The Last Content Space Marine

I’d like to share something a little different with you for this post. Normally I post about videogames, but today I’d like to talk about another artistic medium I enjoy immensely- comic books. Specifically, a run of comics done by a writer named Peter David (No, not the farther of the celery wearing Doctor).

The series in question is an X-men spin off called X-Factor, and ran from 2005 to 2008 spanning 32 issues. And to be frank it’s some of the best comic book material I have ever read. It’s up there with Transmetropolitan and Ultimates 1&2 as some of my favourite material of all time. Honestly, for a serialised comic it even manages to compete with classic graphic novels like Watchmen.

Yes, I think it’s that good.

The set up is pretty simple. Marvel had a cross over event called M-day (an event being a big development in the Marvel setting which effects every character in some way- usually resulting in crossovers and a core ‘event book’), in which an extremely powerful mutant called the Scarlet Witch driven by grief and pain decided that the world would be a better place without any mutants. The Scarlet Witch’s power was to alter reality as she saw fit. By the time she was done, there where only about 200 mutants left in the Marvel-verse.

Now, anyone with a passing interest in the X-Men is probably aware that mutants are supposed to be representative of repressed minorities and persecuted cultures- often homosexuals (unique character traits that appear at puberty for example). This is a perfectly noble endeavour in writing, but I’ve always felt the message of persecution and bigotry is somewhat diluted when the offended party often has at least one trait which lets them throw anyone who pisses them off through the nearest window.

This is the first of Peter David’s triumphs with the series- the principle antagonist is not a supremely powerful mutant survivor, or an invading alien race- it’s that element of fear, bigotry and hatred that runs through a crowd.

Following M-Day, mutants were not killed or ‘vanished’ but instead the X gene responsible for their powers was turned off, and consequently almost all mutants lost their powers. However, many still bear physical deformities of mutanthood, or are open about their former lives. So suddenly the mutant hating mob has a plethora of targets without eye lasers to vent their hate on.

This leads to many of the depowered mutants establishing a ghetto called ‘Mutant Town’. It is here than the principle protagonist of the series, Jamie Madrox chooses to establish the base of operations for a private investigative firm called X-Factor. Their principle goal is to discover what caused M-Day (the X-men have suppressed the information regarding Scarlet Witch), and to assist the population of Mutant Town any way they can.

One of the chief elements that make this run so fantastic is the characters. Each member of the team is unique, has their own quirks both big and small and every single one of them has a well fleshed out and extremely interesting development arc. Even better than that though, their interactions as a group are extremely well written and very, very genuine.

I think that is the main selling point of this series- it’s authenticity. In much the same way that Alan Moore tried to push the idea of a superhero into a real world setting with Watchmen, X-Factor tries to create the same three dimensional view of each of its characters, showing them as far more than just costumed crime fighters. They have their hopes, fears, and aspirations. They are all fundamentally good people- but the way the world has changed has put them under amazing pressure.

So with that in mind, let’s take a look at the team.

We will start with Jamie Madrox- the Multiple Man, and the group’s leader. Madrox’s power is simple- he can convert kinetic energy in his body into duplicates of himself, and can repeat this process ad nauseam. This power has lead to some very interesting character elements. For one thing, he is terrible at making decisions. When faced with an ‘either or’ situation, he just creates dupes to pursue both avenues. He can also reabsorb his duplicates and gain their memories and experiences. However, memory being what it is he can’t really differentiate between memories that belong to Jamie Prime, and memories that came from dupes.

So naturally he does what any sane person would do with such a power- he creates a small army of dupes and sends them off to join the army, study at universities around the world, compete in sports and develop new skills. Of course, once he reabsorbs them, this knowledge becomes his.

This is what I’m talking about- characters using their super powers in realistic ways. Superheroes don’t need to be arseholes about their power, but honestly can you see Clark Kent deciding to take a bus over flying to an appointment? Do you really think Tony Stark doesn’t use the Iron Man tech to make it to the off licence before closing time? It’s that little extra bit of attention, that demonstration of how these heroes use their powers in their daily lives that helps make X-Factor so interesting.

The issue of creating dupes to lead independent lives and then… well for lack of a better term, killing them is also raised in the series. If that version of Madrox has lived for years, doesn’t it count as its own person?

Of course it isn’t that simple. Each dupe is an element of Jamie’s psyche. The best example is in the Red Dwarf episode ‘Terraform’- each dupe is an aspect of his personality made manifest. Some are his guilt, some his motivation, some his paranoia and some are that little voice you get in the back of your head which tells you to try and fuck things up just to see what will happen… So now you can see why he has learned to be careful how many dupes he creates. Of course, when he creates the dupe, he looses that element of himself and must re build it from scratch. For some dupes (such as aggression) this is easy. For other more abstract ones though, it’s almost impossible. This idea forms the premise of probably the most interesting arc in the series.

Next team member is Theresa ‘Siryn’ Cassidy, daughter of X-Man Banshee. Her power is the same as that of her farther- an extremely powerful scream and the ability to use it fly. She can also modulate her voice to make people listening to her do whatever she wants. As a character she gets surprisingly little development until the end of the run. There’s a very important event in her life in the middle of the series (I won’t say for spoilers), but it doesn’t really go any where. She’s mainly there for other characters to play off. But even so her motivations, fears and dreams are realised and while she doesn’t develop much, she is entertaining to read about.

Probably the hardest hitter in the team is Monet St. Croix, also known as M. She can fly, has super strength and also limited telepathy. Her background is that of a spoiled rich brat, who is with X-Factor more for the kicks than any real sense of duty. Think ‘Common People’ by Pulp (or William Shatner if you’re psychotic) and you won’t go far wrong. However, as the story progresses she is exposed to the real nature of the world beyond the gilded walls of her own lifestyle, and while she never really looses her brat like persona she comes to care about more than just herself. It’s her development that I enjoy the most as it’s the most subtle. She goes from constant put downs and abuse directed at her team members, to just the occasionally snarky remark or backhanded compliment as reality starts to set in.

Lending some Scottish flair to the group is Rhane ‘Wolfsbane’ Sinclair. She’s a werewolf- that’s pretty much her power. Her arc is similar to that of Beast- a battle against an animal inside her. As she says “I don’t know if I’m a woman that turns into an animal, of an animal that turns into a woman.” Rahne is also deeply religious and a devout Catholic- a fact that plays a big role later in the series what the mutant persecution gains religious backing.

The resident bruiser is Guido ‘Strong Guy’ Carosella. Guido’s arc is hard to describe without giving away spoilers, but it’s mainly focused on two ideas. The first is that sometimes you behave in ways beyond your control, and the second is the need to balance penance for said actions, with the acceptance that not everything you did was your fault. Guido is also an example of the beautiful subtlety of Peter David’s writing. Small hints are dropped before Guido’s ‘big moment’ which in retrospect are somewhat obvious.

The final character is easily the most interesting with the exception of Madrox. A depowered mutant by the name of Julio Esteban Rictor. Ten points if you can guess what his power was- and no, being Spanish is not a superpower.

Rictor's arc is about loss. His power to create earthquakes went beyond just simple muscle flexing- he was attuned to the planet and could feel the entire processes of its existence from the trees of the rainforests leeching water, to the shifting of tectonic plates, to life moving across its surface. And now the poor bastard just has the normal five senses like the rest of us. Over the course of the series Rictor has to overcome this loss, and is even tempted with the possibility of having his powers restored. Of course, the cost of doing so is great.

What makes Rictor so interesting is again Peter David’s skillful writing. Rictor is traumatised, spiteful and bitter but he is also a good person trying to do what is right. He lashes out at his friends, is overly cruel to his enemies and has a tendency to mope, but he remains pro active and is there when people need him. He’s trying to deal with his loss, trying to get on with his life, but he just finds it too hard sometimes. This is far better than most comic book writing where he’d either be a whining emo pissant or a paragon of ‘getting over it’. Again we come back to the authenticity that makes the series so great.

Despite all this praise though, the run does have it’s low points- most of them right towards the end. The penultimate arc is a cross over with the ‘Messiah Complex’ story arc that tied into all mutant related titles published at the time.

Frankly, it’s fucking terrible.

The thing that pisses me off is that X-Factor was a ‘street level’ story- it wasn’t about Doctor Doom trying to take over the world, or Galactus trying to eat it. It was about a group of people trying to find out the reasons behind the most traumatic event of their lives and their culture, while dealing with the massive phobic backlash against them. Now they’re up against a nationwide militant group of priests with access to better equipment than the US army, and Madrox is travelling through time. It’s a horrendously jarring disconnect from the stark realism of the first part of the run, and it has no place at all in this sort of story.

To make matters worse the Messiah Complex story itself was utter, utter shit. Well to be fair I haven’t read the whole thing, but what I’ve seen in X-Factor and X-Force turned my stomach. The thing that nailed the coffin shut for me was the characterization of Cyclops and Professor X.

Now, let’s be fair. Cyclops isn’t often depicted as a very nice man. But there’s a huge difference between a guy who engages in a psychic extramarital affair with a former supervillian, and a guy who explicitly orders, authorises and creates a team of mutants with the express purpose of murdering threats, who also have full licence to break the law and even torture people for the sake of their goal. And when Xavier finds out about this Cyclops emotionally blackmails the poor bastard into essentially giving him full control of the X-Men. And Xavier, a highly moral and extremely driven individual- lets it happen.

I could go on for a thousand words about the travesty, hypocrisy and sheer utter stupidity of a brain dead writer who thinks murder is ‘edgy’. I think the scene that sticks with me most is Wolverine heating his claw with a blowtorch so that he can carve off a man’s face to torture him. You can make this stuff work in the hands of a skilled writer, but it’s obvious that the bits of Messiah Complex I read were done by a fool with his head stuck in the Rob Liefeld school of comic design. Violence with no message.

Suffice to say the penultimate story arc of X-Factor is a terrible mess; you also need to read other titles to get the full story as the narrative is interlaced, oh and the entire thing is the complete opposite of what made the story so great to begin with.

The final arc is a desperate attempt to recover from the massive haymaker to the plot that was Messiah Complex. It claws back some joy in the form of more character development, but it’s sadly obvious that the series has jumped the shark and what was a glorious tale peters out into a very definite, if unsatisfying end.

Still, even allowing for the terrible interference from Messiah Complex, X-Factor is a really, really good story with some fantastic characters and great development. The art work is always well done and the way characters play off each other is extremely organic. It’s well paced, exciting and action packed with some great drama moments and well executed comedy relief. If you’re into comic books, or you’re looking to get started, you could certainly do a lot worse than this run of X-Factor.

So, a short while back Bethesda softworks successfully bought the rights to a Fallout MMO for a cool two million. This has of course raised the issue of whether Bethesda is going to actually create such a game, or if they are holding the rights for some other nefarious purpose.

I’ve made my views on multiplayer games more than clear, and on more than one occasion. My distaste for them however, extends into the realms of deep seated loathing for their bastard spawn; the MMO.

MMOs typify everything I loathe about multiplayer games. They are shallow worlds with no interesting characters and crappy stories. They require you to communicate with people who are mostly complete pricks, and without a doubt they have the worst gameplay out of any genre. There are specific examples of other games which are of course far worse, but as a genre you will not find a bigger collection of utterly boring mechanics outside of the MMO. The reasons for this are many and varied and will certainly be touched on in greater detail soon, as an explanation is owed to such a complete dismissal of a genre you all seem intent to piss money into on a daily basis.

But today we are going to be constructive. Today I am going to outline certain elements which I think a Fallout MMO should posses- hell maybe even things that would make me want to play the bloody game. So, let’s jump right in.

Human only player characters.
Supermutants work best as antagonists. The atmosphere and pacing of Fallout would be best served as a disparate group of people desperately trying to survive in a hostile world. That pressure and intensity is much lessened if you are able to crush someone’s head like a melon with a flick of your wrist.

Of course it isn’t fun to be cowering in fear for the whole game, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

Emphasis on solo and small team quests.
When I think of Fallout, the only big groups I envisage outside of settlements are a column of Enclave troops grinding the wasteland into dust beneath their power armoured jackboots. Or perhaps a ravening horde of supermutants, hell bent on using your femur as a toothpick for the rest of you.

As such, that same atmosphere of survival and desperation is best served by people operating in small, rag tag bands. Maybe it’s just me, but I honestly can’t see massive convoys of forty odd people marching off to go and raid whisperwind cavern. I know there’s precedent with Caesar’s Legion and the NCR, but those are big organizations and have the supplies and logistics. It just strikes me as wrong that mook wonderers would be able to do that. Unless of course they formed such a power base of their own…

Player built factions only.
This is straight from the only MMO I don’t loathe, EVE Online. Big controlling groups are far more interesting when they are established and run by players. Overthrowing the Enclave is fine and dramatic, but imagine how awesome it would feel to do it knowing that somewhere on the other end of an internet connection you have actually beaten somebody. This wasn’t a scripted event, or a storyline someone wrote- you played a part in the downfall of someone’s actual long term plan, took down an organization built and run by actual people.

Of course, to make such a thing meaningful the game would need more than just guilds...

Resources, settlements, colonies and supply lines.
This is another thing from EVE Online. Give player run factions the ability to actually create something- a legacy and a powerbase, resources to fight over and control, manufacturing centres to equip their forces with the best kit (or at least the best kit post war mechanics can build), strongholds to store their goods, old military bases to occupy and ‘prospect’.

This provides two things- one, a feeling of being badass. A part of a machine larger than you working towards a goal. Kind of like how your boss wants you to feel at work, but with more plasma rifles to use and a paycheque in the form of power armour.

Two, it provides a great ‘endgame’. Done questing? Is your level so high that it can no longer be reasonably called a number? Do Radscorpions flee at your mere presence? Then it’s time to show people how much of a badass you truly are- drive them before you, size their lands and hear the lamentations of their robotrons. Honestly, victory over an enemy ‘guild’ is far more satisfying when you know you’ve done their plans and resources some real, actual harm as opposed to just base humiliation.

This also means that you naturally get different factions. Let’s say for example you have control of a military base which drops a random number of high tech pre war weapons every 24 hours. This is great, but you still need to move those items. In accordance with market economics theory, a guild will rise to intercept your caravans. Bingo, you have bandits. Which means you need guards. Which means planning- which contributes more and more to the feeling of authenticity in the wasteland- plotting your survival and your expansion.

This would help make the game far more immersive and entertaining and raise the stakes for all players involved. http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Meaningful quests.
One thing I loathe in most MMOs is the utterly braindead questing. Go to point X. Collect Y many bits of monster Z and come back. Gold and XP! Oh please do fuck off and die. It was one of the big reasons I thrashed Neir, and to a lesser extent the Witcher. This is the most boring, banal, utterly lacking idea for a game in the known universe. And it is all over MMOs, often with no attempt to even try and dress it up as anything different.

Give quests some real stories and put effort into them. Add some random content so the quest isn’t the same for everyone. Tie them into the PvP guild warfare so low level players can make a difference, such as completing a quest adding a stat buff to a base’s defences for a few hours.

And Finally
Ron Perlman doing the intro. It isn’t Fallout without Ron Perlman doing the intro.

2011 has not been a good year for me. But it has had its upsides! One of those has been the release of some pretty awesome games. So, today’s post is dedicated to my personal favourite games of 2011. Note that I say *my* personal favourites- I’m not claiming these to be the very best of the year in a complete sense, but they are the best that I played. If you feel a game deserves a mention then head to the comments section and by all means have your say- I’d love to hear what you think!

So, with flame proof wards in place, let us jump to the award ceremony of the Evi’s 2011! Only slightly less unprofessional the Spike VGA awards.


Best Graphics:

Runner up: Skyrim.
Skyrim is a bloody gorgeous game. I love the visual design, I love the almost authentic Nordic styling, the rolling plains, the craggy mountains, the weather effects and I especially love the design of the dragons. But I can’t help but feel that Bethesda didn’t quite get the game looking as good as they could. With a few beautification mods such as a graphics post processor though, it looks stunning. I’m relegating it to second place though because one other game really did take me by surprise with the quality of its visuals...

Winner: Battlefield 3.
Shame about Origin, but this title just looks stunning. Now, it’s sad that such immense quality is being used in a grey brown shooter, but the lightning effects, textures and particle behaviour are second to none. I’d love to see what people do with the engine in the future. It’s unfortunate that I’ve not had the time to play much of the game itself, but It is without a doubt the best looking game of 2011, its sheer quality making up for the drab ‘realistic’ styling.

Best soundtrack.

Runner up: Child of Eden.
A legitimate attempt to make a game specifically for the Kinect, Child of Eden is a fun, hyper stylized rail shooter from the creators of Rez. While in many regards it leaves a lot to be desired (it’s more of an experience than a game), the soundtrack is top notch. Sometimes this accolade is given for music that just sounds good, but Child of Eden’s soundtrack is not only of the highest quality, but also manages to complement the graphics and even the gameplay flawlessly. How do you even manage to make music ‘sound’ like a gameplay mechanic? I don’t know, but Child of Eden did it.

Winner: Bastion.
Darren Korb is a name to remember. He’s the man behind the soundtrack of Bastion, and is without a doubt the composer of the best soundtrack of 2011. He captures the scenes his music plays over beautifully, and the production values are top notch. Best of all, they even sound great outside of the game. You can buy the soundtrack on Steam and I would strongly recommend that you do so. Korb has a unique sound and style, and I can’t wait to hear what he comes up with next.

Best Voice Acting

Runner up: Stephen Merchant as Wheatley (Portal 2)
Merchant narrowly beat out Danny Wallace as Shaun Hastings (Assassin’s Creed) for this spot. I think they are both about equal, delivering great off the cuff performances and providing some much needed comedy relief in both of their titles. However I can’t help but feel that Wheatley’s stronger presence in Portal 2 gave him an edge. His character was ‘more interactive’ and as such it’s easier to appreciate his performance. He nailed every line, and was an immensely fun addition to the franchise. I’d love to see Wheatley again, and I can’t wait to see what Merchant does next in the videogames industry.

Winner: Mark Hamill as Joker (Arkham City)
When people talk about the Joker these days they often refer to him as a different character depending on who is writing/playing him. In much the same way that people may talk of ‘X’s Mark Antony’ or ‘Y’s Mickey Johnstone’. It’s a testament to the depth, versatility and complexity of the character that people differentiate between the different portrayals far more than Batman. While Heath Ledger remains my favourite Joker, Mark Hamill’s portrayal in both Batman: The Animated Series, and the Arkham games is a close second. He’s got the perfect mix of menace, dark humour and sheer insanity that make the character so fantastic. It was easily the most memorable performance of 2011; creepy, compelling and creative. A well deserved win. A special mention also needs to go to Tara Strong who played Harley Quinn. She and Hamill worked exceptionally well off each other. Oh, and Spike? YOU DO NOT STICK LUKE FUCKING SKYWALKER IN THE BLEACHERS AT YOUR AWARD CEREMONY.

Best Storytelling

Runner Up: Gears of War 3...?
Yes, you read that right. And no, I’m not being a jackass just to drum up controversy! I honestly really enjoy the Gears storyline. It’s extremely basic, but it’s well told with only a few plot holes (fewer than most games anyway) and it has some great moments. I can’t really give away too much without spoilers for people who haven’t played it, but there was one moment in GoW3 that honestly nearly had me in tears. Yeah I’m man enough to admit it. I love to lose myself in games and Gears makes it very easy to do that. It may not be challenging or deep, but it’s easy to get attached to the characters and the occasional dramatic moments are well done. Plus it was a breath of fresh air to see a male and female lead in a platonic relationship. It’s rare to see that in any media, let alone videogames. It may not be everyone’s choice for runner up, but it is mine.

Winner: Bastion.
The Kid takes home another trophy! Storytelling in videogames is often done in a very hamfisted way, typically through endless cut scenes or walls of text (I’m looking at you FFXIII). In some cases this works well. Hideo Kojima has elevated the endless cut scene to the status of a genre in and of itself. But for the most part when they want to tell a story most developers forget that they are making a game that is designed to be played. Enter Bastion. No cut scenes, no lengthy dialogue sequences, no walls of text. Bastion’s use of constant narration, while initially annoying until you get used to it, is a hugely innovative step in videogame story telling. It won’t work for every game, however as an experiment it was a fantastic way to maintain constant gameplay and combine it with a well told yarn. A sure spot for number one.

Best Gameplay

Runner up: Arkham City
Arkham Asylum is one of the best games ever made. I hold this truth to be self evident, and therefore do not need to justify myself to you philistines! It’s was even down in the Guinness book of world records as game with the highest number of perfect score reviews. Arkham City makes it even better, opening the game out a little, adding more content and even managing to improve the already fantastic combat system. It’s simple, intuitive and hugely rewarding. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was most people’s number one spot for this category.

Winner: Tropico 4.
Another controversial decision. Tropico 4, like Tropico 3, has a flawless complexity curve. It’s fairly simple to pick up the basics, and once you have that the entire island is your oyster. As you get better and better at the game you start to notice more and more ways to tweak the world and your city. After a few hours you’ll be knee deep in ‘socio-political engineering’ I.E, brainwashing everyone into loyalists. Through dozens of subtle methods you can achieve a massive array of results and very different styles of society. The best part is at no point do you feel you ‘need’ to learn more. You go from beginner to master without ever actually realising that your game is improving- all thanks to the way that new concepts and ideas are introduced at a pace you set, without even realising it.

Best Smartphone Game

Runner up: Zen Pinball.
Mainly for Teraga equipped tablets, Zen Pinball is a port of Pinball FX which most of you will know from the Xbox Live Arcade marketplace. It uses some of the same tables and is every bit as good as its 360 counterpart. Zen has great, realistic physics, oodles of style and a compulsive element that borders on Civilization levels. The only drawback is that it won’t work well on all Android devices, so remember that if it doesn’t work you can claim a refund within 15 minutes of purchase. Try to beat my highscores! I’m Evis03!

Winner: Grand Prix Story
The ‘Story’ games are basically business management titles. Don’t let their simplistic graphics fool you though! These are very high quality, well thought out, deep and complex games with loads of replay value. Grand Prix story devoured hours of my life as I lay in bed fine tuning my vehicles, training my staff and researching new technology. A light version is available as a demo and well worth a look. It is available on both Apple and Android stores.

Wooden Spoon- Because some things are just S###

Runner up: Duke Nukem Forever.
Awful graphics, horrible presentation, crap gameplay, abysmal music and frankly far more fun as a running joke. It wasn’t the worst game I’ve ever played, but it was certainly one of the worst purchases I made in 2011. More thoughts here.

‘Winner’: The 3DS.
Here comes the stampede of Nintendo fanboys! I got a 3DS on release date (hell, I went to the midnight launch) and my thoughts on it have been made eminently clear elsewhere on this blog for those who care to read the drunken ramblings of a madman. The long story short though is that while the console itself is fine (I’m one of those strange people who don’t hate 3D on principle- but I do acknowledge that no one seems to use it properly at the moment), the launch line up and subsequent releases were atrocious. What wasn’t just outright crap was either meagre, or rereleases of old games. I already have Ocarina of time. I can play it any time I like on a 36” screen. I don’t give a shit about paying another £40 to play it in 3D.

To cap it off, all my mobile gaming these days is done on my phone or tablet anyway. Games on these platforms are far cheaper and far more suited for quick, pick up-play-put down, style gaming that is so important on a commute. Easily the biggest waste of money this year- and that’s saying a lot from someone who bought both DN:F and Dragon Age 2.

Game of the Year

Runner up: Skyrim
A game with the compulsive nature of crack and the eeked out rewards of the crack dealer. It strings you along and keeps you playing for just one more quest, one more item, one last cleared dungeon- then you can go to bed. You awake four hours later, your face plastered to the keyboard, drool gumming up the keys and the gentle smell of urine from your trousers.

This is Skyrim’s greatest asset and yet also why it isn’t my GOTY. I can’t stop playing the bloody thing. I honestly can’t. But the thing is I can’t figure out why. Everything about it is very well executed, the combat works, the skills are cool, and the world is nice and so on. The stories are a little lacklustre but that’s par for the course with Bethesda games. But that’s just it. Nothing individual is outstanding, but when you put everything together it metamorphoses into something that you just can’t put the fuck down.

Skyrim is a fantastic time sink. I’ve played it for nearly 70 hours, and you know what? I barely remember any of it. Most of the time I have the game turned down low and I’m also listening to an audio book. Yet despite the fact that it leaves so little impression, I keep finding myself throwing hour and hours and hours into it. That alone has to be worth massive kudos, so I offer it the runner up space.

And the Game of 2011 is....

Arkham City.

Arkham Asylum is- as I have previously intimated- one of the finest games ever made. Arkham City is even better. I’ve touched on the improvements made before, but much like Assassin’s Creed 2 to AC1, Arkham City builds on the strongest points and shuffles the weaker ones around or does away with them entirely. Everything about this game is fantastic. The graphics are of the highest quality and also wonderfully moody and atmospheric. The sound is well done, the story is well told if a little pat, the villains are wonderfully imagined and the entire thing has been completed to a level of polish and excellence that brings a manly tear to my eye. It does everything right. What more can I say except it’s my favourite game of 2011, and Rocksteady are the best thing to arrive in the gaming community since Felicia Day.

Noteworthy mentions

Deus Ex Human Revolution
What happened to this game? It hit the community with the force of a category five tornado wielding Thor’s hammer and then vanished. I know that there was some DLC, but for a title so hotly anticipated and so well received (even Yahtzee praised it) it passed in the blink of an eye. It’s a strange conundrum!

Sonic Generations
A shout out needs to go to everyone’s favourite woodland mammal. He’s had a hard time of it the last ten or so years, but Generations shows that Sonic can still be good. A return to the basic values of the franchise was just what the Dr Eggman ordered, and Generations delivered. A hugely enjoyable platformer, and a welcome return to excellence for the speedy hero with the blue dreads.

LA Noire
My review of this title is elsewhere on this blog. I’ve come to the conclusion that it was a fairly poor game. I’ll praise Team Bondi (well I would if they still existed) for their willingness to take a risk and try something new, but much like Mirror’s Edge the end result was less than promising. Fair dues to you for trying people, but a lot of us were hyped for this release and ended up disappointed.

Dragon Age 2
I’ve ranted, raged, cried, sacrificed goats and called down the wrath of any God who will listen on/against this game. But I do need to make one point very, VERY clear as I breezed over it in my video review.

It isn’t a bad game.

It was a crushing disappointment, and a clear message from EA that it didn’t care about the Classic CRPG crowd that DA:O was aimed at. But it wasn’t a bad game. It worked, it had some nice characters and at the very least I played it through the (bitter) end. While I loathe and detest it with every fibre of my being, do not let it be said I declared it to be bad in ‘overall’ terms.

So that’s 2011 sorted. On to a new year, new games, maybe some new consoles and more potential than you can shake a wii-mote at! Love and peace y’all!

-Evis T.

Did you know that there’s an argument for the United States Postal Service to be blamed for attempts to poison senators and media companies with Anthrax? It’s an argument that would place the deaths of five people, killed by a weaponized disease in the hands of the Post Office.

If you didn’t think something along the lines of ‘that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever read’ when you looked over those sentences, you have a very twisted view of the world and should probably seek medication. But you know what? It’s true. It takes a very twisted, neigh corkscrew logic to see it- but it’s there. And you want to know what’s scary? The American senate is debating the future of the nation’s internet access based on that precise logic.

Confused yet? Good. Grab a drink and get comfortable. This won’t take long.

In 2001, Anthrax spores were mailed to several American media companies and two senators. I’ll spare you the details, but there’s more information on Wikipedia for those of you who were still a glint in the milkman’s eye back then. But suffice to say, who do we blame for those deaths? The nutter who sent the letters right? And probably whoever got him the Anthrax. Would it occur to you at any point to blame the Postal System for being the medium by which the attack took place?

Now, when a person buys a bootleg DVD from a dodgy market stand in Croydon, who do you blame? The person who made the copy? The person who bought it? The person who sold it? All of the above? That would be my answer too. But how about the company that made the blank DVD that was used in the copy? I mean, by creating such a device they effectively enabled the piracy to take place. No blank DVDs, no DVD copy, no piracy. This is what we call logic kiddies.

Need another example? How about a group of thieves ram-raid a shop (this means breaking in by driving a car through it). Who is to blame? The thieves, the shop owner? Mall Security? How about the car salesman for providing the thieves with the tools to commit their crime?

But Evis! You cry with indignance and self inflated importance- ‘That’s just stupid. It isn’t the fault of Samsung and Ford that someone is abusing their product!’ And you’d be right. People are punished for the CRIME, not for the means used to commit it- and the people who created the means certainly are not blamed unless they were involved in other illegal practices. But this is the batshit moon logic that the US House of Representatives now has to consider.

The Digital Millennium Copyright act grants certain websites such as YouTube exemption from responsibility if users upload illegal and/or copyrighted content. Provided of course that they remove said content when notified that it exists. It’s called the ‘safe harbor’ and it is vital to enable websites like YouTube, Digg, Reddit and so forth to operate. The amount of submissions that these sites get is astronomical- it is simply not possible to vet every last submission. Not without employing so many people you’d be bankrupt pretty much right away.

The system isn’t perfect. For one thing it means someone has to actually notice and report the content, and then the site has to take it down. By which time the content has spread to a dozen other places and been accessed by thousands of people. But can you think of anything better? The supporters of SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) think so.

They want to do away with the ‘safe harbour’ part of the DMCA, forcing sites to vet every last submission or risk being sued into the ground. Oh, and on top of that they will censor any site that hosts, shows or links to pirated material or- and here is the kicker ‘counterfit gooods’. Censor as in- you will not be able to access this is you live in the US. At all.

So, basically this act, should it pass would trigger the following: YouTube as we know it would be killed. As would almost every social networking site (including Facebook and Twitter) unless every single post you make is checked, lest it contain a link to the latest shitty Hollywood blockbuster. And you thought privacy terms at the moment were bad?

In fact, any free and open platform from 4Chan to your blog could be targeted. Did your blog link to a 30 second clip from a movie? Well done- under the provisions of this act the US Government can now order that your blog be struck from the DNS system and made inaccessible to people within the US. It will be another nation to have a ‘Great Firewall’. The other often cited one being China. But hey, when China does it it’s because they have a totalitarian government with an abysmal human rights record and no freedom at all right? But when the US does it, it will be to protect you from… uhhh… accidentally watching a film you haven’t paid for? Thinking that you could buy a genuine new iPhone 4Gs for $50?

This act isn’t about you America. It was never about you. It’s about business and profit- just like it always is. The administration doesn’t give a fuck about you, your rights or your safety online. This isn’t even about tightening the law. This is all about gouging away at anything that eats into the profits of these companies- these companies who pay you minimum wage, offer no benefits, fire you if you form a union and con you out of any entitlement you might have. They don’t give a fuck about you, why should you give one about them? If these businesses looked after you than maybe I would encourage you to support them. They don’t though, so that’s that.

Look, Piracy is illegal. Piracy does costs jobs, and it does cost money. It may not be as terribly damaging as groups like the RIAA and MPAA want you to think, but it does damage the economy. We should combat it; we should try and stamp it out. But not like this. Businesses should be trying to coax people away from piracy with new practices- not encouraging the government to censor mass communication to take that opportunity away. The digital age has been here for over a decade (longer even) and these companies still don’t know how to react to it. Instead of embracing it they fight it. Instead of realizing that the rules of the game have changed they continue to below at us waving their out of date rulebook around like a bloodied sabre.

The internet can be your friend. Digital downloads have made services like iTunes a fortune and Video Rentals via Xbox Live are a nice earner for Microsoft. The internet is the future and you can’t sweep the future under the rug with legislation and lobbying. Maybe if people don’t feel that your products are worth paying for you should experiment with why- and then try something new. It says a lot that the companies opposing this are the ones who are most closely tied to the internet. They can see the damage it will do, whereas the RIAA and MPAA can’t see past the 0’s on their profit margin.

Piracy will never be stamped out entirely. No crime ever will. All that SOPA will achieve is marking the US as taking its second step on the road to totalitarianism. The first was the ham-fisted attempted to censor wikileaks. Don’t forget America, it will only be a matter of time before this act, if it passes, will be broadened to include ‘matters of national security’. Such as photos of police pepper spraying an 80 year old woman. Such as reports of how the latest war is *really* going.

Always remember, the means are not the crime.

There have been a few games out recently now that we’re out of the Summer fallow, but to be honest I’ve not been doing much gaming. Between work and well… just work to be honest.

Anyway, I’ve re written this intro five times now and I can’t make it sound right. So bugger that, and let’s talk about some of the games I have been playing.

Gears of War 3
If you want a good time it’s hard to go wrong with Gears. Oh it typifies pretty much everything I loathe in the current crop of action games, but there’s something compulsive in the Gears of War series. Maybe it’s the fact is knows exactly what it wants to be and sticks to it. Maybe it’s the fact that while it doesn’t break new ground any more, it does tread its turf with extreme competence and authority.

It’s just a really well put together game, and provides a few hours of mindless fun. There isn’t much more of a point in talking about it- you probably already know if you want to grab it or not, and if you don’t know then I suggest you grab Gears of War one or two first as the changes between them are relatively minor. I will say this though; Gears 3 is certainly the best of the series.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Anyone who’s dug back in my old posts will know I don’t like Deus Ex. It grew on me slightly when I tried to play it again a few months after making that post, but I still think that it is hugely overrated when considered in today’s market. It has aged very badly.

That put to one side Human Revolution is an excellent game, providing a variety of challenges and rewards all wrapped up in a very neat, extremely pretty package. The graphics quality is high, but for some reason everything is tinted orange. Fallout New Vegas did the same thing and wouldn’t you know- when you mod the marmalade off the camera the game looks fucking gorgeous. Human Revolution has a similar mod, and the effect is the same. Why do developers keep doing this? It’s like painting a beautiful landscape and then covering it in Roses wrappers.

One aspect of the game that really hammers its score though are the boss fights. Aside from being totally unnecessary, they are also phoned in- big time. There are four in total, and not to give away too many spoilers all of them are crap.

First off, if you didn’t pick up any combat augmentations (like me- I play stealth and non lethal), these fights offer very little mercy. There is often nothing to actually complement the upgrades that you do have, which means you essentially need to use some really cheap tactics to get ahead. Also, if you travel light and don’t have much in the way of grenades e.t.c, the fight gets even worse. To the developers credit though, the boss arenas as least have a good spread of weapons and ammo.

My biggest gripe out these boss fights though is that they are totally, utterly inconsequential to the story. You don’t even know their names until the cutscene before the fight, and one boss’ name is never even revealed. There is such a broken, ragged disconnection between the narrative flow of the bulk of the game and the boss fights that it’s truly unnerving.

Eidos Montreal actually outsourced the boss fights to Grip, but even then I would have expected the writers to make use of them as characters. A boss fight should represent an apex of the story, a climax or convergence of plot points. These are just tripwires in the narrative. If you want an example of a boss fight done well as a narrative tool, look at anything by Hideo Kojima. Bosses are established (in some cases recurring) characters with names, histories and personalities. Sometimes one or more of these aspects are terrible, but they are always present. The fights are always interesting, requiring you to think up new tactics and adapt to unique situations. Again, sometimes they are not good, but they are usually memorable little stories in and of themselves. Best of all, when they die they are not shoved back into nowhere and never mentioned again. They are characters and their deaths are as key to the story as their lives were. Hell, Psyco Mantis pops up in MGS4 after being killed in MGS1. And Ocelot? Christ- he’s the axle on which the plot of the entire bloody series turns. He’s as much a main character as Snake.

And who are these nameless goons in Human Revolution? No one. They are totally unimportant. I’m not joking when I say that if you cut them from the game all together, practically nothing needs to be changed. Jensen can get shot by a random mook, or caught in a grenade blast or something. The only contribution to the plot is when the first boss, for some totally insane reason tells Jensen where to go next. Why does he do this? No idea. It’s not like he’s had a change of heart and is trying to atone for his sins or something- he tries to kill you moments later. Okay, maybe he’s trying to coax Jensen closer, but wouldn’t he just lie?

Aside from that though, the rest of the game is exceptionally good and a lot of fun to play. Well recommended.

Tropico 4:
Very little has changed from Tropico 3. There is now a more structured campaign a mode, a few more buildings and some minor changes to the way edicts and policies are handled. The graphics have had a minor update too.

If you enjoyed Tropico 3, you’ll enjoy Tropico 4. But you may feel cheated by the price tag for what really amounts to an expansion pack. Give the demo a try though; it’s better than Tropico 3- just not by much.

Dead Island:
This isn’t what I wanted. I wanted a good, serious, narrative driven zombie survival RPG. What I got was Borderlands with zombies in it. I can’t really say Dead Island is bad, but as I’ve said before in this blog many times, I loathe games that are reliant on multiplayer. It’s just an excuse for the developers to put less effort in, and I believe that Dead Island really makes my point for me. Playing alone, it is nothing more than a sequence of fetch quests. Even when I tried playing it with Betamax I was bored shitless. It isn’t a bad game, and it has many good points (the graphics are nothing short of spectacular) but it totally and utterly failed to engage me on any level. So little effort was put into the way the story was told and the quests to complete that it was almost painful. It was obvious the devs thought ‘parties are going to skip these sequences anyway, so why have them?’ A complete waste of £30 for me, but if you dig the multiplayer co op element on games then you’ll probably have a good time with it.

Love and peace y’all.

Okay so, Space Marine demo. This is only the second non RTS title Relic have ever made, and it shows. The demo is competently executed, but I'm not hugely impressed. It certainly wasn't bad though. The melee combat works, but it begs for a block option, or defensive stance of some sort. It's nice to see the 40k world up close in something that isn't Fire Warrior, but as is usual for this generation of games it's brown. Really fucking brown. In a universe where everyone dresses like an LGBT pride march, I'd expect some bright vibrant colours, but sadly Relic has opted for the usual 'Brown is real' approach. The voice acting on the marines is nice, but it did take me several minutes to differentiate between them and the orks.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but it also needs a cover system. Here it comes, 'waaah waaah you're not playing it properly'-can it. Charging a gun line in this game will get you cut down faster than public spending. Nothing wrong with that, but it means you're in an awkward sort of shimmy left and right while you soften the enemy line before charging. A cover system would make this far less fiddly and more enjoyable.

Healing by executing enemies is a very nice idea conceptually and shows how a game’s mechanics can complement its artistic and thematic direction. And here’s the inevitable however- when enemies can keep wailing on you while you’re healing, it doesn’t really help matters. If you’re low on health, odds are you’ll die while executing the enemy- especially if there’s an ork nob in the area. I can see this working better in co op where agro control can be more easily managed, but from my experience with the demo the ability to fight in a defensive posture would be hugely beneficial.

I had far more fun with the jump pack mission, but at that point the game was so easy it was laughable. Fly up, smash down. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I think the spectacle of the game will win many people over. Hint, if you’re been thinking things like ‘but you get to cut off an ork’s balls with a chainsword’ while reading this, that means you. Spectacle though, is a pretty weak thing to hinge your entire experience on. Still, if all you want is to run around with the most over the top, impractical weapon ever devised while screaming reverence for the Emperor, then Space Marine will probably suffice.

And to be honest the spectacle does help paper over some of the cracks in the gameplay. It’s a lot easier to ignore the fact healing often means losing more health than you get back when it’s done via the medium of, well... belting an orc in the nads with a chainsword so it lifts him up of the ground and then bifurcates him.

Still, I need a little more. Spectacle gets old. Seeing the same kill moves over and over again means that no matter how cool they may be, they're going to get old. Likewise graphics give way to the next generation of technology and become dated. Good gameplay though lasts for a very long time. There's a reason Counter Strike and Star Craft are still so popular.

I’ll probably get the full game, but if I do it will be when it’s on sale.

Alright, so for the last 10 hours or so I’ve been playing The Witcher. This game has come more highly recommended from the gaming community as a whole than Jesus from a Jehovah’s witness.

Honestly? I’m disappointed. Very few games can ever really live up to the hype that surrounds them, but by and large I’ve managed to find gaming communities that are mostly aligned with my own views on the hobby, and as such when they get excited about something it’s usually something I’d enjoy. In these cases, over hyped games usually come out as ‘good, but not excellent’.

The Witcher doesn’t even really make it into the realms of ‘good’. Now don’t get me wrong, it isn’t a bad game by any stretch of the imagination- the graphics are pretty good, the world is well realised, the music is top notch and the gameplay has a few really good ideas under the bonnet. Where it fails is the fact that the really good ideas at the core of the game are packed around with mounds of sloppy voice acting, utterly atrocious quest design and (thus far at least) piss poor characterization and a no brainer plot.

First off though, let’s be positive and take a look at the things that The Witcher does right.

The combat is pretty fun. The fact that The Witcher is played with only one character instead of a party like most RPGs opens up new options and styles I haven’t previously seen in a videogame. You can chain attacks together with careful timing, and spells can also be used to turn the tide of a battle in a meaningful way. Your spell casting is limited just enough that you don’t fire off spells willy nilly, but free enough that you’re never too worried about ‘waiting until you really need it’.

You can also adopt a variety of stances in combat, but to be honest I don’t really regard this as anything other than busy work made to make the game feel more tactical than it really is. Reason being that each enemy is essentially ‘weak’ to one stance. Using the wrong one will either result in you doing piss all damage, or the enemy dodging entirely. It’s no more tactical than ‘use fire on the ice monster’.

The alchemy and potions mechanics are very well balanced and allow for a variety of options. Unlike most RPGs, potions in The Witcher are not simple ‘fire and forget’ consumables that you occasionally use to heal when your mage has hit the dirt- they are a core element of your combat strategy. Potions have wide ranging, noticeable effects, and they last for hours. If you pop a healing potion then for quite a while you are going to be very hard to kill as your health regenerates so quickly that most enemies can’t even hurt you. Likewise, pop a Tawny Owl potion and your endurance will regen so quickly that you can fire off spells left right and centre.

There is a price though- every time you consume a potion, it adds to your toxicity level and as that climbs various effects kick in. They start with little graphical effects, but then quickly climb to health penalties, and eventually if you max the gauge out- death. There are of course many ways to lower toxicity, but if you’re in a dungeon then you’ll want to be careful which potions you are taking. The more powerful potions such as Blizzard can add quite a bit to your toxicity level and don’t last anywhere near as long as other potions. Keep popping them and you’ll be seeing stars.

The setting is very atmospheric and dark, with a grim overtone to everything. It manages to achieve dark fantasy in a very real way, yet also manages to maintain an air of authentic medievalism at the same time.

So then you might ask what the problem is. First off this game has masses- and I mean absolutely masses- of dead time. Out of the 10 hours I’ve spent with the game, I’d say about 50-60% of that (at least) was spent simply running from one place to another. Eventually I got so utterly bored I started travelling at night just so I could at least get some fights. Sadly this just meant that I was spending even longer completing quests, and I was essentially just driving my wheels deeper into the mud. The game begs for a fast travel system. It’s not even like there’s any reward for exploration, the game is just wasting your time, padding itself out.

The quest design is terrible. Irredeemably terrible. Most quests are just ‘go here, kill X, come back’ or even the oft abused ‘Collect X many monster bits and come back’. Seriously? This crap is played out and dead in World of Warcraft and these clowns think they can get away with it? I know when you get down to it there are only so many quests in RPGs, but the difference is in how you dress them up and make them interesting again. Literally no effort has gone into doing this with The Witcher.

Combine that with the amount of dead time and you can see why I’m getting frustrated with this game. That’s not even including the bloody research. I like the idea of research in principle, it adds a level of immersion. However when you need to do this research just to be able to harvest parts from the monsters it gets a mite frustrating. Why can’t we do extra damage or stuff like that? Even Alpha Protocol managed to get that right. Factor in that even figuring out how you’re supposed to do this research can take an age (typically one NPC in the area will have a book on the monster), and the amount of dead time in the game is further increased.

Let me put it this way, it took me over eight hours to get out of the first area after the tutorial section. A level not much larger than the New Vegas strip- and with far less content.

The voice acting is terrible. Doug Cockle as Geralt gives a totally bland, level, unemotional and utterly boring performance. He finds not one trace of emotion or soul in the character, delivering every line in the same coma inducing monotone. I’m not kidding, every line from flirtation to rage is like listening to... well... This. In fact one could argue this performance is at least varied.

Not that Cockle is alone in giving a terrible performance- pretty much everyone has a hard time finding so much as an inflection in their speech.

I hate to rag on the plot, but there’s no excuse for a game to develop at this utterly tortuous pace. Think of everything that happened in the first 10 hours of Final Fantasy Seven. Think of everything that happened in the first 10 hours of Dragon Age: Origins. What happens in the first 10 hours of the Witcher? You’re order of monster slayers has their stash nicked, and you kill a demon dog. I’ve got no problem with a slow burning plot, but this isn’t even smouldering.

Oh, and you’ve visited a grand total of TWO locations. And that’s including the tutorial area.

If anything is going to stop me playing (and believe me I’m considering it), it will be this. I know many people feel that it’s wrong to write off a game’s plot without actually seeing the whole thing, and for the most part you’d be right. But when the way the plot is developing (or rather not developing) is the main thing that’s driven you away- I’d say that’s damning criticism in and of itself. To put in a parallel, if a movie is so bad you walk out of the theatre people don’t say “well you can’t judge the movie, you didn’t see it all”, they ask “was it really that bad?”

Geralt as a lead character is painful. I complain about Cockle’s performance, but really the writing sucks too. It takes a skilled writer to use the amnesia plot device well, and whoever adapted this game just can’t cut the mustard. Geralt has no personality, no motivation (beyond fucking anything that moves) and is just... well... boring. Amnesia doesn’t mean your character doesn’t have any sense of self- it just means they can’t remember anything. It’s also worth noting that this ‘total amnesia’ is complete balls. The complete loss of every single life experience simply does not happen. I can forgive it if it’s used well or built up (E.G Namelss One, Planescape:Torment), but here it just comes across as an excuse to avoid giving the character any actual character.

So ultimately I need to come down hard on The Witcher. It has some really nice ideas, and if the sequel sorted out the problems I’ve outlined above, I think it would be one hell of a good RPG. As it stands though, The Witcher is a few shining nuggets of gold floating in an ocean of filth. I can’t be too hard on it though, as at least it’s trying to innovate within the genre, and that is always worth kudos. As a score, I’d call it a 6/10. There’s some great potential here, but it’s buried under mounds of problems that stop it ever really shining.

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I’d like to make one final note. It’s not really related to the game, but more an observation. The people who are singing the praises of The Witcher, are the same people who have been lampooning Dragon Age 2. And I know people are going to crucify me for saying this, but honestly? They’re very, very similar games. Both are action RPGs with crappy plots and an emphasis on action and killing things over any alternative style of play. Both have underdeveloped, poorly defined leads, both have an oversimplified inventory management system and both force you to keep running back and forth over the same tiny areas.

To be honest, speaking totally objectively- I think Dragon Age 2 is the superior game. I honestly can’t believe I’m saying it myself, but the design remit was to create a no brainer action RPG, and they delivered. The only thing that The Witcher does better is the alchemy system, but DA2 counters that by using powers, stances and companions. Plus the combat is at least more entertaining to watch. I feel dirty admitting it, but Dragon Age 2 was more of a bitter disappointment than an actual really bad game, and I honestly think that if it had been released as a totally new franchise, people would rate it over The Witcher.

DA:O Still wipes the floor with both of them though.