The Mass Effect special edition game comes with a booklet which sets out the aims and dreams of the designers. This booklet specifies that Mass Effect:

is not a space opera or a space western. It is a serious and artful cinematic experience, rendered with a unique combination of starkly realistic visuals and hauntingly powerful musical scores.

Well, it certainly is not a space-western, but i don’t see how that’s anything to be proud of. (seriously how cool does space-western sound?!) Perhaps it would have been prudent for Bioware to wait for some positive reviews before publishing their manifesto.

As i trawl through my dissertation i thought i’d share with you something nice i noticed:

Microsoft Word lets you click on the save shortcut icon (the now obsolete floppy disk) even when there’s nothing to save. When you save a document normally a progress bar can be observed to flash up briefly along the bottom of the window. However if you click save again, when there are no changes whatsoever to the document, nothing happens – no progress bar, no extra memory usage, nada. I can only assume this is a generous feature built in to reassure the customer. I myself click save about five times per minute, whether or not i’ve written anything.

Another nice consequence of this feature is that you can write a few sentences, save, open a new window and do something else, then return to the document an hour later, click save again and feel like you’re making progress.

Meet my friends:

: )     : (     : O       :S        -_-

These guys are some of the smileys i use most frequently. The question i put to you is, will there ever be (or is there already) a place for these smileys in the hearts of the grammarians.

Now it’s fair to say that smileys serve as a shortcut so we don’t have to turn our every IM into epic prose. If they’re ever to be recognised as a legitimate form of punctuation it will have to be demonstrated that it is more than just a lazy alternative to writing out a few more words. They’re going to have to genuinely add something to a sentence. Now clever old me, being clever (and old) has worked you all up into a frenzy of doubt and expectation. You’re asking, “but when, Luke? When will somebody prove that smileys count?!” But don’t worry, i’ll do it. In fact i even had the idea before i started writing this!

Now the first two smileys up there are pretty simple, they express basic happiness or displeasure. Arguably these sentiments could easily be included with a few extra words. Hence:

“I’ll be coming home soon! : )”
becomes
“I’m glad to be coming home soon!” or “I can’t wait to come home!”

and “I have to be back by ten : (” becomes “unfortunately, i have to be back by ten” or “I have to be back by ten, which sucks.” We might pause here to debate the grammatical merit of ’sucks’ but pausing is a habit reserved for people with too much time, (and people with Sky+) so onwards.

:S and : O are also pretty dismissable, easily replaced with a pointed “…” or an “i’m shocked to hear…” (incidentally i think that : O holds pretty much the same meaning as ‘OMG’)

This fellow is better -_- but is dangerously close to the crazy horizontal masterpiece faces used by kawaiidiots. See also @_@ ~_~ ^-^ \*^_^*/ and i think we can all agree that granting these any literary merit is a slippery slope to madness and social decay.

Well that’s it then, all my favourite smileys rejected. Never mind. Go home.

The End.

…?

Or is it?

dun-dun-duuuuun! Time to break out my thus far concealed favourite smiley of all! Here goes!…

: P <—-zomg!

I love that little guy. He truly expresses something that cannot be easily defined. Explaining his mystical meaning would be like trying to explain how the colour red actually looks, to someone who’s never seen it before. Maybe it can be done, but it’s certainly not going to be easy. Watch what happens when we try to compensate the sentence:

“Sounds like fun : P”
becomes:
“Sounds like fun… NOT!” or “I am being cheeky and toying with you here but not in an offensive or necessarily totally genuine way when i say that that sounds like fun.”

hmmm.. no dice. God knows how this smiley came into existence in the first place, have you ever made that face? Imagine if we stuck our tongues out to the side like that when we wanted to express the kind of gentle-but-maybe-a-little-sarcastic kind of sentiment which that smiley embodies:

“Hey man, going to that party tonight?!”
“Hell yeah! Party on down! Bleaearrrggh…“

I think you’d agree it would look a little odd. Furthermore i frequently find myself wishing it was ok to use this smiley in a formal typing situation. Consider this hypothetical email to one of my tutors:

“The essay is going well, i’ve been reading Lewis’ ‘On the Plurality of Worlds.’ It’s pretty tricky stuff.”
Compare with:
“The essay is going well, i’ve been reading Lewis’ ‘On the Plurality of Worlds.’ It’s pretty tricky stuff : P”

You can see how the first example could be interpreted as a rather deadpan cry for help, whereas really i’m shooting for a kind of ‘i’m reading it and it’s hard but not too hard, but i’m also not so arrogant to think it’s going to be easy for me’ kind of vibe. But that’s not an easy sentiment to express, especially in a concise email. My alternative would be something like:
“The essay is going well, i’ve been reading Lewis’ ‘On the Plurality of Worlds.’ That Lewis is one crazy cat lol!!”

I think that this guy : P basically serves as a mood-lightener. Pop him on the end if a sentence as you would a question mark, except instead of denoting a question you’re indicating that the sentence should be taken lightly. It’s a little mark to show that whatever you said, don’t take it too seriously. A disclaimer to say that you may or may not mean what you just wrote, and that everyone should just relax.

And everyone did. The End.

Note: I don’t usually have a space between the colon and the open brackets (or capital P, or S, or whatever) but i have to put one there to stop WordPress triggering its own dumb little graphics. If anyone knows a way to turn them off i’d be grateful.

Hm. Upon review the Xbox best-sellers list is pretty boring, you can probably guess the whole list without too much trouble. Much more interesting is the PS3 number one spot: Motorstorm , the relatively casual quad-bike racing game. It’s 311,000 units ahead of MGS4.

Now you’re thinking, “Aha! Perhaps the PS3 is not the bastion of hardcore gaming i had assumed! Touche mister Luke.”

However, note that Little Big Planet has not made the top ten list.

Read into that what you will.

Updates might be a little sparse for the next few weeks, on holiday for 10 days, then many many essays to write :S Doesn’t help that to distract me i have the excellent GTA: Chinatown Wars. Oh yeah one more thing, buy Chinatown Wars.

Apologies for the infrequent posts recently, i’ve had a lot on my plate with this troublesome degree i’m earning.

It’s easy to whine about the decline of video games, (which i still refuse to write as one word) and the general influx of casual game(r)s ruining what was once a beautiful and creative industry, with global gaming corporations turning a broad and varied art form into a mass of identical blockbusters designed to part increasingly wealthy preteens from their cash. (That opener may have accidentally revealed my bias) However i rarely see statistics to back up these claims. Therefore over the next few posts i’ll be looking at sales figures across the gaming landscape and trying to predict, using my mystical powers of reason, what they mean for the future of video games.

Nintendo DS – 10 million sales club.

Nintendo have attracted more criticism than any other company for pandering to the casual market. Nicole Kidman sits in a beautiful house training her brain – surely this is not the same company that made Donkey Kong?! The DS plays host to some amazing games (mostly third party) but how is this represented in the sales chart? Here are the 7 games which have sold over 10million each.

Nintendogs – well, it’s kind of a game i guess? Many of the early DS’s shipped with this, so i’m not sure if this one actually counts, sales-wise. Still, you can’t put a price on a virtual dog.

New Super Mario Bros. – excellent to see this on here, a brilliant 2D adventure, with every convention intact. If i was being sceptical (which i am) i’d point out that this was a launch title and was released before Nintendo saw the massive profits to be made from games which aren’t games, so it’s possible we wont be seeing another great game like this for a while…

Brain Age – Find an answer to the baffling question, “how old is your brain.” Now you can finally put paid to the myth that wisdom comes with age as you manically compete to have the youngest brain achievable. Fun app, not a game.

Pokemon Diamond/Pearl – well i guess somewhere there are kids still playing the DS then! Not that pokemon is exclusively for children, they’ve always been awesome games. However worth noting that the formula hasn’t really changed since red/blue back in 1999, as long as it still works i don’t know why Nintendo would do anything other than tweak.

Mario Kart DS – fantastic racing game, sublime controls and much less of the random element present in MKwii. (though i quite liked the unfairness!) still plagued by rubberband opponents (you overtake them and somehow they spring right back into the lead) but this game has passed many a car journey and for that i am grateful. Still, like Mario Bros. it was a launch title, leaving it up to interpretation how frequently we’ll actually be seeing games of this quality.

Brain Age 2 – pity the ignorant whelp who thinks he can get an accurate handle on the hypothetical age of his brain from Brain Age 1! Times have changed! Your brain-gauging technology is hopelessly obsolete!! Buy Brain Age 2!

Animal Crossing: Wild World – Interesting to see a life sim on this list, it’s a shame i don’t have any statistics on consumer satisfaction though, as i feel this was advertised as being something more than a mortgage simulator. Having said that this game has a dark streak a mile wide. Coming back to your house to find Tom Nook, the local land baron has extended your house without your permission and has left the hefty bill on your doorstep is always worth a chuckle.

This is a list of few surprises. Every title is from a Nintendo studio, and only half of them would qualify as games by many people’s standards. Seeing as how the iPhone does applications better than the DS, Nintendo had better man up and make some games, or they’ll find they’ve lost the one thing most valuable in this industry, the insane fanboy battalion; which Nintendo have dutifully pandered to for 20 long years. Days are passing when kids will buy anything with that big beautiful Nintendo Official Seal of Approval stamp, now the big N will have to start again with a whole new market. I predict a thousand cheap and easy Brain Age clones, and many more copy-pasted pokemon games.

Next time i’ll track down the best selling Xbox games, which should be a little more interesting.

edit: GTA: Chinatown Wars might change everything. (but probably wont)

If game studios were people, and those people were your friends, you’d think long and hard about which ones to invite to your party. At this fantasy party Nintendo would be drinking a cocktail, holding a dozen conversations at once and generally being a young, healthy person, telling politically correct but very funny jokes. Capcom would be wearing a bandana and espousing the virtues of Thundercats to Sony, the sweaty uncomfortable nerd trying to act aloof. In a slick suit with a big false grin EA would be giving a toast, and Rockstar… well, Rockstar wouldn’t be invited. I imagine he has a handlebar moustache and big aviator shades, and has been known to get wasted, throw up everywhere and try his luck with the lovely Square Enix.

The past few weeks Rockstar have been causing drama, and not only in my insane imagination. On the contrary, they’ve been upsetting people left right and centre. Every upset revolves around the impending release (by the time you read this it’ll be out) of the first episode of downloadable content for Grand Theft Auto 4. Titled ‘The Lost and the Damned’ this expansion lets you control the motorcycle gang from the original game, and play through an all-new story based around their murderous exploits and curb-stomping adventures. Good news, right? Well sort of. The expansion is only available to download on Xbox 360, leaving Sony feeling a little cold. Microsoft reputedly paid 50 million dollars for exclusive rights to the game, and so yet again Sony are left empty handed, leaving PS3 owners feeling a little short changed.

To get a handle on this, consider Rockstar’s history with Sony. The Grand Theft Auto franchise has traditionally been at home on the Playstation, give or take the odd gameboy port. At the very least every game up until GTA4 was released to Sony before being ported to other platforms. Bringing the fourth instalment out on 360 and PS3 simultaneously was a move that garnered controversy from the Sony corner, and plunged the internet into a flamewar the likes of which had never been seen. (This mostly consisted of screenshot analysis to discover which platform would get a better draw distance and a higher-res textures) Apparently those Sony fanboys were right to be suspicious, as what was once a killer app for their platform has now sided with Microsoft. This is doubly frustrating for Sony as they pride themselves (quite rightly) on their online section. They have new DLC (downloadable content, make a note of it) for Little Big Planet every week, they don’t charge for demos, they have Playstation Home, and most importantly you pay for things in Euros, Pounds and Dollars, not ridiculous middle-man currencies like ‘Microsoft Points’ which can only be purchased in blocks of a hundred million.

People who like the GTA series are people who like Playstations. They’ve gone hand in hand for so long that if the Human Genome Project found the gene that coded for Playstation purchasing, they’d probably find it also coded for a love of sandbox mayhem and an affection for running over prostitutes. Sure, GTA4 on the Xbox will draw in legions of new fans, but this departure from Sony will be interpreted as a huge kick in the teeth to all those who followed the franchise from the very beginning, and even did something as crazy as buying a PS3 to try and keep up.

The Lost and the Damned will feature male full frontal nudity. This has not only upset all the usual outspoken pressure groups, but has offended the sensibilities of critics reviewing an early version of the expansion. It has been branded a cheap publicity stunt by some, whilst others claim it adds nothing to the gaming experience. (Obviously not quite true, it adds male nudity) The in-the-buff action is limited to one cutscene, which if you are so inclined, you can find on Youtube. (I would offer a link but the videos keep being taken down) For the less curious all you need know is that the Euphoria engine manages to control those tricky genital-physics with aplomb.

Lastly and most importantly Rockstar have upset me this week because ‘The Lost and the Damned’ still doesn’t feature any jetpacks. What on Earth is the point in a fully explorable sandbox world if I have no way of getting onto the roofs of skyscrapers?! This highlights a fundamental misunderstanding on Rockstar’s part, in thinking that the joy of the GTA games is watching your character go through a character building gritty adventure and come out the other end a little richer and wiser for the experience. Rather the joy of the GTA games is turning on all the cheats and flying a tank around the city, crushing hapless citizens by spawning hundreds more tanks in your wake. It’s taking a jetpack up to the top of the highest building, turning on the no-reload cheat and jumping off, using the rocket launcher to hilariously propel your corpse miles across town. It’s turning the gravity down and throwing people off the tops of mountains, then hijacking a jumbo jet to fly into them before they can hit the ground, and using spawn cheats to create a ramp made of cars on top of buildings that you can drive a motorbike off, bail in mid-air and land headfirst on a family enjoying a picnic in the park. In GTA4 none of these things were possible, and The Lost and the Damned does nothing to improve upon this relative lack of freedom. Rockstar, sort yourself out, stop upsetting everyone and maybe, just maybe, you’ll get invited to my murder-mystery cocktail evening.

Finally saw this reboot of the Punisher franchise, the first production from Marvel’s new ‘grown-up’ studio Marvel Knights, which aims to bring some of the more adult Marvel characters to the silver screen.

This first outing is… odd. It’s shockingly brutal, that’s the first thing to say, and Marvel Knights are to be congratulated for their modest use of CGI – preferring traditional squib and cutaway technology (as well as a huge variety of props) to handle the gore. It’s refreshing, even if it is at times unintentionally hilarious.

The interesing thing about this film is just how comic-book it really was. I could imagine each scene in frame-form, the writing exactly reminiscent of graphic-novel style dialogue. Frank Castle was spot-on, he was the Punisher. He killed everyone, including women and young adults, with equal vigour regardless of their crime and with zero mercy. He was impossible to relate to – an inhuman killing-machine, and that’s how it should be! There wasn’t much to the story, it even featured a brilliantly self-knowing moment in which Jigsaw (the deformed villain) told his crew they were not going to hunt down the Punisher yet – first they needed to recruit several hundred goons and hole them up in a huge reinforced building. Seeing the Punisher punish everyone in that building is the climax of the film, and if you like that kind of thing, it’s hugely rewarding.

There are also frequent Biblical allusions which seem to imply that the Punisher is a Jesus-figure, the second coming for the shotgun generation. It’s odd, but this is an odd film. Perhaps the Punisher should best be seen as an example of what happens if you stick too ruthlessly to the source material. That is to say, I loved it, but I’m very aware that hardly anyone else will.

“Sometimes I think i’d like to get my hands on God” – Frank Castle considers punishing the almighty.

I now have a shiny weekly video games column on my university paper’s online edition, which can be found at http://www.redbrickonline.co.uk here, reproduced in screen-o-vision is my first contribution.

The Resident Evil 5 demo came out on Playstation Network this week. (and the week before on Xbox Live, but they were charging for the download, so you get the PS3 version) The Resident Evil series needs no introduction – you wander around, you learn to cope with a baffling control system, you eat herbs to regenerate health and you save your game at typewriters. It’s a series that has wormed its way into our hearts, and despite no single game getting it quite right, it’s all jolly good fun.. Except that’s not quite true, because Resident Evil 4 did get it exactly right. It was brilliant in every important respect, and that’s what makes this sneak-peek at the follow-up particularly disappointing. (There you go, cards on the table – we can both relax now)

The flaws in this game have the appearance of being niggling little nit-picky problems, but when you start picking away you’ll soon see these little things actually cover every aspect of the demo. This is an exercise in weaving a hundred tiny flaws into one huge unplayable blanket. (note to self, brilliant analogy) Enough small talk, let’s dive straight into what’s wrong with this demo. First off – corpses disappear. I thought we had left this annoying mechanic behind in the N64-era. Back then it was a technical limitation – littering the place with corpses put undue strain on olden-times processors. What’s the excuse now? I can only assume it’s the same problem, but I would willingly sacrifice my female team mate’s accurately flopping ponytail for the chance to keep killing enemies after they’re dead. (actually I would just willingly sacrifice her, no reward necessary) I mean, it’s a zombie game! No dismemberment?! Outrageous. They don’t fade away, they bubble unspectacularly, something to do with the plaga virus I can only assume, but damned if Capcom are going to bother explaining the science behind a corpse-bubbling virus.

I can only assume a focus group of thirteen year olds led the decision to ditch Leon Kennedy, the protagonist of all the best Resident Evil games so far, and the recent movie. Presumably they struggled to relate to his ridiculous hair, and demanded a newer, sexier lead male. Well they have one, in the form of Chris Redfield, who fans of the series will remember as the protagonist from the very first game. (and he pops up throughout the series) Chris, or as I prefer to call him, Douche Flexington, (I know that’s petty, I just miss Leon) is “assisted” by Sheva Alomar. I will now subdivide this list of flaws into lists of ways in which Sheva manages to ruin everything about this game. One of the few criticisms levelled at RE4 was that far too much of the game was basically an escort mission. Ashley, the president’s daughter, was to be escorted by you out of the deadly land they call “Europe” and back to all-American safety. Ashley was pretty useless – she couldn’t hold weapons, could only run away and was frequently attacked if you left her alone, but essentially it worked out because it was very clear from the outset that you were in charge. She was totally powerless, and was programmed to follow nervously behind you, and duck instantly if you needed to shoot something in her direction.

Sheva, conversely, is not the weakling you have to protect, rather she’s your supposed equal. What this means in practice is that she runs into you all the time or at least pushes up against you, forcing you into walls. This wouldn’t be so bad if you could just pop her in the head at the start of every level, but she dodges every bullet. She doesn’t duck, as Ashley obligingly would have, she strafes instantly to the left or right and stands resolutely in your field of vision. Needless to say, when a hoard of undead villagers are running for you, and you’re trying to conserve precious bullets by going for headshots, Sheva’s ramming determinedly into you and knocking your aim is less than helpful. Actually, it’s controller-smashingly frustrating. Oh yeah, and if you dally too long picking up ammo and health, Sheva will greedily gobble it up herself! Give that back! Douche and Sheva work as a team. That means if she takes a hit and needs some stirring words to get her back on her feet, it’s up to you to wrestle through the swarm of murderous villagers to whisper whatever secret words of courage magically fix a ruptured spleen.

Conversely if you suffer an axe to the face, you’ll be relying on her to come save you. She will fail. Oh yeah, and if she dies you die. These mechanics, whilst a little ill-conceived would be bearable if the game made allowances for your partner’s small failings, and left things squarely up to you to fix. However this is not the case. Let me give an example from the ‘shanty town’ level presented in the demo: Sheva and I are hanging out on top of a roof, when it becomes clear that it would be advantageous to get across to a different roof. The gap, alas, is too great for either of us to jump. Upon closer inspection I am given the option to ‘press X to assist jump.’ Excellent – a chance to ditch miss Alomar and forge a path ahead. Look out world, Captain Flexington is going solo! I press X, and with acrobatic aplomb I manage to flip Sheva onto the other roof. As soon as she lands her roof is flooded with zombies. She starts yelling for help. As far as I can tell I am powerless to help. My screen flashes dramatically to indicate she is being wounded. She runs down some stairs, hindering any assistance I could have given. Weeping, I cradle my little plastic Leon doll as the controller slips from my shaking hands. Ok, so it’s not a total disaster, but relying on an AI character is never going to be a good idea.

The only time this kind of system has been effective was Half-Life 2, in which you and Alyx Vance fought through many levels of combine-tastic mayhem. It worked because she was immortal, had infinite ammo and was generally way cooler than you. Another minor gripe is the control system. I know it’s a sort of tradition that the Resident Evil games have awkward controls, but they feel unusually out of place here. Survival horror is unique because it’s the only genre that can get away with really inconveniencing the player, and still have those annoyances count towards the game’s quality. In this case however the only clues to indicate that this is a survival horror game are the ammo conservation and the fiddly control system. Both imbue a sense of urgency and panic that would work well in a game that had some atmosphere, but you wont find any of that here. You’re not going to be alone, so forget any feeling of isolation, and the levels I played were in bright sunlight. Sure you could get a few frights from crazed villagers jumping out of cupboards (or something that would actually be frightening) but a good survival horror game will make you dread every new area, and will leave you emotionally drained after every encounter. For this game Capcom have stated they were going for a ‘Black Hawk Down’ kind of feel, which says it all really. You might say that judging the whole game on the strength of the demo is unfair, but this is supposed to be Capcom putting it’s best foot forward, out to impress, and doing their level best to separate me from my money. What reason is there to suppose that the whole game is going to be any more impressive?

I mentioned before that the Resident Evil games were never perfect, but they always seemed to me like a child with a macaroni picture. It’s not great but we smile and nod along, because we’re fond, they’re trying their hardest and it’s pretty good really. But this time the macaroni picture is bad, the child is whining and I’ve had enough. Resident Evil 5 is going to live with grandma for a while.

OK i know i’ve been hating on Google a little bit these last few days, and i promise this will be the last anti-Google rant. (at least for a little while.)

We’re all familiar with ‘Ads by Google,’ the advertising system that fills every page on the internet with junk that’s vaguely related to the topic of the page itself. Behold mortal, the power of context sensitive advertising. This advertising has recently infected youtube, as if youtube wasn’t infected enough. Now you can expect your videos to be interrupted by cheeky little Ads by Google poking their noses over the bottom of your video. Watching hilarious footage of the world’s biggest cookie? Expect an ad for cookie delivery to sidle its way over to you. “Hey man, looks like you’re enjoying seeing those cookies. You know, i could hook you up with some of those double choc-chip for a very reasonable fee.”

Everyone knows that people in general are suggestible idiots, but up until now it has been the task of advertising agencies to convince us that this is not the case. We are in fact attractive smart-minded citizens who work hard and carefully consider the value, ethical considerations and environmental impact of every purchase. It was a slimy, manipulative system but at least it made me feel good about myself. Now all i get is, “you watch cookie?! YOU BUY COOKIE?!”

A particularly insulting example of this happened to me just this morning. I was getting my geek on, enjoying the third Watchmen trailer in glorious Youtube HD (which actually works really well) when my old friend Adsby of Googleton shows up with the following message:

“ALWAYS HAVE BAD BREATH? SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN METHOD TO ELIMINATE BAD BREATH – fangocur.com/bad_breath”

Goddamn that’s a mood-breaker. But here’s the real kicker, this particular ad is what Google assumes will be relevant to me! I check the tags for the video, and find “geek” “nerd” and “comic book” amongst them. Well thanks a bunch Google! Good work identifying the geeks in the audience and singling them out with some insulting adverts. Bully for you.

Stupid Google. Initiate nerd-sulk.

You might have heard of planning for Z-day, the plan you make for when zombies inevitably rise up and come running (or lurching depending on which films frightened you the most) for you and your family. It’s important to make plans for nightmare scenarios, because when you’re safely established on top of the Mega-mart with a helicoptor landing pad, a sniper rifle and several years worth of ammunition and food you can be super smug towards all those hapless losers banging on the doors begging to be let in.

Google’s breaking-down a few days ago led me to create a G-day plan: a strategy for coping in the most disastrous, inconceivable circumstance whereby Google breaks or turns evil. Here then, is the rough draft of my plan.

Step 1. Drink some Red Bull. (or cheaper equivalent) You’re going to need your energy, soldier.

Step 2. Clear Firefox internet history – it’s riddled with broken Google stuff. If Google goes down, then so will Firefox, as I learned to my dismay. (see post below) Plus, if Google turns evil then your best bet is to quiickly erase all traces they might chase you up on. Having said that they’ll already have your physical and online address and know your search history, so maybe that’s a tad pointless.

Step 3. Open IE and delete your Gmail account, then open add/remove programs and remove google toolbar, Google earth and so on. If you’re using a Google OS or browser, I imagine you’ll have to manually dissassemble your computer, and if you’re using a Google PC, well, threre’s a lesson about eggs and baskets here for you.

Step 4. Set your homepage to ask.com. I know it sucks, but I think it has a peculiar charm. So there.

Step 5. Give yourself a pat on the back, and start making your ‘how to live without the internet’ plan. Also maybe watch Dexter. I love Dexter.