Yes, to all my American associates! Happy Independence Day from your fellow Briti.... Ah..... Yeah....

Anyways, have a great day!

Ah Persona 4 for the Playstation 2, quite possibly THE last best game for the terrific Playstation 2... Well until Jak And Daxter The Last Frontier comes out!

Anyways, as said in the first sentence I'm really enjoying Persona 4 at the moment. The one gripe I have with the game so far is its beginning. For the most part I wasn't exactly contributing a lot in ways of interactivity, I watched most of the time and was introduced to the many, many characters and gameplay elements. But once I got passed this stage the game picks up in a staggering way.

Okay, so I was hooked right from the beginning and this painful progression through linearity is both a brave way, and perhaps, neccessity to the depth of Persona 4. To say this game is big is to be the biggest understatement of the year. There's a massive amount of things to take in - from Persona fusions, the daytime schedule, school work, part time jobs and the all important weather report and the game more or less takes you by the hand for the first few hours which more or less is the game's equivalent of a month - you have a year to do...

I haven't really progressed through the game enough to give a truly accurate account of the game so far (I'm still in the middle of saving Yukiko-san) but from what I have played and experienced, I have thoroughly enjoyed it. Roll on the next month!

Oh also, there's some dire news going around my work place of redundancies... Hopefully I'm not one to be let go into the wildnerness that is "Job Hunting". I'll find out more this Thursday coming... God it's tense.

What better way to ease the tension than to talk about games!

First off the bat is Manhunt 2, the most controversial game in the UK! I done the asylum training level and the game is okay... There's nothing too drastic in it to warrant all this controversy that it's come under. Though I have only played a tiny portion of the game so far, so I'm not best qualified to say too much about it yet.

Odin Sphere, another Playstation 2 title made by the same people who created Persona 4. Not a lot to say about this one at the moment. I've only done the prologue so far (Persona 4 quickly set its very yellow and black themed claws into me) and all I can say is the graphics are great, particular note to the animation and detail - the gameplay is not bad either!

Forbidden Siren, ah yes, that one. Not the fantastic remake for the PS3 that is simply titled Siren: Blood Curse but the cockney riddled, frustrating gamplay that is Forbidden Siren (also known as the more simple title of "Siren"). The atmosphere and horror is still just as effective as it was when it was first released, until they open their mouths... WHY!? The game couldn't possibly be more Japanese - dripping Japanese folklore and ideaology all over the place - so why did Sony decide to add Cockney "apple and pears" voices to it!

Klonoa 2: I have the original for the Playstation and I saw the sequel so I just had to have it. Klonoa 2 is such a calm, colourful and joyful game I have ever played. It's easy, just like the original, but it's charming. I recommend it to people who like their platformers colourful, friendly and very 2-D.

All these games will have to wait til I'm satisfied with Persona 4!

For those who have Steam, you may have come across something called Zeno Clash - a sort of First Person Brawler game. It looks weird, sounds weird and JESUS IS IT WEIRD. It is. The story starts off you killing your Mom-Dad hybrid (yes, a hermaphrodite) and your siblings are not liking this. So they hunt you down - oh whatever this is madness I tell you.

Basically, Zeno Clash is a curio title. A game for people who are looking to expand their horizons with grotesquely designed characters and a very twisted and disturbing world where I get the impression everyone and everything is covered in wafer thin sliced ham, for some reason. Humans aren't technically human, many of the so called humans have many animal decals to them. Some have wings, some some have snouts and one is 10 FEET TALL THAT IS ALSO A CROSS BETWEEN A MAN AND A WOMAN WITH A PINCH OF BIRD!!!:@UIOVTUDJFGMU

The game plays extremely well however. The first person melee is pulled off quite exceptionally, working brilliantly in fact. Yeah, there's times when all I'm doing is pressing the MOUSE BUTTON 1 endlessly but you can feel every smack, thwack and whack that you land and receive. Oh, and fighting THE 10 FOOT TALL HERMAPHRODITE HARDEHAR.

Weapons are crap though. It takes an age to get one, keep onto it and even then it's a little cumbersome to use effectively. Which I guess is the whole point. Guns take on the shape of cement mixed with shells and coral (yeah, imagine getting a tube and filling that with a mixture of cement, those beach things I mentioned and a trigger mechanism, leave to dry and remove tube you'll have a rough idea on the design of the gun). There's no OOMPH to the guns, which is a shame. Unless you line the sights on a 10 FOOT TALL HERMAPHRODITE OF WALKING DOOM!! I MEAN SERIOUSLY, HOW CAN THAT THING EVEN BE THE SAME PARENT!?!

Oh okay, I can except weirdness. This is a person who sat through David Lynch's Inland Empire (I had to force myself not to turn this **** off). After that film I just sat there and screamed "WHAT THE HELL DID I JUST WATCH?" A woman becomes someone else, that gets involved with rabbits, Polish people - a man with a lightbulb in his mouth - stabbed by a screwdriver - becomes an actress - lies dying in the street while homeless people talk about something bizarre [har har], then this woman goes to the cinema frees this Polish girl - goes back to normal THEN THERE'S A DANCE NUMBER. 3 hours of my life went to watching this. And that's not even a slither of the description for this film. I missed out the Polish moments, that weird part (which believe me, there's a lot of ¬_¬) when there's a load of ladies in this one room talking about - not sure. I had a pain in my head but I expanded my horizons and gave something I wouldn't normally give a chance. The same goes for Zeno Clash (see, I do somehow make these paragraphs link somehow).

Zeno Clash is above weirdness to the point of no return. The game's disturbing for sure. It's a purely fantasy world where anything and everything happens. The game looks extremely remarkable in places. The art design and extremely meticulously attention to detail of - 10 FOOT HERMAPHRODITE INCLUDED - the world, characters and everything else in this game is wholly unique. I mean any game with a 10 FOOT HERMAPHRODITE has either got balls [arf arf] or several ga-billion screws loose. You just don't do that in a game, but Zeno Clash has. To say this is a true indie game in every sense of the term is the overstatement of the year. But really, this blog is basically about the majority of the indie titles out there. For true uniqueness and innovation in the game industry, this is probably the sector you'll most likely want to venture into. And if Zeno Clash is anything to go by, it'll be a brave venture indeed.

Indie games go against the very notion of the Unwritten Mainstream Conventional Rulebook (patent pending), which is why you'll very rarely see them in shops, in advertisements and any other chav infestated cess pit. Take "The Path" for example, also available on Steam. The objective of that game is to disobey the sole objective of the game, "Follow the Path to Grandma's House". It's basically a distorted take on the Red Riding Hood tale. You control six different girls who venture into the woods to look at childhood memories (they essentially are - bikes, climbing frames etc) and the more you uncover in the woods the more different Grandma's House becomes. "The Path" also takes an interesting look at death, which comes in the shape of the Big Bad Wolf. His appearance is so sudden, random and altogether terrifying that you have to force yourself not to walk on the path in order to explore and get the most out of the game. The game plays out in a dream like manner. There's no sound effects of any kind and the only real sound in the game is the haunting ambient soundtrack that plays constantly in the background. It's a horror game, an unsettling game and the great thing about it is you can't really call it a game. Yes, you could call it repetitive but you're missing the point of "The Path". It's an experience worth experiencing I also recommend "The Graveyard", made by the same company that made "The Path". It's a cheap, short title about a old lady in a graveyard with another single objective "Walk to the bench, sit down and leave." This is a brave game, perhaps more brave than "The Path" because of its delibrate slow pace and... well that would be spoiling it.

Not all Indie games are disturbing, frightening or involve 10 foot tall hermaphrodites. Some of them are family friendly like the superb "Crayon Physics Deluxe", a game screaming out for a DS release. It's a puzzle game that involves getting a ball to a star and moving onto the next level. You achieve this by drawing shapes and lines with the crayon to form paths, weights for see saws and so on. It's incredibly accessible and addictive from the start and although you can technically use the same method in every level (yep, I did) it's interesting to see just how many ways you can get to the star and how other people attempt it. It's a true sand box game and I recommend it, or try the demo at least. It's available on Steam.

I think the most important thing to remember with Indie games is that they're unique not for the sake of it but for trying to push the boundaries of the game industry. Yes, not all of them are instantly accessible or any good. I can however appreciate what it is they are trying to accomplish. If you go into this sector of video gaming and expect a triple A production you will be sorely disappointed. It's not about the fancy visuals, physics (though some of them, like World Of Goo, have bloody good physics) and a mainstream vibe to them. It's about taking the art of interactivity to the next level. These auteurs want to take that keyboard and mouse or joypad and give you control on something you haven't experienced before or take a familiar experience into new realms of possibility, such as Braid or Zeno Clash to name but a few of the many. It's certainly an area of gaming that should be experienced at least once by all gamers and who knows, maybe there's a game in there somewhere that every mainstream developer/publisher will steal from constantly in the near future. And also, futhermore, many of these indie games are free and should not be passed up. For those who have heard of Edmund McMillen, yay. If not, nay. Search for him on Newgrounds.com and you'll see his name crop up frequently. I'm only highlighting one person out of many for the simple fact that his games are pretty cool. I recommend Aether, Meat Boy, Coil and Spewer.

So do I like Zeno Clash after all that?

***SPOILER***