Written By: Alex Shaw

Last November I, like many PS3 owners, finally got my hands on LittleBigPlanet. It surfed in on
a wave of hype and outstanding critical acclaim. Create and publish your own
levels, experience content produced by gamers the world over. To begin with it
was just as shiny, inventive and accessible as I’d been led to believe. Then as
the days went on and the mechanics began to grate a little, I joined the
throngs of complainers lamenting the floaty platforming, unexpectedly steep
difficulty curve and twitchy online interface. Half the user-created levels
were just trophy runs and prize giveaways, the other half were taken off the
servers for copyright infringement. Due to an insanely busy Christmas gaming
schedule I put it down for a few months.

I went back last weekend to re-assess. While many of the above problems are still present I
finally realised what was wrong with my perception. I was judging this as a
platformer. A total redux of what we thought that genre was, true, but a platformer
like Mario and Sonic nonetheless.

It”s not.

LittleBigPlanet is a grand art project begun by Media Molecule in November 2008 and added to by
thousands of artists both talented and talentless. Itâs an exploration of what
gamers can do creatively with a console; a machine usually unsuited to this
task. And it simply takes the form of a platform game.

Itâs still annoying, floaty and full of shabby, prize-littered levels whose inept
designers are begging for approval, but crucially the reviewers who gave it
tens on pure speculation that there would be excellent content were absolutely
right. A little digging and patience turns up levels of extraordinary
complexity, beauty and fun. Everyone can find something to love about this
game. You may be muttering “Welcome to last yearâs opinions,â but, you see, I
had to let the hype die down, the deeper content be published and the new purchase
price drop to such a tragic low that this became the brilliant underdog it was
always meant to be. LBP, I misjudged you and I apologise.

Written By: Alex Shaw

Capcom recently released the “Championship Modeâ expansion pack for Street Fighter IV,
free on Xbox Live and PSN. This gives players a replay mode, a new
points system and a much needed enhanced tournament matching system. However it
doesn’t patch the fact that Seth is the cheapest boss of this console
generation. Let”s take a look back on
some of the biggest cheating scumbags to ever bar us as gamers from those end
sequences.

10. Raven

Lord (Heavenly Sword). The kind of boss you have to hit ten times for every one
time he hits you. Plus he can fly. Youâll have been wanting to clobber him for
the duration of the game and the fact that he makes it so hard nearly dulls the
sharp ending of this overlooked PS3 classic.

9. Graven (Conan).
Itâs the repetition that kills this gameâs enjoyment factor. You have to jump
through hoops and perform identical, perfectly timed attacks repeatedly or he
regenerates health and you start all over again. After six phases of doing the
same thing you begin praying to Crom that Conan will simply grow a pair,
forsake the quick time events and just cut this bastardâs head off.

8. Darth
Vader – Final Battle (Star Wars: The Force Unleashed). Vader should not be easy to beat,
granted, but when he effortlessly parries every one of your attacks except a specific
three-button combination that he seems particularly weak to, it forces you to
turn what could have been THE grand duel into a series of Vader beat-downs,
which he is fumblingly unable to counter.

7. General
Raam (Gears of War). Hiding behind a huge gun and merrily absorbing your
bullets into his head, Raam is one of those essentially invincible guys, until
you reach the prescribed quota for shots in the face, at which point he dies. It
makes no sense. Infuriatingly difficult, especially on Insane.

6. Navarro
(Drakeâs Fortune). Run a gauntlet of grunts and get nothing but perfect
headshots, all the while being cut to pieces if you break cover. Follow up with
a ridiculous quick time event. The game itself is worth so much more than this laborious
war of attrition.

5. Solidus (Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty)

At last you get a katana, and that blond whiner
finally starts seeming like he might have some hidden grit to his character.
Then Solidus whips out his own blade and lays into you so ferociously it
reduces the fight to long periods of blocking with occasional frantic attacks.
Itâs all the more insulting considering how visceral the Snake-on-Snake fight
was at the end of MGS1.You were right to hate Raiden.

4. M-Bison (StreetFighter II Turbo)

Bison takes one look at you and begins a shuttle-run of
Psycho-Crushers back and forth across the screen. If you ever get a decent kick
in, you get thrown like a Don King prize-fight. Heâs a legendarily cheap boss,
but heâs not as cheap asâ

3. Seth (Street Fighter IV)

If you thought Bison was unfair, Seth will calmly counter every attack
with one of his amazing repertoire of three moves; the instant hundred-foot
kick, the teleport/bitch-slap and the suck-you-into-my-belt, which takes such
little regard of physics itâs beyond insulting.

2. Abyss (Marvel VS. Capcom 2)

If you never played MvC2, look forward to a summer of screaming
at this evil green fuckwit. He has three forms: firstly, a twelve foot-tall
armoured horn-beast; secondly, a green naked man with a gun who laughs chirpily
as you get blasted; and a third that fills most of the screen with teeth and
lava. All of these âmovesâ are spammed constantly until you die, which you
will, over and over.

1. Jinpachi (Tekken 5)

Saving the worst for last. Remember fighting Heihachi at the end of
Tekken? He was fast and strong, with swift, brutal counters, but he was fair.
This mutated version has a cannon in his chest and if you stop attacking him
for more than half a second heâll happily blast you with it, dealing about 80%
damage, at which point it just takes one more cheap shot to finish you off.
Evil incarnate; thy name is Jinpachi.

The problem
with all of these bosses is that they force you to fight in one particular way.
Their limited but overpowered attacks leave you resorting to the one or two
tactics that cause them even a little damage. But by the time youâve figured
out what these are, youâve been killed a dozen times and your joy in the game
is ebbing. Hands up whoâd play more single-player Street Fighter IV if the final
boss was Bison, not Seth. The best bosses, (which I might write another article
on) are memorable for the way they kill you once or twice, fair and square, and
then once you spot their weakness, go down gracefully and leave you remembering
how enjoyable the whole game was. More like them, please.

Written By: Alex Shaw

This is an update of the 2006 Xbox release of Outrun 2,
(which was itself based on two Outrun Arcade cabinets by Sega). The graphics
have been polished up and all the cars are available immediately making it game
very accessible.

Taking control of one of a selection of Ferrari’s the player
races through various branching zones trying to make checkpoints within the
time limit and ending up in one of five finish lines. All the while, the hot
babe on your arm rewards you with adoration when you perform well and derision
when you fail. You can also do time trials and heart attack mode, in which
you"re asked to drive in specific ways (hitting no traffic or staying within
colored lines for example). Thereâs also a basic online mode in which up to six
people can head for the finish, either with collision on or off.

The best part of this shallow but shiny  racer is the drifting mechanics. Take a corner at speed and itâs
fairly easy to swing your car into a long and gratifying drift which not only
looks and feels the business, but shaves valuable seconds off your time and
saves you having to slow down. With collision off in multplayer and six
gorgeous looking Ferrariâs all arcing in unison round a hairpin bend itâs hard
to remember a time when racing felt as fun or stylish. The graphics are crisp
and colorful taking you through a variety of different backdrops, from Niagra
Falls to a Shuttle launch-pad, all
beautiful and exhilarating to cruise past.

The original Xbox version, rated as one of Edgeâs top 100
games of all time, was released with additional modes, some of which have been
trimmed for this XBLA (and PSN in Europe only) version. The most obvious
omission is the originalâs extensive series of challenges. This increased the
longevity allowing you to daisy-chain unlocks (Cars, tunes and more challenges)
in a series of achievements. Thereâs also, like the original, no local
multiplayer mode, which is a shame. However itâs worth remembering that for 800
points rather than the 1200 most classic Xbox games command youâre still
getting most of the game for two thirds the cost. I personally enjoyed Outrun
Online Arcade so much I picked up Outrun 2 on Xbox for Â1.99 ($2.91) in a
bargain bin, so if this loss of extra modes has you fuming, you can find it on
eBay or elsewhere for a very reasonable price. The XBLA version wins over the
old, for me at least, due to the polished graphics, immediate accessibility of
all cars and most importantly the chance to play with friends or strangers in a
360 online race. There are general leader-boards available, but Sumo have not
yet gathered that most of us only care about our friends fastest times.

In summation for 800 points you get a flashy, slick,
hellishly addictive arcade racer. Itâs not going to win any awards for depth,
complexity or originality, but as someone who rarely gets much out of racers
other than the Burnout series itâs got me back into feeling the need for speed,
and the drifting is absolutely second to none. Itâs closer to Ridge Racer and
Daytona than Gran Turismo and GRiD, but if thatâs what you like then at this
price youâd be crazy not to bag this classic.

Rating: 8/10

Games based on movies and why most of them suck.

Following our first video podcast, which focused on the superb GoldenEye we took a look at why most other movie licensed games are shallow, creaky and unsatisfying.

Also up for discussion are Lego Rock Band, Wanted: Weapons of Fate and what’s apparently next for many Wii owners. Listen out for a movie review Easter egg

And greetings to all new listeners who’ve come to us from Gamehounds, YouTube, Platform Nation and Daniel Floyd’s lectures. We’ve got some great shows coming up and we want to hear from you. Write to digitalcowboys@googlemail.com

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Written By: Alex Shaw

After
playing and reviewing GoldenEye again recently for the first time in years (Check out the video
podcast here) and with Riddick about to be re-released I started wondering
about the distinction between the good and bad (and terrible) games based on
movies.

For the
longest time, they were just sideways-scrolling platform shooters or brawlers,
with tenuous links to the narrative of their movie counterparts, often
featuring hero models
who bore no resemblance to the actors. For every step forward (True Lies) there
were five drunken staggers backward (Robocop 3, Lethal Weapon, Jurassic Park on the Genesis). This was back when
a simplistic adventure could be swiftly knocked together and released around
the same time as the movie with relatively little prep time. Even considering
this fact, the trend led to some of gamings most wretched abortions as
thousands of buried E.T. tapes will attest. Later on as technology improved,
shallow 2D adventures gave way to shallow 3D ones and despite the lack of quality
increase, development times extended due to volume of programming for this new
dimension and burgeoning opportunities for FMV and realism. The choice was
either bring it out way after the theatrical release (GoldenEye) or rush it out
for with the movie for marketing reasons (Batman Begins). In pure financial terms, obviously
the latter seems most likely to elicit profit; people buy in droves because of
multimedia hype, this will dry out in the months and years it takes to craft a
substantial game so why bother? But that only makes sense if you know nothing
about games. GoldenEye sold gangbusters and was one of the best reasons to buy
an N64. It had a tight, innovative single-player mode, groundbreaking
four-player death-matches and stands as the first brilliant console FPS. The
fact that it was a movie tie-in and you were playing James Bond was just the
icing on the cake but almost seemed incidental to it’s success. It was a
fantastic game, decorated to feel like Bond"s world. Look to the thoroughly
shitty Tomorrow Never Dies and The World is Not Enough to see what happens when
you donât pay attention to that crucial first part. 

The central
problem lies at the top. Film producers list the video game along with the
MacDonaldâs promotion and the action figures in terms of a small part of the
mass-media event that a big cinema release tends to be. So time and budget are
rarely a luxury and quality is often not an issue. Look at Pixarâs releases. Nearly
every one of their films is a masterpiece, but their best game tie-in, Cars, is
only pretty good. The fact that an alarmingly high percentage of movie tie-ins
are aimed at children, frequently seen as having no taste or understanding of
quality by producers also means that most of the games are going to be bad. You
can picture some cigar chomping Hollywood savage tanned nutmeg-brown with a $300 haircut and a
phone taped to their ear, sat by his triangular pool, jerking off idly into a
pile of money, saying "What else can we do? We got the Mountain Dew promotion,
the cartoonâs coming out this summer, the Pussycat Dolls are doing a music
video and oh yeah, letâs do a video game. I know a guy.â Twisted exaggeration,
yes, but the truth nonetheless.

Itâs a
costly process to channel developers into making a movie tie-in. They fight
against an unmoving deadline, glaring dissimilarities from the source material,
unwilling actors, (Sierra found that out the hard way with their Damon-less
Bourne game) and more often than not, a narrative that does not lend itself to
an eight hour, action-packed video game adventure. Nobody sets out to make a bad game, but
itâs very easy to make a bad one anyway if you arenât given time, research or resources
and the money-men are breathing down your neck with release dates. The results
range from Jack Sparrow dying when he touches water to the epic grandeur of the
Lord of the Rings trilogy reduced to hack, hack, hack, uh-oh Gimli died!

Think of
the best movie tie-ins. GoldenEye, Riddick, The Warriors, Die Hard Trilogy. All
aimed at adults, all released significantly after the films in question. (Butcher Bay had much more to do with Pitch
Black than the horrendous Riddick follow-up). They were all made by experienced
developers with their hearts set on carving out excellent games and the
producers were wise enough to step back and trust in the strength of the source
material to fuel sales, long after the DVD had come out.  But think of the worst, and youâre probably
envisioning games released a week before the movie, terrible review scores,
jerky, unpolished gameplay and very little added to the central story. At best you
sit and watch a crude interpretation of the action from the film on a loop,
hammering the A or X button or flailing your Wii mote. Itâs not a trend likely
to end any time soon either, with these games being massive hits, because in
terms of sales, the money-men are absolutely right. Most kids donât have any
taste. God bless the ones that do, because theyâre the ones begging their
mommyâs to let them play Psychonauts or Super Mario Galaxy, but too many are swayed by advertising
and the dreamy pursuit of more Ratatouille fun (as if a crummy 3D platformer
could distil the subtle, gourmet genius of that film). If they enjoyed the
film, surely theyâll enjoy the game, and itâs that promise of potential that keeps
this cycle of derivative crap circulating forever.

But take heart, because the opposite end is even
worse. Movies based on games are so bad, that they hardly even count as films. Michael
DeLuca allegedly wanted Kurt Wimmer, writer and director of Ultraviolet and
Equilibrium, to write the movie version of Metal Gear Solid. This was after David
Hayterâs script was passed on. For producers to disregard the individual whoâs been
inside Snakeâs head and embodying his voice for a decade yet seek instead, the
man who adapted Sphere for the screen suggests to me a level of blind ignorance
of the medium of games that borders on comical. If you want someone to blame,
look at the richest bastards in Hollywood. I used to love movies, but itâs stories like this
treatment of arguably the greatest game ever made that make
me look at what EA did to Godfather II and think to myself: it could be worse.

To celebrate 100 episodes and two years of The Digital Cowboys, we’re kicking off our first of a series of video podcasts. These are all going to be on YouTube. The first is a look at GoldenEye on the N64, one of our favourite games of all time. Make sure you watch it in high quality (HQ).

Sex in Video Games.

Guest starring Daniel Floyd, creator of several animated lectures that can be currently found on YouTube. Here’s a link to the one on sex in video games that caught our attention.

Daniel very kindly agreed to come on and discuss this touchy subject with maturity and focus. In amongst the weighty issues are cultural differences across several territories, a look at the titillation games that have prevented sex from reaching the mainstream, progressive use of sex in games as a narrative tool and of course that most rotten of old chestnuts; the rape-simulator.

In addition, Daniel answers our customary eight questions and we discuss what we’ve been playing. Plus the second ever ‘Random game of the week’, which is shaping up to be a popular segment.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

(Update: The songs in bold are now confirmed as being in the game. The whole setlist has not been fully announced yet, so I’ll continue to update this post as we get more information. Paul.)

With Activision releasing a new Guitar Hero game compiling songs from their previous titles with the drums and vocals interface of World Tour added, here’s a list by game of the songs we want to see on it.

Guitar Hero
Audioslave – Cochise
Bad Religion – Infected
Black Sabbath – Iron Man
The Donnas – Take It Off
Joan Jett and The Blackhearts – I Love Rock and Roll
Sum 41 – Fat Lip

Guitar Hero II
Guns N’ Roses – Sweet Child O’ Mine
Iron Maiden – The Trooper
Lynard Skynard – Freebird
My Chemical Romance – Dead!
Spinal Tap – Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight
Toadies – Possum Kingdom

Guitar Hero Rocks The 80s
Asia – Heat of the Moment
Dio – Holy Diver
Extreme – Play with Me
Oingo Boingo – Only a Lad
Scandal – The Warrior
The Vapours – Turning Japanese

Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
Bloc Party – Helicopter
Disturbed – Stricken
Heart – Barracuda
Kiss – Rock and Roll All Nite
Muse – Knights of Cydonia
Rage Against The Machine – Bulls on Parade
Priestess – Lay Down
The Sex Pistols – Anarchy In The UK
Slayer – Raining Blood
Social Distortion – Story of My Life
The Who – The Seeker

Guitar Hero Aerosmith
Aerosmith – Dream On
Aerosmith – Livin’ On The Edge
Aerosmith – Love In An Elevator
Aerosmith – Rag Doll

Aerosmith – Sweet Emotion
Cheap Trick – Dream Police

Guitar Hero On Tour N/A
Smash Mouth – All Star
Twisted Sister – We’re Not Gonna Take It

Guitar Hero On Tour: Decades N/A
Alien Ant Farm – Smooth Criminal
Edgar Winter Group – Free Ride
Foo Fighters – The Pretender
Red Hot Chili Peppers – Can’t Stop

Fingers crossed!

Here

…Is where you will find a series of fascinating, hilarious and occasionally horrifying short presentations on the way Gamestop, the USA’s premiere game store runs it’s business. It was produced by a disgruntled Gamestop ex-employee and mentioned by Edie Sellers in Digital Cowboys: Episode 97. For some reason it starts on episode 3, so kick off there. These were removed from YouTube and the producer Whistleblowerzero had his account suspended. It’s pretty obvious why.