I'd like to order some perspective.

It's been a good six weeks since the Echochrome demo hit the Japanese PSN marketplace and, after tweaking it six ways from Sunday, it's finally good enough for the US.  The full game is going to take just a bit longer to hit, but the demo offers the smallest taste of the puzzle-y goodness in store.

Echochrome is a game about perspective.  It tells you that what you see is what actually is, playing with the idea of 3D space as represented on a 2D screen.  A mannequin walks along a path suspended in air, but it's a broken path filled with holes, dead ends, and even a few trampolines.  Navigating Echochrome's twists and turns looks impossible at first, as the mannequin mindlessly walks forward in a straight line and only turns when coming to an edge or corner, and your only tool is the camera.  Who knew that perspective is one of the most powerful tools ever created, aside from maybe Anton Ego?

As the camera moves, parts of the path align get covered up or even seem to connect, and what you see is what's really there.  You know there's a gap but it's blocked by a column, so the mannequin cheerfully strolls past it without breaking stride.  One path is 20 feet up and 30 feet across from another, but the angle of view connects their ends so it's an easy step from one to the other without a second thought.  The paths only look like a 3D structure, and Echochrome is more than happy to use that misconception to mess with your head.

The demo is five tiny tutorials and three levels, and both the PSP and PS3 versions are available for download right this very moment.  It weighs in at a tiny 34MB, small enough that it shouldn't be too difficult to find the time to snag it.  Check it out, the demo is well worth the look.

And for those curious, check out the PC original freeware here.

I don't really care about all these hoops you seem intent on making me jump through.

Yay, the R-Type Command demo is up on the Sony store!  This makes me happy, because I've been looking forward to playing it for a while now.  So off I go to power up the PS3 and get downloading.

First off, though, it's time for a required update before I can access the Sony store.  Rolling my eyes at yet another one of these endless time-wasters, I start it up and do something else for ten minutes.  Once that's out of the way it's theoretically time for some R-Type Command.  A quick download and it's on the PS3's hard drive, and a bit of transferring over to the PSP and I'm almost good to go.

The last game I got for the PSP was Patapon, back in early March the week after it came out.  Apparently in the intervening three weeks a new update hit the PSP and now I need to take care of that.  So I set up my PSP with my home network (should have done it earlier, that one's my fault for being lazy) and get to downloading firmware upgrade 3.93.  Once that's done I plug my PSP into my PC's USB cable for a shot of power to make the update run smooth and am promptly told that's just not good enough.  The battery is "low" at 2/3 power and the juice from the USB AC hookup just isn't cutting it.  I drag my PSP into the other room where I've got the AC adaptor plugged into the wall and, finally, decide I've had enough of this.  The PSP goes back into its case and I go do something else.

This is how this story should have gone-  The R-Type Command demo was up on the Sony store and I downloaded it.  One quick transfer to the PSP later and I was playing the game.   That didn't happen, and now I just don't feel like dealing with this silly crap. 

Seriously, Sony, all I wanted to do was play a game. 

Giving a low score to the featured game is now a firing offense.

Jeff Gerstmann, Gamespot's former Editor in Chief, is job-hunting after writing an unfavorable review of Kane & Lynch: Dead Men.  He gave it a 6.0 and that didn't sit well with Eidos, who have plastered the site with banners saying what a wonderful game they've published.  Eidos whined to CNet, who owns Gamespot, who employ Jeff Gerstmann.  What does 11 years of service (he started at Gamespot in October 1996) get you if you say mean things about the big advertisers' games?  A pink slip, apparently.

I wish it wasn't this blatant, that there were mitigating factors to his removal, but at this point it's a very cut and dried case of a publicist complaining to the parent corporation, who promptly fire the offending employee's ass for doing the job they assigned to him.  Gamespot is running damage control as best they can, shutting down threads as fast as they pop up, but something as ham-handed and pathetic as this is the stuff of internet flamewar dreams.  There's a good guy (Jeff Gerstmann), a bad guy (CNet), and a huge load of spectators with a very loud voice.

The headline to this article would be cheap, incendiary tabloid crap on any other story.  Here, it's a simple statement of fact.  I didn't have anything against CNet or Gamespot before (that other article was just poking fun), but now I can't imagine any reason I'd bother with them.  The Gamespot editors are being dealt a bad hand, as evidenced by this post (third one down at the time of this writing) in their forums-

"People, don't direct your anger at Gamespot. This is CNet's meddling. Gamespot consists just of the editorial, news, community, and development teams. It's CNet's marketing that puts the ads up. CNet's marketing that complained. CNet is who can fire their EIC."

But that still doesn't change the fact that this taints the entire site.  Gaming journalism is already filled with enough dodgy crap soiling its reputation, we really don't need events like this making it even more obvious how little integrity has to do with anything that might generate ad revenue for the big sites.  I'm not asking for lily-white ivory tower purity, just a little hint that maybe they're there for something more than being a big advertising outlet for whatever product is being spewed forth from the industry's gaping maw.

This blog article should be recognized as the sole opinion of the editor and does not necessarily reflect GotNext's official position on the subject.

The best Asteroids clone ever is free.

Asteroids hasn't aged well over the years, despite repeated re-releases.  The idea is sound and the original will always be a classic, but each new execution feels a little too unadventurous to be all that interesting.  Fortunately, Asteroids has clones, and that's where Spheres of Chaos comes in.

Spheres of Chaos is basically the best version of Asteroids ever made.  It came out several years ago as shareware, but just recently went through a price-drop to free.  More than just a trippy psychedelic clone, it's got a huge variety of enemies and hazards to fear, not to mention power-ups to exploit, all of which combine to turn each level into a free-form challenge that requires both fast reflexes and careful planning to defeat.  Each enemy also has its own musical sound effect when destroyed, and the combination of insane amounts of color and slightly chaotic but still ambient sound combines with the hectic action to become both soothing and tense at the same time.

For those not into visual overload, it's worth nothing that the trippy graphic effects can be turned off completely, or enhanced beyond all possible reason for those wanting to know just how many colors at once can squeeze into a pair of eyeballs.  Oddly enough, my high score was gotten while experimenting with the Liquid graphics setting.  I honestly have no idea how.

If free excellence isn't good enough news, the game's creator, Iain McLeod, has announced a sequel.  Spheres of Chaos 2008 is on the way, although there's no target month yet, and hopefully won't be renamed Spheres of Chaos 2009.  There's also a little note hiding all the way at the bottom of the front page of the web site asking if anyone is interested in helping with an Live Arcade port.  I'd love to play this on my tv, so if anyone's listening, drop Iain a line.  

Spheres of Chaos is available on PC, Linux, PS2 Linux, and even Risc OS.  Check it out, it will make your life better.

Apparently, doing a halfway-decent cover version is grounds for a cheap money-grab.

The Romantics licensed their song "What I Like About You" for a cover version in Guitar Hero Rocks the 80's, but apparently something went wrong somewhere along the way.  Wavegroup Sound, who have made all the cover versions of the songs in the Guitar Hero series, did their usual job of mimicking the sound of the original, and The Romantics feel that it "has infringed the group's right to its own image and likeness."

There's no issue here about whether or not Activision and Wavegroup Sound, both named in the lawsuit, acquired proper licensing for performing the cover version.  The paperwork is there and signed, and the respective companies were perfectly within their rights to include the song they paid for in the game.  At issue is how close the Wavegroup Sound version is to the original.  No, I don't get it either, but maybe this quote from The Romantics's attorney Troy Horton in the USA Today article can clear things up-  "We're all for good commerce. We just want to share in it."