I would have waited an eternity for this moment...and I sort of did to be honest. Back in February, I spent a lot of money. And then nothing happened for quite a while. But then, without warning, this turned up on my doorstep this morning.



What could this be? Of course, a little bit of rapid unwrapping ensued, to reveal this





It is of course a Street Fighter IV Tournament Edition Fightstick, which are considerably rarer than hen's teeth even at this point. As I said, I ordered it back in February, before the game came out, and it's only just reached here now. I kind of feel guilty about it to be honest. Over here in the UK they cost £150 (at current exchange rates that's $225), but my justification is...well, I don't have one, apart from the fact that I had the money and they are totally awesome. It's fantastic to play with, and though it doesn't improve my near hopeless skills at Street Fighter, it makes everything a little bit more tactile and enjoyable. Build quality is magnificent, it weighs a ton and looks very swish, and I'm really lookig forward to trying out upcoming releases like KOFXII and BlazBlue on it. I'll leave you with a few more shots.


Certificate of authenticity, signed by the game's producer Yohinori Ono and some bloke from Mad Catz



The unboxed stick in all its glory



A very very happy me.

Kingdom Hearts is obviously a generally rather juvenile series, but some of its deeper and more
interesting aspects are contained within the group of villains that form the main opposition within Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories and Kingdom Hearts II, a set of mysterious black robed figures known originally only as 'The Organisation' and later on as Organisation XIII. In a series where good and evil tend to be divided in very clear-cut ways, as befits its Disney based origins, the Organisation represent an intriguing shade of grey, embodying concepts such as duplicity, cruelty and the search for identity.

To explain the basic idea behind Organisation XIII, it's necessary to delve slightly into KH lore - I'll try and keep it mercifully brief. The main antagonists of the series are the so-called Heartless, created when people succumb to the darkness in their hearts and are transformed into monstrous creatures. Kingdom Hearts II put a spin on this idea - the body left behind when somebody becomes a Heartless eventually begins to act with a will of its own, creating a being called a Nobody. Nobodies exist between light and darkness, and are often said to barely exist at all. Lacking hearts, they are incapable of emotion or any form of attachment, and are often said to barely exist at all. Organisation XIII is formed out of 13 of the most powerful nobodies, who were strong willed enough to retain their human form and memories of their past lives, and command many of the other Nobodies.

OK, lore lesson over. The reason why the Organisation makes such a fascinating set of opponents lies in the characterisation of the individual members. Unlike many secret cabals in videogames, the Organisation is neither entirely dedicated to your destruction, nor ironically particularly organised at all. In their very first appearance in Kingdom Hearts:Chain of Memories they are already conspiring against each other, and the player is essentially caught in the middle of a civil war between the more established members and newer upstarts. The various members take delight in double crosses and confrontations, and see the main player character Sora as merely a tool to be used in this internal struggle rather than a major threat that they need to band together against. There's even a double agent involved, the No. 8 Axel, who plays both sides against the middle before later himself betraying the remaining members. The result is an enemy group who comes off less as a faceless army and comes out as a set of individual characters. Neat little touches are inserted to reinforce the idea of individuality, such as the flamboyant and unique weapons each member wields (complete with corresponding titles) and the particular tweaks to the uniform black cloak they all wear.



The Organisation's emotionless nature also gives an interesting insight into their actions and motivations. They are by far the most 'evil' of all the entities who appear in the series and are capable of quite serious action (Axel personally executes the 12th member Larxerne and the 6th member Zexion has the life forcibly drained out of him), but there's considerable difference in character between the lesser members, who carry much stronger memories of their past lives and thus display much more obvious 'character' and the more senior members who are clearly more cold and unfeeling. This difference is also mirrored in the Organisation's motives. Their ultimate goal is Kingdom Hearts, the source of all power within the universe of the game. While the Organisation's leader Xemnas follows the old 'claim ultimate power and conquer the world' cliche, the others have a much more touching aim - they hope that Kingdom Hearts can restore their own hearts to them and make them complete beings again. Yet they seek to accomplish this goal through evil means, since they have no sense of morality or conscience left anymore.



There's one final reason why the Organisation is much more than a standard set of villains, and that's because they have a very unique relationship to the lead character Sora. Sora himself briefly became a Heartless in the events of the original game, and thus a corresponding Nobody was created named Roxas. His existence is not revaled until KIngdom Hearts II but it is also revealed that he joined the Organisation as their No. 13 and was key to their plans. He rejoins with Sora during the prologue of Kingdom Hearts II, but the other members repeatedly try to reawaken him, particularly Axel, with whom he was particularly close. Axel eventually betrays the Organisation in the hope of reuniting with Roxas, and ultimately sacrifices his existence in defence of Sora in the memory of his friend.

There's much still unexplained about the Organisation, and the part of the lore they occupy is arguably the most interesting aspect of the Kingdom Hearts story, and niche that is set to be explored further in the upcoming Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days. But they already represent a brilliant fusion of character, concept and plot. Even in a series filled with famous faces from the world of animation, they stamp themselves firmly as an iconic and interesting set of antagonists.

With rumours of a new PSP again swirlinbg round the internets, I decided to take a brief look at what I'd like changed if a new PSP did come along.

Things that need to change

- The death of UMD

This is the one everyone goes for, but it's probably one of the biggest issues dogging PSP at the moment. People who buy the PSP are generally tech-savvy enough to grasp the concept of the downloadable game straight away, and the platform is more than capable of supporting it technically. UMD's are expensive to produce and are warming shelves the world over. Digital distribution would allow Sony to cut costs and consumer prices, and determine what they want to push marketing-wise.

- Fresh IP

Although the entire game industry is worried about being stuck in sequelitis at the moment, this problem is especially bad on the PSP. The platform has many fine games, but almost all are franchise extensions from it's bigger PS2 and PS3 cousins, and this is true even of the new big hitters Sony announced earlier this year. The console desperately needs a defining game to call it's own, in the same way the 360 has Gears and the DS has *grinds teeth* Brain Training. For this to happen developers need to see it as a viable leading platform, and that leads on to...

- Getting developers onboard

At the moment it seems developers aren't to fond of the PSP It's too advanced to support the more simplistic stuff found on DS, yet apparently not sophisticated enough to produce truly 'next-gen' stuff. What Sony really needs to do is get developers to focus on PSP and produce high-class, original ideas and less lazy PS2/Wii rehashes. There's a ton of genres left to be explored, and recent software like Resistance:Retribution and Dissidia:Final Fantasy have shown just how far the machine can be pushed technically. The key is that the software has to be tied in to the machine's strengths, just as developers had to learn to do with the DS. The PSP is more conventional, but the same lessons must be learned.

- The Firmware updates

This is one of my personal bugbears, but I know a lot of people find it annoying. The continued, often mandatory firmware updates are impossibly irritating and often do little other than put up another wall for the hackers to smash down. Sony needs to learn to build it's software competently in the the first place, and learn from the Microsoft example of only updating to add functionality, and allowing patches to be incremental rather than the need to download the whole firmware every time. The fact that you can't do anything unless you have the latest version is utterly ridiculous.

-Things that need to stay the same

- The hardware

By this I don't necessarily mean 'don't change the machine' - rumoured addons like a slider or an inbuilt camera sound intriguing and could help push the multimedia functionality. But the heart of the hardware, the processor and the GPU, were far ahead of their time originally, and still stand up well today. There's no need for a graphical or computational update, that stuff all still looks great.

- The functionality

A lot of people say that the PSP's status as a multimedia player has distracted from it's true purpose as a gaming machine, and while that may be true in terms of the way it's been marketed, I don't think that's the case in terms of anyone using it. I have plenty of other stuff to play my music and movies, but the PSP is an excellent multimedia device, with the added benefit of remote play functionality (especially good with PlayTV).

- The games

While everything that has been said about software on PSP is true, it still has some remarkably good games. Franchise extensions may not be great for the longevity, but they make for some very good games. Chains of Olympus, R&C:Size Matters, Crisis Core, there's tons of good stuff available. Though I advocate more original experiences, here's hoping upcoming games like Birth By Sleep and Dante's Inferno continue the trend.

1 - Psychonauts



Tim Schafer's crazed masterpiece couldn't be better suited to a TV adaption. It's already widely praised for having a fantastic cast of kooky characters, and with the game's distinctive visual style it would be a doddle to translate them onto the small screen. Add a truly unique premise that allows for practically unlimited variation in tone, setting and situation, as well as a chance for some more serious commentary, and you've got a series waiting to be made. It helps that the game is practically a cartoon itself, what with its cracking script and flat-out weirdness. There's a goldmine waiting under this one

2 - Team Fortress 2



Valve's already gone halfway here with its series of 'Meet the...' shorts, and has announced a comic book based on the Red and Blu teams' antics, so why not go the whole hog and start up an animated series? Wouldn't be for the kids obviously, but I can imagine a lot of fun to be had in a series of 5-10 minute shorts taking the piss out of the generous range of sterotypes on offer, combined with some fun cartoon carnage, and maybe a few sly inside jokes.

3 - Persona



I'm thinking either 3 or 4 here. You've got a readymade schoolkid cast, secret societies, mysterious dungeons and a whole heapload of monsters. Plus the neatly divided moon cycle/weather cycle of the games absolutely lends itself to an episodic format, with the overarcing mystery being solved across the course of the season Some of it wold need toning down (the shooting-yourself-in-the-head bit springs to mind), but there's so many clever ideas in the Persona games I'm sure you could still make something super-interesting out of them.

(Yes, I know there's already an anime, but it's only loosely connected to the game. Plus I'd be fun to see a more western take on it. Is that sacrilege?)

4 - Kingdom Hearts



Bear with me on this one. You'd need an army of lawyers to untangle the rights and several hundred rewrites to polish the godawful dialogue, but at the end of the day you've got a truckload of Disney characters pouring out of every orifice. The games themselves are essentially divided neatly into episodes that would perfectly fit a 'world of the week' format, the non-disney characters are at the very least inoffensive and the series's plot is both insane enough to sustain several seasons and simplistic enough to promote the whole truth-n-love message a cartoon is expected to. Would be difficult to pull off but would also be the most likely to succeed. Also, the world could always do with more Winnie-the-Pooh.

5 - Zack and Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure



Bit left field this one, but the game has such a gorgeous aethetic its hard to pass up. I'm thinking that this one could skew a lot younger than the others. Again, there's a simple premise to string out - find all the bits of the pirate Captain - that would be easy to break down into episodic chunks. If you kept it short, maybe 15 minutes-ish and made each episode simple, bright and colourful, I can easily see tis appealing to younger children. Plus it has pirates. What's not to like?

6 - Street Fighter



...OK, maybe not...

Resident Evil 5 is a game with a problem, and that problem is an identity crisis. It's at the same time a bold step forward for the franchise and a game rooted in frustrations of the past, along with a whole new set of frustrations that have been brought in.


Oh man, those things would have been useful in the original game.

Any discussion of Resident Evil 5 must inevitably begin with a discussion of its illustrious predecessor. Resident Evil 4 was a revolution not just for the franchise but for action gaming in general. It found the triumphant combination of factors to make the definitive experience - more action, bigger weapons, smarter enemies, nastier bosses, new setting. The fact that it moved to a more action orientated stance and switched to a fully 3D camera made it appeal to a far larger audience than before, and it's rightfully acclaimed as one of the best games ever made. For Resident Evil 5 Capcom has wisely decided to build on the solid base that game provided. The interesting thing is how it has chosen to do this.

The first thing which strikes you about RE5 is its setting. Capcom has cranked glorious visuals out of its proprietary MIT engine, and RE5 uses these in the best possible way to create a hugely effective environment. The dusty, ramshackle town of Kijuju oozes menace, its angry inhabitants throwing malicious glances at you as they kick writhing objects in sacks on the ground. Similarly to RE4, you get the impression of a civilization that has fallen off the edge into barbarity, its rural isolation being a lot more scary than any typical zombie apocalypse could be. The problem is, as impressive as this environment may be, you don't spend a great deal of time here, with only the first act being set in Kijuju. This in itself isn't the issue, it's the fact that subsequent environments lack flair and interest. When the mandatory Resident Evil underground laboratory is the most interesting things that crops up you know you're in trouble. Each of the six acts has its own setting, but within each of these there's too much repetition and sameiness, with little feeling of progression. At its worst the environments can degenerate into bland Quake - style killboxes.



Yes, Wesker is back. No, he won't tell you what Ziggy Stardust was all about.

This neatly brings us to the combat, which has been one of the most controversial aspects of the game, debate raging over the remaining of the stop and shoot controls. There's definitely reason to keep them here. They crank the tension up and force tight and precise aiming, always important when taking on the hordes of 'zombies'. And it's definitely hordes - the enemies now pour out in overwhelming waves, flooding combat areas and boxing you in, forcing you into alleys and onto roofs. It's a shame then deja-vu hangs heavy over all of them. The basic Majini are exactly the same as RE4's Ganados, same animations, same tactics, just with spears replacing pitchforks. It doesn't help that there's a far greater proportion of 'super enemies' who basically are colossal ammo sinks, disrupting the essential 'crowd control' tactic that applied so well and created so much tension. Despite this enemy design is pretty poor, with nothing as iconic or terrifying as RE4's Regenerator or Iron Maiden. The game seems to have issues with balancing its combat correctly, never better illustrated than at the end of act 3 when, having thrown a chainsaw wielding miniboss at you, leading to a protracted battle, it immediately goes and throws out.

It's here then that the identity crisis comes to light. As so many have said, this is now no longer a survival horror game. It is an action game, its entire being concentrated on shooting action and big combat set pieces. This wouldn't be an issue if it weren't for the fact that so many of the old hangovers exist. Tank controls and slow movement are fine when they are in service of a slow paced scary game, but they are a real and irritating detriment to blowing up as much stuff as possible. A limited and clunky inventory isn't suitable for such a higly paced game (why has the option to use things straight away without picking them up gone?). The introduction of a limited cover system halfway through the game smacks of half-arsedness and is poorly implemented, only necessary because there are gun toting zombies with machine guns and rocket launchers everywhere in the latter stages. It honestly feels like a bad Gears of War clone at certain stages.

Alongside this crude evolution into action is the loss of almost all the traditional qualities of Resident Evil. The game is almost never scary, the constant presence of a second player and the fact that they can revive you from your near death state killing almost all tension. In single player the AI is a valiant attempt but is clumsy and makes certain boss battles supremely irritating. Said boss battles lack imagination and generally require the use of a specific weapon or environment conveniently found only in that arena and discarded straight away. The story, so cleverly rebooted in RE4 to revive the themes of infection and possession that made the series so distinctive, returns to a tangled mess of backstory and convoluted science. The supposedly world destroying Las Plagas are basically reduced to an excuse to have Ganados in the game, with an infuriating mix of viruses (I counted T, G, T-Veronica, Progenitor and Ouroboros viruses) taking centre stage once more. Worse still is the game's refusal to even slightly acknowledge its pulpy origins. The sarky quips of RE4's Leon S. Kennedy are replaced with Chris and Sheva calling each other 'partner' at every opportunity and generally playing it dead straight. The merchant is gone, and the game just generally feels very po-faced, as if it's trying to make a serious point in a game where you battle against an evil David Bowie lookalike. Oh, and there's a plot twist so telegraphed that a blind man down a coal mine could see it coming. If you've played it you know the one I mean.

However, the game still has several redeeming features. Foremost among these is the inclusion of co-op, which utterly destroys the experience as a Resident Evil game, but makes it into a far more fun game to play overall. Any game is more fun with another person, but the specifically co-op design makes RE5 a total blast. And every so often, a set piece crops up that reminds you simply how very effective a game like this can be. A trek through a darkened mine where one partner has to hold the spotlight, the opening levels in Kijuju where the bright sunlight offers a startling contrast, the triumphant return of Mercenaries mode. And at its most base level, it is built on bones and mechanics which remain sound, and the strengths that characterised RE4 remain here. The level of polish remain high also, graphics, sound and voicework being excellent. It's important to emphasise that the core gameplay here are still good fun in its own right, the crowd control shooting and set piece battles often being tense and exhilarating. Still plenty of fun to be had here.

Ultimately, this is a game which struggles to find what its purpose is. It cannot escape the shadow of RE4, yet it tries to by cranking up the action factor, without realising that this causes it to discard a great deal of what made that game special. The greatest fear before release was that this game copied Resident Evil 4 too much, ironically it turns out that it simply didn't copy the right things. It's a good game, a fine game to play through in co-op especially, but it lacks imagination, and coasts by on being merely competent rather than extravagant. The polish and fine gameplay raise it above average, but there's nothing here that makes it special, nothing here that inspires.

[7]

PS As this is my first review on here, I'd appreciate feedback. Too formal? TLDR? Troll me in the comments :)

OK, so hopefully from now on posts on this blog will not look like somebody unleashed a spastic onto the enter key. Turns out Chrome doesn't play nice with Cblog formatting (thanks for pointing that out Half Left) and so now I've switched to a different browser things should run smoother.

In anticipation of finally being able to blog a bit more, I've spruced up the page with things like a profile and a banner to make it look like I've put some effort in. I haven't of course, but hopefully I will from now on. I aim to update this thing much more regularly now, so watch this space.

Finally, the request. If anybody wants to play SFIV online,if you want somebody semi decent to play against and if you aren't a move spamming Ken player, PM me or add me opn Live. God knows I need some good folk to practice with.