For Your £4.50 This Month

In the first of a perhaps regular (we’ll see) category, I’ll laugh at other journos, their mistakes and general rubbishness. Not because I know better or because it’s big or clever but because it’s fun. At least until someone does it to me that is.

First up is the latest Edge (if you’re going to start somewhere, might as well start at the top), issue #181 (if you want to read along at home) and the gem of a line on page 34 for Alone In The Dark:

…along with the whole of Central Park, which has been recreated to within 50cm of reality.

50cm of reality? What does that mean? Are they missing 50cm of reality? If they added the missing 50cm would it have been reality? Or is 50cm missing every other 50cm? Would you then just fall down and get stuck? Or do you have to jump over these gaps when playing the game? Or did they just cut out every other 50cm and stick the whole thing back together again? Wouldn’t that just look really weird? Does anyone know what this means?

Being Edge, we don’t know which tired hack wrote this but if I did, I’d flog them to within an inch of their life. Or maybe 50cm.

Rogue Galaxy – Done

I’ve finally finished my Rogue Galaxy review. It’s a very pretty game but I’m unsure whether to continue playing it, or move it to Done & Dusted or Left for Dead. You see, I went through a range of emotions whilst playing this game. From ‘This is nice’, to ‘Ugh! This is annoying’, to ‘OK, maybe I can overlook these faults’ to ‘Cursed random battles!’. You can read more over at Ace Gamez once the review goes live (I’ll post here when it does). For now, I think I’ll leave it in Now Playing and see if I get back to it in the coming weeks. With so much other good stuff on my plate (Halo 3, Phantom Hourglass, Logan’s Shadow, Jeanne d’Arc – the latter from Level 5, the same developers as Rogue Galaxy) I’m not going to hold my breath.

Videogame Usability 101

I came across an interesting article over at Next Generation regarding videogame usability and features that every game should have. Whilst I agree with most of them, I don’t think they are applicable to each and every situation. I’ll go through the points here but for a more thorough description, head on over to the article at Next Generation.

1. Never ask a player if they want to save their game.
   This one might seem obvious – just save the game whenever you can a la the checkpoint saves in Halo. But what about device limited systems such as mobiles, where automatically saving will actually disrupt the game flow and cause pauses? What if the player wanted to keep a previous save point and was only progressing to see what was around the corner? My personal preference is to have a checkpoint system which the player will return to upon death in that game session. Also allow them to permanently save the checkpoint whenever they so desire.
2. Always say "press any button" to start a game.
   Can’t really argue with this one.
3. Always let players re-map controller buttons to suit their preferences.
   Again, can’t argue with this. Although sometimes it’s not always possible to re-map the keys particular on devices such as mobile phones. Typically the left and right soft-keys will have graphical assets associated with them (i.e. next, back, select, change weapon icons, etc). If re-mapping these keys was to be allowed, icons would need to be created for every single option. An onerous task and one which could push the file size over the limit.
4. Always let players skip cut scenes no matter how important they are to the story.
   Yes indeed. I’d like to slip in here one of my pet peeves too – provide a theatre option in your games! If you have cut-scenes allow the player to watch them again via a movie mode from the main menu. All that hard work on cut scenes and you only want your player to watch it once?! Plus unlocking the cut scenes as the player progress is another form of reward.
5. Never let a camera get too close to a player or bump into a wall.
   Yes, but easier said than done!
6. Never make use of every controller button just because you can.
   Does any designer actually do this on purpose? It would be great to condense all actions onto one button! GameCube arguably started this trend for reduced buttons. The Wii and mobile phones are continuing it.
7. Always give players full control of accessibility options.
   I don’t consider this a major point and it seems a little out of place in this list but ho-hum.
8. Never use insipid, indefensible enemy attacks.
   Bad design! Very bad design! You want gamers to play your game, right?
9. Always present in-game tutorials, FAQs and help menus for newbie gamers.
   Another seemingly obvious one but one that a lot of games overlook. I’d also suggest that games should include a sandbox area where players can just get to grips with their new abilities without the fear of instant death. Mario games typically cater very well for this kind of thing.
10. Always let gamers get in and out of gameplay as they desire (otherwise they’ll just turn the console off).
    Hmm, this one doesn’t sound obvious but really it is. The player should be able to get to the gameplay as quickly as possible. No wading through several layers of menus, no long loading times, no watching 10 minutes of cut scenes before playing (see item 4). The route to the gameplay should always be via the shortest path possible.

In short, these are all valid points but like always, knowing the rules is just as important as knowing when to break them. Think about your target platform and if you must break them, have a good reason why.

Damn Microsoft!

So, I figured I’d install an off-line blog editor as the on-line WordPress one – whilst fine in the main – can be a little slow (relatively speaking) and clunky. I’m normally wary of Microsoft but I figured I’d give their Live Writer a go as I’d heard reasonable things about it. So, one quick visit and download later and I’m running the install program.

Now, what they don’t tell you is that this is an on-line install, meaning that it downloads everything it needs. Took me a while to realise that was what was happening as all it says is ‘waiting’. Secondly, it forces you to update to a new version of Live Messenger. OK, no biggie. I use the program anyway and I can probably live with an update (still a little annoying though). I figured I’d also give their Photo Gallery software a go. I normally use Picassa but thought I’d take a look at a competitor.

One longish install and reboot later and surprise, surprise, but I also find a Windows Desktop Search feature which was probably mentioned in the small print’s small print but which I don’t want. Why do they do that? Not only that but my image files have now been associated with Photo Gallery despite no-one asking me! Gah. Damn Microsoft! I’ll give Live Writer a quick spin but if it’s no good then it’ll be un-installed pretty sharpish whilst I look for a much more friendly open source alternative.

Gaming Goodness

It’s a good time for gaming at the minute what with the many great titles that are here now or just around the corner. The holiday season no doubt helps fuel this rush, where the only problems are deciding what games to get and how you’re going to play them all.

Still, we can worry about that later. For now, I’ve received MySims (Wii), Race Driver: Create & Race (DS) and Rogue Galaxy (PS2) to review on top of my other responsibilities. Not just that but thanks to a relative’s visit to the States, I also now have Halo 3 (Xbox 360 obviously), Jeanne d’Arc (PSP), Syphon Filter – Logan’s Shadow (PSP) and Legend of Zelda – Phantom Hourglass (DS). Phew, they’ll keep me busy for quite a while.

Better get to it and not blog so much…!

Sega Rally Revo – Review Finally Finished!

It took longer than planned but I’ve finally finished my Sega Rally Revo review (tongue twister alert!) for Kikizo. Will post a link once it’s live. I’ve also moved it over to Done and Dusted. It’s a good game but now I’m done with it I probably won’t be taking it for a spin that often. Too much other stuff on my plate I’m afraid! Slowly but surely I’m getting back up to speed with my reviewing and other work. Stay tuned…!

I’m Alive!

Posts are still sporadic of late. Apologies for that. My house move is still slowing me down – unpacking boxes, tidying up, getting furniture and still setting up my A/V equipment! I have managed to finish the King of Clubs review for Kikizo – will post a link to it as soon as it is live. I have moved it to Left for Dead as I didn’t think too much of it and won’t be heading back to it any time soon. I have also received Rogue Galaxy from Ace Gamez and added it to my Now Playing list. Looking forward to getting stuck into that as soon as possible.

Will post more soon, including a missing post from when I was offline whilst moving. Bet you can’t wait!

King King Lives!

My King Kong review has now gone live over at NTSC-uk. Personally I think it’s a pretty decent review and one I am quite pleased with. Some reviews just flow and others are more of a torturous process, having to be teased and coaxed out. This one was definitely one of the former.

Check it out here and let me know what you think.

I’m Back!

I finally have internet access again after my move and feel like I am back in the land of the living. Well, the land of the connected anyway. This coincides with a bunch of my reviews going live on Kikizo – namely Final Armada, Mercury Meltdown Revolution, SimCity DS and Hard Rock Casino. You know what to do if you want to read them. I also have a couple of posts which I wrote whilst off-line. I shall post them ASAP. Right now, it’s time for bed though……..

Please Stay Tuned….

Apologies for the sporadic (if any) posting of late. I am currently busy moving house and so everything is upside-down – not that I even have internet access at the minute anyway. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible…