In appreciation of: Phil Fish

Phil Fish seems to be getting a lot of hate at the moment. This was bought to my attention when I spotted a tweet from CliffyB highlighting the fact. For those who don't know the story, here's how it goes.

It seems that Fish has an entourage of haters, a bunch of people who take pleasure in criticism and say stuff about boycotting Fez because they think he's an asshole. To which Phil Fish replied this, "Fez is number one on Steam right now and it's not even out yet. You should boycott harder, nerds." So, giving as good as he gets then. Needless to say there was a bit of forum rage, and people started calling for a boycott again. Frankly the forum trolls need to grow up. Phil Fish is not Activision or EA, two companies whom you have every right to hate. No, he's just a guy, a guy who made a game whom some corners of the internet seem to have a problem with, a guy who isn't a PR mouthpiece. So what if he comes across as a prickly auteur? It's his game, he has every right to be. He's speaking to the trolls in their own language. Of course they're not going to like it.

Phil Fish, however prickly or unpleasant a person he may or may not be, is a personality, and one who can speak like a human rather than a PR robot at that. Gaming needs more personalities. Excluding Phil Fish, I can count the amount of big gaming Names I can reel off from the top of my head on one hand. Miyamoto, Kojima, Cliffy B, Jon Blow, Rhianna Pratchett. So he's a pantomime villain to the trolls? So what? He's an indie dev so he can speak his mind without having to worry what the suits think, and it's fun to watch him spar with his critics. I'd like to see more people like him. Also whatever his personality flaws, Fez is a truly great game, and to stop yourself from playing it, just because you don't like the developer is simply cutting off your nose to spite your face.

To put it another way. Did you boycott Django Unchained after seeing Quentin Tarantino's now famous Channel 4 interview with Krishnan Guru Murthy? Thought not. It doesn't matter if he's a bit of a dick, the fact is Tarantino's movies are great, so you go and see them anyway. The same applies to Clint Eastwood movies, or any number of musicians. Of course, you have to draw the line somewhere. It's not ok to like Roman Polanski movies or the Lostprophets. Save the boycotts for the real assholes, not for the guy who just said something that you've taken umbrage with.

Now stop trolling and go play Fez. You'll thank yourself for it.

M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-MONDAY NIT-RO: An ode to my most played game of the past twelve months.

Ifj you hadn't guessed by the title alone, this piece is about RedLynx's fantastic Trials Evolution, a game I'm given to gushing about at every possible opportunity. I'm hopelessly addicted to it, it's the gaming equivalent of crystal meth. There are few games out there any more that are as relentlessly playable and unapologetically hardcore as Trials Evolution that at the same time, are as inviting to the casual crowd.

In fact, the early part of the game is custom made to hook you in. The first time you boot up the game, you're treated to a blast of dumb, yet fun, cock-rock/rap by a man who clearly loves Trials a little bit too much, which sets the tone for the rest of the game. Once you're into the game proper, you're given a bike, a very short lesson in how to control it, then the game turns you lose on a set of tracks that let you blast through them with the throttle buried and barely a thought of crashing. Basically, this is a stroke of genius. If you're having a ton of fun within moments of starting, you're more likely to persevere when the difficulty starts to ramp up. Thankfully, Trials Evo wants you to learn how to play it. Within a few minutes, you've blitzed through the first few tracks and lo and behold, the game has already given you a new and faster bike. By now the game has it's claws in you and you barely notice the subtle drip feed of slightly more advanced techniques in the next licence test. From here you're on the slippery slope to where I have arrived now.

I both love and hate Trials Evolution in equal measure. Despite only dipping into it when I'm in between games, I've scrambled to the top of it's not inconsiderable difficulty curve, after having spent the best part of forty hours with it. While the game has a sunny disposition and a goofy sense of humour, it's still hard on those people who choose to try and attain it's gold medals. People like me. If you don't care about golds, and want to just finish it's tracks you're fine. You have five hundred faults and half an hour at each location to play with. You can laugh along with the level designer who thinks its funny to put a bottomless pit, a fire, a crusher, or a stack of TNT underneath a particularly difficult obstacle. If you're trying to finish the level under a set time and fault limit, you'll soon be cursing that same level designer to the deepest, darkest and most painful of all the Hells. The thing is, once you do come in under those limits, the sense of achievement that comes with it is unrivalled by pretty much any other game out there. You feel like you've scored a victory over RedLynx themselves.

Mastering the game means mastering a physics system that encourages care, accuracy and practice, practice, practice and rewards silly mistakes with embarrassment at best or a bone crunching accident at worst. While the licences you take when you unlock each bike give you the fundamentals, there's no substitute for experimentation. A lot of the fun I find in Trials is working out just where to wheelie, when to pop the rear suspension, working out when power and speed isn't the best option. I'm by no means amazing at the game, compared to those at the top of the leaderboards, I'm slow, scrappy and barely in control, but I've worked through and got gold on every track in the game bar the extreme levels. The physics mean that no two failures are ever exactly alike, which along with the sometimes punishing difficulty, just adds to the onemorego-ness of it all.

While the game can be punishing, it's never unfair. Is that slope too steep or that gap too wide? Keep practicing. The consistent physics and the unchanging nature of most of the landscape makes you the main variable in the task of getting over that troublesome obstacle. Often, the only reward for all the practice is an entry at the bottom of the leaderboard and the knowledge that you've harpooned your white whale, but amazingly, that really is enough. To use the drug reference again, it's like a tiny little high, and once you've got it, you're already starting the next track, craving another hit of the sweet, sweet sense of victory.

But what happens when there are no more tracks? Cook up some more! And if you can't do that, there's a huge community of really talented people who can do it for you. Trials comes with a really comprehensive level editor, one so deep you can make entirely new games within it. I've not even scratched the surface of what it can do myself, but some of the things that come out of the Trials community are really amazing. Even though there are two fantastic DLC packs with two new areas with an entire game's worth of extra content, including the fabulous Gecko 520 BMX, you could probably play a new community track every hour of every day for the next year and still be able to find content you haven't seen. While I do recommend the DLC, if only for the BMX, you don't need it, thanks to the community, even vanilla Trials Evolution has a depth of content that is almost bottomless.

I really can't say enough good stuff about this game. It's a game you can only get better at, a game that changes as you play it, from straight up racer, to platformer, to puzzle game. Even replaying early tracks on faster bikes creates new challenges. Bumps that wouldn't trouble you on a slow bike suddenly become kickers that upset the fastest bikes as you hit them. The same screen four player mode is an absolute hoot when your mates are together and on top of all that, you can dip in and out of it and play it in bitesize chunks when you have a bit of downtime. You know those leaderboards I mentioned earlier? They track your friends too, and the game shows a ghost of your fastest friend to compete with on the track you're racing on. It's a great carrot-on-a-stick that makes you play and play until you've beat them, and when you do, instantly text them to tell them you've knocked them of the top spot. It was my favourite game of last year, and if it wasn't for Bioshock Infinite, it would probably be my favourite game of this year too.

The most significant testament to Trials Evolution's brilliance and accessibility is this. If I leave the Xbox for more than a minute when I'm gaming with my girlfriend, I can guarantee that she's saved and quit whatever I've been playing and has fired up Trials. Usually, by the time I've returned, she's hard at work chasing my best times and will often have absolutely demolished one or two of them. And if you think I can get her to relinquish the control pad when she's her Trials on, well, it's a funny thing to see me try.

Best of all, a version with all the DLC is now available on Steam, so there's another barrier to entry taken away. If you haven't played it, download the trial of Trials, (hur-hur) and give it a go. Trust me, you'll be hooked by the time you've finished with it.

You may even end up wanting to gush about it to the whole internet, like me.

The Experiment: Race Day

Regular readers will know that I've been preparing for an experiment for past month or so. Well, as it turns out, yesterday was, for lack of a better name, Race Day. So here are the results.

One of the bikes I used on the day.

For those who don't know what I'm banging on about, it's this. I was bought an afternoon's track riding with the Ron Haslam Race School for Christmas. The day itself takes place on the Donnington Park Grands Prix circuit using track prepped Honda CBR600RRs and ex (and sometimes even current) racers as instructors. So it was a bit of a dream come true for the biker in me, something akin to being taught to drive by Damon Hill if you're a car nut.

As a gamer with a long time love of racing games, the whole thing presented something of an opportunity. After all, how many of us have wondered, after winning the battle with Laguna Seca's infamously difficult Corkscrew in Gran Turismo, if we could master the corner in real life? I certainly have, and as an owner of SBK X, the official game of the World Superbike Championship, now I could. So here's how I went about it.

First of all, I had to make sure that Donnington Park was even in SBK X to start with. A curious quirk in the race calendar during that season meant the British round of the championship was actually held at Silverstone that year. Thankfully, the game went out on general release before the change could actually be made in game, so Donnington was still there. Another stroke of luck arrived when I found out that a reasonable facsimile of the bike I would be riding in real life was in the game too. So, I had the bike. Next thing to do was turn off the racing line. Generally in racers, it's a helpful feature, but here it gets in the way of what I'm trying to achieve, namely, learn the track. You see, if the racing line is on, you just end up following the line, braking, turning and accelerating when it tells you, rather than actually figuring all that stuff out for yourself. So with full simulation mode on, manual gears and zero knowledge of the circuit, I set about turning out laps.

A month or so later, I wound up at Donnington for real. So, did my countless virtual laps around Donnington help at all in the real world?

The circuit, so you know what I'm harping on about below.

 

In a manner of speaking, they did. But mainly in the most obvious way. Learning where the track goes. More subtly, my time on the game illustrated how ridiculously late the turn in point for Redgate is. Get it wrong, tip in too early and you run out of road and wind up in the gravel. Not something you want to do, since Redgate is the very first corner on the track. Something else that was helpful was how I could take note of where the bike became unsettled under braking at Maclean's. Obviously, in real life, I wasn't nearly as fast as I was in the game, but it meant I wasn't too surprised when the back end started to slide on the brakes when I approached the corner for real. It's still a pretty unsettling feeling though, like you're at the very limit of what the laws of physics will allow you to get away with. The worry that you might crash in a game is very different to the worry that the bike might spit you off when you're actually sat on one.

What didn't the game help with? Let's get the obvious out of the way first. It's in no way like riding a real motorcycle. No matter how good the game's physics engine is, it simply cannot communicate how physical riding at high speed is. The bike tries to throw you off the back under acceleration, tries to spit you off the front under braking, 140mph windblast tries to tear your head off, and you hang off the bike to such an extent during cornering that if you're good, you can touch a knee to the road. If you're amazing you can touch an elbow down. If you're a lunatic, like one of the instructors, you can corner one handed, striking sparks from the knuckle armour on your glove off the road with your free hand.



Donnington Park from the sky.

The game didn't prepare me for just how steep the section between Redgate and Maclean's is. It genuinely felt like a rollercoaster on my first session. As the speed builds with confidence, the track starts to feel narrower as the bike begins to dictate the line out a corner rather than yourself. The whole thing becomes an exercise in lining the bike up at the apex and firing it out on the throttle, rather than just riding around. It's a difficult thing to explain, and something you have to experience for yourself. The game doesn't give any sensation of how close the road feels to your face as you hang off during cornering, or the way that the red and white stripes of the kerb take up most of your peripheral vision as they flash by. The game gives no indication of how the opposite kerb and the gravel trap behind it seems to come at you in a way that's way too quick for comfort the first time you really hook up a corner and fly through it as it's creator intended. Nor did it give any indication of the jarring dip at the apex of the right hander in the Fogarty Esses, which really caught me by surprise the first time I found it. It raised a grin though. It was the first indication that I was getting faster.
 
Most of all, the game cannot match the buzz. I was so high on adrenaline at the end of the day that I couldn't fill out the survey when we were finished. My hands were shaking too much to make my handwriting legible.

So in conclusion, is the game anything like the real thing? Let's put it this way. It's like building a rollercoaster in Theme Park and thinking, these things look like fun, then going to Alton Towers and riding the Nemesis for three hours. It looks like the real thing, and it might give you some ideas of what to expect, but by the time you're done in real life, you'll be an aching, gibbering, adrenaline addled wreck.

Try it sometime!

Five for a Fiver (or perhaps less)

I'm playing an awful lot of Bioshock Infinite at the moment, and I'm marvelling at how I'm able to give new significance to the early events of the game, now that I know what's going on. I highly recommend playing it a second time. In the first playthrough, you're told the story, in the second you understand it.

Anyway, I've been a bit isolated from the wider gaming world recently, but happily, just as I was looking for something to talk about, my Bethesda loving friend stepped into the fold with an idea.

Five for under a fiver!

So I'm handing the floor to him.



As a little side project we decided a fun thing to add to the blog would be a countdown of five great games that we've handpicked each month that you can pick up and play for under a fiver. Most of these games won’t be life changing (Final Fantasy VII anyone?) since these archetypal 'amazing' games usually come with an 'amazing' price tag. You may not agree with our choices but, well, tough! Joking aside, we really hope you like this list and take a chance with some of these titles! The list will change each month with different games you should play for the price of a Big Mac…

Here’s this month’s rundown

#5:
Mission Impossible: Operation Surma (Multi Format)

Ok, so how many of you read Mission… and turned off thinking it was the awful N64/PS1 game based on the Tom Cruise movie? Well actually I loved that game, for all its flaws (Grownup Gamer says, "So did I!"). But anyway Operation: Surma is thankfully far superior. Mostly. You play as Ethan Hunt, and what starts as a simple tag 'n' grab mission evolves into a story that quite rightly should have been its own film. The added stealth tactics are a welcome addition to its predecessor, as are the clever uses of gadgets and silent takedowns instead of headshots to outwit the enemy. These additions help take this Mission Impossible game back to its espionage roots. While clunky at times, the game overall is superb. If you buy it and think what I've just said was a bunch of crap, then I urge you to take it past the first level and reconsider. I happen to think the skydive sequence towards the end is amazing. This game was one of the first I bought for my PS2 10/12 years ago, and is still on my shelf. 
rearms and

Where to buy it: Amazon
Prices: £1.99 INC postage (PS2) £1.49 INC postage (Xbox) PREOWNED (Available sealed on Xbox currently for £4.89 INC postage)

#4:
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 (Multi Format)

Arguably the best Pro Skater of them all. I remember this being the first Pro Skater I played, having played it to death on my PS1. The soundtrack is awesome, I still skate around The Foundry with 96 Quite Bitter Beings by CKY or Blitzkrieg Bop by The Ramones pumped at full volume feeling like a skating god. Graphically the PS1 version of game is quite sketchy, but the PS2 and  GameCube versions hold up pretty well. The game, in any of it's guises remains a gem. Also, if you need just one reason to play this game. Darth. Maul. As a skater. Complete with Lightsaber. ‘Nuff said. If you need another? Wolverine… 


Where to buy it: Amazon
Prices: £2.04 INC postage (PS2) £5.51 INC postage (Xbox) (I know… technically over a fiver… but £2.03 of that IS postage so TECHNICALLY it’s only £3.48…) £4.02 INC postage (For an acceptable copy on PS1 – Although this blogger has found numerous copies of this game lurking in Cash Generator for a measly 99p) £3.49 INC postage (Gamecube) 

#3:
Tomb Raider 3 (PS1/PC)

Ahh, Tomb Raider 3. The pinnacle of the great gaming lady's original incarnation. Great though her previous and following two encounters were, Tomb Raider 3 just stands head and shoulders above the rest. It's also, to my eternal shame, the only PS1 Tomb Raider game I’ve ever completed! What isn’t there about this game to love? Well for starters, it contains my favourite of all the Tomb Raider weapons, the Desert Eagle. Then there are locations, from the freezing tundra of Antarctica to the dizzying heights of London (and the lows of Aldwych Tube Station) to the mysterious and supposedly hidden(?) Area 51 in Nevada. The story and characters are great, even the Butler, who is cleverly covered in targets as you wreak havoc in Croft manor, because Eidos just KNEW we’d shoot him. Genius. The fact that you could play the story sort of in any order you like is a nice feature, whilst India has to be first location and Antarctica has to the be last, you can pick and choose the sequence in which you visit the other three. The classic Lara death scenes were back, my personal favourite? Piranhas. This game is one of the best Tomb Raider games of all time in my humble opinion. And I’ve played them all, even the one that must not be named. Yes Angel of Darkness, I’m looking at you! 


Where to buy it: Amazon
Prices: £3.27 INC postage (PS1 – Platinum, Black Disc will set you back £5.30 INC postage) £2.04 INC postage (PC) – But this blogger recommends PS1!

Drawing close to the end… With the #2 spot going to…!

#2:
FFVII - Dirge of Cerberus (PS2) 

Lordy! As a lover of Final Fantasy, especially Final Fantasy VII, and especially Vincent Valentine, how could this game not appeal? It oozes sexiness from the bleak Midgar backdrop and the lovingly crafted steampunky locations to the platform/hack and slash gameplay. Beautiful. As a massive fan of the Devil May Cry games, for me, this was Devil May Cry set in the world of FFVII,  playing as the *other* character dressed with a pronounced love of guns. Its fast paced, frenetic and provides a lot of back story to the FFVII universe, including some fresh insight into Vincent’s story. It introduces some new characters and allies to aid him during his journey, and you can use his iconic Limit Breaks from FFVII to help you in battle. As a happy bonus for us, Square Enix revamped the game for the Western Market, as it fell short in Japan. More combos, slicker, quicker. I'm glad they did. I remember the first time I played this. I did not stop until I had finished It. I was about seventeen I think, and remember staying up all night to finish it. I remember the last level provided a perfect ending to the game. Coupled with the Death Penalty, Vincent rampaged through the skies. If you are in any way interested in finding out how Vincent became, well, Vincent, then this game is a must play. In fact, any self-proclaimed Final Fantasy fan should own and play this game. One of, if not the best spin offs from a Final Fantasy title ever. 

Where to buy it: Amazon
Prices: £3.66 (PS2) – Best. Buy. Ever. 

This month’s #1 spot goes to:
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Mega Drive)

How could this post be complete without the addition of our favourite blue hedgehog’s arguably best adventure on the Mega Drive. The levels were amazing, the game seemed faster and Tails made his first appearance. It was quite fresh to play as Tails, despite how awful he is as a character, but I remember playing as him instead of Sonic and was like, "Whoa! Whole new Game!" Sonic 2 contains one of my all time favourite Sonic levels, Chemical Plant Zone. The soundtrack to that level was amazing and every time I think of Sonic 2, it's Chemical Plant that I think of. Another feature I liked about Sonic 2 was the spin dash. No more awkward backtracking and building up speed to get round the loop de loop like in Sonic the Hedgehog! Great addition. Weirdly, I love the change in design of the Shield powerup too. In Sonic 1 it was just a boring 'bubble' but in Sonic 2 it was this vibrant pulsating swirly blue thing. Incredible. I recently downloaded this on XBLA and played through for about half an hour and reached the Mystic Caves. Sadly this was very late at night and I eventually had to retire, but was one of the best half hours of my life. I have so much love for this Sonic game, especially the special stages. They're equally as frustrating as those windy mazes and GOAL! bars in Sonic 1, these special stages required a certain amount of rings or you fail at each checkpoint. I still to this day have NEVER managed to fully circle over the halfpipe and catch all the rings in the air. How you are meant to do that still baffles me, almost 15 years after first playing it. If you haven’t played this then do. If you are a fan of Sonic then play this game. This game actually was one of those life changing games. It renewed my love for Sonic and ensured I bought the sequels too.

Where to buy it: Amazon
Prices: Mega Drive games rarely come in the box or with instructions (not sure why!) but as a cartridge only you are looking at £4.15 INC postage. A boxed with instructions copy will cost you between £5 and £10 depending on where you go usually. (I actually managed to score a copy at a local car boot fair, for an award winning 50p). 

We hope you enjoyed this post and please keep reading and sharing! We'll be sure to let you know about the next Five for a Fiver feature

Bioshocked

As you likely saw, there was no blog last week, because I'd done something amazing. I preordered a game to pick up on release day. Specifically I preordered Bioshock Infinite. This is a significant occurrence, it's the first game I've actually gone out and ordered since Final Fantasy VIII, which was also, incidentally, the one time I've ever gone out of my way to get the collectors edition of a game. Anyway, the stars aligned for me on the runup to Bioshock Day. I got some interest on my savings the week before release, and the review on IGN appeared a couple of days after that. The score was amazing so I ordered.

I was slightly thrown by the actual release day. When did games start being released on a Tuesday? I've clearly missed something here. I thought games got released on a Friday so you can ignore all your friends and play all weekend. Not anymore it seems! Nevertheless, it was fortunate that I also had release day off. I played all day, again, something I don't do often. It was wonderful.

If you haven't played it yet, I urge you to do so. Go out in your lunch hour, pick it up tomorrow. It doesn't matter what format you choose. It's beautiful in every possible way. It's light is blinding, it's colours deeply saturated. It animates beautifully. Columbia feels lived in, a world held up by the sheer force of belief of it's inhabitants. The voice acting is stellar. The use of it's licensed music is unique. Elizabeth is utterly, utterly wonderful, the most believable AI companion I've seen since Alyx Vance. She will stir genuine emotions in you. The villains are memorable and the Songbird is terrifyingly powerful. Best of all, the story is fabulously dense, covering a myriad of themes, building to a melon twisting gut punch of an ending. Basically I'm saying if you don't play this, you are missing out on what will probably be the best release of this year and in all likelihood the best game of this console generation.

The first thing I wanted to do when I finished it was start it again.

There's so much buried in Columbia you'll never find everything on your first playthrough unless you use a guide. Do yourself a favour, play it like a real gamer and leave the guide in the shop. Take pleasure in the exploring, the discovery. If you buy a guide, you're basically buying spoilers, the screenshots will steal the
awe from every new area. I will be buying the other companion book however. The Art of Bioshock Infinite, a near 200 page hardcover full of concept art from the game. If you decide to do the same, wait til you finish the game. You don't want spoilers, the game has so much impact when you see it with fresh eyes. (Update: The book arrived today, and it's beautiful, chock full of amazing art. Best of all is the cover under the dust jacket, a shot of Elizabeth and the Songbird embossed in what might just be gold leaf. As you can probably tell, I'm very pleased with it. As a both fan of the game and a book nut, I can honestly say this is an essential purchase.)

So again. Buy Bioshock Infinite! It means Irrational Games will make a ton of money which they can plough into making Ken Levine's next opus. The world needs more games like this, and gaming as a whole needs more men like Ken Levine. He's like a gaming Chris Nolan, somehow making the unapologetically high concept suitable for the mass market. Just as film has it's easily recognisable auteurs, gaming is starting to gain a few of its own too.

Make sure you stay for the credits too, there's a nice little surprise from around the midpoint.

Now go buy it!