Blue Man Sings the Whites

This may not tickle you as much as it tickles me. But then this is my blog, not yours. It comes via the excellent Control Point podcast.

“They call it a Support class because I carry your ass…”

I particularly like the assorted scenes of bonesaw-related ownage. Possibly my proudest moment in TF2 came when I managed to take out a full-health Heavy via the bonesaw.

Helped that he had his back to me, obviously.

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“You’re only writing about games now, aren’t you?” said my mum when I was over there on Sunday. “I like it when you write about other things.”

Sorry, mum.

Call Of Duty 4 (Xbox 360)
I’m not much of a first-person shooterer in general. I’m really, really not much of a console first-person shooterer. But CoD4’s set-pieces, clever narrative tricks and brutal difficulty level + surround sound = something a bit special. I realise that sandbox games and offering the player freedom to wander are in vogue just at the moment, but personally I’ll always take a well-crafted linear game over an aimless, sprawling one that offers several equally-dull choices. There’s nothing here that compares to the brilliant Arnhem Bridge or Stalingrad levels from the original Call Of Duty, and its single-player campaign is pretty short, but it captures the essence of what you expect modern battlefields must be like – messy, scrappy, confusing, vicious and largely fucking terrifying.

I’m pretty sure I mean that as a recommendation.

Chessmaster (DS)
It’s chess! But on the DS. The AI plays a decently strong game (although it’s a shame that there’s no way of forcing the computer to use or avoid a specific opening), and the minigames are quite compelling in a thoroughly boring way. I’ve no idea why I’ve played this every lunchtime for the last couple of weeks, but I have. So there you go.

Team Fortress 2 (PC)
Two things have been instrumental for rekindling my love for Valve’s beautiful-looking, beautifully-balanced Team-Based Online Shooter Of Champions. These two things are the Control Point podcast and my belated discovery of the “Switch To Previous Weapon” key. The former is just a bunch of likable blokes being enthusiastic about something that deserves some enthusiasm. The latter gives me half a chance of surviving in those situations where a certain amount of regrettable violence needs to be handed out to someone in my general vicinity.

I’m a Medic by trade, y’see. Not for me the glory-boy solo-effort flag-capping nonsense of the Scout, nor the shifty, skulking, duplicitous death-dealing of the Spy, Engineer or Sniper, nor even the wholesale slaughter and mass destruction of the Heavy, Soldier, Pyro or Demoman. No. Instead, you’ll find me diving into the midst of battle with only my healing ray to protect me, selflessly risking life and limb to keep my team-mates upright even as a hail of bullets, rockets, grenades and God-only-knows-what-else rain down upon me.

“Rain down on me”, you’ll note. Not “rain down on my armed-and-dangerous team-mates.” Because putting on the Medic’s big coat and the child-molester glasses is basically the same thing as painting a bullseye on your face.

If (like me) you’re a fairly casual player with less-than-perfect knowledge of the game’s maps, and less-than-less-than-perfect FPS skills, playing Medic is great. It allows you to contribute in a real and valuable way to your team’s success without needing the twitch reflexes of a fighter pilot. Just lock that healing-ray onto the arse of a more competent team-mate and follow them on a sightseeing tour of your local warzone.

(My uncle Derek was round my folks’ for the aforementioned Mum’s Day visit. He’s planning a holiday in Vietnam and Cambodia. “Don’t forget to pack a wife!” I said cheerily, to predictably blank looks all round. Sigh.)

The fearful and wonderful thing about the Medic is that you’re playing a purely supporting role – you’re almost entirely dependant on your colleagues, both for protection and to actually accomplish the goals of the level. This is immensely frustrating if you’re playing with chimps, but with competent people around you a decent Medic can be the difference between victory and defeat, by keeping the damage-dealers alive long enough to wear the enemy down, or supplying a burst of invulnerability at the exact right time. It’s immensely satisfying, and a way to feel good at FPSs without being any good at FPSs.

Every so often, though, you’ll find yourself in a spot where you actually have to put away the healing ray and defend yourself – if you’ve clocked an enemy Spy lurking about for example, or if all your team-mates in the vicinity have displayed insufficient respect for the rule that incoming rockets always have right-of-way. Up till this week, these situations have been characterised by my fumbling around with the weapon selection keys like a big fat-fingered fool, then getting my brains blown out. Now I tap Q, and go from selfless healer to SYRINGE-GUN KILLA in less than a second.

Then I run away. No sense in being a bloody idiot about it. If I could shoot straight I’d be playing a sodding Soldier.

Audiosurf (PC)
Audiosurf is a simple little game. Point it at a music file on your hard-disk and it generates a track, along which your guide your ship collecting coloured blocks. The faster and more intense the song you’re playing, the more blocks are available for you to collect. Link three or more blocks of the same colour and they disappear, scoring points. There are various different ships, each playing in slightly different ways. I’ve largely found myself gravitating toward Mono, which plays more like a racer than a puzzler - there is only one colour of scoring block and the main challenge comes from avoiding grey obstacle blocks, with a significant bonus at the end of the song if you’ve picked up no greys at all.

And you’ll want that significant bonus, because on completion your score is uploaded to the Audiosurf website, where you can see the best scores of everyone else who’s played that song. That’s the reason I spent half an hour last night repeatedly replaying the heart-pumping white-knuckle ride that is Identity by the X-Ray Spex, punching the air in glee as I finally managed to finish a run with no greys hit and no leftover blocks, becoming THE CHAMPION OF THE WORLD!

Ahem.

(By the by, other Blue Man Recommend-o-Tracks for maximum Audiosurfing fun include the Bill Shatner/Joe Jackson cover of Common People, Car Fiction by Echobelly, Robyn’s Cobrastyle and the proper, non-cheaty four-and-a-half minute album version of Vision Thing. I am the best at (some of) these).

Honestly, as a game it’s nothing special. But it looks like a rollercoaster in a theme park run by Tron and I keep getting drawn back to it to try new tracks, to creep up the leaderboards or for a ten-minute blast after a poker game or TuFTy session.

A hugely pretty, sneakily addictive little fiddle-toy for fewer than six of your Earth pounds? Up with this sort of thing.

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Seriously, some actual posts on actual things are coming. Promise.

10 - Pac-Man Championship Edition (X360)
The original never gripped me like this. God, but I hate that little pink bastard.

9 - God Of War 2 (PS2)

Big, but not clever. So ridiculously macho that I felt slightly embarrassed playing it.

8 - Crackdown (X360)

A flawed gem, and a brilliant 3D platformer disguised as a Grand Theft Also sandbox tediumfest.

7 - Galactic Civilizations 2 - Dark Avatar (PC)
Best expansion pack ever. And I’ve a horrible feeling I’ll end up shelling out for the new one in the new year, too.

6 - Team Fortress 2 (PC)

The online shooter for people who can’t stand online shooters. In related news, I can’t stand online shooters.

5 - Guitar Hero II (PS2)

Nearly ruined by an aggressively awful thash-metal forum-kiddie track list full of songs that are a) rubbish and b) no fun to play. Fortunately, the good bits are even better than the first Guitar Hero. Freebird is the (second) best end-of-game boss ever, and the bit at the end of the solo in Sweet Child Of Mine where your fingers flash through a blindingly fast series of notes with absolutely zero input from your conscious mind is utterly euphoric.

4 - Puzzle Quest (DS)
It’s a strategic fantasy RPG! It’s a puzzle game! It’s the nerdiest thing ever!

3 - Ace Combat 6 (X360)

All my twelve-year-old, Top-Gun, Biggles-Flies-Undone dreams come true at once. Especially when you’ve got Ride Of The Valkyries / the Airwolf theme / Harold Faultermeyer blasting away in the background. Ace Combat 6! You’re still dangerous. You can be my wingman any time. Even if your cutscenes suck like an industrial sucking machine.

2 - Wii Sports (Wii. Err, obv)

The closest I came to exercise in 2007. The first time I managed to connect with a home run that left the stadium might have been my biggest gaming thrill of the year.

1 - Portal (PC)

This was a triumph. I’m making a note here – “huge success”. It’s hard to overstate my satisfaction.

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Most out of date. Post. Ever.

Still, I recently picked up GalCiv2 again, which made me want to go back to this - one of the many things I started writing during my long hiatus and never got round to finishing.

So, without even a subtle intimation of the possibility of further ado:

Elder Scrolls IV – Oblivion (PC)
Oblivion’s experience system is fucking stupid, with every other creature in the gameworld becoming more powerful every time you do and so seriously damaging your sense of achievement or advancement when you gain a level.

The artificial intelligence isn’t. Enemies you’ve shot with a bloody great arrow will happily return to their guard post after a limited amount of headless-chicken running about, seemingly regarding a sucking chest-wound as something that’s not even worth bothering to fill in the workplace accident book for.

The dialogue is trite and almost totally devoid of character or charm, generally ripped straight out of The Bumper Book Of Fantasy Game Clichés. This is a problem that’s particularly evident in the quests relating to the game’s main storyline. You know, the one you’re supposed to actually care about.

You can run backwards as fast as you can run forwards, making it a viable (and at some points in the game, necessary) tactic to fight your opponents by legging it full-tilt in reverse around the countryside, firing arrow after arrow until the other fella keels over doing a fairly good impression of a hedgehog suffering from male pattern baldness. These Benny Hillian antics help immersion not one tiny bit.

I could go on. I can think of a dozen different ways that the game’s fucked, big and small. The map system holds your hand far too much. The menu screens are chunky and horrible. It doesn’t let your character carry enough, meaning that getting enough loot from a dungeon to make the effort of getting there and slaughtering all the beasties inside worthwhile is an unnecessarily tedious, laborious process.

But here’s the thing – I racked up over a hundred hours playing this game.

A fucking HUNDRED.

In my defence, I was unemployed at the time.

So. What exactly does a man do for a hundred hours in Oblivion? Well, in my case I seemed to have been hit by a phaser set to “Sudden Interest In Botany”. I’m mildly ashamed to recall large chunks of time spent wandering the gloriously-rendered landscape picking flowers. I remember emerging hunched and blinking for a rare foray into our really-real world garden, spotting a small pink bloom and thinking “Oh! A peony! Great, now if I can get my hands on a strawberry I’ll be able to knock together a quick Cure Poison…”

This, plainly, is why I don’t get out more.

For all Oblivion’s problems, for all its bad decisions, lack of polish and missed opportunities, it succeeds utterly in providing you with a big, gorgeous, stupid world and the chance to lose yourself in it.

And the chance to plummet off of big, gorgeous, stupid cliffs while running backwards away from big, gorgeous, stupid wildlife that you disturbed while in the course of looking for some Aloe Vera, natch.

God Hand (PS2)
God Hand is a one-trick pony. That’s OK when it’s a really good trick. God Hand is rock-hard. That’s OK when it’s totally fair.

In the twenty hours it took to plough through the game in Normal mode, I cannot remember ever complaining that one of the enemies had defeated me because of a cheap or unfair attack.

Considering how many times I got defeated, that’s good game design right there. Believe me, God Hand is HARD.

In God Hand, you play a fella named Gene. Gene has a big coat, a standard-issue game-character brash-seventeen-year-old-American voice and, as you might expect, a Hand. That once belonged to a God. Gene uses this Hand in exactly the way you’d expect any brash seventeen-year-old American to. Alright, the other way you’d expect a brash seventeen-year-old American to, ie he slaps people around.

To be honest, the game’s not much to look at. A lot of the character models are a little stiff and most of the environments are decidedly ropy. The sound is terrific, though, with quirky, catchy music (Elvis’ theme is a personal fave, as is the Hawai’i Five-O-ish menu tune) and chunky effects that really help to give the combat its physical, visceral feel.

Ah, the combat. That’ll be the one trick, then.

Starting with a basic suite of fighting moves, you collect more by either (rarely) finding them in-game, or (much more common) buying them from the shop that you can access between levels. You then map these moves as you like to your d-pad’s face buttons, plus specify a set of attacks that will combo together as you hammer at the X button. This gives loads of scope to experiment and find your own fighting style, or to modify your moveset to counter a specific situation or boss. It also adds an extra little “I Made This!” thrill each time your carefully-crafted combo hammers some brightly-coloured headcase to within an inch of his miserable life.

God Hand is, in essence, a 3D version of Final Fight. You walk into an area. You encounter waves of badly-dressed opponents. You hand out the kicking they so richly deserve. Repeat until fade. Clobber enough blaggards and you can enter God Hand Mode, which makes you nigh-invulnerable for a short time whilst simultaneously increasing the amount of damage your blows inflict.

You might accuse God Hand of being repetitive, and you might be right. But it’s repetitive in the same way that Tetris is repetitive - repeated little moments of satisfaction derived from beating the ever-increasing odds through nothing but your own wits and skill.

Alright, nothing but your own wits and skill and a Hand with one previous not-quite-careful-enough God owner.

It’s very hard. It’s very funny. It’s very good.

Galactic Civilizations II – Dread Lords / Dark Avatar (PC)
When I was a boy, I used to love designing spaceships. Warships to be exact. My notebooks were covered with crudely-drawn spiky little fighters and huge, knobbly battleships, conducting grand fleet maneuvers around my lesson notes.

When I was about fourteen, I discovered board games like Star Strike and Interceptor and this minor obsession went from lumpy drawings and descriptions to elaborately calculated in-game stats and even histories. I never actually, y’know. Played the games or anything. Don’t be mad. I just spent hours totting up rows and rows of numbers, crafting intricately-detailed fleets for the sheer joy of creation.

The only drawback (if you don’t count being a nerdy spotty adolescent hermit freak as a drawback) was that my artistic talent never came close to matching my invention, that I could never see my ships anywhere except in my mind’s eye.

Twenty years later, and GalCiv2 shows up.

Yes, yes, yes, there’s a perfectly lovely and relentlessly addictive turn-based strategy game in there, but I’d be lying if I tried to tell you that the appeal lay anywhere than in the huge, massively flexible ship designer. In a stroke of genius, alongside all the functional components (weapons, defences, sensors, “utility” modules like mining or colony constructors) that you can bolt onto your hull, you’re also supplied with an enormous quantity of stuff that takes up no space and is simply there for visual impact, so even someone like me who has Stevie Wonder’s eye for art can create some pretty funky-looking deep-space-death-dealing tin cans..

And in an even more genius-y stroke, when your ships clash with the enemy’s you get to see the battle played out in full spinny-rotatey 3D so that you get to admire your designs doing what they’re meant to do.

I’ve seen attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion…

(When naming ships, I have a tendency to get carried away. I went from the Hammer-class corvette to the Thunder God-class destroyer and on to the Ragnarok-class cruiser. This left me with not a lot of headroom, macho-wise, when I got to start using Huge hulls, and thus led to ships with names like the USS Earth-Shattering Kaboom and the USS Fuck You All. But I digress.)

It’s impossible to explain the degree to which this game appeals to my inner (OK, outer) geek. Swarms of fighters and corvettes provide local defence for my worlds while individually-named capital ships form up into battlegroups and cruise into enemy territory bringing peace through superior firepower.

It just needs the Stormtrooper March playing in the background as your fleet glides into position, and it’d be perfect.

Chuck in the best after-sales support I’ve ever seen for a PC game (the developers are still creating significant gameplay patches for GalCiv2 well over a year after its release – not because it’s buggy, but because they’re committed to polishing the game until it glitters like, well, like C-beams off Tannhauser Gate) and you’ve got the best turn-based strategy game I’ve played since Civilisation 2. Hurrah!

Dragon Quest VIII – Journey Of The Cursed King (PS2)
Mrs. Horn, Blue Man Jr. and I each sunk over seventy hours into this game. In the month or so after Christmas, it was nigh-impossible to get near the TV in the front room because one or other of us was permanently stationed there.

If I had to sum Dragon Quest VIII up in one word, it’d be “charming”. If I had to do it in two words, it’d be “charming, big”. Three words? “charming, big, undemanding”. But that’s undemanding in a good way, it’s undemanding the way that an episode of Only Fools And Horses is undemanding, the way that a Teenage Fanclub album is undemanding, the way a Terry Pratchett book is undemanding. I’m not saying Dragon Quest is easy (although it is, a bit), I’m not saying it’s dumbed-down, I’m saying that it’s a wonderfully relaxing, beautiful and well-crafted way to pass several dozen hours of your life.

It’s not without its flaws. Largely unavoidable random wilderness encounters can be annoyingly frequent. The save system is a bit awkwardly implemented. However, these fairly petty complaints are blown away by the things Dragon Quest VIII does well - the gorgeous anime-style art, character and monster design. The voice acting. The simple, elegant combat system.

I’m not sure I’ve ever described a game as “lovely” before, but if I were ever going to, now’s the time. Dragon Quest VIII is a lovely game, playing it is like taking a holiday to a brighter, cleaner, funnier, better world and if you’ve any time at all for Japanese RPGs or, indeed, any joy in your soul I would firmly recommend you check it out.

Castlevania – Dawn Of Sorrow (DS)
There is a long list of maladies and misfortunes that videogaming has visited upon me in twenty-plus years of pursuing the hobby. Kid Chameleon Neck (caused by playing the Mega Drive platformer on the demo system in Game, which positioned its monitor a good two feet or so above the average person’s natural eyeline). Streetfighter Thumb (tenderness brought on by repeatedly sliding the aforementioned digit around the SNES controller’s D-pad to do Ryu’s Dragon Punch). Civ 2 Eyeball (the dry, itchy feeling around the ocular cavities upon realising that your “quick half-hour before bed” playing Sid Meier’s opus has, in fact, lasted until dawn). Guitar Hero Finger, of which we shall speak more later.

To this list we must add a new complaint – Castlevania Bottom. This condition is characterised by a distinctly uncomfortable numbness in the hindquarters, brought on by excessive time spent perched on the toilet whilst in pursuit of, for example, a rare and annoyingly elusive Valkyrie Soul.

It’s hard to put nail down exactly what it is about C:DoS that’s so utterly compelling. There’s no single aspect or feature of the game that leaps out, grabs you by the throat and refuses to let go.

Yes, it’s big.

Yes, it’s nice-looking in a prettiest-SNES-game-ever sort’ve way.

Yes, the enemies are more lovingly and imaginatively designed than you’ll see in any game that doesn’t rhyme with Bragon Breast Bait – Bourney Bof Bee Burst Bing.

Yes, you’re given just tons of ways of dispatching these enemies, from the gloriously pyrotechnic (Mandragora soul vs. everything) to the satisfyingly visceral (battleaxe vs. ghouls. As Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay torso critical 16 would have it – “your enemy falls to the ground in two different pieces”).

Yes, the exploration-platforming aspect of the game is perfectly-judged, needing enough skill to make progress feel like an achievement, but not so much that it ever frustrates for long.

Yes, the myriad of abilities and items scattered around for you to collect appeal to your inner obsessive-compulsive.

But no, there’s nothing obvious that makes Castlevania unputdownable. The game just gives you a big slice of unpretentious, excellently-crafted lo-fi fun, and with the minor exception of the borderline-incomprehensible storyline it gets right pretty much everything it’s possible to get right.

In other words, it’s the Bizarro Oblivion.

We Love Katamari (PS2)
Right at the moment, it feels like the shelves of your friendly neighbourhood games retailer are chock-full of nothing except grey first-person shooters and row after row of joyless, mean-spirited Grand Theft Also games with all the violence, nastiness and nihilism of their progenitor series but not a trace of its wit or intelligence.

The Saint’s Bulletproof Emergency Gangsta Police Warriors is the disease. Meet the cure.

We Love Katamari put a big stupid grin on my face from the very first second of its intro movie, a smile that barely wavered the entire time the disk was in my PS2. It’s a game that oozes charm like a maple oozes sap.

Does a maple ooze sap? If it’s not a plant you can use to brew a Chameleon potion, then I know sod-all about it.

Anyway.

Each level sees you rolling a big sticky ball – the titular katamari – around to pick up stuff. As you pick up more stuff, your katamari gets bigger. As it gets bigger, you’re able to pick up bigger stuff. Generally, you’re either trying to make the katamari as big as possible in a certain amount of time, or you’re trying to get it to a certain size as quickly as possible. The core gameplay is as simple, and as brilliant, as that.

It’s the little things that elevate We Love Katamari from being a fun little romp to being one of the most memorable games I’ve played in years – the first time your katamari gets big enough to start rolling up people, instantly turning you from a rat in a maze who’s having to carefully pick his way around looming obstacles that threaten to knock things off of your collection, into a cackling force of unstoppable terror. The way that when you roll up something alive, its little legs start going twenty to the dozen as its rolled over and over on your katamari. The utterly deranged, completely baffling and yet on occasion strangely touching plot. The music. My God, the music. Not since Freedom Force (”Nu-cle-ar Vin-ter, ahhhhh-ahhhh-ah! Turns your vorld to snooooow!”) has a game boasted such an ear-worm of a theme.

All together now!

”Naaaa, na-na-na na-na-naa-naa, Katamari Damacy!
Naaaa, na-na-na na-na-naa-naa, Katamari on the swing!”

We Love Katamari? Yes, as it happens, we do.

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