Tag Archives: EA

PAL Katamari Madness

We Love Katamari

I made all the obvious jokes when it was announced that none other than EA was going to distribute We Love Katamari in the UK but noted that they could at least give it some exposure. Ha!

The release has been and gone, and although they did a much nicer job with the box art than the horrible “art” that the US version got (the US cover for Me and My Katamari is even worse), you wouldn’t have known it. The first mistake – I’m disregarding the fact that they release it here months after everywhere else – is that what was a $29.95 (£17) budget release in the US has come out here for £40. As good a game as it is, nobody who doesn’t already know about it will buy it for that much.

The other mistake is that it’s almost impossible to find. GAME aren’t usually credited with an overabundance of knowledge of games (I got hate mail last time I said that, but a couple of weeks ago when I asked about a PS2 component lead they tried to sell me a “super SCART” cable because it was “miles better”) and sure enough it seems that most branches got two copies in at absolute best. One person on the NTSC-uk forums got told by a GAME employee that it looked “shit”, which doesn’t do much to sell it to the customers.

Eynon’s shop got in quite a few because they have a lot of regulars who are interested in Japanese quirkiness and he’s sold most of them both to people who’ve wanted it for a while and even to “normal” people. Although there’s been essentially no advertising for it, it’s been running in the shop since it came out and a lot of people have shown interest when they’ve played or seen it, and I’ve seen more than one buy it on their recommendation.

Nonetheless it’s a depressing situation and surely means that this stuff will be even less likely to come out in Blighty, and that the hardcore who buy a lot of games will import instead, and so the British games industry will implode. We’re surely doomed.

Best of 2005 #10: Battlefield 2

Battlefield 2

Admittedly I have no basis for comparison, but I’d imagine that no game makes you feel like a soldier the way that Battlefield 2 does. For all it’s flaws, of which many are fixable and should have been fixed by now (this is a Battlefield game so I don’t know what I expected), few games have ever immersed me as much as this. Team-based multiplayer FPS always do well with me, but this one just took the idea and ran with it, and thankfully didn’t make it yet another WW2 FPS.

The basic game mechanics are essentially the same as in BF1942 and Vietnam in a modern setting, but thanks to vastly improved infantry combat, an overall balance to the weapons, and a focus on urban warfare I loved this game and really wish for the next one they’d actually finish it before release. The lack of patch support for the bugs is the main reason why this didn’t place higher.

Most games make the single player the focus of their gameplay and generally that’s the best idea, but with BF2 I can think of few gaming experiences more satisfying than joining up to a 32-man army and moving, street by street, into an enemy city, with teamwork and the use of all your combined talents and different weapons as the best way to success. A heavy weapons guy keeps the enemy armour occupied while the machine gunners pin down the infantry so that your own infantry can outflank them and capture their base: there are so many possibilities to how each game plays out. and it makes the list in spite of the problems simply because the core gameplay is so well done.

Battlefield 2

It seems kind of wrong to be talking about games on a day like today, but I’m going to anyway.

Battlefield 2

Battlefield 2 really is a fantastic game. Yes, it’s got bugs that should have been quashed before release (here’s hoping they’ll actually be fixed this time) and yes I keep telling myself that I’m never going to buy another EA game, but the Battlefield series has always been something pretty special. Battlefield Vietnam was something of a non-event for me, being too obviously rushed to even bother with and not really doing anything to drag me away from the great pedigree of its prequel. As my brother pointed out when my copy of BF2 came this morning, I’m likely to return to the winter of 2003 with its 14-hour BF1942 and Desert Combat sessions.

I was impressed with how it runs on my system which is starting to show its age (Pentium 4 2.4GHz, 1GB RAM, 9700 Pro), where I can run it very comfortably at 1024×768 with medium/high settings. I haven’t been hugely impressed by graphics in a long time but when I climbed to the brow of a hill on the dam level I was blown away by the amount of detail stretching out into the distance. This must really be a graphical treat on a more modern rig.

Gameplay is vintage Battlefield (fun as hell if you haven’t played it) but with more features to encourage teamplay which is where much of the best stuff comes from. Taking a town with your team of 32, working street-by-street, with medics healing people and machine gunners providing suppressing fire while everyone sprints to cover from the enemy tank just can’t be beaten. The addition of the RTS-style commander mode where you can provide supply drops and artillery bombardments for your team is fun, but not as good as your regular Battlefield-ing.

It could probably do with a few more maps and needs some patching beyond that useless 1.01 release, but I think I’ve found the game to spend my free summer playing.