Super Mario Galaxy review-me-do.

Of course I bought it when it was first released. After all, it was getting rave reviews from everyone, save for the usual few monkeys who just want to attack anything Nintendo related. And, I played it, and loved it. And then, for whatever reason, I abandoned it for other games. Just .... for no real reason that I can see, other games were much more appealing to me. Which is not to say that any of them were better, incidentally. Just that they were on the 360, which meant achievments and communication with friends at the same time.

And then, the other night, nearly a year after I last played it, I decided to switch on the Wii again and give Mr. Gay another shot. The reason being that the Wii had finally seen some love over the weekend when we tried Samba de Amigo with friends. Before this, my message board tells me the Wii had been inactive in 6 weeks. Which pretty much explains why I hadn't completed Galaxy.

I still haven't completed Galaxy, but I have beat Bowser. Now, here is where things get interesting. Because I would normally not bother going back to 100% complete a game at this stage. I am more of a "Play them all" than a "Play it all" type of guy. But, I knew there was much more fun to be had in Galaxy, so I gladly went back in to add some more stars to my collection.

The closing credits pleased me, and surprised me. Apparently, 6 people were involved in level design, and 1 person was involved in in-game cinematics. This pleased me because it is the way all games should do it, and surprised me because I felt sure that there were at least 100 level designers! I have never played anything that has so consistently thrown new things at me. There are entire massive levels based around a single play mechanic that could quite easily support a full game, that is then thrown away. There are comets that change the rules completely, and yet are entirely in keeping with the rest of the game. There are of course the familiar old enemies, along with some entirely new creations. And it all sits hand-in-hand, and makes complete sense.

All the reviews you have read can't prepare you. They certainly didn't prepare me. I knew I was in for a good time, what I didn't know was that my entire gameplaying life for the last few years would be revealed to be as empty as it has been.

For example, there is a level where I had to multiple wall-jump from side to side up a tower that was sinking into the sand. Or maybe water. Or maybe just empty space, I don't remember now. What I DO clearly remember is the feeling of pure awesome as I made the jumps.It was almost as if I was all-powerful, with the knowledge that I could go pretty much anywhere at any time as of right now, and have no fear at all. Very few games give you that level of reward, Galaxy starts you off with it.

The level design shines. Every galaxy you open brings you at least one area that you can see, but can't quite work out how to get to. These areas may not contain anything, or they may contain power-ups, coins, it doesn't matter. You never feel as if they are out of reach, they are just slightly out of your reach at that moment. You trust that they are there for a reason.

This reason comes with the advent of the purple comet. Once the game is completed, you get a message telling you that 'Another chapter has been added to the storybook', and another one saying 'The purple comet has now appeared'. The purple comet is the one that scatters 100 purple coins through each galaxy, and gives you a star for collecting them all. It is an entirely optional task that is only available once you have completed the game. And yet, it feels like something you should have been doing all along. That is the genius I am talking about. 60 stars is all you need to fight final Bowser, but you will want to find the rest of the 120. Because every single star is just such fun!

Mario Galaxy has made me question just what I have been playing since Mario 64. Why aren't all games like this? I'm not suggesting that every game should be a cute platformer, but I am suggesting that every game should have this amount of love and thought lavished upon it during its creation. 99% of all other games look soulless in comparison.

I wish Mario Galaxy was on the PS3 and XBox 360, so that everybody could play it. Make no mistake about it, there are peole out there who loathe the Wii and all it stands for. These people are denying themselves one of the greatest, if not THE single most wondrous, gaming experiences ever crafted. Anybody reading this who does not have a Wii on which to play this game is hereby ordered to find a way to play it. If you do not, you will have to find a way to apologise to your own soul.

Call me Ishmael

It was a day just like any other. Maybe a little colder than others recently, but the rain was no worse than usual. There was no particularly bad news, or good news. To any observer, it was just the standard average every normal day.

Except, of course, there was something very special about it. Very special indeed. Perhaps it was a planetary alignment? Maybe biorhythms are real, and this was the day that all 3 cycles matched at the top? Whatever the reason, something was different about today. I didn't know it at the time, but I was about to experience something quite monumental...

To fully understand the events that transpired upon the 4th December 2008, we actually need to travel back in time a little, and explore several previous events. Such as, whatever date it was that I first got hold of Project Gotham Racing 2 for my original XBox. That was a good day in several ways.

The next important day happened a couple of years down the line. The actual date has been forgotten, but what I saw that day still lives with me. It was the day I read an article on joystiq.com, and more importantly, the day I watched the video that it linked me to!

Another huge milestone occured on April 11th, 2006. For, that was the day that I first had an XBox 360 of my own to play on. Perhaps April 13th was more important, though, as that was the date when I first purchased some MS points. Which allowed to download the first Live Arcade game I ever downloaded.

PGR2 wasn't just a racing game. Well, it was, but it also had a little bonus. In the garage, there was an arcade cabinet, that was fully playable. The game on the cabinet was called Geometry Wars, and it was, in this humble writer's opinion, better than PGR2! I loved it. Simple, addictive, fiendish, and absolutely relentless, it left an impression on me that not much else has managed to top.

The joystiq article alerted me to the fact that there was a sequel to this bonus game, Geometry Wars Retro Evolved. The video was of K4rn4ge scoring 16 million, which was the highest score on the leaderboard at the time. I watched, and was completely amazed at what I was seeing. It was .... beautiful! Such chaos, such frantic randomness, and such a multitude of enemies. I vowed then and there that I would have that game!

And, the day I finally had a 360 to play on, I actually played the various disc titles we got first. But, the next morning, I knew that no matter what else, I needed to buy Geometry Wars Retro Evolved. My life would simply not be complete without it.

Back then, I had no idea what achievments were going to do to me. I recall reading in the joystiq comments about 'Pacifism' being hard, and was therefore determined to get that one straight away. It took me a couple of tries, and I felt good when I managed it to that minute mark. Right there, I had a badge that proved my skills as a gamer. Right there, I was on the start of a path to greatness. That first achievment, which I got even before I scored 100,000, was the mark of honour that was going to seperate me from my friends.

I was wrong, of course. Pacifism is tricky, but far from impossible.

Since it was the first achievment I got, I looked at the others. None of them looked difficult, and I figured that I would be earning all of them before long. And, within the hour I had scored 100,000. Nice! Sometime in the next day or two I survived to 100,000. At this point, I actually led my friends leaderboard for score. Sadly, somewhere around this time, Razzie50 managed to post a higher score than mine!

Well, I had no choice but to beat her again. Which I did immediately, and it wasn't long before I had the 'Score 250,000' achievment as well. By now, I had started to realise just how tough it was going to be to get all the achievments. But, there were peole scoring 100,000,000 by now, so I had no doubt that I would be able to do it eventually. After all, scoring a million was a very worthwhile achievment, compared to some of the stupid things I had already seen games dish them out for.

But something went seriously wrong. My score kept on edging higher and higher, but I still never got anywhere near to 1,000,000. I didn't even feel like I was improving enough to get close. I swore, I screamed, I raged. I calmed myself down. I allowed myself only three games per day, so as to not allow the game to learn too much from me. I swear, I was becoming paranoid. Somehow, the game was tailoring itself to my playstyle, and getting harder instead of easier!

Why did it sometimes save?

I kept on trying, and became more and more disconsolate. I had all but given up. You may laugh, gentle reader, but my life was in ruins. I was a broken man, and nothing could ever be right again until I had done it. I convinced myself that I was beaten, and made the decision to just let it go.

Two years to the day after I got the console, I unlocked two more elusive achievments. I not only survived to 500,000, but I also had 9 lives at the same time. However, I still hadn't scored the magical million. Razzie50 had, with 200,000+ extra points to boot. Also, by now I had 4 friends who had it, as well as another 2 closer than I was. My score stood at 750,000-ish, which was frankly an insult to me. It hurt me to look at it. It literally burned my very eyes.

That night, though, I had a very good game. I upped my score to 800,000+ in that one game. Suddenly, a million wasn't so far away! Suddenly, I had new hope!

About a dozen games later, I realised what had happened. The game had tricked me! That was the only explanation, this was some kind of psychological torture. I was victim to the whims of an insane AI, programmed to impregnate me with false hope. It gave me wings just before ripping them back off me, cutting my flight short and letting me tumble back to the floor of my own despair.

Another month or so passed, and by now I only ever loaded the game when I had nothing else to play. One night, alone in the flat because my girlfriend was off in Northumberland visiting her dying grandfather, I managed to not only pass 500,000 with my first life, I also beat my current high score. In fact, I got to 900,000 on that first life. This was unbelievable! This was it! I paused upon dying, because I was shaking so much. I am shaking even now, as I recall it. My heart rate resembled that of a hummingbird, and it was even a little uncomfortable. Such adrenaline rushes are rare indeed, but they are the very reason I game.

And once again, Geometry Wars was cruel, unflinchingly so in the way it tricked me. After hitting 925,000 and having 8 lives spare, everything went as wrong as it was possible to go. Within moments, I was dead again. And again. AND AGAIN! My score that game ended up as 952,000. Catastrophe! I had somehow gone from seeing the peak of Everest to looking at it in a picture book as a 5 year old.

Would this torment never end? WHY CAN'T I DO THIS?

One million points in Geometry Wars had become my own personal Moby Dick. It was a dragon, and some day I knew I had to slay it. My life would never be my own, regardless of what other accomplishments I made in life. There was a hole that could only be filled by one of those bastard red magnet homing shielded bastards in a green circle.

This is getting a little long. I think we should have an interval. Here, look at the little dancing girl :

I don't care how pathetic you may think I am. I promise you I thought worse of me. A game was getting the better of me, to an extent beyond which anything had ever proved capable in the past. Something was wrong with the very fabric of the universe. I had been close, but still hadn't managed to suck on the cigar of success. I no longer cared if I ever beat Razzie50, or indeed anyone else. I just wanted my million. God knows I had worked hard enough for it!

Which brings us to tonight. When, for no reason I know, I loaded my nemesis up once more. Expecting nothing, I played a warm-up game. It was quite a harsh game, as it happened. That is one of the things about Geometry Wars, actually. Since it is all random micro-spawns, some games are easier to score in than others. Some games give you endless amounts of snakes and gravity wells, whereas some are a stroll in the park until suddenly you have a screenfull of magnets.

My first game tonight was snake heaven. Snakes used to be my most-hated enemy, simply because I thought they were unfair. They can spawn right on top of you, and kill you instantly, unlike all others. Then, they were replaced by the little triangle things. For a long time, they terrified me, as they flooded in from all corners leaving me no option but to smart bomb or die. However, I soon learned to deal with them, and in fact have hoped many times that they would spawn as they are a great way to speed that multiplier back up after a death.

These days, the only enemy I dislike is the magnet. An otherwise perfect run can be demolished by a badly-timed spawn of these. Also, since I rarely ever get the triangles, one magnet usually means the end of my multiplier at a decent level. My dream game would consist of loads of cyan diamonds spawning from the corners, backed up with plenty of triangles, and a healthy supply of black holes. Healthy, not excessive.

I got that game tonight.

I. GOT. THAT. MOTHER. FUCKER. TONIGHT!

My first death was at about 400,000. Which annoyed me, naturally, but wasn't a nightmare. It was my own stupid fault for dying, too, rather than the game doing something unfair. I felt the game was being mean early on, but it got to a point where I was glad of the large amount of enemies and relatively small amount of surround-spawns.

Before I knew it, I was at 800,000. This was my best game in a while. I was by now getting a LOT of triangles, none of which were killing me. I was also peppering the screen with smart bombs, as there was a steady supply of black holes exploding. My little boy was also enjoying walking in front of me, which cost me another couple of lives.

At 950,000, with 7 lives left, I was in a state of shock. I knew I had this, if I could just avoid the complete mental collapse I got last time I was here.

975,000, and by now the screen is teaming with far too many enemies. I use my last smart bomb, and start to feel myself dying inside. 6 lives to score 25,000 points ... surely I can't mess this up now?

993,000, and I die again! NOOOOOOOOOOO! But then ... a calmness comes over me. 7,000 points is NOTHING. I have 4 lives with which to score this. I have done it, I know I have, I'VE FUCKING DONE IT!

And, I did. For tonight, the game ended with me on 1,091,110! See for yourself :

I am amazed at how calmly I remained at this point. I wanted my girlfriend to walk in and see it, but she didn't. I just left it on the friends leaderboard, so that she would. I always thought that I would spontaneously combust, or at the very least run around shouting and screaming, but nothing of the sort occured.

Tonight, I feel as if there is nothing I can't do. I am once more a God amongst men. I can stand tall in the company of friends, knowing that I have not only knocked the monkey off my back, I have flung him into the pits of hell.

I don't care that I haven't beat Razzie50 yet, either. Because now, I know I can do. Now, it is only a matter of time before I take my rightful place atop my friends leaderboard. That hurdle has been getting taller and taller for the last two and a half years, and tonight I finally jumped over it.

Bring on the new Everest!

Mirrors Edge review-me-do.

The trailers were so promising! Full of blue-skies, incredible stunts, gymnastic feats, and WEEEEECOOLSPEEDY bits. Sure, the protagonist is a tad ugly, but who the hell cares about that in a game where pretty much the only thing you never see is your own face?

With good reason, people have been excited about this one. In a world full of REHASHAN and SHOOTAN, something new is something to celebrate. And Mirror's Edge is definitely a contender for "Coolest idea of the year" in gameplay terms. When people call it a 'free running' game they are mistaken, although it certainly seems that way at first. It is not Parkour, though, because you are not really trying to do anything with style. You are mostly getting from A to B as fast as possible, which maturally involves jumping and sliding, so it is obvious why people made the connection.

And, it has to be said, there are parts of Mirror's Edge that genuinely capture a feeling of unbridled motion along the rooftops. Sometimes you see where you need to be, and immediately see several ways to get there. On these instances you simply can't help yourself ; You COULD just climb that wall, but why do that when you could jump up there, slide over there, and then launch from that and roll nicely upon landing? A lack of momentum is rarely punished, and yet you feel a need to maintain it. It is purely because it is so much fun, the game appears to not actively punish you for slowing down.

Which is why it is so frustrating when the game FORCES you to slow down! Honestly, up on those rooftops is Nirvana. You feel at times like you never want to go back indoors again. So, the decision to set half the game indoors is a baffling one. Crawling through air ducts has NEVER been enjoyable, and yet in the first three chapters I have had to do it on at least three occasions. So, let me get this straight ... I am able to run along walls before leaping to catch the slightest overhang, and so naturally I take advantage of this by crawling in confined spaces. Or, waiting in lifts for a minute at a time!

It's crazy. It's almost like in the Sonic games, where the designers seem to want to restrict you too often. The best part is the running. By limiting the running, they are also limiting the fun. Because, GENERIC SHOOTAN GAME #34 does the in-building combat bits so much better than Mirror's Edge does.

I get that it wouldn't be realistic for Faith to be some kind of tank. She is an athlete, not a warrior, and so it makes total sense that she can't just stand there and absorb gunshots. But, it does seem like she is somewhat of a wuss. Pretty much two shots mean curtains. Now, I like this, but then it becomes a problem when there are more than two enemies around. Which is more or less every time there are any enemies around. Throw in the occasional helicopter gunship, and another SERIOUS flaw, and it would be very easy to hate this game.

SERIOUS flaw. Almost a game-breaker. I'm not even kidding, it is more than frustrating, it is absolutely infuriating.

Apparently, there is a thing called 'Runner Vision' wherein things you are meant to jump off/climb up/interact with are red. This is nice, but often there is nothing red on your screen at all. And so you can press B to show you where to go. Yes, the game felt the need to include a "Where the fuck do I go?" button. Something I have frequently wished more games would do, as it happens. It is a great move, except for a quite glaringly obvious contradiction.

A game about MOVEMENT and FLOW should not really ever leave me wondering "Where the fuck do I go?", should it? Am I alone in finding this to be a somewhat major gripe? Plus, it doesn't even work properly. Early in chapter 3 you come to a roof with no obvious way up to it. You can see precisely where you need to be, and a quick press of "Where the fuck do I go?" confirms this, and yet it seems to be completely beyond your reach.

I tried multiple combinations of jumps, wallruns, rolls, turns, and could not reach the next rooftop. It made no sense. I don't even know why I found the button that moved the window cleaning platform so that I could reach the roof, but it would have been nice if "Where the fuck do I go?" pointed me there instead of my ultimate destination! Fifteen whole minutes on that roof, trying every kind of athletic feat I could think of, when the solution was something far more mundane.

Playing Mirror's Edge, then, is akin to visiting a friends house as a child. He has some wonderful toys, so much better than yours, but you are only able to play with them for a couple of minutes before they are taken away. To make things worse, if you ever do get the chance to play with them on your own, you find that they are hidden from you and you have to go and find them first.

I have completed the first three chapters so far, and I have been somewhat disappointed in what I have played. Sure, there are moments where it has been everything that I had hoped for, but they have been too few and far between. Any game that has me shouting "WHERE THE FUCK DO I GO?" at the screen even when it includes a button to answer that question is getting something very basic very wrong. I'm not asking to have my hand-held. I am just asking for clear direction. By all means make getting to my destination as hard as you like, but never hide it from me.

I file this under 'Missed opportunity', then. I am sure that time trials and speedruns will change things for the better, but having to plod through a story first to get to the good bits is less fun than the designers seem to think. A game that is about getting from A to Z should also show you the way to the other 24 letters, and Mirror's Edge doesn't do that well enough.

Games got good again!

There are simply too many games coming out all at the same time. It's the same every year, with a mad rush to steal our Xmas money. Don't publishers ever think that if they wait a couple of months they can get the entire market to themselves? Imagine if you were a developer, and you were told that your game was scheduled to be fighting for shelf space with FIFA, PES, Gears of War 2, Fable 2, Fallout 3, Tomb Raider Underworld, Left 4 Dead, the WoW Lich King expansion, Resistance 2, and Little Big Planet? Wouldn't you be just a little concerned? Wouldn't you rather be the only good game released in March? I know for certain that I would.

But, that's not actually what I am wanting to talk about. It is a rant I am all too happy to go into this time every year, but this year is different.

Because this year there are two games released that may well steal the entirety of my play time.

I got into games at the age of 7 by playing Space Invaders on my way to school. Back then, arcade games were a whole new concept. They were also EVERYWHERE! Corner shops, takeaways, the local swimming pool, pubs ; all had their own arcade machine. Some were good, some were not so. But they were all pure excitement to a nipper like me. Of course, I wasn't very good at them, but sometimes I did well enough to make it into the top 10 scores. And I have never forgotten the feeling of typing my name in to the scoreboard, even if I knew it would probably be gone the next day. (I didn't even realise at the time that the top 10 was almost certainly wiped every night when the owner unplugged the cabinet.)

As I faced my teenage years, though, arcade cabinets were not so prevalent anymore. But that wasn't a problem as games had moved well and truly into the home. The Sinclair ZX Spectrum that I got for Xmas as a 12 year old became the single most used thing I posessed. Games got more complex, and more varied. Graphical adventures made you think, but overall I still felt more comfortable with games that just kept on pushing me harder against ever increasing odds.

Cycling on several more years, and the high score concept had all but left games for good. Story had taken over. Shooters had more or less died. The focus seemed to be on 3D worlds, and ensuring the player got a 40 hour campaign/story. Final Fantasy VII deservedly sold millions, but it also made games into virtual masturbation. the social and competitive aspect was becoming a memory.

XBox Live changed all that. By having leaderboards for pretty much everything, and by allowing remote players to connect their consoles, competitive and co-operative multiplayer console gaming became the norm once more! (I know the DreamCaast did it first, but the XBox did it right. That is what matters to the world at large.)

And now, the XBox 360 has two games that are pretty much the realisation of my videogaming wet dream.

The first is Gears of War 2. Here we have the age-old story of Man vs Aliens. LOTS of aliens! Sure, there is a campaign mode, but it isn't a life-sucking epic. It is 5 acts, and unless you jump right in to the hardest difficulty solo on your first attempt (as I have done) you won't be seeing much beyond 10 hours gameplay, no matter how poor you are.

It also has multiplayer over Live. And, one of these games is the new 'Horde' mode. In Horde, up to 5 players co-operate against the Locust. Wave 1 has 10 or so enemies. Wave 2 has more. Wave 3 has even more. Oh, and there are more types of them, too. They are bigger and meaner. Every single wave adds more enemies. Then, at Wave 10, they get double health!

This continues for 50 waves. And, you get a score. So, we have a co-operative game where you are all facing against ever-increasing amounts of tougher enemies, which then allows you to compare your skills to others. My friend Jon and I managed to get to Wave 18 so far, and it is getting quite insane already. Plus, this is on NORMAL difficulty. There are two additional difficulties beyond this! I am already taking an hour to cool down, what exactly is this going to do to me on Insane?

Naturally, there will come a day when I will attempt to do all 50 waves on my own. Because THAT is what I game for! Being the guy at the top of my friends leaderboard? Trust me, it doesn't get any better than that for me.

I once started a Source mod of my own. It was going to be some kid of Secret Agent training simulator, where you just fought ever-increasing numbers of AI bots in an attempt to get a higher score. But, the Secret Agent bit was just a quickly invented plot on which to hang my perfect game. I spoke to several people about it, and they all said more or less the same thing. Most weren't into it, needing more of a plot.

But somehow it seems that Epic read my mind, and gave me a marginally altered version of my ideal game. (Only because my game didn't end at Wave 50, it just kept on going until it beat you by sheer brute force and weight of numbers.)

I can honestly say that I have no need to ever play anything else, but then I remember that Left 4 Dead is released very soon. And, having played the demo of that one, I am even more excited than I have been for a very long time.

It's not just that it is zombies. It's that there are just so many of them!

It's not like Horde. Things don't keep on heating up. Left 4 Dead is basically 'Escape the city' for the four of you. In fact, it is more like Dead Rising, pitting you against so many enemies that at times you literally can not see anything else on screen. What makes Left 4 Dead is the co-op aspect. Even on your own, you are teamed up with 3 AI bots. The option is, of course, to have humans for each of the four charcaters. I swear, with 3 friends it won't matter if we win or not. I know for certain that 99% of the time I am going to be too busy laughing to shoot straight.

There are 4 campaigns, each with 5 maps. 20 maps of zombie MAYHEM! Again, there are multiple difficulties, with the last one being labelled 'Impossible.' How can I resist something like that? And as it is Live, there will be leaderboards.

Zombies. Co-op. IMPOSSIBLE. Did Valve reach into my brain and make a game for ME?

Co-op is the future. Every game should have a way to play with others, regardless of how little sense it makes. Halo 3 was good solo, and great with friends. If you haven't played the campaign co-op, you haven't played it properly. With friends, the story doesn't matter. With friends, the difficulty is basically what you want it to be. With friends, even if you mess up you can still laugh. With friends, you can all work together, or you can kill steal and team-kill for lulz. I often stick plasma grenades to team-mates right at the end of the level, just because I can.

Things are looking up. Gaming is slowly remembering just what it was that made it popular in the first place. It was never about epic tales, it was just about epic gameplay.

Limited edition .... demos?

A new and somewhat bizarre trend is evolving.

For some time now game demos on the XBox Live marketplace have been available only to Gold subscribers for the first week, before finally becoming available to all. This is not really nice, but it is completely understandable why Microsoft would do it. After all, the XBox business model is based on getting as many subscribers as possible.

But, there is a new twist. When the Mirrors Edge demo went up last week it turned out that the 'Race' section of the demo requires a pre-order code to play it. Basically, half of the demo is closed to anybody who downloaded the demo in order to try it.

Left 4 Dead has a demo released today. Well, for some people. It is currently limited to people who have pre-ordered it. The rest of us have to wait a week to see the demo.

Am I alone in missing the point of this?

The way I see it is that demos have always been a tool for a potential customer to decide wether they wish to buy the game or not. A convincer, if you will. I didn't need a demo for Mario Galaxy because I already knew just how good it was going to be. I did need a demo for Crackdown, though, and I am so glad that one existed because I may have missed out on a truly awesome game otherwise.

But now, it seems that demos are a reward for people who already want the game. I mean, how exactly is locking half the demo away going to sway me to pre-order if I haven't already done so?

Left 4 Dead is slightly more understandable, but even more annoying. Knowing that the thing is out there, and that I just can't play it yet .... it sucks.

The thing is, it's a risky strategy. What if Left 4 Dead isn't as good as expected? Too Human had a demo that completely put me off the game, it is not stretching belief too far to sgguest that the same thing could happen again. Suddenly, hundreds of pre-orders cancel and demand refunds. (Not that I expect Valve to let us down, but it could happen.)

The solution is obviously just to pre-order. But, there is no way on this or any other Earth that I am ever going to do that. What possible reason can I have to give my money to someone several weeks in advance of receiving my product? Especially since even a paid pre-order does not guarantee getting the game. I have a friend who paid for her launch day DS in advance only for Gamestation to sell it to someone else, and so she had to wait to get hold of it.

Pre-ordering is a system that milks us gamers for all we are worth. It does nothing for us as consumers at all.

They sell you on the idea that this game will be in short supply, that you might not be able to get hold of it otherwise. Well, in answer to that, I shall just ask you when is the last time you saw that happen? (Wii Fit, actually, but that is the ONLY one for the last .... who knows how many years.) I guarantee for anybody who didn't pre-order Gears of War 2 that you will be able to walk into any shop and buy it tomorrow.

By handing over your cash before the game is released, you are effectively locking yourself into a cycle. Once they have you, they try to shift you onto the next release. 'A fool and his money are soon parted.'

You should not be falling for it. You should not be such a slavering follower of consumerism. You should instead answer all the requests to pre-order with "I don't pre-order. I generally buy it wherever I can find it cheapest." Last week saw the release of Fallout 3. The week before it was Fable 2. Both of these games are £39.99 in both GAME and Gamestation. Whereas, in Sainsbury's, they are £29 and £29.97 respectively.

If I had pre-ordered both games I would be £21.01 down today. And there are countless times when I have found games for cheaper than the big 2 offer. Anyone who pre-orders every big release is basically giving £5-10 away every single time. That's potentially £50 this month alone! What kind of insanity is that?

The ONLY time I bothered to pre-order was for GTA IV, and that was because they didn't ask for money up-front. It was just to make sure they got enough copies in. I went to the midnight opening, but unfortunately forgot my phone with the text message on it that was apparently needed before they would let me in the store.

"Can you not just use my GAME card to determine who I am?" was my obvious question, to which they responded with
"We don't have the facility to do that. You can call our customer service department in the morning."
I was aghast.
"It is midnight. Do you honestly think I would be here now if it was possible for me to be here in the morning?"
"I'm sorry, but .."
"It's 2008. This is quite ridiculous."

I walked off, and went to Tesco instead. Got it for about 50p cheaper, and no queue. Wish I had been there at midnight instead.

Sure, it was my own fault for forgetting my phone. But suppose the text message didn't arrive? What then? Or, maybe my phone got stolen? Or I dropped it somewhere? Or, I forwarded the text message on to a friend who didn't pre-order? What STUPID system is it that relies on a text message as confirmation?

So, I think it behooves us all as gamers to let go of this idea. We already overpay, as witnessed by the way they throw so many '2 for £30' offers at us with games that don't sell millions right away. If Sainsbury's and ASDA can offer games cheaper than dedicated game retailers, what exactly does that tell us? I seriously doubt that any supermarket gets more copies than the specialists do.

If anybody in the world has read this, and decided not to pre-order ever again, then please make sure to tell other people you know to stop it, too. We gamers should all be in this together, and should co-op against the bosses who are working as hard as possible to empty our pockets.

Schizophrenic RPG-ing.

I've been playing a lot of Fable II this week.

Ok, there is no way to not say it. The game is magnificent. In many ways it is everything the first game promised us it would be. Every action has a consequence, truly. Even the accidental discharges of magic can lead to unwanted effects. I fired off some blades in Bowesrtone Old Town, and was charged with the crime of 'Vandalism'. This bought the law to me, who asked for a 10 gold fine. However, I also had the opportunity to do Community Service, or to even resist arrest! (I chose the Community Service, but when I fired my first spell I violated my parole, and was given the same choice again.)

I like this. It is no longer a case of 'Good or Evil' at key moments, it literally follows you through your entire life. And, you are rated on more than one scale, too. Goodness, Purity, Attractiveness, and some other hidden ones. Buying clothes can give you bonuses in Ridiculousness and Cross-Dressing, and foods have a Fatness component. All the NPCs in the game respond to different things, so some of them like you to dance for them, while some of them are flirty. Usually, any action you do attracts a crowd, and this can lead to entire cities being madly in love with you, hinting that their finger would look so much better with a ring on it. So much so that the freaks will literally follow you into your house when you go to get your nookie on!

And yet, with so much epic going on, it still manages to mess up on some of the most basic levels. Like the menu system. If you use any item, it kicks you straight out and back into the game engine in order to show you any changes. I get that, I completely understand the point if, say, you were changing clothes. But, if I just read a book? Why should I need to see the effect it has on my dog? It is overly annoying, because generally you find a whole bunch of books at the same time.

I adore the combat! Mapping all your melee onto X, ranged attacks onto Y, and Magic (skills) onto B sounds like a way to oversimplify and dumb things down. Far from it, it actually allows for some intricate combos, particularly with skills. Risk vs reward is an overlooked game mechanic these days, and it is nice to see a game implement it so very well.

And, the game is just fun. Often lol-worthy, always at least amusing. The inclusion of co-op via Live AND local is the icing on the cake! Or would be, had they not gimped out the local co-op so. Basically, all action takes place on the same screen, which makes sense. What doesn't make sense is that player 2 can only be a henchman, and not their own character. Probably there are just too many variables to track, and it would be silly to have players 1 spouse cower in fear every time they saw player 2, so I guess that is forgiveable. What is NOT forgiveable is that the only person in the entirety of creation that I can not give a gift to is my own girlfriend because she does not have a seperate 360 to play the game on. I can give a gift to ANYBODY over Live, even random freaks who just happen to be in the same town as me. But someone I care about? Apparently not. Who thought this was a smart move, huh?

The Live system is a good one, actually. It is like an MMO, only not exactly. What happens is that every player has an orb, that shows where they are and their gamertag, and you can highlight them to check them out as if they were an NPC. You don't see the player, just the orb. If they have a headset, you can hear them talking within a certain distance. There is one fairly massive drawback to this system.

It reminds me that Fable II is NOT an MMO, and gets me thinking about MMOs again. I now have a hankering to play one!

Excite Truck review-me-do.

There are often times in my life when I get somewhat jaded, and just don't want to play games. At least, none of the ones I have, at any rate. This leads to me constantly having unfinished games, and me constantly being in the middle of more games than there are hours in the day. For example, right now I am technically still playing Megaman 9. And Okami. CoD 4, GTA IV, Super Paper Mario, Mario Galaxy, Prey, Uncharted, Resistance, and it goes back even further. Shadow of the Colossus, for fucks sake! Why did I never complete that one? (Hint : It got dull.)

At times like this the last thing I should do is try something else. And yet, invariably, I feel the need for a new experience. When my latest title arrived from lovefilm, it was something I wasn't really bothered about ever playing. I had avoided it plenty of times, but I figured "Why not? How bad can it be?"

I shouldn't have doubted the quality. I know full well that the solution to Jaded Gamer Syndrome is to play something old-school. Something with zero story, PROPER VIDEOGAME PHYSICS (ie. no physics at all), and gloriously uncomplicated aims. You know, the kind of thing where you never worry about where to go next, or find the exact bit of scenery to interact with for the next cut-scene. Nope, just a straightforward twitch game.

Excite Truck suffices. It does more than suffice, actually. It lives up to its name. It excites, it truly does.

The speed of the game can only be described as blazing. Sure, these are not exactly Motorstorm quality graphics, but they are still nice enough. Better than anything you played until a couple of years ago, certainly. Backgrounds whizz past, trees come at you so suddenly you can't avoid them, and enemy cars all look like they are racing the same course as you are. It's all fantastic, unless you are one of those fuckheads on the internet who insist that everything needs to be full 1080p and that you CAN ACTUALLY TELL THE DIFFERENCE. (Hint : You can't.)

So, you narrowly avoid the trees, smash the hell out of the truck in front of you, and then you go up a hill. Flick your Wiimote up, hit the d-pad for a turbo, and see a whole new level of JOY. Flying through the air, sometimes at insane heights, tilt your Wiimote just right so you land all 4 wheels at the same time, and get another boost. This can usually take you right to the next jump, wherein you get to boost again. Or maybe it takes you to a ! icon, which allows COOL STUFF to happen. Like the entire terrain might deform to make a new jump for you to OMG WEEEEEEEEE up once more. There are tracks where you just don't get the time to drive any kind of planned route, you are simply reacting to the near-permanent boost. You will smile, you will laugh, and you may well even squeal.

Of course, being a Wii title, there are issues. Tantamount is the steering. See, you control it with the Wiimote on it's side. Not a porblem, except that none of us are as steady as we think we are, and the Wiimote is sometimes too bloody sensitive. So you often find yourself having to correct for movements you didn't even realise you made. Or, worse still, you find yourself unable to steer the way you wanted to because you moved the damn Wiimote, or tilted it differently. Thing is, it is always your own fault, so it's not a valid complaint. But it will make you shout. Waggle is used sparingly, and I was pleasantly surprised to find myself hammering the 2 button when I crashed instead of the usual mid-air Wiimote wank motion.

Blah blah blah, race mode and challenge mode, blah blah blah, 2 player option, blah blah blah, rising difficulty levels, blah blah blah, unlock tracks and trucks, blah blah blah. All the requisite boxes ticked. Custom soundtracks via SD card are a nice addition, something that should relly have become standard in all games since the days of the original XBastard. Being an early Wii game there is no online at all, which is a pity. 4 player would also be nice, but I can imagine 4 players having fun taking turns and watching others. It's just got that old feel to it.

The biggest fault I can find with Excite Truck is that it makes me REALLY want an online F-Zero. Which probably says more for the speed of it than anything else, and also probably marks me out as so big a nerd that I shouldn't be allowed out of doors any more.

So far I have completed Bronze and Silver cups, as well as a couple of the challenges. I prefer the challenges, as they are the exact kind of thing that I do best. OCD gaming, where you do what you did last time but faster, sooner, harder, better, chasing that boner-inducing S rank. But, that's enough to tell me that this is one excellent game. Also enough to tell me it may well be a little short.

'Outdated concept that has no real use' out of ten. My life has been improved having played it, and if I ever see it cheap enough I may well buy it. Definite rental for anyone else, it's just so much fun.

Play Sega super stuff!

I discovered a new cool SEGA thing, loves! PlaySega, which seems to be new casual portal thingy designed to steal all of our very souls. You know the kind of thing ; Annoying flash games, avatar customisation, all that usual palarver. (It has just now occured to me that I don't know how to spell 'palarver', so I'll just put what feels right to me.) Except it's by SEGA. This automatically makes me want to do squelchy things to it. SEGA GOOD!

There's not an awful lot right now, to be fair, and some of it is broken. I have completely failed to do anything in Sonic at the Olympics, as the game seems determind to not recognise my keyboard in the least. But, in the 'word games' section, I found a nice distraction called Aquatic Word Blast.

It is both good and awful. Good in that the idea is highly enjoyable. Make words from the letters given in the time alloted. Make more words, get more time. Keeps on getting harder, and is exactly the kind of game that someone like me is VERY good at, being a verbose .... type ... guy. And bad, because it doesn't recognise 'wrist', and yet is happy to use 'manioc' as a 6 letter word.

And extremely good because I am currently in the top 10 for it! See right here :



Yes, I know. CheekyLeeth. I was shocked to see that my name had already been taken, and seemingly not by me. Unless I somehow did it a while back, and have mysteriously not used my email address or password. I am CheekyLee, damnit! Not whoever has made an account using that name. I wonder if I get famous enough, will I be able to sue?

Or perhaps it is just time to expand CheekyLee everywhere else ... Or maybe even get a whole new identity altogether? I am quite fond of Magic Beans!

Of course, by the time anybody reads this I will be languishing somewhere in the lower echelons of the top million, I have no doubt. But, for now, I have proof that even briefly I was one of the big guns in a global game! GO TEAM!

Crazy Mouse.

Dear, oh dear.

This morning, as I do every Wednesday, I downloaded the latest XBox Live Arcade demos. Today we got Age of Booty from Capcom, and Crazy Mouse from .... you know, I didn't actually look? Anyway, whoever it is, they do NOT deserve to have their name mentioned online. Someone might accidentally buy this pile of shite as a result, and I in no way, shape, or form wish to be responsible for any additional sales of this abomination.

How bad can it be? I'll tell you.

Take Bomberman as your starting point. Isolate everything that makes it fun, and then cripple all those features. So, replace your Bomber with a mouse. Have him walk on jelly. And make him completely unresponsive to your controller. Got all that? I hope not, I sincerely hope not. Oh yeah, and don't actually have bombs in the game. So, instead of the crazed glory that is a fully-fledged Bomberman war, you have a slow-paced maze combat game, only without any actual strategic combat.

I suppose I should have been suspicious when I saw the price. Now, retro games are generally 400 points, unless of course people want to play them, in which case they are 800 points. New titles go for 800, unless of course there is an internet buzz about them, in which case they go to 1200. Crazy Mouse is brand new IP at 400.

Uh oh.

Here's the thing. Even at 100 MS points I would feel ripped off had I bought this game. Honestly, there is no way something so banal should be released. Not when there are hundreds of independent games out there that are vastly superior.

Recently, there were some demos of XNA community games. Most were ok, one was outstanding. The Dishwasher : Dead Samurai was basically a 2D Devil May Cry, and I would have had no qualms about spending 1200 MS points on it the very day I played it. Why is that not available yet? Whereas, what we do have available instead is a complete horse turd.

Of course, Live Arcade games all come with demos, so nobody can ever say they had no idea what they were buying was so poor. I have only played the demo of Crazy Mouse, so in fairness I am not basing this 'review' on the full title. However, I have been scarred enough by the three levels I did play to know full well that nobody should be playing something like this.

It frustrates me, because I could make (and already HAVE made) a better game. And yet, I can't get my game onto Live Arcade because I am not a known software house. There must be thousands of smaller developers out there just praying for the opportunity to put their games onto XBox Marketplace. MS seem to have a very bizarre system of choosing what makes it. Sure, their concerns about flooding the market with poor quality sound noble, but then they go and allow something so pitiful on to the platform. One has to wonder why...

In short, do not, repeat DO FUCKING NOT buy Crazy Mouse. EVER. Under no circumstances should something like this be allowed to flourish. This back-scratching is the exact kind of thing that is killing the industry. Instead of opening up the market to all, and letting the quality rise, they slam doors in the faces of the little guys.

The game was so poor that I switched off my 360 in disgust, without even getting to try Age of Booty! Since that is a Capcom game, this is almost an unheard of situation.

Still, some good will come out of this. Because now I have an even greater determination to get my own product out there!

Pre-loading splash screens full of obligatory introductory information.

First off, allow me to apologise. After all, you are very aware that the interweb needs another blog, let alone a gaming one, like you need the price of petrol to rise even more. But, it's getting one anyway. I need to write, I need to create. Even if I have no audience, I'm still gonna do it. It'll be good practise. The ocassional bot posts telling me how to make money online will suffice as my feedback.

So, who am I? Well, you may know me as CheekyLee. You may also know me as Lee Weedall, a 38 year old Englishman who is currently living in Lincoln. Go on, google me. I am most of the first page of results, and usually because of prior failed attempts to do just this. See, it is my life's ambition to not actually work. I don't like giving time to other people when I could have that time to myself. So, somehow or other, I want to get paid for games. Be it playing them, writing about them, talking about them, looking at them, or making them.

To this end, I have actually made some small steps. I enrolled at Lincoln University to do a degree in Computer Games Production, but left during the second year. Actually, they kicked me out, but only because they sent me a letter saying "If we haven't heard from you by this date we will have no option but to expel you" and so naturally I just didn't bother talking to them. Saved me the effort, right? Thing is, they have since emailed me to point out that I didn't enrol for the third year, and I have also heard that the head of the 2nd year called my name out in a lecture to see him afterwards. So, I think it is safe to say that I made the right decision. Let's face it, the University is not exactly on the ball.

Far and away my favourite part of the first year was Introductory Games Studies. In this module, we used Game Maker to create minigames. I love Game Maker. I was so surprised at just how much potential it has. Especially to someone who is not a programmer. (I could be a programmer, but I am far too good at displacement activity!) I made several games, and I feel that I can expand on the concepts of some of them. Especially as we move towards a more indie-friendly marketplace.

More and more people are accepting that videogames are an enjoyable pastime. Every single year sales go from strength to strength. However, the big sellers are not just the multi-million dollar epics produced by hundreds over the course of a few years. They are the games that your granny can play.

Well, I can make those!

This is where I currently stand. I am still learning more about Game Maker, because I just enjoy it. I am starting to learn more about both Flash, and XNA. My ultimate plan, at the moment, is to take advantage of the fact that XNA created games will be available to download on XBox Marketplace. I want to have something on there at the lowest possible price, and just see where that takes me. I don't plan to become a millionaire from this, I just want to earn a living.

I am also exploring the idea of some kind of webcast, or possibly even TV series. When the television channel Xleague launched, it was a dream come true. They focussed on e-sports, but also had plenty of other progamming, including the excellent Games Night. Games Night was a round-table discussion programme based on the gaming industry, and I had the honour of being invited onto the show twice. It was nominated for a GMA award, but at time of writing I have no idea if it won or not. It truly was the most interesting games show ever.

Unfortunately, Xleague was run by a bunch of businessmen. Which meant that a lot of decisions were made to maximise potential profit rather than make meaningful content. Which ultimately led to a safety first approach, and cost the channel big time. That they are even still broadcasting at all is a miracle. Still, they gave me several ideas, some of which I am slowly working on in the background.

And finally, there is the journalistic approach. I have done this kind of pointless rambling for the best part of the last 10 years now. My stuff at Honest Gamers is still my peak, and I wish it still existed. My stuff at 1Up was less good, and certainly less volumatic. I have just mellowed or something, I write nowhere near as much as I once did. Which is something I need to recapture. That's what this is for! I will use this blog to write thoughts about game design, write reviews, comment on current events, and generally just have a wall at which to throw my mental shit. Plus, blogger allows me to use google adsense, which potentially allows me some income. I KNOW, it's a pipe-dream. But, anything is better than nothing.

I hope it is as entertaing a ride as I hope it will be.