Review: The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet

Everyone has their touchstones when it comes to recommending Sci-Fi, and particularly spacefaring Sci-Fi. Mostly we gravitate toward the classics. We mention Star Trek, Star Wars, Dune, Ringworld and The Culture, often all in the same breath. What piqued my interest in the fantastically titled The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet; was that most of the buzz around the book mentioned none of these. Instead, the most common phrase attached to it was ‘It’s a bit like Firefly’.

And it is, but it also kind of mis-sells the book a bit.

Small Angry Planet does share Firefly’s scrappy attitude and excellently realised characters. The influence is particularly visible in the Wayfarer’s brilliantly dizzy engineer, Kizzy. A whirlwind of a woman who would give Firefly’s Kaylee a real run for her money if they ever found themselves in the same engine bay.

Strangely, what I found myself comparing Small Angry Planet with most was 20^th Century Fox’s half-forgotten animated Sci-Fi; Titan AE. As they are in that film, humanity in Small Angry Planet is for the most part a homeless nomadic people, held in fairly low regard by the rest of the galactic community. And just like in Titan AE, the universe of Small Angry Planet is a mess of alien cultures, conflict, and grimy cobbled together tech, with underground markets and dodgy dealings galore. It’s refreshing to read something that doesn’t put humanity in the centre of its universe.

But what of the story?

Well, as its title suggests, The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet is a spaceborne road novel, but it’s the relationships the novel’s characters develop over the course of the story’s journey that are the real heart of it. Small Angry Planet follows the crew of the Wayfarer on the contract of a lifetime to tunnel a shipping lane through space from galactic commission territory to the titular small angry planet. The catch is they have to start from the destination. Cue an epic, horizon expanding journey across the galaxy for protagonist Rosemarie.

What I like most about Small Angry Planet is that it’s a novel in vignettes. Each chapter tends to focus on the events surrounding one character at that particular moment in the journey. We jump to an event, the spotlight shines on a person and the rest of the cast take on supporting roles. As we read on, we learn more about that character’s past and background, which we then weave into the overarching web of our own understanding of the crew and their place in the universe. It’s a really interesting way of building a story, and by the end of it I had real affection for even the less likable members of the cast.

And what a cast. I’ve already mentioned Rosemarie, the sheltered and fresh-faced new recruit, but there’s also Ashby, the ship’s human captain, reptilian pilot Sissix, many handed Dr Chef, furry but not at all cuddly Ohan the navigator, gifted human engineers Kizzy and Jenks, grumpy and introverted Corbin who handles the fuel, and Lovey the ships AI, as alive as any other organic crew member. They’re as diverse a crew as you could ever hope to meet, and whilst some may grumble about diversity for diversity’s sake, Small Angry Planet is all the better for it.

Perhaps the best thing I can say about Small Angry Planet is that like all of the very best Sci-Fi you could take the science away from the fiction and the story would still have the same impact. It’s just that good. I’m really looking forward to where Becky Chambers takes these characters in the future.

Read it.

A Motorcyclist's Eye View on Driveclub Bikes

Games are expensive, and I'm a man of limited means and an enormous backlog. Which is why I've only just caved in and bought Driveclub Bikes, thanks to the January PSN sale. But anyway, I like it and I thought I'd get my impressions of the game from a motorcyclist's perspective onto the page. So without further ado, here are some thoughts:


First of all, there's some really precious metal on display. From Honda's seminal Fireblade to Kawasaki's insane, supercharged H2. Coolest of all, to me at least, is the inclusion of Ducati's unspeakably exotic Desmosedici. A limited production firebreathing MotoGP bike with headlights. However, it's sad to see the Suzuki's GSXR1000 (the hooligan's No.1) and Aprilia's RSV4 Factory missing from the roster. Especially when bankrupt also-ran EBR got their bike onto the list.


Away from the metal, I'm really impressed with the attention to detail. It's visible right from the moment your rider swings a leg over the saddle, kicks up the sidestand with their heel and then rocks the bike from side to side to get a feel for it. It's as if Evolution have secretly been watching me when I roll my Daytona out of the garage for a Sunday Morning ride.


The detailing carries on from there. There are flashes of biker bling everywhere. Ohlins gold, Brembo red, bare carbon fibre weave on the bodywork of Bimota's hand built BB3. There's grain in the rider's leathers. The bikes' revs rise when you lean off the outside circumference of the tyre. It all looks so good that I wouldn't be surprised to find Renthal logos on the sprockets and Pirelli written on the sides of the tyres. It feels like the details even extend to rider aids.


Modern Superbikes are very difficult for a regular human being to get the best out of. They weigh around 200KG and force somewhere in the region of 190BHP, as much power as a fairly hot hatchback, through a tyre contact patch the size of credit card into the road. In the wrong hands, that's a recipe for third gear wheelspin at full lean, slides and almost certain disaster. It's undoubtedly part of the appeal, but it's also why modern superbikes are festooned with rider aids. We're looking at stuff like ABS, lean angle sensitive traction control, wheelie control, launch control, slipper clutches, active engine braking management and quickshifters for clutchless gearchanges. The most exotic bikes come with semi active suspension too.


That's a lot of tech, and while I'm not saying Driveclub Bikes models all of it, you can see signs of some of those aids in the game. First of all, you can't lock the wheels at all, a sure sign of ABS. The game also seems to allow you to hold a certain level of rear wheel spin and slide before stopping you going any further and highsiding, just like the best traction control systems are purported to do. The most obvious sign that Driveclub is modeling a rider aid or two is the way the revs fall to bring the front wheel back to the ground when the bike wheelies off a crest - wheelie control. Which is what started me thinking about all that.


Other nice touches include the best stoppie animations I've ever seen and the way the bikes really buck about when you're reaching the limits. Just like when you see the best racers in the world wrestling with their machines in the MotoGP. The bikes all sound appropriately angry too.
Despite all this, Driveclub Bikes is not a simulation. For a start, there's a massive surfeit of grip, particularly in the rain, which allows you to brake really hard at full lean. Something you don't want to do on a real bike if you want to stay on the back of it. There are a couple of other gripes too, like how the AI seems to be quite slow, and I can't find a way to adjust their difficulty to speed them up. It's really easy to just ride away from the pack. Also, it's next to impossible to fall off unless something goes really wrong. Most annoying of all is how it's possible to go all the way down the gearbox, through first and accidentally into neutral. Something that is almost physically impossible to do on a real bike unless something is horribly broken. The biggest issue though is that the bikes all feel a bit samey, which I believe is down to the handling model.


For all it's faults as an actual racing game Tourist Trophy on the PS2 is still probably the best approximation of real bike handling in gaming. This is because Polyphony understood that real bikes steer not because you move the bars, but because the rider shifts their weight in the direction they want to turn. TT's handling emulates this, and it feels like you control the rider rather than directly controlling the bike. Weird though it may sound, my thought processes when I'm riding my Daytona feel very similar to when I'm playing TT. Tourist Trophy's handling model makes it's bikes turn gradually and look more natural than Driveclub's bikes, which tend to look and feel like they're just flopping left and right. Driveclub isn't the only bike game to feel like this, but I was hoping we could have moved past that by now, if only because it looks a bit naff. It's much more difficult to ride the kind of smooth lines that make good laptimes with Drivclub's bikes than it is with Tourist Trophy.


Still, Driveclub Bikes is a straight up arcade racer and when you take it at face value as one, it's excellent. The bikes are outrageously fast, and when you're scything through a complex of corners, inches away from the walls, it makes you feel like a road racing god, cast white hot from the mould of Guy Martin, Ian Hutchinson or Michael Dunlop. When the elements come together like that, all of the gripes fall away and you're left with an exhilirating ride. Just like the very best real world superbikes. Driveclub always felt like the natural heir to Project Gotham 4's arcade racing crown, and with the arrival of the superbikes, that feeling has never been stronger. Driveclub Bikes isn't quite the Bike racing sim I was expecting, but it turns out that it's an excellent Bike racing game. I like it a lot.


It's not quite as good as Road Rash II though...

The Return of Point & Click

I am on a Point & Click bender.

When I think about it, it all started last year when I finally managed to play Discworld Noir. I originally started it as a sort of project in Discworld completionism. It's one of the only Discworld stories not covered in one of the novels, so I was playing it for that, rather than to sate a need for point & click gameplay. So imagine my surprise when I found myself not just enjoying the story (which was pretty much a given) but also the game itself as well.

Yes, the game is archaic, and on the PS1 at least, adorably low resolution and crashy, but it's also well written, well acted and truly brain testing. I'm not ashamed to admit I used a walkthrough in places. Once I had finished it, fond memories of the Broken Sword series, the only other Point & Click adventures I've played, began to surface. I waxed lyrical about them for a while and then moved on to the next game.

Those memories probably would have stayed just that if it hadn't been for the remastering and rerelease of Grim Fandango. A game many consider to be Tim Schafer's magnum opus that was sadly overlooked, and until now, practically unplayable on modern hardware. It's a game I've been curious about since I first played Psychonauts way back when it was first released. So when I spotted Grim on sale on the PlayStation Store I bought it. Then shamefully, I didn't play it. Disgraceful.

My redemption arrived in the form of Broken Age on PlayStation Plus. Another one of those games that I was curious about but never played. Mostly in this case because of an old laptop that was incapable of playing it. And now here it was for (sort of) free for my  console. I started it straight away, then didn't really touch another game til I'd finished it. I enjoyed it that much. Broken Age is charming, funny, pretty, well written, well voiced and everything you expect a good game to be. But it also harked back to the brain bending old days of Point & Click that I'd experienced with Discworld and Broken Sword and I liked it for that too.

The floodgates opened when the Steam Sale arrived. Armed with a new and moderately powered laptop, I wound up buying Machinarium and Broken Sword 4 & 5. I've spent the best part of the last week playing Broken Sword 4, and whilst it's ropey and doesn't really work too well on modern hardware I'm still happy with the time I spent with it. It kind of ended abruptly, but the story was still better than 99% of what other games have to offer. And if I'm being honest, the stories are what are attracting me to these games. Plus it's Broken Sword! Few genres can tell a story as well as Point & Click can and the Broken Sword games are shining examples of that. I went straight into Broken Sword 5 as soon as I finished it.

I use the word gorgeous to describe games a lot, but Broken Sword 5 is the real deal. After two games of industry trend dictated (and pretty rubbish if we're honest) polygons, Revolution Software have gone back to glorious hand drawn 2D roots. Every single background is a work of art comparable to any cel animated film. The advent of high definition has really bought 2D back. The high resolutions let highly detailed and colourful backdrops burst from the screen. Games like Broken Sword 5, Ori and Dean Dodrill's excellent Dust really make me think that we're in a new golden age of 2D at the moment.

I finished it yesterday, and I can safely say that Broken Sword 5 is every inch a proper Broken Sword game. I particularly love it's very English sense of humour and the callbacks to the rest of the series. Once I've finished it, I plan to give my mouse hand a rest so that I can finish the bundle of papery joy that is Tearaway, and then I'll finally get started on Grim Fandango. And after that: Machinarium.

The pointing and the clicking won't stop there though. PSPlus has given me Kings Quest to have a crack at, and I've added Monkey Islands 1 & 2 to my steam wishlist. Then there's the remasters of Full Throttle and the seminal Day of the Tentacle on the horizon too.

What a time to get back into the genre,

An ode to the genius of Terry Pratchett and the Discworld

Last year saw the release of almost certainly the final Discworld book from the pen of Sir Terry Pratchett.

“But wait,” I hear you say, “wasn’t The Shepherd’s Crown the last Discworld book?”

As it happens, no, it wasn’t. The Shepherd’s Crown is the last Discworld novel, which is a very different thing. Sir Terry was working on one final project with his erstwhile co-conspirators at the Discworld Emporium before his untimely death, and the fruits of that project have been released as The Compleat Discworld Atlas.

The Discworld, as we all know, is a flat world, supported on the back of four elephants who themselves are perched upon the back of a ten-thousand mile long turtle. So far, so imaginary. But it has blossomed into so much more than that. Over the course of forty-one novels, Terry Pratchett’s imaginary world has become perhaps the realest of all of fantasy fiction’s unreal worlds.

Let me show you what I mean.

Discworld is far from the first fantasy world to have been mapped, and a map doesn’t necessarily make an imaginary place any more real. What sets the Discworld apart is the level of thought that has gone into creating it. In the process of pulling the Disc from Pratchett’s mind and putting it onto paper, entire landmasses and topographical features were shuffled around to make sure that, with as few loopholes as possible, the world worked. In one extreme case an entire desert had to be moved because it had been placed in the rain shadow of a mountain range that that would have turned it into a swamp.

The Compleat Discworld Atlas and its companion, The Compleat Ankh-Morpork are in every sense of the word, Real Maps, just not maps of a real place.  They are printed on paper that wouldn’t feel out of place in an Ordnance Survey guide. They are meticulously researched and illustrated. They are properly grid referenced and are even folded in the way you’d expect an O/S map to be. To add to this, the maps are accompanied by beautiful hardback books as comprehensive as any atlas or Lonely Planet Guide. The Atlas describes in detail the governments, religions, cultures and economies of the Disc’s myriad imaginary nations. The Compleat Ankh-Morpork is more granular, covering the entirety of the Disc’s largest city, sometimes on a street by street level. It’s packed to the gills with essential travel information, ads for imaginary businesses, tips on getting around, places to stay and amazingly, walking tours. There’s even a directory of wells and pumps, so that you may quench the imaginary thirst you worked up on your imaginary walking tour.

This is all down to the way Sir Terry thought about his creation. He liked the things that appeared in his world to work, and had a lot of fun with making fantasy tropes pay at least lip service to the laws of physics, or failing that, common sense. This had the fortunate side-effect of injecting the Discworld with a palpable sense of substance.

The maps aren’t the only artefacts to arrive here from the Discworld. There are children’s books by Discworldian authors, a farmer’s almanac, a cookbook, advertising posters and most recently, a railway guide as comprehensive as any edition of Bradshaw’s. Ever wanted to know which trains you need to take to travel from Quirm to Uberwald? Now you can find out. Ever fancied trying dwarf bread? Nanny Ogg has the recipe. You can even get an Ankh Morpork passport.

My own personal favourite bit of Discworld is the collection of stamps that came with the hardback of Going Postal. They are real stamps, printed on a real stamp press, on real stamp paper, because Sir Terry said, “If we’re doing this, we’re going to do it properly.” So they did, and made real stamps for an imaginary postal service. If you ever have the good fortune to meet the folks at the Discworld Emporium, ask them about the stamps. It’s a great story.

All of this would count for nothing if you couldn’t identify with the people who live on this flat imaginary world. Middle Earth for example has thousands of years of written history, several beautiful hand drawn maps and a grand narrative to tie them together. I would argue however that The Lord of the Rings can sometimes be a somewhat impersonal story of Dark Lords and Great Heroes. This is the point at which Middle Earth’s halo slips a little for me. I can’t really empathise with Dark Lords and Great Heroes, so the world feels less real to me as a result.

One of Pratchett’s solutions to this was to set his stories in an era of sweeping social change. The Dark Lords and Great Heroes are thus recast as old men left behind by the unstoppable march of progress. They become stubborn geriatrics battling arthritis and false teeth, too set in their ways to change, reminiscing about the good old days around a campfire on the steppes. The Dark Lords and Great Heroes suddenly become relatable. Who hasn’t looked around and felt like this sometimes?
Pratchett’s other stroke of genius was to inject a degree of recognisable normality into the lives of his characters. The denizens of the Disc have lives that go on even when they’re not featuring in a book. They grow and develop over the course of the series and often pass by in the background of other characters’ stories, getting on with their lives away from the metaphorical camera.

Discworld is often thought of as a series of funny fantasy books, which of course, it is. But it is also more than that. Pratchett always dealt with serious issues in his fiction, but he liked to have some fun with those issues along the way. To quote Neil Gaiman on Sir Terry, “The opposite of funny isn’t serious. The opposite of funny is not-funny.” You can be serious about something and laugh at its absurdity at the same time. Pratchett was a very funny man, but he understood that humour alone isn’t enough to carry a narrative. You need to have an irritant to create a pearl.

Sir Terry knew that just because a world is imaginary, it doesn’t mean its people wouldn’t have to deal with the kinds of things that we’d have to deal with in our own lives. Throughout Discworld’s forty-one novels, Pratchett’s characters have had to contend with problems as diverse as their first job, gender inequality, depression, alcoholism, drug addiction, survivor’s guilt, incompetent management, rock n roll, new parenthood and the coming of the railways. And that’s just the small stuff. Sir Terry picked apart a lot of very big issues and delicately threaded them with stories featuring people that you could identify with and root for, whatever their shape. He weaved tales around themes of cultural identity, religious fundamentalism, racism, toxic nationalism, institutionalised religion, the futility of war, social justice, statesmanship, diplomacy, corrupt business, industrial revolution, football and what it means to be human. And that’s just scratching the surface.

It is this iron core of the real world around which the un-reality of the Discworld is formed. It is what ensures that the Discworld will continue to exist for myself and millions of fans around the world, even though Sir Terry Pratchett is gone. It is what makes the Disc feel not like an imaginary world, but a foreign country you can take an all-inclusive holiday to for the price of a paperback.

If you’ve never visited, why not take a trip? I guarantee you’ll enjoy it.

This piece was first published on the Waterstones.com blog and is saved here for posterity. All of the books I have mentioned and many more are available on the website and in store.

But What if I Don't Like Fallout 4?

If you've been paying attention to almost any mainstream culture over the past few weeks, you probably would have noticed a certain buzz in some quarters about an enormous new post apocalyptic role playing game. Fallout 4 arrived this month with an appropriately nuclear sized bang and seems to have taken over the world. No doubt you have seen the adverts, both on the internet and in the real world. The internet is awash with talk of it, your friends and their kids are talking about it, and collectively its players have already spent hundreds of years of playtime exploring its post-nuclear wasteland.

And all that is wonderful for those that are into it. But what if you're like me, bitten by the post apocalyptic bug whilst having absolutely no interest in playing the game. Well, I'm here to help. Here are a few post-nuclear literary worlds you can immerse yourself in whilst your friends have disappeared because they're spending days at a time on their PlayStation.

Mortal Engines:

Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines quartet is set several thousand years and two or three world orders after the end of a cataclysmic event known as the Thirty Minute War. As a solution to the problem of the world's dwindling natural resources, many of the remaining inhabitants of the world have returned to a nomadic lifestyle and put their cities on wheels. Vast tracked cities roam the remains of Europe and a now empty North Sea gobbling up natural resources and hunting other cities in a system known as Municipal Darwinism.

If this all sounds a bit grim, rest assured, it isn't. Mortal Engines is a rip-snorting action-adventure on a massive scale, following two outcasts from London that has almost everything. There are the aforementioned cities on wheels. There are airships, gunfights, and humorous misunderstandings of the technology we left behind. There is a terrifying and unstoppable, yet sympathetic antagonist, and best of all, there is Hester Shaw. One of the strongest, angriest female leads I have ever laid my eyes upon. I really can't say enough good things about Mortal Engines, and if you enjoy a great adventure story, you need to put this on your list.

There is also a quartet of prequels, starting with Fever Crumb, set at the dawn of the traction age. Sadly, we may never see the fourth book, but the three that we have wrap up quite nicely on their own and are well worth your time. Just be sure to read Mortal Engines first.

The Metrozone:

Put simply, Simon Morden's Metrozone trilogy is Die Hard transplanted into London, with a post-nuclear twist.

Metrozone's world is one that has survived a wave of nuclear terrorism perpetrated by a group of Christian fundamentalists known as the Armageddonists. It is here that we meet the lovably unlovable scientist, Russian refugee, and possible sociopath, Samuil Petrovich. A chance decision to intervene in a kidnapping sets off a chain of events involving the Neo-Yakuza, an all powerful computer virus called the New Machine Jihad, some car chases, some crashes, many explosions, a few giant robots, several heart attacks, and a warrior nun. And that's just the first book.

Just like Die Hard, the story tears along at breakneck pace and Morden takes great delight in beating the stuffing out of his leading man. You'll read these books in a single sitting. They're that good.

Metro 2033:

And now for something a little different. Metro 2033, by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky is an altogether more plausible study of what we might become in the aftermath of the unthinkable. Set twenty years after a nuclear strike on Moscow, what might be humanity's last remains make the best of what they have living in the world's largest bomb shelter, the Moscow Metro. Unremittingly bleak from beginning to end, the inhabitants are beset by terrors from all sides. The surface is devastated by war and given to the mutants. Radiation seeps through the cracks and makes everyone sick. People lose their minds in the darkness of the tunnels or to the Dark Ones who periodically venture down from the surface. And of course there are the other people, who can be much worse than all of that. 

So yes, Metro 2033 is dark, but it's also an excellent study of how we band together to cope with the most extreme situations and a compelling journey to take alongside Artyom, the story's leading man. Read it and feel the terror at how close we once were to this book becoming reality.

Wool:

Continuing the bleak, we move onto Hugh Howey's Wool. In Wool, we find ourselves with Juliet, living in a silo with no contact with the outside world except for what's shown on the screens in the main communal area. Those screens show a completely dead vista of lifeless foothills and hints of towers in the distance. As a power struggle and rumblings of an uprising begin to brew, Juliet finds herself caught in the middle, and that's when the real trouble starts for her.

Whilst Wool is less unremittingly grim than Metro 2033, it still has a very downbeat and dystopian tone. The society in the silo is very much two tiered, and very controlled. The elites of the upper floors tend to look down upon the people of the lower floors, who as usual are the people who actually keep the civilisation running. Particularly cruel is the twist inflicted upon anybody unlucky enough to be sent to the surface. Like Metro 2033, Wool is scary because it's so plausible, and it's very much worth your time for that reason.

Shades of Grey:

Let's finish on something light, shall we? When you open the covers of Jasper Fforde's Shades of Grey, you find yourself in Chromatacia; Britain several hundred years after The Something That Happened. A Britain where your place in society is determined by the colours you can and can't see. In fact, almost everything in this society, likened by Fforde as an English grammar school as run by Pol Pot, is determined by colour. From the names of towns and places to a person's job, to whom you can and can't associate with, even your name. Amusingly, certain shades of green have narcotic effects and stronger shades, such as lincoln, are strictly controlled.

Also, there is a critical shortage of spoons.

So yes, Shades of Grey is a very strange book, and it drops you in at the deep end, with leading man Eddie Russet about to be digested by a carnivorous tree. There's a lot to take in, but thankfully, Shades of Grey has an ace up it's sleeve. It is very funny, which helps lubricate the gears of your mind as you try to catch up with the strange place you've found yourself in. Once you're up to speed however, things quickly get sinister, stranger and amazingly, funnier. The plot barrels along through a conspiracy that will shake the characters' worldview to its core and on to an ending that will definitely play on your mind. 

I love this book, and have recommended it to pretty much everyone who's ever asked me what they should be reading. If I have one gripe with it, it's that the next book isn't coming soon enough.

Join the DriveClub

I got the DriveClub platinum, and frankly it's a bit of a surprise, because I hated DriveClub for a long time. I hear you ask, why did you buy it if you hated it, and how did you end up with a platinum trophy for it?

The honest answer is that I ended up with DriveClub because it was that or Destiny when some cheap PS4 bundles came up earlier in the year. I figured that despite the middling reviews, I'd probably enjoy it more than a multiplayer focussed FPS that I had zero interest in. That was the idea anyway. I played the first leg of the tour mode, and wasn't impressed. Driveclub felt bland. To my eye, it looked constantly washed out and flat, barely any better than WRC 4 on the PS2 (still Evolution Studios' high point). I adjusted my TV's settings to no avail. Of course, I'm not one to dismiss a game on it's looks, but it played pretty badly too. The drift model was utterly terrible for a start, but as I played, I encountered overly aggressive AI and random difficulty spikes. I put the game down, and downloaded Oddworld: New n Tasty, Hotline Miami, and Hohokum so that I could play something fun on my expensive new console.

Something kept pulling me back to DriveClub though. It was a game that I really wanted to enjoy, but I'd end up quitting after an hour and staying away for a few weeks. It was like the game was actively trying to make me hate it. Let's put it this way, I was glad that it was a pack-in and that I hadn't paid for it.

If ever there was an advert against releasing an unfinished game, DriveClub is it. Conversely, if ever there was an advert for constant patching and expansion of a game, DriveClub, weirdly, is also it.

Every time a new patch came down, I'd try the game again. Surprisingly, DriveClub got better with every one. It was barely noticeable at first, but the turning point for me came when the drift model was tweaked. Suddenly I was able to carve long, graceful, tire-smoking arcs through the Drift events that had given me so much trouble in the early days. DriveClub was beginning to become enjoyable. Then came the changes to the amount of friction the off track areas had, meaning that a slight mistake no longer meant an instant spin and a restart. I played a little further through the tour until I stopped enjoying it again. The game really got it's claws into me after the release of the patch coinciding with the Unite in Speed DLC pack. Somehow most of my grievances about the game had been polished away, and I devoured the remainder of the on-disc content, getting all of the tour stars in the process. The game still looked pretty boring though.

Once the tour was finished, I was happy with what DriveClub had become and the time I had spent with it. I thought I was done. Then I looked at the trophy list. I was six trophies away from the platinum.

Bugger.

I used my Fiance's profile to get the challenge trophies, but there was no way I was getting the progression trophies without spending more hours playing the game, which was something I was unwilling to do.

Then something amazing (or terrible) happened. The price of the season pass dropped to a tenner. Now, I've always been against DLC for the most part. Especially if it's announced before the release of the game. If you're announcing DLC before its parent game is out, there's no reason why it can't be in the game on release. But that's a rant for another time. With my judgement clouded by the desire for the platinum trophy, I counted up the events in the DLC tours and realised that there was more content in the DLC than in the actual game. I was effectively getting a whole extra game for a tenner. And I hadn't technically paid for the main game. I hit the buy button.

Playing the DLC, there was no doubt in my mind that a lot of it should have been in the game on release. Particularly the dynamic weather. And if Evolution had another 12 months to finish making the game, it probably would have been. But the expanded content bought DriveClub to life. The loose themes of each tour pack gave the game the personality it so desperately needed and the weather turned a bland looking world into one that is simply gorgeous.

Run a race at dawn in the rain. Watch the world turn gold as the sun comes up. Watch the light stream through the trees and reflect off the puddles. Look at the rainbow over the castle. You won't find anything in gaming much prettier than that at the moment. I'm painting with broad strokes there. The little details really sell it. Headlights from the following cars reflect in rear view mirrors. Water streams across your windscreen as you change direction. Brake lights refract through the water on the lens of the chase cam. Every light you can think of reflects off the road. Spray kicks up as you hit standing water. The world turns momentarily blue when night-time lightning strikes. Light snow touches the bodywork of your car and melts.

What I'm trying to say is that DriveClub has become a joy to look at as well as a joy to play. I spent weeks playing through all the new stuff, and at the end of it all I was only a short grind away from the platinum. This is exactly the kind of trophy hunting I like. Trophies gained by playing through everything the game has to offer, rather than arbitrary tasks that you'd never do in the course of normal gameplay.

With the short grind done (only an hour), and my platinum in the collection, I was done. Over the course of the year, and thanks to many patches, DriveClub has metamorphosed from a game that was at best mediocre into an excellent one that I would recommend to any racing game fan. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's the sequel to Project Gotham 4 that we never got. It's that good. So try it. Pick it up on the cheap, get the season pass and you have hours of fun on twenty-five quid, and a fairly straightforward platinum to boot.

The only problem for me now is that Evolution went and added motorbikes just days after I thought I was finished with DriveClub. There's some seriously exotic metal in there that really scratches my biker itch. There's a fresh platinum too.

Here we go again.

What I'd like to see in Zelda WiiU

I've been playing Zelda an awful lot of late, and I've been thinking about what I'd like to see in Zelda when it finally appears on the WiiU. So without further ado, here's a list of the things I'd like to see in ZeldaU.

A ripping yarn

Nintendo made a big step with storytelling in Skyward Sword. Yes it still hinged on the usual kidnap cliche, but in Skyward Sword Link and Zelda had a proper relationship, which meant he had an actual reason to go after her. Let's hope they make another step up in the quality of their stories and give us something epic and properly affecting.

A massive world

A forgone really, since the trailer specifically focussed on an open world. I'd like to see Nintendo go further than that and not just give us Hyrule, but open up some of the rest of the world as well. I'd love the quest to extend to Termina and Kohlint Island. At the same time, the world needs to be filled with life and look like it can support the people living in it.

Towns that feel lived in

I'd love for the places I visit in the next Zelda to feel like functioning communities. In the past, there have been technical limits to how populated a town could be. Hyrule Castle Town in Ocarina of Time for instance felt more like a diorama or a stage set than somewhere where people actually lived. Fable II, despite its faults has this feeling nailed. Bowerstone feels like a thriving community. There was a pub on the Town Square, a blacksmith, food stands, residential areas and shops hidden in back streets. People mingled and complained about their rent. It felt like life went on whether you were there or not. I want to see fields full of grain to feed the population. I want so see trains of cattle from LonLon Ranch being driven to the big city. I want to see people travelling. I want to see people living. Zelda towns exist in a kind of stasis, with people repeating the same lines and motions until the next story beat. For Hyrule to feel like a living world it needs touches like these.

Technology

Hyrule has been pre-industrial for pretty much every game. I'd like to think that the steampunkish monster in the trailer hints at some kind of advance in technology for the world of Hyrule. It would be very cool to see a Hyrule just on the cusp of an industrial revolution. Perhaps one fuelled by the rediscovery and reverse engineering of the ancient technology hinted at in Skyward Sword. A new world where cobbled together old tech sits uncomfortably next to new inventions could be compelling.

Horseback battling

One of my favorite parts of Twilight Princess was charging the Moblin King on the bridge. The horseback battles were some of the coolest and most cinematic moments of the game. I'd like to see them make a return on the WiiU.

Lose the musical instruments

They're annoying and they've become a cliche. Can we have a game without them please?

A day/night cycle

I love being out on Hyrule field and watching the sun set. If the new world of Zelda WiiU is going to feel like a place that could really exist. A day and night cycle is essential.

Motion control

I never thought I'd say this, but motion controls in Skyward Sword made it a better game. It would be a shame to lose them in favour of the gamepad in the new Zelda. Yes, the controls could be improved upon, so let's hope Nintendo do that. It could be amazing.

A separate, playable Zelda  story

Did you ever wonder what Zelda got up to when she was out journeying in Skyward Sword? What about how she became Sheik? Wouldn't it be cool if the next game had playable scenes where Zelda's story got told?

The ability to choose Link’s gender

Lets face it, in most Zelda games it doesn't matter if Link is a boy or not. Think about it. What would change in any game if Link was a girl in any of the Zelda games. Okay, it might lend Skyward Sword a couple of sapphic undertones, but it still wouldn't make any difference to the story at all. There were a lot of positive noises when the trailer for ZeldaU was first revealed and the internet thought that Link was a girl. Let us choose Link's gender. It'd be cool.

Voice work

Come on Nintendo, it's 2015. Let's have some voice acting in your games already. Just not in the vein of, "excuuuse me princess!"

Robin Williams.

Because it would be a fitting tribute to a man who gave so much laughter to the world and loved Zelda enough to name his daughter after her. Credit to http://oscarjoyo.tumblr.com/ for the image