TRW Fighting System

Time to look at the fighting system of The Real World mod in a bit more detail.

The Basics

The basic controls haven’t changed all that much from Kung Fu 3, although there are some differences.  You have several basic move types:

Jabs and Punches - Pressing MB1 performs a standard light jab.  If you continue to press MB1, you will perform a string of different punch attacks, ending with a more powerful finisher.  Punches are fast and versatile attacks, which can be used to stun or punish enemies.

Quick Kicks - Press forwards or diagonal forwards and press MB2 to perform a quick kick.  You can perform two different kicks per direction (6 in total).  Quick kicks are great for fighting both offensively and defensively.

Jump Kicks - Run forwards or diagonal forwards, and press MB2 to perform a jumping kick.  Jump kicks are perfect for opening a combo, putting pressure on an enemy, or causing heavy damage.

Aerobatics - Moving or running backwards or sideways and pressing MB2 will cause your character to perform defensive dodges and flips.  Mastering these techniques is essential for avoiding heavy damage.

Intermediate Techniques

To be honest, these techniques aren’t that difficult to activate, but some are context sensitive.

Combo Finishers - These are flashy special moves mainly used for ending combos.  Towards the end of your combo perform a quick kick followed by a jab to set up a finisher.  Press jab again (mb1) to activate the attack.  The One’s forward finisher is a devastating machine-gun punch  followed up by his signature Superpunch.

Crouch attacks - Similar to the finishers, hold down Crouch and press jab to set up, and jab once again to activate.   Neo will perform a sweepkick and Trinity will perform her signature kick.

Takedown – jump into an enemy character at close range to perform a takedown attack.  This includes Neo’s signature lobby kick.

Wall kicks – Some characters can perform a wall kick.

Back kick – A special quick kick which attacks enemies behind you.  If it connects with an enemy or wall, you may also ‘bounce’ off them and perform a powerful forwards jump kick.

Jumping split kick – quickly jump up on the spot to perform a splits kick which knocks back enemies approaching from the side.  If the ceiling is low, you can also grab hold of it while airborne, and kick enemies in front of you.  Difficult to use effectively, but pretty awesome if you land it.

Types of attack

Like most fighting systems, the attacks in TRW can be broken down into several types, which describe where they hit and how they affect the enemy.

Stun - light hits sometimes don’t knock down the enemy, but just stun them a bit.  Use the opportunity to hit them again!

Knockdown - Your standard kick to the head will simply knock the enemy down (usually they fall backwards a bit).  Perfect for combos.

Crumple / double over - Most punches and hits to the stomach cause the enemy to double over and crumple on the spot.  This is ideal for follow up attacks.

Flyback - Heavy impacts will send the character flying backwards, often tumbling into other enemies or crashing into walls.  These are some of the most powerful hits in the game

Trip / Launch - Foot sweeps and similar attacks will knock the enemy off their feet and launch them straight up into the air.  If you’re fast, you can sometimes land additional hits while they’re still in the air, or as they try to get up off the ground.  This is also a great way to  disarm an enemy.

Wakeup game:

When an enemy is on the ground you can finish them in two ways, depending on whether they’ve managed to get onto their feet or not.

• On the ground any quick low hit will knock them out for good.
• On their knees, a kick will send them sliding backwards, and trip up other enemies.

Juggle game:

When you’ve knocked out an enemy, they will briefly enter a juggle mode, where your hits will cause them to float and juggle in the air.  You can use this opportunity to perform flashy combos to finish them.  Bonuses and explosions are awarded for high scoring combos.

Boss game:

This is unique TRW – boss characters always have their guard up, and can easily defend against simple kicks and stray punches.  The trick is to put pressure on them and break their guard with a combo.

Last.fm powered Wallpapers

So, I was getting a bit fed up with the same kind of wallpapers popping up on my work laptop, and it occurred to me that it would be cool to have wallpapers based on photos of my top artists and musicians.

A few years ago I discovered a really good freeware application for windows called John’s Background Switcher, which scours your hard drive for photos, and then generates random wallpapers for you in a variety of styles. It supports multiple desktops, resizes smaller images, can do montages, mosaics, and has tons of options for tweaking it. It’s pretty awesome.

Now, I could manually download a bunch of pictures of my favourite artists, organise them into folders, and let JBS do the rest, but that could get a little tedious. Wouldn’t it be much better if JBS could download pictures directly off Last.fm for you? Well, it can.

In fact, JBS can download images from Facebook, Flickr, Google images, and many other sources, including RSS feeds. Coincidentally, it just so happens we have a web service in our API called artist.getImages which returns the top 50 images of any artist in the form of an rss feed.

e.g. http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/2.0/artist/radiohead/images.rss

So all you have to do in Background switcher is add a new RSS photo feed, and paste the above link with the name of your artist.

Once you’ve added several of your top artists, you can then sit back and watch your desktop randomly change….

…or, you can set it up to save to a specific folder on your computer. Currently I’ve set my screensaver to use the new last.fm images folder, giving me a constantly evolving Last.fm artists slideshow.

Well, I think it’s neat.  Of course the image quality is variable – not all images uploaded to Last.fm work well as desktop wallpapers, although JBS can do a pretty decent job resizing images over a certain size.  Smaller images are probably best used as postcard or polaroid montages.  Very occasionally you’ll get a NSFW image, but hey, that’s part of the fun right?

Of course, the next step is for JBS to actually accept your Last.fm username, and then use artist images from your library and recent track history. I think it would be great if it were possible to scan your ‘Now playing’ status and actually change your wallpaper to the artist currently playing – but sadly that’s not possible.

Well, there we go – hope it works for you.

(Just please don’t kill our image servers with huge mosaic images…)

Here’s a few examples using the postcard mode.  Similar artists and themes work best.

The King is Dead

Long live The King?

So I got my beer, my gum, and the Last.fm games room to myself (complete with wall projector and sound system) – Let’s rock!

Hmm… as demos go, I kind think Doom 3 and Prey were better. It wasn’t terrible or anything, and the graphics are acceptable, I just found it a bit bland, I guess.

As you know, the first level is a kind of fun throwback to the original game’s final boss.  You don’t really get much of a taste of the combat proper — all you have to do is circle strafe the monster, blast him with the Devastator, avoid his charging attacks, and pickup the ammo drops.   It’s a good but straightforward introduction to the game – the shaders look great in the rain though.

The other level is in the desert (meh) – there’s a driving section, which is better than I was expecting (not as terrible as Alan Wake’s) and you fight a few pig enemies, which is ok, but nothing you haven’t done 100 times before. I died 3 times here (trying to get the shrink ray) and loading times are pretty long on the xbox — probably not as bad as some say (on par with ME2), but irritating mid combat.  It’s perhaps more obvious because the loading screens are static (except for bizarre messages about slapping wall boobs – wtf?) and you can die really easily. Then you go into a cave system where you have to deal with some boring mine-cart puzzle. It was quite cool to see the bug enemies from the 2001 trailer, but otherwise it’s your usual tedious filler puzzle (I wish developers would stop wasting our time with these).   The demo ends shortly after you escape the mines, and reunite with your truck.

I guess I’m biased, because from the very beginning I was never keen on Vegas being the setting for this game, and the Nevada desert scenario doesn’t really do anything for me.  What made Duke Nukem 3d special for me was the fact that it was one of the first FPS games to be set in a gritty, urban, real world setting (unlike Doom and other games at the time set in space or fantasy worlds) – cinemas, red light district, prisons, hotels, and so on.  So as demos go, I’d have much preferred to have played a level in the city, rather than the wilderness.

Crucially though, DNF seems to lack the key gameplay hooks that 3D Realms productions are known for – where Max Payne has Bullet-time; Prey has portals & wall walking; DNF has… well, Duke’s “personality” I guess (a subject worthy of comment, but I’m not up to it today).  Yes there’s the interaction, but most of those aren’t so much gameplay hooks as fun distractions — in Half Life 2, you can use the gravity gun to blast bricks, barrels, saw blades, and anything else nearby at enemies, or use that stuff to block doors.  These are clever and practical ways to interact with the environment and use it to your advantage in combat.  Whereas the interaction in DNF feels gimmicky.  As far as the demo is concerned, it feels like a fairly standard shooter (although to be fair, these days anything that isn’t a military shooter has got to have something going for it).

There are some nice touches (e.g. when you fall over, the camera moves realistically), but overall, I don’t think the demo shows the game off that well.  Again, it wasn’t terrible like some reviews suggested, but there were just no ‘wow’ moments in the demo (except for the giant boss at the start).  Compare that with the Prey demo which was 1 hour packed with loads of cool scenes, clever ideas, and plenty of combat.

Would I buy it? Probably – I grew up with Duke and 3D Realms’ games, and the trailer suggests that the game has it’s moments – sadly they’re just not present in the demo.

The Show Must Go On

Just get up off your knees and say “Fuck you, I’m on my way” The show must go on…

Well, another 6 months have passed, so I guess it’s time once again to kick-start my blog.

I’ve tidied up the layout a bit, and removed most of those ugly “under construction” pages, as frankly, most of them won’t get written.  I’ve also flattened the categories to four broad subjects – CG, Games, Music, and ‘Uncategorised’; plus added three special categories: Articles, Reviews,  and Tutorials.  I might add more as I continue, but the rest can probably be handled by tags.  We’ll see how it goes.

Anyway, it’s getting late, so I’m off to bed. z_z  

Until next time!

Mortal Kombat!

Your soul is MINE!

What was possibly more surprising than DNF coming out next year was just how impressive the new Mortal Kombat is looking.

I just love the pr drive behind this — remakes/reboots are usually a sign of running out of ideas, but so far Ed Boon and the team are saying ALL the right things.  Just watch the new MKast where they talk about gameplay:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITVY-4y2x98 – Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogvF3SeOakU – Part 2

The game looks sick, and as a lifelong fan of the series, it’s hard not to get excited.  I just hope the game is going to have the depth and fluidity as other competitive fighters (namely Tekken and StreetfighterII 4).  It certainly looks like WBGames are at least giving the team some time and flexibility to make the best possible game, so fingers crossed they can pull it off (and not get distracted with pointless mini games like kart racing and puzzle kombat) .

In the meantime, here’s some really cool videos:

With the new Tekken/Streetfighter mashups coming soon, clearly next year is going to be amazing for fighting games.  However, of all the fighting games out there, MK had, in my opinion, the most interesting characters and storylines (until the third game).  There’s masses of potential here.

Can’t wait – probably my most anticipated game right now.

Bad guys

Kratos - Man about town

It turns out I write more on forums than I do blogging, so I’m considering posting the more interesting ones here.

Today’s topic: Homicidal maniacs in video games – why do we love them so?

I think what’s interesting with the GTA games (along with stuff like Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Dusk Till Dawn, etc), is that the lead characters still have a strong moral code. Sure the player can go on a killing spree; but in the game story, none of the player characters are sadistic or psychopathic — they’ve been thrown into a situation that forces them to fight, and the people they attack are usually other criminals or corrupt cops and politicians. On a moral front, the game justifies it by saying something akin to “I may be a bastard, but I’m not a ****ing bastard“. The same is true with John Marston as well — he’s a criminal, but he’s seeking redemption, so in terms of the story it’s okay (even if you got that dastardly achievement).

It’s the same with Alan Wake and Max Payne — they’re both dicks (especially in MP2), but they’re in impossible situations, and under tremendous physical and psychological pressure. But above all, they’re not bad people — they might be flawed, but they have redeeming features. Which means you can identify with them and their cause — at least in the game fiction.

Kratos I’m not sure about — even Riddick, under all the fatalist bravado, shows some levels of remorse. But Kratos is actually psychopathic (I read an article that convincingly suggested that Lara Croft was too). I haven’t played the sequels, but in the first one he has absolutely no regard for anyone’s life, feelings, or goals, except his own. He’s not even aware of them. The game makes it really difficult to like him, except for the fact that, 99% of the time he’s fighting monsters, and in combat he’s a badass.

Perhaps Kratos can be forgiven because he’s so morally shallow, that it’s actually quite comic to watch, in an absurd way. It’s like you’re waiting to see just how far he’ll go. The same can be said about Mortal Kombat — it’s pure comic-book fantasy and so over-the-top, that it just about gets away with it. As others have said – I think humour helps.

But these games aren’t really sadistic, either — which is where I draw the line. When I was younger I liked the Postal 2 demo; but growing up, I realised it was just sick. Of course kids are going to dig it — again, it’s so absurdly divorced from reality, that you can’t quite take it seriously (e.g. using a cat as a silencer). But at the same time, there’s some real underline malice and bigotry in that game too. Well, I’m not going to preach — you have to make up your own mind on these matters; but personally, as someone looking for a career in the games industry, I wouldn’t proudly put that kind of thing forward as an example what this medium is capable of.

There’s also quite a good article on IGDA which considers GTA3 from various different morally philosophical viewpoints.

http://www.igda.org/articles/rreynolds_ethics

Levels Matter

How DLC producers could learn from the modding scene

DLC or ‘Downloadable Content’ has become the big thing in gaming as of late.  Earlier iterations, previously known as episodic content (a la Half Life 2) and expansion packs, were PC exclusive; but with the latest generation of consoles coming complete with hard drives, DLC has become not only feasible, but an almost mandatory requirement for developers.

However, thinking about the recently announced DLC packs for Red Dead Redemption, Alan Wake, and Mass Effect 2,  it struck me that DLC is really just a licence for developers to mod their own games.  As I understand it, the way the DLC system works, you can add new content to a degree, but you can’t make radical changes to the codebase.  So in essence,  developers are now in the business of games modding.  The problem is, unlike the mod scene, they’re charging good money for it.

Frankly, I don’t blame them — if it wasn’t for legal restrictions, I’d probably charge for my mods too.  Surely Katana is worth a measly 400MS points, no?  But here’s where I take issue — a lot of the content on offer seems a bit meagre.  New skins? Guns? Custom armour?  That’s great, but if it wasn’t in the original game to begin with, why should I care about it now that I’ve finished it?

Though I loved the game, from what I’ve heard on various games forums, the latest RDR packs don’t sound that enticing.  In total you’re looking at $40 for the lot, which for a bunch of multiplayer maps, skins, weapons, and a few extras, seems like asking too much.  Weapon and skin mods are the easiest (and therefore the most common) mods you’ll see for any game, so to see a developer do this, and charge a LOT for it, is a bit disappointing.

Still, if DLC is just a fancy term for a mod that you pay for, is there anything developers can learn from the mod scene?  Well, the most important thing I learned from modding, and this is the real point I want to make with this post, is that the only new content truly worth making are new levels and missions.  For instance, releasing new cars in Forza 3 is OK; but if you expect me to pay money for it then what I really want are new tracks to race on.

Adding new weapons, characters, vehicles, and gameplay can extend the life of a game, or even force players to replay the entire game (e.g. Max Payne Kung Fu3, which actually is worth $10).  However,  it’s my belief that gamers constantly want to see and do new things. And by that, I mean genuinely new content, not modifications of existing content — brand new environments, new enemies, new challenges, and new stories.

That’s why the first couple of hours of a game are usually the most exciting, when everything is still fresh — that boat ride to Bright Falls in Alan Wake; Navi flying through the woods in Zelda; the first time you step outside in Oblivion/Fallout3; the first time you take control of the Normandy; running around the castle grounds in Mario 64…  these moments have a powerful impact on gamers, and are often the most memorable.

Unfortunately, gamers are very quick and very systematic about devouring and deconstructing this kind of stuff and there’s nothing, as a developer, that you can do about it, except make more.  It’s no secret that games are getting shorter (Modern Warfare 2 is shockingly brief); but this is where DLC and modding have the potential to make a real difference – to extend the story and create new adventures.  But it’s got to be worth the effort — for both the developer and the customer.

From what I’ve seen in the mod scene, the really popular, long-lasting mods are the ones that offer a substantial amount of new content — namely new story-driven levels.  Whenever someone shows an interest in games modding, I try my best to encourage them to learn the level editors and make new levels, because none of this extra stuff — kung fu, katanas, guns, skins, etc,–  are half as important.  In the long run, I think the same is true for DLC.  It’s new levels that are going to entice gamers to reach for their wallets, not peripheral content.

The Real World – Release Details and New Videos

Naively when we started this project, it took us a long time to realise just how long it would take to finish.  Creating levels and content is one thing, delivering a fully functional game, with polished levels and balanced gameplay is something else entirely.  When enthusiasm was high, we made promises and hinted at content that, over time have become difficult to keep.  As I’m sure everyone is more than aware, the biggest problem with TRW has been trying to stay faithful to our promises, while delivering the final mod in a timely manner.

Fortunately, it’s got to a point where there’s enough content to release the mod, at least in part.  The only reason we haven’t so far is because there are various key features and levels I still want to include, which either haven’t been started yet or just aren’t up to scratch. In addition, there’s certain core content that needs to be polished and the whole game database needs tidying up in general.

As result of all of this, we’re going to do something I said we’d never do — TRW is going to follow a staged delivery system similar to DLC on consoles.  In other words, we’re going to release it in bite-sized mod ‘packs’, which can then (hopefully) be combined into a bigger mod.  In theory, this more agile and focused approach to development should drastically speed things up, allowing you to play the mod and give me feedback while it’s still being developed.  Moreover, there’s now enough levels, characters, and movesets to truly justify releasing the mod in this way — each pack has it’s own ‘character’ and enough new content to warrant the time and effort.  As playtesting is always difficult for small teams, it also means we can address bugs and issues iteratively, and integrate them into the next content pack.  When everything is done, we’ll re-release the entire mod as a final package (TRW Epic Epic Edition is the wip name ) – if that’s even necessary.

I expect that the first two packs will make up 80% of the mod that most people are looking for – they’ll have the greatest priority and the most time spent on them.  The second two packs are finishing off loose ends for people who want the extra content.  I realise that some people will be disappointed that X feature, level, or character isn’t included in the first pack, but this way allows me to focus specific levels and content, and not get distracted.  Above all, it means you get to play the mod as soon as possible.  At present, I have no specific date in mind (please don’t bother asking), but it would be good to have them both out before Christmas (the first pack at the very least).

So the tentative release plan is as follows:

‘Neophyte’ Pack

(initial core release)

• Neo moveset (Kung fu and dodges)
• New guns
• Swat and police enemies
• Standard Agents

Included Levels:

• Intro
• Training (TBC)
• The Dojo (Battle with Morpheus)
• The Lobby
• Rooftop assault
• Subway battle
• Street chase

TRW Profile Launcher — allows you to customise your skin, moves, and abilities.

‘Anomaly’ Pack

(Mx Reloaded release)

• ‘The One’ advanced moveset
• Bojutsu moveset
• Upgraded Agents
• Merovingian’s Henchmen

Included Levels:

• The Alley (Fight with Agents)
• The Teahouse (Fight with Seraph)
• The Burly Brawl
• The Chateau

TRW Profile update – adds more skins, moves, and abilities.  Lets you play the entire mod with new movesets (e.g. Neo’s advanced moves).

‘Trinity’ Pack

Trinity and Morpheus release — exact details and levels to be confirmed later on, but it should be fairly obvious what to expect — new levels, weapons, and  moves, related to these characters are in the pipeline.  This pack will include the opening rooftops chase from the first film, and the Freeway battle from the second film.

TRW Profile update – more skins, moves, and abilities.  Lets you play the entire mod with new movesets and weapons (e.g. Trinity and Morpheus’ moves).

‘Omega’ Pack

Final release — new content will be… inevitable? =)

Final TRW Profile update – all skins, moves, and abilities.  Lets you play the entire mod with all characters and moves.

New videos

Last but not least, in case you haven’t been following TRW on Twitter, Facebook, or Youtube (please do for the latest updates), I’ve released a few new videos:

You can expect more updates, specifically on the Neophyte pack, in the next few months.

Keep it real. B)

Save 6Music – an open letter to the BBC

When faced with outrage and injustice, most Brits generally respond in one of the following ways:

1. Mind their own business and hope the problem resolves itself.
2. Find a queue to join and complain about the weather until they forget what originally annoyed them.
3. Write a stern letter of complaint.

I chose the latter.

…and got a pre-written response back about how it’s still just a rumour, nothing’s confirmed yet.  But still, it’s the principal that matters here.  I believe that British music is one of the few cultural threads we’ve got left these days, and something worth fighting for.  Moreover, I can’t help but feel that if we let this issue slide, pretty much anything is forfeit in the coming years.  The Rage Against The X-Factor thing was a bit of fun, but arguably this is much more important.

For further details and to show your support please join the facebook group  Save BBC 6Music and write your own letter of complaint.

—

Dear sir/madam,

I’m writing to complain about the recent announcement to close 6Music, the Asian network, as well as other related cutbacks and layoffs.  Personally I think 6Music is by far one the best radio stations being broadcast in the UK, let alone on the BBC network, and I am confident that it would gain much larger audience figures were it available on FM radio and not just DAB/internet.  Not only would it be a mistake to pull this station from the airwaves, but it would be an outright betrayal to your customers.

To be perfectly frank, I can’t believe you’d even consider this when you’ve managed to recruit so many high profile musicians to DJ the station.  In particular, Guy Garvey’s Finest Hour and Jarvis Cocker’s Sunday Service are exceptional programmes, representing the best of BBC programming, with wide ranging, eclectic playlists.  Likewise, Chris Hawkins’ concerts and sessions programmes are fantastic — fully utilising the (largely wasted) BBC archive.  From what I understand, it’s precisely these kind of programmes that have helped 6Music build not just a dedicated audience here, but a strong, critical reputation overseas as well.

In addition, I’m also very concerned about possible cuts to the BBC internet/web services.  Although not directly related to daily programming, I’ve found the BBC Languages site to be a wonderful resource, and invaluable in helping me learn French. To pull the plug on these and similar services would be a thoughtless and wholly unnecessary mistake.  Likewise, the In Our Time and Woman’s Hour archives are an amazing resource of information, and I would be incredibly disheartened to see them go.

Guy Garvey's Finest Hour - arguably the best music programme on the radio right now.

What’s most troubling, however, is the fact that it’s plainly obvious that these proposed closures and associated layoffs are merely a gesture of good faith towards the Conservative party, in the run up to the election.  More than anything else, I find this incredibly insulting and a betraying.  I have to ask you if this is a stark warning for things to come?  I realise that the economic situation is particularly trying right now — for all of us.  Nevertheless, if the BBC are willing to buckle under the slightest political pressure without defending or even asking for the views of their customers, then I honestly have to ask myself whether they have the licensee’s best interests at heart anymore.

I’m sure there would have been a bigger outcry had you shut down Radio4 or BBC4; but all the same, this action clearly demonstrates that the executives of the BBC have lost interest in everything it used to stand for — a dedication to high quality programming, British culture, impartiality, and representing both majority AND minority interests.  To be blunt, it’s been heading down this path for several years now; however I used to be content paying my tv licence knowing that, even though most of it was being wasted on celebrity presenters, at least some of it was going towards truly worthwhile channels and stations like BBC4, Radio4 and 6music.  However, in light of recent events, I seriously wonder if the BBC wouldn’t be better off funded through advertising and sponsorship, because apparently the license fee is going to be wasted entirely on cheap, disposable, mainstream programming from now on.

I would strongly urge you not to make this tragic mistake.  If the audience figures really are as low as you claim, then perhaps some kind of on demand service can be arranged?  For example, instead of hosting an entire radio station, make the most popular programs available as podcast/iplayer exclusives?

I realise some of this may have been written in anger, but I am, like many listeners, extremely passionate about preserving high quality stations like 6music, and I trust that you will take my views, criticisms, and suggestions seriously.

Yours faithfully,

Jon Hallier

Further reading:

Killing BBC 6 Music would be a slap in the face to licence-payers

BBC to close radio stations, shut half its website and cut staff

Don’t ditch 6 Music

http://www.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/licencefee/

Dante’s Inferno (Demo Review)

A cold day in Hell, Fife

So I’m starting off a new segment here.  As I’m too poor to afford new games, I’ve decided to start reviewing demos instead.  I’m not going to use some arbitrary percentage, star, or ‘points out of 10′ system; nor am I going to be systematic about every aspect of the game (graphics, sound, gameplay, blah, blah, blah).   Instead I’m going to simply discuss what I like and dislike about the games, and how effective I think the demo is at selling the game.

I was going to do Bayonetta, but that game is so out there, I wouldn’t know where to begin.  So first up is Dante’s Inferno, the demo of which was released over Christmas for the Xbox, and about a month ago for the PS3.  Anyway, I played the demo last night, and I’m not sure if I should commend or slap EA for this one.

I mean, it’s such a blatant God of War clone that it’s not even funny — not only is the controller layout near identical, but most of  Dante’s moves and combos are exactly the same as Kratos’ (e.g. holding Y launches enemies in the air, before Dante springs up, allowing you to attack or throw them 2-3 times).  Health and magic items are located and activated in exactly the same way (you have to mash a button), as are doors; and bigger enemies are even taken down with the same button sequence minigame (uh, sorry… Quicktime Event™ ).  Combined with similar level design, camera movements, and the same blasé approach to nudity (of course women in the 14th century had no regard for modesty or practical clothing, just as the ancient Greeks did …or didn’t), and you’d be fooled for thinking that EA had licensed the engine and half of David Jaffe’s design team.  In retrospect, it would have been quicker to write about the differences.

On the other hand, God of War was awesome; and as this is virtually a carbon copy, I can’t really complain about a game that, for all intents and purposes, has solid gameplay.  Furthermore, when you consider that God of War is a Playstation only franchise, Xbox owners have even less reason to complain.  The key selling point, however, is the scenario, which is cool  — or at least, I imagine it is — the demo doesn’t quite get you into Hell, just the front door.

Abandon all hope…

And this is perhaps my main gripe with the demo — it looks and plays like God of War, but the opening levels noticeably lack the same ‘wow’ factor.  To be fair, God of War started off slowly too, battling various minions on a ship wasn’t exactly edge of your seat stuff… until the Hydra appear.  From that point onwards, God of War becomes the epic, hugely original, action packed title everyone says it is.  Now, I’ve only read Wikipedia’s outline of the Divine Comedy (showing my age here), but I had pretty high expectations with regard to what the team’s rendition of Dante’s Inferno might be like.  Unfortunately none of that stuff is actually featured in the demo.  In fact, it’s not very clear if the demo is actually set in Hell or not.  Half way through level 1, Dante gets stabbed in the back, encounters Death, kills him, and then proceeds on his merry way.

Maybe I’m showing my ignorance of the topic, but honestly, I don’t remember that part in the poem, but then again I haven’t studied the original.  My take was that Dante was a poet and scholar, who travels to Hell alongside Virgil to seek redemption for his sins.  Whereas in the game he seems to be some kind of badass crusader with a cross carved out of his own flesh — sort of like a cross between Kratos and Bibleman (I’m not kidding: one of Dante’s powers is to blast magic crosses at his enemies, and you can even choose to either ‘absolve’ enemies of their sins… or rip them in two).   Most gamers probably wont give it a second thought, but it seems like we’re already deviating from the source material; and, given the Church of England’s (probably justified) reaction to  Resistance: Fall of Man,  I can’t wait to see what they make of this.  Personally I’m not overtly religious, so I’m not offended by their treatment of the material; but the way the game has been presented and marketed leads me to question the publisher’s sincerity towards the poem and what it represents.

Above: Two, somewhat contrasting, illustrations of Dante Alighieri.

The verdict

Overall, would I buy it?  Despite all my criticisms I probably would, if it gets favourable reviews.  The actual gameplay itself seems pretty solid, and the scenario has huge potential (let’s face it, the best level in God of War was Hades).

The real problem for me is an overall lack of originality — and this is the key difference between this game and God of War.  While both games took inspiration from other sources; God of War based itself on broader myths and stories that everyone is familiar with, but adapted them into it’s own game universe.   Whereas Dante’s Inferno seems to be a case of: take the gameplay mechanics of God of War, and the scenario from the Divine Comedy, mix it up, bring it to the boil, and you have an instant hit.  Maybe that’s an overly harsh thing to say, as it does look like a good game; and, for better or worse, it does seem like they’ve drastically deviated from the poem in places.  However, I just wonder if the full game will bring any real surprises for seasoned God of War players.

I’m not purposely trying to bash EA here, but they seem to be stuck in Limbo.  In the last year or two they’ve been repenting for their past sins, and releasing some really exciting and original IP (Mirror’s Edge was particularly impressive, and Brutal Legend seemed like a brave release for them, even if it got mixed reviews).  But this one, despite looking impressive, for the most part seems like a safe bet for them. Given that Bayonetta is blowing the genre out of the water, in terms of innovation, creativity, originality, and pure j-pop weirdness; can EA really afford to be publishing such a blatant ‘me-too’ title?  The game comes out in February, so you can judge for yourselves.

Small Update (10th Feb 2010)

NPR.org have posted quite a good story about the game and the response it’s getting from scholars.  See the further reading below for the article and podcast.  For a more detailed overview of the Dante’s poem, I strongly recommend the In Our Time episodes listed below.

Also, I finally got Bayonetta (which treads similar ground, but is arguably more original, and more controversial, seeing as the enemies you fight are angels from Paradiso, not the Inferno) so maybe I’ll write about that at some point in the near future.

Further Reading / Listening

Dante Alighieri

Divine Comedy

Inferno (Dante)

In our time  – Dante’s Inferno – to Hell and back

In our time – Hell - its representation through the ages

NPR.org - Dante’s ‘Inferno’ Makes A Hell Of A Video Game