Monthly Archives: December 2008

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Lips

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In the high echelons of internet and geek culture, 2008 has seen the biggest argument amongst gamers since the debate over whether games are art: Casual Gaming. This so-called “new” market seeks to capture those people who don’t play games all the time, unlike the rest of us ‘normal geeks’. It seeks to appeal to mums, sisters, grandmas and grandpas, and because of the incredible success of the Nintendo Wii and DS, along with download services like Steam and Xbox Live Arcade, casual gaming has seen a massive spike of interest by the big players in the market.

Along with slashing the price of the Xbox Arcade System, Microsoft has pitched its once hardcore system to the casual gamer. The New Xbox Experience makes the interface clearer and simpler and adds a gimmicky but cute Avatar system, which allows you to personalise a character to your tastes and then see that character appear in the casual games such as Uno and SceneIt: Box Office Smash.

Lips is another attempt by Microsoft to capture the casual market. Made by Japanese studio iNiS, creators of Gitaroo Man and Elite Beat Agents, Lips is a Karoke game accompanied by two wireless microphones. Unlike Microsoft’s disastrous attempt to make a Karoke game for the original Xbox with the Xbox Music Mixer, the game functions as a very slick and cool Karoke simulator, but as a game, it falls a little flat.

The Microphones are striking and well crafted. They feel like a proper microphone in your hand, weighted properly for a sturdy and comfortable feel. The microphone itself is covered by a metal a foam spit guard, which is removed to access the batteries. When in action, LEDs strobe and change colour to the beat of the song, and they also contain motion detectors that interact with the game itself.

The first thing you notice when loading the game is the incredibly slick interface. It just oozes cool, and is insanely easy to use. Three button presses and you’re singing. It would have been nice to use the microphone in some way to navigate the menus, but unfortunately you need to have controllers connected, but it’s not a deal breaker. The first option is to sing, and pressing the button shows you your songs listed in alphabetical order. Selecting a song with the D-Pad plays a sample of the song, just in case you didn’t know it, and here you can also rate the songs and add it your playlists.

Another button press gets you into a staging area, where you can set up the options for the song. Here you can choose to sing the long or short versions of the songs, set up Versus or Cooperative modes, set the noise reduction to reduce the voice in the song, the effect of the microphone, and choose which background to sing along to – Music Video, Interactive Video, or one of 3 minigames. After adjusting your options, you start singing the song.

The singing section feels very similar to Rockband and Guitar Hero singing sections. A pitch line scrolls horizontally and you’re rewarded points for hitting the pitch and timing of the songs correctly. When you sing well enough, an icon appears on screen telling you to perform an action with the mic. Do this, and you activate Star power Star Stream. This gives you double points on all the notes you hit. This is where the motion detector comes into play, although simply shaking the mic rather than doing the exact move can set it off anyway. You can also shake the microphone to become a noise maker, acting as tambourine shakes or hand claps.

Music Video is exactly that – watch the music video as the song plays. Some songs are a little too old to have the original MTV video, or maybe it’s a clearance issue, but in those cases a custom video will play instead. Whilst videoclips are common to most Karoke set ups, I personally found this very distracting, especially during Beyonce’s clip where she’s strutting around in nothing much at all… it’s a bit hard to sing when your tongue is hanging out.

The interactive clip has motion captured dancers singing over a disco-esc flashy background, like those old rave music clips and amiga demos. (Gosh, I’m showing my age here!).You interact with the clip by swinging the microphone around. As you do certain moves, like spin around or move the mic up and down, the video responds in various ways. It’s kind of cool, especially with two people.

The minigames are a silly but fun distraction. Kiss has a cute 2D rendered scene, very reminiscent of Rub Rabbits, with two people running towards each other. Time the microphone movement right, and they’ll kiss. Vocal Fighters has two cartoon singers in spots of light. The better you sing, the brighter the light, forcing your opponent off stage. Time Bomb features a big bomb with a fuse, and by singing well you fill up a glass of water. Shake the microphone and put out the fuse.

There’s also a “jukebox” mode to the game, which allows you to set a playlist and play song after song after song – the ultimate party mode. If a person wants to sing, simply shaking the mic gets the person in the game. This is the same for any mode, but makes the most sense in this mode as you can have the game running as a video jukebox until your guests are drunk brave enough to start singing.

The biggest issue with all of these modes is there’s not really much point to singing well. Yes, you are scored on your progress, and are rewarded stars and medals which in turn give you more points, but there’s nothing to do with the points once you’ve earned them. You can’t fail a song, and moreover you don’t unlock more songs or higher difficulties, points are simply used for bragging rights. So, for a single player, you’ve scored 4 million points on Young MC’s Bust A Move, what’s the point in singing it again?

The 40 songs included are adequate, covering a range of songs and styles, although I feel it’s much more slanted to young females tastes compared to Rockband and Guitar Hero. I really appreciate the inclusion of some Australian greats – if you haven’t sang drunkenly to Khe Shan in a pub then you’re not really Australian to my mind, and now you can capture that feeling any time you want. But I really have to question to inclusion of Shannon Noll on the Australian disc at the expense of Duran Duran’s Hungry Like a Wolf. They could have at least made the songs of the other regions available as a free download.

You can import songs, but again the game misses a big opportunity here. Songs are simply imported – no lyrics can be included. Knowing that you can attach lyrics to music files using ID3 tags, I don’t understand why this ability wasn’t included. I do understand the licensing restrictions placed on content like this, but surely some kind of arrangement could be made with music publishers, even if it was some kind of proprietary file format that only LIPS could use.

Also, when you play your imported song, you’re still scored, although how exactly I can’t quite ascertain. It seems to work just as well if you make random noises into the microphone. And whilst it sends the details of the songs and artists back to Microsoft with the promise of including songs for download if they’re popular enough, for some reason I don’t think Kevin Bloody Wilson will be picked up any time soon.

Another minor issue with the songs is none of them are duets, so two people are in fact singing the same bits in each song. With two microphones, it seems like another missed opportunity to make the game more fun.

Another bigger problem is the lack of online play. You can challenge a person to beat your score on a song, but they’ve completely left out the ability to sing together online. There may be issues with voice and lag, but surely some kind of mode could have been incorporated. They could have also given people the ability to record themselves and upload it to youtube, ala SingStar, but alas that’s missing too. There’s an attempt at an online community, but like much of the rest of the game, it feels worthless. Sure, it’s nice knowing that 324,093 people have sung your favourite song, but it’s pretty unnecessary. I also think it’s a bit broken – it’s improbable that not one single person has attempted to sing Coldplay’s Yellow since the games release.

Conclusion:
Lips does a good job at being a Karoke simulator. It looks and sounds great, it’s simple to get started, and the party mode really is a great idea. The list of songs has something for everyone, and the ability to download more songs increases its appeal. It’s precisely the type of game you can put on at a party and have some fun with.

The problem is it’s not very good at being a game, especially compared to the other music games available. For a single player, there’s not really much incentive to play through all the songs. Yes, singing is fun, but you don’t unlock anything, you can’t change the difficulty. The lack of online modes is also very disappointing.

PROS:
Simple and intuitive and slick looking interface
Microphones feel very well crafted
Varied selection of tunes to suit a wide range of people
Great fun in a party atmosphere

CONS:
Not much of a game – no incentives or unlockables
Can’t import lyrics with imported songs
Scoring on imported songs doesn’t make sense
Severe lack of online play.

73/100

24Seven, Review, Video Games, Writing

Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3

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Could anyone possibly dislike a game that has Frankenfurter travel back in time and kill Einstein, then return to his time to find his Russia gloriously populated by hot, busty women in tight plastic outfits, only to be thwarted by an ex-MTV soft porn star, a host of psionic school girls and the Hoff? No, I thought not.

This is Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3, the third sequel to the prequel of the Command and Conquer franchise… Errr, yes, it’s rather confusing if you don’t know the history of the games, but the basic premise is the Nazi’s never rose to power in Germany, allowing Russia to dominate Europe, much to the dismay of the Allies. In the future, the Russians become the Brotherhood of Nod, and the Allies the GDF which is what Command and Conquer deals with. The Red Alert series deals with the Russians and the Allies. Simple, right? Well, to make things a bit more complicated, Red Alert 3 introduces a new faction, the Japanese, who have mech robots and the aforementioned psionic schoolgirls.

But it doesn’t really matter if you don’t know the history of the franchise, as the premise of this edition is explained in glorious full action cutscenes throughout the game. Featuring real actors including J. K Simmons, Jenny McCarthy, Gerge Takei, David Hasslehoff and Tim Curry, these are worth the price of entry alone. Sure, it’s B-Grade, but it’s the best kind of B-Grade, being funny and entertaining, and they really set the vibe of the game incredibly well.

The game never takes itself too seriously, and gameplay wise is pretty much a traditional Real Time Strategy – it’s faster paced and relies a more on the rock/paper/scissor dynamic than being a matter of building your forces and “zerg” rushing your opponent. The xbox controller does it’s best to match a mouse and keyboard, although I did find myself wishing for them on more than a few occasions, but the online play is smoother than PC could ever be.

If you’ve liked the previous Red Alert games, then this is pretty much the same, just with more to see and do. If you’ve never played these games, you’re missing out on some of the best B-Grade action this side of the 90s.

3.5 Stars

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Call Of Duty: World At War

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The Call Of Duty franchise has always been one of the better shooter franchises, but Infinity Ward, with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, trumped all the other COD games by setting the game in modern times, and putting some killer scripted events in amongst the frantic and intense shooting. Not only that, it had one of the greatest online game components of any game, rivalling the Halo franchise for online fun.

When it was announced Treyarch, responsible for the competent but average Call of Duty 2: The Big Red One and Call of Duty 3, were bringing the franchise back to World War II, there was some consternation about the series. After all, World War II been the setting of more games than any other conflict, and there were big questions as to whether Treyarch could do the series justice.

The answer to that is “sort of”. Call of Duty: World At War is a great game, as nearly as good as Modern Warfare, but what you will get out of the game really depends on what you’re looking for. For someone really hankering to get a gritty World War II shooter with scripted events and good online play, then COD:WAW is perfect. But in my experience, playing the game felt like playing COD4 with a lick of paint, a mere expansion, than playing a new experience.

COD: WAW focuses on the Pacific and Russian fronts, two little explored areas of WWII by video games. These fronts were brutal and savage, and the game reflects the loading screens with footage not usually associated with WWII videogames. I found it to be an interesting experience – on the one hand the game was demonstrating the horrors of war, yet on the other hand it gave you a flamethrower that never exploded nor ran out of fuel (although it would overheat), and was incredibly fun to use on enemy troops, especially as they danced around on fire much like in Loonytoon cartoons.

That aside, the campaign is just as intense and fun as its predecessor. The scripted moments are just as intense as in COD4. The “on rails” section in the seaplane, jumping from gun to gun shooting Japanese boats and Zeros is fabulous fun, and the Russian tank kicking the crap out of the Germans section is incredibly satisfying. However, the story doesn’t feel as well put together as the previous title. The two fronts are so far apart from one another there’s less of a connection between them, and moreover you know who’s going to win, so it takes a little away from the whole experience. The campaign seemed short and relatively easy, which was a criticism of COD4 as well, but it is obvious single player is not really the focus of the franchise any more.

The campaign can be played multiplayer, with four friends battling through many of the maps together. There are some which aren’t available – it doesn’t seem right to have a mission with four snipers after all – but it allows you to approach the missions with a new perspective. Much like Halo 3, there’s cards you can pick up which alter the experience of playing, again making the campaign more fun a second or third time through.

The multiplayer is also just as fun as COD4. You can create classes and level up in much the same way, unlocking perks and weapons the more you play. The perks have been jigged a little to fit the times, however, with camouflage replacing UAV Jammer, but doing the exact same thing. The weapons feel a little imprecise compared to their COD4 counterparts, but that’s to be expected, as WWII weapons aren’t as good as those of modern warfare. Artillery and “spotter planes” (radar) make a return, and now you have attack dogs which tear around the map hunting the enemy.

The maps are set up similarly to COD4, being a mix of open and close quarters fighting, although there are a couple which include vehicles which add a nice dimension to play. In addition to the new, err, old WWII weapons, there are some unique weapons such as the aforementioned flamethrower, “bouncing betty” bomb and Molotov cocktails. There’s also the Nazi Zombie mode, unlocked after completing the main campaign mode, which is a survival mode against the shambling horde. It’s fun, but it’s not a patch on Left 4 Dead.

I must admit, the graphics didn’t really grab me. It looks “next gen” enough, and the pacific areas are quite lush and full of jungle foliage, but it just felt like playing every other WWII game when it really came down to it. Drab greens, browns and greys dominated the game, with a splash of Nazi red and fire here and there. Although I get the whole reality / grittiness of the graphics, I think it’s just a little overdone and wish people would think a little deeper about colour palettes. Sound, on the other hand, plays an incredible part in the game, and during the final battle for the Reichstag I was literally in awe of the sounds all around me, and it added immensely to one of the more powerful experiences of the game.

Conclusion:
Whilst it is obvious Treyarch put a lot of sweat and love into the game, Call Of Duty: World At War just doesn’t stand out as much as it’s predecessor. I’ve played scores of WWII games, and even with the slightly different story campaign settings and grittier overall feel, COD: WAW never felt much different from playing any other WWII game, nor even much different to playing COD4. It is a good World War II shooter, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but I feel it doesn’t have enough of its own identity to really win me over from playing COD4.

Pros:
Uses the COD4 engine to great effect
Great online play bot h competitive and cooperative
Nazi Zombies!

Cons:
Feels like every other WWII shooter
Short and easy single player campaign.

85/100