Knee Deep In Static

Lock and load, soldier! Me and my grizzled comrade Ian Grundy emerge from the frontlines of the console war, avoiding land mines, delayed release dates and Nintendo fanboys to bring you the latest episode of The Unnamed Games Podcast! In this week’s show, we talk about Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, and why our lack of tactical grace on the RTS battlefield would make George S. Patton spin in his grave. We also recount the time that we’ve spent with a few older veterans recently, such as Far Cry Instincts Predator, God Hand and World of Warcraft. Of course, you can’t have war without a little Pain, so we round off our first segment with a look at the European Playstation Store’s latest sadistic offering. We take a short break to disassemble and reassemble an assortment of control pads (whilst blindfolded, naturally) before addressing the console war itself, taking a general look at all five current generation platforms, and how they square up to each other in the theatre of combat. Hold onto your hand grenades, this one’s more entertaining than Bob Hope at a USO show! If you have any questions or topics you’d like us to discuss, or any other comments and suggestions then we’d love to hear from you. You can contact both Ian and myself by writing to podcast@joshbarton.co.uk. Happy listening!

Click here to download the show!

Recorded within our ultra secret crime fortress deep beneath the streets of West London, it’s time for yet another unnamed games podcast! Me and my sinister henchman Ian Grundy take some time out from our busy racketeering schedule to talk about what we’ve been playing lately, including Lost Odyssey, Beautiful Katamari, Puzzle Quest and Patapon. After a short break to bribe some dirty cops, we take a retrospective look at the Grand Theft Auto series, as well as discuss what we’re looking forward to in Grand Theft Auto IV. Bake a file into that cake grandma, because this podcast is breakin’ out! If you have any questions or topics you’d like us to discuss, or any other comments and suggestions then we’d love to hear from you. You can contact both Ian and myself by writing to podcast@joshbarton.co.uk. Happy listening!

Click here to download the show!

Better late than never! In this first episode of our as-yet-unnamed podcast, me and my good friend Ian Grundy reflect upon our time spent with Burnout Paradise, and consider what the future may hold for Paradise City in the way of downloadable content. We also get a little historical with Assassin’s Creed and discuss the finer points of stabbing people in the back of the neck in 11th Century Jerusalem; who said game’s weren’t educational! After that, we tackle a number of independent games emerging from the recent Independent Games Festival and the XNA Creator’s Club. That’s not all though! We bring it home with the freelance police, taking a look at Telltale Games’ recent Sam and Max adventures.

Click here to download the show!

You can expect the format of the show to change over the coming weeks whilst we figure out this whole podcasting thing, and we’re also in the process of securing some better quality recording equipment too. If you have any questions or topics you’d like us to discuss, or any other comments and suggestions then we’d love to hear from you. You can contact both Ian and myself by writing to podcast@joshbarton.co.uk. Happy listening!

Between bouts of Call Of Duty 4, Burnout Paradise and Uncharted, I’ve spent the last couple of weeks reacquainting myself with the artier side of the gaming spectrum with Rez HD, Everyday Shooter, Audiosurf and a few other recent releases. However, I suspect that I’m about a year late to the party when it comes to which of these games I’ve been enjoying the most; Knytt. Just in case your invitation was lost in the post too, Knytt is a thoroughly charming and evocative 2D platform game made by Nicklas Nygren. It’s been described (along with other independent titles such as Seiklus) as an exercise in ambient gaming, eschewing traditional game elements in favour of a more relaxed, explorative experience.

The game opens with a brief introduction sequence; whilst playing near his village, Knytt (the pint-sized protagonist) is mysteriously abducted by an alien spaceship. During its journey the ship is struck by a meteoroid, which sends it hurtling down onto the surface of a nearby planet. Though Knytt and his alien captor survive the crash, they find themselves marooned in a strange new world. Knytt must venture through this world, locating various items to repair the damaged ship so that he can get back home.

In addition to his pleasingly sprightly skip, your little avatar only has the ability to jump and wall climb, putting the focus of the gameplay squarely on exploring and traversing the landscape one screen at a time. Although this apparent lack of variety might not seem immediately appealing, the large and intriguing nature of the game world really propels the game forwards, urging you to discover what lies beyond the current screen. It also helps that the diversely themed areas are so vibrant and well realised in their 8-bit inspired simplicity, from the cacti and lazy pink and orange hues of the desert to the smog and jet black silhouette of the mines. There are a number of screens that feature little more than the very corner of a mountain range or a bridge, but these give the world the sense of scale that is so integral to the overall experience.

Instead of the cavalcade of retro-inspired bleeps and bloops that you might expect a game like this to have, Knytt opts for a more understated and emotive approach to its audio design. Each area possesses a distinct ambient identity; caverns are given their gloom by reverberous loops of wind punctuated by occasional washes of static, whilst the balmy heat of the desert is invoked through warm guitar chords, making it feel like one of the few safe places in the game. Perhaps most memorable are the curious, sporadic string and synthesizer strains of the opening area, which do an excellent job of reinforcing the feeling of being stranded in an unfamiliar environment.

There are further elements that contribute to the immersive quality of Knytt’s world, notably its strange, otherworldly inhabitants. Though rarely interacting with the player, their existence is far from cosmetic; they hint at a larger world, one that we can observe and explore but not necessarily understand. Not all of these inhabitants are as nonchalant to your presence though; there are a number of enemies which will attempt to bring your adventure to an end (though you don’t seem to die as much as blink out of existence). However, it’s not difficult to differentiate between threatening and non-threatening members of the populace; when they’re near, your avatar is helpfully enveloped by a soft red glow.

Knytt is deceptively resonant. Though it’s certainly the dinky little platformer that initial impressions suggest, it’s also something altogether more meaningful. You’re given the overwhelming sense of exploring a living, breathing world thanks to some great attention to detail; from the way that trees sway almost imperceptibly in the breeze, to the sound of your footsteps shifting audio channels as you run across the screen. Curiously, there’s something about Knytt that reminds me of the text adventures (such as Zork and The Pawn) that I played when I was younger despite conveying their worlds through prose rather than an audiovisual language. Much like text, Knytt’s relative minimalism leaves its narrative and surroundings freely open to interpretation, making a world of already unquantifiable enormity seem even more vast and enigmatic.

Stranglehold is the sequel to John Woo’s explosive Hong Kong action movie Hard Boiled, and as well as the maverick director being involved in its development, the game also sees Chow Yun-Fat reprise his role (albeit digitally) as Inspector Tequila Yuen. Set several years after Hard Boiled with Tequila still working for the Hong Kong police force, the game opens with our hero on the trail of a missing cop. Several flashbacks and a kidnapped family later, there’s revenge to be had on the Triad and Russian Mafia. The story doesn’t come across as one of the game’s strong points, but it does create the perfect setup for a high body count. The ubiquitous cover system and generous cache of firearms found in most third person action games are all present, but Stranglehold also has a number of unique features which compliment the run-and-gun action.

Read more

Sometimes I claim not to care about my Gamerscore, usually to people that have a better one than me (which, admittedly, is practically everyone at the moment). The truth is, I like achievements for a lot of the same reasons that I like being rewarded in real-life for working hard or doing a good job. Obviously the two aren’t really comparable, and the idea of having a few numbers added to a conglomerated numerical value might seem a bit hollow to a lot of people. I just appreciate the fact that games not only allow me to cripple dirty cops with a tire iron in a very realistic manner, but will also acknowledge the fact that I’m very good at it with a badge of honour for all the world to see.

I finished playing through The Darkness last week, which I’d started back when it was released, but had left languishing about an hour or so from the end since September. Again, I hold the parade of quality known as the latter part of 2007 responsible for this. After I’d played through to the satisfying conclusion (quick review; brutal, hugely atmospheric, certainly one of the better games to come out in the first part of the year), I felt like I wanted to keep playing. It seemed a shame to re-immerse myself into Jackie Estacado’s grimy version of New York for such a short amount of time when I’d previously enjoyed the rest of the game so much. Finding the online mode to be something a desolate wasteland in terms of other players, I realised that there were probably a number of achievements that I’d missed during the single player game.

A glance at the achievements list proved me right, and Darkness Master, a one hundred point achievement for using the various Darkness powers to kill a certain amount (read; a lot) of enemies sounded like a worthwhile endeavour. Thanks to the fact that registered kills persist through death, I just kept on slaughtering the same pocket of dudes until I eventually died and restarted at the same checkpoint, making the whole experience feel like a murderous, demonic Groundhog Day. I was initially frustrated that I could only get a couple of kills before going down in a hail of bullets, but just as Bill Murray learned from his mistakes so that he could boink Andie McDowell, I started to anticipate when enemies would burst from doorways, allowing me to devour their faces with relative ease. I was, apparently, becoming a Darkness Master.

My perseverance paid off, and after about an hour or so, I had my precious points. As the Achievement Unlocked icon blinked on the screen, that pathological need to accumulate artificial rewards kicked in a bit stronger than usual; I had to have more. None of the other achievements for The Darkness had particularly interested me (and most those left were for the multiplayer mode), so I had a look at what else was immediately available to me without ripping open a brand new game.

Looking through my Arcade titles, I remembered that I hadn’t played Carcassonne yet, which I’d grabbed for free a couple of months back when the Xbox Live birthday celebration was going on. As well as proving surprisingly fun and addictive (though I was initially put off by the horrendously dry tutorials), I managed to get quite a few achievements in just one sitting. Unfortunately, the online mode seems to suffer from the same problem as The Darkness, so it seems unlikely I’ll be able to get the achievements for winning ranked matches.

All of this business with earning achievements got me thinking about World Of Warcraft, where the continued pursuit of rewards makes up the very fibre of the game. I stopped playing in March last year because I’d gone through just about all of the Burning Crusade content that I could manage without committing to a guild, and I’ve never really enjoyed raiding or player versus player combat on a regular basis. After a ten month hiatus, I’ve reactivated my account; not only because there’s some new content to explore (not to mention another expansion on the horizon), but because I’ve missed the sense of continued character improvement that Blizzard has made so alluring.

A good deal of time has passed since I played through the two original continents, and I think I’m ready to explore them again, though this time, with a plucky young Blood Elf paladin. I’ve been playing for the last couple of days now, and already I’m rediscovering the joys of using quest rewards to improve my avatar, rather than feeling a necessity to raid. Perhaps my characters will never be the saviours of Azeroth, but as long as I can get a cool looking sword for maiming twenty Ghostclaw Lynx, I’ll be happy.

Whenever I think I’ve had enough of Crackdown, it amazes me by offering something new. A couple of nights ago, me and Ian decided to jump into the game’s co-op mode, as neither of us had really played it before; I’d had a cursory glance at it when the game came out, and whilst I certainly enjoyed what I played, I was still hungry to finish the single player campaign. Of course, by the time I’d done this, 2007 had started to become this totally insane year in terms of quality releases, so I didn’t really get a chance to revisit Pacific City for some of the crazy co-op action that I was well aware of, but hadn’t properly experienced for myself.

Returning to the game and playing cooperatively for a good few hours proved not only immensely fun, but also made me realise that there’s a lot more to Crackdown than it was necessarily given credit for around the time of its release.

At the co-op mode’s most basic level, it presents the pleasingly Contra-esque imagery of two heavily armoured dudes with rocket launchers running down a freeway blowing the shit out of everything in sight. However, far beyond this, it changes the dynamic of the whole game to the point where killing the gang bosses, the primary focus of the single player campaign, is quite possibly the least interesting thing that you could be doing. Sure, it’s still fun to tackle these missions with a friend, but there are so many other possibilities to explore that don’t exist without a second player.

Amongst other things, I’ve experienced the visceral joy of speeding down the highway in a sports car whilst Ian surfed on the roof and fired rockets into oncoming traffic, as well as being hurled off the top of a building in the SUV, desperately trying to pull off tricks before smashing onto the asphalt below. There are plenty of opportunities to create homebrew games too; just before we finished playing for the evening, we found a rubber duck sitting by the edge a swimming pool on someone’s rooftop, so I’m already thinking of creating a makeshift field goal out of scaffolding for a little game of Punt The Ducky the next time we play.

All of this convinces me that the people who criticised the game for not having a more developed campaign mode or storyline have misunderstood what the game is fundamentally about; a huge part of Crackdown is making your own fun with the tools that the developers have given you. I’m not just talking about excellent Keys To The City mode either; I’m talking about the fact that virtually all objects can be picked up, cars stay where you leave them, and that the co-op mode is as well implemented as the single player experience.

Of course, with this relative amount of creative freedom, it’s occasionally possible to break the game, whether it’s in the form of the framerate screeching to a halt or the physics engine glitching out in a hilarious manner. This really doesn’t matter though, because they’re merely a product of enjoying the game on your own terms. Realtime Worlds hasn’t been afraid to let players push the limitations of what they’ve designed, and ultimately, this is what makes Crackdown a true sandbox and not just an open world.

Given how tall my gaming Pile Of Shame is (not helped by the stack of games I received for Christmas, and the fact that Sam persuaded me to buy Call Of Duty 4), I’ve probably chosen a bad time to relapse into playing E4 on the 360 again; a game which is not only absurdly addictive, but also has the potential to go on, well, forever. Between periods of stark lucidity and fevered bouts of playing the game, I’ve been thinking a bit about why I prefer E4 over similar titles like Geometry Wars and Lumines.

As a gameplay mechanic, I love detonation; not only the unimaginable carnage that it causes, but also that tight sense of anticipation that wells up inside you just before it occurs, whether unleashing a crashbreaker in Burnout Revenge or throwing a timed grenade onto an impossibly huge stack of cars in Crackdown. E4 deals with this concept in far more abstract ways, but the sense of anticipation is always there, either when timing a detonation in tandem with the BPM meter, or when grabbing those last few Quickens before the shield runs out, your fate decided by milliseconds.

At its core, Every Extend has a very simple concept, which is probably why developer Q Entertainment took the opportunity to pad out the Xbox 360 edition of the game with some new gameplay modes, making the overall package a bit more attractive. Alongside the Geometry Wars-esque The Revenge mode and multiplayer battle mode, there’s also a game type called Wiz Ur Muzik, which lets you play the regular game with the addition of your own music in place of the original soundtrack. Initially, I’d written it off as a kind of kooky interactive graphic equaliser. Whilst there is an element of that, playing with your own music has a more profound effect on the gameplay that you’d necessarily think, and it’s become my primary means of enjoying the game.

Although there’s a lot to be said for the way that the game’s original soundtrack entrances you into a steady groove of gameplay, I’ve found that using your own music enhances the light audio/rhythmic element of the game. Using that little bit of intuition that exists by already knowing a song means that detonating your ship in time to the beat for those all-important score multipliers becomes a somewhat more instinctive and rewarding process. Additionally, given that 95% of the game is spent watching the hypnotic synchronisation between audio and visual elements, being able to incorporate music that you actively enjoy makes the game all the more absorbing.

Gameplay aside, one of the reasons I like Wiz Ur Muzik so much is because of the visuals that it presents you with whilst importing audio data. Before you can play the game with your own music, E4 needs to play the track through in its entirety so it can inspect the track and interpret where the beats occur. Rather than forcing you to sit through a percentage bar or something equally tedious, E4 fills the screen with an orgy of neon data; crazy waveforms, oscilloscopes, BPM values and a load of other information that show you how the track is being processed. It’s a wilfully complex aesthetic, which falls somewhere between a 1980s stereo manual and a Tokyo skyline.

In this lower-case Helvetica world of pristine white media devices and Fisher Price user interfaces where anything remotely technical is kept under the hood, it’s refreshing to find something which embraces its underlying complexity. Now if only we could get a remake of Discs Of Tron using the same visual style…

Hello, I am Josh Barton, welcome to my personal blog. I’ll be using it as a place to share my thoughts on video games and games culture, as well as comicbooks, both as a reader and creator.

Look, I know we’re only a couple of sentences into the first entry but I have a confession to make. This post is an act of deception. You see, I actually wrote it several days ago, then set it to publish on the 1st. I even chose an arbitrary time to give it an air of authenticity. 10:24? It’s unlikely I’d even be awake at that time (especially on New Year’s Day), let alone posting a completed blog entry. It just seemed more appropriate to start a new blog at the beginning of a new year; not necessarily under the pretense of a fresh start, but because having the first post appear on the 1st of January appeases my OCD sensibility.

I’ve written for a number of blogs and online journals before, but never been particularly great at keeping them updated; I really enjoy writing, but in the past I’ve had a habit of starting an entry, and then letting it spiral out of control until it became a multi-thousand word essay which I’d eventually lose enthusiasm with and never publish. So, rather than attempting to turn every entry into a five course meal with port and cigars in the drawing room afterwards, I’m going to try and take a bit more of a sushi (or tapas if you have an aversion to raw fish) approach to blogging. This isn’t to say that I won’t be writing longer entries; there are a number of incomplete articles sitting on my laptop I’d like to finish, or at least harvest for some cheap content.

I think that just about gets the obligatory first post out of the way. You have to admit that the deceit made it more interesting. Anyway, I’m now going to (or have I already?) hunt down a version of Frogger to put on my parent’s computer; I was shocked to discover a few days ago that my mum, who’s something of a casual arcade game veteran, had never heard of it, let alone played it. She’s spent the last few months playing pretty much nothing but Peggle and Zuma, so it’ll be interesting to see what she makes of something with a more retro pedigree.