So  there’s now two Zelda games on the Wii, the first being Twilight Princess (Which I will play again properly when I find a cheap game cube version, cause given the chance I will not use motion control) and the second being Skyward Sword, which is  not only the most recent Zelda game out, but also a prequel to all the Zelda games before it; Confused yet? Lets see if I can explain this.

You see up until recently  the Zelda time line had been a thing of speculation, every fan had his or her idea of what game went where , which gave way to forums upon forums of  fans arguing that their timeline made more sense; so along with Skyward Sword, Shigeru Miyamoto ; who I guess got fed up his fans ,finally released an official  timeline, with Skyward Sword starting the who epic saga off.

Even with the timeline, I'm still uncertain as to how it all fits together :S

Like I said at the beginning , Skyward Sword is the second Zelda game on the Wii and is as determined as  Twilight princess to shove the whole motion control thing in our faces. You start the game, like most of the zelda games, with naming the protagonist, I’m unoriginal and boring I stuck with his official name: Link. After a quick cut scene  we cut to link asleep in bed only to be interrupted by a giant bird who spits a letter at him ( I wish I was making this up ) the letter is from Zelda , who in this game is Links childhood friend as opposed to the Princess we all know her as from other games, after a quick read of the note link leaps off the bed and hands the control over to you.

I see Link also suffers from Monday morning syndrome

Using the circle pad on the nunchuck makes movement easy and fluid , the camera is reasonably  well-behaved, only occasionally looking at the sky instead of what your meant to be doing, but a quick tap  of the ‘Z’ button and the camera centres  itself , so no worries there. Running and jumping are again straight forward aswell; unfortunately the motion control isn’t so smooth. Even with addition of the Wii motion plus, there’s still a delay with links movements, and trying to roll a bomb can be a nightmare if the sensor  isn’t positioned in just the right way; throwing a bomb is simple, with the bombs selected bit ‘B’ , move into position and give the wiimote a small flick, but to roll a bomb, you have to raise the wiimote in the air whilst your  positioning yourself, but with the delay link doesn’t  always register that you want him to roll it right away, so you end up being blown up because our spiky eared hero won’t respond to your commands, all you can do there is throw the bomb before it blows and try again.

One of the first things I noticed about Skyward Sword , when I first turned it on, was the art style.

Pretty!

Look at that, its gorgeous! we’re welcomed into the world by bright colours and a cartoony art style which looks like the cell shaded versions like Wind Waker and Twilight Princess all rolled into one , and throwing the music into the mix makes it pretty on the eyes and the ears.

It would’ve been nice to have had more to do whilst in the over world, soaring through the sky on your loftwing is fun, but there is not enough to do, with the five main floating islands being host to mini games or shopping, the smaller pieces of rock that hover in the sky are either empty or have treasure chests that you can only open once you find their goddess cube equivalent in one of the levels below the clouds.

I guess, overall, I can only really recommend Skyward Sword to people who are already fans of the Zelda series, despite the fact that it’s supposed to be the first in the series, the game still expects the player to have a certain amount of knowledge of the world and lore before they even start playing, so whilst fans will probably feel right at home in skyward sword, to the people who want to get into the Zelda series…..Start anywhere else in the series and pick up some of the history before you try out skyward sword, otherwise a lot of the story may not make a lot of sense.

~ HeadphoneGirlZ

So when I found Rory’s Story Cubes in the mighty Leisure Games last year, I had to have them. Presented in a lovely little slipcase (the inner box has a magnetic flap to keep everything safe during transit), you get nine six-sided dice. But instead of dots, you have little cartoon pictures, ranging from straightforward items like an arrow and a pyramid, to slightly more abstract ones, like the comedy & tragedy masks and a demonic shadow.

The idea of the game is storytelling: roll all nine dice then try to make a story using the images on them. It’s quite an entertaining little exercise to try this on your own, but taking turns with friends is where this game shines. Due to the random element of dice rolling, you never quite know what’s going to come up, allowing you to create some weird and wonderful modern fables, either co-operatively or competitively.

And that’s basically it: the rules booklet is tiny and the instructions take up just over two and a bit inches square. The dice are sturdy and well printed, big enough for the recommended ages to handle easily but not too bulky for transporting here, there and everywhere (although apparently there are plans for giant ones, primarily for special needs children and group work). There is also an expansion set (“Actions“), which I have, and another one (“Voyages“), which I don’t (but intend to get hold of as soon as possible). Oh yes, and there’s the inevitable app for everyone’s favourite i-device - but heck, as fun as that might be, that’s not even real dice, so doesn’t actually count.

Because the game is fast and portable, it’s perfect for travelling and impromptu game sessions (say, down the pub or when not enough people turn up for your regular table-top game). Part of me also dearly wants to carry out an experiment to see if I can generate a coherent table-top scenario using nothing but these dice, just for fun. And that’s what this game is all about: pure and simple fun. As someone else’s advertising campaign used to say: “the only limit is your imagination.”

~FuschiaBegonia

With each release I get all excited like I’m a child again and ya know this time is no different. I think you know where I’m going with this so I’ll let the vids do the talking.

~Donna

Environment

Characters

Shiny

Interview and more shiny

I have a massive soft spot for computer RPGs, despite my rather unfortunate first encounter with them via The Hobbit back in the dim and distant 1980s (but that’s another story). I also have a long and rich history with their table-top cousins; the first game I ever ran at University was using the original red box D&D rules and despite the fact that I only used them briefly (because all of the players had been raised on red box and as a result, I felt I couldn’t surprise them with it), I still have very fond memories of that set, crappy dice and all.

So when we were playing Dragon Age: Origins (by the mighty Bioware), I got a serious attack of the warm fuzzies – you know, that glowing nostalgia for an old-fashioned but much-loved game you thought you’d never see the like of again. I’m not a huge one for game mechanics (funnily enough), but the fact that you could see characters marching steadfastly through the basic D&D rules on screen made me chuckle. The dialogue, though corny in places, was perfectly in-keeping with its origins and I loved it to bits. Dragon Age 2 was also great fun, although I missed the freedom of choosing your starting character’s race. And if Dragon Age 3 isn’t centred on Varric, it’ll be a crying shame (Best Adventuring Companion Ever).

It was, therefore, with a sense of dread that I heard Green Ronin had announced that they were actually going to produce a “proper” Dragon Age RPG (and by proper, I mean table-top); after all, there have been some truly awful conversions of big name intellectual properties to other types of format in the past, RPGs included. But when I saw the box set nestled on the shelf of our Friendly Local Game/Comic Shop over Christmas, I had to have a look, just to see if it really was a train wreck in progress.

My first impression was one of amusement: the cover of the box is very tat fantasy, with an elf, a dwarf and a mage kicking the bejeebers out of some nasty Darkspawn greeblies. Don’t get me wrong, it’s beautifully executed and the elf-babe is actually fully dressed – in fact, its perfect for what it’s attempting to emulate (apart from the over-abundance of clothing). The back of the box blurb is straight to the point, too: this is old-school roleplaying and a portal into table-top for those not familiar with the form. Oh yeah, and it has free dice in it as well. Free dice. What’s not to love?

Apart from the dice (three of them; two white six-siders and a red one), you get a Player’s Guide, a Game Master’s Guide and a map of Ferelden. This particular set is for characters of Levels 1-5 (thus continuing the whole original red box theme). At this point I decided it must be mine, whether it was any good or not. Now, having read it, I can tell you that it is good; yes, there are flaws, but on the whole this is a smashing little system that does everything the new and improved current red box D&D tries, but fails, to do (which just goes to show that new and improved is not always better than old and allegedly inferior).

The Player’s Guide sets the scene for the players, with the obligatory “What Is A Roleplaying Game?” section and some notes on group dynamics and game concepts. You then get a far too brief section on the history of Ferelden. This is one of the major points for which the game loses marks for me: okay, if you’ve not played the video version of the game, I’m not quite sure why you’d pick this version up, but some of us don’t have perfect recall anymore and some of the background intricacies have kind of got mixed up with other properties (<cough> Skyrim <cough>), so it really could have done with a bit more oomph.

After the world set-up comes character generation. Nice and simple this bit: roll your 3d6 to generate eight ability scores, pick your background concept (pretty much whether you’re a human, dwarf or elf), tweak it and then choose your class (of which there are three: warrior, mage and rogue) and then tweak some more. The background concept is a little more involved than that, seeing as you have seven actual templates to choose between, but the system is streamlined enough to get a character up and running pretty quickly.

The next chapter goes into more detail about your character’s skills, known in this game as focuses (shouldn’t that be foci?) and talents. A focus is an ability specialisation and a talent is a more specific skill (like weapons training, for example), all of which help to differentiate the characters despite the limited starting choices. Next up is the weapons chapter, which comes with the most adorable set of armour paintings that made me long for a paper doll version of Alistair I could dress up in each one. As with character creation, everything is kept simple and there are no encumbrance rules (The One Ring, take note). Chapter Five deals with magic, another mercifully short and to the point section that gives you what you need to play, rather than endless lists of fireworks that usually bore me to tears and make me give up reading a game all together. The final chapter is an overview of the game rules, such as action resolution and health. There’s even a glossary and an index (and a photocopiable character sheet on the back!). For those of you not sufficiently Luddite, there’s also a link somewhere to a downloadable pdf version.

The artwork on the cover of the GM’s Guide is much more like it, with the good lady mage basically dressed like Morrigan-inna-hoodie. It starts with advice for the GM on setting up a game, creating a story (again, a bit brief, but solid nevertheless) and the different types of GM and player styles. I’m not sure I agree with all of their definitions, some of which may be down to proof-reading failures, which seem to be much more prevalent in this book than the Player’s Guide. Chapter Two looks at the rules in more detail, and even then, they’re nice and bijou.

At its most basic, each dice roll (or test) involves rolling your 3d6 and adding a couple of relevant modifiers. If you roll doubles on the dice, you generate stunt points which allow you to add particular special effects. The red die is known as the Dragon Die, and can alter the outcome of the roll (in terms of degree of success or failure), as well as telling you how many stunt points you get when you do roll doubles. In most cases you’ll be trying to equal or beat a target number, but you might be making opposed rolls (against someone or something else) or an advanced test, which aims to simulate events that take time and uses a threshold mechanism rather than a straight success/fail one. And that’s pretty much it in a nutshell – it really is introductory in every way, shape and form.

There’s a nice chapter on the type of creatures you’re likely to find in Ferelden, including Mabari war dogs (a must-have as far as I’m concerned), and a final one on rewarding your players (oh yes, XP!) before you get to the sample scenario. Now these things are a often a nightmare to write, because you have no idea what players are going to come up with character-wise, so it must be all things to all people. This particular one, “The Dalish Curse”, does suffer from being a bit rumpty-tumpty (and I can see some players running riot with it as written, or wandering off in totally the wrong direction), but it does its best under trying circumstances.

There’s nothing about the Grey Wardens in this set: they’re inBox2(Levels 6-10, or the old dark blue D&D box for those of you who remember these things). Its best to think of this first set as being the section of the video game at the beginning, when you blunder about working through your character’s initial background material (for us, it was all the political manoeuvring surrounding the new Dwarven King). And I enjoyed reading this so much, and making little “awww!” noises at it, that I’ve gone and bought the second box as well (much to the delight of the lovely lass in Travelling Man Newcastle, who was tired of only selling the starter box to people).

So if you want to indulge in a bit of misty-eyed wallowing that harks back to the alleged Golden Age of gaming, or are looking for a way into table-top through a familiar background, this is actually a pretty good place to start. Nicely produced, a good price and a fun, fast read. Go on, give it a go – you know you want to…

~FuschiaBegonia

We all know that video games can be emotional experiences. The exhilaration of taking down a boss by the skin of your teeth, the excitement and wonderment of a new adventure begun and the sheer pride in a perfectly executed headshot that wins the game for your team. But one emotion that video games aren’t very good at producing is sadness. To be fair, most games aren’t even aiming to give a kick to our oxytocin levels and ratchet up our empathy but I wonder why this is. Are video games not expected to be a suitable medium for this kind of emotion in the way that films or novels are? There aren’t many games that have moved me to tears but the ones that did have stuck in my mind as they provided an experience that was somewhat unique within the medium.

Here are a few games that have brought a lump to my throat:

Dragon Age: Origins – asking Alistair to cheat on you

Ah, Alistair, my favourite fictional boyfriend. I originally started to “romance” him on my first play through of Dragon Age because I wanted to be Queen of Ferelden but his superb characterisation won me over. He was funny, honorable and rather charming. Once we had the “lamp post” conversation there was no turning back, I was determined to make sure Alistair and my character got the happiest possible ending. This turned out to be a lot harder than I expected. Near the end of the game, you discover that either you or Alistair must die in order to slay the Archdemon. There is one way out – Alistair can perform a ritual with the character Morrigan (whom he dislikes greatly) in order for you both to live. Unfortunately, this ritual involves him impregnating Morrigan. I have never felt more guilty playing a video game than when I asked Alistair to sleep with Morrigan. After everything we’d been through and all the conversations we’d had it felt genuinely painful to ask him to something I knew he’d hate. At this point in the game it wasn’t an easy decision to make but this is exactly why it has remained such a powerful moment in my mind.

Red Dead Redemption – there are no happy endings

John Marston is a former outlaw that has been recruited by federal agents to round up his old gang members under threat that his family will be hurt if he does not. You spend the whole game playing through various missions to this end but the game never lets you forget that Marston is doing so under duress. After Marston finally catches up with the gang leader Dutch and kills him in a climatic moment, he is finally allowed to return home. At this point the game gives you missions that revolve around every day activities – herding cattle, hunting with your son and generally allowing Marston to settle into family life. The game gives you the opportunity to see Marston happy and to get to know his family. And sure, Marston could be pretty unlikeable some of the time but it’s hard not to get at least a little attached to a character you’re playing so it’s almost heartening to see him finally free. It also helps set the scene for what comes next and give it pathos. The serenity does not last. US soldiers and federal agents surround the farm and Marston sends his son Jack and wife Abigail to safety whilst he prepares for one last shoot out. After all, Marston IS the last member of the gang and must meet the same fate according to the law. At this point the player realises that Marston never stood a chance. He was simply a pawn to be used. There is no happy ending to be found here. Marston cannot escape from his past. The only redemption he can achieve is to save his wife and son by sacrificing himself.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare – the horror of war

The CoD games aren’t exactly known for their deep plots or well-rounded characters. This isn’t a criticism because CoD is very, very good at what it does. However, there was one moment in the first Modern Warfare game that gave me pause to feel something amongst all the bullets and explosions. In the first act of the game during a search and rescue mission there is a lot of foreshadowing that the major terrorist threat has a nuclear bomb. Well, so what, that’s just about the type of thing I expect out of terrorists in these games and I am fully looking forward to kicking their asses before said bomb goes off. Just need to save a few more and then hop back onto the chopper and speed away. Except, instead of escaping, you are suddenly faced with a massive detonation, a mushroom cloud in the air and as the blast catches up with your helicopter you know there is no way anyone is surviving this. I wasn’t expecting it. The game hands control back to you once the chopper has crashed and you make your character crawl his way out. The entire scene is red and the mushroom cloud looms large. Your character can barely move and his breathing is becoming more and more laboured. Everything is silent. It’s horrific. It’s a moment in the game when it’s not simply about killing AI characters or enjoying raining down merry hell on pixels below – it’s a moment about death as it often is in war; frightening, painful and horribly pointless. I’ve forgotten many of the moments in CoD games but not this one. It stuck with me.

What games, if any, have made your bottom lip wobble?

JenJenRobot

The employee wouldn’t give any details whatsoever, but the guy who spotted the shirt did confirm that he attempted to smother himself in the employee’s chest, which didn’t help anything.

via PCGamer.

~Alice M.

Yes, that is H.P. Lovecraft’s Mountains of Madness. And yes, that is a jewel puzzle game. My one previous attempt at a jewel puzzle game ended badly, but this was something I just had to see…

At its heart, Mountains of Madness (well, this version anyway) is a hidden object and match-3 puzzle, with a bit of “figure out how to get the jewels out of ice/hideous statues of Elder Gods” action thrown in for good measure. It must be said, carrying out a hidden object search through the frozen corpses of hideously murdered Antarctic explorers isn’t something you’d want to do every day, but its certainly a new twist on the format (particularly when, if you click on said corpses, there are some pithy statements made about the poor person involved). One particular comment about a person trapped under an overturned sled looking a bit distressed made me laugh somewhat inappropriately (and he, at least, was still alive).

Some of the match-3 games are tricky, but not in a “throw your DS across the room in a fit of pique” way. Plus you earn tools that, once you figure out how to use them, can be tremendously useful in beating some of the harder puzzles. Although be warned: one of the tools lets you switch the colour of every stone on the board, which can actually put you in a worse position than the one you started in. You also earn trophies as you progress through the game, although it’s a bit idiosyncratic as to when it hands them out. I received the one for playing for three hours before I got the one for playing for two and I’m still waiting for the one you get for achieving 12 other trophies.

The story, as you would imagine, has been massively abridged and monkeyed with to make it fit the game format. Some of the translation leaves a lot to be desired, both in what some of the objects in the puzzles are called (I’m sorry, but a glass beer stein is not the same thing as a jar) and also in terms of the passages of narrative text, particularly at the end of the game where it all gets very confusing.

One of the main ways the game shines, though, is in the artwork. The backdrops for the puzzles are beautifully painted and very atmospheric. You’ll again get comedy comments if you click on certain items (“I wouldn’t want to meet the thing that posed for that statue!” etc) which shows that although their translation skills may be a bit duff, the designers have a very good eye and a sense of humour.

It’s a truly oddball thing, this game. I suspect hard-core devotees of Lovecraft will hate it because of what it’s done to the story, but it actually gives a little more interest to the proceedings. After all, if I hadn’t been bamboozled by the concept in the first place, I never would have bought it. And that would have been a real shame; it neither drove me mad nor reached new peaks of gaming experience, but it was fun and compelling and that’s pretty much all of what I ask for in a game.

~FuschiaBegonia

Any takers? No?

Shame.

So, I try to keep an eye on Amanita trailer releases and whatnot but with one thing or the other this month I forgot to fire up the old search engine and missed a big screenshot release on IGN. Without further ado:

Click image to view the IGN screenshots page!

In other news, I’ve been very lax in my femmegamer duties due to my feverish, hopeless pipe dreams of being a professional novelist, but things have calmed down so I hope to be posting more often.

See you soon!

~Alice

Okay so pretty much everyone I know who played Batman: Arkham Asylum has been looking forward to Arkham City. All the information we were fed about Arkham City was meant to tease and tempt us. So much lovely artwork and little pieces of gameplay videos. I knew that if it was just as good as Arkham Asylum, then Arkham City was going to be amazing. They promised us the world. Slowly they revealed that not only would we have Batman as a playable character, but we’d also get Catwoman, Nightwing and Robin. The Catwoman DLC is already out so if you didn’t get it with your pre-order, now’s the time. It’s worth getting, playing at Catwoman is completely different to Batman.

I don’t want to give away the story, but suffice to say, you’ve got an old face and a new face in your primary villains for this out of Batman. You’ll get to see many old familiar faces from the comics and cartoons. Most are short appearances and side missions, but it’s kinda nice to see all the cameos. It’s fitting and it works. Of course through it all you’ve got the Riddler with his trophies and antics all over the place. As you’d probably guess The Joker is a primary adversary, but then that’s to be expected. I’ll leave the other as a surprise for you to find out.

The primary storyline revolves around sorting out Arkham City, and it is the size of a small city in game terms, which is the successor of the Arkham Asylum. As you’d expect everything is in disarray and the career criminals are reeking havoc and scheming. All the evil doing makes for some good story and much unexpectedness. I won’t give you any more than that so I don’t spoil it. Suffice to say I was reasonably happy with the story and it was fitting. Basically you have to fix the fucked up place, but Batman is a hero after all.

Speaking of story, there are a few side quests with their own little stories. Some are okay and are natural branches, but others don’t make much sense. Unfortunately several of them are just busy work to simulate the game being longer. The Riddler side mission is the worst perpetrator of this and actually annoyed me after a while. Previously I’d enjoyed the challenge of the Riddler trophies and riddles, but this time they’ve been tied into the Riddler side mission and there are 400 of them. And maybe this is a minor spoiler, but I’d feel wrong not telling you. You will need to find all 400 Riddler trophies in order to complete the Riddler side mission. This didn’t make me happy and I haven’t finished it out of frustration and irritation.

The side missions are for me the only major downside though. My only other problem isn’t so much a problem as a personal disappointment. I finished Arkham Asylum in about 16 hours including the Riddler trophies. This was the low point for me, I really wanted to keep playing for longer. I was really hoping for Arkham City to be longer, and it was; a little. To me this is a disappointment because I was really enjoying the game and really wanted to keep going and not just faff about with the Riddler trophies. On an up side to these side missions, many of them really do focus in on the whole “World’s Greatest Detective” bit of Batman; and I enjoyed that a lot.

As to why I wanted to just keep on playing; it’s the gameplay. The flow and ease of the fighting from the first one is again present with some little modifications for the weapons and fighting different types of bad guys. There are some special moves that need timing but generally you just don’t have to think as you fight all those bad guys. To me sometimes simple controls only improve the gameplay.

The area that you get to run around is so much bigger than previously, there is a lot more roof activity and climbing.  I would say that Rocksteady Stuios’ devs have definitely had a good look at the Assassin’s Creed games. As you run across the roofs you’ll see how smooth you can go from gliding to running to grappling. If you’ve played the Assassin’s Creed games you’ll notice the similarities and the missed problems that the first AC games ran up against. This for me made moving around Arkham City a smooth and enjoyable experience. Rocksteady was definitely paying attention.

Outside of the primary story you’ve got the challenge maps which are essentially maps from the main story with objectives on how and what to do and a couple options like being timed and ranked. They’re okay, but I actually got bored with them pretty quickly as they’re pretty pointless. Otherwise you also can unlock character bios and 3D renderings as you progress through the game. The 3D renders are actually kinda nice and you can have a good up close look at the different characters.

Overall, I say get it now. It’s an astonishing game despite the foibles as they are few and minor. I really do love the game and wanted to keep on playing forever.

~Donna

You arrive in Salem to investigate the disappearances of four girls, only to find that the entire town has shut itself up and there’s no-one to help you. And this is where the major problem with the game arises: in any other puzzler like this, you’d go and talk to people to try and get an idea of where you have to go next and what you need to do. Not here; there are no clues, which tends to leave you blundering about rather a lot. The little booklet that comes with the game doesn’t explain much either, to such an extent that towards the end of the game I discovered a hints option hidden on a menu screen that isn’t even mentioned in the guide. It might have made things easier earlier on, but long before then I’d resorted to a walkthrough (something I usually avoid using at all costs because it always feels like cheating).

In terms of the puzzles, you have reasonably standard hidden object games, some logic puzzles and some that I have absolutely no idea how you’re meant to solve without the walkthrough (unless you’ve psychically discovered the hints menu right at the beginning and even then, I’m not so sure). Puzzle games are great if you know what the rules of the puzzle are, but far too often in this game you’re left dangling as none of them are explained. I’m still not sure how, as a character with no knowledge of witchcraft, I was supposed to figure out what to do to release the second girl from her ensorcellment, or know what the components of a spell recipe are. But then, I’m not sure how I should know which way the town’s apothecary likes their shelves arranging, either. Part of this isn’t helped by the tiny graphics on the DS’ upper screen, but this isn’t true in all cases. If you do get utterly fed up, there is a skip button which allows you to bypass the puzzles, which on one occasion I did actually use because even with the walkthrough and the hints menu, I still had no idea what I was supposed to do.

Other platforms’ version of this game apparently have a map, which would have been really useful, given that until I caved in and found the walkthrough, I was convinced there were only two streets in the town. There are no arrows to show you possible directions for investigation, leaving you randomly tapping bits of the screen just to see if there’s a hidden footpath somewhere. On top of that, the game does a stunning Michael Crichton and just stops all of a sudden, even though the on-screen dialogue suggests there should be something more.

All in all, it’s a bit of a wasted opportunity, this game. The atmosphere is spooky and the storyline not that bad, but a few suspicious townsfolk to guide you on your way would have given it a huge boost in terms of both tone and playability. Maybe if I’d found the hint menu earlier, I wouldn’t have felt so flummoxed. But because of that frustration, I’m not willing to go back and give it another go just to see.

And so, the hunt for the perfect puzzle game continues…

~fuschiabegonia