Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Wanted: Weapons of Fate

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The game Wanted: Weapons of Fate, like the movie on which it’s based, straddles the line between merit and mediocrity but more often stumbling towards the latter. It’s not a terrible game, but it’s not up to the standard of many other shooters out there, and its flaws outweigh its pluses.

Following on from the movie, Wanted, the game places you in the shoes of Wesley Gibson, who, for those of you who haven’t seen the movie, has discovered he’s not a anxiety ridden geek, but the son of an assassin and all that comes with it; quick reflexes, the ability to curve bullets, and tougher than the average person. In the movie he is trained by the assassin’s guild to track and then kill someone called Cross, who it turns out *spoiler* his is father. Once he learns this, he then turns on his trainers, the Fraternity, and gets his revenge.

The game opens with Wesley, reflecting on his new life when his apartment is broken into. From here, you take him on a trip of discovery, visiting locations in the film as well as locations new for this story, trying to determine who is after Wesley and why. His journey also includes flashbacks of his father, Cross, and helps explain why he was also wanted, why he was killed, and why Wesley is so special. Unfortunately the story is very disjointed, jumping from area to area and principle character to principle character, and the story simply isn’t engrossing enough so it’s easy to forget what’s going on.

But story is not central to a videogame so much as say, a movie, and some of the best games have a poor story or none at all, and make up for it in awesome gameplay. Unfortunately Wanted: Weapons of choice lets us down here too. You’re slowly introduced to the main elements of game play – cover to cover fighting, slowing down time and bending bullets, but once you’re taught these, it’s the only thing you’ll do for the rest of the game.

Shooting controls are pretty standard, Right Trigger to shoot, left to aim down the sight, B Button to melee, but it’s the other gameplay ideas which offer a bit of variety from the everyday first/third person shooter. The cover to cover fighting mechanic is pretty simple and most of the time pretty effective. Press the A Button to go into cover, and then move the right stick to see where you can move to next. A diagram will appear on screen to tell you which way you can go, and you pres the A Button again to move to the next piece of cover. This system isn’t slow and methodical like Gears of War, but quick like Stranglehold. Sometimes the game frustrates you, being unable to find a path to cover, and other times you won’t stick to cover and end up getting just standing up during a fire fight getting hit.

A variant on this occurs when you blind fire buy pulling the trigger when in cover. The screen will turn white, and the rest of the world will slow down, and you can move quickly around enemies and expose them to your shots. You can chain your moves together and move quickly behind enemies you can’t otherwise hit. Again, sometimes you’ll find your route to the cover doesn’t pop up on screen, so you’ll come out of the bullet time and find yourself under fire.

Each enemy you kill gives you a bullet shell to indicate adrenalin, used to slow down time even more, and to bend bullets. Using adrenalin, as you dive from cover you can press the Y Button and go into super slow motion, releasing a hail of bullets towards an enemy. This is far more effective than blind shooting, as you can target more than one person in your line of sight. However, there are times where the camera angle in this fast mode obscures your view, making open shots against foes now impossible until you leave the mode.

I have to admit bending bullets is a bit of fun. Squeeze the Right Bumper and you see a red arc appear on screen between you and your victim. Moving the left stick changes the angle of the arc, and when it goes white letting go will send a bullet curving around to hit the hapless foe. Executed well, and you’ll see a cinematic play which follows the path of the bullet into the victim. However, there are times when the lock on won’t go to the person you want it to, and you have to change the camera angle to get a better feed onto them. Other times it will focus on canisters or mines which you can shoot and blow up, but when there’s no enemies near them it’s rather pointless.

Individually, the components are rather fun, but together as a whole combined with the repetitiveness of the incredibly linear levels, it all becomes a bit dull. For example, with bending bullets there are no special tricks to shoot something and make it fall, or bend bullets around a pole to distract an enemy, you only bend bullets to kill guys. And there are only a handful of enemies – those you can one shot with bendy bullets, and those who you can’t but will stumble around into the open so you can shoot them normally.

There are a few instances when you have to use the blind firing effect to get past a certain guy with a shield, but they can be superseded later in the game by exploding bullets (just like bendy ones but with a bang) or the super fast adrenalin slide. And the bosses are pretty much the same as any other enemy – use the bendy bullets to get them into the open, and shoot the crap out of them.

Then there’s the obligatory sniper mode, where you’re positioned with a sniper rifle at the end of a corridor and have to shoot guys before they get to you slash get to the person you’re protecting. There are also quick time events, which see you do all these cool acrobatic dives, then slow down time to shoot an enemy and a bullet flying at you. These help to break up the monotony, but once you do the first one and realise you have to shoot the bullet and the baddy, it’s easy to do them all.

And then there’s the big endless bulleted chain gun, which the game gives you absolutely no indication you’ll be using, so suddenly it will just pop up in your face and you have to guess you need to shoot the bad guys. Because there’s a big bloody gun in your face, you can’t see the bad guys, but if you blindly fire your head pops up and they will shoot you and you’ll die. It’s the single most frustrating aspect of the game.

The game looks ok, but suffers from the dreaded grey/brown equals realistic mentality of so many other games, and there is some slowdown at odd times which really disconnects you from the game. The locations, given their incredibly linear nature, all feel a bit samey after the first few levels. Sound wise the game has a forgettable soundtrack, but the characters are voiced by the people from the movie, and they put in reasonable effort considering, and the wizzing of the bendy bullets sounds great.

After about 6 to 8 hours of play, the game is over and there’s nothing else to do. You can replay with another character, but they share the animations of Wesley, and it’s Wesley in the cutscenes, so it’s a little pointless really. There’s collectables throughout the game which unlock the other characters as well as art and typical unlockable items, and other modes which involve you getting headshots or meleeing a certain number of enemies, but there just isn’t enough variation in the game to warrant another playthrough.

Conclusion:
Whilst it’s not a terrible game, and there is some fun to be found here, it gets repetitive fairly quickly. There’s not enough variation within levels, between levels and with the different types of enemies to kill. Luckily, the game is over quickly, but with no multi-player and no other incentive to play the game again, there just isn’t enough in Wanted: Weapons of Choice to warrant purchasing the game.

Pros:
Bending bullets is fun
Cover to cover fighting is quick and fun when it works
Decent voice acting

Cons:
Poor story that’s difficult to follow
Too linear with not enough variation in the action
Boss fights feel the same
Moving between cover and locking on to enemies can feel awkward
Mounted gun sections appear without warning leading to quick death
Average graphics with no real pizzazz to the world

65/100

inthemix.com.au, Music, Review, Writing

Grandmaster Flash – The Bridge

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Grandmaster Flash is undoubtedly the most influential hiphop DJ of all time, but I must confess being a little hesitant about his new album. Total respect to the man for making some awesome music back in the day, but can he really still do what he did? Is this going to be a ground breaking album which people from all over will respect?

Well, the answer is no. This isn’t a ground breaking album, and there’s nothing here which will live in hiphop history, nothing which will impress people not into hiphop, and nothing which will live much longer than 6 months in peoples playlists. But that’s not to say this is a bad album by any means. There are some amazing songs on here and unfortunately there’s a lot of filler, too.

Disappointingly, Shine All Day with Q-Tip, Jumz and Kel Spenser isn’t one of the better tunes. It’s got those annoying vocoder lyrics and just doesn’t really go anywhere. Most of the other filler comes from the tracks with the girls. Swagger, which features Snoop Dogg, Red Café and Lynda Carter is one of those typical rap songs by someone like Snoop. Over produced RnB crap with some really lame lyrics like “Show you how I feel, Howie Mandell, deal or no deal”. Big Daddy Kane and Hedonis Da Amazon can’t do any better on When I Get There, nor can Kane provide anything worth listening to with Syndee on Unpredictable, which is ironically rather predictable. Oh Man with Syndee and Natacha Atlus is probably the worst of the lot, being the ultimate in cheesy tripe.

However, I Got Sumthin’ To Say Featuring Lordikim, Jay-Flo & Almighty Thor although cheesy is pretty damn cool, with nice flow by the MCs. The album continues to redeem itself with the addition of DJ Kool & DJ Demo on Here Comes My DJ, a bass-shaking dancefloor slammer, however reminiscent of every other DJ Kool track. Tribute to the Breakdancer is a great old school jam with Supernatural, using the Apache beat for that authentic oldschool vibe.

But the best tracks are those featuring KRS One. He’s still got an amazing flow and incredible command of the English language, and this is very apparent on What If, which questions the state of the world if hiphop was never around. We Speak Hip Hop features Afasi, Kase.O., Maccho, Abass rapping in their own languages, bookmarked by KRS rhyming that whilst he doesn’t speak Swedish, Spanish, Japanese or French, hiphop is a universal language that everyone can understand.

Event, inthemix.com.au, Review, Writing

Jungle Run 7 @ Roxanne’s Parlour

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9/4/09

I’m an ex-Adelaide boy, and whilst I absolutely love Melbourne town, there’s something I must confess. I’ve not been too impressed with Melbourne dnb DJs. Don’t get me wrong, I think they’re technical wizkids on the turntables, but at events where I’ve seen them support internationals I’ve never felt adequately warmed up and excited by them like I was by Adelaide dnb DJs. There’s just not the same vibe from them, and I was worried that an all local line up would be lacking in the awesome vibe I’ve so long associated with dnb music.

However, the moment I walked into Roxanne’s for Jungle Run I was impressed and my opinion has definitely been changed. I’m not quite sure who the first DJ was, but they were playing a fantastic set of tunes, and had the dance floor pumping with oldschool greats like Everyman, R.I.P and more from the 92-94 era. There were a fair few heads in the venue even at that early stage, and most of them were on the dance floor.

I must admit I only checked out the side room once, and liked the set up, but they were playing dubstep – admittedly not my most favourite kind of music – so I didn’t hang around. I mean, why listen to that tripe when the best of drum and bass music was in the very next room? But each to their own I guess.

Trooper, who’ve I’ve seen numerous times in Adelaide, stepped up to the decks, and I was keen to hear him in his hometown. And of course I was not disappointed. He played even more banging tunes, and whilst I don’t know the names of most of them I’m sure there was a fair whack of Congo Natty with the phat bassline and rasta stylings just mashing up the dance floor. I know he played Original Nutter by Shy FX, and I was stoked to hear Limb By Limb by Cutty Ranks and One Blood by Junior Reid. But I completely lost my shit when I heard the original rudeboy style of Inbound (Yes that was me screaming out “Yellow Record!” and calling for the rewind…)

I’m not sure who was next, but have a sneaking suspicion it was Finna, and he continued the great tunes, featuring Randal and a few other tracks from the AWOL compilation, and other great hits like Fire and Ruffneck. And a note to the trainspotters out there – these may not be the actual song titles, but everyone knows them as this so put your pencils away, stop stroking your chins and go dance! Unfortunately I had to leave deep into Finna’s set, but I was well impressed with the whole night.

Something I’ve come to love about Melbourne is the friendliness of the punters, and at Jungle Run this was no different. From chatting to people in the line, to finding myself dancing with people on the floor, receiving friendly smiles from all over the place, and having funny chats to randoms in the toilets, I felt almost the same vibe I got in Adelaide. So thank you, Jungle Run 7! You’ve finally made me feel at home.

inthemix.com.au, Review, Writing

Lily Allen – It’s Not Me It’s You

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Well, hasn’t our little Lily Allen grown up a bit over the past few years? Whilst her second album contains all of her venomous working class wit, and vociferous understanding of modern culture, yet it also reveals a softer, kinder Lily who’s no longer completely immature and angry about absolutely everything.

The first song is Everyone’s At It, where Allen rips into everyone for not paying attention to the drug culture we’ve created, and everyone from users to parents to politicians refusing to accept responsibility. The Fear is all about our obsession with celebrity, and mostly Allen’s celebrity. Back to the Start is about mending relationships, as is He’s Not There, where Allen forgives her absent father, saying such stuff as “I’m so pleased I never gave up on him, oh you wouldn’t believe some of the things he did”.

22 is about a girl who parties through the 20s and finds her future unpromising unless she gets a man and settles down. Who’d Have Known and Chinese are actual love songs, insomuch as she’s singing about enjoying being with an individual. She’s even singing about God with the song Him, wondering what he thinks of all this. All of these songs contain deep lyrics and motives suitable to a Bob Dylan type song, but are wrapped up in such amazing bubblegum pop, and I’m just not sure if it’s sublime or ridiculous.

But then Allen drops her smarts with Not Fair, a whiney number about her man not being good in bed, and Never Gonna Happen about dumping a guy who just keeps hanging on. Yeah yeah, we get it; all men are pricks, whatever. And Fuck You is a happy little sing-along aimed at George Bush, who she calls evil, racist, homophobic and dumb. And whilst that may be true, she could have sung it a little more intelligently.

It’s Not Me It’s You is a great second album, showing however unlikely, Lily Allen has staying power. If you’ve never liked her accent and overall vibe you’re not going to really get into this either, but the music is poppy and fun, her voice still melodic yet brash, and it’s just an enjoyable album.

inthemix.com.au, Music, Review, Writing

The BPA – I Think We’re Gonna Need A Bigger Boat

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Norman Cook drops the Fatboy Slim moniker and presents a varied album of not-quite dance but still catchy and often fun tracks, in the guise of The BPA (Brighton Port Authority) – I Think We’re Gonna Need A Bigger Boat. Some of the quality dips below that of the best of Palookaville, whereas others are shining examples of Norman Cook at his best.

Without a doubt the stand out track is Toe Jam with David Byrne and Dizzee Rascal. This calypso inspired load of nonsense is Cook channelling Talking Heads incredibly well, with Dizzee’s brief cameo being brilliantly placed. Other tracks which really pleased my ear were the jangly guitars on He’s Frank with Iggy Pop, and the very Bloc Party sounding Local Town with Jamie T on guest vocals.

One unexpected highlight is So It Goes, a 70s inspired soul jam with gospel organs and Olly Hite’s quite impressive voice belting out. Another is Seattle, an incredibly catchy pop number featuring the modestly named Emmy The Great. It’s one of those songs that just gets stuck in your head for days. Jumps The Fence is the oddest song next to Toe Jam, with Connan Mockasin’s strong New Zealand accent lending a further amount of surrealism to the track.

The middling songs come from Pete York on Dirty Sheets and dance DJ turned singer Ashley Beedle on Should I Stay Or Should I Blow. They’re not terrible songs, but just don’t have the impact of the other songs. However, Superman and Superlover are both slower tracks, and to my mind some of the weakest songs. Then again, I’ve never been able to get into Cagedbaby.

One of the biggest disappointments of the album is it has in clear writing on the cover the word “Lateef”, yet he’s not to be found anywhere on the album. Lateef saved Palookaville from complete condemnation, and his absence despite the advertising is sorely missed.

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

inthemix.com.au, Music, Review, Writing

Belleruche – The Express

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My first experience with Belleruche was earlier this year in Melbourne when I managed to catch them live. My initial thought was they were a poor man’s Portishead, but it’s an injustice to dismiss them simply as a copycat. Yes, Kathrin DeBoer’s soulful voice has the same smoky sexiness as Beth Gibbons, and the tracks combine turntables, samples and bass guitar, but Belleruche are a lot more positive in both the lyrics and general sound of the music itself, with the music being a little less complex and informed as Portishead.

Their first album was called Turntable Soul Music, and this album continues in the same vein, but is perhaps a little bluesier than before. Anything You Want (Not That) is a jazzy little upbeat number. Backyard is swinging backyards blues, with steel guitar over the simple beat of a drum machine. Idea Three gets a lot more funkier, but the blues returns in Goose Blues.

The record continues in the same vein with Like 4 The Hard Way, then gets a little more pace with Rumble Strip. My favourite track is How Many Times, a short and sweet rocking blues track. Scratch My Soul is the most downbeat on the album, a headnodding blend of echo-y guitar and scratched beats.

Late Train has that awesome blues train feel, accentuated by the horn stabs, and you can imagine an old steam train racing down the tracks as the song plays. The music being simply bass guitar, sampler/turntables and voice mean the music is pretty sparse and simple, unlike the aforementioned Portishead, and the space between sound and silence works especially well on You’re Listening To The World’s, the last track on the album.

I was really impressed with Belleruche’s second album. It’s distinctive and has a sense of cool about it. It’s similar to other music, without being copycat, filling a unique space in the catalogue of modern music.

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Midnight Club Los Angeles

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Midnight Club 3 Dub edition was one of my favourite driving games. It was just so much fun racing around the city in blinged out cars, bikes and suvs. It wasn’t too easy, but it had just the right amount of difficulty to keep you interested. Although Midnight Club Los Angeles differs from Dub in that it is bigger, better looking, better sounding, and the online functions are smoother, the extreme difficulty of the game puts you off that “just one more race” feeling of its predecessor.

The story set up is you’re a hotshot from the east coast come to LA to participate in races and score lots of loot. As you race, you gain reputation which will unlock more races, unlock parts for you cars, unlock new cars and bikes, and reward you money so you can afford to upgrade your vehicle. Pretty standard fare really.

There are different colours of races – Green, Yellow, Orange and Red, meant to indicate the toughness of the race. I say “meant to”, because there doesn’t seem a whole lot of difference between green and red in reality. The difficulty of this game isn’t hard, it’s brutal, so be prepared to lose. Often. Be prepared to be leading a race from start to finish, and losing at the last second because you slightly swipe a car in traffic and go careening off the road. Often it’s better to just let go of all the buttons and come to a stop. Or select Start > Restart Race.

I found the physics to be really detrimental to my efforts at driving. When you drive really fast the camera blurs and the cars get speed wobbles, making it really hard to drive at speed, especially down curvy streets with parked cars on the side. If you so much as skim another vehicle you will lose control and start to spin. Of course once this happens, the natural instinct is to compensate, which makes everything much worse.

Moreover, even when you’re in the clear in a race, out in front by a number of street blocks, the ridiculously tight rubberbanding – the AI code used to make the other cars catch up to you – kicks you in the pants and will overtake you, even though mere seconds ago the car wasn’t even on your radar. Although I didn’t find myself ahead often, I was beaten enough times after leading the entire race that I’m positive the cars teleport metres behind you when you get too far ahead. AI Controlled cars seem to never hit parked cars or on-coming traffic as often as you do, either, but instead take perfect lines through traffic and obstacles. Even if you try and follow them, you’ll find often they make gaps that a normal driver could simply not make.

What makes this the more frustrating is you’ll get to a point where you simply have no option but to race the same race again and again and again. Yes, you’ll learn the race and the lay out and the shortcuts (the AI cars take these too, however) but it seems that no matter what you do, how well you drive, that it is simply luck that sees you win or lose, and not your skill, patience or knowledge of the tracks.

Another problem with the game is the map. The overhead “google maps” type navigation system looks quite slick, but it’s wearisome to use. You can’t get GPS style readouts at all, and often it’s not entirely clear where to go, especially in some of the “open” races or delivery missions. And the game has the problem of having some obstacles looking like you can drive through, and others which will bring you to a dead stop.

The annoying thing is not all the races are as bad as each other. Time Trials are ridiculously harsh, and races with more than 2 cars are controller throwing maddening, but it is the Delivery missions take the cake of everything that is wrong with the game. You’re just racing the clock; you are given a marker on the map, and told not to damage the car – what could be simpler? Yet the slightest bump will knock a huge slab of the damage meter, the time is preposterously short, and all the while you’re constantly pulling up the map to see if you’ve taken the right road to get to the location.

However Freeway races are really quite fun, as there’s only one other racer and up to 8 lanes of freedom to weave between traffic. It’s also easy to know where to go – simply stay on the freeway. And simply cruising around looking for the hidden packages to unlock the cheats is awesome fun! Cop chases are a thrill – they’re supposed to be right behind you! And swiping a car, spinning around, and zooming off in the opposite direction is often a godsend compared to the rest of the game.

Online racing is fun as well. Of course, being human opponents, you know the races are much farer, and lag never seems an issue. You can opt to simply cruise around Los Angeles, chatting with people and then propose a challenge which gets you into the races. You can also jump straight into a race from the menu. Races take the forms found in the offline game, but you’ve got the option of turning traffic off, as well as making your own races. There’s also capture the flag races, when you race to capture a flag and then race to another point to win. These can take the form of team games, and is comparable to my favourite xbox game – Midtown Madness 3.

No doubt about it, MCLA looks sweet. The city feels realistic, even if the driving doesn’t. There’s enough variety in the city to make you want to explore, from long highway straights to windy hilly roads. As you cruise around, you’ll notice advertising, but it’s subtle, like 7-11 branded service stations and the occasional Pizza Hut. No idea if these are in the same place in the real city of Los Angeles, but it does aid a little in navigation.

The cars all look great, but there are only 44 cars and bikes to choose from, which feels quite limited compared to other games. The customisation of vehicles is pretty deep though, allowing you to change the hoods, sides, wings, doors and so on, as well as use real world branded parts. Although not as deep as Forza, for example, you can even share and rank other people’s cars online.

Sound wise the game is also respectable. The cars sound grunty enough, and the screams of the people on the sidewalks as you cut corners are hilarious. However, the AI will taunt you during all races, and as you often race the same people and same races, it gets tired real quick. Also being based on the west coast, everyone sounds like a stereotypical gangster. I was really impressed with the music – lots of bass type music like hiphop, breakbeat, and techno, with a bit of heavy rock thrown in as well, but it will tend to repeat itself more frequently than in other games.

Conclusion:
Midnight Club Los Angeles is a decent game in all respects apart from the insane difficulty. The good races are great, and online modes are lots of fun. I realise some people like high difficultly in games, and get a great feeling of achievement when they beat the AI. However, in MCLA the difficulty borders on masochistic, and to me it isn’t very fun when you’re improving your driving, improving you car, to be beaten time and again at the last minute, and playing the same race over and over again.

Pros:
Great looking racing game
Deep customisation of cars
Realistic feeling city of LA

Cons:
Insanely difficult.
Physics and camera effects when racing fast hinder play
Map, whilst clever in design, doesn’t really do a good job
Repetitive and annoying AI taunts during races

75/100

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