DinnyHoon

Something in the Air

So after a week of being forced to do social things such as to show my face on Halloween and Bonfire night, I can finally retire to my dark, cola-filled domain and hide myself from humanity during the most exciting 4 weeks of the gaming year. The games are flooding into the shops, money is skydiving into the till from my wallet, and the back speakers from my surround sound system are plugged in once again. It’s high season time.

As usual, the autumn has brought cold winds, crispy brown leaves and a heap of goodies our way. Forza 3 has taken advantage of GT5’s almost Spanish procrastination to half-inch the motor racing crown, the Need For Speed franchise has astonishingly coughed up a stunner, and Uncharted 2 (the jumpy shooty almost-GOTY masterpiece) has brought the PS3 right back into it, and just in time for the holidays. So, you may ask, why is November so special? Because now we have them all, dear reader. The big hits of the year are well and truly in our hands, and there’s no Christmas rush to stop us from playing them for hour after joyous hour.

Oh, wait, here comes another one.

Every once in a while, a game comes out, and it changes everything. The entertainment world stops, if only for a second, and turns to this beacon of engineering. It is these games which grant the giant posters, the stupidly early teasers, and the infamous ‘wall of boxart’ at the brick and mortar stores. It’s the game you’re stupid not to preorder. The game that makes you count the coins to meet the amount required to buy the console it’s on. The ones that reach the news on their release date, the ones that have their street date broken by a rowdy e-tailer, and the ones that generate hype that is physically impossible to live up to. Every once in a while, a giant is born.

These titles aren’t like your Guitar Heros, FIFAs or Tony Hawks. If you’re at the press conference that announces just one of these games, you’ll be telling your grandchildren. It’s the GTAs, the Halos, the Gran Turismos, the Half Lifes, the Metal Gears. The games that create a reference point in their respective genres. If a good game comes out, it’s looked at closely to see if it’s anywhere near becoming a ‘Game X beater’, or ‘Game Y-killer’. And there’s one coming out soon, in case you hadn’t noticed.

2 years ago, Infinity Ward surprised the world with one of the greatest games ever made. Modern Warfare 2 hits the shelves in 25 hours. Sorry Naughty Dog, but your game will have to wait until December.

“On your feet soldier. We. Are. Leaving!”

Hairclips and hairpins

Forza Motorsport 3 Review

OK, I have far too much TV to watch, and too many games to complete, so let’s get going.

I might as well start with what’s on my mind right now, and that’s the glorious work of comedian/singer/songwriter/pianist/ginger Tim Minchin. He was on Jonathan Ross last Friday, and I’ve known of him for quite a while. His comedy is based mostly on hilarious pieces of music he writes that flaunt his immense ivory-tickling skill (with accompanying lyrics, naturally). His non-verbal communication with the audience is second to none, and I really think he’s going to be a big star. He has a DVD or two out, but you can just YouTube his name for the best songs. Honestly, it’s worth it. The man’s a genius in waiting.

OK, so onto the games. Now I am slightly drunk after a nice curry, and I’m already tucked up in bed (I’ll give you ladies a second to calm down), but I might as well crack on with my first impressions of Forza Watersport Forza 3. As I may have said earlier, this is the first ever racing game to take the crown from Gran Turismo. And it doesn’t just take the crown, it gets it measured to fit, alters every aspect of it, then it takes a wet fish to the now jewellery-less face of GT. The point is that Polyphony’s gem has always been the undisputed king of motorsport. Even when the mundane round-and-round antics of the first few dozen races in a Ford Cortina are being trudged through, you feel as though something special is under your thumbs, and you play and you play until you unlock the car you had plastered all over your boyhood wall. That was its charm. What Turn 10 have done with Forza is not only adapt that idea and improve it infinitely (more on that later), but they’ve taken advantage of GT5’s constant delays to capture the racing market just months after it was practically declared dead.

The racing simulator hasn’t had its best of times in the last few years. A few gems (PGR3, Forza 2) have shone, but the ever-increasing lack of decent console racing titles has brought the whole genre into question. There’s no doubt that the racing game is the most expensive you can get into, on both the consumer and developer side, and I suppose GT can be blamed for that. While the developer shoves literally zillions of polygons into the wing-mirror of a Toyota Corolla, good old Mr. Racing Enthusiast wants to take Turismo’s realism one step further by purchasing £600 worth of bucket seat for his (admittedly wifeless) living room. Now, while Forza sort of continues that, it also multiplies the fun you can have with such a game without shelling out precious pounds on stering wheels stiched on the thighs of virgins. And that’s what makes it so special.

The accessibility of F3 shines the most. The main example is the ‘one-button’ mode, where you just sort of grip the right trigger and the game brakes for you (all you have to do is steer along the line that’s painted out for you). Now while that may sound stupid to you and I, your 4 year old cousin may enjoy the ability to control an Audi R8 around the Twin Ring Motegi circuit without a degree in cornering. As well as accessibility on a rudimentary level, Turn 10 seem to have perfected what Polyphony have never managed, and that’s how quickly you get to where you want to get in the game. In GT5, progression through the horsepowers has always felt quite slow at first, before you’re randonly thrown behind a V8 after 25-or-so races around a test track in the porridge bowl of the woman who lived in a shoe. Forza throws you straight into its cover car (an R8) for a bit of a thrash around Silverstone, before letting you pick from any identically-specced ‘F-Class’ car such as the new Fiesta. After 3 to 4 fun razz-rounds in the hot-hatch, you find yourself in a Cooper S. 10 races later, your buttocks are being caressed by the soft leather of a Lotus Elise. And that’s the charm of Forza, it gets you into your dream car quicker, and there’s more and more (all the way up to Audi Le Mans cars and even the Veyron) after you get there. The depth of the game, and its focus on fantasy simulation, is second to none. And that is why Forza Motorsport 3 is the greatest racing game of all time.

Getting things out of the way...

Social networks:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Xbox Live
• PlayStation Network
• Last.fm

TV shows I’m watching:

• House
• Big Bang Theory
• Curb Your Enthusiasm
• Doc Martin
• Family Guy
• Have I Got News For You
• Never Mind The Buzzcocks
• It’s Only A Theory
• Lunch Monkeys
• Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe

Games I’m playing:

• Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
• Batman: Arkham Asylum
• Forza Motorsport 3
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
• FIFA 10
• MotorStorm: Pacific Rift

As I said, I’ll probably talk about quite a few of these in depth sooner or later. Until then, boingo boingo whoopsy knickers.

15 Months Later

Right, so er.. this is the relaunch. Well, I haven’t updated the theme yet, but that’s because there are no good themes on the internet. So we’ll call that a work in progress. I had completely forgotten about this blog until recently, when my most recent post randomly got posted onto my Twitter 15 months late. So here I am again, welcoming the crude, fad-obsessed world of Web 2.0 with open arms and a cold stare. Welcome back, I suppose.

I might as well start with what has happened to me recently. It was my birthday (twice), I bought a piano, and this morning I had a bit of a cough. Oh, and some games came out, so let’s get them out of the way.

• Forza Motorsport 3
  Groin-grabbingly superb racer, and the first in my opinion to take the throne from under the comfortable arse of Polyphony’s Gran Turismo.

• Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
  I haven’t played it too much yet, but it’s already hooked me more than the first, especially with the cinematics.

• FIFA 10
  Still better than Pro Evo.

• World of Goo
  I know this is actually quite old (almost a year in fact), but I’ve only just started playing it, and I thought it deserved a mention. This is the best puzzler since Portal, and proof if any was needed that you don’t need to be PopCap to create the most bloody addicting piece of software the drones of this earth have ever seen. Honestly, if 2D Boy produced even 2 games as insanely gripping as World of Goo, they could enslave humanity by level 12.

Anyway, I’ll probably talk about some of those in depth at a later date. I’m hoping to keep up with this blog more than last time, when I treated it like a beaten wife who turns out to be a total bitch (show her love and caring, but try and keep your distance). So expect updates every 5 seconds for the next 2 days, and hopefully daily thereafter. So here’s a couple of subjects I may or may not breach in the coming weeks: apartheid and why it’s sexist, Mr Whippy vs. Mr Softee: the taste test, and when it’s rude/acceptable/necessary to use red biro.

Oh yeah

Blog relaunching pretty soon. Watch this space. Until then, you might as well ignore me. And watch this instead.

Japanese Cartoons and Consumer Cults

Ah yes, anime. A niche of a niche, with its entire fanbase consisting of over/underweight Japanophiles with a penchant for drawn pornography. I’ve always avoided this horrific genre and its cult following. That is, until now. In recent weeks, I’ve been starting to take notice of a certain anime by the name of Death Note. If you’re not familiar with the seris (and I’m assuming you’re not), the death note is a notebook with a pretty awesome power. You write someone’s name in it, and they die. Now, there are a lot of rules and regulations to this book, which become apparent one by one throughout the series. One example is that you must picture the person’s face whilst writing their name, so that people with the same name will not be affected. The thing is, this just.. isn’t a typical anime. Sure, there’s a supernatural element, but it’s very much downplayed in favour of one of the most gripping stories I’ve ever seen in a work of fiction.

The series follows Raito (Light) Yagami, who encounters the death note, a Shinigami (God of Death) tool, and decides to use it to make the world a better place. Obviously, he gets drunk on power and accompanied by Ryuuku (the Shinigami that owns the notebook), he sets out to use his new-found power to rid the planet of criminals. Naturally, this arouses the suspicions of good old PC Plod, and the plot goes on from there. The first half of the series plays like a murder mystery, but from the murderer’s point of view, and it’s executed flawlessly. What? I think it’s interesting. Fuck you.

This leads me (very) loosely to the second half of my title, and this image.

Oh yes. At 09.00 on Saturday,the 26th of June 2008, Apple’s first  Liverpool store opened its doors. And I, your humble narrator, was (practically) at the front of the queue.

The atmosphere was just awesome as the time grew closer to 9am (I was there at 6.30). The staff came out and ran the length of the queue, high-fiving everyone, and getting a mexican wave going. 5 minutes later, we got to return the favour as we sprinted into the shiny new store, arms held aloft, being barraged by the hands of Apple’s newest employees. It was something else.

Then I fell up the stairs.

Punching Mario in the face.

Alright. It’s 2 in the morning, I’m tired, and Diggnation just came out. So let’s get on with it.

As promised, I went out to the Amusement Shoppe For Dignified Fellows (read: Blockbuster) and bought Brawl, and I absolutely bloody love it. In a week, I’ve already played through well over 100 multiplayer matches, God knows how many single-player games, and I’ve unlocked all but half a dozen of the characters. For those of you who have absolutely no idea what Brawl is, I can summarise it pretty rapidly. Pick a famous Nintendo character, throw him on a big platform with other Nintendo characters, and then use a combination of the A and B buttons to knock the shit out of everyone you see. That’s about it. The ultimate goal is to hit them so hard that they fly off the side of the level and fall to their doom. Of course, there’s a lot more to it than that when you really start reading into the game, but you can happily play the game your entire life with the information I’ve just given you.

The big news about Brawl was that it had Snake and Sonic, as well as an online mode. Now, this paragraph is for those of you that are seriously into the Smash Brothers series. The rest of you won’t have a fucking clue what I’m on about. So I’ve unlocked both characters, and they’re rather flawed in different ways. Snake has many strong attacks, but getting any of them just right leaves you vulnerable for a crucial second or two. He’s a great 1v1 character, but on 4-player games, watch him crumble like a stepped-on rich tea biscuit. Sonic is quite the opposite. On small arenas, he’s great for a group match because of his roll-along-the-floor-into-your-legs move that he’s famous for, and he’s a quick and nimble character. You can run rings (no pun intended) around him in 1v1 though.

OK, non-Brawl-fans, you can start reading again now.

Thanks to my sudden lack of money (and a related desire to give my liver a break), I’ve cancelled my Lovefilm subscription and opened up an account at Blockbuster. I had a free rental there, and I also wanted to see what the trade-in money was like. So I rented Uncharted, and sold them pre-owned copies of Virtua Tennis 3, Skate, and Dark Sector… for thrity seven bloody pounds! Honestly, I was expecting £18-20 for the lot, and I would have thought of that as a good deal. I immediately put the lot on my new account, and now I have a rental/Mario Kart Wii fund. Happy days.

Oh, almost forgot to tell you What uncharted’s like. It’s bloody brilliant. There. Can I go to bed now?

PS: I know this post was mind-numbingly dull, and I promise to swear a bit more in my next entry, which will be in a day or two.

This Title Is To Make Up For The Lack Of A Title In My Previous Post

That is all.

I was going to write an entry tomorrow, and I still might, but I’m really bored, so I’ve decided to ramble on a bit.

The geniuses and MENSA leaders among you will notice that I am no longer in Bulgaria. I could write a fecking book on how outstandingly brilliant those 7 or so days were, but I’d just bore you. I’ll just give you the following detail: We got drunk. Every night. And now I’m great at pool.

With that said, let’s carry on with the endless rambling about shite all. I’ll start with Yahtzee. Everyone knows the much-loved Ben Croshaw and his wacky videos about how some games are shit, and we all want to hug him. I’ve noticed, however, that his quality has started to decline, if only slightly. Since his mediocre review of Brawl, he seems to care about what people think, albeit in his own unique negative way. The mass outcry that followed his 4-minute Mario-hatin’ escapade seems to have affected him and his content. He’s known for his “fuck you” attitude, but now he’s just doing it on purpose out of pure malevolence, rather than just being bloody hilarious. Since the aformentioned controversy, he’s churned out 7 game reviews (2 of which were for old games), 2 (still funny) videos completely unrelated to videogames, and a fucking re-run. Thanks a bunch for that last one. So I hope he moves past this rather unsettling phase (which could be explained by the lack of titles in Q2), and gets back to good old shitty-game-bashing.

Next on the agenda is last Friday’s (UK) release of Brawl. The only info I have on Brawl is that it’s Smash Brothers, it’s pretty, it’s on the Wii, and it has Solid motherfucking Snake. These are all excellent things for a videogame to have, so I’m waiting with baited breath until tomorrow when I plan to go out and buy the thing. I only ever played SSBM once on the Gamecube, and I loved it. Unfortunately, it’s bloody hard to find (like MGS3 and a load of great games), so I’ve been playing the original on the N64* for the last few months. I absolutely bloody love it, even though there are only 12 characters and 6 arenas. The matches are nicely customisable, and it can get quite tense. Brawl promises to be such a leap from the retro classic (I’m ignoring Melee), with a shitload of characters, and more customisability than a set of alphabet fridge magnets. And with online pitting you against your friends (and they’re fucking 12-digit codes), I can firmly set my excitement mode to 8, which stands for “touching cloth in anticipation”.

*I’m not cool enough to actually own the thing on 64, so I just pirated it on an emulator. Fuck you, corporations.

Come Cry With Me

“What? You actually update this piece of crap site?”

Indeed I do, but rarely. And you can enjoy this spectacle, which is akin to old faithful’s eruptions, by reading on.

I completed MGS4. I won’t spoil the ending for you (even though you’re a massive faggot if you haven’t finished it), but it wraps up the series nicely. And by nicely, I mean OMIGOD THAT GAME WAS JUST UNBELIEVABLE. I honestly didn’t think this would grip me as much as that other game did all those weeks ago, but my God it did. This game is an emotional rollercoaster, and the ultimate game for a fan of the series. I’ve loved the MGS series more than my family since the 14th of February 1999, when I first got the demo of MGS1. FYI, the demo ended when the DARPA chief died (omigod spoilers!).

I bet you winced/laughed when I said emotional rollercoaster. I fucking meant it. MGS1 had a great story, and MGS2 was a piece of theatrical brilliance as well. Remember the emotion you felt in that sniper fight with The Boss in MGS3, and the Snake Eater theme tune started playing? Double that, and you’ve got act 1 out of 5. The thrills, the nostalgia, the moments where you’re shouting “COME ON COME ON!!!!”* at the screen, the emotional deaths - they’re all here. When Snake’s aging body is revealed in a physical with Naomi, I welled up. I actually cried a bit during the beginning of act 4, and at several points in the epilogue, I was bawwwing my eyes out. This is a game for grown men to cry about. The story is that bloody good.

There were a few moments in GTA IV where I felt adrenaline rushing through me, but it was mainly rage/my love for Niko and Roman. Rockstar helped us relate to the characters in such a great way. Konami have done just that, and to a much higher level. Some of the tear-jerking moments were obviously created with Kojima standing behind the devs, repeating the words “make the player cry like a little girl”. And it pays off.

The ending, as I said 2 paragraphs ago, is a fantastic and definite end to the series. It’s taken 10 years, but Kojima finally has his masterpiece.

*I’ve spoken to a dozen or so people who played through this part, and every single one was screaming at their TVs. You will too.

PS: The title of this entry was a subtle hint that I’m off to Bulgaria for a week. See ya.