So, on the way back to work from lunch, we noticed Game had a demo of Playstation Move in-store for people to try out. Naturally, we went in and had a go.
Matt:
It’s rubbish, ain’t it Paul?
Paul:
Crap.
Matt:
Admittedly, you have no PS3, but I do and still have zero intention of buying that.
Paul:
I think that says enough about it. We have to be fair though; we did only play it for about 5 minutes, if that, but we did get some viewing others in there too. It’s not that it’s bad technology, I mean, the graphics were obviously going to be decent due to it being on the PS3, but all I thought throughout using/watching it was ‘This is just a Wii’.
Matt:
We played some fighting game of some sort, and the tech seemed to do a fine job of replicating your move (I found it similar to Wii Motion Plus), but this is purely Sony’s attempt to cash in on the motion gimmick, but frankly I don’t know many PS3 owners who are gonna get much out of it. And any grandma’s out there already own Wii’s.
Paul:
Thing is, many PS3 owners I know are or have at some point been Playstation fanboys, which means anything and everything Playstation is generally considered to be godly in some way. This means that, despite Playstation Move essentially being a Wii with better graphics, an EyeToy, and colourful bright lights on the end of your controllers, this will likely be hailed as being much better than Wii, totally different and unique, and super mega fun, when in reality it’s just the same thing. I’m sure it should be a lot of fun, but the only thing I felt was stupid when I was waving around a giant glowing sex toy in front of our colleagues. The Wii and it’s motion-controller technology came out in 2006… That’s four years ago! How late this piece of kit is to the motion race is nothing short of epic, and the same goes for the Xbox 360 Kinect.
Matt:
Speaking of fanboys, didn’t you preorder Kinect?
Paul:
Yes, I certainly did, but I was under no illusions about it being any good and had no shame about my plans to put it on eBay if it truly was rubbish. I’ve also since cancelled my pre-order, a move which I consider pretty wise when someone (likely you) said the £120 it will cost could be put toward something better and more useful. Such as, perhaps, beer? Don’t get me wrong, any progress in gaming technology that could get us ever closer to some kind of virtual-reality gaming magnificence akin to the the holodeck in Star Trek – or even better, the Matrix – is something I’d like to keep my eye on, but with the massively differing opinions from those who have tested it, it’s not something I’m happy to take the plunge with anymore when it costs quite so much.
Matt:
Hell yeah. I look forward to the day we can have a fully virtualised wars with tanks and lasers and jetpacks, all from the safety of a personalised gaming pod in your living room. Oh yeah… Until then, we have to settle for flailing dildos.
Paul:
Flailing dildos and dancing about like a muppet in front of everyone; it’s not the most appealing way to spend your evenings in, is it. Then again, at least its sociable and everybody can get involved (unless you have no legs, really sorry about that), which I’m pretty sure is one of the most important and larger focuses of motion controlled gaming technology today. I mean, how else are you going to get grandma to get off her fat lazy arse and join in with the kids at Christmas? If the main focus truly is to get the whole family playing together and being a little more active, then kudos to those in the industry trying to do something about it. But in the mean time, I’d really rather stick to games that are actually good and don’t require me to jump around like a raving lunatic.
Matt:
You still need a PS3. I’m so lending you mine next spring when the Ico HD remakes are released.
Paul:
Fine by me! I’m dying to play Shadow of the Colossus. Anyway, motion control games (mostly) suck, real control-pad games win. Next!
Dome Keeper is an excellent little spin on the tower defense game, in which you play the role of a jetpacking miner defending his base from swarms of aliens, whilst searching for a hidden relic buried somewhere beneath him. And now, with this huge free update, you can play it with friends.
I want to talk about Cloudpunk, a game where you get to be a flying-car delivery driver in a futuristic cyberpunk city. Its world is an incredible achievement of environmental design, and while the gameplay itself may be basic, the city of Nivalis is a thing of beauty to behold. Nivalis is built out of hundreds of hand-modelled cuboid buildings; there’s nothing procedural about it. Apparently it took 3 years for the devs to design the city, and it really shows.
I do love me some quality pixel art, and it doesn’t get much better than this. Cast n Chill is a cozy side-scrolling fishing game by small indie dev team Wombat Brawler, with absolutely gorgeous visuals. It’s simple to play, and you you can dip in and out of it at your leisure, making it a fine addition to our collection of coffee break games.
A friend on Facebook posted a list of their favourite movies, listed in the year they came out, which I immediately followed up with my own list. There’s only one rule: you must pick your favourite for all of the years that you’ve been alive, and you can only pick one per year. I decided to give it a go for videogames. It’s a lot trickier than you might think! Some years have featured an abundance of incredible titles, whereas other years it’s easy to pick out a clear winner in your mind. So, without further ado, here’s my list of favourite games, one per year since I was born. This was insanely difficult…
Fighter Ace was a free-to-play Second World War dogfighting game. You just logged in, spawned in a big sky with about 20 or 30 other people and shot the shit out of each other. It taught me that the Japanese Zero was one of the greatest fighter planes of WW2. Sure, it was lightly armoured and went down easily with just a few direct hits, but it was so manoeuvrable, so fast and agile that it could take on pretty much any other plane and come out on top.
The Trials franchise is surely the most successful game to ever start out life as a Flash browser game. I remember playing the original game on Miniclip back in the day, and I have played every single iteration since. The game’s core concept is simple – you control a trials bike, and must navigate it across a series of increasingly difficult obstacle courses on a 2D pane. It’s the perfect pick-up-and-play game, because it’s easy to get the basics, but insanely difficult to master.
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