Someone To Drive You Home

I was tempted to do a list of games but I have always been a bit lazy and also a paragraph about a supposed game of the year is hardly a glowing recommendation.

2009 has been a mixed bag in terms of games. The fact that we are a number of years into this console generation means that most games are atleast competent. In earlier years alot of these competent games  have ended up half baked  due to developers struggling with hardware that they don’t fully understand. Great you might think but playing a lot of competent games doesn’t make for a interesting year. Games like Prototype, Spiderman Web of Shadows & Red Faction where all competent but missing a aspect which would have pushed them over the top (new gameplay mechanics , interesting overworld and story where things most where skimping on).

Anyway I’m not here to debate how disappointing  this year was i’d much talk about what was enjoyable. So what is this wonderful game. Well it’s Dragon Age: Origins. For those of you unaware is a fantasy RPG made by the lovely team at Bioware(Kotor, mass effect).

pfft Dragons dont even shoot lasers

Now typically I’m not massively into fantasy/Tolkien stuff I’d much rather a cyberpunk or futuristic slant on my fiction so I approached this with a bit of trepidation. The overarching story is a typical ancient evil rising with your character charged with saving the world.

Snoresville right, sure i’l admit to rolling my eyes when I found out I had to become a Jedi Spectre Grey Warden, but you honestly forget about it once you start meeting the other character in the world and specifically the Heroes that join you on your quest. Why is that? Well they are actual characters for a start they have opinions on not only your actions but on the others in your group. For example anytime you come to a situation where you have a choice they’ll chip in with how they think you should precede with Morrigan for example always nudging you towards the sinister and Alistair encouraging you to be as White as fresh snow.

They also have conversations among themselves at random while you’re for example strolling through town these are often extremely entertaining. These occur during periods of exploration which are natural lulls between the combat encounters .The conversation where the French sounding bard calls the stoic warrior a big softy for instance was really entertaining or the dwarf suggesting to the war hound that he could attach a saddle to him and use him as a horse.

Boring Sex Scene Ahoy

At this point if you don’t play many games you might be thinking so what but it’s really a rarity for anybody to put this much effort into throw away dialogue especially considering the limit of only having two companions with you at anytime meaning that most will never hear all the interactions in their first playthrough. This is maybe the best aspect of Dragon Age for me personally and it might sound like a small touch but in a year mired in a wholly competent but uninspired year this is the addition that’ll push you over the top.

The combat consists of equipping your characters with swords, bows, daggers & magical staffs then sending them to do battle with evil doers. The battles themselves all take place in real time ,although you can pause the action to command each individual party to perform a single task, this means that for the most part the action is kept fast paced with only the boss fights that really require the extra level of strategy that I’ll describe later on. Your team hack and slash gain experience and become stronger a nice concession to fun the allies at camp level along with your active party meaning that you can always pull one of your neglected compatriots and not have to worry about them being a weakling.

Hopefully she's not too cold

The battles themselves are bitterly hard but never feel unfair. Regenerating health and Mana in between each fight help to avoid th situation where you get half way through a dungeon and run out of healing items and have to traipse back to town to resupply. It’s a problem that RPG’s have wrestled with since there invention solutions have often been too lenient ( allowing players to run off and resupply) or far too punitive (breaking your equipment, losing experience etc).

While this sounds like it might maybe the game far too easy it really really doesn’t , this is clearly a feature of the game that has been in the game from the beginning in the majority of fights you can die and you will quite readily if you’re not paying attention. Turns out when you know that the player is fighting fit you can put them in situations that are a lot more challenging than if you had to guess what their condition was. This is however a double edged sword on the one hand the game is challenging from the word go and maintains that throughout but on your first play through but you are likely to die a lot while you get to grips with the interface and tactics required to be successful. Is it frustrating? Sure, would I change it? no way there is nothing worse than when a game becomes a matter of procedure the constant challenge of Dragon Age ensures that each victory feels important.

Team Jacob The Later Years

High praise so far but its not all sunshine and unicorns the control scheme on the 360 while it works properly feels a little cumbersome, you cant blame bioware on this one a joypad just doesn’t have enough buttons to accommodate all the complex actions in Dragon Age elegantly (I’ve not played DA:O on the pc but I’m sure having the number keys helps a lot).

I’m no slouch when it comes to RPG but figuring out some mechanics in the took me a bit of time for instance the tactics interface where yo can “program” your AI partners so they for instance heal when there heal reaches a given percentage is never highlighted. I can understand why they might not include a blatant tutorial as it ruins the suspension of disbelief in a game where characterisation is obviously important.

While both these complaints crossed my mind while playing the game they are easily overcome with eventual acclimation in the case of the first and experimentation in the second.

I can defiantly recommend this game to anyone its commitment to characterisation more than anything else is why this has won my Game of the Year, writing one of the least developed aspects in games. What I’m really looking for this year is something that takes its writing and gameplay and raises them both higher.

Fingers Crossed for 2010

This Hat cracked me up

Shout out to my Man Christopher McNeil for this fine recommendation but it was when I read this tweet by Anthony Burch of Destructoid fame that my ears really pricked up. Admittedly a bit of a annoying way to recommend playing something but Mr Burch uses hyperbole like it was going out of fashion. So with my two independent recommendations of a obscure title coming within mere days of each other I decided that I’d have to give Strange Adventures in Infinite Space atleast a shot.

I know what you’re thinking Strange Adventures in Infinite Space is one of the worst names for a game I’ve ever read too (it would be better if it abbreviated to something funny but nope just SAIS). The game was developed by Digital Eel which is a small Seattle based outfit. They have been developing niche games in the spirit that can only exist in the PC Independent scene since the early part of the 00’s (SAIS itself was developed in 2001). They have even picked up a few nominations from the IGF winning awards for Visual Art and Audio in some of the games released after SAIS. Cool right? That’s enough context for now I think.

So anyway after charging for this fine game from 2001 till 2009 the chaps at Digital Eel figure what the heck lets make it free! That sound you hear is my attention being got. At that price I’l try just about anything so I downloaded the game from shrapnel games website (they publish and distribute Digital Eels titles). The game is only just shy of 8MB, installed it fired her up and witness what can only be described as a visual mess.

Only slightly more decipherable than this

Turns out in 2001, when they made this game was developed, Dual screen setups where about as common as shooting bees out your hands so my first play through resembled that of a Jeff Minter game in visual style (the colors where all wrong). Its a simple fix just switch to one screen and it all works perfectly having run dual screens for a number of years its the first port of call to sort out screwy graphics in independent and triple A titles alike. Only reason I even mention it is incase you my lovely reader encounter the same problem.

Your 2D Map of the Stars

Oh yeah I was going to write about the game at some point too, well better late than never! So what’s it like? Well you know the fun of a roguelike game where every time you load the game it generates a new dungeon? Swap dungeon with smattering of galaxies and nebula and you’ve got it. You’re tasked with going out on a ten year mission to explore strange new worlds to seek out new lifeforms and stuff (yeah someone owes Gene Roddenberry a few bucks). The mechanics of space travel are basically clicking on any solar system will tell you how much of your precious ten years it will take to get there. So a few clicks and off you pop on a whirlwind tour of the a set of ten or so Solar systems in whatever order you like. Obstacles like black holes and nebula (which make your ship slow to a crawl with the standard engines) will mean that a small amount of route planning isn’t a bad idea. Once you arrive in a solar system your science team pick the most interest planet to investigate then its off to the next system.

Engaged in the gentlemanly art of Pew Pew

Initially you start off with a fairly slow propulsion system. Once you start exploring planets there is the chance of finding a faster drive or if you’re extremely lucky a hyperdrive which allows you to travel almost instantaneously,which sounds like a bit of a game ruining upgrade, well sure it does make it vastly easier to hit every solar system/planet, but if you warp to a galaxy where its star is going supernova the 14 days it takes to recharge your drive means you’ll die waiting for it to spool up(standard drives can outrun the blasts handily). This example is the crux of what makes SAIS such a fantastic game the way that every choice you make can go either way at the drop of a hat what was once a massive boon can leave you to face the business end of a supernova. When you travel to a planet that has a fleet stationed around it you’re given a rough estimation of the force composition as blips on a radar (pictured below) at which point you can choose to make contact , which may lead to combat or trade , or you can run away wasting the time you spent travelling to that solar system but saving you from a battle which could end you expedition prematurely.

Nice Race of Care Bears Or Lasery Flavored Death?

I could ramble on and on about how the mechanics of risk vs reward are so finely tuned in this game but I’m concious of spoiling too much. The fun is finding out all the interactions for yourself. You really need to try this out and if you play the game a good five to ten times in the one day( the average playtime from start to finish for myself is about 15 mins) and you’ve managed to get confidant enough to push all the difficulty sliders up to the maximum (another excellent design choice) .Then you should try some of the modifications that Digital Eel have graciously posted on their website. These fan made mods are some of the best I’ve seen outside of Half Life 2 they add extra content, new story elements & gameplay. Part of the reason they are so well done is that Digital Eel had the good sense to provide the tools to aid mod community which in turn helps there game become better. If I had to suggest the best two mods out the few ive tried it would be RED PLANET & Even Stranger Adventures in Infinite Space.

Red Planet adds alot of extra fun to SAIS

So hopefully I’ve managed to convinced a few of you to give this a shot and if you really enjoy it. There is a sequel called ”Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space” which I will have to try once I’m done messing around with SAIS. I would love to hear what the readers of SomeoneToDriveYouHome think of this so please have at it in the comments.

Mods For SAIS

Download The Full Game Here

Syndicate Wars is a atmospheric Squad based real time strategy game made by Bullfrog(Theme Hospital , Dungeon Keeper). Its cyberpunk slant is the aspect that really leaves a lasting impression while many games have harvested the Cyberpunk Aesthetic few have allowed it to manifest in gameplay. Syndicate Wars is to Cyberpunk games what Blade Runner is to Cyberpunk films.

Syndicate

Syndicate Wars  (1996) is simply put a classic many people believe that the original Syndicate (1993/1994) is better but personally Syndicate Wars(SW) hits with a art style that is overall more consistent (Environments, menu’s ) and is therefore more effective.

Syndicate Wars

The missions in the game are extremely straight forward Assassinate this guy , persuade this guy to join your faction and escort him to the exit, how you choose to achieve this is really up to yourself. The levels work like mini sandboxes with no Correct way to complete them. You can roll in and kill everybody or build a small army of pedestrians and use them as adhoc human shields. Will you blow up a bank while you are in the area and make off with the money incurring the wrath of the local police force? Do you fight your way in with your four man squad guns blazing to assassinate your target or do you add a expendable member to this squad and use him as a suicide bomber?

The idea that your squad are tools is reinforced at every level they are faceless, nameless, and as the game progresses scarcely human with cybernetics and enhancements rendering them more machine than flesh.

Your agents have been stripped of self awareness have zero personality and will wait diligently for your orders while being ripped to shreds by enemy fire. You can introduce psychotropic drugs to their nervous systems increasing their aggressiveness perception allowing them to return fire autonomously but there is a cool down period where they will default to bullet sponge mode.

This is one of the most fascinating facets of Syndicate wars that game developers said what would a faceless multinational corporation/religious fanatics do with mind control technology if they had wet work to do?Ethically is it better to have a person who has to carry around the memories of murder or a drone who makes no moral judgements during and has no recollection afterwards?

Eurocorp are one of the two playable factions in Syndicate Wars  and are responsible for deploying mind control chips on the general populous. After the events of the original syndicate are the replacement for government. They have the world in their Iron grip and will obliterate anyone who attempts to upset the status quo.

▶
YouTube - Watch this for a better idea of what its like to be a peon in the Syndicate Universe

The Church of the new Epoch are a religious group, the second playable faction, believe Eurocorp must be over thrown , led by nine scientists that where experimenting with mind expansion technology which ended up leaving them a bit queer. Their technology is theoretically better than Euro Corps owing to the mental capacity of their leadership but they lack the raw materials necessary to realise their potential.

The Unguided are the third faction which where originally meant to have a playable campaign. Their ranks are filled with citizens who have awoken from the mind control induced lie and boy are they pissed .In contrast to the other two Factions these guys value freewill and freedom rather that an Orwellian nightmare state (there’s just no pleasing some people). They are led by the tenth scientist in the mind expansion experiment who decided that he didn’t want to be part of the church or the corporations schemes. I have a feeling that owing to the nature of the unguided and their ethos the system setup for the other factions (they cant really be espousing free will and use mindless killing drones!) is a big part of why this campaign never materialised. Although I would be interested what ideas the developers had for it in a purely academic way.

I’ve purposefully been leaving the feature in Syndicate Wars that was/is most impressive. The Persuadertron. What’s a Persuadertron? God I’m glad you asked that, you understand that every one up and down the line of humanity has the mind control chips implanted in them right?

Well how about if you could use this to your advantage in a mission to say override whatever daily routine they’re on and make them body guard your agents? Cool right ? How about if you could even use it to capture enemy agents, scientists and law enforcers?! Really! awesome? Wont this make the game way too easy ? This is the genius part, with your Persuadertron equipped you will persuade anyone in its range to your cause, but only if you have enough followers so average civilian you get him for free, a law man you might need about 5 followers , enemy agents require a significant following mostly due to the number you will lose while getting close to a Agent. So with this mechanic you are harvesting the local populous and moving them into the firing line in order to achieve your goals sinister stuff and the game pretty much encourages it a health human shield wall can be the difference between Mission Complete and your untimely demise (Failure isn’t a option in Syndicate Universe). This of course takes the potential for collateral damage to dizzying new heights (Explosions will cull the flock almost instantly with only your cybernetic taskmasters left standing if you’re lucky).

Yeah I Roll about 50 Deep

There have been rumblings of a Syndicated Wars Sequel for a while now and most recently Peter Molyneux has said he would be interested in making a new game in the series but I honestly don’t see it happening. I’ve always been a fan of Cyberpunk culture and the idea of blurring the lines between man and machine are becoming more and more possible with Vat Grown Skin and stem cell based ocular modification being just two recent developments that spring to mind. Only thing that remains is for me to provide you with a  link to the wondrous Unofficial Syndicate Website. Feel Free to leave a comment!

Thesixtyone is a music site yeah ? That’s cool you’re thinking but why are you writing about it, well its got achievements! Combining two of my favourite passions listening to obscure bands and metagaming.  Thesixtyone doesn’t just allow you to listen to songs it also remembers what you’ve listened to and gives you Reputation (rep), think of rep as musical experience points, and every time you get to a milestone number of rep you are bumped up to a higher user level.

Well what does a higher level give you? You cry! well so far the only ability I know of is that you can heart a song more than once pushing it up the charts (extra rep is earned if a song you hearted is featured on the front page). At this point you guys are more than likely split into two camps those of you who think this sounds totally stupid and those who are intrigued and the real decider is if you don’t really like music that much this is a bit of a non starter for you. I thought it was a great way to find new music (I personally am always looking for new ways to find music that wouldn’t get any play in traditional media).

The website is super slick as well for instance it will load a whole page in the background so that the song you are listening to won’t be interrupted, this is achieved by some fancy pants AJAX computer nerds, it also allows you to download tracks or points you in the direction of a outlet where they can be bought from.

All in all a fairly interesting site it does have some basic social networking features you can friend people, send them messages, listen to their radio made up of tracks they have hearted. Nothing approaching Last.fm’s level of social integration but honestly not really fussed about that aspect (it’s all about the music man!).

Oh yeah and when you get there tell them Pedantic Sent you.

What’s this all about then. Merchants of Brooklyn (M.O.B.) is a first person shooter by Paleo Entertainment , Who? yeah Indie Developers Paleo Entertainment fresh from finishing their Half Life 2 mod  Paleolithic Revolution.

M.O.B. premise is that the polar ice caps have melted and submerged planet underwater so the survivors decided to clone a new lower class from Neanderthals to do their bidding. Somehow they over estimated the number of Neanderthals needed and the decided to use the spares in gladiatorial style arena matches for entertainment.

First off surely if most of the world is underwater they would want to be more conservative with their resources. What I’m trying to say is the premise is flimsy at best. All this you learn in the long slow cut scene at the start which features the player character walking slowly to his next arena fight.

The Disappointment starts to creep in pretty soon when playing this game but my advice to you would be to save some you, will need it for later.

So you are a Neanderthal pit fighter your last fight went poorly you lost your arm and had it replaced with cybernetics. This new arm allows to perform a charged up punch or pick up scenery and throw it.  So you’ll be think oh that sounds pretty cool I’m a pit fighter so i must have a few melee attacks to mess folks up with right and at this point Paleo Entertainment shoot you a look like nah you just need punch *ok being fair you can swipe with a object you are holding same animation for every item tho, charge punch , and perform a canned kill animation on a almost dead bad guy.

Disappointing but within the first few minutes of the game you find out your arm can also transform into a Unreal Tournament Style Flack Cannon (superficially at least) great bet the gunplay makes up for the lack of melee sophistication another head shake from the boys at Paleo. Seems the guns have little to no heft with the difference between a guy falling to the floor or exploding to a thousand pieces being arbitrary. The lack of visual cue when you are taking damage is a massive flaw you can literally go from full health to dead in about five seconds.

I feel its about time i got to real barrier to my enjoyment when it came to this game. bugs! huge bugs  bugs the size of your f-in head my friend. Now don’t get me wrong i can understand one on two bugs in your main storyline, you know if the player does something you cant account for but in MOB i was stopped by a door that wouldn’t open and left by a lift that ran off without me. This was within the space of five minutes  yeah you guys are indie developers but if you are going to release a game and expect people to pay for it it does need to work. Case in point i for one will not be getting their next game unless its made out of magic or something (what im trying to say it ruined my confidence).

I really don’t like writing negative stuff about games especially ones made by the little guys. I mean nobody wants to make a bad game right?

The difficult sophmore post, hmm , What to post about now. Well just so happens I got a comic in the post the other day that’s pretty darn good! Its the new Phonogram The Singles Club issue. How hard it was to get a hold of as well its sold out everywhere in Scotland. I had to order it off Ebay from America! Expensive!

It’s written and drawn by two nice chaps from England (Kieron Gillen , Jamie McKelvie) one of which you might be familiar with if you are into games journalism.

Anyway This latest issue they have made the jump into the world of glorious technicolor (the first story arc being all line drawn) it looks really good not that I know that much about comic book art. Truth be told I am a bit new to the whole comics thing been reading web comics for ages (man I still remember the time I went through the entire Questionable Content archive ) but only recently made the jump to the real deal hold it in your hand kind.

Yeah so what’s it about well talk about dove tailing interests its about music with Gillen quoting lyrics in dialogue almost constantly (which is fun its kinda like all that time I spent listening to the manics wasn’t wasted) and magic! Which is pretty much a winning combination! The story of the first trade paperback focusing on a phonomancer by the name of David Kohl who’s source (Britpop) is being tampered with. Oh dont look at me like that! There is a reason its a comic and not a rambling blog its good fun!

Anyway if your not totally put off by my recommendation you should check it out the first trade paper back is available on the Forbidden Planet website. I got mines at Dead Head Comics In Edinburgh (Support your Local Poet!) which is a lovely wee comic place near greyfriers bobby.

 So you have found my blog huh ? Congratulations are in order. You’ll have one question immediately what’s with the blog name Jason? yeah well when you make your website you can name your website after your favourite dead band :( but yeah don’t think this will be the last link to The Long Blondes or the Pipettes you see about here.

Actually that’s a good point your second question should be what’s this all about then ? well ,  I’ve decided to start writing yeah I saw a real gap in the market for poorly written and researched blogs (self deprecating humour also!) and decided to wade in. Seriously I will be writing about stuff that’s interesting to me Computers, Games, Music. There will be links , MP3’s , opinion pieces , jam pieces , cheese pieces whatever you like really…

Erm yeah so fingers crossed. What do y’all think of this theme I’m personally not 100% sure about it but it will do for now.  

Now to get to grips with wordpress might buy the Latest Issue of .net magazine think they are doing a wordpress special this month. 

The Long Blondes – Someone To Drive You Home (2006)
Not sure about posting up my own MP3s yet need to look into the ramifications ;)