I've been falling back on Tropico 3 for my late night XBOX 360 sessions.  It's a really fun game, the way they've moulded the controls to work with a pad is quite astoundingly good.  It's also a really interesting sim.  It isn't the normal 'gather resources, build, rinse and repeat'....
 
Well, I suppose it is at a certain level, but the political intrigue comes in and makes it interesting.  Viva Tropico! is one of the main campaign missions, the goal sounds so simple - have over 65% happiness by 1975.... But achieving this simple goal seems fiendishly difficult.  It's trying to strike an incredibly delicate balance between growing the economy, and providing for the people.   I'm not sure whether the developers 'Kalypso' have a political agenda but there is one thing that seems to be true of Viva Tropico!  The suggestion that there is a choice between nationalism and immigration support seems false.  Having experimented, several times, always ending in failure - the only conclusion I can come to - is that trying to keep the nationalist's happy will lead to failure/.
 
Abject nationalism is clearly a bad policy in Tropico and you should make as few concessions to to the nationalists as possible.  You also cannot rely on one industry.  
 
I'm sure an economist might correct me - but I think Tropico is surprisingly realistic in a caracature way - real governments and politicians should play it and try to learn something from the game...
 
As long as they don't decide military coupe de tat are a good idea anyway :P
 
 
 
 

I've just finished writing up my brief review of Limbo.
 
All in all Limbo isn't a perfect game, there's perhaps elements missing that we've come to expect as gamers from an XBOX Live title, but by staying independant and making what they wanted to make, PlayDead have created something refreshingly different.   I can see why games have gone the way they've gone.  Originally, beautiful graphics were something people dreamed off - and you were lucky if you could play a coloured block jerking along a pixely monochrome background with irritiating beeping for sound-effects.  Back in those days - gameplay, game mechanics and good design was all you had.
 
People tried to get away with shoving these core elements of a game to the back burners - ET the extra Terrestrial fot the Atari 2600 was a classic example.  Silly game mechanics, poor controls... But a great licence!  There's thousands of cartridges buried in the desert now... You can't blame the developer - he was given 6 weeks and no help to produce a game from scratch.
 
When we did start to get quality graphics, developers tried to push the envelope with them, again forgetting the core elements of a game - who remembers 'Virtuoso' ? Or 'Rise of the Robots' ?
 
Licence, graphics, sound and ground-breaking physics engines(Hydrophobia anyone?), are all good, and can improve a game, but mechanics, gameplay - and to a degree innovation are the foundation on which great games are built, without a good foundation -  a game will simply not stand up.
 
I'm looking forward to PlayDead's next title - if Limbo is anything to go on it should be another step in the right direction and another good example for the games industry at large.

I was playing Left 4 Dead late at night a while ago.  Trying to 'Expert' the 'Dead Air' campaign.  Met a few complete idiots on the road to doing it, and some pretty cool people too... Eventually though I was left at the finale with two bots and this really cool girl... Or at least I thought it was, due to the pitch of the voice.   After some general conversation 'she' turned out to be a 'he' some kid in Canada of all places.
 
Now he/she is somewhat irrelevant, it just illustrates the point about how young this guy was to be playing a cert 18 game.  I quizzed him on his thoughts on this, (He turned out to be 12.) which was that, yes, Left 4 Dead is also cert 18 in Canada, but, and I quote, "Left 4 Dead is awsomeness so I just play it anyway." 
 
Well, erm, okay... Having spoken to guy, and I still see him online from time to time, I'm not convinced he's been severely psychologically damaged by playing it.  Whether because of the violence in the media these days kids are desensitized to it much earlier than they once were... Or maybe some kids mature at different ages, or maybe he will grow up to be a psychopath?  I don't know...
 
I do know, despite quite happily playing video games with my 10 year old nephew , I would not be comfortable playing Left 4 Dead on split screen with him... Okay 10/12 - same, but not the same I know... I wouldn't be happy with my own little girl playing Left 4 Dead if she was 12 (She's 3 at the moment.)...
 
I suppose, the graphics on the whole aren't actually all that scary, certainly not that realistic.  If anything it's all a bit cartoony.  A 3 year old would find it scary - but I'm not convinced it is realistic enough for a violence desensitized 12 year old to be scared of.   So should they play?  On the one hand I think no - if you think about what Left 4 Dead is representing, then it's quite horrific, a zombie infestation causing innocent people to turn psycho - and the survivors have to murder innocent people to get to the safe house?  That's not nice... 
 
The question is, does the average 12 year old think about this?  I'm guessing not - I'm thinking in the spirit of the best George Romero Classic they are just playing the game, point and shoot at the target - and enjoying the story, the plight of the protagonists and wanting them to survive... Or just being silly - going on expert and killing all the other players just to be a dick....
 
Does that mean we should scrap age certification for games like this?  I mean how much harm does showing young children depictions of violence actually cause?
 
Personally I think age certification should stay and be enforced.  There's enough violence and conflict in the world for us to want to protect our children from it for as long possible.  It might not damage them, but it's still nice to think they can spend their life as a child in the naive state of not truly understanding or being exposed to violence, because once they are adults there is no getting away from it.

 I've often thought about how great it would be to have a career which involved playing computer games for money... Having said that I've been in a band - thought that would be good to be paid for, and acted in a play, which was fun, but would nice to be paid for... But if you became a full-time computer games journalist, would it take something enjoy and turn it into work?
 
Lately I've been feeling a bit retro and have rediscovered the PS1 classic Tony Hawks Pro Skater 2.  I've been playing it on my PS2.  Now the trouble is I found myself feeling a little guilty last night.  I was enjoying churning through THPS2, and thinking, 'Really I should be playing a 360 game, working on my achievements...' I resisted the temptation to turn off - boot up Left 4 Dead and try for a few more achievements... Just...
 
But it  left me a little unsettled… At the same time, I’m playing THPS2, really, wanting my character to have better stats and more tricks, and to be skating on the higher levels… I’m basically ‘jobbing it’ through the lower levels trying to get to the stage where I can really have fun…

Is this gaming in the norm?  It’s a bit like back in the days of old Pre-CU Star Wars Galaxies, I would play for so long, and then start thinking, ‘This isn’t efficient, I’m not gaining enough XP per hour at the moment – I ought to go and do something else.’ That something else might be really boring, but efficient in terms of the effort/time for XP gain.  Again, it’s investing time in something that isn’t that much fun, in theory so you can have more fun later.

I suppose this is a truth in most RPG style games, when having a retro- bash the Secret of Mana, I’m slightly conscious that I’m ploughing away with a rusty sword and no spells, so I can enjoy unleashing fiery death on my enemies later.  Power is fun, but games make you work for that power.

An interesting alternative view is that of the Guitar Hero games, playing on Easy difficulty, is frankly boring – but the game is a separate skill in itself.  I defy anyone to pick up Guitar Hero for the first time, no matter how good a musician or gamer you are, and play Through the Fire and Flames or Jordan on Expert… There’s no XP or artificial improving how powerful you are – it’s simply learning a skill, but learning a skill that is essentially playing a particular game.

All this considered, games playing is work, it involves work and always will – so why do we choose to do it?  Doing work which paid, or which would have to pay others to do for us would technically be more useful – so why spend so much of our time working hard at something fun, but unproductive?

I can only guess it’s to escape the mundanity of modern life, to experience ‘flow’ that sense of being so focused on something that the real world doesn’t exist – which you only get from high intensity games.

Ultimately computer games are escapism, finding a career as a games journalist and being forced to play all games, would probably still give that ‘flow’ experience.  Afterwards of course you have to consider the good and bad points and articulate them to your readers….

And you probably have to spend a large chhunk of time playing games which are a complete chore to play and pretty damn awful…

I would still choose that as career having said that.
 

 
 
 
 
 

I've had something of a 'retro' gaming weekend this time.  I played through some of the old SNES Classic 'The Secret of Mana' on an emulator and threw an old copy of Tony Hawks Pro Skater 2 for the PS1 into my PS2 for a retro bash.  
 
Now you sort of might think - "What?!  That's crazy!  You have a 360m with some great games on - what's with going back to the days of eye-wateringly bad graphics?!"
 
Well, first of all - I think the PS1 game suffers from digital TV.  In the days of the PS1 most people would have been playing on an anti-aliased analogue screen so it would have looked smoother.  The Secret of Mana, well... To be honest the graphics are nice, they aren't sharply drawn 3D characters in a glorious environment with weather effects and all that - it just looks like a nicely drawn cartoon.
 
The things is - these games were fun.  They are fun!  I've been playin ga bit of Hydrophobia on the 360 recently, a game I was looking forwards too. Yeah, it's a good game - but I have to say the 'Secret of Man' on the SNES and 'Tony Hawks Pro Skater 2' on the PS1 are far more fun to play.  I'll probab;y really offend the devs who made Hydrophobia with that statement but it's true.  I was interested in Hydrophobia due to the revolutionary water physics, and yeah - they are impressive, but the game so far is starting to feel samey and a little boring.  The enemies and environments aren't engaging and... Well, I get bored very quickly... I have to play in driobs and drabs, and sometimes getting through the game feels choresome. I thnk we're in a danger, as I suppose we always have been - of losing focus on what games are supposed to be about.  Ultimately the primary objective for a game is for it to be fun.
 
The hundred of people making Red Dead Redemption, with it's gloriously rendered wild-west and motion captured horse-riding... Is all well and good - and that is an example where the fun is there too - but do we need all this realism?  Does a revolutionary physics engine make a great game?  Well, no, it should game first - impressive graphics, sounds and effects after.
 
I had a bash on the XBLA title, 'Limbo' too, that has really simple graphics, nothing fancy at all - you cold probably render the same graphics on a Commadore Amiga, but they are still achingly beautiful and the atmosphere is genuinely spooky... It plays well, it's fun.  If anything it's a breath of fresh air, that a designer has docused on innovation and gameplay to produce something special - without the need for armies of sound producers and 3D artists, voice actors and motion capture studios...

I've recently bought Tropico 3 for the XBOX 360 - something of a bargain bin purchase, selected on more of a whim than anything...
 
I'm actually pleasantly surprised, I usually dislike management sim games on a console, but seeing Tropico 3 on my 42" television has changed my mind.  It's surprisingly playable and quite interesting from the quasi-factual elements of the game mechanics.
 
Plus it makes a change from mowing down zombies... (Ref: Left4Dead)