Call Of Duty 5

Both games have a short-ish but perfectly formed single-player campaign. The level of polish on these is absolutely superb – little things like the almost total absence of ‘clipping’ on the models is impressive. I found both enjoyable, though my criticism is that the game essentially is another “fire and dodge” shooter – the basic mechanic hasn’t really changed since Space Invaders thirty years ago. And there’s the merest skeleton of a story to pique the interest beyond that. I’m not sure how long I can simply keep playing this same game.

I think Call Of Duty, as a series, is totally average in every way. It does a bog-standard experience better than any game I can mention. And I think that is why it’s such a bestseller. It offers multiplayer for the ‘hardcore’, and a polished single-player campaign for the ‘casuals’. There’s nothing radical here, nor need there be. (I've written a longer piece on Call Of Duty 5 on my blog)

Speaking of distinctly average FPSs, I am trudging through Fear 2. Actually it’s a pretty shocking game in my opinion, and the story is absolutely woeful – incredibly confusing, impossible to follow, and deeply uninteresting. The draw in this game for me is the little horror-inspired moments – a flashback that flicks onto the screen, an apparition here and there, and lots of environmental effects that really work well. The game is really good at knocking you off balance, often physically – don’t play this if you get motion sickness. It is doing just enough to keep me playing, but never doing enough to really impress me.

On a totally different level in every way is Windosill, a flash game that to many would barely qualify as a game at all. There’s about 10 connected screens filled with weird and wonderful contraptions, shapes and creatures, and you interact with them with the mouse and watch them do beautiful little animations. Each screen is also a little puzzle, where you need to find a small wooden block so that you can proceed. If it sounds weird that’s because it is, but it’s one of the finest half-hours I have ever spent on a game.

The Sims 3

I think it’s a much more open-ended game than the previous versions. In the Sims 1 or 2 I felt rather trapped into sending my Sims off to develop a career, which then got boring, but there simply are more options now. You can busk, fish, cook or paint for a living. You can get a part-time job. You can become a partner in one of the local businesses. And if you choose to ignore work altogether there are still aims to fulfill, whether it’s running a well-tended garden with rare plants, or travelling about the town looking for bodies of water with rare fish to catch. The game still has its faults – it’s too safe, and it’s simply much harder to fail than to succeed, and your sims always default to conventional mode. But it’s still a unique experience – there is no other game that is like The Sims.

I’m still trying to play through Mass Effect, but it’s frustrating me more and more. Any section where you have to drive the BigTrak just drives me mad. I hate the save system. I find all the equipment tinkering fiddly and unsatisfying. You have to forgive the game continually for glitches. And the basic combat just ain’t that good. Even worse, I think I must have skipped the infamous sex scene for some reason - story of my life!

I think this is a game that everyone feels goodwill towards, simply because it looks so damned good and was really very ambitious. But it’s a game I’m endurng rather than outright enjoying. But I do think I’ll get to the point with Mass Effect where I’m so invested in the characters that I start really caring about what happens, and a game with that capacity is simply a step above most of the competition.

Windosill is my game of the week though.

Plans for the next week? I want to finish Valkyria Chronicles. I’m going to buy Zeno Clash when it’s cheap on Steam at the weekend. At some point I want to start going through the Final Fantasy games in order. And just a week to go until Tiger Woods 10 and the motion-plus here in the UK – I can’t wait.

http://www.dontshootfood.com

Newsflash: Newspaper and magazine editors are deeply cynical and manipulative professionals. They pore over subscription and sales figures. They quickly gain a simple checklist of things that sell in the media. And the biggest of these is flesh - a female in either a low-cut dress or a bikini. If the dress isn’t low-cut enough, they will photoshop it. Because it sells newspapers and magazines.

This single fact is the reason why Lara Croft is such a figurehead for videogaming. The media will publish pictures of her, even in-game, and give her games column inches. There’s even the vague idea that she is some sort of empowering female role-model - yeah right!

In Tomb Raider: Underworld you get a fully customisable Lara, ie you can decide whether she starts a level in shorts or pants. I chose shorts, just so you know where I’m coming from with all this. My daughter laughs at the way Lara wiggles her bottom, and my daughter knows nothing of what Ms Croft represents.

There’s the prevailing idea that Tomb Raider games are rather harmless mid-level entertainment - sub-Uncharted but good enough to while away a few hours on. There’s a vague story here but it’s papered on so thinly that you’ll have forgotten it by the time you’ve swung across your first chasm, or negotiated your first moss-covered climbing wall. Yes the mechanics work quite nicely, and there are nice set-pieces (a brilliant escape from a sinking ship) and a very cool bullet-time feature that kicks in allowing you to act split-second heroic at crucial moments. As usual the gunplay is awful, the puzzles get frustratingly oblique, and the whole thing is lifeless and linear.

What stays with me most is what you cannot do. You will get to a ledge that looks very scaleable and simply won’t be able to grab onto it, simply because the game doesn’t want you to. It wants you to scale the wall its way. It’s a crushing metaphor for everything that Lara Croft stands for - fall in line and follow the crowd, get behind the marketing machine and swallow these sub-par action games. And yes, I could easily grind away and finish this game in a few hours, and some of the set-pieces I will genuinely enjoy, but all it leaves me with is a frustration over how uninspiring it all is. It’s the gaming equivalent of cabbage.

NOTE: I picked the frontal shot of Lara above as I feel it shows her sultry side. Apologies to fans of her ass.

http://www.dontshootfood.com