Aion comes from South Korean based MMO powerhouse, NCsoft. You may recognise the name from titles such as City of Heroes, Guild Wars and Lineage 2. All enjoyable MMOs but all lacking a certain something that would propel them to greatness. Aion on the other hand certainly has a hell of a lot of promise for such a new MMO. It’s worth noting now before I begin that I adore MMOs, they provide ultimate escapism. I’m not just playing a game with a linear storyline, I’m living in a world full of people who are as human as me and I can finally feel like a pioneer. Sure this escapist’s world tends to involve a lot of teenagers with aspirations to be ‘l33t’ but make friends with the right people, and there’s something truly special about the experience. Aion reminds me of this vision very much.

A lot of MMOs are reminiscent of modern society; they all seem to thrive upon instant gratification. Everybody wants everything right now, right this second. Understandable really considering life being so fast now. Long gone are the days where it took hours of playing to level up and then one simple death put you right back where you were five hours ago. These days we are used to the likes of World of Warcraft where you can reach level 60 on your own in a mere 2 weeks of gaming, even less with the recruit a friend scheme. Aion is rather different from this instead focusing on the levelling journey itself as well as the destination.

I found out quickly that this meant that players actually stuck together, just like they used to. When it takes a while to level up in the 20s or 30s (Aion has a level cap of 50), it made sense to form groups to complete quests and gain experience. That’s not to say that it is a slow ‘grind’ to level up in Aion. Sure it might not be as fast to level up as World of Warcraft is, but nor is it as slow or as torturous as Everquest 1 or Dark Ages of Camelot. It’s great middle ground ensuring that levelling up felt like an achievement but not a slog. The first 10 levels or so are quite simple to gain meaning that it’s not long before you’ve got some power under your belt.

The class system might look a little limited at first but it opens up nicely. The initial choices comprise of the scout, mage, warrior and priest classes. Anyone who has played an MMO before will recognise these archetypes: damage dealer, caster, tank and healer. Each class then opens up further at level 9 adding specialisations to each, so that one can become a gladiator (a strong tank), a spiritmaster (a pet class) or an assassin (sneaky damage dealer). This is simplifying things quite a bit but with MMOs being so huge, it would be quite easy to write an entire essay on each class. From experience, I found that pretty much all the class types could solo when required but this really is a game that’s engineered more for group encounters than lone ranger style exploring. This is made even more vital with the presence of the much anticipated PvP elements of Aion.

At level 25, the option to enter the Abyss opens up. This is where flying (I did mention flying, right? Yes you can fly in Aion, but only in select areas) comes into its own and so does sticking together. It’s a pure PvP area which not only unites the two player based races, Elyos and Asmodians, but also an NPC based race the Baluar which is also out to get you. It’s an intense experience, made all the more so by the fact that you must fly across from platform to platform but it certainly sticks in your mind, and is a great experience. The game really does open up once you reach the midway level point with group instances becoming near essential to gain better items and to level up effectively.

After playing such a solo friendly game as World of Warcraft, it was a slight culture shock to suddenly need to devote time to grouping together to achieve a common goal but it also quickly reminded me just how much fun it is to do so. You can’t underestimate camaraderie and I’ve always found it is the friends I make in an MMO that keep me playing for longer than any amount of content offered to me.

I spent much of my time in the city areas, such as Sanctum and Verteron, building up my crafting skills. Not only did they provide me with experience but I’ve always been a sucker for tradeskills in MMOs. Aion offered me plenty of choices with the likes of cooking, handiwork, weaponsmithing, sewing, alchemy and armoursmithing. In the early levels, the experience gains from such tradeskill related quests were particularly beneficial. While spending time in the city areas, it becomes quickly apparent that they are bustling hives of activity: full of quests and NPCs, but also full of excited new players keen to join together.

To be cynical for a moment, I do wonder if this excitement will last longer than these early first months, but it does seem to have a strong chance of it. With increasingly strong legions (guilds) emerging across all servers, the community certainly seems to be powerful enough to maintain the momentum that the launch of Aion has produced. That’s not to say it doesn’t have its faults. Besides the incessant gold spammers plaguing all servers, some quests are perhaps a trifle dull at times. The combat although initially involving, eventually turns into a slight monotony of hitting the same few buttons in sequence to ensure an adequate combo is performed.

Overlooking these flaws however, Aion was a great experience and one that has enthused me to levels that I haven’t felt in a long while. I don’t have a crystal ball so can’t tell if it will reach the heady heights of the likes of World of Warcraft or Ultima Online, but it is certainly well worth a look if you fancy something a bit more group orientated than previous MMOs.

It is a hit, no question about that.

Robots. Beautiful artwork. A haunting soundtrack. ROBOTS. There’s a lot to like about Machinarium, the latest game from Amanita Design that won the Excellence in Visual Art award at the 2009 IGF. A point and click adventure game in the very definition of the genre, you play as one of the many robot citizens of the city, you begin the game disassembled on a scrapheap, your first port of call to piece yourself back together and find out what happened. This game wants to prove it has a whole lot more to offer than just a pretty face? I’ll admit now, however, that I never have been down with the art gaming scene. The Graveyard was a bit too clever for me, and The Path passed me by without even a glance. So in looking at this game, I admit I did have some trepidation.

However, even the most art ignorant dunce like me can see that from the moment the game starts the visual style is striking, stunning and there’s certainly no room for doubt as to it’s breathtaking nature. The screens are gorgeous to look at, and as you can tell from the screenshots there’s clearly been so much care and attention thrown into every scene of this game. There’s truly nothing like it. Every building and every location is drawn and coloured to fit perfectly, and every character seems unique and defined. Most notably, Amanita achieves this purely through aesthetics of visuals and sound – there’s not a single line of dialogue to be found anywhere in this game. As the visuals capture you within their spell, so too the music and sound of this game work some incredible haunting magic, again fitting the style of the game perfectly and really giving your ears almost as much of a treat as the eyes.

Gameplay wise however, Machinarium isn’t quite as sure-footed. The first flaw comes in the story telling – and as much as it pains me to be brutually honest, I had no idea of most of the story until I visited the game’s webpage. In keeping with the rather minimalist take on extraneous things such as dialogue and text, I had a vague idea what was happening, but more than once during the game found myself not knowing why exactly I was say, helping the band or throwing myself down chutes other than it was the only thing I could do. Occasionally the game throws up hints as to what certain people require but there’s a definite sense of being left to fend for yourself almost too much. A massive offshoot of this is the lack of hotspots, and bringing back an often hated problem of point and clicks – the pixel hunt. Already having waxed lyrical about the graphics, it seems a bit of a double edged sword that for a lot of things in the game it’s impossible to tell what can be interacted with or picked up without mousing over it or even, in some cases, without moving the character next to it before trying to interact with it. Something as simple as the game automatically realising you want to walk over to the object before interacting with it might be helpful – and granted this does occur occasionally, but it does seem to be entirely random which objects this works on and which it does not.

The puzzles within the game are also very hit and miss. When done well, they are really done well, satisfying and at times there’s a real sense of achievement on some of the puzzles. Some of the puzzles are absolutely fantastic in their concept, but their solutions can be downright devious to the point where even after you’ve figured out the solution, you might still be scratching your head. To alleviate some of this frustration, the game has two ‘hint’ functions. One invokes a pictorial clue coming from your character in the form of a thought bubble, and the other in a rather genius move sees you playing a little minigame in which you have to guide a key to an exit while avoiding or shooting spiders. This mini game mechanic actually crops up throughout the game a Space Invaders clone and a literal head maze proving the highlights and invoking comparisons with DS title Professor Layton. And like that title seems to invoke a similar balance of frustration to a sense of cleverness when you beat it. Be warned though, if your diet of adventure games has mostly consisted of titles of the last few years you may find this game to be pretty tough going at times and find yourself seeing the spider minigame far more than you want to. In addition, sometimes the hints aren’t exactly what you’re after – most annoying is when you’re told the thing you’re after but not how or where it can be found, and you may end up spoiling other puzzles by looking at the solutions to current ones because the things happen to be on the same screen and you’ll have to backtrack to it later.

But overall, it’s really really hard and seems so wrong to condemn this game. Beautiful aesthetics which are unlike anything else – even little incidental details you don’t notice the first time, the subtle animations and music cues. The way the entire game feels like one of those classic Ivor The Engine cartoons that make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I’ll be honest, it’s a game that makes me wish that we at the Reticule had a more detailed scoring system, as I don’t think it’s a miss by a long way, but it’s still a tough game to recommend to everybody. Machinarium as an art project ticks all the right boxes. As a game, it can veer a little too haphazardly on the side of frustration thanks to the interface issues. Certainly worth a try – moreso if you like artistic games – but make sure you’ve got a lot of patience if you’re going to give it a shot.

The most beautiful game this year, but be prepared to work for it

“You can write about anything” he said. “Anything?” I said. “Anything” he said. “As long as it is PC related”. Well as much as this post might therefore seem like a defiant “fuck you!” to Chris’ only brief, I nevertheless want to share my recent experience of playing Halo 3 on the Xbox 360 with my fellow PC brethren. Why? Well aside from the fact that I had no internet for two weeks and was slowly becoming a desperate, games-deprived Neanderthal, everything I’d heard or read about Halo beforehand made it out to be the single greatest FPS of all time. Words like ‘innovative’, ‘revolutionary’, ‘flawless’ and ‘perfect’ seem to get thrown around willy-nilly when it comes to Bungie’s poster child and the few friends I have who play it with an almost religious devotion get quite defensive, angry almost, at the mere suggestion that it could possibly be anything other than those things.

Being the pretentious purist that I am, what I had seen so far really didn’t strike me as that impressive or original and so I spent most of my brief encounters with it turning my nose up and getting frustrated at my ineptitude with the primitive control system. Don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoy a challenge, but after playing a lot of FPS with a mouse and a keyboard, trying to do it with a 360 controller is like trying to run an obstacle course drunk off your tits.

Annoyingly, my housemate is obscenely good, and could probably shoot my bollocks off with his eyes closed. But give me a few hours with a mouse and keyboard and he wouldn’t stand a chance, even with the hundreds upon hundreds of hours he has accumulated online. Aiming with the mouse is, quite simply, better, and being an uncompromising PC gamer means I’ll never be fully comfortable with a controller. Rest assured, I am aware of the fact that this is all relative; everyone playing online is using the same infuriatingly inefficient control method and so is facing the same challenge (I do, however, get a certain amount of amusement, as smug and pompous as this amusement might be, at the sort of things that are considered “awesome moves” in Halo; things that a monkey could probably perform with ease on a PC).

What can I actually criticise Halo for then?

Well there isn’t actually an awful lot wrong with the gameplay itself, and as the bleak, internetless days went by I found myself (with a certain reluctance I might add) slowly enjoying the multiplayer more and more. But to grant any game the extraordinarily special status that fans and critics have given Halo would demand equally extraordinary design and execution, which Halo simply doesn’t have. It’s a good game, but no better than any number of the great shooters on the PC.

The argument I find myself having with Halo fanboys is a continuous regurgitation of the same old nonsense, and the one thing I seem to hear time and time again goes something like: “But the engine is so robust bla bla bla”. True, the engine is good, great in fact, but a solid engine is no longer a mark of distinction. We are in a technological golden age (at least as far as video games are concerned) where having a decent game engine can no longer be flaunted as a remarkable feature. Call of Duty, Team Fortress, Counter Strike, Battlefield, Quake, Crysis; all of these titles have solid engines that have withstood the test of time. Granted they’re not as good as Halo’s in some respects but they’re certainly good enough to facilitate a balanced multiplayer experience, which, when you think about it, is all you really need. A good engine is not what gamers actively look for in a game anymore; it’s something that should just be there as standard.

There is also an on-going debate about the problem of servers. The lack of third-party, dedicated servers means that players are forced to host every game on their own internet connection (the problems of which I won’t bother reiterating here). I don’t pretend to understand the technical or financial obstacles stopping Microsoft and Bungie from implementing the system used in multiplayer FPS on the PC (although as far as I’m aware there really aren’t any or, at least, many), but when comparisons are drawn by Halo’s own fanboys between it and, say, Call of Duty or Quake, then they immediately place it on the same table of discussion, including the efficiency of matchmaking/server browsing. And Halo’s is mind-bogglingly stupid.

Without any kind of server browser, players search for available games and are automatically grouped according to their current skill level, completely ignoring the highest skill level that certain players may have reached in the past. This results in the most ludicrous match-ups often pitting one side that may have played 5000 games between them against another that could have played as little as 100. The veterans barely even break a sweat, yawning as they effortlessly pummel the opposition, who spend the entire game headbutting their controllers screaming “OMG!!” and “WTF?!?!?” as they are sniped in the face or bludgeoned to death for the gazillionth time. No one finds this fun and it happens to me frustratingly often (because I’m usually on the latter team).

The lack of a server browser also means you get absolutely no choice over what map is to be played in the match. It is randomly generated and players get to veto just once, after which they have to settle for the alternative, which is also randomly generated. This results in players being forced to compete on some of the most unimaginative maps known to man, with their only options being to play through it regardless, or quit the game, suffer the XP penalty and leave the remaining players to fight it out with unbalanced teams.

It seems odd that a developer as well respected and acclaimed as Bungie have let such glaring errors remain in their principal title and it reflects poorly on the Halo community that the developers have been allowed to get away with some of the most heinous mistakes, mistakes that would have been instantly condemned had it been released on the PC.

I certainly enjoyed playing Halo, but in no way has it revolutionised the genre or competitive FPS in the way it has been lauded as doing- its huge success can be attributed simply to the fact that, with the exception of its flawed matchmaking system, it is the only console FPS that actually gets all the basics pretty much right, nothing more. It stands alone in this respect, and with no decent challenges to its crown, it has had a free ride with fans who are essentially none the wiser. Valve have raised the bar as far as feedback from their community is concerned and Bungie will have to match this if they are to see continued success with current and future titles.

We’d love to hear about your experiences of Halo 3, and what you think of it from a PC gamer’s perspective. Alternatively, if you would like to criticise my argument, complain about the fact I managed to use the words ‘fuck’, ‘tits’ and ‘bollocks’ in one article, or just tell me that I’m an obstinate little shite, then you can do that too.

Let the commentathon commence!

“No Gods or Kings, Only Man” Andrew Ryan’s sneering visage impresses upon you from his bronzed effigy. From the outset, Bioshock’s city of Rapture is one of affirmed ideology. Rapture isn’t just a city under the sea. It’s a vision. Read the full story

Games are doing my head in. Specifically MMOs.

When MMOs started to really hit it big, to crawl out of the shackles of “cult status” and start to rake in the big bucks, I was one of those kids that every market loves. I was young, middle class and with parents affluent enough to loan me the dosh to buy into anything that the marketing gurus persuaded me that I wanted. For MMOs, that was Anarchy Online, followed by Star Wars Galaxies and Planetside, then World of Warcraft. I’m now sick of these games, and I want to tell you why.

It’s nothing to do with the individual mechanics of each and every MMO, even the ones that are poor and translate into each successful game. No, my problem lies in the design philosophies of the games. The main tenet of their design is not playability but profit and, while this is true of most every game now, they do very little to hide this. The level grind, the uninspired quests, the ludicrously hard boss fights, it all comes together to make you shell out more money for less gratification. In fact, given that most endgames require large groups of players, your input becomes invisible amongst the unbridled throng of spells and people shouting about DPS.

You will often spy developers lauding their achievements in creating a living, breathing world. I don’t mean to be harsh, but these people are liars. They’ve not created a world, they’ve created a set, similar to those used for films except substantially larger. They may have stuffed it full of actors and props, but it’s no more alive than a strip of celluloid. There’s no life in an online world, it’s all heavily scripted and rigidly defined so that what variation the players experience is extremely limited.

If you were to map the average “life” of a Warcraft character you would most likely find that they are worryingly similar. Every player does the same quests at the same levels, kills the same creatures, collects the same useless ingredients. If they’re lucky, their race choice will allow them a slightly different set of quests from another player, but not always. A living world would let players build their own stories, have their own unique tales to tell.

This isn’t a problem in single player games because, by their very nature, they have pre-made stories ready for your consumption, designed to be told through a narrative structure that progresses along with you. Multiplayer games don’t have this safety net being, as they are, intent on creating an entire world around you, rather than situating you inside one that has already been built. Come into our world, the MMO will cry, be who you want to be or who you wish you were, unlock your potential in a risk-free environment.

It doesn’t annoy me so much that they don’t provide these worlds, as I am aware how monumentally difficult that might be, but that they lie about having already done so. There’s no emotional connection to an MMO world because, despite claims made by most developers, your character isn’t really part of it. The world itself is frozen in time, never progressing except for sudden and frustrating jumps forward when expansion packs are launched, and your avatar moved through the world so unnoticed that he may as well have never existed.

The MMO ideal appeals to the part of the mind that likes to make stories, your inner writer. You may be terrible at writing in the real world, but everyone’s life has a story behind it and the realisation of that is what makes MMOs so enticing: you can make a new life online, built from the various events and occurrences, and it will be like your real one but so much cooler. What actually happens, of course, is that you are slotted neatly into one of perhaps 20 different life stories replicated thousands of times. There is no individuality, no sense of self, everything has already been hard coded by the developers, and the only time you really get a choice is when they want you to have one.

You would think that people would know the world is not made up merely of sword fighting and auctions, that for it to be truly alive there must be more within it than mere violence and commerce. There’s science, art, love, solitude, togetherness, independence, and so much more. If you could guess the course of someone’s life from a single glance, knew how they got to that point without having to ask, what would be the point? You can’t stare at a girl in your Film class and go “I know everything about her, from her early life, where she lived, how well she did at school, right up until what brought her to this very place”, that’s not how life works.

Life is about secrets and unknowns and stories above all else.

I know that this is hard to put into a game, to replicate everything about life that makes it feel alive, and I’m not saying that developers should already be there. They should most definitely be trying to get there of course, but all I ask is that, until they manage it, they stop treating us like mindless sheep and lying to us about it. No, your MMO world isn’t a “living and breathing” universe yet, and until it is you will get nothing but bile from me if you declare it as such.

I want a narrative, a journey, almost unique to everyone else, that I am able to convey to people via conversation or trophies or word of my exploits in the press. I want the MMO to be the world I can’t have in reality, the one where you can be famous and have fun, yet without having to follow the same path as everyone else. I want freedom and individuality in a virtual world full of other people seeking the same thing, where half the fun comes from sitting around a virtual fire and asking other people how they came to be at this point themselves, hearing a new story each time.

I want the chance to be the person online that I can’t be in the real world.

If you like smashing stuff up, Red Faction: Guerrilla is the game for you. It sounds like an obvious statement – and it is – but this is a game that truly relishes in you causing more complete and utter destruction upon Mars than Handy Andy ravaged upon the song If I Had A Hammer back in 1999. Previous entries into the Red Faction franchise have been first person shooters, but wisely Volition have taken the move of making the latest game into an open world game in a similar vein to their previous game, Saints Row 2. The move makes a lot of sense, after all why impose a linear path on a concept based on making your own?

So the game itself then – playing as a new recruit to the Red Faction on Mars, your mission is to basically break as much stuff as possible, with something resembling a plot around avenging the death of your brother and bringing down ‘The Man’ – in this case the Earth Defence Force – by smashing his stuff up. Completing missions and other tasks gains you favour with the local population, making them more inclined to drop what they’re doing and take up arms to join the Faction. These missions consist of, primarily – blowing stuff up, destroying buildings and generally making a mess – as expected. It’s not an overly fantastic plot, as is the case with most of these open world games. It doesn’t really need to be mind, but the game doesn’t really try and make a big deal of trying to cover it up. But by the same token, you never really feel connected to the characters at all during the game nor really finding yourself caring whether or not the Red Faction prevails. In a game like this it’s not a big criticism, but it’s worth noting what might be fairly obvious – people looking for a game rich in story would do better to look elsewhere.

Visually the game makes it very obvious that you’re supposed to be on Mars – it’s very dusty and very, very red. Some criticism could be levelled though at the fact that unlike Saints Row 2 a lot of the areas feel a bit bare and barren. Of course, you can argue it’s Mars and it’s supposed to be like that, but it does mean that going between destinations can be a little uninspired. However, in the areas that are populated, massive props (is there a pun there? If so, let’s pretend it was intended) goto the Geomod engine which really does a good job at making the destruction look and feel suitably solid and satisfying when you do start smashing stuff up. Some people have reported it’s fiddly to get the settings right, but personally I found settings that worked on my rig (a 2.1 Ghz Quad with a GeForce 8800 and 2GB of RAM) fairly quickly, with only some slight slowdown during acts of mass destruction.

The main problems with the game are in the controls. Credit where it is due, technically it is a pretty good port working fairly well with both keyboard and mouse as well as gamepad. However the driving model doesn’t quite feel right – most vehicles don’t seem to have a great turning circle and I found myself using the mouse and keys for on foot action, with the gamepad for driving. This proved most irritating on missions where I had to escape from many angry men shooting at me because I’d broken their clubhouse or something. Also combat can be infuriating at times, simply due to the lack of any sort of lock on button. There may be aim assist and I agree I’m certainly not the world’s best shooter by far, but on Normal I died far too many times simply due to the lack of being able to aim at people accurately, even when in cover. And woe betide you if your cover gets smashed, I found trying to recover my aim like trying to wrestle in treacle. It’s a game that is badly missing some form of lock on feature for playing on any difficulty higher than the easiest setting. The friendly AI can also have moments of absolute stupidity at times which can prove disastrous on escort missions or even just for getting in your way while trying to take a shot.

Looking at the positives, the destruction is great and manages to remain fun for the entire game, and there’s something about being able to make your own door into any building. The weapons get ever more explosive and satisfying to use and the faction idea itself (do missions well and people support your cause, even taking up arms to join you) is brilliant. But Red Faction’s main trump card is something that took me by surprise – it’s the multiplayer. Once you get over the fact it’s the infamous Games for Windows Live system, modes like Deathmatch, Capture the Flag and Team Deathmatch are there as almost standard multiplayer fare (more on the almost later) along with Bagman (hold onto a bag for as long as you can) and of course, destruction based gamemodes. The dash of genius comes in the Backpacks found in the multiplayer game. Each one gives a certain buff, whether that’s super speed, invisibility, a jetpack or just the ability to bash down walls with the Rhino pack. The caveat to these awesome powers is that you can only have one at a time. It’s a system that helps to develop a kind of class system into the game, with a well structured team being able to support each other well and even the single player modes as the player can find the best backpack to match their particular playstyle. I dare say I’ll be getting a lot of play out of the multiplayer for some time to come.

A bit of a mixed bag then overall, I would definitely say this is a game worth hazarding a purchase on while waiting for the heavy hitters later this year – the single player has a few flaws but they are of the sort that will depend on the player to how frustrating it gets – I would recommend playing it on the easiest setting and enjoying the ride of smashing something up. But the multiplayer has the fun coming out of it in spades and is truly the hidden gem of this game. It’s a good game, but there is a certain something stopping it from greatness. Obviously depending how much you love smashing stuff up will have a massive factor on your enjoyment of this title. And unless you’re dead inside, that’s probably a lot of you.

Enjoyable, but more bowling ball than wrecking ball. Great multiplayer.

This is the second part of our massive interview with AI War’s Chris Park. The first part went live yesterday Hit the jump to see the rest of our discussion along with more shots from version 2.0 of AI War. Read the full story

The quality of a game’s world can be defined by the depth and quality of its dedicated Wiki. The milestone is Wookiepedia. Anyone who’s ever made the mistake of clicking on a link to that veritable tome of largely superfluous knowledge will know what I mean. There’s pages there longer than anything the real wikipedia could boast. You’ll end up spending hours just reading through the damned things even if you’ve got only a passing interest. The point is though, the reason Star Wars is so successful is that the pageantry of its story telling and setting is largely more powerful than its fairly one dimensional characters and their personal stories. Read the full story