I’m aiming to play at least a couple of hours every month, possibly more if I get into it.  For those who want to know the technical details I won’t be playing the original N64 version nor the recently released 3DS remake but the Collector’s Disc released on the Gamecube for those who pre-ordered Wind Waker (in truth I gained one when somebody did a whole bundle of trades in the games shop I worked in).  I’ll probably record a small section for inclusion of Brake For Frogger each month.

I’m aiming not to ‘review’ Ocarina Of Time with a comparison to today’s games as it would be far too easy to suggest it’s aged badly. I’m more interested in the people I know who have completed the game and say, with all honesty, that they would love to lose every memory of it just so they could discover it all over again.

First though, I might have to prepare to here the phrase ‘Over Here’ a lot.

1- Bioshock Infinite

Two years ago I put the then upcoming Bioshock 2 in this Most Wanted list. I bought it, finished it and whilst it was an enjoyable experience it didn’t seem to hit the heights of the first game.  Infinite was revealed to the public nearly a year ago now with the ten minute video featured above. It’s been stressed that this is not ‘Bioshock 3′ but a departure from Rapture which is probably one of the best realised locations in gaming. The story shifts to Columbia, a city floating in the sky and the scene of a near civil war based of differing ideologies of the time. Basically, it seem to be far more involved as far as story telling goes that your usual FPS and we awarded it the ‘I Want To Play This Now’ Award in episode 2.12 for a damn good reason.

2- Syndicate.

Right, ignore the moaning legions who have complained that it simply cannot be a Syndicate remake/reboot without being a top down strategy game and instead look at the positives. It’s a classic series in the hands of Starbreeze who have a pedigree of good single player first person games with titles like The Darkness and Chronicles Of Riddick. It also looks stunning and rumours persist of co-op four player mode to satisfy the fans of the original. I’m certainly willing to give it a chance.

3- UFC 3.

At some point during Brake For Frogger you’ll have probably heard Tom and I go on about how much we loved UFC Undisputed 2009. We played that game against each other both online and offline for so long that we were still having matches when the 2010 version was released about a year later. For some reason though, the 2010 version didn’t quite catch the imagination in the same way. Perhaps it was the change in controls, maybe the fact that the striking game would see most matches end in a matter of minutes or it could have been the fact the online mode was incredibly wonky. We played it on and off but nowhere near the same levels as before.

An encouraging sign came when THQ announced that there would not be a UFC Undisputed 2011, they would wait a few more months to truly rebuild the game engine and make it more than just a cosmetic upgrade. It may sounds like marketing talk but it seems like they may have actually done it. There’s an overhaul of the submissions system and the addition of PRIDE mode (the Japanese MMA company bought by UFC a few years ago in which punts to the head on a floored opponent were legal) means it will hopefully be worthy of the extra wait. If it does then you might be hearing a lot more about it during Season 3 of Brake For Frogger,

The second season saw the podcast far overtake the written side of the site but with good reason. We don’t have the regular roster of writers who contribute to the site with daily news and articles. If we did have then we might be attracting more in the way of advertisers and therefore income but I don’t think we’ve ever been about that. The best written pieces of 2011 were probably the ones not written by the ‘core’ team. Paulo continues to impress with his game reviewing ability for example.

The podcast is now the focus and Season 2 saw some expansion but it wasn’t exactly smooth. The summer was difficult as Tom left the band on a temporary basis in order to attend to other matters so we floated along rudderless for a short while.  The four man format therefore took a few episodes to settle in, really only hitting the stride proper post summer. In among all this we had moments when Brake For Frogger became something like what I always wanted it to be, an audio magazine voiced by people who love videogames. It’s something Season 3 is gunning for in a big way.

There will be some changes. Lexie’s nervous screaming, delightful though it is, is getting a little bit thin. we’ll still be hearing from her but it probably won’t be in the capacity of her being petrified all the time. There are also some plans to shed more light on less mainstream gaming and Alan will always have us covered for retro games. I’ll also be playing Ocarina of Time and giving my thoughts each month as I get further into it. Having never played it until now  this segment shall probably be labelled ‘Ocarina About Bloody Time’. We’ll probably come up with some other stuff before the record date (currently penciled in for January 26th).

If you’ve listened to us during 2011, spread the word, met us, played against us or been out drinking with us then we thank you. Here’s to a grand 2012.

Long live the Frog!

In this month’s episode:

Rather than shunning the concept of a Christmas special this year, the Brake for Frogger team have embraced the idea and thrown ourselves headlong into our first ever attempt.

Combining a new twist on a classic Christmas tale with our own Gaming Awards for 2011, here is the final podcast of Season 2…

Hope you enjoy!

Brake for Frogger – Season 2, Episode 12 – 2011 Christmas Special – The Tale of Ebeneezer Milburn

Listening methods are as usual:

- Stream from the small media player above;

- Click this here link (if you have Quicktime or Windows Media Player installed) to stream the podcast;

- Right-click the above link, and click the dialog that says “Save target as…”, “Save link as…” or something similar (dependent on your browser) to download the .mp3 file to your computer in order to use it on your iPods or other personal mp3 players.

- From season one, episode two onwards, we’ve also been on iTunes. You can find us by running a search for ‘Brake For Frogger’ in the iTunes Store, and clicking subscribe…

Also, head to http://www.facebook.com/brakeforfrogger and get us liked, folks!

In this month’s episode:

Euan makes the journey down from Kilmarnock to join the rest of the Brake for Frogger clan in Gretna. The Skype chat isn’t dormant however as EvilNinjaPhil of Sonic’s Ring stops watching Lord of the Rings long enough to join in the conversation. Whatcha Playin’ features more Arkham City talk (but no spoilers) alongside some retro gems. The Retro Games Emporium finds Alan dusting off the shelves in time for Christmas and attempting to sell off some stock if the price is right. In the home stretch, Phil has some questions about topics covered in podcasts of old.

You can also win Furyac3′s Eurogamer Swag Bag he left with us in a previous episode, as the poetry competition is still well and truly open. We just need you to write a poem about Brake For Frogger and send it to the usual e-mail address.

In this month’s episode:

Tom’s on a nightshift so your remaining three Froggers sit around and talk about such topics as Arkham City, Space Marine 40k and Alan’s need to ‘recharge his retro’. The Topic Dictatorship covers the team’s favourite games magazines and the Retro Games Emporium goes flying with the animals by taking a look at Starwing.

Alongside this Alan takes on the Gamesmaster challenge with Robocod and Lexie stops getting scared by scaring everybody else with her driving in Need For Speed Hot Pursuit.

You can also win Furyac3′s Eurogamer Swag Bag he left after last month’s episode. We just need you to write a poem about Brake For Frogger and send it to the usual e-mail address.

Also, head to http://www.facebook.com/brakeforfrogger and get us liked, folks!

Enjoy, people!

Brake for Frogger – Season 2, Episode 10 – Elvis is Resting

Listening methods are as usual:

- Stream from the small media player above;

- Click this here link (if you have Quicktime or Windows Media Player installed) to stream the podcast;

- Right-click the above link, and click the dialog that says “Save target as…”, “Save link as…” or something similar (dependent on your browser) to download the .mp3 file to your computer in order to use it on your iPods or other personal mp3 players.

- From season one, episode two onwards, we’ve also been on iTunes. You can find us by running a search for ‘Brake For Frogger’ in the iTunes Store, and clicking subscribe…

Sim City was one of the first games I bought for our SNES (I say ‘our’ because I was forced to share a console with my older sister for the first year or so, she was annoyed when I conned our Dad into buying the Street Fighter 2 pack first). The high percentage the game had been given in Total Nintendo magazine made me curious, I had no experience of the PC version and I wasn’t old enough to consider the idea that this may be a scaled down console version of the game. This somewhat open minded approach probably gave rise to my vast enjoyment of the game. I proceeded to plough many hours into city building over the next few weeks.

Starting with a simple patch of land, often with a few trees and a river if you were lucky, your dreams of a sprawling metropolis begin. The three main zones were split into residential for housing, commercial for shops and industrial for factories but the first concern of your mayorship was how to power all of this which gave you the first big decision. Coal power was cheaper to buy than nuclear but would create a massive smog cloud over the sky, nuclear power was cleaner but more expensive and a disaster if the reactor blew. Once decided it was a case of starting small and laying down the first few zones, linking them with a few streets here and there. Small signs of life would spring up, tiny houses and factories alongside cars driving down roads. It was heartening and refreshing, a game that gave you the tools of creation rather than destruction.

Even at this early stage certain issues were already raised. Crime would still have to dealt with so building a police station was essential. Fire protection would be supplied by building your first fire station. Both of these services would take regular funds from the city coffers which in turn would require you to set the city’s tax rate. Like everything in Sim City, this was a balancing act, too much tax would mean your population would be slow growing as your city would not be an attractive place to work, too little and your funds would be low and investment would be sluggish. Once gaining a small amount of capital you could expand and make your desert outpost into a town adding a rail network for easier transport links, more factories to create jobs, more shops for your citizens to spend their money in and houses for them to live in. Later additions included parks, stadiums and even your own house. The joy of Sim City was looking at your creation from above and watching it grow, seeing everyday life pass by. There became a substantial sense of ownership, you remembered the day when this was all just a desert strip but now it’s a bustling city in which people lived and played. There was a major feeling of pride in what you had achieved.

For those who wanted a bit more of a challenge there was the ability to call on selection of disasters to destroy a part of all of your city. Floods would rage, fires would burn out of control and earthquakes would shatter all the buildings at its epicenter. It was up to you to budget for a recovery and bring the city back to the former glory. Other events were slightly more offbeat such as Bowser emerging from the water and stomping through your streets Godzilla style and aliens invading with a death ray. Getting your city back on its feet was both satisfying to play and boosted your approval ratings no end.

I spent a huge amount of hours playing Sim City and it also featured one of the first examples of unofficial co-op play I ever experienced when two friends and myself each took charge of one zone type in our city and wasted the next five hours arguing over funding and what should be built first. In a strange way it was like a teenage council meeting.  I have tried playing the more recent editions of the series but Maxis took the idea of expansion too far and made the game far more complex than it really needed to be. My overbearing memory of Sim City 4 on the PC was building more and more water pumping stations as there never seemed to be enough to keep the taps running. It’s probably something they patched but I never bothered to update. The SNES version was ideally pitched and an unlikely favourite during my 16 bit days and as such remains on my top list to this day.

In this month’s episode:

As promised by the trailer last month we’ve got Glasgow’s own FuryAc3 on the show to talk us through his adventures during the small, understated event that was Eurogamer; ‘Whatcha Playing?’ covers Tom and Cam’s love of Deus Ex Human Revolution, Euan’s wandering amongst the undead, Fury gets stuck into Gears of War 3 and Alan…attempts to fix his washing machine before taking his Retro Games Emporium to Blackpool for the day!

Enjoy, folks!:

Brake for Frogger – Season 2, Episode 9 – Nightowls

Listening methods are as usual:

- Stream from the small media player above;

- Click this here link (if you have Quicktime or Windows Media Player installed) to stream the podcast;

- Right-click the above link, and click the dialog that says “Save target as…”, “Save link as…” or something similar (dependent on your browser) to download the .mp3 file to your computer in order to use it on your iPods or other personal mp3 players.

- From season one, episode two onwards, we’ve also been on iTunes. You can find us by running a search for ‘Brake For Frogger’ in the iTunes Store, and clicking subscribe…

BFF: Having had a go at the game on the show floor the first thing that strikes you is that Ryu has a strange looking arm – why is this?

Peter: That’s actually a curse, early on in the story of Ninja Gaiden 3 an enemy called the Regent of the Mask – you may have seen him in some of the trailers for the game he has a red cloak and a mask and he places a curse on Ryu and that curse feeds on the lives that Ryu has taken. In this game we play of the fact that he has taken so many lives not just in this game but in the past ones too. The curse will infect more of his body as you play through the game and it is a manifestation of the karma for taking people’s lives. In terms of gameplay, this is how you trigger the ultimate technique – his sort of super move but you have to power it up by killing people that’s an example of the more immersive feel we’re going for in this game rather than just charging your meter up, you have it as sort of a gameplay element both into the game mechanic and story so it gives you more of a seamless experience.

BFF: So that is why there was no essence to collect when I was playing?

Peter:  Yeah, Ninja Gaiden 3 doesn’t have essence to help with the level of immersion in the game for more of a modern take on action games. The story for Ninja Gaiden 3 focuses on Ryu Hayabusa and showing the consequences of him killing people and giving the people the experience of striking someone down with a sword, feeling what that’s like in order to get that connection with the action that is going on. You have to empathise with the people that you are cutting down and if you start putting in yellow orbs that come up from dead bodies and things like that, it takes it away from being an immersive experience and you don’t empathise with them they’re just another game object, you’re just playing a video game. When we look at the way games are evolving they go more towards an elusive style and we want to be there at the forefront of action games to give that immersive aspect.

BFF: With there being no essence in the game, this time round – does that mean the way in which you unlock and upgrade weapons has changed too?

Peter: There will not be the same shop aspect as in the past game, you will get power ups and you will slowly unlock moves, but those are tied into story mode – so within the course of the story you’ll unlock different swords each one will bring with it, its own moves and powers but you’re not hitting the dragon statue at the side of the road to power things up again, that was one of the sort of gamely aspects that we wanted to revise and streamline for the experience on the whole.

BFF: What sort of range of weapons will Ryu have in Ninja Gaiden 3?

Peter: The single player is focused on the story and the concept of cutting someone down so it evolves around sword play – the core combat for the single player then will be based around the Katana.

BFF: With the game having a tradition of being as hard as hell to play, will the third outing continue this or has it been made easier to appeal to a larger audience?

Peter: For Ninja Gaiden 3 we are implementing what we like to call play styles. We know we have a long history and we have earned a cred for being a hard game and the fans who have cleared the game on ultimate ninja will wear that as a badge of honour. We definitely want to give them a challenge and in no way are we trying to dumb it down at all, so that challenge is still there for them but that being said we know that there are a lot of people have thrown their controllers away and even more people who haven’t played a Ninja Gaiden game at all. We think those players (when they come to Ninja Gaiden 3) it’s not a case of being good or bad more a matter that they have different skills. Maybe they’re used to a different games mechanics – so we set up play styles and we have a ninja play skill for the people who want the normal challenge who have played in the past. We also have a Hero play style and is more for the people who just want to play through the story without having to worry about each and every battle. So for people who are new to the series or to players who have thrown their controllers off the wall, Hero play style is there though you’ll still face hard enemies, but there is things going on in the background to help the player – not to make it easier and bring you up to that difficulty level.

BFF: The demo on the show floor has Ryu fighting through the streets of London, will there be any other locations in the full game?

Peter: Yeah, the first stage takes place in London but there will be plenty of locations across the world in the full game.

BFF: Will there be any online play in Ninja Gaiden 3? Versus? Or scoreboards?

Peter: Yeah, we’re definitely looking at online play and with the concept of the single player mode being about what it’s like to cut a person down and being focused on the dark hero Ryu. The online modes are focused on the world of ninjas, so you start the online modes as a rookie ninja you can customise the look and weapons so you play as the ninja you want and you’ll be fighting the other ninja’s through the world to become that top ninja.

BFF: In the past games of the series there have been Easter eggs in the world, are there any plans to have Easter eggs on the third game and if so what could there be?

Peter: We will definitely have content that series fans will enjoy.

BFF: With the game being on the 360 and PS3 is there any difference between them?

Peter: The PS3 game will support Move in the Hero play style, but by in large both games are the same.

BFF: With Move being an option on PS3 version of the game did you ever look at using Kinect on the 360 side?

Peter: We looked at Kinect but we didn’t get the gameplay connection with it that we were looking for. So we felt we could serve the 360 fans better through other aspects other than Kinect.

BFF: With the game also coming out on the WiiU how is it shaping up?

Peter: Definitely for the WiiU version Ninja Gaiden Razors Edge it just getting up and running on the development hardware so we’re still at the stage of playing with control schemes and see what works and what doesn’t. We definitely want to use as many features as we can and to push the WiiU to the limit and we do have a history with touch controls with Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword on the DS and the director Yosuke Hyashi is working on it as we have that history with touch controls, so we can refer to that as a base but if that works on the WiiU or not is something we have to play with and that’s the really exciting thing about new hardware.

BFF: Graphically how are you finding it against the likes of the 360 and PS3?

Peter: For graphics and hardware power it’s definitely on par with both the 360 and the PS3.

BFF: With Ninja Gaiden being on the DS in the past with the excellent Dragon Blade and with the success of Dead or Alive on the 3DS, is there any plans to bring Gaiden to the 3DS?

Peter: There’s definitely ideas there and Dead or Alive on the 3DS was a great project for the team and the 3DS is a very capable piece of hardware so it’s not something that there are any plans at the moment, but there are ideas there.

BFF: With more and more Eastern developers leasing games to the Western developers like Dead Rising and Devil May Cry do you ever see Team Ninja doing this with Ninja Gaiden or Dead or Alive?

Peter: For Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive I’m pretty sure that both will stay in house Team Ninja makes both games and that’s their culture and not just the Japanese culture but the development culture and game culture and that’s what they live and breathe – the kinds of animation and the kinds of combat that’s what the team have been doing that for years. That being said we would still welcome the chance to work with Western developers where there is a lot that we can learn. Being open to Western is definitely something we welcome.

BFF: It’s been sometime since Ryu was last seen on the home consoles and with the likes of God of War and Ninja Scrolls on the market now, how do you think Ryu will stand out in the crowd now?

Peter: We focused on the story this time round and trying to portray Ryu as not just a mindless killing machine from a Japanese arcadey game but focus on his humanity and what makes him tick and talking about the consequence of killing someone. The players will be able to make more of an emotional connection to Ryu through the brutality that they will commit throughout the game and they’ll see Ryu as a Japanese dark hero and not just a cool killing machine. We really want to humanise Ryu and show the real person behind the mask.

This one is probably the closest we’ve got to how we want Brake for Frogger to be which basically means we’ve broken up the bits of us talking with all kinds of random sections.

In this month’s episode:

‘Whatcha Playing?’ this month features Tom’s Minecraft Pocket sessions, Euan’s wander in Bastion, Cam’s Patrick Stewart impression and Al’s washing machine. The Random Topic Generator takes a Stalinist turn and Alan’s Retro Games Emporium features added Nurse Gladys Emmanuel thanks to EvilNinjaPhil of Sonic’s Ring fame.

Added to this, Lexie turns her attention to Left4Dead 2 and demands wet wipes as a result, the Co-Op Shop has an awkward customer in the shape of GLaDOS,  the debut of Secret Salmon, the return of the Rev, the solo review gets godly in From Dust and we even end with a trailer for next month. Organised to the max. this month.

Enjoy, comment, retweet, shout about us from the rooftops!:

Brake for Frogger – Season 2, Episode 8 – Red vs. Blue

Listening methods are as usual:

- Stream from the small media player above;

- Click this here link (if you have Quicktime or Windows Media Player installed) to stream the podcast;

- Right-click the above link, and click the dialog that says “Save target as…”, “Save link as…” or something similar (dependent on your browser) to download the .mp3 file to your computer in order to use it on your iPods or other personal mp3 players.

- From season one, episode two onwards, we’ve also been on iTunes. You can find us by running a search for ‘Brake For Frogger’ in the iTunes Store, and clicking subscribe…