ORIGINAL: A couple of days ago, I was walking past the Early Learning Centre (A shop for very young children in the UK) and it struck me that it was incredibly strange for them to be selling, and advertising, Anakin Skywalker toys.  Now, I didn’t really mind.  I merely thought it amusing that the murderer of “Younglings” would be thought of as a positive character in other section of the franchise, so, on a whim, I sent them an email.

They responded.  In an awesome way.

From: Ross Mills

To those responsible for choosing the toys they wish to sell at the Early Learning Centre, as well as in-store advertising.

I was recently walking past the Dundee Early Learning Centre, and was shocked and disgusted to see an advert for Star Wars toys, prominently featuring the characters Yoda and Anakin Skywalker as positive figures.

Personally, I could not be more shocked. I thought the Early Learning Centre was a place for positive reinforcement of positive actions for children, but yet, here it was, actively promoting one of the most evil characters in the Star Wars universe. Anakin Skywalker.

Now, I am aware that Anakin was not always evil, and was in-fact an innocent in Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace, however, I wish to press on you the severity of his actions starting upon joining the Jedi Order as a Padawan:

* Consistent and flagrantly ignoring the rules, orders and limits set on him by his Jedi Master, Obi-Wan Kenobi.
* Killing an entire tribe of sand-people on Tatooine
* Killing the unarmed Count Dooku
* Cutting the arm off a Jedi Knight, Mace Windu. (Need I remind you that the Jedi
Knights are the PROTECTORS of peace and justice throughout the Star Wars saga?)
* Pledging himself to the Dark Side of the force, an organisation based on the teachings of the Sith, involving Brutality, Fear, Anger, and Hatred, including severe humanistic racism when they came into power forming the Empire
* Acted as the right-hand of the Sith Emperor
* Choked his wife using the power of the Force, nearly killing her and undeniably an act which eventually led to her death.
* Attempted killing of Jedi Knight and Master, Obi-Wan Kenobi.

And, last of all, and the most important
* The massacre of an entire school of young Jedi Children.

Now, I ask you, how can you sell such toys, promoting such individuals, in your establishment?

Sincerely, Ross Mills

I realised that my language was a little strong at the start, but I hoped they would get the light-hearted message.  Luckily, they were incredibly positive about it, and this is the response I received.

Dear Mr Mills

As an avid Star Wars fan myself I can relate to your points below and see the perspective that Anakin Skywalker (in his teenage years onwards) is by no means a ‘positive’ role model, nor is he intended to be represented as such.

We sell a wide range of characters from the Star Wars universe, including stormtroopers, scout troopers, Commander Cody and so forth. With particular reference to the two former characters both are generally considered to be ‘bad’ and unlike Anakin have had no periods of being ‘good’ or ‘redemption’ and are provided to give the ‘good guys’ someone to triumph over. While ideally the Jedi Council would have no enemies and would sit in their chambers sipping Bothan rum, it’s not particularly interesting for a small child (unless of course they wish to populate their ‘tea parties’ with Star Wars characters in which case we fully endorse this!)

For a child to fully immerse themselves in the Star Wars products we sell I would hesitate a guess that said child is a fan of the Clone Wars cartoon series (the prequels and sequels being of an age most would agree is unsuitable for the age range we cater for). In this series Anakin is very much portrayed as a force of good, and our aim is to provide fans of the series with both heroes and villains so they can replay the epic battles of the show in the comfort of their own home.

It’s unlikely that children of that age have seen any of the Star Wars films, however if they have I beg to offer the following counterpoints to ‘the sins of Anakin’

* Anakin loved his mother a great deal and always treated her with respect
* Rescued his master several times from assassins, pit monsters, droid troopers etc.
* Rescued Amidalla from assassin snakes, pit monsters, the Trade Federation and even found time to romance her in the fields of Naboo
* Built C3PO
* Won the Podrace
* Killed the evil emperor to save his son
* I would also argue that if a child has seen all the films they’ll see Anakin as a hero who went wrong but ultimately paid the supreme sacrifice to atone for his sins.

There may be better role models out there for a child, but for the period our toys are aimed at (the Clone Wars), Anakin remains very much ‘hero material’ and is a popular and welcome addition to our range.

Kind regards,
Paul ********
Client Support Manager
The Early Learning Centre

So, thank you Paul.  I am sincerely sorry if I wasted your time, but you have in-fact corrected me.  Chances are that the child is mostly aware of the “Clone Wars” saga, (which, if I recall correctly, the adverts were in the same visual style as) and they are most likely not aware of Anakin’s crimes.

I am very happy that you took my message as it was supposed to be, light-heartedly, and responded in-kind.

You, Paul, are a scholar and a gentleman.

I missed the hype of Oblivion.  I was just never really into RPGs at the time, let alone fantasy RPGs.  It wasn’t until that World of Warcraft, and later Dungeons & Dragons, opened me up to the idea of a stat-based game that would be enjoyable.  Oblivion got left by the wayside and it wasn’t until Fallout 3′s gun-based open-world RPG gameplay that I thought that I should give it another go.  I grabbed it on Steam, load it up, start a new game, and here it is:

A man appears on-screen and Patrick Stewart’s voice rings out.  The people of That Land appear to have the same opinion as me in regards to Jean-Luc Picard, and have made this man the emperor.  He says something about the Gates of Oblivion, which look about as inviting as a summer home in Fife, and Professor X explains that he’s only got a few hours left to live.  Cue a camera-sweep over a lovely-looking fantasy city, and we zoom in on a window to the city’s side, starting the adventure.

As with most RPGs I’m asked to create a character.  I’ve had a good time with a female Commander Shephard of Mass Effect fame as of late, so I go with a female human from “Breton”.  Obviously not based on Breton, France, as this is somewhere else entirely, that would be silly… right?  A little tweaking from the original character, and I have something I can be proud to run around in-world with.

Kalesche, the Breton

So I start off in a prison.  A dingy prison.  A dingy, rotten, stone-walled prison with naught but a wooden chair and table, a clay jar and cup, and some bones for company.  I spend time lamenting my situation.  How did I end up here?  Why am I languishing in this Pit of Despair when I should be out, free, running through the forests, firing my bow randomly at NPCs and stealing their clothes?  Will I ever be let out?  Will I ever be free?  Will I … ooh a physics engine!

The prison gives me plenty of time to mess about with its contents.  Holding the Z key seems to let me pull on chains, move items around the environment, and… levitate items in front of my face without the use of my hands?

Alas poor Yorrick, ye never knew of my telekinetics…

I soon notice that I’ve grabbed the attention of a fellow in the cell across from me.  He appears to be some sort of elven chappy and, judging by what he’s saying to me, (“You’re going to die down here, Breton!”), he’s a bit of a dick really.  Luckily, his insults are interrupted by the appearance of a few guards, and along with them strides Picard himself.  They seem to be escaping something and all bundle into my comfy cell before escaping through a tunnel opened simply through pressing a prominent stone in the wall… hold on… I would’ve pressed that eventually!

Professor X seems to want to chat to me, and who am I to say no?  But he’s obviously just interested in my character’s womanly physique!  Check out some of these one-liners he blurts out!

“You are the one from my dreams.”

“Perhaps the Gods have placed you here so that we may meet.”

Steady on, now Patrick!  We’ve only just met!

Patrick lets me follow him out of prison, despite the fact that I may be in there for murder, arson, fantastical mushroom smuggling, summoning the undead, looting corpses, or any sort of thing that might happen in That Land.  It’s a strange place, this, but I’m not one to complain, I’m free!

Well… I’m free except for the fact that the tunnel they opened up seems to lead straight to some assassins who want nothing more than to skewer both me and Emperor Xavier with some rather pointy swords.  The guards do a little sword-wielding dance, however, and the assassins are soon dealt with.

During the fight, however, the Guard-Captain with them was stabbed.  She’s dead, poor girl.  She deserves a proper burial, and funerary rites, and she can’t

just lie there with that bright and shiny sword.  That needs to go, it’s not respectful.  I’d better take that with me… you know… out of respect.  The other guards obviously agree, they don’t raise a fuss.

Shortly after that, the guards tell me I’ve got to stay.  In this dungeon.  Surrounded by possible assassins.  After I fought with them.  Bastards.  They lock a door and leave me behind.  Suddenly, a wall collapses and behind it a bunch of giant rats appear!  Luckily I have my trusty… DAMNIT! I didn’t equip the sword!  Luckily, time in prison hardened me up, gave me time to exercise, and I quickly dispatch the rats in classic Rocky style.

Rats… why does it always have to be rats?

Nice timing, rats!  You’ve left me a nice person-sized hole to sneak through in order to escape! Handy that!

I give another look over the UI.  It seems extensive.  There’s the inventory split into multiple sections, magic spell selection page split into multiple sections, map page with multiple views of quests and the map, and a few more pieces of detail that I don’t need right now while punching rats.  I equip myself with a sword with a click, and select “Flare”, which seems to be a small fireball I cast by pressing C.  Rats don’t like fire, right?

Through the rat-hole seems to be a treasure trove of mundane items!  I find a chest with gold in it, followed by a skeleton that seems to have suffered a worse fate than me.  I blame his attempt to use a bow and a shield at the same time…

There’s nothing humerus about a dead skeleton…

Luckily, that bow is the perfect size for little-old me.  It gets equipped, and a couple of test shots are placed into a conveniently-placed bucket that sways as if this section was designed to show off a respectable physics engine.

A dead Goblin Shaman lies nearby.  I suppose these chaps will be further into this creepy cavern which I have no choice but to follow.  I can’t say I’m looking forward to this.  Can’t I just dig my way out?  I equip a torch and go through a door on the other side of the room.

Through a door and I am immediately set upon by rats.  More rats!  They attacked me as soon as I came nearby!  It’s almost as if I was carrying a large,

flaming torch of some sort!  Hmm.  I put out the torch, pocket it, and take out the bow instead.  This will work better!

I start sneaking.  This is done by pressing Ctrl to toggle sneak mode, which will also overlay my reticle with a small eye.  When unseen, it is semi-transparent, but if I’m seen it will get brighter to make it obvious if those rats that are chomping at my dangly bits can actually see me or not.

More rats spill round a corner, and I soon see why.  Following them is an undead monstrosity.

Arrows are fired at it, with a nice sneaking bonus to damage, but they don’t seem to do much.  The zombie starts beating me with its meaty zombie fist, so I switch to an alternate damage source: Fire!

Magical fire seems to do a lot more, and the zombie is thrown across the room by my Flare spell.  I loot the corpse, as I am wont to do in these situations, and discover that I can take the creature’s “Mort Flesh”.  It’s disgusting, it’s probably diseased, but I can sell it for gold so I take it with me.

A few rat-killings, chest-lootings and sneaky-shootings later and I’ve discovered something.  I can only carry so much.  I am “Over-Encumbered” and this means that I cannot physically move until I get rid of some items from my inventory.  The thick iron breastplate is the first to go.  It’s expensive, but it also takes up the majority of my carrying capacity.  It clatters to the ground as I look for more items to discard.  Also left in the room are multiple shields, and enough small weapons to equip a small village.  How was I carrying all this?  I even had to get rid of the Guard-Captain’s swanky sword.  Apparently it’s not worth anything to anyone else, despite being the most swish item in my entire inventory!

A short distance ahead, and after I dispatch another goblin, I come across his (her?  How do I tell?) Pestle and Mortar.  So begins a simple tutorial on the creation of magical positons.  It turns out that by placing Mort Flesh, from earlier, and Rat Meat into this and grinding them up, I get a dangerous poisonous potion.  Similarly, grinding up a Cheese Wedge and a Tomato gets a Reduce Fatigue potion!  Jamie Oliver eat your heart out!

Spooky…

After a little bit of foreshadowing with some hanging skulls, the cave crawl comes across a set of caverns designed to show off how combat can work here.  A number of logs are piled next to a conveniently-placed slope upon which some goblins stand.  A simple push sends the logs tumbling down, crashing into the goblins and granting me access to the delicious goodies they drop.  Just prior to this, a goblin stands next to a gate to a “rat cage”, which can be opened from afar to wreak merry hell on the cavern, while a live and kicking Goblin Shaman fires electric bolts at me with a large skull-topped staff.

The staff soon turned into one of my possessions, but the charges required for its electrical attack were wasted on the rats I let out.  Batteries must be found in short order lest I carry around a useless skull on a stick.

I become over-encumbered again.  Apparently skull-sticks are heavy things, and

I instigate a new rule.  The 1lb per 1 gold rule.  If something weighs more than 1lb for every 1 gold it could make me in the shop, it gets tossed by the wayside.  I thought you should know this as that is why I am now running through a cave, chased by rats, having discarded my shoes farther back…

I eventually come to a door!  Is that… light?  I break through the door, rushing into the light of the sun shining on my face!…

Oh no, wait, I’m back in the dungeon, and Picard’s here, too.  The guards suspect me of working with the assassins, but Picard wants to have a monologue, and I get the sneaking suspicion that he’s still interested in me as he asks for my starsign.  The flirt!

This is Oblivion’s character creation at work, as my star-sign (which gives me a minor boost to some abilities) and my character archetype appear during conversations with the Emperor and his guards.

The Emperor, however, isn’t long for this world.  He gave me perhaps the most dire and worrying prophecy of all, shortly before being stabbed in the ribs by a man in red robes and a thick helmet.

No pressure, then…

With the Shakespearean actor lying dead, the guards let me be on my way with the Amulet which was given to me… outside of their view… which I could have killed the king to attain.  You know, thinking about it, I won’t be hiring these guards to watch over my parties…

I turn a few corners and I’m into the city’s sewers making my escape, but a short rat-battle past that and I can see a light at the end of the tunnel, literally.  It IS daylight this time!  I make my way out of the sewers, smell the fresh air, and I’m free to discover That Land.

After booting it up, however, I found myself having a very exciting time.  …if I ignored certain things.

The game tells the story of three brothers, Ray, Thomas and Billy McCall as they first fight for, and desert from, the Confederate (Southern) side of the USA’s Civil War.  Following this, the players experience their adventures while following them on the run while chasing after the titular “Juarez” Aztec gold.  From the start of gameplay the game makes it very clear that these brothers are part of a close family, making it easy for the player to sympathise with each of them, and through this we see the brothers’ closeness, allowing that same player to understand that they would help and aid each other, explaining why they stay together.

During any chapter of the game, you may be given the choice to take the role of either Thomas or Ray McCall.  These two characters differ wildly from each other in terms of first-person gameplay.  One of them is more prone to use a pair of pistols as his primary weapons, therefore the player can expect to need to place multiple shots into enemies from close-up, whereas the other primarily uses a rifle, allowing him to aim further downrange and take out the enemy for a different vantage point.

Both of the characters’ differing styles work well to create very unique gameplay when in gunfights, but this is not limited to normal action;  If the player has dispatched enough of whichever bad guy is trying to kill him, then they will build up a “concentration” metre.   When this metre is full then the player may use a special ability allowing them to kill multiple enemies on the screen at once, but still requiring the player to act.  Each brothers’ abilities both look and play very differently, with one merely asking you to “sweep” the aimpoint over the enemies you wish to shoot, whereas the other one requires you to pull back on the controller thumstick like the hammer on a revolver while it does the aiming for you.  These different styles of play keep the player from getting too bored with one, as if they tire of it then during the next chapter they can simply select the other brother to play as.

Playing the game, it is very clear that a lot of love and testing has gone into ensuring that this game is simple to follow, easy to pick up, and a joy to control.  There are a whole host of small things that the developers have added to this game to ensure that the player will not be frustrated, or are merely nice touches to gameplay, these include:

• The cursor sliding slightly towards enemies who are close to the centre of the crosshair.
• When names of important or useful NPCs are mentioned during dialogue, the view quickly shifts to look at them, reducing the necessity for a waypoint system.
• The hitboxes for various items such as fences are pixel-perfect, meaning that I was able to aim out through very small holes in the terrain, something I didn’t expect to be able to do.
• The voice-acting is a delight, easily adding character to the three brothers.
• Finally (and my favourite), characters have the ability to hide and peek around a corner without pressing a “hug wall” button, the player merely goes up to the wall and turns to look in the direction that they wish to peek.

Each of these make the game a very fun experience, so much so that I intend to go back to and play each level as the “other brother” at some point in order to get the full experience.

Call of Juarez isn’t just an encounter-based first-person shooter (although it mostly is), it varies what is happening constantly both in terms of gameplay and narrative, while keeping a very consistent story.  As an example, first you’ll be shooting your way out of a war, then you’ll be performing a short quick-draw with the sheriff of a town, followed by an on-rails stagecoach ride where you’ll ride both atop, as well as inside the coach, occasionally needing to get out and perform tasks under fire.  If variety is the spice of life, then Call of Juarez: BiB will certainly burn your tongue!

Now, I know that I have started this review by stating that you need to “ignore” certain aspects of the game, these aspects are unfortunately the majority of the multiplayer gameplay, and this is where the game seems to fall down.  The era and setting mean that the multiplayer maps available lend heavily to long western roads and a lot of open fields, giving the sniper rifle, or simply the sighted rifle, the primary claim to the land, and while it is obvious that one should not stand around in the open in such a game, when the game gives you little choice but to do so if you want to move around the map then it becomes a problem.  All of the games that I played in involved getting into a small gunfight, then being shot from across the map, usually while halfway through the smaller gunfight.

Even when in the “small gunfight”, I cannot claim to have enjoyed myself much either.  Most of the time you will be firing highly inaccurate pistols from medium range or dancing around each other as you each try to reload your pistols, maybe firing shots before it reloads in order.  The fast gameplay doesn’t allow the player to easily use any of the interesting cover mechanics that single-player AI allow you to, making it seem like just a poor replica of other online shooters.

Despite the multiplayer gameplay itself being bad, there is at least one good idea that has come out of it.  When playing a ranked game, you must earn money in order to “buy” upgrades for the various different character archetypes you can choose you play, and you earn this money by killing other players.  Where it gets interesting, however, is that if a player is doing very well then they will start to accrue a “bounty” on their head, kill this player and you will win the bounty, meaning that players given a choice will often hunt down a player with a larger bounty rather than go after the easier opponents.

To summarise, if all that you want to know is whether or not you should pick this up, then I will say yes, the single-player is a wonderful experience on its own and deserves plenty of praise, but just don’t expect much from the multiplayer, in fact, pretend that it doesn’t exist.

Anyone who has played this game can tell where I went wrong with this opinion.

Let me start explaining my opinion by saying that this game is not a bad game by any stretch, I definitely enjoyed it, but I cannot say that it should be held aloft in the sort of way that the original marketing might have had me believe.  It was enjoyable, but there is nothing here that is going to get me coming back to it for any great length of time.

“You’re fuckin’ dead, bro!”

The first thing that I was impressed by was the aggro mechanic.  Army of Two touted itself by suggesting that your AI partner would work with you in order to draw the enemies’ fire, while you slipped around the back.  Or you would draw the enemies’ fire, while your partner slipped around the back.

On one hand, it works.  You can order your teammate to hold position, advance, or follow you, each time in either a passive or aggressive mode.  Putting him in an aggressive mode will cause a HUD “Aggro Meter” to increase due to him laying down a lot of cover fire, killing a few enemies who are stupid enough to pop their head up from cover.  This allows you to move forward, nearly always unnoticed, able to take the bad guys out with a few shots from the side of their cover.

Of course, if I decide to get overzealous, then those bad guys will focus on me, often when I have left myself unfortunately open, meaning that I have to dive back behind cover under a hail of bullets while my teammate attempts to draw the attention once again.  It’s a generally fun system, and a wonderful way to slowly make your way along the battlefield.

Where it falls down, however, is when you want to be the one laying down the cover, with your teammate moving forward.   Like most game AIs, he will not often go where you would prefer him to, often getting himself into too much trouble, leaving you to rescue him without a partner to provide cover.

Secondly, the larger problem is that while the AI has infinite ammo, there is often just not enough ammunition to allow a user player who is covering the AI to keep up this tactic for very long, meaning that you are often forced to switch to a secondary weapon, letting your AI teammate take the rear again while you scout forward for more ammunition.  Perhaps this is what the game was designed for, but as the AI teammate seemingly had a great deal more ammunition than me, when the roles are switched it feels somewhat jarring, and this is felt even moreso in co-operative online play, where both players feel the sting of the hammer’s click on an empty weapon.

“We are SO outnumbered, bro!”

A special mention should be made to the enemy AI in Army of Two.  In a million magazine reviews, adverts and game boxes I have seen over the years since the days of Half Life, I have heard that enemies will “flank you”, “work together”, and so forth, and I have no doubt that they do, but I never really saw much evidence of it until Army of Two.  There are two distinct times that stick in my mind, once while assaulting an army base, and another during a “lobby scene”, where I recall focusing on the enemy in front of me, slowly making my way forward, only for a distinct group to sneak to the side of me, where I had already been in-game, and attacked me at an open flank.  Each time I was extremely impressed that they had done the very thing that I was trying to do in-game, and each time it suddenly ramped up the firefight’s intensity.

Now, this may be a byproduct of the layout of the level and positioning of the AI, rather than the AI routines themselves, but it did what it was supposed to do, and I believe that it is worthy of praise.

“I’m not your bro, bro!”

This game, however, is not without its share of issues, the major one of mine is the very end of the game, so I suppose I should warn you here that the following will be a spoiler.

Still reading?  Good.  At the end of the game, you have a quick firefight with the Big Bad of the game, and end up on a roof, watching the bad guy escape in a helicopter.  What happens next?  Do you, the player, do anything?  No.  You watch, unable to act, as one of the main characters picks up a rocket launcher and blows up this helicopter.

Now, this for me was the biggest anti-climax since my inaction caused the main bad NPC to die suddenly at the hands of another NPC at the end of Fable 2, stopping me enacting my own revenge.  Army of Two has a fantastic dual-sniper system, where you and a partner can both synchronise to perform a sniper shot at the same time, surely a much better method of enacting the final action would be a cinematic dual-snipe using this system, rather than taking the entire ending out of their hands?

Another issue that I had was wanting a lot more of a difference in physical character between the two largely butch, anonymous bodies who the player can control.  The characters themselves were different, one a very frat-boy youth, whereas the other acted more like a grizzled war veteran, but at times I could not figure out which was which, unaided by the blank visages of each characters’ masks.

There are a number of other minor issues, such as the game missing the ability to tell the AI partner to go to a specific battlefield position, but none of them seriously affected the game, and I fully expect them to be in any future installments.

“Shut the hell up, bro!”

All in all, I would say that Army of Two is definitely worth a play.  It is not an unparalleled co-operative experience, and do not expect a BAFTA-winning story, but instead enjoy the ride while it lasts, as there are a number of elements found within worth experiencing.

I’m not sure what I thought Fallout 3 was going to be.  Perhaps I thought it was going to be a standard-fare run-and-gun FPS, or perhaps I thought that it was going to be a linear, story-driven shooter, but I could not have been more wrong.

In this post, I want to talk about a few of the aspects of Fallout 3 which have taken me out of my gaming “comfort zone” and affected me in the most overwhelmingly positive way.

Let’s start with an introduction (Warning, this post contains spoilers for early sections of Fallout 3):

Fallout 3 is the third official iteration of a post-apocalyptic (think “Mad Max 2″) roleplaying game by Bethesda Game Studios.  It pits the player, one of many people who survived the apocalyptic war inside a giant fallout-shelter style “Vault”, against the larger world in order to survive.

I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire

One of the first game mechanics that suprised me was that of the combat “V.A.T.S”, or “Vault-Tec Assisted Targetting System”.  On request, this system pulls control of your character out of your hands and attacks selected targets with a level of skill.  Whether you succeed at combat or not is based on the character you have created, and you can keep going until you run out of “Action Points” at which point all control is manual until you can regenerate enough points to use V.A.T.S. again.  While selecting targets, time is paused, and when the action is set running again it runs at a bullet-time pace, often with visceral results.

I never thought that I would use V.A.T.S., seeing it as a “cheat”, forgoing my own skill to that of a dice roll.  As it turns out, however, not only do I often prefer the use of this system in order to target specific parts of an enemy, but since my ability with the weapons in this game is off-set by the player-character’s in-game numbers-based “skills” even when manually aiming, I tend to get less annoyed if the game misses instead of me.

Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall

Generally, when I play games which have a choice, it only affects the end of the game.  This means that I can play through the game, then make an end-game decision that affects it one way or another.  Early on in Fallout 3, however, you come across a choice that dramatically affects gameplay throughout the rest of the game.

Megaton, the closest settlement to the Vault you leave at the start of the game, was build around an old nuclear weapon.  This weapon is still there, and you are given a choice to either disarm it yourself and be a protector of the town, or you are offered an opportunity to blow up the city, gaining favour with a corrupt group opposing Megaton, and being allowed to watch a very pretty light show.

Now, I have not as of yet seen this light show in anything more than static images.  This is because I tried something very strange to me in a game environment, I accepted the consequences of my actions.  I saved Megaton and became its hero, and I did not reload the game to “try again”.  This has given me more of an appreciation for the choice that I made and in-fact made it an important choice in what became my quest to help people throughout the wastelands of the game.

This philosophy of accepting what has happened has not just extended to choices, but also mistakes that I have made.  During a quest in which I was supposed to save a citizen of a small settlement from some of the nasties of the game, I failed and the woman who I was escorting died while we tried to save someone else in the same area.  I could have reloaded the game, saved her, and continued, but instead I returned to report that, unfortunately, I had not saved the lady, but I had saved her companion.  I was rewarded, but not fully, the quest was deemed a failure and ended there instead of continuing to a longer quest chain.  I truly felt like I had failed this community, which was made more apparent when I realised that both I and the settlement would have had a great deal to gain from the citizen’s continued life.

Let’s Go Sunning

Fallout 3 is big.

Really big.

No, you don’t understand, Fallout 3 is really REALLY big.

I have been playing this game for approximately 15 hours, and I have only uncovered around 20% of the game’s wilderness surface area.  That is not even including anything below ground, such as additional Vaults, railway tunnels, buildings, and so forth.  This has introduced an interesting concept of me simply going one way, while people such as my real-life boss have gone entirely another way and had a completely different adventure.  I have started the main quest, whereas he has ignored it in order to focus on side-quests.  In-fact, our differences have become so apparent that we have started marking on a work white-board our progress in-game in order to understand where we are and keep track of what we can talk about.

In no other game have I needed to do this, and it’s akin to talking about a person’s real-life experiences and what they have done differently.  It has made me more excited to go into work as I get to talk about “that awesome thing that happened just yesterday” and, in reference to Megaton, he could well have exploded that bomb, conferring on him a completely different game experience that would have been just as exciting to talk about and listen to.

Way Back Home

I really hate playing sequels before the originals.  This is because I feel like I don’t understand enough of the backstory, or won’t get the same appreciation for what I am experiencing as someone else who has played the rest of the games.  This peeve extends to movies, books, or any form of story-based media.

What I really love, though, is when people make it so that you do not need to understand the backstory, or do not need to know what happened in the previous version.  Fallout 3 does this very well.  While Fallout 2′s protagonist was a direct descendant of the character in the first Fallout, Fallout 3′s character is an entirely new person, in an entirely new area, with an entirely new problem. (The first two games had you searching for something for the Vault’s inhabitants as a reason for leaving, this game instead has you leave on your own for entirely different reasons)

This game is basically a “reboot” of the Fallout franchise for the generation who never played the first two games, and likely never will.  The trouble is that it HAS made me interested in the first two games, and after completing this one I fully intend to install Fallout and Fallout 2, then try to get to grips with them.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a wasteland to explore.

Regardless, I feel that I have a certain amount to say about the most recent game release based on this franchise, which I have finally picked up to play.

Now, one of the first things that strikes most people about this game, and certainly the first thing to be thrown upon forum threads by people with more time than sense, is that this is a Real-Time Strategy game on a console.  I didn’t WANT to comment on this, but I felt that I would be doing the blog a disservice if I didn’t.

If you listened to the cries of die-hard PC gamers, a Real-Time Strategy game will “never” work on consoles.  This sort of comment always struck me as odd, because surely if a game genre is thought about enough, and certain concessions or changes are made, then it should work on console and PC just fine.  After all, the console/PC first-person-shooter argument rages heatedly, but console first-person-shooter games have been adjusted to allow for the kind of controllers that can be expected, and they work very well.

Surely the same thing can be done regarding Real-Time Strategies?

You can tell that Ensemble, the Developers of Halo Wars, have given this a go, and they have done a pretty good job.  The controls are solid enough to allow me to do what I want, when I want to.  The view locks onto units as you mouse-over them and follows them.  There’s a “Select all on-screen” and “Select all on map” button to help get units you want, and double-selecting any unit selects all units of that type on-screen.  But still, you feel like something’s missing if you’re used to the tropes of a PC FPS, such as grouping units, and quickly selecting specific units when they’re off-camera.  Honestly, I have no problem with playing an RTS on a console, but I just wish that Phantom would hurry up and market the lapboard for all consoles a lot better, and that it would be supported.

Next-off, the CG movies between Halo Wars’ missions have been absolutely wonderful.  As a franchise fan, it is great to see the universe in high-definition detail, with everything that my imagination previously filled in being shone directly into my eyes instead.  I cannot be more impressed by the visuals in these cutscenes, but they do one thing that I didn’t expect.  They make the visuals in the game look so much worse.

Since the game is from a birds’ eye view of the battlefield, a lot needs to be shown at once, therefore the models are not fantastically detailed.  Not that this matters much when you’re flying far above the ground, and when you do it is quite the sight to behold, but any close-up in-engine cutscenes that are created look far less than worthy when viewed for more than a few seconds, with the setting’s heroic SPARTAN soldiers unfortunately faring the worst.

Speaking of the game’s setting, a problem with well-established canon is that changes to this can sometimes shock you.  Now, I’m not talking about pedantic “Person X shouldn’t have Y technology because it wasn’t invented until Z years later”, but instead I’ll give an example.  In an early mission, I was under barrage from enemy fliers.  Easy, I thought, I’ll create Warthogs.  These signature jeeps of the Halo universe have an Anti-Air gun on the back, they should make short work of them.

It turns out that I was quite wrong.  In creating a Rock-Paper-Scissors dynamic between infantry, vehicles and aircraft, Ensemble had made aircraft superior to vehicles, meaning that many of my poor marines were blown apart before I realised that those Warthogs weren’t doing as well as I thought they would.  It was easy enough for me to get into a different mindset, and entirely forgivable, but it was a slightly strange situation to face myself in.

One thing that the game DOES retain, however, is the sense of light-hearted fun against a backdrop of a serious story that the Halo franchise brought up.  When Grunts, the cannon fodder of the Covenant forces, are shot, they will let out high-pitches squeals, even flying around the screen when their breathing apparatus are punctured in a way that brings a little smile to my face every time.  The Marines of the UNSC (human) forces have their own over-the-top “Hoo-ah” sarcasm that punctuated the world of Halo 1 through 3, and generally you feel like you’re on the side that’s having the most fun.

One thing I am very upset that they have changed, however, is Halo’s place as a game that wasn’t chauvinistic.  In the original trilogy, Master Chief was a faceless protagonist, usually doing what he was told, even if that was saving the world, but alongside him was a smart, quick-witted, and VERY powerful AI in Cortana.  I am only a few missions into Halo Wars, but right now it seems like all the power is with the Captain, and a bald, skin-headed marine who looks like he came straight out of Doom.  The female protagonists include a scientist who gets pushed around and seems to only be there for exposition or as the love-hate interest of the Space Marine testosterone-bag.

There is also another female AI, Serina, in this game, but I will quote the following from the game manual:

“She has an understated fascination with human relationships and a theoretical interest in ch0colate.”

…I’ll let you mull that one over.

Now, I could wonder to myself, “Would this game have been any good without the Halo label on it?”.  I want to believe that it could, and I want to believe that it is a good game without using anything that Bungie Studios had laid out before it with the previous Halo games.

But I can’t.

The joy in this game is in commanding that group of Warthogs, that you know are great fun to ride, off of that ramp and straight into a squad of Covenant Grunts.

The joy is in listening to the marines make a quip about the excessive forces they are about to face, but have them face it anyway.

The joy is in knowing that underneath all the gameplay, behind all the missions, and permeating the cutscenes is such a deep history.  A history that makes playing a game that otherwise you wouldn’t look at twice suddenly worth it.

So, if you came straight to the bottom to read my summary, or if you have read the entire thing and want to know what my final words are, they are as follows:

If you like the Halo universe, you will probably love this game.

If you hate the Halo universe, you will not.

Make your choice accordingly.

I intend, hereafter, to write about games.  Video games, Card games, Board games, Roleplaying games.  Whatever games take my fancy.

So, I suppose I should start with an introduction to who I am, followed tomorrow by a lovely post about what I am currently doing.  On that note:

My name is Ross Mills, although I am better (and preferrably) known as Oz.  I was born in 1985, the same year as the Atari ST and the Commodore Amiga (if Wikipedia is telling the truth).  Although, of course, my baby-hands were unable to fully grasp a controller at that point.  It took until the Sega Mega Drive in 1990 for me to gain a solid interest in computers.  I still remember watching the adverts for Sonic the Hedgehog and being in awe of controlling this little creature on-screen.

Following that, I was very much hooked on gaming.  Although it took a good long time for me to be able to play on my own terms, after all, I was only 5 at the time.

Taking a drastic leap forward, assuming that I had played brothers’ and friends’ consoles until this point, when the XBox came out, in 2002, I had just recently gained part-time employment at the tender age of 16, so invested in this and a large TV for myself.  I don’t think I could have made a better choice by purchasing Halo: Combat Evolved.

I played this game for hours on end, it was all that I could talk about for a long time, I pored over fan movies, investigated Bungie Studios, its creator, and was a fairly vocal member of HBO, perhaps the biggest Halo fan-site at the time.  Sure, Halo wasn’t the best game, but it did something big for me: It showed me a community, it showed me that games were interesting, it showed me that my interests were valid and something I could enjoy.

Granted, at the age of 16 there were a million other coming-of-age epiphanies I had, however, the playing of Halo shaped my life at the time far beyond what I might give it credit for.

When I was 18, I enrolled in a University course related to gaming.  While this was unworthy of comment within itself, I did spend two years on placement at a Cambridge game development company.  While there, I was introduced to a great many other sides of geekery, shenanigans, gaming, and a fantastic group of friends who I wouldn’t give up for anything.

Finally, after completing University, my grades weren’t that good, and my experience was not amazing, so I looked into the QA side of the gaming industry.  I managed to secure a short-term contract at Virgin Media, testing Set-Top Box applications, which was as painful as the amazingly low-tech hardware they have.  Finally, I have settled on my current job.  I work as a Tester for a game developer in Dundee, Scotland, working on an upcoming game that I believe will shock the world, but until that is released, I plan to play games and write this very blog.  Hopefully, it will continue afterwards, too.

So, this is Oz signing off.

Stay Sensitive.

(Did I really just say that?)