This week we’re taking questions from the audience, so tune it to hear us talk about boss fights, toolbar less MMOs, and other gaming topics.

There is an uncomfortable truth in gaming: if your character spends the game running and gunning down hundreds of people then they probably aren’t a nice person. When games try to create characters who buck this trend by saying they don’t like killing, like Nathan Drake and the latest incarnation of Lara Croft, it just comes off as strange.

It’s impossible to avoid the fact that if your gameplay and cutscenes are at odds then you are doing something wrong with your storytelling.

Games that avoid the excessive shooting can create characters that work really well. The Walking Dead and all but one of the characters in Heavy Rain show how storytelling can work really well when your characters remain true to the story with their actions, but those games are few and far between.

The problem also arises when you are too true to your characters, which is something that GTA5 has found. You have the young gang member who just wants to make some money and you have the retired thief who finds himself in need of some cash quickly so gets it the only way he can. These characters show zero remorse about their actions; they embark on their crimes with no second thoughts as to what they will lose in the process.

It’s the last of the three characters that has everybody upset, and that’s because he’s the only one true to the gameplay. He’s unapologetically violent and unpleasant. He’s the kind of person you can imagine mowing down pedestrians on the sidewalk so that he can get past the traffic stopped at the lights quickly. He’s the one that you can believe the motivation for killing all of the enemies he comes up against, even when they start to run away, just because he feels it’s the thing he should do. He’s the one who will abandon somebody who could be called a friend because his task means that he should.

He is a ghastly character that I actually dread playing. I had to stop last night because I thought I found the game annoying, but actually thinking about it I was reacting to having to play him. He was everything that I was already doing in the game given voice and I didn’t like what I saw.

The annoying thing is that he’s also the most interesting character. The other two are clichés that rely on other media in order to fill in their characters without the game having to bother and who will never do anything too surprising because of it. By making us play a character who is the embodiment of how we play the game the options of crazy are there. The option for interesting is there. The option may never be taken up, I don’t know as I haven’t finished the game yet, but it’s there and that’s the most interesting thing about the game.

I’m not sure I’ll ever enjoy playing that character, but I’m sure the memorable points in the game all come from him (as was helpfully spoilt by reviews, probably for the better).

This week we’re back in the studio and chatting about games again.

This time we’re talking about:

1. Godus
2. Guild Wars
3. Grand Theft Auto 4 and 5
4. Burnout Paradise
5. Riddick
6. Planetside 2
7. Tales of the Arabian Nights
8. Battle: Los Angeles
    

This week we are joined by a special guest, Mike from Killed in a Smiling Accident (kiasa.org). We chat about the games we have been playing, including Rome 2: Total War, War Thunder and Guild Wars.

This week we’re back to talking about what we’ve been playing.

• Guild Wars
• Guild Wars 2
• Defiance
• Rift
• Saints Row 4
• Gone Home
• Star Trek Attack Wing
• Sir, You are Being Hunted

This week we’re back in the lab and playing a board game: Tales of the Arabian Nights.

This is a narrative driven game that shares lots in common with Choose Your Own Adventure books, but is it any good?

There’s this idea that indie games are all 8bit graphics with chiptune soundtracks. This is of course false, as some of the most gorgeous experiences I’ve had in games recently have been Indie games. I think it should be a new genre: the heavily atmospheric game with just enough story added in. I suck at coming up with names.

Gone Home, The Light) and Dear Ester are all games about broadly the same thing: creating an atmosphere but they are all very short compared to larger games. You can play through any of them in an hour or two, much less if you tried a speed run (well, except in Dear Ester where running is considered to be a gameplay issue.) This sounds like a problem but if you expanded them to a full sized game you would have big problems keeping that level of atmosphere going. The only AAA game that I can think of that actually manages that is Portal 2, which must mean that it’s a really hard thing to get right. Even then it throws puzzles into the mix to keep you occupied between the real game of finding out about Cave Johnson. OK, I might have taken the wrong thing away from that game.

One of the problems with these games is that they can cost more per hour of play than some people might be OK with. Gone Home costs about £5 an hour if you explore properly and although I feel that I more than got my money’s worth I can see why some might not. The payoff for me at the end of Gone Home was some sever anxiety about how it was going to end after an enjoyable rummage about in a strange house, and if you’re not into that kind of thing then it’s really not going to seem to be value for money.

I think that these are the gaming equivalents of short stories in the way that they have a single point to tell and are very focused about getting you into the right mood to make that point. They don’t even tell you what they’re trying to be, they just put you in the world and let you explore the very well created surroundings as the tension as to what’s going on builds up. Gone Home and The Light especially have a scary quality that comes from not knowing what’s going on, which is something I can’t elaborate on without spoiling the games.

I like the idea of being put in a world and being asked to figure out why. Actually that’s not true, you’re never asked and you just end up doing it anyway, which is fantastic.

Above all it’s a micro-genre based on environmental and sound design with storytelling being the key to move you onwards. I want to play more of these games, I think they’re an exciting direction for games to go in.

There is a game that’s been sitting on my shelf a while and yet I haven’t played, in fact it’s got to the point where not playing it is a matter of principle. That game is Gun).

Yes the game is old, it’s from way back in 2006. In fact it’s a launch title for the 360 and that’s where my brain has decided to get in the way. With the release of the Xbox One in a couple of months and Microsoft’s usual lack of support for older platforms I don’t expect I’ll play a new (to me) game on the 360 after GTA5, which will probably also be the last game I buy for the platform. I don’t think there are any exclusives that I’ve not played and so I can do the odd thing and think about what game will be the last “new” game I ever play on the console will be.

I think it’ll be Gun. I shall end with a launch title. It seems fitting somehow.

Should I decide which Xbox One game I’m not going to get around to playing now?

Now that we know what the launch titles for the Xbox One will be and what will be out by the end of the year on PS4 I decided that I needed to go mad and make a spreadsheet saying what was coming out on each platform. As I went in a bit I started recording what was coming on PC, which naturally led to me adding 360 and PS3 as well. It’s really quite telling that an awful lot of these games are actually multiplatform and in some cases are even out already.

Here’s my quick analysis as to what is available where. It should be noted that I’ve been a bit generous with some of the titles which are expanded versions of previous games.

The totals I have so far (expect new games to show up and new platforms to be discovered) show that the stated numbers of 33 PS4 games and 23 Xbox One games has some very good titles but there’s a massive crossover between platform with 18 games also coming to each of the PS3 and 360, although those are actually slightly different lists of games.

It’s this support for the last generation of games that is the most surprising as many games don’t look like they are any different on the older platforms due to them being less graphically intense.

Totals:

17

18

33

18

23

1

Announced Games

PC

PS3

PS4

360

One

Ouya

Proper Exclusive?

Platform

Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag

1

1

1

1

1

FALSE

Basement Crawl

1

TRUE

PS4

Battlefield 4

1

1

1

1

1

FALSE

Blacklight

1

1

FALSE

Call of Duty: Ghosts

1

1

1

1

1

FALSE

Contrast

1

1

1

1

FALSE

Crimson Dragon

1

TRUE

One

DC Universe Online

1

1

1

FALSE

Dead Rising 3

1

TRUE

One

Doki-Doki Universe

1

1

FALSE

DriveClub

1

TRUE

PS4

FIFA 14

1

1

1

1

1

FALSE

Fighter Within

1

TRUE

One

Flower

1

1

FALSE

Forza Motorsport 5

1

TRUE

One

Hohokum

1

1

FALSE

Just Dance 2014

1

1

1

1

FALSE

Killer Instinct

1

TRUE

One

Killzone: Shadow Fall

1

TRUE

PS4

Knack

1

TRUE

PS4

Lego Marvel Superheroes

1

1

1

1

1

FALSE

Lococycle

1

1

FALSE

Madden NFL 25

1

1

1

1

FALSE

Minecraft

1

1

1

1

FALSE

N++

1

TRUE

PS4

NBA Live

1

1

FALSE

NBA 2K14

1

1

1

1

1

FALSE

Need for Speed: Rivals

1

1

1

1

1

FALSE

Peggle 2

1

TRUE

One

Pinball Arcade

1

1

1

1

1

FALSE

Planetside 2

1

1

FALSE

Pool Nation Extreme

1

TRUE

PS4

Powerstar Golf

1

TRUE

One

ResoGun

1

TRUE

PS4

Ryse: Son of Rome

1

TRUE

One

Skylanders: Swap Force

1

1

1

1

FALSE

Super Motherload

1

TRUE

PS4

The Playroom

1

TRUE

PS4

Tiny Brains

1

1

1

FALSE

Warframe

1

1

FALSE

War Thunder

1

1

FALSE

Watch_Dogs

1

1

1

1

1

FALSE

Zoo Tycoon

1

1

FALSE

Zumba Fitness: World Party

1

1

FALSE

 

 

 

This week we’ve been playing the following games:

• Saints Row 3
• Defiance
• Prison Architect
• Mass Effect 2
• Grid 2
• The Secret World
• Planetside 2
• Take on Mars (take mars on)
• Papers Please
• Rift
• Space Hulk
• Burnout Paradise
• Minecraft with you lot.