However, it would be highly unlike myself if I didn’t use the blog to shamelessly pimp something I’ve done, which is why I implore you to buy the latest Official XBox Magazine because yours truly has written the disk pages (I also helped with transcribing the interviews for the cover feature, but that’s not quite as noteworthy) which means I get my first official print credit for Official XBox Magazine. So I’m pretty proud of it, even if it is minor in the grand scheme of things. But like I said, I’m pretty shameless about the self promotion on here. Anyway, it was at all good magazine selling vendors and contained all manner of awesomeness aside from my stuff.

But if you absolutely must exclusively see purely the disk pages I contributed to then you’ll have to order a back issue or wait six months for me to be able to republish it should I choose to.

-Massive thanks to Jon Hicks for the opportunity.

Something the GTA series has always been based around is the concept that you start off as a lowly member of the criminal underworld, and then slowly work your way up to criminal mastermind. The only problem is that really, you never do. Your acts may be reported in the paper, but they never feel like you did them. Of course, there are obvious reasons for not making you massively ‘famous’ (it’d be incredibly hard to rob a bank if people knew who you were) but even the later contacts tell you ‘I’ve heard of you from (last mission contact)’ – and you’ve got no real reason to believe them.

On the other hand, Red Dead measures your fame over the course of the game. Starting out as a no-name cowboy, finishing missions earns you Fame. Rather than just being a system for gameplay benefits, it also effects the gameworld itself. One of my favourite moments has been recently, riding through Armadillo (the first proper ‘town’ you visit) with my fame at around 80% full, and random strangers literally going “there’s John Marston!” “Hey John Marston, remember me?” and actually being in awe of you. Everyone who plays a western game wants to be The Man With No Name. Because he’s so famous, he doesn’t need one.

GTA was really onto something with it’s licensed soundtrack for Vice City and San Andreas. Music that fit the time helped sell the atmosphere. By the time we came around to number 4 however, we were sat in the present day. And apparently we listen to all years and genres of music nowadays and WE NEVER DID BEFORE. More seriously, in the case of GTA4 the music lost all personality. Yeah sure, it was great doing a drive by to Queen’s One Vision the first time, but the ninety ninth time doesn’t have the same feel as riding on a bike to Billie Jean in 80′s Miami. Basically, the music didn’t really have a ‘personality’ anymore in modern-day GTA. It was a little better in Lost and the Damned and Gay Tony, because then you had characters with which certain styles of music were appropriate. So the new rock stuff for Johnny and the poptastic stuff for Gay Tony added to the atmosphere.

In Red Dead, there are only two or three licensed tracks. They’re used incredibly sparingly and just at the exact right time. When that José González track kicks in as you reach Mexico for the first time, it’s pretty epic and one of the best moments in the game. The rest of the time, you’re listening to a more custom ambient soundtrack that’s unique to the game, while having all the hallmarks of the classic style of music we associate with Westerns. It also changes depending on where you are – head into Mexico and you get far more flamenco guitars in the soundtrack. In the desert, the sounds of the wildlife make the area feel more eerie, especially at night giving a brilliant atmosphere. In short, it’s not just what music, but how it’s used.

I think I’ll just leave this video in and say: John Marston does not have ‘friends’ that call him up every thirty seconds.

OK, fair enough. Liberty City is basically modelled on New York. It has a Broadway, a Bronx and all the other things a city has. But at the end of the day, it’s still a city. And I don’t know if I’m just suffering from urban fatigue or what, but after a while modern day city buildings aren’t very interesting to look at.

Red Dead Redemption has a beautiful and varied environment. Whether it’s farmland of McLaren’s Ranch, the marshland of Thieves Landing, the lush deserts of Mexico or the breathtaking Manteca Falls, each area feels different in both atmosphere and there are some truly beautiful vistas to be enjoyed in this game. I would dare say it’s on most beautiful game sceneries ever list to just stand with my horse on the top of a mountain looking down on the river between Mexico and the US border states at sunset. I only wish I could take screenshots myself to show them off a bit better. I had to get these (and the other pics in this post) from the official website:

GTA4 had a Free Roam option. Provided you could find enough friends, you could join Liberty City and just go around doing random things as was your want. However, it was unstructured and in fact, pretty lonely without friends, not to mention how difficult it was to organise a multiplayer game with several of your friends and then all doing something meaningful.

Red Dead Redemption makes the lobby the free roam. By letting you roam around the map and putting you with upto sixteen other people, the world feels alive. Posses allow friends to get together and stick together, while the gang hideouts and the unlocking system gives games structure and goals. You can literally create your own cowboy stories with your friends. The challenges allow those who want to skin or evade the law do that, while other challenges just encourage you to work together. And then if you and your friends want to do some classic deathmatch or other structured gamemode, it’s just a button away. It’s the closest thing in multiplayer to being an MMO without being one. Having all of the strengths, while having few enough players to ensure there’s not too much griefing, the only suggestion I would say is for Rockstar to increase the playercount as even 16 players can sometimes feel a little too few.

9 – A pretty decent game, but there’s no way we can say it was better than Halo 3. We’d totally mess up Metacritic otherwise.

8 – Same as 10, but it’s got some form of unpopular DRM that our readers don’t like, and so to save face we’ve had to knock points off the score and face removal from the developers Christmas lists this year.

7 – Crap. This game will make you wish you’d never purchased it. Futhermore it will go on to make you infertile and cause some form of incurable terminal illness in your children and loved ones. Avoid.

6 – The above, written by someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about because they didn’t review Modern Warfare 2.

5, 4, 3, 2 – There are no scores lower than six. These scores, like the caveat of needing to play a game to have an opinion on it and the concept of someone having genuine, honest reasons to think the way they do about a game are entirely fictional.

1 – It’s a casual game and thus does not matter.

But in some effort of making it up to the one person that is probably still reading my blog, here’s a list of the things I’ve written in the interim that have appeared elsewhere in a vague chronological order, assuming I can find it:

My review of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 over on The Reticule

I take a look at the evolution of DRM over on my brother’s site, HullGamer.

I ask some questions about DLC at Citizen Game.

I wonder why new takes on old franchises are often decried before they even emerge back on Reticule.

My first ‘proper’ 360 game review appears in the form of Splinter Cell Conviction for HullGamer.

And finally, also on The Reticule, I review indie game Plain Sight.

I also caught some fish:

Finally, I’m now jumping on the Formspring bandwagon. Ask me stuff, but I can’t promise I won’t answer with ‘Your Mum’. Sorry.

So I would like to welcome you to my Christmas gift, the very first DoubleYouTeeEffCast. Joined by my good friend Andy Lamb we sat down and decided to talk about the year in gaming. Of course, we manage to fly readily off topic and end up about talking about stuff from all over the decade and beyond but I’d like to think this adds character.

Also adding character (read: highlighting the amateurism) is my voice, all the background noises, the disappointing segways and even this running order in which I forget to actually note the times for the first few items. I’ll update it at some point, but I’m away for the next couple of days so you’ll just have to make do.

Download it from here – I’m not going to iTunes it yet for three reasons: one is the quality (or lack thereof) two is the fact that – for now – it’s a one off, we may do more in the future. Thirdly is I just don’t like iTunes.

So that running order then:
Intro
Duke Nukem Never
Command and Conquer
Pandemic
Open world games 13:22
Pushing Tech 16:12
Valve in 2009 18:35
Achivements 20:40
Consoles! 23:30
Games of 2009 30:50 (Ben induces Mariorage)
Left 4 Dead 2 32:58
Modern Warfare 2/The Problem with Boycotts 37:49
Champions Online 41:08
MMOs & Subscriptions 45:12
Indie Games of 2009 46:40 (I manage to mispronounce Spelunky spectacularly)
Return of Monkey Island 57:05
Games of 2010 1:04:05

And the link to the podcast itself. Enjoy, or don’t and of course comments are open. They might be ignored but they’re certainly open.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

In the meantime, sum stuff wot I wrote:

Some words on difficulty in games over at Citizen Game.

Finishing off the Tales of Monkey Island reviews on The Reticule.

Also my opinions on Borderlands and Modern Warfare 2, also on The Reticule.

And of course if there’s anything I’ve missed check The Highlights and in my regular reminder and hopping on the bandwaggon of futility – follow my Twitter.

Anyway, if you haven’t already go read. *Sniff*

(Also apologies for the lack of updates over here. I’m still writing for The Reticule and Gaming Daily if you want to read my stuff (and more soon) so that along with real life issues has meant this blog has suffered as of late. I shall try and correct that in due course.)

So far, I’m really enjoying it. The software is amazingly powerful with a surprising amount of depth for something free, allowing you to add your own sounds using the Mic or indeed anything you’ve recorded with the DSi sound, and lets you import your own photos from the DSi camera.

The website is also home to some extraordinary creations. These were particularly chucklesome examples:

I definitely recommend a download, and given it’s free you’ve got no excuse really if you’ve got a DSi.

Thanks Valve!

Also

Due to many requests, added server ConVar “tf_overtime_nag”. When set to 1, it keeps the broken announcer behavior

CAN’T STOP THE OVERTIME!

Firstly I’ve been doing some reviews over on The Reticule including the first episode of Tales of Monkey Island and Ghostbusters, followed by conducting an Interview with one Mark Darin of Telltale games, one of the designers of Tales of Monkey Island. Meanwhile in my weekly column over on Gaming Daily I’ve been tackling subjects such as PCs at parties, Stalingrad in Call of Duty and Heads Up Displays.

And you may not have failed to notice if you do check this site frequently that I appear to have attracted a lot of attention for my Left 4 Sims piece. The second part is now up, if you were not aware previously. And if you are one of the many new people browsing my site via Left 4 Sims: Welcome and I hope you’ll stick around, even if it’s only if I promise to do more Left 4 Sims pieces if you do.

Honest.