Posts Tagged ‘PS3’

It has been a while since I did one of these link posts, and if all you do is follow me on DoFuss you could be easily mistaken for thinking that something horrible has happened to me — especially if you are still waiting for the last DoFuss Show (believe it or not it is still planned). I checked back the other day and I have posted alarmingly little in the past six months despite previous promises of increased content.

I will not make excuses, but my life has been turbulent and my attention drawn away from the site by my search for work and my writing for other sites. In truth though for all of this I have had more than enough time on my hands, and can’t really place how I wasted it all.

Things have been changing though. Firstly the number of sites I now contribute to has grown, now including Games Jobs Japan, a site set up by gaming recruitment agency Interactive Selection to help place foreign workers in Japan. On top of this, while my furious hunt for work has met with a number of refusals recently I have at least been responding to follow up emails and even a few interviews.

A change came for me last week though as I realised that, in order to really get my first foot on the ladder of gaming employment, a bit more direct experience was need. So I joined the Train2Game design course. This two to three year is specifically constructed to help its pupils train for work in the industry. Backed by TIGA, and supported by a range of other gaming institutions, the design course I am on is set to give me a basic grounding in the skills I need to enter the production side of the industry.

But I don’t intend to rest on my laurels or let DoFuss fall to the way side, yes I will be busy studying… and writing… and hopefully working… but my love for this little site endures. With that in mind the direction is to shift slightly. My hope for the next few months is to post daily, but with a more eclectic range of topics (with gaming remaining at the core). The plan is to add news that catches my eye, links to my other writings, diary entries about my course and, on occasion, the kind of musings you have come to expect from DoFuss.

So starting soon, maybe tomorrow, expect DoFuss to get busier. Until then (like you can’t wait) below are links to everything you may have missed since my last link post, just to prove I have been keeping myself out of trouble. Also, for the record these big link posts may look lazy but they are a pain in the arse to do, so this will (thankfully) be the last one.

Scared Gamer Reviews- DJ Hero 2, Super Meat Boy, Braid (PS3), Dr Kawashima, Costume Quest, Dead Space 2, Dead Space Extraction, Dead Rising 2, Dead Rising Case West, Stacking, Pilotwings Resort, Marvel Vs Capcom 3, Portal 2, Steel Diver, Gatling Gears, Beyond Good and Evil HD, InFamous 2.

Reporting Gamer Previews - Yoostar 2, Ninja Gaiden 3, Serious Sam 3: BFE, Catherine, SSX: Deadly Descents, Rayman Origins, Ridge Racer Unbounded, Orcs Must Die, Prey 2, Blood Rayne Betrayal, The Darkness 2, Warhammer 40K: Space Marine, Call of Juarez: The Cartel, Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon, Track Mania 2: Canyon, Alice Madness Returns, Soul Calibur 5, Hunted the Demons Forge, UFC Personal Trainer, Resident Evil: Operation Racoon City, Wii Exerbeat, Red Johnson Chronicles, Dark Souls, Super Street Fighter 4: Arcade Edition, Dead Rising 2: Off the Record, Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Silver Earring, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Solider, Dead or Alive Dimensions, Child of Eden, Anarchy Reigns, Star Wars Kinect.

Game People Podcast - Alan Wake, Stacking, Flower, Uncharted Series, LA Noire.

Reviews – LA Noire, Faery Legends of Avalon, Soldnerx 2: The Final Prototype – The Last Chapter, Mircobot, Zeit, Spare Parts, Hard Corps: Uprising, Nintendo 3DS, Pilotwings Resort, Super Street Fighter 4: 3D Edition, Nintendogs and Cats, Steel Diver, Dead or Alive Dimensions, Strania: The Stella Machina, Ghostbusters Sanctum of Slime, The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile.

Previews – Bullet Storm.

Articles and Interviews – Nine Things to Remember About Japanese Business Culture, Interview with Q-Games Ariel Angelotti, Interview with Q-Games Jaymin Kessler.

I have just realised that I forgot the obligatory games of 2010 preamble… so yeah. This is about a game which came out last year that made an impact on me, not the best or the worst of the year but I liked it. This is the penultimate one of these so soon I should be back with some more in the moment posts, in the mean time if you want to check out my current reviews or articles go here, here or indeed here.

Games can encapsulate a mood; they can heighten a feeling, and sometimes even lighten the load. Some titles achieve this emotional resonance from their narrative content, others simply come at the right time capitalise on events in our lives, for better or worse (as Braid recently did for me). It is a dynamic that can be both painful or therapeutic, throwing in to relief an issue or allowing an outlet for raw emotions when there is no way to confront an issue directly. For me it was Vanquish that came at just the right moment to vent some very primitive emotions. And as thoughtless a game as it can be, it was just what I needed.

Beautifully Vanquish offers and standard definition HUD, also perfectly timed for this point my life.

Sat alone in my tiny apartment I was, simply, angry; at myself, at my life and my situation. I couldn’t decide if it was my fault, the worlds fault, the years fault, all I knew was that somewhere in me there was a rage with no escape. My anger sat beneath the surface of my smiling facade as I taught children and went out socialising, only occasionally escaping in at very drunk moments.

I had pre-ordered Vanquish months in advance of its release on the promise of another Platinum Games twist on an established genre and director Shinji Mikami’s involvement (the man behind beloved Resident Evil), little did I know how much I was going to need its cathartic action by the time I collected on my order, and how susceptible I would be to it.

Furious, fast paced action punctuated by mindless bravado filled cut scenes and (deliberate?) bizarre translation. Vanquish immediately drew from me a happiness that harkened back to movies like Starship Troopers.

This particular level is one of my favorites, fighting off attackers from a train as it circles around a tunnel.

As I struggled to decide how deliberate the genius of the game was, I realised I was transferring the anger inside me on to the hundreds of enemies that swarmed the world. Robotic opponents that balanced perfectly my ability to blow them to pieces with a range of satisfying weapons against a difficulty that challenged just enough to make me feel accomplished without a sense of being patronised.

It wasn’t just the gunplay that had me wowed. Vanquish’s core mechanic of fast paced movement, which saw me speeding around on rocket powered knee pads from one cover point to the next, did an equally amazing job of drawing the negativity from me. Typically such cover focused third person action games employ a plodding stilted advance, limping from one area of (relative) safety to the next, hiding as energy slowly recovers before repeating the same process again. Duck, fire, duck, fire, crawl forward, it frustrates and gives a sense of impotence in the face of the odds. Vanquish sheds this, forcing me to leap from one cover points to the next, dodging bullets as I go. In truth the system is ultimately the same, with a defensive posture still necessary to recover energy and boosters fuel, but speed and movement makes this defence as engaging and satisfying as offence, far more similar to the 2D games of old than a modern shooter.

AAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!.... AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Vanquish drew my frustration and anger from me as played. The game became a storm drain for my emotions, running off all the excess that had for so long bubbled under the surface. Harmlessly dissipating all of the darker thoughts I had been having. There was no down time, no question of thought or brooding as I sped from one piece of low cover to the next and switched between ever more satisfying weapons to take down robot hoards. Pure unadulterated stress relief that, in my case, was perfectly timed.

Here I am again for another dip back in to the games 2010 that left a mark on me. It was a bad year for me, and while gaming was not to blame but it did provide emotional touchstones, both good and bad. These posts are not a summery of the year’s best games, nor are they in any order or relevance, they are simply the titles I remember and the emotions I will forever connect with them.

After a lifetime of sharing apartments and houses with friends and family I finally found myself alone. Indeed more accurately I found myself homeless, lost and emotionally empty. It is no exaggeration when I say that I was riding the streets calling friends to ask them for a roof for the night. Riding my bike through the dark night I called, and when someone finally I answered I went to his sofa.

I took comfort from having a friend willing to put me up, and in no small part I was relieved to have company. But my luck was not to endure so completely. Not that I was again about to find myself riding the streets looking for a room, but instead that my friend was to go on away for the weekend leaving me to fester in my own numb melancholy.

This would be a quiet moment for Blur.

Come that weekend, with nothing planned and little money, I found my options limited to the entertainment available in the apartment in which I found myself. Fortunately my friend was well equipped being a gamer himself. Surrounded by games I looked at what was on offer. I had some specific requirements for my selection, a title that I couldn’t taint for myself, which I could leave and never look back at if I had to, and something I would be able to just slip into the mindless repetition of. I picked Blur.

I don’t mean to suggest that Bizarre Creations street racing game is dull by calling it mindless, but like many racing games Blur’s controls are relatively simple (with a few easy to pick up tweaks) and demands replays and perfection of tracks to advance.

Zooming around the exploding colour filled tracks Blur felt surreal with its glowing HUD beneath my car, red and blue explosions filling the screen, but real cars and locations. The vehicles even handled in a manner more akin to a simulation than an arcade racer, but I was armed. Collecting Wipeout style weapons and blowing up part of Brighton or Tokyo in my attempts to gain an advantage over the other cars I found it possible to push to the back of my mind concerns about my life as I jostled for position up the pack.

Amazingly for this day and age Blur features four player split screen.

Sat on the sofa/my bed for the two days of the weekend, some two meters from the screen on which the neon racer was displayed, the flashing greens and pinks burned my eyes as they shoot past at incredible speeds. Tactics and strategies all bubbled in my mind as I fought for the required stars that would unlock advancement through the competitions. I played levels repeatedly, unwilling to move on until I had perfected it. Able to lose myself in this, my mind became slowly anesthetised. It was much appreciated.

Blur’s soporific effects remain with me. On my return to the UK I bought it again and still find it akin to a comfort blanket. I can sit and play, almost without thought, advancing or not with very little passion but none the less happy. Even abject failure elicits little more than a shrug from me as I happily… or at least contentedly replay the race.

I couldn’t honestly say if Blur is good game, or even a good racer. It certainly possessed more replay value for me than any games that could reasonably be considered its competition. But for me it is now more like medicine, a painkiller. A game I played with the express purpose of losing myself and then abandoning found a place in my heart from the medicinal service it provided.

We are back for the almost-last DoFuss Show. December will see the last DoFuss Show with my return from Japan to the UK. As I won’t be in the ‘land of the rising sun’ any more, the opening lyrics claim that I am ‘the number one gaijin, the man in Japan who can’ will become hopelessly inaccurate so (as we can’t be bothered to rewrite the theme tune) we decided to cancel the show.

Being busy trying to get ready for my return from Japan it has been a while since the last show, because of this it is a game and news filled episode. Stretching the entire gamut of gaming we jump from Half Life to Megaman, Yakuza to Kinect and 3D Space Tank to the Bible (don’t ask). But any podcast can bring you games, so we also deliver the best in Japanese terror attacks and a smattering of my own personal insecurities about my immanent return to Blighty.

Just in case you are worried about the fate of DoFuss, don’t be. The site will endure, and in the near future Darren and I will return with some as-yet-still-amorphous something for you aural delectation. I say ‘near future’, but I mean in the New Year once I am settled and (hopefully) employed back in the UK. Talking of which, if anyone knows of any job openings in England please let me know, the email address on the left. Thanks.

The DoFuss Show – Penultimate [ 1:03:37 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download