Assorted Mammals of the Old Republic

Hey droogs, guess who’s still alive.

Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood Boxart

Yeah, the economic down turn is bad, but the biggest drain on my pocket at the moment is the glut of triple A game titles around at the mo. I spent last week completing Fable II’s main plot, started playing Fallout 3, started up Guitar Hero World Tour (or as I like to call it “super arrgh I can’t do three things at once magical drum simulator”), my import copy of Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia’s arrived, SSFII HDR comes out some time today and I still haven’t even considered giving time to Dead Space, Mirror’s Edge or Left 4 Dead yet!

Following my obituary for sonic the hedgehog a couple of weeks ago, and based on the recommendation of Chesterfield’s premier/only independent games retailer I decided I’d find time in my frantic gaming schedule to give Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood a rare opportunity to redeem it’s franchise.

Sonic Chronicles is a Role-playing game based on the popular sega franchise, and developed by the hand held division of Canadian company Bioware, better known for creating the Neverwinter Nights series, Mass Effect and Star Wars: Knights of the old Republic.  Considering Bioware’s staggering back catalogue of RPG success going into SC:TDB I was quietly optimistic feeling that Sega had made the right decision to pass the game to a third party rather than leaving production with Sonic Team (Probably too busy making a hash of Sonic Unleashed at the time).

The game picks up sometime after Sonic and Friends have once again defeated Dr Robotnik(His name’s Robotnik.  Not Eggman!), Sonic is brought back following some much needed R ‘n’ R to find that the Chaos Emeralds have been stolen (again) and Knuckles has been Echidna-napped by an organisation referred to as the Marauders.  Sonic assembles his usual team of Mammalian cohorts, slaps on his Ricky Rocket-pants and saves the day via an unusual team member, a trip to another universe and a whole heap of ring collecting.

The challenge presented to Bioware in the production of SC:TDB is the need to keep a hell of a lot of people happy by creating a product which will not only be marketable to Sonic fans, but is also of a high enough quality to appease sceptics amongst their own fan base.  I feel to a degree at least they’ve pretty much cracked it.

The presentation of the game is exceptional with the majority of the game played in 3D across an Isometric plane, the locations themselves are well designed with re-creations of various classic Sonic stages such as Green Hill, Mystic Ruins and Angel Island.  The character design is of a usual high standard with few suprises as to the design of new characters fitting into the fifteen year old tried and tested formula, new protagonist Shade fits well into the rest of the characters, though expect a change of costume before her next appearance.

The game play utilises 100% touch screen control, much like Phantom Hourglass all field abilities are activated by tapping a context specific icon on screen.  During combat the game adopts a variation on the traditional JRPG style.  Protagonists line up at the bottom of the screen, antagonists at the top, the two factions then wait for their turn to batter each other until all of one side is defeated.  To add to this tried and tested formula, Bioware introduces a system similar to Elite Beat Agents/ Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan! for activating special powers.  Pow moves use up Pow points when used much like Magic Points in a Final Fantasy game to activate the Power move however a small rhythm-action style puzzle needs to be completed involving tapping and dragging icons with the stylus, it offers a welcome variation to an otherwise humdrum activity.

As a warning to fans of Bioware do not come into Sonic Chronicles expecting the complex plots and sub-plots seen in Mass Effect or KOTOR, while the plot is relatively well written, this is a simpler game than many of Bioware’s other efforts, an RPG lite for a younger audience.  Don’t let this put you off, as while simple and with a low difficulty level that doesn’t mean that Sonic Chronicles isn’t a pleasure to play.  I managed to complete this game in under 15 hours, which I considered to be about right.  In terms of sub plots and side quests, there are some, though most of these aren’t really more than fetch and carry quests for NPC X.  Apparently there is a Bioware romantic sub-plot ( though without Mass Effect’s Alien Rumpo) between Sonic and Amy Rose, though to be honest I didn’t pursue this and have since found out about it through GameFaqs.

While Sonic Chronicles may not be to everyone’s taste I found it to be an amusing diversion, if somewhat easy to complete.  Though I maybe wouldn’t advise my peers to go out and buy it, I wouldn’t hate myself for giving it as a gift to a younger gamer.  It is a well polished adventure which goes someway to repairing the damage done by previous games to the franchise.  Repairs aided by the fact that it’s possible to complete the game without ever having to use Shadow.

I only hope that Sega takes note of this return to form, and doesn’ t do anything stupid with the next Sonic game, y’know like turning Sonic into some kind of lycanthropic hedgehog, man, chimp, thing.  Man, that would be stupid.

Tags: games, optimist, review

VATs

No, I’m not talking about the strange but effective pause-time first person combat system of Fallout 3 fame but the other and very much more boring kind. (Although I wouldn’t put it past Les Government to coerce Microsoft into using their Gamer Live system to subtract 17.5% of my Action Points, for them to put to use in another one of their completely legal and not-at-all hypercritical wars…)

Any who, by now (yes, just one paragraph in) you can already tell that my other articles haven’t been going so well and, in an effort not to be dispelled from the collective for posting too infrequently, I have fallen back to my ranting roots. Please also find enclosed a very special analogy expanded beyond comparability by yours truly…

So, VAT it is (that’s Value Added Tax for all of those dyslexics that have stumbled upon this site whilst looking for superior methods of vegetable drainage). Every type of financial data seems to be in the news at the moment and today was no different, as the Government rolled out VAT to take a kicking. Alistair Darling, our most amusingly named Chancellor (yes I too have Blackadder like visions of Gordan Brown shouting “Darling, Darling, what are you doing Darling??”), has decided to tinker with this little blighter now. Oh goody, I hear you collectively sigh, that’ll do the trick…

The analogy I heard involved the good ship Britannia having hit an iceberg and The Treasury were simply rearranging the deck chairs on board instead of solving the problem at hand. This, I feel, gives them too much credit, so I take it upon myself to embellish the story for greater accuracy and my own bloody enjoyment (after all we are British and, as such, enjoy kicking ourselves in the gut at every opportunity).

What do you mean bailout?? We're watertight thank you very much...

T’is certainly true, we have hit an iceberg of monetary problem here. However, we all stood on the bow and watched this problem approach, shouting at the captain to reach ramming speed before impact. Now we’ve hit that little Credit Crunch we’ve discovered it was just the tip of a very deep, very dark and extremely cold recession.

What-ho, the Powers That Be spring into action, but instead of pointlessly rearranging the deckchairs they begin to handout caviar and champagne to the idiots that reassured us it wasn’t such a big chunk of icy rock and stoked the furnaces to prove it. Even worse, they’re now ushered into the lifeboats and bid good voyage…

Now it’s time for the deckchairs, but instead of simply moving them around our higher-ups decide to pile them in the middle of the deck, pour flammable liquor across them and set them alight. Never considering for second that it would only result in giving us a choice between immolation and the slow sink into the freezing depths beneath, but at least we’ll have warm feeling inside and something pretty to lookout as we meet our self-inflicted demise.

Oh, and I almost forgot, there’s those poor souls that have already fallen over the side into the murky ice filled waters and are struggling for air as we speak. Why I’m sure our erstwhile commanders have a solution for them too, and here it is. Allow them to present the ping-pong ball measures. That’s right, enough of these little blighters can raise a ship (They saw it on MythBusters once) so if we throw just the right amount at these unfortunate bastards they should be able to cling on to them and rescue themselves…

Hurrah!!! Oh the humanity!!!! Etc…

It’s at times such as these I like to remind myself that all this financial shenanigans is completely made-up, an artificial mechanic we’ve been bred to believe in. Ho-hum, what’s on the other channel?? Zombie-Celebrity-Knife crime?? Brilliant…

Tags: analogy, economy, finance, government, money, rant, ships, Zombie celebrity knife crime

2nd Hand Games [Waffle-o-tron]

Recently HMV announced that it was to start accepting used games as store credit against any of the items in in the shop, and if you wade throught the extended marketdrone-speak in the MCV article you’ll notice a stunning and somewhat amazing thing; they talk about reselling games in their fancy new oh-so-achingly modern stores but they ever once use the words ‘second hand’ or ‘used’.

As a society I think we’ve become used to doublespeak and the depredations of marketing predators, but are we so vain that we have to revert shady words like ‘pre-owned’ to justify ourselves? Pretty much everyone I know never refers to games as anything except ‘pre-owned’ in this context, myself included. Despite the glaring semantic problem that the phrase pre-owned evokes, it just seems dishonest.

But ’tis not just us proles! The whole damn videogaming establishment is up to it, even in an article complaining about them Mr. David Braben himself shows that he is infected with this terrible meme. Mr. Braben’s abject hatred for us consumers has been well documented in his insistance on forcing the great satan of Lenslok upon us poor Spectrum owners, so maybe he is part of this terrible conspircy to protect us from feeling like a herd of filthy unwashed cockerneys buying our soiled chimneysweep jackets from stalls on Portobello Road.

Back to the point! HMV is staring to sell second hand games and Mr. David Braben thinks this is bad because it stuffs up sales figures. Maybe that’s true, but I have learned one thing in my years of gaming; nobody buys the good games anyway, see Beyond Good and Evil, Psychonauts, Terra Nova and Limbo of the Lost.
Maybe not that last one.

Tags: DRM, games, marketdrones, rant, spectrum, waffle-o-tron

Chun-Li’s awesome thighs HD remix

The trailer for Capcom and Udon’s re-development of Super Street Fighter II has hit the internet.

Needs to be seen in HD for the full effect, even so, awwww Yeah!

The only cloud in my sky is there still hasn’t been an official release date set.

*Supplemental*

A date has been set, it misses my favouritest day of the week by a day, so expect me to be playing it next… Wednesday.

Tags: games, superfan

1914 to 1917.

Lending my support to Ado’s “Can it” campaign, behold as a laugh track very nearly ruins the greatest scene in British comedy history.

The thing about truley great British  situation comedy is that the situation around which the comedy is developed is so painfully tragic.  The example here is one of the best, though comedy from the 60′s, 70′s and 80′s is full of it.

Blackadder goes forth was based in a trench during the great war, a situation which should not be funny, clever writing can make the situation funny, but great writing also never shies away from the true horror of the situation.  I think that the greatest line in comedy history is “We lived through it.  The great war, from 1914 to 1917.”  It’s the type of line which takes a moment’s pause to truly comprehend, I hope that if it was filmed infront of a live audience then they didn’t pause to realise the tragedy within this line, if the laugh track was added at a later date, then it was a huge production error which nearly robs the scene of its plausability as a valid comment on the futility and horror of war.

Tags: campaign, comedy, laughter, tv

Love is an Addiction

Poets carve a life from it; musicians often try to evoke the feeling; bookshops have whole sections devoted to it and websites are there for people that don’t have it. Even Plato said that ‘the god of love lives in the state of need’, and it can feel that way, like a need for water and food, so hard to ignore, but what is love?

Love is an addiction, beginning with cravings, growing with tolerance levels leaving you wanting more and more. Once the drug is gone we feel withdrawal and occasionally relapse. A song comes on the radio and you are hit with memories and feelings you would rather keep buried.

The same region of the brain that responds to cocaine is at work in people that are in love, an area called the Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA) near the base of the brain responsible for our reward system, part of what is termed the ‘Reptilian Core’ releases dopamine in response to the subject of our emotions. This is why we can’t help but think of another; or as an 8th century Japanese poet put it ‘My longing has no time when it ceases’.

A study by Helen Fisher of MRI scans of people who had recently been dumped had some interesting findings; the area associated with intense romantic love was firing strongly; the feelings of love are as strong when we can’t have the object of our desires. Terence Thereaux put it better; ‘The less my hope the hotter my love’. Similarly the area responsible for gambling and calculating odds, gains and losses was active; a likely source of the ‘what went wrong?’ questioning that comes after a break-up. It’s not just flowery prose to say that love is lifes greatest prize. Finally the area responsible for the sense of attachment to another was active; We just can’t get that person out of our head.

A questionairre of American college students contained the questions ‘Have you ever been rejected by someone you really loved?’ and ‘Have you ever dumped anyone who really loved you?’. Over 95% of both men and women answered yes to both – there is no escaping the pain associated with love. Emily Dickenson said ‘Parting is all we need to know of hell’.

So why do we love one person over another? Studies have shown that we generally love someone of similar intelligence, looks and socio-economic background but that doesn’t really explain it. If we were at a party full of people matching these criteria why would we not be attracted to everyone there? There must still be an x-factor; something that just ‘clicks’. Will science ever find it? Will that destroy the magic of love?

Tags: Emo, Introspective, Love, Questions

“Stop, stop! He’s already dead!”

Better Days.

Apologies to all those ralph-fans out there(only lying to myself), I missed my post yesterday, to be honest I was a bit stuck for something to write, then I read a couple of things from which I found inspiration.  The first was an article on the escapist regarding games fanatasism, with particular focus on a certain spikey, blue mammal.  The second was Neil’s piece which linked to one particular fictional gem</lie> which excellently highlights the point I’m about to make.

Starting with an admission.  I am a Sonic the Hedgehog fan.  Since christmas 1991when my buddy Craig brought round his imported Japanese Mega Drive, I was hooked on the adventures of the speedy, blue one.  It was a whole year before I received my own Mega Drive along with both Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic 2, still the best Christmas gift I’ve ever received, If someone gave me the gift of world peace and an end to all war, it would still slot in at no. 2 behind that Mega Drive.

Sonic was a departure from every other game I’d played up to that Christmas, about the most visually impressive game I’d played up to this point had been in an arcade, something like maybe wonderboy, or possibly the TMNT arcade game.  I’d never considered recreating this at home possible, not on my Spectrum anyway which offered impressive art if you didn’t mind it monochrome, and with little or no sound.  Sonic completely blew everything before it out of the water, Green Hill Zone Act 1is in my opinion the best designed level for any game on any system, and a perfect showcase for what sonic games should be all about, speed.  Playing Sonic on Xbox live acade my best run through time for act 1 is 29 seconds, I’m pretty sure that when I was a kid I hit 27, but that might be youthful exuberance (or out and out lying).  That doesn’t mean though that you had to complete the first level quickly, If you meander through the level it’s no less rewarding but with so much speed to hand it seems like a shame not to use it.

Later games went on to add further characters from the good ((though confusing) Knuckles the Echidna, Miles”Tails” Prower, Amy Rose(sometimes)), the bad (Charmy Bee, Shadow the Hedgehog, Silver the Hedgehog, Big the Cat, Cream the Rabbit (Oh god it’s like yiffy paedophilia!)) and the Ugly (Big the Cat, again).

Right that’s the potted history out the way, what was I saying?  I love the whole Sonic franchise, unfortunately only in the same way that I love the whole Star Wars franchise, or the whole Indiana Jones franchise, that is after the first three entries I zone out and pretend that nothing else happened.  Deep down there’s a small, grey sinkhole in my heart where I bury all the bad things that happen to a franchise that meant something to me as a child, every time George Lucas sticks his dick into my childhood (thank you South Park) I just bury it away and pretend it never happened.  The same is true of Sonic team, following Sonic & Knuckles (the last of the 2D series on  the megadrive) came Sonic 3D, it wasn’t fast paced and the concept of roaming an isometric 3D plain looking for birdies was like playing a re-skinned version of Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters, only more disapointing what with the original being about ten years old by this point.

Sega, realising their mistake at setting Sonic in a 3D environment, went on to completely ignore it, with all of the main cannon games being made in 3D, and all but Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast receiving anything other than a critical mauling.  Meanwhile on the GBA and DS all of Sonic’s continued adventures in two dimensions have been praised by both fans and critics alike.

Mind you do I really expect anyone to take note of criticism, when the BTOC’s in town?  No of course not, the fact of the matter is that despite well deserved criticism Sonic the Hedgehog is not just a mascot for Sega anymore, but a mascot for the industry, Sonic is not only recognised by gamers but by people on the outside, particularly parents, grown up gamers who remember Sonic from before but no longer pay attention to the industry.  It’s this sense of a “safe bet” which has given Sonic a critic proof sales dynamic.

Apologies to the artist but I couldn't bring myself to use something truly derogatory, I quite liked this.

That and (Welcome to the dark places) Sonic fans that didn’t abandon the blue one when it was a sensible time to jump ship.  I’ve never understood the concept of fanboyism, of the Otaku, of the fanatic until I saw Sonic the Hedgehog fans.  If Sega’sefforts to force me away from the series hadn’t worked then the fans themselves just might.  Not that I’m critical of all fans, I’ve already said that despite Sega’s best efforts, I’m still a fan, thing is though as a fan, I’ve never really considered it necessary to produce badly spelt yiffy porn.  Maybe it’s just me but I’ve never revved up a Sonic game and thought “Y’know, this is good, but imagine if Sonic was taking Amy Rose roughly from behind while Tails tickles his balls.”  I just… seriously I’m lost for words.  I know for a fact that I don’t have to look very hard online to find hundreds of grotty fan-fictions of this very scene.  They’ve even got celebrity endorsement of a fashion thanks to Excel Saga creator Rikdo Koshi, who has in the past produced Sonic dojin.  This being Rikdo though I’d like to think that there was some reasoning behind his art, even if it was just one of the BTOC’s stop offs.

Funny 'cos it's true

I found this handy venn diagram on google images and I can’t help but think that this isn’t something only I’ve noticed, the internet’s saturated with it, possibly more-so than any other franchise (with the possible exception of Final Fantasy, though the quality of FF games has remained high, almost inspite of the garaunteed sales and obsessive fans)

I stated in my title he’s already dead, and I can’t help but think that in my mind Sonic is just that, I still remember the good times, I’ve got the original Sonic game on Live Arcade, and I’ll continue to enjoy it, will I ever buy a new Sonic the Hedgehog game?  no probably not, I can’t help but feel that Sega has long since rendered the franchise, and to that end Sonic himself dead to me.  It’s just sad that that hasn’t  stopped others who proclaim to love him from repeatedly raping his spikey, blue, attitude filled, corpse.

Tags: art, big truck of cash, games, geeks, nerdgasm, rant, superfan

In Praise of Fan Fiction [NSFW!]

A video inspired the original and best Half-Life: Full Life Consequences. While I’m writing, I thought I should take you through the best original fiction on the web. Read at your own peril:

• Hamtaro goths
• “Resistance is futile” will never sound the same again
• Amy Rose is a sucker for the line “You will feel like a princess in my arms and you shall feel my love, nice and slow for you to remember it all.”
• In which Haruhi goes swimming. “Like a baseball bat full of affection, the details of that dream coming flooding back to me”
• The missing scene from Donnie Darko
• A whole section dedicated to wrestling!

Tags: fan fiction, fanfic will destroy us all, games, slash ficion, writing

Comics to Films

Partially inspired by Ralph’s mini rant about the Dragonball movie, I thought I’d take a post to talk about the current speight of comic (or graphic novel, if you can’t bear to call them comics) to film translations.

First a confession, WE3 is one of my favourite comics. Written by Grant Morrisson, it sympathetically evokes moments of horror and hubris, cruelty and compassion; the book should appeal to anyone who ever felt any kind of emotion for an animal. Helped along by the quite brilliant Frank Quitely providing some of the greatest layouts I can remember the whole thing sticks together in my mind as one of the best examples of what a comic can achieve. I still can’t read the whole thing through without filling up. Just a little, mind.

I’d completely missed the announcement that WE3 was going to be adapted into a film, and I have to admit I have mixed reactions to this news. Part of this trepidation is at the root of a lot of problems I have with comic adaptations in general. Comics are contained within their own world; they seem less constrianed by the necessities of realism that film requires. Let’s look at WE3 as an example, in the book the protagonists are kidnapped household pets plugged into killer mech suits while we are shown the moral of the tale through the actions of the humans. Outlandish, no? It’s because of this freedom to juxtapose the bizarre with the humane that sets comics aside for me. Few live action films successfully make this blend work. Don’t get me wrong, sporadically a film will do so with astounding results such as Pan’s Labyrinth, but I feel that this kind of filmmaking is rare at best.

In fact this proximity of the surreal to the humanistic viewpoint continues through some of my favourite comic books and for my money is the real strength of the graphic novel format. In film a serious message is often overlooked if elements of the storytelling are overtly fantastical, often leading to a dilution of the message either by making it’s goals more abstract (Lord of the Rings) or removing any moral message more complex than a Saturday Special (Transformers et al.) This is not a failing of film, it’s just not the norm nor particualrily welcomed. As mentioned previously Guillermo Del Toro could be the arbiter of a shift in expectations, paving the ground with Pan’s Labyrinth and his adaptions of Mike Mignola’s Hellboy comics, he has a keen eye for the visual design of a film and can deliver touching and relevant scenes even if his characters are a fish man and a demon.

Other translations are more direct. The recent success of Persepolis, co-directed by Marjane Satrapi; the writer and artist of the original work closely mirrors the visual style of the book version, adding flourishes of hand drawn animation it turns it into more of a living comic than a film. Frank Miller has also been throwing his hat into the ring, overseeing adaptations of his lauded 300 and Sin City books (possibly due to the butchering of his script for Robocop 2) managed to work with directors and staff commited to bringing the visual style of the books to the screen. While these approaches are valid and produce extraordianry results, they seem to be gimmicky to me neither examples giving the emotional response nor depth of character that I see when I read Transmetropolitan, Fluffy or Pride of Baghdad. Maybe it’s just my preference of film, but I can’t see a comic book film ever succeed at being taken as a ‘serious’ movie.

Apparently there’s ongoing effort to translate Preacher to the cinema. Preacher is a book I grew to love comics with, it threw taste to the wind, mixing cowboy themes with a buddy comedy, slapstick and an overarching message about belief. It was huge, sprawling, filled with insane characters, belly laughs and quotable lines aplenty. Successfully making a movie from the wonderful mess of the comic series would be a feat in itself. Making it true to the spirit of the original may be nothing short of a miracle.

Tags: cartoon, comics, film, filmmaking

Keeps getting earlier

Hey guys, I know we’ve only just started November, and Christmas is still about a half a yonk away but it’s worth pointing out that as of yesterday the Child’s Play charity website has been updated and is now taking this year’s donations.

I’m not gonna preach to you guys I’m sure you’re all capable of deciding which charities are/aren’t deserving of your time or money, and hell sometimes charities are almost like a luxury we can’t afford no matter how much we want to.  Child’s Play’s just something that as a gamer I appreciate.  I’d like to think that I’ve gone someway to help a sick kid watch Wall-e and laugh like a berk despite his or her illness.

Tags: charity, games, geeks