Treehouse Mini Review: Limbo

Another demo that leads to an instant purchase – Limbo is a 2D platform puzzler like many others – guide the character across the landscape avoiding the traps and pitfalls. What makes Limbo uniquely irresistible is its delightfully melancholic presentation. A beautifully minimalist, grainy art-house black and white landscape is yours to traverse, as you, a nameless silhouette of a boy, awake in a dark and murky forest – all deep shade and eerie mist. Like crossing some macabre children's book dreamscape, the woods gradually introduce you to the game’s wicked intentions, and devilish sense of humour.

Here, physics are king with its rules all closely observed (except when they’re not) and the boy’s fragile little body, in its little schoolboy shorts, proves easy prey for the spiky pits, the powerful beartraps, the tumbling rocks and any one of 4 million other ways you can meet your demise here. Death comes hard and fast- the gore (which can be turned off) is surprising initially but is simply a logical conclusion of the world. Fall on a spike, there you stay, all spiked and dead. Each death is silently contemplated for a few moments before a nicely reactive checkpoint system means you never have to retrace a section or jump prior to the one you just died on.

As the game progresses from wood to cave to mountain to factory floor, the tricks and traps become ever more fiendish and a lot of trial and error becomes necessary – so determined are Playdead to separate your head from your shoulders. Leaping through one set of apparent death traps will usually lead you straight into the arms of another – but these tricks are so mischievous, so cheeky you can’t help but smile as you fall to a horrific death for the umpteenth time. The demo itself climaxes with a huge spider you’ve bothered previously picking you up as you struggle helplessly tangled in its web – even the language employed to make you buy the game is irresistible – Push x to “Abandon the boy”. Who could be so cold?

The why’s and the wherefore’s of the world are never revealed. This is Limbo, in it you will encounter others like yourself, suspicious and unfriendly. Also the bodies of several others, which can be put to good use several grisly puzzles. We do find a special someone by the end, but whether or not it is your sister, as the marketing blurb will have you believe, is academic. Music is minimal, the sound of your feet crunching through the undergrowth and wind in the trees suffice as part of a rich and evocative soundscape.

The boy himself is a joy to handle – not used that line for a while – he has a real sense of weight and movement and scrambling up ledges or leaping from chains to safety he sometimes seems to control himself unbidden, so responsive are his twitchy little feet. Comparisons with Braid are an obvious start, but aside from the 2D and platforming, little else here is similar. Emotionally, its closer to Shadow of the Colossus – the sense of isolation and desperation is immense.

At 1200 MS points for a little under 6 hours play, Limbo may seem pricey – but it is 6 hours of pure platforming joy that’s fun to revisit. You will simply not be able to put it down until you've reached wherever it is you're trying to get to. It’s also a great play for new/lapsed gamers so simple are the controls and captivating the presentation. Go on, give it a whirl.

Treehouse Rating: 4 out of 5

Plays like a dream

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E3 Mayhem!

So the 3 big have all shown us their wares – after the 1st official
day, Monday not officially counting as part of the show proper, Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony have dazzled us with the future of gaming for another a year – hard to believe it’s been a whole year since last time. And now as we sit back reeling from the technological marvels of the last 48 hours, stroking our beards, and mulling over who “won”, S1nner pierces the swirling fogs of misguided thoughts by pointing out to me, “it’s not the winning, we’re all gamers”. And how right he is, we are the winners for we get to keep the spoils from all three. Surely now we can put aside these childish notions of who had the best show, who had the least cock ups, who Won? You’d think so anyway, fact is Nintendo won, here’s why.

Nintendo have done a complete volte-face since 2009. Last year’s showing was marked by a firm focus on the dull – family games, shovel ware, wii fit. Tee-dee-ous. And after it, many ninty fans stood, Skywalker style, over pyres of burning Nintendo paraphernalia, weeping openly into the night. Well, they’ll wish they’d just put it in a box in the attic this year because Nintendo, clearly stung by the reception last year have come out all guns blazing. This year the focus was firmly back on the hardcore, with nary a shot of a happy family in sight. The show kicked off with a new Zelda game for wii, looking fairly gorgeous and marred only by some apparent technical glitches, Miyamoto-san showed us some sweet new weapons and full 1:1 motion control with Wii motion plus (looks like I’ll finally have to actually stump up for it after all – and seriously, why hasn’t Link always had a whip?!)

Old school fans rejoiced as killer announcement followed killer announcement ; Kirby (looks genius) a Goldeneye remake, Donkey Kong Country, and finally Kid Icarus. The last announcement was slightly diluted for me, being as it was being introduced on a brand new piece of hardware, the Nintendo 3DS. It’s been on the horizon for a while, but we got our first glimpse of the sexy minx, and despite not being able to appreciate the thing in 3d, this is clearly a do-want situation, at defcom 9, and represents what will be my fourth purchase from the DS family. Goddammit. Full 3D without the need for glasses, a sexy widescreen, analogue stick, built in 3d camera, and all the goodness we’ve come to expect from our DSi’s which can expect to be Ebay’d pretty damn quickly once this puppy drops. With a ton of 3rd party support too and some top games being announced, even as we speak, this looks to be a real winner.

Yes, Ninty was on top form, all the heavy weights coolly threw in their pitches, masterminded by Reggie and flanked by Satoru and Miyamoto, the guys were up there having fun.

A concept sorely lacking at yesterdays Microsoft presentation which was characterised by painful sequence after painful sequence of guys and girls HAVING FUN ARRGH! As in the kind of fun you have when you look off stage and someone is aiming a rifle at you; “have fun I says” the mystery sniper hisses. Anyway I digress - the pained fun being had couldn't totally hide the great tech on display- as Natal became “Kinect” in a terribly clever fusion of “Connect” and “Kineticalisation” which means “to flail”. Yes, Natal is no more, and I’m sure the new name will grow on me, like a fungal infection. No, none of the presenters seemed at ease, perhaps the burden of going first, but little humour was on display following what most agree was a fairly disastrous showing the night previous by the Cirque Du Soleil. Honestly, who thinks this stuff up?

“Kinnect” still has much to do to convince as the focus was, in a weird taking up of the Nintendo mantle, fairly focused on the family. True outside of the Kinnect piece, there was exciting showing of core games; Gears of War 3, Halo Reach and some wholly remarkable footage of Metal Gear Rising – slice and dice baby – and yet the abiding memory is of several people leaping around onstage to some rather second rate looking family titles. Ohno. That said, it wasn’t by any means doom for Nata- Kinect – the demo of the new UI was freaking sweet – “Xbox, make me a cuppa” – will be heard in my house as soon as I have one – the voice control being both awesome, and clearly the way forward for mankind. So too was general minority report style navigation of the menus sweet to behold, and cause for real excitement. Other demonstrations – less so. The 8 year old with her virtual tiger was inconceivably cute, and I did want to play with it (the tiger yes?) , and was impressed by its fidelity and responsiveness and tripping it up with the skipping rope in bullet time, but see what am I saying? Am I really excited for a virtual cat you can pet? Damn, guess I am a bit. But only for the technology you understand.

The fitness game demo’d, while deeply dull in itself, still revealed quality potential in the system which continues to impress with its full body mo-cap. So too did the dance game, which should have had me staring through my hands in horror, but actually looked like a ton of fun, and may even actually help me improve my already highly advanced dance skills in the pursuit of da ladeez. The Starwars lightsabre demo, suspiciously unplayable, looks kinda fun, but suffers for being on rails - I still can’t help but feel that something is lacking, and I hope that Msoft don’t rule out the inclusion of a left handed nunchuck style joystick for character control – we don’t need a wand for the right hand, we can just scan in a ruler or a banana for that, but how are we supposed to move around these game worlds accurately? I guess time will tell what their plans are but I really hope there is a sit mode for at least some games.

The final bombshell though was the announcement of a new 360 sku, which had been rumoured previously, but said rumours failed to convey how deeply sexy the new box would be. I was instantly smitten, sign me up for this sleek, whisper quiet finger print magnet, available in the UK in just 4 short weeks time for £199 – hand it over!

Sony meanwhile went last but didn’t come last – I’m sure Sinner will have much to say on their showing. They too were having lots of fun on stage, lots of 3d gaming, bit moot for me at present, and Kevin Butler giving an impassioned speech about what gaming means to him that hit a lot of right notes – if this is all true and it’s what Move has in mind sign me up (man do I really have to buy 3 new consoles this year?!). The Move demonstrations didn’t show as much as I’d hoped – I’ve seen some stunning tech demos online, but I guess E3 is no place for such tinkering, here we need big games, and Sorcerer fit the bill nicely, all spell casting and fireball making – the interface looked slick and responsive.

Sadly lacking was any sniff of The Last Guardian, but bizarrely compensating for its absence was Gabe Newell showing off Portal 2 and declaring that the PS3 would be the definitive version! Have the Gods taken leave of their senses?! Truly bizarre. Anyway, a nice trailer ensued so I’m fairly stoked for that - Dead space 2 looked decent too with a brief gameplay snippet. Their inevitable subscription model was announced and they showed a bunch of PSP stuff.

Yes all told lots of quality gaming, and the outpouring has only just begun in earnest – now it’s up to the journos of the world to all run round a massive building for 2 days, playing all the latest games and getting paid for it. Damn their eyes. Lots of updates, links, trailers images and dat to follow no doubt.. Truly we are all the winners though, for now we can all look forward to the fruits of their labours, and leave behind this embarrassing grapple over who’s respective flag bearer “won”.

Besides, like I said, it was Nintendo.

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Mini Review: Chime

I’m not sure what it is that makes Xbox Live and music games such a good fit, but there it is, here comes another one. Brighton based Zoe Mode’s “Chime” popped up a couple of weeks or so back, and like Rez before it, is a unique, if less dramatic foray into interactive music games. It is a gorgeously simple and satisfying game, that is a lot easier to play than it is to explain. The player is presented with a silent grid into which you place blocks of various size and shape, in a Tetris stylee. All the while a “beat line” sweeps across the grid, which upon reaching your recently placed blocks , creates a sound. Fitting blocks together into rectangles creates “quads” which claims part of the grid for you as "coverage" – the aim of the game being to get 100% coverage of the board. These quads create musical phrases when the beatline hits them, and their complexity and point value is determined by how big you’ve managed to build your quad before it “expires”. As you play you gradually build the music track up and push it along through it's sections and verses. There's a bit more to it than that, but you can learn more at the game’s excellent website, or watch the trailer after the break.

All sounds a bit dry, but this is a bona fide little gem. The success or failure of such a game is always going to hinge on the music and how well its implemented, and here Chime is resplendent. While only 5 tracks are on hand, each is an auditory joy and provided by artists of real clout; we’ve got Lemon Jelly, a guy from Orbital , Mark Schulz (dunno him, but it’s a nice track, if the weakest) and er, Moby with a toe tapping working of electro pop “ooh yeah”. Crown jewel for me though is Brazil from Philip Glass – an epic orchestral reworking that’s all dramatic strings and woodwind, and wouldn't have sounded out of place on the Punch Drunk Love soundtrack. The interaction with the music throughout Chime is exceptional; you have real influence as you claim more and more of the game grid, starting gradually with plonky bloops and bleeps, gradually building the song up to tumultuous crescendos, all of which are seamlessly integrated into the gameplay, the rendition will vary each time you play it.

It’s no picnic either, it’s deceptively difficult to clear the board within the time limit, although with practice you can do this several times within a round. I found it initially difficult to shrug off my tetris mentality of fitting the shapes together, it’s not necessarily the best way to get the coverage you crave - those pesky quads won't go round corners, and it's easy to misplace a piece ruining your multiplier. The experience as a whole though is deeply relaxing, the music builds and builds, flutey trills and phrases bubble up as you put the quads together with hypnotic little visual flourishes, and before you know it the timer is running out and you’re cursing because you hadn’t noticed and you’ve only covered 98% of the board.

Even more remarkably for what is a fully formed, highly polished game, this is going on Xbox Live for a mere 400 MS points, or a little under £3.50 – an absolute steal which probably undervalues it – I’ve paid a lot more for a lot worse. Furthermore a portion of that goes to children’s charities via One Big Game Could this be the perfect game? Go buy it.

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2009 we barely knew ye..

2009 was a great year for cool stuff, and now that we’re firmly into 2010, we can safely look back without anger, and assess our favourite moments of all the cool stuff, and work out which was coolest. Cool films, cool games, movers and shakers, all the best bits. Come on through to see my roundup of both stuff and things that went well in 2009, and a little look forward to 2010 too.

Best Film

It was a fantastic year for sci fi nerdy joy with an avalanche of hotly anticipated brilliance right throughout the seasons, from Watchmen to Star Trek to Avatar, but who could’ve predicted it would be a (relatively) low budget, deeply personal and political buddy movie that would see them all off? Yes, my sci fi movie of the year has to go to District 9. By turns hilarious, disturbing, thrilling and moving, District 9 is that rare gem of a movie where you expect little and come away with so much. Of all the movies released in 2009, with perhaps the exception of Avatar, District 9 is the one people will remember years from now as being an important milestone both in the genre and in the creation of a force to be reckoned with in 1st time director Neil Blomkamp.

Best Comedy Character

In the year of Hangovers and Brunos, laughs were generally pretty thin on the ground in 2009. Perhaps that’s why the movie that made me laugh more than any other came so far out of left field, being as it was Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds. Sure there was plenty of wincing too in this uber violent jew-ish-fulfillment vengeance wet dream, but punctuated with moments of such comic brilliance to make it stick out firmly in the mind. Brad Pitt's drawl. The pipe. The headbutt. Colonel Landa generally. In fact lets just make him best character of 2009 and be done.

GOTY

Best game is a tricky one as I spent most of 2009 playing Fallout 3 – technically a 2008 title, but one of such breadth and depth, it took me that long to get through it. Add in the expansion packs and cor blimey guvnor that’s more gaming than you can shake a Chinese officer’s sword at. But rules is rules, so for a strictly 2009 only GOTY, look no further than Batman Arkham Asylum. With a sublime mix of stealth and brawling, both masterfully implemented, never before have we felt so Batman-y. If God is in the details, Batman Arkham Asylum is a religious experience, the beautifully crafted asylum is choc full of delicious nods to Batman’s glorious comic book roots, with villains and in jokes under every flowerpot. Throw in some truly out-there set pieces, flawless voice acting and a combat system so tightly implemented, dropping into a room full of thugs and walking away moments later, the assailants soundly snoozing with broken limbs a-plenty, has never felt so rewarding.

Best TV moment

A fire burns in a ceremonial bowl. A young man silently weaves at a loom. Now he’s on a pristine beach, catching a fish and cooking it on a stone, before eating it from a banana leaf. Up trots another slightly shifty looking man, and they have a chat, an ongoing argument. The shifty man asks him if he realises how badly he wants to kill him. The man replies he does. “Always nice talking to you Jacob”, and as we pan back, we see the man sits in the shadow of the enormous Egyptian statue until now glimpsed only in the distance, and all those years ago, by Sayid as merely a foot. Yes its Lost, yes it’s still amazing, and yes it will all be over soon. What will we do without it? The reveal of Jacob, the mysterious secret keeper of the island as a simple island dwelling fisherman at the start of the season finale was typically brilliant Lost. It told us so much, and yet so little. The later reveal about who a certain character wasn’t what we thought either was equally thrilling. Where do we go from here?

Biggest Tearjerker

Aside from the moment in Avatar when Jake flies for the first time (oh wow!), there was only one other movie moment in 2009 that jerked my ducts, and that was UP. In a sequence of unprecedented genius (actually, Pixar have a long history of genius so perhaps not totally unprecedented) we see our youthful protagonists grow up and grow old together, and heart breakingly, one of them pass away, all in the space of a 3 minute sequence in the first act of the film. We don't know these characters well yet, having only been introduced to them moments earlier, and yet the sequence is so powerfully moving, people in the cinema were openly blubbering, and we suddenly fully understand a character for the entire rest of the movie, who would otherwise have been rather unlikeable. It's testament to Pixar's brilliance that they would even consider putting such a sequence in a film like UP in the way that they did, but to get it so right, so emotionally spot on, is just mind blowing.

Best news for real Doctor Who fans

Ok, so I know I'm kind of in the minority here, but I for one am very pleased to finally see the back of Tennant and his leash holding idiot savant ego maniac scribbler Russel T Davies. Yes Davies re booted the Doctor, yes without him we wouldn't have had the success that was Eccleston and the handful of good episodes turned in since his departure, but he has also subjected us to some of the biggest stinkers. He single-handedly destroyed the Master, reduced from a hirsute arch nemesis to a blathering bin-man mug. His plots revolved around whatever zeitgeisty dross he had happened to read about in the Metro the day before, thank Christ Tennant to his credit had the good sense to veto the "Harry Potter" episode, where magic became real and guest starring JK Rowling. Jesus. And the Doctor meanwhile turned into the trendy geography teacher who always knew what was going on, never had a worry, and had 2 expressions - smug or wide eyed. His finale was a typically painful affair, spewed from Davies' backside and loaded with nonsensical drivel as everyone wondered what Timothy Dalton was thinking, the climax of which saw Tennat simpering, " I don't want to go..". On that pay I bet you didn't, now piss off. Early indications for 2010 are rosy, new boy Matt Smith under real writer Steven Moffat looks a good fit, although his penchant for shouting Geronimo is a littlle worrying. Watch this space..

Best game featuring a turntable based peripheral

Perhaps surprisingly the winner for me in this heavily populated gaming genre is Freestyle Games' DJ Hero. With a solid deck in the box, a set list of such quality I need to get it on my Ipod, and game play so intense there will be whole generations of wannabe DJ's with massive right arms and an affinity for flickering colourful patterns. A true innovation that is a start to what I hope will be a massively successful series, the joy of decks is alive and well. DJ battles over Xbox live prove a hit and miss affair - poor losers are prone to ditching when the tunes not going their way, but when it works, its a blast. Pure toe tapping, carpal tunnel inducing goodness.

Best phone that wasn't an I-phone

Slightly biased as I didn't do a whole lot of exhaustive testing, but the winner here is, my new phone, the HTC Hero phone. Its a lovely bit of kit, but I mention it here because of its awesomeness in the pocket gaming arena. Thanks to a healthy homebrew community, the android phone can play existing collections of roms for all of your old favourites from the Nes, Megadrive, Super Nes, master system and more. Duckhunt is now a regular fixture on mine, yes it supports the lightgun games. The caveat for the freedom of distribution is you must own any rom you download, otherwise its just bare-faced piracy. Luckily my games collection is extensive, but now they come with me in my pocket..

So that was 2009, but what of 2010?? Well, there's plenty afoot , but for now, lets just make do with..

Most hotly anticipated film of 2010

The only film on my radar, obliterating all others, is this remarkable looking monster from Christopher Nolan. What. Is. This? Not since the Matrix has there apparently been a film of such broad vision that we knew so little about. One of those rare cinematic experiences where you cannot know what you are going to see, you have to see it for yourself.



Most hotly anticipated game of 2010

With a solid 11 months til the appearance of Natal, I’ll have to come up with something else to look forward to in the meantime. There are a few things that spring to mind, most of them sequels disturbingly, all though 2009’s finest were mostly sequels too come to think of it. So there’s Mass Effect 2, Battlefield BC 2, Bioshock 2 lets hear it for the 2’s! Also Heavy Rain will finally fall, and I am very interested to see how that turns out, will it be the catalyst to the final PS3 purchase? No I'm still pretty sure the Last Guardian will see to that, and that remains one of my most eagerly anticipated games ever. But as we’ve covered it elsewhere, lets pick something new.. hrmm, ok, how about Metro 2033. From a team composed largely of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R crew, and set in the crumbling metro/bomb shelter under Moscow, this ruskie apocalypse game is set to be right up my proverbial. That said, I will miss the open fields and the melancholy trees of Stalker-ville, so maybe I should just opt for the imminent S.T.A.L.K.E.R instalment, call of Pripyat. Means I’ll need to upgrade my rig though, damn..




There's plenty more to look forward to of course, but what are you hoping to get out of 2010? Tell me now!

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Batman based song of the week

Words are great. We love 'em here at the Treehouse, and bandy them about willy nilly, sometimes using whole sentences in displays of uncharacteristic eloquence. But dammit all, they’re so 2008. As we creep towards the bright future, much like Doc Brown’s distaste for roads, where we’re going we won’t need words. For the rise of the video, though apparent for a good while now, has been ever more stealthily spreading it’s seductive tendrils. The video review is certainly no new thing, we’re big Yahtzee fans around here, and indeed even the Gametrailers reviews are things of much value, allowing viewers to see the words of the reviewers in their heads, sometimes literally. But surely the work of Rebecca Mayes eclipses all of these pretenders to the medium, for she is carving herself the niche in video gaming of video song reviews. She not only uses words, and a plethora of instruments, and catchy ditties, but also adorable little penguin outfits and tea sets. A brave new world of games reviews dawns. She was recently featured on Charlie Brooker’s excellent Gameswipe, with her review of Madworld, but this delightful love note to Batman: Arkham Asylum is at once pretty and insightful, and is surely her finest work to date. Ever a sucker for the incredibly talented I take off my penguin hat to her and bid her continue with this bold march towards a word free future. But then again, some faces are meant for radio, so please don’t think too harshly of us if we continue to spout a couple now and again around here. See more of the wonderful Rebecca Mayes at her home at The Escapist, but not I hasten to add, at her real home because that, sir, has a word, and that word is stalker.

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Too many DJ's: DJ Hero hands-on impressions

I finally managed to beat off the chavs to get close to the demo unit for DJ Hero that appeared last week in my local Game. I've been itching to have a look at the turntable close up, despite not actually being terribly excited for it based on what I'd seen, not to mention band games and the like are usually, with their peripheral proclivity, prohibitively pricey. But based on a mere ten minutes of scratch n' sniff, I might just have to make an exception.

The deck itself is pleasingly sturdy, the disc on the right (or left, southpaws), freely spinning unfettered as it should, and the "mixing desk" to the left (see above, reverse it) all present and correct with its cross fader, effect knobs and standard controller buttons tidily concealed under a flap. I thought I best start with the tutorial being offered, as the videos I'd seen hadn't permeated my imagination enough to actually gather what was happening in them. But it turns out it's dead simple, so I skipped it. Also Grandmaster Flash was embarrassingly drawing attention to my newbness really loudly in a crowded store.

DJ's of course, (and not mind, the ones you encounter at weddings who press play to Now that's what I call music 18), mix (or mash, to use the correct parlance) two, often entirely disparate tunes (choons), to make a new and usually improved mash up (song). The same happens here. Track one is the line on the left, track 2 is the line on the right. The one down the middle, as far as I could gather, is used to insert annoying sound effects and cause you to lose your streak. As with Guitar Hero, the iconic buttons zoom towards you on the mesmerically curving track, and you hit the corresponding real world button located conveniently on the deck under your fingers at the appropriate moment to keep that track in the mix. You may see the line jump from left to right and back again. This indicates where a cross fade is required, causing the favouring of one track over the other. Finally, there is what's called the scratchy scratchy move, where a button is depressed and you use the turntable to scratch a funky "eeriyt" into the groove. Simples.

Like Guitar Hero, this promises to be fiendishly addictive and hair tearingly difficult. That said, I blazed through the three demo tracks on normal without problem. There's obviously a lot more to it I don't appreciate yet - there was no specific direction required to get the scratch right, and I barely touched the effects knob. Coordinating all the button presses and crossfades required to keep up with the track, and then dropping in a tasty scratch, is just as rewarding as nailing a guitar solo, and indeed, a tiny crowd of gobby teenagers had quickly gathered to marvel at my mad skills (skillz). My only concern was the crossfaders tendency to leap unbidden out of its central groove, causing one of the tracks to fizz out like a fluff covered needle. No doubt with practice, a non existent problem, clearly one's hand should instinctively hover between the tracks like a Buddhist passing through life.

So I think I need to start saving for this one, because the deck remains fairly pricey for a game. And although it does lack the pick-up-ability of a dinky plastic guitar, based on this tiny slice of gameplay joy and with the knowledge that Activision have secured a genuinely impressive playlist, I have no doubt this will, once it gathers some momentum, be a huge hit. I certainly know what we'll be doing in the Treehouse this Christmas.

Hit the jump for some lovely official videos of a taste of the wonders that await you, and try, unlike I did, to use an iota of imagination of yourself causing these crunchy grooves..

Yes, yes! Sold.




This will never work, right?





Bowie wins. But you probably won't on expert..

More than the sum of its parts..

Check out the Dj Hero Youtube channel for more.

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I just need one more hit!!

Cigarettes. Crack cocaine. Haribo Tangfastics. All extremely addictive. Now a new member has joined the ranks of the dangerously moreish, and is being delivered directly to our homes by Nintendo. Sold under its street moniker of “PiCOPiCT” (or "Picobits" in the States), this DSi Ware title has swallowed up hours of my time with its compelling gameplay and faultless presentation. Easily mistaken for a Tetris clone this puzzler is in fact as original as it is pretty. As blocks fall from the top of the screen, you have to move correctly coloured blocks into their path to match 4 and cancel them out, clearing away the tiles. Things start simply with just a few colours and slow moving blocks, but by the remix stages you’ll be sweating bullets and spitting blood as the similarly coloured tiles pile up. Classic symptoms. The stylus is perfectly suited for the speed and precision you’ll require to beat later levels, and you may need to resist the urge to dash your DSi against the nearest wall as the tiles inevitably and impossibly fall faster and faster in ever more complex patterns. You will however, take great pleasure at how good you quickly become, squeezing the maximum efficiency out of every wave of falling tiles while clearing each perfectly with lots of combos becomes imperative, and provides the fundamental gaming hit that is so very jaffa-cakeishly moreish. The game is themed around 8 bit Nintendo history, so in addition to the brilliant game itself, you’re also treated to a feast of nostalgia, complete with awesome reworking of classic Ninty themes by Japanese Chiptune outfit YMCK. As you liberate the tiles on the lower screen, they fly up to form the picture of one of your 8 bit memories on the upper screen. Nice.

The whole thing bodes incredibly well for the future of the DSi shop, and in one fell swoop has totally justified my purchase (of a DSi, which I wasn't still wasn't convinced about, as nice as the camera and web browser are). Picopict is available via the DSi Shop and costs a measly 500 points. Which meant I got it free, as I resisted the urge to buy that lame looking WarioWare snapped with my free points. Hurrah.

Right, back to it..

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E3 Update: Project Natal

Sadly, Treehouse budgets preclude us from jetting to E3 to cover press conferences in person, so we have to make do with live video feeds and reading smart alecy girls' typed updates. Microsoft were first up this year, and have dropped a couple of bombshells. In amid the Beatles, more Halo, game play footage of Modern Warfare 2 and Metal Gear Solid coming to Xbox, was a fairly extraordinary piece on the motion capture camera everyone's been poo pooing. This was clearly the crown jewels in the display, as Steven Spielberg and Peter Molyneux were wheeled out to wax lyrical about it, and some bloke named Kudo (Tsunoda- lead designer) who couldnt resist taking a few pops at Nintendo's lame waggle approach to inclusivity.

Project Natal (working title, for 'tis but a prototype) consists of what must be a fairly spiffy camera, capable of facial recognition, body motion capture, voice recognition, object recognition - blah blah blah, big whoop, whats new? - the presentation kicked off with a Nintendo style video of people playing various games, martial arts, racing, quiz games, all by just moving their bodies. Right, bit suspicious, although the motion capture looks impressive. Still cant be real. Oh look, they're navigating menus Minority Report style, and chatting on the video screen. Also, voice controlling movies - now that is handy, but hardly revolutionary.

Next up, after a potentially diastrous start in which Kudo's avatar spazzed around like a double jointed gymnast (lotta lights onstage huh Kudo?), an onstage demonstration of some tech demos; a block smashing game where a girl bounces around kicking punching and heading balls down a corridor. Hmm interesting; plausibility, rising.. Next a painting game where the guy paints a landscape with elephant. Not too interesting in itself (but clearly fun) but it's here I noticed how closely the movements were being replicated; as the guy just stood talking to the audience, the avatar onscreen mimicked precisely. Full body motion capture, with real subtlety of movement. Ooh.

Next up, Molyneux, and the part of the demo that puts this in the almost creepy folder. Lionhead have had Natal for a couple of months, and have come up with an AI boy, Milo, that the player can interact with. Using the facial and voice recognition, the creepy kid looks at the demonstrator's face, reacts with emotion to what she says while having a seemingly proper conversation, "throws" objects to her, is passed a drawing. Er, really, its a bit creepy. She then plays with the water in the river Milo lives by, her reflection shimmerring realistically in the surface as she sloshes the water about. That sir, is pretty freaking amazing.

Whether or not this will turn out to be what it appears to be, we'll know in the next few days as fortunate journos with their deep deep pockets get to try it out, and lord knows, we can't trust Peter "ZOMG" Molyneux. If it turns out to not be a fancy pants eye toy, and does do what it suggests though, well, I'm not one for hyperbole, but it could literally change the entire world forever. Or just be a ton of fun. One of those.

Image courtesy of (pinched from) Kotaku

Check after the break for some early videos.

The cheesy "product vision". Hmmm, really?




And Milo. Imagine Fallout 3 with NPCs with this tech.

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PS3 brings exclusive Batman content to the table, wins console war

S1nnerman and I have one of those friendly banter with undercurrents of potential violence console relationships. He's PS3, I'm Xbox, we both own the superior console. He has the state of the art, silent running, future proof, all powerful black panther entertainment centre, while I have the pinnacle of pure-bred gaming machines with an unmatched games library and peerless online play. He points out mine sounds like a plane taking off and is likely to drop dead at any moment. I observe that most cross platform games look better on mine despite the mighty cell, and that he essentially owns an expensive dvd player. We both of course have better exclusives than each other. Killzone? Ha I think not he cries. Pfft I respond, big whoop, where's your GOW? We're on GOW III fool, he retorts. Gears 3, I chortle, what have you been smoking?? This can go on for days. In fact, it's the never ending verbal diarrhoea of two souls who both know they're right, and it's one that's been played out since the dawn of man. With rocks.

The undeniable truth regarding the exclusives however, is of course that I'm right! Gears, Mass Effect, Fable, Left 4 Dead, maybe even Halo! Never mind the AAA downloadable content around at the moment like the Fallout trilogy and GTA4. No, maybe when Team ICO drop something, I might have call for jealousy, by which time I may even pick one up as it will be 2020. That's what I thought anyway. But no, I 've cause for envy sooner than that with the news on Batman: Arkham Asylum, as reported on Kotaku. The game looks great. I am excited for the game. What I would also be excited about is the chance to play as the Clown Prince of Crime himself! And not in some half assed beat em up kind of way, but in a sneaky, silent take-down with uproarious cackling afterwards across a series of exclusive challenge maps kind of way. In fact I'm not even sure I can imagine what the game play as the Joker will be like, but it would clearly be awesome with alot of potential for acid spewing flowers, electrocuting hand buzzers and er, deadly toxic lipstick with which to subdue your enemies? Although yet to be officially confirmed, the evidence that was, apparently inadvertently, on display in Home is fairly compelling. Damn you Rocksteady and by association Sony. You finally made me green. Shaddup S1nner!

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Review: GTA Chinatown Wars

It’s been while since there was a bona fide must buy game for the DS. Professor Layton was a blast – an enjoyable oddity, definitely worthy of attention, but never destined to be carried around compulsively for a quick puzzle on a tube, months after purchase. Likewise, it’s been a long while that anything has persuaded me to leave my Korg DS10 at home. GTA Chinatown Wars is such a game. A game of such sweet, melodic harmony that you want to weep and thank the person sat next to you on the bus that such a gem of a game was brought to light, and may mean you’ll never turn your ds all the way off again. This is pure bred, brilliant design, from the opening screens to the final sound byte. Rockstar have surpassed themselves in connecting to what makes a system unique and have exploited every inch of the DS’s hardware to bring a thorough bred GTA game every bit as engrossing as its forbears and bringing the same humour and style to the party, but with a heavy sackful of new tricks on its meaty shoulders. You're going down to Chinatown..

You are Huang Lee, a young triad returning to Liberty city delivering a treasured family heirloom from your recently murdered gang boss father to your uncle. The sacred sword that’s been in your family for genera- oh yeah sorry, won by your dad in a card game, is promptly pinched by assailants unknown on your arrival in the city, and you are left for dead in a sinking car in Liberty harbour. Without the backing of a spiffy 3d engine, the cut scenes throughout are presented as stylish cartoon cinematics much in keeping with previous GTA art styles, and suit the game perfectly. These seamlessly introduce plot and mission, and are consistently well made. Worth a mention is the brilliant written dialogue which crackles with humour worthy of happier GTA times when your protagonist wasn’t always moaning about the weight of the world and instead revelled in a good dick joke.

You quickly run into a cast of characters also more reminiscent of earlier instalments, wacky in disposition and outlook and perfect foils to your dry sarcastic protagonist, they introduce you to the struggle underway between the triad under bosses to secure their claim on an impending power vacuum as ageing uber triad Hsin Jaoming nears the end of his reign. Perhaps you'll get a chance to avenge your father and get back the sword along the way.

So the plot, characters and cinematics are up to snuff, as you would be right to expect from Rockstar, but what of the gameplay? In a word; stunning. The game is viewed from an old school top down view, slightly isometric and presented in gorgeous cel shaded style which gives the world a unique edge right away. People lack a huge amount of detail being as they are, little more than blobs of pixels, but in the context of the street and with so much detail on the screen, the overal effect is amazing considering it's your little ds chugging these visuals out. Sound is likewise top notch, the streets are alive with people who all talk at you (I’m still a virgin!), and the radio is full of surprisingly sophisticated instrumental tracks that could easily appear in a “proper” console version of GTA. What’s really amazing though is the scope of the city crammed into the little cart. Rockstar have managed to faithfully recreate the Liberty city of GTA IV (less a couple of the more boring islands, who liked Alderney anyway?) down to every last corner, and what you have is a fully realised urban playground in your pocket. It’s all here; hijack any vehicle, beat down any pedestrian - you'll recognise many of the locations and landmarks if you've played GTAIV. But then there’s so much more brought to the gameplay table thanks to the inspired use of the touch screen.

On the one hand, it’s your ever present tool used to interact with inventory items in your pda, select weapons and maps as well as the various stats screens it's so much fun poring over in GTA. But then it’s also used for an ever changing series of disposable mini-game tasks, never revelled in but trotted out to not be seen again for ages, and all the more effective for it. Steal a parked car in GTA CTW (ok this happens a fair bit) and rather than speeding off, you’ll be required to hot wire it via the touch screen, simulating unscrewing of cover plate, and twisting of wires, or just jamming a screwdriver in the key hole and twisting until it starts. More expensive cars even have computerised immobilisers – no match for your perfectly timed touchy code cracking. Use the screen to toss grenades and molotovs, tattoo your crew (!), assemble sniper rifles, search dumpsters, start boat motors, search stolen van panels for drugs the list goes on and on.

But ah, the drugs, oh the sweet, sweet drug dealing! Amazingly I haven’t seen this game in the pages of the Daily Mail yet (ban this filth etc!) but GTA CTW features a fully fledged drug dealing meta game that is in itself as addictive as crack coated haribo. Discover the dealers dotted around Liberty City and they’ll occasionally send you an email to let you know when they have sale on or if they’re trying to get hold of something specific. Keep an eye on supply and demand and you’ll quickly find yourself earning a packet, and before you know it you’re racing across the map to get to a dealer who is paying big for acid that you just happen to have a stash of you picked up cheap days ago in anticipation of this very moment, cos you just gotta have that profit! Buying drugs is a bit riskier – go for a bulk purchase and you may attract the attention of the cops, who will chase you down and if caught relieve you of your hard won merchandise. Which is the most painful experience I’ve come across in recent gaming memory – finally a consequence to getting busted. The drug dealing game is, it quickly becomes apparent, where you’ll make your money. Missions pay out miserably at first so to get on the property ladder you’re going to have to get your hands dirty.

The po-lice themselves are also nicely tweaked in gameplay terms. Now you can lose your wanted level by taking out your pursuers in satisfying prangs, leaving them piled at the side of the road. Once enough of them have been driven off, lie low and watch the stars vanish. It’s a nice logical addition that would be welcome in other iterations.

Also notably absent in GTAIV and reinstated here are the classic GTA missions that should always be a staple; taxi driving, ambulance driving, putting out fires, vigilante missions and crucially, rampage mode! Yes! Devastate enemy gangs with the huge array of weaponry, and watch as their little cartoon bodies run around screaming in flames. Yes this, is old skool, juvenile good times. Add in new funtimes like hijacking rival gang shipments, Ammunation delivery trucks or even raiding enemy warehouses and you've got a ton of fun and variety for every criminal mood.

Control is handled via the actual buttons. Imagine that. I was a little taken aback at first, I’d had it in my head that this would be a Zelda style touch screen led party, but the actual control of Huang is all via d-pad and buttons. This can seem a little unnerving initially, but you soon become accustomed to using those little buttony things you’d forgotten were there. Driving it should be noted is a particular joy once mastered – the ds helpfully aligns you to the road slightly (unless you turn it off) but you’ll still have your fair share of prangs as you get carried away bombing down a huge straight by Middle Park and jamming it around the corner with the handbrake on. Bikes are also very fun, if a bit on the suicidal side. All of the vehicles handle uniquely and appropriately.

Downsides? Every now and again you’ll hit a mission with one of those annoying arbitrary timers that screws you over. Also, you may find it’s very easy to get unwittingly busted by a cop who manages to open your door although you’re accelerating away. The streets as well, while detailed and beautifully realised aren’t too dangerous. It’s rare to fear traffic like you learn to in GTAIV, – you can pretty much run down the middle of the road with impunity, often outrunning the traffic, and you rarely stick to the sidewalks. On reflection though this is almost certainly a well considered design choice more than a flaw.

Generally though, no this is a truly top class title with no real negatives that has left my xbox idle and my pc weeping. Every aspect of the design has been carefully considered and fine tuned to perfection. I haven’t even mentioned the zero load times, the option to save any time you like, the ability to replay every mission on a whim, hunting down the elusive cctv cameras, the multiplayer and stat sharing, the way you can hail a cab by whistling into the mic - there’s innovation in this games pores that in the hands of a lesser developer might have come off as gimmickry. In terms of design and being perfectly embedded in the system it’s on, this is simply the best GTA game so far. A brilliantly comic and very adult game for the most unexpected system that has too long been written off as the mainstay of shovelware and puppy simulators. It is a perfect joy to pick up and play for five minutes or five hours. I’m off to play it right now in fact, Boris is buying weed for a fortune and I’ve got a glut in my stash I ripped off the Spanish lords. Ka-ching!

Treehouse Rating

9.6

Handheld heaven

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Heaven is where the DSis come from

Look here Nintendo. You had me at 'bigger screens' ok, no need for this bizarro alternate universe where everyone and everything is Daz white and people all use their DS's while grinning at each other. Those people are seriously enjoying themselves, especially the old couple at 2.31, pointing and laughing at their new digital photo frame. Jeepers, get a room.

Despite the god awful marketing, you will find me lining up on April 3 to pick up what will be my 3rd DS, that's one for each iteration. I remember thinking it was a risky purchase back when it first appeared, a real wild card in the Nintendo stable - will it be a natural replacement for the Gameboy or will it go the way of the virtual boy? Time has proven me a savvy consumer with a good eye for a winner, but even more time has proven me a sucker for shiny objects "now with bigger screens". Damn you ninty.

I do love my DS still though, having recently been spending a lot of time with the Korg DS10 (genius) and Professor Layton, and don't feel too ridiculous shelling out for another one with a few fairly pointless bells and whistles on it. Cameras aside, I'll definitely make use of the SD card slot and the web browser, despite no flash (damn!). The shop sound fairly handy too, modelled after the Wii shop which I have found pretty good use for, so I better cash in some more stars for points, if there are any to be sold yet.

This marketing is straight from Nintendo's dark new heart of inclusivity for all age ranges and genders, and despite the extreme cheese, you have to admit the DS has the gamut pretty well covered for everyone on the planet. It is still an odd realisation to be creating Kraftwerkalike electronica on the tube, only to notice that sat opposite a 6 year old girl in pigtails is holding the same object as you, albeit a pink one, mucky with glittery stickers, and playing with her pixelated dalmatians. Where will this Nintendomination of the planet end? At least a couple more DS versions away probably. The real big question is, do I trade in my DS Lite or just go ahead and buy another copy of Korg for some linked up, 32 pattern choons. That's going to be kind of tricky on the tube..

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In space no one can hear you plagiarise

The seasonal glut of must have games is upon us, leaving many of us with difficult decisions of where to spend our hard earned cash and time. I chose to spend my Halloween in the company of the xenomorphs courtesy of Dead Space, a chilling survival horror from the team that bought you er, The Simpsons Game.

With so much quality gaming almost upon us, should Dead Space divert your attention? Well, yes, yes it should.

It's been a long time coming, a decent sci-fi horror. Possibly not since the last Aliens Vs Predator game have we had a chance for some silent screaming terror. Dead Space is very much in the mould of an Alien spin off, set as it is aboard a monstrous "planet cracker" class spaceship, not called the Nostromo, that you arrive to fix having received the obligatory distress call. You are Isaac Clarke, mute engineer extraordinaire with a snazzy line in exoskeleton work suits and a girlfriend somewhere on the spooky ghost ship, which after crashing on, disabling your ship (natch) you set about fixing up to try and survive. For you see, the ship has gone quiet not due to a blown fuse, but because of a ship wide invasion of murderous abominations, the necromorphs, who have a habit on jumping on the nearest person and chomping them to sloppy gibs. For it emerges that when the miners "cracked the planet" something(s) came out, and now they're in all sorts of bother. Luckily for Isaac, as a trained engineer with a knack for wielding a plasma cutter, these horrible creatures' weakness is not a grenade up the nose. The obligatory "message scrawled in blood on the wall above a grisly corpse in a pool of blood and guts" informs us, "cut off their limbs!" Lop off a leg or an arm and they'll stop coming. Go for the head or body and its a different story.

What follows is a deeply atmospheric and gore laden creep through the bowels of the ship as you are dished out missions by your two surviving team members who boss you about from their safe hideyholes they've found themselves, and set about dismembering the army of ungodly horrors. The ship itself is the star of the show here, as you move through tight corridors that never feel generic or forced, but functional. These connect to key destinations where some feat of engineering is usually required to ensure the ships' and your, continued survival. These areas are some of the most impressive locales of recent memory, on a grand scale unexpected after the claustrophobia of the tunnels and lift shafts. These sections also typically make use of the cleverly implemented use of gravity; zero-g areas feature corpses and junk floating about in a (I imagine) tremendously realistic way. The necromorphs have no problem flying about in this state however, and are just as likely to leap on your head out of nowhere as in normal gravity. Likewise you are able to fly about the place and walk about the place Space Odyssey style, thanks to your magnetic boots. Aim at a distant ceiling and marvel as you fly across the expanse to gracefully touch down the right way up. It's a dizzyingly fun experience.

The mood of the game generally however is resolutely dreadful. That's a good thing remember. Fear pervades these halls, stalking you like a hungry mutant, and Redwood Falls play every trick in the book to make you jump. These are not always entirely successful, it's so easy to miss your cues after all, but generally the scares come thick and fast with rarely the same jump delivered twice. Praise has been showered on the soundtrack in particular, and rightly so. The sound design is brilliantly realised, with naturalistic and unnerving bump in the night effects that caused me to press pause and remove my headphones to listen on several occasions. The Ishimura creaks and groans. Sound in a vacuum is reduced to muffled thumping footsteps and your shrill breath as your oxygen ticks down. The necromorphs shriek and roar as they attack. Excellent stuff.

Your arsenal is similarly correct, being full of tools and slicey things. The saw blade that suspends itself in front of you to allow strategic carving of creatures is a particular favourite, and each gun comes with an alternate firing mode. Each one takes some getting used to to find the best way to use it effectively. Combat is best approached systematically, one limb at a time, and this can become a huge feat of prioritising later on when you're being attacked from all sides. Gunning and running becomes a panic inducing necessity, and when the strobes kick in and creatures are bursting though the walls, it can be hard to keep cool. Luckily your stasis module allows a limited slowdown of creatures (or fast machinery) to buy you some time, but the small energy bar it relies on means just a few burst before you're on your own again. Likewise, ammo is scarce enough to keep you in a perpetual state of dread, so you may want to make use of various exploding tea flasks dotted about the place which you can manipulate with your kinetic module (gravity gun) into the faces of unsuspecting beasties. The interaction of these two add-ons and your expansive arsenal makes for a variety of approaches, but remember, there is a tool for every job. The presentation of your various gubbins is also worth a mention; to keep you in Isaac's shoes there is no HUD - every part of your various menus and gauges are represented in game. Health is displayed as your glowing spine, inventories and video messages are projected in front of you. It's a slick and considered approach that is generally successful, although some camera issues can rear their head when you least need them to.

The creatures themselves are a diverse bunch and come in distinct flavours and classes from fast and lethal to small and swarmy, they can inspire serious shivers. Should they get too close, each has a series of attack animations where you must button mash to prevent dismemberment, but it's often entertaining to marvel at the horrifically inventive ways Isaac meets his demise. I was shocked by the Thing style head on tentacles that leapt onto my shoulders, knocked my own head off only to replace it with itself, pushing its tentacles into my chugging neck and lumbering off with my body, as the screen fades out resident evil style. There are too the occasional boss fights, and a few other pace breakers - and while a somewhat welcome change from the norm, these sections aren't as fun as they imagine, but do keep the gameplay from stagnating nicely.

That Dead Space is so obviously influenced by other games and films isn't an issue. Of course this has all been seen somewhere before. The quality of the execution goes a long way to excuse apparent unoriginality, and only the good stuff has been retained. Add in the interaction of all these diverse elements, and the game never feels unoriginal to play. In truth, only the hammy script lets it down in any real sense, and various revelations that come to light really aren't revelatory, and the plot that emerges is full of cliches of mad scientists and religious cultism and conspiracy.

Despite the ham and cheese, so well polished and tightly orchestrated as an experience, Dead Space asserts itself as one of the finest videogame lessons in horror yet, and while it might not keep you up at night pondering the plot, you may need to keep the light on for a while anyway.

Treehouse Rating

8.9

Horrible

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Braid takes you back

Well gosh it's been a while, what a busy time, so much to do so little time. So many films, so many games it's hard to know where to put ones brain. But I also spent some serious downtime by a lake which prohibited any kind of media consumption. Well apart from the ipod and ds, but hey it's not frickin punishment. Oh and I saw the Dark Knight in Italian which will now be forever known as Il Cavaliere Uscomo. Cool. Anyway, more about that later, I'm easing myself back into the chilly blog waters with this little post about Braid, so lets go..!

So Braid is another of these whizzy Xbox live jobs, which I'm getting more and more enthusiastic for these days. Although it may sound like an 80's scrolling shooter, this one is in fact a platform based puzzle game - the platforming you'll quickly discover is purely incidental since you can rewind time a la Prince of Persia (new fangled ones oldies) to undo horrendously timed jumps. The puzzling is compelling and at times downright baffling. I'm not sure I could remember how I solved many of the puzzles if I went back to it now, but the speedrun is calling the achievement whore in me a pussy so I may have to go back soon. While you can rewind time as much as you like, the puzzles are based around your manipulation of it, and the fact that various objects and creatures are affected by time in different ways. In fact, it's more complex than that as each of the new levels brings with it a different temporal conundrum - the one where everything in the level moves forward in time as you move right, and backwards as you move left is a doozie. My brain fell out. So as you manipulate time, and work out how to open the door you opened earlier with the key you used on that other door but can still use again because if you play it back quick enough you still have the key, you collect pieces of jigsaw puzzles that build the pictures adorning the walls of your hub home. So it's Mario meets Portal meets Prince of Persia meets Banjo Kazooie. Kinda. It's closest to Portal in terms of the warm little glow you'll feel when you finally grab that piece of the puzzle that moments earlier you swore blind on your mother's grave god rest her it is absolutely impossible to reach my copy of this shitty game is broken.

The best thing about Braid though iiis the graphics? No. Sorry, they're pretty and all, a forever shifting impressionist landscape for a background upon which crudely drawn sprites gambol and play that works beautifully, but it's the soundtrack the really brings them all to life. Cheery folk music played backwards has a wonderfully melancholy edge to it, an emotion that permeates the world from the heroes glum expression to the appallingly written "plot", which is the only real downpoint to the game - it reads like a goth teenagers angsty diary and is supposed to give some kind of context to the proceedings, but it would have been best left abstract. Imagine the mystery that would have engulfed teh nets if none of that had been present? What does it mean? What do the pictures signify?? We would be hailing the first Lynchian masterpiece of videogaming, a truly artistic and meaningful experience. As it is, you're left thinking seriously dude, man up, no wonder you can't get laid. The (admittedly brilliant) ending makes a lot of sense, she had clearly read your whiny little blog.

The awful writing however cannot ruin what is fundamentally a classy little game. Kinda pricey at 800 points considering how short it ultimately is, but while it lasts it's a joy. The demo is fairly substantial and certainly enough to work out if this is your kind of thing. My guess is it will be.

Update - humm, apparently it turns out its all about nuclear bombs. Whodathunkit? Guess the writing is more abstract than I thought. It's still bad though.

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..and he saw that it was good.

In between all the great, good and frighteningly bad films I've been watching, I've still found time to play me games. That's all changed now, as I've found something better, but it's not quite a game.. yet. Spore has been a constant presence in gaming culture for aaages, but never really penetrated my consciousness until now. The game itself looks set to be a complex resource management affair, not really my cup of tea so I thought, but an afternoon with the recently released Creature Creator has changed all that. I've been meaning to download it for a while, but had not been busy enough. For it is only when procrastinating fiercely that one can truly waste some serious time doing something so marvelously pointless. A free, and small download, and you are given a beautifully implemented construction kit of life to fashion and shape your animal into whatever you see fit, then have them dance for your amusement. Youtube is of course full of dancing penises. The free trial contains only 25% of the full creator (which is fiver to buy), and in itself provides a dizzying range of possibilities. Mii channel eat your heart out. So come with me now, and behold my menagerie..

This here is Toothy. He has a face where his genitals should be. I agree, not a good start. He is dancing with his similarly freakish offspring. No explanation is given as to how a creature with a face for genitals has an offspring.

Ah this is more like it, Flapdoodle. He's a happy little fellow with tiny wings, huge ears and a permanent look of surprise. He is also bright purple to protect him from predators.

Predators like this fearsome looking chap. This is Creeple. He's quite friendly really, I just took a picture after making him angry by pressing the angry button. He may play American football. See how it looks like he has one of those old helmets on? Never mind.

This is Spryco. I think I was going for a play on Spyro, although I'm not sure why. Anyway, he's a highly generic lizard type, but has a lovingly crafted spine.

Another ugly one, this is Grimball. He is quite grim when he's scuttling about, but I think he needs a better name. Scuttler perhaps? He has a rather nice paintjob.

Not a great picture, but that's probably for the best, this is a Long Haired Ballgrin, so called because of his flowing hair and prominent balls. The hair is flowing from his bottom. My most obscene creation thus far.

This is Phuckeduck. He is a pun. A fairly bad one too. Breaks my heart, cos he's an ugly little fucker, and all the more sad for it. How depressing.

This is Sparky, another poorly named exhibit. Again, It's a shame, cos I think I've really captured the surprise a shark might feel given legs and placed on dry land, and he is almost certainly deserving of a better name. Any ideas?

And finally, my favourite, Plootle. Look at that face! Look at that colour! Did you ever see as handsome a bug as he? So bright eyed and full of wonder. And to see him dance, oh! He's far superior to that fat german in a Bug's Life.

So thats it, if you're still here, thanks for reading, I will probably do a creature update again, possibly not as extensively unless I've got some real wonders to show off. That's if I don't get bored of creating. But it looks like I may have to actually buy the damn game as I need more antennae. Why are you still here anyway, don't you have some life to fashion?

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