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Adults miss out when they shun kids' games

I enjoyed all of the Harry Potter books, and I enjoyed them in their original children’s covers, not the darker, more sombre jackets designed to make adults feel better about reading them. They’re kids’ books, so why pretend they aren't?

I feel the same about video games. Mario Kart, Super Mario Galaxy and the forthcoming Super Smash Bros Brawl all got great reviews, but some adults feel the need to avoid these games as if, because they are suitable for kids, they must be unsuitable for adults.

I played the original NES Nintendo entertainment system when I was a child and have continued to play the company’s systems and games ever since. I enjoy the escapism of running around in a land with bright red and blue mushrooms and giant monkeys bounding about. Being child-friendly doesn't make the games easier, just generally more imaginative and brighter in the visuals.

That’s not to say I don’t still love a good online frag fest. Both types of game can be equally enjoyable, and I think some folk miss out on great games because they ignore the 'suitable for all' games, unaware of the similarities between them and more adult-orientated titles. For instance, both Grand Theft Auto IV and Mario feature jumping on or kicking other characters heads — just in a very, very different context.

GTA IV and the battle of the consoles

Grand Theft Auto IV is expected to sell out today on both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, but already the console makers are battling to get the upper hand. Sony has released a PS3 package that comes with the game, but it's Microsoft that have really pulled out all the stops by spending a reported $50 million on two downloadable additions to the game that will be available exclusively on Xbox Live.

The content of the packs is currently unknown, but with each costing Microsoft $25 million, it's fair to assume that they will add significantly to the already huge game – and that they won't be cheap for us to buy. But given that most serious gamers already own one of the two machines, will it be worth forking out for the 360 to get the extra content if you already have a PS3?

If you’re a well-off PS3 owner who plays every game through to the bitter end, then it might be worth getting a 360 for the downloadable add-ons that will entertain you for another few hours. On the whole, though, I doubt that many will be tempted to buy an additional console.

Nor are the two versions different enough to encourage much console switching. The graphics are more or less identical, by all accounts, which is disappointing – Rockstar, the game makers, could have used the full power of the PS3’s cell processor to up the ante in the visual stakes.

If you have neither console and this is your idea of car-jacking, gun-toting, drug-dealing fun, the 360 seems to be the one to go for. But if you are a movie buff with an HD-TV then the Blu-ray player in the PS3 may well be the clincher.

Essentially, we have two companies that have pretty much bottomless pockets fighting to be top dog in an industry worth billions of dollars per year. Regardless of the outcome, even the loser will be sitting pretty. If you find yourself appalled by the content of GTA IV or just are becoming a little too involved in the criminality then you can always fork out yet more for a Wii Fit and throw yourself in to it's yogic bliss to centre yourself once more.

Full GTA IV coverage:

Man stabbed while waiting to buy Grand Theft Auto IV
GTA review: Not just a game, but five-star entertainment
It’s just a game, says GTA producer

Wii Fit: cute graphics, but little to get the blood pumping

I went to a Wii Fit launch event this morning, designed to show off Nintendo's fitness game and its  pressure-sensitive floor pad. It was a slightly surreal event, with all the Nintendo folk dressed in white tracksuits with big marketing smiles. I felt a bit like I had stumbled upon a technologically advanced cult. Thankfully, there was no fruit punch offered and we were soon set loose with the games.

To get started, a colleague of mine went through the few steps to work out his Wii Fitness age – a measure of physical wellbeing – by entering his age and height and trying to stand stock still on the balance board. He wavered and came out with a fitness age of 69. Being in his early 30s, he wasn't overly impressed. He did, however, laugh at the number, suggesting he has a mental age half his actual years, so it probably balances out.

We moved on to skiing and hula-hooping, which were fun but didn't seem to require much exertion. Nor do the other balance and Yoga exercises seem to burn off many calories, though doing headers was a bit more energetic. There are some more aerobic exercises available, like jogging, but they just aren't the games I felt were the most appealing. The game's strength is the graphical appearance, which is very appealing in a cute and slightly weird way, with funny animations popping up as you get hit by a football boot or a disembodied panda head while trying to do headers.

The problem as I see it is that the game provides little motivation to keep playing. You can see your Wii Fitness age – and hopefully see it falling – but is that enough to get you using it a few times a week? The motivation for visiting a gym often comes from peers, or because it costs you money every month whether you go or not. Even with the £70 price tag, I'm not sure that these motivational factors are there in big enough proportions to keep me using the Wii Fit.

The balance board's sensitivity is impressive and works really well as a control system, so it will be interesting to see what other titles come out using it as an input device. If the fitness regime had more of a level-based system, like Super Mario Galaxy, I would probably be more inclined to play it regularly.

I don't want to give the impression it's not good. I did like it, and even though I’m probably not in the target market, I am tempted to get one once it has been released. I just feel that it could fall into the same trap as Wii Play, effectively being little more than a good way of showing off the capabilities of the hardware.

My colleague and I agreed that we probably used up more energy walking there from the Tube than we did while playing Wii Fit, but any game that features panda heads being kicked at you is alright by me.

Xbox gets Rock Band 90-day exclusive

I've just come back from a chat with some of the folks at Xbox who are in an excited state as they have just managed to negotiate a 90-day timed exclusive with Rock Band, the big competitor to Guitar Hero III. This will mean the other consoles will have to wait until the summer before launching their own versions of the new game, with the Xbox 360 version coming out on the 23rd of May. Many of the original team that launched Guitar Hero jumped ship to start up Rock Band, so for the companies involved, it really is personal.

For those of you who have been living in a vacuum, Guitar Hero III is a game that comes with a guitar controller and lets you play along with famous songs, getting points for the accuracy and timing of your playing. Rock Band takes it up a notch, adding in a bass, mic and drums so you can play with four friends, each playing a different part of the song.

I've got Guitar Hero III and have played it with a couple of friends who earn their living as musicians and interestingly, the one who is a guitarist says he finds playing the harder levels of Guitar Hero more difficult than playing the same songs with real instruments. It will be interesting to see how Rock Band's multi-instrument set-up will put my drummer friend to the test, but it also raises an interesting question: if you have four friends to play with, why not start a real band? Personally I rock at Guitar Hero III, but if you heard me playing a real guitar, it sounds as if I was fighting it and the strings were winning.

The end of weird: why boring games dominate

I've mentioned the excellent Wii game Zack and Wiki here before. The game got fantastic reviews and was a bold departure in style from most of the other current releases, but it hasn't been selling well in the shops. I think this is partly due to big name games coming out and people are voting with their cash for the tried-and-tested titles rather than purchasing something different. This is going to end up leaving us with a games industry that follows the tragic path the movie industry has taken: terrible remakes of classic films and numerous sequels rather than original and risky movies.

Sonic is a classic example of a once-great title that just trades on it's name to produce shoddy titles. If we don't buy the games that are a little more unusual then games that have the potential to reinvent genres simply won't get made. There are already way too many Brain Training clones on the Wii and far too many bad first-person shooters on the Xbox, and unless we start supporting the more unusual, that's all we are going to be left with. There are games that try to do something different and fail miserably with bad execution and poorly thought-out plots, but when the reviews are great we need to buy these titles. The problem is that most of us can't buy numerous titles on a whim so picking and choosing does end up a conservative business.

The latest title with potential in the weird game stakes is My Beautiful Katamari. You get to roll a ball around a landscape picking up elements from the environment by rolling over them until you get big enough to move on to the next level. It's out on the Xbox, and although it’s a sequel to the PlayStation 2 game it’s easily strange enough to qualify for the "something different" category. There was a PS3 version being developed but this was apparently dropped due to porting issues and the resources have been put towards working on a Wii version.

There is also a game out now for the Wii and the DS called Jenga, which is a video game version of the popular wooden blocks game. I know. Exactly who thought this would be a good idea is unclear, but I think it's safe to say you should probably steer clear when looking for your next unusual game. It also costs four times as much as the real game. Surely somebody should have put a stop to this at the ideas stage?

An emotional response to Manhunt 2

Manhunt 2, which had been banned in the UK last year, has now been given permission for release in June after an appeal by Rockstar Games. Part of the defence used by Rockstar is that although the game is violent and is about committing murder it is no more violent than a Tarantino film.

I think the comparison is missing the very point of video games. My two young sons will always choose to play on the Wii rather than watch TV, the reason being that they like interacting rather than just passively watching the activity on screen. If I am watching a film and one character tortures another, it is the writer and director who are choosing to do the maiming. If I am controlling the character, then it's my choice to torture or not. I'm no psychologist, but that has to have a much bigger impact.

The latest Splinter Cell used the emotional choice you have in the game rather well. You have to make two opposing groups both trust you. One of the first assignments ends with you being asked to kill an innocent helicopter pilot who begs you not to. The game makes it clear that it's your choice and you don't have to do it to continue the game. I did kill him to gain more trust with the bad guys and, much to my surprise, I genuinely felt bad about it. This isn't something I've ever experienced before in a game, and it raises the question not of what Manhunt 2 involves but of what emotional involvement you have. A much harder thing to quantify.

I was talking to a friend about games recently and he was extolling Bioshock. One of his main selling points was that he got to burn a dead cat and hit it with a wrench while it was floating in water, making it bob pleasingly. To be fair to him, he was using this as an example of the interactivity of the environment. I hope it's safe to say that for him, Bioshock is purely entertainment and not a reflection of his ability to form emotional ties, as it seemed to be for me in Splinter Cell. Still, I wasn't overly convinced about this and have since made sure I always face him and avoid making sudden movements when chatting.

I hope he doesn't read this. I wouldn't want to make him angry.

Gran Turismo 5 is launched in a car park

I went to the launch of Gran Turismo 5 Prologue in London last night. It was held in an underground car park in Marble Arch and all of the cars featured in the game were there for people to have a gander at. It was an impressive set up with lots of chequered flags but, bizarrely, there were only four gaming booths for the 150-odd people there.

To play, you had to queue for 20 minutes or so and, as many of the folk there were proper game journalists, if you weren't very good there was all sorts of heckling from the waiting masses. Did you know that the game view where you are above and behind the car is called the 'angel view'? I didn't, but using it rather than a first-person perspective will get you all sorts of disapproval.

I took along a friend called Chuck who does various bits of TV production and directing. He's not much of a gamer but he has had training on and driven a Renault Formula 1 car for some filming work he did. A nice bloke set him up with what he believed was an automatic car. After burning round the track and crashing a lot less than the guy who played before him – and bragging loudly – it was pointed out that he was in fact in a manual car and 'burning' round the track in second gear. He wasn't so good when he went up to fifth.

If you are a fan of driving games then Gran Turismo is a very pretty game with beautiful graphics. You will crash though. A lot. If you have read any of my other articles you may have noticed the point of me writing about games is that I am an average gamer. I love games, but I'm just not an alpha male when it comes to furious button pushing. Proper game journalists may think their witty comments are funny, but being told I drive like a trained monkey can be very cutting.

I did meet a nice guy called David who is one of the PR folk at Sony and we had a chat about my previous post about Blu-ray and HD movies on the PS3 and whether it would be a big selling feature in the coming year and he had some interesting comments. Essentially, he sees the ability to play HD movies a nice plus but the big point of having Blu-ray going forward is being able to put out huge games that would take five or six DVDs. The push from their point of view is getting companies to develop games that will really take advantage of this. Looks like it's going to be an interesting year for Sony and Microsoft as the formats up the ante.