Game of the Year 2011

It's been a long time since I blogged (again), as  that pesky 'real life' thing has been interfering in my free time (and I like to use at least some of that which I have left to actually play games!).  Hopefully, I'll get more time in the New Year.  I had hoped that my family  taking over the TV for  X-Factor 2011 would allow me some time for gaming but, no - I laid into my DS and 3DS instead, the better to block out the tuneless wailing and, frankly, shouting (Kitty, I'm looking at you, through eyes squinting in pain) that was on my TV.


Anyway, as I did last year, I thought I'd post on my favourite games from those that I'd played during the year. I haven't played everything this year - there are some triple A releases (Gears of War 3, Skyrim) that just don't float my gaming boat - and I have a couple (most notably Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword) that might have a claim to sneaking in my top 5 when I actually get around to playing them.  However, there's not much point of a 'best of' list being posted in April the following year, so here it is, in reverse order for an illusion of tension - 


5. Batman: Arkham City - the sequel to what was my game of the year  2009 (Batman: Arkham Asylum) and not as good as that superbly structured and balanced game.  The story and look of Gotham City (aka Arkham City, a prison built in the fenced-off streets of parts of Gotham) were great, as was the respect shown towards the Batman mythos.  There was too much unnecessary padding of side missions though and I hope that any subsequent Batman game from Rocksteady is more focussed. Admittedly, I didn't have to do any  side missions (or I could have picked and chose those that I wanted) but there's a bit of OCD towards collecting in most gamers - I blame Mario - and, in getting sidetracked, I lost some of the focus of the central narrative.   A special mention to the boss fights - far better than in the first game and one (Mr Freeze) was one of the best boss fights I've ever played.

4. Mario Kart 7 - an excellent entry into a series I've been playing for nearly twenty years. It followed the tried and tested template of 32 courses (16 new, 16 plucked form earlier iterations of the game) split into 8 cups, with various unlockables (characters, kart modifications) to pick up along the way.  The addition of underwater and in the air paths through courses gave a sense of 'verticality' to the courses (and the shortcuts available in them).  I was sceptical about this verticality at first but it really has an impact of gameplay and pathfinding.  It also has  the best use of 3D on the 3DS that I've yet seen. 


My only gripe is that there's too many Mario Kart Wii courses on the retro cups - I've nothing against the courses picked (Maple Treeway, Coconut Mall, Mushroom Gorge and Koopa Cape), which are all very good (the former two are probably my favourite courses on MKW). It's just that I still regularly play MKW and one of the great things about playing retro courses in successive Mario Karts is that they take you back to courses that you've not played for a while - this time around, I still play  a quarter of the retro courses on offer in another game.

3. LA Noire - a game that can be summed up as a James Ellroy's LA Quartet simulator  - and just as good as that sounds. Spooky facial capture tech puts recognisable actors (including many of the cast of Mad Men and  John Noble from Fringe)  into the game. The facial expressions  used by the actors are a key part of the gameplay, as you try to 'read' them in interview sequences, something that had never been done in a game before (and that worked very well). Excellent narrative (even if there are a few holes and too many 'borrowings' from Ellroy) and interview sequences.  


Unfortunately, the developer went into administration shortly after the game was released but hopefully another developer has picked up the tech used in the game - it showed massive promise

2. Portal 2 - It's not often that I laugh out loud at a videogame (50 Cent: Blood on the Sand excepted) but I did, several times, in Portal 2.   Intelligence, wit and humour are three attributes not always found in videogames but Valve's excellent first person puzzler had them in spades. As with the first game (that I did not even play until after this one), the gameplay revolves around the portal gun - a device that shoots two (at any given time) holes into reality that then create a portal between them that the player can pass through. The puzzles are essentially a series of passages from A to B but that brief description does not do them justice.  You get  a sense of real achievement (which is always far better than an Achievement) after working out a particularly tough puzzle without resorting to an internet guide. This was my game of the year until today (30/12), when I reached the end of -

1. Uncharted 3 -  Uncharted is one of Sony's console exclusive crown jewels (along with Killzone and Resistance, neither of which I'm that keen on).  Uncharted 2 was excellent in every area (still only my third favourite game on 2009 though, behind Batman and Assassin's Creed II) but this one surpasses it.  The same treasure seeking template as before (think 'Indiana Jones' (but try not to think of the awful fourth film)) but this has been polished to perfection.  The story was spot-on and didn't succumb to the narrative foolishness in the final reel as the previous two games.  Some of the set pieces were breathtakingly good - straight out of a Hollywood blockbuster. The environment effects - fire, water - were superb, giving a true sense of danger to what you were doing onscreen and Nathan Drake is a genuinely engaging central character.  All of the characters were excellently voice-acted, particularly Drake and the always in need of rescue Victor 'Sully' Sullivan (Princess Peach to Drake's Mario).  Special mention goes  to the music score, which was pitch perfect for the game.
Well, that brings to an end my games of the year.  Honourable mentions must be given to those that  just missed out -  Little Big Planet 2 (in the top 3 until the autumn), Super Mario 3D Land, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and FIFA 12 (the best football game I've ever played).  Same time again next year...

Holiday Casualty

I've just been on a great fortnight's holiday in Suffolk - very relaxing, reasonably clement weather  and plenty to do.  As is usual for me, I took my DS Lite, my PSP (which went untouched) and my iPad, in order to head off gaming withdrawal.  Unfortunately, my DS bought the farm while I was away (coincidentally, on a farm) - one of the hinges snapped off as I opened it up for another game of imported zombie RTS Zombie Daisuki (to be reviewed soon).

Something missing?

I wasn't particularly rough with it but the housing for the power lights completely sheared off.  I bought the DS Lite when it came out, upgrading from my DS Chunky, so I've had it for over four years (in which time I've played it a lot).  Even so, a physical failure like this seems poor.

Fortunately, the DS still works OK, though some balancing (or changing grip, so that the left hand is supporting the top screen as well using the D-pad) is required to prevent the top screen from becoming wonky while playing.  I think that this means it is no longer a portable console - playing it on the sofa at home is fine but I think bumpy train journeys are a thing of the past!

I will be replacing it shortly, probably with a DSi.  I did consider a 3DS given the recent price drop but I'm not that interested in any of the current 3DS games and, if I got one, it would be for the DS backwards compatibility.  However, there is very little difference in price between the two at the moment (which is faintly ridiculous), so I might end up taking the 3D plunge or (most likely) checking the condition/price of  a second hand DSi

Nintendo 3DS Launch Day

The Nintendo 3DS launched today and this lunchtime I went to Covent Garden in London's West End, where Nintendo had set up an installation where you could play all the launch games.

The Box of Delights

Covent Garden was something of a geek nexus today, as queues were beginning to form outside the large Apple Store on the other side of the piazza for the 5pm iPad 2 launch, when I got there at 12.30pm The Nintendo lounge room was surprisingly clear though - there were about 15 other people in there (not including the many Nintendo PR staff) but  I didn't have to queue to get in, nor wait to play any of the games I was interested in. The room itself was quite small, as perhaps can be seen from the photo above, with a central area where the 3DSs were, with two 'corridors' on either side, through which you entered and left.  The entry one had display cabinets of Nintendo handhelds throughout the years, which was a nice touch (the original Game Boy looks HUGE).  In the central area, the lighting was subdued, no doubt in order to show the screens to their best effect.  In the exit 'corridor' were PCs, with which visitors could blog (according to the PR people) about the experience (I passed on that, as I had to get back to work).

All the launch games were available and I played Ridge Racer, Pilotwings, Street Fighter IV, Nintendogs, Splinter Cell and Pro Evolution Soccer.

As I had thought would be the case, the 3D effect was much better playing on actual games than with the on-board software. I particularly liked the effect (if not the game itself) on Pilotwings, maybe because of my existing knowledge of Wuhu Island.

There is a 3D slider on the righthand side of the topscreen, which allows the player to reduce/remove the 3D-ness of the games. I actually preferred Street Fighter IV in full 2D than when the 3D effect was switched on, possibly betraying the 2D origins of the series.

The 3D sweetspot was larger than I thought it would be but, even so, in some the games (Pilotwings, Pro Evo) I found that I was subconsciously moving the console while playing, enough so that I some of the 3D-ness was lost the from the games (which was quite disorientating).

Pro Evolution Soccer was my favourite of the games I tried.  The default mode (and I don't know if this can be changed), was a roaming camera centred on your  player in (or chasing) possession (rather than the traditional 'Match of the Day' camera angle of most videogame football).  That was a bit disorientating at first but showed the 3D to good effect.  As usual, the real team names were absent, leaving me to play as 'East London' (in claret and blue, of course).  The Scott Parker (hallowed be his name) player model looked more like the player than in FIFA 11 though.

Pilotwings looked like it could get dull quickly, flying around Wii Sports Resort's Wuhu Island (something I remember being one of many mini games in WSR itself), particularly as I am very familiar with Wuhu Island, having completed the flying mini game in WSR.  It was fun to fly down the crater of the volcano and exit through a tunnel in 3D though.

Of the others that I played, Ridge Racer was, well, Ridge Racer - a solid enough racer but that isn't a genre I'm that interested in generally and even less so on a handheld (unless you can drive a kart and fire red shells at opponents, I give handheld racers a wide berth).  Nintendogs seemed, in the short time that I had with it, the same as the DS game.  The 3D looked smart  but not enough for me to want to pay for a game that, essentially, I already have (and ceded to my daughter years ago).  I played part of one level of Splinter Cell  and recognised it from a SC game I played years ago (maybe Chaos Theory?) that involved infiltrating (eventually) a lighthouse.  I'm not a fan of stealth in games (I'm more gung-ho in my approach) and playing a stealth game I played maybe as long as 7 years ago didn't appeal.

I don't think I suffered any major eyestrain's a result of my half an hour in the booth,  though my eyes did seem a little sore. However, I think that there's been so much coverage of this particular issue, that any ill-effects I felt were probably psychosomatic.

Overall, the glasses-free 3D effect was good but nothing more than a gimmick (as with all 3D, in my opinion).  Games consoles survive or fail on the strength of their software and the 3DS doesn't have great strength yet.  In a marketplace of one, having a strong launch line-up isn't that important - there'll always be plenty of new adopters for a Nintendo console willing to hand over their pounds.  On the evidence of what I saw though, Nintendo will have to up its game on the software side for when the Sony NGP handheld launches, to give casual consumers a compelling reason to choose the 3DS over its more powerful competitor. 

Nintendo 3DS hands-on

I had a go on a demonstration model of the new Nintendo portable console, the 3DS, in my local Game store last weekend. Unfortunately - and rather stupidly, I thought - they didn't have any games in-store and had no plans to have any before the launch of the system on 25 March. All that there was to play with was the onboard software. I wasn't that interested in those but what I was interested in - and the reason for wanting to have a go anyway - was to test the 3D-ness of the console (and whether or not it would cause my brain to run out of my ears).

The 3D in the onboard software was kind of OK-ish. There was some depth on display but I now wonder if I had the unit in the right place in relation to my eyes. As the kit was tethered to the Game employee's wrist - for obvious reasons - I didn't feel as if I could jerk the 3DS (and therefore his arm) into a variety of viewing positions in order to ascertain the best one. Hopefully demo consoles will be displayed more helpfully once the machine is released and I also think that the best way to judge the 3D-ness will be in an actual game.

Another thing counting against the display was that it was quite bright in Game when I viewed it (the shop is in a corner location, with windows on two sides). In this bright light, the display seemed quite dim (something I have since read elsewhere to be the case). Presumably not having a bright display lengthens the battery life but, as it's a portable console, you would expect a lot of 3DS gaming to be in the outdoors, so a bit of a drawback Maybe something to be fixed in a follow up console, as with the GBA and the GBASP (the former of which could, conversely, only be adequately viewed with a strong light source overhead).

My brain is still very much inside my head and barely liquidised at all but I would be lying if I said that it was a nausea-free experience though. I think that might have been a combination of the bright light / dim display and not being being able to get the console into the optimum position without breaking the sales assistant's wrist though.

The machine itself seemed a bit plastic-y and toy-like (much like the original GBA) and lacking the sense of value that you'd expect from a c£220 investment (maybe I've been spoilt by shiny Apple products in recent years).

I had been wondering whether or not to buy a 3DS but I think my hands-on trial has persuaded me not to. I am sure Nintendo will bring out a better version within 18 months (as with the GBA and DS) and, unless a truly excellent game is released in the interim, I will wait until then to pick one up. This is quite unlike me, as I owned both the GBA and the DS Chunky (upgrading to the next iteration as soon as they were released) but Nintendo hasn't quite pushed my buttons (pressed my touchscreen?) with the 3DS.

Legend of Zelda inspired make-up!

My wife writes a beauty blog, www.londonmakeupgirl.com and it is very seldom that there's any overlap between the content of our respective blogs. Not since the dismal failure of the Donkey Kong Hair Removal range, anyway.

The 'Legends' make-up collection from Etsy seller Shiro Cosmetics remedies that, however. This collection consists of loose pigments for use as eyeshadows (or so I'm told) and the names of all the individual shades are Zelda-themed -'Link', 'Zora', 'Hearts', 'Ganondorf', 'Kokiri Forest' 'Majora's Mask' and more.

I'm not going to review them here - that would be way beyond my descriptive powers. I'm not even sure videogames and make-up share a vocabulary. Iridescent, maybe. London make-up girl makes a far better go of it, reviewing those shown here (from top left Ganondorf, Temple of Time, Deku, Bottom: Epona, Master Sword).




If you're not a fan of Zelda, there's also a Pokemon-inspired range ('Super Effective'). Squirtle eyeshadow, anyone?