SteelSkin.net - The Ramblings of Chris Nutt

Yes I caved in and bought a PS3. It is a nice piece of kit, but really what I have been bowled over by the most is Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction.

This is one of the most charming games I have played in a long time. It’s obviously American, but the kind of intelligent American that doesn’t nearly get the praise it should. Pixar does come to mind, as does the original Shrek movie. It’s all a bit tongue in cheek and all the better for it. Like a good meal its staples are platforming and shooting these are incredibly well done, neither punishing nor overtly easy. There are a few ways to tackle difficulty, one is to make things punishing and robotic, another is to make things a great big puzzle, R&C uses the latter. However any staple if over relied on will result in boredom. R&C solves this by spicing up the mix with mini-games, not the quick time awfulness of the competitors, but small juicy morsels involving the Six-Axis or Clank exclusively.

If this game carries on like this I would have put it in my Top 5 ever.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Need For Speed.

Need for Speed is a series I have always held in disdain, a chav racer only that wasn’t worth looking at versus arcade racer king Burnout or simulation champion Gran Turismo. I saw The Fast and the Furious, whilst entertaining it did little to contradict my view of shiny glowy night time racers like NFS:U, NFS:U2 and NFS:C. The first inkling I had that it might not just be a chav racer and something of a good arcade racer to have as a wing man to Burnout was 4 Color Rebellion’s take on NFS:Carbon for Wii.

So a couple of weeks back I asked my mate to download the demos of NFS: Carbon, Juiced 2 and PGR 4 on his Xbox 360. I tried NFS first and was confounded, it was hugely enjoyable and certainly looked nice if a little low on FPS. So we tried Juiced 2, it looked a wee bit nicer, but the game handled like 2nd rate racer, not bad just not great like Auto Modellista did. PGR 4 is the latest in a series of games that after every retry I have disliked immensely. No great surprise when I thought it was made of huge amounts of ass when I played it, nice rain though.

So fast forward to this weekend and my mate John decided to trade in his PS2 Slim for the shiny monolith that is the PS3. Whilst we were in Gamestation Kirkcaldy I found a rare copy of NFS:Carbon for the Xbox 180. I was informed by a bemused Gamestation Edinburgh employee that the Xbox version was always sold out and he didn’t have the foggiest idea why. The simplest answer is MS dropped the Xbox like a hot potato and there for EA followed suit. This is a great shame as the Xbox Carbon looks great, not as great as say Motorstorm in 720P on the PS3, but pretty flipping amazing for the little black box.

I started on tuner as the muscle cars feel as crap as they look and until I have mastered some skill in NFS I feel my nice shiny RX8 tuner will meet my needs. The game plays really nicely and has a free roaming aspect that I didn’t expect, I really am enjoying it and the ability to play in bite size chunks makes it all the more appealing, like GTA: Vice City.

My lovely sister got me two Naruto games for my birthday. I’m really enjoying Naruto: Uzamaki Chronicles so the idea of a game this slick and close to the anime really appeals. If MS starts making hardware that is reliable I might get one.

I’m seriously considering leaving Word of Warcraft. Whilst an enjoyable game at times I’ve started to loose interest because my friends are hardly ever on and anyone I meet online easily charge up the levels as I have RL things like work and a social life that get in the way of playing. That and soloing on a game that charges you £9 a month for the privilege is starting to get a little dull.

Frankly anything with underground in the title or just about anything with a ‘gritty’ setting seems to be getting made these days. It’s just getting silly, even SEGA’s latest Sonic game involves a black hedgehog with a gun. Above fifty percent of E3 this year seems to be this urban-ised tat that claims to be mature dispite it obviously being aimed at 14-18 boys. Maybe I’m just not ‘down’ with the younger generation, but this durge seems entirely deviod of taste or sense. I’m not against gritty games the GTA series, Streets of Rage are both classic examples of good gritty games. However I don’t want every game to have a brown filter across it or some impossibly shiny neon modded nedmobile with some over photoshoped z-grade model draped across it.

My friends are far to busy to play these days so if you are an aspiring Nightelf on Tyralon (maybe?) look my my new character Io.

Io actually started off as Palemoon (the same but female). I kept reading these stories about female players or rather ‘characters’ getting treated more favourably than men. So I spent an afternoon to find out if it was true. Its not true as such, more that they get more attention. So if you like getting noticed and a bit of healing/fortification its cool. I have two problems with it though, one if you are not female it just seems a little wrong like you are coning people (then again I’m not a different species either) and two there are a lot of geeky teens that chase ‘hawt’ characters. I’ve posted all the bits from Palemoon to Io now and I’m all together happier. However I am annoyed that my sister or female friends would have to use an unattractive race just to avoid these people. I’m even more annoyed that its even harder to look good as a guy in WoW. They might all look like porn stars in Lineage 2, but at least there is parity.

Io is a NightElf Druid, I’m really looking forward to getting my shape changing abilities :)