Grab Beyond Good & Evil OST for free!

Beyond Good and Evil is one of my favourite games ever (might be smart to finally do that list one day and publish it here). I love its green-lips heroine, races design, story, orphaned alien children, graphical design and of course great soundtrack. It is therefore with much pleasure that I would like to point out that the aforementioned soundtrack is available for download free of charge (the password for the album is MySpace.com/HyllianMusic and the list of mirrors is here).

While the music tracks from Beyond Good and Evil haven’t reached the ultimate status that mp3 can dream of, namely being put in the permanent folder on my Zen Stone player, they are quite memorable and I do come back to listen to them every now and again. There is also a good deal of variation between them: ranging from ambient oriental music (“Ancient Chinese secrets”) which I have used as a background for one of my tea ceremony dates, through weird sounds of “Propaganda”, to aggressive techno-ish boss fight theme (“Sins of father”), they provide a good variety of tunes for different moods.

The soundtrack was in fact released for free long time ago, which is when I got it, but it’s just quite recently that it has popped up on MySpace. Even if it’s just the clever marketing ploy in order to draw our attention to incoming Beyond Good and Evil 2, I am comfy with it, because I do like freebies, plus this soundtrack is really awesome. Also, worth noting is this interesting remix of one of the main themes, availabe at OCRemix – it is an unofficial remix, but it’s quite good, so I allow myself to link to it as well.

Cloudphobia – are you afraid of clouds?

Almost every sci-fi anime about huge robots (and underage lolitas piloting them, but I digress) features a scene where the robot is manouevering wildly between hundreds of rockets flying in space, smoke trails tracing curvy lines behind them. I have sometimes asked myself a question – why hasn’t this become a motive of a videogame just yet? Wouldn’t it be cool to dodge myriads of rockets and fire kabongazillions of bullets in the sky balet?

If you ever had similar thoughts, here is your game: Cloudphobia is a classical 2D shoot’em up like the ones we used to get in the good old times, featuring giant robots and anime schoolgirls. Note: my first connotation when seeing the title was the vision of someone who totally hates Final Fantasy VII and its main protagonist.

As for the game itself, there are a few interesting twists to it – player cannot allow enemies to pass them and slip through, as they can damage the mothership, there are markers showing were the enemies will arrive and there are missions in which you pilot a robot that carries a sword instead of the gun. Yes, giant robot with a sword – quite neat, eh? Where Cloudphobia got me, however, was in the level where player is guiding their robot between hundreds of missiles swirling around. Sure, the gameplay is essentially a 2D affair, but the beautiful animated background gives the game some depth and sense of scale. Also, it’s damn pretty in movement, as you can see in the video below:

You can also see a more anime-ish trailer here. Once done, go check the game homepage: there is a two-level demo begging to be downloaded and since Cloudphobia is available in digital distribution, it’s easy to buy a full game immediately after trying.

[Found via AVClub]

Barts’ Short Bursts vol. 3 – smart reading edition

Since the concept of Barts’ Short Bursts is a dynamic one and still in its infancy, I have decide to evolve its formula a bit: if possible, each of these posts should have a theme to it. Instead of being a random heap of links and information, such post would provide you with a bunch of interesting things that are not totally from different dimensions, but are somehow connected.

Today’s post will provide you with links to a lot of reading material, hence the name:

* Saracen, the Arabian Knight, has played Deus Ex and obviously likes it a lot. Read his reflections on politics, philosophy and other serious issues in one of the best games ever created in his blog post. It is a pleasure to see praise one of my favourite title written by someone coming from totally different cultural background. Also, it goes to show that truly good pieces of art and story, be it a movie, a theatre performance or a game, can be appreciated regardless of spectator’s origins.

* Trent Polack shares some thoughts on game design and emergent gameplay in this article entitled “An economy of fun”. Whether you want to create your own game one day or not, this constitutes a very interesting piece of lecture.

* Recently published game Velvet Assassin is based on the tragic events that took place during World War II, namely the heartbreaking story of Violette Szabo. Is basing a game on such real life drama an exploitation or is it not? Alec Meer from RockPaperShotgun put down his doubts in form of a short article. Be sure to check comments, too.

* Even though I haven’t blogged about it, I got to play Braid. Contrary to most folks, however, I didn’t like it, among other things because of its insane difficulty level and demonic puzzles. Krystian Majewski has written a great article on Braid’s difficulty and nasty tricks it plays on innocent, unsuspecting gamer. I really wish Jonathan Blow would have read it before publishing Braid.

* Last, but not least, Simon Ferrari deciphers some of Beyond Good & Evil themes. While I don’t necessarily agree with all that he put in the article and some of his connotations are a bit too far-stretched for my taste, it is refreshing to see other of my favourite games (I really should make a list one day) analysed from a different perspective.

As a bow to all the other true hardcore readers, I have decided to be somewhat malicious this time and not to adorn this post with any shiny images – the little letters will have to suffice, dear gamers.

Some thoughts on Final Fantasy VIII parade scene

After deceitfully big title, I am afraid I will disappoint you with a short note just to make a record of a game-related reflection I’ve had recently. Nothing particularly brilliant, nothing particularly insightful, but perhaps you will find it interesting.

My girlfriend (who, on a side note, looks like Zafina from Tekken 6) has shown me Notre-Dame de Paris, the beautiful French musical, fragments of which can be found on Youtube. After watching the song called “La fete des fous“, I couldn’t shake of the feeling that I have seen it somewhere, or at least something very similar.

After some time my neurons made an intriguing connection – I realized that this scene reminded me of Galbadian parade of sorceress Edea in Final Fantasy VIII. Although I’ve heard voices on the web that dancers are doing Thriller routine, I frankly am not convinced at all. For me the parade scene carries more resemblance to the one from musical, in the overall tone and way that dancers move. Seeing how the musical predates the game, the speculation that this particular fragment became influence for the aforementioned parade scene cannot be totally ruled out.

I’m curious to hear your opinion: first click here, than here – do you see any similarity, or is it just me?

Harpooned

I love Japan, I really do. But despite many things that make it great, Japan also has its dark sides. One of these rather dreadful things is the Japanese approach towards whaling. I wouldn’t be mentioning it here on Barts News (this is principally a game blog after all), were it not for Conor O’Kane, a man who has chosen a rather unusual media channel to draw people’s attention to the issue: he made a PC game about it.

Called Harpooned, the game is in fact a clever satire disguised as your average shoot’em up game. Player controls a whaling ship, killing whales and collecting their meat, while taking care not too shoot protesters. All this is accompanied by sarcastic messages such as “scientific bonus” taking a jab at Japanese explanation that this cruelty takes place just for scientific purposes.

As player progresses through the game, more whales get harvested for scientific research and fewer of them remain in the sea. The comments between the game levels will be saying things like “Our research shows that there are less and less whales in the area – we must kill more of them to find out why it is so” until finally there won’t be nothing in the cold waters but scientific vessel and icebergs…

Average player will be able to complete the game in couple of minutes, but it is not really so much a game but rather a statement disguised as a game, a way of drawing attention to the real-life problem. Therefore I couldn’t really say that its brevity is a handicap, on the contrary – average player will be able to reach the end of the game before they get bored and witness the empty cold sea themselves. I think this was intentional in order to make an impression on the player – it certainly worked in my case.

It’s also worth noticing that the production values are high for an indie game made by one man – from pretty graphics, through blood effects, to sad music, everything is polished and carries a sense of style. There also is an online score board for the best whalers scientists.

Download the game at Harpooned website (there is also a Mac version available) and if you can’t spare five to ten minutes to complete it, at least have a look at the trailer below:

Now, will anyone make a similar game for Taji dolphins?

Barts’ Short Bursts vol. 2 – from pr0n to chess

I do understand that some of you might puke due to excess of PSP emulation related notes recently, so for some distraction from PMS (PSP eMulation Series), here goes a burst of short news and not-so-news to keep those of you that don’t have a PSP yet out of misery.

First of all, new Saint’s Row 2 downloadable content pack, titled Ultor Exposed, will be starring porn star Tera Patrick. I have to admit having teenage crush on Tera Patrick – ever since seeing Forbidden Tales commercial in CD-Action magazine (don’t ask me how a porn ad got its way into a gaming magazine for teenagers, but it was there). Were it not for hardware requirements of Saint’s Row 2, this DLC would be my day one purchase. Don’t give me this funny look, I’ll rephrase it for you: Tera Patrick. In a game. Nerdgasm.

If you are a retro-freak (like me) and love point’n'click adventure games (unlike me), then this new will be your cup of tea: King’s Quest I, II and Hero Quest II remakes are available for free download from AGDInteractive webpage. I’ll pass, there are too many other things to play and do, but I believe some of you will be very happy to check this.

Before I gotten into computer games, I really enjoyed playing chess. Later on, in the busy times of my high school, studies and work, I only played it very occasionally, but I still prefer a game of chess to a game of cards. There is some elegance in this ancient game not found in poker or others based on chance, there is need to think, analyse, observe, plan and create tactics. There is also some psychology involved, but this part gets lost when playing against computer adversary, which is perhaps why I don’t play chess against computer – totally not knowing what it is thinking (also, I don’t like losing). And this is where Thinking Machine 4 comes into play.

This website allows player not only to play a round of chess online, but also to observe how the artificial inteligence is thinking, how it estimates the probabilty of possible variants and combination of moves. A fascinating spectacle unfold with every move, not only hinting the most probable scenarios, but also creating a pretty web of entangled lines visualising alternative futures. Read more about the project here, play your game here and you may also have a look at the post through which I believe I have found it.

[PMS] PSPVice – Commodore 64 on PSP

I am going to share one of my dirty little retro secrets here: I managed to live through 80s and 90s without coming into contact with Commodore 64 even once. Not sure how it is possible, seeing how widespread they were in Poland at the time, but it’s true. I have read about them in Bajtek, the most popular computer magazine of the era, but to me they were mystical creatures who existed in some other plane of reality.

I have actually learnt a lot about the machine when I started working as software developer in 2006, because one of my coworkers turned out to be ex-C64 coder. His stories on programming tricks possible on the small machine were incredible – coding assembler programs that would work in phase with TV screen’s moving electron beam in order to achieve more colours or higher resolution, or hacking graphics chip by sending carefully malformed commands in order to be able to access frame, a part of the screen unavailable through regular commands. No wonder that guy is tenfold better programmer than me – at the time, I was struggling with Basic on my Speccy.

But even though Commodore 64 was not the machine I would be very familiar with, it is one of the pillars of the 8-bit era, so of course I couldn’t let it slip when covering emulation on PSP. At first, I have given a try to PSPYape by ZX-81 (my default behaviour when trying to emulate anything 8bit), but for the first time in my life his creation failed me. I believe it is because this particular emulator has not been updated since 2007 and was trying to run it on custom firmware 5.00 M-33 5. If you can hear this, ZX-81, please update the program, s’il vous plait.

After some googling, I have found a working emulator: called PSPVice, it is a neat piece of homebrew that works on every firmware. There are different builds available on program’s website, so just chose the one for your particular PSP.

One of the most famous C64 titles of it era were Last Ninja and Giana Sisters, which I remember from stories of the old times. I gave these games a try and they were running great – plus they are still enjoyable to play. I haven’t seen any problems with emulation, but I admit my testing was not extensive. The only little annoyance was that saving screenshots didn’t work, which is why I am using the image from PSPVice website. There is an onscreen keyboard available and handy autcompletion mechanism that automates loading games for those of us who have no clue which command to use.

Out of curiosity, I tried running the superb Edge of Disgrace demo that I have written about recently, but apparently it is using Commodore 64′s hardware so extensively that PSPVice crashes. This often happens with demos pushing hardware to its limits, so it is not something that I would consider a drawback of the emulator.

All in all, PSPVice is a great emulator and does its job very well, so whether you want to go back to your childhood programming days or are curious why C-64 was almost a cult object for some, thanks to PSPVice your PSP is a good place to do it.

Update: It seems like PSPVice got updated recently, which makes it even better!

[PMS] Fuse – ZX Spectrum on PSP

Being able to emulate ZX Spectrum on my PSP was one of its main selling points when I bought it in 2005, right in line with Amiga emulation. If you follow this blog then you know that ZX Spectrum was my first computer, that it influenced my life significantly and that I still love it. Hence it seems fitting to begin the series of posts on PSP emulation with Speccy, in symmetry with the course of events of my life.

Last time I mentioned ZX Spectrum emulation on PSP, the best emulator around was PSPectrum. When I write “the best“, I must add “in the absence of any competition“. Since it was written for 1.50 firmware, it had compatibility problems, meaning every time I felt like playing some Speccy game on the go I had to first run IR Shell and then run the emulator from there. The usability wasn’t perfect either, but I was willing to overlook it all since being able to carry the essence of my childhood in my pocket was a blast.

Fortunately, a new challenger has entered the ring and I am very pleased to say that it is a flawless emulator, about as perfect as it gets. Called Fuse, this homebrew program is a pleasure to use, featuring on-screen virtual keyboard, loading all types of Spectrum files, such as z80, tap and dsk files (contrary to aforementioned PSPectrum), allowing screenshots capture, as well as saving and loading of states. Additionally, it can emulate different models of Spectrum family, including its bastard children, such as Pentagon. This allows user to play enhanced versions of games for ZX Spectrum 128k such as Amaurote or even try Wolfenstein port I wrote about recently.

As a cherry on the cake, there is an option for monochrome display, which I immediately switched on – my first monitors were black and white monstrosities made in USSR, so I prefer playing Speccy games the same way I did twenty years ago.

My first game, presented in delightful shades of gray

To wrap this note up – this emulator sets a standard which all other emulators should try to aspire to. Fuse is the best way to experience ZX Spectrum on your PSP, period.

EDIT: Akop has just updated Fuse. I didn’t think there was anything that could be added, but apparently there’s a number of things that enhanced the emulator even further. Impressive.

Burly Blender Brawl

I am a big fan of Blender, as you already might have noticed. Today note, while not news at all, will be about Blender and Matrix – what’s not to like for geeks like us?

First, I would like to draw your attention to one, often overlooked, feature of Blender, namely Blender Game Engine (commonly abbreviated to BGE). It is what it sounds like – a solution for authoring game content. It allows managing states, creating logical bricks, enabling real-time physics and much more. While it is perhaps not the easiest game engine to use, it is quite capable and does not cost a penny.

Some time ago I have come across a 3D rendition of environment of Burly Brawl fight scene from the second Matrix movie done in Blender Game Engine. Up until that moment, I was looking at BGE in a bit of contemptuous manner, but being able to fly around that very scene changed my mind and I started paying closer attention. Even though the author, Mike Pan, claims to have done it using only his memory due to not having a copy of the movie at the time, it still looks more faithful to me than rendition of the same scene in the offical Matrix game, Path of Neo. Perhaps it’s the green tint to everything, I don’t know.

The file used to be available from Mike Pan’s website, but is not anymore. However, it can be found the Internet Archive. In order to run it, download the copy of Blender from here, load the file and press P to play. Quite impressive, eh?

If I managed to tickle your interest with the above, you’re welcome to see what Blender Game Engine is capable of in this video and if you are curious about projects using it, read more about Yo Frankie! game. Who knows, you might actually get to create something with it?

Gaming on Acer Aspire One

Being a gadgeteer, I too often buy cool technological gizmos just because I get into my head that it would be cool to have one. In most cases I get back to my senses some time later when I realize I am not using them to their full potential or that they are not half as cool as their marketing promised them to be and as a result sell them when in need of money. Examples of things I used to own but don’t anymore include: iPhone, Wacom Intuos3 A4 tablet, Toshiba M200, Toshiba M4, Powerizer clone and, just recently, a cool Acer Aspire One netbook.

In case of the netbook craze, I reckoned it would cool to be able to type my blog posts and other writing thingies when travelling by train to my hometown (you wouldn’t believe how long it takes Polish railways to travel 200km…) or occasionally check mailbox when in one of many cafes in the city center. Being able to watch a movie, do lightweight programming or play some games were additional plus. At first I wanted Asus EEE, but it was expensive and I told myself that I wouldn’t buy anything more expensive than 1000PLN (Polish currency, which I give here because dollar conversion is changing a bit too rapidly these days). Then I fell in love with MSI Wind, because it was prettier, got many things better and also carried 6-cell battery, promising about five hours of battery life. For a short period of time I considered Samsung N10, which was even cooler – however, it turned out to be freakin’ expensive as well.

Finally I settled for a used Acer Aspire One, with 6-cell battery, 80Gb hard drive, 1Gb of RAM and Windows XP for significantly smaller amount of money than my limit. Unfortunately, it turned out that while it is quite capable machine on its own, it also has several drawbacks.

First of all, the keyboard, while often described as the best among netbooks, is still too small for me. I am a tall guy of about 2m (6.6 feet) and I do have large hands with long fingers – which made typing problematic. Secondly, while the screen was wonderfully crisp and colourful, it also had very high DPI (meaning very small pixels), making extended use for writing/reading a strain on my already strained eyes. Coupled together, these two issues made my primary application of notebook – as a portable typewriter – very limited. I would get tired of using it for anything else than games and movies much faster than the battery would run out. Don’t get me wrong – it was a delightful little device, only it turned out to be unfit for my particular purposes and physical build. I use the past tense, because I sold it very quickly (in order not to lose money, since the moment for sale on the netbook market is good).

However, this being primarily a gaming website, I couldn’t pass the opportunity to check Acer Aspire One’s gaming capabilities – and I have to tell you that it makes an excellent portable gaming device. All the emulators run smoothly (PSX, Amiga and others), but what’s more impressive, a good selection of great older (but not too old, mind you) PC titles are playable as well. I immediately checked four of my favourites that I was itching ever since seeing some of the other “Gaming on Acer Aspire One” videos: ONI, Manhunt, Morrowind and Unreal Tournament Classic. ONI and UT run flawlessly at full speed, high details and in perfectly fluid animation. Manhunt is totally playable in all its gory glory, occasionally losing couple of frames in some more graphic-intensive fragments when there are lighting and fog effects present. Morrowind becomes a bit less fluid outside, but in interiors runs great and lowering drawing distance makes the game an enjoyable experience. Without further ado, here come the four classics in action:

I do apologize for the video quality, but I made this movie in my last hour of Acer ownership, when the buyer was already on his way to my place. It was bright spring morning and AAO’s shiny screen did become quite reflective. As a result, not only can you watch my skinny hand and arm, but also reflection of me and the camera. While what you can see in the movie looks a little weird with the glare, it actually didn’t infer with playing. In other words, things look much worse in the video than in reality. Still, this is the video showing in action some games (ONI, Manhunt) that you couldn’t find played on a netbook anywhere else on Youtube and it might be helpful if you are thinking about buying Acer Aspire One with potential gaming in mind.