So the football season, for the English Premiership teams at least, is now over and normally at this point of the year all footie fans hang their heads and breathe a communal sigh as they realise they have no excuse to avoid a productive Saturday for a whole 4 months.  But wait!  Every 4 years the World Cup comes to the rescue, non-football fans get all patriotic for no reason and EA get an excuse to print money- I mean make another football game.  For those of you that play footie console games, you should know, there are two that normally come out for the main consoles each year.   FIFA 2010, as the title suggests, is officially licensed by the world’s governing body of football, and normally gets all the perks associated with it, such as licensed team and player names.  Pro Evolution Soccer, it’s rival, in recent years has managed to improve it’s authenticity, with more accurate players names and teams, Arsenal are still called North London though.

FIFA was the king of the footie games for years, with great commentary, a great class feel when playing, EA are very good at making  ”the real deal”, you could be watching a TV show and the differences would be indisce

rnible, in fact my mother has before now asked me who was playing.  Pro Evo though is made by Konami, a Japanese games developer who don’t attempt to emulate a TV broadcast, their game is more focused on the strategy and flow of the game.  It’s not an unattractive game, but it is based on an intricate control system, an emphasis on tricky build up play.  Whilst games in previous FIFA’s often ended 8-1, a scoreless draw would be a frustrating, if realistic outcome of an average Pro Evo game.

Both games are produced with lots of love, and I would suggest it’s a personal preference thing, if you need to see Rooney’s perfectly modelled mug opt for the EA game, however if you like to tinker and feel like you have earned your goals then go with Pro Evo.  In fact if you are really into the strategy there are football management sims to look into, but as we all know, people who play these statistic heavy games are obviously just bitter they never got to be accountants.  For anyone though, if you want to get excited about the World Cup a little early then this year’s special edition game by EA will more than do the job.  You get the same tv idents, same opening ceremonies, it would get even the most uninterested football widow’s blood pumping and reaching for the flag of St. George.  And you can play it and prove your gaming skills this weekend at Light House, or just come to cheer to someone on…

The FIFA World Cup Challenge is on 15th May, is £3 to enter and free for spectators

Released a couple of months ago now was Final Fantasy XIII, you’d have thought they would have changed the name in some way after they decided to make a second, but then, this has always been a series full of irony.  Every game is played with an emphasis on plot, but all the characters, story and game world change with each version.  The turnbased, fighting aspect of the game, often changes with each iteration, giving a new experience on which the quality of the game relies upon, yet even though the first game was made over 20 years ago fans are still coming back for more. Despite the changes in character and game-world in each version there are still consistent themes that run through the series, however this latest incarnation seem a little more different than usual.  Mainly, the micro-management of spells and attacks most FF games have is still there, but to use them is practically suicide and as the game can pick the best moves automatically anyway,  the first 20 hours is spent basically pressing A.

This may sound a little boring, and in reality, it is, the story is complex with a new world’s worth of characters being drip fed to you whilst, very slowly, it guides you through the new fighting system.  The game’s narrative stalls many times and it’s taken me nearly 2 months since its release to get through the first half, I’ve simply had no desire to pick up the pad again, with the frustrating and constant changes in cast that deny any sense of narrative and stunt your freedom.  Your path is linear and there is no deviating from the battles that you will have, the power ups you will collect and the cut scenes with the main characters that entertain occasionally, but more often annoy.  However, if you grind your way through, the game starts to open up, and the Final Fantasy we know and love finally returns.

An interesting tactical battle system begins to emerge, having to pre select how your groups will defend, attack and support each other, so every player of the game has their own style, for example me and my brother have been working through the game and we keep arguing about how to play it.  I keep telling him to start buffing up his characters at the start of a boss battle, but he goes for speed and healing up on the fly.  I am obviously right, but I’m sure the fact he (occasionally) succeeds tells you there is more than one way of playing this game.  With more time passing the plot starts to fall into place, the characters and world start to make sense and become familiar, even charming, the music shines through too, keeping up the tension and controlling the pace beautifully.

It’s so frustrating though that you have to play through such a slow starting, unappealing and boring game to get to a rather exciting complex one, I imagine with this being such a huge franchise though, people will have stuck it out and kept playing to see where the story goes, and if you own it and have already put it down with boredom, have a good think as to how much more you’ll need to play to finally get your money’s worth out of this game.  As for someone new to the genre wondering whether to buy this?  I can recommend Final Fantasy, but I think I’ll do you the favour and tell you to go and buy Final Fantasy VII and a PSOne, it’ll cost you about the same and it will entertain for about 3 times as long and from the very beginning.  If the older graphics put you off, perhaps opt for Final Fantasy X instead on the PS2, it’s still a very beautiful game, even by today’s standards, and if you want to play Squaresoft’s best UK release try and track down Secret of Mana on the SNES, it’s like Zelda with knobs on.

Some people don’t like RPGs though, and I can’t blame them, they can suck up a huge amount of your time.  I still never finished VII,  my brother accidentally wiping 120 hours of my life away still haunts me 10 yrs on…

Final Fantasy XIII is out now on PS3 and XBox 360 for around £40

Firstly, I’d like to thank all of those that attended the first ever Big Screen Game Challenge. It was great fun I even got to do some brilliant renditions on vocals.

I’ve been listening to all you wonderful gamers and it would seem that FIFA World Cup: South Africa will be the next BSGC, so instead of Guitar Hero on Sat 15th May, 12pm – 5pm, we’ll have a proper tournament to rival the real World Cup with much better prizes.

You’ll need to register and pay via Light House Box Office and I will be organising names into groups.

Groups A – H will play each other until there are two clear winners for the heats.  Teams will be randomly selected, so no requests please. If you think you’re a champion at FIFA you’ll have to prove it with actually skill and no tweaks.

If you want more information please contact me on ren [at] light-house.  co.uk
If you want to register immediately call our Box Office on Tel: 01902 716055

This year’s video-game BAFTAs were a much better affair than previous years, for the main reason that Dara Ó Briain was on hand to present the proceedings.  What made Dara perfect for the job was not his good comedic timing, which seems to get him a rather comfortable hosting slot on Mock the Week, or even the fact he is well versed in video game culture, Iain Lee says he plays games but still managed to mess it up for a couple of years.  Trying to make jokes about playing with your joystick to a room of the industry’s best was never going to go down well.  No, in Dara’s case he appreciates the fact that games can be many things to many people, a casual distraction, an epic adventure and often an artform, but not the geeky past time they are often portrayed as.  It’s a sad affair that nearly 50 years on since the dawn of video-gaming there is still a stigma attached to the people that play them.

Although the market would perhaps say otherwise, a Wii is now a pretty common sight in people’s living rooms, bringing the console out of the bedroom.  The DS has now branched out with it’s XL version, aiming the larger ‘portable’ at a group of people that aren’t as mobile as the kids they were once for.  Shigeru Miyamoto won the fellowship award at the BAFTAs this year for precisely that reason, his continuing efforts to include more people into his wonderful gaming worlds.  However, the press still enjoy having a go at the odd game, they need to find a scapegoat every now and then and like to shock with stupid headlines like BABIES ARE PLAYING THIESE MURDEROUS GAMES!  The reality that there is a giant BBFC 18 certificate on the cover seems to have been relegated to rather late in the article.  Recent shows like Newswipe highlight the lazy reporting and scaremongering that can go on by the media, and whatever public opinion actually is, we can always rely on the press for a comment on how modern life is destroying our future.

I suppose the important thing to remember with games is that there are many genres and styles, the possibilities in a game world are greater than those you can experience in a film or book, not only are plot, style and time variables in making a game but many games have no bearing in a cohesive reality, Bejeweled or the rather excellent Flower simply wouldn’t work in print or on the big screen.  Not to mention how the player interacts with the game, something that is continually changing in exciting ways, with motion sensors, balance boards, and Project Natal should finally be with us in some form later this year.  And whilst games in general have matured in their structure and tone, there is sadly a diverse range to pick on to highlight it’s shortfalls, even the big budget games have recently come under fire for bad voice acting and poor plot.  I’m sure if Daily Mail and co. actually dug around online and found some of the childish games available they could fill a few more pages.

But there is no need to be shy with your games my friends!  The image of someone sat in a darkened room alone may cast a forlorn image of someone with no friends and nowhere to go.  But they are exploring Hyrule, fitting an exotic adventure into a couple of hours, they may have their headset on chatting to someone in Europe or the US about news and politics, in-between games of Halo, introducing them to friends from home, how could you be more sociable?  The therapeutic nature of games like Tetris or Bejeweled or the even the sense of gradual progress you get from social games like Farmville or Mafia Wars on Facebook are all part of modern life and are regularly played by milions of people.  They can sometimes create the gossip of the day, for example, I’m being told it’s my turn on Scrabble right now (Do you know any words with 7 vowels?).  Games are seeping into more of our culture and in the next 10 to 20 years when everyone in western civilisation has grown up with these digital playthings being an integral part of mainstream culture, the people who play them will be able to stop defending themselves, as by then, games makers will probably have figured out out a way to intoxicate us all and there’ll be no one left to defend against.

All the staff at LH HQ are into gaming, but one staff member took his obsession home with him and knocked us up a brilliant video to promote our forthcoming gaming event.

Big Screen Game Challenge – Guitar Hero from Light House on Vimeo.

Some LH Staff responses to…
Q: What’s your favourite vidja game?

Steph (Digital Marketing Assistant)
“Lips (360) Just Dance (Wii) - because when I get together with my girlies we sing and dance in a drunken stupor!”

Drew (Animator in Residence)
“Mine is Pro Evolution. Because it is ace. Nuff said”

Ren (Bar & Events Coordinator)
“I love to watch God of War, but playing puzzle games, any of the Lego series as they are the best two players and visually stunning games like Ico and Jixel Junkies Eden (although – I found this really infuriating). I can’t wait to play The Misadventures of P.B Winterbottom – please tell me there will be a PS3 release.”

Darren (Press Assistant)
“My favourite video game is FIFA10 because it involves a ball”.

Kimberly (Administrator)
“The Legend of Zelda (1st one for the NES) Because it was the first time I became obsessed with a game. Me & my bro poured over the map that cane with it trying to find every single bonus, extra life, etc we could. We even used to leave it on pause over night so we could pick up right where we left off in the morning.

I think it’s my fave game more for the experience I shared with my brother as children than for the game itself.”

Kelly (Deputy CEO)
“I absolutely adore the Super Mario mini game where you have to look for the characters amongst lots of others. I was so excited the other day because I got to level 86. It’s on the DSi.”

Andrew (Blogger)
“Nothing has taken my life away more than this game, Warcraft, there is nothing compared to this. The SNES version is like pure 100% colombian. Only the super circuit version on the GBA can compete due to the fact it’s got exactly the same game and tracks, is portable and you can have up to 4 players. Screw progress, this was gaming at it’s purest.”

What’s yours?

So I decided to take the leap after the short demo and bought Darwinia + on Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA).  It’s the kind of game made by people like me, who grew up playing games on Spectrums and Commodores, but that doesn’t mean the charm would be lost on anyone else.  It’s a real time strategy (RTS) game where you are tasked to firstly look after, then guide and sometimes get a helping hand from, a group of little green men known as Darwinians, that all exist in some scientist’s experimental computer.

The game looks like a sunny day out in Tron, with large neon rivers to span, electric trees that pulsate and the bleeps and squeaks of an ethereal ghost inside the machine trying to get out.  The creator, who looks suspiciously like Sir Clive Sinclair himself, guides you through building an endless supply of units to combat the evil dragons, worms and spiders, which threaten the Darwinians peaceful existence.  The game doesn’t take itself too seriously though , at one point joking about how the Dawinians managed to track down a picture of the creator on his hard drive and decide to broadcast it across the sky with glee, obscuring the normally pixelated clouds with his face.

The campaign mode itself took me an enjoyable 6 hours to play through, the challenge not coming from keeping your units alive but from trying to coordinate an attack as quick as possible.  With an unlimited supply of squads to deploy, managing your resources is not a factor and it plays out differently to most other RTS games.  This makes it quite relaxed and devoid of the stress factor, if you make a mistake you can quite simply start again, but only by performing faster and more efficiently will the game allow you to advance.  Although playing Multiwinia, the online versus mode, is very different and playing a human opponent becomes a real battle of wits.

The game is another great example of what XBLA can deliver.  Perhaps Darwinia + is not everyone’s cup of tea, but it can be made and distributed so simply that it allows the freedom for small teams to still make games, no matter how obscure or abstract the idea.  It harks back to the old days of bedroom coders, and whilst nowadays games can sometimes overwhelm film and art in size and scope, there is the rather comforting feeling of logic to quite simply see your green pixels shooting some red ones.

Darwinia + is available for the XBox 360 and PC and is around £10.  More information can be found here.

Hello World. Welcome to the brand new web for our Big Screen Gaming Challenge.

BSGC is a monthly gaming event and competition open to all, and is collaboration between Light House Media Centre & Nebula Games. Taking place at Light House on the big screen, connected through the brilliant HD projector.

I wouldn’t have been able to get to this position with the events without the help from Jonathan Dunnett (Marketing Director – Nebula Games), Dominika Sochacka (Researcher), Daniel Edwards (Designer), Gary Jones (Web Developer) and Andrew Baker (Contributor).

Special Thanks to Stuart Slater (University of Wolverhampton), who piloted a gaming event at last year’s Flip Festival when the idea of having a regular gaming event was very much in the research stages.

Plus all the suggestions from the staff at Light House, who have proved themselves truly inspired by Games,
Console/PC or Hand-held. And will continue to support the project by volunteering their help or taking part in forthcoming events.

If you would like to become a regular contributor to our blog please me via email: ren [@] light-house.co.uk
Alternatively sign up for email alerts via the link below.

Guitar Hero: World Tour
Events will take place on Saturday 17th April & Saturday 15th May, 12pm – 5pm.
Prizes will include: Tshirts, games, food & drinks vouchers & other mech.

FIFA: World Cup Tournaments
Events will take place on Saturday 19th June & Saturday 17th July, 12pm – 5pm.
Prizes will be on offer to all winners.

Plus more events to be announced shortly!

If you like the sound of this but are too shy to compete, why not go to our hire section to find out how you can book the cinema space for your own gaming tournament.

Look for future blogs from (Nightbee) Andrew Baker & (reVolta) Ren Walton – these are our gaming tags on the Xbox & PS3 respectively.

WE LOVE GAMES!

Thanks

Ren

Welcome to the Big Screen Game Challenge Website. Whilst we are updating the site, why not register your interest in the event by either using the button below, where you can add your Name, Email and Phone number:

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