Rob’s Terrible Tomb Of Tat

…and you will know me by the typing of the dead.

  • Data Jammers

    From The Archive

    Data Jammers combines three of my favourite things. Digital Eel, Motorways and a Kenta Cho circa 2005-6 aesthetic. Honestly, if you really want to know the way to my heart, it’s not flowers, it’s things that go brum brum vroom in neon colours.

    Obviously if you can make some flowers that go brum brum vroom in neon colours then maybe we can talk about that but until then, Datajammers it is.

    There’s a whole load of obligatory silly plot guff but the game essentially boils down to, as my good chum Lewie puts it, “going along a futuristic motorway really quickly”. 

    And that’s pretty much what you’ll be doing for most of Data Jammers. You’ll be going along a futuristic motorway really quickly. Of course, that the motorway bends and twists and splits off in the most hypnotic and curious of ways leaving you often dazzled at how criminally difficult this place would be for SCS to build a new Eurotruck Simulator game around is also a thing. 

    Of course, there’s the obligatory enemies too. It wouldn’t be a neon-soaked arcade game without enemies, right? (This is videogames, Rob. I don’t think you need to even ask this – Ed)

    At first you’re just kinda avoiding a bit of traffic and the odd elementary enemy that comes drifting down lanes towards you but level by level Data Jammers introduces new hazards to dodge, electronic scorpion shaped things with their stingy eye on doing you in through the face, holes in the road (with traffic barriers because even in the future, safety first), traffic cones, pushy zoomy things and all the other things you’re sure to find on the future information superhighway taken way too literally including bosses that amazingly aren’t rubbish like most bosses. Admittedly, they’re not the highlight of the game either but I’ve seen worse.

    What strikes me though is that everyone else in the game is in a car or robo-vehicle of some kind and you, the player, are bouncing around this high speed way-too-literal information superhighway in what looks like some sort of rubber ring. I know you’re an elite commando (because videogames) but treating this dangerous, twisty turny future roadway like a swimming lesson? Well now. There’s no need to show off.

    Digital Eel are clearly channelling Kenta Cho here and like a lot of Kenta Cho’s earlier videogames, it also feels like the kind of alternative universe arcade game that should have always been but never was. It’s the same sort of territory that Yak explores in TxK to a large degree albeit less obvious a homage to a specific work. Data Jammers is more the Spy Hunter that came out in a world where vector games didn’t disappear down the plughole. And I dunno, there’s something about the ridiculous motorway/data stealing stuff that feels very 2000AD:The Videogame too, which is kinda OK really. 

    In some ways, it’s another videogame future we forgot to explore and someone finally went “you know, maybe…” a few years too late and in others, it feels like the kind of thing that could only be made in these here modern times. It’s very eighties and very now. I like that.

    originally published on Take This Machine, July 25th 2015

  • When there’s a crisis…

    This is the fear: You fear that every crisis will leave a scar, or unpick an old one, and you’ll be left with a build up of scars that taint you forever. You might ask:

    “How can we possibly make any progress when we’re having all these crises?”

    But of course…

    I think I first saw this brief essay passed round on the blue hellbird alternative a fair while back and due to me spending the past I don’t know how long careering from dealing with one crisis towards another, I’ve found it a handy one to keep around.

    (With apologies because I can’t remember who shared it into my timeline in the first place. Thanks tho, mysterious stranger!)

    There isn’t really much in the essay that I wasn’t already aware of but it’s been really reassuring to reread every now and then when I need a blunt reminder.

  • Split/Second

    From the archives

    I’m not the greatest fan of racing games. Actually, scratch that – I’m not the greatest fan of racing games that aren’t Outrun 2. Yet I still end up buying them. Clearly, I’m not right.

    Just a quick glance at some of the stuff I’ve bought over the past 18 months or so and I’ve somehow ended up with a disproportionate amount of the buggers. I think it’s because I eternally hold out hope that there’ll be the one, the one, that comes along and sits alongside Outrun 2 in my cold gaming heart.

    I picked up Burnout Paradise and sort of loved it for a while then I noticed that I was just doing stuff for no particular reason. It became a bizarre procrastination aid. “Ah, I could do something now but I think I’ll just see if I can bounce this car from one side of this road to the other”. Which would have been alright except for that I wasn’t really enjoying bouncing cars from one side of a road to another, I was just watching a number go up. Well, quite a few numbers go up. So I wandered off. Besides which, I fucking hate Guns ‘n’ Roses and having to endure that monstrosity of a song every time I load the game was starting to send me a little bit more loopy than usual. Not something I can afford, that.

    I grabbed FUEL as the idea of a massive open world seemed like quite an attractive proposition. Only it’s a massive open world full of hills. It’s got so many hills that perhaps they should have called it HILL instead. So I spent some time climbing the hills and not really doing much else. In fairness, they were rather pretty hills but still. Climbing hills. In a car. In a game. I could just walk up one and at least increase the chances of seeing something else interesting or different along the way. Like a human.

    I got GRID. That didn’t last long at all. Once I’d driven my brick into a wall a few times and realised that it wanted to play into some sort of OCD-ish bizarre-o-thing and wanted me to try and perfect my runs by undoing my crashes via the power of dark computer magicks, well, I’ve no time for that sort of tedium. No hills, see. That and like FUEL, it wants you torture you before it lets you have any fun. “Here, have a shit car”. “Here, meet my dustbin”.

    The only other game in recent times to come close to Outrun 2 in providing me with my racing entertainment was Excite Truck. It’s a massive bag of silly. I guess, when it comes to racing games, all I want is a big bag of silly.

    Split/Second is incredibly silly. It’s stupendously silly and you should probably buy it right now because it’s not only silly but fantastic, exhilarating fun.

    You can forget about the set up, it’s guff. You’re in a TV series it would seem and the show revolves around people racing cars really fast whilst things explode around them. Obviously. It’s not quite Year Of The Sex Olympics stuff here but I dunno, if you can get I’m A Celebrity, Let Me Out Of Here on air this probably isn’t quite as far fetched as I’d like.

    But that’s all you really need to know about Split/Second right there in that set up. You race cars really fast and things explode around you. There’s even a button you can press to make things explode around the other racers and try and blow them off the track in a ball of flame. Ah man, now we’re talking videogames. I like videogames.

    It’s a game I’m banned from playing whilst the kid is around. Mrs Bob says that muttering the sort of swear words I have been is possibly not the best language to be teaching a young child and that’s not something I can really argue with. Split/Second makes me swear like a sweary man but y’know, it’s a good swear. The kind that you utter when a fantastic Geometry Wars:RE run gets brought to a sudden halt by you doing something incredibly idiotic like walking into the black hole as you were too busy looking over there. Yes, over there. See, you missed that didn’t you? 

    It wants you to win. Which is, seemingly, in stark contrast to most racing games made in the past couple of years that want you to work instead. Split/Second isn’t about realistic racing, realistic crash modelling or as my brief experience with one of the Need For Speed series shown, tattoos, emo street kids and tits. It’s about having some screaming fun and getting to see the next track and the next bag of tricks it’s got up its sleeve.

    And yeah, there’s a point where you spot the mouse in the mouse organ and realise how much the game wants you to win and progress and in many games, that’d be enough for me to put it right down the moment it dawned. I’m having way, way too much fun though to care about what’s going on under the hood. I was having so much fun during my time with Split/Second that it could have thrown a picture of a haddock up on the screen, called my mother a rude name and shot my cat and I’d probably still sit there going “oh go on then, I’ll just do this next race and see what I can bring down onto the track next”.

    Not all of the game modes are an out and out success, there’s a mixed bag of attempts at fucking with the game’s formula of which, the helicopter runs are easily the weakest. A bland “avoid the target” session around the track that on paper, reading “you’re being pursued by a helicopter trying to bomb your face off” sounds far more exciting than it actually is in practice. I can forgive that though. I can forgive anything for the moments I was near out of my seat, ducking between exploding barrels dumped from the back of some sort of Mad Max meets Duel nightmare truck at supermassive speeds getting what I believe might be termed as “the fucking claw” from the controller. 

    The stuff that works far outweighs the stuff that doesn’t and heck, at least Split/Second bloody well tries to mix things up. It’d be rude not to applaud that.

    And applaud Split/Second I will. Big cheery sweary sweaty applause. With an owl.

    It’s probably my game of the year so far and the first racer since Outrun 2 I’ve wanted to just play and play again. That it seems to have slipped between the cracks amongst a fuckton of other big releases this year is a damn shame. It’s bloody brilliant and doesn’t deserve that fate.

    Go on, give it some love. 

    Rutger Hauer/10 -1 point for orange & teal.

    Originally posted on We Make The Cops Look Dumb, November 9th 2010