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...

More Colin McRae Dirt

Since my last entry, which I admit was a while ago now, I have played some Batman: Arkham Asylum (I started my second play-through of this and it's still fantastic), quite a bit of Assassin's Creed Brotherhood (which has grown on me and is also excellent, but still not as good as AC II) but, to my own surprise the only game I want to write about is Colin McRae Dirt.

I last wrote about this title in this entry:

http://therubbishgamer.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/more-uncharted-drakes-fortune-and-colin.html

I finished playing through the career section on Clubman difficulty (the second easiest of 5) and decided to spend some time with the Championship part of the game, which is all rallying and much more in keeping with the earlier Colin McRae games.  It feels like discovering the game for the first time.

I have switched off the annoying co-driver and am relying on the minimap at the top of the screen.  It means having to look away from the road occasionally but also forces you to concentrate harder and so might improve performance.

I did the long version of the European Championship on Clubman and won it.  This in unlocked the International Championship which I decided to do at a harder difficulty level (Amateur - which is 3rd of 5) and got found out.

The first of these (the European) was one of the best driving experiences I ever had with a game.  I felt constantly on the ragged edge but just in control and it was exhilarating.  The driving is beautifully simulated and I feel as if I have mastered the steering slightly more since complaining that it was too sensitive last time.  I will keep persisting at Amateur level and hopefully unlock the Global Championship this evening.

Dirt 2 is now on my Amazon wish list and Xmas might be too long to wait.