Just JUMP ON THE GOOMBA!

Seriously, she just jumped into the same Goomba four times and yelled at the screen. What’s going on here? This is someone with the patience to beat the fun-but-frustrating Prototype without ever toning down the difficulty or destroying a controller.

I suppose it’s sometimes hard for me to remember that not every core gamer grew up with a NES (or 2600, or C64, et al) and the thought that a gamer’s first console might be the N64 makes me feel ancient. Kat, who probably obsesses over games more than I do (which is saying a lot), first cut her gaming teeth by way of RPGs such as Harvest Moon 64 and Paper Mario. As such, she excels at games which give her the breathing room to think about a situation and make the best decision. Conversely, she’s always struggled with genres which require twitch-based gameplay and fast-reactions.

The face of failure

Here at Ready-Up, we’ve got gamers who specialise in every genre, from FPS to driving to the Japanese RPG. Personally, I would describe myself as an all-round gamer, although I’m utterly pants at RTS. Over the last six years, I’ve tried to introduce Kat to more old-school and action-orientated games, to broaden her gaming skill – and for the most part it’s worked. She packs a mean Bill in Left 4 Dead. She’s bested bi-pedal nuclear tanks by the dozen in every Metal Gear. Recently, she even beat Dr. Wily in the original MegaMan. Maybe she’ll conquer Super Mario Bros. yet?

Hang on, she’s figured out the warp zone! Wait, no. She died on 4-1.

Anyway, I think my point is this: just because you suck at a genre right now doesn’t mean you always have to. How you started gaming definitely influences the way you’ll play, but don’t be put off trying something new. Give fighting games a chance. Try an MMO. Go retro. Maybe you’ll love it. Practice makes perfect!

When all else fails, turn to alcohol. Another valuable life lesson!

Comments made by Kat while I was actually writing this:

“Damn it, Mushrooooom! I killed the mushroom.” “Ahh, I didn’t even see that.” “I would have never found that on my own.” “GAPS!” “WHY CAN YOU RUN ACROSS THE LITTLE GAPS?” “This game would be way better if it was MegaMan.” “I miss having fireballs. That was way better.” “[while swimming] OH NO, THIS IS TERRIBLE. EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS FEELS WRONG.” “I had a mushroom that time. Eat it, plant.” “The jumping fish are scaring me.”

So at this years Electronics Entertainment Expo, when Microsoft picked up the empty chassis of a classic 360 to reveal a smaller, sleeker, quieter model hiding within its guts, I cursed under my breath. Here we go again. There’d be no way I could resist. And sure enough, one week after its release, the feature packed Xbox 360 S has found a cozy spot next to my PS3 and Wii, albeit with enough space for the new cooling configuration to breathe. How does it compare to the original model after a week of stress-testing?

The reflective chassis on the new 360 S makes taking a decent pic quite difficult!

If you’re thinking of replacing your Arcade or Elite, or “jumping in” for the first time with this model, you’ve probably read a dozen previews of the hardware elsewhere. Rather than recap the stock-features, I’m going to examine my two main concerns when it comes to Microsoft’s console: reliability and acoustic performance. Sure, the new PC-chic black case, with its thick silver trims and big ol’ fan grills, stands out from the crowd. Likewise, it’s good to hear that 802.11b/g/n wireless, a high capacity hard-drive and a ton of USB ports come as standard. But when I think of my 360, no matter how many great gaming experiences it has given me, I worry about when next I’ll have to send a unit to Microsoft for repair (five times now), and whether my next console will again sound like a lawnmower choking on a garden gnome during operation.

After transferring all of my games and saves by using a USB flash-drive in conjunction with the online DRM-tool (there is, optionally, a hard-drive transfer kit that will set you back about £20), I pulled out my two main noise and heat benchmarks: the original Crackdown and Grand Theft Auto IV. Crackdown is a rare title in that it doesn’t offer a hard-drive install – stressing the DVD drive heavily to fetch data as agents jump around its open-world – whereas GTA IV pushes the system to its limits graphically, kicking the cooling into over-drive quickly. 12 hours of disc streaming later, I was more than pleased with the performance. Apart from some heat build-up around the main vent (be sure to leave three inches of space around the system for air-flow), little had changed since I first booted up the games. Crucially, it is quiet. For comparisons sake, while spinning a disc, the 360 S is no louder than a Wii or most PCs reading a DVD-9. With no disc in the drive, or while playing Live Arcade or installed games, the system is about as audible as a PS3 Slim, perhaps a smidgen more under stress. Impressive.

Hurrah! Now I can talk to my opponents in Super Street Fighter IV!

There are minor changes to the accessories I should mention. The complementary Live headset not only sports a sturdier microphone mute switch-box, but a standard 2.5mm audio jack, which will allow use of the headset on certain accessories (such as the MadCatz SE tournament stick) without the use of awkward adaptors. One minor touch in keeping with the console aesthetic is that the underside of the new controller is an attractive shiny black, as opposed to the black and grey scheme used by the Elite controller.

Is the upgrade worth it? That depends on your circumstances. If you game in a large living-space where noise isn’t a concern and have a model with a 60GB or larger hard-drive, probably not right now. Time will tell how reliable this unit is, but initial impressions are promising; if you’re new to the system, skip the older models and any possible hassle with the old warranty, which even after being extended for three years will soon expire. £199 for the new system is a good deal all-round, but might be too pricey for some. A new, matte-finish 360 S which ditches the 250GB hard-drive in favour of 4GB of internal memory will hit soon, so that could also be considered. In my case, I happen to be pretty crafty with eBay and shopping around online, so I only had to ask myself “Will I pay £20 to upgrade my 360?”. Hell yes!

Accurate 1:1 sword controls? And a whip as a usable item!

Which is why I’m so pleased that Nintendo had a strong performance at this E3. At a show less about family smiles and more about games, classic franchises were reborn en massé, most with new developers at the helm. Sure, we got a couple of minutes of casual titles like Wii Party, but there wasn’t a Wii Vitality Sensor in sight. Instead, the majority of the conference acted as a love-letter to the core, offering (arguably) more new games and surprises than either Sony or Microsoft’s show.

Kicking things off with appropriate flair, a new Zelda title, Skyward Sword, was announced and demoed by Shigeru Miyamoto himself. Despite being a technical disaster on-stage (we were assured it was Wi-Fi interference), it is reported to control fluidly and take full advantage of Wii Motion Plus for 1:1 sword controls. I’m a sucker for the series as it is, so hearing that the game merges the art of Twilight Princess and Wind Waker is all the sweeter. We also got a trailer for Team Ninja’s Metroid: Other M, now finally approaching its release window, and it looks to be an effective hybrid between classic 2D Metroid gameplay and the first-person concepts of the Prime series, with an emphasis on story-telling that may help it stand out from its forebears.

Are you a bad enough ape to rescue the banana horde?

With Rare no longer in the picture, Retro Studios, having already done exemplary work with the Metroid franchise, is bringing DK back in style with Donkey Kong Country Returns. While some might accuse this of being a simple retread of past ideas, the trailer is undeniably impressive; new mechanics, including barrel-blasting between foreground and background areas, feature prominently. More surprising is Kirby’s Epic Yarn, a game which not only pushes the very limit of acceptable cuteness, but also sports probably the most unique 2D-artstyle I’ve seen since Yoshi’s Island on the SNES. While it remains to be seen if the gameplay can follow suit (early criticism cites its easy difficulty), there is a lot of potential in the platform-morphing gameplay. Nintendo rounded off things for established platforms by showing off Epic Mickey (interesting), confirming the Goldeneye remake (risky) and announcing a new Golden Sun title (whoo).

Of course, a new commitment to Wii gaming was secondary to the real news of the the conference: the official reveal of the 3DS, successor to phenomenally popular Nintendo DS. I’m a big proponent of handheld gaming, with a DSi XL, a PSP Slim and an iPhone to my name, but even I was unsure about Nintendo’s direction with the 3DS. I needn’t have worried. Okay, so I may have shouted “SOLD!” the moment I heard there were StarFox 64 and Ocarina of Time remakes on the way (I, er, have some fondness for the latter), but the extremely strong early third party support for the console itself is promising. A Metal Gear title? Check. Resident Evil? Check. Final Fantasy? Of course. A new Persona title from Atlus? Heck yeah!

I'm stiiiill in a dream, Snake Eater~

While software is ultimately what defines a system, without the hardware to back it up, the 3DS could flop harder than the Virtual Boy. Thankfully, my initial skepticism of the technology seems unfounded: show-floor reports claim the 3D effect on the new widescreen display is very real, adjustable and glasses-free. Nintendo has even teamed up with movie-distributors like Disney and Dreamworks to get in early on providing 3D movies. And with GameCube-level graphics, a real analog-stick and the bottom touch-screen still in play, this all-in-one system could potentially dominate when it hits Europe and the United States early next year.

Historically, Nintendo has strived when it’s backed into a corner. The DS and the Wii are still selling by the truckload, so what has prompted this gesture to the hardcore? Perhaps they feel threatened by Microsoft and Sony aiming to steal a chunk of the market they ironically helped create. Regardless, one thing is for sure – if Nintendo can keep up this momentum, it will go a long way to repairing the damaged relations of recent years. Now if we could only get 720p output and a unified online service, we’d be all set!

Well, great. Now I have to buy this. Thanks a lot, Nintendo!

I've got to admire any game which allows you to play as Kraken at least a little bit

At any rate, my first impressions from client-install through to the completion of the tutorial were positive. Building on coding experience with their previous games Savage 1 and 2, Developers S2 Games have put together a lovely little engine for their newest title. It’s smooth and scalable, running on most systems with an entry-level graphics card, yet it also performs without a hitch in 1080p on my modest PC setup, boasting some shiny shader effects which really add to the character art. Best of all, it’s compatible with the holy platform trinity of PC, Max and Linux, so card-carrying Apple and Tux followers won’t feel left out. The tutorial, which took me no more than ten minutes, was strong throughout; with clear voiced instructions on how to play and some in-game examples of character progression, by the end I felt ready to tackle some fellow newcomers online and earn my stripes.

Boy, was I in for a shock. Setting my experience level to “beginner” at the request of the built-in matchmaker, I was quickly paired up with several other players. Ten matches later, my enthusiasm dampened – I had been asked to leave every single encounter, even when joining “N00b friendly”, un-ranked servers. “You suck at laning”, “Learn 2 play” and “OMG You ruin everything!” were among the most common complaints directed at me, besides general expletives. I hate feeling like I’m letting the team down, so I sought to improve my ability by playing some practice matches… but beyond an empty map, there’s no way to do so. No campaign mode. No bot matches. Being a team game, I can understand why this is the case, except it’s a mite difficult to improve when everyone you can play with hates you.

This is fairly analogous to my experience

Frustrated by my failures, and finding the official forums for the game near-incomprehensible, I decided to make a plea for some assistance from Dan, who got in touch with a gentleman from public relations at S2 Games. The problem, as I determined from his reply, was that the tutorial for Heroes of Newerth doesn’t tell you what the hell the game really is. No, it’s not a hero-driven RTS where you attempt to battle it out with colourful enemies in an attempt to destroy their base, all the while leveling-up your character and earning cool new abilities. It is, instead, an extremely complex game of cat and mouse split into several discrete phases, where the pre-game choices of heroes can end the match before it’s even begun and where one accidental mouse click can end it after it’s started.

Yeesh. Okay, so it has a steep learning curve. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with some challenge! I’d be willing to work past that. To persist. To learn. Alas, I don’t want to. To be absolutely frank, the biggest problem with Heroes of Newerth is its community. I’ve seen posts from members who claim it’s the best multiplayer experience they’ve ever had, and hey, maybe after six years of Defence of the Ancients, it is. New initiates to Newerth, however, beware – you are the enemy. Although I respect how passionate the player base is about the game, there’s just no excuse for some of the behaviour I’ve encountered. Check out the coverage for the game elsewhere: even the mighty Giant Bomb has been mocked for their performance in a video preview, yet it painted the game in quite a positive light.

Without care, this is the kind of reaction you can expect from other players

And yet, despite the hostility, despite the assertions that I can’t play games at all and should go back to Imagine Babies, I feel like there’s something here. I want to give Heroes of Newerth a chance. But without hours of trial-and-error, without meticulously studying character guides and YouTube strategy videos, it simply won’t let me. The guys at S2 Games are making a fantastic commitment to improve the current game by adding new features periodically, but without an effective way to ease players into the experience, I don’t think anyone other than existing Defence of the Ancients devotees are going to see them.

I guess by those calculations, I'd have to give Braid 14/10

All of this time travel has led me to think a lot about the passage of time in games, specifically with regards to pacing. It’s an important issue to consider for any game of any type, but more often than not we’re talking about the classic Japanese RPG, heavy with repetitive battling and thick plot exposition. While western RPG design of late has gravitated towards non-linear games, giving players the power to craft their own adventures, Japanese RPGs remain firmly rooted in strong, pre-set narratives. The elephant in the room here is, of course, the long-awaited Final Fantasy XIII, the first “traditional” FF title in several years. It has been famously criticised for containing what is effectively a 25-hour tutorial running along a straight path. Even if it provides some interesting distractions along the way, it has left a lot of players feeling powerless and detached from the game world, a deal-breaker in many cases. Is there really an effective way to balance an immersive story and the feeling that the player has truly made a difference by taking part?

Press X to listen to Vanille tell you about the sky, or hope, or her totally-not-lesbian-girlfriend or AHHHHH

After recently beating the excellent DS re-issue, I have confirmed what I already knew: Chrono Trigger may be the perfect Japanese RPG. This is a strong statement, I know, but it’s relevant to my point. Put together by a coalition of the grand masters of the genre, it manages to sacrifice neither gameplay nor story. While upon first glance the cast might look like an ensemble of time-period stereotypes missing from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, they soon reveal themselves to be anything but. What we have instead are charming characters of genuine depth and personality (like techno-whiz Lucca and the sentient Robo), of genuine desire and motivation (like fallen knight Frog and anti-hero fan-favourite Magus), whose back-stories can be expanded upon should the player so wish. The script is extremely tight (even more so in the DS release), mixing humour and serious exposition well, and the plot is surprisingly accessible considering its subject matter (yet still invites complex discussions of paradoxes and the nature of change).

Attack its weak point (the head) for massive damage!

Crucially, it excels at pacing. You can leave your instinctive grinding reflex at the door, as random battles are non-existent – enemies wander around the field and can be avoided for the most part without penalty. Although picking additional fights for an EXP boost won’t do you wrong, strategy is the name of the game here; tackling the inventive bosses requires more thought than brute force, so preparing your party with the right equipment and combination of techniques (did I mention the three-way special attacks?) is what will win the day. At between 15-20 hours for the core quest, Chrono Trigger never outstays its welcome, yet manages to make the player feel as though they’ve achieved a monumental amount in that time – no doubt in part because their actions are felt over centuries of time travel.

It also has, quite possibly, the greatest game-over screen in a video game. Should the player fall during battle against the primary antagonist (a fight which can be attempted at almost any point in the game for alternate endings), they will witness the consequences of their failure immediately; Armageddon occurs, everyone dies and we are left with a chilling epilogue: “But… the future refused to change”.

Nightmare fuel

That’s an ironic statement on Japanese RPGs right there. But while critics argue for change – to bring games like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest up to “modern standards” set by more mainstream titles – I’d argue that we need to look to the past, at a game which got everything right 15 years ago.

Mike (left) and Jerry (right) have undertaken many projects since their hugely successful webcomic started 11 years ago, including graphic novels, charity fundraisers, an Internet TV show and even an episodic video game.

You see, writing for Ready-Up not only gives me a chance to seriously tackle the big issues in gaming, but also shed some light on games and topics which deserve more coverage, especially those which are important to me personally. It’s a wonderful way for me to express my love of gaming and improve my skills, so I am extremely grateful that I was given the opportunity. However, despite being with the site for nearly two years, I cannot say I’ve been able to put my all into it; I dropped several potentially interesting feature ideas in favour of a quick blog, and I don’t want to even think of all the AAA-titles I’ve passed up for review. I’ve long hidden behind the (mostly valid) excuses of University workloads and general stress, but procrastination and a fear of screwing-up are also to blame.

No more. This week, after two years of intermittent bouts of anxiety, I made the difficult decision to end my studies at University and spend some time taking care of myself. This means rebuilding my social life, expanding my writing efforts and – yes – playing some damn video games. Not only that, I’m working with a group of close friends to put together a game this summer, fulfilling a dream I’ve had since I was a kid.

A simple 2D platformer put together with Torque. Hopefully, our game will be more exciting than this! Appropriately, Penny Arcade Adventures was produced using the 3D version of the engine.

We’re going to start small and then build up to more ambitious ideas over time. Although I’d ultimately like to tackle a Metroidvania-style game with multiple endings, our first game will be a horizontal shoot ‘em up with a bit of a ship-switching twist. After doing some research with the classics, we think we’ve nailed the essentials of the genre. While I do have some experience with the programming language C#, as we have no heavy programmers in our group, we’ll run everything on the Torque X 2D engine, which has pre-defined code structures for complex stuff like physics, collision detection, animation and player input. Working with Torque also has the added benefit of being able to release our finished product to Xbox Live Indie Games, which is growing more diverse and popular with each passing month. Work has begun on the formal design documentation and I have to say, despite the sheer enormity of the task ahead, I haven’t been this excited in a long time.

Hopefully, through both refining my writing and pursuing this project, I can sate that restless, creative desire. And hey, maybe I’ll put together a fun game in the mean time. Wish me luck!

That’s why I’ve always found the process of how games are born so fascinating. Be it from a Kotaku interview, linked on Jeff Gerstmann’s Twitter or as part of a Eurogamer retrospective piece, I latch onto any tidbit of behind-the-scenes info I can find. I was elated to discover the old journals of Jordan Mechner recently on his website, detailing his youth in his early 20s. Jordan Mechner has lived a storied life as a game designer, but things certainly didn’t start out that way. While he achieved early success with the Apple II classic Karateka, he’s better known as the creator of the original Prince of Persia, one of the most influential action/platformer/puzzle hybrids of all time. Despite this, his initial goal was to become a screenwriter, drawing inspiration from his time in college as a film-buff.

The rotoscoped animation in Prince of Persia still looks fluid today. It's incredible to think it came from this!

What Mr. Mechner has done with these journals is unprecedented. By publishing these online for all to see, he has painted perhaps the most interesting – and certainly, the most brutally honest – picture of 1980s games development to be found anywhere. Often pessimistic, but never forgoing hope, practically every month of his life has an entry that needs to be highlighted. He moves 3,000 miles on the strength of a game concept he calls “Baghdad”, and uses his brother as a rotoscoping model to record footage that more than a couple of our readers will recognise. He muses over Tetris and the device he calls the “Nintendo Game Machine“. He moves from one office to the next, struggles with procrastination, but gets to hang out with George Lucas. On the suggestion of his friend Tomi, he implements a rival for the Prince known as “Shadow Man”, and discusses the back-and-forth of game risk/reward. His colleague’s kids become his first real beta-testers. Some things never change, as Microsoft Word crashes and then someone at Broderbund has a problem with, uh, cleavage. Jordan recounts a certain earthquake in 1989, and then Prince of Persia becomes the mega-hit he was hoping it would. Of course, he dreams beyond that, with a film that will finally be released this year.

These accounts of his time with Prince of Persia… they’re human. They’re emotional. They’re wry. They’re intelligent. They’re amusing. They’re bittersweet. They are, above all, inspirational. If you have any interest in the history of this medium and have a few hours to kill, you owe it to yourself to check them out.

The man himself.

“The little guy will be wiggling and jittering like a Ralph Bakshi rotoscope job… but he’ll be alive. He’ll be this little shimmering beacon of life in the static Apple-graphics Persian world I’ll build for him to run around in.” – Jordan Mechner

You see, if there is one practice on the retail high-street I hate, it’s breaking the seal on games and sticking the disc and manual in a drawer at the back of a store. I detest the practice. I loathe it. Of course, I understand that there are perfectly valid logistical reasons for it; not only does it free up storage space for games and consoles – something that is becoming increasingly valuable in an age of bi-annual plastic peripheral releases – but it also greatly deters the age-old issue of theft, preventing some cheap so-and-so from stuffing the latest gaming blockbuster into their coat pocket and slipping out the front door. This makes sense for the most part. What I take issue with is labeling these games as new when they can be in as good or bad condition as used titles.

Admittedly, finding space for these is part of the problem.

Don’t get me wrong. I have no problems buying games in “as-new” condition… if they’re priced as such. But when I walk into an enthusiast store such as GAME or Gamestation and they try to charge me more for a title (often considerably so!) than both the independent game shop down the road and a supermarket giant like Tesco, I start to take issue with what I’m getting for my money.

Some of you reading this might think me incredibly pedantic, and that’s completely fair. After all, if the game disc isn’t scratched to all-heck and plays fine, what does it matter? Unfortunately, for better or worse, I grew up in an environment where piracy was the norm, and this has had the effect of somewhat evangelising the packaging on legitimate games. The beautiful, high-resolution art cover! The shiny plastic case, free from scratches and greasy fingerprints! The fresh-from-the-factory instruction manual, packed with colourful game illustrations and screenshots! A disc which has more than an illegible two-word title etched onto the surface in black-marker pen! And they’re all mine!

Delicious sealed games. I have no shame! Disclaimer: I have played most of these.

Ahem. OCD-tendencies aside, I can’t help but think I have a serious point here. Would you pop into a WHSmith or HMV to buy a DVD box-set and expect the DVD seal to be broken? So why it is acceptable for games? At what point do we to start to separate the condition and value of new games versus used titles when they’re both treated equally? For years, we’ve heard retail chains cry foul of customers abandoning them for online shopping. Can you really blame them when they can get the same product cheaper, delivered right to their door and in an arguably better condition?

I’ve always been a proponent of supporting brilliant games and talented game developers. Despite what I’ve said about grabbing a bargain, I have no problem paying the full RRP when a game is worth it. But games are an expensive hobby, especially for those of us who don’t trade-in or sell our growing collections. For my money, a new game is a sealed game.

There are vocal opinions and valid points to be found on each side of the argument. FourZeroTwo, Creative Strategist at Infinity Ward and direct voice to the community, claims that the change is in the interest of the majority; that PC gaming is naturally shifting towards casual-friendly matchmaking systems and Infinity Ward is adapting. I can’t argue against making any system user-friendly, but I have to question how much difficulty the average PC gamer – an individual who has probably built their own gaming rig from scratch – has navigating through a list of servers. The ideas is that with IWNET, players will be effortlessly matched up with players of similar skill levels, in a manner not-unlike Xbox-Live. There are certainly benefits to streamlining the experience, but must it come at the cost of the inherent flexibility of the PC platform?

PC gamers say "NO" to IWNET

The reaction from the existing Modern Warfare PC community has been understandably bitter. The recent decision taken by Activision to increase the RRP of the game by a  cheeky £10 was not met warmly, but gamers begrudgingly accepted it for the sake of what is expected to be an amazing gaming experience. IWNET seems to be a step too far. With only partial control of private matches, gaming clans both casual and pro may run into ping problems because of the new matchmaking service, with professional gaming clans in particular fond of persistent dedicated servers; some are concerned that the matchmaking service won’t match players as well as human moderators, citing cases where Xbox Live has matched up players in different continents with high pings. The rule play-lists feature of IWNET does seem tailored towards clan matches, but whether it can really substitute a dedicated server remains to be seen.

Modern Warfare 2 is perhaps the most hyped release of the year. But will the removal of dedicated servers and custom content really put a dent in sales of the PC version?

The above points will be debated furiously until the game is released on the 10th of November, but I feel that there are two specific issues FourZeroTwo has neglected to mention regarding IWNET: piracy and downloadable content. Let’s not beat around the bush, here – piracy is a serious concern on the PC in particular, with tech-savvy PC gamers able to play the latest games for free with just a little bit of time and effort. By securing Modern Warfare 2 with a Battle.net-style authentication system, Infinity Ward is guaranteeing that anybody who wants to play the game online with more than a minority of players better have paid for a legal copy.

And with the system closed, these users can expect to continue paying for the game well after release. In an age where paid DLC is the standard on every other major online platform, I doubt it would be entirely unrealistic of me to suggest that Activision would want the same from PC players. After all, they control the online experience. With no free alternatives available from the community, what’s to stop them? FourZeroTwo comments that the removal of custom content is to deter potential hackers from abusing multiplayer, with the VAC (Valve Anti-Cheat) system integrated into the game as standard along with IWNET. However, other games have packed in VAC without losing mod support, so I’m not sure this is entirely valid reasoning.

It may look primitive now, but Jedi Knight mod Saber Battle X pushed an engine from 1997 to its limits in both graphics and gameplay

This, I feel, is the biggest loss for PC gamers. With FPS controls improving on consoles and the Xbox 360 often acting as a core development platform for new titles, one of the best reasons to seek out the PC version of a game is modified content. Being able to extend the play-time of a favourite game with new maps or introduce a completely new way to play with mods adds an incredible value incentive that can rarely be matched elsewhere.  Not only that, new content development keeps the PC community together and coming back for more long after the core game has worn-out its welcome. Some of my fondest memories of PC gaming come from time spent with mods that pushed the boundaries of their respective development engines, such as Jedi Knight’s Saber Battle X or Half Life’s Sven Co-op. Can the contributions of such talented artists and coders in bringing new life to any game really be overestimated?

The answer, sadly, is that Activision probably already knows the value of the current community. Although accurate sources are hard to obtain, estimations peg the PC version of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare as selling only 10-20% of the platform spread for the game. As a controlling party in the development of Modern Warfare 2, Activision will logically want to make as much money as possible out of their PC development time – and if that means locking-down the game to ensure legit play and DLC purchases, so be it. Traditional PC gamers, I fear, have become a casualty of a war that has outgrown them. But I hope I’m wrong.

Perhaps it’s a result of elitist thinking, but I’ve been confused by the need for printed guides for a long time. I’m sure they made a lot more sense in the early 90’s, when Internet access was restricted to which Compuserve and AOL keywords you could remember, but with the rise of GameFAQs (and video walkthroughs) they now seem completely redundant. Why pay for something that’s outdated the moment the print hits the presses, when you can get a versatile text guide for free that is regularly updated in response to demand and interest? There have no doubt been some great print guides in the past – David Cassady’s epic “Official” Final Fantasy VII International guide comes to mind, and it’s always handy to have a stat-filled Pokédex around – but the value proposition just doesn’t seem to be there when you’re already paying £20, £30 or even £40 for a game.

GameFAQs killed the strategy star.

Or at least, this was my attitude towards printed guides until quite recently. Browsing a local gaming store, I found a second-hand copy of an Official Metal Gear Solid 4 guide, priced at £2.99. Somewhat tatty, it had seen better days but was mostly intact, so I thought I’d take a chance on it. Reading through the book, I was frankly blown away by the quality of the content: a detailed, spoiler-free walkthrough of the game; useful information written in a witty-manner; clear, high-resolution game maps; and a entire post-game essay section, exploring the story of the Metal Gear universe… not to mention a foreword provided by Hideo Kojima. I was later delighted to discover that there is also a higher quality collector’s hardback of the book on sale, which includes a signed lithograph of Solid Snake and an exclusive art gallery of sketches and scribbles straight from the development team. Further investigation yielded guides of similar quality for other modern games.

High-quality hardback guides for some of my favourite games? I think I might be losing a lot of money in the future.

Has it always been like this? Not to sully the tireless effort from guide authors in the past, but I don’t think so. It seems that in reaction to free alternatives on the Internet, companies such as Piggyback and Prima have really stepped up the quality of stand-alone guides, offering merchandise and exclusive insider info that you might not find even on the web. I have since acquired hardback editions of not only the MGS4 strategy guide, but two Zelda guides and a Resident Evil 5 walkthrough, which includes a complete run-down of the then unreleased and controversial multiplayer DLC. Of particular note is the collector’s edition Twilight Princess guide, which features a detailed cloth map of Hyrule, golden-etched pages, and the same exceptional presentation and useful information found in the other books. Great stuff.

Looking forward then, in quite a stark contrast to before, it’s safe to say that I’ll probably be buying a lot more guides and using FAQs when I feel it necessary. After all, when the only detriment to fun is your own ego, sometimes you’ve just got to swallow your pride and enjoy yourself. That, and I like gaming merch as much as the next person!