WillWybrow.com

Finally, Mac users have a leg to stand on when they make their defense of their shitty operating system. In spite of its notorious reputation for being the shiny white middle finger to Mac users who want to game, the OS has had arguably its biggest news ever.

That is: the Mac version of City of Heroes/Villains has finally come close to hitting shelves (currently in beta). Expect to see it being the only thing that doesn’t make you want to murder or sterilise Steve Jobs rocking its way to Apple stores near you this Autumn.

Writing about Red Alert 3 made me realise that there needs to be a cool word for the DRM crisis that EA have instigated. I wanted to make a play on the word “dictatorship,” but it didn’t pan out. So for now, we’ll have to call it DRMinism. It rhymes with ‘feminism,’ which is almost good enough. But, fuck DRM.

If I do manage to slip into that comfortable fold of working whilst learning (it’s an odd thing to want to do, but being forced to be industrious will help me concentrate on other stuff), there’s only one thing I want to save money for.

My new computer, obviously. I’m tired of living in the age of AGP graphics cards, IDE hard drives and single-core processors. I want to get into an architecture that will at least be upgradeable when I can afford it, instead of gazing wistfully at the computing power of what seems like everyone else in the world.

While I won’t have it in time for my favourite new game, it won’t necessarily be too long after that.

Red Alert 3

No Yuri in this one. He was, by far, the best character. I am pleased to see that live-action cutscenes are continuing. But you’ll never guess who they pulled in for the Allied Field Marshal and the Soviet Premier. Never.

Field Marshal Robert Bingham is Jonathan Pryce! As in, Governer Weatherby Swann! Holy fuck, how sweet is that?

But wait, there’s more. More? Yes, more. Premier Cherdenko, successor to Romanov, is being played by Tim Curry! Hell fucking yeah! This game is gonna be sweet; they should totally do a film. It would be like World War films, only good (sorry, Dave, though I’ll let you have Saving Private Ryan).

If that wasn’t enough for you, they have Tanya returning, and whispers of Udo Kier on the horizon for an expansion.

And if that still isn’t enough, take a look at this exerpt from the Yuri page at Wikipedia:

It should be noted the Empire of the Rising Sun’s “hero unit” is an “insanely powerful Japanese commando unit, who dresses like a Japanese schoolgirl, but has enough telekinetic power to levitate and capsize a naval destroyer,” called Yuriko Omega. “Ko” is a common element of female Japanese names, often meaning “child”.

Yuri’s daughter is hot stuff alright. Like, jizz all over everything kind of hot. Holy christ, if this isn’t worth slaving my life away for, I don’t know what is.

Nine of your Great British Pounds, every month, could be forked out for a lot of things. Maybe you could sponsor some charity? That’s great and all, but why not spend it on something a little more tangible? Regular expenditure like that could also just as easily be going into a savings account, but £9 is a little bit, well… little for that. It’s better off spent, I’d say.

City of Heroes

What if you could design your own superhero from scratch, with incredible flexibility? What if you then took your superhero around the streets and districts of Paragon City, a bustling metropolis rife with crime? What if your hero earned new powers during his or her lifetime, being able to take on more threatening villains? What if your hero could team up with other heroes on a short-term basis to take on even bigger tasks? And what if your hero was inducted into a SuperGroup, with long-term benefits and allies and a chance to build up a super base?

I’ve never played an MMORPG before. RPGs in themselves are a little daunting from the point of view of a player who is used to running in, shooting up the place and moving on, with little regard for what is the core aspect in an RPG: the character improving with experience.

I did enjoy my brief stint with Morrowind, the third Elder Scrolls installment, and Pokémon is always good fun. But this is number one on the list of MMORPGs, an otherwise untapped genre.

Well, to start with, there is a lot of negativity associated with MMOs that comes from the poor public opinion of World of Warcraft and its players (I have heard some awful, prejudiced things). It could be because of the attention drawn by the people who devote their lives to playing it, but I don’t want to discuss the merits or drawbacks of that game, I want to talk about this one.

I’m going to give a quick run-down of gameplay. If you’re a big player of this kind of game and something that I’m explaining is obvious to you because it’s in every RPG without fail, just remember what I’ve kept saying over and over: first time, here, so bear the fuck with me.

Gameplay

As a hero, you’re registered with the police force of Paragon City and thrown in. There are two things you can do after the tutorial: find some crime and stop it or proceed to your contacts to be given missions.

You get assigned missions via contacts in the city. From detectives to scientists, everybody has got something for you to take care of. The burden of responsibility is on you, but so are the rewards that hard work brings. On your travels about the city’s districts, you’ll see crime in progress, including street brawls, muggings and break-ins.

To kill the bad guys, you use the superpowers you picked at character creation, powers that come from pool sets that expand with more choices as you increase in level.

One of my favourite things about this game is the come-and-go feel of teaming up. Anyone can form a casual team of people of similar levels. What’s more is that people level up at approximately the same rate. Some will steamroller ahead, but most people will be within a range of two or three levels over a long time, meaning you will team up with them over and over. You’ll start seeing familiar characters in the way you’d see familiar people around you in real life. Teaming up in itself is fair; experience and goodies are split fairly between all participants.

People might not be the most intelligent you’ll ever meet, but they sure are friendly. The new and inexperienced are receptive to advice and the veterans are happy to dish it out. You won’t be shouted at for not knowing everything there is to know about the game, and everyone is very polite, offering congratulations and other little courtesies that you don’t often find in online communities.

This is Tom Hanks saying, if you’re going to pick an MMORPG to play, why not this one?

I can’t wait to see this film. I loved Max Payne 2. When I bought it for the Playstation 2 a long time ago, it stuck as one of my favourite games for a long time. When the game Enter the Matrix was released, I lamented that it wasn’t more like Max Payne 2.

Since those glorious days, it has taken a distant back seat, gathering dust on our shelves until its time to shine again. Well, here it is. The Max Payne movie should be plenty of fun; a dark lead character, a hot female assassin and loads of guns. Not to mention bucketloads of action and bullet-time like, apparently, we’ve never seen before:

They haven’t just ripped off The Matrix, they waited until the technology has been available to do it properly. We’ve been shooting at 1000 frames per second. And I’m not on any wires, either! All the jumping and firing and flipping and landing on my head… That’s all real! We shot it all on film, man!
 
We weren’t doing motion capture then sitting around waiting for some studio to deliver the special-effects shots. It’s for real.

Mark Wahlberg, as quoted on Filmonic.com.

Hopefully they will keep it pretty faithful to the game; the cinematics and graphic novel-style cutscenes really brought out the dark feeling of the game. It might turn out as some sort of Sin City-Matrix-Bourne Trilogy hybrid. But with Mona Sax. Anyway, yeah, things are looking good for faithfulness to the game, taking a look at the set in the shot above, it’s looking like it was copied straight out of one of the games.

I am looking forward to this movie a lot, and to get into the ’spirit’ of it, I have downloaded Max Payne and Max Payne 2 for the PC, and I’m playing them again. So far, I’ve finished the first (and am now replaying the second, with things making slightly more sense this time around). The second game is so much easier than the first, which is a little disappointing, but they are still good fun, if only for old times’ sake.

With any luck, Rockstar will capitalise on the film by releasing a new game. For the Playstation 3. With really nice graphics. Yeah, that would be awesome.

Make the plot good. Bowser can still be the bad guy, but he has to be extra to the plot. Maybe he and the Wario Bros. could be in competition for some treasure?

Fuck princesses, Wario would much rather have a stash of gold. So make that the valuable item stolen by Bowser if you must. But far better that they compete.

Mushrooms can be replaced by magical cloves of garlic with the same properties. Just to add that variation.

What do we think? Submit this image to Nintendo and say “get on it?” Or scrap everything, nobody cares about cool, badass antihero characters who are in it for themselves to get rich?

Bah, games are crap these days.

I never played Project Gotham Racing. Aside from not liking racing games as a general rule, at the time PGR2 came out, it was before the days of Batman Begins, and I had nothing but contempt for the Batman character and world, enough to deny a game the chance to shine based purely on its name.

In PGR2, there was an in-game minigame in the garage. It is a delightfully enjoyable affair of glowing shapes inside glowing shapes that shoot glowing shapes at other glowing shapes. I still haven’t played any of the games in the Project Gotham series, but I can guarantee you that Geometry Wars is better than any racing game ever created.

Geometry Wars: Galaxies

For the Nintendo DS (and the Wii), between Bizarre Creations, Kuju Entertainment and Sierra Entertainment, we’ve been brought the very latest version of the game, subtitled “Galaxies,” and it’s an incredible piece of software.

You take control of a space ship in a closed two-dimensional plane. It can move in any direction and fire in any direction, both independently of one another. The player is followed by an automated drone with different behavioural patterns. The two protagonists then must fight to survive against an increasing swarm of brightly coloured enemies.

Graphically, the game is based in wireframe roots of the classics like Asteroid, but given a glowing, shining, far more attractive and modern look to it. The soundtrack is apt and the effects are cool. The enemies are pretty intense; they range from the midly irritating to “holy fuck! That thing is impossible to beat!” The player has a limited number of lives and “bombs” that clear big parts of the screen of enemies.

Enemies killed with the ship’s primary weapon will leave behind “Geoms” of varying worth. These increase the score multiplier and can rack up extra lives or bombs. The total collected also goes into a game-wide pot and they’re used to buy access to further levels and additional personalities for the drone.

Another great part of the game is its total flexibility of the storyline. Don’t confuse this with non-linearity (which plenty of games have). This game lets you work in your own storyline, because it doesn’t come with one! Here’s mine:

It’s “the Future,” and Space-Nazis have begun a universe-wide assault on civilisation. You are a Geometry pilot mercenary who likes to do things his own way and you’ve been recruited by the Good Guys to help fight off the fucking Nazis. You and your witty, Russian-voiced automated drone, Sputnik, do battle side-by-side against the forces of evil, single-handedly restoring freedom to the known universe.

Pretty cool, huh? I made it up myself and everything!

There’s something about the Japanese way of thinking that somehow lets them make games with hugely involved plots and deeply complex gaming elements while also churning out the equally fun simple, plotless games that are brightly coloured and fast-paced. Hell, if you’ve seen FantaVision (which I think had pretty shitty reception, despite being an ok game) then you’ll have a fine example of a simple game at the lower end of the complexity spectrum, whereas you could also hit the other end with some or all of the Final Fantasy series.

Anyway, Geometry Wars is awesome.

From the greatest game series in the world: my new toy, Kain.

To come: Raziel. To come even sooner: Spectral Raziel.

3… 2… 1… and you’re suddenly one of twelve brightly coloured characters aboard brightly coloured go-karts in a cutthroat race for first place.

Take the corners, boost off the drift; sail through the air and accelerate from the midair tricks; collide with glowing question marks for weapons and power ups that blow your rivals back or you forwards; all the while, hope that you can get far enough ahead so when that Blue Shell comes… you can recover from it in time.

The single player races range from the pathetically easy to the impossibly hard, which is nice. Characters and races are unlocked in a nice, steady stream that will keep you playing. The tracks are varied; we see the classics return Wii-style, and a very pretty Rainbow Road to fuck you over at the end of the Special Cup.

I’m new to Mario Kart. You might see this as a bad thing; how can I review a game in a franchise when I have no experience of anything else in it? But I see it as an impartial view untainted by previous successes and mistakes. So, to bring a staggering conclusion to day seven of Wario Week, I bring you this extensive review of Mario Kart Wii.

At first, I was reluctant to buy into the hype surrounding it. Everyone was getting excited about the release of a Mario Kart game for the Wii, but I wasn’t. So when I was invited to join some friends for an afternoon of it, I went with a slightly negative attitude towards it.

It was misplaced, let me tell you. Mario Kart Wii was as surprising as it was fun. I quickly got into it, and found it more enjoyable by the minute.

Gameplay

There are two ways of controlling your Kart using the Wiimote. The first way is using the Nunchuck’s analogue stick for steering. I’m told this is akin to using the N64 controller. But what if you don’t have the Nunchuck addition? Well, that’s fine too, because you can slot the Wiimote into a steering wheel fascia and steer by tilting it from side to side.

I started playing using a Nunchuck, and when I finally got around to using the Wiimote in ’steering wheel’ mode, I found it a little tricky to get the hang of. Even now, after a week of playing, I’ve not quite got it. But I’m working on it!

Drifting, too, was something I had to get the hang of. But I think I’m nailing that, too. Just take a few corners in a new vehicle to get it right. The boost from a drift builds up automatically. There’s none of that twiddling the steering nonsense that you had to do in the DS at least. It stops ’snaking’ (the act of using drift’s boost repeatedly down a straight stretch of track) by charging the boost on time drifting instead of twiddling. That’s a controversial feature; some people are hardcore anti-snaking, some are snaking lovers who have perfected the technique. The removal of it has, to me at least, validated the anti-snaking camp’s viewpoint that it is semi-cheating, despite Nintendo’s assertions that it’s a “gameplay feature”. They sort of blew that train of thought, though, by removing it. Oh well, it’s their game.

Manual vs. Automatic

No, it’s not gear-shifting… Gear-shifting in go-karts largely defeats their point. It’s braking. You can set automatic braking if you’ve not quite got the hang of drifting; very helpful for new players to instantly enjoy themselves - they don’t need to take hours to get to grips with the brake button without careening off the track and into a pit of lava.

Manual braking is essential for winning the harder tracks, however, as the mini boost from a successfully lengthy drift moves you considerably further than taking the corner while braking automatically. Again, this is easier said than done with the steering wheel controller, but there are those who prefer it.

Wii Features

Obviously being released on a new console, it will have unique aspects that utilise the features of the console. Apart from the steering wheel mode, we have in-air tricks or motorbike wheelies. So what? you ask. They’re activated, I reply, by jerking the motion-sensitive controllers. This adds one of those “comic through the window” properties to the game. Let me explain: when the EyeToy came out for PS2, it had a huge amout of “comic through the window”. So did the dance mats before that. It’s a part of whole-body games that would make your actions look out of place or comical to someone who did not know the context of the movements, if they were looking through a window at the player, for example. To watch three players of equal skill (say, who were following each other closely in first, second and third place) throw their arms into the air in sequence is like seeing a miniature Mexican wave.

The Power-ups

It’s become pretty common to yell “BULLET” when getting a power-up while last or almost last. This is a reference to “Bullet Bill”, the handy helper for those lagging behind. It can have devastating effects - knocking opponents aside and pushing the user up in position.

Shells are there - standard greens, homing reds and winged blues. They come frequently enough to deal out some effective punishment. Mushrooms and bananas are there too, coming (like red and green shells) in sets of one or three.

POW blocks send everyone into a spin unless they jerk the controller at the right time. The squid inks everyone’s screen and makes navigating trickier. Lightning is still lightning and reduces everyone’s size, speed and mass. But the single lightning shot is even more interesting. A stormcloud appears over the player who broke the power-up cube. It speeds the player up marginally, but also counts down. If you don’t collide with another player and pass the cloud on in time, it zaps you. Your speed, size and mass take the same lightning hit, but localised only to you.

Bob-ombs and dud power-up blocks come every now and then, and players in the rearmost few can expect Super Mushrooms or the Invincibility Star to help their performance along, as well as Bullet Bill.

Single Player

Singler player is pretty entertaining. With so many of us sharing the copy of the game, there’s not as much pressure put on one player to complete all the cups. This is a good thing, because I think three difficulty settings on all eight cups is a little repetative. Especially when you’re playing your way through the 50cc cups; it’s nigh impossible to lose. Defeating the Lightning Cup on 150cc, however, was extremely gratifying.

Multiplayer

Split-screen racing is masses of unrivalled fun. We’ve got three controllers and one Nunchuck. This sort of separates the game into two challenges: one between the two steering wheel players and the other between the Nunchuck user and the AI players. With enough of the Wiimote additions, however, we could see a real fight for dominance of the road.

Online play is sadly not an option for our rigorously-controlled networking options. To help you out, though, I’m going to quote the Facebook group Mario Kart Wii is my new addiction:

[Mario Kart Wii]’s got absolutely everything (12 player online, time trial leaderboards, the ability to access the ghost data of EVERYONE, competitions, etc.)

As you can see, lots of work has gone into providing a solid online experience, so if you have the game, check it out. If you don’t and this is one of the key features upon which your decision hinges then it’s packed with all kinds of leaderboards and statistics and fun things to do, so consider the game recommended.

Soundtrack and Visuals

This game is filled with “bright noises,” the audio equivalent of bright colours. The sounds and music tracks are simple, expressive and borderline childish; exactly what you’d expect to come straight out of a Japanese game developer’s brain. The graphics are nothing we haven’t seen before on the GameCube; the Wii was never intended to have superior graphical processing power. It’s not ugly, however, and the tracks from earlier games have been retextured and remodelled to look prettier.

Summary

Fans of the Mario Kart series will find familiar aspects and new aspects in the right mix to make the game enjoyable as returning Mario Kart players. New players will find the introductory easy tracks and automatic braking ease them into the game gently, while still being fun. This is something that most people would be hard-pressed not to enjoy. After the challenges have been completed in single player, you can get your friends over to play with them, or find them online and race them at your convenience. It’s a game with a lot of potential playing hours and good, simple fun that other recent releases simply can’t best.

To celebrate, without provocation, Nintendo’s purple and yellow clad antihero, I’ve discarded the site’s usual green theme in favour of one Wario himself might approve of.

I’ve grown fond of the bloated, greedy thief from what little I’ve seen of him, so I’m declaring my allegiance in the way closest to my heart: here!