E3 will be on us very shortly and Controller1.com would like to prognosticate one what you WON’T be reading about come the first week of June. This is not the result of rumor, heresay or the result of a dodgy phone camera shot of a Best Buy POS terminal. This is pure 100% bullshit. You do know how to spot bullshit, don’t you? It’s easy. Read on…
1- Nintendo will announce the Wii 2 HD console without Motion controllers, merely a redesigned N64 controller with more spikes. The Big N has listened to the whining whims of hard care gamers and is ditching the mass market with millions of easy sales of Wii fit and WiiPlay. Instead, they will focus on the shrinking marketshare that ‘core’ games that are currently divvied up between Sony and MS.
2- A Japanese game without hypersexualised pedo-bait female characters will be released. RE5 will offer new unlockable raincoat costumes for Shiva. DLC for X-Blades will include a petticoats and hoop-skirts. I do declare!Dead or Alive Extreme 3 will feature the ladies in a new environment- Open Cut Coke Mining.
3. EA will be bought by Midway
Take one company that’s big but losing a bit of money. Take another company that’s on its last knees. Midway buying EA would be like Quebec buying France. But that won’t stop Midway’s bat-shit loco insane management from giving it a go.
4. Microsoft announces a new model Xbox 360- The Bulletproof. This new model is guaranteed by Microsoft nit to break down in any way. It will never RROD or display an E74. It also has no DVD Drive, power supply, CPU, GPU or wireless receiver. It is not backwards compatible with Xbox 1 games, but its also not present-compatible with Xbox 360 games. But its not breakable.
5. Ubisoft announces a game produced by Jade Raymond that will not be demoed on stage by Ms Raymond, but by the games’ designer. Jade’s a talented lady but we’ve seen enough. Show us the dirty smelly bearded nerd.
6. Boothbabes who can stand up without developing lower back pain within 10 minutes.
7. A new Super Mario Bros game for the DS will be announced. Yes, Nintendo will actually make a second Mario platforming game on the DS. All New Super Mario Brothers will be more of the same. No Baby Mario, Wario or Yoshi. Just Mario and Luigi jumping on things.
8. a PlayStation 3 killer application. Yes, a reason for you fence sitters will be announced at E3. Unlike Heavenly Sword, Lair, Haze, MGS4, Little Big Planet or Killzone2, this will actually excite no PS3-owning gamers with two jobs to take the plunge.
9. A Twitter feed of a press conference without LOL, OMFG or Woot being used when sequel x91 is announced for mega-successful franchise y39 is announced.
10. Controller1.com’s game of show will be an MMO.
wat?
Reviewed on Wii. Developed and published by Electronic Arts
Another quick review. Boom Blox was EA’s first partnership with Steven Speielberg since Medal of Honor. And just like Medal of Honor we have the traditional Normandy Level, as well as robust online multiplayer and a somber score by Michael Giacchino. Wat?
Boom Blox is a cutesy puzzle game where you are presented with a puzzle to solve, usually within a limit of throws. You might be throwing baseballs, or bombs with your Wii Remote, or you might be throwing last night’s curry leftovers but wither way you’re presenting your HDTV with a mortal threat so use the jacket and the strap. Like World of Goo and Peggle, Boom Blox also uses a simple physics system as part f the game, which probably explains why the games looks so very N64. It might look like it doesn’t need the RAM expansion pack you got with Donkey Kong 64, but I’ll bet the physics chew up more CPU power than the particle effects.
Boom Blox gives you a choice of gameplay styles, from levels where you have to manipulate two green blox so they connect and explode to levels where you just have to make the diamonds hit the ground, to vanishing blox and even a few levels with a frickin’ laser pistol. Each level scores you on how many points you get and you can squeak by with a bronze score. But Gold is where it is at, baby.
If you already have a Wii, you should hunt the bargain bins for Boom Blox which has sold OK enough to warrant a sequel but I don’t know whether its a game you want iterated on again and again. There’s exploration mode, where you just play a level at a time and unlock the next challenge, Adventure (Why?) and a mode where you can create your own shitty levels that just recreate badly a game from the NES. Well, Mario 1-1 might be hard on Boom Blox but there’s always Little Big Planet for all your knock-off needs.
This isn’t a graphical game, even for the Wii. The art style looks 10 years out of date and the music sounds like it belongs on a PSOne game but it captures the annoying Wii-style music featured in games like Wii Sports and Wii Fit. Its awful. Wii give up.
So if EA can do something right on the Wii, does that mean there’s hope for the future? No, EA Sports Active says ‘Hi, lard-ass.”
Activision have started the PR for what looks to be Infinity Ward’s next Call of Duty game. Whilst other companies seem to have learnt their lesson about yearly updates, Activision obviously haven’t. EA seemed to have stopped the annual release of Medal of Honor games, id aren’t churning out yearly updates to Quake and Doom. Halo, Gears, Resistance and Killzones aren’t being squeezed out every year. But Activision seem content to have a Call of Duty every year, as well as multiple versions of Guitar Hero annually. But curiously enough WoW is still the original with only two expansions in nearly four and a half years.
Iterating till doomsday has seen a lot of game series being ruined, but you can predict when this going happen very easily- People start referring to it as a franchise as if its a frozen yogurt stand in a mall. The more often you make the same game with only minor upgrades, the more likely you are to suffer from boredom and deja vu. With games like Madden, there’s evidence to suggest that many football fans buy the game every couple of years, rather than every installment. With Madden, there’s also no other choice if you want an NFL game.
With shooters, its perhaps more perilous because there is so much more choice. Call of Duty has to compete with Resistance and Killzone on PS3; Gears and Halo on 360; Tom Clancy shooters on all systems; Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress on PC as well as the ancient juggernauts of Counterstrike, Battlefield and Unreal games. Valve didn’t release TF3 a year after TF2, they added new content (free or not) but Activision took the success of Call of Duty 4 and threw it away by release the almost as successful Call of Duty World at War a year after. If there’s a new CoD game every year, how long before people get sick of it? You can argue that they sold a large number of CoD4 boxes and then a year later sold a large number of CoD WaW boxes. But they also had to devote two of their best teams to making a new title in two years, rather than smaller teams making expansions or DLC.
You can tell the tide of the Guitar Hero Rock Band style games has turned a little bit. People seem a little less enthusiastic about those games these days. Perhaps the lure of being a Rock Star fades after a while? Or the sight of fat geeks rocking out gets old after a while? You know how everyone groans about “another WWII game?” That’s because there was a time when you had Medal of Honor, Commandos, Brothers in Arms Wolfenstein, DoD, CoD, plus dozens of strategy titles and smaller PC games set in the same settings. There are dozens of SF or fantasy based games but the difference is they have freedom to make up new worlds whereas games based on actual events or settings (such as WWII or Modern Combat games) have to adhere to a certain aesthetic and conform to real world experience and expectations. You couldn’t have Gaz pull out a BFG and keep a straight face.
Look at Battlefield. First there was a WWII game and some expansions. Then there was Battlefield Vietnam a few years later, the Battlefield 2 with its mini expansions and console versions and then Battlefield 2142. The SF sequel fizzled pretty much and now the series is drifting backwards in time like some kind of ass-backwards Buck Rogers. Bad Company is back in current times and Battlefield Heroes and the new downloadable games are in WWII (ish) times. EA tried to iterate by innovating but really what they needed was space in between releases.
We’ve already mentioned Blizzard and WoW. But look at Starcraft. It was a huge hit in the late 90′ s but here we are, a decade and change later and we’re still waiting for the sequel (Just suppose EA had bought Blizzard in the past. We’ve have had Starcraft 2-5, Diablo 3, 4 and Origins and Warcraft 4-6 before EA shut them down). Of course, they are releasing SCII in three different versions. Kotick, you magnificent bastard! The clamouring for new SC is such that people will buy the three versions and not bitch too much about triple charged. WHy? Because Blizzard let the demand for a sequel build organically over time. Maybe 11-12 years is overkill, but its worked.
Personally, I am happy to have a new CoD game each year. But I know the series probably won’t be what it is if it starts fatiguing gamers to the point Activision mandate harmful changes in order to fix the malaise. “Have you guys considered adding giant robots?”
I recently started the most recent Prince of Persia game and very shortly into it I realised how much I wanted to go back and give Mirror’s Edge another try. I had given up around the 60% mark, sick of the trial and error approach to platforming. Here’s the review written after I had grown weary of the game and Fallout 3 was fast becoming an all-consuming addiction.
Coming back to Mirror’s Edge, it gelled a bit better than the first half of the game. There are still thing not quite right about the game, with waaaaay too much trial and error and combat that’s more frustrating than catering for a Vegan at a Barbecue. But I seemed to enjoy it a lot more, perhaps without the distraction of Fallout 3. The story wasn’t anything much but I did enjoy the cutscenes ending the game. Of course, Portal’s end credits song called “Still Alive” is better than Mirror’s Edge’s end credits song called “Still Alive.”
Would this game be better if it was a third person game? I don’t know, its pretty good as it is and a third person perspective would be a different kettle of fish altogether. Combat in third person would probably be better but then the game would then just be Uncharted. DICE are still to be commended for trying something so radically different from Battlefield and I hope the sequel (we can but hope) takes a lot of the criticism seriously.
Make no mistake, this is a hard game. Since I was so much wanting to see the end of the game, I bumped the difficulty down to easy for the last two chapters. As far as I can see, it made absolutely no difference in terms of making the combat less painful or the jumping (especially the penultimate leap) more predictable.
I’m glad I made the effort to go back and finish the game, despite its difficult last few levels. Even though the levels all seem to be variations on the same thing, it never felt boring apart from those occasions where you are trying a difficult jump. Usually it comes down to you doing it wrong.
I’ve amended our original review to reflect the change in thinking. Its rare that I quit a game because of frustrating gameplay and come to finish it later and actually like it.
A couple of weeks ago, EA shut down the Brisbane office of Pandemic. They had so much fun doing that, they shut them down again this week. Here’s the CEO of Electronic Arts and if you look into his eyes you will see a window into what’s left of his soul.
We’re read the news. EA’s had a bad financial time of it. They’ve gone from saying they will cut costs by closing 9 locations and shedding 600 jobs to closing 12 locations and 1100 jobs. So far they’ve only closed the offices of Black Box and Pandemic Brisbane. Pandemic Brisbane were given what sounded like a second chance to many. Their new Wii IP was handed to them so long as they could find a new publisher, the remaining staff given the lease, some money and their equipment. Now EA’s decided to take back the IP, sell the physical assets and turf out the remaining Pandemic staff (from a building they moved into only a few short months ago that sports a giant Pandemic sign on the exterior). Stay classy, EA.
Reviewed on PS3. Also on Xbox 360, PC Developed by DICE. Published by EA
Parkour is the the buzzword of the moment. So when the first person game Mirror’s Edge was announced, from the makers of the Battlefield games no less, people took notice. Platforming and First Person perspectives have never had a happy home in gaming (c1 has previously reviewed two of these- Duke 3D and Call of Juarez), and most FPS games of the last 10 years have eschewed this style of gameplay, putting it in the “too hard” basket.
Mirror’s Edge is about Faith, who’s a runner who’s a courier. She’s asian, got a tat and has an athletic figure, in stark contrast to what some on the net would prefer. The game is a platform game where you run across the tops of buildings, leaping between skyscrapers, bounding over obstacles, running through corridors, walkways, balconies, up ladders, down pipes, etc. Mostly without a gun. Your runner’s sense will show objects that you can interact with by them glowing red (I’ve made the joke many times how the faceless villains could fuck these guys up with some well placed spraypaint), ie when you need to jump to the next point- look for the pipe that’s now glowing red.
Then there’s the combat. There really doesn’t need to be much of this in the game but it helps if occasionally you knock out a guard or disarm them. Occasionally you can use their weapons against them, though there’s a popular achievement/trophy if you don’t use the guns. The combat is kinda painful though it wasn’t what put me off the game half way through. The actual raison d’etre of the game is the platforming of the trial and error variety. And what kills any joy out of doing this is the fact the checkpoints are rather sparsely placed throughout some of the levels. There are some rather painful jumps that if you miss, the amount of retreading you must undertake becomes rather repetitive.
The graphics in the game are very nice, with a steady framerate (essential to surviving the jumping without motion sickness). Sound is also a high point in the game and I can’t say I agree with some of the common presentation gripes some have with this game- namely the Flash-style animations used for some in-between level cutscenes. Faith is an appealing protagonist but I will have to see if some improvements have been made to see whether the sequel is worth the time. I had to hang up this game around half way through
So I liked the game, to a point. I couldn’t keep up with the constant trial and error and re-doing a big section just to try again and fail again by falling again so I could restart and retrace and re-fail. It’s like watching Groundhog Day in a loop.
UPDATE:
I recently started the most recent Prince of Persia game and very shortly into it I realised how much I wanted to go back and give Mirror’s Edge another try. I had given up around the 60% mark, sick of the trial and error approach to platforming. Here’s the review written after I had grown weary of the game and Fallout 3 was fast becoming an all-consuming addiction.
Coming back to Mirror’s Edge, it gelled a bit better than the first half of the game. There are still thing not quite right about the game, with waaaaay too much trial and error and combat that’s more frustrating than catering for a Vegan at a Barbecue. But I seemed to enjoy it a lot more, perhaps without the distraction of Fallout 3. The story wasn’t anything much but I did enjoy the cutscenes ending the game. Of course, Portal’s end credits song called “Still Alive” is better than Mirror’s Edge’s end credits song called “Still Alive.”
Would this game be better if it was a third person game? I don’t know, its pretty good as it is and a third person perspective would be a different kettle of fish altogether. Combat in third person would probably be better but then the game would then just be Uncharted. DICE are still to be commended for trying something so radically different from Battlefield and I hope the sequel (we can but hope) takes a lot of the criticism seriously.
Make no mistake, this is a hard game. Since I was so much wanting to see the end of the game, I bumped the difficulty down to easy for the last two chapters. As far as I can see, it made absolutely no difference in terms of making the combat less painful or the jumping (especially the penultimate leap) more predictable.
I’m glad I made the effort to go back and finish the game, despite its difficult last few levels. Even though the levels all seem to be variations on the same thing, it never felt boring apart from those occasions where you are trying a difficult jump. Usually it comes down to you doing it wrong.
Original Controller1.com rating 1/3 (This game epitomises ‘Your Mileage May Vary’)
UPDATED Controller1.com rating 2/3
Cam ollies, George Nollies and Clint grinds
Reviewed on PC. Also on Xbox 360. Developed by Valve. Retail versions published by EA
Left 4 Dead is Valve’s latest First Person shooter, based mainly around online cooperative play. L4D has also managed to at least partially bury the meme-cow (a cash cow for memes) that was TF2, at least in the short term. So what is it about this game that’s got everyone excited?
So the conceit is that each of the four stories are their own survival horror movie. Four survivors- Francis- the tough biker, Louis the office worker, Zoe the spunky chick and Bill, the old fart ex marine. Those are my descriptions based on playing the game so forgive me if they misrepresent the ‘canon.’ The four of you basically go from point A to point B Starting and ending each level in a new safehouse. And along the way there are zombies. Like everywhere. There are the common or garden zombies who just move towards you, sometimes slowly, other times rushing at you, often in numbers. And there are the specials.
There’s Boomer, a giant fat bile factory, who, if you get too close, will vomit on you and have hordes of zombies rushing you. Then there’s smoker, with his enormous tongue; Hunters who’ll jump you and pound the crap out of you; and tanks, who are basically big motherfuckers. There’s also the witch, but DON’T DISTURB THE WITCH YOU TARD!
That makes it sound simplistic but its actually a blast to play, easily the best Valve MP game in ages. You can play either by yourself which is underrated and an enormous amount of fun, and are able to select any chapter in any of the campaigns (of course there are no checkpoints within any of the chapters, so if you die you start again). Or you can play with three others, each of you taking on one of the four characters (one of each BTW). You need to work together, if someone runs off and gets cornered, they will need to be rescued. You can of course heal yourself or heal you teammates and they can of course heal you if they feel like it. But Multiplayer does highlight one thing, the AI in this game is very good (even on single player).
This is down to the much vaunted AI director. This will spawn enemies at just the right time and in just the right places. No two playthroughs of this game will ever bee the same and for that reason I recommend playing the single player through by yourself at some point. When you play with people, they’re selfish with health packs, shoot you by mistake and run off by themselves and get killed- which is a pain since that leaves more infected for you to deal with. There’s also a versus mode where four humans can go against four players on the zombie team. The zombies are weak but respawn and can choose exactly where they will lie in wait for their human opponents.
The graphics are pretty decent for a source based game. It doesn’t look ugly per se, it just looks a little underwhelming compared to even some the best console games, let alone high end PC’s. Sound is fantastic, from the music, the voiceover work to the punchy effects.
Left 4 Dead looks like a poor value proposition when you compare it to Team Fortress 2, but it actually offers so much more, not least is a very good single player mode. It’s memes are also not as moronic and insular meaning this is a fun game for everyone to get right into. Everyone loves zombies right?
Controller1.com rating 3/3
A Wii game on the Focus Test. Who’d have thunk it? Its incontheivable.
In parts of Asia, many PC games are free with the makers recouping their costs on players making microtransactions. This can be for a new spell in an MMO, weapons for an action game, or maybe even clothes for a social game (think Home, but popular). EA is going to try this approach in the west with the free-to-play Battlefield Heroes on PC.
EA, even though it makes a lot of money, isn’t always flush (hence the regular round of Russian Roulette their dev studios play each time the company has a tough quarter). EA isn’t offering Battlefield Hereos for free out of altruism, their hoping you’ll buy lots and lots of stuff just like people are doing in Korea. So what will you be charged for and how much?
Weapons: (price 99c- $3) This is the most obvious one. Why grind to upgrade to a new weapon? Just pop in your card details when you agree to the EULA and you can go from being hamstrung by a n00b pop gun to having a gatling gun and pwning all teh cazULs (casuals)
Costumes: (price 99c- $2) If you want to play as a wizard in a shooter, you should be able to, provided you’ve got the dosh to spare. You can also customise you character with kevlar body armour ($3) shin pads ($1), pocket protectors (70c) and transitions lenses in a number of fashionable styles ($120)
Team Killing: penalty ($5) . If you TK, you will get charged, not with manslaughter, but five bucks. Taking a life is easy, paying your debt to society is harsh.
Playing like a Tard penalty: ($10) This is a nasty one, because if you do things like call for map
change votes 30 seconds before the end of a map, switch teams incessantly when you’re losing and generally act like a douche, you will get charged.
Barking orders into the headset like you know what you’re doing penalty: ($5) Yes, you have a headset. We know. But you’re not very good so why should your orders be listened to by anyone else. If you want to be Napoleon, go and play an RTS and shut the hell up.
Bandages, Healing, etc ($3): You don’t medical attention for free in the real world, so why should you be a freeloader in Battlefield Heroes? Medics in games like TF2 and BF2 are like real doctors. Real doctors make a lot of cash and dive around in Mercs and BMW’s while medics in games just sit around healing everyone and have more achievements than anyone else. Just think about 8 years of medical school and translate that into playing on achievement farm servers for 8 years. Who’s wasting whose time?
Pay for instant respawn ($5). In real war, rich men pay to get out of serving. In a fake virtual war, real men pay to avoid having to wait to respawn. Get on it EA!
Fuel for your Tank (linked to the real world price of oil). Seriously, one of the worst parts of Battlefield games are the Vehicle whores. Well, make them pay for their fuel and we’ll see who long they stay inside the tank.
Pay for Perks: Hey, in CoD, you have those perks that you have to earn by playing the game a lot. Not so much in BF:H. Plunk down $3 for Martyrdom, $5 for 3 frags, $7 for Fireworks.
Swear Jar: This game is going to open the market to people who aren’t perhaps ready for the barrage of bad language. Drop the F bomb and you’ll lost a buck. Question someone’s sexual orientation and you lose two dollars. Racial remarks lose you $5 and sexist remarks get you a drink thrown in your face.
Campsite Tariff: Shooters, particular those with larger maps are prone to camping. Spawn camping is particularly rife and mainly unavoidable in the BF style of game. In order to reduce this, you’ll have to pay site fees and rent when you go camping. Pitch a tent, pay the landlord.
EA’s on a winner with this game.
