I can't keep up with Blogs can I?

Yeah...  sorry about the week hiatus. Trying to keep up with the damn blog and keep getting busy or procrastinate! So... What have my readers missed out on...

New Batman Arkham game

Oh... boy, looks like I'm going to avoid this game like the plague. Surprisingly though it's not being developed by Rocksteady, rather it's being done by Warner Bros. RockSteady have mentioned that some of their staff are working with Warner Bros to help out with the development. But I already know that this game with have another anticlimactic ending like the other two...  So moving on...

Another Disney Game HD Remake!?

Oh you betcha! This time Disney has teamed up with Sega to recreate Castle of Illusion for Current generation consoles. I hope this turns out to be as good as the original. Though to be honest looking at the pictures they do look a little bit "too different" unlike the faithful looking Duck Tails.

That XCom game getting re-branded!

Yeah, remember a while back when 2K Marin announced a First Person XCom game based in 1950s America? Well if you haven't noticed the game's been delayed many, many times... Not to mention the unless amount of XCom fans hating the game's FPS gameplay. But it was announced that the game's going to be re-branded as "The Bureau", and it'll now have nothing to do with the XCom franchise. Personally I think that's a shame, I loved the video they showed back in 2010 with it's fifties Americana style. I mean come on! When's the last time you played an FPS set in fifties American suburbia!? At least the game have some life left in it, even if the game might not be a part of the XCom franchise any more.

Star Fox Art Book available to look at online?!

Back in the nineties, Nintendo released an awesome art book-stroke-manga on Star Fox. Drawn by Star Fox's original artist, Benimaru Itoh, it's an awesome book that features a Manga Comic, and graphic illustrations for Arwings and many other vehicles in the game. The catch was back then it was only released in Japan, and only in short print. Website GlitterBerri has a translation of the Manga portion of the book here. Whilst the whole book can be seen, but in Japanese, at StarFox-online.

Guns of Icarus Online Expansion on Kickstarter!?

Whoo...  I think that's about it for today! Though I will end this blog with mentioning that my favourite online game; Guns of Icarus Online, is getting a Kickstarter for it's "Adventure Mode" expansion pack that puts an MMORPG element into the team based Air ship game. The Kickstarter has already beaten it's first goal of $60K, and it will soon beat it's new target of $100K! So if you want to add adventure to your Guns of Icarus Online game, go and help them out with a $30 pledge! :)

Return to the Review: Gunstar Super Heroes on the GameBoy Advance

I wrote this for IGN's reader review section back in 2005. I was actually excited to play this game, as I loved the first game on the MegaDrive. Turned out that what was advertised as a sequel to the game, would turn into a so-so remake with a dusting of GBA quality 2D graphics minus the awesome gun combos from the original. It's an all-right game, but the original is superior! Which you can now download on the Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360.

In the US and Japan it's called Super Heroes, and in Europe it's called Future Heroes.

I own both the Megadrive/Genesis game and now the new Gunstar Future Heroes (Gunstar Super Heroes in the US). Playing this game has brought back some good times, however in some cases it's not as I though it would be. First off I'll give some Pros about this game so that I don't sound like I'm biased...

First off, there are some added extras levels that haven’t been seen in the old game. The first level is Earth, although the old game was meant to be based on Earth anyway, it felt like something new, as the rest of the game I felt were just copies of the old Megadrive game. New stuff on the GBA game also includes levels where you're on top on an aircraft shooting enemies; crazy little mini games were you collect chicks that felt very much like the classic Sega arcade game "Flicky". And you fly in a helicopter in a top-down arcade shooter style with controls similar to Xevious where you can drop bombs to enemy ground vehicles. 

Another thing I found that was cool in this game was that you can play as either Red or Blue independently, unlike the Megadrive game where Red was always Player 1 and Blue was always Player 2. This gives people the opportunity to play as both characters. However despite the game being several decades after the old game, all the characters still have the same name from the old game, would've been nice to see something new.

And now onto the bad things...

Regrettably the game really isn't to much of a sequel, it's more of a remake. The Game itself pretty much has the same levels, characters and bosses from the previous game (all except the first level). This is a same because I really wanted to see something new, after playing the first level with the huge mecha, it just seemed to play in the same way as the old game did. Onto bosses again, if people remember, the second mid-boss of the Pyramid level, Braavoo Man, was generated out of polygons on the Megadrive game, OK so they were all cubes, but for a Megadrive game that was impressive. However in the GBA game, even though the intro uses some polygons, Braavoo Man is just a collection of 2D sprites, Yet again is a shame because I was expecting Braavoo man to use the same 3D polygons he did back on the Megadrive game.

The old game had the facility to mix and match weapons, for example you can Mix a force beam with a chaser or a Chaser with a blaze beam. You can also mix two of the same beam to give yourself a really powerful weapon. However in the new game, it doesn't exist. Depending on who you play as, you only have the ability to swap weapons, you can't mix them. If you play as Red you get Force, Blaze and Chase, and if you play as Blue you get Lighting, Chase and Blaze. Again, as I played the old game before, I'm disappointed about this because I had loads of fun experimenting with the mixed weapons in the old game.

On to my conclusion...

The game is very fun to play, however if you played and loved the old game, you may be disappointed. However some aspects of the game still makes it fun to play, and even if it is a remake, I still love Gunstar. It would've been nice to see new stuff in the game. If you haven’t got the old game or haven’t played the old game, you really should get this game so you get a taste of the Gunstar game. It's just that if you're a hardcore Gunstar fan, don't expect fireworks to go off.

Bright or Dull? Well lets says it's a fluorescent bulb at best...

Unique Games: Bubble Ghost

There are plenty of great games on the Game Boy. Zelda Link's Awaking, Donkey Kong, Tetris, Dr. Mario. The list goes on and on, but there's one little incredibly underrated game that hardly anyone has heard of. And that's Bubble Ghost!

Bubble Ghost is a maze game, but unlike most maze games where you're confined to the walls of a maze or labyrinth. In Bubble Ghost, you play as a ghost who can actually go through walls, however there's a bubble floating about, and the little ghost wants to leave this old house with his bubble in tact. Issue is, there's plenty of stuff there to burst your precious little bubble.

Be it spikes, flames, hard dryers, or even the heat emitted from candles can burst your little bubble. The idea is simple. You move from room to room, blowing your bubble away from any objects until you get to the final room whereby you can escape from the house with your bubble. The game has a total of 35 levels, and the GameBoy version has a great sound track. I had this game for quite some time and never thought about the game's roots. I always thought that as it was released by Pony Canyon, a Japanese Software and media company, I thought it came from the east. But I was amazed to find out that it was originally developed closer to home...

Surprisingly, it was originally released on the Commodore 64 in France and later ported to the Atari ST and DOS in the US and Canada. What's more interesting about this version is the fact that the ghost sprite looks different. Clearly the GameBoy version, had it's design of the sprite not just so it would appeal to the Japanese audience, but so that it could fit on the GameBoy screens lower screen resolution so that it wouldn't be too big on-screen.

The PC-DOS version of the game is now abandon-ware. Meaning that you can download the game without the fear of being accused of pirating. As Christophe Andrcani, the designer and programmer of the original game, doesn't own the rights to it any more. Nor do Accolade, they went bust in 1999, and didn't take the publishing rights of the game either.

Not only is the PC-DOS game abandon-ware, but there's a remake of the GameBoy version done by Vision Software and Brothers Soft. You can download this right here.

Before I go though, here's the music to the GameBoy game that brings back some good memories of gaming's past!

So... Zork...

Yeah... Zork...

One thing I never though I'd get into, text adventures. I bought the Zork Anthology on GOG. Featuring, Zork 1, 2, 3, Zero, Beyond, and PlanetFall. Now yes you can technically get Zork 1 through 3 for free on Infocom's website, but the version on GOG is guaranteed to work straight out of the box (well in this case download) on your brand spanking sparkling Windows 7 (or 8, if you're a lunatic) machine. But what's also cool about the GOG version is the content that they throw with it such as maps, manuals, history articles about the game and it's lore. There's a lot more in this package than just dumping Zork DAT files into a Frotz emulator.

So, whilst I was on a podcast with good ol' IndieSeoul. I found a copy of Zork 1 for the Japanese Sega Saturn. First I thought, "A text adventure that fit on a 1.4 mega byte floppy on a 700 mega byte CD? What a waste!" But soon I discovered that even when the game is still a text adventure, it has a pretty cool looking FMV intro with music. and whilst playing the game, you have a monochrome image in the background of the scenery in the game behind the game's text.

Interestingness, the game plays using the controller, but you string together pre-set verbs and nouns together to make a command using up and down on the directional pad. Mind you it's all in Japanese, so I have no real idea what it says, though I can recognise the house and the forest in the beginning of the game.

In the last few days though, I had an odd hankering to play this Zork game, it was sitting on my hard drive doing a lot of nothing, so I booted it up and went on an adventure!

The famous first steps in Zork 1

There was just something that took me on Zork that I couldn't describe, maybe it was the mystery about why I'm in front of this house, or why I'm in this world, but I have to do something, so try everything in the confines of typing commands on the screen. So if there's a door you can open, you'd type "open door", or if there's a troll to fight you'd type "attack troll". It's a pretty cool experience, especially if you're like me who went to University, did IT as a major, and learnt commands on Linux terminals. It took me back to my Uni days, despite the fact I went to university 23 years after the release of Zork 1.

One thing I found about this text adventure, is that I could totally imagine what's happening in the game. It's writing is very "direct". Unlike my writing, where I like to waffle a lot, yeah I'm honest with myself, Zork 1 get's the story directly to you with the least amount of text possible without feeling like you've missed out on anything.

Zork 1 running on my Nexus 7!

But one thing I do enjoy is how I know have Zork 1 running on almost everything! I have it on my PC through DOSBox. On my Raspberry Pi using Frotz. and on my tablet and smart phone with jFrotz. Now I wish there's an English version of the Sega Saturn game to add to my "What can I put Zork on to" list. Maybe there's a way to hack it onto the Wii, 360 and PS3, heh!

So yeah, I'm now going to see if I can beat Zork 1 and get onto Zork 2! :D

Fezing it up on other platforms and Telltale Poker Night 2!

Fez on other platforms.

Yup, one of my favourite Xbox Live arcade games, Fez, is going to get released on Steam, PS3, PSVita, Ouya, and iOS! It's so nice to see this awesome game get out of Microsoft's exclusivity.

Oh yes, I freaking love this 2.5D puzzle platformer! I love the fact that it's getting some love for the Ouya too! I guess this is going to be another one of those games I have to purchase multiple times like I do with Super Mario Bros!

 Click here to check out Fez on 360 in the meanwhile before it releases on other consoles.

TellTale Poker Night 2.

What's the best Poker game you can get? Poker Night from Telltale was awesome with it's wit and humour. But yesterday they announce that there's going to be a sequel! A Poker game sequel!? How does that work? Different personalities that's what!

Sam from Sam and Max, Brock from Venture Bros, Ash from The Evil Dead, Claptrap from Borderlines, and to put the cherry on the top of the cake, GLADos from Portal is the game's dealer! Heck yeah! It was announced yesterday, mind you it was the First of April, but TellTale did announce that this is real and no joke!

 Click here to play the First Poker Night game :D

Watch an Ouya play a game live on TwitchTV!

Yup, someone is playing a game on the Android based open platform console, Ouya.

Watch it live right now!


Watch live video from jamescoote on www.twitch.tv

Why I hate the Batman Arkham games!

In 2009, RockSteady Studios released a very hyped up Batman game called Batman Arkham Asylum, that then had a sequel in 2011 called Batman Arkham City. These games got a lot of hype and news, and they were pretty good games for the most part...

So why do you hate them Ian? Well, both of these games are the digital equivalent of watching a great theatrical play, you've been watching it for a good two hours and it's getting near the end, and for whatever reason the lead actor forgets his line and whilst stumbling on his words he trips over something, knocking over a prop that lands on someone, but there's a thin metallic object on top of said prop that falls over and beheads the actor that was standing next to the actor who's crushed under the prop; the actor who's beheaded body stumbles toward the audience and a massive haemorrhage squirts at the audience who freak out and try to flee the theatre in sheer fear as they run over each other, and of course at least one person dies from that. That's what happens in this game, they have a great beginning, a great middle, and then it turns into a terrible end where you wonder why it had to suck so badly...  Let me explain this...

WARNING: SPOILERS WILL BE USED HERE, SO IF YOU'RE AN ANTI SPOILER SORT OF PERSON, CLOSE THE DAMN WINDOW NOW!

Batman Arkham Asylum

The biggest issue with the ending of Arkham Asylum is that you "fight" Joker. However you don't need to be a huge comic boffin to know that Joker is a weed compared to the likes of Batman. So how do end the game? Do you use Bruce Wayne's excellent detective skills to find where the Joker is hiding? Nope. Do you chase a flocking Joker around the Asylum? Nope. Instead you do actually have a fist fight with the Joker. "But how is that even fair if he hasn't got a gun Ian?", well here's RockSteady's approach towards balancing a fight between the Joker and Batman. Batman visits Bane in the game who's turned into a psychopath  because Ivy has injected Bane with a special venom that contains a virus called "Titan" that manipulates the human body to turn anyone into a "hulking" beast. See what I did there, "Hulk", you know, DC... Marvel... Yes I'm a huge nerd get over it. But what happens with this Titan virus? Oh yeah! Joker uses it on himself!

I'm not kidding here, you fight a muscular oversized Joker so that a fist fight between him and the dark knight somewhat balanced...  Well, clearly more in his favour, But that hook shot of yours and his ludicrously long nails put you in a better spot, as you pull him down with the hook shot, causing Titan Joker to fall on his hands, with his long nails stuck in the wooden floor as you pummel his face in. And that's it. Again, you don't need to be a comic book buff to understand that this wouldn't ever happen in the comics or the films, rather Joker would hide as he sends his goons to shoot you, or he would pull a gun on Batman. But no, traditionally in games, the lead protagonist has to beat up the antagonist, so RockSteady had to make a Bane sized Joker for Batman to fight... Thanks for the disappointment guys...

Batman Arkham City

I was dumb enough to buy the first game at full price with an incredibly lack-luster ending, so I was dumb enough to buy the sequel thinking and believing that RockSteady would improve the ending. But I was very wrong, so wrong it might possibly be worse than the first game. How so? Like this...

The plot of Arkham City is that after Joker was taken away from the fight in the first game, the Titan virus is slowly killing him, and now he's managed to turn all of Gotham City into a villian's playground as he holds it hostage unless Batman finds him a cure, which a certain Doctor Freeze has been making. However Joker being the total bastard he is infects Batman with the titan virus with a syringe, and there's only one cure. Batman being smart about this gets hold of Doctor Freezes cure and uses it on himself to prevent dying, but now with a dying Joker in the midst, who will Batman fight as the final boss in this game? Twoface? The Riddler? Ivy? Penguin? Cat Woman? Oh no no, let's use a better character that everyone knows...!

...Clayface

Yeah...  Everyone knows Clayface right? He's been used in EVERY FILM AND EVERY TV SHOW. Notice how I'm being sarcastic here...? The biggest problem with Arkham City is that not only do you fight this guy twice, but after defeating him the second time you think you have another hour or two left before you reach the game's climax. Oh no, you beat the game, and it's mega anti-climatic! this is the video game equivalent of watching a pretty good film before the film abruptly stops and you're told to leave as the film equipment isn't working. What's sad about that statement was that actually happened to me once and had to go back to the cinema the next day to watch said film that stopped on me. So yeah, you beat Clayface, who I ended up reading up that in the comics that he's the 73rd greatest Batman villain ever voted by fans...  [sarcasm] Great... that's an achievement right? [/sarcasm]. What's makes things worse is that as Batman cured himself with the only titan cure in existence, the Joker dies, and it's pretty damn bad, it's like Super Man without Lex Luthor, or Mario without Bowser; Batman and Joker are a match made in heaven despite their sheer hatred for each other. When you think Batman, you can only think of Joker as being his ultimate rival. Think of it like Wily Coyote if he actually caught Roadrunner? Oh wait, Seth MacFarlane made a joke about this...

OK, sure Batman could deal with any one of his bazillion rivals in the next game. Maybe Joker will return from the dead as a zombie or something! I mean come on, almost anything game, TV and or film related now has zombies in it right? Why not the Joker, they have done it to the Marvel heroes at least. It's bound to happen...

God damnit!