Digital Cowboys Film Club is a new project we’re starting with next week’s first episode. We were a Movie and Video Gaming podcast for nearly 90 episodes and since we switched to just games there have been many times we’ve wanted to talk about movies but couldn’t because we want to stay focused on games. We at Digital Cowboys have a commitment to excellence, so we couldn’t just talk about any old movies.

So we decided to go back and take a look at some films that made us love cinema in the first place. We’re holding off Star Wars, The Matrix and the other big franchises (at least for now) in favor of slightly more esoteric, unusual and challenging films. It also allows us to share some of the great pictures that may have passed by our audience over the years. We’re treating it like a club. We’ll give you all a heads up as to what film we’re doing next and you’ll have three weeks to get hold of and see it. Borrow it, rent it, buy it, but SEE it, because we’re going deep on these films and each show will be a spoiler-filled discussion. Sometime in the future we may do a film that absolutely sucks, but is such a train-wreck that it’s worth seeing, and sometimes we may have totally polarized viewpoints on a film.

Here are the eight rules of Film Club.

1. You do talk about Film Club
2. You DO talk about film Club
3. Everyone on the show has to see the film just beforehand
4. One show every three weeks
5. One film per show, gentlemen
   
6. No going “Er… I don’t remember that bit”
   
7. Shows go on as long as they have to
   
8. If you have an opinion on Film Club… you have to voice it

This is going to be great. Our first film is Fight Club and you should see it before Tuesday August 4th

In case you haven't heard the podcast yet, we have a brand new website.

Go to www.thedigitalcowboys.com and marvel at the high quality work of Commander Tim of Gamehounds. We worked with him as he constructed the site and every response we've had so far has been very positive. It's a great leap forward for the show.

Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCJTaccVeZk

This is our latest YouTube video. We really want this to spread about the net so send the link to everybody you know who knows about Milo and Project Natal. Enjoy.

Alex and Tony

On episode #113, recording tonight we have Mike Oldman, Community Manager for Eidos Interactive. Mike isn't just about PR, he's worked with THQ, run several gaming websites, written for Edge, Official Playstation, Xbox World and other magazines, and produced at least one gaming machinima series. So we're going to keep the angle away from merely shameless title promotion (although we want to know about Batman: Arkham Asylum and Just Cause 2 just as much as the next man). If you have any questions for Mike about Tomb Raider, Hitman, Lane and Lynch, Battlestations, Chuck Rock or any other Eidos title, (or if you'd like to ask him about some of the projects he's been part of in the past, then post them beneath this article or email us at digitalcowboys@googlemail.com

Written By: Alex Shaw

It’s hard to recall but this was one of the big PS3 releases, drumming up massive E3 excitement over the rolling demo several years ago. On first glance it’s just Godess of War, twin blades twirling, quicktime eventful and featuring an epic, mature, Conan-style fantasy storyline. To be absolutely honest, the first impressions aren’t too far off. This is every bit as action-packed as Kratos’ journeys, if considerably less gruesome. What sets HS apart is the level of elegance, both in the games heroine, and the design and flow of the game itself. Rather than just mashing the buttons and flailing the blades of Chaos, there’s a little more Ninja Gaiden-style switching of stances and timing of blows. Hammering square will get you blocked and killed fast. You have to time and counter. Nariko arcs about the screen, a lady-shaped death-machine, but each button-press has to be managed. There’s no hand-holding here. You have to earn your awesomeness.

The reason this game stands out in the mind, and why when you’ve finished it, it will stay with you and leave you wondering why other games don’t do it that way is the performances turned in by the mo-cap and voiceover actors. Gollum himself; Andy Serkis plays Bohan the tyrannical and brawny villain, injecting every line with easy, almost likable, poisonous charisma. He’s not some gloating D-lister with pretensions on being Emperor Palpatine, this is an award-winning actor at home in a digital role. He’s more like the terrifying man you meet in the pub and pray you’ll get away from before he snaps and you get a pool cue in the eye. The man who would be Kong also took up the role of dramatic director for the rest of the cast, and it shows. Every line is comitted to, every emotion feels true. If every voice director in gaming took this much time and effort to get his crew emoting then games would honestly be further down the road to being taken as seriously as films. Nariko, Bohan, Kai, Shen are all excellent characters, none of them stereotyped, all of them interesting, with strengths and frailties making them far more human than we’re used to in this medium.

Looking back on the game, it’s really a pretty slick but standard slasher. Golden Axe brought right up to date (and not like the atocity that was Beast Rider) but the reason to find this game again is that if you own a PS3 and if you’re looking forward to God of War III for reasons of story and character as well as action then you owe it to yourself to get this played in the meantime. It has some annoying sections involving crossbows and catapaults and the sixaxis controls, but a little perseverence, aiming first and keeping a cool head will get these completed. Criminally overlooked on release and not likely to see the sequel it probably doesn’t need, this stands alone as a time when Ninja Theory (They of Kung Fu Chaos) truly excelled and made an action game with a bit of heart and soul for a change.

Written By: Alex Shaw

If you recently sold your DS Lite and bought a DSi, sorry pal, you’re a sucker!

Don’t get mad at me, get mad at Nintendo. They promised you an upgrade. The ability to buy brand new mini games and a sleek form-factor with a slightly bigger screen. All they took was that useless old GBA slot that was taking up so much room. Unfortunately for you, that means you traded the best SNES games and frankly some of the best handheld games for Mario Clock, Mario Calculator and the ability to buy small, or “express” portions of other games. On consoles we call these demos and don’t pay for them (Yet… God I hope I didn’t jinx us) It was, in effect, a downgrade.

Tell me, with your hand on your heart that DSiware is what you hoped it would be right now. Obviously it’s early days, there’s so much Nintendo could do with this new market. But if you look at their track record for the past year of WiiWare, they’ve yet to even approach the signpost for the parking lot to the ball-park of quality that some of the titles you lose in this transaction equate to.
Here’s just the briefest of lists of games you can buy as GBA carts cheaply on eBay.

Super Mario Brothers 1,2,3, World and Yoshi’s Island (Advance)

Zelda: A Link to the Past and Four Swords and The Minish Cap

Metroid Fusion and Zero Mission

Golden Sun 1 & 2

Final Fight

Street Fighter Alpha 3

Warioware Twisted

PoKeMoN Ruby and Saphire

Fire Emblem

Final Fantasy VI and Tactics

Mario Golf

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow

PLUS Guitar Hero on the DS

By all means add your own in the comments section. You may not want to buy games second-hand. If so, Nintendo loves you and you will probably be able to buy all the above again legitimately. You may also still have a GBA,  I have a GBA SP for when my wife’s using the DS, but the screen isn’t as bright. You may simply not care about these games. If that’s true of all the above, why do you own a handheld at all? Now in a year’s time, look back on this article and it may be that I’m dead wrong. I’m sure a few good games could come out. Nintendo could even pull some classics out of their magic hat to rival even A Link to the Past, and the others from both the shining days of the SNES and the quirkier inventive streak that the GBA development cycle represented, but let’s face it, it’s not likely.

Written By: Alex Shaw

Whatever your feelings on the demise of the king of pop, if you’re in your mid-twenties or older you’ll remember this game. Moonwalker was based on the movie, itself a collection of music videos and montages culminating in a lengthy,  naive adventure- tale involving Mike trying to save three kids from the evil, drug-dealing Mr Big, played by Joe Pesci. The centrepiece of this is the fairly spectacular video for Smooth Criminal. This imagery formed the backbone of the Sega arcade game and shortly afterward; the Genesis and Master System versions.

The arcade cabinet was an isometric beat-em-up that saw Jackson trawling the streets, rescuing children and throwing magic bolts at hoodlums, armed guards and robotic dogs. Utilizing the dance button activated a smart-bomb style dance attack that forced every enemy to get in behind Mike and dance along with him before expiring suddenly. The home console versions followed the same premise, only with a 2D platforming engine, more suited to the hardware.

The game was decried by many as a crappy license but think hard. How many other games feature singers kicking the crap out of thugs and then coercing them into highly coordinated dance routines? Most music fighters are rap-based and one-on-one. I’m thinking Def Jam Icon here and Wu Tang: Shaolin Style. There are simply no others. So in that way, Moonwalker stands alone. Also it contained digitised, chip-tune versions of Mike’s music. Smooth Criminal, Beat It, Bad, Billie Jean and the obvious choice for the graveyard level; Another part of me. (Licensing, precluded the use of Thriller outside Japan). It was plinky-plunky and exemplary of the limitations of the Genesis, but still funky and recognisible and it gave the game a musical identity.

It was simple stuff. Smack about bad guys and rescue the kids from around the levels. Bubbles the chimp then comes and sits on your shoulder and points the way to the boss, which invariably turns out to be a bunch of goons. Very occasionally you’d get a shooting star that would turn you into a missile-spewing flying robot. It really wasn’t bad at all… well it was Bad… in a good way. Licenses may mean this game will never see the light of day again, but I would encourage Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo to consider it for their online marketplace. It will obviously sell and for the youngsters who weren’t around when it came out, (before the premise of Mike hunting for children took on an objectionable aspect), it’s a great fun title with challenge and replayability. Well worth the 400 points or equivolent it would cost.

Michael appeared later in Space Channel 5 (parts one and two) and as a secret character in Ready 2 Rumble Round 2, both on the Dreamcast, so clearly his relationship with Sega and indeed video games stayed healthy. I would not be surprised if a Jackson-themed Singstar tore up the charts this Christmas. We gamers have definitely not seen the last of this man.

Written By: Alex Shaw

It’s always been very easy to look at video games and find the obvious female stereotypes strewn across our thirty year history. Since we’ve been able to identify adventure characters by gender, they’ve been largely male. Pitfall Harry, Jet Set Willy, Mario, Link. In fact the big revelation at the end of Metroid (Samus was and remains a woman) was pretty groundbreaking back in 1986. When females turned up it was usually either as damsels in distress to be rescued (Final Fight, Mario, Zelda) or weaker, faster fighters to balance the mediocre man and the beefy guy (Streets of Rage, Golden Axe). Then with Street Fighter II we got Chun Li, the token female who was actually pretty good at holding her own and was followed by Cammy and eventually a deluge of lady Street Fighters, each tougher than the last. But women still hadn’t too often been the stars of games.

So it’s 1996 and Lara Croft is up on the posters, her gigantic polygonal mammary glands making all the adolescent boys dribble, and giving developers ideas. The move to 3D meant everything changed for one (well two) reasons. “Hey, let’s make some games with a sexy girl as the star,” they said. “I mean who wants to follow a guy’s tight, supple buttocks around for ten hours? Certainly not girls, they don’t even play these things.” And nobody thought to ask why. Surprisingly following Croft, developers actually managed to hit the mark a few times with slightly more well-formed female characters. So we got Jill Valentine (Resident Evil), Aya Brea (Parasite Eve), Darci Stern (Urban Chaos), Hana (Fear Effect), Cate Archer (No One Lives Forever), Joanna Dark (Perfect Dark), and Heather (Silent Hill 3). It wasn’t the done thing to have girls play the damsel in distress any more and the sexes became equals of sorts, albeit that women were still often the weaker choice with the bigger pockets. Until finally we started getting some real characters that weren’t just eye candy and sometimes the fact that they were female played into the story and had a real effect on their character progression; The Boss in Metal Gear Solid 3 probably being the best example of this.

But despite this short-changing of 51% of the species, I’d like to argue for the other 49% for just one minute. Looking back on these games it’s pretty obvious that men get just as rough a time of things as women. Possibly more so, because developers don’t even have to think, “Hang on, what does this say about how we view this gender?” they just pump up his muscles, stick a gun in his hand and send him down the chute into the battlefield. Chris Redfield in all his lumbering, sweaty glory exemplifies this point. His arms may look like condoms full of walnuts but does he ever say or do anything memorable? In contrast, Sheva of Resident Evil 5 at least has a back-story and some motivation other than simply, “Umbrella bad, Chris SMASH!

It’s embarrassing to say but video games in general, still being a medium on the brink of maturity, means that both genders are portrayed in broad brush-strokes and that comes down to lazy writing and a lack of focus on characterisation. But look to the best stories and you’ll find a better class of woman and man. Metal Gear may be absurd at times, and might not rank alongside the best cinematic storytelling, but Solid Snake is as great a male character as The Boss is a female one. Heavenly Sword pitches a girl born into the role meant for a boy in a male-dominated world and though she’s an incredibly strong fighter, her best characterisation comes in the form of her vulnerability. The mistake most inexperienced writers make (myself included at times in my shady past) is trying too hard to make characters look cool, tough and near-invincible. That’s very often boring as hell and impossible to relate to. Our flaws are where the reader and subject join up. Karla Valenti in Indigo Prophecy (Fahrenheit to my fellow Europeans) for example, is incredibly claustrophobic, a fear which impacts on the game itself as you struggle to push her through a darkened, cramped basement. In this case, it didn’t really matter that she was female, and some games have capitalized on this manner of storytelling.  Mass Effect pulls off the perfect balancing act because it’s absolutely immaterial which sex you pick, everyone reacts to you the same. And guess what; my female Commander Sheppard, with all her hard-bitten lines, scarred face and equally damaged personality is the best female I’ve seen portrayed yet. Taking the gender issue out is not the answer every time, but in this case it works perfectly. Clearly BioWare took a hard look at the story of Ms. Pac-Man and saw an equality they could relate to. So in conclusion, it’s not that games are sexist. It’s not even that game developers are gender-biased. It’s that bad writing is just that. When games get consistently good stories, written by mature adults, both men and women will be portrayed in a better light. We will get the rounded individuals who resemble real people. We just have to hold on through all the meat-headed heroes and buxom, gun-wielding vixens until the culture catches up with our ideals.

This Saturday's episode #111 (June 27th) we've got Leigh Alexander on the show. We're talking about both how women are portrayed in games and how games are marketed towards women.

Leigh Alexander covers the game biz as news director at industry trade site Gamasutra and authors the Sexy Videogameland blog, which aims to engage the community on a wide range of progressive -- and fun! -- topics. Her monthly column at Kotaku deals with social and cultural issues surrounding games and gamers, and she's done articles and reviews in Slate, Variety, Wired and various other publications.

Send us and Leigh your questions to the usual address: digitalcowboys@googlemail.com and remember you can twitter us before and even during the show recording which will be from 8pm BST on Wednesday.

This Saturday's episode #110 (June 20th) we've got Bobby Blackwolf on the show. We're talking about the music-rhythm-action genre; is it getting milked to death this year? We're also tackling the issue of piracy and looking at a few ways it's effecting the industry.

Send us and Bobby your questions to the usual address: digitalcowboys@googlemail.com and remember you can twitter us before and even during the show recording which will be from 8pm BST on Wednesday.

Check out Bobby's podcast on All Games Radio here. It's absolutely brilliant.

Written By: Alex Shaw

This isn't my review it's just something that struck me as annoying while playing. Sloppy-ass storytelling via minimalist cutscenes.

Developers Sucker-Punch are clearly going for a dark, comic-book style to the game. It fits the gameplay perfectly as you're playing an electric superhero/superantihero who leaps around a city in chaos, dealing death to wrongdoers and/or innocent bystanders. So that would fit with presentation that matches today's black, gritty comic books from the likes of Frank Miller, Mark Millar, J. Michael Straczynski, Brian K. Vaughan and Brian Michael Bendis, right? Wrong? The comic scenes are spliced in between each major action section with such clumsiness it feels as though they're just placeholders that never got replaced.

Here's how it goes.

1. You do a mission, running from A to B, and killing dudes 1 thru 20.

2. The mission ends, we cut to a swift montage of pretty competent comic art, complete with a voiceover as gravely protagonist Coal explains how he met someone new and had a conversation with them. This process takes about twenty seconds to watch.

3. Cut to Cole, straight after that, somewhere else. Go do another mission.

Did you spot what was missing? Character interaction, development, empathy, identifying with our hero in any way.

"But that's fine too!" You say. "All I want to do is bust heads. Make with the zapping already. We don't like getting bogged down in those hour-long Kojima style cutscenes." True, sometimes they can screw up the pace and have you longing for some more gameplay, but those bits between the action are absolutely crucial for us caring about what's going on. If we're simply told "Then I met this woman. She worked for some company or other. Told me I had to work for her." we learn nothing except the basic framework for the maguffin Cole's been sent on. He has no more motivation to complete his tasks than before. It short-changes us as an audiance and crucially it falls way short of Sucker Punch's aim. The real meat of graphic novels are the taut scenes of character interaction. They define the story, justify and strengthen the action and give us something to really get hooked on. Imagine watching only the last third of The Matrix. Sure it would be cool, but we wouldn't know why Neo was really fighting, or care what happened to him.

The game itself is fine. A prime example of accomplished, sandbox action with some spectacular moments. I just don't care about what happens to anybody in it. Next time you're riffing on comics developers be sure to read one or two first. I reccomend Powers and The Ultimates.

Written By: Alex Shaw

Having never played Ico or Shadow of the Colossus before, I have issues with how the recent trailer for The Last Guardian made me feel. The story seemed simplistic enough. Penny Arcade among others have remarked that there's only two ways that game's ending; The boy dies or the baby Gryphon thing dies.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/6/8/

The music (courtesy of the Coen Brother's; Miller's Crossing) is manipulative in the way it tweaks at your  emotions and brings up all your regrets and happy memories at once. And of course, the look of the game is beautiful, in that way Team Ico alone seem to be able to manage. Vast, empty, ruined lands, lonely individuals and a tender friendship, tempered by heartbreaking loss. I knew all this going in, and I'm a grown man with a beard, so why was I blubbering like a schoolgirl who's just been called fat by the boy she's been crushing on for years?

I can only assume it's because deep down I'm a sucker for the emotional kick some very select games are capable of delivering. Due to the interaction, it's often even more engaging than a film, book or TV show when a character you've been playing for hours suffers a great loss. These games stick with us and we all like to pick over them fondly in the weeks, months and years after completion, strangely content with the haunting effect they have had on us. Yesterday I bought Shadow of the Colossus on eBay for a hefty price, just so I can finally play this celebrated game and stop feeling like I'm missing out on servicing my soul.

Here are my top ten recommendations for games with an emotional punch that will stay with you.

Possible spoiler warnings if just knowing the titles of these is enough to help you work out what happens.

--------------------

10. Fable II

9. Grand Theft Auto IV

8. Call of Duty 4:  Modern Warfare

7. Secret of Mana

6. The Darkness

5. God of War

4. Heavenly Sword

3. Mass Effect

2. Final Fantasy VII

1. Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistance

Throw in Ico or Colossus by default since by all rights they're superb. Now  I'll probably go and hammer up some drywall while drinking beer off of a Playboy model and cheering on my favorite team, just to remind myself how a real man is supposed to behave.

Written By: Alex Shaw

E3 2009 and two significant steps were made towards increasing the number of full games downloaded rather than bought in stores. Firstly the PSP GO with it's built-in memory, lack of a UMD drive and focus on the PSN store. Secondly Microsoft launching full 360 games, pointedly canceling their sparse run of Xbox classics. It's clearly huge, because soon we'll be buying full games for these systems and Gamestop (and Game in the UK) as well as all the other stores won't see a penny.

Yet, did you notice the utter lack of fanfare to that effect? It was as if Sony and Microsoft didn't want to nip at the hand that feeds them with any grandstanding about the new services. In the future, like it or not we're going to be downloading most, if not all of our games. That time will be different for all of us. Some (like me) will hate the fact that we don't have a boxed, hard copy for our collection or something to sell again on eBay or Amazon to further fund our hobby. But a lot of people won't care at all and will in fact be glad of the ease of use. No more having to deal with sales clerks, no more clutter on our shelves, just teaming hard-drives and instantly accessible games.

But clearly these two gaming giants would rather we took this in our stride and keep Gamestop happy with vouchers for downloadable content like Lost and Damned and exclusive demo access for top games like Killzone 2 (for all the good that did). This is a relationship that's going to turn sour in the years to come as the market evolves. This was just the first, quiet change that still means a huge ammount. Now if you don't mind, I'm going to go and gaze at my World of Warcraft disc boxes. They're just meaningless bits of shelf-candy now. I may as well throw them away. But they're so damn pretty.

Written By: Alex Shaw

Whilst at the MCM Expo in London under the Gamehounds banner, I spoke to Leo Tan; UK PR Manager for Capcom about Monster Hunter on the PSP. With me were my Digital Cowboys co-host Tony Atkins and from Superhappyfuntimeshow - Chris O Regan.

GH: Leo. We're very much Monster Hunter outsiders. We"ve heard about it on various podcasts and we’ve read about it, but we’re trying to get to the heart of what the game’s about. What do you think is the appeal is for the core fanbase?

CAPCOM: That’s a tough one. It’s such a huge game. There’s so much to do in it. It’s got an MMO style meta-game that spans for hundreds and hundreds of hours, only there’s no subscription. To get the most out of it you need to meet up with other people and play. If you have just one other person to play with it becomes this incredible, life-changing experience. If I had to summerise it, I’d say "Hit big monsters with big weapons.”

SHFTS: I’ll confess, I’ve been playing this since it first came out on the PS2 and I really like it on the PSP. The problem is getting people together.

CAPCOM: Funny you should say that. (He hands us a flyer) We’re opening a dedicated space in central London from the first of July to the first of September. It’s three stories, two minutes walk from Tottenham Court tube station, where you will be able to just come in, meet other Monster Hunter players and just play.

Check it out here

SHFTS: Agreed that multiplayer is very important but it’s also a solid single player game. Bit of a dungeon crawling loot-gatherer.

CAPCOM: I would kind of describe it like Phantasy Star Online. It’s a few maps and they change subtly along with the monsters and it’s a case of finding monsters and killing them, then getting better weapons to kill bigger ones. Good for Diablo players who like loot tables. But unlike PSO the combat isn’t just pressing X, X, X. I like Phantasy Star and the loot table stuff is brilliant but Monster Hunter is so technical, and this is maybe one of it’s problems, that there’s a lot of learning to do at the beginning. But it doesn’t get repetitive because there’s always new weapons and new skills to learn, armour to build and an insane amount of customisation. So even if you and I both played Long sword class we might develop our characters quite differently, specialising in healing or evading. The dynamic is always changing. It’s complex but worth the effort.

SHFTS: Is it online or local play?

CAPCOM: It’s local play. There are ways you can play online but we don’t support them.

GH: Moving swiftly on. It’s massive in Japan though, isn’t it?

CAPCOM: Three million units shipped over there last year. More than Wii Fit. It’s the biggest game out there and it’s on an older platform (PS2).

GH: If this was TGS, we’d have a massive line to get through to reach this game, what problems have you guys come up against trying to bring this to Europe and America?

CAPCOM: I think there’s a chicken and egg situation where you want to get players in, but for that you need players. Also there’s a general environmental difference; the weather’s not as good here (England. Tell me about it.) it’s not as safe on the streets, not as easy to meet up. It’s tough to get over the fact that it’s on PSP here. Not enough people use their handhelds in the UK. There are almost as many PSP’s out there as Xbox 360’s (3.2 million to 3.4) Too many units are just sitting at home in a drawer. People have this attitude like because it’s a portable console you must be travelling when you play it. I’ve spoken to people who say “Yeah I’ve got it and I like it, but I don’t travel very much.” And I think, nor do I, but I still play my PSP at home and at work. If you’ve got an amazing set up at home, brilliant, but a good game is a good game.

-----

Many thanks to Leo for the interview. We should have a discussion about fighting sticks sometime, because he loves him some Street Fighter. And NOW I want a PSP! If only Sony would release an updated model... hmm.

The following interview was conducted at London’s MCM Expo Saturday May 23, 2009. It relates to this article, covering the hands-on demo. http://www.platformnation.com/2009/05/23/batman-arkham-asylum-demo-hands-on/

On hand were myself and Tony Atkins reporting for Gamehounds and Chris O Regan of All Games Radio’s Superhappyfuntimeshow. We spoke to Mike Oldman, Community Manager for Eidos Game Studios, about the Batman: Arkham Asylum demo.

GH: This is basically the most interesting thing we’ve seen all day. Why has Batman: Arkham Asylum been held back for release?

Eidos: We didn’t have a solid announcement regarding release date. It’s just a case of making sure it’s the best game possible. There’s nothing wrong with the game, and it’s nothing to do with Square [Enix, who recently acquired Eidos]. We’re looking at a late summer release, but the movement on this has been minimal.

SHFTS: It’s a good time to release, I think Bioshock was out around that time two years ago.

Eidos: Yeah you get that summer lull where games don’t generally come out. I think we’re in the middle of one right now.

SHFTS: Can you tell us what we’ve been playing here? It seems like a good, but quite short demo.

Eidos: This doesn’t show everything in the game by any means. It’s literally just a combat arena. It’s one of the separate modes that run alongside the story. It’s like a survival mode. You’ve got wave after wave of enemies you have to beat and get a high score and there will be leader-boards as well. They won’t just cover combat, there’s a range of modes like invisible predator and it’s basically a series of set challenges. All the skills you learn in the single-player game are transferable into this. The combat changes quite a lot once you’ve gone through the game.

GH: So it’s a progressive combat system and you’ll be learning new skills.

Eidos: That’s correct. I think there’s about twenty takedowns for Batman in the game so what you’re seeing here is just a bit of it. We also just announced the playing as the Joker content for PS3 only. There will be challenge rooms just for the Joker.

GH: I’m assuming we can’t ask if there will be any 360 exclusive content, maybe Killer Croc?

Eidos: (Smiles) No announcement at this point is the official word.

GH: There’s a twinkle in your eye.

Eidos: Wait and see.

SHFTS: One of the things I’ve found when I was playing the demo is that there seems to be a lot of automation in the moves. Like you only have to press a few buttons and he launches into a combo. How does that work? Is it like Assassin’s Creed?

Eidos: It really depends on who you watch playing. The skill of the player really does change the combat quite a bit. I’ve watched people playing today and you get some people only punching repeatedly and it always looks the same. But really it’s designed to be a sort of Tony Hawk style combo system. Once you’re getting seventeen-hit combos on the go it really changes the gameplay completely.

GH: So it’s not so much about the danger of actually dying as it is juggling combos.

Eidos: You have to think forwards as to which guy Batman goes for next so that he can go through a combo. You’re seeing basic thugs here, but later on you get guys with weapons which you have to deal with differently. You can’t punch a knife guy in the face, you have to stun him first. Guns become a big issue too.

GH: So you have to be tactical about who you take out first.

Eidos: Absolutely. One of the things we’ve been saying since day one is that Batman is not a superhero, he’s a guy in a suit with some nice gadgets. He’s a badass, yeah, but if you’re going to fire a bullet at him it’s going to do some damage. So the second someone gets a gun you need to take them down immediately.

GH: I was watching earlier and you actually go into a skeleton mode while fighting…

Eidos: Yes. That’s the invisible predator mode. It’s in every element of the game but it’s not specifically for combat. It’s used for the investigative and detective elements. The majority of the game as it plays out, you do not want to get spotted by enemies and you want to scare them. There’s a dynamic fear system throughout the game where if something happens to one of them in a shady area, they won’t go back to it. Predator mode allows you to see through walls, asses the enemies’ reactions, heart rates, see how they’re doing. You can mess with them.

GH: How easy is it to hide from enemies? I’m thinking of Tenchu and Metal Gear Solid here.

Eidos. Basically if they can see you they’ll come after you. They won’t forget you either. Environment plays a large part in things and it’s not too hard to get away with your grappling hook. His gadgets play a pretty big hand in that. Especially the batarang, which doesn’t get a look in on the demo.

GH: Purely as a gamer, promotion aside, what’s your favourite part of this game?

Eidos: My favourite part of the game, I can’t talk about.

GH and SHFTS: (Cries of disappointment)

Eidos: That’s sickening to say, I know but it is to be kept quiet. Aside from that is combat. The combat is quite excellent. You can interrupt anything at any point. The animation’s not locked, you can throw or counter at any point. Once you get a feel for that it really changes the way you play. And it’s brutal.

SHFTS: It’s dark, but it’s Batman.

Eidos: Yeah, but it surprised even me. You see a few sequences and hear the odd bit of dialogue and you think, he’s messed up. And Arkham’s not a nice place to be.

GH: We’re looking forward to it. A good superhero game, you don’t get that very often do you?

SHFTS: Superman 64?

GH: Mike, it’s been fantastic, thank you very much.

Eidos: It’s been a pleasure.

Written By: Alex Shaw

I was lucky enough to get to play a demo for this much anticipated game this weekend at the London MCM Expo. I was there under the Gamehounds banner and got a great little interview with Eidos community manager; Mike Oldman, which I'll be transcribing for P.N. in the next few days.

The demo was a series of survival matches against rooms full of thugs. There was none of the swinging around and promised predatory gameplay, but considering how many people were jostling to have a go, that was actually a good thing. This was purely a quick session so we could see the graphics, textures and movement up close and get to grips with some of Batman's basic moves. Fighting is so fluid and responsive in this game, it feels a little like Assassin's Creed in terms of making you look cool with minimal button-mashing. I'm assured that while this will ease you in on early sections, the later denizens of Arkham will require more tactics, so it won't be a case of being held by the hand.

Batman's cape swishes about him with the eye-catching grace of Nariko's hair in Heavenly Sword. In fact, it's the best cape I can recall in a game. The Dark Knight moves somewhat similar to the recent Christopher Nolan movie incarnation, with short, sharp, economical blows, rather than the sweeping movements of the Animated series. Fans of the Hush storyline will appreciate how technical he is as a fighter and it feels like he's making split-second combat decisions rather than just mashing punches together. Textures glisten with that Unreal sheen and the character models, body structure and sound effects pack the same meaty punch as Gears of War and similar gritty, physical games from that engine's family.

I, personally have been looking forward to this for a long time. Aside from the SNES version that made an excellent platform beat-em-up of the Animated series license, this is a classic comic-book and movie character who has never had a decent, contemporary incarnation in a video game. Now it looks like this may be that long-overdue menacing, adult representation he deserves. Playing the demo only made me thirst for more.

Written By: Alex Shaw

This is the question whose answer is very much in danger of disappearing up it's own arse. I had to tackle it in a recent podcast and my co-host Tony and our guest Daniel Floyd had to be very much to-the-point. Firstly you have to define art, then discuss which games fit into that category. Cooper Hawkes of Gamehounds maintains that "To me, art is imagination brought to life, and ANY game you play is that.” My counter-argument is the deluge of entirely financially-motivated movies out there. To me at least; Saw V is not art, Epic Movie is not art and the complete works of Pauly Shore are definitely not art. Hawkes and I are going to argue that one out later but in the meantime we defined it on the show as “Anything that"s been created with the intention of provoking emotion taking precedence over financial gain.”

Now by that definition Shadow of the Colossus, Ico, Flower, Braid all qualify. Aside from being achingly beautiful at times they tell a story that evokes emotion. They don’t have to; they could just have been standard adventure fodder. Braid could easily have been just as good on a technical level without any poetic references or back-story, purely based on its mechanics. In fact I know a few people who would have preferred it that way. The reason it qualifies as art by this definition is that Jonathon Blow chose to paint a different picture with it. He chose to tell a deeper story. Littlebigplanet as I have said is absolutely a gigantic art project started by Media Molecule and added to by thousands of players the world over, continuously recreating a collage of gaming experiences, some good, some bad and a few fantastic. It uses platforming mechanics as an end product but the tools the creators use are the components of the levels themselves. It’s quite possible to tell an emotional story using the LBP engine and not one of its contributors outside of the Guilford-based developer stands to make a penny of profit for the time and effort they put in. I know nothing about high art, I’ll freely admit that, but I do know that not all modern-day artists are that selfless.

Roger Ebert has stated in the past that games will never be on a par with films artistically speaking because there is a degree of interactivity that takes away authorial control, but I see this as a gross oversimplification. It doesn’t apply to all games, but some that can be argued to have more artistic merit are going to tell a story no matter what you do. The author always has ultimate control of where you’re going. Sure I could play a game erratically, keep doing the same thing again and again, stop halfway through, skip all the cut-scenes and shut my eyes for the ending but I could also stand in the Louvre and stare at just the bottom-right hand corner of the Mona Lisa, thus taking away all control from Da Vinci in communicating what that painting represents. In either case I’d be being a dick. And Ebert, thanks to the fast-forward and eject buttons we’ve had for the past thirty years, we can do that with films now too.

The conclusion we reached on the podcast was totally unexpected. Even though we could argue the point until the cows come home, it’s based on our personal definition of what makes something art. Daniel Floyd surmised that maybe he didn’t want games to be art. They’re fun, and most art isn’t (to him anyway) and more importantly isn’t it just our own insecurities about what we’re passionately into that made us ask that question in the first place? We want games to be taken seriously so that when we say “Hey, Dad, I’ve decided what I’m going to do with my adult life; I’m going to write about Sonic the Hedgehog.” Our fathers will nod their heads appreciatively because they understand how important games are. We want them to be accepted as a valid, adult pursuit and when it comes down to it, art will never be considered to be just for kids.

Written By: Alex Shaw

Yes, we're a gaming site, but what the hell, most of us have an opinion about this film, even if it's hate. I never much cared for Star Trek. Being raised on Star Wars I always felt that Picard and company lacked in excitement and action, being more interested in politics and diplomacy. However, my wife made sure I watched the first seven Star Trek movies recently to get to know the original crew. They range from Great (Wrath of Khan) to embarrassingly crappy (Final Frontier), but crucially I got a bead on the characters. Other shows, films and games set me up to get into this universe. The cream of recent Sci-F; namely Firefly/Serenity, Battlestar Galactica and Mass Effect. All painted vivid universes with living, breathing people and an emphasis on drama, characterization and action.

So seeing the new JJ Abrams redux was actually pretty fantastic for me. Star Trek 09 has everything I could possibly want. It restarts the universe (No spoilers but once you've seen it there's some really clever stuff going on regarding the new storyline.) and presents you with new actors filling the quirky roles of all the old characters, injecting them with youthful energy. Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto as Kirk and Spock are absolutely magnetic, capturing the twinkle of Shatners eye, his swagger and arrogance and Nimoy's focused, calm and unwavering demeanor. They are stars in the making. There's pacey action and oddball comedy, all conducted convincingly in a shiny new version of the old world. It feels like a full cinematic experience as well, as opposed to the featurelength TV shows that the later movies often felt like. The camera soars past a gigantic Enterprise that's never felt more tangible and real. It's also got a lot of heart, with several moments being actually pretty moving.

Abrams has a talent, displayed in Lost, M:I-3 and Cloverfield of blending the realistic with the exciting and breathing new life into tired old genre's (Twilight Zone-style mysteries, spy thrillers and monster movies). He's the perfect director to bring this to 2009's addiences, both old hands and new blood will find something to love. It's definitely arguable that this film is not as faithful to the old shows as it could have been, it's heavily action based and reeks of setup with it's view to many sequels, but none of this mattered to me as everyone involved handled the main game so well. A genuine experience. Best film of the year so far.

Rating: 10/10

I was recently asked this by listener, Sean O' Brien, after Wanted: Weapons of Fate weighed in at four hours, which at $60 retail is $15 an hour (I can find you girls cheaper than that). In contrast I picked up Mass Effect for considerably less and get lost for fifty or so hours. It doesn't seem fair to judge two different games on quantity of playable hours, it"s quality that counts in the end, right? So another win for Mass Effect there too. It’s an issue that expands into many more, concerning value, gaming style and the longevity of multiplayer, but let’s focus on the core question.

You have to factor in many things when weighing up the perfect length. Firstly genre; a fifty hour single-player action game would never get finished, an eight hour RPG would leave people feeling cheated. Secondly, variety; if you’re doing the same thing over and over for twelve hours, you will definitely get tired of it by the final quarter. No amount of jazzy cut-scenes could prevent a repetitive stop-and-pop from leaving you with a dull feeling in your gut whenever you think about playing the game again. Thirdly, context; if you’re trying to beat the game over a weekend, you’ll stay on top of the difficulty curve but you might get exhausted with it by the end. Space it out over six months and you’ll keep having to re-learn the controls and mechanics and wandering around not knowing where you should be (Final Fantasy XII, I’m looking at you). It’s easy to just say that it depends on the game, but Drake’s Fortune would have been more digestible minus the last hour or so of frantic blasting.

A great deal of the problem lies in the development process. When designing a game and estimating time of play, it is incredibly difficult to balance out players who will try to finish quickly or slowly. There are months of meetings, scripting and storyboarding sessions, months more of engine building, texture mapping, voice recording and motion capture. Hard effort goes into every iota of design in the production and the deadlines always loom on the horizon. By the time it gets to the play-testing stage, any reports that the final sections are tedious or frustrating come after months of expensive production. What are the developers meant to do, simply scissor them out in a rush to the finale? 

Wanted is a short, stylish game that is nonetheless frustrating and formulaic. It manages to outstay its welcome by precisely one level; the last one, which after eight previous missions of Gears/Uncharted/Dark Sector/50 Cent-style blasting action that we’ve all done before, presents you with alley after alley of stupid, bullet-absorbing thugs. It might be a good rental but only if you’re not tired of treading that well-worn path. As a retail game it’s hard to recommend. The sting of it is that four more levels would have taken it into the realms of galling tedium. By the middle of the game you’ve learned all the mechanics and you’re just rinse/repeating so Swedish developers, Grin, were already in a no-win situation. Ultimately it’s a licensed game and while the investment means it may sell more than a new IP, it also constrains. Wanted may have been better as a downloadable game along the lines of Watchmen, along with the lower price point.

The simplest answer to the perfect length of a game is; if you are beginning to get cheesed off with the game and just want it to be over, it’s too long. If you finish and feel like the developers could have given you more, it’s too short. The sweet spot is an exhilarating final section/race/puzzle and satisfying end sequence bringing you back to the title screen and hovering over "New Game” even though it’s 1am. You can get by on four hours sleep, right?

Written By: Alex Shaw

Last November I, like many PS3 owners, finally got my hands on LittleBigPlanet. It surfed in on a wave of hype and outstanding critical acclaim. Create and publish your own levels, experience content produced by gamers the world over. To begin with it was just as shiny, inventive and accessible as I'd been led to believe. Then as the days went on and the mechanics began to grate a little, I joined the throngs of complainers lamenting the floaty platforming, unexpectedly steep difficulty curve and twitchy online interface. Half the user-created levels were just trophy runs and prize giveaways, the other half were taken off the servers for copyright infringement. Due to an insanely busy Christmas gaming schedule I put it down for a few months.

I went back last weekend to re-assess. While many of the above problems are still present I finally realised what was wrong with my perception. I was judging this as a platformer. A total redux of what we thought that genre was, true, but a platformer like Mario and Sonic nonetheless.

It"s not.

LittleBigPlanet is a grand art project begun by Media Molecule in November 2008 and added to by thousands of artists both talented and talentless. It’s an exploration of what gamers can do creatively with a console; a machine usually unsuited to this task. And it simply takes the form of a platform game.

It’s still annoying, floaty and full of shabby, prize-littered levels whose inept designers are begging for approval, but crucially the reviewers who gave it tens on pure speculation that there would be excellent content were absolutely right. A little digging and patience turns up levels of extraordinary complexity, beauty and fun. Everyone can find something to love about this game. You may be muttering "Welcome to last year’s opinions,” but, you see, I had to let the hype die down, the deeper content be published and the new purchase price drop to such a tragic low that this became the brilliant underdog it was always meant to be. LBP, I misjudged you and I apologise.

Written By: Alex Shaw

Capcom recently released the "Championship Mode” expansion pack for Street Fighter IV, free on Xbox Live and PSN. This gives players a replay mode, a new points system and a much needed enhanced tournament matching system. However it doesn't patch the fact that Seth is the cheapest boss of this console generation. Let"s take a look back on some of the biggest cheating scumbags to ever bar us as gamers from those end sequences.

10. Raven Lord (Heavenly Sword). The kind of boss you have to hit ten times for every one time he hits you. Plus he can fly. You’ll have been wanting to clobber him for the duration of the game and the fact that he makes it so hard nearly dulls the sharp ending of this overlooked PS3 classic.

9. Graven (Conan). It’s the repetition that kills this game’s enjoyment factor. You have to jump through hoops and perform identical, perfectly timed attacks repeatedly or he regenerates health and you start all over again. After six phases of doing the same thing you begin praying to Crom that Conan will simply grow a pair, forsake the quick time events and just cut this bastard’s head off.

8. Darth Vader - Final Battle (Star Wars: The Force Unleashed). Vader should not be easy to beat, granted, but when he effortlessly parries every one of your attacks except a specific three-button combination that he seems particularly weak to, it forces you to turn what could have been THE grand duel into a series of Vader beat-downs, which he is fumblingly unable to counter.

7. General Raam (Gears of War). Hiding behind a huge gun and merrily absorbing your bullets into his head, Raam is one of those essentially invincible guys, until you reach the prescribed quota for shots in the face, at which point he dies. It makes no sense. Infuriatingly difficult, especially on Insane.

6. Navarro (Drake’s Fortune). Run a gauntlet of grunts and get nothing but perfect headshots, all the while being cut to pieces if you break cover. Follow up with a ridiculous quick time event. The game itself is worth so much more than this laborious war of attrition.

5. Solidus (Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty) At last you get a katana, and that blond whiner finally starts seeming like he might have some hidden grit to his character. Then Solidus whips out his own blade and lays into you so ferociously it reduces the fight to long periods of blocking with occasional frantic attacks. It’s all the more insulting considering how visceral the Snake-on-Snake fight was at the end of MGS1.You were right to hate Raiden.

4. M-Bison (Street Fighter II Turbo) Bison takes one look at you and begins a shuttle-run of Psycho-Crushers back and forth across the screen. If you ever get a decent kick in, you get thrown like a Don King prize-fight. He’s a legendarily cheap boss, but he’s not as cheap as…

3. Seth (Street Fighter IV) If you thought Bison was unfair, Seth will calmly counter every attack with one of his amazing repertoire of three moves; the instant hundred-foot kick, the teleport/bitch-slap and the suck-you-into-my-belt, which takes such little regard of physics it’s beyond insulting.

2. Abyss (Marvel VS. Capcom 2) If you never played MvC2, look forward to a summer of screaming at this evil green fuckwit. He has three forms: firstly, a twelve foot-tall armoured horn-beast; secondly, a green naked man with a gun who laughs chirpily as you get blasted; and a third that fills most of the screen with teeth and lava. All of these “moves” are spammed constantly until you die, which you will, over and over.

1. Jinpachi (Tekken 5) Saving the worst for last. Remember fighting Heihachi at the end of Tekken? He was fast and strong, with swift, brutal counters, but he was fair. This mutated version has a cannon in his chest and if you stop attacking him for more than half a second he’ll happily blast you with it, dealing about 80% damage, at which point it just takes one more cheap shot to finish you off. Evil incarnate; thy name is Jinpachi.

The problem with all of these bosses is that they force you to fight in one particular way. Their limited but overpowered attacks leave you resorting to the one or two tactics that cause them even a little damage. But by the time you’ve figured out what these are, you’ve been killed a dozen times and your joy in the game is ebbing. Hands up who’d play more single-player Street Fighter IV if the final boss was Bison, not Seth. The best bosses, (which I might write another article on) are memorable for the way they kill you once or twice, fair and square, and then once you spot their weakness, go down gracefully and leave you remembering how enjoyable the whole game was. More like them, please.

 

Written By: Alex Shaw

This is an update of the 2006 Xbox release of Outrun 2, (which was itself based on two Outrun Arcade cabinets by Sega). The graphics have been polished up and all the cars are available immediately making it game very accessible.

Taking control of one of a selection of Ferrari's the player races through various branching zones trying to make checkpoints within the time limit and ending up in one of five finish lines. All the while, the hot babe on your arm rewards you with adoration when you perform well and derision when you fail. You can also do time trials and heart attack mode, in which you"re asked to drive in specific ways (hitting no traffic or staying within colored lines for example). There’s also a basic online mode in which up to six people can head for the finish, either with collision on or off.

The best part of this shallow but shiny  racer is the drifting mechanics. Take a corner at speed and it’s fairly easy to swing your car into a long and gratifying drift which not only looks and feels the business, but shaves valuable seconds off your time and saves you having to slow down. With collision off in multplayer and six gorgeous looking Ferrari’s all arcing in unison round a hairpin bend it’s hard to remember a time when racing felt as fun or stylish. The graphics are crisp and colorful taking you through a variety of different backdrops, from Niagra Falls to a Shuttle launch-pad, all beautiful and exhilarating to cruise past.

The original Xbox version, rated as one of Edge’s top 100 games of all time, was released with additional modes, some of which have been trimmed for this XBLA (and PSN in Europe only) version. The most obvious omission is the original’s extensive series of challenges. This increased the longevity allowing you to daisy-chain unlocks (Cars, tunes and more challenges) in a series of achievements. There’s also, like the original, no local multiplayer mode, which is a shame. However it’s worth remembering that for 800 points rather than the 1200 most classic Xbox games command you’re still getting most of the game for two thirds the cost. I personally enjoyed Outrun Online Arcade so much I picked up Outrun 2 on Xbox for £1.99 ($2.91) in a bargain bin, so if this loss of extra modes has you fuming, you can find it on eBay or elsewhere for a very reasonable price. The XBLA version wins over the old, for me at least, due to the polished graphics, immediate accessibility of all cars and most importantly the chance to play with friends or strangers in a 360 online race. There are general leader-boards available, but Sumo have not yet gathered that most of us only care about our friends fastest times.

In summation for 800 points you get a flashy, slick, hellishly addictive arcade racer. It’s not going to win any awards for depth, complexity or originality, but as someone who rarely gets much out of racers other than the Burnout series it’s got me back into feeling the need for speed, and the drifting is absolutely second to none. It’s closer to Ridge Racer and Daytona than Gran Turismo and GRiD, but if that’s what you like then at this price you’d be crazy not to bag this classic.

Rating: 8/10

Written By: Alex Shaw

After playing and reviewing GoldenEye again recently for the first time in years (Check out the video podcast here) and with Riddick about to be re-released I started wondering about the distinction between the good and bad (and terrible) games based on movies.

For the longest time, they were just sideways-scrolling platform shooters or brawlers, with tenuous links to the narrative of their movie counterparts, often featuring hero models who bore no resemblance to the actors. For every step forward (True Lies) there were five drunken staggers backward (Robocop 3, Lethal Weapon, Jurassic Park on the Genesis). This was back when a simplistic adventure could be swiftly knocked together and released around the same time as the movie with relatively little prep time. Even considering this fact, the trend led to some of gamings most wretched abortions as thousands of buried E.T. tapes will attest. Later on as technology improved, shallow 2D adventures gave way to shallow 3D ones and despite the lack of quality increase, development times extended due to volume of programming for this new dimension and burgeoning opportunities for FMV and realism. The choice was either bring it out way after the theatrical release (GoldenEye) or rush it out for with the movie for marketing reasons (Batman Begins). In pure financial terms, obviously the latter seems most likely to elicit profit; people buy in droves because of multimedia hype, this will dry out in the months and years it takes to craft a substantial game so why bother? But that only makes sense if you know nothing about games. GoldenEye sold gangbusters and was one of the best reasons to buy an N64. It had a tight, innovative single-player mode, groundbreaking four-player death-matches and stands as the first brilliant console FPS. The fact that it was a movie tie-in and you were playing James Bond was just the icing on the cake but almost seemed incidental to it's success. It was a fantastic game, decorated to feel like Bond"s world. Look to the thoroughly shitty Tomorrow Never Dies and The World is Not Enough to see what happens when you don’t pay attention to that crucial first part. 

The central problem lies at the top. Film producers list the video game along with the MacDonald’s promotion and the action figures in terms of a small part of the mass-media event that a big cinema release tends to be. So time and budget are rarely a luxury and quality is often not an issue. Look at Pixar’s releases. Nearly every one of their films is a masterpiece, but their best game tie-in, Cars, is only pretty good. The fact that an alarmingly high percentage of movie tie-ins are aimed at children, frequently seen as having no taste or understanding of quality by producers also means that most of the games are going to be bad. You can picture some cigar chomping Hollywood savage tanned nutmeg-brown with a $300 haircut and a phone taped to their ear, sat by his triangular pool, jerking off idly into a pile of money, saying "What else can we do? We got the Mountain Dew promotion, the cartoon’s coming out this summer, the Pussycat Dolls are doing a music video and oh yeah, let’s do a video game. I know a guy.” Twisted exaggeration, yes, but the truth nonetheless.

It’s a costly process to channel developers into making a movie tie-in. They fight against an unmoving deadline, glaring dissimilarities from the source material, unwilling actors, (Sierra found that out the hard way with their Damon-less Bourne game) and more often than not, a narrative that does not lend itself to an eight hour, action-packed video game adventure. Nobody sets out to make a bad game, but it’s very easy to make a bad one anyway if you aren’t given time, research or resources and the money-men are breathing down your neck with release dates. The results range from Jack Sparrow dying when he touches water to the epic grandeur of the Lord of the Rings trilogy reduced to hack, hack, hack, uh-oh Gimli died!

Think of the best movie tie-ins. GoldenEye, Riddick, The Warriors, Die Hard Trilogy. All aimed at adults, all released significantly after the films in question. (Butcher Bay had much more to do with Pitch Black than the horrendous Riddick follow-up). They were all made by experienced developers with their hearts set on carving out excellent games and the producers were wise enough to step back and trust in the strength of the source material to fuel sales, long after the DVD had come out.  But think of the worst, and you’re probably envisioning games released a week before the movie, terrible review scores, jerky, unpolished gameplay and very little added to the central story. At best you sit and watch a crude interpretation of the action from the film on a loop, hammering the A or X button or flailing your Wii mote. It’s not a trend likely to end any time soon either, with these games being massive hits, because in terms of sales, the money-men are absolutely right. Most kids don’t have any taste. God bless the ones that do, because they’re the ones begging their mommy’s to let them play Psychonauts or Super Mario Galaxy, but too many are swayed by advertising and the dreamy pursuit of more Ratatouille fun (as if a crummy 3D platformer could distil the subtle, gourmet genius of that film). If they enjoyed the film, surely they’ll enjoy the game, and it’s that promise of potential that keeps this cycle of derivative crap circulating forever.

But take heart, because the opposite end is even worse. Movies based on games are so bad, that they hardly even count as films. Michael DeLuca allegedly wanted Kurt Wimmer, writer and director of Ultraviolet and Equilibrium, to write the movie version of Metal Gear Solid. This was after David Hayter’s script was passed on. For producers to disregard the individual who’s been inside Snake’s head and embodying his voice for a decade yet seek instead, the man who adapted Sphere for the screen suggests to me a level of blind ignorance of the medium of games that borders on comical. If you want someone to blame, look at the richest bastards in Hollywood. I used to love movies, but it’s stories like this treatment of arguably the greatest game ever made that make me look at what EA did to Godfather II and think to myself: it could be worse.

To celebrate 100 episodes and two years of The Digital Cowboys, we're kicking off our first of a series of video podcasts. These are all going to be on YouTube. The first is a look at GoldenEye on the N64, one of our favourite games of all time. Make sure you watch it in high quality (HQ).

(Update: The songs in bold are now confirmed as being in the game. The whole setlist has not been fully announced yet, so I'll continue to update this post as we get more information. Paul.)

With Activision releasing a new Guitar Hero game compiling songs from their previous titles with the drums and vocals interface of World Tour added, here's a list by game of the songs we want to see on it.

Guitar Hero
Audioslave - Cochise
Bad Religion - Infected
Black Sabbath - Iron Man
The Donnas - Take It Off
Joan Jett and The Blackhearts - I Love Rock and Roll
Sum 41 - Fat Lip

Guitar Hero II
Guns N' Roses - Sweet Child O' Mine
Iron Maiden - The Trooper
Lynard Skynard - Freebird
My Chemical Romance - Dead!
Spinal Tap - Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight
Toadies - Possum Kingdom

Guitar Hero Rocks The 80s
Asia - Heat of the Moment
Dio - Holy Diver
Extreme - Play with Me
Oingo Boingo - Only a Lad
Scandal - The Warrior
The Vapours - Turning Japanese

Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
Bloc Party - Helicopter
Disturbed - Stricken
Heart - Barracuda
Kiss - Rock and Roll All Nite
Muse - Knights of Cydonia
Rage Against The Machine - Bulls on Parade
Priestess - Lay Down
The Sex Pistols - Anarchy In The UK
Slayer - Raining Blood
Social Distortion - Story of My Life
The Who - The Seeker

Guitar Hero Aerosmith
Aerosmith - Dream On
Aerosmith - Livin' On The Edge
Aerosmith - Love In An Elevator
Aerosmith - Rag Doll
Aerosmith - Sweet Emotion
Cheap Trick - Dream Police

Guitar Hero On Tour N/A
Smash Mouth - All Star
Twisted Sister - We're Not Gonna Take It

Guitar Hero On Tour: Decades N/A
Alien Ant Farm - Smooth Criminal
Edgar Winter Group - Free Ride
Foo Fighters - The Pretender
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Can't Stop

Fingers crossed!

Here

...Is where you will find a series of fascinating, hilarious and occasionally horrifying short presentations on the way Gamestop, the USA's premiere game store runs it's business. It was produced by a disgruntled Gamestop ex-employee and mentioned by Edie Sellers in Digital Cowboys: Episode 97. For some reason it starts on episode 3, so kick off there. These were removed from YouTube and the producer Whistleblowerzero had his account suspended. It's pretty obvious why.

Written By: Alex Shaw

Some games you’ll never beat. Statistically only a small percentage of players see a game through to the end, but there’s a difference between getting pushed to the edge of your abilities and laying (or throwing) the pad down and just never getting into the game in the first place. I went back to Mass Effect last week. It was one of the hardest moments in gaming for me. Not because of the difficulty of the game, but because eight months had elapsed since I’d last sat in the Mako and wondered where to go.

Going back to games is something we’ve all faced. Maybe the first time round you weren’t in the mood, or you had too much on your plate or the game simply repelled you by being tricky and convoluted, but then you started seeing it everywhere, your friends kept staring at you aghast when you said you hadn’t even really played it and finally podcasters started talking about the thing like it was a world changing event in gaming, one which you’d missed out on. Those thoughts trickle to the back of your mind and prick at you when you’re in bed, or walking down the street or cruising Amazon. “You never finished Mass Effect dickhead.” They say. “What’s the matter? Is Little big planet too hard for you?” until eventually. “You’re not afraid of The Darkness are you?” Until you snap and go on a budget spending spree.

This is the best thing about the ordeal. You spend only a fraction of what these games originally cost. I picked up Mass Effect for the British equivalent of $12, The Darkness for $9 and LBP for $18. All of which add up to less than one new game. The slow decline in price of any game on the market is a godsend for folks who pick it up late, something that may go away when it’s digital downloads only. Pleased with your bargains you take them home, slap them in and fire them up again.

…and you’re back where you got stuck before. This is the hardest part and the biggest hurdle you will ever jump in that game. RPG’s are the worst offenders. With a platformer or a shooter, you’re going to get fairly universal controls and hopefully an easy to grasp interface. An RPG takes the five hours you’ve already played it just to get to grips with the complex combat, leveling and item system, so when you come back, you have to re-learn that in minutes or you’ll die quickly and repeatedly. Final Fantasy XII still has me stymied. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to go back to that one because it’s a generation behind. The lumbering behemoth of non-widescreen, standard definition, coupled with a wired pad of all things, is a mighty enemy indeed.

But in the case of Mass Effect I had two avenging angels on my side. Xbox Live and a good friend. Quantum sat patiently and talked me through a difficult vehicle section and the mine that followed simply by listening to my descriptions and going from the memory of his past six runs through. Yes that’s not a typo, this man has spent hundreds of hours in that game, and who better to have at my back? Now I’m halfway through and really beginning to enjoy the story and the world it’s set in. So next time you venture back into an uncharted game that you just can’t seem to break into, I can thoroughly recommend getting a coach. Someone who’s been there and can dissolve your frustrations with knowledge and guidance. Quantum, to me is better than a strategy guide. Thanks mate.

These are some of the best previous episodes of Digital Cowboys. Look for them on iTunes or indeed, here on the blog. The best ten are highlighted in bold.

• Episode 5 (May 22/07) Features a screwball radio play 45 minutes in.
• Episode 9 (June 20/07) Was sequels and why they suck, where we worked out the mathematical likelihood of any trilogy being even good, let alone great. This data was extrapolated from 57 existing trilogies.
  
• Episode 10 (June 26/07) Featured among other things video game controversy where we talked about Carmageddon, Beat em and Eat Em and Custers revenge. This was after Manhunt 2 was refused classification in the UK.
  
• Episode 11 (July 4/07) The first room 101 where we threw things we hated about films and video games into a room representing hell.
  
• Episode 13 (July 18/07) Was the 2007 E3 special, featuring Chewbacca and his PSP.
• Episode 18 (August 22/07) Where we looked at films that need remaking. It finishes on an awesome Clive Owen song.
  
• Episode 14 (July 25/07) One for Firefly fans.
• Episode 19 (August 30/07) Movies based on video games and why they all suck.
• Episode 24 (October 3/07) With the release of Halo 3 we did an epic episode looking at the whole trilogy. 
• Episode 36 (December 29/07) The games of 2007 roundup.
• Episode 37 (January 10/08) 2007 news roundup (Including Jeff Gerstman's sudden exodus from Gamespot)
• Greatest Hits (April 22/08) Episodes 1-51's best bits (Also look on the blog at April 6/08 for the trailers of the Bollywood movie of Digital Cowboys)
  
• Episode 53 (April 28/08) Retro games console test and Wii Fit
• Episode 55 (May 15/08) GTAIV Epic Review
• Episode 56 (May 22/08) After Empire magazine published the 500 best movies and Godfather was number one as usual, we decided to do our own, alternative ten greatest movies ever.
• Episode 58 (June 5/08) The NES special
• Episode 59 (June 12/08) The Sega special (featuring Tony Edwards)
  
• Episode 61 (June 26/Part 2 27/08) Metal Gear Solid special
• Episode 63 (July 11/08) Gameboy Special
• Episode 64 (July 18/08) E3 2008 Special
• Episode 67 (August 8/08) The second Room 101
• Episode 69 (August 21/08) Amiga 500 Special
• Episode 70 (September 11/08) SNES Special
• Episode 74 (October 12/08) The dead console special. Turbo Grafx-16, Atari Lynx, Jaguar, 3DO, Sega Saturn, Nintendo Virtual Boy, Nokia N-Gage.
• Episode 75 (October 16/08) Our online friend Davus died. Tony hosted this one and we talked about the gaming community we build up around us. Probably one of the best episodes.
• Episode 83 (December 12/08) The death of the PS2
• Episode 86 (December 30/08) The games of 2008 awards ceremony double episode. After this, we had to decide what to do with the show.
  
• Episode 88 (January 16/08) Following the death of EGM; The decline of print in gaming journalism
• Episode 92 (February 14/08) We got mentioned on 'Gamers with jobs'. Kropotkin guested and we talked about mobile gaming. We also started our Twitter account.
  
• Episode 97 (March 20/08) Paul took a break, we got a new logo and ethos. Alex started writing for PN. Edie guested. Alex's favourite episode.
  

In preparation for this week's episode 101, which is focused on sex in video games, our listeners should check out Daniel Floyd on YouTube.

He has posted various mini-lectures on gaming elements. They are hugely entertaining and very well researched. Made in conjunction with James Portnow.

There is one on Sex.
One on Storytelling.
One on the uncanny valley.
One on learning in games.
And finally one on choice in video games.

Check them all out but especially the one on sex. My wife discovered it after I wrote my article on Sex in video games: how far we've not come.

Written By: Alex Shaw

Valve’s recent knee-jerk escapade at GDC had Gamehounds’ Edie Sellers in a lather this week. On her podcast she expressed surprise and annoyance at their decision; namely the withdrawal of Kim Swift, project lead on Portal, from the yearly game design challenge, this year provocatively titled ‘My First Time’. It’s a dully predictable move in an industry still remarkably coy about sex. “My first time”, was an open challenge, marrying sex and autobiography, and the final submissions from Swift’s two substitutes and the remaining contestants showed invention and a mischievous streak, but certainly not the headline-baiting boldness that Valve would need to justify such cautious behavior.

You don’t have to look far though, to see why they might not want their name attached to anything that could be misinterpreted as sordid or corrupting. The media-fueled hubbub over Mass Effect in early 2007 speaks volumes for how different the general public perceptions are between film and video games. The sex scene in Mass Effect is by all accounts no different to the kind of soft-focus, fare you would find in movies like Daredevil or Ghost, with lingering shots of perky backsides and a fleeting nipple or two. This was fed through the Fox-news exaggeration machine, given a quick bake in their conjecture oven and passed around between a group of people who haven’t played ANY video games, let alone Mass Effect, and the resultant debate, now well-worn on YouTube borders on farcical. While Spike TV’s Jeff Keighley defended the game’s content with maturity and crucially having actually played it, he was up against the wall of loudmouthed, opinionated busybodies spouting non-sequiturs like “Who can argue that Luke Skywalker meets Debbie Does Dallas is a good thing?” and my personal favourite, and the basis for this article; “What happened to Atari and Pinball and Pac-Man?”. This sentence crystallises the problem game developers face when trying to advance the industry in any challenging way. Too many people still envision single-screen 8-Bit arcade machines from the early 80’s when the words “video game” are mentioned, and they can only see children playing them, because why would an adult do so? Time has moved on, those children have now grown up and have children of their own. Now the games they play can be vast, complex odysseys with lifelike HD graphics, and the singular inability on so many people’s parts to marry this evolutionary step with the notion of a growing and maturing audience is what holds back sex in games.

Violence? No problem. We jumped that hurdle in the early 90’s with Mortal Kombat, a game so cartoonish and innocent now, that it’s very hard to see what all the fuss was about. Bad language has crept in slowly, seemingly one curse at a time, until with trailblazers like The Getaway, no word was unmentionable. Sex; however is still the thorniest subject in an industry that regularly produces entertainment that involves slaughtering Nazi’s, drug-dealing or dismemberment on such a regular basis that we see these as commonplace, even conventional. A rough sort of acceptance has formed in the minds of outsiders. The above is just the sort of thing that happens in video games. But sex is different. Look at the examples we have of games that dared to deal with this nest of vipers; Custer’s Revenge on the 2600, in which you play the famous General defiling various Native Americans, Leisure Suit Larry, with its smirking innuendo and juvenile attitude, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, with the drawn out court case over “Hot Coffee”. Then there’s the actual Japanese PC-based rape simulator “Rapelay” by Illusion Soft, which Amazon wisely decided to stop selling. Projects like this, whatever the intent of their developers make it hard to build a positive case for sex in games and seem to serve only to inflame public outrage.

Violence is horrible and illegal to the vast majority of non-incarcerated, non-military citizens, but sex means so many different things to so many people that there is no way to reach a general consensus. It’s totally subjective, and highly likely to provoke a negative reaction. It’s an act that can be beautiful, embarrassing, incredibly fun or utterly awful, different every time or always the same, may be meaningless or lead to life-changing relationships and indeed the continuation of the species. Asking why it can’t be in a game is a question with its answer rooted in culture. I could (and should) write a thesis on this, but the short answer is that the public appreciation for sex is changing with the times, slowly, as we crawl away from the Victorian period when it became so utterly reprehensible to even mention. It took decades for sex and nudity to be accepted in books films and TV, but those are long-established entertainment forms and comparatively video games are still in their teens. It will take a few more generations before all the people who only remember Pac-Man are gone and those born into an era of Mass Effect and any other game that dares to tackle intercourse reach the obvious conclusion that people of all ages play games and those of a certain age should have no problem exploring relationships of all kinds, with and without sex. The detail and emotion-heavy gameplay of the future could indeed prove quite interesting. Taboos are broken all the time. Last month’s cocky, male full-frontal in GTA: The Lost and Damned was a first, and whether Ms. Sellers is right and the scrawny chicken-neck of a reproductive organ on offer was a poor example or not, I agree with her that it’s steps forward like this that bring the industry that little bit closer to real maturity. Maybe then we’ll get to see “My First Time” as a full game.

Written By: Alex Shaw

Harmonix have revealed plans for Rock Band song packs released specifically to tie in with Triple-A releases starting in the Q1 of 2010. Community development manager for Harmonix Sean Baptiste released this information in talks yesterday. Tying in with the release of Quantic Dream’s Heavy Rain, on November 6th will be the first of these packs, which comprises Prince’s long awaited Rock Band debut Purple Rain, the song classic rockers will be looking forward to the most; Guns N’ Roses November Rain, and the most interesting addition to this trio: Tay Zonday’s Chocolate Rain. Zonday has said in interviews he is “Very pleased” with this development.

The catch is that it’s console specific. Only Playstation 3 owners will be able to buy this pack day in date. Reports indicate it is only a timed exclusive, however and 360 owners may be playing these before Christmas, but only as separate tracks with no reduced cost. Fortunately for Microsoft fans they get their own timed exclusive song pack comprising of Wake by Linkin Park, Wake Up by Rage Against the Machine and Wake up Dead by Megadeath, released to coincide with the November 8th release of the long awaited Alan Wake.

Written By: Alex Shaw

I’ve been writing furiously about Resident Evil 5 for over a week now, exorcising demons I was clinging to regarding the controls, inventory, acting and story but to prove I’m not all bile and fury, it’s time for a bit of post-mortem praise. There were some excellent moments in playing through story mode which you forget while your blood’s boiling over control issues. For those who haven’t yet finished, I’ll steer clear of spoilers.

The depiction of an African village is extremely detailed. There’s some very compelling evidence pointing to casual, clumsy and thoughtless racism on Capcom’s part, which would make for another article altogether, but the fact remains that the sun-bleached township you begin at, with its oppressive shacks and buzzing flies, is very evocative. The scene is horrible and you wish you weren’t there, but that’s surely the point. Now while the labyrinth of locked rooms and puzzles that formed the backbone of the whole series is gone, what’s in its place will make for great replay value. Being able to dive in and out of each level, with or without a friend, and hold onto a consistent stash of loot and weapons means you can explore every nook and cranny on multiple occasions. The mercenaries mode yet again adds the element of score-beating and rewards to emphasize the new arcadey nature of the core game. In addition, the cut scenes are undeniably pretty, with a lot of stuff flying about and some impressive fighting, and working for achievements was a welcome addition, which made me alter my playing style several times. Finally there is one very effective moment when you have to be very, very quiet that had my nerves shot to hell, harkening back to the tension of the Nemesis theme.

If the series is to progress and we’re going to get that reboot that Capcom are hinting at, I have some suggestions here which may interest them. Firstly; take it back to the mansion. It’s where we go to in our heads when we think Resident Evil. Ditch S.T.A.R.S, Umbrella, Chris, Jill, Claire, Leon, Wesker and everything else. What they equated to thirteen years ago is not where story games need to be going. For a reboot, we need new characters, plot, settings etc; it’s in a mansion, there are zombies, puzzles and weapons. That should be all that remains of the original story. From then on, we need new ideas.

A more successful blend of action game and survival horror requires a nimble character you can rely on with a solid control system. No more movable turrets. This means running while aiming (at the expense of accuracy), and being able to dodge an attack (but not run rings around slow enemies.) Go back to slow zombies as the main grunts of the game. Introduce much faster, more intimidating enemies in thinner numbers (the Crimson Heads of the GameCube version, for example) further on. Since 28 Days Later we’ve had the zombie upgrade of screaming, charging infected in popular culture, but they’ve never quite been done right in a survival horror game. They always move too slowly or stop to attack, or in the case of Left 4 Dead, attack en masse without the creeping weight of a Resident Evil encounter. They need to be savage, blood spewing maniacs who never stop moving.

Here’s the formula; enclosed corridor + fast zombie + half-empty handgun and the exit in sight. Tension up the wazoo! Survival means scraping together everything you have. Bring us back to a place where every single bullet counts and careful organising of your inventory kept you alive. Allow us to keep a hand free and pick up something like a herb in an emergency, even if we have no slots empty (again at a loss of firing accuracy because you’re shooting one handed.) The gameplay should involve running between rooms, braving the prowling undead and giving us the binary choice of the original games; shoot now and this room might be safer, but you’ll have less ammo, or run for it and the room stays lethal. The taking of responsibility for your environment and being permanently wary of what is around the next corner is something that needs bringing back. The spirit of these games is very much alive, but something has been lost along the way as action games evolved. To successfully instil us with horror, Capcom are going to have to make us fight to survive and that means holding on to your last bullets like you’re in Die Hard, and every slowly opening door will once again make us hold our breath.

Written By: Alex Shaw

I'm very proud to announce that I've begun writing articles for the website Platform Nation. Check them out here, they are a fine source of gaming news and reviews with an excellent forum section and plenty of podcasts including of course Edie Seller's Gamehounds.

My first article for them is My Old Friend Nintendo.

I sit gazing into my rapidly cooling coffee. It's two in the afternoon on a sunny day in a sleepy New York bistro. Nintendo, sitting across from me laughs uproariously into his cell phone and says his goodbyes to the caller, closing it and setting it beside his untouched cup.

"That was Time magazine,” he says. “They want to do an interview with me this week.”

“I know,” I say. “You just agreed to meet them Friday after lunch.” Nintendo nods and takes out his Blackberry, tapping at the tiny keys and smiling.

“Mmm,” he says.

“That was the day we were going jet skiing on Drake Lake,” I say pointedly. Nintendo stops tapping and looks at me as if waking from a dream.

“Can we make that Saturday?” he asks and starts to check his Blackberry. “Next Thursday…sorry, the Tuesday after that?” I look at Nintendo as he starts to pencil me in and my shoulders slump.

It was never like this before. We met in 1985 when we were both very young. It was one of those friendships that you find yourself holding up as the yardstick to every relationship. He was fun back then, and honest. We"d play at exploring castles, rescuing princesses, battling fire-breathing monsters and all the other things kids find to do. We grew up together and our friendship only became stronger. We played better, smarter games, went Kart racing and got into RPGs exploring vast imaginary worlds. He learned new skills and I learned from him.

Then came high school and college and we still kept in touch, even though we saw each other less. I hooked up with an ex-girlfriend of his, who was a little more mature then either of us, causing an undeniable rift - yet still every time we met it was like we were kids again, but with encounters tempered by our newfound view of the world. The imaginary lands never seemed more vivid and real.

Of course people change. They grow up and move on to greener pastures with the inevitability of little Jackie Paper. The last time I saw Nintendo he wasn’t doing too well. The imagination was there in his work, but he was having an awful time of getting people to really pay attention to it. I was frankly worried about him, but the distance between us was growing vast and noticeable. We kept in touch; we both got jobs and moved in different directions. The way it always goes.

Next thing I know, it’s New Year’s 2006 and he’s calling me up, blind drunk and very happy. His business ventures in Japan, America and Europe are all paying off so well, he can barely get the stock in to meet demand. I’m so incredibly happy for my old friend and tell him so, but for the first time it doesn’t seem like he’s listening to me. Then he calls me the wrong name. I mention it, and he mumbles something and hangs up.

It’s July 15^th 2008. Today. I haven’t seen Nintendo for four years and he’s sitting across from me in the bistro, with the world at his feet.

“I saw your work with the space project,” I offer, “Great stuff.” He looks up at me from his iPhone.

“Thanks,” he beams. “What did you think of the sports programmes?”

“Also good,” I say diplomatically. I don’t want to bring any personal feelings of indifference into the conversation. I’m trying to be as positive as I can be, but it’s hard when he’s received seven calls since we’ve been sat here. I feel like the proverbial third wheel.

“And what about that music project? That looks like great fun doesn’t it?”

Not wanting to be painfully honest, I change the subject. “Are you planning any more projects based on your old creations?” I ask hopefully. Nintendo’s brow creases.

“That’s a lot of effort for not much return,” he says absently, ordering us both another coffee. “The last one took three years to make and made substantially less profit than a cheap little Carnival I set up in two days.

“But it was such a great piece of work,” I press on. “Surely that’s what counts in the end; building something of substance, something of merit. Something that will last and future generations can appreciate.” He looks stumped and chews thoughtfully on a biscotti. Then Time magazine calls and I’m alone again for fifteen minutes.

“So I’ll put you down for jet skiing on Duck Lake on Tuesday the twenty-ninth, OK?” Nintendo repeats.

“Drake Lake,” I say quietly and nod.

“Swell,” he says, rising from the table, throwing down a handful of bills. “Listen, I have to run, I’ve got to be on the Tonight Show, and they start recording in three hours.”

“I’ll see you later,” I say, locking eyes with him. He smiles, but his eyes are on his Blackberry again.

And you know what? In a few years time, when the standard of his work is at an all time low, his new friends have all deserted him and he’s no longer the man of the hour, he may come to me, deflated and contemplative, with plans and ideas that more closely resemble the heights he reached as an imaginative child with a world of potential. On that day, when I could crow and sneer at his downfall, I will instead sit back and look at his new ideas and encourage him in doing what he always did best; creating worlds that were bright and fun and innovative, and of undeniable substance and quality.

I tell myself this as I watch him go. Who knows what will happen to him, but if my battered heart knows anything it’s that he’ll always land on his feet, and I’ll always be there for him.

Part 5 of the Resident Evil Musings.

Does this sound familiar?

1. "Boom - Resident Evil!"
2. Hey you're a white, average cop in their twenties. Your name is Chris/Jill/Leon/Claire.
3. Welcome to the scary mansion/police station/Raccoon City/Eastern European/African village.
4. Things are looking a little scary, thank God you have your pistol.
5. Aaagh... Zombies/Infected folks of mixed ethnicity!
6. Solve this puzzle.
7. Oops, the pistol's a bit rubbish, here's a shotgun.
8. Aaagh... monsters that are faster and more dangerous than zombies!
9. Here's a bit with a train/tram/boat.
10. Hey you've reached the laboratory, now get to the bottom of this mystery.
    
11. Damn, it was Wesker what done it!
12. Aaagh... a Tyrant! Better use this rocket launcher.
13. All done. Fly away on the helicopter and stare at your partner with your dead, personality-free eyes.

It's really as by the numbers as that, and this is coming from someone who loves the Resident Evil series. My biggest problem with 5 is that it does nothing with the formula. The acting is just as bad, the plot twists just as trite, but there isn't anything new or sparky about it. Resident Evil 2 had branching story lines for the two leads, 3 had the ever-stalking presence of the Nemesis, Veronica had a scrolling action that did away with static screens, and 4 had the new controls and perspective. Aside from pretty graphics, Capcom have come up with nothing new for the series in five years... with the exception of an incompetent sidekick who gets herself in trouble or killed more often than a Doctor Who assistant.

Yes, it would appear co-op was what they were dangling their hopes on for this game, but if you don't have a friend with you - if, say, your best mate is still waiting for his copy to come through the post, days after yours arrived - you have to make do with the AI to help you out as Sheva. But she doesn't. Sheva wastes your good ammo and herbs, creates frustrating weapon trading scenarios and gets herself cornered and squished by axe-wielding brutes when you're being relentlessly attacked. The brutal combination of non-pausing item control and belligerent, suicidal AI makes your single-player experience hollow and annoying, leaving you only able to see the similarities and lack of improvement on previous games.

Think of the advancements we've seen just in video games over the past five years since the last RE game. We've had two Gears of War games, which picked up and ran with the third person action perspective redefining it in the process; Silent Hill Homecoming, which by all accounts has improved the control scheme of the original game and made it easier to move and dodge, in a survival horror long known for its steadfast adherence to slow, awkward progression. We've had Left 4 Dead with its multiplayer orgy of never-ending fast-zombie onslaught, twitch-fast controls and genuinely nerve-wracking pace. And we've had games like Uncharted and The Darkness which worked on a tried and tested movie formula and made the delivery fresh and interesting.

In truth RE5 is not a bad game experience. In relation to 50 Cent: BOTS it's a breath of air that, while not fresh, is at least breathable. But another average outing in Umbrella-Town is not what I wanted. I want to see this series that I cherish advance on the level that Metal Gear did when it jumped from MSX to PSX. Maybe it needs a hiatus before a grand reboot, but if Capcom do the same thing again for 6 then there's going to be words.

Screw Chris, Jill, Leon and Claire. They are mindless, character-free automatons which have no place in contemporary games. The day of the Mary-Sue superman whose abs ripple in the sunlight and whose catlike reflexes are remarked upon and admired by all has long since departed. We need flawed, fascinating, dangerous or vulnerable individuals, surrounded by a cast of similarly original creations. Capcom need to employ some western writers of high quality like J Michael Straczynski or Mark Millar if they wish to continue the form of homage to American movies, because their staff scripters and plotters are doing a horrible job.

And finally the controls simply aren't good enough any more. If Capcom want an action game they need action controls. This means running while shooting, an intuitive item system you really can operate on the fly, canceling of animations if you need to move fast, and the ability to beat the crap out of your enemies without fulfilling certain criteria first. It's what we'd all do in a survival situation and it's time RE reflected this.

The rating I give RE5 is based on the game itself, but taking into account what it should have been. Tony maintains that experiences of Resident Evil 5 may vary.

Final Score: 6/10

As we're nearing episode 100 and with the change to a two man show, we've got a new logo for iTunes and general use. It feels a bit more personal than three controllers and here at DC we're ALL about personality. This weeks podcast is going to be absolutely kickass! Recording starts tonight.

Written By: Alex Shaw

Strangely enough for a game that's got everybody so nitpicky and middling in their scores the one place that Killzone 2 excels is in it's weaponry, specifically the sniper rifle. I maintain that this is the best SR since GoldenEye showed us how to do it, and it's for such a simple reason; control.

As warped and twisted as our hands become trying to grasp the slippery eel of the PS3 Dual Shock, and as much as our confused fingers end up resembling a plate of fat spaghetti, as we search for purchase on the triggers, once you're looking down the sights of this bad boy it all becomes clear. We can let go of the nubby thumbsticks with their supporating pustule rubber buttons on top and just lightly tilt the pad left, right, up and down and as long as you are pointed in the general direction of a Helghan warrior you can ease the sights dead centre between his glowing red eyes and squeeze off a round or two to encourage his propaganda-addled brain to launch through the back of his Kojak slap-head.

It's delightful, and if only it didn't require you to wrestle your avatar into cover to initiate, it might be the perfect weapon. We need more PS3 developers making subtle use of the tilty control. Not in a way that's crucial to the game, but in little ways that make you smile in the knowledge that you're not going to find that feature anywhere else.

We all have a pile of shame. It's the stack of games we've bought and are sitting on, but have yet to finish, or in some cases; play. Here in order of priority is mine. PLUS the specifics of when they will be considered beaten.

1. The Darkness (Finish on Normal)
2. Silent Hill: Homecoming (Finish one ending)
3. F.E.A.R 2 (Finish on Normal)
4. Chrono Trigger (Finish)
5. Dead Space (Finish)
6. Bionic Commando (Have to kill Hitler)
7. Burnout Revenge (Have to unlock a truly awesome car)
8. Shadow of the Colossus (Play once in my life)

Games I've Finished

Peggle
Resident Evil 5
Street Fighter IV
50 Cent: Blood on the Sand
Killzone 2
Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix
Flower
Sega Mega Drive Collection
Streets of Rage 2
Left 4 Dead
Scene It?: Box Office Smash
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Gears of War 2
Fallout 3
Rock Band: AC/DC Live

Written By: Alex Shaw

While playing his latest game, in which this dangerous little animal goes to Iraq and massacres every person he meets, I began to despair for all human culture. It's not that the developers of the game, Swordfish, were just uninspired in placing this rapper du-jour at the heart of a hot-button Middle-Eastern territory and then throwing seven hundred screaming Arabs at him, each with an AK-47, a bandana and a neat line in the most appallingly cliched dialogue, it isn't even the fact that the game is broken on a fundamental level that only playing on hard mode would uncover, it's not even that I hate this project, its subject and the way it's been comported on a base level. No, the reason this makes me crazier than a bastard on Father's Day is that this game is going to sell bucketloads.

Mainstream journos, when handed this game, will judge it based on the built-in audience of Fiddy fans. This means they won't look upon it as a real game, but another installment dropped atop his merchandise mountain. Thus it will get away with its multitude of sins. Dedicated gaming press have seen it as a guilty pleasure and a fun arcade romp. I felt no guilt and not the least bit of pleasure playing this, merely a cold deadness where joy once resided and a deep, unremitting fury that this man earns more per year than some of the countries he would gladly visit to perform his bling-fueled genocide. Of course it's 50 Cent, not Curtis James Jackson III, who's the neanderthal-browed mass murderer in this game; a sub-human killing machine whose only goal is to get back a skull covered with diamonds. Unfortunately this is apparently the same character he plays every time he sets foot onstage or does an interview for MTV. Unless it's not, unless it's him and all this playing characters bullshit is a hangover from childhood games that allows these arrogant, angry halfwits to do and say anything they like as long as there's some comforting fiction to hide behind.

It's morally repugnant, needlessly violent, sleazy, mysogynistic and utterly trite... I respect that, but it's also horribly written and riddled with glitches to the point where it doesn't feel like a game any more than Paris Hilton's Stars Are Blind single resembled real music. It's just a cheap, vanity project for a man with the emotional development of a nine year old. Worst of all, the game's been applauded for not being quite as bad as the execrable Bulletproof, released on the previous generation of consoles. That it's not entirely unplayable is not a plaudit and should not enter into the debate on the quality of this game, which is lower than Fiddy's IQ, thinner than his library and more untraceable than the sum totality of worthwhile actions this man has done with his career.

P.S. Graphics and sound were adequate.

Final Score: 2/10


 

Written by: Alex Shaw

Part 4 of the Resident Evil musings.

Here's something that's been driving me batshit crazy lately. The greatest detractor from the reality of any given action game is that we are obliged to see all the animations. In Resident Evil 5 if an enemy is pulling back a spear to plunge it into your chest you can blast him in the face with a shotgun shell and the game will often, but not always do something like this.

Hmmm...

That should really have killed this mob here.

Still, I've started so I'll finish.

Better luck next time pal.

And lo and behold, your shotgun is ineffective, while his pointy stick wins through and robs you of a third of your energy. If you sidestep, he pivots on the spot like one of those teacups at Disney World and homes the point in on you with laser-guided precision. In other words, if you're in range, that stick's hitting you no matter what.

The level of response to a good 40% of your shots in RE5 is nonexistent. You can plug an axe-wielding behemoth in the kneecaps, head, wherever; the game is not registering bullets hitting bone, it's keeping count of the mobs internal damage bar. You have to shoot him precisely ten times in the head with your shotgun to take him down. Do it nine times and that guy WILL survive long enough to splatter you with his axe. On the tenth hit, he will crumble to the ground as his bar runs out, but his head will not explode. You didn't shoot him really, you just rolled the dice enough times to lower his HP to zero. Other mobs are slightly different. In the classic RE4 manner, you can kneecap them and keen headshots are rewarded, but in later levels, they are tougher and eventually every enemy will have this internal stamina bar and nothing but the predetermined shot count will take them down. Passing this off as an action game is a fallacy. It's an action RPG, with all the reactions of World of Warcraft's expressionless enemies programmed in.

Worst of all, is Chris' unending ability to not get out of the way when he needs to be quick on his feet. Not only can't you run and shoot,or run and reload, but you can't cancel a reload on the fly. 2001's Halo saw Master Chief able to melee in the middle of a reload if caught unawares or suddenly ambushed, and yes he could reload while running. The lumbering dolt Redfield, stops moving with all the grace of his dribbling rabid foes and starts his three second reload cycle. Any damage he receives while this is happening is an unavoidable penalty, because that gun is going to get reloaded, same as the pointy stick was always going to hit you. In Capcoms own Street Fighter 4, it's possible to cancel special moves in order to fake out your opponent. Are Capcom serious in their assertion that standing there like a nob and fiddling with your weapon heightens the tension rather than just frustrating? The only horror you end up feeling is of your character's inability to perform the actions you need to survive.

Fortunately to counter this it's possible to limp through the game on a shred of energy if you keep Sheva close because she will tap you out Dom style every time you hit critical status. Of course if she's in trouble you both die. Do it all again, try harder next time. Now they have pointy sticks and wooden headmasks, which are impervious to magnum shells. They must be made of the same titanium wicker as the impenetrable doors.

Written By: Alex Shaw

Part 3 of the Resident Evil musings.

Think of the worst acting in a video game ever. The worst written lines and the shoddiest delivery of said dialogue. You're probably thinking of the original Resident Evil, or if not, it's in your top three.

There was something so iconic, so amusing and so likable about dialogue like... "Jill, here's a lock-pick; it might come in handy if you, the master of unlocking, take it with you. / Well I'm sorry, but he's probably... / I found this weapon. It's really powerful, especially against living things. / and of course; Don't COME!" It was forgivable. After all, speech in console games was relatively new, as was trying to present a cinematic experience. The game limped through on B-Movie sensibilities like a redlining hero in desperate need of an F. Aid Spray and we accepted every cheesy minute. Then Resident Evil two came out and it was the same, then three, Veronica, the remake, and Zero and very little had changed. As with everything else the quality of the delivery got a little better by the time 4 rolled around, but now with the fifth installment, thirteen years later the world of games has changed and this is still a sheepish B-Movie. Games like Heavenly Sword, The Darkness and Half Life 2 have proven that nuanced, subtle performances are more than possible in an action game, so why are we still looking at gruff beefcakes and their chirpy female sidekicks chewing through line after line of trite cliches, with little to no emotion or truth in their performance?

Cinema itself has changed. Resident Evil 4 is an evolution of the series much like 1995's GoldenEye made James Bond smarter, harder and sharper. It's been years since Pierce Brosnan first twinkled those eyes on our screen, and now we have the quantum-leap progression of Casino Royale as the benchmark for gritty, realistic and excellently measured spy thrillers, and the steely gaze of Daniel Craig. By contrast GoldenEye looks a bit creaky and sleazy, though still solid. Resident Evil 5 is the Tomorrow Never Dies we've been delivered, when we need Casino Royale. Also the game is based on action now, not horror, so the writers have years of Bruckheimer films to look to as the basis of their characterisation and themes. But the action movie has changed too. We have had Bourne, Nolan's Batman and The Matrix and the sharper writing attached to those films to show us that dialogue doesn't need to be a leaden series of setups for the big explosions, and central characters can be flawed, interesting and dark. Team America: World Police was designed as a parody of the very films RE emulates. Every daft line delivered with painful sincerety. The landscape of cinema that Capcom originally explored and transposed to the gaming scene has changed, along with the performance of their competitors. To progress, they must go back to the drawing board and look at what they could be delivering in terms of a cinematic experience. Just pray they don't look to Paul W.S. Anderson's Resident Evil films as a yardstick of excellence.

Written by: Alex Shaw

Part 2 of the Resident Evil musings.

Now the issue of control. Even in 1996 when we were still just getting to grips with 3D worlds, Resident Evil had poor controls. Released three months before Mario 64 showed the world the best, most fluid, freeing and agile new system, one that has arguably even now not been matched, the Playstation users were bestowed with a game that presented you with a weighty marionette dressed as a special forces police officer, and asked you to gamely shove them through a series of static screens, hopefully avoiding the lumbering undead on the way.

There was a rhythm to them. Your heart beat steadily along with Chris and Jill's footfalls on the dusty floors. You kept up pressed and wove left and right with the bottom half of your thumb, occasionally stopping and rotating like a robotic toy from the 1970's whenever you found a statue or picture worth investigating. It served to heighten the tension, and it made you feel that at least when you stopped and aimed your pea-shooter of a Beretta 92F at a Zombie, you were an immovable object and that you had made the decision to fire, thus eating up eight of your bullets. There was no nimble sidestepping or stunning of your enemies, it was a binary choice. Run or kill. If you evaded and left them alive, they would be there when you inevitably returned. If you killed them, you would have a safe, empty room to explore but less ammo to play with. This was fine against loping zombies, but when the scaly, needle-toothed Hunters entered the house and, following the offscreen crunch of their footsteps, you saw what a fast enemy could do to your meat-puppet, the fear genuinely began to set in. Were Capcom banking on this creating genuine excitement in the game, or simply ignoring the frustration over the fact that you just couldn't smack the reptillian bastards in the face with the butt of your shotgun? Either way, I personally relished every treacherous explored corridor now furnished with its own movable deathtrap.

And so it stayed for many years; through Tomb Raider, Mario and eventually the Prince of Persia - a game founded on fancy footwork - re-emerging in a 3D world in a way that both utilised the geometry of its blocky Playstation 2 environments, and also freed up the player to indulge in feats of acrobatics that rivaled Nintendo's plumber. The last Resident Evil Games before 4 were Zero, and a remake of the original for the GameCube in 2002, both of which were still using the antiquated control scheme from six years previous. The only addition was a much needed quick-turn pioneered in Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, and occasional dodges that could not be relied upon as a survival tool. A more action-oriented Resident Evil was developed that later became Devil May Cry. One can only imagine what that game might have been like had a Dante-powered S.T.A.R.S team member been able to take a sword and dual pistols to Umbrella's finest.

Then in 2004 the huge redux finally came. 4 was what we'd been waiting for. The camera was behind Leon and the screens flowed rather than remaining static. It actually had a lot more in common with the underrated Code Veronica, both in terms of pacing and sheer weight of enemies thrown at you. In fact, the first-person Merceneries sub-game in Veronica fairly closely resembles the machanics of 4. Now you could aim. Now you could kick the Ganados in the face, kneecap them, and most importantly the combat knife, long relegated to sitting at the bottom of your magic trunk could come into play as a deadly and useful addition to your arsenal. It was so good that we didn't think to ask why Leon couldn't move and fire at the same time, sidestep or roll to evade attack. One of my favourite journalists, John Davison of 1UP and What They Play, remarked that it felt more like moving a turret on wheels around, choosing a position to plant it in the ground and then rolling the gun left and right to choose your targets. Not at all the organic, flowing and action packed realism that Capcom were aiming for.

Five years have gone by. We've had Gears, we've had Dead Space; hell, even Niko Bellic can walk and shoot at the same time, and the shooting controls for GTA have long been documented as being patchy. Chris is back, with Leon's moveset, and a great deal of us are not happy. Why haven't Capcom evolved the series? Why do we still feel so vulnerable? Is it for the sake of tradition or sheer laziness? The demo kicked at the proverbial hornets nest with unfounded rumours of a control rethink weeks before release.

If you look at the gaming world of Resident Evil's 4 and 5 you don't need to move and fire. It's still the binary choice. Only what's changed is that ammo is no longer finite, and we don't have to retread these paths again. It's more a case of moving to the next section and clearing away the hordes that reside there, rinse, repeat. So with this being the case, whether you need to or not, why can't you move and fire?

When Resident Evil 6 inevitably emerges, in 2014, no matter how shiny the graphics are, Capcom are going to have to address this issue. A game with a five year old control scheme that refuses to acknowledge the advancements of it's peers simply can't be excused by the general gaming public in this day and age. The only thing carried over from the survival horror genre that it no longer bears any resemblance to are these controls. Updated circa 2004 granted, but nonetheless pitched to have you doubting your abilities to evade death, and in an age where high quality action games with decent controls are fast becoming the most popular genre, Capcom are going to have to take a good, hard look at what they want this series to be.

Written By: Alex Shaw

This is the first of a series of musings on Resident Evil 5 and how the series has changed in the past 13 years.

Inventory management. Originally Chris Redfield could carry six items and Jill Valentine, being a resourceful woman with more pockets, had room for eight. This led to ridiculous leaps in logic regarding relative mass and weight, so a shotgun, it would seem, took up the same space as a key. Other games like Fallout have attempted to deal with this conundrum by assigning weight to each item, keys and food usually equating to a tiny fraction of that of a weapon, yet still neither had it right. In Fallout the designers would have you believe that your hero could cart around ten assault rifles, a few rocket launchers, and a host of other weapons before you start to feel it and have trouble running, yet for game after game if Chris or Leon were holding a pistol, shotgun and the relevant ammo, plus a key and a crank, he would, when confronted with a vital, life-giving herb, be unable to stuff it into a spare pocket or (most ridiculously of all) simply consume it on the spot. Instead you had to hightail it to the nearest safe room, dump a few items in the trunk and then traipse back to the herb. Resident Evil Zero on the GameCube made another attempt to advance this by having Rebecca swap her items for what was lying on the floor. This solved nothing as backtracking for whatever you swapped it for was inevitable, but at least it made more real-world sense.

The magic trunks in every safe room had a strange reassuring quality. Big enough to contain every item in the game and transport them to various locations, often miles apart, they made up the core item management homebase that allowed you to feel like you were taking part in a genuine zombie movie, with limited resources and careful planning of trips around the house/police station required as a central facet of the gameplay. Bullets were wholly finite. There were 500 handgun bullets in the game and they had to be used sparingly as and when you found them. Even saving had a tinge of danger to it, as with ink-ribbons you had to find your saves, hidden in the bookshelves, drawers and assembled clutter of a spooky old mansion. Save too often and you may not have many chances left to continue.

Then came Resident Evil 4 and all that changed. No longer were there a set number of bullets in the game. Hoarding ammo was counter-productive and rather than a vast labyrinth of locked rooms, puzzles and backtracking, Leon Kennedy was faced with a relatively linear path of fast-zombie action. Sharpshooting rewarded ammo, so the more you used your guns, the more regular the flow was. The inventory also changed. Leon now carried everything with him in a briefcase, and the arms trade was brought in (later mimicked by Metal Gear Solid 4 in an expanded and, some would say, game-breaking manner) with the introduction of the mysterious and charismatic Australian. "Welcome!" he would shout. Then "What are ya buying?" and we would smile and gaze upon his wares and try to fit them in our case. Sorting, changing positions and selling items became a new mini-game and a welcome addition to the series.

This was when Resident Evil stepped up and out of the dark ages, into the next century, and both rode in on a wave of action games and also spawned the stylisations of more to come. Gears of War, Dead Space and Alone in the Dark, all profoundly influenced by this one, and in turn all of the Gears clones that are now emerging wretchedly from the shadows like post-modern slasher films in the years after Scream. Digital Cowboy Paul always expressed extreme gratitude to Capcom for these changes, and for the many others in 4. In his words it was as though the developers had asked themselves "What would Paul like to see in a Resident Evil game?" The answer was more action, less backtracking, better controls, more precise aiming and less faffing about.

Now Resident Evil 5 is here. I am three sections in and after struggling with the inventory system I can honestly say I miss the Australian. More than that; I miss the attache cases. I miss the magic trunks. I even miss the safe rooms. Because while there are safe havens, the only time you get to really mess about with what you have in your nine slots per character is on a static screen before the sectioned level starts and you are once again loaded into the zombie cannon and fired down the tunnel of shacks and market streets.

You assign weapons to each direction on the D-Pad, (mimicking Gears) and ammo and healing items go in the corners. It's that simple, it's that boring and honestly, in this writer's thoroughly biased opinion, all the sparkle has gone out of the world of inventory management. Crucially the action no longer pauses when you check your supplies and you are highly likely to be attacked if you stop for a moment to look, so it's more an issue of knowing what you have and taking fleeting jumps in and out to throw your partner some relevant ammo.

It's a different type of game. You have to survive one onslaught after another and it is indeed horrific, but I dispute on a fundamental level that this is any longer definable as survival horror. The conundrum is, of course, how do you take it back to the days of inventory management without losing the tension and all the progression in game design that's been made? Or is this even a step backwards, because now, in the frantic, neverending chase through the African back alleys and marshlands, I'm coming across items I can't pick up... because my inventory is full.

Compiled by: Alex Shaw

These are the ten graphic novels I most recommend if you've seen Watchmen and want something more. Most of them involve superheroes and the re-working of the popular themes set by Marvel and DC.  A warning; these are filled with dark, adult themes, sex, death, politics, religion. Most of them are offensive in some way. All of them are exhilarating and fascinating.

Transmetropolitan: Back on the Street (Warren Ellis) A foul-tempered journalist in a hedonistic future world documents the events of his city and follows the election of a twisted liar into presidency. Clearly based on the work of Hunter S Thompson, this book is what made me want to be a journalist.

Preacher: Gone to Texas (Garth Ennis) A young priest in Texas becomes the carrier of a power equal to God and goes to find the almighty with his ex girlfriend and an Irish vampire in tow. Bloody, pitch black, hilarious and terrifying American storytelling.

Rising Stars: Born in Fire (J. Michael Strazinski) A meteorite collides with a small American town. Every local unborn baby at that moment absorbs a share of unearthly powers. This book is about how the kids grow up to become superheroes and villains and then change the world. 

Y The Last Man: Unmanned (Brian K Vaughan) Every single male on the planet suddenly dies horribly except a young escape artist named Yorrick and his monkey. The book is all about how the women cope in the following years. Absolutely brilliant female characterisation. Sharp, funny dialogue, epic scale and a real sense that the apocalypse could be like this.

Powers: Who Killed Retro Girl? (Brian Michael Bendis) In a noirish city filled with capes, how do the police get by? Join two jaded detectives on the hunt for the killer of a beloved superhero. Bendis hung out with real cops to get his facts and lingo right so this is hard hitting stuff.

Hellboy: The Chained Coffin and Others (Mike Mignola) The best way to read Hellboy is in this collection of short tales. The red, horny one travels the world, tracking down menacing ghouls and demons and putting an end to their mischief in his customary gruff manner. Pure, dark-spirited but light-hearted, fascinating, tale-weaving.

The Authority: Under New Management (Mark Millar) What if the Justice League had no compunction with taking on real world events? A troubled superteam deal with dictators, a twisted alternate Avengers and God in the form of a titanic space slug. And the wonderful Jenny Sparks, foul-mouthed, chainsmoking spirit of the 20th century finally gets to see midnight at the turn of the milennium. Harsh and brilliant.

Planetary : All over the World and Other Stories (Warren Ellis) A trio of superpowered archeologists uncover the secret history of the 20th century. Like the Authority, it deals with ghosts, alternate worlds and time travel. A grown up Dr Who.

Wanted (Mark Millar) Pure nihilistic nastiness. Much like the film, a worthless office jerk gets pulled out of his horrible life to become a super-powered assassin. Unlike the film, this deals then with a team of super-villains who secretly took over the world in the 1980's. Awesome stuff.

Nightly News (Jonathon Hickman) A cult target newscasters for assassination to make a point. More of an investigation as to how all of our news is apportioned out by six major real life corporations. Scarily real and chock-a-block with facts and figures about just what we're watching and reading. Impossible to put down.

Hi, Paul here... with, erm, an announcement.

More observant listeners will have probably noticed that my presence on the show and blog has been somewhat low-profile over the last few months. This is due to a number of reasons, most of which have nothing to do with Digital Cowboys, but are clearly impacting my ability to make a useful contribution to the show.

As such, and after much discussion with Alex and Tony, I have decided to take a break from Digital Cowboys for a few months. I am delighted with the increase we have seen in the popularity of the show and blog (which is getting more and more hits every day) thanks to Alex and Tony's phenomenal efforts, but sadly I am not really able to match them at the moment. Not having much time to play video games beyond singing a few songs every other evening is not really the best position to be in for someone who is co-hosting a video game podcast! I'm also conscious of the increased emphasis being placed on written articles on the blog and... well, to be perfectly honest, I'm not really much of a writer either. :(

I will be back – probably sometime after my holiday to Australia in May – and will definitely be joining my fellow Cowboys for the journey to PAX in Seattle in early September. In the meantime, I will still be contributing to the show by helping to maintain the blog (something I have been doing since the beginning), so think of this as a temporary farewell rather than a long goodbye.

Ciao for now,

Paul Shotton.

P.S. Rock Band 2 FTW!!!!!11111

Amongst NXE's feature set, the most prominent is the ability to create your own custom Avatar. In true Digital Cowboy tradition, we have created virtual versions of ourselves.

So without further ado, here they are:

Alex



Tony


Lizz


Paul

Hello everyone.

I'm Lizz and I'm married to Cowboy, Tony Atkins.

I would like to share with you some of my video gaming background.  

I was given a Master System II when I was about 10 and was only given one game, which was Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade.  My reactions were not very good so I don’t think I ever saw the third level of this difficult platform game, plus, my sister used to kick my butt when playing Alex Kidd in Miracle World so the console gathered a lot of dust.  Later, I was given an Amstrad PC with lots of copied games but they took a long time to load and had a tendency to crash.

I didn’t really come into much contact with games - other than Tetris on the Game Boy, which I completed on the hardest setting and saw the rocket take off once - until I met Tony.  He owned an N64 and Playstation and bought a Dreamcast soon after we started going out.  I didn’t play the N64 or Playstation as there weren’t any games that interested me.  I only played Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast and used to successfully button bash, which annoyed Tony as he couldn’t beat someone who was so unpredictable.  It wasn’t until Final Fantasy X that I got more interested although after playing over 100 hours, I still never completed the game. 

The Xbox was my breakthrough.  I bought my own console and Xbox Live account and we set up a good network in the house and I have many memories of sitting in the converted attic playing 16 man Rainbow Six 3 with friends that we met online and still talk to five years later. 

Tony bought a gaming PC for the release of Half-Life 2 so we had 2 PCs to play World of Warcraft together when it was released.  I was hooked, like the 14,000,000 other subscribers, but my desk set up, gave me repetitive strain injury so I’m not able to play for very long.  I currently have one level 71 character and about a dozen alts over a couple of servers.

I also really enjoy playing games on the 360 like Rock Band & Guitar Hero and XBLA puzzle games.  I still play the odd shooter, like Gears of War 2, but my slower reactions let me down sometimes and I find that I’m only good for target practice.  I did own a Nintendo DS but recently sold this due to the acquisition of an iPod Touch which is even more mobile for quick casual games than the DS for commuting.

Thanks for reading.

Lizz Atkins

Compiled By: Alex Shaw

Having just seen Watchmen, I need to have a good long think about its strengths and weaknesses. In the meantime, I can honestly say it fits into this updated list very firmly. The titles of the graphic novels are contained within the brackets.

Straightforward comic book films like Spider-Man are excluded because they aren't based on a specific, core story - although we could go into semantic arguments for years on this one.

The only film I really want to put in here is one that is entirely original and not based on any kind of comic book. 2008's Hancock, which would be just above Watchmen. Post your additions or omissions in the comments space below.

1. The Dark Knight (The Long Halloween - Jeph Loeb)
2. Batman Begins (Year One - Frank Miller)
3. Sin City (The Hard Goodbye/The Big Fat Kill/That Yellow Bastard - Frank Miller)
4. Watchmen (Watchmen - Alan Moore)
5. X-Men 2 (God Loves, Man Kills - Chris Claremont)
6. Hellboy (Seed of Destruction - Mike Mignola)
7. A History of Violence (A History of Violence - John Wagner)
8. Akira (Akira - Katsuhiro Otomo)
9. 300 (300 - Frank Miller)
10. 30 Days of Night (30 Days of Night - Steve Niles)

Written by: Tony Atkins

The time has finally come! 

 Of course, what I am referring to is breaking the 100,000 gamer score barrier.

As I currently write this, I stand at 99,683 and I have mixed feelings about going past the 100k mark.  My initial feelings are 'Yay, about fecking time!'  I"ve been achievement hunting since 11/12/05 so as you can see that's 3 years of blood, sweat and tears and probably thousands of hours played.  So I should at this stage be jumping for joy as 100k has always been my goal.  However, herein lies my problem - what happens when I pass that goal?  I"ve been so focused in getting past it that I'm now a little apprehensive how I"m going to feel once I’m there.  It’s almost like hitting the reset button in Call of Duty 4 once you’ve hit level 50 to go back to zero again.

 

Now, of course, achievement points mean far more than just an accumulative score, they are there to guide you through games and experience new and wonderful things you wouldn’t have challenged yourself to bother with before.  Of course, I’ve could have hit 100k easily last year if I had done what a lot of achievement whores do, play every game that comes out and then hit it for 300 or 400 easy points and then just move on to the next one.  This has never been my style, I like to get the very most out of every game I put in the drive, which can sometimes lead to playing games for 100+ hours.  So as you can see, I take my gamer card very seriously.

 

However, this has never stopped me from playing the odd crappy title - Jumper, Shellshock 2, please raise your hands - but I’ve also found some real gems along the way - Cars and Just Cause to name a few.

 

So what’s my goal after 100k?

 

110,000 doesn’t quite have the cache, so I guess I need to aim high, 200k maybe.  In the end, it always comes back to the games though and achievements come in at second place.

 

I’m looking forward to this continued journey in the years ahead.

Tony aka GHOST WORLD

Written by: Alex Shaw

FAO Rare

It's been three months now guys. I think it's time for a plain black T-Shirt! Let me first start by saying that I love my avatar. Aside from a head so freakishly large that if he's lived in the middle ages he'd have been killed as a witch, he's a pretty cool guy.

But there are definitely some recurring themes in the growing list of avatar clothing and accessories which leave me cold.

1. Camp, colourful and silly clothing.
2. Stupid outlandish hairstyles (but no unusual hair colours)
3. Tacky gangsta-wannabe clothing.
4. A decided lack of game-related clothing (aside from the Xbox T-Shirts and a vaguely GTA-flavoured recent package.)

Now most days I like to Daniel Craig it (Grey fitted T-Shirt and dark blue worn jeans). No joy on the grey. In fact even black and white are off the menu. Black Tees involve monkey faces, heavy metal imagery or a great big dollar sign on a gold chain. But what if you aren't a teenage punk, a metal-head or a pimp with his eyes on a prime piece of bling?

The other extreme is also available. You can dress like a darling little preppy with golfing pants, tie and blazer combo's and turtleneck/jacket ensemble's that would make you a truly punchable figure as you exited the dressing room.

But where are the clothes for real people?

More to the point, where are those game-related kits that we've been dreaming of?

1. Gears of War armour
2. Halo armour
3. Fable getup
4. Burnout racing leathers
5. Dead Space suits
6. Street fighter karate Gi's
7. Hitman black suits with red ties and black gloves
8. Fallout 3 Brotherhood of Steel power armour
9. Mirror's Edge Faith outfit (for the ladies)
10. Tomb Raider outfits

I mean the marketing pretty much writes itself. The pitfalls (everyone wearing the same boring T-Shirt, or 90% of Live users dressed as Master Chief) simply aren't as perilous as the simple fact that I can't be alone in the settling for rather than choosing of my outfit.

On a podcast I listened to last year, someone said they had visited Rare and asked "Oh, you can change the colour on that T-Shirt, right?" and his guide had answered; "Hmm... that's a good idea." That was two weeks before NXE launched. You've had time enough. Knock Sony and Nintendo on their asses with a dazzling array of free clothing. Not just once every so often, every week. Make us ache from the choice of what awesome outfit to kit out in next. While it reaps no cash reward (like 49 cents for a cowboy hat), the ultimate end will be a happier and more diverse crowd of XBL users.

Make it happen in 09.

Sincerely

Alex Shaw
Digital Cowboys

Written by: Alex Shaw

This is something that's been bugging me. I've been playing since I was 12, which at 28 is more than half my life, yet being honest with myself, I'm not actually all that good.

I can beat the computer on easy, maybe normal and I can beat unpracticed players two out of three times if I concentrate, but put me up against someone online who knows a combo or two and I go to pieces. Maybe I'm intimidated by their silence. Maybe it's because they always pick Ken and Ryu and those two characters are hideously unbalanced in terms of being able to pull of quick successions of hits (no matter what Capcom tell you). Maybe it's just that I need to train, but something feels like it's missing.

In the interests of putting things into perspective, let me set a one to ten scale for Street Fighter skill.

---

1. You've never played Street Fighter before. You may have button bashed on another brawler but never Street Fighter.

2. You've played Street Fighter but you're not very good. This is usually characterized by leaping all over the screen hammering all buttons at once. You say the moves are too hard to do.

3. You can play Street Fighter. You know how to throw a fireball, but it doesn't always work and once someone gets you in a corner you just give up. You're thinking of getting an arcade stick.

4. You know one character. (Usually Ken or Ryu) and default to them each time, when you fight competently.

5. You know a few combo's. (Jump in, hard kick, crouch, hard kick, dragon punch, then throw if they're stunned.) You may have owned Street Fighter games in the past and beaten them on easy and sometimes normal.

6. You can perform multiple combos for multiple characters, plus you're getting the hang of focus moves and Ex moves. You almost definitely own a stick.

7. You win most fights against regular folks. You're unfazed by their button mashing. You can do Super and Ultra moves every time and you know how to cancel and use it to your advantage.

8. You're a pro. Street Fighter is your game of choice. You had Street Fighter III: Third Strike on the Dreamcast. You take ranked matches VERY seriously.

9. You're a maniac. You hate every other fighter online and want to kill them, which you can, with Akuma, effortlessly. You are a master of all moves. You made your own joystick (possibly out of a shin bone).

10. You're a world champion. We watch vids of you on Youtube and are left humbled by your prowess. You probably use Dhalsim or Dan to leave your opponents confused as to how you're pulling this stuff off. You have a Street Fighter arcade cabinet in your house... which is otherwise empty.

---

So looking at the scale, I'm more of a level 5 fighter actually. True Street Fighter players will scoff at this list and the leaving out of the various permutations of pro player, but this is from the point of view of an average gamer.

I think that applies to most of my games playing exploits. I'm never the champion of anything. Leaderboards are alien to me. But I do beat games. I soldier on, and I have level six in my sights. I'm going to master Ryu... or maybe Sagat to throw off the thirteen year olds who keep defaulting to Ryu and Ken.

Wish me luck, and if you meet me online... go easy on me.

Written by: Alex Shaw

As all of you will know, the recent acquisition of the 1up network by UGO left the whole site stripped of staff and most of the podcasts and shows they put up on a regular basis were either changed considerably or canceled altogether.

One of the latter (it seems at present) was The 1up Show; a weekly half hour slot featuring the journalists of 1up discussing the latest games, previews and industry news. I've been watching the back catalog to see what I wasn't watching at the time and I can honestly say this show will be bitterly missed.

It is without a doubt, the smartest, most professional, truthful and occasionally hilarious video game show ever committed to camera. I cannot recommend enough that each of you go back and check out at least the last few months worth of episodes.

http://www.1up.com/do/minisite?cId=3145462

It's more than just a look at games though. Through the show, we get a glimpse at their office life (albeit through a filter of comedy). It's a warm, geeky, clever and honest place where people get paid to write and talk about games. Ironically in the end it was the high production values of this show and the various podcasts of 1up that left the Ziff Davies network in debt, leading to the sale of the site, and EGM to UGO. Obviously they worked very hard to keep the place together and clearly it couldn't last forever in this case, but nonetheless, watching these episodes back presented me with a tantalizing glimpse at my ideal job. Now that it's gone I feel like something hopeful in me has left along with it.

It's not all sadness though. Several of the resilient folks behind the show pulled themselves together admirably and now have a follow-up series named Co-Op on their website; Area 5. They have set themselves up as a fully fledged game-related video company and they take donations. For what they put out, I'll be proud to make one.

http://area5.tv/

Anyhow, that's enough of my fawning. Check them out now. Remember to state your age properly if you're over 18, otherwise you'll be refused entry. It gets a little blue. 

Personalities, the glue of the network include Phil Kolar, Rob Bowen, Shane Bettenhausen, Ryan Scott, Nick Suttner, Alice Liang, Jay Frechette, Tina Sanchez, Richard Li, Sam Kennedy, David Ellis, Jeff Green, Ryan O'Donnell, Greg Ford, Jason Bertrand, Cesar Quintero, Thierry Nguyen, Anthony Gallegos, Matt Leone, and Matt Chandronait. All of them know their stuff and are thoroughly entertaining to watch.

Written by: Alex Shaw

As mentioned in this weeks episode. I got the new Street Fighter figure of Ryu. There's a whacking great vile misprint on the back concerning Ryu's Country of Origin. Kids should look away. On a side note, the figures are awesome. £9.99 on Play.

Here in precise order are my favourite scrolling beat-em-ups. I've been playing a lot of these lately and I really would love to see this dead-and-buried genre brought back to us.

1. Streets of Rage 2 (Mega Drive)
2. Alien Vs. Predator (Arcade)
3. Final Fight (Arcade)
4. Asterix (Arcade)
5. Streets of Rage (Mega Drive)
6. X-Men (Arcade)
7. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Arcade)
8. Die Hard Arcade (Saturn)
9. The Punisher (Arcade)
10. Kung Fu Master (Game Boy)

Come and find us.

Here: http://twitter.com/Digitalcowboys

Well, as has been mentioned on the podcast many times before, I tend to Tony things, i.e. complete stuff as and when I buy/rent them.  So I guess this means that I don't have a big pile of shame as such.  Don't get me wrong though, there are still achievements, quite literally, I want to get in games, so here is a list of a few that might interest you.

1. Eternal Sonata - The only true pile of shame game I have.  Never have and never will play it.
2. Gears of War 2 - Need to complete on Insane difficulty.
3. Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 - Need to complete all DLC Co-op missions.
4. Rock Band 2 - The Endless Setlist awaits me.
5. Kingdom for Keflings - So sweet, so time consuming.

I'll keep you posted but don't hold your breath for Eternal Sonata!

Tony

Below, there's a link to the Gamers with Jobs website. If you're looking for similar game-related discussions from non-paid though nonetheless incredibly professional and likable folks, you'll find good stuff here.

http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/

We all have a pile of shame. It's the stack of games we've bought and are sitting on, but have yet to finish, or in some cases; play. Here in order of priority is mine. PLUS the specifics of when they will be considered beaten.

1. Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (Have to beat Bison with my new Arcade stick on normal)

2. Bionic Commando (Have to kill Hitler)

3. Rock Band 2 (Have to finish World Tour)

4. Burnout Revenge (Have to unlock a truly awesome car)

Wish me luck.

----------Amendment-----------

Finished

Rock Band: AC/DC Live
Fallout 3
Gears of War 2
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Scene It?: Box Office Smash
Left 4 Dead
Streets of Rage 2
Quackshot: Starring Donald Duck

Having played this charming, oddball, twenty-minute and best of all FREE game I'm hoping to spread the word about it.

To explain the plot would remove much of the fun but all you need to know is that it uses a modified Quake II engine and throws you directly into a colourful and weird world. It's a great way of turning gaming narrative on it's head. It was created by Brendon Chung, who is definitely a man to watch.

Download it and try to get through in one sitting. There are some jumpy bits so save often. You'll thank us later.

---

You can download Gravity Bone from: http://www.blendogames.com/

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Format: Playstation 3
Reviewer: Alex

Arguably the best game on the PS3 and yet sometimes achingly derivative and petty, Drake's Fortune is a curious blend of tired, old favourites and expert polish. Pilfering liberally from the successful exploration elements of the Tomb Raider series and the cover action system from Gears of War it's very hard for a player on the initial run to find the identity beneath the surface. It's there, however in the form of brimming personality and charm.

The story is pure Saturday morning matinee fodder, an up-to-date Indiana Jones the world of cinema sorely needs and within moments of the epic score rousing you up with lush visuals and all the other cliche's that make you feel like you're playing a big game, you fall right into Naughty Dog's trap. Then after witty, exceptionally well-delivered dialogue you're basically ferried about between room after room of crafty, spiteful enemies who flank you all over the shop and pick away at your patience. These shootouts are interspersed with some very competent platforming, which unlike Tomb Raider requires usually just the right direction push and occasionally some timing. Punishment is never more than a few repeated moments of game, but you WILL die over and over.

It's a fairly old game by now, but the addition of trophies and an incoming sequel, coupled with a budget price make this one almost unmissable for fans of action games. The core gameplay is nothing you've not seen before, but the central trio of Nathan, Elena and Sully in particular are strong, likable characters and that alone is worth playing for.

Rating 8/10

Format: Xbox 360/PS3
Reviewer: Alex

It's a beautiful, sweeping, epic (which won my best visual style of the year award), and it's built on the solid movement engine from Assassin's Creed; a game of proven quality, but is Prince of Persia actually any good?

No.

PoP holds you by the hand and guides you through the breathtaking levels, leaping from platform to platform with apparent grace and precision, until, that is, you spy through the silken veils and find that this potentate is bare-ass naked. Your hand isn't just guided, it's downright forced! When you realise this, you'll see that you must simply press A, then B, then A, A, B, B, A until you reach the safe platform and reset your restart point. Just input the code with the right timing. One wrong button or a double-tap and you start again, swiftly, admittedly. It doesn't seem like you died; Elika saved you. But she didn't and you did. Now input the code again and get it right this time please. The result, rather dishearteningly, is a protracted, ten hour quicktime event.

Combat is much the same. A carefully predetemined line of binary (or whatever the four button version of binary is). And yes you do die, you just don't get the animation. This seems dishonest of Ubisoft. For years they've been slapping us on the wrist for bailing on Sam Fisher or indeed the Prince himself and the games were frustrating, but you knew why and what the boundaries were. You also were able to vary your movements and timing a little. Expanding the prince's world to a sandbox and then drawing a channel in the sand and nudging us back in whenever we attempt to veer off is not doing justice to the scope at stake here. This is a beautiful world, a textured, watercolour oasis. Key elements may be pilfered from Okami and team Ico's efforts, but it is nonetheless a stunning achievement, graphically, aurally and for the smooth effortless movement. But effortless in this case may not be a compliment. If the game requires little of the player than to just be there, tapping buttons rhythmically on cue, surely some sort of guitar controller should have been supplied.

Rating: 6/10

Platform: Xbox 360/PS3
Reviewer: Alex

A polished and fast-paced return to the Mortal Kombat universe, this time with popular, if bland DC superheroes along for the ride. While the story premise is ludicrous fanfic, the Unreal engine at it’s core gives the fighting a meaty wallop. It looks and sounds great and plays in an entertaining fashion, providing old favourites like fatalities and new twists on the “test your might” mini game.

It's genuinely nice as a long-time comic fan to batter DC characters up and down. Batman in particular has some really brutal moves that feel authentic. Superman and the Flash do move sluggishly in comparison to their classic counterparts and you have to remind yourself that this is for reasons of balancing. After several weeks of blinding speed twitch-fighting on SFII HD, however, I found closing the gap between any characters to just move in and pound on my opponent to be like running in glue. It's a different dynamic, based on methodical timing, rather than button hammering. This did not stop Paul beating me by mashing the buttons like a madman, though the fact that he was playing as the buxom Catwoman may have helped distract me.

Unfortunately in order to broaden the appeal the gore is muted and does not compare with past MK efforts. More pertinently, in this age of Youtube, is there much to be gained from memorizing three dozen button-kombos for the kid-friendly fatalities? Also once you’ve pounded heads for a week or so in story and arcade mode there is little to bring you back. Tony’s theory is that one on one fighters have lost their relevance and I have to admit that after this, Soul Calibur IV and the last Tekken and Virtua Fighter offerings only the impending release of Street Fighter IV can save this old, exhausted genre.

Rating 6/10

This is apparently how we look in the head of listener Matthew Byott.
He stated in his letter to us that...

"having never seen you guys, i have this mental image in my head:
 
Paul - a bit of a delboy
tony- a short muscular bloke with a large head
alex - has a bowl cut, and wears thick lensed glasses.
 
im sure that this is nothing what you guys really look like."

Unfortunately, he's absolutely right.

Sorry about the lack of updates recently - just a standard list this week:

Siouxsie & the Banshees (3 Pack)
"Hong Kong Garden"
"Kiss Them For Me"
"The Killing Jar"

Blink-182
"Dammit"

Silversun Pickups
"Melatonin"
"Well Thought Out Twinkles"

Psychedelic Furs
"Pretty in Pink"

...of the most recent episode. My PC is being as stupid as a barrel-full of retarded Hitlers. Paul will no doubt work his magic when he comes over to mine tomorrow so episode 74 will be up midday Sunday.

Alex

This week, the Rock Band DLC is Red Hot Chili Pepper's Blood Sugar Sex Magik (full album). One track from the album - Give It Away - is already available on Rock Band 2 (due November 2008 in Europe!).

Blood Sugar Sex Magik

The Power of Equality
If You Have to Ask
Breaking the Girl
Funky Monks
Suck My Kiss
I Could Have Lied
Mellowship Slinky in B Major
The Righteous & The Wicked
Blood Sugar Sex Magik
Under the Bridge
Naked in the Rain
Apache Rose Peacock
The Greeting Song
My Lovely Man
Sir Psycho Sexy
They're Red Hot

Due 23 September on Xbox Live and 25 September on PSN:

Moving Pictures by Rush (Full Album) - At last!

Tom Sawyer (Original Version)
Red Barchetta
YYZ
Limelight (Original Version)
The Camera Eye
Witch Hunt
Vital Signs

Also available as individual tracks:

Bad Religion - Sorrow
The Cult - She Sells Sanctuary
Hot Hot Heat - Bandages
Kasabian - Shoot the Runner
Sleater-Kinney - You're No Rock N Roll Fun
The Stone Roses - Love Spreads

All master tracks, as per usual.

Awesome week ahead, all in all. Good thing I got a load of MS Points recently... :-D

Alex needs another week to focus on fatherhood before coming back, but as a taster of what's to come, think retro console review, think the best 16 bit machine ever created.

One word, one (or four) syllable(s): SNES!

After last week's Moving Pictures delay fiasco, Harmonix are set to release the PAX 2008 Collection Pack on 2 September. All tracks are master recordings and will costs 240 MS Points for the pack and 80 MS Points individually. Proceeds from the sale of this Pack between launch and Holiday 2008 will be donated to the Penny Arcade run Child's Play Charity in order to help out children's hospitals around the world. Those tracks in full:

Jonathan Coulton - Skullcrusher Mountain
MC Frontalot - Livin’ on the Corner of Dude and Catastrophe
Darkest of the Hillside Thickets - Shhh…

The Locksley track pack was also hastily put up last Thursday following the announcement of the Rush delay. All masters, 240 MS Points for all 3 or 80 per individual song (these prices are effective until 29 September):

All Over Again
Don’t Make Me Wait
She Does

Digital Cowboys is on hold for a week while Alex recovers from the sudden fortnight-early birth of his baby daughter; Lyra. If you want to blame someone, blame her.

Of course you'll have to get through her dad first.

See you next week for much rejoicing.

Okay, here it goes, here it goes, here it goes, here it goes again...

Due August 12, we have the Roadrunner 6 Pack. The pack will be 480 MSP and single tracks will be 80 MSP for the first month. From that point on the pack will be 800 MSP and the single tracks will become 160 MSP. That list in full:

Airbourne "Runnin’ Wild"
DevilDriver "Clouds Over California"
Dream Theater "Constant Motion"
Killswitch Engage "My Curse"
Machine Head "Aesthetics Of Hate"
Megadeth "Sleepwalker"

This week, some of tracks in the Rock Band DLC selection are sure to at least make one Digital Cowboy a very happy bunny:

Crüe Fest 3 Pack 02 (240 MSP):
Buckcherry "Rescue Me" (80 MSP)
Mötley Crüe "Face Down In The Dirt" (80 MSP)
Sixx AM "Life Is Beautiful" (80 MSP)

Singles:
System Of A Down "B.Y.O.B." (160 MSP)
System Of A Down "Toxicity" (160 MSP)

This week's selection of songs (all masters), due 29 July on Xbox Live, is as follows:

Scars on Broadway - They Say (160 MS points)

Staind - This is It (160 MS Points)

Testament - Electric Crown (160 MS Points)

thenewno2 - Yomp (80 MS Points)

In celebration of today's podcast in which we discuss The American Office, here's a sneak preview of Ubisoft's new tie-in game. 100% pure awesomeness!

Neversoft continue to crank out DLC packs for Guitar Hero III.

Due 24 July on Xbox Live and PSN:

Guitar Virtuoso Track Pack
Joe Satriani "Surfing with the Alien"
Steve Vai "For the Love of God"
Buckethead "Soothsayer"

Pricing: 500 MS Points or £3.99 (probably!).

You know the drill. Due 22 July on Xbox Live...

Nine Inch Nails 3-pack:
Burn
Capital G
Last

Shinedown:
Devour
Junkies For Fame

All master tracks.

Pricing: 440 MS Points for the Nine Inch Nails 3-pack or 160 MS Points per individual track.

For the next three weeks we'll be publishing on Friday instead of Thursday. (Alex is attending anti-natal classes with his wife). See you tomorrow.

DC

There are three questions that a gamer needs to ask him or herself regarding Metal Gear Solid 4. The first is whether you enjoy stealth-action games. The likes of Splinter Cell and Assassin’s Creed have set the bar high in the past few years, largely inspired by this series. Fortunately unlike previous games the rigid enforcement of stealth has been relaxed in all but a few places and a player could quite happily charge through most of the game, guns blazing and not be penalised for it. Unlike Sam Fisher’s previous outings where being spotted results in a mission restart, MGS4 gives you room to breathe and make mistakes. It’s a completely new engine built with the Call of Duty crowd in mind and it genuinely makes a difference in how you play as Snake.

The second question is whether you have played the previous games. You could probably get by on a thorough perusal of Metal gear history online but this is a game built upon a foundation of dense characterisation and vividly realised set-pieces designed to evoke emotion. This cannot be swiftly assimilated in a few pages. To get the full effect you will have at least had to have finished Metal Gear Solid on the Playstation. Sons of Liberty and Snake Eater add texture and history to the saga, which then fully enables the player to feel the true sense of completion in Guns of the Patriots. If you haven’t played any of them, track down Metal Gear Solid on the PS1 or if you own a Wii or GameCube find the remake; The Twin Snakes. It hasn’t been played by many and both have their strengths and weaknesses but the improved graphics may make the transition smoother.

Final question. Do you own a Playstation 3? If the answer is no, does this single game truly warrant the hefty investment? Going back to question two; if you have completed the first three and thoroughly enjoyed them and are hankering after this final instalment then this could indeed be the one killer app to convince you. It is a fantastic game in it’s own right. Almost every facet from previous instalments has been polished up and perfected from the once-fiddly camouflage to the cluttered item selection. Now your sneaking suit mimics your surrounding environment with a single prompt and the in-game menu gives full interface with a vast arsenal of weapons and gadgets, siphoning them into handy quick-select packages. The photo-real graphics and awe-inspiring soundstage push the PS3 to new heights of excellence and the new third-person camera finally makes hunting down enemies a joy rather than a chore. It is in short, everything Metal Gear could and should have been. It will remain Sony’s flagship game for quite some time.

It isn’t without its flaws. Half the game is spent sat passively watching lengthy cut-scenes which will become tiresome if you don’t know your history. Even if you do, in fact even if you have loved every previous moment of Kojima’s unusual blend of melodrama, action and oddball humour you might wish he’d had a better editor to trim a few of them down. The crawl mechanic is still broken and clumsy and you will often hit the deck and struggle to get back up when you are being attacked. However, long-time fans will forgive these as eccentricities of the series and will most likely be glued to the screen in rapt attention as the ghosts of previous adventures are evoked and explored.

In summary, this is so far, without a doubt the best game on Playstation 3. If the clumsy, archaic online mode is anything to go by, the future of the series will NOT be spent there. So whether we see any more from Snake and friends, this moment, frozen in time will mark the noble death and rebirth of the stealth action game.

Rating: 5 Stars

Following our Sega episode I trawled through gaming history on the net and found that Nintendo did in fact release one console flop prior to the Virtual Boy. Behold now the Nintendo 'Video Boy'. This was a combination VCR and Game Boy released only in China and Saudi Arabia in 1993 in direct competition with Sega's Game Gear. Apparently Nintendo were impressed with Sega's combining of their various consoles with popular entertainment platforms and sought to challenge their market dominance in this field. They teamed up with Phillips to release this machine. Ultimately this led to rivalry and a falling out with their other bedfellows; Sony, who went on to make the Playstation.

It failed due to piracy, though several games were planned to make use of the video features, including 'Edit King' and 'Fast Forward Fox'.

Apparently they go for several hundred quid on eBay.

----------------

The Digital Cowboys Game Boy episode: Coming soon.

Alex

It's that time of the week. You know the drill...

Rock Band

Due 17 June on Xbox Live:

“Afterlife” by Avenged Sevenfold (Master, 160 MS Points)
“Critical Acclaim” by Avenged Sevenfold (Master, 160 MS Points)
“Hammerhead” by The Offspring (Master, 160 MS Points)
“Rock N Roll Dream” by Crooked X (Master, 80 MS Points)

Harmonix have also confirmed that the 14 remaining tracks Pixies album Doolittle (which features Wave of Mutilation) will be released on Xbox Live on 24 June. More on that next week.

Guitar Hero III Legends of Rock

Due 19 June on Xbox Live and PSN:

Coldplay Track Pack (All masters, 500 MS Points or £3.99)
"Violet Hill"
"God Put a Smile Upon Your Face"
"Yellow"

After last week's Jimmy Buffett-shaped debacle, and in the wake of Guitar Hero III releasing Motörhead DLC earlier in this week, it's clearly time for MTV Games and Harmonix to step up to the plate with some killer new DLC. That list in full:

MTV2 Pack
"Moving to Seattle" by The Material
"A Clean Shot" by The Myriad
"Bullets & Guns" by Them Terribles

Individual single:
"Girls Who Play Guitars" by Maxïmo Park

All tracks are masters and available for 80 MS points each, with the MTV2 Pack also available for 240 MS points.

I've heard of Maxïmo Park, but that's about it. Your mileage may vary.

'Til next time, Rock Band fans!

Paul

UPDATE: turns out the press release was wrong. The Maxïmo Park track actually costs 160 MS points. No matter: it's a great tune and well worth the points (IMO).

Harmonix have announced the Rock Band DLC that will be available on Xbox Live on 3 June. That list in full:

"Margaritaville" by Jimmy Buffett (master - new original recording)
"Cheeseburger in Paradise" by Jimmy Buffett (master - new original recording)
"Volcano" by Jimmy Buffett (master - new original recording)

"Indestructible" by Disturbed (master)
"Inside the Fire" by Disturbed (master)
"Perfect Insanity" by Disturbed (master)

Those who have already played Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock will no doubt already be familiar with Disturbed, as their track "Stricken" featured in that game.

However, you may be asking yourself (as I was): "Who the f*** is Jimmy Buffett?".  Well, you can find out all about him over at Wikipedia.

Ciao for now.

Paul.

Game: Grand Theft Auto IV
Format: XBOX 360

This review sits beneath a landslide of amassed praise and hyperbole surrounding this game. A title has not received such unanimously vaunting praise since Ocarina of Time on the N64. I could just repeat what everybody else has said and state that this is a strong contender for game of the year and virtually flawless, but in all honesty my experience seems to have varied. In the interests of journalistic integrity I can’t just say it’s perfect. It’s not and that’s fine, nothing really is. So if you need validation for your purchase or a collection of how many incredible new features there are then look elsewhere. If, however you would like to know what “not without its flaws” means (and it has been said by many) then read on.

Before I start, may I first echo the praise for GTA IV’s central character Niko Bellic. He is a prime example of depth in a central protagonist and I never felt frustrated with the way he acted. In fact, his forthright strength of character actively left me discouraged to go on the usual killing sprees, unlike the callous Tommy Vercetti from Vice City. Niko is definitely likable and compelling and many of the characters he meets (especially at the front end of the game) are multi-dimensional and interesting and only a little clichéd. The polish on the format is definitely apparent on start-up. The weight of the character and the vehicles he drives is apparent. The impact of hitting someone with a car or shooting them is amped up and the people behave a little more realistically. You can play for ages and still notice new things. It was only after about twenty hours that I started to see repetition, which gave way to cracks and flaws in the gameplay and eventually full-blown frustration at what eventually became apparent; polish is all that distinguishes this game from the previous iterations.

This is not to say that GTA III, Vice City and San Andreas are not superb games, but they were all based around the same engine, pioneered on the previous generation’s consoles and significantly here not replaced with a new one. This is GTA as we know and love it, but also (if applicable) as we hate it. The old problems are still there. The refined mission system means that if you are (unfairly?) slaughtered on a first attempt you can reload the current task. What it doesn’t counter for are the often monumentally long and boring drives between the islands that you often have to take. The Taxi system is a masterstroke, allowing you to skip many of these for a small fee, but all too often a specific vehicle is needed, necessitating you sitting for five minutes each attempt, having the same (or at least similar) conversations with the same characters who quickly reveal their lack of dimension through the repetition of the odious things they say. Hearing it once would be fine, twice or six times is unbearable. Maybe I wasn’t a sharp enough player. Maybe I shouldn’t have died so often or lost track of my fleeing quarry, but many missions are so trial and error based that you need several attempts just to know what’s around each corner.

In the interests of constructive criticism, rather than picking at the holes in this (admittedly fantastically presented and well planned) game, I will suggest what I’d like to see in the next instalment. For instance I would genuinely like to see the old engine scrapped. It was great for the PS2, functional and fun, but for current gen consoles, with responsive and intuitive characters like Assassin’s Creed’s Altair stalking the bustling streets, we need a model that knows when not to plummet off a rooftop because the camera whipped round to an awkward angle at an inopportune moment. We need a man who knows to lock onto and shoot the thug who is three feet away and emptying a shotgun into him and not stubbornly keep aiming at the one three rooms away behind a crate despite numerous frantic button taps. These are simple things that Rockstar surely will contend with someday. I just wish it had been for this game.

A save system that would allow you to start at the warehouse full of goons at the end of a long drive, not before it, would be nice, along with the ability to get people to be quiet in the car so you can listen to the music. Speaking of which, the soundtrack needs a mention. Over a dozen radio stations and only one or two with anything good on: perhaps a little too much like real life. This is only remarkable because the previous two games have had two of the most outstanding collections of 80’s and 90’s period music in any video game ever, and what’s assembled here seems a little too much like the eclectic mix that would play in a smoky record shop run by a music elitist who loathes anything popular. Perhaps I’ve been spoiled by Guitar Hero, but a handful of rock songs just isn’t good enough when swamped by a deluge of reggae, electro, funk and obscure hip hop. Hell, one station is entirely dedicated to Bob Marley and the Wailers. This saddens me as I was genuinely excited about the soundtrack, but the Chatterbox equivalent talk shows always seemed to be playing the same three segments, which meant that by hour thirty, I was switching off the radio and listening to the soundtrack to Layer Cake on my iPod. Next time, Rockstar, don’t be afraid to put on more songs that people know and/or like. Obscure is ok, but nostalgia has more power than novelty.

It was around this thirty-hour mark that the weight of the game began to press down on me. I knew I wasn’t far from the end but it just seemed to be going on forever, with each gruelling mission advancing my percentage of completion a fraction at a time. The fun began to ebb and a cold determination to finish rather than enjoy it began to set in. Again, perhaps if I had taken my time, it would have been better, but the repetitious waltz of chase/hide/shoot took such a hold that I could barely tell one mission from the next. It’s not just that all the missions in this single game follow the same handful of themes, it’s that this is all GTA has ever done and once again, to be constructive, perhaps the next should include more variation, even if this sacrifices the playing time of the core story. There is still plenty to do once you finish the final mission (indeed, this is the game’s key strength) with dozens of Taxi, vigilante and assassination missions, coupled with the usual treasure hunt. But once again, though they have swapped hidden packages for pigeons, it’s the same as it always was: drive/find (/shoot if necessary). The shooting system itself has indeed been refined, but after a time every single shootout became the same. Hide behind a wall or a box, wait for the hoods to show their faces, blast, repeat. I’d have appreciated either variation or simply less of the same. Five standout set pieces would stay with me longer than twenty identikit scuffles.

The much vaunted strong point of the game is the story. True, it starts out great with a thought-provoking series of tangled relationships, and much in the way of exposing the hypocrisy behind championing the American dream whilst despising outsiders who wish to join the party. There is musing on the nature of revenge and starting over and it truly holds your attention, but again it is only to a point. At some undetermined moment the clichés begin to appear until you find yourself sitting in a car with foul-mouthed Mafiosi thinking, “I have so done this before.” Rockstar run out of steam and leave you stranded in a limp reproduction of the Sopranos all too early. Once again, if they have to shorten the story for the next instalment in favour of consistent quality and depth then I certainly won’t be complaining.

The friend system initially is great fun. Spending time with your buddies shooting pool and the like is entertaining, but eventually you find yourself with twelve people calling up and badgering you to go to a strip club with them when it’s (really) three in the morning and all you want to do is sleep. Eventually you realise that the limp bonuses that keeping everybody happy offers simply isn’t worth the hours of your time and the ignore button becomes your new best friend.

Finally the real killer of this game for me, beyond the repetition, beyond the lame back-end characters and forgiving it the engine which still can’t seem to manage to keep the frame rate consistent and a far-off vehicle visible from moment to moment, no, the real killshot for my enjoyment of this game was the frustration factor. I lost count of the number of times I roared at the screen and writhed in my chair as Niko’s speeding car clipped a lamp-post and ground to a halt allowing whoever he was pursuing to escape within five seconds meaning I would have to jump through many hoops again just to get back to that same place and perhaps catch him. The illusion of freedom was never so present in a game. You may be able to go anywhere and do anything (weathering the consequences each time, usually involving a tedious police chase) but you still have to do a hell of a lot of things to the letter if you wish to actually play the game. You can’t cunningly set a trap for the dim-witted hoods you know are going to emerge from a certain door, you have to go in the front way and hit a certain spot. You often can’t shoot an enemy off the back of a motorbike because you must get to a certain place and kill him there and you certainly can’t let any of the core characters die, much less kill them. This leaves you prey to occasionally retarded A.I. both for allies and enemies, and performing the same tasks in the same ways to appease the game mechanic. When the cries of protest at an unfair death outweigh the smiles of joy at the clever digs at American culture and the occasional original mission you have to start questioning the validity of those multiple perfect scores. So this is the tallest order to Rockstar and requires them to go back to the drawing board. How about an open-world game where you really are free?

The saddest thing for me is that of course they won’t do this. The engine they polished may be from the last generation but it keeps the current gen happy. The next instalment will use the same one, the same problems will be present and of course I will buy it on day one, because I’m like that.

I don’t regret buying this. In fact despite the seeming negative tone of this review I would urge everybody with the corresponding console to go out, buy this and play it to death. It is more of an experience than most other games. I have barely mentioned the incredibly fun multiplayer setup, the pure joy of just cruising around the city on free mode with your two best mates in the car seeing what you can jump over and the mysterious downloadable content we’ve been promised for later this year. It is genuinely worth every penny of its price tag. It’s not perfect. We should not demand perfection from our games. But it could be better and to that end Rockstar can take on board what many people have said, and perhaps next time I can truly say that this time… it was different.

Rating: ****

Synopsis:

Multimillionaire arms dealer Tony Stark is taken hostage by mercenaries while supplying U.S. troops in Afghanistan with new hardware. Mortally wounded and kept alive by a jerry-rigged heart operation, he is threatened into constructing similar weapons for his captors. Instead he fashions a crude suit of armour kitted out with flamethrowers and rockets and makes a daring escape bid. Back home in L.A. Tony suffers a crisis of conscience and decides to make an improved suit and track down all of the weapons he has supplied in the past and also take out the armies of fanatics and despots lording over many troubled war zones across the world. However a dangerous business rival has other plans.

Review:

It’s been nearly half a century since Stan Lee and the other creators at Marvel started churning out dozens of highly popular superheroes onto the pages of longstanding comic series, and yet it’s only been the past decade when we’ve seen them appear on our cinema screens. Iron Man marks the first of these that Marvel is financing themselves, and it shows. Right from the off, two things are abundantly clear; firstly that the people who put this together know their comic, its characters and scenarios, and secondly that they are all aware of how to translate the values and themes of a 1960s introductory story into a modern-day setting and make it relevant and entertaining. If every one of their previous efforts had been as good as this, then misfires like the clumsy Daredevil would have brought them truly excellent films as well as gateways to new franchises. Not that they haven’t been able to push most of their licences into sequel territory, regardless of film quality: Fantastic 4 spawned a silver spin-off and even the lumbering, misunderstood Hulk is getting an imminent pseudo-sequel.

Like the best comic book movies, Iron Man takes for granted that its audience is going to be relatively intelligent and spends little time explaining things in detail. In fact, its whip-quick pacing is one of its deadliest weapons, along with a tight script and confident delivery by all. It doesn’t pander to kids or hold back on grim moments, of which there are a surprising number. This is a superhero film set in a more real world than most of its peers. The enemies are by and large tyrannical mercenaries and fanatics in the Middle East, and the film is unflinching in prodding at several touchy issues regarding war and the shameful truth of the arms industry. It shares much with the 2005 film Lord of War in this dispassionate statement of chilling facts, yet like that film never stoops so low as to preach about the evils that are apparent to all who are looking. This is a film for adults and mature kids. The classic rock of the soundtrack makes this clear; if you’re old enough to appreciate AC/DC then you’ll get the best out of this film.

It is a movie of two halves, the first an uneasy war piece with the gritty, sun bleached flavour of David O’Russell’s Three Kings. Downey’s Tony Stark is confronted with the reality of what his weapons do, something he appears to have been ignoring, and the understanding that he has indirectly caused terrible harm. This segueways explosively to the second part where Stark harnesses his techno-genius abilities and channels them into something protective and impossible to ignore. What is interesting is that there is no morality play of right or wrong at work here. It’s not that his weapons have ended up in the wrong hands; he simply realises that they will be used by the strong to take from the weak and this deeply affects him. He does what any man would when facing the dark night of the soul; he builds a kickass suit of flying armour and goes to make amends with awe-inspiring firepower.

The iron suit scenes are all shot with the grace of a concept car show-reel with flawless and seamless CGI effects from ILM, working the impossible so that you forget what you’re watching isn’t real – or at least you don’t query it until you leave the cinema. It culminates in a mech suit clash of the titans that most have compared favourably with Transformers, but which reaches even greater heights of impact because you know there are two men in there being pummelled with motorbikes.

Despite eye-popping effects and edge-of-the-seat flight sequences it is the script and acting that carry the film the most. All too often, big budget effects movies fall back on what could be knocked together from several rejected drafts and the actors don’t seem to engage with the characters, but there is an ease here that is delightfully out of character for a blockbuster. Downey Jr was born to play the role of Stark; his troubled past, drug and alcohol addiction serve him well to characterise this flawed master of technology. Always perfectly timed with a quip or a charming one-liner he is every bit as compelling as Bale’s Batman or Perlman’s Hellboy. He plays him brash and lonely, more at home with machines than other people, with the exception of the spunky Pepper Potts, played just on the wire of damsel in distress by Ms Paltrow. Terrence Howard also makes a welcome turn as Stark’s friend Jim Rhodes, immediately making him likable and frequently exasperated by Stark’s attitude, so that when he glances at a spare suit of silver armour and War Machine fans grip their seats, thoughts of a sequel flash through everybody’s minds. Bridges’ Obadiah Stane starts off as an obvious villain complete with hirsute chin and shiny pate, but eventually surprises in his cold-hearted greed and vicious ability to do anything for an edge in the market. Ending up like Donald Trump meets Megatron, he is a true avatar for iron-hearted corporate greed.

To conclude, as the first of ten planned films funded by Marvel themselves, this is the perfect piece to open the second renaissance of comic-book movies. While not distinctly different in tone from Spider-Man or Batman Begins, this is without doubt a triumph of new attitude. We now know almost all of Marvel’s key characters and they can commence upping the ante with faithful renditions of comic fans favourites and introductions to the uninitiated. The Hulk is set to explode back onto our screens in a few months time and Captain America and Thor are waiting in the wings. However, unlike the past decade’s worth of Marvel films, where one of the key aspects of their universe was impossible due to different distribution rights; i.e. the crossover characters from one book to the other. The next few films look set to break that trend at long last. Downey’s Tony Stark may be appearing in The Incredible Hulk, and there is a scene after the credits in (some screenings of) Iron Man featuring Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury appearing at Tony’s house with a cryptic message about forming a new super-team. I walked out before I could catch this Easter egg, but it’s quite possible that as a long-time Avengers fan, I’d have cheered like a maniac. Instead I left the cinema with a massive grin on my face and Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man? grinding in my ears. For the end credits, it couldn’t really have been anything else.

Rating: *****

Alex Shaw

Name: SingStar
Format: PS3
Developer: London Studio
Release Date: December 5 2007
Reviewer: Alex Shaw

The original SingStar was released on the PS2 in May 2004 to generally positive reviews. It was praised for its easy accessibility, versatile track list and multitude of gaming modes, but also criticised for the very specific nature of its note chart. While it followed the model of a classic karaoke machine, the double-edged sword of its points-scoring nature meant that songs had to be sung in a set manner, allowing you to see exactly how well you were doing but also no real creativity while singing. This meant that if trailer-park chanteuse Christina Aguilera were to attempt her own song, Genie in a Bottle, she would have to ensure she stuck to the exact vocal pattern she created in the original track. This would mean that achieving the coveted perfect 10000 score would prove difficult, even impossible for a showboat like her.

Regardless of this, the game proved a huge success in Europe, spawning many additional song packs including Party, Pop, Rocks!, 80s, 90s, Anthems, Legends and R&B. Its initially girl-oriented audience has widened over the years to the point where the new version has a cool-looking gent on the cover, validating the more self-conscious guy’s inner desire to grab a mic and make like Blink 182.

In December 2007 SingStar was finally given its current generation console update. Some things were different. Some have changed. Gone are the sparse, white menus, replaced with a welcoming HD front-end offering access to the SingStore and your online profile. These are the two key facets of SingStar on the PS3 that set it apart from its earlier instalments. The SingStore itself is at this moment four months old and boasting an impressive girth of 200 downloadable tracks. At 99p a go it is unsurprisingly easy to find yourself loading your cart up every time you pop in, and each time you do an old favourite or something new is brought into the SingStar format in what has proved to be a very pleasing manner. It is this feature above all others that set SingStar on the PS3 up as something different to its predecessors. The initial thirty songs are a fine mix, sure to contain at least one song that everybody knows, but soon you will find yourself hankering for more and it’s the expandability that makes this a truly lasting game; almost a platform in itself.

If you are lucky enough to acquire a PS3 camera then the other feature opens out before you; namely the ever-growing online community of SingStar players each able to download half-minute snippets of themselves performing. You don’t need the camera to view the videos of course, but anybody with a sense of fun would want to get hold of one anyway after seeing what these people can come up with. Some are great, some are plain awful and a few are genuinely inventive, their creators utilising their thirty precious seconds to truly entertain. This reviewer has seen Chewbacca dancing for joy (presumably over his new Star Wars PSP), singing fruit, chin-people, cross-dressers and the most ridiculous pair of pyjama bottoms ever. The interface shares a similar flavour to YouTube and Facebook, allowing you to make comments, keep friends, rate videos and be rated. It gives a grander sense of scale to the game and seeing everyone performing the songs we have in common creates an unusual sense of unity for a console game.

On the subject of performing we come to the great divide that is an undeniable part of the SingStar experience. There seems to be two very distinct ways of playing, depending on which of two ends you want to achieve. Firstly there is performing a song; actually getting up on your makeshift stage and belting out Life on Mars in a manner that would make Ziggy proud. This makes it a fun experience for you and everyone else involved, and can leave you with a score that is mostly admirable. The other way is the calculated discipline of getting your voice to follow the sliding pitch bar without missing a single note. Unfortunately this is where the game falls down for the average person. Trained singers will likely be able to control their voice so that it sounds effectively like the original track, whether they channel the original artist or not, and still hit the notes, but the other 98% of the population will come off sounding more like what Alan Partridge would refer to as a trapped boy. A horrible, monotonous whine will escape your lips, interrupted only by the occasional swiftly stolen breath and instrumental pauses, and everybody in the vicinity will feel their flesh crawl and desperation to leave the room. It is a weighty choice when deciding whether to play for points or for the general fun of the SingStar experience, which when done right can make for a truly memorable party, often captured forever in a grin-inducing scrapbook of pictures and videos thanks to your camera. Those who can genuinely sing need not worry, but if you have that much vocal control, you should be doing it for a living anyway.

It is significant that Harmonix’s Rock Band has a far less stringent requirement from its vocalists on the Easy setting. Since the front man is the mouthpiece of the band, a player desperately playing for points and singing technically correctly but droning abominably would swiftly destroy the rhythm and morale of the rest of the group. However, Rock Band’s note charts have a forgiving flow to them allowing for that all-important performance to shine through. On Expert it’s a different story, though, and many a slapdash vocalist will have to be rescued by their teammates repeatedly should they attempt it. I myself save the high score attempts for times when nobody else is around to feel the pain.

SingStar PS3 is a significant step forward in the series, broadening its horizons extensively. Now when you have your family over you can let them browse through the store until they find something they are prepared to sing and then video them while they’re at it and keep the clip for all time. As far as future instalments go, Vol. 2 is due in June and promises harmonising on duets (singing different lines over each other on tracks like California Dreamin’) and PSP interactivity with the SingStore. Hundreds of tracks will no doubt be released in various European languages (fingers crossed for Cochise by Audioslave, already on a song pack in the USA) but perhaps some editing tools would be a wise element of future DLC, to ensure that the submitted videos remain fresh from those who enjoy channelling their inner star. If you’ve never played before, own a PS3 and this appeals to you then now is the time to take up the mic, but if you’ve been annoyed by the playing system in the past then little has changed to make it easier to get a high score and still sound human. This reviewer’s advice: let the points go and just sing your heart out.

Rating: ****

Well, it's sure been fun bringing these clips to you over the last few days. We have one more left to show you and here it is.

We just finished adding the final sound mix to a crucial scene in the film and couldn't wait to share it with you guys. So, without further ado...

By popular demand, here is another clip from Digital Cowboys - The Movie. We had a superb time in Bombay and it's really great to see the film starting to take shape.

Here is an exclusive clip taken from the forthcoming film, Digital Cowboys - The Movie. We hope you enjoy it.

Due to the extremely busy Christmas period, the Cowboys have been partying extra hard. As a result, Episode 37 will now be released this Thursday (10 January).

We promise it will be worth the wait, however, as it's a thorough run down of the main events in movies and video games in 2007 including Oscars, console launches and trillion-dollar-mergers, as well as a preview of the fantastic stuff coming this year.

See you in a bit.

This weekend I'll be handing out loads of cards pimping this show, so to all newcomers: welcome, come on in and put your feet up.

Rather than listening to the old shows sequentially, have a look at the overview first and check out the shows where we talk about stuff you like. We've covered so much this year that there's bound to be something for everyone.

In the next few weeks we'll be reviewing Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock and The Golden Compass, and rounding off the year with a retrospective of some the movies and video games from 2007 that we have not already discussed and a review of the absolute best and worst the year has offered.

Enjoy.

Alex

There's a brand new way to communicate with the Digital Cowboys: our revamped official MySpace page. We have a friends list we're just dying to fill up and we want your comments, feedback and support. Spread the word about our kickass podcast and then we can set about challenging the likes of Russell Brand for market dominance.

There are new videos too. One is a special Bohemian Rhapsody music video and the other is a production diary for Alex's first feature, Character Assassination, filming this October.

Tom Underhill, the newest addition to the Digital Cowboys and a very old friend of Alex, Paul and Tony. An aspiring writer and filmmaker, he is currently penning a script called "Another Day at the Office". It's a genre-straddling action comedy paying homage to the many hitman related films we've loved throughout the years. In Episode 5, Tom, Alex and Paul read excerpts from this aloud.

Like the rest of us, Tom loves movies, music and video games and has spoken of opening a comedy club.

If you would like to be an investor in 'Club Tom' or want to pass on your thoughts on his work, drop us a line at digitalcowboys@googlemail.com

And if Edgar Wright is reading this, please write in and we will put you in touch with this sizzling young sweatshop of ideas.

The best man at Alex's wedding. A former native of Derby in the UK, Mat fled to Canada in search of culture and has since been living in a land of very nice people.

He also went to College at the less prestigious of the two institutions in York. Like Alex, he wants to crack his way into filmmaking and they have shot several low budget movies together.

Check out their journey around Kent on YouTube in three parts here.

Mat got to see Grindhouse before any of us, so hear what he has to say about it in Episode 3.

An introduction to the team:

Alex Shaw (Left): A former Film student from the less respectable of the two Colleges in York, Alex dropped out, flat broke after the first year and became a waiter while he wrote his Sci-Fi opus. This year he decided to get back to doing what he originally intended and is planning several no-budget films. Prone to knee-jerk reactions and bad jokes, but good at the rants and possessing an exhaustive memory for movie trivia and video game history. He's also a supervisor at The Gap.

Tony Atkins (Right): Forgoing further education, Tony crafted his career as a landscape gardener early. Placid and thoughtful, he tends to speak only when necessary and tries not to tread on people's toes. However beneath that affable exterior lies the heart of a video-game assassin, trained to devour games in a single weekend. Tony possesses an addictive personality and a highly competitive streak, but is frequently able to root out the balanced viewpoint.

Enjoy!