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Controller1.com Focus Test: Bound in Fail

Today we boot up Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood and God of of War: Chains of Olympus. Yep, we load up these games. We see the splash screens and even the main menu.

 

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Now playing: GTA Chinatown Wars

I’m currently on holidays with the wife. To sate my gaming desires whilst on the road, I’ve bought my DS Phat with GTA Chinatown Wars and my PSP 1000 with God of War: Chains of Olympus. Of course, I can’t charge the PSP battery enough  so that CoD CoO can update the PSP’s firmware (one nice thing about the original DS and the Lite is that you don’t have to worry about this bullshit). So Chinatown Wars is the game du jour.

GTA:CW is Rockstar Leeds making a 3D GTA game from a top down perspective. Its got all the colour, edginess and humour of a full console version without the feeling that something is not quite right, as was the case with the two PSP iterations.

Your stylus is used appropriately, to manage your menu items, emails, GPS map, etc and the traditional dpad + buttons used for driving, moving and combat. This being a DS game, there has been an attempt to add stylus gameplay into the mix, such as using touch screen actions in minigames- such as hot wiring cars.

It works, mostly. Maybe its because I’m sill playing on the original DS, but I’ve found using the dpad to be somewhat painful after a short time. The game is still fun, but jeez it is hard. Its not easy to pin down why, but I found myself having to replay missions again and again.
Happily, the makers have taken one of many people’s criticisms of GTAIV to heart. If you fail a mission, you see the mission briefing (skippable, of course) and then you have the option to skip the travel to the missions by pressing select. Hallefuckinglujah!

So if you’re going to make your game hard, at least make retrying easier. Thanks Rockstar Leeds. Theeds.

E3 2009- part 2. I Need a Drink

To continue: the Sony and Nintendo conferences were held today, the first day of the show, proper.

So let’s get into it….

Sony
God of War III is coming in March 2010. It looks like a painting come to life according to David Jaffe and I’m not going to argue with him, merely ask him not to visit goth art galleries anymore whilst inebriated. the fourth game in the trilogy 9(!) will close out the series (!).

PSP Go! was announced. People were shocked. People who woke up from coma’s were shocked anyway. Its a slimmer, UMD less PSP that will go on sale in a few months for US$250 alongside the current PSP-3000. PSP will finally see Gran Turismo portable, which seems to have taken a leaf out of Pokemon and Monster Hunter’s huge popularity in Japan by allowing trades over wifi. There’s a new Metal Gear portable game, Peacewalker or Pisstaker or something and this looks to be set a few years after Metal Gear 3. There’s the previously mentioned Little Big Planet PSP, Motorstorm and Assassin’s Creed PSP; as well as a newly announce PSP Resident Evi, PSP Infamous and PSP Soul Calibur.

On the PS3 front there’s the duel wand motion controller, currently unnamed and listed for release sometime in 2010. You can now get your waggle in three different flavours, depending on which system you own. As far as games go there weren’t many surprises, as most had been either announced, teased or leaked before the show. What games were shown mostly look pretty cool. Uncharted 2 looks to be fantastic, but we new that. MAG looks to be big and expansive but we knew that. The demo was nice in showing the strengths and weakness of the concept. Another quick look at the new Ratchet game in one of Sony’s many montages and a new Final Fantasy online game, FFXIV for release in 2010 on PS3 only.
But the exclusive that looks most intriguing is Agent, from Rock Star. Its set in the 70’s so I’m sure we’ll get that period completely inaccurate (you know early 70’s hippie fashions and giant afros with disco music). You’re an assassin. Its a Rock Star game so you’re never going to be handing out leaflets in a mall.
Assassin’s Creed 2, not shown on the Ubi conference, was demoed but as Jade Raymond was no where to be seen we’ll skip that. Just kidding. Can this game redeem the flaws of the original? Time will tell. PS3 is getting some exclusive DLC. Its called the PSP version and if you buy that, you get some extra weapons to use. Also shown is a cartoon racer where you can make and share tracks. Moving right along, there’s The Last Guardian, from the makers of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. Even though the trailer showed up on the web a few days ago, its still nice to see.
Overall, better than last year but we knew 95% of the content previously so the surprise factor was lower. Personally, GoW III, Ratchet and Uncharted 2 are my must haves on PS3 out of what was shown here.

Nintendo
Well, if they could put the word Mario into any more products they would. They started by talking about mario’s evolution and how they want to take Mario into 4D. By this they mean a 4-player coop version of All New Super Mario Brothers for Wii. A 2D renaissance has taken place with this and Epic’s XBLA game announced yesterday, but hopefully this won’t merely be the DS game upscaled for Wii (though bets on that’s exactly what this is).
Of course there would be WiiFit 2. Nintendo may not be making the kewl games like they used to but your grandma needs something to do in between lawn bowls and writing angry letters to the newspaper. Motion Plus was pimped yet again, with what seemed to be a familiar montage of what you could do with it (deja vu circa the Wii’s2006 launch).
Wii Sports resort seems to be less of a tech demo and more of a “this is what we should have done all along” game.
Along the same vein, Red Steel 2 (Motion plus only, it seems) is going to try and fulfill the promises Ubi made in 2006 with the big selling but reviled original.
We have a Final Fantasy game for Wii, Crystal something. Open world gayness from SE. Weeeeee. A DS Kingdom HeartZzzzzzzzz. Mario and Luigi told from Bowser’s side. oh dear. Golden Sun. Oh well, some fanboys should be happy. But Women’s Murder Club? Cops: A recruit ?. I think my DS will be getting dustier and dustier.
Mario Vs Donkey Kong Mini’s March Again, is more puzzling action, this time with a level editor- buts its a DSi Ware game only. As is a Wario Ware title where you make your own games. I sometimes thing games where the idea is to make your own games is rather lazy on the part of developers.

There was a long build up to an announcement by Satoru Iwata (Nintendo Japan Head dude). The build up was to one of those cheap things you clip on your finger to monitor your heart-rate. The internet goes “huh?” The next announcement lead to believe its a joke at the expense of fanboys. Its Super Mario Galaxy 2 for Wii!

Also, making sense of the recent bundling of the three Metroid prime games on one disc is a new Metroid Game from Team Ninja. Its called Other M. And its semi side scrolling.

10 THINGS TO DO WITH A PSP

Sony’s PSP hardware is selling quite well around the world. In Japan the Monster Hunter games has given impetus to the handheld that isn’t a DS, bringing gangs of otaku together in order to play with each other (emphasis mine). In the west, the PSP is the is hacked console currently on the market.

10. Use it as a remote controller for your PS3 I don’t know why but somehow you can and somehow you would want to. Your PSP interfaces with the PS3 in useful ways not seen since the Gamecube could be attached to the Gamecube. You can download, via the PS3, PSOne games. You can use your PSP, via the PS3, to play online multiplayer games. You can watch movies stored on your PSP, via your Bravia, in a resolution best described as “I paid 3k for this TV and it looks like what?”

9. Play movies on UMD disc. Movies such as XXX, Charlie’s Angels, SWAT and Hitch.

8. Play movies from your DVD collection ripped to PSP or the digital copy many DVD’s come with these days.

7. Skype. With its inbuilt Wifi functionality you can use the PSP as if it were a telephone, not not as if it were an NGage. For some reason, Sony forget about the whole Sony Ericsson thing when they designed this thing. Its a multi-media player, not a taco.

6. Spend countless hours updating the firmware every 14 days. The system has been out since 2005 and the firmware is now up to version 5 something.

5. Spend countless hours downgrading the firmware so you can run “homebrew.” Apparently everyone wants to use “homebrew” games. Note that when you say this out loud you must hold up your hands and articulate the quotation marks with your fingers. This is so people know you’re using “homebrew” as a euphemism for pirated games. In lieu of articulating quotating marks with your fingers, you can also tap the side of your nose or wink (or ever say “homebrew, wink wink.)”

4. Pirate the games. Why lie? That’s why you bought this thing. That’s why the system sells respectable numbers each month but UMD is a completely dead format and PSP games almost never chart. Its incredible that western publishers bother so much with trying to port their PS2 and Wii titles onto PSP considering the return on their investment must be less than the distance between a corpse of a Wall Street Stockbroker with an office on the 30th floor and the pavement.

3. Use the PSP as an MP3 player. Yes apparently Sony didn’t completely forget they invented the walkman. But they did forget how and why they invented it. The PSP, with a decent size memory stick can play music as well as movies.

2. If you own any version of PSP, you know have something to use as a conversation starter with someone who works in a store where memory cards are sold. You can have long and ponderous conversations about the differences between the 1178 different variations of Sony’s proprietary Memory Stick format, complain about why the fuck they couldn’t just use the ubiquitous and far cheaper SD cards

1. Play legally bought games. No only kidding. What would you want to play that shit? Instead you can look cooler on the bus than those DS-playing kiddies playing New Super Mario, Mario Kart and whatever else came out on the DS two years ago.

Editor’s note: I have not downgraded the firmware on my PSP. I also have not played my PSP is a long time. It has more dust covering it than my Wii.

IN THE BARGAIN BINS…

Today I went shopping and looked around for some games in the bargain bins. I’m usually too impatient to wait six months before I buy a game. I mean, I don’t need game on Day 1, but I usually aren’t able to wait until a game is in the big sales.

I saw some games that might been OK had I been in the mood like Frontlines Fuel of War with a T shirt and a book for AU$35 and a number of other games not worthy of writing about (ie only the stuff you’d expect to be in the bargain bins, shovelware or flops). But one title did catch my eye.

God of War: Chains of Olympus for PSP for AU$25 (about half the RRP). Its the only PSP game I’ve seen in the Top 10 in All Format Sales Charts for a long time. So OI thought, what the hell, I’m going away for a bit and I might need something for the travel.

So of course, I haven’t actually played my PSP since Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters in 2007. Its a first gen PSP-phat. It might be heavy and slow but its built like a brick shithouse. It also has, I disovered when i returned home, a dead battery. Time to try and find a cheap replacement.

LEGO INDIANA JONES

Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on: DS, PSP, PS2, Wii, PS3, PC. Developed by Traveller’s Tales. Published by Lucasarts (NTSC)/Activision (PAL)
It’s the third Lego game based on Lucasfilm source material. And probably the best so the pressure’s on Lego Batman. Lego Indy takes the storylines from the first three movies and turns them into plastic heroin.

Maybe that was pushing it a bit far but what you have is a charming (if
sometimes obtuse) action game with puzzles, combat, vehicles and Short
Round able to destroy metal barrels with his bare hands.

Lego Indy has refined the formula laid down in Lego Star Wars but reducing the number of characters in your party (usually 2, sometimes three in some of the Temple of Doom levels) and very occasionally 4 (as in the final level of Last Crusade) but without characters who only have one talent that is occasionally used and is otherwise a drain on the fun (ie C3PO). Of course now you have phobias (Indy can’t go near the snake pits, Elsa won’t go near the rats, etc). You also don’t have unlimited ammo in guns and can only use weapons dropped by enemies (when they have them). A few shots and you’re empty. Of course any character can pick up a spanner to fix a machine or a shovel to dig up Lego treasure and small characters have their hatches leading to secret areas but on the whole this has refined the approach. There are puzzles based on Simon Says provided one of you characters has a blue book that’s usually sticking out of their pocket and some boss battle where its not immediately apparent what the fuck you have to do to progress (the worst was the thugee on the rock crusher)

That said there’s still some annoying crap such as often respawning on the edge of the cliff you fell off anyway, areas where you are constantly overwhelmed by enemies, some of whom now wield RPG’s that blow you to Lego bits with one shot. Obscure puzzles and boss battles are annoying but you’ll generally work stuff out without too much drama. I scratched my head a bit, but then I’m not very bright. But I think the Comedy 64 is more over-rated than Kristen Bell so I can’t be all that dumb.

Graphics don’t really matter much as they look the same on most platforms but they are quite pretty on 360 with background textures of non Lego items being rather nice. Lego is Lego and as such Marion looks like a tranny, but one without a penis so its not all bad for Indy. Lego Indy, of course has no genitals either so….

The Score is great and It’s nice to hear the music from Temple and Crusade since you can’t buy the fuckers on CD at the moment. The sound effects are also crisp, but many of them are the same as the ones from Lego Star Wars.

So I loved Lego Indy. Would I buy Lego Batman? Well, One Lego game a year is enough and I love Indy and Star Wars so much more than Batman. But I would be up for a Kingdom of the Crystal Skull game, just so I can hear people trying to popularise “nuke the fridge” and be burned like a goat’s bitch. Oh wait.

C1 Rating: 2/3