[edit]paragraphs fixed. That’s what I get for copy-pasting formatted text into WP.

Even though I don’t think I’ve remembered more than a couple of his birthdays since about 1999, Rik was kind enough to get me the Swapper for my own a month or so ago. Here are a few thoughts:

It’s a puzzle-based platformer, casting you as an un-named astronaut lost on an abandoned space station. A central feature is a tool that lets you create clones of yourself – up to four at a time – that copy your exact moments. Run to the left, jump, etc, they do that too. You can also transfer your consciousness from one body to another – the “prime” body is the only one that can move between rooms, or pick up the orbs you need to unlock further areas of the station. The death of that real you means a fail and trying the room again, whereas other clones are disposable.

Puzzles then are usually based around somehow getting the Real You into a position to get an orb somewhere in a chamber. So a simple situation might be, having two clones standing on pressure switches to open two doors that block the way. You set one up in the right place, then have to figure out how to get the second in position without having the first move away.

What makes matters complicated is, the cloning and swapping functions need a clear line of sight. As well as physical obstructions, there are different coloured lights that each block one function but not the other. So you might be able to get a clone in the right place to grab an orb, but then you have to figure out how to transfer to them.

So far I’ve found the puzzles about the right level of challenge – there have been a few rooms where I was utterly baffled for fifteen minutes thinking that it simply wasn’t physically possible. Then I had the sort of moment of clarity that makes puzzle games so rewarding. (even if also the nagging feeling that smarter folks would have done it in half the time).

The game also has bucketfuls of atmosphere – it’s gloomy and a bit creepy on the station, a mix of metal corridors, alien undergrowth and chambers that almost look church-like. There are few active threats, apart from hazards to fall into, but there’s still a sense of something ominous. Along the way you encounter crew logs that give you a bit of a clue as to what’s taken place, along with one very erratically behaving survivor. Then telepathic rocks start talking to you in your head. Which, as I type this I realise sounds dumb, but it’s pretty spooky when it happens. They represent some sort of sentience so alien and far removed from us that they basically perceive only a realm of pure thought, and are rather baffled by the concept of physical reality.

Throughout this the gadget that shoots your mind around, and the backstory of its development, is used to raise questions about the nature of consciousness. Are our minds just a by product of physical functions of our brains? Or something more than that? Also we might wonder, even if we could through technology gain the ability to manipulate and tamper with consciousness, is it a good idea to do so?

That question is highlighted in a particularly chilling way when you realise something possibly quite terrible you’re doing, not even as some key plot event, but just as a part of the standard gameplay. Remember I said those clones are disposable? You’re basically creating and then murdering people, several at a time, just to open doors. The body count by the end is horrendous. I don’t yet know if these clones have consciousnesses of their own, and I’d be scared to find out. On the one hand, they lack any sign of control of themselves, mimicking your every move. But, the device that beams your mind into them is called the “swapper”, which to me implies a two-way exchange.

So there’s a sense of faint horror in the background, or at least something rather unsettling. Which together with the moody environments and the solid puzzling make this a rather worthwhile experience. I struggle to keep up with indie games, but I’m glad I actually paid attention to Rock Paper Shotgun’s recommendations for once.

Morrowind isn’t the sort of RPG where you need to go looking for advantages. After a first ten levels or so of running from demons and flailing ineffectually with your sword, you quickly find yourself escalating in power. By level 30 or so there’s not a lot that can seriously challenge you. Still, there a number of exploits out there if you’re feeling lazy or unscrupulous.

Levitation
Start with something simple: enemies without spells or ranged weapons basically have no way to handle you while you’re airborne. If monsters are giving you grief, float away out of reach whilst giving them the finger. Sadly this feature was removed from later games.

so long, sucker!

More levitation
Morrowind has a custom spell-making system that’s very flexible, to the extent that you can come up with some tricks that the developers probably never intended. In particular, you can take spells that are meant to apply beneficial effects to the player, and fling them at an enemy instead. Spells such as the aforementioned levitate.

Now this sounds like a bad idea. However, make it a minimum strength spell and your enemy will be levitating really slowly . So you can take a moment to heal yourself, or dance around using ranged attacks, while the frustrated enemy closes on you at a glacial pace.

Alchemy abuse
You make potions with the alchemy skill. Strength of the potion depends partially on your character’s intellect stat. You can make potions that boost intellect. I think you see where this is going?

Make an intellect potion, chug it, make another while under the influence, repeat several times, until you feel your intellect is suitably boosted. Then proceed to make a bunch of potions of other useful kinds, all stupidly powerful. So you can give yourself mega-healing, or super-fast levitate, or just flog your little vials of superpower serum for buckets of cash.

Troll people into attacking you
Maybe you’ve decided to murder some NPC because you want their armour, or their squeaky voice irritates you. Or possibly you’re not a complete monster, you’re just carrying out duties for some faction that this NPC has foolishly made an enemy of.

Unfortunately if you start a fight and kill someone in public, you get a bounty on your head and guards will try to chase you down and arrest you. To avoid that sort of aggravation, you need to make the NPC attack you first so that when you kill them, it’s an act of self defense. The way you’re meant to do this is either by taunting them or using an enrage spell, but these require a decent investment in Speechcraft and Illusion Magic skills respectively.

So here’s the cheap way: make a crappy job of pickpocketing them. Just stroll up in full view and jam your hand in their pocket. You don’t even have to take anything. Just getting as far as the “view what they’ve got” screen registers as an offense. Irritated at such dickish behaviour, they will immediately attack. And you can quite freely fight back, just make sure to let them land the first hit. You still have a bounty now but, unless you pilfered a high-end magic sword or something, it’s far less than the penalty for murder, and guards can’t even be bothered to actively chase you for it.

While up staying with Jo (currently trying to do a few things before she turns a certain age) recently I had the rare opportunity to access the full suite of last-gen consoles – the “Ex-Box”, the “Pee-Ess 3” and the “Wee”. Left to my own devices for an hour or so, I decided to give Forza Motorsport 3 on the 360 a quick go.

I had little knowledge of the game, save for a dim awareness that the series was highly regarded by console racing fans, and that in some eyes it had superseded the once-mighty Gran Turismo as their title of choice (although obviously such things may depend on your particular format affiliations).

Gran Turismo: Here I am, finishing sixth on the easiest track.

Now, an hour is certainly not long enough to form a judgement, but in the time I played, I entered three different events, all of which required me to race around the same three tracks in slightly different cars. At the end of each, my victories (which came as a relief given I was using someone else’s profile and couldn’t work out how to change it) earned me what seemed like an improbable number of points and unlocked a number of vehicles. And yet, a huge number of events remained (by the game’s own calculations, my efforts added about 0.2% onto the overall progress meter).

It reminded me very much of the aforementioned Gran Turismo series, of which I am equally ill-qualified to speak, despite owning a couple of the games. Some years ago, though, as FFG’s self-appointed racing ‘expert’, I remarked that:

“1998 was most notable for the benchmark racing title, Gran Turismo. While catering for those wanting a quick 15-minute blast the real beauty of the game was the career mode, offering an almost bewildering amount of depth.”

I really should get around to re-writing those brief history articles. Although what I said was kind of true: I was bewildered by the career mode, to the extent that I never really bothered to get that far with it. Indeed, my main experience of the series was in split-screen multiplayer, with my friend and sometime-nemesis PG attempting to exploiting my mental frailties, with some success, by muttering “don’t mess this last corner up” each and every time I led on the final lap, a tactic which often left me wheelspinning in the sand amid a flurry of swear words rather than basking in the glory of victory.

Everyone fails their B License on their first go. Even your Dad did – although he’d never admit it now.

When I wrote those words I was going along with received opinion at the time in order to show I was down with the console kids. Since then it’s become a little more acceptable to criticise the series, but I’m not going to do that either – I really haven’t played enough to do so. All I can say is that the games have never grabbed me, and there’s something very dry about the career mode that doesn’t appeal. I certainly don’t like being made to race the same tracks over and over and over again just to get somewhere either – it seems like a cheap way of drawing a game out (a criticism that could also be levelled at some of my favourite arcade racers, too).

The veteran games writer Stuart Campbell has some thoughts on this that are worth reading, I reckon. I’m not sure GT really is the equivalent of value-brand beans, but I kind of get what he’s saying here.

(P.S. Although I’m not really saying either game is boring, I just realized that “Bore-za Motorsport” scans a lot better as a title).

So it looks like the latest remake off the line is Speedball 2.

I’m pretty sure they’ve tried to do this before, with Speedball 2100 on the PlayStation, which was essentially the same game with blurry textured polygons in place of sprites (at the time this represented an improvement, but it has to be said, the original’s visuals have probably aged better).

A further remake, Speedball: Arena, never saw the light of day as far as I can tell, before 2007’s Speedball 2: Tournament was released to a fairly mixed reception.

The latest version looks to be more of a ‘back to basics’ type remake, and will be a 2D affair. Jon Hare, of Sensible Software fame, is involved, and claims that this will be “the best version of Speedball that’s ever been available on PC”. Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?

They’ve done this sort of thing before with Hare’s own Sensible Soccer – do a new version with updated graphics, disown it, then do another one, then disown the 3D altogether and re-hash the original.

My own opinion is that remakes of this sort don’t do anyone any favours. It would be best to just leave these old games be, and give people access to play the original instead (via a GOG release, for example).

As for Speedball 2, I was never a huge fan myself – and although my review is one of those old ones that possibly needs a remake of its own, I’d stick by my general position that it was okay at the time but no classic, and doesn’t really stand up all that well, which is probably why I haven’t rewritten it, to be honest. (You may notice that the review of the 2007 game I linked to, not entirely co-incidentally, says something similar – but other opinions are of course available).

Here’s the trailer for Speedball 2 HD, then. I don’t think it looks that great – sharper, yes, but the HD only seems to highlight the terrible animations:

For a while now I’ve felt an urge to revisit Morrowind. It must be, oh, eight or so years since I last wandered the swamps and ashlands of Vvardenfall, exploring ruins and running errands for various guilds. In particular, I was interested to see how the game looks these days. Over the years fans have created a whole host of graphical upgrades  – features like higher resolution textures, new character models, improved lighting.

Problem is, though, the overhead in time and effort to get a modded Morrowind up and running. There are hundreds of mods out there to sift through and choose from. Then you have to be sure they’re all co-operating with each other without any compatibility issues. So the idea got put on the back burner – which was probably a good thing as the last thing I need to do with my time is revisit a massive RPG I’ve already completed several times. Unfortunately for my productivity, though, I was reminded about the Morrowind Overhaul.

This project is a collation of masses of mods, all packaged together in one neat installer. The amount of faffing around is minimal – just set it going, make a few aesthetic choices, then sit back for a few minutes whilst various archives are unpacked. It’s perfect for players like me – nostalgic but too lazy to go reading through lists of mods for ourselves.

I’ve only played for a few hours so far, wandering riverbanks bashing rats to death, but my first impressions are good. The game still shows its age in some ways – even with nicer models, character still have rather stiff poses and animation. It does however look a lot smarter than the original we were playing back in 2003. The improvements are quite comprehensive. Swamps and grasslands benefit from more plentiful and organic looking vegetation. Cities boast crisper textures for their flagstones, crabshell walls and decorations in the fine manors. New character faces are way ahead of the awfulness of the lumpen, blocky originals. Oh, and you can reduce the amount of fogging, so you can climb a hill and enjoy the view way off into the distance. So the mysterious Dunmer homeland is even more compelling a place to explore. I was a bit worried about changes being too extensive – turning wastelands too lush and fertile, say, but so far it all seems quite true to the spirit of the original game. (or at least gives you that option).

Only problem I’ve had some far are a few huge yellow warning signs in some houses where tables are meant to be. oops. Either someone forgot an asset or one mod isn’t talking to another, or a wandering wizard just cast Summon Big Exclamation Mark. But as long as it’s not too pervasive I can forgive, as there must have been a massive amount of work here just collating all the mods and writing such an idiot-proof installer.

Just to be clear, what this mod isn’t doing is altering the gameplay.  Everything that was broken or annoying, still is. So the combat is still pretty crappy and level 2 characters will still flail around uselessly as invisible dice-rolls declare their sword swing missed. And Cliff Racers are still hateful. If you do want to try and fix that side to the game, there are plenty of mods for that too, just a separate department, and not one I’m really interested in right now. I love the Morrowind experience, for all its flaws, and am just happy too see the visuals get such an extensive upgrade.

There’s always a new one coming out. The promise of something different is exciting. If you enjoyed last year’s effort, then perhaps the new one will be even better. If you didn’t, then perhaps they’ve fixed all of the terrible problems it had.

You can’t trust the demo. One match on standard difficulty is never enough, no matter how many times you play it. The promise of a full season or tournament ultimately proves too much to resist. Any niggles or queries are brushed aside – it’s probably just you that can’t get the hang of the shooting, it’s not the game’s fault; and that bug where the goalkeeper flaps every shot into his own net will probably be fixed in the full version.

You can’t trust the reviews. Because whoever gets tasked with covering a football game will never have long enough to play it. Certainly not as long as you’d want or expect your own enjoyment of the game to last. Positive (and ultimately, incorrect) remarks about last season’s travesty are glossed over or ignored, and writers are rotated in order to avoid having to contradict themselves.

You can’t trust yourself. You can’t be too harsh on the professionals. Because we often can’t decide either. What kind of person puts 25+ hours into a game without being able to tell whether that game is good, or if they even enjoyed playing it?

Emmanuel Adebayor: Also rubbish.

Me. Because I’m an idiot, who is pretty sure that PES 2011 (yes, I know it’s not the latest one, but with my track record, I consider this a sign of strength) is rubbish, but keeps playing it anyway, despite a desperate lack of fun (a low point was reached when failing to score in 10 successive games, and at 4am, that most ridiculous of self-imposed challenges – “don’t go to bed until you win” – was reluctantly abandoned).

I gave away one of my favourite football games (PES 2008, later retrieved) because I was brainwashed by the demo of a terrible one (PES 2010, sold on eBay) which later sent me scrabbling for a second hand copy of an interim title (PES 2009, disc a bit knackered, festering in cupboard) which I already knew to be rubbish.

I buy old versions of FIFA (they’re not very good). I buy new versions of FIFA (I don’t like them).

I’ve only myself to blame. But it’s also their fault, and they’re all stupid and I hate them.

(p.s. Can someone buy me PES 2014 for Christmas? Thanks.)

Hello there.

Tonight’s review is of FlatOut 2 from Bugbear. Spoiler: we quite liked it.

If you want more by way of an introduction, here’s a nice picture, in which your reviewer considers exchanging his ‘Sparrowhawk’ for a ‘Road King’:

Now if that kind of talk doesn’t get you going, I don’t know what will.

Hello.

In response to a couple of requests, I’ve added some more music from Puma World Football ’98 to the site.

To be honest, none of the tracks are that noteworthy, and are certainly without the significant comedy value of the mighty PES 2008 soundtrack, but clearly, they’re of interest to someone.

You can find them at the bottom of our ‘looking back’ feature here.

Meanwhile, work on ‘proper’ content continues, and we hope to have more here soon.

Hello everyone. Tonight we have another guest piece from the J-Man, all about the exciting world of driving lorries. Or trucks, if you prefer. So go have a read about Euro Truck Simulator.

Then when you’re done have a look around his own site, the rather fantastic Just Games Retro, which is stacked full of reviews of oldies, and kind of like what this blog would be if we updated about ten times more often.