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Welcome to FunkyJ.com

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So, here it is, the new and improved FunkyJ.com for 2026 – only 10 years since the last major update!

My DJing has taken off so I want to have this as the one-stop-shop for all things DJ FunkyJ, so the calendar and linktree are in place for that.

As to my articles I’ve managed to get a semi-automated process happening to upload all my articles. It’s not perfect, and I do have to do a lot of post upload editing, but it’s way better than copying and pasting. However, there may be errors in dates and even titles.

When I started writing for dB Magazine and inthemix in 2002, the web was nascent and you had to look hard for material on the various artists I interviewed. Nowadays with AI and Google and whatnot it’s really simple to find information, and I hope my writing will be added to that pile, as well as be useful to archivers and memory laners.

Some notes to take into account when reading the old reviews:

  • I was writing for an audience of the time. It was, after all, over 20 years ago. So some may find the writing offensive.
    For that I apologise, but I present the articles here as they are as an archive of the time.
  • The wordpress publishing dates are the I wrote them – or at least the creation dates the computer recorded me writing them. Publishing dates would have usually been a week or so after the creation dates.
  • There may be some errors with this and the articles in general, but I present them as I wrote them, not as they were edited by the publications I wrote for.
  • Any images are sourced from public sites such as Amazon and Wikipedia and other “retro gaming” sites. If the sites go down, then the images will also go down. I claim no ownership of article images.
  • The exception to this are any event photographs I post. These will be copyright of me. Please respect that and attribute them as appropriate if you’re going to reuse them.
News

New Gig Calendar

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I’m trying to incorporate my google calendar and facebook events calendar here so there is ONE CALENDAR TO RULE THEM ALL!

Save this page and visit it often to see where my gigs are at.

February 2026

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  • FunkyJ at Daddy Bar
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  • FunkyJ at LB’s Record Bar
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Time for an upgrade!

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So it’s been FIVE years since I last updated this website.

A lot had changed, so I’m going to start to refocus the content on what I’m doing now and in the future, rather than what I’ve done in the past.

Starting with my new logo!

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

FIFA 17

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In some gamers’ minds, the yearly update of EA Sports games like FIFA is an indication of what’s wrong with Triple A games. Being asked year after year to pay for what they see as a roster update is akin to nothing but the worst form of corporate greed. However, every year EA Sports and FIFA try to do something new, something to give fans of the series a reason to buy the yearly update, and not simply stick with the year before, or whichever year the fans vehemently argue was the best. Sometimes that works, like the introduction of FUT a number of years ago. Sometimes that fails, like the upgrade of engines when we first went from Xbox to Xbox360. This year, EA Sports have taken a risk and not only upgraded the engine, but added a whole new way of playing.

The big engine change is upgrading to the Frostbyte engine. Whilst FIFA has always looked good, sometimes the players and reactions to the way the match was played seemed a little off. Like when all the players played the same animation before the kick off. Like when the players seemed to do inappropriate actions to one another when one fell over. Frostbyte seeks to change all that, and does a reasonable job at it too. What this means is the game feels more lifelike than ever. Players sweat. Player breath frosts in the cold air. Players move around like players should – for the most part. There are still some odd results of the physics engine, such as often it appears players will kiss and feel each other up, which can be hilarious if you have the mind of a 12 year old (which I have).

Animations, whist still canned, appear far more varied and lifelike. The way players twist their body away from free kicks, for example, is far more realistic than previous years. Player movement feels smoother overall, and whilst close ups of players still force you into the uncanny valley, the players look far less ghoulish than in previous years.

The impact on the way FIFA plays in general is harder to recognise at first. The ball play does feel a little zippier, and the bounce and movement feel a little more realistic, although there are times where the ball does still feels glued to player’s feet. Because of the physicality of the engine, the game feels more brutal than in past iterations. Players are grabbed off the ball and physically blocked from the path of the ball. They’ve even introduced handball! It doesn’t occur often and can be switched off, but I liked having it on, because it did up the realism.

There are small changes to the way penalties and corners are handled now. There’s a movable aiming spot which allows you to pick out your man. It is deliberately imprecise and I’m not entirely sure that’s a good thing, as my I used to be rely on corners to get goals more often. You can choose to be the receiver of a corner or throw-in, allowing for more tactical outcomes however. Penalties are prefaced with a controlled run up now as well, which makes them just a little more difficult to execute.

The other big reason they introduced the new engine is the new mode – The Journey. In this mode you play as young Alex Hunter, rising from humble lower class beginnings to rubbing shoulders with the upper echelons of the FIFA sporting code. In a very RPG light-ish fashion, you improve your skills via training and playing, face and overcome several ‘big’ challenges, and make a bunch of decisions which will change your life forever… or at least to the end of the 15 or so hours you’ll be playing it. There are several animated vignettes which push the story along, as well as reaction pieces where you can be fiery, cool, or balanced and these slightly influence the game in terms of how you are seen by your peers and fans.

I must admit I was extremely dubious about this when it was first announced. PES also had a career mode which was like an RPG, but it was pretty awful, predictable and tacky. FIFA went to the expense of getting “authenticity coaches” to help with the plausibility of the story, and I must say I’m impressed. Yes, the story is tacky and predictable, but it’s played with such conviction, I even started to get angry with fake twitter feed when they would riff on Alex’s performance! Alex himself, played by Adetomiwa Edun, is likable enough, and it’s his gruff Grandfather, asshole ex-best-mate-now-rival Gareth Walker, and comic relief Danny Williams who joins you when you’re slumming in the lower league who make the story shine.

You earn your spot in the team by doing well in training, which leverages the minigames to more than just loading screen shenanigans. The mode itself can be played as a team or solo in the “play as a pro” style. I preferred team, because as is usual with the Pro mode, if your team is a bit rubbish (I chose Burnley because Claret and Blue!) then you don’t get to see much of the ball, so your score doesn’t improve as much as playing as the whole team. Playing as a team does have its drawbacks though – you can’t control the team’s formation, subs, or attack / defence approach like you can in the other modes.

There are a few other annoying nags about the mode in general. Training feels a bit grindy, however if you skip it you tend to score D or F, which means you won’t qualify for the starting line-up. It’s frustrating particularly later in the mode, because you’re doing so well during the match, which is the most fun part of the game after all, but skipping a session means you don’t get to play. You can’t skip or restart a match, although there are times, either for story purposes or because you don’t qualify for a game, that a match is skipped, so it feels a little odd. And there are odd story moments too – like being told your team faces relegation although you have won the majority of the games you played.

FUT has had some minor changes, the impact of which will depend on how interested you are in the mode. The “Ones to Watch” and Holiday Specials (the latest is a Halloween flavoured one called “Scream Team”) are new ways for prices of certain players to be artificially raised. They’ve also introduced Squad Building Challenges, which offer rewards for doing certain things, like putting a back four together all from the same country. However, the rewards are non-tradable, and be aware that doing challenges will remove those players from your club, so choose to do these wisely, especially if you have traded high value cards or even spent money on packs and players.

The other modes such as Manager Mode and the International Women’s Tournament all remain pretty much the same. Japan has been introduced to the International Women’s Tournament, and the mode is still pretty strong, feeling different enough from the men’s game, and I’m fairly certain FIFA is the only sports game to feature a women’s league at all. It would be nicer if this wasn’t tucked away behind menus this year though. Manager Mode focuses a little more on your objectives as a manager, and these are tailored more to your team. Choosing a lower division team means you won’t be asked to win the FA Cup to survive in your role, for example. However, gaining a place in the cup will give your team a financial boost. It’s a more realistic approach, which is appreciated, but doesn’t substantially alter the mode.

Conclusion:
EA took a risk with FIFA this year and it’s paid off. The new Journey mode is ultimately silly, but it’s surprisingly engaging and a lot of fun. The new engine makes the game better, not in leaps and bounds, but subtly so, and it’s not until a few hours of playing whatever mode you prefer that you appreciate the differences and the sense of realism the changes bring.

Pros:
New Engine improves the way the players look as well as the way the game plays.
New mode is surprisingly engaging and fun, leveraging disparate parts into a whole.
Women’s football remains a strong part of the game and difference to other sports games.

Cons:
Changes to FUT can result in the loss of paid for content if you’re not paying attention.
Women’s football mode is hidden behind the menus.

80/100

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Mirror’s Edge Catalyst

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Mirror’s Edge was a breath of fresh air when it was released in 2008. Featuring an Asian female lead who was appropriately proportioned when most other games featured buff marine types or buxom wenches; a game world that was full of stark white splashed with bold colours amongst a sea of drab brown and grey game worlds; and featured a fluidity of movement in a world full of stop-start gun fighty games. It certainly wasn’t without its flaws and had many detractors throughout the game community, but it was bold, especially for a big publisher like EA, and full of promise for those of us who wanted something new.

Unfortunately, we had to wait 8 years for a sequel and 8 years is a long time in game development terms, and particularly with what has happened to the games industry lately. The games market has completely fragmented, with PC and the console market dominance being smashed by iPhone and Android games. The rise of the casual gamer and indie developer has pushed games in directions unheard of 8 years ago in terms of art and action. Diversity of representation, which has always been in the back of developer’s minds, has been pushed to the forefront of the conversation surrounding games.

With this context in mind, fans of Mirror’s Edge were excited to see what EA could come up with. With the story rebooted and an entire city open to explore, would Mirror’s Edge live up to its promise and could Catalyst become the next big thing ™? Well, in a word, no. Regrettably, Mirror’s Edge Catalyst tries hard, but when held up to its competitors it falls quite short.

Let’s start with the character Faith. I can excuse the developers for having her iconic sleave tattoo absent at the start of the game and turning it into a reward. As a player, it’s kind of cool to play through wondering how she gets it. But, without spoiling it too much, the when it’s rewarded is really too late in the story, and the way it’s rewarded is kind of lame. But that’s not the worst of it for Faith. Her strength of character has been greatly reduced by the weak story. The predictable plot and one dimensional villains strip her of agency, and instead of acting on her own and for her own sake, she gets pulled along inexorably and the player is simply there for the ride. It doesn’t help that Faith is still depicted as a teenager. I’m completely aware that I’m nowhere near being a teenager any more, but this doesn’t excuse the poor writing and plotting. We’ve all grown in 8 years, but Faith hasn’t and she seems wildly immature and predictably whinny.

Arguably, story comes after gameplay, and strong gameplay can erase the bad taste the story can leave in your mouth. Unfortunately here the game stumbles too. Quite often. Into an abyss. Where you wait an eternity for a loading screen to bring you back to the action. The first Mirror’s Edge was criticised for poor controls and 8 years on the developers haven’t figured it out yet either. Which is a shame because when it works, like games such as Sunset Overdrive, Dishonored, Assassin’s Creed, Batman’s Arkham and Infamous series, where exploration and movement are put in the forefront of design, the movement in the game brings an almost Zen-like sense of calm and achievement to the player.

And in a world where those games exist, it’s not like the makers of Catalyst had nothing to emulate. The Up/Down mechanic is a great idea – you hold the left bumper for contextual up movements like jump and climb, and squeeze the left trigger for contextual down movements like slide and drop. The idea is you get a rhythm going as you move through the world, stringing movements together and flowing through the game. Unfortunately, the poor execution results in Faith falling to her death constantly. The biggest issue is the amount of things the left bumper is used for – jumping, wall running, attaching your rope, jumping off the rope, grabbing a ladder – compared to the trigger which is simply slide down/under and land. Quite often you’ll want to do a standing jump but wall run, or want to leap from a wall run but continue in the direction without jumping. I suspect the bumper isn’t as reliable as the trigger, and fervently wish I could remap the up and down to the left and right triggers so I could get a better flow going when playing. Another idea would be to have the facebuttons mapped to contextual movements, so pressing the bumper and pressing A would make you wall run, pressing Y would make shoot your rope out for example.

Speaking of shooting, thankfully faith doesn’t ever use guns this time around. One of the biggest complaints about the original game was the weapon sections. This time, Faith exclusively uses her fists and legs to fight. You’re meant to use the environment and your speed overwhelm the game’s enemies – leap up the wall, fly kick off a flywire, and so forth. And yet again, the game underwhelms with tedious AI where it just bunches together so you can kick the enemies into one another. You can defeat all the enemies using the same move (Y and joystick back or to the side). Every. Single. Fight. Some fights you can pretty much ignore, though towards the end of the game you’re frequently locked in a room and have to fight all the guards to enable you to proceed which feels like shoddy game design.

What’s most frustrating about these issues is the open world City Of Glass is actually spectacular, and you really want to spend time here exploring. The world is sterile, stark, cold and beautiful. Although it’s pretty much non-interactive – people stand around and exist just for you to interact with them, you can’t knock chairs and tables and ornaments flying – like many open world games, there are a heap of secrets to find which fill in backstory and give you things to do. My favourite was the screen hacking. After doing missions or winning achievements you’re rewarded with runner packs, containing logos and backgrounds which you can put together on the Mirror’s Edge website and then hack billboards showing your logo across the city and in your friend’s worlds. The billboards are quite often difficult to get to, and it’s fun exploring how to activate them (but not constantly dying and seeing a reload screen). Also as in the previous game, you can also set up and complete with other players runs, trying to beat their time or infuriate them with near impossible paths to follow.

Conclusion
Mirror’s Edge Catalyst unfortunately misses its mark. Following on from the first game, the ambition and desire is present, and doesn’t completely fail but doesn’t quite succeed either. Maybe if it came out 5-6 years ago I could appreciate it more, but with some many other fabulous open-world games out there to compare it to, plus a very weak story which lets the series down, it’s mechanical flaws really stand out, and it feels like a let down.

Pros:
The World of Glass is fabulous and itches to be explored.
When you can string moves together the game really shines.

Cons:
Stringing moves together happens rarely. You die because of the controls, not because of the game’s intention or difficulty level.
The enemy AI is stupid and fights are always the same.
The loading screen takes too long to get you back into the action.
The story is predictable and Faith feels diminished as a character because of it.

70/100

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Unravel

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As a former game developer I can really sympathise with Coldwood Interactive, the developers of Unravel. As a middle tier developer, they spent many years developing games that were critically dismissed, but people enjoyed and more importantly, sold enough copies to keep them in business. But as time went on, the studio grew weary of making games where they had little creative control, and didn’t really say or mean anything. The sense that you’re working in a dream job starts to feel like a nightmare as you devolve into just going through the motions in a daily grind, constrained by the wills of others and not contributing to your own creative development.

On a camping trip in Sweden, Coldwood’s creative director Martin Sahlin found some discarded wire and fashioned a little man out of it. Later, he met some other campers, one who had a big yarn of red wool, which he borrowed to wrap around the wire. Thus Yarny, was born, and so too the desire to make something unique and profound surrounding this cute little invention.

Yarny is the protagonist of Unravel. It’s a 2.5 D side scrolling platform puzzle game whose uniqueness comes from the beautiful near photo realistic artwork and tethering game design. Yarny is made from yarn and as he moves across the screen he unravels, leaving a trail of bright fuzzy red yarn in his wake. Yarny can tether to sparkling points in the environment, and from this he can swing, tie knots, bounce and even push and pull environmental objects along the trail. You’ll use these mechanisms to solve the various puzzles in the level to avoid water, long drops, crushing gears and even wildlife. Yarny’s yarn is not endless, and as he unravels he becomes skinnier, and once you see the first knot in the yarn, you know it’s about to run out. Luckily there are places where you can restock your yarn to help complete levels. Whilst it’s not an earth shattering addition to regular side scrolling game mechanics, it does make a tired conceit feel refreshed.

What is also refreshing is the game never treats the player like an idiot. There’s not much handholding, and everything you need to complete the level is shown to you and it’s up to you to figure it out. It’s a game which invites you to explore and experiment. There’s no time limit to any of the levels, so you can play at your own pace. Although you’re constrained by the length of yarn, the checkpoints to refill are nearly always placed on screen, allowing contemplation and planning. You can always backtrack, although this uses your yarn, or respawn to the checkpoints and try a different route. Collectables are hidden throughout the level, often in plain sight, and quite often trying to reach them will reveal new tricks and multiple ways of solving the level.

There are issues with the platforming which mar the experience of Unravel. Often judging jumping distance and gaps often feels like Hail Marys, especially in later levels. Timing puzzles can be frustrating, and there are a couple of points where the respawn is too close to an insta-death situation, and you’ll repeat the same sequence over and over. The addition of a mechanic near the end of the game, whilst it’s interesting at first, changes the leisurely pace to glacial and the combination of having to hold too many buttons at once plus the difference in pace makes playing the level a tedious chore.

However, these minor issues don’t detract too much from the joy playing the game, much of which comes from the spectacular environments. Set amongst the forests and plains of Sweden, the game is full of beauty and colour. Although the levels are essentially flat, the combination of photorealism, dreamy lighting, and background movement is designed to make them feel alive and give an amazing sense of playing in real places. It’s helped by the fabulous animation of Yarny himself, as he gazes around in astonishment, flees in panic, shivers in the cold, and gets heavy in the wet rain.

Colour also plays an important part in helping creating the mood of an environment, with the colour cues helping present a feeling to the player. The sun dappled fields are alive with colourful flowers and softly move in the unseen breeze invoke joy. The industrial wastelands with the murky yellows, drab greens and dirty browns associated with toxic wastelands arouse disquiet and disgust. The frozen forest with its crisp, white snow hanging from deep green branches feel calm and pristine.

There’s not much of a story told to you, but you learn about what the game is imparting to you through the mis en scene (fancy word for environment). Throughout all the levels, there is something happening in the background with a story told through the mis en scene, from the set dressing and the props to animals and insects and even the weather, and it’s absolutely delightful to see developers use something integral to the nature of the visual medium in such a way. There’s no need for dialogue as everything you need to know is presented in the frame you move through. Unlike of what so many other games (and movies and TV shows) do and literally spell out what they want you to think, Unravel encourages you to think and wonder and come to your own conclusions.

Conclusion
Unravel sits in that space between indie game and “game as art”, whilst not being either. It’s clever, not wanky. It’s contemplative, not prescriptive. This is from an established if not truly successful studio, and published by one of the biggest publishers in the world. However, if nothing else, it shows that the most imaginative, beautiful and fun games can still come from anywhere, and there’s still a place for middle tier studios and even publishers.

Pros:
Absolutely beautiful game
Very cute character.
The string mechanic is a nice addition to the side scrolling platform genre

Cons:
Sometimes the platforming can let you down
Could be considered a little short.

90/100

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Need For Speed (2015)

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As someone who doesn’t drive nor own a car in real life, I feel like I’m probably missing something when I play most driving games. I certainly don’t get into the whole tweak this setting to make the car run at 1 horse power over its registered limit so the car goes 3 km/h faster than it normally would. I don’t get making the car look like it’s been thrown up on by an artist with a fetish for plastic airplane wings. What I do like is the sound of the engine and the feel of speed generated by the game. If there is a cop car chase and a cool soundtrack thrown in, then I’m happy.

So I should be delighted with the new Need For Speed. After taking a year off to develop for the new consoles, the Ghost crew working with the Frostbyte Engine have put together a really nice looking game. It’s quite possibly one of the nicest looking games I’ve played in this generation. The environments you drive around are beautiful, although most of the time you’re travelling too fast to notice. The only disappointment is you’re always driving at night. There is a moment where the sky brightens as if it’s going to be dawn, and then dawn never comes, but it’s still beautiful.

The cars themselves are spectacular. There are moments when the FMV cuts from the actors to your car, and it’s near impossible to tell the car is rendered in 3D and not actually there on set. And sound wise, this game pushes all my buttons. The cars sound as good as they look, with the V8s being particularly growly. The music is a cool blend of EDM, newer DnB and some rock, and thankfully not a dubstep track in earshot.

“Wait!?” I hear you cry. “Did you say FMV?” Yes, yes I did. And yes, I mean Full Motion Video, like Night Trap and Mad Dog Mcree, games that came out on Arcade or CD Rom in the early 1990s. And no, this isn’t any better 25 years later. Well, ok, that’s not very fair – they certainly look better as the 3D integration between the actors and non-physical assets is now seamless. This would have been completely shot on green screen, and much like modern movies, it is near impossible to tell what’s real and what’s rendered.

The actors do a valiant job, talking into the camera at “you”, but it feels very amateurish. The script is nonsensical and doesn’t actually contain any coherent story, which means any connection between you and these actors is difficult to form and maintain. There is no plot, no usual story elements, no “bad guys” to battle against. There’s this crew of misfit road racers, and you decide to drive around with them, and there’s kind of a love triangle or hexagon that’s hinted at, and then you meet someone’s idol (who is apparently a real life racing identity – who knew? *shrug*) and race with them, and that’s kind of it. Oh, and fist bumping. So much fist bumping. Every time there is a new scene, there is a fist bump. Every time someone leaves a scene, there is a fist bump. This game should have been called “Need for Fist Bump”.

It seriously baffles me why they decided to go with FMV. I imagine, however, the conversation went a little like this:
Mike: (Management Type Dude) “Holy Fuck, we forgot to include a story! We have Monster product placement but forgot to write a goddamn story for that product placement! John, run out and make some people and scenes for us! Dan, write a story”
Dan: (Lead Designer who once studied English/Journalism) “My job is try to make games fun, not write the story. I don’t know anything about the underground racer scene. I haven’t even seen “Fast and Furious”!
Mike: “It doesn’t need to be War and Peace, Dan, it’s a game about driving fucking fast cars at night. Just copy the F&F synopsis online, but take out the sex and violence… this game needs to be PG. Write it now or we’ll put you back on the match 4 mobile games team.”
Mike: “And put fist bumps in it. Kids love the fist bump.”
John: (Lead Art Producer Type dude) “Mike, we make cars, not people, and you’ve promised another 150 cars for DLC. We don’t have the time nor the team. But we are working with EA, so go get an animation team from another studio to help out.”
Mike: “Shit, we don’t have any animators free – everyone is tied up making Madden 16, Sims 4 and FIFA 16 – it has women in it now you know! Remember what Activision said… it’s TRUE!!”
John: “Damn the FIFA team. Well, shit, I don’t know, get some voice actors or something, and some real car dudes, but we’ll film them on green screen.”
Mike: “Fantastic idea! You’re promoted to Studio Head! Fist bump?”

The driving itself is rather fun, which is good, because at the end of the day, this a driving game, not a fist bump simulator. But let’s get something out of the way first – Need For Speed is an arcade racer. The driving is ‘loose’ and ‘unrealistic’. Your car will slip and slide and turn and do things it probably wouldn’t do in real life or in other car games. It’s meant to be that way and is not, and hopefully never will be, a simulator. Having said this, overall there is a little unresponsiveness when turning that is apparent in all cars. It feels like there is a lag between moving the joystick and the car reacting, and it’s not fixed through tuning the car. It is, however, a minor annoyance that will become less noticeable as you play the game.

Similar to other Need For Speed games, you rack up points when driving, and need these points to pass missions and unlock levels to upgrade your cars. There are a variety of skills which you can score against when driving: Speed, Style, Crew, Build, and Outlaw. Speed is self-explanatory – pull off speed tricks like 0-100 and maintaining your top speed. Style is maintaining good driving lines and drifts around corners. Crew is earned when you drive in concert with your AI opponents, like chain a drift around corners. Build is based on your build, and it’s suitability to the type of race and manoeuvres you pull off. Outlaw is about causing destruction and how long cops will chase you. I really like this system, as it’s fairer to drivers like myself who aren’t always the best drivers, but do enjoy silly things like knocking down street signs.

Points aren’t the only currency to earn in races though. You also earn cash, which is used to purchase new parts or new cars once they’re unlocked by points. It’s important to own at least two cars and get them early, upgrading and tuning them to different specs – one as a drifter to help you slip and slide around corners, and one built for pure speed. I initially wanted to “save” money by only having one car and modding it, but you end up spending more money on tuning and retuning rather than just having two different cars, and there are races which simply cannot be won with the wrong specced car.

The world you inhabit is Ventura Bay, which is apparently based on Los Angeles. I’ve never been to LA, so can’t compare. It does feel very similar to Los Santos though. It’s an always online world, much like Burnout: Paradise City, and you’ll see other players driving about, usually on the map or parked at the garage. We’ll get to more into that in a moment, but apparently a lot of people were bitching about this when it was announced. I don’t understand why, I’ve never had any issues with connection nor drop outs and only once was my experience negatively impacted, when Xbox decided it was time to update in the middle of a race, but that was ultimately my fault.

The entire map is unlocked at the start of the game, so you can drive around to your hearts content. Driving around earns you points just the same as the missions, and although you can always teleport to the missions, I suggest driving to the missions at first to give you some much needed level advancement. The game story is where you earn cash, and designed around five main characters who will fist bump you in the FMV story scenes to give you missions, corresponding to the five styles of driving. For example, Spike is usually represented by a green icon, which is Speed, so most of his missions will be races. Yellow represents Style races. Purple is Build races, so usually you need a specific type of car or motor or mod. Blue is Crew, so these always involve racing in teams, and Red is Outlaw, so usually mean racing causing destruction or with cops chasing you. The characters sometimes shift in what they want you to do, so there’s plenty of variety in the story missions.

Some missions you need to come first in either the race or by amount of points earned, whilst some are there just to further the story and placement doesn’t matter. The ones where you have to earn the highest points are usually quite fun, because it’s all about how well you drive. You make more points drifting in a pack than alone and feel more inclined to take unusual risks, like jump ramps, drive into on-coming traffic, and hand break turns.

The races where you have to win outright are downright annoying, because the rubber banding is extreme. You can be winning by a huge lead and then slow down to avoid a collision, and then be overtaken by not only the second place, but third and fourth. It’s controller throwing frustrating. There’s one race in particular which I’ve found impossible to win, and looking online I’m not the only one. Another annoyance is the other road traffic. There’s not much on the road, which is good, because it’s moronic. It deliberately veers into you and it also glitches – it can appear one moment and disappear the next, meaning you can swerve to miss something which is essentially not there.

I mentioned cop car chases, and they’re quite annoying too. As you break more laws, you rack up a higher fine which you pay on getting caught. The cops will set up road blocks and so on to stop you, which you can normally get away from, until they drop tire spikes, meaning you lose speed and control if you run over them. In free mode, this is fine, because you normally don’t spend a lot of time near the cops to warrant tire spikes, and the cops are stupidly easy to get away from. However, during an Outlaw race, where you have to do the race whilst being chased and rack up lots of Outlaw points, the degree of Outlaw-ness continues after the race. So whilst it’s rare to get tire spikes dropped during the race, after the race when you want to go to the next mission or whatever, there are tire spikes everywhere and you will lose any cash you earned from the race in fines.

I’ve only done one race in multiplayer, and the player took the first turn and glitched out, taking the opponents out with him. I was incredibly grateful to that player, as it was the race I have not won yet… however the extreme rubber banding meant the AI cars came and overtook me at the last corner. If you’re in a story mode race and haven’t opted to race with another player, you appear on the map to them, but you can’t see them. So on the map you’ll see what is clearly a race with the little arrows going around a course, but if you’re in the locality won’t see any cars or players. I guess this is to stop players trolling each other and parking cars along the route, but it’s very odd situation and creates a lack of cohesion between single and multiplayer. If you’re going to do this, why not make a single player and multi-player version of the maps, and allow one to be offline?

Conclusion:
Need For Speed lost its footing some time ago, and is still trying to find it. Whilst the game looks and sounds amazing, and the driving is fun for the most part, there were a lot of odd decisions made with this one – the FMV, the Always Online, Driving at Night, No Weather – which would have been expensive in terms of time and money but don’t really add any value to the game. My advice for the developers is to scale back the game, focus on what made Need For Speed so good back in the day, and forget trying to shoehorn in this and that to appease the masses.

Pros:
Amazing looking game
Great car sounds and good soundtrack.
The points system is far fairer than other driving games
Good variety in types of races / missions

Cons:
Car turning is a little unresponsive / sticky.
Rubber banding is ridiculous
Glitches of cars vanishing
Glitches in multiplayer races

60/100

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Goat Simulator

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When I agreed to review Goat Simulator for XBW I was prepared to get my snark on. I was geared up to rip it a new one, lament at how the democratisation of technology is a double barrel shot gun to the head of games quality, because on the one hand now everybody plays games so people make games anybody can play, and conversely allows anyone to make games so nearly everybody does, both which have affected the quality of the games we play.

But after playing Goat Simulator for a mere 5 minutes, my mind changed. Because, despite of everything, this game is FUN. Even though it’s full of flaws it’s still very much a fun game. And people have fun blowing up spaceships and jumping onto ledges and simulating armies of orcs and goblins, so why not have fun being a goat? After all, that’s meant to be the whole idea of games, right? It’s so ludicrous that it can’t do anything but make you laugh and smile.

The game is simple as hell. You’re a goat, and your goal is to create as much havoc as possible in the open world playground you find yourself in. Think of it as GTA, but instead of a homicidal maniac, you’re a goat. Or Skate, but instead of a skater, you’re a goat. You run around using the sticks to control the goat and the camera, and headbutt with the right trigger. Running into objects causes the physics engine to do its work, sending shit flying everywhere, racking up points. The more damage you do and the more tricks you string together, the higher your multiplier. Tricks include licking things with the X button, which acts as a kind of rubber band on items. You jump with the A button, meaning you can do some platforming and mid-air acrobatics. Press B and you fall into rag-doll. You can manual as well, that is walk on your forelegs, by flicking the sticks up and down, which is incredibly hard to pull off.

Part of the joy of the game is experimenting with the physics. Seeing what you can lick, hit and jump on. You can climb ladders and jump off highrises onto trampolines and be flung across the map on air vents. You can ragdoll in empty pools, effectively skating them. Of course, the game isn’t too well polished, and you can end up in some very odd situations. You can get your goat’s head stuck in things. Sometimes you’ll hit the right combination of things and get flung forever or through a building. In any other game this would be frowned upon, by the creators gleefully tell you if you do get weirdness beyond the normal, just respawn. It’s not like you have lives or a mission or anything to worry about losing.

Mutators are probably the best part of the game. What’s a mutator? Why mutators mutate your goat, obviously. By pressing Y, these allow you to do silly things like double jump, or dance, or spin really fast in a circle, or float, or tie rockets to your goat’s back, or turn into a giraffe. You can combine these all together, so pressing Y might make you shoot off your rockets and then float.

The game is full of surreal moments. It was, mutated into a giraffe, when I was laughing like a little kid on too much red cordial – as you run about, terrorising the humans who populate the world, they say stupid shit like “Never trust an animal with 4 hoofs” and “is that a goat?”. As the giraffe, hearing someone say “is that a goat?” is just perfect. Another surreal moment was finding an elevator and riding it to open to a rooftop nightclub. As I terrorised the club I ended up head butting the DJ, who is in a Deadmou5 helmet, and then found the helmet stuck on my head and the electrobeats pumping every time I pressed the Y button.

There are achievements in the game, with a long list of things to do when you start the game, as well as xbox live achievements. One problem with the in game achievements is they reset every time you start a new game, which feels a bit cheap. It doesn’t really record what you have done, so there’s absolutely no sense of progression. Luckily you keep your mutators. There are also goat collectables, and finding these unlocks more mutators. There are also timed races, where you can add your score to the global rankings. One nice thing about the Xbox One version is you can play local multiplayer. Obviously, this makes the ridiculous become even more so, as 4 player wreak havoc on an unsuspecting town.

But one of its major flaws is it is ugly. Not only do the physics do odd things to your goat’s head, stretching the textures weirdly, other game textures and models are pretty blocky and basic. It adds a kind of charm admittedly, but at the same time we are dealing with what is meant to be next generation gaming here. Not all games need to be super realistic, but games are meant to have a certain degree of finesse, and this lacks it.

It’s not a long lasting game either, as there’s no real sense of progression from session to session. Although there is a lot to explore and find – it is fun trying to get to the high places in the map and grab that collectable in the container – the two worlds you get to choose from do feel quite small compared to other open world games. There’s no real reason to return to the game, either. I’ve probably only played it for 4 hours, and that’s more than enough. I’ll show it to friends, have a laugh, but I’m not going to play it and come back to it later, like I do with FIFA or GTA, even for the xboxlive achievements.

Conclusion.
Ok, so how to rate this game? It’s buggy. It’s ugly. It’s ridiculous. It’s fun. It has a charm that is quite unique to this game. But is that enough?
Well, for $10 bucks, yeah.

Pros:
Unique charm
Surreal and funny
Lots to explore

Cons:
Very Ugly
No sense of progression
Gets boring after a few hours.

70/100

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Evolve

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Sometimes I’m not sure if my passion for gaming is dying, or if I’m just choosing really poor games to suit my lifestyle. I’ve realised I spend more time on both the PS4 and XboxOne watching video through the Plex and Youtube Apps. I got games with my Xbox I haven’t even looked at! And yet when I do play games, I feel cheated. I feel that “Next Generation” is really the same as other marketing bullshit like “Fresh Frozen” and “Organic”.

Evolve, the latest game added to my collection, feels like such a game. I’ve bought into the marketing hype and come out disappointed. Evolve is like a collection of everything from last generation scrambled up and packed as next generation. The four classes of tank, healer, support, and hunter is standard fare of any multiplayer game out in the last decade. The idea of 4 against 1 was introduced in games like Unreal and refined in Left4Dead. The witty banter mistakenly written to provide characterisation to dull, insipid character tropes has been here for as long as we’ve had 3D characters.

Now, don’t get me wrong, Evolve isn’t a poor game. It looks fantastic. The character models look amazing, and are highly detailed. For example, the way the robotic eye moves on Markov the tank is a nice little detail which would have been difficult and expensive (CPU wise) on previous generation machines. It’s just a pity you only ever see this kind of thing when you start the game. Sure, you see the other players when you’re playing the game, but you’re never close enough to see good detail, and there are usually so much other shit on the screen to actually bother to care. I get it, this is “next generation” so I should be impressed with the amount of effects and filters and animals and shiny which can be rendered on my screen. But it’s amazing that graphics and displays can be so detailed we can use them to see inside far away galaxies and into our own very cells, but yet I can’t tell if I’m shooting at an enemy, another team member, or a rock.

The game plays well enough too. The balance between the monster and the monster hunters feels fairly even. You can still take down a monster when it’s fully evolved as long as you have all members of your team alive. But speaking of monsters, this whole evolve thing is a crock. All that is happening is the monster levels up during the game. Big fucking deal. Like seriously, this is meant to be “evolution”? The same thing happens in Left4Dead.

Worse still, it doesn’t even feel like a threat. In Left4Dead, it was always scary when you see that alert flash up. You know that if you’re caught alone, you’re screwed. In Evolve, you see the warning and most of the time you haven’t even seen the monster! Maybe that’s just the sign of good monster playing, but yet the best games I’ve played is where the monster struggles against the players a couple of times. Playing as the monster, when you evolve, you get stronger and get to add points into the abilities you already have. So, during a good game, you might catch a player out on their own at level 1, kill them (each character has 3 resurrections and then are out of the round for good), then run off to evolve so you can take on the whole team later. The old cat and mouse. It’s a poor game when you don’t even see the cat.

A major issue is finding games and people to play with. The offline solo mode is reasonably similar to the online game. The game uses AI to fill in your roster of hunters and monsters, and you earn XP after a game. You can play Hunt, a one off match, or Evacuation, which is a series of 5 games. After each game, the world “evolves”, so if the monster wins, the next match he might have plants which can help it evolve faster, or if the hunters win turrets pop up in certain parts of the map. It’s not a terrible tacked on story mode which is good, but it’s not as fun as playing with other players.

However, finding those players seems difficult. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of people playing the game. That’s when the servers are up. I know that server downtime is to be expected in this day and age, and I don’t know if it was unfortunate timing or an ongoing issue, but on more than one occasion my game time was stymied by the servers being down. When the servers are running, it seems to take a long time to find games, and I find I’m always on with the same people. Again, it’s hard to tell if this is a feature and I’m matching with similar players, or if there just aren’t too many people playing. Those who do play also tend to leave their headsets off. There’s no communication. I guess it’s better than screaming kids dropping the N word, but still, in a game focussing on co-operation it’s annoying no one is communicating.

I think another major problem is the grind of the game. Yes, you level your monster up during games, but it’s only momentarily and as I said, it’s only upgrades to your existing form. No new powers, and you don’t even look that different. After the match you’re rewarded XP like every other game these days and you ever so slowly unlock slightly better upgrades and even more slowly, new monsters / characters. The new monsters and characters go through the same slow grind to upgrade their weapons and unlock more new characters. Why? This type of progression is taken from Dungeons and Dragons which is 40 years old now. Why do I have to start off with a shit character and grind to be better? Why haven’t we come up with a better system yet? This sense of false progression is becoming really tedious.

Here’s the other thing – this game has microtransactions, but they don’t help you overcome the progression blocks. Yes, I know everyone hates microtransactions, you should pay for the whole game, blah blah blah, but the old model of making money from games has collapsed due to the global economy, piracy, ease of distribution across networks, the pricing mechanism of App Stores and so on and so forth, so the games industry had to change their methods of making money or they would have vanished. It’s here now, if you don’t like it get over it.

However, what is annoying is when games don’t do it correctly, and this is what we should be focusing on criticising. Buying skins in a game which makes you grind to level up shows these guys have no idea how to properly monetise their game. Good monetisation comes from a well designed level flow which limits your progression and only prompts you to spend money when you get stuck or want to do something faster. If these skins allowed you to earn XP faster, or gave you unique but balanced abilities, sure, by all means put them in. But this is just pure nickel and dimeing and the resources wasted putting this together could have been used elsewhere in the game.

Conclusion
As I said, Evolve isn’t a poor game. It simply doesn’t live up to the expectations and the hype the “Next Generation” promised us. And I think people who got the game quickly realised this and stopped playing. Its progression system seems deliberately tedious, meaning even the people love it dropped off perhaps quicker than they would have in other situations.

Pros
Well balanced 4 versus 1 gameplay
Great graphics

Cons
Absolutely nothing next generation on offer apart from the graphics
Progression too tedious
Can’t find people to play with online
Crap microtransations

70/100

Gigs & Mixes from the 2020s. Writing from the 2000s.