Pointless or Ahurgaflurgan?

I may have mentioned before that I enjoy Borderlands 2.  I may have mentioned something along the lines of being a little addicted to Borderlands 2.  You probably don't get the scale to which I threw myself into this game.  It's so bad I'm embarrassed^* to talk about it.  Really, I shouldn't even be admitting to it.  Am I creating strong enough picture?  No?

Right.  I got sooooo into this game that I spent three fucking weeks looking for the rarest weapon in the game.  I found the bloody thing and then Gearbox did their Loot Hunt^**  month and for a glorious day one boss enemy dropped the weapon one hundred percent of the time, and now I have a bunch of them.

This doesn't even cover the HUNDREDS of hours looking for other slightly less rare, but still hard to obtain weapons.  I give one word to people who might know: Norfleet.  I'll now give you two words: fucking Norfleet.

Anyway.  Now that I've given you some idea the extent to which I let this game take over my life, I'm going to go through a few things about the game since it's coming to the end of it's very long cycle^†.  Is it a review, is it an overview, is it me taking an opportunity to whine about things I don't like about the game?  Who can say?  I present this little essay and I'll let you, demented reader, make up your own confused, confused mind.

I'm pretty heavily into the game is what I'm trying to get across to you.

Let's start with what Gearbox got right with Borderlands 2, shall we?  From the outset it's a pretty game.  The overexposed opening reminds those of us who played the first game just how unforgiving the planet of Pandora is.  Each of the playable characters is distinct and quirky, as you would expect from a game as quirky as this.  Once you're knee-deep in the game you're presented with bleak environments and amusing new enemies in wonderful cel-shaded-fi.  Lovely.

We also get to meet the two characters that eased us into the first game: Angel and Claptrap.  There are too many spoilers when it comes to Angel, so let's not bother with her.  Claptrap, I perversely find a lot more likeable than in the first game.  I know he's supposed to be a really irritating character and he was much more annoying in the first game.  In Borderlands 2 he's just kind of tragic and everyone hates him, even though he turns out to be incredibly useful.  Maybe it's my sympathy for the underdog, dunno.

The story is coherent, which is always a plus in an FPS.  I'm staring directly at you COD.  It doesn't suffer being lost quite as much as in the first game, though there's so many side quests to do, there's still that drift and you can sense it on the periphery of you consciousness.  But there are so many amusing asides and so much funny dialogue, you don't actually notice too much and by the time you might be in a position to notice, you're too busy killing baddies to really care.  Which, mostly, is the point of a game like this.

That brings us to the extra content.  So much of it.  A good lot of it I haven't indulged in because it's in the form of skins and heads.  I mean they're cheap and all, but I can't get terribly excited enough to fork over the money to buy them.  It's a clever way to grab a few extra quid without people feeling like they're being squeezed, even though they are a little bit, not a full squeeze of the testicles^‡ just a little pull of the sac.

What I have paid for are the DLC campaign add-ons , and largely I've been happy with what I've handed money over for.  You get a few extra hours of gameplay for about eight quid.  Can't complain even when they don't quite measure up to the main quest, though I was very pleased with the Tiny Tina DLC, which was huge for an add-on.  And then there are the other bits, like the extra characters, level upgrades and the Head Hunter packs.  That adds up to a lot of extra stuff.  And we consumers do like our extra stuff, unless it's hot coffee in the crotch, we're not so keen on that.

The whole package is crammed full of references.  Brimming over, dammit.  I like me a good old reference, and this kept me amused, I'll tell you.  There were so many references I didn't even know them all – not that I'm some kind of pop culture guru, it's just amazing the breadth of things they pulled in.  There's even one I'm sure no one's copped to and that's from the Torgue DLC with one of the gangs called the Burners, looking very similar to a faction in the game Rage called the Scorchers, even having a thing about bikes.  Am I seeing things?  Hmmm.

There is a lot to like in this game.  Perhaps not enough to take it to the insane extremes I've gone to in playing it, but a fun game all the same.

Of course, it isn't all good.  I wouldn't have written this if it were a fannish look at what makes it work.  You're not getting off that lightly, oh no.  I have things I want to say and I want to suggest.  As if anyone from Gearbox is going to read this.  Just like Dean Koontz is never even going to be aware of my open letter.  It's all just honking in the dark.

I'll not bother with bugs and glitches and things, because you could write a book about them.  Borderlands 2 isn't quite as bug-ridden as, say, Fallout: New Vegas, but it has its fair share.

What I am going to say, is repeat what a guy who goes by the Youtube user name Morningafterkill observed about Gearbox's handling of the game: they don't seem to know how to handle it.  The first Borderlands felt slight and experimental and it almost feels like they were throwing stuff at to see what worked.  This extends into the DLCs for the first game which were kind of messy and, in the case of the Mad Moxxi DLC, was just badly put together.  Yes they hit the right notes with some parts of campaign add-ons, but you could feel they were kind of winging it.  For all that Gearbox addressed a lot things to improve the experience of Borderlands 2, there's the niggling feeling of not being sure what to do with it.

Sure their blogs make it seem like they have everything well in hand, but when you look at certain things, you start to see cracks.  It was most illustrated for me when someone on their forum asked a question about one of the big mechanics of the game and the developer who answered essentially explained the point of the mechanic and then said it wasn't desirable^§.  Bit of an odd thing to do when you should be in control of the game.  Their last couple of non-Borderlands games have been embarrassing failures and it makes you wonder how good they are at producing games.

Even the Loot Hunt event had shades of this.  Actually, more than shades.  Huge big signs, telling us, "WE DON'T HAVE A FUCKING CLUE!" The first part of giving players the opportunity to find some rare items, yeah I can get behind that.  It was a fantastic idea.  Gets the interest again.  But the added stuff, like buffing the game's weapons went a little awry.  There were a handful of weapons that got good upgrades and then the rest just got tweaks, like the weapons known for having huge magazines getting an extra one ammo.  One, in weapons that carry hundreds.  A lack of awareness there, Gearbox.  Lots of people were disappointed by that, but what was most disappointing was the inability for international players to help out with the targets.  It was made clear from the start we couldn't get the prizes and no one was surprised, but when we couldn't even help out in the US players reach the goals, it felt a bit like the company couldn't give a shit about their overseas players.  This might not be the case, but you feel that twinge, like non-US players aren't important.  WE'RE PEOPLE TOO!  And if it wasn't apathy, it gives even more this impression of not knowing their market reach.  A tad strange, don't ya feel?

For the record the Loot Hunt is a great idea and wouldn't go amiss being part of the ongoing promotion of a third Borderlands game, and not just for other corporate sponsorship.  Something other than the golden keys.  Keep interest and maintain a cool connection with the fanbase, doing these events one weekend a month or something.  See, I'm still trying to be positive in this sea of criticism.

They added a third playthrough to the game.  It was designed to be very tough.  The main problem you see with it, is it kinda broke the game.  It's actually incredibly difficult to progress in this playthrough without specific weaponry, even with multiple players.  In a game of 'a bazillion guns' it's a little strange you find only about a dozen weapons make doing it feasible^§§.  How much thought did they put into this mode that wrecks the notion of customisable characters?  Probably not quite as much as they should have, as they added in regeneration to enemies that negates another major mechanic.  I can't say that was well-thought out.  It's one of the things the first game got right.  You could go through any mode with gear that wasn't the rarest and have a good time making it through, even when it was quite challenging.

Then there's the tendency to aim to be annoying and frustrating with game mechanics.  Yeah, they actually want to frustrate their player base with enemies.  What the fuck?  Going out of their way to make something so annoying it will make people rage-quit?  Is that really a desirable goal for a game?  I don't want to play a game to be frustrated and angered^§§§.  I want to have fun on a game for a few hours, not have the creators yank my fucking chain.

The rarities of equipment is all fucked up.  It shouldn't take days or weeks to get certain weapons, no matter how good they are.  Fighting a tough enemy for hours or one that has a fight time that's tediously strung out shouldn't yield rubbish and fucking consolation items.  It's not rewarding.  At the moment I'm trying to get weapons that only drop from enemies that only occasionally occur.  Someone quoted these weapons have a drop rate of one-in-thirty.  I started counting and as of writing this blog I've fought ninety of these enemies and not a one of these weapons has appeared, and some people have talked about fighting one or two hundred of these guys and only got one or two weapons.  And remember these are rare enemies already!  If you're going to have these things in the game give a fucking decent chance of a drop^§§§§, because the enemy's rarity is going go on top of the item's rarity.  I'm not some fancy mathematician, but even I can see that.  It's clear most gamers aren't even going to encounter them, as they play through the game once and move on, such deeply buried items seem pointless, don't you think?

Players want to feel rewarded.  It's something that Minecraft – a game Gearbox admire so much they have an entire section pay homage to it, including fighting enemies from Minecraft – understands all too well and though you can spend a long time doing something it never feels frustrating.  Yes, Borderlands 2 is a very different game and that's my point, it's a fast-paced shooter that's repetitive enough with three playthroughs available, adding in sections that need to be done over and over and over and over and over and over^§§§§§ for the item an enemy is supposed to drop takes away from that.  S'not rewarding.  Players want rewards not grinding chores.  The slavish adherence to the RNG in the inevitable sequel^§§§§§§ has to go and with it the mindless 'random is random' mantra.

And finally, probably more personal to me, but I've seen a few grumblings about it: ditch the fucking raid bosses.  This convention of MMOs isn't required in a game like this and it feels like giving the single player or people playing splitscreen at a home a raw deal.  I've told you my feelings on forcing people to play online – I'll give a hint: I don't think it's good.  That's only part of it.  Super powerful, can take a ridiculous amount of damage and, the cardinal sin, most possess unfair attacks you can't defend against marks all of these enemies.  It doesn't fit in with the rhythm of the Borderlands games and, again, feel desperate, like Gearbox don't know what the hell's going on.

There you go, the good and the bad of a game I've spent far too long playing.  There's more to love and more to get annoyed about, but I've rambled enough.  Don't you people ever sleep!

^* And mortifying.  Don't forget mortifying.

^** I think some people were pissed off that the super-rare weapon they'd spent ages looking for was now very easy to get a hold of.  I thought it was only fair of Gearbox.

^† By the time the final DLC comes out Gearbox will have been supporting the game for eighteen months.  Quite amazing for an FPS when most other companies give up on a title after a year.  Unless it's Insomniac games with Resistance 3 and they walked away after about months, the fucking wimps.

^‡ Or ovaries.  Whichever, it all adds up to the same.

^§ I would link it, but I don't have time to dig through the forum to find the thread.

^§§ Although the minority of really good players will claim this is nonsense.  They're talking out of their arse.

^§§§ It will likely happen anyway, but that's not the point.  The creators of the game baiting the player that way is trollish to me.

^§§§§ Yes, yes, they drop other rare items, but only at the top mode and the rare items aren't that good and, again feel like patronising consolation prizes.  I don't want to be patronised any more than I want to be frustrated, man.

^§§§§§ ...over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over...

^§§§§§§ Because it will happen.  They made too much money on it and had too many high-profile fuck-ups to not support the Borderlands universe with a second sequel.


Will

Scraping All Those Pennies.

Okay, I'm going to give some people a little length of rope to hang me here: I don't have a huge insight into how big businesses work.  The internal workings of large companies are somewhat arcane and nausea-inducing.  I always envision people in suits getting promotions based only marginally on their abilities and mostly based on how much arse they're willing to have near their mouths.  A skewed, paranoid picture, possibly, but it's hard to shake it^*, especially when you read about the kind of shit that goes on.

Anyway.  Since I have no real understanding of businesses of a certain bigness, I will only talk about it in the vaguest of terms, in a hushed voice, hoping they don't swoop out of the darkness^**, plucking me away and setting me to work in their customer service department.  Eeeep.  That image is bowel-worrying.  I'm sure I can extrapolate things, we can all do that, but usually when I try to my wonky understanding of human nature screws up my prediction and I end up looking like I'm somewhere advanced on the autistic spectrum.  I'll give it the ole college try, though.

What I can understand is greed.  We all know greed and we all see it.  Just a quick glimpse at British Telecom, British Gas and British train fares^† tells you what you need to know about greed.  It's not those companies I'm looking at right now, though they deserve all the fucking lambasting they get.

I've been reading about corporate greed in different areas in the last week, in areas slightly less consequential than transport, communication and power.  They might not impact lives quite as much, but it doesn't make their money-grubbing antics any less unappetising.  Like watching a demented and unreformed Ebenezer Scrooge bashing orphans on the head and carrying them off to workhouses, cackling all the way.

So, I present to you the curious cases of Games Workshop and EA Games.

Yes, note the word connecting both.  I'll give you a moment to consider sticking around before clicking on something else, perhaps some hollow 'inspiring' quotation perhaps.  To the two people who have stuck around: what the fuck is wrong with you?

Since you've stayed I'll offer some background.  Games Workshop is the company behind the tabletop battle games Warhammer Fantasy Battle (or simply Warhammer) and Warhammer 40,000 (known also as Warhammer 40K or 40K).  Both of these games involve the use of miniatures^‡ to simulate battles in either an epic fantasy setting or a far-flung future – guess which is which.  Games Workshop has been the undisputed giant of this market for a couple of decades.  EA Games, full Sunday title being Electronic Arts, is a computer games publisher and current Source of All Evil^§.

I used to love playing Warhammer 40K.  In my teens and early twenties I bought lots of miniatures and rules books.  I wasn't spectacular at the games, but I generally had fun playing.  Not long after I started in the hobby, I got one of my patented foreshadowing moments (see my Dean Koontz open letter for details, I'll still be here when you're done^§§), but couldn't quite explain it.  Something was off about it.  Unlike my Koontz foreshadowing the problem became clear to me fairly quickly: expense.  The models to play this game, we have to use and only from Games Workshop, were pricey.  Not break the bank pricey, but you had to think long and hard about when and which purchases you were going to make.  This was the early nineties, when Games Workshop still sold miniatures other than their own Citadel Miniatures, but that didn't last, oh no.  Soon it was only Citadel Miniatures as the official miniature for their games.  And prices started to go up.

Now, you have to pay almost fifty quid for a sixty or seventy millimetre model – and not even a metal model, at that, because Citadel don't do metal no more.  It's all plastic these days, guv.  That's a ridiculous amount of money and it's only for a single miniature; for even a small game of 40K you need at least twenty-five or thirty models.  And even your bog standard troop type models are not cheap, costing twenty-five quid for ten plastic models.  That's insanity.  And there are people more passionate than me about the whole business who'll also point out the overpriced and constantly re-released rules books (with new rules^§§§!! And new units!!) that are broken anyway.  And don't get anyone started on the prices of paints.  Whoo!  That's a big can of worms, there.

I stepped away from the hobby quite a long time ago, but I still look in on it once in a while and was amused and saddened when I read recently their share price had plummeted.  It seems Games Workshop's policy of extreme pricing because there was no alternative to their model or system has come back and bit them on the arse.  There are other games systems around now that don't demand such huge sums of money from those who indulge in the hobby.  You have to feel sorry for the staff though, because at some point it's going to come back and bite them too.

An interesting thing about the Games Workshop thing is that it got me back to something I've done periodically: making rules for my own games.  Most of the time these rules were messy and ultimately didn't work.  This time probably won't be much different, but I'm going to see what I make of it^§§§§.

Now, to the other greedy bastard company: EA.  They have come under fire in the last couple of weeks for re-releasing a game I loved.  They resurrected Dungeon Keeper.  It doesn't really matter what the game was like, because, by all accounts^§§§§§ this update for the mobile market bears not a fucking ounce of resemblance.  For a start, they've stripped it down to being a tower defence game, right, fair enough, it's for mobile, it's just for people on the train or bus going to and from work.  The real heinous crime comes in the pay to play model they've crammed into it.

For this game, in order to do anything that even sniffs of gameplay without waiting for hours or days waiting for a simple action to occur requires money, you know to make up for the game being free to download.  And it's on a sliding scale, depending on how advanced the action is you want to do.  Some of the reviews I looked at reported requiring hundreds of dollars to achieve anything in the game.  Do you remember my crack here about Sticky the Stick?  Did someone at EA see this and go, "Fuck me!  This nobody's on to something!" and decide that fucking gamers and a beloved game was the way to go.

I hope this isn't a trend because the games industry, from what I now understand, is on a bit of a precipice and this kind of thoughtless money-grabbing insanity is only going to tip them closer.

And those, my friends are the tales of greed and corporate stupidity I saw this week.  They are not unique and I wish more companies suffered greater consequences for their actions, but, in the case of EA, if I can help make people aware and make sure they don't spend money on a shoddy, nasty tactic, then I'll have done something worthwhile, even if it is a tiny thing.

^* Yes, yes.  Hard working and dedicated people get to the tops of companies all the time.  It's my perception, dude, get with it.  It also doesn't mean they're nice people.

^** Or blinding fucking sunshine as it is at the moment.  It's really damned inconvenient and it shouldn't happen in February.

^† That's the seeds of a political rant for another time, I think.  Fucking politician cunts.  See that?  It's anger.  Grrr.

^‡ Also known in some circles as minis or sad sodgies.

^§ A position sometimes occupied by Activision.

^§§ Or will I?

^§§§ Tweaks.

^§§§§ While not getting too distracted with it.  I have other things to do, you know.  I might release it for people to test it out.  How's that, eh?  Interested?  Comment.

^§§§§§ And keep an eye on that page, the number of negative reviews is only going to swell.


Will

So, Your Favourite Feature's Gone...

There are some ways in which I envy developers: the money, the fame, the adulation. Mostly the money, though. However having the power to create worlds in which players can get lost for hours is a tempting prospect. Being a writer affords you a little of that, but there’s something mesmerising about how a good game can worm its way into your mind and you find yourself thinking about it at odd times^*. A funeral somewhere has to have been inappropriately interrupted by some derp shouting, “Shit! That’s how you kill Crawmerax!”

Developers hold the keys to our gaming experience. You can see them as benevolent overlords, handing out nuggets of golden gameplay to while away your hours, with a beatific smile and generosity of heart. Or you can see them as cackling bastards, sitting atop their piles of shimmering experiences, demanding body parts for the privilege of just a few moments of rapturous joy and then peeing on our shoes and asking for a kidney when we want to extend the game^**.

Whatever your view of developers, they are the ones who control the content of the games that we see on the shelves. If they so chose they could fill their game chock-full of whoopee cushions that every time you did anything in the game you made a fart noise. Actually, I think I’ve just created gaming perfection, go me! Just imagine it: the climactic fight between you and the Great Murder Soul Hellstomper and with every move the hilarious sound of a violent evacuation of gas from the backside. Thinking about it, it might be a bit crap.

We have to believe that the people who put together the games we buy have the best interests of enjoyment at heart (you know, outside of the fame and money) – though sometimes it’s hard to see it that way. When the developers look at a mechanic or option they have to make a decision about whether it’s right for the enjoyment and feel of the game. They are human and sometimes they make mistakes, after all there are lots of considerations to putting together a game, even with armies of people working on it, but they also quite often, through study and experience, get the decision right on the button, and we as gamers do a little happy dance – well I do anyway, don’t you judge me. Then there are the other times, the instances where you look at the choice that’s been made and you think, “Someone should have sobered up before they stuck that in.”

This is more of a problem, I suspect in sport simulation games. I read about people muttering about the loss of a mechanic from FIFA 12 or the latest Need for Speed. I don’t know much about that kind of thing, since sports games aren’t really my bag. Football’s never been of much interest to me and driving just bores the hell out of me – except maybe Chase HQ, I was crap at it, but it was fun. Having said that these games aren’t the only ones to suffer or gain from feature shuffling.

Games franchises where the basic gameplay elements never really change can live or die on what’s added and what’s subtracted. Up to a point for a lot of games it’s mostly about what’s added that makes them better and better games. Take Assassin’s Creed as an example. The first game in that franchise was okay, for about half an hour, and then the boredom set in. And what boredom it was. The same pattern of climb, do viewpoint then go to a dull mission, repeat. In Assassin’s Creed II (along with Brotherhood and Revelations) the addition of more flavourful and enjoyable missions made for a more interesting game. Yes, they maintained the same basic gameplay, but it was made more fun with the variety of what you got to do with the character. For me they did go a step too far in a desperate attempt to cash-in on the multiplayer market, but I seem to be the only one in the world who thinks multiplayer Brotherhood and Revelations are both as much fun to play as cornering a rabid rat.

Features are, of course, a hotly contested element of the super-money-spinning industry of FPS, whose multiplayer elements bring out some of the best and worst of the feature shuffle. You can see that these guys watch each other very closely and, quite often, you can see that they’re gleefully lifting ideas from their contemporaries. It sort of looks like they’re walking up to each other in the street, saying hello and then taking that packet of M&Ms right from the other’s pocket and grabbing a handful. That kind of handsiness makes me worry about ever meeting them – it could get awkward.

Arguably the most controversial feature in the recent Call of Duty games has to be the ‘quick scoping’ ability. This, for anyone who doesn’t know, is something that apparently predates Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, but these games have run with it. In a nutshell it’s the ability for snipers to run around and shoot people at close range with a minimum of aiming. Since most sniper rifles in the Modern Warfare games are one-hit kills, you can see that some people can get a bit frustrated with it. I have to admit, it frustrates me too, even more so when I experimented and discovered how easy it is – I got a lot of kills and I’m a middling player at best. As you can imagine there are a lot of people who detest this feature’s very existence. So, when Call of Duty: Black Ops came out Treyarch decided to ditch the ability. Can you guess what happened next? Yes, in a fit of ‘oh dear, human nature’ there was an outcry; a huge vocal group started angrily asking what happened to their favourite annoying feature. And, like that, in Modern Warfare 3 quick scoping was back to test just how far a game can increase my blood pressure.

And then there are the baffling omissions. As annoying and unfair as quick scoping can be you can understand why it was put back in place. Insomniac Games, going a little crazy, did something that almost beggars belief. In Resistance 2, a game that a lot of people were lukewarm about, there was included a multiplayer co-operative mode. This was a huge amount of fun, if a tiny bit repetitive, with groups of players working together to complete missions of varying difficulty. It included three classes that could, in fine RPG style, be boosted the more you played. I sure, correct me if I’m wrong, this game managed to boost the life of a game that otherwise would have disappeared into dim memory by perhaps a year. I waited in patient hope when Resistance 3 was announced to see if they would update and expand this mode. When I got my copy and discovered there wasn’t anything like it available on the disc, there was a tear in my eye. Yes, they vastly improved the single-player experience, but they gave us a clunky and buggy multiplayer that was like everything else out there – don’t even get me started on the disheartening swarm mode, blech. Discovering, the other week, that Insomniac Games were finished with the Resistance universe I fell to my knees and bellowed at the heavens. They’ve moved on to the Ratchet and Clank games leaving no possibility of replicating that wonderful gaming experience from Resistance 2^†.

Developing games is clearly a juggling act, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, why don’t you take to the comments and give an airing to the game features that you love, lament, mourn the passing of or would happily dance the grave of?

^* Fuck that was prophetic, considering what I did last year.

^** Or they’re a bit trollish and like to take this piss and frustrate players. They still giggle like the nasty cunts they are.

^† Turns out Insomniac yoinked it for Fuse and kinda screwed up the experience by making it a deeply mediocre game.


Will

Retro Money's Still Money, Boys.

I own a PS3.  Nothing remarkable there – that’s me and about sixty-four million other people, then.  When I’m not being terrible on some online game or another, I like to go browsing through the Playstation Store.  Like most people I do a little rooting around for new DLC and perhaps some new game that might be good to have a look at.  This can make my poor hard drive unhappy and my struggling bank account look nervous.  Seriously, my bank account is a worried entity, constantly sweating and sending me pathetically worded letters pleading for me to stop spending money.

Much of the time I don’t buy anything, but come away with some ideas for games I might want to buy in the future and be awful at.  Sometimes, though, I feel a tiny bit disappointed.  I get the feeling that there are games that should be in the Playstation Store, but don’t make an appearance for one reason or another.  Old games.  Though, not that old – my first computer was a ZX Spectrum +2 and just about any game I might want from that era is easy to get through emulators and such.  The old games I’m talking about are ones that I played on the PS One and Saturn back in the heady days when I wasn’t crippled by poverty.

They do have some PS One (and PS2) games in the store and my wife was very pleased to get a hold of Theme Hospital a while back.  She got hours of fun out of that; it was great.  Something bugged me, though.  I’ve got Resident Evil: The Director’s Cut, though it seems that the Saturn version of the game has been expunged from the history books.  There were lots of titles that maybe should have been present, but there was no sign of them.  Like someone had been blindfolded, spun around in a room full of game titles and those they stumbled on were the games chosen for the store.

I remember getting quite excited when I saw that Golden Axe was available for purchase and then almost cry-vomited when I discovered it was the crummy Mega Drive version.  I wanted the arcade version I remember sucking my ten pences up like some kind of ten pence devourer when I was ten or eleven or twelve!  What’s wrong with that?  Why can’t we get similar stuff to what’s on XBox Live Arcade, I cried through the few, errant, chunks of eye-corn.  I haven’t bought Golden Axe, but I still felt cheated.  How dare they stop me in the desperate and intricate attempt to recreate my childhood?  No, I’m not going to buy an XBox for that one thing, didn’t you read the first paragraph – I’m poor; it’s a fucking miracle I have a PS3.

There’s no R-Type, either.  A game I possessed on the Spectrum and then, some years later, when I had a PS One for a short time.  I’m not very good at it, but it’s a fun little shooter and can whittle a few minutes of boredom.  And it’s not an unpopular game.  There are screeds of fond gamer memories about the little blue starfighter that could.  Yet it’s not there.  Sure, there could be rights problems, but given the money Sony could make by making the game available that’s something that could be recouped.

Then there’s the little game, Dark Cloud, that I spent too many hours playing in even more recent times.  I don’t think it would kill them to give this an airing on Playstation Store.  If only just to salve my hurting nostalgia bone.

A game that might be less likely to turn up is Exhumed, an FPS in which you’re pitted against aliens that formed the basis of ancient Egyptian mythology.  There was a PS One version of this and I’m sure it would be seen as a retro treat.  Though, I have to admit, I had the Saturn version of the game that was considered far superior.  What do you reckon the chances are of that one appearing on Sony’s shop front?  A clue: non-existent.  That’s one I imagine trying to overcome licensing wrangles wouldn’t be worth the effort.  It’s nice to dream though.

And, really that’s all this is, in the end, dream upon dream.  There is money to be made in dusting down these retro gems and many more on top of that, but it’s whether Sony, or anyone else thinks the reward is enough that will determine if they are unearthed again.

Will