Gwailofilms

I've been heading back to the old school 'cos I'm an old fool.

Spured on by a discussion about Goldeneye, I bought an N64 for the office (a whopping

This thread has prompted me to dig out some mighty fine WCW comp DVDs I have. I have a long flight tomorrow, so I'm ripping them to my various portable video devices for 10 hours of in-flight WCW.

iPhone/iPod Touch owners need to download "Shift". It's a really clever little platformer and only costs 59p. I'm hooked.

why pay to get it on the iPhone?

Because

 

1) 59p is nothing

 

2) I can play it during inevitable train delays during my commute to work

Sorry, re-reading my full post I sounded like a sarcastic twat, didn't actually mean it to come off that way. Just was more wondering why ye'd pay for it when you can play it online free regardless (and I'm sure you could take the flash file and transfer it to the iPhone normally and thus play it that way through the web browser, even if you don't connect online with it).

Equal apologies for treating you like a sarcastic twat. I wasn't actually aware it was an online Flash game; you've now ruined my working day. Thanks. The iPhone still has "issues" with Flash anyway.

In this .torrent culture, people have got too used to getting stuff for free. 59p for a really fun game with Christ knows how many levels is an absolute steal no matter what platform you play it on.

iPhone/iPod Touch owners need to download "Shift". It's a really clever little platformer and only costs 59p. I'm hooked.

why pay to get it on the iPhone?

Because

1) 59p is nothing

2) I can play it during inevitable train delays during my commute to work

Also nearing the end of Bioshock, which I'm enjoying a lot. Just passed the "would you kindly" twist.

 

That's the games biggest flaw. After that awesome twist you aren't near the end, it starts to drag for a little while after this.

 

Nah, It's biggest flaw is that the 'moral dilemma' surrounding the Little Sisters is about as sophisticated and interesting a block of wood. Be good, game harder. Be Bad, game easier.

I don't see the game as really being about the moral dilemma though. It's more about the power of suggestion and how it "makes" you do bad things by pretending they're for good reasons.

iPhone/iPod Touch owners need to download "Shift". It's a really clever little platformer and only costs 59p. I'm hooked.

Skool Daze was one of the most annoying games I've ever played. It was as hard as HTBACB.

 

Bonus points if you know/remember HTBACB on the speccy.

Had it on my old Amstrad. I was about ten and it was funny cos it was rude. The weird two-viewports-at-once-to-"replicate"-three-dimensions messed with my head.

Oh, and to jump on the bandwagon...

1) Street Fighter II Turbo (SNES) - I'll freely admit I suck at this, but I absolutely love it. I can't explain the lure, but I think it's the one Capcom got "right". SFII was too slow and felt limiting in terms of character selection and many of the SF games beyond this just went too far in terms of tweakage, but this is Street Fighter perfection for me.

2) WWF No Mercy (N64) - It was a toss-up between this and VPW2, but this wins out due to the variety of match modes, number of characters, tweakable variables and just plain being able to pull off a shooting star press from the top of a ladder set up in the ring onto an opponent on the floor. Eight years on and wrestling games still haven't managed to top this.

3) Fallout 3 (360) - My current drug of choice. Yes, it's flawed (why are those books floating above the shelves? Why is that body part floating at eye-level?), but it's massive, engrossing and easily the game of 2008. I'm 45 hours into my second play-through and still haven't started the main quest. If I was stuck on a desert island, I'd want a 360 and Fallout 3. Awesome.

4) Rock Band 2 (360) - Some games you have to be in the mood for, this I can just pick up and play. I'll probably never get onto "Hard" and there's no way I'll ever be able to play a real guitar, but every time I boot this up, I'm a rock star. Even better with a bassist, drummer and willing/drunk singer. The ability to import 95% of the RB1 tunes, plus the massive amount of DLC means it'll never get boring.

5) Perfect Dark (N64) - Sacrilege I know, but I prefer this to Goldeneye. I found that once I'd played PD with it's longer story, huge multiplayer and provision for two-handing any of the weapons, I rarely went back to Bond. Practising your multiplayer skillz against a whole ton of bots rocked too. Towards the end of my N64's life, when I had tired of all my other games, I still played this for many, many hours.

6) Portal (360) - How can you not love Portal? Brain-bending physics puzzles, a fantastic twist, the birth of a new classic video games character and that song. The sequel can't come fast enough.

7) Robocop (Amstrad) - My first computer was an Amstrad CPC 6128 and I loved this game to death. Great graphics, synthesised speech, cool music, the glitch in level seven which meant you'd occasionally fall into some weird underworld, three types of gameplay and "playing" an 18 certificate movie at age 8. Brilliant.

8) Tetris (Gameboy) - A mistake Nintendo repeated with the Wii: don't bundle your best game with your console! I have an original 1989 Gameboy and I still play this today.

9) Mario 64 (N64) - Nintendo perfected the 3D platformer with this game and everybody else is still trying to play catch-up. Gob-smacking at the time and still superb today.

10) GTA: Vice City (PS2) - I had nearly 40 PS2 games an this is the only one that makes the list. For me, the pinnacle of the 3D GTA generation. San Andreas and GTAIV are both great games, but VC is the perfect storm or characters, setting, action, music and feel. You mean I get to "be" Ray Liotta? Where do I sign?!

11) Virtua Cop 2 (Arcade) - There's only one way to play this and it's reason I've listed it; "Chow Yun-Fat Mode". OK, so it's not an official mode and it'll cost you two quid a pop, but next time you see one of these machines, give it a go. The premise is simple: play two-player mode by yourself with a gun in each hand. So much fun.

12) ActRaiser (SNES) - The SNES is probably my favourite console ever and home to so many amazing games. ActRaiser has no hope of making the official 50, but I have to list it. A fantastic convergence of genres (God game and side-scrolling platform slasher; imagine Sim City meets Golden Axe) in which both just "work", some beautiful sprite work and an amazing score.

13) Mario Kart (SNES) - One reason: all-night multiplayer Mario Kart parties 'round Craig's house. "He's got the red shell!"

14) Bomberman 2 (SNES) - See "Mario Kart", but with four players. A great game in its own right, but this is here more for the memories it evokes of cramming a shitload of friends into someone's living room and just using utter bastard tactics on one-another. Bomberman went downhill after this, but like GTA:VC, I consider this the peak of its respective franchise.

15) Royal Rumble (SNES) - Man, this got played to death. You got to play as cool wrestlers like Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels instead of idiots like Hulk Hogan, hit people with chairs, do top rope moves, tag teams, the Rumble. Get me a SNES, stat!

"More Than A Feeling" is the most perfect Guitar Hero song ever. See why, here.

 

Spoilered here for non-clickers:

 

<-- click on 'spoiler' to show/hide the spoiler

 

More Than a Feeling

by Kieron Gillen, 18 Apr 2006 1:00 pm

Filed under: kieron gillen, 2006 april 18, boston, can a game make you cry, control schemes, emotions and games, feature, guitar hero, harmonix, issue_41, kieron gillen, music game

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You hit an unexpected realization: Boston was probably one of the top ten videogame level designers of all time.

 

Problem being, they weren't aware they were designing a level. If you told them of this undeniable fact when they were doing it, Tom Scholz and his group of Massachusetts-based musos would have looked at you strangely before returning to the important business of recording double-tracked guitar solos and working out how to get the hand-clap machine working. They would have had no conception what a level designer was. One who designed levels? But levels of what? It was the mid-'70s, where conventions like "levels" were the far-off fancy of the loopiest of lunatics.

 

They had a pop career to take care of, and that they did. If you wanted to be factual, you'll note their debut album sold 17 million records - certainly enough to keep a man in plectrums for quite some time. If you want to be mean, you'd argue they were instrumental in the power ballad's creation, so they should be crushed with enormous rocks. If you want to give them a bit more credit, you'll note that with "More Than a Feeling," they invented marrying an insistent circular chord progression with a tiny-tiny-BIG-BIG-repeat! structure, which the Pixies cheerily stole for "Debaser," which Nirvana stole for "Smells Like Teen Spirit," which everyone else stole to invent '90s rock. And if you want to be me, you'll note their real import in history is designing the best level in Guitar Hero.

 

Fellow Massachusettsians Harmonix clearly understood what they had in Boston's design when they imported this piece of carefully crafted aural-terrain into the world of Guitar Hero. Some credit must go to the developers: While the level was clearly Boston's genius, the game design itself was Harmonix's. This small developer's aim is to "create new ways for non-musicians to experience the unique joy that comes from making music." It's a noble one. Guitar Hero is the closest they've come to achieving their goals.

 

It's easy to bracket Guitar Hero with other abstract party games in the PS2's armory - rest it alongside your Dance Dance Revolutions and Singstars (what we do in Europe instead of Harmonix's Karaoke Revolution), and snootily dismiss it as just a giggle. Guitar Hero's more than that. While Singstar and DDR sit slightly to one side from the main thrust of videogame design, Guitar Hero engages us with one of its secret magics. It probably has a special game designer name, but for the sake of our argument, we're going to call it the "input fallacy"; one, that's basically what it does; and two, it's got that sort of ring of polysyllabic seriousness which implies I know what I'm talking about, instead of just desperately bluffing.

 

Which always helps.

 

Games trick you into thinking you're doing something more difficult and interesting than you actually are. In Prince of Persia, you may just be pressing a single button, you're rewarded with a powerful leap from the lead character. The fallacy is your brain connects your action to the animation - that it was you that did that, thus you should feel the rush of reward. Your actions created that reaction. In a real way, many of the best games are based around this, and games which fail to make you feel as if your on-controller actions connect to your onscreen actions are dismissed out of hand. This is why - say - Dragon's Lair connected with gamers less than the similar period's Defender, despite the spectacular difference in the visuals. In Dragon's Lair, there was no real sense that you were controlling Dirk the Daring. In Defender, your slightest twitch was magnified spectacularly on screen. In one, you watch the hero. In the other, you are the hero.

 

It's this phenomenon around which Guitar Hero is based, and it's this which raises it above its peers. In DDR, there's no sense of your actions creating anything. The game merely judges your actions. DDR isn't about tricking you into thinking you're dancing - to actually succeed with DDR, you are dancing. There is no magic here, just you following orders. Similarly with Singstar and Karaoke Revolution: To do well in them isn't to be tricked into thinking you're a good singer - but it's to actually be a good singer. All the games may give you a little flash of the joy of performing with their feedback telling you how you're the greatest dancer or whatever, but that's a different thing from the flash of joy of performing the act itself.

 

Guitar Hero differs. Guitar Hero is about tricking you into thinking you're playing guitar. You press the buttons and strum with the flipper... and the appropriate noises appear. The power of Harmonix's system is how - even at the basic levels - they've judged the correct number of inputs to make you feel as if what you're doing has some connection to the music that's emitting from the speakers. That by waggling your fingers in a certain way, that riff screams out. You stop waggling your fingers... it stops. You're playing the music.

 

You know you're not. But you certainly feel like it.

 

What separates Guitar Hero from Harmonix's other offerings is its choice of peripheral. Playing on a controller creates a level of abstraction through the input method. Noises are appearing, but in a way which you know bears no relation to how they're really produced. With that plastic guitar hanging around your neck, that leap of faith is a lot easier to make. And this is where Guitar Hero achieves Harmonix's stated aim - to give a little of the absolute thrill of creating noise, feeling connected to this wave of pure sensation. You want to know what it feels like to play guitar? It's like the state of zen-tranquility in motion chased by surfers, samurai and shoot-em up addicts. It's a little like realizing you're the breath of God. Guitar Hero takes you into the neighborhood and shows you the view.

 

And as my ex put it after blasting through The Queens of the Stone Age's "No One Knows," "I deny anyone can be in the same room as Guitar Hero and be unhappy."

 

It's not a game. It's a pharmacological miracle.

 

And, returning to the point in question, Boston are level designers par excellence because their song shows off Harmonix's mechanics to their best effects. Other songs do various aspects of the performance better. Others are much more challenging. But none manage to express, in the topography of their guitar line, the varied and absolute pleasures of playing Guitar Hero.

 

It's more than just Guitar Hero, though. In its simplified - distilled - echo of real guitar playing, it teaches you a little of why guitarists play certain songs. Before playing Guitar Hero, I had something of an old punk's puritanical disgust for over-technical guitar players destroying records with their unwanted virtuosity. Now, I can see why the pleasure overwhelms them and they want to do so. The breathless rush after you fall off the end of a guitar solo into a hard, extended note makes you see this... it's addictive. So, they're addicted to it and can't help themselves. I don't really blame them. It's a feeling worth chasing.

 

It also teaches you that the best, the very best guitar-led songs manage to hit these sensations while still serving the song, because there's more than the act of guitar playing being taught. It's also engages with your understanding of the song itself. Guitar Hero, in some ways, is an active form of music criticism, opening the songs' guts to a layperson so you can see how it's working, like Natural Scientists trying to understand the universe's design in a daisy. For example, I know "Ziggy Stardust" is a great song, but by the game walking you through Mick Ronson's lyrical and witty guitar line, I understand it all the better: How it flicks between the hard and the soft and the counterpoint to Bowie's lines; how it's really good.

 

Even artists I've got less time for are shown in a better light. Take Franz Ferdinand's reheated, post-punk art-pop, represented by "Take Me Out." Coming from an entirely different tradition to the majority of the songs Guitar Hero offers, its oblique rhythms provide off-kilter challenge, and playing them shows you how imaginative, how ballsy, and how, through odd ingredients, its momentum is created. Playing the Chili's cover of Stevie's Wonder's "Higher Ground" and Sum 41's "Fat Lip" have led to similar grudging respect, against my previously developed critical (and terribly snobby) faculties.

 

Going further, and showing it isn't just that Guitar Hero makes all songs great, the array of B-level filler mostly just sits dead on the disc, taking up space. Guitar Hero's explanation only works when there's something worth explaining. Flipping it around, obviously enough, songs you already love have their greatness re-affirmed. "Ace of Spades" is nothing less than the sound of the universe's atria slamming shut during the world's sexiest coronary, and captured perfectly here while (on higher difficulties) sitting on the absolute immaculate boundary being too hard to play and impossibly satisfying when you do. Equally, the Queens of the Stone Age's "No One Knows," whose dense rhythms can stun the unwary fledgling even on Easy.

 

"More Than a Feeling" isn't that hard - only on Expert does it start to really take your fingers apart, one knuckle at a time. This is part of its majesty as a level, gently walking you through everything great about Guitar Hero. Delicate movements of the fingers across the plastic fret board during its idyllic opening, before it releases the Searing Guitar Sound

why on the wwe wrestlemania anthologies dvd's have jimmy snuka's and demolition entrance been overdubbed?

Because the licenses for their music have run out and Vince doesn't want to pay to renew them.

I gave up. There are more than enough good games out there deserving of my time rather than push through this just for the experience. I got the Gravity Gun, and it wasn't nearly as much fun as the Portal Gun.

I can see you point. I'm done with my Orange Box, so I'm going to trade it in and just download the XBLA version of Portal as it's the only one I'm probably going to go back to. Doesn't mean I'm not interested in Half-Life: Episode III when it appears.

I started Bioshock last night. Holy heck, what an intro. What an incredible setting and superb atmosphere... the way the lights blink on as you approach an area, the cackling of splicers from the next room... I think I'm going to like this one.

Jesus loves me, this I know/For the Bible tells me so...

Hearing that from the next room still gives me the wiggins.

. I'm glad I played this and Bioshock a few months apart, as the period setting is a little familiar.

On the surface, there's definitely some similarities, but, as you know, once you get in they become very different, yet equally absorbing games.

Guess I should reply on topic. I borrowed Orange Box recently and finally managed to play and complete Portal. It's as much hilarious fun as I'd hoped. There's a superb mechanic in place, and GlaDOS is simply brilliant. I recommend it to anyone.

Portal is an incredibly fun game. Reaching the "twist" blew my mind first time out and then it just gets better. If you're a Rock Band-er, you can download "Still Alive" for free too.

I then moved on to Half Life 2, which is sadly showing it's age. The opening segments bounce between nothing at all and relentless pursuit, not really letting you get into the game. I'm still playing for now but I might give up.

I saw it through to the end, only because I hadn't played it first time around (what with owning a shit PC and all). I can see why such a fuss was made about it at the time - there are some great moment and details - , but it screams "10-year-old PC game" on the 360. The mid-pursuit level loading is just bullshit on a console in 2009.

I have Dead Space and Bioshock on the shelf awaiting playing... I'm leaning towards opening Bioshock as everything I've read about it indicates I'll love it.

I was three-quarters of the way through replaying Bioshock (to get the "good" ending to sit alongside my "bad" ending), when I got back into Fallout 3 again.

I've got all the DLC and started with a new character. I took her to do "Anchorage" first, then "The Pitt" and now I'm just wandering the map, discovering the locations and taking on random missions as I stumble upon them. I'm Level 17, have clocked up 30 hours (the time it took me to finish the main story last time) and haven't even started "Following in his Footsteps" yet.

Fallout 3 is starting to look like the best value

I'm reading the Cornette book and in it he talks about an angle, taped on February 14th, 1987, where he fireballs Ron Garvin. Does anybody what date that aired, so I can track it down?

It's McG. It was always going to suck balls.

<-- click on 'spoiler' to show/hide the spoiler

We got sucked into a black hole and instead of being destroyed like we should have been we magically survived and appeared in the past... for some reason.

 

Uh, yeah, okay.

 

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Dumber things have happened in sci-fi, in regular "earth-based" movies, in the Trek franchise itself and, indeed, in the movie called

<-- click on 'spoiler' to show/hide the spoiler

The Black Hole

 

[close spoiler]

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On another note, I'm really glad to see this movie keeps gathering fans. It's my favourite movie so far this year.

My friend cannot watch Ghostbusters 2. Every time he has tried, he has received devastatingly bad news before the end.

Not the worst thing to have happen - the ending is easily the weakest part. Still very intriguing though, what was the severity of the news like? As in, is it a humorous thing s/he mentions in passing or is it a case of "Never speak of that film"?

 

I am nosey.

The news has ranged from "sorry, my cat's just shit in your shoe" to "deaths of friends and family" bad. The movie is cursed for him and he won't go near it.

Jumping into the "Alien Cubed" discussion, grab a copy of the book "The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made" for the full lowdown of the "wooden planet/monastery" versions.

In other news I saw Ghostbusters 2 again the other day - so much funnier than I remembered.

My friend cannot watch that film. Every time he has tried, he has received devastatingly bad news before the end.

From Dusk Till Dawn - Would've loved to have seen this and not known anything about it beforehand. Still one of my favourite films for memorable lines, including this peach:

 

"Did they look like psychos? Is that what they looked like? They were vampires. Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, I don't give a fuck how crazy they are!"

"Plant yourself in that seat"

"What are you going to do to me?"

"I said plant yourself... Plants don't talk..."

I love that movie. Still possibly George Clooney's best role.

Benjamin Button also belongs to the worst list.

A retread of Forrest Gump didn't appeal to me, so I have managed to sidestep said cinematic turd.

I really enjoyed Karl Urbans performance aswell, he had some great lines and I liked what he did with Bones. I have to go see this again, god bless the unlimited card.

If anyone deserves big things out of this movie, it's Karl Urban.

Star Trek is my pick for movie of the year so far, but I've not seen Coraline yet.

Toss up between Wolverine & Watchmen for biggest turkey.

I just got back from the studio and with 20 mins to prepare to review the film..

Explain. Use words. Short ones...

...and the word "artichoke".

Just watched Star Trek and I really liked it. Plently of Star Trek fans will sulk and create because things are different and don't follow the TV show timelines,

Those people can shut their faces because it is made very clear why it doesn't follow the TV show/previous movies' continuity.

I'm seeing it again tonight on the IMAX Enormotron.

the effects are leagues ahead of the FX in the first X Men movie (as they should be, considering a nine year gap), is that movie badly made too?

You're doing this just to piss me off now, aren't you?

Which bits are better than the first X-Men?

The bits on the motorbike that look like 1940s rear projection?

The bits where his CG claws wobble off their tracking markers on his hand?

Patrick Stewart's de-aged, badly tracked, poorly comped face?

The "claws-in-the-tarmac" motorcycle 180 where what appears to be a still frame of Hugh Jackman judders around into position?

The "My First Greenscreen" shots of the kids running for the helicopter, where everything is in the wrong proportion, there's no perspective and you can see the green fringing around everything?

I've made some films that include VFX shots. These films will never be seen by anything like the audience that, sadly, will see Wolverine, but I would embarrassed to put work as bad as any of the above on the screen.

and as for me saying 'it was well made', i was talking from a technical standpoint, it's a slick piece of movie making, i don't think anyone can deny that.

I just did. If the FX are bad, then it's not well made.

If you bought, say, a pair of shoes online and one had a hole in, would you say they were "well made"?

i don't think anyone could say that Wolverine was badly made.

Some fucking awful FX work says otherwise.

porn of the dead, I don't know even know where to begin with this, all i can say is damn

 

ps

the jist of it

female zombie gets boned then she bites of the guys tally whacker, female gets drilled by 2 male zombies then ripped apart, doctor plays with a dead females privates she moves and he bones her then she eats his testies, its one of the weirdest films i have ever seen.

And you were expecting..?