Monaco: What's Yours is Mine

It’s not often I’ll purchase a new and recently released game on the fly, but that’s exactly what I did when I heard about Monaco.

Having been in development for over 3 years, it was demo-ed at Penny Arcade in 2010, but it had already run the risk of losing the initial hype and the residual hope of a good game after vastly exceeding the usual development cycle for this kind of title. During this time I somehow managed to live in a Monaco sized box, because this was all news to me and it seemed to pop out of nowhere.

Monaco is an indie stealth game released on the XBLA and Steam and is a top down GTA style run around with prominent online co-op.

Not exactly my kind of game and the emphasis on “co-op” leaves a sour taste in my mouth. But after the strangely high review scores and a decent looking ad, my interest was piqued.

At the start of the game there are four players that wish to break out of prison. After the first mission of choosing a player and doing that, the rest of the game is fulfilling other missions based on various heists. There are more characters to unlock and each have their own unique skills.

The Locksmith – Opens locked objects faster

The Cleaner – Knocks out unsuspecting enemies

The Pickpocket – Has a pet monkey which can pick up loot

The Lookout – Shows position of enemies while sneaking

Unlockable

The Mole – Can knock through walls

The Hacker – Injects viruses into systems

The Gentleman – Can change his identity when hidden

The Redhead – Attracts a single NPC

The online component has trouble on Quick Match, but I found that joining another host’s was much easier.

Each mission has an objective, usually to grab a certain object or when unlocking characters, to rescue someone. You must reach the target and return or escape. Secondary objectives are collecting all the loot in an area and doing the level as fast as you can.

It looks a lot like Hotline Miami, which was released earlier this year, in that it’s 8 bit inspired and has top down view the whole time. However, how much of the level can be seen depends on the character’s perspective.

There are enemy patrols, which alert each other when you are spotted and they have limited vision, like in most stealth games and the “innocent” NPCs roam about the levels, generally getting in the way and some even dob on you when you are found by them. They may be innocent, but apparently they’re still aligned.

Some of the features in levels include, trigger alarms, locked doors, cameras and lasers, all of which can be hacked and guard dogs which have increased sensitivity to noise and are able to follow your scent.

The pink one is me.
I’m dead.
That happens a lot.

Level design is fairly open so there are many paths to achieving your goal and with the character’s ability sets, there are a lot of ways of going about progression too. There are lots of places to hide, like in bushes or cupboards but you can also find new paths by climbing vents.

There are items that you can use, mostly weaponry with extremely limited ammo and use, like the shotgun and the wrench or there are bandages which can heal you. Your health is a round life bar that can appear in the menu which when you bring up overlays the game without pausing. Once a character in single player mode dies, the level restarts and you choose another character to play. This can happen three times before you presumably must reload. Once you finish the level, that character can be used again.

When playing online, you and your buddy can progress the level together, making the process much smoother or conversely, screwing everything up.

Playing online requires a lot of co-operation and relying on one another’s abilities, whole party must go through the doors to other levels together or they can’t progress and when characters die they must be revived by another member or once again nobody can progress. You have to look after one another.

The game is very dynamic meaning that the wild card element of adding more players makes things a little manic at times, making moments of teamwork rather poignant and giving an immense feeling of satisfaction on a mission well done.

The community at first seemed a little hostile, but this might have been because initially I died quite a lot (in some rather ill-placed locations) making me a drag on the team, but after a few games I was able to find some really great people I could work well with, which is really rare for me.

Story segments are set out in a budget side on fashion and really isn’t worth getting worked up over. I ended up skipping a lot of it.

Obviously, being that the game is set in Monaco, although you wouldn’t know by the dark interiors you mostly see, there are a lot of French speaking characters and the music reflects the bougois style. Austin Wintory did the soundtrack, his previous game music being Journey, which is one of my favourite games this generation. I don’t prefer Monaco’s music, but being a more moody and piano based set, this is completely fine. That and topping Journey really would be a miracle.

Overall, I loved this game, it was fluid, fast and frantic and I enjoyed and will enjoy every minute I play. It’s rare for me to enjoy a game which has a strong multiplayer focus, like it is equally uncommon for me to enjoy slow moments in stealth games where I have to do something the hard way because of a screw-up, but I was still having fun and so were my peers.

Even though I need constant death supervision.

Monaco: What's Yours is Mine

Socialising and Games

How much do we really need to socialise when playing games?

I remember reading in an article once that the feeling of boredom is the result of loneliness, used as a stimulation to socialise much like hunger comes from not eating. The idea behind this ridiculous philosophy was that humans need to socialise and that television, games and all the other fun things in life are incorrectly being used to cure us of our loneliness.

Personally, I think it’s a load of ol’ bunkum.

Aside from the complete dismissal of individuality and that humans don’t need to socialise in order to survive, there is an interesting point here though. Well, tangentially speaking.

Will all game experiences have a communal aspect? Is the increased emphasis on social interaction in games a result of becoming part of the popular culture?

With the arrival of widespread internet connectivity, communication and contact seem to be the core focus of everything lately, especially gaming.

Starting with the PC and games like Doom, this evolved and moved onto the Dreamcast and started MMO games. Today all sorts of games can be played online and not always with direct contact, Dark Souls and Journey feature a subtle interactivity which means that you don’t converse at all with a fellow player.

Then there are the Facebook and Mobile type social games that actively endorse social activity.

I’ve often played Journey thinking I was playing with the same person, only to discover they were 20 different people at the end.

It’s not just games either now, with the Wii-U becoming more online friendly and bolstering its online shop with a slew of indie titles and the Playstation 4 having been announced with a share button and live video streaming, we’ve never gamed so close to our online friends.

The rumours of the next Microsoft console have caused an uproar and if they were thinking of making it online only, the recent outcry would surely make them think again.

Not being a particularly “communicatively astute” person myself, the thought of more games getting social features puts a shudder down my spine. I hardly play online nor do I play Facebook games or use a Smartphone (or any phone for that matter). Games are saturated with multiplayer or DLC content so nothing is a complete and independent experience anymore. This can be very divisive and there has often been times I just haven’t bothered with buying a game because I couldn’t be bothered with the hassle of finding out the best version to get or even just having to download all of the preorder items.

To me, one of the better reasons for this shift in the industry was the hope that the large networks of people being able to talk quickly and without external management would make game companies more wary of releasing a bad game, tas word would spread, thus increasing the overall quality of games. At very least I was looking forward to the new consoles becoming more backwards friendly, as being mostly digital it wouldn’t be too hard nor with the large leaps in technology too difficult to emulate, also nobody would want to lose an entire persona they had spent years building because a new console came out.

But unfortunately this has not been the case as with the PS4, it has no backwards compatibility and the profile you had will be no longer mean much, with them opting instead to go for a more spontaneous system of sharing immediately and the Wii-U’ isn’t much better with its lack of Gamecube compat and difficult Virtual Console transfer.

Monaco, where the first thing you can do is piss in a toilet.

But how many times in a game do you feel the need to “share” your experience? I certainly don’t very often, as someone who likes to write and play games, I’ve found that on the very rare occasions I whimsically wish to “share” my experience, turning over to my computer or just waiting until the end of my gaming session suffices.

Would I sacrifice room on a controller for the privilege of instant sharing? No. Do I fancy having another button to collect dirt and need cleaning once a month? Not without a complimentary maid, no.

The culture of social profiles on your gaming console has already made the solitary enjoyment of playing a game, into a huge public funfair where everybody can see what you are playing and when. Throw in an all seeing Kinect or the stats accumulating software that Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony no doubt already use whenever we play online and I can’t help but feel an overwhelming Orwellian fear encompassing my every purchase.

The more companies look at these noncontextual facts of how we play and how often, the less we see of games being an art form and more of being a product, a cash cow waiting to shift by the numbers. They’ll see that you spend hours playing Call of Duty or Farmville, and a minute amount of time playing Journey and attempt to monetise that, taking out the enjoyment factor and the reasons fuelling your game habits and just look at the raw numbers.

Perhaps this is mostly a fad. On the day I write this Reuters has announced Zynga’s 10% loss in shares and recently Ken Levine stated he threw out the multiplayer ideas for Bioshock Infinite in favour of strengthening the core story. Gamers are showing that they want more than to talk about their games, they want to play them.

Games are going to be more social now, because more social people are playing them. Not that I am convinced by it, I’m not going to start socialising in my games any time soon, but I’ll quite happily join in when we invent holo-decks.

Socialising and Games

A Hazy Mess

The Fog is a 1980 horror film directed by John Carpenter, set in a seaside town called Antonio Bay that is celebrating it’s centennial when some funky stuff starts going down.

Still in the throes of his 1978 Halloween hit, Carpenter delivers the Fog initially in a slasher horror style, with moody introduction to main character, Stevie Wayne, host of her own independent radio show that plays smooth sultry songs, delivered with seductive voice over for the town’s residents , passing drivers and anyone else who likes a good late night lovin’. She is played by Adrienne Barbeau, who is known as a bit of a scream Queen and later married director John Carpenter.

As all directors who fancy their actresses do, the first 5 or 10 minutes of the film covers unimportant side and incidental characters remarking how they “Would like to meet her” and would happily break up with their wives or possibly cheat on them to be with her. You know, I was always told that if you have something valuable you should make sure you shouldn’t tempt people with it by getting it out all the time (oo-er) and talking about it. As if we need to be told that Adrienne Barbeau is supremely bangable, like we might not. I s’pose that’s why Carpenter and Barbeau aren’t together anymore.

“I’m Stevie Wayne and if you don’t have anything to do right now, I’ll be here, playing music, all through the witching hour. Even if you do have something to do, keep me turned on for a while and I’ll try my best to do the same for you.”

As the story goes, when the town was being founded there were some folks who wanted to create a leper colony nearby, other folks weren’t happy and so lured them and their ship onto some rocks and used the plunderings to establish modern Antonio Bay. Now it’s approaching the centenary celebrations weird stuff is happening around the town.

Basically it’s another revenge ghost story.

You see I already have a few issues with this film’s premise, for a start, 100 years is a pitifully short time to be having “age-old” style ghost stories such as this, and what’s more, in 1880 (as that’s 100 years before the film’s release date) there weren’t much in the way of galleon-esque ships, piratey people OR colonising happening, because that’s all stuff that happened in the 1600′s and that’s at the tail end of it.

Secondly, they “lured” them onto the rocks by building a fire, creating a false beacon. How stupid. What were they doing out at sea, when they had already established contact on shore? They had to have had contact because otherwise the “lurers” of this situation couldn’t have known about the lepers and their intentions. Why weren’t they on shore and how did they forget where the rocks were?

Another thing while we’re at it, if the year was 1880 what was there if there wasn’t a town yet and why were the founders there if they hadn’t yet done any founding? It’s all pretty shaky. This supernatural horror isn’t believable!

Anyway, there’s a poorly executed dual narrative with a hitchhiker played by Jamie Lee Curtis (who was in Carpenter’s Halloween) which doesn’t work as there has to be something interesting happening between stories for you to remain immersed while there is a shift.

She also looks like she is about 16 and then she starts sleeping with a man who looks like he’s about 50. It’s really weird because the film doesn’t attempt to comment on it at all, it’s especially interesting as she was so chaste in Halloween and she’s quite the opposite here. Jamie Lee Curtis’ real life mother is also in the film, Janet Leigh, who is the lady in the shower in Psycho. I guess screaming and getting naked runs in the family.

Ghost: Knock knock!
Old Granny: Who’s there?
Ghost: Plot device for endangerment of child.

When “The Fog” finally hits, already all of the characters have uninhibitively succumbed to the idea of mysterious goings on, despite not much actually happening of any note and begin lull into a dazed hysteria. The threat of “The Fog” and what is in it, is… well… it’s not, to be honest. It’s not a threat at all. For a start, it’s clear that there is just people in the fog. People with lame weapons that use those to kill. If the film had convicted itself to the slasher style, this might have been rather effective, but instead, it opts for a zombie style approach, except with characters too bloody idiotic to keep windows closed or even to remain seated when the “threat” literally knocks on the door. One of the characters OPENS IT. But I suppose that is the threat.

People’s deficiency.

Perhaps this film is in fact showcasing and highlighting the scariest thing about man, his infinite stupidity. If that is the case then this is probably the scariest film ever. The enemies are hardly formidable. They’re slow and easy to escape from, I would say a walking pace would do it.

The film also forces the ghosties into frankly hilarious situations like crawling up a roof and the characters are left in about as much confusion as we are.

There is a priest bloke who looks frighteningly similar to a certain author, and has a real air of self importance, thinking he is the key to everything, so when the ghosts go you are left trying detect the immense disappointment in his face as he realises he’s not actually very integral at all.

Left, Janet Leigh. Right, Edgar Allen Poe.

The plot is really weak, it even manages to outstay it’s welcome at only 89 minutes and in the end just amounts to “Pirates be wanting their gold”. Despite being done by Carpenter the music is dull and monotonous, a bit like the wooden acting, which feels as though we’re watching the script rehearsal and not the final product, none of the actors make it their own or deliver with any conviction. If the story, premise or characters were more interesting it wouldn’t be quite as painful, but instead we have to rely on Barbeau’s smooth voice to get us anywhere.

What makes it so disappointing, is that Carpenter usually has so much unseen depth (like fog-HA!) and scope, he creates realistic characters against a force to reckon with. But The Fog feels so insular and suffocating. He usually uses every aspect of storytelling and filmmaking to bring the danger to life. There is so much potential with the Fog, he could have used better lighting and more uses of the fog itself, he has the supernatural license to!

This film suffers an identity crisis and lack of refinement in development, too much build up, too many cuts away from the action and not enough impending danger leaves it all a bit… cloudy.

A Hazy Mess

T-Minus 6 months or something

That’s nearly enough time to make a new bundle of cells that can independently think. It’s a shame mine don’t do that.

Today is St. George’s Day, which means that I must now moan a lot in order to further establish my being English. Today is also possibly Shakespeare’s birthday and if I remember rightly, also his… Deathday? Is that a term?

I’ve now become full time at my day job, which has lost me my “killer catharsis” day, which I used to write/rant on here. A couple of months back I also started to write 3 posts a week, so in hindsight that was a bit stupid of me.

But, it’s a thing now, so I’ve restructured and streamlined to do’s to make up time.

These past few months on here I have grown the site to talk about games and films as well as books and nowadays you can find some of my posts on ScrewAttack.

In fact, I’m not too humble (or at all) to admit that all of my posts have been put on the front page and are enjoying thousands of views apiece.

I’m hoping to get the Half Life stuff all finished up soon and then we can move onto System Shock 2 and don’t forget you can send any recommendations to me the old fashioned way using email, because spambots are clever and depressing.

I’m sure one day I’ll have a nice witty sign off but for now BUGGER OFF will have to do.

T-Minus 6 months or something

Tales from the Half Life Pt.9

It’s been a while eh?

I guess you thought I must have given up or just went ahead and completed the game as nobody could possibly take this long to complete Half Life.

Wrong on both accounts, as I am still dutifully playing 45 minutes every week and then turning it off from motion sickness.

I’ve started playing Thief now too, so I feel like how I imagine the tripod aliens do all the time they were on Earth.

Sick to death.

The stuff that has been happening:

Gordon Freeman encounters some nippy ninja girls proving that Half Life isn’t an all-boys club.

Said nippers knock out Freeman. I guess his superior intellect isn’t capable of figuring out traps. It’s too busy thinking about pushing trolleys into lasers and climbing ladders and stuff.

Freeman is getting pretty tired after his day at work began with trouble in the lab, alien monsters appearing, army attacking him all while trying to make his way home as the lift is out. Fortunately soldiers are kind enough to give him a ride.

Freeman is chucked into a rubbish chute-type thing, with the perpetrators walking off cackling to themselves about how they have expertly disposed of our “hero” and how they did it just like in the movies, by leaving said hero in an easily escapable situation (this being a pit with a large stack of easily scalable boxes) and then topping it off by leaving him unattended and then moving on with their plan that must not have any further interruptions lest they fail in their often pointless endeavour.

Freeman treks about, going outside for a bit and then back indoors where he meets this fella.

He looks formidable.

Who is easily defeated.

Guess not.

Freeman then discovers a large bright lab with another one of those creatures in, of which I will now call Vatman, for hopefully obvious reasons.

Where the hell are the seats in this place? Black Mesa should really prioritise ergonomics, perhaps then they wouldn’t have had a loopy MIT grad on their arses.

I’ll probably be trying to hurry this game up a bit as it’s getting a drag, it could be worse, I wouldn’t want to be Freeman’s wife, I bet she will be getting an earful once he gets back home.

I fail to see what the purpose in this machine is. Apart from being an oversized can opener that is.

Tales from the Half Life Pt.9

Think about the children!

As I write this, I am still reeling from the numbing shock of finishing Peter Pan by JM Barrie.

I remember hearing that the novel is notably darker than its silver screen incarnations but it hardly made me any the wiser to the novel’s sinister fancies and author’s grotesque and somewhat racist and sexist fantasies.

You know how kids are always talking about killing and some such? Well in this book they really mean it and do it. Frequently. They genuinely slaughter pirates and “redskins”. Mentions of scalping and merciless killing abound, Wendy not once reprimands the Lost boys or her young brothers about their murderous ways and even Smee, the lovable and bumbling sidekick to Hook wields a gun called Johnny Corkscrew, I suppose that sounds alright, but why is his gun called Corkscrew nobody asks? Because after shooting children with it, he proceeds to gouge the pistol into the victim’s swollen and bloody wound and screw the cold metal into their torn flesh. Nice.

It’s not just this though, there are tonnes of children’s books that feature strong language, dark themes or violent content, it’s not merely limited to literature either, although in my opinion it’s one of the worst advocators of adult themes around children, because films and the oft-accused video game industry also feature the like. You know a lot of weird tosh used to fly back in the day.

One of the films I remember was rather traumatising (in that enjoyable way) was Return to Oz, for starters, the story starts back in boring Kansas where even happiness comes in dingy grey, but also Dorothy is being shipped of to the nuthouse because she’s got a bad case of youth going on.

Apparently Aunt Em (played by the lovely and demented Piper Laurie of Carrie, Twin Peaks and The Faculty) had enough of Dorothy’s tales of Oz, presumably because she’s a bored housewife and sex hadn’t been invented yet, so she just decided to palm her off onto the nearest wide-eyed, kiddy-vying man in white coat.

What’s more Oz is not the munchkined haven we once knew, instead we’re treated to stop motion rock faced Nome king, creepy wheelers who look like Adam Ant with trolley wheels attached to his hands and worst of all the mental Queen who changes her head like it’s a woman’s handbag.

In your Night face or something.

Did this film attract much attention? Well, probably, but you just don’t see this kind of horrifying crap any more. The closest we have now is that Under the Night garden or whatever it’s called, you know , the one with the beige man with dog turd Leia hair and blue man with tumour on the side of his head. It’s like Teletubbies for the mentally deficient. I have no idea why someone thought that show would be good for children, or how parents can let their kids watch it only to complain to the authorities 5 mins later because there might have been a nipple on the news. God forbid. If only someone could just get rid of ALL the nipples so not one bairn will ever run the risk of mistaking a nipple for an ordinary human thing.

I think that the decrease in adult themes and content in children’s entertainment has been somewhat down to parents becoming stricter and more politically correct. The advent of the internet and the joining of many cultures has led to reinforced ideas about how to treat people of different cultures, beliefs and interests, this has then polarised parents, making some more politically correct and others even more prejudiced. Either way they’ll be much more likely to complain when they see something unsavoury on the telly screen. Thowse pawer chilluns! Sheyld thaer ayes!

I grew up with rather lenient views on what we were allowed or old enough to watch, my favourite films of all time are Evil Dead 2/Medievil Dead and have been since as long as I can remember, before I was even 4 years old. I suppose I’m not the pinnacle of what I think children should be or base what they should watch on my own upbringing, because at the end of the day I am not normal. I have anxiety problems and an unnatural fixation on the macabre. But that’s not to say that I don’t believe that children are able to watch rather adult films and not end up a psychopath.

Groovy

I think the key to this is the BBFC laws, made ever more strict with the cries of mob-like parents outside their windows.

My opinion?

Keep them, they’re great.

Because that way when children defy the laws, it’s not without knowing what they’re getting themselves into, unlike in America where it seems like just about anyone can pick up an R-rated film on DVD.

Here in England, you have to go through quite a lot of effort to buy an 18 rated film, which means that the child would have had to have thought rather hard about whether or not it’s worth the effort, and that means that they can make their own informed decision at least, instead of it just being a choice of whimsy.

They’re also good to keep the pansies out of the horror section at the video shop. Not like any of it matters with the internet around anyway.

Basically, I love the BBFC’s laws, because they are made to be broken.

In the end, every situation, child and film/book/game is different and it’s up to the parent’s discretion to decide whether they believe that the material will be offensive to the child. In the same way it is down to the parent to take responsibilty for most matters relating to their child until they reach the age of maturity.

Just don’t always blame society, entertainment or other people when you weren’t the one watching your child when he/she pulled out YOUR Escort magazines from the cupboard.

Think about the children!

The Secret of Crickley Hall

I won’t deny that the last minute addition to my reading list this week wasn’t fuelled by author James Herbert’s untimely death, but I will say that it was lingering on the invisible underbelly of it.

As one of his later books and written in 2006, the Haunted house thing has been done to death and then some, to the extent of necrophilia by now. Even the newest medium of videogames exhausted the theme long before Herbert had the bright idea to jump into horror’s spitoon.

But as ever, Herbert manages to turn simplistic ideas into an engaging story and compelling read. The Secret of Crickley Hall is set in Devon in a secluded house located in a gorge near a small quite town. A small family, two daughters and Gabe and Eve, whose son went missing the previous year have started to rent the large house while Gabe is working locally. Trouble soon starts a-brewing when the family dog up and leaves and the daughters are terrified at night by the odd sounds and happenings from the hallways.

So pretty traditional haunty housey fare, but the treatment renders it more memorable than its peers. It’s rather hard for me to pinpoint exactly the reason why it works, or what it is that Herbert has done. Herbert is by no means a writer of technical brilliance nor does his style inherently lend itself to horror’s purpose. The premises to his stories are mostly bland and the progression isn’t exciting or unique. So why does this book… work? At all?

I think that James Herbert’s main skill lies in believable and relatable characters, once again nothing especial, but that’s the key. The characters are people we can accept without hesitation. The characters from The Rats and Lair are people without any special character traits or extravagant histories, I think that even in America that should be relatable, hence Stephen King’s declared love for Herbert’s work, in fact the title of British Stephen King is completely apt, as like King both authors have character centric horror dramas that tackle heavy themes that are easily still encounterable by the audience.

Let’s not also forget that the Haunted House genre in British Literature has been dead since Henry James, making the characters of some of England’s memorable haunted stories, largely irrelevant and polarising to modern readers. America is the home of the modern haunted house film and Japan of the haunted house game. Both countries use their specialised techniques, slasher and psychological respectively as the main drive for both the horror style and the narrative is shaped around it (or vice versa).

Late 2012 saw BBC release a 3 part TV series where they make the wife the central character and permeate the entire experience with wistful under and overtones. Fantastic.

The main themes in Crickley are religion and child abuse, and to a lesser extent casts a glaring eye on war-time Britain and the societal flaws of the era.

The thorough treatment of his themes starts with children, the young 5 year old son is missing, a horror for any parent. It deals with obviously the loss of the child and the pain that inflicts on the people around, but also the lack of knowledge of where the child is, this means no closure for the parent and also preys on the general fear of the unknown, the blame of the loss on the parent and the guilt they would obviously feel as well as fear of future failures and the rest of the family’s (and by extension, society’s) perception on them and their inaction and finally also that the reason for their child’s disappearance is never known so there is still a possibility of someone wandering around nicking kiddies, and this is just the missing son.

The children of Crickley Hall and their untimely deaths during a flood in 1943 and the children currently living with their parents at the hall are where the main focus of horror lies, like with the missing son, Herbert manages to incorporate other elements of horror aside from the fear for children in with it, which is good for people with hearts of obsidian like me, because there’s nothing worse than reading horror that’s afraid of itself, you never get that with Herbert, he had a sense of direction and never shies with the aggressive approach to some hard subjects. He lets you know that you DON’T know where the limit is. There’s nowhere he wouldn’t take you.

This is especially true for the religious themes, it’s not a vindictive attack or even an appraisal on Christianity, but it does use common and known issues that some Christians are known to experience as a plot device, such as Religious mania and self-punishment, as well as abuse of power.

I come from a non-religious family so the concept of religion scares me greatly, particularly the kind of twisted logic that Herbert explores in this novel set in a small town where religion seems to thrive most often.

Here’s a search result for “scary ghosty” as the results for “naked ghost” weren’t exactly PG.

I guess this was even less of a review than usual, but as mentioned the development of characters and themery is the main attraction, not something easily illustrated in a simple review. It’s quite odd that this is the third thing I’ve written about in the past week with “secret” in the title, this being the only one worthy of sporting the name.

The book is a lengthy 620 pages and contained a significantly less amount of sex than I expected and have seen in previous Herbert novels which I found to be pleasantly gratuitous. However there were a couple of bits where I found myself surveying the bus to ensure I didn’t have a conspirator.

I probably wouldn’t recommend this to a first time Herbert reader as its refrained style could give the wrong impression about a writer who more frequently lies on the glory side of the line when it comes to horror fiction, but for fans of horror and his previous works, it’s a great read with some great concepts of paranormality and scares in.

The Secret of Crickley Hall

The Secret of Monkey Island

One of the most famous adventure games ever made is The Secret of Monkey Island, created by Ron Gilbert of LucasArts, a recently defunct studio that pioneered the genre.

LucasArts’ first adventure game was Labyrinth, although they were then called Lucasfilm games. Labyrinth was based on the film of the same name and is known for having Douglas Adams contribute to the design of the game. In this respect LucasArts have helped to give the games industry a boost in credibility amongst a wider audience by involving staple sci-fi names.

When it was first announced that Disney had bought up Lucasfilm, I was very excited about how the two biggest names in film had joined together and what this would mean for their game studios, particularly concerning how well Disney treat their properties, I was hoping that there would be some renewed interest in some of the properties that had now come into their care, such as Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle.

Unfortunately this never came to pass as Disney appear to have decided to go the way of their own game studios and shut them down, so in memoriam, and also because it was already on my list, I decided I would play The Secret of Monkey Island, which I have never played before.

I have the remastered Special edition that is available on Steam however, I played through the original mode on it. So soak in the spritey goodness.

I’ve only any real experience in more Japanese-style adventure games and horror titles, so I’m not completely in the dark but the difference is still noticeable.

The game is a point and click, so the main aim is to “adventure” about and find items, solve puzzles and talk to people in order to progress the game. Whether it’s because it is an early title or not I noticed how arbitrarily linked some of your actions have to be to solve certain puzzles and so at times did become a little stuck. Fortunately this version has a hint button that I used a couple of times when I had no idea what I was meant to do, UN-fortunately it was pretty useless, often giving me irrelevant location specific advice.

The main character is Spicecake Peepwood, or the lesser known Guybrush Threepwood and has blind aspirations of becoming a pirate, the first part of the game is about proving yourself to be pirate material and the latter part is about “saving” a love interest after a particularly swift introduction and fall in love sequence.

There are two main areas of the game, Mêlée Island© and Monkey Island© and screens you can go to on each. There are a lot of NPCs in the game and as you learn how to swordfight there are encounters with people in between screens on the map.

Swordfighting is word-based and involves encountering people and collecting phrases and in the midst of battle using the correct phrases in succession to win the fight, this is where the popular “How appropriate, you fight like a cow” comes from in the game.

It wasn’t until the end of the game when the credits were rolling that I noticed Orson Scott Card had written all of the swordplay insults, which I never knew. Orson Scott Card wrote Ender’s Game, which as I understand there’s a pretty hilariously bad looking film based on it coming out sometime this year.

The game’s dialogue was written by Tim Schafer and some other people and is the best thing about the game, you can choose the fairly standard dialogue options or can go for some fourth-wall breaking answers or just really sarcastic retorts. It all provides for some interesting banter that can make the game extremely replayable to see how another choice might have affected things.

My favourite character is Stan the ship merchant, the entire segment of buying the ship was completely pointless and time-consuming, which I found hilarious.

The great thing about this game is that, there is really no way to die (apart from one segment, that you’d have to be really dense to screw up) and there’s no way to ruin your progression at all. It’s a relief to play a game once in a while where I don’t have to worry about things all the time. In fact, I half expected there to be some sort of thing I had ruined or glitched out when playing this, but it’s an incredibly solid game. I wonder if this version has had to be altered much to fix things that could have caused issues in the original release?

There are lots of in-game jokes and references, for example at the beginning of the game there is a pirate in the bar that starts going off on an advertising reel for a game and there are lots of allusions to LucasArts games. There’s no way that you should play this without a sense of humour.

When I got to the end of the game there was one thing that I kept thinking about, waiting for the answer. The game is CALLED The Secret of Monkey Island. So what IS the Secret?

It’s not even like they offered us a mystery to make us wonder about the secret at hand, instead we got a lot of people saying about how dangerous and scary it is and it has some for of ugly secret, but they didn’t bother throwing any surprises at us.

The only thing “secretive” about the Island was there was a giant monkey head with an underground lair in. That you hardly saw anything of! Was THAT the secret? They may as well not bothered. What I ate this morning is a secret, doesn’t mean I’ll keep banging on about it. Perhaps the whole point is that it was naf.

Some of the puzzles can be a little unintuitive but the witty dialogue and the beautiful graphics really set this game apart from the types of adventure I usually play.

The Secret of Monkey Island

The Console War of Attrition

Fanboy.

What an ugly word.

It’s always being thrown around and is the Godwin’s law of the videogame community.

But this word is just a new coat for a thing that’s been around since the early days, mostly when the Megadrive came out. Not so much here in the UK which is predominately Sega territory.

I know that game related posts all over the internet are filled with dreary renditions of rose-tinted nostalgia stories, that are so similar to your own, you secretly wonder if everyone has been whole-stamped with the same videogame memories, undergoing a bit of “brain-in-the-vat” syndrome, but I’ll ignore the proverbial and just go ahead anyway.

When I was younger my friends and I (the plural may be a slight exaggeration on the number of friends I actually had back then) only had Megadrives so there was no argument between consoles. The only time I ever experienced anything of the sort was when she was able to move on and buy a Saturn and I couldn’t. That bloody girl had all the latest stuff.

So obviously that makes it very easy for me to say, “Back in my day we never argued about which was the better console” as for me it feels like this last generation has become so aggressive with ownership of consoles, however in America the SNES and Genesis were head to head in a war of sales figures and somehow this got transferred onto the consumers and quickly turned into a war of hearts and minds.

The beauty of it all lies in the way the companies managed their sales pitch, instead of attempting to win by appealing to their consumers, each company recruited their consumers to wage war on the other and in doing so, were just trying to make the other company lose. We’re all just pawns paying for our own military service as conscripts to the console army. We are being used as a cheap marketing tool, to companies too lazy to fight their own battles. We are the real losers.

The only other business as ridiculous is the PC vs Mac argument which has leaked out into the mobile phone market, it’s a slow trend but the use of consumers as a sales tool is certainly picking up traction. It’s like a more sinister materialistic 80′s without excess of money to fuel the consumers.

So although not exclusive to the Videogame industry, it is still rife here.

Why are we selling our souls to the corporations? Because gamers are dedicated soldiers if nothing else.

There are two main types of soldier in the console war, the martyr and hater.

I’m really not sure what is worse, one enables malpractice in companies and the other directly attacks the consumers, but both are extremely damaging to the games industry.

Haters “hate on” all of the consoles that aren’t their own and tend to use the term “fanboy” as a weapon to upset other people, it often can leave one feeling the need to prove oneself. For example, I wrote an editorial a while back for a website and one of the replies went something like this;

“Why no mention of (PS3 Game)? You don’t have a PS3”.

As if my entire article was now null and void because I hadn’t mentioned the game and might not own a PS3.

Luckily I’m a lot more civil when replying to people compared to my manner while writing normally in pieces like this, interestingly, I found myself trying to tread carefully trying to prove that I did in fact have a PS3 and the game in question, but without looking like I was trying too hard to say I did. I shouldn’t have given this person the time of day, but the desire to be accepted by this uninformed twat overrode all else.

Which means he won.

Yes, I know that’s the N64 logo, shaddup.

Martyrs are no less passive, defending their console often when nobody is attacking it. I have always thought that people shouldn’t be hated for loving something, but obviously this only goes so far and defending a company’s policies which are designed with their pockets in mind is certainly not going to gain any sympathy. Any perceived slight will instantly cause some people to jump straight into flinging insults with little regard to grammar let alone Wildeian wit.

For example, I once mentioned online that I tend to stick to Eastern games for the PS3 and Western for the Xbox unless otherwise informed but this kind of segregation basically had the same effect on the forumfolk as if I’d been doing it with people and concentration camps.

I’m sure we all have our favourite console and there’s nothing wrong with that at all, but some people just seem to have no self-esteem.

The main reason that people antagonise one another over consoles, is insecurity about themselves, sometimes a poor method of justifying their own purchase of a console as they don’t have all of them.

I mean, if you didn’t have enough money/room/permission to get one, you don’t want to make the wrong choice right? That’s understandable, I used to suffer from this a lot myself.

So what better way to avoid this problem then to just bully your way to contentment, eh?

There are pros and cons to all consoles, you are allowed to lament not having the ability to play Halo, Metal Gear Solid 4 or Mario Galaxy without having to condemn them.People feel affronted as different consoles cater to a different demographic and somehow variety is supposed to be a bad thing?

The intent of the companies who introduce and enforce the console war is to destroy the opponent, but where’s the line for gamers? At what point constitutes the desired destruction when people and ideas are concerned?

The Console War of Attrition

Out of Steam

I’ve often wondered why there isn’t more Steampunk themed media and why all current Steampunk stuff (Steamboy, His Dark Materials, Sky Captain etc.) is mostly aimed at young adults.

Steampunk isn’t the most hailed or abundant genre in literature and the closest I’ve ever read to one is probably Northern Lights by Philip Pullman which just goes to show how loose the criteria is.

It doesn’t come as a huge surprise then that one of the most prevalent steampunk novels of the current generation is Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve, the first of a set of novels set in a post-apocalyptic world turned cusp of a new techno-industrial revolution.

A Web of Air is part of the futuristic Mortal Engines series, but set many years in the past. The main character is Fever Crumb an eccentric 16 year old girl who is an Engineer, a group of people who operate in London and appear to have Asperger’s-like traits and an obsession with rationality and learning about mechanisms.

Crumb has left London however, and is pursuing the life of a light attendant on a theatre ship which travels from town to town. Lights and electricity are pretty hard to operate in this world and backwards cities like Mayda-at-the-World’s-End have quasi-religious anti-technology tendencies.

After becoming embroiled in a mysterious plot, Crumb must escape the clutches of evil cartel and a mysterious killer whilst attempting to uncover the theory of flight.

Considering this is a steampunk novel, there’s not a lot of steam going on, with the more interesting stuff basically being “magic”. The cast of characters are diverse but not exactly the richest and most gripping. Fever exhibits traits of Engineers and humans and appears to struggle with the two, giving the book an unusual turn for a YA novel, however her crude thought patterns and her lack of taking control of situations often means that she feels less of a likeable, strong and troubled woman, and more like a cheap unlicensed film figurine of Spock that you found at a boot sale, it looks like him, it sounds like him, but there’s an unnerving hint of uncanny valley going on.

The map that appears at the beginning of the book, presumably for the kinds of people who use satnav and haven’t had to think about navigation before.

Other characters include irritating child with unusually mature realisation of romantic feelings for the main character, he’s 10 years old, there’s the “sudden but inevitable” traitor, complete with lack lustre exposition and red herrings big enough to fill an entire Wagamama, there’s the “fat is always evil” drug cartel lord, masquerading as a genteel aristocrat and would probably be just as convincing if he wore a second hand unitard with lace trimmings.

The world feels detailed and important even outside of Mayda, with the main character’s past in London and various details about how the world presumably reached its current stage. This is all probably because it is actually a sequel to Fever Crumb, in which the titular character has some form of adventure in London and meets the irritating child and ends with joining the theatre ship, however I did not find this out until after I had already read the book and like with Lair by James Herbert, I found that this gave the current story a good amount of depth and in the case of this book, made it a lot less patronising than it could have been considering it’s a Young Adult novel, which I usually avoid for this very reason.

Unfortunately as a YA novel it also has boring and generic YA themes, like the parent-revolt, the slow and agonising falling in love lark and all the confusions and inner turmoils one usually expects when met with this tired trope and most annoyingly the main character steals the show after many convenient plot developments allow her to. I call this “Girl gets the Car” after Cruel Intentions where a character gets something that is important or allowed some form of privilege that they shouldn’t by rights have, either because they didn’t earn it or they don’t care about it, purely by virtue of being a female main character.

However, I feel obliged to mention that there are a couple of instances that were mildly surprising and some of the aspects of this novel weren’t as grating as it could have been, most of which are spoiler-y, so I’ll spare you those, but there is a lot of mechanical description and a good level of physical detail of the inventions helping them to come to life, you have to stop thinking emotionally as one usually does when reading and start to think more logically, which kills a little of the immersion but does wonders for Crumb’s appeal as you join her nutty mindset.

I wonder if the demographic can follow this Hard-Sci fi approach to in-book gadgetry, but then I expect that the lack in detail of some of the creation is another matter entirely. The whole of Steampunk as a genre is completely ridiculous and unbelievable which is probably why it gets relegated to such a young age group to begin with, most of the kids that read this kind of thing probably move onto Alternate History stuff when they get older.

How steam might look today.

There’s nothing particularly wrong with this book and I can see myself recommending it on many occasions, however the lacklustre approach to an unusual theme is very disappointing considering the potential, the story is cookie-cutter, the character development is nonsensical and the book can’t escape its own target audience haunting its every sentence, ringing of dull pretension.

But what I see through those faults are an interesting and diverse world with strong ideas for Steampunk inventions that tread nicely on the useful line without dancing precariously too much on the gaudy, which is what a writer is often wont to do when broaching teens, especially considering previous Steampunk media.

This is an author who almost has to dumb down the entire novel because, perhaps, a couple of ideas aren’t up to scratch with adult fiction and the market is so bloody difficult to seduce.

Like Aeon Flux, I feel like something is being held back from the immature audience and as a result loses a lot of integrity, coming out less like Indiana Jones on wings and more like Professor Layton dancing with death.

Out of Steam

Secret of Mana

The Super Nintendo housed some of the most prolific and cherished JRPGs and Secret of Mana is no exception.

Developed by Squaresoft, Secret of Mana was one of the few Japanese RPGs that publishers could be bothered to localise to the PAL territories and shares similar themes as some of the other titles, particularly Square’s darling, Final Fantasy, that were released around the same time, such as magic casting and crystals.

Unlike Final Fantasy however, Secret of Mana is an action-RPG with active switching party members. There are 3 characters in the party and you can use any one of them by pressing the start button. The battle system is free-moving with direct control of the attacks by pressing b button, it then takes the weapon a couple of seconds until it recovers optimum usage, you can also hold down the attack button to charge your weapon in increments corresponding to its level, which are gained through progression and activated by continual usage.

There are about 8 weapons in the game including swords, boomerangs and whips, which can all be levelled up to the maximum of 9.

There are 3 different types of armour you can equip, helmet, body armour and bracelets. Magic is pretty similar to the weapon system with new elements of spell being unlocked by progressing the game and able to be levelled up through use.

Each of the 3 characters have a role in the battle however can be used for anything. The main character Randi is a warrior type and is unable to use magic, Purimu is a white mage and Popoi the sprite is a black mage.

Neko is a travelling merchant in Secret of Mana, like most cats he is a crook and inflates prices above town shops for personal gain. I think he uses his profits for racketing and catnip trafficking.

The story begins when Randi pulls a sword from a stone after falling into a stream when playing with friends. His village soon discover what he has done and ostracise him as his actions have cursed them, drawing a creature to the village.

Having nowhere to go Randi leaves and makes his way to the next village and soon meets the other party members.

The characters aren’t particularly interesting and could really be switched out and replaced with just about anyone and manage to retain the same aesthetic to the game.

Unfortunately the game was rushed for release and so the script and translation is not fantastic and I’ve heard that most of the text was cut out leaving most of the plot lost in translation. This really doesn’t surprise me as the story is atrocious, making it about as exciting as a fisherman’s friend pez dispenser.

The battle system is of course the main attraction for the game, however it does have a few interesting aspects making worth noting, for example it implements a ring-based menu system, which is like the minecraft of the SNES era and there is also some beautiful music in the game that endures the play time, sometimes at an intrusive capacity as you’ll find yourself humming along days later to some of the more inane tracks, not quite able to place them.

Multiple swipes without waiting for the weapon to recover will do infinitesimal damage.

Secret of Mana is a pretty simple game and there are few features of real import, that’s not to say that it’s a bad game as it’s fun and enjoyable the 25 hours it lasts, however it wasn’t one of the most high class games when it comes out and as such is a victim of its era.

Poor character development and terrible pacing negatively complement the lack of plot while the progression indicators are almost non-existent, this game mostly runs the risk of being forgotten as a relic of the past.

Much of this can be attributed to poor localisation and I can see a lot of potential in the series, perhaps the sequels fix some of the injustices of this one?

A great game to pick up if you’re an avid fan of the console and JRPGs but not a title for the weak willed.

Secret of Mana

Top 10 2D Fighting Games

The 2D fighting game is the pinnacle of the fighting game genre. Having been put off about 15 years ago by Rise of the Robots, and turning to 3D beat ‘em ups for a spell, I returned to the 2D fighter with SNK vs Capcom a couple of years ago to find that the world didn’t end after all. This generation has spawned a number of contestable fighters as well as our old favourites coming back with games still on form.

So once again, this is my top 10, my favourites from across the years and the ones I play the most. This time with no Rise of the Robots.

10. Samurai Shodown V - Playstation 2

The character designs of this title are done by Nobuhiro Watsuki who wrote Rurouni Kenshin and features weapons based 2D gameplay. Unfortunately the Xbox version Samurai Shodown Sen went 3D and is not very well received.

 9. Killer Instinct Gold – N64

Another classic game made by Rare, the characters are really odd and it has combo heavy combat that puts Mortal Kombat to shame!

8. Guilty Gear Accent Core Plus – PS2

This is the 5^th version of Guilty Gear XX, and you thought Street Fighter IV was bad! A very fast paced fighter with metal inspired characters and an awesome metal soundtrack. The record for this game giving me a blister is 2 rounds.

Yet another updated version of Guilty Gear XX. This is the 6th.

7. Super Smash Bros. Melée – Gamecube

The ensemble 2D brawler with Nintendo characters, I went with Melée in the end because I find it more enjoyable and have played it more.

I “main” Game & Watch to the frustration of my peers.

6. Blazblue: Continuum Shift – PS3

I’ve placed this higher than Guilty Gear as the gameplay is much more entertaining in my opinion. The characters look good and their play styles are varied.

5. Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure – Dreamcast

Based on the incredible, amazing, stupendous, oh-my-god awesome Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure manga, Capcom bring the insane characters to life in this fighting game.

4. Neo Geo Battle Coliseum – PS2

An ensemble fighter from the folks at SNK featuring all your favourite SNK characters, like King of Fighters with a bigger roster.

3. King of Fighters XI – PS2

Another SNK ensemble game but with tighter controls and better balancing, XI is my favourite as I prefer the characters in this one, but KoF 98 or 2001 are the most loved.

2. Street Fighter III 3rd Strike – Dreamcast

Street Fighter is undoubtedly the best 2D fighter franchise and 3^rd Strike is a masterful game. The controls are really fluid and the addition of parrys add an interesting kick to the game. I only wish there were more characters.

1. Garou: Mark of the Wolves – Dreamcast

If only all of the Fatal Fury was as good as this. Everything in this is perfect, the controls, the characters, the music and those bloody beautiful sprites. I fell in love with this game as soon as round started and I doubt I’ll find another fighter to top this one.

 Honourable Mentions

Marvel VS Capcom 3 – PS3/Xbox 360

Mortal Kombat II – Megadrive/SNES

Skullgirls – PSN/XBLA

Top 10 2D Fighting Games

Time is Punishment

Crime & Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

Most of the classic literature I’ve been reading lately, I’ve started without any knowledge, aside from the title and the author. Either through laziness or that I’m wont, I find I enjoy books better when I have no idea what to expect. Which is good because I had no idea what Crime & Punishment was about.

I first read The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky a while ago and loved it. Every Russian novel I’ve ever read has been outstanding and this one particularly so, the abundance of intriguing characters and the complexity of their relationships were unlike anything I’ve ever read.

So I’ve been really looking forward to reading this as everyone’s always banging on about it.

As the title suggests the novel is about a crime and the implications therein. Fortunately I did manage to gather that this might be the case when I picked it up. It is told in third person however mostly centres around one main character called Rodion Raskolnikov, who is a former student who has quitted and turned to drink and solitude. Raskolnikov or Rodya, is suffering monomanic delusions and is horrendously poor so hatches a plan involving the murder of a pawnbroker that he has sold some pledges to.

The book mostly follows Rodya and the people around him reacting to the murder and his subsequent illness, with no knowledge of the former. It maintains a close and personal account of Rodya’s mental condition and degrading health whilst also leaving the complete intent of the murder a mystery for the majority of the book. Well I think it was meant to be a mystery or else the penny dropped pretty late.

As per many pieces of Russian literature, there features heavy realism in this novel, with a large portion of the book giving descriptive summaries of the architecture and surrounding environs of St. Petersburg 1866, where the story is set.

The bustling lives of 19^th Century Russians are detailed finely with special attention on the clothes and class society that these people have.

So, I wouldn’t recommend if you can’t even handle a Dickensian level of description, mind you, I probably would recommend not bothering with books in general and just reading scripts instead.

Fyodor Vasilyev – 1869

There is also a lot of rich imagery. The use of the word yellow to signal malady and malcontent is prevalent throughout as well as the use of red as an indicator of rage and anguish.

You can always learn much about Russian culture when you read a Russian book and in this novel I learnt what a “Yellow Passport” is, a ticket which allows one to practice prostitution and the holder is subject to frequent medical check ups. This sounds like a great idea, I think it would be good to introduce something like this in the UK, telling people not to practice one of the world’s oldest and hardest to detect jobs is a bit like yelling at a dog to stop wagging its tail when petting it.

Dostoyevsky employs many similar themes to The Brothers Karamazov, like poverty, religion and social hierarchy.

Nearly all of the characters in the book are poverty stricken and struggle to keep rent paid and feed their families, this is shown in the most scrutinising detail, as Dostoyeksky was not a rich man himself, he had a challenging relationship with his faith and this is evident in his creation of devoted and passionate characters like the prostitute Sonia compared to the distracted reliance of Rodya.

The lack of intrigue in the novel left me a little disappointed and the characters weren’t exciting or fun enough to keep me fully engaged, however they are interesting and thought provoking, which compelled me to be concerned for them.

My favourite aspect was the abundance of Psychology and Philosophy themes present in the book, Rodya is a very polar character, somehow remaining likeable whilst being a selfish and conceited murderer, however he is also prone to acts of huge generousity, he feels guilt for his actions, but not in a direct way, he is his own punishment as his mind wreaks havoc on his body. I sometimes felt a little guilty whilst reading this as I felt I was rooting for him when he was committing sinful acts and I was condemning him when he did nice things like give his money away to a grieving widow.

But the depth of neuro-science is not just in the way the main character descends into madness and confusion, but also the thoughts of the other minor characters, often only serving as incomplete conversations that have little bearing on the plot or even the current situation.

*Ahem* Spoiler Alert.

I’ve got a little way to go before the end, but it being a 600 page book I’m sure you can forgive my not having finished it in the allotted week. I’m assuming there’s not going to be a mindblowing twist so I’ve probably said all I can be bothered without going into singular in-depth analysis.

Definitely not as refined and intellectual as The Brothers Karamazov but a fantastic book nonetheless if a little hard going and lacking in steady pace.

Time is Punishment