games, gadgets and all things geek.

Bit.Trip: Runner

Tue, 25 May 2010 07:43:06 +0100

It is often said in video games that the simple ideas are the best ones. Bit.Trip Runner demonstrates this better than most. It’s like Canabalt might look like if it had been made in 1985. You control a big, chunky, 8 bit style character (who bares more than a passing resemblance to Horace, of Horace Goes Skiing fame) through side scrolling levels where the objective is to gather gold and stay alive.

Your actual control options are pretty limited. Your runner moves through the levels automatically, with you deciding when to jump, dive or kick. There is gold to pick up, odd looking blocks and flames to avoid, robots to duck under, jump pads to launch off and speed boost symbols to collect. Pick up all the gold in a level and you will gain access to a bonus stage where you can pick up, yes, more gold.

So far so ordinary, right? Well sort of. There are a couple of things that make this title stand out. First of all there is the music. At the start of each level the music is simple and minimalist, but as you progress it changes and gathers momentum, mirroring your on screen action. And it’s good. 8-bit tunes at their finest, the soundtrack alone will make you want to get to the end of the level, just to hear how it all ends. You can add you own beeps and boops via the d-pad, but for most levels you will be far too busy getting ready to time your next action to bother with any ad-hoc 8-bit remixing.

Thats because in this game timing is God. When you press 2 to jump, you do just that. You can’t increase your leap by pressing it longer, neither can you tap the button for a quick jump. So you have to get your timing spot on, and just as importantly you need to get the rhythm right. Which brings us back to that great 8-bit soundtrack-the music almost guides you, with well timed actions being reflected in the music. As you get further into the levels the music builds, and your runner starts to leave a trail of sparks behind it. Keep hitting your marks and a rainbow will stream out behind you as the music start to crescendo. And all the while you are watching out for your next action. It all builds into a wonderful mix of music, visuals and frantic gameplay. Make a mistake and you are warped back to try again. And again. And again. Because this is one of the best examples of a game that keeps you coming back for “one more go...” that I have played in a while. When you first start playing the game it looks like an interesting, but short diversion. Then you realise that you have been playing it for two hours, your eyes are starting to hurt and your hands are starting to get sweaty.

Graphically the game is a homage to the games of the early 80s, though it has enough pseudo 3D parts to remind me a little of 3D Dot Game Heroes. It’s nowhere near as complex as that, but the chunky sprites are reminiscent of the Atlus title. It’s colourful and clean, and does just what is needed of it.

FOR: Fantastic music, hypnotic and tight gameplay, colourful and simple visuals, keeps you coming back again and again.

AGAINST: Avoid if you hate chip music, may induce WiiMote to wall/window/TV related incident.

VERDICT: Buy it.

Bit.Trip Runner is a WiiWare title and costs 800 Wii Points.

Halo:Reach beta +24

Wed, 19 May 2010 17:12:10 +0100

The absolutely brilliant Halo Reach beta was due to end today, but has had a reprieve. Hurrah! Bungie’s Brian Jarrard told Joystiq, "Our official plans as of now are to turn off the Reach beta on Thursday, 5/20 at 10AM PDT.".
So what are you waiting for?! You have another day to play before it goes away! Oh, see what I did there?!

Play this:

Wed, 19 May 2010 17:01:06 +0100

This is a fantastic example of what can happen when a simple idea gets wrapped up in a stylish wrapper and sprinkled with “just one more go..” magic dust. The game is called Canabalt, and you can find it here.

I apologise in advance for any work that remains undone on your desk once you start playing this...

Alan Wake Ltd Edition is BIG

Fri, 14 May 2010 11:19:19 +0100

Look at the size of that thing!!!

File formats: GTF

Fri, 14 May 2010 10:11:20 +0100

File formats are a pain in the arse at the best of times. They simply introduce hassle that you don’t need. For a while now I have been trying to use my PS3 as a media centre. It makes sense, since it renders films and pictures beautifully and is of course a rather snazzy Blu-ray player as well. In theory it should be very easy to just have everything going through the PS3. Enable Media Server on the console and install some software on my iMac. But no. First of all the connection is super flakey. Which is annoying given that both my iMac and my PS3 are connected to my network by cat5 cable. It’s not a firewall issue, because it does work sometimes. Also my Xbox 360 never drops a connection to my iMac. So there is something else going on.

Another annoyance is that the PS3 won’t play some video formats, but will play others. My media software will attempt to deal with this on the fly, but again results are unpredictable. So I arrived at the conclusion that the easiest way to resolve all of this would be to connect a drive with all my media directly to the PS3.

Now this is a hassle for a couple of reasons. For one thing the PS3 only has USB ports at the front of the console, so it’s not exactly aesthetically pleasing to have yet another cable sticking out of it. The other, bigger hassle, is that now I would have to keep two drives up to date with content, since my iTunes library is on my iMac. A pain but not a deal breaker. So I sigh and start to format the external drive. And this is where things take a turn for the bloody annoying.

The PS3 is very picky about what types of drives it will read: specifically it will only entertain Fat32 drives. This is a pain in the arse. Fat32 is an old Windows format and while it works fine it has a serious limitation when it comes to file sizes. Fat32 will only allow files of 4gb and under. For music and images that’s fine, but for films it’s a nightmare. More and more of my films are over 4gb, and some are over it by quite a bit. A Fat32 drive will simply refuse to write these files. Back to the drawing board.

NTFS is out because not only does the PS3 fail to see this format, my macs can’t write to them due to licensing issues with Microsoft (though a mac CAN read an NTFS drive). By this point I was starting to get a headache.

The answer to all of this was, as is so often the case, to use a mac. I formatted my external drive as MacOS and installed Plex on my MacBook Pro. An HDMI and TOSLink cable later and all was well. Films look stunning and it handles every file format I have tried, including content recorded by PlayTV on the PS3. Job done.

EDIT: Last night I wondered what would happen if I connected the MacOS external drive to the Xbox 360. It read it without any problems.