Pre-emptive strike against Splthinter Thell

The main thing, though, is the remarkable and bold focus - none of Assassin's Creed 2's endless tutorial or ridiculous minigames, or indeed of Arkham Asylum's irritatingly blocked routes and hollow collectormania. This reborn Splinter Cell just gets on with it: it has the courage to pick one thing, the fantasy of being a hi-tech manhunter, and do it as well as possible,. Conviction believes in itself, and so should you.-IGN UK 


What this reviewer failed to appreciate is that the "long-tutorial" of Asscreed  was not only necessary for getting to grips with the mechanics, which though simple, had the potential to be easily be mishandled. It was also an excellent opportunity to spend time on character development. It may seem a moot point in the instant satisfaction world of interactive media, but a developed character lends purpose to the interaction. A game with a disposable narrative and two-dimensional protagonist are easily forgotten, the only exception to this rule being the Master Chief. Every studio and publisher is after the next bankable franchise, and those aren't made in a day. The market is incredibly competitive and the consumer is increasingly discerning, for some, solid gameplay just isn't enough. 
As for the criticism of Arhkham Asylum, well that I can verify, running awkwardlydown repetitive halls  as Batman always seems to do, looking for question marks quickly loses its appeal. However it was the first game to do the caped crusader justice, so for the most part, its faults are forgiven. 
Tomorrow I put my order in for Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Conviction having played the demo and been frustrated by my inability to use Sam Fisher to the best of his ability. I want a real crack at the whip and I need a new co-op for my housemate to come home to. 

Sci-fi action RPG sound like your cup of tea? ME2

Bioware is pretty well known on the RPG scene, it made its name with the vast Baldur’s Gate, a game for the now ancient Window’s systems that had five discs and an isometric view that to the over-the-shoulder games witness (which I was for so long) seemed crowded and incomprehensible. However it cemented itself in the annals of critical acclaim for making Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic for the Xbox, also its first foray into the heady world of science fiction as opposed to fantasy. They blew everyone away myself included for managing to make a Star Wars game that surpassed the achievements of the prequels that had left fans of the original struggling to overcome shock of Jar-Jar Binks and Hayden Christensen. Compelling, well written characters, engaging story and simple turn based mechanics all amounted to an instant classic. Bioware would forever be synonymous with the people who restored people’s faith in the Star Wars franchise and knew how to make games that didn’t sacrifice story for game-play or vice-versa.

The first Mass Effect I enjoyed immensely but wasn’t without it faults. Unsurprisingly Bioware had trouble letting go of it’s turn based combat roots and as a result mass Effect wasn’t sure if it was a third-person shooter trying to be a turn-based game or a turn based game trying to be a third person shooter, small wonder then that the game-play often misfired as badly as the game’s sniper rifles. The cover mechanic was more than temperamental and the constant need to micromanage force powers, sorry “biotics” meant that the action didn’t flow nearly as well as it could. Hoarding weapons was another unfortunate carry over from the old days, as you constantly opened crates looking for improved radioactive rounds or a better shotgun, in the end you’re inventory was crammed with a lot of junk whose tiny statistical variation didn’t seem to warrant all the bother. It seemed that the game being something of an experiment had also suffered budget issues, and as such the “vast universe of diverse planets” actually boiled to the same lifeless, mountainous  hunk of rock in a slightly different colour. These huge moons were traversed in the awful rover that handled like a shopping trolley with a wheel missing, the soul highlight of these planets being a bunker that came in only three variations inside and out. However despite all this the game was lifted by a compelling story about your mission to stop galactic apocalypse wrought by ancient machines that look like colossal head-lice.

So we know that Bioware know how to tell story, so with that in mind it comes as little surprise that the opening cinematic for Mass Effect 2 is one of my all time favourites. Following a little intro-scene providing some skilful plot exposition reminding us that we are Shepherd; saviour of the galaxy and possibly the alien answer to the UN (depending on whether you chose to last time around) we cut to my favourite space-ship the SSV Normandy drifting smoothly through space, part yacht part stealth fighter plane. Once again piloted by Seth Green played with great conviction and truth by Seth Green. Suddenly out of nowhere, the ship comes under-attack, is dreadfully damaged and Shepherd having said goodbye to the love interest from the last game (in my case Liara an archaeologist of the slutty-race of aliens) attempts to rescue the crippled Seth Green from the sinking vessel. It’s clear from the outset that the graphics have stepped hugely since the last game as has the conception, it was a stirring moment to find myself on the deck of the navigation section ceiling blown away, seats floating in zero-gravity the only sound the breath of my respiration unit.

The designers cut seamlessly between cinematic and game-play as our mystery attacker comes in for another pass, landing the ship a final blast, giving Shepherd just enough time to rescue Seth before being blown into space. The Normandy is destroyed and Shepherd plummets into the cold void, clutching with futility at the rents now pouring out life and oxygen, drifting motionlessly, unmistakeably dead. I was left somewhat shell-shocked, our protagonist and his vessel are both committed to the unremitting nihilism of death. A Bold move that instantly sets the dark tone the sequel aims for.

Needlessly to say both Shepherd and the Normandy are brought back to life at the behest of Martin Sheen, that’s right Martin Sheen! President Jed Bartlett himself the head of a shadowy intelligence agency known as Cerberus. It speaks volumes that the video-games industry can now draw this calibre of talent to the table, something my mum is still coming to terms with “Martin Sheen? I don’t believe you.” For some reason Americans are particularly terrified of intelligence agencies, probably with good reason. Anyway as Shepherd is quick to remind himself, he killed his fair share of Cerberus operatives on those boring rock planets in bunkers both A B and C, why would he agree to help them? Because the universe needs saving of course! Silly man (or woman) the choice is yours, this is an RPG after all.

Mass Effect two is vastly improved on the first game maturing not only tonally and aesthetics but also in terms of fluidity. Shepherd’s armour that used to resemble a camo-coloured wetsuits is more bulky and well, armoured.  The weapons that apparently were beyond a special-operative superior to all his peers are now easier to fire, although for balance purposes some are still unavailable. This is less frustrating than the first game which let you use them but were entirely ineffective, which begged the question as to how such a fantastic soldier never learnt the principles of using more than one gun, how difficult can it be? Anyway I digress, suffice to say the micro-management of powers is gone as the designers have reduced the mind boggling variety to a select few. These have been handily mapped to a different button meaning that you need never pause game-play in order to reduce an enemy to ash. It seems Bioware at last shook off it’s old fantasy roots to deliver a higher-tempo, less confusing action experience.

However none of this has detracted from the well-written, excellently acted dialogue and engaging characters. When RPGs give you squad mates to help you in your quest for them to be truly great they need to be useful in combat and interesting to talk to. HK-47 the psychotic robot from Knights of the Old Republic was an example, as was Garrus from the first Mass Effect. I liked his ability to snipe enemies and his calm voice that belied a man/alien, frustrated by a bureaucracy  that hinders him from stopping crime. 

Despite what peter Molyneux may tell you, it’s not easy to love or even like video game characters, unlike books or films games need to work. Chess wouldn’t be any good if every piece had an amusing back-story but they could all only move one square forward. Game characters are more like kitchen utensils, you love them because they’re useful, and anything else is a bonus. Though I’m in danger of dragging this metaphor out, the dog in Fable 2 is like the microwave beeper that goes off when it’s finished, useful but you could live without it, Garrus is like the broad-bottomed, high-sided, non-stick frying pan that can cook anything and can easily be cleaned. I love that pan and I love Garrus Vakarian. It was an excellent and typically satisfactory Bioware moment when the vigilante carving his way through a crme-infested space station turned out to be none other than Garrus. I was chuffed to have him back on my time, and was horrified to see him gunned down and permanently scarred.If it sounds like I’m going on about this guy a bit much and why don’t I fuck him already? I shall tell you now I bloody did. That’s right when playing as female shepherd I fucked Garrus even though he’s got a face like a hairless falcon and the body of an ant.

Besides the ability to tap alien ass, I was of course assembling my new team with some old faces and many new, doing little side-quests here and there to give me relief from the exhausting central plot. Though weapon customisation was trimmed right down, you still need resources to upgrade them, which require you to scan planets for resources. It seems that Bioware still need to inject tedium in there somewhere as though worried that the RPG purists will get annoyed. However the bunkers on moons are gone replaced by mini missions on unique planets that are fun, if a little too short.

However the greatest achievement of Mass Effect 2 isn’t the great narrative moments where you encounter old allies like Urdnot Wrex, who as a friend pointed out has the same character arc as Canderous Ordo from Knights of the Old Republic, but never mind because the rival to his throne is guy who played Worf. Nor is it the realisation of a new universe, which is different enough to be fresh, but is nevertheless familiar, the aliens divided into stereotypes, the intelligent ones, the money grabbing ones, the sexy ones and the violent ones all manifested in another film or tv.show years ago. Its greatest achievement is how game-play, personal motivation and story are tied so closely together. To succeed in the final level, a suicide mission to which there’s unlikely to be a return you need to assemble a bad-ass squad. Depending on your own character-class you quickly assemble a favourite combination, however to get the most out of your kitchen utensils you need to do favours for them. These missions further characterise your useful squad-mates and un-tap their combat potential, motivating you to dig deeper and rewarding you for doing so. This is something I failed to realise during my first play-through and as a result everyone died. Garrus too? That’s right. Him too. However having fucked him as female Shepherd and learnt more about everyone second time around I was damned if I was going to let that happen again. Bioware had tricked me into caring for these people and for an RPG there is no greater achievement.

This is a franchise that can only go onward and upward in terms of narrative quality and technological achievement, much like a soap I’m dying to know what happens to Shepherd and his rag-tag bunch of aliens, robots and soldiers. As is my housemate who finished the game in four in the morning eyes glued to the screen, having played it for eight hours straight. It’ll be a bittersweet moment when the last act of the final game concludes, but then again, there’s always DLC. 

Being left in Limbo feels like Heaven

Never let it be said that Xbox Live is not a great and noble system, basking in glorious Gold Membership one can download films, the latest demos, and even patch those niggling bugs that have been spoiling our most recent purchase. Yet beyond this is it serves a far greater good, giving a platform for the independent games developer. Much like the indie-film director the games developer is not slave to market research, focus groups and corporate stooges interfering with the creative process. With this freedom the indie-developer can experiment, innovate and attempt something original.

Such is the case with Danish developer Playdead, who have created a truly remarkable entity, a dark and disturbing platformer. The platformer has long been dominated by the gay abandon of Mario and Luigi, Sonic and Knuckles, Kirby and well whoever it is that Kirby's bumming in the slash-fiction. Rather than opting for bright-environments, unthreateningly grumpy enemies and mindless coin collection, Playdead has created a monochromatic world of fiendish puzzles, unexpected violence and charming creativity.

Having selected new game from an uncluttered menu, the scene opens onto a forest, entirely rendered in deepest blacks, muted greys and hazy white. It was some twenty seconds before I realised nothing had happened, and I should be doing something, I press X then trigger then A and finally two little dots appear, the eyes of our avatar a small and vulnerable looking boy. One cannot help but be entranced by the isolation so effectively conveyed by the simple decision to avoid the usual colour, plethora of ladders and waddling grunts. The wind whistles eerily and convincingly through the branches, while the footfalls of the running boy realistically echo into the emptiness. It’s not long until we encounter our first hazard, a spike trap easily cleared by jumping, later three bear traps that, unless pulled apart by the action button form an unsurpassable and lethal barrier. Stepping on one will causes it to snap shut on your body, grimly decapitating you, this first death setting the tone for many more to come.

It immediately becomes apparent after having tried to clear a stagnant pool infested with flies by leaping over a box and promptly drowning for the umpteenth time that Limbo is asking you to use that most infrequently employed of gaming instincts, common sense. Play enough games and you soon realise that there is common sense and gaming sense. Gaming sense is what tells you to keep hold of the ultimate super-weapon until you encounter the final boss, gaming sense is what tells you that all boxes floating in a lake are to be jumped on one from an another. Very few games ever ask you to use common sense, as though worried it would distract from the fantasy. Those few that do, Portal and Half-Life to name but two, suddenly appear fiendishly difficult as all your gaming reactions are frustrated, should I be shooting these crates or climbing them? These default reactions the legacy of a decade or more where games had been limited by both computing power and developer creativity, just because you look like you can climb that wall, doesn’t mean you can. In Limbo however these instincts must be ignored, don’t try and jump over the box, drag the box out of the pool to jump on the rope you couldn’t reach, of course so simple! However what raises these cognitive challenges beyond pure puzzle solving is the pure morbid imagination which accompanies them. In the first section of the game our tiny hero is forced to flee a giant spider, I’m not generally afraid of spiders but the sheer tenacity of this one had me quaking in my boots. Having de-limbed it with a bear trap and crushed it with a boulder I thought it was gone for good, yet it came after me again, dragging its hairy body with just one leg remaining. After getting over the initial anger at this arachnid’s cheek of having followed me so far, I was presented with a very Limbo like conundrum, how to scale a cliff too high to jump which also had razor sharp spikes at the bottom. As I stood there pondering I noticed the spider was still flailing its leg at me with futile desperation, a cruel thought struck me, and I grabbed hold of the appendage and began to drag it toward the spike pit, only to have the leg come off in my little hands. I then rolled the spider’s roly poly head and body into the pit, providing the perfect height for me to scale the wall.

This darkness is not however without a sense of humour, if you’re sense of comedy is that way inclined, and though incredibly short and very expensive for the total  hours of enjoyment provided, Limbo is one of the few games on the market that performs so consistently and surprises with such regularity. There is currently a debate over whether games can claim to be art, though most “legitimate” forms currently deride such a notion, it wasn’t so long ago that cinema had its own artistic corner to fight. However I defy anyone to play this game and not feel a little touch of the uncanny, that tingling that only great cinema and great literature can bring, not bad for an xbox live game. 

The Assassin’s Creed(s) For those of you who loved the Da Vinci Code

The Assassin’s Creed(s)

For those of you who loved the Da Vinci Code

The first Ass Creed was something of a rarity in the industry, a bold if somewhat misguided attempt to inject something new into a market soaked up to the eyeballs in blockbuster FPS fare or dire kitsch wii games that shamelessly attempt to pound life back into characters who are long past their sell-by date. I’m looking at you Mario.

One story followed the detestably bland Altair, that rarest of things an Arab hashashin with a tone-neutral American accent, a fallen champion of an order of hitmen that perplexing attempts to keep the peace in Second Crusader Palestine through political assassinations. Our other story set in the futurey present day follows Desmond Miles a man more whiny and clueless than the love-child of Anakin Skywalker and Peaches Geldof.  The premise was somewhat difficult to swallow, for the purpose of some evil plot by some beige yet nefarious corporation Desmond Miles must lie down on an unfinished MRI scanner or Animus, as they called it and is forced to relive his ancestral memories, those of Altair.

Now it was undeniable that running across the beautiful and accurately rendered rooftops of Crusader Jerusalem and Acre was tons of fun,  and pulling off a successful assassination with a wrist blade that flicks Wolverine like into the throat of your hapless enemies made you feel more than just a little cool. Unfortunately this historical action was frequently interrupted by mind-numbingly dull sequences in which dear Desmond gets up, wanders round, goes to bed, picks his nose, and talks to his tormentors neither of which were memorable enough for me to name. No doubt it was the developers attempt to remind us that this was a historical epic that touched on the sensitive topics of blind faith to a cause and religious intolerance, no no, this is god-awful science-fiction conspiracy, masquerading as something new and interesting. Apart from being an extremely tedious jolt out of the fun and into the mundane, it was also somewhat insulting. It’s as though the developers felt it necessary to give us a modern day protagonist to “relate to” that history is so confusing and impenetrable we need a simpler explanation so as not to fry the brains of the hopelessly cretinous sloth with the controller in his hands.  If you’re wondering the real reason behind the conflict between the Muslim and Christian world it’s because the Assassins and the Templars (o Christ them as villains again) are fighting over mysterious artefacts that can control human minds and distort perception. Assassin's Creed ended with Altair being betrayed by his mentor, a narrative cliché so overused in games it’s on the verge of stepping into parody, and Desmond being sprung from the MRI scanner by the blonde-assistant and noticing these funny symbols scrawled on the walls.

Assassin's Creed 2 picks up right after this moment, and unfortunately the first moments of the game are spent with Desmond being led like the toddler he is through the danger a  the safety of the modern-day Assassin’s lair. Though I commend Ubisoft for lightening the tone of the first game which took itself far too seriously for what it was, it’s hard to sense the urgency we’re meant to feel when the modern assassins conduct themselves like a bickering Mystery Team, out to uncover the conspiracy of whose haunting the old carnival in Peaceville.

However we at last lie down on a new Animus (basically a rust covered recliner) and step into the roof-hopping shoes of our new ancestor Ezio Auditore di Firenze, and the world of Renaissance Italy. Ezio is instantly more likeable than the Spoc like Altair who managed to be both smug and lifeless all at the same time. Ezio is charming and roguish, and for once a video-game protagonist undergoes an actual development of character, maturing from a carefree bourgeois wastrel to the grimmer professional assassin of the later acts. This change is inevitably wrought by family tragedy and betrayal, as following his father’s and brother’s hanging he is forced to don the family wrist blade and now iconic hawk-like hood. Unlike Asscreed the First, no doubt helped in part by the cultural phenomenon started by Dan Brown, the shadowy conspiracy stuff involving secret societies working behind the scenes of real historical events suits the setting of Renaissance Italy perfectly. The rooftops and landmarks of Italy’s old maritime republics are a perfect playground for Ezio who moves with realistic weight and agility.

The improvements on the first game are innumerable, as dyes bought from tailors allow for clothing customisation, armourers new weapons and even art shops to decorate your Tuscan Villa. These distractions unlike the token side-missions of the first game actually work to intrigue and motivate you into exploring the nook and cranny of each city, all of them possessing a unique flavour, despite the universal three boxes with a white sheet laid over them, left to signify spots to begin free-running. The combat has been much improved with the different enemy types injecting much needed strategy into the swordplay. In the first game once you had learnt to counter your enemies blows,it left you somewhat overpowered as you thrust sword after sword into hapless crusader foes.

The side-quests as mentioned before are all individually planned and thought out, each and everyone a mini mission requiring different tactics and strategy, to say nothing of the story missions which have been perfectly thought out to be open to the player’s plans as well as being distinguishable from the last bloody murder. This action is mercifully only interrupted once by Desmond and those pesky kids, and despite the improvements you nevertheless feel a sinking feeling of disappointment when you are wrenched from the exciting adventures of Ezio Auditore.

However despite the vast array of improvements on the last game, Assassin's Creed is forever held back by the decision to make it all about two secret organisations fighting over some old alien artefacts. Damn spoilers. Yes that’s what the great mystery of the “Pieces of Eden” boils down to, Aliens. A jarring end tonally to what was otherwise a rather good delve into Italy’s past. The finale which takes place in Rome, right in the heart of the Vatican which involved a good balance from assassiny stealth, and swashbuckling was ruined by what basically amounted to bout of bareknuckle boxing with the Pope. This terrible final bossfight was topped with a conversation with an Alien projection that gave us a little more exposition leaving Ezio confused and my disbelief suspension array stretched to the limit. This was not helped by Desmond’s timely interjection of “What the fuck?” again, as though we didn’t know that’s what we were meant to be feeling. However despite my utter contempt for the conspiracy bollocks, I don’t doubt that this is a franchise that will draw me back again and again, because at the end of it all wouldn’t we all like to climb to the top of the Duomo and throw ourselves from the top into a haycart?