Right, the story. Man, the story is like some treasure hunter bullshit, man. I mean, like, this fucking dude called Drake or some shit is the main guy. I thought it was kinda racist how white they made the dude, though. I seen that bro on the VMAs and he was like mixed race or some shit, so I don’t know what Sony is being racist for. I ain’t down with that, dude. I listen to hip-hop. Plus I got this bro I buy weed from who’s from, like, Portugal. Which is probably in Africa. it sounds African, like Senegal, and I know that shit’s African. Anyway, the dude is too tanned to just be tanned, that’s a natural thing.

So Drake is treasure-hunting some shit again, and he’s making these gay-ass jokes about everything, making me feel like I’m watching Buffy or some shit. Basically the story is pretty weaksauce, man. I mean, I’ve seen fucking Indiana Jones and that shit was great. Ain’t no rolling boulders, coal trains or infant Chinese sex slaves in this shit. Dude doesn’t even have a hat! Shit is a joke. Plus, he’s got this girlfriend, and ain’t no options to throw a kegger and get that bitch drunk or nothing. Even Mass Effect lets me nail aliens, and that’s some faggy space shit. This guy’s meant to be a bad ass and he doesn’t even get laid.

The gameplay is all like jumping onto shit and then shimmying 10 feet and then jumping again and doing that shit pretty much over and over for 8 hours. Ain’t no terrorists or bros like that to shoot, plus when I click the right stick to knife a motherfucker the camera just spazzes into the middle. Sony need to fucking change that, everyone knows that clicking those sticks is sprint and knife, who they thinking they are just changing that shit?

Playing online is the worst shit. Everyone knows that when you’re shooting bros online you wanna be looking through your character’s eyes, but Sony still make me move my dude around like I’m playing Bubsy 3D or something. SERIOUSLY Sony, get with the current shit! I ain’t playing no Nintendo DS like a fucking child molester. Screw that Mario shit.

0.5/10 (I’m giving this shit half a point because I like that song Drake did on NBA 2K11)

Everyone knows that movies based on games are fantastic *high fives Uwe Boll*. And everyone knows that games based on movies are even better. But why is it only the high-octane action blockbusters and kids animations that get the crossover treatment? Why is there little to no room for artistic dramas to be converted? While Activision work out how solve that problem (Call of Duty: Schindler's List edition?), I've conceptualized a video game for Lost in Translation.

If you're unfamiliar with this movie, it stars Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson as characters emotionally lost in strange and wonderful Tokyo, Japan. Besides using 80% of the movie to boost tourism to the city, the other 20% features the main characters trying really hard not to bone each other. They exchange intimate glances and occasionally touch each other softly. It's lovely.

The game will be a modern text adventure. You'll play as Bill Murray, whilst Scarlett Johansson becomes an unlockable player after completing a single playthrough. *If you complete a second playthrough, a bar of tofu will be unlocked as a playable character.

Here are some in-game screenshots I came up with:

You're due to star in your first commercial, and already Tokyo is being really Japanese to you. How will you handle it?



You and Scarlett Johansson are no longer strangers in the night, but how will Bill Murray cope?



That famous end scene. That whisper. Now, not only do you get to know what Bill Murray utters in Scarlett's ear, but you get to decide!



As a pre-order bonus you'll get the Japanese chat show host as a playable character. Enjoy his wacky mini-games as you collect as many used panties as possible in the allotted time (online leaderboards also available).

Lost in Translation: The Video Game - RRP $59.99 (360/PS3/Wii/PS2/Saturn)

------------------------------------------------------------------------
*update: the ESRB deemed "the tofu sidestory" far too explicit for inclusion

I'm going to make this a quick one. No one needs to know how I reached these epiphanies taking a dump, or the arduous journey my food endured from mouth to anus. The object here is making some points, and in order to do so I'll use bullet points. Bullet points are fun, and make things interesting. I want them to be my new step dad.

+ @Replies
I'm not the biggest fan of the GiantBomb community. In my experience the people there are either incredibly cool, or far, far up their own brown eyes. However, the way that communication is facilitated between GB members is really well done. If you @reply someone, you're notified. This is a way in which I could see myself spending a lot more time than I already do here at Dtoid; to be notified when someone responds to a comment I've made somewhere on the site. As it stands I'm leaving comments, and then almost instantly forgetting I've done so. If I could get a handy nudge via email to let me know about interactions with me, I'd love it.

+ Threaded comments
As an active community, a lot of people here are leaving comments and actively participating in discussions. It gets to the point where comment threads become like forum threads, full of active conversation. In order to break up daunting reems of commentary, it might be good to see who is responding to who by indenting comments below the users they're left for. This pretty much works in tandem with my previous suggestion.

+ Actual bullet points
Little did I realize when writing that first paragraph, but I don't think we have bullet points? I can't a magic button for them.

And that's me done. For now, anyway. They're mainly just pointers on how I would get more enjoyment out of the community aspects of Dtoid, particularly these here blogs. I love writing here, I just wanna feel a bit more connected to you peoples. Because I love the way you look, and want to smell your hair while you're sleeping.

When The Orange Box was announced a few years ago, it presented a line-up of Valve’s finest arsenal. Not only were you getting Half-Life 2 on console, a title which would have sold well all by itself, but you were getting both its expansion episodes, and its insanely popular, multiplayer cousin, Team Fortress 2. It was a fantastic deal, and worthy of a price tag double, or even triple its value at retail. At the back of theBox’s lineup was a little known entity by the name of Portal, an unassuming puzzle game which, surprisingly enough, used Portals as its base mechanic. On paper it sounded interesting, but for any gamer anticipating the Box it was nothing more than a quirky, little distraction from the main acts. Valve finally unleashed their collection on the World, and Portal became their little engine that could. Momentum thrust the game from an obscure tent in the corner of the corner of the festival onto the headline stage, bright lights and all, and within a month that quirky little puzzle game had risen to become Valve’s hottest property. The Orange Box remains one of the best reviewed titles on any gaming aggregator, and it’s thanks, in no small part, to the game with the cake.

That was four years ago, and Valve is back with Portal 2. Having broken free from it’s compilation roots, it stands proud as a full-length, and full-priced game. There is no lack of ambition here, either. As we start the game the first voice heard is that of Stephen Merchant – co-writer of The Office – taking the role of Wheatley, a dense but lovable droid who guides you out of a testing complex that’s collapsing to rubble and cinder. You jump from platform to platform, navigating through crumbled heaps of grey and brown cement. Clearly these are the beginnings of a game that wants to broaden its horizons, and expand beyond the sterile test chambers of its predecessor, igniting the notion that there lies a World beyond the Aperture Science compound.

Travelling through a hole in the wall you enter the complex, only, you’re behind the scenes. Panels jolt from walls, malfunctioning, throwing random bursts of life at you. It’s fitting, and is a perfect summary of the spontaneity contained within the complex itself. These are not the test chambers as we remember them, they’re feral from abandonment and lacking maintenance. This adds an interesting dynamic to puzzle solving, as it ends up being less defined exactly where and how you react with the environment around you.

Even in this weathered facility, puzzle solving is not beyond comprehension. And the difficulty curve is a comfortable incline, transforming slowly into a steeper and steeper hill. Opening segments act more as tutorials than true challenges, a useful way for those new to Portal to understand the central mechanic, and for those learned in its ways to brush up on their skills before being provoked properly. One intangible quality synonymous with great puzzle games is the ability to make the player feel smart; to imbue a sense of accomplishment from task completion. I had this feeling section after section while playing Portal 2. Even when it feels as if your epiphany has arrived completely by accident, the path towards that solution creates such an air of satisfaction that you’ll happily forgive yourself for tumbling over the finish line.

What envelopes the fantastic gameplay is a story with deceptive depth. While the first game kept its narrative consistently light, entertaining from start to finish, its sequel attempts to give the situation, and its characters some deeper context. In one such instance we uncover that GLaDoS, or rather, the intelligence planted within her, may have belonged to a former lover of Aperture Science CEO, Cave Johnson (voiced by the awesome J.K. Simmons). As you tread through sections of the game, hearing Johnson’s voice echo out on old recordings, GLaDoS will recall a mysterious fondness for the man, one for which she doesn’t quite understand the basis. It gives her personality, with its antagonistic wit and humour, a bittersweet face, and turns her into much more than just a malevolent machine.

It’s in this narrative depth that Portal 2 effectively distances itself from its progenitor, proving that beyond its longer length and funnier jokes, it’s a game with with genuine soul, and worth of anyone’s time. Even if the cake does remain a lie.

I’m no JRPG fiend. Many, many times over the years I’ve dabbled: a Legend of Mana here, a Wild Arms there, they’ve all been fairly distant and inconsistent forrays into a decidedly enthusiast style of game. Oddly enough, it was 11-year old Lou Chou who struck much more of an affinity with leveling up and the almighty grind than his 24-year old counterpart. Way back then Suikoden‘s was a World with near limitless possibility, committing to lengthy battles that juggled finite control of potions with hit and magic point conservation. I was overwhelmed by the potential these games offered, but all too suddenly things changed. A bright, bitingly chilly January morning in 1999 saw me tearing through a gift-wrapped rectangle, and behind that vivid paper was an orange box sporting text that read Half-Life. The rest, as tired cliches note, was history.

What Valve accessed with the creation of Half-Life, among a thousand other visionary things, was a way to tell a story so artfully, and with such engagement, that it became roleplay. It was by extension an RPG, only without experience points or jarringly translated text. The Japanese RPG had long remained the bar for those looking for a little sophistication or depth from their narrative experience, but with one game a standard was redefined.

In a post-Half-Life World western development had become increasingly more relevant, and when a game like Deus Ex was hitting the criteria for an RPG experience, whilst also escaping the standard trappings of party systems and gender-ambiguous protagonists with eyes like dinner plates, it became all too clear that there existed a lot of imagination in the West.

The current generation arrived, and thanks in no small part to Microsoft the West had become a crucial place for development. Microsoft was, very obviously, close to the PC platform. It recognized the talent behind some of the more seminal games studios, and put a lot of faith in those guys to bring interesting new ideas to its console. You have to wonder, in a World where a Microsoft console didn’t exist, would we still have Mass Effect or Bioshock? As notable beneficiaries of Microsoft support, it’s arguable that the budget just wouldn’t exist for Bioware or Irrational Games to be creating such staggering, triple-A titles.

Gravity is a motherfucker, and just as sure as things will soar, it’s only a matter of time before the consequent fall. The popularity of COD spawned an army of me too titles looking to cash in on the popularity of the first-person shooter, the effect of which has left us with a culture where even those within the industry are surprised if a period of time passes without the release of another shooter. The irony is that now Western gaming has a face, and it’s Call of Duty. The same way an uninformed, surface interpretation of Japanese gaming is that it’s all JRPGs with sickeningly cutesy Anime characters, Western gaming is now just army men awash in machismo.

So what does this mean for Japanese gaming? Well, now’s as good a time as any for Eastern development to force its way back into mainstream consciousness. While people are suffering shooter fatigue, it’s the perfect opportunity to come in with some different ideas and methods. All it takes is one game, one success story, to change the way people think about the games they want to play. Who knows, maybe somewhere in Japan a studio is working on exactly that game.