I’ve just finished editing and scoring Gameinsdustry.biz’s first podcast. It’s from this year’s Games Developer’s Conference in San Jose last week and, as a result, will only really be interesting to videogame people, which, in fairness, is probably most of you.

Listen out for the recording of Introversion, developer of PC indie title Darwinia, simultaneously sticking it to the publishing men and fuelling 10, 000 videogame blogs this week, and Nintendo’s Iwata working the crowd and pinning down in one word just what videogames are really meant to be about.

Incidentally, the grimy groove underpinning the first quarter of the Podcast is a midi sequence of Beethoven’s fifth mashed through a pattern sequencer in Reason 3 and spliced up with some other magic. Just thought someone somehwere might be interested…hello?…anyone?…

Listen here

Apologies that most of the current content going up is just reproduced videogame reviews. Things really are crazy busy but normal service should be resumed soon. This review just went up on Eurogamer. They cut the segue about North Korea and nuclear weapons and stuff (I thought they might) which means the joke/ paragraph doesn’t really work any more… nevermind – it was probably inappropriate – but still, here it is in original form

The Magna Carta, that historically crucial legal document that bound the power of an English Monarch by law so that today the Queen can’t just wee down your chimney or execute left-handed or squiffy-eyed people willy-nilly, was signed off in 1215. To say that this, its namesake videogame, appears also to have been created seven hundred and ninety one years ago would be a mostly unfair joke; but one just funny and true enough to make it worthwhile. After all, its developers live in Korea and that’s far enough away that they can’t punch us and it’s not like they have nuclear weapons or anyth…oh right.

Truth is, like North Korea’s ongoing obsession with stockpiling weapons of mass we’re-not-quite-sure-what, Magna Carta Tears of Blood is an attempt to make something the rest of the world used to do before they decided the whole idea was probably generally a pretty bad one and moved on (mostly). So, maybe it’s a status thing (look we can do that too!) or just Softmax playing software top-trumps with arch-rival Japan. Either way, although this aims for Final Fantasy VIII, it mostly ends up just hitting the fan.

That’s not to say it’s not effective in its superficial imitation. The game opens as prettily and cut-scene heavy as you might expect for a videogame with such lofty aspirations. But the flickering cracks between the jaggy polygonal walls and the awkwardly proportioned characters bespeak the fact this is a developer that doesn’t share Square-Enix’s world-poverty clearing development budgets.

You can read the rest here

It’s no surprise that PSP-exclusive RPGs are so scarce. Quit whining and actually think about it for two seconds: simple-looking 2D adventures based on the form and function of the SNES role-playing heyday, while affordable to make, don’t fit the aspirational futuristic branding too well. After all, we might know that sprites can still be totally amazing, but they hardly inspire tech envy from the eyes peering hungrily over your shoulder on the bus.

On the other hand, sprawling macro-narratives populated by WETA-style leathery-faced orcs and chisel-chinned polygonal heroes all lit cinematically by a continuous graphical firework display take a load of people with a load of time and a load of cash to make. It’s unlikely that any publisher would lay down the same kind of financial and temporal investment that a grown up console’s AAA RPG would need for what’s essentially a little pocket gamble in a niche and expensive genre.

So, let’s start this gratefully: Key of Heaven (Kingdom of Paradise in the US, Tenchi No Mon in Japan) is neither a port nor a cross-platform hedged bet. It’s rather a well-presented, PSP-exclusive Action RPG mixing up the immediacy of beat-’em-up style fight mechanics with RPG-lite levelling and questing. It’s long, good-looking and mostly spectacular (if a little soulless) in its kinetic visual appeal. Hero Shinbu’s attack moves dance and twirl eloquently across the PSP’s delicious screen and, for public transport show-offs, it’s exactly the kind of pretty faced companion to inspire jealous stares.

You can read the rest here

“I don’t get to go on many adventures in real life,” says tall Girl A scratching a furry ear. “Final fantasy XI allows me to be a heroine, to fight alongside people; people that sometimes go on to become close friends. It’s a social thing and a questing thing. That’s why I play.”

Next to her, short Girl B nods feverishly in silent agreement. A towel headdress frames chubby cheeks and excited bright eyes: geek sheikh. Girl A swishes the long tail avalanching conspicuously from the seat of her tight hugging red shorts. “Oh! And I love collecting the clothes.”

Jesyka D’Itri, Girl A, is a 23-year-old architectural engineer. She’s dressed in full slinky and provocative get-up as a Mithra, one of the cutest races in Square-Enix’s flagship MMORG title. We’re standing on a blustery pier in Santa Monica, California for the Final Fantasy XI fan festival, an event put on by the publisher to promote the new PS2/ PC expansion pack, Treasures of Aht Urhgan, and the impending 360 release of the four-year-old online RPG. This is a gathering of the individual souls, minds, fingers and thumbs that habitually inhabit the virtual world of Vana’Diel; nerds incarnate, avatar masks slipping off and the ‘real’ personalities, lives and faces of Final Fantasy XI’s communities slithering from that dimension into this.

“It’s not really a shock when you get to meet your online friends for the first time,” explains Jesyka. “We spend so much time together each week questing and talking that our real characters become pretty clear. I think the job type that people choose for themselves in the game really reflects their real personalities too. Paladins are always very protective of others; all the Black Mages that I’ve met in real life seem really intelligent; Red Mages (that’s my character) are always very sociable, team player types while ninjas are, without exception, assholes.”

Besides offering a chance to experience the full 360 release and the new areas the expansion pack brings, there is opportunity here for spirited cosplay, real life ‘questing’ (such as picking up litter from the beach for ‘exp’ points that can be traded for gil), exclusive merchandise that can be part paid for with garnered gil and a host of in-game competitions with sponsored prizes. Crucially, the weekend also provides platform for the Japanese development team to release a flurry of new feature release details to hopefully knock some of the wind out of World of Warcraft’s still gathering sails; Better to do it here in front of loyal subjects for whom the slightest evolution of their world order carries heavy implication than to a sweaty hall of disinterested E3 attendees.

You can read the rest here

Things are busy in the world of Chewing Pixels. I just got back from a big Final Fantasy fan event in Santa Monica, CA. It was both fantastic fun (new Square-Enix PR guy is a friend plus UK:R‘s Gary Cutlack was on the trip) and utterly bizarre at the same time. I’ll post up a piece that I’m writing for Eurogamer on the event when it goes up on that site. Meanwhile there’s lots of work to be doing and no time to do it in. Hopefully a few sweet projects come to fruition over the next couple of weeks. More on that later. If you missed it please pick up a copy of last month’s edge magazine (one with PS3 on cover) as there’s a long feature in it on localisation that I was particularly happy with and was the result of a couple of years worth of work on and off. Finally buy this. I’m half way through and it’s breaking and rebuilding my mind.

Classical music critics regularly have to review well-known compositions from long dead composers reinterpreted by a contemporary conductor. Be it Fritz Busch orchestrating Mozart’s Operas, Serge Koussevitzky recreating Tchaikovsky’s symphonies or Sir John Barbirolli’s defining interpretations of Mahler, a classical critic essentially weighs one person’s interpretation of another’s idea.

Likewise, in modern music there’s the cover version: Jose Gonzalez transferring The Knife’s fizzy bass of Heartbeats to nylon string, Ryan Adams lending melancholic sincerity to Oasis’s Wonderwall or Johnny Cash acoustically gravelling his way through the desperation of Nine Inch Nails’ self-harming Hurt. The cover version allows artists from different fields to recast well-loved melodies; they put their fingerprint on someone else’s handiwork. Sometimes the result is horrible, but often it’s mesmerising, casting a sheet of fresh light over all too familiar places.

But there are no cover versions in videogames.

Imagine. Hideo Kojima’s Ico: Yorda all khaki-shirt and boot-polish blackened cheeks; John Romero’s Kirby Canvas Curse: hot, smoking Gatling gun peeking out from pink fluff holster; Tom Clancy’s Super Mario Land: armour-plated Yoshis whispering past night-vision Koopas. No, that couldn’t happen. Rather, one publisher just has to rip off another’s ideas, try to make them their own, and hope for the best. Arguably, this is a good thing; Shadow of the Colossus might never have worked as a J-pop squeaky Rhythm Action game but still, the chance would be a fine thing.

The Drakengard series, as you might have guessed from this winding but determined introduction, is a cover version in all but name; borrowed gameplay ideas and execution implemented by a publisher trying to carve significance in a genre it has no notable history with. There’s no shame there: some of the greatest games have been sneaky tributes. Remarkably though, Drakengard steals from two pockets with one swipe: part Dynasty Warriors action-RPG, part Panzer Dragoon airborne dragon-galleon warfare action this game Pongs back and forth between two originals with metronomic regularity.

You can read the rest here

For five minutes, after the PSP’s drive has accelerated and settled into that battery draining hum, the revolutions per minute spinning a scenic tapestry of dark hewn rock, purple half light and cold cave womb around you, Breath of Fire 3 seems delightfully different.

You’re one of them: the kind of fire breathing dragon you’ve slain a thousand times in countless adventures before, each one’s plastic case a transparent trophy on your gaming shelf. Left long unknown, silently un-hatched deep underground the game opens with your egg’s discovery by treasure hungry miners. They’re the kind of RPG people whose hungry shoes you’re used to filling. In a flash of loud you’re awoken from scaly slumber, virgin lungs itching with trinitrotoluene fire as your crystal eggshell cracks gloopy to their dynamite punch.

Three minutes to go: you crawl out, stretch terror and lumber toward incredulous stares, nostrils flaring in their speed-dilating retinas, bristling with the rush of being monster; Such foul elation to be hatched just for unjust destruction and ruin. As you burn their twitching torsos to ember crisp, lingering smoke trailing hot fingers around your newborn hide, it’s good to be bad. You imagine what lies ahead: tearing down identikit RPG villages, ripping out the NPC throats which always existed only to repeat that one line time after infuriating time after time. This could be the ultimate revenge RPG; your chance to wreak havoc upon genre conventions that have grated year after year through developers lack of foresight, insight or bravery.

You’re four and a half minutes in, stumbling blind through the cave’s hot white exit, squinting to find new prey, expectant excitement spiking synapses red raw.

Then stop. Load. You’re being captured. Load. You’re being transported away in a cage. Load. You fall off the back of the train. Load. You’re lying tumbled unconscious in the forest. Load. You’re found by a woodsman. Load. You’re a boy now. Load. You have to talk to villagers and be nice. Load. Load. You must travel the world fighting other monsters on your way to find two friends while you uncover an unspeakable evil that only you can possibly defeat in the ultimate showdown. Load. You’re in a cliché again. No save.

You can read the rest here

Maybe it’s because we British are an island nation, a group of people tied by a small geography but defined by a giant history.

Perhaps it’s because we love to see hope in the hopeless, the little man triumphing in the face of adversity. We revel in witnessing the afflicted stick two fingers up at fate and circumstance and sidestep the laws of society and nature and received wisdom to produce a momentary miracle.

Maybe it’s because CNN’s editors are skilled with a comprehensive understanding of the relationships that exist between audience and hero and the precise ways to gently but forcefully manipulate and emphasise emotion through cut and pace.

Perhaps it’s because of the way he talks all clumsy beauty; each phrase drawled thick and gloopy but with ringing honest truth. Or the way the coach put him there as a condescending favour with but a grain of faith and in return got suffocated and crushed by unexpected but glorious yeild.

Maybe it’s because we’ve all at times felt what it is to be spectator, outsider, underdog, ill-equipped, awkward and uncomfortable hanger on; And how we’ve all dreamed of being held high on their shoulders, soundtrack a cast of rasping peer’s cheers rooting just for us in a moment of pure communal wonder.

Perhaps it’s just because it’s such a rare thing to see a life’s near high point captured so eloquently and overtly on film. Or maybe we just all long for that kind of affirmation and, in giving it, even through a screen, get something back ourselves.

Either way this is an awesome clip.

What do you think?