Xbox One: First Thoughts

So let’s get this out of the way first: Xbox One is a stupid name. I’m vaguely aware that the idea behind it is probably that there should be ‘one’ box under your telly that does everything, but it just sounds like it’s the first ever Xbox. I’ll bet they spend AGES thinking it up too, which just makes me sad. Still, Xbox 360 was a stupid name too, but that never hurt its chances.

One of the most exciting design features of the Xbox One is that it floats.

Second, my god it’s fat. Seriously, that box is MASSIVE. The fridge school of console design. Perhaps it’s the ‘one’ box under your telly because it ate all of the other ones. Where’s the form factor? Where are the ergonomic curves? Why have they made an enormous two-tone desktop PC? And then you’ve got to find somewhere to put that bloody huge Kinect sensor as well.

Speaking of which, why does everyone at Microsoft think that talking and waving at your telly is the future? I’ll be the first to admit that Kinect is clever, but is it any more than a novelty? As I was watching the reveal last night, one of a series of anonymous men in suits walked onto the stage and started barking commands into thin air: “Xbox! Trending!” “Xbox! Go home!” All I could think was: “My god he sounds like a tit.” But thanks to Xbox One, now I can sound like a tit in the comfort of my own home.

Speaking of that reveal, there was an awful lot of talk about using your Xbox to watch TV… but can’t we just, you know, use a TV to watch TV? I’m still not entirely clear on what the benefits of watching TV through an Xbox actually are. There was talk of ‘instant switching’ between movies, games and TV, like we’re all ADHD children with an attention span of 10 seconds. I can’t think of a reason I’d want to instantly switch back and forth between all of these things, unless perhaps I was watching a porn movie and my girlfriend walked in.

Apparently the control pad has “40 new design innovations”, although we have to guess what they are. Perhaps it’s made of cork so it floats if you drop it in the bath?

I’m aware that all of this sniping just makes me sound like an Xbox hater, but the truth is that there was nothing in the presentation last night that made me get excited about the new console. I don’t care about Kinect, I hardly ever watch TV and I never play online, so there was very little that appealed to me. Then when they finally, FINALLY got round to talking about the games, they were just the same old bombastic blockbusters – Forza, Call of Duty, Battlefield, etc. Not only do these types of games leave me cold, they’re also available (for the most part) on the PlayStation 4, so where’s my reason to buy an Xbox One?

Then there’s the really irritating stuff. Details are still a bit sketchy, but it seems that any games you buy will be downloaded to your machine and tied to your Xbox Live account, which puts a big question mark over the whole pre-owned market. It seems that Microsoft will ‘allow’ (huh!) second-hand games to be played on your console, but you may have to pay a fee for the privilege. Then there’s the question of lending games to friends – apparently you can play your games on a friend’s Xbox One if you sign into your account on their machine, but presumably this isn’t an option if you want to lend it to them long term. It all sounds a bit Big Brother to me, and these innovations benefit only Microsoft and the big publishers, not the consumer.

Oh, and it’s not backwards compatible with the Xbox 360 either. So that’s a bit shit. Looks like you’ll have to keep two big boxes under your telly for the time being.

So all in all, rather than being excited, I just got a bit annoyed by the new Xbox One. Aside from fancier graphics, I’m not entirely sure why it’s better. Feel free to enlighten me.

[As penned in perplexity by Lucius Merriweather.]

I Can’t Believe They: A Task for Blockers and Bombers

For me Lemmings is video games.  Put a picture of a little man with flowing green hair and a blue body suit in front of anyone on the street that doesn’t remember the end of World War II and in all likelihood they’ll know what it is.  That’s not just because it’s wonderful.  It is, wonderful that is, but it also represents one of the many moments in video games where game designers just got it.  They got how to design games so that they aren’t impenetrable, so that they aren’t obscure or immature, and so that they’re appealing to everyone.  In short it could easily be argued that Lemmings was really the first game to be targeted at a mass market.  Call it casual, call it non-hardcore, call it dumbed down.  I don’t really care.  But it was an amazing piece of software that appealed to hordes of people and as a result has had an enduring run appearing on PC after PC and console after console.  The little men with green hair and blue suits were unstoppable and getting them to the exit was all the rage through the early to mid nineties.

But what if I told you that Lemmings in fact have green hair, green suits and green skin.

At least that’s what a Lemming looked like on the humble green-scale Game Boy as all of the life and colour  were sucked out of the sprites in order to fit them into the humble handheld, along with the graphical detail that made Lemmings so charming.  Despite this though – and some other shortcomings such as all too frequent sprite flicker – Lemmings was an impressive technical feat all things considered.  Some fantastic and creative use of the four shades the Game Boy was technically capable of made the game look far more advanced than it was, and although the port made obviously concessions in frames of animation and detailed backgrounds, the places where the developers did focus their attention show an incredible attention to detail.

Some of the design choices just suit the system.  The zoomed in Camera for example  allowed for far more detail in the Lemmings sprites themselves than would’ve been possible if it was having to animate more sprites at any one time.   The result of such concessions is that Lemmings on the Game Boy is a far more attractive and impressive game than would’ve been the case had no thought been put into accommodating the lacking hardware.  The version is far from perfect, but despite having access to the Amiga 500 version of Lemmings and its sequel the Game Boy version won out by virtue of its convenience. I wouldn’t recommend you play this version over the incredibly pretty PSP remake released in 2006, but as far as handheld curios go, Lemmings is certainly up there.  Just get a pen and paper ready because you will be writing down plenty of passwords.

Fun With Phantom Hourglass

Seeing as a sequel to The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past was announced for the 3DS just the other day, it seems like a good time to write about that other great portable Zelda game, Phantom Hourglass. I only played it for the first time very recently, but I was immediately struck by how well it suited being played on a handheld console – unlike the 3DS version of Ocarina of Time, which tried to squeeze a console game to the size of a tiny box. Phantom Hourglass is designed to be played on the go for short stints, and it’s all the better for it.

I was also impressed by how well the controls have been mapped to the DS stylus. I wasn’t sure how combat would work, but it quickly became second nature, and the boomerang works particularly well with the touch screen. In fact I reckon that the Phantom Hourglass boomerang is the definitive version in the Zelda canon. I love the way you can scribble all over the maps too: it reminded me of making my own paper maps for Head Over Heels back in the old days.

It was great to see the return to the Wind Waker cel-shaded version of Link as well: I love this design, with his big ol’ head and tiny little feet. I remember how controversial it was when it was first revealed, so it’s funny how now cel-shaded Link is now as readily accepted as the Ocarina of Time version. I think I prefer him, to be honest.

Having said that, I’m very much looking forward to returning to the top-down Link of A Link to the Past 2 later this year, but before then I still have loads of Zelda to catch up on: Skyward Sword is still waiting on my shelf to be played, and Spirit Tracks sounds worth a look, plus I never got around to playing The Minish Cap or Oracle of Ages/Oracle of Seasons when they came out. So many Zelda games, so little time…

[As dictated by Lucius Merriweather. Another game falls from The Mantelpiece.]

As far as licensed fare goes, this is pretty great

Licensed videogame toys can range from good to bad to ‘don’t open me I’m horribly collectable‘, and they only seem to be becoming more and more prevalent accompaniments to big game releases. Like their film counterparts, sometimes they even start to show up in stores well before the product on which they are based is a twinkle in the retailer’s bottom line, with the local EBGames retail chain selling Bioshock Infinite figurines seemingly eons before the internet had a collective orgasm over the game (including our very own Lucius Merriweather).

Me, I’ve never been particularly interested in the videogame toys. But browsing in the toy section of a nearby department store for My Little Pony figurines of all things (why no Applejack guys, she is clearly the best of the bunch, what with all the sass) I stumbled upon these little gems of Meccano sets based on the latest entry in the Gears of War series, Gears of War Judgement.

Pretty awesome, right? For mine Meccano was always the superior of the ‘build stuff’ toy genre and recreating some of the art assets from the brilliantly designed Gears of War universe is something I think I’d like to do on a rainy Saturday afternoon. And coming up to Winter I am sure there are a few of those on the way. Worth a purchase to put away for a rainy day? I think so.

Now back to the search for an Applejack figurine…

The 30 cent decision

The 30c cone from McDonalds – high in sugar and low in taste – 30 cents

OR

Super Metroid – high in action, high in gameplay and high in awesome – 30 cents

You decide.

Forgetting ‘Heroes of Mana’

I just forgot I owned a video game and the worst part was I was about one mouse click away from purchasing it again.  That game was the Heroes of Mana, the Brownie Brown developed Real Time Strategy/Role-playing hybrid released in 2007 for Nintendo’s DS.  It was one of the many games of its type released for the jack-of-all trades handheld in what was to be a short lived phenomenon – including Blue Dragon Plus and Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings.  It was small-scale Real Time Strategy done right in a way that suited the handheld almost like a glove, and is almost the epitome of the types of risks developers were taking when developing seemingly niche titles for the phenomenon that was the Nintendo DS, a console that sold over 150 million units worldwide.  Needless to say even if you manage to capture a small proportion of that market, you’re still well on the way to turning a profit on the title.

I will get around to playing Heroes of Mana one day.  Games like it are few and far between in the current handheld environment, with things not looking to improve any time soon.  The Japanese video game industry is still a strong behemoth that rules the roost in many areas of the vast market we call video games.  But it isn’t as strong as it once was and the once steady stalwarts of the industry like Square-Enix, the very company responsible for Heroes of Mana, are continuing to struggle to find their feet.  But for time being we can’t rely on it to deliver these unique experiences en-masse, and because of that I will be foraging  through my shelves to see what other treasures I’ve pushed to the back of the shelves as the new shinier consoles have come into my life.

Heroes of Mana has been added to the ‘Mantelpiece‘ along with far too many other dusty discs, cartridges and cards.

Gay Tony’s Ballad isn’t a chart topper

Grand Theft Auto – The Ballad of Gay Tony - I never much liked Grand Theft Auto IV.  I bought it at launch, the ‘special’ edition I might add, played it for a few hours, thought it was a bit average and then put it on the shelf.  A year later I forced myself through it in an influenza haze and it wasn’t until the last hour or so that I felt any semblance of enjoyment in what GTA IV offered, but even then I came away thoroughly underwhelmed.  I felt the narrative was broken, the characters schizophrenic in their motivations and a story that was punctuated by a few key moments strung together by stochastic interactions with a whole bunch of randoms.  Couple that with the fact that the game was just no fun to play and you have a game that I feel is highly, highly overrated.

The Ballad of Gay Tony, the second expansion for Grand Theft Auto IV, is big, bright and bombastic.  It is filled to the brim with interesting characters and relationships that feel real, with personal problems that we can all relate to on some level.  Cut scenes are well-written making it a compelling proposition to see through to the credits.  You take the role of Luis, a dominican ex-con who has found his feet in business with night-club owner and socialite Tony Prince (Gay Tony).  Torn between the demands of the high-rolling lifestyle and actually having to earn a living, Tony gets ‘in bed’ with some not-so-wholesome types and it is naturally up to Luis to clean things up.  It is a legitimately interesting premise that while it doesn’t deliver any earth-shattering moments, does the job and gives you enough investment in the plights of this odd couple to keep you interested.  

And this really is one of the main strengths of Gay Tony.  Tony Prince is the star of the show and is one of the more interesting characters to come from the GTA franchise in quite some time.  He isn’t an all-bravado member of a crime syndicate, an all too common trope on the series, but rather a vulnerable character whose reliance on drugs and alcohol at tough times makes him helpless and able to be taken advantage of.  A thesis could be written on how Tony Prince both adheres to and breaks simultaneously the gay stereotypes that are used in popular culture, but it isn’t his homosexuality that defines him.  It is his weakness and his self-destructive behaviour that makes him an interesting case for how Rockstar should take character development forward in Grand Theft Auto V.  He is driven by vanity rather than criminal intent, and that makes everything far more complicated in how he interacts with your character – and in turn strains the relationship between the two in a far different way to the usual ‘go here, steal this, give me a cut’ way.

But like everything Grand Theft Auto IV, the Ballad of Gay Tony is really just no fun to play.  Driving around the city forms a major part of the game but the cars handle too loosely to ever feel like you are in control.  Watching the suspension bear the weight of the car’s chassis as it takes a corner looks the deal, but it never feels like the weight is shifting as it should resulting in every car feeling like it is a top-heavy 4WD all too-eager to turnover.  All of this makes car chases that should be exhilarating,  frustrating,  and traversing the world more of a chore than anything else.  And the other half of the story isn’t much better with the cover and shoot system leading to far more accidental deaths and failed attempts at murder than should be the case in a big polished AAA title.  Don’t get me wrong, GTA IV and as such this expansion made huge strides from the utter frustration that was the last-gen GTA series, but it certainly isn’t as good as other similar structured games.  The good news is Rockstar seemed to get it right with the stellar Red Dead Redemption so GTA IV may signal an end to the combat woes that have plagued the series since it went 3D way back in the PS2 era.

And the problem all seems to stem from a serious case of identity crisis.  The Grand Theft Auto IV never really knew whether it was trying to be a serious crime epic, or an over-the-top video game experience, and as a result feels like it is constantly trying to find its feet.  It wants you to be an almost superhuman driver, shooter and flyer, but gives you simulated real world powers and physics to do them.  It would be like asking Spiderman to climb a building using only suction cups.  

All of this said I think that the Ballad of Gay Tony, like the first expansion the Lost and Damned before it, is streets ahead of their namesake title.  The characters aren’t as inconsistent in their actions and Niko Bellic was and it is more ambitious in its mission design despite fundamentally being a go-here and do-this structured game.  It doesn’t break the mould in any meaningful way but the Ballad of Gay Tony is a decent distraction that more than anything is a reminder that developer Rockstar has a long way to go before it perfects the popular series.  I just hope a whole lot of those strides toward perfection come packaged in Grand Theft Auto V.