Tuesday, 18 December 2012

AnarchistRant: Games do Not Make People Killers

The question about if there is a corrupting influence of video games on players is one very close to our heart here at the GAC and it was entirely unsurprising that the absolutely heartbreaking recent tragedy in Newton CT is being capitalised on too prove that video games are responsible the actions of Adam Lanza.

I can't being myself to write the details of the tragedy but if for some impossible reason this has passed you buy you can find them here.

Firstly, case of perspective, this is a deeply heartbreaking tragedy, this is not an opportunity for attention seeking and initially we had no intention of commenting on it.  Unfortunately, as we had predicted the finger of blame is being pointed towards the gaming industry by those too afraid to look a little harder and find a convenient scapegoat.

We have already touched on the subject before and for that just check out this entry.  It will be an eventual aim of this project to publish a full and unbiased analysis of the impact of video games on people, taking into account the relevant studies and pointing out those that fail to support the conclusion they have reached but for now here is out view which will be expanded on in a Vlog on our YouTube channel.

The problem is that Adam Lanza was clearly a mentally ill young man, no sane person would murder their own mother and the 6/7 year old children in her care.  It is a tragedy of huge proportions as is any senseless loss of life.  The cause for his mental instability is unclear and his unhealthy response to violent entertainment may have acted as a catalyst for his imagination, fuelling his specific methodology for his crimes but the fault doesn't lay with that entertainment.  The reason I know this is because I can gleefully play Manhunt, Hitman, Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty or any other game that people who seek attention from the media chooses to pick and I have and would never harm another person except out of self defence, let alone murder my own mother and small children.  He was disconnected from reality and clearly lacked human empathy, that is the sign of someone who is mentally ill, not a gamer.  We, as gamers, understand that we are engaged in a fantasy and have no interest in acting out on them, no matter how cool the experience is.  It is certainly a fact that those of mental suffering with the kind of antisocial mental illness are drawn to extreme forms of entertainment.  This is the same argument that has been levelled at books, music and films and at every turn this has been shown not to be a corrupting influence, the obsession with it is however a potential cause for concern.  If your son or daughter is sitting in a dark room playing COD muttering "Die, die, die" with no sense of enjoying the experience (which would show they are aware they are wilfully engaging in fantasy) under their breath you don't blame the game they are playing if they do something terrible, you turn the power off to their room and take them to see a therapist immediately.  

Not all media is suitable for everyone, the very young and the mentally deranged can form an unhealthy connection with it and that is when you seek an intervention because there is something wrong, not with what they are reading/listening to/playing but with their mind.  They need help, taking the media away won't help them, they were damaged before and they will be damaged after.  

As a parent this may not be your fault, it may be something natural but it is your responsibility to know your child's mind and to do something about it because their mental health is on you and those who supply care to your children.  Sometimes you need to ask difficult questions and face unpleasant truths but every mass shooting of this type was avoidable, not by limiting the access of anything in particular (of course 0 guns means 0 shootings but the US is clearly not going to take things to that extent) but by identifying mental health problems and addressing them.

Wednesday, 12 December 2012

AnarchistRant: The Walking Dead Game Disc Release

"Don't forget your fan-base."

That should be an official rule for whatever medium you work in. Case in point: The Walking Dead for those of you who don't know the walking dead stated out as a comic book which is published by image comics. The book has earned image comics national renown and has become so popular that it became a TV series on AMC. The series has received praise both from critics and fans alike. Now that the Walking Dead has conquered TV and comics Image thought it'd try its hand at video games and the game has received many awards and is many a critic and fans game of the year. I applaud The walking dead for its ability to draw appeal from the different forms of entertainment it's a very hard thing to do and almost nearly impossible to achieve. To have such cross appeal means that Robert Kirkman and Image comics Truly has a brand that is very unique and special. However in its success it seems that both have forgotten who brought them to the dance: the fans.

I didn't have a "season pass" for The Walking Dead game instead I was hoping that Tall Tale games would release this game on disk. Call me crazy but i like having a physical disk in my hand and i don't have the money to go buy a new PS 3 with more memory so I have to manage my downloads carefully. Imagine my disappointment when i went to my local comic book store which also carries games and they said to me "We don't have The Walking Dead game its a gamestop exclusive." It got me thinking that Image forgot that it was comic book fans that made the Walking Dead the success that it is. True they gained new fans when they brought it to TV but these fans were encouraged by the tv show to go buy the book thereby increasing sales.

Image and Robert Kirkman should say this " We know we have a huge comic book fan-base lets do something special for them to show our appreciation for all their support." they could ship copies of the game bundled with the newest Walking Dead trade paperback and charge a special price for them both. Or if they really want to make something special print a walking dead omnibus complete with all 17 volumes of the trade paperback and bundle it with season 1 of the walking dead TV show and video game and make it a comic shop exclusive. It would go a long way to show the hardcore fans that they are appreciated.
My name is artisticgamez and this has been my pipebomb.

Thursday, 22 November 2012

The Gaming Anarchist Collective and Being a Gaming Anarchist

Occasionally the question arises "why gaming anarchist? Isn't that a bit puerile and outdated punk rock behaviour?" It's an interesting one and it should really be clarified somewhere along with a more in depth description of what we are here for so here goes.

There was a lot of thought that went into the choice of name for this project, lots of ideas were banded around before we decided on the name of the group as the Gaming Anarchist Collective. Even so there is a chance that some assumptions can be made on it. This group doesn't ascribe to any specific party political ideal, members and contributors can and do have a wide spectrum of views. We are gamers, that's an easy one; we are a collective, we work together as a single entity; and we hold an anarchic view, this is where things can get sticky.
Anarchism, nothing to do with an over-the-hill, culturally irrelevant butter salesman
The meaning of anarchism has been deeply mismanaged by the punk movement and has almost turned it into a cultural irrelevance (personally I love punk music but that isn't the point, I also love metal but I don't think devil worship is a good idea).  It does not mean being a disruptive force for the sake of disruption alone.  It is the belief of the current state of affairs is wrong and seeking to change that according to a driving ethos, that ethos isn't fixed so what any given person or group that claims to be in any way anarchistic could be opposed to wildly different things, which I believe is where the confusion comes in.  Anarchism comes directly from the Greek "an" (no) and "arkhos" (leader) and reinforces the fact that this movement is intentionally faceless, not through cowardice but through necessity as well as our aims. We also refuse to accept leadership from the industry, they are facilitators and people we fund to entertain us. The gaming industry isn't a government, it is a business that produces a non-essential product, a product there is a huge market for, a market that is being poorly served by some people who stand on the shoulders of the originators of this industry and risk ruining it for everyone by taking advantage of ever increasing complexity. To give it a film analogy it is like comparing Charlie Chaplin to Adam Sandler.

Any name of a group unless it is a unique brand name (not ones that use twee respelling of real words) will have unavoidable connotations to pre-existing ideas or philosophies. If you consider the political philosophy that you could ascribe to our title the closest etymologically would be collectivist anarchism. Collectivist anarchism is a political doctrine that states that the means of production should be owned by the masses and people should benefit according to their labour (which diverges from Marxism which states all take according to need). Taken purely in the sense of a consumer capitalist culture that might initially sound ridiculous but there is a difference between a philosophy within a system and a desire for a certain system of government.  If you did some reading into the philosophy from the perspective of the narrow aims of this project it works out as a pretty good fit. The name as it is was selected organically from the meaning of the words not in order to ascribe to an ideal, there is no desire in this project to change our respective economic or political system. If that was the point this group certainly wouldn't have anything to do with gaming, instead we would have V masks on and be standing outside banks. Our aim is simple and achievable, to improve both the view of gamers and the health of the gaming industry.

It is easy for people who believe a company in a free market can do whatever they want and consumers should just accept it to label people who disagree as "commies", "lefties", "Marxists" etc and that is bullshit (people also do this to anti-prejudice movements when they ascribe the "far right" neo-Nazi groups as being opposed by extreme beret wearing ultra liberals). Demanding value for your money is the basis of capitalism, money has a value in terms of investment into a task either with labour or financial investment or the rarity of a commodity. If you have a job where you work for a salary you will know how much your time is worth according to the economy, it's stipulated in your contract.  We can either pay less for what we get or get higher quality for what we pay for, those are the only agreeable options.  This project is entirely devoted to the spending of disposable income and how much that can buy you and we believe everyone is paying too much and getting too little for it, it is as simple as that.

A overly simplistic meme but nicely sums up the absolute opposite of our aims and what some people may immediately think of
To stick with the political analogy the gaming industry is an entertainment medium, as such it is a non-essential commodity. The means of production, i.e. game development and production, are in the hands of those businesses that does the work but they have no value without the consumer. They exist and prosper by consensus and financial investment of their customers. A plough in the hands of a farmer who grows a crop that nobody wants is just scrap that could be better used by someone else to better effect.

The entire perspective is wrong, as with politics, the people shouldn't fear their government, a government should fear their people. In the same way the gaming community is in control, not the developers or the producers, some people desperately try to wrestle that from their benefactors, the gamers.

To put it into a graphic and fairly unpleasant metaphorical imagine the gaming industry as a large powerful person, let's call him Jim. You're an insignificant speck to Jim, a single cell organism, bacteria that lives in it's intestines, consuming whatever by-products he produces, there are lots of other little cells like you, some consuming different by-products of Jim's, some the same but ultimately there is no competition between these cells as there is more to consume and more space to exist that you could ever want. Jim doesn't care how his body works but it seems to, he does what he wants and everything is find in his world. If Jim changes his diet then the composition of his by-products will change, some of the bacteria is fine, consuming away oblivious to what is going on. There is other bacteria that can't consume anything from what Jim produces and increasing numbers of the cells keep dying off, not that Jim even notices or cares, he is doing fine. Eventually Jim's the by-products of Jim's metabolism has changed so much that entire populations are missing that used to co-habit quite happily for the benefit to all. You see the fact is that these aren't parasites, Jim can't just get rid of them, they have their own tiny by-products that in large enough numbers sustain Jim's existence. Individually they are fairly meaningless but together they keep Jim's body running, to what extent that is Jim really can't tell and without them before he knows it Jim suffers kidney failure, no more Jim.

Individually we are specs to those in the industry but we each generate the money that it needs to exist, it is a symbiotic relationship and not a parasitic one. There is a balance to be found, between cost and value, between piracy and slavish copyright enforcement, between popularism and banality, between Microsoft and Sony. Division creates profit for those who don't deserve it, as gamers we are one socio-economic group, we don't need to play the same things, be able to afford the same things, own the same platforms of be of the same skill level. We just want to be able to spend some time playing games if we want and we should want that same freedom for others should they wish.

There are some people who like to stand up as voices of public opinion and that is great but ultimately they need to balance their desire for their message and their continued recognition for their opinion and in the end they all either put on a tweed jacket and sell butter on TV or disappear into obscurity. We are happy to be unremembered, playing games is ultimately an unimportant thing, it's a fun way to pass the time but it isn't a way of life, it doesn't separate us from other people, it just serves as an opportunity to being some people together.

We intend to bring the power to the gamers because we are obscure, the person writing this will probably never be individually recognised for it because ultimately recognition doesn't matter. What matters is that anyone who joins us or supports us or is influenced by us want the same thing, a thriving video game entertainment industry. No leadership is needed, each person has their role to play and for some it is to talk, for others it is to listen, for some it is to organise and others to create, but if we act as one and stand together we will meet our goal.

Everyone will support different caused under this banner of positive change and a healthy industry. Some may focus on DRM; some on increased consumer rights (i.e. returning a game if you think it's rubbish) some it will be to fight the media's impression that all gamers as potential murders and rapists who are all men who live in their parent's basement; some to point out that variety and creativity is better than predictability; others to find a better price point for games (either through a healthy retail price or preventing DLC price gouging), the list goes on and on.

Ultimately it is about finding a balance we can all live with, nobody gets what they want all the time but as a community the gamers and the industry (most of which are gamers anyway) can find the point where the industry can grow in a sustained way by producing quality products. There are some simple things all paying consumers can all do without resorting to activism to be heard in a way that hits hard:

  • Do not buy DLC that clearly should be part of the game and has been held back i.e. anything created during the main development cycle, by buying the game you should get these included in the retail release. 
    • "Real endings" e.g. Azura's Wrath 
    • Missing levels e.g. Azura's Wrath (again), Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Assassin's Creed 
    • Game changing upgrades e.g. Street Fighter X Tekken (gems), Dragon's Dogma 
    • Extra characters e.g. Street Fighter X Tekken (especially when it's clear the content is on disc, complete or not) 
    • Anything that can be unlocked by playing the game 
  • Do not buy games in stores that offer retailer exclusive DLC or download that content 
  • Pre-order any game you are interested in (be cautious of non refundable deposits in stores) and be willing to cancel it immediately upon the news breaking about any bad practices or a weak demo 
  • If a publisher has a history of releasing GOTY, complete, gold editions etc never buy the initial release, wait them out 
  • Do not buy any game that contains user limiting DRM, that goes double for single player offline games 
  • Do not pre-order digital content 
  • Do not buy anything digitally that is the same price or more than physical media 
  • Do not buy any competitive online game if you have reason to believe that any patching or balancing issues will not be addressed by patches but a new iteration e.g. any fighting game from Capcom 
  • Do not buy any game that insists on agreeing to terms of service that damage your consumer rights, legal rights or change your ownership of the product into a revocable "licence" 
  • Do not buy any game if the servers are cut for a previous title within 2 years of launch e.g. pretty much any online EA game 
  • Do not buy any game that is published by a company that bans users for voicing opinions on the quality of a product 
If enough of us follow these practices the companies will feel it in their profits and will quickly adjust their marketing strategy, they want to prosper and will do what it takes to remain profitable. It takes having convictions, you don't need to consume anything in the gaming industry any terms of service of practices are there because we allow them to be there. There is one thing holding us back from this, excessive fan service for a developer, publisher or IP. Nobody HAS to buy any product in the gaming industry, it is an entertainment medium, this is an attitude that above all needs to change for the good of everyone. If you had to buy something on day one and were so excited to get it home and play the hell out if it I understand, we all do, we aren't dismissing your fan-hood or considering you as less than any other gamer but you are wrong, that shouldn't be the end of our conversation, it's the beginning.

If a production company has the rights to an IP you enjoy boycott it, even if it kills the IP off for good, something will come along to fill the hole left by nostalgia. If you love gaming or even just quite enjoy it you need, like with all things, a sense of proportion and discipline, without it the industry will soon reach saturation point where more and more people become excluded. Some people love that, that they have something that others don't, the problem with that attitude is firstly it's selfish and secondly it just goes to prove that you had to pay over the odds to get something, it's self defeating. We have already seen subscription plans for consoles being tested out in the US by Microsoft, if we don't pull the market back we will end up with a price plan like your mobile/cell phone or else be forced to pay outright for an inferior model. Even as I write this an article popped up saying there will potentially be two tiers of next generation box, a proper console and an "accessible, budget conscious machine for casual gamers." That isn't a good idea, it's an excuse to turn consoles further towards being the cost of a desktop PC which consoles have thrived as being the cheaper plug and play model that doesn't need upgrading until the next generation. Bit by bit what built this industry is being chipped away by people who don't understand their own market but do understand how to sell stuff to credulous people. The people who are sucking this industry dry rely on loyalty, you owe them none, they should be respectful to the people who buy their products.

Together we can make a difference.

Tuesday, 20 November 2012

AnarchistReview: Hitman: Absolution



About
Name: Hitman: Absolution 
Developer(s): IO Interactive
Publisher: Square Enix
Genre: Third person shooter, stealth
Players: 1
Online?: Yes (asynchronous) 
Platforms: PC, Playstation 3, Xbox 360
Platform used: Playstation 3

Review

It has been a long time since IO Interactive resurrected Agent 47 and unless you count the more polished version of Blood Money onto the Xbox 360 (and we don't) this is the first entry in the series to be made for this current console generation and with the impending launch of the next generation it will probably be the last.  Hitman was the IP that IO Interactive was built on and in many gamers their confidence in them may well have been shaken by the promising but flawed Kane & Lynch and it's ridiculously short and disappointing sequel.

It would be worth declaring an interest first of all, we are massive fans of the Hitman series.  Personally I have played every version and played them to death so in order to give people a reasonable idea of what to expect I will split this review into two parts (which we will be doing for all ongoing IPs in the future), for the series fan and for someone trying it out for the first time.
Alvin!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review for the fans:

First off here's an excuse to just stop reading, if you have been looking forward to a new Hitman game I don't think you will be disappointed.

The game takes the tried and tested formula of and adds a few modern twists that bring the series up to date.  The new graphics engine looks fantastic, the rag doll physics is less hilarious, the throwing objects for distractions is smoother, the NPC interactions are improved, the dark humour is still there (if a little diluted) and the shooting is more satisfying.

If you have been concerned by the Assassin's Creed style "Instinct Mode" then you can rest easy.  In the easier difficulties it works as a hint system, highlighting relevant NPCs, targets or objects as well as highlighting objectives and offering clues ("you could drug his coffee" for example).  In all but the hardest difficulty (which strips everything out including the HDD) the "Instinct Mode" allows you to avoid eye contact with NPCs who would be suspicious of that bald guy in Gary's clothes who just walked by.  This is a finite resource which regenerates in time, is regenerated by certain actions (i.e. subduing a guard and stashing his body) or not at all depending on your difficulty.

As you would expect the higher the level the guards become more numerous and more alert depending on the difficulty.  The different difficulty levels also follows on the tradition of changing the ability to save, the first three levels allow you to activate checkpoints that saves your progress (gone are the number of hard saves you can make) and the top two leave you on your own, as you would expect you are expected to play the level through in one run or not at all.
"Whoops, um, this officer? This is for gutting fish, here let me give you a closer look"
One enhancement to the mechanics cribbed directly from another Eidos IP Deus Ex: Human Revolution, namely the cover based stealth system, allowing you to stick to cover and quickly switch from one piece of cover to another which fits well, it shouldn't all be "knock out/kill someone, steal their clothes, hide the body, walk somewhere, rinse and repeat."

It's not all good news.  Depending on how you look at it the campaign is less of a Hitman game than previous instalments and more of a progressive narrative.  Previous games had you performing hit after hit with your signature arsenal leading up to an impending final boss, the story was always something of a secondary thing. *Minor Spoiler Alert* After the prologue you are on the run from the agency and you need to give up everything but your filament wire which may make you feel a bit cheated by the narrative, however there is something of a moment of cheer when you are reunited with your beloved Silverballers.  Also not every mission contains a hit, for example the second mission after the prologue is entirely an infiltration mission with the follow up being a long escape from the bungled hit.  It is clear that the logic behind this was that as a single mission it would be too challenging on the higher difficulties so early in the game but you can be forgiven for feeling pissed off at infiltrating the building, finding the targets room, crawling into a vent and the screen going black, mission over.  What?!?
"Hello? Police? There has been a terrible accident......"
The real joy of this game comes from the Contracts mode.  This gives you free reign to pick a level, target up to 3 NPCs as targets, set conditions, make the kill and send it off to your friends list and challenge them to match your skills.  This isn't just limited to your friends list, IO create their own as well as they have stated that they will pick the best public Contract challenges and make them accessible to everyone with full leaderboards.  Anybody who is a fan of the series remembers comparing their best run-throughs of certain maps with their friends, now you can go one better with what some have dubbed a deadly game of HORSE "I've just killed those three people with a single shot from a sniper rifle and escaped whilst dressed as a chicken, try topping that!"

I have heard some people going on about the basic character of 47 has been changed, that he has all of a sudden grown a conscience.  I'm not sure that's the case, I remember his church gardener days from Hitman 2.  Like all psychopathic people he is may appear cold to the outside but through the centre is an almost sickening streak of sentimentality for anything they identify themselves with most when the time comes to make a decision. In my opinion 47 has never been a hero and isn't a hero here.

Ultimately there is nothing here to put off a hardcore fan, everything I love about this series is retained and in most cases enhanced, although the single player campaign is more story at the expense of fun missions the Contracts mode makes up for that and gives this title the longevity to be played for years to come.

Review for the First Timers

If you have never played this series you may well be wondering what the fuss is all about.  Hitman was one of the first games to ever use rag doll physics back in 2000 and it's open level design was made the series a true evolution in gaming and joined Metal Gear Solid as iconic tactical action game.  It's hallmarks of being able to steal NPC costumes (and in later instalments stashing their bodies in containers), creative ways to kill your targets and lots of black humour stood it in good stead and all of these are retained in the original.

There are some things that this game has that flies in the face of what you might expect when measured against it's counterparts on the market.  The game is not designed to be forgiving, you should expect to reload games from the optional checkpoints (not available on the harder levels and there is no option to save) or from the very beginning often.  It is designed to be a stealth game not a flowing action narrative.  Sure, you can treat it as a cover based shooter but expect to have your ass kicked if you do and you won't experience any of the best the game has to offer.
Agent 47 - The cheerful life and soul of any party
The AI is more advanced than many stealth games, you will find yourself changing your costume often in order to move from one area to the next, I have seen reviews where they expressed frustration where they dressed up as say a police officer then complained that you were spotted by the other police when they were blending in.  I don't know what your initial reaction was to reading that but if it was "that's bullshit, in Assassin's Creed I can stand with monks and I am invisible" then take a second to think, these characters are designed to be on the look out for intruders, you waltz up dressed in the clothes that belong to someone they know, of course they will be suspicious whilst unrelated NPCs will ignore you.  As an example one of the early levels you have hotel guests, hotel maintenance, electrical contractors, hotel management, maids and mercenaries.  If you are a mercenary everyone in the hotel will treat you like the armed thug you are and let you walk about however you like, however come too close to another mercenary and they will know pretty quick that you have Steve's shirt on and he doesn't remember working with a bald guy and will get suspicious, if you don't get out his line of sight pretty quick he will follow you, blow your cover then try to catch you then sound the alarm (depending on the type of NPC they will start shooting).

The game is designed to be played tactically, you have multiple routes and multiple methods.  The difficulty levels are designed to ease you into the way of playing the game.  The "Instinct Mode" which feels a lot like Assassin's Creed's "Eagle Vision" or Batman's "Detective Mode", in the easier difficulties it will show you what you can interact with, where your target is and where the guards are and their path through the map, as you go up the difficulties the access and functions of this mode get disabled until all you have is the finite ability to turn your head away to avoid suspicious glances.  The game is also designed to be played over and over in different ways which is why the accumulated level bonuses are sometimes contradictory e.g. go through the whole mission in your suit and wear X costumes or multiple ways of dispatching your targets.
Keith Carradine plays the main antagonist (not pictured) clearly unconvinced by David's "suicide" he hires a look alike to go out for revenge with his gimp and blind sidekick
For multiplayer rather than going for PvP deathmatches they have developed a Contracts mode.  This allows you to pick any campaign mission, select up to three NPCs and execute them however you like, you can then set this up as a challenge to your friends to complete your challenge with the conditions you set.  It has a build in bullshit detector, by which I mean that you need to have completed the challenge yourself before you can post it so the only limit to the difficulty is your own ability.  As well as this there are some developer created challenges and they will be selecting the best from the community and providing them for public play with global leaderboards.

This game has a lot to offer but requires a little commitment to get used to the play style but when you can walk in, dispatch your target with everyone thinking there has been some kind of terrible accident you are playing the game the way it is designed to be played.  That said there are lots of ways in between, to achieve the Silent Assassin award in each mission you need to be a ghost who facilitates tragedy but that doesn't stop you being able to find a nice vantage point and shoot your target in the head and escape in the confusion or execute every guard you find.  All of these are ways to play but ultimately the game rewards you for playing like a cold professional killer not a maniac, collateral damage gets in the way of getting your job done.
Latex clad murderous nuns because.........um..........no we don't really know either but we do know it has and will continue to piss some people off
Ultimately this isn't a traditional shooting game nor is it at all like Assassin's Creed which people will be comparing it to.  The missions are fairly short puzzles with multiple solutions and you are encouraged to take your time and experiment, the excitement comes from the tension not the violence.  If you are looking for a fast paced action driven game that you can blow through and move on to the next one you should look elsewhere, otherwise this title belongs in your collection.

DLC, Online Passes and DRM

There is no DRM on this title, which is always good news.  There is an online pass which had stuck in our throat until they relented and made it free for all to download which earned this title GAA status.  There are a number of fairly inexpensive outfits and weapons that were available as pre-orders from different retailers.  This is a real negative for us, the idea of store specific pre-order DLC is really irritating, it is a cheap commercial trick to force you to use a certain retailer and also to force pre-order over day 1 or later purchases.  Thankfully unlike the Resident Evil 6 different challenge maps or the Robin DLC for Arkham City these costumes are fairy innocuous and don't really affect the game in any meaningful way and has been overshadowed to us by essentially removing the online pass by making it free to all.

Summary

Pros
  • Stunning visuals
  • Great music and voice-overs
  • Huge replay value
  • Wide range of gameplay options from casual to hardcore
  • Creative and satisfying online mode
  • Murdering a gangster with Fugu poisoned cocaine
  • Free online pass
  • I almost forgot Kane and Lynch 2 existed


Cons
  • Campaign too heavy in story at a cost of entertaining assassination levels (it feels a bit like you start part-way into the game, especially if new to the series)
  • Missed opportunity to include older missions into Contracts mode (A New Life or A Dance With the Devil from 2006's Blood Money would be favourites)
  • Huge numbers of NPCs and graphical details limits level maps to smaller than previous titles
  • Latex-clad killer nuns and some of the other darkly comic overtones are a shade too subtle and could be misrepresented as misogynistic
  • Retailer specific DLC
  • Having to wait 6 years for it


Overall: Great, an essential buy for anyone who is a fan of the IP or the stealth action genre and a strong recommendation to anyone else.  If undecided as the online pass is free you might want to consider renting first to get a feel for how you like our murderous baldy clone friend.

Monday, 19 November 2012

GAA - Hitman Absolution

Hitman Absolution has just done the impossible, going from pissing me off to making me damn happy.  The friendly courier has just delivered my copy of Hitman Absolution, after opening the box I found the bane of my life, an online pass.  For those of you who don't know the online content of the game is a mode where users can create their own hits from the games existing levels and post them online, sounds like loads of fun and as someone who has played the previous versions of the game over and over having the opportunity to vary the already varied levels in potentially thousands of different ways.



The game was shaping up to be fantastic value for your money if this kind of experience if your thing, it's certainly mine and that code potentially changed my feelings on everything.  Minutes after Tweeting this I found this short article that has stated that Square Enix has made a sensible decision.  After shipping the games complete with the online pass codes someone in the organisation has considered the current consumer backlash against this kind of penalisation against used games.  They have since decided to remove the cost to the online pass so it is available for obtain at no cost.

Congratulations Square Enix, for that you have earned yourself the second ever GAA status, I hope this decision is one you stick to for your future releases.

Did Square Enix chicken out on it's online pass?  The answer is irrelevant, ultimately  they made the right choice

Thursday, 8 November 2012

Announcing the first GAA - Anarchy Reigns

After announcing our MAC and GAA status a week ago we have kept an eye out for any titles or companies who have demonstrated any of the behaviours since that warranted being out first entry and we have one and we are very proud to announce it is for positive practices (don't worry we will be compiling a shit list and roll of honour from the last few months but we wanted to find an inaugural entry).

The Gaming Anarchist Collective's first GAA title and ironically it's titled - Anarchy Reigns



We have been keeping a fairly interested eye on the western release of Platinum Games' title Anarchy Reigns.  An online beat-em up that has 16 player brawls (yes 16!).  The concept is fairly simple, larger than life characters, many reappearing from Mad World  beating the hell out each other in a series of maps and game modes inspired from first person shooter games .  Notoriously punishing to first time player but contains no advantages to progression (no enhanced damage or health or unlocked moves) besides perfecting your technique which is something that Street Fighter X Tekken got wrong (Capcom, shove those gems up your ass).



There are plenty of reasons before today we were cautious of this title, the combat isn't as fluid as titles like Bayonetta (who appears as a DLC character available from the launch special edition), the offline campaign is laughably short (but then this is designed for online PvPvPvPvPvPvPvPvPvPvPvPvPvPvPvP), no attack cancel, inescapable throw animations and the difficulty involved in delivering a good beat-down when one of your opponents can come along and smack you in the back of the head.

With a release date only a couple of days before of the Ninja Theory take on Devil May Cry which is possibly the most polarising title in the gaming community I have ever known the publishers Sega needed to do something to make enough noise for people to take notice of this fairly obscure title (when you consider their other Q1 2013 release is Metal Gear Rising: Revengence, which from our hands on play of a couple of weeks ago, oh my God, this is the action game people are waiting for) dropping a month after.

The question is what did Sega do to promote their game? Announce a huge amount of DLC?  Insult anyone who has criticised the game? Create cheap publicity through some stunt? No, they slashed the price from the lowest I have previously found of £37.85 down to an RRP of £19.99.

That's right, £19.99, less than you would pay for a second hand copy of the anniversary release of Halo in Game.  That offers terrific value for money and even if, once we get our hands on it, we aren't blown away by the game we are proud to hold this title up and say it is the first holder of the GAA status.  I truly hope this title is a success for both Sega and Platinum Games so that the industry can sit up and take note.  Just charging a standard premium price for a game, irrespective of longevity or quality is an insult to your customers.

EDIT

As an update to this story our favourite online retailer Shopto.net is offering this game at the even lower price of £17.86.  Available for preorder here

EDIT 2

As another update amazon.co.uk are going one step further and offering the game at £15.32

Tuesday, 6 November 2012

AnarchistRant: Halo to the Christmas hype monster

The release of Halo 4 along with Assassin's Creed II signals the rush towards the Christmas season of huge blockbuster releases.  If you are like some of us and are a day one purchasers you can expect your wallet to take quite the bashing this month.  Not including the re-release of already successful products like Mass Effect Trilogy and Saint's Row 3, Batman Arkham City (the latter two represent better value than the original and make for essential purchases for those who have interest and haven't already picked up) there are some huge releases this month. Most of the key high profile releases with the biggest followings are listed below (by release on the first platform):

2nd November
Assassin's Creed III
Need for Speed: Most Wanted
WWE '13
Football Manager 2013

6th November
Halo 4

13th November
Call of Duty: Black Ops II

20th November
Hitman: Absolution

23rd November
Lego The Lord of the Rings

30th November
Wii U console + launch titles
Far Cry 3
Zone of the Enders HD collection

This doesn't take into account the numerous cash in games like Little Big Planet Karting, Avengers Kinect, Zumba, Andrew Lloyd Webber sing & dance along which will no doubt be average to poor which are purely designed to take advantage of well meaning Christmas shopping.

With the average price of these games around £40 in the UK if you wanted to get your hands on the big games of the season you would be looking at a whopping £400 this month not including the new Nintendo console (£250 for the most basic model, not a bad price to be fair for a new console launch with the premium bundle packs  with one game coming in at £330).  Ouch, unless you have a health bank account or family happy to spend a fortune on you during the holiday season people are going to have to economise.  That doesn't even cover some of the big Christmas gift games like Fifa.

With advertising for some of these titles beating you about the eyes and ears all day every day (Halo, Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty being the key offenders who have been pushing their new title for what seems like forever) so you can be forgiven for being swept up in the Hype.  

Most of these games aren't an unknown quantity, if you are fans of the franchise or genre you are unlikely to be disappointed with the products but do you NEED them immediately?  For some of you the answer will be a resounding yes, at least for a few, highly competitive on-line players of games like COD will feel a desperate need to get on the leaderboards early otherwise they will be forever be left behind.  

Taking the example of COD the question is with Modern Warfare, World at War, Modern Warfare 2, Black Ops and Modern Warfare 3 still swelling with 30,000,000 players of the franchise is it likely that you will either be the global number 1 or be short of players in the earlier iterations? Even someone who has every COD released to date (and I do) it is fair to say they have not significantly changed to the point of making the earlier versions redundant in terms of fun or visuals.  Not to mention that this current model has done a great job of turning a great single player experience into little more than a few hours worth of tutorial for multiplayer and none of the production values or voice talent will convince me otherwise.  I can say for experience that if I look at the accounts of people of my friends list very few of them even touch the single player campaign in the first week or release where I personally experience the narrative of the story, feel short-changed with the length and depth of the experience so play multiplayer to get some more life out of the title only to get my teeth kicked in by the online community.

The fact of the matter is that some of these games are shown to be or are sure to be good, in some cases really good, although reviews aren't necessarily anything to go by you are unlikely to see anything below an 80% average for any of them.  Not bad at all, a rating like that pretty much promises you a game that will at least be enjoyable to most gamers whether you like the genre or not.  As of right now Assassin's Creed III is sitting at around 85%, Halo 4 at 87%, Need for Speed at 84%, FIFA 2013 89% and WWE '13 at 80%.*

If you are the sort of person who only gets games at Christmas or only want the absolute best here are a list of games that have been released in 2012 that have an average review score* as high or higher than the new high profile Christmas release titles mentioned above.
  • Journey
  • Mass Effect 3
  • Xenoblade Chronicles
  • Guild Wars 2
  • Trails Evolution
  • Mark of the Ninja
  • Borderlands 2
  • Dishonored
  • Xcom: Enemy Unknown
  • The Walking Dead
  • Max Payne 3
  • Darksiders II
  • Sleeping Dogs
These games are hardly hidden gems and some of them (*cough cough* Mass Effect & Borderlands) have some highly questionable DLC practices but it might be worth considering that for those of you that don't spend much money on their gaming collection that there are always alternatives to the big titles of the minute. Not to mention that with the exception of Hitman, Zone of the Enders and Far Cry these holiday season launch games are sequels of games that were released in the last 12 months.  

Just look at Batman: Arkham City, as great a game as it is and as much as I love it if I knew that waiting a year would give me the game for a fraction of the price with all extra paid content included it would have been bumped down my list and I would be picking it up now instead.

At the end of the day shop around, do your research, have patience and be confident that any game publisher needs us far more than we need them.


*review aggregate obtained from gamerankings.com