So after a long hiatus from them, I decided to play an RPG. I don't even remember the last proper RPG I played (not counting action games with RPG elements). This is mainly due to time constraints. When I could only play 10 hours a week, I didn't want a 40+ hour game, thus it has been mostly action oriented titles. Despite having Mass Effect and Eternal Sonata sitting on my shelf, I've started with Enchanted Arms. I expect it to be the worst of the 3, so I decided to start from the worst and work my way up.

I'm about 5 hours in, and I think I'm past all the tedious beginning stuff. The tutorials are ridiculous. Not because they don't teach you the combat, that is fine. Everything you interact with outside of combat uses the A button. So one tutorial, right? No, each item has it's own freakin tutorial, and then once you have acknowledged you know how to press the A button, your character then proceeds to rephrase it to the character that taught him, just to be sure. And I don't know if there just isn't speech for some parts, or if the game is majorly glitched, as the character interaction screens play out the same regardless, with lip movement that matches the dialogue. You can break crates in the non-combat areas (this hasn't gone out of fashion yet?) and if you find something, the game pauses and you have to press A to continue. Why on earth does it need to pause? Just add it to my damn inventory.

All that whingeing aside, combat is fun. It uses a fairly standard elemental strength/weakness set, but takes place on a 4x6 grid, split down the middle so you can't cross into enemy territory and vice versa. Characters get to move 2 spaces (might have to check if increasing your agility can bump that up to 3, cos it would be pretty useful), then attack, which might attack the square in front of you and the ones either side of it, or down a column. I won't go in to too much detail, but positioning is pretty important, each character has multiple attacks/buffs they can use, and there are a number of stats to keep track of, which I'm starting to get a decent handle on. What is starting to worry me at the moment is the VP system (which I think means Vitality Points, can't recall). Each turn that a character takes an action in combat, their VP drops by one. Thus the longer the combat, the more VP they will use. Once their VP is at 0, they will have 1 hit point and 1 energy point (attacks use up varying EP) when they start battle. You can build golems to bring into battle and swap them into a maximum party of 4 between combat. Recharge stations restore VP, and these were everywhere in the first 3 hours. At my last save, I was running out of golems to swap in. If I can't find a recharge station soon... I might have to load a save from about 2 hours previous. I'm certainly starting to worry, and if I do find one soon I will probably grind nearby so I can earn resources to build more golems to prevent it from happening in the future.

So despite a lacklustre first couple of hours, it is starting to pick up. I also reviewed Kameo, which you can find below or click the link. Cheers.

Kameo is a solid adventure with a light hearted setting. During your adventures you will collect Elemental Warriors which you can morph into, and using their varied abilities to effectively beat enemies in combat and solve puzzles are the chief aspects of the game. The story is not terribly engaging, but the gameplay elements come together well enough, and the game keeps offering you new things to do.

The game throws you into the thick of things right off the bat, with you in control of Kameo (an elf) and in possession of 3 Elemental Warriors (which you will soon be stripped of). The immediacy is a bit daunting, but it doesn't take long to get to grips with the controls, even though they may initially seem awkward. The A button is your interact button, and also to change into Kameo when you have transformed into an Elemental Warrior; the other face buttons are used to change into the assigned Elemental Warriors. These are pictured near the top of screen, so you always remember which button to push. To perform attacks or actions with your current character, you will press a trigger, or both simultaneously. Available actions and the required buttons are shown unobtrusively at the bottom of the screen at all times, so you won't have to memorise every action for every Warrior. Once you've completed this impromptu tutorial, you will launch into a proper one, which seems a bit backward.

You learn that the Elves have tried to keep the peace with the Trolls, but they have broken the truce and a war is raging on. Your sister Kalus has also betrayed you, and is siding with Thorn, King of the Trolls. Your ancestors have also been kidnapped. To defeat the threat and save your relatives, you will need to recover the 10 Elemental Warriors. Each of these have multiple abilities, and they will be required to complete your journey. Kameo can hover around environments quickly and has a flip kick, but she isn't much of a fighter. You will soon find Pummel Weed, who is likely to be your standard combat Warrior of choice for the first half of the game, and progress from there.

Environments can often be quite vast, and at times upon entering an area you will get a camera tour through the level to show you where you need to go, and to give you an idea of which Warriors you will need to rely on. Some of the areas are friendly, where there is little combat, but you are required to traverse them and find the way to the next area. These areas often have inhabitants that will talk to you, or shops where you can buy items. The action levels forgo friends for foes, but still retain the traversal aspect and even some light puzzle solving in combat itself.

Graphically Kameo has aged since it launched alongside the Xbox 360, but not considerably. Some models have low polygon counts or plain textures, but everything is still bright, colourful and nice to look at. Some environments have their fair share of straight edges, but are still expansive and well-designed enough that it hardly matters. Animations are great, aside from the odd clipping problem. The game has a good sense of charm in its simple and bright artistic design. For example one of your Elemental Warriors is Rubble, who is a pile of rocks with a head-shaped rock on top. Stop moving for a moment, and he will bounce his head and flip it in the air in a playful fashion.

It's the Elemental Warriors that are the star of the show and gameplay. As your stable of Warriors grows, you will have more abilities available to you, and be able to reach locations (or discover secrets) that you weren't able to before. For example, Pummel Weed can plant himself in the ground and move along to get under small gaps, and Deep Blue is the only Warrior who can swim underwater and reach caves. It's using these abilities in tandem that feel particularly good. For example, using Major Ruin's dashing technique to launch off a ramp, changing into Chilla midflight, and digging his ice spikes into an ice wall that he can climb. The joy comes mostly from discovering these combinations yourself, so I won't spoil any more of them. The sense of discovery continues regularly throughout the game as you unlock new Warriors, and different obstacles are put in your way that you have to solve.

Not that they are too troublesome to solve. The combat is generally easy, and the puzzle elements are pretty straightforward. At the beginning of your adventure you are given the Whotnot Book, which is enchanted by the wizard Ortho. If you ever get stuck, he is usually able to tell you what needs to be done. In fact, he is a little overzealous. Almost immediately after you come across an obstacle, Ortho will let you know that he has a hint for you in the Whotnot Book. It's much more satisfying to ignore it and solve it yourself, but I did turn to the book a few times on my adventure. It's not too instrusive, but you can turn it off if the feature annoys you. If you fall off a ledge, you spawn back in the level and lose some health. If you lose all of your health, you can continue. There is little penalty, as the game autosaves every few minutes. The Whotnot Book also houses information on the Warriors you have. Elemental Fruit can be found around the land, and can be used to purchase upgrades or new abilities for your Warriors. A few of these will be particularly helpful, but most simply add flair to attacks, and aren't entirely necessary; at the end of the game I had quite a number of Elemental Fruit I hand't bothered to spend. You can assign Warriors to face buttons from within the book, or in the game by holding a face button and choosing a Warrior from a radial menu.

Bosses look mighty intimidating, and are some of the best battles. These usually require good use of a couple of the Warriors, and soon you will have the pattern and a strategy in place. A couple of them became a bit on the tedious side, requiring you to perform the same actions too many times, but most of them were quite fun. For example, one of them is a huge tree with a gnarly face who shoots roots out in your direction, and periodically shakes its upper limbs to let loose some Trolls hiding among its branches. As well as the bosses during action stages, you will also come across several Shadow Trolls, who are holding the Elemental Warriors hostage. These you can only combat as Kameo, but you will need to commandeer a Lost Soul and throw it at the Troll when it materialises. These battles all follow the same basic premise, but they will scale as you progress, requiring you to hit them more times as they introduce new attacks.

It seems the story is aimed at being accessible, but is entirely boring and forgettable as a result. While most of the voice acting is adequate, it seems that each actor was given free reign to interpret their characters however they chose and to come up with whatever thickly accented voice they wanted. So while none of them are bad on their own, they seem to lack coherence against the story or setting. This makes the story not very engaging, and I found myself skipping a lot of the scenes, which I normally don't do, to get back into the action. You can talk to some characters in the friendly areas, but they usually don't have too many discerning features and often look alike, so it is hard to connect with anyone who isn't one of the few main characters in the story.

There is a local co-op mode, but it is limited. Once you complete an action stage in single-player, you unlock it for multiplayer. Thus it is just the same level again with a friend. This seems like a lost opportunity, as the potential combinations of Warriors lend themselves to a truly co-operative experience. Specific Co-op levels that required two people to work together to complete would have been very rewarding. This ties to another lost opportunity in the single player campaign. The game takes about 10 hours to complete, but it doesn't feel as though all of the Warriors and their combinations were explored to their fullest. One of the Warriors unique skills was only used for a few minutes after retrieving him, and then was never needed again. Bosses could also have been improved by requiring more than just 2 Warriors for each one.

In all Kameo is a solid adventure. While the story is lacklustre and lacks engagement, the gameplay will keep you interested enough to see it through to the end.

Score 8.0

Inspired by Boz' series of finance tip blogs, I sat down earlier this year and wrote a series about investing and making a plan. After the series was complete, I sat on it, pondered it, and realised I simply wasn't experienced enough to fully endorse the plan that I set out. Especially given that the major part of my investing didn't start until this year. Since then, my investment value has tumbled... not to mention the fact that I borrowed to do so, and am paying interest. But here are a couple of ideas that I can share.

1. Don't get emotional when your investment goes down.
2. Don't invest more than you can afford to lose.

Both of those things are related; if you can't afford to lose it and you do, you will be mighty upset about your dire situation. All investments that offer returns come with risk, and you need to be sure you can handle that risk. In my case, I borrowed money to invest in managed funds, thinking the market had already taken quite a dip and would bounce. I'm still waiting for that bounce, and I've lost several thousand dollars in asset value as the market continues to correct itself. Obviously I'd much prefer it had increased by that value instead, but I just shrug at my situation. My plan was for the long term, and the value of those assets has no effect on my income today. Even at the absolute worst, if somehow the entirety of those managed funds drops to zero, I can still afford to make the repayments.

Long term plans (at least 5 years) should have an estimated average return. However, it is important to realise that it is an average. Some years your return might be negative. Other years it might be significantly higher than your expectations. This is how I've managed to remain detached from my losses. This is an off year; there will be others that outperform in the future. If you are going to run around like a headless chicken if your investment goes down by a few per cent, it is probably better to find a lower risk investment opportunity (probably with lower potential returns) for your own personal harmony and wellbeing. Investing is a worthwhile cause, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who is going to be stressed about constantly monitoring their assets value. I only ever check mine when I get my quarterly statements.

Note that I'm not a financial adviser or investing guru of any kind. If you want specific financial or investing advice, I recommend seeking a qualified professional.

So Rock Band finally hit us here in Australia. While I was always set on Rock Band, GH : WT comes out next week, so I wasn't too sure. Finally decided on it for the Xbox 360. I was really torn as to which version to get. All other things being equal, I would probably have got the PS3 version as I have more hard drive space if I want to download songs and my friend has a PS3 who is likely to buy one of these rhythm games at some stage. But I'm pretty sure the instruments are cross compatible for the 360, but not the PS3. I don't know whether I will ever make use of this feature (how will my Rock Band drums work with GH : WT?), but I guess it is there if I want it.

So I've put in a little single player with the drums. By golly the bass pedal takes a little getting used to. At first I was bummed they included it in easy, but I guess you have to start somewhere. I cranked it up to medium before long, and I haven't been doing too badly, but I haven't progressed very far.

World Tour is great fun. I HATE how multiple people have to sign in. This is so tedious. But rocking out with mates is great fun. We've already reached our fan base limit for medium, which is a sore point for me; on the one hand I understand that the whole band should progress, but it also means you need at least 2 people who can play on Hard. This is unlikely to happen with my circle of friends. I really like the setup though, travelling around the world. The 10 song setlist was a doozy. We got up to Enter Sandman, song number 9, and got our butts handed to us. We took a break after about 6 or 7 goes (with drums, vocals and guitar, and once getting 98 freaking percent), the came back to it and managed to nail it. I was SO not walking away from that gig when we had finished 8 songs already.

So I see me having a good time with this game for a long time to come, though I don't know how much I will focus on single player, it will probably be more of a multiplayer affair for me. Oh, I also suck at singing on this game, and every karaoke game I ever played. Whenever I sing the way I think the song sounds, my pitch is way off. If I manage to get the pitch right, I am personally hating the way I sound. And who decided all these German songs were a good idea?

Played through Crackdown again recently, and decided to give it a review, which you can find below. I originally thought I would have fun with the review and try and talk like I was the commentator in the game, but I found that a lot tougher than I thought, so I went with a traditional review.

Come on agent, let's see what you can do! Crackdown puts you in the shoes of an engineered soldier, whose task is to serve The Agency and take out the 3 crime lords who have taken up residence in Pacific City. It is a great action game that really makes you feel like a super powered agent, with a distinct art styIe an overzealous narrator, a well implemented upgrade system, and an expertly designed city to flex your powers in.

The game takes place in a third person perspective, and from the outset you are allowed to explore the entirety of Pacific City. The city is divided into 3 main islands, and each is dominated by one of the 3 crime syndicates. Your primary goal is to take out the Kingpin of each of those crime syndicates. However, at the outset of the game those Kingpins fortresses are heavily fortified. Each of the Kingpins is supported by 6 generals, and by taking out these generals, you weaken the Kingpins defences. For example, take out the general that handles weapons distribution, and the Kingpins bodyguards will start sporting lower grade weapons. Take out the general who handles recruitment, and there will be less bodyguards to deal with. When you approach a fortress, the game is helpful enough to give a percentage chance of success based on your current stats and defeated generals.

Of course, The Agency doesn't know where these fortresses are, so it is up to you to explore the city and find them. Once you get near a fortress, you will receive an updated dossier and the location added to your map. Occassionally you may get a random update if you have been wandering around without finding anything, so you will never be completely lost. There are also supply points around the city, which are usually located in high places. When you die, you can respawn from any supply point around the city, as well as restock your ammo. You can only hold 2 weapons at a time, and for all the money spent on bioengineering you, you think they would be able to supply you with some decent weapons. The first weapons you have are servicable, but you will want to replace them as you come across tougher enemies. Once you collect guns from dead enemies, you can take them back to supply points, and they will remain available to use for the rest of the game.

Combat is simple. Holding the left trigger locks on to the nearest target, pull the right trigger to shoot. That might make it sound simple, and it is, but the combat is often intense because you face so many enemies at once. Once a target is locked, you can use the right stick to target a specific area of the body. This hardly comes into play as it doesn't yield much benefit; only head shots deal major damage, but it takes a long time for the reticule to home in. You can also home in on petrol tanks, and blow cars up with a well-placed shot. The targeting system works well the vast majority of the time. There will be occassions where it targets cars behind the bad guys or not the specific guy you want to aim at, but these issues are fleeting and usually don't impact on your success. Killing enemies with bullets upgrades your aiming skills, and the reticule tightens faster once you lock on.

You can take out your enemies with brawn as well as bullets. You can do this by either walking straight up to them and giving them a hefty kick, or picking up objects and throwing them. Enemies are smart enough to move out of the way of incoming heavy objects, so this isn't usually useful until your physical strength has been upgraded a few times. While you might only be able to pick up barrels at the outset, you end up being able to pick up trucks and throw them around. To go the distance in Pacific City you will need to upgrade this ability, because it also indicates how much damage you can take.

On top of regular bullets and brawn, you can use explosives. You start out with grenades, but can also obtain some rocket launchers from your enemies. Taking out enemies with explosives increases the skill, and each upgrade offers more damage and a higher radius. It is a double edged sword - while explosives are great for taking out enemy cars and their passengers, it can also kill nearby civilians, which drops your skill. However, the punishment is minute and won't really impact on your upgrades.

Driving is the one skill that is not necessary; you can play the entire game without getting in a vehicle. This is a good thing, because for the most part, driving sucks. You can commandeer civilian vehicles, but the handling for most of them is very poor. The Agency has three vehicles available to you at the garage; a speedy sports car, a SUV that can handle rugged terrain, and a truck cab that plows through just about anything. There are two ways to improve your driving skills. The first is running over enemies. Without any driving skill this is difficult as most enemies will just avoid you, and it is much more efficient to get out of the car and shoot them instead. The second way to improve your skills is to compete in races, which are against the clock. Again, with poor handling skills these can be a bit troublesome. Once you manage to get a couple of driving skill upgrades, these become much easier. Another perk with the Agency vehicles is that their appearance changes in line with your driving skill, giving your sports car a sleeker look, or beefier tires for your SUV. Once fully upgraded, they get an additional bonus, such as a nitro boost for the truck, and mounted machine guns for the sports car. While these are nifty to play around with for a short period of time, driving as a whole feels completely underutilised in the game. It would have been nice to have a few chases, or even some smart level design which allowed you to take a short cut and launch cars off makeshift ramps into an enemy fortress.

Agility is the defining skill in Crackdown, and goes hand in hand with level design. Agility determines how high you can jump. All three islands have a big degree of verticality. Your agent can cling onto window ledges, balconies, and the edges of buildings, and continue jumping upwards from there. The main way to gain agility is by collecting agility orbs. These are mostly found on rooftops, so you will need to employ your climbing skills. While it is possible to travel the entirety of Pacific City at the start of the game, you certainly won't be able to scale all the buildings, and thus reach some of the fortresses. While it isn't too subtle, it still strikes the effective balance between being open-ended while offering a structured way to progress. It often means doing a bit of island hopping, as you go back to find more orbs, upgrade, then go to another island to get newly accessible ones, and so on. The level design is such that this is a fun endeavour anyway, planning your jumps ahead of time as you try to figure out the best path to the orbs you can see up above. Rooftop races are also available, requiring you to go through checkpoints on the rooftops within a time limit. If you complete the challenge, you are awarded agility points. These aren't necessary to fully upgrade, and I found some of them pretty tedious. Not making a jump often means failure, which is very frustrating for long races. A quick restart feature might have mitigated this to a degree, but if you fail you have to traipse back across the city if you want to try again.

Presentation is excellent, with an intentional comic book feel. People and objects have a distinct black border around them as though they have been pencilled in. By not aiming for realism, they have really nailed a cohesive, colourful look. Most impressive is the draw distance; stand on the tallest buildings, and you will be able to see nearly every other building that would be visible from your position, even on the other side of the map. Moving objects fare worse, with some pop-in if things are getting hectic. However, this mainly occurs when you are intentionally causing having and blowing up everything in the streets; it's rarely an issue while you are following your mission objectives. The game also has an intentionally hammy commentator, who gives you updates, acts as a guide, and lauds your skills. The last part is mildly broken, where he will comment on skills you weren't even using. For example, giving you props for an impressive ascent when you were running along a flat road. I found this amusing, but being told about rooftop races for the umpteenth time, which triggered whenever you came within range of one, became tiresome. There are plenty of other neat touches as well, such as the way your agent grunts with each jump, the way the screen shakes when you hit the ground from a great height, and the way the sound of a homing rocket scales as it gets closer to your location and then whizzes by your head as you manage to avoid it. There are plenty of people bustling around the city, and firefights often break out between gangs and the peacekeepers, making the place feel alive.

The game does offer a challenge on the medium setting, such that I turned it down to Tough (the easiest setting) after some frustrations. The game is balanced as far as requiring a certain skill level to be able to beat the kingpins and their generals. This is mainly by virtue of guards continuing to respawn. If you don't have good aiming skills or armour, you won't be able to take them out fast enough as they get replaced. This can make storming a fortress a tense affair as you retreat to recover your health, and try to progress a little further before you have to fall back again. While your aim is pretty good from a distance, enemies are a better aim the closer they are. Thus it can be frustrating to have a quartet of enemies respawn through a door several feet from you and rip you to shreds in a few seconds before you can find adequate cover. This means restarting from a supply point and needing to clear the fortress from scratch, and was the reason I turned down the difficulty. Aside from that one point of frustration, the game is never unfair. Playing through the game while doing the odd orb-hunting or races will naturally progress your skills (aside from driving) so they should be near their peak when you reach the end of the game. Of course if you are ever having trouble, you can focus on upgrading a particular ability by asaulting gangs in the streets, or just taking your time with outlying enemies of a fortress.

I do not have Xbox Live, and unfortunately my attempts to system link were unsuccessful, and could not find the other linked machine. The game offers co-op and allows two players to run around the city taking on the bosses, but I advise reading other reviews if you want more accurate information of this feature. This review also incorporates the free download which adds the Keys To The City mode. This is like an ultimate cheat mode. Note that this starts you in a new game, not your existing game, and turns off achievements and leaderboards. The cheats are varied, allowing you to set your skills to whatever level you want, have insane agility (jump higher and ran faster than was previously possible), spawn items at will, and more. This makes for a fun diversion, letting you set up a long chain of exploding barrels or cars, and generally just go nuts around the city.

Crackdown is a great action game that makes you feel like a superagent. It is easy to pick up and play, has fun gunplay, and a great city to explore. What are you waiting for agent? Let's see what you can do!

Score 8.5

At least I think this is the third time I've had a racism themed blog. But a quick follow up on my Bioshock review. I played through the game again on easy to harvest the Little Sisters and get the different ending, and as mentioned in my previous blog, it felt way too easy as compared to normal, especially given that the game employs vitachambers. But something else was more disappointing. I couldn't get spoiler tags to work, so the next paragraph is a Bioshock spoiler.

--- START SPOILER

In the first play through where I saved the Little Sisters, after the encounter with Andrew Ryan, Tenenbaum helps you. After harvesting the Little Sisters, I was expecting something entirely different to happen after that encounter. But no, she helps you anyway. I was hoping for a secondary sequence to rival the Big Daddy mission. Should you wish to respond to this, word carefully for those who haven't played it yet!

--- END SPOILER

As I mentioned was happening a little while ago, my parents and I sold our business. We are still busy at the moment as there is a handover period, so I'm over a week behind on reading Gamespot news and reviews (which I used to read daily at the shop) and haven't been commenting much on blogs. We let a lot of the regular customers know in advance that we were selling. One of the questions that was asked of us several times was "Who is taking over?" I'm not sure how you are supposed to respond to that. What information are they looking for exactly? My response generally was "A young couple, they seem very keen, they have done accounting/business courses at university" or something along those lines.

The people taking over are Chinese. Those who have read my previous blogs on this topic would probably know that I am not racist, but am intrigued by subconscious beliefs we may have, and that while it may not matter to me, it might matter to someone else. I refrained from saying that they were Chinese, because to me it didn't matter. Certain people, based on their behaviour or comments while being customers, I imagined probably did care. A few times, I caught my father saying "I have to be honest, they are Chinese". My dad is not racist, but the words 'I have to be honest' sound loaded with guilt. It makes it sound like you would prefer to keep it hidden, but really there is nothing to hide. I know my father wouldn't do it on purpose, I guess it was just his subconscious factoring in that it will matter to some people.

Of course, I ponder racial relations and the fine line between respecting racial differences and bringing attention to those differences unfairly. Some people don't give a crap. A customer asked me some questions about the sale, and asked me what the new owners name was. I told her his name. Her face dropped. "Can you please cancel my orders". Inside I was thinking "You have got to be joking?" but I feigned ignorance and asked why. She gave me a spiel about being able to pick up the weekly item in question on her way home from work, and she had been meaning to do it for a while. It sounded plausible, but saying his name (which I assume most people could determine it is of Asian origin only, and not a specific country) was definitely the catalyst. While that was the most drastic reaction, I've seen some other people less than enthused, to the point where I don't think they will be customers much longer.

He is smart though. He factored in that he was going to lose customers in his offering price (a price we were obviously still ok with). He shouldn't have to factor that in, but I guess racism, whether spoken or unspoken, is probably going to exist for the rest of my lifetime. You could make an argument against language barriers, and they would be valid. One person working doesn't speak very good English, and may have problems relating to customers. But one of them speaks good English, and we have had a few good conversations. Such as whether it would be harder for English speakers to learn Chinese, or for Chinese people to learn English. The way I understand it from out conversation, Chinese words are represented by symbols, which are more like pictures. If I remember correctly, English has the most words of any language. And words with one letter different can mean entirely different things. Because Chinese symbols are intricate and usually well drawn, he has trouble reading some peoples English writing, because we all write differently. We are used to reading other peoples handwriting, and only look for vague shapes that make up our alphabet. All rather interesting.

I also asked him if he ate dog. While culturally and legally we do not eat dogs or cats (in Australia, and I assume many other Western countries), I don't see any moral reason not to do so. What makes it so different from us farming pigs, sheep, and cows? We feed them, make them fat, kill them, and eat them. So why should we tell them they are not allowed to eat dogs in their country? I suppose you could say it is a domesticated animal, but I don't know if that actually means anything. It wasn't until I included someone else in the conversation that it came to my attention that we are the only country to eat the animal on our coat od arms, the kangaroo. I think a rare delicacy is also an emu egg, and the emu is also on our coat of arms. Interesting, eh?

I just so happened to buy a gaming mag (because the shop had no internet for a week before the sale), and it had an article about the growing market in China. I knew that China had a one child policy, but it has been in effect for 29 years. The article pointed out that no person in China who is under 29 years of age has a sibling. I had never looked at it that way, and that sounds both amazing and hard to comprehend. Apparently it is a big factor in MMO's in China; they've had no brothers or sisters to play with, so that becomes their social hub. Interesting things to think about.

A couple of reviews for your perusal. First up, Bioshock.

Prepare for an intriguing adventure into the deep. Bioshock opens in 1960 with you as a passenger on a plane, which crashes into the ocean. Nearby happens to be an entry point to a vast underwater city. Soon after entering you find a radio, and are contacted by Atlas, who informs you that you have entered the realm of Rapture, a utopia imagined by one Andrew Ryan. Like all supposed utopias, things have gone awry, and the majority of residents have become mentally unstable due to genetic modification and splicing, and the city itself has become somewhat dilapidated.

Amid the city's history is experimentation with genetic changes, and the discovery of ADAM and EVE which are substances that assist this process. Throughout the game you will find audio diaries from various citizens of Rapture, which fill you in on the development of ADAM and EVE, the history of Rapture, and even common citizens remarking on the upper echelon of Rapture - comments they certainly wouldn't make to their face. Andrew Ryan also contacts you via your radio, and let's you know he isn't too happy with your actions.

Atlas first tasks you with helping to find his family, whom he can't reach from his current position. Soon you encounter your first splicer, one of the citizens of Rapture who has been sent a little crazy. In fact, there are rarely any sane people you meet in Rapture, and most will attack you on sight. You get equipped with a wrench if you want to deal with splicers up close and personal, and collect other weapons through the game. These are mostly olden versions of first-person shooter standbys, but you can collect multiple ammo types for each one that are useful against different enemies. For example, a few of the ballistic weapons have anti-personnel bullets that are much more effective against splicers, and anti-armour for use against turrets and Big Daddies (more on those soon).

In addition to more conventional weapons, you are also introduced to Plasmids. These are genetic powers awarded to you, a few by pick-ups, but mostly through purchases (again, more on that soon). Electroshock is your first required plasmid, allowing you shock your enemies, and is used to momentarily disable turrets and cameras. Using your plasmids uses up your EVE, which you can collect while searching through Rapture. These aren't all direct attacks, and there are other useful abilities such as deploying target dummies, or enraging enemies so they attack each other. There are also a variety of Tonics you can collect, in three categories; physical, engineering and xxx. At the outset of the game, you have two available slots for plasmids and for each type of tonic, but you can unlock more as the game progresses. Tonics are permanent abilities, such as getting improvements to hacking, bonuses to your wrench wielding skills, or resistances to certain types of damage, and they don't use up any EVE.

While there is a decent amount of action in the game, it heavily favours exploration of the environments; there are plenty of rooms in Rapture that you will never need to visit, but you will feel compelled to do so. Many objects like storage crates, desks, fridges and corpses can be searched to uncover ammo, food/first aid kits, money, and a large variety of other items. Money is used to buy items at vending machines which are located throughout the game, and they do not always carry the same items.

There are security cameras in Rapture, and if they catch sight of you, they will send flying security bots after you. You can either wait until the alarm finishes, or run to a Bot Shutdown station to turn them off. Similarly, if a turret catches sight of you, it will begin firing at you. If you can evade the security cameras and get underneath them, or shock the turrets and approach them, they can be hacked and turned to your own uses, and will trigger from your enemies. Other items like vending machines can also be hacked to make items cheaper. When hacking an item, a grid of hidden tiles is displayed, which need to be turned face up to reveal pipe pieces. Liquid begins flowing from one pipe on the edge of the grid, and you will need to place pieces so that the flow can reach a pipe on the other side. It's a fun diversion, though some of the harder ones can be almost unfair. You can equip Tonics that assist you in hacking, and you can use Automatic Hack Tools if you have them to automatically pass those you don't want to attempt. Another mechanic of the game is to take photos of your enemies. Taking photos usually puts you in harms way, but if you take enough photos of a particular enemy type, you will be awarded a bonus for doing the research. Usually this is more damage to that particular type, but there are other bonuses as well.

There are a variety of splicers wandering around doing their own thing until they catch sight of you. Some will attempt to crush your skull with a lead pipe, while others will have firearms. Others have been further genetically modified, such as the Spider Splicer who crawls on the ceiling, and Houdini Splicers who fling fireballs at you, then disappear and reappear elsewhere. For the most part the enemies behave with some degree of intelligence. If you set them on fire, they often scream and run to the nearest patch of water to douse themselves... where you can then electroshock them for major damage. There were a few ignited enemies that continued to taunt me while they burned to death. There was also an occasion where I set a splicer on fire, who then ran past a Big Daddy I was not prepared for; as I was the original source of the fire, the Big Daddy attacked me when it would not have been logical to do so. These lapses of intelligence or logic are few and far between and don't break up the experience too much.

Big Daddies are the enemies that will take the most planning to deal with. Basically, these guys are tough, and are huge bulking behemoths that look like men dressed in diving equipment of the time. Luckily they are the only enemies that won't attack you on sight, and their sole duty is to protect the Little Sisters. Little Sisters look like haunted young girls, and they have been 'programmed' to extract ADAM from corpses. If you approach a Little Sister, the Big Daddy will become aggravated and warn you away. Once you attack, the Big Daddy will respond with force. Unarmed ones will charge you and smack you about with their drill-arms for massive damage, and these attacks are hard to avoid, while those with firearms will shoot you with powerful weapons from afar. They take a huge amount of damage, but you will need to defeat them to interact with the Little Sister.

Once you have taken out a Little Sisters protector, you will have a choice; save them, or harvest them. Killing them nets you more ADAM, but saving them curries favour with one of the still-sane citizens of Rapture, and can lead to other benefits, plus a difference to the game ending. ADAM is used at a 'Gatherers Garden', which is a vending machine for plasmids, tonics, and to unlock more slots. Early in the game it creates quite a conundrum, whether to unlock more slots so you have more abilities at your disposal, or to try out new ones. Plasmids and tonics can only be swapped when acquiring them, or at Gene Banks. It is annoying that you can't check which tonics you have equipped unless you go to a Gene Bank, but this is minor.

The controls are smooth, and while you will end up with a large range of weapons and plasmids at your disposal, holding a bumper pauses the action and brings up a radial menu, allowing you to quickly combo your weapons and plasmids. You can hold up to 9 EVE injections and first aid kits, as well as consuming edibles. This is supported by the vitachambers, which are like a checkpoint system. If you don't heal yourself in time and you die, you are revitalised at a vitachamber. Everything in the level stays persistant, including damage you have already done to enemies. Purists might complain that this makes the game easy, but it will reduce frustration. Players who do not like this system can still save the game anywhere, and reload if they die, so everyone is catered for. My personal experience was to use health kits any time I was low, but continued from a vitachamber if I did find myself forgetting to heal in the heat of battle.

The real star of the show is the environment itself. Rapture is fully realised, and feels like a place that might actually have existed. No two rooms feel the same, and the level design is superb. While you will usually have a specific task to perform at all times, there is plenty of room to explore and often more than one way to reach a certain destination. You will also travel through clear tubes that connect the major buildings, and the background shows the grand scale of Rapture. The distortion effect here as you look out at the ocean, and the way your vision blurs when walking through cascading water and when drinking too much alcohol in a short period, are all done convincingly. While you could point out that the water in the game is done extremely well, so is everything else.

If the stunning environments don't urge you to explore Rapture, then the story will. What happened to Rapture and it's citizens will slowly be uncovered as you learn from the recorded diaries, and you will often find these off the beaten path. You will also meet some fleshed out characters face to face that give you their personal history. These people are not your standard sort of crazy; they are just left of centre, with a deluded view of the world and an elevated sense of their own worth. Their words are often poetic, yet also dripping with a venomous condescending tone. The writers, directors and actors should all be commended for delivering such superb voice work. The sounds in Rapture are equally impressive, from the sounds of water flowing, to the effectiveness of the guns, the various plasmid sounds, and the unmistakable thuds of the footsteps of a nearby Big Daddy.

Bioshock can not be recommended enough to anyone who wants a strong story-driven first person shooter. It has multiple gameplay elements which all merge together seamlessly. From it's art direction, great use of sound, and great pacing, Biosock excels in every area, and is a must play game.

Final Score 9.5

And for dessert, PixelJunk Monsters.

PixelJunk Monsters is a tower defense game that gives your brain a workout as it lulls you with its sweet charm. For anyone who doesn't know what a tower defense game is, here is a breakdown of the basics of this strategy subgenre. Waves of enemies pour through the level, trying to reach a certain destination, and always follow the same path or paths. It is your job to build towers along the sides of those paths that will attack the enemies when they come into range. Each successfully defeated wave awards you with some form of currency so that you can build more towers or upgrade them so you have enough firepower for upcoming waves. Enemies may be weak or resistant to certain towers, so the strategy comes from building the right tower in the right place at the right time.

PixelJunk Monsters builds on the basics of the genre nicely. One original addition that really affects the way you play the game is that you are not some unearthly being watching the action from up high; instead you are in control of a native that moves around the level. Thus, if you want to build a tower, you need to run across the map to do so, and you can only build where there are trees. Enemies will follow their set path trying to reach your base. If they reach it, one of your babies is lost; lose them all and you will have to restart the map. When an enemy is destroyed, it drops currency, and you will also need to run around collecting it. Make sure you avoid touching the enemies though; if you do, you will drop some of your coin.

The early levels introduce you to 4 basic enemies that highlight the uses of your 3 basic towers. You are going to need the splash damage of cannons to take out the tightly packed little bugs because arrows will be too slow to take out the numbers they throw out you, and arrows will plink off the armoured fellows. While those cannons will do some splash damage to spiders as they race through, you will need accurate arrows to clean them up. And those arrows might be able to hit flying units, but you will need to use the much more efficient anti-air if you want to defeat an entire wave of the flying tops. Towers can be upgraded 4 times, and the levels take incrementally longer to upgrade. Upgrades are usually more damage, but can also include range increases as well depending on the tower. Towers earn points for each kill they make, and once their bar is full, they go to the next level. You can also stand in front of a tower and dance, which will also increase the bar. Thirdly, you can instantly upgrade a tower with gems.

How you use your gems, which are dropped occasionally by monsters, is all part of the strategy. While it costs a gem for early tower upgrades, a final one costs 3 gems. Gems are also how you unlock new towers. By running back to your base and pressing the action button, it brings up a menu of all the available towers, and how many gems it costs to unlock. Using your gems early to upgrade existing towers often means not unlocking some of the more powerful towers. You won't need these towers in the easy levels, but they will be required later. For example, you will need a Laser Tower when you face the flying enemies that are resistant to your anti-air guns.

Once a level starts, you won't have long to build your first few towers with your starting money before the first wave arrives. A bar at the bottom of the screen shows the progress of the waves. The left side of the bar has a picture of the current wave, another picture slides along the bar to show what and how long until the next wave begins, and a picture on the right side of the bar shows which wave will be following. Thus you will have advance notice of which waves are coming, and can build appropriate towers and dance in front of them to upgrade them in preparation. Each level is capped by a boss, but these usually aren't too threatening; if your defenses were sufficient to get you to the boss, they are probably enough to deal with it.

You never have to deal with reacting enemy AI in this game; each time you play a level, waves will happen in exactly the same way every time. Nevertheless, if you want the opportunity to play all the levels, this game is hard. There is plenty of trial and error as you attempt to figure out the exact numbers of each towers you need, how they need to be spaced to be most effective, and upgrading which towers will lead to more overall damage, and even which ones you need to sell so that you can build a more effective tower in its place. In later levels it does throw you some curveballs, such as after several waves from one direction, they start coming from another direction or multiple directions. Because you didn't know about it, there are mad scurries to build defenses in the correct places, and often lead to restarts so you can build with this knowledge in mind. The more you play each level, the further you get as you understand what you have to build ahead for.

The game begins on an overland map, and you progress through the easy levels, with some branches or side paths on the map. Some roadblocks are blocking certain areas of the map, even if you have completed the preceding map. Should you try to cross the roadblock, it will let you know how many rainbows are required to unlock it. If you complete a level perfectly - not allowing any enemies to get to your base - you earn a rainbow for that level. This is where the game earns its title of hard. Getting through most of the levels is not too tough once you know the waves, but getting a perfect is. In later levels it requires an extremely precise strategy, and it seems apparent there must be only one way to complete it with very little variation from a predetermined build path set down by the developers. Nevertheless, a solution exists, and it is up to you to solve the intricate puzzle.

Another quirk afforded by the fact that you control a character is the opportunity for 2 players. As best I can tell, the levels do not change and the game becomes somewhat easier, as two players can cover the ground better, and both can be upgrading towers. This is a game that deserves the moniker of co-op. Players will need to communicate, work on a plan together, and determine whether they want to save gems to unlock more towers or use them now for upgrades. If you aren't talking to each other, you are probably going to lose. Players each have their own cash, but gems are shared. This means you will also have to discuss who is doing the 'money run' after each wave, especially if you are saving for a more powerful tower; it's no good if both players have 300 gold each and you need a tower that costs 400. This is one of the most rewarding co-op experiences I've played.

The visuals and sounds are of the cutesy variety, and everything feels cohesive. Everything is 2D sprites and look like pastels, and the sound when you squish little bugs is satisfying indeed. The various sounds let you know which of your weapons is firing, and a distinct 'tink' lets you know when enemies are resistant to the weapon that just fired on them. When standing in front of a tower, your characters stops to do a little jig, to help speed up the levelling process. It's all very simple, but it does the job.

Realistically, a level of PixelJunk Monsters is a big maths puzzle that you start trying to solve before you know the whole question. If you don't mind the trial and error aspect, it is a great brain teaser as you try to account for all the known variables, especially with a friend. There is enough variety in the level designs and the wave sequences to keep you interested for the long haul. It's only drawback is that the rainbow system might lock out the less astute players from being able to reach the hard maps, though you can always look up video walkthroughs if you are really struggling with a level.

Final Score 8.5

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Bioshock was obviously great. I chucked the game on Easy last night for my second playthrough to get the different ending (saved the Little Sisters, what a poignant ending, it actually brought a tear to my eye), intending to play through using mainly the wrench. Wowsers, what a change in difficulty compared to Normal. I only had to use 1 first aid kid while whacking away at my first Big Daddy, and I think I lost about half a bar of health while clubbing Steinman, while he riddled me with bullets. If you haven't played this game yet and intend to, definitely don't play it on Easy (although I'm also wondering whether wrenching might actually be more effective in any difficulty).

Fave moment would have to be setting a splicer on fire, watching him take a few strides towards the nearest pool of water and land on a proximity mine left by a Big Daddy about an hour earlier, and soar offscreen. One of those "oh snap!" moments that had me sit up involuntarily and guffaw at the screen.

I watched Iron Man the other night, which I thought was a good solid action movie. It was no Dark Knight, but it did the licence justice. I thought there were a couple of nice touches, but they might be considered spoilers for someone who doesn't know the universe and doesn't want to know.

When James Rhodes watches Tony Stark leave in the Iron Man suit, he looks at the other silver prototype, and says "Next time". This is an obvious reference to the fact that he will become War Machine in the sequel. As far as I remember from what I know of the Iron Man universe, he takes over for a period of time when Tony Stark is out of action. Maybe they co-exist, I forget exactly. I used to be a comic collector a decade ago, and I still remember a bunch of that stuff. I never collected Iron Man, but I liked researching the Marvel Universe regardless, as my cousin was also a collector at the time.

The part after the credits made me smile. I thought both the introduction and the casting were great. Tony Stark gets home, and who should step out of the shadows but Samuel L. Jackson wearing an eye patch. After being asked who he is, he replies "I'm Nick Fury, the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. I'm here to talk to you about the Avenger project". Nice setup for two movies!

Marvel are going all out with a whole bunch of their characters. Incredible Hulk comes out on DVD in a couple of weeks, but there is plenty more in the works. Here is what is on the way, according to www.imdb.com

Iron Fist (2008 ) guess this one isn't going to make the date, seeing as I can't even find a trailer on youtube.
Punisher : War Zone (2008 ) again, I guess this will be next year.
X-Men Origins : Magento (2009)
Silver Surfer (2009)
X-Men Origins : Wolverine (2009)
Luke Cage (2009)
Ghost Rider 2 (2009)
Nick Fury (2010)
Ant Man (2010)
Thor (2010)
Iron Man 2 (2010)
Doctor Strange (2010)
Submariner (2010)
The First Avenger : Captain America (2011)
Spiderman 4 (2011)
The Avengers (2011)
Deathlok (2011)

Cripes. I would have loved to have seen a Venom movie, but I guess that is not to be, and we will probably see Carnage in the next Spiderman. I find Daredevil 2 a strange omission from the list; I know it isn't in the top tier of the superhero movies, but figured it would have done well enough for a sequel. On top of that, there are some other movies that might interest big kids coming in the future.

Master of the Universe aka He-Man (2009)
Astroboy (2009)
Transformers 2 (2009) I doubt this surprises anyone
Voltron (2010)
Thundercats (2010)

I've heard that Master of the Universe is going to be directed by John Woo. So this time it might actually be good...

Note : Much of this has been in response to this Gamespot article.

There has been a bit of a hullaboo lately from publishers regarding the second hand games market. Primarily, they don't like the fact that resellers (i.e. retailers selling second hand games) get all the profit while they get none. I can certainly see their point of view. They could cut the middle man and distribute everything digitally, but we are a while away from that transition (especially with limited hard drive space). So in the interim, some companies are trying to offer rewards for purchasers of new retail products.

All new copies of Gears of War 2 will come with a one-time redeemable code to download the Flashback map pack, 5 reworked maps from Gears of War 1. This will be the only way to get these maps; Cliff Bleszinski says they will never be made available any other way. A second bonus is given to those who purchase during a midnight launch; an in-game gold-plated Hammerburst assault rifle.

NBA Live 09 will have a feature that brings daily updates to rosters and stats. Retail copies come with a one-time code to access this feature; second hand buyers will have to pay $19-99 to access this feature. Rock Band 2 has 20 free tracks for download via a similar one-time code. That would be a decent download fee if you paid the asking price for songs. Dead Space has extra suits with in-game benefits, a different one each for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, that will be downloadable only for the first two weeks after release (one would suspect they are smart enough to make this accessible only from an in-game menu, but if not you can always download it from the appropriate marketplace during those two weeks and buy the game later).

Are these incentives really enough though? Rock Band 2 seems like a game that you wouldn't see many second hand copies of anyway. I'm not into sports game, but the updates for NBA Live 09 seems like a compelling feature, and the price of those updates represents a fair chunk of the all-inclusive full price.

There seems to be a couple of problems with the strategy for Gears of War 2. First, the midnight launch, the only way to get a new skin for a gun. Some people simply can't make it to these events, so missing out on an in-game item on this basis seems unfair. If it was extra paraphernalia (i.e. no change to the game itself), like an art-book, a figure, or soundtrack, that would be fine. Not that this piece of content sounds particularly compelling; a new skin for a gun that has no impact on gameplay. New skins are nice, but I don't see myself paying for downloadable content unless it had some impact on the gameplay (that's just me, I'm sure there are some who would). As such, this content isn't going to make me attend a midnight launch if I wasn't already interested, let alone buy a brand new copy if I normally get one second hand.

The multiplayer map pack is not time-based; all new copies of the game will come with a code to download the pack, regardless of when you purchase the title. Nevertheless, Gears of War 2 will still be sold on the second hand market. I doubt this is going to present much of a problem for players of either group; there will be matches that cater to the content that they have. But the maps will not be available for a price for those that buy second hand copies. Epic are not giving second hand buyers an opportunity to give them money. Companies are complaining that they make no money from second hand sales. I thought downloadable content was a way to offer more value for and produce a revenue stream from consumers, whether they bought new or used.

You can get the extra suit from Dead Space if you download it within two weeks of release. As per Gamespot's news piece "Both suits will have advantages over the standard in-game armor, providing increased inventory slots and tougher protection against spikes, tentacles, and other space-monster weapons." Beefier armour might sound good to some. But what about game balance? What impact are those extra inventory slots and extra protection going to have on the gameplay? Will they make early levels easier and less thrilling than they were originally designed to be? Bioshock would have been a far different experience bereft of some decision making if you started the game with all plasmid and tonic slots open.

I fear the path this may lead to. What if all retail copies are crippled releases that offer a minimum of gameplay, but comes with a code for downloadable content that 'fixes' the game and makes it the way it was designed to be? Then they could charge second hand users for that content, to ensure they get a piece of the pie. But then what happens if your company goes bust, whichever service the download is on goes bust, or for other reasons the download becomes no longer available. That game is dead, and anyone who didn't have that content is not allowed to enjoy it again the way it was supposed to be if they manage to procure a copy.

Ideally, any additional content should not unbalance the game. Conversely, the lack of that content should not hamper the original design of the game, or make the consumer feel like they are missing a decent component of the game. Skins don't break these rules, but aren't particularly compelling.

The main items I can think of would be extra levels/maps/race tracks, and extra playable characters/cars/weapons (so long as these things don't break the balance I mentioned above). The retail box can include a code for these, as well as being available for download for a price, as a potential revenue stream from those who do buy second hand. Even if you do give out codes in the box this way, I'd also suggest they don't release the content at launch. Advertise the fact that the content is coming, but wait a couple of months before you release it. That encourages early buyers to hold onto their copies to get their free content instead of sell them. Heck, don't even advertise it before release day, just make it a nice surprise when consumers open up the box and see that they have some more free stuff coming down the line.

Maybe it's the wrong way to go about it altogether. Maybe Criterion is on the right path with Burnout Paradise. They have been releasing regular free updates to encourage players to hold onto their copy of the game, so they can check out the new content when it arrives, and presumably sell more new copies because there are less second hand ones floating around. This was a part of their plan from the beginning, and they made it clear what their intentions were (at least to frequenters of websites such as this).

Rare is also offering Banjo-Kazooie free if you pre-order Banjo-Kazooie : Nuts & Bolts, which will otherwise be available on XBLA for 1200 points. This seems like a pretty decent bonus, and perhaps other developers could consider doing something similar. If you are releasing a sequel to a franchise and there is enough space on the disc, convert the original to the current platform with the option to unlock it via these one-time codes. Include a boss mode that collects the bosses from previous entries in the series. If there is enough space on the disc, include another game from your back catalogue (if it is no longer available, thus not cannibalizing existing revenue stream), but only unlockable via a one-time code, encouraging people to buy new to get the bonus.

Many PC games are already in on the act with limited number of activations (I imagine this practice is also aimed at anti-resale, but has remained largely ignored under the veil of preventing piracy). What are your thoughts of console games going the same way? At least they are offering content instead of introducing activations, which they very well could, so we should be grateful for that at least.

I don't think there is a problem with the second hand market; it exists for just about everything else. I also don't have a problem with developers trying to make an extra buck from downloadable content; I just want it to be compelling content, not a fix that allows me to play a game the way it was meant to be.

Firstly I reviewed Condemned 2. Feedback appreciated as always.

One of the features touted at the start of this generation was that everything was going wireless. It seemed like there was a big song and dance about it. One of my friends had a go at the Wii because the remote and nunchuk were connected via wire, even though the remote itself was wireless.

Recently I bought two extra 360 controllers so I could play 4 player games. I already had 2 wireless controllers, and since I thought I wouldn't be using them that frequently, I got two extra wired ones. So I played some 3 player Castle Crashers using the 2 wireless ones, plus a wired one.

So for my next single player gaming session, I turned on the console, a controller was already plugged in, so I used that instead of turning on a wireless one. I've continued using it for the past few days, and I couldn't care less.

Maybe it's because I don't have bratlings or pets that could run through the room and trip themselves up. At the moment the controller is left sitting on the couch, cord draped across the floor, and I know that anyone who walks through my place is going to see it and walk over it. If I was worried, I could always just put the controller on the table next to the console when I'm done with my gaming session.

I will concede that Wii remote and nunchuk combo could have benefited from being wireless, especially the games where you are 'running' and the cable is flicking up into your face. But with traditional controllers, I don't think I care whether it is wired or not (though I hate the ridiculously short length of the PS3 charge cable). While it's probably so marginal it hardly matters at all (especially when compared to the consoles energy consumption), I imagine it must be more energy efficient to used a wired controller than use one with battery storage. Admittedly wireless internet is nice, enabling multiple devices to connect to a central point.

Hey all, just wrote a review for GW:RE 2. I don't know if this is a universal issue, but if I try looking at grouped friends contributions, apparently no one has done any reviews. If you have done a review recently that you don't think I've seen, let me know and I will have a look individually.

The Review
Geometry Wars : Retro Evolved 2 (from hereon referred to as Geometry Wars 2) maintains the basic controls of it's predecessor, but adds a bunch of new modes and gameplay elements to expand the experience. It doesn't take long to grasp the core concepts, but it does take time to master. Following the basic tenets of 2D multi-directional shooters, the left stick moves your ship, while the right stick controls the direction you fire. In modes where it is available, a trigger will unleash a screen clearing bomb.

Geometry Wars 2 is an arena shooter; each mode takes place in the same rectangular arena, enemies constantly spawn, and your goal is to rack up as high a score as you can before the mode ends. One change over the previous version is geoms. When an enemy is destroyed, it will drop one or more geoms, and collecting them increases your multiplier; collecting multipliers is the key to getting high scores in Geometry Wars 2. Unlike the previous version, multipliers do not reset if you die. Floating geoms don't stick around forever (though the time varies depending on the mode) so you will need to be on the move to rack up your multiplier, offering a nice risk versus reward.

In every mode, the risk cranks up pretty quickly. The game takes its name from the basic shapes of the enemies, which are composed only of neon outlines. Each enemy follows a pattern; some home in on you, some evade your fire, and others follow their own path independent of what you do. It is all very mechanical, but the sheer number of enemies you face make the game extremely frantic. Apart from one specific mode, there are no 'levels' in Geometry Wars. Enemies continue spawning in, in more numbers and in more complex combinations, until they overwhelm you.

While the visuals sound simple, the bright colours are very striking, and seeing the game in motion is a thing of beauty. Most enemies only require one hit to be killed, and explode into particle effects, creating a cascade of fireworks over the screen at nearly all times. While this does appear spectacular, a few times I thought it was slightly overdone and could have been toned down a fraction, as sometimes I lost track of what was going on. Those times were fleeting though.

While GW offers 6 modes, only one is available at the outset; Deadline. Deadline offers unlimited lives, but imposes a three minute time limit and 3 bombs to achieve the highest score. I feel this was a very strong design decision. It allows newer players to acclimate to the controls without worrying about losing lives. It also alludes to the fact that surviving is not the true purpose of any mode in Geometry Wars; learning how to efficiently collect geoms and achieve a high score is. Of course, surviving is still important; dying in Deadline clears the screen of enemies, and while things ramp up again quickly, precious seconds means lost opportunities to collect geoms. Once you have accumulated enough score in any of the modes, it unlocks the next one.

The second mode is King. While King limits the type of enemies that spawn, you can only shoot from inside designated circles, and enemies can not enter them. However, once you enter them, they only last a few seconds before they shrink into nothingness, then another circle appears, keeping three on screen at a time. This mode is very tactical, requiring you to think ahead about clearing a path to the next circle, as you will be weaponless while making the journey, as well as considering whether you want to risk close encounters with enemies to collect geoms while on your way. This mode is all or nothing, with no bombs and only your beginning life.

Evolved is the third mode, which is the same as the original Geometry Wars. You are given 3 lives and 3 bombs, and can earn extra lives or bombs if you reach certain score milestones. This plays much like Deadline, though there is more incentive to stay alive.

Pacifism, my personal favourite mode, does not allow shooting at all. Only one type of enemy spawns in this mode; the ones that home in on your position. Gates also spawn in the level, and crossing a gate destroys enemies in close proximity. The enemies continue to spawn in various locations around the arena, creating some very tense moments as you double back to collect geoms and scrape through a closing gap between different groups of enemies as they home in on you. Like King, this one is do or die, giving you only one life and no bombs.

Waves follows King and Pacifism in the 'one hit and its game over' mechanic. The vast majority of enemies spawned in this mode are rockets. These spawn along either half or the entirety of one of the four walls of the arena, and continue moving to the other side and back until they are destroyed. This might sound predictable, but a new wave spawns every few seconds, quickly ratcheting things up. Every now and then an odd enemy of another type spawns, which can throw a spanner in the works if you think you have discovered a decent strategy for dealing with the waves.

Sequence is the final mode to be unlocked, which offers a slightly more traditional 'levels' pacing. Each level contains the same enemy placements or spawns every time, but they also quickly get hard, offering large numbers of enemies in difficult to deal with combinations. You are given 3 lives and bombs. You are given 30 seconds to clear each arena, and if you die or time runs out, you move to the next arena. This might not sound like much punishment, but it denies you the opportunity to score more points and collect geoms from that level. Bombs are a last resort, but it's better to use them if you are backed into a corner and collect the geoms before the next level starts. The mode finishes when you clear all 20 levels or you run out of lives.

While you are likely to push yourself to beat your own scores, leaderboards are another way that may push you to get new scores. If people on your friends list have a higher score than you, it is listed at the top of the screen, as if teasing you to beat it. One problem is that you must be online for your scores to matter; they are not saved on your console. Therefore, if you start a game without being connected, even your own previous scores will not be listed, and you will not have any idea what score you are trying to beat. By the same token, if you happen to have a breakout score while offline, it will disappear when you exit the game; it is not stored to be uploaded the next time you are online. This may not matter to those who are permanently connected, and I find it annoying but tolerable as I have to swap connections, but others may not be able to handle this feature if their consoles are rarely online.

The game offers local multiplayer. There is no online multiplayer, but this is understandable as the game requires split second timing and lag would be a killer to the frantic gameplay. The game offers both competitive and co-op play for all of the modes, up to 4 players. It even offers team options for the competitive modes if you have more than 2 players. Competitive games offer a ranking system; after each game, players earn points depending on how they placed, and accumulates for all game types, so you can set up your own gauntlet to see who is better at the game overall. Co-op modes tally the multiplier and the score. There are no online leaderboards for co-op; one would suppose that Bizarre saw the potential for multiple players to 'break' enemy patterns and post ridiculous scores by using infallible strategies. While that may be understandable, in a really dumb move your high score is still not saved on the console, so if you want to work on your co-op strategies you will have to grab some pen and paper. Still, I haven't discovered any infallible strategies yet, and my time spent playing co-op has been more frantic than single player due to enemies exploding all over the place and bright colours filling the screen. Pacifism feels the weakest mode here, but Deadline makes a great way to get friends to try the game, as an inexperienced player won't be out before the other and left watching.

The sound is a part of the experience instead of being laid over it. The modes have a strong techno rock beat, that pulses and changes with the course of the game. When you die it naturally eases down, but picks up again before long as enemies begin to fill the screen again, and reaches a high point when the screen is teeming with enemies. You never need to check the timer in Deadline; the music begins to get really tense as the game is about to end.

Any one game of Geometry Wars : Retro Evolved 2 is unlikely to last very long. However, the game has that 'just one more go' quality, as you strive to beat your previous high score or one set by a friend. Early on skill seems to climb steadily as you learn patterns and figure out the best way to increase your multiplier, but the road to mastery is likely to take some time. While everyone will probably find an enemy that annoys them, death never feels cheap and you always feel like you could do better, urging you to try again. With the variety of modes, everyone interested in the genre is likely to find one that they love.

Final Score 9.0

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While I haven't played too many, I've become a fan of 2D dual-stick shooters of late. To be specific, the only ones I own at the moment are Assault Heroes 1 & 2, Geometry Wars : Retro Evolved 2 and Undertow (I think I'm forgetting one), though I've played a few demos and there are a number of them on my radar to purchase (among the billionty other games in various other genres). As mentioned a few blogs ago, I still think there is plenty of room for innovation in the genre. So here are a few gameplay mechanics or thoughts on ways they could innovate. I will use the word 'ship' as a lot of todays games in the genre are ships, but you can substitute that for whatever is appropriate.

Different ships
Most of the dual-stick shooters I've seen have one ship that has the same movement speed or health. Why not offer a few that have different starting stats? Obviously balance is an important factor here, but it could add replay value to these games. Stuff that could differ is the basic stuff such as health, firing speed and damage, movement speed, and ship size. Other special touches could be armour plating on the side of bulky ships to reduce damage, or a weak point at the rear of zippy ships that deals extra damage, or some special abilities attached to a trigger/bumper, like shields and cloaking.

Upgradeable Weapons and Ships
I know some games already have this, such as Assault Heroes, but from what I've seen many of the games don't allow for much in the way of customisation (in Assault Heroes, you collect upgrades for specific guns from the environment). A game that allowed you to buy different weapons with different attributes and upgrade them as the game went on would appeal to me. As well as weapons, being able to buy armour upgrades or speed upgrades could also work. Again this could offer replay value, as you could try different weapon combinations in future play throughs.

Multiplayer Games
There is already Undertow, but I'm surprised there haven't been more that have followed in its footsteps, offering team-based multiplayer. From what I gather (I only played it offline) matches were all Control Points/Domination. I don't see why many of the popular multiplayer modes in FPS can't translate to dual-stick shooters (I was actually designing such a game for this years Developer For A Day, but didn't complete it in time). Capture The Flag with flag carriers not being able to shoot encourages co-operation. Much like Team Fortress 2's Gold Mine map (or whatever it is called), there could be an object that begins in the middle of the arena and needs to be pushed to the opposing team end by firing at it. That sounds like it could be super hectic. Or a King mode where some item is available for collection, and while in possession, you get a weapon bonus, and earn points periodically while all the other players home in on you to try and kill you and steal it.

Experience Points
I guess this is somewhat similar to the upgradeable parts. Earning experience can earn you those upgrades. Perhaps they can be persistent; a game with such a feature might be fairly tough on early attempts, but small incremental upgrades can make the journey back to that point a little faster and allow you to go a bit further than the last time.

Target Reticule
This really depends on the game, but the reason I thought of it is Assault Heroes. The game has a flak cannon, which is pretty slow firing, but devastating to armour. The problem is, sometimes you (or at least I) aren't sure if you have the stick pointing in the exact right direction. This sucks when you are slightly off and it takes a second to fire the shot if the action is fast paced. If there were a small reticule showing you the direction you were aiming, that would be helpful for the slower weapons that you really don't want to miss.

Lock-on
This may not really belong here, because I'm advocating not using the right stick to fire, and is almost an entire new game idea. My inspiration for this idea was thinking about Heavy Barrel and Midnight Resistance, which had weapon pick-ups with limited ammunition. With limited ammunition, you really don't want to push the stick slightly off target and waste it. The game automatically locks on to targets, and you can press the bumpers to cycle between targets, or flick the right stick towards a target. Face buttons fire your weapons at the designated target. Game design is important in my vision for this to work, though I haven't fleshed it out. The intent is to make constantly switching your weapons up, including upon a single target, to be an important part of the gameplay. For example, perhaps sandbags are impervious to your fire while troops fire on you from behind it, but throwing a grenade makes them scatter and then you hit your machine gun button to take them out. Rocket launchers can be great for tipping over an APC, but too hard to target the troops that spew out when you do. The dynamics of the different weapons attributes and strengths and weaknesses against various enemies, their behaviour when fired upon by those different weapons and limited ammo is intended to keep the player from holding down a single weapon button and evading fire for the entire game. I think this might look better in my head than it sounds on paper, but I think I have the basics across.

MMO
This might get a "what?" reaction from some of you. I haven't thought this through thoroughly, but what if you start up the game, and it presents you a grid of say 10 by 10. There are four teams. At the start of any 'mega-game' each colour controls one corner of that board, being 25 squares. You select a square which is adjacent to an enemy one, and soon after a battle begins. How each individual battle plays out, I don't know; probably a control point system, and the highest after a certain time limit claims that territory, then you go back to the megamap and choose another square (maybe they should be hexagons).

Perhaps each secure zone (one that does not have any adjacent enemy activity) gives bonuses to adjacent territories for that team. Or something. I'm not thinking of specifics, but you want to balance it so that it makes it a little harder to press into new territory and not disadvantage teams that have lost a lot of ground (as you don't want everyone to drop out of a clearly losing battle). Perhaps bots could be implemented to make sure teams stay balanced as well. Obviously I only have a vague idea what I am talking about, but with some thought I can see someone pulling this off. If you include some of the other stuff listed above like different cIasses of ships (and maybe more powerful ships gets called in as teams get pushed back into the corner) or some persistent upgrade system, it could really work.

Or maybe as opposed to going back to a map and the game being segmented, the actual arena is huge, but you can bring up a map that is broken down into sectors, with numbers indicating how many of each teams ships are currently in it, and if your team controls a control point there, you can warp to it. Actually, I like this idea so much I think the last two paragraphs are irrelevant, but I'll let it stand.

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