Alrighty then, boys and girls, it’s time for a blog post by an old art teacher of mine. I’m a big fan of his work and he was an absolutely excellent teacher, so give a warm Joypad welcome to:

Guest Blogger – Mr David Dunlop from The Art Classroom.

When Ross and I decided to swap and write posts for each other’s blog, I found it quite difficult to say something that Ross wouldn’t be able to. Being an avid Joypad fan, I’m always surprised by the amount of detail and passion that are squeezed into each post on the blog. I only hope that this post will live up to the standard and sit nicely within the rest of the Joypad posts.

After owning a PS3 or X-box for a number of years, you get to the point where you know a game so well that its playability or foreground objects or characters become second nature. The game becomes a habit and its elements become so familiar that you could probably play it with your eyes closed. Most players, like most non-gaming people, take their views for granted. They fail to see the complexity of the textured surfaces, the beauty of the backgrounds or the power of the landscape.

We are all guilty of becoming too involved in what’s in front of us, while missing what’s going on behind us or above our heads. We fail to appreciate that every little aspect around us has been designed and thought out… just like in a game.

I have played very few games, mainly because the effort involved normally takes hours or days to reach completion. It’s not possible to finish a game within a single sitting anymore, even if you’ve sat all day, it’ll be a surprise if you manage to explore even 10% of most games’ capabilities. Of the few games I have played, I have come to appreciate the very landscapes the games are set in, some of which are discussed below.

Fallout 3 was the first game I ever played on the PS3. Set in an apocalyptic future where the world has been nuked. I remember the feeling of leaving my underground vault for the first time and walking out into sunlight and the vast wasteland. The views were amazing, climbing to the top of a mountain and overlooking the never-ending landscape was just breath-taking. Fallen buildings, broken bridges, eroding motorways filled with rusted and broken vehicles, huge landscapes that even when viewed through a scope, disappeared into the horizon.

Grand Theft Auto 4 has attracted attention for all the wrong reasons. While on the ground you’ll be amazed at the incredible attention to detail, shop fronts, brickwork, posters and architecture. There is nothing more impressive than to steal a helicopter and fly over the city. Loosely based on New York, it’s probably the cheapest helicopter tour you could take and you’re also the pilot. While you’re committing that crime you might as well jump out of it onto the Empire State Building, or onto the Statue of Liberty. If you land on the right level of the statue you are able to go inside her body, climb up inside her and even view her beating heart.

For fans of Sci-Fi or horror, you won’t get a better game than Dead Space, it’s like you’re actually interacting in ‘Aliens’, the movie. The scenery and atmosphere are immense. It’s scary enough when your inside a metal casket floating through space being chased by mutated zombies, but it’s even scarier when you step outside that casket into the beauty and silence of the vacuum of space.

Last, but not least, is my favourite game of the moment. Modern Warfare 2 is not the greatest first person shooter there has ever been, but it definitely is one of the most realistic looking games around at the minute. Every time I play it, I feel that I have actually been in a conflict, it’s attention to detail is staggering. It looks dirty and war-torn, set in various troubled locations around the globe. The ‘Favela’ map in multiplayer is a beautifully rendered location set in Rio de Janeiro under the eyes of the Christ the Redeemer statue.

So, there you go, I’m sure there’s nothing surprising I’ve mentioned above, all I ask is that the next time you sit down to play for a few hours, don’t just think about achievements or kills. Spend a little time admiring the effort the developers have placed into the finer details and landscapes surrounding you.

1. Make a website

Making a website is simple, and if you just use a site like Freewebs, or indeed WordPress, free. It has the advantage of giving people the general impression of what your clan is about, what games your clan play, who’s in the clan, and guidelines for application.

2. Keep it simple

Limit yourselves to a few games. There’s no point trying to be the best at every current FPS. It’s much better to just focus on one or two games, and improve at those, rather than learning a new one every time it comes along.

3. Choose a decent name

Something simple yet memorable. Stay the hell away from names like “The Gods” because they make you look like big-headed idiots. Don’t ever replace letters with numbers or symbols, because it looks so dumb. What do you think is a better name: FR33L@Nc3R5 or Freelancers? Names like “Elites” or “Kings” are out of the question. Choose something along the lines of “Templars” or “Ghosts”.

4. Make your clan recognisable

Use a feature to make people recognise your clan, whether it be identical Titles in Modern Warfare 2 or similarly-coloured names in PC games. Even puting your name in [brackets] will make people realise that you guys are a clan. Even a similar styling to your names can help. For example, a group of people with names like [Spectre], [Ghost] and [Banshee] will seem to be part of a clan because of the brackets around the names, and the theme of ethereal creatures.

5. Be friendly

Being in a clan does not guarantee your superiority over other clans, anou rise d if you act all high-and-mighty, other clans are going to hate you. Being friendly will convince other clans that you’re people they want to play with instead of against. Forging alliances will help you rise in the ranks and get better-known.

6. Have some standards

I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want some curse-dribbling noob in my clan. It would bring the image of the clan down and convince people that the clan are all idiots, even if there’s only one. So be nice will on the mike, don’t grief, don’t camp and strictly no teabagging.

7. You are not the best

So don’t proclaim that you are. There isn’t really such a thing as the best clan, because there’s no official table for clans. You don’t know if you’re the best. Someone might say you are, but others will dispute that. If you’re claiming to be the best then people will get angry at the self-inflated a-holes in the game. So just… don’t do it.

So, I’ve been snooping around, and I now present my Top 5 Free Games for PC. Onto the list, which is numbered in no particular order.

Cave Story

Cave Story was written, sprited, programmed and designed all by one guy over the space of five years. And it was worth it. Cave Story is a “Metroidvania” title: a non-linear game in which certain paths can only be travelled once the correct equipment has been obtained. I’m personally not very far into it, but the gameplay is sublime, with some floaty physics, an upgrade system that’s directly linked to killing enemies and taking damage and some nice retro graphics. It’s worming its way towards the Wii Virtual Console right now, so get it for free and revel in its innocent delights.

Chzo Mythos

The Chzo Mythos is the point-and-click adventure game series by Ben ‘Yahtzee’ Croshaw. The series starts with 5 Days A Stranger, where you play a cat burglar named Trilby as he becomes trapped inside a haunted manor. Better Than It Sounds, honest. the sequel, 7 Days A Skeptic takes place on a spaceship, but thanks to an infuriating chase sequence, I gave up on it. Trilby’s Notes, the third game, is different in that it uses what we nerds call a ‘text parser’ instead of clicking. Notes is both much more violent and much better written than the previous games, bringing in elements of a grand H.P. Lovecraft-inspired storyline. The last game, 6 days A Sacrifice concerns a completely new character, but I haven’t finished that one yet, although I honestly don’t think Yahtzee will do a 180 here and drive the series into a ground. The only money these games will cost you is the money you’ll have to spend on a new pair of underwear.

Warsow

That’s a very abnormal title for a very abnormal game. You know, occasionally I get sick of running slowly around generic arenas trying to make out a game behind the brown haze it’s kicking up into my screen. That’s why Warsow is such as breath of fresh air. Officially still in beta, Warsow could make a tidy dollar if it was released commercially. It boasts a strange mélange of graphical styles: cartoony cel-shaded characters and weapons in bright industrial cyberpunk arenas. The gameplay is movement-based, placing a lot of stock on trickjumps and all those moves you know and love from the Quake series, but with a much nicer presentation and a genuinely enjoyable community. Asking for help in Counter-Strike will probably get you booted. Here you get given help.

Meat Boy

If there was any game that could convince vegetarians to return to the natural order, Meat Boy is that game. Control a chunk of meat on his epic quest to save his girlfriend, through dangerous, hazard-filled arenas. If he touches a saw blade, he’ll explode into clouds of blood. If he touches salt, he’ll dissolve. If he touches fire, he’ll burn. Everything in this game is out to get Meat Boy. But by god is it fun. Games can be frustrating in one of two ways: through bad design, or through tough challenges which you will growl at, then immediately try again. Meat Boy is of the second type.

TrackMania Nations Forever

You will get screwed over in this game. Whether it be by a sneaky corner, a labyrinthin track, or a jump that you have to be going at full speed to land, you will be screwed over. But you will keep playing, because this game is brilliant. It’s been out for a long time, and the community has produced some truly great tracks for playing online on. There are some servers where you can just mess about in skatepark-style zones. There are some with massive jumps, there are some full of short technical tracks, but overall, damn they’re fun. You know that feeling in Mario Kart when you’ve sliding round a corner, then someone rams into you from the side and knocks you into the lava? That doesn’t happen here, as each car is on their own time trial here, so if they come near you they’ll ghost right through you. It’s a small desicion, but one that has a monumental impact in one of the most addicting games ever.

Special mention also goes to Tribes 2, an old game released for free a while ago. Jumping around with a jetpack never ceases to be fun.

I’m writing the script for a web-based miniseries called Diary Of A Freelancer.

The show revolves around the daily lives of a group of characters who are all FPS gamers, in the title clan. They’ll come up against many different… things in their epic quest to do… nothing. Look, it’s all a bit sketchy right now. I only have two episodes written, but I hope for either an ongoing series or a couple of seasons at least.

Also, had a cool idea for machinima. I’ll just have to wait and see if Reach is better for machinima than Halo 3 to make movies with. Don’t want to begin writing anything just now in case I have to scrap it all if Reach turns out to be better or worse.

Argh, these wee bug thingies keep jumping up at me. What are those? They look like the larval form of alien insect. Probably because they most likely are.

Another larval form. In fact, squinting at it transforms it into the head of a floating goblin with cotton wool stuffed in its ears. Either way, these things are damn annoying, as they have a tendency to swarm at me in large numbers, and kiling one will replace it with another one. I’ve come to know them as Annoying B*stard Insect Larval Form Swarms. Or Bugs, for short.

…And the producer of the Bugs appear to be giant purple sacks of viscera. Icky. Actually, that raises the question, if the Bug spawner is made of organs and ickiness, what are the Bugs made of?

So of course Samus blasts it and its twin brother down with her eraser-laser. Hey, who needs Industrial Strength Bug-B-Gone when you have a gun for an arm?

Hooray, more missiles! Oh, I can’t wait to use these, I just love big boomy things. I’m a gaming pyromaniac. Uh, by that I mean a pyromaniac in games. Not a pyromaniac who plays games. Goodness no. Of course not.

I mean it. Stop asking.

Oh no. There’s rocks falling down. Wait, those rocks aren’t the same colour as the ones in the level. Where did they come from?

The big purple monster is back! Wait, earlier on I saw purple insect larval forms… This couldn’t be the fully-evolved form of those larvae? Because there were loads of those Bugs, and if every one becomes a giant purple rock snake… oh god, the thought’s terrifying.

Boom, eyeshot! As mentioned in Part 1, shooting the monster in the eye is the key to beating it. This is what happens when you shoot it in the eye. Doesn’t make much sense, really. I mean, surely being shot in the eye won’t make your whole body flash white? Because I don’t know about you, but when I get poked in the eye, I’m pretty sure my stomach doesn’t rupture and my a*se doesn’t explode.

Someone once said “Make love, not war”. Samus tries it, and gives the spiky monster a hug. It does not go well.

She finds that a missile in the cornea works better, though.

“Okay, sorry! I didn’t know! I won’t touch your spice again!”

“Hmm. Okay.”

Yeah, after that he just left. What, am I boring you, big monster thing? I apologise that I’m not the usual calibur of lunch, but as an intergalactic exterminator I have a job to do! And that job requires you to stay here and have a million new orifices melted in your carapace!

Ugh. Insects. Never happy.

I’d like to know how this works, actually. Is the tank an upgrade to the suit that reduces damage? Or is it full of nanomachines that increase stamina so that your health is greater? Or is it like Lucozade, where you’re so doped up on energy that it takes longer for you to realise that you’re supposed to be dead by now? The game’s answer to this is an emphatic “Why do you care!? You’re not supposed to be pondering the workings of the systems in the game, you’re supposed to be melting insects and blowing sh*t up!”

Samus sees a dragon-bug-eye-Ahriman thing and tries to avoid, not realising that there’s a lava pit nearby. I told her before this mission not to jump into the lava. I specifically told her that she wasn’t to do that, and she went ahead and did it anyway. F*cking women, eh?

A moment out to look at the map screen, and this genuinely worries me. In Fusion, you almost always had a full map screen, whereas in this you must discover it as you go along. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with entering an uncharted area, to be perfectly honest. Anyway.

Well, this room looks strange. For one, it isn’t rocky, it looks as if it’s actually been built. Oh, I’m excited! This kind of thing always leads to treasures!

It’s a… red door. Which has to be opened with missiles. That I don’t have. FFFF–

BZZT…INITIATING SCAN… SUBJECT APPEARS TO BE WEARING HIGHLY-ADVANCED POWER ARMOUR THAT HAS THE ABILITY TO CHANGE INTO A BALL… SUBJECT APPEARS TO HAVE A GUN FOR AN ARM… SUBJECT APPEARS TO BE A WOMAN.

RECOMMENDATION: WOMEN = DANGEROUS. DESTROY SUBJECT AT ALL COSTS.

The first thing Cavemind does to try and stop Samus is to place a ledge slightly higher than she can jump. With the promise of goodies above this point, Samus begins to get angry as she realises that she can’t have them. Never tell a woman she can’t have something. Learn from God’s mistakes.

I dropped to the bottom of the chamber, only to discover a red door. I feel this would be a good place to stop, and fill you guys with fantabulous wonderment about what might me behind the door.

Well, f*ck. I just realised that I forgot to create a new save state. I have to play all this bit again.

FFFFFFFF–

Anyway, onto the LP!

This is the title screen. It’s in space. For some reason.

You mean that we’re spending the whole game trapped inside dark rooms? I mean, I know that the NES had some limitations, and it was easier to display black backgrounds or whatever, but this is 2010 2004! Every remake nowadays expands on the original somehow! Don’t you think it would be interesting if we were allowed to see the kind of planet our heroine grew up on?

…And speaking of our heroine, Miss Aran is apparently an emotionless, dead-eyed f*cking ghost thing. Just a bit creepy.

And from the wierd-ass opening sequence, we’re dumped straight into the game. Jesus, gamers were spoon-fed back then. I’m less than a minute in and I already have the Morph Ball ability. Do you know how long it took me to get that in Fusion?

I would make an innuendo concerning that bottom line there, but frankly I’m above that. Plus, she’s a chick, so that takes away some of the humour…

To proceed I have to contort our armoured heroine into a ball and let her be grabbed by some big stone alien thing. You know, Samus’ power armour must be really advanced. Between storing all the different abilities and whatnot, it can mechanically reform itself into a perfect sphere for our heroine to roll around in. Halo, 40K, every other FPS of the last 5 years, eat your heart out.

Another one! I tried shooting it down a few times, but to no avail. How can a millenia-old statue survive lasers anyhow? I don’t care how advanced the alien technology might be, my suit is better! I can roll into a ball, for crying out loud!

Yet another one! This one’s different though! This lecherous old alien thing is holding his own ball! You shall grab me no longer, foul… you!

OK, I shot the ball and it contained a powerup. That’s strange, most balls contain–

GRAH! I will not yield! I will not sink to that level! For I am stronger than that! I AM HERETIC GAMER!! HEAR ME ROAR!!

Sorry about the outburst. I decided to dunk myself into lava to calm myself down.

My path is blocked by a freaky-deaky dino lizard monster Pokémon statue. I have a feeling that with the large amounts of alien architecture here, this is soon to turn into Alien. I mean, Metroid and Alien both have an overly masculine female lead trying to prove she can cut it with the big boys by gunning down everything in the room… the parallels are creepy.

I enter the next room and JESUS ON A STICK WHERE DID THAT THING COME FROM. I use my eraser-laser to melt its alien face off. Hahaha, girl power, b*tch!

SAMUS ANGRY!! And guys, as we all know, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Especially when she’s wielding an eraser-laser and wearing armour that can turn her into a bowling ball.

“Come here, daddy loves ya.”

“Oh, all right then. If it gets you out of my way, then I suppose it’s alright.”

“That’s what they all say, darlin’.”

What does this mean? I don’t know!

Ahh! A spider get it off! Why does this make any sense in game terms? She is wearing bowling ball armour and has a gun for an arm. Surely she can get rid of a tiny purple spider? Apparently not. Even in the future, women still have to get the nearest guy to trap the spider with a glass.

That Alien feeling is coming back again. At first I was going to make the obligatory Star Trek joke, but then I looked at it and thought it looked like a highly-polished cryo tube. Also, those amoeba doors really freak me out. In Fusion they were normal mechanical doors with coloured panels, not jellyfish that swallowed some neon lights.

Okay, when I took this, the whole room was shaking and there were loads of rocks dropping from the ceiling. Trust me to take a screenshot that has one f*cking rock in it. Ugh.

Samus is now a eraser-laser-using, missile-shooting bowling ball. And she still can’t get rid of spiders.

I tried this. Virtual Boy Advance controls are not suited for action-filled games like this. My fingers hurt when I tried it. It went away, then I typed this guff up and it hurt again.

What is this thing?! I was just walking along and these spiky walls erupted from the ground around me! Of course not. It’s a boss, clearly.

So I shot it a few times in its eye (the iris was a lovely shade of WEAK SPOT) with my missiles.

I… think I beat it. I shot it a few times, it retracted and that was it. Nothing else. It just left. No powerups, nothing. This game is messing with my head. I need to lie down. F*CK, A SPIDER!!

Stay tuned for Part 2!

Let’s Plays are essentially videos in which people play through the campaign mode of games, and recording themselves doing so. Usually this is done with a screen-capture program like Camtasia. Finally, the player’s commentary is layered over the game’s audio. I have a little policy on LP’s, I never play a game that I’ve played before, unless I’ve only played a minimal amount of the game. Other users of the channel may have varying policies, but whatever. So far, we have these LPs planned:

Deus Ex (PC) – Played by HereticGamer (That’s me!)

Pokémon Emerald (GBA, played through the Visual Boy Advance emulator) – Played by R.J. O’Connor (already on Youtube – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STH3wdD-ZZU&feature=channel)

System Shock 2 (PC) – Played by Xenotron, if he can get the damn thing running.

The Art of Theft (PC) – Played by The Spy

Halo: Combat Evolved (PC) – Played by Zac-049 and Lieutenant O’Malley

Fallout 3 (Xbox 360) – Played by (un-named at the moment)

The entire Half-Life series (PC) – Played by (this guy’s un-named too).

…And I plan on doing a screenshot LP of Metroid: Zero Mission for GBA. Expect the first update for that very soon.

Thanks guys, and as always, to the two of you who read this, spread the word. I mean it, I want you to tell everyone you know who may be interested in the slightest. Do it, and I shall shower you with gumdrops from rainbow-coloured clouds.

RPG Maker VX is a program created by Enterbrain to help bedroom programmers create their own RPG games. I must stress that these are just like JRPGs, and not the open-ended adventures that Western RPGs are. I’ve previously used RPG Maker XP, and while it has a better way to import resources, VX wins over it simply through the style.

VX has a cutesy chibi-like style, just like the old Final Fantasy games. It comes pre-loaded with 4 tilesets that are easy to mix and match on any given map, and comes equipped with an overworld map set, unlike in XP, where you had to fashion your own. It’s also substantially easier to import tilesets, as all you have to do is import them, set their passability and you’re off.

I’m rambling on, assuming that you know what I’m talking about. maybe you do, but for those that don’t I’m just going to explain how easy it is to make a game with VX.

One year ago, I wanted to be a game developer, but knew nothing about it, having had no experience with game development. Through creating a game with the XP iteration of this program, I learned a lot more. I learned about technical aspect like mapping, event, self-switches etc. I learned about how to sustain people’s interest through the game. Albeit, my first game was terrible to me now, and it only lasted about two hours, and no you’re not getting hold of it

I don’t think I can do this program justice. Of course, there are people who just use it to create fan-games of things like Zelda, but I consider these people time-wasters. No matter how skilled they may be, the fact remains that they’re using someone else’s characters and not their own. And characters are what drive a story forward, and using someone else’s exposes how bad these people are at creating characters.

But for every fan-game there are two or three well thought-out, original games. The creators are people who are in the same hobby as you, friendly and accepting of any criticism that may come their way. RPGs as a genre have almost died out, or become stale. The RPG Maker VX community is a place to get games that add something to the template each time, and these games are available for free.

If you’ve ever wished to create an RPG in the vein of Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest, you owe it to yourself to download it. The only things wrong with the program are that it’s only available for 30 days trial (luckily a dose of keygen sorts this out) and that the battle system is even worse than XP’s (which was nothing to shout about in the first place). But the battles can be fixed with a certain script, even if it does require a bit of modification (still trying to get it to work, admittedly).

Download it now.

Well, I feel that Halting State is video-gamey enough to review it. It’s set in Edinburgh in the near future, where people can slip on glasses, and through their phones, jump into a strange mix of LARP and MMORPGs. There are a few nice references in it, to an MMO called, simply, “Space Marine” and an MMO set in Ankh-Morpork of Discworld infamy. And look at the sweet pixel-art on the front. It smacks of awesome, especially as that bottom character is a sprite of Charles Stross himself.

The book is written in second person. I have never ever seen this before. My English teacher, with a PhD in the subject, told me that you should never write in second person because “it’s a load of sh*te”. But it works in Halting State. Halfway through the novel I  was wondering why the hell I was the main character. It was like the book kept speaking to me. “You enter the hallway, looking for a drink”, for example. Then I realised where I had seen this style of writing before.

Adventure games. It’s like this whole book is a homage to adventure games, with a suitably mysterious plot and lots of interesting characters, along with a nice setting.

The second person POV is suitably effective in Halting State, as first and foremost, Halting State is a mystery/crime novel. I have seen books which try and be mysterious, but ruin it through excessive omnipresent foreshadowing. in halting State, you unravel the mystery as the characters do. The constant use of “you” as a pronoun in the book draws you in, makes you feel like you are the main character. It’s incredibly immersive.

That alone speaks volumes of Halting State’s ability to enrapture. these are words on a page. There is no input from me, the reader, apart from to turn the pages. But Halting State is somehow immersive in ways that many games wish to be, and they fail to enrapture me in the same way by having things such as clunky controls or awkward interfaces. These are problems that books simply cannot have. You will never ever get a book and put it down because the pages turn strangely, or the typeface uses too many serifs for your liking.

The one main fault of Halting State is the technobabble. I mean, I love videogames and all, and I heard that Charles Stross worked as a code monkey before writing, but by Yevon does he let it show. The characters will often slip into uncharacteristically long monologues about how this universe is meant to function. I tried my hardest to make sense of these, but couldn’t, and just moved on. It’s terribly off-putting to the casual reader.

Overall, though, Halting State is an entertaining ride with a cool story to boot. It manages to mix many different genres together in one big melting pot, the most noticable being mystery and hard science-fiction, but with elements of crime drama, corporate thriller and cyberpunk in there as well.

If you’ve ever dismissed anything as being “too nerdy”, then what the hell are doing in my website? Get out! In all seriousness though, if you’re prepared to skip through reams of technobabble to find a good story underneath, then Halting State is £7 well spent.

One-Word Summary: “Technobabble…”

Overall Rating: 85%

I believe that games can be art forms. Not through graphics, as most games that try and be realistic end up painting themselves brown, and in “realistic” games I end up getting a little scared as every character looks like they’ve just escaped from the uncanny valley.

It seems to be the games that don’t try to be realistic are the ones that I see more as art. Forgive me if you disagree, but I don’t think that Team Fortress 2 would have been as fun to play if it had looked like a Call of Duty game.

With the majority of games that I pick up, I look at the screenshots and end up going “Oh, another grey World War II shooter”. And this is exactly what happened with the new Wolfenstein game.

Wolfenstein 3D, as we all know, was the world’s first FPS. It invented the genre, which games like Doom and Quake then went on to popularise. But the new one is not original at all. It contains the token RPG elements of every FPS nowadays, it contains a half-assed magic element, and it’s set in World War II. So all you need to know is that its Call of Duty with Nazi wizards. In short, it takes all of today’s biggest clichés and mixes them together to make one big pot of generic soup.

If a game has a more defined style, then I’m probably more likely to take it seriously. House of the Dead: Overkill, with it’s cheesy grindhouse parody. Team Fortress 2 with its cartoon insanity. Braid, with its arty pretentiousness.

But it isn’t just the graphics that can contribute to a game being artistic. Music, atmosphere and even story can make a game artistic.

Let’s take a look at music. Music is as integral to the game as the graphics. It creates atmosphere, it adds a whole new layer to the experience. How music is used in a game can turn that game into an artwork. Let’s look at two completely different examples: Halo (3, in particular) and Portal.

Halo 3‘s soundtrack is a sweeping orchestral masterpiece, created by the genius Marty O’Donnell. If you can play that game without being uplifted and empowered by the sheer epicness of those songs, then you must have some sort of brain tumour. They add so much to the experience, and the game would have been completely different without them, and probably not as good.

Portal is completely different. It contains a total of one song, which you only listen to at the end of the game. But what a song. It’s a light folksy rock piece sang by the game’s main antagonist about how she’s still alive. I can’t explain it to you. You’re all sitting there thinking I’ve lost my marbles. All I can say to change your mind is “go play Portal, complete it, and you’ll understand”. Now, I usually listen to music of the heavier persuasion, often of the metal variety. But Still Alive is one of my favourite songs. You can listen to it on Youtube, or MP3 or whatever, But if you’ve never completed Portal for yourself and heard the song at the end of it, you haven’t heard it.

Atmosphere is a tricky one for developers to get right. In fact, saying that it’s tricky is like saying that McDonalds is a little bad for you. Some of the most atmospheric games include BioShock, the Thief series, Half-Life and Fallout (3 in particular). BioShock is atmospheric because of the sheer amount of detail put into the game. Thief is atmospheric because you’re a piddly weakling who dies if he so much as gets flicked by a guard, therefore he must creep around in the darkness to stay alive. Half-Life is atmospheric because a) you never leave first-person and b) it’s a story of escaping more than anything, rather than trying to take down the entire alien race, you’re just a mook caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, and trying to get away. And lastly, Fallout 3 is atmospheric because anything can happen. you can’t really count on anything out in the wasteland. Turn a corner and there could be a guy with a mini-nuke launcher, or there could be any variety of mutant there wanting to bite your ears off.

Now, finally,  story. Games are getting more and more desperate for a good story, and sometimes a game can be forgiven its faults simply for having a brilliant story (Mass Effect). Spending 3 hours wandering around the same area at the start of a game would normally have me giving up, but the story was so compelling that I felt I had to keep playing to get to the end. Half-Life is another one, like I said before, it imposes the singular objective of escaping before the coffin lid clamps shut on you, and its this feeling of escape that (in Episode 1, in particular) lends the game its atmosphere. Stragglers losing their nerve, and a rebellion held together by a thread that could snap at any moment. Sometimes a game that has a complex story can work against it. Like Braid.

The story (to me) is this: you play Tim, who screwed up a relationship and now he’s looking for his princess. But others claim that it’s got something to do with setting off a nuclear bomb… which is a bit like… um… no, I can’t see it. The story seems simple enough, but throughout the whole game we have to hear about some tool pontificating about the grandeur of his design, and how common men cannot appreciate the subtleties and nuances peppered throughout. It’s horribly annoying, and luckily you can skip through the story bits. But when a writer does something like that and makes such a complex and multi-faceted story like that one, people spit on it.

All in all, I am a firm supporter of the belief that games can be an art form. And more and more companies are realising it now too. Take Gearbox, veterans of the realistic FPS. When I saw the first screenshots for Borderlands, they were in Real-O-Vision, and I thought “Oh, another generic sci-fi FPS”. But then a few months later, it changed, from the ugly caterpillar, to a beautiful butterfly. Gearbox realised that the mood created by its bold, inky concept art was too valuable to lose. Now, I find myself hotly anticipating Borderlands because of it.

Anyway, I’m off to check for a release date on Borderlands.