This week, the chaps piffle about:

• Sony’s sold 1.8 million Vitas
• Diablo III‘s teething problems
• Chu Chu Rocket (Android)
• Gun and Blood (Android)
• Minecraft (Xbox 360)
• Mortal Kombat (PS Vita)
• The Great British Debate: Is this year’s E3 make or break for motion control?
• WIN! Tickets to this year’s Eurogamer PC Rezz Show

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Inversion is silly, and I think everyone working on it would agree. It’s silly on purpose, and it’s silly in a few ways that are probably entirely unintentional. The plot follows a short preamble, then the horrific aftermath of a mysterious invasion by carefully ill-described enemies.  These foes miraculously appear and take over a city, perhaps the entire world, within a few moments (it’s hardly discussed). You (and a co-op partner if you’ve one around) must support a resistance against this mysterious oppressive force.

The plot absolutely feels like an attempt to motivate progression to the next piece of content rather than actually dictate an important message, so perhaps it’s forgivable that there’s a real lack of world-building. The dialogue serves the purpose of moving forward without a great deal of self-awareness. When the enemy threat is first discovered, your character notes that their guns are unusual. He asks his partner why anyone would need a weapon like that, casually ignoring that the two of them have personally been carrying equally humongous shotguns.

Similarly, the name of the invading force is casually thrown into dialogue; they’re referred to as “Lutadores” 20 minutes into gameplay, a name that sticks throughout. You never hear them refer to themselves by that name, nor hear dialogue from anyone deciding that’s what they should be called. Later, characters that have had no contact with you also refer to them the same way; how was this name discovered? The wordplay is too cute for the race themselves to have come up with (“It’s like Looter and Luchadore! Because we’re… looting? And, uh…?”). They’re portrayed as nearly human but almost devoid of speech skills – save for a few active phrases, so they couldn’t have thought of it. I suppose the answer is not to think too hard.

The plot is, of course, similar to another popular third-person action game where humanity’s last dregs survive against insurmountable odds. Inversion feels enough like Gears of War, and it’s possible that the designers took an extended look and considered whether they could make an alright approximation. That’s actually kind of amicable if true since iteration and improvement is an under-appreciated facet of the industry that serves to distil the best parts of other sources. Darksiders is known for cribbing from almost everywhere, and in a sense, Inversion also follows some of the mix and match design concepts. There’s an interesting mechanic that’s similar to ones found in Red Faction: Armageddon or Fracture (two comparisons not intended as insults!).

Inversion’s gameplay differentiator is a weapon that can alter a small area’s gravity (nicknamed the “Grav-Lift”, which at least gets the equivalent of a “sure, I guess we’ll call it that” within dialogue), making objects lighter or heaver. This can be used to pin enemies to the floor, throw them into the air to get them out of cover or move objects around.

It’s a little underutilised. The tool’s importance feels more geared to explaining why this title is more than another third-person shooter and is not necessarily a gameplay necessity. I wasn’t using it a lot and wasn’t being penalised for ignoring it.

The Grav-Lift’s existence does justify some of the more interesting set pieces, where due to unexplained reasons, the gravity in some areas of the world will shift to other surfaces, meaning that you’ll randomly walk up the side of a building or will float in mid-air from surface to surface. This makes for an interesting change of pace that’ll break up regular shooting sections.

Multiplayer is in the form of a traditional deathmatch, a mode similar to a Juggernaut in which only one character has access to the game’s Grav Link, which can be taken if the carrier is killed, and an interesting take on Assault mode: If a position is taken the entire map literally flips on its axis, all the players drop onto the new floor, then the attacking and defending teams switch roles. It’s a new take on a classic, and it’ll be interesting to see whether it takes off when the game is released.

All Inversion asks is that you’re aware that it’s stupid. If you’re capable of, and enjoy, removing your mental faculties for a short burst, you’ll probably get on with it.

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Silent Hill 2 was released in 1999. Reviewers applauded its efforts as a terrifying experience, even if the story was relatively unimaginative (and downright silly) in some places. When I picked up the game for the first time, I was thirteen years old, sitting in my parents’ basement — in what was informally dubbed The Game Room — and trying not to pee my pants as I solved puzzles, fought my way through crowds of horrific armless creatures and tried to find out why the hell I (James) was in Silent Hill in the first place.

I really didn’t like his late wife, sending her husband to this horrible place. Note to future self: don’t send husband to creepy place where he’ll eventually lose his mind. Natch.

As a high definition game, Silent Hill 2 really showed its age. The lighting and textures were still poorly rendered and, for whatever reason, Konami admitted that there were a few issues surrounding shadows within the game itself. (Someone somewhere said something about a patch but… I’m less than optimistic.) As a result, the experience has dulled.

Sure, there are monsters to kill and sure there are puzzles to crack. There’s even a Pyramid Head or two that you can try to shoot to death (before it falls down a stairwell). But the missing shadows, which had added an incredible amount of depth to the original game, really pulled away from the overall experience.

Even though I’d play the game in the afternoon (hey, I’ve gotta take what I can get with a baby running crawling around the apartment), I expected Silent Hill 2 to scare the pants off of me as it had when I first played it in 2000. Disappointed Amanda was disappointed. So I digitally shelved the game after only four hours and went on to experience Silent Hill 3 — my favourite of the series and, in this writer’s humble opinion, the best.

When Heather broke onto the scene in 2003, I was pleasantly surprised that they managed to create a female protagonist that was neither an incurable badass nor an irritating girly girl with a princess complex. Heather struck a chord in the middle, as a teen thrown into horrifying circumstances who was simply trying to survive. When I first played the game, I couldn’t put it down. The puzzles were deliciously complex (if I wanted them to be). The enemies were brutal. And there was something about running for my (Heather’s) life that was genuinely appealing for sixteen year old me.

Unlike its predecessor, Silent Hill 3 has aged gracefully. The dialogue, story, graphics, and even the tank-like game play managed to feel fresh and new, as if I were playing the game for the first time. The environment is just as horrific now as in my memory.

My heart pounded as I ran from enemies that I couldn’t hope to defeat. I ran out of bullets all the time and tried to beat baddies up with my girlish melee skills. Often getting eaten or pummeled to death, I might add.

What I had enjoyed in my inaugural play-through in 2003, I still enjoyed nearly 10 years later. Looking back at the plethora of games that I enjoy replaying, there aren’t too many of them that I can genuinely say, “Yep. That was as good, if not better, than the first play-through.”

Colour me impressed.

The Silent Hill HD Collection’s games — Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 3 — managed to provide an experience that still goes unmatched by today’s survival-horror standards. Although Silent Hill 2 lacks the depth and breadth of terror that Silent Hill 3 provides (and provides, really), it’s no surprise that the games later in the series simply don’t measure up. Although Silent Hill 2 is better left in memory, I recommend the collection for fans of Silent Hill 3. It’s worth it.

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Outside of PC-only MOBAs and the like this is the first time I’ve seen a developer, let alone one backed by a massive publisher, make this kind of decision. Of course when you look at it purely from a consumer point it makes sense; splitting up the player base is a bad idea. When games that aren’t Call of Duty release map packs every new release fractures the player base even more. Pretty soon by the 3rd or 4th release, the players who have supported the game for every map pack now have a limited number of people to play against. It becomes an issue of either having the most players to match up against, or having the most variety of maps. Call of Duty only gets away with this because of their sheer number of people that play the multi-player. Even if only half buy the initial map pack, that number still is leagues ahead of the initial player base of any other multi-player game.

But even Call of Duty has problems. With Activision trying out their Elite program from the beginning of a new game I’ve found that it’s a terrible idea. While it costs less in the long run for the consumer to pay for Elite, the fracturing of maps and players kills any positivity going for the program. I practically avoided playing the new maps as they came out because I was stuck playing them with a significantly smaller number than just going into a regular match. And since the developers wanted to make sure that the new maps could be played the most, they were in a small rotation of maps. Even after a few matches, the new maps got old quickly because I didn’t want to play the same one 10 matches in a row.

This issue is also alleviated if every map is released for free to all players. There is no fracturing of player base and the maps can go into general rotation from the get go. The only issue with this strategy is directly tied to revenue, which developers and publishers both thrive on. And here is where they both can take a page out of the free-to-play book and provide free content f0r people while also earning cash from players as well. Bioware has already implemented this tactic into Mass Effect 3′s multi-player. Players can either spend time earning the cash needed to buy the booster packs of weapons and items, or they can directly purchase them for a nominal fee. Of course this couldn’t directly translate to competative multi-player as allowing people to buy weapons would turn the game into pay-to-win. Customizing your avatar, however, could easily be revamped into a microtransaction experience. I personally would rather have the option to pay for specific customization of my character than having to pay for a new map. Not only would this method allow everyone to play together, it wouldn’t alter the core experience whatsoever. People could spend as much or as little as they pleased and still feel like they aren’t being “forced” into buying something just because everyone else is.

I am definitely excited to see where Lightbox takes this approach in Starhawk and what paid content they will provide alongside the free maps.

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The harsh effects of a Double (Dragon) dip recession…

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Welcome back for the spoiler-filled part 2 of Dave, Jitterbug and Yoshifett’s review of The Avengers. Again, there are spoilers, you have been warned. Check back on BRB next week for another exciting episode of BRB Flix!

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http://youtu.be/bf1GrySRWv8

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