Gaming, Music, The Internet, Whatever….

Let’s get one thing clear from the start; I love Test Drive Unlimited 2. More so than the first one, which is saying something. Just the addition of another island was enough for me but it’s a better looking, far more “focused” game than the first one which was, at times, something of a sprawling mess.

However, there is one particular aspect of the sequel that is annoying me immensely.

No, it’s not the fact that you have to drive by a dealership, car wash etc to unlock it (mainly cause it gives you impetus to go out and find things, which given that there is so much more to do this time around, is a good thing)

No, it is not the fact that you have to find all the roads in Hawaii/Oahu again (ok, this is slightly annoying but understandable to a degree as unlocking all the roads would kill the progression somewhat)

No, it’s not the myriad of bugs and “oddities” that seem to litter the game. A game this massive is bound to have a few bugs in the system. And there are a couple in there, to say the least. I seem to have avoided some of the worst so far, thankfully.

No, the most annoying aspect of this sequel are the characters who all seem to be the most vacuous, hateful group of people I’ve encountered in a gme for a long time. Sorry, that’s unfair. They’re not vacuous and hateful. They’re smug, vacuous, annoying, cliched, one dimensional and hateful. That’s better!

And it doesn’t help either that every single one of them looks absolutely identical. It’s almost as if two people have populated the entire populations of Ibiza & Oahu themselves. Ok, maybe I’m being a bit harsh but when you decide to base the whole game round these 8 or so people, you would at least except some kind of plot or characterisation, otherwise what is the point?

I guess that leads onto another point about how every single game now MUST have a plot of some kind to somehow justify it, in much the same way as every single game a few years back MUST be a open world game, merely because that’s what everyone else is doing. If there is no justifiable reason for it to be in the game, then it shouldn’t be there. Or if it must be there, then put some effort into it.

Anyway, if you’re after a game to sink the best part of 300 hours into then you can’t go wrong with TDU2. Just skip every cutscene and turn down the character voices, ok?

Earlier this week, the UK shit rag/newspaper The Daily Star printed a “shocking” story about how Grand Theft Auto developers Rockstar North were going to base the next version of their incredibly popular series in the sleepy Northern England town of Rothbury, scene of the recent fatal stand off between Northumbria Police and Raoul Moat.

Expect of course it wasn’t. Someone at The Star had clearly been on the Something Awful or B3ta forums and decided that someone’s mock up was a real game and ran with the story, without first bothering to do anything important like fact check. The story was pulled from the website within hours of publication but not quickly enough for Rockstar Games’ lawyers to ask the Star for an apology.

What’s most interesting about the apology (link here) is the bit at the very bottom.

The Daily Star. A "news"paper, clearly?

If ever there was a more appropriate use of punctuation, then I’d like to see it.

This time of year E.g. the first nine months of the year are usually a pretty barren spell with regards gaming; the games industry has/had become so obsessed with mimicking the film industry that it believed that the only way that it could actually make any money was by releasing all it’s major games in one three month period. Of course, the film industry, to a certain degree, grew out of this a few years ago and it would seem that the games industry is slowly following suit.

Mainly in no small part to Modern Warfare 2. Predictions that it was going to sell “shitloads” proved to be accurate and most of the major games that were scheduled for launch late last year quickly decided that going up against Infinity Wards behemoth wasn’t for them. So instead we now have a wonderful situation where in the early stages of 2010, we have AAA games being released on a monthly basis (though why the American Automobile Association is doing releasing games I’ve no idea.

Two of them, Perfect Dark Arcade and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, were two of these games and I must admit that I am looking forward to them, particularly as both series hold a place in my heart.

Perfect Dark Arcade is a semi-remake of the N64 original and as you can see in the vid below, it finally lives up to some of the promise it showed 10 years ago. I played my original cartridge of it recently and lets say once the rose tinted spectacles came off, things weren’t as I remembered them.

I was looking forward to this before; Almost obscenely looking forward to this now. Arrives on Wednesday for a not at all obscene £7.

Next up is Metal Gear Solid : Peace Walker. Now my feelings on this were the complete opposite; the last PSP MGS (yes, it’s acronym central from here on in) didn’t inspire me at all, particularly when it came to controlling the camera. But this gameplay video looks like a hell of a lot of fun. It’s obvious that Kojima’s direction is helping to firm up the gameplay a lot. And that soundtrack? Want a copy of that on CD ASAP. Certainly makes a change from the endlessly looped 2 minute tracks that were in Portable Ops (another major annoyance I had with the game). So very much a want now from me.

Metal Gear Solid : Peace Walker is out late May, and hopefully in time for my birthday. Which would be nice.