Boom Boom Rocket Interview

Getting the lowdown on EA's first XBLA title.

At a press event in north London on the 5th of April, EA unveiled their first ever Xbox Live Arcade title, the rhythm action game Boom Boom Rocket, made by Bizarre Creations, creators of the award winning Project Gotham Racing series and the simple yet frighteningly enthralling Geometry Wars.

Boom Boom Rocket revolves around triggering off fireworks as the camera pans around moonlit 3D cityscapes to the beat of ten classical music tracks remixed by the composer Ian Livingstone. The game which has been worked on by the Pogo team who’ve had great recent successes in the casual game market aims to appeal to a range of skill levels, difficulties ranging between a comfortable pace for the less capable player to a frenzied rush for those looking for a more intense challenge. Visually the title is fairly spectacular, Steve Cakebread who worked on Geometry Wars was brought in to ensure the final product would have the same psychedelic palette and style as the aforementioned XBLA title, again focussing on maxing out the 360’s power without attempting to reproduce reality in games; the combo fuelled powerup is a showcase of this, rewarding players’ skill with not only extra points but also an intense pulsating showcase of graphical prowess.

Having had the chance to play the game I can happily say it’s an enjoyable little title- unrestricted by the specific genre focus of games like Guitar Hero it’s accessible, simple to play and my main thought when playing the game was that they’d hit the nail on the head with the rhythm mechanics. Offering depth and difficulty for the masochistic number grinding gamer and a selection of pretty colours and loud music for those like myself who rather enjoy an inebriated turn taking session with friends after a night out on the lash, it’s looking to be a gem of a title all round.

The game will be available for purchase on XBLA around mid April, retailing at 800 points the game features simultaneous two player on the same screen, Xbox live high scores, Endurance and Practice modes, as well as a visualization option which will shower you with an array of pretty explosions in time to music from your own collection. The final part of the package is the child/drunk friendly Freestyle mode which allows you to set off fireworks without having to actually worry about the timing of when you pull off your spectacular moves in relation to the music, rather like dancing in a darkened corner of a nightclub.

During the event I managed to grab hold of Boom Boom Rocket project leaders Sam Hall and Nick Bygrave for a few minutes to have an informal interview discussing their thoughts on the soon to be released title, the motivations and influences behind the final build of the game and a little discussion about the rise of the increasingly popular rhythm genre…

Thanks for the interview guys! I’ll dive straight in here; let’s talk about the music…

Q: What about the choice of using remixed classical music in the game, was that a conscious choice for the game’s direction or was it just a realistic route for making the production more affordable by avoiding licensing fees?

Obviously that is a factor, and avoiding the license fees helped- but working with original music and working with a composer allowed us to make sure that music and levels worked really well together, and we wouldn’t have had that flexibility with licensed music.

Q: Are you looking into the possibility of extra music packs for Boom Boom Rocket to download over XBLA?

It’s something we’ve considered certainly, there’s nothing set out yet but we’ll see what feedback we get from the game- it’s definitely a distinct possibility.

Q: What about the choice of Ian Livingstone for the game’s music?

We’ve worked with Ian before on the Gotham Racing 2 theme music so we knew he was a good composer; he looked at the game and the track he sent us just instantly worked, so we had him work with us again for Boom Boom Rocket. It’s been a very closely linked process, the levels and the music being developed simultaneously, allowing a much tighter rhythm game experience than we would have been able to make using licensed music.

Q: Playing it reminded me rather of the dancing minigame in Rayman: Raving Rabbids on the Wii due to the fact that rather than just hitting buttons to the beat, in Boom Boom Rocket the timing focuses on different aspects of the music and it seems to fit really well, did getting away from bassline-focus that electronic music rhythm games have help make the style of the game more varied?

Yeah, we could apply lots of different styles of music to the game and really play around with it a bit more- obviously the aim was to use music that would be familiar to as many people as possible, certainly that was where the choice of classical music came in: people would recognise the songs from adverts and TV programs, and remixing them in styles that people would recognize as sounding like specific bands or artists seemed to give us a good coverage that people will be able to relate to and enjoy.

Q: In terms of the visual presentation of the game at least it does remind me an awful lot of the early PS2 title Fantavision, have you used many of the aspects of that game in Boom Boom Rocket?

We’ve never actually played Fantavision actually- we were worried early on that people were just going to make this comparison, and that it might be a thorn in our side. The visual similarities are there of course, you’ve got the fireworks and the cityscape backdrops, but the gameplay is very different- Fantavision was more of a puzzler where as this is pure rhythm action, and hopefully when people play the game they’ll see past the aesthetic comparisons and realise that in terms of gameplay it probably has more in common with something like Guitar Hero.

Q: Well admittedly I’d have to agree with you there- the most striking aspect of the game I found when I was playing it was that I seemed pretty incapable of playing it without being able to hear the music, and that’s something that all music based games should really strive to achieve isn’t it?

Well when we were doing the early testing we’d sat people down with the game and seen that they were trying to concentrate on hitting the buttons as the fireworks crossed over the line, which is of course what you’re supposed to do, but after telling them not to concentrate so much on the visuals and just keep in time with the music something and then suddenly something just clicked. Amazingly there’s a video on Youtube of our EA producer Joe playing an entire level on hard blindfolded and still getting an A* rank, it’s something we didn’t really know about until we saw it later, but after seeing that obviously we became much more confident that we were on the right track with making the game musically focused.

Q: I mean I’m not particularly into my rhythm games, but in within about thirty seconds of playing I really started to get the urge to start moving my feet about, the only other game that’s made me feel like that recently is probably again: Guitar Hero, have you found similar responses when playtesting?

Hahah, yeah- when we were showing you all a demo of the game earlier I felt a bit conscious of the fact I was playing it infront of a room full of people; I HAD to bob my head a bit, just to help keep the groove…

Q: Going back the music in the game, given the choice personally is there any particular genre of music that you’d really like to integrate into Boom Boom Rocket?

That’s a good question… Personally I like dance and house music, but that’s pretty much catered for in the game already- When we started work on the game we were using mainly pop music, it kind of worked ok, but it didn’t quite feel right. We haven’t really had to predict what music would work in the game, and that’s been interesting- it’s all been pretty trial and error in terms of getting music to fit the game, trying out new songs and styles and getting feedback until we had something that seemed to work. Having direct access to the composer made a huge difference, it meant we were able to make changes to the music to fit with the game rather than vice versa. I don’t think any one kind of music works better than any other, it’ll be interesting to see what other styles we end up using if we carry on in the same direction we’ve been going in the production process we’ve used so far; with gameplay and music being developed in tandem it opens us up to a lot of exciting possibilities for the future.

Q: Certainly in the brief time playing Boom Boom Rocket despite the totally different visual stylings it reminded me a little of the PS2 music game Rez in terms of the almost hypnotic nature of the game- is this a game you’d relate to more than Fantavision for describing your influences?

Absolutely, we love Rez. We work as a part of the audio team for Bizarre, there’s been about nine of us in total all playing a part in the process of making the game, all of us from a musical background which of course has added a lot to the game- it’s a very different from Rez, but we think it’s different in a good way.

Q: Yeah, it’s definitely much more simplified, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing- aesthetically it’s basically just a 2D game with pretty graphical effects, but with sound based games it’s often best sometimes to keep it simple visually.

I think again that was definitely an intention, I mean at times during production the game did start to become more complicated and we had to keep reining it back in to keep the core gameplay simple and get it right rather than throwing in loads of extra stuff that didn’t quite feel right.

Q: On a personal level, what would you guys like to do next? Would you be interested in any point at going back to something in the style of Fur Fighters and perhaps making a similarly styled third person shooter for XBLA, or do you think that area’s been covered strongly enough by full price titles currently in the market?

We’d certainly not like to rule anything out for the future, and if we had an idea for something similar that we imagined could be good fun then I’m sure it’s certainly something that Bizarre would investigate. From the team’s point of view we’re all working on titles to be published this year that’ll be keeping us busy for the next few months, but beyond that we’d certainly like to start work on something else and I’m sure the company would like to keep up the momentum we’ve got at the moment with our current team; it’s been really enjoyable.

Q: Again, with the XBLA limit recently bumped up to a fairly generous 250mb it’s opened up a lot of possibilities- Again on a personal level, in an ideal world where you could make any title you’d like to for XBLA, what sort of game would you love to make?

Hahah, well obviously most of our lunchtime sessions are spent discussing that question, but it’s more often than not just ideas being thrown around that are concept over substance. Personally I’d like to make something a little more abstract in the vein of Rez, but there’s no plans in the pipeline for anything like that- we all love that kind of game, but it’s a bit too niche.

Q. That’s understandable, but at the same time it seems music based titles are definitely on the rise: Dance Dance Revolution is recognized the world over and it seems Guitar Hero is quickly heading that way- also titles on the way such as Boogie for Wii and the recently announced Rock Band look to suggest that music games are starting to move more into the limelight of the games world. Obviously the focus of these games musically has often been commercial dance and pop and more recently rock music, but do you think the rise in popularity of the genre could open up a gap in the market for the more niche electronic music based titles? would you be interested in moving on with what you’ve learnt and achieved with Boom Boom Rocket onto something a little more abstract?

Well obviously we can’t speak for the company, but that appeals to very highly, yes. We come from a background of making music, so any game that can achieve a sense of you being involved in making music whilst playing would be an amazing achievement. It seems like there are a lot of generic games in the genre, and as it’s such a wide new market there’s a lot of exciting uncharted territory to explore. Going back to Guitar Hero- It’s great because it’s brought the rhythm game back into the mainstream, taking away the image of your little sister playing Britney’s dance beat and making enjoying rhythm games something that gamers no longer feel they should be ashamed of.

Thanks again to Sam Hall and Nick Bygrave from Bizarre Creations for their time, I shall be looking forward to getting my teeth into some more Boom Boom Rocket mid-April!

Review: Pacman Rally

If you’ve taken that many pills you shouldn’t be allowed to drive.

Pacman’s back for another inexplicable PS2 outing, joined once more by all of your favourite Namco characters! That’s right- you’ve got Pacman, Ms Pacman, the Ghosts… and a couple of other blokes that noone really seems at all able to recognise. So what are we looking at here then? A franchise fuelled identikit kart racer aimed at young children? Well, the short answer to this is… Yes. Unfortunately the long answer isn’t much different, the main question rushing around my head when playing this game being primarily: “Why does this game even exist?” Pacman’s clearly a character who only holds real appeal to retro gamers, and his more recent 3D incarnations somehow lack the charm he mysteriously managed to muster in his days spent mindlessly munching his way through a maze. But it’s at this point I started to get confused - while I’m absolutely apathetic towards the character I admit they’ve given the guy a little dash of flair in the game, he often performs purely aesthetic stunts while you race about, it’s truly endearing to see that Pacman’s having a whale of a time. Unfortunately, I’m not.

Before I sink my canines in, I’ll tell you what I enjoyed about Pacman Rally: I enjoyed some of the level designs, there are a fair few exciting jumps in the game and some of the characters who pop up around the levels are adorable, particularly the dinosaur on one of the jungle tracks who oozes charisma despite only being visible on screen for about 2 seconds every lap. Now’s probably a good time to frown, being that in my experience of the game the most memorable character throughout the game was in all honesty, an obstacle. But at the same time, it doesn’t feel fair to slate Pacman Rally, as it’s not really that bad a game; it’s just horrendously average…

Graphically it’s a meat and potato affair, some of the levels having a bit of colourful charm, but many look a bit more dull (if you’re gonna make a ‘crazy’ kart racing game, there’s no sense in holding back your palette, eh?) Some of the level design and presentation however is quite lovely; some of the more open courses, despite lacking polish, are pretty exciting to race around. Around half of the courses are pretty awful to play sadly, having been made to consist of only set square corners, they feel constricted and unpleasant to race around, unlike the more enjoyable courses which are wide tracked and curvy in a Diddy Kong Racing kind of manner.

Unfortunately controlling the karts isn’t even nearly on par with the N64 classic; you’ve got all the bells and whistles you’d expect in any modern kart racing game, when inevitably compared to Mario Kart it just feels… clunky. There’s no sense of weight or impact when driving about, at times you feel like you’re just floating around the course. Even when you’re going at a fairly satisfying speed the whole experience is a little disjointed. The weapon powerups are pretty much an iffy rip-off of Mario Kart, green, red, and blue bombs all do exactly what you’d expect them to, just in a much less satisfying manner than good old shells. The other powerups are a mishmash of often overcomplicated objects that do all the usual stuff you’d expect, and sadly the lack of simplicity here does make the game a bit less aesthetically cohesive than it could have been overall.

One of the main features of the game is the Pac-mobile meter; a bar that you fill up by collecting Pac-Dots around the course then use to transform your character into a giant mechanical Pacman, changing all of the other racers briefly into blue ghosts ready to be chomped up. It’s an admirable idea, and brought the game up to a level of creativity I wasn’t really expecting when I first tried out this special move - sadly it doesn’t feel like it plays an important enough part in the game to be anything other than a gimmick. The Pac-mobile is clunky and difficult to steer, the speed boost you achieve is minimal, and after the initial smug grin of eating a few other racers it just feels like an unwanted extension of the invincibility star in Mario Kart, which is a shame as it’s probably one of the few mechanics in the game that, if treated with more care, could have given Pacman Rally a bit of an edge. Multiplayer’s not even worth my time to discuss; it doesn’t support more than two players - need I say more?

The music adds to the sense of inconsistency in an often hilarious manner - many of the in game tunes involve the ‘Pacman tune’ being sampled or remixed, which leaves much of the music fairly painful to listen to after a few minutes due to the entirety of his theme tune lasting about eight seconds. In stark contrast to this however, some levels have hugely intense and epic music that feels like it’s been ripped straight out of a budget survival-horror game, while some levels have some rather chilled-out acoustic guitar offerings that are, frankly rather lovely.

Overall the problem with Pacman Rally lies in the general inconsistency with which the game has been made. It lacks a sense of focus in nearly every aspect of production, the stark differences between level design feel sloppy; as if the people who made them failed to keep good communications throughout the designing process, resulting in two vastly different styles of racing games for which one racing engine had to fit. Inevitably it doesn’t work too well, making the tight cornered and more restricted races significantly less fun to play, something which when combined with the lack of a cohesive style both mechanically and aesthetically renders the game fairly lifeless and lacking charm. Multiplayer options are just severely lacking in general, and it only took me about an hour to complete the entire game. Don’t be fooled by the “it’s for kids” mentality and take my advice; Get Mario Kart 64 on the Wii Virtual Console service. It’s cheaper, it’s better, and you’ll have a hell of a lot more fun.

Graphics: 6

Gameplay: 5

Sound: 6

Lifespan: 3

Overall: 5

Review: Burnout Dominator

Are you sure you’re driving on the wrong side of the road?

The Burnout series has come a long way since its humble beginnings on the Gamecube, never being afraid to tweak the mechanics of its newer iterations to give them each their own unique style hidden under their seemingly identical bonnets. Burnout 3 is seen by many as the seminal game in the series, taking the focus away from precision driving and encouraging players to give in to their inner beast and become a vicious predator on wheels; a shift in the series’ focus that made the game arguably one of the best arcade style racers ever made. With Burnout 5 soon on the way to quell the speed needs of next-gen junkies, EA have thrown us a bone in the form of Burnout: Dominator, a title which offers all new tracks to bomb around for those who really just can’t wait for the next official sequel in the series. With Burnout 5 seemingly intent on taking a whole new direction on the franchise, this could be the last classic burnout game we see for a while and overall it’s a nice package; combining the old racing focused mechanics of Burnout 2 with the more realistic graphical tone of Burnout 4. Dominator doesn’t have ideas above its station: it’s a self confessed remix to tide us over until the series takes its next step forward with the likely changes the official sequel will bring- sadly I have to say that Dominator doesn’t cater for me personally, the game choosing to focus on the earlier ideals of the series rather than offering up more of the instant visceral action that Takedown kept on lovingly giving.

Now before I begin, I’d like to make something clear: I love Burnout 3. It’s probably one of my favourite racing games ever, so when reading what I have to say about Dominator take it with a pinch of salt; on many accounts this really is a great game, but largely when compared to Burnout 3 there are some shortcomings and changes that aren’t too welcome in my mind, and as it only seems fair to compare Dominator to the last outing on the system which undoubtedly raised the bar for arcade racing games in general I’m not going to be pulling any punches when it comes to comparisons. First of all, there’s one unforgivable problem with Dominator: The loading times. Confusingly however the problem doesn’t arise when loading levels, but when autosaving your progress to a memory card after each race- usually taking around 7 or 8 seconds to record your updated statistics, an amount of time that seems frankly ridiculous; get over the time you’ll have to wait to get back to the main menu after each race however and you’ll be well on your way to having a blast.

You can still expect the trademark Burnout playing style of smoothly drifting through traffic on the wrong side of the road to boost your score and fill up the ever precious boost bar, but rather than upgrading the bar’s capacity with takedowns the maximum charge is a fixed amount, the focus this time being on achieving Burnout Chains by totally filling the boost meter then discharging it all in a frantic blaze whilst achieving your quota of dangerous driving before the bar runs dry to fully replenish your boost and adding a score multiplier- it’s this aspect of the game that you’ll get your adrenaline pumping, Dominator encouraging you to keep on boosting for as long as you possibly can; releasing your finger from the boost button at any point during a chain breaking it and putting a major dent in the incline of both your speed and score. It’s a mechanic that’s a blessing and a curse- reaching 10X multipliers through chaining is absolutely thrilling, but it takes time to build up to such a level and once you’ve gotten a taste of the fast life it becomes increasingly harder to get your kicks when playing dominator.

Visually there’s not really all that much to say about Dominator that you shouldn’t already know, in terms of appearance it seems to be an identical build to Burnout 3- the only noticeable difference being a preference towards sepia tones in the colour scheme which sometimes makes oncoming traffic more tricky to spot, and the game having a more grounded, less flashy visual approach all round. Realism has definitely become more of a focus all round in this iteration, don’t expect to see the same level of pizazz when it comes to cascades of sparks and metallic debris flying about as you carelessly romp around the tracks. This grounded feel isn’t restricted to the aesthetics of Dominator either, the physics engine isn’t set to 11 anymore which in short means that; when you crash it’s rarely very spectacular, and achieving takedowns isn’t the cakewalk PS2 owners may have gotten used to. The takedown camera also seems rather intent on frightening the hell out of you, something which I’m not entirely sure is unintentional: Rival cars don’t seem as inclined to spin out and crash when you ram into them this time around meaning that you usually have to forcibly shunt them into obstacles to achieve a takedown- the problem with this is that the camera angle switch is far faster than in Burnout 3, often leaving you being unsure if you’ve successfully taken out the enemy driver or screwed it up and foolishly crashed your own car, which tends to break up the sense of pace at times. When you do crash your own car the camera angles are often quite tight and claustrophobic, taking the only real gift of messing up out of the experience: getting to see a nice wide angle depicting just how spectacularly badly you judged that drift. This shortcoming is pretty much forgiven for the inclusion of the Crashbreaker into many of the game modes, allowing you to steer your wrecked car towards oncoming racers in traditional slow-motion glory before triggering explosions to cause a gauntlet of destruction for your opponents to try and weave through, and with the scale of explosion being dependent on how full your boost bar was when you crashed it takes away some of the misery of piling into oncoming traffic with a bar full of turbo. Again however, another tradeoff for this is a lack of Crash mode, something which I can certainly live without but many may miss.

Dominator is a great racing title all round, but it’s an entirely different kettle of fish when compared to Burnout 3; it’s more focussed on controlled racing rather than visceral carnage, and if you’re looking for another fix of metallic brutality then you might find Dominator a little disappointing. The lack of online modes and an emphasis on control and focus mean that it’s a much more solitary racing experience, one which rewards those who put the time into mastering it but lacks the casual appeal of it’s PS2 predecessor. The grounded style it offers will likely appeal to fans of more realistic racing games, but those looking for a quick fix of nitro fuelled fun with a few friends will find more joy in cracking out your old copy of Burnout 3 for an encore.

A solid and well made game, but one that’s just not quite as much fun as Burnout 3.

Graphics: 8
Gameplay: 8
Sound: 8
Lifespan: 7

Overall: 8

Review: Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin

Art Attack

Castlevania’s back for its second outing on the DS, and once more nothing’s really changed: Vampires are being badly behaved, and there’s a castle full of ghastly beasties to trawl through. It’s 1942 and the vampire Brauner’s been trying his hand at a bit of oil painting, with rather evil results… and what’s all this? An automated sidekick? This is the most immediately unwelcome addition to the series, and frankly when you play PoR for the first time, you’re not going to like it as much as its predecessor Dawn of Sorrow. You’ll want Soma back. You’ll miss your souls.

I’ll stop myself here though, because this isn’t a criticism: Castlevania titles are usually held in such high esteem by gamers that any changes are often ill received at first by fans, as once again the series which has evolved a fixed Metroid styled exploration theme continues to innovate once more in its new outing.

Compared to it’s predecessor, early impressions of Portrait led me to believe the game was shallow, gimmicky, and rehashed: Having a sidekick back me up in combat made me feel dirty, there didn’t seem to be enough depth to customization, and many of the enemies had been ripped straight out of Symphony of the Night, much as with Dawn of Sorrow. But after continuing to play for a few more hours, suddenly it all clicked into place, and it became crystal clear in my mind that Portrait of Ruin is an absolute corker of a game.

First off, this game gives you options galore- most important of these regards your aforementioned sidekick, Charlotte. Personally, at first I hated the inclusion of a computer controlled ally- and throughout most of the game I didn’t use her at all, it took me a while to realise the true nature of Charlotte; She’s simply an optional feature which allows deeper customization alongside a huge amount of extra moves and strategies which you can use if you want to. You can either have her act as a summon who quickly pops in to provide support or you can have her backing you up full time and fighting enemies alongside you. You’ll have probably noticed by now that I keep describing the uncontrolled character as being the female half of the team, and surprisingly this isn’t just because of my hugely misogynistic nature… After delving deeper into the stat grinding aspect of PoR, it becomes quite clear that Jonathon is intended to be the main character for most of the game; His skills receive experience through repeated use, whilst her spells cannot improve, and he has a much wider variety of moves to perform than Charlotte- who whilst being fairly powerful doesn’t hold her own as a fully playable character, and I expect was never intended to.

The lack of souls as mentioned earlier is rather disconcerting at first, but by combining the weapons, armour, spells, subweapons, and trinkets that enemies drop it doesn’t feel like the customisation element has been lost at all; Jonathon’s subweapons in particular offer more variety than you can shake a stick at, as well as each having their own experience level to max out, which opens up a frankly silly amount of grind-time for even the most masochistic completionist. Adding to the already rather substantial beef of the package, not wanting to include spoilers I’ll just say that the game world itself is rather huge- and there’s even a decent bunch of optional quests to keep you entertained and well equipped along the way. Even though the entire game can be completed in about 10-12 hours, there’s an undeniably epic feel to the adventure- I usually found that one hour playing felt like 3; forget value for money, this game is incredible value for time.

The bosses vary in difficulty, but they’re all awesomely inventive- hitting that marvellous sweet-spot of game development where you can happily be killed by a boss two or three times simply because you’re so surprised at the inventiveness of their attacks and animations that you forget you’re supposed to be miffed.

The audio in PoR is fantastic, the typically sharp smashing and bashing sounds laid over the catchy score gives the sense of drama and adventure that’s expected, and the vocal soundbites used are too infrequent to ever really get annoying- which in my mind is a massive technical feat. Visually Portrait of Ruin is an absolute treat, continuing the DS tradition of alternating between beautifully detailed 2D backgrounds and slightly fuzzier but rather epic 3D backdrops; they add a very real sense of solidarity and style to the environments you whip your way through- some of the later backdrops interact with your character in a manner which is overwhelmingly creepy despite technically being quite basic. The entirety of the level ‘Nation of Fools’ is a good example of the sometimes disturbing nature of PoR; The mechanics give it an awkward, claustrophobic feel which combined with the gruesome boss gives the entire area a rather brilliantly crafted feeling of discomfort and dread. Animations throughout the game are consistently fantastic: Even when walking through recycled environments in the later parts of the game the new enemies that pop up will have you absolutely mesmerised at times, keeping the game feeling fresher than you might have expected at this stage. But it’s not just the monsters keeping you on your toes- unlike its predecessor PoR’s control system is built upon throughout the game, leaving you with controls that are almost of the complexity of a decent beat-em-up. But of course, you can also quite happily just play it like a standard Castlevania title and ignore most of the new stuff if you’d like to as well.

Again, it’s this feeling of choice that makes Portrait of Ruin such an exceptional game; they’ve added a huge amount of complexity to the controls and customization that you can quite happily just ignore without being penalised by the game. The early impressions of innovation and change are a misinterpretation of what is simply an extension of what handheld Castlevania fans have grown to love- more customization, more to explore, more to collect. Many of the complaints about PoR have regarded the in-game recycling of environments, but considering this re-use adds a huge amount of extra content to the game I really can’t complain. The one criticism I must make about PoR is the inventory system, which is poorly organized and at times buckles under the weight of all the goodies you hoard throughout the game; it always seems particularly difficult to find stuff that you’ve just picked up even when you know exactly what the item was called.

Sure, this game doesn’t really do anything new. But what’s wrong with that? Portrait of Ruin gives fans of the series everything they could want to fiddle around with on the customisation front, and then gives you a large game world as your playground. And it does all this in a way that feels almost perfect. For your money there’s a lot of fun and thrills to be had here, backed up by some seriously beefy content. Get hunting.

It’s better than Dawn of Sorrow. What more could you want?


Graphics: 9
Gameplay: 10
Sound: 9
Lifespan: 9

Overall: 9

Review: Superman Returns

Why the world doesn’t need Superman Returns

Now before I begin to absolutely slate this half baked effort of a sandbox game, I’m going to give it a sprinkling of sympathy because the task of making a great superman game would arguably verge on being impossible; Whilst some game characters break a few of the ‘golden rules’ of games mechanics- Superman just takes the piss: He’s invincible, can fly through space, and lift up potentially anything if he’s needed to- and that’s just for starters… Superman as a character must be every game designers nightmare- the only game I’ve ever played which successfully had you playing as a protagonist who couldn’t die was the near-perfect Planescape: Torment, which only worked because the character design and narrative made this mechanic seem intrinsically linked to the game. But of course, this aint gonna work for old Superman…
Firstly, Superman is boring: he’s good for good’s sake, clean cut, trimmed, and well shaven. So if they’re not going to use an immaculate storyline to fix the mechanics issue of being invulnerable, how are they going to make it work? And the answer to this ladies and gentlemen is one you’ve probably already worked out for yourselves…
They’re not going to make it work! This game is a poorly executed mess of thrown together ideas that’s an unpleasant experience to play. Now although I could quite happily leave the review finished at that, I’ll take you deeper into the psyche of the man of steel- giving you a brief but enthralling taste of what EA have decided it’s really like to put those sexy red boots on for a day:

9:00am – Woke up on the streets of Metropolis, Would have been nice to pop over to Lois’s place but unfortunately all of the buildings appear to be cardboard boxes- but that’s ok because there’s LOADS of them. Decided to go for a fly to escape the painful framerate of downtown life.

10:36am – Cardboard buildings kept catching fire- Predictable. Robots caused mayhem around the city and I had to keep chasing them down. Despite my unsurpassable strength it seems I am unable to harm anyone who blocks their upper body with their arms: Depressing.

12:13pm – Started throwing vans around a bit. No one seemed to mind. No one seems terribly aware that I actually exist to be honest, unless I’m saving them or punching them. Typical.

12:36pm – Metropolis was destroyed while I was flying around a bit making zoom noises. Didn’t care. Tried to fly into space to negate responsibility. Couldn’t.

That’s right- being superman is boring as hell. It’s a sandbox game with responsibility- whoever thought it was going to be fun should be fired before they inevitably start work on a GTA-style milkman simulator which requires you to get up at the crack of dawn every day and fire up the batteries in your float. Superman’s invincible, so to combat that they’ve given the city itself a health bar- which in effect makes your sole purpose in the game to uphold and defend one of the most soulless game worlds you’ll ever see. Not only that, but for a city of its size it tends to become apparently irreparably damaged in no time at all- so how can you stop it? UPPERCUTS! Lots and lots of uppercuts; Superman’s never really been all that into flying really, but by god he loves a good fist fight. Well he better, otherwise in the next 5 minutes Metropolis is going to be deemed beyond help and Superman’s gonna cry into his hands like a schoolgirl with a grazed knee. Of course, Superman isn’t just limited to uppercuts- throughout the game you constantly unlock a veritable plethora of excitingly named combos which you’ll never, ever use. Why? Because like me you’ll most likely be confused and scattered, frantically hitting buttons in the hope that somehow you’ll do something that the game will like; hand to hand combat is disjointed and rough in terms of both mechanics and presentation, or in other words: I couldn’t for the life of me work out what the hell was going on most of the time, one of the main buttons used in combos is also the button which launches you into the sky and more often than not you get the latter. To add insult to injury the camera seemed to quite literally have a life of its own sometimes, occasionally zooming out hugely and maintaining inexplicably odd angles. Considering so much of the game revolves around fisticuffs it’s unforgivable just how awful the fighting system is, it gives me an overwhelming sense of being grounded and useless rather than empowered- which is rather strange considering the character you’re playing is essentially omnipotent and pretty much invincible. It’s even more depressing that the enemies described as ‘robots’ which you repeatedly get beaten up by seem to have been created using a texture and polygon variation of the timeless art of ‘lucky dip’- I’m pretty damn sure that last time I played superman took a beating from a guy who had 2D legs… equally hilarious is the ability to freeze helicopters mid air and watch them remain perfectly stationary; it seems that the development team made the logically sound decision that if Superman doesn’t obey the laws of physics, then to include physics in the game would really just have been a waste of their time.

Graphically this game is a mess, looking like a shoddy PS2 release game at best; explosions are dire and environment damage is almost entirely sprite based, animations are sluggish and Superman’s got the face of a serial killer. It’s difficult to comment on the actual world environment; although EA do often tend to specialize in generic they’ve really excelled themselves with metropolis. Oddly however, the musical score is rather lovely- having been presumably ripped from the film, and some of the sound effects used for zooming around are rather magnificent, it’s a shame that this high note is crushed by an incessant flow of cringe-worthy quips from the man of steel himself.

I think the icing on the cake for me with Superman Returns is the fact that I seem to repeatedly find myself wanting to destroy the buildings and fry innocent people with my laser eyes; I’ve never enjoyed the chaotic destructive nature of sandbox games like GTA, but being forced to work as a constant caretaker for this lifeless city just leaves me wanting to raze it to the ground. Quite simply this game is cheap and nasty, avoid at all costs.

Being an invincible demi-god has never been less fun.


Graphics 3
Gameplay 4
Sound 5
Lifespan 3
Overall 3

Article: Are Nintendo turning it all around?

After spending a few weeks with Nintendo’s new system I’m starting to get a feel for the Wiimote and I have to admit that I’m liking it a lot. Having heard much about Wii Sports I had full faith in the controller in terms of motion sensing capabilities, but I remained rather sceptical about how well the controllers would handle a title like Zelda, particularly considering the regularity of last minute indecisiveness regarding how motion sensitivity would be implemented into the game. Regardless of the potential the Wiimote had for a title such as Zelda, I think they made a good call- and interestingly the title is a great show of how easily the innovative controllers double up as a traditional style ‘pad’ so to speak. This is a great thing for Nintendo, as whilst motion sensitive games are a fantastic step forward in terms of playing style, it’s good to see that they don’t have to overly rely on this mode of control; sadly you can also expect a variety of cheap cash-in games that will sneakily infer motion sensing capabilities whilst in reality being tarted up gamecube style titles.
Wii Sports in particular is really making waves in the worldwide press at the moment, with Nintendo receiving huge accolade across the board and an unexpected sudden rise in demand for Wii consoles seemingly overtaking the insatiable desire for the PS3, you can’t help but feel that Nintendo are laughing right now… After years of speculation that the company would be soon going the way of Sega they seem to be in a very comfortable position right now. Particularly of note here is their infamously ‘bad on paper’ idea of the revolutionary handheld console that would have TWO SCREENS! The impact of the DS has been astounding, Dragon Quest IX being a hallmark sign of its domination of Japan not only as a handheld, but as a standalone console. So when did Nintendo start hitting the right buttons all of a sudden? They’ve had the same ‘games for everyone’ mantra for years; sadly one which has been misunderstood by many as being ‘games for kids’. But is this so unreasonable? Admittedly Nintendo have been making fantastic games throughout the whole of their time in the industry, but for a while their focus on reaching out to the mainstream has been taking the wrong path- creating quirky, aesthetically pleasing and colourful consoles that inferred a user friendly approach that in reality wasn’t hugely different from the other consoles on offer. Wii however is looking to change Nintendo’s philosophy into reality- Ipod chic minimalist styling is sure to raise the eyebrows of many a non-gaming consumer, and the ability to simply pick up and play games such as Wii sports shows an incredible step forward in trying to introduce gaming into a mainstream audience; not even to mention the potential impact that Wii’s exercise benefits could have on the gamer stereotype. But it’s the simple things that make Wii so accessible to non gamers, the classic frantic tilting of controllers when taking a hard corner in a racing game; cue to many a sly chuckle from ‘hardcore’ gamers is now not only totally acceptable, but in many future games will most likely be expected of the player!

Despite having put countless hours into Wii tennis, it seems that every time I play against someone who’s never touched a Wiimote before within minutes they’re on the verge of beating me. Nintendo have truly broken a new barrier between the player and the game, putting our instinctual reactions one step closer to an onscreen reality; Instinct is why Wii works so well- Unwrapping the box I was ready to come to grips with a brand new control system, but I didn’t have to. Within 5 minutes, I couldn’t even remember playing games another way- it just felt so natural. Nintendo look to have a bright future ahead of them in the next few years, and how they fare compared to Microsoft and Sony seems irrelevant now; regardless of the longterm figures of the next-gen war, gaming is going to change, and with their iron grip of the handheld market with the DS, and the inevitable link between this and their Wunderkind console: Nintendo look to be the ones to change it.

Review: Phantasy Star Universe

Confused franchise seeks genre for fun and games, maybe more.

Online gaming these days is big business; chances are if you’re reading this then you’ve either dabbled with a MMORPG, shared asphalt with a handful of strangers for a few laps, or perhaps you’re a veteran of Xbox Live who’s about to graduate from the legendary ‘School of American Smack-talk’. Or maybe like me you’re one of the few who remembers the golden era of 56k console gaming, and the swansong of the Dreamcast: Phantasy Star Online. Now ok, chances are if you’re reading this then you’ve played PSO religiously at some point; finding yourself lost in the hypnotic rhythm of the game, succumbing to its hugely repetitive but intensely gratifying cycles of grinding. If you HAVEN’T played PSO, then first of all you’ll think I’m freakishly obsessive, and secondly I think it’s about time you stop reading this review right now, and go and download Blue Burst from Sega’s website. Now this’ll be the point at which any Phantasy Star Online fans reading will feel their heart collapse like a wet paper bag full of soggy biscuits:

PSU isn’t as good as PSO. I hate to say it, part of me is surprised as hell that I have to say it; but it’s the sad truth. Now we all know that sometimes it’s hard to come to terms with the loss of a good franchise, especially those that clearly had so much potential. Devil May Cry 2 broke my heart, and left me bruised and battered in a ditch; but then Devil May Cry 3 came out, and I began to find myself having hope once again: I was one of the lucky ones. Others haven’t been so lucky, and I’d like to tell you about poor little Peter; The innocent boy who spent his whole life collecting Sonic games, only to find himself in a web of his own denial trying to convince himself that the 360 iteration was “a good game” which was “worth forty pounds”. I laughed at poor little Peter; we all did. But that was before I almost fell into the trap of Sega nostalgia myself…

I desperately wanted it to be the game I’ve waited years for, and I honestly did my very best to lie to myself that I was having fun, and that it was a great game. Then I found myself two hours into the single player game, and wanting to kill something. Now, whilst I mean this in the sense of wanting the characters to all shut the hell up with their inanely pointless chitchat and let me kill some monsters, I’m sad to say that by this point in the game I’d lost interest, and simply wanted to throw something out of the window and beat a stranger to death with my keyboard. My choice of keyboard was fairly premeditated here, as the PC version of PSU doesn’t support a mouse. You heard me right, it doesn’t support MOUSE. So, unless you’re fond of pain I’d dust off a USB controller right about now, or pick it up on the Xbox 360 instead. ‘Story Mode’ absolutely astounds me, because it manages to be infinitely more awful than the single player of PSO, which was arguably one of the most flawed and empty single player RPG experiences that I’ve ever seen, and being that I’m not actually a homicidal maniac most of the time I can’t help but think that it’s the fact that they’ve somehow taken the most broken aspect of PSO and made it MUCH worse leaves me in such a state of disbelief that my brain decides it’s about time to go a bit mental. Now am I being unreasonable here? You tell me, as I take you through the whirlwind adventure that the first few hours of PSU’s Story mode… Right, first of all you’ve got the main character- he’s an annoying prototypical American D00D who’s a bit feisty, instantly unlikable, and pretty much resembles every other generic computer game protagonist that you’ve seen in the last 10 years- He’s even got the whole: “My father died and I’m angry” vibe going on and hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if the end of game boss turned out to be the bloke who killed daddy. In fact, the only thing which differentiates the main character from [INSERT UNMEMORABLE MAIN CHARACTER HERE] is the fact that the voice actor sounds like he’s constantly tanked up on special brew; whilst he’s mumbling and slurring like a tramp, it’s actually fairly funny watching the cutscenes, although sadly it does nothing for the fact that I want all of the main characters to die horribly so I can kill some monsters in peace. But no ladies and gentleman! There’s no time for killing monsters in Story Mode, because these masters of yarn spinning have got some cracking tales lined up for you! Sit back and watch as the protagonist chases what appears to be a sexually confused tramp! Gasp as your sister predictably gets stuck behind some rocks or something! Cry as you once again lunge towards the keyboard to fight a boss, only to find that there’s no need, they’ve put in a CUTSCENE THAT DOES THAT FOR YOU. Sections where you’re actually playing can be equally painful, often having to flick through a small set of menus just to use a Metroid Prime style visor to detect weakpoints in piles of rocks. (It seems that even when swinging about a sword the size of a small country I was completely unable to break through debris without first having a gander through my magic goggles…)

But that’s enough about the story; this is all you really need to know: They’ve taken the main criticism of PSO not having a story, and they’ve obviously tried pretty hard to fix that- but after 20 minutes of playing it you’ll just be wanting to get back to the old PSO single player- mindlessly ploughing through dungeons over and over again with no so much as a whiff of characterization or plot. Aside from the awful characters and story the game world isn’t too bad- the music is pretty patchy, some of it frankly sounds like someone sat infront of an electric piano having a fit, whilst other tunes are more in the same vein of the original: Pretty bad, but I’ll let it slide. Graphically the game’s nothing mind blowing, but it’s fairly pretty aside from a few graphical glitches that pop up here and there- although it does suffer from some of the worst horizon popups I’ve seen in years, and the strange inclusion of generic NPCs in cities who actually fade and disappear when you get close to them rather than when they’re far away which just screams: “Don’t try to talk to him! We haven’t scripted stuff for them to say!” Walking around these soulless lobbies full of ghostly characters gives me a strange feeling that the PSU servers will before long be mimicking the emptiness of the universe they’ve created.

PSU single player grabs you by the reins, holds your hand and doesn’t let you go out of your depth. And I HATE that. For me, the reason I kept going back to PSO over and over was because I liked to push myself to the limit; the game gave you a set of very simple controls and let you choose your own pace- you could go through forest over and over until the dragon didn’t stand a chance, or you could whip up a HuCAST and go through Forest, Caves, and Mines in one afternoon and beat Vol. Opt at level 6. That was what made PSO special, the simple but rhythmic combat and the predictable enemies combined with the lure of better items just being in the next tier up meant that you were constantly pushing yourself to the limit, the simplicity of gameplay giving you an immense sense of control over everything; allowing you to survive in areas which the game deemed you to be not even nearly ready to handle at your level. PSU’s online mode still allows you to do this, but the system which made PSO such a beautifully simple game seems to have had its fingers broken. The rhythm based tapping to attack is inexplicably missing: The weapons still strike in their trademark PSO pace but the timing requirement is gone, the game encouraging you to just hammer the button. Nice new additions to the combat system include the ability to strafe in a basic manner, allowing you to spread machinegun fire across enemies- a luxury that PSO did not permit, and the ability to customize weapons with elemental power- essentially providing more effective versions of the ‘special’ functions on many of the rare weapons in PSO, but are constantly in effect rather than being triggered by an alternate button. These 2 changes are very welcome in the fact that they make playing as a ranger much more fun than it ever was in PSO, allowing you to John Woo it about holding back a small horde of enemies with icy greasegun bullets. In fact, despite the story mode being utterly dire the online mode of PSU is actually quite good; despite having lost many of the aspects which made PSO such a great game it still brings out those familiar addictive qualities, and whilst I enjoyed seeing some of the scenic new levels I was more than happy just repeatedly playing through the same areas over and over again just to get a little bit more cash for that upgrade. In this respect PSU feels like the younger brother of PSO, it’s tried so hard to be something better; to stand up tall and proud alongside the big players in the online market, and for this it’ll inevitably be kicked in the teeth. I sympathise with the guys who were making PSU, times have changed since the days of Dreamcast online gaming and PSU doesn’t even nearly make the standard as a decent MMORPG and in many ways it would have been better if they hadn’t tried to keep up with a plethora of pointless and badly implemented extra features such as the first person camera, which allows shooting but no movement…

But even though this younger brother aimed so high and fell so far, if you put in a few hundred hours into PSO like I did then you’ll still find yourself hooked to it just like you were on its predecessor, and if you can dig up a few old Ragol comrades it’ll be almost as much fun as the good old days, because you have to remember: PSO was horribly flawed too, we just learnt to forget about that. It’s nothing special, and compared to WoW or Guild Wars it’s dire- but if you’re prepared to switch your brain off, sit back with a joypad and grind with a few friends then it’ll give you hours of entertainment.

Same flavour, different recipe. Just stay the hell away from Story Mode

Graphics: 7
Gameplay: 6
Sound: 5
Lifespan: 8

Overall: 7