"Get in the hole...bitch"

I’m shite at sports, it’s a personal tragedy and one that I’ll never overcome, I’ve not played every sport (just how do you get into pole vaulting) but I’m pretty sure I’ll be terrible at all of them. I might never get to sleep with a team-mate’s wife or swear into a camera and I’ve made peace with that, because I can do it all on an Xbox.

In reality I don’t care much for sports but boy do I love them in video game form. It doesn’t even matter which sport it is, I used to play the likes of Fifa 96, Troy Aikman NFL Football, NBA Jam and NHL 96 for hours as a kid, and while my interest in sports has waned somewhat, I’m still playing their virtual incarnations like a zombie.

As opposed to most other games, there’s always a new version every single year, promising to be better than the last. The squads will be updated, as will the shiny new kits, there might be NEW ANIMATIONS! And that’s all you really get, and for most Fifa fans, that’s all they want, change is bad. Wayne Rooney has graced the cover since 2007 and the only difference is that he’s got progressively uglier.

EA Sports love to throw a gimmick at the rest of us, if David Beckham’s new haircut didn’t persuade us to buy the new game then 360 dribbling will! Or 360 passing! Next year it will 360 heading, like the shitting Exorcist, NEW PROJECTILE VOMITING! When you do eventually buy the latest version you’re left disappointed that they’ve removed all the things you liked about last year’s game.

I like to think I’m better than this, I won’t be fooled by the promise of a brand new game every year, only to hold a near identical copy of the game I only bought 12 months ago, so what I do, I buy them every 48 months, in which I hold a near identical copy of the game I only bought 48 months ago.

Having bought Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 on the *gulp* Nintendo Wii, it was time to buy the latest version, and this time on a console where I didn’t have to swing my arms like a mentalist. Because Tiger Woods “did all that sex” a few years ago, EA Sports have chosen not to have his face on the cover, instead choosing to have The Masters emblazoned all over it, with the tiny words Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12 underneath.

Unsurprisingly, this year’s version is all up in the air over The Masters, which for people uninterested in golf (me included) is a golf tournament, and as I have gathered, quite a fancy one. It’s extremely refreshing to have a different menu screen to the one EA Sports has stuck with for all of its games for the past five years.

I like golf games because they’re hypnotically addictive, which is strange because I’m just doing the same thing over and over. I’m definitely not going to have to gun down a terrorist or jump in a helicopter, I’m not even going to get in a golf cart, I’m just going to hit a ball down a field. It shouldn’t be fun, shooting Nazi’s in the face is fun, murdering in renaissance Italy is fun, golf? Fun? Why yes it is.

Sinking a long putt to get an eagle is incredibly satisfying, and for a guy who craves a false sense of achievement, it will be dangerous when I finally get a hole in one, “you coming to work today?”, “Fuck your job, I got a hole in one!”. Tiger Woods will (probably) appeal to any gamers who are “completionists“ because there’s a lot to do. Pretty much everything is unlocked through challenges, you complete a challenge and you have another more difficult one to complete, which is a much more entertaining way of getting Xbox achievements than collecting feathers.

Despite all the fun and japes, there is something substantially annoying about Tiger Woods 12, and it’s not the lack of sex. There are a total of 34 courses, though you only get 16 of these when you buy the game, the rest being available to purchase online. This might be acceptable if it didn’t interfere with the game, but you are constantly reminded that there are events you cannot play until you buy the courses. It might be acceptable if the courses were reasonably priced, but they’re not. It might be acceptable if these courses were produced after the release, but they weren’t. They could have been in the game, but EA Cunts have cynically decided to make us pay for part of a game we have already paid for.

This is nothing new, but it’s a trend that is becoming more and more common as publishers know they can withhold content from a game, sell it separately, and millions of morons will buy it. The publishers are dicks for doing for it, but the people out there enabling them are the real cunts. Tiger Woods 12 may be fun but it’s an insight into the terrible dystopia of video games that has yet to come.

World in Motion

So Microsoft have announced that the much anticipated Kinect will be sold for around 150 bucks. A little exchange rate research later and I guess it will around £100 over here, which in my opinion is £99 too much.

Let’s be honest, we are all bored of the Wii. Waving your arms about like you’re being attacked by a wasp just isn’t fun after four minutes, unless you’re Ant and Dec, which is always fun as long as you’re still getting paid.

With the Wii making so much money, Microsoft and Sony have jumped on the motion cash cow, and before Christmas motion controlled gaming will be available on all three consoles. Despite it’s popularity, the Wii has offered very little to hardcore gamers apart from the odd Zelda and Mario game, so it’s hard to get excited about Kinect and Move because they will only cater for the casual gamer.

The majority of the games announced for Kinect are aimed for children, so rather than an innovative piece of technology, it is more of a sound business plan from Microsoft, aimed at attracting a younger (and older) audience to the console. There is always one bastard developer though with delusions of grandeur, and they make a brilliant game that we must all have…the bastardy bastards. The big game from E3 was Child of Eden, and will be the reason (if any) for the hardcore gamers to buy Kinect, which they will.

The problem I have with the Wii, which I assume I will have with Kinect, is that the few good games available on the Wii would work just as well, if not better, without the motion controlled elements. I’m fine with pushing buttons, it’s less of a hindrance than waving my arms about, and with the Wii you end up pushing buttons anyway. You won’t have any buttons with Kinect, and whether this is a good thing depends on how well it works.

I understand that the whole movement aspect is great because it encourages the often obese gamer to exercise, but I have found a way to sit down and play games, and not get fat, or what I have dubbed, COD fit. All you need is a console, an exercise bike, and the ability to multitask. Or you can just play games and exercise separately.

Even if you don’t want to buy Kinect, Microsoft will manipulate you into buying it eventually. It’ll just be like downloadable content, fucking devious. In the good ol’ days you used to be able to buy a game, and then play it, seem simple enough. Now, you spend £40, and then you are continually sold extra parts of the game for the next year (at least). The latest Fifa game has 2 modes on the menu screen that you need to pay to unlock, didn’t I already pay to play it? Modern Warfare 2 has released 2 map packs so far, each costing around £10 each. You don’t have to buy these, but it makes it incredibly hard to play online without them as you are kicked out of any match that features a map you don’t have. So if you want to keep playing online you have to spend a total of around £60 on one game.

It has been announced that Fable III will use Kinect, but you won’t

need it to play the game. I get the feeling that a lot of games will have totally pointless special Kinect features that you don’t need, but in some way stop us from getting the whole experience of whatever game we’re playing. So it is inevitable that we will all buy Kinect even though we don’t want to, so how about lowering the price a little?