Gaming notes (charlesr)

[charlesr]

I've never liked blogs.

But now I think I know why.

Random people on the internet rambling isn't for me. However, reading the blogs on here by people that have been around for a while, I find myself interested in what you've all got to say. I don't know you properly, but there's a sense of familiarity there that makes what you've got to say more important to me. Weird eh?

Anyway, in the spirit of things, I'll try my own ramblings. If my spiel hasn't run out by the time Neil adds the proper blog code to the forum, then I'll keep going. If it has, then at least I tried.

[Dogg Thang]

Well, since you've brought it up, Charles, is it okay if I ask what the thinking behind the blogs is? I mean, if people have something to say, why can't they just post it?

I guess I thought when the call went out that it was going to be guided or the blogs would follow a certain set pattern to justify their existence or something. Rather than ramblings.

[briareos_kerensky]

The blogs here are just a temporary solution, they will be upoaded somewhere out of this forum and will be accessible to anyone visiting the site without registering (I think), so that they will be able to lure in or scare away possible forum submitters. That's they way I see it, maybe it's just a way to ride this moment's wave and feature blogs to increase traffic site.

[charlesr]

Bit of both I think. John's pushing the show on this one.

It's so we can integrate the extra content on to the main site. Due to the nature of our review process (which perhaps I'll do a separate post on some time), it's very hard work for me to keeping the content flowing regularly, so I tend to upload things in waves. However, blogs, by their nature are "take them as they come" - people don't expect excellent grammar and pacing - in fact they expect the opposite. A more chatty nature. So they can be uploaded automatically thus adding more content to the site without more workload for the team whilst at the same time giving forumites a stage of their own - I was surprised at the number of people that asked if they could blog officially - perhaps I'm behind the times though. As I said, I've never seen the attraction of blogs. But then again, my mobile phone bill is £3/month, the phone does calls and texts and my slippers are wearing out fast.

[eastyy]

- people don't expect excellent grammar and pacing - in fact they expect the opposite.

lol perhaps i should do some then

i like reading blogs i must say

[charlesr]

Finishing games

A quick catch up on events so far this year:

I've been aiming to play games properly. This means, if they are good, I need to "finish" them, in whatever way that means.

I bought a 360 for Forza 2, but I'm still only 60% through - but the good news is that I'm still playing it. I didn't help myself by choosing to play through on Champion Mode, but it makes for epic races. As does staying with mildly upgraded cars rather than instant winners. Sure, it has its fair share of problems, mainly repetition, but the core of the game is solid.

ICO: For me, finishing this meant playing through it once. I'll probably never get time to go back, but I'm so glad I did it.

Further back in the year, a fair few of us played Gradius V. For me, finishing it would have been seeing the end on one credit. This soon changed to just seeing the end It's pretty hard. But what a glorious experience. And so cheap.

More recently along came a surprise 360 demo: Skate. After 15 mins with the demo (about 10 mins than I normally spend on demos), I was pressing "add to preorder" on VG+. It was easily the most effective demo I'd ever played. I then sat back down and played the demo. A lot. When the full game arrived, it truely clicked. 1000G achievement points and exclusive play for a couple of weeks - Game Of The Year for me so far. But even though I've got all the achievements, it feels unfinished, because every time I go sidewalk surfing, I find new areas I've not been to before and new ways to style a spot. Fantastic. More ramble on Skate later I think. But it made me decide to get a skateboard for Christmas. I may not take to it, but I need to give it a go before I get too old.

After that, I moved on to Gears of War coop. I've not tried the single player before so I was quite excited. I'm about 2/3 way through now and it has definitely lived up to expectations. Not exceeded them, but the hype was pretty big. Some lovely set pieces and the teamwork needed for quick coop progress is fairly well designed. It's very grey though Now, here's the thing: with Skate, I was compelled to complete the achievements because the majority made loads of sense and were challenging e.g. win 6 in a row online, or learn all the tricks. But in Gears I find they just occur as I'm playing. e.g. complete stage 2 on normal, do loads of perfect reloads etc. Maybe it's the type of game, but it doesn't compel me to seek them all out. And then there's the same achievements but on a higher difficulty level. e.g. complete stage 2 on hard. So that's weird isn't it? In Gears of War, the game gets harder by selecting a difficulty level which alters the game. Whereas Skate gets harder without altering the game - you just have to get better at chaining and manuals and grinds. Wouldn't it be great if the "hard" levels on FPS style games (I count Gears of War here) were completely new areas? So the terrain/level design is harder rather than just the enemy AI. It would certainly compel more people to play the harder stuff. Whereas, I'll be "finished" with Gears of War once I've played it through once on coop.

So, bringing us up to present day: I've been enjoying Silent Hill 2. I'll be finished with that when I see the end credits. Even though there are multiple endings, I've just not got time to see them by playing the game randomly many times and hoping I get a different one (youtube will sort me out I hope). James is a right thicko though.... "There is a hole. It's dark and you can't see the bottom. Do you jump in? Yes or No?" Insanity.

Once I've finished that I was going to move on to Halo 3 which I've not tried yet, but my friends have "finished" it now. They played through once on coop and have now moved on to Call of Duty 4. Which leaves me trying to decide if I should just give Halo3 a miss. I tried the Beta and thought although it was nice in HD, I didn't get anything more from it than Halo2 (enjoyed the online a lot but wasn't terribly good at it). And I could trade it in against CoD. Decisions. Finished before I even started. Not good.

In the background I've got some handheld action on the go. I'm still trying to nail Championship Lode Runner on the DS. Damn it's hard. Here's the review. And I'm playing through Guru Logic Champ. Again... I tried it in the micro the other day, but the shoulder buttons aren't comfortable for extended play and since that's mostly what you use, it works much better on the SP. But I've just had some new games arrive which are tearing me away from finishing those. All on GBA: King of Swing / Kuru Kuru Kururin / Happy Penachu. £20 delivered from Play-Asia. Now that's bargain gaming. Kuru Kuru is in the Micro now It looks like the sort of game that I'll be trying to finish without mistakes. Let's see how I get on eh?

Finishing games has made my gaming year vastly more satisfying than previous ones where I just flitted from half finished game to half finished game. It means stopping buying new games all the time, but it was well worth it and I recommend giving it a try.

[charlesr]

The ntsc-uk review process. Just in case anyone is interested.

1) Writer submits 1st draft
2) Other writers provide constructive criticism, which can get quite heated
3) Writer agrees or justifies and provides further drafts
4) Other writers polled for a score based on what they think the text sounds like (not what they think of the game themselves). Editor has final say
5) Banner (and sometimes vid) created
6) Final draft sent for proofing
7) Published

It's a lengthy process but ensures consistency and quality as much as is possible when constrained by one person's opinion.

[ItsThere]

Nice - its good to hear I'm not the only one who is worried about 'finishing' games properly at the moment!

Also thats some serious editing on the review process! Does that mean everyone was in on the 6/10 for MP3 and were there any heated debates?

[charlesr]

Yeah, there were some heated debates about that one. Let's not let it spill over in here though. There are differences of opinion amongst the writers about a lot of games, so it keeps everyone on their toes.

[charlesr]

Thought for the day:

Anyone played the original Donkey Kong recently? I fired it up at lunchtime (mame) and it goes to show that games really were harder back then I felt like a complete noob.

[JP]

I booted up the first Wipeout on from the PSN a couple of weeks back and I really can't remember it being that difficult before!!

I think the older games needed to be more difficult though, there would probably only be about 20 minutes of game in Donkey Kong if they made it easier.

Also, our age makes everything seem more difficult now!

[charlesr]

Can you use bigger font please? I can't quite make out what you said there.

[chopemon]

When you say feedback is given about a review before it is published, does that mean other writers chime in with their views on the game or on the writing style and grammar?

With reviews do you take the view that they are an individual's view on the game or do you try to present the NTSC-UK 'official' view, i.e. the reviews are consistent with the overall view of the site?

This isn't a leading question or anything. It's just that one of my favourite areas of discussion at the moment is game reviews and how broken the entire process is for publications and large web sites and how stupid numbers are and how people react to them. I'm interested in how a site like this deals with review scores.

Maybe I should blog about it...

[John Beaulieu]

When you say feedback is given about a review before it is published, does that mean other writers chime in with their views on the game or on the writing style and grammar?

All staff members can comment on the review text, whether they agree or disagree with certain points, whether some point(s) need adding to the review or taking away, and of course the writing style and grammar - though the final two points are normally picked up when the review goes into the 'proofing' phase of our process.

Then everyone joins in the score discussion ... this stage of the process can take a while, but the aim isn't to say what score each individual member of staff thinks the game should be, but the score that the text reads as. There is nothing worse than reading through a review and then the score totally going against the opinions formed within the text.

Finally, to answer your point about who's view the review is ... the body of the review, the text and pro's/con's is the opinion of the writer, with the full backing of the site behind it.

[JP]

Can you use bigger font please? I can't quite make out what you said there.

That proves my point exactly!!!

For almost two whole minutes my 34 year old brain didn't know what the hell was going on there!

I think years of hard drinking, hard drugs and even harder women is finally beginning to take it's toll on my ageing mind & body!