PEOWW Awards 2011:  Writer’s Choice.

2011.  What a year.  I thought it was going to be two thousand and beleven given how gash the previous two years were for gaming but overall it’s been, as Tori Amos would warble, a pretty good year.  Instead of the usual vote ‘em up awards nonsense, the PEOWW write-oh-staff have assembled (like Voltron) to give you their votes for this year’s awards.  But don’t get two comfortable because BLEOWW we’ve got rid of every category apart from DKADEOWW the best and worst games of the year because otherwise it gets to unwieldy to read and because you know that Bobby Kotdeath is always going to be our Cunt of the Year and that Sony will always be our LOL of the Year.  So with no further ado, we present the 2011 PEOWW Awards-o-tron!

Rich

Game of the Year – Saints Row 3

An open-world gangster game getting my vote was never a likely prospect but Saints Row 3 was a truly special game.  Losing the drab anchor of reality that pinned GTAIV to floor, Saints Row 3 is a sugar-frenzied caffeine bomb of a game that combines spectacular action, relentless pacing and genuinely funny humour into a game that arguably has more impact than anything I’ve ever played.

Add to that the excellent co-op play, awesome soundtrack and excellent story and side missions and you’ve got a game that is unashamedly ridiculous but all the more fun for it.  Perhaps the best recommendation I can give you is that after Saints Row 3, Skyrim seemed just too pedestrian for me to persist with it. 

We’re not doing second places but it’d be Dead Island.  Third would be Mindjack.  Shut the fuck up, it’s good.

Worst Game of the Year – Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon

This was supposed to be awesome.  Earth Defense Force 2017 remains one of our favourite games and Vicious Cycle were saying all the right things during the pre-release hype.  EDF but with online co-op?  Just the thought of it made us cum oil all over our dads.

Unfortunately, Vicious Cycle lived up to their weak softography with a barely finished, botch-job of a game.  Everything was smaller than before.  The enemies, the levels, the destruction.  It was just so underwhelming and when the game abruptly finishes just fifteen levels in, you know that they ran out of time and ideas but decided to release this lemon anyway.  They then extended out a mere three hour long game to two hundred hours thanks to a set of unbelievably joyless achievements.  Absolute shit.  Vicious Cycle, you are all cunts.

Saints Row 3

Gareth

Game of the Year – Skyrim

Deus Ex entertained me with its stealth gameplay, Dark Souls made me feel like a true warrior with its unforgiving nature, but my Game of the Year 2011 has to go to Skyrim. I have to admit this came as a surprise to me, I wasn’t even necessarily going to get it at launch until a friend’s excitement for it transferred to me. Oblivion was good, but to me Skyrim is something else.

The world is more beautiful in many ways. I remember first seeing waterfalls, geysers and salmon swimming up stream and I just had to stop and look for a moment. In a linear game it would have meant nothing to me, but in such a massive world these touches just made it all the more believable. I still haven’t finished the main story but I have experienced so many other stories which could easily be considered main stories in their own right, some long, some short. The skill trees allow you to build a character as you want, and there are plenty of levels in the game allowing you to dabble in other skills if you want. The UI can be a bit slow and cumbersome and the 3D map isn’t the easiest thing to navigate but despite these things I cannot put the game down.

I’m over a hundred hours in and it still feels like I’ve barely scratched the surface and I’d be happy to spend another hundred with Skyrim. Then maybe create a magic based character and start all over again.

Worst Game of the Year – The First Templar

L.A. Noire disappointed me immensely thanks to its repetitive missions and Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon was just boring as hell but the worst game I have played this year has to be The First Templar.

I’d heard that despite its low budget there was fun to be had with this game and with two player co-op I couldn’t resist. I wish I had. It’s a very basic hack and slash game with low quality graphics and voice work. That doesn’t bother me, especially as it’s co-op. What we also found out to our displeasure though was that the game hadn’t been thought through properly, with game saves only applying to player one (so any cumulative achievements were a no no for player two), broken objectives, repetitive enemies and forced stealth sections which simply do not work.

It wasn’t without its charm. You could buy skills with points you acquired throughout the game which is always nice and, um…well I guess the combat could be fun sometimes. Even in co-op this game was pretty painful to experience, and to help each other my friend and I went through it twice thanks to the funky achievement situation. Just avoid it, it may be boring but at least EDF works on the most basic level.

Skyrim

Lurk

Game of the Year – Saints Row 3

Whilst recently I’ve been engrossed in Skyrim, it is a slow burner of a game taking a fair amount of time to get going. Saints Row 3 throws you into the deep end with some great set pieces to begin with before slowing the game down ever so slightly. In the GTA games the most fun you could have was when you put in cheat codes to spawn a tank and just went around blowing everything up. In Saints Row 3, that is a side mission. Pure fun from beginning to end and just sticks two fingers up to more poe-faced games in the process.

Worst Game of the Year – Earth Defence Force: Insect Armageddon

Earth Defence force 2017 is a great game that whilst being very flawed in the technical department, was a lot of fun and had a good variety of enemies. The sequel, Insect Armageddon flips this and is more polished technically, yet lacks a lot of the fun and vision of the prior game. The game is incredibly short and gets very repetitive, which is some feat since the game can be completed in a few hours. Overall it was such a disappointment, because it lacked the vision of the prior game.

Earth Defence Force: Insect Armageddon

Danny

Game of the Year – Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together

Wait what? A PSP game?! Yeah technically this is a re-release of an old Playstation 1 RPG but to my knowledge it never reached our country until this year and boy have we been missing out.

Tactics Ogre is a turn based strategy RPG that allows for a lot of customisation and has an interesting story with multiple paths with wildly different outcomes depending on what choices you make. It a meaty RPG like this that really shows off the strengths of the PSP as a device for playing slower paced role playing games, the type of games I really love hence why this is my personal game of the year.

Worst Game of the Year – Sword of the Stars II

URGH! what a absolute clusterfuck! I am not sure who is at fault here between the developer who could not make its development milestones to the publisher who released that game regardless of it quality just so that they could claw some money back but this has easily been the most disappointing game of the year and will be remembered as one of the worst video game launches for some time to come.

To make things worst I was REALLY looking forward to this game and this game was barely playable on my PC for months due to menu unresponsiveness to the point where I could not even start the game even though the recommended spec stated my PC should be able to play the game with ease. Further more the game lacked (and still lacks some might say) a lot of the core features promised while it was being sold on steam.

You want to know what the worst thing was? There was barely any coverage of this shame of a release. A lot of people could and probably did get suckered in to picking this up because at the time there where much more important games to be covering so nobody took notice of this game’s terrible launch. This game is going in to v1.0 soon, it still won’t be everything that they promised and my faith in Kerbeross and Paradox Entertainment will be tarnished forever despite both releasing great games in the past.

Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together

Mike

Game of the Year – Arkham City

Work’s been sidetracking me but I might as well wax lyrical about Arkham City for Game of the Year. It was a surprisingly close call between that and Deus Ex but the way Rocksteady have built upon an existing framework has just pipped it. They’ve added to an already impressive combat system by adding more gadgets, counters and moves whilst still maintaining the DC fanboy feel of the original.

The world is brimming with almost too much to do but it speaks to my completionist nature and doesn’t feel too long in the tooth. Its a remarkably accomplished experience that even the Catwoman DLC couldn’t sour.

Worst Game of the Year – Duke Nukem Forever

Duke Nukem Forever took fourteen years and THOUSANDS of individuals to develop and, when it fell to Gearbox, there was some optimism. Having just come off Borderlands I hoped they could add some colour to a potential painting of smeared shit. What we got was an outdated clusterfuck. There seems to be very little of the Gearbox charm to this and it looks as if they’ve just put it out on shelves. You’re better than this. Chinese Democracy is better than this.

Duke Nukem Forever

Mark

Game of the Year – Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Yes I know Skyrim is so good I’d happily elope with it and have it’s little Dovakin babies but I’m all for supporting the underdog so my vote goes to Deus Ex: Human Revolution. It’s not easy to follow a game as good as Deus Ex (Invisible War tried and failed spectacularly) but HR managed it not just in terms of gameplay with it’s potent mix of 3rd person stealth, 1st person shooting and hacking mini game but more importantly with a well written script and unique atmosphere. We’ve all seen upteen number of Blade Runner clone cityscapes filled with gray concrete and garish neon, HR avoids such obvious tropes and mixes amber tinged renaissance aesthetics with 80′s style cyberpunk to make it look at once familiar but original. The writing too takes familiar cyberpunk concepts like the loss of individual humanity and the rise of corporate dominance and refreshes them with such poise and depth that you’ll gladly talk to every character you meet not just to find the scores of excellent side missions but to just hear what they have to say about a world that’s so detailed and well drawn you could happily replay multiple times and still not see every outcome and unexpected twist. Sure Skyrim may be bigger but playing HR is more akin to reading a well written novel from cover to cover as opposed to flicking through an encyclopaedia and being left with a rough idea of what it was about.

Worst Game of the Year – Earth Defence Force: Insect Armageddon

I managed to lap this in less time than I’ve have extended bowl movements which is appropriate as it’s a steaming pile of shit.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Paul

Game of the Year – L.A. Noire

Given my somewhat fleeting dalliance with games this year, I was, for the most part, lucky enough to avoid encountering anything that actively offended me. But with Skyrim currently proving itself to be a disappointingly buggy hash-job of a game – but by no means worthy of lemon candidacy – selecting my game of the year has proven to be more troublesome than I’d initially anticipated.

It’s with some surprise therefore that I’ve ended up singling out L.A. Noire, Team Bondi’s undeniably flawed but entirely playable noire ‘em up released back in May. While it appeared to receive little more than a collective shrug from a large proportion of gamers, no doubt deterred by its emphasis on slow paced, well-executed storytelling rather than punchy thrills, it’s a game that admirably substituted pace for tension, often building up to some wonderfully outlandish action set pieces, which more than justified the drawn out build up.

It was the game’s ghoulishly nasty crime sequences, however, along with the outstanding use of facial mapping technology and a genuine sense of intrigue that created the big draw, combining together to form a truly immersive experience, much more nuanced, mature and wilfully intelligent than anything that has preceded it. The naysayers will argue that it’s little more than a glorified cut scene, but this was perhaps the first time that video games and cinema had legitimately collided in something other than a Uwe Boll car crash sort of way, and that was a genuinely impressive sight to behold.

LA Noire

Matthew

Game of the Year – Dark Souls

Despite the odd decision to use peer-to-peer rather than dedicated servers (like in Demon’s Souls) which results in the whole experience being less stable and endless “SUMMONING FAILED” messages, Dark Souls has one of the most engrossing and unique multiplayers you’ll ever play. It has one of the best melee combat system since…well, Demon’s Souls. One wrong move and you’re sent all the way to the last activated checkpoint minus all the souls you’ve collected so far, die again after that and you’ve lost the souls forever. The never-ending threat of possible invasions from other players coupled with the gloomy art style and clever use of ambient sound brings a constant sense of dread and an almost unparalleled, tense atmosphere that few other games rival.

Worst Game of the Year – Uncharted 3

As pretty as the game looks, the gameplay is still damn near identical to the first game in the series and it wasn’t exactly stellar to begin with. Same endless set-pieces of caves/buildings/vehicles falling apart around Nathan Drake as he attempts to shamble his way out. Same identikit bullet-sponge enemies who flinch at a point blank shotgun blast to the face. Same horrendous Gears of War-lite combat that they’ve somehow managed to make even worse than the previous game due to completely messing up the aiming controls (so much so that they actually invited fans of the series to their studios to help fix said awful aiming). The series needs to be put to bed for a good few years before reinventing itself.

Dark Souls

Colin

Game of the Year – Driver: San Francisco

Ashamedly only purchased when the price fell to acceptably low levels, Driver: San Francisco has to be a major sleeper hit. Take a massive freeroam driving only environment with missions, races, challenges and the inexplicable ability to possess any vehicles you see – much like Burnout Paradise, sans the vehicular possession.

Just dicking about, going for a ride, doing some stunts, ‘leaping’ into cops chasing some robbers and best of all listening to the brilliant (and very funny) dialogue Tanner must listen to from his passengers while trying to run the bad guys down all gels together to make a very enjoyable experience.

It’s like being in your own buddy cop movie, but not half as shit as it sounds.

Worst Game of the Year – Nintendo 3DS

Adopting a new console on day one is always a risk but when a company themselves effectively leave its success in the hands of third party devs they really are accessing for a failure of epic proportions.

There are some good games out for the 3DS, don’t get me wrong but in the budding early years of any machine, to receive such lacklustre support from the creator is pretty inexcusable.

A further slap in the face from the sizable price drop didn’t make things any easier. Nintendo tried to compensate the early adopters with 10 free NES and 10 free GBA games but this just isn’t the same as cash in your pocket.

I am hopeful for 2012 and even a few gems at the end of the year in the form of Mario Kart and World still gives me hope, don’t screw it up again Nintendo, we need real games.

Ian

Game of the Year – Portal 2

For me the game of the year was Portal 2. It arrived in February after the usual Yuletide nonsense release schedule but  I grabbed it a couple of months after the hype had died down and discovered what all the fuss had been about.  It took the core of the first game and massively expanded it, both conceptually and narratively.  It’s still a physics puzzler and you still feel like you’re getting a mental workout when you come up with the solution to solve each individual test chamber.  No such ‘cake is a lie’ nonsense this time, more what purports to be an escape from Aperture Science.

The cast expanded beyond the first game’s Glados with the jovial Cave Johnson (voiced by J.K. Simmons) and Wheatley (voiced by Stephen Merchant) being the two significant additions.  The story, such as it was, could pass you by if you concentrated just on the puzzles in the game. But if you scratched the surface you could unearth a sprawling backstory complementing the Half-Life universe. The gameplay supplemented the simple place two portals concept of the first game by introducing three ‘gels’ that changed the physical properties of a surface.  To wit: repulsion gel makes surfaces bouncy, propulsion gel that accelerates your progress and finally conversion gel that makes surfaces previously unreceptive to portals become so. These three extra variables open up a whole new aspect to the already great spatial awareness puzzles the game has.

Valve surpassed themselves by including a whole separate co-op campaign for those that like the social aspect of gaming. This proved to be a stroke of genius as it was some of the most fun I’ve had gaming in a long time.  Some of the test chambers look impossible to begin with, the iterative deduction required being some of the most rewarding moments I’ve ever experienced gaming.  Now that it’s cheaply available you really have no excuse not to play this game, especially since there’s free co-op DLC available too.

Portal 2

Jason

Game of the Year – Skyrim

While games like Deus Ex, Iron Brigade and Saints Row 3 deserve honourable mentions it was only ever going to be Skyrim for my game of the year. Just a fantastic game that ticks all the boxes and has a massive game world to explore.

Worst Game of the Year – Various

I played too many lemons this year to peg just one. Duke Nukem, Dungeon Siege 3, Child of Eden, Bodycount and Call of Juarez:The Cartel all shit. oh and homefront also terrible. This year was really front loaded with tonnes of garbage.

Eurogamer Expo 2011

Rich

Surprisingly, last week PEOWW managed to get off of the couch, assemble a few of the writers and get our arses down to the Eurogamer Expo in Earls Court, London. The expo ran for four days and dozens of titles were exhibited. We’ll leave the PR stuff to sites that can string together complete sentences without calling anyone a cocksucker and will do what we do best: talk about the games.

PS Vita

Blagging our way in with press passes, we had a choice right away. Join the OnLive queue, dive into Skyrim or Batman: Arkham City or get onto the PS Vita. Whichever one we chose would mean a shitload of queueing for the others and we’re not the type to queue. The biggest scoop would seem to be the PS Vita so we dived into that queue. Besides, it had the cutest PR chicks and if you’ve ever been to a games expo before it’s usually 95% sweaty men, 5% fat chicks with blue hair so breaking up that monotony is always a good idea.

The Sony folks made you pick a card like a sort of evil Derren Brown that can’t market a console to save its lives anymore. Pick a card and that’ll be the game you get to try out. Two of us went in. Andy got Wipeout and I got some shit called Little Deviants. Gutted. It wasn’t even a game about Karen Matthews other twenty kids.

However, the game actually turned out to be a brilliant showcase for the Vita’s numerous control setups. It started out with a mode that played a little like Marble Madness except that you use the touch pad on the back of the console to create hills and waves that roll the ball around. Initially it was ridiculously tricky but it gets more intuitive as you go along. The pad itself was extremely responsive and the potential for genuinely new gameplay ideas is huge.

They followed it up with modes that use the touch screen, tilt controls and of course the standard analog and buttons setup. The analog sticks (yes, not nubbins anymore) felt great if a little loose (in a PS3 pad kind of way) certainly better than the original PSP nubbins and, for my money, better than the 3DS analog slider. A quick go on Wipeout confirmed that these controls are perfectly capable of handling action games.

With decent analog controls and the console quality graphics, those of you who want to try out the PS3 exclusives but can’t be arsed with a PS3 may well want to wait on this.

Arkham City had some of the biggest queues at the Expo.

Get ready to burn me as a heretic but I didn’t get the mass love-in of Batman: Arkham Asylum. Strip out the Batman flavouring and it just seemed like any number of roaming beat em ups, a genre that is ten-a-penny on consoles these days. That said, the E3 previews of Batman: Arkham City looked interesting, especially with the outdoor sections and so this was my first port of call on the second day.

After too much cutscene bollocks (you only get ten minutes on this before they kick you off) you finally get into the action. The combat was much as expected with lots of fast flowing fighting that, as with the first game, seems to play itself – a feeling that was confirmed when Paul and Gareth turned up and I was able to continue fighting whilst looking at them and talking.

However, the free-roaming grappling and gliding outside in the city was very entertaining, echoing Crackdown to some degree. Fans of the original won’t be disappointed and Arkham City may even win over some new fans as well.

Gareth Dark Souls I never got around to completing Demon’s Souls. I reached the third area and someone invaded my game and despite me managing to fight him off and kill him I was so annoyed that on my first attempt at a new dungeon some random attacked me that I stopped playing. However, I’m looking forward to Dark Souls and I managed to get a go on the demo. I can’t tell you everything that happens in the demo because I took over from someone else who’d played a bit so I don’t know what I missed in the beginning and neither did I finish it. I was fighting my way through waves of skeletons before three showed up (I’d only fought two at a time before this) and a giant one as well who killed me in one swing so I let someone else have a go. From that description though if you’re a fan of Demon’s Souls you should be happy. The controls seem to be exactly the same (hard to say for sure because the demo was running on a 360) with attack and defence mapped to the shoulder buttons and when you die you leave a little glowy patch that you have to return to to regain your full strength. Being a demo the RPG parts weren’t that obvious but I have no reason to believe that is any different to Demon’s Souls either. Seriously, ‘spiritual’ sequel my arse. This is Demon’s Souls again, but also on 360. Fans of the original and 360 owners who like tough, unforgiving, but ultimately rewarding games rejoice. There was also a giant raven/crow thing. It didn’t attack me, it was just perched above me but I imagine it was there for a reason and I’m looking forward to finding out what that reason is early next month. Ninja Gaiden 3 With Itagaki not at the helm of the new Ninja Gaiden I was both a little worried and hopeful for Ninja Gaiden 3. Ninja Gaiden 2 seemed a little too harsh to the point of being cheap and judging by interviews that seemed to be Itagaki’s goal, so with him now gone and Yosuke Hayashi in charge maybe the difficulty would still prove a challenge but a fair one. On the other hand what if Itagaki gave Ninja Gaiden its X factor? The thing that made it fun despite it punishing you at every turn. From the demo I played my fears are quelled for now. QTEs have been introduced but they aren’t awful and are generally intuitive, the gore has been toned down (though it’s still very gory) but it’s far more common for your opponent to writhe around in pain now and even beg for their lives (there’s talk of trying to humanise Ryu Hayabusa by making his actions have consequences) and you no longer pick up glowing orbs to replenish your health or charge your special attack, that seems to happen just by killing and when Ryu’s arm glows it’s ready to pop. The core gameplay is still a lot of fun though and all Ryu’s moves seemed to connect with a satisfying amount of force. The camera swings about quite a bit which adds to the excitement (although it does feel like the game is playing itself at times) but as is the norm for these types of games you will often be attacked from off screen. I was playing on Normal mode and it seemed very easy, I completed the demo having been hit only a few times and when I was it didn’t do much damage but even in the demo there are higher difficulties so Master Ninja fans should be catered for as well hopefully when the final game comes out. Now I can safely say I’m looking forward to it. Resident Evil: Revelations Having only dabbled with the 3DS at the event my first true experience was with Resident Evil: Revelations. The first thing I noticed was how quickly my eyes adjusted to the 3D compared to other games, even if the effect wasn’t so obvious as something like Zelda. The second thing was the graphics, which are excellent and an obvious relative to Resident Evil 5. I took a second to adjust to the controls thanks to the size of the handheld itself but if you’ve played a modern Resi title you should be right at home here. Not that this seems to be exactly the same as that, ammo was in very short supply in the demo and the enemies that featured (Silent Hill style beige things with massive arms and floppy heads) soaked up bullets like nobody’s business. There were also a few puzzles squeezed into the short demo (using the stylus, natch) and you had to search the area pretty thoroughly in order to progress. This is obviously an attempt at bringing back the old school style of Resi, despite having the over the shoulder camera angle and high precision aiming, if you’re low on ammo you’re going to be forced to flee at times which should hopefully keep tension high. It’s too early to say how successful this will be but Resident Evil: Revelations remains the one 3DS game that truly interests me and hopefully it works, is a success and forges a path for new/old style Resi games on consoles as well. Hands on with Mass Effect 3. Mass Effect 3 RPGs never work as demos, how can you give anyone a sense of progression in a fifteen minute demo? You can’t, so demos tend to concentrate on the combat which isn’t usually anything special. Mass Effect 2 blurred the lines between third person shooter and RPG (a little too much in my opinion) and it seems Mass Effect 3 is going to continue that. There were three choices of class in the demo, Soldier, Engineer and Sentinel with Liara and Garrus as your squad mates. The demo charges you with protecting a female Krogan as she ascends in a lift from waves of Cerberus troops. Mordin is also there barking advice to you and telling you if the Krogan is in any danger. You fight off three waves, climbing ladders between each wave to keep up with the lift before a giant mech strolls out for you to take on. Once that is done the demo ends. All in all it felt like ME2. As per usual someone had left the demo unfinished so I picked up the controller and was playing as a Soldier class Shepard and I found it quite easy to play it as a run and gun shooter (not how I’ll play the final game) but obviously with the difficulty options that will be available in the final product this won’t be such an issue. Despite Mass Effect 2 not being a slouch in the looks department ME3 looks considerably better and the upgrade trees also seem to be more in depth than ME2, with the ability to upgrade specials in different ways so the balance between gameplay styles will hopefully be spot on with the final game of the trilogy. It seems generally speaking things are moving in the right direction in the right areas, and therefore, roll on March 2012.

Up next was Ridge Racer Unbounded. This straightforward demo didn’t stray too far from the usual formula and would have been easier if I wasn’t still in Burnout Paradise mode (having maxed that out a couple of weeks ago) and determined to race in the oncoming lane. One very nice touch was the projected score and position information against buildings, Splinter Cell: Conviction style. If you’re looking for an arcadey, extremely zippy racer, this looks like a decent bet.

Other demo machines hidden in the dark corners of the venue were;

Inversion (a very standard third-person shooter that would have bored us to tears except that it had a tricky gravity mechanic to it. It still looked pretty average though. Dead Space did it better and that was dull as pisswater. The demo level was a rocky, lava-based affair so they’ve got the ripping off Gears of War thing down too.

Another Tekken game. Possibly the most underwhelming thing at the Expo.

Tekken Hybrid (actually Tekken Tag Tournament HD, the ‘Hybrid‘ name refers to the fact that it is bundled with some bullshit Tekken anime on the same Blu Ray disc) was astonishingly average in all respects. Playing exactly the same as the original Tekken Tag Tournament but with hi-def graphics that seem to be hi-def versions of the original designs and therefore very ordinarily and quite dated. We guessed that the Hybrid name refered to some sort of PSP cross-over functionality (hence the plain graphics) but nope it’s just gash. All the characters seemed to be present and correct but Tekken‘s been irrelevant for years now.

Supremacy MMA may well have been the most pointless game of the show. As with real mixed martial arts, it’s all about the UFC. EA tried, and failed hard, to enter the octagon with EA MMA and got tapped out effortlessly and now Supremacy MMA is having a go with a roster of nobodies. The combat itself was stripped down and fairly ordinary with stiff character models exhibiting no real sense of impact or damage.

PES2012 and FIFA were present as they are due to go head to head over the next couple of weeks. Both games have demos on the two proper consoles but we took a quick look at PES2012, having written it off from the pretty awful demo. It was seemingly the full version and so we (Andy and I) played as North West London (QPR) and Northwich C (Norwich City) battling to half-time before getting bored. Unfortunately PES still feels sluggish and mechanical. The lack of team names is understandable but the fact that they make no effort on the kits (when given absolute carte blanche to do whatever they like outside of the licensing) is still pretty lazy.

Paul Weedon Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater 3D I’ve always been of the opinion that console to handheld transitions never really work all that well. Sure, the Gameboy Advance had its occasional blips of success, but otherwise I remain fairly sceptical about the whole thing. Sadly, MGS3’s transition doesn’t look as though it’s set to do much to waylay my scepticism, as, from what I could glean from my very fleeting encounter, it’s a bit of a shambles. The problem here certainly isn’t an aesthetic one. Visually at least, Snake Eater on the 3DS is up to scratch and the 3D elements, albeit eye-breakingly disconcerting, seem to open themselves up well to the game’s jungle environments. The problem here lies with the fact that this is clearly a game designed to be played on a console with a pad, and the 3DS, in spite of its intuitive design, simply just isn’t kitted out properly to accommodate the complex control scheme of a Metal Gear Solid title. Even in a slightly dumbed down format the gameplay is incredibly cumbersome, a fact that isn’t helped by the fact that Konami seem to have inexplicably retained many of the camera issues that blighted the PS2 version back in 2004. Given that Sony’s analogue arrangement leaves much to be desired, it’s not often that I’m quick to praise them in terms of their game-related output, but to their credit at least the DualShock makes Snake Eater vaguely playable. I suppose to some extent Konami are to be commended for trying something as technically ambitious as this at such an early stage in the 3DS’ lifespan, but, for the time being at least, it doesn’t look as though that gamble is about to pay off any time soon. All these other games can fuck off. All we really want is for Future Soldier to be good. Ghost Recon: Future Soldier By far one of the more exciting things we had a chance to play at Eurogamer, the long awaited sequel to one of the best games on the 360 is shaping up to be something very special indeed. Sadly, we only got a chance to play a portion of one of the adversarial modes, but this nevertheless offered sufficient insight in to what we can expect from the game’s co-op modes. And, let’s face it, that’s all we really care about here at Peoww. Everything we’ve come to expect from the series is present and vastly improved. To this day Advanced Warfighter remains a perfectly good looking game, an impressive feat given that it’s nearly five years old now, and whilst the sequel didn’t exactly offer up much in terms of visual upgrades, Future Soldier looks set to deliver that in spades. New additions include an intuitive multiplayer cover system, much needed for co-op but previously lacking in the Advanced Warfighter titles, whilst Ubisoft appear to have taken a leaf out of every FPS on the market right now and added the ability to run. Small additions they well may be, but overall the game is looking considerably more polished than its forebears. Whilst previous entries in the series suffered from a visibly slower framerate when it came to the multiplayer modes, Future Soldier has upped the ante, now delivering a consistently lovely array of visuals in keeping with the game’s single player modes. Overall, it’s all shaping up rather nicely. Our only real gripe is that it’s not due out for another six months or so.

Shockingly we gave up on Skyrim to join the PS Vita queue (despite being literally five mins from getting a go) but we were stood right by the demo consoles and it was immediately evident that it’s Oblivion but prettier. With a sword in one hand and a flame in the other, the combat seemed to be what you’d expect from an Elder Scrolls game. Whatever happens, we’re all over this when it gets released.

One game that we were able to walk right up to was Rage, the latest thing from iD (the chaps behind Quake, Doom and Wolfenstein).  That was thanks to them having a lot of demo machines set up but also down to a slight lack of interest from the floor.  The demo had three sections to it and after wandering around one of them trying to find something to kill, we settled on an arena-styled level that played and looked a little like the risible Mad Moxxy DLC from Borderlands.

Rage is a fast, post-apocalyptic FPS with silky smooth graphics but the setting looks dull, no matter how much grunt you put into the graphics engine, and the gameplay was tired and generic.  Three parts Metro 2033 to two parts Borderlands but somehow less fun than both those games.  Early impressions for this game are that it’s what happens when programming geeks try to be funny.  We’ll be avoiding it.

A potential ‘game of the Expo’ was the long-awaited Saints Row: The Third. The sequel to our favourite gangster sandbox-em-up, SR3 looked familiar while ramping up the action with more customisation options, some incredibly inventive weaponary (a giant dildo and laser-targeted airstrikes) and some crazy finishing moves in the melee combat.  There wasn’t any sense of mission structure in the demo but the core gameplay was very impressive indeed.  If you’ve played the previous games, this doesn’t stray too far from the series but the game will be looking to put the pressure on GTA5 from the get-go when it comes to all-out fun.

Cale Batman: Arkham City Well despite only getting twenty minutes of playtime (and about half of that spent watching unskippable cut scenes, grrr!) I reckon this could well be in for a solid ten out of ten when we get to play the full game. Arkham City is both huge in terms of scale but in detail with rooftops filled with Riddler challenges, destroyable security cameras and roaming gangs giving out tit bits of information about side quests and general happenings. Best bit: Harley Quinn’s reapperance. The queue for Battlefield 3. No thanks. Battlefield 3 Wow, this was a big disappointment. The PC version is looking teh sex despite having to use EA’s shitty Origin software but the 360 version still has the same old Battlefield control problems with lag input and botched stick acceleration both rearing their ugly heads while the visuals looked washed out with blocky textures and monochromatic lighting making spotting enemy soldiers the biggest challenge. Best bit: Leaving the EA section to go play GRFS. Ghost Recon: Future Soldier Well after months of no information GRFS finally surfaced to spew molten gaming jizz right in our faces leaving us begging for more. Going against the grain of current games it eschews the run and gun action of Battlefield or Call of Duty for a more considered, tactical model that rewards planning and teamwork rather than ADD reflexes and auto-aim exploitation. Best bit: Slowly flanking around a pack of camping snipers to give ‘em a 9mm enema. Halo: Anniversary Well it’s Halo made all shiny but still filled with the same hateful gameplay that’ll attract horrid cunt players as ever. If you’re the kind of person that knows what MJOLNIR stands for you’ll love this.  Otherwise keep the fuck away. Best bit: Watching some fat fuck get so excited he fell of his stool playing this.

Gareth and Rich on SWOS playing as Welsh and Ukrainian pub sides respectively.

Aside from all these modern efforts, the expo also reserved some space for the chaps from R3PLAY, the Blackpool-based retro expo that we visited last year and is on again in November, and they were exhibiting various retro consoles and handheld devices.  Our personal highlight was Sensible World of Soccer which was running on an Amiga A600.  Horribly clammy joystick aside, the game’s still got it.

There was also a small area reserved for indie developers.  Our indie highlights were the Snake-inspired Hard Lines (available on iOS for both iPods and iPads) which was ridiculously addictive for what was basically Snake with bells and whistles and also Fotonica, a beautiful modern twist on the ‘running man’ genre (the most notable example of which is Canabalt) but in a first-person perspective and with some gorgeous Rez-style graphics.  Check it out HERE.

Ian Ace Combat: Assault Horizon It was the Ace Combat you’re familiar with. There was either a gunship mission (that seemed to oversimplify the helicopter controls to the point of it having kiddie wheels) or a fighter mission in which you take on lots of enemies in ex-Russian jets trying to blow the shit out of Miami or some generic American coastal city. Nice ground detail anyway, but since the game is obsessed with jets and missiles you won’t spend much time looking at the scenery. Maybe it was the shitey Dualshock3, but I didn’t really get on with the controls. You first get into a turning battle with an approaching bogey, only once you’re in close vicinity can you enter what seemed to be an entirely superfluous dogfight mode. This was just a minigame which let you lock your unlimited missiles on for a guaranteed hit. It seemed to be a repetitive affair, the enemies only really differentiated by one designated an ace, although that just meant they turned quicker. I got bored after fifteen minutes and got my free t-shirt with a simple Namco logo plastered over the chest. No doubt the game will be proficient enough when it’s released although if it’s anything like previous releases it’ll be DLCd up the wazoo with all kinds of hentai plastered over the planes. As for the t-shirt, when I went to wear it the next day I was overwhelmed by the stench of chemicals no doubt used for its production so it had to go in the wash before being worn. There’s probably a metaphor of some kind there but I can’t be arsed to come up with it. Mario Kart 3DS It was Mario Kart on the 3DS. It’ll sell shitloads. Well, given how relatively unsuccessful the 3DS has been, it’ll sell reasonably given the lack of buyers. Maybe I’m stuck in the past, but Mario Kart was fantastic on the SNES and everything since (bar the stellar Super Circuit on GBA) has been but a pale imitation. I spent more time playing Mario Kart in the Retro corner of the show than the five minutes I spent on the 3DS incarnation. Meh. Mario Bros 3DS After the watered down bullshit that was New Super Mario Bros and Super Mario Bros Wii, the next decent Mario game after the twin Galaxies (Steve Wiebe need not apply) could well end up being on the 3DS. Again, it’ll sell well but unlike Mario Kart didn’t leave me feeling uninspired. Sure, the camera needs a bit of work, but it could well be a return to form. Although maybe I’m not the target audience ’cause it was reminiscent of Super Mario 64 but without the freedom of movement the N64 classic gave you in 1997. It was around this time that my eyes spazzed out and the game became unplayable. It may have been the fixed position of the console in the demo pod or it may have been the wanky 3D implementation. Either way I’m not convinced on this evidence.

So there you have it. A run-down of a lot of games. There are no real surprises here. The same old franchises and a couple of not very confident looking newcomers. We were disappointed at the no show of Aliens: Colonial Marines and we had our hearts set on finding Vicious Cycle (the fucking no-marks who wrecked the Earth Defense Force series) but they’ve long since given up supporting that fucking lemon.  But with Skyrim, Mass Effect 3 and Saints Row: The Third all looking spiffy, we’re happy enough.  Also, none of us queued up for Modern Warfare 3 because, you know, fuck that bollocks. But we’re happy to tell you that it looked exactly like Modern Warfare 2. Like, exactly.

Ian

Bean Dive pt.1 can be found HERE.

My plans to put some time into the more challenging first achievements prior to July 7th sadly didn’t come to fruition for whatever reason. See, I’m good at this procrastinating lark. However, having a better half who does shift work played into my hands as she worked Friday 8th until 2200 and all day on both Saturday & Sunday following, so some proper headway can be made on these badboys.

Due to my gambit of watching NFL Total Access on Sky Sports, I was successful in my plan of making a sly start to the Dive prior to turning in for the night. First up just after midnight on Thursday was DJ Hero. The purist in me wanted to just get the one achievement before moving on to the next. However the game had other ideas. I skipped the tutorial as is my wont, before diving into the first mix. Got the first achievement by getting an 8x multiplier but since I was on a roll saw out the mix. Then the game hit me with the bête noire of many score whores, a bloody 1 point achievement for finishing my first mix as well as the achievement I’d expected to get first for 5G. I could’ve carried on but for work in the morning so switched off. My own personal hell is an uneven gamerscore set to a Mick Hucknall soundtrack.

30 unstarted retail titles, some good, some bad, all mocking me

Along with breakfast, I made a start on two easy XBLA achievements, Sonic & Knuckles & Age of Booty both gave up a combined 15G with ease. I thought Feeding Frenzy would be another that’d yield quickly, but oh no. With that I went to work.

Eight or so torturous hours passed where all I could think about was which game I’d be tapping up next…

Continuing where I left off, Guitar Hero Metallica was slain with a simple ‘download a free song from GHTunes’ for 5G. I could’ve sung or played a song, but time was of the essence and I still had most of a pile of games to tackle.

Next up was Bayonetta and I can see why it polarises opinion, though I’m not sure how it garnered an Erse 10. Maybe the reviewer likes pain or has a thing for Sarah Palin. Two achievements popped this time (15G), though I could’ve quit to dashboard after just one. I figured my copybook was already blotted by DJ Hero so it didn’t matter anymore.

Revisting Feeding Frenzy garnered a quick 10G after about 10 minutes, easy. Another XBLA title, indie poster-child Limbo was up next. I went the wrong way and got some avatar tat as well as 5G for my trouble.

Following on we had a Peoww source of mirth, Shaun White’s Snowboarding (bLOL – Ed) was inserted in the disc tray. Horrible. One of our erstwhile forumites paid full price for this. He may have even been lead reviewer. Wow, what an incredible error. It takes everything that was great about Amped and ignores it. Horrible. One flung snowball later (15G) and I popped the disc tray with the disc still spinning. Horrible. It’ll take some going to surpass this game with another I’ll want to play even less. Did I say it was horrible? Our 2/10 review back in the mists of time may well have been a trifle generous.

Aqua: Naval Warfare was up next, nothing to do with those annoying Nordic pop types thankfully. More a water based twin-stick shooter. Finished the tutorial, 10G was mine.

Time to move on to MindJack. Overwhelmed by the sudden stench of citrus, I did everything I could to try to skip the interminable opening sequence and the crude control orientation, I was out to dashboard quicker than the game blotted my gamercard with 5G. Cheers for that Squiddy.

A much more promising game was up next, underpublicised racing game Superstars V8 Next Challenge from Italian developer Milestone, fondly remembered by me for their early PC game Screamer. Distributed over here by Codemasters, I’m not hugely surprised SSV8 didn’t get any hype given as it clashes with their own Grid series. Regretfully rather than sampling the gameplay, I went for an easy achievement in watching the credits. They went on for about 5 minutes, thankfully not as long as those for the interminable Guitar Hero II. 9G later (Ha! Take that DJ Hero!), it was time to move on.

Bargain-basement darts title PDC World Championship Darts gave Shaun White a run for its money in the enthusiasm stakes, thankfully my fears were proved wrong as I found myself quite enjoying the game. At least once I’d realised you could stop a throw if you’d Johnny B. Downsed it. Sure, a max looks like a grindy hell, but it’s not hateful like SWSB is. Won my first match against the 16th ranked player for a paltry 5G. The postman only won once though.

I don’t know about you but I’m getting bored of this blow-by-blow account of every damn achievement I got during the dive, so if it’s boring for me god knows how you must feel dear reader.

In conclusion, I decided not to go for Ninety Nine Nights, Blaverage Angels or Naruto: Rise of a Ninja ’cause I had taken on enough games as it it was. That combined with the fact I’d have had to grind to even get the first achievement in each. And in the case of NNN, there was probably a reason why I’d bought it cheap in 2008 and never played it.

Total games played rose from 215 pre-dive to 249 afterwards and my completion ratio dropped from 51.2% to 44%. Going to need a bit of work to tackle this, but at least it’ll stave off my compulsion to buy yet another game for a while.

Will I do it again next year? Possibly. At least now I have the ghosts I’ll address them. Bullet Witch can still fuck off though.

Ian

My name is Ian and I have a problem. Besides being an achievement whore, I’m prone to pick up the odd gaming bargain from time to time. Trouble is, I’ll often forget I’ve even bought it so it can languish in my stack of un-played games for a long time. Brütal Legend (£4), DJ Hero (£15 inc turntable) & several others languish there alongside cheap old sports games like PDC Darts (£1.99) & Trouser Snake’s PGA Tour 07 (98p).

For example, I’ve not started Mass Effect 2 (£5) ‘cause I wanted to mop up the first game before I went to the by-all-accounts superior sequel. Or Super Street Fighter IV (£25 so hardly a bargain) that I’ve not played due to the lame excuse of the 360 direction pad being atrocious. There may be some justification in that point, but not really a valid reason for not playing the damn game.

Then there are the games sent to me by a fellow PEOWW achievement whore, Rich, as he’s done with them and the gamerscore garnered might help me along a little. There’s Dark Void and Jericho to name but two. Microsoft don’t exactly help matters with their deals of the week either, so I have Limbo (600 space bucks) & DR: Case Rosie West (400MSP) on the list with some other XBLA games. To top things off I recently tapped up my friend who works for a certain large software company and I now have promos of Soul Calibur IV & H.A.W.X. 2 amongst others.

“All those games that we have kicking around unstarted are not counting against our completion percentage stats, so we are not particularly motivated to start them.
The idea of the [dive] is to start each and every one of those games, gaining at least one achievement. The shame of having our completion percentage collapse will no doubt shame many of us into rebuilding it as quickly as possible.”

All of which is a great excuse for me to finally address those games I keep putting off starting. This year’s Dive commences on July 7th  so apologies in advance for those of you on my TA friends list as there’s going to be a lot of activity from my direction on the day in question. 28 games so far in fact.

The plan of attack so far is to hop in and hop out right quick just getting an easy achievement and then moving to the next victimgame as efficiently as possible. Bearing in mind that for every Scene-It showering you with achievements like Poundland confetti at a chav wedding, there’s a Monster Madness (played for 5 hours, not one achievement, traded in for profit). Therefore I’ll start on the easier games first then tackling those that require a little more commitment.

The bastard of the bunch looks to be Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII purely ’cause it requires you to beat all 18 campaign missions just to get the first achievement. To fit this into the schedule, some groundwork is required or I’ll be playing this game all day on the 7th. Clearly the only solution is to play the first 17 missions beforehand leaving the final mission and first achievement for Bungie Day.

My grandpa was always on about the WWII, yes.

It’s TA ratio of one belies the chore involved as anyone who plays the game will get it with perseverance. I’m guessing it’s been deleted from a great many game histories since that option became available.

In complete contrast, DJ Hero is a polar opposite when it comes to getting that first achievement, almost rewarding you for starting the game.

10 PRINT "PEOWW IS THE GREATEST"

Saving all game acquisitions I’d got since deciding to do the Dive would be pure folly though so Portal 2 & Child Of Eden were given the proper respect they deserved, the former getting maxed with relative ease thanks to a great co-op partner. The latter is a different matter, no way was I waiting to play it.

My plan is to get home from work (early?) on the 7th and hit up as many games as possible that evening but if  I don’t manage to start them all, I won’t be too crushed. After all, some of the guys on TA who’re also doing it have 100+ games they’re diving with.

Finally, if you want to participate, sign up here!

See you on the flipside if I’ve not lost my mind or caused my 360 to meltdown due to the sheer lemon overload I’ve subjected it to.

Achievement Whore:  A Guide to True Achievements.

Rich

It’s been a while since I’ve written an Achievements Whore article. The reason is that since the last one, a site specialising in that kind of caper has come along and blown away all the competition. True Achievements is a rather clever site which pretty much encompasses every aspect of achievement hunting, making it my favourite one-stop shop for all things whorey.  The site works on a clever premise. Instead of worrying about the gamerscore value of each achievement, True Achievements works out a ratio between the number of people playing the game and the number of people who have that achievement. This gives a value with the easiest achievements resulting in a 1:1 ratio. That is to say that 100% of people who have the game, and have registered on True Achievements, have that achievement.

The ratio gives a multiplier which then is multiplied by the original gamerscore to give an adjusted score (in TA rather than GS if you will).  Having the original gamerscore in the calculation does skew things a little (achievements for Avatar are individually higher than achievements for Dead Rising) but with a little practice you’ll soon be mining enough information from the site to keep Naomi Campbell in whorish rocks for a lifetime.

99% of True Achievers have this achievement giving it a very low ratio. But at 302TA it scores higher than anything in CoD or Dead Rising.

Basic principles.

One unavoidably easy achievement is the Press Start achievement in The Simpsons.  You get this achievement for simply starting the game.  As True Achievements only start counting you as a player when you unlock your first achievement, this achievement has been nabbed by 100% of the people who on TA that have played it.  That gives a 1:1 ratio.  The achievement is worth 5GS which is multiplied by 1 (the TA multiplier) to give a score of 5TA.

One of the most difficult achievements out there is XXL on the game Fight Night Round 4.  This achievement is one of those ‘be the best in the world’ ones where you have to be the number one player online in ranked matches.  Out of 10,073 players on TA, only nine have this achievement giving it a ratio of 33.45 and a TA score of 2509 from an original 75GS.  Pretty frightening but not as frightening as EA being stupid enough to pit their horrendous online community against each other like that.  To put that all in perspective, that one achievement is worth more TA points than you’d get for maxing out EDF, Dead Rising or any of the Call of Duty games.

Getting this achievement involves being the very best in the world at GRAW. Being the very best in the world at GRAW involves being a terrifying twat.

Incurable whores will even check out TA before buying a game in order to ascertain the level of chore involved in maxing it (or in extreme cases, checking that the game’s achievements end in fives or zeroes), but there is much more that the site can do for you.  Here’s PEOWW’s guide to getting the most out of TA.

Getting your whore on.

If you’re looking for cheap achievements, a good place to start is by clicking on ‘Games’ and then ordering the list by ratio or TA score by clicking on ratio, click the ordering button again to order it low to high.  Scroll down to get past the games that have just one or two players on them (those are usually developers) until you get to the likes of Avatar and whatever filth Disney-Pixar have released recently.

Any game in the lower reaches of that list are perfect for crack-addict whoring with most of them being maxable (getting the initial 1000GS) within a day’s play.  Any game that tops out at under 1200TA is ripe for a super easy max.  Over that and you’ll be looking at a little effort for your max, usually a collectathon achievement or some rudimentary online bollocks.

Each game on TA includes a list of achievements, with most of them having a guide attached.  These are submitted by members of the site and vary from idiots telling you what the achievement description says to classic works of whorish art like THIS.  With a little effort, and a membership to a rental company, you can easily increase your gamerscore by 10,000GS

Getting stronger!

When games start hitting over 1300TA, you’re looking at some decent effort for your max.  Horrible tricks include making you play a game twice (Wolverine which tops out at 1300TA exactly), winning more online matches than you’d care to or some kind of relentless grind-o-achievement.

If you’re happy to be a filthy, crackwhore about it all, then stay away from these games or just rinse the easy achievements.  To find them, go into the game on TA and click the list button (see below) to list the achievements.  Then order them by ratio.  Anything under 2:1 is going to be a gimme.

The 'list' button (bottom right).

Those of you who like a little classiness on your gamercard will look to get games like this maxed.  Again, check the achievement guides on each achievement and also the comments within.  These often give extra hints.  Also check the voting on each achievement guide but be aware that some people vote negatively just for fun because, you know, they are cunts.

The 2K Club.

If you want to really put a shine on your TA profile, you need to get serious and nab a few 2000+TA maxes.  These always involve a mixture of skill and chore and are not easy to put down.  Anything from Marvel: Ultimate Alliance to Ninja Blade can be in here.  If you want to see what the main fly in the oitment is, order the achievements by ratio and look at the hardest ones.  Here you’ll find the ‘complete the game on Bastard mode’ or ‘kill everyone ever’ type achievements.  At this point you can expect the number of people who haven’t got the achievement to out-number those who have.

These are doable though.  It’ll take persistence and maybe a few long days of online boost-o-chore, but you’ll get there eventually and you’ll have a nice little something for your trophy cabinet – more on that later.

Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

From 2500TA upwards, you’re looking at something bleak blocking your max attempts.  From ranked match achievements that can’t be boosted to difficulty curves that resemble a typical Stoke pass, games with this kind of TA score often devolve into joyless experiences.  They are doable but they are going to require the sort of dedication that makes playing other games more or less impossible for a while.

A favourite here is what I like to call the ‘stupid fucking achievement where a developer thinks that their piece of shit game will actually be played by anyone online’ achievement. These are pretty common in the mid 2K range on TA.

Ain’t nothing up there but dead folk.

Eventually the TA scores get high enough to suggest that something has gone horribly wrong.  An unachievable achievement will score 0 on the site so that’s not the problem.  These really high scores either indicate that the achievement was once gettable (like old EA games that no longer have online servers) or that it’s just really, really fucking difficult.  If you pick up a game with a TA score over 3500, the odds are you won’t be maxing it.

The piss on your chips.

The ‘all achievements’ list on TA is only available if you register on the site (you should do that anyway) but it allows you to see all the hardest achievements.  These vary from getting thousands of online wins on Armoured Core For Answer, perfect runs through the harmless-sounding Hail To The Chimp, being the best player in the world at Fight Night Round 4, Kane and Lynch and GRAW and a host of secret achievements on Lost Planet 2 which sound like you need autistic super powers to get.

The hardest full-retail maxes on True Achievements. These games are effectively broken (I still want Deathsmiles to get a proper release in the UK though). Spiderman's high ratios are due to it being a new game. Expect it to drop super quickly.

Screw you, Clyde.

Aside from nabbing maxes and avoiding high TA titles, the site also is very useful if you’ve got any ghosts pestering you.  A ghost occurs when you pick up a game, for example Call of Duty 3, and realise you hate its fucking guts.  If you’re lucky, you won’t have scored any achievements and you can delete your game history but if you accidently snagged 10GS before binning that piece of shit, then you’ve got 10/1000 cluttering up your card.  That right there is a gamercard ghost.

TA can help you identify the easiest achievements (list them by clicking the button as shown previously and then click ‘ratio’ at the top of the list to order by ratio) and then you can polish these off in a few hours, turning a ten point ghost into three hundred points of respectability.  I’ve used this technique a few times to quickly exorcise a ghost but I’m not ever going back to Wartech or Lego Bionicle no matter how easy the achievements are because they are irredeemably awful.

The easiest achievements in Prototype. If I ever decide to de-ghost this fucking shoddy Crackdown rip-off, this will guide me.

He did not kill you because you weren’t armed.

One nifty feature of True Achievements is the Trophy Cabinet.  Here you can put in your hardest-earned achievements in order to show off like the whore you are.  But did you know that you can also include entire maxed games as well?  Go to your game list, click on the game you want to show off and there’s a button in the top-left to add the whole game to your trophy cabinet.

Whores will have their trinkets.

Statistical quirk-oh list.

Scouring the huge archive of data that makes up True Achievements reveals some fairly odd quirks and anomalies.  Here’s some of my favourites;

2134 number of people have 5 Day Survivor on Dead Rising but only 1856 have 7 Day Survivor.  That’s quite a few really pissed off people.

301 people fell just short of maxing out Avatar (despite there being absolutely no difficulty involved).

Despite being a fairly innocuous family horror title, Monster Madness has never been maxed thanks to a combination of fucking horrible achievements and some glitched ones.

Stallion83, the legendary reigning champ of True Achievements, has maxed out Blood In The Sand.  Twice.

The Wave 100 achievement on Robotron: 2084 is the hardest XBLA achievement out there. Only 28 people have ever achieved it. Start building bunkers before the rest of their species arrives.

So there you have it, everything you need to get your Paris Hilton on.  Get onto TA, register yourself and bookmark your profile page.  If you really like it then you might want to donate which will give you faster achievement scanners, meaning your conquests will appear on the site a lot faster.  Bonus.  Add to this nifty little automated announcements when you hit GS and TA milestones – as well as a running total of your maxed games –  and you can’t really go wrong.

Perfekt Past: Tony Hawk Pro Skater.

Rich

When asked the question ‘what’s your favourite game?’ any gamer will struggle through two or three choices before picking one and slightly regretting it.  I’m exactly the same.  Resident Evil 4?  Rebelstar 2?  King’s Bounty?  It changes daily for me.  But what about ‘what’s your favourite demo?’

For me, that will always be the demo of Tony Hawk Skateboarding (the European renaming of Tony Hawk Pro Skater).  It came free on the front of some PlayStation rag and I fired it up with as much anticipation as I’d fire up ITV on any given night.  None at all.  A few plays later and I’m awaiting the full game more than anything ever.  I played that demo over and over until I’d mastered the game mechanics as much as possible.  I knew that level like Rihanna knows the back of Chris Brown’s hand.

Elissa Steamer in the warehouse with the skateboard. Probably not the Cluedo solution you were looking for.

The full game didn’t disappoint and I played it to death, beating it with every character and setting all the best scores on the game’s high score table.  Every level, every trick, every hidden tape… I knew everything about the game.  Well, almost everything.  One thing I could never have guessed was that Activision, lords of all that is unholy, would ruin the franchise so badly that a new Tony Hawk release would be as welcome as Tony Hawk releasing fluids into your face and so these days in, a mere decade and a bit after Neversoft’s extreme sports masterpiece I honestly couldn’t give two fucks about what the Birdman does next (either in real life or in virtual form).

The thing is, I just picked up a replacement PSP and, with a little bit of coercion it plays this old favourite from a PS1 disc image.  I have the disc, the means to convert it and thumbs with which to play it.  So how does the game that introduced gamers to such things as the kickflip (because admit it, we would never have known if it wasn’t for this game) hold up twelve years after its release?  I’ve been painstakingly researching it and the short version is ‘really well actually!’

Here’s the long version.

‘you are still pulling off’

Firing up THPS for the first time is much like firing up any modern game.  You get the PlayStation logo, the Activision logo, the Neversoft logo, an intro movie (featuring videos of the various skaters represented in the game), a memory card check, a ‘press start’ screen and eventually your main menu.  Phew.

I jump right into Career Mode and pick Bob Burnquist.  He’s got great stats – not as good as Tony Hawk but not as smug either – and I seem to remember him being my first choice back in 2000.  Rodney Mullen hadn’t been introduced to the series yet.  After sticking with the default board, trucks and wheels I button-press my way into the first level.  Warehouse: Woodland Hills.  What strikes you as the level loads up is the list of goals.  There are just five.  Get some points, smash some boxes, get SKATE, find the hidden tape and get even more points.  None of this combo shit and wacky stunt bollocks that the later games became obsessed with.

‘much shorter but also it means that you concentrate’

After my thumbs struggled to get used to using a d-pad again (seriously, has the 360 killed that little skill or what?) I get reacquainted with the warehouse.  It’s as I remember it, with a big ramp leading to a half-pipe and a few other ramps that I always stayed away from because of their limited scoring potential.  I take down the goals fairly quickly.  This still plays well and feels comfortable even if it is missing the manuals and reverts of the first game.  That means the combos are much shorter but also it means that you concentrate on the actual tricks and not how to link them.  It feels a lot more realistic, even if you are still pulling off moves that would make most skaters weep in their pants.

I hope that rucksack contains a lot of bandages.

Graphically, it’s a little rough.  The PS1 was a complete paradigm shift for console gaming, giving you proper polygonal 3D and more or less signalling the end of the 2D visuals of the 16-bit era.  At the time it was mind-blowing.  Now it’s probably the most dated looking console since the NES because 2D is timeless.  Jagged 3D, less so.  That said, viewed on the tiny phosphorous-bright PSP screen, THPS looks better than it would on a proper telly and the character of the game still shines through.  In 2000, this game looked great and was something of a marvel with its free-roaming stages and interactive scenery.  Well, a tram running you over is as interactive as it gets I guess.

One thing that THPS had was a really iconic soundtrack.  This was the age of the proper soundtrack with games like Wipeout licensing actual musicians.  THPS went with a punk soundtrack (something it’d regrettably move away from when it began whoring itself to various hip-hop and nu-metal artistes) and it was quite something to load up a game and hear Dead Kennedys and Suicidal Tendencies blaring out at you.  Indeed, the soundtrack is something of a time capsule – if anything hearing Goldfinger after all these years reminds me that you couldn’t fucking move for poppy ska bands with chirpy wind sections – and even if it did usher in a horrible trend that reached its nadir with the Burnout games, hearing some of these tunes after all these years makes me smile.

‘you get to the bottom’

After nabbing the goals on the Warehouse level, the game sends you to school.  The school level is oddly featureless but is one of the largest stages in the whole game.  Ramps, tables and bridges punctuate the landscape but it’s not until you skate away from the start that you find one of the gaming wonders of 2000.  A small area with two pools to skate in and a giant video screen showing some skating action and clips from music videos.  It’s a little primitive but at the time this was as next gen as gaming got.

Next up is the mall.  A great level that highlights something that was lost to the series (until it came back in one of the later games), the downhill level.  You start at the top of a mall which is basically a huge ramp.  You’ve still got SKATE letters to find, things to smash, points to get and a hidden tape but once you get to the bottom of the level, that’s it.  End of run.  The increase in speed means that it’s harder to line up your jumps but the increased challenge is welcome.  It’s a great level even now, with loads of detail including water features, giant staircases and an outdoor area.  The score goals are tougher here as there aren’t too many opportunities for big points, at least not until you train your eye to spot them.

I can see my impending death from here!

Beating these first three levels obviously helps your skater cred as next up is a competition in a Chicago skate park.  There’s no collecting to do here.  You just lay down three runs and the best two are entered into the competition scoreboard against the AI skaters.  This is the area that so wowed us in the demo.  Pro tip:  go to the half-pipe at the back, to the left (back and to the left…. back and to the left) and stay there for big points.  Without the distractions of the other levels, these skate competitions represent the purest gaming in THPS and are a good place to express your inner skater dude (without the risk of crippling injury/pretentiousness).

After sufficient time on that hype, it’s time for the *woosh* crackpipe.  That is to say, hello Downtown, Minneapolis.  This is an outdoors level where you aim to attain the usual goals while getting run over by bastard motorists.  It’s probably the first area where you’ll need to go searching for your goals and nabbing those pro scores is tough also but it’s also got some nice touches to it.  The hidden tunnel leading up to the rooftop pool is one of them.

Next up is the bitch of the bunch.  Downhill Jam, Phoenix.  This level is much like the earlier mall run but faster, harder and tougher.  Getting the collectables takes a bit of discipline – the hidden tape is a complete bastard even now – and the score goals take a lot of work also.  It’s a great level though, one of my favourites from the whole series.  Although I’ve got horrible memories of them bringing it back for a later game and adding more collectables.  I might be imagining that though.

‘reverting to type and giving you shit’

After another skate competition, this time a tricky affair in a limited arena in Burnside, Portland, it’s over to the streets of San Francisco complete with trams, cops and skateable landmarks.  I have to admit, the hidden tape had me stumped here and I had to look it up onYouTube.  Never would have found it without that bit of assistance.  Fuck knows how I managed it back in the day.  We were made of sterner stuff back then, clearly.

The final level is another skate competition, this time in Rosswell, New Mexico.  An early example of the humour that would grace the series, this level is set in a mysterious environment, all green and techy, that is both spooky and very skateable.  Big ramps and quarter pipes make it easy to score big here and winning this competition unlocks your chosen skater’s skate reel video.  In my case, I get to see Bob Burnquist doing his thing.  Beating all the goals in the game also unlocks a video of horrible bails and the hidden playable character, Officer Bob.

Tony doing the first

I don’t know if I’ll go back and complete the game with all the other characters – the only reward for doing so is to unlock Private Carrera.  I remember going to the trouble the first time around but the character (a woman if I remember correctly) wasn’t really worth the effort.  Later games in the series would introduce much better unlockable players such as Spider-Man and some weird devil woman, before oddly reverting to type and giving you shit unlockable characters again but the decline of the series is another article, for another time.

For now, let us remember a great and trailblazing game.  It literally defined a genre and wasn’t bested until it went too far downhill and crashed into a metaphorical bus, opening the way for EA’s brilliant SKATE and it’s less-brilliant sequels.  With ten skaters, nine levels and a dozen or so songs, the thing that strikes any veteran of the series is how efficient this game is, elegant even. The gameplay is centred on skating rather than hunting down too many collectables and is refreshingly free of gimmicks whilst still having a few surprises up its sleeve.  The levels themselves are particularly great with a good mix of open areas, downhill courses (why did they get rid of these, they are brilliant) and competition arenas.  Aside from the Downhill Jam level, I blazed through the game quite quickly and whilst it’s a hell of a lot easier than what would follow (Project 8 was coded in hell by cunts), it’s fair to say that THPS is, surprisingly, as much fun to play today as it was all those years ago.

Revisiting it has been a blast.

Ian

A lament on yet another dead UK codeshop

This is by no means an exhaustive history of the recently disbanded Liverpool-based developer, more a rose-tinted view from this particular writer who tends to get (senti)mental about such matters.

Like many people, the first time I became aware of Bizarre Creations was as a result of the early PlayStation title Formula 1. When it shipped in September 1996, it was an example of what Sony’s already ascendant console could do in the right hands, released into a market alongside such titles as Tekken 2 & Crash Bandicoot. These titles along with the first Tomb Raider game, released that same November soon cemented the grey sandwich toaster as the mass-market favourite over Sega’s ill-fated Saturn.

Formula 1: Classic PS1 graphics but they've not managed to digitise the arrogant, cheating cunt's ego though.

Formula 1 itself was a technically accomplished game that boasted commentary from the then voice of television coverage, Murray Walker as well as licensed music from shred deities Steve Vai & Joe Satriani. It also featured link cable play and it was this feature that hooked me and many others, though I didn’t go as far as some students I knew who extended a cable from the living room to an upstairs bedroom to allow multiplayer larks without having to lug televisions around. In these days of annual updates, refreshingly it was based on the 1995 season. Thankfully it only spawned one sequel in 1997 that was largely the same game, only with an drivers-eye view and a very silly arcade mode with ridiculous handling.

Next came Fur Fighters, an initially Dreamcast exclusive arcade shooter in which you had to shoot the stuffing out of various cute protagonists. I didn’t enjoy the demo at all, so the game passed me by. I’ve not managed to find anyone else that played it, let alone bought it. It must’ve sold pretty well as there was a PS2 sequel subtitled Viggo’s Revenge.

The game that really cemented Bizarre’s reputation as a premier driving developer was the much-delayed Dreamcast flagship title Metropolis Street Racer. It introduced the Kudos system which would show up in one form or another in all their subsequent driving games as well as real world locations that put Sony’s Gran Turismos to shame. Coupled with a day/night cycle that adjusted itself according to your Dreamcast’s internal clock and a fantastic soundtrack by videogame composer par excellence Richard Jacques, this game no doubt caught Microsoft’s attention and lined up the Liverpool studio for their next title.

Project Gotham Racing was the game in question and just happened to be one of the launch titles for Microsoft’s Xbox alongside Halo, Amped & DOA3. It was the second best selling launch title behind Master Chief’s debut, many gamers (myself included) choosing it over the other games available. It ratcheted up all the features found in MSR to the next level with higher fidelity graphics, a licensed soundtrack & many more cars. Despite the name there’s no Batman tie-in here, the Gotham of the title referring to New York’s prominence in the game.

PGR was followed in late 2003 by a sequel, innovatively named Project Gotham Racing 2. This was more of the same (no bad thing), only now incorporated with online multiplayer via Xbox Live that just happened to be more addictive than KFC batter coated crack. I realised that I was playing too much when I stopped playing one night and even the kebab shops in the next road were closed so I had to go to bed hungry. Not that it mattered. All I wanted to do was play some more. But I had a job so I had to go to sleep. This game also marked the first appearance of a future addiction, hidden away in a corner of the car garages on an unassuming arcade cabinet. It just happened to contain Geometry Wars (more on that later).

Fast forward to  the winter of 2005 and the launch of the Xbox 360 (so much for the conventional console lifecycle eh?) and Bizarre once again provided a standout game available from the outset for another Microsoft console. When you consider the other games released at the time, PGR3 is the only one that’s really stood the test of time, graphically at least. Initially I was ambivalent about the 360, but seeing this game running on a huge telly was all the persuasion I needed to put myself in debt again and buy it. A far better soundtrack than the previous two incarnations did away with the needless radio stations unique to each city, doubtless due to licensing costs.  Again, Geometry Wars made an appearance, this time in it’s Retro Evolved incarnation.

Microsoft’s fledgling Xbox Live Arcade scheme needed titles and an early favourite soon became the standalone version of Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved, still priced to this day at 400MSP. The pricing alone stood out from the crowd and it soon became an essential purchase. The high TrueAchievement ratio is proof of the stiff challenge the game presents, my haul only being three of the twelve. I really must remedy that sometime.

Their next release in 2007 was another XBLA offering Boom Boom Rocket, this time published by Electronic Arts. At the time I didn’t give it a fair crack of the whip, writing it off as a half-baked hybrid between Guitar Hero & Dance Dance Revolution. One person who didn’t was our very own Rich. A patch was released allowing use of the now ubiquitous plastic guitar controller, no doubt as a result of the Activision buyout that same year.

The fourth and final installment of the Project Gotham series followed the same year, which continued in much the same vein as PGR3, only this time with stunning dynamic weather and motorbikes. The latter were pretty difficult to control, but proved an entertaining diversion from the usual overpowered Top Gear test track fare. A slew of cleverly thought out achievements added to the package including my favourite ‘Tonight Make Me Unstoppable’ in which you had to listen to a particular Bloc Party track and finish a race in second (I think). Not quite sure why, but it felt fresh compared to the usual driving game fare. Of course, we had another GW appearance in the garages, this time in its Waves incarnation.

Geometry Wars made the leap to Nintendo consoles in the autumn of 2007 in the form of GW Galaxies on the DS & Wii. You’ll forgive me if I give them scant attention ’cause it was a case of nice idea, wrong console from my point of view.

2008 brought the release of The Club, something of a departure from driving games, being as it was an against-the-clock third person score attack shooter. Various stereotypes competed in a tournament across a slew of locations ranging from a labyrinthine mansion to a crumbling ocean liner. For whatever reason, Activision didn’t release the game, publishing duties falling to Sega who didn’t really promote the game at all. In fact I picked it up on launch day for £20. I was glad I did as I was rewarded with a challenging game that sometimes feels harsh, but at the same time doesn’t feel like a chore. Multiplayer was an altogether different manner, seemingly populated by low-lifes who brought a new meaning to the adage ‘never play with randoms’. Now is a different matter, games usually being populated by Achievement whores who’re boosting the game.

Geometry Wars 2: A genuine contender for the 'greatest thing on XBLA' award.

Later in 2008 came what many may consider to be Bizarre’s crowning glory, the utterly superb XBLA game Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2 (gasp). It took everything that was good about the original and expanded on it several times over. Six different game modes made an appearance including Evolved, Pacifism (a personal favourite) and Waves (as introduced in PGR4) . Coupled with addictive gameplay, fantastic friends list scoreboards and imaginative achievements (for example Wax On/Off where you had to circumnavigate the perimeter rubbing the walls the whole way), this is to XBLA in 2008 what Chime was two years later. Nothing less than essential.

All of which brings us to 2010 and a handheld gaming landscape transformed by the emergence of iOS devices as a viable gaming platform. Naturally, a version of Geometry Wars arrived for Apple’s dominant smartphones / geek toys and proceeded to sell enough copies to fill Kotick’s bath with yet more money/tank horribly and give Activision’s shareholders coronaries at this aberration on their balance sheet*.

*I’d check, only any kind of reliable sales figures for iThing apps are seemingly hard to come by unless they’re for Cut The Rope or Angry Frakkin Birds.

The studio’s penultimate game was the arcade racer, Blur, released a few months after a well supported multiplayer beta, yet for whatever reason didn’t perform to their parent companies expectations and along with their final game (more on that later) was cited as a reason for the prospective sale of Bizarre to any interested suitors.  Check our review here for a little more detail on what we thought, but essentially it was the guts of the PGR series on somewhat more fantastical race circuits that would be more at home in Burnout et al. Lazy reviewers might well have called it Mario Kart with real cars and they’d not be far wrong, most power-ups having an equivalent in Nintendo’s evergreen series.

Their final game was the much maligned 007: Blood Stone, purported to be a brand new standalone continuation of the Bond canon, but as Rich observes wasn’t up to much. See our review here. The awkward blend of third person shooting and PGR-style driving didn’t mesh particularly well and the game pretty much tanked at retail, which along with less than stellar sales figures of Blur no doubt contributed to Activision’s decision to attempt to sell off the studio in November 2010.

Sadly no buyers came forward and the studio closed its doors in February 2011. There is however light at the end of the tunnel. Since the studio’s closure two studios have been formed by ex-Bizarre employees: Lucid Games & Hogrocket, the latter featuring Steven Cakebread who created Geometry Wars.

I leave you with a short lament from a friend who loved the PGR series more than anyone else I know.

RIP Bizarre Creations, their demise is a great loss to the industry. Never before had a developer managed to make a racing series that so finely sat in the middle ground between sim and arcade racer, balancing the scoring aspects of arcade racing and forgiving handling model, whilst still requiring accuracy and cornering skill to go fast. And just who else is going to make those infuriating yet horribly addictive cone challenges, one of the few things that’s ever made me throw a controller in rage? Or push me to try and gain every single platinum medal across the entire series, spending hundreds of hours playing. No other racing series, or indeed, any series has ever hooked me quite so thoroughly as PGR, and it’s creators closure shall be much mourned, even if their new overlords led them down a different path, for whilst there are rumours of a new PGR, they’ve got a tough act to follow, and one I suspect they can not top. Nor can one forget Geometry Wars simplistic beauty, brought to the world by PGR too of course, before it’s recognition and promotion to standalone brilliance, I just hope Activision don’t try and run that into the ground. At least it’s creator has now gone on independently, so there is some hope for the future.

This guy maxed PGR3 & PGR4 and I’ve rarely if ever beaten him online from PGR2 onwards. He’s also so laid back that for a game to induce controller rage is pretty unheard of.

We’ll miss you Bizarre, gawd bless you and all who sailed in you.

Colin

This is none of your E3s, CESs, TGSs or Leipzigzigzigs, this is Glasgow on a cold wet and dreary Sunday morning in February. This is proper gaming dedication.

Nintendo started advertising these “Exclusive Nintendo 3DS pre-release events” over the past month, events where the average punter can have the chance to “experience the 3DS magic” – what this would entail is anyone’s guess. This was free and being that the only similar event I’ve had a chance to attend was the 2009 Edinburgh Interactive Festival which was quite frankly light on things to do and a bit pants – I jumped at the opportunity to attend and registration was a relatively simple matter, I booked my tickets and off we went.

How's that Performing Arts degree working out for you, lads?

There’s about a dozen of us here at 10 in the morning, unaware of exactly what to expect and whether it’s actually a waste of time but frankly there’s a tingle of excitement in the air and along with my companion (a handheld gamer for the better part of her life whose recently upgraded to more intensive xbox 360 fun) we venture upstairs.

Tickets are scanned and we are briefly introduced to the history of Nintendo handhelds. You wouldn’t be wrong in saying that the event organisers exactly know their target audience, by that I mean it seems that just about everyone involved in the event just so happens to be slim, leggy, attractive women with ‘sizable assets’ and tarted up to high heaven (with skin tight clothes) – Not that I was paying that much attention to them you understand. These ladies serve to be our guides for today but frankly if there’s a chance we actually do get to see the 3DS today I don’t think anyone would care if they all wore bags on their heads.

Our ‘guides’ start telling us about the 3DS, about its interactive features and how communication is more important than ever. Street pass allows the devices to constantly communicate with others in the vicinity, sharing game data, music playlists (apparently), Miis and so on – nothing new learned so far but of course they can’t assume that everyone is a spotty bod like me.

We are led through to a small darkened room with a fella looking suspiciously like Ryu from Street Fighter, standing in front of a background with a few props to hand – and yes, things do start to get a bit cheesy. Ryu and the newly arrived Ken started to fight… to the sound of SF special effect sounds. I can’t help myself (even as writing this) but a massive grin creeps across my face. After the brief performance we have an opportunity for photographs with the stars and nearly a week on I so regret not getting mine taken.

People at a thing.

In small groups of five we’re then bundled along a corridor with more actors – It’s Chris Redfield and his sister Claire! “There’s an outbreak of the T-Virus!” (I thought we were past that in the Resi franchise now) and they’re gonna lead us to safety. It felt like a short, cheap and cheerful Alien Walk – especially when some ‘thing’ grabbed my ankle. It was stupid fun! even if a little inaccurate – I’m sure I saw one of the chainsaw men, they’re Las Plagas creations, not T-Virus [/geek]

I suppose the point of it all was to show how we are no longer limited to the 2D plane and things can be more interactive than ever, or perhaps it was just to cheese us out big style but frankly I loved it.

Next up – Wossy. Many years ago Iain Lee was the poster boy for videogaming in this country, personally though many feel Charlie Brooker is the contemporary equivalent – except a million  times better but JR seems to be the go to guy when something is needed whored or insulted for that matter. He’s on a giant TV spouting his usual brand of pish but this time with a Nintendo slant. He seems enthusiastic enough but I’m sure for the right price he could sell us on the virtues of blowing a baboon.

Well the 3DS appears to have fucked Wossy's eyes.

After a short video reel of upcoming games we are apparently going to get our hands on several different features of the Nintendo 3DS, which I almost cannot believe.

Firstly – The games. Practically each machine has one of the aforementioned leggy/slim/tarted-up ‘guardians’ (with sizable assets and skin tight clothes) watching your every move – asking if they can help like an over enthusiastic game shop employee. I’m not exactly the atypical speccy, nerdy, socially awkward gamer, but at the same time I don’t need or want to be bothered while gaming.

The machine is comfortable to hold and intentionally doesn’t seem too different from the traditional DS. As I’m sure everyone is aware the setup is much the same with a few minor changes. Start and select are along the bottom now, the new analogue nipple feels silky smooth and effortlessly glides at my will (nowhere near as elastic as the PSP’s). The 3D effect is quite impressive; as I’m sure many are aware it works by having a multi-layered screen showing slightly different images thus giving the illusion of depth. Last year I was initially irked to learn that the 3D effect only works when the device is held at the right distance and directly in front of you, but it felt very natural and comfortable seeing as I was just holding it how I normally would.

The 3D effect can be turned off from the depth slider and I constantly found myself doing this for a number of reasons. I was curious to compare how the experience compared going from ’3D’ to ‘standard’ mode and my conclusion is that while the 3D experience is interesting I’m not too sure how it will fare long term and if game developers will make full use of the potential.  The other reason for turning the feature off was more to do with my own comfort. At times I found it difficult to focus on the action when so much is happening at once and on more than one layer. This didn’t bother me as I found the 3D effect to be more impressive when I wanted to see it.

Pilotwings: still getting us excited after all these years.

The games available to try were:

Ridge Racer: Pretty much as you’d expect with fun slip-n-slide racing with more boosting than you can shake a nitro at.

Dead or Alive: Watching boobs jiggle has never been so fun – now in 3D! (oh God I hope no-one takes that comment on face value – Ed)

Resident Evil: The Mercenaries: Again it’s pretty much all that you can imagine – Plenty of fun to be had especially if you liked the mercenaries mode in previous Resi games. Particular note goes to the analogue controls which made me feel like I was back playing RE4 on my Gamecube

Street Fighter 4: Impressive graphics and with the ability to pull off super moves with just a tap of the touch screen looks like even a shocking clumsy fool could have a lot of fun.

Pilotwings: Its pilotwings.

Kid Icarus: What was essentially an on-rails shooter seemed to demonstate a few interesting features. Firstly, while the flying and shooting can be controlled just by moving the on screen cursor, it was possible to use a combination of the touchpad and the analogue stick to allow separate flight and aiming controls, much like how the DS tried to use this mechanic for FPS shooters. It worked quite well here and will be interesting to see how fluidly it can be incorporated into other games. Secondly, the 3D visuals although constantly active worked less well with individual enemies flying at the screen and much better when faced by one huge boss attacking and flailing towards you. As said previously not all games will suit this technology and the ability to turn the 3D effects off is welcomed.

The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time: I don’t know many gamers who haven’t at least played this one but as ever, it was a joy to once again be back inside the Great Deku Tree. Inventory access is now via the bottom screen and as such the experience feels more comfortable. I think the 3D effects will be enough to get me to travel back to Hyrule to experience the world again from a slightly different perspective.

3D isn't always better than 2D.

All the games handled very well and graphically look (somewhat) superior to the DS, while it’s obviously still not on par with PSP levels of graphics Nintendo never set out to match their rival in this way, infact I’m not even sure they’re competing with each other at all.

After a while we are shuffled into the next (more appropriately lit and without annoying thumping dance music) room. Here there are still games and demos to try but we look at some of the other 3DS capabilities.

Knowing very little about Augmented Reality (AR) technology I was interested to learn a bit more about it, unfortunately the ‘guardian’ could only go as far to say “you put the card down and the game starts in a few seconds”. The programming for the game must be built into the system or on an SD card because as I understand it, the card only serves as an area for the camera and AR game to focus on. The games themself work very well; little more than mini games but hopefully opening the way for more innovative ones. I was shooting targets that I had virtually appeared on the table and then at a giant dragon swiping at me, all the while using the system’s gyroscopic controls to rotate around the virtual environment, aim and even duck and weave at the incoming attacks. Gyro-controlled games like these work great on the iPhone, so more on the 3DS will be a welcome addition.

Face Raiders is another simple yet enjoyable game that is great at showing off the machine’s features. You take a picture of your face which then spawns your face as enemies and using the gyro controls you aim and then fire balls at your face – a surreal experience that Freud would have a field day over, all the while your grinning chops mock you from a few crude yet mirth-inducing expressions.

Here we also saw a few running videos on the system, MGS3 looks as fine as you can imagine and in addition to seeing some Sky Sports Ryder Cup action (which looked as crisp as it would on my iPhone) I am briefly told about the possibility to surf the web using the 3DS – unfortunately I don’t get to try it but the prospect is very appealing, a feature that never really took off with the original DS.

Things were wrapping up as I saw the camera station and as such couldn’t spend much time with it. From what I could garner the internal camera is very much on part with the current DS one. You’re not going to snapping sea turtles laying their eggs with it or anything so understandably the quality isn’t brilliant. From what I saw just before leaving the external cameras aren’t too different quality wise, the difference being that the positions of these cameras allow for taking 3D pictures.

Overall this event was a great experience for me and even my companion too. In one hour I was greatly entertained and best of all my curiosity about the 3DS has been partly satisfied but my impressions on the machine are still developing.

On one hand, it’s a new piece of tech from a tried and tested company, they’ve taken a new feature and already created a few interesting games with it. Online seems to have had more focus than before with a proposed easier way to connect to friends, share data, game online and hopefully as mentioned – surf the web. While the device may not be released with all of its features such as the eShop, there’s still more than enough to keep people busy.

On the other hand, the technology is a bit gimmicky, I’m not too sure how many companies will take full advantage of these features – that’s even if a decent software base can be established. With these new features the device hasn’t really had the chance to evolve graphically which may put some off. Pricing has caused some controversy and if the games move too far north in price the company won’t be doing themselves any favours. Oh and maybe I’m just plane thick but I honest to god couldn’t find where the stylus was. I doubt Nintendo will be going down the route of using their forthcoming eShop to release the kind of cheap and cheerful games we are seeing on more and more mobile phones, not if a recent quote from Reggie Fils-Aime is to believed. This could hurt them unless we see some really quality titles in the eShop, with a sensible price tag.

The hour is over, some HMV staff plead with us to pre order a Nintendo 3DS, we leave. I was impressed with the machine and the show put on in general and this is coming from a somewhat bitter and cynical gamer. In the lead up to launch it will be interesting to hear more impressions from people who aren’t quite like me – is the price right, are the launch games good, what about that battery life, eh? My companion had her own opinion – “extraordinary graphics”, “unbelievably good 3D effects” but with a certain degree of possible “motion sickness from the 3D”, luckily rectified by switching to 2D mode.

I’m sure I will get a Nintendo 3DS this year but whether or not that’s at launch is still undecided. While everything I saw impressed me no end, games make a system so only time will tell if a Nintendo 3DS is a really worthwhile purchase.

The 2010 Writer’s Choice Awards

It’s that time of year again where all the sites make lists of what sucked least in the previous twelve months.  As ever, we’ll be running our regular awards feature with all the categories voted for by YOU personally and that’s all fine and dandy but in the meantime we thought it’d be nice to let you know what the PEOWW crew picked as their games of 2010.  One game per PEOWW writer, the way God intended.

Mark

Alan Wake (Xbox 360)

For my money the best game of this year has to be Remedy’s Alan Wake. In a marketplace filled with annual updates, soulless sequels and beige, cookie cutter franchises it stood head and shoulders above anything else not just in terms of storytelling and atmosphere but also for the sheer visceral thrills it has to offer. Sure it’s not a game for everyone or every occasion but when it gets it hooks in you’ll never feel the same way about moonlit forests or logging yards ever again.

Lurk

Red Dead Redemption (Xbox 360)

Picking my game of the year was a bit of a struggle, this is down to not to playing that many games this year and a lot of those games not being anything special. The two games I actually played the most  this past year are Deadly Premonition and Red Dead Redemption. As much as I’ve wanked on about Deadly Premonition in my review and on the podcast my game of the year has to be Red Dead Redemption.

My reasons for picking this game is down to the fact the game has so much depth to it. This game is better than the overrated GTA 4, if only down to the fact that the big expanses of desert has a lot more life than the crowded Liberty City.  Not only do you have a massive single player experience, which kept me playing long after completing the main story, but you have a fun filled multiplayer component on top as well.

Matthew

Demon’s Souls (PS3)

An action RPG with hints of hack ‘n’ slash and Rogue-like, Demon’s Souls is like nothing else you’ve played. Both punishing and rewarding, the innovative online multiplayer mode is the game’s unique selling point. Seeing the ghosts of other players exploring the same areas as you gives a good sense of community, and the fact that other players can invade your game as a black phantom at pretty much any time adds to the feeling of constant dread and danger throughout.

The online multiplayer aspect of the game is enhanced by the ability to summon up to two other randomly chosen players of a similar level of your own to aid you, as well as being able to leave hints hints of deadly traps or ambushes. It’s been a while since a game has hooked me as much as Demon’s Souls did, It’s easily amongst my favourite games of this generation.

Colin

Splinter Cell: Conviction (Xbox 360)

One could argue that the Splinter Cell games didn’t do much evolving from the last last gen to the last game – certainly not a bad thing but Conviction had a lot of nay-sayers from the off.  At times the game felt a bit Arkham Asylum-y, certainly no bad thing. Enter a room, use skill, sneaking, gadgets and takedowns to make your way past or murder everyone in sight.

The Deniable Ops mode was a fantastic addition, allowing you to go it alone or with a buddy to play a shortened story mode or a series of challenge levels, clearing areas full of bad dudes and hoard variations. Plenty of fun and more DLC would certainly be welcomed.  Splinter Cell: Conviction had some great, good and downright ignorant reviews from people I question ever played the game but it was nothing but good time larks for me.

Rich

Pinball FX 2 (XBLA)

2010 wasn’t a great year for full retail games and so it came down to a choice between Chime, Pac-Man: Celine Dion and Pinball FX 2.  To be honest you could flip a coin but if I absolutely had to give an answer, I’d say Pinball FX 2 edges it thanks to it being literally the most addictive game in years thanks to the excellent leaderboard action.

Sure, a couple of the tables are absolute bollocks but at 200M$P per table, and with more on the way, you’re sure to find a few that you’ll really get on with and for the first time that I can recall, this is a pinball game that actually takes advantage of its virtual setting making for some outlandish tables to play on.

Danny

Super Street Fighter IV (Xbox 360)

My favourite game of this year was probably Super Street Fighter IV even though it’s basically an update to a game that was released last year. Out of all the games I have brought and played this year SSFIV is the only game I can see myself still playing with my friends in the next five to ten years much like Capcom’s other classic fighting games like Capcom Vs SNK 2 and Marvel Vs Capcom 2 which I still dig out my PS2 for every once in awhile.

Gareth

Super Meat Boy (XBLA)

Bayonetta started the year with a bang but it didn’t hold my attention too long after completion. Mass Effect 2 disappointed the RPG fan in me despite it being an excellent game otherwise. Red Dead Redemption bored me after a while despite obviously being a quality product. I grew to love Alpha Protocol but it has too many issues. Super Meat Boy is nigh on perfect.

The charm, the music, the controls, the fiendish yet genius level design makes this the most addictive game I’ve played this year. The quality also shines through. Despite not boasting state of the art graphics every level has been crafted brilliantly and the controls are as reliable as you could ever need. The almost instantaneous respawns upon death just add to the one more go factor which make Super Meat Boy my personal game of the year.

Jason

Fallout: New Vegas (Xbox 360)

Fallout: New Vegas just hits all my sweet spots with great quests, interesting combat and new things to see every time I jump in. Since finishing the PEOWW review I’ve been back doing the various achievements that I didn’t pick up the first time through added many hours to my already inflated playtime. Thing is I dont mind wandering around the Mojave Wastes doing bits and bobs. It doesn’t feel like a grind and that for me is the sign of a classic game.

Ian

Chime (XBLA)

An initially confusing game where it’s not immediately clear what to do, the in-game tutorial being as much use as a Peter Sutcliffe mask at a serial killer victim support group. However, once you figure out the mechanics of the game under your own steam, a delightful experience soon becomes reality. You could easily lose days to this game. All matched to a perfectly balanced set of achievements, some of which seem unattainable at first, by the time you’ve mastered the game you should be close to having them all, at the very least being well equipped to go after them. At 400MSP, there’s really no excuse not to play this game if you have a Live connected 360.

Grizzly

Super Street Fighter IV (Xbox 360)

Street Fighter IV saw the return of the fantastic fighting series after several years of countless sequels and re-hashes of the same formula. it featured everything a Street Fighter fan could want out of a next gen reboot.

Super Street Fighter IV not only improved it, it brought it as close to perfection a game could possibly achieve.

Awards, yeah?

Yes, my dears, it’s that time of year again where we take a look back at all the games released in the huge ball ache of a year that was 2010. Some where good, some where bad and some where Army of Two: Ladyboys Wreck Your Shit Whilst Raping Pandas.

Just like last year we’ve broken the nominations down into different sections based on style, hardware format and the like with each one getting up to three votes from you with your first choice being your preferred preference and so on.  Additional comments are always welcome ans we’ll use them where we can.

We’ve included a few new categories this year to reflect changes in the gaming scene along with all your old favourites like the ‘LOL@’ and ‘Lemon’ so be sure to check our REVIEWS and MINI REVIEWS sections for a reminder of some the games eligible for nomination.

So have your say and get your votes in before December 31st 2010 to THIS address.

The 2010 award categories are:

Multiformat Game of the Year

The best game of 2010 that wasn’t a format exclusive, nuff said.

Xbox 360 Game of the Year

The best game of 2010 on the Xbox 360 console/tiger grooming webcam.

PS3 Game of the Year

The best game of 2010 for the Playstation 3 console/dildo semaphore kit.

Wii Game of the Year

The best game of 2010 for the Nintendo Wii console/xerox machine.

Hand-held Game of the Year

The best game of 2010 for the PSP, DS or other mobile system.

Download Only Game of the Year

The best download ONLY game on Playstation Network or Xbox Live! Arcade, this also includes Xbox ‘Indie’ games and iTune/Android apps.

Best Additional Content of the Year

The best free or paid DLC for a videogame.

Worst Additional Content of the Year

The worst DLC for a videogame.

Best Visuals

The best looking game of 2010. Not just in terms of raw graphics but design, style and consistency.

Best Sound

The best sounding game of 2010. This includes music, sound effects and vocal performances.

Best Story

The best narrative and story from a game in 2010 including but not limited to having your lead character pissing herself while sounding like she’s working the phone at 1-800 Iselfharm.

Best Online

The best online experience from a game in 2010. This includes longevity, stability, player user base and DLC that dosen’t make you grind the game for another fourty hours.

Surprise of the Year

The game from 2010 that exceeded your expectations, if you even had any to start with.

Disappointment of the Year

The game from 2010 that just wasn’t all that, not a true lemon just one more disappointment in this thing we call life.

Lemon of the Year

The game from 2010 that had you curling into the foetal position as you played it while clawing at your own eyes and wishing there was such a thing as mind bleach.

Hero of the Year

The chap or chapess that’s done the most for videogames in 2010. Corprate shills and Helen Mirren  need not apply.

LOL @ Award

The publisher, developer or individual person who’s been acting the biggest Kotick … sorry, cunt in 2010

Website of the Year

The best interwebs read in 2010 that wasn’t porn or tedious Twitter brain farts.

Most Wanted 2011

Your most wanted game that’s due out in 2011 or just delayed from 2010 (natch).