EN OFFICIAL PLAYSTATION COMMUNITY PRESENTS...
OPC
WELCOME TO EDITION #02 - JUNE 2012
magazine EXCLUSIVE: SSX Q&A! EXCLUSIVE Q&A SESSION WITH TODD BATTY - SSX CREATIVE DIRECTOR
& GAME REVIEWS & & MUCH MORE INSIDE... SIMPLISTIC GAMING
‘PIDGE999’ TAKES A LOOK AT THE SIMPLE JOYS OF (GAMING) LIFE
SORCERY, PIXELJUNK 4AM, MAX PAYNE 3, SKYRIM AND OTHERS
LBP VITA Could LittleBigPlanet be the Vita’s ‘killer app’? ‘QuietlyWrong’ takes a closer look.
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THE 19TH HOLE ‘englishgolfer’ poses questions to two members of the OPC Community.
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COMMUNITY.EU.PLAYSTATION.COM
WELCOMECONTENTS
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WELCOME/ CONTENTS JUNE 2012 reviews - part I
extras
06 PixelJunk4AM
48 The 19th Hole
08 Max Payne 3
52 Community Events
10 Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim 14 Awesomenauts
features 19
EXCLUSIVE! Q&A with Todd Batty - SSX Creative Director
24 Simplistic Gaming 28 PS VITA - LittleBigPlanet + Interview with Community Co-ordinator ‘Syroc‘ 32 Battle Royale 34 DmC: Devil May Cry
reviews - part II 38 Doctor Who 40 Jak and Daxter 42 Sorcery 46 Resistance: Burning Skies
MESSAGE FROM THE COMMUNITY TEAM EN COMMUNITY MODERATOR: LordRoss
TWITTER: @LordRoss
WEB: community.eu.playstation.com
This issue, a message from LordRoss... - EN Community Moderator Welcome to the second edition of the Official PlayStation Forums magazine! This bumper issue is crammed with reviews from a wide variety of games, from Max Payne 3 to Sorcery via the innovative musical spectacle that is PixelJunk 4am. Plus we have some fine features including an intriguing, interesting and totally exclusive interview with the producer and creative director of SSX, Todd Batty! Everything you see here is the work of the community, and we want to see more of it in future issues! If there’s a game you want to get a leg up with, let us know! Or even write your own feature, review or rebuttal and get your passionate words featured in the next issue! Best wishes LordRoss
magazine info
opc magazine
Published by the EN OPC Community. Design/Layout: mattsimmo.
writers litterature pixeljunk4am review chrisa3211 max payne 3 review Ellie87 skyrim review NateC87 awesomenauts review Pidge999 simplistic gaming QuietlyWrong lbp vita & sorcery review NateC87 battle royale
englishgolfer the 19th hole Bearskopff dr who review fski jak and daxter review Richard4481 resistance: burning skies review CaptainCortez dmc: devil may cry
feedback/want to help? We’d love to hear what you’d like to see in the magazine and your general feedback, be it good or bad, we want to hear it! If you’d like to help with the OPC Magazine as a writer, please let us know via the feedback thread in the OPC forum.
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www.easports.com/ssx
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PIXELJUNK 4AM
REVIEW REVIEWER: litterature
PLATFORM: PlayStation 3
RELEASE DATE: 15 May 2012
LITTERATURE takes a look at PixelJunk 4am... PixelJunk 4am is simply about making music for the sake of making music in an easy and intuitive way. The tutorial begins by introducing some basic concepts, such as effects, which are achieved by holding down the Move button and moving the controller. Seems simple enough, right? The tutorial then moves on to other concepts such as ‘pulling’ loops for the four different tracks (Synth, Bass, Drum, Rhythm), muting tracks, reverb effects, and more. Initially, while playing through the tutorial, a feeling of intimidation may sink in a bit at first. However, as quickly as that feeling can sink in, that’s how quickly it fades away. Q-Games has already taught the player everything that they need to know and once they’re in front of the gameplay area, the lessons learned come into focus and the lack of a failure state allows players to get creative and begin enjoying the game right away. Nothing is imposed on the player – playing the game is very loose, free, and fun. No ‘bad way’ to make music really exists in the game. The music creation in PixelJunk 4am is enjoyable and freeform. However, after playing for a while, the question of whether or not
enough game exists in PixelJunk 4am begins to emerge. On one hand, as it is, PixelJunk 4am is a different kind of music game experience that is empowered by roots. If it became ‘more’ of a game, that could be its undoing. On the other hand, the premise of mixing the same songs over and over again for groups of PSN users begins to wane in strength. PixelJunk 4am has canvases and its technology to present to the player in the form of gameplay. A player’s performance is live for everyone with the Live Viewer to see. Players can offer ‘kudos’ to performing players by waving their Move controllers during a player’s performance. Kudos and viewer totals periodically fade in and out at the bottom of the screen to let the player know that people are enjoying his or her performance. The player can also notify friends via Facebook and Twitter as to when he or she is performing. If some kind of online cooperative music mixing were possible, maybe the notification system would have stronger appeal. Again, the game comes to a crossroad: if cooperative music mixing were added, it might interfere with the game’s core experience.
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MAKING MUSIC ... PixelJunk 4am is simply about making music for the sake of making music in an easy and intuitive way.
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PixelJunk 4am really has no target audience or ideal gamer. Gamers who like music will like it, gamers who like innovative games or unconventional gameplay experiences will like it, and gamers who just want to have fun will like it, too. The game offers relaxing gameplay that allows its users to be as creative as they’d like to be. Although PixelJunk 4am may have a lack of traditional game elements, that same lack of traditional game elements is what makes it great and one of the most fascinating and intuitive experiences available for PlayStation Move. Anyone who thinks that Q-Games’ music experience is for them should definitely consider purchase, as the odds of them being disappointed are slim to none. PixelJunk 4am is available on the Playstation Store for £6.49. PixelJunk 4am Live Viewer is Free. And you can see performances on the internet too: www.twitch.tv/pixeljunklive.
‘THE GAME OFFERS RELAXING GAMEPLAY THAT ALLOWS ITS USERS TO BE AS CREATIVE AS THEY’D LIKE TO BE. LITTERATURE
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MAX PAYNE 3
REVIEW REVIEWER: chrisa3211
PLATFORM: PlayStation 3
RELEASE DATE: 18 May 2012
CHRISA3211 takes a look at Rockstars’ latest release... Pill-popping, drink-downing, slow-mo ex-cop Max Payne is back. Nine years after Max Payne 2, our antihero has quit both the force and the States, and we find him working private security in Sao Paolo for Brazil’s wealthy. An early scene in his employer’s penthouse introduces us to the Brazilian high society Max has been tasked to protect: politicians, tycoons, police chiefs and enough floozies to make Duke Nukem look positively celibate. Although Max foils an early kidnapping attempt here, it’s clear that there’ll be no messing about: shooting is brutal, destruction is vivid and enemies are numerous. The guns themselves, although satisfying, won’t surprise you; but the ability to dual-wield any one-handed weapons creates some interesting, if impractical, combinations. Even when assault rifles litter the floor, it’s hard to resist the call of a Mac-10 in one hand and a sawn off shotgun in the other.
Elevating the game from 3rd person shooter to something a little more special is Max’s ‘bullet time’ ability - a quick tap of R3 will slow down time and give you precious seconds to pop out of cover and sneak a headshot. It takes slightly longer to go into slow-motion than in previous games, but when combined with the new cover system it is more balanced that way. It’s true that cover-based shooters come a dime a dozen nowadays - and make no mistake, Max Payne 3 does force you to squat more than a camping holiday - but the quantity of alcoves and filing cabinets never makes it a chore to do so. Movement can occasionally be clunky, however, so doors and tight corridors tend to pose the same threat that they did in Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto IV. Equally, your options in hand to hand combat are extremely limited, so you’re best off preventing the enemy from getting close rather than dealing with the consequences.
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...it’s clear that there’ll be no messing about; shooting is brutal, destruction is vivid and enemies are numerous. This can be awkward as the AI is, by and large, very good. They will flank you, obliterate your cover, speak in Portuguese - all well known techniques for confusing gamers. Mercenaries were evidently Buy One Get One Free though, so be prepared to face dozens at any given moment. And yet there is a nice variety to gameplay: shooting segments are broken up with explosive set pieces and a plethora of cutscenes. There are possibly a few too many of the latter, but the script and voice acting are so good that you won’t really mind. Rockstar’s trademark humour and satire are dotted around the levels - if you enjoyed the Pink Flamingo in the original then the Adventures of Baseball Bat Boy are most definitely for you. Stealth sections appear here and there too, but they come across as rather an afterthought: options for avoiding enemies are limited and you get the impression the game wants you to be spotted so it can show off its glass destruction again. There are minor annoyances elsewhere (whoever designed the
laser sight needs talking to) but overall Max Payne 3 is everything you’d expect from a Rockstar game: slick visuals, immersive story and satisfying gunplay. A small ‘arcade’ mode is also included, comprising a Score Attack Mode and the return of the ‘New York Minute’ challenge - 1 minute to complete each chapter with time extended for kills. It’s a nice addition and includes high scores for competition’s sake. Multiplayer takes the form of the usual selection of deathmatch and objective modes - for both lock on and free aim - with the addition of ‘Gang Wars’ and ‘Payne Killer’. The former pits two of the story’s gangs against each other with a series of objectives while the latter puts one player in Max’s shoes taking on everyone else. There is certainly a lot to explore and bullet time transfers well to the online arena (only affecting those in your field of view) but connection and matchmaking problems have so far slightly soured the experience. Despite a few minor issues, then, Max Payne 3 is everything you’d hope for from our favourite
alcoholic’s first outing on PS3. Thrilling, furniture shredding action sequences are backed up by narrative that’s the perfect mix of sleaze and class, and the disc is packed full of content too. After the first two games’ shadowy, noir style, the wild contrast of Brazil is refreshing, but that won’t hinder fans of the series recognising the ever-troubled protagonist. Whether you’ve followed Max since that subway station eleven years ago or you’re just looking for a polished shooter, Rockstar has the game for you.
MAXPAYNE3
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SKYRIM ‘I am delighted that I did not miss out on the opportunity to play this beautiful game and would recommend it to anyone without hesitation...’ - Ellie87
ELLIE87 TRAVELS ACROSS THE LAND OF SKYRIM ON AN EPIC ADVENTURE FILLED WITH INCREDIBLE DETAIL, DEPTH AND IMAGINATION
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ELDER SCROLLS V: SKYRIM
REVIEW REVIEWER: Ellie87
PLATFORM: PlayStation 3
RELEASE DATE: 11 November 2011
ELLIE87 TAKES US ON AN EPIC ADVENTURE Have you got 100-plus hours to spare? I had 100-plus hours to spare, and I spent those hours perfectly by immersing myself in the world of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. One thing that you will need to have in order to maximize the experience of this fantastic game is time. Bucket-loads of it, if possible. The reason for this is that Skyrim is one of the most gargantuan undertakings gamers will experience, since the likes of games such as Fallout. The sheer size of the adventure, both in terms of its environment and in the amount of activities available to the player really is mind-blowing. To put it plainly, Skyrim is one of the richest gaming experiences that I’ve had to date. MAIN QUEST Skyrim begins with the protagonist introduced as an unknown prisoner, who has been caught in an Imperial ambush while attempting to cross the border into Skyrim, being escorted to a village called Helgen to be executed. The character is saved from execution by the unexpected and rather timely arrival of Alduin, a powerful Nordic God - also called the World Eater. Alduin takes the form of a dragon and is possibly one of the coolest characters I’ve seen in a game. You will be treated to a very clear view of him in the opening scenes, perhaps a little too close for comfort.
CHARACTER RACES Skyrim offers you the option to choose between ten different races for your character in the opening scenes. They are Nord, Imperial, Redguard, Breton, Wood Elf, Dark Elf, High Elf, Argonian, Khajiit, and Orc. You will be prompted to customise them about five or so minutes into the game and from that point cannot change their appearance so it is best to make sure you are completely satisfied with how your character looks before you proceed. I had great fun creating lots of different looks for my character. I prefer games like this which have a high level of character customisation. Each race has specific natural skills and abilities. For example the Argonain race can activate a power called Histskin which allows them to regenerate a large amount of health over a short period of time, they can breathe underwater and are 50% resistant to fire. I chose to be a Khajiit for my adventure, one of the beast races. They are feline in appearance and to me look the best out of all the races in the game. For players that might find the opportunity to perform spells appealing, choosing one of the Elven races may be the best option as they are the most effective to utilise magicka, and thus are gifted at performing spells. Equally, those who would like their protagonist to be a gifted warrior, a Nord would be a good choice as they possess qualities that make them proficient in melee combat. LEVELLING UP As you progress through Skyrim completing quests and killing enemies, you will level up. Each time you level up you will be able to add a bonus to your magicka, health or stamina, increasing it by 10 points (increasing stamina also allows you to carry more weight). When my character was quite low level I found it beneficial to level up my health as it gave me a little more chance against the more experienced opponents. Increasing magicka allows you to cast spells more often, increasing health allows you to take more hits and increasing stamina allows you to carry more weight and run for a further distance when wearing heavy armor before tiring.
He launches an attack on Helgen and during the chaos the prisoner takes the opportunity to escape. As the game progresses you learn that you are something called ‘Dragonborn’ and you then embark on a journey to discover what it means to be Dragonborn and to learn how to correctly harness the strange power that is given to you. All the while you are relentlessly in pursuit of Alduin, whose whereabouts become unknown after his initial attack on Helgen.
Each time you level up you will be able to pick a perk which will have certain requirements before it can be chosen. You can save the perk for later if you don’t quite meet the requirements to unlock the one you would like at that particular time, or if you aren’t sure which one you would like to choose.
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EXPLORATION I spent most of my time in Skyrim exploring the hundreds of locations available to discover. It soon becomes apparent how large the game is when you are travelling from location to location, and it takes a very long time to travel from one side of the Skyrim map to the other (which I tried). Whilst you are travelling you will encounter a wealth of dangers in the form of a huge variety of enemies and a wild and dangerous landscape that you are forced to traverse to go to and from objectives. The landscape, including all its locations, has been brilliantly crafted. You will travel through treacherous marshes, scale huge misty mountains, and trudge through snow capped forests and huge scenic valleys. Graphically, Skyrim looks really pretty on the PS3. The graphics are not as polished as they are on the Xbox but they are still good for a game of this size. Bethesda has paid considerable attention to detail when crafting the environment, particularly in regards to the texture of the terrain and how realistic the water looks. There are nine major Holds (large cities of sorts) which are scattered around Skyrim. They serve as a great source for buying supplies, selling wares, buying your own personal property within which you can store personal items and use as a place to rest. You can also acquire lots of new quests from the Holds by talking to their many inhabitants. My favourite of the nine is a city called Whiterun which you are required to travel to early on in the main quest. It is a picturesque, welcoming city which boasts panoramic views of the misty mountains which surround it. It reminds me of a place you would expect to find in Lord of The Rings or something similar, it has such a magical feel to it. All the nine Holds act as useful places to use for fast travel as they are spaced out fairly evenly across Skyrim.
QUESTS There is as with most games a main plotline to follow in Skyrim. There are countless side quests that you can acquire as you progress, the majority of which can be started and finished at any time. You gain XP, money and are occasionally gifted armour and weaponry from completing each quest. I found it beneficial to try to complete as many of them as possible to pile on the experience. All side quests vary in
length and difficulty, and some will require you to travel a long distances and will have numerous outcomes. It is very easy to get distracted in Skyrim when it comes to following the main quest line. There’s just so much for you to do that you may find yourself being drawn into exploring each new location you discover rather than just running past them to return at a later point. Skyrim is a game that you can play to your own pace. There is absolutely no rush to try to complete the main quest line unless you would like to do so. This is one of the things that I found most enjoyable about it. Games where you feel as though you are pushed along too quickly can feel way too linear. LOOTING Skyrim, similar to Fallout, has various containers that you can loot. You can loot chests, corpses, barrels, sacks and various other objects found within the game. From these containers you can acquire new weapons, apparel, potions, ingredients, books, food, miscellaneous objects and gold. I went around looting as much that I could carry because any unwanted items can then be sold on to merchants for gold. CREATURES OF SKYRIM The creatures range from the small and relatively harmless Skeever (a large rodent type animal) to the huge and fearsome dragons that are returning to the skies of Skyrim. When you engage in combat with an enemy a health bar for that enemy will appear at the top of the screen. You will notice with certain enemies that their health bar depletes slowly which indicates a high level enemy or that the current weapon/ spell you are using is not very effective in inflicting damage. Creatures like Wolves and Skeevers can be killed with relative ease. However giants, dragons, sabre cats and trolls are a lot tougher and should be approached with caution. Enemies all have different weaknesses and strengths and I have learnt that the key to killing some of the tougher ones is to learn how to exploit their weaknesses. Some enemies you encounter will be immune to certain spells and attacks, but will be vulnerable to others. DRAGONS You are introduced to the dragon Alduin in the opening scenes of Skyrim but you will not start to encounter any other dragons until a little further on in the main quest line. From this point on they will have a profound presence in your game and will randomly spawn alone or in small groups. In my opinion the dragons are the best looking things in the game due to the amount of details Bethesda has put into their design. When a dragon is near you will hear the sound of flapping wings or a tremendous roar. There are different types of dragon in Skyrim which differ in strength and ferocity and some can take a fair bit of effort to slay. With a bit of perseverance and with the help of the Dragon Shout (or Thu’um) Unrelenting Force you are able to literally knock the dragon out of the sky to battle them on the ground. You need to kill them successfully in order to absorb their power and unlock ‘dragon shouts’ which those that are dragonborn can learn almost instantaneously. Epic music cues as each battle with a dragon begins which really accentuates the excitement of the experience.
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Admittedly I found it satisfying to kill a dragon (you are rewarded each time one is killed by being able to unlock a new dragon shout using the soul you have absorbed) but on the other hand it does seem a shame to hunt them because they have such a profound presence in the game.
Skyrim will continue to reward you after you have finished the main quest by offering heaps more in the way of side quests to complete, locations to explore and endless enemies to battle. That is the real beauty of the game. It just keeps on going and continues to deliver thrills and excitement as if you were starting out on your very first adventure.
SKYRIM SURVIVAL GUIDE - Ellie’s top tips for Skyrim • SAVE OFTEN! There were plenty of times during my travels in Skyrim with my Khajiit that I discovered lots of new locations and covered a huge distance on the map, only to be killed some time later rather unexpectedly. Due to the fact the game does not auto-save regularly I would encourage you to save as often as you can to avoid losing any progress. • To cover ground quickly, invest in a horse from one of the stables which are located next to each of the nine major holds in Skyrim. What they lack in speed they make up for in endurance. • Be careful when pick pocketing/stealing from NPC’s as you never know who might be watching... in the blink of an eye a whole town can turn hostile towards you if you make a wrong move which can be a bit of a pain. • You can buy vacant properties situated in various holds in Skyrim. They act as a place where you can rest and somewhere that you can use to store irreplaceable items safely. • Stock up on useful potions particularly health, stamina and magicka potions which will aid you significantly in long drawn-out fights.
Similar to Fallout, Skyrim does unfortunately have its fair share of bugs. One of the most common issues I encountered was the game freezing up when I went through a door into a new area, or when fast travelling whilst it was loading. Make sure you save often in case this occurs in your game so you don’t lose any progress. When I finished the main plot line in Skyrim I felt sad, thinking that it was the end of my character’s journey. If you have the time however,
As a gamer that has not played Oblivion and being a total newcomer to the series, I am delighted that I did not miss out on the opportunity to play this beautiful game and would recommend it to anyone without hesitation.... so long as you can spare the time.
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AWESOMENAUTS
REVIEW REVIEWER: NateC87
PLATFORM: PlayStation 3
RELEASE DATE: 02 May 2012
NATEC87 fast forwards to the year 3587... The year is 3587, and in that year introduction sequences that rival those of Saturday morning cartoon shows are the order of the day. Ronimo Games’ Awesomenauts is a three-on-three 2D action strategy game that can be found on the PlayStation Network. PS Plus users picked it up for free back in May (another reason to sign up for the fantastic service) and it continues to enjoy a thriving community to this day. The variety in characters and team tactics ensures you’ll be coming back for battles over the game’s three maps where no match is ever the same. You can head online (and offline) with your friends in local co-op as well, something that is seeing a resurgence in a lot of games lately, a welcome one at that. Whether you take control of the tank Clunk, with his extensive health and self-destruct ability, Voltar the healer or the extremely agile Froggy G, everyone will feel they have a role to play as the team work towards their goal, destroying an opponent’s drill that is harvesting the arena’s resources. These drills are protected by a number of powerful turrets
that will easily kill the more naïve player. Brutal it may be but it ensures rounds have length and forces the game’s tactical lessons upon the player which is by no means a bad thing. In order to break through one of these the team will need to utilise all of their abilities and surroundings, more often than not in the form of droids that can provide limited shields from a turret’s fire. Once you’re through you’re gifted the powers of a bazooka-packing droid that packs a pretty punch. Keeping it alive can work wonders and shift the advantage to your team in an instant. It’s a worthy reward for the task of bringing down a turret. In order to achieve your objectives you’ll certainly need some equipment and equipment Awesomenauts provides. At the beginning of each of your lives you’ll be dropped into the battle from the sky where you have an opportunity to collect more of the game’s currency – Solar. It’s a refreshing change from just randomly spawning and is an opportunity to gain that extra Solar for that vital upgrade for your character
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Trophy hunters out there might be a tad disappointed that the game doesn’t come with a Platinum, however the other trophies do pose quite a challenge. that can swing a match in your favour. Solar is otherwise earned by dispatching enemies, healing allies or collecting those that are dotted around the landscape. Generic upgrades such as automatic health regeneration and an extended life bars are accompanied by character specific enhancements. Sheriff Lonestar’s raging bull attack can explode upon the end of its usage or Yuri can extend the reach of his laser, something that can be exploited at times and will hopefully be patched in future updates. The game is primarily designed to be played online with human teammates and opponents but it does provide bots for those who wish to practice offline before entering the online arena. As teammates these AI controlled characters are almost always frustratingly stupid and as opponents they certainly don’t hold back. An option to change the difficulty would have been appreciated but there’s nothing quite like a baptism of fire. Top teams can take down their opponent’s drill in mere minutes with the right set up where some
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battles can last up to half an hour. Teams are mostly balanced but a fully powered Voltar can become unstoppable at times. Trophy hunters out there might be a tad disappointed that the game doesn’t come with a Platinum, however the other trophies do pose quite a challenge and you’ll enjoy your journey to achieving 100% on the list. All in all Awesomenauts is most certainly worth your cash. The community still thrives and will continue to do so with two rumoured DLC characters on the way. Although it can become a repetitive experience at times there is enough variety in teams and tactics to keep you coming back for more.
‘...AWESOMENAUTS IS MOST CERTAINLY WORTH YOUR CASH. THE COMMUNITY STILL THRIVES AND WILL CONTINUE TO DO SO...’ NATEC87
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www.facebook.com/easportsssx
THE OPC FORUM HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO POSE Q’S TO TODD BATTY. HERE ARE HIS RESPONSES...
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TODD BATTY Q&A
EXCLUSIVE A MASSIVE THANKYOU TO TODD FOR TAKING TIME OUT OF HIS BUSY SCHEDULE TO RESPOND TO THE QUESTIONS
TODD BATTY - SSX CREATIVE DIRECTOR First, let’s take a quick look at Todd’s background... • • • • • •
11 years making games, started in the industry in 2001 First game credit was on NBA Live 2003 where he was granted a US Patent for the Freestyle Control design First Lead Designer position on NBA Street Homecourt (06-07) Second US Patent (pending) for Trick Remixer design on NBA Street Homecourt On staff at Vancouver Film School as Game Design Instructor and Mentor Producer and Creative Director for SSX (09-present)
design never actually ‘stops’. As features are added to the game, new ideas for building on those features or ‘missing/unforeseen’ support features are constantly being recognized and our plans are always shifting around these new priorities. But in order to add something new or complete a feature that is taking longer than anticipated, something else usually has to go. Our plans and the end vision of the game is something that is constantly evolving and being further refined, and unfortunately that means that things are dropped along the way. It definitely hurts, and ultimately I think that is what drives so many sequels in our industry. By the time a game is finished, the developer usually already has enough ideas to make an entirely new version of the game. With SSX, our philosophy was to make sure everything we actually included in the game was done to the highest degree of quality possible, which often meant that features not started ended up falling on the cutting room floor in favour of finishing others that we had already started. While this can be tough to swallow I think it makes for a better overall game in the end. WHICH SSX FEMALE CHARACTER WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO MEET ON A BLIND DATE, AND WHY? (ENGLISHGOLFER) Haha this is definitely a first for me as far as fan questions go! I guess the obvious answer would be Elise, she has been my favourite character and the one I have played with almost exclusively in every iteration of SSX I have owned. She is, to me, everything that SSX stands for. In the new SSX I am also a huge fan of Kaori. But I guess the purpose of a blind date is to meet someone new so I’m going to go with Zoe. She represents something a bit different than the stereotypical video-game sex symbol and is rather a strong and confident/cocky woman who doesn’t take sh*t from anyone. We need more female characters in games like her. She’s always had a really awesome voice too, from Bif Naked in past versions to Sarah Edmondson in this one.
BEING THE CREATIVE DIRECTOR OF SSX WAS THERE SOMETHING THAT YOU PERSONALLY WANTED IN THE FINAL VERSION OF THE GAME BUT THAT ULTIMATELY ‘GOT THE CHOP’? (ENGLISHGOLFER) Oh man, there were so many things I would have loved to get in the game that ended up on the cutting room floor, first and foremost probably being split-screen offline multiplayer. Cutting features is probably the single hardest aspect of our jobs. In a typical development cycle
HOW IS THE MUSIC CHOSEN FOR SSX? IS IT MUSIC THE DEVELOPMENT TEAM LISTEN TO, OR DID CERTAIN RECORD LABELS APPROACH YOU AND ASK FOR THEIR MUSIC TO BE FEATURED? (ENGLISHGOLFER) It’s a little bit of both, our Worldwide music team is always being approached by artists and they send some of them our way, and we also actively seek out artists on our own. We have a central music team here at EA Canada who embraced the challenge of living up to bar set by earlier versions of SSX. They had a vision early on for what this game could sound like and worked incredibly hard to find the right bands and songs that could fit with the sound we were going for. I think they did an amazing job with it, and on top of that realized that no soundtrack will ever match the diverse range of different musical tastes in everyone so allowed players to upload their own custom music and have it remixed by our ‘Harmony’ remix engine. Having used this feature myself it is so worth the effort to set it up if you haven’t already!
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IS THE INSPIRATION FOR THE VARIOUS TRACKS BASED ON REAL PEAKS OR IMAGINATION ONLY, OR A COMBO OF BOTH? (NICK_BESTER) As you probably know, we did start with NASA topography data as the initial building blocks for each mountain. From there, we did extensive research on the mountains themselves so we could determine the right ‘theme’ for each mountain range that felt somewhat authentic to the area. Obviously we took a tremendous amount of creative liberty here, but almost everything is based off an idea we discovered while doing that research. For example, when researching New Zealand we discovered a famous mountain (Ruapehu I believe) that had a beautiful lake at the summit and a ski resort on its slopes. This prompted us to create Wakefield where the frozen river winds its way down through Bulldog and Last to Hit creating a slippery, natural halfpipe that is awesome for both racing and tricking. We compiled literally terabytes of photo reference from mountains around the world and at one point had a contractor working on SSX whose sole purpose was to simply organize all of this reference in an easy-to-use database for our level designers. Mother Nature creates some insanely crazy topography - things I wouldn’t believe were real unless I had seen the pictures myself.
control over customizing the existing characters, though. It would have been really nice to offer a deeper selection of outfits and accessories to dress your favourite character up with and will definitely be something we look to blow out more if we end up creating a sequel to this game. And yes, that would very likely include swimsuits. Haha.
IN THE SPIRIT OF THE BLIND DATE”CHILDISH QUESTION”... ANY CHANCE THERE’D BE A SWIMSUIT ADDITION OF SUITS FOR THE FEMALE CHARACTERS? (NICK_BESTER) Haha anything is possible. Not the first time we’ve heard this request. :)
BEING THE CREATIVE DIRECTOR OF THE GAME, IS IT YOU WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR PUTTING ALL THOSE TREES IN MY WAY WHEN I’M ABOUT TO LAND A MEGA-ÜBER TRICK? IN SERIOUSNESS, HOW LONG DID IT TAKE TO DESIGN A DROP/MOUNTAIN AND HOW MUCH TWEAKING (READ PUTTING TREES IN MY WAY) WAS DONE? Ultimately I am responsible for everything that goes in the game so you can definitely direct your ire my way (sorry)! Of course, we really did not do anything like this intentionally. If you consider the high number of tracks in the game and the depth of ways you can ride each track depending on what gear setup you have, it was really almost impossible to find the ‘perfect’ line for each track before we were actually done. We designed a number of main ‘paths’ down the mountain that offer an intended and relatively safe ride, but when you go off-piste you are putting yourself at risk. We spent many, many hours tweaking and refining all of the tracks in the game, though. Right up until the last minute. We didn’t rest until the game was put in a box and have continued to tweak things as best we can in response to fan feedback, including plugging up some unintentional shortcuts on certain tracks. This is ultimately the best and worst part of sandbox/open-world design – you get some incredible emergent gameplay and also some not-so-great moments that you simply couldn’t see coming. Overall though I think the good always outweighs the bad, which is why you see so many games built this way.
Todd (left) with Connor Dougan (Lead Gameplay Designer and Producer)
DID YOU EVER CONSIDER HAVING A CUSTOM CHARACTER DESIGNER AT ANY STAGE OF DEVELOPMENT? (AARONLEHD) Not really. For us, SSX has always been about the IP characters. On Tour introduced a create player feature and we saw from the reaction of the community that this was not a tremendously popular feature for them. So we decided very early on to spend our efforts on creating awesome SSX characters rather than doing a custom creator. I will say that one of the other hard-to-cut features for SSX was having better
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DID YOU REVISIT THE PREVIOUS GAMES IN THE FRANCHISE IN GREAT DEPTH AND, IF YOU DID, WHICH DO YOU THINK STANDS AS THE STRONGEST? ALSO, WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO JETTISON ‘TRADITIONAL’ MP? (FSKI) We sure did. The entire design team played the hell out of SSX, Tricky and SSX3 early in development and we almost always had a copy of Tricky or 3 running in the dev area all through development. When we looked at the series our general consensus was that Tricky and 3 were the pinnacle of the series, and each of them did certain things better than the other. Having been so close to it for so long and having read so much fan feedback, my conclusion is that the players who prefer characterization, presentation and the overall ‘vibe’ of SSX generally favour Tricky, and those that value the core gameplay above anything else generally favour SSX3. Even in terms of gameplay though, those 2 games couldn’t be more different. Tricky is really rider-vs-rider while going down a mountain whereas SSX3 is really rider-vs-mountain with other riders doing the same. This distinction was an important one for us and forced many early decisions. If we were going to be more like Tricky, it would have meant having very tight, narrow courses, peerto-peer online with player vs player combat as a big focus and heavy catch-up logic to keep everyone together. If we were going to be more like SSX3, it would have meant having big, open mountains where you could be riding by yourself for extended periods meaning we needed to bring environmental challenges and asynchronous online play more to the forefront. Because big, open mountains was one of the most requested features for a new SSX we made the decision early to be more like SSX3 and I think that played out pretty much as expected. For a sequel I think bringing back more of the elements of Tricky to help satisfy the players who favored that version would make for some really interesting design. Seeing the 2 styles come together in a single, epic SSX game would really be an amazing project to work on. As for the decision to “jettison” traditional MP, here’s how we got there. First you have to consider that SSX is not simply a racing game.
I’m going to assume by ‘traditional’ MP you are referring to how a racing game typically works. But for SSX we felt it was always a Tricks game at its absolute heart. And with Trick games such as SSX and Tony Hawk there really wasn’t a ‘traditional’ online MP component, built specifically for that type of competition. So when we looked back at how we all played those games back when they were popular, Trick competition was typically something that was turn-based. So we thought, what would it be like for hundreds or thousands of people
to be competing in a turn-based competition but where they were all taking their turns at basically the same time, and everything kind of evolved from there. This was also an ideal setup for Survive. We knew that this was going to be a bit unexpected and potentially disappointing for Race it, but we simply did not have the time or resources to build both an asynchronous and synchronous (ie peer-to-peer) online setup for SSX. I realize it is easy to imagine how racing down the mountain in synch with your friends and knocking them down would be amazing, and I’m sure it could have been. But you also have to consider how often/likely it would be that you would be in close proximity to your friends on our giant mountains and at the speed we move in SSX. So in order to make that really compelling we would have likely needed smaller, tighter tracks and some heavy catch-up logic, neither of which we thought was ideal. Finally we also had to consider what online lag would have meant to a game as twitch-based as the one we built, and online lag is something that is almost unavoidable with peerto-peer gameplay like you typically find in a sports game. So overall while we would have loved to explore both types of online play we think the one we did choose, which allows you to play against people who are online with you at the same time AND with people who play on a different schedule from you, all with no waiting to join matches, was the best one for this game.
GIVEN THE CULT STATUS OF THE FRANCHISE, WAS THERE A LOT OF PRESSURE TO GET EVERYTHING JUST RIGHT WHEN DEVELOPING FOR THIS GENERATION OF CONSOLES? (CHRISA3211) Oh hell yes. Definitely. This is the second time in my career that I’ve actually had the pressure of working on a cult-classic franchise, and also one that I also was a huge fan of before ever starting to work on it. The first was NBA Street, and now SSX. It is unbelievable how much pressure not only myself but the entire team felt to make this game as great as possible in the hopes of living up to the legacy left behind by SSX Tricky and SSX3, both 90+ rated games. We worked tirelessly for 3 years, starting from a brand new code base – no easy feat as I’m sure you can imagine! And given that, if I’m honest with myself I think we ended up in a place similar to where the original SSX did. A good game with some fresh new ideas and a world of potential just waiting to be realized in a sequel. It’s always tough to be compared to something like SSX3, which was the 3rd iteration of the original SSX. If we had been able to start with a working game it probably would have been far different but given the length of time since those games, the tech simply wouldn’t have held up to today’s standards. I think what we achieved from a core gameplay POV with the overall ‘feel’ of carving down the mountain, riding off almost anything and how your momentum carries over from the ground to the air and back to the ground is an incredibly strong foundation that would allow us to focus on all of the surrounding presentation much more in a follow-up game.
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GIVEN THAT THERE CAN’T BE TOO MANY PEOPLE WHO CAN BEAT YOU AT SSX. WHO IS YOUR MAIN COMPETITOR, SOMEONE IN THE OFFICE OR A RANDOM THAT YOU’VE MET ONLINE? (WINNIEP) My biggest rival during dev and even after the game shipped was definitely Connor Dougan, our lead gameplay Designer and Producer. He and I had some great back-and-forths, beating each other’s records and talking smack with each other all along the way. But recently it has definitely become some of the members of the merqurycity.com community. I got to meet a few of these folks during our community day event here at EAC and started posting and interacting with their community after the game shipped. It didn’t take long for some of them to start trashing my records and I actually ended up learning how to become even better at our game after watching what they could do with it. I also get random challenges on Twitter from time to time that I always like to try and beat, I’ve ended up filling my friends list on both Xbox and PS3 with active members of the SSX community and I’m always looking for new rivals to add! WERE YOU AWARE OF ENGLISHGOLFERS BRILLIANT SSX LEAGUE? (WINNIEP) I just became aware of this recently and am going to try and join the league and see how I do vs the Play Station UK community. I’m really looking forward to it, I’m always amazed at how members of our community create and organize competitions amongst themselves. My hat is off to you, englishgolfer. Well done! WOULD IT EVEN BE POSSIBLE TO ADD ‘TRADITION’ MULTIPLAYER AS SAY A RACE PACK UPDATE / DLC? (WINNIEP) Anything is possible. :)
DID ‘REAL SNOWFLAKES’ JUST ‘SLOW DOWN THE RUNNING OF THE GAME’ OR HAS IT ALWAYS BEEN LIKE THAT FROM A DESIGN POINT OF VIEW? (WINNIEP) There are definitely tracks that have falling snow in the game – Bulldog in NZ and The Big Show in Siberia come to mind, as well as the whiteout tracks in NZ. But we couldn’t do REALLY heavy snowfall from a tech POV without negatively affecting framerate, which is why we added fog to the whiteout tracks as well. Considering the size of our
mountains, the speed at which we stream them and the amount of SFX going on in the game, I think our engineers did an incredible job of maintaining a constant and solid framerate throughout gameplay. This was something we prioritized very high, nobody enjoys constant framerate dips slowing down the experience. Especially in one that relies so heavily on speed and reaction time. HAVE YOU EVER THOUGHT OF DOING A HD REMAKE OF THE ORIGINAL GAMES (PERHAPS WITH 3D SUPPORT) ? (ENGLISHGOLFER) We considered many different ideas during development (we actually had 3D running for a while but it was eventually cut for time and tech constraints) and will continue to explore some of these in the future. Our community seems to favour having some of the old tracks from Tricky and SSX3 running in our new game engine with all the advanced physics over a straight HD remake, but either idea seems like it would be a huge win for fans of those games. Let me know what your thoughts are, I would love to hear them!
The Mount Eddie DLC is now available on the PlayStation store: Mt. Eddie & Classic Characters Pack - £6.49 Classic Characters Pack (Stand alone) - £4.79 Mt.Eddie Pack (Stand alone) - £4.79
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SIMPLISTIC
GAMING
‘pidge999’ takes a look at the simple joys of (gaming) life.
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SIMPLISTIC GAMING In 1971 ‘Computer Space’ was released and is widely considered the first ever commercially available coin operated video game. In 1972 Allan Alcorn’s ‘Pong’ was released into the public domain to some awe with a home version following in 1975. This revolution was not political, although the industry is not far off these days, but a serious technological innovation despite its creator allegedly witnessing a similar creation at college 8 years earlier.
In 2009 ThatGameCompany defied conventional wisdom, taking gaming all the way back to its early ‘70’s roots by creating a game of such emotion and involvement that you would have thought it was a near “mega” button-basher game. It was not, only one command was needed and you could choose any button you wanted. The only other action involved you tilting your ‘Sixaxis’ controller to manipulate the petal you started off with. That game was FLOWER and I was hooked.
What ‘Computer Space’ and the versions of ‘Pong’ had in common was their simplicity, not so much in terms of primitive graphics but more importantly the controls and what you actually had to input - up, down, left, right and fire and in the case of Pong, just up and down..
Being 38, I have had a fair few consoles and personal computers in my time and to be honest I am not a big fan of the ‘retro’ genre. I do not care too much for remakes on my PS3 or Vita that I played when I was much younger but what I do love is the retro take when playing a new game. I can handle multiple buttons if need be when it comes to Call Of Duty, FIFA and the like but over the last 10 years I have loved simpler games. In 1977 the short-lived VideoBrain Family Computer was released adding colour graphics to the mix. It was not really until the mid 1980’s that gaming really took off and through the proceeding 9 years or so they stayed pretty much the same. Beyond graphical improvements and different attempts at storage media most gaming held on to the simple controls with no more than 2 or 3 “other” actions on buttons. In other words your Granny could play them! In December 1994 the next revolution, Sony Playstation, hit the market to some fanfare. Again, beyond improved graphics people did not expect too much. How wrong could they be? The controller had more buttons than the majority of humans have fingers! 14 to be exact (if we include start buttons etc) and soon after dual analogue sticks were added. As a result gaming was ready to shift up a gear and embrace the new button configuration!
It seems things have evolved over time yet stayed the same. It is a contradiction, but who has not played a version of Tetris recently that simply did not involve moving the blocks to make complete lines? There have been different takes on it but the core mechanic remains. This brings me neatly to Lumines. Being a sad music geek of all genres (but loving dance music) I was engrossed by the simplicity of it when I first played on the PSP in September 2005. I played Lumines for so many hours at a time that often I think Q? And Ubisoft could have been cited in a divorce petition!.
For a good 15 years developers looked at using all the buttons in varying combinations to make characters respond to all manner of commands, it soon became the norm. Having to press so many buttons and wander aimlessly for so long in some games I used to get so bored that I eventually bowed out of gaming altogether for the PS2. (I would point out I had a family too so money was needed elsewhere)
In February of this year I bought a Vita. I also (surprise, surprise) bought Lumines - a case of Deja Vu! - and it has happened all over again. However, given the comments made by media outlets about the Vita needing content to compete in the cutthroat world of handhelds these days I wanted to see what would arrive for it beyond the full price options.
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SIMPLISTIC GAMING I knew there would be a lot of content ready to utilise the Vita’s touch screen and back touch pad and wondered if it was going to get messy again but needn’t have worried! Starting from the simplistic, artistic ‘Escape Plan’ to the Colourful ‘Mutant Blobs Attack’ the games are looking great and utilising the new technology but not making the player jump through hoops and wander aimlessly for hours and they are also well priced. If there is something I cannot bear it is having to get your character to walk (in real terms) about 5 miles across a barren wasteland simply to put an item in a trunk then have to trudge all the way back to where you started to get anywhere further. This to me is how developers stretch the playthrough time. I think they use the term ‘Open World’ as subterfuge for ‘Go have a look at nothing!’. Maybe I’m too cynical.
This can be said for quite a few minis, they are a stepping stone to possibly bigger programming jobs further up the golden ladder of game development. In 2000 I sent an email to Computer & Video Games for their letters page. I never thought it would be published but to my surprise it was!. I was 26 at the time and still bought gaming magazines even though I knew I would miss out on that iteration of consoles due to family commitments (and the worry a new baby may shove a well chewed biscuit into a drive!) The email offered my hopes for the next console generation, those being some new games with imagination and simplicity. Sadly it did not really seem to come to fruition during the last generation, not for a while anyway. I understood that these expensive new consoles needed system sellers but I thought maybe some innovation would come.. Seemingly for real innovation it took 9 years and Jenova Chen and Dylan Cuthbert. In conclusion, you can create something people will play and enjoy in quick bursts without having to compromise on gameplay and control. There are people out there that do not simply just want to run around for hours in a sandbox, doing nothing. I am one such person and some of the PS Community I play with agree. I think we can rely on Chen and Cuthbert to keep innovating and developing decent, simple and enjoyable games. I just hope that the next generation of developers will follow their lead.
This year ThatGameCompany continued their trend with the immense ‘Journey’. The difference with wandering aimlessly here was that in Journey you always progressed. If ‘The Orb’ pioneered Ambient Music, as far as I am concerned ThatGameCompany are the pioneers of ‘Ambient Gaming’ and should continue on that path. Other developers should take note of the simplistic approach. It does not have to be ‘ambient’ but simplistic CAN be great. The PixelJunk games offer something similar too. The difference between those and the likes of Flower are the speed at which they are played. They are, however, no less enjoyable.
Then we have ‘Playstation Minis’, by definition they create restrictions on developers as they need to develop a game that is both imaginative, well priced but conforms to certain size restrictions to be downloaded. Whilst we have the PS3 / PSP / Vita ported version of old arcade games like ‘Ikari Warriors’ we also have simple pick up and play titles like ‘Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess’ and while there’s nothing too imaginative about the gameplay but the imagination is in the storytelling.
It will take a major publisher to take a real chance to get out there and put something truly innovative yet simple into the public domain. Ubisoft have tried it successfully with Child Of Eden (again like Lumines, a Q? Developed game) so why are more not taking the chance? Who knows, only time will tell.
ADVERT
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www.littlebigplanet.com/karting
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LITTLE BIGPLANET
PS VITA Could LittleBigPlanet be the Vita’s ‘killer app’?
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VITA GAME CHANGER? Read any review of the PlayStation Vita and you’ll undoubtedly see Sony’s darling new handheld compared to smartphones. Mobile phone technology has come a long way in the last decade; the iPhone’s App Store is barely four years old. At the same time, the market for phone ‘apps’ has snowballed, with millions of consumers expecting to be able to buy games for pennies, or even download ad-supported freebies. It is into this market environment that the Vita was launched just a few months ago, and couple of key questions have been posed time and again: will people still pay £20-40 for a console-quality game on a handheld against such competition? Or £200 for a device that can’t make phone calls? Whatever your answer to the questions (a heartfelt yes from me; give me a Vita and Everybody’s Golf any day of the week), LittleBigPlanet is approaching release and when it hits the shelves it will change the Vita forever. With LBP Vita on your machine, you’ll have access to the game’s story mode and a generous helping of engaging mini-games, probably the finest level editor ever seen on a gaming device and literally thousands upon thousands of (totally free) user-created levels and games, some of which will rival the best paid-for phone apps.
you want to play isn’t there? Make it yourself! LBP’s editor allows you to exercise enormous control and unleash your wildest ideas. Suppose that during your commute you see someone tilting their phone to guide a ball down a never-ending series of platforms with holes in them and you want to have at go at it. You might be surprised how easy it would be to recreate such a game. And when you’re satisfied with your creation, you can upload it for the rest of the world to try. Or improve it! Think it would be better if your ball got to collect musical notes as it went along? Easy. Want to incorporate some mischievous platform-tilting badgers? Knock yourself out. For some people, the creation side is actually the larger part of the game and it is undeniably rewarding to create your own stuff, whether it’s a fancy costume, a wondrous contraption or a whole level. New Tools If you think that the Vita version of the game must be a cut-down version of its PS3 big brother, then prepare for a surprise. Preview footage of the game and demos of the game at PlayStation Access events have revealed a title that looks so exactly like the PS3’s LBP2 that it’s often difficult to tell them apart, either in screenshots or videos. All of the logic tools, sensors and tweakers from LBP2 appear to be present and correct; in principle, anything the PS3 can do, the Vita can do... And maybe even do better! In early February, a number of lucky LBPaficionados were invited to a Game Jam at Tarsier Studios’ offices in Sweden to get their hands on an early version of the game and what they reported back made the PS3 LBP community green with envy.
And if you think I’m exaggerating, think again. In the three and a half years since its release, the PS3’s LittleBigPlanet and its sequel have seen millions of levels published by its users – such prolific output that there are now approaching 7 million levels to choose from. Even if you dismiss 90% of these as dross, empty levels, childish rubbish and so forth, the remaining 10% still far exceeds the total number of games on App Store! (And you can’t tell me that the App Store doesn’t have its fair share of dross, etc.)
February’s Game Jam
Not only does the handheld game incorporate all the tools from LBP2, it adds a whole bunch more that multiply your options. As well as some tweaks here and there that add new Vita-specific functionality, such as the incorporation of the touch screen and rear touchpad, there are new additions such as the ability to add your own level ‘objectives’, detect the activation of bounce pads, even do basic arithmetic with the logic gates, and there are some true game-changers in the form of the improved ‘Note’ object and the incredibly powerful new ‘Memoriser’ With the option to download your favourite community levels direct to your Vita to play whenever you like, the possibilities open out like the Grand Canyon. You only have to look at the apparently depthless creativity seen in the PS3’s portfolio of levels to see what can be done. You want a platform adventure? Easy. Re-imagination of classic arcade action like Space Invaders or Donkey Kong? All present and correct. Recreation of a thousand simple-but-addictive website time-wasters? Of course. Whatever the genre, someone somewhere has attempted to recreate it in LBP. Not hours, but weeks of ever-changing entertainment at your fingertips. And you can bet that with the launch of LBP Vita, that boundless creativity will see a similar explosion of invention. But what if the game
The Note object now allows you much more control about the appearance of text in your level, opening up the way for good-looking information displays and new HUD-overlays – they can even take an input signal and incorporate its value into the text. But, for me, the Memoriser is the most exciting addition of all. It allows a creator to store information in a level and then recall that information next time you play (remembering your option preferences, for example, or some RPG stats) or, even pass that information from one level to another. If one level isn’t enough space for your marvellous creation, just link it to a new one and pass the important information over. It’s difficult to properly appreciate the potential of this simple addition, but I fully expect to be amazed.
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Whether you’re a level builder or tinkerer, an architect, critic or a player, whether you just want to play loads of levels or share them with the world, LittleBigPlanet Vita looks set to provide a whole new portable world of possibilities with apparently no end to it. From shoot-em-ups to roguelikes, via puzzles, platformers and tower defence, short movies and maybe the odd fart-noises app, the game offers an enormous helping of entertainment and engagement.
IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT SACKBOY A handful of the more impressive levels currently available on LBP2 – to give you a taster of what you could see on the Vita:
‘Minesweeper’ by hotalbi You can be part of it... So join me when the game is released and let’s make a million amazing experiences! And then a million more!
- http://lbp.me/v/688yqg - A meticulous recreation of the Windows PC version of this classic timewaster; also check out hotalbi’s fantastic Tetris level.
More information about Create mode: http://www.lbpcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?67819
‘Cubefield’ by pate59 - http://lbp.me/v/-cdvhq - Inspired by the simple Yo! Arcade Flash game, a challenging little block-dodging mini-game
‘LBP Checkers’ by comishguy67 - http://lbp.me/v/9y8zex - It’s checkers! Or draughts as the British know it. There is a plethora of chess and checkers and connect-4 levels but this is particularly notable for having a 1-player AI opponent capable of putting up a bit of a fight.
‘Containment’ by Nightshade94123 - http://lbp.me/v/1fg1ck - A cracking twin-stick shooter with a weapon-upgrade system that will keep you playing for ages, trying to better your high score and unlock more power...
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INTERVIEW WITH SYROC With the arrival of a new version of LBP comes the appointment of a new Community Coordinator! Simon is also known by his PSN name Syroc, under which identity he has created some beautifully detailed levels and regularly contributed to the community before his appointment at Tarsier Studios. We cornered him recently to ask him a few questions about LBP and the Vita... HI SIMON! FIRST OF ALL, CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR RECENT APPOINTMENT AS COMMUNITY CO-ORDINATOR! CAN YOU GIVE US A FEW WORDS ABOUT YOUR HISTORY WITH LITTLEBIGPLANET? Thank you! Well, the first time I got my hands on LittleBigPlanet was back during the public beta, back in 2008. Create mode hooked me straight away and from then on all my waking hours were filled with LBP. During the first few days of the beta I barely slept. I was constantly working on my levels and playing through the few story levels with my friends. Then in early 2009 I started blogging about all thing LBP for LittleBigLand.com, which I did until I became too busy with other things just after LBP2 was released. I could go into more details, but it’s really not terribly exciting! HOW DID YOU FEEL WHEN YOU GOT THE JOB AS COMMUNITY COORDINATOR? I was very excited of course. For me becoming a Community Co-ordinator is a bit like turning a hobby into a job. So, I couldn’t be happier. WHAT’S YOUR IMPRESSION OF THE LBP COMMUNITY? It’s always astonishing to see just how diverse the LittleBigPlanet community is and how incredibly creative all the creators are. You have players from all over the world, of all ages playing together and sharing their creations. I think that is quite amazing. CAN YOU SAY WHAT SORT OF THINGS THE LBP COMMUNITY CAN LOOK FORWARD TO WHEN THE VITA GAME IS RELEASED? Magical things!
LBP VITA LOOKS LIKE BEING THE BEST VERSION OF THE GAME YET! WHICH ONE FEATURE OF THE NEW GAME DO YOU THINK IS THE MOST EXCITING FOR CREATORS OR FOR GAMERS? I think creators will love the Dephysicalise tool. The tool allows you to, well, dephysicalise any object in your level, which not only can save some thermometer space, but also allows other objects as well as players to pass through it as if it were made out of Hologram material or Sticker material. Much like the current merge glitch in LBP2 this tool also allows you to merge two objects together to form a new object or create some interesting material combinations. A few month ago someone mentioned that they would like to see a quicksand hazard in LBP PSVita, well with the Dephysicalise tool you can easily create that yourself in a matter of seconds. The Memoriser is also going to be huge. It’s basically a tool that saves any input you feed into it and recalls it forever until the original input is overwritten. This allows you to not only share data wirelessly within a level, but also from one level to another. So if you wanted to you could create an RPG where stats and items carry over from level to level or build a custom save system which allows players to continue playing your level from the point where they stopped playing the day before. But we’ve also made tons of improvements to many existing features, which will streamline the creation process and generally make it easier to create what you want to create. Players can expect a very similar experience as in LBP2, but this time around you will be able to take LBP with your wherever you go. You can fill up the Vita’s memory card with all the amazing community levels you want to take with you and challenge players over ‘near’ to beat your highscore on any level. DO YOU HAVE YOUR OWN VITA? WHAT GAMES ARE YOU PLAYING ON IT? ANYTHING ELSE YOU’RE LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING IN FUTURE? Yes, I do. Right now I’m enjoying Wipeout and Everybody’s Golf a lot. I’m constantly amazed by how good Wipeout looks and Everybody’s Golf is always good if you have 15 minutes to kill. What other games I will buy in the future I don’t know yet, but I’ve recently tried the Gravity Rush demo and have to say that that could be quite interesting. Aside from that though, I don’t really know what is coming out for the Vita in the future. I would love to see a new Okami game. That could work quite well with touch. Some useful links: •
https://twitter.com/#!/tarsierstudios
•
https://twitter.com/#!/syroc_lbp
•
http://tarsier.se/
•
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Tarsier-Studios/166582500043239
•
https://twitter.com/#!/littlebigplanet
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BATTLE
ROYALE
REPORTER: NateC87 (please note this article was written prior to E3, where further details emerged) Since the excellent ‘Michael’ advert, featuring a number of PlayStation regulars including Sackboy, some Chimera from the Resistance series & Paul Phoenix from Tekken, there had been rife speculation that Sony were indeed working on their own four player brawler.
perhaps our handhelds. When questioned on the subject Superbot’s Omar Kendall, Game Director on Battle Royale, simply replied: ‘Maybe... stay tuned.’ Could this be the beginning for more consistent crossplatform play? We’ll hopefully find out sooner rather than later.
Developers SuperBot Entertainment and Sony’s Santa Monica Studio have clearly borrowed ideas from elsewhere but this is no bad thing despite what some forums and message boards might say. Even with similarities in gameplay who can honestly complain as your favourite Sony characters go head to head. Hell, driving games share basic gameplay elements, as do football games. Rant over. Household names Kratos, Sly Cooper, Parappa the Rapper and Fat Princess have already confirmed their presence as well as Sweet Tooth and Mael Radec from Twisted Metal and Killzone respectively. Rumoured appearances from Solid Snake and Cole MacGrath only build on the excitement that a lot of PlayStation owners are undoubtedly feeling now since the game’s announcement in April. Even Sony’s Kevin Butler is set to be given a run out; you’ll recognise him from other numerous PlayStation video ads.
Who would you like to see feature? Are you dying to see Spyro beat on Crash? Or perhaps the main protagonist from Journey? All three would be welcome additions no doubt. In a potential revelation we could see the gust of wind from Flower against a car from Gran Turismo. Okay, maybe not... With its almost certain appearance at E3 this year a lot of questions will be answered and the future of this exciting fighter will be clarified and its own identity defined.
One of the surprising and more impressive elements we’ve seen from the game so far is the dynamism of the landscapes that the four-player battles take place in. Stages are a mash-up of our favourite PlayStation games and come alive as their elements interact. Watching Patapon warriors invade Hades’ circle is as surreal as it is wonderful to watch. Others confirmed include blends of Ratchet & Clank and God of War, LittleBigPlanet and the Buzz! series and Jak & Daxter and Everybody’s Golf [Hot Shots Golf]. It will be interesting to see what other combinations the developers put together with such a grand scope to work with. People familiar with this game’s origin will understand that frantic gameplay is a staple feature of the genre so there’ll be no time to sit back and drink in anything. Unless you’ve been eliminated of course. There’s a long way to go before Battle Royale hits our consoles and
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DEVIL MAY
CRY
CaptainCortez takes a look at the brief history of Devil May Cry and looks forward to DmC: Devil May Cry.
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DMC: A BRIEF HISTORY
DMC3 introduced a brand new feature and that was the ability to switch between weapons on the fly. It focused on style over the darker atmosphere of the original game and introduced us to a younger more care free and cockier Dante. This was the tale of how Dante gained his power. This was Dante’s Awakening.
Those of you on the gaming scene (primarily during the PS2 era) should be very familiar with this title. It had a total of three games released for the PS2 and Atlus’ Shin Megami Tensei: Lucifer’s Call featured a cameo appearance of Dante as a playable character in his DMC2 attire. The original, with its eerie and chilling atmosphere, stylish game play and Gothic Electro soundtrack was groundbreaking for its time. So groundbreaking in fact, that it created its very own sub-genre. You wouldn’t have guessed at the time, but this genre (known as “Extreme Combat”) would serve as the very foundations for most successful action games of today. Many companies take inspiration from both Capcom and Hideki Kamiya’s other creations (over at Platinum Games) because they’re the top dogs in the industry when it comes to these types of games. Even God of War took inspiration from Devil May Cry and Prince of Persia and look at how well that’s doing! Going back to DMC, next up we have Devil May Cry 2. After the huge success of the original title (which was in fact Kamiya’s own version of Resident Evil that proved to be so radically different, it became a brand new IP), hopes were high when people caught wind of a sequel in the works. It all looked promising, with artistic flair and stylish cinematics, but sadly that was all it had going for it. The game was a flop. It had poor execution, was handled and developed badly, felt empty and lifeless with bland environments, had poor AI and unimaginative enemies that didn’t really stand out or prove to be anywhere near as challenging as the Marionettes and Bloody Puppets of the original title. This hit Capcom hard. What could Capcom, the company who created such an original masterpiece, do about this mess? How could they make it up to the fans? Well, they did what seemed like the best idea at the time……and that was to reboot the series.
Combat was smooth, stylish and over the top. Bosses were once again memorable. Weapons were great (beating a boss with a guitar? Awesome) and the story was compelling. Needless to say DMC3 brought the series back with a bang and fans all across the globe were not disappointed! Next up we have DMC4 – The first DMC to be made for next gen consoles. This looked nicer than the previous titles, with smoother textures, greater facial animation and introduced Nero as our main protagonist this time around. The game featured Dante but focused primarily on the new hero, who portrayed an angst ridden, emotional character. New moves were introduced, along with the addition of a Demonic arm which we would later come to know as the Devil Bringer. On top of this, Nero’s sword could be revved up (which charged up attacks, unleashing even greater blows than before), with his Devil Bringer also having a charge up function that blended well with his gunplay. Sadly, bosses were recycled and Dante took a back seat this time around. It seemed odd that after DMC3’s huge success Capcom would mess things up again, just thankfully nowhere near as badly as they did with DMC2. Oh and Dante was eventually playable, but you had to fight all of the same bosses you already previously fought with Nero. He just felt like a tacked on addition to the game and really, I think I’d have preferred another story with the younger Dante of DMC3. Now it seems that Capcom are in a similar situation to the days of DMC2. They feel the series has gotten stale. The fans mostly feel the same and something needed to be done about it…. Say hello to reboot number 2 >>
Thus, Devil May Cry 3: Dante’s Awakening was born! As a prequel to the original game, DMC3 told the tale of two brothers with two very different goals in mind; One craved nothing but power, unable to accept his humanity, calling it a weakness and casting it aside in favour of his Demonic heritage. The other saw his humanity as a strength and followed in the footsteps of his father, using his heritage as a way to protect humanity against the ever present threat of Hells Devil Spawns.
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DMC: DEVIL MAY CRY DmC: Devil May Cry is their latest title, which is being developed by Western Developer Ninja Theory (famous for Heavenly Sword and Enslaved), with key members of staff who have played a part in all previous Devil May Cry titles. This includes Hideaki Itsuno and has so far involved many trips to and from Japan, for both Ninja Theory and Capcom employees as they really want to get this right. Unlike the previous reboot (DMC3), DmC has scrapped most of Dante’s trademarks in favour of a more realistic, punkier version of our white haired hero. Now with black hair and a shorter jacket, Dante looks completely different. Many fans were outraged, shocked and even felt disgusted because Dante had been an iconic figure in the gaming industry for such a long period of time that the public simply weren’t ready for a change as dramatic as this. When news hit that the game was on Unreal Technology and not using Capcom’s in house engine (MT Frameworks), as die hard fans of the series (some might say cult followers) we knew that this was a bad decision. Every DMC beforehand featured game play with solid 60 frames per second motion. This was crucial to the series as it relied on precise timing, accuracy and tactics to get past the hardest of enemies. Due to this, both Ninja Theory and Capcom decided that they needed to focus on game play primarily. Making this 30fps game feel like a 60fps game was top priority, not just for the company but for fans also. However, not everything is as bad as it seems. Dante may not entirely feel like Dante, but this is Ultimate DMC as Ultimate Spidey is to the Amazing Spider-man. It uses what makes DMC Devil May Cry, keeping the DNA of the series true to what it should be, but at the same time offering a totally new experience. This is a retelling of a story we’re already familiar with. Only this time our playful hero is less playful, more antagonistic, rougher around the edges and is no longer a Half-Demon. With the addition of a new bloodline, Dante is now one third Human, Demon and Angel, with Eva (he and Vergil’s mother) being the Angel and Sparda being his Demonic father. DmC is using motion capture for practically everything in game and all of the motion capture has been filmed at the same studio James Cameron used whilst mo-capping the Na’vi in Avatar. Hard Lock-On has been removed and the control scheme has been changed drastically, but according to those who’ve played it, it still feels very much like Devil May Cry, even if I’m not convinced this Dante is really Dante at all. A part of me is thinking this should have been either a brand new IP or a new DMC with a new protagonist. Still, when Dante enters Devil Trigger his hair goes white and his coat turns red, most likely as a nod of respect to the previously released titles of the series. Since I’ve been following the game from when it was first announced, I’ve noticed many changes over the last year and a half. Most noticeable of which has been Dante’s appearance.
Gone is the ugly look of the TGS 2010 Dante and instead we now have a cooler looking guy, with a lot more style and signature moves ripped straight from the previous games. Prop Shredder’s back, along with Stinger, Drive and Million Stab (which has now been renamed to Trillion Stab), with Sky Star returning as your trusty air dash, though this is in a new form and only accessible with your Angel powers. Aside from this, the shoulder buttons have had a layout change, with the rear triggers allowing you to access your Demon and Angel weapons individually (without these active, you’ll remain in human mode throughout the game), allowing you to perform certain moves you wouldn’t otherwise have access to. A concern that I had was with the difficulty of the AI. At first appearance it didn’t look that great and as a result, the game didn’t look challenging at all. However, following a recent interview with Tameem Antoniades on Capcom’s E3 stream, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that NT and Capcom have been creating this game on the hardest difficulty, with the easier modes being tweaked upon the hardest difficulties completion. This sounds reassuring to me, as I love the challenge of DMC1 and 3 and actually crave challenging games. They just feel so incredibly rewarding to me, but then who wants a game that will baby you and hold your hand from start to finish? It leaves no room for you to try out your own thing, or to develop your own style of play. Now, with such a large amount of game play video’s, it’s clear that DmC is looking promising, but will the core mechanics stay true to the series or will this new title deviate too much from what we know and risk creating an entirely new Universe? Anything’s possible right now – even the possibility of the original series continuing after this has been released. *Fingers Crossed!*
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Originally, like most of the hardcore fan base, I was shocked when I first saw how drastically the series had been changed and even more shocked that Dante didn’t feel or look like the protagonist I grew up with and idolised over the past 11 years. DMC has always been about style and with Dante’s flair and attitude, becoming the character and feeling almighty (like an omnipotent God who could smite you down with the World’s weakest sneeze) has always felt like a great experience. What’s interesting is that DmC has been made more relevant to the people of today. As an example, those living in our current era will understand poverty, loss, corruption and government control, along with the act of rebelling and not conforming to what seems correct and acceptable by the standards of today’s Society. With camera’s watching your every move and masked figures reminiscent of the internet group, Anonymous, it’s clear that this title will relate to us in more ways than one and may even show that the ties we have to everything can be broken and that not everything we see is good. There are huge shades of grey between the fine black and white lines and I feel that ‘New Dante’s’ world may not be too dissimilar from our own. Technology is ever present and with the return of Mundus, I’d say Dante’s going to have his hands full for quite some time. To wrap things up, as a huge fan of the original series, I’m still not 100% convinced that this title will feel like a true DMC game. For a start, Dante’s personality is so, so wrong, but then it was Capcom’s decision to go down this route in the first place and as they seem so confident we’ll love the latest title in the series, let’s all hope they know exactly what they’re doing. Dante’s darker, but then so is the world he’s living in, so maybe it’ll all work out for the best in the end! For those even slightly interested in the title, be sure to keep a look out for any posts I create in the Action and Adventure forums, as I’ll be the first to announce when Capcom are hosting a DmC event and I think that right now, a hands on with the title is what we really need. Check out the latest trailer below: http://youtu.be/S2ZseseqE20 DmC: Devil May Cry is due for release on PS3 in both North America and Europe on January 15th, 2013 and remember; if you have an opinion, don’t hesitate to express your views by getting involved with discussions with the Official PlayStation Community.
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DR WHO: THE ETERNITY CLOCK
REVIEW REVIEWER: Bearskopff
PLATFORM: PSN/Vita
RELEASE DATE: 23 May 2012
BEARSKOPFF goes on an adventure with the Doctor... For nearly 5 decades the BBC has been gracing our tele-boxes with wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff crammed full of pop-culture references, family humour, eccentric British wit and some of the most memorable characters in recent memory, so it’s about time we changed the channel and assumed the role of the good Doctor ourselves – and his budding companion River too. With no install data to worry about, you’re instantly transported to a lovely main menu with the iconic Tardis bouncing across your screen to the hum-along theme tune and from there it’s simply a case of starting a new game (or browsing through the collectables menu which you’ll be doing regularly throughout your playthrough). The premise of the plot has The Doctor and River Song chasing down individual parts of an item called The Eternity Clock. Unfortunately, there is no Lost & Found nearby and as luck wouldn’t have it, each separate piece is in the diabolical clutches of The Silence, Daleks, Cybermen and Silurians. Only, they’re not particularly easy to reach
and will involve some slight time travel to Victorian London, a sneakpeek inside a Cyber-factory as well as few other location-staples of the series. Throughout, you’ll wield your sonic screwdriver solving puzzles and conundrums, disposing of enemy weapons, scanning numerous objects all whilst keeping out a keen eye for the collectibles; an array of hats owned by the Doctor and a library of notes and pages River doodled down over time. The best part is, all this can be done alongside a second player and that’s where things become ruddy good fun. Play on your own however, and you will encounter a few problems.
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The premise of the plot has The Doctor and River Song chasing down individual parts of an item called The Eternity Clock. Unfortunately, there is no Lost & Found nearby.
DOCTORWHO
Whatever you do, don’t blink. Blink and you’re dead. Blink and you’ll realise River has become wedged on a random piece of collision somewhere or maybe she just really loves loitering on ladders – especially when there’s a countdown ticking away. Or maybe the game didn’t auto-save when expected and you now need to replay a significant portion of the game. Yes, the game is slightly let down by some pretty terrible AI and at times, it’ll become infuriating but whilst the game has its problems, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint they can almost be forgiven largely due to the fact we’ve finally got a decent Doctor Who game that’s been given the care and attention the show receives. Sure, it’s not perfect but it’s a good sign we’ll be seeing better, stronger Doctor Who games in the future and at a very reasonable price point both at retail and on the PS Store I can happily close with this: if you’re a DW fan this game comes highly recommended, if not, why? DW is - FANTASTIC!
‘WITH NO INSTALL DATA TO WORRY ABOUT, YOU’RE INSTANTLY TRANSPORTED TO A LOVELY MAIN MENU WITH THE ICONIC TARDIS BOUNCING ACROSS YOUR SCREEN’ BEARSKOPFF
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JAK AND DAXTER
REVIEW REVIEWER: fski
PLATFORM: PS2/PlayStation 3
RELEASE DATE: 17 Feb 2012 (re-mastered)
FSKI takes a look at the recently remastered classic... Released in December 2001, Naughty Dog’s first entry to the Jak and Daxter series was met with critical acclaim and went on to sell over 4 million copies worldwide. Early this year Mass Media Inc. gave us their remastered version adding 720p visuals, trophy support and stereoscopic 3D.
eco guy, and their journey begins.
The story begins with Jak and trusty sidekick Daxter travelling to Misty Island against the warning of Samos the Sage, master of Green Eco and general know-it-all, where they encounter two nefarious characters and a rabble of unsightly creatures known as Lurkers. Alarmed, they prepare to leave and tell Samos of the dark situation they have witnessed when they are suddenly attacked by a large Lurker. Jak manages to destroy the lurker with a barrel of Eco but the resulting blast sends Daxter flying into a pit of nasty Dark Eco, transforming him into a weasel, or something...
Gameplay in the first of the Jak games is a fairly simplistic mixture of 3D platforming along with some light puzzle solving. While negotiating the various locations you’re required to collect green eco to keep your health gauge topped up, while yellow eco allows Jak to shoot fireballs at enemies, blue eco increases Jak’s speed and finally red eco temporarily increases Jak’s attack power. The game features a wealth of environments but many require you to gain access to a vehicle or clear a blocked path, all of which can be achieved by performing various tasks game characters will set you along the way. Completion of successful tasks result in characters awarding you ‘Power Cells’ which are used to power machinery, unlock vehicles and power . Cells can also be bought from various characters by trading in ‘Precursor Orbs’ you collect throughout.
Returning to their home, Sandover, Samos informs our duo that the only person able to return Daxter to his human form is Gol, the dark
Tasks are fairly varied, one moment you could be chasing a flock of seagulls across Aztec themed ruins and the next minute you’re
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...it’s the originals breezy, simplistic charm and far more forgiving difficulty that still makes it my favourite entry to the franchise. speeding through hoops against the clock in the racetrack-themed Precursor Basin. You can keep track of quest progression via the pause menu along with your amount of Precursor Orbs as well as other collectables picked up along the way. While Jak is clearly an extremely polished effort there are a few minor niggles present. Vehicle handling is extremely loose which can prove frustrating with hoop tasks which require precision and occasionally the mission selection structure can leave one feeling overwhelmed by the sheer weight of active quests given the relatively large world map.
The effect, while not the best I’ve seen, adds a pleasant amount of depth to the image and cut scenes have thankfully also received a 3D overhaul, crosstalk was minimal and some amusing ‘pop’ is present particularly during Daxter-starring post-death cut scenes.
play and while its sequels upped the ante with greater variety of vehicles, weaponry and deeper storylines, it’s the originals breezy, simplistic charm and far more forgiving difficulty that still makes it my favourite entry to the franchise. To this day, recommended.
Booting up Jak and Daxter after 10 years away I’m struck now, as I was then, by the DNA it shares with Naughty Dog’s previous Playstation franchise ‘Crash Bandicoot’, coupled with the realisation that you can clearly see where they were headed with the seminal Uncharted series.
However, my main issues with the HD collection are technical. Occasionally the framerate chugs which, given the fact we’re playing the game on a current generation platform, beggars belief along with the mystifying decision to optimise the game for 720p. Surely Mass Media could have achieved a 1080p resolution at a solid 30FPS of this fairly primitive looking game?
The similarities between the first iterations of Jak and Crash are strong, both emphasise platforming and box breaking gameplay in a lush exotic setting with subtle bongo-driven musical motifs but it is in Jak’s expansive world where it begins to pull away from its predecessor. While not strictly an open world game it is still an impressive achievement to see such a large map built early in the life cycle of PS2.
It’s also worth noting that I played the game in stereoscopic 3D.
Jak and Daxter - The Precursor legacy is still an absolute joy to
JAKANDDAXTER
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SORCERY ‘The excellent orchestral soundtrack really emphasises the atmosphere with flutes and harps and the whole Celtic shebang...’ - QuietlyWrong
SORCERY IS THE NEW RELEASE THAT’S SET TO GIVE YOUR PLAYSTATION MOVE A MUCH-NEEDED WORKOUT
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SORCERY
REVIEW REVIEWER: QuietlyWrong
PLATFORM: PlayStation 3
RELEASE DATE: 23 May 2012
QUIETLYWRONG WIELDS HIS MAGIC WAND After the disappointment of numerous licensed ‘Harry Potter’ tie-ins, here is a game that actually promises to give you the feeling that you can wield a magic wand with the best of them. Your Move controller, with its glowing bulb, makes a pretty good wand and before long you’ll be flicking arcane bolts left, right and centre instinctively.
With no way to tell the difference between a side-path and the main path, you’ll often find yourself unable to retrace your steps more than a few metres. Consequently, it’s almost impossible to open every chest and find every treasure in a single play-through, which won’t endear the game to trophy hoarders.
Opening with that classic story-telling device, the animated story-book, Sorcery introduces you to its protagonist, the sorcerer’s apprentice, Finn, and a wise-cracking magical white cat, Erline. The colourful stylised world in which you find yourself beautifully complements the story-book cut-scenes. Most of the game takes place in haunted caverns and watercolour elven realms that are filled with stone structures that seem to have grown out of the ground rather than being built, and the whole thing is infused with North European myth. The excellent orchestral soundtrack really emphasises the atmosphere with flutes and harps and the whole Celtic shebang, and the game makes good use of musical cues to emphasise moments of danger and accompany the more relaxed exploration sections. It’s a little unfortunate that the American accents of the main characters sounds a little incongruous in this setting, but the game’s evil elven Nightmare Queen hits that pitch-perfect plummy English articulation so beloved of movie bad guys.
With the game constantly guiding you from one arena or set-piece to another, the action really boils down to a series of magic battles and simple environmental rearrangement, so you’ll never have to go far before needing to wield your wand and manifest your magical might. So the Move controls are absolutely critical for the game, and it’s here that – thankfully – the game stands out, at least over the short range. Most of your attacking spells (see ‘A Kind of Magic’’) are cast with a forward flick of the Move controller, and (with a little aiming assistance from the game) you can exercise enough control to pick out individual targets, as long as they’re fairly close to you, which is gratifying. Your early introductions to your powers give you plenty of pyrotechnic examples to show them off, and combined with some genuinely amusing retorts from your feline companion you have plenty of encouragement for experimentation.
Exploration, however, is very limited. The game leads you down a very linear path, and though the corridor-like nature of the game is well disguised by the environment, it can leave you feeling like everything’s on rails. A few side-paths lead to additional hidden goodies, but the obsessive completist will be infuriated by the game’s habit of closing off the return path - something it does with such frequency that you can’t escape the sensation of being herded forever forwards.
When you’re really under fire, however, the system works less well. The game takes control over the camera, attempting to keep your enemies in frame at all times so you can concentrate on aiming your spells. However this makes for a very clumsy system when enemies get very near. When your enemies are getting too close or are firing projectiles and spells at you, you’ll be tempted to back off, but then the aim-assist stops assisting and you end up hitting nothing with your shots, which is immensely frustrating until you get used to your maximum effective distance.
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Between battles, you’ll be asked to solve simple environmental problems, levitating blocks out of your path, opening doors, fixing stairways and bridges with simple moves of the wand. Everything is very prescriptive, however, and you can only levitate those blocks that the game allows you to. These are always outlined with a purple glow, so you won’t have to waste any time trying to do anything that the game hasn’t accounted for, but the limitation to opening the paths ahead only adds to that sense of being herded along. Very few of these problems offer any cerebral challenge and you may become tired of the repeated application of these simple moves over and over again, though these constant interactions really help establish a sense of connection between the controller and Finn’s on-screen wand. In total, the game isn’t huge, perhaps eight to ten hours, and lacks replayability. The narrative is well told, if lacking any surprises, and has some great dialogue, especially in the early game. The spell-casting system is the core of the gameplay and is correspondingly well polished and offers some inventive variety of options for taking out the enemies. However the constant repetition of some actions and the extremely linear gameplay can leave you feeling straitjacketed. The connection between the controller and the on-screen wand offers a great example of how PlayStation Move can really add to a game in the right context, but the one-dimensional gameplay and repetitive activity may mean that its main appeal will be to younger gamers looking to fill a Pottershaped hole.
A Kind of Magic At the beginning of the game – once you’ve been directed to your wand – you have access to the basic offensive spell, the arcane bolt, plus an earth-strike spell that rips up the ground in a line in front of you and stuns your enemies briefly. As you progress through the story, you’ll unlock a shield spell, then ice, wind, fire and lightning spells. With the exception of the earth-strike spell (which feels under-developed by comparison), all of your offensive spells have two modes of action, achieved either by a flick forward or a side-swipe of the wand. Flicking the wand forward allows you to aim a blast of elemental energy at your enemies (in the case of the arcane bolt, it’s a generic dart of energy). Side-swiping varies considerably, with ice spells casting a blast of ice around you, wind creates a short-lived tornado, fire a wall of flames and lightning a crackling circular electrical trap. More importantly, spells can be combined. Before you are entrusted with wind and fire magic, environmental fire pits and static tornadoes (appearing from mysterious holes in the ground) are provided for you to fire your arcane bolts through. Firing an arcane bolt through fire turns it into a fire bolt (which travels much further than the basic fire blast); firing a fire spell into a tornado (or casting a tornado through fire) will turn it into a devastating fire whirl. Once unlocked, tornados and electricity make for a nasty lightning storm. The simple arcane bolt offers the most curious side-swipe variant, however, allowing you to curve a bolt around corners. Although it can be (literally) hit and miss at the best of times, there is something very satisfying about hitting an enemy that is hiding behind cover.
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Hubble Bubble You will encounter chests throughout the game, offering a few story items, gold, treasures (to sell for more gold) and potion ingredients. In a nod towards the RPG genre, by combining ingredients you can research new potions, each of which provides Finn with a permanent buff, whether that’s to enhance his offensive spells, build up his hit-points or various other useful status improvements. When you have the right ingredients and an empty potion bottle, you enter a short mini-game in which you use the Move controller to mimic the shaking, grinding or pouring of occult components into a cauldron before giving the whole thing a quick stir. Once mixed up, the game requires you to give the bottle a good shake and then upend it as if into your mouth. The first time this happens, it’s a really charming addition to the game. As you collect more ingredients and mix up more and more potions, it rapidly loses its appeal and becomes a chore. Which may be entirely realistic, but the game could do with a short-cut in this regard.
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RESISTANCE: BURNING SKIES
REVIEW REVIEWER: richard4481
PLATFORM: PS Vita
RELEASE DATE: 01 June 2012
THE FIGHT AGAINST THE CHIMERA CONTINUES... Resistance : Burning Skies is the PS Vita’s inaugural first person shooter using the dual-analog sticks and is developed by Nihilistic Software. Those familiar with the Resistance series will know this is the fifth Resistance title to be released since Insomniac’s Resistance : Fall of Man, Resistance 2, Resistance 3 and Bend Studio’s PSP effort, Resistance Retribution. The story runs parallel in the alternate history with that of R:FOM. Burning Skies follows the story of a New Jersey firefighter named Tom Riley as he battles to save his family. The story starts off on what appears to be a routine call out with a fire at a local warehouse and from the moment you arrive you quickly realise things aren’t quite what they seem and it’s not going to be your day. Once Riley realises what’s happening his only aim is to reach his family and protect them from what is happening around them with the Chimera swarming from every direction. The graphics are what you’d expect from a Resistance title, Nihilistic have kept to the atmospheric feeling you get from Resistance.
Granted, they’re not the most eye dropping but they are great nonetheless for a handheld. The sound on full blast was quite good also though tinny at some points. Nihilistic Software have made good use of the Vita’s touch screen to access secondary weapons. Every weapon in Burning Skies is equipped with a secondary option and as you progress new weapons collected will prompt a short video tutorial explaining their use. One thing I’d make sure you take note of is how to run; I blinked and missed this one. You need to double-tap the Vita’s rear touch pad and boom your away like the lead boots have been removed. One of Riley’s main weapons is his trusty firefighter’s axe which I loved using to smash Chimera heads open with! Early in the game one of story’s main characters ‘Ellie’ discovers Grey Tech which lets you upgrade weapons, each weapon has 6 upgrades which are divided into 2 sections of 3 and you may only have 2 out of the divided 6 equipped (If that makes sense to you).
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Burning Skies follows the story of a New Jersey firefighter named Tom Riley as he battles to save his family.
Your health auto-regenerates so no need to worry about picking up any vials to replenish it and there is always plenty of ammo lying around. I’m not going to lie to you, on Normal mode this game can be very easy and some of the more experienced gamers may want to bump the level up for more of a challenge (doing this has no effect on trophies). I managed to Platinum this game and being what I’d call a casual gamer I was quite pleased with myself as it was only my second (my first being Burnout Paradise). Multiplayer has a handful of game modes to offer which range from the usual suspects of Team Deathmatch, Deathmatch and Survival which range from 4-player games to 6- to 8-player games. Survival is the only mode you wouldn’t recognise and is a type of virus game in which you must survive for as long as possible but once killed you respawn as a Chimera and must kill any remaining humans to infect them. Multiplayer also makes use of the PS Vita’s Near functionality with the ability to distribute and receive viruses which are then turned into multiplayer bonus of
RESISTANCE BURNINGSKIES
1.5, ,2.5 and I think 4.5 multipliers for XP (I may be wrong with that last one). From around the web I have read a few other reviews and I was personally a little hesitant with what my experience would be like with this game but after playing it I would not hesitate to recommend Burning Skies to anyone. As a fan of the Resistance series this is a great addition to the franchise and Nihilistic Software have done Insomniac proud on bringing this title to the Vita.
‘ONE THING I’D MAKE SURE YOU TAKE NOTE OF IS HOW TO RUN; I BLINKED AND MISSED THIS ONE. YOU NEED TO DOUBLE TAP THE VITAS REAR TOUCH PAD...’ RICHARD4481
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ENGLISHGOLFER PRESENTS...
THE 19TH HOLE The 19th hole – a place where people can kick back and relax after a hard day of gaming (either on their PS3 or on the fairways)! Here we’ll take the time to get to know and chat with other regulars on the forum and see what makes them tick. First up, we’ve got a moderator like no other...
Wretched_Hawk
Q. HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH YOUR USERNAME? I was going to use my own personal account but that uses a name and surname, not actually mine though so there would have been tad too much confusion. So over the course of a week I tried to work something out which was quite suitable and I had ‘hawk’ but it needed more. I’m often feeling ill quite randomly due to something I’ve eaten or smoked or drank - or any other number of things - so ‘wretched’ was suggested and it is quite apt! Terrible story I know.
Q. LOOKING BACK, IF YOU COULD CHANGE IT TO SOMETHING ELSE WHAT WOULD IT BE? I wouldn’t change my username, but I’d probably just add the word ‘cat’ in there. Q. HOW DID YOU GET THE JOB OF MODERATOR? I’ve worked in social media for some time, I actually use to work just across the road from these SCEE offices and use to pass by many a time, I even said to people (old workmates etc) ‘I wonder if I could get a social media job at PlayStation... that’d be a combination of career and dream companies to work for’. One day I wanted to leave my old work place, applied to a couple of places and one of them didn’t actually list who the company was so I figured ‘okay, well it’s a games company so I’ll go work there and maybe I can move on to Sony at some point.’ Anyhow day before the interview I still have no idea who it’s with so I ring up the agency and they say PlayStation... that was nice. I grew up on PlayStation. I went from Spectrum and Atari to PlayStation... I went from rarely gaming to spending all day on Music creation games, Sim City 2000, mastering Tekken and becoming the greatest player of Ridge Racer who ever lived - not to mention dedicating 200
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plus hours every single time I completed FF9 so yeah, it really was a nice surprise.
gaming skills.
Then it was just a combination of my natural charm, my amazing CV, my social media and moderation background (I’ve been a mod on some old school forums since the days of dial up when not one other friend of mine had a PC & only business men had laptops) which got me the job... and my amazing good looks.
Q. WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE TYPE OF GAME? I like anything if it is good. I love RPG’s like FF9 and I adored Uncharted 3 and as some may know I thought Afrika was one of the best games ever. What else? I miss the days of games like X-Com, Sim City 2000, Civ 2, C&C on the PS1 - it’s something I hope Sony sort out in future: we have some bits and bobs but some genres are lacking, although that seems to go for all consoles. It seems that what we do get is either FPS games or really sub-par games in other genres like sims, strategies etc. I blame the kids and their demands these days! *shakes fist*
And a brown envelope with some cash in it. And a cherry pie. And some polaroids.
Q. WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE GAME OF ALL TIME? WHY? FF9 - greatest game ever, still holds up and looks and feels and works better than the vastly over rated FF7.
Q. ACTUALLY YOU’VE HAD SOME INTERESTING JOBS BEFORE THIS ONE. CARE TO SHARE? I have been a proof reader before - albeit for a science fiction novel. Don’t ask. I’ve also proofread some horror, some vampire stuff and a few other things that I can’t really recall and that I’ve tried to blank from my memory.
Q. I’LL INVITE YOU FOR A ROUND OF GOLF WHERE YOU CAN BRING ALONG 2 PEOPLE OF YOUR CHOICE TO PLAY. THE FIRST MUST BE A GAMING CHARACTER AND THE OTHER IS FREE FOR YOU TO CHOOSE. WHO WOULD MAKE UP OUR 4-BALL, AND WHY? Garnet Til Alexandros XVII or ‘Dagger’ as you may know her & Polly Ester from the Samurai Pizza Cats - for obvious reasons.
Q. BEST WE MOVE ON QUICKLY THEN.... WHAT WAS YOUR 1ST POST HERE IN THE FORUM? Hmmm... Probably something along the lines of... ‘Hi guys, check out these links, spam, spam, spam... cat.’. Am I close?
If those two aren’t available then Cole Phelps & Ted Bundy... that would make for an interesting round of golf - Cole would inspect your balls whilst Ted killed the caddy.
I’m here now so hopefully they won’t shove me out the door anytime soon for all my spam.?
Q. PROBABLY! WHAT IS A NORMAL (AND I USE THAT WORD VERY LIBERALLY) DAY FOR AS A MODERATOR? A normal day is me deleting emails for half an hour as it’s just company spam, then I start work. So, post on the forums and reply to bits and bobs, then I start tearing my hair out as I remember I have to moderate and the 3 big ones (LBP, XMBs, Home) can drive the best of us mad... it can be non-stop, and even when I’m gaming with you in an event I’m still modding those ones. They can be huge and they never stop. I may also smoke quite a lot and I am not a smoker. Basically an average day for me is not all what any of the folks on the forums think it is. I knew this getting into it so I don’t mind so much but moderation can pretty much mean looking at a screen all day, getting repetitive injuries and suffering from 3 hour headaches - yes that is me. If I wanted an easy job I would have stayed doing what I did before where I was mainly reading books all day... which was nice! I think it’s best to be honest about the job of moderation in general as sometimes people get the wrong idea, but I like it here, I have a great laugh and I enjoy posting on the forums and joining in with the banter. Q. WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE PEOPLE LOOKING FOR JOBS IN THE GAME INDUSTRY? Don’t be a fanboy. If you find it odd or wrong or get angry when a PlayStation employee mentions their DS or Xbox then this industry is not for you. I’m one of a small minority of industry people who only has one company’s stuff, i.e. Sony. Everyone else you meet has 3 consoles, two handhelds and phone that plays cheap crappy games that you download from a fruit related store for 99p. The same goes for folks at the rival companies. People move around from one company to another. The games industry is just like any other industry. It’s not special, you have to do tedious jobs/work, you have to deal with different people, and things can go wrong. Q. BRIEFLY DESCRIBE YOUR GAMING HISTORY.... Hmmmm.... Started on the Spectrum and Atari’s, went off games for a while before the PS1 hit and, well, that was a great time. I can’t really think what else to say apart from the fact that old age has dwindled my
Q. IF YOU WERE IN CHARGE FOR A DAY, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE ON THE FORUMS? I’d close them, ban you all and then ban everyone from PSN so no grief reports could be made. I jest of course! Well, I would make the cat thread the only topic in every section! Alright, joking again! Actually I’d spend the day changing random links in peoples posts to this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0 (Rick Rolled) - brilliant eh! Q. YOU, LORDROSS AND ENVISAGER ARE IN A BOAT SURROUNDED BY SHARKS. TO MAKE IT TO LAND, ONE PERSON NEEDS TO “GO OVERBOARD”. WHO WILL IT BE, AND WHY? I’d do them both in regardless. That way when I get to land I have space for Polly Ester and we’d be able to sail off together. Q. FINALLY, A BURNING QUESTION THAT IS PROBABLY ON EVERYONE’S LIPS. ARE YOU JUST AS CRAZY IN REAL LIFE AS YOU ARE HERE ON THESE FORUMS? All I’m going to say is that people with mental health issues should not be viewed in such old fashioned ways and they shouldn’t be written off or dismissed as not useful to society.
Well thanks to Wretched_Hawk for taking the time to answer – hopefully you won’t get into too much trouble revealing your moderation secrets! Moving swiftly along... next up is Warren_Jeeves >>
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with me when it first came out as an arcade machine, along with Boot Hill a little later.
Warren_Jeeves Q. LET’S START WITH YOUR USERNAME…? My username came about around eight years ago: I have a friend called Warren Bear---- and we both used to comment on a site at the same time. I used to go under the name ‘Warren Jeeves Bear---- the 2nd’ just to have a dig at his name. Anyway, I just shortened it to Warren_Jeeves later on for forums and other sites I had to use a username for and it stuck with me. I would never change it as it’s been my online name for quite some time now. My real name is Gary. Q. PLEASE DON’T TELL US YOUR SECOND NAME IS GLITTER! BUT GETTING BACK TO YOUR USERNAME, HAS ANYONE PULLED THE “ASK JEEVES” JOKE ON YOU? I used to always get called Gary Glitter when I was a kid, I’m happy to say I didn’t turn out like him though. I’ve had the odd ‘Ask Jeeves’ joke - last time was in General Discussion where someone put a thread up to ask me anything. I didn’t join in! Q. HOW DID YOU COME ACROSS THESE FORUMS AND, IF YOU CAN REMEMBER, WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST POST HERE? I’m not too sure on this one. I think it must have been a google search I did that led me here after I’d been using the gamespot forums for a while and got fed up with them. I’ve no idea what my first post or thread was but I do remember the post that got me my first ban. Q. BRIEFLY DESCRIBE YOUR GAMING HISTORY... Good question. I enjoy looking back to when I was a little kid - it must have been the mid 70s when I remember having a Pong system hooked up to the TV in my parents’ bedroom and then not much later finding an Atari console in their wardrobe just before Christmas. Yep, I got the Atari 2600 with the fake wood finish and what a ground breaking machine that was in them days. Space Invaders became a huge hit
After that I got myself a paper round to pay for a ZX Spectrum (Paper Boy was a good game). As a 13 year old kid I spent many mornings freezing my bleepers off just to pay for that machine - we had no central heating or double glazing back then so it was very hard to get up on a winter’s morning when there was ice on the inside of the windows and snow outside. Then I came home to spend hours typing out a code from Input magazine (just to make a square move across the TV) only to find it didn’t work because I made one typo! I then spent the rest of the day reading back through it -good times! My next system was the Mega Drive: I enjoyed Road Rash, Mortal Kombat, the Sonic games and all the other games that were popular back then. After playing Virtua Fighter in a bar while I was on holiday I came home and bought myself a Sega Saturn. Athlete Kings was probably my favourite game on the Saturn along with VF and Sega Rally. Next came the N64 and the Dreamcast for me. Some really good games on those systems - Ocarina of Time and Shenmue come to mind amongst many others. Then in the late 90’s I got my first PC and started to game on that quite a lot. I think my first ever online gaming experience was Motocross Madness 2, I seem to remember the first person I talked to on there was from Sweden and he gave me some good tips. After that I got into FPS online games like Call of Duty, Soldier Of Fortune 2, Medal of Honour, Counter Strike, Return To Castle Wolfenstein and a few others. I did at one point buy the first Xbox but I never played it very much because I preferred playing on my PC much more. I did like XIII on the Xbox but I couldn’t get used to playing without a keyboard and mouse. 2007 came along and I got myself a PS3 - took me a long time to get used to playing FPS games without a keyboard and mouse but all I ever game on now is the PS3.
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Q. WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE TYPE OF GAME? Hard to pin it down really, I do like racing games quite a lot as well as third person shooters like GTA, Uncharted and Red Dead Redemption and of course I do like many FPS games. Q. WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE GAME OF ALL TIME? WHY? This is a really hard one... Haze! No, erm... I would have to say Shenmue, that game took over my life for a couple of weeks while I was on my Christmas holidays from work and not many games have got me that engrossed since, although I doubt if I played it now I would feel the same about it. One game of recent times that sticks out in my mind is Mirror’s Edge: that game seemed to do something a little different that I found very interesting. I’m hoping they bring out a sequel; it would be a day one purchase for me. I still have quite a few big games sat there that I’ve barely touched like Skyrim, Fallout 3 and Borderlands. I’ll have to find time one day to play them. Q. I’LL INVITE YOU FOR A ROUND OF GOLF WHERE YOU CAN BRING ALONG 2 PEOPLE OF YOUR CHOICE TO PLAY. THE FIRST MUST BE A GAMING CHARACTER AND THE OTHER IS FREE FOR YOU TO CHOOSE. WHO WOULD MAKE UP OUR 4-BALL, AND WHY? I’d bring Tiger Woods (gaming character) and Tiger Woods (real dude). Haha joking, I would choose Kratos as my gaming character because I’d just like to see him kill everyone along the way and also I’d bring along David Gilmour from Pink Floyd so I could pick his brains for some good guitar tips along the fairways. Q. YOU HANG OUT A LOT IN THE THE ‘GENERAL DISCUSSION’ SECTION OF THIS FORUM. DESCRIBE THAT SECTION IN 3 WORDS. ‘Mike939 and dannyjt’ or ‘Bunch of loonies’. I mean that in the nicest possible way. BEING A REGULAR THERE I TEND TO AGREE WITH YOUR 2ND CHOICE! I’D BE BORED WITHOUT THAT FORUM, BUT THERE AGAIN I WOULD FIND MORE TIME TO PLAY GAMES AGAIN. Q. I KNOW YOU ARE A PARENT, SO WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO OTHER PARENTS WHEN IT COMES TO GAMES AND CHILDREN? Another tough one. I’m not in a good position to give out good parenting advice on gaming as my kids play games that are rated well above their age. The way I see it is that games like COD are just the same as playground games from when I was a kid; we used to play cowboys and Indians pretending to kill each other, so bar the swearing it’s the same thing. That said, I was walking through my kids’ playground the other morning and heard worse language than I’ve ever heard in a game. Q. THAT’S AN INTERESTING POINT YOU BROUGHT UP ABOUT PLAYING COWBOYS AND INDIANS. I USE TO LOVE PLAYING “BRITISH BULLDOG” IN THE SCHOOL PLAYGROUND BUT NOW WE HEAR OF SCHOOLS BANNING IT AS IT IS TOO VIOLENT. DO YOU THINK LAWMAKERS ARE GETTING IN THE WAY OF PARENTS BEING PARENTS, THAT IT SHOULD BE THE PARENT DECIDING IF THEIR CHILD SHOULD PLAY A GAME OR NOT? I think it’s hard to get the balance right; on the one hand parents have the right to say what’s right for their child, but on the other hand sometimes the government does need to step in because there are some idiots out there who have kids. We do need guidelines and laws when it comes to children because of this very reason, but things seem to have got silly lately - didn’t they ban playing conkers in some school a few years ago? Like I’ve said, my kids play games of an ‘adult theme’ but they are far
too scared to even watch a horror movie, which I find weird as I’ve always loved horror movies ever since I can remember. The only kind of media I would stop my kids viewing would be the sexy stuff but I don’t even have to enforce that one right now as they look away from the TV even when there’s a kissing scene. Q. IF YOU WERE IN CHARGE FOR A DAY, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE ON THE FORUMS? I would exterminate every cat related post or thread and then ban StrangeSam for a month at the very least, just to give him enough time to get over his strange love of cats. Only joking Sam, but if you did post anymore cat pictures you would be gone for good! Q. YOU, LORDROSS AND ENVISAGER ARE IN A BOAT SURROUNDED BY SHARKS. TO MAKE IT TO LAND ONE PERSON NEEDS TO ‘GO OVERBOARD’. WHO WILL IT BE, AND WHY? Simple. As Ross gave me a vote in the awards and Vissy sent me some goodies I like them both equally, so I would take out my Swiss army knife (I don’t go sailing without it) then cut them both in two before tossing half each of them to the sharks. Does that sound fair? Q. PERHAPS NOT THAT FAIR FOR LORDROSS AND ENVISAGER! IF WE CHANGED THE QUESTION SOMEWHAT AND HAD YOU PLACED IN AN ONLINE GAME WHERE ONLY 2 OF 3 PLAYERS COULD SURVIVE, WOULD YOU THINK OF YOURSELF FIRST OR TAKE ONE FOR THE TEAM, SO TO SPEAK? I don’t really play online games so much these days even though I do enjoy them, but when I do play a team game more often than not I’m out there for the team and I would give up glory just to see my team win. So in this case Ross and Vissy would be safe in my hands and well away from my Swiss Army Knife.
Well thanks Warren_Jeeves for taking the time to share with us, and thanks again to Wretched_Hawk. I think we’ll all agree they’re two very big characters on our forum. In the next 19th Hole, I’ll be chatting away with Cimbrer, who was recently described as a ‘Danish pastry’ and asking if the P stands for ‘Pooh’ in WinnieP’s username. Until then, happy gaming!
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