Whilst at the MCM Expo in London under the Gamehounds banner, I spoke to Leo Tan; UK PR Manager for Capcom about Monster Hunter on the PSP. With me were my Digital Cowboys co-host Tony Atkins and from Superhappyfuntimeshow – Chris O Regan.

GH: Leo. We’re very much Monster Hunter outsiders. We”ve heard about it on various podcasts and we’ve read about it, but we’re trying to get to the heart of what the game’s about. What do you think is the appeal is for the core fanbase?

CAPCOM: That’s a tough one. It’s such a huge game. There’s so much to do in it. It’s got an MMO style meta-game that spans for hundreds and hundreds of hours, only there’s no subscription. To get the most out of it you need to meet up with other people and play. If you have just one other person to play with it becomes this incredible, life-changing experience. If I had to summerise it, I’d say “Hit big monsters with big weapons.”

SHFTS: I’ll confess, I’ve been playing this since it first came out on the PS2 and I really like it on the PSP. The problem is getting people together.

CAPCOM: Funny you should say that. (He hands us a flyer) We’re opening a dedicated space in central London from the first of July to the first of September. It’s three stories, two minutes walk from Tottenham Court tube station, where you will be able to just come in, meet other Monster Hunter players and just play.

Check it out here

SHFTS: Agreed that multiplayer is very important but it’s also a solid single player game. Bit of a dungeon crawling loot-gatherer.

CAPCOM: I would kind of describe it like Phantasy Star Online. It’s a few maps and they change subtly along with the monsters and it’s a case of finding monsters and killing them, then getting better weapons to kill bigger ones. Good for Diablo players who like loot tables. But unlike PSO the combat isn’t just pressing X, X, X. I like Phantasy Star and the loot table stuff is brilliant but Monster Hunter is so technical, and this is maybe one of it’s problems, that there’s a lot of learning to do at the beginning. But it doesn’t get repetitive because there’s always new weapons and new skills to learn, armour to build and an insane amount of customisation. So even if you and I both played Long sword class we might develop our characters quite differently, specialising in healing or evading. The dynamic is always changing. It’s complex but worth the effort.

SHFTS: Is it online or local play?

CAPCOM: It’s local play. There are ways you can play online but we don’t support them.

GH: Moving swiftly on. It’s massive in Japan though, isn’t it?

CAPCOM: Three million units shipped over there last year. More than Wii Fit. It’s the biggest game out there and it’s on an older platform (PS2).

GH: If this was TGS, we’d have a massive line to get through to reach this game, what problems have you guys come up against trying to bring this to Europe and America?

CAPCOM: I think there’s a chicken and egg situation where you want to get players in, but for that you need players. Also there’s a general environmental difference; the weather’s not as good here (England. Tell me about it.) it’s not as safe on the streets, not as easy to meet up. It’s tough to get over the fact that it’s on PSP here. Not enough people use their handhelds in the UK. There are almost as many PSP’s out there as Xbox 360’s (3.2 million to 3.4) Too many units are just sitting at home in a drawer. People have this attitude like because it’s a portable console you must be travelling when you play it. I’ve spoken to people who say “Yeah I’ve got it and I like it, but I don’t travel very much.” And I think, nor do I, but I still play my PSP at home and at work. If you’ve got an amazing set up at home, brilliant, but a good game is a good game.

—–

Many thanks to Leo for the interview. We should have a discussion about fighting sticks sometime, because he loves him some Street Fighter. And NOW I want a PSP! If only Sony would release an updated model… hmm.

Pre-E3 Round Table

At the MCM Expo in London this week we were lucky enough to get into a lengthy discussion about E3 and what we’re expecting from it with Chris O Regan (AKA Kropotkin) of Superhappyfuntimeshow, David Turner (AKA Elmo) and Michael Fox of Joypod. We go over lots of the core interest points including what the big three can do to impress us, and what we’d most like to see.

Back in the main show, we take a look at two music games of wildly varying quality. Guitar Hero: Metallica and Rock Revolution. We also have Random Game of the week and your letters, including an explosive retort from Sean O Brien about our treatment of the PS3 and conclusive proof that games CAN be art.

To round off this bumper show we interview (along with Krop) Mike Oldman; community manager for Eidos who was at the MCM, showing off a demo of Batman: Arkham Asylum, which was, as we said, the best thing at the MCM.

Joypod is a games-focused radio show that you can (and should ) tune into every week on Play Talk Radio http://playradiouk.com/ They record live with different topics every week and take calls from their extended community and listeners. You can catch their shows in podcast form on iTunes as well. Check out their site here http://thisisjoypod.com/

Chris is a good friend of the show already and is lucky enough to be winging his way to E3 as you hear this (If you’re listening over the weekend). His show, which he records with Hendrix and Bloodshot Robot is broadcast on All Games Radio http://www.allgames.com/radio/shfts/ can be found here: http://www.shfts.com/ for your weekly dose of often hilarious, oddball comedy from three guys who know rather a lot about video games.

Thanks for the show guys, it was great meeting you at last. It’s also worth noting that we recorded the MCM round table part of the show before we interviewed Mike from Eidos and Leo from Capcom. We would have been a bit more enthusiastic if you’d caught us afterwards.

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The following interview was conducted at Londonâs MCM Expo Saturday May 23, 2009. It relates to this article, covering the hands-on demo.

http://www.platformnation.com/2009/05/23/batman-arkham-asylum-demo-hands-on/

On hand were myself and Tony Atkins reporting for
Gamehounds and Chris O Regan of All Games Radioâs
Superhappyfuntimeshow. We spoke to Mike Oldman, Community Manager for Eidos Game Studios, about the Batman: Arkham Asylum demo.

GH: This is basically the most interesting thing weâve seen all day. Why has Batman: Arkham Asylum been held back for release?

Eidos: We didnât have a
solid announcement regarding release date. Itâs just a case of making
sure itâs the best game possible. Thereâs nothing wrong with the game,
and itâs nothing to do with Square [Enix, who recently acquired Eidos]. Weâre looking at a late summer release, but the movement on this has been minimal.

SHFTS: Itâs a good time to release, I think Bioshock was out around that time two years ago.

Eidos: Yeah you get that summer lull where games donât generally come out. I think weâre in the middle of one right now.

SHFTS: Can you tell us what weâve been playing here? It seems like a good, but quite short demo.

Eidos: This doesnât
show everything in the game by any means. Itâs literally just a combat
arena. Itâs one of the separate modes that run alongside the story.
Itâs like a survival mode. Youâve got wave after wave of enemies you
have to beat and get a high score and there will be leader-boards as
well. They wonât just cover combat, thereâs a range of modes like
invisible predator and itâs basically a series of set challenges. All
the skills you learn in the single-player game are transferable into
this. The combat changes quite a lot once youâve gone through the game.

GH: So itâs a progressive combat system and youâll be learning new skills.

Eidos: Thatâs correct.
I think thereâs about twenty takedowns for Batman in the game so what
youâre seeing here is just a bit of it. We also just announced the
playing as the Joker content for PS3 only. There will be challenge
rooms just for the Joker.

GH: Iâm assuming we canât ask if there will be any 360 exclusive content, maybe Killer Croc?

Eidos: (Smiles) No announcement at this point is the official word.

GH: Thereâs a twinkle in your eye.

Eidos: Wait and see.

SHFTS: One
of the things Iâve found when I was playing the demo is that there
seems to be a lot of automation in the moves. Like you only have to
press a few buttons and he launches into a combo. How does that work?
Is it like Assassinâs Creed?

Eidos: It really
depends on who you watch playing. The skill of the player really does
change the combat quite a bit. Iâve watched people playing today and
you get some people only punching repeatedly and it always looks the
same. But really itâs designed to be a sort of Tony Hawk style combo
system. Once youâre getting seventeen-hit combos on the go it really
changes the gameplay completely.

GH: So itâs not so much about the danger of actually dying as it is juggling combos.

Eidos: You have to
think forwards as to which guy Batman goes for next so that he can go
through a combo. Youâre seeing basic thugs here, but later on you get
guys with weapons which you have to deal with differently. You canât
punch a knife guy in the face, you have to stun him first. Guns become
a big issue too.

GH: So you have to be tactical about who you take out first.

Eidos: Absolutely. One
of the things weâve been saying since day one is that Batman is not a
superhero, heâs a guy in a suit with some nice gadgets. Heâs a badass,
yeah, but if youâre going to fire a bullet at him itâs going to do some
damage. So the second someone gets a gun you need to take them down
immediately.

GH: I was watching earlier and you actually go into a skeleton mode while fightingâ

Eidos: Yes. Thatâs the
invisible predator mode. Itâs in every element of the game but itâs not
specifically for combat. Itâs used for the investigative and detective
elements. The majority of the game as it plays out, you do not want to
get spotted by enemies and you want to scare them. Thereâs a dynamic
fear system throughout the game where if something happens to one of
them in a shady area, they wonât go back to it. Predator mode allows
you to see through walls, asses the enemiesâ reactions, heart rates,
see how theyâre doing. You can mess with them.

GH: How easy is it to hide from enemies? Iâm thinking of Tenchu and Metal Gear Solid here.

Eidos. Basically if
they can see you theyâll come after you. They wonât forget you either.
Environment plays a large part in things and itâs not too hard to get
away with your grappling hook. His gadgets play a pretty big hand in
that. Especially the batarang, which doesnât get a look in on the demo.

GH: Purely as a gamer, promotion aside, whatâs your favourite part of this game?

Eidos: My favourite part of the game, I canât talk about.

GH and SHFTS: (Cries of disappointment)

Eidos: Thatâs sickening
to say, I know but it is to be kept quiet. Aside from that is combat.
The combat is quite excellent. You can interrupt anything at any point.
The animationâs not locked, you can throw or counter at any point. Once
you get a feel for that it really changes the way you play. And itâs
brutal.

SHFTS: Itâs dark, but itâs Batman.

Eidos: Yeah, but it
surprised even me. You see a few sequences and hear the odd bit of
dialogue and you think, heâs messed up. And Arkhamâs not a nice place
to be.

GH: Weâre looking forward to it. A good superhero game, you donât get that very often do you?

SHFTS: Superman 64?

GH: Mike, itâs been fantastic, thank you very much.

Eidos: Itâs been a pleasure.

Written By: Alex Shaw

I was lucky enough to get to play a demo for this much anticipated
game this weekend at the London MCM Expo. I was there under the
Gamehounds banner and got a great little interview with Eidos community
manager; Mike Oldman, which I’ll be transcribing for P.N. in the next
few days.

The demo was a series of survival matches against rooms full of thugs.
There was none of the swinging around and promised predatory gameplay,
but considering how many people were jostling to have a go, that was
actually a good thing. This was purely a quick session so we could see
the graphics, textures and movement up close and get to grips with some
of Batman’s basic moves. Fighting is so fluid and responsive in this
game, it feels a little like Assassin’s Creed in terms of making you
look cool with minimal button-mashing. I’m assured that while this will
ease you in on early sections, the later denizens of Arkham will
require more tactics, so it won’t be a case of being held by the hand.

Batman’s cape swishes about him with the eye-catching grace of Nariko’s hair in
Heavenly Sword. In fact, it’s the best cape I can recall in a game. The
Dark Knight moves somewhat similar to the recent Christopher Nolan
movie incarnation, with short, sharp, economical blows, rather than the
sweeping movements of the Animated series. Fans of the Hush storyline
will appreciate how technical he is as a fighter and it feels like he’s
making split-second combat decisions rather than just mashing punches
together. Textures glisten with that Unreal sheen and the character
models, body structure and sound effects pack the same meaty punch as
Gears of War and similar gritty, physical games from that engine’s
family.

I, personally have been looking forward to this for a long time. Aside
from the SNES version that made an excellent platform beat-em-up of the
Animated series license, this is a classic comic-book and movie
character who has never had a decent, contemporary incarnation in a
video game. Now it looks like this may be that long-overdue menacing, adult
representation he deserves. Playing the demo only made me thirst for
more.

Questions for Cooper Hawkes.

We’re very proud to have on this week – David LaMont of Gamehounds; AKA Cooper Hawkes.

We pick his brain on various topics, including Gamestop, Wii Music, The rumored Microsoft motion controller and Battlestar Galactica. We also ask him our customary eight questions.

It’s a really relaxed show this week. Much heavier into chat than news. It gets even filthier than usual so the faint-hearted have been warned. It’s also been one of our favourite episodes. We go way off-topic, but when the conversation is this sparky, it makes for a nice diversion.

On a side note; BSG and Firefly fans should check out Quantum Mechanix. I recently bought a pair of Apollo Dog Tags from them and they adjusted their shipping costs to the UK just for me. Very helpful purveyors of high quality replicas and sci-fi parephanalia. Fancy a dinosaur T-Shirt with “Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal” on it? Then they’re your guys.

And many thanks to Blake Bohmann who helped us get some of the rare and weird gaming music for this week’s show.

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This is the question whose answer is very much in danger of disappearing up it’s own arse. I had to tackle it in a recent podcast and my co-host Tony and our guest Daniel Floyd had to be very much to-the-point. Firstly you have to define art, then discuss which games fit into that category. Cooper Hawkes of Gamehounds maintains that “To me, art is imagination brought to life, and ANY game you play is that.” My counter-argument is the deluge of entirely financially-motivated movies out there. To me at least; Saw V is not art, Epic Movie is not art and the complete works of Pauly Shore are definitely not art. Hawkes and I are going to argue that one out later but in the meantime we defined it on the show as “Anything that”s been created with the intention of provoking emotion taking precedence over financial gain.”

Now by that definition Shadow of the Colossus, Ico, Flower, Braid all qualify. Aside from being achingly beautiful at times they tell a story that evokes emotion. They don’t have to; they could just have been standard adventure fodder. Braid could easily have been just as good on a technical level without any poetic references or back-story, purely based on its mechanics. In fact I know a few people who would have preferred it that way. The reason it qualifies as art by this definition is that Jonathon Blow chose to paint a different picture with it. He chose to tell a deeper story. Littlebigplanet as I have said is absolutely a gigantic art project started by Media Molecule and added to by thousands of players the world over, continuously recreating a collage of gaming experiences, some good, some bad and a few fantastic. It uses platforming mechanics as an end product but the tools the creators use are the components of the levels themselves. It’s quite possible to tell an emotional story using the LBP engine and not one of its contributors outside of the Guilford-based developer stands to make a penny of profit for the time and effort they put in. I know nothing about high art, I’ll freely admit that, but I do know that not all modern-day artists are that selfless.

Roger Ebert has stated in the past that games will never be on a par with films artistically speaking because there is a degree of interactivity that takes away authorial control, but I see this as a gross oversimplification. It doesn’t apply to all games, but some that can be argued to have more artistic merit are going to tell a story no matter what you do. The author always has ultimate control of where you’re going. Sure I could play a game erratically, keep doing the same thing again and again, stop halfway through, skip all the cut-scenes and shut my eyes for the ending but I could also stand in the Louvre and stare at just the bottom-right hand corner of the Mona Lisa, thus taking away all control from Da Vinci in communicating what that painting represents. In either case I’d be being a dick. And Ebert, thanks to the fast-forward and eject buttons we’ve had for the past thirty years, we can do that with films now too.

The conclusion we reached on the podcast was totally unexpected. Even though we could argue the point until the cows come home, it’s based on our personal definition of what makes something art. Daniel Floyd surmised that maybe he didn’t want games to be art. They’re fun, and most art isn’t (to him anyway) and more importantly isn’t it just our own insecurities about what we’re passionately into that made us ask that question in the first place? We want games to be taken seriously so that when we say “Hey, Dad, I’ve decided what I’m going to do with my adult life; I’m going to write about Sonic the Hedgehog.” Our fathers will nod their heads appreciatively because they understand how important games are. We want them to be accepted as a valid, adult pursuit and when it comes down to it, art will never be considered to be just for kids.

Written By: Alex Shaw

Yes, we’re a gaming site, but what the hell, most of us have an
opinion about this film, even if it’s hate. I never much cared for Star
Trek. Being raised on Star Wars I always felt that Picard and company
lacked in excitement and action, being more interested in politics and
diplomacy. However, my wife made sure I watched the first seven Star
Trek movies recently to get to know the original crew. They range from
Great (Wrath of Khan) to embarrassingly crappy (Final Frontier), but
crucially I got a bead on the characters. Other shows, films and games
set me up to get into this universe. The cream of recent Sci-F; namely
Firefly/Serenity, Battlestar Galactica and Mass Effect. All painted
vivid universes with living, breathing people and an emphasis on drama, characterization and action.

So seeing the new JJ Abrams redux was actually pretty
fantastic for me. Star Trek 09 has everything I could possibly want. It
restarts the universe (No spoilers but once you’ve seen it there’s some
really clever stuff going on regarding the new storyline.) and presents
you with new actors filling the quirky roles of all the old characters,
injecting them with youthful energy. Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto as
Kirk and Spock are absolutely
magnetic, capturing the twinkle of Shatners eye, his swagger and
arrogance and Nimoy’s focused, calm and unwavering demeanor. They are
stars in the making. There’s pacey action and oddball comedy, all
conducted convincingly in a shiny new version of the old world. It
feels like a full cinematic experience as well, as opposed to the
featurelength TV shows that the later movies often felt like. The
camera soars past a gigantic Enterprise that’s never felt more tangible
and real. It’s also got a lot of heart, with several moments being
actually pretty moving.

Abrams has a talent, displayed in Lost, M:I-3 and Cloverfield of
blending the realistic with the exciting and breathing new life into
tired old genre’s (Twilight Zone-style mysteries, spy thrillers and
monster movies). He’s the perfect director to bring this to 2009′s
addiences, both old hands and new blood will find something to love.
It’s definitely arguable that this film is not as faithful to the old
shows as it could have been, it’s heavily action based and reeks of
setup with it’s view to many sequels, but none of this mattered to me
as everyone involved handled the main game so well. A genuine
experience. Best film of the year so far.

Rating: 10/10

Can Games be Art?

We welcome back Daniel Floyd to the show (last seen in #101 when we talked about sex in games). He was the first man we thought of when it came time to wrangle the slippery eel of rooting out why video games have yet to be considered as art and what might help them to be accepted. The toughest part was making sure we didn’t disappear up our own arses, but our conclusions were actually pretty surprising.

We also discuss Star Trek, the whole trilogy of Fallout 3 DLC, the recent Gamehounds playdate, Wanted: Weapons of Fate, Wii Sports Party, plus the latest news, your emails and our random game of the week.

The music at the end credits was composed by Daniel himself as a reworking of a classic piece of game scoring.

A special thanks to my sister Lucy Shaw (BA Hons – History of Art) for some extra research and consulting for this show.

The fourth Digital Cowboys Game Night is this Sunday 17/05/09 at 8pm BST/3pm EST. Remember to send your gaming pet hates for next week’s show to digitalcowboys@googlemail.com and Tony would like some more folks for our FIFA 09 league so send Ghost World a messsage on Xbox Live.

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I was recently asked this by listener, Sean O’ Brien, after Wanted: Weapons of
Fate weighed in at four hours, which at $60 retail is $15 an hour (I can find
you girls cheaper than that). In contrast I picked up Mass Effect for considerably
less and get lost for fifty or so hours. It doesn’t seem fair to judge two
different games on quantity of playable hours, it”s quality that counts in the
end, right? So another win for Mass Effect there too. Itâs an issue that
expands into many more, concerning value, gaming style and the longevity of
multiplayer, but letâs focus on the core question.

You have to factor in many things when weighing up the perfect length. Firstly genre; a
fifty hour single-player action game would never get finished, an eight hour
RPG would leave people feeling cheated. Secondly, variety; if youâre doing the
same thing over and over for twelve hours, you will definitely get tired of it
by the final quarter. No amount of jazzy cut-scenes could prevent a repetitive
stop-and-pop from leaving you with a dull feeling in your gut whenever you
think about playing the game again. Thirdly, context; if youâre trying to beat
the game over a weekend, youâll stay on top of the difficulty curve but you
might get exhausted with it by the end. Space it out over six months and youâll
keep having to re-learn the controls and mechanics and wandering around not
knowing where you should be (Final Fantasy XII, Iâm looking at you). Itâs easy
to just say that it depends on the game, but Drakeâs Fortune would have been
more digestible minus the last hour or so of frantic blasting.

A great deal of the problem lies in the development process. When designing a game and
estimating time of play, it is incredibly difficult to balance out players who
will try to finish quickly or slowly. There are months of meetings, scripting
and storyboarding sessions, months more of engine building, texture mapping,
voice recording and motion capture. Hard effort goes into every iota of design
in the production and the deadlines always loom on the horizon. By the time it
gets to the play-testing stage, any reports that the final sections are tedious
or frustrating come after months of expensive production. What are the
developers meant to do, simply scissor them out in a rush to the finale?

Wanted is a short, stylish game that is nonetheless frustrating and formulaic. It manages
to outstay its welcome by precisely one level; the last one, which after eight
previous missions of Gears/Uncharted/Dark Sector/50 Cent-style blasting action
that weâve all done before, presents you with alley after alley of stupid,
bullet-absorbing thugs. It might be a good rental but only if youâre not tired
of treading that well-worn path. As a retail game itâs hard to recommend. The
sting of it is that four more levels would have taken it into the realms of
galling tedium. By the middle of the game youâve learned all the mechanics and
youâre just rinse/repeating so Swedish developers, Grin, were already in a no-win
situation. Ultimately itâs a licensed game and while the investment means it
may sell more than a new IP, it also constrains. Wanted may have been better as
a downloadable game along the lines of Watchmen, along with the lower price
point.

The simplest answer to the perfect length of a game is; if you are beginning to get cheesed
off with the game and just want it to be over, itâs too long. If you finish and
feel like the developers could have given you more, itâs too short. The sweet
spot is an exhilarating final section/race/puzzle and satisfying end sequence

bringing you back to the title screen and hovering over “New Gameâ even thoughitâs 1am.
You can get by on four hours sleep, right?

Spring Cleaning.

After many busy weeks and with many more ahead of us we took a breather this episode, kicked back and addressed some outstanding issues.

Firstly there’s news about 3D Realms finally closing its doors. We get a mention on Giant Bomb and then restore a twenty minute section from last weeks show, discussing the run-up to E3 and future console generations with Commander Tim.

The main body of the show is answering our listeners mail, most of which pose really interesting questions. We round off with random game of the week and a review of Dawn of War II by James “Mijmeister” Perkins.

This weeks fantastic image was put together by Commander Tim. I believe it’s our first fan art.

If you live in the USA (or the UK and don’t mind not sleeping), be sure to catch us with Gamehounds on a COD4 Xbox Live event, Sunday May 10th 8pm-10pm EST. Our gamer tags are Ghost World and Alex D Cowboy. Make sure you include a message saying you’re a listener of the show if you want to stay on our friends list.

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