The $500 challenge.

I've decided, based on my finances, serious gaming backlog and a discussion that I heard on Gamers With Jobs to give something a try:
For the next year (that is from Oct 1 this year, to Sep 30 next year), I am going to budget myself $500 for gaming.  It sounds like a lot, but it's about 10 bucks a week.  And I'll be interested to see what I end up trying in terms of new genres, purchasing methods and outlets that I had not considered before.


That's five hundred Australian by the way.  So that's 4 full priced retail games.  Guess what my plan won't be.


Exclusions from this budget are:
XBox Live Subscription
Replacement hardware - in the unfortunate event of a console or PC dying, then a replacement will not count towards this.


Perhaps in a future challenge I'll try to include both those too.


So, from my starting $500, I've got:
MS Points to the value of $16.50
From that I picked up the two expansions to Toy Soldiers, a XBLA title that I adore.


Remaining:
$483.50

How can anyone argue for Fedor being no.1 in Pound for Pound?

There are 4 guys who are clearly heads and shoulders above all others when people compile their Pound for Pound lists: Anderson Silva, BJ Penn, Fedor Emelianenko, Georges St Pierre. But how would you rank these four? There are several metrics for Pound for Pound discussion which I’ll break down.

The first is very creative, and as a result the hardest to rationalise: imagine that all fighters are magically scaled to be in the same weight division - who wins? This isn't a very popular metric, but is one that is used by some in their arguments as you could say that if it wasn't for size, then Anderson would beat Fedor on the feet every time, or that if BJ hadn't been undersized compared to GSP, his skills would have let him control that fight. In this scenario Anderson Silva's striking is too good for anyone else in this list, and even should someone get him to the ground it's been shown that he can do enough not just to survive, but to win. BJ's boxing is a serious threat to most and his ground game is probably the best of anyone on this list should they all be the same size, but against Silva, his boxing will still fall short and against GSP he'll likely get pinned against a cage by a fighter who will still be physically stronger and a much more skilled wrestler. GSP has shown time and again that with his ability to get the measure of his opponents and then wrestle them through the mat for five rounds that should he get hands on his opponent, then they are going wherever he wants them to be – but first he has to get inside Silva and though GSP has good stand up, he’s not at Silva’s level and on the ground, after the Hardy performance it’s clear Silva or BJ at his size would give him fits. So when you have 3 guys theoretically the same size as Fedor, each of whom outclasses him in his given area, what do you think can happen? He can definitely throw a brilliantly timed, hand-pulverizing counter or pull off some sneaky sambo, but on a virtual, level playing field, he's going to lose to all 3 of his fellow Pound for Pounders nine times out of ten.

Assuming everyone is the same size

1) Anderson Silva

2) GSP

3) BJ Penn

4) Fedor

The second, more popular metric is to look at their accomplishments relative to each other in their divisions. This is a better measure, but can be further confused by asking the question "if this is Pound for Pound", then what have they done outside their weight division?

In that case, we have to immediately move GSP and Fedor down the list as they haven't had any fights outside of their weight divisions in what we'll call "relevant history". Sure Fedor beat Aoki in an exhibition grappling match, but if someone wants to claim that as a pound-for-pound relevant bout, I will personally laugh in their face. Meanwhile both BJ and Anderson have fought above their weight division with great success. Indeed, the argument can (and has) been made that BJ could beat anyone at Welterweight except for GSP. Meanwhile Anderson has embarrassed two Light Heavyweights, including a recent title holder.

So the list using these metrics would probably look like this:

Accomplishments outside their weight division

1) BJ Penn

2) Anderson Silva

3) GSP

4) Fedor

But why is GSP above Fedor in this list? Because of the third metric: dominance in their division. This is where I (and many others) feel the most weight should lie. First in this list is probably GSP as, since the Serra fight, he has never looked in trouble. No opponent has come close to finishing him and though he mightn't have finished fights emphatically, there's never any question of who won or lost. Add to this that there is no legitimate contender at this time for the welterweight crown and you have as close to the definition of divisional dominance as you can get. Second would be BJ Penn, as he is close to cleaning house in lightweight, which is a much deeper division - and again, no one has really had him in a bad spot.

Anderson and Fedor sit in an interesting position here. Fedor has dominated the division available to him, with wins over such "luminaries" in the past 4 years as Coleman, Hunt, Lindland, Choi, Sylvia, Arlovski and Rogers. He has been unquestionably rocked on a few occasions during these bouts, but ended all of them in fairly decisive manner. Meanwhile Silva has fought more than twice as many fights in that timeframe, many of them against top 10 competitors. The issue here is that in the eyes of some, he has failed to dominant in some of these performances. But I'm going to rule against Fedor here as his "dominance of the heavyweight division" has been against fighters who are at best, able to be described as on the decline, and at their worst, freak shows. Fedor’s management has locked him away from what is currently the deepest pool of heavyweight talent in the sport's history and without any real test against them, then Fedor will have to continue to sink in these rankings as no one should seriously rate Werdum or Overeem at this time.

Dominance in their division

1) GSP

2) BJ Penn

3) Anderson Silva

4) Fedor

So, does anyone have any observations about these 3 lists? I'll point out the obvious one. That in each of them the 3 top guys have all switched positions, so that they all rate first, second and third in the respective metrics. Meanwhile Fedor finishes in fourth place every time. In fact, I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that by the end of this year, Fedor will not feature in the top five of any realistic pound for pound list as the quality of the competition he will face cannot stand up against guys who are testing themselves against fellow top competitors regularly. Sure, he will in all likelihood go undefeated, but when you last match against a truly relevant opponent was back when Pride was still around, you have to do more than fight Werdum to get back into contention. At this point I'd say that the winner of Lesnar/Carwin is more deserving of Fedor's spot on this list than he will be, unless he somehow beats Werdum so badly that we all forget to play six-degrees-of-MMA-separation and look at Werdum's history and those of his wins and losses and realise just how irrelevant that fight really is in the heavyweight division.

Before anyone jumps on me for it - I'm not a Fedor hater. I love watching him fight because it always turns into some bizarro world where the most outrageous things happen and I find that to be outstanding. But I can't and won't take him seriously as a top heavyweight contender, let alone a pound for pound contender until he takes on some real competition again.

A lost hobby

It was interesting to revisit Tasmania recently and see how much and how little had changed. It also reminded me of how much I miss pen and paper and tabletop gaming. Not over Skype or using IRC or anything like that - but actually face to face, around a table.

This was mainly triggered by seeing the finest collection of ADnD 2e that I have personally witnessed in a long, long time. It was also the first time that I ever saw a Birthright boxset in the wild - rather than mocking me from the shelf in Birchalls in 1996. This collection was all in the hands of someone who I knew was an old LAN hand, but had no idea was into RPGs. And apparently they still play. It made for a nice sideline to the conversation which up until then had been dominated by our respective wive's baby talk.

It was also triggered by walking through an arcade in Launceston - vaguely remembering that there was a store there that I wanted to check out that wasn't open the last time I visited, and then discovering that it's a goddamn LARP supply store. In Launceston. With no less than 3 different sign up sheets for LARP organisations around the town. And that's a city and surrounds of only 100k or so still. If that isn't the sign that somewhere has a serious gaming population I don't know what it.

But desite that store exisiting and there being so many groups, there is no more Electric Adventures/Legends, no more Robot Boy, no more comics stores - indeed Birchalls seems to be the only retailer that stocks any of the actual gaming products anymore. So what had once been at least an apparently thriving town for tabletop gaming now appears fairly desolate. Similarly with Hobart, where there was once Ellison Hawker/Area 52, Electric Adventures and Just Games (was that it's name?) - there is now only Area 52. Not to say that these stores don't have a fairly impressive range of miniatures, rulebooks, RPGs and more. But Birchalls in Launceston lacks on thing - tables.

I remember when Legends occupied a large corner in Launceston, with the whole ground floor being it's retail area and upstairs were tables and terrain galore. It was the focal point for the games community - a place where you could have games, watch games, meet other gamers, have notices put up and arrangements made. Area 52 in Hobart still fills this role with it's Battle Bunker, where even early on a Sunday morning I was still able to run into people I know having (or attempting to have) games. For most of us though, the internet does the organising now. In Melbourne I found gaming groups online as there is no "Friendly Local Gaming Store" - sure Mindgames has a notice board, but most people don't look at it that much, and there are so many people who never even go into the store - instead choosing to shop online. Local also has a completely different definition here - having to commute nearly half an hour (by car) to get to your gaming venue is a different story to when most people live within a few blocks of each other (or at the very least a few suburbs).

It's also very difficult to find a good group. It turns out that years of playing together through university and beyond and slowly adding and subtracting people from the group means that everyone interacted and got along well. It wouldn't have worked if they didn't. We all generally agreed on the type of games that we liked and weren't afraid to give and receive feedback. The groups I've spoken to and played with over here - they've been fairly varied. Some were excellent and introduced me to new games, styles and ideas, but the timing and location of their sessions were just a little too difficult. Others I gave up on after e-mails or phone calls made it clear that it just wouldn't work.

As such, most of my gaming since I moved to Melbourne has been done via Skype or various chat programs. But this lacks a lot - it's hard to game when everyone has a computer in front of them and is probably browsing their RSS feeds and e-mail. It's harder still because everyone is talking over everyone else because there's not the non-verbal cues and communication.

Also - you feel like a bit of a dick sitting in a room with a headset on talking in character. Especially if your wife is on her laptop next to you. Most of all I miss the social aspects of gaming - having regular get togethers with friends and acquaintances, or open invite days at Area 52 to play card or board games. In fact, most of my socialisation came during these game sessions - because that was when you could guarantee you'd have your friends together in one place.

Because really, when you get down to it a copy of a RPG is really a social device as much as it is a game. It's there to bring people to a table around it. Those people will just as often talk more about everything else than they will about the game. For me, gaming was my version of going out for drinks with friends. And I realised that it'd been more than a year since I'd played an RPG. I hadn't played a wargame since I lived in Hobart. And the only reason I'd played some card/board games in the past year was because SDnet Aussies had a geek-together in Melbourne for the Star Trek reboot.

But despite all of this, I don't want to cut the cord with gaming. I remember just how much fun it is and want to get back into it. But it's all about finding the people, the time and the place.

Surviving the Horror

I frequently complain that some developers seem to be stuck in a rut when it comes to game design relating to save and death mechanics. It seems that many choose to punish the player with the punitive measure of "time loss". This was supported by this Digital Unrest post and seems to be the underlying reason behind changes discussed in an interview with Alyssa Finley from the Bioshock 2 team. I believe that there are better methods out there for dealing with these mechanics - not just in theory, but ones that already exist in practice.

The core problem that I want to point out, is that such a punitive measure as "time loss" is pointless. Survival Horror games (the example cited by Digital Unrest) are tightly scripted and events happen in a very specific way in order to increase tension and ratchet up the "shock factor". The idea that the best way to implement the death mechanic in these games is to force the player to replay a segment is at it's core, stupid. The player once they have experienced a segment for the first time, on being forced to immediately replay it following their death and a load, now knows exactly when and where the enemies will come from, knows when certain audio cues are going to kick in or when scripted events will occur and because of these things there is no tension anymore. That repeated section of the game becomes nothing more than an exercise in memory retention and the feelings and reactions engendered by the initial play-through are lost. Should the player be forced to go through this process repeatedly it also becomes a serious test of patience.

The point that Digital Unrest seem to be trying to make is that the player has no connection to or investment in the game other than their time, and thus to create any suspense or feeling of loss the threat and implementation of a punitive time penalty must exist. I find this idea repugnant in it's inherent laziness. If a developer is incapable of making you care about what happens in a game on a level greater than your time investment, then that game should be seen as the massive failure that it is. I've previously addressed why death in video games is an outdated concept and shown where some developers have moved beyond this is new and interesting ways. But I'm going to go in a slightly different direction in addressing the concept of a "penalty" for dying.

If death in a game is not going to be a permanent event, such as in the "hardcore" modes of Diablo or in all manner of Roguelikes - then it should not exist. This is not to say that your character should be invulnerable, merely that the implementation of the incapacitation and events leading to your characters untimely exit should be better controlled. Look at Monkey Island 2 back in the day, with the method of delivery of the story being used to explain why Guybrush never actually died. More recently we can look at Far Cry 2, which has in my opinion the best implemented death mechanic in gaming - where your "death" is part of the gameplay experience serves to increase NPC interaction and advance the certain sideplots. Most games (and by most I mean all but a tiny handful) assume that the character never dies during the course of the narrative. Thus, we have the "LOADING LAST SAVE" screens which you encounter to let you know: "Oops, you fucked up but it's OK, because none of that really happened. So we'll just all collectively ignore it, pretend it never happened and move on." If death was such an important event in these games, why isn't it acknowledged as such? I'd argue that death is not an important event in games as it's never addressed in anything more than a cursory "YOU DIED - GAME OVER" screen.

So if death doesn't serve a narrative or gameplay purpose, then I have to ask the obvious question - what makes death in games such a "good" idea in these people's minds? It seems to be that they feel that death is a necessary punishment, that a game where they aren't forced to waste their time in replaying segments is somehow less challenging. That the best thing to do is to take away the player's time. I feel very strongly that it's a stupid argument because, as previously stated, these games are so linear that the setback exists only as time loss and that there is no real threat to the player, nor any real engagement in the game by the player during the repeat of the segment up until the point where they were killed. From a narrative perspective it makes no sense as the story of the game continues to assume that the player never actually died. Look at movies - when was the last time that a movie had it's lead character die midway through an action sequence, then fade to black, fade back in - and we're back at the start of said action sequence and the character has to go through it all again.

This has all come to a head in the latest interview from the Bioshock 2 dev team. Alyssa Finley talks about the VitaChambers and addresses the perceived problem of them making the first game too easy. It may just be a matter of opinion, but the VitaChambers were well implemented in my opinion, they offered a way to allow gameplay to continue without resorting to a more traditional death mechanic. I ask then, just how will not having VitaChambers make this a better game? The fact that when someone is killed that they will have to go back to their last save doesn't make it better. It makes it an exercise is wasted time. Yes, you could "game" the VitaChambers if you wanted - but this is within the concept of the game. In fact, I'm fairly certain that such an obvious exploit didn't escape the attention of the original development team and perhaps allowing players to utilise such a mechanic to advance past a section where the otherwise might have failed was their intent. Finally, let's not forget either that both System Shock's also offered the "regen chamber" mechanic as part of their gameplay and neither of those ever suffered accusations of being "soft".

The idea that the only way to punish a player in a game is through the loss of time invested is outdated, stupid and counterproductive. Nothing will get people to stop playing faster than the feeling that they are wasting their time on a game. The key is for developers to find a way to integrate "death" into their games narrative and find new mechanics to nullify the thirty year old brain-bug of the "GAME OVER" screen, not to have to waste their time pandering to a vocal group of whiners who think that the industry should stay stuck in the same conceptual rut that it's been in for three decades.

It seems that this whole "issue" is just another in a long line of beat-ups and whining by people who feel that they are too hardcore for all these traitorous "casual" games of today. You're welcome to play a game of Diablo 2 on the Hardcore setting at Nightmare difficulty or bang your head against Armed Assault, where if you are really lucky you can die in a cutscene where you don't even have control of your character. These are just two of a multitude of "hardcore" options you can play if you really want to show off your e-peen, but the rest of us are happy to play games for enjoyment.

Madworld ramblings...

Since Madworld came out there's been distinctly little talk about it in any circles that happen to overlap with my own Venn Diagram of experience. In fact the sole piece of reporting that I've really seen on it post-release relates to how "poorly" it's sold thus far.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I saw no advertising for this game. Not online, in print, on TV or in the cinema. It seemed that they were solely relying on the buzz created by the art and the fact that it was a "mature game on the Wii".

Oooh, yes. How positively shocking. A mature video game. It doesn't seem particularly mature to me. In fact it seems positively juvenile - but I suppose that's half the fun of it. I really consider it a sad state of affairs if "gallons of blood explode geyser-like out of a stump from a chainsawed limb" is considered to be the defining factor in what is "mature" and what is not.

Another bit of buzz in the lead up to the release of this game was that was being developed by some new American/Western development house created by SEGA. Part of a new wave of games designed to break the trends of old. But for the most part I feel like I'm playing a game so firmly rooted in the tropes of the 16bit era that I have to remind myself that this is 2009.

The story dialogue in this game is presented in the classic Japanese unskippable-floating-text-box-with-character-portrait-cutscene style. Don't tell me that you budget was so tight or room on the DVD so sparse that you couldn't get some voices in there for these scenes. They are few and far between and the fact that I never hear the voice of anyone actually in the world puts me off. And the fact that the story has to be delivered in such a way is even more disappointing.

Then we have the fact that this game still has lives. Yes. Lives. As in you die, you use a life and get to continue. Last I checked my Wii doesn't have a slot for me to pump coins into so this is an automatic devaluation in my mind.

Levels aren't particularly long, but for me anything more than 10 minutes without a save is annoying. And this game doesn't have saves. If you don't finish all the sections of a level before quitting then you don't have your progress saved. You get to go back to the very start. Personally, I think that if you have to have a load event to move into a new area, then the very least you can do is have a goddamn checkpoint there to allow the player to restart from there.

The gameplay isn't particularly deep, instead relying on player creativity and the visuals to keep interest going. And combining this kind of uninteresting combat with the quite frankly awful control scheme that this game has just results in frustration. The way the controls are in this game seems to be tailored to make them as unfriendly and unresponsive as possible. All too often you will end up facing the wrong way and attacking the air or having one of many, many, many context sensitive actions fail because you couldn't keep the camera aimed at exactly the right spot.

In combination, all these factors make me feel like I'm playing a B-grade brawler on the Megadrive. In fact, I'd be tempted to label Madworld as "The Wii's Altered Beast" if it wasn't for the fact that the game has style on it's side.

A few games have been accused of putting style over substance and only rarely has this accusation been more accurately levelled or the crime been more egregious. And I can take a lighter approach to sentencing here as Madworld revels in it's style - through the gritty black and white lense they're able to get away with a lot more. This ultra-violence is at the heart of the game's commentary, the focus is put on why ultra-violence is an accepted spectacle and supported. But this "social commentary" seems a bit off-the-mark, especially given how actively the game tries to alienate you.

Really, Madworld should be so much better than it is. All it would have taken is someone to take a stand and go: "It's not 1992. We have the technology. We can do so much more than Streets of Rage now." But it seems at every turn the easy decisions were made - to fall back on cheap, stale and boring design which ultimately saddles this game with so many issues as to make it unenjoyable. Combine this with some ridiculous technical issues - like how the game plays at some weird resolution giving you a top, bottom and sides letterbox effect cutting your viewable screen area significantly, and the continuing inability for Wii controllers to reliably pick up what's being input in gestural commands and the game enters the realm of painfully disagreeable. And for a game that should have been the perfect stress-reliever, this outcome is just criminal.

Eminently stoppable Force Unleashed meets immovable opinion.

I've been playing The Force Unleashed - and though I'm only about an hour in I feel that I can already unload some baggage on this one way train to wreck-town. Being a massive Star Wars nerd I could bitch and whine about how this game is inconsistent with the existing canon, or that it just recycles the same environments from every game, novel and film without a hint of originality or thought. But those would be easy swipes - and cheap ones too. Playing as Vader's apprentice is a cool concept and it is the recognisable environments that create an immediate impact and association, which separates this from "generic space game X".

No, the problems I have are with the game mechanics and even the design. None of these make it a bad game, as it is still fun, playable and thus far, it works - but they do prevent it from being anything more than average.

I'll start with the obvious - I have a Lightsaber. Why the hell do my enemies have health bars? When it takes me a combo or two to drop an enemy we know that there is a problem. Because it's a Lightsaber. I should wade into that crowd of rebels and emerge on the other side amongst a light shower of cauterised limbs. Now, like most Star Wars games which have come before it is choosing not to play the dismemberment game, which I find disappointing given it is one of the few settings where you can have a limb cut off and there be no blood to scare the censors, because it's a goddamn Lightsaber. The concession was undoubtedly made for ratings - and as much as I hate that, I can understand it. But it still doesn't solve the health bar problem.

Why have a health bar at all? I can't see many people becoming so deeply invested in this that they are worrying about force power micromanagement and going: "Oh, he only has a 1/5 of his health left, not 1/4 - so I shouldn't use my Sith Slash on him and instead do a Sith Slam to ensure maximum efficiency." The health bar shouldn't even be there, it's distracting and serves no real purpose. I couldn't give a crap what their current health is - they're still standing up and thus I'm still going to liberally apply Lightsaber until they fall over.

I would have preferred to be mowing down greater quantities of less "healthy" enemies - have the game focus on you feeling like the Force-throwing Lightsaber-swinging bad-boy that you are meant to be. Instead, I'm stuck being the only character in the Star Wars universe for whom Stormtroopers are actually a threat. I just cannot get over how incongruous and immersion-busting it is to unload a flurry of Lightsaber death upon some Rebel Scum (TM), only to have them kick you in the chest and knock you down, because they've still got half their health left. It's stupid and I don't want to have to talk about it, but here we are. Thankfully with the terrible "lock on"-system and lack of decent camera controls, you'll rarely see a health bar for the person you're actually trying to hit with your Lightsaber so the whole point is really quite moot.

It just strikes me that the lack of dismemberment in any form and the use of a healthbar has really undercut what could have been a remarkable chance to show off the Euphoria physics/AI stuff. Lets look at GTA IV, where an injured person reacts to their injury or physics interaction and then attempts self-preservation in the environment accordingly. Compare this to Force Unleashed, where Euphoria for enemies is little more than a hopped-up rag doll system and the closest your enemies come to reacting is occassionally grabbing something when you Force Grip them.

And this brings us to the core gimmick of the game: Force Grip. One upon a time when you were stuck in a game, you looked around for the airvent to shoot in order to crawl into it. In this game, you look around for something with a great big glowing aura (or better yet - great big yellow arrows) which you need to Force Grip. And it's here that the game bogs down, as the first time that you drag a yellow arrow across a door it's a case of "heh, that's pretty cool", but the second time you go: "Really? Again? So soon?" Then, by the tenth occurence in the first level of a puzzle relies on "use the Gravity Gun (sorry "Force Grip) to pull the power cord out of the shield generator" you'd be forgiven for thinking that it's 2004 and you're playing Half Life 2. You know, back when this crap was still somewhat new and different.

This tedium is what I fear will stop me from going too far with this game, no matter how much I love Star Wars. Every aspect of this game feels focus tested, like it is was developed to be as safe an investment as possible. And I'm under no illusions that this is how things work and that this is definitely the new LucasArts way. It's just that this board-room-generated-checklist approach has never been as painfully obvious. I'd like to hope that the occassional flashes of inspired design that are in the game haven't been totally wiped out by this lowest-common-denominator approach to development and that I might find something to love. But other things about the game make me question just how well made it actually is.

With the ability to Install to HDD now available on 360, I haven't played a game of disc in quite a while - and being able to hear my 5.1 sound system over the console is a lovely change. And in several games I've noticed a real performance increase in terms of both load times and framerates. Well, if the load times for Force Unleashed when installed are anything to go by, then I am ecstatic that I have it installed and am not just running from the disc.

How can it take the same amount of time to load an options screen in the pause menu as it does to load a level? In a game that relies on upgrades and character advancement, this is not just ridiculous, but passes into the realm of totally goddamn unacceptable. Every time I go to a menu or select and option from a menu it actually has to bring up an honest-to-goodness load screen. And not a quick flash of one, but a nice long load screen. Enough time for you to consciously think: "Man, this is taking a while, has it locked up? I'll check to see if any Friends are online. Oh, only three - and none playing anything I want to. Ah well, back to the game. What? STILL? Come on! How can it take thi- Wait, there we go. Hurrah, now I can adjust the brightness."

And this isn't just while playing the game, this is from the main menu too! It's like someone there thought that Mass Effect's elevators were the greatest innovation in game design since CGA colour and the world needed more of that crap. When a game takes as long to load an options menu as it takes GTA IV to load a city, you know that there is a problem. And I might forgive it if the menus were works of art or somehow remarkable. But they aren't. They're drab and derivative, there is no conceivable reason that they should take so long to load.

I feel like I shouldn't play this game, like I shouldn't waste me time on another pandering grab at my fan-whore money. Maybe I should just go and get Conan or Hellboy or Viking to get my brawler fix. Or go back to Madworld, actually no. Lets not go back to Madworld right now. I'll leave that for next rant.

The Eidos Purchase - a hyperbolic perspective.

What follows is my visionary and cautionary tale of what will come to pass as Square Enix takes over the reins on some of gaming's most beloved franchises.

Hitman 5: Penultimate Zeigeist of Kings
We join Number 47 in his latest adventures, his trademark black suit now features many chains, buckles and pouches. Jesper Kyd is replaced by Nobuo Uematsu on soundtrack duties. The opening cutscene is 12 hours long and features at least 8 hours of longing staring by 47 at love interest. His first mission is given: "Assassinate John Smith, local drug lord", you attempt it but fail miserably as you get defeated time and time again by the first guard you encounter. You try and try and try again, each time being doomed to a half hour cutscene showing your pitiful demise to swelling orchestral chords. A hint box pops up: "If you are having trouble, try levelling up before the fight." You spend the next 12 hours hunting rats for XP. Then, once you have enough levels to face off against the boss safely, you try once more and as soon as you come face to face with the boss the game goes to a cutscene and you die of sleep deprivation before it is over. And that's just the first level.


Deus Ex 3: Crystalline Dreams of Oepdipal Schadenfraude in the Sky
JC Denton returns in this thrilling turn based RPG. Progress through more than 2000 hours of content, of which only 2 are actually relevant! Watch as JC Denton's hair becomes blonder, taller and more outrageous in style with each level gained! Thrill to canned combat animations featuring a sword 5 times taller than Sears Tower! Remain disengaged and impassive for hours on end as you watch cutscenes! Go and make a cup of tea - they're still going! Walk the dog too - this might be a while, he's still crying about that girl, you know, the one who got ganked by that guy who was totally evil, but JC Denton was obilivious to. Actually, you should probably get some sleep now, we lost enough people with the first boss cutscene in Hitman. It's OK, by the time you wake up and get back from work tomorrow, he'll almost be done crying. Sure there's nano-tech and the ability to restore her to perfect health using technology, but don't question the writers - she's dead. She was stabbed in the middle of the hospital ER by the badguy and she's dead. Now stop poking holes in our plot and watch more cutscenes because you're asking too many questions.


Thief X-12.2[b]s9 (paragraph 4)
Garrett travels through time to help popular Disney characters defeat the evil ghosts of Christmas past, present and future. Innovative and revolutionary new controls for the series mean that you can only move in one axis at any given time! This changes the entire dynamic of the genre as the controls suddenly become another layer of depth which you need to conquer in order to become the new spirit of Christmas.


Tomb Raider: Underworld
Lara Croft battles her way through yet another adventure, coming face to face with her arch-nemesis - herself. The pseudo-mysticism kicks up a notch as she battles her doppelganger for . . . Wait a minute, that was the last Tomb Raider game.