Nostalgia or Notstalgia? - Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven

The title is lame, I know. This is my feeble attempt to create some kind of themed series thing, in which I’ll be playing through games that I loved in my childhood and seeing whether or not they hold up to the incredibly high standards of modern video gaming or if I just loved them because I was a child and children are stupid and love anything.

Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven is a stealth game released in 2003. It's almost unique amongst stealth games in that it features ninjas, which is somewhat perplexing as ninjas are not only known for their stealth prowess but are also fucking awesome and should be featured in everything but whatever. The game follows the epic tale of two ninjas, Rikimaru and Ayame, in their quest to stop an evil guy from being evil; this is exactly the kind of plot you’d expect from a game set in feudal Japan, an evil spirit called Tenrai is seeking to destroy the world or take over the world or steal all the sushi or something using the 3 “totally not Dragonballs and we don’t even like Dragonball anyway so go away” Jewels. The presentation of the story is similar to something like Resident Evil 2, we see similar events from the perspectives of both of the characters and the canon is a mixture of both. I’m fully aware that this is a sequel and I’m sure that the events of the previous games do have some bearing on the plot of this title but it seems to stand up well enough on its own, making only subtle but noticeable ‘winking at the camera’ references to past events.

The atmosphere of this game can charitably be described as inconsistent, it seems to be attempting to maintain a dark and epic atmosphere but undermines this somewhat with all of the guards speaking with hilarious stereotypical Asian accents, the kind your parents come out with while pulling their eyelids and singing the Chopsticks theme, and the several out of place comedy cutscenes, the implied molestation gag at the start is HILARIOUS and totally fits. Overall though, the tone matches what most people would imagine feudal Japan to look like, the buildings all have screen doors and lavish golden ornaments and pictures of dragons on the walls and especially later in the game, when shit’s getting real, the general feel of hostility and intimidation on the part of the game increases. I certainly understand the need to sucker people in with bright lights and rape gags, the developers understand their audience at least, but it’s also pleasant to see a gradual shift in feel as the story progresses. The music is particularly worthy of praise. Despite being what one might call standard sounding traditional Japanese music it’s done so well that you can’t fault it, I’d certainly want this soundtrack playing at all times if I were a ninja!

You’re given a choice between the characters to begin with but there are only very subtle differences between the two of them. Rikimaru is slower but stronger and Ayame is faster but weaker. You know, the same distinctions that Capcom always make between genders. Likewise, their mission sets are very similar, it pulls the same trick as Devil May Cry 2 in making you play all of the male characters levels in a different order and do some of them backwards as a female; I guess everyone decided in 2003 that games just weren't long enough but didn’t have the commitment to do anything about it that didn’t involve copy and pasting. There’s also a third bonus character to unlock when you finish the game but that’ll just be a nice surprise for when you get there. The gameplay itself is actually fairly strong; the controls are simple third person fare, a moveable camera on the right stick, the ability to press yourself against a wall by running into it, an easy to aim grappling hook. Bread and butter stuff, but you’ll certainly never get yourself caught because you’re too busy messing around with complex control schemes *cough*MGS*cough*

Most of the gameplay is focused on sneaking through a variety of levels including villages, fortresses and castles but Tenchu makes the same mistake as many other stealth games in that the stealth is not mandatory. There are a few levels in which you’re not allowed to kill anyone or all of the enemies are undead but for the most part killing patrols is not only a viable option but seemingly encouraged, given that dispatching enough enemies with obscenely violent and thankfully varied “Stealth Kills” in each level unlocks an extra ability. I’d have thought that a ninja game of all things might have a mandatory stealth focus but I’m not a professional game developer so what do I know? I’m not saying that the heavy focus on killing isn't fun of course, just a little out of place with the general theme of the game.

The game also gives you the option to indulge in a vast array of gadgets, ranging from blowdarts and poison rice to mines and flaming shuriken. I have to say though, as nice as it is to have a little variety with my weapon choices, many of them are somewhat cumbersome and difficult to use and it’s often a far simpler option to just stealth kill an enemy than it is to place poison rice in their patrol area, escape to a safe distance, wait for them to eat it and then watch them slowly die. Of course I appreciate the enthusiasm on the part of the developers in creating such an array of tools to use but I never found myself using more than health potions and a few darts to get through the actual game and everything else got relegated to bored piss-about fun. But, you know, they’re there if you want to use them. A somewhat disappointing aspect of this game is the boss fights. See, the controls are far more suited to sneaking and killing enemies before they’ve seen you than they are to heavy combat. There’s very little strategy involved other than “attack the thing” and too often the fights become exercises in button mashing. I maybe would have preferred some clever stealth-based puzzle-type bosses but maybe I’m just too demanding, who knows?

Overall, I’m probably not as in love with this game as I used to be but it hasn’t lost too much of its charm over the years and is still a very enjoyable experience. Plus, ninjas. Ninjas, man!

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories

To begin with, let me just say that I really did enjoy this game, there aren’t too many games that I’ll immediately play again the day after I finish them like I did with this one, and that despite the seemingly negative nature of the upcoming pedantry, this is probably now my second favourite entry of the series. No lie.

Shattered Memories is described as a “reimagining” of the original Silent Hill game, but in all honesty it bears very little resemblance to the original, beyond the fact that both games feature a man who can’t drive very well and has lost his daughter it’s pretty much night and day. I wouldn’t say it’s too outlandish to consider SM a brand new entry in the series, as I do, and to suggest that the implied association with the first game is purely to draw in the nostalgia crowd who (rightly) thought Origins and Homecoming were bullshit and to ease them into the idea of having to play a “new” Silent Hill game without any sense of fear and self-loathing.

Yes, Climax do have some balls, it seems. They certainly weren’t worried about “doing the original justice” or “keeping the die-hards satisfied” with this remake, as pretty much everything is totally different, besides the aforementioned premise and a few character names from the original, the Otherworld is now blue and icy, there’s no combat and the exploration and puzzle solving elements have been given a severe trimming down. In fact, very few of the established elements of Silent Hill are even present in SM. See, balls! Like fucking grapefruits!

The gameplay itself is divided into 2 distinct sections, exploration through the town and chase sequences. During the exploration sections, you, Harry Mason, wander through various dark buildings and streets with a flashlight. That’s it. Sounds thrilling, right! These sections are pretty much linear; they are given some semblance of a sandbox feel by the inclusion of various mementos and photo opportunities left by strangers most of the time it’s just moving from A to B, and the quickly established fact that these sections feature no monsters or dangers of any kind make them sound as exciting as dry toast. And yet, these sections, as well as the story, are what make the game feel like a Silent Hill title, and are actually my favourite in the entire game. The traditional Silent Hill atmosphere is strongest in these parts, and there’s just something very chilled and relaxing about travelling through the snow with soft, beautiful music playing, knowing that, for now, at least, you’re safe. No homo. This is a very underutilised methodology in horror games, earlier Silent Hill and Resident Evil games (Nemesis, in particular) worked on the premise that you could be attacked any place, any time, and by including long periods of complete safety, SM creates a false sense of security that the save rooms in RE really cannot match.

Although, this isn’t to say that SM has completely abandoned established horror practice, as the transitions to the Otherworld, while not always impossible to predict, are fairly sharp and jarring, taking you from seemingly safe locations, such as bedrooms and living rooms, to icy, nightmare land, and these transitions usually made me “jump” more than most of the actual monsters, which isn’t saying much, as an adorable puppy licking my face and waggling its tail at me made me jump more than the monsters in SM. I’m really not sure what happened there, pretty much every other element of these chase sequences was done well, the controls are tight and dependable, easily outstripping similar sequences that I’ve played recently in Yakuza 4 and LA Noire in terms of usability and not making me cry with frustration. The environments are challengingly maze-like but sufficiently navigable and the music and camera work give a strong sense of impending doom. And yet, all of this is undermined by the pathetic looking, whimpering cuddly toys you’re running away from. I’m not sure if this was the developer’s aim but I actually felt like a bit of a girl for running away from enemies who are trying to snuggle me to death, to the point where I expected Harry to be wearing pigtails and a pink bra in the next cut scene. The reason being chased in RE3 was scary was because the guy chasing you was a fucking huge monstrosity with a rocket launcher and a massive impaling tentacle. Now, say what you like about RE’s lack of subtlety in comparison to SH but fuck, that guy was scary! I mean, even Pyramid Head had a giant phallic knife. Because of the absolute lack of threat posed by the enemies, these sections fall from being “tense and heart pounding” to “mildly irritating.” Shame really, Silent Hill has always had such good monsters, and maintaining this tradition would have benefited this title in particular, perhaps more so than any of the others.

Another non SH addition to the series is the intermittent therapy sessions, during which you’ll be asked a wide variety of questions about your personality and your feelings on topics such as sex, death and family life, and the game will, apparently, use these answers to create a “unique experience.” Now, I only played the game twice, answering honestly the first time and lying about everything the second time, and there were admittedly some differences between the two playthroughs. Some of them are very easy to predict, for example the female characters were wearing more revealing outfits when I said that I’d been unfaithful (I haven’t, don’t worry!) and some less so, I was given differing routes through the first section, for example, but for the most part the experiences were mostly the same. It’s a very promising step for gaming in general, having your individual choices impact gameplay in subtle ways but I can’t help but feel that it could have been used in more extensive and impressive ways than simply changing outfits. Also, despite having elements of cut-scenes and normal world play change based on your answers, the Otherworld sections always stay 100% the same, every time, and I would suggest that having vast portions of the game unaffected by the game’s major selling point is really not a wise move. Surely, when considering the implementation of a “personalised nightmare,” someone must have asked, “Well what if people like ice and the colour blue?” I, for one, do like ice and the colour blue, which dulls the psychological impact of these sections significantly. If the game could have deduced from my answers that I’m mortally afraid of vegetables and close-ups of Stephen Merchant’s face and created a nightmare around that, then I would have been impressed. As it stands, I’m not. One last gripe I have with the therapy sessions is the fact that they are needed at all and that they are touted as a new and exciting addition to the series. At least in SH 2 and 3, I’ve always taken it as standard that my actions and behaviour would have consequences to the games progression and ending, and as such it feels like buying an album with the words “Now contains music!” written on it. Although it could be argued that previous games weren’t affected as extensively and subtly by your actions, I still don’t feel that SM does enough in this area in order for it to proudly boast it as a major selling point.

Despite all of these vast differences to previous SH games, there are areas in which SM retains similarities to earlier entries in the series, and the most obvious of these is in its storytelling. Don’t want to give too much away, mostly because I can’t, even after 2 runs most of it makes very little sense, even to a seasoned SH fan like myself, I can’t imagine how a newcomer would react to all this. Suffice it to say that everything is steeped in symbolism and that the multiple choices the game presents aren’t the only way of increasing the replay value, you pretty much need to finish the game once in order to fully comprehend all of the subtleties of its story. Trust me, it’s impressive stuff. Of course, there are multiple endings in true SH fashion but I don’t get the feeling that as much effort was put into them as in previous SH games, each one contains about 4 seconds of unique footage, which would usually make it more of a “play the game once and watch the other endings on Youtube” kinda deal, but the replay value is bolstered by the aforementioned various choices you can make and the batshit impenetrable story.

One other area in which SM retains the high standards of the previous games is in the music. I have to say that Akira Yamaoka is one of my favourite artists in general; it does him a disservice to say “He’s good for a video game composer.” I listen to his music much more than I play the games, and I downloaded this game’s soundtrack long before I even considered playing the game. The in-game music has again shifted in style to suit the tone of the game, eschewing much of the earlier trip-hop influenced sound in favour of a more chilled, piano-based sound, which suits the relaxed, wintery atmosphere of the game perfectly. The 4 vocal tracks feature probably my favourite female vocalist Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, who sounds amazing as always. The main theme “Acceptance” is simple and beautiful, the rockier “When You’re Gone” and “Hell Frozen Rain” feature incredibly catchy vocal melodies and an immense guitar solo respectively and the cover of “Always On My Mind” is just… well, let’s forget about that! Suffice it to say that the Pet Shop Boys’ version is still my favourite.

Overall, I would say that SM is a game for which it is very easy to nit-pick and single out weak individual elements. Yeah, the monsters aren’t scary, the exploration could be considered boring and the psychological profiling could be just as easily replicated by playing “pin the tail on the donkey” with a deck of Tarot cards, but when considered as a complete experience it ultimately succeeds, much in the same way as Heavy Rain does. I might not be able to explain exactly why I like it, but I do, and that’s all that matters!

Silent Hill: Downpour - First Impressions/Warning

To say I'm a bit of a fan of Silent Hill would be like saying that Charlie Sheen is somewhat keen on cocaine and losing money. At least 3 of the games would go into my top 10 of all time and I could spend hours discussing the symbolism of Mary's outfits or Heather's secret guardian monster. Anyone? PLEASE!? And yet thankfully I'm not one of those weaboo hipster "Only Nihon no Silent Hillz r good" fuckheads. I've managed to enjoy most of the Western developed Silent Hill games, Shattered Memories in particular is spectacular with a story far greater than any that ever involved an evil cult. So it's not prejudice that fuels my refusal to continue to play Silent Hill: Downpour. No, it's more the fact that what I've seen so far is plaintively terrible.

The game starts with a scripted action sequence in which you, a prisoner whose parents named him Murphy Pendleton and as such almost definitely hated him from birth, murder a fat man in a shower. Sounds fun, I know, but right from the get-go I had several problems with this part. First of all, this section acts as something of a tutorial, complete with on-screen pop-ups giving you masses of instructions. Practical yes, but horribly detrimental to immersion. You see, when you boot up Silent Hill 2, there are no control charts clogging up the screen, or tutorials mandating that you use each attack 3 times to show the game you've understood it like it's your fucking nursery teacher showing you how to match shapes. It almost feels like you're actually involved and that you're maybe not playing a video game. In Downpour, it's painfully obvious that this a videogame, and not in an ironic, postmodern way like Metal Gear Solid 2 or something. This is something I've noticed in all of the Western Silent Hill games, and it takes you right out of the moment, every time. Maybe it's just indicative of the times; studios can't imagine modern casual gaming "I need something to blow up before I can get an erection" bellends tolerating having to maybe read an instruction manual for 5 minutes, which is fine in a lot of games but for a game so dependent on immersion as Silent Hill (should) be it's a poor design choice, to say the least.

Another glaring problem with this section is the fact that it shows you the murder outright. On my English course, when writing stories we were taught to "show, not tell," and of course Downpour breaks even the most basic of writing guidelines by telling and not showing. This is another sign of the times; in the past, when the writer wanted the audience to know that a murder took place, Mary's murder in SH2 for example, they built up a steady stream of clues and symbolism, culminating in some grainy black and white footage that you couldn't even be sure showed anything of significance. Downpour doesn't trust you to understand such complex symbolism and as such has you performing the murder in a well-lit room as the first fucking level. Hooray for subtelty! I suppose it might be necessary for the story to know this took place but I spent a good hour or 2 pissing around in caverns and hotel rooms, leaving a few diary entries or video clips to build up even the slightest sense of intrigue wouldn't have gone a miss here, guys! Of course, it's revealed to be a dream but I'm assured this did actually happen. I think, I didn't care enough about the story to do much research that didn't involve Wikipedia.

In a dazzling display of originality, Sir Murphy Charles Rudyard Pendleton the 3rd is being transferred to a different prison when his bus crashes and he makes a daring escape, proving definitively that there's NOTHING that modern Silent Hill games won't steal from Resident Evil and do slightly worse. The following section sees more shameful rehashing of modern action gaming tropes with the inclusion of quicktime events and moral choices, the quicktime event in which you balance Murphy as he walks over a log proving particuarly annoying with the fact that it's obscenely difficult and I died like 6 times, again kicking the immersion square in the testacles. The section does take place in a darkish forest though, the section is Resident Evil 0 was in a dark forest so it had to, which makes me picture a developer desperately pleading with the player, saying "Look, it's dark! Old SH games were dark too! See, we're still good!" A later section which invokes a similar image is one in which you run up a never-ending staircase, only to turn around and have the exit right in front of you. It's supposed to be a mindfuck, but wasting 10 minutes running up stairs with no indication that you're supposed to turn around is just irritating. In fact, in the time I spent playing Downpour there were no real mindfuck moments at all, just jump-scares and signpostings of enemies with noises from the next room, removing the thrill found in earlier games, when your radio buzzes but you can't see anything, almost entirely.

I think my real problem with Downpour as a whole is that it's aiming to be something of a Greatest Hits package. It's like the developer didn't play any of the old Silent Hill games but was given a list of things that were used in old Silent Hill games and told to use all of them. We get the rusty Otherwold from SH1, breakable weapons from Origins, chase sequences from Shattered Memories, poor combat from all of the earlier titles, a feature added to please the fans I imagine; it can't be for story purposes, this guy is a convict and I imagine more than capable with weaponry. Lack of cohesion is a massive issue, the game tries to do so much and ends up being a Jack of all trades, master of fucking nothing. It tries so hard to include all of these features to please the fans, pretty much begging them to accept this as a true Silent Hill game, but trying to do this while simultaneously trying to please modern action audiences with copious unneccesary violence and quicktime events is the game trying to have all of the cake, eat it and requesting a doggy bag, and the inclusion of these features will, ironically enough, probably turn away the Silent Hill fans the game is trying so hard to cater to. But it's not just a bad Silent Hill game, it's just a bad game in general. I can forgive quicktime events if they're done well or moral choices that make the story interesting but they're not used in any noticeably meaningful way, they're just there because the developers think they need to be. Shame, really.

After putting up with all of this bullshit, I got to part in some caverns, entered a room and heard a monster screaming in the next room. I said to myself, "if I get attacked in here I'm selling this piece of garbage." I hope whoever buys my pre-owned copy from Game has a better experience than I did.

Metal Gear Solid 4 (and a bit of MGS2)

I was wrong about something once. There, I'll never use that sentence again.

I'm referring to the fact that once upon a time, I distinctly remember myself referring to Metal Gear Solid 4 as "the greatest game ever made." I now look back on that unfortunate period of my life in the same way that most people look back on the years they spent wearing all black, listening exclusively to Marilyn Manson and being a bit rude to their probably very nice parents. Metal Gear Solid 4 is not the greatest game ever made. It's not bad, but it's far from great.

The funny thing is, when looked at solely from a gameplay perspective, MGS4 is pretty decent. Notice the absence of words like "innovative" "spectacular" and "unique" from that last sentence, words which have all been used extensively to describe previous Metal Gear Solid titles. A very under-discussed aspect of this game is just how much of a departure the gameplay is from previous MGS games, as rather than using the traditional fixed camera angles and control sceme established by earlier games, MGS4 favours a far more generic, over the shoulder 3rd person presentation, more akin to Gears of War-style action game. Similarly, the gameplay itself is far more action based than it has ever been before; the game offers some illusions to a focus on stealth, with the inclusion of a drum can and the ever-present cardboard box to hide in, but this is somewhat undermined, in the same way that a forehead Swastika tattoo would undermine your insistence that you don't mind Jewish people, by the massive arsenal of weaponry with purchaseable ammo that's made available pretty much right from the start. This means that the game falls into the same trap as 99% of all stealth games by not making the stealth mandatory, or making it an even remotely attractive option to anyone who doesn't give a fuck about PSN trophies.

The other core features of gameplay read like a checklist of generic modern AAA action gaming. Act-based structure - check. Aforementioned massive arsenal of overcompensatory firepower with virtually infinite ammo - check. Straightforward action story (or as straightforward as Kojima was ever going to manage) - check. In fact, it could be said that very little about this game is unique. I suppose the boss fight structure could be considered unique, you fight a boss with some kind of special power, then fight their weaker, feminine form, then hear their tragic backstory. This is fairly unique, until they repeat it 4 times, taking the innovation out back and putting a shotgun bullet between its eyes, the post-fight explanations of their tragic childhoods become particularly tiresome given the fact that they're barely characterised, making their admittedly horrific stories impossible to care about. Even the individual elements of the boss fights are copied from old Metal Gear games, and it's certainly not to serve an intricate plot as the repetition of older elements in MGS2 was. One boss has stealth camoflague, one you fight in a snowfield, one has psychic powers, oh come on!

And all of this is when you're even allowed to play the game! Much is made of the fact that the series contains a ratio of cutscenes to gameplay in uncomfortable favour of the former, and any hopes of change are quickly dashed with the fact you could get in a cup of tea, a hearty English breakfast and a decent length wank before you're even allowed to control Snake. So it's fairly clear that, in gameplay terms, Kojima is taking litres of the piss in this game.

But you know what, I think that was intentional. I'll be discussing this in more detail later on but essentially, after Metal Gear Solid 2, fans were unhappy with series focus on more serious topics, especially after the blockbuster Hollywood style of the original Metal Gear Solid, and demanded a return to this style, and by demanded I mean "threatened to kill Kojima if he didn't." So what essentially happened with MGS4 is Kojima thought, "They want generic action? I'll give them the most generic of all the generic action!" and made a game adhering to all of the modern action gaming stereotypes. It's the videogame equivalent of a child's tantrum, like serving your dinner guests rib-eye steak, only to have them all throw the steak away and demand Spam. So you serve them out of date Lidl value Spam, and they love that even more, if the near universal perfect review scores for this game are anything to go by. But you know what, sometimes Spam is okay. I occassionally enjoy Call of Duty as much as the next guy, and this is a succesful world-renowned game developer we're talking about, so even his metaphorical cock-slaps are still fairly fun to play.

So the gameplay is not a total dealbreaker. No, what I really have a problem with, what makes me feel that the game has absolutely no right to exist, is the story.

The main plot can be fairly simply summarised: Bad guy wants to destroy world, you stop him. Not horrible in itself, and that's not where my grievances lie, this would be fine as a stand alone game. No, most of my problems with the story of MGS4 come from the fact that it's essentially a sequel to MGS2. Now, anyone who's played and genuinely understood the story of MGS2 should understand that this in itself is a fucking ludicrous idea. In my opinion, and the general opinion of informed Metal Gear fans, MGS2 was never meant to be taken as a series of real events. Hell, it was unclear before the release of MGS4 whether or not the events actually happened; the abundance of postmodern themes in the game has lead people to theorise that the story took place in a dream or a VR simulation. Not saying I agree with this either way, but the main point of such theories is probably to suggest that the frankly ridiculous events should not be taken literally, and more that the story is more of a vehicle for it's messages and themes rather than concrete events. I'd compare it more to something like Silent Hill 2 than the first Metal Gear Solid, the events are similarly disjointed and nonsensical but they don't matter, as the themes of MGS2, much like the symoblism in Silent Hill 2, are far more important than the individual events.

The real problem I have with MGS4's story is that it took events that were never meant to be taken literally and canonised them, making it so that every single inexplicable ludicrous event in MGS2 happened in real life, exactly as it was seen. Oh dear.

I'm trying my best not to sound like a massive hipster bellend but frankly, 99% of people who played MGS2 just didn't get it. They took the events at face value, and to be fair, when you take that view of the story then all of the criticism of it being poorly constructed and nonsensical becomes completely valid. This is obviously the wrong way to look at the game, but the problem in this case is that if enough fans hold the same viewpoint towards something, it usually becomes accepted as the truth, no matter how incorrect it may be. And the widespread face value evaluation of the plot of MGS2 becoming the accepted one, coupled with the fact that Kojima recieved death threats to make a sequel to MGS2, means that we have a developer making a sequel to game he never wanted to sequelise based on an incorrect interpretation of his own fucking story. Think about that, for a second. I couldn't make this shit up if I tried. No wonder he chose to bore you all to tears with hours of pointless cutscenes in MGS4, you fucking deserve no less.

So it's a game made for the fans. In fact, everything about this game feels about as fanservicey as 2 KPop stars penetrating each other on stage. Literally every member of the MGS cast comes back to make an appearance, no matter how token and pointless it may be. I mean, seriously, was anyone losing sleep at night because they didn't learn of Mei Ling's eventual fate? Her character in particular feels as if she's had a role invented for her just so she can appear, looking like some kind of supermodel as all female characters in current generation action games must by law. And on that topic, it seems Kojima was truly devoted to his AAA checklist with the entirely irrelevant shoehorning in of a sex scene between Naomi and Otacon and a romance subplot between Merly and Johnny aka. the guy who shits himself, yeah they even had to try and make him cool. Not to mention Raiden performing a vast array of amazing stunts despite his ever decreasing limb count, a meme which almost feels like an ironic apology for making him a pussy in MGS2, as if to say "You didn't like Raiden in MGS2? Fine, now he's a cool ninja! Happy, you shallow-minded bellfucks!?" It's a good thing that all of this is most likely a simple satire of Hollywood action movies, because Kojima would lose major cred with me if he expects anyone to take this shit seriously.

It's no surprise that trying to make sense of all the bullshit that came before this game is very difficult, and trying to get any kind of resolution of out it is even worse. I've watched the ending cutscenes multiple times and it really is very easy to lose the will to care about the story towards the end. What I do understand is the fact that, right to the end, the game is straining to please the fans, allowing them control Metal Gear REX and including a final fistfight reminiscent of Liquid and Solid's iconic encounter in MGS1, complete with a medley of various Metal Gear themes, just screams of nostalgic fanservice, basically shouting "Remember this? Remember when this series was good and I made games for fun and not to avoid car bombs!?" Predictably, the ending itself is almost 4 hours too long and includes a myriad of plot twists that would confuse M Night Shyamalan, leading to the inevitable happy ending, Snake saves the world, every single loose thread or shred of intrigue that ever made the series interesting is tied up in waves and waves of exposition and everyone lives happily ever after. Which is what everyone wanted, right?

So yeah, shallow but generally enjoyable gameplay, what little there is of it, anyway. So if that's enough then enjoy! However, if you're a fan of the original Metal Gear Solid games then you should find everything about the story massively offensive and a total piss take. But hey, shooty guns fun wahey!

Shadows of the Damned

I try not to go into games with too many expectations, either negative or positive. It's the reason I try not to watch too many pre-release trailers or interviews with shithead developers talking about how much more "dynamic" and "engaging" the sequel is than the predecessor. But it was hard not to have at least moderately high expectations when you look at the development team for Shadows of the Damned: Shinji Mikami, creator of one of my all-time favourite series Resident Evil, Akira Yamaoka, Silent Hill sound designer and one my favourite musicians of ever and Suda 51, a man whose games I haven't played before but I'm aware of his many well respected past titles. Woop, there goes the bar shooting way up, on with the game!

The horrendously titled "Shadows of the Damned" is a third-person shooter following the adventures of rugged demon hunter and presumed sex pest Garcia F. Hotspur and his quest to rescue his girlfriend, a blindingly original premise, as you can see. The plot doesn't really get much more complex than that, it's basically just Mario with more violence and sexual allusions. You're accompanied on your journey by Johnson, a floating skull who also acts as a motorcycle, gun, overcompensatory phallic symbol and comic relief throughout the game, imagine Resident Evil 4 if your mildly attractive and slightly ethnic female support character had been replaced by a penis with the personality of Jimmy Carr. On that note, the comedic aspects, and particularly the partnership between Garcia and Johnson, were actually my favourite part of the experience, with a vast variety of penis-related humour on display. Sure, it's juvenile and vulgar but that's right up my street, and right up the streets of many man-children gamers, the videogame equivalent of Jim Jeffries to Portal's Stewart Lee. Together, this couple o'ragamuffins must journey through the Underworld and fight off many, many generic demons in search of Paula, Garcia's girlfriend/kidnap victim.

The gameplay is generic. Oh so generic. We're talking third person, over the shoulder shooting, periodically upgraded weapons, bosses with giant glowing vagina weakspots, there's nothing here gameplay wise that hasn't been done a million times before, or more precisely, there's nothing here that Resident Evil 4 didn't do better. SOTD goes for a sort of over the top, comic book violence-feel and achieves it very well. Enemy body parts fly off in suitably gory fashion and the action is mostly fast paced and constantly moving and ammo is never in short supply, and this emphasis on action creates a very thrilling and exciting experience.

Akira Yamaoka's music is of course expertly composed; it does suffer from a lack of a consistent style, jumping from soft acoustic guitar to industrial metal on a whim but it's all done so well that it's hard to question it, and you have to applaud Yamaoka for not falling into the same trap that many musicians would have and making a lazy 80's speed metal soundtrack just cause Garcia shoots some guns and rides a bike once or twice. Oh, and Mary Elizabeth McGlynn sings on here, too. If I gave ratings that'd get at least 3 stars on its own.

So we get strange music from Yamaoka and fast paced violence from Mikami but what does Suda bring to the game? Well, I guess we know who the beta in that friendship group is! Given Suda's reputation for pure weirdness I was expecting something a lot more... messed up but outside of some vulgar humour and the fact that the general atmosphere is slightly stranger than your average shooter I'm not sure how much he brings to the table, on this occassion. Perhaps if I were more familiar with his previous titles and the nuances of his style I might have noticed his contribution a bit more.

Despite being a generally fun experience, there is plenty to nitpick at in SOTD. The difficulty, for one. I played on the highest difficulty available and once I'd mastered the controls and recalled my RE4 crowd control skills I was breezing through the game like nobodys business. There isn't too much variety on offer in terms of enemies either, they tend to repeat themselves a lot, creating the feeling that many of the fights are simply filler and that you're not really advancing. There's a sort of pseudo-RPG thing going on with weapon upgrading that's completely pointless, especially as your weapons are upgraded automatically and in very noticeable and game-changing ways (The homing machine gun is OP as fuck!) and I never actually noticed the firepower or the reload speed increasing after an upgrade, in the same way you notice a damage increase in an actual RPG.

The chase sequences are plaintively fucking dreadful, obstacles and enemies are placed specifically to make shooting as fiddly and difficult as possible and useful items placed so they're impossible to get without being insta-killed. Similarly horrible sequences take place later in the game when you're forced to play through multiple 2D side scrolling levels. Now, 2D side scrolling is my absolute least favourite form of gaming, ever. I don't care how many nostalgia fags tell me otherwise, there aren't any "classic" 2D side scrollers without Castlevania in their name that didn't improve by going 3D, and to be blind-sided by this bullshit when I feel I'm as far as I could possibly get from 2D side scrolling, playing a 3D 3rd person shooter, actually made me feel pretty insulted. I'm assuming it's for the sake of 'OMG so randon lolz' hipster cred, it's all experimental jazz and paper cut-out art but to me it just screams, "We couldn't afford/be bothered to make anymore actual game, here's some shit!" I find it difficult to believe that anyone on the development team played these sections and thought, "Yup, this is fantastic gameplay, guys! Now who's for Soggy Biscuit?"

The boss fights are nothing to write home about, basically "Shoot the weak spot" is the order of the day, not inherently bad in itself and the interesting use of the Underworlds' darkness goes some way to making the fights more interesting but all in all they're still very samey. The game is also terribly short, which is guess is appropriate for a game made by Japanese men, making it more appropriate for a rental than a full price purchase. Hell, I know I'd have been annoyed if I'd paid £40 for this game.

Overall, SOTD is jolly good fun, there's some decent shooty fun and plenty of laughs to be had but it is painfully unoriginal; if you've played Resident Evil 4 and want something similar but noticeably worse then go for it and if you haven't then hang your head in shame on your way to a game store. And don't buy SOTD when you're there!

(A bit of) Dark Souls

First of all, this is not a complete review of Dark Souls. I vowed to myself that I'd keep playing until the end, I laughed as my housemates gave up after the second boss and went back to playing FIFA and Saints Row and other actually fun games like heavily menstruating females and despite all the frustration and anger and cursing my own existence I kept going for a solid 12 hours. But finally, after having my intestines forcefully removed with a giant and over-compensatory lightning spear for the 50th fucking time, I'm ready to admit that Dark Souls is just too hard.

For the first 12 hours or so, my impressions of Dark Souls were very positive. Despite the intro cinematic promising some kind of Tolkien-esque epic tale, the story is very minimalistic and plays very little part in the overall experience. 'You're a guy, there are some bells that need ringing and everyone wants to stab/burn/electrocute/eat/club you to death' sums it up pretty nicely, which was a wise decision, as trying to create a sense of flow and coherent storytelling in a game in which you die every 10 seconds would be harder than my dick in the presence of your mum. There is a basic tutorial explaining the control scheme but other than that you're pretty much left to it, and in my opinion, without trying to sound like a COD faggot who needs his hand held through every level, this was a big mistake on the part of the developers. For the first few hours I was collecting and losing 'souls' and 'humanity' and using 'bonfires' without knowing what any of them really did, which would be fine if you could just learn them eventually but not knowing how to use them was detrimental to my experience, by the time I figured out that you had to collect your souls after dying and use them to level up, for example, I'd already lost a good 20000 souls at least and was, as such, horribly under-leveled, which meant more grinding and less enjoyment of the game. Since I didn't get a manual with my rented copy I have no idea if any of this stuff was explained there, but given the general trend towards minimalistic manuals these days I'm guessing not.

Dark Souls is, of course, notorious for its difficulty, and yes, it is very hard. Of course it is, but the way I see it there are 2 distinct types of difficulty in video games. You get the first kind by playing Call of Duty on the highest difficulty, walking out into a battlefield and immediately dying. You've learnt nothing that could potentially improve your strategy for next time around and are pretty much doomed to go out into that same battlefield and die in a similar way. The second is found in Dark Souls, you enter a fight, observe the enemies attack patterns and tendencies and attack signposts and return after your inevitable death with a better understanding of how to approach the fight. It's a very fair kind of difficulty that rewards perseverance and willingness to learn, as well as the ability to overcome blinding frustration. It does get a bit trial and error at (most) points but I always found that the moments in which I applied what I learnt and used it to succeed were the most fun and the most rewarding. To be honest, I didn't really mind dying in those moments in which I wasn't applying myself properly; it was similar to losing a poker hand that I know I'd played badly. It was my fault and I'll need to do better next time. And when you do better next time and succeed, the feeling is absolutely unparallelled. Very much worth the hours of frustration, in many cases.

As well as genuine challenge, the game does have some 'ace on the river' moments, too. The most frustrating moments in Dark Souls are when things go wrong and it's entirely out of your control; some memorable instances include being thrown off a bridge by a glitch after using a falling attack, having my extremely useful 'souls' (a type of currency) and 'humanity' (I still don't know what this is) re-spawn on the other side of a very well guarded and dangerous room and having my nipples bitten off by fire-breathing dogs because of frame-rate drops, in a fucking offline single player game, no less. And this is my biggest problem with the game, with all of genuine challenge posed by the enemies you need the game mechanics to work flawlessly 100% of the time or you don't really have a chance, and they just don't do that. Of course, the problems with the mechanics and AI can also be used to your advantage. For example, the enemies, for the most part, are incredibly aggressive and will charge over gaps, into large fires and off of bridges to get to you, turning what the developers probably intended to be epic battles into laughable displays of enemy incompetence. There are other minor issues, the inexact nature of the lock-on system, caused in part by actually having to use the analog stick button for something useful, can cause problems when, instead of facing an enemy, you're left with your back to them and can only watch the imminent manual spinal removal. For the most part, though, the mechanics do work quite well, they're efficient and usable but, like the 3D features on the 3DS, you only notice them when they fuck you over.

The general atmosphere of the game world deserves praise, the designers have done a very admirable job of creating a very dark and hostile game world in this game; it's safe to say you will never feel safe or welcome at any point in this game. Hell, even most of the bonfire areas have enemies within very close proximity, removing that brief feeling of safety found in other games focused on survival like the Resident Evil games; this coupled with the fact that there is no true pause function that doesn't involve turning off your XBox and going for a wank makes the world feel like it would be far better off without you in it. The actual enemies themselves are also noteworthy, there is an absolutely incredible range of impressive creatures and human enemies on offer here, the kind of thing that art books were made for. Not only this, the number of unique attacks used by the enemies is also very admirable, which makes each encounter different and means that each enemy requires noticeably different tactics to defeat, very worthy of praise and far more sophisticated than the usual "melee and magic and nothing else" attack sets of RPGs.

The game presents itself as a large, open world game in which you can go anywhere you like but in reality the game is actually fairly linear, there are strict paths you have to follow in order to advance. The game never really tells you where to go and instead employs the underutilised "teaching by killing" method; basically if you're not supposed to enter an area the game will kill you for trying to go that way. It's an original approach, yes, but it can get confusing for players used to just heading off in one direction from the starting point, like the time I spent 30 minutes trying to get through a graveyard before realising I was meant to go in the opposite direction. Conversely, there were also paths with difficult enemies that I was supposed to take that I dismissed as high level areas to revisit later, when in reality I was supposed to suck it up and take on whichever mangled beast was blocking my way. I'll say it: There is absolutely no shame in using a walkthrough for this game. I refuse to believe that anyone got through this game on their own with some of the convoluted paths you need to take to advance. I understand that the focus of the game is on exploration but the absolute lack of guidance, combined with illogical bullshit like putting a door at least an hours worth of backtracking away (allowing for deaths and getting lost. And deaths) and in the path of a fucking huge dragon that no-one would ever think to go back to, makes for quite a frustrating experience, at times.

One last important feature that I didn't manage to use is the multiplayer; I don't have XBox Live because playing online these days is like paying for people to piss on you and tell you you're inferior without it actually happening, so I can't comment on this aspect but judging by video footage I've seen of the online features in action it looks like I've dodged a bullet on this one, as the only advantages seem to be having your game interrupted by OP shitheads, (that's 'overpowered' for those of you who don't play fantasy RPGs and who have regular sex and stuff,) having messages constructed from a pre-determined list of words warning you of enemies you can already see and having all of the challenge and fun removed from the boss fights by allowing you to summon a couple of mates to help. So, it doesn't really have any advantages at all, then? 

Overall, despite all of the niggling problems I've mentioned I would heartily recommend Dark Souls. It's not for everyone, but if you can past the extreme difficulty there is one hell of an experience on offer here, and that's just after the first 12 hours. I'm sure I'll be going back to it at some point...