It’s called Dweller, a mobile remake of classic ASCII dungeon crawler Rogue. Input is simple; you navigate using the keypad like a compass, moving one tile at a time. Attacking is equally simple; you just press in the direction of whichever enemy you want to attack in an adjacent square. You can also use ranged attacks too, such as spells and arrows, and cycle targets before firing. All not more complicated than it needs to be.

But what makes Dweller just about the perfect mobile game is that it’s turn-based. The game always remembers your last move, so you can open it up and play for a few moments and successfully pick up exactly where you left off. You can also manually save your progress too, so if you’re making particularly good progress through a tough level, you have somewhere to fallback to should you die.

The graphical update is also charming–if a little small. The sprites are recognisable and only as detailed as they need to be. The illumination of the immediate area around your character is also nicely done, with nothing but blackness in front of you and ‘fog of war’ behind, so it’s really easy to see where you’ve been already and not mistakenly backtrack through previously cleared areas.

In short, Dweller is a superbly-crafted mobile game; it’s succinct in its design and execution, isn’t laborious to play and doesn’t demand a fixed amount of time per session. Give it a try.

OK, I understand the basic premise. You get to run around one “spooky” warehouse interior after another, maybe tramping through a vaguely sewer-like section in between, shooting stuff with big guns — “stuff” being exactly the right term.

Am I really supposed to be some 7ft musclebound SWAT-trained beefcake with the upper arm strength of a toddler? I mean, come on. I’m all for a modest amount of realism in shooters, but with the hateful aiming mechanic you’re constantly hosing your limited ammo supply across the walls, floor and ceiling. Everywhere but actually into your enemy.

And let’s get one thing absolutely straight, before this stupid myth perpetuates its self into the annals of gaming history for good: whoever decided the AI in this game was “probably the best since the grunts in Half-Life” needs their fucking head examined. Over and over the bumbling idiots trot right in front of me whilst trying to take up flanking positions, without even so much as a rifle stock to the solar plexus. And I mean right in front of me, like they have to run around where I’m standing in a tight corridor on their dizzy way to fuck know’s where.

I’m not even going to bother mentioning the piss-weak paranormal aspect except for the incidental music, which is great. The gore wouldn’t scare a 12yr-old.

Let’s not beat around the bush: the Halo series has never been about story-telling. It’s about running around various types of environments and shooting stuff. Lots of stuff. And this the third iteration does with style and aplomb.

Both the weapons and the enemies have seemingly been rebalanced for the final game—somewhat subtly, but it’s definitely more enjoyable for it compared to the previous two. Where grinding frustration gave way to outright apathy for me in the last two single player Halo experiences, Halo 3 wasn’t so ridiculously unbalanced – in terms of numbers as well as available ordinance – so as to stop me from reaching the end, without first slamming my head repeatedly against a brick wall for 3 hours more than necessary.

That said, the squad-mate AI is fucking abysmal and now seemingly incapable of driving vehicles with any semblance of normality at times. Twice I had to restart entire sections because the AI simply cannot control the Warthog with any consistency: driving headlong into boulders in the middle of fields, careening into other scenery way off track, or just simply trying to drive up the steepest part of necessary inclines and failing. Then rinse and repeat until you either give up and go on foot, or opt to take over driving and let the AI do all the shooting instead — it’s scream-at-the-screen awful.

Once you’re used to anticipating these sorts of problems, however, the rest of the game is excellent. There’s a new type of enemy late in the game which is extremely cheap in its hit-and-run tactics – seeing as it can scale walls and leap vast distances – but otherwise the on-foot combat is hugely enjoyable, with no shortage of possible tactics to work your way through one area of enemies to the next. Grouping up with several Elite later in the game to take on the Flood is especially enjoyable.

The settings too, whilst still using staples from the previous games, are more varied and more interesting than before—notably at the start and end of the story.

Overall, it was 9 hours’ gaming well spent—I’d even go so far as to say it’s worth playing through for the ending. However, I think replaying the campaign in 2+ co-op will put the single player experience firmly in the shade. But that aside I’d say it’s still a solid 8/10 for me in single player. It’s just a shame the friendly AI isn’t more polished.

Overall, I like it. Essentially, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is Counter-Strike for Consoles but with some nice added extras to ensure the game is fast-paced and generally more fun. The rank (i.e. experience) system has been shamelessly ripped from the Battlefield franchise and is a concise way of getting rid of Counter-Strike‘s ham-strung shop mechanic.

Initially, you can only choose from one of three rudimentary classes, but you quickly unlock more as you “rank up” in the game. You can also create a further 5 custom classes once you reach a certain rank, comprising any combination of already-unlocked equipment you like.

Experience – and thus the ability to rank up – is gained in several ways, primarily by killing enemy team members. The scoring is more refined than simple kill or no kill, however: you score 10 points for taking someone down on your own, 5 points for double-teaming an enemy and 2 points for an assist, i.e. finishing someone off after they’ve stood too close to a grenade but didn’t die in the explosion.

Additionally, you gain bonuses in-game as your score increases. For instance if you score a few points in quick succession you gain the ability to call in a drone, which duly scans the battlefield and reveals the locations of all enemies on your mini map for several seconds. Offensive bonuses are also available to higher scoring players, which include air strikes and helicopter gunship support.

Overall, it’s a solid multiplayer experience and a refreshing change from the more reserved Counter-Strike clones out there. The action can often be frenetic, but never overwhelms the player. Death is swift but very rarely ill-deserved — the excellent instant replay from your killer’s point of view is a brilliant mechanic and helps you learn where you’re making tactical blunders, or just the latest victim of a skilled sniper.

Not that I’ve any interest in Sony bashing or other such twaddle–I’m still very much lusting after a PS2, maybe even a PSP if the platform continues its slow but steady blossoming of late.

No, what will be most interesting in the immediate future is what happens at other movie studios, now that one of the big companies has very publicly aligned itself behind a single high-definition format. For someone as big as Paramount to have suddenly snubbed Blu-ray, you have to wonder what other studios might now be feeling about the format wars.

Is the pressure now off for other studios to stand behind their format of choice? Do they even realistically have a choice, given the respectable demographic coverage that companies like Paramount and – to a lesser extent – DreamWorks Animaiton has? I’m sure many people will argue counter-point to this sort of thinking, no doubt with Sony Computer Entertainment leading the rebuttals. But no matter how you care to spin this, it’s not unreasonable to explore the implications of Paramount’s decision, seeing as how much of a pain in the arse it must be to coordinate releases across two similar formats.

And what of PS3? Fast-forwarding into the ridiculous, evidently the death of Blu-ray as a consumer video format would make Sony’s, “it’s the cheapest Blu-ray player out there,” patter much less meaningful and empathic. It’s certainly a bargain price for Blu-ray equipment, but we all know what the market thinks of that price tag just for a console.

I’ll still be posting on Castle Mania as infrequently as ever, but I’ll be updating Secret Passages whenever I come across anything even remotely games’ related—typically on a daily basis.

Done that? Good. I agree definitely with the idea of “localising” the good/bad effects. Keeping things on a global scale seems prone to failure, without some sort of world-spanning reputation mechanic.

For example, if you piss too many people off in one village, your evil rating would increase in that particular instance. Imagine ransacking a village one day, then returning to it on another only to be pelted with rotten vegetables and being verbally abused – maybe even physically assaulted – until you left.

You could then extrapolate this exponentially throughout the world. If the village you terrorised was some miserable backwater, then perhaps only the outlying farmsteads and neighbouring villages would treat you with caution, if not outright contempt. However, go on a killing spree in a major city and I would expect my reputation to preceed me just about everywhere I went.

You could couple this sort of “radial reputation” system into a character’s appearance for your marketing gimmick. But the real gameplay mechanics would come down to something more sophisticated and real-world. The more negative your reputation, the more you’d struggle with persecution in the world. Something gets stolen or someone gets murdered, the authorities automatically smash down your door in the wee small hours and drag you off for interogation. This would force you to sleep rough, or – much more interestingly – start relying on the criminal underworld for supplies and work.

Taking this idea further, you could then engage in some interesting double-crossing to curry favour with certain parties. Maybe even regain your nobility if you wished, or reveal yourself to be a treacherous brigand otherwise.

Sony have just announced a deal with former UK telecomms monopolist empire BT, enabling voice, video and – urgh – text message communications for British PSPs.

Whilst it’s nice to see Sony penning deals of this kind to make use of a very capable piece of hardware, it’s not what the hardware was originally designed for. Why call it PlayStation, when it seems pervasively clear that Sony are now trying to make the PSP into this generation’s must-have gadget? As they did with the Walkman, but have utterly failed to replicate since. Anyway, back to the new deal…

With this announcement regarding text messaging, and Microsoft’s recent Xbox Live Spring Update enabling instant messaging, I’m finding it increasingly difficult to understand why these companies think inputting text with a thumbstick is a good idea. Sure, text messaging has been a boon for the mobile phone industry, but, as an interface, mobile phones are only slightly less abyssmal for entering strings of text. Why then are we now seemingly being bombarded with this technology in the gaming space?

There’s nothing to suggest that either Microsoft or Sony can directly monetise each message sent, unlike text messaging on mobile phones. More over it takes far, far longer to input a simple line of text with a joypad. Remember when you used to enter your high scores into an arcade machine, using just 3 initials, and how long that used to take? Exactly. Except now you get more than 3 letters. And you can see all the letters you can choose from on the screen at once.

The frustration factor of trying to send text messages on a PSP is going to completely kill this aspect of the service. You’d have to be extremely dedicated – not to mention a little bit sad – to carry on tip-tapping away, a single letter at a time, in order to justify using your PSP in this way.

And let’s be honest; if you can plop down £150+ on a trendy portable, you’ve likely already spent at least that on the latest 3G video-enabled, multi megapixel camera-toting, gigabytes-of-MP3s-playing mobile phone anyway. Which kind of negates anything the PSP can do beyond “play games” anyway.

Sony really need to sort their act out.

The following is a review of the PC version of the game, which I wrote on the (most excellent) Idle Thumbs’ forums last year. Seeing as the sequel has just been announced – and I didn’t have a blog at the time – I figured it would be prudent to republish it here (including a few tweaks).

Review

The game’s premise is simple; murders are happening throughout a near-future city. You are a divisional agent trying to piece together what’s going on, as the urban landscape – and populace – sinks further into maddening decay around you. The game’s narrative is driven via your forays into this world, and, upon discovering a fresh crime scene, through the use of a forensics system straight out of an arcade game. Yes, SEGA’s production-accredited influence is all over this game like a rash, seeping from every broken pipe and cracked plasterboard wall. And, in this particular instance, that’s a very good thing.

Combat is firmly rooted in arcade mechanics, although weapon selection is deceptively linear. Unlike virtually any other first-person game you care to mention, Condemned only ever lets you carry one weapon at a time. Furthermore, you never have any more ammunition, other than what’s left in the gun you just picked up. This forces you to make tactical considerations where you’d not normally expect to in a game of this kind. Do you stick with the electrical conduit, with its high speed, decent damage and reasonable blocking ability? Or do you risk snatching up that sawn-off shotgun instead, in the vain hope that at least one of its two chambers actually has a shell in it? You also have to consider that, once the ammunition is spent, firearms are next to useless against assailants, with the more cumbersome weapons – such as the sawn-off – being surprising brittle. Arguably, it’s best to resort to physical contact over munitions in the majority of cases, as melee weapons always pack a mean punch. But when called for the guns in the game really deliver, if only for a brief period of time.

As already alluded to, the procurement of weaponry is often a case of just ripping the nearest pipe or 2-by-4 off the wall, as your assailant barrels toward you. The brawling in Condemned is as brutal as is it is brief, with individual encounters usually requiring no more than a couple of well-timed swings to smash the life out of your opponent. And when a swing of your sledgehammer does connect with an attacker’s face, it’s reassuringly pronounced through brilliant motion capture and liberal sound effects.

It’s worth clarifying at this point that, whilst production values are extremely high in Condemned, the polish never interferes with the gritty realism the game strives for. Filthy, rain soaked partition walls are swollen and discoloured with unnerving realism, and the character artwork is consistently striking throughout. Certain models can look a little boxy at times, but this happens so rarely it won’t detract from your complete immersion in the rich and varied environments.

The story, too, is equally well crafted. Pure pulp it may be, but then that’s the idea. It’s worth highlighting the voice acting also, which is surprisingly convincing and well delivered; this definitely ain’t no Prey. The central plot twists and writhes as you crawl through sewers, an abandoned subway train yard, and later derelict rural farmsteads set amidst rotting fruit orchards. Each level is well paced and believably constructed, and the over-arching themes of murder and human degeneration saturate every corner of the environment, creating a virtually unique atmosphere that really needs to be experienced to be believed.

Ultimately, Condemned leaves you with a few loose strands of unfinished sub-plots, but the game’s core narrative reaches a fulfilling climax and, mercifully, doesn’t leave you hanging in wait for the sequel.

There are a couple things which might prevent Condemned being a ‘must-have’ title for some people though. Perhaps foremost, it’s relatively short. Playing at a leisurely pace, I finished the game in approximately 12 hours. For me this isn’t a problem (in fact it’s pretty much perfect), but some gamers may expect more game for their money. I would argue, however, that it’s difficult to hold this against any game when it’s as polished and well directed as Condemned. It just might be a little shorter than you were hoping.

Secondly, the game suffers from what many early Xbox 360 titles were afflicted with; poorly conceived achievements. These commonly take the form of collecting a certain number of dead or dying birds, scattered seemingly at random throughout each level. The mass death of these birds happening in key areas of the early game is one of the sub-plots which weaves its way throughout, and discovering the skeletons – or writhing corpses – of crows as you pick your way through the debris adds a layer of sombreness and pity to the experience. However, after picking up the first few, it becomes more of a chore than anything else to retread cleared sections trying to find the last couple of elusive pickups. Additionally, there are several fragments of metal to collect during each stage, but, unlike the dead birds, it’s not entirely clear what purpose these have in the game’s narrative. Bronze, silver and gold ratings are available for each respective level’s achievements, which in turn unlock more content—usually nothing more than concept art (though it is, admittedly, stunning). The sheer number of achievements spread throughout the game is quite daunting, but the biggest stop-gap to actually collecting them all is the game’s settings and story; after one complete play-through, I can’t see many people feeling the urge to retread this game’s rotting floorboards. At least not in the short-term.

Taking everything into account, this game is full to bursting with menace and foreboding. What it might lack in overall duration, it more than makes up for this with the shear visceral nature of the experience. Condemned should be held up as a triumph of tightly implemented design, considered mechanics, and mature themes successfully – not to mention convincingly – executed in a video game.

If you liked the film Se7en then you’ll be completely engrossed in Condemned: Criminal Origins. Thoroughly recommended.

Overall: 4/5

Whilst I have absolutely no desire to support that waste of fresh air that is Jack Thompson, I sincerely hope there isn’t some shred of a long uninstalled violent game – such as a config file for an age-old version of Counter-Strike – buried somewhere on the hard drive. Because if there is, then we – as gamers – are fucked (legislatively speaking).

And Thompson will be waiting, trousers down, howling and raging like a rabid animal.