For Answer

Ok, before any of you get scared that I became a mecha pilot while you were not looking, what came before was a glimpse into Armored Core 4 Answer.

I got it recently for the ps3 when I went into Mega Plaza to see what the new games they had were. I wasn't planning on getting anything, but when I saw the case I couldn't resist.

I have been playing the game in small bursts over the past couple of nights and I finally came up against the signature NEXT (that's what they call the mecha in the game), White Glint. I was given a wing man to go up against it and had a blast.

The first three times I tried the mission I failed miserably, surviving up until the point when the lynx (the pilots of NEXTs) with me is killed.

But, once I got my head around the way I had to compensate for my craft against the white glint, I had a great fight and took him out in record time!

When I checked online I found out that there is speculation that the pilot of the white glint is supposed to be the player from the previous game - armored core 4.

Anyway, the fight inspired me to write about it and use it to experiment with a way of writing about videogames that is a bit more visceral (get ready to see more of that once I get my hands on left 4 dead, albeit not in-character).

I added a bit too many embellishments I think, and I will probably be focusing more on what 'I' felt as opposed to what the game character would have felt, but I am happy with it I guess. Let me know what you think.

Well, I haven't finished the game yet, but I am definitely having a blast and enjoying being a lynx for an hour or two at night. If you enjoy mecha games and are not bothered by slightly complex control schemes, this should be up your alley! It is also available on the xbox 360.
Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device

The Glint In My Eye

The White Glint was a legend amongst Lynx. The NEXT that tore through whole armies all in defence of Line Ark. It was said that its pilot sometimes showed mercy to troops, giving them an opportunity to escape if they agreed never to return to Line Ark.

Some said it was because its pilot was tired of war and only killed because of some higher duty. Others said its pilot only enjoyed killing worthy opponents. It would explain why any NEXT that had come up against it had not returned. I wonder how many NEXTs and Normals lay sunken beneath the waves of the sea surrounding Line Ark's headquarters.

I wasn't that bothered. I didn't believe in myths. No Lynx, and especially no NEXT, was invincible.

Omer insisted that I take along a pilot that they would recommend. I was a bit irritated by that, after all, I work alone and had not had any trouble so far with the jobs I had undertaken.

After waiting around a bit in the Omer base near the remains of Lagostown, a lynx walked in. It was Otsdarva. Hmph. Looks like Omer was serious about eliminating the White Glint. Well, that's if the stories I had heard about Otsdarva were true anyway.

We head out for Line Ark at dawn and got there about thirty minutes later. We were greeted by the White Glint's operator. Turns out Otsdarva knows her - Fiona Jarnefeldt. He also made some reference about her being responsible for the fall of Anatolia.

That was interesting...

We made it clear that we were not backing down. Otsdarva had already activated his overboost and headed straight for the White Glint. I was still expecting some sort of reinforcements from Line Ark, but none came. Not that I wasn't grateful though, the White Glint's pilot, whoever he/she was, was a beast.

I tried getting Otsdarva to slow down so we could plan properly and limit the White Glint's mobility. Maybe get it into the structure we were fighting around, it seemed like it was geared around aerial maneuverability. But no, he insisted on chasing the NEXT every which way it went, playing to its pilot's tune. It was obvious this was personal for him, as the number 1 rated lynx in Collared, he probably felt threatened by the White Glint, whose pilot was officially rated 9th and yet still more feared than he was. Knowing this, I was even more annoyed that Omer sent him along with me.

My HUD told me that I was running low on AS missiles. I switched to my right arm weapon settling in for the long haul with my rifle. Missiles were too expensive to waste trying to hit the White Glint anyway. Better to rely on my plasma cannon and the rifle.
Initially, the White Glint focused almost exclusively on Otsdarva, throwing a few missiles and shots my way whenever I got too involved in their dance.

I quick boosted out of the way again as the White Glint sent a few missiles my way once more. As I shot down the remaining missiles chasing me, I noticed Otsdarva moving erratically. What was he doing?

I then saw what was wrong, his main generator had been destroyed. Looks like the pilot of the Glint had crippled him completely. He fell out of the sky towards the sea. I thought about going to try and catch him, but the White Glint sent more missiles my way and forced me to dodge some more. Moving further away from Otsdarva.

The Glint then activated its overboost and disappeared behind some buildings. I hovered over the water warily watching the direction the White Glint went in and scanning for any sign of Otsdarva. Maybe he would be able to escape in time.

I heard his voice over the comm, he was congratulating the pilot of the Glint!

"Get out of there man!" I yelled into my mic. I got static in response.

Dammit.

Kasumi came in over the comm-link confirming that Otsdarva was dead. She also let me know it was just me and Glint left to duel. Not that I was expecting any backup at this stage in the fight.

I gripped my controls and began to scan the skies for the NEXT. My NEXT's cameras were not the best available unfortunately, even though they had served me well in the past. I vowed to upgrade my headpiece if I got out of this alive.

I saw a flash of white to the right. It was the White Glint. I opened fire as soon as my auto-targeting system picked it up and began boosting towards it. Maybe if I could get in close I could damage its boosters, give me an edge and maybe deliver some sort of karmic justice for Otsdarva.

I sent a cloud of missiles to its left and came in hard from the right, machine gun fire wailing over the sound of explosions. I fired flares, expecting a retaliatory salvo from the Glint, and I wasn't disappointed. I had gotten in close enough to hit the main boosters when suddenly I noticed it's engines glowing brightly and the unmistakable halo showing the discharge of kojima particles. My heart got caught in my chest. The NEXT was getting ready to release its assault armour attack. I quick boosted and flew into the air to get out of its area of effect. I watched as the field of deadly energy came towards me as I ascended. A stray thought passed through my head as I pushed my engines to their limits, In this moment, I was truly in a place reserved for a few. This feeling of riding the edge of death at over 200 km/hr, it was one of a kind. The zone.

I made it. I didn't get away completely unscathed though, the attack ripped right through my primal armour and damaged my armour plating directly. It wasn't enough to put my readout in the red though.

I had to act fast. The White Glint purging its assault armour gave me a window of opportunity, its primal armour would have been depleted and it would take a few seconds for it to recharge. Now was the time to strike.

I turned around quickly, targeting the White Glint and letting rip with my plasma cannon and rail gun. With no primal armour to defend the NEXT, it didn't take long. A couple more shots and it was over.

I could hear Fiona, the White Glint's operator over the comm. She spoke to me and said something about me being as good as she feared I would be. I didn't know what to think about that. How could I? I had just beaten the White Glint.

I got an S-rank for that mission from the match ranking computer. I stared at it for a while wondering how much luck played a factor in what just happened. After a few seconds I realised it didn't matter. Luck was always a factor in battle.

I had a few job requests waiting for me when I got back to base, the one that caught my eye was to bring down two of Algebra's lynx's, the pilots of Red Rum and Starka.

Before I accepted the mission, I thought about why I kept on taking these jobs from faceless corporations, adding destruction to an already blasted earth. A lot of people think that lynxes were insane or just desperate to justify their training and the amount of money spent on keeping our NEXTs in working order. I think it was more than that, but I didn't know why.

Part of the answer came to me as I managed to complete the battle against the two NEXTs, Red Rum's four-legged NEXT shorting out in front of me. The planning, the preparation of the NEXT for battle, the high speed ballet filled with the thud of bullets, the crackle of plasma and the sighing of missiles through the air.

I continued fighting in this war because it was something I was good at and my NEXT allowed me to do. Not that the loss of life was something that pleased me, but there was something, something that caught the eye in-between pushing the side-boosters to their limit as one weaved to dodge a missile barrage, something that captured the imagination as I soared through the skies watching the subtle electric crackle of kojima particles in the dead of a snowstorm.

I am sure the pilot of the White Glint understood that and that was why even as he/she sank, they didn't say a word. They didn't need to. We had already said everything there was to say.

Online Gaming in Nigeria

I was talking to a friend the other day about what games we were interested in this Christmas, and I mentioned Left 4 Dead . He then proceeded to ask me whether I was planning to try and play L4D online with our terrible internet connections. Now, even though I am primarily getting Left 4 Dead for system link fun (hopefully I will be able to convince everyone in our 360 LAN circle to pick it up as well), it did get me thinking about what games we can play online from Nigeria.

One game that came to mind was FFXI . Now, even though you will probably lag like hell, it would be playable and you would be able to get a lot out of it. I remember that when I first moved back to Nigeria, I was able to play it over a 56K connection and it was okay. The main problem of course would be how to pay for your subscription. It would be worth investigating to see whether they accept Nigerian credit cards. I guess the same would go for World of Warcraft although if you can actually figure out a means of paying, by all means give those two a try. They work quite well on our connections.

So, I have decided to make a short list of good games that I feel are quite easy to get and play online. This list is of course by no means definitive, but I hope it will be able to introduce more people to the joys of multiplayer gaming.

For this list, an ideal online game that would be suitable to playing from Nigeria would have the following characteristics:

1. Be playable over a slow connection and not be too dependent on having low latency, low ping connections. So that rules out the majority of first person shooters and some RTS games.

2. Not require a subscription fee. With all the hullabaloo of Nigeria being the king of credit card fraud, most companies are unwilling to accept any of our bank issued VISA or Mastercard credit cards even if we are willing to send proof of identity and ownership. So, this is of course going to be a factor. In the case of games that accept our credit cards, I will make a note of that in the short write-up describing it.

3. Not require system specifications that are too high. This is mostly related to PC/Mac gaming. This is because high-end systems are quite hard to come by in Nigeria from my experience with shop owners going wide-eyed when you request a system with more than 2GB of RAM onboard and no clue what video cards are. Any game on this list will be playable with a very basic system. By basic system I mean a computer that has at least a pentium III (or equivalent processor), at least 512MB of RAM, and a graphics card with at least 64MB of RAM onboard.

The List - 

1. Lusternia (or anything else by Iron Realms ). Lusternia is a text-based MUD (multi user dungeon) that is part of a group of text-based games from a company called Iron Realms. They are known for creating games of quite a bit of depth with rewarding gameplay and social systems. Wait! Come back! Just because there are no graphics does not mean that it is not fun! Honest, I promise!

Ok, settled in?

I chose Lusternia to highlight their stable of games, even though all of them are definitely worth at least trying, because it is the setting I liked the most. The dark, almost faerie-like setting with trees being places of power and bards that destroy things just by strumming a string on their harps is quite absorbing and a little bit different from the standard Tolkeinesque fare that most other text-

based MUDs bring to the table. You can play any of these games using the standard windows/mac terminal which allows you to connect to their server and play the game, and all of the Iron Realms games have a java applet that can be launched from the various game websites, but if you want a bit more customisation and cotrol over your play experience, then you can get one of the dedicated software solutions for playing these games. zMUD , GMUD , MUSHClient , all these and more allow you to interface with the games at a level that the java client or windows/mac terminal cannot even offer.

There are a few problems though. With our high latency connections, combat at the higher levels can become very troublesome to get right, where timing and making decisions based on what you see on the screen and with our connections, if you get hit by lag, it could easily result in death. However, it is possible to pay cash in order to advance if combat proves too difficult, and I believe they accept Nigerian credit cards.

So, if you are interested in playing in fantasy worlds with hundreds and even thousands of other players politicking and fighting with the best of them, you should try out Lusternia or at least one of the Iron Realms games. I am sure you will find something you like. And if you don't care for fantasy, there are loads of sci-fi, horror and urban themed MUDs that are also a lot of fun. You can find them at the MUD Connector or Top MUD Sites .

2. Dofus . Dofus is a graphical mmorpg (massively multiplayer online roleplaying game) made by a French company called Ankama Games. It was built completely in Flash and is quite beautiful. The reason I put it here is that the combat is turn-based and so is not explicitly dependent on quick inputs and the client itself is quite lightweight at 150MB compared to the monsters of World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy XI which are both close to or above 1GB. I did download and try out this game but didn't get very far in it. There is a block on the amount of content you can access if you don't pay a subscription, but I will check and see if they accept Nigerian credit cards. They are also working on another game called Wakfu which is based in the same universe, as well as a TV series.

It is quite a successful game with about 10 million players on different servers. Whichever way you slice it, that is huge and speaks to the popularity of the game.

So, even if you can't go past the beginner stages due to credit card payment trouble, you can still enjoy a part of the game.

3. Kingdom of Loathing . Kingdom of Loathing is a browser-based morpg (multiplayer roleplaying game) run by Asymmetric Publications. This is a very funny game typified by its use of stick figures and humorous writing. You take on the role of an adventurer, just like in the previous games mentioned here, and you fight monsters and get treasure all while cracking up at the silly writing and situations. You are allocated a set amount of adventures a day which can be augmented by various items with the number being reset at 2pm GMT. Each adventure allows you to battle a monster or do some other activities. This helps limit your play time as one can only do so much in any given day and can be of huge benefit to those who might get addicted and not do any work at all.

It is quite interesting and although I only dabbled in it, it was actually quite interesting.

4. Trackmania Nations Forever . Okay, though not strictly an online gaming experience, it is enhanced tremendously by having other players to compete with, either by racing directly against them, or indirectly by trying to beat their lap and track times. It's hiscore table is collated from all over the world allowing you to play offline and do time trials and then upload your scores and see how you did.

Trackmania Nations is a racing game focused around the art of time trials (racing on a particular track with the aim of getting the fastest lap and/or track time). It is such an addictive game and it scales very readily to very slow systems. As long as you have a suitable graphics card to show it, it will gladly run at a smooth, crisp state for your entire play time.

It was one of the games that we tried to participate in for the World Cyber Games 2008 that I wrote about in a previous article and in fact this is more of a reason for us to play it more. As at the last time I checked, we had 80+ players from Nigeria on Trackmania Nations Forever. I hope we can get more and even get on the global rankings board.

Oh, did I mention that it had a track editor allowing you to create awesome, zany tracks for both you and your friends to try out?

5. Evernight: The Reign of Darkness . I actually used to play this a couple of years back and I am quite pleased that it is still available to play and going strong. It is a browser based turn-based strategy game where you take control of an army/nation and proceed to battle/negotiate with other players for supremacy. Every day you are given a set number of turns in which to accomplish various things. You get one turn every ten minutes and you can make a move as often as that or even once a week if you prefer and all from the comfort of your browser window!

Definitely give this a try.

That's it for now. I will probably be adding to this list in the coming months and of course, if you have any suggestions do leave them in the comments section.

Mother 3

I have been meaning to post about this since it came out and I downloaded the patch, but somehow it just slipped through. The Mother 3 fan translation is finally done! You will need to obtain a rom of the original Japanese game which you can always do a quick google search to sort out, then download the patch and apply it to the rom.

Below you can find a trailer showing scenes from the game. It does contain a few spoilers here and there so if you are one of those people who must not see anything at all about any piece of entertainment before you consume it yourself, then don't watch it. :-)



It is an awesome game and the sequel to one of the most charming and unique RPGs I have ever played - Mother 2 (Earthbound in the West). It is interesting, not only because of its setting - a Japanese RPG set in a non-post/pre apocalyptic urban environment - but also because its lead designer and creator Shigesato Itoi is a writer. As a result of this, even though the combat system and the general rpg elements of the games are competent, they are not anything revolutionary. What is really nice about the Mother games though, is the writing.

There's been so much talk around the gaming blogosphere about narrative in games and how games need to escape from the crutch of film and books, but you don't hear a lot about games like the Mother series in those circles. They should be talking about it.

 I currently have Mother 3 on my PSP and I'm playing it via emulation, but I have decided to stop until I finish Mother 2. Once that is done I am going to start a new game of Mother 3 and settle in to enjoy the ride.

On that note, I should also say that I have decided not to pick up anything else once I get Little Big Planet for the PS3, Left 4 Dead and Fallout 3 for the Xbox 360 that is a AAA title for a while. I realise that I have been getting loads of games close to when they come out and I still have a huge pile of stuff on older gen consoles like the PS2 that I haven't even started playing and I am not the only one. I am trying to stop that now, plus next-gen gaming is sooo expensive here it is not even funny. So, pardon me if the number of AAA reviews that come from my end reduce. HOWEVER, I will be covering classic games that should be available for cheap on older consoles, or handheld titles which also go for much cheaper than their home console brethren.

I am also using it as an opportunity to look more critically at 2D games and some of the older games to help me as I slowly journey on the path to making my own games.

VR1 Crossroads - In Memoriam

Back in 1999/2000 I discovered this text-based massively multiplayer RPG game called Crossroads. It was made by a company known as VR1 and was still in beta. By the time I had discovered it though, most of the beta testers had left and it was obvious that even though its developers might have wanted to keep working on it, their parent company was having none of it.

What was up was still quite fairly detailed though. The background for the game was quite unique, players began in a place known only as 'The City' in their chosen faction HQ. In the HQ, you are given a book/journal/message board that informs you of the history of your faction, why it is in the city and some background info on the world. Most factions will tell you that they all used to belong to a larger faction known as The Division. An uber secret organisation with multiple sub-organisations under it that were kept secret from each other and from the existence of the Division.

The Division was run by mysterious beings known as Archons who one day, just as mysteriously, disappeared, causing the break of the division, and the cutting loose of the factions under it.

From there, depending on which faction you join, you are given goals. Most factions want to control places of power which were sources of a substance known as Odyle, others wanted to control the city via its politicians, mobsters and other influential people. Some wanted to do both. And then some wanted to also gain influence over the dreamworld.

Dreamworld? Yes, this game had it all.
When I first downloaded the client for the game I was asked to create a character. The character creation screen was also quite interesting to me. I had never played Ultima or other text based MUDs before this one, so the use of a personality quiz to determine what kind of character you would be was a novelty for me. After answering some questions, I was then asked whether I preferred fantasy or sci-fi. I chose sci fi out of curiosity and was then given attributes that I had to choose from. Each positive attribute added points to a pool and the total positive points had to be balanced out by a negative points. Different attributes had different points associated with them.

I then got thrown into a faction of alien psychics, unfortunately I don't remember the majority of the faction names, and proceeded to explore the headquarters. It was such a fascinating experience. I realised I was the only person in the faction and so was the de facto leader. Assuming this meant I was the bees knees, I stepped out into the world to explore.

As I said earlier, the game was mostly bereft of players by this point so no one bothered me for my first thirty or so minutes while I got familiar with the command and the interface. I guess I should mention the fact that this was the first text-based game I had ever played with sound. The music was simple from what I remember, but it really set the mood of the various areas I went through and was enough of an addition that it immediately catapulted it to the top of text-based games I had played.

After some roaming about I found a place of power. I had been instructed to use the 'sense' command at these places to confirm the presence of odyle. After doing that, all I had to do to collect power from it was to sleep there for a long enough period. To be honest I can't remember whether all of this was int he faction diary or on the noticeboard, but I knew what I had to do when I found one. I then proceeded to sleep and what faced me was another character creation sequence. This time I had to 'mold' my character from dream stuff and it followed a more conventional character creation set up. After completing this I ascended through light and ended up in a central hub in the dream world. It was so cool! The interface changed slightly and the ambient sounds changed to suit the mood. While the city was mostly realistic and had normal locations like book stores, bars, night clubs and offices, the dreamworld had temples and dungeons and castles with fiends in them. I also traded my trenchcoat for a suit of leather armour and a sword.

I fought a few creatures and explored a bit before suddenly I was wrenched out of the dream world and back into the waking one. I think there was a notice in the dream world hub warning dreamers not to stay out too long as you could only sleep for a fixed amount of time (the exact amount was randomised slightly and was also based on the amount of odyle one had accumulated) and if you weren't in a special zone like the hub, you would lose all the items you had gained in the dream world. The experience taught me to pay more attention to the rules of the world. I dusted off and left to explore the world more before logging off for the first time.

I was hooked.

I proceeded to play the game solid for about 4 - 5 months religiously every day. It also didn't help that I was having a bit of a depressing time in real life and took the first chance I could to excape from it, but the game was really that good. I got attacked a couple of times by rival factions, re-created my character a couple of times and settled on a faction called the Jactara. I became faction head there too since there was no one else and started mapping the city's underground. Hunting down places of power and making sure that one was safe there (as other players could wake you up if they found you) was quite exciting and addictive in its own right, but finding out about the world and what happened to the archons was even more interesting. The writing was quite good from what I remember and all the players in the game were very reluctant to reveal which faction they belonged to although we sometimes shared information about pieces of the story we were able to figure out from our faction's information and our own investigations.

There was also the tussle for influence over the city as you could bribe NPCs to spy for you or just to gain power over them, thereby increasing your influence. This was easier to do, but for a more permanent solution, the best thing was to find a bit of blackmail material on the NPC in question. I was never sure whether they used to spawn in random places or just occurred in one place, but the idea was that blackmail items were unique and so only one player could have them giving them complete control over that NPC until someone else could get that item from them, and there were loads of hiding places.

The dream world also had its own rules as well and items to find, creatures to slay and so on. I became quite adept at sleeping and even learnt some spells that helped keep me asleep for much longer than normal so that I could explore.

There really was so much to do in the game and it was nowhere near finished. There were mystical factions, a faction made of dreamworld inhabitants, psychic factions, alien factions, a super hero faction, and a Men In Black-style faction called D12 (Division 12), which was the only faction to my knowledge that possessed a dossier on all the other factions and the most information about the archons. They were also one of the few factions that could actually kill a player for good.

Normally if you lost in combat your character would be knocked out and you would end up in the dream world. You could then be looted. There were no experience points in the game per se and so you might lose some odyle points, but your influence would remain intact so long as you had your blackmail items and so on. But, if D12 or one of the other factions that had kill requisitions (like a psychic faction called the panopticon) gave one to one of their players, they could kill your character. This did not mean game over however. Your character would instead get stuck in the dream world, never waking up. I don't know what would happen if you then died in the dream world however. It was possible to make it back to the city though if you could break into the dream inhabitants faction HQ and steal a body from there which gave you other abilities.

The game was really awesome and the developers had not yet implemented all the other factions or a lot of the skills or quests or finished areas. A lot of mobs were absent or present in an unfinished form, but it was already very engrossing. The few people who remained were a diehard bunch who still explored the world and had fun griefing one another from time-to-time. Unfortunately, VR1 then announced that it would not be continuing development on Crossroads (I think they couldn't find a publisher or their publisher told them not to continue), deciding instead to focus on more traditional videogames like Nightcaster as well as an mmorpg that was cancelled as well called Lost Continents.

While the forums were still up, some of the players were asking if VR1 or their publisher would be willing to sell the IP to them along with the engine so that they could continue developing it. Even creating a thread on text-based MUD company Skotos' forum asking the company to approach VR1 about purchasing the game. After a while of following the ever dwindling community I gave up on ever seeing Crossroads again. Now, I am not sure whether they even exist any more as a company. I have tried googling them and checked wikipedia but there's no link to a website or anything else. And their former web address is up for sale so who knows?

For a very long time it was the only mmorpg I had seen that had such an interesting setting and backstory. I really hope that games like The Secret World can sate on my yearning for playing in a world inspired partly by HP Lovecraft, contemporary conspiracy theories and a healthy heaping of mystery.

For more information about VR1's Crossroads, you can check out this really nice article on the game here, a press release discussing its then pioneering use of direct music can be found here , and here's an interview with one of their leads discussing Lost Continents.

EDIT: Just found out that they merged with Jaleco USA to form Jaleco Entertainment. No offense to VR1 Entertainment or Jaleco at all, but really? From Crossroads to this? I wonder whether the original designers behind Crossroads and Lost Continent left or are the ones behind the games on the jaleco site as well...

EDIT 2: Also, a link to one of the original designers of the game over on IGN. He also apparently worked on Lost Continent too.

Halo 3 All-nighter

I just had my first Halo 3 all-nighter. It was quite an impromptu affair. Last Friday was my friend's birthday and we were all too tired (and BROKE!) to go to a bar or club so we decided to play a bit of Halo 3.

I had just finished the campaign on Heroic and was in the mood for some fragging. So, we got another one of my friend's involved and the birthday boy's cousin in order to have a full set of four. I also had an extra copy of Halo 3 (long story, don't ask) lying around, so I decided that we could try 4-player co-op first.

After messing about with the router for a while, we were able to set up a game and we started on Legendary. We were just beginning to get into a groove, me and my friend's cousin (from now on known as El Cij) made a very nice team, when suddenly the game seemed to freeze and we heard loud groans from the next room. My friend's power box had given up the ghost. Apparently, because his 360 is an NTSC one, the guys he bought it from had supplied him with a custom power box that automatically stepped down the voltage so that it would work here without the need for an external step down adapter. It would come back on in an hour or so, but he couldn't guarantee it would last any longer.

We then began discussing how this was actually his second power box. The one he had used previously had been blown by a power surge in their house (oh the perils of not having a stabiliser!).

We then decided to make some coffee, get a bottle of white wine and settle in to some Slayer. El Cij went to bed about 1am and left the three of us to play. We decided to use the opportunity to put in some practice on the levels and learn the new weapon dynamics before we have the halo gaming day where we will hopefully have up to 16 guys and 4 consoles. Most of the people we are inviting have played and owned Halo 3 since last year. We didn't want to go into that with absolutely no preparation at all!

It went pretty well actually. We came across this really cool combination of shotguns and graviton hammer. That made for some really enjoyable games. Maybe by the 1st of October we will be able to put up a fight.

Oh, did I say that the multiplayer is really, really good and better than Halo 2's? Well, it is. And the Spartan Laser is sexy.

The Internet Luxury.

Spore is finally out! Spoke to my brother in England about it yesterday and he was saying that it was all over the place. It was at that precise moment that I realised that I wasn't all that interested in Spore.

This is not because I think it is going to be crap or that Will Wright sucks or anything like that, I generally am not really a sandbox type of player and so have missed a lot of his games. In this case though, I think it is more the fact that it seems a majority of the game experience is directly related to trading and seeing other peoples' spore creations is quite a deal breaker for me.

I mean, forget the DRM. Who cares that the game is going to allow you to install the game three times before you have to call them up and get more installs? I can see it being a problem, and on principle I don't like it, but for me, the main thing is the dependency on internet.

I could have maybe bought it on a whim (and maybe I still will), but the reliance on internet is quite depressing. It seems like a lot of games, and more particularly, single player games, are beginning to require the internet in some way shape or form.

I remember installing Half Life 2 on my PC then having to reformat it. Re-activating it on Steam on a rubbish connection like the one I have in the office is not fun at all. I don't want a game that people are saying a lot of the fun is going to come from seeing and experiencing other people's creations! To be fair, I don't know whether this is true or not, but I honestly just feel that if you are making a sigle player experience, the addition of downloadable elements and so on should enhance instead of complete.

Spore is even not that bad, at least you can buy it for the PC. What about games that are only available on a console internet store? Rez HD? Tried to get it and guess what? Xbox LIVE doesn't accept Nigerian post codes as legit. Pixeljunk Eden? Same thing. I am not even going to think about Bionic Commando or Braid or Castle Crashers or Ikaruga or...the list goes on and on. And this is when I can even get the console online at an acceptable speed.

So much gaming and I have been cut off from it not because I can't afford the games, or because I don't want to play them, but because of where I live. At least with boxed games I can pick some up whenever I travel, but these will just sit and exist for me on youtube and desktop wallpapers from the internet. I see people on various blogs talking about how annoyed they are with Spore and its DRM, but of course nobody even bats and eyelash at the fact that one of the major unique selling points of the game is linked directly to availablity of relatively fast broadband internet. Why should they? They seem to take it for granted.

How I wish that we in Nigeria had the luxury to complain about having only 3 installs on a game that we can get full mileage out of. Or even hell, having the luxury to even play one of these download-only games.

Looks like I might have to start travelling with my consoles if I want to get some of the good downloadable games out of them. I might also have to try and get a foreign credit card in order to buy and play the majority of them.

Michael Abbot of the Brainy Gamer was rejoicing in one of his posts about the increasing quality and availability of online games, and how mazing it would be for a plastic free future. I dunno whether a download-only future for games is one that I am really looking forward to. Well, that is if our government and the various companies that provide internet to us here at ridiculous prices will ever begin to take getting us as a country connected seriously at all.

Of course, this is not to say that the rest of the world should wait for us to catch up, but it would be nice to know that we were even thought about at all when they are making these decisions. After all, do they really think that just because they do not officially distribute here that no one is playing video games?

This is so nice!

ELA in Love at First Byte from Fernando Sarmiento on Vimeo.

I would love to see a videogame with this art style and feel. The colours are just too nice! Maybe even with the FMV to go with it. Would be cool and subversive to have a modern videgoame out with graphics like this and cutscenes involving real people again. Only Command and Conquer seems to be keeping the flag flying. Well, them and Kojima in his introductory sequence to MGS4.

But, with regards to the art style itself, it just reminded me of TRON and Rez all over again, but with a richer colour palette. Rez was the last game in recent memory to push the envelope on vector graphics and such and was all the better for it. Would be nice if more game developers were to make games with this sort of 3d pixel vibe to them. Maybe even with more muted colours. The thing that I quite like about the colour selection in this video is that you can believe that it doesn't take place in a computer world (a la Rez and TRON), but just in a strangely animated one.

Found via super punch and made by Pepper Melon with more info on the short here

Nostalgia

I was just going through the posts I put up on my first proper gaming blog way back in early 2004 (or maybe even late 2003!) and I realised I actually had some good ones.

I will be posting them throughout the week so that the blog will at least see some daily activity. I might tweak some of them for grammar or whatever, and some of them I think started some ideas that have shaped my thoughts on games and game design, so those ones I will probably want to go over and maybe develop some of them. Oh, and I will keep the original titles as well, so please forgive some of them.

Anyways, here is the first one, and it occured at the time that I had just gotten seriously into online gaming via xbox live. I actually like the style I had back then. don't think I still write like that anymore, and in some ways it is sad, in others at least I can say that I have moved on.

MEMORIES OF THINGS PAST

I woke up quite late today after a night of vivid dreaming. The first thing I heard was the sound of gunshots.

My brother was playing Resident Evil on the Gamecube. Seeing him do this just reminded me about how much fun I had with that dinky machine since I got it at the Japanese launch. It made me think back to why I had stopped playing it religiously and now measured my gaming experiences by the amount of time spent on Xbox Live!

Last summer, I lost all the data on my memory card. It contained every single save I had since I got the machine. At least, every single US save. Goodbye trophies from Super Smash Bros.! Goodbye Wind Waker! Sayonara PSO, Timesplitters and tons of other game stuff. Even my beautiful replays from Super Monkey Ball on Expert mode...*sigh* When I realised it was all gone, through an oversight on my part (I mistakenly agreed to wipe the contents of the memory card while I was about to play a Japanese game)I just lost interest. Then, I got an Xbox. Life became about getting as lost as possible in the worlds of Vvardenfell, Halo, and the skies of Panzer Dragoon. I never even gave my Gamecube more than a second glance in those heady days with Mr. Driller been a slight diversion to the cube's delights. Even Mario Kart only kept my brother and I playing till we unlocked all the cups. By now though, PSO had come and brought with it all its addictive goodness.


Now though, my brother has gone to the back of the mansion and is at the tombstone that requires the arrowhead to get through. It's all coming back to me. I tell him to go back inside and go upstairs to get it from the room with the mirror and the two zombies. It feels cool.


I am going through a gaming fallow period. Being online is fun and all that, but only about four people out of all the people on my friends list make it worthwhile. I had more fun playing all these single player games offline. Or just messing about on Super Smash Bros. with my flat mates. Those days were cool. Of course, I am not saying that Live or online gaming as a whole is without its strong points and its allure, after all I already have a copy of FFXI waiting to be installed on my PC, and NWN is also probably only going to be played online. Overall though, I think that I play games for the experience of gaming. Getting lost in a world and having it affect my own environment as well - the theme tune for a level coloring my memory of summer for example - creating a dialogue, both spoken and unspoken between me and a group of friends, even if they don't play videogames.

Finishing the Fight

 

I finally got my mitts on Halo 3! Yes, yes, I know this is probably old news for most people with 360s, but it is still quite an achievement for me, and getting it was almost as interesting as playing the game itself.

Basically, I went to every department store and electronics shop on the Island in Lagos asking about it, and like I detailed in an earlier post, most people don't even seem to stock 360 games, let alone having Halo 3. I was about to give up and look to the internet and my hit or miss credit card to help me get it when I went to the NuMetro Media store in the Palms shopping mall. By this time, I had given up on getting Halo 3 in any of these stores and was just looking for a control pad (they didn't have any by the way) when one of their sales reps came up to me and asked what I was looking for. I told him that I was looking for an xbox 360 pad. He looked thoughtful for a second or two and then told me to wait for him. He looked like he was going to the back of the store and so I just said in passing that if they also happened to have a hidden copy of Halo 3 somewhere in there, I would want to get that as well.

He then asked me whether I wanted a PAL or NTSC one and I told him either. He went away and left me with my hopes actually raised and when he came back with both his hands empty I was disappointed. He then told me to come back at 1pm. I looked at my watch and saw that the time was 12.30pm, so I told him this and said that I would just wait. He then told me to give him my number and that he would call me when the stuff was there. So I did so, asking him when he thought they would be available, and he said the next day.

And so, I left.

I went back about the same time the next day (Saturday) and I saw him. He told me that they still weren't there, but that he would definitely call me once they were available. So, I went back home again, getting ready to attempt the internet purchase option. On Sunday morning I got a phone call from a number I didn't recognise and it was the guy from the store! He told me that he had the goods and that I could pick them up that day. Thinking that all I would have to do is drive down to the store and go get them, he then confused me by asking where I lived. I answered automatically and told him that I lived near the mall at Lekki Phase One then he told me that he could bring it to me. At this point it dawned on me that when he told me that they would be getting the Halo 3 and the control pad soon, he was talking about himself and his side-business (or PP - Private Practice as they say). Well, Halo is Halo and so I got in my car and met him at the entrance to the estate. I parked on the side of the road and he got into the car with a black polyethene bag. I thought for a moment at how this must look like such a shady deal being executed. Anyways, he brought out the Halo (which looked to me almost like it had been hastily re-shrink wrapped by Alaba boys), paid him N13,500 ($114) with a big sigh and drove off. I had already picked up a game pad from another store and did not have enough money to buy one more. I am planning to pick up two more pads from a store near my office. They are offering them for about N6,000-N8,000 ($50-$67) which is still a damn sight better than the N10,500 they are asking for in the department stores.

Anyways, long story short, I got my game, and I have been playing for two days now on Heroic. Africa has been glassed and I am on my way to kick the ass of the people who made it necessary. The Flood. The game looks really nice, and I prefer its visual aesthetic to Gears of War which I also finished recently. Halo's art design is a bit subtle in that it appears to be really just generic space marine tosh, but on closer inspection, there really is a lot of work and artistry put into it. And at least I can tell the difference between a Brute, Elite, Grunt, and marine at a glance unlike in Gears of War where everybody looks like they are on the same steroid regime.

The game is also quite nice too so far. :-)

World Cyber Games Championships...

And Nigeria is participating! How this flew under my radar I have no idea. I think I remember reading about a competition, but since it didn't involve any games I play or am interested in, I just didn't pay too much attention. Guessing that that is what it was.

I am quite pleased at this development, although I wonder how well we will actually do given our track record for assuming we are GREAT at something only to find out that we are only wonderful relative to the others around our neighbourhood. Will still be an interesting experience however. Wish I had the time/excess funds to go to Germany as my visa is still valid.

According to the official Nigerian World Cyber Games (Wow! I don't believe I just typed that) website, the games available for representation by us are - Need for Speed, Age of Empires, Warcraft and Fifa 08. If I had seen anything on Halo 2/3, I might have actually considered going on a training regime with a team in order to see about participating. Even if we get our asses handed to us over there (which is most likely), it would have been very fun.

The Lagos Gaming Scene

I realise that I haven't really gone into what the gaming scene is like in Nigeria at all. Beyond a bit of a rant regarding prices of software over here, nothing else has been highlighted. I am going to attempt to address that in a series of posts.

Most of the gamers I know can be split up into two groups. The current-gen gamers and the last-gen gamers.

The current-gen gamers I interact with regularly own Xbox 360s. If anything, I would say that it is their console of choice for all things game related. Very few of them have ps3s and even fewer have Wiis.

Oddly enough, most of the media/general stores here stock PS3 and Wii games and very few Xbox 360 games. The playstation and Nintendo brand names are really stuck in the heads of most of the buyers for these stores, and they do not really consider the 360 relevant as such. Most of them do not even realise that the 360 can also play dvds and act as a media center. It is just in some limbo space as far as they are concerned. A strictly gaming machine with games they do not understand. The playstation has grand theft auto and pro evolution. Even though these games are also available on the 360 they do not really register this as far as being a reason to buy more 360 games. Why would anyone want to buy a 360 anyway? The PS3 is obviously better.

This makes gamers resort to a place called Alaba Market, an area in Lagos that is known as the center of Igbo traders in the state and also the HQ of anything to do with electronics.


These guys get everything, and if they haven't gotten it yet, they can get it for you. Plasma/LCD High Definition TVs at the cheapest price you are likely to get in the country as well as all sorts of gadgets, music etc. They are also the center of the pirating scene for videogames, music and movies. But, anyway, even though Alaba Market has a lot more choice for the 360 and any other system owner, it is still quite limited.

I just recently got on the current-gen train so I am still wading through all the options available to me in Lagos, but from what I gather from them, it is essentially a sort of pot luck for games, and most people simply wait until a friend of theirs, or they are travelling abroad and get their games that way.

Apart from the current-gen gamers, there are the last-gen gamers who mainly play on the ps2 and xbox. Most of their games are pirated. A pirated game for either of these consoles goes for as little as N1500 (roughly $12) if you are in the right place, and I have never heard of them passing N3000 (roughly $25). This is well within the budget of most people who are still in university or secondary school. It also makes them focus on a few games at a time in order to eke out as much as possible from it. Most of the people that are in this group almost never buy original games. In the stores here, an original Playstation 2 game goes for about N9,000 (about $75) a pop, and the choice is still quite limited. Mainly football and AAA titles like GTA, Pro Evolution, FIFA and Tomb Raider. You occasionally find non-big name titles like Rez or Panzer Dragoon Orta for relatively cheaper (N6000 which is about $50), but these are very few and far between.

Personally, I have never bought a pirated game before, and I don't think I ever will, but it is not hard to understand why most gamers in this country do buy them. There is no official distribution network for our country and no support for any of our consoles or games, so we are very easy prey for the sharks that travel to the states or the uk, pick up games at retail price (most likely bargain bins) and bring them back with their profit, flight ticket, and other expenses tacked on to them. They buy a brand new PS2 game for at worst $40 and sell it to us for $75. What can one do about that? If there was a way for them to buy the games at the dealer prices, we would have a much better deal and it would hopefully give people more of an incentive to pick up original titles. I am not going to hold my breath for that to happen though.

Another thing that struck me when I came back was how much stuff you have to get in order to support your console lifestyle. A stabiliser is a must as is a UPS if you don't want our beloved PHCN (Power Holding Company Nigeria Limited) to mess you up in the middle of a dungeon or mission. I still haven't gotten a UPS for my consoles and I feel the pinch every time I have to replay an entire section because the the 'light went'. It's made me hate games with poorly placed save- and checkpoints even more now, and I really do appreciate my DS.

Actually, this brings me to another topic, that of portable gaming. You would think that in a country with an unstable power supply, over-priced games and not much disposable income that portable gaming would have taken off dramatically. Unfortunately, this doesn;t seem to be the case, admittedly this is based purely on my own limited experience, but I rarely meet people outside the current-gen set that own portable consoles, and even when they do, it is a PSP and it is being used as a very big iPod and storage device. Odd that. I think this has to do with the perception that portable gaming isn't as good as home console/PC gaming simply because the graphics they are capable of are not that great compared to the home consoles, and they are mainly filled with 'kiddy' games like pokemon and patapon. Then again, it could also be because getting pirated games onto a PSP is a lot easier than doing the same with a DS. Hell, I once went into a game store in the complex where my office is and saw a friend of mine downloading games from the store's laptop onto his memory stick for his PSP. I do not know whether they were charging for this service or they were just giving him free games though.

I am hoping to help try and change the perception of portable gaming being limited by organising some gaming get-togethers focused around more than just home console gaming. Will update on the site once I see how that goes.

This brings me neatly to the end of this topic. Hopefully, I will be able to write about our Halo gaming days. I will also try and take some pictures of the next one (if it happens) and if we play some Halo 3, maybe even some videos!

EDIT: Made some grammatical changes and tweaks here and there.

First Post!

Woohoo! I get to say that once more. After several abortive/miscarried attempts at keeping a blog, I am here again...maybe this one will last?

Anyways, I was inspired to make this post after reading a post by the always insightful Chris Plante of Hard Casual over at gamesetwatch - link. It made me think about my whole plan to make videogames once I had settled down in Nigeria. The 'settling down' period has been going on for the last oooh 3 years and 6 months now, and it doesn't seem like I have made any head way at all into game development. Well, I am going to sit down and try again. So, this blog is going to have my game development exploits, as well as commentary on various games I have played or even some game design theory, and some other arty stuff.

Anyways, do rss and let's see if I can keep you interested!