The Past and times of Yore: Elastomania, la moto elástico

This one is a fairly short review of one of the games I played throughout my schooling years, and I did play a lot, even while at school itself, yes I’ll admit it but I sincerely doubt any person out there wouldn’t have played some kind of game at school, I for one played a fair amount especially during secondary school. Some of the most prominent non-browser based ones have been Blobby Volley, Liero and its successor Soldat, there has been some great browser games too for that time but I won’t go into those. Elastomania, was probably the best non-browser based game that I have every played throughout my entire education, it had something that you just couldn’t work out from the name, or couldn’t tell from watching someone play it.

Apple!

I could imagine all our peers walking past us wondering why we’re playing this game that looks like it was modelled on a colouring book as we ever so slowly riding this gravity defying motorcycle over some small hills that looks like triangles while throwing our arms back and forth to seemingly flip ourselves up the right way. It must have infuriated them not knowing how or why we were doing this, then again %99 of the time it was us nerdy guys playing and they would have just passed it off as some losers playing some silly game , but in reality they were the ones who were missing out and if they never experienced the joy of computer games in that period of their lives they will probably never enjoy as much as we do now.

Gonna get either my tyres slashed or a haircut here.

But anyway I’m being a bit too dramatic and I suppose I’d better explain the concept first. Elastomania is a (very) 2d platformer game where you control a motorcycle with super extendy suspension and have to navigate through various obstacles collecting apples (some of which change the gravity, of course), and when you’ve collected all the apples in the level you can go and get the flower which finishes the level, and you have to do this all without hitting your head on any part of the course, simple eh? Did I mention that in order to achieve this throughout the game you’ll have to vault yourself backwards and forwards to change the bike’s angle as well as magically flip the bike horizontally so the back wheel becomes the front and vice-versa all the while dodging hazardous objects.

Ah the flower of completement, always so far out of reach.

 This all might sound a bit weird to put together so I was going to provide a helpful video of me attempting a helpful video of me doing my best attempt at the first 3 levels of Elastomania then showing you a video of the pro's doing it, but unfortunately I had a bit of trouble filming the game using fraps. Now the fascination with this game starts with just simply being able to complete the levels then once you’ve done that it goes on to trying to finish them as quickly as possible below which shows speedruns from several Elastomania “pros” at work through the first 18 levels of the game

Holy shizow this guy is smooth.

This coupled with the very popular and essential level editor led to some quite crazy level designs and even Elastomania teams and tournaments.

A fairly silly elastomania custom level.

 
Team NSB Movie

So as you can see such an odd game became quite serious for some people, not for me though, it was just something for me to do while relaxing between study and also when I had nothing to do and needed to kill some time. The best part about it for me was probably the simplicity and the physics, you need to quickly work out what angle to need to push to be able to reach the platform or land correctly.  I loved hanging upsi-down while riding along facing backwards then coming off the rail and throwing myself forward so I land wheels down. It was a such a simple concept to start with but the player (and players) made it so much more with styles of playing, best times and new maps which again proves the old saying that a good community improves a game’s longevity and popularity.

A 'spiral' styled level, their quite popular

I can’t really explain the greatness that is Elastomania by way of words movies and pictures you just simply have to try it for yourself, this game kept me occupied when needed for a long time, I could play it again and again, even just the first 8 levels of the demo before I got the full game. Although I have gone on to other things, it’s hard to describe what kind of game it was the best of, I guess it was the best when-not-at-home, non-browser game that I’ll never forget.

JD

Ahh simplicity at it's best

How do you like them apples? very much sir thank you

The Past and Times of Yore: GTA4, The Ballad of Gay Tony, Bringing back the crazy-go-nuts

Title: Grand Theft Auto IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony
Developer: Rockstar North
Publisher: Rockstar Games (Parent Company: Take2 Interactive)
Platforms: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC
Multiplayer: Up to 16 players on consoles; 32 on PC.
Website: www.rockstargames.com/theball...
Release Date: October 29, 2009 on X360; April 13, 2010 (USA) on PS3 and PC.
Rating: MA 17+ (ESRB); 18 (BBFC)

First off I will say I have already done a small review for TBOGT back in April 2011 but having recently played the game again I did want to expand on that as much as I could.

There was a time when I thought that GTA had gotten a bit more serious, that was of course when GTA4 came out. It was so great looking and smooth and the ragdoll and physics effects were awesome and the driving and shooting and overall animation and graphics were much more realistic overall, which wasn’t exactly too hard coming from San Andreas. While this newfangled animation did resolve with some ragdoll fun, most of the time I found myself trying to play mildly realistically even so much as early in the game and sometimes when I felt like it even abiding to the local street signs and traffic lights. With the release of the “Lost and the Damned” expansion this didn’t really change much, the biker gang story was just as gritty as the main GTA4 storyline. But I enjoyed the realism and playing properly though I couldn’t help thinking there was something missing.

GTA was based on gritty realism, TBOGT is safe to say is not in most regards.

When the newest expansion for GTA4 “The Ballad of Gay Tony” (TBOGT) came out thats where a lot of things changed. In contrast to the gritty underground life that was the Lost and the Damned This ‘episode’ focuses on the glitz, glamour, money and business of the Algonquin (aka Manhattan) night life, the game introduced new weapons, new vehicles, new radio tracks, new interiors, and new missions that offer a fresh way to explore Liberty City. The story starts off quite simple (in GTA terms), you are Luis Lopez, a hispanic American who has had a troubled childhood with both his friends and his family and has been through some rough times with drug gangs and jail and has just recently survived a bank robbery as an innocent bystander in which we all would know which bank robbery it was and who the culprits were. I love the fact that the main characters of the expansions have missions that intertwine with the ones from Niko who was the main protagonist in GTA4. So anyway Luis is now in a business partnership with Tony Prince aka “Gay Tony” who is a nightclub entrepreneur with links to the Ancelotti Crime Syndicate. Gay Tony operates two nightclubs in Algonquin - Hercules and Maisonette 9, he is also a drug addict, with many debts to pay off, and he relies on Luis as his bodyguard/business partner.

Tony and Luis hold a tenuous partnership

The first mission started out pretty normal, you drive to the two clubs and see Luis and Tony together and got to know the two personalities. I did notice that Rockstar had added new “clubber” citizens with the appropriate clothes and I have to say they did a pretty good job of simulating a nightclub, the music was there, the new radio stations and tracks were especially good in the club scene, the alcohol, the people, the vibe there was even people outside the venue drunk and throwing up. It became apparent in the second mission that this was not going to start off slow at all, you travel with Tony to the golf driving range where you take shots at a union official who is tied to a golf cart before his mafia friends arrive and you jump into your own golf cart for a short guns-blazing-golf-cart-chase through the city. After that things quickly spiral out of control and you’re doing jobs all over the place for eccentric millionaires, annoying pricks and powerful criminals alike to save Tony’s skin, things that involve blowing up speedboats with sticky bombs, stealing armed helicopters from luxury yachts, skydiving out of planes, jumping off buildings and stealing a moving train carriage using a skycrane.

Just a usual day at the office

All the side missions this time around are all just as crazy, they involve helping your friends Armando and Henrique steal drug shipments, base jumps from buildings, cage fighting and triathlons involving helicopters, speedboats and fast cars, you can also enjoy the clubs if you with, either by doing the dancing mini-game or working there as the manager occasionally being called out to do a favor for a celebrity of some sort. One of the main things that adds to the action is the introduction of some fairly ridiculous new weapons and vehicles which include:

Like Planet Rock!, we just don't stop we gonna drive you nuts!

• A longer more silly looking handgun.

• The AA-12 automatic shotgun with explosive rounds no less

• The P90 Assault SMG

• A Golden SMG that has a ridiculous 1000 rpm fire rate

• A heavy M249 machine gun

• A chunky looking advanced sniper rifle with laser sight.

• The return of the sticky bombs and grenade launcher from the Lost and the Damned as well as an armed helicopter with chainguns and rocket launchers and last but not least a SWAT tank with a full on assault cannon. If that doesn’t spell chaos then I don’ know what will.

Budda budda budda budda! kablamo! wachow! badda bing bong!

When playing GTA San Andreas it was hard to believe CJ went from a low-life gangster in LA to being a part owner of a Las Vegas Casino and The Ballad of Gay Tony does seem a lot like the time CJ spent in the Nevada desert doing seemingly secret-agent style missions. I’ll always love the whole “starting out in a new city with nothing and working up to something” style of story, but it was somewhat fun to be “starting out with lots of things and trying to stay alive” sort of story and throughout the missions there were a few times when I did think to myself “wow how are we going to get out of this one” as Luis struggles to deal with all the problems he has going for himself with his troubled mother, his friends Armando and Henrique, his suicidal stalker ex-girlfriend Margot, and not to mention all the people Tony has either pissed off or borrowed money from with his drug-fuelled antics.

Luis' friends Armando and Henrique aren't exactly supportive of him trying to reform his life though either does he the way he's looking with that fully automatic shotgun "Grrrrrrr"

I had only one occasion where I could experience the multiplayer and it was fun, but not as fun as it could have been, I played a bit at a LAN we we used the Simple Trainer to spawn cars, obstacles and generally cause some ruckus but what I really wanted was to do multiplayer base jumping and skydiving. I was really interested to see if they had a game mode where you could do the triathlon race with the helicopters, boats, cars and nitro with your friends but looking at the multiplayer modes unfortunately this wasn't the case though as you'll see below I did find some press screenshots of it so I don't whether it was originally in there or what.


"This ain't checkers" Triathlon Mission with Mori

Why wasn't this a multiplayer game moooooooooooode!

Overall I found The Ballad of Gay Tony a pretty fun experience, it brings back a few of the crazy things from San Andreas that were missing from GTA4 and really finishes off the game with a bang (literally!) It pays tribute to what the original game was built on freedom, chaos and thoughtless crime. This ‘episode’ has vice, sex, action and explosions out the wazoo and would satisfy anyone who was disappointed with the simplification of the original game. Sadly the multiplayer was never very active on PC at least though I thoroughly recommend for any fans of the GTA series.

JD

 
The Ballad of Gay Tony Debut Trailer

Menergy!

The Past and Times of Yore: GTA4, The Lost and the Damned, blacktop rollin'

Also Known As: Grand Theft Auto: The Lost and Damned, Grand Theft Auto IV: Episodes from Liberty City
Also on: PS3, X360
Genre: Compilation
Publisher: Rockstar Games
Developer: Rockstar North

I may have mentioned this ”expansion” in a previous post but only very briefly, The Lost and the Damned does deserve more recognition then just a few lines in a post mainly about the other one. I had never really bothered purchasing any of the previous GTA ‘Episode’ i.e. the previous Liberty City stories or the Vice City stories but because they were given such high praises by both my friends and the critics and also because GTA4 has been one of my favourite games ever, so I had to comply. GTA4 had a lot of intertwining storylines in fact it could have made 2 or 3 more ‘spinoff’ games based on just that game world alone as they are a great way of getting more play out of a game rather than just doing the main storyline again and again.

Johnny Klebitz and his custom "Hexer" bike which is new to GTA I might add as well as a whole heap more

Anyway, the Lost and the Damned is the story behind a Motorcycle gang who featured in GTA4, the protagonist is Johnny, a veteran member of the gang and it’s Vice President the story basically tells of the returning of Billy, the reckless and volatile club president and the violence and chaos that ensues both inside the club and with the clubs main rivals: The Angels of Death. You may remember Johnny from such GTA4 missions as ‘Blow your Cover’ and ‘Museum Piece’ and yes you do go through those missions again from Johnny’s point of view. I must admit though, the times you briefly see Johnny in those scenes he seems quite a bit different from what he is in the instance it’s almost like Johnny was just another crazy friend-of-a-friend that Niko meets but now he’s the protagonist and therefore one of the only calm and collected characters in the game. Apart from the members of the lost motorcycle club there is a few new faces but most of the characters that Johnny interacts with outside the club are characters that you have seen before.

From left to right some of "The Lost MC" members: Terry, Angus, Brian, Jimmy and Johnny

You start in the Alderney Island this time around largely based around the Lost Clubhouse situated there. The main difference that The Lost and the Damned (TLAD) has to GTA4 is that throughout most of the game you will be riding a motorcycle. This is possibly the main reason I enjoy this game as I loved the motorcycles you had in GTA4 and this one gives the same and much more, motorcycles give a different feel than cars and apparently you could even notice that when you drove cars with Johnny that he didn’t handle them as well as Niko did and vice-versa with the bikes. Almost every mission involved bikes in some way including gang wars while riding with your crew and motorcycle thefts for profit even the racing missions where you have a baseball bat and could knock other opponents off their bikes (which was immense fun I can assure you). One of the problems though is that sometimes the slightest thing on the road, for example a piece of wood can have odd results, sometimes you just run over it but other times it launches you 5m in the air in a full on frontflip often resulting in you crashing and losing the race, but I guess it’s all the more spectacular. The episodes games are obviously fairly short (only a third of the missions available in GTA4) but there’s still a decent amount of fun to be had, there’s the usual line of side missions and random encounters throughout the story, Congressman Thomas Stubbs who you didn’t see in the previous game makes an appearance and provides some comic relief from the otherwise dark and gritty storyline.

Being on a motorcycle and riding with others on motorcycles, I just can't get enough

Checkpoints are a new feature in the game which allow you to continue a mission from different points rather than starting again. This time around you can call on your biker buddies Terry and Clay to come help you on certain missions in which the way they help you changes each time, sometimes giving you in instructions for tactics or to set up ambushes (who would have thought?) also your ‘The Lost’ gang members will gain experience and be better at fighting. You can also use your fellow gang members for delivery of guns and bikes if you may happen to lose your motorcycle in some way and god forbid you don’t want to be seen driving a car. As well as the new motorcycles (and some cars) that were included in the game there are a few new types of guns including a very useful automatic pistol, a very powerful but short range sawed off shotgun, an even more powerful rapid fire assault shotgun a grenade launcher, pipe bombs and pool cues (of course).There is thankfully new music around this time to give a more biker feel to things, I especially love listening to “You’re going to Hell” by Alice Cooper. 

The Sawn-off Shotgun, very powerful, as long as you're only two metres away or less

As I said before I loved riding bikes in GTA4 and that’s what makes this one so good for me, it’s nothing complicated just good old gang wars, in fact it’s probably even less action packed then GTA4, not to mention TBOGT which is a veritable orgy of explosions. There’s something to be said about cruising down the highway on your chopper with the sunset in the background and music on your, er stereo, it’s something I really want to do if I ever have enough money for it. The Lost and the Damned is essential if you’ve played and liked Grand Theft Auto 4 as it’s the same city just a different story and cast and if you happen to like Motorcycles it’s even better.

JD

I can apparently backflip a motorcycle without trying, or meaning to in the first place

My Usual Spiel: Saints Row the Third , Gang-bangin' rocket shootin' good taste abusin' fun

Release Date: November 15, 2011

Also Known As: Saints Row 3, Saint's Row 3 [common misspelling], Saints Row: The 3rd
Also on: X360, PS3
Genre: Action
Publisher: THQ
Developer: Volition 

Unlike most of my gaming compatriots, I am one of those people who enjoy the first couple of levels of a game, you know the ones, you’ve gone through all that intro stuff and have just started out on your own (or not, depending on the game) and the area (and even enemies) usually seems somewhat friendly compared to the rest of the game at least. My absolute favorite kind of game is when you’re an aspirant of some kind, be it soldier, gangster or Jedi as long as it’s something to do with starting off from not much at all (maybe even from the gutter) and slowly rising up to greatness, but to be honest sometimes I’m just happy as a normal pleb of a fighter with only has access to basic weapons and abilities, it’s just so much more simple when you’re starting out, then when you’ve turned into this unstoppable hero who morning consists of saving the United States of America from a foreign power and afternoon consists of saving your home planet from alien invaders . I have this feeling a lot more particularly when I start a game for the second time or more, it’s just the fact that you know what to do and have a plan about how you’re going to play the game differently this time, this is especially true with MMORPG’s where once I know what I’m doing I can work out exactly what to do with the next character I make and of course there’s a hell of a lot of things to learn when you start a new MMORPG and even more so if it’s your first one.

Aw hell it's in flames already? mah country and also planet need me mo then ever!

 One thing I am never fond of thought. are the short “tastes” that they force on you at the start of a game, whether their flashbacks or prequels or important backstory I may begin to sound like a grumpy old gamer but I don’t want to act these things out, I don’t want to be thrust onto the top of a speeding train with no explanation of what I’m doing there and have some random weapon thrust into my hands with no other explanation of what it is or how to use it properly other the screen prompts or to be also thrust (it seems like the perfect word for this situation) into some supercar where I have to race another opponent and very high speeds while being chased by the Po-Leece when I’ve just started then game. Of course many could argue that there’s nothing wrong with that and as an experienced gamer I should know what to do (which I do) and also that I should be grateful that the game gives me such an experience early on. Even so, I am absolutely fine in showing me these things in a cutscene, I like to start off slow and I don’t like to be shoved into some out-of-control scenario where I have to dash around like a madman guns blazing in order to survive to be able to get the “real” starting area.

But strangely enough, in this particular instance I didn’t mind it at all…..

In Saints Row the third you do start with a brief cutscene which shows your gang don their ‘disguises’ which happen to giant mascot heads of one of the gang members and attempt a bank holdup which doesn’t go too good right from the start, then immediately your shooting down throngs of fashionably dressed guards, then SWAT teams before your buddy in a crane helicopter comes to heave out the actual vault itself with you on top of it all the while you’re fighting off SWAT teams and attack choppers one handed with a machine gun. I’m not going to tell you what happens after that as I’d otherwise spoil the brilliant first mission but I will tell you it involves an aeroplane and can assure you it gets crazier, whatever chaffe I had against throwing me in the deep end was obliterated by a number of things mainly the overall feel of the game even when you first start is both wacky and chaotic which suits the graphical style and both the gameplay and also because I was having so much fun. This isn’t a game where you worry about doing it right (all the time) you just aim to have as much fun as possible while getting the job done, you’re not a rookie or a basic soldier pleb you’re the (semi) invincible ass kickin supremo gangsta and what makes things better in my view is that you technically one of the bad guys, the leader of the bad guys in fact so this makes what you do more justified in a sense, but obviously there are guys badder then you which you are required to eliminate, after all you can’t go around killing people who don’t deserve it all the time can you?

Who wouldn't want to be Johnny Gat?

The story (yes there is a story) to Saints Row is relatively easy to get your head around, basically you are the Leader of the 3^rd street saints, the bankjob goes wrong and pretty soon you’re in the hands of giant crime syndicate, called The Syndicate… when is split into 3 separate gangs who control certain parts of the City of Steelport. So basically the game revolves around a giant free-roam city main story missions involve you escaping the Syndicate and doing certain key missions and eliminating the three gang leaders along with your gangster buddies and everyone you come in contact with along the way, but really that’s just the driving force behind the chaos oh so, much chaos. Along with the story missions there is a multitude of other activities you can do which include your usual side missions like causing as much damage as possible in the time limit either by yourself or with a tank but it gets crazier when you start purposefully throwing yourself into traffic to claim insurance money and driving a high profile client and escort around the neighborhood while trying to evade TV vans hoping to get a “scoop” and even more bizarre when you have to escort a tiger, yes tiger in your car. 

Sit in a chopper shoot enemies, protect friends, simple enough?

As well as that there are the usual assassination missions, car theft missions and gang ‘operations’ that you have to “interrupt”. There are of course various shop in the game that get wackier each one you find, from the Saints Row gear outlets to the “Let’s Pretend” costume store, there are gun stores and car garages scattered across the city and what makes these better is that you can modify almost any gun or vehicle in the game, this is especially great if you want to turn your favorite vehicle into a Saints coloured cruiser. Over the course of the game you ‘acquire’ various gang hideouts (though you’re doing anything but ‘hiding’ in them) which can store cars and sometimes water vehicles and aircraft.

Gangstas in Spaaaaaaace!

Your main point of focus, is none other than your phone (wow, how true to the era), through your phone you can pretty much do everything inside the game, call your gang homies for backup or vehicle delivery, checking your bank account to transfer more laundered city money, and the usual things like accessing the various side missions and the city map. One thing Saints Row does introduce is the upgrades section in your phone, which allow you to spend money to upgrade just about everything, inc personal upgrades such as more health or sprint time, weapon upgrades such as faster reload or blast damage or gang member upgrades such as better weapons or even have them fly in valkyrie style in an attack chopper. Speaking of the weapons and upgrades your arsenal is about as crazy as it can get you not only have a range of oversize and modified pistols, shotguns and machineguns from almost the very start you have access to sky launching missile system which you can eliminate tanks in one hit and not to mention the homing rocket launcher and airstike marker which are in the “special” weapon category. The melee weapons as you could probably guess include a giant rubber dildo called the “penetrator” and various other objects including a giant electrified shock hammer.

Your phone, it's useful, just like in real life

Gameplay and controls in Saints Row is pretty basic if you’ve ever played Grand Theft Auto, or most other Third person games for that matter, you run you shoot, you drive cars etc, what you do and what controls you have vary greatly depending on what you are doing, especially in the story missions when you can be doing anything from flying a futuristic attack jet to shooting enemies with a lazer hand cannon in a virtual reality tron-like world. There’s this kind of slapstick way your character moves and jumps around especially the “Fred Flintstone” way of entering and stealing cars which is kind of hilarious.  I found with the vehicle handling it’s almost impossible to drive things slowly and carefully though technically I was using the keyboard so I had the whole foot to the floor full lock or nothing thing with the keys going on, which is one of the things that really irks me about playing games where your half driving/walking. The graphics are as you’d expect though slightly more cartoony to preserve the feel of the game rather than having the dark gritty faces of GTA, I did notice that even under lenient settings the graphics did still seem to chug a bit when out in the open city but that didn’t matter much, I suspect that the graphics could have been mildly worse and it still wouldn’t have mattered we’d all be still having so much fun, or maybe there’s a barometer these days, but anyway…
 

I like this shot cause it epitomizes how you move around in Saints Row the Third, you don't really seem to have much control of your body (or vehicle) you just flail through the air

So at this point you might be thinking: “So yeh, this is basically just like GTA” well you wouldn’t be wrong, it has pretty much all the usual nuances that we’ve come to expect from a game that this similar but the key factor that Saints Row the Third has is craziness, lunacy, chaos, ludicrisoty if that’s even a word, whichever you use Saint Row embraces the silly and does it very well, this is coming from someone who hasn’t played the first two games, but could probably imagine what they were like. Another thing that Saints Row embraces is senseless violence and sleaze, whether it’s stealing shipping crates full of illegal immigrant hookers or smashing pedestrians bodies to pieces with giant pressure powered fists. This of course isn’t new to GTA but it never takes it as un-seriously and in spades as Saints Row, there was so much comical violence and death and so many lurid sights,  images and references that it’s a wonder this game ever got released, but with kids these days (who probably play it as young as 8) you can never know.

They need some lamposts like that down Melbourne CBD

When people ask me what the game is like, I like to say that it’s ”GTA on drugs”, and I think that’s pretty true it embraces the  silly rather than trying to be serious and have the player have to make their own fun. I never had a problem with GTA ‘becoming’ serious with the release of GTA4 I just found my own fun along the way, but in Saints Row you just simply cannot play with a either play straight or with a straight face and I can happily say I did laugh out loud, not to something unexpected and funny I did myself, but to a scripted event in the game. I found it thrilling just waiting to see how my character and his friends were going to get out of their current situation and can be honest to say that unlike some missions from GTA in the past, there wasn’t a moment in the story missions where I felt it was getting boring or repetitive (note: murdering people in the most comical way possible apparently never gets boring).

This was the first ever game where I chose to wear a parachute at all times, not out of style, you just never knew what you were going to fall from next. That said it sure beats the lift

SO, if you happen to like the Grand Theft Auto series but though it needed a bit more craziness, lunacy, chaos, senseless violence, sleaze and debauchery, objectification of women, public servant and political mockery, gang warfare, mass egotism, bad taste and general disregard for human life of any kind, then this is the game for you….  which is basically what? all of us.

everyday i'm parachutin'

My Usual Spiel: We Love Katamari & Katamari Forever - Keep on rollin'‏

Also Known As: We Love Katamari, Katamari Damacy 2

Exclusively on: PlayStation 2
Genre: Third-Person Action
Publisher: Namco Bandai
Developer: Namco Bandai

Release Date: September 20, 2005

When I ask people if they’ve heard of Katamari Damacy, most of them look at me like I’m insane (more than usual) of course I couldn’t really blame them for not knowing, the Katamari series has been going since 2004 but has remained (and probably always will remain) a very Japanese game as evident from the intro sequence to We Love Katamari into on the Playstation 2 in fact all I have to do when showing people the game is mention that it’s Japanese and they understand, slightly. I really don’t know how I originally came across the series, I think I was looking for something out of the ordinary something more puzzlesque, something that only the Japanese could think of and basically I just decided “yeh this looks good”, I can’t really remember owning any other games of this type on PS2 or even on PS1, it was one of the more bizarre purchases that I made and I’m glad I did, otherwise I never would have been given the chance to remake all the planets and stars by rolling up objects on earth then vaulting it into space.

The intro, I still show it to people just to get their reaction

The Katamari series has a simple concept, that’s simple in the way of the gameplay is simple don’t ask me about the finer points of the storyline or characters, this game is very Japanese, that’s all you need to know. The basic way to play is that you control the Prince who is the son of the King of all Cosmos or one of his Cousins. While playing you push around a Katamari which is some kind of magical ball that sticks to things it rolls over collecting them on the way in a snowball like effect, the Katamari ball in itself can come in many different colours shapes and sizes to start off with, the Prince and his cousins are only 5cm tall, but are able to push around a Katamari that has grown to the size of a landmass. The storylines have varied over the years, a sort of recurring theme is that the King does something silly then ends up destroying all the stars in the sky then gets the Prince and his cousins to roll up Katamari’s on earth in order for him to shoot them into the sky and turn them into stars. The levels basically consist of rolling up a Katamari to the determined size in the determined amount of time, but there can be variants on this including rolling up as fast as possible or rolling up only certain things.

For example: that rabbit is too big and we've bounced off it

The actual rolling of the Katamari is quite simple, you just use both the Playstation thumbsticks to move the ball in the direction you want and you can also jump over and around the Katamari to do a quick turn and have various pausing camera angles available, though sometimes when you are in tight spaces other objects do get in the way of your view. Basically it’s up to you to judge whether something can be rolled up or not, most of the time it’s trial and error as you bump into things that are too big and sometimes lose items that are already “stuck on”. As you collect bigger and bigger items the Katamari grows until you possible can’t see the original ball or your character pushing it (well they are only 5cm tall aren’t they?)

The gameplay, much easier to understand in action, can you spot the Prince and the cousins under the Katamari rolling it?

My first Katamari Game was on the PS2, this was entitled“We Love Katamari” this was the sequel to the first Katamari Damacy. The storyline in We love Katamari was largely based around the people or‘fans’ of Katamari rolling possibly from the previous game, I really don’t know how you can be a fan of being rolled up by a giant inwardly magnetic ball and repeatedly crushed into the ground but of course I’m not here to judge. I really enjoyed this title all the way from the main menu to the final credits, the storyline was wacky but believable, the gameplay and learning curve was solid, the simple graphics suited the game fine with the trademark colourful blocky style, the replayability was interesting in a way that it made you strive to get better results rather than starting a new game over again. I really liked the way you controlled the Prince or another cousin and you ran around a meadow which served as a menu system and you talked to the fans of Katamari Damacy who talked to you about how Katamari Damacy has somewhere influenced their lives or how they need help and you would be flown up to the King who would give you your task whether it be make a Katamari that is big, enough, rolled up fast enough, made of the right material or just do whatever the hell he says which can be anything from rolling up a flaming Katamari to make a campfire, rolling up students at a school to send them home or rolling up as many animals as you can.

Animalz! we needz da animals!

By playing these levels unlocks a multitude of other things i.e. more levels obviously but there are also Cousins and Presents that can be rolled up, any cousin who is rolled up the first time can be used as a playable character. The presents however are used to dress up whichever cousin you are using at the time, the presents come in 3 different categories, head (headphones/crown), face (long nose/mask) and body (guitar/horsey). Which Cousin you use or presents you are wearing makes no difference to the way you play it is purely cosmetic. Basically you unlock more fans of Katamari from Sumo wrestlers to old ladies with a variety of different ways or reasons to roll a Katamari until you eventually make enough planets and stars to roll up the sun, as you do.

The Select Meadow, most unique menu system I've seen

We love Katamari was great game and a great introduction for me to the Katamari series, I had heaps of fun and put a lot of effort into it and think I did the best that I could, there hasn’t been many games where I’ve tried this hard to get the best scores I could and I think this one had the spirit. Similar to Minecraft I would recommend it to anyone, they might be put off by the initial look of it at first, but after they play it they just might like it.

Also Known As: Katamari Damacy Tribute, Katamari Tribute

Exclusively on: PlayStation 3
Genre: Action
Publisher: Namco Bandai
Developer: Namco Bandai

Release Date: September 24, 2009

I was quite surprised when I saw that this game had been released, though I understood why when I realized the game had never come out in Australia. I only heard about it 3 or 4 weeks ago and had ordered it online. I was excited that I had actually found a PS3 version of the Katamari series as my only option currently on the PS3 was NOBY NOBY BOY from the same creator (more on this at some point). When I found that this game was actually a‘Tribute’ or a collection for the original Katamari Damacy and the We love Katamari that I had played on PS2 I wasn’t too worried as I didn’t mind replaying the old levels that I’d played and I was eager to play the new levels from the original.

Yes you can roll up the entire solar system

 Though this was the same Katamari as before there were a few things that did annoy me first of all, the game's basic graphical style is cel-shaded, now this looks ok (it does cause slowdown in some places which is kind of odd) but if I want to switch to the classic graphical version I should have the option right from the start. In Katamari forever you have to randomly unlock the other graphical versions which  and so far I've completed most of the game and have only found the 'wooden' style and even then you can only play the other style once you have played the level once already. This really disappointed me as I was not a fan of the cel-shading from the start.

The new cel-shaded style

The classic style

The 4 graphical styles avaliable including wooden and comic.

The storyline of this escapade was that one day the King was teaching the Prince how to do a super jump then he jumped too high and hit his head on a meteor knocking him unconscious.The Prince and the cousins then decided to build a Roboking in order to do the King's work, but the Roboking malfunctioned and you guessed it, destroyed all the stars in the solar system yet again. So basically you do missions for two kings, Roboking's missions revolve around the usual making the Katamari as big as possible or a certain size whereas the King's level are more object or special process based i.e only picking up animals (as before) or only picking up hot things. The King is dreaming so all the objects are in shades of grey until you pick them up and he remembers them which makes things kind of hard in some special missions.The storybook menu layout is pretty good though not all of the cousins will be on the screen at the same time.

One of the menu screens, this one shows the cousins and presents screen where you can select which cousin you want to play and what they are wearing.

 Some chnages to the game was the Prince hop where you can now jump with the Katamari to reach higher places and the Kings and Roboking's heart and broken heart which pulled items toward you, so you had to work out when to use them at the best possible time. I found the levels to be varying in difficulty, there was some where I struggled to do well or even complete whereas others I could ace by just doing my usual thing but the new content and variety made it good enough. The music was fine although a lot of it was remixes of the past songs from We Love Katamari which didn't sound that good.

A broken heart powerup.

We love Katamari was adequate, it was good to play some of the levels from the original Katamari on PS2 and the PS3 definitely needed a Katamari game for anyone to discover the series. Despite a few shortcomings that I found it was fun and entertaining enough to warrant my purchase and I do concede when you buy another game of the same series it is not as good as the first, but between the two games I love Katamari the most.

naaa na na na na na na naaa.....

The Past and times of Yore: Vietcong & Fist Alpha, I give a nod to US forces

One thing that makes me sad about doing these reviews for past games is that I sometimes never get around to playing them again, it would be wrong to review a game that you haven’t played for a decent amount of time which I think is what happened with my Battlefield 3 review, I had only just finished the singleplayer and hadn’t played that much of the multiplayer and apparently it did show with feedback from some people I guess I was just in a hurry because people wanted to see the review and I wanted to deliver. This is not the case with Vietcong however I have played the singleplayer and multiplayer extensively in the past just not that recently, usually with‘The Past and time of Yore’ reviews I have replayed the game and wrote the review within a short period of time. To be honest it’s only because of the quiet period at work brought on by Christmas and New Years that I decided to write this review as my time at home is currently filled with Test Drive Unlimited 2 which I have previously reviewed and of course The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim which I possibly intend to finish (to some degree) before I write the review.

 Release Date: March 26, 2003

Exclusively on: PC
Genre: First-Person Shooter
Publisher: Gathering of Developers (aka GOD Games)
Developer: Pterodon Software

It’s been awhile since I’ve played Vietcong, and will probably be some time before I play it again, if ever, and this isn’t because I don’t particularly like to play the game of course, it’s because I love it and have possibly played it a bit too much however I have tried to replay the Fist Alpha expansion with some success but did not finish due to some strange bugs happening with it. You may have heard me mention it in my Battlefield 3 review, I did have a lot to talk about in regards to the Vietcong’s singleplayer mode which greatly outshone Battlefield 3’s even by today’s standards but I’ll get into that later. Vietcong was one of the first games I ever played online, the first possibly being Starcraft or even Quake 2, I’m honestly not sure but as I’ve said before it was the first one where I was serious, serious as in I was in a clan as was online at specific times in order to play for “wars” against other clans, Vietcong was a great game in a way that it had a great multiplayer and a great singleplayer which is a great achievement for an FPS. I think the first time I played it was a friends Lan and instantly I was amazed by the authentic Vietnam war style and very realistic (2003) graphics. The only First Person Shooters (FPS) I had played before this were Doom and Quake (of course) which were all sci-fi alien invasion shoot-em ups and were obviously not based on anything real whereas Vietcong was my first taste of a realistic tactical shooterwhich would eventually lead to many more.

Vietcong Main Menu

Vietcong, as you probably may have guessed already is a realistic shooter set during the Vietnam War, you play as some American army dude called Steve R. Hawkins who along with 3 other American army dudes and 1 South Vietnamese army dude (ARVN) you live in a dirty camp and pretty much every day go into the jungle and kick ass and kill commies, well that’s the basic jist of it. Of course the storyline is a bit more in depth than that, you arrive at Nui Pek camp in the middle of the jungles of Vietnam as the new sergeant, replacing the previous one who had been shot dead by the good ol Vietcong. The Fist Alpha prequel which had a similar setup to the first game you play as Sergeant Douglas (the man Hawkins replaced) and you had the same team except for Nhut, who joins later once the previous guide is killed. The story this time is about how your whole team including the Captain moved from the Plei Ku base and constructed Nui Pek and the events that led up to them destroying a major Vietcong base in Cambodia. I loved the opening scene of the first game where you were travelling in the helicopter while talking to Hornster, one of the squad and were able to look around during the whole thing, and when you land and the usually army banter happens between two of the soldiers, and you are able to walk around and take a look at the camp and meet the rest of the crew. 

The Nui Pek US Special Forces Camp

After that you soon meet your commanding officer and settle in to your new room/office and then after some shooting practice with your new best friend Hornster, then you were ready for your first mission along with el Capitano. Vietcong has a great storyline, you play as Hawkins for the whole game a new sergeant going into a new base during the Vietnam war, you have your office and quarters where you can read your diary, previous mission reports and many other documents you also have a firing range you can go to and pick any weapon you had unlocked or picked up to test out and take on the next mission, (even enemy weapons) then when you’re ready you read and accepted the mission brief and there is almost always a meeting in the briefing room which was heaps of fun to watch before you went out on your mission and on several occasions you could walk around the whole base. 

The Weapons Room at the later stages where pretty much all of the weapons have been unlocked and are available. you could select any weapons (even Vietcong) pick it up, try it out at the shooting range then take it on a  mission.

As far as I have seen, very few modern shooters have that sort of thing, It took almost half an hour of playing before you got into the actual shooting of enemies and even then it was only about 3 or 4 until you get to the next mission and go through the whole walking through the jungle thing again until you see something, of course this is the Vietnam war, and that’s what things were like. Modern Warfare and the Battlefield series boots you right into the action immediately, I’m thinking I now prefer games like the Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis which was very much like Vietcong in the slow singleplayer story mode sense, and come to think about it. I’ll have to try out the new one sometime too. I really haven’t gotten into many shooters since Vietcong, I basically followed on from Vietcong with the Battlefield series starting with Battlefield 2, which I still have in high regard as my favourite multiplayer first person shooter ever. Of course Battlefield was all about multiplayer and no singleplayer, Vietcong has what I would think a healthy balance, I must have played Vietcong’s singleplayer over and over again eventually trying to perfect each mission as what started as quite a hard game eventuated into something quite easy and nostalgic, this was mainly due to the fact that my hardware upgraded over the years.

*insert Flight of the Valkyries here"

Graphically Vietcong looked absolutely awesome for its time, I’ll never forget the first time me and the team made our way into the dense jungle, with birds flying out of the way and just the tense atmosphere of the whole thing. It was such a change for me from playing things like Doom and Quake which are as stealthy and quiet as a bangin pots and pans parade and about as realistic as Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X is to a real flight simulator so this was a welcome change I suppose. Of course little did I know that I pretty much wouldn’t be going back to the days of the running rocket launching jumpathon, no siree bob, from then on most of the FPS games that had come out were based around the tactical shooter model which varies through World War 2 to modern day wars. Vietcong was the first game I played that pretty much required you to use your weapons iron sights which were required in harder levels and were taken out entirely in most multiplayer servers which used the ‘Vietnam’ difficulty skill which removed pretty much all objects on the HUD as well as the crosshair. 

Back then, scenes like this blew me away

This along with the gritty weapon sounds and blood splatters made for a great experience, one of the best being that a lot of the time you couldn’t even see your enemy, this would have frustrated the hell out of more action style FPS game players and you found yourself shooting in the general direction and hoping you’d hit something (aka spray and pray). In singleplayer your squad consists of you as Sergeant Hawkins, a calm and common sensed Medic named Crocker, a nervous but straightforward Radioman named Defort, A black friendly Engineer named Bronson, a hot-headed Machinegunner named Hornster and an enigmatic Pointman who is played by the South Vietnamese ‘Nhut‘ all of which have their own personalities which add immensely to the situation with either situational character or humour. It’s hard to explain how well the singleplayer holds together with Hawkins experience in Nui Pek and the surrounding area I guess it’s just a great way to tell a story.

The Team from left to right, Crocker, Defort, Hornster, Nhut, Bronson

Hawkins aka you, you can also see some LLDB (Vietnamese SF) behind Hornster

Vietcong was one of my first fortes into online gaming, (the first possibly being Starcraft) one interesting fact being that this is the time I coined my usual gamer name; JDman. As you could guess my time online was quite different to the singleplayer as you were fighting actual people, the main game mode played was Capture the Flag (CTF) where you either played on the US or Vietcong team and tried to steal the enemies flag from their base and bring it back to yours. Two things I think the multiplayer in Vietcong did best was the two sides and the classes, for one the two different sides had completely different weapons this kind of thing was unheard of in Counterstrike of course in Vietcong this was because of the reasonable amount of historical accuracy as the Vietcong had mostly Russian weapons and the American’s had their own, this did keep things at a bit of a disadvantage at times but I think it worked. 

Also the classes true to the singleplayer you could play as the soldier with the largest array of weapons, the medic who could heal other players with a limited selection of weapons, the engineer who could place traps such as claymores and tripwire grenades and had access to shotguns, the radioman who could call down artillery on certain places of the map, the machinegunner who had access to the heaviest weaponry and the sniper who of course had access to the longest range weapons. I loved this setup and played a medic most of the time which most people did not and it was heaps of fun to be able to heal myself and others, and otherwise do something other than killing in an FPS game and this was a big moment for me. This might sound silly but person-on-person killing in FPS is not my forte so you could understand why I’ve strayed away from games such as Counterstrike and Call of Duty and I constantly find new ways of helping the team while indirectly killing them. Though this is much easier in the Battlefield series then it was in Vietcong.

Multiplayer Capture the Flag Game Spawn Screen for VC, note the limited weapons for Medic

It wasn’t long before I was introduced to a clan. Clans in Vietcong were made up of players who had banded together to form a team either out of online or real-life friendship and the purpose of these clans was to have scheduled “wars” with other clans, which sometimes included “training nights” this was quite a weird experience for me (and even weirder explaining it to my parents) as it was almost like playing a sport, except it was played using a computer and the‘sport’ was killing people. This started with simple messaging over MSN Messenger then went on to actually talking to people using a microphone and the Teamspeak software chatting with people I had not even met, some of which from other countries. Over the years I was in clans called “Band of Brothers (BB)” “Aus Nite Crew -=(ANC)=-“ and “Warcorps (VV)” which eventually led into Battlefield (until ADP) and WoW and as you can see each had their own “tag” that you put in front of your name. 

A score display of one of the largest battles I ever had, 2 clans vs another 2 clans

I met a lot of new people during this many I did manage to meet in real life and got introduced to web forums and of course internet drama and clan politics which frankly I think are pretty interesting and sometimes funny and don’t bother me much. I tried many times to get people to play different maps and different game modes i.e. “Real War” which was a point capture mode and a map that was based on a singleplayer mission that was almost entirely thick jungle. This experience led to me driving reasonably long distances to actually meet up with my ‘clanmates’ or the people I played the game with at LAN parties, this was the first time I ever did this and honestly it was scary once you think about it, but always had a great time once I was there and Vietcong is one of the best LAN games around.

Me at my first lan with people from many different clans

Once the Fist Alpha expansion was released things really got started for example there were a few extra guns and a few extra maps to keep things interesting, and also more multiplayer game modes. The thing that made most of the difference of course was the custom made multiplayer maps, these added a whole new flavor to the same old thing, and I enjoyed having many ‘wars’on these special and fun maps Multiplayer was indeed a fascinating and fun experience and kept me going for a long time, you don’t know how challenging a game is until you played the multiplayer against actual people and there are many different aspect you can add to the equation for example you can hide and they don’t know where you are, and also the general teamwork and playing with genuinely friendly people. After Fist Alpha, Vietcong never had any real content after that, there was Red Dawn, which was basically just a new fairly long singleplayer mission along with some new maps. And there was also the downloadable custom map mode and pack made by the community. The sequel to Vietcong, Vietcong 2 came out in 2005 but to my dismay was poorly received by the rest of the community and was never indulged with clans or warfare, at least in Australia which I felt was a shame , as I did enjoy the multiplay and singleplayer, though I admit it did lack the quality and overall experience of the first but that’s a story for another time.

For Vietnam!

Vietcong I can say was definitely my best experience of singleplayer First Person Shooter to date, just missing out on the multiplayer by a worthy opponent. Vietcong multiplayer has pretty much died now in Australia at least, but don’t get me wrong, Vietcong had one of the best multiplayer experiences out there and that’s the reason why it built up such a strong community that lasted quite a while and one which I was glad to be part of it was what got me into multiplayer games and the general community even more then Starcraft did. It wasn’t too long ago that I played the both of them, but that was probably the last time, I’d be worried if I played again that it would start to get stale, but in this case I wouldn’t be so sure. So if ever you’re at a LAN or store and you have a chance to play or pick up a copy of the game, please do, I can’t guarantee but I’m pretty certain you won’t regret it.

JD

A life changing experience.