Game Invader : Worst Game Ever

I finally played Big Rigs. And, in order to profit in some way from my misery, I promptly wrote a column on it for good ole Zeitgeist.

Read it here, and don't mind the punctuation ;)

Elsewhere on the same paper (right next to my column, in fact), Videep Vijay Kumar reviews SHOGO : Mobile Armor Division.

Game Invader : Drop Dead Gorgeous

This article first appeared in my column for Zeitgeist, the New Indian Express' Saturday supplement in Chennai. They don't seem to have uploaded it to their site, so I've taken the liberty

Two games I've played in the past week are notable for being among the best looking games I've ever played. They're Assassin's Creed , and Colin McRae : DIRT – both titles have managed to drop my jaw.

I happen to be one of the loudest voices in the 'gameplay over graphics' camp, and I still stand by that credo. However, it's nice once in a while when a game (or two) comes along that simply blows you away by simpy being stunning.

DIRT is far and away the best looking racer I've played. Period. The car models, tracks and environments simply bristle with life and detail – grass rustles, dirt and gravel fly off the track, debris scatters and remains on the track as you make another pass. The damage to your car is also spectacular – dirt and grime, scratches and dents, and cracks on your windscreen all show up to realistically reflect the wear and tear that would be obvious on any car driven as badly as my Chevrolet SUV in DIRT. In fact, I normally prefer racing from a completely first-person view, but DIRT has me switching to third person so I could fully take in the graphic splendour this game delivers.

Who says dirt is ugly? A poke in the eye!

The DIRT menu screens are the most pleasing in recent memory – it's a delight to simply browse through the splendidly designed menus that take you through the game's tutorials and various game modes. Top notch. Deserving of a 'best UI graphics' awards – in fact, they should institute a category just so that DIRT could win!

Assassin's Creed needs no introduction to gamers, but I can't help stating how brilliant the game looks. The level of detail present in the gameworld is unprecedented – no other game has felt so alive. While other fantastically detailed worlds exist (Oblivion, Mass Effect), Assassin's Creed surpasses those in terms of sheer believability. Walking through the crowded streets of the game's locations, you truly get a sense of moving among living, breathing people. The excellent sound design and voice work augment this, but it is unquestionably the visuals that deliver the knockout punch.

Altair effortlessly moves through the crowd, like Karamchand in that classic opening sequence.

Altair's cloak billows in the wind as he free-runs through the treacherous, dizzying levels like some sort of medieval spider-man. The animations are fluid and flawless, the textures meticulously crafted and the colours muted and believable. A pleasure to play, and a treat to watch.

Of course, it helps that both games are fun to play. If they weren't, I wouldn't have lasted long enough to take in all the breathtaking eye candy they pack within. Still, it would be pretentious to assume that the graphic excellence in these titles is in any way subservient to the gameplay – they stand tall as examples of games which would have been less fun if they didn't look as good as they do. A case of graphics greatly enhancing gameplay.

It's also important to note here that DIRT and Assassin's Creed are not 'Crysis' gorgeous – they don't depend purely on technical strengths to strut their stuff. I ran DIRT on the humble XBOX 360, and Assassin's Creed on a laptop running a GeForce 8400 GS, a decent card, but not a monster by any means. Crysis wouldn't even run on these configurations, let alone look pretty. It's important, in my book, to deliver good visuals on medium range systems, and certainly on next gen consoles. (While on that topic, take a bow, Valve, for your source engine)

Games like these are poster children for the 'next-gen' gaming experience – games that make it easy to believe that total immersion is eventually possible, and that one day we won't be able to distinguish virtual worlds from real ones.

Keep It Simple, Stupid!

This article first appeared in my column for Zeitgeist, the New Indian Express' Saturday supplement in Chennai. They don't seem to have uploaded it to their site, so I've taken the liberty

Playing Metroid Prime 3 : Corruption on the Wii is an eye-opener, even for a battle-scarred oldie like me. In perhaps one of the best control schemes to use the Wiimote's motion sensing capability, Nintendo has once again indicated the direction in which gaming needs to progress.

Consider this – the modern videogame controller has two analog 'joysticks', one directional pad, and anywhere in the region of ten (yes, TEN) buttons arranged in finger-twisting positions. To be able to effectively play a modern day shooter like Call of Duty or Halo, you need to use every single one of these in various combinations. To the experienced gamer, this may seem like no big deal, but it makes these wonderful games extremely difficult to learn for someone with no previous experience.

In my personal experience, there have been numerous instances where I've sat down with an eager friend, all set to introduce them to videgames, only to have them quickly lose interest because they're overwhelmed by the controls. Rest of the evening spent over beers and television. Much less fun.

As has been the case all too often in the history of gaming, it's Nintendo who is showing the way.

In Metroid Prime 3, you aim the gun by simply pointing with the Wiimote, wherever you want to aim. Just like a real gun. This simple modification alone dramatically reduces the coordination levels required to master the rest of the controls. Yes, there are still several button presses to master, but by removing one level of abstraction from the mix, the designers free up the gamer's mind to focus on the other aspects of the control scheme. Resident Evil 4 is another game that lends itself beautifully to the Wii controller – and is in fact even simpler to learn than Metroid.

The control schemes for these games aren't quite perfect yet, but they inarguably are giant strides in the direction of more intuitive, less abstract control schemes for videogames.

And with the advent of intuitive controls, one great roadblock towards the mass adoption of videogaming as a hobby will have been removed. For gaming to compete with movies and music as forms of entertainment, designers need to keep the games simple to play. It's easy to watch the best movies. It's easy to listen to the best music. By comparison, it's insanely difficult to play the best videogames.

Of course, I'm not suggesting oversimplification to a degree that the games become boring, I firmly believe that most games today tend to err in the direction of packing in too many features at the cost of accessibility. RTS and FPS games are the major culprits, but other genres aren't immune to these failings either.

Nintendo gets this. Which is why they're working hard and smart towards reducing button presses in favour of easier to understand control actions like pointing, punching, swinging and tapping which normal human beings can learn easily, and get on with the fun part of actually playing the game, as opposed to playing hour-long 'tutorial' levels just in order to get started. In fact, even the process of learning to use the Wiimote is far more enjoyable than a similar process with a conventional controller.

The Wii and the DS (Ninty's equally innovative handheld system) have outsold every other contemporary gaming platform worldwide by large margins. There's a reason for this – a reason other gaming hardware and software developers should do well to heed.

Game Invader - When Role-Playing isn't Role-Playing

I've cribbed for a long time that modern role-playing games are increasingly moving away from the core role-playing aspects of the genre, focussing instead on the action, strategy, storytelling and exploration aspects.

Read more on the subject at the latest installment of 'Game Invader'.

Elsewhere , Videep Vijay Kumar reviews Assassin's creed. He always gets the nice graphics. I get a bad caricature. Eh? Oh. Buy Zeitgeist (the Indian Express Saturday Supplement) and you'll understand.

Game Invader - handhelds and fanboys

Two more links to my columns on zeitgeist :

• Why you should buy a handheld
• Gamers, don't be fanboys, try something new.

Actually, the second one is based on an earlier post on this blog, but I can be forgiven for plagiarizing from myself ;)

The Importance of Being Earnest

Yes, that's right, i said "earnest", in the age of L33t and all that. It's an old fashioned word for a rather old fashioned thought - one that I, and the esteemed Vinay Nilakantan, have often been expressing to the founder/editor/bossguy of this blog (and many other gamers) for many years now. Which is this: If you find a game that you enjoy, for whatever reason, try to take the time and trouble to finish it.

I'm obviously referring only to games that actually have an ending. If you're one of those gamers whose only purpose is to rise to the top of leaderboards in online deathmatches and CTF and whatnot, you can stop reading now. But if, like me, you occasionally lean a little more towards the entertainment side of the games as armchair sport vs. interactive entertainment debate, you'll find playing games through to the end to be an utterly rewarding and satisfying experience.

For starters, there’s the incomparable, bittersweet, I’m-such-a-dude-to-beat-this-but- I-wish-it-wasn’t-over-now-what-will-I-do-with-my-life feeling that you get at the end of an epic quest like Baldur’s Gate 2. There’s simply no other feeling like it. Or there’s games like BioShock, with strictly middle of the road action until that one, staggering moment, 80 per cent into the game, which makes it all worthwhile and will make it one of your most memorable gaming experiences. Even in a consistently brilliant, emotional experience like Shadow of the Colossus, the most gut wrenchingly resonant moment occurs right before the very last level. And who doesn’t want to grab that cake at the end of Portal??

It’s not just about story, either. Some of the best action sequences, and obviously boss fights, occur deep into games, beyond some numbingly boring, backtracking heavy sequences (fanboys, you know what I'm talking about). And even when the ending isn’t up to scratch and seemingly not worth the effort, there’s a unique sort of in-joke kind of pleasure to be derived from discussing with fellow sufferers how an otherwise great game could slip up like that, or leave you hanging. Anyone remember Xen from the original half-life? Or played God of War 2 to the very end?

One of my greatest gaming regrets is not playing very far into any of the GTA games. The lack of a retry option for mission failure, forcing you to often get waaaaaay across the map just to pick up another thing to do kept getting to me. I’m happy to hear that GTA4 fixes this and I’m queuing up for my copy, but I’ll never experience the awe that the entire gaming world almost has felt for GTA3, and San Andreas, and now I never will. I can’t help feeling that my lack of patience (earnestness??) has denied me something, and I'm the poorer for it. It's certainly not keeping Rockstar awake at night, so who's the loser here?

So the next time you need to find your way past the occasional ridiculous level design, or reload for the umpteenth time because of an insane difficulty spike, or tear your hair out because of a seemingly unsolvable puzzle, or repeat the same actions over and over and over again because of brain dead checkpointing, try to grit your teeth, and Finish the Fight. The best may well be yet to come.

Game Invader : Everybody knows that worms can't swim!

This week, Game Invader (my weekly gaming column for Zeitgeist, the Indian Express Saturday paper) looks fondly back at one of the greatest PC strategy titles ever made - Team 17's Worms 2.

Read it here.

Arsenal conveying teh_pwnage after defeat!

This has got to be one of the funniest crap-i-mations that I've ever seen. Brilliantly done. My favourite is Wenger, but the others aren't too bad, either.



I haven't the foggiest who created this, or from whence it sprung, but if anyone does, let me know and I'll link to the source. Bound to be some more such teh_br1ll14nc3 there.

It's somehow just not the same if he's V.Kennedy

P.James is actually V.Kennedy. Here's proof.

If I have to explain that to you, then you probably won't be interested in this post anyway.

But for the enlightened, how are we going to deal with this? Does 'V.Kennedy Magic Show' have the same ring? Didn't think so.

Some of us lucky ones have seen the actual P.James, who was an ancient human being even 20 years ago. Videep Vijay Kumar remembers having James perform absurdly impossible feats at his (Videep's, not James') second birthday party. Aditya Khanna has seen him live at Spencer Plaza, revelling in the magnificence of the venue in a manner that would have made Yanni proud.

To the rest of us, he's a mystery man who will always be associated with his iconic piece of graffiti that greets Chennaiites from Redhills to Injambakkam.

But he was always P.James.

And now, he's V.Kennedy. At least, his grandson is. And Kennedy continues to call himself P.James, at least when he's performing. Like Phantom, it passes on from generation to generation! What fun! The 'P.James Magic Show' graffiti is like the world famous 'Skull' mark of the Phantom. The Ghost who Walks! The Magician who Writes on Walls!

And before we end this delightful train of thought, let's take a moment to dwell upon the mysterious man who links the two P.Jameses, by virtue of having been born to one and fathered the other. By studying the naming patterns in the family, one can safely conclude that he must be called J.Vincent. Yes, that will do nicely.

Game Invader - My Weekly Gaming Column in The New Indian Express

It's official - I'm now an official game journalist! I have a weekly column (Titled 'Game Invader'. Nifty, eh?) in Zeitgeist, the Saturday paper from the all-new, zippily redesigned New Indian Express.



The first one was called 'A call to non-gamers'. You can read the online version here.



But, seriously, if you're interested in gaming, you must get the actual paper. Editor-in-chief Aditya Sinha has done gamers a huge favour by taking a leap of faith and devoting a full page every Saturday to gaming, the first newspaper in India to do so. It's a spanking new redesign, and has tons of great content (no, I'm not returning a favour or anything. I honestly believe that Zeitgeist, and the new Express, are a breath of fresh air for newspaper readers in the city. Try it for yourself.). Go out and get one this Saturday, and you'll see what I mean.






This is what Zeitgeist's gaming page looks like. That's me in the corner. That's me in the spot . . . light . . . losing . . er . . .sorry.




And besides my column, there are other great articles on gaming as well, written by excellent individuals such as Videep Vijay Kumar and Sumit Mehra.



So, does this make me India's first weekly columnist on gaming? At least in a print newspaper? Can any of my readers point me towards any others?



I'm enjoying this thoroughly - it's a dream come true. Hope you guys enjoy reading my stuff even half as much.