Friday 27 December 2013

My Top 10 Video Games

My first ever video game was on an 8k ROM cartridge that cost (this was back in 1983) £30, just think about that, 8k, my VBA scripts are typically bigger than that. I wouldn't call myself a serious gamer and this list is not a history of games in the way that Charlie Brooker recently did (rather brilliantly too) but rather these are the games that for various reasons have stayed with me long after playing them and that others get compared to. You'll probably notice a recurring theme with some of them but I never said I was that original. To start with then, we do indeed go back to 1983 and that 8k ROM cartridge..

 

Star Raiders, Published by Atari in 1979

Firing on invading "Zylons"

Taking some obvious inspiration from the likes of "Star Wars" and "Battlestar Galactica", "Star Raiders" is a 3D space combat game where you must defeat the evil "Zylon" forces. It plays as a first person space shooter with you looking out of your cockpit as you travel from sector to sector defeating the enemies before they can destroy your star bases. This was effectively "Elite" without the trading aspect and looking at the layout of the cockpit displays it's not hard to see the early beginnings of either "Wing Commander" or "X-Wing". The game had levels of difficulty and depending on how you did you then got a ranking at the end. This was incredibly influential on me and this style of gameplay (with its obvious movie overtones) has always been attractive. It was released onto the Atari VCS and the ST and was recently re-released for both the X-Box and PS3 but to me none of those versions ever captured the simplicity and grace of the original. The last best space combat game I played was probably 2003's "Freelancer", I have never really been able to get into "EVE Online" despite several attempts to do so.

 

Alternate Reality, Published by DataSoft, 1985

Trying to escape a Knight in the City Square

Carrying on my trend of playing from a first person perspective comes this ambitious project developed by Paradise Programming. Looking to be heavily influenced by "Dungeon & Dragons", the opening cinematic shows you, the player, being kidnapped by an Alien spacecraft and then transported to another world and left to fend for yourself. What makes this game stand out for me was the concept and what was planned. Planned as the first of seven games, the first part is just the city and is mainly a game of exploration, no quests, no upgrade path. If you find doors or the city gates you would be prompted to enter a disk for the "Arena" or "Wilderness". Ultimately, only one further expansion came out, "The Dungeon", but the packaging gave some tantalising hints as to what was planned. This game came on four double-sided 5.25 inch floppy disks and there could be a lot of disk flipping depended on your path through the city. Changing weather effects, atmospheric music and an unforgiving save system (when your character died, you had to start again) all combined to give a unique game and dangerous game world. What struck me about this and, to my mind anyway, what sets it apart from similar games of the era was the sense of freedom and the ability to explore. Ultimately a bold concept that was probably too ahead of its time.

 

Dungeon Master, Published by FTL Games, 1987

Whilst appearing not too dissimilar from previously. Mentioned "Alternate Reality", "Dungeon Master" is different in style in that there is a definite quest to complete in addition to puzzles to solve and a whole host of creatures to overcome. You play as a guiding force for four adventures venturing into a dungeon to find the "Firestaff" and defeat "Lord Chaos". All relatively simple so far but what sets this apart was the atmosphere the game generated, in no small part to the excellent sound design. This was probably the first game I had to play with the sound down at various points, the noise coming from the Worms and the Skeletons used to freak me out, and the number of times I would turn a corner and suddenly find an adversary would see me jumping in my seat also. As you beat more opponents your adventurers get more experiance, which increases your levels of relevant skills, use a sword you get better at combat, cast spells you get better at magic. The puzzles also could be quite hard and don't forget this was before the age of the internet so there was no game FAQs you could interrogate. This spawned a host of imitators, including two sequels but, like "Star Raiders", to me they never quite achieved the same heights that this did.

 

Carrier Command, Published by Rainbird, 1988

This was the game at stole my last long summer holiday. I woke up, I played this and carried on playing, only breaking for food and sleep and it was glorious. You are in command of a futuristic Aircraft Carrier and you have to stop an opposite number that has been take over by a rogue AI. Your carrier has aircraft, amphibious vehicles and multiple weapon options. You equip and then deploy your vehicles in support of capturing islands, performing reconnaissance or even defending your carrier from attack. Your arena is an archipelago of Islands that you can build automated facilities to either mine resources, build equipment or are pure defensive in nature. The enemy carrier is faster than you so strategy is critical, you need to build and protect your own supply lines whilst trying to cut off your opponents. The multiple assault options, coupled with a well designed interface gives a lot of breadth to this.

 

X-Wing, Published by LucasArts, 1993

"This is Red 5, I'm going in!"

So what happens if you take elements from games like the afore mentioned "Star Raiders", "Wing Commander" and "Elite", include elements from one of the most famous movie franchises of all time and make it a great game to boot? "X-Wing" happens. "Star Wars" based games had always been popular but don't forget, this was 10 years after "Return of the Jedi" and the prequels were still some time off even being announced. "X-Wing" is a great game in its own right, the "Star Wars" elements only add to the atmosphere. The game features relatively recognisable elements, there's a tutorial level, the training missions before beginning one of three actual "tours of duty", the third one of which culminates in the battle of Yavin as featured at the end of the original "Star Wars" movie. Missions leading up weave in story elements which only adds to the overall atmosphere of the game. Initially you can fly either an "X-Wing", "Y-Wing" or "A-Wing" with the chance to fly a "B-Wing" coming with a mini expansion later on after the main game. The three tours of duty feature a punishing learning curve with some earlier missions being harder to complete than some later ones, an issue that would be addressed by the sequel, entitled "TIE-Fighter". Like other games in this list, the sequels that followed never quite captured the magic that this one brought.

 

The 7th Guest, Published by Virgin Interactive, 1993

The year was 1994, I was working full time in my first IT job and walking into a Virgin Games Centre (remember those kids?) I bought my first dual-speed CD-ROM reader for £180 (this was a bone fide bargain at this time), and with it two games, "Dune" and "The 7th Guest". The latter was arguably one of the first games to take advantage of the additional storage potential afforded by CD and it made good use of it featuring a lot of specially shot video that adds to the game as you progress through it. The game is essentially a series of puzzles that need to be solved to venture further into a creepy old mansion, you play from a first person perspective and one of the first questions you ask yourself is "who am I and what am I doing here?". The game revolves a dinner party thrown by an old toy maker who has made some nefarious deals with supernatural forces, each guest also has their reason for bring there and their stories unfold over the course of the game. The game lulls you into a false sense of security with some of the earlier puzzles being quite simple but the difficulty quickly ramps up in difficulty. Again, it's the atmosphere that makes this game so memorable, from the video segments to the sound design to the design of the puzzles themselves. Followed by a lacklustre, bug ridden sequel, this game was recently released for iOS devices and it's as good as I remember it.

 

Unreal Tournament, Published by GT Interactive, 1999

Like probably every games of that generation, I played Doom to destruction, some of my very first networking experiance was fitting two PC's with ISA network cards, 10 metres of co-ax cable with T-Pieces and Terminators, all to play Doom across IPX/SPX (yes kids, there was a time before TCP/IP). This would be followed by games such as the inevitable sequel, the "Quake" series and the " Unreal". Whereas "Unreal" was a story based game, "Unreal Tournament" was all about multiplayer (with some single player support thrown in). The game was fast, energetic and with what felt like a wide choice of firepower. I can still remember four of us taking our PC's into the office, plugging into a seperate LAN and then the joys of seeing your opponents faces when you take them out. Of all the games of this ilk, this is still the one I come back to. It's fast frenetic and fun which is something I think some modern day shooters forget about.

 

World of Warcraft, Published by Blizzard, 2005 (Europe)

What do you call a party of dwarves?

I'd not played an MMO before having missed out on the "Everquest" series but a friend of mine had been following this game since it's US release and urged me to pre-order. I did and my gaming life for the next 8 or so years would change. It's a Massive Multiplayer Online game which means as you are playing it so are thousands of people around the world, each "player" you see in the game is being controlled by someone like you sitting in front of a PC. It came with a very lengthy manual but realistically, when creating a character, you choose your race, class. And a couple of other things and then your off into the game. The tutorial levels do a good job of introducing many of the key concepts (and these have been refined over the years) but this is very much about exploring the world. In some ways like "Alternate Reality" earlier in my list, it was this sense that was one of my joys of playing, going somewhere and getting a bit more of the map to uncover, but be careful, if you wonder into an area your not ready for then prepare to die a lot! The game has continued to grow and evolve as new expansions and updates are issued. I haven't logged for nearly a year as I felt recent changes dumbed down the interface too much and there was a growing focus on "grinding" (performing repetitive tasks for rewards towards better gear) but a fifth expansion was recently announced and I am wondering about going back.

 

Heavy Rain, Published by Quantic Dream, 2010

Decide quickly before he gives up and leaves

There's a scene in the sci-fi classic "Fahrenheit 451", where one of the characters is watching a TV series and every now and again the TV stops and directly asks the viewer a question, their answer then directly influences what happens next in the TV series. "Heavy Rain" tells the story of four characters and how they interact with each other as they become entangled in the case of the "Origami Murderer". Each has a vested interest and the game composes of segments where you are one of those characters. What sets this game apart is the complete lack of control structure, you may move a character through a building but you only interact with your environment when you are given the option too on screen. Like a lot of games on this list, the atmosphere the game generated can be intense and it throws some harsh decisions your way as the game builds to a climax and then giving you a twist. There's a lot of different endings depending on the disposition of the various characters as the final chapter begins and choices made earlier on can and will come back to haunt you. This is a serious adult game with mature themes and, for me, was an incredible experiance to play through.

 

Mass Effect 2, Published by Electronic Arts, 2011 (PS3 Version)

Take out that Krogan before he charges!

Starting a new role and talking to your colleagues can be a challenging experiance, will you fit in, will there be common ground to talk about? One such colleague was a big gamer and seemed genuinely shocked I had not played any of the "Mass Effect" series, such was his hurting that I bought the first game, equally enjoyed it and the tracked down the second. The game is the story of Commander Shepherd as he travels the galaxy fighting an alien invasion force. Now this is all fairly standard scifi fare, but what makes this stand out is the story that develops through a series of cut scenes that give you a choice to respond, make too harsh a comment and the character might get hostile towards you, be nicer and maybe romance will blossom. This is all interspersed with plenty of third person viewpoint as you battle various hostile forces all the while trying to make the rest of the universe believe as you do. Like "Heavy Rain" before it choices you make will continue to have and effect and ability to import characters from game to game mean choices you made in thefi rest game will impact the third. For me, this is the best of series as it balances story, interface elements, combat, etc the best of the three.

 

Thursday 19 December 2013

Is it really 30 years ago?

I've been thinking about this for the past few days, past Xmas's and the like. For some reason, 1983 seems relatively clear. It was my first year of secondary school, my sisters weren't at home and I'm fairly sure "Flash Gordon" was the premiere on Christmas Eve. Was it my main present that I was excited about? I'd had my first personal computer earlier that year, an Atari 400 with 16kb of RAM and a membrane keyboard but this was the age without suspend-to-memory and sleep mode, so when the power was turned off whatever was there was gone. I remember having my first tape drive and it was genuinely revelatory, I could play cassette games (and get introduced to the vaguries of tape load errors), save my programs and so on. I remember buying C15 cassettes and filling them with programs I would type in from magazines or listings books, and some of them even worked!

It was a much simpler age back then and it does make me wonder what I'll be having for Christmas in 2043.

 

Wednesday 18 December 2013

Film/TV Review of 2013

So here we are then, my usual round up of my TV/Film hits and misses of the year, feel free to agree or criticise as you see fit.

Best returning TV show

As someone who has never watched "Breaking Bad", hard as it may seem to believe, there were other shows back for more runs. "Arrow" started out strong last year but seemed to lose the plot towards the end, coming back for it's new season, it hit the ground running and has looked stronger and stronger each week. Effortlessly weaving in the odd fan pleasing reference such as "Solomon Grundy" or "Ra's Al'Ghul" and the "League of "Shadows" and some great action scenes. Returning villains, ongoing storylines, this is easily the best show of it's kind on at the minute. Both "Game of Thrones" and "The Walking Dead" continued their impressive runs and the kinds of twists and shocks that both surprise and shock you in equal measure.

Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu would continue their adventures in that other Sherlock Holmes series, "Elementary" and display a level of chemistry then even outshines that as seen in "Castle". "Once Upon a Time" changes tack in its new season and has one central story at it's prominence as the mission to save Henry from Peter Pan begins. Once again Robert Caylyle as Rumplestiltskin is easily the best character although the Evil Queen isn't far behind. The Dan Harmon-less "Community" series 4 was a shadow of it's former self (despite one or two good ideas) and it was with a happy heart to hear he is back for Series 5 in 2014. Revolution continued to amaza with it's poor scripting and inane plotting.

Favourite Returning TV Show: "Arrow"

Honorable Mentions: "Game of Thrones", "The Walking Dead", "Once Upon A Time"

Best new TV show

There's certainly been a lot of new stuff to watch this year and by no means have I been able to watch it all. Films have provided inspiration for series this year, firstly I have to mention "Hannibal" that I initially didn't watch and it was only the urging of a friend that made me go and catchup and I'm glad he did. This is the early years of the character made famous by Anthony Hopkins in films such as the "Silence of the Lambs", this time played by "Casino Royale" bad guy, Mads Mikkelson. This is about the relationship between the good doctor and FBI agent Will Graham as he goes about doing his day-to-day investigating. This could so easily have been a psycho-of-the-week but the crimes are almost incidental to the relationship of the two characters. Unnerving, brilliantly written and genuinely enthralling, definitely looking forward to this coming back. Then, there is "Agents of SHIELD", riding the wave after 2012's "Avengers", referencing "Iron Man 3", name dropping various characters from the universe, how could this fail? To be honest, it hasn't, but neither has it really succeeded in the way it should have. 2 dimensional characters, boring scripts, poor dialogue, it feels like the writers are being held on a leash not to be too daring whilst "Arrow" (which I talk about elsewhere) has taken criticism levelled at it and come back stronger than ever. "Agents" isn't dead yet, Clark Gregg and Ming-Na Wen have more charisma than the rest of the cast put together and there's still stuff to enjoy but it's just not as good as it should be and that's what hurts.

As someone old enough to remember the original "House of Cards" from 1990, I was interested in Kevin Spacey's new version and was thoroughly entertained by the machiavellian twisy turny nature of the script. "Da Vinci's Demons" takes some random notes from history, adds some renaissance-punk action, a corrupt church and a mysterious book then you have effectively "Macgyver" in the fifteenth century, brilliantly fun. In another twist on history, the BBC took everything they learned on the later series of "Merlin", threw it out of the window and gave us the tepid "Atlantis". "Sleepy Hollow" got a new twist that has been quite enjoyable so far. "Once upon a Time in Wonderland" (a spin off from "Once Upon a Time" has had some nice ideas but has struggled desperately in the ratings. Coming a bit left-field from BBC America came "Orphan Black" about a group of women who realise they are clones and what this means, well acted and some very clever ideas presented. "Banshee" was another show I nearly didn't watch but so happy I did, telling the story of a diamond thief who gets out of prison and goes looking for his former girlfriend and his share of their last job. On the run from russian mobsters who originally set the job up, this all comes to a head in a small town bordering on Amish territory where the afore mentioned thief finds himself as the new town sheriff. Brilliantly written and acted and featuring some outrageous action scenes, this was one of the best, if not my favourite, new show.

Favourite new TV Show: "Banshee"

Honourable mention: "Hannibal", "Da Vinci's Demons", "Orphan Black", "House of Cards"

Film Hits of the Year

After the all-conquering nature of the 2012's "Avengers", there seeemed to be a lot riding on "Iron Man 3", was the magic still there? Obviously with it's 1.2 billion dollars at the box office, I don't think it was as good the first one as mainly I paid to see a film called "Iron Man" and a lot like last years "Dark Knight" there wasn't much of the costumed shenanigans as I would have liked. Thor would fare much better later in the year with "The Dark World", if the first film focused on the Thor/Jane Foster relationship, this one was all about Thor and Loki and much better for it. Everyone on top form, a great script and some inventive cinematics all combine in one of the best films of the year. Sci-Fi was also served well this year with both "Oblivion" and "Gravity" producing some stunning visuals, critics argues that both films had weak stories both but survived on their various merits. Arnold Schwarzenegger had two films out, "Escape Plan" with Stallone but the real hit for me was "The Last Stand" and it's lack of success at the box office, like 2012's "Dredd" was a real shame. "Cloud Atlas" was an attempt at telling 6 seperate but connected stories across 6 different time periods, a modest success, initially I wasn't keen, but having watched it a couple of times, I think this will become a film like "Chronicles of Riddick" and "Scott Pilgrim" before it that the more I watch it, it will most definitely grow on me.

Vin Diesel would have a good year with both the physics ignoring "Fast & Furious 6" and "Riddick", both films revisiting past characters and both having a lot to commend them (obviously for different reasons). After 2006's disappointing "Superman Returns", the character was relaunched in the Nolan-esque "Man of Steel" and was a deserved success, british actor Henry Cavill taking on the famous cloak and like Nolan's trilogy having a great supporting cast such as Russell Crowe and Kevin Costner playing his Kryptonian and Earth fathers respectively. After the similarly disappointing "X-Men Origins", Hugh Jackman came back in the much better "The Wolverine" and gave us one the most promising post credits scene since Samuel L Jackson confronted Robert Downey Jr.

Favourite Films: "Oblivion", "Gravity", "Thor The Dark World", "Riddick"

Film Misses of the Year

After the brilliant "The Expendables", Bruch Willis, Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger would all come back in action roles in the early part of the year, now Arnie's "The Last Stand" was a lot of fun, Stallone's "Bullet to the Head" is what he deserved and Willis practically sleep-walked through the latest "Die Hard", Nakatomi plaza is a very long time ago now.

I'm going to cop some flak but also for me "The Worlds End" was also a bit of a miss, I loved some of the ideas in the script, concerning the changing nature of friendship as the years go by but the sci-fi element just seemed tacked on and (surprisingly as a sci-fi fan) I didn't like that part of the film. The second Hobbit film was also a bit of a disappointment for me, it flowed well, the pacing was right but nothing really happened and for me, it was just a setup for the third film coming out next year. Viewed in concert with the other films, my view will probably change but at the minute, not so much.

Worst film: "Bullet to the Head"

Doctor Who program of the year

Doctor Who was all over the TV this year, for it's 50th anniversary, the BBC produced a lot of output and it was mostly good. My favourite was the webisode "Night of the Doctor" which brought Paul McGann back to the role he first played in the 1996 movie and in just 8 minutes he showed us what a great Doctor he could have been and has been on the Big Finish audio dramas. "An Adventure in Space and Time" dramatised the beginnings of the show. Directed and written by the fifth doctor, Peter Davison, along with Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy and a whole host of famous cameo's, an irreverant love story to the series. The actual 50th episode was very good also, weaving in a lot of references from past stories both from the new and classic era.

Favourite Doctor Who program: "Night of the Doctor"

 

Tuesday 17 December 2013

First post..

This is a first post to get twitterfeed to hopefully see this and also to test Blogsy on the iPad.