May 05 2012

Yet More Scriptwriting

This week I’ve found myself returning to my scriptwriting, as it’s gone by the wayside over the last couple of months. As usual there was no specific reason for this, but if I had to pin it down to anything is that I started writing the very first series of Trent Samuels, got halfway through the script and then realised that the story wasn’t progressing how I imagined. So, much like my approach with series 2 (now series 3), I took some time away from it in the hope that inspiration would strike.

I’m glad to report that it did. I’ve gone back to my script notes this week and not only finished writing episode 1, but also nearly finished the first draft of episode 2. The plot for episode 1 still isn’t quite where I want it to be, but there’s a first draft and I always feel that is a good stepping stone for getting decent material out there. That process has worked well in the past, and I’ve no reason to expect otherwise of this series. As mentioned above, this was a similar problem I had with series 2, I knew where I wanted to go with it but something wasn’t working, and I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. A couple of months of ignoring the scripts and working on other things and then I realised what was missing: one tiny bit of story that I had failed to take into account. It was literally something as simple as getting a character to go from point A to point B and explaining why. After that the rest of the story fell into place and I had the entire series finished inside a couple of weeks.

One additional bonus is that, during my Trent downtime, I’ve developed an idea for another audio comedy series that could very well go on for some time. It’s also indicated very strongly that I like writing science fiction and to do anything else at this time might be a slightly foolhardy move. Looking at my list of audio projects (original scripted work, not the podcasts), only one of them isn’t sci-fi related. I should have seen that coming really, given that I think it’s possibly the best genre for discussing real world issues, scientific breakthroughs and exploring both the good and bad aspects of humanity – the bad: war, petty squabbling, conflict etc. The good: discovery, co-operation, curiosity about the world, the galaxy and the universe in which we live. It all has equal weight in the grand scheme of things, and science fiction lets you explore these subjects head on, and that’s always fascinated me. Just take a look at Star Trek, in all of its various guises, and tell me I’m wrong about any of this. Unless it’s Star Trek Voyager, it might be better just sweeping that one under the rug.

The other good thing about taking some time away from the scripts is that other members of the cast have been chipping in some nice ideas along the way. Just yesterday we discussed what the official language of the planet Sponge should be, and also how the series should wrap up when we finally reach series 6. As it currently stands, there are a few plot twists on the way, followed by some more twists, and then a final twist to finish on. To say any more than that would definitely count as spoilers, but this definitive batch of episodes I’m writing now will see a nice, albeit slightly vague, story arc for all of the characters and wrap things up within 36 episodes and 3/4 specials. That’s not to say that I won’t go back to writing Trent at some point down the line, but for now I’d like to do these 6 series I had originally planned and then move on to something else. I’ve discussed this previously, but I have about four other audio projects that I’m developing at the moment, continuing with our podcasts and video game reviews, and also still plotting some short films. One thing I’m taking forward is to not rush anything. I’m not working for a studio and I don’t have deadlines to stick to other than self-imposed ones. To rush any of our projects would be detrimental to say the least. We’ve got quite a niche audience as it is, and the only way to boost that is with quality content. That’s one of the reasons why we haven’t done many live action things yet, obviously I don’t want to spend a huge amount of money on any of that, but I don’t want it to look bad either, unless we’re doing it ironically. Suffice to say, we’re still working on new material, and the fact that today marks episode 100 of 60 Second Gamer is a significant landmark. Recently I went back and watched some of our older videos and it was interesting to see how they have developed. I admit that I’ve previously found it difficult to stick with one visual design for a significant period of time, but that was usually due to an upgrade in software and a constant desire to refine the series than anything else. I’ve since moved to Adobe Premiere and I’m finding the edits even easier to put together, so I’ll be sticking with the current visual design for a while – it’s also helpful that I only have one template now, constantly switching between the templates for the main feed and the retro feed made things more complicated than they needed to be. Now it doesn’t matter if the review is retro or a more recent title, they’ll all have that same logo in the corner. working in HD is nice as well, it might sound a bit daft but it’s given us more freedom to do different things with the footage and it points to exciting times ahead.

Now then, I’ve just taken delivery of a number of bad video games (yes, some are from Blast! Entertainment), so I think I’d best go try them out so I can put out another totally incredulous review…

Apr 26 2012

60 Second Retro Gamer – Episode 52 – Babe (PS2)

As always, the podcast is available through iTunes or www.randomstoat.com

Oh, where to begin. This is the game that caused Rich to have a breakdown, live during our podcast. As part of our efforts to play absolutely EVERY GAME EVER, we’ve played some bad games. There are a lot of really good games with fantastic stories, nice graphics and game design that makes sense and, y’know, works. Then there’s pretty much everything that’s been released to tight deadlines with limited prep time and a launch window that can’t be altered. Right at the bottom of the pile (or at ankle height at the very most) are Blast! Entertainment, a sub-set of the once great Mastertronic group and a business partnership with the unknown Disky Entertainment Group. Although, they could actually be very popular in their native Holland (or The Netherlands). Something tells me that they’re not.

From previous blogs we’ve established that Blast! tend to buy up licences for movies and TV series and convert them, badly, to video game format. So far we’ve looked at Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, Paddington Bear, Lassie and now Babe. Yes, the sheep pig of the same name. Under normal circumstances you might think that a game about a sheep pig would be quite entertaining, shepherding sheep and, potentially, other farmyard animals around the place with the smug satisfaction that comes from being a pig with a small tuft of apparently anthropomorphised human hair betwixt your ears. This game takes inspiration, and little else, from the two Babe movies but owes more of its design to Babe: Pig In The City than the original movie, for the dressed up monkeys (some even with tutus and lipstick) and disabled, wheelchair-bound dogs. No joke. Go see the 2nd film if you don’t believe me. Done that? Told you so.

So how does this fail so epically? Playing as Babe, your role is to get the sheep to the exit, avoiding obstacles, dangers, “bad men” (I’m quoting from the instruction manual), manholes and the oh-so-typical ability to get completely stuck in a corner and not have space to turn the sheep around. Funnily enough that happens a lot. Far too often to make this anything other than an exercise in frustration. Luckily there are checkpoints dotted around each level, so if you get it completely wrong then, in theory, you shouldn’t have to backtrack too far. Nor would you really want to, let’s face it. I’ve since gone back to it and played through to the end, but it was a struggle and is four hours I’m not going to get back. My last attempt at playing through the game saw me reach level 2 then, after about an hour of trying to get the damned sheep to the exit, realised I now felt quite ill and needed to switch it off. I was effectively incapacitated for the rest of the afternoon.

Luckily the game doesn’t stretch to 50 levels as listed on the back of the box, there’s just 18. Despite the fact we rip into them quite regularly, most Blast! games realise their limitations and limit you to something between 6 and 10 levels per game. No, not this game – 18 levels of torture and badly designed isometric puzzling. I could get along with the isometric style if it was coded properly. Case in point: you would point Babe towards Gypsy the sheep. You bleat at Gypsy to make her move, and she’ll keep going until she reaches an inanimate object. Fair enough, sounds easy. So, you line everything up, you assume that Gypsy is going to follow a straight line, within the confines of an isometric adventure, naturally. Of course, that doesn’t happen. Instead Gypsy starts moving as you’d expect, then for NO REASON AT ALL shifts over in a diagonal line and heads straight for the hazard you’d previously accounted for and deemed to provide no risk. I’m no stranger to isometric games, having played a number of RPGs that sit in that graphical sub-genre (Fallout being the most notable). Games like Fallout no doubt had an extensive testing period, and you can walk in a straight line with little trouble. By comparison, Aqua Pacific (the game designers) probably went for for the isometric look just because it was different to every other Blast! game.

Whilst I managed to struggle through to the end, it took a couple of hours to adapt to the style (and the poor graphics), I’m still not sure if the queasiness was because the game is just terrible or if the poor isometric gameplay was the cause. If I start bleeding out of my ears any time soon, I’ll know it’s because of this game. Much like the other Blast! games we’ve covered, I’d hope kids know that there’s much better games out there that are appropriate for them to play. There’s also much better games by Blast! that you can try before even thinking about this one. It’s quite funny in a way – years ago we used to think the Thunderbirds game was diabolical. And it still is, let’s be honest. But we never expected it to be the best of a bad bunch. A couple of years down the line and there’s still not been a better Blast! game than Thunderbirds. And if that isn’t damning evidence that they’re cheap cash-in merchants, then I don’t know what is.

Apr 21 2012

60 Second Retro Gamer – Episode 51 – Lassie (PS2)

A podcast is also available at www.randomstoat.com or through iTunes.

Blast know no limits when it comes to acquiring licences for well known franchises (see some of our other videos for more – and what’s worse is there’s a lot more we’ve yet to cover), so it should come as no surprise that in 2007 they released a game based on the long running Lassie franchise.

I have no shame in admitting that I don’t know much about Lassie other than the character has traditionally been played by a male dog, and that Lassie is loyal and dependable. After that, I seem to get Lassie mixed up with Skippy the Bush Kangaroo and, strangely, the dogs from Homeward Bound. Thankfully I haven’t yet mixed Lassie up with any talking animal from Disney, or with Beethoven (the dog, not the composer). And, for the record, I have no intention of watching any Beethoven movie after Beethoven’s 2nd. No Charles Grodin, no sale. I’ve just read there are SIX sequels to Beethoven. Ye Gods…

A Lassie movie was released in 2006, taking the character back to its roots and set shortly before World War 2 kicked off and ruined things for everybody. The game takes on the premise that Lassie has had six pups which have been stolen by Eddie Hynes (who appears to be the dog-equivalent of the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang). Playing as Lassie, it’s your job to rescue each pup across a variety of levels. Well, six. Yes, in typical Blast! fashion this game is a mere 6 levels long, and assuming you can see past the broken collision detection and bad controls, it’s another game that can be finished in under an hour. Once again Blast! have provided a guide to each level in the booklet and tells you how to proceed.

Despite this being a Blast! title, the graphics don’t actually look that bad. It’s all cel-shaded so that gives it a pleasant “Wind Waker” vibe, even if the gameplay doesn’t get close to hitting that found in the Legend of Zelda series. To be frank it would be a push to liken it to the PS2 Crash Bandicoot games, which look like masterpieces by comparison. The soundtrack isn’t too shabby either, but it’s a touch overdramatic for this game – it makes it feel like a Pirates of the Caribbean movie simply on the level of bombast alone.

Seeing as you’re playing a dog, the controls allow you to take part in various activities such as digging, jumping, sniffing and, erm… sneaking. All that’s missing is a dog equivalent of Snake’s sneaking suit and I think we’d have a new genre to mess about with. Who could turn their noses up at a stealth dog? Throughout each level there are various bonuses to collect, including a pink bone that gives you a temporary burst of speed – the dog equivalent of a caffeine boost. Sadly this never seems to work particularly well, as you end up bouncing into any and every obstacle before the boost runs out, leaving you exactly three paces ahead of where you started. Blue bones scattered around the levels can be used in the Nurture level (more on that momentarily) but otherwise serve no purpose. The booklet says each level starts with a cut-scene, which is stretching the definition a little – you’re treated to a series of slides that explain the story and what the purpose of the level is. Very basic stuff and not particularly well programmed.

To add a little variety to proceedings, after rescuing each pup there is an option to look after all of them in a low budget version of Nintendogs. Using blue dog bones as currency, you can provide food, water and exercise (all free, apparently), as well as special meals, drinks and play (costing 1-3 bones). The game doesn’t mention what happens if you neglect any of the puppies, so that’s probably for the best. I don’t think we got through more than half of the game when we captured it, by that point the generally bad gameplay had irritated us to the point that carrying on wasn’t an option. I persevered and actually finished the game earlier this week. Levels 3-5 weren’t hugely difficult, but the final level proved troublesome mostly because it didn’t give any indication as to what was expected from you. After a few hours at the pub (for a meal…) I went straight back to it and worked it out. That marks one of only a couple of games I’ve finished on the PS2, and the other is Paddington Bear. That’s slightly depressing.

Again, this is probably one that a certain number of kids would enjoy and play through, but then I have more faith in children’s ability to recognise a bad game when they see one. As an adult playing a game aimed at kids, and knowing that it’s from Blast!, I can appreciate the graphics and the needlessly overwrought soundtrack, but otherwise this is a typically short and unpolished effort that had potential to be… not great, but certainly acceptable. As Blast! games go it’s one of the better ones we’ve played so far, but that’s not saying much.

Apr 18 2012

60 Second Gamer – Episode 50 – An American Tail (PS2)

Podcast available at www.randomstoat.com

Yes, they even made a game based on An American Tail. Who are “they” you might ask? Obviously, it’s Blast Entertainment with another very cheap, very badly coded video game. I really do wonder what goes through their mind every time they purloin a new licence – Beverly Hills Cop? Sure, let’s get the series and character names and set it in the 80s. Thunderbirds? Let’s make them save the meat processing factory. Captain Scarlet? Yeah great, let’s make sure you have no sense of speed and zero control over the Spectrum Patrol Car! (In this instance, Spectrum isn’t so much as green, more like a blood red smear on the side of a mountain).

So, An American Tail. Directed by Don Bluth who also gave us The Land Before Time (before it suffered from a stupid number of sequels) and Dragon’s Lair. This film in particular? Stone cold classic. The animation is top notch, the story is entertaining and a little bit dark, just on the verge of being inappropriate for younger audiences, and certainly much darker than the sequels that followed – I’ll allow An American Tail 2: Fievel Goes West to remain as a valid sequel. If not for the presence of John Cleese as Cat R Waul, then for the inspired Western setting and James Stewart as the burnt out old sheriff. This has nothing at all to do with the video game based on the first movie though, so I’d best move on.

This is your typical Blast! release – the front cover art is deceptively good, implying that the game is going to meet your expectations. I mean, it’s An American Tail! How can it go wrong? In the hands of Blast!, it’s the gaming equivalent of a tragic bus crash. Across 6 “huge” missions, playing as Fievel you rip off the Monkey Ball series on a pirate ship (huh? Don’t remember that being in the film), fly into New York Harbour on the back of a very slow moving pigeon, scuttle through the streets of New York, scramble through the sewers (that’s a two part level, shock horror!), leading to the final showdown with The Secret Weapon. Analysing each of these levels, Level 1 goes by the title “All Aboard!” and sees Fievel rolling around in a soap bubble trying to reach the goal. The Monkey Ball game mechanic on this first level is clunky and unpleasant – the soap bubble, ironically, feels heavy and unresponsive, and is made all the more irritating when you find yourself trying to edge round a corner and then suddenly find yourself plummeting into the ocean.

Level 2, “Taking Liberty”, sees you flying into the harbour on the back of Henri the pigeon. Henri moves as if he’s meeting heavy wind resistance, ponderously flapping his wings avoiding ducks, rocks and boats, and flying through what I assumed was yellow sponge but is in fact bird seed. The seed isn’t completely pointless as it boosts Henri’s energy meter, which reduces gradually over time. The colour pallet used on this level is hideous – it’s all mucky browns, coppers and more browns. What should be an exciting view of New York on the near horizon actually looks like it was created in Microsoft Paint.

Level 3, “New York Minute”, has Fievel moving around the streets of New York, avoiding horse and carriages, the general folk of New York and er, open manholes. I don’t think it’s obligatory (the manual seems to say as much), but there are also 16 pieces of cheese to locate throughout the level. I suspect you wouldn’t get anything for collecting all 16, and similarly you won’t be penalised if you don’t even try.

Levels 4 and 5 take place in the sewers. We didn’t really get too far into these as the controls, or lack thereof, began to cause us problems and a slight feeling of motion sickness. Basically, your role is to follow Digit throughout the sewer and making sure you don’t fall too far behind. Difficult enough if you had a straight line to follow, but they throw obstacles and all manner of things into your path to slow you down. Most vexing. The second half of “Sewer Rat” sees you escaping from Warren T Rat on a roller skate. Your job is to make it out without being caught by the cats, and without colliding with any obstacles. Easier said than done.

The final level, “The Secret Weapon” sees you take control of the giant mouse-shaped secret weapon and scare the cats away. You have to avoid hitting obstacles and not fall in the water. Hmm. To add further difficulty, certain areas won’t support the weight of your flaming death machine, and the booklet even suggests you try scaring all 17 cats by moving the weapon near them and making them jump into the water. If it’s not a mandatory element of the game, then I’ll pass thanks.

It gets worse – the 4 bonus levels see you rolling around again in a soap bubble, avoiding lines of washing as you veeeeeeeeeeeerrry slooooooowly float towards the ground and spend even more time in the sewer as you try to reach the bottom without being steamed to death. Very loosely inspired by the movie, and lacking all the charm that film provided. On the subject of lacking charm, the same can be said for their use of clips from the film between some of the levels. Clearly the budget wouldn’t spread to acquiring the soundtrack to the clips, so there’s no dialogue and badly dubbed music to tide us over. The booklet says that, before each level (or “mini-game”) you get to “watch a classic clip from the movie to fill you in on the story”. We played through just over half the game before throwing in the towel, and we only saw a couple of clips. In retrospect that might be because we played three of the bonus levels, so I think the clips are limited solely to the 6 “main story” levels, for want of a better term. Even so, there isn’t much context provided for each clip and the lack of dialogue doesn’t help link the separate mini-games into any coherent story. We struggled with it and we’ve seen the original film. What happens if someone completely new to the franchise tries playing it? It won’t make a lot of sense.

Based on the review that Ant put together, I’m inclined to agree with him in many respects. Whilst Don Bluth might spin in his grave about this game when he does eventually pass on, I can’t help but think that he would have had at least some sort of creative control over whether his classic animated film be turned into a video game. If he didn’t then fair enough, but otherwise it’s yet another cynical cash-in.

Apr 01 2012

A-Z music list, podcasts and 1 film a day

For quite a long time now (I think I started in 2006) I’ve been trying to listen through my entire music collection in alphabetic order – I realised that I’d not actually listened to most of the music in my collection (which built up rather quickly over a very short period of time), and the only way to do so was to listen to everything in order. Because I also insist on having every track scrobbled on last.fm, progress was initially slow as I could only listen to music on the PC. Eventually I bought an iPod and was able to listen to something whilst out and about, and then have the tracks scrobble when I went back to the computer. This was always a hit and miss process – I would load up the last.fm plug-in, start iTunes and then it would either recognise that I’d played songs and duly send them to last.fm, or it would throw a wobbly and not recognise anything. Usually a manual scrobble would do the trick, but as I have a 160gb iPod classic and lots of music on it, this would often take a couple of hours and even then was not guaranteed to work.

It only really started to work properly after I bought the Mac (I know, I know – lots of Apple products). As expected, iTunes is pre-installed on the system and feels much easier to use on its native system, which is ironic enough given that the software is pretty much identical on a PC. With the exception of a brief couple of weeks when Apple updated iTunes and it took last.fm a while to release a compatible update, the scrobbling feature on the Mac has worked flawlessly. It’s meant rapid progress in working through the big A-Z over the last few months and I’m now approaching the letter M. I can see that one taking a bit of time due to my back catalogues of Metallica, Megadeth and Meshuggah to name but three, plus all of Meat Loaf’s catalogue as well – anyone who knows about Meat Loaf will know that his songs are epically long and not a prog-related tempo change in sight. Recently I’ve worked through what little I have under the letter L – Led Zeppelin, obviously, with Lost Prophets, Linkin Park and Lynyrd Skynyrd to come.

I’m an album away from finishing off the Limp Bizkit discography, which has been a mixed bag. Significant Other and Chocolate Starfish are clearly the picks of the bunch, and with hindsight I don’t think Results May Vary is that bad, although the album title is apt. It’s the same musical style as the album that gave us “Rollin'” and “My Way”, but lacks any of the punch of that album – it’s about as generic as it can get and the stand-out track from that era, Just Drop Dead, isn’t even on the album. “Eat You Alive” is pretty decent, as is “Behind Blue Eyes”, if nothing else than that it’s a cover from a song written by a much superior band. I’m foregoing The Unquestionable Truth Part 1 because it’s AWFUL, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt with Gold Cobra and listen to it at least once. Apparently it has a more guitar driven sound so hopefully it will be much better than “Results May Vary” and, more importantly, make me forget about the travesties that were Unquestionable Truth and New Old Songs (5 versions of My Way – seriously?).

Further to my earlier post about watching an average of one film a day this year, March was the breaking point and I only got through 17 films all month. I still think 300-odd films is a manageable target for the year but it’s not going to be something I actively seek out. I am however continuing to work through plenty of other things this year including listening through our old Digital Village radio archives. I’ve only got three shows left to listen to, including my own, but they’re all 2 hour episodes and from the three people that ran their shows the longest – about 24 weeks each. I’ve found that a good time to listen through them is on my lunch hour, so I seem to be getting through them quite fast now. The only problem being, my office moves to Birmingham in 6 months and I don’t know what lunch breaks will be like, so ideally I’d want to finish them off by then!

And on a final note, we’ve just launched a new podcast at www.randomstoat.com – called The Stoat’s Tale, it will hopefully be a regular topical podcast where Ant, Rich and myself discuss the week, our hobbies and news stories we’ve picked out. The podcast is on our website now, and should hopefully be available through iTunes within a few days. This first one is a bit rough and ready, none more so than the telephone interference that gets in the way around the 2 minute mark, and there’s no music yet, but that should all be smoothed out by episode 2 which will be released either on the day of recording or the day after. We’ll probably pick up with The Movie Review again soon as we’ve not released an episode since November 2011, but we’ve still got plenty planned that will be on the way once we’ve recorded a few. Despite my movie a day plan for this year I’ve not been to the cinema in 2012, mostly because there’s been nothing released so far that will have held my interest or justified the expense in going. That’s due to change shortly with the Avengers movie and the big summer lineup, so we should be able to start releasing “normal” episodes within a couple of months as well. Besides that, there’s still a lot of audio series coming this year, and I might (emphasis on might) find time to put together a couple of short movies now that I’ve worked out a few tricks with the video camera.

Mar 25 2012

60 Second Retro Gamer – Episode 49 – Paddington Bear (PS2)

The video above is Ant’s review, the one below is our complete play through of the game, overdubbed with our podcast. For the record, in the intro sketch that really is the sound of Tesco Value bread hitting me in the face.

For those of you not in the know, there’s a video games company called Blast! Entertainment that has a nasty habit of buying the rights to TV shows and movies, then releasing sub-par video games for the masses. You can usually spot one of their games from the yellow logo on the cover that features a grinning and winking orange bomb. Not too sure why he’s winking at us, but as logos go it’s almost as cheap and unpleasant as the one for Random Stoat… cough The majority of Blast! games also come with a yellow back cover with a few token screenshots of the game thrown in for good measure. Cheap doesn’t even begin to cover it, although I have to give them some praise for the front covers as they often make the game in question look much better than it actually is.

I didn’t really get into the whole Blast! thing until quite recently when we started doing 60 Second Gamer, where we realised that the games they make are actually quite entertaining to review due to their inherent badness. I suppose technically my first exposure to Blast! was way back in 2007 when Rich, being a huge Thunderbirds fan, bought the Blast! published game based on the original 60s show. Noting that the disc was a standard CD-ROM and not a DVD gave us a good idea what to expect. Since that game became our first Blast! review the only other game of theirs we’ve reviewed is Captain Scarlet as it seemed a nice companion piece to the Thunderbirds review. That and the Captain Scarlet game makes Thunderbirds look like high art by comparison.

Good luck finding decent information about Blast! online, as their web presence is surprisingly minimal. They’re an arm of the Mastertronic group, who back in the days of yore (read: the 80s) published a number of budget games for the 8-bit consoles of the time. From that perspective nothing has really changed, as that’s what they still do this very day. The strange thing is, Blast! themselves are usually the middle ground between Mastertronic and individual game developers – strictly speaking Blast! don’t make the games. In one respect it does allow smaller developers to get their work out there, but at the same time the work is of such a low quality that you probably wouldn’t want to play any more of their games. I can only assume that, once the licence to a franchise had been acquired, the studio was given a ridiculously short amount of time in which to put a game together, so I can’t blame them for that if this is the case. If they were given a huge amount of time then clearly they should have done better.

So, Paddington Bear. I don’t think there was any specific reason for the game other than Blast! were able to get the licence for it. Certainly for other Blast! games there was always an associated media release alongside the video game, be it a new movie, new TV series or something similar. The closest I can find to anything that might fit this criteria is that a live action Paddington film was announced in 2007, the year this game was released. The bear in the battered blue coat seemed, according to Wikipedia, to be going through a period of popularity in 2007 following his appearance in Marmite adverts and on a Royal Mail stamp in 2006, and reached his 50th year in 2008. Reasons enough for Blast! to make a video game, I think.

The contents of the game are typical low quality tosh, even for the pre-teen (maybe even pre-school?) target audience. The case says there are 10 exciting levels of fun activities, but when the 10th of those “exciting” levels is Paddington’s bedroom – which you can decorate by buying furniture using marmalade sandwiches as currency – you know it’s off to a bad start. With the brief exception of me getting confused on the bicycle level and not being able to find the exit in the house swarming with bees, I think the game could easily be finished in under 30 minutes, and a speed run would likely take less than 20. The level design varies from basic maze-style navigation levels (as seen at the train station), top down collecting levels (Paddington’s party), to basic 2D platforming (Paddington’s flooded bathroom). In theory there’s enough variation between the levels to hold interest, but the shortness of each level offers no real incentive to go back and play through again, even if that does mean missing out on some rather nice looking rugs in Paddington’s house…

Another amusing aspect is the difficulty options when starting the game – Easy or Hard. No Medium difficulty here. The only difference we noticed between the two was that you lose more marmalade sandwiches if you bump into a man or a bee or something else when playing on Hard. Given that the only purpose of these marmalade sandwiches is to pimp Paddington’s pad, it’s no great loss. And on that note, a lot of the furniture available to buy is hideously expensive, within the game at least. 100 marmalade sandwiches for the most expensive bookcase? No ta. Bearing in mind I only collected about 260 sandwiches from a single run, you’re looking at several passes to get everything, and I’m not doing that. Collision detection is terrible, so bad in fact that you can get stuck on a piece of furniture even though you can clearly see you’re nowhere near it. Apparently there were 4 testers employed for this game – if this is your day job guys, I’d quit. Another thing I really like about most Blast! games is that they essentially give you the complete walkthrough within the manual itself, no doubt in a desperate bid to bump up the page count – for Paddington Bear alone the manual is 12 pages long, not including the cover. The level guide takes up 5 pages of this, explaining what you need to do for each situation.

So, as a retro video game fan, is this worth buying? I’d say wholeheartedly that it’s only worth owning if you have young kids who don’t mind shoddy game design and like Paddington Bear. There’s little else to recommend for anyone else. I know full well that I’m not the target audience for this, which almost makes the game acceptable. It isn’t. There are no doubt some parents who have nostalgic memories of Paddington and they will of course be either hugely disappointed or hugely amused at this. Or both. I’d actually suggest going and playing Toy Story 3 if you have youngsters who are into their video games, it has a lot to offer for both kids and parents alike. We’ve got that game on our big list of videos to release, so there will be a blog about that somewhere down the line.

Mar 18 2012

60 Second Gamer – Episode 47 – Quantum of Solace (PS3/Xbox 360/PC)

Version reviewed is the PS3/Xbox 360/PC edition of the game. There are variations of the title with different features (and different developers) for PS2, Wii and the DS which we may review at a later date.

I’ll admit right from the start that I’ve not played this one yet, so my witterings below are based on watching Ant play the game when we captured the footage. I’ve purchased the PS2 version of the game which I’m going to play at some point (same argument for every other game in my collection – one day…), and I will probably buy this one as well eventually as the levels on both versions of the game differ. The gameplay style also differs between the two – PS2 Quantum is a traditional third person, over the shoulder affair similar to Resident Evil 4. For PS3 Treyarch opted for a mixture of classic Bond first person gunplay mixed in with some third person gun play when taking cover or taking down enemies. This mixed approach works to a degree but I think I’d have preferred for it to stick with one or the other for the sake of clarity. Most of the promotional material ahead of release showed a lot of Daniel Craig’s craggy features in-game, whereas you’ll spend most of your time staring down the barrel of a gun.

Our little intro sketch plays on the fact that this plays a bit like one of the Bond games featuring Pierce Brosnan, and could even be a cheeky reference to the Goldeneye remake. It’s been that long since we filmed it that I can’t remember, but in any case I think it’s amusing enough. It also refers to the fact that, whilst this game is called Quantum of Solace, the majority of it is flashbacks to Casino Royale. Flashbacks that make the story much more action packed than it was. That’s the confusing thing about this one, and I know they missed out on publishing an official Casino Royale tie-in when it came out, but if you’re going to tie in to the previous film then surely that shouldn’t be the majority of the game? That said, Quantum of Solace was hardly the best film in the series, so it’s probably more a comment on the quality of that movie than anything else.

It’s also in the true tradition of other Bond games in that there are multiple versions of the game – the most notable example is The World Is Not Enough, which had significantly different releases on N64 and PS1. What this means is you’ll have a different experience if you play and compare the PS3, PS2 and Wii editions. The PS2 release seems to have the best overall aggregate score (huzzah for Metacritic), but if Ant thought the PS3 version was bad we should count ourselves lucky that he hasn’t encountered the Wii version. By all accounts it seems like a rush job from a developer I’d not previously heard of, and it’s also quite informative that this is the only third party title they’ve ported to the Wii to date. Their own original titles seem to have fared a little better, so I’ll cut them some slack for this one.

The one aspect of the game we didn’t touch on in the review is the multiplayer, which by all accounts seems to be traditional Bond multiplayer fare. I’ve never found much enjoyment in Bond online modes unless playing against friends, much like we used to do back in the day with the original N64 Goldeneye. To be honest I think that many people are tied in to the whole Call of Duty thing that you might be hard pressed to find a game on there anyway these days, much like when Ant bought Transformers War For Cybertron and there were literally zero other players online. I’m sure the £6.29 spent on additional multiplayer characters was money well spent, for anyone that bought them.

Mar 14 2012

60 Second Gamer – Episode 46 – Journey (PS3)

Release day review from 60 Second Gamer – a first and quite impressive in my book! I’ll keep this brief (full blog entry coming tomorrow, as I missed out an update over the weekend).

I’ll be honest and admit I hadn’t heard about Journey up until the week of release. I’m a regular reader of www.thesixthaxis.com and they rather graciously put up their review on the day it was available to PS Plus subscribers and gave it a rather glowing 10/10 score. Suffice to say on the basis of the review I paid up my £9.99 (the penny is price rhetoric) and downloaded the game. I played for about 40 minutes last Thursday night but didn’t really sit down to play it properly until Sunday, at which point I played through the rest of the game in one sitting. As gaming experiences go it was a thoroughly entertaining one. The combination of gameplay, soundtrack and story alongside the relatively short running time all combined to form a near perfect gaming experience.

My second run through the game took just 1hr 40m. That included more exploration than my first time through, and also spending over half of that time playing co-op with another random player. That’s one of the great things about this game – there’s no voice chat and you’ve no idea who you’re playing the game with until you’ve finished the story and it tells you what other players you encountered along the way. It leads to a much more collaborative way of playing games and I’d quite like to see more of it in the future. It’s also a very relaxing adventure – you don’t have to think too hard about the puzzles, there aren’t really any enemies, and you can play it through a number of times and have a different experience each time round.

Some might balk at the £10 cost, but the argument I’ve seen elsewhere, specifically The Sixth Axis, is that you spend £15-odd when buying a film on DVD or Blu-Ray and that gives you approximately two hours of entertainment a pop, so why should this be any different? If the experience is good enough then you’ll come back time and again over the next few months and even years, much along the same lines as my viewings of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. And Life of Brian. For me at least the £10 cost was justified and I can’t praise it highly enough. You’ll get that impression if you listen to the podcast, it’s essentially just me talking about the game for 20 minutes.

The video review is below, you can also download our podcast about the game at www.randomstoat.com or find 60 Second Gamer on iTunes.

Mar 05 2012

A Brief Holiday Blog

Thanks to a very much welcome weekend away, I wasn’t able to update my blog on Friday or Sunday. As such, I’m throwing this one onto the site just to keep me ticking along and also to ensure I don’t miss a week – once that happens it all falls apart as I discovered in 2010. And 2011. So, my holiday. We booked three nights in a cottage at Stratton, literally a stone’s throw away from Cirencester. We wanted to stop somewhere that was just far enough away to justify the journey, but not so far away that we’d spend most of our time travelling there. As such, at about 80-90 minutes away by car, Stratton was a good bet, and it helped that the journey was essentially a straight line all the way. The only exception to this was what I assume was Cheltenham (I didn’t pay much attention to the SatNav after finding the name Bishop’s Cleeve oddly amusing). Not only were there suicidal cyclists roaming the roads, but the traffic light system left a lot to be desired – a couple of islands would be preferable to what they currently have, but seeing as I’m from Redditch, a location famed for an exorbitant number of islands, I suppose I would say that. The only other thing I can say about Cheltenham is that I knew I was in the area when I drove past a road sign sponsored by Cheltenham & Gloucester. That also kept us amused for a few miles.

Before and after Cheltenham it was all plain sailing – pre-Cheltenham it was all roads I’d driven down before, post-Cheltenham we saw vast open fields, a wood or forest (through which the car in front randomly indicated left, as if they were planning to turn off down a non-existent side road), and also a surprisingly steep 10% incline. Usually when I encounter these road signs I assume just dropping down a gear will do the trick – nope. After dropping down to third, I was still barely managing to maintain my speed, no doubt partly influenced by the massive bundle of holiday stuff in the boot and back seat (oh yeah, we went away for 3 nights but took enough food, clothes and technology [iPad, Kindle, PS Vita, 3DS] to last a fortnight).  On the way home we encountered a similar (if not the same) 10% incline but this one was all downhill instead. Huzzah!

On arrival it was a tad confusing as to where we were supposed to go. My initial research had been completed with Google Streetview, and our cottage could be seen, just barely, at the far end of a private road. I toddled down there cautiously and found an open gate leading to the front of the property, complete with baby traffic cones (I didn’t find out if they were stolen from a cycling test centre, sadly). Then, after working out how to access the key safe next to the door, we were in. The cottage was very well stocked – stereo, big flat screen TV, wood burner and leather sofa downstairs, another smaller flat screen TV and iPod dock upstairs – both TV’s also had a Sky TV box (only showing Freeview, I’m afraid) and a DVD player hooked up. Rather snazzy, but then it’s a 4 star holiday home, which I wasn’t aware of when we booked it – suffice to say we made sure to tidy up after ourselves at every opportunity and avoid the oft-threatened penalty charge of £30 that was blazoned across the guide book. Thankfully the owner is a lovely woman who has more of a concern with teenage holidaymakers than people who are relatively normal and boring like us. She was amazed that we don’t drink alcohol, either that or she was trying to gauge how much damage we would be likely to cause during our brief stay. None, I’m happy to report.

One thing I quite liked about the location was the open stream that runs down one side. The stream runs directly through the owner’s property and onwards through to the public fields that are in the picture below. Rather appropriately the booklet on arrival advises to exercise caution when approaching the bridge, as it can be quite slippy in wet weather and runs pretty fast. The funny thing about this is, when we booked the cottage there were two conditions, similar to Fight Club:

  1. Children must be supervised at all times when near the stream.

  2. No children.

The location itself also has the benefits of a rural location (very dark at night, very quiet all of the time), but is only about 10-15 minutes walk away from the centre of Cirencester. The town has a typically old-world twisty-turny high street, mixing big name retailers with local owners. I was surprised to see a quite reasonably sized local butchers in amongst the big names (a Tesco Metro is literally 2 minutes walk away no doubt receiving more than its fair share of business), although typically the butchers was down one of those side streets and not in full view of the main shopping area, although if you’re visiting the Corinium Museum (local Roman history) or St Mary’s Abbey (visible from our cottage) it’s smack bang in the middle between the two. We’d only really popped into town to have a walk and pick up a few essentials (I say essentials – mayonnaise and sweetcorn for paninis and a tuna pasta bake respectively), so we didn’t get to check out the museum, but if we ever go back it’s on my list of things to do. We did also consider visiting the Roman Ampitheatre but, on discovering it is essentially just a big mound of grass we decided against it.

There’s a number of nature walks nearby as well that I wouldn’t mind trying out – the best we managed was checking out the field next to the cottage and the public footpath that ran through it. I ended up wimping out when the public footpath ended and it looked like we were about to walk onto someone’s farm (one farmer in particular was eyeing us up with a horror movie vibe going on – his evil gaze was somewhat tarnished by the two small poodle-sized dogs accompanying him). Suffice to say we backed up and headed to the fields we could see from the cottage. From there we were disappointed to find it’s a self-contained field – houses block access on one side, the river on another. So in the end we did a little loop, was again disappointed to not see any wildlife in the river/stream/running water, and then made our way back to the cottage. The rest of the afternoon and evening was spent watching The 4400 Season 2. Rock and roll.

And then, in brief, that leads to us leaving today and heading home. I also stopped in at a discount furniture shop in Evesham on the way home to collect a new futon – the old wooden one has given up the ghost and fallen apart, so it was time to get one with a metal frame. Ironically this was cheaper than the wooden one, but there we go…

 

Mar 02 2012

60 Second Gamer – Episode 45 – LA Noire (Xbox 360/PS3/PC)

Okay, I lied about blogging this one with a full review, but that’s because I’m heading out for a weekend away literally moments after this has been posted. Normal service resumes next week.