Ustinov - officially awesome pirate

Man, pirates are awesome, aren’t they? Yarrgh! Shiver me timbers! Batten down the hatches! Full sail ahead! It’s a life you’re probably envious of – no rules, no one to tell you when to wash, and plenty of rum as long as you get there before Jack Sparrow. Sure, there are downsides – scurvy, being constantly on the run, and, if you’ve been sailing for too long, there’s the situational homosexuality, but everyone would gladly take those negatives in their stride for the ability to defeat ninjas, and be able to do whatever you want. Sticking it to the man!  A pirate I was meant to be.  Trim the sails and roam the seas!  Well… not nowadays.  Sure, Monkey Island and Pirates of the Caribbean romanticise the idea of piracy somewhat; the latter asking us to side with these troublesome yet lovable figures as they find treasure, deal with the supernatural, and stick it to those British Empire (what is it with the Americans and making the British the bad guys?) bastards.

Flash forward to today though, and the image of piracy is something that is wholly different. Those crazy swashbucklers, with their sea shanties and need to ravish the ladies, have turned into Somalis with speedboats and modern weaponry, trying to make a living for themselves in a horrifically impoverished part of the world. Then, on the other hand, thanks to the technological age and the proliferation of the internet, we too can become a new kind of pirate, downloading anything we want at the press of a button for free.  Both groups of these new-age pirates can stick it to the man just like in the days of old.

When it comes to videogames (and Somalis, but that’s not what I want to focus on here), piracy is no joke – except in the aforementioned Monkey Island series. Even a single game can make or break a small studio; it can be the difference between making enough money to afford the production of other titles and lining up in the unemployment queue. A single flop could spell doom for the entire company, and this is when piracy becomes a dangerous catalyst. The number of illegal copies isn’t something that can totally dictate a game’s success or failure, and blaming it entirely is something that is altogether unfair and ignores a great number of the bigger issues. However, it can still be a depressing statistic to look at when you’re confronted with a list of the most pirated games of the year, and some of the titles on it have been pirated more than they have actually sold. Potential franchises have been ended, and some great ideas will be rejected in the future for under-performing, despite having been pirated so heavily.

Of course, there are many reasons for game piracy in the first place, and you’ll find that many pirates offer justifications for what they do. One of the biggest reasons given for piracy is the Digital Rights Management software that many companies launch with their games, supposedly in order to prevent such piracy. The bizarre situation then occurs where the DRM that the developers used to make sure people are playing their game legitimately ends up being so imposing, and so restricting to the people who bought the game, that it becomes easier to pirate a copy without the DRM in order to be able to play the sodding thing. Take Spore, for example.  It was a PC release that generated a lot of hype through both its potential (covering the action, RTS, and RPG genres), and allowing you to create a series of creatures and guide them through their evolution. But it wasn’t so much the gameplay potential that garnered a lot of attention in the end, but the SecuROM DRM that generated a lot of negative buzz.  SecuROM could potentially open up your computer for security risks and was overly intrusive technology which seemed to actively punish players for buying it legitimately.

Spore: DRM hell

Spore ended up becoming the most pirated game of 2008, not down to its hype or quality, but as a form of protest against the security measures. People pirated the cracked version en masse, even people who wouldn’t otherwise have bought or even considered playing the game – just as a “fuck you” to EA. Ubisoft have come under a great deal of fire recently too, for releasing the PC edition of Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood with a DRM that requires you to have a constant internet connection, or the game closes down without saving your progress because you are obviously a terrible person. Granted, it has since been updated so that it will only periodically check for an internet connection, but only for one or two of the games using that security system. That’s when it gets into ludicrous territory – when even a slight internet failure can wholly punish you for supporting a company legitimately.

DRM isn’t the only reason for piracy though. Modern Warfare 2 became heavily pirated for the PC in 2009 because Infinity Ward dared to release the game without dedicated servers. How could they!? You best believe that Black Ops was pirated over five million times on the PC alone last year when they kept the servers out.  No, wait, they didn’t. They brought back the servers and still got pirated to hell and back. Why? Retribution for Activision effectively destroying Infinity Ward due to their own greed? Possibly. It’s not really clear. Then there’s the case of the Humble Indie Bundle. Indie game developers put together a collection of five, later six, games for sale in one convenient bundle that consumers could pay as much as they wanted to for, with no DRM measures, and the ability to play them on Macs too.  You could decide how much of your money went to the developers or was donated to the charities it was supporting. I don’t really see how you can say much fairer than that, right? Over fifty percent of people who acquired the bundle did so illegally. That’s a lot of money Child’s Play potentially missed out on.

It isn’t clear cut, and I can’t sit here and entirely condone or slam it, because I’ve pirated my fair share of stuff in the past. Most of it has been music, as well as many TV shows that I can’t wait months to reach the UK and, as ashamed as I am to admit it, also some games, which I feel worse about. After all, with a lot of the music, if I’ve liked it, I’ve gone on to see those bands live, bought their music in the future, or recommended them to my friends to try and make sure they’re supported. I’ll recommend TV shows to my friends if I like them too, but with videogames I just end up feeling weirdly guilty about doing it, even though I justified downloading them to myself.  What kind of reasoning can I give myself for doing it if I’ve just been criticising the actions of other pirates? It’s not an excuse I feel to be particularly valid, but I’ve only pirated games that I couldn’t legally acquire, games that are decades old – mostly point and clicks or similar genres that I couldn’t get legal copies of.  Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Sam and Max: Hit the Road, Leisure Suit Larry, and Police Quest (my dad had them on floppy disks… guess which data format is now completely useless?) are the main examples I can think of.  In the past, I’ve also attempted to download Knights of the Old Republic, Sam and Max Season One, and one of the Broken Sword games, but none of those I could get working on my laptop for some reason.

The thing is, as soon as I got a chance to buy those games legally I did so, and it’s led to me buying more games from the developers of those titles as a result. Being unable to get the Broken Sword download working caused me to buy it legally when I got the money to do so, and my frustration with trying to get Knights of the Old Republic to work made me more determined to play it, which then saw me buying it as soon as it arrived on Steam. I enjoyed Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade so much that when it arrived on Steam bundled with other point and click games I bought it without hesitation. Downloading Full Throttle – a game I couldn’t get my hands on – meant that as soon as I saw Grim Fandango in Zavvi  (before they closed down their stores and became online only) I was running to the counter and handing over my money before I knew it. My inability to get a download of Sam and Max Season One working wound up with me buying the season legitimately when I got the chance, and I now own all three seasons that Telltale Games have done – legally – as well as buying their other titles whenever I’ve had a chance. So, knowing my experiences with pirating games, and knowing that I’ve since bought legitimate copies when I’ve then had the chance, what’s to say a lot of the other pirates don’t as well? As badly as some companies get screwed over, is piracy totally and utterly condemnable? Is what I did entirely justified? No. Was it a totally bad thing that I did? It’s a tricky issue, and that’s why it’s such an interesting subject to me.

Piracy in videogames is a subject about which I’ve always felt just one opinion could never suffice. Everyone has their own take on piracy and I don’t think it gives enough of a view of the bigger picture if just one person talks about it. To that end, I’ve recruited the help of my fellow swashbuckling crew mates here at GamingLives and threatened to make them walk the plank if they didn’t hand over their two doubloons on the issue. So what did the scurvy scallywags have to say?

Adam

Cap'n Jack contemplates piracy issues. And boobs.

Piracy is wrong – it’s rife, but it’s still wrong. Five or six years ago it was a major issue for the PC scene with an explosion in P2P traffic, which enabled hundreds of thousands to readily acquire the latest titles, without ever giving so much as a penny to the creators. Publishers would desperately try to enforce security features such as SecuROM and use restricted CD keys, but for every measure there came a countermeasure. The pirates always won, so that certain companies went so far as to install Digital Rights Management without ever informing the consumer, tantamount to malware, which many claimed was harmful to hardware and extremely complicated to remove from the system. With that in mind it is perhaps understandable why some vigilantes turned to piracy as a way of striking back at the publisher, but at no time have I ever felt right playing a pirated game.

Yes, I have done it. I have played pirated titles and it just felt wrong. Knowing that I was without any form of technical support when I would encounter a problem, that I didn’t have a manual to consult when I found myself stuck with the controls, and all the while paranoid that this version of the code was compromised with spyware and viruses that could destroy my computer in seconds. So why do it? Originally it was financial constriction, but once you get into a job and wake up to the real world, you understand the value of a product and why it’s important to support an industry such as gaming by making a financial contribution. There were times when I would use pirated copies of games as a benchmark test, to see if it would work on my system, as companies became slow to release demos and most retailers were unwilling to refund a PC title once its CD key had been used.

These days I just don’t see a place for piracy in gaming. Digital distribution via the Steam network has dramatically reduced the cost of PC gaming and provided a cloud service that you can readily access your gaming library from, as and when you need it. Demos are more widely available and the expansion of the gaming press beyond paid for blurbs give you a multitude of opinions, always on hand, about how well the game runs and if it’s even worth playing. You only need to download and install OnLive these days to be able to sit and watch the game played out from start to finish by an average Joe just like you and me.

That companies are becoming more protective of their products and IPs, and actively pursuing those who are siphoning funding away from development is good news. My only concern is that this is encroaching into the very grey area of modification, where gamers are creatively exploring the many possible uses of both hardware and software.  ‘Jailbreaking’ products to explore the possible functionality of our purchases should not be something we should be made to feel ashamed of doing. That companies are being exposed as withholding features from the user so that they may sell it to them as additional content, or to only provide it in an updated model, is shameful, and the ingenuity of the user should be rightfully celebrated instead.

Ben

If you look at the list of the most pirated games from 2010, those figures can be interpreted slightly differently if you take into account the install base of each format. How many PCs compared to 360, PS3, Wii, etc.  I don’t condone piracy at all, but the whole “PC this, PC that” over these figures is way off course. There are so many factors to take into account: install base, people’s stance on DRM, etc. How many people actually went out and bought the games after trying them out? You never get told those figures and, I suspect, never will.

Games may have been downloaded X amount of times, but it’d be interesting to see how many were actual working copies. I know you could get hold of Starcraft II through not so legal means, but it was never the whole game (from what I know, anyway). How many of the 360 games were kids thinking “I can get CoD for free because my mum won’t buy me it!” – only then realising their 360 won’t play a burnt disc.

A game pirated is not a sale lost. Many pirates have no inclination of buying games in the first place, regardless what format they choose to download for. To say a company lost X amount of sales is true in a sense, I suppose, but in reality I don’t think so. If those 1.1million people who downloaded Alan Wake wanted to buy it they would have. While pirates continue to damage a game developer’s opportunities to make considerable large sums of money, it’ll never be defeated, and in the end the industry will try and pick the wrong battles. This is probably why CoD is so high up on the list, even if Treyarch did come to their senses and throw in dedicated servers.  What’s the difference between pirating a game and buying it pre-owned? The developer doesn’t see any money either way. I’d go as far as saying pre-owned hurts developers more, because more and more retail space is given to pre-owned games; just look at how your local game store has changed over the last five years.

Lorna

Most of us have done it at some point in our youth, but having grown up and woken up, reality hits home and one has to consider the consequences.  I’m not a supporter of videogame piracy; I think it puts smaller devs at risk and generally pisses over a lot of hard work and effort. Some people have a warped sense of selfish entitlement that makes them think they have the right to something for nothing. They don’t. You may buy it and dislike it, or buy it and love it, but that’s the way it goes – that is what demos are there for.  If more people had been in situations where, as can often happen in any business, they struggle to get paid for work they have done, or have had people demand more for less – or even nothing (and yes, I speak from bitter experience) – then perhaps they’d appreciate that they are taking the royal piss by refusing to pay for games.  As for ‘sticking it to the man’ or ‘punishing the dev/publisher’?  Seriously, wake up.  Pirating Alan Wake won’t punish Remedy for reneging on the decision to put it out on the PC – you’re waving your pitchforks in the wrong place, that was Microsoft – it will just harm the chances of a sequel, robbing genuine fans because publishers only see the bottom line, regardless of anything else.  It isn’t even anything to do with cost, as even games as cheap as Amnesia have been pirated.

Now that's a pirate...

Markuz

Piracy in the gaming industry is honestly not something I’ve ever considered, at least not since the days of the Amiga. Living in a particularly run down area of Glasgow, let’s just call it “Obrox” so as we don’t offend anyone from that area, there wasn’t much money going around and so I tended to spend more time at the Barras market buying meat and groceries than I would in a supermarket. To put things into perspective though, the ratio of “honest to goodness stores” to “knock off, stolen, and counterfeit goods” on sale by the traders in the Barras is perhaps 1:99, and I’m being very conservative towards the number of honest traders here. Out of all the dodgy stalls in the market, probably 30-40% of them were stalls trading in copied Amiga or Atari ST software. My friend worked in one of those stalls and, as such, I’d get handed bundles of games that they didn’t manage to sell over the weekend.

At this point in time, however, I wasn’t spending that much time gaming… the Amiga was more of a production machine for me and I was mostly rendering in 3D, designing fonts, working on album covers, etc. so although I had the pirate copied games I probably only played a dozen of them over the space of a year. As a 17 year old kid with no money, I didn’t consider the damage that I was doing to the industry by having these copied games but, by the same token, I didn’t have the money to buy them either, so I wasn’t taking MY share of their profits away from them as they just wouldn’t have got the sale in the first place.

Now, however, I don’t have a single copied game. Haven’t done in over twenty years, because I much prefer having the physical copy and the original artwork etc. As someone who develops software I can also empathise with the devs, because I hate finding out that someone is using our proprietary code without permission, and we DO come down hard on them. I believe that the gaming industry should be doing the same. I know of one particular guy who is very proud at being one of those people who had their Xbox banned from XBL because it had been chipped, and boasts about all the games he has weeks before release that only cost him a fiver. That’s his prerogative, but I wouldn’t lower myself to taking money from the devs like that by using hookie gear… and I’m also not stupid enough to pay a fiver for something that I could download for free, but that’s another story entirely. It may sound quite hypocritical to those who know that I DO download TV shows from the USA but that’s because they take too long to come out over here and I DO buy them on DVD as soon as they’re available. Won’t stop downloading TV shows, as I’m impatient, but I also won’t download video games either, as I know how precarious the industry is compared to television, and getting games a few weeks early isn’t worth becoming “that guy”.

A real pirate game. Sadly the DRM meant that we couldn't get the box open without it being hooked up to a 36bps modem

Mark S

As someone who wants to eventually work in the games industry I can see the harmful effect of games piracy, especially on the indie game developers who work on a shoe-string, or with no budget. These guys sometimes don’t get the chance to get started in the industry because their game may be popular, but is then stolen by a couple thousand people.  We all tend to turn a blind eye to piracy in the games industry, but when you see big companies going bust and cut-backs here and there… I’m sure some of that is to do with the overall economic climate, but I’m also sure a lot of it is because of people stealing profits from the game developer’s pocket. Sure, it probably doesn’t affect Activision or EA as much, but when all of the other studios are closed down you’re going to end up with Call of Duty 40003, and that’s a world I’m just not prepared to live in.

Most developers bust their arses bringing us games; nearly always to tight schedules and working all the hours they can to bring you a fantastic experience. I think, as gamers, we should try to remember that more and not steal from them. That’s what piracy is – stealing, no matter how you dress it up.

Michael

Gaming piracy is bad, but sometimes even I have resorted to it. Americans have had Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, and Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver on their PSN shop for a year, but we Brits aren’t getting it at all. I love those games,and really want them on my PSP so I tried downloading them via torrents. Luckily for Crystal Dynamics and Sony, the download was region locked and wouldn’t work. Bastards!

Pete

So, piracy…. well, I’m ambivalent about it in the computer industry I guess. I know it’s a bad thing and it brings all kinds of strife to the developers and studios and distributors, but occasionally it seems to me they charge far too much for what they’re producing anyway, especially if the game is poor!  That said, I’m a bit of a stickler for rules, so as it is essentially illegal, then I frown upon it. I’ve never chipped a console in order to play those kinds of games and I never will. I’d be too concerned about it going wrong and screwing the console up completely for one thing.  Not quite sure what I’m saying here. Bottom line is it’s illegal, so it’s wrong, but that’s never stopped me from copying music or downloading a film… just call me Mr Double Standards!

Rob

In my opinion video game piracy shouldn’t be done whatsoever. The amount of time and dedication video game developers spend nowadays their titles is obscene; you have a huge team working on the next biggest title and somebody has to pay them. Pirating games, especially console games, basically ends up with game developers not getting a salary and could kill the industry. Luckily, despite living in London and being around a load of gamers, I have not come across someone who pirates games, and we as a gaming community like to buy games and enjoy them.

I suppose you could argue about the age of the game, and whether it is worth getting it for free or not. If you take something like DOS-BOX on the PC, where you can pretty much download any old school title and essentially play it for free, then I suppose that is OK, because the game has run its course and also didn’t have about 70 people working on it. It is a tricky subject, I must admit, but all in all I am basically against the whole idea.

Samuel

I can understand why some people might feel compelled to pirate games. I don’t do it personally, but it’s more out of my being a collector and needing the genuine article for my collection than any higher moral purpose. Games are very expensive. Gamers tend not to be very affluent. The appeal is obvious, though clearly selfish.  Games publishers and developers, however, make the situation worse, consistently, as though they don’t actually have a bloody brain cell between the lot of them, because the way they go about supposedly tackling piracy tends to be surmountable for the pirates, whilst only harming those poor idiots who do pay for their games legitimately. Ubisoft’s egregious system requiring you to be online at all times whilse playing some of their newest titles, for example, has led to my not playing games from franchises that I really love, such as the latest edition of The Settlers, purely because of the DRM. I live in a rural area and my internet connection isn’t guaranteed to be stable. Having my gaming access cut off at random because the game demands internet connectivity, despite being a single player game, any time my internet goes down is just unacceptable. I’m left, because of Ubisoft’s heavy handed and draconian stance, with two options: either I join the pirates myself, or I simply forgo playing the game. For now I’m going with the latter. Eventually however, I am probably going to reconsider and look at perhaps contemplating piracy myself, because it’s unfair that I should have to miss out by doing the right thing.

I currently despise the pirates for allowing themselves to be used as justification for these kinds of ridiculous impositions, especially on PC gamers, but to be blunt my ire towards the publishers goes much farther and deeper still. Eventually, something is going to have to give. And it doesn’t need to be this way at all. Some forms of DRM can work… the best example I’ve encountered is Stardock’s stance towards their games, such as Galactic Civilisations II and Demigod, where you can play the game without a serial code or internet access, but do need a valid code and an account with their Impulse distribution network to download updates, patches, expansion packs, and exclusive in-game extras. The games don’t stop working any time I can’t get online, and gamers are strongly encouraged to buy the games for the patches because they were intentionally released with game-breaking flaws on the disc. Nobody loses except the pirates. If only all in the industry were so enlightened in their measures…

Ste

I don’t pirate games now, but ‘back in the day’ I used to own a chipped Playstation that I would get copied games for. This is a bit of a poor excuse, but I obviously didn’t have a job, and my parents weren’t exactly rolling in cash at the time, so it was all I could do to play the latest games. Looking back on it, I didn’t see that I was doing anything wrong. To a kid like me it just meant free games! If I’m to think about it further I’m not sure what ‘actual’ damage I did to the industry, if any, as I wouldn’t have been able to buy 95% of the games I pirated, but I’ll leave that for another discussion.

Nowadays piracy is a lot harder to get away with, especially with everything needing to be authenticated online. I have mixed views on this as it pisses me off that I have to be connected to the internet in order to play some of my games. A good example of this is Starcraft 2. Even the single player elements require you to log into Blizzard’s servers. However, at the same time I completely understand why things like this are done. It’s a bit of a shit situation that as a consumer it requires me to compromise a little and meet the developer in the middle. I’m willing to do it for the time being, but I hope that something better comes along before too long.

Looking ahead the recent news of the PS3 having its security blown to bits by a hacker has really pissed me off. It’s only a matter of time before custom firmwares are released that will allow people to bypass the Playstation’s formerly robust security measures, so that copied games can be played as if they were genuine. There are those that will argue that it would only be the same as when the original Playstation was cracked, but nowadays it’s fair to say that the development process is far more complex and expensive than it was in the past, and therefore developers and publishers have a lot more to lose. As the Playstation is my main console I hope that the quality of the games being released doesn’t slip too much as a result of lost sales thanks to piracy.

Stu

I am generally against video games piracy. However I also subscribe to the “try before you buy” philosophy where I’d rather give something a test before parting with my rather limited spending money. For instance, I wouldn’t ever buy a car without taking a test drive first. Yes, we may be talking £40 versus £14,000 and you may argue that a £140 dishwasher wouldn’t get a test drive, but there is something fundamentally different between the two. The dishwasher is purely a tool, whereas arguably, the car is a hybrid between tool and an experience, especially as we tend to spend so long in them! Likewise, most digital purchases are done for the visual, audio, or gaming experience and because liking an experience is a matter of personal taste, I think it is important to be able to sample it before going “all-in”.

That said, when it comes to the argument for piracy in relation to “try before you buy”, I don’t think it stands up in gaming, because of digital distribution, and similarly not for music either. Most online MP3 retailers now allow 30 second previews of most songs on an album, enough to give you a taste at least to tempt you into spending your £5-10 on the album. We’ll ignore radio purely because you have no control over the songs played. Computer games have had this preview feature for years through demos. Some are time limited, others are just a level, but it’s usually enough to work out if you’ll like the game. Try before you buy as a reason for accessing the full pirated game for free? Not a viable argument in my opinion.

There is also the argument of cost as an excuse for piracy. On release, games are now £40 or £50, which is quite a large sum of money to outlay all at once and with many games on offer it is easy to see why people may turn to piracy, but that isn’t acceptable. Piracy is still illegal and it isn’t as though there are ways to help ease the cost. Games at full retail price barely stay that way for more than two or three months before they are reduced to around £25. Already half price. £25 for an 8 hour romp with possible multiplayer or replays adding to its life, versus £8 for a 90 minute movie at the cinema at one use per pop… you can’t say it’s bad value for money.

So you’ve had your fun and are bored with the game – you can sell it on second-hand. In fact, shops will even buy it back, allowing you to build credit towards another purchase. So £25 for the purchase then a minimum £5 rebate when you’re done. This is becoming extremely good value for money. I’ve not even gone into the likes of rental where £3 can net you a new release for seven days.

Basically, if you “must have” the latest release in your grubby mitts then you have to pay the full retail price, just like if you wanted the latest iPhone or any other highly desirable commodity. Going ahead and pirating it is just plain wrong, regardless of the high cost.  The only valid reason I ever ‘condone’ for video game piracy is where publisher imposed DRM destroys the gaming experience. Requiring an ‘always on’ internet connection, for example, is a terrible, terrible thing. Why make your paying customers suffer? If anything it will only drive them away. Any DRM should be non-intrusive to the gaming experience.

So there you have it. We’ve shared out all our rum, but it’s not over yet. There are still many tales to tell, and this is, as I said before, a massive subject that is quite personal to each individual. So this is where you come in. We want to hear your opinions on the matter too. For it? Against it? How has it changed the way you’ve played games if at all? Please let us know in the comments below. And be nice, or we’ll feed you to the sharks.

The list runs the gauntlet from horror to comedy, through surreal waters, 2.5D backgrounds, hand-drawn works of art and back again, with a raft of familiar and new premises to stir interest. For some, this may be the year that the Duke comes home, the year that dicktits becomes the insult du jour, or the year that Skyrim eats our Xboxes, but for those smaller genres… well, don’t overlook them – for them, it could be the year of fire, the year of destruction, and the year they take back what was theirs – a new age, a time of genre rebirth perhaps, and a time of much quoting of nineties sci-fi dramas. The year is 2011, the place: the GamingLives Point ‘N’ Click Adventure Roundup.

Lucius
One of the more interesting titles coming up, Lucius is a 3D horror adventure, heavily inspired by the Omen and focuses on six year old Damien-a-like, Lucius. Lucius’ grandfather was a member of a satanic cult and in exchange for wealth, promised the soul of his first born grandson to the devil. He got his wish and the family amassed considerable power and wealth, eventually coming to reside in a sprawling mansion with a number of staff. When the child was eventually born, Lucifer claimed his soul and replaced it with his own blood, allowing him to finally place his offspring on earth. Upon reaching his sixth birthday, the boy sets down his evil path, beginning with bumping off the mansion’s residents, one by one, in the form of ‘accidents’.

The game is full of puzzles and follows a linear story which rewards players with new skills and supernatural powers for completing tasks – powers such as telekinesis which can then be used to further your evil intentions. Sounds good to us and it makes a great change to have the chance to play on the side of evil. Lucius is developed by a small team based in Helsinki, known appropriately as Shiver Games and is due for release in June.

Edna & Harvey: The Breakout
This kooky modern/retro point ‘n’ click has been a resounding hit in Germany and we fell in love with it when we reviewed it here at GLHQ. It focuses on the surreal lunatic, Edna Konrad and her terry-towel rabbit, Harvey. You are tasked with breaking out of the asylum where Edna has been incarcerated since the conviction of her father, and regaining her lost memories along the way. The gorgeous hand-drawn art style and odd cast of characters are complimented by a raft of smart puzzles, great humour, and witty writing to make it a must-play title. It brings back some old skool features such as the verb bar, but combines them with modern touches such as the blessing that is the ‘show all hotspots’ key – a vital inclusion in adventures these days.

The game was developed by one man as a student project and grew into this quirky delight which is an impressive feat. We feel a series in the making here, and if the teaser that we managed to dig up in any indication, we may not be far wrong. Expect this one to be rattling cell bars on 11th February.

Black Mirror 3
The final part of the dramatic Black Mirror trilogy doesn’t waste any time and jumps into the action mere minutes after the conclusion of the second game, putting us once more in the shoes of the surly, sarcastic Darren Michaels. As a blaze engulfs Black Mirror Castle, a stunned Darren is arrested and is eventually, after three weeks, bailed out by a mysterious benefactor – all the while, plagued by terrifying nightmares from his recent, shocking experiences. Now he is faced with fighting through a web of intrigue and mystery surrounding past and recent events to get to the truth of the ‘Curse of the Gordons’. Will the curse overcome him the same way as it did his forebears or will he manage to defeat it and unravel the mysteries of Willow Creek and the Gordon family once and for all?

Spread over six chapters, the game runs off the Black Mirror 2 engine and boasts over 62 locations in and around the town of Willow Creek. The 2.5 D style returns and early screens show off some beautifully detailed locations that we have come to expect from the series. One to watch. Let’s hope that the end won’t let fans down as much as the first game and we can’t wait to see where the labyrinthine story goes next. Developed by Cranberry Productions, Black Mirror 3 will see a release on 22nd April.

The Next Big Thing
The Next Big Thing is a slick, eye-wateringly pretty looking game developed by Pendulo Studio, who had a great deal of success with their previous title, Runaway. Using the same graphic engine, The Next Big Thing brings back the familiar, rich art-style backgrounds and over the top characters, this time focussing on two oddball journalists in Hollywood’s golden age. The story explores the idea of what would happen if the monsters that we know, love, and fear from horror films were actually played by real monsters. Take that idea a stage further and imagine them now being cast in kiddie films, rom-coms, or worse…*gulp* musicals. Any self-respecting monster would rebel and that is where the game comes in, with our journos tasked to cover a Horror Movie award ceremony.

Boasting one of the best websites we’ve ever seen for an adventure game, the Next Big Thing promises 120 backgrounds, well realised 3D characters and animations and a stack of cinematic sequences to blend together the twisting skein of mysteries, puzzles, humour and nods to cinema’s finest genres. Amongst the serious and dramatic titles due out this year, the Next Big Thing stands out as a potential comedy gem and we’re seriously loving the art style. Due out 25th March.

Bracken Tor: The Time of Tooth and Claw
Something wicked this way comes and the player has to ask themselves how far would they go for a big story as they step into the shoes of a hungry journalist. With the moors soaked in the bloody mythology of ancient beasts and unknown terrors prowling the darkness, only a fool would go looking for answers alone in the dark. This is where you come in. After the mutilated body of a hiker is found near the mysterious stony outcrop of Bracken Tor, you decide to try and find out the truth, and begin delving into not only the brutal death and other supernatural reports, but the Bronze Age origins of the nightmares that have plagued the moors for centuries.

Bracken Tor offers an in-depth sinister story, as you unravel the past and try and stay alive long enough to solve the recent, horrific death. The game is being developed by Cornwall based indie development studio, Shadow Tor Studios, with assistance from the ‘Mysterious Beasts Research Group’ and the ‘Cornwall Archaeology Society’. The website is comprehensive and features a number of teaser trailers and screens to tantalise fans of the darker side of the genre. With a good pedigree in the horror end of the genre with the well-received Barrow Hill: Curse of the Ancient Circle, Bracken Tor promises well researched, spine chilling gameplay and will be hopefully hitting shelves 4th March.

A New Beginning
While other titles have gone down the route of horror or comedy, it isn’t often you get what Daedalic Entertainment are calling an ‘interactive, eco-thriller’. Taking control of two protagonists, the player is swept into a world on the brink of ecological disaster brought about by climate change. Recently retired Scientist Bent Svensson has spent his life working on an alternative energy source – research which is about to fall in the hands of an unscrupulous energy magnate. Enter a young woman called Fay, who has been sent from the future to kill Sarah Connor. Okay, she has actually been sent from the future to prevent a vast environmental disaster form taking place and she needs Bent’s help and his research to do so.

The game weaves its tale across detailed, hand-drawn backgrounds, and features more than thirty characters, lovingly presented and animated, along with a wealth of puzzles and problems to be overcome. No one ever said that saving the world was easy. Just ask Captain Planet. Okay, don’t. The game is being developed for the Wii and DS, alongside the more traditional PC platform and will be arriving from the future on 8th April. We’re pretty certain that it won’t be wanting your clothes, boots, or motorcycle, but have them ready anyway.

Baron Wittard: Nemesis of Ragnarök
We previewed the sexy looking Baron Wittard: Nemesis of Ragnarök some time ago, and the release is drawing ever closer. The game centres around a nameless writer who has been dispatched to investigate a grand, abandoned building armed only, as ever, with a camera and a torch. The building in question is an abandoned ‘pleasure dome’ called ‘The Utopia’, constructed by an eccentric architect, known as Baron Wittard. He built an entire city inside the building, including shopping centres, homes, offices and leisure facilities. It was to be a paradise, however, Wittard’s dream never even made it to its grand opening after a series of mysterious events, and now the forlorn place is silent, dogged by rumours, mysterious disappearance, disturbances, and tales of dark, hidden secrets.

It is up to you to battle through the myriad of puzzles and mysteries to unlock the secrets of Baron Wittard’s sad, broken world before a lurking evil is unleashed.  The screenshots look impressive and detailed and it boasts some haunting scores which serve to deeply immerse the player in this lonely world gone wrong. The game has been receiving great previews from those who have got their hands on it which is a superb coup for new indie developer, Wax Lyrical. Baron Wittard: Nemesis of Ragnarök will be released on 18th February.

Back to the Future, episodes 2, 3, 4, 5
The long awaited episodic game based on the Back to the Future franchise launched late last year with the first part: ‘It’s About Time!’. And it was, too – in every sense. The four remaining chapters are due to follow and, together, tell a completely new cinematic story, featuring Marty McFly and the ever-awesome Doc Brown, voiced by none other than the ‘real’ Doc himself, Christopher Lloyd. Set six months after the end of the third film, the DeLorean mysteriously returns to Hill Valley, prompting Marty to once again venture back in time and enlist the help of a young Doc Brown to solve the mystery and stop the ever-wibbling space time continuum from unravelling. It’s prone to doing that, or so we’ve heard.

Masters of the revival, Telltale Games, are promising more time travelling adventures in the remaining parts, which are tantalisingly titled as follows:  Get Tannen!, Citizen Brown, Double Visions, Outatime. Sounds good to us. No word on definitive dates yet, but expect them to be spread out in a similar way to the recent Monkey Island releases. We’re more looking forward to what they do with the boxed retail release though when it eventually sees store shelves – expect a special edition of some kind.

Alpha Polaris
This one is a horror adventure in a setting with a difference: gone are the mysterious mansions, creaky castle corridors, and knicker-wetting descents into bottomless sarcophagi. Instead, the game is set in an American oil research station named Alpha Polaris, lying alone in the snowfields of Greenland. Outside the station all is not well, as a huge ion storm begins to gather, stirring reality and unknown night terrors together. You must guide Rune Knudsen, a Norwegian biologist, as she takes on a lurking force in an enclosed setting, which promises to ramp up the tension and produce a thick atmosphere of fear and paranoia.

The game features 3D characters against impressive looking backgrounds – a common high-end genre staple – and a strong storyline along with an original score and the usual puzzles. Alpha Polaris is developed by an indie Finnish team, Turmoil Games, who are aiming for a deeply atmospheric piece driven by story and characters and we hope they succeed because the setting is intriguing and, from the screens we have seen, it is shaping up to be a tasty looking title. No word on an exact release date yet, but we hope it won’t slip from the ‘early 2011′ window that it currently occupies.

Last Half of Darkness: Society of the Serpent Moon
Society of the Serpent Moon is another title in the successful Last Half of Darkness series and is another horror adventure from Californian indie studio, WRF Studios. As ever in a horror game, no mysterious package heralds anything warm and fluffy… indeed, the package you receive at the start of the game contains a scribbled note, a map and, worst of all, your fiancé’s bloodstained ring.  A few days previously, she was sent to investigate a number of vampire-like murders that had been plaguing a small European town… so it would seem that all did not go well.

It is up to you to track her down and solve an ancient mystery along the way, not to mention the problem of the townsfolk who are turning into creatures of the night that are far from emo and sparkly. Just don’t pack a stake in your carry on luggage – the American customs people take that stuff seriously. The game is slated for a 2011 release, but there are no further details at this time. The ongoing Last Half of Darkness saga has many fans and offers traditional horror adventure gaming with some innovative ‘hands-on’ puzzle features that we can only hope are included in this latest release.

Deponia
Another beautiful looking hand-drawn adventure from the makers of Edna and Harvey, Daedalic Entertainment, Deponia is set on a trash planet of the same name which is presented in a broken down style reminiscent of Borderlands – albeit slightly cleaner. Deponia is peopled by a number of odd characters filling the game’s world, from small settlements to villages buried inside rubbish heaps – you, however, play as grumpy daydreamer Rufus who, in true Skywalker-esque style, wishes he were anywhere but Deponia. He dreams of a life in one of the beautiful cities floating far above the grimy planet and when a girl called Goal falls from one of these cities in the clouds, it is the chance he has been waiting for and he embarks on a journey to get her home.

The concept is a great one and the worn and cobbled together nature of the rubbish world of Deponia looks and sounds endearing, as do the beautiful backdrops. The character art style bears a resemblance to the genius work of Jamie ‘Tank Girl’ Hewlett, which gives it instant appeal (for me at least) and the classic theme of a young daydreamer looking to a far off place to escape from a mundane existence is a strong one that is always appealing. Deponia should be hitting UK shores on 20th May.

Gray Matter
Jane Jensen makes a long awaited return to the adventure genre after her success with the Gabriel Knight series, penning the intriguing looking Gray Matter. The game is a classic point ‘n’ click mystery with gothic/supernatural overtones, spread across eight chapters and focuses on two protagonists. Dr David Styles is a neurobiologist who, since losing his wife, has become a recluse, locked away in the ominously titled Dread Hill House. That bodes well. Samantha Everett, a young street performer shows up on his doorstep one night and becomes his assistant, helping him through his various, odd experiments.

As is always the case, things start off well and quickly descend into mystery, with unexplained events starting to plague Dread Hill House and the dead seemingly returning.  The screens are stunning, showing off the high-end 2.5D adventure with some exquisite 2D backgrounds and well realised characters. While the old mysterious mansion/reclusive scientist may be classic, slightly stale fare, the game’s visuals at least seem to make it well worth a look. Indeed, if it tackles the classic setting and characters well, it could be strong contender for adventure of the year.

J.U.L.I.A
We should note, that if we ever go into a cryostasis pod, we’ll be packing a camcorder and survival kit worthy of the SAS… indeed, we’ll be packing the actual SAS. You’ve heard how this one goes… Rachel Manners is an astrobiologist, who awakens from a cryogenic sleep to the sound of an alarm on board the vast space probe that she’s been travelling aboard. She has been out for several decades and for some reason, the crew are all missing. Something has gone wrong – probably something nasty… no Pikmin Onion ever mugged a spaceship, we know that much. Now you have to figure out what happened and why, along with uncovering the mysteries of the solar system in which you find yourself.

The start at least reminds us of Alien and others, and isn’t far off the same concept as the recently released Darkstar: The Interactive Movie, but we love it. Alone in space, with some tooled up gear and a mystery to solve – it sounds good, and from the few screens that we’ve been able to find, it looks pretty good too. On a personal note, I’m actually hoping that it veers more toward drama than space horror because something like Event Horizon could well finish me off after Amnesia. J.U.L.I.A, from the awesomely named indie team, Cardboard Box Entertainment, is expected to dock early this year, though no date has yet been set.

Tales of Monkey Island
This one should need little introduction, since even people who steer clear of the adventure genre will be well aware of the Monkey Island series’ impact on, not only the genre, but gaming and the culture which surrounds it. The episodes which make up this release may have been out last year, so this is a fly addition, however, those of us who like our games in one piece, rather than blown into chunks will be rejoicing that next month finally sees the UK retail release of the Tales of Monkey Island.  Tales focuses on everybody’s favourite hapless pirate, Guybrush Threepwood as he once again goes into battle against the ever-tenacious LeChuck.

In the course of stripping LeChuck of his demonic powers, Guybrush somehow manages to infect the entire Caribbean with expelled voodoo. Yep, sounds disgusting doesn’t it? With the voodoo infecting ordinary pirates, Guybrush sets off in sail of a cure for the problem, but nothing is ever as easy or simple as it may appear (unless you count the pointy-chinned Mr Threepwood himself). With the return of old favourites and some entertaining new faces to help spin the winding story, the retail release of this well received five part adventure should keep fans of ‘proper games’ happy. Expect to get this slice of physical media in your salt-stained piratey mitts on 25th March.

Moon Base: Orion
Another P&C eschewing the realism offered by many in the genre, Moon Base: Orion is a gloriously quirky looking title with a stylised hand-drawn style that is finding its way into many of this year’s adventures. The game centres around the sarcastic Space Janitor, Rad Tunever, whose holiday is rudely interrupted by that most inconvenient of things… a distress signal emanating from the far off Moon Base: Orion. Rad becomes embroiled in an adventure to rescue the base’s inhabitants and save the galaxy from a vast threat. Will he ever get that well-deserved holiday? We suspect not. Simple premise, cool setting, and beautiful looking artwork shoves this one into the top picks of our titles to watch for this year.

No word on the release date yet, having already slipped from its Q4 2010 window, however, we have faith in the sexy looking indie dev, Red Talon Games (based in Canada) to get this one out before the galaxy falls to an intergalactic threat. Or at least, drifts off into its soup, which can be just as lethal.

If that list is impressive, then the third and fourth quarters promise yet more with games such as The Last Crown, Coven, Memento Mori 2, and Harvey’s New Eyes on the horizon to name but a few, with sequels to genre familiars preparing themselves for a second front on the year. While countries such as Germany never fell out of love with the adventure, or the PC for that matter, to the extent of other territories, we can only hope that more gamers, many of whom (such as myself), are returning to the PC, will see the worth – and the gems – in this plucky genre that never quite let the coffin lid be nailed down by an increasingly dismissive industry. There are some genuinely great games already out and have been for years – smart, funny, and beautifully presented and 2011 promises more still. This is nothing new, just that this time, they are sufficient in number and quality that people outside the P&C playing field may just notice and bring us our ball back. If you’ve been away a while or just never tried one, if story matters more than multiplayer mash ups, then think about it and consider wading in – they won’t eat all your resources or spit DRM acid over your goodies and they mostly don’t bite. Mostly.

Fresh, innovative ideas in this day and age are rare. Even rarer is the chance that those ideas will grow into something truly amazing and fantastic, but that’s exactly what to expect from an idea pitched by Tim Schafer. There’s an incredible amount of love that goes into each title Schafer is involved with, and it pours through in everything, from the style to the characters to the incredibly top-notch and hilarious writing. Every Schafer game takes a simple, yet fresh, idea and makes something wildly imaginative from it. Brutal Legend’s idea is simple: “What if Metal ruled the land?”  From that one idea, many others spawned and from those, a game formed.  That game is Brutal Legend.

The story can be summarised thusly: Jack Black is Eddie Riggs, the world’s greatest roadie. He can build anything, tune anything and fix anything – except the state of current music. After an accident caused by one of the members of the inexplicably popular ‘Kabbage Boy’, Eddie Riggs is transported to a mysterious world where the guitars can fire lightning bolts and flames, and the animals and landscapes take their inspiration from covers of Metal albums.

Hearing about the game and following it closely as it developed, I couldn’t help but fall in love with it beforehand. Then, one day, the dream looked as if it was going to disappear and, like everything else I’ve ever thought I could love, Brutal Legend was going to leave me and break my heart. That day was when Activision dropped Brutal Legend and it looked like Tim Schafer was going to be shafted once again. I thought I’d never be able to get my hands on the game and all would be lost.

Then as suddenly as it left, Brutal Legend came back.  EA had picked up the game and they were going to give it the love and attention Activision wouldn’t; EA were going to support it and make sure it was the hit that it deserved to be.  Then yet again, as suddenly as it came back, everything looked grim.  Activision saw how much attention Brutal Legend was getting and, realising they were going to lose out, tried to sue to prevent the game from ever being released. Like a jealous lover, if Activision couldn’t have Brutal Legend, no one could. The lawsuit was quite a high-profile one in the world of games; Tim Schafer was famously quoted as saying “If Activision liked it then they should have put a ring on it… oh shit! Now Beyonce’s going to sue me too!”  However, true sense prevailed and EA won the right to publish the game which was it was to be released in October 2009, with EA creating a massive advertising campaign – they even went so far as to rename the month of release ‘Rocktober’.

The first time I’d get to properly see it in action, however, was during Download Festival 2009. You see, during EA’s advertising campaign they decided that one way to promote the game further would be to set a World Record.  So the Saturday of the Download Festival, gaming rockers and metal-heads gathered to set the World Record for the most people Air-Guitaring in a single place. Giving out Brutal Legend shirts to everyone who participated, our reward for setting the record would be the opportunity to play it in the facility EA had set up during the weekend.  After air-guitaring to Motorhead’s Ace of Spades, we cheered when an official declared that we were now World Record holders! I still think it was an amazing part of the marketing campaign.  If you look carefully at some of the pictures, you might be able to find me if you’re lucky!

I eventually got my hands on the game a few months ago, after a long time waiting for it.  And do you know what? That wait was incredibly justified.  Everything about the game entices the heck out of me, from the cut-scene with Jack Black leading into the Start Screen, where he finds the “LP” in the “Epic Metal” section of the record store, to that LP which acts as the Start screen and opening menu with the epic artwork; the game even starts off awesomely for me.  The opening cut-scene perfectly sets up Jack Black’s character, Eddie Riggs and introduces us to Kabbage Boy, an amazing parody with a song that, once unlocked, I had to listen to over and over and over.  The introduction into the mysterious world he is then launched into (which I shall henceforth refer to as ‘The Land Of METAL’) is also amazing. Just, everything about the opening is amazing.  From the opening cut-scenes to your first murders to building the Druid Plow to driving away, running over tons of enemies, and then meeting the human resistance and joining forces with them. It’s one of the most epic openers in a game that I’ve played for a long while, and it acts as an amazing introduction into ‘The Land Of METAL’.

It’s a game that starts off awesomely, and continues as it means to go on. The open world system is fantastic, and one of the few worlds that I have found myself obsessed with, wanting to see everything and trying to unlock all the hidden treasures. The Land of METAL is fantastically designed and certainly comes across as it means to – like the groin-splitting, legend-creating offspring of amazing metal album covers. There’s so much to see, with a ton of variety and so many different influences that it looks and feels like an art gallery for metal artists; one you can explore and in which you can explode people with the power of music.

Oh yeah, I haven’t mentioned how amazing it is to electrocute and set things on fire with your guitar and your axe, the powers of which are amplified in game. A lot of the game is simply the greatest tribute to Metal there could ever be. Collecting fire tributes becomes an incredibly fun diversion to the main game and helps you to gain new updates and combos for your  weapons and Druid Plow. Driving is made even more fun with the incredibly dedicated soundtrack, with every track hand-picked for the game. It’s a complete labour of love, and though I wasn’t a big fan of some of the tracks, I still appreciated listening to them; they helped make the Land of METAL just that bit more special – even if I did end up looping the Kabbage Boy song with the Tenacious D tracks over and over.

And then there’s the fantastically written Campaign mode, wherein Jack Black as Eddie Riggs helps defeat the forces of evil by use of his Roadie skills. Granted, if you were a particularly, incredibly cynical man, you could claim a lot of it is just training you to play the multiplayer, but if that’s even remotely true, then I’ve never played a more fun tutorial. The twist that got to many a gamer was the fact that the important battles are, in fact, real-time strategy, though you could get in up close and personal (like the random skirmishes dotted around the map, as a lot of the promotional material suggested).

Coming into the game a lot later than everyone else, meant I was a lot more aware of this and thus enjoyed it a lot more, as the battles are fast paced, well balanced and require a lot of quick thinking and strategy if you want to succeed. They’re also massively fun, and with the ability to get in on the action to level the playing fields with your axe and magical solos (one of which literally summons a giant lead Zeppelin to come crashing into the ground), they become a fun, fast paced and, if anything, more streamlined RTS.

Going back to how fantastically written written the story is, many of the characters and the background are brilliant and engrossing, and a lot of extra back-story is hidden around the world, though it is optional for those who don’t want it forced upon them.  Different characters may be various archetypes of metal, but they all mesh together really well and provide a bigger concern into the state of music today if you really want to dig into what the story means – it’s a lot deeper than you’d originally give it credit for.  Brutal Legend is one of the more hilarious games I have played in a while. Jack Black was a brilliant casting choice, as were many of the other voices provided in the game, and the writing had me in frequent stitches of laughter. You can tell how much hard work was put into the writing, and it really, fantastically shines through, even with the random lines that characters spout mid-battle, you’ll be bound to find something to set you rolling on the floor in laughter.

Brutal Legend is just such a brilliant combination of humour and metal that I couldn’t help but fall in love with it. Everything seemed to speak to me and come across as such a fun experience that I literally lost myself in it more times than I could count, and regretted nothing. A point of sadness is that, despite all the controversy surrounding Activision trying to block its release and EA’s massive marketing campaign, the game didn’t sell anywhere near as much as it should have done.  It’s around pretty cheap now though, so there’s little reason for people to deny themselves the chance to pick it up and hopefully see what I saw: a beautiful labour of laughter and love.  And fucking METAL.

-Love Edward
P.S: Play a drinking game. Every time you see the word “Metal” in this, drink. You may die.  How much more metal can you get than that?

In the past, you would buy your game and that would be it. You’d have the full and finished thing in your hand on the day of release, sure in the knowledge that if you didn’t complete the thing, that was your own doing. Unless you got hit by a bus, of course, but in such a situation, not finishing your game is a relatively minor annoyance.

Gradually this has stopped being the case, starting slowly with expansion packs, before picking up speed with downloadable content seeing publishers churning out any number of minor and major game additions or even locking off content already on the retail disk (which is a rant for another day) until you purchase an unlock key online. From there we started to lose the retail disk and manual and other solid aspects of the game when entire titles started to be sold over services like Steam, Impulse, and Games on Demand. And now at last we’re seeing an advanced form of rip-off that has evolved from the combination of games distribution and high-speed internet.

Episodic games made him cry fire...

When did it become acceptable for developers and publishers to sell us an unfinished product? Okay, you could make the argument that unfinished games have been hitting retail for some time, with patches trickling out that fixed them and slowly made them half-way functional because their release was rushed to meet unreasonable deadlines. That’s been happening for years on the PC, and now on the current generation of consoles due to the Xbox and PS3 allowing for patches to be downloaded and applied relatively painlessly as a matter of course. This has resulted in developers doing a sloppier job of testing and polishing their products before release. And again, that some gamers do not have internet access for their consoles still is a rant for another time. But even this isn’t nearly as frustrating as being sold a game that has half or more of the content entirely missing, not broken, but not there at all except for an IOU and a short preview that promises to sell you the next chunk sometime in the future.

In theory, episodic games are a logical progression of the downloadable content model, letting you play as far as you’re willing to pay for, in smaller increments than buying a full priced game outright. The argument does fall a little flat when you consider that these episodic games have a demo mode on XBLA and PSN, so you can find out whether or not you want to pay the full price without paying anything at all.

I was hugely excited by the Penny Arcade Adventures game. I’m a big fan of the webcomic. Jerry Holkins is a very funny, very erudite and well-spoken commentator on the industry. And his partner in crime Mike Krahulik is an incredible artist. Between them, their work has a kind of humour that alternates between the extremely vulgar and the extremely high concept, visiting most points in-between, and somehow managing to make some very good points along the way. That appeals to me, strongly, so the idea that they intended to make their own game loosely based on the characters from the webcomic was positively saliva inducing.

The more details that came out about it, the more I salivated. It was a combination of a traditional RPG and a point and click adventure. It had a story and setting inspired by the work of H.P. Lovecraft. It was full of steampunk imagery and style. It let you recreate yourself as the main character, so it was really you dicking about with Tycho and Gabe. And it was being made with Hothead Games, an independent dev team that had somehow managed to snag Ron Gilbert, the creator of Monkey Island, as a creative director.

The only news that landed with a thud was that it would be an episodic title. At the time, this was a disappointment simply because the first episode turned out to be quite short in duration. You could finish it in a few hours. And then you had to wait again. The second episode repeated this; when it came I devoured its succulent offering in very short order and was again left restlessly demanding the rest of the game, my hunger barely satiated.

I waited a very, very long time after that second episode.

Eventually it started to reach a point where it was getting ridiculous. Episode three was nowhere in sight over a year after the second episode had been released. I was by now actively hunting online for some kind of announcement or news, but there was none. It had dried up, the game was postponed, nobody knew what was going on with it, and neither Penny Arcade nor Hothead were responding to the increasingly frustrated and vocal questions about what the hell was going on.

A few weeks ago, we finally found out, those of us who had supported the project from the start, had bought the two episodes as soon as they came out despite the pricing structure, and who had kept vigil in the absence of that third episode. And the word was there would be no third episode, nor the fourth that was also previously promised. Excuses were made. Hothead and Ron Gilbert had better things to be doing with their valuable time (namely Deathspank, a game which has mostly passed me by, and which I am entirely apathetic about). Not enough people had bought the first two episodes, accusing them of being overpriced. Blah blah bloody blah.

The thing is; I would have continued to wait. I paid the (at the time) exorbitant price of both released episodes because I wanted that game, and there was no doubt in my mind that there would be four episodes and a full story and a complete game at the end of it. Hell, maybe, if those four did well, there would be even more! I trusted that. Fine, let Hothead piss about with Deathspank. I don’t mind. Just so long as they came back and finished Penny Arcade Adventures when they were done with it!

Being told that I had wasted my time, my money, and my unwavering support, because they couldn’t be bothered to finish the game properly, felt like a massive betrayal. It still does. I am massively angry at them, inversely proportionately to how much I loved what little I had been allowed to play. And it’s had other ramifications, not just for my appreciation of one of my favourite webcomics and any future output from the developer involved, but in how I will now approach other episodic games.

In short, don’t try and sell an episodic game to me ever again, until all the episodes are finished and released. I don’t care how much I want the game. I don’t care if it means that later episodes are guaranteed to be cancelled because those first few aren’t selling much. Maybe it’ll result in some potentially great games fizzling out. And maybe, just maybe, it’ll force developers and publishers to see just how unfair it is to those who did support them when they let them down. Until I know with absolute certainty that the whole game is there for me to play, I’m not interested.

The news that Hydrophobia was to make the switch to being episodic was a surprise, to say the least

I’ve been watching Hydrophobia with interest for a long time now. It was changed to an episodic XBLA game during the time I was starting to wonder where the third Penny Arcade episode was. Unlucky for them. Until I get all the episodes, not going to buy any of them. And I’ve held off on the new Telltale Games reboots of Sam & Max and Monkey Island too, until each season has completed and been re-packaged as a complete game, so I’ve only bought and played the first two seasons of Sam & Max.

Essentially, this entire article is a rant about how I got screwed over by a game I desperately wanted to finish, but was denied the chance to do so. To some people that may seem rather petty. But once bitten, twice shy, and in the long run I can see me not being in the minority of gamers to be betrayed in this way.

When Eurogamer suggested that they consider Kotick to be misunderstood, that he is just trying to make money,when people think that he has some sort of obligation to make gamers happy, Schafer didn’t beat around the bush:

“Well, he doesn’t have to be as much of a dick about it, does he? I think there is a way he can do it without being a total prick. It seems like it would be possible. It’s not something he’s interested in.”

He goes on to say:

“He makes a big deal about not liking games, and I just don’t think that attitude is good for games in general…You can’t just latch onto something when it’s popular and then squeeze the life out of it and then move on to the next one. You have to at some point create something, build something.”

Not a fan then, but given that Activision tried to sue Schafer’s company, Double Fine Productions, in a vain attempt to stop Brutal Legend being published by hated rivals EA, it is more than understandable.  Something which Schafer admits may have held up the writing of dialogue, but goes on to say that he would likely have left it to the end anyway, due to his penchant for procrastination.

When Eurogamer suggested that Kotick was perhaps too successful, Schafer had a few suggestions for a career change:

“He could go to an industry that makes more money. Ball bearings… Something that suits his passions more. Weapons manufacturing?”

However, with Kotick gone, who would be gaming’s new Mephistopheles?  Our new panto villain?

Source: Eurogamer

No one ever just phones the Police and lets them deal with it...

After being left behind by the mainstream some years ago, the graphic adventure/point ‘n’ click genre endured, buoyed up by healthy, dedicated following and evolved into the self-sustaining creature it is today.  While a small number of popular franchise releases or the odd hit still get weighty attention, such as the recently revitalised Monkey Island series, Sam and Max, or even Machinarium, for the most part, these adventures have settled firmly into an overlooked niche.

Small sub-genres of their own have developed, such as horror or mystery titles with their own respected developers, franchises, and thriving communities and over the years, many gems have emerged, lauded by those immersed in the genre and slipping beneath the radar of those who aren’t.  Black Mirror II’s predecessor was one such title and now, in the hands of new developer Cranberry, this long awaited sequel aims to up the thrills.  Far from being action oriented button mashers, this type of adventure moves at a more sedate pace, relying on the story, painstaking exploration, and puzzles for its kicks.  It is the sort of game you settle down to with a cup of tea and a biscuit, rather than a crackling headset, Pringles, and requisite whining teenager across Xbox Live.

Like its kin, Black Mirror II is devoutly story driven, aiming to be as immersive as possible, with a level of illustrated realism that is pleasantly surprising to someone who has been away from the genre as long as I have.  Played in the third person against lavish ’2.5d’ backgrounds, the player becomes part of the unfolding narrative, exploring, conversing, solving puzzles, and unravelling the mystery as the various plot strands begin to interweave.

Darren chalks this one up to experience. Ahem.

With the story the dominant force, an in-depth review of a game like Black Mirror 2 is difficult, making the risk of spoilers (for both games) almost inevitable, and therefore needs approached with some trepidation.  Told over six acts and set 12 years after the brutal murders of the first game, the player takes the role of new protagonist, Darren Michaels – a Bostonian physics student holidaying at his mother’s house in the run down town of Biddeford in Maine.

Seemingly thousands of miles from the, now infamous, English town of Willow Creek, scene of the original murders, Darren’s life is filled with the mudanity of a summer job, indulging his passion for photography in a local shop while simultaneously nurturing a large chip on his shoulder.  However, nothing is ever as it seems and with the appearance of the alluring Angelina and a mysterious stranger with an interest in the pair of them, Darren is inexorably drawn into a mystery which reaches across the Atlantic and back into the fog of the past and the tragic history of Willow Creek which is still languishing in the shadow of the Gordon family curse.

Murder, mystery, blackmail, suicide, mysterious strangers, suspicious accidents abound…and that’s just Act I which is almost like a separate game in itself, feeling somewhat detached from the heart of the story.  The meat and potatoes of the plot don’t really kick into gear until Darren reaches England to search for Angelina who has vanished while investigating Darren’s connection with Willow Creek.  Every 12 years, tragedy strikes the small town and being 12 years since the last murders, the Gordon family curse hasn’t ended its stranglehold over the area.  Darren becomes embroiled in the evil surrounding Black Mirror Castle and a serpentine conspiracy of dark magic, murder, and tragedy which stretches back decades.

The various plot twists involve most popular clichés that one could think of, but they work well in service to the story, despite feeling rather thickly trowelled on by the end and more than once it was easy to make an educated guess as to upcoming twists.  How the story is presented however, can balance the more classic plot devices, and the way the game inspires immersion and allows interaction can be crucial in determining whether the whole thing works or doesn’t….it wouldn’t be the first game to suffer from a poor interface or bad inventory management, however, Black Mirror II handles these things admirably and as such, is an improvement over the first game.

The diary is a great way of keeping up to speed on current tasks...and talking about your changing body

The leading character, Darren is a surly, grungy, sarcastic young man, world-weary in the way that only a student with an attitude problem can be.  His acidic remarks are amusing, presenting him as a grumpy and reluctant hero and he isn’t alone…almost everyone in Biddeford seems to be rude, curmudgeonly, creepy, perverted, belligerent, or sarcastic and the English cast are barely politer.  While there are a few stock characters here such as the wizened butler or the mouthy New Jersey girl, all work within the framework and aren’t enough to outweigh the, by and large, satisfying cast rounding out the story.

Immersion, as previously mentioned, is a crucial element when the primary drive is the story, and as such, the game follows the conventions of many in its genre, keeping the navigation and interaction simple and clean, with minimal distraction.  There is no perma-map or HUD, and the inventory and menus (which are well presented and easy to use) are tucked discreetly away at the vertical extremes of the screen  where they can be summoned to visibility with a simple mouse-over. With the clutter cleared, the player is left with only Darren, a well realised 3d character, and the world around him which made for an ‘instant connect’ with the environment.

Interaction is simple, with a combination of the mouse and keyboard shortcuts to move and interact with other characters and various points of interest.  A single left click on an object will have Darren describe it, while right clicking will garnish the player with a more detailed description and an acerbic observation or three.  Double clicking on an exit or object will take Darren there immediately which is a relief in sections which require a lot of backtracking (thankfully the more frustrating of these are confined to Act V).

What sort of adventure would it be without at least one morgue scene?

Simple keyboard shortcuts can be utilised: hitting the spacebar causes a flashing indication of all points of interest and interaction, which, given the level of detail in most scenes, can be easy to otherwise overlook unless you are keen on ‘pixel hunting’ (minute cursor sweeps to locate any interactive hotspots) which is a long acknowledged bane of the genre.

While some purists may frown at such an addition, claiming, perhaps justly so, that it spoils the fun of exploring, it is a choice that is a comfort to have on standby and one which was sadly missing from the game’s predecessor.  The balance of being able to check for anything missed manually at the tap of a key is welcome, especially since old hotspots and previously non-interactive objects will subsequently become ‘live’ as the story progresses.  Another welcome shortcut is the quick-save option: rather than breaking the player out of the story by having them traverse menus, a quick tap of F9 will save the game without pulling focus.  Hitting ‘D’ will bring up one of the game’s many successes in the form of Darren’s diary.

These coffee stained pages are an excellent conceit, neatly summarising the story and allowing the player to keep track of tasks.  The checklists, notes, and clues, along with odd sketches and crossings out of old tasks add a warm touch of character and are very in keeping with the game’s feel.

Continuing with innovative devices, Black Mirror II’s fast travel option is presented in the form of a postcard inventory item.  Bringing up the postcard of Biddeford, and later, Willow Creek, from the inventory presents the player with a neat pictorial representation of all the locations and a simple click will whisk Darren straight there, provided it  has been unlocked.

Your worn seaside postcard makes a smart fast travel device and if folded correctly, can be used as a makeshift raft...

Like other games of this type, snatching an ‘A’ star on the ease of interaction and movement and serving up visual pizzazz is one thing, however, one area which many adventure titles sadly fall down, is the voice acting.  On the whole, the standard in Black Mirror II is high, with only a few oddities apparent in Darren’s Bostonian twang which becomes easier on the ear as the game progresses.  For the most part, the supporting cast are well played, and the doctor, who, for some reason, sounded like Christopher Walken, was actually pleasant for precisely that odd reason.  The British accents however, as is often the case, are where the polish started to thin slightly.  While some were fine, the maid who veered into a blend of Australian and English was often jarring and being told to “Peese orf yah wankah” by one character had me cringing into my tea.  Thankfully, this sort of thing was few and far between and what slipped under the otherwise high bar, was never enough to derail the experience.

Thankfully, the sound effects and music were flawless, with haunting piano pieces and occasional screeching strings underlining the, often sinister, story in a way that complimented without ever being overbearing.  While the same pieces would repeat, they were atmospheric enough that it never grated.  Likewise, the sound effects were top notch, with gulls screeching, rain drumming against windows, and offices full of burping water coolers and ringing phones all serving to create a rich tapestry of sound which helped to flesh out the environments and further enmesh the player in the realism.  The only bugbear – and whether this was down to my aging speakers or not – was that the exterior environmental sound would often drown out dialogue to the point where it was indistinguishable, so prepare to fiddle with the sound settings to get the right balance.

...what did you expect to see out of a Biddeford hotel bedroom window? Sydney Opera house perhaps?...

Overall, the sound complimented the environments beautifully and these themselves were often breathtaking, maintaining an unflinching high standard throughout.  Vivid, lush, and intricate, the level of detail on display in Black Mirror II rarely failed to impress, with almost every scene being something to be admired.  The worn out seaside town of Biddeford with its colourful but faded splendour and the dilapidated grounds of a castle nestled in Wales, reclaimed by encroaching marsh and forest were a rich treat for the eye.  A crumbling lab, a crypt, and several grand hotel lobbies were just a few more of the locations and ‘broken down eye-candy’ on display.

Light effects only added to the atmosphere, whether it was the obligatory lightning flashes or shafts of light seeping through ornate windows.  Moving through dank passageways beneath Willow Creek, Darren’s light would realistically drive back shadows as he picked his way through the twists and turns.  The innovative use of visual effects were also employed in several ‘blink and miss’ moments to creepy effect, notably every time the mysterious stranger from Act I was observed talking – odd jagged flashes would appear and vanish, at first leaving me wondering if my game had glitched before realising that they resembled broken glass.  An odd, if somewhat chilling touch.

A renovated asylum with a history of torture sounds like a great place to kick back for the night

Black Mirror II possesses so much attention to detail that it was hard not to idle over each screen, rather than proceeding with the story and intricate touches are everywhere, from the skin crawling walls in Fuller’s rancid dungeon room, to the smoke furling from chimneys, to the flickering of broken traffic lights in Biddeford’s tired streets.  Extras wander through town scenes and breathe yet more life into the game’s world and realistic grime, clutter, and character illustrate the background of almost every location.

While the story is a serious one, there are a few self-aware flashes of humour which acted as brief relief, acknowledging and playing off the player’s expectations of certain clichés.  Observing a thick growth of ivy, strangling the front of Gordon’s Palace Hotel, Darren remarks in his usual dry manner that it’s a shame that he doesn’t have to secretly get up to the first floor, since the ivy would be an ideal ladder substitute and there are  similar sarcastic observations about various inventory items and the tradition of secret passageways beneath sarcophagi (which turn out to be amusing in the irony that this is precisely what the game delivers, minutes later).  Someone at Cranberry clearly has a sense of humour, unafraid – if indeed, it was intentional – to poke fun at their own genre.

The game, while sedate by nature, is generally well paced, starting slowly and building to full steam in the middle game, rattling along in a frantic end-of-act chase sequence that has the player puzzle solving on the fly, giving a pulse-fluttering buzz, only for the whole thing to come screeching to a halt in an oddly stilted fifth act.  The game never quite regains pace after this, with much backtracking and faffing bogging down Act V and into Act VI as the story dusts down its baggage for the traditional endgame revelations.  Act V was perhaps the biggest complaint about the game, and only a grudging one at that – there was a lot of to and fro-ing, faffy puzzles and the whole thing felt rather tedious after the preceding acts.

An ideal hallway for rollerskating but a bitch to dust

Adventure games like this live and die by the quality of their puzzles and Black Mirror pretty much gets it spot on, which is a relief because again, it is often one of the biggest pitfalls of the genre.  Get the puzzles wrong and the game stalls – no amount of stunning visuals can save a game from inventory hell, puzzles which risk dead-ending a player, or just plain bizarre, senseless problems.  Nothing surreal here, just logical, smart inventory based puzzles – none of which should have the player stumped for too long if they fall back on the traditional default of trial and error.  Any dab hand at this type of game will be an inventory magpie anyway and the rule of thumb in a genre known for its infinitely copious pockets is: ‘if it isn’t nailed down, nick it’.  Thankfully the game will never ‘dead end’ a player by having them reach a point of no return without crucial items and knowing this makes solutions a matter of time, trial and patience if they haven’t already worked out ahead of time what something will likely be used for.

Cobbling together levers and light sources are all par for the course, as is anything involving hosepipe or rope, but there are more innovative puzzles in Cranberry’s offering too.  The use of an inflatable raft, for instance, to lift a concrete beam, or gathering a mish-mash ingredients to cobble together a darkroom kit involving among other things,  a vandalised string of lights from the local diner stood out, along with luring a Raven from its nest to retrieve an item.  One particular scenario was reminiscent of the ‘A Team’, leaving Darren to escape from a locked room with only the equipment to hand and some makeshift welding gear.  Less satisfying were some of the close up puzzles: the usual safecracking and lock picking were here to be counted, (safes in abundance), but others, including the sliding piece puzzles – a pet hate – were a frustrating matter of pure trial and error, with the transparency/map in particular, leaving me with little idea of what to actually do other than clicking and dragging it about until something happened; similarly the last puzzle swallowed my patience which acted as quite a buzz kill before the finale.

Not satisfied with adding some welcome options such as the ‘show all hotspots’ control, Cranberry have included a few other extras, such as a ‘panic lever’ on the easy setting to allow tricky puzzles to be circumvented after a certain amount of failed attempts.  Also present are a number of unlockable pictures and minigames, found by snapping various people and places during Darren’s travels, but perhaps the most welcome, and something which would have been – literally – a life saver in the first game, is the ‘auto save’ function.  At certain points in the game, Darren’s life hangs in the balance and is dependant on swift action to save him.  In these moments, to prevent apoplexy from those who weren’t expecting a sudden turns of events and, thus, hadn’t saved, Cranberry have kindly ensured that the game saves itself before impending doom, allowing the player to reload and try again.  While this can lead to Groundhog Day-esque circles of repetitive death as the right option is sought, it is a relief to say the least.

Willow Creek...home of madmen, mayhem, and perhaps worst of all, the opportunistic Murray

Aside from the visuals and music, it is often the small details which give Black Mirror II its charm.  The dying town of Willow Creek ravaged by tragedy, lying forgotten in the heart of the English countryside is hard not to be moved by, with the run down buildings and destroyed beauty of the locations invoking an air of sadness, underlined by past events.  Even casual touches provoke emotion: from the tasteless cashing-in of the murders by some of the locals, to a young victim’s name forever recorded on the highscore table of a pinball machine in the local pub – something which gave more than a moment’s pause.

The irony of a town in the throws of death itself, relying on death for life in the, sadly all too realistic, exploitation of the murders which made it famous for fifteen minutes, didn’t go unnoticed.

The human desire to capitalise on tragedy is perhaps the most realistic thing about Black Mirror II.  Tasteless souvenirs, postcard maps of murder spots, a grisly sanatorium renovated into a hotel, and perhaps worst of all – animatronic re-enactments of the more brutal murders, including that of a 12 year old boy, in the sensationalist exhibit at the local museum, are all too believable.

Underlying themes of good and evil and whether they are choices beyond your control are prevalent, as is the notion of fate and whether trying to escape it, merely drives you deeper into its arms.  Black Mirror II presents the chilling notion that, irrespective of whether or not you believe in something, if that something believes in you, there is little you can do about it.

The ending, coming as it did after a largely unsatisfying chapter seemed sadly abrupt and there were a few details which didn’t make sense, including a rather odd loose end hanging from Act I.  The set up for the threequel was obvious, but by the time the end credits finished, I was left wondering where they can possibly go from here, having used up every conceivable plot device possible, from questionable parentage, double bluffs, reappearing siblings, betrayal, and grave defying deceased, not to mention having burned through the main cast with gusto, leaving a considerably thinner set of options for a continued story.

I just hope that the Black Mirror franchise hasn’t shot its storytelling load before the third instalment because the game was a joy to play, rekindling an interest in a genre I had left behind, and presenting an immersive, enjoyable, and largely satisfying game, full of atmosphere.  It is a shame that, for the most part, these games are overlooked by so many when they have much to offer – not the least is value for money because at around 20 hours play time and half the cost, it beats many console offerings into a bloodstained hat.  A hat which, if combined with a salt shaker and a biro tube, can be used as a mini submarine.

Mrs Peacock may have been a man, but Miss Scarlet certainly isn't, as Mr "Reverend" Green will attest!

Being a long-time PC gamer, I’ve played my share of PC games in the past, and then some.  By far the biggest collection of PC games I own are “point and clicks”, which to the uninitiated involve walking around, picking stuff up, solving puzzles, MacGyvering stuff together, and chatting people up (Well, interrogating them really).  So I’m here to share my love of this overlooked little genre.

“The Secret Of Monkey Island” was my first, followed by “Simon the Sorcerer”, but the one that really cemented my enduring love of this particular game type was “Cluedo Fatal Illusion”.  The graphics were state-of-the-art at the time (1999 – god I was 17!) and I’d never experienced anything like it before; not just the graphics but the immersive first person perspective that made you feel like you were really there.  The whole murder mystery, whodunnit thing had me head-over heels.  I’ve always been a sucker for the old ‘group of people stranded in a mansion and being picked off one by one’ scenario, so this was gaming heaven for me. (Sexy Miss Scarlett being a bonus!)

Something wooden... something devoid of life... night vision camera... all that's missing is dodgy mascara and a gobby northern lass!

Fast-forward to today and you’ve got outstanding titles like “The Lost Crown” and “Return To Mysterious Island” among many others ranging from the easy “Nancy Drew” series to the near ‘impossible to do without a walkthrough’ ones like the “Myst” games.

So, first person or third? Personally I don’t really have a preference. For me things like the story and gameplay take precedence over whether it’s first or third person, so this doesn’t factor into whether I buy a game or not.  It’s nice to be immersed in the game first person style, interacting with characters, feeling the atmosphere, and having the shit scared out of you on occasion.  However, it’s also nice to see just whose life you are meddling with and get a little more attached to them and the story, not to mention sending them places and getting them to do things that you would avoid in real life, because you watch movies and you know the ‘rules’. But hey, it’s not you right?

Then there’s the inventory. Aaaaaah, the inventory. If it’s not nailed down then it’s destined for your Tardis-like pockets.  Anything from bread to ladders, it’s coming with you whether it belongs to someone else or not.  I get a weird sense of satisfaction every time I pick up a new item, thinking “Yeah, inventory!” Or muttering under my breath “InvenToryyyyyyyy.”, with a smug little smile on my face. And it feels even better when you finally figure out where to use that bloody rubber chicken or knock together a battery out of some coins, cloth, bamboo, and a lemon (Seriously). Still, you can’t help but feel a bit sorry for your character hauling around a sack of cement or walking around with a giant banana picker stuffed down their trousers, I mean, that’s gotta chafe, right?  But like it or not, they’ll do as they’re damn well told, because you WILL need that chocolate fountain at some point, implausible as it might seem.

Before Harry there was Simon... and he didn't need two "hangers on" and an owl to make things happen! Just a mouse.

I do have a few gripes with these games though, one being that they are just not long enough (with the possible exception of “The Lost Crown”). Another is when a game won’t allow you to add stuff to your inventory until you’ve seen where you can use it. (Yes “Rhiannon” I’m talking about you.) I mean how annoying is it to pick up something like a torch that you just KNOW you will need, but not be able to take it with you until you’ve clicked on the dark stairs? Answer: VERY! Having to traipse around every bloody area in the game trying to find that poxy oak branch you saw earlier but don’t remember where, can be extremely frustrating! As to graphics, some of them are quite dark, which makes for a great atmosphere, but when it’s SO dark you can’t even find the bloody door handle, it kinda irritates!

Despite their various flaws, some anti-climactic endings, and a format that some might call repetitive, you can’t help but keep going back. Adventure, horror, mystery, puzzles, and murder, this genre has it all. And you’ll see it all too: ghosts, vampires, druids, pirates, books that transport you to another world, machines from the future that consume people, giant moving stones that turn you into a pile of ash, and monkeys called Jep.  Oh, and normal people too. Wonderful escapism that will consume hours of your day and night, but in a good way.

So say goodbye to sleep and hello to the multitude of lives out there just waiting for you to take over and see through to their end again and again. And so, “point ‘n’ clicks”, in the bellowing voice of Whitney Houston: “I will always love youuuuuuuuuuuuu!”