The Field Marshal's New Year Honours List

Another year chalked up, and with it another batch of games. It must be pointed out that I haven't awarded a Bennett Medal this year because try as I might, I've been unable to think of a third game which has rocked my world in 2009. There have been some near-misses, but it has been a fallow year for AAA titles it seems.



The Bennett Cross
"... most conspicuous gameplay, or some daring or pre-eminent act of valour or self-sacrifice, or extreme devotion to entertainment in the presence of the enemy"

The Hunter

A game of which many gamers are probably unaware, and some of those who do know it may well be inclined to steer clear on the grounds that killing small, defenseless fluffy animals is mean and nasty, or something like that.
Brand awareness certainly hasn't been helped by financial troubles faced by the developers this year which apparently led them into a period of administration. Fortunately it's still running, and we can only hope that work continues to fully realise the game's potential.
But what about the game itself? Well, it's a relatively straightforward hunting game. You pick a weapon, you set out into a completely open and satisfyingly large island game reserve, and then you track and (hopefully) kill either deer, turkey, elk or coyote. Sounds simple, and it is, but that doesn't do justice to the amazing atmosphere of the game. The reserve itself is beautifully rendered, especially in the early morning as you trek across misty hillsides with the sun peaking through the trees. Despite the number of species available, game is few and far between and you can spend a large amount of time starting to wonder if there's anything there at all, until you hear the grunt of a big buck, or the startling whine of an elk bull, and then you're into the tracking stage. Some of the animals are very, very sensitive and getting close is the biggest challenge, which makes a kill even more nerve-wracking. Much as I like Serious Sam, The Hunter is no mindless run-and-gun. There are no airports full of civilians to mow down with your machine gun, no grenades or gunships or demons or waves of undead to fend off. It's not for everyone, but if you don't have any moral objections to the game, and can stand something a bit more laid-back which rewards patience over twitch skills, there's nothing better that I'm aware of.



The Bennett Service Order
"... acts of the greatest gameplay or of the most conspicuous entertainment in circumstances of extreme danger"

Dragon Age: Origins

I've put about 20 hours into this game so far, and it's telling me I'm 15% of the way through. I'm sure some twat power-leveler could have finished it by now but the point is there's so much to appreciate in Dragon Age that I'm really in no hurry to finish it. There are flaws, notably the combat which is awkward and old-fashioned, and I spend a lot of time wishing I could skip the dungeon crawls and get back to the story. And I could do without having to micro-manage all the party members. And your hero really ought to have recorded dialogue instead of standing there like a statue in every cutscene. But ultimately Bioware have taken the excellent story-telling mechanics of Mass Effect and fitted them to a dungeons and dragons adventure. The result is an enormously satisfying game, and it wouldn't do it justice to say it's a good way to pass the time until Mass Effect 2 appears.

Honourable Mentions
Aion was perhaps the biggest launch for me this year, so why isn't it in the big 3? It's fairly pretty, and flying is an interesting, if not particularly well-implemented gimmick, but really there's not much else to even say about it. It's the same old mechanics, a whole shit-load of grind, and the usual deluge of moronic cunts who show up wherever PvP rears its ugly head. It's not really bad, it's just not great.
Having just picked up Torchlight in the Steam winter sale, I'm enjoying it a lot as a sort of gentle alternative to Diablo. The pet is a nice touch, especially being able to send it back to town to sell all the crap while you're in a dungeon.
Overlord II was more of the same, and no worse for that. Burnout Paradise was ok, although much more arcade-orientated than the superior Test Drive Unlimited.

Dishonourable Mentions
Dead Space came out in 2008 I think, but since I only just got around to playing it, it's included here. Awful, awful, AWFUL controls, stupid third-person view and insipid story. HAWX could have been Strike Commander for 2009, but instead managed to be tedious shit with an awful external view mechanic that could have been designed by the Dead Space devs. FEAR 2 was a borderline good game, except that Monolith managed to make the same mistakes as the developers of the FEAR expansions and as a result Project Origin's story is shit. The action often misfires and the game ends up being a pale imitation of the original.

Thought for the Day: Bianca Beauchamp

Big old wonky fake boobs, and a penchant for wearing full-body condoms. Nice!

On the Subject of Dead Space

Keely Hazell. Yes, again.

Another day, another Steam sale. I picked up Dead Space because I've read a lot of glowing reviews, despite some early control issues. Not so many that I was convinced to buy it at full price, mind you.

Anyway I'm not impressed. It's essentially a third-person Doom 3. With really, really shitty controls. Even when you turn off the in-game vsync (and force it through the video card driver instead) it's still shit. Floaty, laggy, nasty, shit mouse control which is a combination of a crap port from the console version, combined with the idiotic notion that making the controls as painful as possible will increase the sense of "suspense". "You're in a heavy space suit, you're supposed to move slowly". Bollocks. Fucking with the controls does nothing but get in the way of the sense of immersion, and makes the game frustrating not in a "difficulty" sense, but in a "this game was designed by monkeys" sense.

And that goes double for the third-person camera. I'm neither for nor against third person in principle, but I'm absolutely against Dead Space's implementation. They've zoomed you right in so half the fucking screen is taken up by the exciting view of your own back. Because of course by making it so you can't see anything because you're always in your own way, it makes the game more exciting and scary. Twats. But then they've realised that if you're staring at your own spine, you can't see anything at all, so rather than move the camera back to a more reasonable distance, they had the bright idea of shifting it way over to the right. So now it's only the left half of the screen which is hidden behind your own character. I honestly didn't realise that the character in the opening cut-scene was supposed to be me, I assumed it was another spaceman sitting next to me on the ship. It really is dumb, and gives the (correct) impression that they're desperate to show off their character design at the expense of the game play.

Despite the rather poor first impressions I thought I'd get stuck in and see if the game at least offered a bit of atmosphere, some decent scares or whatever. Sadly it really is just Doom 3 so far. It has the seriously annoying habit of showcasing new enemies when you first encounter them, usually from the safety of a neighbouring room through an unbreakable window. "Hello! Look at me! I'm a scary new creature! See me slaughter someone of no significance, and then come in here after I'm gone and a few more like me will pop up". It's the same thing FEAR 2 did with the assassin, even though FEAR 1's assassins were handled much more effectively. In Dead Space it happens right from the start of the game. There's no "Aliens"-style attempt to leave the worst to your imagination, keeping you on your toes because you don't even know what's stalking you in the shadows. From the moment they're introduced, all the enemies are just a series of tedious monster-closets. You can easily tell when, and usually where they're going to pop up. A corridor with no exits at the far end, but a tempting item on the floor? I wonder what will happen when I pick it up. An objective located in a large room with vents on the walls and floor? Whatever do you think is going to happen? At least in "aim" mode you get a torch, so that's one improvement over Doom 3. Except the game isn't very dark to start with so you don't really need one.

It's relatively good-looking I suppose. In a generic, industrial spaceship corridors sort of way. The monsters are pretty bland and forgettable. There's the obvious gimmick of needing to shoot their limbs off if you want to kill them efficiently. It's contrived and stupid but it's a damned sight more acceptable than messing with the controls in order to "enhance the game play experience".

So consider me particularly underwhelmed. I'm very glad I didn't pay 3 or 4 times as much for it. I feel like I still paid 3 or 4 times more than it's worth. But fear not (literally), there will undoubtedly be a slew of sequels as they try and wring all the commercial potential out of the franchise.

Thought for the Day: Eva Wyrwal

While I marshal my thoughts on Aion and Dragon Age: Origins, amuse yourself to the exceptional talents of the Polish hottie.

On the Subject of Nerfs

Keeley Hazell

My disdain for competitive PvP in MMOs is well-documented but the sad fact is that left unchecked, or rather when whining little PvP fanboys are pandered to by developers, the side-effects of PvP can spread like a cancer into all parts of a game.

I've been playing a bit of Champions Online recently. I didn't really intend to, and was lured into it by someone who was more enthusiastic, but I thought it would pass the time until Aion, if nothing else. As it turns out it has been reasonably fun. I've seen a lot of criticism of the visuals but I think in practice they're perfectly serviceable. They tend to look pretty bland and uninspired in screen shots, but in-game, with plenty of NPCs wondering around and a fairly decent graphic look it works ok. The main downside so far (by which I mean the mid-teens) is the lack of any central storyline, or really any central hook at all. It is all pretty random "go here, talk to this guy who will give you some standard-issue MMO quests before sending you on to the next hub". I've heard some talk about you designing a nemesis or something later on, but there's no sign of that yet. So it's ok to dip into now and again, but I have my doubts with regard to its long-term success.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. By far the best part of CO is the character design section, which offers an enormous amount of variety. Consequently I have put together a few different characters, some intended to duo, some just fanciful solo fodder. One of the latter category was designed around the "ice" archetype, and at this point anyone with a working knowledge of CO and the various powers probably has a pretty good idea where this is leading.
Essentially there was one ice power in particular which was broken. Or buggy. Or "not working as intended". Since I'm not that bothered about CO I haven't been frequenting the forums or keeping up with the current state of the game, but even I could see this power was over-powered and I even predicted its eventual nerfing. Sure enough, that eventuality came to pass today, and as I confidently waded into to some encounters I suddenly discovered that my trusty "3" key didn't seem to be doing anything. At all. Where previously any enemies foolish enough to get up close and personal were cut down in seconds, now it was me staring at the all-to-familiar "defeated" notice. Of course I had a pretty good idea what had happened, and a quick visit to the forums confirmed it. There was the usual flood of "WTF??" and the accompanying "haha, you deserved to be nerfed" crap.

I have come to the conclusion that I no longer have the patience for nerfs. Either get that shit right the first time (and this particular "bug" wasn't something obscure or difficult to reproduce, it was a blatantly obvious) or suck it down and put up with it. Let's not forget that CO has undergone the usual rounds of closed and open beta tests and is now fully open for business. I will happily accept skill adjustments and fixes during the beta period, because that's what beta testing is for. But now I'm paying to play a character, I'm getting into the swing of it and, dare I say it, enjoying myself, when some ham-fisted dev pulls out the nerf bat and starts swinging. The fact that I could solo that character was a large part of the appeal. The fact is I am no longer enjoying playing that character. To say I would quit the game because of that one nerf would be going too far, but on the other hand that one nerf is also symptomatic of a certain attitude on the part of the developers which doesn't bode well for the future.

The argument is, of course, that the power was broken and needed to be fixed. Even ignoring the fact they only just got around to "fixing" it today, why exactly did it need to be fixed at all? Because of fucking PvP, that's why. Some whiny little bitch took a beating at the hands of someone running an ice build and threw a hissy fit. In fact it was probably a lot of whiny little bitches.
Ignoring PvP, as every right-thinking individual would, why should skills be nerfed in PvE? There's no real reason. After all, despite what some retards claim, PvE is not a competition. What do you care if someone else's character has an easier time than yours? For one thing there's nothing stopping you from adopting their build, and for another it's not like that other person would have an easier time than you playing the build you chose. The notion that it's "not fair" that ice builds might have a super-power (a superhero with a superpower? whatever next?) is just fucking idiotic.

I'm well used to nerfs, having spent several years at the mercy of A-Net's relentless nerf bat. In that time I observed another downside to nerfing, which is that rather than creating a "level playing field" for all the classes, what really happens is the people who get in early enough take advantage of the "exploits" or unbalanced skills or whatever you want to call them and make out like bandits through farming or similar. Then the hammer comes down and suddenly no one else gets that same opportunity. At the height of Guild Wars' success, the super-rich players were the ones who had been around for the infamous farming runs which have long since perished at the over-zealous expense of "balance".

And it always does seem to be over-zealous. Developers never simply "tone down" unbalanced skills, leaving them with some usefulness but without being ridiculous. Instead they tend to crush them into worthless shadows of their former selves. This is what appears to have happened to Frozen Footsteps.

As I have probably pointed out in the past but have no fear of repeating, class balance isn't just a myth, it's something which shouldn't even be pursued. The whole point of having classes in the first place is to offer variety, so to go on to reduce that variety with the apparent aim of making any differences purely cosmetic is backward in the extreme. Of course the PvP brigade don't see it that way, but then you should simply have one and only one PvP class and be done with it. The notion of sharing game play mechanics between PvP and PvE is deeply flawed. Even A-Net approached that same conclusion when they eventually had the balls to give skills separate PvP and PvE descriptions.

Ultimately, after a customary period of loud mourning, players move on, work around the new, gaping holes in their skill bars (and in CO, filling up your skill bar seems to be a very slow process) and start whining about the next flavour-of-the-week build which is currently dominating PvP. I, on the other hand, am simply no longer interested in re-learning a character which I had developed around skills I was comfortable using and which have subsequently been pulled out from under me. So goodbye to my ice robot, and probably CO. It was an interesting diversion, but if you're going to continue to suck the cocks of PvP players at the expense of my game play, you'll be doing it without my subscription.

On the Subject of id

Christina Hendricks

So id Software has been bought by some big company bla bla boring shite. The news was met with a mixture of predictable end-of-the-world hand-wringing, but also with a fair amount of "yeah, whatever", shrugs.

Personally, I don't think id has done anything worth celebrating since Doom. Doom 1, that is, before the endless "Ultimate Doom", "Final Doom", "Doom 2" or especially "Doom 3" dead horse-beating. I'm just about willing to allow Quake 2 on the grounds that although I never played it, it tends to be fairly highly regarded. And it can't be much worse than Quake 1.
Essentially id have built a business around releasing engine tech demos poorly-disguised as games. Every big new release tends to accompany a new "id Tech" release, and then the various franchises are farmed out for some in-between filler games like Quake 4. The problem seems to be that while co-founder John Carmack is one of the undisputed legends of game engine development, id don't seem to have anyone working on the design side who operates at anywhere near the same level. I was especially amused to read the reports of John Romero's comments regarding the recent buy-out. Romero, who was notoriously drunk on his own ego when he quit id, and who went on to do nothing even remotely noteworthy. Unless you include projects that were noteworthy for being a big pile of shit, that is. Bit bitter are we, Johnny boy?

Doom 3 was the last big id release, and that's nearly 5 years old now. And it was tedious, repetitive, scripted, monster-closet-filled, pitch-black, no-flashlight-while-your-gun's-drawn, crap AI wank. The id fans loved it because it was called Doom and had the id logo on the box. Everyone else thought it was shit, but shit rendered by a nice engine.

The biggest issue I've had with id games, and it goes way back to the original Dooms, is their stuck-up, holier-than-thou attitude. They have an annoying habit of believing that only they know how to make good shooters, that only they make "serious" games for "serious" gamers, that everything else is just trivial nonsense and that if you disagree, the problem is with you, not their games. id games are Serious Business.
In fact while they've been innovative and influencial when it comes to engine technology and online gaming in particular, id games tend to suffer from a severe lack of creative inspiration. Their response to such criticism was basically Quake 3, which doesn't require creativity, or atmosphere, or a story, or characters, or immersive environments, because it's simply designed as a theatre in which Serious Gamers can waggle their cocks at each other to determine who has the biggest. Or least small, at any rate.

So what's on the horizon? Naturally the fans are salivating over the forthcoming Doom 4, because it's called Doom and has the id logo on the box. It will of course be shit. Yet another iteration of the same old, same old. More space marine fighting through hellish demons. So that will be exciting. But if the hundreth sequel of a series which didn't have the staying power to justify any at all isn't enough, they've actually summoned up the energy to create a whole new property. Unfortunately Rage looks, if anything, even more derivative and bland and boring than Doom. Mad Max meets Dune, or some shit like that. It'll be tiresome corridor shooting broken up by some pointless driving sequences. But it'll have the id logo on the box.
Not to mention both Doom 4 and Rage, by way of id Tech 5, will be multi-platform releases which means they will inevitably suffer from the usual compromises to pacing and AI that always accompany console shooters. It will be interesting to see how the fans react to that, probably they will just claim that since it's id, this is how shooters are supposed to play and if you disagree you just don't "get it".
But they utilise megatexturing, and that has "mega" in it, so it must be good.

On the Subject of Catching Up

Julie Soete

Now that I've got the girly pics out of my system, it's time to see what your esteemed Field Marshal has been up recently.

The Hunter

Still going strong, this one. It has reverted to full-on microtransactions now, with various new weapons and other bits and pieces being rolled out. At its heart is still the immensely immersive and surprisingly playable thinking-man's shooter it has always been. Rain has been re-implemented after early versions tended to crash the game, but now that I think about it I haven't had a crash in a long time. There's also a lot of statistics feedback, although I still don't quite get the correlation between an animal's score and what I see in-game, it seems a bit random.
Looking forward to them opening up the big island some time in the future.

Tom Clancy's HAWX

I finally got back into this after losing interest early on. Unfortunately I can't claim to have had some sort of revelatory experience but at least I've finished it now, and so I can move on to more interesting things.
It tries terribly hard to offer an involving storyline, but after the first couple of missions I found I was simply skipping all the briefings. They're not important, you just end up shooting at anything you can lock onto really. My biggest complaint, and probably a lot of people's, is still the shitty "assistance off" mode. Fortunately I found I could complete the game on "normal" difficulty without even having to use it. No doubt phags will immediately switch to the harder settings, and I can imagine dogfights might become quite painful, and possibly even impossible without it. It's so dumb though, all they have to do is allow for proper breaking and stalls from the cockpit views and it would be all good. I stand by my previous suspicion that they did it both to prevent the game being too easy (simpler to cripple the controls than develop better AI) and to show off the visuals.
Speaking of visuals, I wasn't exactly blown away. The ground detail in particular is shit. The game tends to look best during some of the big dogfights over large cities, where you're flying through multiple missile smoke trails illuminated by dawn/dusk sunlight. In the countryside/desert missions it's decidedly less impressive. In DX10 mode (which didn't even work on the Steam version for a long time) at least there's a slightly better sense of atmosphere.
So overall the game is fairly mediocre. The storyline aspects don't hold a candle to Strike Commander, it's a fairly straightforward arcade shooter with annoying control mechanics, and the graphics aren't all that great.

Cryostatis

Picked this up for free via an EVGA offer. In fact I had forgotten I had it until just now when I was trying to remember if there was anything else I had played recently. Not that I've played much, but so far my impressions are that the frame rates are bit low given the visual quality it offers. I'll try and remember to have another go and see if the actual game is any good.

Coming Soon

Overlord II should be a fun distraction if it's anything like the first. ARMA 2 could be a good tactical war shooter, but I'll probably wait until the price has dropped on Steam for that one. I might give the forthcoming free-to-play version of DDO a go, despite not having the most favourable recollections of the initial release. I've got a few more MMOs under my belt now, though, so perhaps it'll have something to offer.

Thought for the Evening: Maria Ozawa

Got 99 problems, but a lack of pictures of Maria Ozawa ain't one.

Thought for Later in the Day: Dee

Off of the (apparently) dead "puredee.com". She's (most often) blonde, she has a slightly nasty boob job, and I've tried to spare you the ones where she looks like a cheap tranny, but don't let any of that put you off.
I wonder whether her retirement was prompted by getting knocked up, murdered by a trucker, or another gender realignment op.

Thought for the Day: Kyla Cole

Long overdue, I know.

On the Subject of Graphics

Kelly Brook

I was unfortunate enough to stumble across this painful example of "journalism" on the otherwise quite respectable bit-tech.net. It's (thankfully) short, but in order to save you from wasting even the smallest amount of time reading what is in reality a bunch of ignorant, idiotic wank, let me distill some of the "best" bits.

"Crysis with all the sauce turned on looks just as good as Left 4 Dead"

What a dick. Define "good". L4D has graphics which are appropriate given what it's trying to achieve. Heaving hordes of zombies are more important than rich environments. Indeed, the sparsity and starkness of L4D lends to it's post-apocalyptic feel. Crysis, on the other hand, attempts to render a rich, lush tropical environment with a much smaller density of NPCs. Similarly, WoW is quite openly designed to run on as many machines as possible, and looks very basic as a result. Do the X million WoW players care? Do they fuck. L4D would arguably not benefit much from running on CryEngine 2. Crysis, on the other hand, would be impossible to build on Source. The fact that someone compares the two demonstrates a tragic ignorance of graphical effects.

"how good a game looks isn’t about how technical the graphics are"

This is really the same point, and again relies on the tiresomely ambiguous use of the word "good". How "realistic" a game looks IS dependent on the lighting pipeline supported by the engine. How "good" it looks is a meaningless, subjective metric. This is just another example of people not understanding the difference between graphical complexity and art design, or at the very least not appreciating that a more sophisticated engine can only increase the options available to designers, while no amount of clever design will achieve realism beyond the capabilities of the engine technology, even if it can disguise its shortcomings.

"I really hope that graphics advancements slow down some and gives the hardware a chance to catch up"

What a fucking retard. How about hardware advancements speed up to enable better graphical effects? Let's put the brakes on progress just so you fucking morons who can't afford a decent machine can run "high end" games on your piece of shit PCs. These are the same sort of people who still claim Crysis is "poorly coded" to this day, despite a) having no experience of graphics programming, and b) the fact that nothing has been released since Crysis that is anywhere near as visually complex.
Anyone with a clue knows that video card technology has been sadly stagnant for the last couple of years, while nvidia sat on their thumbs waiting for amd to catch up. The 9x00 series in particular didn't deserve to see the light of day, and nvidia are still reguritating three year-old tech in the form of the GTX250. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and blame the global economic fiasco. The fact is still that a combination of weak tech and the increasing trend towards porting games from aging console hardware to the PC are holding back much-needed advances in graphics.

If Crysis is indeed the pinnacle of PC graphics then in a few years or maybe less than that, we’ll be able play our games at the native resolution of a 30in display with all settings on max using mid-range hardware

This is such a meaningless statement. There are plenty of games right now which will run perfectly well at 2560x1600. Some of them even look good. This quote borders dangerously on a "we will have photorealism in X years" prediction. Crysis is a triumph of graphics programming on current hardware, but it is a long way from photoreal. And it's not just about being able to push enough pixels to be able to run it at a high resolution. I'm sure even Crytek's own developers would be happy to point out the many approximations and cheats they had to employ in order to squeeze every last frame-per-second out of the engine, at the expense of realism. Did you really mistake the Koreans in Crysis for real people? Or even one of the trees and bushes for real trees and bushes? The graphics might be "sufficient", they might be "impressive", but they're by no means photoreal, in the same way that you would never in a million years confuse that Final Fantasy film with live action. This quote is just more whining from someone who can't afford a decent PC and who thinks the whole games industry should just spin it's wheels churning out second-rate, 5 year-old visuals just so that they run well on his shit PC.

Of course the author is simply trying to align his own worthless opinion with that of industry luminary Doug Lombardi in order to look cool and connected. Unfortunately he's also misunderstanding the issue. There are other factors involved when it comes to game graphics, most importantly cost. Let's say Crysis is 80% realistic. I just made that up, but the point is that the last 20% of realism would cost a disproportionate amount to achieve, even ignoring the fact that it would be nowhere near possible on existing hardware. The sheer amount of data that would be required would demand so many modellers, texture painters, animators and level designers that it's simply not realistic to expect genuinely photoreal games. Consider the enormous budgets consumed by current AAA titles, and then look at what they achieve technically. Yes, there are the constraints of the hardware to consider, but bear in mind that modern games also seem to be shrinking in terms of hours of game play.

Another issue that sometimes pops up during discussions of game graphics is that of ray tracing. It is currently being waved around as some sort of magical technology that will single-handedly make all games photoreal, if we can only get hardware that can process it in real time.
Unfortunately this is simply not true. The fact is, there are some effects which can be achieved more effectively, or more accurately, by ray tracing, but it also comes with a lot of it's own limitations, and not just when it comes to speed. Even if the hardware was available, there would be no reason to have an engine ray trace everything all the time, it's just not necessary. It's not really the simple choice of "ray tracing vs. rasterisation" which is often described. Visual effects artists in film or television don't ray trace everything even though they don't suffer from the limitation of having to render a frame in 1/60th of a second. Because it doesn't add anything to the visual quality in a lot of cases. Of course if you're dealing with pretty, glossy reflections in complex surfaces there are few alternatives. Not to mention other applications like shadowing, occlusion and colour-bleeding, although in those cases there are alternatives, and alternatives which often produce superior results. The point is it's not an "either, or" situation, and while it would be nice to have access to real-time ray tracing functionality, don't expect it to suddenly make all your games photoreal. Ray tracing won't improve your models, your textures or your animation.

On the Subject of PHaGS

Nonami Takizawa

This was originally going to feature my observations on the subject of monitor input lag, but it quickly arrived at broader territory as we will see in due course. Monitor input lag, essentially the time delay between a monitor receiving an image from the computer and making that image visible to the user, has become the new yardstick for LCD monitors. What amuses me about it is the way wannabe hardcore gamers will pour scorn on a monitor that has been demonstrated, on some random website of no repute, to have a high lag when the truth is 90% of those people probably couldn't even tell the difference in practice. Of course I understand that there is variation in lag, and that less lag is better, but I also understand that a lot of the people who are the most critical and "discerning" are simply deluding themselves that they're good enough gamers to even notice the difference. They want to be seen to reject higher-lag monitors because they see it as an indication of their own gaming prowess.
Of course, by "prowess" I'm really referring to a player's reaction times in FPSes, which is the only genre where a few milliseconds of lag are even an issue. Similarly, when the armchair critics denounce a monitor as being "bad for gaming", they really mean "bad for pro-level FPS gaming", which in turn really means "fine for 99% of people".
It is often easy to identify the pretenders, as their grasp of the technical issues involved is often slight, to say the least. Look out for people claiming that a monitor demonstrated more input lag in one game than another, for example.

It is what I'm going to call Pseudo Hardcore Gamer Syndrome, at least until I think of a catchier title. People who aren't really "all that" but who want to believe they are, and certainly want other people to believe they are, and so adopt the affectations of legitimate top-tier (FPS) gamers as a substitute for genuine ability. I haven't just invented this demographic, as evidenced by the huge variety of "Fatal1ty"-branded gaming products available, for example. Not that PHaGS sufferers (it's almost like I worked backwards from the acronym) would be seen dead with a Fatal1ty mouse/keyboard/psu/cock ring, because those products aren't hardcore enough for the true pros.

Left 4 Dead was, and still is, a tremendous example of PHaGS in action. I've pointed out in the past that pretty much 100% of L4D players think they are better at the game than everyone else, and will often bemoan the quality of random players to a generally sympathetic audience who don't realise that they are, in reality, criticising each other. The other members of that group you just played with who were "poor players" on account of the fact that they wouldn't follow your instructions without question, are most likely busy lamenting your own deficiencies.

The general derision for Far Cry 2 was no doubt in part due it not being just another vacuous corridor shooter designed for the Quake 3 crowd. The common criticisms concerned issues which got in the way of the PHaGS approach of powering through any FPS as quickly as possible so that the sufferer can jump on the nearest forum and announce how short the game was, and especially how easy it was, in an attempt to demonstrate their advanced gamer status.

Of course PHaGS doesn't only affect FPS players. MMOs are another breeding ground for players who want to be seen as better than they really are. Unfortunately in MMOs, monitor input lag is hardly an issue because the games are at the mercy of much higher network lag, nor do pro-branded products like mice, keyboards or anal beads offer any real game play advantages. Fortunately there are plenty of other avenues in which to channel your hardcore pretensions. Historically, MMOs have substituted time played for actual skill, and that will suit the common PHaGS sufferer just fine, since they are commonly ne'er do wells who are in a position to spend an excessive amount of time in-game. There is also the classic issue of beta "testing", because of course only the best players will get into a beta. Or at least so the people in the beta would like to believe. Beyond that, MMOs are largely all about the gear, which at the high end is usually a function of time played, so that's naturally compatible with the PHaGS ethos.

Is there a cure for PHaGS? Perhaps "growing up" might be an effective remedy. There is, however, a danger that once the sufferer has acquired the symptoms, time might further reinforce the delusional state. After all, if you've been playing MMOs since Ultima Online, you must be an exceptional player, right? There's also a serious risk of contagion, as demonstrated (appropriately enough) by L4D. As more and more players accumulate more and more hours played in games which bring them into contact with existing sufferers, the chances of new players developing the symptoms will increase accordingly. It's also important to recognise the dangerous feedback that can occur as the infected population has arguably already grown to the point of becoming a profitable marketing demographic for game developers. Thus more games will be developed which feed on the weaknesses of current sufferers in addition to attracting new and susceptible players, further escalating the problem. It is not inconceivable that the only people who will escape the epidemic are those who have a natural resistance to infection and lack the overall inadequacy and weakness of those people who are most likely to become victims of this ruthless disease.

On the Subject of The Hunter

Some Random Model

I had never heard of The Hunter until it popped up on a forum recently. It was being compared with Crysis, at least graphically, and I have to admit that initially I scoffed at what seemed to be some crappy redneck hunting game. Look at those shitty avatars! Crysis?? Yeah, right.

But first things first. Subsequent online discussions about the game have tended to disintegrate into impassioned, if pointless, arguments about the nature of hunting in general. Mindless bloodlust or sensible population control? A means to provide food or a means to provide wall trophies? I have no interest in hunting in real life. It's difficult to be impressed by someone dropping a deer at 200m using a rifle. I'd be impressed if the hunters took them down bare-handed. Or if the deer could shoot back. Don't confuse that with me giving a fuck about poor, innocent animals, though, because I don't. Hunting simply doesn't appeal, in the same way that I have no interest in opera or knitting.

Still, the trailer looked pretty, and the idea of a more leisurely-paced game was attractive, and best of all the basic game is free.

It doesn't look as advanced as Crysis, let's settle that one right away. The graphics reminded me more of Stalker, which isn't a criticism, just an observation. On the other hand the island reserve is nice and big (and seamless) and the forest nice and dense. Well, it's nice from an aesthetic point of view, not so much when you're trying to spot a bastard deer. There's a dynamic day/night, or rather dawn/dusk cycle, and just like in Far Cry 2 the game can look stunning in the morning and evening. In full daylight it can be a bit harsh, a bit electric green, but even then there are cloud shadows rolling across the hills and grass. Some of the meadows especially are gorgeous. And it runs pretty well too, although I've had a couple of crashes. Overall, far more impressive than I was expecting.

Then there's the game play. It should be understood that this is no run-and-gun FPS. In fact there's not much gunning at all, and you're not going to get very far if you run (in either sense; the run speed isn't exactly a sprint, and any deer will hear you coming a mile off). It's barely a walk-and-gun, more like a crouch-and-then-prone-and-then-spot-and-maybe-gun-if-you're-lucky. It's a much more measured, thoughtful experience which will immediately alienate all the "hardcore" online FPS fans and for that alone it deserves respect. It turns out that for me at least, and naturally my opinion is the correct one, The Hunter is enormously immersive. It's amazing how much time you can spend in it, simply tracking and exploring and perhaps spotting the odd animal along the way. You can sit in a watchtower (or whatever they're called in hunting circles), camp your favourite meadow or beach or forest clearing. Well, ok, there aren't that many options for things to do, but that makes it all the more impressive that it's such a compelling game. There's the carrot-and-stick element of "if I just follow this next track...", or "if I just wait here a little longer...".

It's not perfect, but then no game is. There's a slightly bizarre, and incredibly annoying 4 hour / 10km limit before it kicks you back to the hunting lodge. That might seem like plenty of time/distance, but when it kicks in while you're trying to track a wounded deer like it has done for me twice this week, it couldn't be more frustrating. According to some posts on the forums it is done to prevent server overloading or some such rubbish. No one seems to know why they can't let you "rest" in the same position rather than forcing you to retrace several kilometres of slow jogging, by which time the tracks are long gone.

Not being a real hunter I can't comment on the realism of the animal AI. The deer cetainly seem to be verrrrry sensitive, and I've often approached at what I thought was a very restrained pace only to see the deer bouncing off over the horizon. It wasn't until I figured out how important wind direction is, and located the smoke bottle in the inventory, that I started making progress. It makes a close encounter quite nerve-wracking, and it requires a lot of patience to get that perfect shot. Or luck.

Anyway, in terms of value for money it's unrivalled, and that aside it's the best game I'm played so far this year. Of course it's early days, but The Hunter will certainly keep me occupied while I wait for Burnout Paradise to download on Steam (finally!).

On the Subject of HAWX

Holly Madison

How the fuck could anyone mistake Tom Clancy's HAWX for a proper, realistic flight sim? The fact that it's a multi-format release should be enough to tell you it's an arcade game, and if there's any doubt beyond that then a quick look at any of the teasers and trailers should firmly put the matter to rest.

And yet since the release of the PC demo, I'm seeing endless forum posts from people whining that the flight model is unrealistic, or the unlimited ammo and fuel is unrealistic, or it's not as realistic as Falcon 4 or Lock-On - Modern Air Combat or whatever other chin-stroking flight sim they can think of.

It's like complaining that Mario Kart isn't realistic. It's an arcade game. It's about action, pretty pictures and blowing stuff up. It's like some people saw a picture of an aeroplane and immediately started dusting off their joystick/thrust/pedal combos.

Anyway, some people's idiotic presumptions aside, I was quite enjoying the PC demo. For a while. But like virtually everyone else who's tried it, the out-of-cockpit "assistance off" mode started to wear thin quite quickly. I was saddened to see a developer response to the issue,

Our "Assistance OFF" mode comes with a completely different gameplay style than the one we have been used to until now in other flight combat games. The dogfight camera is the only camera that can support that type of gameplay. Here are just a few of the features we wanted to implement in the "Assistance OFF" mode, which could only be obtained through the "Dogfight camera":

• See both your target and your own aircraft at the same time, to anticipate and quickly react to your opponent's moves.
• See incoming missiles as they approach your aircraft, so you can assess impact time and calculate exactly when you need to react.
• See every move that your plane makes, this being the only way to execute extreme maneuvers, never seen before in other flight combat games.

This is why the dogfight camera is and will remain the only camera available when playing in "Assistance OFF" mode. This camera is at the core of the game design, and an essential part to create the game experience.

What a load of absolute wank. What they actually mean is the game would be too easy if you had a proper cockpit (or even chase) view in assistance off mode, so they've added artificial difficulty by forcing you to use a needlessly disorientating camera. The first two "reasons" they give are essentially the same, but the third doesn't even make sense. The 3rd-person view is "the only way to execute extreme maneuvers"? Hitting brake+up elevators at the same time, which seems to be the full extent of the game's "extreme maneuvers", has nothing to do with the camera. The fact is that if you were in a first-person view, you'd be able to judge when to complete the move much more easily than you can with the current camera.

Of course a first-person view wouldn't show off their fancy graphics as well.

And the game seems to be quite pretty, at least from high-altitude. At ground level the simple box buildings look a bit... boxy. The clouds are sweet, though. Another side effect of the "not a proper sim"-ness is that there are limits to the active flight zone. Admittedly it takes a little while to reach them, but when you do you'll find a very sci-fi force field blocking any further exploration.

I thought it felt a bit like Strike Commander, a classic action-oriented, non-sim flight sim. It was probably that nostalgia that led me to preorder on Steam. However, having spent a little more time with the demo, and after discovering that the assistance off camera is apparently here to stay, I'm wondering if I should have bothered.

On the Subject of FEAR 2

Monica Bellucci

I've been looking forward to this one. The original FEAR was the Crysis of its day, pretty much impossible to run at max detail on anything available at the time. It might have been a stunningly blatant Ring rip-off, but it had its fair share of shocks, and an oppressively creepy atmosphere punctuated by frantic firefights with impressive AI opponents.

Perhaps my favourite aspect of that game was the ending. Rather than winding up with some tedious boss character, the sort where you think "why didn't that thing just go out and kill everything itself rather than wasting time with all this tech company conspiracy bollocks?", F1's finale was surprisingly melancholy. Well, until the nuclear explosion.

It was slightly tricky to keep track of F1's storyline, scattered as it was between discarded Armacham laptops and voicemails. But at least there was a story, unlike Valve's piss-poor attempts to obfuscate Half-Life 2. Of course if you were following the story it was just Ring without the video tapes. And a high-tech underground vault instead of a well.

But fast-forward past all the non-Monolith-developed expansions and "Project Origin" name wrangling, and now there's a proper, official sequel.

Let's get the bad things out of the way, although they will probably be more numerous than the positives. Which isn't to say they outweigh them, however.

• What idiot thought it would be a good idea to letterbox the PC version to 16x9, when most monitors are 16x10? The same idiot that thought it would be more "cinematic" if they added, or rather forced you to put up with...
• ...film grain. And no option to turn it off. Maybe in the rumoured patch. Note to developers: film grain doesn't make you feel like you're in the game, it makes you feeling like you're watching someone else play it. On shitty 8mm film.
• Autosave. Fair enough, but there's no way to manually save the game. You have to rely on the predefined chapters if you want to replay a section of the game.
  
• Achievements. Not really a "bad thing" in themselves, rather just another symptom of the overall consolitis.

With that of the way, it's time to consider the things F2 does right. It looks very nice, in the same clean, industrial style of the first game. It also runs very well, and I suppose that's largely due to it being console-friendly.

One point which I feel deserves special mention, is that the game has not crashed once, so far. It's sad that that should be the exception rather than the rule, but it has been absolutely bug-free in the time I've spent playing. Top marks.

The story is... hmmm... well, Monolith have attempted to distance themselves from the 3rd-party FEAR expansions, but I don't feel they achieved anything remarkably different with this game. I only played Extraction Point and not the widely-panned Perseus Mandate, but I did find F2 to be a little less subtle, and a little more in-your-face than the first game. There are many points in F1 where not a lot happens, except for the tension being cranked up. F2 tends to throw as much as it can at you, all the time. Firefight followed by Alma vision followed by firefight followed by specters followed by firefight in a mech followed by etc etc.

One interesting comparison is provided courtesy of the stealthy assassin bad guys. In the first game they appear (in narrative terms) without warning. You're in yet another office environment when suddenly there are Predator-style refractive things jumping around at amazing speed. When they appear in F2, it's after seeing one from a safe distance, shortly followed by a special appearance in a cutscene. So it's not like you're not ready for them. That, and they're a lot easier to spot, even if they feature more sophisticated, pretty rendering. The end result is that they really become just another foe rather than the "oh shit, it's an assassin" moments of the first game (at least until you figured out that slide-kicks would one-shot them).

In general the gameplay felt very much like Half-Life 2 in the sense that you're constantly moving forward, never sticking around in any one location for any time. I suppose the first game was like that too, and maybe I've just been spoilt by Far Cry 2. It's not really a complaint, just an observation. It also feels like a waste, because there are some very nice environments in F2, not to mention 11GB of game data, which seems like a lot for what turned out to be a roughly 8 hour game for me. So yes, it was too short. By roughly a factor of 2.

As for the ending, well, it was ok I suppose. There is what really amounts to a boss encounter unfortunately, although it's a boss encounter crossed with the stupid bit at the end of Far Cry 2 where you end up fighting your "buddies". So that was less than ideal. The conclusion to the story itself could have been better, too. The idea of your character ending up trapped with Alma in her private hell is good, but they had to spoil it with the ridiculous psychic rape and talking foetus. Yeah, it's pretty much as bad as it sounds. No subtle melancholy for F2, that's for sure.

Still, the firefights were good enough, if no different to the first game. The frights were a little less effective, maybe thanks to (over-)familiarity with most of the tricks in Monolith's big book of scares. There were some good bits, although not much beyond what was in the demo.

One thing that I found disappointing was the Wade Elementary section. There's lots of intel lying around to tell you about the testing that's been performed on the little kiddie-winks, how they were split into different groups and ultimately how there's a huge underground testing facility beneath the school. That's all great, but I kept waiting for the "scary freaky kids" to show up and provide a landmark gaming moment. Unfortunately they never did, and it all just turned out to be backstory for how Armacham were trying to find potential candidates for project Harbinger, which is essentially how your own character fits into the situation.
Definitely a missed opportunity there, Monolith. You know where to find me if you need some tips for FEAR 3.

Thought for the Day: Veronika Zemanova Megapost

I really didn't intend for this one to be a megapost. "12 will do", I thought to myself. But you know how it goes when it comes to pictures of attractive women with big tits, there's no such thing as "enough".

On the Subject of Mass Effect

Bar Rafaeli

Mass Effect is an odd game in hindsight. I really enjoyed playing it, but now that I'm looking back on it I find it hard to pinpoint what exactly made it compelling. The combat is awkward, with it's over-the-shoulder 3rd person view, team orders that I rarely used and which were pretty frustrating when I did and character skills which I hardly ever bothered with. Graphically the game veers between impressive and fairly lame. The characters are done well, some of the environments are good, but then you get dumped onto a planet in the little tank thing and suddenly it's like playing something out of the 90s.

Really, it comes down to the storytelling. The story itself may be fairly standard sci-fi wank involving ever-popular robotic species and ancient civilisations, but it's told in a very engaging, and very polished style. The voice acting in particular is first-rate, probably the best I've encountered (which isn't really saying much). If you don't stray from the primary missions then it has a great deal of page-turning appeal.

It's not perfect, and some of the supporting characters veer from bland to annoying. Eventually I was longing for a dialogue option that would let me shoot the human woman who you pick up at the start of the game in the head. Also you know, deep down, that the game isn't going to allow you to do the "wrong" thing, so while it can be fun to act like a bastard and crank up your "renegade" status, it doesn't really change anything. I'm not even sure what the point of the paragon and renegade tracks was, I think I've read you get some special ability that's activated by them or something, but I ended the game at about 50% on both, with no obvious impact on my character.

Another aspect of the game which could use some serious work is the side missions. They're useful for bumping up your level and for kitting out yourself and your team-mates, but there are only about 3 models of "dungeon" in the whole game; a "mine" dungeon, a "research" dungeon and a "warehouse" dungeon. Oh and I suppose there's a "spaceship" dungeon for the relatively rare boarding missions. But in each case the layout is identical each time that location appears. And they're very small, taking all of 5 minutes to clear.
Fortunately there's more variety in the locations visited in the primary missions.

The character design interface could do with some work, too. Assuming you bother to customise your character, it has an irritating habit of producing faces which look fine in the close-up view within the design interface, but which go on to look fucking awful in the actual game. Mostly it's the camera's short focal length, which gives the image a slightly fish-eye effect which isn't present in cutscenes. So you end up having to put the eyes artificially far apart to make them look right in the game. Also I found it virtually impossible to make a decent-looking female character. Someone needs to put some R&D into proper hair systems for games, because the sculpted plastic look that's so common in RPGs is overdue for a next-gen update.

The fact that there's a lot (and I mean a lot) of dialogue to plough through might seem like a bad thing, but I found myself exploring all of the branches wherever possible. The downside is that it hurts the game's replay potential. There may be a fair variety of classes to choose from, but the thought of having to sit through all the interminable chat again really puts me off. It was fun the first time, but now I know what everyone's got to say, what's in it for me?

Perhaps that's why I find the game slightly difficult to classify now. I was keen to get back into it at every possible opportunity to find out what happens next, but now that I know what happens next, I really have little motivation to do it again. Maybe I'll wait a while, and then choose a class that's significantly different from the tank I played this time. I ended up fairly overpowered really and my team-mates contributed very little to the success of the missions, which is perhaps why I didn't need to bother with the team controls. There were occasions where both my team-mates were dead (never permanently) and I'd go on to clear the area single-handed before returning to resurrect them. I might as well have not had team-mates, except that they're often necessary for cutscenes.

So overall, a polished, fun game. Might be one to pick up cheap given it's limited replay value but still definitely worth a first run.

On the Subject of Janeane Garofalo

So 24 season one thousand or whatever has started, and even though it hasn't had that many thoroughly good seasons it's usually a reasonable way to pass the time. But one question must be on the lips of anyone who has been watching this year:

What the fuck has happened to Janeane Garofalo's face?

Janeane from the good old days. Lest we forget.

Used to be she was a worthy piece of totty, albeit one claimed by chin-stroking comedy pundits as some sort of thinking man's pinup. Even though she generally peddles a cheap, Americanised, smug sarcasm and despite flirting with a slightly adolescent, wacky, sub-goth style she has a somewhat adorable, cuddly quality. Or at least she used to, before she went on The Steve Jobs Diet.

Janeane: the 2009 edition. WTF?

That, and she looks like she's been hit repeatedly in the face with a brick.

I was sitting here, idly watching when I saw some random supporting actress and thought to myself "She looks like an ugly version of Janeane Garofalo. Like Janeane Garofalo would look if she'd been held hostage for several years, and then dressed to look like the predictable odd-ball computer geek to replace Chloe".

Oh, and Tony Almeida now sounds EXACTLY like Roger Crowley, "the wickedest man in the world" off of seminal 90's genius comedy "This morning with Richard not Judy".

Thought for the New Year's Day: Aria Giovanni and Friends Gigapost

At the risk of letting this upstanding blog turn into a wretched pit of filth, here are some decidedly NSFW pictures of Totty Troop Major General Giovanni with some of her chums. If there's one thing better than lots of pictures of Aria with her delightful jubblies out, it's lots of pictures of Aria with her jubblies out, lezzing-up.

I might have got a bit carried away with this one, but what better way to start a year?