Jammy’s Archive #02 – Aerowings (Dreamcast)

Picking some of my favourite, unique and just plain strange games in my collection, Jammy’s Archive aims to give you a perspective on some lost gems of gaming…..

Game – Aerowings
Developer – CRI Middleware
Console – Dreamcast
Released – 1999

Review: Get Up And Dance (PS3)

There are many dancing games on the market, with many of them being quite entertaining and successful. If I’m honest with you, I’m not a very good dancer, so I end up being quite proud when I bust out a robotic-esk dance move, making me think in my mind that I am the best dancer on the floor. After playing rival dancing games such as Dance Central and Just Dance I have managed to adapt to the gaming side of the dance floor and have found myself to enjoy dancing titles. Now it’s time for me to grab my move controller and head to the dance floor but this time on the PS3 with the Playstation Move.

I started the game off by just plunging into the main event, I feel I don’t need rehershals but… the option is there if players would like to practice before breaking it down. There are also different options for some of the songs that allow you to take the lead or be the backing dancer. This is a great function in the game and gives you the option to master more than one routine.  After failing terribly on my first try I decided it would be the best to head to the rehershal section of the game and see how the game breaks the dance moves down. Sadly this isn’t applicable in this title and it plays just like the main game. There is no tutorial functionality it literally is just a practice mode, with no explanation.

When it comes to looking at a song to choose there is quite a variety of different songs to take on. I personally was excited to dance to Barenaked Ladies- One Week, a classic by Lionel Richie – Dancing On The Ceiling and Example – Kickstarts. As you can see the songs are spread out across the different generations of music. It’s nice to see the variety, but I personally feel there should of been more tracks bundled with the game. Compared to the other dance titles like Dance Central I feel they had a better track list on the disc. 

After choosing the songs I wished to dance to I jumped in once again thinking this time I won’t embarrassed myself and managed to pull of a flawless combo. This didn’t happen as a lot of the songs are ridiculously hard. Each song has a star rating out of 3, but the lack variation between songs with the same level is limited, making you start of with songs you probably don’t enjoy or want to mess around with. Even the one star songs gave me some difficulty and felt at times the Move accessories weren’t responding enough to my movements.

It seems that the developers targeted for an audience that could already pull of the dance moves on the disc in the real world, compared to Dance Central and Just Dance which are much more enjoyable to play with friends.  You can change the difficulty of each song however… just not in the generic standards. You can only change the difficulty on each song whether you choose do the long version or the short, but this doesn’t change the dance moves either so it’s just depending on how far you can make it through the song before failing miserably like i did. I even got a few friends involved to see if they could do some of the harder songs, sadly they also failed.

With the difficulty being an issue for myself and I would probably say for the majority of you if you don’t tend to play dance games, there are other game modes that may take your fancy. The Classic mode is a typical basic mode, where you can just dance the night away. During this, the official music video plays in the background for every song on the disc, which is something the competitors rarley focus on which makes it a nice addition to this game.  There is also a Keep Fit mode which is pretty self explanatory but this mode allows you to perform a certain routine that  has cardio points associated to it (which is also available in the other modes) so you can acknowledge how much of a work out you are getting from each song. There is also the Shape Up mode which allows you to customise your keep fit experience. I enjoyed these modes a lot more than I would of imagined.

Get Up and Dance’s main feature is of course the mulitplayer functionality. The option for party play is probably the game’s main focus. This said, Get Up and Dance takes things on a serious level compaired to other titles. There’s Last Man Standing which is again pretty straight forward, if you make too many mistakes in the performance and you’re out, with the winner of course being the last one standing. Tug of War has 2 teams battling it out, with the strongest dancers becoming the Get Up And Dance champions. There’s also the option to choose the amount of rounds you partake in.

This is where the game stands out among  its competitors, it may be a hard game to master but the option to have backing dancers allows you to form your own dance group with your friends and take control of different roles in a dance tournament within the game. This mode is basically a career for your group, your overall aim is to win the competition which has 11 progressively harder routines to work through. There are quite a few games that use the Playstation Move functionality and some of them work better than others, as you can imagine Get Up and Dance does a good job picking up your movements but it is very precise with what you have to do to score the higher points. It works, but I still found myself questioning if this game would of worked better on the Kinect.

Overall 5/10
Get Up and Dance is a nice varied dance game with a good track list appealing to all different types of music/dance fanatics. Overall the game falls short, with few aspects of the main game made enjoyable for everyone, though it can be fun if you don’t take it too seriously, but there are better options on the market. If you’re looking for a dance game where you can have fun and still progress then I recommended picking up a different title. The multiplayer is good and the backing dancer option is great but the game is really aimed at people who can already dance. There is not much space for practice and learning, which is a shame as this could of been a much better game if they focused more on fun instead of professionalism.

Film Review: Shame

There should be a word of warning for filmmakers who attempt to leave the impression of the film to their audience, being impartial or ‘leaving it up to the viewer’ may represent some ideological integrity but it is reductive in the fact that catharsis, the emotional centre is underserved. It’s a shame indeed that Shame is so reserved emotionally, guesswork appears to suggest that the distant tone of the film is meant to mirror Brandon’s (Michael Fassbender, ever engaging and always magnetic) alienation from his peers and family.  Cryptically though director Steve McQueen (the director of Hunger that is, not The Cooler King) at times demonstrates that he is all too aware of the emotional needs of his characters, but too often gets hung up on his burgeoning trademark motifs of extended takes and restricted coverage. A single protracted close-up of Sissy (Carey Mulligan) crooning ‘New York, New York’ may have been interesting as an editorial exercise, but with cinematography this restricted it’s often crying out for cuts.

McQueen’s filmmaking is as much exploitative as it is introspective, nothing wrong with either but they do share a pessimism in what they present. Make no mistake, Shame is a pessimistic film in the tradition of so called ‘social realism’. That said, it’s still folly to its own brand of tropes and clichés. If a character appears troubled and needy, it’s not surprising if said character turns up worse for wear later. Self-destruction is something at the heart of this and McQueen’s previous film, the problem is that this theme is not much more than a thinly explored veneer and one that is quickly worn out. Dramatically nihilism is much more satisfying than creation, but it’s comparable to a sugar rush.

A side effect perhaps of the film’s content, yes there is sex, reams of it. Full frontal, scenes of hetero and homosexual copulation and what appears to be unsimulated onscreen urination (the latter obviously being the offending article that got the film slapped with the dreaded NC-17 rating stateside), but for all the flesh on show here the film does run the risk of dramatically subduing us. There is a catharsis in all of this, but as stated earlier it culminates in a fizzle. Dramatically we’re as exhausted as Brandon, with our senses spent we’ve got nowhere to turn. Once again the impression of these scenes is probably evident in one’s reaction, but subjectivity can only carry a scene so far when the director’s convictions are elsewhere.

Overall there is little to complain about. At best it is a well intentioned, intelligent film that at worst suffers from sterile aesthetics and a lack of restraint. That said it is certainly more charismatic than the usual realist fare, Abi Morgan’s screenplay makes up for its typically miserablist set pieces with enthusiastic dialogue that pops and flows naturally from the game cast. At times the movie hints at a comparison with American Psycho (an unstable outsider socialising amongst a group of wealthy metrosexuals) but Shame has its eye more on tragedy than dark comedy. Unfortunately the film undercuts itself with so much emphasis on the visceral, in that sense you will find yourself struggling to keep up empathetically.

6.5

Film Review: War Horse

Here’s a morsel for Mr David Cameron, Prime Minister of these British Isles to chew over in his current rut over the UK’s cinematic output: It’s taken an American Filmmaker to make a great British film. Why is that? It can’t be a cultural thing can it? We may have an answer in the aesthetics: Spielberg has shot the typically drizzly and overcast English countryside like the American Frontier. Bathed in a golden sunset and hewn far closer to Gone with the Wind than The Wind the Shakes the Barley. War Horse’s Devon may remind you more of Kansas than ol’e Blighty, this is the cinema of Hollywood’s Golden age. High melodrama backed by the finest symphonic score celluloid has to offer. This is not a story of nations, nor flags. This is classical storytelling told in a timeless tradition.

Where Spielberg traded visual storytelling for hyperactive overkill in Tintin, he rebounds with graceful aplomb in War Horse. This is a director and his cinematographer working in perfect unison, Spielberg commands every element of the screen, every shot, pan and edge of the frame tells the story. The camera moves to introduce characters within the frame. This is not filmmaking content with cuts telling us where and when to look. Michael Kahn’s editing compliments the onscreen action and never dictates it (as is typical of contemporary filmmaking).

The story of Albert Narracott (Jeremy Irvine) and his faithful horse Joey is a fairytale, unashamedly so. Parallels with Black Beauty are self-explanatory, this certainly shares much by way of narrative DNA but the setting expands it into a vast epic that stretches from rural English idylls to the barren ruin of The Battle of the Somme. Those battle sequences are tastefully executed, contrasting Saving Private Ryan’s seismic camera shakes and exploding viscera with the juxtaposition of life and the absence of life. In a sequence who’s methods may seem closer to classic Disney, a cavalry charge is mown down by machine gun fire. The horses and their riders charge toward the guns, the horses run past the guns without their riders. Not a drop of blood is shed and yet it is as harrowing as a three buckets worth.

The cast is populated with the best of the UK’s acting talent, so much so that such a stellar ensemble threatens to overshadow the central performance of Jeremy Irvine. This may indeed be the central flaw to the film, as we follow Joey through a multitude of what are basically subplots. The redeeming feature here is that Joey is the central character here and the triumph of the film is that we, as an audience, can make our way just fine with Joey. The combination of Joey and Albert is in that regard, a heart-warming perfect storm. The overriding sentiment is the separation of family, the reunion is the driving force behind everything that takes place from that point onwards.

These are big emotions at play here, and this is not a film that minces with subtext. This is filmmaking with its heart on its sleeve for audience to see. Those tears that are running down your face and into your popcorn? Those are tears of joy, tears of the realisation of the beauty and power of cinema. This is the work of a filmmaker with an utmost love of his craft and the heritage of film. A heartfelt symphony of pure cinema.

9/10

Film Review: The Artist

It’s easy to be reverential about nostalgia, how can you not be? After all we’re all inclined to go back to the roots at some point, but obviously we’re all too aware of what replaced the thing we look back to and as a result we can never separate our present from their past. This is something that probably (if unconsciously) plagued the writing and production of The Artist, a (semi) silent drama about the beginning of the talkies.

Unlike the seminal (is there a better word?) musical Singin’ in the Rain, which made a farce out of the technical hitches and learning curves surrounding the hasty induction of unsynchronised audio and bulky, clumsily hidden microphones (“speak into the bush!” “I can’t make love to a bush!”). Sound takes off without a hitch, leaving silent film thesp George Valentin (a superb breakout performance from Jean Dujardin) up mute creek without a boom pole. Sound is the enemy here, innocence is in the exaggerated gestures and, indeed, the ‘mugging’ that was in the lifeblood of the storytelling of silent medium.

Naturally the nostalgia at play here gives way to yearning and the tragedy of the advancement of time. Sound itself is employed as a weapon, from an inventive nightmare sequence to the threat that at any point a character may indeed (heaven forbid) speak. Which is probably the film’s defining fault, albeit this is an imperfection which will be mostly subjective. The experience of watching something with such a fluent understanding of the tropes of silent cinema is so refreshing that sound itself becomes underwhelming. The ending of the film may be feelgood, but you may find yourself wishing that writer/director Michel Hazanavicius had gone for broke and made the film entirely silent. Comparable to the sensation at the end of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast: By the time the curse was lifted and the prince finally became human again, we’d fallen in love with the beast.

The Artist, like its namesake, is of course the story of a man watching his beloved craft get swept under the rug. Emotionally it hits every beat with aplomb, this is not simply a movie about the joy of filmmaking. It’s fundamentally nostalgia, yet it manages to elevate itself above just being a trendy retro-novelty (god knows, we’ve had enough of those). It understands the methods of the medium and exploits them into creating a moving piece of consummate storytelling. It’s too good at this in fact, so much so that you’ll wonder why movies need to speak at all. Even this one.

Review: Pullblox

DSiware was and still is a great idea from Nintendo. This idea has been carried forward onto the 3DS where you can play the DSiware and also all the other software made specifically for the 3DS. One of the great new games that you can only download for the 3DS (also known as 3DSWare) is Pullblox.

With this game, the simple yet effective motive that strives throughout the whole game is to pull blocks and safe little children who are trapped at the top. Simple; but not so. You have been given this task, which at the start sounds easy, but gradually builds in difficulty, bringing about some real brain busters. This is pretty much all the game brings for you.

The 3D effect is simple; it is not amazing and will not bring your jaws to the ground. The colours are pretty and the game itself is easy to enjoy and can bring you back to play more. Sadly it doesn’t utilize the full effect of the 3D that has been given to the consumers. Either way it is still a fun and enjoyable game!

Review: Freaky Forms

This game is not for the hardcore gamers. It is a simple yet effective game that brings about the child within you, as you get to create some freaky and wacky creatures that live on your own little planet. Admittedly when I though of this game, Little Big Planet came to mind. However, as I have not played that game so I will not be comparing the two. This is infact just a little game that can help pass the time.

Freaky Forms, as said, bring out the child in you. You have the choice to place a random head size, arms, legs, accessories and much much more and then jump around your own named planet to help other formees, or to eat the fruit and poop out eggs that give you coins and rare items when you break them. It is a very colourful game, something that you can enjoy without having to swear at the screen or control your temper over.

To move your formees around your planet, you need to use the stylus to help them jump or walk/run. This mechanic is very simple yet can be a little irritating when you can’t make the right jump to a platform that you want to reach. In the end it seems as though you will need to make an accurate jump on your own accord to see if you can reach that platform. Either way you can just ignore this and then move around and talk to other formees or just create more and more.

As you create more formees, something ‘magical’ happens when you reach a certain amount. You planet will grow in size once you reach five formees and then again when you hit ten (and so on).

In the very end this game is very enjoyable and bring back memories of those weird creatures that you may have wanted to befriend or even muck about with!

Review: GTA III 10 Year Anniversary (iOS/Android)

When I heard that Rockstar Games were porting one of their all time greatest games over to the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch, I was more than a little sceptical, and for good reason. Now, unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past ten years, then you’ll all be pretty familiar with the Grand Theft Auto franchise, but for those who aren’t, I’ll provide a quick rundown of the third instalment.

Originally released on October 1^st 2001 for the PlayStation 2, GTA III is set in the infamous Liberty City, a fictional metropolis loosely based on New York City. The game follows the story of the equally infamous Claude, a criminal who was betrayed by his girlfriend during a bank heist and who is now required to work his way up the crime ladder of the city before confronting her. Obviously, as this is a direct port, the portable edition hasn’t deviated from story, so you’ll experience the same plot points, missions and characters you did when you first played GTA III all those years ago.

Graphically, GTA III: 10 Year Anniversary is surprisingly good. The iOS port mirrors, if not betters the graphics of the original PlayStation 2. The cut scenes look and feel the same and really hit you with a nostalgia factor that very few games can provide these days. One of my initial concerns was that because of the smaller screen the graphics and general look of the game would feel limited, but I’m happy to say that I was wrong. At this point I should probably mention that I played GTA III on the iPhone 4S and would recommend that if you have the choice to play it on either an iPhone or an iPad then go for the latter, primarily due to the extra space that the bigger screen provides, so the onscreen controls don’t obscure the gameplay as much.

With regards to the controls of GTA III, it’s really a mixed bag. Sadly, I really struggled to get to grips with the way in which you manoeuvre Claude around Liberty City. It was simple enough to walk around on foot but when it came down to the fast car chases, drive-bys and races, it became just that little bit more… fiddly, for the lack of a better word. As you can see below, the on-screen buttons on the bottom left of the screen are used to manoeuvre your car around the city. You can also take advantage of the iPhone’s gyroscope controls, although these can sometimes interfere with your driving skills with the touch buttons if you’re not holding it exactly horizontal. When walking, you’re provided with an on-screen analogue stick, but these controls can be mixed and matched in the options menu. The part where the iOS version really does come unstuck is the Auto Aim function. When confronted by more than one or two enemies, which is often, you’re put at a serious disadvantage as you struggle to shoot at the correct person.

When it comes down to GTA III’s audio, I was left wanting. Using both the default iPhone headphones and the internal iPhone speakers, I felt that the audio of the cut scenes in particular sounded tinny. The ambient noise of the city, mixed in with the odd gunshot, didn’t seem as affected, which is one good thing. It may not be the most important aspect of a game like this, but it can certainly make a difference when playing for long periods of time.

Overall, I think that Rockstar’s iOS port didn’t quite live up to the masterpiece they delivered to the PlayStation 2 but in all honesty, who expected it to? Despite the controls, I believe that GTA III: 10 Year Anniversary is definitely worth your consideration.

GTA III 10 Year Anniversary Edition is currently available from the iOS AppStore and the Android Marketplace. Due to the game’s size and scope, it’s recommended that you play on one of the supported devices below -
Apple iOS Devices: iPad 1 & 2, iPhone 4 & 4S, iPod touch 4th Generation
Android Phones: HTC Rezound, LG Optimus 2x, Motorola Atrix 4G, Motorola Droid X2, Motorola Photon 4G, Samsung Galaxy R, Sony Ericsson Xperia Play, T-Mobile G2x 
Android Tablets: Acer Iconia, Asus Eee Pad Transformer, Dell Streak 7, LG Optimus Pad, Motorola Xoom, Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 and 10.1, Sony Tablet S, Toshiba Thrive

Review: The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword

“You fight like no man or demon I have ever known. Though this is not the end. My hate… never perishes. It is born anew in a cycle with no end!”
— Demise

The Legend of Zelda franchise is perhaps one of the biggest out there. Many people would have heard of the legends such as Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask etc., and believed to follow this through until Link will finally rest and Zelda is no more in trouble. However that is not the case; Twenty fives years on and Link is still saving Zelda and defending his homeland from peril. The Latest installment to mark the 25th anniversary of this epic franchise is Skyward Sword. This game is set both on foot, on the earth, and in the sky in a town called Skyloft. Here is a brief summary to click you into the minds of the game!

Skyward Sword is the first in the Zelda series, which is then followed by Minish Cap and then Ocarina of Time. We follow the story of Demise, the origin of Ganon and the creation of the Master Sword. Hylia, the main Goddess, has previously had a battle with Demise and managed to seal him away, but not for long. We then move to Skyloft, which Hylia created. Link and Zelda are both childhood friends on this small island and peace is on the island. However things are shook when evil forces make Zelda fall below the cloud onto Hyrule, thus being in a completely new world. Link then follows, as Zelda is the one person whom he does not want to see in danger.

This game has brought about a new way to the style of playing Zelda games. We have the innovative Wii Motion controls, which make you feel as if you are Link himself, moving the sword at your own pace and striking the exact area you want. It also polishes on what Twilight Princess brought us, the aiming on the bow and arrow, the shaking of the nunchuk to roll, a lot of new things have been added to extend and progress the way the player controls Link. Throughout the story you will gain new and improved items to get through the story. You also have the option to upgrade your items back on Skyloft when you have collected the right amount of items, suck as the golden skulls or blobs from the jelly like creatures. Another new feature we get to play with is the motion control when flying. If you jump off a building or a high place, Link might go into the ‘belly flop’ mode, where he will land on a specific area. You can control Link using your Wii remote to get to the exact location you wish to land. You can also control Link’s bird in the game using the Wii remote. This vastly improves on the other games where you just used the joystick, when infact Skyward helps bring you closer to the mode of transport than the other games!

The graphics may be the only thing letting the game down, but nonetheless, it still looks beautiful and sleek. The graphics systems are not up to date compared to the 360 or PS3, but we all know that graphics are not what makes a game! Unless the game has a brilliant story, it is a pointless game, something to just play through and leave, never to be played again. On the other hand, one with such a story and graphics at the same time makes it to be something beautiful and out of this world, which is hard to come by these days. Zelda improves on the graphics with each game, this one taking a hybrid form of Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, which is something that we consider a wise move, as it works in this world of Skyloft and Hyrule!

We think that this is perhaps the greatest Zelda game out there, not forgetting the likes of Majora’s Mask and the Wind Waker, but it certainly is one to be considered as the greatest. It also helps push the Legend of Zelda franchise into a new direction; with the way we control Link and explore the lands of Hyrule! Nintendo have come out, again, with another top-notch game and perhaps one of the greatest games they have ever produced!

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