Bunch of Jackasses, Standing in a Circle

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy is weird. It's clear that these are the versions of the characters from the 2014 film, all snark and I AM GROOT and personal stereos with classic tunes, except... they aren't. They all look a bit different, they all have different backgrounds and histories, Star-Lord has very different taste in music -- but still isn't a murderous psychopath, boooo! -- and they are all Canadian. It's all a bit off-kilter and almost feels like you're playing an unlicensed knock-off.

(Although computer-Groot is more or less identical to film-Groot, and if he's Canadian, I can't tell.)




I know why it's like this and why they aren't the comic versions or even brand new computer game incarnations of the characters, but it does slap a big old identity crisis right into the middle of the game and while said crisis doesn't hurt the game, as such, it does make it feel, as I say, weird.

But weird as it is -- and it is weird, did I mention that? -- it is also good fun. It feels a bit like the film tie-in games of the olden days; I'm thinking of stuff like Ocean's Batman: The Movie or RoboCop 2, with a jumble of play styles in one game. Most of MGotG is a generic but solid action adventure, with a bit of running, a bit of jumping, and some light puzzling, now and then interrupted with set-piece fights -- of which more below -- but there are also a couple of short spaceship sections, and far too many -- prepare thyself -- quick time event sequences.

QTEs! Oh how I have not missed those cursed things. To see them popping up in a game from 2021, long after everyone had agreed they were a terrible idea, is an unwelcome surprise. They add nothing to the game, and are often plonked down at the exact distance from the most recent save to guarantee maximum annoyance. I turned them off after the second or third instance.

(And thank you to the developers for allowing us to turn off some of the more annoying gameplay elements. I was very pleased to see that there's a very comprehensive set of options for customising gameplay.)

I like the team based combat, which is a little bit standard action game and a little bit real-time strategy. You have direct control over Star-Lord, jumping, punching, and shooting while the rest of the Guardians run about doing their own thing, but you can issue orders for them to use their special abilities -- which change and improve as they earn experience, because of course there's an rpg-light experience system -- from a mostly-slick radial menu thingy, and you can also -- most of the time by accident if you're anything like me -- call them in for a team talk huddle that sets up a minigame in which you have to deliver the right sort of inspirational speech by picking words from a floating word cloud that only Star-Lord can see. This team huddle feature is a little strange and underdeveloped, and I switched it to automatic after the first couple of instances, but it leads to the Guardians all getting supercharged and, more important by far, the fight music changing to one of a selection of perhaps predictable but nonetheless uplifting 1980's pop hits.

(Beating up alien soldiers to Wham's "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" is oh so silly, but oh so great, and it never gets old.)



It's a good system that works well most of the time, and makes combat -- of which there is a lot -- always compelling. It also helps distract from the part of battles that you control, which alas is quite loose and slippery, and never really feels like you're in full, well, control of Star-Lord. I do wonder if it would have been better to take direct input away from the player during fights and instead run the entire team, including Star-Lord, from the orders menu. This is more or less what I ended up doing in my playthroughs anyway, keeping Star-Lord out of the fight and issuing commands from the sideline like some sort of football manager. In space.

The writing, in general, is okaaaaaay. There are no real surprises in a tale of a scrappy sort-of-family pulling together in the face of certain doom, and while it lacks the emotional punches of the films -- no Nebula, and no (sob!) Yondu -- there is a decent stab at doing something with Star-Lord being forced into parent responsibilities despite deeming himself unsuitable because of his own upbringing, or lack of.

The only other major issue with the game is perhaps a case of it's-not-you-it's-me. There is a point in the story, which up until then has been linear, where it looks like the whole thing is going to open up and let you zip about space doing jobs to earn money to pay a Nova Corps fine, and then... the Guardians all decide no, they'll just go and do one big paying job instead, and off we go to the next level, all those other possibilities abandoned and ignored.

(Sad trombone sounds.)

In all fairness, the game never says it's going to go open world, but my gosh it suggests and teases it, and that it doesn't feels like a huge missed opportunity. Where the game goes from there is fine, it really is, but it could have leaned into the cosmic side of the Marvel Cinematic Computer Game Universe and -- literally -- explored the wider setting that, as it is, we only get hints of.

Still, even if Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy isn't as much fun as it could have been with just a couple of tweaks -- and okay, a massively expanded middle section -- it is still a lot of fun. Much better than a film tie-in should be, even if it's not really a film tie-in. Weird.

Arbitrary score: 2021 out of 2014.

I Had the Power (Up)!

On Sunday, I went up to That London to go to the Power Up! exhibit at the Science Museum, prompted by reading about Orlygg's visit... except I didn't go until Monday for unimportant reasons I won't go into.

(I went and ate spicy paneer chapati wraps in the park instead.)

On a scorching day pushing past 35° Celsius, I did what I always used to do on hot summer days, and went into a dark room to play computer games!

This is only half of it!

It's debatable whether Power Up! is truly an exhibit at all, but I don't suppose it matters. For an old fart like me it was an exercise in nostalgia, playing games from my youth on the original hardware, and for youngsters -- of which there were not many, as it was a school day -- it's an opportunity to see where computer games came from, and that there is fun to be had with the older systems.

This was a pleasant surprise. A version of this -- I think the Mark 6 -- was my first console.

It was £12 for a day pass, which isn't terrible for a London museum and by my rough count I played around 27 games, so that's money well spent I reckon. Yes, I could emulate all of them, but it was good to play on the original hardware and I got the chance to handle some consoles I have never seen in the flesh before, like the 3DO, NeoGeo, or WiiU; there is something of a thrill to experience them for the first time, but perhaps I'm just a big saddo.

Aside from the N64 controllers almost all having that distinctive loose thumbstick, all the hardware was in excellent condition, and I wonder where it all came from. It's a brave collector who would donate their vintage console to be handled by thousands of grubby mitts, and I can't imagine the Science Museum itself has a stack of old SNESes in a back room. That said, the Amiga CD32 had its launch at the Museum, so it's possible that the machine there was indeed owned by them!

I have only a couple of minor criticisms. There were a few notable omissions, such as the PC Engine and any handhelds that weren't produced by Nintendo, and not all of the games were the best showcase of their machines; are we really saying Frogger is the Commodore 64's killer app?

(I would also have loved to see a Wondermega or "tower of power" in the flesh, but those are the nittiest of picks.)

Otherwise, Power Up! is an interesting if superficial look at the history of computer gaming, but also a great day out if you're a fan of computer games.

Arbitrary score: Blast Processing out of MOS6510.

Your humble correspondent, having completed Sonic 2, entirely legitimately, honest.
(And no, no idea what happened to my hair.)

The Last Straw

As I may have mentioned before, Shadow of the Colossus is one of my favourite computer games ever. When the team behind that announced a follow-up, The Last Guardian, in which the giant-thing-on-which-you-can-climb is a friend rather than a foe -- although the Colossi aren't enemies as such, but that's a bit of a spoiler -- I knew I had to have it.

I waited, and then it was announced it would not be coming out on PlayStation 2, but rather the upcoming PlayStation 3.

I bought a PS3 for the sole purpose of playing TLG. I waited.

It was delayed so long that the PS3 release was cancelled and it would instead be released on PS4. In the mean time I had found other games to play, so purchasing a PS3 wasn't a total waste.

I was lucky enough to win a PS4 in a competition, and so I waited.

The game was released! I got it! I... got busy and distracted and didn't play it.

I got a PS5. Just last week a gap appeared in my life and I, at long last, booted up The Last Guardian.

I didn't like it much.

Oh dear.

It's not bad. It's fine. It looks amazing, most of the time, the music is beautiful, and the central gameplay idea is very clever; your big furry buddy Trico does feel like a real creature and the way you interact with it in order to progress through the game is for the most part well-implemented. I also have to give the designers considerable credit for basing a game around collaboration rather than combat; it reminds me of the sort of quasi-puzzle games you'd get in the Amiga days, and in fact I'm sure there was a game of that era which had a similar pet-and-puzzles premise, but I am old and fuzzy now and I don't remember.

But.

The controls are borderline terrible. There's an attempt to go minimalist and simple, and the controls are context sensitive to an extent, but recognition of the context is a bit wonky, so you may be trying to walk along a platform but instead find yourself bouncing off a wall. The camera automatically rotates to point at Trico, which is a lovely touch except if you're trying to line up a precise jump. Basic movement seems to go from a single tentative step to a flat out sprint, with nothing in between, which again is not much good when you're hopping about hundreds of metres from the ground. Trico doesn't always do what you want it to do, which is fine because it's part of the central concept of working with a wild beast, but you'd expect your actual playing piece to respond to the buttons you're pushing, given that precise movement is such a big part of the gameplay.

The game also has a habit of taking control away to show off the more dramatic jumps, which I suppose on the plus side means you're not wrestling with the controls. In fairness these cut scenes are impressive, but would probably have been more fun if I'd been allowed to be involved.

I finished the game but I didn't complete it -- there are secrets to unlock -- and long before the end I knew I would probably never play it again. It would make a wonderful animated film but as a game it's a huge disappointment. I wonder if I just waited too long. Maybe it could never live up to my expectations.

Arbitrary score: PS3 out of PS5

Here you go, you can watch the beautiful production and my less beautiful struggles with the wonky gameplay:

Boy Band Road Trip XV

I know I was excited about Final Fantasy Versus XIII but it's been so long since the game was announced that I don't remember why. Even so, now it's out -- and now called Final Fantasy XV -- and I have it.

I haven't got very far into the game; I'm only on the third of thirteen chapters, and it could all go to heck after this point, but I've also put in about forty hours, which tells you both a lot about my play style and about how much I'm enjoying it.

When I finish the game I may come back with some more thoughts, but here's what I think so far, in a format stolen from my old mate Andy.

The Good

The protagonists look like a rubbish boy band and they do come across as chumps but they also turn out early on to be quite endearing. It's a computer game so the acting isn't brilliant but there is a real sense of camaraderie in the party and because they convince me that they care about each other, I end up caring about them too. My favourite is Ignis, who cooks, drives, and is English, so I think is supposed to be the main character Noctis' butler. He has a wonderful habit of shouting about recipes, even when the party is supposed to be sneaking through the woods, trying to avoid mind flayers. As he's English he will probably turn out to be a traitor, but for now he's ace.

I like the setting more than I expected too. It's a sort of modern fantasy so everyone's dressed in normal clothes and they drive cars and they go to diners, but they are also carrying magic spears and the man flipping the burgers at the diner is also handing out monster-hunting quests and rumours about treasure. I think there's been a bit of grumbling about FFXV not being a traditional mediaeval fantasy setting, but it's not as if the series hasn't done similar things before; everyone loves FFVII and that starts with a train pulling into a station in an industrial city. It helps that the design is consistent; I like a patchwork fantasy world -- Titan is a mess of influences that shouldn't work, and I love it nonetheless -- but FFXV's world does have a certain verisimilitude.

The game blocks exploration at first but once a certain story point is reached early on you are free to roam. There's a bit of backlash against open world games these days and I can understand why, but I love to explore at my own pace and FFXV doesn't stop me from poking around in the corners of the map. I'm also happy with the region-based level scaling; in general, monsters get tougher the further away you get from the starting area and I much prefer that approach to something like Skyrim, in which the bandits that were level 4 last time you passed their cave are now level 16. In tabletop gaming terms, FFXV feels more like an old-school wilderness crawl than I would have expected from something so shiny and new; you can even run into creatures far outside of the usual level range for that area, the equivalent of the GM rolling the most unlikely result on her wandering monster table.

Oh, and the monsters fight each other! They need to be goaded into it but then you can sit back and watch them pummel each other, and you even get to keep the loot they drop. It's a little detail but it makes the world feel less artificial, and there's something fun about setting off a little bit of chaos in a system and watching it escalate.



The Bad

Menu-based combat seems to be out of fashion in rpgs these days, as there is a common perception that it requires no skill -- which anyone who's played Disgaea will tell you is ballcocks -- so in FFXV you have direct control over Noctis, and the idea is that you run about looking for openings, and dodge in and out of the fight. This works in something like Dark Souls because there's a sense of weight to the fighting and it makes a difference if you get hit. That's not the case in FFXV, in which combat feels light and soft, and there's no major benefit to being dynamic when you can just hold down the circle button until the enemies are dead. I fail to see how that requires more skill.

The Ugly

The protagonists are not, it turns out, members of a rubbish boy band, but they do look like a rubbish boy band, and while you can change their outfits, the small number of alternatives also look like what a rubbish boy band would wear. This game is crying out out for big bags of costumes like Final Fantasy X-2 had; I'm not a big fan of publishers selling frivolous extra content like outfits, but even I would consider paying 50p for something that's not some black trousers and a black jacket.

As you can see, there's far more Good, which is, er, good, because I was a bit wary going into the game. I haven't played all of the titles in the Final Fantasy series -- I haven't started IX yet and that's considered to be the best one -- but I am a bit of a fan. It's far too early to tell if XV will unseat my favourite, 2006's XII, but already it has a better story -- although that wouldn't be difficult -- and the gameplay is almost as much fun, aside from the terrible combat mechanics. We'll see how things progress as I put in more hours over the Chrimble break, but it's thumbs up so far.

On Your Nelly

First things first, I should mention that one of my friends was involved in the production of this game -- and voices a pompous sea bird -- and I've spent an afternoon playing Bomberman with both the creator of the game and Nelly Cootalot herself, or at least her inspiration and voice actor.

Nelly Cootalot: The Fowl Fleet is a comedic point and click adventure game about pirates. If you are now thinking "Gosh, that's a bit like deciding to be a sprinter and challenging Usain Bolt to a race your first time out" then that's a bit weird that we both thought of that, but you'd be correct. The shadow of Monkey Island looms large over this game -- now I'm imagining a Lovecraft pastiche; The Shadow Over Monkey Island -- but not only does the script acknowledge the influence, Nelly Cootalot is strong enough to stand up to and apart from its illustrious predecessor.

The writing for the most part is strong, and the characters' personalties come across well, helped in no small part by good voice acting throughout. Nelly herself is a charming protagonist; everyone seems to like her, and her cheerful approach to adventure is infectious. The main villains are a bit sketchy, and not in the appropriate sense of the word; I think they return from the original game in the series, but as I've not played that, their motivations and personalities seem a bit vague in this instalment. A new villain introduced in the middle section of the game comes across far better, although again his motivations and connection to the main plot are somewhat unclear. Still, it's Nelly and her friends who are most important and they are well-written and acted; aside from Nelly herself, I was most impressed by her sidekick Sebastian, voiced by Tom "Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior" Baker. To be honest, I was expecting someone of Sir Tom's prestige to sleepwalk through his role but he brings a lot of personality to Sebastian, even though he has one of those voices that means you can never quite forget the actor behind the character.

The game is funny, and there's a varied approach to the jokes, with plenty of references to films and games, a bit of witty wordplay, a dash of satire here and there, and at least one bit of smutty innuendo, although that last one doesn't land as well as it could have due to some clumsy back-pedalling. Some comments and reviews have claimed that the game is for children -- perhaps because of the art style -- but the latter joke suggests not, and some of the references are going to go right over the heads of most kids, unless they are showing Jack Nicholson films in primary schools these days.

The game looks good too. The trailers did look a bit ropey, with a flat animation style reminiscent of Flash or a cheap CBeebies programme, but the game looks much better in action. The character models look to be cel-shaded and that gives them a bit more weight, and they are for the most part well-animated; it is a bit of a shame that they don't tend to do anything when Nelly isn't interacting with them, but one has to remember that this isn't a multi-million pound game with a hundred-strong creative team behind it. That said, it's a pleasant surprise when you spot a character making a small movement or gesture that must have added time to the production schedule and is irrelevant to wider game, but helps to bring the character to life. It shows a dedication and craftsmanship that you don't often see in the aforementioned larger productions.

I did encounter a couple of graphical glitches; during one part of the Guttering Howls section Nelly walks in front of and through something she should be behind, and in the penultimate chapter the inventory panel goes a bit wonky, but is still usable. I also had a bit of trouble with the game's interface being slow to register what was under the pointer, although the mechanics worked as expected, so it wasn't a major issue. I played the game on Linux Mint 17.3 and I don't know if these glitches are in every port.

Heh, "port". Like sailors. Heh.

Nelly Cootalot's puzzles are varied and often require different approaches and techniques to solve; even when they are of the give-item-A-to-person-B sort, they are at least presented in novel ways so the game never gets dull. In terms of difficulty, the puzzles are if not simple, then logical, so you are never hunting for rogue pixels or throwing every item at every character, hoping for the best.

That said if there is a flaw in Nelly Cootalot -- and to be fair, it is the only thing I would consider a proper flaw -- it's the wider logic surrounding the puzzles. On a few occasions I worked out the solution to a problem, and had all the correct items in my inventory ready to go, but I couldn't apply said solution because I hadn't gone to talk to someone -- often in another location -- who was supposed to give me the idea I'd already had. This led to frustration and -- in one case near the end of the game -- a suspicion that there was a game-breaking bug. On the plus side, Sebastian is able to give hints about what to do next, and in at least one case this helped resolve the impasse, although in the latter instance I did end up roaming around clicking on everything and everyone until I spoke to the right person.

Creator Alasdair Beckett-King is a jolly nice fellow -- and is not bad at Bomberman -- but it turns out he's quite good at making computer games too. I had great fun playing Nelly Cootalot: The Fowl Fleet and although it is short -- it can be completed in about five hours or so, although getting the Steam achievements will take longer -- I think it is worth the £12 I paid for it. There are rough edges, and places where I feel Alasdair and his team could have done a tiny bit more, but what's here is good, and I hope the game is enough of a success that we see more from him.

If you like point and click adventure games, give this a try, because you'll probably like it. If you don't, give it a try anyway, as it's charming and funny and may change your mind.

Nelly Cootalot: The Fowl Fleet is available from loads of places, right now!

Bloody

Games Workshop's Warhammer is a juggernaut of a franchise. Its runaway success has changed the company from a single hobby shop in Hammersmith to an international corporation, and the game has expanded beyond the tabletop into board games, role-playing games, video games, MMORPGs, novels, comics, and even, in the latter stages of 2010, a straight-to-dvd film, although reviews haven't been too good on that last one.

Warhammer is the company's core product, but there's also a horde of lesser games, lost to the mists of time and commanding high prices on eBay, stuff like Chainsaw Warrior and Lost Patrol. Somewhere in between is a middle tier of games that have never been huge money-spinners, but have remained popular enough to remain in production, on and off, throughout the company's life. Blood Bowl is one of these, a Warhammer-ised version of American football, with orcs and goblins beating seven shades out of dwarves and elves, and with maybe a touchdown or two thrown in. In the game, players take it in turns to advance their teams up the pitch, seize the ball, and through applied brutality, agile footwork, or dead-eye accuracy, attempt to get the ball into the end zone to score. Their chances of doing so are modified by their teams' skills and statistics as well as a significant amount of luck, as generated by the rolling of dice.

In 2009, Blood Bowl was released to a number of video game platforms, including this DS version. It lacks the 3D environment of the PC and console releases, opting for a isometric viewpoint; while some may view this as a negative, and it does at first glance seem like a retrograde move back to the 16-bit era and a waste of the DS' capabilities, the viewpoint works in the game's favour, allowing for a wider field -- pun intended -- of vision, as befits what is, after all, a game of strategy.

Similarly, the lack of a real-time mode turns out to be a missing feature which is not missed, as the end result is something which is more or less a straight translation of the board game into electronic form. The original board game is strong enough that 3D graphics and arcade-style gameplay are not improvements but unnecessary distractions, and for whatever reason they were removed from the DS edition, it has resulted in a better game. The fidelity to the source material also means that those players who want a quick game of Blood Bowl, but can't find an opponent or don't have the space to set up the board, can instead whip out the DS and indulge. There is also a rudimentary local multiplayer option, as well as a "hot seat" mode, which may be a misnomer on a portable system.

All that said, some features are indeed missed, such as the wilder players and options some of the teams bring along with them, and while eight types of team are included it is disappointing that evocative races such as the dark elves and undead have been overlooked. It is possible however that only those familiar with the original game will miss these bells and whistles, as the core gameplay offers plenty of complexity to keep strategic thinkers happy. On the other hand, those same strategic thinkers may not be quite as happy with the difficulty of the game; while the single-player mode will prove a challenge due to an aggressive CPU, the AI does on occasion seem to engage in some wild and hare-brained schemes, such as sending players to the far corners of the pitch to await passes which are never likely to come, or withdrawing strong blockers from the front lines, and so on.

The game benefits from good graphics, with good designs and smooth animation, although it would have been nice to have some variation in how the players moved. There are some neat cut scenes during the game, with the referee stepping in to conduct the opening coin toss and adjudicate fouls, and so on, and there are is a brief appearance from the game's commentators, familiar to those who have played the board game. Perhaps the most important cut scene of all is that which plays when a touchdown is scored, and alas this is the most disappointing, with dodgy-looking cheerleaders and no variation in the animation at all; it would have been a neat touch to have included burly orc cheerleaders, ethereal elven cheerleaders, bearded dwarven cheerleaders, and so on. The game also lacks much in the way of music, with only one or two tunes in evidence, although perhaps a wise move to shun in-game music, which could have become annoying with individual matches taking up to an hour to play.

This lack of polish can sometimes be an annoyance, but the game survives. There are some glitches in the code that may prove to be a more fatal issue. Outside a match, the game can sometimes take a long time to move between screens, which could be put down to loading times were it not for the simple fact that Blood Bowl is a cartridge-based title. At times, the game can lock up during these pauses, necessitating a restart and the subsequent loss of data, most annoying during a league game where a team has built up money and experience over a season. Other editions have been fixed by updates, and a new version of the game was released in 2010, but neither have made it to the DS alas.

All in all, Blood Bowl on the DS is a very basic game, and the lack of features and polish can be a bit disappointing at times. That said, the core gameplay is strong, a faithful adaptation of a great board game and at the end of the day, it's the gameplay that matters most.

Mister Blobby

A few years ago, I'd almost given up on video games. The whole industry seemed to have devolved into an absurd graphics arms race, and gameplay didn't so much take a back seat, but got forced to the back of the bus to that manky seat with all the dried chewing gum and bogeys stuck to it. Every game seemed to be a World War II first person shooter, a Japanese-style role-playing game, or a sports title. A tiny number of genres dominated, as the big publishing companies saw what was popular and pumped out more of the same. This has always been a problem in the industry, as all the beat-em-ups and scrolling shooters in the 16-bit era prove, but as games got more elaborate, we saw the disappearance of those bedroom programmers who just had an idea for a fun gameplay mechanic and built an entire title around it, whether or not it would sell.

And then came Katamari Damacy. Presentation aside, it could easily have been a £2.99 Commodore 64 release. It's got a unique central mechanic, and the rest of the game is there to serve and embellish that. It's a game for gaming's sake, and I loved it to bits. I bought the sequel, and loved that too. Then came the Wii, and Nintendo's new approach of "sod the graphics, let's make games fun again" and after almost putting video games away forever, I'm back in. I was waiting for Katamari Wii; the philosophies match up, and anyone who's played the rolling ball levels on Super Mario Galaxy knows that the game could work well on Wii, but it was not to be. Instead the Firebomb360 got a half-hearted sequel and Wii owners got nothing.

Until de Blob. It's definitely a post-Katamari game, and probably wouldn't exist without that title; they look very similar, and have the same sort of almost-therapeutic feel to the play. The purity of the game's philosophy is also similar; while there's a token plot*, it's all about the fun of the mechanics, of just playing the game for its own sake. It's not a clone of the earlier title, however; the central mechanic is quite different, based on colour rather than mass, and with the ideas of colour mixing, patterns, and combinations thrown in, it's even a bit more complex than Katamari, although just as intuitive in its own way. The control scheme is by necessity different to the earlier game, and doesn't borrow from Super Mario Galaxy either, presenting a new take which works well and makes good use of the Wii's unique controls.



The graphics aren't groundbreaking, but that's not the point, and the central conceit of painting colours back into a grey world works very well. The music isn't as manic and varied as the wonderful Katamari tunes, but it is a good fit for the game, and quite cleverly associates different sounds with different colours, making the soundtrack somewhat interactive, as (for example) the doo-wops accompanying de Blob as he (literally) paints the town red give way to some freestyle scratching if he turns brown and starts daubing things in that colour.

(As an aside, I'm not sure if there's not something slightly racist about associating the colour brown with "urban" sounds, but perhaps I'm reading too much into it.)

It's not as refreshing as Katamari, but de Blob is nonetheless a very welcome reminder of games-as-games, which is surely why we play these things in the first place, and is a good fun game in its own right. There's lots of replay value in the various unlockable levels and secondary play modes, and it looks to have a decent multiplayer mode, something the Katamari series lacked. All in all, it's a very solid title, and a worthwhile purchase for any Wii owner.

*There is a political edge to the plot, with much talk of revolutionaries and an oppressive police state, and the central conceit of graffiti as a form of protest. There's no real depth to it, but unlike Katamari, the plot is at least about something.

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In other news, I started my new job this past Monday. It's not that different to my old job, and it's in the same office, and technically it's a promotion, but I had to apply and interview for it, so it's all a bit strange and unusual.

In No Particular Order

I'm a bit behind here, but Pro Evolution Soccer on Wii is the best footie game since Sensi. Since the death of that venerable franchise, I'd basically been making do with the playable but dull FIFA and had been avoiding the Pro Evo series for no good reason; particularly foolish given the consistently good reviews bestowed upon the franchise. The clever new control system of the Wii version got a lot of attention, but still I resisted, until it was forced under the tree at Chrimble. It turns out to be quite brilliant. It plays completely differently to any footie game I've ever seen (but doesn't have to; it can be played in a bog-standard Fifa way if you want, but you're missing out) in the sense that you really do control an entire team rather than just one player. In the majority of these games, you have to rely on the AI to back you up when you go for a run, or try to put a cross into the box, but in Pro Wiivo, you can move any team member into any position on the field, make them move where you want, and so on, and it's nothing short of revolutionary. What Konami have done, essentially, is take the environment of a real time strategy game like Command & Conquer and slap it onto football, and it works wonderfully. And at £13 from Amazon (likely cheaper elsewhere too), it's also a bargain. I'm not very good at it as yet, but I'd be up for an online match; my Wii number is 7714 7295 2393 7107.

ITV are trumpeting their snagging of the FA Cup broadcast rights with plenty of billboard advertising. It's all macho nonsense based around an "in the FA Cup, all men are equal" tagline, and one of the posters shows a fireman competing with a Manchester United player for a header; it's a clear reference to the previous round where a postman knocked the once-mighty Leeds United out of the contest, but the unfortunate implication of the advert is that a man who every day risks his life to save the lives of others is somehow not as worthy as a bloke who's paid millions to run around a field for an hour and a half once a week. Nice work, ITV. Classy.

I have a beard. I had an ill-advised facial growth back in Sixth Form, but it looked like a tuft of ginger pubes and was quite the embarrassment, and I swore never to repeat that mistake, and yet... Back around Chrimble '07, a colleague grew a superb beard, a full-on North Sea fisherman thing, but his missus not-so-subtly suggested that he get rid of it by buying him a shaver as a gift. I detected the beginnings of new winter plumage sometime in November and urged him to keep it this year, pledging that I too would grow a Christmas Beard in support. Meg hated the idea at first, but now has become quite taken with my hirsuteness, and won't let me shave it off. Combine that with the fact that I haven't had a haircut in two months, and I'm starting to look like a feral Geography teacher.

Vimanarama is great fun, and probably the last decent thing Grant Morrison did. It's also the only known instance where a Wikipedia page quotes me. Meanwhile, Brandon Graham ad Corey Lewis are geniuses, even if the former is borrowing liberally from Mitz. Graham's King City is particularly inspirational, and I can't wait to see the second volume; I may give his werewolf porn comic a miss though.

And I was rooting for Paterson Joseph, but this fellow has a definite sense of the eccentric about him, so I think he could work. After all, I thought David Tennant was too young when they announced him, and he turned out okay. Incoming showrunner Steven Moffat's favourite Doctor was Peter Davison, again a youngster at the time, and he seems to have a good idea of how to make the young-but-impossibly-old thing work. All that said, I am a tiny bit worried that the producers will try to twist the show to make it more youth-friendly, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

Brushing Off the Dust

Yes, still alive, just not interesting enough to blog.

How about Halloween? I've decided I probably won't bother seeing the completely unnecessary remake. I'm a huge fan of the original, but it's not sour grapes that compels me to shun the new pretender, more that I really don't see the point. The umpteen sequels have essentially been remakes, bringing nothing new to the formula set out in the first film, and taking away plenty, and I don't see Rob Zombie managing to change that. I'll probably catch it on DVD, but I'm still hoping they'll find some way to clean up the dreadful film quality in the original.

(Halloween did get me thinking about my still-in-development God of Power Metal idea, but I shouldn't talk any more about that right now. Anticipation, and all that.)

Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition (I feel there should be a colon in there somewhere) is a remake done properly, however. The controls are a clever evolution of the series' traditional scheme, as well as being a good use of the Wiimote/Nunchuk combo, and the gameplay itself is very well designed, although it took me a while to get back into the essential mindset of how to play a Resi game (the last time for me was Resi2, which sucked up much A Level revision time). I'm not very far into it, but there's one great siege sequence which is a fine twist on the usual boss battle. Resi2 is my favourite of the series so far, but 4 is a fine entry, and could supplant its predecessor. It's also very important to see games like this done well on Wii, as it can only help to solidify the machine's credentials as a serious contender (rather than a niche alternative) in the current "console wars".

The job is also going very well, but I'm having the next week off in order to get some bits and pieces done that I've allowed myself to neglect. With luck, and if I don't spend all that time fobbing off my plans, I should have some things to show off over the next few days.