The Motion Control Wars: Part 3

With Playstation Move having been out of the door for a few weeks now, the last card to be played is in Microsoft's hand.

Today, it was revealed that Kinect's launch line-up of games will include 17 titles (12 on launch day itself to be precise; with the remaining five following in the next couple of weeks).

As predicted (see Part 2), it's mini and party game city, which stands it in good stead for the impending "I want a Kinect, daddy!" season - especially given that the only 'standard' title there is a new Harry Potter game.

This shot is from E3. The list has since grown to 17.

Kinect's looking to be a hit, with demand apparently surpassing what stores had predicted in some regions. Despite its hefty price tag (again discussed in part 2), Kinect should be well in to the public eye by the time it launches with Microsoft reportedly ready to blow a whopping one billion dollars (ouch) on its advertising campaign.

You have to wonder whether the profits are going to offset the costs of that - and they probably won't - but all Microsoft are looking for at the moment is a good foothold in the market. They'll be aiming for a much higher attach rate than the Wii managed - it suffered badly from poor software sales - with their budget (£30) Kinect titles.

Undoubtedly, the Live network offers another platform to be exploited. It's much more elaborate than the Wii's offering - which was successful in its own right - and with the new console having built-in wireless internet capabilities Microsoft will be looking to drive Xbox Live Marketplace and indeed Gold Membership sales. How long before we see Kinect titles offering a substantial online multiplayer portion? The possibility of playing Kinect with your friend across the other side of the country could well be something Microsoft would like to push in their attempts to be the driving force in moving the motion control platform forwards.

Poor launch showing? Playstation's budget Move controller.

So, were we wrong about Kinect's potential success? Very possibly. Move has been extremely quiet since its launch, and with a somewhat lacking performance on the promotion front from Sony, Microsoft could well have the upper hand moving in to Christmas. Wii sales continue to tick over but surely its age is beginning to pass. It's ready to be replaced by something shinier and 'cooler'.

Were we wrong about its appeal to the core gamer? Not at all. You just have to look at Kinect's launch line-up to see that - and Move is still very much on top in that department.

Medal of Honor beta finally launches on 360

Having been live on both PC and Playstation 3 since the first of this month, the Medal of Honor beta has finally hit the Xbox 360 after suffering numerous delays. 

In a post over at the EA forums, community manager Matthew Pruitt spilled the details.
"The team is hard at work building an awesome gameplay experience for Medal of Honor," he wrote. "Your feedback is crucial to enhancing the experience."

The beta has also been extended until July 31^st due to the issues.

The multiplayer side of the Modern Warfare retaliation from EA is being handled by DICE, the highly regarded developers of the Battlefield franchise.

If you have a code, it can be redeemed at www.medalofhonor.com/beta. You can grab one by pre-ordering the game at selected retailers. The full game, which is a reboot of the classic World War 2 series, will be on shelves in October.

The Motion Control Wars: Part 2

Today, Microsoft officially announced the pricing of its Kinect motion controller. It'll be retailing at the not-so-modest price of £129.99 along with a free copy of Kinect: Adventures.
Also revealed was an Xbox plus Kinect bundle, priced at £249.99. At this point, it's already a lot more expensive than a Wii - not to mention that the Xbox in question only has 4GB of internal flash memory.

Far from the rumoured £50 price point (which, realistically, was never going to materialise), Kinect is in danger of pricing itself out of the market.
We've seen how poor the launch line-up of games is looking for Kinect, and unless anything radical is unveiled between now and its release, it'll be stuck without titles that justify its existence.

In short, Kinect will be a mini-game feast for the opening months of its release. You can get that from Nintendo, and the shortcomings of the 4GB bundle are obvious. Indeed, it tots up to the same price as a PS3 slim console minus Sony's motion offering, Move.

But how long will it be before that 4GB needs upgrading? Yet more cash. For the long-term, Kinect really isn't a viable investment. People - families especially - who just want the system itself and to simply top it up with a few games every so often are not going to be best buds with Microsoft when they discover extra outlay is needed after a certain point.

And all for some frantic flapping during mini-games? On that front, Microsoft is four years late to the party. For such entertainment, there's only one word on the minds of consumers: Wii.

Call of Duty Multiplayer Will Remain Free – For Now

Nigh on a week ago, video game industry analyst Michael Pachter suggested that Activision should take advantage of its huge online user base by charging players who want continued access to Call of Duty multiplayer modes.  

Whilst not a new idea, similar models that have launched on Playstation 3 or Xbox 360 have not seen the same wild success as Activision-Blizzard PC mainstay World of Warcraft.

That doesn't put off Activision bigwig Robert Kotick, though, who discussed the idea merely a month back.
"I would have Call of Duty be an online subscription service tomorrow [if I could]," said Kotick, who also recently bemoaned Activision's lack of income from multiplayer services they supply.

Today the two main developers of the series, Infinity Ward and Treyarch, have each profusely denied that such services will appear in their games in the future.

Infinity Ward creative strategist Robert Bowling quashed the rumour, stating that "nobody has to pay to play COD or MW2 multiplayer, nor will they."

In the Treyarch camp, community manager Josh Olin confirmed that a pay to play model will not be appearing in 2010's Call of Duty title Black Ops.

It remains to be seen what newly-formed studio Sledgehammer Games will be bringing to the table for the franchise. Assigned to develop Call of Duty in 2009, Sledgehammer may well hold the key to the COD subscription model.

What does seem certain, though, is that both Infinity Ward and Treyarch will resist implementing such a service, once again highlighting the supposed poor relationship between Activision and its studios.

Music Review: Recovery - Eminem

Music reviews are something I've often considered, but ultimately shied away from. Unlike video games, music is really very subjective. Each and every one of our tastes are different - and who is a reviewer to say whether or not you'll like a particular album, track or artist?

The same could be argued for video games, of course, but in that case a technically flawed product is always technically flawed no matter which way you look at it. With music, discerning a rating is difficult. You don't get broken music. Unless you use your CDs as frisbees.

Music invokes emotions in ways that other formats can't. And music critics have it tough. All you have to do is look at the spread of reviews that Marshall Mathers' sixth album, Relapse, received on its Metacritic page. Some reviews scored Relapse with as much as eight points difference from one another.

The user reviews section just down the page is a different picture. It's filled with dissatisfied fans blasting the recent efforts of Mathers, criticising him as 'trying too hard', and 'less than average'.

Artist interaction with fans is something that doesn't happen enough. Oasis' stage presence - or total lack - epitomises the level of recognition fans have come to expect now. It's unusual then, that in a direct address to fans, an artist will admit their own faults. Mathers goes as far as accepting criticisms aimed in his direction in the lead single Not Afraid, confessing 'Let’s be honest, that last Relapse CD was eh/Perhaps I ran them accents into the ground'.

It's a statement which forms the general theme of the album, the subject appearing prominently once again in Talkin' 2 Myself (which features excellent vocals from Kobe), which documents Mathers' struggle in reclaiming his rap crown - 'Them last two albums didn't count/Encore I was on drugs, Relapse I was flushin' 'em out'.

Most impressive is they way that Mathers keeps his word and truly shows exactly why he was held in such high regard following his first albums. There are blips, such as the Relapse-esque So Bad which appears to have survived from the first cut of the album around a year ago, but as a whole the album reasserts Mathers' position as one of the greatest lyricists around.

Now returned is Eminem's uncanny ability to weave deep meaning into only short verses which have been missing from his music in recent times, and Recovery represents exactly that - it's a true return to form, and one that sees Mathers' status returned once again.

Who Won E3?

Far from the most spectacular E3, 2010's event held little of note with regards to big announcements. Motion control systems had their formal debuts, new hardware was launched by both Microsoft and Nintendo and a couple of new titles were released into the wild. The question is, who 'won'?

Microsoft

+ Kinect lives up to its promises, and looks every bit as accurate as was claimed

+ The new Xbox 360 is a marked improvement on the current model

+ The Xbox looks to be moving forward in light of the shutdown of original Xbox Live

- Kinect is for casuals

- The whole conference was for casuals

- Microsoft tried to atone for this by giving out free 360s

Sony

+ Move looks very promising

+ Games lineup - extensive PSP catalogue, and Killzone 3 looks amazing

+ Kevin Butler

- Boring and monotonous Jack Tretton

- Continued persistence with PSPgo

- Playstation Plus sucks

Nintendo
+ New Zelda looks great
+ 3DS is amazing
+ Done-away with Cammie Dunaway
- Nintendo don't know how wi-fi works, blaming 'wireless devices' for controller interference
- Too much translation from Japanese to English
- No Vitality Sensor. Nobody really gives a damn about it, but it's the principle of Ninty casting aside their own product before it ever saw the light of day

Winner: Sony

Leaving Nintendo in its dust and Microsoft a distant third, Sony pulled this one out of the bag without having to resort to new hardware announcements, with a better all-round showing including the versatile Move alongside a stellar lineup of future titles.

The Motion Control Wars

Big reveals and surprise announcements were thin on the ground at this year's E3, with both Sony and Microsoft dedicating vast segments of their conferences to (re)introducing their respective motion control systems, Move and the newly-branded Kinect.

With Nintendo's foot already firmly in the door on the motion control front, the retaliations from their competitors did conjure up some questions. It was interesting to see in which direction Sony and Microsoft are going to be taking their innovations - and they certainly differ.

Kinect probably opens up the more avenues of the three, with complete body tracking meaning even the subtlest movements of a gamer could potentially be used as a control method. Avenues such as head tilting and leaning  which could come in especially handy in shooters or racers. It was interesting to see, then, that some of the guys you'd expect to be taking advantage of this - Cliff Bleszinski of Epic Games, for example - seem to be distancing themselves from Kinect, refusing to be drawn on what would simply be a "tacked-on" gimmick were it to be implemented into the third iteration of the Gears of War series. For the time being, it looks as though Kinect is going to be stuck with its catalogue of casual launch titles, and not the controller/Kinect hybrid games that the hardcore crowd are pining for. Bleszinski does show some intent for the future, though, not ruling out some dedicated Kinect games from Epic in the future. "The technology intrigues me," he says.

As it stands, though, Microsoft appear aiming for the Wii's family-oriented market. Launch games - which are mainly being churned out of the Rare studios - such as the abominably named 'Kinectimals' along with 'Kinect Sports' take the place of staple Wii titles. The new entry into the Forza series does little to inspire, appearing to be entirely Kinect-based rather than a follow-up to the previous hardcore iterations.
It's early days of course, and the technology on show in the Forza demo did look as though it could certainly come in useful in a full Forza title. Luckily, Microsoft has far from ruled out incorporating Kinect into games aimed at the Xbox's core audience. They're certainly wary of alienating existing customers, and it's something they will avoid at all costs.
"I'd like to see what a first person shooter would be on Kinect someday," says the global marketing director of Xbox 360, Albert Penello. "You're just seeing the first generation of stuff."

Proper first-party Kinect titles look to be a while off, then. On the third-party front, SEGA have been hard at work on a game for the more dedicated gamers. We're yet to hear what it actually is, but SEGA promises it'll be released alongside "more clever and sophisticated packages".
At the moment, Kinect is definitely one to keep an eye on. Slated to be released at the princely sum of $150, core Xbox users might find themselves better off investing at a later date when a wider selection of titles are likely to be available. If you want the casual titles, though, it's better than the Wii at those. Probably.

In the opposite corner is Sony's Playstation Move. It's... err, a black Wiimote. Cleverly, though, Sony have taken it in a different direction. We've already discussed how Move is going to have to stand out to be worthwhile, and Sony have seemingly obliged.

Debuting with titles such as Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2011 and also featuring in both Heavy Rain and Resident Evil 5 in new boxed editions, Move offers a more accurate experience than its Nintendo counterpart. Precision is the name of the game here, especially since the release of MotionPlus for Wii which built upon the not-so-accurate Wiimote in order to offer a better experience in Nintendo's core titles such as the newly-announced Zelda title, Skyward Sword.
The first-party introductory titles on offer for Move include the intriguing Sorcery and SOCOM 4, which would no doubt scare off the 'soccer-moms' of the casual demographic, instead enticing the opposite end of the market. It's a brave move, but they've covered all their bases with the obligatory Buzz! titles in the launch lineup.
The killer for the Move, though, is the price. For just fifty pounds, you can get your hands on a controller, the required Eye camera, and a selection of demo titles. Compared with Kinect, Move offers a much better package. Gamers who lament the Wii's poor graphical capabilities but long for the stick waving waggle controls are now catered for at a truly affordable price.

The tick of time will tell who'll come out on top. From a games perspective, it's got to be Sony. Whether it's a commercial hit is another matter, but for its budget price and titles on offer, true gamers will no doubt favour the Move.
Kinect, on the other hand, is definitely for you if you're into jumping, shaking, running and other living room exertions. Hopefully we'll see Microsoft take advantage of the powerful little cam in future for something a little more sophisticated.

A Look Back At: Mass Effect 2

This is the first in the 'A Look Back At' feature series. Somewhere between a short review and a retrospective, I'll be giving a more critical analysis of games gone by.

It's 2183. A rogue Spectre is on the loose, and he's pretty taken by the idea of universe domination. His name is Saren and he's not such a nice guy. Indoctrinated by the Reaper known as Sovereign and used as a puppet for its own plans, Saren is public enemy number one.
This is, of course, the general premise of 2007's Mass Effect.

As is well documented, it was pretty impressive. It surprised at every turn, and it was very involving too, with the new and improved innovation of dialogue choices which also allowed the player to direct the more minor parts of the plot - something never properly explored in the past.

In the build-up to the release of Mass Effect 2, Bioware slowly began to roll back the covers on its blockbuster sequel. Refined combat system. New party members. Shiny weapons. 
Carried over to Mass Effect 2 were the dialogue options, and this time the implementation of player-dictated storyline was taken to new levels. The finale of the game was completely open. Shepard could die. Your squad could die. Shepard might survive. There were a plethora of variables which would ultimately affect the last thing you see before the end credits begin to roll, entirely under control of the player.

There was always a niggling fear - in the back of our minds, at least - that perhaps, by deviating from the structure of the original title, Mass Effect 2 might just be a totally different game than we were expecting. We weren't let down in that respect. It still felt, fundamentally, like Mass Effect in every way. No, we were let down by Mass Effect 2 in an entirely different department.

The Gears of War-esque cover system, the improved shooting mechanics and the new levels are all undeniably brilliant. Even on their own, they stand head and shoulders above most other games released in the past year. It is a Bioware title, though, and it's what we've come to expect.

Except it's not. 

You see, as clever and affecting as the endgame in Mass Effect 2 is, you really can see it coming from a mile off. A mile off meaning it's right on the back of the box. The story - save for the start and end of the game – is lacking. Simply put, in Mass Effect 2, there's too much freedom offered to the player in the mission routine of recruit, loyalise and repeat; more specifically in the way these missions can be undertaken in any order - or not at all.

So much so that to weave in a story between these missions would be damn difficult for Bioware. The plot development we do get comes in the form of intermissions every so often from The Illusive Man. There are no big twists, no big reveals. The story during the main bulk of the campaign is pretty much non-existent. Apart from the brief sidesteps from the main routine – boarding a derelict reaper springs to mind – it is painfully uninspired.

There's no doubting, as mentioned above, that Mass Effect 2 is a brilliant game. It just seems that maybe this time, in aiming for the spectacular, Bioware neglected to give as much attention to the core element of any RPG – its story. It simply doesn't quite manage to juggle everything at once.

More than anything, it's a testament to how well the original Mass Effect was structured and written. So maybe there was nothing quite as brilliant as the climax and subsequent denouement of its sequel, and there are many welcome additions and refinements brought to the table by Mass Effect 2. But in a genre where the creation and development of the universe in which the game takes place is of very high importance, we can't help but feel that Mass Effect 2 isn't, as a complete package, on a par with its predecessor.

Sony’s Move: who is it actually for?

In a move which surprised absolutely no-one, Sony kicked off GDC yesterday by officially revealing their brand new controller. It's called the Move, and it's also strikingly (suspiciously) similar to the Wii remote. So much so that it's not exactly clear who or what Sony's target market actually is.

Since the Wii is only ever regarded as a success - commercially at least - amongst more casual gamers (case in point: Dead Space Exraction), it's a strange move by Sony to release what's essentially a copy – only with better looks and more precision. One of the main attractions of the Wii is the affordable price point, and with Sony reporting that the Move is going to launch at 'under $100' (read: $99) as a mere add-on for the existing Playstation 3, it seems a lot to ask for a little extra sparkle in comparison to its competitor.

It's simply not reasonable to expect that casual gamers will choose to pay the premium price, even less acknowledge the difference between the two. And this is where Sony needs to tread especially carefully: Move needs to do what the Wii didn't - appeal to hardcore gamers without being a gimmick or a hindrance.

Sony has already demonstrated Move in action with SOCOM 4. It was particularly unimpressive; especially considering the guy playing was just sitting in a chair as you would with a controller. It would seem pretty unrealistic to assume that anyone would choose to point a controller at the screen rather than enjoy the accuracy of the thumbsticks, especially in the competitive environment that is the online shooter.

Ultimately, Move is going to need a lot of thought, but it also needs to tell core gamers exactly why it is worthy of their notes. Otherwise, it simply won't compete. We're waiting, Sony.

Review: Fallout 3 (Xbox 360)

Back in 2006, developer Bethesda released its fantasy RPG Oblivion to critical acclaim. Accordingly, when the news that Bethesda had acquired the license to the Fallout series, the industry was rife with speculation surrounding the direction in which Bethesda would take the series.

Now it's out in the wild, we know. On the surface, Fallout 3 is essentially Oblivion with guns, a lot of big bombs and a not-so-lush new game world. Utilising both the story and premise of Interplay's point and click adventures Fallout 1 and 2, combined with the fine base of the aforementioned Oblivion, at a first glance Fallout 3 appears as something of a sidestep in the genre. For despite the huge expanse available to roam at will and the reams of new dialogue, every step of the way there's a striking resemblance to its spiritual predecessor. So, if you didn't connect in any way with Oblivion, you might do better looking elsewhere.

Perhaps the most comparable moment between the games is that in which the player leaves their respective start-point for the first time. In Oblivion it's the Imperial Sewers; this time around, it's Vault 101 - a hiding spot in which you have been taking refuge from the raging nuclear destruction which has been taking place for your entire life.
The two games start in a remarkably similar way. Lucky then, that even the second take is bloody brilliant.

Once you're past forging your character with the wealth of customisation options and the introductory elements of the story, you're thrust into the open - free to set off in whatever direction you please. The wasteland is a picture of flawed beauty. There are beautiful vistas in nearly all directions when traversing the plains - huge draw distances and some stunning skyboxes manage to make the decimated Washington enticing, even inviting.

The game is also supplied with some excellent audio - each gun has its own recognisable thunk, and there's some blood-curdling sounds accompanying bullets to flesh. Since Oblivion, the cast of voice actors has been expanded such that the issue of the same voices being discernible time and time again stands no longer.

With the sum of these elements, Fallout 3 is a playground for you to delve into. Even aside from the main story quests, there are dozens and dozens of areas and situations to be stumbled upon.

Wandering upon the plains with no specific direction or plans, we stumbled across a town populated by... well, cannibals. It was only after some dialogue and further investigating that we discovered so, and took it upon ourselves to rid the place of the culprits with bullets to each respective brain.
The beauty here lies in that this wasn't a proper mission, or even a designated side quest. If we wanted to, we might've left the town untouched. We might not have even stumbled across the town at all on another occasion.

Within lies the fact that essentially every player of the game will have a different experience. It would probably be impossible to find someone who has experienced the same things that you have during your time on the wastes.

Fundamentally, the base of the game is not so different from Oblivion. The same efficient control scheme has been carried over. The inventory and quest book, now fused into the Pip-Boy 3000 bound to your wrist, remain unchanged save for a few additions such as the new health status screen which allows you to heal individual parts of your character's body, since any damage inflicted is specific to different limbs.

An interesting feature of the game is the Karma system. Such systems have been popping up in RPGs for a while now, and Fallout 3 possesses one of the best we've seen. It recognises your actions as either good or bad - offering clean water (or not) to the homeless, for example - and adjusts your character's future accordingly, ultimately affecting how the game will end. From a technical standpoint, it's a masterful feat. Since practically everything, situationally, can change - such as characters dying and even towns being wiped off the map - the world is as dynamic as we've ever seen in a video game. NPCs will react differently depending on your past actions and decisions, resulting in a different experience every time you play.

The core gameplay is perhaps a little lacking. You'll find that the guns are missing the precision and control of the Call of Dutys and Halos of this world, with bullets often flying off at random angles, and the control sensitivity isn't exactly perfect no matter how you tailor the settings in the menus. And since most of your time spent trekking over the wasteland will involve shooting a ton of enemies - which incidentally are incredibly detailed and often unique owing to the huge number of outfit combinations - combat is pretty fundamental to the game.

Luckily, there's a saving grace here. It's called VATs, and it's essentially a pause button. Whilst in the VATs screen, you can pick individual body parts of your enemies to aim for. What makes this so well balanced with the real-time combat is that it's contextual: if you're far away your chance of hitting, as you would expect, is markably lower than if you were say, 5 feet away. And as it's of limited use, you'll be required to flick in and out of VATs, making for an extremely tactical combat system. Risk your bullets with a low hit chance, or take them on in real-time and trust your own hands? In a world where supplies and ammo are scarce, there's a lot of decisions to be made.

And it's the adventures to be found in situations such as finding that ammo in the first place that endear the Fallout 3 world to us. You could raid a supermarket, negotiate a trade or stumble across some other wanderers from whom you could steal some supplies. It's this depth in choice, the lack of structure and the sheer open-endedness of the game that draws you in, and it holds on even stronger than it grabs you. Simply, you could easily while away a hundred hours of your life in Fallout 3. The scale is colossal. If you wanted to complete everything on offer here, well... you probably couldn't. Much like a certain Bethesda game from four years ago, Fallout 3 is a title that sits comfortably amongst the most stellar of RPGs of the generation.

9/10

F1 2010 details begin to trickle out, release date set

Formula 1 fans have been treated to some juicy new information regarding Codemasters' take on the world's most glamorous motorsport. A press release today confirmed the speculated September release date for Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and PC, as well as releasing a couple of screenshots into the wild, which you can see below.

Also confirmed were the expected career, championship and multiplayer modes.

F1 2010 marks the first time that a Formula 1 game will appear on the Xbox 360, after all previous outings since 2001 were tied down with Sony, whose last release was Studio Liverpool's Formula One: Championship Edition in 2006.

It will, of course, feature all the official tracks, cars and drivers.

Codemasters F1 2010 Press Release

Knuckling Down

So this is it; I've decided to bite the bullet and begin. For me, this is going to serve mostly as a portfolio of my work, just somewhere I can keep everything all in once place where it's readily available to grab whenever the need arises. Video games, by the way, is what the main focus of this blog shall be - but don't be surprised to see other miscellaneous topics popping up here and there.

Reading this, you must have done some fair digging, since this isn't something I'm doing in the interests of going public. Don't shut the door on the way out just yet, though; if on the off chance you like my work, don't be put off hanging around or getting in contact. It's nice to have an audience.

I'm going to try and get some sort of format for this place, so I can gradually build up the level of content here.

This isn't a news blog, by the way. Any new posts are just a demonstration of skills for the portfolio or, more likely, a byproduct of boredom. I'm really more about proper writing than racing to report breaking news the fastest.

It looks like I best get going.