South West London high streets feel the impact of shop closures

This news item can also be read on the South West Londoner, here.

Wimbledon is feeling the impact of high street closures, reflecting national figures released last week.

Unlike other towns in the area, Wimbledon's HMV store has so far escaped closure, but elsewhere the high street has succumbed to financial pressures. 

PWC and the Local Data Company stated that last year, an average of 20 shops a day closed down, with further figures from December 2012 to February 2013 predicting this will increase to 28 per day.

Among the hardest-hit retailers across the researched town centres have been video games (-45%), health food (-24.7%) and clothing (-15.9%); while payday loan establishments, pawnbrokers and charity shops have increased in number (20%, 13.2% and 2.7% respectively).

Around Wimbledon town centre, owners of high street shops have been affected by recent closures. A GAME and a Jessops, long closed and abandoned since those businesses faced bankruptcy last year, linger unclaimed.

Millets, which also closed last year, had since been turned into a pop-up laptop repair shop, before finally becoming an Oxfam only three weeks ago. The Deputy Online Manager of the branch, 21-year-old Ellen Melhuish, said that many unemployed locals came to volunteer at the shop, including ex-employees from the nearby Jessops.

Mark Newbury, 28, deputy manager of the FARA charity shop, said that the opening of the new Oxfam branch had not affected the number of customers in his own store. He added that high street shop closures had affected him personally in the past, having taken up charity volunteering as a result of being made redundant during the recession.

Some sales assistants are seeing the closure of bigger businesses in a more positive light.

“It’s nice to see smaller, privately opened businesses," said Erin Luke, manager of the Cancer Research shop.

 

"Independently-run stores foster a better sense of community, so closures are not always a bad thing.”

Imagine This: A Medium Divided

This article can also be found on One Hit Pixel, here.

I want you to imagine something for a moment. Picture a film industry where each film company had their own brand of DVD player, that would only play discs produced under their own publishing label. To be able to watch, say, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World or The Dark Knight Rises at home, you would have to purchase separate Universal and Warner Bros. brand players.

This, of course, sounds abjectly ridiculous. Yet it’s more or less how the games console industry operates. To the consumer it’s an annoyance – to experience more of the medium, you’re expected to pay a lot of money in extra hardware. However, Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony absolutely crave brand loyalty; it’s what brings in the largest revenue. To ensure that customers pick their hardware over competitors, these guys will try all sorts of tactics.

Means for the Market Share

Nintendo is very committed to selling hardware designed exclusively for gaming, and little else. This gives them a lot of creative freedom with hardware designs that can’t be easily transplanted to other hardware (we’re used to it now, but the design of the DS was really out there back in 2004). Of all possible tactics to fight for exclusivity, I don’t mind this one. A prompt for developers to design games of worth with new and interesting hardware encourages interesting results. They also have an illustrious history of iconic franchises on their side, requiring very little maintenance. The Pokémon franchise alone will have me putting money into their wallets for a long time to come.

Sony invests a whole lot of money in developers producing exclusive content just for their hardware. The occasional big titles that they have all to themselves are quite the customer draw. Because of Sony’s long and established  connection with the Japanese game development scene, a lot of titles developed in the country end up being Sony exclusives. But in terms of hardware functions, there’s nothing, currently, that requires it to be exclusive to one kind of hardware. If those new IPs don’t gain traction with the consumers, all is lost.

These days, Microsoft is generally blasé about software exclusivity; realising that in terms of hardware, the Xbox 360 wasn’t really outstanding from the PS3, and definitely not from the ever-improving standards of the PC. Instead the draw is unique utility options, like the Kinect and Xbox SmartGlass technology – both of which can be considered underwhelming to date. I can respect the movement away from focusing on exclusives, but the push towards more peripheral hardware doesn’t help make gaming more affordable or accessible.

It’s The Same, But Different

So bearing in mind the present standards for how our three console giants handle themselves, how will this impact the new generation of consoles? We already have the Wii U following Nintendo’s Modus Operandi to the letter, but it’s the approach of the new Sony and Microsoft machines that have people speculating. Though honestly, it’s hard to think that their business practices will significantly change.

Sony, while they remain stony silent about the technical specs on their new games console (which everyone is calling the Playstation 4 for convenience’s sake) until February 20, we do know that many of Sony’s game development studios are also suspiciously quiet. What this most likely means is a line-up of Sony’s exclusive IPs – Uncharted, God of War, Killzone, LittleBigPlanet, Gran Turismo and some new from MotorStorm developers Evolution Studios all potentially in the pipeline. Studios are already making playful references to new titles on the horizon. It would be nice to take the presence of characters in Playstation All Stars as hints for releases, but I sadly doubt that game’s marketing ploys extend beyond DmC and Metal Gear Rising.

As for Microsoft, a little bit more of the Xbox 360 successor’s (referred to as the Xbox 720 in a few circles but we’re just calling in the next Xbox for now) technical specs available. There are a lot of words regarding the types of processors that may be used, but I struggle to find that especially interesting. That the use of a Kinect might be mandatory falls in line with Microsoft’s focus on peripherals, at the least. What raised my eyebrows was a mention of a patent by Microsoft being filed regarding ’3D projection’ back in September 2012, turning the entire room into a game screen – which was then demoed as IllumiRoom last month. It feels ridiculous, but that step towards virtual reality is a tantalising prospect for a new direction of game development, moreso than graphical fidelity.

For both of these, there’s a personal concern of backwards compatibility. Neither the PS3 or the 360 made much of playing old works; but allowing previous software to be played will let the companies wring the last few dollars out of the previous generation, and allow the consumers to keep their collection without having two consoles hooked up.

The Coming of the Uber Console?

If you’ll allow me one more thought experiment, could you actually imagine an industry where there’s only a single brand of household console? From a development perspective, it would be a godsend. While at present it’s generally desirable to have a game released on multiple platforms, it requires a lot of work for developers to create such ports, generally due to differences in hardware specifications, but sometimes it’s just a matter of politics.

As such, development for a single platform allows maximum running optimisation. An industry with only the one home console would seriously cut down on development times, since development tools like physics or particle effect engines would be useful to everyone.

In a way you could say that the Ouya is trying to be this Uber Console, as the barrier to entry for developing it is intentionally very low. But it will never have the kind of major software development support our resident Big Three do – nor does it help that, on Android, there’s already a fractured install base. There would have to be a near collapse of the games industry as we know it before such a unified movement could be feasible…

So who wants to cause an industry collapse with me?

Review: Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate

This review can also be found on One Hit Pixel, here.

I had fallen out of love with action RPGs. Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance played well, but is obsessed with its own terrible plot, and the less said about what I think of Dark Souls, the better. It was a genre that didn’t feel fun any more; then I played Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate. It managed to do something I hadn’t seen in the genre for a few years – not take itself seriously, but remain in top form mechanically. If you’re a Monster Hunter veteran, you already know this – but this review isn’t so much for you (reinforcing your opinions aside). Those of you who are cautious newcomers, please read on.

Plot is very light; the tropical settlement of Moga Village has been ravaged by earthquakes and lightning-spewing leviathans. You, a Hunter, are tasked with showing such beasts the business, and reviving the community while you’re at it. As such, Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate is two games: A more fluid version of Phantasy Star 0 and a menu-based Harvest Moon. Both are compelling, but are even better combined.

As you set out to smack overgrown lizards silly, you’ll find that almost everything gives you items and resources; carved from your kills and foraged from the surroundings. Upon returning to base, you use those items to farm, fish, or best of all make new equipment.

Every weapon and armour piece is made from the skulls you’ve just caved in. It’s a kind of ridiculous joy to come back with a fresh corpse and see what you can turn it into. Giant butterfly-beetles? Now a sweet top hat. Armour-plated bear? Now some giant cymbals. The game is kind enough to give you the base versions of the 12 weapon types, and experimenting with them to find your favourite will push you to explore upgrade paths. The moment I found I could commit monster genocide using a huge metal bagpipe, I was sold.

That’s not to say the combat is easy. God, no. Each weapon type has its own quirks, generally in terms of attack ranges and animation length. Every move will leave you vulnerable in some way, and looking for openings and not committing to risky attacks is key to survival. Once you start fighting boss monsters, you’ll become an instant strategist, calculating but desperate. For those who can no longer get it up unless you’re putting bullet to brain-pan, there’s a set of ranged weapons (Bows and Light and Heavy Bowguns) that work in their own special way, along with armour sets that can only be worn by gunners.

However, despite the daunting nature of larger hunts, death is not swift, nor is it time-consuming. While success takes skill, early on it takes a few solid hits before your health starts getting low. This is a nice way to ease new players in – there’s a whole lot to learn, but the basics are fully explained and you’re given a lot of breathing room to figure things out. Blind and sudden failure is enjoyable only to masochists and those with too much free time.

The hunting locations are wonderfully diverse; forests, deserts, swamps, tundra, and implausibly safe volcanoes. Each comes with a pleasant musical sting upon entry, and then you’re left to the sounds of the wilderness – until you come across larger monsters, at which point satisfyingly tribal beats kick in. This sound design makes Moga Village’s non-stop jaunty tunes a touch grating.

Multiplayer is a major aspect of the experience. Some are happy to hunt on their lonesome (with AI buddies if need be), but after a while, repeating hunts to grind materials became less exciting when I could clear them consistently. However, with other people playing with you, nearly every mission becomes a thrill. Coordinating a hunt with each player taking on a different role (my Hunting Horn is great for this, the music the weapon type plays gives party-wide buffs) is incredibly satisfying.

A warning, though. The 3DS version of Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate only allows for local multiplayer. If you want online, the Wii U version is required. The games are cross-compatible – as are the save files – but if you don’t have other like-minded hunters near you, bear this in mind.

The Monster Hunter experience isn’t for everyone, as cult series tend to be. Some resent resource management. Some see repeating missions as grinding (and the main story goes quickly if you only play required missions). Some prefer a more forgiving combat system. And that’s entirely okay – the long-time Monster Hunter players will fondly remember the moment the game ‘clicked’ for them, but no one is going to blame you for being hesitant to roll with the die-hards.

As for me, outstripping any concerns over grinding and resources, I got to be a sartorial king. A skirt made from sea monsters, a top made from shrieking tropical birds, and a cello made from creepy crawlies. Fabulous.

Paper Mario: Sticker Star (3DS)

This (at the time of writing) preview can also be found on Shadowlocked, here.

The Mario RPGs stick a hefty middle finger up at the stat-crunching of traditional RPGs – and I love it. Whereas in the Final Fantasy series, a large portion of the combat is aiming to reach 9999 damage per attack, Mario's quests (and the Paper Mario games in particular) make you put a lot of strategy and effort into dealing what damage you can.

Couple this with the ability to deal extra damage and dodge blows taken via 'Timed Hits', and the combat of Mario RPGs feel more like puzzles than a series of statistics comparisons. However, among the series, there are some variations and exceptions. The Wii instalment, Super Paper Mario, crammed the system into a (surprisingly loose) platforming game – which didn't really work for me. Its predecessor, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door on the Gamecube felt like the pinnacle of what a Mario RPG could offer me, and I was secretly hoping that Paper Mario Sticker Star would match that.

The setup is exact Paper Mario fare. Bowser interrupts the annual Sticker Fest of Decalburg by causing the Sticker Comet to explode, throwing the 6 Royal Stickers in all directions, and leaving Mario to clean up his mess. His only companion in his adventure this time is Kersti, a 'sticker fairy'. For the early sections that I played, Sticker Star definitely echoes Thousand Year Door in tone and style (which is excellent and a huge plus by itself), and the writing is as long-form and self-referentially goofy as you could ever want. However, mechanically, it takes a surprising step towards... the adventure game genre?

Mario-nostalgia 

Yes, while the basic tenets of a Mario RPG are present and correct – with 'Timed Hits', enemies to be defeated in less-than-straightforward ways, and incredibly jaunty battle themes – battles are given slightly less of a focus to favour exploration and puzzle solving in the game world. Think Monkey Island, and you're on the right track.

You could reason this change as being related to Sticker Star's main theme and mechanical gimmick – all of your actions and abilities are powered by stickers. Littered across the game world are stickers depicting weapons and items, and these are your only means of attack in battle. This means that if you run out of stickers you're defenceless; but they are easily replenished, and will generally be tailored to the foes in the area. Other, more significant items found are also turned into stickers for use in combat.

This system is incredibly streamlined; and forces you to think in a way that's contrasting to many RPGs – you don't benefit from holding onto your strongest items. Why waste three stickers on winning a fight when you can do it in one? Unfortunately, it also means that the finer features of Thousand Year Door are no longer present. There's no audience cheering you on in fights, or Partner Characters. The loss of the latter is a huge shame, but begrudgingly accepted. Attacks do a lot more damage than standard for a Paper Mario game, and you're rewarded for finishing fights quickly without taking damage. You don't even gain experience after battle (which is honestly a good thing). It definitely feels like battles are being pushed out of focus, but not in a way that makes them irrelevant or poor.

Puzzle me this

 

And what of the puzzle-adventure aspects? The game world is broken down into many small acts spread across a map, as with Super Mario Bros. 3/Super Mario World/New Super Mario Bros./etc. Not only is this a sensible decision for a 3DS game (it makes it a lot easier to play in bursts), it gives a focus for each area having a main event or puzzle to solve.

As with battles, they are also sticker-related; the focus of your play will be on finding items to resolve requests and obstacles in your path. What would wake up a sleeping Wiggler? Can you replant a Toad's destroyed flower garden? Some of the puzzles even take an oft-criticised aspect from point 'n' click adventures, with very specific and arguably obtuse solutions. There will only be one item that will wake up that Wiggler, even if you have something else that would make sense. Fortunately, you can press the L button at any time to get a hint from Kersti.

While, from its opening hour or so, Paper Mario Sticker Star is not Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door again, it doesn't really need to be (which is painfully obvious when said like that, but fans of a series have complicated feelings about sequels). It's mindful of the past in all the right ways, and the shift towards puzzle-adventure is a genre I actually like a whole lot (for whatever that's worth). The Mario RPGs continue to offer more than what's normally demanded of an RPG, and that's a very good thing indeed.

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?