The Geek Cometh

Let’s be honest, Resident Evil has gone from being a survival horror to a survival shooter. There are many reasons why RE4 destroyed the very soul of that series.  Capcom spent so much time improving the game engine that they forgot what the series was all about in the first place, I think the original Resident Evil remake for the Gamecube shall remain the pinnacle of that series for some time to come. And with good reason. It was Fucking scary.

The last game to really get my heart racing was Doom3, I like to play my horror games in the middle of the night with all the lights out using a big pair of headphones, and believe me Doom3 was made to be played like that - any other way just doesn’t cut it.  The dark atmosphere, sound effects and subtle whispers made a somewhat repetitive FPS into an altogether more exciting prospect. When done right scary games can be scarier than the scariest scary movie, simply because the experience is much more immersive.

I could never get into FEAR, I haven’t played Alone In The Dark since I had a 486 and I don’t want to run around as a Japanese school girl taking photos of ghosts with some prehistoric camera.

This pretty much leaves me with Silent Hill. I know there’s other scary games out there but the problem with third person horror games is they also have to be somewhat enjoyable to play….which is actually quite a rare thing for the genre.  Silent Hill 2 was one of the best survival horror games ever released, period. It really was quite a story. There are entire essays on the net about the various darker than hell undertones running throughout that game.  I got the ending where James Sunderland killed himself, it still remains one of the most perfect game endings I’ve ever experienced because the utter despair projected throughout the game until that point never truely lets up.  I’ve never played a game that portrayed a descent into bleak suicidal madness so well. There were other “happier” endings, but the suicide one has since been, somewhat fittingly, revealed as the only true ending to the game.

SH3 had its moments but felt rushed, 4 was a return to form in terms of atmosphere but had some very questionable game design.  And so now we are on the brink of Silent Hill Homecoming for PS3 and Xbox 360. I find it fairly ironic that a series somewhat inspired and created on the back of RE’s success appears to be super-seeding survival horror’s finest in all the areas it originally sought to mimic, aside from perhaps game play, however the SH games have never been that game-breakingly horrible to control.

I’m looking forward to this game, it’s a series that has been bold enough to flirt with themes and subject matter that would probably have got it banned had they been less subtle.  The music has always been superb too. One thing though, the development house is different this time as it’s being made in the US and not by Japan’s finest, which could be a crucial factor in how this game turns out. In the immortal the words of Travis Touchdown - who knows? Could kick ass… Could be dangerous. Could totally suck.

I do know thing for sure though, beating half naked zombie nurses to death with a steel pipe never gets old.

Chris.

There arent enough work passes in the world.

So, I’ve recently been rather busy with work, hospital appointments, and other such joviality and as such havent managed to post anything. But I figured I would save all my blog skills for the trip that I currently find myself on. I am in Leipzig. In Germany. For the Leipzig Games Convention.

The European E3 is entirely overwhelming. From the size of the Leipzig Messe where the event is held, to the sheer numbers of people attending…. its just huge. So my first day was spent walking about in a general zombified state trying to take as much in as possible. Because of this I didn’t get any gaming done. So not much to report from day one apart from the noticable lack of Nintendo ( Casual gaming indeed! ) and the huge queues for the Blizzard booth ( Its an MMORPG lartards! ). I’m hoping day two will involve a lot more actual game stuff! Until then, please enjoy these random photos from today :

One last thing for today. A lot of the companies at the convention give stuff away. Nothing big or expensive, usually stickers, posters, demos, and what not. But some of them give away lanyards. Lanyards! I have now made it my mission to come away from the 4 days with as many lanyards as possible. Here’s a shot of todays haul :

Thats it for now, back again tomorrow!

Dave

Heath Ledger didn’t just play The Joker, he was The Joker.

Apart from The Dark Knight being in my opinion the overall best comic book movie to come out in probably the last forever there’s lots more reasons to be happy that it’s so successful.  There is nothing in that movie for kids, it’s darker than any 12A movie ever released. After seeing that film I don’t think a typical 12 year old would take too much away from the experience other than confusion and horrible nightmares of some guy in clown makeup trying to cut their face off.  But the main reason why it’s good that TDK has grossed the GDP of a small country is that it paves the way for more darker comic book movies in the future. Which leads me to the next bit of cool…

Darren Aronofsky is apparently making a new Robocop - It’s such a strange combination but I quite like most of his films so this should be interesting if nothing else…  What’s also weird is that Aronofsky was in line to do Batman Begins before the Nolan’s got it but was also making cool art/cult films before now seemingly trying to reboot a major comic book (in this case heavily inspired) adaptation.  They should continue with the contemporary social satire of the original….but less of the, admittedly hilarious “Robocop is basically the story of Jesus Christ” parallels that are mentioned in the audio commentary of the dvd.

Now Robocop movies were never triple A to begin with but it better be Robocop for adults and not any of this fun loving shite that they went with on the last few, when I think of Robocop I think of that scene in the original where the ED-209 goes apeshit in the board room and shoots some dude like 57 million times….and then in the directors cut he shoots him some more. Any sort of violence on that level is absolutely fine, it doesn’t really even have to be over the top Verhoeven-esque, just as long as it’s satisfying and makes you feel slightly uneasy for a while.  It all bodes well though because Requiem For A Dream did make anyone who watched it feel uneasy for about an entire week after they saw it.

I’ve had no money to buy any new games recently due to my eternal post-graduation job hunt, but everyone should play/get Braid by any means possible. Just read some of the review quotes on that page to convince thyself.

Yeah…somebody forgot to tell the new Lara Croft model that in promotional shots for the new Tomb Raider game she should definitely NOT do this. Here’s a video of her talking about herself with unintentionally funny extreme closeup towards the end.

That’s about it, I need to go wash my eyes after seeing that Lara Croft photo again.

Chris

Final Fantasy 13 just got announced for XBOX 360

Not only is this quite monumental for the series, but it goes to show how divided the current hardware market really is. Apparently Japan isn’t getting a 360 version, no surprises there, but Square Enix clearly feel that a PS3-only release would hinder International sales of the title. Fanboys may be screaming “OMG! They sold out!” as they cry into their Blu-ray drives, but by that logic Square already sold out, in the mid nineties…to Sony.

Let’s be honest, the PS3 has had a bumpy ride since the day it was released.  At the beginning the price was way too high, the games weren’t all that great (bar a few like Resistance) and one of the main reasons to buy the system (major exclusives) seemed to be dying a death.  Series’ such as Grand Theft Auto, Devil May Cry and Virtua Fighter have all gone to 360 with near identical graphics, leaving only two big hitters left for Sony - Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy.  However MGS already has this tradition of re-releasing with some added extra bonus features on other consoles, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see MGS4:SubstantialSubstance on 360 some time soon.

And so now the PS3 doesn’t really have much left to tempt me. Home? Free online?  Built-in Wireless? I suppose I could buy all my dvd’s again in High Definition. Okay, apart from Final Fantasy I did have one other definite reason to buy the big shiny black box. It meant I could pack away my noisy old temperamental PS2 and play a lot of the PS2 games that I haven’t had time to play yet, only with up-scaled graphics - but then they went and dropped backwards compatibility from the console.

Having said all that I’ll still probably end up getting a PS3 sometime in the future, I love video games too much not to plus there actually are some great exclusives for the system. Home does also genuinely excite me, however I just can’t see myself handing over the cash any time soon and whatever way you look at it, losing Final Fantasy is another direct hit to an already shaky PlayStation Empire.  Here’s hoping Sony have a lot of earth shattering announcements at their E3 Conference this week and that Home lives up to the hype.

Chris.

Over the last few days I’ve been periodically playing Granny’s Garden for the BBC Micro. If you come from a time when this graphical text based adventure was used as some sort of primary school educational tool then you’ll know how just how basic yet somehow memorable it has become. Before my nostalgia trip all I could remember was that the game was kinda weird but I never really knew why…..now I know why. It has the most bizarrely schizophrenic narrative ever conceived and punishes you for making completely rational decisions. The third level where you have to feed the dragons would probably have confused Einstein.

My god, the first puzzle. Maybe I’m still missing something after all these years but I’ve wasted too much of my life trying to figure out which one is the magic tree. Basically the fact that each tree is exactly the same makes this task somewhat impossible. You can’t even really call this a puzzle because the answer randomly changes every time you play. This screen should have read - “Above are 12 identical trees, please type in random grid combinations until something happens.”

A correct guess of the magic tree led to what pretty much all magic trees should lead to - two white mountains, four more trees, a weird sun/planet thing and a not so secret cave. The best thing about this area was the superbly self-descriptive name - “Kingdom Of The Mountains.”

The game also gives you a first taste of its greatest feature at this point. The illusion of choice:

OK then.

Our friend the Raven supposedly has magic powers too, his greatest ability is telling you that you’ve failed miserably and must start again. Though thankfully you don’t have to pick him out of some crazy grid parade of other Ravens. He magically brings us from the Secret Cave to The Woodcutter’s House (I love this game) where we get the infamous Fig puzzle everybody remembers because it actually makes sense and if you get it wrong the game gets angry and tells you the answer.  As you search for the first missing kid in the creepy house you may decide to go into the Kitchen, where there is a pot. Can’t fit a lot in a pot, no reason not to look into it, right? Wrong! Out pops the wicked witch ensembled by really loud creepy bleepy sounds, which for an 8 year old kid in the 80’s basically makes you shit your pants.

For those interested the emulator I used was called BeebEm which you can find here, google is your friend for everything else.

Chris

Hello all!

This is my first post here at Nerd Anger, hopefully not my last either!

Before I begin I have a confession to make, I’m not a terribly angry nerd! In fact I don’t get angry at many things at all…unless you call my mum a whore or something, then I may have to gut you like a fish before actually feeding you to some fish then catching those same fish and feeding them to your family.

Light hearted fun aside I’ve actually tried being angry about pop culture and plastic before but I only end up laughing at the absurdity of being angry at things that I don’t even have to associate myself with in the first place. However one constant shall hold true - My posts will usually have a video game theme because video games are the greatest invention of the last ten thousand years.

In a case of nothing new there then - Metal Gear Solid 4 apparently has 45 minute long cut scenes, 40 minutes of which are probably hideously convoluted Codec conversations with Snake spewing up sentences that have no relation to anything at all. He’ll get angry at the Colonel, flirt with the young hot scientist (but it’ll be ever so creepy this time coz he’s really old) and the words “Stealth Mission” will be used more than once. It’s nice to see Konami are doing their part in converging the medium of movies and games by actually turning the game into a movie.

I find it fairly awesome that Nintendo’s Wii Fit appears to be destroying fat children’s lives by telling them that they are indeed fat. The best quote from that story was from the outraged parent of a 10 year old girl -

“She is solidly built but not fat. She was devastated to be called fat and we had to work hard to convince her she isn’t.”

So basically the answer to the problem is this. Instead of Wii Fit telling solidly built 10 year old girls that they are fat, the game should tell those 10 year old girls that they are “Built like Solid Snake.”

However the use of the word “Snake” in Wii Fit may imply that your child is in fact….Satan.

Chris