Artificial Reality? REALLY?

We gamers are told that we will be whisked away to distant lands and be able to enjoy a true artificial reality. But is it actually anything close to reality? Below I discuss what aspects are far from reality but why we do not really mind.

We All Drive the General Lee

Now before we start I am not talking about cars jumping in Rally Games and the like. These cars are built to take this sort of punishment with specialised suspension. But take a game like Driver San Francisco or GTA where you get 10 metres of air or more and you land and speed off into the sunset, Would this really be possible? 

A car is not designed to take its weight suddenly hitting its suspension and would crumple into a heap. 

But do we care when we play our games? Not really, it adds to the fun, makes car chases more exciting and if all things relating to driving were kept real in a game a crash would write off your car, you would get stuck behind a tractor and would run out of fuel just as it got interesting.

Bionic Woman

Recently while playing Tomb Raider I got to thinking. How is her body connected together. Lara cannot fall from great heights onto the floor, but she can fall almost an unlimited distance from a cliff as long as there is a zip line in her path for her to grapple to and slide down. Play it and see what I mean. she uses her climbing pick and no matter how far you fall, she will be able to survive and slide to safety with all limbs attached.

What would actually happen in these moments would be that her arms would likely be ripped from the socket or at least dislocated and she would be in terrible pain and needing serious medical assistance.

We let this go as it adds excitement to an escape scene as our hero runs and swings to safety. It would be a long slow slog down the mountain if we kept to the reality of the situation

I Am Invincible

Whether you are in a fire fight taking bullets to the face, get hit by a moving car or take machete blows to the torso, you will survive. Are you the Hulk? Are you Wolverine? No. In most cases you are an archiologist or a immigrant or a normal, red blooded soldier with basic protective clothing. So how come you are able to take that level of punishment? 

In reality you would be like the guy from Goldeneye who thinks nothing can touch him, until he gets frozen to death.

You have to give games some artistic licence. Otherwise you go to the extreme where ever single hit is instant death. Imagine a game like Call of Duty where every single time you too a hit you had to restart. You would have to creep round every single inch of the game and never come out of cover. It would sap the life and enjoyment from the game. 

Yes it is completely false but its the only way to keep things fun.

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

Nice guys finish last.... unless you are playing computer games. In which case it is almost inevitable that the good guy will win the day. You very rarely get to play the bad guy. To do some nasty crap and still make it to the end alive. 

The game will have a young boy against an army of trained killers and you will still come out on top. I think this is mainly down to morals. Games do not want to be shown for glamorising evil and saying that being cruel is ok.

I guess the reason behind this may also roll back to the fact games are often blamed for bad things in the world. A killer is often stated as being 'Into graphic video games' and being a 'social outcast' as a result. I know this to be rubbish as I have been playing since I was about 5 or 6 and I have only once thought about going on a gun rampage around my office (The gun would be filled with water before anyone calls the police).

The Future is Waist High

Look at the back of the box. Do you see the characters from a third person perspective? Well if you do be prepared for lots of random structures which are waist high.

All modern games with cover mechanics seem to love the waist high wall. Gears of War is the main example where buildings have been destroyed to leave strategically places waist high walls that are perfect for cover and to flank your enemies. There will even be some of these walls in the middle of a park. there would be nothing else. no reason for them to be there, but walls a plenty!. It may be that they have been built specifically as cover points but who has the time to build strategic defences unless you have months to prepare for war.

Yes we are talking about games and so they have artistic licence but can they not think of a better solution than this? there must be some way of explaining them or make them out of some special military material which shows they can just be thrown up quickly. Halo did this with the shield walls which obviously have been put in place by the enemy. You can make a gun with a chainsaw attached to the end but you cannot make military cover?

We have a Licence to KILL

How come there is practically no decent licenced games? We have seen 007, Terminator, Transformers and many others. The licences often do not come bigger (Star Wars) but the games that they create are empty and often devoid of any fun. What exactly is the problem here?

It could be said that it is the smaller developers that tend to get these games and as such they cannot make anything better. If this is the case then why not give them to someone truly deserving?

I know it is hard to make games and also that the big houses still can make pure crap (Army of Two:Devils Cartel and Aliens: Colostomy Bag spring to mind) but you have already written scripts or characters which only need to be fleshed out. It has been tried in two directions as well. some have decided to follow the film almost scene by scene while others have tried to use the characters in a unique side story. But it all of what has appeared they have been terrible.

I refuse to mention games where they do not get the original voice cast... just stupid.

There are some incredibly clever people in the games and film industries and to be fair they are both as useless as one another bringing the material to the other side. Most film adaptations have been pointless wastes of my life. But why can they not come up with something better? 

How can you mess up an Aliens game? Really? You have a small squad, put them in a corner and throw wave after wave of enemies at them with almost no visibility. But no you have well lit rooms and they have a few enemies all running straight into your gun sights. Now take a game like Dead Space... Input Aliens and bang here is the greatest Aliens game ever made... Simple. They come out of the walls, floor, behind you and often when you have no way to defend yourself. But the makers of the actual licensed games get it completely wrong.

It has become a joke in gaming to see a licensed game coming out. Everyone expects them to be pointless. But its awful when it is a piece of material that you actually respect and even worse when you cannot understand why it is so terrible. I played Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic back on the Xbox and it literally blew my mind. It was well written, had good supporting cast, graphically was good and it honestly made me feel like my character was a Jedi badass. But then comes games such as Kinect Star Wars... You can tell a game is crap when most reviews say the best thing in the game is..... The Dancing Mode.

The makers of that game should hang themselves for making that shameful game. 

I really do not think that games should be made to launch with a film. A tie in game is often the weakest as it often follows the films story. So they have to wait for bits of the film to have been made before they can code that section. this means it is often rushed which equals crap. It is often better in my opinion to make a side story or just use the Universe that the film is in. That is why the Knights of the Old Republic was good. It was not Luke and Han etc, it was another Jedi. A unique story but you knew what he was capable of. 

007 must have done other missions that were not films? Why not do his first mission and what set him apart from the other 00's. Origin story or something. The universe will be the same and the character but there is a larger scope. I do not think people would be interested in a side story of say 006 but I think there is still more room than to make terrible tie in games. To a degree this is what was done in the famous Goldeneye game on the N64. It was not launched at the same time as the film and was not a scene by scene of the film. I cannot see why this game is loved as much as it was. For me it is average but it is not terrible.

If you look at some of the games we have today that have got licenses which are done well (Batman Arkham Asylum) then they sell in huge numbers and will honestly go of forever. Arkham City sold many more than the first game and was amazingly good. It evolved itself and now is the benchmark that all other licenses are measured against. 

Again this game was not linked to the film but stood to the side. It helped having voices from the TV cast as it did link in but it was a unique story and played to the games strengths.

I want to see developers try making games that link to huge film franchises. But they need to be made in the correct way. The game is only ready when it is ready. not so it can be launched alongside a film. It should be made for gaming sake and not to cash in on a movie. I am hoping that EA can resurrect the Stars Wars games and that other people can get hold of a decent licence and do something good with it. You can see how a game can be used right and wrong by looking at Telltale Games 'The Walking Dead' and then playing 'The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct'

Anti-Social Gaming

Remember when you were a kid and your mates would come over every evening and you would play a game together? Well if you are still a kid then you probably don't. 

Before technology kicked off into the huge part of our lives it is today, you had to see your friends to talk. As part of this you had to get together in a space to interact. Playing games was done on a single console, a single screen and using a single game.

Now I am not saying that technological advancements are bad cause they obviously are not. I would not ask for the games consoles to go back to the ones we used to have (Even though the games qualities were better!) But I do get annoyed that I cannot find many games to play with a friend. Now I used to have a weekly get together and play a COOP Campaign. Games such as Halo, Gears of War and Left4Dead allow this to be done on one console and one game. But trying to find a game which allows this to happen has become the most difficult task in my life.

I go shopping, looking at the back of the game boxes for a little green box the says 2-4 or 2 coop. This is the sign that the game is playable as coop on a single screen. Well it is meant to. Before people say anything I know on the back of a box it also has an orange box which may say the same. this shows Online coop. The issue I have is that COOP is often put on boxes either incorrectly or for a specific mode like Horde. Now to me this is not COOP, this is more 2 player. I want COOP to mean cooperative play, so Coop Campaigns. Yes you can do this online but to me that is defeating the idea of coop. Games should be something that brings people together. I get fed up with having to play games with my friend round the corner as the game will not allow him to come round mine for a beer and to play. When and why did this change? Are we now not allowed to communicate unless it involves some for of technology? Is there some disease that will be passed between us if I actually see him. I find that the games industry is determined to make people anti-social rather than the other way around. Take online gamers. You play COD and some chav american will curse you and your mother from the comfort of his living room so you need to mute him so you can actually play a coop game the way you want. This is pointless. Plus that chav is never going to be able to speak to someone face to face. Put him in a room with the players he cursed online and he would be in the corner not making eye contact because the skills to talk are not there.

I have read that making a game split screen takes away graphics etc from the game engine. Well how come then two of the biggest games on Xbox have done it without a problem? Gears and Halo have always had split screen coop and Gears has up to 4 players. I cannot understand how a game can be made which allows online coop, but cannot allow the screen to be split and the same experience to be had.

Having played through all the big titles listed above and having not been able to find anything in my local game stockist, I resorted to playing Epic Mickey! That is just embarrassing. I used to have a girlfriend heavily into games. Playing a game together was really good but this would not be possible. I would have had to send her to her house so we could play together. How would I progress that to nocturnal activity if she is not even there? Games makers need to be less lazy and make games more social. Then then need to make sure that boxes are accurate.

Thank you to http://www.co-optimus.com/ for allowing me to find games that have couch coop with my mates. Otherwise I would never find anything to play.

The Battles Of Gaming - Part 3

Gran Turismo vs Forza Motorsport

Gran Turismo was the first Racing Simulation to hit our consoles as far back as the Playstation. It was something that had not really been done before with realistic looking cars and more importantly handling models. It had a staggering amount of cars all with different feels and became a massive hit. GT was pretty much the only game in this sub genre for a while (Others had tried but always came out on the arcade style) GT was onto its third reincarnation by the time its true competitor entered the market. Forza Motorsport came on the Xbox and was for all intents and purposes GT for the Xbox. Very similar in look and feel with an equally wide range of cars it was pretty much a clone. In fact I think it was called the GT clone. However after a few years it became evident that this was no mere clone and that the team at Turn10 seriously wanted the crown. They were putting out new games nearly every year and they were not just reskins but improvements. GT on the other hand stalled a bit between GT4 and GT5 allowing Forza to release several games while it only put out one and also Forza branded out into open world driving with Forza Horizon putting the same cars but on dirt tracks, hill climbs and speed runs through crowded open roads. Forza is coming back again as a launch title on the Xbox One while at present GT is going to hit PS4 but we are not sure when. This battle is a little open as the games are on opposing platforms but most fans will state that theirs is the best. Quality is close but Forza probably edging ahead as they releasing a bit more often. However Sony will not let their franchise go down without a fight and I expect something big soon.

FIFA vs PES (Pro Evolution Soccer)

FIFA is the longest running Football game. It has been going since 1993 and pretty much been a yearly purchase for me. As it was pretty much the only football simulation game back then it had the monopoly of the market and also of the licence. It was one of the only football games allowed to use proper players names and likenesses. However in 1997 it got a rival. Pro Evolution Soccer (WInning Eleven in certain countries) landed and even though it was not allowed to use the correct player names (Roberto Corlos!) it quickly stole FIFA's crown. FIFA I feel had taken things a bit easy. There had been no competition and so they were caught on the back foot and quickly Pro Evo was seemly the game of choice for many football fan as far as 2008. This is when FIFA struck back. FIFA had built a new game from the ground up and god was it good. Since then PES seems to have struggled to keep pace and FIFA are again dominate. This could all swing again as it only takes a new gaming model to grab players attention. It is good that we have two games keeping each other honest as the games are benefitting. The FIFA's of old got complacent. This battle can only benefit football fans.

Sony vs Microsoft vs Nintendo

Okay so my images are not correct but its the concept that I want! The console battle of today is more high profile and more diverse than ever before. Looking back to when gaming was fairly new only Nintendo have been with us since then. Console manufacturers have come and gone and staying in the market can be as short as one poor console. 

We have three huge companies in the market today but who is the main man?

The answer here is tricky. If you look at the last 5 years the console that shipped the most consoles world wide was the Nintendo Wii with around 100 million sold (Xbox 79 million and PS3 78 and change). So this would appear that nintendo are the strongest in the field right? Well it is not so clear. Yes they sold huge numbers of the Wii but it is widely known that most Wii owners do not buy that many games for the machine. For example for every 1 game an owner would buy for a Wii it is believed they would buy 5-10 for the other consoles. This is maybe an explanation to what has happened since. 

Nintendo released the Wii U last year and at the time it was the only new console on the horizon. After its initial launch went well the console has been outsold month by month by consoles 5 years old. The Wii U sold just 180000 units compared to well over 250000 units of both PS3 and Xbox 360. On top of this, at this years E3 most big games publishers stated they had NO plans to make games for the console.. After 6 months the console has not sold and the people making games seem to have abandoned ship. Is the console rubbish? No but it appears to be aimed at a market that is not really there. Will this be the end of Nintendo? No thankfully. Nintendo are still hugely profitable and have the 3DS handheld to fall back on. Plus they do have plenty of exclusive in house games that will keep them afloat. However I would not be surprised to see the normal 5 year life of a console be cut very short and a new machine come in at the end of 2014 or 2015. At present they do not appear to be in the new battle that is forming.

That battle seems to be between Sony and Microsoft. This was thought to be the battle of the last generation as the Xbox 360 and PS3 went head to head. On this battlefield it was Xbox that took an early lead. This was mainly due to an error from Sony. Due to development issues and the cost of components Sony launched nearly a year later than the Xbox. They had potentially the more powerful machine but it cost nearly £100 more than their rival and was a year late. At this point the Xbox had a huge fan base and the developers of games had a year of experience. As you can see the sales numbers were and are close and so Sony have done well getting back into things, but it did lose its hold of the market from the past. 

Moving into the next generation that are hitting this winter have Microsoft kept the lead? Ironically no. They seem to have hit the same issues that the PS3 did last time round. The console is going to be more expensive, slightly less powerful and more to the point, through some terrible marketing and press releases they seem to have annoyed almost all their fans. After E3 Xbox were in so much trouble they had to change almost all of what they said to match Sony. It was almost embarrassing how badly it all went. 

Has the battle then been won by Sony? It is not clear as Microsoft have tried some huge ploys to win back favour and to a degree it has worked (I will be buying an Xbox One at launch and a PS4 later down the line) but for the majority it is still open. We will not know how this battle has played out until this time next year. will it be as close as this generation? That is the most likely and to be fair the best thing in my opinion. Choice and competition very rarely leads to anything bad. It keeps companies improving and moving things forward. Would we have gone as far as we have with the machines we use having only one on the market? Would we have the wide range of games? 

I hope to see more battles appear in gaming and new things being tried to try and leapfrog the other. That way things will move forward and the consumer will be the ones to benefit.

The Battles of Gaming - Part 2

Resident Evil vs Silent Hill

Now this is an interesting battle. both of these games date back to the 90s and the Playstation. During this period, scaring the shit out of people seemed to be the name of the game and these two franchises did it in spades. Resident Evil was set in a normal US city which had been affected by a man made virus, while Silent Hill was in a messed up alternative dimension. Both were very good and had huge fan bases. Most people I knew played them both and would be very positive about them. But something happened and both these games seems to have lost the war. Resident Evil has become an empty vessel of what it once was. There is very little of the original game left. Silent Hill seems to have gone too crazy and lost most of its audience after the fourth in the series. But although these two once giant games have all but died a horrible and painful death, there are signs of others taking over. Dead Space was the latest to really make a big impression with three solid titles. But coming into the next generation there are two more coming which look very promising. Outlast is proper survival horror as you have no weapons in what appears to be a lunatic asylum gone wild and there is also ‘The Evil Within’. The Evil Within is actually designed by the guy who did the first Resident Evil game and that series return to some sort of form in Resident Evil 4. This is not to say that it will be the new Resident Evil but there are plenty of people hoping it will be. This genre is currently the undead. It is waking to be cured and there is an audience for the right game.



Virtua Tennis vs Top Spin

Virtua Tennis as a franchise has been around a long time. It was certainly a Dreamcast game and was probably the first tennis simulation on the games consoles (It also did okay in arcades). Graphically always sound and technically pretty solid it did some good numbers. Top Spin came along in the Xbox days and seemed to perfect the Virtua Tennis model taking it a little further towards realism. Now I am a tennis player and I played Top Spin as I felt the way it played was more like the real sport. Virtua Tennis for me was a little bit simple but more accessible and the mini games made it feel like an arcade game. Now both did ok. Both had good reviews and both have gone on for a few years. but suddenly both of these games seem to have disappeared. We even now have EA Sports Grand Slam Tennis which did well as it was unopposed in the market. Now tennis games are not huge profit drivers and so I can see why they are not coming out frequently but there is a market for the right game. It would be interesting to see what would be crowned champ if all three came out at the same time. I would put my money on 2K and Top Spin as if you look at EA vs 2K then EA are looking vulnerable (Just look at NBA Live!)



Guitar Hero vs Rock Band

Yet again this was EA vs Activision, Goliath vs Goliath…. And both failed!

The issue here was not that the games were poor as they were both almost identical and both had the same controls and similar music etc etc. The issue was that the makers put too many out too quickly. Within about 3 years we had nearly 20 games!! Guitar Hero 1,2, 3, 5, World Tour, Aerosmith, Smash hits, Van Halen, Metallica, Warriors of Rock and then we move on to Rock Band 1, 2, 3, The Beatles, AC/DC and Green Day. there was also Lego Rock Band and Band Hero….. the market was just saturated and the problem was that you could not import songs between games. It just got to the point where nobody could be bothered anymore. It is a shame as I still like breaking out the guitar, mic and drums and having a band night murdering Queen in my cats screwing voice! They tried DJ Hero in the hope that that would take off but that fell flat too. I think that if you released a disc with just songs on from the other games that it would sell. Maybe not huge huge numbers but enough to make a decent profit. The fun is there just not at £30-£40 a pop every few weeks.

The Battles of Gaming - Part 1

We all love our games and love to play the best in the market. However the best in the market can be a rather heated debate. 

There have been many games companies go up against each other year after year for the title of best First Person Shooter, Racer, Footie Sim etc etc. Sometimes there really is not much to choose between the two, other times the gulf is massive. In this article I am going to take a look at some of the battles of old as well as the current ones.

Lets start with the first and probably the best known rivalry in console gaming.

Mario vs Sonic. 

These two were the mascots of their rival systems through the 90s. As the Megadrive and the Super Nintendo went head to head so did these two. They were very similar side scrolling games but playing them was very different. Sonic was all about speed and using this to get around. Even the levels were about speed. You could complete one of the first few stages in a matter of seconds. Mario was more about abilities and moving through levels intelligently. In the early days these two sold fairly similar numbers. Look at the market today and Mario is still the lead in many games while Sonic appears as more of a bit part in Sega collection games. Is this fair on the quality of the games? I would say so. Mario adapted and created new aspects and skills that made the games change and grow. Nintendo did brilliantly in making the character feel approachable and yet challenging. Sonic just seemed to be very one dimensional. There was never really anything that changed. They attempted using other characters to add variation but they never seemed to be as accepted as Mario and his pals.

Street Fighter vs Mortal Kombat (Was this an actual game? MK has gone against everything else!)

Again another 90s rivalry between two fighting houses. By the time Mortal Kombat (Why the K??) came around there was already a number of Street fighter games and these had been in arcades for years. Still it did not stop MK from being hugely popular mainly due to its gore and brutal fatalities. Again we can look through to today and see one franchise still fairly strong while the other has had to try gimmicks to try and stay in the peoples focus. Mortal Kombat has gone up against Marvel, DC, Capcom, The Carebears (Not really but they might win for a change) and not really done all that great. Street Fighter may have disappeared for a while but did come back strongly in the late 2000s with Street Fighter 4 which seemed to pick up where the old games finished off. This battle I do not think is completely over and there are some promising games coming onto the scene (Injustice). fighters are a bit of a unique market and do not always get picked up by the mass market, this may be why they seem to come and go from the market.

Mario Kart vs The World.

Here we are back again to the colourful and loved Mario. Like I said this guy is still hugely popular and to be fair it is easy to see why. I do not think there is a bad game with Mario in it, none. Mario Kart has been so dominant that any other game has always been compared to it and lost. You see a review for a karting game such as Crash Team Racing, Little Big Planet Karting, Looney Tunes Racing, Diddy Kong Racing and Sega All Stars Racing and every single one will be compared to Mario Kart. And they have all failed! The only one recently that seems have done okay was Sonic All Stars Racing Transformed as it did something different with the flying and water based sections of tracks (the less said about F1 Race Stars the better). Mario is Kart king and I cannot see that ever changing.

Call of Duty vs Battlefield (and versus Medal of Honor but that's crap)

This one started off in a weird way. Call of Duty was not always Call of Duty. It was called Medal of Honor before EA and Infinity Ward fell out and EA kept the name but Infinity went on to start up with Activision and create rival game Call of Duty. Cutting this short the battle between Medal of Honor and COD was short. Medal of Honor was rubbish, Cod was good, the end! So a few years later suddenly a new game appeared on the scene. Battlefield was born by no other than EA (who'd have thunk it!) and it was pretty popular. The games were in the same genre but even to today they are actually very different. COD out sells Battlefield most years however I think Battlefield has the better review averages. COD fans seem to buy it regardless (Not saying it is a bad game) and the two sides are very opposed. Some of the marketing campaigns for the two have been great as they take the piss out of eachother. Medal of Honor did try to come back a few years ago but they should put it to rest, it is over. It will remain a laughing stock so just leave it alone. Between BF and COD I think the battle will go on as they both sell well and have different audiences. that may of course change but at the moment it is them vs us!

Championship Manager vs Football Manager

This rivalry is very similar to that of Medal of Honor and Call of Duty. The game makers who used to make Championship Manager were fed up of having Eidos Entertainment telling them how to make their game. They decided to leave but could not take the name. So Football Manager was born. This was fairly funny as with most name changes the majority of people are not aware so a name can shift a large amount without being the same game. But when it comes to PC gaming this is completely opposite. Champ Manager failed, it failed hard and has all but disappeared. No other Soccer Management game comes close to FM in sales and quality. The battle here is won and I doubt there will be anything in the future to change it.

Part two coming soon.

MR