Ape Escape (DVD)

This review can be found at Shadowlocked, here.

I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting when I popped Ape Escape into my DVD player. My frame of reference of the series was the original Ape Escape on PS1; the pioneer software for Sony's dual-stick Dualshock controller; a sweet soundtrack filled with poppy drum 'n' bass, and more ridiculous monkeys than you could count - trying their hardest to put their IQ-giving 'Pipo Helmets' to good use.

Plot-wise, the Ape Escape DVD provides the last of those three. A series of two-to-three minute episodes that largely focus on Specter - the villain of the Ape Escape series. He's an evil ape granted a genius intelligence though an experimental helmet. With his army of fellow apes (given helmets of their own), he intends to take over the world... but never manages to succeed.

At the very least, I expected an animation of the Ape Escape series to be an anime. Anyone would with such a 'typically Japanese' source material. But upon watching, these expectations were heavily subverted! Ape Escape is animated by Frederator, an American animation team, most notably responsible for The Fairly Odd Parents, but have more recently had a hand in the production of Adventure Time and Bravest Warriors. 

A More American Monkey

There are two issues with this, one an outright problem and the other... more of a thinking point. The problem here is that Ape Escape was very much a side-project for Frederator. Written to fill Ad-break slots on the Nicktoons channel in 2009, the animation was produced in Flash, leading to a cheap and loose-looking finished product. That would be perfectly fine when watched on TV, but packed together like this, it stands out much more.

That's not to say Frederator didn't put in any effort into the production. The writers and directors of each episode shuffle around and are recognisable from the team's larger projects, and the voice cast (Greg Ellis as Spectre and Annie Mumolo as the kids out to stop him) are well-established in doing voices for cartoons and video games.

The show's writing is my second issue, but not necessarily a complaint. With an American studio handling the project, the writing is very typical of a Western show aimed at children, rather than a Japanese one. Since, as said before, the source material is full to the brim of Japanese-specific wacky humour, the absence of that is a surprise.

Here, you'll see slapstick reminiscent of Dennis the Menace; Sound effects just like a Hannah Barbera cartoon, and the visual gags of Dexter's Laboratory. All of it is aimed at someone at least a decade younger than me (I'm 22), but every so often a gag would be absurd and timely enough to get a chuckle from my cold, dead heart.

A Good Catch?

Still, the biggest question lingers: who should buy this? Animation fans aren't going to get much entertainment from a show that could be technically compared to Johnny Test. Fans of the Ape Escape games are likely to want the Japanese humour of the source material. Young kids would enjoy it, but Ape Escape is barely a recognisable name in the West these days, and as a kid your watching habits are very much franchise-driven.

For those who want to give Ape Escape a shot, the DVD will go on sale on February 18th for a reasonably cheap £7.99.

The Solution is Fisticuffs

This feature is also available at n-Europe, found here.

The Menu-Based RPG. Iconic for the games that come under it, the way it changed perspectives on game design, and the impact it had on gaming culture. It's also a genre that's fallen almost entirely out of favour with the present gaming scene; all due to two common design features.

The first is grinding, a concept that - if you're reading this - is most likely known to you. The process of doing a task over and over until you're in the condition to progress. It could appear in subtle fashions, but because grinding can lengthen a 10 hour game into 20 hours, the games of old used it to make the title worth the high sale price, and the games of today use it to keep you firmly glued to your screen.

The second is something I call 'Stats as Progression'. It's something also familiar to RPG players, but it's less commonly discussed. Since the classic definition of the RPG is based around concepts of pen and paper games like Dungeons & Dragons, RPG characters have their abilities quantified. I'm talking about Health Points, Defence, Agility... Let's just call them your 'Numbers'. As a shorthand for your character growing stronger, these Numbers increase as you fight and win battles. The player can feel as though progress is being made, but in games without an action element, they can remove 'agency' from the player a little. It's frustrating to have an attack miss, just because a hidden calculation dictates so.


Combine these two ideas in one game, and you have a system where progression through the game is dictated by how high your Numbers are. And to get your Numbers to a level where progression is possible, you need to grind – most likely through killing enemies. But if this was just a flat proportion of Numbers Required to Time Playing, the game wouldn't feel like it's increasing in difficulty. So to combat this, the time grinding to get to the target Numbers gets progressively longer.

Does this sound like a game you've played before? I'm sure you can name a few. The thing is, when that's all that there is to a game's progression, the only aspect of a player that's being challenged is their patience. In an action-oriented game, to progress requires a steady increase in skill. Here, the player's skill need never improve.

Honestly, it's the number one reason why I, personally, will stop playing a game. Grinding is not fun by itself, and if the process isn't made engaging, or the reward doesn't feel worth the effort, then it's time to move on to greener pastures.

To avoid a game where winning is simply a matter of having the biggest Numbers, game designers need to look at what exactly their barriers to progress are, and how they can give the players more agency. It's almost like... a puzzle.

Puzzling Punch-Ups Performed on Paper

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door is my favourite title on the GameCube. Its aesthetics were top-notch and would be enough for me to love the game alone, but it was the gameplay that sold me. PM:TTYD turned combat into a performance, figuratively and literally. To defeat enemies by just selecting your strongest attack was inefficient, and in some cases outright impossible – success came to those who mastered the infamous 'timed hits'.

And it wasn't just about attack execution – many enemies were designed with a puzzle-solving element. Beyond Mario's skill-set of stomps and hammers, he gets an entourage of partners who each have their own special skills. Koops the Koopa Troopa is immune to damage from spikes. Vivian the Shadow Siren can pull Mario into the ground, avoiding attacks that would otherwise be unblockable. As your partners are introduced to you, the fights get more demanding, requiring you to use your new abilities effectively.

To have battles be 'perfect' puzzles, the abilities of the player have to be known at all times. This can be a hard thing to incorporate into the normal RPG style. While this works for Zelda games, where access to every weapon is carefully timed with what dungeons and bosses you'll be fighting; imagine if Pokémon limited the monsters available to you for Gym battles! It would definitely be more challenging, but a lot more restrictive.

Examples off the Beaten Path

Some titles get around this by making the method of combat puzzle-like, rather than detailed strategies to defeat specific enemies. Puzzle Quest immediately comes to mind (though I find it a bad example, as the computer tends to cheat), but if you take a dip into the esoteric there are some good examples.

The 2009 DS title Radiant Historia was, in many respects, generic. The setting, characters and writing were entirely uninteresting (at times painfully so). However, it had a fascinating battle system. Enemies you fight hang out on a 3x3 grid, and can be repositioned by your party's attacks. Consecutive attacks will chain together, so with some careful planning you can force all foes onto the same panel, taking heavy damage with every attack.

Baten Kaitos was a beautifully weird GameCube game that featured cards as your means of attack. While each card had its own ability, they also came marked with a number; creating 'chains' of cards with incrementing numbers was vital to dealing good damage. As such, building your deck of attacks was a very involved and careful process.
Final Fantasy XIII (forgive me for not using a Nintendo example) was heavily criticised for being linear, but that meant the game ensured that each fight would be a worthy challenge – and its battle system (which revolved around changing team tactics on the fly to keep up with fast and vicious enemy strategies) made for some of the most intense fights I've played in a main-series Final Fantasy.

The Paper Mario of the Present

With the release of Paper Mario Sticker Star, fans everywhere fiercely compared it to the lofty heights of Thousand Year Door. Unsurprisingly it doesn't hold up, but not because it's inherently bad... just different.

With the sticker gimmick that Sticker Star is based around, it takes the idea of battles being puzzles to extremes. The puzzles outside of battle have direct impact on your progress in battle, and vice-versa. For those who aren't familiar with the game, Mario's abilities are taken from an inventory of stickers. Solving puzzles in the field and attacking in battle uses the same resource, and stickers are single-use.

This turns Sticker Star into a giant resource-management puzzle. Every battle forces you to decide between using your best skills now or later – but hoarding stickers results in dead weight. Running out will cost you time and money to replenish your stocks (so failure isn't crippling), but you're gently encouraged to collect any stickers you find – even if they appear useless.

This is all well and good on paper (har har), but for those expecting a more tried-and-true RPG experience, the different approach to battles has proven a little off-putting. Still, this shouldn't dissuade any Paper Mario sequels – or the Menu-Based RPG genre as a whole – from getting wild and experimental with their enemy slaying. 'Solving' a battle brings out a sense of satisfaction wholly different from sweeping digital vistas or satisfyingly chunky gun feedback.

In a gaming climate where the big-name RPGs are action-oriented, open world affairs; the Menu-Based RPG is slowly being forgotten. While no one will be too sad to see rigid, grind-heavy affairs fall by the wayside, there have been innovative puzzle-like experiences through the console generations. Who knows, maybe the next big RPG title of 2013 will challenge our minds in unforeseen ways.

A Professor Layton RPG, maybe? Hmm.

Why You Should Play Virtue's Last Reward

This review and eulogy for my game save was originally posted on n-Europe, and can be found here.

Virtue's Last Reward is outstandingly fresh, gripping and challenging. It's by far the most interesting 3DS game I've played. But you shouldn't buy it; at least, not yet.

To explain why you shouldn't buy it is relatively simple, but explaining why the game is so good is more involved – and involves a small history lesson. So without further ado:

Once upon a time there was a company called Chunsoft. They produced a game in 2009 called 999: Nine Hours, Nine persons, Nine Doors for the DS, and it was incredible (see my personal review). While the Visual Novel genre was (and still is) a staple in Japan, the closest many western consumers got in the genre was the Ace Attorney series.

999 offered a suspenseful and harrowing plot; nine people find themselves trapped on a sinking ship and tasked with playing the 'Nonary Game'. The road to escape is filled with puzzle rooms, odd discussions about metaphysics, and the occasional spot of chilling gore. Even though 999 never saw a release in Europe, the title proved to be popular enough for a sequel to be made: Virtue's Last Reward.

In 2010, a separate games studio called Spike released their own Visual Novel for the PSP: Dangan Ronpa. It had a distinct, yet similar theme to 999; A murder mystery involving 15 students trapped in a high school of despair, headmastered by a psychopathic talking teddy bear, Monobear. The title was only ever released in Japan, and was an unknown in the West, until the game was covered as a 'Let's Play', translated into English by Orenronen, a member of the Something Awful message boards.

In early 2012 Spike and Chunsoft had a merger into, er, Spike Chunsoft. They had been owned by the same conglomerate as far back as 2005, but this merger seemed apt; Virtue's Last Reward takes on many thematic elements from 999 and Dangan Ronpa. It has an outstanding pedigree, and it shows.

You play as Sigma, a seemingly ordinary university student who, on December 25th of 2028, finds himself suddenly kidnapped and trapped within a giant warehouse with 8 others. The reason? To play the Nonary Game: Ambidex Edition. Escape will only be granted to those who can successfully amass 9 Points, gained by allying with fellow players... or betraying them.

As with its prequel, Virtue's Last Reward is incredibly verbose, but offsets its novel sections with 'escape the room' puzzles. However, this time everything has been kicked up a notch. There are so many possible branching paths to the plot, a function to jump between checkpoints in the game was mercifully added. Puzzle rooms have bonus challenges that give secret files. They explain the game's backstory, in a... disarmingly casual fashion. Getting these bonus rewards requires some lateral thinking, and are definitely rewarding to solve.

The characters are also a joy to get to know. The character designs have a mixture of hits and misses (the character artist, Kinu Nishimura, often adds fanservice to her art, and some of VLR's characters get more than their fair share (as seen to the left); but all of them grow over the course of the game, some in unexpected ways. The voice acting for the European version is Japanese-only (the NA release had an optional English dub), but they all suit the characters well; especially the evil AI that hosts the Nonary Game, Zero III (his inclusion is very similar to that of Monobear in Dangan Ronpa).

The challenging puzzles and compelling plot had me playing every night; staying up until ridiculous hours finding my way out of a locked pantry and deciding whether or not to betray my team mates on this play through. But as I progressed, cracks began to appear in VLR's veneer.

At first they were silly, easily ignored things. The localisation of the text often strays from what's said in Japanese, and noticing when the two don't match up is a little jarring. During puzzles, the framerate stutters when you rotate the camera. The script insists on writing 'donno' instead of 'dunno', along with a number of silly typos in general.

And then there were the save corruption issues.

It was a problem known about in the American 3DS release. There was a bug that could corrupt your save file if you saved in the middle of certain puzzle rooms. This was annoying, but easily avoided. After the EU release, that warning was extended to all puzzle rooms. This was considerably more concerning; but still avoidable.

But then, after around 20 hours of playtime, I decided to take a break. I was nowhere near a puzzle room, so I felt I was safe. Not so. When I next boot up my game and try to load my save, I was greeted with a black screen. My 3DS had crashed. Two-thirds of the way through a great game, and my journey was over.

It brought about an odd feeling inside me. I had pre-ordered and happily laid down my £30 to play a game that would unlikely see Europe's shores. The game was engrossing and compelling enough to lose many, many hours of sleep. I would have given the European publishers, Rising Star Games, money up front if it guaranteed games like this to be consistently released over here. But at the end of the day, I had paid £30 for a game that didn't work.

I'm still not sure how to make peace with that. At time of writing, Rising Star Games have gone on record to say that they are aware of the problem; but nothing regarding what they're going to do about it. 3DS games can be patched (It happened with Mario Kart 7 not too long ago); but who knows if the same will happen here. Until some concrete action has been taken, please hold off on enjoying Virtue's Last Reward. Getting obscure releases is wonderful; but only if they actually work as intended.

Preview: Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch

This preview can also be found at Shadowlocked, here.

I'll be honest here: I'm not a Studio Ghibli fan, and not of the works of Miyazaki in particular. His films are pretty, no arguments there. But as a jaded and bitter adult, the endless whimsy does little for me, and the ham-fisted environmentalist messages even less.

So on paper, Ni No Kuni, an RPG co-produced by Studio Ghibli (right down to Joe Hisaishi composing the soundtrack) would do little for me. Fortunately they are working alongside RPG masterminds Level-5 – and now I've had time to play the PS3 title, I can safely say that although the theme is pure Ghibli, the gameplay experience is totally my kind of game.

Ah, but why do I say the “PS3 title” specifically? Well, back in 2010, Level-5 and Studio Ghibli made Ni No Kuni: The Jet Black Mage for the DS. While a solid RPG in its own right, its main draw was that it came with a real-world grimoire, reflecting one that appeared in the game. Within it was information on every weapon, item and enemy, as well as detailed lore about the game world. Due to the hefty translation requirements of the book, the game was never localised.

However, the PS3 release, retaining the basic story basis and characters – as well as including the high quality graphical production as expected of any HD console – has the budget and the scale to get a full English translation, book included. Hisaishi's soundtrack (performed by the Tokyo Philharmonic orchestra, no less) is coupled with smatterings of fully animated cut-scenes from Ghibli; in a similar way to how Catherine had some scenes animated by STUDIO4°C.

The rise of a classic

The story is very familiar fare. You play as Oliver, an ordinary kid living in an ordinary (if somewhat 50's-ish) town. But due to a series of unfortunate events, his mother dies of heart failure. Distraught by his sudden loss, Oliver's tears transform a doll given to him by his mother. The now living doll (with a charmingly well-localised Welsh accent) calls himself Drippy, Lord of the Faeries. He tells Oliver of a mysterious evil plaguing his home land, and needs Oliver - as the Chosen One - to take up the role of a wizard to cure the spreading case of Brokenheartedness plaguing the population.

If you're familiar of the Hero's Journey story archetype, Ni No Kuni plays it line for line. And as a game designed for children (and written by Studio Ghibli), you would expect no less. The vast lush scenery porn of the Other World, its adorable denizens (enemy and ally alike), and how the game gently hand holds you from check point to check point ensures that Ni No Kuni is ideal for the son, daughter or young sibling in your life.

But don't take this as Ni No Kuni being unsuitable for older audiences to play. Level-5 shows some great mastery of game design, lending tricks from their previous RPG exploits. The battle system is that of a simplified action RPG (and a subtle call back to Rogue Galaxy on the PS2). You can freely run around the battle arena, but attacking and defending are on timers. Deciding the best time to attack is incredibly important, especially when Oliver's running speed is rather feeble.

When battles get too hot for him to handle, Oliver can summon a familiar to fight in his stead. Almost every foe in the game can be recruited to your side; all detailed in full within your magical grimoire. While the preorder version of Ni No Kuni will come with a physical copy, the entire text is available within the game itself. The translation and content echoes strongly of Dragon Quest IX (also produced by Level-5), right down to the punny names of foes. The Hog-Goblin line of enemies also features the Gobfather, the Gobspeed and the Gobforsaken. Christ.

When you're not battling monsters, you are puzzle solving...of the highest order. As a wizard, Oliver's task to cure Brokenheartedness requires him to borrow a little Heart from those who have excess to cure those who are lacking. A guard lacking a get-up-and-go attitude? Find him a little Enthusiasm! On paper they're little more than side quests; but it's a clever bit of attention paid to the game's theme. You're magically fixing broken hearts on a quest to save your mother... and what did she die of again?

I do always have a soft spot for games that include a bestiary; so the way Ni No Kuni encourages you to read as you roam, discovering new pages as you play, is incredibly compelling. The game reportedly has an around 50 hour play time, but finding all there is to see (and completing the huge number of side quests) will add on many more. For those who need to be won over (or just want to see the lush visuals in action), a demo is available on the PSN right now! Otherwise, the full game will be available from the 25th January, 2013.

Preview: Sonic & All-Stars Racing: Transformed (WiiU)

This preview has also been released (in a slightly edited form) on Shadowlocked, here.

The Mario Vs. Sonic rivalry hasn't quite died yet. Sure, they get along just fine at the Olympics, but when it comes to Kart racing, Sonic is still looking to take the top spot.

Between Mario Kart and its long list of competitors across console generations, the genre has become incredibly refined. At this stage, in order to remain competitive, innovation and bold statements are definitely required. In the light of Mario Kart 7, All-Stars Racing Transformed has done both of those things; and it succeeds! Mostly.

What makes the All-Stars Racing series stand out is its use of Sega history. While Sonic's in the game title, it's not all about him. Characters and courses are sourced from all places, with surprising additions. Transformed features a Skies of Arcadia stage (and Vyse as a racer), and raceways born from Panzer Dragoon and Afterburner, of all things. For more contemporary cameos, the Starlight Carnival stage from Sonic Colours is included, which is just as mind-blowingly colourful as the original.

Transformed makes itself directly comparable to Mario Kart 7 by having the vehicles (you guessed it) transform. However, while the hang glider and submersible in Mario Kart handled in manners similar to the basic car, the planes and boats in Transformed handle noticeably differently.

On paper, this makes a lot of sense. In terms of... let's say 'gamefeel', having each vehicle type handle differently is logical; a plane controlling exactly like a car would feel terrible. At the same time, having the handling of your car change severely in the middle of a race can be very off-putting if you're not prepared for it.

The previously mentioned planes are egregious for this. Developers Sumo Digital realised that, in a game designed for all ages, having total free-flight would end in wayward chaos. As such, you can turn on a 'guiding path' that creates a friendly green guideline in the flying sections. It's also somewhat magnetic – flying too far away from the line will pull you back on track. You can turn this assist system off at any time, but after using it for a while, the full plane controls gave me the piloting skills of a drunken madman. I hastily turned the guides back on.

Like any self-respecting kart racer, All Stars Racing Transformed has weapons – but interestingly, they aren't the randomised game-changers that they are in Mario Kart. Equivalents to the Blue Shell and the Lightning are nowhere to be found. This, personally, is a glorious, well-judged addition. While, in close races, a well-timed firework will get you into the lead, the person at the back can no longer effortlessly ruin the person in first place.

What they have to challenge the leader instead are stage hazards. On some courses, like Starlight Carnival, enemies from the source material will hover ahead causing havoc. On all stages, there will be a sudden swarm of bees at set intervals during the race. The person in 1^st place will have to deal with them, and poor driving at these moments can leave you fighting to hold position. While sudden, it never feels unfair – but having these obstacles be bees on every stage feels like a wasted opportunity for good theming. They could easily be ninjas on the Shinobi stage, or Rokkaku Police on the Jet Set Radio stage.

In terms of game modes, they've taken the time to go beyond the basic standards. There's the regular Grand Prix, versus modes, and battle modes – but there's also an extensive single player mode that acts as a sort of 'career', with race requirements, branching paths and challenge races. The challenge races are legitimately difficult, and are a great way to improve your skills in the game (don't know how to powerslide? Do the checkpoint challenge where you get bonus time for good drifts, and you'll learn fast). If you want to take things online, up to 10 racers can participate at once.

While there are additional functions that make use of the Wii U's assets, they're all rather incidental. That's no bad thing – labouring gimmicks into the control scheme would definitely hinder more than it would help. You can use the tablet controller as a steering wheel should you wish (you won't); the screen acts as a top-down map in single player, and your own personal screen in multiplayer.

It feels a little mean-spirited of me to continually mention Mario Kart while writing about a game that's legitimately solid and entertaining in its own right; but much of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed wouldn't exist (or at least wouldn't be so refined) without the context provided by Nintendo's racing series. That Transformed has managed to take that context and make it its own this is definitely commendable, though. Until Nintendo release Mario Kart WiiU (and trust me, they will), Transformed is looking to happily be your kart racer for the next generation.

N.B. After the article went up on Shadowlocked, I had an error corrected. Rather than butcher the paragraph to fix it, and addendum was placed:

Since writing this, I've been corrected about the weapons. There is actually an equivalent to the Blue Shell in All Stars Racing Transformed: the bee swarms. During my (short) time playing, I never found them in item rotation, so I took them as a stage hazard. That this isn't the case is actually a huge shame, though the reality makes a lot of sense. I'd still enjoy it if the bees were themed to to stage they appeared in, though.

5 video games that demand a film adaptation (and some that don't)

Going by the AAA titles, game design shares elements with film design. Having a fully voiced and acted plotline is common these days. However, video games make for poor films. Game series that get adapted to film are campy cult hits at best, and a waste of everyone's time at worst.

Still, games adapted to film aren't an entirely toxic concept; it just takes a little bit of lateral thinking. Here are 5 films I feel could be interesting adaptations, and a few that definitely shouldn't make a trip to Hollywood. (Note that some titles I mention may be in production already. Just because they exist doesn't mean they should.)

Take them to the silver screen

Yakuza (2005, Sega)

Who would direct it?: Chan-wook Park (Oldboy)

Yakuza has drama on two levels. On one, there's the inter-personal relationships of ageing yakuza members searching for peace and comfort. On another, there's Kazuma Kiryu repeatedly ramming a barstool into some thug's face.

Adapted as an action movie, a gradual swing between emotional torment and low budget, brutally choreographed violence would be deliciously harrowing; a welcome escape from the CGI and explosions that's the normal go-to for the genre.

Luigi's Mansion (2002, Nintendo)

Who would direct it?: Dean DeBlois (How to Train Your Dragon, Mulan)

Feel-good summer blockbuster of the year; one plumber who has long suffered in his brother's shadow, plucks up the courage to be the driving force in his own life. A decent animation studio is a must - the Mushroom Kingdom doesn't work in real-life proportions, evidenced many times.

Half the fun would be Luigi's ghostbusting antics, the other half being a great art direction. Hey, if Disney's Wreck-It Ralph makes a decent return at the box office, and they retain the license to use Nintendo characters, this may not end up being conjecture.

...I wish.

Driver: San Francisco (2011, Ubisoft)

Who would direct it?: Scott Sanders (Black Dynamite)

Driver:SF is a love letter to the car chase genre, right down to bonus missions that reference big-name films set in San Fran. However, a Scary Movie style adaptation with endless references isn't going to cut it.

The plot of Driver:SF is campy, simple and incidental (John Tanner is a cop chasing down criminal mastermind Charles Jericho - even in his dreams), meaning a film version can go all out in telling a self-parodying tale about comas, fast cars, and rebellious police.

If they manage to retain the game's mechanic of Tanner possessing other drivers, the chase sequences could be unlike any other.

L.A. Noire (2011, Team Bondie)

Who would direct it?: Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist)

The Artist, though I didn't care for it, proved an important point - the techniques of old can have modern relevance. Gaming fans already know about this (what with all the retro-style indie games out there), but here it means that mimicking old film styles has more validity than just being a gimmick.

L.A. Noire's 1940s setting heavily reflects actual Film Noir (right down to the use of flashback), but Film Noir is traditionally done in the 'past tense' (with the protagonist as a narrator), while L.A. Noire is very much 'present tense'. Doing the adaptation in a true-to-period style would make for an interesting angle, and might encourage viewers to look into some Noir classics.

Mother 3 (2006, Nintendo)

Who would direct it?: Chris Butler (ParaNorman, Coraline)

The Mother series is known for its cute and colourful settings, with a darker horrifying plot underneath. That kind of setup just begs to be told in a twee stop-motion format (without Tim Burton, preferably).

Mother 3 in particular is a great tale experienced by few, and a surprisingly sad and moving one at that. Having recently watched ParaNorman, the team behind that would do incredible justice to such a project. Just... Don't let very young children watch - they may be permanently scarred.

Keep them on the game console

Mass Effect series (2007-2012, Bioware)

Mass Effect's charm really isn't in its world-building. What the games did well was making that world feel relevant to the player - a range of choices in character design, dialogue options, good/evil dichotomies, and so on. A film (being a linear narrative) has to choose a single story path - so writers of a Mass Effect movie would have to try and encompass a representative telling of the games with a single continuity - and that just ain't happening.

The series' huge backstory also puts it in a position similar to the lacklustre Watchmen. A fine line stands between drowning newcomers in lore, and not having enough in-jokes for the diehard fans. Failure results in a hot mess. Mass Effect would likely suffer even worse - fans are going to take every difference between the film and their own personal experience on board.

Uncharted series (2007-2011, Naughty Dog)

Uncharted is already 90% film. The set pieces in the series are grand and dramatic, but the best moments are where you have control during the death-defying parts - the possibility that you could mess up and leave Nathan Drake to perish. Just watching the same scene (without the uncertainty of survival, no less) voids that tension.

Aside from that, the actual events in the Uncharted games are pressingly generic in action films. We've had decades of ruins exploration, shoot-outs against Russians and snappy one-liners - Drake as a character can't offer anything new to that formula.

Heavy Rain (2010, Quantic Dream)

Heavy Rain is, in a way, a film rendered as a video game. The director, David Cage, has gone on record many times saying that the future of games is to make them more like films, and has yet to prove himself correct.

The game's cinematography is definitely first class, but little else is. Heavy Rain's story is unique for a game, but dire for a film. Character motivations are all over the place, and the character plot threads are hastily stitched together. An adaptation would have to fix so much to make things competent, it may as well be a different story.

Final Notes

Video game stories are generally unambitious and often pandering, but a common complaint levelled at film adaptations (and this holds true for films adapted from other kinds of media) is that the narrative strays too far from the original work. The long-term fans want to see their darlings in a 1:1 translation, and won't stand for less.

The best film adaptations that I've seen don't take the source's story verbatim, but instead understand the feel of the original. The Street Fighter movie isn't great, but it's an adaptation that definitely captures the goofy nature of Street Fighter, even if the character roles and actor choices are unorthodox.

If game-to-film adaptations are to succeed, the games with a strong theme, easily understood context, and with room for reinterpretation are key. Just taking what sells well isn't going to cut it.

Then again, since when were adaptations about artistic integrity?

The Too Spooky Shopping Trip

This article has been written as part of the Critical Distance October Blogs of the Round Table. It can also be read at Digital Heaven Entertainment, here.

The scariest moment in gaming I've experienced? Accidentally saving over a near-endgame file of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. I've not really played any horror games. Not because I don't want to, I've just never really gotten around to it.

Hopefully not having played the first 3 Silent Hills won't invalidate my opinions as a Person Wot Writes About Games; but until I eventually play them, there are a few times where a game has been successfully unsettling. The one that's still stuck with me is from Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey.

As a series, the Shin Megami Tensei games (this is excluding Persona and other spinoffs, mind) are very thematically similar. You, a lowly human have been gifted with the technology to summon demons to fight by your side, while a ridiculous catastrophic event goes on around you. Depending on how you react to certain story choices, you gain a Chaotic/Lawful alignment (intentionally not just 'good/evil', though often it pans out to be the same).

Where Strange Journey differs is its setting - a series of twisted worlds called the Schwarzwelt. Created by demons, it represents the ills of the human condition. You play as a soldier of a global army, investigating the Schwarzwelt in an attempt to destroy it; though you quickly find yourself unable to escape.

Welcome to Sector Carina

Up to a point, each location in the game plays up a problem with humanity, with a surreal twist. A lot of these areas don't have the impact they should (which I will discuss later), but the third area, Sector Carina is meant to represent humanity's greed, being a gigantic demon shopping mall.

And you know what? It really creeped me out. Sadly, not entirely due to the game's aesthetics, but at least partially! Sector Carina was clever in being uncanny. At first look, everything does look like an ordinary shopping mall (through the filter of low-quality textures on a DS screen), but then you talk to the first NPC:

And then you look at the posters and the shop windows:

And then you pay attention to the slow, militaristic waltz used as background music:

And it settles in that this is a shopping mall with all of the pretence stripped away. Everything you could ever want is within these walls (along with a whole lot of stuff you don't), and your only company are towering urges to BUY, EAT, and CONSUME.

Relevance in a Riot

I was playing Strange Journey in August 2011, and reached Sector Carina during the time when the England Riots occurred. For those who aren't familiar, a riot broke out in Tottenham, a district of London, on the 7th of August. What had started out as a protest against police corruption and brutality in the area took a turn for the violent once someone decided to throw a bottle when the police arrived to suppress the protest. Things escalated quickly, with shops smashed and ransacked, and arson attempts. Once it started, similar riots sprang up all across London, and then into other, unrelated cities of England.

On the day they had started, I happened to already be in the centre of town, watching Croydon slowly go up in flames on BBC News. Had I not gone home when I did, the underground and bus services would have closed, leaving me stranded on Tottenham Court Road. I get home by sundown and find through Twitter that even my local high street had rioters.

While the area where I lived wasn't especially wealthy, it didn't have economic and police problems as severe as the ones in Tottenham. As I found out more about the event, it became woefully apparent that the majority of the rioters weren't causing anarchy for any kind of cause, other than their own pockets.

In a way, even though what happened is incredibly sad, I empathise. People riot in pursuit of aspirations, and ideally you'd want those aspirations to be political. However, many of us (and I'm including myself here) have aspirations that don't extend too far beyond our economic status, the next pair of shoes, the next luxury meal, the next tablet computer.

That some of us are willing to go to the lengths of destruction just to get it (along with the vague promise that you won't get caught) is actually pretty scary! It weighed on my mind, as I progressed through Carina, being told that the area was run by the demon Horkos, a glutton so dedicated, it ate an entire space craft, filled with the protagonist's comrades. Drawing a parallel between materialism and violence is heavy-handed, but it's not exactly incorrect.

It is later implied through some side-NPC dialogue that the layout of the Sector was based on a human shopping mall. This kind of M. Night Shyamalan twist made me roll my eyes, but then, the Westfield shopping mall in Stratford opened.

Retail Therapy & Theming Consistency

It's hardly likely to be the largest shopping complex out there, but I felt dwarfed by Westfield Stratford's size when I visited in its opening week. It had a casino. It had a 10-screen cinema. It had a food court that took up almost a third of the whole complex, with every kind of regional cooking speciality. It's the kind of place that would get anti-capitalists and anti-consumerists feeling violently ill, but I actually, honestly enjoy that kind of thing.

As I walk around, I recall Sector Carina and suddenly feel awkward. I make a realisation. For once, the moral soapboxing in a piece of media is about me. Funnily enough, by being very faithfully tied to the rules of what makes an Atlus JRPG, Strange Journey keeps its theme and its gameplay woefully separated. It hamstrings the entire game, really.

While I couldn't get emotionally invested with the themes of war or lust, if they'd taken the time to do something to make those ideas relevant to the player, they'd have more impact. It makes Sector Carina's effectiveness something of an accident. While the stage itself didn't do anything to make you think about greed via the game mechanics, materialistic greed is something that I can admit to having done in the past, way more than bloodthirstiness or careless environmental destruction or (sadly) wanton hedonism. Sector Carina was effective because the setting has (at least for me) some real-life parallels; not just a strawman argument of humanity.

While my experience with Strange Journey is very much down to circumstance, the aesthetic and theme of Sector Carina could still be used in other games. Commerce as Horror is something not really explored, unless you count Dead Rising (you shouldn't) or one of the stages in Illbleed (which does use greed as a mechanic, impressively). No one should experience their neighbourhood being torn apart in the pursuit of goods in real life, but they can damn sure could see it done in a game.

N.B.: You can read about the finer details of the 2011 riots at the Guardian here. The information is surprisingly extensive.

10 Features More Games Should Include

This feature can also be found on Shadowlocked, here.

Everyone has their personal likes and dislikes when it comes to game design, and when making games for the public, a developer can't possibly please everyone. That said, there are often trends and fashions when it comes to putting features in a game, and there are definitely some features that I wish would start appearing more often in current releases.

As a small disclaimer, these personal preferences aren't at all objective. There is a long time yet before I'm crowned Ultimate Overlord of Game Design. And I'm not saying all games have to include these features - they are the sprinkles on top that could make a solid game even better.

1. Local Multiplayer

I grew up playing games designed for 'friends on the couch' style gaming. My childhood was filled with many evenings of Snowboard Kids and Mario Party on the N64. These days, because online play is incredibly prevalent, playing with strangers on the internet takes precedence over anyone in the room with you. It worked well for Journey, but when there are games like SSX that don't offer Split-screen play, something is horribly wrong.

2.The Non-Violent Option

So you're a paragon of virtue, and being attacked by thugs. Sure you could just impale them with three feet of steel, but you're 'the good guy', so simply cracking all their ribs and leaving them to the elements is the obvious humane choice. Batman: Arkham City and Deus Ex: Human Revolution both do this, and it's a little unsettling. If I'm to be given the option of non-lethal force, I'd like to not have to hospitalise half the population, thanks.

3. Theming With a Meaning

With the push for video games to be considered an art form and not just entertainment, games are going to have to be 'about' something. Not just "This is a game about being a cool guy with awesome powers", but actually discussing something relevant to real life. Better yet, let the player interact with a meaningful topic through the game play. The soon to be released Watch Dogs is very much about Internet security. By placing you as a character who's job is to hack into other people's lives, you're going to think a lot more about how you handle your real life internet affairs.

4. Beautiful in Any Body

A popular inclusion in many games of this generation is character customisation. On paper it's a good idea - you can immerse yourself in a game even further by having a representation of yourself - but often the options are rather limited. Which isn't really a problem if you're an average-looking white dude, but it can be a bit disappointing for everyone else. The Saints Row series is very notable for how it accommodates all body types (and genders!) to a ridiculous extreme, and it's something other games with customisation should really look into.

5. Gotta Collect 'Em All

I never grew out of my Pokémon phase. It's sad, but true. What kept me coming back was the immense number of team combinations I could come up with, and the effort put into all of the monster designs. It's the same traits that has me hooked on Magic: the Gathering, too. Collecting and customisation is a tried and tested way to hook an audience, and it's way less insidious than the Skinner Box techniques that games like World of Warcraft employ to keep you playing.

6. A Grey Matter

It's so stale when a game tells you that your actions are either unquestionably just or pure evil. It's a weird illusion of choice when really a better story can be told without forcing such Black-and-White morality. Catherine does a good job of having a personality quandary without it necessarily being about morality. Better yet, NieR is a title that at its very core is about subverting your feelings as to what's right or wrong.

7. In With The New

It's something that plagues all media, not just video games, but endless sequels feel really restrictive and stagnating. Some of the best games have the benefit of not having to be tied to a canon. Platinum Studios (the guys behind Bayonetta and Vanquish) have deftly avoided making proper sequels to their own Intellectual Property; and it lets each game speak for itself.

8. Mytholo-VG

Very circumstantial, but I just love it when, if a game has to source from world literature and culture, it goes all out in its adaptation. The menagerie of mythological beasts and deities in the Shin Megami Tensei series keeps me coming back game after game. Of course, shallow or lazy insertions are not favoured. More Okami and less Smite, please.

9. Micro, not Macro

Sandbox games with large explorable worlds are definitely popular ('Skyrim' will show up in the Oxford English Dictionary at this rate), but I've always found them a little unsatisfying. For all the landscape, the inhabitants - especially ones that aren't plot relevant - feel weak and soulless. I'm not easily immersed in my video games, but the game worlds I hold the most dear aren't the largest, but put loving detail into every inhabitant and the lives they lead. One of the many things that made The World Ends With You my favourite game.

10. Vampires

For real. Way cooler than zombies. You can't argue with Castlevania.

Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance (3DS)

This review can also be found at The Yorker, here.

As I've said in the past, the Kingdom Hearts games are a slave to their narrative. Regardless of your opinions on whether the plot of the series is any good or not (It's not very good); there are now 7 games all part of the same story - of which Dream Drop Distance is the latest in terms of both release and chronologically. To properly appreciate a new game in the series, it almost requires a working knowledge of the previous entries. And that's a bad thing.

©Square Enix

KH3D tries to mitigate this with in-game reference material and flashbacks to the game's past events - but to the newcomer, the convoluted path that leads plucky anime teens Sora and Riku to an all-important quest that involves 'diving into the dreams of sleeping worlds' is confusing, and ultimately feels irrelevant. It's almost as if Square Enix want you to ignore the overarching plot altogether, which may really be for the best.

See, it's not the narrative that has made the Kingdom Hearts series so enjoyable, it's all about spectacle and satisfaction. The spectacle of exploring bright and detailed worlds, and the satisfaction of weighty and involved combat.

In regards to the spectacle, Square Enix definitely took the time to use the 3DS' graphical abilities as effectively as possible. The 3D is strategically used to be more noticeable in cutscenes than gameplay, so while battles do benefit from the depth-of-field, they won't strain your eyes.

The series staple of exploring multiple Disney franchises is of course present, and although they all have shared design aspects to get everything looking cohesive, they're also incredibly distinct through set-pieces and colour use. The clean, geometric and faintly pulsing landscape of the Tron Legacy world caught my interest in ways entirely other to the soft golds, rich purples and towering buildings of the Hunchback of Notre Damme world.

In regards to gameplay satisfaction, every sequel to Kingdom Hearts series has improved on the base mechanics of the original in some way. To those who have played Re:coded on the DS or Birth by Sleep on the PSP, you'll already be at home with the basic setup, but KH3D adds three new (notably huge) features: Parkour, Pokémon, and Narcolepsy.

The opening stage quickly introduces parkour - or 'Flowmotion' as the game insists on calling it. This allows you to slide along rails, swing around poles and spring yourself off walls, all of which gives you incredible freedom of movement and new context-sensitive attacks. The wall-springs work out to be rather imbalanced in the long run, as you quickly find you can use it to scale walls of any height, and you can accidentally trigger it if you try to dodge roll too close to a wall.

Instead of classic Disney characters assisting you as party members, you can summon friendly versions of the enemy 'Dream Eater' monsters you battle throughout the game. The Dream Eater system is very robust. Every monster has its own abilities and AI patterns; they unlock special abilities for you via simple 'skill trees'; and there are even Nintendogs-style minigames for the cuteness factor. The part of me that never grew out of loving Pokémon adores this addition, but it's a shame that because of this system, I can never fight alongside the main characters of each world.

To keep with the theme of 'sleep and dreams' beyond just the plot and the game title, sleep even affects the player characters. The protagonists Sora and Riku are playable in tandem - both exploring the sleeping worlds, but in separate realisations. However, they (for vaguely explained reasons) cannot be awake at the same time. As you play as one character, you'll see a 'Drop Meter' that acts as a timer until they spontaneously fall unconscious, and he counterpart takes over. This can happen literally any time outside of menus and cutscenes. Bosses suddenly become a lot more harrowing when it's against a time limit.

Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance makes some undeniable design faux-pas. The ability to scale any surface trivialises platforming. Raising Dream Eaters eventually becomes more time consuming than the main combat. The idea of using theming as a limit on you feels just... wrong. And yet, that it keeps the gameplay of the series solidly intact, and still dares to try new ideas and push things even further. And I've gotta give it props for that.

Don't be a stranger - gaming with new housemates

This article can also be found at the Yorker, here.

Dealing with new housemates is difficult. They probably won't clean, they're going to keep you up all hours with music you hate, and lord help you if you let them borrow anything of yours. But unless you can bank on getting your daily dose of human interaction elsewhere, you'll probably want to get to know your housemates better.

And what better means than with video games? (Well, there are lots of better means, but I digress.)
It's very easy to default to FIFA, Call of Duty or similar when thinking about multiplayer household gaming, but those options are a rather limiting - not everyone has a taste for football or first person shooters, so here are a few suggestions to add strings to your friend-making bow.

Mario Kart - Multiple Nintendo Systems

An obvious suggestion, but a good one. Available on any and every Nintendo console post-SNES, you'll struggle to not find it in one form or another. The quality between games is variable (Mario Kart DS is the best one), but in the context of just playing with friends, it matters little. As a bonus, it's incredibly easy to turn it into a drinking game! Personally I like this rule set (should work with all incarnations, works best with Mario Kart: Double Dash!! and onwards):

• Start a multiplayer race, with 4 tracks picked at random.
• While racing, any time you are hit with a Red Shell or better, take a drink.
• At the end of the race, the person who came first (out of the players, computer racers don't count) does not take a drink, 2nd and 3rd place drink once, and 4th place drinks twice.
• Repeat for all races in the set. At the final standings, 2nd and 3rd place drink twice, 4th place finishes their drink.
• Drink responsibly. If you end up throwing up I have lost all respect for you.

Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 – PS3 & 360 (Or just fighting games in general)

Fighting games work out to be perfect group entertainment (since it's interesting to watch as well as play), but player skill can be a problem. Two good players competing is dramatic, and two beginner players competing is a great laugh, but if a skilled player is pitted against someone new, the inevitable curbstomping is satisfying to no one (unless the skilled player is a sore winner). MvC3 is a good bet for its easily recognised cast, bright, frantic aesthetics, and a 'simple mode' control scheme for those who aren't confident in their fireball-throwing ability. If it's a game with a large cast, select characters by theme (and take suggestions from those watching to be inclusive!) Some suggestions:

• Pick a character who went alone to the high school prom.
• Pick a character who has less than £50 in their savings.
• Pick a character who has a low tolerance for alcohol.

Kirby's Adventure Wii

Yep. The cutest video game mascot to ever exist is entirely made for Co-Op play, and Kirby's Adventure Wii is the most recent and splendidly made addition to the series. While not a difficult game, it's built around being played by 4 people of any skill level - so anyone can have a blast. And if you're so inclined - enough means to be an evil dick to the other players (not recommended for friend-making). Plus, Kirby is both super cute and super violent in equal measures, so everyone has something to love!

Borderlands & Borderlands 2 – PS3, 360 & PC

If you absolutely must play a game where you ventilate everyone you encounter, Borderlands is enough of an accessible and unusual choice where you can rope in those who would be less likely to play a shooter. Taking on concepts of stats and skills from RPGs, you can work your way across the wasteland with a good weapon, even if your aiming isn't up to snuff. The sequel (released September 21st, just in time for the start of the University year) even has a 'Best Friends Forever' mode that offers skills and special abilities to aid those who are new or terrible at the genre. Personally, that's a godsend.

Free-To-Play Online Games

Okay, hear me out. In situations down the line where you don't have the space at your place to host a gathering, your schedules don't often sync with your friends, or you just don't feel like getting dressed; online gaming is a great way to unwind and still connect with your friends. You need not play a game so demanding of your time and money like World of Warcraft (not that it needs saying); there are plenty of easy to download and play free titles to play in a weekend or a week of free time. The gaming service Steam has a range of free-to-play games (my personal favourite being Spiral Knights), but there's always some cheerful, freshly translated Korean title to try out; and if you can co-ordinate a few friends to join you on your safari, you're bound to have some memorable experiences. MMO Grinder does in-depth reviews on free-to-play games if you need detailed info.