Author: Grubdog

Racing Developers – Let Me PLAY YOUR GAMES

Polyphony, Codemasters, System 3, Turn 10, SimBin, Brain In A Jar, this is directed towards ALL of you. I’ve been enjoying Supercar Challenge lately with my new wheel, playing a good few hours every few days. It’s the most satisfyingly realistic driving simulator I’ve ever felt. However, I’ve still only unlocked 3 cars in the game, out of 44. There are 41 cars I can’t drive. Despite the fact that this is a videogame, my options are artificially limited by in-game money earned by competing in hundreds of races with dull, easy, brain-dead AI opponents. That’s no knock on Supercar Challenge’s AI racers, all racing games have AI I don’t care about.

Should I really have to spend 50 hours in career mode just to enjoy Time Trial properly? Would it be considered a crime to let me drive the cars I want from the start? This is mindblowingly terrible design that has somehow become the standard in console racing games. Time Trial is what I love – I want to drive to my own limits and challenge myself, to properly appreciate the physics of these fantastic simulators. Why can’t I take ADVANTAGE of the fact that this is a videogame, and drive the car I want?

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Pandora’s Tower – Love’s Chain

Pandora’s Tower is one hell of a climb. 12 towers of brutally overpowered enemies, clever puzzles, and awkward camera angles make sure of that. Each tower contains a piece of monster flesh you need to bring back to your vegetarian girlfriend Elena, who suddenly has to eat meat to prevent a curse from turning her into a beast. There’s no real explanation on why all this is happening, but why not? She’s cute! The curse has a time limit, so I better hurry! As I eagerly pursued the first tower, Elena sat in the observatory, awaiting my flesh.

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Nintendo Direct – Better Than E3?

“Great stuff, Nintendo really did hold back at E3!”

“Only Nintendo could royally screw up the biggest trade show of the year but absolutely DESTROY a random Thursday at midnight.”

“Nintendo doesn’t really give a shit about E3 (and maybe any press events) anymore. They love Nintendo Direct. “

“That was approximately a billion times better than E3”

“Way better than E3!”

About A Billion Times Better

I’m pretty excited about Animal Crossing and the new 3DS redesign, but the internet is just too easy to make fun of right now. Nintendo Direct had a successful community reaction because it came out of the blue and completely bypassed all expectations and hype the media likes to sling around. Nintendo found the winning formula for releasing information: talking directly to the fans.

Sorry gaming press, you fucked up and now Nintendo doesn’t need you.

Killzone 2 – Generic Fun

Killzone 2 is EXACTLY what you think it is. A military themed futuristic shooter with amazing graphics, a flashy campaign mode and a few classy dick jokes. I know, it’s 2012. At Pietriots we game according to our budgets and we take our time, because games are fun. Despite being an old predictable shooter, I felt the need to write about it because I was having a good time. The gameplay is quite impressive and the battlefields really feel alive, it was all going gre-

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Alan Wake – Nightmare Revisited

Alan Wake is an enchanting game. When I first played through it on normal difficulty I poked fun at it a lot. The campy setting, repetitive gameplay, awkward animations, and silly concepts were all easy targets for ridicule; yet I still played through all the way to the end. The environments really captured me in their detail, and I was immersed in the bizarre world surrounding the small town of Bright Falls. I was fascinated with the game, but not in love with it. The journey looked and sounded wonderful, but it wasn’t engaging. I reluctantly plodded through the flat gameplay to experience the wonderfully crafted story.

I still had an empty feeling about the game, despite exploring every inch. Long after I completed it I still thought about it, and it became a much bigger force in my mind. At the time, I knew I didn’t really enjoy it a whole lot, but that didn’t stop me from having pleasant thoughts and memories of the game every time my eyes caught the box in my collection. The whole concept of the game was romanticised in my head and it took on something bigger than it was. It was eating at me. Finally I decided; why not? Despite a large backlog of games I haven’t even started yet, I started Alan Wake up again; this time on Nightmare difficulty. Maybe the gameplay was better than I remember? I had to clear this empty space in my mind.

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Thoughts – Wii U, E3, Community Reaction

Holy shit! This is the most excited I’ve ever been about a new game console – Nintendo blew my mind with their presentation and I loved every little thing. In fact, the little things were the best part. No catchy title here; I’m just going to run through my thoughts as I watched the conference, and then afterwards when I looked around the community.

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Joy Ride Turbo – Now With Buttons!

A few years ago, Joy Ride Kinect was released as an example of how a racing game could benefit from Kinect controls. The game was a broken mess, to the point where you could win races without even moving. The developers have finally admitted this was a bad idea, and they’ve re-released the game with new “precision controls” (exact words used in the PR) using the normal Xbox 360 control pad. Joy Ride is finally playable in the form of Joy Ride Turbo, but what’s it like? Was there a nice personality hidden behind that awful piece of technology?


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The Next 5 Years: Naka’s Prediction

Greetings everyone, I am Yuji Naka and I have something to share with you all. This morning I woke up with a clear vision of the future. It was the first time in weeks I had a dream without my pal Sonic interrupting my fishing trip. It started this year and went all the way to the year 2017! Can you believe that? 5 years in a single night! I will have to talk to SEGA about making a new NiGHTs game with this concept. We always have great discussions when they catch me sneaking into my old office, hehe. Anyway, let me start with the year 2012, which I’m sure you all know well!

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Late to the PS3 party: LittleBigPunishment

Just over a week ago I finally bought a PS3 – there’s quite a few games on here I’ve been keen to play and Tales of Graces F was the pushing point, as well as my new Logitech G27 steering wheel that shamefully isn’t compatible with X360. I’ve been enjoying LittleBigPlanet so far; it’s a lot more fun than I expected. The physics aren’t horrible like I’ve read; it’s easy to adapt to, and the game has quite a bit of charm with some great music and pretty graphics.

It was all going fine until I foolishly plugged in my ethernet cable while the game was paused… THEN OPENED THE GATES OF HELL.

gamechanger

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The Tragedy of Dynasty Warriors VS

It’s just been announced via Twitter that Dynasty Warriors VS will not be coming to 3DS outside Japan. There’s no reason given, however we do know that Dynasty Warriors VS didn’t do very well in Japan, selling a mere 10,000 copies in its first week despite the heralded appearance of Samus and Link as bonus characters. Who cares, right? The game bombed, why do we care? Doesn’t that justify no western release? Absolutely not, and here’s why I think Tecmo-Koei are blowing a good opportunity.

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Crash Car Racer (Wii)

YES! A budget racer on Wii, if there’s one genre I know well, it’s this one! I jumped for joy when I saw this game in Kmart, possibly scaring the lady at the counter. There was no sign of Zelda, Xenoblade, or The Last Story on the shelves, but sure enough: 20 copies of Crash Car Racer! It has to be good, right? At $15AU I had to find out.

The name Crash Car Racer does a pretty good job telling you what it is: a racing game with cars that crash. However, it’s not really ABOUT crashing, it’s just a normal racing game that happens to have completely broken physics, conducive to crashes. The disconnected car handling, poorly programmed AI, and bizarre tracks all combine to create a game that pretty much crashes itself every lap, no matter what you do.


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The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

Here we go, another Zelda game; puzzles, bosses, exploring, fighting. You know the drill. Or do you? I never intended to review Skyward Sword, because I thought everyone would buy it and love the shit out of it and we’d all happily talk about our favourite parts and hold hands. Much to my disgust and surprise as I scan the twitterverse and look at sales trends, it seems gamers have let this one slip away. With some time and perspective now I can see why. A lot of games these days make you think, and Skyward Sword does that. The difference here though is that you also have to act.

Skyward Sword is a weird game. It’s lazy and closed off; it won’t play itself. If you want to get anywhere, you have to pick up the controller and ENGAGE. It’s the concept that started video games, and it’s the only reason they ever existed. If you want anything in this game to respond, you have to poke it. Skyward Sword is a naive attempt to put the focus on the actions of the player, and it completely tears apart the passive nature of recent blockbuster games like Skyrim and Mass Effect. Zelda is an AWAKENING. Skyward Sword will have you feel like you’re actually CLIMBING things, and actually wielding a sword. It all comes together thanks to the MotionPlus controller, and it WORKS!

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