We Interrupt This Broadcast | 11-11-11... Or Is It?

No, it is. I'm just being difficult.

That said, here on The Speculative Scotsman, 11-11-11 is going to be all about the things that could have been. If not the good times we were going to have - I mean, who am I kidding? - then the timely reviews I was going to put up today, if I'd only written them.

Thing is I haven't. You folks will just have to go in want of my thoughts on the direct-to-DVD gimmick horror movie named for the date, because I couldn't stand it.

I had hopes for 11-11-11. Not exactly high hopes, but nonetheless, I don't despise the SAW films - of which Darren Lynn Bousman directed the second, the third and the fourth - and I genuinely do adore Repo! The Genetic Opera, which I understand was something of a passion project for the talented young filmmaker.

Would that 11-11-11 evidenced even the barest suggestion of the undeniable passion Bousman brought to his macabre musical... his modern-day Rocky Horror. Alas no, not so much. It is truly a dreadful film, all ham and no jam, and half an hour of it was all the other half and I could take the night before last.

As to last night, well. We went to see Opeth and Pain of Salvation, but mostly Opeth, at the HMV Picture House in Edinburgh, which I was disproportionately pleased to see still rather resembles an old cinema. So we took our seats - oh, seats! - bought some beers and sat back to enjoy the music... which we did.

Failing the 11-11-11 movie review - in fact failing the movie, never mind the review - I was going to post a bit about the three hours I spent nursing a pint of tepid Tuborg while Opeth and Pain of Salvation played last night instead. I was going to write about how I do not disagree with Ryan of the inimitable Battle Hymns blog when he says that the lack of growlage was pretty darned disappointing.

Much as I adore Opeth's latest album Heritage, which this tour is of course in support of, the band played a fair selection of their beloved back-catalogue too, and even these songs seemed... not blunted, exactly; tempered might be a better way of describing it. And tempered is really the last thing I want Opeth to be, especially the older Opeth albums I hold so close to my heart.

Also: no Blackwater Park. What the crap, guys?

Still, had a great night, and a great day beforehand, sampling Orkney ales in the Gillie and wolfing down a plate of delicious veggie haggis in Henderson's, with the very best company to keep me company. Happy birthday, hon!

Anyway, I'm sure I've more to say about Opeth - and maybe one day I'll say some of it! - but my fallback plan for content on TSS today was also comprehensively scuttled this morning.

It was the postie what did it. Isn't it ever?

He only brought me my copy of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

So... give me a hundred hours or so, and we'll talk, alright? :)

Happy 11-11-11, everyone!

Video Game Review | Dead Island, dev. Techland

No-one really gave a shank about Dead Island till that tremendous trailer.

The game, for all its immediate promise when Deep Silver announced it in 2006 - of a massive, first-person perspective open world a la The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, but with zombies, and the stink of survival horror - Dead Island had been long thought lost to that dead zone known as development hell when in 2011 a stunning CG short film reignited interest in the latest from the Call of Juarez developers.

I was, for my part, skeptical that we would ever see Dead Island on store shelves, and doubtful that if and when we did, it would in the least resemble the touching teaser. Half a year later, the impossible has happened. Dead Island, as it transpires, actually is a game - as opposed to the glorified tech demo I'd expected - and not only that; it's pretty terrific, too.

But that isn't to say it's anything like that trailer.

The zombocalypse begins on the island of Banoi, a fictional landmass supposedly off the coast of Papua New Guinea. Whichever of the four playable characters you pick at the start screen, after a night's irresponsible drinking you - yes, you - awaken in your room in the Palms Resort Hotel with one hangover to rule them all, to find zombies to the left of you, and undead to the right. But here you are. Stuck in the middle of a nightmare.

Thanks to a mysterious voice that guides you over the intercom, you escape the hotel by the skin of your teeth to find spread out before you Banoi, in all its broken, bloodied glory. The island may not be the sheer size of Cyrodil, say, or even the atomic wastelands of New Vegas... nonetheless it is truly a huge place, of incredible, eye-catching environs. First and foremost amongst them: the tropical resort village you find your feet in, with its shallow swimming pools and lavish outdoor bars, where Techland tutorialise the simple mechanics you could spend the next 30 hours getting to grips with.

Which is to say, see a zombie? Kill it dead.

Don't have a weapon? Well find one, why don't you! A lead pipe, for instance, or a machete... or my personal favourite, because I picked - entirely at random - the blunt weapons specialist: the level 7 Baseball Bat. Failing that, there's always your fists. Or a gun, though there are very few of those in the beginning; more's the pity for those players who pick the character with the affinity for arms.

Anyway, next on the agenda - that is presuming you don't have any more pressing business than surviving this beautiful living dead hell - find yourself a workbench and gussy that weapon up some, because the only thing better than a striking stick is a striking stick you've set fire to.

But wait, there's more! When you begin Dead Island, the combat controls default to digital, which equates to a button press that makes your undead slayer flail his or her weapon like a lunatic. Needless to say, this is not so awesome; it makes for flat, pointless combat, with no tactics to speak of, nor any species of player choice. And you're going to fight a lot of zombies over the course of Dead Island, so do yourself a favour: pop into the options, swap over to analogue controls, then let 'em have it.

The analogue controls will be familiar to anyone who's played the Skate series, which had you perform tricks with the right control stick, holding down to charge a jump, for instance, then flicking it straight up to pull off an ollie. In Dead Island, the only difference is you're charging your arms instead of your legs, so when you swipe the stick from left to right, your character does likewise with a weapon. In this way you can lop off individual arms or legs, rendering a zombie practically harmless, or if you're lucky, and you aim your strike just right, explode an undead head.

This mechanic - truth be told only this mechanic - serves to separate Dead Island from the pack. Curious, then, that by default it's inactive. If I hadn't turned the analogue combat controls on, I don't know that I'd have bothered exploring Banoi at all. As was, I completed the very lengthy campaign, as well as almost every one of the sidequests, and I spent an almighty amount of time just traipsing around, too, to see what I could see... looking for loot in all the wrong places.

30 hours of my life later - seriously - I don't regret a second of the time I spent with Dead Island, simply because the combat was so satisfying; so weighty, strategic and visceral. The missions, alas, aren't. Harvest five samples of meat from a certain sort of zombie. Find ten nails so some guy can set up a barricade. Kill all the zombies in a particular area. Well, whatever.

Nor is the world, beyond the small holiday resort you begin in, much to brag about. There's a jungle, a prison and a city, none of which have the strength of character or the freshness in terms of video game aesthetics of the starting area. Also: the voice acting is awful... the graphics get worse the further through the game you progress... and the less said about Dead Island's story - which after all was what that trailer purported to sell it on - the less said about Dead Island's story, never mind its characters, such as they are, the better.

But that combat! There's simply nothing quite like it, and though I expect The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim will be a trump to Dead Island's spade in every other sense, Bethesda Softworks, the undisputed masters of the open world, would be well to take this essential lesson to heart, because with such singularly solid combat, even a mediocre game - as Dead Island would otherwise be - can be great. One can only imagine how incredible a good game would be with Techland's pioneering mechanics to boot.

Smash Hits | [Insert Skyrim Job Joke Here]

The BoSS is on vacation today. So.


You know, I don't buy terribly many video games. I mean, I play a whole lot of the things - I'd be the first to admit my eyes are sometimes bigger than my belly - but multiplayer modes rarely catch my eye, and £50 for a game that'll entertain me for a few evenings is a very hard sell.

Which is to say, the last video game I actually bought was Mass Effect 2. LoveFilm's kept me rolling in fun times on the 360 and PS3 since.

Anyway, if there was even a shadow of a shadow of a doubt that The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim would be the game for which I break my long-standing buying fast, it's gone as of now. Because:

Cloth map! :D

Doesn't hurt that it's a cloth map for the hugely anticipated sequel to Oblivion, which given that I've yet to dare try my hand at an MMO must be the game have I've sunk the most hours into - ever. That I'd buy this beauty at some point was pretty much a gimme.

Then Bethseda announced a lovely burlap cloth map would be made available - for free! - to anyone and everyone who preorders Skyrim, whether from retailers in Europe or North America.

Here I'd been thinking I'd wait to see how the various console versions shook up in the final summation before I made a decision either way. (I mean, I'd like to get the Xbox 360 version, what with the points and all, but for a game of this sheer scale and scope, perhaps the PS3's extra storage will come in handy. Frankly I'd rather not have to worry about compressed textures and dodgy audio because of file format limitations - roll on the next generation already - but such is the gamer's life in this day and age.)

Well, I'd best pick one and be done with it, or no cloth map for me. Which I hardly need confess would make me a very sad Scotsman indeed...

***

Source: Kotaku

Trailer Trash | Elder Scrolled

So yesterday, I watched press conferences.

They were not, as a whole, particularly inspiring. There will be new games! Hooray! And who would have thunk it?

Sadly, most of the things I'd hoped to see were not to be. I'll admit to some excitement over the Kinect functionality Microsoft and certain third parties are baking into a select few forthcoming 360 games - primarily Ghost Recon: Future Soldier - but of the four conferences yesterday, honest to God, I think I enjoyed the Ubisoft one the most.


For Far Cry 3, the stealth-developed sequel to an open world FPS which could and should have changed the face of gaming a few years ago, but didn't; and for the next Assassin's Creed - that is to say Revelations, "the final chapter of Ezio's story," as if it hadn't already ended twice - which looked awesome... despite my misgivings about diminishing returns from studios churning out yearly sequels.

But one of the coolest bits and bobs to come out of E3 thus far wasn't at any of the press conferences - though there's still the outside chance it could feature at Nintendo's new hardware extravaganza later today. Rather, released apropos of nothing much at all, seven solid minutes of gameplay from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.


And here they are:

Can I hear a hell yeah? :)