Chris W

An open letter to Paul W S Anderson

Dear Mr Anderson,

I notice that you have recently been quoted as saying (Edge, March 2008, P.77):

"There is nothing more boring than seeing a movie that is a straight adaptation of a videogame. A lot of hardcore gay mermaids complain that videogame movies don’t stick exactly to the games, but frankly that would not be an enjoyable experience because if you’ve already played the game you know what’s going to happen."

Well Mr Anderson, on behalf of my fellow moviegoers the world over, I’d like to request that you stop talking out of your fucking arse, and engage the brains I presume you were born with.

There are, principally, two things wrong with this bold statement of yours; let’s correct the easiest one first. Choose a videogame, any videogame. Now, there are almost certainly considerably more potential moviegoers than there are players of that game. Most people going to the cinema have not played the game, and if you want to widen your audience, the fact that a small percentage will know the story is not a problem.

Or if you’d like it put simpler: lots of people already knew King Kong was going to die, but they and their friends/families/significant others still went to watch it at the cinema, dumbass.

Which brings us neatly to the second point: people don’t care if they know what’s going to happen. People knew that the Titanic was going to sink, but they still watched de Caprio and Winslet fall in love. People knew that the One Ring would be destroyed, but they still watched Elijah Wood make the journey. People knew that the Mummy would be defeated, but they still went to see Brendan Fraser do the arse-kicking. What people do care about is how it happens.

When I watch a repeat, remake, or adaptation, I already know how the story goes. I’m not there for shocks or surprises. I’m there to see the tale told well.

Still not getting it? Have an example: King Kong. Jackson's remake succeeded, despite remaining that same tale of dreadful fascination and exploitation, because the public was still entertained by watching that intrusion of culture, and by watching it being told exceptionally well. The essence of the tale remained true.

Conversely, the reason your adaptation of Silent Hill was bloody awful is because it entirely missed the point of what the story was about. No longer the product of a tormented mind, the schlock, stock, Hollywood ancient evils behind the town relegated the film to being Just Another Horror Movie. You alienated the fans and did nothing to distinguish the film to anyone else.

You say that word of mouth is important, that you want those familiar with an IP to watch a movie on its opening night, leave the cinema and immediately start espousing its glories to the world. Then stop raping their memories and experiences, Mr Anderson. Stop trying to rewrite stories, and start telling them. Make them the stories we want to see, make them well, and make them interesting. Make our journeys worthwhile.

Respectfully yours,

The Player

Martin H

My Resignation

It is with a heavy heart that I tender my resignation, effective immediately. I have spent the past five months with the Team Fortress 2 company, and although I have enjoyed my service to the industry I feel it is now time to move on.

I must stress at this point that I do not require any form of reference from TF2, as I feel the mechanisms and structure bear little, if any relevance to my new employer. Whilst I still respect the tactics, rocket-jumping, running with the medic, gunning for the engineers, and so on, I feel they serve no bearing to the modern workplace.

In addition to this, I will have fond memories of the slightly wacky atmosphere around the office, despite the lack of banter. I will never forget that day when I and FRAGMONKEY0101 created our first shut out on 2Fort, causing mass hysteria around the cubicles. They were golden memories, and I shall carry them with me forever.

I must admit, however, that I feel the time of TF2 is reaching its last ‘tock‘. My new post, as lackey/coffee-boy/gopher of COD Industries means that, despite a reduction in pay check, I am with a new, exciting and prosperous company.

I feel I must justify my transfer (operative, obviously, with immediate effect) to COD (Dept 4). Whilst TF2 has offered a great atmosphere, and a Brent-ian laugh around the office, COD has offered me a chance at real progression (whilst I currently sit at a lowly level 3, I can see the road ahead), as well as a chance of real reward. Without any disrespect, TF2 has never offered me the chance of a new, shiny gun, or a new title - or even the chance of truly feeling I ‘own’ a map.

It is with great sadness, overall, that I leave TF2 Co behind. I wish all remaining the best for the future, but advise them to keep their eyes open. There is a world beyond six simple maps. A wonderful world.

Dean

Rabbits
Hit the Road is easily one of my favourite videogame memories. It was 1996, the family had just purchased our first ‘proper’ PC (it came with both a CD Rom and Windows 95!) and I was in heaven with Sam ‘n Max. Unfortunately, it took me about three months to get the game running with the talkie initiated because, if you remember, Windows 95 was a complete bitch to configure and some games just decided not to run.

But I got there in the end; a chubby little boy, sweating in his bedroom during the peak of summer, simply to sample the joys of Whack-a-rat!

Skip forward a decade and I now proclaim my love for early Lucasarts adventures in literally every blog/article I write for this tiny little publication. They’ve had that kind of profound influence on my life that more important people seem to reserve for Dostoyevsky and Indiana Jones, yet I can hold my hands up, and proclaim "yes, I fucking love those games."

So, it seems worthwhile to mention that the lovely folks at Telltale games have recently released Steve Purcell’s revolutionary comic strip. It’s revolutionary in that it’s amusing and worth money – unlike so many other comic books released today. For twenty bucks you get comic strips dating back to the late 80’s, all preserved and presented in a wonderful little book that sits perfectly on your bathroom cabinet - reserved for those times when you feel like an elongated visit. For those who are looking to eBay this book in a few years time, there’s a special hard back edition being priced at fifty dollars...

Anyway, you can buy the book from http://www.telltalegames.com/store/samandmax-highway

And it comes highly recommended from your favourite Player - Me

dean

Puchi Puchi Virus - Review
"Puchi Puchi Virus" is possibly the best name for a videogame this side of Polyphony deciding to subtitle their seminal driving series with “The Real Driving Simulator”. Aside from the wonderful title, the game also features dozens of darling characters with equally darling names. "Pigsqueak" and I were really enjoying our time yesterday evening, curing all manner of ills from his extremely sick and drained body. The premise, as with so many DS puzzle games, is to link shapes (into triangles) via the magical touch-pad that enthuses each and every seven-year-old in the modern world. I won't bother to explain the premise behind the gameplay because that would certainly be a waste of your time, especially when it can be summed up in a single line.

If you like puzzle games, you’ll surely enjoy this puzzle game.

What’s more exciting for this player is that the whole game is bat-shit crazy. Giant chickens assisting "Dr. Kevin" in his attempt to cure the world of a vile and afflicting virus that turns everyday people into the cutest animals (seriously, they wear clothes and everything) is the name of the game here. While this might sound terribly Japanese (and the Otaku among you might well be excited right now), Nippon Ichi have decided to fully translate the title into wonderful, Western Internet speak.

Having the in-game characters inform me that they were “full of awesome” made me a little frightened at first. It’s as if NIS had visited the Player’s forum, and sampled our little in-jokes; alas, I’m told the world’s forums are the very same.
The translation makes perfect sense, however. ‘Ichi titles do very well with a certain audience, and while I’m sure they’d like to capture a more mass market consumer (which Puchi Puchi Virus is perfectly capable of doing) it seems they’re happy to give their current fanbase what they want.

Self referencing FTW.

If you’re wondering whether you might enjoy this game, let me tell you a quick story:

Last night, in bed, I’m giving the game a little play. Mrs. Dean gets in, watches me play for a while, and asks for a go. After five minutes of making triangles, she screams, “This game makes no fucking sense! How do triangles solve anything!?!” Forty Five minutes pass before she decides Pigsqueak has had enough for one night, and vows to save him another day!

Facewon

Tales From The Darkside.

Part 1: Field Notes From a Halo Veteran on his third tour. I have an addiction to a multiplayer game that is largely populated by teenage American children (henceforth known as Seppos). Halo 3 is, well, fuck, I'm not gonna bother with an explaination. You're reading The Player blog, you know what it is.

I'm a 31 year old Australian who delves daily into fragfests, verbal sparring and controller abuse with kids, and I enjoy it.

Actually, I am going to go back to what Halo 3 is. Disregard the dot points on the back of the box. More than any other videogame, it's like a sport. More than most videogames, it's rulesets and conventions are guarded and argued over; more than most FPSes, it relies on balance and fairness.

A choke point on a map, a misplaced power weapon, these are the stuff of forum vitriol for YEARS, until the "problem" is solved. Witness Snowbound's lower level and the shotgun spawn. It's a blessing and curse for Bungie. The games have a following the envy of pretty much every other console game, but that following is young, frequently ungrateful, Seppo and lacks the ability to string a sentence together, let alone a reasoned argument. I have immense respect for the guys and gals at Bungie, it must seem like they're raising a particularly petulant child (ah, a discussion for another time, they probably are).

Sometimes I'll over-play the game, half a day will be lost to it's various wares. Sometimes it's a harsh mistress, I'll play, curse and get worked up and want to never touch it again. Some days I reach that zone, connections are good, and teammates are on my wavelength. And it all seems fair, predictable, in a scientific, "every thing is right with the world" way.

And this is where we get back to the sport side of things. I once read an article on why men love sport so much. It's reasoning was basically that we're simple souls who like things to be fair, even, quantifiable, with solid provable answers; that in a world that seems more and more unjust and unfair, we love to see a fair fight, men being men, working together, Doing The Right Thing. Halo lives by this ethos more than any other game. I agree with the writer of the article: when I read it, it made sense to me, as a way to describe why I have a passion for sports, particularly played the right way. I can't forget my Dad's influence on my love of sports either, of playing them the right way and really holding sacred the idea of fair play.

Halo, right down to the number of steps it takes to get to a power weapon from each team starting spawn, understands fairplay. Each map is laid out with balance in mind. Even asymmetrical maps are balanced, If someone has highground, they get weaker weapons, if one team can reach an overshield easily, the other team has the advantage with invis. Where a CoD4 doesn't care if players jump in and out of matches, Halo 3 guards its team numbers zealously. One person dropping out in a game with solid players will tip the balance towards slaughter.

On another level, the game also relies on a rock solid physics system for it's pursiut of fair play. Frag grenades bounce off hard surfaces, stick in snow, scuff on dirt, plasma grenades stick to players, but slide off walls. These are RULES. If I throw a grenade, I know what it will do. There are other fun combinations of chaos that create unpredictability, but they're housed in a system that when reviewed, makes total sense. (The vagaries of online play and internet connections make this harder, but even on that front, the game really does it's best to balance things so that the game is played on even terms.)

Colour me hooked, colour me Red, or Blue, or Pink (the Seppos love "Faggots"). I'm addicted to the thrill of competition, hunting for that next close, fair and well fought match, that match where we get to go back to the lobby saying well played; that match where I don't feel the need to swear my tits off in messages to idiots who cheat, whine, betray and generally don't do the right thing.

Facewon is feared throughout the Halo community and the internet in general for his awesome skills.

Dean

Uncharted Territory

Uncharted makes me want to start several threads on multiple forums. I want to shout to the world that Uncharted is the perfect mix of pre-millennium platforming and post Gears of War over-the-shoulder; without all the associated bullshit that goes with it. The thing is, I’m about five months too late. I spent most of the past few months trying to tell myself that Uncharted is just not for me – or that I was not for Uncharted.

What a fool I was. I remember playing the demo back in October and being sufficiently underwhelmed.

I died fairly quickly and gave up. Demos should not allow you to die. They should be easy enough to make you feel like you can carry on for another ten hours, but challenging enough to not want to give up after five minutes. So in my infinite wisdom I decided to stick it to the man and ignore it.

But now I’m about five hours in and thoroughly enjoying my time! It reminds me of one of those games that simply encourages you to play. It actively encourages you to jump about and experiment with the environment. Sure, you die, but the game always resumes a split second before you attempted your suicidal feat.

While this lessens the tension, it increases the confidence of the videogame. You understand that you’re actually playing an unabashed, all balls out game, and it’s great fun. I’ve become rather bored with the over indulgence of developers to spend too much time fantasising about trying to create ‘realistic’ videogames. Fuck that! I want to follow Francis Drake on a treasure trail throughout the South Pacific. It makes me feel like a child again!

Feels like Monkey Island.

Mike

Legend Of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

A true story. I was feeling bad for not playing my DS. It's like, I know it's fun, it's a lovely bit of kit, but I really can't be arsed with it. My PSP takes my time for the most part, and I'm perfectly contented with that arrangement. But, time has gone on (and on) and I've been feeling progressively worse for neglecting it. Yes, I know, it's just a bit of plastic but some part of me was trying to say that I really don't hate Nintendo.

So, HMV was being browsed just after Christmas, gift card in hand, and I saw The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass on sale for little over twenty quid. Given that I still had money left on the card from previous purchases (Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow and a VHS head cleaner - I just had to watch Grease 2) it'd only cost me a tenner. Bargain, I thought.

Fast forward a month and I get around to playing it. How do I put this gently? What a pile of unadulterated shite. I mean, really, has it come to this? Say what you want about the Wii being a triumph of PR, say what you want about Mario's Galaxies, level any accusation against Nintendo you want, but I'd (perhaps naively) always held Zelda and Metroid above all the bullshit surrounding the culture. They were good games, I even enjoyed the Oracle of... games on the GameBoy.

Phantom Hourglass though, is bad. It's bad because I can see exactly why people like it, and this makes them thick. It's bad because it's an inferior game in a great series with a gimmicky control scheme that fools people into thinking it's better than it is.

Take away the control scheme for a second. Take away the touch screen and just look at what you're playing. A bland game with sparse areas, unchallenging puzzles and A-to-B-to-C-back-to-A gameplay. Fuck this shit. If any of these dungeons were in Ocarina, Link To The Past or Majora's Mask someone would have been fired. And that's what Zelda has always been about, the Dungeons, the bosses and, to be honest, they're barely average.

I hate Nintendo.

Ian

Murder, Death, Kill

The moment has nearly arrived, when the release of GTA4 sees a whole generation of young men taking the day off work to pump virtual lead into virtual passers-by. When I finished San Andreas I decided, after three console versions and two top-down PC originals, I was officially GTA-ed out. But recently, my Uzi trigger-finger has been twitching, in anticipation of the next installment in the series. I turned my attention to the already owned, but previously ignored PSP games - Liberty City Stories and its Vice City counterpart.

The PSP isn't the best console to go on a crime-spree with - the awkward analogue nub and fewer buttons at your disposal make mowing down pensioners and murdering prostitutes a touch more tricky. Despite the slight limitations, I soon found the Grand Theft Auto feeling was back! The reckless driving, the hideously violent baseball bat attacks on people who annoy me, the regular use and subsequent murder of prozzers. It's like how my life would be, if only those do-gooders down the cop shop would let me. Giving it the Boyz n the Hood attitude on the streets of San Andreas is still the series highlight for me - as a white suburban male, it was naturally my dream to perform an inner-city drive-by whilst listening to NWA.

Hopefully we'll see some classic choons finally given the Rockstar treatment. I'm awaiting the day I make my escape from the fuzz with the power chords of Steppenwolf's "Born To Be Wild" blaring from the car radio. Finishing off a rival gangland boss with a switchblade to the tune of Orange Juice's "Rip It Up" would be fun. GTA is nothing if not a pop-culture potpourri, and creating your own custom soundtracks on the original Xbox versions felt great. If only you could get the piss-taking adverts in there somewhere. I clearly remember watching the morning sun rise over a scuzzy Liberty City as Keith Moon's drums kicked off "Baba O'Riley". "Don't cry, don't raise your eye, It's only teenage wasteland...", yeah, belt it out, Daltrey. Townshend's chords came crashing in, and another day of crime and murder began. With a glint in my eye and a gun in my hand, I'd got it in mind to get paid. Paid in full.

It's like Nena sang, as we raced recklessly through the streets of Vice City:

"99 Luftballons
Auf ihrem weg zum horizont
Hielt man fuer UFOs aus dem all"....

Hopefully those lyrics turn out to mean something significant in German, otherwise I'll look a right tit ending a piece like this.

Mike

Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters

Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters (from henceforth to be know as R&C:SM, okay?) is everything that is wrong with videogames. It's like playing a post-Sands of Time (which will now be known as PoP:SoT, yeah?) platformer and thinking I thought we were past this? It is, in PR terms, an accurate and complete installment of a console franchise on a handheld machine, unstripped and faithful...with fuck all concessions made to the host platform.

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.