Deep pockets, 007

I was just playing the GoldenEye Reloaded demo on los Xbox - rather enjoyed it, I'd heard it was rubbish. (Although my enjoyment might be partly because I only played the N64 original for about two minutes fourteen years ago, so I didn't really have anything to compare it to.)

But something that amused me was that I got genuinely confused for a minute by the fact that Bondface could pick up more than two guns at once. Like, whoah. That odd little mechanic introduced by Halo has got so pervasive that it didn't occur to me that a recent major FPS release might not use it. I don't even like the mechanic! And yet I was startled by its omission.

It reminded me of the nice article in the Observer yesterday by Lucy Prebble - she pointed out that when playing L.A. Noire she was surprised by the fact that the player character, a cop in '40s Los Angeles, isn't corrupt and the game doesn't want you to play him in a corrupt way. It's a sign of how some tropes and concepts get so deeply ingrained for one reason or another that it's quite shocking when they're deliberately not used.

On a not-really-related note, I gave the Asura's Wrath demo a whirl too. Bit of a nutty game, eh? I'd like to have the ability to spontaneously grow four extra arms when I get really angry, mind.

Lego Fellowship, anyone?

Hee.

Oh look I remembered I had a blog

So about this time last year I was commenting on Duke Nukem 3D's astonishing cheapness. Well, today I hopped over to GoodOldGames.com and downloaded me a bit of Blood, very much a brother in spirit to Duke (used the same engine, had a similar feel and style, and in fact finding that Wikipedia article has revealed to me that it was co-made by Duke creators 3D Realms, which I didn't realise) - it's a game I have fond memories of playing round a friend's house.

And good heavens, it is even more shameless than Duke. It wants you dead every step of the way, even on the easiest difficulty. To give you an idea, the baseline enemy - the first you encounter, and the commonest - is a zombie with an axe, and may very well get up again shortly after you thought you killed it. I was getting thoroughly mullered for a while before working that one out. It's remarkable how much gaming has become more user-friendly in the last ten to fifteen years. And frankly, I much prefer it.

In completely unrelated news, my current film-based obsession appears to be Tangled. Watched it once, thought "yeah, decent film". Fancied watching it again, did, thought "actually, this is brilliant. I'ma buy it". And now I basically want to watch it over and over again all the time forever. It's great. It's so fun and so pretty. And Rapunzel and Flynn are easily the best leading Disney couple for years - since Belle and the Beast, I'd say. Obviously lessons were learnt from The Princess and the Frog's rather dull stars. (Well, Naveen was alright.)

Also, best horse ever.

That's all. You can stop reading now.

Words on the Internet

Following on from my last post, I think Phineas and Ferb might actually be my favourite show on telly at the moment. It is literally the only programme I have watched this week with the exception of the new episodes of Futurama that were on last night.

(Technically I'm also watching Battlestar Galactica but I've got about five weeks behind on that somehow. All the episodes are sitting there on my Sky+ box waiting to be watched. And on that note, when does the show get really good? Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying it, but at this point - about a third of the way through season 3 - I'm still trying to work out why everyone went ballistic over how good it was. It's a good show, but it's not that good. So I'm wondering if it suddenly kicks it up the proverbial notch at some point. Possibly the fact that I already know the Big Twist over what time period it's actually set in has partially ruined it for me?)

Aaaanyway, to go back to my original point, Phineas and Ferb is great. It looks nice, it's funny, it encourages all sorts of positive behaviour in the younglings without being preachy or worthy, the musical numbers are brilliant ("rubber bands, rubber balls...") and all the characters are worth spending time with. I read somewhere that one of the creators said one of the show's rules is "No stupid characters or jerks" - I guess Candace is kind of a jerk sometimes but she's still basically likable at points - and this is genuinely quite refreshing. Also, Richard O'Brien's in it. What more could you want? There's some episodes up on YouTube, check 'em out.

Apparently I should change the title of this blog to "TV Theme Songs Currently Stuck in My Head"

Today it's this one. Hey, at least it's not a Japanese one so I can actually understand what they're singing about.

I just finished Super Mario Galaxy 2 this morning (well, by "finished" I mean "beat the final boss", not "got all the power stars") and I really don't get why the guys who make these games can craft fantastic, fantastic platformers and then completely fuck it up on the bosses. Both Galaxys have a few decent bosses, but most of them are shit. And the shit ones are invariably the ones you have to fight multiple times because they couldn't be arsed to think up some new ones. I don't get it.

(Actually, as a rule I don't much like boss fights anyway and would be just as happy if they weren't there, but even so.)

The latest anime theme song to get stuck in my head

Is this one.

So yeah.

Also, in Fallout 3, I accidentally made the bloke who helps you nuke Megaton run away. So now I'm trying to play through with Neutral karma instead. Go figure.

You've tried to lose Karma! And failed miserably!

I've started a second playthrough of Fallout 3, which continues to delight and dazzle with its joyful brilliance. But it's all gone a bit pear-shaped.

My first playthrough was on the Very Good side of the Karma meter. I was lauded far and wide, people ran up to me to give me stuff for free, etcetera. So this time I thought I'd be a villainous villain and go Very Bad. I've even come up with a reasonable in-game excuse: I've made my character Asian in appearance, the little meta-narration in my head explaining that she's from a dynasty of cunning Chinese spies.

That sounds kind of racist. I should explain that in Fallout's backstory, the world has been reduced to a crispy post-nuclear wasteland as a result of a bit of argy-bargy between the U.S. and China. So the idea is that my girl (who I've named Ziyi in honour of Zhang Ziyi because a) she was the first Chinese woman I thought of and b) I really fancy her) is the latest in a long line of craftily planted agents designed to keep on screwing Americans over long after the war. Hence, villainy.

Annnnnyway, it ain't happening. I'm on level 5 or 6 and still on the Good side of the meter. I'm finding it genuinely hard to be a bastard. The worst thing I've done is told Bryan Wilkes, the little kid who kicks off the "Those!" quest (the one with the giant fire-spitting ants) to naff off and stop bothering me. And I would've done that anyway 'cos "Those!" is a really annoying quest and I vowed never to do it again after my first playthrough. And I gave Three-Dog a bit of lip, but since that was after I already helped him out with repairing his radio broadcasts it didn't do much. I did try to nick some of his stuff while he was sleeping, but he woke up, took the stuff back and then instantly went back to sleep again. Git.

So yeah, I apparently don't have it in me to be a wanker. Actually, this is a thing about Fallout which is one of the reasons I love it so much: there aren't enough games that let you be nice. Most open-world, "do anything" games translate "do anything" as "shoot anyone". (Hi, Grand Theft Auto!) It's kind of the standard response in gaming, so to come across a game where you can persuade people not to fight you and give up the vital keycard or whatever willingly is so refreshing that I find it hard not to choose that option. (On a smaller scale, the fact that in Bully you can wander around giving people thumbs-ups and compliments always delights me.)

I am going to try and kick off in Fallout 3 though, honest. I'ma nuke Megaton and everything. Although I need to get my lockpick skill up high enough to rob Sheriff Simms' house and find the Bobblehead that's apparently in there first. Then I'ma nuke it.

Although actually, now that I think about it, another reason I'm holding off on the bastardry is that I don't want to disappoint my in-game dad. Because he's Liam Neeson. Liam Neeson. You don't let Liam Neeson down, for heaven's sake, he's a talking Jesus-allegory lion Jedi that leads the A-Team. And I think he had a beer with Homer Simpson once.

I guess I'm going to have to keep reminding myself that the game's main bad guy is Malcolm McDowell. I'm not betraying Liam Neeson, I'm teaming up with Malcolm McDowell! No jury would convict me.