...the most spiteful game I've ever played. It's also the hardest game I've ever played. Not in a good way either. I think it's absolutely horrible, Silver Surfer horrible. When I say spiteful I mean that the game is designed to make you cluck your tongue with disgust when something appears out of nowhere with deadly accuracy or you have to perform terribly placed jumps, climb and jump off of badly designed ropes, platforms and ladders or die because the camera pans beyond where you are standing with no reason or warning. You can also die repeatedly in an odd hotspot and lose 5 lives in 10 seconds or be respawned in mid air above a pit and keep falling with no hope of saving yourself and lose an entire continue of lives. If the game is that hell-bent on snatching your lives then kicking you repeatedly when you're down, there's not much motivation to continue unless it gives you some kind of stockholm syndrome. In the other Contra games, you felt you were doing something wrong, and next time you would remember and be more skilled. In this one, you know it's not you and hope you're 'luckier' next time.

Contra 3 (Super Probotector) on the SNES is the pinnacle of the series in my opinion, with the Gameboy version (Operation C?) and the original NES game not too far behind. Imagine that Konami forgot Contra 3 ever existed and made Contra 4 like the arcade version of Contra 1. Then imagine that they made it harder by a factor of 2, then added another screen that you have to constantly watch for grenades and bullets while still dodging and jumping the bullets on the main screen. Then made it bland. Also add some dodgy collision detection on some of the enemies. Contra on the Genesis? Harder and more boring than that. The shooting gallery levels are quite pointless, the perspective and collision detection is so bad that the levels are extremely easy, until the bosses where as there is no 'depth perception', you can't tell what you're meant to be avoiding. On the giant metal gorilla, he throws his flamethrower breath in a slow circle. You can't avoid it as you can't climb the ceiling and there's no visible difference between the flame's safe area and deadly area so it either goes through you and doesn't kill you or it goes through you and you die. Stupid.

There is no more deforming terrain, dual guns, overhead or 3d sections, no exciting vehicles, quickly changing situations or memorable bosses. No memorable, dynamic music that is choreographed to the set-pieces. All of those ideas have been taken away and the only new thing that is added is a grappling hook that fires straight up and attackes to the
occasional specific platform. If you fire it and it doesn't hit anything, you float in mid-air for 2 seconds for no real reason, like
you were Richter doing a Holy Cross attack but totally vulnerable and doing no damage. The elements that do come back from Contra 3 have been ruined, such as the giant android gorilla, it no longer has any panache or impact. When you saw the 2D version in Contra 3, it was definitely a wow moment. When you see him in poor 3D with no sense of scale, no real animation and no drama in the music, it's very dull.

"It's the little things that kill you", on top of this, every time you die and come back your character says one of the following:
LOCK N LOAD!
LOCKED AAAAND LOADEHHD!
TAKE EM OUT!
IT'S TIME FOR REVENGE!
COME GET SOME!
LET'S PARTY!
in the worst fake macho Konami voice you can imagine. Mercifully you can turn this off, but it's almost comical when your guy
says COME GET SOME! and then is immediately pelted with 4 bullets and a grenade from each direction and falls over like a goon.
Talking of LET'S PARTY!, there is an awful lot of knee high boots, spandex, PVC suits, leather captains hats, tight jeans and naked oiled torsos in the game. This make it feel like a very manly and burly game and makes it much more farcical. There's nothing wrong with it, it just seems very silly in what is meant to be a serious and 'cool' sci-fi game.


Good old Ash! (Not from Contra 4)

When you run out of lives and have to continue (often), you're frustrated and just wanting to get on with it. Instead, the game
slowly fades to black, goes to a game over screen. makes you sit through all the game over music before it will let you press continue.
Argh.

The DS Lite pad is pretty bad with this game, but I'm sure you can get used to it. Saying that, it's perfectly fine for Castlevania games, so I don't know what's going on.

Plus points: It looks quite nice, like a jungle and industrial based Symphony of the Night. It's got other Contra games built into it that you can get, provided you're dedicated enough to unlock them. Ummmm.... if you play the game on Hard you get to hear the Contra theme...

In all, I'm sure I don't like it because 'I suck' but I enjoy the Contras mentioned at the beginning of the blog, Ghouls and Ghosts,
Metal Slug Anthology etc so this game makes me a bit sad and disappointed.

Kind of the final straw for me,

the lovely new ceramic white PS3 with 40GB hard drive has an RRP of 39,980 Yen in Japan.

That's $340 which is £176.

The bog standard Wii is £180 ($367) in the UK, if you can get one. Meanwhile, the black PS3 with 40GB hard drive is £300 ($613) which is almost twice as much as its Japanese counterpart. Japan has a near identical economic model to the UK, so import duty aside, it's unacceptable. Sony's import embargo on Europe means you can't even try to get a fair deal.

Umm, anyone want to play some Animal Crossing DS or Mario Kart DS? XD

Assassin's Creed is reviewed today, I think. When the first video of it came out I was intrigued and excited. Then in the many months to come I got bored and disinterested in it. Just like Metal Gear Solid 4, too much exposure over too long with no chance to play it. I saw a proper gameplay video that was put up last week and I think it looks quite good, far from the original vision but kind of like Tenchu and Prince of Persia in one. Then a sword fight against a group of enemies popped up and one of my pet hates arrived....

Multiple opponent combat where only one person attacks you at a time and the others very slowly circle you doing nothing. Many movies and TV series are guilty of this in fight scenes too but games are the worst offenders as it's a much bigger part of the experience. One of the only games I've seen that does things 'correctly' is Devil May Cry 3*.



The first thing you do is learn to dodge and block and then attack when you are able as everyone is attacking you at once in a frenzy, earning the game its somewhat unfair reputation as extremely hard. In Assassin's Creed, there were 7 people against your hoodie guy and the 6 not engaged with your character could have attacked or rushed in but they stood there like lemons, making a mockery of what should have been a very difficult if not impossible situation. It's a bigger shame because the actual sword fighting mechanics seem to be very good.



Why are you running? It's only one enemy with eight life bars.

I still look forward to Assassin's Creed and there seems to be much more to it than the combat but seeing that got me into this rant :)

There's been a game that made me run from multiple enemies before, but for different reasons. That is Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. The combat in that was so boring and easy, with no benefit from fighting, that I ran through a lot of that game, ignoring the enemies. Worst game in series.

Assassin related reading:

Alamut by Vladimir Bartol - A novel about a Persian assassin during the crusades. His stronghold is called Alamut, the 'Eagle's Nest'. I'm pretty sure that somebody on the Assassin's Creed team must have mentioned this book in an interview. If not, someone in the creative team has read it as Assassin's Creed heavily borrows from it. This is an amazing book, and I urge you to get hold of it if you can.

Pyramids by Terry Pratchett - A very funny and enjoyable novel about a school of assassins and one very special pupil. It comes from the Discworld series of books but has a self contained story so you can pick it up without having missed anything. Another highly recommended book.

* Another candidate would be God Hand, but that game is toooo hard hehe

I got to spend some time with Guitar Hero 3 this week and I think the track list is the poorest in the series so far, and definitely not UK friendly. It's funny how She Bangs the Drums by The Stone Roses is an unlockable track in the shop, maybe it'll get swapped to a main track in the European release along with the Kaiser Chiefs track (although that one is poor). I feel that the series is increasingly geared to 80s and 90s American rock and metal, regardless of quality of songs or suitability for a rhythm game. Even in the first game, the tracklist wasn't stellar but at least it had at least 2 genuine classics in each set list.

Anyway, I tried to play Welcome to the Jungle and Knights of Cydonia on hard and expert after I finished Normal (really quickly) and it's just ridiculously hard! These are two songs that I really like and can play on the guitar easily and they are easy to play. The scale runs and sweep picking in Knights of Cydonia are three 'buttons' max on the real guitar and the tremolo picking isn't nearly as fast or weirdly timed as the on-screen notes on Guitar Hero 3 either. The constant fast position changing needed during the 'solos' just don't exist in the song as played on a real guitar and on the keyboard. I'm pretty sure this is the same on all the songs except that crazy song in the credits which I think could possibly be harder on the guitar than Guitar Hero :p

So, if you can 100% tracks on Hard, let alone Expert on Guitar Hero 3, please consider picking up a guitar at some point. You already have the speed, timing and relative co-ordination to do really well.

I am really annoyed that Rock Band isn't out until next year 'sometime' in the UK, I was going to have that for Christmas!

In case you were wondering which songs I like in Guitar Hero 3 (not likely), here is a list:

School's Out - Alice Cooper
When You Were Young - The Killers (one of the only songs by the Killers I like)
Sunshine Of Your Love - Cream*
The Seeker - The Who (kind of, there's SO many better songs by The Who)
Paint It Black - The Rolling Stones* (I smiled and the back of my neck prickled when I got to play this one)
Paranoid - Black Sabbath
My Name is Jonas - Weezer
Welcome to the Jungle - Guns & Roses*
Black Magic Woman - Santana (Fleetwood Mac did it better and originally wrote it though)
Cherub Rock - Smashing Pumpkins (yet again, so many better songs by this group to do than this)
Knights of Cydonia - Muse* (Although they could have picked a more guitar heavy Muse track)
She Bangs the Drums - Stone Roses
Pride & Joy - SRV (yet again... etc)

* The starred ones are the only ones I was truly excited about, until they're too easy on Normal and too hard on Hard

EDIT:
Oh, also, the boss battles have a bug in them. If you go through all the tracks up to the boss battle, the difficulty on their side will be set to Easy, meaning that it's extremely hard to beat them due to their increased defense and regeneration. You have to turn off the machine and start again from the boss battle for it to be at the correct difficulty. I found Morello and Slash impossible til I did this and then they fell straight away.

As some of you already know, I got my cover of Too Hot, the Hotspot theme, on The Hotspot this week. :D Thanks Vinny!
I don't know if anyone will listen to it on the recording and and come here, but here it is again:

[video=IHEwlzSv5b8Fuzfe]

Thanks everyone for your kind words in my last blog comments :)

I've been on On The Spot twice, the UK Podcast twice and now The Hotspot, only Button Mashing to go! :) To do that though, I'd have to become a millionaire and move to California :p

Just before the Ray Davies (of The Kinks*) Electric Proms performance yesterday, the BBC showed New York Giants vs Miami Dolphins at Wembley Stadium. So as I was already watching the channel I thought I'd watch it and give it a shot. My first time watching an American Football match. I know I'm not the target audience at all but I quite enjoy the anime Eyeshield 21 and I found the Rugby world cup match I saw recently quite fascinating. My watching of team sport pretty much consists of occasionally watching international games of Football (Soccer) and Rugby if i'm forced to on social occasions, but I don't mind too much, fit men in shorts running around is great, though eventually boring. I do respect the relentless skill and pace of those two games though. I actively watch parts of the winter and summer Olympics (I love the winter olympics, especially the skiing, snowboarding and skating events).

Anyway, after I finished watching the Dolphins vs Giants match on the BBC I came away confused and quite bored and frustrated. I'm sure the game is great and utterly fascinating if you're so inclined and have watched a lot of games, knowing the game inside out. After first impressions seeing a proper match (rather than seeing glorifications in cartoons and films) though, this is what I was thinking:

It's called Football even though only two people kick the ball, very occasionally.

The game keeps stopping and starting all the time, they even stop the game to measure where the ball is exactly. Come on, guys, hurry it up, the match is only an hour anyway, and split in four! I was struggling to keep interest, and I was only watching a half hour highlights show.

You can throw the ball to someone over the scoring line and score a touchdown. Not only does that seem cheap to me, how is that touching down anything?

They're allowed to run off the field and it still counts as progress and the team that ran off the field with the ball are allowed to continue... that's cheating! :p

You can pass forward and even circumvent the defenders by chucking the ball. That's totally fine, but thinking of all the games where that's illegal, it seems to take a lot of strategy out of the game.

There's 11 players, but 35 (!) substitutes and pretty much everybody comes off and has a rest, whereas in any other sport you're pretty much on there for the whole game and lump it. This seems as weak as the short length of the game, having 4 quarters and wearing armour. No wonder you can have big fat guys that look as if they're going to collapse there on the field (I know they've got muscles too, like sumo wrestlers, but the men I saw in the match really didn't look too healthy with that weight).

They're wearing helmets and armour.. I can understand it in Ice Hockey as they beat the **** out of each other with sticks and smash each other into the wall, (although I don't know why they're allowed to do that) That seems pretty weak when you have a similar game like Rugby played worldwide with no helmets and armour. The protection just seems to make the players just do more reckless stuff and then maybe someone will fly up in the air, land on their neck and get severely injured or die. There's a reason for the human body's pain response and fear of brutal contact, you know.

I understand the appeal of Basketball, I kind of understand the appeal of Baseball even though it's as dull as Cricket to those not playing AND they seem to cheat by walking as far as they dare from their bases. I can't really see the appeal of American Football yet though, maybe if I were to watch a few more matches, but still, if I was interested in watching some sport, there'd be lots of other things I'd rather watch.

Let me know what you think of American Football! If you like the game, please try to be constructive with your response, I'm not attacking the game, I'm just stating my first impressions, I'm not sure I have any opinion on it other than it doesn't seem to be for me.

* If you don't know who the Kinks are, shame on you ;p If you've got Guitar Hero 2, there's a bad Van Halen cover of their song 'You Really Got Me'.

I just got a moderation warning. It said I'd posted offensive content and in very clear wording it said that I did it again I could be banned, and that being a paid subscriber wouldn't protect me. (How cold and threatening is that? I suppose the kids need it? Wouldn't it make them further rebel though?)

The warning didn't tell me what I'd supposedly said or done, only that it was offensive and had been removed.. If you're not told what you've done or why, can you modify your behaviour?

Edit:

It seems that the THUMBNAIL for my 'Imagine a Whore in Bed" picture from an editorial I did nearly 4 months ago has been moderated. If I didn't find that out (on my own by the way), then the large picture could have been later moderated and me being banned. I guess I just delete it and am not allowed a sense of humour using images far tamer than some of the screenshots and game covers I was parodying.

The image that was heavily featured in an editorial I made nearly 4 months ago and the thousands of people that saw it then had no problem with it, so I though there was no problem with it, especially as it was less risque than some of the screenshots, promotional pictures and cosplay photos put up by Gamespot staff and other users.

Do you think it was that offensive?

I have no problems with moderators or the job they're doing, I just think that the notification system should be a bit more detailed and less one sided. The message also didn't tell me where I should go to ask why i'd been moderated or to contest it.
Which is here, by the way.
If you're threatened in that way and then not given any avenues, I'm sure it can be very intimidating.

I have a few suggestions for change that I will put to the Site Feedback forum:

1. Include full details for the reason for moderation in the moderation notice private messages

2. Change the image folder so that you can have pictures only show up on your user area and also mark them yourself for 'risque content', both features you can already do for videos.

Communication is the key to friendship.

I've been working on an orchestral version of the Hotspot theme tune, "Too Hot" by Jeff Gerstmann's band Midnight Brown.
It's been in the making now for a long time now and it's finally completed.
Let me know what you think!

~~ Moved up to a newer blog ~~

Sadly, like all c1assical music, how good it sounds is directly proportional to its clarity and volume, the Gamespot movie format isn't really geared towards either of them. Hopefully if it gets on the Hotspot then at least on the downloaded version you can hear it in 64k. :p I will try to come up with a way to distribute it on proper mp3 soon.

Jeff, please tell me what you think of the interpretation if you're reading this!

There's been lots of price drops in consoles recently, both in the USA and Europe and I wanted to get my head around it

I am using the UK prices but it's pretty much the same in Europe, in France and Germany at least there's only a $16 discrepancy.

PS3

Current 80GB PS3 Price USA: $499 £246
with Motorstorm

Current 40GB PS3 Price USA: $399 £196
with Spiderman 3 bluray

Previous 60GB PS3 Price UK: $914 £450
with nada

Current 60GB PS3 Price UK: $712 £350
with a choice of 2 of 6 second party games

Current 40GB PS3 Price UK: $627 £309
with nada, but some places throw in a game

UK price 163% of USA price, with price drop on both, on only comparable system, 40GB.
The USA 80GB with full backwards compatibility and a game is $120 cheaper than the cheapest 40GB UK console before USA sales tax, still over $100 with it.


Wii

Current Wii Price USA $250 £122

Current Wii Price UK $365 £180

UK price 167% of USA price, if the USA price doesn't drop to the lower price promised.


Xbox 360

Current Premium Xbox 360 Price USA: $350 £172
with 2 games, Forza 2 and Marvel Ultimate Alliance

Previous Premium Xbox 360 Price UK: $609 £299
with nada

Current Premium Xbox 360 Price UK: $527 £260
with 1 game, Forza 2 and 1 extra controller

UK price 166% of USA price, with price drop on both


Prices based on www.gamestop.com and www.game.co.uk


I don't have any current gen consoles and it's not that big a concern as if I really wanted one I guess I'd still get one, but still, it's quite eye opening that even now with our price drops here in the UK, we're still way behind. Even with all the price drops in the UK consoles, they're still more expensive than even the initial USA prices.

Edit:

Today's news

Current Core 'Arcade Live' Xbox 360 Price USA: $280 £136

Current Core 'Arcade Live' Xbox 360 Price UK: $409 £200

That's %169 of the USA price, mmmm good deal!

So, I've listened to In Rainbows by Radiohead. I'll start off by saying I liked it. It's definitely not a giant leap like Pablo Honey to The Bends or The Bends to OK Computer or OK Computer to Kid A. In fact I'd say it's an amalgamation of all their experience so far. All this said, it's my least favourite Radiohead album after Pablo Honey.

15 Step, Bodysnatchers and Reckoner are great but sound like B-sides from Amnesiac. The other songs sound like alternative takes to Hail To The Thief songs. And since when did Thom sing such inane things as "I don't want to be your friend, I want to be your lover"? Listen to Faust Arp and tell me it's not Blackbird by the Beatles with different lyrics. Before now, Radiohead haven't sounded like anyone else but themselves.

I'll give it some more listens (4 complete album listens so far on my day off), but it's not setting my heart on fire like the other albums. It's the first Radiohead album since Pablo that hasn't made me love every track, wonder how it's made and scrabble to learn how to play it in some way. Radiohead songs usually have at least 4 layers to them and at least one melody if not two or three totally unique to that song and so intoxicating that you can identify a song in under one bar. I don't believe this album has a single song that has these qualities. It's a good album, just not Radiohead level, after all the waiting we've done. I didn't see where Radiohead could go from Hail To The Thief and the answer is that they've not gone anywhere. It's alright but it disappoints me that they don't have another hyperjump in them for now.

Regarding the 'choose how much you want to give us' aspect of the album's purchase, I thought it was a clever one. One that was a difficult decision for me in what to give them. At the same time, other established bands have immediately jumped on the bandwagon. I see this as the beginning of the death of modern music. It's catalysed the descent of the album and the rise of the downloaded album or single further. Established acts getting paid by companies for their pulling power. Get the new Prince album for free if you buy The Mail on Sunday, get the new Charlatans album for free if you visit XFM.com. What next, the new Christina Aguilera album free if you spend a fiver at Anne Summers? If Nine Inch Nails, Oasis and Radiohead are giving their album away for free, what chance do new artists have? Unless they happen to sound like The Jam or Coldplay and debut their album free in a deal with McDonalds after being featured in advert for a new burger.


The Times - 'The Day The Music Industry Died' : "What looks like commercial suicide is, in today's reality, sound business sense. Records, CDs or downloads now have all become downgraded to the status of promotional tools, useful to sell concert tickets and fan paraphernalia. While there is still good money to be made in music, and particularly on the concert circuit, the record business (blame it on piracy, too many CD giveaways or the advent of the recordable CD) is a busted flush.

Now that live music rules, nobody bothers to complain about what it costs any more. Euphoria at the news earlier this year that the Police had reformed obliterated all concerns that it cost between £70 and £90 to see them play at Twickenham in September. I spoke to many fans at one of those gigs; not one complained about the ticket price."

My experience of large non-Radiohead gigs has been a horrible one. A ton of rude, drunk, inconsiderate animals who would seemingly rather be at the pub or on the street fighting or groping each other, despite the fact that they paid £70 to see the wonderful concert thats going on in front of them. Or it would be if the acoustics and the sound engineering didn't suck so much. It's the same at cinemas, although not drunk, the most ignorant arsehats seem to lurk there to ruin everyone's experience. I much prefer cds and dvds in the company of friends as a result, at 1/8 of the price unless a gig is invite only.