Best game in a long time

Arkham City is without doubt one of the best games I have ever played. I don’t say that lightly, I sincerely mean it. It has everything you could possibly want in a game, for starters you are Batman. But not some hobbled “I have had all my toys taken away from me and I won’t be cool till the end of the game” Batman but a “I am so freaking cool I can kill guys just by looking at them” Batman… which is nice!

You have great toys to play with and the actual mechanics of playing the game are exactly right. Fighting is at the forefront in this game and you will be doing plenty of it. But its fun, there are so many things you can do as you pound people it is just an endless joy. Then you get to throw in all your cool gadgets and you are set. But its not straight forward, do something stupid and you die almost instantly (that is a good thing as you still have to think rather than button bash).

The artwork and production value in the game is utterly stunning, the art-deco style of Gotham is extended into some weird and wonderful ideas but all of them feel at home here. While some of it is absurd none of it felt out of place. You are playing a man with no special powers but dresses up like a bat.. absurd was left at the door. On top of that the voice acting is superb, I have already mentioned my gripe so we will leave it at that. You have to praise the developers for not sticking with the established designs for the characters, they have taken some already great concepts and just improved on them with this game. It is worth playing the game just to get the the unlocks that let you examine the models in more detail (Kudos to them for including the design of Cat Woman from the animated series as a model as well).

But the standout thing here is the story. I’m not going to tell you a single thing about it that would only spoil it for you, but lets just say it was not what I expected at all and was just fantastic. There are plenty of older characters that make an appearance not just the Joker, Penguin or Riddler, and there are twists and turns all through the story. But at its heart it stays true to who Batman is and what he is about.

Final thought

This is just the perfect superhero game that I don’t you could ever really do with any other superhero. You know you are playing a great game when you finish it before you wanted and you want to start it again straight away.

*I will give you one little spoiler*
I got to beat up a shark!

Batman: Arkham Asylum was a surprise for me, I had seen it coming and it looked interesting. But when you look back at the history of super hero games it is not good. So a long time ago I gave up on hoping on a good super hero game, let alone the best one of them all Batman. How so very wrong I was, I think is has to go down as one of my favorite games of all time.. right up there with the likes of Super Mario World (SNES) and Street Fighter II Alpha 2 (Saturn).

For those that know me they know I don’t often complete games. I usually lose interest somewhere in the middle, put the game down, then never really come back to it. Arkham Asylum treads that careful line between game and cinema, an engaging story, great game mechanics, fantastic voice acting. I think between Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill you can’t not enjoy it.

You know a game is good when I have completed it a few times now and I am working on getting all of the achievements and extras.

On to Arkham City

Of course I have only had Arkham City for one day now, but it is very part the better of Arkham Asylum. Not only is the system better, new ideas have been added, but there are also all new gadgets to play with.

The city is sprawling and feels real and gritty with the various character nicely woven into it. Other reviews out there will go into the details but lets just say its great!

My only disappointment so far

The only thing I am disappointed in so far is Harley Quinn. Of course the character design is spot on, it’s just not as good as Arkham Asylum. Unfortunately they have also changed the voice, in Asylum it is Arleen Sorkin the one true voice Harley Quinn. In City they have changed it to Tara Strong. She is excellent but she is just not right.

For me Harley Quinn is as important as Cammy. She is not the most important character but she is one of the most interesting.

Realtime Worlds the creators of that have been very quiet since its release working on their next game. Having handed over the follow up to “Crackdown” to Ruffian. Due to be released later this year “Crackdown 2″ will be pretty much more of the same. I am sure they will have added some new twists, and improved the engine. But to be honest I have done that now, and I don’t really play “Crackdown” other than to have 10 minute blasts of crazy jumping around the city, and driving the great cars.

What looks much more interesting is APB. A game Realtime have had in development for a long time now.

Initially it looks very much like a standard open FPS (think Grand Theft Auto) but as the video shows it is something a lot more interesting than that. The on-line aspects of the game make for a much more immersive and fun looking game. We have all played where the computer AI is just no good at all, APB looks like it can solve that problem.

Being able to call for backup is a clever idea and one that I have wished for in a lot of games. How well it plays out depends a lot on the muppets who are in the world with you, but it has the potential to be a lot of fun.

Customisation

The level of customisation you can put into this game is also another fantasic addition. Making it a lot more interesting than just a plain shooter.

The BGR team has already decided on at least two customisations we need to put into this game.

The A-Team
This is a must. We will need a custom GMC van with correct livery (Black and Grey with red stripe and spoiler in case you did not know) plus White and Red Corvette. Then of course there is the team to go with that, something of a running joke here at BGR but we enjoy it. But we are in need of a forth to take the role of BA.

Gunsmith Cats
Another must, just because it would be fun to see a classic Shelby Cobra GT 500 turn up with Rally and Mini inside.

After a long time in the making it is looking likely this is coming in the next few months. The potential is fantastic, and I for one am looking forward to it.

Update:
IGN have put up a great post looking at ABP. Looks like they are looking forward to its release, though it looks like the release date has slipped back to summer.

The World

So asides from that mechanic how’s the rest of the game? good but nothing groundbreaking sadly.  For when it was released in Japan (ie last year) the graphics are good but have since been superceeded a lot. I have to give props to the town designers though.  The towns are lively and although they aren’t filled with side quests for you, they are often full of background info and pointers to help you out if you are lost. It is a welcome change to see multiple shops of the same type in the big city – not enough games have this even if the duplicates sell identical ranges. It just seems more real and is another draw into the world.  The world itself is split into areas, you have bog standard fields, desert and canyons as well as mines and caves & dungeons – typical fair asides from the awesome city on the back of a giant creature.

Characters

At the start you create your own avatar, who is a member of your party and used in the online mode. Sadly it isn’t you who transforms, Leonard is the main character in the story mode and the one who transforms. Still, you can do some nice setups for your avatar in single player, using the White Knight to knock a golem senseless and let your avatar pick up the final hit for the VERY satisfying kill.  There isn’t a single character I absolutely wanted to gut but at the same time, I can’t say Leonard or any of the others are characters that will stick in my mind for life.

You get plenty of options for building your character’s appearance, but when it comes to upgrading their skills it’s no Dragon Age Origins – you only chose which weapons/magical powers to use for your character and the others in your party. Essentially you pick whatever skills you want from different skills trees, the more from one tree you pick, the more skills (and more powerful) you unlock. The catch is, that there are general stat boosts in each tree so just maxing out one tree without paying attention to the others is going to end up with you missing a ton of various hp and magic,dext upgrades while spreading them out and you may not have enough deadly techniques. A surprisingly good system.

Combat

Combat is plentiful due to respawning random encounters. You can see the enemies on the map but if you or your allies stray too near then the enemies will move towards you. With that said, you can just keep running in a lot of cases and not have to fight if you so wish, which is a relief if you are directionally challenged like me.

You use action points to do attacks and can make custom combos. You are restricted to assigning moves to 3 command bars and then chose pick attacks during combat from there. After each attack you have to wait for your character to recover from the attack and then you can pick another attack. The heavier the armor, the longer this takes.  You can switch between characters but its a case of using select and then picking from a list rather than the more refined button combos of games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2.  My biggest annoyance with the system is that you can’t pause the action to send commands to your team. After playing games which let you (and to great effect) I found myself not worrying about using my allies. The AI is in fairness, good enough to keep them alive and they do fine at healing you and your other allies when they can. You can set up some great individual combos but again sadly these don’t link up with your teammates.

Also it should be mentioned that the fights and enemy HP are designed fairly well. Killing regular foes is fairly quick but killing a giant foe as a party of humans will initially take a long time, transforming and it’s a relatively quick and fun experience. I didn’t have to grind through any area repeatedly killing enemies because the next group were one shotting me. The difficulty throughout is set on the side of easy but boss fights are still a challenge if you didn’t prepare and used all your action points on your way to the boss.  I’ll still take a fun 5 minute over a laborious 10 minute boss fight just because the boss has insane HP.

Online

There is also a fairly large online mode to keep you busy. The online is a pain to set up – there is an additional free signup required on top of PSN and it’s case sensitive… Anyway once set up it’s easy, you can set up your own guild or join a friend’s or some random person and take part in quests. You can build up your guild from a grassy area with a couple of equipment vending stalls to a small town which may appeal to some. I’m more interested in wailing on trolls but I appreciate it is there and did waste an hour or so building up a little village just because it was there. By building up to a town, you also gain the ability to just mine/farm items required for mixing into new items which if you were going for those trophies would be invaluable. The quests are up to 4 player and while some can be solo’d, you’d need to be a much higher level to try.

Story

I enjoyed the story but minor spoiler hated the Bowseriffic rescue efforts throughout the early goings on but it improves as you get further in to the game. The story wants to be epic but doesn’t pull it off in the same way FFXIII does. I wouldn’t be suprised if this was intended as being a trilogy and that this is just the first part. In fact by the time you get to end game, things were just getting really good and it is set up nicely for a sequel which has already been announced and I would readily recommend that based on this game.

Overall

White Knight Chronicles is a highly enjoyable action rpg, or is it an mmo? it kind of blurs the lines. The graphics and story are good, but like pretty much everything bar God of War 3 and Uncharted 2 get blown away by FFXIII.  If this had come out a few months earlier it would have had a much better chance of making a big impact. Same applies to Yakuza 3 which I have brought and remains virtually unplayed because Sega decided to bury it by releasing an rpg the same week as a new FF… STUPID.

Back to WKC and given the lack of competition for online multiplayer console rpg/mmo games, I hope it will find its own place amongst gamers as I enjoyed my time with it and I hope to get back to it at some point as the single player story mode is only part of the many things to do in it.

The only thing I can say is that this is the year for games with stories and rpg elements, FFXIII and Dragon Age Origins Awakenings, more Valkyria Chronicles DLC and even Yakuza 3. My free time has never been more keenly contested.

Anyway, the first thing about Dragon age: Origins is the choices available. You have the usual choice between 3 races, humans, elves and Dwarves and 3 classes, Warriors, Rogues and Mages (unless you’re a Dwarf) and there’s plenty of customization to be done once you pick.

Initially you play through one of 6 different origins stories depending on your race and class.  From here on the real choices that affect the whole Dragon Age world begin.

Tough Choices

Throughout the game you are presented with a number of choices which will determine your allegience to one party at the expense of another and a whole bunch of seemingly low importance side quests that appear to have little impact, many of which do have little impact but some of which you just won’t appreciate until you finish game, and it tells you what happened to the dwarf who asked for your help. Over the course of the game, a King dies and you will have a big say in who the new monarch is. Play your cards right and it could even be you as King or Queen but again, that depends on if you’re eligable – race,class and background and choices made.

Combat

Combat in Dragon Age Origins runs in realtime, but depending on your style of fighting it may seem a straight forward slugging contest, especially if it is a fight between warriors but it is quite possible to run around as a rogue and stab people in the back. You can bring up a menu and pause the action and assign each of your squad members a target and action. It’s not until you play another game that doesn’t give you a chance to pause that you realise how awesome that is (White Knight Chronicles I’m looking at you!).

The difficulty is well adjusted. Normal provides an enjoyable challenge without really causing any times where you’ll hit a point and go I can’t do this. The difficulty can be changed at any time and the console versions don’t differentiate between difficulty when handing out achievements/trophies. Easy is just that, easy. A useful way to burn through the game if you are more interested in the story but you may feel a little unsatisfied. You won’t be up against as powerful foes and things like potions will rarely be needed as opposed to vital. It is much faster though as you won’t need to pause the action to dish orders as enemies will fall sooner.

Hard and above introduce you to friendly fire, the number of times I’ve been hit in the back because I gave the ai mage access to the biggest spells in the game is a lot but in fairness much of the time it was following orders – if a group were attacking the healer, burn them all. Of course that was me being cheap and abusing friendly fire not being on. On higher difficulties I’m sure you order them around more or don’t give the AI orders to use the big spells and then you manually switch to the mage and use them yourself when the time is right.

Allies

Building up your allies to fight the Darkspawn invasion is the main aim of most of the game, these allies will be useful fodder/footsoldiers in the final fight and along the way you recruit members for your party (or not in some cases depending on your choices). Even once you recruit members, you have choices in how you deal with them which can result in them hating your guts to ultimately challenging you or at the other end of the spectrum, getting romantically involved. Allies perform better if they like you and cheap gifts only go so far, you may end up going off on side quests for them or coming to a decision and thinking twice about if you really want to do that because you know that they are going to go mental over slaughtering innocents (of course a couple are the opposite and rage at you for going out of your way to help people).

Sidequests

On the subject of sidequests there are many, many of which offer little reward other than a token reward but a clean concience. Others provide more substancial rewards in XP, gold or loot. And there is a lot of loot to be had in this game. Some people may get annoyed that they can’t carry it all and at times even if you buy every backpack you can, you will still end up passing over some although as you get further through, you don’t need to worry as much about looting as your gold rewards get bigger and some of the loot gets far more valuable than others so that you can dispose of without real fear of needing that 5 silver seeing how that helm was 3 gold. If you gotta get them all then if you buy the Warden’s Peak DLC you can store items you won’t need for a while there once you have completed it. The DLC has also some nice equipment and is a good buy.

DLC

On the subject of DLC, it’s been confirmed they will be providing DLC for 2 years! From what they have done so far, it integrates well. The Golem Shale is well worth getting and not just for his brilliant rants about birds (spend years as a statue outdoors and you’d probably feel the same), anyway he is awesome. There is a big expansion pack scheduled for March but apparently DLC doesn’t work with that, I’ll post an update once it’s out but even if that’s the case, with new NPCs, equipment and areas I expect it will turn out to be worth it, if there’s one thing I can say is that more Dragon Age is always a good thing.

So with so much more DLC to come, the potential for certain choices to affect things could be somewhat daunting but there’s no use guessing what will come. If all else fails and you don’t like how a choice ended up comes the end of the game or when a new DLC is released then you can always play through again, and you won’t mind either. I’ve been through three times and found new things each time. Using different team members at different times can give different choices and dialogues and can make fights far easier or difficult. There are still endings I haven’t seen and ideas for characters I’d like to try out.

Which Version?

If you are in the slightest bit interested in RPGs, you have to get this. Then you may have the choice of what to get it on. Well the 360 loads faster than the PS3 and the PS3 is behind on DLC because of the Sony testing program or Bioware being lame depending on who you listen to. On the flip side, the PS3 looks a bit better than 360 and is less likely to die from being on for long hours. Nikobe’s 360 started dying during DAO and my 360 started dying from Mass Effect 2 so if possible you should probably go with the PC, its better than both and has tools to let you do all sorts of modding. For the record I got the Collectors Edition on PS3. The bonus DVD wasn’t great to be honest but it had a code for more Dragon Age goodies and an armour for Mass Effect 2 which as it turns out is by far cooler than any of the other armours in the game even if statiscally it isn’t better than the pre-order bonus ones. Yes it is weird unlocking 360 content with a PS3 but well done to EA for getting it to work.

In Summary

Massive replayability with a great storyline and more content coming makes Dragon Age Origins an easy recomendation to anyone with any freetime. Actually it doesn’t matter if your time isn’t free, this is a game that you make time for. While playing you think I’ll just finish this sidequest, which leads to this and another well I’ll do this… before you know it you’ve been playing for hours more than you intended.

I’m no expert, I’ve twice visited Japan, the first time was a hectic 9 day self-tour of Tokyo, Hakone, Kyota & Osaka. The second, a more leisurely 9 days in Tokyo as part of the Manga Tour of Japan which I definitely recommend although you should definitely have a few more days in Japan afterwards. http://www.japanjourneys.co.uk/manga.htm

Anyway, this isn’t a proper tourists guide to tokyo, more a anime/toy collectors guide and a memory jog for the next time I go but hopefully you may find it useful. Please feel free to let me know if anything has since closed down.

I’ll leave the best till last so scroll down for Tokyo.

As for when to go, Sakura (Cherry Blossom) season is usually late March/early April, summer is hot and icky I was told by my Japanese teacher, personally I’ve only been during cherry blossom season and can vouch for the prettyness which isn’t something I say often and that the temperature was slightly better than the UK for the time.

Hakone

If you go on a day trip up to Hakone you can see Mount Fuji, there is a great cable car ride you can take which takes you up the active volcano there.  There is a train you can take down which I recommend you take as it is unlike any other I’ve been on. Crazy tight turns and having to reverse the direction it is pulled from along the route. Great views.

Hakone also has my favourite place which was the Samurai Museum. Run by this great old guy who greeted us and then while were looking around the small museum, he shocked the life out of us by jumping out from behind a corner having changed into in full samurai gear.  He posed for pictures too, most awesome.

There was a great castle here but I missed going in it by half an hour because of cramming everything else in (and getting on the wrong bus earlier which was how I ended up at the Samurai Museum LOL). There’s a fancy art gallery I didn’t go in.

Osaka

Osaka Castle is awesome.  The most impressive of the castles I visited and absolutely huge gardens. It isn’t the original but a remake. I wish they’d do that with more of the ruined castles here in England. Oh look at the remains of a castle isn’t anywhere near as impressive as a whole freaking castle!

Universal Studios Japan is here, I chose the castle instead though as I only had one day in Osaka.  There was a Full Metal Alchemist attraction to celebrate it’s opening so I’m guessing there should be a few non Universal anime attractions there too.

I didn’t spend long here so nothing else to add sorry.

Kyoto

Kyoto is just site seeing central, you visit one shrine or temple and can see another and can walk to that. You keep doing that and before you know it you are miles from your hotel. I didn’t have time to do anything other than that and I know I barely scratched the surface. Just make sure you have enough memory for your camera here. SD cards were harder to come by and more expensive than in Tokyo or Osaka.  Have more than 1 day here. There really is a lot of sites to see, I didn’t even get to go to any of the shops here.

Tokyo Sights

• Stay in or near Shinjuku, from that station you can get pretty much anywhere, it is the most amazing labyrinth though so if you get lost at Clapham Junction station you may want to make sure you go with a tour. Sadly it does not have the blackboard used in City Hunter.
• You have to do the Tokyo Tower for obvious reasons.
  

  Not full size but no midget either. The Iron Giant is awesomeness incarnate

• The Asakusa shrine will look familiar to anyone who’s seen Tenchi Muyo and regardless, is a great site to visit with the Senso temple practically next to it. A nice weapons shop here and some stalls with various anime tack and lots of Japanese food.
• Shinjuku park is a really nice park to have a little picnic in. It’s also fairly big.
• The Studio Ghibli museum is a must if you can get the tickets.  On the roof is a statue of The Iron Giant.
• The Tokyo sword museum was cool but too small and out of the way to really recommend unless you are really into your swords. No swords for sale, not even a paper knife. They do work restoring ancient scrolls here, security is TIGHT.
• The Imperial Gardens – HUUUUUUGE and very impressive.
• Harajuku has the great Meiji Shrine, a good toy shop and a good tourist shop for buying tacky souviners. If memory serves, the park is supposedly best on Sundays.  The main thing is watching the antics people in the park – they set up stereos and do live music, everything from j-pop to elvis. For normal (non-otaku) people there is a bunch of designer shops there.
• The full 1:1 scale Gundam is no longer there but there is still a Statue of Liberty and Toys R Us on Odaiba Island (Shiokaze Park) along with a nice mall and a great Hawiain Burger bar.

Tokyo Shops

This is an otaku’s blog so I’m not going to be posting where to find designer labels, well not unless the designer works for Shonen Jump

• Akihabara is the place for current anime & manga merchandise and games. Cosplay cafes and electronics shops. Check out the shops in the big tower next to the station, one had TF animated prototypes for sale before Animated was out and a few floors up was the Revoltech store. There was a fantastic shop with a load of Japanese G1 Transformers at not so nice prices on the end furthest of the high street from the station. Also had the Dragon Ball Z bathroom scales which I regret not buying to this day as an amazing piece of tack.
• Nakano Broadway is THE place to go for hard to find old anime merch. The shopping mall looks naff until you go up to the 2nd and 3rd floors where it has a number of awesome shops. Whether it be toys (one of the Mandarake’s only sells robot related toys), anime, manga, soundtracks, video games, cosplay outfits or animation cells – you can get it here. To get there there is a train station of the same name. Easy.
• Don’t bother going out of your way to find a Toys R Us, it was more expensive than the Animate across the street for toys or games in Sunshine City. If you want to visit a TRU, I suggest the one on Odaiba island for sight seeing purposes.
  

  A shop that only sells merchandise of Shonen JUMP characters... Now THAT's my kind of shop.

• The Shonen Jump shop on the site of the Tokyo Dome had some pretty rare stuff if you like Shonen Jump manga/anime and you may be able to get tickets for a baseball game or whatever’s going on at the dome while you’re in the area.
• There is a great American restaurant in the Takashimaya Times Square complex in Shinjuku which is perfect if you fancy a big steak.
• Also in the same complex is Kinokuniya Books which has a huge english section with one of the biggest ranges of English manga I’ve seen. It includes English language releases that were released in other regions. I picked up all of the Slam Dunk manga when in the US it had stalled at vol 5.
• HMV is just around the corner from there and is a great place for your J-pop/rock needs and has some soundtracks.

Things to Remember

I’m not going to do a list of useful phrases, there’s too many and to be honest, I barely spoke to anyone out there, just pointed and nodded. Rude in the extreme but Big Mac is the same in any language

• Make sure you have a map of the train system in English.  You will need it to match up with their map which will be in Japanese and more likely than not, will have prices instead of stops on. Instead of zones they work on price in yen (public transport is dirt cheap compared to the UK and vastly superior, don’t bother with taxi’s)
• Forget travellers cheques – far too much hassle.
• Cash, you need it, and you need a lot of it. Credit cards are only taken in large stores. You will need wallets full of cash. Luckily Japan is a really safe country and you won’t get mugged (well shouldn’t unless you’re exceptionally unlucky or stupid. I had £1000 cash at the start and split it into 3 wallets, 2 stashed in my backpack – emergency, large buys and normal person’s use and then pulled out whichever would be necessary. Sneaky but effective. Note, that was nowhere near as much money as I could have spent but was perilously close to the maximum weight allowance.
• Do NOT put your cash in the shop keepers hands. They have a little tray or basket, put your money in there.
• The Japanese wear face masks if they have the slightest trace of a cold. At least cover your mouth/nose if coughing or sneezing.
• Sumimasen = sorry, general get out of jail free word for any idiotic foreigner behaviour you might do (such as the above). Also can be used as excuse me to indicate you’d like them to get out of your way if they are blocking somewhere.
• Do NOT cross the street when the traffic lights are red for pedestrians even if you can see there isn’t a car for the length of the road. You will get evil looks and probably a few snide comments you won’t understand.
• When you enter a shop, quite often you will be greeted. This is normal. The same on leaving so don’t worry. Nod politely if you want to be nice.
• PS3,PSP and DS games are region free, console accessories like joypads and arcade sticks are also region free.  Blitz Akihabara! The Macross Frontier games on PSP and Initial D Extreme Stage on PS3 are must haves. Reminds me there’s a new PS3 Gundam game I need to import…
• There is no need to carry spare drinks around, wherever you go, there will be a vending machine nearby. Probably a Lawsons too (equivilent to a 7-11/corner shop).
• Even Lawsons sell anime tack. Usually the random luck mini boxed toys with gashapon machines as well. There is no escape!
• (item name) Kudasai – I know I said no phrases but I used this a fair bit as a lot of shops keep everything in glass cabinets (which is odd considering the low crime rate but perhaps also helps explain it). Tell them the toy or game name e.g. Goshogun or Mazinger please and point in the right direction and they will be able to help.
• You have to visit a Gera Gera manga cafe – think internet cafe, with more manga than you’ve ever seen in your life, as well as a selection of anime and games you can use there. Open 24/7, people that miss the last train often spend the night here.  The inspiration for my collection which is a topic for another day…
• Mandarake and Animate are two of the best places I found for buying anime, manga and toys and associated stuff (soundtracks,games,tack). There will be at least one Animate in every city, keep a look out.
• DVD’s are region 2 so they will play on UK players, however they will NOT have english subtitles. Same applies to blu-ray, no subs.
• CD’s and DVD’s are, relative to the UK and especially United States, incredibly expensive (£25 for a CD is common!). Don’t let that deter you though, it’s cheaper than importing unless you want to import knock offs in which case you might as well just download them. Feel pride in supporting the content makers.
• If your airline allows, take 2 bags, one inside the other on the way out so you have 2 bags to load up with toys and merch to bring back. I take old clothes so if necessary (and it has been both times) I throw out some clothes so there is enough room for toys. Remember to keep some clothes though to cushion and pad out your luggage to keep toys safe
• Die cast toys and hand luggage don’t mix and you may be subject to a painstaking search of your hand luggage contents but they do look exceptionally awesome going through the X-ray machine!
• Baseball batting practice is a good way to kill some time, coin in slot and then a series of balls come flying at you at whatever speed it says on the door so you don’t need to worry about not knowing any Japanese. I don’t know jack about baseball and I enjoyed it.

Note: I’ve not mentioned karaoke, there were plenty of karaoke bars but I can’t advise which are good as I didn’t use any as it hurts me never mind anyone else when I attempt to sing.

If you can find it, I recommend the book, Cruising the Anime City: An Otaku Guide to Neo Tokyo.  It has useful maps of the main otaku shopping areas. It’s out of date for the smaller shops and the Bandai Museum is no longer there but asides from that it has some great information on the culture that won’t age and is well worth a read.

All of these things should make this the best games? Until two weeks ago you were right and I was ready to fight to preserve it as the best game I played all year. But all that has changed. While it is still the high point for me in terms of stealth/action/super hero games there is now one game that does all of that, but only much better.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

This is how the game starts, and doesn't let up

I had seen (but not played) the original, and played a little of this one before I managed to get my hands on it. Both of the other two BGR’ers have been telling me for some time it is their favourite game, I was not convinced.

My initial reaction to this game was that it was OK, but nothing special. Right at the start while I thought it looked nice, I wasn’t getting on the the controls very well. But once I had got over that slight problem this game opened up to me and showed me what a true cinematic experience a game can be.

The Setup

You are following the fortunes of Drake. You start in the middle of incredibly well done train wreck and through the course of getting out of it you are taught the basic controls. From there the story goes on to explain you are on the hunt for Marco Polo’s lost treasure.

This games really does play out like an Indiana Jones story with travelling all over the globe looking for the clues that Marco Polo has left behind. On the way you are shown some of the most amazing scenes I have seen in computer game. But the thing that really got to me was not the stunning detail but the grandeur of set pieces.

But the best part is the game expects you to explore all the aspects of these huge scenes. They are not just window dressing, they are integral parts of the story with secrets for you to find and cinematic cut scenes which flow seamlessly into the game to let you explore them even better.

The actual story is so well done I would actually love to go and see it at the cinema, it puts Indiana Jones to shame. I especially enjoyed the various subtle touches and comedy that are woven perfectly into the story that really will have you laughing with the character and thinking “Oh crap!” just as they say it on screen.

Quality production

The quality of the voice acting in this game is second to none, I didn’t think Batman could be beaten but I could not have been more wrong. All of the characters are voiced perfectly, and I genuinely enjoyed listening to everything they had to say. Even the little pieces of in game dialogue were fun and I didn’t notice any glitch moments where it repeats the same phrase.

The most fun part of the game beside the great story are the excellent fighting mechanics. Running and gunning actually works perfectly, and I have found the most fun thing to do is to run up to your target shooting then beat the living crap out of them. This is especially fun because of the huge number of fighting animations that makes them a joy to watch.

Stealth can also be a big part of this game if you want it to be. You sneak about in most places and take out the guards silently. The actual stealthing mechanic is perhaps not as fluid as it could be, but again once you are used to the way it work you will not have any problems.

Extras

Beside the fact that I am going to play this game through again at least once there are all sorts of extras included for you. There is actually a very fun multi-player mode where you can play the normal array of game modes like death match and king of the hill. But they have also included some behind the scenes videos and various art galleries.

Conclusion

This is a must own game. I played the entire game through in 10 hours, and I was actually disappointed when it finished, I could have happily played it for twice that long. But its the tight story that keeps the game fun to play, so I guess I will just have to wait till Uncharted 3 comes out.

No not in that way….well maybe I am a bit hehe. What I’m referring too is my preference for playing games on easy mode <gasp> I hear you cry and “What a noob!” (if your harsh) but yes I play on easy and I always will.

No I’m not a casual gamer in that I only play on the Wii on weekends, I don’t play Sing Star once every six months round someone’s house and I certainly don’t like playing Who wants to be a millionaire on the tv at Christmas.  I’ve played games for over 20 years, I’m not elitest or showing off but I’ve played a very broad spectrum of games including many obscure and weird games (mostly Japanese). What this all boils down to is, I’ve been around a bit (gaming wise) I know my stuff but I choose to play games the way I want.

I get allot of grief for playing games on easy, old-school gamers who used to struggle through levels in old arcade games see easy mode as wimp mode and think you might as well not play at all or your wasting the game.

I play games for various reasons outside of how hard I make it on myself to enjoy it.

• the story which you get wrapped up in and draws you forward. Final Fantasy for me is all about a story that just happens to be interactive, I’m not really interested in the challenge of the bosses or leveling to max level I just want to be entertained.  A recent example is Uncharted 2 which features some of the best acting in a game ever and the story really draws you in.
• the sheer fun (flying down a mountain in SSX Tricky or Driving down the streets of San Fran in Crazy Taxi).
• Sense of progression, I mentioned not slaving away at Final Fantasy for leveling but some games derive their fun from a sense of progression the most obvious being World of Warcraft and other MMO’s (which I am very easily addicted too…sadly).

None of which require me to crank up the difficulty to make them better. Some enjoy the challenge of finishing a game on crazy mode but I don’t, I find it quite jarring to see a story sequence in Uncharted 2 then get shot with a missile and watch it again over and over. Getting killed in games breaks me out of the illusion and gets me grumpy, it makes me want to not play any more.

If you were watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in the Cinema and Indy and that kid were shooting down the mine in that cart and instead of looking cool they slammed into a wall both died then the screen flashed and they were twenty feet back again and this time survived it would get a bit old and feel cheap.

There are some games I will probably never see the end of due to them being too hard with no way to make them easier, I’ll probably never get through Little Big Planet…I love the game and would love it more if I could see the end but I just keep falling off the platforms and get grumpy and I have never finished a GTA game purely because I always come up against some chase mission that requires perfect timing and control in one of the games worst vehicles.

My loss with those games and others but still if they were a bit easier I’d enjoy them allot more, to be able to put them aside in a nice completed games pile (or sold if I didn’t like them that much).

So when a game presents me with a choice of easy or normal I will always choose easy and I don’t care!

Tried out Modern Warfare 2 on the XBox

I entirely missed the first installment of this series. I have never been a great fan of the “Call of Duty” games, I always preferred the “Battlefield” series. I have always preferred the more open aspect of that series over the tightly scripted world of COD. I have also never been a huge fan of WWII games, they are interesting but I get the feeling they are unnecessarily limited (hence my enjoyment of jumping into a tank in Battlefield).

But I was in a supermarket, there was the last copy of the game in the shop and it was cheap, so I picked it up. Nikobe is always telling me what a great game it is. I liked the idea of the various perks in the game, not only the ones like the gunship but the ones that beef-up the useless players in the game seeing as that is the area I live in.

I know this is not going to win me any friends (and maybe the ire of the fan boys) but I can’t say I am impressed.

Feeling disappointed

The real draw for this game is the on-line games, I will come to that in a moment. Before I jumped on-line I wanted to play through the campaign, get a feel for the system before being destroyed by all the 12 year olds playing this 18 game (got to love that).

Started playing and I was very surprised. Why? because I can’t use cover in any way. “Gears of War” and “Rainbow Six” have excellent cover systems and I have come to expect this from my games. People just running down corridors and popping out in full view is just not realistic. I want to use the blocks and walls in the game, rather than them just being a method to have me killed. I know everyone is in the same boat, but not having a cover system is inexcusable. Just to take the micky though the computer can use cover (What?) yes it can hide around corners and behind doors. They can also blind fire at you, and all you can do is duck down or lay prone (just like in real life). If there is one saving grace its the face that the bad guys in the game are worse shots than Storm Troopers.

I was also a little disappointed in the quality of the graphics. The standards are high as far as graphics go and I don’t think MW2 lives up to the requirement. Its only a minor thing, on the whole it is excellent, but in places (like the first snow level) you see some strange artifacts.

Things to like

The way the sights lock onto the closest enemy when you switch to the gun sight is a great idea. Saves a lot of time and makes the game a little more fun. This is especially true when you can barely see the enemies running at you.

Although the game is very scripted, and the path you can take thought the game is limited to a very narrow path it is interesting to see the story unfold. The set pieces in the game are beautifully designed and the action sequences are a lot of fun.

Take it out for a spin, and get destroyed

As I was expecting going on-line to play is normally a disaster. I am killed constantly normally without even seeing my assailant. But the kill cam that shows you your killers point of view just before they took you out is excellent to see. The way the game makes you tougher the more you are killed is also a welcome feature.

Conclusion

I can’t say I am enamored with this game. It is well done, but I personally think there are other games out there that do it a lot better. The XBox live release of Battlefield show what can be done with tanks and mobile combat. “Gears of War” while it is OK, it has a better combat system.

All in all I think this is just not my game. It has not grabbed me like it has with other people. I know there are people who love it and I can see why they might. But it just did not do it for me. I think I will trade it in while the prices are good and get myself something else.

A simple, but fun game for XBox

Just released on XBox live is “Trials HD” a very well done motorbike trials game. After getting the demo I was hooked on this game. Its instant fun factor is evident from the start, and while it initially appears very simple it is actually surprisingly hard to master.

But this game threw me back to one of my most favorite games of all time, and game I played when often over 15 years ago on my ZX Spectrum. That classic game was called Kikstart, and it has more than a passing resemblance to this new title on the XBox.

With a pedigree like that, how could I resist buying it?

Trials HD

The initial idea is very simple. Each level consists of course, you need to get from the start to the finish in the quickest time possible with the least number of accidents.

The levels start out very simple, little jumps, easy ramps. You will very quickly make it past the first two difficulties with the minimum of fuss. But you will still have a lot of fun playing with the idea, and experimenting with the physics. Then the difficulty increases, the medium set of levels are challenging in places, and will cause some frustration but getting through them with trial and error will let you complete the levels quiet quickly.

Then comes the hard levels, and by hard I mean there is a second level of skill to this game that you have to master if you want to get passed even the training level.

This is the great secret of the game, there is a real skill to playing it and its not all about how fast you can drive. There is enough here to keep you entertained for hours, and you will be more than happy to play the levels again and again just for the shear hell of it. That is the making of a good game in my book.

Missed a trick

There are two glaring problems with this game:

First. You can not pull tricks on your bike. Its not really an issue in any way, but if you do happen to find yourself 3 stories up, flying through the air, it would be great to be able to pull a “super man”, or just stand on the saddle. It has no effect on game play, just makes it look cooler.

Second. There is a great level editor in the game. Its a lot of fun to create your own levels (Little Big Planet has re-introduced this idea, and set the bar high). The level of control in the editor is excellent, with an advanced mode if you want more control, and to create more impressive levels.

But I was hoping for a market place for other peoples levels. It was suggesting in the demo you would be able to swap levels with others. You can, but only your friends. Everyone should have been able to share their levels and get new ones. This would increase the games life infinitely, as it is you are pretty much stuck with the ones in the game, and the ones you make.

I have a feeling this is more to do with what Microsoft wants, than it is the developers. Which would be a real shame if Microsoft are crippling great ideas just becuase it does not make them as much money.

Links:

• Eurogames gives it 9 out of 10
• IGN gives it 8.3 – Impressive
• Sarcastic Games shows its not as easy as it looks
• Peoww also has a great review

The Predecessor

One of the best Spectrum games of all time

While this game is a lot of fun, there is a game that came out long before it that is almost identical in every way. Only this game came out over 20 years ago (1988 to be exact).

This was easily one of my favourite games on the ZX Spectrum, not only did it offer great game play. It could be played two player and it had a level editor built in. That was totally unheard of at the time, and made the game just astounding.

I know I have sparked your interest, so you will be please to know you can play it right now on-line.

Some more useful links:

• Crash review from 1988
• World of Spectrum – Kikstart 2 page
• Its great to see I’m not the only one who noticed the similarity to Kikstart or again here (not as original as I first thought it seems)

Conclusion

I have lost hours to this game already, just playing the levels again and again (or getting stuck). So I was delighted with “Trails HD”, I see it as a very modern remake of one of my childhood favourites.

I can thoroughly recommend it!