craven.fr (.ox.ac.uk)

One of the most impressive applications of the iPad, and the one that sold me on the tablet format the most when the device came out, was the digital comics application developed by Comixology (which also appears as single-brand apps under the Marvel, DC, etc. names). Being able to buy comics digitally was immediately interesting to me as an expatriate, and the similar form factor of the iPad made the reading experience feel largely the same—better, in fact, since the vibrant colours of the screen are richer than the newsprint of actual comic books.

I read a few comics when I got my iPad, but nothing really gripped me to an extent that I stayed with any series, and with the MBA going on last year I hardly had any spare time for such frivolities anyway.

This September, however, DC comics took the radical step of restarting all of their books—Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, you name it, 52 titles in all, in a massive initiative dubbed "The New 52". At around the same time, I began listening to a comics podcast called The Comics Conspiracy, sister podcast to another podcast (The Geekbox), that I had long listened to. The combination of their enthusiasm for comic books, and the new jumping in point provided by the new 52 initiative, has seen me return to the world of comic books, for the first time since I was a teenager.

From Marvel to DC

Back then, like the majority of comic readers, I was a Marvel fan. Listening to the podcast, I learned that it was common for people to start out preferring Marvel comic books in adolescence, only to move to DC when they become adults. This struck me as odd, but their justification made sense: Marvel books tend to feature characters dealing with real-world problems (Peter Parker, the bullied nerd, the X-Men, coming of age coping with the things that make them different from other people). Adolescents identify readily with these characters.

Adults, on the other hand, especially the ones who might still indulge in reading comic books, are more likely to feel like they have enough of the real world in their own lives. Picking up a comic book is an act of nostalgia—and an act of escapism. Escapism is where DC books come into their own—the Green Lantern, participating in interplanetary intrigues, Aquaman vying for control of the throne of Atlantis. Even the gritty Batman is a billionaire with essentially unlimited resources at his disposal. He doesn't struggle with the same problems the rest of us do. To one audience, that might make him seem more remote; to another, it is precisely what makes him interesting.

Another factor seems to be that Marvel books have been of lower quality of late then when I used to read them in the 90s—crossover and event fatigue has left many fans abandoning books, even when they prefer the characters. (This is all hearsay, but it's a view I've heard from more than one quarter.) Between that and the DC universe making a new start, I have jumped onto the New 52, and share below my impressions from the books I decided to pick up.

Titles

Justice League

This is a great book for introducing readers to the whole DC universe, and is well-drawn, funny, and well-written, too. The heroes are meeting for the first time (most of them shocked to discover that Batman is real), so there's really no background knowledge required to enjoy the book. It makes for an exciting read, gives you a lot of super-hero bang for you buck, and yet requires none of the background knowledge ensemble super hero titles usually do—you get the best of both worlds.

I'll definitely keep reading this one as it is the best way to get to know the DC universe, which I am keen on getting to know as well as I know that of the X-Men or the Avengers.

Action Comics

This is another one with no background required. Superman has just started appearing around Metropolis, and no one knows who or what he really is. He's a bit more like the Golden Age Superman, in terms of powers (if a tank shoots him in the stomach, he will get the wind knocked out of him, and go down). He's fighting city corruption, not intergalactic menaces, and the whole book has its feet on the ground a lot more than I necessarily expect from a Superman title.

I bought this title fully expecting to only read the first book, but I'm actually really enjoying it, and think I'll stay subscribed to this one too. It's much better than I thought it was going to be.

Detective Comics

I'm planning on sticking with this one, too, as I feel I should at least give it a few full story arcs before deciding on whether it's for me. Detective Comics, as its name implies, is a more involved book, and I don't think it's fair to judge it based on only a few issues. The first story arc is off to a great start, though—an intriguing new case involving the Joker. There's no reboot, here: characters like Batman, Alfred, Gordon, and the Joker are all already here, but the title does take the time to characterise each one, so that even if some are new to you, you are told who they are straight away. This is a far darker, gorier title than the first two, though, which are more family-friendly fare. The main Batman title has been getting rave reviews too, but I haven't seen it yet.

Batman and Robin

Robin now is Bruce Wayne's son, with whom he was only recently re-united, and with whom he has a somewhat strained relationship. (The original Robin is now called Nightwing, and stars in his own book.) This takes away the... questionableness of Batman and Robin's old relationship, and replaces it with one that, as a father, I can identify with right away. With so many Batman titles to chose from, one needs some kind of selection criteria to help decide which ones to read, and my interest in the father-son dynamic decided me for this one.

So this book had my interest piqued, and I thought the first issue was great. But in the second, Robin comes across as a bit too warped—and I have no comprehension of what's going on with this villain we keep seeing. So, I'm putting this book on probation, but I hope it lives up to its potential.

Aquaman

I heard a lot of great things about this after the launch, so I decided to give it a read. I am by no means an Aquaman fan, but part of the point of the book is that Aquaman is nobody's favourite super-hero. When he surprises a group of machine-gun toting bank robbers, once they realise it's Aquaman they burst out laughing: what's the guy who's power is talking to fish going to do to them? (Answer: kick their asses.)

So this book is setting out to make Aquaman cool again, and that is interesting enough of a challenge for me to want to read it. I don't expect that I'll still be reading Aquaman two years from now, but for now, it's an interesting book with excellent artwork.

Justice League: Dark

One of the interesting thing about the new 52 is that, despite what I've described so far here, there are lots of titles that have nothing to do with superheros. Titles like All Star Western, Men of War, Swamp Thing, I, Vampire, and many others show that comic books are a great medium for science fiction, horror, suspense, war stories, and westerns as well. I think that this is pretty cool, and like to think that my tastes are more varied than just wanting to read about men in tights, but for one reason or another none of the 'alternative' titles really jumped out at me.

Justice League: Dark is a magic and supernatural-oriented spinoff of the Justice League, committed to fighting evils of a demonic or esoteric origin (things that can't be overcome by Superman's strength alone, is the idea, although I think it's pretty clear that the "Justice League" bit was tagged onto this title in order to encourage a broader audience to try it out.) I think it should be good as a change-of-pace title, but the first issue didn't sway me one way or the other. It's clearly introducing a big world, so I'll give it time to see whether it will turn out to be all I am imagining. In any event, I really like the art in this book (don't judge it by its cover!)—in fact I'd say it's my favourite looking book of all the titles I read, so it will be no hardship to stick with the title for a while.

Others?

Clearly, my selections only scratched the surface of the 52 titles that are available. The others I decided against for various reasons, but I thought I should at least mention the most notable omissions. Wonder Woman had great critical reception, and I'm fascinated by the character, whom, it turns out, I really know nothing about. But I don't like the art style of the book at all (especially in contrast to how gorgeous she looks in Justice League), so I passed on it.

Animal Man also got rave reviews, but it seems a little dark for my tastes. Swamp Thing, similarly, is also supposed to be good, but I was afraid it would be too involved for a new reader to follow what's going on.

I was very interested in picking up a military-themed book, too, but I didn't hear enough buzz about either Blackhawks or Men of War to really believe that they would be worth my time. I may still crack and buy one or both, though, just because I think a good military series would be a great change of pace. In much the same vein, I'd be interested in All Star Western, but the fact that it takes place in Gotham City, on the East coast, seems pretty out-of-place to me.

So, those are my impressions. One thing I have discovered about reading comics again is how the format really lends itself to reading each issue more than once. Yes, you can blaze through an issue in only a few minutes, and at first feel like you've blown your money on something that was way too short, but in one's hurry to zip through the story, one misses a lot of the impact of the artwork the first time through. A second, slower, reading, preferably the next day, allows the atmosphere and storytelling of the book to unfold in a new and different way, as the visual art exerts more influence on the second reading.

It's a medium I'm happy to have rediscovered, and I'm happy that modern technology is helping readers to find the best comics to read, and obtain them digitally, to read in a pristine format.

This weekend Emilie and I tried out a new board game I'd heard a lot about and bought a few days earlier, Carcassonne. (There are three board games I've kept hearing good things about: Carcassonne, Settlers of Catan, and Ticket to Ride. But Carcasonne is supposed to be very well suited to two players, which is usually what we have.)

Anyway, I add my voice to the chorus of those who highly recommend it. It's similar in some ways to Lost Cities, but whereas that game ends with a very math-heavy round of adding and multiplying points to see who won, in Carcassonne you can score most of your points as you play, which makes scoring the game feel like less of a chore. It's also fun in that you place tiles and build a mediaeval map as you play, so it's visually very appealing.

Saturday Emilie had to get some work done (today is her first day with her students) and I worked on my Pai Gow video game. The game itself is playable in text mode so now I'm on to the artwork and animation, which is a lot more tedious for me. But the finished product should be neat.

On Sunday we spent the day in Cambrai with friends, the weather was great and we ate on the balcony and then took an afternoon walk around the city. Oh, and Saturday evening I finally saw the Serenity movie, that I somehow missed in the theatre and only got around to renting now. That was a great sci-fi movie; I was already familiar with the setting from the TV show but I don't think that it's necessary to enjoy the film. This is grittier sci-fi than Star Wars so some may find the movie a little too dark, but it has a bigger point to get accross than emptier gory sci-fi like Aliens.

All in all a very good weekend, but too short as always.

Generally speaking, there is nothing in my taste in music that would suggest that I would have any interest in DJ Hero. I have long enjoyed Eric Prydz's "Call on me" remix—although in that case it admittedly has more to do with the video! But all in all, I have very little interest in or knowledge of hip-hop, and only a passing awareness of dance and techno.

If I may be allowed a small digression here, I should say a bit about my taste in music. To a lot of people, my musical library, which is composed primarily of classical, opera, and jazz, would be considered 'snobbish'. I don't see it that way. To me, the crucial factor is of musical talent. Thus, I favour genres where the musician actually plays his or her music—the less studio remixing, autotune, or other artificiality involved, the better. Beyond that, I also like music that is technically impressive and interesting, which is why classical and jazz float to the top.

This is why, although new country is probably the musical genre I hate the most, two of the last five albums I bought were bluegrass—hardly a musical genre one would call 'snobbish', but one which showcases some of the most impressive, real musicianship in the world.

End digression. So, given my attitudes towards music, what on earth could have persuaded me to buy DJ Hero, and think I might enjoy it? In part, it was precisely because I knew so little about the music and about DJing as an art form, and was hoping that playing through this game would allow me both to widen my horizons and to gain an appreciation for DJing—something which up until now, I had considered to be nothing more than cutting and pasting sound samples on a workstation, and hardly a performance art.

That is not to say that I was going into this completely blind, though. I have listened to plenty of Fatboy Slim, Moby, and Eric Prydz before. And the second album I ever bought (on vinyl!) was He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper by DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. While we see enough of Will Smith nowadays, the chance to play through a DJ Jazzy Jeff setlist in DJ Hero somehow felt like an appropriate way to give him his due :-)

What really sealed my willingness to be open to this game, though, was the fact that my go-to "coding music" is in fact a 31-minute long live mix by Japanese DJs Denki Groove (the opening of which can be seen here). Having watched this, and listened to it often, was the only real evidence I had going in that live DJing was a real thing.

So, I was somewhat open to DJ Hero, and hoping that it would widen my horizons. That would not be enough to make me buy the game, though. What really pushed me over the edge was just seeing it—being played in the video game store. The controller is a nice piece of kit—significantly nicer than the very fisher-price Guitar Hero controller. The game looked fun (and it is fun), and that is as important as the music.

So, what do I think? This is best music game I've played since Guitar Hero III—and I sunk a lot of hours into that one. I'll be doing the same with this one, as well. It is fun, and it does help gain an appreciation for DJing, although I think it is necessary to do some outside research as well (since the game is more of a game than a realistic representation of what a DJ does). But the game helps inspire you to look into the real thing (I've spent a lot of time on the Korg and Roland websites in the last few days.) I am still not ready to put DJs on the same level as the instrumental musicians that I primarily listen to and admire. But I am less dismissive of their music, and do appreciate dance and hip-hop more now (for what they are), than I did before.

Thanks to excellent coverage by podcasts and video game sites, I've been able to track closely all the goings on at E3 2009 last week. As an owner of a Wii, DS, and PS3, the announcements at this show about what games were upcoming were very interesting to me, as I dream about what I might be playing in a year's time. (And Microsoft's announcements were interesting too, inasmuch as they allow me to weigh what I'm going to be missing out on in a year's time!)

All of this is just one man's impressions; for more complete coverage outlets like 1up, Giant Bomb, and the excellent video podcast Co-Op are the places to go. But I thought I could organise my thoughts here by sharing what games E3 has led me to put on my "definitely going to buy" list, my "definitely now interested" list, and my more disappointed "questioning" list.

Definitely Looking Forward To

The biggest surprise for me was that there is a Wii game I am definitely intending to buy this year, happily proving my Wii's Last Stand? concerns to be ill-founded. The New Super Mario Brothers Wii game looks fantastic—it should be a blast to play with my wife and friends. Prior to E3 I had no expectations for any new Wii games, now this one is looking like a sure thing, and two more feature below on my "excited" list.

On the PS3 side, Uncharted 2 is looking better and better, and Uncharted was one of my favourite games on the PS3 already (I've played through it twice, which is saying something). The sequel looks to have a lot going for it, I really liked the trailer, and so I am sure this will be one of my surest purchases when it comes out.

Also on the PS3, Final Fantasy XIII—which was always an automatic day-and-date buy for me—finally has a date to go with it (early 2010), something I'm very happy about. The E3 trailers also raised my hopes that the story will not disappoint, and the English voice acting should be up to Squeenix standards as well.

Definitely Excited About

These are the games that now have my interest after this E3, but I'm still unsure whether I personally will buy them when they come out, wait until they can be had for cheaper, or simply pass on. But I am now paying attention.

Two more Wii titles, contrary to expectations, are on this list: Super Mario Galaxy 2's trailer looked excellent. I enjoyed the first game a lot, but at the same time I have never replayed it, nor did I go for 100% of the stars, even though I still could. So I wonder if I really ought to get this game or not. There's no justification for it but for some reason PS3 Trophies make me much more eager to play long single-player games on that system, rather than 'lose time' on the Wii (but that's my problem, not this game's).

The new Metroid game is also something I'm very happy to see announced—although not quite so happy as these guys! But I won't know whether I personally want to play the game until I hear a lot more about it. I'll be paying careful attention, though.

Final Fantasy XIV was the best surprise announcement of the show for me. I've never seriously gotten into a MMO before, but I may well give this one a shot, though like with Metroid I'll need to know a lot more about how the game turns out before I can say for sure.

Disappointments

Heavy Rain, which I have been getting hyped for, did not look as good at E3 as I had expected it to. Not only that, but the Alan Wake gameplay demonstration looked a lot better than I expected that game to. I'm certainly not writing this game off yet, but I had expected it to be a day-and-date purchase, and now I'm definitely going to wait to read some reviews of what the game actually is like to play before I decide whether it's for me.

Honourable Mention

Scribblenauts, of which an astonishing impromptu demonstration can be found in this episode of Co-Op, is pretty amazing, although I don't know enough about how it works as a game to know whether it's worth getting or not:

Dishonourable Mention

Activision suing to prevent the release of Brutal Legend is really low. EA's lawyer put it best saying it was "like a husband abandoning his family and then suing after his wife meets a better looking guy". I may pass on Modern Warfare 2 because of this (I was on the fence for that game anyway), and it certainly makes me more likely to buy an EA-published Brutal Legend. The surrounding context of the story is probably too inside baseball for most people to care much, but it is petty and mean enough that it is going to have an influence on who I buy games from.

All in all though, I'm excited about the future: this show has got me interested in a lot more upcoming games than I thought I would be paying attention to—the year ahead is looking very promising indeed.

My iPod is in mourning this week as most of the people behind many of my favourite podcasts (including what had been my current number one favourite, "1up Yours"), were laid off yesterday as Hearst Corporation bought the 1up Network from the long-struggling Ziff-Davis.

Along with the podcasts, also axed was the illustrious video game magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly—although I cannot mourn it in the same way that I mourn the podcasts' passing. This is not because I am without nostalgia—in fact I'm probably one of the few gamers still around who can say that I bought Electronic Gaming Monthly Issue #1 (with the Mega-Man 2 cover) from the newstand. But print media, especially an enthusiast magazine focused on a multi-media realm such as video gaming, has long had a bleak outlook. Like most gamers nowadays, I have long gotten my gaming information through the internet. In fact the only times I've bought EGM in recent years were when I was in an airport, and that isn't often enough to feel too bad about the magazine going away.

If print is the past, though, the things 1up was doing in terms of online media were clearly the future. I subscribed to four of their regular podcasts (Broken Pixels and Review Crew were a bit too irregular for me to include them with the rest): The 1up Show, 1up Yours, 1up FM, and Sports Anomaly. Of these, the video podcast the 1up Show was produced at a standard that exceeds most television programs, and it deservedly got top billing on the iTunes store. In terms of new media, that is a coveted achievement.

Even so, one can see from a business perspective, that the 1up Show took a lot of people to make, and that is very expensive. In the face of that, and the few advertisements they were able to include, I am willing to admit the possibility that they might not have been able to continue with the 1up Show. (Although I should think that they could have done a better job in including advertisers—enthusiast-oriented programs like this are great for advertisers, where the topical ads are more interesting and less annoying to viewers, so it seems to me that there was a lot of untapped opportunity there.) But the audio podcasts were cheap to produce and cheaper to host—and they also had almost no advertising. I definitely feel that their potential was untapped by Ziff Davis—but for Hearst to axe them means that they have let go of the best part of the property that they bought. These shows made their contributers celebrities among gamers—who then read the articles on the website chiefly because they were written by these personalities. With no personalities and no shows left, Hearst is missing out on a lot of potential value.

One of the other "enthusiast" (in a way) podcasts I listen to, is the Wall Street-oriented "The Real Story" from theStreet.com. It never ceases to amaze me how consistently they are able to get advertisers—often ones like BP that are not even directly related to the show topic. Revision3 and TWiT may have to work harder to find sponsors, but they have been able to do so. This is why, despite not being on the business side, I cannot believe that such widely circulated and respected gaming podcasts—who have an obvious bank of potential sponsors in the game publishers and console manufacturers—could not be more succesful from a business standpoint.

But I digress. Although I take some solace in the fact that (podcasts being so easy to produce), most of my other favourite enthusiast podcasts ("The Java Posse", "Geeks On", and "The HDTV Podcast") are run by enthusiasts as hobbies, with no thought of monetary return. From this, and from the encouraging Twitter posts by the fired 1up-ers (the first episode of "Rebel FM" is already up!), I am confident that more podcasts will still be coming.

But, with the personalities that make these shows what they are being scattered to the four winds, I do worry about how long this will be able to continue, as they progressively find jobs elsewhere. Some may be able to continue, as John Davison continued to appear on 1up Yours even after leaving the company to found whatTheyPlay.com, but others, like past greats Shawn Elliott or Mark MacDonald, will not. The prospect of so many leaving at once makes me worry for the future, and while I look forward to listening to what they put out, the end of 1up as we know it is a very sad thing.

Mielke's blog of EGM's final day is a must-read if you've ever followed this magazine or its podcasts before.

Folklore is a solid game that I don't think got enough credit in the gaming press. I may be generous towards this game because I love the style and atmosphere, but in a game like this that is half the battle. If you haven't heard of Folklore, this video review gives the basic rundown:

To me a good RPG needs two things: first, a setting (and characters) that you like—you spend a lot of time in their world, so it needs to be a world you are drawn to. And second, a battle system that is engaging and fun. The gameplay needs to be able to stand up as a game that's fun to play for it to capture your interest.

On the first criterion, then, Folklore has me sold: it has a Hotel Dusk style murder mystery set in a seaside Irish town, framing excursions into a Netherworld that is beautiful and intriguing. People have criticised the graphic-novel style cutscenes (instead of voice acting like one would expect nowadays), but to me that's just not relevant to the core value of the game.

On the second criterion, though, Folklore really knocks it out of the park. There is no physical combat in the game; you capture ids from the monsters you defeat and use their attacks in battle. You spend a lot of time configuring which face buttons you want to go with which attack, but the overall feeling is that you are a real badass powerful wizard who can unleash a gigantic beast or dragon on his foes at whim. That super-powered feeling is for me one of the joys of video games, and this game really gives it to you.

So, no, it's not necessarily the game to win over converts to the genre, and the lack of much voice acting is disappointing in a PS3 game, though the presentation is otherwise good, if a little old-fashioned. There are moments of incredible HD graphics, but all-in-all the game feels like a a PS2 or Dreamcast game. (That doesn't bother me though: after all, I'm also playing Mega Man II!) On the measures that matter, Folklore is a solid RPG that I am looking forward to playing the rest of the way through. And it makes an excellent change of pace from shooters and war games.

Katamari Damacy was one of those games that won me over from the opening title sequence. As it turns out, my son had the same experience with Katamari Forever, its sequel on the PS3: every time we start the game he goes nuts, pointing and shouting, and applauds when it ends. Consequently, we watch the opening sequence nearly every time :-) James also enjoys the "Royal Rainbow" effect, which is also accompanied by frantic pointing and squeals of "REGARDE!" <look>.

The game itself is primarily a compilation of levels from other Katamari sequels—which is not a bad thing, if only because I, like nearly everyone else, hasn't played any of these sequels since the original. The review on Giant Bomb does a good job of evaluating the title, so I won't say much more about it here, other than to say that I agree with that assessment.

I will just underline what an incredible value this game turned out to be. I bought it for Emilie, but I was really impressed with what a put-together title it was. There are a ton of levels, and multiple game modes, plus cousin collection and present collection side-quests to do in the levels. It adds up to tens of hours of gameplay—more than most PS3 games—for a very low price. If you like Katamari Damacy, this game is an excellent buy.

If there is any genre in video games today that is overdone, it is the first-person shooter—and the most clichéd sub-genre of this most clichéd of genres is the bald space marine type of first-person shooter, in which realistic battles are fought in a sci-fi setting. Just as in the 80s space shoot-'em-ups cloning everything from Space Invaders to Galaga formed a glut of mediocrity in arcades, today, faced an increasing number of mediocre Halo clones, a first-person shooter has a lot of resistence to overcome if it is going to merit atteniton.

And yet, from early on Killzone 2 (in which the protagonist space marine, to be fair, sports a military haircut rather than being bald) held my interest in spite of my all-too-apparent reticience to play this kind of game, because the programmer in me just had to see what has long been acknowledged as a supreme technical achievement. In terms of raw graphical beauty, Killzone 2 currently sits atop the PS3, and is without reservation the best first-person shooter I have played.

That's not to say that it has won me over to the genre, though. And not because I don't like war games on principal: Metal Gear Solid 4 in fact is my favourite video game of all time. But that game tackles the moral questions surrounding war in a thought-prevoking way, even while putting together an awesome action tale. Killzone 2 has no such pretensions—but it compensates through faster gameplay and more intense action. In "video-gameyness", that probably counts for more for most people than a thought-provoking plot, though, so my preferences may be in the minority.

This really comes to the fore in online play, where teams of 16 players confront each other in a variety of missions. These battles are a lot of fun—and definitely a game, not a serious war story like the single-player campaign (you respawn after eight seconds, after all). In online play, it is the scoreboard that matters, not who prevails in the science fiction saga of the invasion of planet Helghan. Both the single-player and especially the online modes have a ton of replay value as well, so Killzone 2 provides a huge value for entertainment: I definitely prefer it to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and since owning one realistic first-person soldiering game is enough for me, it is Killzone 2 that I would recommend.

All in all, then, I would not hesitate to recommend this game as a core element of anyone's PS3 library, especially for those who are more predisposed to first-person shooters and war games than I am personally.

This weekend we had my mother- and brother-in-law over for dinner on Saturday night, and went out with four generations of my paternal inlaws on Sunday. We went to a restaurant and then back to Emilie's grandparents for poker and trivial pursuit (I won the latter!). The occassion was to celebrate September birthdays so mine was included, and I got some nice presents (a couple books on gardening and a model train, among others).

Besides family visits, a large part of our week-end was taken up in Super Paper Mario, which just came out in Europe for the Wii, and which Emilie and I are both enjoying. Before this she was replaying through New Super Mario Bros. to retrieve every single star coin in the game—I've been telling her that she's been playing so much since she's pregnant that we'll have to name the child Mario if it's a boy!

The rugby world cup has been fun to watch so far, although France's opening loss to Argentina was a disappointment. (I would've hoped the USA could've beaten Tonga too, but the fact is we just aren't a rugby union playing country.) Still, no matter who's playing it's an exciting game to watch, and some of South Africa's tries against England on Friday night were downright amazing. If France doesn't make it to the end I'll be rooting for the Springboks, although the conventional wisdom is that nothing can stop the All Blacks this year, curse or no curse.

When I bought my Playstation 3, I bought four games, Metal Gear Solid 4, Grand Theft Auto 4, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. All of these games have something in common: they are realistic, movie-like adventures filled with guns, explosions, and plot twists and turns. They also have violence and language that make them inappropriate for children.

LittleBigPlanet is something completely different for the PS3. It's as cute and fun as it looks, but rather than try to drum up some florid prose, I'd rather just embed a video to give you the idea:

With that out of the way, there are three points that I would like to comment on here: the controls, the sound, and the appeal of LittleBigPlanet.

Whenever an exclusive-to-PS3 game comes out, message board trolls who are 360 fans will come out and try to lower the game's reputation by harping on some minor flaw until it seems as though it were a major flaw. With LittleBigPlanet, these internet troglodytes love to harp on the 'floaty' controls. All I can say is that if that is the best criticism you can come up with about LittleBigPlanet, there must not be much to complain about. The controls are great. (A precision-based level like the ninja training one would be no fun otherwise—whereas in fact it happens to be my favourite out of the single player game)

Another thing which one does not necessarily pick up on right away when reading about this game, is just how amazing the sound track is. LittleBigPlanet has one of the best video game soundtracks ever, and although that is not in itself a reason to buy the game, it does mean that the game is great on a level beyond what you can see at first glance.

Finally, I want to say a word about the impact LittleBigPlanet has had on our house. Up until now, my wife has never touched the Playstation 3 controller. Not only did LittleBigPlanet draw her in, though: now she won't put the thing down. From having LittleBigPlanet dreams to complaining that she can't get the music out of her head in the morning, she has LittleBigPlanet on the brain! Best of all for her as well as for me, we can play together, cooperatively at the same time. So early on, when she was still coming to grips with the controls, I was able to help her get through difficult levels she wouldn't have been able to do on her own (although I must admit that she now has more stickers collected than me!). It's a huge hit in our house. (For context, this is not the first time that a video game has captivated her to such an extent—but the only other time I ever saw it happen was with New Super Mario Bros., so it is in some very good company!)

It is no coincidence that when you beat the single-player game, the trophy you receive is a silver—not a gold—and that its name is "Just Beginning". Some of the user-created levels (hundreds of thousands of new levels that people create that you can play online for free) are amazing—some are as good if not better than the ones that come on the disk. Others are creative masterpieces that you can't believe someone actually made using LittleBigPlanet. At the end of the day, LittleBigPlanet is not just a game, it's a platform, and its possibilities are something we will be exploring for years to come.

Metal Gear Solid 4 spent the last year as the Playstation 3's flagship game. When I bought my PS3, this was the game that came with every PS3 you could buy. In a lot of ways, it's an odd choice: First, it only really speaks to people who played the earlier Metal Gear games in the franchise, which pretty much excludes the larger public in favour of 'hardcore gamers'. Much of the plot involves tying together loose ends from the previous games, which are constantly alluded to. And the game is very complex, taking time to learn how to play—potentially a lot of time for someone who hasn't played a Metal Gear Solid game before. So why include this title with the system?

At the same time, MGS4 was an inevitable choice as a pack-in title, since no other title so supremely shows off the incredible power of the PS3. The battlefield in MGS4 is so realistic that if it weren't for the heads-up display you could easily be fooled into thinking you're watching a DVD, it's that good. (The screenshot above is what the game actually looks like while you're playing it.) The cutscenes are also gorgeous, all while managing to avoid falling into the 'uncanny valley'. And the gameplay, plot, and voice acting are all on a par with the graphics. In a lot of ways, Metal Gear Solid 4 is the best game I've ever played. It is, without question, a masterpiece.

The gameplay, as I said, almost requires you to already be familiar with the Metal Gear series, which is based on 80's action movies, most obviously Escape from New York. This is not just another shooter: Metal Gear is all about stealth-based gameplay. While you do have weapons, there is only one of you, infiltrating enemy bases with countless soldiers, so while you may have to fight your way out of a jam, going head-to-head with the enemies means certain death. Instead, you have to hide (in lockers, under tables, etc.—there are countless possibilities), create distractions (leaving a Playboy on the ground to trick sentries into bending over to pick it up, throwing an ammo clip across the room to create a noise elsewhere), and use techniques like choke attacks to render enemies unconscious without making noise—making sure to sneak up from behind so they don't have time to raise the alarm! There is a lot of depth to this: if you choke out one sentry, for example, you'd better hide his body somewhere before his partner comes along, or else that one will raise the alarm. All of this is what makes the game fun and unique—you're constantly finding new ways your character can hide, or tricks you can try—but it is also takes a lot to master.

All this sneaking creates a lot of tension, so the game balances things out by interspersing a lot of cut scenes, which bring the plot along and give you a chance to recover after the stressfulness of infiltrating another level. I like this a lot, it makes playing the game a lot more relaxing, and the plot of MGS4, which centres on private military corporations (rather like Blackwater), is at times quite thought provoking. At other times it's quite hokey, but it wouldn't be a proper hommage to 80's action movies if it wasn't!

Some of these scenes are fantastically epic and memorable; some of the gameplay levels vary the standard stealth in ways that not only add variety but make it even more fun, from tracking a trail through the forest on one act to tailing an unsuspecting spy through the streets of an Eastern European city under curfew in another. The bar is high to learn this game and its universe in order to get the most out of it, but the rewards are amazing.

When I bought my Wii, it came with Wii Sports in the box. The contrast between the PS3 coming with MGS4 and the Wii with Wii Sports could not be starker: one is easy for anyone to pick up and play from children to grandparents, even though no effort at all went into its graphics and depth. MGS4 is so hard to figure out how to play to the uninitiated that months went by before I really sat down and started trying to play it (and I had played MGS Twin Snakes before), and even then I had to acclimate on "easy mode" (which gives you a lot more weapons and makes the enemies fewer and stupider). Yet the graphics are so good that it can be mistaken for a DVD, and the amount of depth, both in the plot and the gameplay, exceeds anything that has come before it in the history of video games. The execution is flawless. I am so glad to have played MGS4, but at the same time I have no problem understanding why it is the Wii that is outselling the PS3 by a more than 2-to-1 margin. Five stars. It deserves them, even if it isn't a game for everybody.

We got a Nintendo DS Lite about a week after its European launch (technically it was Emilie's anniversary present from me), and are very satisfied customers. So far we've got four games, although Emilie spends all her time (at least 3 hours a day I'd estimate) on Animal Crossing. It doesn't do it for me but she's really into it which is fun. I had thought she'd have gotten more into Mario 64 DS (since in high school that was the only game mom really liked to play), but so far she hasn't gotten into it. I've been replaying it avidly though, since to this day it is in my opinion the best 3D action platformer ever made. (And the game got a few nice improvements in the DS version as well, and isn't hard to control without the analog stick the way I thought it would have been). I'm sure Emilie will get into it eventually because I told her we can't get New Super Mario Bros. until she beats it :-)

Those were the games we got right away, but we soon caved in and added Nintendogs to the mix, because we were both interested (in my case, because I only had a few minutes to play every evening and so I didn't want anything too involved). And indeed, Nintendogs is just perfect for playing in 5-minute doses. And it's nice to have a game that uses the microphone.

We stuck with those 3 for a while and all was well. There are a ton of games we want to get (Sonic , Mario Kart, NSMB, Castlevania DS, Advance Wars, ...) but you have to take time to appreciate each game. Still, I was a little bothered by the fact that all our games were a bit childish. (Well, I think Nintendogs is aimed at adults, but it's not exactly macho either). What would I do if a PSP-owning friend wanted to check out the system? I wanted a "show off" title, as well as something a little more oriented to the traditional gaming crowd. Having done my research, I got what seemed to me to be the graphically most impressive on the system, as well as what promised to have the best control setup of an FPS ever to make it to a console (not to mention on-line multiplayer with voice chat): Metroid Prime Hunters. So this weekend I picked that up and have been having a lot of fun with it. It's no PSP-level graphics, but it is beautiful, the gameplay is great, and the Metroid universe has always appealed to me ever since Spaceman Spiff.

UPDATE 20.08.06 Moved links onto Amazon affiliate pages

After many weeks of frustration, we are at last the proud owners of a Wii! A new video game store opened in Valenciennes this week, and calculating that they would be sure to have Wiis on stock when they opened, and that (unlike all the other stores), they could not yet have a pre-order list, we arranged to be there when the doors opened yesterday, and were the first customers of the new Score Game, Valenciennes. To see how our whole Wii-opening experience unfolded, invited guests can watch our video of us unpacking, installing, and playing the Wii for the first time.

For games, so far we have Wii Sports, Wii Play, and Madden 2007. I'm planning on picking up Zelda tomorrow.

Madden is a lot of fun with the Wii controls, and not having access to American sports here, I have really been looking forward to having this game to compensate. My Bears will win it all in the big game! But it is really involving with the Wii controls; snapping the ball, passing and kicking, even juking and stiff arming are all a lot more engrossing when they involve actual movement. The EA sports games are often criticised for putting out the same game year after year, but the fact that they were able to make such a good version of Madden for the Wii deserves real credit. So far I've played two exhibition games, and won 7-3, and 7-0, respectively. Scores like that make my old-school NFC heart glad; time was when football video games had so much trouble being realistic that it was actually hard to finish a game with less than fifty points on the board.

We haven't done much with Wii Play yet; some of the games like shooting and laser hockey have promise as time wasters, but it isn't really anything to write home about. It came included with the second controller, though, so it's hardly worth criticising—it was a freebie.

Wii Sports is really, really good. Much more than you would expect given the primitive graphics. Tennis and bowling are both great, and baseball is surprisingly complete. We haven't even played golf yet. But the real stand-out surprise was boxing. I'd heard some complaints about the game on-line from people who found it too tiring and such, but as a game that is immensely satisfying to play—and a huge stress reducer—for Emilie and me both it was a real revelation. Very satisfying stuff.

The best surprises for me have been the good uses the internal speaker in the remote gets put to. It's neat to have the thwack of the racket when you hit the tennis ball or the "hut! hut!" before you snap the ball coming from the controller. I'd heard the sound quality described as "hallmark-card quality" so I was glad that it is actually much better than that.

The other cool surprise was how different the gameplay feels to playing a traditional video game; it's a totally different experience, and so I think having both the DS and the Wii is a very complimentary proposition. Emilie is still working her way through Mario 64 and I'm still playing Final Fantasy V Advanced, but the Wii adds a whole new type of game to play.

So, no buyer's remorse so far. Besides the games, we've played around a bit with the Wii channels, and browsed the Virtual Console, which will probably get some business from us once we've gone through a few of our Wii games. Mario Kart 64 and Gunstar heroes have caught my eye, as well as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time; but it will be a while before I'll have time to play any of those, so I'll hold off for now.

The last few weeks have seen us playing a lot of fun video games (if I haven't posted any personal articles recently, this is why!), so I thought I'd weigh in with my thoughts on them a few weeks on.

The Wii has been a lot of fun, and I'll get to that next. But one of the more surprising developments to me has been that Emilie hasn't been playing much, continuing to play mostly with the Nintendo DS. In 2007, she has played through and won New Super Mario Bros., and collected 50 stars in Mario 64 DS. We'll probably pick up Mario Sunshine to play on the Wii once she's done with that.

Her long-time favourite game, Animal Crossing, has also been getting a second wave of play. One of her co-workers bought a DS and Animal Crossing, and they brought them to work to trade items. This sold the system to another co-worker, then a third, and now a fourth! Talk about word-of-mouth at work! I also bought Emilie the DS version of the Sims 2 for March 8th (women's day), but I've ended up playing it more often than she does!

I have a big backlog of DS games to play myself, as well. Over Christmas I stocked up on RPGs, Magical Starsign, Final Fantasy V Advance, Golden Sun, and Final Fantasy I & II:Dawn of Souls . In my enthusiasm, however, I failed to take into account how huge these games are! I'm still not done with FFV, despite playing it heavily for three months, and so I haven't even got to the others yet. I've also enjoyed NSMB and Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, where I'm nearly done but currently stuck at Dracula.

But the real centre of my gaming attention has been the Wii. While a surprising number of my coworkers have bought the Wii only for Wii Sports, I actually haven't been playing it that much. Tennis and bowling are both a lot of fun (I concur with the observation of many others that bowling on the Wii is actually more fun than real bowling). We both like boxing a lot, tiring though it is, as a stress reliever. Golf is okay but the putting is very frustrating, due to the mechanics of the game (which require a well-defined backstroke).

Wii baseball deserves special mention, for being the most realistic simulation of the real thing. When you're standing in front of your TV watching those balls come in over the plate and taking a swing, it really feels indistinguishable from actually playing baseball; it's pretty neat.

The sports game I've been playing the most, however, isn't made by Nintendo—it's EA's Madden NFL 2007, which is awesome. I think most fans of sports games are more likely to own an XBox than a Wii, so this game doesn't get nearly the credit it deserves. The controls are really well thought out and immersive, especially the passing game, and power running. Some people have complained online about the kicking game; these people are whiners, I find it works excellently. Emilie always finds it funny when I call for a fair catch, though :-) The game lacks an online mode, but that doesn't matter to me living in France, since no one in my entourage even knows the rules to American football, let alone would want to play online.

Besides Madden, the game that I've been playing the most has been (of course) The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. It is an incredible game, and things like being able to fight on horseback are particularly cool. The coolest thing about it, though, is how much it feels like Zelda. I mean, I only played the original NES Zelda, and the SNES A Link to the Past. (Now that I have the Wii I'll be able to go back and play Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker later though.) But things like enemies, the way bombs work, the bow and arrow, the boomerang—it's all stuff that goes back to the original Zelda, and despite being in 3D it all feels just right. The addition of a great story, though, is something that the original Zelda didn't have that this one does. I'm 19 hours into the game so far and haven't scratched the surface.

I got one other game this week, even though with the backlog I have going I'm not planning on getting anything else until I've finished some of the others (Sonic will have to wait). That's because the game is Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, a 2002 GameCube exclusive that is very hard to track down. I found out about it from the podcast GeeksOn, who in their December "a geek's Christmas list" episode had a list called "GameCube games for the new Wii owner". This is a horror-themed game with a Cthulhu-like mythos, and a huge amount of depth. There are in-depth descriptions of anything you care to examine, and you play characters in Ancient Rome, 18th century Europe, the Khmer empire in ancient Cambodia, etc. in the course of the story, as the main, present-day character reads their chapters from the Necronomicon. There's so much attention to detail in this game that in the cut scene that took me back to the Roman empire, the Centurion and his soldiers are actually speaking in Latin!

So, a lot of fun games. Although the original reason I was so sold on the Wii and DS is because I don't have a ton of time to play video games, and their games are made to be good in small doses, with Zelda and Eternal Darkness I've got a couple epic games to work through anyway.