I promised I would do more to promote the site and share that traffic with other bloggers, and here’s the first step of that process: the Carnival of Video Game Bloggers!

In case you’re a little unsure, a blog carnival is a collection of posts from different authors on the same topic. Think of it as a magazine – there’s a deadline and an editor, and everyone who wants to get involved submits their articles. The carnival is then published online with links to the articles, and participants read, write and share their thoughts with each other. It’s really a very communal occasion, and always turns up lots of interesting reading material.

The Carnival of Video Game Bloggers starts on February the 19th, right here at The Collected Writings of James Newton. For more information, and to submit your articles or offer to be a host, I recommend using the carnival’s homepage, which you can find here.

I hope you submit your article and come back to enjoy the carnival on the 19th of February!

Not, as you might be thinking, an excuse to play games non-stop until your eyes bleed but rather a social networking website mainly for people who play games. Think of it as a MySpace with even worse social skills, if you like.

Anyway, I actually think it’s a pretty good site. There are pages for games, developers, publishers and of course players, and anyone can contribute to game pages, creating them and adding content as they wish. Of course, if you’re just there to make friends there’s lots of provision for that too, with groups and friends list, just like any decent site.

I created a group for game bloggers called – in a very Jamesian twist of ingenuity – Game Bloggers. I thought it would be a good opportunity for other game bloggers to exchange links and build traffic, so if you’re a GGE member you can find the link here. If you aren’t a member but it sounds interesting, leave a comment (or email me) and I’ll be happy to send you an invite!

I’ll also be working harder on building links here and increasing my traffic, which seems to have dropped off a little this year. If you have a website you’d like me to publicise, let me know and we’ll exchange links.

Incidentally, today I started and finished my second soundtrack in two months for a documentary called “The Future of Farming.” Mixing rustic, lightly lilting acoustic guitar rhythms with gentle spacial synths it’s another string to my bow – scoring a documentary is hard, but I think I’ve done a good job. Expect samples in the coming days!

Originally starting life as Project Berkley – creator Yu Suzuki named it after the University of the same name because he liked it – Shenmue was one of the very first “go anywhere, do anything” kind of games that Sega termed Fully Reactive Eyes Entertainment.

An ambitious project that quickly became the most expensive video game of all time – possibly introducing the current trend for enormous budget games, but that’s another story – Shenmue tells the story of a Japanese teenager named Ryo Hazuki, who grows up in 1980s Japan.

Returning to his home and dojo one December day, he sees his father killed by a man wearing green Chinese robes. The man attacks Ryo, then leaves with a green mirror made of mysterious green stone. Waking up several days later, Ryo resolves to discover what happened that day and avenge his father’s death.

Shenmue is an awesome experience because it creates an involving and engrossing world through detail. You can pick up pens, notepads, turn lights on and off, collect toys, drink cans of pop (and win a prize!), train to improve your martial arts skills and so much more I can’t remember. Sections of Dobuita (the nearby town to Ryo’s home) were modelled on Dobuita St in Japan, and when you complete the game it’s possible to play through the game using that day’s real weather from the area. That’s how cool it is.

Part of the joy of playing Shenmue is that it’s unintentionally quite a funny game. The voice acting isn’t of the highest standard and although the script is wide – every time you have to fulfil a new objective you get new dialogue, which happens quite a lot in a game this size – you’ll hear certain phrases over and over again. In fact, one of my favourite ways to amuse myself is to use Shenmue dialogue in real life. Here are a few of my tips:

• When asking a friend about a previous event, ask “what do you remember about that day?” If this fails to bring a response, prompt them with “that day the snow turned to rain.” This always helps.

• If someone asks what you’re looking for, tell them you are looking for sailors, or a man named Charlie. He has a tattoo on his arm.

• Whenever drinking, always finish with “oo-ahh… good” and look at the can, bottle or cup. This will never get old, even if you do it every time you have a drink over the course of six years or so.

Shenmue is vast and unfortunately unfinished. Shenmue II is available on the Xbox but I don’t think it’s quite as good as the first one as it doesn’t have the same feeling of being able to explore a small area; it’s rather larger, and the environment is less appealing to me as it’s set in built-up Hong Kong, rather than rural Japan. Still, it’s worth getting if you find it – 2 for £20 from Gamestation as well, you’ll be pleased to know.

What do you love about Shenmue?

Wii Play is the second-highest selling Wii game in Europe, and I think I’m right in saying it’s almost entirely due to the bundled Wii Remote. Why pay £32.99 for a controller from unscrupulous retailers when for £34.99 you get the remote and a game? Does that mean the game is only worth two quid, though? Let’s take a look.

Although my time with Wii Play has only been very brief so far, I’ve played each of the nine minigames enough to be able to tell which are decent and which aren’t. My favourite so far by a country mile is cow-racing game “Charge“.

Spinning the controller onto its side, you tilt it forward to accelerate, steer it left and right and lift it to jump. It’s an incredibly simple system that actually feels remarkably comfortable and satisfying, and although the main crux of this game simply involves bashing into scarecrows and avoiding hurdles, you can still see the huge potential for the control system. In fact, it’s so good that I’m now convinced Sonic and the Secret Rings, which uses a very similar if not identical control system, will be a very good game. I hope so, anyway.

Next up in my Wii Play top tips is Billiards. Although it lacks any form of tournament or ladder play options, the mechanics are pleasing enough to convince you to have another go. You use the Remote to point at the part of the ball you want to hit – top for top spin etc. – then hold B to cue, pull back the Remote, push forward and make contact with the ball to send it spinning away, hopefully knocking another ball into a pocket. It’s a simple but effective system that eschews the traditional console snooker setup of power bars and timing, instead going for actual physical movement, and although it’s not wholly authentic – you can’t screw off to one side during cueing, for example – it is enough to leave you inspired by how well a full recreation of snooker or pool would play.

Shooting Range is an homage to probably the most famous light gun game ever, Duck Hunt on the NES. Various kinds of targets appear – bullseyes, clay pigeons and even ducks – and you shoot as many as possible, or compete against another player to get them first. It gets pretty fast but, to be honest, there doesn’t seem much fun to be had here; although the obvious comparisons to Flash games have been made, you’re effectively just clicking on targets, so it feels a little less than engaging.

The next game – Tanks – is a great idea unfortunately wasted. Using the D-pad or nunchuk to drive a tank around a battlefield, you have to destroy the enemy’s tanks with mines or shells. It works fine, but the main problem is that, in two player mode, you have to co-operate – you’re not supposed to blow each other up. This sort of game is perfect for multiplayer competition, yet there’s no support for it at all. When Playing Tanks made me want to play the similar yet infinitely superior DeathTank on the Saturn, and if a game makes you want to play something similar that’s ten years old it’s not doing its job properly. With some proper multiplayer support, extra weapons and varied terrain, this would be an absolute cracker of a game. As it is, as with many of the Wii Sports and Wii Play games, it’s a missed opportunity.

Two of the games – Pose Mii and Find Mii – are so simple as to make them more or less pointless, to be honest. Pose Mii teaches you how to twist and tilt the Remote to rotate characters, but there are a hundred other ways players could have learnt that mechanic. Why not go for a “steady hands” type game? This mechanic has so many uses – imagine twisting the Remote to crack a safe, waiting for the click from the controller’s mini-speaker – that it’s a real shame they chose to place this game in.

Find Mii is practically “Where’s Wally?” (or “Where’s Waldo?”), with you trying to spot a particular character in a group of others. The levels vary from having to spot a character who’s fast asleep to matching twins or triplets, but there’s precious little fun here, sadly. In essence it’s similar to the Super Mario DS minigame “Wanted”, but for some reason it never feels as frantic a search, and so much of the enjoyment is drained from it.

Fishing is pretty good, and in two-player mode when one of you gets a bite the other player can steal it from you, if their reactions are quicker. I’m not sure how I feel about this part of the gameplay – on the one hand it keeps things fair by not favouring one player’s rod with all the fish, but on the other hand it seems wrong for reasons I can’t quite place.

The two remaining games – Laser Hockey and Table Tennis – are both largely based on Pong. Table Tennis just requires you to move the bat from side-to-side, but in Laser Hockey you can rotate the bat as well as move it around the table. It’s a limited idea that has instant playability, but you’ve seen it all before a thousand times.

You’ve probably got a complete picture of Wii Play by now. The games are instant but limited, and many of them lack a sense of fun or play, instead simply being uninspired ideas to teach you a controller movement. Only Charge feels like a completely thought-through game, and although you could ask for more courses and so on the game stands well on its own, which is more than can be said for most of the other games here.

Despite the overall negative tone of this review, it’s still worth buying Wii Play for the Remote, and Charge should give you at least a fiver’s worth of entertainment. Unfortunately the game on its own is largely worthless; everyone at Nintendo must be chortling on this fact as they see the game riding high in the sales charts.

I’m listening to Keep on Running, from Music of My Mind by Stevie Wonder

As long-time readers will be aware, I’m a fan of the hugely talented developers Ubisoft who, with great games like XIII and Beyond Good and Evil, were probably my favourite software house of the last generation, even above Sega and Nintendo. Now, with Wii all over us, how does their first major original IP since BG&E stack up?

Hold my hand(le)

Using your Wii Remote as both your gun and sword, the game takes you through all the controls in its first level. Far from being the safe start many would expect, it’s actually quite a dangerous level for the novice; I’ve seen many deaths due to the on-screen tips obscuring the level, and the pointer waving everywhere.

Having played my fair share of first-person shooters, I found the controls pretty intuitive to start with, and they definitely got me more excited in the game. Swinging your nunchuk to pump the shotgun or knock over a table for cover brings an extra element of involvement to the game, but the mixture of presentation styles did alienate me a little. Combining in-game animation and voice overs with some freeze-frame montage/collage shots is an odd choice, and doesn’t work anywhere near as well as in Ubisoft’s previous and similar FPS title, XIII, which was adapted from a comic in the first place. The art style in-game doesn’t transfer well to a comic style, and although the voiceover is consistent throughout – unlike BG&E – the whole visual presentation is a bit of a mish-mash. Whether this was a conscious decision designed to mimic the mixture of Eastern and Western styles – a consistent theme throughout the game – is open for debate, but personally it doesn’t work.

On that topic, actually, the menu screens are absolutely abominable. You use the cursor to drag icons over a display panel, which is hardly intuitive, especially when the icons are gaudy neon with Japanese subtitles. I can read them anyway, but it still seems counter-intuitive. Again, whether this is intentionally to draw the gamer into a bewildering culture is up for debate, but at this stage of the game, is it really a good idea anyway?

Take aim…

Once you get into the game, the controls are much more intuitive than the ones that got you there. Once locked onto any enemy with A, you push the remote forward to zoom in, which seems pretty gimmicky, even by current Wii standards. One worry I had about the Wii, and shooting games in particular, was that the sights and reticules would be very twitchy, fidgeting all over the screen, but in fact they’re very docile things, sticking in one place even if you’ve a shaky hand.

The sword fighting doesn’t offer quite the same level of precision, although I doubt I’d notice if it did. That’s not to say it’s boring – it’s very exciting, the music lifting up and drawing you to the edge of your seat to weave around your opponent and slash at their exposed areas. At the battle’s end you can show mercy or deliver a final blood-letting blow, and those who know me will be absolutely baffled, I’m sure, to know that I choose the merciful option every time. I can’t explain it.

Is it any good?

I’ll hold my hands up at this point and say that, yes, Red Steel has come in for quite a lot of criticism already. To be fair, with the exception of Nintendo’s Wii Sports and Wii Play it’s the only launch game created just for Wii, so of course there are going to be problems. The graphics aren’t stunning, the art direction is a bit of a mish-mash and there are some sizeable obstacles to be overcome early on for new players.

As an Ubisoft fan I recognise quite a few elements from their very impressive FPS XIII, such as the action icons and some level and weapon designs. I wouldn’t say it lived up to XIII or Beyond Good and Evil yet, but as the first third-party IP developed and released exclusively on Wii it’s an interesting start.

It’s not an absolute must-have, and the confirmed sequel will improve on its flaws I’m sure, but it happily sits alongside Zelda in my fledgling collection.

I’m listening to Let’s Get It On [*], from Let’s Get It On [Bonus Tracks] by Marvin Gaye

I should really have posted these on Friday or over the weekend, but I was working all the time, which sadly involved telling lots of people they wouldn’t be able to get a Wii for Christmas. Not everyone took it well – “merry f***ing Christmas!” still rings in my ears! – but I had a valid pre-order and I deserve a Wii as much as anyone else.

Obviously there’s a lot to get through, so today I’ll focus on what you get in the box: one Wii console and Wii Sports. For the rest of the week I’ll go into Wii Play, Red Steel, Wii titbits and Internet shenanigans and, of course, Zelda: Twilight Princess.

So, what do I think of it?

I’ll start with the machine itself. It’s beautiful, a gleaming white and blue design that’s extremely sleek and compact. The remote has a lovely weight to it, and even though some of the buttons are a little fiddly at first, I doubt you’ll need to bash them in many games, not at first anyway.

The presentation of all the software, channels and so forth is in keeping with the exterior design: very simple and refined. In terms of audio-visual styling it reminds me of the Dreamcast’s browser, which was similarly cut-back on buttons and the like. It looks very nice, and the channels system works well, even though there are only four channels at the moment. The others are:

• Forecast Channel – check the weather anywhere in the world. Out December 20th.
• Internet Channel – a free web-browser designed just for Wii. Coming December 23rd.
• News Channel – spin the globe to read RSS news. Out on January 27th next year.

Leave a message

One thing that Nintendo are keen on is that the Wii should be the centrepiece of the family home, but rather than go for a media centre-type route as Microsoft and Sony have done, they’ve decided to add functionality designed to bring them together, rather than give them each something to enjoy individually. Key to this family hub system is the Wii Messageboard.

Essentially a virtual pinboard, this lets you leave messages for other Wii users in y our house, but as it’s integral to the system it’s possible for games to access them automatically. Wii Sports posts your top scores and fitness age (more on that later), and in future Animal Crossing will use it as a replacement for its in-game board.

There’s more, though. By registering a friend’s Wii number – a sixteen-digit code identifying their machine – you can send them messages, Mii characters and even digital photos from your SD cards. Similarly, add any regular email address and you and the owner can exchange emails, creating a family addressbook and message centre. The downside of course is that it’s one messageboard for everybody, but then in an age when we all have multiple email addresses anyway it’s not really such a problem!

I was initially confused about how to send SMS messages to a mobile phone, but it actually turns out that you send emails to phones, not texts. I was quite disappointed, I must say, but I can understand why Wiis sending free texts wouldn’t be the best business sense for Nintendo. The Wii site offers little explanation, sticking to the SMS story, but perhaps that’ll be available in a future update, as at the moment it just lets you register an email address.
Let the games begin!

Okay, let’s actually delve into one of the games. The obvious starting point is Wii Sports, since it comes with the Wii. Though little more than five tech demos, it’s still immensely playable and addictive.

All Sports

I should say at this point that the learning curve on the games is brilliant. The first time you play you get a few practice shots/punches as it takes you through the controls onscreen, then you’re matched against an opponent of a low skill level. As you progress through the game you gain skill points, so your opponents increase in skill. I hit Pro status in Baseball today, but I’m still struggling against splitters. Please post tips for dealing with splitters!

Instead of choosing an established sportsman or a cheap lookalike, you use the Mii characters you create in the Mii Channel as your character, and it logs your skill level. Playing Baseball with an all-star team of Miis from your friends is great – so far Ed has let me down with his fielding, but Sid is a great player. They also turn up in the background of your Bowling game, and I think along the sidelines in Tennis. It’s a simple thing, but it’s very cool to play alongside your mates. Anyway, into the games themselves!

Tennis

My favourite! This is a doubles game where you control the racquet, not the player, who moves automatically. You simply swing the controller at the right time to return the ball; like Pong, but without the movement. Dead easy.

EXCEPT the real clever bit lies in the choice of shots. You can hit lob shots by twisting your wrist over, or slice beautifully satisfying backhand shots with a twisting/cutting action. Seeing them clip the top of the net and win the point is genuinely exciting.

So far the net game seems a little underdeveloped, as it seems to focus on baseline hitters, but I’ve found a tip that works is to hit the ball early and twist your racquet to “cut” the ball across court, rather than balloon it in the air. It takes practice, but when it works your opponent will find it very difficult to reply.

Another tip would be to be aware of low-hanging light fittings when serving…

Baseball

My next favourite, although also the most responsible for tennis elbow – it’s hard not to pop your elbow out of its joint when going for the big home runs!

The actual game is very simple. Swing the bat at the right time to connect with the pitch and knock it as far as possible for a home run. The fielding is automatic, and they run, dive and jump about to try to nab you out. Essentially you have to hit it past the bases and onto the main field to get anywhere, as otherwise they’re far too quick.

Of course, everyone wants to hit a home run, and when you do it’s a great feeling – the rumble and “THWACK!” from the controller is fantastic, and you watch the ball sail into the stand and receive fireworks. One observant touch is that if the ball lands in the crowd it disappears, but if it hits the stairs it bounces off them and rolls down!

Pitching has more options, with curve, fast, screwballs and splitters all available, as well as different targets. How fast you swing your arm alters the pace of the ball – so far about 150kmh seems as fast as I can go without some form of mechanical assistance! Also, if anyone has any hints for dealing with splitters, I’d be most grateful!

Golf

I haven’t played much Golf yet, because although I can see it being quite an addictive little game it takes a little too long to get a round in. That said, the controls are great – simply get into stance, hold A and swing to adjust your power. Hit it too hard and it’ll screw off to one side, but just right and you should see it trickle into the cup!

It’s actually very similar to Golf on the NES, with its simple map, pared-down club selection and putting style. It would be nice to see a few simple tournaments or other options, but the same can be said of all these games; they’re not intended as time-stealers but fun introductions. I can’t help but wish for more though! I would put smart money on Wii Sports 2 being announced before too long though, especially as apparently they wanted to cram more sports into this one but didn’t have time. I’m not sure which universally-appealing sports would work well, though – basketball, fishing, ice hockey? Either way, an update – even a patch – with a few extra options would go down great!

Bowling

There isn’t a great deal to say about Bowling, to be honest. You move left or right, alter the angle of throw, swing your arm and the ball goes sailing down the lane. It’s possible to add spin, but I haven’t really figured out how yet, although I have managed to chuck the ball into a neighbour’s lane! With a few friends it’s great fun as you’d expect, but not really recommended for solo fliers.

Boxing

I’ve saved this for last as I’m not 100% sure about it, to tell the truth. On the one hand, dodging and punching is fantastic exercise and a lot of fun, but it lacks the feeling of control that makes the others so satisfying. Jabs work fine, but trying to pull off bodyshots or uppercuts is inaccurate, leaving you feeling that swinging your arms wildly is your best chance of success. When you do land a good punch the action slows down, and when you get rocked by one the screen wobbles and looks a bit weird, which is cool.

Train for Fitness!

Not only does Wii Sports contain these five versions of the real sports, it also offers fifteen minigames based on them to help you improve your game in all manner of ways. These are structured in such a way to start off with the basics and move onto accuracy and strategy, and they work great.

Tennis builds from simply returning the ball into the opponent’s court to hitting it through a moving orange bar, and the final challenge is to knock the ball against circular targets above the net. The learning curve on each is pitched just about right, and this is where the “I’ll do better next time“ addiction really kicks in. The satisfaction when I received my first gold medal was awesome!

Of the other dozen games, my favourites are:

• Power Throws – a bowling game, where each set of pins gains a row at the back, until you have over 90 pins in a bunch! Getting a strike doubles the score for that lane, but knocking over that many pins is tough! Another very addictive minigame.
• Hitting Home Runs – baseball of course, this challenges you to hit ten home runs, and then tots up the total distance you whacked. As your final score comes up, it’s honestly very hard not to click “try again”

The others are all mostly very good too, with the first two golf ones lacking a little in the way of fun. Dodging the balls in boxing is great fun!

Apart from using these games to train for the actual sports, the game pilfers from the success of Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training, using three of them to calculate Speed, Stamina and Balance, resulting in a “Fitness Age” between 20 and 80 or 90. One good thing about this is the way the game posts your results to the Wii Messageboard, resulting in “I see you shaved forty years off your age today!”-type conversations. It’s a good attempt at single-player lastability, but again is best as a shared experience.

Overall thoughts

Wii is clearly a machine that aspires to be great, but risks being dismissed as a novelty. Nobody I know who has played one has come away thinking ill of it; most of my friends here aren’t particularly into games, but seeing them get up and box or swing a racquet has brought so much enjoyment that I really think Nintendo has got it right with this one.

Wii Sports is a great introduction to the controller – much better than Wii Play, if truth be told – but with a little extra provision for long-term play it would be even better. Posting high scores and results to the Wii Messageboard is a great idea, but a proper in-game leaderboard, a few trophies and belts to be won and the like would just kick it up another notch. However, it’s impossible to aim too much criticism at such a charming, enjoyable and free collection of games.

I’ll be doing more big updates this week, focusing on Wii Play, Red Steel, Twilight Princess and more details on the console itself. Thanks for reading, and come back soon!

PS At 2,056 words, this is easily my longest entry ever!

I remember writing this! I loved the original Animal Crossing, though not as much as I love the DS one, and I wanted to write a diary. So I did! Obviously this is out of date by now, but it’s still something I really enjoyed writing. This is just a post to introduce you to my characters and friends – the rest of the diaries will be moved into a separate page in a few days, so they won’t be on the main page. Enjoy!

It’s been almost two months since I visited Eville, and it certainly shows inside my house. The cockroaches were about, but that’s okay, because squishing them is one of my favourite things to do! I found twelve June tickets which are now wasted – shame that, as I could’ve won something good. I never learn, though – I think I’ve only ever entered the raffle once. I’m not much of a gambler, you see.

Somebody’s camping… it’s Peanut! She told me to start camping. What a stupid idea – why should I get into a tent when my house is the next acre over? It’s not like I can play Donkey Kong in a tent. I smiled and nodded whilst she told me about some camping thing, then went to pick more weeds. This place sure is dirty.

Murphy shouted at me when I went to say hi. Baddie. He says I’ve only been away for seven weeks, so there’s no point getting nostalgic. I suppose he has a point!

I went to see Bea, one of my best friends in Eville. First she told me she doesn’t like the warm weather, and wants to feel cold shivers running up and down her spine, but then she told me that she always feels warm on sunny days (even without a coat), and that sunny days are the best. Which is it, Bea? I shut the door behind me and felt very confused outside. Still scratching my head, I made my way over to Blaire’s house. She wasn’t in – probably out gossiping somewhere! I caught a grasshopper and went to see Tad.

He didn’t have much to say, just telling me about Katrina (guess who’s coming to town), so I wandered over to the Wishing Well and, surprise surprise, found Blaire running around. She’s always gossiping at the Wishing Well, so for research purposes only I thought I’d ask and see if there was any gossip I’d missed out on. She did tell me she likes calendars and notebooks, so she can mark the days I come to see her, then toddled off, whistling a jolly little tune to herself. That’s about the first time I’ve ever known Blaire be that happy!

Katrina’s coming in two days – I’d better get my fortune told. I wonder what it’ll be..? Maybe I’ll be rich, or popular, or clumsy!

I met a new citizen called Sandy – she appears to be some kind of ostrich-type creature! Cool! In fact… I think she might be a road runner – she called me “speedy”, and looks a bit Road Runner-esque. Pure cool.

I popped in to see Elmer, one of my bestest buddies, and he greeted me with his cheery laugh as always. Then he went on to tell me about this scary story where he found something disgusting under his furniture, but he managed to scare himself more than he scared me, and ended up stomping around in a grump! I couldn’t cheer him up, so I decided to just leave him to it.

I don’t recognise the town tune any more. Did our new citizen Becca change it whilst she was popping through? Possibly. Maybe it’s a grower.

Got stung by bees. Nuts. I was a little scared of talking to Boots in case he laughed at my injury, but he was very understanding and told me to just “chalk it up to experience”, so I did. Then he told me to forget about getting his camera back (I already had, whoops!), and gave me a glare. I took that as a hint and trundled off to the post office. There was nothing there.

Having tidied up the town a bit, and made sure none of my friends had forgotten who I am… argh, I forgot about Teddy!

I raced across town to find Teddy’s house by the sea, even ignoring the fruit and weeds lain tantalisingly by my feet. I got to his door, completely out of puff, and knocked to find… he wasn’t in! Teddyyy!

Yey, I found him! He was in a bunch of trees. Now, what would a bear be doing in the woods..? He wasn’t very happy to see me – he told me off for shaking trees, and told me I deserved to get stung… Teddy

I was so sad I didn’t even want to get my new Donkey Kong Jr. game. How could Teddy be angry at me, and say such nasty things? I decided to lock myself in my house and go to sleep. I guess not everybody missed me as much as I missed them…

I’ve played some weird games in my time, but this trumps them all, no doubt about it.

You play a seemingly twelve-year old girl named Rami (that’s her in the picture), who wears a bunny suit. She runs and jumps like most game characters. She flies a green dragon named Spot who breathes fire. Not too bad so far.

One level involves you flying through space shooting gearstick-tops with Kings’ heads on, koala bears clinging to trees and rocket-propelled postboxes. The boss is a robotic alien in a metal bowl of some description which steals cows and turns them into steaks, which it throws at you, saying “beef is on sale every Tuesday! Madam, how about beef stew for dinner?”.

The final boss encounter takes place in the insides of an ancient Japanese beast called Apocalypse, and is a translucent heart which spews Japanese words – karaoke, shogun, ninja and so forth.

I forgot about the sumo wrestler egg-thing, which spins around on a pencil until it vomits purple liquid.

There’s more, but they’re the weirdest bits, and the game’s all the better for them.

Top marks go to top bloke Damien McFerran of www.meanmachinesmag.co.uk for selling me the game. You beautiful man, you.

What’s the strangest game you’ve ever played? Did you like it? Should games be more weird?

I like Sonic. I like Sonic a lot.

Sonic on the Master System still ranks (in my eyes) as one of the most beautiful and enjoyable games ever created. I played it again last week and wanted to cry. The same goes for Sonic Chaos, Sonic 3 and maybe Sonic 2, on a good day.

The problem is that, since Sonic 3, no Sonic games have really affected me in the same way. I love Sonic Adventure but it doesn’t make me feel loved in return. The original games were games that loved to be played – they were tight, directed games which balanced exploration with high speed but above all gave you perfect control and set pieces which make you grin like this:

A lot of people think that the Sonic games have lost their way since the 2D days – whereas Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine seem to be perfect transitions from two to three dimensions, Sonic hasn’t fared quite so well. I don’t know why. I have my suspicions. Anyway, this is supposed to be about Sonic Heroes.

I want to like it.

I really, really do. If it wasn’t a Sonic game I wouldn’t have given it the time of day, let alone persevered with it as I have. It frustrates and delights in roughly equal measures, but it often leaves a sour taste in my mouth and has me switching it off in frustration. Just as you think you’re getting the hang of it, and you’re enjoying the speed, scenery and level of exploration, the game hits you with an annoying drop, jump or group of enemies and sends you back to repeat the last four minutes.

Some levels are very clever.

Frog Forest uses rainfall to grow leaf platforms, vines to grind on and mushrooms to bounce on. The mushrooms even use the sound effect – “blawk!” – from Mushroom Hill Zone in Sonic and Knuckles – I approve of that.

It’s all going very well until you reach the end, and the camera shows what’s behind you, instead of where you should be going. I blundered into the sea a few times before working out I had to hit the spring, at which point a classic 3D Sonic setpiece takes place – you have to escape from a giant crocodile in much the same way as the killer whale/rolling boulder/GUN truck etc. escape scenes from Sonic Adventures 1 & 2. This time though, instead of running, you have to jump from swinging vine to swinging vine, which basically means getting into a rhythm of tapping A and hoping you don’t fall to your doom. It isn’t much fun.

Some levels are wonderful.

Seaside Hill combines the familiar chequered land pattern from the original Sonic with the Emerald Coast Zone from Sonic Adventure. It’s fast and bright and vibrant and everything a Sonic game should be. I think later levels rely too much on grinding to get you from A to B, and ask you to make jumps without being able to see what’s on the way. That’s not good.

This is all going a bit NGJ, and I apologise. I want to like Sonic Heroes. No, I want to love Sonic Heroes, but I can’t seem to do it. Every time it opens up to me, with fast, smooth level design and ideas that make you smile, it sucker punches me into dying without it being my fault.

Bosses are a perfect example – the last one I did lasted over five minutes without any restart points, and is basically just reams and reams of enemies. If you get killed by the last one you have to defeat them all over again. Not good.

I still haven’t made my mind up.

Normally with my games it’s very black and white whether I like them or not, but I think my love for Sonic is obscuring my (normally very accurate) game-divining-o-vision. Maybe I’ll have to spend more time with it to work it out.

Note: I posted this on my old blog a while ago, but with the new Sonic the Hedgehog game released next week I’m willing to bet this is still relevant, particularly discussion of its faults.

I haven’t fired it up since I wrote that post last year, which pretty much damns Sonic Heroes to Sega Hell.

After much hassling from me, my good friend Jim Parker finally set up a blog the other day, and the first post – about the nature of play – is a cracker. Click here to read it.

Jim and I clearly see very much eye-to-eye on this issue – I would much rather play a game that gives me the chance to do something I can’t do elsewhere. Escapism into a simulated reality very rarely interests me, with the possible exception of Pro Evolution Soccer.

I enjoyed the whole article, but this section stands out to me:

I’d prefer an ultra un-realistic game to be quite honest, a game where I can fly, a game where I can do super human feats, a game with no gravity, no rules and no limits.

Although such a game would be near-impossible to design and play, the message is clear: play is our chance to take on new personae, escape the limitations of our human world and embark on new adventures, exploring fantasy worlds and our imaginations. To play is not to simulate situations we find or avoid in our own lives, but to give ourselves experiences otherwise impossible.

There’s obviously a lot of money to be made from games that simulate reality as closely as possible, but it’s a futile endeavour if you ask me. “Reality games” could end up with the same reputation as “reality TV”, another media attempting to capture our everyday lives for entertainment’s sake that often falls flat.

As a future games programmer, Jim has the chance to shape what games we’ll be playing in years to come. It sounds to me like he’s got exactly the right idea not only about what we play but, crucially, why. Let’s hope developers around the world agree, and that we start to see that reflected in their games.

Related links:

Jim Parker – game blog.