Internet Apocalypse

With perfect scores from Famitsu and Edge and a glowing review from Kotaku, Capcom seem to have finally found the formula for the ultimate videogame, Guns, Tits and Buns. Bayonetta went on sale in the UK last Friday and smashed into the top 20 at number 5. This might seem like a lukewarm reception to the title, but bear in mind that no one has yet managed to knock Modern Warfare 2 off the top spot for weeks now and, in a chart inexplicably dominated by Nintendo Wii games it has done well to beat other triple A titles like Dragon Age: Origins, Darksiders and Assassins Creed 2.

I’m habitually cynical when it comes to perfect games, so I tried to remain neutral when playing it, trying not to expect anything too awesome, while at the same time, gearing myself up for the first of the big console releases for 2010. First impressions? Well, not great. The cut scenes in this game, although some of them are visually great, are very confusing. At points, the dialogue between the characters makes absolutely no sense and the attempts to explain the plot are laughable. I can’t help feeling that maybe crucial plot elements disguised as Japanese metaphors were lost in translation along the way and what I was left with was an unfathomable mess of random conversations that allude to concepts and storyline only understood by the guy that wrote it in the first place.

That aside, Modern Warfare 2’s storyline makes next to no sense and that’s brilliant, so let’s move on to the gameplay itself. Wall-running, turning into a panther, blowing stuff up and shooting the shit out of things with the guns either in your hands or the ones attached to your feet all feels smooth and well done. The combo system is one you’ll be well used to if you’ve played Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden or Onimusha, with a very similar weapon and character upgrade system. Within 15 – 20 minutes or so, you’ll be well used to the controls and kicking some angel ass. The fact that I didn’t have a clue what was going on in the story actually seemed to make it better as I was hurled from one completely abstract level to another. One minute I’m surfing on a missile, the next I’m running up the side of a sky scraper, dodging trains and the next I’m slamming a huge angel tentacle phallus into a babies mouth and slicing it in half, before tearing it to pieces using demons summoned from and made out of hair. Yeah, it is random.

The game is 70% boss battles. You may get a feeling of “I’m sure I killed you on the last level” as the game forces you to kill the same boss four or five times on consecutive missions, before having you fight them all again in a final, final, FINAL battle to the death. The boss battles are so ridiculously awesome in how they look and the amount of colour and activity going on that it really doesn’t matter and most of them are challenging enough to tax the average player without getting them stuck for too long. Saying that there are points in that game that are so knuckle-bitingly frustratingly hard that I almost destroyed London in a ball of white hot ball of fury several times during the completion of this game.

I’d personally not give this game a perfect score, but it would be pretty close. I can understand why the Japanese might think it’s perfect as they have a higher chance of being able to figure out what the hell is actually going on. I just can’t fault how graphically amazing this game is at times and when I finally turned my Xbox off after completion, I was surprised it hadn’t RROD’d on me again from being overloaded by sheer awesomeness.

THQ have done a sterling job with taking my favourite IP in science fiction and translating it to the gaming medium. The Dawn of War series and its subsequent expansions still stand the test of time today as a fantastic set of games with beautifully modelled units. It's features like the model painter, included in both games, that captured the spirit of what Warhammer was all about and really proved to me that these games were created by people who had done their homework or, more likely, had played the table-top games themselves. THQ extended their rights on Warhammer 40k until 2013 - that was back in March 2007 and since then they have made good on their promises to really bring the characters to life.


A Warhammer 40k MMO had been hinted at a while back. I read an article on Massively which had the MMO down for a 2012 release. I'll be honest with you, I was a bit gutted that it had been planned for release so far into the distant future. The Warhammer MMO is slated for release AFTER Darksiders 2. At the time of writing this, Darksiders 1 hasn't even been released yet. (8th of Jan 2010) However, that was the beginning of the year and this is now. A lot has happened since then, notably the Halo MMO being canned, for whatever reason, and a small recession that I'm sure you're all very much aware of! I mentioned the Halo MMO being cancelled because it is significant alongside all the failed MMOs that are drawing their last rattling breaths, emaciated and defeated and the feet of mighty Warcraft. Age of Conan, Tabula Rasa, Hellgate London & The Matrix Online, to name the biggest names. The Warhammer Online classic MMO is still going, although it confused me as to why anyone would want to move from Warcraft to a new game with a very similar IP. All this depressing MMOWTFFail news was gradually chipping away at my faith in the Warhammer 40k MMO ever being released at all.


Today, Kotaku published some images, released from a "Friendly Source" inside THQ Studio - Vigil Games. They aren't exactly screenshots, but they ARE proof that work on the MMO hasn't been shoved on the back burner to be forgotten about. The presence of the massive Warhound titans give a small hint towards the scale that this game could possibly working towards. The rest of the models do look tantalising, the Space Marine model especially, but I'll hold off drawing any more wild conclusions until we have some more information. But keep going Vigil, I can't wait to see what you guys come up with!

I must confess, I missed the first instalment of Uncharted, “Drake's Fortune”. I didn’t own a Playstation when it came out so I couldn’t get my mitts on a copy. So I wasn’t on the edge of my seat when I heard that its sequel had been announced. Sure, I saw the screenshots, which looked fantastic and I watched some videos of gameplay which looked scripted but still made the game look fun, but I’ve been burned too many times by games that promise the earth and fail to deliver, so I tried not to get too excited by it.

The game combines 3rd person shooter action with stealth as an option but not a requirement to progress through the story. There is a fair bit of Parkour – style climbing which reminded me very much of assassins creed and some puzzles which are so easy, they may as well not be there at all. Where Uncharted 2 really excels is in the mix of all these elements tastefully and in the right quantities so as never to bore the player with too much of one thing. The story was fun and kept me interested while the cut scenes were well acted, both by the character models and the talented voice actors. (Claudia Black especially) All of this is set against some of the most stunning backdrops I have ever seen. Clicking the images below will enlarge them.


The controls work well for a third person shooter. You will find soon after picking up the pad and learning how to use the pistol, that headshots are possible but made tricky enough to be extremely satisfying when you one-shot that evil henchman on the next rooftop over. The game combines 3 gameplay types together well in quantity, however it does fall down at controlling these 3 types equally well.

The Parkour running and jumping controls well enough, but I sometimes found that jumping from ledge to ledge felt rather scripted sometimes, like I was initiating a tiny quicktime event to jump across a gap, rather than using skill to judge the distance of the jump. This DID make the game play smoother but at the same time, made it feel a little linear, which is a shame because the backdrops were really, beautifully rendered. I want to feel like at any point, I can break away and go explore, at least a little bit.

The stealth gameplay was a particular sticking point for me. The stealth takedowns were very smooth when executed and I did try to stealth-kill where I could, rather than go guns blazing every time. However I did find that sneaking around enemies to get behind them was made more difficult because of Drake sticking to the wall at a crucial moment or perhaps jumping over the top of the wall instead of simply standing up behind it. I think this problem could have been solved by a dead-mans-switch method of duck and cover, i.e. if you aren’t holding a button down to hide, then the character doesn’t duck behind cover.

Controller woes aside though, the game is possibly the best game I have played this year. It really is beautiful to watch and to play. It never leaves you bored or frustrated and is impossible to put down. I keep thinking about Metal Gear Solid 4 as I write this. I think the comparison I’d draw is, while MGS4 is a classic that will be studied and praised for years to come, Uncharted 2 is an addictive airport novel of a game that you find yourself devouring in record time and then tentatively waiting for the next instalment. There no doubt will be a sequel to this game and when it is released, I’ll be first in-line to bag myself a copy. Oh yes.

Uncharted 2's stunning backdrops have been unsurpassed this year.

And so it seems the hype has worked against the film as I thought it would. The media frenzy and months of scrutiny and anticipation built the movie a pedestal so impossibly tall so as to make delivery of anything that could live up to peoples imaginations and expectations nigh impossible.

As I sat in my favourite seat in the little cinema in Hammersmith, i sensed restlessness in the crowd of people as they watched the movie. After the initial "wow" of the first 10 minutes or so after the opening credits had ended and the story kicked in, i started to become irritated by the number of people texting on their phones, running back and forth to the bathroom, whispering to each other and generally not paying attention to what I thought was a great movie. After I got over my annoyance at them all and quelled my need to stalk the isles with a silenced PPK, picking off those who were not paying due attention and diligence to the movie, I reminded myself of what I had initially thought when reading the graphic novel... "this is ace, but how are they going to translate this into a movie??"

In defence of those... I am hesitant to use the word idiots, but there, i just said it... in the defence of those idiots who could not sit still and listen to dialogue for more than five minutes at a time, I will say this: This movie has been billed and hyped as a superhero movie and, in essence, it is just that. However, the distinction was never made between this movie and, say Iron Man or X-Men in the advertising campaigns. Therefore people who had not read the book arrived wanting to see super powers, flying robots, indestructible men and perhaps the odd one-eyed giant tentacled mutant tearing apart New York (yes, I'll get to that).
In actual fact, what they got was a dark, dialogue heavy movie which I felt sat more on the film noir side of the fence than the superhero side of things. The reasons I think this movie didn't appeal to a large section of the audience in the cinema was the very reason I liked it so much.

Apart from the ending - and there IS a spoiler alert at the beginning of this article, so please stop reading now if you haven't seen it yet - Apart from the ending which was completely different from the comic book, I thought that most of the core elements were captured in the film perfectly. The sets were fantastic and Rorschach's part of the story, which is my personal favourite, especially his time in prison, was very well done indeed. Sure, the odd detail had been changed, they used a circular saw rather than an arc welder to cut the bars off his cell door and he didn't shackle anyone to a radiator, set them on fire and give them a hacksaw, but I do understand why you have to cut some things down and out of a story in order to fit them into what is already quite a weighty film... within reason of course. What I noticed and what I found fairly annoying, was that the night owl and the silk spectre both such a mastery of kung-fu style street fighting. I understand that making them masters of unarmed combat makes for entertaining fight scenes, but in Rorschachs case, I don’t think it was necessary. His style of fighting was so awesome in the books anyway... simply pick up whatever comes to hand and jam it in the opponents eyes... maybe break their fingers or lock them in a fridge.


I think the biggest deviation from the storyline was the ending. Again, spoiler alert. It got to about ten minutes before Ozzy was about to unveil his master plan to Rorschach and Night Owl and I started thinking... "Are they gonna do it? or are they gonna pussy out?" T minus five minutes and still nothing to suggest he was going to be teleporting psychic monsters into New York. When they decided to go with the fusion generator detonation thingy, I have to admit, I was a bit disappointed but in retrospect, I think it might have taken a bit too long to explain and, since there had already been people walking out of the cinema by this point (no doubt wondering where Val Kilmer in his rubber-nippled batman costume was) I guess I can let them off. The effect was the same, but the method was different, that's all. The motive for doing the dastardly deed remained the same but the film makers obviously decided that it was just too tricky to introduce in the last fifteen minutes of the movie, which is understandable I suppose.

You have to admit though, it would have been awesome to see a massive creature mind-blast New York with psychic energy and fill the streets with death and rivers of blood.

Funk drummin never sounded so good!

Stanton Moore is an incredibly talented drummer - so talented, he has his own band, named after him and they are all pretty awesome too. Not a long post today, just an old Vid of the man, doin what he does best... Layin’ down some grooves!!

Oh to be a reporter in the 1950's! Sipping rum in the stifling heat of San Juan after a hard day toiling away over a typewriter in a nicotine stained office. This is exactly how I felt as I accompanied reporter Paul Kemp on his journey through the bowels of Puerto Rico. Today I'm writing about the Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson.

When I read this book, I imagined the setting in tones of sepia, old Chevrolets rolling past in the dusty Puerto Rican streets as people in thin linen shirts and round-brimmed hats try to do as little as possible in the heat of the beating sun. Suddenly my tube journey to work was transformed. I could hear the Jazz and taste the cheap iced cuban rum, a refreshing change to the cramped, sweaty underground of sleepy, flu ridden Londoners.

The book tells of said reporter, his adventures and mis-adventures. He joins a small newspaper, already fated to fail due to its colourful workforce of extrovert and sometimes violent hacks that make their living there. This could be enough of a story on its own, but throw in a love interest shared between the reporter and his unstable friend and you have a recipe for both disaster and intrigue.

What impressed me the most was that this book, written from the point of view of someone who was obviously having trouble dealing with becoming middle aged, was penned by Thompson when he was just 22 years old! Although short, this is a must read for anyone, especially those with a lust for adventure or the idyllic dream of a little work and adventure in far flung lands.

Definitely - I will have to write a short article on Down & Out In Paris & London by George Orwell at some point, as both these books have the same effect of truly transporting the reader to a different place and time. It will be hard to beat books like these on my commute from here on in.

One of the most famous and celebrated sci-fi authors celebrates his 80th birthday this week! Well, unfortunately, he is dead already, he died in 1982. However Mr. Philip K Dick was responsible for a massive body of science fiction that has permeated society in the form of classic novels that will live on for the rest of time, which in turn gave rise to some of the best movies ever to be made.Everyone knows the book "Do androids dream of electric sheep?" which inspired the film by Ridley Scott "Blade Runner". This is, by the way, one of my favourite films of all time. This film was released just a few months after his death. I think it is a tragedy that he never got to see it before he died.But what about the author himself? Well to be honest, until I had started to research this post, I knew little about him. Unfortunately for the budding writer in me, it seems that Philip K Dick joins the long list of visionary masters that I aspire to who suffered from serious mental health problems and heavy drug use. Dick claimed that he wrote many of his works while high on amphetamines and LSD and later on in his life suffered from what sounds to me like paranoid schizophrenia. He would be plagued with flashes of visions into ancient Rome and as these got longer and more intense, Dick decided that this could well me a past life or that perhaps he was leading two lives at the same time. Interestingly, he also had a recurring dream that he was looking for a story entitled "The Empire Never Ended" in a magazine. He convinced himself that if he ever found the magazine in his dream that it might send him mad.

In tribute to Phillip K Dick, I've pulled my finger out and made a start on "The

 Man In The High Castle", one of his most celebrated works that I, for some reason, have never gotten round to reading I'll no doubt post about it here once I've finished it.

To find out more about Philip K Dick:

BoingBoing.net have a radio tribute to him archived on this page
The Philip K Dick tribute blog (amazing name) Total Dickhead

Films

I've listed the films of his that i really enjoyed in no particular order. I guess in the order of most awesome as voted for by me (I'm typing them as they pop into my mind). There are 9 films that I am aware of in total but these four are the ones that I have seen, remembered and enjoyed.

Blade Runner

Directed by Ridley Scott. Film Noir about a dark and not so distant future where a private detective hunts down rogue androids, while questioning his own humanity. "Do androids dream of electric sheep"

A Scanner Darkly

A strange method of filming live action scenes then animating over the top of them was used in this movie. It explores an alternate reality where a small group of friends live with their addiction to the psychoactive drug "Substance D". "A scanner darkly"

Total Recall

Truly, one of the most awesome Arnie movies of all time! This was released in the cinema in 1990 apparently (I thought it was older than that!) This film is about a man who thinks he has paid for memories of adventures to be implanted in into his mind. He quickly begins to discover that he has gotten more than he bargained for. "We can remember it for you wholesale"

Minority Report

Adapted into a blockbuster movie and directed by Stephen Spielberg,

 Minority Report is set in a future where murders are kept to an all time low by a police force that relies on the pre-cognitive abilities of three young psychics. The main protagonist is a cop, accused of a murder he has yet to commit and pursued by the very police force he used to serve. "Minority Report"