The Blame Game - Who is responsible for the Wii's descent into shovelware hell?

The Wii is a much maligned piece of hardware. It has acquired a reputation and not a particularly positive one at that, amongst gamers the world over. If the internet is to be believed, or the nasal, sperging clerks of Gamestop, or that annoying friend of yours that simply cannot stop talking about Gears of War 2, then the Wii is a useless, underpowered disaster of a machine, replete with a veritable landfill of shovelware. It’s not a ‘gamers machine’, whatever that means, its appeal is strictly to those who don’t know their Halos from their Hard-driver, or even their Metroids from their Marios.

It would be unfair to suggest that these hyperbolic ravings are not based around a kernel of truth. Score-obsessed uber-site Metacritic gives any game that scores 90 or higher on average, a mark of ‘universal acclaim’. The Wii has 9 games which achieve this score, of those games a mere 4 are Wii exclusives. In comparison, the Xbox 360, which admittedly had a headstart, has 26 titles rated 90 or higher, although it’s ratio of platform exclusives is significantly poorer, with again only 4 of these games being 360 only. The PS3 manages a more modest 19 universally acclaimed titles, but once more, only 4 of these are exclusives. Amusing then as a purely academic point, that the Wii has the highest ratio of universally acclaimed titles to platform exclusives. It proves nothing of course, but it’s an interesting statistic.

Metacritic rates any game 75 or higher to be ‘generally favourable’. At this point some cracks begin to appear when using Metacritic to make these kinds of sweeping judgments. There are some very clearly ‘generally favourable’ games that miss out on the 75+ average and are relegated to the much less favourable ‘mixed to average’ category. Personally I disagree on a number of titles such as Resident Evil Darkside Chronicles, but that’s by the by and subjective, so let’s try and keep it academic for the time-being (subjectivity comes later). In the generally favourable category, there are 122 Wii titles which is not particularly good when compared to the Xbox 360’s 296 and the PS3’s 203. However, the Wii again attains an extremely high ratio of favourable titles to console exclusives, an impressive 59 in total, particularly when you bear in mind that I excluded titles such as New Control Pikmin, which were previously Gamecube exclusives from this research. The Xbox 360 takes a pummelling on this one, only 27 titles, 3 of which are DLC/expansion packs, are platform exclusives. On Sony’s side of things, the PS3 manages a more impressive 43 exclusive titles in the 75+ range.

There are a number of ways to interpret this data. Firstly, it should be mentioned the 360’s numbers are artificially inflated due to Xbox Live Arcade. The Wii has two digital distribution services, the Virtual Console and Wiiware. Wiiware contains original titles, the Virtual Console does not and as such, Virtual Console games are not listed by Metacritic. Xbox Live Arcade however makes no such distinction and you will find games such as Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Streets of Rage among the list of ‘generally favourable’ Xbox360 titles. In terms of exclusivity, there are a few things to note. The 360 clearly comes out the worst of the 3 here, by a significant margin, but is hampered by the fact that 360 to PC ports are far more common than other platforms. Titles such as Gears of War were ported to PC and are such, not exclusives. The statistics do show that in terms of exclusivity, the Wii is the clear winner. While it has fewer ‘generally favourable’ titles, a much greater ratio of these titles are Wii-only. It should also be pointed out that many of these cross-platform titles, such as the latest Tiger Woods games, do have features which make them desirable Wii games. The motion controller and motion plus make the game an entirely different experience on Wii. Considering that the Wii suffers from inferior graphics performance, messy online support and frequent control issues with certain titles, it can be argued that cross-platform titles which attain a 75+ rating on Metacritic by and large have something different to offer than their next-gen counterparts.

While that interpretation of the data is positive news for the Wii, the number of quantifiably ‘good’ games isn’t. If we go back to our original point, you will remember that some accuse the Wii of being loaded with nothing but shovelware. While this is not the case, the Wii does have a disproportionately large amount of shovelware and quantifiably less ‘good’ games than the PS3 and 360. That is an unfortunate, but undeniable fact at this point, at least, as factual as one can get when dealing with such a subjective topic. The law of averages does not seem to favour the Wii right now. The Playstation 2 also suffered from an immense amount of shovelware, yet thanks to the popularity of the platform and the law of averages, for every X number of junky unplayable games, there was a diamond in the rough, which leaves the PS2, now well into its twilight years, with a substantial catalogue of superb games. My concern is that the Wii will not be able to reach that point, allow me to explain why.

It is very easy to place blame for the relatively low number of good games on the Wii. Some blame Nintendo, accusing them of cynical marketing ploys, abandoning their core-base for a new demographic of non-gamers and casuals whose tastes are limited to Wiisports and Wiifit. Some blame said non-gamers, accusing them of dragging their beloved hobby through the dirt because they don’t know, don’t care, or actively don’t want good, deep, innovative games. I don’t believe there is one single entity to which to attribute the blame, but I do believe there’s one group which are being ignored in this regard. That group are the gamers themselves.

Inconceivable, you might scream! We as gamers are fighting to keep our hobby pure, keep developers honest and ensure the future of good games! It’s a common rallying cry for the old guard and wannabe old guard alike, preserve the purity of our hobby, fight those who would besmirch it, but it is also sadly hypocritical. You see, I believe that a substantial portion of the blame lies with gamers themselves. Allow me to grace you with yet more wonderful statistics.

In the US, the Wii has shipped 26 million units as of 30th September 2009. As it stands, it is the most popular home console of this generation. Wii owners account for 32% of all gamers in the US. According to market research conducted by NPD as of September 14th 2009, 42% of both 360 and PS3 owners in the United States, also own a Wii, a startling high figure if it is remotely accurate. Let’s assume for the moment that it is. Sadly there don’t seem to be up-to-date sales figures at this point for the US, the last accurate information for the 360 is from 1st November 2008 so it would be unreasonable to make a comparison between those figures and the recent numbers for the Wii. Therefore let’s go back in time and use the 2008 figures, which should give us a relatively fair point of reference. As of that date, the Wii had sold 13.4 million units, the 360 11.6 million and the PS3 5.7 million. For the sake of argument, let’s stick with those figures and apply the recent percentages. You may say that this is inaccurate and yes it is, but for the purpose of this exercise it is reasonable, you will see why in a moment.

So of the 11.6 million 360 owners, 42% also have a Wii in their household. That’s 4.8 million Wiis cohabiting in the same domicile as 360s in the US alone. The now inaccurately low PS3 numbers indicate 5.7 million consoles purchased, with 2.39 million Wiis sharing their particular homes. Again, for the sake of argument, let’s just ignore the PS3 numbers entirely for now and focus on the 360. 4.8 million 360 owners that also have Wiis in their households, in the United States. Now admittedly, not all of these Wiis may be accessible. Some may be owned by siblings, room-mates or even parents, private machines not for general use. These numbers are also inherently inaccurate because we are applying new ownership percentages to old sales data, simply because nothing more recent is available. Well, that’s your study blown out of the water you may say, with a smug grin on your face. Allow me to wipe that off for you. The number is far higher than 4.8 million, simply because those percentages are so recent and the 360 has had over a year of sales to add to that 2008 figure of 11.6 million. But let’s just say for the sake of argument that it’s still 4.8 million.

In the week following Dead Space Extraction, one of the latest mature-rated offerings on the Wii, the game sold a total of 9,000 copies across the United States. Consider that for a moment, a game that is high up in the ‘generally favourable’ reviews category, sold 9,000 copies. Now let’s assume for a second, that absolutely no-one who owns a Wii exclusively, is a gamer at all. Let’s give in to that fantasy for a second, because it illustrates my point nicely. That still leaves well over 4.8 million folks who own a ‘real games console’, who also own a Wii. Of those 4.8 million, bearing in mind that no pure-Wii owners are actually gamers so would never buy Dead Space Extraction anyway, only 9,000 purchased the game. Want to hear a depressing percentage? 0.188%. That’s how many ‘true gamers’ bought Dead Space Extraction. One can blame marketing if they choose, EA spent very little advertising the title, but is it to much to expect gamers to actually read magazines and websites to keep up on the latest reviews and information? Isn’t that what a true hobby enthusiast would do?

While Dead Space Extraction is by far one of the most dire indications of gamer’s unwillingness to buy good games due to platform bias to date, there are plenty others to be had. NPD figures as of February 2009 indicate that Okami, one of the ‘universally acclaimed’ Wii titles, sold a paltry 165,000 copies, whereas Zak and Wiki, which missed out on the 90+ bracket by a mere percentage point, sold only 116,600. If we again assume that there are no true gamers that only own a Wii and indeed, that only 360 owners are ‘true gamers’, just for the sake of not crunching any more numbers than necessary, 3.43% of these people bought a copy of Okami and 2.42% bought Zak and Wiki. These games have been out for quite some time so it’s safe to say they aren’t going to sell many more new copies. Dead Space Extraction may be a slow burner and continue to sell, but from my perspective, 9,000 copies sold is an undeniable disaster. Perhaps the most depressing thing is that these numbers I’ve just provided you are not just hugely over conservative, they are inaccurately low. If the NPD study is even remotely accurate, there are far more than 4.8 million gamers who own both a next-gen machine and a Wii. I didn’t even account for PS3 owners and the 360 statistics are a year out of date. That’s also assuming that no Wii-exclusive owner can be considered a ‘real gamer’, a lie so heinous as to be hilarious to anyone with an ounce of common sense. The scale at which these numbers can and are even worse than I’ve stated, is mindboggling.

The Wii’s relative lack of good games in comparison to the other consoles is not due to a lack of gamers owning Wiis, it’s due to a lack of gamers buying good games on the Wii. Good, 3rd party Wii games, simply aren’t selling and it’s not Nintendo’s fault, it’s the gamers. They are the ones not buying these games, despite having access in vast numbers to the console on which to play them. It is this inherent platform bias, an unwillingness to support good titles regardless of platform, that is killing the Wii as a ‘proper’ games console. They have only themselves to blame and the myth of ‘no good games on Wii’ is nothing more than a self-fulfilling prophecy preached by the very people responsible for this mess. In this commentators view, platform neutrality has always been the correct way to view gaming, picking and choosing the good games on each platform and leaving the rest to rot. Unfortunately the rise of platform warriors on the internet is making this more enlightened attitude a thing of the past. Even now as I write, angry tweets come in from biased airbags, desperately trying to convince me that their platform is superior to the others and more importantly, that I must be out of my mind to suggest that the Wii could possibly have games worth playing! The hypocrisy of these self-professed ‘true gamers’ is both palpable and disgusting and if they will insist on drowning themselves in a pool of their own narrow-minded platform bias, I wish they wouldn’t try to take the rest of us down with them.

To access the stream

The stream is still functional and Natural 20's show will continue as normal at 18:00 GMT (13:00 EST). To access the stream, since our webplayer is temporarily unavailable, it is recommended that you download an mp3 player like Winamp. Once installed Click Add in the bottom left corner and Click Add URL. Enter the following URL - http://scfire-mtc-aa03.stream.aol.com:80/stream/1998

This will work with most up-to-date mp3 players such as VLC and WMP.

WCRadio.com

You're probably wondering what you're doing here. I have redirected the domain for the time-being from WoW Radio due to an attack by a scriptkiddie. We are working to resolve the issue so in the meantime, we have ensured that the site is not accessible by the usual means to prevent possible keyloggers and the display of unsavoury images. Thank you for your patience.

Borderlands PC Review

Borderlands on PC is a messy console port with a laundry list of problems a mile long which any self respecting developer would be ashamed of.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s take a look at Gearbox’s First Person Role-Playing Shooter, Borderlands on PC. The premise is simple. You play one of four character archetypes each with their own unique skill and themed talents who have come to a backwater Desert world by the name of Pandora. Their mission? Seek out a mythical alien vault supposedly filled with delicious uber-technology. The problem? Nobody is even sure if the vault actually exists at all so in order to find it you’ll be trotting your way through a lengthy main quest and slaughtering entire villages worth of bad-guys. This sounds like a run of the mill FPS so why call it a Role-Playing Shooter? Well the answer is that Borderlands is an FPS with loot, stats and experience. It handles like a first person shooter, so as opposed to an under-the-hood diceroll to determine whether or not you hit your target, it is based on your ability to aim and various other bullet-physics which you should be used to by now if you’ve played any FPS in the last 5 years. The stats come into play in terms of what you and your gun are capable of doing. All weapons and additional equipment are level dependent and their power is scaled accordingly. As you gain levels you’ll be able to use more powerful equipment as well as unlock more powerful talents which in turn beef up your equipment stats. These vary from the mundane such as how much damage a gun does, how much recoil it has or how fast your shield recharges through to more exotic affairs such as how often your gun sets an enemy on fire.

If you’ve paid any attention to the trailers you’ll know that Gearbox pushed the weapons as one of the game’s big selling points. A particularly over-the-top trailer claimed in a Guy Richie style tagline that the game had ’87 Bazillion Guns’. They weren’t far wrong, since the game sports a loot system based around procedurally generated items. There are certain preset types of weapon such as combat rifle, rocket launcher, shotgun and so forth but there are a huge number of ways that the game can give stats to them in order to create a unique gun. As you attain higher levels, the chances of getting a truly outlandish weapon increase and the thrill of getting a new gun doesn’t get old. Those of you whose minds are running wild with the prospect of guns which fire other guns which in turn fire flaming squirrels or other such nonsense will be disappointed, the weapon generation is not quite that wacky, though there is more than sufficient variety to keep you interested. Higher level guns in particular have flavour text which indicates that the weapon has a special property. Descriptions such as ‘Monster Kill!’ and ‘Pele demands a Sacrifice’ denote abilities ranging from infinite ammo to spiralling bullets. There are a lot of these and while some are clearly more useful than others, the variety is definitely there.

If you haven’t realised yet for some reason, this game is about the guns and thankfully the gunplay is tight and enjoyable. Those concerned that this game would be another Hellgate London can rest easy, the dice-rolling bullethoses that passed for guns in Flagship’s glorious (though somewhat undeserved) failure are nowhere to be seen. Borderlands has guns that sound like guns, kick like guns and explode heads like guns should in an FPS. They also melt enemies, set them on fire and blow them into tiny pieces all with satisfying results. At its heart, Borderlands is about glorious, stylised violence and in this respect it does not disappoint. Enemies exhibit reasonable, though not amazing AI and will attack you in large groups, particularly if you’re playing with friends. Yes, Borderlands is a co-op game.

Singleplayer can be an occasionally bland and all-together easy experience. The fact is that while it has a Diablo style loot system and keeps you engaged in the search for your next shiny, the storyline is paper-thin and interaction with NPCs beyond shooting them in the face is kept to a minimum. In the case of NPC interaction that’s probably for the best. Borderlands does not feature many memorable characters or at least none that you’d want to interact with any more than is absolutely necessary. There are no rich backstories here, even the personalities of the 4 available player characters are quite flat. The only time you’ll hear them speak is in occasional one-liners resulting from events such as critical hits and spawning a vehicle. While the characters are exceptionally well modelled and the graphics style is a wonder to behold (more on this later), it is a shame that they weren’t fleshed out more. Long story short, you’re not going to find an immersive, single-player roleplaying experience here.

You also won’t find Borderlands singleplayer to be all that challenging, Gearbox has not paced the game well in terms of experience gained. There is a significant difference between the power and toughness of enemies of various levels and being even a few levels higher than your opponents will result in an utterly unfair massacre in your favour. While skipping many of the sidequests will give the bad guys a fighting chance, more often than not you will still come out ahead. Enemies in areas you’ve already visited respawn, but keep the same level as they had when you first met them. Needless to say, turning your level 25 Deathcannon on a group of Level 3 bandits does not end well for them. It’s amusing to watch but is too easy to be any fun after a while. The game encourages overpowered silliness by allowing stats to stack in excessive ways. When your soldier is firing a heavy machine gun with a 200 round clip, spitting out upwards of 20 buffed up firey doombullets a second with almost no reduction in accuracy thanks to stacking skills and class mods, very little is going to live under your crosshairs. Doing so is half the fun, combining lucky drops together to reach absurd levels of power, but it has an adverse affect on the difficulty.

Co-op is where this game truly shines. Many of the issues hi-lighted in the previous paragraph are resolved when playing with others. The game’s difficulty ramps up quite severely, particularly in 4-player mode. Enemies are tougher and hit harder so you will need to cooperate and help your team-mates in order to succeed. The lacklustre story and dearth of NPC interaction become sidenotes as the story is what you and your friends make of it. You will tell tales of the time Brick drove his runner off a cliff or when Lilith blew up the entire enemy compound with a Phoenix, oh and the rest of her team too. Picking through the spoils after an intense pitched battle, decided who should get what is satisfying, as is the collective excitement whenever something absurdly powerful or unusual drops. Be advised however that the game does not have any kind of trade or loot system, so playing with random internet folks is inadvisable. Expect to be screwed over repeatedly if you dare venture into the fetid, stinking realms of the pubbie. The quests invariably involve blowing something up, which is to be expected considering the type of game this is and its focus on doing just that. Side quests are mostly inconsequential in terms of the story and provide a short paragraph before and after to justify whatever genocide you just committed. It doesn’t really provide any immersion at all but in co-op you don’t need it. The gunplay is enjoyable enough to keep you interested.

The design is not perfect. Nothing ever is but in terms of gameplay there are a few things that could have been done a lot better. While the game gives you the illusion of a completely open environment, it is entirely possible to simply drive off the level without warning, which kills you instantly. The limitation is understandable but surely it would have made more sense to wall off each area so that this was not possible. The awkward handling of the vehicles doesn’t do the player any favours in trying to avoid these areas either and while we’re on the subject, vehicles in general seem like a missed opportunity. There is only 1 type of vehicle in the game, a Warthog-style buggy which can be equipped with either a machine gun or missile launcher and painted in 8 different colours. The weapons are weak in comparison to your firearms and barely worth firing when you consider that you can just run over almost anything and kill it instantly. Vehicle vs Vehicle combat is very infrequent and the one vehicular boss in the game is a horrible mess of a fight which you may find easier to skip entirely by sniping the boss from outside of his arena until he explodes. In a game with 87 bazillion guns, would it really have hurt to have a little variety? This also applies to the enemies who only come in a handful of varieties. In the case of the various bandit types, encounters are shaken up because some of them have unique guns which they then drop for you to loot. It’s a minor gripe really but it would have been nice to see a few more enemy types.

On the graphical side of things, Borderlands is an absolutely gorgeous, stylish game.. Just how great the world looks can’t be overstated, the decision to change the graphics style was inspired. Everything looks amazing, from the varied, meaty weapon models to the characters and scenery. The only real complaint is that most of the environments consist of desert and structures made out of scrap metal. Obviously this was the environment they were going for and they succeeded in doing so, but it does get samey after a while. Regardless, the game is colourful, vibrant and a real beauty to look at.

Things start to get ugly when you look at the number of glaring technical issues that the PC port has. Yes, I’m calling it a port because that’s what it is. While the game runs well and appears to be stable, there’s a sackful of niggling problems which may infuriate you. Where do I begin? Well why don’t we start with the in-game voice chat that cannot be disabled or adjusted via the options. Yes, you are forced to listen to the shrill bleeting of all and sundry if you make the mistake of playing a public game. Even if you’re playing private this will get in the way of using a proper VOIP client like Ventrillo and the quality is extremely poor. Or how about the menu system that was clearly designed with a joypad in mind and is awkward to use with a mouse? Speaking of mouse, enjoy the fact that mouse-smoothing cannot be switched off in-game, useful for those with ball-mice circa 1994 but inconvenient for everyone else. Those prone to motion sickness or who simply appreciate a nice wide field of view will also boggle that it defaults to 75, which is really inappropriate for monitor display. The list goes on and on, from the archaic Gamespy matchmaking system that doesn’t work half the time, to the lack of anti-aliasing option and the mindboggling stupidity of the hardcoded stat display limit, in which items may only display 5 lines of stats, when they could potentially have up to 7. It reeks of bad QA, particularly on the PC and casts doubt on the already suspicious claims that the PC version was delayed a week due to ‘optimisation’ as opposed to an attempt to make a little extra money on the console version by exploiting impatient gamers. Thankfully these issues are on the way to being resolved, with a patch on the horizon and industrious PC gamers having fixed or at least worked around these issues by editing the games .ini files. Threads like this (http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3223246) provide a ton of information on possible .ini tweaks and more are on the way. None of these issues are deal-breakers but the combination gives the impression of lazy development and that’s never a good thing.

Borderlands is a promising concept that hits the mark, most of the time. While it may not prove to be as resilient and long-lasting as Diablo 2, it is a fun game in its own right with a loot system that keeps you playing. The chance of that amazing gun by just around the corner is constantly dangled in front of your nose, which complements the game’s enjoyable gunplay nicely. It is not a grindy game thankfully, but you will find yourself going off the beaten track to shoot up some fools for no other reason than to have fun. While it may lack polish and the PC implementation in particular is clumsy in many respects, the compelling combination of solid shooting and the desire for loot makes for a really good time.

Happiness is a pipebomb and a room full of zombies.

Left4Dead easily ranks in my Top 5 gaming disappointments of 2008, battling for top spot against such disasters as Spore. It wasn’t inherently a bad game in and of itself, indeed, it earned almost universal acclaim from press and gamer alike with its unique brand of survival action. I was excited to pick up the game on release, eventually struggling through the lengthy install brought on by a non-functional boxed copy. 7 gigabytes seems like an eternity when you’re desperate to join in the fun and in the case of many British internet connections, eternity is not far from the truth. I must confess, my exposure to the game prior to release was limited to previews. I had not taken part in the beta nor jumped in to take advantage of the 4-pack deal, pre-ordering my copy as an afterthought, from Amazon instead. The main reason the game was taking up a spot on my radar, aside from the obvious desire to purchase anything and everything Valve released, was the excitement of WoW Radio’s gaming community. Those who have been a part of it can attest the friendly peer pressure that’s involved in upcoming releases, the desire to play with people that we know can be relied upon not to suck and/or annoy is an extremely strong pull and can give greater purchase incentive to those who might be on the fence. Left4Dead was just such a game, interesting but not a guaranteed day one purchase, that is until various ventrillo voices shouted in unison from the murky depths of the beta ‘get this now!’. I was convinced.

Unfortunately, there are times when one should not pay any attention to what his peers are squawking. Left4Dead was simply not my thing. What other way is there to describe it? After all, it’s a universally acclaimed cooperative multiplayer experience that I didn’t enjoy, therefore must surely be a case of personal preference getting in the way of my enjoyment. I haven’t touched Left4Dead in over 8 months, so let me delve into the recesses of my game-addled mind in order to recall the details of my dislike. The first gripe to be dredged up has got to be the sheer lack of enemy variety. Hordes of fast moving zombies are interspersed with a spattering of so-called ‘special’ infected, with 5 types in total. Only 3 of these types are a constant threat, appearing with reasonable frequency to harry the survivors as they make their way through whatever infested hellhole they’ve managed to find themselves in this time. The Tank and Witch are reserved for special occasions, dire threats if not dealt with properly. The special infected vary in terms of their actual threat value. Hunters and Smokers exist solely to punish players who wander off on their own and bring down the guillotine on disorganised teams, posing little threat otherwise.

This lack of variety continued into the weapon selection, a paltry offering totalling just 6 firearms. I could have forgiven this were Valve obviously trying to portray a pseudo-realistic survival horror, where supplies were scarce and survivors had to improvise to stay alive. This is not the case however, as Left4Dead is part of the ever-growing survival action genre that Resident Evil 4 began, pitting you against hordes of horrors with plenty of ammo to spare. The horrifically generic weapon selection and the metric ton of ammo available for each made the game feel like a fast-paced shooting gallery and I soon tired of it. There is a lot to admire about the game, including the impressively sized hordes, innovative death mechanics which are now being ripped off piecemeal for titles such as Modern Warfare 2, astonishing character design and top-notch voice-acting, to name but a few. Left4Dead had all the polish one would expect from a Valve title but unfortunately, in this player’s view, none of the substance. It felt light-weight and flimsy, from the lack of variety to the tinny gun-shots and lack of punch to the weapons. I found it lacklustre, unable to quench my now growing thirst for zombie genocide and for a time, that thirst would have to wait.

On May 14th 2009, Tripwire Interactive released their budget-priced zombie shoot-a-thon Killing Floor. You may be familiar with it if you followed the Unreal Tournament 2004 modding scene, since that’s where the original version first let loose its ravening hordes upon an unsuspecting world. The story behind its development as a fully-fledged commercial title is short, but one of those heart warming tales that indie development is known for. Tripwire had previously released a rather hardcore online shooter by the name of Red Orchestra, touting realistic weapons, 50 person battles and a variety of World War 2 era vehicles. What they had also done is endorse a mod for their own game by the name of Mare Nostrum, certifying it and releasing it through Steam as a free download for all Red Orchestra owners. Alex Quick, the mod team leader for Killing Floor, contacted Tripwire about porting the mod over to Red Orchestra and, as the story goes, Tripwire liked the mod so much they offered to create a full, commercial release. It’s all rather fitting when you think about it, Tripwire was created by the team behind an Unreal Tournament 2004 mod (also named Red Orchestra) and now its next title would come from the same source.

I hadn’t even read a single preview for this game when I pre-purchased it, I had no idea what to expect. It is testament to the power of budget-pricing, particularly since it was 25% off for pre-order customers, that I was able to purchase it without blinking. Hey, it’s £11, what could possibly go wrong? It’s surprising that I still fall into that particular trap, having been burned several times on budget price titles which sported good concepts but thoroughly awful execution. I can overlook budget-related issues such as voice-acting, sound-design and graphics but if I’m unable to play your game because of your hamfisted approach to whatever original concept you’ve dreamed up, expect very little sympathy from yours truly. Tripwire’s previous effort, Red Orchestra, at least gave me some confidence that I wasn’t about to walk into a disaster area with a slightly dented wallet.

This time it was my turn to apply peer pressure onto my fellow WoW Radio gamers with relative success. When the game launched, we were able to deploy full squads of 6 to commit Killing Floor’s particular brand of zombicide. What followed was joy. Sheer, visceral, bloody-spattered joy. You see, Killing Floor has a simple premise. England has been taken over by hordes of bio-experiments known as Specimens or ‘Zeds’. Your mission? Kill as many of them as possible and hope to survive long enough to engage the Patriach, a bio-engineered monstrosity armed with miniguns, rocket launchers, a cloaking device and a thoroughly unpleasant temperament. Your team is dropped into the level, often with no rhyme or reason and expected to slaughter several, increasingly difficult waves of specimens. The maps are rather open ended, allowing you to choose where you wish to engage the hordes, causing them to spawn accordingly, depending on your position.

From the outset it became clear that this was not the run and gun experience of Left4Dead. Enemies move far slower and more deliberately, approaching in groups from every conceivable angle. Careful shots are the order of the day, as in typical Red Orchestra fashion, there are no crosshairs to be seen. Right Click allows you to look down your gun’s iron sights. I’ve always been a fan of iron sights, not for the sake of realism, but for the trade-off one must usually make in order to use them. Killing Floor allows you to trade mobility for accuracy and a somewhat reduced field of vision. While it might seem insignificant at first glance, Killing Floor’s iron-sights add to the game in two very vital respects. Firstly, the use of iron-sights introduces a sense of tension. Will you stand your ground in the face of enemy and unleash a fusillade of hot lead into their fetid brain-pans, or will you cut and run, relocating to a new position? Having to make that choice is important in any survival horror game, reminding you that this is not your typical shooter and that you are always vulnerable, all of the time.

The second advantage that iron sights possess is the ability to give your firearms a real, weighty and satisfying feel. Assuming it hasn’t faded from your mind, you will remember my earlier remarks regarding.Left4Dead’s lightweight, unsatisfying weaponry. Killing Floor is just the opposite and gloriously so. Weapons feel powerful and relatively realistic and it’s not just how they handle, but how they sound. Tripwire did a fantastic job sourcing the perfect audio assets for these weapons, each one is meaty and packs a real aural punch. Combine this with the iron sights, recoil and exceptional enemy feedback, as specimens stagger or are simply dismembered and decapitated with satisfying graphical and aural displays and you have a recipe for thoroughly enjoyable gunplay. Just to add the icing on the cake, occasional ‘zed-time’ slow-motion effects, resulting from particularly stylish or gory kills add a precious few seconds of breathing room, allowing players to line up their shots, as well as the added bonus of looking cool. If the Matrix taught us anything, then it’s that everything is better with bullet-time.

While we’re on the subject of my Left4Dead gripes, allow me to point out two areas where Killing Floor equally trounces it. The first is weapon variety, which just this past week received a very generous boost. Killing Floor launched with an impressive arsenal of weapons, ranging from the simple, yet brutally effective combat knife, to the hefty LAW Rocket Launcher. The game launched with 13 weapons in total, not including the dual-wield option for both the 9mm and handcannon pistols as well as the obligatory grenades. Since launch a further 9 weapons have been added, bringing the total to 22. This number includes several melee weapons which, rather than backups to be used in a pinch, form the foundation of the ‘Berserker’ perk, a melee-centric class with several, powerful benefits. I started off as a Berserker but found myself disappointed that the meaty visual and aural production of the firearms was not replicated in the melee weapons. Often it feels like you’re flailing at the air, with very few sound effects and little confirmation that you’ve hit anything. I consider this a big oversight that I hope is rectified by Tripwire in a future update. The guns on the other hand are outstanding and each one feels unique. Various ‘perks’, the game’s classes, favour different types of weapon but any class can use anything, provided they have the money and carrying capacity to do so. Progression from the humble pistol to the most powerful weapons such as the SCAR battle rifle and M32 grenade launcher is well paced and buying that shiny new weapon after saving up sufficient ‘dosh’ to do so never fails to excite. It is also important to note that there is no ‘best’ weapon. Even the game’s BFG equivalent, the LAW, is extremely impractical in many situations and has very limited ammunition. A mix of weapons and perks amongst your team is always the best way to stay alive and it is good to see players assuming various roles.

Killing Floor also has a greater variety of enemies. Where Left4Dead has 6 types in total, Killing Floor has 10 and has no qualms about mixing it up to force you to deal with a variety of threats. Even the humble Clot, the game’s basic, shambling zombie type, can grab and immobilise the player, quickly tearing them apart. Each enemy type has several distinct attributes and knowing how to take down each one is rather important. Sure, apply gun to head works, most of the time, but you’re also dealing with enemies of various different speeds, movement styles and occasionally, invisibility. Enemies like the Scrake and Fleshpound rival Left4Dead’s tank in terms of toughness and appear a lot more frequently, requiring some seriously focussed fire to take down. In the case of the Fleshpound, a precise alpha-strike is the preferred method because attempting to simply whittle him down will cause him to enrage, charging your squad and slaughtering everything he can get his hands on… well, whatever they are, pounders I guess, the Fleshpound doesn’t really have hands per say.

Left4Dead took a lot of its ideas from the original Killing Floor mod but they are both very different styles of game. Left4Dead requires the players to stay on the move, whereas Killing Floor favours setting up in a well-defended location in order to survive. Thankfully the maps are designed with this in mind and with one notable exception which I’m sure all Killing Floor players are familiar with, there are no universally safe locations. Literally every place you could possibly decide to make your stand in has multiple entrances, along with sneaky entrances for the insidious crawlers to spew from. Doors can be welded shut but this is a temporary measure that requires the constant attention of at least 1 player and stronger creatures like the Fleshpound can smash their way through regardless. Such camping style gameplay could be considered tedious at first glance, but the game presents a constant challenge and threat to your defences, particularly as ammunition can become scarce on harder difficulty levels and running off on one’s own to find more can be a very risky prospect, as can moving the entire team. One mistake, one nasty specimen let through the defensive lines can spell quick death for your team. Even the basic Clots can do heavy damage that puts Left4Dead’s infected to shame, not to mention their ability to immobilise you. This, in essence, is what allows Killing Floor to straddle the line between survival horror and survival action. You may be a heavily armed, wise-cracking paramilitary force, but your carefully laid defensive plan can turn into complete chaos with the slightest mis-step. The adrenaline-laced panic as your former fortress is overrun, leaving your team firing wildly as they attempt to retreat to a safer location, only to find the way crawling with specimens, never gets old and that’s where the game’s true strength lies. Under the persistent levelling and class system and the myriad of different weapons to choose from, Killing Floor is a simple game with a simple idea, slaughtering zombie hordes with your mates is fun, if done right. While a decidedly B-movie affair with an old graphics engine, spotty voice-acting reminiscent of Dog Soldiers and a cheesy metal/industrial soundtrack, Killing Floor is a blood-soaked riot that can and will justify the asking price.

Tales from Firstlook – New Super Mario Brothers for Wii

When it comes to cynicism, there are few targets more tempting than Nintendo. Over the last couple of years they’ve provided more rage-fodder for angry internet men such as myself than anyone else, but now that Activision has safely stolen that crown it is perhaps time we talk about one of their new products which is actually a game as opposed to a work-out machine. Nintendo’s display at the First Look Expo in Amsterdam was surprisingly muted. There were 2 titles on display, one of which was the forthcoming DS Zelda title Spirit Tracks, which appeared to contain trains and also Link. I like trains, but I don’t like Link, conundrum! Instead of fighting this particular battle myself and my colleagues decided to take a look at the other title on offer, New Super Mario Brothers for Wii. In an uncharacteristically sensible move, Nintendo provided each pod with 4 controllers and a knowledgeable rep to talk us through some of the basic concepts, though it did not take us long to realise what was going on. Selecting either Mario, luigi, yellow mushroom guy or purple mushroom guy, we had access to all of the levels in World 1 and started to make our way through.

Initially it played as one would expect. The controllers were held sideways in the classic NES style, no nunchuck in sight and thanks to the excellent d-pad and well spaced buttons the game handled perfectly. The graphics were colourful and polished, making the already impressive DS version look very dated in comparison. All of the sound assets one expects and is perhaps sick of by this point were present, which is sure to please traditionalists. Soon enough however, it became abundantly clear that none of that mattered, as great as it was, because we were rapidly discovering just how many opportunities one had to be an obnoxious bastard to your fellow players.

New Super Mario brothers for Wii features 4-player “co-op” and the use of inverted airquotes there is well justified. At first glance is appears to be par the course, with up to 4 players running the level alongside each other, able to cooperate to kill enemies and bounce on each other’s heads to reach otherwise unreachable items and platforms. The death mechanic also requires the assistance of other players, since upon losing a life, a player will return in a bubble which must be popped by another, living player. So why do I use those airquotes so readily? Well the answer is, that the game also counts up your points at the end of each level and ranks you depending on how well you did against the other players. This score is dependent on several factors including the number of lives you have left and how many coins, mushrooms and other such things you managed to collect during the level. By introducing this competitive aspect to the co-op, it flips the entire experience on its head and turns it into a contest where the most ruthless player wins. There are several examples of this in action.

Firstly, the vast majority of power-ups in the game come in packs of 4, so that’s one for each player, right? Wrong. While you could share and give a power-up to everyone, you can also steal as many of the power-ups as you can get your hands on. Red mushrooms for instance give you 1000 points per pickup if you already have one. The scramble for these power-ups particularly as the screen continues to move if a player reaches the front edge of it, is fast and intense. This pilfering however is only the tip of the iceberg. The death mechanic can also be exploited to cause problems for your fellow players, since popping the bubble over a pit or deathtrap will result in yet another life lost. By far the most fiendish thing we found to inflict upon our bitter rivals was Yoshi’s ability to eat other players and then spit them out into pits or enemies. The howls of anguish were frequent as was the raucous laughter.

One might think that we were, to use the phrase, ‘doing it wrong’, playing the game in a manner which was not intended. I would dispute this, based on several factors. Firstly, rather than disapproving looks and attempts to get us to play the game one particular way, the rep was laughing along with us as we gleefully screwed each other over at every possible opportunity. It was clear that this playstyle had been going on all day and that the game facilitated it, glorified it even in places. If you recall Nintendo’s otherwise lacklustre E3 presentation, you will also remember the competitive aspect being discussed at length. This deliberate design choice recognises the desire for a new kind of cooperative experience, that of competitive co-op which is equal parts helping your fellow players as hindering them. In a social environment with 3 other players in your sitting room, the fun factor and lure of such a title is obvious. Some games have touched on this before, such as Castle Crasher’s princess-kissing sections, where players who were otherwise working together, must fight to the death for the right to kiss the damsel in distress, but none has yet come close to capturing what this new style of play could become, as New Super Mario Brothers for Wii. It’s a truly joyful experience, where your fellow players are just as much of a threat, if not more so, than the enemies and pitfalls of each level. Any questions about the difficulty level of this title, particularly with the introduction of ‘Play it for me’ mode, or ‘Super-guide’ as Nintendo likes to call it, should be tempered with the knowledge that constantly having to watch your back makes things an awful lot more interesting.

Tales from Firstlook - Call of Duty : Modern Warfare 2

This is the first in a series of articles about some of the upcoming titles I had the chance to play at the Firstlook Expo in Amsterdam. I wouldn’t consider these reviews, since the time I had with each game is limited, but they should hopefully provide some insight into the games in question. Let’s start with the self-proclaimed big-hitter, Modern Warfare 2.

Upon walking into the expo, a quick glance to the left unveiled a towering black structure with green waveforms painted on it. Flatscreens with pulsing green graphics and the release date for Modern Warfare 2 adorned the outside walls. We were able to enter the expo a few hours before the general public, which gained us two important things. Firstly, a delicious breakfast of stereotypical dutch cuisine (ham and cheese). After eating our fill we took full advantage of the other benefit of press access, early access to the pods. After a thorough session with Bayonetta, which I will talk about in a future article, we decided that it would be best to approach the MW2 ‘booth’, which is hereby referred to as The Dark Tower. Queueing for The Dark Tower was almost as surreal as walking into it. Burly and slightly psychotic looking bodyguards flanked the entrances, along with a slick PR guy who was doing a solid job of talking up the game to various inquisitive press. He visibly glowered as myself and my colleague cracked jokes about what might be inside The Dark Tower. A new price-hike perhaps? Bobby Kotick himself, there to devour our souls? After all, we were sure we’d seen less people walking out than going in. The humour was a mere mask for the terror in my heart, OH GOD, MODERN WARFARE 2 IS GOING TO FLAY ME ALIVE.

We entered The Dark Tower in a group of 6. Lead by the most psychotic of the bodyguards, we were instructed to stand on a series of X marks on the floor. Fully expecting an anvil to drop at any moment, we adorned the surprisingly shoddy headphones that hung from the ceiling and stared blankly at a concave projection screen, which one presumes was setup to make sneaky photography and filming difficult. The next couple of minutes consisted of a trailer which used the in-game engine, but didn’t actually show any game-play. Having played, but not entirely finished (or indeed paid much attention) to the single-player story of the original Modern Warfare, I can safely say I didn’t really understand what was going on. Things exploded, people talked about more things exploding. Bullets flew all over the place, various locales were shown. I must say the usually stellar audio production was notably absent from this demonstration, perhaps due to the inferior quality of the headphones. In a futile gesture of immersion which would not be out of place in a school theatre production, air was blown in our face at various intervals and bursts of smoke shot into the viewing room. We had to stifle a chortle at the absurdity of this half-arsed attempt to impress, lest The Dark Tower’s bodyguard crush the life out of us with his bare hands. He looked capable.

As the presentation ended with a rather unimpressive climax, we were asked to stand there for a minute or so and then lead into a room with demonstration pods. We were told that we had 5 minutes and that we were to share a pod between two. While this sounds odd at first, you should bear in mind that the pods were set up to show off the ‘new’ Spec Ops mode, Infinity Ward’s replacement for the promised co-op which was cut at the last minute. We played on standard Xbox 360 pods, which aren’t ideal for split-screen setups due to their small displays. At least the high resolution capability ensured the visuals were sharp and crisp.

The demo allowed us to play a Spec Ops mission on a hard difficulty setting which I assume must be Veteran, involving the two of us using a breaching charge to penetrate an enemy stronghold and clear out those inside. A surprising and thoroughly inappropriate bullet-time segment followed the breach, allowing us to gun down a shocking number of enemies before they were able to mount a reasonable defence.

This initial triumph was short-lived as it became abundantly clear just how unfair this particular mission was going to be. Large groups of laser-sighted gunmen appeared on expansive balconies either side of us and proceeded to rain bullets and grenades down on our position. Dashing from cover to cover was the best option and I equipped myself with a shotgun to clear the room as my partner picked off the gunmen on the balconies with his own laser-sighted rifle. More and more enemies flooded in and I was eventually overwhelmed while reloading, taking 4 or 5 hits before falling to the ground. It was at this point that we experienced the truly bizarre nature of the death mechanics in co-op. I was able to pull out a pistol, Left4Dead style and gun down a couple of opponents, before starting to crawl back to my partner, with a lengthy ‘bleed-out’ timer emblazoned on the screen. The enemies quite literally ignored me as I crawled in front of them and eventually, I made it back to my partner’s position who with a simply press of the B button, laid hands upon me and filled me with the power of the Holy Spirit. I assume that’s what happened, nothing else makes sense since the healing was so incredibly fast. There was literally almost no risk involved in getting me back on my feet. No dressing of the wounds, no temporary vulnerability as he heaved my hefty, bullet-ridden carcass back onto its feet. It seemed cheap, reminding me of the bro-slap system of Gears of War, which effectively involved insulting your partner and calling him a fa***t for going down to a mere 20 bullets to the face. It was an immersion-shattering experience. As someone who has real difficulty dealing with regenerating health as a mechanic, finding the concept of hiding behind a pillar for a few seconds to pick the bullets out of your face truly alien and more than a little stupid, this blatant arcade-y nonsense did absolutely nothing for me. The enemies eventually overwhelmed us and we attempted the mission a couple more times, to no avail. At least my concerns about difficulty were without merit, it was balls-to-the-wall hard. So why, pray-tell, could the entire game not be this challenging and therefore, by Infinity Ward’s flimsy justification, have co-op mode? Forgive me for my scepticism of IW’s reasoning after being presenting with their own demonstration material which appears to contradict their statement.

In terms of production values, it’s hard to judge how impressive the game is by a demo inside what is effectively a warehouse. Sound assets seem on par with the previous titles and I saw little upgrade in terms of visuals from the original Modern Warfare. It was a good looking game to begin with so that’s not a big issue. Gunplay was also almost identical so if you liked Modern Warfare’s gunplay I see no reason why you wouldn’t like this. It’s also rather hard to judge enemy AI in such an enclosed space. The snipers on the balconies did what snipers do, snipe. Picking them off wasn’t exactly difficult considering they had virtually no cover, so it was a shooting gallery for my rifle-toting partner. It was rather hard to tell if we’d been flanked at any point since we were dodging bullets from all sides to begin with, but I didn’t get the impression that the AI was stupid, beyond their insistence on piling into the room through a chokepoint which I riddled with buckshot at every possible opportunity.

The overall impression I was left with upon exiting The Dark Tower with my complimentary t-shirt is of a game and a publisher with delusions of grandeur. This is not the ultimate evolution of FPS, it is merely competent and overly reliant on it’s monstrous budget. It does not, judging by the limited playtime I had with the title, do anything to justify the price-hike beyond having spent too much money during the development cycle and on pre-release marketing. The recent Kotick-driven decisions have done nothing to warm me to the game and while console players might be limited in terms of their FPS back catalogue, PC gamers are not and do not desperately need this title to round off their 2009. I somehow doubt that those who enjoyed Modern Warfare will pass up this title on consoles, though the recent snub of PC players in the form of an unmoddable game and no dedicated servers may send some the way of the pirate and/or boycott. For me, as someone who found Modern Warfare inexplicably over-hyped and thoroughly lacklustre in many respects, my hands-on of Modern Warfare 2 has done nothing to change my opinion and it will not be getting shelf-space in my collection.