Intentionally Left Blank

Note :  Nintendo are currently streaming a Pre-E3 video that seems to confirm at least the idea of friends lists and online voice, text and video messaging.

So with E3 upon us, all eyes are focusing on Nintendo to bring us into the ‘next generation’ console era. Personally I am incredibly excited to see what Nintendo has in store for us and hopefully there are plenty of surprises in store, but part of me can’t help but think they are going to fuck this up.

See to begin with I was always a Sega fan and followed them through most of the 90‘s all the way up to the untimely demise of the Dreamcast and, as I watched the Sega I once knew fade away, I knew I had to move on to greener pastures. Enter Nintendo to neatly fill the Sega shaped hole in my heart and, since Gamecube era, I have been an avid Nintendo fan. I didn’t even feel I had missed out on not owning a Nintendo 64 or SNES either as most of my friends had one at the time. What always appealed to me about Nintendo games, and it was also something that appealed to me about Sega games at the time, was that their games were always designed around being just plan fun and always gave of the impression that a lot of love and care had gone into making them.

So enter the Wii, which proved to be a huge success, I mean who doesn’t own a Wii by now, and yeah Nintendo still made great games for it. What changed for Nintendo is while they stood still and focused on the casual audience the ‘hardcore’ gaming community moved on. Even when Nintendo released a more traditional game, it still felt that they still lacked the kinda of support and offerings that were available on other consoles. Think Mario Kart 7 and its terrible online Wii friend code system or even Smash Bros. Brawls online component. Nintendo stood still in the online space, and that proved to be its biggest downfall. People like playing games online easily and seamlessly, they like chatting with their friends over the internet, developers appreciated the chance to patch their games and release extra content after launch and Nintendo didn’t accommodate for any of that, at least not in a intuitive way, and Sony and Microsoft just…well did! Just think of how much work Microsoft put in to the Xbox dashboard over the 6 years its been out or how both companies have constantly evolved their online offerings, for better or for worse, constantly over the past generation. So as Third-party support began to dwindle and Nintendo’s first party offerings sold by the bucketload, people started to lose interest in the Wii. 

With the Wii U Nintendo has a chance to turn everything back around and reclaim the audience that they lost, without losing site of what made Nintendo so great in the first place. However before they win me back they need to make sure they address a few things….

A Better Online Multiplayer Experience, Friends Lists and Online Messaging Support

Nintendo need to ditch friend codes. I completely understand their reasoning for doing it, but its incredibly inconvenient entering my friends code and then waiting for them to enter mine as well. Nintendo needs to realise that its not their job to hold our hand through the online gaming experience. If their worried about their younger audience, spend more time educating parents on online gaming and building in customisable parental controls that are easy to use. The Wii U needs proper online aliases, complete with the ability to create friend lists, parties and the ability to participate in voice chat easily and simply. 

Triple A games from other Publishers

Third party support has always been fairly lacklustre on recent Nintendo consoles, with only Capcom being a regular standout performer. Nintendo needs to romance big time developers this time round and bend over backwards to accommodate them. Its a horrible practice, but part of why the Xbox is such a success is its timed exclusives. Nintendo could do with a few more companies releasing their games with Wii U as the lead console and the only way to accomplish this is working closely with third party developers. 

Achievements

Seems like a small thing no, and maybe a lot of you are thinking ‘What? How are achievements important’. They may seem insignificant, but they are actually a key point of why I enjoy my Xbox. I mean everybody likes to brag a bit right, and what makes achievements or trophies great is the ability to be able to compare how them with friends and also gives you an amazing sense of accomplishment when you unlock a particularly challenging one. Nintendo has the opportunity to take this idea and run with it further, there Club Nintendo scheme lets players buy items with stars they gain from buying Nintendo games, why not give players points based on how many achievements they unlock in a game or even a Smash Bros-esque system where completing specific accomplishments unlocks in game items. Combine this with proper online aliases and 3DS support and I’m in. Don’t underestimate the power of achievements, I can’t count how many people I have heard say ‘Ah I’m going to buy this game on the Xbox for the achievements’.

Apps and Downloadable Games

I’m not talking just games so much here, both entertainment and social applications are welcome here. Remember the channel pages on the Wii. They were pretty bare unless you bought a ton load of Virtual Console games. Let developers and content providers give us Netflix, Lovefilm, BBC iPlayer, 4OD, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and turn the console into a digital hub to rival the Xbox’s media capabilities. In the gaming space, let developers create downloadable games without size limits and make it easy for new developers to bring downloadable titles to the system. WiiWare was a good idea, but tiny file size limits and a lack of a real push from Nintendo caused it to fall flat on its face. 

Expandable Memory, in a friendly format

So this is something the Wii actually did late in its lifetime, so there is a good chance this will continue with the Wii U. In order for the Wii to be able to patch games, and have downloadable content, its logical to expect there will be at least a small hard drive built in, but wouldn’t it be great if you could just plug in a 32GB SD card or an external hard drive to expand that storage. Microsoft and the Playstation Vita both have expensive propriety formats, so having a cheap standard format would prove to be a breath of fresh air. I understand that the propriety formats are mostly there to reduce the risk of piracy but hopefully that is something that Nintendo could overcome by other means. While your at it, throw Cloud saves into the mix as well a la Steam.

So there we go…..Ok so there may be a few things that Nintendo will have to do to win me over completely and I still worry that if the console is just as powerful as the current generation consoles then they will run into problems down the line, but fulfilling all of these is a step in the right direction and will definitely make me reconsider putting faith into a Nintendo console again. Which ever way they decide to go, I will certainly be watching the Nintendo E3 press conference with great interest. 

So for this weeks ‘Mixtape Monday’ I thought I would go with a bit of a Video Game theme. Over the last couple of months, I have had the pleasure of playing titles that are not only just great games, but have also have great soundtracks to boot. Here are just a few of my favourites…..

Lone Star - Jim Guthrie (Sword and Sworcery)

Read my review yesterday to find out what my thoughts are on Sword and Sworcery as a whole, however Jim Guthrie’s brilliant OST for is one of the elements that make this game a truly unique experience.


Build That Wall - Darren Korb (Bastion)

Bastion could of easily been an unremarkable cutesy hack and slasher, but the unique art style, great narrative techniques and immersful soundtrack turn it into something special.


Home - Disasterpeace (Fez)

I like Fez! Enough said!


Exile Vilify by The National

Hidden amongst the the witty dialouge and great sound design of Portal 2 lies this heartfelt ballard by The National. Kudos if you can find it in the game.


Clint Mansell - Leaving Earth

Lets put all this ending stuff to rest and just admit that despite its flaws, Mass Effect 3 was a pretty remarkable game. This track by Clint Mansell sets the scene and the tone of the Reapers descent perfectly.

On doing my daily sweep of the AppStore for deals, new apps and free apps, I noticed that the quite frankly incredible Sword and Sworcery (yup its spelt like that) from Superbrothers and Capybara Games had been heavily discounted to £1.99, or even 69p for the iPhone/iPod only version. I purchased Sword and Sworcery several months ago and it still stands as a tremendous example of a game that has been designed from the ground up to incorporate touch and work with both the advantages and limitations of iOS.

So what makes this game so great I hear you ask?

Visually it looks outstanding. The pixel art look is obviously designed to invoke nostalgia of the games of yesteryear, but in reality it goes far beyond that and combines incredibly detailed pixelated landscapes with some beautiful lighting and visual techniques. The result is worlds that look far more lush than any of those previous generations of consoles could ever invoke. It even looks great blown up on the big screen using an Apple TV with AirPlay.

The sound design and music is equally, if not more so, impressive. Created by Jim Guthrie, the music is perfectly integrated into the story, providing atmosphere to quieter more somber moments and creshendoing up to much more majestic ones. A particularly memorable moment takes place during a fight where the music is so tightly integrated into what your doing, you end listening to the rhythm to time your shots rather than paying attention to the onscreen cues. 

Gameplay wise the actual core games is pretty simplistic, think of a modern take on a point and click adventure with the occasional combat scenarios. It works great on the iPad or iPhone and, although there were a few frustrating moments, I never felt like this game would of benefited from any sort of gamepad or mouse and keyboard interface. The combination of touch and accelerometer works perfectly.

The story equally is nothing spectacular, but the clever humourous writing more than makes up for it and makes for an enjoyable experience.

Its also little short, you could probably breeze through it in a couple of hours. In fact he game actively encourages you to take breaks in between play throughs and cuts the story up into several acts or episodes making it ideal for short bursts.

All in all though, its certianly worth the 69p or £1.99 for the universal app (it even has retina support for the new iPad) and is a great showcase of what games designed for iOS can do. EA and others take note, for touch screen to really take off as a viable control method, we need to move away from virtual buttons and control overlays, and start playing to the strengths of touchscreen gaming.

Its another Monday, which means its another chance for me to share the musical gems I have come across in the past week or so. So what, I hear you ask, have I been listening to this week? 

Pepper and Shepherd

The Railway Social Club

Hailing from Birmingham, The Railway Social Club’s harmonious voices are yours to own on their ‘Nowhere - EP’, available on iTunes.

http://www.trscmusic.com/Home.html

Double Yellow

The superb ‘We Got Caught - EP’ from Here And Now Recordings is now available to purchase from iTunes. 

http://www.hereandnowrecordings.com/

Roman Foot Soldiers

All the way from Jakarta, Roman Foot Soldiers bring a fresh indie electro experience courtesy of Indonesia. Their EP ‘Kitsilano’ is available free from soundcloud.com/romanfootsoldiers

Disasterpeace

If you have met me, or even talked to me in the past couple of weeks it is probably no secret that my favourite game of the moment is FEZ. What help makes this game so special is it spectacular old school chip-tune soundtrack courtesy of Disasterpeace. The whole soundtrack is available to buy via http://disasterpeace.com/album/fez

http://disasterpeace.com/

The past few days of my life have been a test of my physical ability, my endurance and my orienteering skills. Yes, I am talking of course about ‘The Great Escape’ in Brighton. During my time at the festivities, between drinking vast amounts of alcohol and walking up and down seemingly never-ending hills, I did manage to see a whole host of amazing bands. So I thought to my self….Whats the best way to share my findings with other people.

Dude check out these awesome bands!

After about 15mins of shouting at random people in the street, I concluded maybe a blog post would be the best way to handle this. So here we go, my first Mixtape Monday and with it comes my five highlights of ‘The Great Escape’.

http://www.weloveblackcherry.com/

http://www.chetfaker.com/

http://www.grimesmusic.com/

http://www.facebook.com/disclosureuk

http://www.jinjasafari.com/

*May contain FEZ spoilers*

So the other day I finally finished ’FEZ’, and suffice to say, it was not at all what I was expecting. I mean that in the best possible way of course. On the surface, FEZ seemed like a unassuming cutesy indie game platformer with an interesting in puzzle mechanic, the ability to rotate the seemingly two dimensional world on a three dimensional axis revealing new doors, items and more. To FEZ’s credit, it could of stopped there. The striking 8bit era visuals and the beautiful soundtrack by Disasterpiece would have carried it the rest of the way and won me over. What makes FEZ truly special however goes so much deeper than that. 

The game is littered visually with symbols, patterns, tetrominoes and shapes that you could easily mistake for just existing for the sake of aesthetics. However as you progress through the game, you start to realise there are patterns everywhere, on the ground, in the sky, you name it! Nothing is there by accident.

What ensues is the discovery of completely alien language with its own number systems and alphabet. A language that you will need to learn and understand, if you wish to reap all the secrets FEZ has to offer. This is all on you. FEZ offers no hand holding, no tips or tricks or no items that reveal all of it secrets, at least not ones that the game is going to slap you in the face with. It doesn’t assume you are stupid, and it is equally not afraid to challenge you. All you know is that its increasingly apparent you better start writing some of this stuff down.

This brings me on to my personal favourite part of FEZ. Making notes! Now before you call me crazy I’m going somewhere with this.

I haven’t made notes for a game in years, and during my time with FEZ I started to find my self scrawling things down I felt were important, jotting down parts of the game I understood and symbols I was yet to comprehend. I had been told that FEZ has this effect on people, but I didn’t believe it until I started doing it myself. I collaborated with other friends playing the game at the same time, sharing hints and discoveries. I looked to the internet and witnessed the gaming community using their combined knowledge to solve some seemingly impossible puzzles. My housemate even joined in, giving me a second opinion on things I may have overlooked. It was a epic, and was a truly unique co-operative experience, which I hadn’t experienced since playing Monkey Island with my school friends.

All in all FEZ is a great game, and if you have an Xbox and fancy a gaming with a touch of something special, give FEZ a try!