funny you should mention that, it's out this week!

I’m sorry, that title was a lie – these aren’t FAQs they are just Qs. Qs that you guys asked me recently on our Formspring page, so I’ve picked some of the best and decided to answer them here, a little like SentUAMessage from Xbox Live except none of the questions involve Call Of Duty or whatever conveniently happens to be this week’s Xbox Live Arcade release. Big thanks to everybody who sent them in (even the bolt question), it was actually quite fun to answer them; they are all good questions and, for me, one of the best things about games is talking about games intelligently with other gamers; the proper gamers – not the 12 year old kids with gamertags like “xxx BeA5T K1LLER xxx” that send messages to Pointyhead, and the other one, that go “wenz teh next cod out coz i wanna be playin it innit”.  When you eventually reach the bottom of the article feel free to carry on discussing and debating in the comments or over on our forums.

Oh and while we are talking about questions and yakking about games, a few times a week over on our Twitter we play Reply&ReTweet in which we set a question for the day. You guys reply to it and we retweet some of the best answers. Regardless of if we retweet your response on the day, all the replies go into the archive for all to see.  There’s a link to it at the top of the page.  So… enough pimping of our social networks, lets get on with it.

What is your favourite music to play games to?

Honestly, I normally just stick to what ever audio the game has.  Developers must spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on the audio design for a game, each and every note timed to be played at a set moment in the game or designed to make you feel a certain way about what’s happening on screen. I’m not going to mess with that; I like getting wrapped up in games, and playing Dead Space with the Kings of Leon or some other popular music band the kids like these days playing over the top is just going to destroy the whole “Oh shit what was that? What was that?? ARGHHHHHH!!” feeling that you get.

inside the helmet he's making a face like this :S

That said, there are some games that have a truly awful soundtrack – mainly racers.  I think the only two occasions where I have actually put music on my Xbox was back when Burnout Paradise came out; that gets painful after a few hours, so I put together my own soundtrack featuring Status Quo and the Beach Boys.  The other was when Dead Rising came out, I put Down With The Sickness by Richard Cheese on, just for a giggle. There’s a crap saying that you get taught should you ever be unfortunate enough to work in electronic retail “sound is more than half the picture”, but it is true and couldn’t be more so with games; you can hear the guy behind you, you know which side somebody’s going to overtake you on and you just feel the atmosphere of the game more. The lines between your living room and the underwater world of Rapture become blurry and for those few hours you can be Spartan 117 or who ever you want to be.  If you’re a gamer I’d recommend getting yourself a 5.1 system, even if it’s a cheap one, it’ll be better than what’s built into your TV.

Hey!

:D

Ok now, that’s not a question for a start but you’re going to get a response anyway. Have you noticed how the smiley, when turned into picture form automatically by things like MSN messenger, forum message boards or the software that runs GamingLives never fully conveys the awesomeness of the . The only time I’ve ever seen it correctly put across in full awesomeness is in the picture to the left. Another thing that bugs me is trying to send somebody a on Xbox, and the PlayStation is such a pain too, why is it not mapped to a button? Even on a chatpad for the Xbox controller it’s a pain in the arse.

Do you stock 4.38 diameter bolts?

You ever write something on the internet that you wish you hadn’t? In answer to your question, no we don’t… but your question has oddly just reminded me of something. In the first Bungie ViDoc for Halo Reach there is a shot about four minutes in that starts off with the bolt and then zooms out to reveal what is either a section of the single player game or a multiplayer map, “Yeah? So what? Big deal”. Well we gamers take stuff like that for granted now but a few years ago something like that would have been impossible. Even though we don’t see it, that bolt head will most likely have something written on it too but you’d only ever see it if you got up close and zoomed in. That is how much detail the really good game developers like Bungie put into their games and they do it for us, just to make the world we are involved in that little more believable.

What’s your personal favourite gaming death of a character ever?

Ohh that’s a good one, I’ll give you few answers to this if that’s ok? Lara Croft in the PlayStation 1 Tomb Raiders for a start; there was something oddly satisfying about falling off a high ledge or shorting a jump and hearing her scream and then the crack as she hit the floor. It made you wince a little and go “Awwwww”, then you remembered you were playing it on the PlayStation and you hadn’t used a save crystal for ages and then you’d go “Ohhhhh”.

The first gaming death I ever truly felt was when Aeris got stabbed in Final Fantasy VII, I remember just looking at my brother in shock. What just happened? That doesn’t happen in games? I liked her and she had all my good cure magic.

Why... just... why?

Most recently was Mass Effect 2, there are a few ways that this scene can play out in the game so its not really a spoiler but Kelly Chambers died. I watched her die. I liked Kelly. She told me when I had messages, and if anybody wanted to talk to me. I actually screamed when it happened then I took a moment and it occurred to me “Gah! The auto save!” I jumped across the room and turned the Xbox off and I tried again. No joy. She died every time. This was the first time I think a character died as a result of my decisions, the decision in question was the one to go mining for ore I didn’t need before saving my crew. I thought “Oh I’d better stock up before I leave, I’m bound to need some”. How wrong was I?

The Companion Cube from Portal also deserves a nod. I was determined not to throw her into the fire; I must have spent twenty minutes trying to work out how to get her out safely. Then GladOS’ comment after you do it resulted in an under-my-breath “Bitch” – it really did make me feel bad for a while.

If you could pick any game ever designed thus far, and put yourself at the helm of the development process, what would it be?

Let us tell you how this will make you feel

If there is one person that shouldn’t ever be in charge of the development of a game its me, as I’d ruin it with explosions and tits. Commander Shepard would wear a boob tube all the way through Mass Effect (my Shepard is a lady), Halo 3 would have featured a level where you have to fight off ten Scarabs at the same time using a grav hammer and every decision you make in Fable 3 would result in a sex scene. As much as I would love to get my name in the credits on a game, truth is I’d rather be the one to play them when they are finished. I don’t want to know what’s about to happen; I love those OMG moments that we get in games now too much. There’s a core bunch of guys that are driving the industry; guys like Cliffy B, Peter Molyneux, The Houser brothers and the studios that they work at like Bungie, Media Molecule, Rockstar and so many other studios, both big and small, that are driving the industry forward and are responsible for where gaming is now.

I’m proud of these guys! They are pioneers and I don’t think they get the recognition they deserve from outside of the gaming industry, if it wasn’t for them we’d have nothing to do other than sit around watching Top Gear repeats and The One Show. If I was working at a studio I’d only get in their way.

How does Xbox Live work?

Like Xbox live as a whole? Just the matchmaking bits? Honestly though I don’t know, it’s something I’d like to know but I must have just spent the last hour trying to find the technically minded version of how it works, but I can’t sorry. The Xbox Engineering Blog is a good source of info like this and hopefully they will cover it in the future it’s worth a read regardless, and features info on how Achievements work, Xbox party chat works (which might be the closest answer to your original question) and much more.

Which game would you say has been most instrumental in changing the industry (in terms of gameplay, graphics, style) to how we see it today?

One game? Hmmmmmm I could give you a stack but I’ll try pick one… One game to rule them all..?

You all know how I'm going to answer this one right?

an hour and 45 minutes pass…

Right, I’ve decided – can only be Half Life. *gasp* Now the Half Life players among you are going “Yes, well done” but the truth is I never played it *gasp*.  So how can I give that an answer? Easy. I watched my brother play it; he was sat in the back half of our living room at the old house playing it one day and he called me over saying “Hey Lee, look at this” as he booted the game from the start. Like many gamers, when I first saw Half Life’s opening sequence I was blown away – it was so simple and brilliant. You played a bloke on his way to work, then you get to work and it all goes tits up. There was no cut scene, no ball-ache tutorial it very much was Gordon’s story from Gordon’s point of view. Sure, there was plenty of stuff going on around you and you got to see different sides of the same event with the add on packs that were later released, but the thing that made it the game that changed games is that it was the first one to pay attention to the little things that happen, the scripted events we now take for granted, blokes getting attacked by head crabs in an office you can’t enter, aliens kicking doors in when you walked past. Before this, FPS games where just that – first person shooters.  Nothing happened in them; you just ran around grabbing key cards and opening doors, the worlds they were set in were dull and stale, they weren’t alive and didn’t feel believable, you didn’t care – “Oh there’s a baddie, shoot it – oh I need a red key for this door”.

Wisely done, Mr. Freeman. I will see you up ahead.

Somebody who has actually played the game might want to correct me on this in the comments, but I love that you don’t actually know what’s going on as its happening in Half Life. It’s not until much later on that you know why events have occurred the way they have and what was actually happening, this represents another of those landmarks for gaming where the story telling side of games kicked in and it really started mean something. There’s a whole mythology built around the Half Life games and I won’t insult its fans by pretending to know what its all about, again another thing it brought to the gaming industry. I just had to phone Adam to check what I was saying was right and his response was “Ah well its actually quite complicated you see…” and in that half sentence he gave me all the info I needed. Half Life really was the turning point for story telling, physics, puzzle solving and even as a shooter it stands up with the best of them. Hopefully one of the other writers who have actually played it will cover its effects on gaming and give it the full in depth article it deserves one day.  It’s a much loved and timeless game, I cared for the Freeman’s fate and I wasn’t even playing the game.

…and you thought I was going to say Halo.

Games currently confirmed include Enslaved, Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom, Dragonball Raging Blast 2, and Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds.  Let’s just hope that the games keep on coming because the Spring event was surprisingly lacklustre on the games front, with the promised heavy promotion of Prince of Persia appearing oddly absent.

The Autumn MCM Expo will take place at the London Excel Centre between October 29th and October 31st.  For tickets and more info, swing by the revamped official event site: http://www.londonexpo.com/

According to Develop-Online, Capcom’s decision appears based on the fact that the original Dead Rising was banned in Germany by their notoriously ferocious ratings  board and that with the major release of the sequel pending at the end of the year (which hasn’t yet been given the nod by the USK), it ‘would be remiss’ of them to promote the sequel.

Is this the end?

The developers of last year’s kooky, fairytale carnage-fest, Fairytale Fights, have seen their financial woes swell and culminate in Bankruptcy this week.  The New York/Amsterdam based developer, according to Gamasutra, filed for the Dutch equivalent of Chapter 11, after a lengthy list of troubles including overdue payments, loan defaults, and bad cash flow.  Not only has Playlogic struggled with its own creditors, some of whom have initiated legal proceedings to recover their money, but the developer claims that Koch Media, their major distribution partner, owes them around 1.7 million Euros.

The upshot is that unless Playlogic receives a financial bailout, they’ll be shutting up shop for good.  While Fairytale Fights didn’t set the gaming world on fire, the concept and gameplay were engaging enough as to be enjoyable despite the flaws, so it would indeed be a shame if Playlogic slipped, like so many others, into the night.

“Nintendo initiates these actions not only on its own behalf, but also on behalf of over 1,400 video game development companies that depend on legitimate sales of games for their survival.”

Presumably the new 3DS will have improved security measures when it arrives on our shores, but for now, remember kids…when it comes to piracy, just say ‘no’…or rather…’nnarrrr’.

Source: MCV

The main difficulty with collecting games music is that the majority of soundtracks only see release in Japan. This means either importing yourself from Japanese websites and mail order catalogues and trusting several vaguely mutually cooperative international postal services, all whilst running the risk of Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise officers taking the piss and slapping four times the price of the album in tax onto the package if and when it reaches Britain, or, alternately, paying the exorbitant ransoms demanded by import specialist retailers who already have the item in the UK for resale. An extension of the latter is buying from eBay… which comes with the added stress of not knowing whether you’re purchasing a faked pirate copy or not until it arrives, at which point extracting a refund from the seller becomes a task on the same order of magnitude as convincing an American that their country didn’t win the second world war single-handedly.

This is the only worthwhile thing about the game... I feel sorry about it, because this music is awesome

Some games of course get somewhat better treatment with regards to Western fans. Bioware are particularly savvy to the interest in game soundtracks, and have regularly issued limited numbers of albums with their new releases for some years. The Final Fantasy soundtracks as well accompany the release of each new entry in the main franchise when it arrives here, often coming in several variant versions with piano arrangements and full orchestra arrangements, and even an occasional rock version courtesy of the Black Mages. In recent times, the soundtracks for a new Final Fantasy have often been the best thing about the game, with the franchise in decline in most other aspects.

Such a beautiful set and, for a game with such an incredible soundtrack, it more than deserves a standalone offering, and yet not a sign of it!

It is becoming increasingly common for publishers to include a games soundtrack as a bonus in the collector’s or limited edition. Unfortunately, these tend to show up on a DVD containing other shit that is of no particular worth, such as wallpapers that are on an order of magnitude inferior to the fan made ones you can find in 30 seconds via a Google images search, and which mean you can’t put the disk straight into your hi-fi in order to listen to the music. Worse still, it’s only ever an edited track list, leaving out more than is included. This seems to me to miss the point, and is pretty damned useless as a soundtrack release, yet it’s happening more and more; Ubisoft are particularly guilty of this kind of shoddy deal, with such neutered offerings showing up for the collector’s editions of games like Assassin’s Creed II and Anno 1404. Both of which have genuinely brilliant background music, making it all the more of a tragedy of marketing.

Recently Red Dead Redemption “included” the soundtrack in its limited edition. Rather than take the craptastic DVD approach though, the game didn’t have a physical copy of the soundtrack at all; on opening the case, I was confronted with a slip of card with a code on it to use to download the music in MP3 format from Rockstar’s website. The fact that it was the full soundtrack, including the songs that play once at key points in the games single player campaign, had been a seemingly refreshing change of pace. Not being told until the game actually arrived through the letter box that it would only be a digital download of middling bitrate quality however took the shine right off of things.

The best soundtrack as a collector’s edition bonus by a country mile has to be the one that came with Bioshock 2. With an astoundingly high level of quality and disregard for the “that’ll do” attitude shown towards other games music, the full soundtrack was presented in keeping with the artistic style of the game itself on a double-sided vinyl 45 LP. Not only that, but it also had the original Bioshock soundtrack in the box as well, albeit as a CD. If all bonus soundtracks were as classy as this, then I’d be a very happy chap indeed, though how many other gamers can say they have the ability to play vinyl straight out of the box I wouldn’t like to hazard a guess at.

The quality of each games music varies wildly of course, as does the actual style and genre, and I must profess to being drawn more towards those that feature an orchestral score. But there are also some excellent examples of more contemporary styles in my personal collection, with the line only usually being drawn with regards to more techno or poppy soundtracks, especially the cheesier sort of J-pop that graces certain Japanese games and anime. Rarer still, though not through choice, are albums of retro 8bit and 16bit game music. These are incredibly few and far between and harder yet to get hold of; the Super Metroid, Mega Man, Legend of Zelda and Sonic the Hedgehog soundtracks holding pride of place on their shelf, waiting to be joined by more if I should be so lucky as to come across them.

Also often worth seeking out are live recordings of games concerts, something that would be practically unheard of in the UK, but which are very popular and quite a common occurrence in Japan. Many of these offer exciting variations and re-arrangements of popular game themes usually focused on Nintendo or Capcom franchises. There is a classic series of five albums from the early 90s recorded by the Tokyo City Philharmonic, titled simply Ōkesutora ni yoru Gēmu Ongaku Konsāto (or Orchestral Games Music Concert 1-5), which are highly prized by collectors. As well there have been several major concerts revolving around Mario, Legend of Zelda, and Final Fantasy. A personal favourite is a concert dedicated to the Gyakuten Saiban franchise, better known as the Ace Attorney or Phoenix Wright series to English speaking gamers. There is also an excellent jazz quartet rendering of select themes from those games soundtracks. Another favourite of mine is the recording of the Super Smash Bros. Melee concert, which came free, attached to the front of an Official Nintendo Magazine some years ago when Melee on the Gamecube was still the current entry in the series, and which is probably the best free cover gift on any magazine ever.

Game music goes a long way towards sucking a player into the feel and tone of the game, but it is often equally as artful as the game is, and deserving of play by itself to be enjoyed simply on musical terms. As long as that remains the case, collecting those soundtrack albums will be as much a passion of mine as collecting the games themselves.

There’s no denying that magazines still have their place in the world, many still have active readerships and carry a brand that just may see them through the downturn. There are those who enjoy the feel of glossy paper in their hands but they are too few in numbers; cutbacks happen and, before you know it, the last print run is ordered and it’s goodnight Irene. Recently it was announced that PC Zone would be closing and the magazine would cease to exist and, for me personally, this was particularly disappointing to hear. The news should be a lesson to any magazine editor out there, a message that clearly says “you are not safe”. PC Zone, when I was growing up, was one of the heavy weights; for me it was my Rocky Balboa of all the magazine reading I did. But how far have we come when it no longer graces store shelves anymore? It’s perhaps not only a tale of the changes facing the print industry but for also the gaming industry as well.

The Internet exploded at an exponential rate to the point where, today, it’s such a huge part of society that it’s hard to imagine the world without it while, on the contrary, many seem unconcerned by the dwindling numbers of gaming magazines on shelves, as the Internet is now their virtual newsagent. But that’s today’s generation of gamer compared to the one when I was in single digits of age; it’s a different era and a completely different beast. PC gaming was rampant when I was growing up, but these days it’s more of a console world; the way we play games has changed and it will probably change again in the not so distant future and that’s also true about how we receive all our gaming news, gossip, reviews and pretty much everything else that you could possibly need relating to the hobby that many are so passionate about.

As we enter an age where dedicated gaming websites pull in hundreds of thousands of viewers each day and contents of demo disks are not only freely available online but also fed straight to our consoles, it’s hard to understand where magazines will fit in with the gaming world within a few years’ time.  For myself personally, I have a habit of picking a magazine up every time I make a long journey but, sadly, that’s about it. I wish it didn’t have to be that way, that the industry had evolved when it needed to and not before casualties had started to be lost, but apparently we don’t live in a world where Time Lords and their ginger assistants trot around in a feisty blue number fixing the mistakes that should never have happened, sadly.

Perhaps there is some proverbial light at the end of the tunnel and maybe, just maybe, the conclusion will be a bit of “best of both worlds”. With the likes of the Apple iPad currently being one of the most lusted over gadgets on the planet perhaps it, and the whole host of other E-Readers on the market today, could be a remedy for an ailing industry. Digital Distribution is a term bandied about with mixed emotions but while that discussion has been done before, and will no doubt be done again in the not so distant future, it could just be the key to the magazine world’s woes.

It's highly likely that magazines will eventually be forced to go down the road of being purely digital

With the popularity of eBooks having never been so high, surely it would only be a matter of time before gaming magazines found themselves enclosed within an App store of sorts, free of the shackles of their laminated pages and in the potential hands of millions, ready to be purchased at the click of a button regardless of their locale to a shop or not.  Digital Distribution gave PC Gaming a bit of a kick up its ass to jolt it back into life somewhat, and the same could very well happen with magazines. Just imagine before your morning commute to work you pick up your “gadget” that’s already sync’d the latest instalment of EDGE or GamesTM while you ate your breakfast, then jump on a train and begin to read to your heart’s content.

I don’t quite think that the days of magazines are over just yet, even with the big bad internet breathing down their necks it’s a totally different experience and perhaps it’s that more than anything, the experience which needs to be preserved. Picking up a magazine, flicking through its pages and having a good peruse feels totally different to website browsing; some may go onto say that it feels more enjoyable and I’d find it pretty hard not to agree with them. There has to be a time when a line is drawn and battle plans drawn up as, sooner or later, magazines as we know them today will have to change, to evolve to the next step and if a form of digital distribution is the way forward then so be it.

Perhaps between then (whenever that may be) and now things may change and I hope they do, it’d be a damn shame to lose many more magazines to the chronicles of time; they have their place in the gaming world, that much I’m sure of, it’s just a matter of finding out where exactly that is.

Oh noey Woey, it looks like it's starting to snowey!

There is also a flip-side; when games enter the world of sex. Naturally, being naive to what lurks in the darker corners of the internet (don’t smirk, I have to put that, my parents might be reading), I was only recently introduced to game pornography early in 2009 with the stellar performances in “Left 4 Head”, an adult spin on the popular Left 4 Dead game. Curiosity got the better of me and I sat slack jawed through the first half and had to prevent myself dozing off during the second. Our survivor, Zoey, tackles Special Infected in a way you’d hoped never to see. When attacked by a Smoker, it’s not his tongue that wraps itself around her but the world’s longest trousersnake. Of course, when you’re being strangled to death by a giant penis, your first instinct is to suck the end of it.

Sakura? Yes, I think I'd rather.	Call of Booty... best I could do really!	Zoey gets a little frisky with a Witch

After Zoey eventually finishes off the Smoker (I’m talking via gun here, not a money shot) she’s then “attacked” by a Hunter where she makes a half-hearted attempt to push him away before providing us with the promised “Head” part of the title. It’s a little bit rape-y and Hunters aren’t blessed with the prettiest schlong or at least the actor isn’t. It’s not good enough to be a turn on or terrible enough to find hilarious, it’s just bad. The moral of the story seems to be that if you can fellate your way through a zombie apocalypse, you’ll survive. Unfortunately if there’s a sequel where Zoey gets it on with a Witch while a Boomer gurgles excitedly in Left 4 Head 2 I’m yet to find it.

This clearly isn't real, but imagine the achievements??

For research reasons only, honest, I decided to further investigate game-to-porn adaptations, hoping for a wealth of poorly made videos to mock as opposed to being titillated by. Sadly the scene seems to be lacking. The best known series is “World of Whorecraft” which sold over 20,000 downloads at eight bucks a pop and is only worth hunting down for the few minutes of “acting”. One guy with an odd Irish/pirate accent needs gold in return for his cloak-repair services and the sexy Elf coyly declares “oh you’ll get your booty” as she disrobes before getting down and dirty. The creator of Whorecraft also went on to produce a porno entitled “FPS-Porn Operation Sex: Cock and Load”. It seemed to mainly consist of a gun strapped to the front of a camera and put a whole new meaning into the phrase “BOOM! HEADSHOT!”.

Hallo-a... I've-a come-a to feeks-a your freej-a!

Another well-known games franchise that has been the target of the adult industry is Street Fighter with the release of the subtly named “Street Fucker”. This Japanese film includes Chun-Li, Ryu and Honda amongst others and contains the least desirable porn actress I’ve laid eyes on in the form of Sakura. The porno may be a random, bizarre experience that makes little sense but at least they made the characters more faithful to the games than the 1994 Van Damme movie did. With gamers out there actively searching on Google for the elusive Call of Booty: Modern Whorefare 2, is there actually a high demand for game porn or do we just want a giggle? Perhaps half the fun is just coming up with title puns – Ninja Gay Den, Ass Effect, Lust Planet or more niche videos such as Ratchet and Spank. If they were well-produced I think some gamers would certainly have their interest piqued by Halo’s Cortana, Modern Warfare’s Soap MacTavish or Dragon Age’s Morrigan making an appearance in a more adult form. There definitely seems like a gap in the market and I believe we’re just the people to fill it, who’s with me!