Episode 35: The Rise & Fall of SEGA: [mp3] [website]
with Joe DeLia, Dits Symeou and Leon Cox

Digital Cowboys Episode 143: [mp3] [website]
with Alex Shaw, Tony Atkins, Dits Symeou, and Leon Cox

Episode 36: The Gaming Grind: [mp3] [website]
with Joe DeLia, Brad Gallaway and Jared Newman

Episode 35: The Rise & Fall of SEGA
“The skies are bluer today than ever before as Big Red Potion presents its lovingly crafted tribute to the mysterious Japanese giant known as Sega. From the early magic of “riiise from your grave” to the misunderstood, ahead-of-its-time beauty of the Dreamcast, Sinan, Joe, Leon Cox from GamerDork and Dits from The Gamer Scene talk about how Sega reached their mid-90’s high, and why they soon plummeted out of the console race thanks to a few ill-advised mistakes and unfortunate decisions. Finally, the boys discuss whether the old Sega could ever survive in today’s Call of Duty-dominated marketplace, Sonic 4, and if the new Sega is even Sega at all.”

Digital Cowboys Episode 143
“This week we have a roundtable cross-podcast discussion about the Nintendo Wii. Why don’t we play it more often? Is it just because of the graphics? Can the list of games that Wii lovers hold dear turn the tide with the rest of us? Five men, five opinions.”

Episode 36: The Gaming Grind
“Grinding: we’ve all done it. Yet despite the promise of bland repetition, why do we keep coming back for more? Can gaming exist without the grind? Should we put up with the endless hunt? Those are the exact questions that Sinan and Joe attempt to answer this week, as Jared Newman from GamerCrave and Brad Gallaway from GameCritics jump on-board for this loot-grabbing extravaganza. All that plus Borderlands talk, achievement discussion, and 100% pure, uncensored Kubba.”

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Disclaimer: moany, self-involved post, which this disclaimer doesn’t justify, but I’ve typed it all out now, so if you choose to read it, deal with it.

For no discernible reason whatsoever, a huge pang of anxiety about my writing has emerged from underneath the bed and is giving me an absolute nightmare tonight. Now of all times, after securing more freelance work, with useful amounts of money actually starting to come in for what I’m doing. I mean, even the prospect of an Indian takeaway isn’t helping, and usually a half-decent korma is enough to plain stop me thinking, let alone worrying.

To clarify, I’m not asking for reassurance here. Well, I am, but I don’t think any reassurance will actually provide any reassurance. Does that make sense? Let me try to explain.

I’ve never trained in journalism, English, or any kind of media studies at university level. Actually, I didn’t even do English at A-level. At GCSE level I scraped my way through it, the only subject that I had any real trouble with, my teacher simply telling me after one particularly awful essay that I had no natural writing skill whatsoever.

Now that I’m writing at a number of games websites, some of them fairly prominent, I sometimes feel like a wolf in sheep’s clothing just waiting to be found out. Tonight, that feeling is like an itch I can’t shake off.

Why am I getting these writing gigs? Is it just hard work, punctuality, an understanding of grammar, a dash of knowledge on the subject? Some people have said that I can write well about games, but are they just being nice? Am I actually in any way, shape or form a decent writer, someone able to write thought-provoking work, or am I just a below-average hack working harder than others just to stay afloat in a speciality subject?

Screw you! This is SO over!

I’ve worked hard to learn how to write over the last two years, observing how others write, reading style guides, trying to plan, working to understand what makes a decent sentence decent, a structured paragraph structured, an interesting piece interesting. Now I even edit for one site, reading through other people’s drafts and handing out pointers on where they can be improved. On a night like this, I feel like the most inappropriate person to be doing that.

I appreciate all writers probably go through crises of confidence all the time. While that doesn’t make the one I’m having right now any less crippling, I do understand that, frankly, insecurity is plain old insecurity. But this is a bit new to me. In all things I’ve done previously in my life, I’ve been able to tell whether what I’m doing is good or bad. With my writing, while I can see improvements and where I can improve, more often than not I just don’t know whether what I’ve just written is any good or not. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll spend ages refining what I write, fine-tuning it, and trying to ensure it’s as good as possible, but you can’t really know until anyone reads it, right? Is that right?

I have no idea. Like I said, even after two years of doing this, it’s all a bit new to me. And still very much scary.

With all due respect to the people and sites I’m working for now – all of which have some great writers - sometimes I feel like the only way I’ll be able to prove to myself that I can actually write is when I’m writing for someone like gamesTM or Edge, or maybe one of the major gaming sites. And if no-one’s looking round, wondering what the hell someone like me is doing there, maybe I’ll be able to accept that I might actually be able to write. Just a bit.

I feel a bit better now. Looking forward to that curry.

—

Two weeks in a row? Say it ain’t so. Yeah, I’m actually starting to juggle all my freelance work with all the work I’m doing at TGR and writing in my blog this week. And even playing video games as well. Of course, I’m sacrificing what little of my sanity remains to do so.

The one thing I’m not sacrificing is my Masterchef time. How could anyone sacrifice Masterchef for anything? Don’t they know that cooking doesn’t get tougher than this? Well, that is, until the quarter-finals of course. Then it doesn’t get tougher than that. Well, until the semis. And then the final. And then actually cooking in an actual restaurant and not on some loudmouthed reality show for amateurs.

Where was I? Oh yeah, video games, ShoNTell, all that jazz. Let’s do that.

PLAY
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Heavy Rain (PS3): I’ve already written a couple of blog posts on this game, but I’m sure there’ll be a few more on the way. I’m presently trying to encourage my girlfriend to push through with a second playthrough, but I’m not sure she quite gets it yet. Actually, I’m not sure anyone in the world quite gets Heavy Rain, but that’s already foreshadowing the discussion I’ll be having with Messrs. Matulef, Inzauto and Xantiriad on an upcoming episode of Big Red Potion. The same Jeffrey Matulef, by the way, who scored it 5/10 in his review for our mutual friends at Games Abyss – ouch.

Greed Corp (360 XBLA): I reviewed this for GamerNode earlier this week. I tossed and turned a bit about the score, something that happens more with GamerNode reviews because I know they’ll go into the Metacritic score. I don’t think it actually changes my judgement in any way, I just get a little more (irrationally) concerned about it. Thankfully, it was rather an excellent game, fully deserving of its 8/10.

Encleverment Experiment: (360 XBLA): There’s something about hearing posh British accents in video games that makes me happy, beyond me being British, I’d like to think. And there’s one in this charming enough brain-testing Live game with an educational bent, like another of Blitz Arcade’s XBLA games, KrissX. My review of the latter has popped up this week for Game People.

NEWS
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Sledgehammer to Make 2011 Call of Duty, Activision Reorganizes Franchise: You’d think even Activision couldn’t screw up something as phenomenally successful as the Call of Duty franchise. Clearly Bobby Kotick sees your thinking as a challenge. Lots of kerfuffle, sackings and lawsuits now between Infinity Ward and Activision, but what will it mean for the actual games? Article @ Gamasutra

ApocalyPS3: An early contender for the worst-named thing of the year. I found it all a bit ridiculous. So PS3s couldn’t work for one day of the year, so what? How many 360s have gone completely kaput, as in not going to work ever again, over the last three or four years? I know Sony has a recent habit of screwing up a lot, but the press went totally berserk. Story @ Joystiq

AND…
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Ten Phrases It Is Now Illegal To Use When Writing About Games: I’ve craftily already done all my self-pimpage, so it’s time to pimp some actually decent writing. Starting with Lewis Denby’s manifesto against overused phrases in video game writing. I scored 11 out of 10 – overall. Post @ Lewis Denby

Just be glad it’s not a prisoner-devouring beach ball: Interesting thoughts from game designer Corvus Elrod on differentiating between a toy and a game when it comes to describing video games. Elrod postulates that a video game is unable to be a toy, even if it’s designed to mimic one, because of the boundaries of space for play to take place within, as enforced by the medium. A theory to think about, certainly, but his comments section doesn’t seem to agree… Post @ Semionaut’s Notebook

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That’ll do for now – Masterchef is only seven hours away – sho out.

I’ve been thinking about the esteemed Jared Newman’s comments in response to my (spoilerific) blog post on Heavy Rain. I just wanted to throw out a quick thought on something that occurred very early on in the game, something I think represents the best example of what (I think) Jared was talking about, namely Heavy Rain trying to present itself more as an interactive drama with no correct choices than as a video game to be beaten.

In the opening scene where you play as a clean-shaven Ethan, you can go into the back garden and play with your two sons. Playing helicopter, swinging them around and so on. By the way, twirling around Jason as he giggles hysterically is so simple and yet so rewarding, and provides excellent juxtaposition for later scenes in the game.

Anyway, eventually you get into a mock swordfight with Jason. This prompts the game’s first quick time event. If you follow the commands correctly you’ll win the fight, with Jason pretending to die and Shaun very impressed by your skills. If you lose then Jason wins, much to Shaun and Jason’s delight.

The opening interchange between Ethan and his two sons is very enjoyable to play through.

It’s interesting how this moment immediately challenges your approach. Are you playing to win every QTE, as you would in a typical video game, or do you deliberately lose to let your son win, as might any good father? That was the decision I perceived, and as such I chose to let Jason win. My girlfriend, conversely, played to win, and didn’t even think of letting Jason win. Different approaches, different results. Having watched both outcomes, I can say that there clearly was no right way to play this QTE.

This kind of mentality does transfer into later non-QTE-based choices, as discussed in my (once again spoilerific) last blog post. Essentially, some difficult choices can provide viable outcomes either way, enforcing the whole interactive drama shtick and promoting playing with characters’ agendas in mind.

The thing is, this goes at odds with all the later QTEs which are much more typically gamey. These often take place in life or death situations, with the emphasis on using skill to survive clearly evident. You do not make choices in these QTEs – as seemed a possibility in early tech videos of the game – you simply press the right buttons in time to make it through them. It’s win or lose, simple as that.

The question is, is Heavy Rain challenging you to consider how you approach the game – which it clearly has in my case, by the way – or is this just clumsy design and a mismatch of ideas? You could argue that it reflects reality, that in emergency situations it’s all about life and death, while in contrast there is no black and white when it comes to difficult decisions. I think that oversimplifies things, but hey, maybe things are that simple.

Putting my concept of conflicting agendas between characters to one side, it seems this is where Jared and I disagree. But it’s certainly got us thinking, and either way, there still remains plenty to talk about with Heavy Rain. I’ll probably be ending most of my blog posts on the game with that sentence.

—

Note: big spoilers for Heavy Rain in this post

Happily, I played through Heavy Rain before this weekend’s PSN-gate. Any Big Red Potion listener knows that this has been my most anticipated game of the year, maybe of this generation.

Did it deliver on my lofty expectations? Well, I definitely enjoyed it, and I do think it’s one of 2010’s most important games. Ultimately, however, I’m a little disappointed. I feel there were design choices that detracted from the well-crafted dramatic tension and worked against producing attachment.

My major issue was with playing as multiple characters. This design choice allows players to continue should one of their characters die. Creator David Cage made it to encourage permanence as an important part of the game. I applaud the sentiment, but this choice created a basic problem.

The four player characters in question were Ethan (father looking for his kidnapped son), Madison (came to Ethan’s aid), Jayden (FBI agent working on the case of Ethan’s missing son), and Shelby (a private investigator).

For the first half, the characters were kept away from each other. The overarching plot of Ethan’s kidnapped son connected their stories (with the exception of Madison), but they did not meet and their agendas did not cross. Ethan dealt with the immediate aftermath of the kidnapping, Madison suffered with her own psychological problems, Jayden tracked down clues relating to the Origami Killer, and Shelby performed his own investigation.

At this point, I had two goals. The predominant goal was to save Ethan’s son, obviously. I had real sympathy for Ethan after witnessing the tragic death of his other son in what was Heavy Rain’s beautifully crafted dramatic highlight.

However, the second goal was to play my characters as I felt they should be played, something enforced by the contemporary realness of the setting, by having witnessed their respective backgrounds, and particularly by being privy to their inner thoughts. By pressing the L2 button, I was given access to each character’s thoughts, and I could get an idea of their agendas. Sometimes these were fairly set, at other times they were more vague, more for me to define and decide. So I could play the characters entirely as I wanted, right?

Madison's character evolves oddly through the game

No. The game had already helped to craft each character’s personality for me. Take Madison, for example. I played as her when she suffered a vivid nightmare, in which she desperately tried to escape a swarm of attackers in her home. I then learnt that she slept at a motel frequently to escape this paranoid insomnia.

Madison soon got involved with Ethan’s story, taking care of him after he got into harm searching for his son. However, I felt that Madison, while obviously sympathetic for Ethan and his catalogue of injuries, would only do the bare minimum to look after him given her paranoia. Of course, Madison is later revealed to be quite courageous, but that’s not how I perceived her at the time.

As Madison, I didn’t want to take too much care of Ethan. However, as the player, I knew that if she did it would probably improve the chances of him finding his son. Thus, a conflict of interests between two of my characters was borne, or more accurately between my characters and the seeming goal of the game. Should I have played Madison as I thought she would act, or did what I knew would help produce the happy ending I wanted?

This conflict of interest occurred several times. Later on, Madison moves to kiss Ethan, and I got to choose between kissing him and not kissing him. As Madison, I thought there was no way it was appropriate to kiss Ethan at such a critical time. As the player, with the ending in mind, I suspected kissing Ethan would lead to a happily ever after. What to do?

Playing as several characters with differing agendas, specifically ones that didn’t align with the predominant goal, proved a problem. It detached me from the characters and their agendas, making me feel more like game director than player character. Rather than feeling like I was playing naturally, in line with what my character’s own needs and wants were, I felt compelled to twist proceedings to suit a story I wanted. You could argue that I still had the choice to play however I wanted, but the clear predominant goal of saving Ethan’s son was one that only the most heartless of players would not work towards. I also think the transparency of certain choices made things worse. The kiss/don’t kiss dilemma was clearly going to affect the game’s ending because it occurred so late in the story.

I’m told that a lot of the smaller choices provide more butterfly effect results, but I’m hesitant to try play through a second time at this stage. For all my complaints, I still greatly enjoyed Heavy Rain at times, clearly a strong step in the right direction for dramatic video games. I’m just not sure I want to see what’s going on behind the curtain yet.

I will go into more detail on its positives as well as its negatives in an upcoming Big Red Potion episode, and no doubt on this blog too, because there’s plenty more to say about this game.

—

Yeah, time to start this up again. If I’m going to keep doing pimpage rather than blog posts – this week my reason/excuse is that I’m seriously ill – I may as well get back into the habit of doing them in these round-up posts. That way I get to actually talk a bit about some games I’ve been playing too. Which was the idea of the ShoNTell thang when I first started it… hmm. Yup, after twenty-seven years of it, I still get rather surprised by my own idiocy at times. Here’s a full and hearty ShoNTell.

PLAY
—

Chrono Trigger (DS): What a joy it’s been to play this game, and I simply cannot believe I missed out on it when it released for the SNES in 1995. I was thinking about what Xantiriad said about it on a recent TGR Replay show, that it still seems modern despite being nearly 15 years old. He’s quite right too, but I’m trying to put my finger on why that is. Is it because the Japanese role-playing game genre has stagnated to the point to where it’s not so much the snake biting its tail as chewing its own throat off, or because Chrono Trigger was ahead of its time? I think it’s a little from columns A and B. Certainly the J-RPG genre, outside of Final Fantasy games, has become repetitive and drab. But there are things Chrono Trigger does that makes it stand out, even now in some respects.

Dialogue is far more concise than is typical for a J-RPG, and yet characters still feel fleshed out within what is a rather simple story admittedly. And it’s the characters that are important about this game. They each have distinctive personalities with back stories to explore, and the game uses associated music excellently to convey atmosphere and character presence. You know what Frog is about when you hear that booming, proud score kick into action.

Then there’s the quirky humour. Not nearly enough games know how to do funny on top of their more serious storylines, but Chrono Trigger has funny in abundance. There’s giant robots who sing before battles, a sultry crossdresser who even in 16-bit form has a confident sexiness to him, and enemies which pick one another to throw at you. And yet there are still these heart-warming moments, tiny things that are excellent touches, like early on when your cat follows you limpet-like around your house. Or the little flashes of romance between the main characters, especially Lucca’s crush on Crono which is really rather sweet.

But what I appreciated most was how the combat was handled. Yes, there’s no challenge until quite late on, but mercifully the game only infrequently feels like a grind, this because of how encounters are laid out. Rather than switching out to battles using a transition animation like Final Fantasy games tended to do, enemies will roll out of the sides, or you’ll just bump into them in the map. It makes the play feel more cohesive and is much less painful than randomly switching to a battle as you try to make your way through a map. Really, how did the random appearance of battles shtick last until Final Fantasy X?

Anyway, in short, it was yet another wonderful DS J-RPG. Keep them coming!

AND…
——

Prison Break: The Conspiracy Hands-on Preview: Yeah, with this first ShoNTell back I’m going to stick to plugging my own writing, especially as there’s a fair bit of it this week. Starting off with this preview of the upcoming Prison Break game for my friends over at Resolution. Article @ Resolution

The Video Game Bucket List: This was a bunch of fun to write, and I’m very proud of it. It’s not very profound, but surely not everything has to be, right? See how well you score on it. Article @ GamerCrave

Plain Sight Hands-on Preview: My second piece for Reso in the week. I really have to be thankful to the site’s editor-in-chief Lewis Denby for giving me the opportunity to get my press event wings. Not quite my wings, because I did go to EA to see Dead Space: Extraction last year, but these two events – one a press conference, the other a visit to an indie team’s studio – felt more like genuine press work. Which was exciting for me, and I’m eager for more. And I got to see what looks to be one of the most promising indie games this year, and it has robot ninjas in it – very cool. Article @ Resolution

—

That’s it. I’m really a bit flu-ey this week, so it’s going to be a slog just to get myself down to the shops to buy some Heavy Rain, let alone play it – sho out.

My review of BioShock 2 (single-player) went up at TheGameReviews late last week. While it didn’t send me head over heels like the first game did, I couldn’t be happier to declare it a worthy follow-up. Who knew?

Maybe we do get a little bit too melodramatic when it comes to continuations of beloved IPs. Why can’t we have some optimism, some belief that there might just be a Terminator 2 around the corner and not a Matrix: Reloaded? Probably because more sequels go into the latter group than the former, but is that the case with video games? I’m not so sure about that. Look at Street Fighter II, Soulcalibur II, Uncharted 2… I guess it’s probably the tech aspect, right? Or maybe just ‘cos video games are awesome, nay, awesomer than movies? Yes, that’s it.

I think this review represents the most high-profile game I’ve reviewed for any site yet. I suppose Flower, Trials HD and Pro Evo 2010 were pretty big games, but this is BioShock, baby. I’m not sure why I shy away from the big reviews. It’s not any fear of criticism or anything like that, because I tend to get that whatever I do. I think I just enjoy playing a variety of games, and maybe doing lower-profile reviews provides an excellent opportunity to play games that I might not normally play. Or maybe I’m just weird.

Oh yeah: real blog posts coming soon. Honest. Maybe.

—

Let me be clear: Valkyria Chronicles is good. Really bloody good. Absolutely compelling, terrific fun, full of depth and replay value. Can’t wait for the sequel. Wonderful, wonderful game. I really enjoyed it.

I just wanted to be absolutely clear because, even with the praising preface in my returning Very British Gamer column on the game, it still feels like I launched a scathing attack on it. Truth is, I could’ve been talking about one from a large number of video games in that column. It just so happens I’ve been playing Valkyria Chronicles.

I’ve got war and politics on the brain, subjects not too compatible with praise when it comes to gaming. It’s very hard not to at the moment with the Chilcot inquiry, and I think a lot of my thoughts on that have been bleeding into my writing of late. After all, my first piece for Games Abyss also went up, and it’s all on current affairs and gaming. Hopefully I can redirect my writing into less serious matters. I can at least say that my next major freelance piece won’t be on matters so grave, so that’s good.

Anyway, I’d be honoured if you checked both those bad boys out and let me know your thoughts. I’d say more, but BioShock 2 is here and demands my attention. One last thing before I go, though. It’s time to ‘fess up again: I was so so so wrong about Valkyria Chronicles based on my demo analysis back in 2008. Looking back, I just didn’t get the game at all. I’m not going to speculate on whether that says more about me than demos or vice versa…