Having owned all the consoles for the last 2 cycles, there’s always clear winners and losers as to which console is played most. In the last generation, we had the original Xbox, Playstation 2, Gamecube and I’d argue the Dreamcast as well to some extent.

The winner was the PS2, hands down. Sure the library was full of shovelware, but there were some really great gems amidst all the crap. Super Robot Wars, Metal Gear Solid, God of War, Gran Turismo, Final Fantasy. All these titles have justified the $400 price tag I paid for my fat PS2 after I finished VCE, which was a hell of a lot of money back then. The Dreamcast comes a close second, although it was my first console really, but the large number of perfect fighting game ports plays a huge part.

The loser though, a bit harder to decide. My Xbox collection of games was pitiful, having only around 6 or 7 titles, even then being the noob I was back then most of them weren’t that great. The Xbox made itself up though by being the most awesome media centre/retro gaming machine EVER, and to this day still serves as my media center for non HD content.

We’re left with the Gamecube, which I bought solely for Phantasy Star Online. Eventually I got a few more games like Super Robot Taisen GC, and Naruto 2. The two best games I had were MGS: Twin Snakes, and of course Resident Evil 4, which almost justified the machine’s existance. Sadly the pitiful number of games I had for it and lack of interest in GC titles meant the Gamecube became the kid that no one played with at school. I guess the world agrees, because the GC died a slow and painful death, and everyone thought it was the end for Nintendo.

This gen, we’ve got the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and the Wii. For me, the clear winner of this generation is the 360, with the PS3 only coming second, only because I hate the damn Wii so much. Today, most of blockbuster hits that come out are multiplatform, leading to inevitable 360 vs PS3 comparison shots. In my personal experience though, the 360 has the better online play, the better achievement system (which has me playing Kung Fu Panda just to get the bloody points…WTF?), usually leading me to buy multiplatform titles on 360.

While these 2 massive corporations have been battling it out with their uber space bending machines, Nintendo have snuck past and totally decimated Sony and Microsoft when it comes to market share. The Wii was a great concept it came out, with it’s unique control scheme. I even had a little fun playing bowling and tennis with my girlfriend. At this point, Nintendo’s evil plan had come to fruition. I went out and bought one of these things. They made a machine that created a whole new breed of gamers, the ‘casual’ gamer (ie your mum).

Don’t get me wrong, the Wii has a lot of potential. When it first came out I’m pretty sure the first thing alot of us thought was how cool would be if there was a awesome Star Wars lightsaber fighting game. And there was. But it wasn’t awesome. In fact, as time went on, I knew if and when it came out, it would suck balls. And it did.

And here is the problem. Ever since Wii Sports came out, there’s not much since in terms of innovation. It’s as if Nintendo has really dished out the be all and end all of Wii games right from the bat, leaving every game feeling bland and samey. Quality titles are far and few between, with lazy developers slapping motion controls onto their game and releasing it as a Wii title. Take a look at your local games shop and for every good game such as RE4: Wii, Metroid and Zelda, you’ll find another 10 shit ones that rely on some waggle gimmick that is totally unnecessary. Now imagine an unsuspecting parent wading through this sea of turd trying to find the real gems.

After Nintendo’s thunder died a little, they introduced stage two of their plan. This was of course Wii Fit. It was a cool idea, and even fun for a bit. And so the masses flocked and bought millions of Wii Fits. Yes even me. And after a few days I was bored of it. I had high hopes for a good skating game, and developers tried to do this but the controls were never quite right.

Soon, Nintendo will unveil the third stage of their plan, which is Wii Motion Plus. This little device will allow the Wiimote to finally capture 1-1 movement. Which is what the Wii is supposed to do in the first place. So lightsaber fighting games where you swing is captured is now a reality. No doubt it will sell like hotcakes, but whether developers can make good use of it is doubtful.

What really shits me is this. Developers who think they can make a quick buck by releasing some crappy game with Wii mote wagging as a gimmick. This is just adding to the already massive sea of crap that comes with a popular console (see PS2). The best games on Wii either use motion controls to improve the game (RE4: Wii, Metroid) , or don’t use them at all. de Blob, which was a great game used the Wiimote waggle to jump, something which could’ve easily been a button. Instead the bosses at bluetongue decided there must be some kind of Wii waggle gimmick and so added this. The game would’ve been just as good, if not better without it.

And secondly, how this machine continues to sell so well, despite having such a crap library of games. Sure there are a few good ones here and there, but a large majority of Wii games are inferior ports of their next gen brethren. Developers of AAA titles totally forget about Wii and make their games more awesome on 360 and PS3. Only exception is RE4, but the guy responsible for removing quality games on Wii was probably taking a sickie that day (playing with his Wii). Apparently there are more Wii Fits in existence than PS3′s! That is totally ridiculous, the Wii is an epidemic that must be stopped.

There is probably a reason why the Wii is selling so well. And I figured this must be it. Young guys in their teens who use the power of the Wii to pick up girls. “Want to come over to my place and play Wii Sports?” Ya rly.

After 2 weeks off relentlessly plugging away at RE5 it has fallen

Having finally completed everything I took some time to watch the Making of Documentary that came with the special edition. RE5 has some really good production values and some of the techniques they used for making the cutscenes I’d never heard of before but were really awesome

• realtime motion capture, so the movements processed realtime and there’s a preview screen with the in game engine showing the movements of the actors
• previzualization, sort of like a moving storyboard for the director to be able to visualize his concept before they actually start fully committing to it. For RE5 they used a combination of live action for the actors, superimposed on the game CG cutscenes, which the final product looks almost exactly like
• virtual camera, so after all the motion capture is done and ported into the game, they set up a virtual camera in the scene which can be moved around in real life using some kind mock camera in real life with a monitor so the director can pick the camera angles as though they were filming live action

All this reminded me of Hideo Kojima’s talk at GDC where he mentioned using good game design and technology to overcome impossible barriers. He also mentioned that Japenese developers mainly rely on good design while the west had access to superior technology. It’s good to see developers like Jun and Hideo embrace the west use it to make the best game they can.

Saved for my interests…

Read more…

Having played this to death and having 900/1000 points (for now) I’ll share my thoughts about it. But to give some perspective we need to take a look at it’s legendary predecessor. (spoilers, don’t read if you haven’t played either game)

Resident Evil 4 was a brilliant game in it’s day, totally reinventing the series for the better. The clunky tank controls were gone, replaced by slightly less clunky tank controls which actually suited the game and a new 3rd person camera. Cheap scare ‘dog through the window’ moments were replaced by genuinely creepy environments and moments full of tension.

Who could forget the moment you walked into the village and suddenly the music changed and you were assaulted by hordes of crazy villagers, especially when the guy with the chainsaw came along.

Or in the castle when all you could hear was the sound of those chanting monks coming to get you.

Or when you were trapped in the house with Luis and Ashley and had to hold your ground against the angry mob.

Or when you see the regenerator for the first time, you know you it will come to life and you can’t kill it.

Now we get to Resident Evil 5. I was eagerly anticipating this game since it was announced, and I had pretty high expectations for it. Did it deliver the great experience that RE4 did?

The answer is no. Lets my point out my issues with the game.

Too many times in the game am I reminded about awesome moments in RE4. Within moments of starting the game, I’m greeted with almost the exact same village scenario at the start of RE4. Later during the game, the El Gigante from RE4 makes an appearance, except this time it’s a stupid vehicular shooting minigame instead of the epic boss fight it was in the previous game.

The controls. Despite the ‘slight’ improvements they’ve made such as being able to choose the control schemes, this time around the controls don’t sit quite as well despite being almost exactly the same game. Despite the new schemes, I found myself setting it back to good ol’ RE4 style. But even after the Wii edition’s perfect control scheme it feels very outdated. More on this later.

The laser pointer aiming. It sucked faceplanting into the TV to aim at some guy in the distance last time and it still sucks now. Why couldn’t we have a crosshair at least this time?

The addition of a partner. I feel that this game suffers from what I call ‘co-op’ syndrome, in which the developer decides that co-op is a good inclusion in their game then decides to (re)design their game around it. Resident Evil was always about being alone, and that was part of the tension. In RE5, you’re fighting the same amount of enemies but now you have a friend with you to help out. They really should have upped the number of zombies you fight at once to balance this, and I’m talking about Left 4 Dead numbers here.

Guns and ammo carrying over and chapter select. Chapter select isn’t a bad idea, but when your inventory is continuous across all difficulties it can make the game too easy. Say you run low on ammunition or health, you could simply reload a previous chapter, grab some herbs and ammo, save your game and voila, you’re fully loaded again. Even worse, there’s a particular level which has a rocket launcher easily accessible right at the start of the map. This combined with the partner and the way save games work gives birth to duping tricks which totally ruin the difficulty.

Too easy to get superweapons. In RE4, you had to play Mercenaries to unlock the holy mother of all guns, the Handcannon. And by play, I mean you had to fucking own it, by getting 5 stars on each of the 4 stages with all 5 characters, and having done this, let me tell you it’s no easy feat. Furthermore, to unlock unlimited ammo for it you had to collect a rather large sum of money which you could only hope to amass by finishing the game yet again. This made owning the Handcannon after all that work so much more rewarding to own. In RE5, you can simply unlock the Handcannon by purchasing the best magnum and upgrading it fully. This combined with the above trick means almost anyone can do this.

Rather uninspired boss fights. From the get go, you were captivated by awesome boss fights in RE4. Nothing in RE5 even comes close.

The plot. RE4 was simple. You rescue the president’s daughter (are you a bad enough dude?), and this does not change throughout the game. In RE5, there never seems be a clear context as to what you have to do or why. You spend the first half of the game chasing after ‘some guy’ for no clear reason, and after that you just happen to stumble onto Wesker’s plot to destroy the world.

As you progress through the game, you eventually get to the token secret death star bottomless pit lab where the baddie always hides out in. Here’s where the game gets kinda fucked up. It’s at this point where you encounter zombies WITH GUNS. This is not just once or twice like RE4 either, but about 50% of the enemies from this point onwards carry guns and shoot at you.

And suddenly you can press X (or square in PS3 version) to take cover to pop and shoot.

Then it hit me. I was really playing Gears of War all this time. The controls, the partner, the cover system. This is confirmed later on when you have to fight a large boss using the Hammer of Dawn from GoW. And it’s this combination GoW with RE4 controls that really bugs me.

The problem with this game is that while it tries to be RE4, it’s also trying to be different at the same time. The result is a game which doesn’t really know what it is. Is it a survival horror game? No, the horror is nowhere to be seen. Is it an action FPS with zombies? No, the controls don’t suit it at all. If CAPCOM had decided to go all the way with either genre, chances are I probably wouldn’t be complaining right now.

Despite all it’s flaws RE5 is still a great game and one that I enjoyed immensely. It’s one of the best looking games on a next gen console at the moment by but it’s certainly doesn’t push any boundaries and it’s just not GOTY material in this day and age, or even Resident Evil anymore.

It seems these days that co-op gaming is all the rage.

It’s been around for a while, with games like Diablo, Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter etc. But it’s only lately where every game seems to have a co-op play for campaign or story modes which used to be exclusively a single player experience.

When I think of the co-op of today, I think of Halo: Combat Evolved for Xbox which was probably the first mainstream game which had this feature. And playing it with a mate is probably one of my most memorable gaming moments ever.

Of course, the subsequent games also had this feature and finally Halo 3 had co-op over Xbox LIVE which was one of its widely touted features.

And since Halo, most FPS games released would have some kind of co-op feature. You have games such as Army of Two and Gears of War which had the gameplay designed around co-op. The latest game to join this trend is Resident Evil 5, which is not even an FPS to begin with.

Somehow I believe developers are starting to miss the point of co-op play.

Games like Army of Two and Resident Evil 5 seem to have totally forgotten about the single player experience. What if I don’t want to play co-op? I still have to endure through all the stupid BS partner nuances and stupid AI who can’t watch my back. Why is there magically 2 levers required for every door in RE5? Why the hell does the team keep needing to splitting up in Gears of War? A good single player experience shouldn’t go at the expense of some co-op mechanics.

Sheva in RE5? Totally unnecessary

Halo co-op was a great experience because it was the people playing the game that made the experience, not the developers. No where at any point during the game did I have to play the game differently because I was playing with someone. My friend and I played and together we beat the game using the same rules as single player, not forced split up sections or bits where you have to press 2 buttons at once. For RE5 it was a bit weird to introduce a new character as the 2nd player/partner, because in RE games anyone you meet up with usually gets split up from you multiple times and/or ends up dead.

Nobody cares about the people in the background

Of course there are games where co-op play is well done, or sorely missed when present. Call of Duty 4 for example, it wouldn’t really hurt that much to just drop a 2nd player in and let them help out, especially in Veteran mode because the game is so goddamn unforgiving anyway. Saints Row 2 is another good example because each of the 2 players experience the story their way, even in cutscenes, the player only sees their own avatar and the 2nd player is nowhere to be seen.

Of course, as with Diablo 2, the game needs to get harder in co-op mode to balance out the extra firepower you get with extra players.

So in my entire one year as trade master, this is my biggest heist yet. The red limited edition RE5 elite tempted me since I laid my eyes on it, but alas I bought my replacement 360 a month too early and missed out.

Or so I thought.

Here’s how it went down.

JB Hi-fi were offering the usual trade deal, but for some reason they were doing a special ‘trade 2 and get it free’ instead of the usual 3 games. I decided it was too good NOT to take advantage off, so I went down to JB and got myself 2 preowned games for a total of $60 and traded those in for RE5.

I had my suspicions that EB would have some kind of crazy trade deal for this game and it was confirmed when I went to trade it in. $93.50 for RE5!

EB’s crazy trade deal for RE5…just crazy

At this point I could’ve went home with my $93.50 ($33.50 profit) in EB Games credit and been relatively happy. But one of my colleagues at work said something that I didn’t really consider before:

$29 profit..do that 3 times and u got a new game…anything else coming out u want?

hehe, do it about 15 times and buy a new 360

So I decided I would ‘take advantage’ of this loophole a few more times. With the 93.50 EB credit I purchased 4 more cheap games and went back to JBHifi, went back to EB games and traded those in for $187 credit. I think so you can see where this is going.

Resident Evil 5…and there’s 5 copies…hahah get it?!

So after much trekking around to various EBs and JBs I end up with 5 copies of RE5. Along with my own personal copy, 6 x 93.5 = 561 and with some leftover credits from buying games, I had the grand prize:

YOU VICTOLY

Sold off the copy of Halo Wars that came with it, as well as the SF2 HD Remix which I both already have. So back in the black and a red elite to top it off. Legendaryyy….