Gaming: Prototype
Wikipedia fact: "In his sarcastic Zero Punctuation review of Prototype, Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw compared" Prototype and Infamous "point for point, and determined that he could not tell which was the better game" ... "and challenged the respective studios to "produce the best image of the rival game's main character wearing women's lingerie" as a tiebreaker. To his surprise, both development teams rose to the challenge".
Year of release: 2009
Developed by: Radical Entertainment
Available for: PC, Playstation 3, Xbox 360 (version played)
Demo available: No.
Summary: Alex Mercer wakes up in the morgue to discover he has been infected by some sort of virus that gives him all kinds of extraordinary powers, and is caught up in a battle for Manhattan between other infected humans and the military forces trying to contain the outbreak.
Thoughts: Ever since open world games have started to embrace the vertical and let you scale buildings there have been a variety of different ways developers have found to make climbing possible and fun. In 2007’s Crackdown you scaled buildings through a series of mighty jumps from ledge to ledge, while later that year (and in its 2009 sequel) Assassin’s Creed used a system of hand and footholds to ascend, all excellently animated. 2009’s Infamous uses a cross between the two, with Cole able to climb and do small leaps from ledge to ledge, as well as gliding when necessary. In Prototype, you simply hold one button and Mercer runs straight up even the tallest buildings in seconds.
Gaming: Fallout 3 – Operation: Anchorage
Wikipedia fact: "The content focuses on a titular event in the Fallout timeline before the Great War took place, in which the United States Army liberated Anchorage, Alaska, from its Chinese Communist invaders."
Year of release: 2009
Available for: PC (version played), Xbox 360 and PS3. In all cases it is available either as an individual purchase or packaged with all the other downloadable content in the Game of the Year Edition.
Summary: The Lone Wanderer assists the Brotherhood Outcasts by entering a simulation of the invasion of Anchorage by Chinese soldiers.
Thoughts: As the first piece of DLC to be released for Fallout 3, Anchorage is a bit of a strange beast. If I were to list Fallout 3’s strengths (in my opinion, at least), at the top of the list would be the open nature of its world, leaving you free to go off in any direction you choose and find enemies to fight, new quests to complete and locations to explore. Following that it would be the survival elements, scavenging abandoned locations for much-needed supplies and never knowing quite what you might find, looting fallen opponents, fixing up your damaged weapons, trading what you’ve scavenged for what you need and taking advantage of a bed in a safe haven to rest away your injuries. It all adds up to an experience I’ve returned to three times now. For Operation: Anchorage, Bethesda decided to throw out pretty much all of that.
Personal: January 2010 in review
I’m trying out something new for 2010, looking back on each month. The idea is to make it a monthly feature, but we’ll see if I stick with it across the year or if I can even make it interesting enough to be worth reading:
TV: Dollhouse – The Left Hand (S02E06)
Episode quote: "I'm afraid of Caroline. If she comes back where will I go?" (Echo)
Year of Broadcast: 2010
Starring: Eliza Dushku, Harry J. Lennix, Fran Kranz, Olivia Williams, Stacey Scowley, Miracle Laurie, Alexis Denisof, Summer Glau, Enver Gjokaj.
*Spoilers follow*
TV: Dollhouse – The Public Eye (S02E05)
Episode quote: "You can never tell what monsters are hiding inside." (Cindy Perrin)
Year of Broadcast: 2010
Starring: Eliza Dushku, Harry J. Lennix, Fran Kranz, Olivia Williams, Keith Carradine, Tahmoh Penikett, Stacey Scowley, Miracle Laurie, Alexis Denisof, Summer Glau.
*Spoilers follow*
Gaming: WET
Wikipedia fact: "On July 29, 2008, Activision Blizzard announced that WET had been dropped along with many other games, thus putting its future into hiatus." ... "On April 27, 2009, Bethesda Softworks confirmed that they will publish WET."
Year of Release: 2009
Developed by: Artificial Mind and Movement
System(s): Xbox 360, Playstation 3 (version played)
Demo available: Yes, on both consoles (you can queue the Xbox 360 demo to download from here). Does a good job of showcasing the game’s strengths, covering the regular combat, rage mode and a vehicle sequence.
Summary: Gun-for-hire Rubi Malone travels the world doing dangerous work for money, until she is caught up in larger events.
Thoughts: It seems difficult to avoid referencing Quentin Tarantino when talking about WET (out of the ten highest reviews on Metacritic, exactly half mentioned him). It isn’t difficult to see why as the game draws from the same ‘grindhouse’ influences that Tarantino is fond of, in particular the over-the-top violence of the exploitation films. WET has an artificial film grain effect to look like it was filmed with old cameras (complete with flickering and scratchy artefacts), loading screens are often masked with promos to visit the concession stand, when you die the ‘film’ burns up, and the original soundtrack is filled with songs inspired by the ’70s.
Gaming: Modding Fallout 3
Wikipedia fact: "Fallout 3 takes place in the year 2277, 36 years after the setting of Fallout 2 and 200 years after the nuclear war between the United States and China that devastated the game's world in an alternate post-World War II timeline."
When Interplay sold the rights to Fallout I was sceptical that Bethesda would be able to create something that did justice to a classic series that I adore. In a way I was technically correct because Fallout 3 isn’t really a great Fallout game, lacking a lot of the key elements that made me love the originals. However, it is a great Bethesda RPG and I’ve had no trouble divorcing the game from Interplay’s originals and being able to enjoy it as a game in its own right. It’s from playing Fallout 3 that I’ve finally been able to understand just what it is people like about Bethesda’s other games like Morrowind and Oblivion, two games which I’ve never been able to get into.
After playing through the game twice on Xbox 360 and earning all 1,000 gamerscore available in the base game I now have the game of the year edition with all the DLC, and by the time I’m done with this third playthrough I’ll probably have spent upwards of 200 hours playing the game.
The reason I went with the PC GotY edition (aside from it being much cheaper than buying the DLC separately) was for one thing: mods. A common opinion expressed about Oblivion was that the mod community really transformed the game for the better and I’ve been looking forward to seeing what they’ve done with Fallout 3. So here is a round-up of all the mods I’m currently running, along with screenshots (when applicable, and those with an image will usually have several more on the download page) and links to download them:
Web – The Psychology of a Bleep
In internet terms this is a little old (almost a year!), but I’ve only just seen it. Before I post it I’ll embed the original version, Sesame Street’s Count singing about how he loves to count:
Now check out this version, where every ‘count’ has been replaced with the beep typically used to mask swearing:
Gaming: Game of the Year 2009
Updated Jan 26th 2010 to add WET. Updated Feb 5th 2010 to add Prototype.
With 2009 only recently over there are still several games I need to play before I feel comfortable offering a definitive personal game of the year for 2009 – with games like New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Uncharted 2, Infamous and Borderlands being notable absences – so this will likely change a bit as I play more of 2009’s releases. However, I wanted to get this all thought out while most of the year is still fresh.
At the time I started this article I’d finished twelve retail games that released in 2009 with five more being worked on and another five waiting to be played. There’s clearly a way to go before this is anywhere near to approaching a definitive verdict, but I’ll continue to add to this as I play each game until eventually I can declare something my definite game of the year.
I intend to list every 2009 retail game I’ve played in order of preference, and all will include at least some sort of comment about why I like them. I don’t think there’s any need to go in reverse order but if you prefer to read them that way then you could always scroll to the bottom and work up. So without further ado, my game of the year for 2009 is currently:
This Week 13 – January 10th, 2010
The web gets a little quieter over the holidays so there wasn’t quite enough to justify a This Week post (especially as the holiday period also meant I spent less time on the internet finding things). Everything is back in full force now though and I have a healthy collection of links to share:
*
I knew that Disney liked to recycle a lot of their older stuff (from things like this collection of images), but this video highlights just to what extent:
(via Cracked)
Gaming: Demo Round-Up
Some thoughts on demos I’ve played recently – Bayonetta, Dante’s Inferno and Lego Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues. Apart from Bayonetta all demos were only played on the PS3, simply because I have lots of space on my 80GB PS3 drive but almost none on the 20GB 360 drive:
Wikipedia fact: "Combat in Bayonetta, a single-player action game, resembles that in Hideki Kamiya's prior Devil May Cry. The player is encouraged to explore ways to dispatch enemies with as much flair as possible through the use of both melee and long ranged attacks, complex combo strings, and multiple weapons."
Bayonetta
Available for: 360 (download here), PlayStation 3 (both versions played)
Thoughts: As was clear from very early on in the game’s developments, Platinum Games weren’t ever aiming for subtlety with Bayonetta, they just set out to make a big, over-the-top game in the Devil May Cry style, and that really comes across in the demo. It’s all quite bonkers, Bayonetta blows kisses and sheds her clothes, fights a big monster with the head of a baby, and so on, with healthy doses of Japanese pop music. It was fairly fun but not really my kind of game (I’m not keen on the Devil May Cry genre in general), and despite learning all the combos I quickly fall back on button mashing once the actual combat starts.
This Week 11 & 12: December 13 and 20th, 2009
Thanks to my forced absence I missed last week’s post (and the internet in general), so this one combines the things I collected before my absence (which would have been part of Week 11) with the things I’ve found in the few days since returning to the web (Week 12). So here we have science jokes, spiders, Jack Bauer, Shaolin monks, Saturn and Twilight.
*
Jack Bauer gets himself on Santa’s naughty list:
(from Rebel Christmas Card)
*
This Week 10: December 6th, 2009
It’s that time again. Check out this weeks collection of journalism blunders, John Woo, The Sims 3, Rogue Warrior, Earth and other planets and pointless ghost hunter TV shows:
*
A TV station used their Twitter feed to make a live billboard that always displayed the most recent message beside a picture of their news team. That’s all well and good until your Twitter message seems to be accusing them of something unsavoury.
*
Gaming: Dino D-Day
The dinosaur above sits innocently on the title screen, offering no hints of how irritating his kind will prove to be.
Available For: PC, on Steam (download from here)
Summary: Sergeant Jack Hardgrave attempts to thwart the Nazi regime’s plans to use dinosaurs to win World War 2.
Thoughts: Dino D-Day is a mod using the Source engine (ie. Valve’s engine, used for everything from Half-Life 2 through to Left 4 Dead 2). The free mod is being released ahead of the full game, which will be available on Steam next year. While trying out the mod I made a few comments on Twitter, and I think they’ll make a good basis for my thoughts.
“Trying out the Dino D-Day Source mod, detailing that time in World War 2 when the Nazis unleashed their secret weapon: dinosaurs.”
That about sums it up. You’re a soldier in the African desert during World War 2, trying to stop the Nazis from unleashing dinosaurs upon the world. Just imagine how different the world might be today if Hitler had decided to use his dinosaur powers for good.
Gaming: Fat Princess
Wikipedia Fact: "Some feminist groups criticized the game's premise, accusing it of promoting prejudice against fat people."
Year of Release: 2009
Developed by: Titan Studios
System(s): PlayStation 3 (PlayStation Network download)
Summary: Rival teams of multiple classes try to rescue their princess from the enemy castle while keeping their own prisoner safe, and can fatten them up with cake to make them heavier.
