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More soon.

• Firstly, assuming that the promo video isn’t enormously exaggerating the abilities of the motion-tracking tech, then I think its fair to say that this is pretty impressive stuff. Full-body 1:1 motion tracking of individual limbs is a major step forward in itself, but if Microsoft have brought voice control to an acceptable level of accuracy and reliability- and thats a very big if- then that could be pretty revolutionary in itself.

• It reaffirms Microsoft’s committment to prolonging this console generation. This device could easily have been incorporated into a new next-gen system. Given that it presumably won’t see release until next year, this could significantly extend the Xbox 360′s lifespan.

• Natal is obviously an effort to grab some of Nintendo’s lucrative casual market, a segment which has eluded Microsoft so far. Nintendo will be worried- and there’s a significant chance it may cause them to bring their plans forward for the Wii’s successor. The inherent limitations of the Wii’s internal OS can’t be refreshed and revamped the way Microsoft and Sony are able to constantly update the capabilities of their consoles. Nintendo may decide that MotionPlus isn’t quite enough to give the Wii a few more years of market dominance.

• I would however question the usefulness of the Natal tech for the Xbox’s hardcore contingent (which is Microsoft’s bread and butter). Call of Duty, Gears of War and Halo aren’t going to ditch the controller entirely- and unless they do, gamers can’t do a whole lot of useful interacting with the Natal system with their hands full of Xbox controller. Unless sticking out your tongue to reloads your gun counts as useful (oh, and I’m patenting that idea).

• Jettisoning the controller entirely represents a considerably greater break from gaming tradition than Nintendo’s Wii Remote. While the Remote uses buttons in conjunction with motions, Natal is motion-only. No matter how good the underlying tech is, this strongly suggests that it is casual and party games that will be the focus of Natal-compatible software.

• Oh, and Don Mattrick’s smugness is seriously irritating.

Showing a canny understanding of the Wii market, where the cheapest looking titles, usually party games, tend to sell the most copies, Electronic Arts’ Boom Blox Bash Party not only has a naff title, but also sports appropriately cheap-looking boxart.  EA hope this will be a winning combination at retail, and given what they’ve managed to do with just over a year’s development time, this title is more than deserving of success.

For the uninitiated, Boom Blox Bash Party is the sequel to a Wii-exclusive action puzzler released last summer that won wide praise for its unique gameplay that straddled the boundary between hardcore and casual more successfully than just about any other title since Peggle. It was the game’s unadulterated simplicity that really impressed. Tapping into the brain’s hardwired affinity for blowing stuff up, the core gameplay involves toppling towers of blocks by throwing balls at the screen. Like Jenga in reverse, but with explosives. Similarly, the control scheme is simplicity itself- you just point at the spot you want to throw the ball at, lock with the A button, make a throwing motion (your throwing speed determines the power) and release. Its a remarkably elegant and intuitive system that requires no learning, practice, or tutorials.

But what can the sequel deliver that the original couldn’t?

In the best tradition of sequels, Bash Party sets out to offer bigger, better, and more content than its predecessor. And its hard to argue that it doesn’t deliver on each of these promises. Wisely choosing not to reinvent a perfectly serviceable wheel, EA’s Los Angeles team left the basics untouched, and added in a whole lot of new content and modes.

Although this sequel is being marketed as a multiplayer-centric experience, Boom Blox lends itself just as well to single-player gaming. Not only does the game feature a much larger number of levels, but the bronze/gold/silver scoring system returns, providing a powerful incentive to perfect your score on each level. An Xbox-like achievement system only adds to the game’s addiction quotient, although with only pride rather than gamerpoints to play for, the effect is lessened.

One of the most remarkable aspects of the original title was that not only did the designers throw so many ideas, mechanics and modes into the experience, but that most of them worked, and worked really well. A few, however, like the extraneous shooting mode, have been either sidelined or removed entirely for the sequel. Bash Party doesn’t just trim the fat from the original, but its packed with a good number of new modes and mechanics. The slingshot tool in particular, while initially a bit fiddly, opens up a whole new world of Blox-flinging action that can stand proudly alongside the staple ball-throwing and Jenga-like grabbing actions that made the original such a darling of the media.

The sequel sees other nips and tucks, too: the occasional slowdown that marred some of the more complex levels in the first game is now all but gone. The background environments are far more detailed, and are now fully polygonal. Additionally, the new space and underwater environments radically alter the physics, and thus the gameplay, in interesting ways- a welcome change for experienced players.

But it is the new online features that can potentially give Bash Party legs well into the future. In a nod to the new reality of user-generated content, Bash Party enables you to download new levels from both EA’s designers and also other players. Facilitated by an enhanced Create Mode, players can to utilise the same toolset that the game’s level designers used to produce all the game’s included stages. Refreshingly, the system bypasses Nintendo’s often tiresome Wi-Fi Connection and Friend Code systems and links directly to EA’s servers. Presumably in an effort to discourage an avalanche of blox-related smut, however, user-submitted levels are subject to approval by EA (although levels are freely shareable between Wii Friends with no censorship). Levels download seamlessly and instantly, and if the originality of some players’ creations with the original title is replicated than you can be sure to be entertained by the community’s efforts. A quick browse through the available levels confirms this suspicion. In fact, I would go so far as to say that for those of you who felt left out of the user-generated content party started by LittleBigPlanet last year on PlayStation 3, Boom Blox is an excellent alternative outlet for your creative juices.

Despite the strong similarities, in just about every respect, Bash Party is a substantially superior game to its predecessor. A little like playing Super Mario 64 and Wii Sports for the first time, your first experience with Boom Blox will inevitably result in an ‘ahh…’ moment of gaming nirvana as the penny drops. The similarities of the sequel, though, mean that veterans of the original won’t be bowled over second time around in the same way.

It’s not perfect, mind you. The somewhat anaemic art style from the first game remains, and if you found the blocky critters from the original irritating and charmless, then you won’t be pleased to hear that they’re more ubiquitous than ever in this sequel. And while the controls make excellent use of the Wii Remote’s pointing capabilities, the game’s hyper-sensitive physics mean that gently manipulating objects  with the controller in the ‘grab’ tool mode is still frustratingly difficult. In the grand scheme of things, though, this is nit-picking. Bash Party is just about the complete package, and is the Wii’s best exemplar of gaming that is both utterly casual and utterly hardcore at the same time.

Those of you who remained unmoved by the original will not be especially convinced by this sequel. But for those of us left with a blox-shaped void in our hearts upon completing the original, Bash Party not only hits the spot- but blows it to smithereens.

8.5/10

(Public service announcement: Apologies for the infrequent updates over the last week- normal, much more regular, service will resume very shortly)

After a relatively quiet start to 2009, the videogame release lists are starting to look a lot rosier- and with E3 just around the corner, there’s going to be a veritable avalanche of new software and hardware thrown in our faces- and that’s just the booth babes. We all have our favourite sources of breaking news and hands-on impression from around the web- be it Eurogamer, 1UP, Gamespot or heaven forbid, IGN- and like you, that’s where I’m going to have my eyes trained on come E3. But what about the games that are going to get smothered in the glitz and glamour of Los Angeles? That’s where No Added Sugar Comes in. Under the Radar is an occasional series that puts the most promising upcoming games under the microscope- not the likes of BioShock 2 or Final Fantasy XIII, but games that wouldn’t otherwise get much of an airing, because of any number of reasons- for example the game might come from a small scale or indie development studio, might fall victim to inadequate marketing, or simply lack a big-name licence to gain the attention of the ADHD-afflicted media.

In the first of this series, beginning right now, I’m going to cast an eye over 5th Cell’s upcoming Scribblenauts on DS.

More after the break.

It’s always nice to see a DS developer develop an original IP, and take the time to nurture it until it’s ready for release. Renegade Kid’s overlooked Dementium and Moon titles are two recent examples. 5th Cell’s first two DS titles, Drawn to Life and Lock’s Quest, are others. It’s even better when the fundamental concept of the game is so revolutionary. And Scribblenaut’s central premise is probably the most ambitious idea to ever appear on a handheld console: namely, the ability for the player to summon any object imaginable by scribbling its name on the touch screen.

Of course, by any object, I mean ‘pretty much’ any object. Smut and proper nouns are out, but that still leaves a massive amount in. To give you a sense of the scale of the depth of the game’s possibilities, writing ‘dinosaur’ on the touch screen will call up a generic dinosaur- but you can also summon individual species of dinosaur to do your bidding.

The open-ended nature of the game’s objectives is designed to get you to think creatively- if you can think it, then the game aims to let you do it. The flexibility and complexity of the game’s object system is demonstrated by the game’s creator, Jeremiah Slaczka, in a recent interview with IGN:

“Thunder clouds are pretty awesome. If Maxwell stands near a Telephone pole, the lightening will hit the pole, but if he’s holding say a spoon, the lightning will be attracted by the metal and hit Maxwell, and if Maxwell is riding a panda on a unicycle at the time, then that panda’s going be feeling it too. What’s really awesome is if it’s raining the lightning will set things on fire, but the rain will douse it out.”

This feat is accomplished, according to the game’s lead producer Matt Cox in an interview with Eurogamer, by means of a massive database which categorises objects according to various attributes and behaviours; weight, flammability, mobility, combustibility, and a bewilderingly diverse set of other characteristics. It’s a task that boggles the mind- but 5th Cell think they’ve nailed it. In fact, they’re so confident about the game that they claim that “it’s mathematically impossible to experience all the game’s content in a lifetime.” While they may be right- I mean, how many permutations can there be to explode a nuclear bomb by means of a stick of dynamite, a donkey and a dishwasher?- but frankly I’m more interested in trying to stump the game by thinking of something it hasn’t.

Scribblenauts’ ambitious do-it-yourself mechanic is actually a natural evolution of  5th Cell’s first DS game, Drawn to Life. Like Scribblenauts, Drawn to Life is a DS platformer with a stylus-based twist: rather than summoning objects, the game asked you to you draw your own character using the game’s MS Paint-like interface, as well as other environmental features to help you progress through the game’s environments.

Assuming that the item creation mechanic works as well as it should- and the team is supremely confident that it does- then the only thing that can stop Scribblenauts from being a winner is the level design. For all its charm, behind the clever drawing features, Drawn to Life was a pretty unremarkable platformer. I hope that 5th Cell are devoting as much time to variety within the levels as much as they are their gigantic database of objects.

With games this ambitious, it’s always difficult to know if it’s going to turn out to be a damp squib or a contender for game of the year. With Scribblenauts, 5th Cell have the concept, the experience, and the confidence to deliver in a big way. Let’s hope they also have the magic fairy dust to give the entire experience the polish it needs.

Even if it does fall flat on its face upon its release later in the year, Scribblenauts deserves huge praise for trying something that none of us have ever thought of.  It makes the kind of grandiose promise we don’t hear enough of from DS developers. Let’s have more of it, please.

]]> http://noaddedsugar.wordpress.com/2009/05/26/under-the-radar-scribblenauts/feed/ 0 markcullinane poster scribblenautslogo http://noaddedsugar.wordpress.com/2009/05/24/world-of-goo-fan-video-might-just-blow-your-mind/ http://noaddedsugar.wordpress.com/2009/05/24/world-of-goo-fan-video-might-just-blow-your-mind/#comments Sun, 24 May 2009 15:11:08 +0000 markcullinane http://noaddedsugar.wordpress.com/?p=125 ]]> Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that I quite like 2D Boy’s astonishing indie game, World of Goo (as evidenced by the goo blob in my banner). Well, Gametrailers.com recently ran a video-creation contest in order to drum up some publicity for the title. Some of the entries take the unique spirit of the game and run with it, resulting in some amazing creations. The video below, ‘The Painter’s Sign’, could easily serve as an intro video to the game itself, as it leads right up to the first level. It’s a worthy winner.

I think that World of Goo, developed by two people on a shoestring budget, was possibly the biggest achievement in game development in 2008. A full-featured demo including the game’s first world is available for PC, Mac and Linux right here.

I kid you not: I remember, back in my primary school days, trying in vain to convince my fellow classmates that a game can be cute and colourful but still mature. While I was trying to extol the virtues of Super Mario 64, they scoffed at the game’s bright primary colours and went back to their PlayStations.

Fast forward to 2009, and one of the things that really grinds my gears about this current gaming generation is the increasingly pervasive myth that the Wii has no good games- and it’s partially rooted in the same blinkered attitude that frustrated me so much in the past.

This myth, I believe, is partly borne from a sense that Nintendo has left their core audience behind, instead focusing on casual-friendly lifestyle games, cooking simulators and other hardcore-baiting titles like Wii Music. It’s also due to a proliferation of third-party shovelware- cheaply produced, poorly made throwaway software- that has flooded the Wii’s software catalogue. You know, all those mini-game collections and babysitting titles. Putting two and two together, the received wisdom on the Wii is that Nintendo has ‘sold out’ and it’s now just a console for girls and children who don’t know any better. The goodwill amongst the hardcore gaming community that greeted the Wii has definitely been ebbing away. But is this fair? In the first of an occasional series about issues in gaming that just plain upset me, I’m going to try and get to the bottom of this myth- and show it up for what it is, in a (hopefully) systematic and evidence-based way.

The original PlayStation and PS2 were home to shedloads of shovelware, yet people accepted that this is an inevitable result of popular consoles- opportunistic developers looking to make a quick buck tend to follow the money trail. Yet, the quality of both system’s software highlights shone through. Nobody looks back on either of those consoles and remembers the trash- we remember the Metal Gears, the Icos, the Final Fantasies and the Okamis. Games critics and hardcore gamers are much harsher on Wii for some reason, and constantly and casual references to dust-covered Wiis abound. The critical negativity surrounding the Wii in the gaming press demonstrates first of all a weird sort of amnesia, where quality Wii titles seem to be wilfully forgotten about, but secondly it reveals deep-seated biases of the sort mentioned at the top of this post- an unwillingness to engage with games that break outside the hardcore mould.

Firstly let me address the myth that Nintendo has abandoned their core audience. So far on Wii, Nintendo have produced a fine Zelda game in Twilight Princess, and one of the most critically acclaimed games of all time in Super Mario Galaxy. Ignoring for a moment the fact that the GameCube only saw one proper entry in both the Mario and Zelda series (ignoring Twilight Princess’ unusual birthing process on the GameCube and Wii), let us not forget that it takes years to produce titles of the calibre of main entries in the Mario and Zelda series. The Mario Galaxy team haven’t been twiddling their thumbs or making cooking games since they completed their last opus, they’ve been working on their next one. Same goes for the Zelda team. Rather, we’ve seen an expansion in terms of development. On Wii, Nintendo’s teams have provided us with hardcore titles like Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Smash Brothers, Disaster: Day of Crisis and now Punch-Out!!, while providing us with new entries in franchises like ExiteTruck (and Excitebots), new Battalion Wars, Wario Ware ( more of which is coming later this year),  Mario Strikers, Mario Kart, Paper Mario, Animal Crossing, downloadable goodness like the Art Style series, all the while experimenting with mass-market friendly titles like Wii Sports, Wii Sports Resort, Wii Fit, Wii Music, and Endless Ocean to name some of the big ones. The ports of games like Pikmin, Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat and the Metroid Prime trilogy are also bringing these classic titles to a new generation.

While I’m the first to admit that Nintendo have taken the lazy option too often in this generation, choosing to rehash games like Mario Kart and Animal Crossing rather than revolutionising them, the quality of their output has remained pretty consistent, and when it really matters, stellar. I expect Nintendo to adopt a strongly conciliatory tone towards the hardcore audience at the E3 Conference in Los Angeles next month, but I don’t think they need to make any outright apologies. Like I said, the Mario and Zelda teams- the cream of Nintendo’s development talent- remain just as committed to triple-A standard titles as they ever were. The endless diatribes about Nintendo’s ‘selling out’ smacks of that most annoying of claims: when a friend tells you that band ‘x’ used to be great until they got signed by a big label and now they’ve gone ‘corporate’.  Nintendo’s change is an expansion of emphasis rather than a shift of emphasis. Nintendo know that their new expanded audience of mainly  female and older gamers is a more fickle one, and that the company may yet need to rely once again on their core support. They’re not going to throw the baby out with the bath water.

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata. Wanted for crimes against hardcore gamers. And hairdressing.

As for third parties, while they have been slow to adapt to the Wii’s graphical shortcomings and the new development opportunities offered by the system’s unique controller, to make the blanket point that there are no (or even not many) decent games on Wii is clearly an uninformed view. Apart from crowd-pleasing multiformat titles like Guitar Hero and Rock Band that have found a home (and a huge audience) on Wii, the following is a list of the cream of the third-party crop on Wii- games that are either Wii-exclusive (in most instances) or substantially enhanced on the Wii.

• Zack and Wiki
• No More Heroes
• MadWorld
• Elebits/Eledees
• Resident Evil 4
• Okami
• Boom Blox & Boom Blox Bash Party
• Tiger Woods
• Grand Slam Tennis
• Pro Evolution Soccer
• World of Goo
• Lost Winds
• Little King’s Story
• Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People
• de Blob
• Bit.Trip: Beat
• Rune Factory: Frontier
• House of the Dead: Overkill
• Let’s Tap
• Mercury Meltdown Revolution
• Tenchu 4
• Trauma Centre: Second Opinion & New Blood

This list is not exhaustive, and if I’ve left anything major out please let me know via the comment box below. In the case of many of the multiformat titles listed above, like Pro Evo, Tiger Woods, Resi 4 and Okami, the Wii versions have widely been praised as the best due to the smart and well-conceived inclusion of motion/pointer control. All the titles on the above list are high-scoring games on Metacritic. Some, like EA’s Boom Blox and World of Goo to name just two, belong in my personal all-time favourite games list. I am not guilty of wearing rose-tinted (or  Nintendo fanboy) glasses. I am painfully aware of the minefield that is the Wii software market. The ratio of great to awful games on Wii is disheartening (though certainly not unique in gaming history). Surely, it is incumbent on the gaming press to cut through the dense thicket of trash on the system and highlight the quality titles, of which there are many. If you take the time and care to search for quality titles, they do exist in good numbers.

Sure, there are entire genres worryingly under-represented on Wii, notably the first-person shooter. But the same can be said of PlayStation 3 and Xbox, which both have gaping holes in their line-ups. The biggest problem as I see it is that a lot of the best Wii games (like Boom Blox and Zack and Wiki) either come from non-traditional genres (in the former case) or appear to be children’s games (in the case of the latter). Too often, as was the fate befallen by Zack and Wiki, this results in games being ignored by the mass market and hardcore gamers, because they didn’t do their homework, or they’re just too blinkered to accept that something so apparently sugar-coated like Z&W could actually harbour a wonderful piece of software.

If someone wants to argue that the Wii suffers for a major deficit of first or third-person games featuring impossibly musclebound, gruff soliders kicking alien ass for Uncle Sam, then I defer to your point. There really is a lack of good first and third-person action games on the system. But no good games?

The next month of Wii releases illustrates the fallacy of this argument. Today sees the return of a much-loved Nintendo property, Punch-Out!! which has already scored excellent reviews online. EA’s exer-gaming Wii Fit competitor, EA Sports Active also sees release today. Boom Blox Bash Party, the sequel to the Spielberg-conceived title of last year (and my highlight on Wii last year) comes out next Friday. Soon after that, Grand Slam Tennis and Sega’s Virtua Tennis 2009 herald the long-awaited release of the Wii MotionPlus peripheral, promising true 1:1 gestural control for the first time. (Tiger Woods will repeat the same trick for golf in early July). Online impressions suggest that all three of these titles are deserving of your attention. Later in June, Sega’s The Conduit fills a void in Wii FPS gaming, eagerly awaited by the shooter-starved hardcore contingent. Also of note in June is the European release of Another Code, Nintendo and Cing’s very promising take on the increasingly resurgent adventure game genre. Oh, and Sega are also releasing the fascinating and well-received Let’s Tap  to European shores during the month.  That’s strength in depth right there, folks, and this is just one month’s worth of releases (albeit an unusually excellent one). Wii owners with even a modicum of open-mindedness are being spoilt rotten by a lineup like this. Let’s stop moaning about the endless substandard mini-game collections and celebrate the diversity of genres represented by high-quality games like these. That’s something Sony and Microsoft would kill for.

And there are more reasons to be cheerful about Wii. While the Wii Remote has certainly played a central part in the console’s success (and has enhanced many, many games), those of us who witnessed Nintendo President Satoru Iwata unveil the device back in 2005 and had visions of Minority Report-style gestural control with pinpoint precision must feel somewhat let down by the inaccuracy of the controller’s motion capabilities which reduced the revolutionary promise of the controller to a mere ‘waggle’. With MotionPlus, the full promise of the Remote should be unleashed over the next couple of years- starting this June.

No, the biggest problem with the Wii is not that it hasn’t got enough great games, it’s that big-budget game development on Wii remains such a high-risk because, firstly, of the strong casual skew of much of the Wii user base, and secondly, the difficulty in making quality titles stand out in a sea of dross on your local games store’s shelves. How to resolve this is anybody’s guess, and it may be something I attempt to tackle in a future post. But for now, let’s get off the Wii’s back and enjoy all the gaming goodness it has to offer.

We all play games for slightly different reasons.

Some of us only play Final Fantasy or Metal Gear Solid, allowing ourselves to become engrossed in complex and lengthy single-player experiences, with deep storylines, intriguing mythology and endless levelling-up (in the former case) or interminable cut-scenes (in the latter case). I jest.

Others love the simple thrills of beating our friends in a photo-finish race in Mario Kart. Others still love nothing better than hopping online on PC,Xbox or PlayStation and trash-talking the opposition in Call of Duty 4.

Speaking about their upcoming Dead Rising 2, Capcom bigwig Keiji Inafune said a month ago  that “single-player alone is not going to cut it,” noting “we’re at a point in game history that you need to have some form of multiplayer component in a game.” (via Shacknews)

The specialist gaming press reported Inafune’s comment, but failed to analyse the wider implications of his statement, which are in my view significant.

Surely, there are few greater sins in game development than shoe-horning a multiplayer mode into a game that doesn’t need it. Unless a game is built around it, developing a multiplayer component usually diverts development resources and substantially increases the cost of making a game. Of course, its often well worth the effort- where would Halo be without its multiplayer mode?

None of this is to say that multiplayer games or multiplayer components in games are necessarily any less worthy than single-player modes. The life of a gamer would be lonely without the opportunity to play against others, either on or offline. I’m just suggesting that the idea that every game needs a multiplayer mode is a worrying idea.

Some recent games have incorporated interesting ways of incorporating a second player into the core single-player experience. Capcom’s Zack and Wiki enabled a second player to draw on the screen, helping the main player. Similarly, Mario Galaxy followed the lead of Rare’s under-appreciated Jet Force Gemini by allowing a second player to assist the first in a variety of ways whilst preserving the purity of the single-player mode. World of Goo, a devoutly single-player title, contains an interesting leaderboard system, enabling players to compare the size of their towers of Goo (accumulated throughout the game) with other players.

However I fear that Inafune was referring to discrete multiplayer modes being necessary rather than the above integrations of other players into a core single-player mode.

I’m a fan of Xbox Live. But quite apart from the issue that multiplayer modes are usually necessarily devoid of a story or richly developed context- at least outside the realm of MMOs- spending my gaming time blowing up potty-mouthed, homophobic American teenagers was never at the top of my agenda.

And what about the question nobody dares ask? If we continue to diminish the importance of purely single-player games, when the servers shut down on Halo 6, Burnout 8 and Gears of War 7 in 2020 (as they eventually will), what happens then? Does that mean that in the future, when nostalgia strikes, we’ll dust off our consoles and find that we can’t play the games?If we let single-player gaming experiences wither and die, then I fear my interest in gaming will follow suit.

I’m no luddite. Let’s embrace the multiplayer future, but not an exclusively multiplayer one- and let’s never forget the Marios, the Zeldas, the Icos, the Okamis, the Final Fantasies, the Metal Gears and the Half-Lifes that never needed a multiplayer mode to reach true greatness.

Evangelism is annoying at the best of times. And computer users are guiltier than most of trying to convert other people to their cause.  The various Mac and PC adverts which poke fun at each other have been the source of much heated online debate about the relative merits of each operating system. This suits both companies. The ‘Im a Mac’ / ‘I’m a PC’ dichotomy is presented to consumers as their only choice. It excludes alternatives. But together they’ve succeeded in utterly marginalising the very thought of an alternative from people’s collective mindset. So when people see my computer screen and see my desktop, they often comment on its prettyness, but when they’re informed its actually Linux, the response is either ‘huh?’ or ‘oh, you’re one of those!’. Just as people who make special efforts to be environmentally friendly can be ridiculed by their peers (I unfortunately can’t claim to be particularly green), using open source and genuinely free software is pretty damn uncool, compared to the uber-trendy Mac user.

Apple’s marketing is genius in this respect: they’ve managed to conjure an alternative to Windows based on notions of style and finesse- creating a cult-like fan-base that will do all their advertising for them. I’m not denying that Mac OS is a great operating system, but listening to the Mac kids talk about it you’d think its somehow subversive. Using a Mac is about as subversive as liking Coldplay. Linux, on the other hand, threatens a fundamental tenet of capitalism- that is, you get what you pay for. Because unlike the fiercely propietary operating systems of Microsoft and Apple, Linux is free, not just in terms of financial cost, but in terms of freedom to tinker around, freedom to customise, to share, and to improve. The idea that something can be free in this way- without a catch- is something that capitalism teaches us to be wary of.  This partially explains why being a Linux user feels a bit like being on the lunatic fringe- I half expect to be called a communist any day now.

But rather than tell you, dear readers, that you’re in thrall to the Microsoft/Apple duopoly and you really must cop on and switch to Linux today, I’m just going to tell you why I use it. It’s not for everyone, but it is for me.

I’m not a computer whiz by any stretch of the imagination. I’ve never touched a command-line in my life and I’ve always been reasonably satisfied with Windows XP.

I first heard of Ubuntu during a late-night browse. The promises were grand: A perpetually, 100% free alternative to Windows, virus-free, spyware free, pretty much inpenetrable security, maintained and supported by a massive community, wide hardware compatibility, a file system that didn’t defragment, a full suite of free open source software included, and the greatest promise of all: this was Linux for ‘human beings’, not for binary-spouting computer nerds. Various parts of my machine (like the DVD player) had given up the ghost on Windows, so I thought I’d see if Ubuntu could do any better.I dual-booted Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) for a couple of months alongside my Windows install. Initially it was somewhat intimidating, despite the obvious concessions to usability. Although difficulties getting Adobe Flash, my graphics card, and video/audio playback working smoothly causes me to eventually abandon the OS, we parted ways very much enamoured (at least I was).

The system booted up in half the time of Windows, it operated quickly, silently and efficiently, and with a bit of tweaking, is more than a match visually for Mac OSX. Ubuntu’s approach to installing software and updates is radically different to Windows and Mac. Everything is entirely free and downloadable from online repositories accesible by the OS. The ‘add/remove programs’ equivalent in Ubuntu contains hundreds of free programs. Best of all is that you probably won’t miss much from Windows: as a recent article from Download Squad notes, the chances are that most of your favourite applications work on Linux too. Photoshop fans are out of luck, however- something that has been a difficult pill to swallow.

Linux, and even the Ubuntu flavour, is most certainly not for everyone. When you install it, something on your computer is likely to be temporarily broken. This is because developing open-source drivers for every piece of hardware is a gargantuan task for a community of mostly voluteers. It could be the suspend feature; you may be hit with a total lack of audio from the speakers; or videos may flicker uncontrollably. But I can say with some certainty that whatever the problem is, there is an answer- and the online community at ubuntuforums.com are dedicated to helping out Ubuntu newbies, regardless of how elementary their problem is.

If you don’t have any tolerance or curiosity for resolving the ocassional hiccup, then stick with Windows, it will serve you better. Similarly, Ubuntu, while definitely ready for primetime, is not quite user-friendly enough for the mass-market, especially one that has been indoctrinated to expect a start button in the bottom-left of the screen. Also, serious PC gamers might want to think twice before reaching for the penguin But if you’ve ever wondered ‘is this all there is to computers?’ then by all means, give Ubuntu, or another Linux distribution for that matter, a shot. None of this is to denigrate Windows. For all its flaws, using Linux for a period of time demonstrates how difficult it is to create a stable OS that is both user-friendly and powerful at the same time. Whilst Windows may be beset by a multitude of problems, it does achieve this goal pretty admirably.

I’ve been Windows free since Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) came out a few months ago and I’ve managed to iron out all the outstanding issues from the last installation. Like I said, a few google searches and trawling through the forums will likely solve any issue you may have.

Using Ubuntu  feels a bit like growing your own vegetables- it’s definitely not quite as easy as buying them from a shop, but knowing that you’re no longer reliant on ‘the man’ is infinitely more satisfying,. The ideological aspect of Ubuntu is very appealing to me: having studied Sociology of Community in UCC, I learnt that the development of the Linux kernel (the heart of the OS) was an unprecedented feat of transnational co-operation, a genuine meeting of minds that wasn’t about making money but about giving people the opportunity to break free from a monopoly. But don’t get me wrong.I don’t like Ubuntu because I’m a bleeding-heart lefty. I like Ubuntu because its light years ahead of Windows in just about every respect. The only thing saving Windows at the moment is Linux’s reputation for being complicated and user-unfriendly. Now that this argument no longer holds true thanks to distributions like Ubuntu and Linux Mint, it is just the force of habit and (Microsoft’s advertising dollars) that is protecting Windows’ market share.

So in conclusion, Linux and Ubuntu may not be for you. But there’s a good chance it is. And the best part is that it won’t cost you anything to find out.

Stephen Fry’s dulcet tones will put the argument for Linux better than I ever could:

Henry Hatsworth is one small step for platforming, one giant leap backwards for representations of Britishness.

EA’s new DS property is the brainchild of Karl Gray (who hangs out with 2D Boy’s Kyle Gabler- of World of Goo fame- so you know he’s good).  Hatsworth is two games at once: tough-as-nails platformer on top screen, stylus-based matching block puzzle on the bottom. Both screens interact with each other. Sounds mad and it is, but it works a treat. Level design is only so-so but dual-screen gameplay and entertaining humour win the day for Hatsworth.

Bad for kids with ADHD. Good for people who love match-3 puzzlers, good ol’fashioned SNES-style platforming, and pompous Brit stereotypes.

Jolly good show.

8/10