Hey!

So another podcast (i’m thinking that this might become a monthly thing), this time we talk about Spelunky, Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, Bioshock 2, Bayonetta, smartphone apps and gaming future.

This week we have Nick and MichaelI hope you enjoy!Any comments post on the site (it’s free) or send us an email: theguys@beatbritish.co.uk

As always if you are viewing this from somewhere else, go to the website www.beatbritish.co.uk and subscribe to the itunes feed or listen to our podcast right here on the site.

Paris

And after a looooong hiatus the Beat.British podcast is back. This week we talk about all the freaking games that have come out, it was ALOT. After the regular program I go on to talk to Seraphim2150 (Michael) about his opinion on the current and near future releases. Modern Warfare 2 is talked about (naturally), Brutal Legend, Borderlands, Assassins Creed 2, ODST, Dragon Age and many more.

I hope you enjoy!

Any comments post on the site (it’s free) or send us an email: theguys@beatbritish.co.ukAs always if you are viewing this from somewhere else, go to the website www.beatbritish.co.uk and subscribe to the itunes feed or listen to our podcast right here on the site.

Paris

Just for the record. After a little bit of a hiatus, there will be a new podcast being recorded next week.
For all those coming here after I was featured on Monday Musing thank you for visiting subscribe to the podcast via iTunes and send us those email questions!

Paris.

But I am not here to talk on the joys of games to come. I am no shrouded ghost, come to haunt the misery gamer, to show them what could have been. Oh no!

I come as reviewer of games past! To enlighten you as to the treasures you may have missed. And what delectable delicacy have I selected to inflict upon your eager, straining eyeballs?

Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines

Yes, indeed, a game that makes one’s grammar cells cringe with it’s title and causes the PC gaming crowd to jostle and growl menacingly! Let us begin.

Vtm:B  is based upon the roleplaying game produced by White Wolf, which is itself named Vampire: The Masquerade. Many assume it is a sequel to the first game, Vampire: The Masquerade, but it is markedly differen. First and foremost in these is that whilst the previous game is far more reliant on traditional “point and click” Diablo-esque Role play, this particular game is a first person affair: more shooter than roleplay, at least initially.

Famed as the first game to utilise the Source engine, developed for Half Life 2, this particular “feature” was a blessing as much as a curse, as the game was, in many ways, an experimental “test” of the engine. Evidently eager to make use of the famed facial animation and physics engine, this attempt to combine a first person shooter and an RPG resulted in a strange hybrid, bug ridden and unstable.

Yet it is, ultimately, an amazing game.

Harking back to Deus Ex, for whom most of the fans feel the game is a spiritual successor, VTM:B combines aspects of character freedom and action, a twisting plotline, multiple choices and a sense of involvement in a story. This is not you saving the world. This is you saving your own skin and getting your own back. Which, considering the glut of games which, over the years cast you as the ubermensch super marine, is a breath of fresh air. Although, since you play a Vampire, maybe not so fresh.

Did I not mention that?

Oh yes, in this game, you are the nasty thing that goes bump in the night. And your choices are varied: do you aspire to Dracula levels of seduction? Are you an animalistic beast? A political “Blade-esque” vampire, filled with authority? A horrific Nosferatu? Or a madness afflicted crazy?

That last one isn’t just down to gameplay style, either: The Malkavian choice is one of the more amusing ones, providing a meta-game aspect, similar to the tongue in cheek jibes from games such as Max Payne. mainly because they’re stark raving bonkers.

The game is played from the first person, primarily, though switches to a third person view when using melee attacks. The camera is acceptable in both views, yet is hardly perfect, especially in third person. You begin life as a fairly weak little bloodsucker, uneducated in the ways of the night. Your character design chosen by answering a series of questions which can dictate your “bloodline” (Hence the title) and your particular strengths. You can also opt for a manual input. Some RPG fans may be disappointed in the limited number of choices, but the game sticks fairly well to the template as laid down by the tabletop game. However, when it comes to character appearance you are offered 2 choices: Male or Female. And whilst these vary between the bloodlines, there is no choice beyond that.

Dumped into the mean streets of Los Angeles, you are exposed to something few games really get right: an excellent voice cast.  The first character you meet is Smiling Jack, a staple of the table top game and here voiced by John Di Maggio, he of Bender fame. The characters are what make this game: no pop up briefings or walls of text here. All the voices are rich and delivered with a sense of awareness, drawing you in. And some of these guys are really nasty pieces of work. Your interaction with these characters is conducted by the staple of the RPG: the multiple choice conversation bar. Various responses are dependant upon whether you posses certainly skills as well as your bloodline choice. These won’t hamper the plot, but may effect the rewards you receive for the various missions on which you are dispatched.

After your trial by fire, or hopefully not, being undead and all, you are unleashed upon the first “hub” of the game: Santa Monica. The game itself is divided into four main areas, which open up as the plot progresses, each with various stage branching off with various side missions. How you navigate these streets is also dependant upon game choices: Skulk through the sewers or travel openly in the air? If you’re a Nosferatu, I wouldn’t advise the latter.

The game is well presented, with minor texture skipping at distance, but this in itself is rarely an issue, due to the clustered nature of each of the hubs. However, it is clear that certain animations and textures weren’t completely finalised prior to release, with the occasional animation repetition  or clipping error. Most of the time, the graphics and presentation evoke the seedy, foreboding sense of the setting. The scantily dressed “ladies of the night” to the rusty diner in Santa Monica all give the game a sense of moral decay.

The mechanics work well, mainly in the dialogue sections, with the wrong choice often cutting off an entire side-option, ensuring one is careful in choosing. Whilst your choices may not have world-impacting consequences, there are enough gameplay slash personal ones to matter.

Combat is a slightly different affair: The game is not a case of twitch and “aim for the head”: it draws from your selected stats, your character only able to wield certain weapons with certain skillsets, which are calculated. Each successful hit results in a number floating from your enemy, which grows darker until they drop. Whilst a good gauge of the damage you do, seeing as you don‘t know how much health your opponent has left it is often a case of “hammer the trigger until they drop. And seeing as combat is not the most tactical of affairs, this can make some parts of the game feel more a test of patience than of skill. The AI doesn’t utilise cover well, nor is there any form of co-operation amongst your foes: melee monsters charge you, ranged enemies fire at your location, which they always seem able to pinpoint, whilst bosses just follow a pre-set pattern of attacks. Tactics in these situations seem limited to trying to soak damage and whittle away at targets health, hoping your combat skill is enough to kill them before they drain your health.

The various vampiric abilities help a little in this, again dictated by bloodline, yet some seem more useful than others. The invisibility power is certainly useful for the stealth based character, whilst celerity (bullet time, for those non fans) is great for combat. Others seem mainly augmentations for the passive options, but it really depends on play style: melee or ranged, magic base or gun toting maniac?

These skills, along with ones base abilities, are improved via the acquisition of skill points and the odd skill-book littering the environment. Everything, from your ability to hack computers, to picking a lock or just being able to swing a weapon are dependant on these skills. And skill points are only awarded for the completion of missions. The amount of combat also increases as the game progresses, meaning that your ability to acquire skill points becomes difficult, unless you had the forethought to store up skillpoints earlier in the game. That said, the sneakier players will find their patience rewarded more than the “run and gun” crowd. Basically, if you aren’t outfitted to fight at first, then your challenge will increase.

This lack of balance plagues the game a little. Coupled with crashes and several broken quests make the game, at least initially, a bit of a trial to get into. Add on to this only the one official patch and the game seems broken. However, a thriving community has built up around it, providing community patches which solve a lot of the crashing and balancing issues

So far, I seem to be fairly “neutral” on the whole game. But then we hit the story. Whilst the engine doesn’t live up to it’s full potential, the setting, the various levels and challenges posed to you, along with the methods of world interaction provide an incredibly addictive experience. Take for example the method for regaining health: follow a person into an alleyway and drain their blood! But even here, choice has a factor: kill them whilst doing so and you risk losing “humanity”, eventually devolving into a true monster. Can’t find a suitable, lonely human? Lure a prostitute into said alleyway. Accessing a computer? Your character sits at it and you have to type in passwords and commands.

The characters themselves are also a joy, with varied back stories that are a mixture of amusing, tragic and genuinely horrifying. The missions range from typical combat to being able to manipulate people at a party. The combat becomes all encroaching, which is a minus, but there is some satisfaction at becoming able to kill tooled up vampires with only a couple of rounds from your desert eagle!

The locations are varied and engaging, with shout outs to classic films, media commentary and the odd bit of self deprecating humour about gaming itself. The plot twists and turns nicely, the various sidequests allowing you the opportunity to earn some extra cash or just explore. There are a view collectible questlines, some hidden little tidbits to find. Often these are inconsequential, but they add to the depth of the game. Main characters live or die by your choices. The game draws you in very well, pushing you through haunted hotels and gruesome snuff movie theatres. And whilst the balance is at times slightly off, you can often play according to your preferred style.

Ultimately, it is worth a look, even now. For a five year old game, it holds up well, providing a plot that allows a certain amount of choice, relying on your decisions made during the game, as well as a setting that feels true to the world it is based on. For a developer it would have been very easy to just make a shooter with vampiric elements, but Troika took the concept and ran, creating a game with as much innovation as Deus Ex and the adult elements of GTA.

Oh Shadow Complex, you are such a jem.

Ok. So I got a little too exited about Shadow Complex. I also initially thought it was going to be bunk. Lets face it Gears 2 didn’t have the same spark as gears 1 and undertow wasn’t one of the most popular games on XBLA until it was given away for free after xbox live didn’t work over an entire christmas period.

Thanks for that Microsoft, seriously. Christmas (but I digress).

I was skeptical during E3, I was skeptical when news came out about it, I was pretty much sceptical until about a week before it came out.

This changed when saw a Quicklook video. Something about the collecting many things and the memories of playing Metriod and Castlevania made me REALLY exited. To the point where i left my xbox on on the day it was released so i could use xbox.com so i could tell my xbox to download it while at work.

I wasn’t disappointed. Lets get that out of the way. Shadow Complex has raised the bar (and the size) of XBLA games. It has a polish and quality that is lacking from most of what is on offer on XBLA. It’s quite obvious why it was the last of this years summer of arcade. Because it is the best of the bunch.

They tout it as a Metriodvania game, and it’s not too far from the truth, the idea that this could become a genre is fantastic. It’s a true gamers genre and it’s nice to be pandered to for once.

Shadow Complex starts you off (after a little prologue of what’s to come) with a flashlight and the ability to jump. You and your new girlfriend go to explore some caves, and she decides to play hide and seek. She buggers of and gets kidnapped by a shady organisation  called ‘the Restoration’. You find her backpack (which has climbing gear in it) it gives you the ability to wall jump and grab ledges and the game begins. The story (as always) soon becomes about way more than just rescuing your new piece of tail but luckily the main protagonist was trained to be an assassin. A tad contrived yes, but while playing it didn’t really bother me.

Slowly as you explore you get more gear, better guns, cool gadgets and upgrades etc… Some of which is optional but will inevitably make the game easier. One example is a helmet with (if you find all the passkey components)will give you a shield which if you stand still renders you invincible. But you can still shoot. Bloody useful.

Shadow complex works in mostly a 2D plane, it’s touted as a 2.5D game (which always bugs me as a title, just say sidescroller). Sometime yes the perspective changes and you are shooting into the screen but it’s usually for cinematic effect and can be a little fiddly.

It does look fantastic, not during closeup cutscenes. Shadow Complex is Running in the unreal engine and it suffers from the low to high resolution texture pop-in frequently. but these minor technical issues and as well as the occasional weird bug are easily forgiven after you realise that you’ve been playing longer than intended and it’s 2am.

This is essentially the main joy of Shadow Complex, it always feels an accomplishment is right around the corner. Looking at the map (in all but the highest difficulty) will indicate where other items are for collection with a simple Question mark. The fact that one is just two rooms away and it will ‘only take five min’ means ‘only five mins’ becomes an hour. And now your late for work.

Fuck.

- Viewer note don’t try and squeeze in a little bit of SHadow Complex before you leave in the morning. Unless you can call in sick… mainly because you will.

Everything you do nets you experience points, every ten levels you get something special (up to level 50), however contry to what most games do. players get more experience for discovering new rooms and getting upgrades. Just smoking fools nets you next to nothing in experience. Doing it creatively gets a little more and bosses give quite a lot; but not as much as looking for upgrades and exploring. Which in turn makes you want to find everything. Experience carries over through multiple playthroughs - which is REALLY useful when you get the infinite ammo upgrade for the sub weapons.

Getting around the map is really easy, certain doors and panels can only be opened by certain weapons/devices. Gold for guns, Red for Rockets, Green for Grenades (hey these all start with the same letter as the weapons i only just noticed that) and Purple for Foam (wait never mind). THe foam gun is by far my favourite of the devices in the game.

The Foam gun is basically a ‘make you own bridge gun’ is is key to the fabled ’sequence break’ of the old Metriod and Castlevania games which you can do to finish the game in under 20 mins my best time being 36 mins odd. THe foam gun bugs up funs is grates and incapacitates enemies, sticks riot shields to the floor. Oh and explodes if you attach a grenade to it. Which can lead to hilarious results.

Once you’ve finished the campaign you can either start over with your exp level intact and level up some more or you can try your hand at the challenge rooms. A series of challenges which get progressively harder and have a time limit.

Ultimately Shadow Complex is probably the best XBLA/downloadable game i’ve played all year (maybe ever) and is in my top 5 games of the year period. If a game like this came out every wednesday i’d be broke, but happy.

Here are some words of wisdom: I know Shadow Complex is 1200 points, but try it. It truly is one of the greats.

Paris.

Shadow Complex is Available on the Xbox Live Marketplace for 1200 Microsoft points.

Ah those Nazis. As if starting wars and genocide wasn’t enough, it also appears as the fiends were conducting supernatural experiments and creating new and deadly weapons based on science they don’t quite understand. Well that is what the team at Raven is insinuating.

Wolfenstein is the latest in the series of first person shooters from id, going back to one of the first ever FPS’s, Wolfenstien 3D (predating Doom by a year). That said, the game feels like a closer link to 2001’s Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

As said before, those damn Nazis are up to their dastardly plans again, and have taken over the town of Isenstadt in order to use it as a base for seemingly all of their black projects. Once again, you play B.J. Blazkowicz, an OSS agent sent in put a spanner in the works of the Nazis and stop their various plans. This is done the usual way, with B.J. shooting everyone, stealing intel and picking up Nazi gold. In that sense, it business as usual.

The main change to the series is the introduction of a open world hub for the game, the city of Isenstadt. I’m not entirely sold on the idea, as it can be very annoying to limp back from the missions only to be ripped to pieces by a bunch of troops outside a safe house. But, it also means there is always fun to be had just shooting up the enemy soldiers. However, the open world is jammed full of loading screens and the extra missions are not actually that good. Additionally, roaming enemies rapidly become more powerful, making a simple trip to the shops hard.

The other major change is the introduction of the new “Veil” mechanic which allows B.J. to slow down time, shield himself and empower his weapons as well as providing  multiple ways of solving challenges. One of these are the Geists, little bug like creatures that float around. Only visable in the Veil, they act as floating exploding barrels providing an extra punch when fighting some of the new enemies. These powers are a bit generic, the type you’d expect from any developer trying frantically to fit some kind of supernatual power up. That said though, the powers can be fun, especially the time slowing ability.

Despite all of this, the place where Wolfenstein truly stands out is the guns.They are some of the most satisfying weapons to use I’ve ever seen in any game. As well as the stalwarts such as the Kar 98 (excellent for blowing Nazi heads off or removing limbs), the MP40 and the MP43, we are also treated to a hilarious panzershrek, the best flamethrower since Far Cry 2, a ghostbuster’s style proton cannon, a tesla gun and finally a rocket launcher that turns enemies into skeletons before disintegrating them. As if that wasn’t enough, Raven has also included an upgrade setup, allowing you to actually focus on the weapons you use. For example, I upgraded the MP40 and the Kar primarily as they are useful throughout the game, but would have loved to upgraded the flamethrower all the way (you will never have enough money to upgrade everything).

The graphics this time are running on the idtech 4 and they certainly do look nice. The backgrounds are especially lush, with some of the levels approaching Bioshock levels of beauty in my eyes especially the hospital level. The character models are also very good, with a good use of some particle effects, mainly on the veil troopers, the gentlemen in the heavy armour with electrical effects jumping across them. The sound effects are also of a good standard, with the crack of the Kar being especially punchy. The game has some sections that really crank up the tension, such as the aforementioned hospital level.

There are some issues however. The multiplayer is a bit generic, and is actually worse than Enemy Territory which is available for free. In singleplayer (the meat of the game), the missions all feel very similar, just with different backgrounds. The other flaw is that basically, this is very similar to RTCW just with a little update and a few tweaks.

Wolfenstein is a strange game. On one hand its a great game, good fun to play with some of the best weapons ever seen. On the other though, its fatally flawed, quite linear and simplistic. End of the day, its a summer blockbuster action movie with good old sterotypical Nazis shouting “Mei Leiben!”. Don’t think too much about it and just sit back and enjoy the ride.

I give Wolfenstein on PC 85%

Editors Note: Thanks Seraphim2150, keep up the good work.

Hello!Another Podcast, this week talk about: Call of Duty WaW, Avatar Clothing/Awards, Arkham Asylum Demo, Section 8, Lost Planet 2 Demo, Lost Planet, Ice Levels, Ape Escape, Overlord 2, Fable 3, Assassins Creed 2, New Dashboard Update, Eternal Sonata, Shadow Complex, Trine, Ratchet & Clank, Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time, Prototype and Spyro.

Hey Alex is on the Podcast!

Oh and Joe plays Guitar.
Any comments post on the site (it’s free) or send us an email: theguys@beatbritish.co.uk

As always if you are viewing this from somewhere else, go to the website www.beatbritish.co.uk and subscribe to the itunes feed or listen to our podcast right here on the site.

Paris

Hello,

A Interview podcast you say? Yep it’s the debut of the “BeatBritish Fanfare Show” interviewing the Average gamer on the street and on the web. Yes indeedy,  this time I interview Seraphim2150 (Michael). We talk about gaming on a Budget, Steam, Getting games for Free, Gaming in Leeds and Age Ratings (the PEGI problem). Other than that the games in discussion are: Fallout 3, Jak and Daxter, Bioshock, Half Life 2, CoD4, MAG and CoD:WaW.

If you’d like to be Interviewed on the BeatBritish Fanfare, send an email to: theguys@beatbritish.co.uk and tell us why you should be interviewed (any attachments will be deleted - if you want to be creative post it on youtube or your own site).

Any comments post on the site (it’s free) or send us an email: theguys@beatbritish.co.ukAs always if you are viewing this from somewhere else, go to the website www.beatbritish.co.uk and subscribe to the itunes feed or listen to our podcast right here on the site.

Paris

Hey Podcast Anyone?

This week we are joined by Jeremy as well as Alex. Jeremy after spending time in a warzone has been playing games to pass the time and we talk to him about what games he played. This week the games in discussion includes: Planescape Torment, The Witcher, Neverwinter Nights, Dungeon Keeper 1 & 2, Startopia, Wii Sports: Resort, Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass, Plants vs Zombies, Modern Warefare 2, Call of Duty: WaW, Mercenaries 2, Starcraft 2, Blaz Blue, Left 4 Dead 1 & 2, MAG, ABP, Assassins Creed 2, the Next NXE (can we get a better name for this now? Err XE?), Fat Princess, Prototype, RROD, Zoo Keeper and iPhone gaming.

Any comments post on the site (it’s free) or send us an email: theguys@beatbritish.co.uk

As always if you are viewing this from somewhere else, go to the website www.beatbritish.co.uk and subscribe to the itunes feed or listen to our podcast right here on the site.

Paris

So another podcast, this week we talk about Red Faction, Mercenaries 2, LOOM, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Prototype, Battlefield 1942, Zeno Clash, Trine, Brutal Legend, Ever 17, Mass Effect Galaxy, Peggle, Milo and Kate, Parapa The Rapper, Space Channel Five, Eddy likes some achievements (oh my god the world is ending!!!), Championship Manager, Rockband 2, CoD:WaW and Glitching bastards (you know who you are…grrrr).

Just for the record after this podcast I got the Flawless Fretwork achievement in Rockband 2. Go me. Yay.
Alex again graces the airwaves. Girl on the podcast!

Any comments post on the site (it’s free) or send us an email: theguys@beatbritish.co.uk

As always if you are viewing this from somewhere else, go to the website www.beatbritish.co.uk and subscribe to the itunes feed or listen to our podcast right here on the site.

Paris