5 posts tagged “assassin's creed”

It's official - Wii Fit is now a part of my life. Every day at around 7PM, I jump onto the Wii Balance Board and get my BMI reading. The picture above was the first BMI reading I got from it, and I was kind of shocked. Obese? Me? Overweight, yep. I am that. Not obese though. Obese? Thing must be broken. Yet I look down and see the developer belly which was hewn from countless late-nighters and an infinite conveyor belt of takeaway meals. Actually, the way Wii Fit shows you your BMI is kind of horrendous if you're weight conscious - your Mii is on screen and thin to start with, but slowly expands as the BMI increases. The end flourish is a comedy sound effect which does nothing to help the fact that there's a cartoon version of yourself on screen looking pretty fat and miserable.

Wii Fit has helped me in the past two weeks or so to a much more nicer BMI of 30.15 - I yearn for the day when I'm not in the painfully red obese oblong and am sitting in the pink glow of being overweight. It's still not a good place to be, but a hell of a lot better than obese. I've been on the thing often as well as complimenting the workouts with some running again. Ah, I've missed the running. I am determined to lose this gut though. Half my wardrobe now is unwearable - I've got slim-fit hipster jeans slowly getting covered in dust, and shirts which don't button up the way they were designed.

I was extremely lucky to pick up Wii Fit though - I somehow managed to get to PC World the exact moment they got stock in (and ironically it was after a 3km run..!) and now I'm getting serious with some rhythm boxing courtesy of a trainer Mii who sounds a lot like Jason Stratham. It's crazy I come out of those workouts with a sweat on, but it all helps. I've also cut out completely the chocolate and sweets. Biscuits? None of that sweet cakey nonsense for me. I've forsaken my treats for a gutless body. Is it natural to be doing this? I guess I just don't want to bounce as much these days.

I went for my annual visit with my optician at the weekend - although my optician has now become a Scottish fella with worse eyesight than me. Could this even be possible? He managed to put myself at ease with all the wacky things which are currently happening with my eyes. I have floaters - one main one for each eye - which drift into vision sometimes to say hello. I hate floaters. I also have the joylessness of seeing light sources shimmer in a next-gen-bloom-kind-of-way - it was a nice novelty to begin with, walking home with a dreamlike sheen over all. Now? It's kind of bloody irritating, evenmoreso when I was out running one night and not only were the lights all shimmery, but there was mist about - which only seemed to make the effect much worse. Oh, and the glasses constantly steaming up through my exertions too. So, yep. I hate my vision.

Mr. Optician also told me of the things to expect if (when?) one of my retinas decides to detach itself from the back of the eyeball. My old optician told me that I should expect a "curtain effect", though the new optician was a lot more descriptive - expect plenty more floaters than usual (like shitloads more) followed by flashes of white light and then the dreaded curtain effect. When that happens, I should phone them up without hesitation. I've been told that this is what you would expect if you are short of sight. On the good news side of things, he did mention that my eyesight hasn't changed that much - although his final test (a new one I didn't experience last year) proved I may soon need *two* sets of glasses - one for reading and one for normal everyday activity.

Getting old sucks. So does the prospect of spending money on spectacles - although my healthcare covers £200 of it all, so I decided to get a new pair anyway and also a pair of sunglasses in lieu of the pair I lost when I was training for the GNR a few years back. I did feel like not taking my vision for granted when I left there, so I decided to watch Watchmen at the wonderous Tyneside Cinema. Verdict? Really enjoyed it, although I've not read the book in a while so maybe when I re-read the book, I can get angry with the film like half of the critics out there. There were some very brilliant bits in the movie though, and there was some pretty impressive gore too, especially the scrap in the alleyway. People who have seen the movie will know exactly what I mean.

What else? Wheelman is going to be out next week! I'm quite excited about this - feedback on the demo has been majorly positive. There are still the naysayers out there, but we've got the majority and that'll do us. The game should be out the 25th (I've seen 24th somewhere though...) in the US and the 27th in the UK. To celebrate this, Ubisoft have produced a brand new trailer which - quite frankly - kicks serious booty -

Now Ubisoft produce some lovely trailers - they have a knack of marrying mainstream music with the action (check out these trailers for Prince of Persia and Assassin's Creed and try and tell me otherwise, oh doubter of things!) and the above is no exception. I think it puts Wheelman firmly in the "fun" department. "Look, it's not a seriously gritty thing like GTA4. It lets you shunt cars, spin 180 and shoot shit and leap from car to car with gay abandon!". This trailer has got a lot of positive feedback, though I think it's interesting that the Midway logo has been toned down somewhat - you can see it at the end, but you need to squint a bit.

I think that says a lot about the company in this day and age. I can imagine the marketing men of Ubisoft getting together and realising that the Midway logo is a negative than a positive. This is sad news, though perhaps unsurprising given the slow descent which has been happening. Vin's also interviewed very, very briefly for GameTrailers TV (Note the caption for the interview doesn't mention Midway Newcastle) and it's pretty much telling that Vin doesn't really seem to know too much about the game. I've crunched on that motherfucker for over a year, the least he can do is know a bit more about it.

Vin recently appeared on a French chat show for Fast and Furious, and looked kind of unsettled when Wheelman was shown on big screens and one of the hosts handed him a controller. The result? Vin bouncing off walls and spectacularly ending the demonstration slamming into a roadblock. Thankfully a cop car exploded and the audience went crazy. Thank god for that exploding cop car, or else it would have looked kind of stupid. The host then showed Vin "how it should be done". Vin tried to rescue the situation describing the "Reverse Cyclone" (It's actually called The Cyclone, Vin) by getting up out of his chair and turning on the spot while shooting an imaginary pistol.

So, yep. I get the feeling that Vin would rather talk more about the new Riddick game than Wheelman - that's the impression I get. Has Wheelman changed from the original vision of a straight-laced GTA clone - in Vin's eyes? Is he pissed off that you can do all that fun arcadey stuff? I'm extremely glad we didn't go down the GTA4 route of chore-like gameplay and the seriousness of it all. GTA San Andreas had parachutes and jetpacks. What happened?

I think Wheelman will do well at retail - I think there's been that turnaround we've all hoped for when the gamers of the world realise what we're not trying to be. "GTA4 Meets Burnout" seems like a good description. It's going to be an interesting couple of weeks - review scores (the ones I've heard of have been very favourable), the game's release, sales figures and that possibility of a sequel. If we get to do a sequel, I wouldn't mind at all - it'll be great to see where else we can take the franchise and add the things that we wanted to, but couldn't.

It'll be interesting to see if Vin's on board too - or at least care enough for a sequel. Maybe if we have an unlockable Riddick skin, he'd be interested.

Interesting title there, yes? I grant you... "exploding soup". How the heck did I end up with that? Well, let's get that out of the way first. After working on a Saturday - although I spent a lot of the day deleting old e-mails and playing our latest build - I thought I'd treat myself to a bit of shopping. Somerfield is where I do the "small shop" whereas the bigger Sainsbury's is the larger shop. Somerfield it was then - I was on food and needed to get back home. I bought the regulars and decided to pick up the hallowed Soup of Gods - freshly-made butternut squash soup. Mmm! The checkout girl suspiciously double-bagged the first bag of my shopping though neglected to double-bag the next - although all that was in that bag was some apples, a loaf of fairly light bread and the aforementioned soup.

SOUP ASPLODE

So I was almost home. A matter of yards. I was quite chuffed that I had myself another sample of lovely soup when I heard the sound which is that of fear regarding soup-love. "Clunk!". I looked behind to see the soup on the pavement but intact. Phew. I looked at the bag which contained the soup and comically it had a round hole in it. I thought I could pop the soup back in and make it, so I picked it up and as I was about to put the soup back in - and by the way, the fresh soup is packaged in a plastic cup with a lid - the whole bag disintegrated and the soup fell a lot harder onto the pavement. Waste of food. Soup halfway up my leg. Me cursing Somerfield for their shoddy bags. I won't stand for it though - I'm sending them the soup-covered wreck of a bag complete with my reciept, a semi piss-taking letter and a request for some free soup. I think I'm within my rights, right? Needless to say from now on I'll be taking no chances and triple bagging my shopping from Somerfield. It is strange that the bags also ask to be recycled, yet there's no recycling bin in the shop.

Media Vs. Videogaming

I hate it when the media seems to be throwing everything it can at videogaming. Actually, an interesting comment made by someone online confirmed my fears - people these days are spending less time watching television and videogames are a contributing factor. What better way to get back at videogames than to directly attack them and put them down? Fox News this week had a spectacular display of foot-in-mouth over the alleged "explicit sex scene" in Mass Effect - below is the footage from this non-story complete with the hilariously named "Se-xbox" moniker...

Note that it also claims that the game features "Full Digital Nudity And Sex". As you can see, Cooper Lawrence appears on the show to pass comment - and hang on - isn't that a new book you want to plug with you posing like you're God's Gift to womankind? Geoff Keighley thankfully defends the game and gets his facts straight - even to the point where he asks Cooper if she's actually played the game. "No!" she giggles. Well, that's interesting. She's criticising a game she hasn't even played. As soon as this feature ended and basically Geoff was frozen out of more defending and sensible discussion, things got into motion pretty quickly...

When Facts Go Wrong 3!

Firstly, EA's Jeff Brown (VP of Communications) sent a letter to Fox citing that their comments were wholly inaccurate and were mostly conducted by people who hadn't even played the game. Here's some snippets -

• Your headline above the televised story read: "New videogame shows full digital nudity and sex." Fact: Mass Effect does not include explicit or frontal nudity. Love scenes in non-interactive sequences include side and profile shots - a vantage frequently used in many prime-time television shows. It's also worth noting that the game requires players to develop complex relationships before characters can become intimate and players can chose to avoid the love scenes altogether.

• FNC voice-over reporter says: "You'll see full digital nudity and the ability for players to engage in graphic sex."
  Fact: Sex scenes in Mass Effect are not graphic. These scenes are very similar to sex sequences frequently seen on network television in prime time.
  

• FNC reporter says: "Critics say Mass Effect is being marketed to kids and teenagers."Fact: That is flat out false. Mass Effect and all related marketing has been reviewed by the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) and rated Mature - appropriate for players 17-years and older. ESRB routinely counsels retailers on requesting proof of age in selling M-rated titles and the system has been lauded by members of Congress and the Federal Trade Commission. In practical terms, the ratings work as well or better than those used for warning viewers about television content.

Fox replied with no apology but invited EA's VP of Communications on the show to defend the game further. Thankfully this was seen right away as a transparent attempt by Fox to keep the discussion going, even though it was a discussion based on conjecture and not experience - something that many videogame news write-ups happen to be built from. It gets better...

Don't Fuck With The Internet.

Many gamers soon realised that they could blackball Cooper Lawrence's book via the power of amazon.com reviews and soon enough they had given the book negative reviews and added some insightful comment like "I've not read the book, but it's a terrible read" to mirror Lawrence's comments about Mass Effect. Amazon.com keep deleting the negative reviews, but they keep on being added. This ended up with Lawrence realising what a stupid moo she is and has since apologised for this...

“I recognize that I misspoke,” she said. “I really regret saying that, and now that I’ve seen the game and seen the sex scenes it’s kind of a joke. Before the show I had asked somebody about what they had heard, and they had said it’s like pornography,” she added. “But it’s not like pornography. I’ve seen episodes of ‘Lost’ that are more sexually explicit.”

Adam Sessler commented about this whole debacle rather eloquently on G4's X-Play -

This whole thing just outlines how uninformed the media are regarding videogames. They see each one with suspicion and regard all gamers as slackers and should be treated as such. I'm sure many people including myself are insulted by this. Whenever a murder occurs, there's a rush to see what videogames were in the murderer's living space and then blame it on them. Forget those films! Forget those television shows! Another excuse is that because the game is truly an interactive experience, it is an obvious connection to bad things. I blame several factors in this - not the games. Parents who aren't responsible (who have also caused the mess of feral kids running about this country I live in) allowing their kids to play M-Rated/18 Certificate games. Also the person who is playing the game - if he or she is mentally unstable then he should have carers who realise that he shouldn't be playing impressionable games... or watching impressionable movies. It's sad that Videogames versus The Media will roll on and on and on. As gaming gets more popular, this will be the case. It just gets me angry.

Assassin's Creed - Done!

Still in the world of videogaming - I completed Assassin's Creed the other night. It actually surprised me with its ending and wasn't actually what I expected. I'm not going to reveal spoilers, but let's just say that a sequel is definitely possible. I can still play it and dive back into the Animus to check out where those hidden flags are for more lovely achievements, though the overall gameplay of the game does let down the truly beautiful looks of it. Dodgy fight system, repetitive mission tasks... the fact is though that Assassin's Creed has been a very successful thing for Ubisoft - to the point that they could tell EA to piss off as the mighty EA did want to buy Ubisoft and no doubt borgify them into the EA Collective. For this reason alone, Assassin's Creed must be celebrated.

The Console Sea Change.

This article does it for me. It's basically Sony's plans for their dubiously-marketed PLAYSTATION 3(ahem) - you may care to note that there's no mention of videogaming in Sony's plans for console dominance - just lots of other stuff. This is a case of history repeating itself with the PS2 and the Dreamcast where Sega released a flurry of incredible games, though the unwashed masses indulged in the PS2 for the small factor that it could play DVDs and get the support from Sony's team of paid-off developers. The Dreamcast died a death it didn't deserve. The Sony bigwigs think that they'll overtake the installed user base of the Xbox 360, and I think they could do it - though only because of all that guff in that article and not the videogaming part of the console. As a games developer, this worries me somewhat. I think Sony show their consumer goods-shaped heart on their sleeve.

Hooray for Blu-Ray?

Blu-Ray is now the deciding factor for a lot of PS3 purchases and not the gaming side - which has been stupendously lacklustre compared to the 360's consistant output. It depresses me that this is the case - when Sony bring out a "new" console, it's more often than not the same model but in a different colour - and people will buy it. People cite that all this console purchasing is "good news for the industry" but I think otherwise - it's good news for the movie industry due to all those Blu-Ray purchases. Early adopters of Blu-Ray players are officially knackered by the fact that you can update the PS3 firmwear to a more newer version of the Blu-Ray player due to the PS3's online capability. The whole thing stinks, and is the reason why developer support from Sony sucks so much and it's also why a lot of Sony's PR is as smug as they are. The consumer are guinea pigs munching up another Sony-created media format before they inevitably bring out the next one. I'm happy to have not bought into the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray "war" because I knew it would end in tears.

Lastly...

House-purchasing update - survey has been approved and now I need to phone up for Contents Insurance quotes (gah). I put it off last week though need to sort it out this week. Also! I've decided to throw away HP's crappy wireless keyboard and mouse and getting my hands on a wired keyboard and mouse. Fuck wireless. I mean - even if the keyboard and mouse from HP was great, they still go through batteries like they were Jaffa Cakes and I think I'd actually save money with a wired keyboard and mouse. In fact, I'm typing this on my cheap-ass £5 USB keyboard and yet it's still 100 times more reliable than the wireless keyboard. I'm an old-fashioned kind of fella. I miss wires. Oh, and the in-built webcam is still knackered. Word to the wise - HP sucks.

I'm glad I woke up for work today, I really, really am. After the news that Rez HD is coming to the Xbox 360, I had an inkling and checked out our PartnerNet. This is the closed Xbox Live Arcade network which is like peering into the future - game developers across the globe chuck stuff on there for other devs to download and play to death. It's quite, quite special to be able to do this. Lo and behold! Rez HD! To download! I'm the world's biggest Rez fan - I even have the Rez Trance Vibrator in my personal possession as well as the original Dreamcast version (a promo copy no less) and the PS2 version. This was quite a find for a slow Wednesday.

Like Rez. Except MORE.

As it says. Imagine Rez but in beautiful HD running at a silky smooth frame rate and you're halfway there. Add achievements, leaderboards and the like and it adds to an already brilliant experience. The download is pretty small (around 111Mb) for what you're getting - one of Sega's greatest moments in gaming where they were getting their very talented satellite studios like United Game Artists and Smilebit producing beautifully-crafted games like Jet Set Radio, Cosmic Smash, Seaman (hehe), Samba De Amigo and Rez. Inspired by the works of Kandinksy of all people, it's a game which is astounding to not only look at but also to hear. There's some wonderful meshing of visual and audio and without sounding too pretentious, it's as close to art in videogaming as you can get. Jeff Minter commented that Rez was "Space Harrier in techno trousers" which is pretty close to the mark. It's a shame that his recent Xbox Live Arcade release of Space Giraffe can't even hold a candle to something this expertly crafted. You do need to do the game justice though - get a surround sound system with a stonking huge television and turn out the lights.

"Memorieessss..."

When I was holed up in the flat in Mold, Rez helped coocon me from the drunken pissheadery and small town mentality and I look back on those days with joy. It was almost like a ritual getting myself ready for another trance-like assault on the senses. I also know of someone I used to work with who swore by Rez. He did smoke d'herb, mind you. The game is ideally suited for it. I'm just joyously happy that the game will soon be in the hands of the Xbox Live Arcade community and I predict it'll do incredibly well to the point that Rez 2 would be a certainty. The great thing about Rez is that even though it's a few years old, it still looks fresh and different - the art style is so radical that you accept it and enjoy it for what it is. It's like watching Tron - even though it's dated, the Syd Mead-inspired designs still hit a chord and look fresh and modern. Rez's achievements are spot on too! Here's a small taster...

Assassin's Creed - The Opinion So Far...

My favourite videogame reviewer Yahtzee has recently reviewed Assassin's Creed and once more he's spot on. There was a lot of mixed opinion online about the game, so I was keen to see what it was like. The first time I experienced the open world in the game was quite an incredible thing - you start off in the bowels of your main Assassin's Bureau. After some (many) tutorials, you get stuck into the town outside the Bureau and the game does a good job of getting you involved. Soon after you get on a horsey and end up in the huge main map - The Kingdom. It was quite mind-blowing - I have to say the graphics in the game are the most truly immersive I've seen yet. The shadows are so nicely produced that everything feels solid. It's very easy to believe you're there in the world and soon I was tasked with sneaking up viewpoints and launching myself off posts into haystacks. This is more fun than you just reading that. You then go to the city of Acre - and when I say city, I mean it - the place is vast. You then interrogate suspects, pickpocket, eavesdrop and help citizens as part of your campaign to find out more about the person you've been assigned to kill.

So Far So Good?

Well, yep. Except the review comments I've heard about repetition are true. Every job thereafter has been the same - travel to city by horse, investigate area and then assassinate. Yahtzee mentioned the horse thing where you have to slowly walk past guards on horseback so they don't suspect you. This got quite irritating quite quickly, and was more fun to leg it through areas with guards running behind you. The parkour stuff is nicely handled and your movements are startingly fluid and realistic - in fact, it's quite enjoyable running on rooftops collecting Crackdown-style hidden things (in this case, flags) while running up to a guard and assassinating him with your handy hidden blade in one fell swoop. There's also the sub-plot set in the future which Ubisoft spoiled themselves by leaving the futuristic HUD in their promotional materials. Ah, well. There's some horrificness in the game though. The combat system can be frustrating at times in that sometimes when you get knocked over, you lose the ability to lock onto stuff - although it's more a case of pressing the left trigger to lock on and then the right trigger to defend yourself - instinctively you press the right trigger straight away, which is where the problem lies.

More Problems!

Yep. Although countering to kill people is great fun, you sometimes glitch through buildings as you perform your moves. If you're backed up in a corner, the camera can suffer somewhat which makes anticipating counters difficult. The repeated soundbytes from passers-by get old way too quickly, especially when saving citizens - plus the camera will lock onto the citizen you've saved when all you want to do is get the hell out of there before another guard turns up... and yet the thrill of running away from many guards is an enjoyable one, as is setting stuff up before you assassinate a main target. Killing guards is good fun because - get this - they stay dead! No respawns here... so killing archers outside the area will make your life a lot more easier. Also nothing beats climbing a massive building and looking around you. In Acre, there's a humoungous cathedral which you get to access after your third kill - and climbing to the top of that was extrememly memorable. Launching off it into a haycart was even more memorable, although I was expecting an achievement like the one I got in Crackdown from getting to the top and jumping off the Agency tower. In short then - rent before you buy. It's good in short doses (say an assassination a day) and the sub-quests help increase the longevity of the thing.

Computer Update!

Here's me thinking I could only burn discs with Vista's gimped burning, but no! Clicking on the Help and Support bit of my PC, I discover I have Roxio Creator - meaning (hopefully) DVD burning won't be painful and I won't have to shell out £59 for Nero. It's curious I only found out about this via the Help and Support bit. Also I think I've found out why my keyboard and mouse are cack - a workmate of mine tells me it sounds like I need to update the BIOS. He also told me why this would be the case - and the link to a forum I posted yesterday had inklings of a BIOS update - although the process to go about it sounds ball-achey. I've contacted HP's After Care Shizzle via a contact form so I hope I'll get concrete help back from them. The frustrating thing is I shouldn't really have to go through all this shit. It's curious that The Tech Guys didn't mention that I had Roxio on this computer when I complained about the slow burning speeds - their "solutions" were either to buy Nero or to use msconfig to shutdown everything and see if that improved anything. Is it too much to ask that I can go into a shop, buy a branded PC-type product and have it do the job it's supposed to do? This BIOS stuff is good news though. I could still salvage this puppy. I can phone up The Tech Guys for shits and giggles and give them the exact reason why this PC is sick and they'll be dumbfounded as they try and use google for an alternative solution.

Book Update!

I recently got a test book through from blurb.com which also acts as a present for Mum - she's not seen any artwork of mine for some time, so it's the least I can do. Anyway, the quality of the book was great - there was a small rip on the bottom of the back of the dust cover, though that might have been my excitement getting it out. The book, I mean... tsk. Well, I was told by another workmate that there's a new way to produce books and it's Amazon-fuelled! CreateSpace is extremely exciting - basically it's the perfect way to get my 365 book out to the masses. I'll need to use InDesign to get the book together, but there's a lot more advantages to this than blurb - you get your own ISBN number, you have more control over content and layout and - get this - Amazon will actually sell the thing for you in their store!!! This is insanely good news. I was using the BookSmart software to layout 365, though now I will use these guys. I just need to start hunting down all the bits and pieces of artwork I have lying about.

YouTube Update!

If you've not yet seen Network, then I suggest you watch the below clip and realise just how relevant it all is to today...

Tomorrow (er, today) is "Let's See How Many Things I Can Put Right With This New(ish) PC Day". I'm going to make a last-ditch effort to try and save my soul and my sanity by fixing all the things which are wrong with this PC. There's a bit of a list so I'll plough through it when I wake up tomorrow (well, when I had breakfast) before I make a very firm phone call to my friends - The Tech Guys! I'll tell them what an absolute disappointment this PC is, and would gladly trade it all in for a log cabin in the middle of nowhere and a big bushy beard.

Been playing Assassin's Creed for quite a while today too for the first time. Plus points - looks lovely, some satisfying combat, Crackdown-style "Hunt The Flags!" hidden stuff, jumping into hay. Minus points - glitchy (some gameplay bugs) and starting to get repetitive. Plus the stealth mechanic is essentially borked. I'll comment more when I play it some more,,,

I'm playing catch-up with many, many videogames. This weekend has so far been full of the joys of new game purchases and playing through games that all the serious gaming fraternity cracked ages ago. One of these games is BioShock - from the makers of the scary-as-heck System Shock 2, BioShock shares a lot with this historical game. For a start, it's set in an oppressive atmosphere and you have deranged lunatics wandering about and mumbling/shouting stuff in your general direction. While hiding behind corners.

Me? Scared?

I used to relish seeing the looks on the faces of people who had yet to encounter Resident Evil on the PSOne. I'd always show survival horror virgins a perfectly normal corridor in a slightly sinister mansion and asked them to walk down the corridor. SMASH! Zombie dog jumps through the closed window and the person holding the joypad yells a random expletive. This is proof that scary videogames do just that - scare. Well, the good ones anyway. BioShock is one of those titles which will have you freaking out at times. The audio design is nigh-on perfect at sending chills down your spine, and the location is a brilliantly-realised underwater city built by a bloke called Ryan who also littered the place with Orwellian propaganda and a variety of interesting characters.

But I freak out when I play it in the same way I freaked out playing Doom 3 and Condemned. No wonder I gravitated towards my recent purchase...

Itsa Me!

"Maaaarriioo!". No freaks with hooks for hands here - just good ol' fashioned family-friendly fun. This is the thing - the hardcore who love their 360 and PS3 will diss the Wii for the lack of graphical grunt, but a lot of games I've played on the Wii exude fun in spades. Excite Truck had me yelling and hooting like a little kid - and although it's not as pretty as some more high-end next-gen titles, it has heart and soul. Mario is a lot like that too - a game where you know the developers have gotten together and vow to make your experience enjoyable and nourishing. Super Mario Galaxy is the new Wii title and I was blown away from the start.

Blown Away?

Graphically Super Mario Galaxy is beautiful. It has a very strange dream-like quality about it - when you begin the game heading towards the trademarked castle of Peach, the moonlight catches the crescent-shaped clouds. Stars rain from the sky and you realise you can use the Wii Remote to collect these stars. This is a trick which comes in its own very quickly and soon becomes second nature when playing. All hell soon breaks lose as Bowser comes along to capture not just Peach but the whole castle. Mario is blasted from the castle and lands on a spherical planet which adds to the dreamlike quality of the game.

The Importance of Rimming.

Every planet has a rim-lit process about it which is not seen much in videogames but this is the reason why it adds a unique flavour to the game. Everything soon becomes apparant - the game is scarily well presented and polished. The graphics are lush as mentioned, but the soundtrack is the best Mario soundtrack I've heard - all recreated with a full orchestra. This adds to the impressive space theme even more. Controlling Mario is also a cinch - the nunchuck is perfectly balanced to move him around, though it's a compelling new experience to navigate around beautifully-realised spherical worlds. The makers of Ratchet and Clank had some sour grapes about Nintendo's use of spherical worlds, cited that it was all their idea, before perhaps adding some marketing bullshit about how Ratchet and Clank "wouldn't be possible on the Wii, but is totally possible on the PS3". Hush now. You're out of your league here.

Developers Taking The Piss?

This outlines once more that it's totally feasible to come up with beautiful experiences on the Wii. I cringe when I see some absolute horrific visual dirge made available for the Wii from developers looking for a quick buck. I think the so-called limitations of the Wii are a reason why some developers - mostly Nintendo - try harder to come up with fantastic visual experiences. I mentioned Metroid Prime 3 - Corruption in an earlier blog entry, but it's another great example. What is the point in spending time working on a game which is derative and will paint your company in a bad light? It is annoying, especially for the developers who work on those games knowing that they can't go on forums and harp on about how great their next game will be. Speaking of which...

Me And Gaming Forums.

I used to post regularly on a gaming forum called rllmuk. Don't ask why it has a funky acronym like that. Anyway, I came to the conclusion not long ago that game developers shouldn't get involved with gaming forums. I've vowed not to read any more comment pages and forums from gamers - because some of them can be a bit too vocal and scarily obsessive with certain games. One of the posters of rllmuk slagged off Stranglehold. All well and good, you think. This guy is entitled to his own opinion. Sadly this bloke downloaded an illegal copy of the game and proceeded to rip the piss. Anyone who tried to combat his views - especially me - were greated with a "you've only played the demo - I've played the game!", although his view was skewed on the fact he didn't know if he had the final version and he based his views on an illegal practice. Soon the age-old argument of piracy came to fore and before you know it there were many people who were happy to defend this guy and piracy. So from that point on, I declined to post on that forum.

I've not posted for some time now and I'm glad of it. I would hate to hear the comments about the game I'm working on from that lot because they can be ruthless, tactless and just plain rude. The typical comment of ""[insert game here]" is shit" is far too common. I digress...

WAR.

Call of Duty 4 is an absolute blast. It's insane how intense and how much fun it is - and not just that, it's also brilliantly presented and the voice acting doesn't suck one bit. I think it's the first FPS I've played which is 60fps (a 60fps fps!) and it makes quite a difference. For a start, everything seems to be a lot more solid and real. The eye is tricked into believing what it sees and it adds to the immersion. The game looks incredible - probably the most realistic recreations of war-torn areas I've yet seen - and the introduction where you see through the eyes of a President who is about to be assassinated is scarily harrowing to say the least. It's a world away from Super Mario Galaxy, but the point is that videogames as a medium are a truly diverse one which can appeal to everyone.

Ubisoft's "Surprise!"

I also purchased Assassin's Creed - which is weird because I was having second thoughts about it. There's reviews flying about which are less than flattering about Ubisoft's latest AAA title - the fact the stealth system is broken and it gets repetitive too quickly. It does also look astoundingly beautiful for a next gen title and the plot supposedly revolves around you playing an assassin who has to take out a variety of targets through a mix of the aforementioned stealth, reconnaissance and Parkour. Unfortunately, they've done a Terminator 2. "What do you mean, Steve?". Well, Terminator 2 had you assuming Arnie would be playing the same role as in the original - an evil cyborg sent back from the future to murder a target. Sadly the trailer to Terminator 2 totally revealed everything - he wasn't evil after all! *phew* Assassin's Creed makes the same mistake.

Something's Not Quite Right Here...

On all the preview videos of Assassin's Creed, we're treated to some lush vistas and Altair (the main character) killing and jumping from building to building escaping guards. One thing looked a bit out of place though - the HUD. I'm paid to create such things, and it's hard not to see the futuristic look of the HUD. Targeted characters also display swish status displays and graphics and the screen sometimes glitches with code. So it's not really what it seems and my brain was wondering what could be going on. A virtual simulation? Could it be? Well, Ubisoft could have surprised us all and left out the HUD and the effects altogether. That would have been a brilliant unseen twist that some videogames are lucky to have.

I've also guessed the ending too.

When Opinions Collide!

Now there's a famous site called Penny Arcade which has a large readership and they trust what Gabe and Tycho - the two characters of the site - say about videogames. Recommendations from them are genuine things indeed. When Gabe defends Assassin's Creed then tongues start a-wagging - especially from the likes of rllmuk. He cited the reviewers of the game didn't have enough time to immerse themselves in the game and thus a low mark resulted. The doubters mention that Penny Arcade carry Ubisoft advertising and they've produced comic strips for Ubisoft games including Assassin's Creed. I've not had a chance to fully play the game, though this GameTrailer's review is a pretty comprehensive take on it - it also outlines the stealth glitch as well as a few others. I think Gabe's heart is in the right place but the world of videogames can be a horrible thing indeed. It can be full of more wrongs than right and the gaming press can be easily paid off to give huge scores to games - Halo 3 for example.

"Wha?"

Like Halo 2, Halo 3 was full of promise but didn't actually deliver. It didn't surprise and those reviewers who gave the game perfect scores must have skipped the last two levels in the game - the penultimate level being a frustrating fleshy hole of flood-filled disappointment and the last level was a much more unfair take on The Maw - the last level in Halo 1. Call of Duty 4 pisses all over Halo 3. As an experience, it's much more exciting. It's more polished and has a lot going for it. When well-respected magazines like Edge give Halo 3 10/10, then you start to worry. The worrying thing is that if you want to buy a game with confidence then you have to go into the gaming forums and see what people are saying about the game. Failing that, download the demo and experience it yourself. I don't trust many game reviewers these days, although let's end this very videogame-related post with video footage of a reviewer I do trust - Yahtzee.