Doctor Who - The Gunpowder Plot

The Doctor and some Guy.

Hello again, today I would like to tell you all about the latest Doctor Who Adventure Game, The Gunpowder Plot. I have covered all the other games in this series so now it’s time for me to produce my usual report on both game and story. I’ll split the review into two halves so first up is a review of the game itself...

The Game

Oh dear. It’s been almost a whole year since the last Adventure Game (the Vashta Nerada based Christmas episode) and surely the time has been spent evaluating the series so far and devising ways to make the game more fun? Less... crap? No it has not.

You may not remember my previous grumbles about this series and the inherent problems I’ve had with the game mechanics, and the general competency of the design. Let me remind you of the ways in which previous Doctor Who Adventure Games have offended me:

1. Stealth sections. Bloody stealth. Doctor Who is not Solid Snake or Rikimaru, he’s the Doctor, a stumbling, loud, talky man. The Adventure Games love to include stealth sections that are usually too tough for kids and too frustrating/boring for manchildren like me.

2. Time limit finishes where precision and timed button presses are essential, neither of which are possible given that controlling the characters feels like driving a hovercraft full of eels through a pool of extra slippy custard.

3. Mini games that are boring and frustrating. The previous games decided to recreate the Doctor’s habit of bashing gadgets together out of bits of junk by forcing you to play tiresome min games, the worst being the steady hand game. The game that can be found at the fair where if you touch the wire with your metal loop there’s a loud buzzing noise and you lose. It is the worst game.

4. Lots of running down corridors. Okay, this is a Doctor Who tradition but it doesn’t mean that I want to spend my time up and down the same bloody sets like poor old Colin Baker in Mindwarp.

So after almost a year to clear up the mistakes in past games I was expecting an improvement, what I got instead was a neutered version of the same frustrating mess. The good news is that the mini games are infrequent and largely painless, the hateful wire game has gone and is replaced with a simple connect the shapes puzzle. It’s pretty easy and not frustrating – great for kids and good for someone who just wants to get through the story. So although the mini games are still there, they’re largely painless and irrelevant. Hurray. Still, it would be nice not to have them at all.

And that’s the only positive.

The stealth section is present again, only this time the setting appears to be the traditional computer game staple of a bloody sewer. Not only do you have to play through a risible stealth section (now with added stealth ‘kills’) but you have to do it in a series of brown corridors. Fun. The stealth section is also overlong and repeated twice. Plodding slowly behind dim-witted aliens does not make for excitement or tension, it fosters boredom.

The traditional adventure game puzzles are incredibly easy and come across as half hearted. The good news is that it’s almost impossible to get stuck as almost all the puzzles can be solved with the sonic screwdriver or the psychic paper. The bad news is that it removes any thought or challenge to the puzzles. You'll often find an item but then realise that it’s the solution to the puzzle you’re about to encounter in the same area. Again, good for young children, bad for anyone who wants to put their brain to use. Still, I did find it funny that over the course of the game Amy manages to make use of the various remnants of a Chinese meal she keeps in her pocket.

The animation is appalling, everyone runs like the T-1000 in Terminator 2 and the water effects are awful. The game looks like it was developed 10 years ago, if you play the game at the default Medium graphics quality then Rory is a nightmare creature - a being spawned from beyond with fronds for hair and black liquid eyes. If you want to change any of the graphics settings you have to close down the game. There is no option to restart, you have to close down and restart the game manually - the game does not prompt you to do this either. I would also like to mention the incredibly bizarre bug I encountered during installation where for some reason the installer would hang for 20 minutes and then commence installation. I wasn’t the only one to have this problem and it took a trip to the official site to figure out why the installer wasn’t working.

Rory would like you to join him... IN HELL.

The game itself is terrible, the novelty of playing as the Doctor, Amy, and Rory soon wears off and you find yourself wondering how much time you’ve wasted watching poorly implemented cutscenes and listening to poor voice acting. Again it seems that there is little direction for the actors as even the normally excellent series regulars sound flat and unconvincing.

These complaints are nothing I haven’t already mentioned in previous reviews and it seems these problems will never be resolved. This is a tragedy, there was a chance here to create something truly special for the Doctor Who audience but the ball was dropped, rolled down a hill, and landed in an open sewer.

The Story

Enough moaning about the game, what’s the story like?

It’s actually not bad once you get past the crappy game mechanics and the tedious running through dull corridors and city streets. The Doctor crashes his TARDIS into another ship after escaping a horde of angry medieval Chinese warriors that Amy and Rory had managed to annoy. 'Dimensional lesions' begin to appear in the TARDIS itself and the Doctor tracks more lesions to Earth. The TARDIS crash lands in 17th Century London on the 5th November 1605 and the Doctor and crew stumble across Guy Fawkes and his co conspirators, who are led by a strange woman with glowing green eyes...

It transpires that the Doctor crashed into a Rutan ship (Horror of Fang Rock) and stranded a crew of Rutans under the streets of 17th Century London. The Rutans want to blow up Parliament so that the explosion can propel their ship off Earth (yeah... what?). It’s not long before the Sontarans arrive to stop the Rutans and take the Rutan’s genocide device. It seems the Rutans were travelling to Sontar to destroy the Sontaran race with a viral bomb. The Sontarans want to get their hands on this bomb so they can reverse engineer it and use it to destroy the Rutan race.

After a lot of running up and down corridors and avoiding Rutan and Sontaran patrols, the Doctor saves Parliament by transporting it into space and recreating his anti-Dalek weapon from Remembrance of the Daleks and modifies it to fight off the Rutans.

Eventually the Doctor reverse engineers the bomb to destroy the Rutans and gives a spare bomb to the Sontarans so that both races have the power to wipe each other out. The aliens, having reached a stalemate, decide to leave Earth alone and continue their war elsewhere (or later on one side will probably steal the other side's bomb and then detonate the genocide device). The Doctor then returns Parliament to Earth and leaves Guy Fawkes to be captured by the authorities.

The problem with the story is that it is constantly interrupted by the game itself and by heavy handed educational dialogue. “Hello, my name is Guy Fawkes, my favourite colour is green and I had liver and onions for dinner. I hope to blow up Parliament with my barrels of gunpowder. I hope I don’t get caught because the punishment of the time is to be pecked to death by a duck.” This pretty much happens every time you speak to one of the conspirators. I love history and I’m always interested in the stories of historical figures but the presentation in this game is sorely lacking, it's like having a textbook read aloud to you.

I remember an old collectible series called Discovery that had a Guy Fawkes special, it had wonderful posters and educational facts and stories behind the Gunpowder Plot. Hanging those posters on my wall was more fun than playing this game.

The BBC has released some educational material for schools to go hand in hand with the game. I hope the kids have fun with the PDFs 'cos the game will bore them to tears.

Halloween-O-Thon Part The Third

Hello there, I hope you are having fun tonight. I am busy constructing an elaborate bucket-of-fish-heads trap for the local trick or treaters. They love it when they ring the doorbell and 10 pounds of mackerel rains down on their heads. Their cries and squeals of delight can be heard for miles.

Now let me tell you about one of my favourite scary films.

The Thing

The Thing is magnificent, possibly John Carpenter's greatest film - sod Halloween, The Fog, Escape From New York, and In The Mouth of Madness because The Thing is better than all of them. In fact, The Thing combines the best parts of the other films to make a fantastic whole. The stalking suspense of Halloween, the implacable weather conditions of The Fog, the coolness of having Kurt Russell acting all anti-heroic, and the paranoia and creeping fear of In The Mouth of Madness.

Look, watch this and you'll see that even the trailer is great.



"Man is the warmest place to hide."

*Shudder*

Much like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the real horror of The Thing, is the loss of self. The thought that a creature could take your body, your personality, your being, your form and parade around in your skin, living your life. The victims of The Thing are perfect duplicates, the facsimiles retain memories and personality, nothing gives them away until it's too late.

Of course for those who don't consider identity theft a horrific idea, there's always the fact that The Thing can shapeshift into millions of hideous forms and kill you with pseudopods, teeth and alien ejaculate.

The film is set in a remote outpost, cut off from civilization and surrounded by harsh weather conditions. There is no escape from the alien terror, no safe haven to hide within, no outside help to call in to remove the problem. The desolate surroundings add to the air of encroaching hopelessness, of a land howling in pain and wanting to scrub itself of this alien infection.

Plus Kurt Russell is fantastic in this film. Snake Plissken and Jack Burton are cartoon (anti)heroes, RJ MacReady is a more rounded, everyman character. MacReady is clearly someone who has seen horror before, his matter of fact demeanour with each new crisis suggests someone who has seen horror and conflict. He's also a man with little remorse or love for his fellow cabin mates. I have a theory about MacReady, it's not a clever one but I think he was a Vietnam veteran. He's a helicopter pilot, he's sullen to the point of being anti-social (hell, he lives in a shack away from the rest of the men), he's a drinker, and he knows how to handle a weapon and explosives. For MacReady the paranoia in the research base is probably very similar to the constant fear of time spent in the jungles of Vietnam. That's just my theory anyway. Not ground breaking or particularly insightful but I think Russell's performance does give some depth to the character that isn't in the script.

I was fortunate enough to see The Thing in the cinema last year. There were two showings over one evening, both sold out. It was amazing to view the film on the big screen with a packed audience cringing and shifting uncomfortably during the quiet periods and reacting with yelps and cries of horror during the gory action sequences.

The Thing is a film that should live on your shelf, slowly absorbing the other DVDs into its collective and making them dance for its own amusement.

No I don't know what I meant by that last part either.

Web Snark - Torchwood: Web of Lies

Today I was reminded by Rob Buckley that Starz commissioned a Torchwood webseries starring Eliza Dushku. At the time the news was too terrible to contemplate so I blanked it from my mind, but now I have been reminded of it, I must see it. You can watch it too. JOIN ME. Go on, watch it and then come back for some of my thoughts.



That was terrible wasn't it? I mean, really bad. The animation is awful, like something from a flash video from ten years ago. The artwork varies wildly in quality from frame to frame, it seems that whoever is responsible is trying to ape Bryan Hitch without actually being any good. Gwen in particular varies in appearance from frame to frame, just watch how her nose changes shape.

Speaking of Gwen, Eve Myles destroys Eliza Dushku. Eliza's performance is the usual comatose, emotionless reading that she usually delivers. A particular highlight being when she can't muster any kind of strong emotion at the news of the 'death' of her brother. She sounds like she's burnt the toast rather than suffered the loss of a loved one. Eve, to her credit, gives her usual full on Gwen performance.

There's supposed to be an intriguing mystery behind it all as Gwen's scenes are set in 2007 whereas Eliza's character is living through the Miracle Day. Jack is kidnapped but there's no suspense as we all know that he's fine when Miracle Day begins. Plus, who really believes that anything of any real consequence will happen to the main characters in a webseries that only managed 30,000+ views since its release (as of today)?

The blessing is that the episode is only four minutes long so at least it doesn't take up too much of your time. The frightening thing is that the rest of the series is only available on iTunes but someone who was dedicated/insane filmed their PC and put the videos up on YouTube. I believe there are ten episodes in total, you would have to send me real cash money to make me watch more than the first episode. I'm talking upwards of an English pound.

Web Snark - Dragon Age: Redemption

Hello, today sees the release of multi media tie-in webseries, Dragon Age: Redemption. I enjoyed Dragon Age: The First Game and found it to be a deep, complex, and very well written fantasy world. A webseries set in the same universe would surely be an instant hit. Redemption stars Felicia Day out of that webseries about MMORPGs that the kids all like, and she was in that Joss Whedon show, and that other one, oh and that singing supervillain webseries that everyone loved. It also stars Doug Jones who was Abe Sapien in that film where Ron Perlman wears red paint.

So the pedigree is there, let's have a watch and I'll jot down my thoughts as we go along.



0:25 - This is taking forever, we've only just got to the title card. You know what's good about games? You can usually skip the endless title cards at the beginning.

0:30 - And so we begin with a massive chunk of expository text. This is always a bad sign. If you have to write down the entire background to your film and force the audience to read it before they can start watching, there's something wrong with your plot/script.

0:42 - More text and, as Mr Richard Cobbett pointed out, someone keeps splashing blood all over the background. Although splashing blood on everything (and using the accompanying blood splatter sound effect) is a fine Dragon Age tradition as you will soon realise.

SUPER NERDY OBSERVATION ALERT

0:45 - This bit about "The Qun" is very simplistic and slightly misleading. What I gleaned from the playing Dragon Age 2 is that it's basically communism with a caste system. Peasants from a feudal system encounter The Qun system and sometimes decide that they're better off working for/with the Qunari so up sticks and leave their noble masters. I don't think there's any evidence in the game lore of anyone being 'forcibly' converted (other than in unreliable accounts from the nobles who have lost subjects to The Qun or from Qunari occupied villages that mass converted to it). That's what I like about Dragon Age though, it's complex and you can never really know if you're being told the correct version of events. Seriously, you should give the game a try. A five minute webseries is always going to struggle to convey the complexity of an 80+ hour game.

NERDY OBSERVATION OVER

0:55 - More text. Mages, power struggle, blah, blah.

1:10 - Finally, a set and some actors!

1:13 - "This will make you talk." Not if you put a knife in his throat, it won't.

1:26 - The guy on your right, look at his armour - it's paper! Look at it! That's papercraft armour!

1:44 - Hey look, it's Doug Jones! Hi Doug! I hope Del Toro makes another monster movie soon so you don't have to keep appearing in stuff like this.

1:45 - Sorry, I should say that Doug is playing a Qunari. There supposed to muscle bound giants. It looks like they only managed 'taller than average'.

2:22 - Magic Fingernails of Choking? I don't remember this spell from the game.

2:35 - Well, that's the opening sequence over with. Didn't it remind you of a live action intro to a terrible 90s game when live action in games was all the rage - ON CD-ROM?

2:48 - Those pig carcasses look very plastic. Maybe fantasy pigs are made of plastic in Kirkwall?

2:53 - Why is she chopping the same bit of pork over and over? Is it because it's not really meat and therefore an illusion of butchery, carefully constructed for our entertainment?

3:19 - "Knife-ears" is the crappest fantasy racial slur I have heard. "Hey you, yeah you! Your ears look like knives! Hahahaha!" "Uh okay, see ya." The world of Dragon Age is supposed to be a horribly racist place, the least they could do is come up with an insult that would actually cause offence rather than mild annoyance.

3:25 - So this fight doesn't make a lot of sense, she seems to parry his knife with a bone and outmuscle a man who's got several pounds in weight on her. I know this is supposed to establish Felicia Day's badassery but they could have at least coreographed the fight to make it look credible.

4:00 - This Qunari's wig is... incredible.

4:24 - Hey look it's the low cut suit of armour that provides no protection to the chest! Hooray for Armour of Fan Service +1!

4:48 - She jumps out of a tree so hard that her hood magically removes itself from her head rather than dropping forward and covering her face.

5:03 - "I'll carve it out of you - but my battle axe is made of rubber, so can I borrow a knife?"

5:15 - Look, it's the man who wears paper armour! And in bright daylight the armour looks as flat, thin, and two-dimensional as paper!

5:25 - So the choreography for this fight is, "wave your weapons in circles in the air and then Felicia does a backflip to redraw her knives which she had already drawn in the previous shot."

6:08 - Look out! A slight incline! Someone might fall down that and graze a knee!

6:28 - Nooooo! They fell down the slope! The grazing! The terrible grazing!

6:34 - It's okay, Felicia did a cool action pose after rolling down the incline so she's fine. The other guy probably has a nasty cut on his knee, maybe even a bruise on his arm.

6:38 - And just for the fans, here's a Nicola Bryant style cleavage shot of Felicia while on top of a man.

6:51 - She puts her knives against his throat.

6:54 - Cut to his face and there are no knives against his throat, in fact, nowhere near.

7:00 - Blood!

7:02 - Which then splatters all over the credits.

Okay, that was bad. Felicia does not convince as a cool, deadly assassin and everyone else in it is clearly from the local amateur dramatic society (apart from Doug Jones of course). I don't understand why EA/Bioware would give the go ahead on this series without providing some help with the budget. This is not a good introduction to the Dragon Age world and it will surely struggle to pull in the casual fan based on the production values on screen. If I didn't know anything about Dragon Age, this would not convince me to investigate further. However, this series will probably get a healthy number of views due to the power of Felicia (in fact it's already at 40,000 within a couple of hours of release) so I'm sure there's some kind of plan behind it. I'm just not sure what the aim of this webseries is.

NEXT EPISODE - Lots more rubber ears as Felicia visits the elves.

TV Preview - The Wildest Dream: Conquest of Everest

This week a fascinating documentary about Everest will be aired on BBC Two at 9.00pm on Wednesday. It's a feature length tale called The Wildest Dream and it's about exploration and the challenge of surviving in Mount Everest's 'death zone'. Here's the official blurb:

Dressed in gabardine and wearing hobnailed boots, British explorer George Mallory risked everything in pursuit of his dream of reaching the top of Mount Everest. He was seen alive just 800 feet below the mountain’s peak, before the clouds closed in and he disappeared into legend – Mallory’s death stunned the world in 1924. In 1999, renowned mountaineer Conrad Anker discovered Mallory’s frozen body high in the mountain’s “death zone” and his life became intertwined with Mallory’s story. Remarkably all Mallory’s belongings were found intact on his body. The only think missing was a photograph of his wife, Ruth, which Mallory had promised to place on the summit if he succeeded. Haunted by the story, Anker returns to Everest to solve the enduring mystery surrounding the ill-fated expedition and the disappearance of one of the world’s greatest explorers.

There's some serious Hollywood talent in this documentary film, Liam Neeson narrates, Ralph Fiennes provides the voice of Mallory, and even Alan Rickman turns up to provide a brief voiceover. Neeson provides his trademark gentle but authoritative tone as narrator and maintains your interest throughout the film. Neeson could probably corner the market in bedtime story telling.

The tale of Mallory's efforts to conquer Everest is well presented and the film takes the time to try and explain the mentality of a climber, and put Mallory's desires in context with the 1920's golden age of exploration. Anker examines his own obsession with climbing and how this effects his relationship with his wife and family, which is then paralleled with Mallory's letters to his wife. It's a nice story telling techinque and provides much needed insight to the historical figure.

The footage of the mountain and the climb itself is stunning and is an impressive feat considering the conditions the crew must have faced. The free climbing scenes are particularly dizzying and effective. The Sherpas are also given screentime as their skills are obviously appreciated by the climbing crew. A Sherpa blessing scene before the climb begins is insightful and is even linked back to Mallory's own pre-climb blessing which produced a set of ominous visions.

A slight criticism would be that the death zone's lethality is never really explained fully. This is understandable though as the film is more a study of exploration and human spirit rather than a morbid exploration of one of the most hostile environments known to man. If you want to know more about the 'death zone' then there is an excellent blog post about the harsh conditions and irretrievable dead that litter the landscape here.

The film is just under 90 minutes long and airs on BBC2 Wednesday 17th August at 9pm. It's also repeated on Sunday 21st August at 5.30pm. Here's the trailer:

DVD Review - Super

Super is a darkly comic and lo-fi take on the superhero business from the director of Slither. Starring Rainn Wilson and featuring an all star cast of fantastic character actors, it’s a tale of one man’s crusade against local criminals, “Shut up, crime!” Here’s the official trailer:

This is a great film but could be a difficult watch for those who don’t like their humour dripping in the blackest of black tar. There are elements of Kick-Ass, The Punisher, and quirky indie comedy in the script and they largely to combine a funny, tragic, beautiful mess of a film. The cast is brilliant and everyone in it gives a great performance, Ellen Page in particular is fantastic as the manically unstable ‘Boltie’. Nathan Fillion again displays his supreme comedic skills and shows in a brief few scenes why he should really be in bigger movies. Rainn Wilson manages to be vulnerable yet chilling as a one man wrench-wielding machine, a sympathetic yet ultimately terrifying portrayal of a man who has gone over the edge into a violence filled world of his own creation. The Crimson Bolt is basically nothing more than a maniac armed with a wrench, poor physical fitness, and a shoddy homemade costume.

Kick-Ass is the obvious comparison and this manages to be a less childish and fantastical take on vigilantism. The protagonist doesn’t suddenly become a real superhero with gadgets and wise cracking allies (one of Kick-Ass’s major crimes, other than being shit, was that it didn’t stick to its original ‘realism’ concept). Super is a film that will not please everyone, it is not a  mainstream superhero tale. It’s a dark, comedic, realistic take on vigilantism that also manages to have a heart at its dark centre. The violence can be swift, brutal, and shocking but there’s a strong moral core to the tale, even if it is delivered via a wrench to the face.

Torchwood The Lost Files - The House of the Dead

Cheer up Ianto, it might never happen. Oh wait, it did...

The third and final Lost File is The House of the Dead. I was hoping it would be based on a popular arcade game that I pumped many a pound into during my student days in Cardiff. Here's the original The House of the Dead:

I'm sure you can all agree that it's a work of art. I could get to the final boss on one credit but could never defeat him for some reason. There's also a terrible movie version of The House of the Dead that I have never seen. What was I talking about? Oh yeah, an audio play that has nothing to do with the video above but shares the same title. Sorry I'm wasting your time here, let me get on with it.

This play is set in the most haunted pub in Wales and blah, blah, here's the official blurb:

"The brewery have called 'time' and it's the last night at The House of the Dead - the most haunted pub in Wales. Barry the barman has invited renowned psychic, Mrs Wintergreen, to hold a special seance to mark the occasion, and there's a big crowd hoping for the chance of seeing their deceased loved ones for one last time. But when Jack arrives on the scene, he's determined to stop them. Ianto is puzzled by Jack's behaviour, and Gwen is suspicious. Why is Jack acting so strangely? Then the ghosts start arriving - and all hell breaks loose."

It's difficult to discuss this play in much depth without spouting massive spoilers, there's certainly a lot to discuss around the final 15 minutes of the play but I don't want to spoil anything. It's a slow tale with an absolutely terrible name for the villain, it actually made me laugh when it was revealed. The name reminded me of my attempts at writing superhero fiction when I was 12. Still, terrible name aside the villain is a decent concept and provides a reasonable and rational amount of peril without becoming too silly.

Performance wise we once again have John Barrowman struggling to emote convincingly but he does put in a lot of effort in this play. I'm willing to overlook the dud delivery of some of his lines providing he sounds like he's interested and not just idly flirting and quipping. Eve Myles doesn't feature much in this play, I can only assume she was busy elsewhere or the writer decided not to use her. It's a shame because Eve seems to be the most comfortable audio performer. Gareth David-Lloyd puts in a good shift and handles his scenes very well, the writer gave Ianto plenty to do in this play and David-Lloyd steps up to the challenge. For all the good that the regulars do, the majority of the guest artists undo it by performing in the usual assortment of cod-Valleys accents.

This play is worth a listen if only to hear a decent Barrowman performance and a solid script that makes good use of character history and contains hardly any dialogue clunkers (apart from that villain name, what were they thinking?). The play can be found on YouTube but don't look at the comments as people can't resist posting spoilers.

It's a shame that the TV show appears to have abandoned the episodic format for its stories and moved onto ponderous season long storylines, because occasionally Torchwood can strike lucky and provide entertaining episodes. This episode and Submission before it prove that some writers can craft interesting plots and (reasonably) witty dialogue without turning the show into Carry On Aliens. Alas, Miracle Day and Children of Earth have been ratings hits in the UK so it seems that this collection of audio plays are perhaps the last of a dying breed.

Torchwood The Lost Files - Submission

The title of this audio play is a pun. It’s not a reference to Captain Jack’s favourite type of hanky panky but rather a literal description of what happens. The Torchwood crew go on a mission which takes place within a submarine or ‘sub’ if you like. Sub-mission. Submission. It’s a mission on a submarine. A mission on a sub. Submission. Do you get it now? Good.

Awful title apart, this audio play is actually quite enjoyable. I know, pick up your jaw, I was vaguely positive about something Torchwoody. It shocked me too. Here’s the official plot blurb:

“In Ryan Scott's episode, Torchwood are chasing aliens down the M4, when Jack accidentally blows a hole in the Severn Bridge, and the SUV hits the water. Whilst submerged John, Gwen and Ianto hear a strange noise, which, back at the Hub they realise is a cry for help. They track the cry to its source which turns out to be the deepest part of the Ocean - the Mariana Trench. Ianto rings old Torchwood flame, Carlie Roberts, who's an expert in marine geology, and Jack pulls strings with the US government to get them all on board the USS Calvin, an Arleigh Burke class destroyer, which is heading for the Trench. From there they board the Octopus Rock, the only submarine built to withstand the pressure at that depth, and follow the signal. But when the Submarine crashes, the team are left at the mercy of a hungry alien.”

Conveniently, the team were in the water at the exact time required to hear the alien sound – it was at this point I started to roll my eyes in contempt. Luckily the play pulled it back with a simple but enjoyable plot from then on as Ianto contacts an old flame from his days in Torchwood One, and the team blag a submarine from UNIT (it’s a sub mission remember, submission). The tale combines elements of Bioshock and The Abyss to create a suitable creepy underwater menace, in particular there’s a menacing American voice that seems very Andrew Ryan like. Unfortunately there are the usual gaps in plot and logic that Torchwood does so well but they’re not quite as offensively stupid as usual and the alien has a reasonable motivation (even if staying in the deepest part of the Earth isn’t a particularly great way of luring new human visitors).

The play is full of continuity references and mythology that the show has dropped since series one. We hear reference to the original Torchwood offices (remember early in the show’s history when they mentioned Torchwood hubs in other UK cities?) and UNIT provide the submarine for the sub mission (Submission). There is some decent character work with Ianto as the writer gives him dialogue which isn’t just limited to being deadpan or flirting with Jack. John Barrowman is poor as always, audio is not a good medium for his skills as it’s obvious that he struggles to emote convincingly using only his voice. There’s also yet another attempt at portraying Jack as a ruthless saviour, prepared to sacrifice anyone to remove a threat to the human race, but it’s not convincing here just as it isn’t convincing when Barrowman is forced to play that role in the TV series. Eve Myles is as loud and enthusiastic as ever.

Maybe it was the playful dialogue that saved this play for me, there are jokes and retorts aplenty in this episode and they’re certainly a step up from the usual Torchwood attempts at witty repartee. This is still a Torchwood play though and you will need to ignore silly stuff like a highly valuable submarine only being operated by four poorly trained operatives with no previous submarine piloting experience on  a journey to the deepest part of the Earth. So yeah, usual logic problems aside, this play is reasonably entertaining for 40 minutes.

But man, that pun title. Submission. Get it? Yeah? Submarine mission. Submission. A mission on a sub. It’s a submarine and the people within it are on a mission. A submission.

Okay, I’m annoying myself now.

END.

Torchwood The Lost Files - The Devil and Miss Carew

No expense spent with the episode title cards this year!

Have you ever listened to the Shipping Forecast on the radio and thought, "Ooooh, that's scary"? No? Me neither but that's the concept behind the alien menace in the first of three Torchwood audio plays, The Devil and Miss Carew. Set in the gap between series two and three, this play features Gwen, Jack, Rhys, and Ianto. Yes people, Ianto is alive and well in audio play land. You can now sit by the radio and coo softly at his smooth Welsh voice as he flirts poorly with Captain Jack.

The Devil and Miss Carew features a technology hating alien that offers a new lease of life to the elderly in a scheme that stops making any kind of sense once you think about it for more than five seconds. The alien, named Mr. Fitzroy, manifests during the Shipping Forecast on Radio 4 and offers to rejuvenate the elderly for the price of their immortal soul. In return the refreshed pensioners are supposed to aid Mr. Fitzroy's arrival on Earth by destroying the world's electricity supply because he really freakin' hates electricity. Torchwood bumble into the evil scheme and it's up to them to stop the end of civilisation as we know it.

There are so many problems with this play, a low budget affair that manages to be unambitious, uninspiring, and dull. First of all, the performances are poor. Eve Myles tries her best (and to her credit she always seems to be game for the latest Torchwood clunker she's handed) but John Barrowman and Gareth David-Lloyd are awful. The lines are poorly delivered, almost as if it's the first read through of the script. A better performance from the leads could have elevated the piece a little during the numerous, chatty, character scenes but unfortunately Jack and Ianto make this threat to the Earth sound like an inconvenient trip to Homebase to buy some fuses.

The plot is littered with lazy conveniences and shortcuts. The Torchwood team don't really do much to solve the problem, they split up and wander around a bit. Jack and Ianto find the alien's stash of antiques and talk to him via the radio, which ends with them standing around wondering how they'll stop Mr. Fitzroy. In the meantime Gwen is beaten up by a pensioner (Gwen conveniently provides commentary while being battered) but after being subdued by the villain manages to convince her to provide a detailed breakdown of her plans and a convenient backstory via a massive infodump. Later on Gwen is rescued by Rhys because Rhys sits at home bored, checks Gwen's browser history, and then decides that's where Gwen is and he should go and conveniently check up on her. Very convenient.

This audio play is a waste of time, it doesn't provide an interesting threat, it doesn't give an insight into the Torchwood team, and it doesn't entertain. It's narrow in ambition while attempting to provide global threat. The idea of a creepy voice on the radio is a classic and should work well in this audio format, but here it's used rarely and only once for scares.

Luckily you can avoid this episode by not downloading it from the BBC site. Yay!

Doctor Who - Shadows of the Vashta Nerada

Another Doctor Who adventure game has arrived. I've played it and I have my usual spattering of opinions so download it here. 

Feel free to play along or just read my recap if you want to know what happens.
 

What the hell have they done to Santa's nose?

The Game

Oh god. I really thought the games were improving but I was wrong. The previous episode, TARDIS, was short and very limited in scope but at least it didn't contain stealth sections. The dreaded stealth returns in this episode along with numerous corridors. The endless bloody corridors. Corridors you'll have to run along a lot. Just like part three or four of a six part Pertwee or Baker story when the writer really needs to pad the running time. Shadows plunges you straight into some really tedious corridor running and doesn't stop from beginning to end. This game is all about running along metal walkways and entering codes into doors. It's boring, it's terrible and I'm pretty sure most kids will hate it.

The puzzles are very easy in comparison to previous episodes (the 'hold-your-hand-steady-or-lose-all-your-progress' game is thankfully absent) but they are dull. The first set of puzzles involves memorising a keypad PIN number, which is pretty tedious once but is hellish when you have to perform this half a dozen times in a row. In between the keypad puzzles is a jog through endless corridors. Corridors. Corridors with a bit of sea outside. Corridors. Bloody corridors.

The corridors become even more nightmarish when combined with insta-death sections. Have you played Gears of War? Do you remember the level with the shadowy bat things that could kill you instantly if you stood in a dark patch for too long? Well they put that level in this game and it's even less fun. Thematically it matches the monsters involved but it's infuriating as hell. The first time it happened my computer lost the will to live and crashed to a blue screen. This was a relief.

Later on there's a couple of the obligatory stealth sections where you have to lure a monster into another part of the level so you can kill it with a button press. This was done in the first two games and it's still terrible. I understand that it's an attempt to replicate the clever methods in which the Doctor usually disposes of monsters but I wish the designers had come up with variations on the theme rather than the obvious re-use of the same situations and set pieces as previous episodes.

Finally, the plot is the very worst of base-under-siege stories from the Doctor Who annual of alien invasions. It's quite simply uninspired, it doesn't offer anything that hasn't already been done with the formula and it's dull. Even the characters seem to react with bored acceptance when one of their number is killed off (in an unintentionally funny cutscene). Also, nothing is made of the Christmas setting other than some dialogue at the beginning and end.

In short - No sir, I didn't like it.

These guys can be killed by a 100W lightbulb. Pfft.

The Story

Continuing from the previous episode, TARDIS, the Doctor has brought Amy to far future London, which is now underwater and under attack from a giant armoured shark. The shark attempts to destroy the corridors so the Doctor and Amy flee deeper into the complex where they eventually meet a hapless piece of monster fodder. It's not really worth noting his name as he soon dies during a cutscene when the Vashta Nerada eat him while the lights are off.

Yes the shadowy piranhas are back. I'm not quite sure how they reached the sealed environment of London or how they can live underwater though (aren't they forest dwelling creatures?). Still, familiar baddies with easily modeled character designs are back!

The Doctor is trapped in a Troughton style story as the underwater base is under siege by aliens and he has to deal with a vaguely defined plague (which doesn't seem to have any symptoms or ill effects on anyone). He also has to deal with a computer straight out of a 1960s special effect budget (complete with wonky computer voice and crap design).

The Doctor offers to help and restore power to the lights in the complex. He does this by running down corridors and pressing switches. It's all very exciting. Only it's not because he runs down the same corridors he ran down earlier only this time if he steps into the dark he will die. ONLY THIS IS BULLCRAP BECAUSE IMMEDIATELY AFTER AVOIDING THE DARK PATCHES OF DOOM, THE DOCTOR ENTERS A CUTSCENE SET IN A TOTALLY PITCH BLACK ROOM AND ISN'T INSTANTLY KILLED LIKE HE WOULD HAVE BEEN EARLIER. Ahem.

The Doctor restores the power after much heroic button clicking, logic puzzle solving and skeletons in diving suits avoiding. Amy helps a bit by being sent off on her own to do something incredibly dangerous while the Doctor presumably eats a jammie dodger and stares at a circuit board.

The Doctor heads back to the humans and formulates a cure for the plague that still doesn't seem to be hurting anyone. This involves running down corridors and entering keycodes. It is great fun. The Doctor finds some collectibles but sighs at the futility of a collection of things that can't be accessed outside of the game.

The humans are cured of whatever plague they had and one of them repays the Doctor by threatening him and tying him up. The Doctor leaves the humans (who are going to use the lifepods to escape but then inexplicably don't use them while the Doctor is cocking about elsewhere) and heads over to the wreckage of that ship that was in that movie, The Philadelphia Experiment.

The Doctor explores the wreckage and eventually seals the rift by running along some corridors and avoiding instant deathtraps. The surviving humans (all two of them) apologise for misbehaving and offer the Doctor and Amy a Christmas dinner of sea pumpkins. The Doctor and Amy leg it.

THE BLESSED END.

If you'd like to know what the other episodes in the series are like then please head over to:

Episode One: City of the Daleks
Episode Two: Blood of the Cybermen
Episode Three: TARDIS

Doctor Who - TARDIS

The new Doctor Who adventure game is here. Download and play along at home or just skip that and read my spoiler filled recap below. Whatever. I'm not your dad.

The Game

The greatest piece of news since the announcement of the Doctor Who adventure game series is, THERE ARE NO STEALTH SECTIONS IN THIS EPISODE. Hallelujah!

Phew.

So this instalment has removed the direst part of the previous games, does this mean that TARDIS is a bold new step forward? Uh, no. Sorry. The hateful minigames are still there, the drag-a-thing-through-the-maze-but-don't-touch-the-wires game is present along with a timed button pressing activity, which is made very frustrating when coupled with lousy character movement. The Doctor (as portrayed by Matt Smith) may move like a man piloted by an uncoordinated bag of epileptic hedgehogs but that's no reason to try and emulate it in the game. The Doctor moves with the soupy grace of a milk float in treacle when attempting to turn mid movement. This makes the final 60 second TARDIS piloting game annoying in the extreme.

Still, at least in this episode you get to explore the TARDIS. Great, eh? Imagine visiting all those mad, impossible rooms that must be contained within the time machine's many corridors. Well keep imagining because you won't see them in this game. This instalment was clearly created on a budget, there are only two rooms and the adversity is a glowing blob with a generic name, The Entity. I'm worried that for this instalment it seems the money has run out and there are still 3 more to come.

The voice acting is an improvement this time, I can only assume (because I haven't checked) that the script was performed in between filming of the regular series and the Christmas special. Matt Smith sounds much more comfortable and less sleepy this time around. Karen Gillen is much improved too, but to be honest she does sound a bit bored of things at times. It doesn't help that Amy is written as being unthinking and careless as she casually insults everything and everyone and vandalises the Doctor's drawing room.

Collectibles are in this episode too, they're not hard to find this time. I'd advise looking underneath the TARDIS controls and the stairs. And yes, none of them are exciting at all.

TARDIS is also very short. It took about an hour to play through, there isn't a whole lot of action and the tale is very simple. This game is more of an interlude rather than a full fledged episode.



The Story

The plot is thus, The Doctor and Amy are discussing holiday plans when the TARDIS goes a bit wrong and flushes the Doctor out into space. There's a prologue available online that explains why the TARDIS is misbehaving. I wonder why it wasn't created as a cutscene? I guess it was for budgetary reasons. The cost of some horse faced aliens and another voice actor probably being too much for what is a very small game.

Anyway, the Doctor is in space without a helmet! Calamity! The Doctor, via the gift of charades, tells Amy to extend the TARDIS field around him so he can breathe. Amy accomplishes by pressing red buttons. Go player one! The Doctor then tells Amy to construct a tractor beam by finding some old junk in the TARDIS Drawing Room. A room we have never heard of up until now but it has been there all along. Honest.

Amy ventures into the drawing room and finds various items from the Doctor's previous adventures; the fourth Doctor's scarf, the Fifth's cricket ball, a Cyberman breast plate, the fob watch from Human Nature, and a few other items of interest. There also seems to be a ye olde portrait of what appears to be Steven Moffat above the fireplace, the picture shows him holding a sonic screwdriver. Amy finds the Master's laser screwdriver and heads back to the console room. A vase is broken while she's in the room but she dismisses it because the plot demands she casually ignore it. A glowing orange vapour emerges from the vase...

Amy completes the laser screwdriver/tractor beam device and pulls the Doctor back into the TARDIS. Unfortunately there's another wobble from the TARDIS and Amy is catapulted into the future of the TARDIS where she's now trapped on her own.

The Doctor runs off to the drawing room to construct a techno babble device so he can save Amy. The Doctor tries to explore the TARDIS but is sent back to the console room if he tries going anywhere but the drawing room. There is also no corridor exploring animation during the journey to the drawing room. The player is disappointed.

The Doctor completes the device and sends a message to Amy in the future. Amy activates it but is attacked by the glowing blob that escaped from the vase as she reappears in the present TARDIS. The Doctor manages to cajole The Entity (the creature's name may as well have been Glowy Blob, it has more personality at least) back into a vase and then he releases The Entity into the time vortex where it can feed on the smaller creatures within.

The Doctor is then allowed to explore the TARDIS but he finds he can only really examine the console controls. The console gives detailed descriptions as to what each lever and button does. The player has the sinking feeling that he's going to have to remember this stuff...

The Doctor then decides everything is okay and he can begin another journey through time. The player then frustratedly attempts to pilot the TARDIS four times before finally getting the ship moving.

The Doctor takes Amy to London in the future where it has become an underwater city. Any chances of a relaxing holiday are ruined by a large, monstrous shark patrolling the waters...

Retrotatstic TV - Maid Marian & Her Merry Men

I was ill a couple of months ago and I did what everyone does when they’re dying from a cold, I fired up a DVD and enjoyed some televisual comfort food. I decided to finally crack open my Maid Marian and Her Merry Men Series One DVD and wrap myself in a big nostalgia blanket.

So is Maid Marian still as funny as the eleven year old me thought?

Surprisingly yes. This is essentially because it’s Blackadder for kids. Maid Marian’s first series was written by Tony Robinson and was clearly an attempt at harnessing the Blackadder style for a younger audience. Whereas Blackadder took a cynical look at historical figures, Maid Marian made an attempt to make every historical figure into a very silly person indeed.

The Sheriff (Tony Robinson) is the closest Blackadder-like figure in the show as he is a sneering, cynical, power grabbing man surrounded by idiots. Unfortunately for the Sheriff he’s also an idiot too as he becomes convinced that Robin Hood is a vicious, mean outlaw, despite all evidence to the contrary. Robin, is a metrosexual tailor and a coward. He’s a terrible leader, he’s an awful shot with a bow, and he’s also really, really polite which isn’t much use when you’re supposed to be a fearsome criminal. Maid Marian is the most intelligent character in the show (although given the people she recruits for her gang, she’s not that clever), she’s moralistic, passionate, caring, and also slightly resentful of Robin as he gets all the credit and adulation from the peasants for the Merry Men’s successful deeds.

My two favourite characters though are Gary and Graeme, two guards who bumble around Nottingham having conversations about hot water bottles and football. They’re supposed to be vicious killers in the employ of King John but they’re not very good at their job and usually spend their time annoying the Sheriff by being charmingly stupid. To extend the Blackadder comparison – they’re a pair of Baldricks with swords.

The performances are the right side of pantomime and everyone pretty much talks LIKE THIS THROUGHOUT EACH EPISODE. But then, that's what almost everyone did in Blackadder too. What's great about THE SHOUTING and overacting is that it's not there to compensate for a poor script or to wring a laugh out of poor jokes, it genuinely aids the show's charming atmosphere. There's a musical number in each episode, some are great, some of them not so, but they're always performed with gusto by the cast and usually get by on goofy charm.

My favourite episode of series one (viewed through the eyes of an adult) is Robin The Incredible Chicken which is a parody of the Robin Hood archery contest legend. It's very silly indeed (almost Pythonesque) and contains a tribute to Bullseye too. Sadly, no one has uploaded any clips from this episode to YouTube. Frowny face.

Maid Marian is proof positive that you don't need to dumb down a concept because it's a kid's show. I could blather on but look, here's a clip from a later series of the show (the fantastic Crystal Maze parody) and then there'll be a link to the DVD (although for some reason series one is £12.99 and the rest of the series DVDs are £4.99 each). If you don't find something in the show that makes you smile then I'm sorry but I'm going to have to declare you an enemy of mankind.



Series One DVD

Or the more cost effective Complete Series Set

Doctor Who - Blood of the Cybermen

The second Doctor Who Adventure Game is here. Go grab if you want to play along at home or skip to the story section of this piece if you're lazy (or don't own a PC) and just want to know what happens.

I found the first game to be a disappointment, both technically and storywise so I was hoping that the second game would be an improvement. Is it?

Yes, albeit only a slight improvement.

THE GAME

The corridors. The endless corridors. With an occasional small outside bit. Yes, the level design once again is rather limited. You will spend most of your time running and sneaking down endless corridors avoiding enemies and looking for collectibles and puzzles to solve. The stealth portions of the game are just as aggravating and tedious as in the first instalment and require split second timing in some sections. In fact I'm not sure that casual gamers or the very young are going to be able to progress past some parts of the game without help from a savvy gaming veteran.

The minigames are not quite as odious this time. Gone is the stupid hold-an-icon-steady-around-a-bit-of-wire game from the Dalek adventure, this time it is replaced with a match rotating coloured balls affair which is much less frustrating.

There is a strange platform crossing section early in the game which is bloody terrible. The Doctor has to cross moving blocks of ice and if his efforts are slightly mistimed he falls to his death. Unfortunately the Doctor's movement is not the most precise and he tends to stumble around and slide off the ice to his doom. Granted, the 11th Doctor is a somewhat clumsy and inelegant creature but when you apply this to an insta-death platforming section, it does not lead to fun times. It's like controlling a dodgem car greased with butter. On ice.

Once again the voice acting is dull and undersold in places. I think it may be a problem with the direction as Matt Smith and Karen Gillen seem to be struggling with the correct range that voice acting requires. Perhaps a few more takes would have done the trick? For all I know, the lines were recorded between episodes which would explain the tiredness in the principal actors' performances.

The collectibles are back and I found several flavours of jelly baby. The collectibles are still entirely unnecessary but fun if you like looking at unused publicity photos of characters and monsters.



THE STORY (SPOILERS ABOUND)

Again, I will start this section with a question - did you enjoy Tomb of the Cybermen? Do you think it would be better mashed up with The Tenth Planet and every space based Troughton cyberman story? You'd be (un)surprised to find that the result is not particularly satisfying.

The Doctor receives a distress beacon and lands the TARDIS in the Arctic. The Doctor rescues an archaeologist/engineer named Chisholm from an ice cave and discovers that Chisholm was attempting to flee his own Arctic survey team.

Amy helps by moaning. Amy is still dressed in a mini skirt and at no point changes into something warmer. Instead she spends her time complaining and generally showing up Classic Who companions Tegan and Peri in the whingeing stakes. It seems that Phil Ford is struggling to write dialogue for Amy that makes her a sassy and feisty companion without making her a bit of an irritating berk. And is it too much to ask the developers to give Amy Pond different outfits for each game?

The Doctor decides to investigate the digsite that Chisholm has fled from, despite Chisholm frantic pleading not to return him there. Upon arrival Chisholm is immediately attacked by a Cybermat. A Cybermat! Yes, it's the return of the silly metal rat things from the 60s. Amy makes an incredibly lame mousemat joke at this point. I sigh and want to slap Phil Ford for that one. This time the Cybermats have a poison bite that infects you with a nano virus that turns you into a Cyberslave. Poor Chisholm immediately runs off and isolates himself in a locked room to save the Doctor and Amy from being infected or attacked by him.

Unfortunately for the Doctor and Amy they soon discover what a Cyberslave is when they open the main complex door and are attacked by a Cyberman in a jumpsuit. Seems a Cyberslave gets partially converted via the magic of nanites. Amy disables the Cyberslave by venting some steam at it. Yeah, I don't know how that really works either.

Inside the research complex, the Doctor finds a professor who is attempting to develop a cure for Cyberslave-itis. The Doctor cheerfully informs her that it won't work until he gets a pure sample of nano-wotsits from a Cyberslave. The Doctor rigs up an EMP device to disable a nest of Cybermats and then Amy disables a Cyberman with a loose electric cable. Armed with the necessary components, the Doctor creates a cure by playing a quick minigame. The professor has vanished though...

The Doctor uses the cure on Chisholm (who has now become a messy fusion of Cyberman and human - a makeup effect that I would have liked to have seen on the TV for real) before heading to the digsite to locate the cybership lying beneath the ice.

It's at this point I get confused about the current incarnation of Cybermen. It seems they've been blended with original versions to once again become a spacefaring, time travelling race. They are now much more advanced than their humble beginnings in series two of New Who. It's a little confusing really and I wonder if their weakness to gold or the repeated shouting of "excellent!" is going to make a comeback next.

The Doctor spends a lot of time pressing buttons on lifts and avoiding Cybermen until he eventually reaches the control centre of the ship. It's at this point we find out that the professor was a Cyberslave all along. GASP. It was a trap laid for the Doctor to find the ship so he could finish waking up the Cybermen, because apparently the Cyber Leader couldn't figure this out for himself. The professor aimed the distress call at the TARDIS to lure him all the way to the ship. This doesn't explain why she was working on a cure for the Cyberslave condition or why the Cyberslaves and Cybermen were attempting to kill the Doctor if they needed him to free them. THIS MAKES MY HEAD HURT.

The Doctor manages to escape the clutches of the Cybermen and save Amy from cyber conversion. Chisholm makes an heroic comeback and destroys the Cyber Leader and then the Doctor sets the ship to self destruct and everyone makes a last second escape. Hurrah. The Doctor and Amy depart leaving Chisholm to explain to a rescue party exactly what went on...

Apart from the dumb plot twist toward the end, this was a solid enough story. It's nothing we haven't seen done before with the Cybermen and I don't think reintroducing the Cybermats is anything other than Classic Who fan service. Still, this game was more enjoyable than City of the Daleks and hopefully the games will continue to improve.

Now if only we could have a clever plot and a wander around the TARIDS next time...

Stupid Films That I Love - Event Horizon

This instalment of SFTIL features a Paul WS Anderson movie, Event Horizon. No, wait, come back! It's really quite good. You see, years before Mr Anderson made a mess of Alien Vs Predator (and the Resident Evil franchise, and made a movie where Kurt Russell says bugger all), he made an entertaining horror movie.

Event Horizon stars Sam Neill and Laurence Fishburne (who admittedly seems to sleepwalk his way through this movie) as a scientist and spaceship captain, respectively. Their mission is to travel to Neptune to retrieve a missing ship, the Event Horizon, that has returned to the solar system after spending seven years missing. Laurence Fishburne and his crew of stock characters travel to Neptune where they discover the price the Event Horizon crew paid for meddling with black holes.

Needless to say things do not go well for the intrepid crew of stock characters (look, it's Sean Pertwee playing a gruff cockney! Oh, and over there is the wisecracking crewman who gets all the catchphrases! If you peek around the corner you can see the inexperienced crewman who will do something stupid and get into trouble! And there's the guy who works for the government and therefore cannot be trusted!) The ship seems to be possessed and has it in for the retrieval team, cue lots of dark, space corridor porn and loud bursts of sound designed to make you jump.



Despite its faults there's a lot going for Event Horizon. The ship itself has an interesting design, especially the engine room with its pool of coolant and spherical gravity drive. The effects work is good (the shots of the space station orbiting Earth and the Event Horizon orbiting Neptune are great) and the technology looks solid and largely plausible. The stock characters are entertaining in their own sub-Alien way and Sam Neill puts in a fun performance as the scientist who, SPOILER - goes a bit loopy and serial killerish.

I have to mention the soundtrack, it's a combination of Michael Kamen and Orbital and it works very well. The blending of traditional orchestra sounds with techno elements creates a pulsing soundtrack that gives the Event Horizon an ominous, growling, pulsing heart beat.

Event Horizon is a fun B-movie and, as with all the Stupid Films That I Love, not an example of cinema as high art but it is an enjoyable and occasionally frightening way of spending an hour and forty minutes. Also, the film ends with a Prodigy tune over the credits which always scores bonus points in my book.

"Where we're going, we won't need eyes to see."

Game Review - Dragon Age (Late Impressions Edition)

Dragon Age is big. Really, hugely, massively big. Bigger than a big whale balanced on the shoulders of an even bigger whale who has put on some weight. This is a fantasy RPG that attempts to be every bit as epic as Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and GRR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire.

You take on the role of one of six origins, human noble, dwarf commoner, dwarf noble, city elf, Dalish elf, and finally, mage. Each origin has its own unique beginning to the game where you learn the ropes of combat and abilities whilst suffering some heart rending tragedy which forces you to leave home and join the Grey Wardens. The origin stories do a marvellous job of setting the scene and providing you with a unique political viewpoint of Ferelden. A human noble will have a very different view of the world to a Dalish elf, for example. The origins serve not only as a functional tutorial but also as a taster of the moral choices that you’ll be making later in the game.



Your character becomes a member of the Grey Wardens, an elite unit of warriors charged with saving the world (yes, just like the Spectres in Mass Effect.) It’s a trope that serves well within the setting and provides the impetus and motivation to save the world from the coming Blight. The Blight is an invasion of hideous monsters (the Darkspawn) that rise up from the subterranean depths of Ferelden (the fantasy land you inhabit) causing misery and destruction wherever they roam. The Blight is led by a demonically possessed dragon which must be put down in order to stop the rampaging Darkspawn army. In order to achieve this not insubstantial objective you’ll need to wander the length and breadth of Ferelden recruiting forces for your own army as you go.



Cue visits to remote locations such as an extensive underground dwarf city, a forest populated by elves and werewolves, remote castles and fortresses, and a sprawling capital city. The design of each zone is unique and contains some stunning views of the local landscape. It’s a pity that although attempts have been made to add unique wrinkles to each race and location, it’s pretty standard fantasy fare. Dwarfs live underground, elves live in forests, and humans live in vague approximations of medieval villages and cities. Dragon Age doesn’t try to subvert genre expectations; it creates a familiar but engrossing fantasy world and is largely successful.

Combat is tough, especially so if you choose not to include a mage in your four man party. Mages provide the usual assortment of ranged damage, healing, ability buffs, and crowd control. The robed spell flingers are absolutely essential to your progress through the many combats dotted throughout the game. It is essential that you use tactics if you play at the default difficulty setting, the game facilitates tactical thinking via its pause and play system which will be familiar to any players of previous Bioware RPGs such as Baldur’s Gate. For those who haven’t, you can pause combat at any time, issue commands to your party members and then unpause to see the results. Combat occurs in real time but can be paused at any point in order to issue commands. There is also a new tactics feature which allows you to set default behaviour and commands to your companions. Tired of manually activating all of your fighter’s abilities? You can use the tactics tool to set the character to switch on his abilities at the start of a fight, have him use a health potion when his health drops to a certain level, or give you a hug when the Darkspawn kill one of your loved ones. One word of warning though, ranged combat tactics seem to be hard to instil in your companions, they have a tendency to draw a blade as soon as anyone gets even slightly close, despite what you may have told them to do.



Alternatively, if you don’t want to play with combat tactics you can set the difficulty to Easy and breeze through fights with little effort. This may be an attractive option to some as the sheer amount of combat in some areas (especially toward the end of the game) can get a little tiring. It certainly doesn’t take anything away from the story if you decide to make things easy on yourself and reduce combat difficulty. If anything it’ll stop you from getting fatigued in some of the more combat heavy areas.

Dragon Age doesn’t have a morality system as such. This means that every quest involving a moral choice can be resolved without the game judging you by adding or docking points on a morality bar. However, this new freedom to make any decision without judgement is hampered by the reactions of your comrades. Some of your followers will approve of heavy handed tactics and harsh decisions whilst some prefer the softly, softly approach. Your decisions and dialogue choices will either improve or reduce your influence with your buddies. If you increase approval high enough, your pals will gain access to stat boosts and offer side quests. So far so good, but then the game introduces something that makes a mockery of inter party diplomacy – gifts. You see, your followers are very shallow, very shallow indeed. Did you offend someone in your group by constantly kicking puppies and thrashing peasants? Why not offer the offended party member a shiny bauble? They’ll instantly forget what a massive idiot you are. It’s a shame that the game works so hard to create relationships via dialogue options but cheapens it with this slightly ridiculous gift system.

Another thing that bugs me is why the hell do people drink poultices in this world? I guess Bioware wanted to use a different word than potion but they could have at least chosen a word that was accurate. You place a poultice on a wound, you don’t ingest it.

Minor carping aside, Dragon Age is a fantastic piece of work. I spent about 80 hours wandering around Ferelden and enjoyed pretty much every minute of it. This is the best fantasy RPG of recent years, and is sure to be regarded as a classic in future lists. I’m looking forward to how Bioware will develop the Dragon Age franchise, especially in light of the huge positive reaction to the RPG statistics lite approach of Mass Effect 2. Will a Dragon Age sequel retain its stat crunchiness or will it drop some of the stats and inventory management to become a more streamlined experience? Ultimately, I don’t care how many statistics are in my game as long as the high standard of roleplaying storytelling and decision making is retained. Dragon Age is the nerdier, acne ridden cousin of Mass Effect 2 but that doesn't make it any less remarkable and absorbing.

Oh, hey! The game only costs £14.99 at Play.com right now. Give it a try.

Game Review - Mass Effect 2 - Also Things What Happened In My Game

This is going to be a gushing review. Absolutely gushing. Sickeningly gushing. So gushing you'll wonder if you've come to the right blog. Look at the image above, it's pretty kick-ass and that's what Mass Effect 2 is all about - kick-ass moments. I'm not talking vacuous Michael Bay moments (although there are explosions and gunplay aplenty), I'm talking emotional, impactful, kick-ass moments. Moments that had me cheering one minute and cringing in anticipation the next. This is the thing, Mass Effect 2 is possibly one of the most engaging game narratives ever created. HYPERBOLE ENGINE ENGAGED.



Look above these words, it's Shepard in the Afterlife. He's obviously dead. OR IS HE?

Mass Effect 2 begins with a fantastic opening sequence. Part cut-scene and part interactive, the game opens with a bang and engages you emotionally from the outset and provides you with sufficient motivation for the rest of the game. After this introduction you can make changes to your Shepard if you've imported him/her from the first Mass Effect. You can then change class or alter your ugly face. I still have the PC that ran the original game and so my save game was still available but I understand that this may not be the case for most PC gamers, so I recommend this site if you want to import a Shepard close to your own experience.



I could waffle about the story but I don't want to spoil anything - well, apart from at the bottom of this post where I'll be throwing spoiler bombs around as I reminisce about my experiences in the game. The story is such a joy to experience fresh that I wouldn't wish to spoil anything for anyone. The main storyline focuses on Shepard's efforts to hire a Dirty Dozen-esque collection of space bastards in an effort to defeat a new, terrifying enemy. It's a story you can play through pretty quickly if you just want to recruit squad members and blast off into the unknown. But I don't think anyone would want to do that because each squad member has his/her/it own quests which are all engaging stories in their own right. As in the first game you can roam around your ship, The Normandy, and chat to your crewmates, each time revealing something about each character until eventually they'll ask for help in some serious matter they'd like to resolve. Even the sidequests are all different this time - gone are the cookie cutter space dungeons of the first game. This time sidequests all take in unique environments and include their own little narratives.

Conversations can be influenced by your rank in Paragon or Renegade alignment. As you make decisions in the game your Paragon and Renegade ratings will increase. It's up to you where most of the points will fall. I admit that I played as a Paragon Shepard but when I maxed out my Paragon rating I did start to choose Renegade options to spice things up. What makes the morality of Mass Effect great is that there is no black and white morality. Renegade Shepard wants to save the universe just as much as Paragon Shepard, it's just that the Renegade version acts like angry Jack Bauer at the beginning of season two of 24. A new feature in ME2 is the Paragon/Renegade actions that you can take during conversations. Paragon actions involve saving lives whereas Renegade actions involve sudden, hilarious violence. They're a fantastic addition to the Bioware school of conversation.



Combat is much, much better than in the first Mass Effect. Mass Effect 2 is now an efficient shooter that, for me, matches the twitch shooting thrills of Gears of War. The tropes of the third person shooter are present, chest high walls for cover, firefights in areas filled with said walls, enemies that dart between the walls, and melee enemies that induce terror because cover does absolutely no fucking good against them and OH MY GOD THEY'RE SCREAMING AND MOANING AS THEY APPROACH! GET THEM OFF ME! Sorry. To spice things up, you are now equipped with a host of powers, for example, Soldiers can slow down time to line up a perfect shot and have different ammunition types to suit any occasion. Other powers such as invisibility and telekinesis are available depending on which class you choose. Your squadmates are fairly competent as semi-autonomous allies. You won't need to frequently pause and issue commands as they'll generally go about the business of butchering your enemies with little input from you. They're even capable of using their powers without encouragement and spout one liners as they do so (Mordin has the best lines here).



So the story is all kinds of wonderful and the combat is greatly improved but what about the RPG elements? Well, they're downsized. But I would ask the question, "what do you consider to be RPG elements?" Because if you mean stats and numbers then that's roll playing and *role* playing. ME2 is a fantastic role playing game because it presents you with characters and decisions that are immersive and engaging - not because you're armed with a +5 shotgun. Think back to the first game, did you really enjoy managing your inventory? Do you miss sorting through tens of items, converting them to omni-gel and selling them to the crew member who refused to just give you stuff? The tedious number crunching is gone, now when you find a new, superior, weapon you just equip it. No fuss, you just do the sensible thing and pick it up. You no longer have to buy weapons and armour from one of your own crew, now you research better technologies and use elements hoovered up from nearby planets to fund the research. Once you've created the new item, it's available for use straight away. It's a lot less tedious and fits into the fiction of the universe.

Character progression is slightly simplified from the first game but is no less interesting. You will have only a handful of powers to choose from and only a certain number of points to spread amongst them. You can specialise some powers and will need to make the decision as to how you will focus your abilities. It's not dumbed-down, it's just more simple and elegant. Gone are the largely meaningless numbers and levels, now the numbers are crunched down into 4 levels of skill in each power.



I love this game. I think it can be completed in about 20 hours but I invested just under 50 because I didn't want to leave. The final hour of the game is thrilling and the decisions made will obviously cause repercussions in the third game. I can't wait to see what Shepard does next.

Okay under the load screen I will be discussing my experience in the game. DO NOT READ ON IF YOU HAVEN'T FINISHED THE GAME. I'm serious, people.


SPOILER TOWN


Oh man, that last mission.

I passed it with flying colours. Only I didn't. You see, nobody died on my team (because I am great) but my entire crew, including the cute and lovely Yeoman Kelly was pulped by the Collectors. I was horrified that my attempt to explore every square inch of the galaxy had led to the death of my favourite minor character. Dr Chakwas survived and she asked why I took so long. Commander Shepard gave some platitude about needing to be ready before going on the suicide mission but I knew the truth - I was dicking about looking for easy credits and XP that I didn't need. I've never felt so guilty in a game. What really killed me was my return to the Captain's Cabin after finishing the game and finding my fish tank full of dead fish. Fish that Kelly used to feed. *sob*

Bioware tricked me. Normally the plot will say that you only have 24 hours to save the universe but will then allow you to tit around to your heart's content. Only this time it doesn't apply, the longer you take, the more crew members die. I have since gone back and replayed the conclusion to the game and saved Kelly because I want her to appear in ME3. But man, that image of dead fish will haunt me for a while yet.

I also rejected Tali's romantic advances, and felt like an utter bastard. Her reply was along the lines of "Of course, why would you be interested." It broke my heart. Of course I was kind of interested but I'd already pimped Shepard out to Yvonne Strahovski. I mean, come on, it's Yvonne Strahovski! Tali's dejected response was heart breaking. But let's face it, I couldn't figure out how we'd get up to any inter species hanky panky anyway - Tali lives in a special suit which stops her from dying of the common cold. A romantic dalliance would be all kinds of unhygienic.

In one scene I took a Renegade action, thinking it would be oh so cool and hilarious. The only problem is that I felt like an utter dick afterwards. In one mission you encounter a few scared Salarian construction workers and one of them pulls a gun on you. The Renegade action button appeared and I duly pressed it thinking that Shepard would disarm the panicking alien. What he did was punch the scared guy out and then made a pithy comment. I was shocked. Shepard was acting like a big, dumb, jock, bully and I'd told him to do it. The other Salarians looked more frightened and worried than ever but unfortunately I couldn't select "Apologise profusely" as a conversation option. Man, I'm such a dick.

I didn't learn my lesson from the Salarian though, as later on in the game I wanted to extract some information from a young street hood called Mouse. Mouse was reluctant to give up some information on an assassination and when the Renegade option flashed up, I took it. I punched the poor kid in the face and threw him to the ground, he instantly gave up the information and I felt like a bully. This time there was an apology option but the kid brushed it off and limped away, blood covering his face. Man, I'm such a dick.

Those moments were depressing for me but one moment made up for it all. A moment that had me laughing like a mad man. I headbutted Worf in the face. Michael Dorn was moaning and talking smack, the Renegade option came up and I headbutted him. It was so unexpected, so brilliant that I couldn't believe what just happened. That memory more than makes up for all the poor decisions I made.