A Slide & tap adventure

I took a walk down memory lane recently, via the Directors Cut of Broken Sword on the DS. A little like being a devoted Sega fanboy, I probably enjoyed these games more than LucasArts' adventures back in the day, purely because I played them first. I'm of course talking only about the 2D point and click adventures in the series - the 3rd was a boring crate pushing simulator that I never finished and I didn't even know that they made a fourth one (which at least goes back to the point and click approach apparently). I think I can now honestly admit that the LucasArts titles are better games - I still got some enjoyment out of this but I can see the flaws now with more experienced eyes.

This being the Directors Cut, it starts off with a new section that takes place before the original game started, with the player taking control of the female lead, Nico. I'd already played a little bit of this section as I think it was available online when this version first came out. I suppose it wasn't too bad but it didn't really have the urgency of the original opening so I found myself waiting for this to be done so that I could back to what I knew. It might have been better to still have the same opening with George but dip into Nico's story later - which is what happens anyway so I don't know why it was so important to have this come first. I also found that the puzzles in Nico's section felt pretty different from the original game - within 20 minutes I encountered 2 difficult block sliding puzzles that would have been at home in one of the Professor Layton games (I like the Layton games on the whole but I always hate these kind of puzzles!). I can't remember if what Nico discovers has some relevance to later games in the series but either way her story didn't really feel like it came to much of a conclusion.

Probably the most disappointing aspect of the DS version is that it doesn't have any voice acting. I'm sure most of it was pretty cheesy but that was also part of its charm. Obviously I don't know the full details behind why the voice acting was removed but DS cartridges can apparently go up to around 500MB in size, with a corresponding increase in cost to the developer. It seems to me like they could have compressed the audio sufficiently to fit onto a cart but somewhere along the line someone probably made a decision to cut it from a cost point of view. I know that the Wii version of it does have the voice acting but I can almost guarantee that I wouldn't have got around to playing that version. Plus I think that the stylus controls suit it better than the Wiimote would have, in my experience the pointer control is usually still a bit jumpy.

Speaking of how it controls, I think that using a stylus is probably the best method of playing a point and click adventure I've ever come across. It also has a great system of highlighting areas that you can interact with that are near your current position, which gets rid of the problem of hunting the screen for a single pixel that is important. There were only a few occasions where the small size of the screen made it a little difficult to spot something but normally they just leap out at you. I'm not sure if they also simplified some puzzles from the original game, I'm sure anyone who's played the original will have bad memories about the goat in Ireland but I managed to get past it first time here. There is also a section later on where you can actually end up dying if you do something wrong but I think it now automatically pops up your item menu to make it easier to do the right thing. I think you can still die just by choosing the wrong conversation option a little earlier but obviously I picked the right one from memory. This is clearly one of the game's major flaws though, especially given that there are no autosaves and normally nothing to suggest that you might need to save regularly.

Even with the extra sections added in this version, it comes across feeling a little short by modern standards. I don't know if I just underestimated how long I got stuck for in the original (bearing in mind that I would have to trek to the library to search the net for hints instead of using an app on my phone). This is despite the fact that I still found myself a bit confused about what you were trying to accomplish at some points, the diary of what you had done recently was quite good but often didn't have any hints of what to do next. The fact that George and Nico get together at the end of the game seems like 'just because', as they haven't really spent that much time together through the game. I guess they are supposed to have liked each other from the start but needed a push to show it, I wonder if the lack of voice acting made this feel more rushed as it'll always take less time to read something in your head than out loud.

I had forgotten most of the story and I was quite surprised at how much it shared with Assassin's Creed, the modern day Neo Templars and the Hashashin attempting to stop them. This takes a more realistic and sympathetic approach to the Templars of the past though, making the Neo-Templars out to be unworthy of their ancestors and not shying away from the horrible way that the original order was dissolved. Assassin's Creed neatly steps over this time period and gives no real explanation for how the order has survived the inquisitions. I can personally brush over the approach taken in AC but I'm sure some people might view it as disrespectful and it's probably convinced a fair amount of people that it just might be true.

I'd be quite interested to play the second game again too, it's sad that this didn't get a remake as well. That still seems like the bigger and better game in my memories but I don't know if they are a little rose tinted. I certainly remember one section very well as it was available on a cover mounted demo disk that came with a PC magazine. It involved trying to get past a guard into some docks if I remember rightly and showed off some neat puzzles and improved animations. I don't really play PC games anymore, so even if I could track down my original copy I don't really have a convenient way of playing it. Maybe it's for the best to leave it as a happy memory and not have my impressions of it shattered in the cold, hard light of day.

A change of difficulty

Vanquish had been sitting on top of my pile of shamefully unfinished games for around a year now (a totally different pile from those that haven't even been started). It was something that I started on Normal difficulty and I stubbornly persisted with it, despite my usual play session of it being; spend 30 minutes getting used to the controls again, get stuck and repeat a section over and over, get frustrated and quit. Finding myself with nothing new to play I decided to swallow my pride and restart this on Casual difficulty (I don't know which feels more insulting, that or 'Easy'). To be honest, it's been a revelation and unless you find Normal difficulty to be a breeze, it feels like this is the way it should be played - for the first time anyway at least. There is obviously a big high score chasing aspect to it, especially in the tactical challenges and if people enjoy that then all power to them, I probably would have too in the past.

On Casual you will rarely have to repeat a section due to dying (most of my deaths were for stupid or unfair reasons) and you can blast through it so much faster, which helps you to keep up with the story rather than forgetting what's going on. Not that there is much of a story to it really, though I hadn't really picked up on the burgeoning bromance between the main character Sam and Lt. Burns. They verbally abuse each other constantly but Burns often allows himself a smile when Sam's not looking after he does the right thing against his orders, I guess trying to figure out whether he's a government tool or a good guy overall. Despite the way the story goes, I think that Burns was looking for someone to be able to do the right thing when he was resigned to just following orders.

"What are you assholes reading this text for? Get back to the fucking main section!"

As a whole, the story rides the line between being faintly realistic and just out there crazy, which according to this article may have been the intention (there's also an outtakes video with Burns doing a good Donald Duck impression). It felt to me a little like how I wanted Gears Of War to continue - I took the first GOW to be almost parody because of its impossibly meat-headed and OTT characters, taking the idea of generic space marines to its most extreme conclusion. All I heard about the later games suggested that they'd started taking themselves seriously though, so Vanquish definitely felt like a worthy successor to it - especially since I've heard plenty of people describe it as "Gears of War on crack".

As well as Casual mode making the story easy to follow, I also felt that it really allowed me to experiment much more than Normal mode had. I was much happier switching to the more unusual weapons and running in close to use the melee attacks. I still feel like the melee attacks were a bit strange as they were so cool to use but then leave you totally unprotected afterwards. I can understand that they were trying to keep the focus on shooting rather than let the melee be too overpowered, but it always felt like there should be some trick to using it without overheating your suit - like a bonus for a good combo or something. You can use the disc launcher to melee without overheating but I never liked it as a weapon so didn't tend to keep it around, I just wanted to be able to throw a free melee attack out now and then, as long as it was balanced by taking some skill/timing to perform.

The question I've been asking myself since finishing it is whether I will take this approach to difficulty with future games. I've just jumped into Alpha Protocol on Normal and am finding it quite tough, so that niggling feeling of whether to restart on Easy starts creeping into your brain (and not just to make a better attempt at some of the early conversations). I think I will persevere in that case as it feels like something which will become manageable as your character levels up but at the same time I really wanted to play it for the narrative choices so hopefully I wouldn't be missing much on Easy. I also don't want to miss out on whole sections of a game down to picking Easy, which doesn't happen very often but was the case in Resident Evil 4 and I wouldn't have wanted to miss any of that. It's a bit of a strange approach to take I think, it's not like the removed sections would have been impossible to fit into the easy difficulty - it's like making a cut of a film with complicated scenes removed for the hard of thinking.

Most of the time I would say that I lean towards supporting the approach of only having one difficulty really but on the other hand I'm still fearful of starting on Dark Souls, which has one difficulty setting - Bastard Hard. I think that when there is no difficulty option, the game should probably be tuned so that most people could get through it - it's one thing when it's my own pride that's preventing me from seeing the whole game by refusing to select easy but when you don't have the option it feels unfair. I guess it also depends on the game though, would Dark Souls be a fundamentally different game with an easy option? Lots of people have been talking about how the experience of the game is part of what makes it great, the genuine fear that one mistake would lose you so much. Would reviews of it have been different if people had the option to blast through on easy or would they stick to their guns and review the game on its default setting? It's definitely something I plan to look at again once I've manned up and actually played the game, so I can form a proper opinion rather than just making assumptions from what I've read.

I'd buy that for a dollar!

Technically around 68 pence in the UK, I bought an Xbox Indie Game named Little Racers STREET at the weekend. I was vaguely aware of it beforehand but I decided to take the plunge and purchase it when a couple of friends invited me to play it online. Thankfully I have Kinect so I was able to say "Xbox Bing Little Racers Street" to find it, as it's no longer on the first page of indie games (if you can even remember how to navigate to that page). The multiplayer component of it is a recent update as it was initially released as a single player only game at the end of January. I think it is the first Xbox Indie Game I have played with online multiplayer and that's not to say that it's a poor early attempt either. It supports up to 12 players with pre race lobbies and handles host migration pretty seamlessly (where the host leaves and someone else is chosen to take over). There was lots of fun to be had, even though I struggled to compete being chucked straight into a class D race and only having enough money to buy a slightly upgraded class E car to begin with.

You may have guessed from this talk of classes that it follows a Gran Turismo/Forza like Career Mode where you can build up a garage of different classed cars. After the multiplayer game broke up I found myself going back into the single player career for quite some time, building up a better selection of cars for the next online session. It does a very good job of keeping you hooked, not only is there the desire to upgrade your cars with your race winnings but even if you come last place you won't feel like your time has been wasted. In addition to totalling up your winnings at the end of a race you can also see your progress towards completing a huge amount of in game challenges. These work well as a substitution for standard Xbox achievements but they also give a tangible reward, from a useful lump of credits early on, to higher classed cars than you would have been able to afford for a long time.

I couldn't really find much to complain about on the whole, there was a little bit of slowdown occasionally but even LaserCat suffered from some slowdown in places and that was only trying to recreate a Spectrum style game. When you are working with the .NET family of languages, which are abstracted a long way away from the hardware of the machine, I imagine you may often come up against poor performance that is very difficult to optimise. They are already working on another update for it though, so it may still improve in this area. I also found that it could get a little bit dull from a track point of view as each race is set on a specific part of one large city and there can sometimes be little to differentiate one race from another.

I really felt in a way that I wished I could pay more for it than 80 Microsoft Points, which is kinda rare for me as I probably even felt a little sting paying 240 MSP (gasp!) for Blocks That Matter (another great indie game that could almost have been a Live Arcade game). And while It's largely becoming accepted that the best price for games on iOS and Android is around $1/59p, those platforms can easily support adverts and allow you to buy additional in game currency. Xbox Indie Games have no other revenue stream available once someone has bought your game, so you're purely trying to judge whether more people will buy it at a lower price. Whatever your feelings are about buying in game currency with real money, I think it would have suited this game and have been a good additional source of income for the creators. They could have taken the approach that Eutechnyx have with their online MMORG Auto Club Revolution, where real money usually only buys things that don't have much affect on the gameplay, to avoid any complaints that you could just buy your way to the top of the multiplayer mode.

Sadly I don't think we're likely to see any changes to the way XBLIG works, so short of sending a cheque in the post, writing about it feels like the only way I can show additional support. So if you can spare the points, please give it a try.

Revelations?

I had a whole post written about Assassin's Creed: Revelations and its nitty gritty details but the more I tried to finish it, the more boring it seemed. Yes, I could have ranted on about the tower defence mini game and terrible horse & cart sections but these have all been picked apart elsewhere and there's not much more that I could add. There's good and bad in its gameplay but it's largely the same as it was in Brotherhood, with some tweaks here and there (mostly for the better I would say). What disappointed me most was probably the fact that it didn't really live up to its name.

I've mentioned before that I wasn't a huge fan of Brotherhood but you can't deny that it was better named. This however didn't really have anything interesting to reveal, especially if you've been carefully following the lore of the previous games (I hadn't really but there still didn't seem to be much new here). I'm not sure what I was hoping for really, it's not like there was much manoeuvring room to fit any explosive revelations into the story but you still hoped for it anyway. The only way it could possibly be worded is that they were revelations to the main character Ezio, but even then I was sure he knew a lot of the story too.

I think the series as a whole has struggled to focus on the characters that I have really been invested in. The first game is mostly based around Altair's boring textbook redemption storyline, when for the most part I wanted to know more about Desmond, whose past lives you were re-living. When that game ended with a conclusion to Altair's story but pretty much cut off Desmond's mid flow, it was pretty jarring and I was just glad that I already had Assassin's Creed 2 lined up to play. The sequel probably had the best mix of both timelines as you finally got to do some interesting stuff in the present day but also quickly formed an attachment to the new character Ezio. Your returns to the present day were also scripted regularly, which broke up the action nicely.

Brotherhood broke away from this approach and let you return to the present day whenever you wanted but despite there being some interesting present day sections at the start, there wasn't really much reason to come back otherwise. The same was true of this game, where there were a few vague interactions with Subject 16 - the previous occupant of the Animus device, whose puzzles you have been solving for 2 games and some abstract first person levels, that are supposed to give some insight into Desmond's past. Despite being largely optional, it seemed like the focus of the game as a whole was on Desmond and his need to accept the mistakes in his life, though to me it never felt like he had much to feel sorry for. The ending of the previous game, which was probably what you would most want to find out about was brushed over quickly and then barely touched again, which I found pretty disappointing. The game ends on Desmond stating that he knows what needs to be done, but the rest of us are still in the dark.

All that was left that really interested me was wrapping up Ezio's story and I don't really feel that this was done satisfactorily either. It starts off well, with the introduction of a number of new characters, including a likeable assassin called Yusuf. I felt that he and Ezio worked quite well together, with Yusuf having some similar qualities to Ezio in his youth and showing a fair degree of cheek to his 'mentor'. I was quite surprised that Ezio didn't just turn around and deck him at any point. While the portrayal of Ezio as an older man wasn't exactly realistic (though some of the sci-fi leanings go some way to justifying it), I thought it was nice to see older characters even attempted. On the whole he was a bit closer to the character I originally loved after being fairly unmemorable in Brotherhood.

There is also his love interest Sofia, a bookshop owner who is almost 20 years his younger. As digital romances go it wasn't too bad, you could say it was quite subtle as neither party seemed to be directly pursuing the other, it all seemed to flow along quite naturally. Ezio has finished his personal journey of revenge so it felt like the bulk of his story was about his pursuit of knowledge and whether he could let other people into his life while still being an assassin. While playing I couldn't exactly remember his previous romantic history, I got a little confused between his most recent love interest and his 'greatest love' who was pretty much retconned into Brotherhood through flashbacks. I guess that his relationship with Caterina Sforza was never going to reach a conclusion due to her being based on an actual historical figure but it felt a bit weird that this was just dropped without much explanation.

I felt a little short changed by where Sofia and Ezio's relationship is left at the end of the main storyline (my wife even more so). It hints heavily that they get together but it's not really confirmed - though I'm not saying I wanted a hot coffee mini game or anything like that. I've completed all of the additional challenges I can stomach so I'm pretty sure there's nothing more to be found out about them within the game. I was expecting something, even if it was just a flash forward scene of him and his kids after the credits (to paraphrase Mr. Plinkett: "Don't any of you f**kheads tell me that it was explained more in the novelisation or some animated short film, what matters is the game"). It just seems a bit disrespectful to discard the character who has been the best thing about the series for three games so easily. I'll still be watching out for Assassin's Creed 3 later this year and it could well benefit from the fresh start a new main character will allow. I'm just a little sad to see Ezio go out with such a limp conclusion and his own acceptance that he was only ever the caretaker of these Revelations.

Mahna Mahna

Who doesn't love The Muppets? Though aside from watching The Muppets Christmas Carol religiously every year, I probably haven't seen that many of their feature length adventures, at least not recently. So I wasn't sure what to expect from this story wise when it isn't based on a classic tale to begin with. I was pleasantly surprised by a story that handled multiple characters with different goals and motivations pretty well. I'm gradually trying to learn more about what goes into the movie script writing process and parts of it just stuck out to me as exactly the approach that's recommended. Am I going too overboard taking this kind of approach to a Muppets film? Well partially I can't help but start to pick out these details, but I also think that it's worth mentioning that a film primarily for kids still cares enough about these aspects and isn't worried about the audience holding multiple plot threads in their head, even if they are pretty simple.

Other than the initial fake trailers, I hadn't really been searching out every bit of information on the film before watching it, so I was unaware that alongside the human actors the main character was a new Muppet called Walter. Walter is the brother of Gary, played by Jason Segal, who has gradually become a favourite of mine. I'm not sure whether I first became aware of him in How I Met Your Mother or Forgetting Sarah Marshall, I probably saw both of them roughly at the same time. He was clearly the best part of the latter though and I loved his musical puppet show in the finale of that, which makes him seem like a natural fit for a Muppets film. He doesn't stray too far from his usual characters but that was fine by me.

I also like Amy Adams for her role in Enchanted, I thought she did a great job of bringing a traditional Disney cartoon princess into the real world. The over the top nature of bursting into song and dance routines in the real world always makes me smile and this same kind of feel is brought to this film. As a pair she and Jason make a good team and really embody this kind of old school feel of not taking yourself too seriously. The initial trio is a slightly uncomfortable one, with Amy's character Mary reluctantly allowing Walter to join her and Gary on a tenth anniversary trip to Los Angeles.

This leads to the main plot where Walter discovers stereotypical oil magnate Tex Richman's plans to take over the Muppet studios and drill for oil underneath. To prevent this from happening they go to visit Kermit and convince him to reform The Muppets and perform one last show, scouring the country to find the now disbanded team. The film never forgets that a lot of its story is very clichéd and plays on this for laughs a lot during this process ("Lets get the rest by montage", "Lets travel by map, it's much faster"). There are also plenty of cameos in this section, I embarrassed myself by blurting out "Heh, Dave Grohl" to my wife in one scene, where he plays 'Animool' in tribute band 'The Moopets'.

Miss Piggy turns out to be the hardest Muppet to get back on board, due to her history with Kermit. I don't know if it's just down to age but I find myself liking her much more than I did when I was a kid, back then she just seemed loud and annoying. Playing her off against Kermit's hesitance to really commit to anything seems to make her a much more sympathetic character. The fact that I can sit here and think about an age old puppet character's motivations and feel that they were quite realistically portrayed has got to be one of this films great triumphs surely...

If I had any criticisms of it I would possibly say that Walter's discovery of his own talent kind of comes out of nowhere, but then I think it's more about how he gets the confidence to share it. Oh, and I would have liked more Gonzo :) Special mention should also go to the Oscar nominated song 'Man or Muppet', which I hope goes on to win it. I'm sure every man can identify with it, I'm not sure if it was written with the English use of muppet in mind but that's certainly how I thought of it. It's simultaneously funny and touching in a strange sort of way, which you could say to sum up the whole film really. Go see it if you haven't already, I'm sure you won't be disappointed.

Double Fine Adventure time

I wasn't really surprised to see that the Double Fine Adventure kickstarter page had reached a million dollars by this morning. The speed at which it was increasing yesterday, before most of America had even woke up, it was kind of inevitable - especially after this tweet. I think there was a significant amount of hype involved in the feeling of jumping on this thing on the first day. I kinda wonder if there is anyone waking up this morning with 'backers remorse' thinking "I didn't play past the boat level of Stacking", "I hated Brutal Legend once it got to the RTS bits" or "I've never even played Monkey Island!"? No, just me?

I'm joking slightly of course, for $15, which is what - just under 10 quid in real money? I was happy to drop that to be able to play the final results however it turns out. Obviously there are plenty of people out there who are willing to donate much more to support their heroes and see a point and click game from them again. My personal favourite game of theirs would probably be Day of the Tentacle, I didn't have a PC at home until around '95 so I was a little late to the game (this happens a lot with me). For some reason the more out-there puzzles in that seemed to make some twisted kind of logical sense to me, whereas in other games I'd just get frustrated and go to gamefaqs (or go down to the library to use yahoo search back in those days probably). I appreciated the humour and characters of Sam & Max but wasn't grabbed as much by the game and the Monkey Island series just sits there as a beacon of shame, which I will probably never get around to playing. There's no way it could possibly live up to the years of hype I've read about it so in a strange sort of way I'd rather leave it than be disappointed.

I think for me, the insight into the development process will be the best part of the whole deal. It'll be very interesting to see publishers switched for users as the biggest influence on direction. As far as I can tell there's no legally binding contract for them to do what the fans want, I imagine it'll be more of a case of taking any suggestions under advisement but you never know - there might be some issues that Double Fine and the backers as a whole end up completely at odds over. At least once they've got the money that's it though, no threat of non-payment for 'missed milestones'. I also wonder how they will balance documenting the development without giving away all of the puzzles before you've even played it. Obviously trailers and developer interviews for other games manage to accomplish this but the scale of this sounds bigger than a lot of things that have been done before.

I think there will obviously be a big interest in fan funding after this, Nathan Brown at Edge asks whether Double Fine just killed the publisher and I also saw a good article on how it could be viewed as similar to zyngas free to play model. The second article also made me think about DLC in games, how it initially seemed like something that could be a nice bonus but more often than not just feels like something that should have been in the game in the first place. I wonder if more people will consider this added value strategy (aside from ridiculously overpriced special editions) and not be so scared of the basic edition having a lower price. Again with DLC, it might seem more acceptable if you weren't paying 'macro-transactions' on top of a game you've already spent £30 on. I'm already considering whether I should upgrade my backing status to get a HD copy of the documentary at the end of it... and then it's only a bit more to get my name in the credits (which are clearly going to be as long as an average Ubisoft game).

The many levels of Inception

I was inspired to write this after watching the following video on youtube - you can watch it before or after I guess but if you're like me you might want to leave some time for your brain to crawl back into your ears. Oh and it goes without saying, you need to watch Inception too - I was pretty late to watch it in the first place but I still know some people who haven't...

The title of this post could refer to the levels of dreams in the film but also to the many levels you can appreciate the film on. I think the video above is about as high as it gets but the great thing about it is that almost anyone can appreciate it, even as a great action film. Since it took me a long time to get around to watching it, I thankfully hadn't heard any major spoilers but I'd certainly had a lot of people say that it was a very complicated film, so I was expecting something confusing and mind bending that would take multiple watches to even understand. As it turns out, I found it to be pretty straight forward (not trying to act like I'm exceptionally smart here or anything), the film does a very good job of explaining everything that's happening every step of the way. Other people have pointed out that the character of Ariadne pretty much exists to ask all of the questions the audience may have, so that they can be explained to her and us at the same time. The concepts may be unrealistic but they are dealt with in a sensible and logical way, I don't think there's anything wrong with enjoying it on this level and not thinking too deeply about it afterwards.

As the above video explains, probably the best trick in the whole film is the ending and how for most people it got them thinking about whether the spinning top would fall over and whether he was still dreaming at the end. A lot of people were convinced it was a dream, I think I leaned towards it possibly being reality but at the same time I wasn't going to argue about it as I didn't feel it was that important which it was. Overall I thought that the point was he had got over the grief of his wife and that he was just happy to be with his children because he starts spinning the top and then doesn't even look back to see how the top behaves, suggesting he doesn't care anymore. So I saw it as a 'happy' ending either way, even though some people might view it as a bad thing to still be stuck in a dream. We all have to take happiness where we can find it I think, rather than hoping for a better world after we die. I guess it's a similar but different approach to the question of whether you would stay in the matrix for the digital steak.

But clearly that's the tip of the iceberg, as the video shows there is so much more that can be taken away from it. It makes a very convincing argument for both the final scene being a dream and that the entire film is a dream. It also raises more questions about dreams and reality that I hadn't really considered and will probably make you question the meaning of the film if you watch it again. I'll certainly be paying a lot more attention to all the background stuff I missed. It's pretty clear that the dream vs. reality question can probably never be proved one way or the other though, given that Christopher Nolan has stated it is supposed to be ambiguous and he probably won't endorse one particular viewpoint as correct.

This made me think of another situation where this kind of confirmation has been made by a director, in the case of Blade Runner and whether Deckard is a replicant or not. Ridley Scott has now pretty much gone on record saying that he is supposed to be one, but for a long time I wonder if he was trying to keep it ambiguous so that the viewer can make their own deductions? Certainly from my own point of view, it was a film that I loved the first time I saw it but the idea of him being a replicant never crossed my mind at the time. It wasn't until the advent of the internet that I became aware of the idea and over the years more and more quotes from Ridley Scott cropped up supporting it.

But should the director of a film have the final say over how it's interpreted? And does it make the film worse if you don't agree with this theory? It makes it a different film for sure and you could certainly take the approach suggested in that Inception talk and ask whether viewing the film from either perspective gives a different insight or a more sympathetic view of it. This is something I may try to remember in future if I feel like I'm quick to judge a film badly because I'm looking at it from a fixed viewpoint. I think it's still down to directors to make things clear to us through the film though and not just rely on a press interview to tell us what it's really about.

Games that make you feel smart...

...Then stupid. Then smart again.

I'm hardly the worlds biggest puzzle game aficionado but I wanted to write about two in particular that have really grabbed me recently, both of which give you that smart/dumb/smart feeling. The first is Quarrel, by Dundonian game studio Denki. This was a game that I have been aware of for a long time and I have followed its difficult journey to Xbox Live closely. It was especially hard to see some people I knew lose their jobs there, after the inability to find a publisher for it caused some major downsizing of the company. I'm not an iPhone owner so didn't get to play that version, so I was pleased that it finally made it to the Xbox, for a price so cheap that everyone should really pick it up. At that price I can't see it making millions for them, but I guess now that it might almost be more about proving the point that there is a market for it.

It's usually described as a cross between Scrabble and Risk, which is the simplest and at the same time most accurate way of describing it. While the single player computer opponents aren't bad, you know that their words are just picked from a dictionary at the end of the day. Playing online against real people is obviously the ideal situation and this is where you usually start to encounter the stupid/smart factor. One match you can find yourself dominating and coming up with great words, only to meet someone next match who can make the full 8 letter anagram nearly every time. That or you start to get cocky and take an 8-2 matchup, where you then completely fail to even think of a word and get beaten by the other person no matter just because they made any word. The fact that all words have a full definition given is great for growing your vocabulary and I'm sure every game helps to improve the speed you can think of words.

I would probably go for 'foul' here but would I lose to a 5 letter word?

There are some problems with the online experience though, which are pretty much all down to Microsoft's own word filter that is separate from the list of words allowed in the game. This leads to the hilarious/frustrating situation of words being rejected when they would be accepted in the single player mode, including the 8 letter anagrams. Given that you can abuse people all you like over the headset (and tell people in real time that 'it wouldn't let me type XXX') and I'm sure I've received abusive text messages too, I really don't know why this needed to be applied, especially to what should hopefully be a good natured word game. I really hope that it will eventually see a patch or some kind of workaround as it can lose you matches when you don't have enough time to think of an alternative word.

My other puzzling choice is Pullblox for the 3DS by Intelligent Systems - for once making a non-Advance Wars based attempt at dominating a Nintendo handheld. It is easily the best piece of downloadable software for the device yet, and probably the best original title that I have played on it so far. It's more difficult to think of an easy sound bite description of it than Quarrel, it blends logical thinking with some basic platforming, but also takes on Prince of Persia's time rewinding mechanic to emphasize that perfecting your jumps isn't the most important part of the game. Each puzzle is made of multiple different coloured blocks, which can be pulled out a maximum of 3 units and your aim is to climb to the top to rescue a stranded child.

While some puzzles have one set solution, I liked the fact that you could sometimes improvise and get to the top by any means necessary, which feels like quite a rare thing in a puzzle game. This is especially true when playing puzzles created by other people as the only condition the game has for sharing them via QR code is that they can be completed, not that there is only one way to do it. I haven't really played other peoples creations yet but the standard single player levels are more than enough to cause you to question your intelligence. One moment you will call yourself a genius for figuring out something complex, the next you'll be slapping your forehead when you finally see the simplicity of a solution you've been skirting around for ages. It also stays fresh by introducing all of its features slowly, giving you enough levels to prove that you understood the last feature before showing you something new.

It's a little more difficult to recommend this to everyone if you don't already have a 3DS - I don't think I could quite call it a system seller and while the 3D effect can sometimes feel helpful, it's never essential. However if you do own a 3DS it's a must purchase and again cheap enough that it shouldn't put a dent in anyone's pocket. While Nintendo are struggling to adopt a sensible pricing structure for its handheld games in some respects, this is a promising step when it could easily have been released as a standard £30 game on the original DS.

More Fighting Game ramblings

I had a chance to play a little of Soul Calibur 5 at the weekend, not a game that I had been looking forward to especially but I'd been aware of it through coverage on Shoryuken.com. The fact that it featured Ezio Auditore from the Assassin's Creed series interested me slightly and he was clearly the character I was going to try out first. I was with a bunch of friends who mostly had some interest in fighting games, though for some it was a minor distraction before playing some FIFA.

First impressions weren't good - I was really shocked by the main menu, which was ugly, clunky and had us very confused as to where the option for standard player vs. player mode was hidden. Once we found it we then realised that we'd better go to the options screen to set up the controls as there was little chance that they had followed the Third Strike Online approach of having controller setup on the character select screen. However, I don't think any of us were prepared for a very simple screen with a shared setup for both controllers. We scrolled through the first few layouts, all of which seemed to be centred around the face buttons on a pad - I didn't even realise at the time that there was an option to customise it fully but that would have taken an age as you have to scroll through a list of attacks, not just press the button you want to do an attack.

Thankfully all of us were using the same brand of Arcade stick and were prepared to just roll with the default setting but this is absolutely unacceptable for a game that was seemingly being positioned as a serious tournament game. Button checks have become a huge time sink at these events when there are so many different button layouts on arcade sticks and pads, with everyone plugging their own in for each match. Third Strike Online has demonstrated the best way of doing this now and I feel there's no excuse for future games that don't follow the same approach (if Street Fighter X Tekken does it wrong I will gnnnngghhhh!).The single controller setup seems like such an oversight that I feel like I must be missing something, I've not seen this complained about yet but I wouldn't have expected it to be difficult to find this option either.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the config screen isn't exactly friendly to new players either, you are just presented with a list like: A - G, B - K, X - A, Y - B, RB - A + B, etc. I took this to mean guard, kick and two types of attack but someone else observed that it could just as easily be interpreted as guard, kick, attack and block - were they really so short on screen space that they couldn't print the proper name of things?

We all jumped in and had some button mashy fun with it, people mostly getting beaten because they didn't use the block button (I always struggle with games that take this approach). It seemed harder than I remembered to get a ring out on people - you'd often have them right up against a sheer drop, hitting them with attacks but they would be absolutely fine as long as their feet stayed on the ground, like there was a foot high invisible wall all around the arena. Ezio was pretty cool and I even managed to finish a round with a combo into his hidden pistol, though I have no idea how I did it. So while it may have a training mode that sounds quite good, there was nothing in that quick game with friends that really encouraged me to take a more serious look at it. I would play it again in that kind of situation but by that point I'm sure there'll be something new and interesting that would take that experimental spot.

Speaking of mashing, we also played a little Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3, where I managed to beat all comers with a team of Phoenix Wright, Dante and Hawkeye. I'll admit I was the only person who'd played much of Ultimate, though most had played the vanilla version and beaten me on other occasions. I was mostly playing Phoenix Wright for practice as I want to use him but he's so hard to do anything with online. The dream is to hit someone else with his level 3 hyper and take them to court but so far I've only had it done to me (still hilarious either way). Dante I've always dabbled with so I can remember a few combos and Hawkeye is currently my insurance policy even though I don't really know how to play him.

Hawkeye works really well at 'keeping people honest' I think, if you mash out a move without thinking he can pretty much punish you from anywhere on screen with his single arrow hyper move. I think you can maybe cancel your move with X-Factor as a bait for it but I've not seen it done. I can really struggle against more random players in other games so having the threat of that hyper really feels like it forces the match to be played more on my own terms - and if people don't learn then I'll keep on using it. He also gets a pretty good speed boost when you activate X-Factor, so he's a great character to save till last and on a couple of occasions I lost both of the other characters and then just ran through the other guys entire team in a red mist of glory. There's no better end to a match than hearing his "No!" followed by "KO!".

Hopefully I can get to play a bit more of it this week, I think I just need to be strict with myself and avoid trying to play ranked matches online as that's always the quickest route to disappointment city...