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.