Skip to the current generation of consoles and there was a short delay from Rockstar as they worked to give their series a more gritty, realistic feel for the modern era, leaving something of a hole in the market. This hole was rather conveniently filled by Saints Row, courtesy of Volition.

Saints Row carried on the tradition of presenting a fun-filled and action packed sandbox title with a slightly cartoony feel, and despite some graphical imperfections it proved to be something of a hit. Roll the clock forward five years and we are about to receive the third instalment, which promises to be a touch more polished and as much fun as ever.

At the recent Eurogamer Expo, Saints Row the Third was something of a big draw, and that’s not just because of the promotional girls walking round the show floor either. Saints Row has built up a pretty big following since it debuted on Xbox 360 back in 2006 and as a big fan I was quick to get in line.

Unfortunately, the console I used had no headphones, so I couldn’t follow the dialogue as the game opened into the initial level; “When Good Heists Go Bad”. I was, however, able to get a good idea of the gameplay and the visuals on offer.

This level sees you perform a bank job with three homies, rather surprisingly dressed as… yourself. You start off on the ground floor of the bank, with the customers following the typical orders of getting down. As you move to the counter, things take a turn for the worse as it seems the staff were expecting you.

It’s not long before the bullets start flying as you and your crew are faced with bank security guards and SWAT as you start looking for what, I assume, was the bank manager. Fortunately, you have unlimited ammo on a good variety of weapons; a pistol, rifle, machine gun and shotgun to make this possible.

Get ready to blow stuff up!

Targeting and shooting feels very familiar as you go into an over the shoulder view for combat. LT aims and RT fires, and you can bring up your weapons wheel as before to easily select any of the available firearms. Unfortunately, it seems that cover may be lacking again, which is a shame but overall it’s familiar and works ok.

You continue through the bank and upstairs, taking on more and more security and ducking behind tables as you locate the bank manager. You then have to detonate some explosive to blow the roof. Yes, you read that right: The plan is to airlift the vault out of the bank. Despite all the setbacks, everything appears to be going, more or less to plan. That is until you get to the roof and find a number of choppers, police and FBI gunning for you.

What follows is an insane shootout, as you bring down the choppers and mow down wave upon wave of SWAT team members, before managing to get the vault hooked up to the escape chopper, getting yourself on top of it and making your exit. Explosions and bullets rain down on you as you jump from side to side on top of the vault, continuing to shoot back at the FBI and Police, which is ultimately in vain, as you end up getting captured and the mission ends.

In a separate session of free roam, I took some of the cars for a spin round the city, completely legally of course, and can confirm the game keeps that arcade feel of the past games in these sections. Vehicles allow you to fling yourself around corners at great pace in a familiar fashion that the series has become known for.

Safe to say this episode will be just as mad as the others!

I also went for a quick jog with a giant green monster head on (courtesy of someone else) and the player animations seemed to be a bit smoother and more fluid than the previous titles.

With the short time I had with Saints Row the Third, it felt very similar to its predecessors, which for me, is no bad thing. The game carries a looks similar to those games too, but there certainly is some extra polish to the visuals. Gone are the glaring glitches where cars drop through road and bridges disappear as you drive across them.

I was gutted I couldn’t really hear the sound, as in the previous titles the speech has been one of the real highlights, offering some genuine humour that really adds to the experience. Alas this part will have to wait.

I didn’t get to play for too long but the demo has certainly done its job for me, as I am now even more eager than ever to get my hands on the third instalment of this thoroughly enjoyable series. Eyes on November 18th, then!

I remember reading about BMX XXX when it came out for PS2 and Xbox in 2002. I remember the controversy and the innate craving to play this game that had topless characters and unlockable stripper videos. Consequently, I didn’t get to play it when I was 14 years old, but now I’ve had the opportunity I can safely say that I missed out on absolutely nothing. Let me explain.

Wading Through Shit
At its core, BMX XXX is a terribly substandard BMX sim. The controls are ripped straight out of the Dave Mirra series, no surprise considering both games were made by the same studio, Z-Axis. Apparently, due to poor preview reception, the devs decided to ramp up the controversy in the hope that it would in turn ramp up the sales. It didn’t work, but it did get the game a lot of attention. Mainly for being shit and having naked ladies in it.

Everything feels like an afterthought. The control is terrible which is astounding considering the fact that its running on the Dave Mirra engine. How can a studio screw up its own control engine? The tricks are bland and awkward, grinds being the only thing that doesn’t take holding three buttons to pull off. The bails and connection control is worse than the first Tony Hawk title, despite that begin released in 1999 for the previous generation of consoles. Everything feels harder than it is, mainly due to the erratic bike control. You always seem to be going too fast and are never able to stop in time. As soon as you start peddling you’re going super-fast; fine control is impossible. This makes basic things like accepting tasks and collecting missed items a chore. Add to this the presence of smut, sexism and bigotry everywhere and you get an experience that’s like wading through shit; it’s bloody hard and you feel dirty afterwards.

Dog's humping and a guy throwing up?! This is so controversial I just have to buy this game!

Hexagonal Breasts
I might as well talk about it now. The amount of controversy rammed in this game could fill 100 GTAs and there’d still be enough left over for a couple of Saints Rows. The streets are populated exclusively by bums, prostitutes, pimps and fat, corrupt cops. They all seem to exist solely to get in your way and shout profanity at every opportunity. Rather than being a part of the setting (as in GTA) or an amusing parody (as in Saints Row), the dirt is used as a basis for everything. The first mission I came across involved taking hookers back to their brothel. No, seriously. All the while they’d be saying things like “Oh baby you can ride me any time” and “I wish this bike didn’t have a seat”. I’m actually deadly serious about that last one, if you can believe it. When you reach the brothel, you’re greeted by a pimp who says “Get in there before I cut you, bitch” to the working girl and “I will staaaab you motherf**ker” to you. Cheers mate, nice to know you appreciate me giving your lady a croggy home.

I see where they were going with it. They were trying to appeal to the hate-loving ‘gangsta’ types who thought that listening to Eminem and calling their roughish council estate ‘da ghetto’ made them tough. They were targeting the blokes who go to the pub every night to talk about football and stare at the barmaid’s tits, chuckling as they do, firm in the knowledge that they are ‘men’ and that’s just what ‘men do’. The problem is that the former group make up about 1% of the population of the UK and probably about the same percentage of the dedicated gaming community. The latter group don’t really play games, unless it’s FIFA or maybe a spot of Tiger Woods. They targeted a demographic who wouldn’t give two shits about their smutty, awful game.

Oooooh square boobs! The controversy is almost too much!

Talking of smut, it’s actually more hilarious than it is arousing, to no great surprise. Topless girls are all well and good, but when the graphics are so bad that every pair of jugs has angles and a point the reason eludes me. Did Z-Axis really think that we gamers were so depraved, so desperate for a look at the female figure that we’d buy a crippled, broken and unplayable game just because it had hexagonal breasts in it? I’m insulted.

Verdict
In fact, this whole game is one big middle-finger salute to the gaming community. Z-Axis obviously thought that by putting naked chicks and enough profanity to out-swear a cheap gangster movie that we under-sexed, under-appreciated, outcast and downright rubbish game geeks would lap it up. Well, f**k you Z-Axis. Straight up. The only people that this game appeals to are morons or those who are so addicted to tits that they get all hot under the collar seeing Lara Croft’s square boobs, completely motionless on her triangular chest right back in Tomb Raider 2. The game plays like shit, looks worse and sounds like a 13 yr old chav’s birthday party after mummy brought home some MD 20/20. Avoid it unless you like being patronised and treated like the guy who has a sly one in the porno theatre.

Neil’s Deals Best Price: £3.59 from Amazon

Christ this is getting worse. Let’s hope MTV Music Generator 3 will be a nicer experience when I look at it in the next instalment of Digging for Gold!

After sampling several games over the years that allow you to do this, I’m starting to wonder if developer’s can ever get this right. It’s not that I don’t get what they’re doing or why they add the systems in, but very few games seem to give me what I want. Critically acclaimed games that are on the market now that have moral choices included, don’t really show the potential of what could be. Let me explain.

The Mass Effect series are games that everyone who I know have loved and played. Within the game they allow you to choose how to react to some of the characters. Depending on your actions, it can alter the way your character interacts with who you are talking to. Overall this does give you a moral choice but towards the end of the game I was disappointed with the eventual outcome. Everything I said or did within the game always came to the same conclusion at the end of each encounter. The only thing it really did was to alter the responses and the options. Being good or bad didn’t actually change anything; I got the same information both ways, and neither way altered the game in the slightest aside from in the dialogue. I’ve come to the conclusion that this wasn’t a real moral choice at all, just a system that posed as one.

It was a clever way to mask linearity by providing two ways of getting to the same result. The only real moral choice in the game was at the end, how you react will then alter the next game, pretty lacking if you really think about it. Some characters will live and die but all the way throughout the storyline nothing actually affects this until the end. A character may reply to your abruptness by being a little disgruntled but in the end you always get the same answer. Occasionally, something does affect the gameplay marginally but nothing major that would make a big impact on the overall game itself. Just in case you are wondering, I wasn’t meaning both games played as a series, just each on their own. I know killing one or two characters in one game means they aren’t in the other, but that’s beside the point.

Fallout with its explicitness

The second game I want to look at is Fallout 3. Again if you have played it you will get what I’m on about. At certain times in the game you have to pick one of two sides, by doing this you directly alter the game. Take, for example, the beginning when you have to go to Megaton. When you enter a bar you are approached by a man asking you to blow up the city. You have three choices, you can agree and blow up the town, you can tell him where to get off and never bring the subject up again, or you can choose to tell him to get lost and inform the local law. I played this scenario several times over, just to see what happens if I did different things.

The first time I did it, I told the guy yes and set the nuke ready to blow. I wandered over to Tenpenny Tower and pushed the plunger resulting in destroying the whole town. That’s right, everyone that was in that town was gone forever. The second time I did it, I told him to step off and refused, then I did nothing. All the characters survived and nothing else happened. The third time I did it; I said no and then informed the law. I followed the lawman up to the bar and he confronted the man, a fight broke out and he was shot dead, I killed the assailant and then became a hero, given a place to live by the town folk and approached by the guy’s son to be thanked for avenging his father’s murder. I thought to myself “hang about, let’s replay the third scenario again”. Again I went through the motions and did the same thing again, this time when I went up to the bar and watched the same thing happen again, as soon as the man-made motions to pull out his gun, I hit the vats button and quickly killed him to stop the lawman from leaving his son fatherless. This time I was thanked by a shocked lawman for saving his life and I still I got the reward from the town people. Every single thing I did in this one instance directly altered the game one way or another. If I saved everyone, I still had both Megaton and Tenpenny Towers left in the game. If I chose to get rid of Megaton, it was gone permanently, same with the characters. Still, with all that I could do, I still felt that it was lacking.

Games like Grand Theft Auto allow you to run around with a bazooka killing anyone in sight, the problem being that nothing you do affects the game. There are no consequences for your actions. You die and wake up in a hospital or you get arrested and spawn by the nearest cop-shop. You can choose to not be Ted Bundy, but it makes no difference either way. You decide to sleep with a prostitute afterwards you decide to kill her; you get your money back that’s about it. It’s not really a moral choice because morality is knowing that there are consequences after taking an action, whether it be good or bad.

Mass Effect is as linear as they come

What I wanted to be able to do is not just effect a game on a dialogue or on a physical way, but to be able to do both and more. In real life when you talk to someone, if you call them an asshole, chances are they will more likely not talk to you again. If you attack someone they will more likely fight you back and if you kill someone you can’t take that back and will end up arrested serving hard time in a place you wouldn’t really like to go.

The next evolution of moral choice is something that I look forward to. Imagine a game that if you speak to someone in the right way, you get a different response. If you are aggressive then they won’t talk to you and spend the remainder of the game avoiding you like you have bubonic plague. Killing an in-game character will mean they won’t exist and doing so has serious consequences much like in real life. Sleeping with the wrong type of prostitute will make you contract a sexually transmitted disease. Finding a nice woman and marrying her won’t give you a dose of the clap, but choosing to have a baby will also affect the rest of the in-game world. Opting to wipe out a town will mean that other towns will not allow you entry or try to kill you on sight. Every single thing that you do whether it be deciding to do a paper-round or refusing to take on a quest of epic proportions, changes the outcome of a game entirely. Being good or bad in any capacity changes everything that happens to you later on. Obviously there has to be some sort of story, otherwise what’s the point? However, getting through the story won’t be as much of a straight line and will have a lot of choice and variety along the way.

Like real life, things happen that affect the outcome of what choices you have in life, this in turn determines how life will pan out for you. Fate isn’t set in stone and a good game world should always have several ways to accomplish something; each resulting in events panning out differently. I don’t see why things like moral choice in a game can’t directly affect how a story will unfold or if it will at all. Maybe it’s too much of a tall order but game like Fallout are already halfway there, let’s just see who decides to go the whole hog first. As always, I’m sure that some of you will agree and disagree with my views on this, and I’m sure you will let your opinions known.

The Crackdown 2 demo on offer on the Xbox Live Marketplace lets you complete several objectives and explore the city as much as you can within a thirty-minute time limit; so no dithering around, lard-arse. It also features seriously sped up ability levelling, so you’ll be evolving faster than Charles Darwin on steroids. If you’re feeling lonely, you can also play it co-op with friends online, as you’ll be able to with the full game.

From the looks of the Crackdown 2 demo, not much has changed, which is mostly a good thing. The core gameplay is practically intact, and all in all the game has a very similar look and feel. This time round there is an extra layer added to the gameplay, and that is in the form of… zombies! You can just imagine the developing team sitting round a table and thinking, “Hmm, what component is guaranteed to make games even more awesome?”. As a result, during the daytime you will be crime-fighting in the usual manner, but at night you’ll have the zombies (or freaks, as they are affectionately called) to deal with. This definitely makes the gameplay more dynamic and varied.

In the demo, there are two types of objectives to deal with; one for each of the types of bad guys you’ll encounter. For the living, you have zones to clear, and then call in an Agency chopper to secure the area. For the previously living on the other hand, you set about eradicating them by capturing modules that power up a massive UV machine, as just like vampires the ‘freaks’ are sensitive to light. The objectives on show here aren’t particularly inventive; it’s just ‘kill bad guys then press a button on something’ for the most part.

Reminiscent of crowd control at the average Millwall football match

I have to say I did miss the original layout of missions, that bared a very strong resemblance to Mercenaries; attack the enemy strongholds and assassinate a key leader to gradually weaken the gangs. Whilst not very original, I found it more interesting. To be fair though, just because these types of missions aren’t in the demo, doesn’t mean that they won’t be in the full game. Similarly the weapon choice is slim, generally coming down to either ‘rapid-fire shootah’, or ‘pump-action shootah’. There is the interesting addition of the UV gun however, which annihilates the undead, but is little more powerful than a blast of air to normal people. If there are more inventive weapons like this in the full game, you’ll have a useful and engaging arsenal.

It is slightly irritating how you are plonked straight into the action with no idea what’s going on, as the story seems even more vague than the original. The link between the gangs and zombies isn’t explained (unless I missed it), but for some reason the gangs do their best to get in the way of you wiping them out, only to get their heads snacked on as soon as they encounter any. Undead and ungrateful.

Some aspects of Crackdown 2 from the demo appear a tad clunky. The controls are decent for traversing the city on foot, but the shooting mechanics can be very hit and miss (literally), and whilst driving is probably improved from the first iteration, it can still be like a five year-old bumbling about in a supercharged Little Tikes Cozy Coupe at times. The AI is left wanting also; the first time I called in the Agency ‘Peacekeepers’ after clearing out the area of enemies, they saw fit to gun me down as a thankyou, despite me never laying a finger on them. The graphics were also never spectacular in the original, but in Crackdown 2 they are definitely disappointing, with muddy and bland textures all over the place.

For those who used to love torturing ants as a kid

I have definitely laid down the law on the Crackdown 2 demo, but don’t let this fool you into thinking the game is totally out of order. Firstly, I didn’t particularly like the structure of the demo, and it took me a couple of playthroughs before I got to grips with it more. The time limit imposed for the demo is also a nuisance in a game of this ilk, where you’d much rather be arsing around blowing things up or exploring the city than rushing from objective to objective. I generally get the feeling Ruffian Games aren’t showing us all there is on offer here (at least, I’m hoping so), and that there will be many surprises in store for those of us who cough up the cash for the full version.

That said, I’m disappointed that some issues with the original haven’t been more improved on, and that there’s a lack of innovation evident at least from this demo. The game is still, however, a great laugh and full of the same action-packed fun of the original. I won’t be pre-ordering it, or taking a trip to the shop on the release date, but I’m definitely still crossing my fingers and holding my interest on Crackdown 2 after playing this demo.

Bad publicity is still publicity
Keith Vaz, Kevin McCullough, Jack Thompson, The Daily Mail; despite being ill informed imbeciles the gaming industry owes these guys (and many more) a great big hug for the way they’ve selflessly promoted the market. “Xbox 360 gains sentience and cripples decorated war hero”, “Sonic the Hedgehog promotes bestiality” and “Gary Glitter: I was normal before I got a Wii” are all (in some universes) genuine headlines that have attempted to degrade the reputation of games as a viable platform for artistic expression. Of course the only thing these lobbyists have all succeeded in is doing the exact opposite, with the games in question receiving a popularity boost in a similar manner to the way that Vernon Kay is now regarded as being actually newsworthy.

Rockstar Games have undoubtedly benefited the most from these unintentional plugs, and it’s fair to say that they know exactly which mass media buttons to press. The GTA series can certainly walk tall based solely on its technical merits, but that can’t be said for the Manhunt series which I imagine would have fallen under the radar completely if not for the hysterical reaction to its gruesome content. Manhunt’s appeal was that it was breaking the boundaries of acceptable levels of violence in such a way that gamers across the globe were buying the game out of  sheer curiosity rather than based on the game itself. That’s not to say that its necessary to go looking for trouble however, since the global media will regularly manage to  find something to have a good old fashioned “It wasn’t this way in my day” campaign, regardless of minor details like factual accuracy.

Not so interesting now is it?!

While Mass Effect was already doing pretty well for itself with rave reviews from all sides, it received a welcome publicity shot in the arm through the frankly hilarious over-reaction from Fox News and Kevin McCullogh which was utterly convinced that Bioware’s space epic was in fact an unrelenting interspecies gangbang with an error ridden article with concluded with a sentence that will (and deservedly should) stick with him for the rest of his days:

“With it’s “over the net” capabilities virtual orgasmic rape is just the push of a button away.”

This showed that he not only completely misunderstands the nature of technology at large but a distinct lack of evidence that he had ever actually played the game. Even though the realisation that he had based an entire opinionated article on a completely fictional concept forced a prompt public apology, the media furore had already ahcieved the desired effect from Bioware’s perspective. Though thousands of extraterrestrial nipple hunting teens would have been disappointed at the sight of a mere blue side-boob I have no doubt that Mass Effect would have shipped a considerable number of copies based solely on the promise of being able to… well maybe you should take this one, Kev:

“hump in every form, format, multiple, gender-oriented possibility they can think of…”

Indeed.

There are occasions where bad publicity can have a plain and simple damaging effect on your game however, which Electronics Arts found out using a marketing ploy that only they would have the balls to even briefly entertain, never mind pick up and run with. Considering the biblical nature of Dante’s Inferno (as well as including an achievement for killing non-baptised babies, how the hell did that make it in!?) you would expect religious protestors to descend upon the game’s development studio with great haste. Well not quickly enough according to EA, as it came to light that a group of protestors kicking up a fuzz at E3 about the game’s religious context were in fact hired actors, with EA themselves picking up the bill. With a false website and reading material to back up this “unique” viral marketing campaign, EA must have thought that they had covered all of the bases. Until the next day that is when the entire thing was unveiled as a farce, and we all went back to vocally regarding EA as a shower of unscrupulous suits who live in volcano lairs and set our hard earned cash on fire to light their gargantuan cigars. Bastards.

Get yourself meme’d
The internet is a phenomenally power marketing tool and it’s very rare to jump into any gaming website without your screen being filled with the latest God of War 3 or Wii Fit propaganda, which is more often than not implemented with the subtlety of an Activision rep throwing a Call of Duty branded brick at your head. It’s not just the shady contracts between publishers and reviewing sites that gets people talking though, with a game that is worthy of being subjected to the meme treatment essentially doing all of the work itself, for better or worse.

If you can include any kind of glitch, hammy acting or moment of awkwardness in your pre-release footage you can bet that it will have been recreated, re-imagined and redistributed within hours of it entering the public domain. The E3 presentation of Genji 2 for the PS3 reached hilarious levels of stupidity and as a result the phrase “Giant Enemy Crab” is jokingly referenced across the industry, from Viva Piñata to World of Warcraft. While the producer of the game excitedly revealed that the game would be full of genuine historical battles from ancient Japan, footage of the infamous Giant Enemy Crab filled the screen behind him, leading to a few confused attendees frantically checking their history books, while the rest of them simply soiled themselves laughing. The situation was compounded as innovative new features such “real time weapon changes” were unleashed on the unsuspecting audience. Despite the obviously embarrassing consequences, the farcical press conference put Genji on the map in an unprecedented fashion, although I don’t think many publishers would go employ that particular marketing plan too readily.

Be a tease
Sometimes when it comes to building up the interest in a game, less is more. A well placed teaser trailer for your upcoming game can get the masses salivating at the mouth before you’ve even written a single line of code, particularly if you’ve already established your brand. Take the Mass Effect Teaser trailer as an example. It consists of two core elements, the first of which is a brief recollection of the many glorious achievements you as Shepard had heroically performed in the first game, followed by the useful tidbit of information that he’s dead…

I’m sorry what? Commander Shepard, who I spent slightly north of fifty hours levelling up has died within a few months of me turning my back? Why is that Geth wearing his armour?! I have too many questions, someone take my money so I can find answers! PLEASE!! Ok, that reaction was certainly on the more vocal end of the spectrum but it got people talking in a way that never really died down until Mass Effect 2 hit the shelves, with hype hitting fanatical levels as each character in Shepard’s suicidal space opera was gradually drip fed to us.

Where do I pick up my cheque?

Not that drip feeding information has a detrimental effect on the hype surrounding a game, with many publishers rightly making the decision to release as many trailers that tell us absolutely nothing for as long as they can. In the same way that gory scenes in horror movies are most effective when left to our imagination, the number of people attempting to hopelessly dissect a game trailer increases as the level of tangible information that the trailer provides begins to drop. The recent trailer for the next title in the Ghost Recon series, Future Soldier, encapsulates this pretty well with the fifty second video telling us that it’s set in the future and some people will be invisible. Do we know who we’re fighting? Where this conflict takes place? Why the US Military have gone all Predator on us all of a sudden? Hell no! Does that stop the gaming community shouting their support or distain at the tiny morsel of information they’ve just been fed? Of course it doesn’t!

There’s no doubt that I’m only scratching the surface and some of the larger franchises have probably already implemented new advertising techniques that us simple gamers would never even consider. Where does the pre-release hype machine go from here though? Subliminal messaging perhaps? For all we know, every minute that we play the latest FIFA or Call of Duty could result in thousands of unnoticeable commands being hardwired into our minds.

Fortunately my mind is protected from any such ~ BUY ARMY OF TWO ~ attacks and as a result I’m impervious ~ FOOTBALL MANAGER IS YOUR FRIEND, GO TO IT ~ to any such suggestions…

The matter of sex. Sex in games. In-game sex. In-game nudity. Penises. Penii?! Well that is a perennial debate so I will shy away like so many chaste maidens from that particular issue.  More accurately, the portrayal of sex in games and why it’s so controversial when it is portrayed, despite the utter saturation of it in other mediums.

The Lost and Damned, whilst developed by an (aptly-named) studio who already have a good pedigree in controversy, managed to shock, delight, confuse many with its cock-sure depiction of a male member (of congress, no less). With The Ballad Of Gay Tony, the closing chapter of the GTA 4 saga dealing in part with another aspect of sexuality, Rockstar are certainly one of the few developers not afraid of raising a few issues about sex and sexuality, and it’s these I’m interested in.

For one, if we, as a community of gamers wish to be granted ever-more respect by the mainstream media, we must, as a rule, respond to issues of sex and nudity in a mature fashion. I don’t wish to imply that people are not, just that it is an important foundation to lay. We must be able to enter into a dialogue about sex in games in the same way as developers must be able to depict it in such a way as to facilitate mature discussion. Now, Japanese developers have a vivid history of sex games, but cultural differences abound; I’m talking about the way forward for a western audience and industry. What have we learnt from Hot Coffee, J. Thompson, blue aliens and japanese dating sims?

"Let's get it oooon..."

Mass Effect spawned an absolutely hilarious reaction in the media upon its release (if you somehow haven’t seen it before, it’s absolutely hilarious how ignorant some people were about it…)

Aside from being laughably under-researched (my favourite line is ‘the ability of players to engage in graphic sex’) the feature linked above highlights all that is wrong with the interaction between the mainstream and video games. Especially surrounding the issue of what is, ultimately, no matter how many different religious groups believe otherwise, a perfectly natural act. Again, fun as it would be, I’m not offering a diatribe against either Fox (Megan or the TV company), the media, religion, your mum, or Bioware (the twisted, predatory corrupting influence that they are). This video is timeless, but seems especially relevant once again as Bioware are set to release Dragon Age: Origins, a game that we’re told (or perhaps warned) has a good deal of on screen hanky panky.

Yeah, this looks like fun...

Let’s cut to the chase: I propose that the only way we are going to make progress in the matter, is for more games to have sex featured in them. The problem is how to present it. The power of suggestion is as powerful as ever, and to my mind the sex scene in Mass Effect is both tasteful and effective. ‘Sleeping’ with hookers in Grand Theft Auto is not tasteful but it’s certainly not offensive or gratuitous. So far so good. Let’s take a look at a few more examples.

Sex in Fallout 3 is possible but inconsequential, unrewarding, and ultimately pointless from a gameplay or narrative perspective. A non-committal depiction shall we say. Fable 2 takes another interesting approach by letting you only hear the act of coitus. If you’ve played Fable you’ll also know that having a child is amusing but again, ultimately a gimmick; I call this a morally neutral stance. Both are fine, but one is sincerely lacking in ambition to drive the matter forward, understandable after the fiasco that the ratings boards conjured over the naming of in-game drugs

Where is the sex that adds to the drama? Think about the potential of sex scenes in films and literature to really evoke emotions, to create powerful drama and motivations between characters. How games developers, backed into a corner by ratings boards and neurotic censorship endorsed by a morally perplexed billboard society continue to shy away from a responsible yet vivid depiction of all things sexual baffles me.

"That is one massive penis".

I’m hoping that Heavy Rain, the TIMJ hands-on preview of which you can read here, with its ostensibly ‘life-life’ portrayal of a believable scenario will feature a real, bar-setting sexual event or relationship. If games are ever going to cross over the threshold from entertainment to art-form, from wasted artistic potential to responsible medium of expression, we all need to get virtually laid a little more.

In all honesty, they could have been forgiven for lying back and watching the money roll in after GTA 4 was released, but ever the workhorses they announced two Xbox 360 exclusive DLC packs were going to be released. The Lost and The Damned was released to equally positive reviews back in February, and now The Ballad of Gay Tony completes the saga. A lot has changed since GTA 4 first came out, so there was always a danger that the expansion packs could come across as dated as unnecessary. I was on the case to find out what’s new in the more flamboyant side of Liberty city, and whether it would be worthwhile to make a return visit.

The horse was Falkirk Boy in case you were wondering, not that the useless mare ever won me anything.

This time… it’s FABULOUS
The Ballad of Gay Tony still takes place in Liberty City, but shifts the perspective from Niko Bellic to Luis Lopez, a business partner/gun toting enforcer for Tony Prince, aka Gay Tony, who runs a successful chain of nightclubs in LC. However, things start to spiral out of control for Luis pretty much as soon as the game starts as Tony gets involved with some unsavoury characters, leaving Luis to clean up most of Gay Tony’s many messes.

The strength of the GTA 4 and The Lost and the Damned in terms of storyline was the broad range of quirky and funny characters, and I think that this installment tops them both in this element. Like Niko, Lopez is a loyal and likable protagonist, which is quite a relief after having to play as Johnny Klebitz, who came across as a bit of an unbearable douchebag in The Lost and the Damned. Gay Tony is another great addition to the catalogue, and the relationship between him and Luis is really funny to watch. It’s not just the protagonists that get all the limelight though, almost every character, no matter how small an appearance they make, is fantastically thought out, voiced and animated. My personal favourites are Brucie Kibbutz’ older (and much, much shorter) brother Mori, as well as Yusuf, who is voiced by the briiliant Omid Djalili.

"Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just ple...oh, it IS a gun?"

The Ballad of Gay Tony also contains a few missions that cross over with the narrative of the original GTA 4, as well as The Lost and the Damned. It’s done very well and it’s really cool to see the different missions from another perspective; they fill in a lot of unanswered questions, particularly concerning one of Niko’s biggest enemies. Overall, I was very impressed with the story; I thought Gay Tony in particular was a surprisingly sympathetic character who stole every scene he was in. The glitzy, camp feeling of the story and dialogue is also a big departure from the other two installments which keeps things nice and fresh for the people who were getting a bit tired of the uber serious Niko and Johnny.

Bigger, bolder and a hell of a lot bloodier
A common complaint about GTA 4 from long-time fans of the series is that a lot of the more adventurous gameplay features from San Andreas had been dropped in favour of gritty realism. Well not anymore. Everything about The Ballad of Gay Tony just screams affluence and excess, from the sparkly pink menus to the selection of new game modes. The missions themselves are also a lot more explosive and varied. After about an hour of playing the game I had strutted my stuff in one of Tony’s nightclubs, played golf, had an epic shootout with the fuzz and had an exhilarating chase through a park… in a golf cart. While most missions still follow the “drive to objective, shoot the place up, run away” formula, they’re all  packed with so many set pieces that you’ll never find yourself hungry for more variety.

With Tony being the owner of two of Liberty City’s hottest clubs (Maisonette 9 and Hercules) it only makes sense that Luis gets the chance to venture into them during the course of the game. There are essentially two main elements to the nightclubs when you walk past the bouncer; work and play. While working security at either of the clubs you’re instructed by earphone to check out different parts of the club and look for trouble. Most of the time it just involved throwing out unruly guests on their rump but there’s often a special mission at the end of a shift where you’re called on to help out a VIP member of the club with whatever problem they’re having.

When it comes to having a good time, The Ballad of Gay Tony gives you three options; drinking alcohol, dancing, and… erm… drinking more alcohol. You can go to the bar for shots or have a rhythm based champagne guzzling contest with some other patrons, both of which will result in some Euphoria induced drunken wobbliness. It’s entirely pointless and will probably get old soon, but after watching Luis tumble down the stairs of Maisonette 9 for about the 100th time now, I still get a kick out of it.

Dancing is much more of a fleshed out mini game and comes in two stages. At first Luis will pick out a lucky lady to pull some shapes with, which you help him to do by trying to fill up a dance meter by moving the analogue sticks to the beat. To be honest, the way the dancing sections work isn’t very intuitive and it’s pretty difficult to tell whether you’re lighting the room up or stinking up the dancefloor. However, after you’ve filled up the dance meter, an old fashioned quick time sequence is played while the entire club partakes in an oddly choreographed group dance. Now, I’d like to get another perspective on this since it might be different in other places, but the only collaborative dance that goes down in the Scottish clubs that I’ve frequented was the Macarena, and that was at a push. The whole thing seems very High School Musical and is pretty awkward to watch, although the songs you get to listen to while it’s going on are pretty good.

Also making a return from the days of San Andreas is base jumping, which basically involves jumping off really high things with a parachute. Simple eh? Not quite, as each base jumping mission has different objectives, such as getting through checkpoints on the way down or landing at a specific spot. Falling through the air is really well done and pretty exhilarating, and it’s to my shame that I “neglected” to pull Luis’ parachute once or twice (read: Forty times *hangs head*) just to see what would happen (for the record, pretty much what you would expect). Even though it’s a fairly incidental feature it does appear naturally in a couple of missions, and the base jumping is a good addition to GTA’s slowly increasing list of cool yet pointless things to do. There are around twenty five challenges in total so they act as a good distraction in between missions, even if it’s just for sick bastards like me who enjoy watching people melt into the ground.

I couldn't get a good shot, so I had to make do with one of the more tame explosions

A more violent alternative to throwing yourself out of helicopters is the Drug War side missions, which involve you helping out your old pals Armando and Henrique from your time as a lowly drug pusher. Like the base jumping challenges, they’re entirely optional but well worth checking out even if just to listen to Henrique and Armando arguing with Luis and each other. The Drug Wars are pretty bog standard side missions that involve blowing stuff up, stealing stuff or shooting people, and it’s disappointing that sometimes entire missions, from the brief at the beginning to the conclusion, are sometimes replicated, even back to back on occasion. Overall it’s a more satisfying addition than the base jumping, and with another 25 missions to go through they’ll keep you occupied for a while.

As well as the new game modes, The Ballad of Gay Tony has seen heaps of new hardware been added to the already impressive arsenal. In keeping with the general theme of the game, pretty much everything is outrageously over the top. New sports cars, flashy suits, a fully fledged attack helicopter (which can be a bit fiddly to use, but is still satisfyingly destructive), subway cars as well as some very cool new weapons including a fully automatic shotgun that fires explosive rounds (possibly my favourite thing, in the world, ever, bar none). When you combine this new gear with everything else it really makes The Ballad of Gay Tony an impressive package.

There’s so much new content in every aspect of the gameplay that it’s impossible not to find something new to tickle your fancy, and it’s all been combined flawlessly to make for some very impressive in-mission set pieces. Not only that, but a new scoring system has been implemented with all missions that scores you on objectives such as damage taken and number of headshots. Once you’ve completed the game you can go back to every mission and try to get 100%, which really improves the re-playability. My only problem with this feature is that all of the missions will punish you for not completing a mission quickly enough. I like to really take my time with a game and try to get as much from the experience as I can, so I don’t appreciate achievements or objectives making  me feel like I’m being rushed.

Graphic scenes (No, not that kind. Well, maybe…)
The Ballad of Gay Tony uses the same game engine as GTA 4 and TLAD, so nothing has really changed in terms of how the game looks. That being said, the graphics engine still just about stands the test of time. The sheer scale of the city is still a technical marvel, and the fact that you can see all the way to the horizon just makes helicopter rides and base jumping all the more impressive.

It looks like some of the effects have been tweaked a bit, with explosions in particular looking spectacular (watching a luxury yacht capsize in flames is a good example of this). I’m still amazed at the quality of the lip synching in cut scenes; it’s frighteningly accurate and brings the brilliantly written characters to life, even if the textures can sometimes be a bit ropey. Visually however, the ace in the hole for Rockstar is the Euphoria engine, which makes conventional ragdoll physics look like they belong on the Game Boy. Despite it being used since GTA 4, it never ceases to amaze me just how fluid and realistic it looks. Watching people roll over the hood of your car, or trip and fall down a flight of stairs has never been so satisfying. The fact that it is prevalent in every part of the game, applies to every single person in the metropolis that is Liberty City, well that’s just gravy.

Tracks of Liberty City
While TLAD added new songs to the roster that catered to the hardcore and punk crowd, The Ballad of Gay Tony expands the soundtrack further, and it’s all about the disco beats. New songs have been added to K109, San Juan Sounds and Vladivostok FM, and they’re all great additions. There’s just something so… right… about speeding down the highways in the middle of an epic gunfight with some cheesy 70s porno slap bass to compliment it. It just fits in with the whole theme of the game perfectly, as much as listening to AC/DC while cruising with The Lost was in the previous expansion.

A few new radio stations have also been added, which lets you listen to reggae, chillout or 80s pop tracks, but unfortunately you can only get them with the Episodes from Liberty City disc. This strikes me as a bit of a bizarre decision really, as it punishes the people who bought TLAD when it was first released, since they’re obviously not going to shell out for Episodes from Liberty City when they already have half of the content.

Gang Warfare
The multi-player modes in The Ballad of Gay Tony have probably received the least amount of attention out of anything in the GTA series; the number of new game modes for online gamers totals up to zero, which is really disappointing since I enjoyed playing GTA online. Some of the game modes have been nipped and tucked a bit (the addition of kill streaks is welcome, but why did it take so long?) but overall there really isn’t anything there that will drag anyone from Call of Duty or Halo into the online world of Liberty City.

This contributes to what I thought was the biggest problem in the first place with GTA’s multiplayer, in that it has an extremely passive community. Since death-matches could take place in the entire city (although this has at least been rectified now), you would spend a lot of time just trying to get to a fight instead of actually fighting. Combine this with the fact that the GTA community was full of anti-social no-mic players and it made the whole thing very impersonal and dull at times. Since the multi-player is essentially the same thing, the problem remains and you’ll struggle to have any really memorable experiences online.

Buy it, try it or avoid it?
I’m not going to beat around the bush here, you should buy this expansion pack. The Ballad of Gay Tony is fantastic value for money, measuring in at just shy of 15 hours of gameplay (which is more than some full price games) you’d be crazy not to shell out the 1600 MS Points for it. It’s full of new content, including another brilliantly written story, but the gameplay is all familiar enough for fans of the original game to jump straight back into things. Even though the lack of development in the multi-player side of things is a shame, this is a very modestly sized DLC pack, with the scoring systems in missions a great way to increase re-playability. The Ballad of Gay Tony is a perfect way to end the series, both in terms of the narrative and the sheer quality of the game itself, and anyone who wants another little slice of life in Liberty City will be very, very pleased with this installment.

1. Taking note of security cameras.
(Game to blame: Goldeneye 64)
When walking around at the office block at work (or any building that has them for that matter) I always seem to make a mental note of where every single security camera is and what their field of vision would be. I have no reason to enter any building I frequent undetected, so why the hell do I do this?! I even had one instance of waiting for a mate to make a transaction in a local bank, only to find a security guard had been sent out to follow me on account of the fact I had been blatantly clocking all the camera locations and security features…

Best FPS Evaaaar!

2. Looking around suspiciously before entering a vehicle.
(Game to blame: Grand Theft Auto)
I don’t drive so this is really a puzzler for me, but should I end up in a situation where I need to enter a vehicle, I find myself giving my immediate surroundings one last conscientious glance before I finally get in the car. What do I think I’m going to see? That I’m being watched or followed? Checking for attackers? Snipers?! Not a solitary clue, but I still catch myself doing it.

I was only wanting a lift!

3. Secretly wishing I could shoot at gas tanks.
(Game to blame: Half-life 2)
As I sit here writing this on my lunch break at work, staring mindlessly out of the window wishing I was elsewhere, my not-at-all picturesque view overlooks an adjacent construction site littered with big propane tanks and diminutive gas barrels. It looks just like a plausible yet clichéd scene from a generic shooter. In a game and offered a view such as this you just know that you would be presented with a sniper rifle, and have the freedom to fire down upon your enemies using the various explosive and flammable tanks to your advantage. The explosive red barrel is a formula I’ve really come to dislike, yet given the right view it’s at the forefront of my mind, weirdness.

Exactly what I was thinking...

4. Tapping out a ‘Shoryuken’ on anything that resembles a joystick.
(Game to blame: Street Fighter 2)
Analogue sticks, d-pads, arcade machines in pubs that aren’t Street Fighter, Atari controllers, my phones trackball. You name it; if it moves like a Joystick I will give it the old ‘forward quarter circle forward’ without fail (well except on my penis… hmm…). This move is forever etched into my brain. I even find myself doing it whilst waiting for any game to load. Mind you it is a good way to get a feel for the robustness of any pad.

SHORYUKEN!

5. Dreaming about games.
(Game to blame: Braid)
This is the most annoying one. I buy a new game on release and chances are that if I get bang into it that very night, I’ll dream about it without fail. Maybe only certain elements appear subjectively, or I dream about the actual gameplay itself, or even applying real world rules to what I’ve played. I’ve had situations where I’ve been stuck in a game and have gone to bed frustrated, only to dream the solution and see it work the following morning. It’s scary what my brain does at the best of times, least not when I’m asleep!

A dream game...

While I wasn’t going into Prototype expecting the next GTA4, I certainly had high hopes for a game that seemed to be hitting the right notes in pre-release. So was this a successful Prototype, or do Radical Entertainment need to go back to the drawing board?

A tale of one man and his parasite
Prototype is a free roaming platformer/beat em up hybrid with some minor RPG style character upgrade thrown in to keep things interesting. You are placed in the shoes of Alex Mercer, a man who wakes up with the ability to change his body into any shape he wants, jump incredible distances and take bullets without much of a fuss. He also wakes up in Manhattan with no memory of his previous life, which you’ll spend the majority of the game uncovering.

The game has a pretty solid foundation for what could be a very interesting story. An amnesiac with inhumanly destructive (and awesome) powers wakes up on a surgeon’s table, and sets out to find out about who he is, how he’s capable of such feats of power and who is trying to hunt him down at every turn. Unfortunately, the narrative that’s built on top of those foundations is about as structurally sound as a papier-mâché scaffold, with sugar paper draped over it. Maybe that’s a touch harsh, but for most of the game, the plotline, characters or cut-scenes rarely venture above being half decent.

Man I look broody. Hey everybody! Come see how broody I look!

The main problem is the way that the story is told, every mission usually starts with a CGI cut-scene showing Alex talking to an unnamed soldier in the present day, talking about what’s gone on for the last two weeks. These scenes are visually impressive, but very short and really don’t do anything apart from set up the next mission. Don’t expect to uncover any shocking revelations. The scene will then flash to a point in the past, which is where you gain control of Alex, where you can either roam around the city doing your own thing, or head straight for the mission start point.

Once you reach the mission start point, an even shorter cut-scene is triggered, usually involving Alex’s sister Dana giving you the next direction to head. These scenes are over so quickly that they never involve any kind of character development and do very little to flesh out the back-story behind the game, although they aren’t helped by the appallingly hammy dialogue. The voice acting for the most part is actually pretty well done, but it’s the script itself which really drags most of the scenes down. Every line spoken by Alex is so similar to the last that you stop caring about what he has to say pretty early on. In particular his conversations with his sister Dana follow a very strict formula:

*Alex walks into the room, Dana is sitting at her PC.*

Dana: Hey Alex, have you seen this <event or person> on the news? Maybe you could find something out there that could help you find what’s going on.
Alex: <event or person>? This <event or person> could be the key to uncovering my past/getting revenge/saving <person who needs saving>, and I’m going to find out everything they know/stop them before it’s too late.

Fin

It’s clear that the scriptwriters were going for the broody, introverted anti-hero angle with Alex (I imagine other character names like Logan Dark and Sinister McMurderchops were banded about before they settled on Alex Mercer), and you have to at least admire their consistency, but it gets very boring after a few missions, trust me.

The actual story really doesn’t have that much in the way of content either, apart from the moment that you discover Alex’s true nature, there really isn’t all that much to keep you riveted. Don’t expect any plot-twists or unexpected revelations, because there’s none to be had. Which is a real shame, considering the developers were essentially working with a clean slate here, there are very few restrictions if even your protagonist doesn’t know who he is.