Paradise in Pants' Clothing

Video game review of "Project Eden" for Sony Playstation 2 (PS2).
Published on ciao.co.uk, September 2003.

I didn’t always think like this game was brilliant value. To be blunt, the screenshots on the back of the box were only so-so, and I had this game tucked in the drawer for a long while before I started to play it properly.

Even then, the cut scene that plays automatically when you first load the game looked good but the cut scenes within the game were, and are, a bit ropey to say the least. Then there were the controls – playing in third person had me stumbling over bricks in the road and my hardcore, futuristic SWAT team running into each other like a scene from a ‘Carry On’ film. Switching to first-person view for a Red Faction-style experience is better, but even then you need to get used to the PC/mouse-style control. In a nutshell, the crosshair moves across the screen as far as possible before the character you’re controlling actually turns the corner or looks up or down. Cue lots of falling down holes, walking into alien nasties and taking a week to grab a door handle.

However, with persistence I’d say all these difficulties are mastered within a couple of days’ playing.

Then Project Eden really comes into its own. I’ve played a lot of games and I don’t know how Eidos has done it, but it really works. The concept is simple, the plotline infantile, the graphics are no work of art, and on reflection the levels are extraordinarily repetitive. Watching someone else play Project Eden is probably marginally less dull than sitting in a clear glass box suspended above Tower Bridge, but this is one of the longest and most addictive games I’ve played in ages. After completing a level, I couldn’t resist a quick peek round the corner of the next level, which then turned into an hour, and was shortly followed by the entire post-work evening slipping away. Severity of puzzles vary, and when lured into a false sense of security there is still ample opportunity to be caught unawares and swamped by the enemy, resulting in a quick return to the last power-up point you passed (a wall-mounted box with a “UPA” sign that produces what looks like a lightning bolt to recharge your enviro-suit, much like Half-Life).

I guess I should explain what the game’s all about before I witter any further.

You control a team of four UPA (glorified police) officers at some point in the future. Earth now resembles what you see in the film, “The 5th Element” i.e. nobody lives at surface level anymore except tramps and scavengers. The adventure kicks off with your budding team of four investigating some sort of technological disturbance at a meat-packing factory near the populated levels of the city. From there onwards you are embroiled in some sort of sinister plot that means your job is never quite done. When you’ve investigated the disturbance, you find out some technicians are locked-in somewhere else in the building. When you’ve rescued them, you’re investigating the kidnappers a.k.a. “Death’s Head Gang”. You then find out they’re all using a new recreational drug of some sort that turns them into psychopaths…and so on and so forth. The same drug seems to be lying around all over the place, and a quick nibble turns your average Roland Rat, Tiddles the cat, Spot the dog or homing pigeon into a monstrous genetically mutated beastie. Some have bad breath and quite a range with it too so don’t get too close. The drug also has the same effect on humans, so you could be in a room full of people you think are just innocent bystanders at one moment, only to be surrounded and one the receiving end of a good kicking the next. Anyway, eventually the roots of the whole palaver links back to a member of your team, but that’s all I’ll say for fear of ruining everything for you.

Your team of four have various skills that you’ll need to get through the puzzles. Amber is a female ‘Robocop’ and impervious to heat, poisonous gases (handy given how many lifts and other confined spaces the team finds itself in). Minoko can hack into pretty much anything resembling a computer, which you’ll need to open doors and grab information amongst other things. The real fun though is overriding the control systems of wall or ceiling-mounted laser cannons, handy for taking out an attack if you’re overrun with bad guys. It’s like using a shotgun to kill an ant. André is the DIY expert who fixes keypads, door locks, generators and other things, and Carter is the team leader with sole security access to certain rooms or information.

You’ll get help in various ways too – first of all, guns. The most useful weapon by far is the Timeshock. Flick this to the “area” setting and you shoot a projectile through the air in the same way as a mortar. When the projectile hits the ground or a wall, it emits a ‘bubble’ of light in which time slows down. Any bad guys caught in the bubble, which has a circa 20 feet diameter, instantly turn to slow motion, meaning you can literally walk up to them and poke them in the eye. Handy for giving you time to think when you’re caught by surprise. Be careful though, it works just as well on your team members too. The other weapon of note is the Extractor. If your team’s armour is running out and there’s no recharge point in sight, fire this puppy at a bad guy and it saps energy from them. Keep doing this enough and you’ll create an energy cell, which can be used later to replenish either armour or weapons. You’ll also slot the bad guy in the process, though getting them to stand still for long enough might prove difficult – see note on the “Timeshock” above.

In addition to your fancy protective suits, and your weapons, everything seems to run on electricity too in this game, and your other main source of help is from electrically powered James Bond-style gadgets. Not all are available at the start, and you’ll have to collect them throughout the game. You can’t miss them though – you’ll get an e-mail from the boss to say they’re on their way down in a UPA lift, marked on your scanner so you can find it. The first two are the Rover and the Flycam, the former resembling a remote-controlled car with on-board camera and grappling arm, and the latter is literally a flying camera. Both can press buttons to open doors, get into little nooks and crannies where a team member won’t fit, and the Rover can also defend itself with a small laser cannon, though gets stomped on and squished quite easily so don’t rely on it too much. Whilst a bit dull, both are essential to completing the game as there are some points where your team will hit a dead end, which is usually a cue to start looking for a heating vent or hole in the door that one or the other will fit through. Think 3D too – many puzzle solutions mean checking either at your feet, or up a lift shaft or through a skylight.

The best gadget by far is the laser sentry – a long gun with a short temper mounted on a tripod. Set it down and its radar kicks in immediately, so just sit back and watch as it deals out the punishment. The best place to put them is in the middle of a wide, open space, preferably on a crate or boulder so the bad guys can’t get to it too easily. Otherwise leave one in the centre of a crossroads, or at a right angle corner – that way it can defend from attacks from more than one direction at once. It also serves as an early warning system – even when the baddies are too far away to appear on your scanner, you can hear the sentry firing from miles off so you know an ambush has been sprung.

Objective? What objective? When you start, you’re just starting a run-of-the-mill mission and it all kicks off from there. Whilst sounding disorganised, this introduces great variety in the game, as rescue missions follow search-and-destroy, which in turn might follow all four of your team running for their lives to get out of a place before it explodes. Good stuff. Graphics are OK, levels sufficiently varied to hold interest, and animation OK. The artificial intelligence of your team members does leave a little to be desired. Give your team the “follow me” instruction and then accidentally fall into a hole, and it’s likely that what you’ll see before you breathe your last and get zapped back to the last recharge point is the other three landing on top of you in a pile. Morons, the lot of ‘em.

The thing this game does really well is the sheer playability. Look at it logically and it’s repetitive, play it and it’s addictive. The controls, while tricky at first, are soon mastered and you’ll be ordering people around all over the place, flanking the bad guys, and only needing to put your sentry in one place in a room to clear it. You feel like you’re progressing quite quickly, but the game just goes on and on – it’s like the first Space Invaders games in the 1970s where the game looped if you completed it so, as long as you stayed awake, you never stopped. It took me more than a week from when I was saying, “I think I’ve nearly finished it now”, to actually completing it. The game does actually have an end but this characteristic delivers in spades to the game’s value-for-money, and how many adventure/RPG games do that these days? I think this is down to (a) a BIG game anyway, (b) pitching of puzzles at the right level, and (c) the fact that despite potential targets being highlighted when you point your gun at them, it’s still possible to miss details in a room the first time you visit. This is part of the opportunities there are to interact with the environment. In addition to basic button-pushing and lever-pulling, you’ll need to shoot obstacles to remove them, use movable objects to get the Rover somewhere you haven’t even seen yet, and use the right combination of each team members’ skills to proceed.

I know I said the plot is infantile but it’s good enough to keep you intrigued, and there are a number of clues along the way as to what’s really going on, though I must admit that when the ‘twist’ came, it caught me slightly by surprise. During some levels your team will be split up and won’t see each other again until right near the end, changing the game from one of actively seeking the enemy to more escape and evasion.

All in all, this is a top-notch game. If it had stonking graphics too, and a little more variety, I’d be giving it five stars and ringing Eidos to see if I could work with them on the next one, if there is a next one. As it is, there’s even a multiplayer option offering a better-than-basic ‘shoot ‘em up’ experience. Good value for money even if you spend 40 quid, and brilliant value if you get it pre-owned or on price promotion. Go buy it now and kiss goodbye to conversation and your social life for months.

Soul Reaver + Feminism = Primal Urges in Male Gamers

Video game review of "Primal" for Sony Playstation 2 (PS2).
Published on ciao.co.uk, September 2003.

Well, if you like Soul Reaver, you’ll like this.

Imagine Soul Reaver, except starring a curiously foxy, leather-clad (hubba hubba) twenty-something girl clubber, instead of the tormented, rotting corpse of a vampire. Also, imagine that when morphing takes place, it’s the person rather than the scenery that morphs.

Not that the scenery isn’t varied in Primal. It is – with four demon realms in addition to ‘Mortalis’ a.k.a. Earth where you travel from at the beginning of the game. You might need to turn up the brightness on the TV a bit (though there’s an in-game option for this) but once you do, you’ll see very expansive, detailed levels. Being completely fictional, the worlds aren’t restrained by trivialities such as physics, so the programmers have ‘carte blanche’ to make each world as characteristic of its inhabitants as possible.

Each realm also comes with its own wildlife as well as weather, scenery, and architecture. The wildlife is usually bad tempered and spiky, even sarcastic where the “Aetha” realm is concerned. The upside of visiting each new demon realm is that sooner or later, Jen, our heroine, will assume the ability to morph into the demon form represented by that realm. These abilities are probably the second-most anticipated part of the game, with each morph being really quite cool and including Jen growing horns, elongated – Wolverine style – fingernails, the ability to breath underwater and communicate via telepathy, or the chance to morph time when running or fighting. The latter ability is similar to bullet time in the Max Payne games except a lot easier to use and control. Weapons and battle combos also vary with each realm, ranging from a simple double punch to some pretty useful manoeuvres with either a whip or twin energy swords. You get a little pep-talk when Jen has acquired a new ability so it doesn’t go to waste.

“So what’s the most eagerly anticipated part of the game?” I hear you ask. Well, once you get into the game it becomes apparent that completing Jen’s list of chores in each realm will have an impact on what happens next. There’s a plot y’see. The whole reason Jen’s in this mess is because her boyfriend got nabbed outside a nightclub on Mortalis by a big nasty demon. She’s chasing him to rescue him. As you start to look as if you’re going to complete one realm, you develop a hankering to see what the next one’s like. You don’t know the sub-plots for each realm until shortly after you enter them, which also keeps the game fresh, and there are bonuses in the form of tarot cards to be collected along the way. These unlock anything from game concept art to a, “The making of…” video. It’s handy sometimes that the ol’ PS2 plays DVDs too!

Jen’s newly-acquired abilities help her to navigate the various landscapes, as well as solving the puzzles along the way. It might be that you need the Ferai ability to jump higher than usual, the Undine ability to swim, or the Wraith ability to slow down time – handy for scuttling under the occasional portcullis before it slams shut. Thinking laterally and therefore using the appropriate demon form to solve a puzzle becomes more and more important as you proceed, though I don’t think this is exploited to its fullest potential (I’ll explain later). If you get stumped completely on a puzzle, then it’s probably because you should be playing as Scree rather than Jen.

Scree is not only a stumpy, overly-polite gargoyle with no patience for Jen’s flippant sense of humour, he’s also Jen’s guide. Scree also helps connect Jen to the ‘bigger picture’ plotline, which is that the two forces balancing the four demon realms are…well…unbalanced. Basically, there’s too much chaos and too little order for the first time in eternity, and if Jen doesn’t sort her act out then it’ll all go a bit Pete Tong, including on Mortalis. Imagine it being the January sales on Oxford Street for every day of the year and in every town and you’ll get the picture – total bloodthirsty anarchy combined with a complete lack of social responsibility to yourself and others.

OK, so, we’ve got objectives, we’ve got the opportunity to play as either of the main characters (that follow each other around in case you were wondering), a plot, a few sub-plots thrown in for good measure (including Scree’s, which is revealed late on in the game), and the chance to kick a lot of arse along the way. There’s decent background graphics, good animation, good beat-em-up-ability, characters with differing personalities, and some half-decent puzzle-solving in-between. There’s even a twist at the end, and the size of the game means you’ll probably get your money’s worth out of it. All in all it sounds quite good, but there is room for improvement here.

I said that Primal was a bit like Soul Reaver. Well…it’s actually VERY like Soul Reaver. I swear that even a couple of the sound effects are actually the same. The layout is very similar, and the huge size of the realms mean it takes ages to traipse from one end to another - especially if you’re dragging a stone gargoyle with you, no matter what diet he’s on. The supposed ‘fix’ to this problem is the rift gates (read ‘teleport’), which crop up regularly in each realm. Trouble is, you can never remember which one’s which in relation to the rest of the realm, so while you can crank one up and supposedly stroll great distances in one step, you end up warping backwards and forwards all over the place until you can remember where that flippin’ door was that you just pulled a lever to open from somewhere ten miles away. If you ignore the rift gates then the miles and miles of realm you found so cool on the first time through turn out to be a bit of a pain. There needs to be some sort of better linking between the in-game screen and the map screen here.

One of the cool things about Soul Reaver was the ability to backtrack to old places when you’d acquired new abilities, making the hunt for bonuses all the more satisfying. In Primal, during Solum – the first demon realm visited – you wander past many a pool or lake that looks worth investigating if you could only swim. You learn the swim later on, but you can’t get back to Solum once you’ve left it, so you’re left wondering what delights rest at the bottom of that river. Maybe game bonuses where you ring a special phone number to be included in a special international Primal ‘experts’ club, perhaps a preview of Primal 2, maybe an opportunity to design a level that ‘The Gauntlet’ game did so successfully on the Sega Megadrive – who knows?

The puzzles aren’t as puzzling as they might be. Once you get the knack of it, then the major difficulty in completing the game becomes finding the time to play it, not calling all your mates that are playing it to see who’s figured it out first. This reduces the ideal age of the player, though in the process serving as a useful step up for a young gamer taking on something a little more adult. Mind you, there’s a lot of blood in it too. Also, when fighting, there’s no tuition on combos. People who play Tekken as the Bruce Lee-style character (I can’t remember his name) will love this ‘cos it’s all about walloping the buttons as fast as you can. Anyone else will get fed up with the funky moves in the demo sequences that seem to be impossible to replicate when you’re actually playing the game.

Overall, I’d say it’s not one of those, “Omigod, I gotta have it the minute it hits the shelf” games. However, when you’re wandering around Game or Electronics Boutique with a couple of games to trade in, I would say to look for this in the pre-owned. If you haven’t played Soul Reaver then the format will seem new to you, and it’s still a good game even if you have played Soul Reaver. It’s nowhere near as dull as some of the PS2 magazines said, and the bonuses available do make it worthwhile checking every corner and behind every tree. A promising start, and if all the faults are taken into account then Primal 2 would become a must-have purchase.

Anna Jackson, reporting manager, Band & Brown Public Relations

From: Anna Jackson
To: Glyn Davies

Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2003 12:16:45 +0100

Can you forward me any email communication you have had with Geoff M and I will submit the by line.

Thanks for your help with this, the client is really, really impressed - as am I!

Valerie Weisenreder, reporting manager, Band & Brown PR

RE: Work update
Date: Tue, 2 Sep 2003 16:04:33 +0100


MY God - you are brilliant.

I am sure you guys can fill Glyn's schedule for two hours!!!!

V

An Ecosystem - Just What European Resellers Need?

Ghost-written article for Edzard Overbeek, Cisco Systems EMEA.
Published in European Reseller magazine, UK/Europe, September 2003.

As if leveraging, ramping up, and creating ‘synergies’ weren’t enough business jargon to choke any IT expert, we are now creating 'ecosystems' for resellers in the European channel to market. Recent analysis by Martin Canning, VP, European Services Research, IDC EMEA, suggests that the current linear, hierarchical method for manufacturers to work with their channel partners may be retired by, of all people, the end users. Why? Quite simply, end users want to be able to contact just one person if something goes wrong, they need an upgrade or they have any questions. Traditionally, an organisation might deal with many resellers for different things. However, those days are gone.

Our ‘ecosystem’ functions like a human networking cocktail party hosted both in the real world and in cyberspace. The aim is to ensure that the perfect fusion of specialised IT knowledge is applied to each end-user scenario, reducing duplication of activities and therefore cost to the customer. This tackles the main issue for resellers in that it is impossible for them to be all things to everyone. It is also the reason why the majority of IT vendors employ a mixture of channel partners and systems integrators to provide the ultimate in business flexibility. Furthermore, the ecosystem tackles two other key concerns for resellers – overstocking and keeping up with ever-evolving technology. Both are part of the same problem - rapid advances in technology are almost impossible for an individual reseller to match, resulting in a supply chain beset with yesterday’s technology.

We encourage resellers to specialise, firstly to reduce overlap between rivals and secondly because competing on price alone is a recipe for disaster. Preventing such duplication of expertise is vital to ensure a seamless and profitable channel. The combined market opportunity for the extensive range of networking products, from routers and switches to wireless LAN solutions, is worth up to €64 billion for product sales, plus €30 billion for advanced services. No single vendor can possibly claim to do all this single-handedly, which is why an ecosystem of specialised, complimentary organisations is the ideal scenario. Our goal is to help give those organisations a slice of this action.

If that isn’t incentive enough, the focused ecosystem approach acknowledges the strengths of each player – whether software publisher, distributor, ISP, or reseller - working on any end-user requirement without bias. To reassure all concerned we invoke a “traffic light process,” ensuring that once a partner has been engaged on a project, no other player can muscle in.

In February this year we announced an expanded partnership agreement with US operator AT&T, where AT&T agreed to use our indirect sales partners to sell its advanced services. However, the ecosystem doesn’t solely benefit the reseller community. AT&T obtains access to more SMEs than ever before, regarded by many industry analysts as the "sweet spot" of the multi-billion Euro managed services market.

Far from being simply a new approach tagged with new jargon, the ecosystem presents genuine opportunities for all involved. These range from an increased customer base to carrying more up-to-date or varied solutions, or being able to access one specialised section of a massive IT project that had never been deemed possible in the past. It just goes to show – some buzzwords really are a hive of activity.