Category: Game On

Like an excited kid at xmas time, I sat up last night waiting for the information to trickle from the Sony press conference in Culver City, where the PS3 was being revealed for the first time. After last weeks launch of the XBox 360 before the assembled hipsters on MTV, I wondered just how Sony would respond.

By quarter-past midnight I was beginning to think they wouldn’t reveal anything concrete, as sites like GameSpot and Engadget gave the impression that all we were getting was a technical fact sheet.

Then suddenly, Kaboom! – the information came thick and fast, as everything from details of the system architecture, to images of the new console began to hit the net. Joystiq went down, Engadget struggled under the load, and GameSpot and IGN seemed slow with their updates.

By one in the morning it had calmed down to a relative frenzy – GameSpot had an early report from the press conference up, and IGN had a good amount of PS3 information on offer by then.

I would have gone to bed at this point, but then details of PS3 games started pouring out too, and in my excitement I had to read each scrap of info before I finally hit the sack at close to two.

It’s probably going to be a year and a half before I get my hands on one of these things, and I’m going to be counting the days. Roll on the next generation.

After spending some time this weekend playing TimeSplitters Future Perfect, I’ve come to the conclusion that; as a developer EA creates some pretty decent efforts, but, as a publisher, they tend to sugarcoat anything that passes their way to the point of ruin.

Cases in point for me are Burnout 3 and TimeSplitters Future Perfect. In both cases EA took over as publisher, and in both cases they’ve served only to tarnish once fine franchises in their quest for the mass-market.

With Burnout they introduced a sickening teen-angst soundtrack and, as if that wasn’t bad enough, they got Criterion to add in some assclown Crash Radio guy (as featured in SSX3), who serves only to annoy, but can thankfully be turned off.

With TimeSplitters FP they’ve added a similar announcer guy, who gushes in dude-americana each time you kill or are killed in arcade mode. Worse still is that you can only turn him off in custom games, meaning that working your way through the arcade leagues is simply excruciating, due to the deluge of banal “Boom-Shakka!” or “Chimp-icide!” comments that punctuate every kill.

It adds nothing to the game, serves only to puke sugar-saturated barf onto the once slick presentational style associated with the TimeSplitters series and, for me, is the very worst of what EA has to offer the games industry.

Having EA own, or indeed p0wn, every single license out there is akin to Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer directing and producing every movie that comes out. One or two in a while is okay, but when you can see they’ve dipped every title in hype-flavoured syrup for reasons only known to themselves, it starts to make me wonder if both industries are heading for the same ends.

And, since I lost interest in going to the movies a long time ago, save for special occasions like LoTR or Spider-Man, I’m wondering how many more years I’ll be a gamer before the franchises I love are shat-on to the point where it just isn’t worth the annoyance?

After the crushing disappointment with last years IndyCar Series, I was a little apprehensive about picking up the mis–titled IndyCar Series 2005 when it arrived during the summer.

Last years’ effort had been so bad that if it hadn’t been for the fact I’m a huge fan of the sport, I probably wouldn’t have gone near the sequel. Fortunately, however, ICS 2005 turned out to be a vast improvement over the original, although not as entirely new a title as the 2005 postfix would suggest.

For a start, the twitchy car handling is comparable to last time, if a little more forgiving, although that doesn’t mean it’s easy. If you’re looking for an arcade racer then Burnout 3 is what you’re after. IndyCar Series 2005 is as hardcore as console racing games come – the default set-up for every track is pretty much unusable, and you’ll have to put many miles of test laps in to dial down the car for your personal style of racing.

This is both a strength and a weakness – casual gamers will be horrified at the almost vertical learning curve – just being consistent enough not to clip the outside wall is a real challenge until you have the car handling with any degree of predictability. But for gamers who like their racers to have a bit of depth and customisation it should come as a welcome diversion from the power-up’s and short cuts found in every other game on the shelves.

The in-game graphics are unspectacular to say the least, and virtually unchanged from last time out. Compare it to the latest PS2 or XBox titles and you have yourself a game that looks quite dated. But then, how many other racing games are chucking the player and up to 32 AI cars around tracks in excess of 200 miles an hour? Regardless of the bland graphics, what you’re here for is the racing, and for the most part ICS 2005 delivers on the premise of the sport. Racing is ridiculously fast, close, and mistakes are punished harshly, making every on track decision just that much more tense. Until you learn that backing off is sometimes the better choice than a huge wreck, the game will bite you time and again.