A gaming hobby is generally a steady one; there are hardly very many surprises that can make us truly genuflect with awe. Innovations come and go and we, as gamers, move on like the animals of the Serengeti, from one water hole to the next, unfazed and unperturbed. Every once in a while though, comes something that stirs up the horde. Like a group of hungry lionesses, they stalk from behind, sizing up our numbers, willing one or a few to break away.

OnLive wants to be those lionesses and it wants us to be the unwary gazelles and the odd zebra or two who decide that there’s nothing wrong with trotting over to relax under the shade of yonder tree. Okay, enough with the metaphors already. What is OnLive, you ask?

As it stands, OnLive is mostly a concept, a remarkably ambitious one at that. When suggestions are made that console-makers won’t be able to compete until 2022 (“We have at least 11 years to establish our business before there is a clone”—Steve Perlman, Founder of OnLive), you know that someone wants to make his point and resolve quite clear; OnLive is apparently the next step forward in bringing gaming to masses. Imagine this scenario: you’ve not tinkered with your PC hardware for while and it’s fallen behind enough such that the new-fangled Mirror’s Edge game everyone’s raving about will chug on your system. So instead of going through the pain of upgrading all the while trying to create a semblance of future-proofing (a plan fraught with fail, usually), you decide to just pay for the game and run it as is. Is that possible? Doesn’t that sound like a console? Well, ‘I’m not sure’ and ‘yes’ are the answers.

See, what one is doing is actually subscribing to a service from whence you purchase your full games. The quirk here is that you’re not actually going to play them on your godforsaken machine: that, you’re not. Rather, somewhere in some distant land lies a cloud computing server with more powerful hardware than you’ll ever see in your lifetime (for the average gamer, that is) and that is what actually runs the game. All you have to do, in Matrix terms, is “jack in” and let the system deal with the grunt work. *cue a very Neo “Woah!”* According to Steve Perlman, “It took many years of development, testing, and refinement to get it to work through the vast range of Internet hookups in the home” (OnLive Interview, MTV Multiplayer). He also added: “To make OnLive work involved fundamental work in psychophysical science; custom chip, hardware and wireless engineering; complex real-time software — from the lowest- to highest-level, and real-time network engineering down to the sub-packet level.” Now, this sounds too good to be true and you’re probably wondering how the magic happens.

Firstly, claims have made from OnLive’s parents that it actually uses a video compression algorithm that can “encode and decode video into data in about one millisecond” (1/1000ths of second). Yes, that’s what you’re actually going to be playing: literally a “video”-game. And I hate the fact that I made that stupid pun but for once, it makes sense. That’s why, all you—the gamer—will need is a PC capable of receiving said data and then decoding it while you do what you have to with your preferred control system (keyboard, mouse or OnLive’s proprietary wireless controller) and then the end-user data is sent back to the server. Alternatively, you can use OnLive’s own “micro” console which is a USB-powered dongle of sorts that houses an HDMI port (for output to an HDTV) and an Ethernet port, among other things. This micro console is being pitched as a “competitively priced” video decoder that is specifically designed to carry out the OnLive dream as efficiently as possible. It also boasts Bluetooth connectivity and optical output for audio.

Something as revolutionary like this will surely ignite the masses and it has clearly done so, with polite yet flaming words being hurled already. Eurogamer’s Richard Leadbutter wants this “to be brilliant so much that it’s almost painful” but offers warnings to the ambitious developers on a technical level. He speaks of the hardware issues particularly in terms of numbers when it comes to servicing the clientele as well as flaws he sees with the video encoding technology. These are important particularly given that OnLive will apparently be able to output 720p video at 60FPS whilst taking into account the constant end-user to server data streams with regards to input signals and its corresponding response. No mention has been made of the resolutions that will be achievable when playing on a standard PC monitor. Similarly, the very first warning bell in gamers’ minds would be that of latency. Having run his own Counterstrike server for a while, Another Castle writer Derek Chow commented, “Running something as old as CS1.6 still gave us hell with regards to latency and [expletive indicating faeces]“. Since instead of optimised game data streams, encoded video streams are being passed, one also wonders about the bandwidth requirements. Those, too, are high: “standard def” will require a minimum of 1.5Mbps whereas “720p60″ hungers for a meatier 5Mbps.

In response to Mr Leadbutter, visionary Steve Perlman defended his product with some interesting numbers: 9 content partners (including Electronic Arts, Ubisoft and THQ), a round trip latency from “pushing a button on a controller and it going up to the server and back down, and you seeing something change on screen” of less than 80ms and that the custom chip running these complex algorithms costs “under $20 to make”.

Now, all this is very exciting and I personally can’t wait to see how the drama unfolds. Until then, I have a simple question for Mr Perlman: What the hell is psychophysics and what does it have to do with OnLive?

Except now. Now it’s a game.

Another Castle resumes normal service next week. Hang on in there!

Ok. I recently embarked on a journey to delve into the Community Games on Xbox Live with the intention of buying and reviewing one game each week for this here website. If you don’t actually know what I’m referring to, then you’re probably not alone. Buried somewhere within the New Xbox Experience’s vast array of squares (Game Marketplace > Explore Game Content > Community Games, to be precise), you’ll find about 200 titles begging you to play them. You see, these are all indie games. We’re not talking World of Goo levels of indie-ness, oh no, plenty of these are proper bedroom coded, one man and his dog and a tin of uncooked baked beans type games. In a nutshell, it’s essentially Xbox Live Arcade, albeit without the stringent quality assurance policies. Plus it’s cheaper too with games starting from as little as 200 points.

So yes, my journey… I’d played the first batch of XNA created games back when the covers were first taken off the Community Games section. I tried out The Dishwasher, Jellycar and Little Gamers each of which stole my life away from me for as long as each of the trials lasted. Microsoft was onto something good. Opening up Xbox Live to smaller developers would, in theory, be a splendid way of proliferating interest in their inventions. But, somewhere along the line I simply forgot Community Games existed. I vaguely recall the initial run of games being available for a limited period only, and that’s why I never went back to it. Regardless of whether it was my own stupidity or not, I decided to go back to Community Games last night and lo-and-behold almost 200 games were patiently sitting there waiting to be played by someone, anyone.

These games don’t receive much coverage from the usual sites I read, so my intention was to write a regular column reviewing one game every time. I was hoping to uncover a little gem each week and bring it to the masses. At the same time, the devs get some coverage and Another Castle has some page-impression-encouraging unique content. You pat my back, I pat your back. Then we all club together and overthrow Bill Gates so I can jump up and down on his springy four-poster bed like I was a six-year old again.

Last night I set about my task, almost getting through five trials. The trouble was – out of the ones that worked – whilst some were frankly awful, the best were merely painfully mediocre. Here’s what I played:

1. ZP2K9: Browsing the Community Games list reminds me of my Amiga days. I was blissfully naive back then and despite my brother being an Amiga Power subscriber, I often refused to acknowledge the actual reviews, instead I’d just look at the screenshots. Look! Look! Pretty! Pretty! With the Community Games, you’re offered a paltry amount of written information on each game, and actually reading it is somewhat of a chore because Microsoft insists on giving you the game’s age classification ratings before describing the game. So, I had basically screenshots to go on again. And ‘boxart’, or rather the game placeholders on NXE.

The acronym ZP2K9 is about as descriptive and helpful as those idiotic “Page Intentionally Left Blank” messages you used to get on exam papers. Simply put, it’s a Soldat clone. You view the action from a 2D Worms style perspective. You can choose to fight against bots or head online, where you control this little dude and you have to shoot other little dudes. You can pick up a selection of carelessly discarded machine-guns and flamethrowers with which you annihiliate the opposition. So far, so real-time Worms, except the controls are slightly weird. Movement is with the left stick and the right stick shoots in the direction you push it. The A-button jumps, however you can walk up vertical walls and even upside down. The concept sounds like fun, running above someone showering them in bullets, but the execution is just weird. You sort of stick to the walls and ceilings and it feels too rigid and unintuitive.

After a little shooting, dieing, and missing jumps completely, I’d had enough. Little did I know at this point, but ZP2K9 would be the best game I’d play out of the five…

2. SMASHELL: Booting this one up, I was convinced ZP2K9 was just a clone of another game I’d played a hundred times before and that SMASHELL would offer something fresh. The controls helpfully occupied the loading screen. A to jump, left stick to move. LT to shoot. Simple, but one that’s subtly complex at same time – like all the best puzzlers – I was hoping.

In SMASHELL you play what can only be described as Samus Aran when she’s rolled up into a little ball. A small square of land sits in space with these spinning, disc-shaped, mechanical looking things moving about randomly on it. You jump on them. And coins come out. Which you collect. Then some more spawn and you do it again. After a little while you get an EXCITING power-up: the ability to double jump and build EXCITING combos by bopping from one spinny thing to another. Collecting coins each time. Imagine Super Mario 64 stripped of everything except a garden full of Goombas which our Italian friend has to squish. You kill them all, then they respawn. You kill them all again. They respawn… ad infinitum until you punch yourself in the face to break the mundanity. Then some flying things pop out of nowhere dropping things on you, a bit like Boos in Mario, at which point you tell the game to fuck off.

3. FALLDOWN: Ahh… another game that insists upon using capital letters to stand out from the crowd. How well this bodes after the revolutionary SMASHELL, I thought. In fairness, I mildly enjoyed the single game of FALLDOWN I played. I’m never going to play it again, but it was ok for the 2 minutes it took me to finish. Again, you control a little character in a 2D plane. 2 characters in fact, one with each stick, the idea being you can have 2 players on 1 controller. Basically, a big metal spinning blade of pain is located at the top of the screen. It speeds up as you move further and further down the screen. Your little men have to dash left and right, then drop through a hole. This process repeats over and over again until the meat grinder eventually catches up with you. The challenge comes from seeing how far you can get before you become fit for consumption in MacDonalds. Next…

4. Mithra – Episode 1, Chapter 1: Now I was beginning to get really annoyed. Initially, Mithra looked promising. It started off with a first-person view in a proper 3D world. I was stuck in some test tube! Intriguing! An actual team of guys were developing it according to the credits and judging by the “Episode 1, Chapter 1″ subtitle, they wanted to tell me a story. Goodie, I like stories.

Then it broke. “Error Code 3″ or some such message. I rebooted. Error: Family Fortunes noise. I tried two or three more times: nothing. Sigh.

5. Zenhak: Now this looked promising. Judging by the screenshots it had a kind of isometic Fallout slash Deus Ex vibe about it. It looked like some kind of stat-laden RPG set in the future complete with wildly OTT computer terminals so big you need six more eyes genetically implanted just to keep watch on them all.

I fired it up. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do a fucking thing. I could control a mouse pointer and move it round a room but I couldn’t interact with anything. My avatar was in the centre of the screen, on some kind of animated loop, except all that was moving was her swollen arse and her head. It’s like she was at a game of tennis watching something move from left-to-right, right-to-left, left-to-right.

Arghhhhhhhhh! I was ready to break something. I switched off my Xbox and plugged in the PS3, giving the fingers to Microsoft.

So. Community Games. From my limited time with it last night, what’s on offer is either not much fun or simply broken. And it’s a shame because the platform has so much potential. It also makes me realise why Microsoft is so precious about what’s released on XBLA. I’m going to persist with this though. I know games as good as Carneyvale Showtime exist on there, so it’s a matter of digging rather brushing away the cobwebs. I will be back, it’s just going to take some time. Now where’d I put my shovel…

In Issue One we did a Top Ten of great, life-changing moments in gaming. They were times when you sat back and knew – you knew – that this was going to stay with you for some time. Meeting Alyx for the first time in Half-Life 2. That first big jump in Mirror’s Edge. Most of you probably remember how to get the first magic flute in Super Mario Bros. 3. Well, I’m having one of those moments right now. I’m playing StoryTron. And it’s like nothing I’ve ever played before.

At first I had a sneaking suspicion that this was similar to an idea I’d had a while back about an online gaming repository. It frames itself as a way for players to write and share ‘interactive storytelling’, but with the emphasis on the interactive part rather than the storytelling. Whereas a lot of IF focuses on the experience and the linear story rather than how the world can change relative to the player, a Storyworld has more of an emphasis on agency, and more of a feel – though only a feel, it should be emphasised – of intelligence.

Sort of. There’s currently only one game available on the website, a demonstration of the idea by one of its creators entitled ‘Balance of Power’, which puts you in the shoes, suit and smile of President Bush on September 12th 2001. Terrorists have just done something awful to the World Trade Center, and it’s up to you to dictate policy for the Western world. Naturally, I did what any right-minded leader would do at that point. I gave a ‘HUGE’ amount of weapons to insurgents in Israel and installed what the game refers to as ‘an appropriate stooge’ to run things there for me.

No change there then! America lol, etc.

But the effect in-game was extremely odd. I’d done something which, let’s face it, is not insignificant in a game like Civilisation or Total War. And yet the consequences were entirely unclear to me here. On the left of the screen, where ‘Fate’ tells you about the results of your actions, some people told me off (to which my response, amusingly, was ‘OK’ and a picture showing the equivalent of the emoticon), and then Congress honored me ‘MODERATELY’. Which I guess is nice of them.

The game works on some strange grammar that appears to allow it to use some simple programming on the designer’s side of things to create more interesting relationships between people, organisations and places in the world. As an idea, it’s quite nice indeed, and in the right hands it could potentially create something pretty playable. But as it stands it’s missing that piece that something like this needs – it’s simply not fun, something that one of the creators of the technology admits as a worry of his on their blog.

It’s not entirely hollow – there’s a very good concept at the heart of Storytron, something that would appeal to those that have followed games such as The Political Machine or Kudos in the past. The aim of the demo game seems to be enacting your chosen policies with the minimal impact on your political standing, which generally means back-scratching and secrecy. The problem is, the game’s rules don’t really help the player in deciding between sending an emissary and sending a nuke. To some, that’s a good thing. But most will be put off.  It has potential, and it’s definitely worth a moment or two of your time, if only to smirk at the strange wording the computer is forced to use. Primarily what it needs is for people to understand how to design for it.

Anyway, after becoming The Man in the eyes of Congress, I’ve decide that my next goal will be to get North Korea to re-enter the NPT. How will I do this? Through the medium of ‘EXTRA HUGE’ airstrikes, of course. That second term in office is almost guaranteed.

One of the reasons I find it hard to watch horror movies nowadays is because of those gosh-darned introductory pieces where everything is happy, the sun is shining, and all is well with the world. Partly because, hell, I’m here to be intimidated so let’s bring on the dismemberment, but also because secretly I’m more scared by those bits than by any other segment in the film. Even that bit from Eternal Sunshine where the faces go all gooey. Even that. So let me tell you now that not only should you play Eversion, but you should play it knowing full well that this is a horror game. And that’s a screenshot of it above.

What’s so great about Eversion, and the secret that it hides, is that you don’t know why or how it’s going to become a scary game. You just know that it will. You can see the Mario-clone vibe it’s got, yet the introduction screen states that the game is “NOT INDICATED FOR CHILDREN OR THOSE OF A NERVOUS DISPOSITION.” While that’s a bit of an exaggeration, it leaves you staring at World 1’s blue sky and listening to its happy, melodic soundtrack thinking the words ‘Oh God’ over and over again. Because something is going to happen.

It all revolves around this ‘Eversion’ button that you have, but I’d rather not spoil the surprise much further than that. Suffice to say that things get considerably freakier as you play on. You can download it from this link directly; if you fancy a gander at the official site then it’s here, but there are spoilers in the comment thread so you’re forewarned. It’ll take only a few minutes to get an idea of what’s going on, but it’s a really neat idea, as neat ideas go.

Because you would possibly need one after HAWX. Slapping the Tom Clancy brand on a game usually means a very decent outing full of improbably martial story-lines and meaty shooting action. HAWX is the latest in the long-running, multifarious franchise that looks to extol the virtues of what is fast becoming the poster-child for any game with a military bias: Private Military Companies (PMCs). In this increasingly bleak version of the future, even our boys in the sky are nothing but trash-talkin’, hip-hoppin’ mercs. Doesn’t sound like they’ll be enjoying too many beachball matches then.

I feel the need…

In the currently available [XBL, PSN] demo of HAWX, you have the ability to play two basic missions. One is purely a training level designed to let you get a handle on this new-fangled “assist mode”; this has ostensibly been designed with the armchair commander in mind. When initiated, the camera angle swings way out and you get this awkward view probably better suited to something like Skate. I wasn’t happy when I realised that I had to play the entire mission from such a broken perspective. While I got used to it after a while, it felt weirdly disconnected as your control over the craft seemed to be far less refined.

Fortunately, the second mission allowed you to switch back to all things natural. To be fair, this incursion into Rio de Janeiro seemed poised to offer something worthwhile—with plenty of air support available and the knowledge that you were going up against an army of fighters, bombers and tanks. Ten minutes in and having shot down the bombers, chased tanks through gaps in the skyline of the city and played tag with some fighters, I was struck—brutally—by how utterly listless the whole experience was. At no moment could I sense the vertigo-inducing intensity that epitomises the Ace Combat series nor did I feel that I was doing anything remotely exciting. Adding insult to injury, the game tries to show off the ERS (Enhanced Reality System) which highlights “ideal” paths to enemy conflicts and even suggests the best way to dodge locked missiles. Weak.

…to ask for my 848MB back.

Personally, I wouldn’t find myself wanting to follow-up with HAWX even if a demo doesn’t always represent the full product. Now they may be able to sort out the bland, washed-out visuals and refine the controls but I don’t think they’ll be able to code in the kind of magic that gets your blood pumping and brings about a strange desire to break out the Top Gun soundtrack.