It’s been a bit long coming due to a few problems over at Rodent Towers, but the interview I did with Matt V of Hermit Games is now up and online for your enjoyment. I’ve not even had chance to gander over the rest of the content yet as there’s looooooads but I can certainly vouch for the quality of my article.

Go Team Rodent!

Talking of SHOCK HEADLINE/PRESS RELEASE stuff, the press release about Gyrostarr receiving a release date landed in my inbox this morning. Exciting stuff and an absolutely seamless way to link two articles together in one fell swoop.

I get a fair few press releases dumped my way and more often than not, I tend to ignore them. Usually, the games are well, games I couldn’t really give two flying fucks about but the reason I’m making the exception for Gyrostarr is that it looks like it could be right up my street. Looking like a mix of Tempest, F-Zero and Torus Trooper is a surefire way to make me wee in my pants with excitement. If anyone other than Jeff has the form to pull this game off, then it’s High Voltage.

Unfortunately, there’s only one small problem. I sold my Wii to my cousin before Xmas so that his kid could have one on Xmas day. So I’m Wii-less. I thought for a while that I wouldn’t actually miss it, but after being spoilt by the perfect controls of Excite Truck, the tiltyness of Kororinpa and the sore arm fun of Wii Sports, returning to a “normal” controller feels a bit of a let down. Given at the time the 360 was still getting a lot of loving, it seemed like the sensible thing to do.

With XBLA becoming less attractive over time (this year to date there’s only been Aces Of The Galaxy of much interest, with Braid to come) I’m feeling like there’s a gap in my gaming life at the moment. At the moment my 360 is being used more for XNA testing and as a DVD player for the kid than anything else. And someone releasing a game to WiiWare that I might actually give a shit about really doesn’t help.

I fear that it’ll be sooner rather than later that I end up caving in again. Especially if anyone reports back this week that Gyrostarr is as good as it looks. Bugger.

Still on a “shit journalism” trip, I found myself wandering over to Next-Gen, the online home of the ever flowery worded Edge magazine this afternoon. I know I should know better considering it’s really not something I enjoy but having drifted over to David Hellman’s site this afternoon to see what go on in the world of Braid I was teased away by an Edge preview of the game.

Here is what I’ve learnt from an entire 483 word preview. There’s a game called Braid, it has platform bits and some Mario-esque homages, it’s pretty and… well, nothing else. I know previews aren’t exactly reveal-me-do at the best of times, but four hundred and eighty three words of flowery nonsense isn’t exactly my idea of anything other than a complete and total waste of my time and sucks space out of the internet that could have been used for something more constructive. Like a LOLCat or something.

At least once a year, usually due to Asda having nothing else in stock, I’ll pick up a copy of Edge and it’s a wholly depressing read. Anonymous reviews aside, there comes a point when writing about games where you have to pause and assess just how much substance is crammed in amongst all the big words. With Edge, more often than not - it’s very little indeed. Take this quote from the Braid preview as an example:

“The images that result from the jigsaws are graphic extensions of a somewhat overwrought story about love, longing and second chances – for which Braid’s time-reversal gameplay acts as a fanciful and tenuous metaphor. The impressionistic narrative is touching, but the sophomoric manner in which it is written makes you glad it’s relegated to a largely optional chin-stroking meta-text.”

If only someone had removed the chin-stroking big words where small words would suffice it might actually have some meaning. As it stands, the article is a 483 word exercise in tedium and nonsense and that quote conveys very little in too many words. When George Orwell wrote Rule 6 in Politics and the English Language, I really don’t think this was what he had in mind.

Surely the job of a preview piece is to get me interested in a title, or at the very least to provide an in progress report of how a title is shaping up? The Edge piece does nothing but sap my very will to live. There’s nothing that makes me care for the game, nothing that helps me form an opinion on it beyond the screenshots which we already know look nice. It completely fails to do anything of worth other than take up page space.

The reviews tend to fare just as badly. It seems that somewhere down the line someone has mistaken vomiting up a thesaurus with good journalism. I refer once more to Orwell, this time to rule 2: “Never use a long word where a short one will do”. It’s very easy to waffle on about the sophomoric meta-textual nature of the underlying story but it conveys nothing of worth to the reader. Words for the sake of words. And yet this magazine is the flagship for the industry. There’s something seriously wrong here.

Perhaps it’s the lack of saying anything useful that makes Edge so successful.  I’m sure there are great swathes of the industry that prefer a lot of big words and pretty pictures over anything of use. It’s a marketing wet dream. On first glance it may appear to have something deep and profound lying in wait for the reader but on anything more than a cursory glance it all falls apart into nothing.

There’s no depth of critical analysis lying in wait, just big words, game names and some sharp design work. I’ve seen the style infiltrate certain quarters of reviewing sites. A few weeks ago I stumbled onto British Gaming following links off willy nilly as is my want and came across this preview of Mirror’s Edge.

“a game so heavily centred on fluidity of movement that strays from the predictable shackles of third person to create a game intensely visceral that demands you to grab the controller”

I’m British and *I* need a translator for that.

For all my moaning though, I’d still prefer an Edge preview over the SHOCK HEADLINE/PRESS RELEASE format certain media outlets take, but please people, if you’re sitting down and writing a review or a preview of a game do me this one small favour.

Make sure it’s readable and actually tells me something. All the flowery words in the world can’t replace decent critical opinion.

Big words don’t make you sound clever. You’d be wise to remember that…

I give up trying to ensure I put this out on a Sunday for the time being, so with no further ado may I present “The Day Of Random Links”, formerly and soon to be again “Sunday Linky Sunday”. After the jump, find the joyous links of doom, a bit more wordy than usual too…

Roogoo Review Round Up - I like Gamerbytes (formerly XBlah), it’s nice to have one place you can stop off that’s solely dedicated to the console downloadable stuff that’s not populated by thickies. Why Roogoo, though? Well, because of the cuntwittery of the control scheme. Despite getting reasonably high scores across the board, apparently it’s selling terribly. I lasted a few minutes into the demo before my hands were in agony at having to use the triggers for everything. Did no-one think this was a really stupid thing to do? Am I on my own here?

Spore Creature Creator Leaks - Providing I don’t get yet another email from those lovely folk at EA, the full version should (allegedly) be in my hands later today. Having been unable to resist the leaked creator I’m happy to report that for this segment of the game at least, it lives up to its hype. Both myself and C4 spent a good few hours creating our own Dinosorearses and beasties. Naturally, his were far, far cleaner than my efforts. Y’know, being 4 and all that.

20% of all Casual Gamers are disabled - Not a figure that surprises me, strangely enough. Hopefully this figure will encourage more people to realise that hey, there’s folks out there who could be playing our games rather than encouraging the dickwads and their insular mentalities over what gaming should be. For the more bean countery amongst readers, that’s 26% of the respondents to the poll that you currently aren’t capturing…

Leave In God Mode - I’ve deliberately cut down the title of this blog post because I don’t see a reason why it can’t apply across the board. For whatever reason that strikes you, y’know, leave it in.

My Speccy - Adopt a Speccy and get online high scores via an online Speccy emulator. Oh good lord, I think I’ve just messed. I’m oddbob0 if anyone wants to compare scores, come fight find me. Some odd and poor choices (Deathchase can’t really be played fairly in a score league for example, as incredible a game as it is) but hey, it’s online Speccy goodness with high scores… that’s ace.

Wiiware Is A Lie Redux - the original post has been doing the rounds for a while now. For those not up on the story here’s a short potted history. Bloke has done some games before now. Bloke goes through WiiWare approval process. Bloke gets rejected. There’s an important point I pulled from the follow up post though that confirmed a suspicion I had: “It appears that unless you have an ‘office’ location they won’t consider you.”. Bingo! Pal, it’s on the Warioware site, it’s something that’s been known for months, nay - since WiiWare was first announced.

No news to see here then. Man not meeting criteria for eligibility gets knocked back. That’s not to say Ninty’s policy isn’t pulled from Satan’s own backside, mind - but it *is* a bit rich to go shouting your mouth off when you’ve clearly ignored one of the basic requirements. Still, internet stardom no doubt awaits…

Worth A 1000 Words - Bill on Charlie. Not like that. He’s right y’know.

Leaky, leaky Microsoft - No comment. Yet. I smell further idiocy afoot.

Oh, that headline works on *so* many levels, I’m sorry. I’m also sorry that I haven’t had chance to sort out the half mess that is this site at the moment, my wonderful flu has metamorphosed into snot central and is driving me spare. Thanks to everyone who left “get well wishes” though, much appreciated and it’s certainly something I’m planning on doing sooner rather than later.

A discussion over at Chez YakYak yesterday reminded me of a game I’d not thought about in a fair old while. I was aware of its development right from the beginning but due to various things going on at the time I didn’t actually realise the game had made it out into the wild. In fact, it landed out into the wild with such little in the way of publicity I was mildly convinced that the versions floating round the net were perhaps not quite as legit as they should be.

Of course ladies and gentlemen, this is the internet and it only takes a quick email to actually find out the cold hard facts and I’m happy to say that the developer of the game I’m about to mention has confirmed that it is indeed out in the wild and for sale and has been for the best part of 2 years now. Never let it be said I’m the quickest person in the world to catch on.

But why is it of any note or interest to anyone, dear readers? What is this game? It’s the last “officially licensed” entry in the Jet Set Willy canon and it is, perhaps, not quite what you’d anticipate.

It is *fanfare* Jet Set Racing and it takes our errant miner into Mario Kart territory all in the comfort of the palm of your hand. Or up against your ear, if that’s your sort of thing. Developed as a game for mobile phones not long after the also very nearly ill fated but excellent conversion of Jet Set Willy it landed with little more than a splut into the great wide world.

You’d think, knowing the rather insular nature of the retro scene that there’d at least be a minor kerfuffle given it’s a drastic change from the usual Willy template, or perhaps a strong love/hate divide. But it appears that no such thing occurred. Jet Set Racing flolloped out into the world with just about nobody noticing. It would appear that it doesn’t even warrant a listing in the fountain of all shite knowledge, Wikipedia (but then, Perils Of Willy sits there taunting you with its red “there is no link here” text but at least that gets a mention albeit with the annoying [life needed] tag).

And it’s a shame, because whilst it’s far from a great game - it’s filled with touching tributes to the original games and developed by a team with a clear respect for the source material. Ok, so on later levels the low resolution really begins to drag the game down as it becomes difficult to tell what is track and what is scenery, but for the most part it’s a very competent effort.

More importantly, we get to discover that the foot that crushes Willy when death is upon him has a name. For what it’s worth, it’s Terry.

If you’re wondering, the Central Cavern robot is called Brian… There’s 3 modes of play for you to dip your toe into, the obligatory championship, a time trial mode and a practice mode. As well as the usual conventions you’d expect to see from a Mario Kart style racer, there’s also the obligatory (if it’s a Willy game) haul of objects to collect. Unlike Jet Set Willy, collecting all the objects won’t unfortunately cause you to slide through your house and stick your head down the toilet to vomit, but instead it’ll open up extra tracks and characters.

Each of the tracks appears to be styled on a different room from Jet Set Willy, so you’ll find yourself sliding around The Megatree, bombing through The Cold Room, into The Attic (but no bugs this time!). Actually, I tell a lie - there’s also a couple of tracks that seem to bear no relation to Jet Set Willy at all - a nightclub (which looks nothing like Stairways did I can assure you) and even an Area51 style zone with aliens phasing in and out. Aside from those, though…

If you’ve got this far and the question on your lips right now is “yes, that’s all well and good but is it worthy to carry the Jet Set Willy name?” I’m afraid the answer is “does it *really* matter?”, because as far as I’m concerned it doesn’t. Between The Perils Of Willy, JSWII and where the aborted Megatree was heading, it’s entirely likely that had the franchise continued to be milked then we’d have seen a series of games treating dear Willy in the same way that poor Dizzy got abused throughout the eighties. By virtue of Matthew Smith’s madness, we got away relatively scot free. At least till my compadre Mr Smila got hold of him… then worms, cans everywhere!

What it is though, is a simple and fun ride and if you can find a) a vendor that carries it legit and b) your phone can handle a nearly three year old game then it’s definitely worth a look. I wouldn’t say it does Willy proud, but it certainly doesn’t drag him through the mud for a kicking either.

Which is why it cheers me up no end to wake up today and find not one but two things that made me hang my head in my hands.

First up, the press release of doom that seems to have spread across the internet thanks to certain press release regurgitating sites making something of it (that’s really a rant for another day though). Caffeinated Games, then.

Bless, they didn’t exactly get off on the right foot with me due to the press release.

Caffeinated Games Social Network allows gamers to connect directly with the creators and create a community around the games.

“When you read postmortems about failed indie game companies you often run across a common thread, either the publisher didn’t understand the concept or didn’t market the game.

We at Caffeinated Games recognize publishers have to guess what games people will buy so it is often hard for them to sign off on new ideas. Also if your game doesn’t fit into a specific genera they may have a hard time marketing the game. Our approach to overcome this is to make the games we want to play and then pitch those games directly to the gamers. Cut out the middle man if you will. The gamers after all are the ones who ultimately make your game a success.”

Oh, do fuck right off. The whole site is just one massive way of taking names, and frankly you can stick that so far up your arse it never comes out. Fuck knows how one man is going to write AAA titles but I’m sure when the game is announced in 4 or 5 hours time there’ll be a collective sigh of “who gives a fuck”.

Why on Earth I should have to sign up to something masquerading as a social networking site just for someone elses market research purposes I have no idea. In the interests of true investigation I signed up under a bollocks name and filled in “fuck you” into every required field and to find what? Nothing, zip, nada. Cheers cunt. And I’m sure he meant “genre” not “genera” but hey ho…

Anyway, todays big news as everyone will likely already be aware is the frankly glorious story about Limbo Of The Lost. A bunch of Kent(s) chancers who’ve ripped media off left, right and centre to make a clusterfuck point and click adventure of epic proportions.

It’ll likely take you a lifetime to spot where every single thing has been stolen from - there’s chunks of Unreal, WETA models (I piss you not), Oblivion, Thief, Wolfenstein, WoW, stolen cut scene clips (possibly Pirates Of The Caribbean and *definitely* Spawn)… the list goes on and on. Not since Harry Price (not the Borley Rectory bloke, although that would be funny) has anything been quite so shamelessly stolen. It puts my “favourite” remaker Musti to shame for nicking things.

You can find a cracking overview of the story to date over at Rockpapershotgun (along with a photochopping competition…) with all the merry links you’d need to stay up to date on this story.

Obviously, a lot of the news reports doing the rounds have focused on the stolen content, but what about the game? Perhaps we could possibly excuse the game if it’s more than the sum of its parts?

Well, no. It’s shite. Really, really shite. It would seem the game started life as an Amiga point and click game with screenshots that look suspiciously like this isn’t the first time these chaps have “borrowed” stuff for their games judging by their slightly erratic look. Any Miggy experts in the house to confirm suspicions?

At some point, the pub pals of Kent shifted over to the Wintermute engine to make the game we see today.

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen to Ed Wood territory. Where ambition seriously outstrips talent.

I managed around half an hour playing the game before my brain decided enough was enough, there’d be some damage if I continued any further. Once you’ve sat through your third or fourth unskippable piece of exposition, you’ll be feeling the same too I promise.

From the moment the game opens, you’re in stolen content land. Impressively mangled to form a bizarre plot as it is, it’s still got an air of shitstain about it. The first room contains a goblin walking on the ceiling and enough exposition to shame Helen Raynor or the entire script development room of any Star Trek episode. Within seconds you realise you’re walking around a screengrab of a jail cell. That’s not the best of starts.

There’s no depth or sense to the way your character moves around the screen and the shadows are hilarious. Once out of the cell itself you find yourself wandering through a labyrinthine series of rooms where each one looks completely different to the last. Eventually you stumble upon Vera Duckworth masquerading as a ships cook who makes you endure around three or four minutes of tedious “hilarious” dialogue. Variable volumes had me near pushing my ears up to the speakers to make out what was going on, but in the end I realised there was no point anyway. It was all shite.

I stumbled out of the kitchen into my jailers room whereupon I indulged in a conversation with a Pirates Of The Caribbean poser model kit reject who spent a good three minutes telling me to be quiet. If only he could have been a bit more quiet. Silent preferably.

I gave up. I couldn’t take a moment longer. The wonky controls were driving me spare, examing an object just to get an “ahhh” and going to a badly acted cut scene every time there was an item to collect and the sheer numbing tedium of the exposition was slowly killing me from the inside out.

And this is the thing, stolen content or not - no genre (or genera ;)) deserves this sort of treatment. The game should never have made it to the shelves on the grounds of being colossally arsebiscuits beyond human comprehension. It’s a folly of giant proportions and one that I couldn’t recommend even out of curiosity.

Yet there’s a part of me that cheers the sheer audacity of it all. To steal on such a monumental scale in order to get this tale out there is no short order. No matter where the content has been culled from, there’s a fair old bit of work gone into the game and it’s abundantly clear that this isn’t some sort of crazy joke but a labour of love.

It’s still shit though.

And seriously, do check out his fine Nimbus tunes too - especially the wonderful “Future Boys” as featured in the Biffovision pilot episode. Glorious.

That’s me right now. Manflu aside, which is causing huge concentration problems when trying to do owt, (moan,moan,whinge,whinge) over the weekend I received the room templates for George’s Squizzy Griffin from Scott to get on with building my segments.

Normally, I live in the more comfortable land provided by GM for all my room building needs (or in the case of JSW:O I’m given a game specific editor to use), this time I’ve got MMF2 to contend with. And with no offence to the package which is evidently more than capable of truly wonderful things (see Noitu Love 2 for a prime example, chaps) - thank the lord I only have to stick some blocks down in rooms because it completely leaves me in the dark as to what is where and does what.

In the same way that I’ve quite often had the point put to me that some folks wouldn’t know where to start if you didn’t stick an IDE in front of them - I’m flummoxed completely by the system used by MMF. Not a new thing, of course - that’s how I ended up falling more into the Gamemaker camp but I’ve managed to avoid having to suffer the confusion it causes my brain for a fair old number of years now and just kept it tucked on my hard drive because people have a habit of sending me source files instead of .exe’s to check out along the way… So, more than ever, I’m especially impressed with how folks manage to pull incredible stuff out of it because I can barely place a blinking block down in the right place without having a minor trauma. It’s not even difficult per se, just so different from what I’m accustomed to.

Still, 6 rooms out of 50 out the way. Ever onwards…

In other news, cracking on with JSWO bits and bobs sort of, kind of. There were a few major glitches with the editor which I picked up on whilst trying to record a tutorial video proper for it - you know, the kind that mean you *really* have to delete the audio track when something goes wrong. Stu fired me over the latest version yesterday (well, the day before now) to take a gander at which is something I intend to do once I’ve finished wittering here. Fingers crossed that a lot of the stuff that seriously broke does so no longer.

I’ve not really got much to do with the editor itself, a few “test” maps to go alongside the documentation, a few video tutorials and if time allows - hopefully I’ll be able to squeeze in some new full scale maps as well. Given I’m really out of practice with level building for JSW:O it may take me a few hours to get back up to speed proper on the games quirks. Just got to find those hours from somewhere.

And finally, opted to make the last revision of War Twat “final”. It’s gone down immensely well across the internet and I’m chuffed with the response. I’ve been tinkering with 3 other games on and off, flitting inbetween them as and when. I want to try and get a game a month out, be it an overhanging WIP being completed or a quick new title. At least, that’s been the plan. I doubt VI will make the final cut - I tried, but between the huge amount of assets I’d foolishly set for myself to create with the game design, it’s going to need some major reworking to make it a viable proposition.

The other two games I’ve been toying with are little shooter projects and to be honest, neither is really capturing my heart right now although both have been great little learning exercises for different things. The former started out as a sort of GR++ meets bullet hell concept, but erred a bit too much towards GR++ for comfort - none the less I managed to cadge a few very nice pixelly particle ideas out of it. The second is/was a more smeary affair using a lot of feedback and blurring effects. Very weird-me-up but currently incredibly unplayable.

I get the feeling the answer lies somewhere inbetween the two…

Game Ovr - via Auntie Pixelante, an ace collection of game related images to idle your time over.

This is Ciellus - I meant to post a while back but it slipped my mind, more timely now that Terry has announced he’s going to be ploughing some serious time and work into it. The teaser shot made me a tad moist in departments it really shouldn’t have.

Konami attempting to censor MSG4 reviews - “Konami issued us with a list of things that we’re not allowed to discuss. This list of prohibited topics is pretty long, and even extends as far as several facts that the company itself has already made public”, the disclaimer that sets off more alarm bells than a fire at a fire alarm factory. Via The Escapist.

Collectible Design In Games - I usually subscribe to the point of view that they’re pretty much a cheap shot design decision yet I’ve spent so much time with C4 hunting down orbs in Crackdown it’s spooky. Christ, I’ve got a 4 year old who looks out for the glow and throbbing sound and points to where to go. Obviously, Realtime Worlds got something seriously right here.

The Gematria Project - I’m sure I’ve heard of this bloke before… gratuitous self promotion ahoy. My music on MySpace. May cause brain tumours.

Condemned To Hell - The Texas governor is this years keynote speaker for E3? No wonder companies are scooting off from the ESA at an epic rate. Mental.

Edge review Noitu Love 2 - and award it 7/10. An Edge 7 is roughly on par with every other magazines 40 gazillion rating. They’re still unreadable though.

Painkiller - a few weeks late on this, but some love from Yahtzee for the oft derided People Can Fly Robotron meets FPS one off (yes, there is only one - la,la,la,la,la,la etc…). To coin a phrase “what he said”. I fucking love Painkiller, it’s so gloriously dumb.