Save Our Souls!

From time to time a game will appear where the concept is so strong it alone can carry any amount of development errors. SOS: The Final Escape (Disaster Report for you merkins) has it all; bad control system, slowdown, horrible voice acting, robotic animation and yet it still manages to retain its form and be remembered as a GOOD GAME, pure and simple.

The premise is so incredibly basic I can't imagine that this is the first time it's been tried, yet I'm stumped if I can come up with any other game that has revolved around simply trying to survive following an earthquake. It doesn't matter that the save system's clunky and that the game's extremely linear and even the fact that the main character seems to drop dead if you let him go more than 15 minutes without water doesn't prevent you getting fully immersed in the city that's falling down around your ears.

I think what does it is that it's not actually that far-fetched. Yes it's the stuff that disaster movies are made of but everything in the game just looks so familiar. I challenge any city-dweller to not find themselves wondering "what if" about their own home town when they see how much an earthquake turns the friendliest of urban landscapes into a veritable deathtrap (or challenging obstacle course).

Obviously things would be even better without all the flaws mentioned above, so here's hoping someone who has access to a good city-rendering engine gets their hands on the license in order to make a bit of a "Director's Cut".

In other news this week, NFS:MW took a bit of a back seat whilst I piled through SOS, but I've also been making good progress in Castlevania Dawn of Sorrows. At its heart it's as old school as they come but I'm having a great time with it and I can even see myself replaying it, which is a rare thing these days.

Only 15 days to go now until the ban :-/

Ooh sorry love looks like the carburetor's blown

How a racing game with no depth, no strategy, no sense of speed, no real target achievement and, above all, no fun ends up being regarded as one of the best games ever is beyond me. How Nintendo seem to have managed to convince millions of people that Mario Kart DS is a messiah in gaming form is even more baffling. The game wasn’t fun twelve years ago so the fact they’ve managed to convince people (including me) to buy it again is credit to their word of mouth marketing campaigns.


The fifth game in the series and yet again nothing’s changed. The broken bits are still broken and there’s just not enough to keep anyone who doesn’t have access to a constant barrage of similarly skilled and DS-equipped mates interested for more than a few days. You might think the addition of online play has is enough to keep things varied but connection problems, the fact that you can only race against three people (rather than the full complement of eight) and the lack of an online battle mode renders the online play nothing more than a token gesture. In addition to the cheating, the frustration, the lazy track design (hell, half the tracks were nicked from the previous 4 games), you now have the added issue of the horrible DS design. It’s a lovely console for touchscreen play but for extended racing sessions it’s just cramp-inducing. Oddly enough the controller works fine for Tony Hawk Sk8land and the superb Castlevania Dawn of Sorrows but it really doesn’t sit right for Mario Kart.


On the home gaming side of things, I finished Kong (a weak ending to an overall top title) and I’ve made some decent progress in The Movies. Cinder Toffee Films are doing pretty damn well in the 1930’s. Not won any awards yet, but things are improving at a rate of knots and if research goes as planned I’ll be showing off the best in special effects if nothing else. If anything worthwhile comes out of these studios I’ll be sure to let you know :-)


Replacing Kong on the Xbox was Need for Speed Most Wanted. As I hate the whole car-modding, street-racing subculture I never tried the Underground games and was ready to pass this by too. However, a quick play on the demo revealed that there was more to this than posey “bling” and so I thought I’d give it a try. My main impressions: bloody good fun! The game structure is race, win, upgrade, race etc. with some incredible police chases to shake things up a bit but it works in such a freeflowing way that it’s hard not to be impressed. Last night had me going from trying to clock a recorded speed up on a speed camera into a street sprint race then straight into a 15 minute police chase with no separation between them at all. Great fun!


In other news this week, the Xbox 360 got released and I finally got a PS2 (borrowed from my sister). She’s given me around 15 games to try, all of which I believe are good, and I’ll be reporting back on those as soon as I get a memory card.


I’m down to about three and a half weeks before the only games I can play are ones I one. I know I’m getting a couple for Xmas, but still, it seems like a much bigger step than it really is.