Dragon Age Origins on PC and Assassin's Creed Revelations on PS3

I have played through quite a bit more of Dragon Age Origins than described in the last entries, but I'm not going to describe it all in detail here mainly because I cannot remember it all.  I will go through the main points.

After leaving Lothering I went to Redcliffe.   I met the people I was supposed to meet and when I was convinced there was nothing further to do in preparation I said "Bring on the night and the accompanying attack of the undead".

The zombies were not too hard to fight off by Dragon Age standards, though I clumsily let one significant NPC die (I cannot remember his name).

After it was all over I went to Castle Redcliffe where I had more problems.  The battle in the castle courtyard was a real pain and after several attempts and several views of the hated "Your Journey Ends..." screen I won this one by a slight fluke.  The very tough enemy crossed the courtyard to take on my party but his allies hung back and did not seem to notice us so I got the chance to finish the big guy off first.

I went into the Castle to find that the zombie invasions of the town were being caused by the Arl of Redcliffe's stepson who had been possessed by a demon.  He had also poisoned the Arl.  I sorted out the immediate problem but the Arl remained ill and his wife theorised that Andraste's Ashes (a religious artefact lost in the mists of time) might make him better so, since scholars have failed to find it for centuries and as I also have a darkspawn horde to fight I am the obvious person to go and look for it.

Having picked up some more work to do from the Chanters and Blackstone Irregulars I made my way to Denerim.  On the way I was waylaid by an assassin hired by Teyrn Loghain.  He had quite a few friends and killed my party a couple of times before I killed him.  As he lay dying he seemed to have enough energy left to say "Hey, why don't I join your party..." but I finished him off and we went on our way.

The city of Denerim is a world in itself and you travel between one location and another and can be attacked along the way just as you can in the wider world.  You first arrive in a market area and most of the game's main groups have a base there where you can pick up and cash in jobs.  This was the first time I encountered the mage's collective and I picked up work from them as well as from the Chanters and Blackstone lot.  By now I have so many quests either not done or half done that I was beginning to feel a bit swamped.

It was in Denerim, while trying to clear out some Blood Mages (kind of like necromancers) from their base in a warehouse that I met my first serious problems.  By the time I got to the leader, who had three allies with him, my party had one Greater Health Poltice and no ingredients for making others.  Morrigen had a Drain Life spell which she could sometimes us to improve her own situation but that was it.

I spent more than half a day repeatedly trying to win this fight and failing and just started to hate and resent the game so much.  I especially hated the fact that the leader had a fireball spell which, in this enclosed environment just seemed like a "you lose" button he could press when he felt like it.

I went to bed having still not got passed it but in the morning I realised I should have just gone back to the market and bought all the health poultices I could find and returned with them.  So that's what I did and I won the fight at the third attempt.  The fireball was still very annoying, though.

I have recently started playing AC Revelations on the PS3.  My first impression of it was positive.  Its version of Constantinople is a beautiful city and full of colour.  But it is for its understated lack of novelty that I like it best.  The ordinary houses and buildings of the city take me back to the less spectacular areas of Florence from ACII.

Constantinople - Between Florence and Acre.

Unfortunately, there seems to be less content than in Brotherhood, though that is yet to be seen for sure.  The fact that the city is smaller does not concern me but that there is less to do does.  The real problem with the game is that the real story is happening not to Ezio, who only has a bunch of sidequests to perform which are cobbled together and called a game.  The real story is Desmond's story.  After all his time in the animus his brain is coming apart and the memories Ezio is catching up on in Constantinople are even described by Subject 16 as a few leftovers which need mopping up (or words to that effect) if Desmond is to recover.

When Ezio arrives in Constantinople he soon finds himself in an underground environment where a workman is trying to break through an impenetrable door.  The door requires several keys in order to be unlocked and that appears to be the game.

As Ezio travels around the city he encounters animus data fragments.  When he has collected enough you can go back to being Desmond (hooray!) and do a 3D platforming puzzle (first person).  As Des goes through the stages of this he agonises boringly about his past life in a wining fashion that anyone would enjoy listening to.  What the culmination of all this will be I do not yet know.

How the same writers who created the aloof and taciturn Ezio also came up with the self obsessing Desmond remains a mystery.

Despite all these complaints and despite one or two glitches with the controls I am enjoying Revelations and will write more about it soon.

I have received Need for Speed Undercover through the post today.  I have never played this one and I saw a clip on YouTube of a race featuring wide roads and fast corners and had to have it.

Dragon Age: Origins on PC

Okay, I got it wrong.  Going into the Fade was never part of Initiation.  It comes later in the game and I have now got to that bit, but I'm not going to write about today as there is loads more to cover.  What I'm going to write today follows on from the previous entry.

After Teyrn Loghain's betrayal the tower which my character (Ank) and Alistair are at the top of fills with Darkspawn and we are both overcome...

Miraculously, we are not torn to shreds.  I wake up in bed in Flemmeth's hut.  Flemmeth is Morrigen's mother and lives in the Kocari Wilds (I got the name wrong last time).  She is apparently a famous and powerful witch but there is some doubt about who she really is but whoever she might be she must be powerful to have saved us from the Darkspawn.  (I am going to write about my character in the first person from now on).

I now set out with Alistair, Dogmungus (see previous entry) and Morrigen (at Flemmeth's request) to unite the people of Ferelden against the Darkspawn.  Alistair and I are the only Grey Warden's left since the disastrous battle and it is our duty.  Morrigen is clearly more morally flexible and has no time for such quests.  I am trying to play a fairly selfish, neutral sort of character myself but it is sometimes hard to fit that in with taking on the responsibility of a noble purpose.

We leave the Wilds and travel to the village of Lothering.  There we are introduced to the Chanters' Board, the Chanters being a group of religious types who want work doing, and the Blackstone Irregulars, who also have tasks for us to perform and are a fairly down to earth group who are trying to fight the Darkspawn.  These two groups have liaisons in all the major locations in the game and you can cash in work done for them with any of their representatives.  I accept all the jobs that are on offer from them and some others from a woman who is trying to help the large number of refugees who are fleeing the Darkspawn and have taken up residence in the town, plus other work from local people.

We have to kill several groups of bandits in the area (the area around the village is referred to
 as a forest; there are no trees).  There is also group of giant spiders and another of bears to take out.  There is also a bit of gathering of stuff to do.

When everything that can be completed in this area has been done I finally go to free Sten.  He is a large character from a neighbouring country who had been imprisoned for murder (which he does not deny).  He agrees to come along and help us, but with little enthusiasm.  This is first time I have to decide who will come along with me and who will be left in the camp, because only me and three other characters can be in the party at once.

Sten in Prison.

In my previous play through I had not taken Sten with me, and I had assumed that this, or some other thing I had neglected to do, was the reason why Lothering subsequently appeared on the map as being inaccessible because it was overrun with the blight.  This feeling that I'd got something wrong early in the game had contributed to my being tired of playing it.  However, after I left Lothering this time the same thing happened and I cannot go back.

We ran into some Darkspawn on the way out of town and rescued a traveling merchant dwarf and his idiot son.  They will take residence in the camp soon and will sell us reasonably priced goods and the son has a talent for enchanting weapons with Runes which give them extra powers (more damage, greater chance to hit and even resistances etc.)

I then get my first view of the world map and choose to go to Redcliffe, where I must get the local lord, Arl Eamon, to join the fight against the Darkspawn.  I also have parts of side-quests which need to be taken care of there.

LittleBigPlanet and Burnout Legends on PSP and That Game on PC

I have been neglecting my blog writing duties lately.  I should have by written that LittleBigPlanet on the PSP failed to do the one thing that I asked of it and have plenty of content.  I think this is a great shame.  If I had played the PSP version first I would never have known that LBP was special and I never would have bothered to play the PS3 game.  Every game in a franchise advertises every other so every one should have the same time and attention put into it as every other.

I have now started Burnout Legends and it seems okay but I have not played much yet so don't feel I can really comment.  More later, hopefully.

As much as I was enthusing about only playing games in specific categories in my previous entry I have caved in and played on the PC before my two months of playing on handhelds had expired.  What was the game which caused me to weaken in this way?  What was the game which has kept me as it's slave since and not even allowed me to write this blog for over a fortnight?  It was the same game I previously forsook and swore never to play again, even after over 220 hours playing time had been clocked up on Steam.  Perhaps because of those 220 hours.

I had been playing a character who looked ridiculous and I hated him.  He was a mage and a useless one.  His physical makeup was pathetic, his ginger suede-head was ludicrous and the cowl he was adorned with was absolutely the finishing touch.

There were long periods in the game when I could not remember what my ultimate goal was.  I just seemed to do side-quest after side-quest and was so bogged down with so many incomplete quests in my codec that that my head spun as I trudged from room to room dreading to open the next door because there would always be an impossibly difficult fight behind it.  Could I not just open one of these doors and find some excellent loot and move on?  I think I have earned it.  No, you will find seventeen enemies any one of which will be able to beat any member of your four member party.

My ultimate goal was, of course, to unite the peoples of Ferelden and defeat the Darkspawn and the game was Dragon Age: Origins.

Going back to it now as a more experienced gamer I can see that it is excellent and did not deserve my hate.

The pieces of data that you find in books around the game world separate it from the herd.  They don't need to be there but they flesh out the culture and history of Ferelden and its neighbours so effectively in a few short paragraphs each.

This time I am a rogue.  "Rogue's have more fun," I said to myself.  I am a male human.  It almost felt like the radical thing to be.  While I'm not overjoyed with the way my character (pictured left) looks he is at least not totally crap.  He is not a constant reminder of my own stupidity.  I was going for safe, and I think that's what I managed.  Also, he's not an Elf!

I chose to be a noble and in this storyline you spend quite a bit of time messing about in your dads castle, and then it gets overrun and you have to get out.  That all happens pretty suddenly; but I suppose these things do.  It is decided by your father that you are going to go with Duncan, an experienced Grey Warden, who it seems you will meet whoever you are, and become a Grey Warden yourself and fight the Darkspawn.  I seem to remember that at this stage you go into the fade as part of your training if you are a mage but I could be remembering that wrongly.  I might go into the fade at a later stage.

For a human noble rogue the stage prior to initiation involves going into the Wilds (these wilds have a name beginning with K which I cannot remember, it's Kunari or something like that).  You are part of a group of four initiates.  Here I ran into a side-quest which I did not complete and seems to have been kicked into touch on the codec.  You are looking for an artefact which belongs to the Grey Wardens and you do find it and you also find Morrigen (also in the picture) and after a certain amount of messing about you take the artefact back to Duncan, leaving her behind.

It is known that the Darkspawn are soon to attack the area near your camp and you are to be initiated prior to this attack.  At the camp you also meet several other relevant people.  One is the King and another is Teyrn Loghain; a Teyrn being a type of noble.  You also meet an aging Mage called Wynne.

To cut a long story short, initiation involves drinking darkspawn blood.  This can kill you.  You do not die.  Neither does Alistair, who is one of the other initiates.  You also meet a Mubari warhound who takes to you so you take him along with you.  I called him Dogmungus.

In  the battle the King's forces are to take on the Darkspawn directly.  You and Alistair have to go to the top of a nearby tower to light a signal fire to let Teyrn Loghain's forces know that it is time to attack.  The tower is already overrun with darkspawn who you have to fight including a demon at the top.  You light the fire but Teyrn Loghain turns his army away, leaving the King (and Duncan) to their fate.  What a git!

God of War Chains of Olympus and LittleBigPlanet both on PSP

You will probably have to read the previous entry to make complete sense of these next three paragraphs.

Firstly I'd like to correct one or two things I said about Chains of Olympus.  When an enemy is about to attack you you do not have to press L and triangle simultaneously to reflect the attack back on to them, you just have to press L.  If you do it too early you will just fend off the attack but not damage the enemy and if you do it to late you get hit.

I was right in saying that you can do this a lot of times to the two large enemies I described last time to no noticeable effect but I did discover that a single heavy hit using triangle can usually be completed just after this defence and it will get through.  Occasionally when trying this I held down the button for too long and struck out with a longer attack and did not always get away with it without a retaliatory attack coming back.  Sometimes it appeared that even though Kratos got his shield up to block the retaliation he ended up being flattened to the floor and this would usually leave him open to two further attacks, one from the original attacker and one from the other enemy and this could be very frustrating as they did a lot of damage between them.

After quite a few more deaths I managed to kill both enemies using this method.  I had tried so many times that it was one of those moments when I could hardly believe that I would never have to do it again and that I was actually seeing the next section of the game.  A small part of me already felt nostalgic and mourned that frustrating arena and those enemies I had hated and killed but which had embedded themselves in my mind.

The PSPs LittleBigPlanet is very recognisable to anyone who has played LBP on the PS3.  Protagonist Sackboy runs and jumps his way through platform levels which have a variety of themes based on different parts of the world.  Along the way he gets fried, spiked , electrocuted steamed and frozen (I don't remember any freezing in LPB for PS3 but it is very similar to electrocution).

A blurry Sackboy in a blurry alpine setting.  Also pictured: some thin guy.

There is one difference, however, which makes the game a completely different experience to the PS3 version which is that, despite the terrible things that happen to Sackboy, he does not die.  He simply regenerates at the last checkpoint and you carry on.  Previously there was a limit to the number of times you could regenerate at a given point before you were finished and had to start the level again.  As much as this drove me up the wall when it happened its absence gives me a slightly casual attitude towards getting cooked and this is to my detriment as you lose points when it happens and my scores are generally mediocre as a result.

There are other differences in this game.  The stages, which are a bit shorter than the PS3 stages, are themed around different parts of the world from the first game.  The game has a 2 1/2 dimensional quality in the sense that Sackboy can move in and out of the screen between different layers to move around obstacles or avoid hazards.  There are only two layers in this version of the game whereas there are three in the home console version.  It is not immediately obvious how this difference effects gameplay, especially as I've not played on the PS3 for a while but having created a level on PS3 I can imagine that makes a substantial difference for the developers as well as for players.

I won't be creating any levels for the PSP as I only have an E1003 PSP Street which does not connect to the internet.  I'm a bit sorry about this as level creation is an interesting aspect of the game but when I did put my one PS3 level online it was rapidly relegated down to obscurity because so few people played it.  I cannot help thinking that this was not based on merit or lack of it but simply the fact that there are so many levels out there which have already clocked up loads of plays, and a few likes and this makes it hard to get a foothold.

Getting back to the PSP game.  It certainly is excellent but I cannot help thinking that death would improve it, and that longer levels wouldn't hurt, and could probably have been accommodated, though if there are plenty of levels I will let this go.

The positive thing I would say in conclusion is that I am anxious to stop writing this and play the game which I never really felt about Exit or Chains of Olympus but did feel about Civilization Revolution.  Maybe I should be giving the DS more of a chance.  Nevertheless, I have bid on a copy of Burnout Legends for PSP on ebay.

I have been having ideas for other restrictions I could place on my gaming for a limited period and come up with a few interesting ones.  The period I would implement the ideas for would depend on how restrictive they were:

1. Playing only games bought in charity shops and jumble sales
2. Playing only games bought on ebay for less than £5
3. Playing games from a single IP; GTA and Elder Scrolls come to mind but there might be other suitable ones.
4. Playing only games from a particular genre
5. Playing only games from a particular publisher
6. Playing only bonus content.

The first two would probably involve more PC and PS2 games than usual.  I am frustrated because I
had thought of another idea which was the one I was going to implement next but I've completely forgotten what it was.  I might do bonus content soon because I have got Harley Quinn's Revenge from Arkham City waiting to be played. 

God of War Chains of Olympus for PSP



I am slightly scared of this game.  It is excellent but it seems to have got the better of me and when I think of playing it I feel a bit intimidated and I honestly believe that I spent the whole evening watching TV last night in order to avoid it.

 

I am trying to get through an arena where there are several birds which attack me, two weapons which fly on rails from one side of the circle to the other at regular intervals, one perpendicular to the other, and two large enemies who shield themselves instantaneously when attacked.  I have been advised that the combo square square triangle is the way to break through their shields but I find that once I hit triangle I am immediately flattened by the enemy I'm attacking.

 

The Ghost of Sparta looking at his most ghostly.

Because of these failures I have moved on to a new method for getting through this stage and it is also not working.  I am entering this section with only enough magic for one special attack and most normal attacks end in disaster so my method is now to first finish off all the birds in the arena and second use primarily my shield to attack the larger enemies.  Defending from their attacks is easy and you just have to keep your shield up and you won't take any damage, though you will be pushed backwards.  However, you can use the shield to reflect their attacks back onto them by pressing L and triangle at the same time, but this has to be done with pretty good timing or you get hit by that attack and probably another one or two as it takes time to recover and get your shield up.

There are definite signs that my strategy is having some effect as a message comes up on the screen saying "2 hits" when I do it, implying that both enemies have been effect, but despite some pretty long lasting scraps of this kind I have never survived long enough to see the O appear above the head of either enemy to imply that I can now execute the finishing move on them.  This is a pity because the finishing move for these enemies is pretty easy.

I am going to pick this game up again today and one way or another I will get past this fight.

Otherwise the game is excellent.  Some of the fighting is hard and sometimes you find you are dumped into a difficult encounter with none of the magic required to win it or only a sliver of life left.  The plot is a bit far fetched but that is the nature of the game and not to be criticised.  There is an interesting mix of enemies and there seems to be plenty of content and I always put it down thinking what a great game it is despite the frustrations I might have experienced when playing it and I think that it always the real test.

I have now bought Little Big Planet for PSP and will hopefully be writing about it soon.

I do some voluntary work at a local charity shop and today they had some XBOX 360 controllers which I was able to buy cheaply as they are not able to sell electrical goods to the public.  Hopefully they will work okay with the PC.  They have installed themselves but as I am not allowing myself to play on the PC or console at the moment I have not been able to properly test them.

More on Civilization Revolution

I have to apologise to Firaxis (developers of Civ Rev) for suggesting that the British came in for unfair treatment in the game.  I have finished the game I was playing when I last wrote on this subject and have started a new one as the Egyptians and it seems that all nations are described as pretentious snobs by their enemies.

I also feel obliged to mention that it does make a difference which nation you play as.  Comparing the British to the Egyptians, the British rifleman unit has one extra attack point (four instead of three) but the Egyptians can glean more trade and one food from a dessert region from the start of the game.  These are not the only differences, just examples.

Civilization Revolution scores over many other strategy games in the important respect that you can crush your opponents quite quickly once you are powerful, whereas in some games there can be long periods where you have a lot of housekeeping to do once you have built a large nation.

I have been unable to put this game down in the last few days but feel as if I might be exhausting its entertainment value at least for the time being but I have won the God of War: Chains of Olympus for PSP that I mentioned that I had bid on on ebay two entries ago and the seller claims to have posted it so hopefully I will have that soon.

I have also recently played the demo versions of Patapon and Little Big Planet for PSP.  The first one appears excellent and I certainly mean to buy it some time and hopefully I will write about it in the future.  I am most enthusiastic about LBP though.  The content is clearly different to the PS3 version, the game's mechanisms seem just the same and it looks stunning on the small screen so that is probably the next game I want to get.

Civilization Revolution for Nintendo DS

Usually, I don't play a game on a handheld console if it's available for PS3 or PC but I had to stick to my rule about only playing on handheld consoles for the next two months and I had a copy of this on the shelf which is currently have for sale on ebay so I thought I'd give it a go.  I hope nobody buys it too soon.

This is a great little game and even though it could be regarded as a watered down version of Civilization IV it has plenty of depth and  there is a lot to think about.

The game features food and resources.  If you collect a lot of food in a city the city will grow more quickly but if you collect more resources then buildings and military units grow faster.  A larger city can, generally speaking, generate more food and resources so the temptation is to prioritise food production but some buildings can speed up food production so perhaps creating those first by putting resource production first should be the tactic.  In truth it depends on a city's circumstances and there are other things to consider such as science, which you need to produce to make buildings and units available, and culture which makes a city's sphere of influence grow and protects it from leaving your nation and joining another.

Placing citizens on particular squares causes them to generate the food, resources or trade characteristic of that square.  If a citizen is not placed at all they will generate resources and trade.

It appears that it would be possible to play and win an entire game without generating any cash at all but, as in life, money can be a useful thing to have and is also generated by cities but, unlike food and resources, it goes into a general pot for the whole nation.

Most of the game takes place on the touch screen and this is where you issue your orders; both directing your cities and moving your military units.  When you send military units into battle the fight is played out in a brief tableau on the upper screen which is otherwise just used to carry information.  Military units can be stacked on a single square or all in the same city and when three of the same kind are stacked they can form an army whose power is as great as all three summed.  Unit's of different types have different strengths and weaknesses and can develop to be stronger still through winning victories.  The best military units I can make at the moment are cannon, which have an attack of 7 and a defence of 2 and riflemen who have an attack of 4 and defence of 5.  If you put one of each on the same square then the better defender will defend first if they are attacked and if you keep them together as you move them the superior attacker can be used to assault enemy units.

I am playing this scenario as the British, though it is not clear that this makes any difference in terms of development but I cannot be sure either way.  I started with Monarchy as my system of government and perhaps it would have been something else with a different country.  One thing that I cannot help wondering and which rankles slightly is that when my AI opponents address me they assure me that the " pretentious snobbery" of my people will soon be put to an end.  Would I be accused of this if I was playing as another nation?  Perhaps the French are called arrogant and the Germans officious.

I will forgive this and continue to enjoy Civilization Revolution.  I am writing this on a bank holiday Monday and was very tempted to break my rule and play some Fallout 3 yesterday but this game saved me from that so a bit of negative national stereotyping while not being forgivable can at least be overlooked.

Exit for PSP

This game may never have set the world on fire and there might now be infinite platform puzzlers on many different platforms, but I Exit it is worth more than the 65% awarded to it by Play: not that I ever take any notice of them.

I have so far solved thirty five of Exit's one hundred puzzles.  New mechanics and ideas are still being introduced.  Stages 31-40 are dark environments where you cannot see the map to begin with, except for the basic layout.  Usually there is a torch to be found and sometimes a light switch to illuminate the whole area.  We have already encountered electricity, water, fire, locked doors and destructible walls and the means to overcome these things - sometimes these means are in difficult to reach places.  There is a fair amount of pushing boxes around to reach high places.

Well, I think that's pretty clear...

The purpose of the game is to escape the level, and to assist trapped and helpless companions to escape.  The companions have no pretensions towards being AI controlled co-op style assistants; they walk blindly after you and will get themselves burned or electrocuted if you don't take good care of them.  You can give them directions from a distance and they can carry and use objects but always have to be given very specific instructions.

Companions come in three kinds each of which has its own skills and shortcomings.  Kids, for example, can crawl through small spaces but cannot climb very high without assistance, are susceptible to drowning (Limbo style) in shallow water and move slowly.  There are also young adults who are similar to protagonist Mr Esc. and reasonably versatile but have no skills which Mr Esc. does not have, though they can help him to push heavy objects.  Older adults, who are portrayed as fat, can push heavy objects by themselves but cannot climb onto high places without help from two young adults, one of whom can be our hero.  Companions are characterful, if a bit needy and pathetic sometimes and do add a lot to the game.

All these mechanics make for an interesting and sometimes very challenging set of puzzles.  The only shortcoming is that sometimes it is the game's weaknesses which make the puzzle hard, rather than it's strengths.  The rules regarding pushing boxes around, which I won't attempt to explain hear, are the most frequent example.  Sometimes it would take a chess grand master to see in advance the precise sequence of moves needed to complete the puzzle, especially in the dark.  This is mainly because some moves are irreversible.

Despite this, the game's strengths are used well sometimes and there is a substantial amount of interesting and absorbing gaming here and given that I got a good condition boxed copy of the game with its manual on ebay for £3.97 I would recommend Exit to anyone.

I have never played any God of War game so I have bid on a Chains of Olympus for PSP on ebay but I don't know if I've won it yet.

Gran Turismo 5: Academy Edition and Borderlands

I have been playing GT5 on the PS3 lately and it is a hard task master.

In the career mode there are several different types of challenge.  The simplest (though not necessarily easiest) are the tutorials which often involve just driving a short stretch of track in a precise way in order to learn to take the best line at corners or similar.  To get the gold trophy requires great precision but I am a masochist and always make myself do them repeatedly until I've cracked it.

Seasonal Events vary in difficulty and tend to require a specific vehicle type which I am not always able to access which is a bit annoying but they are enjoyable, if generally tough, races.

A-Spec Events represent your main career progression as a driver.  I have only done the beginner level events so far and they are fun and not too challenging but there are four harder levels to go.

That represents most of what I've done so far.  There are other things to do but I've not got into them enough to write about them.

I've been back to playing Borderlands on the PC.  I have no saved games on my existing PC and I wanted to do a quick play through so that I can then buy and play the extra content.

This time I'm playing as the soldier and as with my previous play throughs I am constantly forgetting to use his special ability which is deploying a turret which has a shield which I can crouch behind.

I have been enjoying the game and as usual am finding it highly playable.  I've just killed sledge and then been to the Arid Hills to find the gun parts required to complete a job from the Firestone Bounty Board.  It's a bit disappointing that on visiting the job board after returning from the mine two of the four new jobs to be found there involve collecting the parts of a gun which have been scattered around but this is a small gripe about an excellent game.

I received the game Exit for PSP through the post today.  This heralds the started of my latest gaming experiment.  For the next two months, up to and including October 16th, I am not allowing myself to play any game other than on a handheld console.  I have a PSP, a DS and a Gameboy Advance SP and am not intending to buy any new hardware so I hope none of these breaks down.

I now have four games for the PSP (one of which I've completed), one for the DS and five for the Gameboy Advance so I reckon I'll be buying some new ones.

The Game's The Thing...

I can't remember exactly what caused me to recently search for the letter a on the Zavvi.com website.  I think I had been puzzled by it's interpretation of a search term I'd put in so I tried just searching "a" to see if the result would be any item with the letter a in at all - in other words, most items.

As it turned out, it was not.  The results given were all items featuring the word "a" (the indefinite article if you've been to university).  Curious, though what about I don't know, I searched for the definite article instead ("the") and noticed straight away that there were huge numbers of Blu-Rays and DVDs in the search results but not that many games.  I thought that there would probably be more films for sale on the site and when I checked there were, but not by enough to account for the disparity of "the" results.

What I'm getting round to saying is that 1331 out of 4557 Blu-rays had the word the in the title but only 51 out of 402 PS3 game titles did.  That is 29.21% of Blu-rays and only 12.69% of PS3 games.  To draw a slightly questionable conclusion from this, films are more than twice as likely to have a "the" in the title than games.

Looking down the list of games featuring "the", there were a reasonable number of "The Ultimate Edition", "The complete Edition", "Game of the Year Edition" etc.  In other words, "the" had not featured in the original title for those games.

In the list of Blu-Rays, it was immediately striking that many of them started with "The", a feature which not many of the games shared and I think here I can draw my only substantial conclusion (assuming any of this is worth writing), film titles are chosen to inject one important quality which games are less likely to require...

(pause)

...drama.

I can imagine films called The Borderlands, The Dishonoured (I will spell it correctly), The Assassin's Creed or even The Little Big Planet but game titles work differently.  I could just as easily imagine chopping the "Thes" off film names and giving them to games: Godfather, Usual Suspects, Bourne Identity and (and I think this is the best illustration), Deer Hunter.

The film The Deer Hunter is about a guy who happens to hunt deer but also falls in love with his mate's girlfriend then goes off to Vietnam to fight in the war but when he comes home his mate stays in Saigon with post traumatic stress but our bloke soon realises he can't stay at home and enjoy a life there (including a relationship with his friends girl, who is now interested) until he's done everything in his power to bring his friend home.

A game called Deer Hunter would involve hunting deer and slowly improving your skills at hunting.  It might involve playing a guy who starts out hunting deer but goes on to shooting people for some reason but it would not be the personal story about an individual and the unique events that happen to him that the film is, it would be an ongoing process which most players would not get to the end of.

That lack of specificity is the reason a game has no "The" and a film does.

Indie Games Good - AAA Bad

It seems to be the fashion in the gaming media to regard indie games as being organic and artful in a way that triple A titles cannot achieve.

Okay, so good art is rarely made by committee and there are large teams working on most big games, but if an individual has an inspired idea for a 30 hour open world action adventure it is not possible for them to make it themselves and they have to get the backing they need to get a team working on it.

At the other end of the scale it is perfectly possible for an individual or small group to decide to try to milk the smart phone app or PC market for all it is worth and make a series of slap dash efforts and heavily publicise them;  EA are not the only people who might be seen as cashing in on the games marked.

I am not claiming that this is what always happens when an indie is successful.  I'm sure that Thomas Was Alone is an excellent game for what it is, but is it fair to compare it to a detailed and lengthy triple A game which has had so much more work put into it.

Perhaps that is the real point.  Good and bad art come in all shapes and sizes but those who put in a lot of work deserve some credit, even if their results are not always great.

But most significantly, AAA titles should be considered for the very best review scores even if they are made by a developer with an unfashionable reputation and are the fifth in a previously mediocre series and are published by one of those publishers often thought of as most soulless.

More on Volition's Saints Row The Third and on THQ

I have been surprised since I came back to playing Saint's Row the Third last week that it is as good as it is.

Okay, so the "plot" is not good and is just designed to feebly join the missions into some sort of coherent whole but the missions themselves are fun but challenging

What would normally be considered side missions are part of what you have to do to complete the game in SR3.  As I explained in the previous entry, you have to buy properties, clear out gang operations and perform various other violent missions which are marked on the map.  The completion of each of these causes another small area of the city to come under your sway.

Occasionally, when you are in a particular area, your cell phone will ring and you will be called upon to go and defend or attack a location where another gang is trying to impose itself.  There will be several waves of enemies and to get through each wave you will have to kill a certain number.  It is always tempting to attempt to run over them in whatever car you arrive in and as a started this is fine but if you keep going back over them in the same car in will get badly damaged and start to burn.  If it carries on being fired on you might not have time to get out before it explodes and if you have already taken a few yourself then the explosion will kill you.  If you can get through all the waves of enemies then this will also turn a section of city to your control.

I hate the rival gang called the Deckers.  One of their specialist types of enemy blinks very rapidly from one location to another and is very hard to kill as a result.  They attack either with a melee weapon that looks a bit like an (ice) hockey stick or with (I think - they so rarely stay still long enough to tell), dual Uzis.  When you are being fired on from all sides by normal enemies and one of these enemies comes from nowhere and  knocks you down with a hockey stick it feels more than a little unfair.

Saints Row - The Present and the Past.

The last thing I'll say about SR3 for now is about the picture above.

On the right is the version of the box-art for the game that I have and on the left is the version you can buy at the time of writing (see link in left column for my ebay store).  There are many differences between the two images but the most obvious one to me is in the bottom right corner of the box where the Deep Silver logo replaces the THQ one.  I was going to write that I was sorry about the demise of THQ but I am not sure what to say.  The list of second rate IPs they funded (most of which have now been off-loaded onto Nordic games - though I don't mean to imply that Supreme Commander is anything but brilliant) is substantial and the good games that were in their care will all be going to good homes - or at least to new homes where they will have a chance.  I only hope that those which are less good will not be followed up on.  If Nordic restarted the discontinued Red Faction series or failed to end the mediocre MX vs ATV it would be an opportunity missed.  I also hope that where series are carried on they will be taken in new directions.

While THQ's end is obviously a great shame for those employees who have trouble finding new work it is perhaps a clean section on the messy slate of the games industry.

I have bought a Gran Turismo 5 on ebay, a game which I am very surprised not to have played yet, and am quietly hoping it will arrive tomorrow.  I will write about it soon.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky on PC and Saints Row The Third for PS3

I first played Shadow of Chernobyl ages ago and have more recently played quite a bit of Call of Pripyat but never previously got round to Clear Sky, which was a semi prequel to the first STALKER game.

Most of the action takes place on the map of the original game - though the graphics have been improved.  There is one additional area of swampland where the game starts and where it becomes clear that combat is going to be the focus.  Each area is fairly quickly worked through by taking down enemy groups such as renegades, bandits (these two are pretty similar) and the military.  There are also some fetch quests given out by stalkers you meet at camps.  The rewards for doing these have so far been pretty poor; generally you are told of the location of a stash which often has pretty mundane contents - perhaps just some ammo and bandages.

I'm only into the second area so far but I am yet to find a single artifact.  They are much harder to track down than in the first game and perhaps even harder than in Call of Pripyat; though I cannot say that for sure until I have played more.

I am looking forward to getting on with the game despite the one or two negatives mentioned here.

I recently dug out Saints Row The Third after a long time on the shelf.  I had remembered it as being a bit obvious but when I started playing I found it to be great fun.

After a couple of days back playing it I am at the stage of thinking it is obvious but fun.

Most of the challenging sections of play involve taking down large groups of rival gang members while more enemies pile in from all sides.  You can call homies (I hate that word but it is used in the game so I am using it here) to come and help you out.  They can be very helpful but if they get put down you have to revive them or you fail the task and you are vulnerable while helping them.

So far it seems that apart clearing out rival gang areas, as described above, and performing missions, which often involve fights like the one described above, what you mainly have to do is buy properties and businesses around the city.  There is no actual challenge to this, you just have to have enough money and you accumulate money more rapidly by owning more properties and businesses, as in Assassins Creed Brotherhood.

I was using both hands on the controller and taking this picture at the same time so I reckon it's not too bad.

Money is also used to buy upgrades for many things including health and weapons.

Despite all that, the city is full of things to do which you discover by driving around.  Some of those things are pretty insane and I can only approve of that.  They can also be quite challenging, as with a task set by Prof. Ghenki (is that how you spell it?) which I performed last night.  It took the form of a game show in which you had to kill or be killed.  The enemies were mascots and there were fire and electrical traps which you had to pass through but the timing had to be just right.  This was one area where health did not recharge, though there were a few targets which could be shot to improve it.  There were other targets to win more time or more cash and others called "Unethical" and I have no idea what they were for.

I usually failed this challenge by running out of time, though that might say more about my abilities and style as a player than about the game.  I got it after about six or seven attempts and felt that I richly deserved the financial reward I was given.

I think I would recommend this game but could not feel emotionally involved in it as I might with some games.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic - PC

I bought KOTOR on Steam recently (for less than £3 during the sale) and it did not appear in my library at first.

It turned out that I was in offline mode.  I don't really get this as the Store was appearing and I managed to go through the buying process.

When that was sorted out I downloaded the game but when I tried to play it only the initial LucasArts logo came up and then disappeared again.  I tried this several times with the same result then tried a generic fix suggested on the Steam help page with no joy.

I uninstalled AVG since it is one of the most emphasized programs on Steam's list of things that cause problems and tried again but still got no further.

When changing the compatibility mode a couple of times didn't work I messed around with the graphics options and at last I got a result.

This description makes it sound pretty simply but it took a while.

My character (Petracina) looking at a protocol droid.

Is it any wonder that I usually play on the PS3 these days.  This game is ten years old and my PC is easily powerful enough to run it but for some glitchy and annoying reason of its own it chose not too.

Still , first impressions suggest that it is an excellent game so I'm going to stop typing and go back to playing it...if it starts.

Dead Space - PS3

This is my first entry for about a million years and I am making no promises about writing more in the future but it entered my head to say a bit about boss fights.

What I have been attempting to get through in Dead Space recently is not a boss fight in the conventional sense.  I am not fighting a single huge monster.

However, it is a section of the game which takes place in a different type of environment to most of the gameplay and the technique required is different to most of the game and, most significantly, it is clearly designed to be harder than most of the rest of the game.  There is a save station just beside the point where is takes place.

I am now fed up with materialising next to that save station and getting into the seat of the gun from which I have to shoot down asteroids to prevent the USG Ishimura's hull integrity from falling bellow 0%, while my colleague issue's unrealistic radio update's about how long I've got to keep it up for and a female automated voice reminds me how slim my chance's are by commenting on the state of the hull.

It puzzles me why it should be necessary to make one section of the game so much more difficult than the rest.  I love Dead Space but Visceral would do well not to test my devotion by frustrating me in this way.  There are a lot of games out there.

Still, since most of those other games also have irritating boss fights I might as well stick it out and try to get through it.

It occurred to me last night that if there was a more skillful gamer in the room I could hand the controller over to them and let them play through it for me with a clear conscience as it is clearly a stupid, annoying and pointless part of the game (I wasn't getting frustrated), but I new as soon as I'd thought it that I would not do this.  If I did it would not be me who had played through the whole game.  I suspect that this is the mentality of a lot of gamers and so cannot help thinking that developers put boss fights in because they hate us and like to imagine our impotent little tantrums.

Or perhaps that's just me...