The Broken Frandroid – A literate queen,
Was a Crossword champ at the age of nineteen.

Yes, she made up her own words and threatened the judge,
If he didn’t shut up, she’d turn him to sludge!

But instead she sent pigeons to destroy his plants,
But they got lost on the way, did they end up in France?

The Broken Frandroid – So shiny and clean,
She became a pain in the ass at the age of fourteen.

She trained her fish minions to maim and destroy,
When they chomp on her sister she’d shout SUGOI!

So who’s that little girl, living in a haunted mansion,
With a devil for a friend, and some bad ass wizard action?

Well it’s been three months since the Broken Frandroid entered (what she would call) your pitiful lives, and she’s now here to stay. She may have a hatred all things cute! She may wreck the lives of hundreds of video game characters, she may threaten a fellow Ready Up staff member constantly on Twitter, every day. But you just got to love her! I mean, she can’t help it; it’s in her very bad programming. And she gets angry all the time because she’s broken and not just because she despises pink, fluffy and ginger things.

But if it wasn’t for her we wouldn’t have these awesome yet grotesque monstrosities that are the Broken Frandroid webcomics. So please enjoy this recap of all the comics so far by clicking on the tiny cute pictures below. And if you don’t click them or read them, just remember, she knows where you live!

The Broken Frandroid – A lot like the Borg queen,
She assimilates game characters but not human beings.

She loves leather and rubber but also bright pink,
But that’s probably a lie; what do you think?

It seems even pink things have a terrible fate,
Due to the Broken Frandroid’s charm and hate.

The Broken Frandroid – Quite nimble and lean,
And her favourite colours are orange and green.

She loves bunnies and birdies and little fish too,
And cute purple dragons not found in a zoo.

But most of all, she likes fire and gems,
And she would burn your house down and steal your M & M’s.

The Broken Frandroid – Can get Frangry and mean,
But can also be friendly, it’s part of her routine.

She writes and draws about her favourite games,
She might break its heart and then drop it in flames.

But there is one thing that we all know,
She cares enough to write these small ditties, fo’ sho.

The Broken Frandroid – Has a very odd gene,
It means she will go mental at the sight of whipped cream.

She will screw with your mind and your game character too,
She might (if you’re lucky) say a polite, “how do you do?”

Yes, it’s tragic – Rapture’s your fate,
And watch out for when Frandroid uses incinerate.

]]> http://ready-up.net/2012/03/04/broken-frandroid-biogotchi/feed/ 1 http://ready-up.net/2012/02/19/broken-frandroid-inglourious-blathers/ http://ready-up.net/2012/02/19/broken-frandroid-inglourious-blathers/#comments Sun, 19 Feb 2012 10:00:33 +0000 Fran http://ready-up.net/?p=49661

The Broken Frandroid – Part girl, part machine,
She will take a PEGI three and make it an eighteen.

As those cute little bastards from Animal Crossing know,
Life can be tough, but Broken Frandroid says no.

She says, chill, eat an apple and have a brew,
And read these Webcomics or she’ll be after you.

]]> http://ready-up.net/2012/02/19/broken-frandroid-inglourious-blathers/feed/ 2 http://ready-up.net/2012/02/05/broken-frandroid-the-illusive-hamster/ http://ready-up.net/2012/02/05/broken-frandroid-the-illusive-hamster/#comments Sun, 05 Feb 2012 10:00:10 +0000 Fran http://ready-up.net/?p=49470

The Broken Frandroid – a being that lives on caffeine,
She writes about characters that are not normally seen.

She draws them obscurely and in original ways,
Takes them out of their comfort zone, this is how she plays.

From games of old and those of new,
She will wreak gaming havoc also on you.

You could look at the films and say they have been handled wrongly, and they have. It’s just not like they had a lot to work with to start off with. Come on, until Duke Nukem Forever the guy was thought of as one of the best video game characters.  One of his best lines “I came here to kick ass and chew gum, and I’m all out of gum” is a straight lift from “Rowdy” Roddy Piper in They Live.  When one of your best characters needs to take subtlety lessons from the male wrestling lead of Hell Comes to Frogtown, maybe we should admit that video games are in their infancy, storytelling wise.

Look at the birth of cinema; that started as a silent medium, which is why Sonic, Mario and Pacman still endure. Mario as the fat man that keeps falling down is funny.  We all know that his Donkey Kong sprite was given a moustache because of the limited amount you could do with a small number of pixels, but in the Super Mario Brothers days, his look of shock as he bumped into a mushroom and then went up before falling off the screen is pure Oliver Hardy.  In fact, playing the Mario Brothers mini game in Super Mario 3, more amusement was had in the slapstick of jumping off Luigi’s head than in anything else.  The Chain Chomp is pure angry dog slapstick… even the angry sun in Mario 3 has links to George Méliès Le Voyage Dans La Lune and SunnyVoyage. Hell, even in the Sonic games, the ‘dum, dum’ of death is almost like a comic ‘Wah, wah, way”. By the time you get to Sonic 2, a whole stream of amusement comes from the fact that Tails seems desperate to commit suicide at any opportunity.  Even the central idea behind Pac Man, where the underdog turns round and has revenge on his pursuers is not a million miles away from Chaplin… and Angry Birds is not far away from the world of Buster Keaton either.

In the modern age, the most successful characters also seem to be mute.  Master Chief and Chell don’t say a word, but their narratives are some of the most compelling of the modern era.  They’re also both immersive first person games, where you can more readily identify with the main character because you’re not being someone else.  Technically, Halo ODST was right up there with the rest of the Halo series, and in terms of acting talent, it had Nathan Frickin’ Fillion in it  but it felt less of an immersive experience than the mute experience of Master Chief and the well realised dialogue of the Arbiter and Cortana.

On the other part of things, we have Chell.  In the Portal commentaries, it’s been spoken about how Chell was going to say one word at the end, but it was scrapped. Another interesting thing is that they played around with the idea of GLaDOS (and Wheatley) talking during the tests, but found that too distracting.  Rather than cut scenes, there was exposition away from the action, and humour not something that wrenched you away from the immersive experience.  I want to get into the story of games, but even I find myself pressing the skip button through cut scenes where it’s available (by the way, with the silent Atlas and Peabody, the Laurel and Hardy thing has been done very well too). The video games that people went to to prove to Roger Ebert that video games could be an art form were Shadow of the Colossus and Ico, guess what… silent protagonists.

The main problem with video games characters is the ‘Mary Sue’ factor. In fan fiction a ‘Mary Sue’ character (named after a Star Trek short story) is a character who is just too good at everything.  They don’t have any real flaws, and they tend to be the best at everything they put their minds to.  That’s the whole basis for a load of characters these days, a single soldier destined to take on armies, or galaxies of armies.  In the first game, Duke Nukem was an ironic take on the already outdated 80’s musclebound stereotype, in the remake he just became that stereotype, so perfect at everything that even his own ego could heal his wounds! One of the nice narrative surprises (Spoiler Alert) is that your character gets killed during the Airport Hostage mission… it would be better if you cared about the character at all. You can have someone that is exceptional, but they can’t be the best.  That’s not interesting.  No matter how cool Boba Fett is, he would suck as the main character in a film. Even Han Solo wouldn’t be that great, he’s great as a side character, or as part of an ensemble but you need to start with your everyman, your simple farm boy.  You need fallibility, and you need a character arc. The best realised video game character so far, probably Nathan Drake in the Uncharted series. He trusts the wrong people, goes after the wrong girl, falls off things and you love him the more because of it.  But we need to do better than someone just saying “how about a modern day Indiana Jones”?

How about a normal loser kid who by accident finds an alien artifact, but has no idea how to use it properly? How about an ethical female spy who wants a chance to complete the objective by non lethal means before the army gets called in? Or if you are going to rip off stuff from movies, how about a comedy game where a couple of slackers fend off the zombie hordes with cricket bats! Or just stick me in a game! I do comedy, I can rap, I can do poetry, I get angry, I can wield a sword! I could be the most memorable game character of all time… or possibly just the worst…

It’s been tough. Very tough. Not just a teeny bit tough, but bastardly tough!

First thing I see with my dark elven eyes when I get to this snow covered land, other than the barely missed axe to the neck… is a dragon. A bloody dragon. Who would have thought it? I had never seen a swimming goat before either, but that seems to be ‘all the rage’ in these parts as well…

My story starts from there I guess. I was an outcast and unloved Dunmer. I think my face even offended people. But then the Dragon shows up and now I’m all special and everyone wants me to help them with tasks. It’s funny how no one will help me do any tasks, well, except the horses – I saw them kick the shit out of a dragon, before I even got a chance to give it a good beating!

It turns out that I am quite good at tasks. Tasks that involve killing things. Not the most lady-like of jobs I know, but I guess I’ve always been a bit different. My black eyes must make people think I’m hardcore or something. I found out that I have a good affinity with pyrotechnics! Flames seem to come naturally to me, so I thought I would hone these skills by going back to school. Killing things also can get you gold. Wooo, gold! Though I’m still not sure what this last shop item does, I bought it anyway.

Not everything has always gone to plan. I did spend nearly an hour attempting to climb up a massive bastard mountain to get to the Throat of the World before I realized I was supposed to go to Aivarstead first and follow a snowy brick road all the way to the bloody top. Only to then be greeted by a horrid snow monster who can one hit kill.

But it’s not only been hard for me. The whole world is suffering. Even the locals, they don’t seem right. I was watching some guy chop wood in Riften, but there were random bits of wood stuck to various parts of his body. Unless he is some sort of tree man, I’m guessing however this happened, must have hurt like hell.

Some people just seem to vanish into thin air. Perhaps they are using Vampire dust? Either way, they still like to have a chat even if you are not quite sure where they are. I also noticed that the people of Skyrim are very good workers. I saw a blacksmith with a knife and a broom in the same hand, whilst chopping up some leather – talk about multitasking! One elf guy I met must be really afraid of the dark, the bloody idiot carries his torch everywhere – even to bed!

I didn’t think I’d be seeing another dragon. I assumed infinite dragons was only a rumour. Turns out I was wrong! I even saw one flying though the sky, backwards… what kind of wizardry is this?! Only the strange happens in Skyrim, and talking about strange, how the hell did this leaf get so damn big?

I worked so damn hard to get where I am today. I fought bonesies in light armour and I killed multiple bandits in heavy armour. I became the Thane of Whiterun, (though I am regretting that now. Stupid Lydia, how many times do you need to get stuck on a gate or end up crippled on the floor?).  I also became the head of the college for mages. With this job I even got a set of flashy robes! I look awesome; badass even. All I need to complete the look is that awesome silver mask I picked up after I decapitated that nasty mage. Nice new hooded robes, a nice new looted mask; what more could I ask for!

Beware, people of Skyrim, lock up your sons, for words cannot describe how fabulous, menacing and downright awesome I look! You dragons better watch out, you’re gunna be slain by by one hot Dark Elf! I was on par with the Hagravens before, but now… NOW LOOK AT ME!!

ARRRRRRRRGGH!!! What kind of evil magic is this? I know I’m bloody hideous, but did this clothing combo really need to remove my entire head??!

That’s not just a reflection of the game’s plot which moves us from an ancient feudal Japan with Ninjas and Samurai to a post apocalyptic Neo Zeed future, it’s also reflected in the game’s mechanics. In terms of what the game it reminds me most of is the Shinobi that was ported to the Game Gear back in the day, where you had to have pixel perfect jumps, learn your enemy attack patterns and conserve your health bar like an old age pensioner conserving heat during the cold snap.

The problem is, that this is a modern game in polygons and 3D and even with the slider turned down so your gaming experience is on a flat plain, it’s very hard to replicate the precision that pixels provide. Also, there are no lives. This is great; it means that you don’t have to do the old school thing of starting the game all the way at the start again when you get beaten by the boss, and your karai knives regenerate so you don’t have to find a risky power up box… but then it robs the game of the challenge. You can just go through the game and try as many times as you like, which tends to lend itself to frustration as you will play until you get stuck. This is where the real frustration sets in.

Rather than old school difficulty, Sega have now introduced a scoring system. You get 1000 points for every hit you make on an opponent, but you lose 10,000 every time your opponent hits you, and it also seems you lose quarter of a million points every time you use one of the four magics that get given to you from the beginning.  At the end of the levels I played, I ended up with zero points… and a C+ rating. I hadn’t been playing badly, but I hadn’t memorized the level the way I used to with games like the Game Gear Shinobi.  I could go through to try and get an A or an S score, but I really can’t be bothered. Games aren’t like when I was a kid and I’d buy a game  and that would be it for about three months. These days I have a stack of games to play, a stack of games that are sitting on the pile beneath Skyrim. So I’m not going to devote the time that Shinobi needs… and in this day and age I’m not sure who would.

Another issue is that you get all your abilities at the beginning, so I just ended up using the somersault sword attack all the time, although if it had been more like the Game Gear Shinobi where you freed other ninjas with abilities on the way, then it would have been more satisfying.  It’s kind of annoying when a 20 year old handheld game does it better than the new 3DS version.

The game is solid, fun, there are some nice 3D sections and nice nods to previous games (the bomb in the power up, the highway section), there’s some cool anime sections, but nothing close to the Revenge of Shinobi disco dance, Batman (Devilman?), Spiderman, Hulk and Godzilla bosses. Playing this reminded me more of a game that you would play on your smartphone rather than an A title for a modern handheld. In fact, between this and Samurai Vengeance II, I would choose the madfinger game every time. OK, you could say the top down and side on fighter are apples and oranges, but it shows you what can be done in the genre… and it’s about a fifteenth of the price.

Welcome to the the Video Game Supporting Artist Agency.  I know, I know, you want to be the star of your own game, but we all have to pay our dues.  I’m still waiting for my opportunity, this is just something that I do to earn me enough simoleons so I can keep my Sims Social family happy while I try out for bigger roles.  Things are actually looking up; I was the masked henchman who stood just to the right of the Penguin at the beginning of Batman Arkham City. So work hard and soon you could be in a AAA title like that.

It’s a shame you weren’t in a month or so ago. We were looking for people to be extras in both renaissance and medieval Constantinople, but that’s all been cast now. There was a rumor that they were casting for the corpse in a future LA Noire DLC, but everyone wants to get their face seen in that game… the animation is so good.

If you don’t mind dressing up in a hot dog or salmon costume, there’s probably an opening in the Raving Rabbids Alive and Kicking Kinect game. No one lasts there that long.  Of course, if you don’t mind dressing up in a costume, and you’re not adverse to being hit with a giant purple dildo there’s a big casting call over at Saints Row the Third at the moment, but if you do make it big, that’s not the sort of thing you want turning up in the tabloids.

I’ve heard that they may be looking for people to dress up as Goombas for the new Mario Land 3D game; although I warn you, that’s a really boring job.  You just walk backwards and forwards all day in a set pattern. Although the catering is good; all the mushrooms you can eat! There’s Uncharted 3, which is really cinematic but that sand gets everywhere — in all the cracks —  and there’s a pretty good chance you’ll be shot in the face then asked to run into the next scene only to get shot in the face again.

No? Well, there is always Skyrim.  It’s nice character work, and every village needs a smithy. It’s a actually a speaking part too, which will look good for a show reel.  It’s just that the game is so damn big that no one will really remember your performance. Still, it’s a lot easier on the eyes than being in a Hello Kitty game, am I right? I can put a call in with Modern Warfare 3. With the way that game’s selling, they may need to cast a whole different set of NPC’s for each region.  Here’s hoping, right?

So, what previous video game experience have you had? What the hell is ‘Bubsy The Bobcat?’. Oh… right. Wasn’t there a really shit 3D game? Oh did I say shit? I meant, ummm, no, just shit… I think the only work you’re going to get is maybe a brief cameo in Sonic Generations, where both Sonics end up pointing and laughing at you.

If you alter your T-shirt logo we could get you a job. as a Block in a Mario game?

I tell you what, it’s not easy.  I used to be Aero the Acrobat. If I were you, I’d try to get some work as one of the furries in Saints Row the Third, and see how things go from there. Though everyone hates furries — just warning you…

Obviously I couldn’t go without my partner in singing crime, Susan (In the event of a singing event that Susan and I both attend, the safety glass may shatter itself). The event was held in a Karaoke Bar called Lucky Voice, which was underneath a Yo Sushi. Because it was underground it looked like a dingy cave. To Susan and I it looked amazing. Exactly the sort of dingy dive that we like to get our song on in (try saying ‘song on in’ fifty times when you’re drunk)!

When we were shown into our Karaoke room, it was like they knew we were coming. Not only was there the singing game, but there was also a box of wearable props. Obviously, I went straight for the wigs and the novelty cowboy hat and Susan went straight for a hat that looked exactly like one she already owns. She could have walked out with it and people would have just assumed that it was hers, but she didn’t. Honest. A true paragon. If she wanted it, she would just have walked out, and if anyone had asked questions, she would have just used her Filipino glare that she inherited from her mother. I think it turned someone to stone once! It even scared the tills in Superdrug when it didn’t show up her multi-buy discounts!

But, you’re not here to read about hats; you would be reading ‘hatter-up.net’ if that were the case. You’re here to hear about We Sing Rock, and what is the most important thing about a singing game? The songs. Fortunately, this game has a great selection. It has some really good songs that you might not expect from a Wii singing game, like ‘I Believe In a Thing Called Love’ by the Darkness (that really did take our voices glass shatteringly high); ‘Eye of the Tiger’ by Survivor, which you must have on a Rock singing game by law, I think, and the awesome ‘Final Countdown’ by Europe.

One song in particular stood as as a Karaoke favourite that Susan and I have taken pleasure in massacring in singing sessions before. The anthem, the awesome ‘Alone’ by Heart. After I epically squealed my way through the song in our We Sing cave, without noticing that the door was open and everyone could hear my slightly less than dulcet tones. Still, what I lack in pitch perfection, I more than make up for in terms of passion and epic arm movements!

I kinda panicked when I wondered what other people would think of my singing, but at least I got to see what the game thought of my singing. And the game was part of a Wii, and Wiis are my friends. Or so I thought. The game asked ‘Did any glasses shatter?’. Of course, I was horrifically insulted by that comment, (it’s fine if I say it about myself, not so much if non-sentient devices chip in) and was tempted to shatter the glass of the TV screen but it wasn’t the poor TV’s fault, it was just the middleman, a pawn in this singing game.

I got to see Kevin Leathers, the senior producer of We Sing Rock, who said that he was the brains behind the game having insults but when he saw the Fran glare (not to mention Susan’s ancient Filipino death look) he quickly added that he just had the idea, he hadn’t written any of the insults himself. We asked him the obvious: why did he pick Rock as the genre for the next stage of the We Sing franchise. He said that they gave it to the public to decide, asking on forums and on social network sites what they would like, and the public yelled back “We Want ROCK”!!!

One of the features that can actually help you get better is the fact that the game actually has singing lessons built in, so if I got the game, I might eventually move down from shattering glass and may only shatter plastic rulers instead (shatterproof my pert arse)! Kevin said that it was mainly to help people learn the game, but also to add more to the single-player element, making We Sing Rock a karaoke game that you can play by yourself without needing friends. Not that my friends always stick around when I get stuck into ‘Alone’ for the third time in an evening.

I asked him if I played the game non-stop from now on, would I be able to get on X Factor and meet Gary Barlow for next year’s auditions. He told me that I would definitely get on X Factor (Yay!) but that it wouldn’t be for the right reasons (Boo! Sorry, that gets four ‘Nos’). Still, it’s probably just as well, otherwise this time next year I would be in prison for molesting Take That band members who have really grown into their looks. He said that I didn’t need to sing to get that far, but I want to get to judges’ houses. Well, who wouldn’t want a free holiday in LA with Mr. Barlow?  Still, I do have an incentive to get better, Kevin did say that if I won the X Factor, he would make a game about me… ‘We Sing Fran’… so I’d better get cracking on that music lesson mode then. Fame, fortune, tie-in video games and that hot piece of ass Gary Barlow… Muhahahahahaaa!

We Sing Rock is out next month, so keep an eye out for our, hopefully not so glass shattering review.

HA! I know, I know… I said that it was probably going to fail, but they had a good deal, (and it still might fail). The cloud-based gaming system that beams the video from a high end computer back to your PC or Mac is free but the box that beams the Hi-Def signal back to your TV costs £69.99. Or so I thought. The lucky people who went to Eurogamer picked up a system for free and those that missed out got a voucher to pick up the system for a quid (and £6 handling fee).

I wasn’t even one of those slightly less lucky ones, but they are doing a deal where the first game that you buy through them costs a quid. And one of the games they have on offer is Deus Ex: Human Revolution.  Worth a punt for a quid, I thought. I have regular Sky Broadband, and it worked fine through my crappy old PC that couldn’t even handle the Cataclysm update of WoW.

Then I saw their other special offer.  Damn you special offer… damn you eyes for seeing the special offer!!!

If you pre ordered Saints Row 3 for £34.99, then you got the games system for free (well, nearly free – there was still the £6 shipping and handling charge) – even more than that, if you signed up for their Play Pass (which gives you access to 105 games) for a month, for £6.99 you got 30% off all purchases. So, for Saints Row 3 (£24.49), Deus Ex: Human Revolution (£1), the OnLive console (£6 P&P) and a month’s Play Pass (£6.99 -and you can cancel at any time) just £38.98.  As I wanted Saints Row 3 on my Xbox 360 anyway, it seemed like a pretty good incentive to swap systems just for the one game.

So, the console is very small, a bit like an expensive door stop. Two USB ports on the front, an ethernet connection on the back, power, HDMI and that’s pretty much it. It also comes with a pad and a USB to MICRO usb cable that connects it, as well as an HDMI cable and ethernet cable. The pad is so close to an XBox 360 pad that you’d be hard pushed to tell the difference even if you were very, very drunk, (I will let you know if it ever happens to me). Also there there is a set of record buttons for you to take ‘brag clips’. Something I will use to take those amusing ‘capped in ass’ moments.

Saints Row The Third isn’t out until next month, so I thought I would have a spin on some of the games available as part of the Play Pack Bundle. So, the first game I put in was Batman: Arkham Asylum. People have complained about lag times but to me it seemed just the same as if I was playing on my 360, maybe even better with the level of detail and rendering. It certainly didn’t disappoint.  The buttons were the same too, with the same names, so for me there was very little difference.  Occasionally, the graphical detail drops out but as it’s a video stream it’s not laggy but the screen distorts, kind of like a very mild version of watching a digital TV channel on Freeview when it’s wet outside. So us Brits should see this as a slice of familiar normality.

And it’s cheap. All the games tend to have a free trial, and some games that are outside the ‘Play Pack’ are really cheap.  Underrated shooter Metro 2033 is just £3.99, or £2.79 if you have the PlayPack bundle discount.  If I saw that game for less than £3 for the 360, I would snap it up.  But they need to be a lot cheaper.

If I had pre-ordered Saints Row 3 (which I could do for £31.85) then the odds are that in a couple of months time I could probably get a decent trade in for it, £17 is probably not unrealistic, which means that the game would really cost me about £15. Also, I can loan it to my friends, keep it, and not worry about losing it if the company shuts down. The OnLive system does have some cool games, but there are a lot of cool games that it doesn’t have. If you’re an Xbox owner that’s annoyed by the Playstation 3 exclusives, then most of the main titles for both systems are going to seem like other system exclusives for the OnLive user. And what about the games that the system will never get?  Well, why don’t you go over and have a look at Steam, because a load of those games will take a while to come out on OnLive and in the case of Valve and EA, that might be never.

True, I can’t play these games on my PC, Mac, Tablet or smartphone but I really don’t want to. What I really want is for them to get the license for World of Warcraft so I can play Cataclysm on a kick ass spec PC on my crappy little unit or even plug a usb keyboard and mouse into the OnLive unit so I can live the dream of playing WoW on the big screen! My little Gnomy, not so skinny and boney.  I’m sorry, but Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga… say whaaaaaaat?

But what about all those PC games that you can finally play on a console? Well, I tried. I thought I would try and play a game of Astro Slugs.  But I couldn’t. Because I couldn’t type my name in.  When I played 4 Elements, it told me that with a keypress I could bring up a virtual keyboard, which then turned semi transparent and I couldn’t see anything. And the game was designed for a mouse, and was frustrating as hell itself to try and play with a keypad.  From the games in the Play Pack bundle, the only ones I was interested in playing on a console format were Just Cause 2, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Bioshock, Borderlands, Saints Row 2, Tomb Raider and World of Goo, and I already owned all of those! And I don’t have to pay £6.99 a month to play them. I may be exaggerating a little but when 2004 game Evil Genius is one of the free games on offer, you wonder how good the rest of the games you never heard of are?

Hey, it’s a cheap experiment. It’s another plastic wired block to add to the collection. I got to be an early adopter, and if enough of these things are sold then the game catalogue might get better.  If they aren’t, then hopefully someone will work out how to put XBLA on it with a USB drive. Either that or it’s the most technological door stop I will have ever owned…

Why is this, I hear no one ask? Because I think it’s still a little behind what anyone else wants.  Look at the Xperia Play.  For those of you that don’t know, it’s basically an android phone blended together with a PSP Go. You can use it as a portable and download all the stuff you already have from the PlayStation Store (like those free games you got when the site was hacked) and also use it as an Android phone.  The problem is, they should have done it five years ago. Back then, Sony Ericsson was one of the gold standard phone manufacturers, the PSP was just a year old and the iPhone was still a year away. A PSP can still blow the iPhone 4 away in terms of graphical power, even after the Apple produce has gone through its fourth iteration. If it had been a choice in 2007 between an Xperia Play and an iPhone, that would have been a real choice.  Now you would get an Xperia Play because you couldn’t afford an iPhone.The new demo of Uncharted: Golden Abyss, the Vita version of the game has gone online and it demonstrates that you can use the touch screen to control the game like a iPhone game.  It has a proper joypad and buttons.  Why do you want to smear the screen with your fingerprints if you don’t have to! You have a whole touch pad on the back so you can ‘touch’ the screen without obscuring the action with your finger! If you want to make the console like an iPhone why don’t you make it a real competitor?Make it a phone! Why not? If you’re going to have a 3G antenna anyway (which you have to pay the equivalent of £17 to join in Japan, and then if you decided to drop the monthly 3G service, £17 every time you want to reconnect! Say whaaaaaat!) With the iPhone 5 coming, (and the dual core Android phones like the Galaxy S 2 .. and soon quad cores) the consumers are likely to see few advantages to buying a Vita than getting a new generation phone.

I have an Android phone… and I love it but sometimes I feel I would love it more if the bottom corners of the display of every game weren’t taken up by my thumbs. (I hate thumbs, especially my thumbs after eating YumYums). Games have evolved to be played in a square, not a top heavy triangle.  Plus, as strange as it sounds, people seem to forget how satisfying the feedback of actually pressing a button is. I love it. I would push the ‘DO NOT PUSH’ button if I knew it was gunna give me feedback. Plus, the dual analogue stick system that has been toyed around with in various ways since the Dual Shock 2 seems as though it will be the ultimate evolution of the joypad until we develop the science to give us an extra set of thumbs!

What would I really like; I would like to take the PS Vita, and also make it a phone (Android, I guess but I would be happy if I could just make calls on it so I could stop having to carry another thing around in my pocket). Also, I would merge it with a 3DS, so the screen could be glasses free 3D with a slider if I wanted it and the thing could be a clamshell so the screen is protected and not always getting smudged, and you have the option of using a stylus.  Also, it would be pretty cool, and not impossible for it to have one of those laser keyboard projectors in it when you set it on a table in the bottom of the clamshell and a pico projector on the top so you could put the image on your phone up on the wall, (and it could also include a handy bottle opener, a Star Trek style replicator and a telescopic Samurai sword for the inevitable zombie attack… ok maybe not those three). The point is, this is all existing technology and if you want to take on Apple, you have to offer something much greater than the current technology is.  And I know, the Vita is a handheld console, not a smartphone but those worlds are merging.  It’s no longer apples and oranges… it’s apanges and orples, erm yeh, (I assure you I’m not having a stroke). And once again, it seems that the handheld consoles are moving behind the times of other technology. It happened with Sega when the Dreamcast wasn’t a DVD player when the PS2 was and a lot of PS3’s sold on the strength of their Blu-Ray players and the constant hours worth of Come Dine With Me.

It seems like a bold statement, but unless they start offering a lot more, the 3DS and the PS Vita could be the last standalone hand held consoles… before Sony and Nintendo go the way of Sega and realize they could make more money producing apps for the iPhone than they can trying to market their own consoles.

The above is what I’d like to think happened, instead my day was very different (bloody security guards spoiling my fun). Instead I was at the Imperial War Museum in London. It’s a pretty impressive building full of tanks, subs, aircraft and massive bloody missiles. The second I got there I was loving it! But that’s not what I was there for, no way! No, none of those bastard tanks were for me to accidentally drive off with, neither were there planes for me to fly away in. I was there for one mission only: The Cursed Crusade!

The Cursed Crusade is exactly the kinda genre I love. Developed by Kylotonn, a French video games company, the game is set in medieval times. It’s a third person action adventure game and it contains hot male character models wearing a lot of armour. Having had a go on the game, I was presently surprised, so surprised in fact that I took to the game as if it were my only child. Loving it, showing great happiness towards it, and then swearing and beating the crap out of it (by the way, I have no children, you don’t need to ring social services. I also love erm, all children, great and small).

The story is about two characters, Denz and Esteban, and they need to find Denz’s missing father, who should be able to lift a curse that has been put upon the two characters. The curse is like something from hell and when activated you go all horny and red, in the devil way, not the chasing after wenches way. The control system was really easy to pick up; I impressed the guy showing me how to play the game. You would expect nothing less of me though, really, girl power and all that other crap. The fights were bloody, messy, hack and slashy fights yet they were not button bashy fights and I could dual wield two different weapons at the same time. The enemy deaths were brutal and brilliant to watch and the environment looked pretty amongst all of the dead and severed heads. I had a cheeky grin the whole time I was playing it!

You can play this game in co-op. I was lucky enough to bump into some of the usual suspects I’ve become friends with on other gaming sites and had a go on co-op with my chum Svend. Co-op was fun, but then co-op in my opinion is always fun. And if you can pull off the tag team style move, it’s bloody awesome and you needed to give each other at least a ‘Dumb and Dumber’ style high five!

Now this is normally where we would say ‘laters’ and all go home. But, no, us ‘journos’ were in for a treat. In another room there were a group of guys, covered in medieval armour and wielding their massive swords triumphantly. They gave us a demonstration of sword and axe fighting. The same weaponry and stuff as I’d just seen in the game. A company called History In The Making supplied all the weapons and costumes these guys were wearing. They have also been used on TV shows and feature films shot in the UK. They even brought in medieval backdrops. The place looked like a bloody castle. It was great. The ‘guys’ in all the armour are actually period actors, and they do stunts and sword fighting for a living! I was very jealous.

It was all really impressive to watch ‘the guys’ battle it out, but you could tell people just wanted to grab swords and chop anything in sight, myself being one of them. As soon as we were allowed to try out all the shizzle, I went straight for the biggest weapon I could find. I found an axe, and because I needed to look the part (you know me when it comes to costumes), I got to try on some ‘mail’. Mail, probably known better as chain mail, was never actually called ‘chain mail’, as the mail is what the chain suit is called. It would be as if we were calling it ‘mail mail’ or ‘chain chain’ or something. Either way, I had to try it on. It took two people to put the bloody thing on me as it weighed a lot but once it was on, I could have worn it all day. It was so cool against my skin, like a soothing Aloe Vera gel except made from holey metal. I had a mail hood on as well, that also felt nice. They wouldn’t let me keep it. Boo!

Then I was given a Claymore to play with. A very nice Scottish man (with fabulous hair) then taught me how to wield a sword properly. Possibly the greatest thing I have ever been taught since learning how to not burn skinny fries. The movement done with the feet was very much like martial art stances, and this helped produce power to swing the sword. I was practising on a wooden target but if it were a human being, it would have lost its left arm, and its head,  but only after I’d broken its nose with the chunk of metal attached to the sword handle. This experience has taught me how to defend myself for when the zombies attack or in case those bloody killer tomatoes return to get us.

There were various other weapons and armour, shields and helmets. I pretty much tried out everything. I could have walked out with the gauntlets. They made my tiny little hands look all mighty against my weedy little arms. You could do a very good Doctor Claw impression and I did the most menacing evil villain ‘Muhahahaha’ finger taps ever! All of this sword fighting and axe wielding excitement wasn’t there to cover up a game that might be flawed, or even a bit rubbish and rushed. I really liked the game before I even stepped foot into the medieval battle zone and I look forward to playing The Cursed Crusade in the near future. This swordfest was just a great added bonus and I thank everyone involved in creating this amazing event. The Cursed Crusade is out on the 7th of October and I highly recommend having a cheeky look, and not just at the males in mail.

Recently, I got back into my Harry Potter obsession from 10 years ago. Okay, I will admit now, I have never read the books, but once I saw the last movie, the urge for more ‘Potter’ was needed. I then discovered the wonder of the Steven Fry audiobooks, (I am actually really pleased I never read the books now because the joys of listening to Fry’s Hermione impressions are bloody awesome).  So, after buying my Snape action figure, Draco Malfoy mini bust, and also the official Slytherin uniform including, scarf, robes, tie, grey jersey, prefect badge and a Death Eater wand, I wanted to experience the video game. Well why not? I do love those bastard video games too.

Back in the day, I had Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone on PS1 which was  pretty fun. Then later I got the Quidditch World Cup on the Gamecube (and then more recently on the original Xbox) and found that it was actually a pretty fun game and I got to play as Slytherin (my chosen house if you haven’t already guessed). Having just seen the Deathly Hallows movie, I was tempted to get the last game, but reviews saying that it was the worst Harry Potter game (if not the worst game ever) put me off. The series only went next generation with the fifth film, so I figured that I could pick up Order of the Phoenix pretty cheaply. Then read that Half Blood Prince was pretty much the same game, but with entertaining, non broken mini games, and a Nearly Headless Nick stopping you from getting randomly lost, so I bought that one instead. I hate getting lost in games!

I found the game to be exactly what I wanted. Why, because the ‘Grand Theft Hogwarts’ style game allowed me to wander round Hogwarts. I got to see how the Gryffindor common room linked to the main staircase, and I got a solid sense of the geography of the game that I didn’t get from the films (or from listening to the books). Yes, the mini games are repetitive, but they’re a lot more fun than the mini games were in Bully, and Hogwarts is a much more interesting place than Bulworth Academy. Hogwarts itself looked very impressive. Detailed portraits hung on the walls, other students wandering around the halls and vast outdoor landscapes which you can also explore.

At the time, the game wasn’t given amazing reviews, firstly because it was largely a retread of a game that was two years old by the time it was released.  But having not played a Potter game since Quidditch World Cup, it’s one of the most solid, pacy and fun games that I have played in a while.  If I hadn’t been gripped by my recent Potter obsession, I don’t know if I would have ever picked it up but I’m glad I did.  Not only is it a fun game, it’s a good example of a film tie in done right.

1. Don’t just concentrate on the main character models, concentrate on the world.
2. Make sure that it’s fun… shouldn’t be that hard to do… really…
3. If your franchise appeals to kids, make the basic game easy to get through, but include enough secrets and challenges to keep older audiences interested.
4. Don’t try and make Gears of War with wands.  Twice.  It’s not going to work either time, EA, no matter how cool the Harry Potter franchise is.
5. Release DLC for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince so I can play through Malfoy’s story and get some extreme close ups on that icy blond piece of sexy Slytherin ass!

I have also watched nearly everything that he has worked on except for The Office (Gervais is the reason behind why I didn’t watch it, I hated his character so much) and this is because I admire him as a person but also I find his gangly goggle eyed dork face quite charming and, erm, kinda sexy in some odd, freakish sort of way. I think we also have a similar humour. A little bit dry and quick witted and it’s really unique when you come across someone who’s style of humor is exactly the same as yours. Perhaps scary is a better word to use.

When I discovered that he was going to be a voice actor in Portal 2 I was just in utter awe. I did star jumps, fist pumps and made a delicous cake (which is a lie, you know I can’t cook). It made me want the game, (that I wanted badly enough already) even bloody more. Even more than Haribo for breakfast.

After playing all of Portal 2, it showed to me that the part of Wheatley was made for Merchant. His voice acting is amazing, the way he can show great emotion in his words and show this strange caring yet evil side all at once. All the voice acting in Portal 2 is fantastic, but with Merchant vocals, it gives the game a much more human approach. His sarcastic humor was perfect, and I think this is very rare in games today. It was such a contrast compared to GLaDOS’s harsh and robotic voice and Cave Johnson’s shouty, militant voice. And though it seemed slightly strange to start with, the mixing of a very human amusing Bristol accent worked really well. Obviously Valve thought his voice was amazing too and that’s why they left it untouched by technology.

I’d like to know how many games could be improved by just using Merchant’s voice.  The new Earth Defence Force would be awesome, if now and then you’d hear, “Ohhh! Look at the size of that bloody bug!” in native Bristolian. Or in Gears of War 3, “yes, erm it seems like I need to kill this monster, in the ‘most’ horrific way possible, isn’t that right Marcus? Yes, ok, I will probably do that… erm can you do it first?” My personal favourite would be to get Stephen Merchant to redub Get Fit With Mel B on Xbox 360 Kinect. This fitness game is actually pretty good except for the fact you have to put up with Mel B’s stupid voice. Merchant would make me want to workout everyday… “Ohh you did a little jiggle there, a lovely little jiggle! Fantastic… That’s it, that is some good leg, erm, leggage… Finish that workout and you can treat yourself to a lovely piece of muffin!”

I’m going to see Stephen Merchant in September for his ‘Hello Ladies’ tour. I managed to get a front row ticket and I will be there wearing one of my many Portal 2 T-shirts. I may even make an ‘I <3 Wheatley’ T-shirt especially for him. The lanky shit better notice it too, or I may have to start calling him the dumbest moron who ever lived… then Portal him into space… and then I would say I was genuinely sorry.

I sit down with friends who have an iPhone 4, and we get into a debate.  App Store vs. market, iTunes vs. drag and drop, retina displays vs. AMOLED displays, the best build quality in the market vs. something a third of the price, iOS5 vs Gingerbread, widgets vs. stability etc. ad infinitum.  In fact, it reminded me of something I used to do as a kid… argue about the Super Nintendo and the Megadrive.  More games vs. adult games (but you can make the blood red in Mortal Kombat with a cheat code), Mode 7 vs parallax scrolling, Sonic vs. Mario, “You smell” vs “Your mum smells”. And it looks like the iPhone and Android phones may have become the big games systems of the future. (And I’m sorry for the Windows 7 phone users who love their Xbox Live integration, but after the Zune and Microsoft’s late entry… I think the platform is the equivalent of the Amstrad GX400… even if Nokia is teaming up with them… after all, Panasonic teamed up with 3DO!)

Why? First of all there’s the install base.  Apple claims they have 200 million people using iOS devices, now Android have 130 million – and they’re growing fast, with 550,000 activations a day, and predictions that could rise to a million by the end of the year (so, ner, Apple!). Secondly, there’s the development.  People can do it in their back room.  Google have even invented a system where you can piece bits of Android code together like jigsaw pieces to make your own apps.  It’s like the community games that people make for Little Big Planet being put online and suddenly getting 10 million downloads. If a game got 10 million sales, it would be a blockbuster.  Then again, a game that sells for £39.99 is a lot better than a game that sells for free (well, financially speaking at least, I’d take my free version of Paradise Island over Duke Nukem 3D any day!).

It does mean that people are going back to gameplay.  People are looking for simple and fun – in a way, games have gone back to the NES era, where people would play for entertainment and high scores (BTW – how nice is it to see sprites again?).  Give them a graphical knock down and versions of Doodle Jump and Angry Birds could easily be remade on the NES. Although for every great new innovative game you get, you get a million poor clones… how many versions of Bejeweled does the world need? (Answer, not seventy five frickin’ billion of them!) And theft is rife, not just the people looking back at the NES and SNES back catalogue and ripping off Tetris Attack (although can I find one good rip off of Hatris, no I can’t!) but even ripping off new ideas, like Capcom Mobile’s well documented rip off of Explosion Man, MaXplosion (even after Twisted Pixel came to Capcom for a distribution deal). I give it a month before there are a whole bunch of Apparatus clones clogging up the Android market.

Remake me damn you!

Add to that the number of emulators you can get.  On iOS, you can get versions of some Megadrive games, but on Android, why bother when you can download emulators for free! In a way, it would be nice to see more regulation, but also more studio involvement from looking at their back titles.  I never got to play Rocket: Robot on Wheels the first time, but it’s a great little game – well suited for play on the go – but it would be so much better if you could have proper accelerometer control.  Come on DMA, the next Grand Theft Auto is important – but the game already works! Why not spend an afternoon making the controls match up and rereleasing it for 59p (and while we’re at it, Gamefreak… you need to take an afternoon off from Pokemon to release a decent port of Drill Dozer! GBA games work SO WELL on Android emulation).

That’s is also the problem with games on the iPhone and Android at the moment – the price.  Microsoft actually set a pretty decent price point when it came to XBox Live Arcade, with some bigger arcade games costing 1200 points (£10), lesser titles costing 800 (£6.50) and retro games costing 400 (£3.25) – roughly. This means that people could make a clear profit.  When Apple started charging for games, the 99 cent price point came in, meaning that people are now wary of spending more than 59p on a game.  Great if you’re a guy in your bedroom, not so great if you’re a big studio… especially as both Android and Apple take 30% of any money you make.  This leads the big studios to try and get you to download their programs from websites off the main market – as a result they don’t get the sales they want, so then don’t commit fully to the smartphone game market. At the moment, of the big game publishers, only EA, Capcom and Namco seem to have any kind of presence in the Android marketplace, although Sega and Capcom have joined the AppStore.

Age of Zombies - Arrgh, Brains!

So – now is the time to get involved. And I actually am getting involved (watch this space). The most expensive game on Android market is a Japanese RPG that still clocks in at under a tenner.  People are having ideas and making games that can be directly sold to the consumers.  There’s a small window of time before the big studios realize that they can’t ignore a combined market of 330 million users in iOS and Android.  Where else would a game as awesome, but short as Halfbrick’s Age of Zombies be the equivalent of an AAA?  So, play games, make games (a decent Metroidvania style game please), talk about games and maybe even review games on these platforms (certainly tell me your recommendations in the comments) – because I can tell you this… more people will play Angry Birds (which I bloody hate) than any game that will ever be released for the PlayStation Vita. And there are exciting times to come…  both iOS and Android need their killer apps – and I can’t wait for Apple’s version of Mario to take on Android’s version of Sonic in the 2032 Olympics.