Regarding PS3, I have no interest in the platform but I’m not going to be foolish and say “it’s done” like many others are now starting to do. At this point, all I could consider Sony guilty of is piss-poor management, a completely stupid hardware iteration cycle and the fact they’ve failed to fill the software library as quickly as their competitors. Just look at Wii, drowning in shovelware and selling by the truckload regardless. Xbox 360 certainly doesn’t have the volume, but it still has a comparable – if not arguably superior – range of titles to Wii.

In my opinion, PS3 doesn’t need Home – that’s not going to save it. Home was originally intended to be a ‘day zero’ novelty, an immediate and clear differentiator between what came before and the rest of the next-gen competition. We’re now almost 3 (yes, three) years down the line from that point and, to all intents and purposes, Home’s true purpose and impact on the platform is almost entirely moot. Especially given that someone like Microsoft can so effortlessly integrate a similar novelty into their platform.

But even more fundamental that this, I believe that Sony releasing quirky titles, such as LittleBIGPlanet, while the PS3’s library is depressingly overwhelmed by multi-platform games, does nothing to bolster the PS3’s perception. In fact, if anything, I’d say Sony are alienating potential customers, because their approach seems to be “loads of games you can play on something else, then something novel once in a blue moon.”

Three years ago, when debating which next-generation console to buy, I fully anticipated regretting my subsequent purchase of an Xbox 360 by Christmas 2008. But Sony haven’t gotten their act together. They need to focus on turning out good-to-great games for their platform alone, not the occaisional super-hyped epic. No-one in their right mind plops down roughly £300 (in the UK) just to play Metal Gear Solid and/or LittleBIGPlanet several months later. Especially when I can buy a competitor system with all those cross-platform titles for a little over a third of that price.

The following is another letter I recently sent to The Hatchet Job Show, wherein this time I take exception to one of the show’s regular participants criticising Fallout 3’s game mechanics, whilst citing Mass Effect (of all things) as somehow being markedly superior.

For the record – and you’ll likely guess this from the following paragraphs – I think Mass Effect is one of the more over-rated and over-attributed games of this generation; a thoroughly bland game with no more than beguiling production values and some above-average (by typical videogame standards) writing to its credit.

The following revolves around my recent over-extrapolation of Rockstar’s “zombie outbreak” announcement for GTA IV . Even though I was mistaken in my assumptions, the idea is something I thought would make for a fantastic game mode and so wanted to put down my thoughts using a basic narrative.

It is 5:23am on a hazy, cloudless morning.  The sun is beginning to come up and we watch the streets below us glow a predawn gold.  ‘We’ are 4 people: myself and 3 friends – Tina, Mark and Sean.  We’re camped out on a roof in downtown Broker, watching the world go by — or rather, what’s left of the world go by.

The streets below us are all but deserted as we gaze out across all four corners of the tenement block.  “Seen anything yet,” I ask Sean over the radio.  “Nah, nothing,” he replies.  I raise my rifle and glass the street below.  And I spot one; a lone, ambulatory corpse, slowly shambling it’s way down the middle of the 4-lane thoroughfare that runs in front of our building.  “Hey, I’ve got one-” The crack of Sean’s rifle makes me jump in the early morning quiet.  “Yep,” Sean says, as the echoes from his single shot fracture into the distance. I re-centre on the shuffling cadaver in time to see it finish slumping over awkwardly, its head now missing.

“Nice one,” I say into my radio; “…cheers,” replies Sean, sounding somewhat distracted for a moment.  ”I’ve only a few rounds left for this,” he says, referring to his rifle.  Tina, having been watching the western side of the building opposite me, reluctantly agrees. “We should probably go now,” she says.  Mark, keeping a vigil on the northern-most edge of the building sidles over and we make for the stairwell entrance in the middle of the roof.

On the ground, we split up.  Mark and Tina head north as Mark’s convinced the more lucrative supplies will be in the upper part of the island today.  Tina procures an abandoned station wagon from across the street and she and Mark head off, Mark hanging out the window brandishing his M16.  As they race off up the sidewalk and then onto the road again, I’m reminded of eager big game hunters out on safari.  Wonder if I can find Mark a pith helmet today, I think to myself.

It’s 5:44am when Sean and I split up and head off to find our own supplies. Sean’s convinced the best loot is going to be in the south, around the fairground and the docks.  I’m happier not to stray as far as the others, picking up the smaller, more frequent caches nearer the tenement.  By the time I reach the first cache, the others have moved already moved out of radio distance and I’m alone in the slums.

At 6:01am I’m picking over the contents of a stash behind a discount clothing store.  Unusually, there are a few choice items here and there in this part of town today.  Across the street, an abandoned park is scattered with rotting bodies. Mouldering corpses strewn amongst the weeds and long-dried piles of fresh tarmac that never got re-laid.  And it must be one of these corpses that rises and blunders towards me, as I busily root through the garbage for treasure.  Before I realise this, the creature’s low pitched moan sounds virtually at my ear and I wheel around, suddenly petrified, involuntarily loosing a hail of machine gun fire into the back wall of the clothes store.

As I bring my gun to bear, the corpse is already within arm’s length.  I jerk backwards and up against the wall of the store, ineffectually spraying bullets into the thing’s legs and lower torso.  It staggers a moment, then regains it footing as I frantically reload whilst trying to skirt the building at my back.  In doing so, I notice several other corpses across the street have risen and are making their way across the pavement towards me.  I pause, steady my aim, and quickly kill the first monster as it continues to follow me.  It drops to the floor, face first, with a dull wet thud.

The other undead are across the street and within half a dozen yards of me now.  I turn and run, calling into the radio as I do so.  No reply.  I spot an abandoned car ahead of me, but decide it’s probably safer just to continue back to the tenement on foot; better than risking being caught whilst trying to jump-start the motor.  The undead continue to follow me, but they’re starting to drop back.  However, they do not stop following – not yet anyway.

I reach the entrance to the tenement at 6:12am.  There’s no-one else here – they must all still be looking for supplies.  I try the radio again: still nothing.  The few undead that were chasing me seem to have either lost my trail or given up, and I can’t see any other corpses nearby.  I decide to wait here, on the sidewalk outside the building.  I can always make sport of those that were following me, should they find their way here.

Sean returns a few minutes later at 6:19am, but he’s brought his own fan club.  And it’s considerably bigger than mine was, slightly to my annoyance.  A group of about 10 undead are following him as he casually jogs down the street towards me.  ”Brought some friends,” he quips over the radio.  ”Yeah, yeah,” I mutter, but I’m grinning all the same.  We meet up in the middle of the street, face the pack and open fire.  They fall fairly quickly, but one or two get alarmingly close – with Sean actually walking out to meet them on occasion.

It’s 6:26am and the gaggle of stiffs Sean baited are lying dead in the road before us.  We still haven’t heard from either Tina or Mark.  The sun is now climbing above the taller buildings, the mist burning away and the glare coming off the skyscrapers is almost blinding.  It’s then we hear Tina over the radio, her voice faint and crackling with static at first.  Something about a party..?  Then we see them, Tina and Mark, as their scrambler slides around the building at the top of the street, its engine at full chat.  Tina’s driving, again, while Mark rides pillion.  A slight snap of static and Tina’s voice comes over the radio loud and clear this time: “I said: Mark decided we needed to have a party.”

As Tina guns the bike down the street, a sea of bodies pushes around the corner behind them and lumbers towards us.  There must be at least 40 of them, clothing ripped, long dried wounds black and sore against their blotchy, striated skin.  ”Oh… nice,” I say over the radio and Sean laughs.  Mark’s laughing too, loosing shots over his shoulder as Tina steers the bike around a burnt out car and across the last few feet of pavement in front of us.  Tina and Mark dump the bike and we reassemble in front of the building.  ”This is going to be a fruity one,” laughs Mark and he and Sean start picking off a few stragglers at the fringes of the mob with their prized rifles.

The timpani of shell casings and steady ratcheting reload of the rifles is slowly overwhelmed by the low murmur of the oncoming horde, and we realise we’ve loitered for too long.  There are still at least 30 of them as we duck inside the tenement entrance and back slowly towards the first flight of stairs at the end of the corridor.  The first couple round the door and Tina opens fire.  One drops instantly, but the other staggers for a moment and then rushes forward.  Mark kills it with a pistol shot.  But as this one falls, the rest of horde files in through the tenement door and comes rushing towards us.

By the third flight of stairs, Mark and Sean have used all their better ammo and have resorted to pistols.  Tina and I still have our machine guns, firing short bursts into the crowd over Sean and Mark’s heads.  We reach the fourth storey landing and Mark falters for a moment.  He’s immediately set upon by the leading three undead and killed just as we bring the first one down.  The horde seethes around the banister and across the landing towards Sean, Tina and myself.  Mark’s body vanishes in the throng.  Suddenly, to Sean’s left, a corpse lurches forward out of a side corridor and grabs Sean.  He manages to kill it quickly, but the main group is upon him now and boils around him.  Tina and I manage to kill several of them as they log-jam around Sean’s body.

Tina and I are running now, flat out up the stairs to the roof.  We can hear the corpses moaning and thudding across the floor below us, eager to kill the last two survivors.  We reach the roof and spread out to cover the doorway, being careful not to create a crossfire.  The door on the roof is narrower and funnels the undead almost one at a time as they race out to meet us.  I can’t hear anything above the pitched clatter of our machine guns, until we both suddenly have to reload in the same instance.  ”Shit!”  We wheel and run for the far side of the roof as the remaining dozen or so undead pour out of the stairwell.

I’ve no machine gun ammo left, Tina has just a few rounds in hers.  I open fire with my pistol, bringing down one of the corpses as the mass charges towards us.  Another staggers and Tina abandons her machine gun for her pistol also.  Two more fall and then they’re right on top of us.  We skirt sideways along the short wall edging the tenement roof, but we’re just delaying the inevitable now it seems.  Nine corpses bear down on us, Tina drops another as she side-steps past me and then I’m overrun. Raking clawed hands and biting feral teeth on all sides.  Blood red, then darkness.

I can hear Tina’s last futile attempts to fight off the remaining few with her knife, but it’s no good.  We’ve lost this time. “You’re an arse,” says Sean into the black, obviously referring to Mark. “Yeah, and..?” replies Mark. But you can hear him grinning when he speaks.  I just shake my head, smiling.

The following is a letter I originally sent to The Hatchet Job Show, a videogame podcast hosted and produced by a friend of mine (who goes by the online moniker 1Dgaf).  In it I refer to Peter Molyneux’s recent press conference, just prior to the release of Fable 2, wherein he asked the industry at large not to concentrate of seperating the mistaken concepts of “casual” and “hardcore” for the good of the industry as a whole.

In episode 17 you discussed Peter Molyneux’s talk with journalists about the perceived divide between “hardcore” and “casual” gamers. During your conversation, SomeGuy mentioned “markets” and I think this is something which may be the root of the problem.  And then later in the discussion, 1Dgaf made mention of not putting up with “shittily produced” casual games.

In the last 2-3 years there has been a conscience effort, by publishers – and indeed the appearance of bespoke “casual only” developers – to target this perceived “casual” sector of gaming with specifically tailored products.  It’s my feeling that this is a somewhat misguided effort; why the recent positive discrimination? There have always been parlour-style videogames, like Windows’ Solitaire and Minesweeper — tiny games that have been bundled with Windows since the 80s.  On the other end of the spectrum, there have equally been titles with the complexity and depth of Elite available to play.

I think what Molyneux was really doing is making a plea to developers and publishers, that pigeon-holing your game is unnecessary.  I would go much further and argue that some developers use positive discrimination, regarding intended audience, because they have knowingly built a game that is tailoring to the needs of a specific niche, with as little effort to engage anyone other than experienced players.  Quite often, this is because they rely on cheaply cloning gameplay and control mechanics from a successful title, and so are only interested in courting players of that successful title.

To me, this is a defining aspect of the perceived “hardcore market” as defined by publishers and advertisers.  But for me, this also falls under the 1Dgaf’s category of “shittily produced” and something I hate about contemporary videogames.  Even though AAA titles do cost (potentially) millions and millions of pounds/dollars to make, we still drown in great swathes of copycat titles which add little – and more often detract – from gaming as a whole, whilst almost always making no effort to engage anyone outside of their very targeted market.

And it’s this, I think, that Molyneux was talking about; he’s making a plea that people stop wasting money, time and effort producing throwaway content at horrendous expense that does nothing to broaden the market or further the medium.

A short passage from the Qur’an finds its way into a game – in seemingly innocent, artistic circumstances – and the (videogame) world goes properly mental.

I don’t quite understand the current furor over the Little BIG Planet ”scandal”.  Fair enough, we don’t have many (i.e. any) mainstream games tootling out Christian hymns on a regular basis.  But it’s a bit beyond me why this particular incident has caused quite the stir it has.

It seems no-one still knows exactly what the sung passage from the Qur’an actually translates as.  But, assuming common sense prevents its meaning from being twisted into something vaguely perceptable as inflammatory, I don’t have any issue with this – as a gamer – whatsoever.

However, in perspective, there’s a question of context and appropriateness here.  And I think it’s that aspect which, ultimately, has compelled Sony to withdraw the game and ask creators Media Molecule to substitute the content in question.

So, finally – and some might fairly say “inevitably” – after almost 2 years of near-faultless videogaming on a first generation Xbox 360, those dreaded three lights have appeared.  And this time they won’t go away again.

I had my first encounter with Microsoft’s infernal “red ring” about 6 weeks ago, in the middle of playing then-recently-purchased Burnout Paradise.  It’s quite a weird thing when it happens, driving around one moment before the 360 lets out a screech of pain as everything comes to a sudden, flickering stop.  (Interesting faux moire effect from the crashed graphics buffer, too.)

So you get up, switch the machine off and switch it back on again, praying it was just a software glitch.  But, after a moment’s normal boot process, there they flash.  Like tiny crimson prophets of videogaming doom.  You hastily switch the machine off again, give a it few minutes to calm down and try again.  And on that occasion, it did come back to life for me.

I phoned Microsoft immediately anyway, just to report it.  They advised me to try the cache clearing trick, which seemed to drag a few more weeks’ sporadic use out of the machine.  But it finally crapped out again for good on Friday night, when I’d invited a friend over especially for some gaming.  Fortunately, my Dreamcast has never had any such issues, so Under Defeat, Virtua Fighter 3tb and Soul Calibur all got a good airing instead.

Satruday morning, on the phone, they assure me it’ll be fixed “in 2-3 weeks” at no cost.  Strip it of all cables, controllers and harddrives; “send nothing but the base unit” they said.  No charge for postage either, which is nice; didn’t wait for me to arrange a convenient collection time either though, which is slightly stupid.

So I have the big, cardboard-wrapped brick – all ~3.5 kilos of it – on my desk at work now, awaiting a second collection attempt.  Fingers crossed I’ll be furnished with at least a latest-generation DVD drive, if not a completely new main board too.  In some ways I’m quite glad the machine’s carked it, as it was insufferably noisy and should be a lot quieter with the updated hardware.  It’s more than slightly ridiculous when you can’t hear the game you’re quietly trying to play, while your kids sleep upstairs and your wife is watching Katy Price and Peter Andre flap about in the next room, but can’t make out the game’s audio for the turbine under the telly.

With the unveiling of the new DSi, a cut-and-shut update to Nintendo’s deservingly popular dual-screen handheld, Nintendo have announced they are – after 20 years of manufacturing portable consoles – introducing region locking to their software.

Why?  Having been the bastion of the hardcore for so long via the Game Boy line of machines, why Nintendo suddenly sees fit to artificially lock out buyers from different territories seems utterly ridiculous.  It doesn’t matter how you spin it: a sale is a sale is a sale.

Now, granted, the amount of profit platform holders like Nintendo can skim off the top of each sale is known to fluctuate quite wildly between retail territories.  This has always been the case and I’m not going on some “rip-off Britain” crusade with it here either.  If you don’t like it, sell your consoles, because nothing’s changed in the 20 years I’ve been playing videogames.

What’s most beguiling about this is that, in this pathetic effort to defeat “lost sales” via grey importers short-circuiting (often painfully) staggered territorial releases, companies like Nintendo are actually accellerating the problem.  They’re also contributing directly to mass piracy.  If you, as a publisher, can’t – or simply don’t care to – properly organise worldwide software releases, your potential customers will not wait.

Whereas the original Silent Hill series is similar to Resident Evil in many ways, its atmosphere and treatment of the player is entirely more mature and involving. Silent Hill: Origins on the other hand is exactly like Resident Evil, just with someone randomly banging two pieces of metal together in the background.

It’s a shame because, whilst it’s obvious there are challenges to engrossing the player in a suspenseful horror environment on a portable, what Climax have created really is nothing more convincing than a pocket ghost house. Replete with plastic ghosts on strings and rumbling “Welcome to your Doom!” voices booming out over and over.

The main problem with the approach to horror in Origins is that you’re shown the monster immediately, then hit over the head with it again and again right from the beginning. It’s an immature and empty way to scare the player, especially if your intention is to continue scaring the player the whole way through.

By the first ‘boss’ encounter I was completely indifferent. This admittedly disgusting creation is what appears to be a figure straight-jacketed in a sheet of (presumably) his own skin. The creature is completely naked too and, though unsurprisingly devoid of genitals, watching its bare-arsed self trot passed you on its supposedly murderous rampage was more comical than anything else. Even given the fact you’re trapped in a room made from raw, oozing flesh with it.

Another key aspect that completely debases the intended scares is the weapons system. Climax have introduced a very rudimentary and cheap RPG-like mechanic to the arsenal, which means weapons degrade with use before eventually disintegrating. Which often happens in the middle of a fight. But instead of causing the player to panic, which admittedly it did at first, it rapidly becomes apparent that you can simply punch the various hell-spawn to death with your bare fists anyway.

All of which means that Origins is effectively a scrolling beat ‘em up with some delusions of grandeur, along with a nice licence to cling to for critical support. But let’s be clear; it’s very polished in its production, with the locations in particular very much paying homage to the console series. Rooms and corridors swing fittingly between eery dereliction and repulsive decomposition. Characters too, whilst somewhat limited in terms of polygonal and textural detail on the PSP, are well-formed and fit convincingly into their various environments; lighting is excellent and there’s never a sense of creatures and items being jarringly superimposed over the scenery.

So, in summary, I think it’s fair to say that Silent Hill: Origins is a competent and complete videogame. Don’t pick it up expecting the rather primal terror of something like Silent Hill 3 and you’ll be OK. But it is disappointing to see a game with no small amount of potential or complexity broken down into its constituent parts and merely served ‘well done’ for the masses.

Anyone else horribly disappointed at how focus-group led this piece of shit would appear to be, from the demo at least? It distinctly reminds me of playing Need for Speed: Most Wanted, but with utterly predictable “multiplayer” thrown in for the hell of it.

Call me a bitter, jaded cynic, but I don’t give a shit who’s just pulled the longest handbrake turn in whatever random part of the available play area someone happens to be bumming around in at the time. What’s the point? For a (principally) point-to-point racing game, Burnout: Paradise seems to be more about cock-waving than actually seeing who’s the fastest from A to B. It also seems to be about griefing and generally being a complete dick.

I really can’t see how the full game can be any better than this, except you get more pretty scenery to whiz past / fly over, along with more flash motors to do such in. The crash physics? Great and spectacular as always. But where’s the soul, man?

Burnout seemed to be about smashing as much of the bubbly black crap out of your opponent’s vehicle as possible before you hit the finish line. Paradise’s modus operandi would appear to be focussed on simulating late Wednesday night at the local McDonald’s car park in Weston-super-Mare.

“Hail to the king, ba-!” Oh just fuck off, you decrepit old twat.

Is anyone really interested in playing Duke Nukem Forever? No. Will the Puke’s trademark objectification of woman and grating xenophobic banter remain intact in the latest iteration? Definitely not, though I’m sure the boobies will be bigger and rounder than any of the expansion packs (fnar) were allowed to make them.

Duke Nukem was originally successful because we could laugh at how stupid it knew it was, visually as we as aurally. I’m struggling to see how DNF will be able to recreate this sentiment in a world now obsessed with political correctness and high-resolution 3D. But I can personally meter out some satisfaction from the announcement…

Back when Prey’s Nth redevelopment was announced a couple of years ago I predicted that, were it to be a commercial success, 3D Realms would very seriously commit to releasing Duke Nukem Forever. I also predicted that they would achieve this by reusing Prey’s engine and pouring Nukem-themed content into it. Moreover, what with the success of meathead-centric shooter Gears of War selling in embarrassingly* high numbers, DNF’s commercial realisation was pretty much assured.

But I fail to see how 3D Realms will make the content of DNF anything more than a balls-less, cowardly, tongue-in-cheek tickle of modern day sensibilities. Perhaps complimented with ridiculous and insipid amounts of “gore” and swearing. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of tits though — expect at least one hour of the game consummate to involve running around the inside of one or more pole dancing backwaters. And don’t expect the game to last any longer than about 7 hours for a modestly experienced shooter fan anyway.

* I still remain to be convinced that Gears of War isn’t one of the laziest, mediocre and by-the-numbers games ever designed, tarted up with trowelfuls of expensive make-up and dressed in the most meagre of string bikinis. I can see Marcus Fenix’s packet about to slip out and hit Cliffy B in the face. ⇑