21st Century Digital Boy

So I bought Tomb Raider: Anniversary recently. On the Wii. After they heard about that, friends of mine mentioned that Eurogamer slagged it very bad. I was worried for a bit, until I actually played the game.

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QTTabBar (XP, Vista) is a freeware addon for Windows Explorer which adds tabs, a quick search bar, a drop-down menu for navigating subdirectories, preview tooltips for various image formats, a customisable application launcher and god knows what else. Really, really nice little thing. The only thing I don’t quite like is that there’s no option to have its toolbar display small icons and text labels (or text labels at all). Other than that, it’s nice and quick and offers some really nice options to improve Explorer’s handling.

In other news, I recently bought the Naki Ultimate Fighting Stick off eBay since this seems to be the only not completely shit arcade stick available for the Xbox. It boasts an impressive feature set by working with both the Xbox and PS2, having vibration motors and even two analogue “trackballs” that can be used as analog sticks on both consoles. It’s also wireless, running on a mere three AAA batteries.

Fighting Game Nerds over on the shoryuken.com forums stated that the buttons and stick on this thing were terrible, which worried me a bit – and, as it turns out, they weren’t quite wrong. The stick has a fairly large range of movement and the buttons feel a bit mushy, but it’s decent enough if you’re not an uber precision/speed geek. What bothers me the most is that the buttons don’t click as nicely as the ones on most other sticks. That aside, the above-linked thread also mentions that the parts can apparently be replaced with proper arcade-grade gear with not too much effort if you’re so inclined.

Aside from the buttons being somewhat spongy, the only things that bother me slightly are that the shoulder trigger buttons don’t work if the thing is connected to the Xbox (which is forgivable, considering that the triggers on the Xbox gamepad are fully analog) and that the plastic cover on the case hole for the stick is loose. This seems to be common practice though, but something that I consider a minor annoyance. There’s no input lag of note on either the PS or the Xbox, and the general feel and layout of the stick works quite well.

In general, I’m quite happy with this as a 30 quid purchase (including shipping). Being able to play Guilty Gear on my Xbox with a proper arcade stick = yes, and having a second stick around for the Playstation (I already own the official PS1 arcade stick by Asciiware) in case it’s necessary is also a nice thing.

So I’ve (re-)discovered a clone of my favourite shmup EVAR not too long ago and figured I should share the love. This game is EXCELLENT. WELL DONE. ACE. KILLER.

Typhoon 2001, being a clone of Tempest 2000 (that being an excellent remake of the 1981 arcade game Tempest by the similarly-excellent Jeff Minter) is about Shooting Stuff That Comes At You Really Really Fast. The game setting consists of a web of corridors floating in Bizarro Space, with starfields that form beautifully symmetric patterns and distant layers of… something. Your blaster, also known as The Claw, is stuck to the upper end of the Web, and Stuff Comes At You Really Really Fast from the other one. That is all the story this game has, and all the story it needs. (continue reading…)

So I finally finished Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay last Friday. I can only echo the sentiments that so many others have already voiced – it’s a refreshing change from the rule in that it’s a movie tie-in game that’s actually pretty fucking good. On the other hand, it doesn’t really have much to do with any of the movies, but is rather just an episode in The Misadventures of Richard B. Riddick – then again, this holds true for the rest of the franchise as well. The actual plot of the game is rather short and thinly spread, and in retrospect most of the things that happen between the introductory parts and the endgame feel like filler material. Funny enough, they don’t do it while you’re playing, or at least not nearly as much. (continue reading…)

I just found a DVD of Six-String Samurai while I was shopping for groceries.

HELL YES.

For those who have no idea what I’m talking about, 6SS happens to be pretty much my favorite movie of the past, oh, I don’t know, ever. Kickass music, glorious camera work, and a premise that is made of crack and awesome. Because I’m a lazy bum, I’ll just copy&paste a short review of it that I’d written someplace else when I’d first seen the movie.

So I had a vid night with some of the mates last night. We watched The Iron Giant, Seducing Doctor Lewis… and the one I’m going to recommend.
Six-String Samurai.

Think Lone Wolf and Cub meets Mad Max meets 1950’s Rock’n'Roll.
The basic premise is a wee bit wacky, but stick with me for a moment.
In 1957, the Cold War escalates and the Soviets end up nuking and invading the US. Hilarity ensues, Elvis (yes, the Elvis) gets crowned King of the remains and takes seat in “Lost Vegas”.
Fast-forward forty years. The King Is Dead. Vegas needs a new King. Road Rockers from all over the place start flocking towards Vegas to claim the throne as theirs. Among them Death himself, incarnated as a postapocalyptic version of Guns’n'Roses’ Slash. And, of course, the unnamed protagonist whom everyone just calls “Buddy” and who looks a very slight bit like Buddy Holly would after having survived the Nucular Holocaust Of Doom. I think.
Thus, Buddy sets out equipped only with his trusty six-string electric guitar – which conveniently happens to have a katana taped to it – his postapocalyptically torn-and-dirty tuxedo, his broken glasses and a battered parasol, for he has “a gig in Vegas”.
As we join him on his journey, he encounters a group of badlands wildmen chasing after a little kid and his mother. They kill the Mom, Buddy arrives and disposes of them with a little help from his awesome Rock’n'Roll Kung Fu (and his katana). The Kid sits there, pokes his Mom with a stick a few times, then bleats at Buddy who passes him by.
Buddy tells him to “Float away, little butterfly, just flutter away”, the kid stalks him. Buddy tells him a bit more directly to back the fuck off, but the kid just bleats and continues following anyway. The beginning of a wonderful friendship fo sho’.
The two travel through the desert heading for Vegas, kicking some wildman ass in a breakneck 15mph car chase, getting caught up with the Postapocalyptic Sitcom Family From Hell, running from guys in badly-taped space suits, and slaughtering the whole remains of the Red Army along the way.

I love it. This flick is stuffed to bursting with various pop culture and rock’n'roll references, from the lead character, his nemesis, a cameo by A Guy Who Looks Suspiciously Like Clint Eastwood, the whole Samurai Tale concept, a bunch of Spaghetti Western spoofs, the all-pervasive Mad Max style, up to the store in a town called Fallout (seriously) which is owned by a Gangsta Midget who quotes The Wizard of Oz (yes, seriously).
Oh, and the soundtrack is played by a Russian-spawned Rock’n'Roll band called The Red Elvises.

There’s a trailer and ad blurb here. Six-String Samurai being a rather Indie production from 1998, it is somewhat hard to get regularly now, but can still be acquired through the usual intarweb outlets for decent prices.

(German original and pictures)

“That is not dead which may eternal lie…”

After my visit to the nether hells, I am glad to be still alive, but nobody believes what I have to report. The fools – they don’t see what is going on in front of their very eyes; they’re too closed minded to recognise the things waiting for them just outside of their field of view which is so constricted by the blindfolds of their concept of reality. But I can understand… had I known the horrible, unearthly terrors that were waiting for me, I’d have turned back at once. And it all just looked like a game in the beginning… (continue reading…)

Back to your regular programming: Baten Kaitos is pretty damn awesome. It has the gorgeous of Chrono Cross, but a far simpler battle system. I’d never have thought I might say this of a card-based battle system one day, but it’s one of the best turn-based combat systems I’ve seen.

Every character can be assigned a certain number of cards based on his or her level (20 at the start of the game). These cards are shuffled, and a certain number are drawn in the first battle. Every character has several “attacks” per turn, which are executed by playing several cards after each other; every played card is replaced by the topmost one from the character’s deck. If your deck runs out, the character pauses for a turn while his deck is being reshuffled. The trick is that you only have until one card’s battle animation has finished playing to choose the next one. If you’re too slow, your chain of attacks ends early.

There are no separate “commands” as in other battle systems, but different types of cards. Attack cards, Defense cards, Recovery cards. Some have more than one property (ie. most swords have Attack and Defense) and can be played in more than one situation. If an enemy attacks a character, the procedure is the same as with you attacking – if you don’t play a card until the attack animation finishes hitting the character, he’s hit without any defense. If you play quickly enough, the card’s Defense value is subtracted from the attacker’s card’s Attack value after all his attacks are done and damage for the chain of attacks is evaluated for the turn.

To add even more complexity to it all, certain combos of cards will result in the final card of the combo “transforming”, conjuring a different effect than normally (über extra damage and the like).

The whole “play quickly or die” concept makes the battle system more fast-paced than just about any other turn-based system I’ve seen before, and the fact you’re issuing commands to the characters via decks of cards adds both strategy (setting up the decks for the characters) and an element of randomness. I like.

Other than that, Baten Kaitos permanently breaks the fourth wall by adding the player as a “guardian spirit” who’s engaged in a spiritual bond with the main character Kallas. This is only occasionally actually noticeable though, mainly when Kallas turns to the camera and asks the player what he thinks they should do. From what the game told me so far, Kallas have his own ideas about what’s right though, and the relationship between him and the player influences battle performance among other things. Pretty interesting stuff.

So, I just finished Half-Life 2 yesterday. For those who haven’t finished it yet, do not fear – I will not spill any details about the plot or stuff.

Let me say this much – HL2 ends just like it starts – very, very abruptly. The ending makes most of the game seem rather pointless, in a “Uh, dudes, I can’t think of an ending” kind of way. In general, HL2 is very much like its predecessor – in particular in that it spectacularly excels at skillfully avoiding doing too many new things.

Oh yes, it is pretty, but looking at other games – in particular this year’s incarnations of the Metal Gear Solid series, Twin Snakes and Snake Eater – it’s not as spectacular as it’s made out to be. Yes, the facial animation is nice, but seeing as how Valve circumvented any kind of player-induced changes by cleverly hard scripting all scenes that gave the player time to properly look at people’s faces, it doesn’t seem all that awesome.

Also, while I was only playing it on medium Texture and Model detail due to lack of RAM in my machine, the texture and model quality massively fluctuated from “good” to “what the fuck, this looks like Quake 2 or Quake 3″.

The gameplay is, as in HL1, about as pedestrian as it comes. The physics engine is a marvelous toy, but you’re not really able to do anything you weren’t supposed to be able to do. Other than that, HL2 is an über-linear run&gun shooter, just like HL1. It does do a better job at hiding the fact that you can’t go anywhere you’re not supposed to than HL1, but not everywhere and not much.

The vehicles are fun – a lot more fun than Far Cry’s; you can actually go faster than 20km/h without completely losing control and randomly crashing into things – but still no real competition for Halo’s vehicles, which were both sufficiently plausible in physics and really, really fun to drive.

The level geometry is another thing that caught my attention – I used to do some mapping myself, so I tend to pay a bit more attention to that kind of thing. Most of the levels look like they’d been modelled in Lego. Square houses, rectangular houses, a really large amount of the major level geometry is done in 90° angles. Or, to put it another way, much of the game’s level design is rather bland if you take a closer look.

It was a fun ride while it lasted, with the exception of a few places, but I’m sorry to say that I can’t agree with any of the major gaming press who call it “revolutionary”. If there’s anything Half-Life 2 is not, it’s revolutionary. Evolutionary, maybe. Sorry, Gordon.

Next up in the queue: Paper Mario – The 1000 Year Door and Metal Gear Solid 3 – Snake Eater. I played a bit of both so far, and I like what I’ve seen.