January 2009 – The O/C Gamer

Australia Day

We’re in the midst of a long weekend here, with the 26th being Australia Day. And I fucking love being Australian.

Not in the boorish way that seems to typify over-use of the recent “oi oi oi” chants of Aussies overseas; no, I grew up when Australia had no impact on anything. When we were crap at cricket, rubbish at rugby, soccer was still publicly called wogball and the Olympics were a glum television event; when we were politically inconsequential. Those days had a massive influence on me; the idea of the Little Aussie Battler, the support for the underdog, the respect for the people who just get the job done – and appropriate injections of Tall Poppy Syndrome for those who get too big for their own boots. There’s no braindead chants in my vision of Australia – just a thrill when the battler gets up, and an accepting grunt when the other team excels.

But what’s that all got to do with gaming?

Allow me the luxury of a few more words to explain.

I grew up in a country town, population 2,000. As a male kid, you played cricket or tennis on a Saturday morning; graduating to an adult, you did the same in the afternoon. Social time was Saturday night, at the larger pubs in the area, and Sundays would see the young men work through their hangovers at Apex gatherings & working bees; it just seemed to be the natural progression of things.

One of the Apex regular tasks was the organisation of the Australia Day breakfast, where a huge chunk of the town would dawdle in to the lawns by the side of the Town Hall for a plate of deliciously greasy bacon & eggs, with the eggs later being fried in Australia-shaped holes in slices of bread. Sloppily served with a smile and good cheer, it was always a great morning event; we’d wander around, watch the Young Australian of the Year award, then maybe bugger off to the beach later in the day. And there’s so much of the spirit of those Australia Days that make me proud.

But I haven’t explained anything yet. A few more words…

Between the gorging at breakfast – the smiles, the enthusiastic catch-ups across the rows of trestle tables – and the beach, there was a necessary stop-off at home (Mum made certain we had at least an hour break between eating and swimming). One year, long ago, I wandered via the Main Street, stopping by the newsagent – one of the few shops open on this most sacred of public holidays. And a shiny magazine caught my eye – the Home Electronics Yearbook. I was just entering my “interested in electronics” phase; I bought it in a heartbeat. I flicked through it while I walked along the sea-wall home: it wasn’t an “electronics” magazine at all! Instead, it was a consumer-oriented mag highlighting exciting new products – hi-fi, television, and something new – home computers.

I looked at these machines with wonder, with lust – I couldn’t quite understand what they were, but I knew I wanted one. Within those glossy pages, I compared the unknown features – numbers, really – of the Apple II (expensive!), Atari 800 (surely a gamer’s paradise!) and the VIC-20 (but it’s only got 5 RAMs!). That one magazine, that one Australia Day, somehow triggered a love in computing that would see me get my C64 soon thereafter (64KB! under a third of the high school’s new Apple’s cost!), and hence an introduction to gaming.

Fast forward a few years – I’ve got my C64, I’ve got my 1541 disk drive, and it’s Australia Day again. My oldest friend and I drop by my home between the breakfast and the beach, avoiding the worst of the midday sun. To while away the hours, we fire up the C64 – “any new games?” he queried, looking over my small collection of hookey floppies.

We started playing one game – a game I’d briefly looked at before, but hadn’t bothered trying to figure out. He, on the other hand, was made of sterner stuff, so we started digging, figuring out the rules, discovering the game.

Archon.

We played and played that game. Our intended afternoon at the beach became a quick dip at dusk (not too long, though – the jellyfish get a little feisty on balmy summer nights). I went home and played Archon for hours; my mate returned the next day, we played it a lot more. Once we’d sussed the impact of the red/green squares, figured out the meaning of “power points are proof against magic”, we were set – and then the real fun started. Challenging each other to nutty battles – “knight versus dragon on white!”, “shapeshifter versus phoenix!” – and setting up the most shameful of victories – imprisoning the opposition’s final piece. Endless debates about whether the brute force of the Dragon, combined with the uneven Shapeshifter, favoured the Dark Side over the Light’s powerful Djini and crapulent Phoenix. The hot Sorceress versus the cool Wizard; my preferred Unicorn over the Basilisk; the wimpy Valkyrie, or the annoying Banshee. So much depth, so much fun.

We kept the “traditional” Australia Day bouts of Archon going but, as you’d expect, we started getting older, and after a few years I was tackling the game solo. And so it will be again this year – Australia Day, greasy breakfast with a grin, and two solo games of Archon – one against Light, one against Dark.

I love being Australian, and I love my Australia Day.

Mid-week Snippets!

I do so enjoy the opportunity to post something fun in the middle of the week, far from my usual week-in-review compendiums and all-too-occasional “features”. Just my luck, then, that a couple of things popped up today that deserved mentioning.

First up: Space Giraffe (for the PC) got a worthy review in PC Gamer and, in a blog post celebrating that fact, Yak mentions that Gridrunner+++ (a working title – but so was Space Giraffe) is slated for release on ~~XBLA~~ PC in late April.

Delight!

But that reminds me that I’ve never mentioned its predecessor, Gridrunner++. GR++ can be held largely responsible for my return to gaming after a long, unfocused absence, and also my introduction to the wider social internet. Through this game, I’ve made dozens of really, really good friends, found a welcoming place to crash in every part of the UK, and… well, it was a gateway to a better life. Grandiose responsibility to be laid at a game’s feet, eh? But it is a thoroughly wonderful game, available for both PC and Mac, and totally Minter.

Please – if you’ve not tried it before, head over to the game’s page, and at least try the demo. Then buy it – for $10, you can hardly go wrong.

Secondly, and snarkily: just caught this snippet of a Kaz Hirai interview in the Official PlayStation Magazine over on EuroGamer. I’ll not get snagged by some of the more… “popular” bits, but will call out this quote:

We don’t provide the ‘easy to program for’ console that [developers] want, because ‘easy to program for’ means that anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so then the question is what do you do for the rest of the nine-and-a-half years?

To which I can only add this: hahahahahahaaaaaa ahahahahahahaaaa. Whee!

MaskParadise

Right.

Tonight, I could take the easy way out: refer to my last post, and simply substitute Burnout Paradise for Ridge Racer 6. After all, it’s been another work-affected week, I met up with pretty much the same group of people for Paradise burning a-plenty (and my 400th Challenge), and played Majora’s Mask… pretty much the same as last week.

But I won’t take the easy way out. Instead, I’m going to write a few more paragraphs about That Which Tortures Me So – Majora’s Mask.

Now, I’ve only just finished the second Temple, after more stumble-heavy to-ing and fro-ing that feels more like a point-and-click adventure than a 3D action RPG-lite. I’ve abandoned my quest for Purity and now have an accessible GameFAQs walkthrough by my side; I’ve been driven to bloody-minded anger by some of the “puzzles” that are being presented, and that second Temple was just fucking infuriating. And that’s the thing that’s most annoying, in a way: the first Temple was a delight, reminding me of the delight that can be found in the Zelda canon. It’s just that, after the second Temple kicks you in the balls, drops you four stories, then says “walk back up here the long way, loser”… well, I get a little discouraged.

And let’s be quite clear here – I’m really not trying to be a difficult contrarian in taking an active dislike to this game. I fully appreciate that some people love and cherish this game (such as oft-commenting Steven O’Dell – thanks for the comments mate, I really appreciate them :)

But I just am not clicking with this Zelda outing. And it could be partly due to the fact that this game simply does not feel polished, does not feel tuned. A simple example would be watching the Goron form of Link play his drums in place of the ocarina; there’s no animation sync to the notes played, so it just looks… well, lame. As for the Songs themselves, they also display a lack of polish – in Ocarina, all the Songs you input were small fragments of larger tunes, giving a feeling of interaction – your initial inputs trigger off a beautiful tune. Majora’s, on the other hand, has principal Songs lasting just your input notes, leading to an unrequited cliffhang. The Song of Soaring is really shitting me off in that regard.

Is Majora’s Mask an ugly duckling? I bloody hope so, I really do – I still hold some belief that the last half is going to bring forth some amazingly heartfelt emotion and deliciously grinducing (that’s grin-inducing, folks) gameplay. But at the moment I’m considering practicing Astropop instead, because this is simply not enjoyable.

MaskRacer

It’s been a very quiet week for gaming, with time (and inclination) diminished due to work-related pressures best described as “panic”. All good fun, supposedly, but it’s a bit of a bitch when do-it-for-the-team commitment impacts my OCD.

A return to Ridge Racer 6 with my UK (and AU)-based chums revealed that the old girl has lost little of her charm. After some quality racing with a field of a dozen, we decided to crank the handicap up to give some of the younger players a chance at the win. And bugger me if the pack doesn’t immediate bunch up, with less than two seconds separating first from last – resulting in tons of swearing and laughs and more swearing. Fantastic stuff – I do love our little semi-yearly stoushes.

The only other game to get a look-in this week was Majora’s Mask. It’s an infuriating game; I plodded painfully along throughout the week, not knowing what exactly it was I was supposed to be doing, gleaning a mask here, a happy Townie there. Eventually, frustration overwhelmed me – I had to head to GamesFAQs where I (thankfully) found a spoiler-free walkthrough… and inching through it (to avoid any spoiler-free spoilers ;) revealed that my frustration stemmed from a very early mis-reading of the game. Well, not so much a mis-reading… more a case of Majora not living up to my Zelda expectations.

See, I’m struggling to remember a back-and-forth quest in any other Zelda game; so, when I’m asked for a potion, and I couldn’t previously buy one at the shop where I’m expected to buy one, I’m hardly likely to return there, am I?

:seethe:

So I’m a little disappointed, to be honest. I’ve finally got to the first dungeon, and cleared it out without too many problems, and that was as enjoyable as I was expecting the rest of the game to be… but then it was followed by an annoying race. Oh, and I managed to defeat that Temple Boss with no idea what I was doing (seriously – I didn’t even know I was hitting him). I’m still feeling unfairly oppressed by the pressure of the time limit, and I’m encountering issues where the game will hang – once after 50 minutes of play – which particularly annoys because of the limited ability to save the game in any meaningful way. But I can see some cleverness (and contradiction) in the structuring of the game in its Groundhog Day cycle, but hopefully I’ll be seeing more of the good stuff, and less of the frustrating bits.

Now all I hope for is an easing of the pressure at work – hey, I need at least a couple of hours gaming a night!

Majora’sOcarinaFlowerParadise

After my flurry of posts over the New Year, I would’ve given myself a break if I’d not managed to get something out this evening; but it’s been a good couple of days off work, I’ve got plenty of gaming in, and I’m feeling like a boast ;)

After snaffling the Biggest Quiver in Ocarina of Time last week, I proudly mentioned this on one of my friendly gaming forums – to which a pal slyly replied “But have you caught the Hylian loach?”

Shit. I’d completely forgotten about the Ocarina fishing component. I knew the Loach was supposed to be a prick to catch, but I figured that I’d get away with just seeing it – something I managed quite quickly. But then I cast my eyes across an Ocarina Guide that mentioned…

Are you THE MASTER? If you are, you can get the following:

100 Golden Skulltulas
36 Heart Pieces
Have four Bottles (fair and square)
Tons of Secret Grottos/Areas
Lots of Golden Rupees
Own a cow
Get 1500+ points on the Horse Archery Game
Caught a 20 pounder
Caught the Hylian Loach
Have all the weapon upgrades
All Masks
Big Goron’s Sword
…and like to torture chickens.

Bastard. It’s almost like he was goading me.

So a-fishing for the Hylian Loach I went. And, I must say, everything you’ve heard about the Loach is true. Four hours of gentle teasing, waiting, quiet chasing, and lip biting before I got the bugger to bite – but then, when he bit, he was landed without too much fuss…

Another couple of items collected, a slight mis-step (taking Fairies, rather than Blue Potions, into the Ganondorf fight), and Ocarina of Time was struck off The List. And it goes without saying that it’s still a magnificent game – utterly deserving of all the plaudits afforded it over the years and, I’ll posit, better than any other game I’ve played in the last year.

With Ocarina complete, I gently eased myself into Majora’s Mask – and after a handful of hours, I have to say that I’m not overly impressed. I don’t like the repetition (especially that fucking Deku animation when I stray too close to the Deku flower), I don’t like the dark tone, I don’t like the implied time restriction – and right now I’m just feeling a bit out of my depth. There almost seems to be too much information on offer, too much to do – and I don’t feel able to even chip away at it. Here’s hoping there’s a breakthrough soon, lest I reluctantly resort to GameFAQs – something which I’m trying to do less and less these days – but I’m buoyed by the fact that Ocarina also started slowly, and I’ve grumbled about the opening of Twilight Princess before, and they both ended up being corkers.

Whilst the second day of the New Year saw a Zelda game Completed, the third day saw the Completion of a Suda51 game – Flower, Sun and Rain. Whilst the story was great, the gameplay – being little more than an interactive story, requiring you to move from one location to another & click through pages of dialogue, and never presenting the opportunity to fail – left a lot to be desired. Very hard to recommend, unfortunately; thankfully, it didn’t trouble The List for long.

Finally, there was another visit to Burnout Paradise this week, pootling around with friends and snaffling a few more Challenges (385 of 490 complete, now). Fabulous stuff, and a handy reminder of this game’s online strengths.

Next week: more Majora’s. A scheduled return to Ridge Racer 6 with my old racing chums. Given that it’s a return-to-work week, that’ll be plenty :}

My 2009 Gaming Resolutions

You know the thing I hate most about my O/C affliction? It’s that the backlog of The List makes me very conscious of any new purchases (well, most of the time, anyway. Sometimes I just need a little retail therapy). I’ve always got one eye on The List, trying to chip away at stuff, whilst still managing to get a look at all the Shiny New Things my chums are talking about.

Because I love a new game, I really do. Just before Christmas I was getting a pressie for my nephew – fuck The Simpsons Game, he’s getting Super Mario Galaxy – and I picked up the new Prince of Persia game and just stood there, holding it in my hands. I wanted to buy that bugger, I really did… it looks lovely and quite doable and O/C-friendly. But then I reminded myself about the sixty-five other games that I hadn’t yet Completed and asked myself, in an overly rational manner, whether I really needed that new game.

I tried convincing myself that it was a good opportunity to snaffle another 1000 GS on the 360, but I’ve seen that argument before; I quickly countered with “Why don’t you buy Avatar, then?” which quickly shut me up.

Anyway, before I let you all in on way more of my internal dialogue than you care about, the point is that my New Year’s Gaming Resolutions are going to revolve around clearing that backlog and making room for a bit more modernity.

To that end, I resolve…

…to Complete at least two Zelda games. I want to play through them all in release chronological order, and (as I indicated last week) I’m getting close to wrapping up a 100% run on Ocarina of Time. But then what – do I go on to Majora’s Mask (which I’ve never played) or follow-up with the Ocarina Master Quest? Decisions, decisions.
…to Complete at least two PS2 games. This scares me a little, really – of the eight games there, three are rhythm action games (which I’m notoriously bad at), the Katamaris are O/C collection nightmares, and Bujingai is as hard as nails on the higher skill levels.
…to Complete at least four(!) from the PC, Nuon, Dreamcast, and Jaguar groups. Holy shit!
…to keep on top of stuff obtained through the year. In 2008, I managed to Complete 11 of 18 new purchases – let’s aim for a similar target of 60%

So now they’re out there. My Resolutions.

What are your Gaming Resolutions for 2009?

No More Heroes: Game Saves

Being the O/C freak I am, it wasn’t enough that I finish No More Heroes on the most difficult skill level (in both PAL and NTSC versions); oh no, I had greater plans in store.

As you may have gathered from my previous post, the main spectacles in No More Heroes are the boss fights. Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to select a particular boss battle after-the-fact, so I figured the best thing to do would be to create a stack of save files, positioned such that the save is just before each boss battle.

And so I present the following files unto you, dear reader. Each file has the four available save slots occupied as follows:

A Cleared game, saved after beating Henry on Bitter. All collectables collected, all Gold Medals obtained (except on PAL – missing some Free Fight Golds there), and tons of money earned so you don’t have to do any side missions if you don’t want to.
Sweet: saved just before ranked fight.
Mild: saved just before ranked fight.
Bitter: saved just before ranked fight.

Thus, if you download the “Rank 3” files below, you’ll be able to tackle the battle for Rank 3 at all difficulty levels to determine for yourself that, yes, Shinobu is an utter bitch on Bitter. But a totally rewarding bitch :)

Sadly, you’ll probably find that these files will load up the Bitter save in Slot 1 by default; to revert to one of the other skill levels, wait until you’re back in-game, hit the “+” button, navigate to “Data” and then load the save-slot of choice.

To copy these onto your Wii, drop the “private” folder (from the desired archive below) into the root of an SD Card, then pop that into the Wii and transfer the data from the SD Card to your Wii system memory. Remember, you can only have one of these game save files on your Wii at a time, so make sure you back up your existing save game first! (Again, copy it onto a SD Card, then copy it from the SD Card to someplace safe. Of course, you’re doing that with all your current saves anyway, aren’t you? Because I’m not going to be held responsible if you lose all your hard-earned progress just because you wanted to sneak a peek at one of these save games ;)

Make sure you download the correct version of the file: “NTSC” files should suit the US, Canada, and other NTSC parts of the world (Wii code is “RNHE”); “PAL” files should be good for European / Oceanic countries (and, I’m guessing, all PAL regions, with Wii code “RNHP”). I suspect neither will work in Japan, unfortunately.

…and, as an extra special bonus, here’s the excellent Zero Punctuation review and frothy Edge review of No More Heroes.

Enjoy!

No More Heroes

After being blown away by the rather magnificent Killer7, I was keen to check out Suda51‘s next baby. Press buzz around No More Heroes was positively bubbling, with hopes being built that it would be the first massive third-party title for the Wii.

After acquiring the European version of the game (Australia seems destined to forever fall under the shadow of the delayed Euro releases), I decided to forgo my my zillion-playthrough Killer7 plans and leapt right into the game. And it’s really quite a jarring opening: the toonish cel-shading, combined with retro-Lego-inspired blocky models have you questioning the decade in which No More Heroes was written. But, having toddled your way from the front door of your motel room to the stairs, you’re treated to an opening credit sequence that more than tips its hat to Tarantino. Using such a film trailer-esque opening is a ballsy move, and probably the nicest use of FMV I can remember in recent games; and, with heart pumping and a goofy grin on my face, the game engine kicks in for the pre-tutorial sequence: with a guitar screeching in the background, Travis Touchdown incinerates two guards with his light sabr… erm, “beam katana” and punctuates the performance with a hearty “Fuckheads!”

This, clearly, is not Animal Crossing. And that sequence always crosses my mind when I hear someone talk about how the Wii “is just a kid’s machine”.

“Nope, that’s not a light sabre, honest… Mr Lucas.”

The tutorial is just brief enough to tell you that holding “Z” and mashing “A” is good, and occasionally a prompt will appear onscreen giving you a simple gesture to enact an über-move. And this works well on my initial playthrough on the easiest setting: hold Z, dodge with D-pad, mash A. Easy. Blasting through the first level, and it’s all very interesting – but you don’t actually feel like you’re doing anything – the button mashing is animating Travis very nicely, and there seems to be a fair bit of carnage going on by your blade. The first time you have to recharge your katana is a bit of a surprise, but hey – the rapid Wiimote wanking action is second nature. To me, at least.

Eventually you reach the first boss fight, after a chat on your Wiimote cellphone (make sure the speaker on the Wiimote is on, lest you’ll be as confused as I was!). These brief interludes with love-interest-come-boss Sylvia Christel on the phone – and in the pre- and post-mission cut-scenes – are a maelstrom of cheese, corn, and uneven writing; Travis goes from drooling puppy-dog to sneering dismissive with no real rhyme or reason. Sylvia is, of course, a bitch for a reason, but let’s face it – the storytelling isn’t NMH‘s strong suit.

Where the game comes into its own is in the boss battles.

Somewhere around the interweb I heard that No More Heroes shared a character designer with the (rather excellent) Speed Grapher anime, something which the IMDB page for NMH doesn’t verify. Despite the discrepancies, there’s certainly similarities between the two, with bold boss-characters that verge on the bizarrely risqué: from the crotch-laser-toting Destroyman, to the “fuck you, ya little prick” goading of Speed Buster, to the Uma Thurman-esque Bad Girl who provides panty-loving fan service. But the bosses are the only characters that receive any TLC whatsoever; all the other entities you encounter in the game are either completely nondescript low-polygon grunts (grinding katana-fodder for further progress) or hopelessly under-developed side characters (the mysterious – and buxom – Dr Naomi, and the proprietors of various shops).

Bad Girl’s got a filthy mouth. Bless ‘er.

Outside those boss encounters, the “Punk’s Not Dead” ethic of Suda51’s Grasshopper Manufacture is stamped all over No More Heroes – the overworld of Santa Destroy is a jarring mish-mash of beautiful skylines and boxy cars. The washed-out colours and innocuous sounds of the environments give way to brash interstitials, all big guitar chords and bold colours splashed on white. The game exudes style at every turn – it’s just that it’s a different style every time. Go kill a squillion bad guys, raining ash/blood on the landscape, then spend ten minutes petting your cat. Gameplay and graphics from this millennium as you do battle, but back to the eighties for chunky retro status screens and jolly bleepy-boop high-score music. As I said, a mish-mash. Patchwork. Incoherent.

But you can’t help but think that the overworld is so clunky it could only possibly be a joke – a parody of sandbox games, perhaps? – but a joke isn’t necessarily the most fun thing to play. In fact, if there is any complaint that could be levelled at NMH, it’s that the early levels require a bit of grinding – odd jobs or samey assassination missions to fund access to later levels. Whilst this isn’t a massive inconvenience, it does remind you that your “sandbox” is, essentially, linear; you’re always striving to see that next big battle.

After 18 hours, I’d managed to mash my way through the Sweet (Easy) difficulty level. Another twenty or so hours had all my little OCD-driven side-missions wrapped up, and another playthrough on Sweet followed by Mild (Normal difficulty). There’s not much of a leap in difficulty there, and – while I was happy enough with the wacky ramblings of the characters and the gameplay in general – it was with a certain amount of weariness that I started (what I intended to be) my final playthrough on Bitter (Hard) difficulty.

And suddenly, everything’s changed.

Now, it’s true that NMH, at first, appears to be bland – a simplistic, but punkishly stylised, button-masher. But repeated playthroughs – in the fabulous Bitter mode – yield gameplay-changing rewards; rhythms of boss battles are exposed, generating the same kind of feeling that you get when suddenly hearing a buried instrument within a wall of music. The fights become intelligent, demanding cognition. Button-mashing serves no good whatsoever, and the game demands that you fight. And I want to fight these bosses – I see this challenge as something to be savoured, rather than persevered.

I’ve never, ever, felt this way about Boss Fights before.

I love this game. I love the way it has opened my eyes a little wider to the possibilities of gaming; I love that it recognises its place sitting at the edge of the mainstream gaming market, tongue planted firmly in cheek. I love the swaggering cocksureness it exudes, utterly confident in the knowledge of its weakpoints, its failings. I love the backhanded, last-minute throwback to Killer7; I love the competent Great White Giant Glastonbury shooter you find wodged in the middle of the game. I love the fact that Travis Touchdown’s defining monologue is delivered in the midst of the first boss battle, muddied and drowned by the action around it; I love that the brain-twisting monologue near game’s end is delivered in fast-forward, acknowledging the fact that this is, in fact, a game.

Yes, I had to learn to love it, and that’s not something a lot of people will actually bother to do; but I feel now it’s my job to tell others about this wonderful, wonderful experience. Push through that first playthrough, ignore the clunkfest of an overworld; drink in the wonderful Masafumi Takada soundtrack and unlock Bitter Mode. Please.

Shinobu – This girl delivered the Game Of The Year.

In the end, No More Heroes‘ failings are more tragic than erroneous: it’s a shame that few will push past the conflicted presentation, and a tragedy that fewer still will experience Bitter Mode. Regardless, No More Heroes is my Game Of The Year because it’s actually changed the way I think about gaming. That statement may sound lofty and pretentious, but it carries a lot of weight – because it’s true. Bitter convinced me that boss battles could indeed be glorious, rather than a massive pain in the arse; terrific, rather than just tolerable. I will rate my Bitter battles with Shinobu as my (single-player) highlight of the year – utterly, utterly fantastic fights: thrust, counter-thrust, heady attack, frantic defence, each bout whittling us both to within pixels of death. My losses left me feeling drawn, yet desperately eager for more; my breakthrough win felt fucking amazing.

And that feeling alone is Game Of The Year material for me.