Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters
Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters (from henceforth to be know as R&C:SM, okay?) is everything
I mean, really, isn't it too much to ask the player to use both the analogue nub and the d-pad for movement? The former for general motion, forwards, backwards, left, right, the latter for strafing in a gunfight (of which there are plenty). Isn't it too much to assume the player just knows what to do next? Hands are clapping for the lack of patronising tutorial - the game starts off challenging and goes from there - but to leave the player doing trial-and-error, death-and-restart flailing in the first level is unforgivable.
Also unforgivable are the mini-game style diversions consisting of Sonic Adventure-esque rail sections, hoverboard races (not as cool as it sounds, Back To The Future 2 this is not) and spaceship shizzle, among others (I assume, I lost the will to finish it). On paper they sound good, on screen they look good, in practice they take more piss than a trainee nurse. You're on a rail and the sort of sign you see on westerns for diverting trains comes up. The game assumes you know exactly what to do and that you'll hit it. I twigged it a bit late, missed it, had no chance to atone for my error and died. No worries, R&C:SM says, you'll do better next time. A prompt restart later and I do it and move onto the next section. Should the only way to survive a game be through dying? Ikaruga this is not.
It's infuriating, not least because said section (barely 3 levels in) came after repeated sections of jump-on-platform, platform falls, jump-off-platform tedium. How did I know the platform was going to fall? I didn't, I died, but I didn't make that mistake again. Which comes to the crux of the matter: Should a player fell obligated to constantly guess what the dev is going to throw at them next? PoP:SoT teased the player into improvising, trying, learning, and rarely punished the player for their rashness. It gave the player a climbing frame to scale and only asked for imagination, R&C:SM asks you to think of the most archaic and degenerate cliches in gaming and assume that's what's next.
It's not enough to just be a "full size" game on a bite-sized console. Size matters, it seems, but so does quality. Fucking gash.
30 January, 2008
Mike
17 January, 2008
Mike
Parappin'
Developer: NaNaOn-Sha
Is it ever enough just to be first? Think about the games that kick started genres and sub-genres and precious few remain at the pinnacle for too long. Tetris, sure. Mario 64 ... perhaps, though it could be argued that it has been surpassed. Goldeneye? Dethroned.
And so it comes to Parappa the Rapper to show those young whipper-snappers that followed that he remains relevant; he’s just gotta believe. Alas, for time has not been too kind to that dog wot fancies a sunflower and it seems that he suffers from a chronic condition of not being Gitaroo Man. The signs are everywhere: the title screen doesn’t say Gitaroo Man, the songs aren’t from Gitaroo Man, there’s no Mojo, Mojo King Bee and, worst of all, the entire experience severely lacks stadium rock. Bad form.
While it may seem unfair to dismiss Parappa the Rapper for not being another game, there’s no escaping the fact that the entire experience feels pointless. The genre has moved on, games have moved on and while the dog may have seemed radical at the time, he feels conservative and old-fashioned now. It all feels a bit Cliff Richard.
The mechanics of the game feel old, the songs (bar the Driving Lesson) lack punch next to Gitaroo’s set or, even, Un Jammer Lammy; next to what is on offer now, the simple follow-my-lead play style reduces the game to feeling like one long QTE. We’ve moved on, it’s time he did too.
14 January, 2008
Ian
PES2008 is not a great football game in my humble opinion, it's part of a great series of games but not, in itself a classic. It's strange then that I've just spent a huge chunk of my week playing it again, at the expense of far more important matters. The clue's in the title as to why I'm still persevering with it, the Master League. Few things brings out my inner football geek like a good Master League campaign to sink my teeth into, with the possible exception of Football Manager (which once saw me watching a Brazilian league game on Sky at three in the morning in the hope of spotting an inexpensive left-back).
In most Pro Evo games the masterleague is the icing on the cake, unfortunately in the latest version it's one of the few saving graces of an otherwise pretty shoddy title. Master League is pretty indestructable in terms of someone at Konami coming along and ruining it. There'll always be the underlying satisfaction of taking a terrible team at the bottom of the second division and turning them into World beater's.
I like to build up a solid team of footballers I've never heard of in my life, sod signing Henry and Rooney; give me the likes of Japanese master striker Oguro (I've no idea if he even exists in real-life but he's been ace in every version of PES so far). Barretto, the long-haired Ecuadorian central midfielder is another player I try to snap up first chance I get, me and Barretto have a history of success. In PES4 on the PS2 he joined me at Lyon for a long and honour-strewn Master League career. In PES5 I'd landed myself a job in the hotbed of footballing passion that is Glasgow Celtic and Barretto once again was signed up as a raw young midfielder who matured into a legend. I'll never forget his last gasp winner than secured us promotion to Div 1 that year. Great right peg on the lad.
That's the thing about Master League, the game & you combine to create your own stars - even the cloggers of the default Master League team, Stremer, Huylens, Espimas et al can become cult heroes. Castollo, the dread-locked default striker has become something of a super-sub in this year's version for me. I've had offers for him of course, but I'm not selling, not while the kid's got something to offer us. At present I'm back at Rosenborg, still stuck in Division 2 and with some dodgy signings dragging me down. Mendieta, the former Middlesborough man has done nothing, and Maurice Voltz, another swap deal is similarly hopeless on the right. Barretto's on board though, so good things are obviously just around the corner. Hope he brought his shooting boots, we need some inspiration from somewhere.
12 January, 2008
10 January, 2008
Dean
I am not pussy whipped (Rock Band)
While I’m usually exquisitely turned out when leaving the house for an average day of Canadian festivities, I’ve recently become accustomed to wearing a Steven Tyler endorsed headband. There are two reasons for this:
a) I have a beautiful head of hair that is accentuated by a rose coloured headband
b) I am one of only a handful of people who can honestly state they can five-star The Hives’ Main Offender in Expert mode.
This in turn allows me to strut into a music shop, declare that I’d like to purchase a Fender Stratocaster and proceed to play the fuck out of it because I five-starred Heroes by David Bowie.
The thing is, Players; while I'm sitting here at my desk wearing a red Libertines jacket doing some Charlie off a supermodel, I’ve noticed my life hasn’t really changed that much. Sure, my bank balance is $200 worse off, and my wife is ignoring me because we have a set of plastic drums in the apartment, but apart from that, I’m still the cocky whore I was previously.
A cocky whore who now has a set of plastic drums in his apartment.
Rock Band is the perfect videogame for a generation of adults who’ve had enough of videogames. While conventionally, the game is extremely simple, it still manages to convey the most heavenly of sensations; playing in a band.
At one point in my life, I played guitar for a wonderful little band that would often cover Blink 182 songs for a dozen or so kids at the local rec centre on a Saturday evening. Coming onto stage and hitting out the first few bars to Dammit was a wonderful feeling, and it really helped with my sex life.
While Rock Band doesn’t replicate the feeling of being fifteen years old again, it certainly allows you to wrap your hands up in masking tape, and pretend that you’re Tommy Lee.
Which, by the way, is fucking awesome.
03 January, 2008
Martin H
My first piece of 'amazing' news was the fact that the big N had finally made those fucking ridiculous Nintendo Stars worth sommat more than a shoddy wallpaper/ringtone/PRINT-OUT OF A GBA TO PUT ON TOP OF YOUR TELLY. Whilst not quite at the lofty echelons of the Japanese Club-Nintendo cool-as-fuck-but-pointless-as-hell gifts on offer, it's now possible to swap these stars for points to buy old games off the Wii shop. 'Get in', I think to myself, now a way to play silly-expensive Sin And Punishment without paying.
If you're cool enough not to own a Wii, here's how it works - you swap your stars for a points card, like XBox Live pre-paid cards. Great. Shame the cards are never on sale. Presumably to stop the die-hard-fanboys in exploiting their never-splurged (on or over?) Wii points, no doubt amassing in the thousands, there is a download limit per day.
Seriously, Nintendo. Take the hit at first, then have a decent system up and running...
If that wasn't exciting enough, more mail today told me that I can now buy Virtual Console games to send to other people. Fucksake. If I can't get them for free, what makes these cads think I'm going to buy one for anyone else.
Once again, Nintendo win my 'Most Pointless Shit Ever' award.
I'm off to play my rather expensive download of Psychonauts on my 360.
29 December, 2007
Ian
- THEPLAYER's Podcast
Piracy
For 2007's final blast, Dean, H and Mike attempt keen, planet-shattering insight, tackling LucasArts' Monkey Island adventures, in what's feared to be the first in a series of examinations of memorable or even Important videogames.
In practice, this seems to involve firing off "like" and "y'know", like, a lot. Y'know.
All aboard for boyish enthusiasm, nostalgia, and the usual levels of swearing, teasing and reckless superlatives we hope audiences have come to expect, and perhaps even enjoy.
A merry festival-of-choice to all.
Download
Are you social? You are? Super - check the fuck outta these:
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You can also read The Player's Blog at: http://theplayermagazine.blogspot.com/
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Tracklist:
Pixies - Isla De Encanta
Tom Tom Club - Wordy Rappinghood
BGM:
Frank Zappa - The Gumbo Variations
Santana - Incident At Neshabur
LTJ Bukem - Unconditional Love
18 December, 2007
Katie
If I were to be supremely condemnatory, I’d go so far as to describe the screenshot as almost entirely irrelevant. Next to a newly-released "artist’s rendition" of the new Nintendo console and Take 2’s expertly crafted fiascos, there’s nothing quite so effective in throwing our video gaming selves into a flurry of judgemental internet-based frothing. Be it in support or, more often, anger, saliva and screenshots play a crucial part in our very initial commentary on the latest news. I don’t think I’m being unreasonable when I ask "why?"
You could argue that they present expecting excitables with a more definitive definition of the game, a form in which they could take the hyperbole and sometimes excessive floral detailing of previews and press releases into a single designation – pictures say a thousand words or something. They allow you to forge a more concise interpretation of the game’s atmosphere that could never really be justified in literary terms. Just one of the many inadequacies of the lineal medium, author Harlan Ellison would oft-complain and I agree. Just how many words would it take to literate a thousand pictures?
But that’s what the promotional art is for. Often more impressive, elaborate, more revealing of the tone and palette, more demonstrative of the characters without the restrictions of polygons and in-game angles which are never viewed when you’re actually playing the game, more creative with the gimmicks and features of the title than a checklist and a montage of the same sprite in different colours, just this pure distilled expression of what the game is about. You only need to look at Akihiko Yoshida’s awe-inspiring cover art for Vagrant Story or the elegant melodrama of the Castlevania artwork. Screenshots will never be able to compete.
Or so they shouldn’t but they do. We lust after them like hungry pack wolves, huddled together in the bleakest and brightest corridors of the internet, waiting impatiently at every announcement or arranged event, journalists live-blogging with hunched obsessives bathed in the flickering glow of their monitors clicking the ‘refresh’ button every half-second for that first stealing glimpse. And we’re always playing Goldilocks, that glimpse is always too hot or too cold, there’s always an issue with the detailing of the laser beam (Halo 3) or the re-use of GBA sprites (Final Fantasy Tactics A2) or complaining about the complete change in art direction (Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker). And we’re near always wrong – Halo 3 was in beta at the time and now looks incredible, Tactics A2 does not re-use GBA sprites and looks incredible and Wind Waker is now remembered as one of the most visually charming titles in the series and looks incredible.
A screenshot is not news, there is very little to feast on after the dust has settled and flamboyant raging arguments have subsided until you realise, dust down, you’ve been mauling each other over very little meat indeed while the cunning bugger in the corner’s merrily chomping on Kojima’s announcement that Metal Gear Solid 4 has dirty magazines in it. No one looks back and says "oh, didn’t that screenshot look just dreamy?" No, we look back and furiously masturbate over Yoshida’s perfectly pornographic paintwork or raise a glass to celebrate that Phantom Hourglass looks just like Wind Waker. That’s how it should be from the start. That is what we should be able to recognise and appreciate, to discuss and debate without tripping into pitfalls left for us in the form of mildly pretty (or not) stills, without the need or desire to desperately detail every ridiculous aspect of a product which will look entirely different when in motion.
14 December, 2007
Katie
Acute Issue
I’ll start and end on personal notes. I’m going to be presumptuous and state that unlike the other more-talented The Player folk, I like video games innocence. Which is nothing like reality innocence, which might see Little Timmy feel comfortable happy-slapping his grampappy ‘til he turned more blind if it meant getting a guest spot on Little Big Brother or something, I don’t know.
No, video games innocence, to me, is something mysterious and heartening and, perhaps most of all, overpowering. It’s that literally magical (it could only be magical, there’s no other explanation I’m willing to accept) quality often attached to thin-faced, big eyed leads in [mostly Nip] games that seems to make them oh so amiable. That quality which sees the special fourteen-year-old salvation inevitably carve a monster count in the hundreds whilst minding his P’s and Q’s and generally being awful trusting of everyone. Especially his silver haired older best friend who shows up halfway through dressed entirely in black who is later revealed in the guide book to wield a sword titled "The Traitor" or so.
Why, when Sora is whisked away from his luxury tropical island home, given a giant key and told he must save several universes and remains chirpy throughout, I’m astonished I’m not violently sick. When Marche wakes in the middle of the street to find his town has changed into the kingdom of Ivalice before being challenged to a punch-up by bipedal lizards with only "a stuffed toy?" for help, I’m not switching off, refusing to accept the notion that children could do anything besides swear profusely before flipping fingers and fucking off for a shoplift.
I’m not convinced it’s necessary. Kingdom Hearts is often criticised for being inherently Disney in tone, with fans eager to celebrate the loss of primary colours with each new secret ending and trailer released and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, despite the Japanese version handling issues such as alcoholism that Westerners don’t or shouldn’t know about, is occasionally dismissed by fanatics politely requesting the same degree of discreet storytelling PS1 Tactics produced.
They certainly aren’t aspiration, they haven’t promoted a generation of ever-hugging lovey pillocks floating through their lives with a smile and generosity poring out of every slimy orifice they possess, because (and I’ll continue to be presumptuous, hopefully with your blessing) most people who find themselves attached to these kind of leads are whining teenage pillocks moping through their lives with headphones in, frowns out and a thin slathering of oil poring out of every slimy orifice.
This in an entertainment format which eagerly produces pop icons out of spikey-haired grumpy sods with oversized weaponry in secret military groups made up of the emotionally unstable, gun-wielding big titted posh totty and butch, faceless ugly-shade-of-green space marines who clearly has a black man’s voice because they sound the coolest (this is a lie, by the way, the voice actor’s white). I’d hesitate to compare the excesses of fanart dedicated to each in some gruesome competition to demonstrate their popularity, if only due to my pronounced dislike of fanart and this isn’t GameFAQs, for God’s sake.
If we wanted to place a single word description, I would happily nominate ‘infectious.' Irrationally and unfairly unexpectedly so. Like a plague or an irritatingly catchy pop song that makes you consider murder/ suicide pacts to end the pain. But like Take That and the bubonic, you’re not sightless to the simpering stupidity, the excessive and unimaginably moronic dialogue, the unappealing stereotypes and often-accompanying Massive Damage (sorry) barrage of fantasy terminology, followed by more unimaginably moronic explanations again-oft surrounding a ridiculous recipe of amnesia, trust to the point of ignorance and the inevitable betrayal you saw just by their dress sense on the back of the box.
It doesn’t matter though. I forgive it. Stupid, moronic, unappealing, stereotypical and unexplainable but I, for one, am damn grateful for it. Because when you’ve got the Player furiously jacking off to Angelina Jolie’s digital rendition and Steve Downes’ sultry tones bringing the most ridiculously uncharismatic video game lead in decades to slighting popularity, I’ll happily entertain the notion that somewhere, imaginary sweetheart teenagers can save the world with insipid ear-reaching smiles, and me along with them. The happy little fucks.
