Lots of games...

So, I've been settling into University quite well. I've taken to my hall quite well. But I've got myself an amazing group of friends! Some I don't see as often as I'd like *cough*SHANICE*cough* but  I guess it can't be helped. 

Some however, are making me spend all of my Student Finance money...

All because of this game:

I've been spending an awful lot of time playing this game with my friends, I've even brought two decks! I've only been playing two weeks!! But this isn't all we've been playing...

We've been playing Munchkin (which is actually a lot of fun!), Bullshit, Chase the Ace, Portal 2... the List goes on! 

It's a wonder I have time to do anything else!

Portal 2 Co-Op

So, Andy and I decided to get Portal 2 yesterday after each completing Portal 1 (well, he got it... I just told him too... oops...). Since then we've been playing Portal 2 Co-Op non stop. NON-STOP. 

I was P-body. Andy was Atlas. Which was really funny because they were really cute and we laughed a lot at the comments GLaDOS made whenever they hugged or played rock paper scissors... 


I do think Andy missed the companion cube though... I found this on the interwebs and I thought it was brilliant - he also found it cute. But it totally represents Andy and his companion cube well,   I think he's hoping it comes back though... To be honest, so am I :3

So there were a few levels that had us stumped, though we completed it in about 7 hours, but between this we did cook lunch and a curry... so about 1 hour wasn't spent playing... But either way, it took us a while. I'm quite proud of how quickly we got some of the levels, though I'm not sure either of us are a fan of the funnels really...

Whilst typing, Andy is currently playing Portal 2 Single... And so far we've met:

Wheatley! He's voiced by the wonderful Stephen Merchant. Who is wonderful. I've seen him in The Tooth Fairy (staring The Rock, Julie Andrews and Merchant) and I really loved him. Wheatley so far has simply been frantic, shy and quite amusing. I lost count of the amount of times Andy and I have laughed at Wheatly.

Of course we've re-met GLaDOS and let's just say... she's horrible, yet again... For example, she just called Chell fat... Lovely... 

So I'm going to go watch Andy play Portal 2, whilst tidying his sofa so we can watch some movies later whilst nomming on the pizza we're going to be making in about... 40 minutes!

So, happy 10 month anniversary for us... we've spent it playing Portal 2, eating homemade pizza and watching movies... Oh, and nomming on chocolate. Of course! 

Gamer's Christmas Gift Guide

How do you do your Christmas shopping? Are you freakishly organised, having everything bought, wrapped and tagged by October 1st? Do you panic buy everything in December from the petrol station? Or are you somewhere in the middle like me, smugly buying presents in September but then realising mid December you are nowhere near finished?

Either way, you might need some help picking out gifts for that awkward gamer geek in your life. They won’t appreciate socks unless they have Space Invaders on them, and giving them booze will only inhibit them from playing Skyrim over the festive season. What do?

Here, gentle reader, let me help you.

Portal 2 Turret Plushie



http://tinyurl.com/74k4s6b

BRB, SQUEEING FOREVER.

That’s right, it’s a TALKING. TURRET. PLUSHIE. It even reacts to motion, and calls out ‘malfunctioning’ when you knock it over. It even says ‘Are you still there?’ if it doesn’t see any motion after about 30 seconds!

It is probably the cutest little package of shooty doom you ever laid eyes on.

Magic D20 of Destiny



http://tinyurl.com/dx3ldxu

Ok, so it’s a fancy Magic 8 ball, but come on, that thing’s cool. Plus, I bet it’d save a lot of arguments at the table. ‘Do we raid the dungeon or go get drunk with a wizard? CONSULT THE MAGIC D20!’

(We may or may not have got a wizard drunk in a D&D campaign once. Hey, it worked!)

Minecraft Diamond Necklace



http://tinyurl.com/78fpen4

Do you love your ladyfriend dearly, but can’t afford to lavish her with jewels this Christmas! Fear not! J!nx has you covered with this necklace fashioned after the diamond sprite in Minecraft.

File this under ‘More stuff I really kinda want.’

Icon Watch



http://tinyurl.com/4xcok8v

Do not adjust your set, that actually is a real life pixellated watch. One reviewer on the page states that it’s ‘more awesome than a panda in the kitchen’. I think we might have to take his word for that, but it is indeed pretty cool.

File THIS under ‘Stuff I’m pretty sure Sunday Matt will want.’

Portal 2 Long Fall Boots Socks



http://tinyurl.com/3uqq2ry

Ok, so Long Fall Boots may not exist outside of Aperture Laboratories, but this is the next thing. Wearing these makes you super cool and keeps your legs all toasty and warm. Don’t go jumping off cliffs though, for God’s sake.

Angry Birds Plushies



http://tinyurl.com/67bcfg5

Everybody loves Angry Birds, right? Or at least everybody’s heard of it. Plus, when everyone’s had Christmas dinner and you’re being forced to watch the Eastenders tragic Christmas special where everybody dies, you can start lobbing them at your dad to entertain yourself. Repeat until your arms are tired or a family member slaps you.

Space Invaders Couch



http://tinyurl.com/3wvmc38

Have a spare $5500? Then splurge on this for your loved one and make all their other gifts look like old hat by comparison. Huzzah!

The craziest Portal 2 conspiracy theories

Obviously, the following is going to contain big, fat spoilers for anyone who hasn’t played Portal 2 yet. So you know, go do that. Because it’s awesome.

Right, now they’re gone, let’s get stuck in. I know I promised to stop ranting about the game, but I started replaying it the other day, so, er... no. I got back into the Steam forums too, to play a game of ‘spot the insane conspiracy theory’. You should try it sometime, it’s highly amusing. People LOVE to read too much into things. With that in mind, let’s see the craziest theories I’ve come across...

Cave Johnson was going to be an AI

http://tinyurl.com/43h3tvu

Ok, in fairness, this isn’t technically crazy, but it just goes to show how hungry Portal fans are for extra information on the game. This fan has dug deep into the game files and has come up with unused script for Cave Johnson, which implies he would have been an AI trapped in a cube you would have come across in the old Aperture Laboratories.



There’s only a few lines of dialogue, but it seems as if instead of the scene where PotatOS automatically reacts to Cave’s recording, she actually reacts to him in person, as it were. If you read it for yourself, it’s easy to see why it was chopped out. While Cave as an AI would have been a cool idea (and climbing over his corpse a suitably grisly way to escape the test), it was too obvious. Having Cave blurt out, ‘Hey, you’re Caroline! Don’t you remember?’ would have sucked.

The Rat Man escaped to the moon

http://tinyurl.com/3utny8n

Yes, this is a theory. Anyone who played the first game and read the ‘Lab Rat’ comic available on the official site will feel pretty sorry for the guy. Having escaped GlaDOS’s initial killing spree, he found himself having to wander the facility for years, subsisting on foraged food and going slowly insane. It’s not pleasant.

Which is, why some say, he escaped to the moon. The main evidence seems to be this picture.



The theory goes that he sat in the room with the first portal gun, waiting for the moon (hence the phases of the moon drawn on the ceiling) so he could shoot a portal onto it, running through the readymade orange portal and escaping, only to send back the picture of the Companion Cube on the moon’s surface.



That’s all very well and good... but did any of you think how he would BREATHE there? Hmm.

Cave and Caroline are Chell’s parents

http://tinyurl.com/4yp7ds7

Ohhh, this is a biggie. You may well have heard of it already (it’s been repeated on several gaming sites), but it bears repeating.

Basically, several tidbits from the game have been brought together to prove something that doesn’t seem quite plausible. First, there’s the potato experiment that bears Chell’s name:



Ok, makes sense so far. It explains how Chell got there, as a child of an employee. There’s an idea that her dad must be high up, because the experiment lists a ‘secret ingredient from Daddy’s work’.

Then, we notice that Chell’s surname is redacted in the comic, although none of the other test subjects are. Weird, but we still don’t see it.

Then, we’re shown this picture:



Apparently, Cave and Caroline are clearly an item because a boss and his secretary (even a respected one as Caroline is) would never pose like that, apparently. Then, somehow, the massive leap is made that CAVE must have been Chell’s dad! Which means Caroline is her mum! ZOMG!

Ok, there’s the fact the turret opera sings to her as ‘My Child’ as she’s leaving, but come on. Really? REALLY?

The entire game mirrors Greek myth

http://tinyurl.com/3jcpe48

Otherwise known as ‘the one that actually kinda makes sense’.

In Portal 2, at one point you can find and rescue what is known as the ‘Oracle Turret’. Instead of the usual dialogue, it spouts predictions at you (Hearing it say ‘Get mad!’ in its squeaky voice is possibly one of the cutest things I’ve ever heard). At one point, it talks about the legend of Prometheus, who was cast into a pit and pecked by birds.

Sound familiar?



That’s not all. A fan has drawn up a list of all the similarities, both in character and plot. You can find it here: http://tinyurl.com/3nl4t24.

It’s interesting to read, because instead of tenuous links (see Cave and Caroline are Chell’s parents theory), it all makes some sense.

Also interesting to note is the face hiding in the ‘Portrait of a Lady’. Look at it above, can you see it hiding at the left of the frame? Apparently that’s Aeschylus, who wrote ‘Prometheus Bound’. Well I never.

Chell travelled back in time

http://tinyurl.com/3ucooqu

Ah. Crazy paydirt!

Someone on the forums has asked about this picture:



Basically, they don’t understand why it’s there because they can’t see where the red button is. That’s not where the crazy is. To find it, you need to scroll down a bit.
Forum user Whiplashr insists that the poster is proof that Chell, at some point, travels back in time to the 70’s and breaks into the then operational testing spheres.

Why? It’s obvious!

-Chell wore an orange jumpsuit in the first Portal.

-Chell has hair a bit like that, apparently (Note: She doesn’t).

-Chell went around barefoot in Portal, too.

-No one else would have been wearing an orange jumpsuit, so it must mean just her!

Oh dear, Mr. Whiplashr. You’ve added 2 and 2 and made 47. It’s just a poster. Valve aren’t trying to screw with you. Go outside, absorb some vitamin D or something. You’re scaring me a bit.

Pokemon as explained by a Pokemon virgin

Now, what I’m about to tell you may startle you. You’ve been warned. Ready? Here goes:

I’ve never played Pokemon.

THERE I SAID IT.

Here’s the thing: I didn’t get heavily into gaming until early 1997 with the gift of a Playstation that was given to me by my grandparents. I had actually owned an original Game Boy back in the day, but I managed to lose it somehow. Or maybe my mum sneakily sold it. After all, those things were the size of a brick, you couldn’t lose them if you tried. The upshot of this is that the whole Pokemon phenomenon just passed me by.



Years later, I am a grown adult (I know, I was as surprised as anyone to find that out) with my own money and a DSi XL (I refuse to buy a 3DS. 3D is stupid). I decided, maybe, just maybe, it was time to investigate this thing. After all, it has made like a gazillion dollars worldwide, so it must be good. Plus, my 11 year old cousin loves it. That in mind, I acquired a copy of Pokemon Black and dived in head first. This is a first hand account of what happened.

World: Play Pokemon! It is made of diamonds and unicorn tears!

Me: Ah, why not, I’ve got nothing more important to do (read: no one is shouting at me to do anything).



Me: I don’t actually know what kind of game this is, apart from collecting bizarre animals. It is Japanese though, so I know it will be weird.

Me: I wonder what the difference is between Black and White? Should I play both?

Internet: They have different Pokemon in them.

Me: I’ll just play Black then.

Me: WTF is this opening sequence? Did I get the right game?

Me: This is a JRPG isn’t it?

Me: Oh HELL. Well, I’m committed now.

Pokemon Black: Here is your character, impose your name and gender upon them.

Me: Must resist the urge to call her ‘Tart Features’... I’m an adult now. I get bills and everything.

Pokemon Black: Pick a Pokemon out of these three.

Me: What? None of these are Pikachu! This sucks! I suppose I’ll take Tepig. He’s a fire one, right?



Me: He is! Sweet. His name’s stupid though.

Pokemon Black: Send your child like avatar into the world, to leave them at the mercy of every paedophile ever.

Me: That can’t be right. Kicking kids out to fight each other with wild animals? I know you’re odd, Japan, but you aren’t that cruel. ARE YOU?

Internet: In Black and White the characters are teenagers but in earlier Pokemon games, yes, they were kids.

Me: WTFBBQ?!

Me: Ah. Combat. Here we go then.

Some time later...

Me: Oh cool, Tepig’s evolving.

Me: Oh, now he’s called Pignite. LOL I GET IT.

Me: Trudge, trudge, trudge. Oh look, another city.

Me: Team Plasma are rubbish, where are Team Rocket with that cat thing? I saw the cartoons.



Me: This game is actually a massive grindfest, isn’t it?

Me: I think I’m going to scoop out my own eyeballs through boredom.

Me: I mean, look at the Pokedex. You mean I have to level them ALL up? I’ve got things to do over here!

Pokemon Black: I’ve glitched out now, rendering the game unfinishable.

Me: Oh, thank GOD. (Boots up Portal 2 for the billionth time).

By the way, I kind of stole this format from a recent www.mommywantsvodka.com post. You should go read it because it’s awesome, and it will assuage some of my guilt. Thanks.

Listen to me, I have opinions

Ok kids, it’s what none of you have been asking for: its Friday Voni’s mini review time!

Lego Harry Potter Years 1-4



I’m all for the Lego games, even though they’re slowly oozing their way through the gaming industry like... something that oozes. There’s been Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Batman, there’s going to be a Pirates of the Caribbean one, I won’t be surprised if Warner Brothers own the rights to every film series in existence by now in order to turn them into little digital plastic bricks.

If you’ve played any of the Lego games you know what’s happening here. You and either a friend or the computer control two characters from the Harry Potter universe as they run around alternately smashing things into little bricks or building little bricks into something else, in order to collect studs, the currency of the game. It’s simple platforming at its best. My only issue is with the control system. As you’re playing witches and wizards, you can cast certain spells, but sometimes getting the game to understand when you want to cast one is sometimes fiddly and annoying. Also, there seems to be a bug at the end of Year 2 that makes the boss disappear from view even though it’s actually right in front of you. Oddness.

Anyway, if you love Harry Potter, it’s worth playing, but if you’ve played one Lego game, you’ve played them all really.

The World Ends With You



I rarely, if ever, play RPGs. In fact, the last true one I touched may well have been Final Fantasy 8. So imagine my confusion, if you will, when a friend pressed The World Ends With You into my hands, saying ‘You MUST play it!’

It definitely isn’t your usual RPG fare. Yes, there’s levelling and spells (reincarnated here as pins that you wear) and parties and ENDLESS TALKING, but that’s where the similarities end. Your setting, rather than your bog standard medieval or sci fi fare, is the shopping district of Shibuya, Tokyo. You play a character that rather than taking on the hero mantle automatically, is outwardly hostile to everyone he meets. It’s all quite refreshing to see, initially, but at the end of the day underneath it all is just another grindfest.

If you enjoy RPGs, you really should check this out if you haven’t already. If not, well, maybe you should investigate my next item:

Okamiden



You all know how I love Okami with a deep and slightly illegal love (that restraining order is simply proof of said love), and I think I mentioned my unrestrained joy at the prospect of a sequel being released, so you know I got my grubby mitts on Okamiden as soon as was humanly possible.

The verdict? It’s good, but it shouldn’t have been on the DS. I know, I know, the whole point was you could draw directly on the screen, and it was nice to be able to interact with the game world that way, but Okamiden suffered for the gimmick.

Okami was stunning, even by today’s standards. A sequel on the PS3 or Xbox 360 would have been eye bleedingly beautiful, and would have been able to support a much more engaging game (Honestly, Okamiden has one unique mechanic, that of using your in game partner to help you platform, and it gets old QUICKLY), but it got kicked in the head for the almighty DS. An absolute crying shame.

You should still play it, though. Play Okami then play it. You can’t call yourself a gamer if you won’t support truly original titles. I will judge you until you do.

Portal 2



Oh, who am I kidding? I’ve played it, you’ve played it, and even your dog’s played it. ISN’T IT AWESOME?!

Get over it, Professor Gamer

Ok, confession time: Even though I spend nearly every Friday here banging on about how much I love video games, the sad, sad truth is that I suck at them. A lot.

I’ve always sucked. I’ve only been playing games since the original Playstation era (so, since about 1997 for me. That’s still around 14 years though. Wow, I’m getting old), but even back then I sucked. It took me 10 years to even finish the original Tomb Raider. Bah. Back then though, we didn’t have the internet at home, and so I didn’t have the wealth of walkthroughs, tips and tricks that are now available to me. Without them, half of my games would have been unfinished and I’d have probably given up on gaming altogether as it would have been too frustrating.



Here’s the worst confession: I even had to use walkthroughs on Portal 2. Please, try to hold onto your monocles, I know you’re shocked but it would be terrible if you dropped them into your sherry glasses.

Yes, I got stuck traversing Aperture Science, a problem that no one else seemed to have had, according to the Steam forums. I’m not a member, but I enjoy perusing them for the latest bonkers theories. (Chell is an android! The Ratman used the portal gun to escape to the moon!). While I’ve been trawling the forums for crazy, I’ve spotted several threads complaining that Portal 2 just didn’t match up to the challenge of the original Portal. The complaint has even cropped up in Yahtzee’s review of the game in Zero Punctuation yesterday.



Ok, they may have a point. The people who were chomping at the bit for Portal 2 were those who’d played Portal, replayed it, played the custom levels, spent four years yelling ‘The cake is a lie!’ at each other, replayed it again, written terrible fan fiction, then replayed it again for luck. They knew what they were doing. They didn’t need to be shown the mechanics again, they just wanted to run in, start shooting portals everywhere and discover a whole new challenge.

Problem is, you can’t aim your game solely at the crazy rabid fans. You need to appeal to the newcomers too, the ones who’ve never heard of the Weighted Companion Cube. Those players will need a bit of hand holding, or the game will just be an indecipherable mess to them.



When I think about it, 2 was probably a bit easier than 1, but not by much. So why is there so much whining about it? And it’s not just the Valve fans. Wherever you turn on the internet, there’s people arguing that gaming has been dumbed down for today’s market and now anyone could finish Mr Brown’s Shooty Punch Adventure without even breaking a sweat! How could this be allowed?

Is that really a bad thing though? We have to remember that there needs to be a line drawn between ‘challenging’ and ‘just stupidly difficult’. Portal was challenging, ‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia’ on Guitar Hero 3 is just a case of arthritis waiting to happen.

It also depends on what kind of game you’re playing. On Guitar Hero or Rock Band, if you can complete the hardest songs on the ‘Expert’ setting then you are clearly some kind of mutant that finds joy in racking up high scores and making everyone around you feel inferior (or Sunday Matt). In a story driven game like Portal 2 though, you can’t make your player do the same bit over and over until they figure out the exact solution. It breaks the narrative flow, frustrates the player and if it happens long enough, they’ll give up and trade the thing in for something that won’t make them hurl their controllers at the screen.



I don’t hurl controllers anymore, by the way. They’re expensive now.

The point I was making was, the games aren’t being dumbed down now, their difficulty is just being tailored to suit the gameplay. If you’re so desperate to prove yourself as a ‘hardcore’ gamer, go five star ‘Psychobilly Freakout’ or something.

Storytelling in gaming, or a love letter to Portal 2

WARNING: This post will contain massive spoilers for Portal 2. If you’ve not played or finished the game, avoid this like the plague!

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.

This week I’m mostly going to be talking about Portal 2, partly because I’ve just played it (and loved it), but mostly because it’s going to help me prove a point I want to make about the way storytelling is handled in games.

The vast majority of games today seem to plonk themselves in front of the consumer with little or no story at all. Instead they get by on their gameplay mechanics and flashy graphics, and as slick as they both may be, it’s not really enough.

However, there is a small group of games that is bucking this trend and showing us just how it’s done in the game industry. The most recent of these, of course, is Portal 2.



When you break the game down, it doesn’t seem like much. Mute protagonist solves puzzles in stark testing rooms while omnipotent AI taunts her. It’s the way that Valve have fleshed out the story around this situation that makes Portal 2 and its predecessor, Portal, that really makes it special.

So, how do they do it? The problem with games is that it’s just so difficult to get plot across to the player. You don’t have the luxury of huge blocks of text, like novels do, and you can’t take control to show lengthy cut scenes in the style of a film or you’ll bore your audience senseless. There are plenty of examples of these happening (Hi, Metal Gear Solid), but Portal doesn’t. Instead, it relays the story of Aperture Science through the gameplay itself.

The important rule they have stuck to, that any writer knows and should have tattooed onto the inside of their eyelids, is ‘show, don’t tell’. One of the best examples of this is when the game explores the entire history of the facility from the 1960’s to the present day. To do this, the game literally drops you at the bottom of the salt mine the facility resides in, and you play your way through the ancient test chambers, witnessing the downfall of the company and its crazed CEO first hand. It’s powerful, fascinating and above all, interactive.



The gameplay isn’t everything though. There’s also the matter of the script. Games are notorious for their dire scripts and voice acting (Hi Resident Evil) but no one seems to have told Valve this. They have gone for quality over quantity, with only two main characters with major speaking roles, with talented actors voicing them. Ellen McClain is incredible as GLaDOS, somehow expresses the complicated rage of her character through the guise of a computer.



The final aspect of storytelling in gaming, and what makes it so unique, is the participation of the fans. Within hours of a game being released, forums are lit up with discoveries of Easter eggs and hidden gems within the story, and theories and ideas about what the gamers have just experienced. Sometimes this throws up completely bonkers theories (Caroline and Cave Johnson being Chell’s parents, anyone? Yeah, thought not), but if a game has driven the player to dig deeper and discover more layers to the plot for themselves, then we can proclaim it a success as a storytelling medium.

Yes, this is really me harping on about ‘games as art’ again, but I think we really need to highlight issues like these within the industry. Portal 2 is an example of just how it can get it so right, and we can only hope the rest follow.

Joy and Happiness

After waiting what seemed like years and years, me and Friday Voni finally received Portal 2 through the post! Woo! So to show how full of joy and happiness I was and to teach you how to feel the same, I thought I'd do a tutorial on it!

Enjoy!

P.s Happy Zombie Jesus Day one and all!!!