Written By: Alex Shaw

While playing his latest game, in which this dangerous little animal goes to Iraq and massacres every person he meets, I began to despair for all human culture. It’s not that the developers of the game, Swordfish, were just uninspired in placing this rapper du-jour at the heart of a hot-button Middle-Eastern territory and then throwing seven hundred screaming Arabs at him, each with an AK-47, a bandana and a neat line in the most appallingly cliched dialogue, it isn’t even the fact that the game is broken on a fundamental level that only playing on hard mode would uncover, it’s not even that I hate this project, its subject and the way it’s been comported on a base level. No, the reason this makes me crazier than a bastard on Father’s Day is that this game is going to sell bucketloads.

Mainstream journos, when handed this game, will judge it based on the built-in audience of Fiddy fans. This means they won’t look upon it as a real game, but another installment dropped atop his merchandise mountain. Thus it will get away with its multitude of sins. Dedicated gaming press have seen it as a guilty pleasure and a fun arcade romp. I felt no guilt and not the least bit of pleasure playing this, merely a cold deadness where joy once resided and a deep, unremitting fury that this man earns more per year than some of the countries he would gladly visit to perform his bling-fueled genocide. Of course it’s 50 Cent, not Curtis James Jackson III, who’s the neanderthal-browed mass murderer in this game; a sub-human killing machine whose only goal is to get back a skull covered with diamonds. Unfortunately this is apparently the same character he plays every time he sets foot onstage or does an interview for MTV. Unless it’s not, unless it’s him and all this playing characters bullshit is a hangover from childhood games that allows these arrogant, angry halfwits to do and say anything they like as long as there’s some comforting fiction to hide behind.

It’s morally repugnant, needlessly violent, sleazy, mysogynistic and utterly trite… I respect that, but it’s also horribly written and riddled with glitches to the point where it doesn’t feel like a game any more than Paris Hilton’s Stars Are Blind single resembled real music. It’s just a cheap, vanity project for a man with the emotional development of a nine year old. Worst of all, the game’s been applauded for not being quite as bad as the execrable Bulletproof, released on the previous generation of consoles. That it’s not entirely unplayable is not a plaudit and should not enter into the debate on the quality of this game, which is lower than Fiddy’s IQ, thinner than his library and more untraceable than the sum totality of worthwhile actions this man has done with his career.

P.S. Graphics and sound were adequate.

Final Score: 2/10


 

Written by: Alex Shaw

Part 4 of the Resident Evil musings.

Here’s something that’s been driving me batshit crazy lately. The greatest detractor from the reality of any given action game is that we are obliged to see all the animations. In Resident Evil 5 if an enemy is pulling back a spear to plunge it into your chest you can blast him in the face with a shotgun shell and the game will often, but not always do something like this.

Hmmm…

That should really have killed this mob here.

Still, I’ve started so I’ll finish.

Better luck next time pal.

And lo and behold, your shotgun is ineffective, while his pointy stick wins through and robs you of a third of your energy. If you sidestep, he pivots on the spot like one of those teacups at Disney World and homes the point in on you with laser-guided precision. In other words, if you’re in range, that stick’s hitting you no matter what.

The level of response to a good 40% of your shots in RE5 is nonexistent. You can plug an axe-wielding behemoth in the kneecaps, head, wherever; the game is not registering bullets hitting bone, it’s keeping count of the mobs internal damage bar. You have to shoot him precisely ten times in the head with your shotgun to take him down. Do it nine times and that guy WILL survive long enough to splatter you with his axe. On the tenth hit, he will crumble to the ground as his bar runs out, but his head will not explode. You didn’t shoot him really, you just rolled the dice enough times to lower his HP to zero. Other mobs are slightly different. In the classic RE4 manner, you can kneecap them and keen headshots are rewarded, but in later levels, they are tougher and eventually every enemy will have this internal stamina bar and nothing but the predetermined shot count will take them down. Passing this off as an action game is a fallacy. It’s an action RPG, with all the reactions of World of Warcraft’s expressionless enemies programmed in.

Worst of all, is Chris’ unending ability to not get out of the way when he needs to be quick on his feet. Not only can’t you run and shoot,or run and reload, but you can’t cancel a reload on the fly. 2001′s Halo saw Master Chief able to melee in the middle of a reload if caught unawares or suddenly ambushed, and yes he could reload while running. The lumbering dolt Redfield, stops moving with all the grace of his dribbling rabid foes and starts his three second reload cycle. Any damage he receives while this is happening is an unavoidable penalty, because that gun is going to get reloaded, same as the pointy stick was always going to hit you. In Capcoms own Street Fighter 4, it’s possible to cancel special moves
in order to fake out your opponent. Are Capcom serious in their
assertion that standing there like a nob and fiddling with your weapon
heightens the tension rather than just frustrating? The only horror you end up feeling is of your character’s inability to perform the actions you need to survive.

Fortunately to counter this it’s possible to limp through the game on a shred of energy if you keep Sheva close because she will tap you out Dom style every time you hit critical status. Of course if she’s in trouble you both die. Do it all again, try harder next time. Now they have pointy sticks and wooden headmasks, which are impervious to magnum shells. They must be made of the same titanium wicker as the impenetrable doors.

Written By: Alex Shaw

Part 3 of the Resident Evil musings.

Think of the worst acting in a video game ever. The worst written lines and the shoddiest delivery of said dialogue. You’re probably thinking of the original Resident Evil, or if not, it’s in your top three.

There was something so iconic, so amusing and so likable about dialogue like… "Jill, here’s a lock-pick; it might come in handy if you, the master of unlocking, take it with you. / Well I’m sorry, but he’s probably… / I found this weapon. It’s really powerful, especially against living things. / and of course; Don’t COME!" It was forgivable. After all, speech in console games was relatively new, as was trying to present a cinematic experience. The game limped through on B-Movie sensibilities like a redlining hero in desperate need of an F. Aid Spray and we accepted every cheesy minute. Then Resident Evil two came out and it was the same, then three, Veronica, the remake, and Zero and very little had changed. As with everything else the quality of the delivery got a little better by the time 4 rolled around, but now with the fifth installment, thirteen years later the world of games has changed and this is still a sheepish B-Movie. Games like Heavenly Sword, The Darkness and Half Life 2 have proven that nuanced, subtle performances are more than possible in an action game, so why are we still looking at gruff beefcakes and their chirpy female sidekicks chewing through line after line of trite cliches, with little to no emotion or truth in their performance?

Cinema itself has changed. Resident Evil 4 is an evolution of the series much like 1995′s GoldenEye made James Bond smarter, harder and sharper. It’s been years since Pierce Brosnan first twinkled those eyes on our screen, and now we have the quantum-leap progression of Casino Royale as the benchmark for gritty, realistic and excellently measured spy thrillers, and the steely gaze of Daniel Craig. By contrast GoldenEye looks a bit creaky and sleazy, though still solid. Resident Evil 5 is the Tomorrow Never Dies we’ve been delivered, when we need Casino Royale. Also the game is based on action now, not horror, so the writers have years of Bruckheimer films to look to as the basis of their characterisation and themes. But the action movie has changed too. We have had Bourne, Nolan’s Batman and The Matrix and the sharper writing attached to those films to show us that dialogue doesn’t need to be a leaden series of setups for the big explosions, and central characters can be flawed, interesting and dark. Team America: World Police was designed as a parody of the very films RE emulates. Every daft line delivered with painful sincerety. The landscape of cinema that Capcom originally explored and transposed to the gaming scene has changed, along with the performance of their competitors. To progress, they must go back to the drawing board and look at what they could be delivering in terms of a cinematic experience. Just pray they don’t look to Paul W.S. Anderson’s Resident Evil films as a yardstick of excellence.

Written by: Alex Shaw

Part 2 of the Resident Evil musings.

Now the issue of control. Even in 1996 when we were still just getting to grips with 3D worlds, Resident Evil had poor controls. Released three months before Mario 64 showed the world the best, most fluid, freeing and agile new system, one that has arguably even now not been matched, the Playstation users were bestowed with a game that presented you with a weighty marionette dressed as a special forces police officer, and asked you to gamely shove them through a series of static screens, hopefully avoiding the lumbering undead on the way.

There was a rhythm to them. Your heart beat steadily along with Chris and Jill’s footfalls on the dusty floors. You kept up pressed and wove left and right with the bottom half of your thumb, occasionally stopping and rotating like a robotic toy from the 1970′s whenever you found a statue or picture worth investigating. It served to heighten the tension, and it made you feel that at least when you stopped and aimed your pea-shooter of a Beretta 92F at a Zombie, you were an immovable object and that you had made the decision to fire, thus eating up eight of your bullets. There was no nimble sidestepping or stunning of your enemies, it was a binary choice. Run or kill. If you evaded and left them alive, they would be there when you inevitably returned. If you killed them, you would have a safe, empty room to explore but less ammo to play with. This was fine against loping zombies, but when the scaly, needle-toothed Hunters entered the house and, following the offscreen crunch of their footsteps, you saw what a fast enemy could do to your meat-puppet, the fear genuinely began to set in. Were Capcom banking on this creating genuine excitement in the game, or simply ignoring the frustration over the fact that you just couldn’t smack the reptillian bastards in the face with the butt of your shotgun? Either way, I personally relished every treacherous explored corridor now furnished with its own movable deathtrap.

And so it stayed for many years; through Tomb Raider, Mario and eventually the Prince of Persia – a game founded on fancy footwork – re-emerging in a 3D world in a way that both utilised the geometry of its blocky Playstation 2 environments, and also freed up the player to indulge in feats of acrobatics that rivaled Nintendo’s plumber. The last Resident Evil Games before 4 were Zero, and a remake of the original for the GameCube in 2002, both of which were still using the antiquated control scheme from six years previous. The only addition was a much needed quick-turn pioneered in Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, and occasional dodges that could not be relied upon as a survival tool. A more action-oriented Resident Evil was developed that later became Devil May Cry. One can only imagine what that game might have been like had a Dante-powered S.T.A.R.S team member been able to take a sword and dual pistols to Umbrella’s finest.

Then in 2004 the huge redux finally came. 4 was what we’d been waiting for. The camera was behind Leon and the screens flowed rather than remaining static. It actually had a lot more in common with the underrated Code Veronica, both in terms of pacing and sheer weight of enemies thrown at you. In fact, the first-person Merceneries sub-game in Veronica fairly closely resembles the machanics of 4. Now you could aim. Now you could kick the Ganados in the face, kneecap them, and most importantly the combat knife, long relegated to sitting at the bottom of your magic trunk could come into play as a deadly and useful addition to your arsenal. It was so good that we didn’t think to ask why Leon couldn’t move and fire at the same time, sidestep or roll to evade attack. One of my favourite journalists, John Davison of 1UP and What They Play, remarked that it felt
more like moving a turret on wheels around, choosing a position to
plant it in the ground and then rolling the gun left and right to
choose your targets. Not at all the organic, flowing and action packed
realism that Capcom were aiming for.

Five years have gone by. We’ve had Gears, we’ve had Dead Space; hell, even Niko Bellic can walk and shoot at the same time, and the shooting controls for GTA have long been documented as being patchy. Chris is back, with Leon’s moveset, and a great deal of us are not happy. Why haven’t Capcom evolved the series? Why do we still feel so vulnerable? Is it for the sake of tradition or sheer laziness? The demo kicked at the proverbial hornets nest with unfounded rumours of a control rethink weeks before release.

If you look at the gaming world of Resident Evil’s 4 and 5 you don’t need to move and fire. It’s still the binary choice. Only what’s changed is that ammo is no longer finite, and we don’t have to retread these paths again. It’s more a case of moving to the next section and clearing away the hordes that reside there, rinse, repeat. So with this being the case, whether you need to or not, why can’t you move and fire?

When Resident Evil 6 inevitably emerges, in 2014, no matter how shiny the graphics are, Capcom are going to have to address this issue. A game with a five year old control scheme that refuses to acknowledge the advancements of it’s peers simply can’t be excused by the general gaming public in this day and age. The only thing carried over from the survival horror genre that it no longer bears any resemblance to are these controls. Updated circa 2004 granted, but nonetheless pitched to have you doubting your abilities to evade death, and in an age where high quality action games with decent controls are fast becoming the most popular genre, Capcom are going to have to take a good, hard look at what they want this series to be.

Written By: Alex Shaw

This is the first of a series of musings on Resident Evil 5 and how the series has changed in the past 13 years.

Inventory management. Originally Chris Redfield could carry six items and Jill Valentine, being a resourceful woman with more pockets, had room for eight. This led to ridiculous leaps in logic regarding relative mass and weight, so a shotgun, it would seem, took up the same space as a key. Other games like Fallout have attempted to deal with this conundrum by assigning weight to each item, keys and food usually equating to a tiny fraction of that of a weapon, yet still neither had it right. In Fallout the designers would have you believe that your hero could cart around ten assault rifles, a few rocket launchers, and a host of other weapons before you start to feel it and have trouble running, yet for game after game if Chris or Leon were holding a pistol, shotgun and the relevant ammo, plus a key and a crank, he would, when confronted with a vital, life-giving herb, be unable to stuff it into a spare pocket or (most ridiculously of all) simply consume it on the spot. Instead you had to hightail it to the nearest safe room, dump a few items in the trunk and then traipse back to the herb. Resident Evil Zero on the GameCube made another attempt to advance this by having Rebecca swap her items for what was lying on the floor. This solved nothing as backtracking for whatever you swapped it for was inevitable, but at least it made more real-world sense.

The magic trunks in every safe room had a strange reassuring quality. Big enough to contain every item in the game and transport them to various locations, often miles apart, they made up the core item management homebase that allowed you to feel like you were taking part in a genuine zombie movie, with limited resources and careful planning of trips around the house/police station required as a central facet of the gameplay. Bullets were wholly finite. There were 500 handgun bullets in the game and they had to be used sparingly as and when you found them. Even saving had a tinge of danger to it, as with ink-ribbons you had to find your saves, hidden in the bookshelves, drawers and assembled clutter of a spooky old mansion. Save too often and you may not have many chances left to continue.

Then came Resident Evil 4 and all that changed. No longer were there a set number of bullets in the game. Hoarding ammo was counter-productive and rather than a vast labyrinth of locked rooms, puzzles and backtracking, Leon Kennedy was faced with a relatively linear path of fast-zombie action. Sharpshooting rewarded ammo, so the more you used your guns, the more regular the flow was. The inventory also changed. Leon now carried everything with him in a briefcase, and the arms trade was brought in (later mimicked by Metal Gear Solid 4 in an expanded and, some would say, game-breaking manner) with the introduction of the mysterious and charismatic Australian. "Welcome!" he would shout. Then "What are ya buying?" and we would smile and gaze upon his wares and try to fit them in our case. Sorting, changing positions and selling items became a new mini-game and a welcome addition to the series.

This was when Resident Evil stepped up and out of the dark ages, into the next century, and both rode in on a wave of action games and also spawned the stylisations of more to come. Gears of War, Dead Space and Alone in the Dark, all profoundly influenced by this one, and in turn all of the Gears clones that are now emerging wretchedly from the shadows like post-modern slasher films in the years after Scream. Digital Cowboy Paul always expressed extreme gratitude to Capcom for these changes, and for the many others in 4. In his words it was as though the developers had asked themselves "What would Paul like to see in a Resident Evil game?" The answer was more action, less backtracking, better controls, more precise aiming and less faffing about.

Now Resident Evil 5 is here. I am three sections in and after struggling with the inventory system I can honestly say I miss the Australian. More than that; I miss the attache cases. I miss the magic trunks. I even miss the safe rooms. Because while there are safe havens, the only time you get to really mess about with what you have in your nine slots per character is on a static screen before the sectioned level starts and you are once again loaded into the zombie cannon and fired down the tunnel of shacks and market streets.

You assign weapons to each direction on the D-Pad, (mimicking Gears) and ammo and healing items go in the corners. It’s that simple, it’s that boring and honestly, in this writer’s thoroughly biased opinion, all the sparkle has gone out of the world of inventory management. Crucially the action no longer pauses when you check your supplies and you are highly likely to be attacked if you stop for a moment to look, so it’s more an issue of knowing what you have and taking fleeting jumps in and out to throw your partner some relevant ammo.

It’s a different type of game. You have to survive one onslaught after another and it is indeed horrific, but I dispute on a fundamental level that this is any longer definable as survival horror. The conundrum is, of course, how do you take it back to the days of inventory management without losing the tension and all the progression in game design that’s been made? Or is this even a step backwards, because now, in the frantic, neverending chase through the African back alleys and marshlands, I’m coming across items I can’t pick up… because my inventory is full.

Killzone 2/Watchmen/50 Cent: Blood on the Sand.

As one Cowboy leaves for a break from the show the other two gear up for a full assault. As well as news of a console going UP in price we’ve got three huge, heated and thorough reviews.

Killzone 2 the Playstation 3′s great red-eyed hope for FPS dominance or at least a shot at the title. Does it hit the mark? 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, often dubbed a guilty pleasure has it’s whistle well and truly blown and finally the film geeks have been waiting for, for two decades; Watchmen explodes onto the screen but can it impress the Cowboys?

All that and a bunch of fantastic listener mail. Send your messages to digitalcowboys@googlemail.com for future episode readings.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Compiled by: Alex Shaw

These are the ten graphic novels I most recommend if you’ve seen Watchmen and want something more. Most of them involve superheroes and the re-working of the popular themes set by Marvel and DC.  A warning; these are filled with dark, adult themes, sex, death, politics, religion. Most of them are offensive in some way. All of them are exhilarating and fascinating.

Transmetropolitan: Back on the Street (Warren Ellis) A foul-tempered journalist in a hedonistic future world documents the events of his city and follows the election of a twisted liar into presidency. Clearly based on the work of Hunter S Thompson, this book is what made me want to be a journalist.

Preacher: Gone to Texas (Garth Ennis) A young priest in Texas becomes the carrier of a power equal to God and goes to find the almighty with his ex girlfriend and an Irish vampire in tow. Bloody, pitch black, hilarious and terrifying American storytelling.

Rising Stars: Born in Fire (J. Michael Strazinski) A meteorite collides with a small American town. Every local unborn baby at that moment absorbs a share of unearthly powers. This book is about how the kids grow up to become superheroes and villains and then change the world. 

Y The Last Man: Unmanned (Brian K Vaughan) Every single male on the planet suddenly dies horribly except a young escape artist named Yorrick and his monkey. The book is all about how the women cope in the following years. Absolutely brilliant female characterisation. Sharp, funny dialogue, epic scale and a real sense that the apocalypse could be like this.

Powers: Who Killed Retro Girl? (Brian Michael Bendis) In a noirish city filled with capes, how do the police get by? Join two jaded detectives on the hunt for the killer of a beloved superhero. Bendis hung out with real cops to get his facts and lingo right so this is hard hitting stuff.

Hellboy: The Chained Coffin and Others (Mike Mignola) The best way to read Hellboy is in this collection of short tales. The red, horny one travels the world, tracking down menacing ghouls and demons and putting an end to their mischief in his customary gruff manner. Pure, dark-spirited but light-hearted, fascinating, tale-weaving.

The Authority: Under New Management (Mark Millar) What if the Justice League had no compunction with taking on real world events? A troubled superteam deal with dictators, a twisted alternate Avengers and God in the form of a titanic space slug. And the wonderful Jenny Sparks, foul-mouthed, chainsmoking spirit of the 20th century finally gets to see midnight at the turn of the milennium. Harsh and brilliant.

Planetary : All over the World and Other Stories (Warren Ellis) A trio of superpowered archeologists uncover the secret history of the 20th century. Like the Authority, it deals with ghosts, alternate worlds and time travel. A grown up Dr Who.

Wanted (Mark Millar) Pure nihilistic nastiness. Much like the film, a worthless office jerk gets pulled out of his horrible life to become a super-powered assassin. Unlike the film, this deals then with a team of super-villains who secretly took over the world in the 1980′s. Awesome stuff.

Nightly News (Jonathon Hickman) A cult target newscasters for assassination to make a point. More of an investigation as to how all of our news is apportioned out by six major real life corporations. Scarily real and chock-a-block with facts and figures about just what we’re watching and reading. Impossible to put down.

Hi, Paul here… with, erm, an announcement.

More observant listeners will have probably noticed that my presence on the show and blog has been somewhat low-profile over the last few months. This is due to a number of reasons, most of which have nothing to do with Digital Cowboys, but are clearly impacting my ability to make a useful contribution to the show.

As such, and after much discussion with Alex and Tony, I have decided to take a break from Digital Cowboys for a few months. I am delighted with the increase we have seen in the popularity of the show and blog (which is getting more and more hits every day) thanks to Alex and Tony’s phenomenal efforts, but sadly I am not really able to match them at the moment. Not having much time to play video games beyond singing a few songs every other evening is not really the best position to be in for someone who is co-hosting a video game podcast! I’m also conscious of the increased emphasis being placed on written articles on the blog and… well, to be perfectly honest, I’m not really much of a writer either.

I will be back â probably sometime after my holiday to Australia in May â and will definitely be joining my fellow Cowboys for the journey to PAX in Seattle in early September. In the meantime, I will still be contributing to the show by helping to maintain the blog (something I have been doing since the beginning), so think of this as a temporary farewell rather than a long goodbye.

Ciao for now,

Paul Shotton.

P.S. Rock Band 2 FTW!!!!!11111

Amongst NXE’s feature set, the most prominent is the ability to create your own custom Avatar. In true Digital Cowboy tradition, we have created virtual versions of ourselves.

So without further ado, here they are:

Alex



Tony


Lizz


Paul

Hello everyone.

I’m Lizz and
I’m married to Cowboy, Tony Atkins.

I would like to
share with you some of my video gaming background.  

I was given a
Master System II when I was about 10 and was only given one game, which was
Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade.  My
reactions were not very good so I donât think I ever saw the third level of
this difficult platform game, plus, my sister used to kick my butt when playing
Alex Kidd in Miracle World so the console gathered a lot of dust.  Later, I was given an Amstrad PC with lots of
copied games but they took a long time to load and had a tendency to crash.

I didnât really
come into much contact with games – other than Tetris on the Game Boy, which I
completed on the hardest setting and saw the rocket take off once – until I met
Tony.  He owned an N64 and Playstation
and bought a Dreamcast soon after we started going out.  I didnât play the N64 or Playstation as there
werenât any games that interested me.  I
only played Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast and used to successfully button bash,
which annoyed Tony as he couldnât beat someone who was so unpredictable.  It wasnât until Final Fantasy X that I got
more interested although after playing over 100 hours, I still never completed
the game. 

The Xbox was my
breakthrough.  I bought my own console
and Xbox Live account and we set up a good network in the house and I have many
memories of sitting in the converted attic playing 16 man Rainbow Six 3 with
friends that we met online and still talk to five years later. 

Tony bought a
gaming PC for the release of Half-Life 2 so we had 2 PCs to play World of
Warcraft together when it was released. 
I was hooked, like the 14,000,000 other subscribers, but my desk set up,
gave me repetitive strain injury so Iâm not able to play for very long.  I currently have one level 71 character and
about a dozen alts over a couple of servers.

I also really
enjoy playing games on the 360 like Rock Band & Guitar Hero and XBLA puzzle
games.  I still play the odd shooter,
like Gears of War 2, but my slower reactions let me down sometimes and I find
that Iâm only good for target practice. 
I did own a Nintendo DS but recently sold this due to the acquisition of
an iPod Touch which is even more mobile for quick casual games than the DS for
commuting.

Thanks for
reading.

Lizz Atkins