Alan Wake is a survival horror that trades so strongly in the humble homage that there is very little left that is truly original. You play as Alan Wake, a horror author (Stephen King) who retires to the sleepy mountainside town of Bright Falls (Twin Peaks) after finishing your latest book. Something goes horribly wrong when your girlfriend is kidnapped (Super Mario Brothers) by a mysterious dark presence that slowly envelops the town. It’s then up to Alan to try to confront the darkness with his trusty flashlight to burn away the things that go bump in the night (Darkness Falls).

The plot is actually richer than my crude breakdown here, but not by much. The only part that has any originality to it is the game play and that’s perhaps due to the woeful lack of titles in the survival horror genre. In Alan Wake, light is your friend. The other residents of Bright Falls have been possessed by the darkness. Perhaps consumed would be a better description. You’ll face redneck after lumberjack who are coated in a thick billowing blackness that can only be burnt away by the light. Then of course, you are free to cap them at your leisure. Like any good survival horror you have to be skilled with juggling your inventory. The only real tense moments in the game are those when you’re reloading your gun and your flashlight.

Alan Wake lacks the atmosphere that made success stories from similar titles like Dead Space. Despite being set in the middle of a pine forest in the dark of night, there isn’t a whole lot that is scary out there. In fact, you basically face the same handful of foes throughout the whole game until the only real enemy is repetition and fending off boredom. Having said that, repetition was the main gripe for the first volume of Assassin’s Creed, so I have high hopes for the future episodes of Alan Wake.

One of the interesting features in Alan Wake is the game being split into television style episodes instead of traditional levels. Continue to the next episode and you’re greeted with a “Previously on Alan Wake” voice over that is completely unnecessary. I suspect it’s there for two reasons. Firstly, survival horror games are wholly extensions of horror films and are bogged down in the storytelling traditions of the moving picture. Secondly, there will surely be further episodes to download, making the previous episode recaps relevant instead of redundant.

Alan Wake is a bit on the corny side, but in the same way that Twin Peaks was. Yes it was cheesy yet you were entertained none the less. The other characters Alan runs into add a goofy charm to the story line of Bright Falls. Alan’s agent and pal Barry Wheeler is so dorky he bleeds into brilliance and the old drunken Anderson brothers are retired rock gods who understand the secrets behind the dark presence and Alan’s involvement in the unfolding events.

If you’re happy to lock yourself away in the darkness for a few hours, Alan Wake is a pretty fun game to play. It’s not as haunting as they hype would have you believe, but there are genuinely tense moments and the plot is engaging enough to warrant playing it. Now go Mario, rescue the princess!!

Starting on 10th June and for a limited time only, Sony is giving new PSPgo owners (18+) in Australia a head start on their game collection with ten games to download from the Playstation store, free:

• Assassins Creed: Bloodlines™ (Ubisoft)
• Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories (Rockstar Games)
• Gran Turismo™ (SCE WWS)
• James Cameron’s AVATAR™: The Game (Ubisoft)
• LittleBigPlanet™ (SCE WWS)
• MotorStorm® Arctic Edge (SCE WWS)
• NEED FOR SPEED SHIFT (EA)
• Pursuit Force™: Extreme Justice (SCE WWS)
• 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™ (EA)
• Wipeout® Pure (SCE WWS)

Check out au.playstation.com for more deets.

First off, I want to state for the record that i’ve never been crazy about ‘car games’. I’ve never found myself addicted to one. I’ve never found myself playing one for 16 hours straight. I’ve never really been challenged by one. Well, that’s what I was able to say before I played Rockstar Games’ Midnight Club L.A.

An in-game screenshot. To the bottom right is your speed, NOS boost and power gauges. The green indicates a slipstream boost that is charging by tailing the cars ahead, similar to the effect in Mario Kart.

There’s so much good in this game that I don’t know where to start, so i’ll just rattle off everything about it that I enjoyed. Firstly, as expected because it’s a Rockstar Game, there’s a plot to accompany the gameplay. That plot isn’t earth shattering, but it and its characters is enough to propel you along until the competition fuelled addiction kicks in. It’s an open world style game, not just any open-world but the exact replication of Los Angeles!

L.A. at night. Traffic congestion is at its lowest at night, it's well worth waiting for the sun to go down for the more challenging races, hence the game's title Midnight Club.

I first had a taste of real life open world maps in the grimy guy-ritchiesque game The Getaway. Its backdrop was London and they did a great job of reproducing the environment. The Getaway had a huge driving/racing component and with London’s map as your open world, it made for some great gameplay. Its the same with MCLA. As silly as this sounds, racing a ‘real’ map makes the gameplay more ‘real’. When it comes to street racing, no fictitious map could ever feel as ‘real’ because it’s hard to fake all those dead ends, bad town planning, sprawling downtown and congestion caused by topography enforced road design problems etc. Basically all the bits that make a city fun to race around, also making that city a challenge and you simply couldn’t dream up Los Angeles and all its foibles. Whether its Santa Monica or the Hollywood Studios backlots to Mullholand Drive. There’s no city like it and so racing its streaking and winding roads is truly unique.

The sun setting on another day of L.A. street racing.

Graphics wise, the game is very convincing. There are moments when the sun is setting, the pink clouds reflected in your new paint job as your tear around a corner, the world spinning to match your camera’s perspective as you correct the car and fly over the lip of a hill, you’d swear it was live action footage.

It’s the detail, the little things that make this world real. Like huge shadows fleeting across the road in front of you as a plane above flies past. Scratches on taxis you left behind remain for longer than you’d remember. Or how about when a pig pulls you over for an infringement and the visual switches to the patrol car mounted camera, grainy and black & white just like in episode of COPS. Even the head turn of the driver in your car when you put it in reverse. These little details attended to make MCLA all the more immersive.

The police pull you over with guns drawn if you really piss them off. If you do something minor to grab their attention, the camera view will switch to that of the dashboard mounted patrol car cam as they approach your vehice for questioning.

As your eyes are entertained, so are your ears. The soundtrack is killer. With a good variety of electronic, hip-hop and rock there’s always something good on the radio. It was great to hear local acts Dukes of Windsor, Young & Restless, The Presets and one half of, K.I.M. also on the tracklist. Tunes by NIN, Holy Fuck, Santogold, Deadmau5, Nas, Snoop, Too $hort, The Cool Kids, CSS, MGMT and many more feature on this street racing title. Another attention to detail moment in the game for me was racing in downtown L.A. – taking a shortcut via an underground ramp and hearing the radio crackle and hiss as reception dropped out momentarily until I was above ground again. It’s moments like those in the heat of a race, that make you smile.

Two tuners going head to head.

The basic gameplay involves completing a series of missions, interestingly not all racing related. Some require you to deliver high-price cars with zero damage in record time. Other times you need to teach a lesson in a session of demolition derby. Ultimately though, this game is about racing on the streets of L.A. for money, fame and pinkslips.

There are a number of racing formats also and the AI drivers looking for them such freeway racers, traffic light racers, series, city champs. Flash your headlights to initiate a race. Simply cruise around the city or to a destination, flash your high beams and it’s go-time. When you complete a race, or bow out you simply return to cruise mode. No boring load screens or unnecessary intermissions, you go straight from cruising the streets of L.A. to racing them to cruising again.

Driving a fast car means faster AI competitors.

In terms of cars at your disposal, there a 4 levels of non-fictions cars made available via your Garage. Win money (or cars you can sell) to get the cash to buy faster, better handling and impressive cars. Reputation and Rank (tied to racing XP) unlocks car levels, this means you’re never allowed a car that exceeds your prowess. Even so, competitive AI is throttled to your car’s stats. For example, if you’re driving a shitbox, all AI in a race will have relatively, the same sluggish cars. However if you manage to buy or win a Lamborghini, be prepared to race some other very fast cars. This means you can’t just gain a competitive edge with money, instead if you want to drive a fast car, you better be able to handle the speed. This in turn means your reflexes develop amazingly intuitive, I was surprised at the speed I was able to confidently handle the faster cars. By the time you’ve max’d out a level 4 car with modifications, your reflexes have become lightning fast. To revel in the joys of driving, simply drop back a notch to a more modest car and everything slows down again, allowing you to savour a race, to truly perfect your driving lines and cornering techniques. My favourite car ‘to smell the roses in’ is one of the very first cars you’re offered in the game, an 80s VW GOLF GTI (or affectionately called a Rabbit). There’s also an expansion pack out now called South Central. Besides expanding the L.A. map, it includes new cars like a Range Rover and an Impala, the latter of course perfect for the hydraulics mod.

The South Central expansion pack includes several new cars.

The modifications available are either aesthetic or performance in nature. The aesthetic options are almost limitless, allowing for unbridled creativity and customisation. For the more serious player, money is better spent on performance upgrades. You don’t have to be a physics major or mechanic to apply these upgrades, a simple leveled system lets you spend money on things like cold air intakes, bigger turbos, brakes, exhaust systems etc – with each mod’s value being shown in either acceleration and/or top speed. The modifications even retain some of their value at the time of trade-in.

A tastefully modified new generation Golf

The customisation tool is accessed via your Garage and remains consistent, regardless of the type of vehicle you’re working with. Vehicle types include Tuners, Muscle, Luxury, Exotic and not for the faint at heart, Bikes. Tuners are mostly Japanese cars, the typical The Fast & The Furious rides with turbos etc. Muscle cars are what you’d expect, Luxurys are also. Exotics are high-end cars like Lamborghinis. You get to sample them all as certain story-progression missions require you to win a race in one of each car type.

NOS boost lets out a blue flame from the exhaust when engaged.

Outside of static customisation, the game also includes in-game mods that allow for strategic use during races such as NOS boost, a very handy and fun mod. Rage which makes your car temporarily indestructible whilst flinging cars like a semi-trailer just hit them, when your car collides with theirs. EMP a somewhat fictional device featured in The Matrix and Under Siege 2 basically knocks out the electricals in cars.

The game also features online racing tournaments. A great excuse to show off all the love you put into the external customising of your car! In regards to AI, they’ll give it to you just as good if not better than real life players, expect to race courses over and over and over, missing out by only seconds each time, having to replay until you’ve clocked that mission. This game is extremely challenging and so you won’t find yourself bored from lack of difficulty.

My only advice, just don’t go for a drive in real life after having played this for a few hours, you’ll be disappointed you can’t run reds, take shortcuts through studio backlots, out run police or refill your nitro boost tanks at petrol stations!

www.rockstargames.com/midnightclubLA/

Star Craft, like practically all Blizzard games, attracts serious fandom from gamers. Brad was lucky enough to receive the very coveted key to play the beta release of Star Craft 2. His ex girlfriend, has other plans.

When Lawrence Fishburne told Keanu Reeves to “Free your mind” in the Hollywood science fiction epic, The Matrix, audiences were thrilled to the notion of applying mind over matter – that the mind could actually be used to control technology. But as exciting as the film was, the idea was still just a work of fiction – until now. An Australian talent has not only taken the initial, tentative steps towards mind control over technology, it has already unleashed a working product on the American market. Emotiv Systems’ EPOC headset does what we’ve only been able to fantasise about in movies: It can read your mind and use that information to control technology.

“We compute the patterns and try to recognise thoughts, expressions and emotions,” explains Emotiv co-founder, Nam Do. “It has 16 sensors that read the electrical impulses from the brain that are naturally emitted. It works wirelessly with the computer and looks for patterns.”

Do was back in his adopted country for the Sydney-hosted XMediaLab event, “Global Media Cultures”. His keynote speech was been the biggest revelation – and an unqualified hit – among attendees as well as other speakers. It’s one thing to say on paper that a headset can intuitively interpret facial gestures, emotions and slight movements, and then translate them into commands for a computer or video game; it’s a whole other thing to be able to demonstrate such features in front of a live audience. We came away even more impressed after Do allowed us to test the EPOC headset first hand.

Emotiv allowed us to play the game ‘Spirit Mountain’ using EPOC’s developmental software. After a quick fit and test of the headset, we completed some training exercises where the computer learns to recognise the patterns received from the headset. This data forms the basis for later challenges. For example, the software has a series of challenges involving a 3D cube. By using thought alone, we were cable to cause it to spin, rise, drop and even disappear. Spinning the cube is particularly telling of the subtleties in the EPOC design: once mastered, not only can you keep the cube spinning, you can control the rate at which it spins.

epoc headset

Based on the latest developments in neuro-technology, Emotiv has developed a revolutionary new personal interface for human computer interaction.  The Emotiv EPOC is a high resolution, neuro-signal acquisition and processing wireless neuroheadset.  It uses a set of sensors to tune into electric signals produced by the brain to detect player thoughts, feelings and expressions and connects wirelessly to most PCs.

Headset Features:

The limited edition EPOC is released in the US in limited quantities, and early users will have access to the Emotiv App Store and the very first games and programs developed exclusively for this one-of-a-kind neuro-technology platform. Developers are currently utilizing Emotiv EPOC technology in a variety of new and exciting ways.

Artistic and creative expression – Use your thoughts, feeling, and emotion to dynamically create color, music, and art.

Life changing applications for disabled patients, such as controlling an electric wheelchair, mind-keyboard, or playing a hands-free game.

Games & Virtual Worlds – Experience the fantasy of controlling and influencing the virtual environment with your mind. Play games developed specifically for the EPOC, or use the EmoKey to connect to current PC games and experience them in a completely new way.

Market Research & Advertising – get true insight about how people respond and feel about material presented to them. Get real-time feedback on user enjoyment and engagement.

Via PopSci

Digitalsoaps (there’s a business called Digitalsoaps??) have produced these true to scale examples of when soap can be manly. A set of four bars will set you back $34.

Via NewLaunches