Blue Man Sings The Whites

ACE COMBAT: ASSAULT HORIZON (XBOX 360)

Let’s get this out the way first. “The strongest Ace Combat in a decade” says the end of Eurogamer’s review.

No it isn’t.

“It’s Call of Duty in the air” says the start of Eurogamer’s review.

Yes it is. However, I’m not as keen on this development as that reviewer seems to be.

Since the very start of the series Call Of Duty’s single player campaign has been a shooting gallery, a theme park ride from Man’s-Inhumanity-To-Man World (The Shootiest Place On Earth!). It rolls you through a series of action set-pieces featuring explosions and carnage dialled up to eleven. It never makes much of an effort to disguise the fact that you’re on a predetermined path, that everyone playing the game is going to have pretty much exactly the same experience as you. That approach gives the game’s designers a great deal of control over the pacing and staging of the action. This allows the construction of awesome experiences like Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare’s sniper missions which start with the unbearable tension of slithering through long grass as a company of enemy troops marches past and over you, and end with you fighting off seemingly endless waves of enemies in a post-Chernobyl radioactive ghost-town fairground. Another example would be the Death From Above level from the same game, which made you the gunner in an AC-130 gunship but used a combination of abstracting “night-vision” visuals and minimalist sound design to make you feel distanced and removed from the action, turning a completely familiar rail shooter setup into something eerie and weirdly affecting.

The tradeoff for having that tight control over the experience is obviously that the player’s freedom is greatly curtailed. If you’re building a game around these pre-fab cinematic moments you need to make sure that the player’s in the right place to see them. It means that you’re telling a story rather than allowing the player to make his own. None of this is inherently bad. Some of my best friends are linear action titles. Not every game is served by being a sprawling, freeform open-world affair.

Ace Combat is served by being a sprawling, freeform open-world affair. After all, what’s appealing about flying a jet fighter? Isn’t it speed? Isn’t it the power that that speed grants you? Isn’t it the ability to go where you choose and rain down with great vengeance and furious anger those stuck plodding impotently through the mud below? Isn’t it going up-diddly-up-up and down-diddly-own-own? Isn’t it looping the loop and defying the ground?

The prior entry in the series, Ace Combat 6: Fires Of Liberation might be my favourite game on the 360 (Non-Plastic Guitar Division). And a major reason for that is that it understood that need, the need for speed. It provided big, sprawling maps so you had the space needed to thunder across the landscape and it provided big, sprawling missions so you had plenty of targets to swoop on like a supersonic metal seagull of DEATH. A side benefit of the large playing area was that you got room to breathe – Ace Combat 6 was hectic and action-packed, but it also gave you time to make decisions, whether they were based on tactical considerations or sheer capricious whim. It made you feel like a king of the battlefield.

Ace Combat: Assault Horizon does not make you feel like a king of the battlefield. It makes you feel like a put-upon underling being ordered from one task to the next. And that task always seems to be ”Go And Have A Knife-Fight In A Matchbox”.

In other words, it’s Call Of Duty in the air.

Project Aces have clearly decided that the best bit of Ace Combat is dogfighting at close range so wouldn’t the game be better if you did more of that? Like, a LOT more of that? Like, making that pretty much all you ever do? The game’s been built around a new mechanic where getting close to an enemy allows you to press both triggers to kick in Dogfighting Mode. In DFM you give up control of your plane which just automatically follows your target (often along a pre-determined PATH OF AWESOMENESS, twisting and turning amoung skyscrapers or around oil-rig booms or whatever is needed for the requisite Call Of Duty set-piece spectacle). You just concentrate on keeping a crosshair locked on the enemy plane ahead, firing your cannon and launching heat-seeking missiles until it ceases to be a problem in the most pyrotechnic way possible, often spraying your canopy with spots of oil as you zoom through the explosion. It’s pretty fun, the first half-dozen times you do it. By the twentieth or thirtieth nigh-identical repetition of the process the thrill’s worn pretty thin.

What makes it even more annoying is that the designers have gone all-in on Dogfighting Mode, sacrificing pretty much every other aspect of the game to it. Missiles now require you to be behind the target to even have a chance of hitting, obviously making them much less effective. Long-range and multi-target missiles are still present but are almost worthless. I complained about the small maps and linear missions in HAWX but AC: Assault Horizon makes HAWX look like Operation fricking Flashpoint. A group of enemy fighters spawns out of thin air practically on top of you in the middle of the cramped battlefield, the game waits until you’ve shot all of them down (including the enemy’s flight leader, who you’re explicitly told is practically impossible to destroy in any way other than via DFM), at which point another group of enemy fighters spawns out of thin air. You’ve got no agency, no tactical decisions to make, you’re just being dragged by the nose from one pre-canned encounter to the next.

Air-to-ground missions might be even worse, since it lacks even the firework-display distraction provided by Dogfighting Mode. There’s no planning, no tactics, not really even any use for special weapons. You’re given a pre-planned flight path through the enemy forces which when followed allows you to destroy pretty much every available target in one pass with your cannon and the occasional missile. It doesn’t just lack thrill, it’s actively boring.

It would be unfair to claim that lousy fighter missions are all AC:AH has to offer, though. There are also missions flying an Apache gunship which are vaguely tolerable although slightly awkward to control and which suffer from the same lack of agency as the jet missions. There are missions where you get to be the door-gunner on a Black Hawk helicopter which are terrible because door-gunner missions are always terrible. And there’s a mission where you’re the gunner on an AC-130 which might sound familiar because it’s a hackneyed rip-off of the same mission from HAWX 2 which was a hackneyed rip-off of the previously-mentioned same mission from Call Of Duty 4.

In fact, Assault Horizon feels more like a sequel to HAWX 2 than to Ace Combat 6. Beyond the already-belaboured point about linearity and lack of elbow-room that blighted the HAWX series, AC:AH has the same sort of airport-novel military-fetish plot as HAWX 2. It’s got the same reliance on a gimmicky control method (DFM vs. Assistance Off mode). It puts you in the shoes of several protagonists in the same way and has the same vague sense that it’s embarrassed to be a game about jet fighters. Assault Horizon’s helicopter dalliances are more fun than HAWX 2′s interminable spy-drone missions, but only in the sense that dinner with John Major is more fun than dinner with Nick Griffin.

I’ve been trying without success to think of a game that’s disappointed me more than Ace Combat: Assault Horizon. Sequels are often let-downs for a variety of reasons, but I can’t think of another example of a game series that Lost It overnight, that took such a huge step away from the things that made the previous games so special.

Gaming now has its Red Dwarf Series 6.

RANK: D

NBA 2K11 (Xbox360)

It appears that sports games with roleplaying elements may be my Kryptonite. It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, given that I’ve a long and generally regrettable history of adding roleplaying elements to those sports games in which, strictly speaking, no roleplaying elements existed. In any case, the reason I’ve spent the past few weeks enthralled by a game depicting a sport in which I have little interest and less knowledge can be summed up in three words: “My Player Mode”. It’s strikingly similar to the Be A Pro mode in FIFA 09 which ate so much of my life – you create and control a single player through the course of his professional career, gaining experience points depending on how well you perform which you then use to increase that player’s abilities. And so: DIRK JUSTICE.

Jrue Holiday is momentarily distracted by an imaginary deceased tortoise. JUSTICE! takes full advantage.

The first pick of the second round of the 2011 draft by the New Jersey Nets, at the start of the season he was a tall, quick point guard whose talents included: a) a pretty sweet medium-range jumpshot and b) nothing else. DIRK JUSTICE! spent exactly six games in New Jersey being played out of position, not getting the ball and watching team-mates launch hopeless shots into the first four rows of the crowd before demanding a trade and taking his meagre talents to the Pacific Northwest where he survived as a soldier of fortune. After a few months of development playing as a facilitator and streaky scorer for the Trail Blazers, he has now turned into a tall, quick point guard whose talents include a) an even sweeter medium-range jumpshot b) an awesome Sideshow Bob hairdo / serial killer moustache combo and c) nothing else.

Note the score and game time remaining. This is what is professionally known as "Sticking The Boot In." Or possibly "Suck It, Bryant".

It’s possible that NBA2K11 is a rigorous and authentic recreation of basketball. I haven’t the faintest idea, because I know as much about basketball as Danny Dyer knows about string theory. I just know I love the announcer shouting “HERE’S JUSTICE!!” like an Eighties straight-to-video action movie hero every time I take a jumpshot. I love that different teams and different players play noticably different styles, forcing me to adapt my game to beat them. I love that the game’s a significantly different experience playing as a centre than as a shooting guard. Mostly, I love that enough is out of my control that it emotionally involves me.

That seems a bit counterintuitive, so let me try to explain.

When your player releases a shot in NBA2K11, it has a percentage chance of going in. That chance is based on how far from the basket the shooter is, his skill at that range, whether he’s spotted up or shooting off the dribble, how tight the defence is around him, how well you time the button press to make him release the ball and probably several other factors. No matter how ideal the situation you’ve manufactured to take the shot, no matter how well you time your release you can’t guarantee a basket, only shift the percentages in your favour to a greater or lesser degree. This means every shot gives a small gambler’s thrill when it swishes through the hoop, or a sudden spike of righteous annoyance if it clangs off the rim. Either way, the emotional stakes are increased, either in an “I AM A GOLDEN GOD OF BASKETBALL!” fashion or an “I’LL GET YOU NEXT TIME, GADGET!” sort’ve way. The perfect balance of control to Mongo Only Pawn In Game Of Life is found in My Player mode, where I’m regularly delighted by the play of my AI teammates but even more regularly frustrated with them. Crucially though, I’m usually frustrated by them in fairly predictable ways – Greg Oden’s reluctance to attack the basket or Deron Williams’ monomanaical tendancy to take ridiculous shots, for example. Those tendancies make me mentally assign personalities to algorithms, make me get invested in what I’m doing, make me develop a relationship with the other nine players on court and a relationship with the game itself. This results in the sort of emergent narrative you get playing a game like Championship Manager, where the abstraction and random element both fill in the gaps in the AI, playing into the natural human tendancy to see pattern and design where none actually exist. Essentially, the instinct that makes people turn the shadows cast by curtains flapping in the night breeze into a vengeful ghostly apparition, or made a bunch of frozen Scandinavians decide that lightning hitting trees was thrown by a beardy alcoholic with an enormous hammer is the same instinct that makes me shout at Kevin Love for bricking open but insanely optimistic 3-point attempts. I’d like the game to embrace this even more. When I score or block a shot it makes me feel the overpowering urge to declare my awesomeness / taunt my opposite number. To that end, I wish there were some equivalent of the insanely detailed FIFA goal celebration mechanic in the game – if he sinks a clutch shot it would be nice to have DIRK JUSTICE!!! bounce back up the court doing Sam Cassell’s Testicle Dance, f’rinstance.

Derrick Rose gazes with wistful admiration at the majesty of JUSTICE!!'s hair.

Other nittiest of picks – the commentators aren’t brilliant, there’s way too much repetition and they don’t seem to recognise that season averages will be reduced if you’re not playing full-length games. Hence you hear things like “He’s not a regular scorer, but he’s contributing tonight” when DIRK JUSTICE!!!! is 3rd in the NBA in points per game. Also: in “The Association” mode (the game’s equivalent of a Madden Franchise mode, where you’re in full control of a team, functioning as its GM and coach as well as playing every game) you have the option of reducing the number of games played in a full season from 82 down to 54 or even lower. Bizarrely, that’s not available in My Player mode, you’re forced to grind through a full-length season or nothing. Oh, and why are there no glasses available in the otherwise nicely comprehensive player appearance editor? Amar’e Stoudemire has his excellently stupid goggles present and correct, why can’t DIRK JUSTICE!!!!! have the same? Or even better, Rip Hamilton’s mildly terrifying Phantom Of The Opera facemask?

The hypnotic power of the JUSTICE!!! crotch leads to a simple basket.

These really are trivial complaints. NBA2K11 looks good, feels brilliant and has me shouting at Imaginary Brandon Roy for not JUST TAKING THE BLOODY WIDE-OPEN SHOT THAT I JUST SET HIM UP FOR WHERE ARE YOU GOING? OH MY HUGGING GOD. That’s what I want from a sports game.

RANK: A

(This is something of an experiment with structure and word-count. Your pardon is pre-emptively begged.)

CRACKDOWN 2 (Xbox 360)

A free-roaming third-person action game, Crackdown 2 casts you as the ultraviolent cyborg enforcer for a fascist police state. Your mission is to keep the citizenry of Pacific City safe by bounding around the streets and rooftops raining ballistic death on the mysterious monstrous “Freaks” who roam the city at night and the malcontents who roam it by day. This is exactly as much fun as it sounds. And a useful insight as to what the country will look like after 5 years of Tory government OMG TEH SATIRE.

Crackdown 2 gives you a big, varied gameworld to fool around in. While the setting lacks the authenticity, nuance and humour of the Grand Theft Auto games which were an obvious influence, Pacific City’s neighbourhoods range from rickety shanty-towns to glittering skyscrapers with each district presenting a different challenge to traverse effectively.  The game has an attractive comic-book aesthetic – all flat colours and thick black outlines – which rather suits its knockabout b-movie storyline and over-the-top action.
 
Sensibly given the multitude of threats it throws at you, Crackdown 2 starts you with superhuman strength, resilience and leaping ability then only makes you stronger as the game goes on. Killing enemies bestows “experience points” which improve whichever method you used to carry out the kill – firearms, explosives, melee or vehicles. Your foot-speed and jumping are primarily increased via collecting “agility orbs” which are scattered on rooftops around the city, the collection of which becomes almost a game in its own right – part free-climbing, part scavenger hunt.  You’re never explicitly directed to carry out a specific mission, rather the game scatters tasks to be performed all over the city and leaves you to pick your own path through them. However, they are all variants on a few basic themes – vehicular checkpoint races, footraces over the rooftops, attacking an enemy base or defending a point from waves of Freak attacks – and even given that moving through the city is fun in and of itself, by about halfway through you have seen everything the game has to offer and the action has begun to feel somewhat samey.

That’s something of a wider theme. Crackdown 2 lives by the motto “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” to an even greater extent than most sequels. This is both its greatest strength and greatest weakness. Crackdown was an awesome game, and everything that made it fun – orb hunting, stronghold assaults, bouncing from spire to billboard to tower like a cybernetic fascist super-kangaroo – has been transferred to Crackdown 2 with a bit of extra polish and some rough edges taken off. I would have no hesitation whatsoever to recommend it to a newcomer to the series. However, anyone who played the original will likely find that the relatively minor additions and innovations aren’t enough to dispel the nagging feeling that you’ve been here and done this before. Personally, it’s been three years since Crackdown and I was ready for another one. Of it. Your milage may vary.

RANK: B

Sorry so long without a post but hey, it’s not like you’re not used to frequent inexplicable losses of signal from this direction, is it?

Here’s a measure of how eventful and thrilling my life’s been in the time I’ve been away: I’m seriously considering trying to re-watch my entire DVD collection. In alphabetical order. The drawbacks I can see to this plan are a) it would would mean watching Alien, Alien 3, Alien Resurrection then Aliens, and b) it would mean watching Batman & Robin.

Anyway, some stuff that’s been great that I’ve discovered in the last three months:

The latest Metric album (especially Gold Guns Girls). The latest Raveonettes album (especially Heart Of Stone). Moon. Mount & Blade. The latest Yeah Yeah Yeahs album (especially Dragon Queen). The Incredible Hercules. Drag Me To Hell. The Sounds (especially No-One Sleeps When I’m Awake). Castle. Lloyd Doyley’s first ever senior goal. Forza Motorsport 3 (especially after finally working out how to use the XBox steering wheel I got for Christmas last year and has been lying shamefully unused since because of my general hamfistedness. Turns out I just needed some patient tutoring. Actually, one sentence of impatient tutoring. Actually, just my wife saying “You’re turning that wheel like you’re driving a hugging clown car”). The second series of Being Human. The second series of Newswipe. Pretty much everything Gail Simone’s written for DC Comics, especially her brilliant brilliant work on Birds Of Prey, Wonder Woman and Secret Six. The Answer Me This podcast. Lego Rock Band. Snow. Oh, and the iPhone.

Some stuff that’s not been great in the last three months:

Champions Online. Work. The Doctor Who Christmas special. The end of the best coverage of any sport on UK telly as Channel Five show (probably) their last Yankee Helmetball game. The Digital Economy bill. All car insurance ads in the history of all things, ever. Flash Forward. The iPhone’s battery life when you’re playing games on it.

So yeah. Alive and reasonably well. Further updates to follow. Eventually.

Here’s proof I’d rather do anything than what I’m supposed to. Right now, in order of importance I probably ought to be a) preparing for tonight’s first session of a game I’ve never played before in a genre I’ve not GM’d in, oooh, 15 years?, b) sorting out my Christmas list or c) working. Instead, here’re some one-paragraph brainsplurges on some stuff that’s moved me to having to write over the last few months.

Once
The low-key and super-low budget story of the friendship between a Dublin busker and a young Czech pianist it made me laugh, made me weep like a tiny child for approximately 75% of its running time, then made me rush off and buy the DVD and soundtrack album. It’s not a musical, but rather a film about music so it’s just as well that the songs are absolutely bloody wonderful, by turns beautifully delicate and spine-tinglingly passionate. In an attempt to claw back my Hard-Bitten Internet Cynic image by proving that there’s nothing so exquisitely crafted and personally affecting that I can’t crush it under the lumpen weight of objective overanalysis, I’ll say that Once is better than Garden State and the Commitments, about on a par with Almost Famous but not as good as Magnolia. Rank: A

The Beatles: Rock Band (Xbox360)
We bought the game solely to replace the drum controller that got knackered on our heroic expedition up the north face of Mount Rock a couple of bank holidays ago, so it was a pleasant surprise that the game was so good. It’s fair to say that nobody in the family is a big Beatles fan – personally I’m so amazingly ignorant that before playing this I’d never previously heard While My Guitar Gently Weeps or Dear Prudence (other than the Banshees’ version, obv) – but this game totally won us over. The enthusiasm that the developers obviously have for their subject matter comes across over and over again, in the animation of the band members, in the often-beautiful staging of the songs (Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band/With A Little Help From My Friends being a particular highlight), in the wealth of unlockable photos and video that’s included, even in the names of the Achievements. The Beatles: Rock Band is like reading an article by a really great writer on a subject they really know and really love but that you never previously cared about. Rank: B

Lie To Me
Someone’s seen House and gone “I’m getting me a piece of that action!” Quirky take on an established (some would say tired) TV genre – check. Grizzled veteran British lead actor who’s plainly having a whale of a time – check. Troubled but charismatic and brilliant central character with a distinctive gait (House’s limp, Lightman’s bizarre half-gibbon, half-Quasimodo shambling) – check. Unbelievably formulaic scripting with exactly the same story beats every week – check. The always thoroughly watchable Tim Roth does a nice job with a part that calls for him to say “Ah! Now THAT’S the truth!” fifteen times an episode but that doesn’t cover the fact that this is a slightly degraded photocopy of a show that itself has no pretentions to being anything other than disposable fluff. Rank: C

Dragon Age: Origins (PC)
Love it. Love it love it love it. It’s a properly beardy fantasy RPG for properly beardy people. I could pick nits – I’d like the game mechanics to be a bit more transparent so that I could make more informed decisions when levelling up, and while the main story feels decently epic it doesn’t wander far from painfully familiar fantasy tropes – but that would be stupid because this is the best game I’ve played this year that doesn’t involve a man dressed as a nocturnal mammal jump-kicking people in the face. What makes it come alive for me above anything else are your NPC party members, as consistently likeable a group as I’ve ever encountered in a CRPG. In particular, the droll-but-dorky Alistair (Chandler Bing in plate mail, but nowhere near as annoying as that sounds) and Morrigan the sarky heartless sorceress have spent most of the game in my active party, in large part because I enjoy them sniping at each other so much. Only slightly less fun are desperate romantic Leliana, the golum Shale who’s reminiscent of the (awesome) psychopathic android HK-47 from the (awesome) original Knights Of The Old Republic, and lust-for-life Elfish assassin Zevran who’s spent most of his time with the group trying to get into my pants. Bring on Mass Effect 2! Rank: A

[rec]
An hour of enjoyable-enough mockumentary zombie hokum, 15 minutes of HELL ON TOAST. In a good way. Rank: B

Dexter
When I first heard the premise of Dexter – a serial killer working for the Miami police department who preys on other serial killers – I was utterly repulsed. It sounded tacky and sensationalist and dark-for-the-sake-of-darkness and generally not my cup of tea. But eminently sensible people kept singing its praises, so eventually I gave it a whirl and was duly blown away. After a bit of a wobbly second series it got back on track with an excellent third (starring Jimmy Smits’ enjoyably terrible Cuban accent), and now the new season is easily the best yet. The latest episode – set on Thanksgiving – is like a distillation of everything that makes the show worth watching. It’s got Dexter struggling to cope with regular human interaction, it’s got terrific performances all round (particularly from John Lithgow in magnificently creepy form) and it’s got incredibly tense sequences alongside moments that are laugh-out-loud funny. It really is pretty much as good as telly gets at the moment. Rank: A

Lungs – Florence + The Machine
Since last.fm arrived on the FunSquareSuperPlus, I’ve spent a fair bit of time listening its automatically-generated reccomend-o-tron. It seems that Skynet has decided that I’m almost exclusively into impassioned and slightly eccentric female singer-songwriters. And, you know. It’s hard to argue. So it’s fair to say that there was a better-than-average chance I’d go for this album. And sure enough, it’s awesome and proof positive that modern pop really needs more a) harp-playing and b) songs about werewolf-themed sexuality. Rank: A

Let The Right One In
Unsettling lo-fi Swedish vampire flick that plays with themes of alienation and adolescence. But better than that sounds. I couldn’t shake the feeling there was stuff going on here that I was too stupid to understand - what was with the repeated shots of characters’ feet, f’rinstance? Rank: B

The number of tracks available for the Rock Band series reached went over the 1000 mark this week. That’s a daunting amount of music to wade through, and so to celebrate the release of what people are calling The Three Songs That Everyone’s Been Waiting For Off Nevermind, I thought I’d chuck together a quick list of ten downloadable tracks that you really shouldn’t miss.

So I did. And this is it.

Hard To Handle – Black Crowes
Yeah, it’s just an “As Made Famous By” jobbie, but it’s a total crowdpleaser, not least because of the big a capella chorus that everyone can join in on. As good on bass and drums as it is on guitar, which is this good: very good indeed.

Live Forever – Oasis
Chance to do Liam’s Manc whine plus two of Oasis’ three best guitar solos = winner. Mic stand and singing with your hands clasped behind your back compulsory.

Crushcrushcrush – Paramore
It’s a rubbish song, and I’m obliged to grumble whenever my daughter picks to sing it (which is only, you know, every time we play it). But secretly, playing the chorus is an absolute hoot. Don’t tell her, alright?

More Than A Feeling – Boston
Cheesier than the Waitrose deli counter, but the pre-chorus riff that ends with the two rapid bursts of three notes? Possibly my favourite guitar bit in the whole game. And brilliantly there’s a long sustained note straight after it that gives you plenty of time to bask in the warm glow of your own awesomeness.

Gouge Away – Pixies
Not a difficult song on guitar and bass, but it’s got a significantly different “feel” to almost everything else in the game and that makes it interesting. And Frank Black hits the sweet spot where his vocals are demented enough that you can give them EVERYTHING YOU’VE GOT but not quite so demented that they’re impossible to replicate (hello, Debaser!).

Skullcrusher Mountain – Jonathan Coulton
“I made this half-pony half-monkey monster to please you
But I get the feeling that you don’t like him
What’s with all the screaming?
You like monkeys, and you like ponies
Maybe you don’t like monsters so much?
Maybe I used too many monkeys?
Isn’t it enough to know that I ruined a pony
Making a gift for you?”
Lyrically and musically Coulton’s stuff is, almost without exception, an absolute blast to sing. I’d highly recommend checking out Re: Your Brains, too. Word around the campfire is that The Future Soon is next up which should also be a winner, although I’m still hoping for Shop Vac at some point.

The Way That It Shows – Richard Thompson
It seemed an odd choice from RT’s extensive back-catalogue, but as soon as you play it you can see why they went for it. It’s a song that’s put together like a Swiss watch, every element meshing together with exquisite precision. The guitar part, predictably, is outstanding – gradually becoming more and more intense as the song goes on before reaching its climax in an extended, incendiary solo.

I’m Eighteen – Alice Cooper
Maybe the best song about being a teenager ever, and this live version is agreeably ragged and twiddly.

Stonehenge – Spinal Tap
Heavy Duty is technically trickier, doesn’t have long periods in it where certain band members aren’t doing anything and is arguably all-around more fun to play, but I can’t get enough of that mandolin solo. And doing the “Nobody knows who they were… or… what they were doing” line in the Nigel Tufnel stunned, spacey Mockney voice is yet to get old. Might want to keep an eye on your drummer, though.

Tribute – Tenacious D
The kind of song that Rock Band does best is the overwrought power-ballad. This? Well, it really is the ne plus ultra of overwrought power-ballads. Great fun on guitar and drums, even more fun on vocals – “He asked us… *Snort-grunt-growl-thing* ‘Be you angels?’ And we said ‘NAY! We are but men! ROCK! *Long-drawn-out-overtheatrical-wailing*”

This started as an entry in my soon-to-be-forthcoming One-Paragraph ThingThink Roundup but it spiralled wildly out of control AS YOU SHALL QUICKLY SEE. Also: of the 20 people who read this blog, about 3 of you are likely to be even remotely interested, but apparently I really needed to get this off my chest. So, sincere apologies. And so, without further ado:

I owned every single Madden game between 1994 and 2008 before EA ditching the PC as a platform led to me missing last year’s. If there’s a series of games that I’ve sunk more time into over the years I can’t think of it. This isn’t a boast – blimey, it’s almost the opposite – but I mention it for context, so that you’re aware that these opinions are in no way coming from a sniffy Eurotrash “I Find It Curious That A Nation That Prides Itself On Machismo Feels The Need To Strap On Thirty Pounds Of Armour In Order To Play Rugby” sort’ve place. With that out of the way, here are my top ten problems with Madden 10:

1. The running game doesn’t work. At all. For the opposition or for me. Running’s always been rubbish in one way or another in pretty much every iteration of Madden but this year it’s particularly broken – your typical sequence of runs will go 0 yards, -2 yards, 1 yard, 1 yard, 0 yards, 2 yards, 35 yards, -1 yard, 1 yard, 0 yards. It’s like you’re playing Advanced DeShaun Foster Simulator 2010. Yes, after some fiddling with sliders it’s possible to get your back to the giddy heights of a semi-consistant 2.5, three yards a carry, but why the HUG do I need to be roostering about under the hood in order to get one of the FUNDAMENTAL ASPECTS OF A HELMETBALL GAME to work? In addition to which…
2. …it’s almost totally impossible for a receiver to beat a corner deep. So when you add that to the ground-game’s ineffectiveness, it means  the only type of offence that works with any reliability is a junky semi-West Coast Captain Checkdown sort’ve thing built around short passes. However…
3. When I first started playing Madden, quick out-routes were almost impossible for defenders to cover man-on-man. A few years ago, hook patterns were basically 10 free yards every time you ran them. This year, both of those have been so unrealistically cracked-down upon that trying to complete either, even when your receiver has position, will work maybe one time in ten and get picked off about half the time. So when I say “the only offensive strategy that works reliably is passing short”, I in fact mean “the only offensive strategy that works reliably are very specific short passes, namely slants, dumpoffs to your backs and, if you’re feeling really adventurous, the odd drag route.” Which is frighteningly realistic if you happen to be playing as Andy Reid, but for anyone else it’s pretty profoundly rubbish.
4. If I’m playing Superstar mode as a quarterback, why can’t I look left or right, or “focus” on one receiver? There’s a play in the Packers’ repertoire that has the flanker run a corner-route with the slot receiver close by performing a “quick hit” five-yard hook. Several times, I’ve been in a position where the defence is in a cover-2 or similar zone, with only one defender in the vicinity of the two receivers meaning there’s an easy completion available to one or the other of my guys straight off the snap IF I COULD SEE WHICH OF THE TWO THE DEFENDER WAS TRYING TO COVER WHICH I CAN’T BECAUSE OF THE STUPID FIELD VIEW YOU’RE FORCING ON ME YOU USELESS, CRETINOUS MORONS.
5. I quite like the ability to upload the replays of my Plays Of Awesomeness to the Internet. HOWEVER, this seems to have come at the cost of the instant-replay option only being able to record X number of seconds of action. Unfortunately, X seconds is considerably less time than it takes to, say, take a kickoff return back for a touchdown. This means that for longer-than-average plays (you know, the sort that you MIGHT WANT TO SAVE) you often lose the first few seconds of action (you know, the bits where your receiver gets open / running back breaks through the line of scrimmage / returner busts through the first line of defenders, the bits you MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN RE-WATCHING) leaving your replay only showing the ballcarrier running in the open field for 60+ yards (you know, the boring bit).
6. Why is there no create-a-playbook function? The one in Madden 08 was clumsily implemented and occasionally irritating to use but that’s a lot better than, hmm, let me check, oh, nothing. And to make this even more annoying, why can’t I preview the existing playbooks to find the one that suits me best, instead of having to guess, load up a game and flick through the plays there? Oh, and while I’m on the subject, why can’t I select a set of audibles that work with whatever team I’m playing with? Why do they have to be locked to one “favourite” team? And seeing as we’re talking customisation let’s indulge a tiny niggle – how come if you move a team or start with a new custom team there are no names that the commentators will use? In every version of Madden since 2003 there have been “default” names that go with the custom logos that are recognised by the  game – now, nothing.
7. The Achievements are rubbish, almost entirely based on doing certain things with certain players (tackle Antonio Gates inside the 5-yard line, or intercept Pointing Manning three times in a game) with next to nothing on offer for, well, actually acheiving anything. Win a Super Bowl? Draft a rookie who goes to a Pro Bowl? Run for 200 yards in the game? Get your Be A Superstar player to the Hall Of Fame? Child’s play, now get back to trying to juke Bob Sanders. I generally don’t give much of a cuddle for my Nerd-O-Score, but it still seems a bizarre and mildly annoying decision not to focus Achievements on the way the vast majority of people play the game – Franchise mode.
8. Why can’t I turn off the incredibly bland, totally useless, load-delay-infested “halftime show” that is inflicted on me every game? The cliché with EA Sports games is that they’re a bit soulless but glossy and beautifully presented. Well, this is a bit soulless and it’s presented horribly. The commentary is repetitive and even more prone to mis-reading the game situation than it was when Madden and Michaels were on the mic. The menus are a pain to navigate. On top of everything else…
9. In-game marketing just washes over me as a rule. But Madden 10 abuses the privilege. Delaying me from starting a game for three seconds so that Snickers can tell me to “Be a Chompion!” started as a mild annoyance but has made a swift ascent up the north face of Mount Infuriation to the point that I’m now ready to choke a marketing executive to death on a delicious bar of nougat, caramel and roasted peanuts smothered in thick, thick milk chocolate. Mmm, Marathon really satisfies.
10. And while we’re at it, having a menu item almost constantly on display that’s ever-so-discreetly nudging me to part with actual cash-money for a cheat-code, well – you stay classy, EA Sports.“Given that millions of people are already habitually paying full price for a glorified spreadsheet update every year, do we really need the relatively paltry sums that are brought in by milking the fanbase in this incredibly tacky way and corroding the user experience for everyone?” “We don’t need the money, Piers, we just want it. Because we’re very, very greedy.”

I don’t know. Despite the many, many issues I’m still getting some enjoyment out of the game, but that may be because by now it’s physiologically impossible for me to have less than a tolerably decent time playing Madden. However, I can’t shake the nagging feeling that Madden 10 is a significantly worse game than the 2008 version. The fundamental problem for me is that your offensive playcalling is so utterly hamstrung by the hopelessness of the running game and desperately narrow range of options for getting a receiver open. How is it possible, after 20 years of iteration and refinement, to produce a game that fails so completely at such a basic level? It’s like shipping a FIFA game in which corners and crosses were completely ineffectual, where the only way to score was the dribble-and-shot. Which come to think of it was exactly what EA did every year before Pro Evo came along and ruffled their feathers, wasn’t it? Of course, given the EA’s exclusive licence with the NFL, there’s zero chance of that happening with the Madden titles which might go some way toward explaining the bloated, unlovable, complacent mess that is this year’s game. Rank: D

Man, it’s going to be tough to get through this post while maintaining the BMStW IV paradigm of swearinesslessness. If ever a game called for a stream of joyfully employed base vernacular, it’s Batman: Arkham Asylum. Or, as it should properly have been called, Batman: (Funking – Ed) People’s (Suit – Ed) UP.

Batman is the coolest superhero. That’s not an opinion, it’s an empirical fact. Batman’s got the coolest logo. Batman’s got the coolest kit. Batman’s got the coolest alter-ego. Batman’s got the coolest base. Batman’s got the coolest power – namely the power to ROCK YOUR FACE. I love the Adam West camp-as-Christmas Some-Days-You-Just-Can’t-Get-Rid-Of-A-Bomb Batman as much as the next man. But my favourite take on the character is the dour, uncompromising, ferociously intelligent and utterly terrifying bad(bottom – Ed) from Grant Morrison’s run on JLA. The Batman who can kick the alien (donkeys – Ed) of a team of incredibly powerful superbeings who’d already defeated Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Aquaman and the Flash. Arkham Asylum’s Batman (scripted by Paul Dini, one of the guiding forces behind the excellent Batman: The Animated Series) isn’t quite in that league (aha. Aha. Aha.) but at least he’s in the right sport.

Generally speaking, I don’t have the guts or the patience for stealth games. My character’s vulnerability and the necessity to spend a lot of time sitting around waiting for the right moment to move leads to a undesirable combination of tension, boredom and frustration. The last sneak-em-up I really enjoyed was Tenchu on the PS1, which for all its faults did a wonderful job of making me feel like a ninja in Feudal Japan, darting across the rooftops over the heads of the dull-witted foreign invaders, making the shadows into a weapon, not a shield. You snuck around to make yourself more powerful, not because you were powerless if you didn’t. You weren’t an intruder, you were a predator. Arkham Asylum’s stealth sections give the exact same sort of thrill, the anticipation of isolating some poor (hugger – Ed) followed by the brutal satisfaction of the takedown. I found myself taking my time over the last opponent or two in each room, letting them run around freaking out with their status readout indicating “Terrified” before finally swooping in to put them out of their misery.

If anything, the brawling sections are even better. Combat is simple, relying almost exclusively on two face buttons, but never gets stale over the course of the game largely thanks to absolutely exemplary animation. The fighting in Arkham Asylum reminds me of the Paul Greengrass-directed Bourne movies – strings of fluid moves which are carried out almost too quickly to be consciously registered and yet you’re somehow never confused as to what’s going on. That smoothness is combined with a convincing sense of weight and impact, and as a result the feeling of controlling a hyper-competent, hyper-trained fighting machine is both convincing and satisfying. When Batman hits you, brother you STAY (FORKING – Ed) HIT. My personal favourite move is the finisher where Bats delivers a WWE-style flying fist-drop on a fallen opponent – generally the animation shows you punching the enemy in the face, but if he’s unfortunate enough to be lying with his feet pointing away from you the blow looks for all the world like it’s landing right in his (Michael Ballacks – Ed) instead. Walking up to groups of (buzzards – Ed) and calmly and ruthlessly cleaning their (firkin – Ed) clocks never, ever got dull. Batman: Handing You Your (Derriere – Ed) Since 1939. Batman: Over One Million Customers Served. Batman: When You Absolutely, Positively Have To Deck Every (Mummykisser – Ed) In The Room, Accept No Substitute.

Deep down, I suspect that it’s not actually that great a game, that it’s too repetitive, that it’s too easy, that it’s too Grey Generic Xbox Action Game Space Marine-O-Vision, that the stealth and fighting mechanics while fun are too shallow, and that anyone who didn’t have such a strong emotional attachment to Batman as a character would find it a bit bland and annoying. That doesn’t matter, because anyone who doesn’t have a strong emotional attachment to Batman as a character can (cuddle – Ed) right off. Arkham Asylum lets you “be” Batman, in the same way that (the good bits of) Jedi Academy let you “be” Luke Skywalker. If that notion doesn’t appeal that’s your fault, not the game’s. Also, you smell. RANK: A

Punch my Peggle and call me a casual gamer, but I think I might have hated Mirror’s Edge.

From the wide-eyed ousider’s perspective Parkour is fascinating, both on a practical and abstract level. It seems to be the natural evolution of martial arts for our increasingly dangerous cities, a physical discipline that equips someone to deal with armed confrontation in the most effective possible way – by running the hell away from it. The Mirror’s Edge demo seemed to capture the utter wicked-coolness of Parkour very nicely with its gorgeous bright clean cityscapes and its focus, pretty much unique in the annals of first-person games, on movement and terrain over enemies and fighting. Adversaries were dangerous and largely to be avoided rather than defeated, so the clunky combat controls didn’t bother me in the slightest. I was in it for the running, jumping, climbing trees, the sense of exploration and agility and pell-mell momentum.

Instead, what I got was a stop-start first-person platformer / puzzle game which was made more artificially difficult by having you repeatedly shot at while you were trying to work out your path through the game’s too-often confusing and bland environments. Chances to free-run through the pristine city with its gleaming white skyscrapers were too few and clichéd grey corridors and service tunnels were too many. And whoever decided to set three-quarters of the last level in the pitch dark needs a slap to the chops and a good hard think about what they’ve done. Because if there’s one thing that always improves the experience of finicky platform nonsense, it’s not being able to see what the hug you’re doing. See also: whoever decided that the best way to showcase the acrobatic but imprecise combat was repeatedly locking you in a room with a bunch of heavily-armed motherhuggers and not letting you out till they were all defeated. Grrr.

Mirror’s Edge isn’t totally without merit. When it gets out of its own way there are some nice set-pieces here and there – most memorably, racing down the central staircase of a towering corporate headquarters to escape a squad of armed police – but those moments are swamped by the amount of time spent standing around trying to suss where you’re supposed to go next and how in God’s name you’re meant to achieve that.  Chuck in a nonsensical story, diabolical voice-acting and, in a videogame first, cutscenes that are significantly uglier than the game itself and you’ve got one of the most disappointing games of recent years. RANK: D

Good result for Tom Clancy’s Rainbow there against a scrappy Vegas team.

A semi-tactical real-world soldier sim in which you’re in charge of a three-man elite anti-terrorist team running around the Las Vegas strip meeting interesting people and shooting them in the head. Even though it’s considerably streamlined and simplified since the old Rainbow 6 games on the PC (where you’d be controlling a squad of six and often spent more time planning your team’s movements on the level map beforehand than you did actually first-person-shootering) this is still something of a thinking person’s frag-fest.

I found R6V2 (he was the astromech droid on Wedge’s X-Wing) a bit of an uncomfortable experience. The game doesn’t seem sure if it wants to be a slow-paced tactical shooter or something more akin to Gears Of War, where use of cover is absolutely vital but it’s still completely clear that you’re in an arcade free-for-all. As a result, there are some jarring changes of tone and the odd moment that feels completely out of place in a game that’s largely a semi-hardcore soldier-sim. Goons pouring out of side-doors when I reach a certain point I can just about forgive. Goons that only pour out of side-doors when I reach a certain point, having totally ignored the two squad members that I sent ahead are a complete immersion-breaker. Don’t get me started on the blokes lugging around indestructible metal shields. The airport level, with its multiple unavoidable chokepoints that you have to navigate sans squad, can get to fecking feck. And the hugging game ends with a hugging BOSS BATTLE. Seriously. A combat sim that throws in an old-skool shmup-style memorise-the-pattern trial-and-error boss battle. For crying. Out. Loud.

My discomfort wasn’t entirely due to the schizoid level design, however. Call me a muesli-munching bleeding-heart liberal, but all the way through the game I was faintly bothered by the nagging awareness that I was playing a right-wing wet dream. Dozens and dozens of highly-armed fanatical terrorists are going to BLOW UP THE MOON or something so we now need to open up a dialogue. And by “a dialogue” we mean “their chest cavities”. Yes, of course it’s only a game, yes of course it’s not remotely unique in demonising and dehumanising the pop-up shooting-gallery targets that provide an obstacle to victory. Nonetheless, there’s just a slight distasteful air to proceedings, a bit of a whiff of the palpable excitement that a certain sort of person displays when something ghastly happens because now they’ve got moral justification to let slip the dogs of war, crack open the shiny high-tech explode-o-toys and protect the values of civilization by being absolute barbarians. However, Ubisoft should be given credit for subtly undercutting the game’s fascist undertone by casting your squadmates as a pair of bumbling pacifists who’ll do anything in their power to prevent you harming anyone. They repeatedly refuse to follow your orders because they’re unable to work out how to get around, for example, a knee-high coffee table and on occasion they’ll even attempt to bring a halt to the bloodshed via non-violent direct action, heroically throwing themselves in front of your gun in the midst of a firefight. The voice-acting for your team isn’t just them endlessly singing Blowin’ In The Wind but it flipping well ought to be.

For all its frustrations and dodgy ideology, I had a pretty good time with R6V2 (or “Community Policing Sim: The Met Edition” as it swiftly became known in these parts). When Stan and Ollie aren’t being flummoxed by furniture or the functionality of the common corridor they do give several very cool moments where you can send them in through one door to draw the enemy fire (“Iron Duke, Iron Duke, this is Pawn Sacrifice…”) while you nip around the side and slaughter the oppo with impunity. The combat is intense but still somewhat tactical, and the experience-point system that rewards you with goodies for massacring folk in interesting ways (killing someone from behind f’rinstance, or at long range, or with explosives) encourages you to plan and experiment even if the kit you’re given actually isn’t any more effective than the default stuff. And I liked being able to use the EggBox camera to import my massive baldy heed onto my character.

Rainbow 6 Vegas 2, then. It’s annoying and it’s for people who’re a bit too keen on the word “ordnance”, but it’s not bad. RANK: C