E3 was a beast of a show: big lights, big crowds and all at a huge expense for the publishers and developers spending millions on their booths as the show grew in size every year. That is until 2006, when the ESA had the choice: Change E3 or scrap it. 

Now the show has become strictly invite only in the hope of getting things back under control, which seems to be working out nicely. Attendance is under a tenth of what it was and the journalists have what they need: a single big event to see the games that are due to be released in the last half of the year without being trampled by a pack of fans storming to the next event.

Sure the press could attend smaller events that go on already throughout the year, but there’s a lot of publishers out there and a lot of publishers means a lot of travel fees. It’s a real deal breaker for the smaller sites and papers who can’t afford to be sending writers around the map on the whim of a publisher.

“So what about us!” I hear you cry. Well my money is on PAX, which since E3’s downsizing has had over fifty publishers and developers just waiting to show off games to consumers. Right now it might not be the spectacle that E3 was, but given a little more attention PAX is set to be the event that everyone craves.

So should E3 be open to the public? No. The US press need this event to cover games for the huge majority of people who can’t attend, and when there’s a four hour line to play Nintendo’s new Wii, everyone looses. As for the future of other large events such as GC and TGS, well lets hope they can handle things better.

It’s that time again for another retro roundup

Ghostbusters – C64

I’m sure many of you long time gamers have had the pleasure of carrying an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on his back, taking out bank loans and ducking under the legs of Gozer the Traveler. This isn’t a usual pick for my list of obscure old games but with all the talk about the new Ghostbusters game due out in June I’ve had the old game on my mind. One of the most memorable things about Ghostbusters for the C64 was how the terrible speech scared the hell out of me, but not enough that I didn’t have a great time singing along with the bouncing karaoke ball.

Did you know that the NES version had such terrible spelling and grammar?
”Conglaturation !!! You have completed a great game. And prooved the justice of our culture. Now go and rest our heroes !”

You’re Winner!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZYSVgE5Kwg

Park patrol – C64

More Activision greatness. Park Patrol is one of the top C64 games I’ve played, I have to wonder if Activision hoped that this would end up in arcades as it truly did all the right things to make it a great eater of quarters. The basic idea was to run around and pick up trash before you run out of energy, you also have to deal with killer swimmers and turtles while ants take food from your storage hut. Fantastic and simple, makes me wonder where the developer has gotten to now. Unlike the Ghostbusters developer who’s making iPhone games, Tony Ngo seems to of disappeared entirely

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-Up77H268E

Moonstone – Amiga

The most frustrating game on this list by far is Moonstone for the Amiga. Three lives and the constant threat of instant kills may not sound fun with real time combat, but the tactical combat and crazy gore would always pull me back for some more punishment. If you don’t watch any of the other youtubes that I’ve linked to at least watch this one, it still doesn’t look to bad graphically and still isn’t half bad; perhaps that’s why it has a fansite http://www.moonstonetavern.co.uk/ and sells for $45 used!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLMFybclOJM

Startrader – C64

Startrader brings us back to the obscurity as the game was only available on a crazy cassette that had ten games on one side and Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” on the other. Under $10 for ten games and money donated Famine Relief in Ethiopia is a crazy deal by today’s standards, I only wish they picked different art for the box, it freaked me out pretty badly.

I see a lot of people calling Startrader a poor man’s Elite and they might be right, even still, I had the darn music stuck in my head a couple of nights ago and I couldn’t remember it at all come morning. Sadly this game is so obscure that I can’t even find a YouTube video for it, so instead I have a link to lemon64.com where you can subject yourself to a tune I’ve heard over and over.

http://www.lemon64.com/?mainurl=http://www.lemon64.com/games/details.php%3FID%3D2453

Gumshoe – C64

Untill I just stared researching I had forgotten that Gumshoe actually came in the same pack as Startrader and it’s perhaps the best game in that little package. Now I’m sure a lot of NESheads are thinking of their light gun game, it seems as is Nintendo must of bought some of the rights from A&F Software with the change in their pockets. The premise is very simple shoot guys, and reach the top, perhaps that’s why it was so playable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FORDZUIjo_0

And so ends another walk down memory lane for me, I hope I’ve reminded some of you with games forgotten and given the rest of you an interesting quick look into my gaming childhood.

Monolith’s bringing the F.E.A.R. back home with their new sequel.

It’s been a rocky road for the F.E.A.R. franchise over the last three years, squabbles over the game’s ownership between Monolith and Vivendi made it seem that a true sequel with the F.E.A.R. name had become impossible. A few months ago however, both companies were able to bury the hatchet (under a bundle of money) so Monolith could present us with the continuation of the story that they began with the original F.E.A.R. First Encounter Assault Recon, forsaking all previous attempts by TimeGate Studios. So what does all this crazy industry business mean exactly? Well if you’ve played either F.E.A.R. Extraction Point or F.E.A.R. Perseus Mandate then you can wipe that experience from your mind as if it never happened, because as far as F.E.A.R. 2 is concerned, it didn’t. For those who missed out on the original then you missed out on what was named shooter of the year 2006 by some and is also one of the most disturbing shooters on the market.

F.E.A.R. 2 puts you in the shoes of Michael Becket just before the explosive ending to F.E.A.R. and keeps the same broody atmosphere, reflex time and creepy little girl that made the first game stand out so much. Storytelling has improved greatly giving you a far better grasp on what is going on and why you’re there. This is all helped by competent voice acting and sixty pieces of collectable journal intelligence which tell the story as you progress, but it’s hardly a rollercoaster of intrigue and has little in the way of surprises. Open endings are in style right now and the ending here isn’t any exception, there’s plenty of room for further sequels after this game’s climax.

You won’t be spending the whole game by yourself

Core gameplay is largely unchanged, but since every FPS needs an angle F.E.A.R. 2 presents to you intractable cover table flipping (a-la Stranglehold) and mech combat (a-la – uhh, MechWarrior?). Firstly the cover system, like several other aspects of the game, heralds from a slightly older school of gaming in that you don’t ‘snap to’ cover like you would in Gears of War and blind fire around corners. This isn’t necessarily a failing since it doesn’t create a game full of waist high walls for you to hind behind after every corner. The cover system does occasionally confuse the poor replica soldiers, several times I witnessed a soldier stand out greatly from the cover, making him an easy target or I’d see several soldier running back and forwards over a large open area taking cover at either side. The AI isn’t bad on the whole, but it does have some quirks and generally isn’t as revolutionary as F.E.A.R. was three years ago. Good use of cover makes combat a whole lot easier, but being equipped with a fully operational mech armed with machine guns, rockets and heat vision is a better way of tipping the odds into your favor. Those who played the F.E.A.R. 2 demo will likely say that a mech section that uses up a third of the demo has no more place in F.E.A.R. than it would in G.R.A.W. but fortunately in the context of the full game these sections are used rather well. After battling a few mechs while on foot, entering one yourself doesn’t feel so out of place and while it does remove you from the creepy and vulnerable sensations you’d be experiencing otherwise, these sections are used very sparingly and don’t equate to even a tenth of the game.

It’s obvious by now that F.E.A.R. 2 has two goals: solid combat and creepy atmosphere. For the largest part it succeeds at both very well. The guns have a great feeling of impact when they connect, although the gore on impact can be a little overused. Some replicant soldiers must have a destruct button hidden somewhere on their body as landing a grenade a few feet away from your target will often cause the soldier to explode into a gorgeous sea of crimson rather than being thrown from the blast. I can’t really vouch for the realism of this gore one way or the other having not personally thrown any cooked frag grenades into crowded areas. Other weapons such as the laser will allow you to satisfyingly dice your targets in two even through some cover, which is sure to have you squealing with glee. The weapon selection isn’t huge and totals around eight in all with a generous four gun inventory system, especially handy when ammo is running short. F.E.A.R.’s combat might be a shock to the system for some when you find that you’re not blessed with the supernatural ability to regenerate health by standing still, unlike so many recent games. This will require a sharp change in your playing strategy after the numerous health pickups from the beginning of the game start to become far less frequent.

Going toe to toe with a mech isn’t too wise

If you’re not in combat then you’ve likely reached a horror section of the game, after clearing out a few rooms of foes your HUD will flicker and fuzz signaling another interlude as you begin to expect creepy girl Alma to appear behind you in a reflection at any moment. Not being much of a horror movie fan myself I did find that the constant shifting between combat and the horror sections becoming tiresome and a little too played out by the end. You do have to appreciate these sections though, some of the sick, twisted and unusual things you see do keep things interesting, it’s just a pity that you’re constantly mentally classifying each section combat to horror to combat to horror. Then again, I might be overanalyzing this whole thing. One of the biggest gates to a quick progression through the game is often in the form of a small padlock in the corner of a large room, perhaps I’m spoilt by waypoint markers but there’s nothing fun about wondering through the same rooms over again just to find the exit tucked away in the far corner.

While you may be surprised by some of these gruesome and twisted goings on in F.E.A.R. 2 you’re unlikely to be knocked off your feet by the graphics. Nothing here jumps out as looking bad per se but this is the same Lithtech engine seen in Condemned and the previous F.E.A.R. games, so despite the enhanced textures it still doesn’t always graphically feel like a new release. That said, Monolith sure does know to use effects to enhance atmosphere. Rather than a clear vision you’ll often have to deal with interference fuzzing up your heads up display or having the display in the mech go haywire after taking one too many missiles, these effects go a long way towards creating the atmosphere and are well used, much like the audio. There’s the usual whizz bangs of rockets flying and guns firing, spoken dialog is well read and scripted, one little gem of dialog is when your warned that Anya wants to devour you like “free pizza at an anime convention”, while a good laugh the humor fortunately begins and ends there. The music is especially effective even though barely heard. Dynamic orchestral scores aren’t anything new but having everything quiet but tense keeps yourself in tune with the current situation.

Most guns aren’t original, but they are satisfying

Those of you who are hoping to be able to play through the story with a friend for comforting support will have to just rely on moral support as F.E.A.R. 2 doesn’t feature any co-op modes, hardly surprising due to the nature of the story. There’s also no split-screen online, although you do get your usual online modes of deathmatch and team deathmatch along with a basic experience based leveling system and four other multiplayer modes:

• Armored Front
  Team on team combat over a large area with five command points. Plays a lot like the UT2004’s onslaught with mechs and gun emplacements. A whole lot of fun.
• Blitz
  Essentially capture the flag (or Phlag)  but instead of one flag in each base your whole team either has the role of attack or defend
• Control
  Plays a little like Armored Front but with only 3 control points and no mechs, makes for a much faster game.
• Failsafe
  The toughest mode of them all, team based bomb planting and bomb defusal, with no re-spawns. Definitely one for the more experienced players.

Multiplayer is fast, furious and fun despite a feeling that it’s all been done before and is worth looking into if you want to get your full moneys worth out, but doesn’t solely merit a purchase for most people.

Boo!

F.E.A.R.2 perfectly meets the expectations set by the previous game and it doesn’t go out of its way to attract new players. The single player mode will only give you roughly seven hours of gameplay so hopefully you’ll get the extra millage out of the multiplayer. Overall F.E.A.R. 2 is a solid PC style FPS with some traits from some of the more recent console multiplayer console shooters.

I really enjoying putting together my previous retro games blog post so I figured it was time to put together another. So without further ado, here’s more games that you’ve likely never heard of.

Creatures (Clyde Radcliffe Exterminates All The Unfriendly Repulsive Earth-ridden Slime) II: Torture Trouble C64

We’ve had people complaining about torture in World of Warcraft like it’s a new thing. Creatures brought torture to the C64 back in 1990 with every 2 levels of platforming being followed by a puzzle torture section, these torture puzzles were so popular that Apex put out a sequel that focused purely on the torture. Watching the YouTube video will give you a pretty good idea of what most of these single screen sections involve, but you’re missing the gory deaths of Clyde’s cute friends.

Extra kudos to Creatures 2 for having one of the most bizarre cheats ever. Lick your finger and rub it up and down the joystick ports for infinite lives, yes I know it seems crazy but it really worked!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc0QDlaRFeo

Best Cheat

JetStrike Amiga CD32

Jetstrike plays like a combat version of Choplifter, with a whole lot of variety beyond the usual missions of picking up people and dropping them off, You’ll have to deal with: Dogfights, Stunt flying, recon and tank bombing missions in a large selection of aircraft, such as: A-10 Warthog AH-64 Apache, Spitfire, Acro Jet and Dragons. The maps were rather small and it was pretty hard to see what was coming when you really started to move along fast (just like Sonic games after 1995) but the gameplay, variety and CD32 music is a recipe for win.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Si69-4giMcs

Super Skidmarks Amiga

Super Skidmarks and Worms two games whose names alone gave me a lot of entertainment through the years. One of the biggest reasons that Super Skidmarks stood out from the crowd were its smooth animations, high quality graphics and tight controls. There’s not a whole lot of real content here that’s particularly groundbreaking or original but it took the existing sea of Supercars clones to the next level, it’s just a pity that the YouTube video below doesn’t do justice to this great game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0EU1ocGjrY

Buck Rogers Countdown to doomsday

As much as I do enjoy medieval fantasy it’s nice to get into a good sci-fi RPG no matter how quickly the in game music brings on dementia. I expect this will be one of the better known games on this list just due to the amount of systems it was released on, but I’m curious to know what people thought of this game. For some reason I believe that it wasn’t well received, but I loved it and it’s the only game on this list that I’ve actually completed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MzAPrpVFk0

Halls of the things ZX spectrum

About as basic as a game can be (except for the bewildering controls), run around a maze, shoot things, collect rings, win game. There’s a good chance this may have been the first game I ever played and I have many fond memories of playing this at my Aunts house when I could still count my age on one hand.

Others have fond memories of this game also and there’s a updated HD version. Crazy! http://retrospec.sgn.net/game/halls

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_O5eR5nAQo

A few things recently have got me thinking about old game, I don’t mean PS2 games or PS1 games, I mean really old games. From those who read this I’d be interested to hear what’s your first game, but here’s a list of a few games that have been on my mind and why these random games hold any kind of significance.

The Chaos Engine (Amiga 1993)

This will be the only game on this list that I expect anyone to remember (Likely Danny O’ Dwyer). The closest comparison I can think of is Gauntlet, but if you watch a small part of the video you’ll quickly get the idea. Sadly the Bitmap brothers never released their GBA version as they announced but since we saw Speedball on the XBLA I hold hope that this series isn’t forgotten

Kennedy Approach (c64 1985)

A strange game for a 7 year old to be playing, but without the internet and IMs I barely knew my way around a keyboard. Kennedy Approach is a keyboard driven game where each plane needs to be called by typing its ID and giving it a direction and altitude, it’s all rather rudimentary but it sure did teach me a lot about ol’ QWERTY at a young age.

Kettle (c64 1987)

I’ve been playing a lot of OCremix tunes recently, some good tunes without lyrics do wonders for my concentration when I’m trying to work/write and there’s a lot of noisy distractions around. Kettle is one of the first games that I ever just stopped and listened to the music.

Atic Attack (Spectrum 1983)

Very popular back in its day, Atic Attack was made by the the same guys that founded Rare, back then they were known as Ultimate. One strange thing about this game is that every time I see that turkey I can hear Hugo Myatt saying “Careful team, your life force is draining”

Liberation: Captive II (Amiga 1994)

I wrote rather extensively about this back in March (http://www.gamespot.com/users/Elk/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=m-100-25355260). Captive II was my young Oblivion, the game was huge and there was a whole lot to do for a tiny Amiga game. It’s sad that I can find nothing about the developers and the publisher is now doing games that have Noel Edmonds on the cover.

So congrats to you if you’ve played any of those games, you’re officially old.

Also I wanted to take a few moments to talk about my distain for Sonic Unleashed. Sonic Heroes was the last Sonic game that I played, I think actually own a copy that I’ve only played for 10 minutes, which is a little strange as I didn’t have a ‘bad’ experience. There’s a demo of Unleashed out there right now which is a glowing example of everything that’s good about the game, plain and pure Sonic running along. Now even this best part of Sonic has some pretty fundamental issues which I’ll get to later, but sometimes I wonder if they added some of this extra stuff just to kill the scores of the game. I didn’t play through the whole game so I’m not going to get into a lengthy review, instead I’m going to break it down into bullet points so it’s suitable for a future PowerPoint presentation.

5, Human’s don’t look right in a Sonic game: There’s plenty of creatures that have been discarded (Nack the Weasel anyone?) why can’t cities be full of other creatures rather than these cartoonish out of place humans in these middle areas?

4, The middle areas: Memory’s never been a strong point for me, but the central hub in Sonic Adventure worked pretty well, kind of like Mario Sunshine, however in Unleashed you have hubs set in may different areas that are rather a pain to navigate and it’s never very apparent where you need to be going.

3, The Werehog: Now although these sections are by far the weakest point of the game I do have to applaud Sonic team on trying something new, obviously their existing formula isn’t working out but Sonic games aren’t really about combat. For those who haven’t tried Unleashed, the combat works God of War style but far slower and a whole lot less enjoyable…. Actually now I think back to Sonic team trying something new, I didn’t much care for the Knuckles levels in Adventure and the Tails levels were just horrible.

2, High Speed: Sonic is all about speed right? But speed shouldn’t mean constant trial and error to achieve anything because you only have a split second to react to any obstacles around you. If you want to give us this high level of speed then do us a favor and zoom out so we can see what’s coming. Yes I know Sonic looks very pretty in HD and you want to show him off but when we are “Rolling Around at the Speed of Sound” it’d be nice to see more than a few meters in front of us.

1, Artificial lengthening of the game play: One of my biggest pet peeves and perhaps the main reason I never finished the game. Unleashed requires you to collect so many Sun and Moon medals, to collect these you have to replay older missions and rely replaying some levels time and time again to find an item because you have to jump right at a certain point. Before playing Sonic Unleashed I’d just finished dealing with this same damn mechanic on Prince of Persia and that almost crossed the line and that game is FUN for the most part, the areas in Unleashed were bad the first time around, I don’t want to keep going back and playing them to find a damn item!

Back in the later 90’s there were a lot of platform games that simply copied Mario, I wish Sonic had taken this route 10 years ago and worked on a few 3D platforming fundamentals before things have gotten this far. Honestly I don’t think the feel of the Sonic controls have ever really felt right in 3D, there’s just too much emphasis on speed and not enough of tight and precise movement, like they are trying to run before they can walk.

Bottom line, Sega need to swallow their pride and ask Nintendo for some help, sure it won’t come cheap but there aren’t that many who know how to make a solid platformer these days, even Rayman seems to have given up.

–

Phew that was long, but I haven’t focused on gaming in my blog for as long as I can remember. Hopefully most of this makes sense, I usually allow myself time to read back through my blog posts and tighten them up but I’m feeling a mixture of laziness and tiredness, so you’ll have to make do with my disjointed rambling.

I’m back from the sunny west coast and wow somehow that city manages to be the exact opposite of Sonic unleashed. Alright, let me explain. Just before I left for California I set myself a goal of getting through Prince of Persia and Sonic unleashed, I had enough time so it seemed pretty reasonable, Prince of Persia was exactly what I expected, no more, no less and rather quick to get through, so then it was time to put the old ‘chog through his paces. Since Sonic Unleashed isn’t a new game I had plenty of time to get my expectations adjusted by the experiences of others which have been entirely negative, but being the sucker that I am I set the game of on the GameFlu and was astounded to find that the game wasn’t able to meet my amazingly low expectations, in fact I couldn’t complete the game (fortunately I wasn’t scheduled to review it). To steer my ramblings back to my original analogy, I had an idea in my head of what I’d expect from San Francisco and somehow the city exceeded my expectations in every way. There you go Sonic Unleashed <> San Francisco or perhaps Sonic Francisco != San Francisco depending what takes your fancy (I prefer the latter)

 
My new wallpaper (helps to have 4 screens)

There’s a few peeves I have about most American cities that I’ve visited, mostly the problems are with the planning and the store selection. Where I live (Kansas) has a very ‘city in a box’ feel, as if I’ve been let loose on SimCity and made some generic heartless area, where building placement is decided by metrics and numbers “These people are so many miles from a Walmart, place another”, “the people need more Applebees” etc. One of the greatest things about SF is perhaps how it reminds me more of a city like Torquay with its feel but just far more geeky and of course, geeky is win. I love the small business, grocery shop feel, I love the fact that I saw more iPhones and smart phones in 4 days than I have in my life and I generally love how it’s not Kansas.

Perhaps my favorite shot

We got to do a lot of neat things while my wife and I were there for 3 nights, as you saw before I rudely busted in on the Giant Bomb crew, but I brought British gifts, so hopefully tonight’s Bombcast won’t be scolding me for my actions. We also saw just major historic sites, such as the worlds largest LOLcat

The CNet / GameSpot building (didn’t get a chance to enter

Loud fish mammal creatures

And plenty more on my Picassa Album (http://picasaweb.google.com/madelk/SanFran09?authkey=ciB0RUwjay8)

Obviously I had a great time and I look forward to getting back into the city, I just wish more places were hiring and not firing.

Achievement unlocked!

Here’s a link to the best photo’s I’ve taken since I’ve been here in SF.
http://picasaweb.google.com/madelk/SanFran09?authkey=ciB0RUwjay8#

Image by davidciani via Flickr

I’m working on getting all my stuff packed up and DS’ charged for my trip to San Francisco bay early, early tomorrow morning. I’m pretty stoked about the trip and hopefully I’ll meet some interesting folk there, which seems pretty inevitable.

If you’re around the bay and want to meet up for a pint of poison then hit me up, you know where I am.

No, I’m not back to playing World of Warcraft, instead today is the 29h anniversary of my birth and I’m hoping to get an apprentice mount next level.

The trip to San Francisco has been delayed a week (we were supposed to leave today) but it made more sense to go at a time when we actually had money in the bank so we could actually do things while we’re there.

I’ve been wondering if any readers live in, or have visited the SFbay as I’ve been thinking about what to do while I’m there. I was hoping to get some kind of tour of the CNET office but I’m really not sure if anything like that is offered, or even who to contact if it is. I’m also looking for places any good places to eat or see. Places like Fisherman’s Warf and the bridge are obvious photo spots so I’ll be sure to have some good photo’s for you all by the time I get back.

Lastly, for your reading pleasure I’ve uploaded my reviews here for you to take a look through, but check out the versions over at Citizen game for HTML IMG added goodness including the new Rise of the Argonauts review. Please read and comment on what you can.

Thanks for reading my 29th anniversary post and please let me know if you have any San Francisco incite.

Happy New Year Everyone!
At last a holiday we can all agree on.

I was wondering if you’ve been setting New Year’s resolutions, if so then please share. Resolutions don’t sound like something that I’d usually go along with, if it’s important enough to set a goal for then you shouldn’t need some arbitrary date to set yourself goals. However, setting reasonable resolutions works and helps you better yourself and your life, with that said, here’s my dumb goals for 09.

Gaming

Complete 2 Zelda games - so this doesn’t really better me or my life, but I’ve only completed 4 Zeldas, 3, 4, OOT & TP. This is especially sad since I own every Zelda except for the first two. Not sure which I’ll play through, perhaps Wind Waker and Phantom hourglass, but I’m also tempted by Majora’s mask.

Fitness

Hundred push ups - I’m not in terrible shape, but I could always stand to be fitter. I managed day one on the harder routine which meant 45 pushups with 4 one minute breaks, I still hurt. If anyone wants to join me on this path of pain then checkout
http://hundredpushups.com/

Career

Complete at least one piece of paid commissioned work - I’ve been writing reviews on and off for quite some time now and have gotten rather serious about it over the last 2-3 years so it’s about time I set myself up with the next level. Honestly I’m a little skeptical about this but I’ve thought of ideas for a column in a paper, so with enough stubborn behavior I may get this harder achievement to unlock.

I hope you all do well with your lists and may all of your achievements unlock.