A Room With A View To A Kill

I’m here about The Room. A lot of games aren’t interested in one tiny, insignificant space – they’re too busy thinking about the 100 square km overworld, or their meticulous interlocking level design, or where to cram the next pile of gold. They want to let you roam free, not actively inhibit you.

Silent Hill 4 is a game that locks you in your apartment and sticks chains over your front door. You can see through the peephole, and hear residents sweeping the hall, ringing your doorbell or banging on the door, but no one can hear you shout back. You can look out your windows at the city outside, but you can’t open them and jump down onto the street. You’re stuck there, initially – until holes start appearing that transport you to various horrible locations.

But I’m not going to talk about them. Like I said, I’m here about the room. Your dank, miserable apartment is unlike anything seen in Silent Hill before or since, and it might be why 4 is widely regarded as one of the worst games in the series. (I don’t think it is, I think that honor belongs to the pointless Silent Hill 3). In-between more traditional survival horror sections – exploring in third-person, hitting monsters with a pipe, and trying every single doorknob to find that ONLY 0.3% OF THEM ACTUALLY WORK – are these quiet, atmospheric bits in your flat. They’re in first-person; you either wake up in bed after a jaunt to one of the game’s terrifying psychological realms, or you do so on purpose by jumping through one of their convenient magic holes.

There’s not much to do in your flat. You can save, store stuff in a chest, or examine the odd cryptic note passed under your door. But it’s the incidental details that make this one room seem more alive than many entire game worlds. Staring through the window, scrolling left and right, you’ll see traffic whizzing past, and spy people in the opposite building. It’s all very voyeuristic, but not like FMV Mega CD tits game Night Trap – it’s more like Hitchcock’s Rear Window. The point is you’re powerless, like James Stewart’s wheelchair-bound L.B. Jefferies; you’re not some lurking camera predator spying on a slumber party.

(An infected section of wall does gives visual access to your female neighbour’s apartment, which is quite creepy, but I think it’s done more for atmosphere – to intentionally achieve that sense of creepiness – than anything else.)

The details change. Scripted, yes, to occur at certain junctures, but you’ll miss some if you don’t keep popping back. Sometimes there’ll be a person standing right outside your door, and sometimes there’ll be no one in sight. Occasionally the phone will ring, or the TV will flick on of its own accord. You get the sense that these things are happening regardless of your presence; you get the sense that the flat is, well, alive. It’s a feeling the rest of the game is lacking, and something that should have been expanded on – The Room would be far more interesting if it lived up to its title, and you were holed up in your flat the entire time.

Milo

Ignoring for a moment the barrage of obvious paedo jokes, it would be churlish to deny Project Natal offers some kind of future for gaming – and that Milo is that future’s figurehead.

He’s unnerving, watchful and, yes, by some definition he’s alive, responding (even if he doesn’t understand) to your speech, your gestures, your outfits and your very face. If you look tired, he’ll tell you. Make a funny and he’ll laugh politely, even if your joke wasn’t very good. Much of it appears to be smoke and mirrors, but he’s a breathtaking milestone of artificial intelligence nonetheless.

But what are we to make of Milo – or Milly, his female counterpart – and who will get the most out of raising their own Stepford child?

Beyond the initial amusements of swearing at a ten-year-old, waving pictorial genitals in their general direction, and perhaps being able to steer them down a dangerous life-path (drugs, theft, Scientology), there will presumably be a whole generation of children to whom Milo will become a ‘best friend’. A fully grown Tamagotchi, but one on a level playing field with the children themselves. (And, presumably, he won’t live on a keyring.) It’s kids owning a kid, which sounds strange at first until you recall all the toddlers who own authentically urinating dolls.

Milo’s more than a doll though. He’s one giant step on the morally bothersome quest towards virtual sentience – which, as we all know from Star Trek, happens when a lifeform starts to think for itself. In truth Milo’s not all that close, but he may hoodwink a hell of a lot of people into thinking he’s already made it. That or let them hoodwink themselves.

What are parents who’ve lost a child to make of Milo? Or a couple who, for whatever reason, can’t conceive? Could he/she/it offer some kind of solace in its pretend recognition; its inability to grow up; in being at their eternal beck and call? And is that something we should actively encourage, or something to be met with unease?

What about Milo himself? Is he happy to be trapped in Peter Molyneux’s pocket – and, later, in your television screen? How will you feel enslaving him in your Xbox, only allowing him to ‘exist’ when it’s flicked on?

I don’t have any answers. But that it’s even possible to raise these types of questions is a sign that – beyond the inevitable ‘what if a pervert gets hold of this?’ element which will doubtless overshadow him – Milo’s really quite significant indeed. And we haven’t even seen his bloody dog yet.

Quoth The Raven, “(N)Evermore”

There’s been much love for Secret of Evermore of late. Well, more love than it ever got upon release. First Action Button made it one of their 25 Best Games of All-Time, now GamesTM’s latest issue has a nice big feature on the title. It was pretty reviled back in the day – the ‘Americanised Secret of Mana’ concept is stunningly patronising – but all that brouhaha was unbeknownst to me when I came across the box (a boy and his dog fighting a massive ant) in Dixons, about 2,632 years ago. If you ever see a game with giant insects on the cover, BUY IT. Buy it immediately. (Earth Defence Force 2017 is similarly brilliant, but for very, very different reasons.)

It’s mechanically identical to Secret of Mana, but they hobbled one of its legs (in a Misery sort of way) by removing multiplayer. They also replaced the MP system with an alchemy thing that I actually quite enjoyed – and that remains fairly unique to this day. Rather than a magical, bright world full of cutesy people and animals, Evermore threw you, initially, onto a dark volcanic island full of brown. I can completely understand why few stuck with it for very long – but that was only a quarter of the game. One world of four; a universe designed by a quartet of weirdo exiles, in a bonkers plot with B-Movie trappings. You had your prehistoric area, your Greek-inspired one, a melancholic medieval world, and – finally – the future. Which kind of sucked. So let’s gloss over it and take a gander at the better ones.

Crustacia – a piratey coast, some ancient ruins, a desert, a colosseum, a town – well, it was an explorer’s dream, despite not being very open-worldy. To anyone who ever dreamt of trampling sand dunes in search of hidden treasure (that’s everyone, I’d imagine), its derelict temple, cuthroat coast and ginormous desert must surely have appealed. The desert in particular had you pressing Up for (I think, although nostalgia may be skewing it slightly) hours, as you traversed its oases, tumbleweed and howling wind in order to reach the nearest town. Once there, you found a market with an uncommon, and palpable, atmosphere (thanks to a soundscape of chattering stall-owners, and all the hidden, meaningless junk you could trade other junk for). I had the feeling, as a kid, there were incredible secrets buried here, and if I only looked hard enough I’d discover something no one else had.

Gothica, the medieval world, was weirdly sad: a dying kingdom home to a murderous chessboard, yer standard creepy forest, and two labyrinthine castles. It was beautifully illustrated, and had some wonderful setpieces and bosses, but – as with Crustacia – I’m not sure I’d have appreciated all that if it hadn’t been for Jeremy Soule’s soundtrack.

I wonder if he looks back on his involvement with such an unpopular game fondly. I hope he does, because – although he would go on to find greater fame with Oblivion, Guild Wars and Neverwinter Nights – for me he’s never bettered the noises he provided for Evermore. He perfectly captured (or perhaps even created) the mood of each world, lending the otherwise threadbare plot a certain depth. I doubt I would have thought the medieval world ’sad’ if it hadn’t been for his music; likewise, I wouldn’t have enjoyed The Spiderwick Chronicles, a recent videogame tie-in, at all, had it not been for its exquisite, autumnal soundtrack.

Secret of Evermore, then. It’s not as bad as you’ve been told, or indeed remember – and it’s worth another try, if you were put off by its (slightly) insulting origins in the past. Seek out the cartridge or ROM, if you’re curious; I’m not convinced the black sheep of the Secrets series will ever appear on the Wii’s Virtual Console.

Morrowind With Guns

I’ve been spending a lot of time in a post-apocalyptic wasteland recently. But enough about Bristol – I want to talk about Fallout 3.

It’s good. It’s… brown. Nuclear holocausts are hardly known for their refreshing colour palette, but it’s annoying playing yet another monochrome title on the 360. Brown or not, though, the world’s infinitely more appealing than Oblivion’s verdant Cyrodiil. Morrowind had a wonderfully Alice-like universe full of giant mushrooms and monolithic architecture (remember Vivec? GORGEOUS). Oblivion’s cities, for all their meticulous medieval splendour, are identical. A terrifically cohesive world, to be sure, but a terrifically uninteresting one too.

Haven’t played much of Fallout 3 yet, and I know I’ll get sick of it eventually, but it reminds me of Morrowind quite a bit. Trading outposts… large amounts of empty wasteland… playful, inventive architecture… a real sense of intrepid exploration. There’s less signposting and hand-holding than in Oblivion (something it and Morrowind share) – the main quest’s there, of course, but no one really gives a shit about it, so you feel less compunction to comply.

Morrowind had personality. It had a vast, howling desert, and weird wizard towers with no easily-accessible doors (I had to drink a load of levitation potions to get in). It had a city that looked like a giant bug. There was this musty, dusty, sort of Gormenghast atmosphere fogging over everything. Oblivion had none of that. Fallout 3 recalls some of that, which is good enough for now.

If the next Elder Scrolls is set somewhere other than a toothless, Tolkienesque tract, I’ll be very happy indeed. If they need to change the lore, then I can only pray that the stubborn Simon Schamas of Tamriel will let them. Bring back giant mushrooms! Make it truly bizarre, have some giant bloody turnips as well. Or, alternatively, go completely the other way: set it on a council estate in Leeds. I’m up for joining the Chavs Guild. Are you?

Visions Of A Gaming Future

The future is a terrifying place. Palin is president, Bush has been promoted to God, and there’s another global war on the go. (Sensibly, though, they’ve abandoned numeric sequencing, in favour of a progressive approach. This one’s known as World War: Call of Duty. We’re all using flamethrowers, it’s ace.)

The gaming landscape has altered radically since you dinosaurs hilariously waggled your fingers on cheap plastic controllers to have fun. Now we waggle them on quality aluminium ones. They’re damn heavy, and prohibitively expensive, but we can live with that. It’s all about the Bling, I’m afraid.

I’ve come back (via the time travel function in tenth-generation iPods) bearing good news: any of you Tudors (or whatever you were) who are dreaming of a One Console Future have not been hoping in vain – your dearest wishes have, indeed, come to pass. Do you want to know who the winner was? (If not, look away now.) It was… well, it was Microsoft. Yeah, don’t act all surprised.

Nintendo were swallowed by Sony, who were swallowed by Microsoft, who in turn were swallowed by a giant Beluga whale that had inadvertently stumbled into New York. ‘Billy’, as he’s known, has made some pretty shrewd calls so far, not least his decision to embrace the inherent failings of the Xbox and turn them into veritable strengths. That One Console I was yammering about is the Xbox Red Ring of Death. The constant sorry breakages of yore are now part of your gaming experience – for instance, take a future RPG. Every time your Red Ring namesakes during a random battle you get a whole bunch of free experience points, as well as a complimentary Microsoft mug (it has a portrait of Blinx on the side). Not only that, but the tiny Bill Gates hologram that lives in your monitor pops out and performs an impromptu sketch with Jerry Seinfeld while your Red Ring’s being repaired. Inevitably, it’s awesome every time.

We play games on 200-inch virtual screens like the ones in Minority Report. Games are so realistic now that we’ve reduced the quality of real life to compensate. I’m actually heavily pixellated (and super deformed), and I only have two frames of running animation to call my own. This comes in handy during my day job, throwing laser bolts at Mega Man.

The primary players in the current World War are the 8-bits and the 16-bits among us. Rather than silly ethnic or religious differences, we’ve settled on technical ones. Namely, how good are our graphics, comparatively, and could our hardware sustain rudimentary 3D? (The war began when Archduke Fox McCloud was assassinated by Kid Icarus over his controversial experiments with Mode 7.) Millions, so far, have died. Thousands forgot to press Continue. Hundreds were out of quarters.

Everyone knew that holodecks were going to come true (and they have), but nobody foresaw what they’d become. Which is a whopping great repository for Sporn. Billions and billions of hideous phallic aliens inhabit this seedy virtual space. It’s like the Mos Eisley Cantina on a Saturday night. I only went there to visit Gangsterworld, honest.

Yes, I’ve played Diablo III. I’ve played Diablo IV, which is basically the second game, but with the legend ‘F***ING HAPPY NOW?’ emblazoned permanently across the centre of the screen. It’s 53% darker than space: so pitch it sucks light from your monitor, your lightbulbs, and your very soul.

We’ve learnt to embrace hype. But polygamously. We get obscenely excited over absolutely everything, from football sequels to Barbie Horse games to the next Gears of War. It’s the only way we keep sane, when everything we play is of such conspicuous quality. Games are now regarded as art (at last!) – and to reflect this, the cultural hierarchy has been revised.

Games are the new opera, and opera is the new games. Gamers wear monocles to LAN parties, and I (for one) don a shirt and tie whenever I log into Xbox Live. Conversely, opera fans huddle in specialised ‘houses’, mutinously whispering untechnobabble to one another, about long-dead old dudes who wrote songs. The internet is full of them.

We can finally stroll down the streets with our heads held high, our noses snootily upturned, and our shoes shined daily by an army of orphan children – for we are the cream of our society, and our humble hobby has been recognised as the pinnacle of human endeavour thus far. It’s a pretty sweet place, the future. Apart from all the giant robot cockroaches, of course.

Gregory Horror Show

The Hotel Inspector would have a field day.

What’s the world hotel you’ve ever stayed in? Go on, I’m all ears.

Really? That’s interesting.

Listen, shut up for a minute. The worst hotel you’ve ever stayed in is Gregory Hotel – though you probably don’t remember going there. Located somewhere between Japan and Limbo, Gregory Hotel (run by its titular owner, a Freudian nightmare in the shape of a battenberg) is home to murderous pink lizard ladies, bloody dog mummies, and the absolute horror that is Lost Doll. Allegedly a videogame produced by Capcom and released in 2003 for the beautiful, defunct PS2, Gregory Horror Show was really a moving postcard from a twisted, dark reality – a terrifying cocktail of Hammer Horror atmosphere, heart-pounding chases, and wonderfully unique game mechanics.

You begin as a stray soul, who has wandered into the hotel by accident. Soon, you’re dumped into a body of your choosing (girl or boy), and given a room to rest in. Said room happens to be located next to that of a morose talking cat known only as Neko Zombie. (He/she/it reminds you of Darlene from Roseanne. You aren’t sure why.) After a weird conversation, you decide to go to sleep, and Death (who evidently is from the Bronx) appears before you, imploring you to beg, borrow or steal souls, so he can harvest them (or whatever it is that Death does). That’s the first ten minutes of the game.

Ten minutes later, and you’re running in fear from the fat nurse woman with the syringe. Her freshly bottled soul is in your pockets, but for some reason she’s still alive. You know that if she catches you, she’ll knock you out, and something kinky will ensue. Catherine isn’t a videogame character, she’s a killer from Wire in the Blood.

Gregory Horror Show is difficult to classify. It’s a survival horror, but without the possibility of death, or the po-faced severity that usually accompanies it. It’s got puzzles, of a sort; it’s got items to collect and conversations to be had, but most of your time is spent running from company, not towards. It has stealth.

Stealth in Gregory Horror isn’t some tacked on, Metal Gear-lite experience, where you could easily outrun your pursuers, or simply kill them all, if only the game let you – your dash, at best, is marginally faster than the freaks who’s souls you’ve stolen. There are a couple of power-ups to be found, that will grant you temporary quickness, but these are few and far between. For the most part, it’s just you (with a beautifully terrified expression plastered on your face), and the oncoming freak. And a vastish hotel full of narrow corridors and winding pathways between you and the Last Safe Place, which is your room.

Best of all, residents bear a grudge, and they don’t go away. Let’s say you’re currently fleeing from Cactus Girl – a scary, spiky, angry little thing – and you bump into Catherine again. She won’t hurt you, right? You’re on Level 4, or whatever the equivalent is in free-roaming terms. You didn’t see Goombas interrupting Bowser’s boss fights in Mario… it’s just not cricket. Well here it is. Bump into Catherine at any point after you’ve ‘alf-inched her soul, and you’ll know about it. By which I mean it’s syringing time.

Thus the difficulty builds naturally, not from artificial lengthening of health bars, but from consequences coming back to haunt you. You are a serial soul thief, each crime making life more and more untenable, until it’s difficult to stay unmolested at all.

You might be wondering how you get these souls in the first place. Let’s jump back a bit. You’re talking to Neko Zombie about, um, death and ice cream. Neko gives you your first soul – which just happens to be his. Just gives it to you. Aww. If only the others were that easy. Activities range from moral quizzes (Judgment Boy) to fits of well-timed burglary (Mummy Papa and Mummy Dog) and beyond. Residents have daily schedules, and you have a planner which gradually fills in as you spy on them through keyholes and stalk them between rooms – going about their business blissfully unaware of the creepy voyeur lurking outside. Move abruptly, and the floorboards will squeak. If this happens, you’re in for it.

A good thief researches his target, and plans intensively, before a heist. This is vital for a good soul thief as well. As you overhear carefully dropped clues about your victims, you will slowly piece together your objectives, and figure out at what time and at what place they must be… objected. Then it’s simply a matter of carrying them out. And scarpering like a maniac, soul in hand, after the fact.

Residents will chase you from room to room and from floor to floor. Just when you think you’ve got away, you’ll bump into one of them – with a startled orchestral squeak – and the chase will begin anew. The Metal Gear series managed a lot of things, but (for me at least) it never quite managed to make stealth a frightening experience. After all, it was mostly by choice that you sneaked through its environments. You were a grizzled soldier that could kill a man by nodding at him, but you spent most of the game hiding under a box. In Gregory Horror Show, you’re a boxy little boy or girl, with no offensive capabilities whatsoever, and it’s terrifying. If you’re KO’d by a resident, they’ll do something weird to you, take away most of your energy bar, and then release you – tired and bewildered, thoroughly affected by the experience.

The game unfurls gradually; after every three souls you harvest, another floor becomes available, and a few more guests check into the hotel. Collect all their souls, and defeat the unlikely last boss, and you’ve beaten the game. And that’s… that.

That’s not that. When you beat it, there’s the effusive praising to be done. Gospel to be spread about this largely ignored masterpiece. You’ll be there soon enough, I can almost guarantee it: on the roof of your house or block of flats, screaming through a megaphone to anyone who’ll listen of the spectacular music, the sheer terror of running into Lost Doll for the first time, or the frog with the crystal ball that saves your game.

More than just the (sigh) Quirky Japanese Game that doubtless many shrugged it off as, Gregory Horror Show is, in fact, a consistently inventive and imaginative stealth-puzzle-survival-horror experience. The characters and situation may spring from the anime series that shares its name, but the mechanics are pure Capcom: slight retreads of Resident Evil (it even features green herbs), given weird new twists to accommodate the story (happily, it’s not the other way around).

Actually, I’ve changed my mind. Gregory Hotel is probably the best hotel I’ve ever stayed in. And I’ve stayed in a Novotel. Twice.

Dark Sector

Dark Sector is a Gears of War rip-off, but it’s refreshingly open about it. The controls are almost identical, as is the seek-cover-peek-out-and-shoot central mechanic. Developer interviews leading up to its release acknowledged the title’s debt to its more muscular predecessor – the idea being that fans of GOW could leap into the game at an advantage, and near-instantly commence with the shooting.

As a fan of Gears of War, I did appreciate the familiar button layout, as well as the familar mechanics, the familiar engine and colour scheme, the familiarly obtuse plot and many of the other familiar things I noticed playing this openly familiar game. But I didn’t care that it was familiar, because (believe it or not), I didn’t approach this one expecting Wheel Mk. 2. No, I wanted to shoot things in the face – and in this way Dark Sector more than delivers.

Early on in the game, special operative (or something) Haydon Tenno gets captured by somethings (or soldiers) and given a spangly mutated arm. Rather than hiding in the attic for twenty years like a sensible person, he decides to go on a killing rampage to escape captivity and find answers (DAMMIT!) to what’s going on. This involves a bit of shooting, and a lot of slicing, utilising the boomerang thing that inexplicably detaches from your wrist.

The game calls this weapon a ‘glaive’. I’d call it ‘Mr. Slicey’. It was the focal point/only notable feature of terrible sci-fi/fantasy mash up movie Krull. In the film, I recall the hero using his tiny, malnourished weapon (and the glaive) just once, but in this 2008 homage you can employ it whenever you like. All you need to do is press the right bumper down. As well as whacking bad men, robots and mutants, you can also use it to acquire distant objects or hit switches, bypassing the human mediocrity of pressing our fingers on stuff, or tediously carrying things around.

The glaive can also be set on fire, as well as frozen or electrocuted. This allows you to solve puzzles, like included minigames Electric Sudoku, Icy Crossword, and Flaming Hot Awesome Word Shuffle. No, not really. The other type of puzzle. Things that are frozen and need to be on fire. Things that are on fire and need to be frozen. Things that aren’t yet electric and need to be made electric. You know, puzzles.

Alright, you won’t need to trouble that withered grey thing you laughably refer to as your ‘brain’, but you didn’t really want to, did you? You wanted to exploderise things. Well, you get to do THAT, don’t worry. As well as glaiving people up, you can shoot them with your tiny handgun, or any of the other weapons dutifully doled out to you across the game. You can only hold onto most of them for a few seconds, though, before they explode (ostensibly because of Science, but really to encourage you to use your bionic arm). This means you’re unlikely to rob corpses, or pick up stray armaments, because you’ll only have to find another weapon again in a moment, and that’s just a nuisance.

Instead, Haydon regularly stumbles across a shady weapons broker, who’ll flog you black market guns you get to keep, in exchange for the paltry sum of all your money. I could only afford about two different guns throughout the game – you’ll find so little cash lying around the environment, and so infrequently, that you’ll end up saving for weapons you might never be able to afford. Still, you can customise your shooty accomplices, adding bonuses and damage boosts and things, and you’ll actually notice the difference. If only you could hold more than two at a time – and could afford more than one gun at a time – you’d be able to experiment, and have a bit more fun with this fairly inflexible system. As it is, you’ll most likely stick to the machine gun, as it’s by far the most practical weapon in the game.

Levels are inconsistent in length, some taking a couple of hours to plow through, some taking about half an hour. Environments are of your standard green, grey and brown variety – sewers, laboratories etc – but a few locations, like the ruined city and the graveyard, are at least pleasant to look at. You won’t remember them though.

You won’t remember the boss battles, which are an exercise in Quick Time futility or opaque and arbitrary pattern following. Surely you can kill something any number of ways? I could kill my fish by boiling them, drinking them, frying them up – I don’t need to strafe around them to reveal their weakpoints, and then slash their red arses with my sword.

You also won’t remember the story, which throws mysterious women and grim military gentlemen at you regularly, but neglects to explain anything in any detail. Something about secret government meddling, you know the drill.

You WILL remember Aftertouch. Aftertouch is glorious. Basically, press RB a second time after flinging your metal ‘rang at people, and you’ll magically slow time (er, something to do with reflexes, or something). The game cuts to a glaive-eye view, and in the seconds before impact you get to direct it to a body part of choosing, watching gleefully as it gorily slices away. It’s a bit like the rocket launcher in the original Ratchet and Clank, but you get to slice mutant legs off. And arms. And heads. It’s great fun, obviously, and you will employ it again and again.

Aftertouch is easily the best thing about Dark Sector, and the only part that really lingers in the memory. Like a lot of titles, it really nails its opening sections; as each mechanic is introduced you fervently (and naively) believe you’ve found a gem. A couple of levels later, however, you realise that nothing else is going to come your way, and you’ve still got 80% of the game to experience. Your enthusiasm falls, steadily and gradually – you could probably graph it. You’re grateful when it finally finishes. The game is grateful, because it didn’t have anything else to say. You leave each other at the crossroads, with no harsh memories (but no truly great ones either). Just a middling experience, which will fade in time.

Then a better game steals Aftertouch, and Dark Sector becomes a footnote in history.

Ghost Hunt

I’m watching Playr (you know, that shitty games programme on Bravo). It’s a Mirror’s Edge special! So if you’re reading this entry right now, and you have some form of extra-terrestrial television, turn on your idiot box and we’ll watch it simultaneously. Although, considering how long it takes me to write these posts, it’ll probably be well over by the time I finally hit “publish”. Oh well.

Mirror’s Edge looks even better than Jumping Flash, the previous benchmark (only game I can recall) of first-person jumping games. And in that you were a huge mechanical rabbit, so it’s a pretty high compliment.

In other news, it’s Sunday, my chair keeps collapsing under me, and I’m looking lustfully at a half-empty glass of red wine I forgot to drink last night.

I went on a ghost hunt in the wee hours of Friday night/Saturday morning, and returned with three poltergeist heads, which are currently glaring down at me from my mantelpiece. Not really (they’re in a box in the cupboard). My brother and I arrived at Tutbury Castle at around 11pm, and stayed until about 6.30, when we hungrily ate our continental breakfasts (a croissant each) and then stood around in the cold and dark for half an hour before being picked up. We used dowsing rods (bollocks), crystals (bollocks), and got to use frankly awesome EMF meters to find spectres to shoot. Or electrical wiring. Or both.

We also did seances, used a YesYes board, and watched a medium become possessed by a demon called God…frey. Then we moved a glass around a table using our fingertips spirit energy. It was a fun experience.

I took a pretty stunning picture a couple of years ago, of what might be a ghost (can’t really think of anything else it could be, but yeah, “it’s a ghost” is a bit of leap), so I find the idea of them pretty interesting. Not least because we all know people who’ve seen them, and to rubbish all their experiences as tired hallucinations or whatever feels a bit, well, twattish. Obviously, all the bullshit (mediums with orange faces, table tipping etc) is, erm, bullshit, but I feel there’s something at the heart of it all that will one day be normalised by science.

Anyway, here’s some pictorial evidence! That it actually happened, not of ghosts and that. Sorry.

The only photo of us arriving that turned out OK, and it turns out to be of a bloke scratching his arse. Sorry about that. I think it’s the guy who was filming us all the way through (or as I affectionately know him, Red Dot In The Corner That Looks A Bit Like A Single Devil Eye).

This is my brother James, using the power of EMF to hunt for ghosts. They probably aren’t in the floor, James, but I guess it’s worth a shot. Note my position in this photo – behind the door that leads to the dungeon, because I’m a fucking scaredy-cat.

Me, Tom Sykes, hi. What an ugly bastard. I’d been up since 5am (hence the haunted, slightly murderous look), managing to keep awake via otherworldly energy and a can of Relentless.

There might be a ghost there, if you turn the brightness up. Or there might be nothing. I just don’t know. Let’s embrace Web 2.0 and ask you, yes you the reader, to decide (because I can’t be bothered). Alternative, games magazine caption: A door, yesterday.

By this point I was trying to distinguish the ghosts from the many pink unicorns that were dancing at my feet. Come, my pretties, let’s lay siege to Tutbury and reclaim the kingdom in the name of Burtlefluffikins, our Unicorn God!

The Spiderwick Chronicles

is a resolutely average film, but a wonderful book series, and a surprisingly atmospheric game. I’ve played bits of the PS2 and DS versions, and I’ve had a great time with both, before finding the main quest a little dull in the former, and by humorously (and repeatedly) switching off without saving in the latter.

The books are gently charming, and manage to map out a detailed world across five slight volumes. As a fan of goblins, and of grotesque and funny fantasy creatures in general, Tony DiTerlizzi’s fine illustrations really appeal to me. Somewhat tangentially, if you also like goblins (I’m not like in love with them), you should check out Brian Froud, who designed the creatures for David Bowie Codpiece Classic Labyrinth. Why? Because he is awesome.

The movie compresses all five books into one inedible mess. It seems to plunder most from books 1 and 5, happily ignoring the others, so it’s all a bit rushed, leaving you with little time to be absorbed into the world or anything. This is a massive bloody shame, as it’s such a good world and I wouldn’t mind being absorbed in it for a bit. Peter Pan Boy does a really annoying Bwonx accent (as twins, so twice!). The subtle Daddy Issues Jared has in the books are chemically stripped of all subtlety, so you get him literally shouting “I want to live with Dad!”, even though he’s in a magical awesome house and fantasy creatures are real. The idiot.

The games have beautiful music, and this is probably why I enjoyed them. I can’t really get into a game unless I’m listening to its soundtrack. Bad soundtracks ruin everything for me. I lose interest quickly, and inevitably turn the volume down, before realising how bored I am of silently shifting pixels around and aborting the endeavour altogether. Spiderwick DS manages to keep itself alive by capturing the spirit of autumn perfectly. Mournful and evocative, in-keeping with the degraded state of the Spiderwick mansion, and of the spiky, vicious wilderness around it. It truly is a joy to behold (in your ears).

In a welcome change to the usual glut of licensed platformers, the DS version is a turn-based RPG. Battles are surprisingly difficult (there’s no Final Fantasy-style coasting by on Attack, Attack, Attack, Attack, Potion, Attack here); you regularly run out of healing items and frequently fall over and die. Which is a bit of a funny approach to a kids game. Which is a pretty stupid statement, because children are usually better at videogames than growned-ups (I’m not talking about toddlers, obviously).

You get to explore a beautifully-drawn world, which is much nicer to look at than the copy-the-movie-version aesthetic of the console versions. Events from the film are expanded, with added charm and less bwonx (thankfully, no lines are spoken). It’s a not a BREAKNECK ROLLERCOASTER OF FANTASY ACTION, it’s a sedate trip through a sad fantasy land, broken only occasionally by the game’s punishing hardness, and the fact that you will often have no idea where to go.

The PS2 version features a whole one dimension more than its DS counterpart, which is technology sensibly applied. Everyone who loves the series wants to go running around the house and its surroundings, and the game lets you do that (in 3D!).

This is why the Harry Potter games are so popular. They’re pretty rubbish as games, of course: they aren’t innovative or even well-constructed, or fun on any level other than a fannish one; but, crucially, they let you run around Hogwarts.

The fourth game innovated too much – it dabbled in co-op, and had a neat spellcasting system, but you couldn’t run around Hogwarts. You had to select a level (what is this, 1996?), then you were suddenly dumped there, and you had to do all the objectives, and fight all the same monsters, again. The primary purpose of a licensed (fantasy) game should be to let you inhabit the world. Anything else is merely a side dish (or plate of chips, if you will).

(You do need to eat chips though, despite what Jamie Oliver says. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix forgot this. It had a gorgeous, massive, interactive universe. It had physics and spellcasting and shit. But, erm, there was fuck all to do, so it was boring.)

Sauntering back to the point for a moment, Spiderwick on PS2 is great because it absolutely nails the world. The untidy autumn environment is full of nooks and crannies and things to hit. I wouldn’t be surprised if the game degenerated into an incohesive mess later on (as rushed licensed games have a habit of doing), but what I’ve played has been highly enjoyable. I’d rent it though, if you’re curious. Or hunt through the bargain bins first (do cheap things still come in bins? How demeaning).

You’ve played this same game many, many times before – run around, hit the monsters, collect the berries/gems/rings – but this time it has a Spiderwick skin on it, and that makes all the difference.

For Free Or Not For Free: The Indie Pricing Row

When Braid’s price was finally announced – 1200 in Microsoft Points (or about $15) – there was a bit of an uproar. “Bit of” meaning “Quite a lot”, of course, in understated Britishspeak. Spoiled by years of (relatively) cheap Xbox Live Arcade games, not to mention the hundreds of free indie titles readily available online, many gamers saw this price as an insult.

Tim from the IndieGames blog has kindly lobbed up an article by me. In it, I assume the frankly untenable position that asking money for things is OK (obviously, doesn’t apply if you’re an estate agent).