THE CHZO MYTHOS

What makes a good film? Why, I would say editing and direction, for no film is good without a good lot of those. But, what makes a great film? Why, I would say an interesting plot and memorable characters.

And erm... why am I talking about this? Because the Chzo Mythos is not a film, or even a series of films.... It's a bunch of adventure games. BUT THEY ARE A BUNCH OF WOW ADVENTURE GAMES WHICH ARE BETTER THAN ANYTHING HOLLYWOOD HAS PUT OUT IN THE PAST TEN YEARS!

The Chzo Mythos is a tetralogy of games revolving around some strange, ancient, supernatural horror. It's your basic point-and-click (with the option/risk of dying, something quite strange in the genre) puzzle-solving, AGS-scripted affair but what sets it apart from other games is the sheer scope of its plot. The series spans many centuries and each successive addition manages to expand the plot more and more.

The entire thing kicks off in 5 Days A Stranger, where you play Trilby, a 'gentleman thief' who breaks into a house only to find that you can't break out of the house. Supernatural events ensue. It's a simple premise and the game has only around 10-15 rooms but Ben 'Yahtzee' Croshaw, the game developer/designer, manages to use each and every one of them so effectively, sooner or later you just get caught up in the whole thing and suddenly the little pixel blob graphics take on a life of their own and everything manages to become unnaturally spooky. The dialogue is witty and funny and Trilby, as the only one who keeps his head while everyone loses theirs (metaphorically), is a pretty endearing character. The gameplay is fantastic. The puzzles are just the right level of difficulty and the controls are smooth and suit a laptop's touchpad pretty well. All in all, it's a very, very enjoyable game with subtle nods to classic horror films here and there. What a perfect introduction to the world of adventure gaming! Ahhh.....

The 2nd installation, 7 Days A Skeptic, is where everything reaaaallly speeds up and takes off. This time the supernaturality is happening in... space! That's right! Space horror! A genre that has not been fully explored methinks (remember how good Solaris was? TARKOVSKY NOT SODERBERGH PLEASsseE) and a shame it is too. The inherent claustrophobia of being on a spaceship makes it the ultimate setting for TERRORIZATION BY A WELDER! Anyway, it's set around 4 centuries after 5 Days and you play a psychiatrist (Kris Kelvin much?) on a ship of DOOM. It's wonderful, it's magnificent, it's like Event Horizon done right! The puzzles are harder this time around and some of them border on headbanging. There are also really wicked moments of... DOOM. There are actually MANY instances in which you can die and in some sequences you even have to run and shoot, which feels weird in a point-and-click but serves to kind of up the DOOM factor (MOVE FASTER YOU PIXEL SON OF A BITCH) and makes the whole thing even scarier. Scary as hell, in fact. I was jumpy for two full hours after playing this. The controls are kind of fucked up for this one as they were probably optimized for mouse-play and none of the characters in this are even remotely as cool as Trilby. However, everything else is superior to the first. The story loses some of its humour but gains terror momentum fast.

The 3rd part of the series diverts from the usual 'blah blah days a blah blah' title-formula with a brand new fangled title called Trilby's Notes. Ahh... good old Trilby! How I love thee! Anyway, this time you get to play a more mature, less cavalier Trilby who has been recruited into some kind of special government agency investigating the occult. Set a couple of years after 5 Days, this one is to The Shining what 7 Days was to Event Horizon. With a new 'shadow realm' full of blood and guts and meat and scary dudes that you can phase in and out of (that makes for some really jumpy scream-out-loud moments) and the incorporation of a more text-based interface than its previous two counterparts, the puzzles are magnificently hard. Trilby's Notes is also, hands down, the freakiest game of the lot (unlocking doors with LIMBS???) and maybe the best of the lot. The story is fleshed out even more with significant nods to Hellraiser and the beginnings of the CHZO MYTHOS BACKSTORY start to drip in and it's really quite good.

The last of the tetralogy is 6 Days A Sacrifice and it's set smack dab in the center (chronologically) of 5 Days and 7 Days. 196 years on each side, if I'm not mistaken. Anyway, this time you play a severely injured building inspector. Definitely the most ambitious of the lot, this one tries to tie up all the loose ends in the previous three games and give it a satisfying, crunchy ending. There's a lot of time-travelling, a lot of flashbacks and even a sort-of sex scene. The plot becomes all twisted and a little philosophical (just a little) in a Hellraiser-meets-Donnie-Darko way and the puzzles are just mindbogglingly hard. Trilby also makes a re-appearance in this one and, although I won't spoil the plot for you, there is a HUGE nod to God-Emperor Of Dune here which I didn't quite enjoy because I love good ol good ol Trilby. This is the game where the series reaches for CLASSIC status and kind of gets there for awhile before falling off into the GREAT GAME pit.

There are also a couple of text-adventures that can be downloaded along with 6 Days that try to swell the story even more. They are also pretty good. If a little short. And painfully easy. They're worth it just for the story, really. It's a good story.

Anyway, THE CHZO MYTHOS is a bunch of games that beg to be played. And played chronologically. In a day. Taken separately, each game is a fun, well-made adventure game. Good games. Taken together, the whole thing becomes MASSIVE ENTERTAINMENT. GREAT game. There is such a heavily cinematic feel to all of it that you can't help feeling like you're watching a fantastic Hollywood horror film DONE RIGHT. Like The Exorcist or something. As written by Junji Ito. With Ewan McGregor as lead. It's a well-written, excellently directed story that you can really lose yourself in... for a day or so. Unless you absolutely refuse to check any walkthroughs, for in that case, my friend, YOU WILL GET STUCK. I guarantee you WILL get stuck and bang your head against the wall forever.

Whatever. All the games can be downloaded HERE and by God, you should download them RIGHT NOW. DOWNLOAD ALL AND PLAY NOW and donate the cash you're going to spend on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Redux Redux Redux OR WHATEVER to Ben Croshaw.

Nintendo DS Lite

My experience with gaming consoles began with the SNES ages ago but the first one I started properly playing regularly was the Sega Megadrive which provided me with hours upon hours of side-scroller fun. Later on, I began to get my side-scroller fix from a Nintendo Game Boy and my family bought a Sony Playstation for home and my six-hour-stretch RPG gaming began. Strangely enough, my gaming days ended when my brother bought a Sony Playstation 2. Something about it seemed too heavy for me to appreciate. Also, he put it in his room and it was (and is) a pain to go there to play.

I bought a Nintendo DS Lite a week or so ago and have hence been returned to the rabid gaming days of my youth. Funnily enough, the atmosphere it evoked was not so much the console gaming experience as it was my early computer gaming experience.

I have always been one for gameplay. Gameplay over all else! Graphics be dammed! I am capable of enjoying text-based games ten times more than the latest crappy PS3 release... I believe its in the Sony line that one most sees the fetishizing of technology over solid concepts. However, the Nintendo line, I feel, is all about gameplay.

The Nintendo DS Lite is a dual screen portable console with touch-screen capabilities. This is brilliantly incorporated into the gameplay, lending it a kind of 'hands on' feel that one just doesn't get with the other consoles. It also makes moving around a lot easier. One plays almost all games with a stylus and the fun one can have with this is almost unlimited. There's one game in particular that I keep on playing - ELITE BEAT AGENTS - which takes the basic DDR hit-the-right-buttons-at-the-right-time template and turns it into an amazingly addictive reflex-testing subconscious-evoking... thing.

I could go on and on about the games, the adventure titles are a throwback to my IF days, the plots are so solid and so interesting that you completely forgive the linearity of the game. There are also a lot of Serious Game titles to be found here, like Brain Age which 'activates your prefrontal cortex' daily with rapid math problems and Cooking Navi, which is basically an interactive cookbook with recipes by Japanese chefs from leading hotels. In a nutshell, the games are more tight than sprawling but there's plenty here to keep one occupied for hours.

And should that fail... there's always Homebrew.

Homebrew is the term used for programs and games whipped up by individuals for the DS. Because Nintendo keeps things open, with the right hardware, it's possible to load up your own home-made programs onto the DS. Some of these programs available online are pretty amazing as well. There's DSOrganize, which is a PDA-style program with a Calendar, To-do list, Web Browser and even IRC. Another one of note is NitroTracker which is a remarkably solid music tracker that utilizes the in-built mic to brilliant effect. There also has been a successful attempt at porting Linux over to the DS. Seriously, with the Wi-fi connectivity of the DS and the open-ness of its hardware and code, its only a matter of time before the DS gains the function of a rudimentary PDA.

Of course, being able to run Homebrew also means being able to run ROMs, the term popularly used to describe pirated games. Again, with the right hardware, getting new games is as easy as running a Google search and downloading the games into your device. Never again will you be stuck with one and only one game until you can save up to buy another one. With ROMs, you can play a new one everyday. For 24 hours. Before you have to purchase the original copy, you know, like the good citizen you are.

So, there you have it. The many reasons I bought the Nintendo DS and the many reasons why you should buy one too. Actually, ELITE BEAT AGENTS is already reason enough. But another one would be, if you have one, I'll give you my friend code and we can battle over Wi-fi.