To Minmus and Back

The obvious next step was to land on Kerbin’s more distant (and inclined) moon of Minmus. Space Cheetah 1 was more than up for the job, but I decided to use the slightly refined Space Cheetah 1A, with the troublesome mk1 lander can removed and some solar panels added to recharge the batteries when I forget to turn the lights off.

After his ordeal on the Mun, Jebediah Kerman understandably sat this one out, his rescuer Bill Kerman (no relation?) instead being the first kerbal to plant a flag on Minmus.

When Scott Manley claimed this was actually an easier trip than a voyage to the Mun, I didn’t believe him - but Minmus’ low gravity really does make landing a lot easier and safer.

Home Sweet Home

It was only in the last moments of my seemingly successful rescue mission to the Mun, that I discovered just how unwise it was to place a mk1 lander can at the bottom of my final stage – a capsule too weak to withstand even a parachute-assisted landing.

In one (alternate) reality, Jebediah Kerman bravely travels to Kerbin’s closest moon, lands with his last sliver of fuel, waits there for 12 days (during which time about half a dozen Kerbals are killed testing various rockets intended to rescue him). Finally, a sleek new rocket lands nearby, taking him all the way back to Kerbin, through its atmosphere and then gently down to the ground suspended from a parachute. But not gently enough to stop his half of the dual capsule from crumpling up like tinfoil and crushing him to death.

Fortunately at this point I had finally learned to quick-save, and in the real (albeit later) timeline, the Space Cheetah 1 does not separate its final stage, coming down to land with a combination of its parachute and the last reserves of its plentiful fuel. It’s still a bumpy landing, but at least both kerbonauts survive.

To the Mun and Back, with a Passenger

After a number of failed experiments, and watching a few videos by Scott Manley (hallowed be his name), I came up with the Space Cheetah 1: a much more efficient rocket, more than capable of landing on the Mun and returning to Kerbin.

Having to land near Jebediah’s stranded lander did make things a little trickier, but I managed to touch down within 14km, and Jedediah covered the distance with his jet pack. And so the two brave heroes boarded the rocket for the journey home, blissfully unaware of its lethal design flaw.

Not Quite to the Mun and Back

After the Space Cat 3 left Jebediah Kerman stranded on the Mun, I tried coming up with a beefier rocket to better make the trip there and back. It soon became clear, however, that I was just scaling everything up, creating bigger rockets that were every bit as inefficient as before.

Here three brave kerbonauts managed to pass over Jebediah at an altitude of a few kilometres, a reckless act that left them with barely enough fuel to get back to Kerbin.

To the Mun and… Back?

Having cut my teeth on Orbiter back in the day, the friendlier and more feature-rich Kerbal Space Program is clearly right up my alley. After messing about a bit in Kerbin orbit, my first proper attempt to reach its closest moon (“Mun”) resulted in a safe touchdown of the Space Cat 3’s landing stage, allowing Jebediah Kerman to plant a flag on a brave new world.

Of course, I did almost run out of fuel during the landing, leaving no chance of a return journey, but that just meant I’d won the opportunity to craft a rescue mission…

Played it: Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

On the subject of video games that aren't ashamed to be video games, the superbly titled Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is a prime example. Living by the rule of cool, the cyberpunk themes are plundered for diverse enemies that blur the line between the biological and the technological - in the process covering more interesting topics than the "cyborg modification is bad - yes/no/maybe" of certain other games.  

Revengeance doesn't take itself seriously. It's happy to use the language of video games and it doesn't mind looking silly from time to time if it benefits the overall experience. The gameplay is frantic and fun and, on normal difficulty, I thought a little easy... At least until I reached the final boss battle, which starts out with a giant spider mech trying to stamp on you and only gets more extreme and challenging from there. I emerged from this final onslaught a little like its hero: worn out and pushed to the edge, but mostly just satisfied to have splatted a bad dude and a few hundred of his mooks.

Played Them: XYZZY Best Individual NPC Nominees

If you want to read my dissection of three well received characters from the interactive fiction games of the space year 2012, follow this link.

Played it: Dead Rising 2: Off the Record

When you’re being bombarded with marketing for humourless, over serious, AAA-budget western games, it always feels like a breath of fresh air to play something that’s not ashamed that it’s a video game: something that presents a world with consistent rules and does its best to make you laugh.

Like previous instalments, Dead Rising 2: Off the Record locks you in a semi-open environment with thousands upon thousands of slow moving zombies, and lets you lose to find makeshift weapons, play mini-games, rescue survivors and defeat “psychopath” bosses.

I found the level of challenge, at least in this version, to be tough but fair. It may punish you, but only to try and make you a better player. It may require a bit of dedication, but I didn’t feel that it showed the same contempt for my time that some games do. It allows you to run wild and have fun, but rewards meticulous planning and timekeeping.

It also brings us more Frank West. Okay, he’s yet another white male lead, but in a sea of angry bad-asses out for revenge, it’s easy to like this good-humoured fuck-up with a paunch - a man with groan-worthy one-liners who frequently ends up the butt of the joke himself.

Played it: Zone of the Enders: The Second Runner (HD Edition)

The thing I liked best about the first Zone of the Enders was the cool overworld map, representing a space colony orbiting Jupiter - from which you could descend to more specific arenas full of enemies to be confronted or avoided. The 2nd Runner opts, instead, for a linear progression of levels, some of which allow exploration, but many of which are frantic set pieces.

In every other respect, however, this is a vast improvement on the original: the gameplay requires strategy; the different weapons are all useful in their own ways; the characters are more interesting (even the slightly annoying main character of the first game reappears as a more mature ally); the settings are more varied – and so are the challenges.

In the first game I often wasn’t sure exactly why I failed or succeeded. In The 2nd Runner, it was almost always clear that I failed because I sucked at whatever I was supposed to be doing – whether that was being ganged up on by mooks, learning the rapidly changing attacks of a boss, negotiating a minefield, shooting down giant spaceships or escorting a character who makes Ashley Graham seem like Liberty Prime – and I succeeded by practicing, paying attention and experimenting with different strategies.

In summary, this was probably the most fun I had swearing at my TV so far this year.

Played it: Project Sylpheed

 

After the first mission of this space combat game, we’re treated to the funeral of a character who died during the opening cinematic. Aware that players were given no reason to care about this poor soul, the script makes sure to tell us that “he was a kind man, loved by everyone”. This represents the story elements of Project Sylpheed in a nutshell: events that are on paper dramatic and in execution ham-fisted and artless.

Fortunately, the cut scenes are brief and usually more interested in giving us close-ups of the spaceships that’ll be exploding than providing insights into the inner lives of the characters. The story serves its purpose in terms of justifying why our nimble starfighter should be blowing up red ships and not blue ones, and that is what we will spend by far most of our time doing.

Speaking of time, let’s get this out of the way: each part of every stage has an arbitrary time limit, rarely justified and frequently contradicted. Failing the mission because you didn't shoot down that last lousy fighter in time is pretty frustrating - especially when all that would have happened had you succeeded is the timer would have reset and a bunch more enemies would have spawned. Together with the emphasis on escort missions, it’s often hard to believe your failure is your own fault.

But the battles you get to participate in - dominate, really, with your prototype fighter locking onto dozens of enemies at a time and taking out capital ships with a single torpedo - are massive, colourful and exciting. Swarms of fighters leave spiralling vapour trails between massive spaceships that blast out colourful laser beams and arcing missiles. And you rocket through the whole mess blowing things up left, right and centre. Project Sylpheed looks like the battles I imagined I was taking part in when I played Wing Commander, way back in the day.

The sheer cool factor inspired me to rise to the challenge of these tightly timed escort missions, learning to prioritise targets and dispatch them quickly. And, well, I had fun. I got a real sense of achievement from completing these uncompromising missions, earning points to spend on customising my fighter with huge and even more explodey weapons. And when I did finally reach that last ham-fisted cut scene, I couldn't help but view it with some strange fondness.

Project Sylpheed may be a quirky game with a number of significant flaws, but as the space sim genre is on the cusp of a Kickstarter-funded renaissance, it’s also a solid example of what a modern spaceship game can look like.

Disclaimer: I played the game on normal difficulty, with no DLC weapons and without skipping any missions.

Played it: Zone of the Enders: HD Edition

A game about giant robots flying around an orbital space colony and beating one another up, Zone of the Enders offers shallow but entertaining gameplay and a smattering of those offbeat elements you’d expect from Hideo Kojima (unfairly best known for lengthy cut scenes, which are few on the ground here).

I loved the environments in this thing, soaked up the atmosphere and enjoyed both the simplistic bludgeoning of mechanical mooks and the somewhat more demanding boss fights. My only real complaints are that, of the large number of weapons you acquire, only a handful are actually any use, and the whole thing ends pretty abruptly.

Played it: Hotline Miami

The interesting thing about Hotline Miami is it succeeds where many indie games fail: basically doing the same things as triple-A titles, only better and with complete self awareness.

It's also the best kind of challenging. Dying and retrying actually feels like part of the fun: providing an opportunity to refine your ability to dole out ultraviolence and the freedom to experiment with unlikely strategies.

Coupling fast-paced action with a bizarre plot that's explicitly made open to multiple interpretations, Hotline Miami manages to be a game that rewards both deep thought and off-the-cuff thrill-seeking.

I Made a Thing

This thing is about some guy who you want to die, but won't.

Here it is.

2012: Cool Stuff from the Year the World Ended

Belatedly, it's that completely personal and arbitrary annual list of stuff I found last year and really liked. This time for A.D. 2012: the year the media told us people believed the world would end, but almost nobody actually did, and it didn't.

---Movies

The Raid
A combination of incredible, relentless fight choreography and note-perfect direction make this the best action film in years - if not decades.

The Avengers (a.k.a. Marvel Avengers Assemble)
Not just the pay-off for all the fun Marvel superhero films that led up to it, but a special effects blockbuster where the dialogue is just as fun, if not more so, than the explosions.

The Artist
This beautifully filmed drama is a delightful homage to silent cinema.

---Books

The Scar - China Mieville
A typically uncompromising and imaginative fantasy from Mieville, this time taking a decidedly nautical bent and thoroughly conjuring the true immensity and depths of the sea - plus the strange terror of its uncommon denizens.

Knight of Germany - Professor Johannes Werner
The authorised biography of Oswald Boelcke, the father of air fighting tactics. Much of the book consists of Boelcke's letters home, offering a great insight into one of the world's most interesting historical figures. Werner's commentary, meanwhile, almost seems to embody the insecurity of thirties Germany all too neatly.

Rise of the Videogame Zinesters - Anna Anthropy
Like A Room of One's Own, but with more Mario.

---Comics and Manga

20th Century Boys - Naoki Urasawa
The third year running that this genre-defying epic has appeared on my end-of-year list. If I haven't conveyed my love for it by now, I guess I never will.

Batgirl - Bryan Q. Miller et al.
The first truly satisfying big-name superhero comic I've ever read, that provides a satisfying conclusion for a comic-book character with one of the most devoted fan-bases around.

Saga - Brian K. Vaughan, Fiona Staples
Inspired in no small part by Star Wars, this science fantasy comic mixes space ships and magic, robots and ghosts - while also not shying away from fully fleshing out the ugly side of its unreal galaxy.

---TV Shows

Fringe
Some shows grow on you. Some shows you know you'll love from the first episode. For me, Fringe was the latter.

You could pitch this show as "The X-Files with real story arcs and a consistent mythology", but it's so much more than that. Starting out as a show about a mad scientist helping the FBI deal with mad science crimes, it sprawls into an epic saga with a broad cast of likeable characters, an endless parade of imaginative gimmicks and a ready supply of heart-wrenching drama.

Chuck
Superficially a nerd wish-fulfilment fantasy, this tale of a white-collar loser turned super-spy won me over with its self-awareness, lovably weird characters, cheerful tone and consistent knack for making me laugh.

The Yogscast
Video game content that values the experience of playing games rather than regurgitating advertising copy. Exactly the kind of stuff television channels seem to have no interest in showing me.

---Games

Dishonoured
World-building is the part of fiction at which games excel, and the world of Dishonoured is intriguing, imaginative, atmospheric and exactly my cup of tea. Also one of the year's many examples of something achieving success outside the narrow military shooter genre that seemed to be dominating the medium.

Xenoblade Chronicles
The Japanese role-playing game we've all been waiting for, set in a mindbogglingly massive and beautifully realised fantasy world.

Metal Gear Solid 3: HD Edition
The perfect storm of complex stealth gameplay, over-the-top characters and barmy storytelling.

Played It: FTL: Faster Than Light

Mayday... Mayday...

This is the S.S. Space Cat, a Federation starship deep in Mantis territory. We have been attacked and boarded by pirates and are in need of immediate assistance.

Attempts to expose the invaders to space have back-fired... They disabled our life support systems before teleporting away and we are unable to re-pressurise those sectors... We've already sent two crew members in there, and both suffocated before they could even begin repairs... Fires are raging out of control, consuming even more oxygen that we don't have...

Is anybody out there? We are carrying information vital to the Federation.

Please respond!

[static]

Saturnalia

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

"Just in time for the holidays, NASA's Cassini spacecraft, in orbit around Saturn for more than eight years now, has delivered another glorious, backlit view of the planet Saturn and its rings. (Click to read more and get a larger view...)"

Happy holidays, you lot.

Buy yourself something nice and we'll say that it's from me.

Played It: Zeno Clash

Zeno Clash is a game about punching people. Punching people and sometimes shooting them. Or hitting them with a club.

Our anti-hero and puncher-in-chief is Ghat, a tattooed human on the run from his multi-species brothers and sisters after murdering their hermaphrodite Father-Mother. Together with his horned girlfriend, he flees civilisation: past the territory of the voluntarily insane Corwid of the Free; pursued through a desert by a squirrel-bomb throwing bounty hunter; to the End of the World, where he awakens a strange and morally ambiguous entity of incredible power...

Zeno Clash is delightfully barmy, unrepentantly imaginative and daringly original. It's also unpretentious, good-humoured and colourful. I am, sadly, not the most comfortable with beat-em-ups, but if I were this might actually be the perfect game for my tastes.

Played It: XCOM: Enemy Unknown

The original UFO: Enemy Unknown is one of my all-time favourite games and - in my opinion at least - this modern version is a fantastic update. I wouldn’t be one to say that it’s better than the original, but it does manage to improve on it in a few areas.

Being able to customise your troops, see people milling about inside your base and view the battlefield from more human angles are welcome additions. It’s just a shame that like so many of these updates (see also Deus Ex: Human Revolution) the original is actually larger and more complex. This new version also, and this is probably the clincher for me, lacks that unremittingly bleak atmosphere that made the whole world feel endangered by inscrutable alien foes.

It’s still a solid, addictive and challenging strategy game, though, and hopefully a chink in the armour of the overwhelming lack of diversity we've seen in terms of big budget game genres.

"You never know."

If you're not already interested in this film for other (old, Austrian) reasons, you may like to know, if you don't already, that Kim Jee-woon is the director.

If that name seems familiar, it's because he also brought us A Bittersweet Life and The Good, The Bad, The Weird - two of my favourite films.

Played It: Spec Ops: The Line

Although some of the initial discussion suggested that Spec Ops: The Line might be a game to handle war well and realistically, by now I think it's commonly accepted that this is more a deconstruction of the gung-ho portrayal of war in modern military shooters.

The order of the day is running through pretty much every standard trope in the big book of generic war game Lego components and making you feel really, really bad about everything you do. This is the game to take our culture's current most popular role for the player character - the tough guy who kills hundreds of people for what he believes to be right - and actually tries to characterise him appropriately. Not to spoil too much, but it turns out he's probably a guy with a few character defects, to say the least.

There are debates to be had about whether this is a game that tries to have its cake and eat it - to titillate with violence and military fetishism, only to absolve itself of responsibility with a fancy plot. Whichever side of the fence you fall on (and for me I think the gameplay and plot interwove very nicely) Spec Ops: The Line is certainly thought-provoking. Not a perfect game, by any means, but ample proof that both the will and the ability exist to make video games that tackle weighty themes with a modicum of complexity.

"You should maybe not do the thing."

Played it: Sleeping Dogs

Drawing inspiration from movies like Infernal Affairs and City On Fire, Sleeping Dogs puts you in the role of an undercover cop infiltrating Hong Kong triads and getting tangled up in a web of conflicting loyalties.

Structurally and thematically it seems to draw a lot from Red Dead Redemption. But while RDR's John Marston is fleshed out beautifully as a man who wants to reform even while events (quite possibly including the maniac holding the controller) continue to force him to do bad things, the pacing in Sleeping Dogs feels slightly off, the stakes rise unevenly and the twists are telegraphed far in advance.

So that just leaves us speeding around a virtual Hong Kong in flashy cars, getting into fist fights, blowing things up in slow motion and singing karaoke. Nothing in this game is original, that's true, but it's all slickly implemented, consistently engaging and good rollicking fun.

"He called them his robot family."

Played it: Binary Domain

When it comes to Japanese studios attempting to pander to occidental audiences with their own limp take on over-saturated, traditionally Western genres, Binary Domain seems like it should be exhibit A. We have here a cover shooter in which a shaven-headed American soldier blasts his way through a futuristic city supported by a cast of national stereotypes. It's rather unsurprising that this game has largely sunk without a trace - and considerably more surprising that this is actually a bit of a shame.

The basic gameplay mechanics are extremely solid. The cover system - which is both the defining trait of the cover shooter genre and the part that's most frequently implemented poorly - works smoothly. The enemies are a variety of robots which are great fun to blow to bits, capable of adapting to damage (at one point one still came at me after I blew both its arms off) and understandably prepared to risk their metal necks. This is not a game where you can pick a good piece of cover and spend the whole battle popping in and out of it. Enemies will flank and rush you. Pushing forwards is often safer than hunkering down and being outmanoeuvred.

Pulling your weight is also important to the game's trust mechanic, where if the other characters think you're rubbish (or possibly even a secret robot), the story will take a turn for the worse at key points. And although the dialogue is predictably cheesy and the characters are well-worn stereotypes, Binary Domain does actually have a surprisingly cool story and setting.

This is a future where rising sea levels have all but wiped out the world's major cities. Advanced robot workers have enabled the rich to build gleaming new metropolises on top of the old ruins, while the poor still languish below. When it's discovered that advanced robots are impersonating humans, that aforementioned team of national stereotypes is dispatched to the once more isolationist Japan, infiltrating the lower levels of Tokyo and ascending to its high tech heights with the help of the criminal underclass - all while under attack from the local robot militia.

Naturally there's some attempt to cover Blade Runner style themes, with a sprinkling of Alex Proyas' I Robot and Hideo Kojima's Snatcher, and at times it manages to be very effective. One scene in which some yakuza brutalise a man who hadn't realised he was a robot, for example, really stuck with me. The architecture of the city, both above and below, is also properly awesome, and gorgeously depicted.

For all that, though, this is still Yet Another Cover Shooter. The developers show that they've learned well from Western games, and in the case of the boss fights demonstrate a subject where they should probably be giving the lessons, but this is a refinement of the genre - not a reinvention or even reinvigoration. If you're bored with this kind of game by now, Binary Domain probably won't be able to revitalise your interest. Familiarity aside, if you like action games and science fiction, do give this some consideration.

Played it: The Last Story

Along with Xenoblade Chronicles, this is the one of the handful of innovative Japanese role playing games that have been released in the twilight years of the Wii. Where Xenoblade streamlined and opened up the traditional JRPG formula in a highly original setting, The Last Story opts for more of a stock medieval fantasy land, while also ripping out all of the gameplay you might expect and replacing it with transplants from completely different genres.

The result is something that could best be described as a spiky-haired Gears of War with an emphasis on close combat and with the ability to issue orders to your AI team mates. This form of gameplay is actually enhanced by the linear, scripted nature of each quest and side-quest, with every battle carefully crafted to give you a different challenge. The bosses in particular require a high degree of strategy, and developing effective tactics to beat them is very satisfying.

Although I did grow to like all the characters as the game progressed, the script is rather weak, relying on the cast delivering lengthy explanations of motives that fail to flow naturally from their reaction to events. These are nicely entertaining heroes to send battling through dungeons, but most attempts to develop them and embroil them in drama manage to feel both forced and predictable.

One surprising high point of the game is the setting of Lazulis City, the hub that the heroes return to between dungeon crawls in order to buy and upgrade items and find optional side quests. At first this may seem like a disappointing stock medieval city, especially compared to the more imaginative settings we often get from JPGs. As you spend time inhabiting it, though, you find a complex geography of streets and alleys, populated with plenty of people (and the odd cat). Shouldering your way through a busy shopping district, or finding a quiet courtyard where you can sit and listen to an old man's nostalgic stories, Lazulis City feels vibrant and alive where many RPG cities are static and sparsely populated.

The Last Story emphasises a narrative that should be a lot tighter, with stronger character motivation and less exposition, but it's still a solid action RPG with a surprisingly interesting setting.

Read it: Bryan Q. Miller's Batgirl Rising; The Flood; The Lesson

The problem with DC superhero comics is one of impenetrability. The characters themselves are great, but the stories told with them rely on knowledge of complex backstory, are frequently told over multiple concurrent titles, and are subject to editorial fiats more about repositioning franchises in the marketplace than creating solid drama. Coming from a background of television, writer Bryan Q. Miller is well versed in telling a story in linked but approachable episodes, while dancing to the tune of the men in suits - and the result is very much the superhero comic I have been looking for.

Miller focuses on a solid, entertaining story of costumed crime fighting, developing new Batgirl Stephanie Brown as a character, and fleshing out strong relationships with her unknowing mother and a sceptical Oracle. Where events from other comics intrude on this core, Miller actively skirts around the foreign plot, turning what could be unwelcome interruptions into fun diversions. This strong sense of a unified story, so uncommon in DC comics, extends to the entire series exhibiting a beginning, a middle and an end. Compared to the usual sense of incompletion, the three collected editions of Miller's run on Batgirl form a uniquely satisfying whole, and turning the last page provides an actual sense of closure for a character who (I believe) has yet to appear in the new DC continuity.

A variety of artists contribute to the visuals, leading to an uneven quality, but things are always colourful and there are enough contributions from the awesome Dustin Nguyen to keep me happy. Pere Perez, who pencils the final issue, also pulls out all the stops for a spectacular few final pages.

Of all the DC books I've read (admittedly only a tiny fraction of those published), these are the three that I'm happy to recommend unreservedly.

"Can you just sign this please?"

Played it: NeverDead

NeverDead is a game with enormous potential, but which manages to flub pretty much every one of its selling points and remain struggling to escape mediocrity.

The promise of playing as an immortal character who remains in control of his severed body-parts is alluring, but in practice the game is frustrating even on its easiest difficulty setting. You spend too much time gathering together your disparate bits only to lose them again right away, all while menaced by a breed of annoying, endlessly respawning monster that is more than capable of inflicting you with a game over screen.

The setting is an intriguing Japanese fantasy world that has progressed from spiky-haired heroes to sleazy corporate commercialism, but we never find out much about it beyond the fact that getting anywhere requires killing an undisclosed number of demons to banish various force fields.

And the characters are fun and likeable, if archetypal, but used for little more than cheap laughs and obvious melodrama. Anti-hero Bryce in particular is refreshingly depicted as quite the underdog, but the few attempts to capitalise on any sympathy we may have for him fall rather flat.

NeverDead is certainly far from a bad game, but in a way it's almost more disappointing than that: the seed of a cult hit that instead grew into something improbably unremarkable.

Played it: Xenoblade Chronicles

It's taken me almost a year to get through Xenoblade Chronicles, completing the better part of its over 400 side quests and fully rebuilding a ruined city. There are still a few quests, hidden skill branches, optional bosses and rare items I've yet to tick off, but I feel that I've fully enjoyed the game without needing to scrape the sweet-but-crusty residue out of the bottom. Or not for a while yet, anyway.

Over 160 hours of gameplay later, I stand by my original opinion that this is the Japanese Role Playing Game we've been waiting for: the one that keeps everything that makes a JRPG a JRPG - the imaginative fantasy setting that mixes magic and technology, the beautiful heroes in outrageous fashions, the pacifistic and humanistic themes that nevertheless result in epic battles - but while clearly having learned the lessons of more open, less heavy-handed Western RPGs.

Xenoblade Chronicles is a progressive JRPG, and an enormous open-world adventure. Its only significant flaw is that its size and openness extend beyond what its otherwise laudable improvements are readily able to cope with. Exploring the huge, memorable, beautifully designed landscapes and discovering new things is one of the chief appeals of the game, but encountering numerous side quests that require finding a particular minor character in one sprawling level, who you've probably already met (but you can't remember exactly where or when) gets pretty tedious, and tracking down the items needed to rebuild that aforementioned city will be impossible without a detailed guide for all but the most dedicated players.

Where this game really triumphs is in its world building, an aspect of fiction that video games are uniquely qualified for. Here we get the opportunity to explore an imaginative, colourful and heartfelt world, infused with its own consistent mythology and replete with interacting cultures and conflicting characters. We get a sense for its inhabitants, and their relationships (positive or otherwise) are linked explicitly with the gameplay. The chemistry between the main party of heroes is also made central to the story - not uncommon in JRPGs, but here developed with particular care, good humour and humanity.

For me, this is the best JRPG I've played since Chrono Trigger, and probably a game that I'll remember as one of my all-time favourites. But, as with its otherwise awesome interface, its incredible size works against it. If you find that you love it, Xenoblade Chronicles will consume your time and leave you with a sense of having spent it somewhere wonderful (in the literal sense of the word). Anything less than that, though, and it's probably just too big to swallow.

Plague Rats, Whale Oil and Stabbing

Dishonoured looks like my kind of stuff.

For Your Consideration

I think you should go see The Raid.

"At least the fish will be my friends."

Played it: Metal Gear Solid 3 (HD Edition)

The year is 1964, and CIA infiltrator Naked Snake has been sent into the Russian wilderness to extract a defecting scientist. When Snake is betrayed by his mentor, "the Boss", and her elite Cobra Unit, he finds the US threatening him with execution, while the Soviet Union teeters on the brink of nuclear war.

If Metal Gear Solid 2 saw the stealth component of the series properly mature (bearing in mind that the first game in the series was released at about the same time as Thief: The Dark Project), Metal Gear Solid 3 is where this gameplay truly comes into its own. The radar is de-emphasised in favour of proper control over the camera. Camouflage, silencers that degrade over time and a made-up martial art called CQC are thrown into the mix. Things work differently enough from the previous two games that I pretty much had to learn the rules all over again, but, as always, while things may not be very realistic, they are consistent, entertaining and open to possibilities.

As you collect equipment, the number of different ways you have to get through each area will increase dramatically. You can avoid, kill, tranquillize and knock out enemies, interrogate them, jam their radios, distract them, throw venomous snakes at them... And there are a lot of areas to get through. Sneaking is now what you'll spend the vast majority of the game doing: through numerous large, open environments. This game dwarfs its predecessors, while still being packed full of little details and taking you through an absurdly wide variety of terrain types.

In addition to the refined gameplay, Metal Gear Solid 3 also tightens up the storytelling. Yes, there are still plenty of lengthy cut scenes - but they're considerably more focused, and with a lot less bald exposition. Nowhere is this more apparent than the boss fights with the various members of the Cobra Unit, who are left intriguingly mysterious - while bosses of previous games in the series usually poured their hearts out in lengthy, demystifying monologues. Elsewhere there's more of an emphasis on action, humour and actually getting to the point.

The cartoon-ish, sometimes supernatural characters are always interesting and frequently likeable. Ocelot, for example, who had been becoming more and more of a cackling, moustache-twirling villain, is here an ambiguous youth with conflicting ideals of honour and loyalty. The Boss is an awesome and sympathetic antagonist, making you hotly anticipate the final showdown, even as you understand Snake's reluctance to fight her. Snake himself is equal parts bad-ass super soldier and ignorant comic relief. And for all that many games may moralise about the ethics of war, it's difficult to imagine a more organic incentive not to kill your opponents than the creepy and blackly comic boss fight/puzzle that pits you against "spirit medium soldier" the Sorrow.

In one word: I found this game fun. The straightforward but flexible gameplay, the outrageous story, the unforgettable characters and their idiosyncratic boss fights, the explosive finale - everything adds up to an enjoyable and surprisingly unique whole.

Posty Posty

I'm busy for a couple of weeks, and everything goes and changes on me. At least it seems we finally have cuts in Blogger.

Played it: Metal Gear Solid 2 (HD Edition)

I loved the first Metal Gear Solid game for its unique atmosphere, memorable boss fights and endlessly inventive gameplay, but one thing I always thought it fell short on was the supposedly prominent sneaking element. There were only a handful of areas to sneak through, and once you learned the right strategies it was trivial to traverse them (arguably a good thing given the amount of backtracking). Yes, the game mixed things up occasionally – giving you a cold that alerts the enemy when you sneeze, or forcing you to figure out which guard is a disguised ally - but for the most part it was the bosses and action sequences that made the biggest impression.

Starting Metal Gear Solid 2, my immediate impression was that the stealth gameplay had finally matured. There are a large variety of ways to kill guards, knock them out or avoid them, and they've learned plenty of new tricks themselves for detecting your presence. This upgrade isn't one of realism, I should add, so although downed baddies no longer blink out of existence, if you want an assault rifle you'll have to find it in a floating power up rather than take one off the enemy. But that's all well and good: the Metal Gear games have never been about realism, but about presenting a world with a consistent set of video game-ish rules that even spill over into the story (where many game stories seem terrified of acknowledging how the world they're set in actually works).

So the stealth is pretty fantastic, equalling the Thief series in my estimation, and the boss fights and action sequences are naturally great as well, even if several seem analogous to parts of the previous game. I even quite liked the early twist in the story that enraged many fans at the time of the original release. Where the game did start to quickly burn through the good will it had earned was the ending. I found the final boss fight really fun, but it's sandwiched between two very lengthy cut scenes that are pretty much solid exposition.

I don't know, I really did like this game a lot, but I was hoping for a definitive Metal Gear Solid experience, and I still don't think this quite got there. The self-deconstruction is either very clever or utterly self-defeating; Big Shell is a cool location but the slightly wonky tone stops it from obtaining the epic atmosphere of Shadow Moses Island; and Dead Cell are a reasonable substitute for FOXHOUND but not quite as memorable.

Perhaps I would find what I looking for in Metal Gear Solid 3... (Spoiler: I did.)

"He prefers cherries."

Played it: Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Whether it's visuals or audio, you'll be hard pressed to find a more sumptuously atmospheric game than Deus Ex: Human Revolution. This is a future of audacious mega-structures, human augmentation, renaissance fashion - and, naturally, a cyberpunk underbelly of lofty goals turned sour. If nothing else, this game is a treat to explore.

Ignoring the second Deus Ex game (a mediocre shooter that might have been well received if not for its supposed heritage), and comparing it to the first, Human Revolution has more satisfying and consistent gameplay, and a tighter, more natural storyline. But the environments of the first game are still much larger and allow for more emergent styles of play. It's a shame that the focus on technically superior graphics above all else is leading to smaller and narrower games, even as platforms increase exponentially in power.

But despite a few hiccups (see also: the out-sourced and utterly incongruous boss fights), this is a first-class game that combines old-school ambition with a more refined sensibility.