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(This is quite late. I’ve been sitting on this review waiting for the breathing space to actually upload since mid-August. Better late than never though eh? It’s probably available quite cheaply now as well.)
It’s no secret, but i quite like super-powered characters. I’ve been a fairly avid comic book collector for many years now, and one of the key draws for me has been super-powered characters. I think it’s the “what if…” that always rings most true to me. What if someone could fly? What if someone could control things with their mind? What if someone became a lethal, sentient, super-disease? And that’s really what you get to have a go at in Prototype.
From the same people – Radical Entertainment, who gave me one of my favourite Superhero gaming experiences to date in Incredible Hulk : Ultimate Destruction – comes a game with a very similarly powered character. In fact, with several notable exceptions, you could practically play the game and pretend you were the Hulk. You can throw cars around, deliver deadly shockwave-style attacks, even give yourself a pair Hulk fists. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if what they wanted was to just make a next-gen Hulk game, but lost out to some other developer.
You control Alex Mercer, and to start off with you are pretty powerful. This is a flash-forward to what will be and gives you a tantalising glimpse of what’s to come. Then it goes back to the beginning. A city on the verge of an epidemic that would belittle even real world tabloids’ paroxysms of apocalyptic hyperbole. With no memory and the interest of some zealous military types, you are on the run, in the big city. Slowly piecing together the events that brought you to where you are.
Unlike most games the story is something you have to actively seek, this is done by absorbing specific characters and it is the absorbing that also provides you with some upgrades and new abilities. I found absorbing to gain the story was interesting, but made the story a little piecemeal. Possibly this was due to my not finding the people to absorb, but it did become a little hard to keep track of, especially as the story was basically made up of snippets of experiences taken from hundreds of people.
Whether it’s a Hulk wannabe or not, the game’s still got plenty of other gameplay mechanics to offer. As mentioned before you can absorb people to gain memories and skills, the same mechanic also awards you with the appearance of whoever you last absorbed. This means you can use it to help you evade capture and also to infiltrate bases. When running parkour style about the city a leap of a building can be followed by a glide, you can take over tanks and helicopters and commandeer these, you can call in artillery strikes on targets, pick up guns and rocket launchers, and generally bring about as much havok as you feel comfortable.
For the most part it’s pretty good fun being the most destructive force around, only problem is to counteract your super-ness, the game just really stacks the odds against you. In fact if ever there was a game that i’ve played this year that induced a lot of swearing it was definitely this one. Swarms of enemies with lots of knockback attacks and explosions and unstoppable combos really can be a bit much, even if you’re in control of a supposed power house.
But this isn’t my biggest gripe with the game. Over the course of the “story”, Alex never really sits easy with any particular type of morality. He’s not really either good or evil, which is fine, the grey area is a place that most game characters find themselves in. It’s more that when you find out what actually happened, well it made Alex seem like, at the very best, a malicious idiot. His moral standing, or lack thereof, was irrelevant. I felt an odd shame of being in control of him the whole time.
Still if you can get over this, then there’s a quite a lot to do, and it often looks and feels cool to be doing it. If a dislike of the character you are controlling is still a problem, then you can just pretend you’re a slim-line Hulk in a hoodie.
A while back i posted a list of hopes and dreams of games to come. As time has passed five of them i’ve picked up (Batman Arkham Asylum, Prototype, Scribblenauts, Moving Notepad, and Sacred 2), one of them i became a lot less interested in when i had a chance to play (Ghostbusters) and one of them is due out in a few weeks time (Modern Warfare 2). The remaining five have all slipped back to next year.
I’m pretty sure that two of these have made the move because of Modern Warfare 2 (Bioshock 2 and Red Dead Redemption). DC Universe Online and Final Fantasy XIII are more likely to have been the victim of over-expectant development schedules, and Infinite Space is most likely fallen foul of the difficulty with which niche JRPG’s have in finding Western publishers. (Something which is annoyingly keeping Demon’s Souls from having a European release although it’s reviews and demand is exceptional.)
Unusually for this time of year, the actual crop of games due for your release has diminished, with many blaming the assumed might of Modern Warfare 2 causing many publishers to shy away to the start of next year. To be honest, i’m not too bothered by this. Yes it gives me the task of avoiding buying some games so that there’s something to want for Christmas, but there’s still one or two gems to come.
For a start Borderlands is out on Friday. With it’s local co-op splitscreen and absurd, and supposedly neatly distinct and varied, range of weapons counting the “Bazillions”. I’ve been keen on this for a while, and the unique selling point of “Bazillions” of weapons seems to be holding out quite well. I would have liked to have been able to customise them to my liking rather than having the random, RPG-esque loot drops, yet i’m still pretty psyched about it’s arrival.
Then there’s the almighty L4D2, with a whole host of new special infected, weapons, additional gameplay modes, alledgedly more dynamic AI director, and stronger – although that might just mean existent – story line. This was shamefully missing from my original 2009 wishlist – possibly not announced at that point – but has been the cause of much excitement and expectation. Roll on the demo! 
Not long ago… (Ok, quite long ago judging by the apparent death of this blog in recent months.)
I’ll start again…
A while back Giles raised the point of fanboyism. I responded to this post with the story of my resisting the PS3 and how i went from being a Sony fanboy to a hater.
My resistance to the PS3 was pretty much one part feeling of betrayal and two parts baulking at the price tag, with the second definitely contributing to the first. This meant that when the PS3 Slim came along, what was once stubborn refusal soon gave way to a nerdish desire. I had always coveted Little Big Planet and have been a big fan of the Sony exclusive God of War series, so having an opportunity to acquire these, or at least the console that would let me play them, and at a more palatable price, got me down to Game and putting down a preorder.
In the time after getting it, i’ve restricted myself to PS3 exclusives, favouring the Xbox for the cross-platform games due to having more Xbox owning friends. I’ve not done the maths but it strikes me that there aren’t that many must have PS3 exclusives. I picked up Little Big Planet and Killzone 2 immediately, and have regretted neither. Shortly after i also got Uncharted : Drakes Fortune, Infamous and Ratchet and Clank : Tools of Destruction. Uncharted and Ratchet and Clank have had considerable play time, Infamous considerably less (due mostly to the outstanding quality of the other games when compared to it!)
It didn’t take me long to get reacquainted with the PS3 controller, very familiar, light and a good rumble pack, but let down by stubby lower shoulder buttons – i guess i’m spoilt by the great big triggers of the Xbox 360 controllers. I did find that for £3 handy plastic extenders could be bought that made them a lot more user friendly.
Getting online was pretty easy and completely free, and the online store uses real money, so no guessing how much you’re actually spending when using it. The web interface is usable and allows access to both iPlayer and Youtube, which is nice.
It’s also practically whisper quiet which means little to no distracting whirring when playing a stealthy part of a game – i always find that a bit of a mood breaker on the Xbox, even when i think i’ve got used to it.
All this said, i’m quite aware that it doesn’t appear to be an essential purchase. If you’ve got an Xbox and are focussed on the games available for it, then you can happily live in ignorance. However, if, like me, you’ve looked at the world of games and seen several gems that will always be out of your reach and find it hard to live with that, then i would say go for it. There’s very little comparable to Little Big Planet and the upcoming Uncharted 2 on the Xbox. It’s also free to go online, but with sparse to non-existent party and comms support. (Surprisingly a mixed blessing as i’m also yet to experience the pain of an annoying 12 year old screeching abuse at me when playing online.)
(Note : It’s yet to be seen whether Playstations other big steps towards game types outside of the Xbox’s scope (MAG and DC Universe) will be additions to the list of must-haves, but the potential i’ve seen and the lack of lag i’ve experienced in other games bodes well for both of them. That and i’m a massive DC comics fan. 
)
Left 4 Dead 2 has caused quite a stir it seems. With much vitriol being directed at Valve for potentially splitting the gaming community and not delivering on the promises they made when Left 4 Dead originally came out.
I do believe that we’ve not been delivered as much content as they could have done. Survival mode is more a fun distration then a full blown attraction and the extra versus maps feel like they could’ve been included at the beginning. I still have hope that the Left 4 Dead 2 will deliver more than a mod of Left 4 Dead.
If Valve are to believed then this time around, the game will be more than just more of the same. With a plot – a frequent criticism of the first game, proper melee weapons, more varieities of infected, a whole new gaming mode, more maps, and substantial changes to the core gameplay. Thinking about it, if each of these things had come out individually as paid for DLC over the course of a year – even at the bargain price of 400 gamer points a shot – you could be looking at the cost of a whole new game anyway?
Besides hasn’t the likes of Call of Duty done basically the same thing? With new variations on a theme coming out once every year since 2005 and with all add-ons paid for anyway? Is the problem not so much that this has happened at all, but rather that Valve has spoilt it’s fan-base with extras that they now believe is their right to always get?
I’m fed up with horror films that are just “re-imaginings” or whatever of sometimes classic horror movies. It’s cheap and lazy.
I’m fed up with horror films that use torture and general stupid unpleasantness in leiu of horror. Yes i know hacking and cutting people up is pretty horrific, but in comparison to a lot of the horror genre it’s unimaginative and dull.
What i want is the creeping and unspeakable unknown. The dread of the unavoidable and the inevitable. Something fantastic and extraordinary, yet filled with eerie familiarity. Hurray for Sam Raimi returning to the fold and giving me “Drag me to hell”, a film that fits this bill perfectly.
There’s no real blood and gore in the sense that the horror genre has become saturated with, but there’s plenty to make your stomach turn. There’s frights and shocks and jumps aplenty, there’s old school spooky noises and some of the most basic yet effective scares i’ve seen for a long time. It’s also brilliant and shows many a film maker that going for the higher censorship rating equals neither scary nor good.
In a nutshell the story is simple. Alsion Lohman plays a young woman who spurns a gypsy woman’s request for a third extension on a loan to keep her house. She is then cursed by the gypsy woman and all hell literally breaks lose. Her sceptic boyfriend – another excellent turn by Justin Long – offers her support and goes along with it as things just get worse and worse for her.
Key to this movie is how both of these two characters are truly likeable. Lohman manages to give us a damsel who is in obvious distress but with enough guts to fight her supernatural tormentor. Long plays his character with enough scepticism to provide a foil to her unbelievable situation and claims, but with a touching love that drives him to support her in spite of it all.
The film has plenty of Raimi’s trademark slapstick and goofing around – talking goats, people floating when possessed, hardware as weaponry – but there’s also a geniune foreboding that’s not existed in any of his films since Evil Dead. Overall this is a thoroughly effective horror movie and a definite return to form for Sam Raimi. More please.
Written by Bob
One thing i noticed when reading reviews for Pokemon Platinum was that for almost every reviewer it was just another installment. Of course, many added “if you’re new to the series this is a good one to start with”, but for none of them was that the case. Everyone had played it before.
I suppose even i’ve played it before. I had Pokemon Stadium on the N64. I still don’t know why i bought it. I had only a minor interest in Pokemon, as i do now, and found the gameplay to be really uninspiring. But if you’ve read my other article on this site (why i’m buying pokemon platinum) you’ll know that an overwhelming desire for quality JRPGs made me go for Pokemon Platinum.
I got it on Friday – thank you Game pre-order – and have played only about 10 hours so far. I know in terms of hardcore gaming this is pretty poor, but i’m not a kid, a student, unemployed, a bus/train commuter nor a full-time games reviewer, so it’s not that bad really.
So far, it’s actually pretty good. The visuals are basic but bright, colourful and appealing. It sounds pretty good with a soundtrack i don’t mind listening to. In terms of gameplay, well, it is pretty addictive so far. I get why you might want to “catch ‘em all”, because that’s what i find myself doing. I’m happy doing some grinding to get levels up and it’s pretty cool when your pokemon gains new abilities. Most fun i’m having though is in naming them, in my collection i have Pokemon called Cheese, Trousers, Moped, and Devastator.
What you’ve got to understand is, i find giving things stupid names, a LOT of fun. So i’m finding Pokemon Platinum a lot of fun. It’s not without flaws. I cannot help but feel that the game expects you to know your way around a Pokemon. To understand the merits of not evolving or evolving your pokemon and from what i’ve read, without having a Pokemon playing friend, there are somethings in the game that i just won’t be able to do. (Like evolving my Abra that i spent a lot of time levelling up.)
Other than this minor gripe, it’s got an immense amount of depth and a nice feeling of making the game your own. The question is, and the reason this is just part 1, is how long will this last? When i’ve covered another 10 hours of gameplay, i’ll let you know. In part 2.
I reckon my first ever online gaming experiences came playing MUD’s (Multi user dungeons) at university. Way back in the glory days of 1993/4 the internet was something not many people had really heard about. You could tell by the type of people who you found playing MUD’s back then. Mostly helpful and keen to enjoy the shared experience, other players you met within would tend to be there for the game. Yes, the odd noob would show up and just cluelessly ruin things for a while, but usually an admin would be nearby, and they would swiftly issue a kicking or banning.
It was a short-lived experience. I moved away from the gaming to making friends with random people across the globe in IRC, taking full advantage of the social experience offered to a typically shy guy by anonimity. Then, as time went by at University, i became more likely to be in a pub or club than in the computer room, but that’s another story. (Which some of you may well feel like you’ve lived through as well.)
The next time i returned to the online experience was playing Socom 3 on my PS2. Aside from the fact that i did myself no favours, by going in having just about scraped through the first level in single player, playing online was VERY different. Gone were the helpful others. Gone were admins regulating the gameplay and looking out for others. What you got instead was inane chatter, swearing, verbal abuse, glitching and far too many pre-pubescent, self-proclaimed “experts”.
I stuck with it and after a while i was rewarded for my perserverance. It did take a long time. It did take a lot of hate from fellow players. Yet, i started to find that just by focusing on the game above all else, i could start to win or at least assume fairly commanding ranks in the games i played. The strangest form of abuse i found was from people who just plain didn’t like my choice of weapons. If i was playing a long range game (note : I hate sniping and snipers) i would change to heavy machine guns – hated for their rates of fire, strength of firepower, and large clips – and for the close, something light but with a high rate of fire.
I knew what it was that drew so much ire. They were the weapons that were believed to make playing the game easy. What i didn’t understand was that these weapons were available to everyone. If you wanted to get revenge, then you could use them yourself. If you couldn’t beat them, then you just weren’t as good as you thought you were. Did these people believe that in the proper warfare that was supposed to be simulated, soldiers would hurl abuse at each other if they had an unfair technological advantage? No. You just work out how to deal with it.
In the end I think one too many spawn-campers and glitchers made me give up on it, but i’m still glad to have had that particularly lawless right-of-passage to console gaming.
I don’t tend to play with randoms that much any more. With a group of fellow gamers to go online with, there’s usually someone else who has the same game who’ll be willing to play a friendly versus or co-op game. Oddly, i do miss the days of struggling against the odds, fighting against those who just take the easiest route or are in it for the griefing or bragging. The fact is, although the affectionately named “randoms” are often irritating and sometimes just plain offensive, i find struggling against the odds and eventually coming out on top is far more satisfying than any number of achievements.
Posted by Bob
Harrowing. If i had to sum this up in a word, it’s “harrowing”. I reckon it’s probably because some of it feels close to home. For me, it raises all sorts of questions about self-defence, peer pressure, uncontrollable youth, bad parenting, and where to go away for a weekend break. These things made this film feel particularly uncomfortable.
I’m not going to get into a rant about the state of the world today, or tut about kids, because i think it’s more just about general feelings of helplessness. About people being caught up in the wake of strong spirited bullies. About the lengths kids can go to just feel like they belong. About how children can so easily become their parents.
If this sounds like i had a spiritual experience with this film, don’t worry, i didn’t. I just felt that inbetween the standard horror fayre of people being stabbed, burnt alive, and generally terrorised, there was something spookily familiar. Maybe it’s that parts of the woodland settings reminded me of Spring Park woods. Or maybe it felt like it had leapt straight out of the Daily Mail letters page. Either way it helped make it quite spooky and horribly compelling.
I liked most of the characters, from the plucky and unlucky female lead, to the easily intimidated hangers-on in the gang. Some of the non-victim adults seemed a little cliched, and i felt that some of the trauma’s that befell the main character were a little too inconvenient. Other than that it may leave you feeling a bit traumatised – bit like another equally harrowing English horror, “Dead Man’s Shoes” – but i think if you can stomach it, there’s a lot to take from it. (I think the word “enjoy” would be just inappropriate, but i would say that i’m glad i saw it.)
Posted by Bob
Si asked for it and here it is. I’ve always got my finger on the gaming pulse and this year there’s plenty to throb for! (By which i obviously mean your pulse.)
Batman : Arkham Asylum (Xbox 360) – If the videos are anything to go by this could well be the definitive Batman game. There haven’t been many good ones, although the one on the Amiga was alright, but this has got everything. A nigh on perfect voice cast (Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy provide the voices for Joker and Batman as per all decent animated versions of the two characters from the last two decades), gorgeous looking graphics, some very exciting looking gameplay, and a great back story (based on the Arkham Asylum graphic novel).
Prototype (Xbox 360) – Fighting as an amnesiac, genetically modified, free running killing machine in a busy city sounds like a lot of other games. Looking at it the protaganist resembles Altair from Assassin’s Creed, but his powers are like nothing i’ve seen in a game before. A glorious looking mash-up of Incredible Hulk : Ultimate Destruction, GTA IV and Assassin’s Creed.
Bioshock 2 (Xbox 360) – All it needed was to just sound as good as the first one, but it looks like Bioshock 2 could be even better. Playing as the prototype Big Daddy this time fighting against a grown-up little sister/uber Big Daddy with the added joy of mix and match plasmids! Also, online multiplayer!!! Woo hoo!
Red Dead Redemption (Xbox 360) – From Rockstar comes another massive world to explore, this time set in the (wicky wah wah) Wild West. Looks gorgeous and hopefully will play great as well.
Final Fantasy XIII (Xbox 360) – Although probably restricted and on multiple disks on the Xbox 360, if it’s anywhere near as awesome as Final Fantasy X on the PS2 was, then this will be a joy. Early FMV footage looks INCREDIBLE.
DC Universe Online (PC) – Fight alongside Batman against Lex Luthor. Use super speed to run up a building to join Superman in a fight against Doomsday. This might be the first MMO i get. Maybe.
Ghostbusters (Xbox 360) – With a story penned by the original cast, starring the original cast – except Sigourney – and with hopefully good online co-op and a good gameplay mechanics, it could be a unique movie/gaming crossover experience.
Call Of Duty : Modern Warfare 2 (Xbox 360) – Little is known of this, except that some of it’s likely to be set in snowy conditions judging by early footage. Hopefully it will have the same great online gameplay and maybe some online co-op as well.
Infinite space (DS) – A DS game that sounds like it ticks many of the right boxes for me. A space strategy JRPG with a wealth of customisability in terms of both the ship you fly and the crew you lead spanning two galaxies there should be plenty to do. No idea what the gameplay mechanic will be like, but i’m hoping for something that will make good use of the stylus and maybe be in realtime.
Scribblenauts (DS) – If you can think of it, and it isn’t rude, you can use it in this game. Solve puzzles your own way. Brilliantly playing to the DS’ strongest points, a very simple and potentially endless puzzle solving game.
Moving Notepad (DSi Ware) – Not really a game but a free application exclusively for DSi. Unfortunately we’re still waiting for Nintendo Europe to get their act together and set up the infrastructure for it, but this is a basic tool that sounds like a lot of fun. It’s just a basic animation package and it’s free. Hopefully when we get it, there’ll also be the feature to send your animations to people as well as to post them to the online theatre!
[Edit] Sacred 2 : Fallen Angel – This game moved onto my gaming radar recently. It’s reviews aren’t great but it falls into a category that i’m fairly sure will make it a win for both myself and Michelle. Local co-op. Not only that but with a relatively decent camera – ish – and plenty of hack’n’slash action. It’s also got local co-op online, if you know what i mean, which opens the window to further winnery.
Posted by Bob
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