HOKANU-MK.I

March 2007 – April 2010

“She showed ‘em how it’s done…”

Still, did you have to eat my copy of Just Cause 2? You fuck.

I think I may have found my new Mercenaries 2/Saints Row 2/Prototype.

Please stop making special editions for games.

Yours Faithfully,

My Wallet.

I’m pretty sure the changelog for Valve’s new user interface didn’t mention clairvoyance as one of its features.

I’ll have more to say about Mass Effect 2′s Paragon/Renegade system soon. In the meantime it’s worth mentioning that the new Renegade ‘Interrupt’ actions are making it very difficult for my Shepherd to remain diplomatic.

Clearly one of the features of Audiosurf is that it would be impossible to see every ‘level’ that it had to offer. You work with the music you’ve got on your hard-drive and while a lot of songs may produce a memorable experience because of how much you love the music, instances of tracks that provides a truly excellent course to ride are few and far between. I’d originally intended to do a Match-3 feature on great Audiosurf courses but, honestly, I’m yet to find one that comes close to rivalling Monkey Bee from Damon Albarn’s Chinese opera side project Monkey: Journey to the West.

The three phases of the song sync up with Audiosurf’s different gradients impressively. The start of the course is uphill, a pretty relaxed affair offering no real challenge. In the second phase, which kicks in at 2:40 of the above video, you get a higher tempo flat surface that bounces along to the electronic drum hits. At this point the collectible notes are perfectly spaced to practically fill the grid. Around the 3:50 mark the guitar hits and the track goes mental (this is also the point my video capture software freaks out for a few seconds). Here you get a constant descent, littered with tricky to avoid greys and dangerous, but tempting, collectibles. It’s complete fluke that this was the run I finally managed to get the Stealth award, netting the high score by quite some margin.

Anyway, maybe you can suggest an even better course for the game. If so, let us know in the comments.

Ah crap, we’ve been at this all night

-Main Character, Dark Void

At which point, right at the start of the demo, the only thing I’m thinking is, ‘Ah crap, another main character voiced by Nolan North.’ Don’t get me wrong, he’s a really good voice actor, but after playing Uncharted 2 and Assassin’s Creed 2 fairly recently, and with Prince of Persia being a not-too-distant memory, I’m getting more than a little bored of his voice.

And the thing is I shouldn’t be able to tell. I’m almost completely rubbish at recognising voice-over artists, to the point that a friend had to point out to me that Morrigan and Alistair from Dragon Age were being voiced by the same people that did Chloe and Flynn from Uncharted 2 despite the fact they’re doing the same bloody voices in games that required them to converse with each other in a similar manner and that I was playing at the same time.

Perhaps my biggest issue is that hearing North’s voice seems to signal a very specific kind of character archetype: a cocky yet lovable rogue who gets embroiled in an escalating crisis but manages to wisecrack his way out of it with some degree of bumbling luck. Would a little bit of diversion from the stock formula be too much to ask for? Maybe I’m being unfair, but surely there are other voice actors in need of work.

Luckily the demo gave me the impression that Dark Void was rubbish; an impression most reviews have confirmed, so at least I’m getting a break.

Normally it wouldn’t be a big problem, you’ve got a few months at the start of the year to go through a few of the games in your backlog. Not so with 2010. On the face of it the publishers claimed that they were pushing games back because having everything release in the autumn was losing them money. Unfortunately they pushed everything back to the same time. In short, it hasn’t helped. Here are a few of the games either coming out in the next couple of months or already released in the last month. Note that this is just the games that I will almost definitely be buying, by no means all of the games that are actually coming out.

VVVVVV - Indie platformer that plays like a cross between Portal and Jet Set Willy. Instead of jumping you flip gravity, but can’t do so when mid-air. It’s hard, to be sure, but, importantly, never seems unfair with it. Demo here.

As the credits roll I take a quick look at the games shelf. Now Assassin’s Creed II is out of the way (more on that soon) I realise that I’ve basically finished all the PS3 games that I had decided were worth persevering with. Good job me. Well not quite actually because upstairs on that other shelf and, by the same token, in that virtual shelf that is the Steam games launcher are a horrifying number of PC games yet to be properly explored. My PCs been somewhat neglected as a gaming platform of late. Below is a highlights package of the games I really need to find the time for. At this point I’m basically fishing for suggestions; if you spot a game on this list that is pretty much essential to play then let me know.

Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars - Action-oriented RTS that is somewhat light on the ‘S’. I’m not expecting much from this, but a child-Phil once spent a huge amount of time playing its predecessor Tiberian Sun and the next game in the series, released this year, looks interesting.

Dawn of War II - Action-oriented RTS that… Oh, enough of that. I actually got a good way into this but put it down again after being completely annihilated during a mission. That wasn’t really fair as my demise was clearly my own stupid fault. Since then the game has added a Last Stand co-op mode that looks pretty good.

A screen I didn't see too often.

Planescape: Torment – The second of my must-play classics. Generally regarded by the people who know about this sort of thing to have the greatest story in gaming. Now I think about it I probably couldn’t have picked two worse games in terms of length.

Kings Bounty: The Legend – Clearly that week of An Hour With posts didn’t work because most of the games featured still sit on about an hours play time. This one’s sitting on about an hour and a half so, all things considered, has done pretty well.

I'll admit my motivation for playing this decreased dramatically when the last of my bears died.

Dragon Age: Origins – I’ve reached a familiar point. I now understand the systems that govern Dragon Age a lot better and I’m starting to wonder if I should restart with a slightly tweaked character. This wouldn’t be a large hindrance, as I’m only a few hours in, plus it would give me a chance to change my character’s hair so that she doesn’t look like 90% of the women in the game.

Much bigger than the Darkspawn problem is the problem of the unimaginative barbers.

If all this looks bad, you should see my pile of unread books.

Uninvolved, you make calls with your head and not your heart, and you never feel like you can escape the gravitational pull of the game’s design the way you can in, for example, Bethesda’s RPGs.

-Oli Welsh, Eurogamer’s Dragon Age review.

I’ll not take umbrage with the many negative things Oli Welsh has said about Dragon Age as I haven’t played it. This statement, however, cannot go unchallenged. I can’t remember a game in which I spent more time having to account for the ‘pull of the game’s design’ than Oblivion. I still remember spending around 10 minutes jumping off a roof in order to improve my athletics skill and so get full rewards upon levelling up.  That was not a call made with my heart.