New Laptop - New Gaming

Laptop review - HT Spectre XT
September 2012 

That first experience with a new piece of hardware is a rare pleasure. But it's all too easily ruined by unintuitive or unnecessary software. Booting up a new Windows 7 PC can be harrowing. 

First Impressions

The XT's chamfered rear gives it a distinctive appearance
Photograph: Peadar Grogan

The design of HP's sleek new Ultrabook is something of a revelation for Windows hardware. Lest you confuse it with one of the company's range of new ultra-thin 'Sleekbook' laptops, here’s a brief introduction: 

The Spectre XT is 18mm thick at its deepest point. The brushed aluminium lid and palm-rest are cool to the touch. The notebook’s underside is coated with a pleasing rubberized finish. At just under 1.5kg, it’s a notebook light enough to carry and reassuringly easy to hold. 

The laptop has a subtle wedge shape, tapering from its distinctive chamfered rear to its chrome-finished front. Unfortunately weight distribution is off. The laptop can’t be opened one-handed, but the neatly recessed touchpad provides a natural gripping point for your fingers on the front of the device.

Super Hexagon article on ThePlayer.ie

Niamh Houston wasn't even born when the Game Boy launched in 1989. But that hasn't stopped her creating music with the aging hardware. Using the stage-name Chipzel her work recently featured in the iOS hit, Super Hexagon. The game sold over 10,000 copies in its first three days.

Read more over on theplayer.ie or listen to her awesome music below:
Super Boy of Little Powers by chipzel

Singapore - Now we are cosmic friends forever.

Sometimes things don't go according to plan. This blog was supposed to catalogue a year of intense retro gaming. This was meant to be my opportunity to catch up on all those classics I've missed. Instead I'm living out of a hotel in Singapore. A plesent experience no doubt, but not conducive to gaming. Now on my third weekend here I find myself slightly under the weather. I'm cooped up inside rather than out seeing the sites. So I've dipped into my Steam account and tested the waters with a couple of gems. One old, one new, both thoroughly enchanting.

Pretty Sweet, no?

Singapore is a city of contrasts. It's population is diverse. Its streets hide hindu temples, British colonial facades and modern towers of glass and steel. The rich are rich and the poor are poor, but the same could be said of anywhere. The people are obsessed with technology - Samsung and Apple branded tablets and phones are everywhere, but oddly gaming has almost no visible presence. Except, of course, for that guy in my office with the plushy cactaur sitting on his desk.

None of this bothers me of course.  I'm not in the market for new releases. The lack of Gamestops littering shopping centres is no concern of mine. I've got Steam loaded up with classics from the Hackett Out pile of shame. But where do I begin? 

Two Player Productions are documenting the making of Double Fine Adventure. It's Tim Shafer's latest (Monkey Island, Grim Fandango) and it's being funded through Kickstarter. The passion of the Double Fine team is something else and while watching it, I've been thinking about their 2006 release, Psychonauts. I bought Sands of Time, Beyond Good and Evil and Shadow of the Colossus all on day one. I take nerd-pride in having sought out these much loved but under-played classics. Psychonauts is another one of those games. Of course, I didn't own an original XBox. That's my excuse, but it's been six years. Never having played Psychnauts is damaging my street cred.

Psychonauts's clunky camera and overwraught opening hour did drive me towards a more carefully designed modern release however and I'm now playing them both. Superbrothers: Swords and Sworcery EP is something of a revelation on PC. I played the original iOS release but it bored me. I lately took to lsitening to Jim Guthrie's simply outstanding soundtrack and it drew me back to the game. The control implimentation for mouse is lacking, most notably in combat where I would have tweaked the configuration somewhat, but seeing the Superbrothers artwork on a 13" rather than a 4.3" screen has made all the difference. The care and love that exudes from every aspect of the game is tangible.

I'll be back to outline my thoughts on Psychonauts. I'm here for another five weeks, rattling around this hotel suite. In between swimming in the roof-top pool, sipping beers in street-side bars and eating delectable €2 meals from the hawker centres, I'm sure I'll fit in the time to complete Double Fine's platformer. And maybe work through Deus Ex too. 

That is, of course, if the outstanding 10000000 on iOS doesn't eat up my every waking second. Get it!

"Juvenile, Silly and Intellectually Lazy" - Jonathan Blow (Designer of Braid)

I don't know much about hip-hop, but I know what I like...and hip-hop isn't it. I've given rap music a fair shot over the years. I've listened to American artists from both coasts, everything from NWA to Kanye and a little of what came in between - Dre and Snoop's solo work, Wu-Tang, Cypress Hill. I've dabbled in punk derivatives The Beastie Boys, the reggae-influenced Fugees and UK trip-hop acts like Tricky. 

Some I've loved, but when it comes to hip-hop - rap's main-stream arm - I just hit a wall. I can't get passed the posturing and misogyny that permeate the culture. So what's this got to do with videogames, right?

Well there are parallels. Hip-hop and gaming are both marketed squarely at a young, adult (often male) demographic. Much like rap, games’ mainstream arm overshadows its more thought provoking offerings. Apart from a few notable indie exceptions, gaming’s best titles struggle to provide context for their violent mechanics. 

I recently read The Atlantic's article 'American Mozart' (David Samuels May 2012). It challenged me to rethink my take on hip-hop. And that's a good thing, right? That’s good writing. Hell, I was tempted to pick up tickets for last week's 'Watch the Throne' gig at The O2 right there on the spot. The article profiled Kanye West - his past, his successes and failures, his strengths and weaknesses. Samuels understands his subject. He wrote convincingly, spinning a narrative interwoven with impressions of West's ongoing tour with Jay-Z. It's worth reading for the sense of perspective alone - it's a window into another world.

Watch Taylor Clark's thoughts on modern gaming, and Jonathan Blow's work, here.

Something else popped up in The Atlantic last month – a piece on another self-made, independently wealthy, social pariah. 'The Most Dangerous Gamer' (Taylor Clark May 2012) is a scathing attack on mainstream gaming from the perspective of indie-game developer Jonathan Blow. Clarke's take is overly simplistic perhaps. To paraphrase - modern mainstream games are 'dumb', no one is doing anything about it and Jonathan Blow will single-handedly change the world's opinion of the medium. But at its core, there's more than a grain of truth to the article. 

If good writing challenges perceptions and provokes responses then Clarke’s article is just as successful as the Kanye West piece. He received an icy reception from many gamers. It’s the same reaction we saw from the fighting game community when the misogyny rife in that scene came to light earlier this year. For me, Clarke's writing was a shot in the arm. It’s OK to call bullshit if that’s what you see – to point out puerile art direction or a lowest-common-denominator marketing approach. But it’s just as important to highlight gaming’s strengths. Clarke may have failed in that regard but he is a gamer and it’s encouraging to see his writing in the mainstream media. I'd recommend reading his response to his detractors on Kotaku.

Why is that I'm willing to give gaming a pass, one that I won’t extend to hip-hop? Games are greater than the sum of their parts, but in a way I can't yet quantify. Ultimately it has something to do with the design process - a good designer’s intent is expressed in the mechanics and will shine through an uninspired art style or weak story. 


While it can be difficult to focus on gaming’s strengths, it’s even more difficult to explain those strengths to others. There's something to games that even the most ill-conceived marketing message can’t touch. It's up to writers in the field to find that 'something' and to focus on it while not being afraid to call out the "juvenile, sill and intellectually lazy" aspects that so often dominate. And then maybe someday we wont have people cheering every violent death during stage presentations at E3.


Sources:
theatlantic.com
giantbomb.com
image via Steam

Don't Cheer for Murder

For a long time I've wanted developers to contextualise videogame violence. Now along comes Naughty Dog (one of the worst offenders when it comes to casual in-game murder) with a title heavily influenced by Cormac McCarthy's The Road. It's kill or be killed in the post-apocalyptic world of 'The Last of Us'. The game's scenario demands violence and the developers don't hold back from representing it graphically.

Now that I'm finally getting what I wanted, I'm not sure how I feel about it. And I definitely don't know how to feel about the cheers and hoots of joy that accompanied every violent act on E3 stages this year. Am I the only one who found this gameplay walk-through a little disturbing?

Feeling disturbed is better than feeling nothing though right? If that's the case the above demo has already achieved more than most games. If Naughty Dog can sustain that discomfort throughout the game - can string together hours of consistently tense encounters that I'd rather avoid than get drawn into - then they may just be on to something with The Last of Us.

I Love it When a Plan Comes Together

With Mass Effect 3 behind me, it's time to get down to business here at Hackett Out - I've started to chart a route through that backlog. A post every couple of weeks should do it. I won't have much time in front of the TV but 14 days should be long enough to get stuck into any game. And, hopefully, there'll be something interesting to say at the end of it.

I'm beset by reminders of the triple-A releases I'm missing out on - Max Payne 3 is calling to me. There's nothing for it but to launch into some old-school action to cleanse my pallet. 


I grew up without videogames. The PlayStation had launched by the time I convinced my parents to invest. I got my hands on a heavily discounted Sega Mega Drive when I was 11 or 12. I moved on to Sony's console a couple of years later. As a result, Nintendo's golden era passed me by. My first Mario game was Mario 64 and my first Zelda - Ocarina of Time. I've never played Super Metroid, A Link to the Past or Yoshi's Island. I have lots of homework to do on the Nintendo front - if only to figure out why the American press seems so obsessed with those games.

It's all rainbows and chip-tunes in Bit.Trip: Runner

The past few weeks, I've been playing a little Bit Trip: Runner on Steam. A subtle blend of euphoric platforming perfection and teeth-grinding, rage-inducing horror. It's got me pumped for yet more 2D challenge. So I'm going right back to the source. My first task here on Hackett Out will be to complete Super Mario Brothers. 

Only 27 years late!

The Mass Effect Effect

How can the loss of a Mass Effect game-save lead to so much strife? Well, there are two reasons. And the first is simple, I love my Shepard. I didn't want to lose him. The second has to do with the appallingly small world of videogame journalism. And it's highlighted one unsettling problem that a 'year off gaming' might present.


Now that the old PS3 has received a new lease of life (thanks to my trusty hair dryer), I’m back in business with Mass Effect 3. Catastrophe averted. 

Losing a game save shouldn't be such a problem, right? The gameplay in ME3 is unrelentingly satisfying. I’d have been only too happy to play through those opening 12 hours again. Combat has real heft - although things can still get hairy, it's only too easy to dominate each encounter. It's crowd-control and it's fun.

Controlled chaos in Mass Effect 3

The game also benefits from a serious presentational facelift. Looking just as good as ever, it seems that developers Bioware finally hired a foley artist and/or sound engineer to bring the quality of their audio up to match their visuals. Weapons pop and the iconic sounds of the mass relays and reapers are pitch perfect. And those bizarre moments of silence that peppered previous games? Few and far between.

Most importantly, the game feels like a sequel to the original, rather than to its 2010 follow-up. I've been known to ramble on about how much I love (and hate) the first game so I won't labor the point here. With this third release in the series, Bioware have struck a careful balance between the original’s storytelling and its sequel's focus on combat. Shepard’s back in the thick of the action in this one. 

So if the experience of Mass Effect is all good, what exactly is my problem? And no, it's not the obvious one.