Left 4 Dead 2 - avatar awards

Last night, after a total of 25 or so hours playing the game, I unlocked the 'zombie hand' avatar award  t-shirt in L4D2. Yes,  I've shot, bludgeoed (baseball & cricket bats, guitar, frying pan), sliced (machete, katana), chopped, blown up (explosives & grenades) and  set on fire 10,000 zombies. My avatar now looks like this -

I have the very t-shirt in real life too, given to me at the Eurogamer Expo.

The medipac my avatar seems so happy to have found was awarded after completing all five L4D2 campaigns.  I don't have one of those in real life.  He does though.

This is the first game I've played that has given out avatar awards and I think it is a good idea for developers to give something tangible (though, paradoxically, virtual) for an action in a game, rather than the solely empirical Achievements. It is also a way for other players to know what the player has achieved without trekking through their gamerscore.

Next up, an attempt to unlock the Depeche Mode t-shirt in the same game, by rescuing a garden gnome. It's certainly what my first thought would be in a zombie apocalypse.

Mass Effect - am I being left out?

Mass Effect 2 was released today and everyone seems to love it. Reviews from sources I trust are uniformly excellent. Gamers whose opinion I trust are equally effusive. It's the first 'big' game of the year and has a lot of marketing support behind it. It's even crossed over into 'proper' media - aka the GTA IV effect. For Christ's sake, I saw it shown on the video advertising billboard on the King's Cross railway station concourse on Tuesday night (with that location, they're obviously trying to corner the wino and crack ho market).

But I'm not sure. Not because of the game itself - I have no doubt that it is a well-crafted videogame. Rather, my apprehension is because of the original game, which I didn't really like. Lord knows, to blaspheme twice within the space of a paragraph, I tried to like it but it left me cold. Shonky combat, dull, empty worlds and interminable interaction with NPCs. It was like KOTOR, on the original Xbox, stripped of the Star Wars mythology, i.e. what made it good. Not fun.

Many of those people that are hot for ME2, showed a lot of love for the first one, which makes me think that I won't necessarily like it. I have been meaning to give the first game a second chance, though. However, I wonder if I'd want to trek through two 40-hour+ games, set in the same universe, back-to-back?

I could just jump straight into ME2 without bothering with the first game, of course. Just because a sequel has been made, there's no requirement to have played the first one - GAME staff don't give you a pop quiz on the original game when you buy sequels. I wouldn't recommend anyone play Assassin's Creed at all, when they could just dive in to the better-in-every-way sequel. However, I've read that ME2 takes data from an ME save file on the same 360. Now, while I think that is a great fan-service, it puts me off going straight for the sequel - what would I be missing if I did that?

I'm coming to the end of Assassin's Creed II and I then intend to move on to Uncharted 2. Heavy Rain, God of War III and Red Dead Redemption all come out over the next few months and I'm avidly looking forward to them all. It's likely that these games, coupled with my finite gaming time, will mean that I'll pass on ME2, at least for now.

But what will I talk about on the Internets?

A Non-gaming Week

Sometimes, being a 30-something gamer results in there being not enough emphasis on the 'gamer' and too much emphasis on the grown-up bit at the other end of the phrase.

This week, after my customary 'gaming until stupid o'clock' Sunday night/Monday morning session, I've barely gamed at all. I don't know why I have the stupid o'clock session - it sets me up for a sleepy start to the week, making me too tired to game early on in the working week. Or work. Or converse rationally after 8pm.

This week, I started with good intentions in the morning for evening gaming sessions. I was imagining shotgunning zombies during my journey to work, though to be honest maybe a London commute makes everyone think that. By the evening, due to sleep deprivation, coupled with a day of particularly stressful work (it's been a bad week for that), the only thing I've shotgunned is (metaphorical) nighttime cocoa. Work, the curse of the gaming classes.

And I've had a nasty bout of man-flu. Feel my pain.

So when I came to fire up my 360 last night for Assassin's Creed II and Sega Rally, it had been five days since it was last turned on. Other than a bit of Professor Layton and one lunchtime game of Burn Zombie Burn, I'd gone through a week without gaming.

Which makes it a bit difficult to blog about, really. Normal service will, hopefully, be resumed next week, as this week I'm doing my 'stupid o'clock gaming' Saturday night/Sunday morning. Left 4 Dead 2 here I come.

Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition Trailer

A trailer for the repackaged version of last year's entry in the survival horror franchise has just been released.  Having Jill (showing her skills as 'the master of unlocking' and also nearly being made into a 'Jill Sandwich' in the trailer) and Chris both in a mansion (even if not 'the' mansion) is fanboy gold.

I won't be buying the full game - I did that last year - but the two new scenarios are being made available as DLC and I'll be stoking up my painfully slow broadband connection for them both.  I liked Resi 5 and had an absolute blast playing it through on Co-op across Xbox Live but I know that plenty of gamers didn't and it alienated part of its fanbase.  I wonder if Capcom consciously included 'fan-friendly' content in the DLC as a way of regaining goodwill (and money, of course).

Strange Behaviour in Venizia

After a brief flirtation with FIFA 10 last weekend, I returned to Assassin's Creed II  today (I had the day off work). I'm currently plying my murderous trade in Venice, probably the largest of the cities in the game. Venice is a fair way through the adventure and I'm beginning to wonder if the playtesting was frontloaded into the opening areas. I was wandering around Venice this afternoon, between assassinations and I came across a small group of Venitians all standing at a 45 degree angle from the floor. They were staring intently at a small patch of wall, murmuring to themselves (and I thought it was the assassin sect that were so named for their consumption of hashish). I stood Ezio in front of them (obscuring at least one) and took the picture below.

Earlier on (no photo this time), I had been swimming in the lagoon (a death sport, if ever there was one, be it in the Renaisance or now) and a gondola rammed me. The gondolier fell into the water but the gondola itself passed through Ezio, leaving him (me/Desmond) lodged inside the body of the boat. All that  could be seen above water was the top of Ezio's hoodie. After much flailing around, attempted dives, high/low profile switches, I had to give up and quit the game.

Fortunately, the game had saved a couple of minutes before, so I didn't lose much progress but I hate any bug that forces me to quit a game (talk about breaking the illusion).

I didn't have any similar problems in the first 24 hours or so that I'd been playing the game. I do wonder if developers think that, as only maybe half of gamers get to the latter stages of a game, they can cut corners on bugfixing in that area, particularly if they are struggling to meet deadlines ahead of release.

This shouldn't put anyone off though - even with little niggles like this, ACII was one of the best games released last year.

The (many) ways in which Assassin's Creed II is better than the original

As I posted  previously, I received Assassin's Creed II (AC2) for Christmas and I had intended to write about my first impressions of it but, as I've played over twenty hours to date, it seems a little late for that.  I reckon I'm only just over halfway through the story, so this isn't a full review (which may - or may not, to be honest - come later) either.  Rather, this is a comparison with the first game, which was also a Christmas present from a couple of years ago (what is it about Christmas that makes me want to assassinate people?).

I will say at the outset that AC2 is better than the original in pretty much every way.  While I enjoyed the first game, I had the feeling that it had been a little rushed, probably in order to hit the Christmas market and that it did not live up to the pre-release hype that Ubisoft had generated for it.  AC had looked and sounded like it was going to be a benchmark in gaming but in the end turned out to be a better than average (and therefore disappointing) action adventure game.

This time around -

There's more to do

In the first game,  just like in Celebrity Big Brother, you could experience all it had to offer in the first hour.  After that it was just repetition of those same experiences.  Now, those experiences included killing people with a hidden blade in your wrist guard and jumping off tall buildings, so it wasn't unpleasant repetition but still.....  Anyway, AC2 has many different types of side missions to keep you occupied when you want to veer away from slavishly following the story.

There's less Desmond

I don't think it's a spoiler to say that the central conceit of the AC games is that there are a couple of secret societies that have battled each other for hundreds of years.  The player's experience of Altair/Ezio (the main character in the first and second games, respectively) is actually via a present-day member (Desmond) of one of those societies (and descendant of those individuals, I think - sometimes I drift off when being told the plot through cut scenes) replaying Altair/Ezio's 'memories' using some sort of pseudo-tech time psycho-time-travel device.  At regular intervals during the first game you'd be transported back from Outremer to take control of Desmond instead.  Desmond wasn't in the least bit interesting and there wasn't really much you could do with him, other than wander aimlessly around a couple of rooms, be told the plot by the NPCs present in those rooms, completely fail to use the toilet or shower  (and believe me, I tried) and eventually be transported back to the 'proper' part of the game.

This time around, after the initial scene-setting Desmond-age, he is mercifully absent for much of the game.  I next took control of him after I'd played nearly twenty hours and that was just about bearable.  Admittedly, I'd been faffing around with the side missions a hell of a lot (treasure map + treasure chests + my collecting OCD = twenty hours to get to halfway) but even if you'd raced through the story, you probably wouldn't get too fed up with Des.

Personally, I'd be happy if there was no present day aspect of the games at all and Desmond was just a discarded idea from the development process, nestling in Ubisoft's waste basket alongside giving Ezio a jetbike, or turning him into a rentboy (Ass Assassin's Creed, if you will.  Ahem).  Being able to play as an assassin in Outremer or Renaissance Italy would have made for fine games on their own, without the science fiction trappings.

There's more internal logic

In the first game, when running away from guards, you could only blend in with the crowd if walking with a group of monks - normal city folk obviously becoming transparent when you are in amongst them.  AC2 remedies that - you can now blend in with any group of 3/4 or more people wandering through the streets.  This is just one example, there are plenty of others - the cities that Ubisoft has created seem more 'real' in how their inhabitants behave and how you can interact with them.

The platforming is more difficult


The free running of Altair looked fantastic but was actually very easy to achieve - pull the left stick in one direction while pressing a button.  There is still an element of that in AC2 but you need to give far more thought to your pathfinding up the side of a building; this makes for far more rewarding gameplay.  There are also several sections (no spoilers) that are actually straight indoor 3D platform sections, like Prince of Persia (particularly Sands of Time).  These  can be quite tricky and are a welcome break from the majority of the game, which is set outdoors.

There are more weapons

The first game had a limited number of weapons.  In AC2, as the game develops, Ezio becomes more tooled up than than a Basildon chav on Saturday night.  Special mention goes to the use of poison and your ability to use it to create 'Georgi Markov' moments.

More familiar surroundings


A selfish one, this.  I've never been to Jerusalem or Acre; I have been to Florence and Venice.  I like playing games set in 'real' places (although none of the settings are carbon copies of an actual city) that I have visited. I liked PGR (even though I was really bad at it) because I could zoom through the streets of central London where I work, thinking things like  'Ooh, that's Horse Guards Road', as I span out and the opposing cars flashed passed me.

and 


They haven't thrown out the good stuff


Unlike some sequels (Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, I'm looking at you), the developers haven't discarded the good parts of an original game in their desire to make the sequel different. The central idea of being an assassin  and killing folk is interesting and that is maintained.  As in the first game, the graphical style is very impressive and they've also kept climbing towers to better ascertain your surroundings; jumping from high places into haystacks and the hidden blade weapon, all of which were great in  the original.

Hopefully, I'll complete the game in the next couple of weeks and then be able to post a full review.

Mario Kart Wii cheaters - for shame!

I've been playing quite a bit of Mario Kart Wii over the last few days, with my daughter and also on the internets over Nintendo's wi-fi connection. MKW, as I will lazily abbreviate it, is pretty much the only game I play online against people that I do not know.  Ordinarily, this is no problem  - races are challenging and fun and there's generally a good mix of player abilities.

However we were playing a couple of days ago and one of the racers had infinite items (the decent ones too - if you're going to cheat, cheat large I suppose), from even before the race started.  There were bob-omb explosions on the starting grid, which should have warned me that something was off but, as we hadn't come across it before, we persevered.  On the following race, we quit before the end as the nob-end was carrying on with the same tactic.

I had a quick search of the internet afterwards and found plenty of mentions of this particular hack.  Who on Earth would want to cheat at MKW?  I mean, who would want to cheat at any game anyway but MKW?  It is not a serious game and it's on the Wii, for crying out loud!  Not exactly hardcore, is it?

On a happier note, as we were racing my daughter was smack-talking me - Mario Kart as it should be played.  I'm so proud.......

Christmas Presents!

Well, I hope everyone had a Happy Christmas.  Father Christmas (videogame division) was generous to me this year, though  I had been very good.  I received Assassin's Creed II on 360 and Professor Layton and Pandora's Box on DS from my lovely wife (ha - I know she reads this) and Uncharted 2 on PS3 from my smelly brother (I know he doesn't).

Getting a videogame for Christmas has been a a regular part of the festivities for me since the mid-eighties.  I particularly remember getting Knight Lore in 1984 or 1985.  I knew (before Christmas) where my Mum had hidden it (as yet unwrapped) and, most weeknights when my stepfather went out to pick my Mum up from work, I would sneak it out from its hiding place, load it up and have a pre-Christmas sample of Ultimate's finest, making sure to turn it off as I heard our car approach.  Of course, whether my Mum would have recognised the Christmas present game had I left it playing after her return is an interesting point.  She might have had an inkling on Christmas morning though, when my 'new' game looked suspiciously like the one I'd been playing (weeknights only - no weekend illicit gaming opportunities presented themselves) for the previous few weeks.....

I've only scratched the surface of ACII so far but it is shaping up to be an excellent game (when I've played it some more, I will post on it).  I  haven't sampled the other two yet  but I am sure (or as sure as you can be by relying on reviews) that they will both be great too.

I'll make a rare non-videogaming comment and mention getting one of Lisa Snelling's Poppets for Christmas as well (second on the left, reading a copy of Neil Gaiman's 'The Graveyard Book').  Cool.

EDIT - Since I first started drafting this 'Christmas present' post, my Mum, mentioned above, has died from cancer. Shit.  She (and my stepfather, also now fighting cancer) purchased my first gaming platform, the ZX Spectrum, back in 1983, starting a hobby that has given me countless hours of enjoyment over the last quarter  of a century.  This is one of the many, many things that I have to be thankful to her for and the world is a worse place without her.

To quote from Dylan Thomas, 'Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.'  The rest of the poem is available here and is well worth a read.

Normal service - and my membership of other virtual spaces - will be resumed soon.