Goodbye

IN THE words of Julie Andrews: ‘So long, farewell, auf Widersehen, good night’:

We’re all off. Not far fortunately. We’re moving round the corner to the ever lovely BeefJack where bovine comedy is plentiful and the living is easy…sorry. Clearly I’m in the mood for lyrics.

The content will be as grand as ever and I’ve no doubt you’ll all be happy to read the sterling work we’re conjuring up.

This however isn’t just to tell you that we’re going. It’s to say thanks to you. Yes you *points*. As clichéd as it may sound, this site would have been nothing without you dear reader. You’re brilliant.

And oi, you lovely freelancers who have written for the site over the year. You’re brilliant too and I wish you all fantastic future writing careers.

Now finish reading the lovely content that we’re ending on and wander on over to BeefJack. Pull up a chair there, have a laugh, enjoy yourself. It’s going to be an exciting ride ahead.

Jennifer Allen

Potential dangers

Steven Croop wonders if DEFCON is a little more sinister than meets the eye.

WHEN THE nuclear-horror thriller WarGames was released in 1983, its climactic moment was when the computerised retaliatory failsafe WOPR ran through its scenarios and found that every one resulted in “WINNER: NONE.”  The only way not to lose, then, was not to play.  With the Cold War still going strong, the great fear of the era was mutually assured destruction—an unwinnable game that no one could quit unless somebody else stood down first.  1991 came, the MADness ended and the world watched the First Gulf War—the first videogame war—on television.  Now the climax of WarGames feels more like when NORAD has a base on the line that’s about to get hit with a nuclear maybe-missile.  We see the line trace its way to the blue triangle, and both vanish in a white circle.  Is the base still there?  Say anything.  It is the fear of an era in which widespread computerisation heralds instant communication but also instant miscommunication.  It is the fear of desensitisation in an abstracted era.  Kill a person at the push of a button, a person who is nothing more than an infrared blur on a grainy monochrome TV feed.  Watch them running, running—gone.  Introversion sought to distil these sentiments—new and old—into a game, and DEFCON resulted.

I recognise DEFCON as a ‘heavy’ game that I find it difficult to play consecutive matches of, but where the game somewhat undoes itself is its brisk pace and demand for concentration.  It leaves little room for reflection by the average player like me, who is busy trying to decide whether to surface his subs and annihilate the North American eastern coast, without thinking about the hugeness of the meaning wrapped up in his small conundrum.  The best way to feel a given match’s true weight would be to have already lost, to have nothing to do but watch and go ‘wow’ as the game blooms brightly.  I got exactly that dark luxury in the last game of DEFCON I’ll probably ever play.

Excessively violent Risk

As a Europe (players are assigned control of a broad geographical area, all of which are continents except for Russia) sandwiched between Russia and Africa in a three player free-for-all, I was bound to be the first to go down.  With my fleets decimated, my radar blinded, my airbases and silos neutralized, by the 15 minute mark I was effectively out of the game.  But my enemies had expended so much ordinance eliminating my offensive capabilities, my cities remained mostly intact.  In real life warfare there exists the concept of the ‘open city’: a declaration from the defenders of a city that they have abandoned the city and that their opposition should occupy the city rather than subject it to further (unnecessary) bombardment.  Stripped of my ability to visit destruction upon Europe’s enemies or defend her cities, I would have liked to declare Europe an ‘open continent’.  Unfortunately the goal of DEFCON is not to surgically lay low the military of the opposition, except as a means of getting at the succulent interior of his continent.  Kills are points in DEFCON, and only the mass deaths of civilians count.  Hitting a city with a missile produces x million deaths dependent on its population, with each million deaths of the enemy’s people equal to two points and each million deaths of your own people inflicting a one point penalty on your score.  The silos opened at last and I watched as Europe’s cities disappeared in the crossfire.  I comforted myself with the thought that Europe only perished out of the necessity of the game, for the sake of the scoreboard.  Civilian populations aren’t labelled with a points value in real life, so there’d be no reason for Europe to burn.  The open continent would be spared…right?

The reason given for WOPR’s creation in WarGames is that too many humans refused to pull the trigger in drills.  I wonder if today and in the future we might not have the opposite problem, with abstracted warfare mitigating human conscience.  Instead of the average FPS with its crosshair and health meter, it might be that DEFCON is the closest thing that videogaming has to a true mass murder simulator.  Its interface is more believably what some missile commander underneath a mountain might base world-altering (or world-ending) decisions on.  Playing it, we see how easy it is to end entire cities when they are just coloured diamonds.  I think that the most important victory in DEFCON is to break through that wall of abstraction and entertain the consequences of our amusing little simulation were it played out in the real world.  DEFCON has shown me what it feels like to watch a continent burn.  For that I appreciate it, but now it is too laden with death to feel like I am ever just playing another game.

Format: DS | Genre: RPG| Publisher: Nintendo | Developer: Nintendo | Release date: 04/03/2011 | Price: £29.99

Jennifer Allen has to catch them all thanks to POKEMON BLACK/WHITE.

IT’S A game for kids isn’t it? That’s what you might be thinking when you see the word Pokémon. After all, its appearance is rather childlike and it’s as far away from gory as you can possibly get. It’s not really a game for kids though, for one thing there’s a little too much depth to be seen here. While cynics could argue that recent Pokémon instalments have been more of the same and lacking in a few revolutionary innovations, Pokémon Black and White manages to be both feeling like a whole new game while maintaining its original sense of magic.

The storyline is rather familiar admittedly. You play a teenage dreamer, determined to turn their dull life around and become the greatest Pokémon trainer of them all. So off he/she goes to battle the gym trainers scattered around the land of Unova, in order to collect their badges and ultimately face the Elite Four. There’s even the ever familiar dilemma of choosing your starter Pokémon. Do you go with the fire based Tepig, the grass based Snivy or the water based Oshawatt? This is where the sense of shiny new goodness kicks in. The Pokémon on offer are all entirely new. Sure you’re playing the game in a very similar way but the Pokémon – the key component to ensure that this game is wondrous – are all new. You might notice that a few of these new creatures have borrowed ideas from older generation ones but there are still sufficient number that feel all new. Such as the ice cream based Baibanira. Yes, ice cream based. It’s perhaps not the most amazing of ideas for a Pokémon but it’s unique, I’ll give it that.

Insert predictable gotta catch em all gag

Traversing the world of Unova is no great hardship, offering a fairly linear structure to proceedings but it’s the variations within the Pokémon themselves that offer flexibility and of course the urge to collect them all. Each Pokémon has a bit more character too in the form of individual animations during battle. It’s unfortunate that the graphics within battles are still distinctly patchy but overall, the style is much improved. Indeed in the case of much of the exploration you’ll be conducting, you’ll be busy oohing and ahhing at the impressive sights of the pseudo 3D world you inhabit. Visiting huge cities actually feels like an accomplishment rather than the flat lands of the past. Further improvements are present in small but no less important things such as Pokemarts now being incorporated within Pokecentres, thus enabling you to heal and rest while also stocking up on items all within the one place. TMs, useful extra moves for Pokémon, can now be used multiple times on different Pokémon making it simpler to micro manage your abilities more efficiently.

Online functionality has also been improved with the C-Gear device enabling you to battle or trade with other players via infra-red, local and online Wi-Fi. Pokémon Dream World also offers the ability to communicate with other players via your PC too although this wasn’t available to test out just yet.

While you can spend tens of hours ploughing through the main game, the fun doesn’t end with the Elite Four. Like previous Pokémon titles, it’s the end game where things get truly excellent. Expanding your Pokedex to over 600 Pokémon is a joy and a series of new towns and areas to explore are unlocked. There’s even a new storyline to follow. There’s also enough of a difference between Black and White to encourage you to track down someone with the opposite colour to yours with both titles offering their own unique Pokémon as well as an unique area.

Pokémon Black and White won’t convert naysayers to the cause but regardless of this, it’s quite clearly the best title in the series yet. It’s a fantastic way to say goodbye to the DS in time for the launch of the 3DS. Familiar yet fresh, it’ll undoubtedly claim hundreds of hours from anyone who gives it a shot.

9/10

What does this score mean?

(maybe some war)

THE NEXT title by Costume Quest and Stacking developers Double Fine has been announced. It’s got robots.

Trenched will be an Xbox 360 exclusive, released over XBLA, featuring lots of stompy customisable battle robots and big scary alien do-hickeys.

Players will fight as part of the Mobile Trench Brigade, combining shooty action with tower defence style play across Europe, Africa and the Pacific.

Here is a video to watch with your eyes.

No release date yet.

Brendy Caldwell

Red Dead and Minecraft are ‘good things’, GDC awards claim

WESTERN SHOOTER Red Dead Redemption and blocky sandbox building things game Minecraft are good, according to a Game-playing Developmental Conglomeration.

“Minecraft makes me want to kiss the Internet,” said one Conglomatron. “And Red Dead has horses and you can wear hats in it and everything.”

The just now made-up comments came as Red Dead won four awards at the Game Developers Choice Awards, including Best Game Design and Game of the Year.

Minecraft won five awards overall, three in the Choice Awards and two more in the Indie Games Festival, Including Best Downloadable Game, the Innovation award and the Seumas McNally Grand Prize – worth $20,000.

Nidhogg won the Nuovo Award while Amnesia: The Dark Descent was also said to be “yeah, I like that too”, winning three IGF awards including Excellence in Audio and Technical Excellence.

Well done to all them folk. Well deserved methinks.

(Via GameInformer)

Brendy Caldwell

Format: PC | Genre: MMORPG | Publisher: Trion Worlds | Developer: Trion Worlds | ETA: 04/03/2011

Sinan Kubba contemplates giving up his social life in favour of RIFT.

SO RIFT is now in full flow on the back of a strong beta phase, the reassuring news of a million accounts already registered, and a relatively smooth launch – minus a bit of server queuing here and there.

Last week at a London press event, representatives from developer Trion Worlds gave off an air of confident nervousness ahead of the launch. That may sound oxymoronic but it’s totally understandable.

Trion Worlds may be releasing their first MMO, but their 200 or so employees boast some of the most experienced people in their field, Across various individuals you probably have a collective that has worked on every major MMO since Ultima. So while lying ahead is the daunting task of ensuring the smooth launch of a game in such a competitive, risk-heavy genre, the Trion team is quietly confident.

A new ruler?

So far the confidence appears to be justified. People seem to be enjoying themselves in Rift’s dense world of Telera, some loudly singing the game’s praises in chat. It’s early days yet, of course, and there are many more obstacles to overcome. One of the biggest may be to really demonstrate to outside players what separates Rift from other major MMOs, and in particular World of Warcraft. At a glance the former is very reminiscent of what is the undisputed leader of the pack.

Many of the same memes run through opening areas. Big things like armour, vendors, interface, quests, basic consumables and trade skills all seem like paraphrases of the equivalent in Blizzard’s game. European Community Lead at Trion Worlds, Sebastian Streiffert, explained to me why this design is quite deliberate and how playing the game soon reveals its unique nature.

“Well, if you have played MMOs before, what you’ll see in Rift is very familiar because we’ve taken a lot of the good things about MMOs and applying them, putting them in there, so you have the basic structure. But then, to make it very fresh, you have the class system, the dynamic content, the lush new graphics – I’m sure you’ve seen some of the real cool-looking areas today – but yes, it’s one thing to say we have these unique features, but it’s another thing when you actually try the game, get in there, and realize it’s freaking awesome. The rifts – that’s how I got my learning with the game.”

Sebastian is referring to the rift invasions, which are in many ways the game’s unique selling point. These are randomly spawning tears in the world from which all kinds of monsters invade to try to set up footholds to take up further attacks from. They are often tied in to larger world quests affecting the entire zone you’re in.

War of the Rift

I’ve stumbled into a few on my early travels and, with the opening areas dense with characters, I’ve seen dozens upon dozens of players pile in on monsters to try to frag em up in the allotted time. Certainly based on first impressions, the rifts and subsequent foothold invasions are a whole lot of fun, often on a very large scale, and Trion’s drum-beating description of them as dynamic appears quite fair. When you see a horde of enemies come straight for where you are while you’re quietly trying to hand in a quest, it’s unsettling at first, and underlines the potential impact they can have. Will Cook, lead designer of the rift events, explained some of the process that went into them:

“We have a big old list of things we’d like to do, and even I have a ton of things that would be crazy in any game, let alone an MMO. Half of those ideas though seem to have made it in the game anyway, I mean I never thought they’d get in there. I never thought we’d get [rift] invasions on the road, taking over quest hubs… that sounds like suicide. You never stop a player from leveling and questing. That’s dumb! That is a rule: never put bad guys on the road. What we realised, though was [if we] put bad guys on the road in the right spot, players don’t always have to defeat that challenge, they can just dive off the road. It’s like the Hobbits from The Lord of the Rings when they’re being chased by the Nazgul. It’s an incredible experience. These are crazy ideas that no one thought would work, but we’re actually getting a lot out of them.”

The underlying feel I get from Trion Worlds and from my early time with Rift is that the developer is not that fussed about enticing new players to their game… which makes sense, really. The MMO audience may be continually expanding, but Rift is nothing like the new breed of MMOs such as DC Universe Online and The Old Republic. It shares its lineage with traditional thoroughbreds like Ultima, Everquest, and of course World of Warcraft. In many ways, large and subtle, it’s trying to one-up them – to be a WoW 2.

Continues…

Trailers: Mount & Blade: With Fire and Sword, sninkt sninkt clllngr!

THAT’S RIGHT, it’s sound effects day at Reso. What you gonna do about it? Sweet nothing, that’s what.

Shamefully, I have never played Mount & Blade. But it does look awfully fun. Doesn’t it? Here’s some trailery goodness for from Paradox Interactive et al to celebrate the Game Developers Conference, which is taking place miles away in the New World – a distant, scary place of which we know not lots.

With Fire & Sword is due out in the second quarter of 2011 for PC.

Brendy Caldwell

Trailer: Ace Combat: Assault Horizon, pfffffffneeeor!

THAT’S THE sound of a fighter jet. It’s flying through the air and it’s hitting you in the face.

“Hey, watch it,” you say, licking your fat lip.

“No, YOU watch it,” says the boisterous fighter jet in return.

And that’s just what you do. You notice this trailer and you watch it.

Ace Combat: Assault Horizon is out for PS3 and Xbox 360 at a spoooookily unspecified date in 2011.

Brendy Caldwell

Eurogamer Expo tickets now on sale, dahn Lahndan innit

TICKETS FOR Eurogamer Expo 2011 are now on sale for £8 per day, Eurogamer hastens to tell everyone.

But the above price is for “early bird” tickets. So there may be an increase in price over the next few months. Panic accordingly.

The Expo will remain in last year’s nest Earls Court, London. It’ll be spread across four days, taking place September 22-25.

It’s good craic. Doubtless some Resolvers/Beefjackers will be there. Come and play games! You can buy your tickets from their website.

Brendy Caldwell

Format: Reading | Genre: Military | Publisher: Titan Books | Author: Raymond Benson and John Milius | Release date: 25/01/2011 | Price: £6.99

Jennifer Allen looks at a chilling glimpse of a plausible future (maybe) with HOMEFRONT; THE VOICE OF FREEDOM.

I’M THOROUGHLY conflicted with Homefront: The Voice of Freedom. While it tells a great story that offers some great opportunities to feel truly chilling, the writing reminds me too much of a popcorn blockbuster – explosive and brash but lacking in the finer nuances of the English language.

It’s not surprising really. Co-written by Raymond Benson and John Milius it was bound to be easy to read but not the most complex piece of writing. Benson has been responsible for numerous gaming tie in novels such as Splinter Cell and the Metal Gear Solid novelisation, while Milius co-wrote Apocalypse Now, Magnum Force and Conan the Barbarian. The cynic in me wonders if Milius wrote the gung ho parts of Apocalypse Now looking at the rest of his work. That sounds horribly snobby and it’s not meant to be by any means. Loving gung ho films as much as the next person, I can appreciate that The Voice of Freedom is a novelisation of a blockbuster of a title that while lacking in depth, makes up for it with a charm that means you keep reading. Even if you do find yourself occasionally cringing at the simplistic language, especially in terms of dialogue.

The setting is bleak indeed. America has been occupied by the Greater Korean Republic and it’s all really rather grim in the land of opportunity. The book looks at the lives of two residents from two very different backgrounds. There’s Ben Walker, a journalist who tries to escape the occupation and finds himself embroiled in the resistance efforts. The story uses part of Ben’s diary to elaborate on events that are often briefly discussed in the actual tale. Indeed, the book feels a little too rushed at times glossing over details that would have perhaps been more interesting if properly explained rather than mentioned in passing.

There’s also the perspective of Salmusa – a ruthless Korean agent who’s stayed hidden until now. His ruthlessness is quickly established when he kills his wife with barely a hint of humanity. The pacing throughout is pretty steady in this regard with action scenes appearing at a steady pace. Military acronyms are understandably used here to add an authentic touch but it’s not excessive. In fact, everything has a hint of chilling plausibility to it. Set only 16 years into the future, it feels a little too possible. The explanation given for everything is that the US has suffered an economic crisis and is languishing in a pit of despair with mass unemployment. Sound familiar? Not quite yet fortunately, but there’s certainly a hint of reality in there.

The cat and mouse type game that Salmusa and Ben play quickly draws you in, but why oh why does the dialogue have to feel so pedestrian? It feels too simplistic alongside a story that offers so much potential. It’s impossible to say how it ties into the game without having played the game but it has piqued my interest. It’s not a demanding book by any means but it does provide an interesting alternate universe – one that I enjoyed reading about.