On the Subject of Diablo 3

Summer Glau

Another day, another drama in the world of video games. The latest controversy comes courtesy of fanboy wank-fodder Diablo 3, and the news that it will require a continuous internet connection in order to function, even for single-player sessions.

Now of course when a less popular company like, for example, Ubisoft, tries that sort of thing, the backlash is immediate and vocal and pretty much unanimous. But of course this is Diablo 3, and so naturally the apologists and sanctimonious, self-satisfied, smug shit-head multiplayer fucks come crawling out of the woodwork to make excuses and patronise anyone who dares to question the edicts of the almighty Blizzard. These are the people who only ever cared about the MP aspects of the game, which were obviously going to require an internet connection, so it makes no difference to them and they are incapable of understanding why people who aren't them, and who perhaps have their own preferences and priorities which may not include multiplayer gameplay, might be disgruntled. Suddenly the people who have the nerve to question these design decisions are simply suffering from acute nerd-rage, they are making mountains out of mole-hills and should "deal with it". They should vote with their wallet, and meanwhile those visionary individuals who wholeheartedly support Blizzard's courageous and progressive proposals will be busy enjoying the game while you miss out.
It's terribly easy to adopt that point of view when you are entirely unaffected by the issue at hand. And it's terribly easy to swallow anything without question when you have a company's cock rammed that far down your throat.

Blizzard for their part have apparently been "surprised" by the negative reactions. But that shouldn't come as a shock; this is a company which has been previously surprised by negative reactions to their plans to force their forum users to operate under real names. Blizzard are easily surprised, it seems. But then they operate in their rarefied world apart from the rest of the games industry, with a loyal legion of sycophants to fellate them while they roll around in the WoW subscriptions collected from millions of Chinese gold farmers.

Ultimately I don't even care. I was never into Diablo "back in the day", and by the time I was introduced to Diablo 2 it was already painfully dated and clunky. Without the benefit of the ever-popular rose-tinted specs of nostalgia it doesn't really stand up to modern scrutiny. Nevertheless I would have been interested in trying a contemporary sequel, although being as I am in possession of perfectly adequate genitalia I have no interest at all in the multiplayer, co-op or otherwise. I find it curious how obsessed many people are with the MP side of Diablo 2 when it had a perfectly serviceable single player campaign, aside from the flaws pursuant to the game's vintage. Unfortunately it seems that Blizzard are making a very conscious effort to move D3 towards a "primarily" MP experience, at which point what tenuous shadow of interest I might have possessed proceeds to dissipate entirely.

And let's not pretend that the always-on requirement is entirely for the benefit of the gamers. Let's not pretend that it will make the MP experience some sort of utopia of fairness and order and will prevent those devious individuals who might want to bring it down from implementing all manner of bots and exploits and hacks. How successful has that policy been for WoW? It's about DRM (not just in terms of piracy, but in the broader sense of managing how you use the software), and it's about additional monetisation of mandatory online features (the real money auction house, for example).

Meanwhile the fanboys can continue to pat themselves on the back for keeping the faith, and convince themselves that they will be enjoying something special and rare that the naysayers will be missing out on. Only we won't be missing out on anything except the bullshit posturing of a bunch of self-important fuckwits pissing away their lives trying to make the numbers on their screens higher than those of the idiot they're playing against. And all the while playing the special bonus mini-game of trying to one-up each other's encyclopaedic knowledge of obscure character builds in the chat window. How will I ever survive without that?

On the Subject of The Witcher 2 (Part 2)

I've now spent a little time with the game, although it has been somewhat abbreviated by my PC's recent decision to start locking up randomly (which I hope a motherboard replacement will fix, because nothing else has).

By far the biggest disappointment has been the use of quick-time events during some combat scenes (generally fistfights rather than the regular armed combat). I hate QTEs, I think they're lazy and cheap and ruin any sense of immersion, and I'm not about to give TW2 a pass on them simply because I'm a Witcher fan. I don't know if this game has a similar boxing mini-game to the first Witcher, but if it does and they use the QTE mechanism, I'll be very disappointed. I know QTEs let the designers chain mocap or whatever into a more fluid and cinematic visual experience, but it is absolutely at the expense of gameplay. You definitely lose marks for it, CD Projekt.

Anyway I've only just reached Chapter 1, which is where the "proper" games appears to begin, after the extended prologue/tutorial section. The new combat system took a bit of getting used to; it's not really any better or worse than the old "click to chain" system but it took a while to learn the rhythm of it. Although at worst it just turns into a parry/strike/parry/strike loop. Once you get the hang of it (and the fact that you now have to meditate to drink potions) it feels fairly fluid and natural.

As I'm only just getting to the more open portion of the game there are a lot of aspects I have yet to encounter, like crafting, quests etc. It's definitely a pretty game though, and has the same authentic feel as the original. I'm still not sold on the Geralt redesign, he's too much of a lantern-jawed jock now, but at least it's the same voice actor as before.

Anyway, assuming I can get my machine to behave itself, and if I can tear myself away from a recent obsession with SWAT 4, I'm looking forward to getting stuck further in, QTEs aside.

On the Subject of Battlefield 3

A nice bit of bush, lorra lorra lovely couple blinda data

It appears that E3 was a bit of a console-fest, and not a particularly impressive one at that, and it has triggered the usual round of "PC gaming is dead" hand-wringing. Confirmation that Skyrim will be a console port didn't help, although some minor relief came in the form of the legendary John Carmack admitting that focussing on developing for consoles is a bad idea. Meanwhile, one thing which seems to be obligatory in any discussion of The State of Gaming is some mention of the forthcoming Battlefield 3.

I've watched the various videos, and I've reached 2 conclusions. Firstly, the game looks incredibly pretty. Not without exceptions, mind (the section where your character attempts to locate and diffuse an IED looked pretty mediocre), but in general the various demos have been very impressive, both technically and artistically. It's interesting to contrast that with Modern Warfare (the first one, since that's the only one I've played), where above-average art direction managed to compensate for a relatively limited engine to create an impressive game experience. BF3 appears to benefit from both nice design and a top-drawer engine to often stunning effect. Large environments, some great smoke effects, richly detailed environments and characters. It's all good.

The second conclusion I've reached is that despite all the good stuff, I haven't seen a single example of gameplay which hasn't already been done to death in all the other modern warfare shooters (or the WW2 shooters before them). Even the tank sequence, despite being blanketed in arguably excessive bling-bling effects like video distortion, just reminds me of whichever CoD or MoH or Crysis or whatever it was I've done that sort of shit in before. Not to mention the subsequent airborne sequence which is straight out of MW. There's also a surplus of scripted action evident, something which might well spark the furious crucifixion of lesser games. Of course this is the almighty BF3, so you're obliged to brush aside such trivial criticisms. Gamers are such fucking hypocrites.

Multiplayer monkeys will immediately start quoting shit like "ooo 64 player multiplayer" bla bla boring wank. I don't fucking care. I don't care about the multiplayer at all. I don't care how many of you fucking idiots can get together at one time and bitch about how everyone except you sucks at the game, and how everyone else should follow your orders, before all rage-quitting. Fuck you all.
And that's the thing. Outside of the multiplayer there is nothing new here in terms of gameplay.
I understand that the BF series is historically MP-oriented, but the fact is that the majority of promotional material currently available, the material upon which hordes of shooter nerds are building their masturbatory fantasies, is taken from the single-player campaign. It remains to be seen how much SP content there is, but you can bet that if it's on a par with other recent shooters (i.e. very short) you mustn't complain, because this is BF3.

I also find it bizarre that BF3 is being heralded as the latest saviour of PC gaming when it's a multi-platform release. I suspect DICE will be wary of making the common console-related mistakes when it comes to the PC version (fov, control issues, "press start" instructions etc) but the fact is, console gamers won't be sitting in front of their PS3 or 360 wishing they had the PC version. They won't care that there's a PC version at all. No matter how much prettier it is on the PC, no one will actually care except PC gamers.

It is inevitable, given the obscene hype, that BF3 will be a let down in some way to a large number of gamers. You idiots are only setting yourselves up for a fall. Even your beloved multiplayer will be plagued by the usual cheating and hacking within moments of the game's release. Don't get me wrong, if there's a decent-sized single-player campaign you can count me in, and I don't hesitate to applaud the technical quality of the engine and the impressive design. But in the meantime no forum thread is complete without someone name-dropping BF3 as an example of how it should be done (whatever "it" is), when the game is still months away from hitting the shelves. Not a year goes by without something suffering from this sort of obsessive hero-worship, and it always, ALWAYS ends in tears.

On the Subject of The Witcher 2 (Part 1.1)

Denise Milani

I'm currently waiting for the 1.1 patch (due any moment) to see if it fixes the main problem I have, namely having to reset my manly 30" monitor to 1920x1200 before starting the game. Otherwise it just "um"s and "ah"s and eventually drops back to the startup menu. If I do reset the screen res I can get it to start, and from what little I've seen it looks great, but I want the best possible experience and I'm happy to wait. I've also read that the shitty securerom drm is affecting performance (and massively increases the loading time) for non-GOG/Steam versions so hopefully that'll be something else which is addressed in the patch. When will publishers learn that hurting paying customers with stupid crap like that is not clever?

Still, I was impressed with how quickly the game makes up for the lack of tits in the packaging by having Triss show up very, very naked almost immediately.

On the Subject of The Witcher 2 (Part 1)

Celebratory Tits

And so to one of my most highly-anticipated games of 2011; the follow-up to the superb, 2007 Bennett Cross winner The Witcher has arrived.

In this first part of my review, I shall be setting aside such trivial matters as gameplay, graphics, storyline, dialogue, tits, soundtrack, tits etc and concentrating on the much more important issue of packaging.

That's right, it's a COLLECTOR'S EDITION!

And what a CE it is, too. It's a big fucker, about 3 times the size of the original Witcher CE. Heavy, too, for reasons which will become obvious.

Nicely understated box. No idiotic publicity hyperbole.

Even more (or less) so on the back.

Like with the WAR CE, a large proportion of the weight comes from the hardback art book. This is another classy tome like the original Witcher art book, although with a hard cover and less nudity (sadly).

Beneath the art book is some papercraft model or other. I hesitate to "spoil" the effect by actually opening it. Maybe I should have bought 2 copies - one to keep for best. Then again this isn't the cheapest CE in history, so perhaps not.

A couple of DLC armour codes and some stickers later, and we're into the real guts of the box.

The Geralt bust. The other major contributor to the package's extreme weight. I would have preferred a model of a naked Triss or similar, but you can't have everything. Not to mention I'm not a huge fan of the (in my opinion entirely unnecessary) Geralt redesign in TW2, and this rubs it in your (my) face somewhat.

Nice, chunky game box. This would constitute a CE in itself for many games.

Game, game guide and bonus stuff. More on that later.

"How to Play Cards and Dice". A cute little guide book. But why would you need that?...

...aha! A set of dice, in a nice little Witcher pouch. That's why.

And then when you're done with the dice, there are some Witcher playing cards.

They look very classy, although again I'm hesitant to break the seal.

Nothing left in the box except some authentic Witcher dust.

In fact the weight of the bust played hell with the moulding in the box. The weight, combined with some less-than-gentle shipping no doubt.

And so that's it. Or is it? I happened to break open the bonus dvd box.

Only to find another papercraft model, and a map (complete with some long-overdue tits).

The game DVD box has a weird letter thing, in a fancy envelope, and a little coin which I almost missed on first inspection.

Cute.

For completeness, a better view of the stickers.

And so this time that really is all. In fact the more I got into it, the more impressed I was. The dice and cards are my favourite elements, and overall this collection is firmly at the Tabula Rasa end of the spectrum (i.e. good) rather than the WAR end (promises much, ultimately disappointing). Definitely one of the best CEs I've encountered, let down only by the price and the lack of pictures (or models) of tits. 9/10.

On the Subject of Portal 2

Big boobs never get old, unlike Portal

It's a new Valve game and therefore PC gamers are obliged to bow down and worship at the feet of The One True Developer.

I played the original Portal through again recently. My main impression was that it was incredibly short; enough time had passed for me to have forgotten most of the finer details of the puzzles but it still only took a couple of hours to complete. And the first half of it was tedious tutorials. As far as I'm concerned it has minimal replay value, partly because it's ultimately a puzzle game and so once you've solved it there's nothing left to do, and partly because the "hilarious" quirky robot humour gets old very quickly.

And I know Portal 2 has a co-op mode, but how is that going to offer any more replay potential, other than twats trying to show off how good they are to players who are playing levels for the first time? Who gives a shit about finding alternate solutions to puzzles once you've already found one? No doubt there'll be a lot of downloadable levels, but that's just more of the same except without any sort of narrative layer.

Of course as a puzzle game it's riding the current gaming zeitgeist of everything being treated like a challenge and a competition, which is why so many people are blown away by it. That, and the Emperor's New Clothes appeal of Valve's so-called "storytelling", whereby players mistake the lack of narrative clarity for another layer of gaming complexity, where you somehow have to be good at the game to understand the story, just like with Half-Life 2. In reality there's simply not a lot there beyond the (admittedly well-constructed) atmosphere and polished gameplay.

I fully intend to pick up Portal 2, but I will wait for the inevitable Steam sale. Portal 1 was nowhere near a full-price gaming experience, and despite claims that the sequel has substantially more content I don't believe it has the lasting appeal of more conventional games. The forum hysteria has already died down, again because of the limited scope and longevity of the game.

So yeah, a new Valve game. And just like with L4D2, another "more of the same" sequel. Even the more oblivious gamers are beginning to notice the lack of any substantial new content coming out of Valve in recent years. Still nothing on the future of Half-Life, whether it's more HL2 episodes (so much for smaller chunks = faster turnaround) or perhaps HL3. I don't argue the fact that they're still putting out games with a massive degree of polish, they're just running low on innovation and substance. Their increasing focus on multiplayer, especially co-op which as I've noted in the past is several years too late given modern gamers' rabid sense of competition and basic inability to co-operate, is disappointing because it's resulting in increasingly vacuous gaming experiences.

On the Subject of UK:Resistance

What else is there to say?

Sad news by way of the recent winding up of classic, vaguely Sega-obsessed sarcastic commentary site UK:Resistance. I can't remember how I stumbled upon it, I suspect I was turned on to it in the late 90s by console-monkey friends. Anyone aware of the site will also be aware that it's been on auto-pilot for the last few years so it's not an especially shocking announcement, but in its heyday it was a go-to for gaming-related comedy. Run by Mr Gary Cutlack, who has gone on to write for proper gaming mags and sites, not to mention making a bunch of slightly odd youtube videos, UK:R was like Charlie Brooker with a bit less swearing. Cutlack also runs Idiot Toys, which is worth a visit unless he plans on shutting that down too. But first be sure to visit the UK:R archives while you still can. It's amazing how much work he put in back in the early years. Note the Employee of the Week posts, which no doubt influenced my very own Thought for the Days.

A few years ago Cutlack sold out to Shiny Media who promptly slapped its trashy branding and a million ads over his sites. Being a poorly-conceived blog portal wank-fest which I suspect was supposed to be some sort of nerd Gawker, Shiny spontaneously combusted shortly after. Cutlack was given back control of UK:R in lieu of money owed, and managed to grab back the idiottoys domain when whatever was left of Shiny forgot to renew it.

UK:R was also notable for its user forum. Based at boards2go and featuring a high-speed/low-retention policy, it often offered some jaw-droppingly funny contributions from regulars, not to mention impromptu porn dumps from mad-as-a-brick resident porn scene freak murphy "The Reverand DMark" or whatever his handle was back then. The original forums were nuked following a spectacular public breakdown and revelations of intra-forum infidelity from Cutlack's bit of fluff. Can't remember what she called herself now. Absolutely top-drawer entertainment, while it lasted.

The "official" forum was followed by a succession of indie spin-offs, before settling on the (theoretically) still-operational, if virtually flat-lined UKPersistance. Originally a lot of the old crew were regulars, before the community was eventually eviscerated by further dramas, including more infidelity revelations (this time featuring oversized yank pinball fanatic and long-time UK:R regular "Dork") and the leak of ill-advised nudie pics of genuinely-female "Frap", who also happened to be real-life UK Frag Doll "Jam". Or did that happen on the original board? Whatever, they're preserved on ED if you're interested. White-nightery and schism followed, and UKP was never the same again. DMark/Mark seemed to tire of people criticising his taste in forgettable Eastern-European heroin-addict skanks and disappeared, taking his endlessly amusing old-school racism and tales of crazed stalking and cleaning up various bodily fluids (if not producing them) at the family B&B with him.

UK:R itself was almost entirely Cutlack, although there were one or two guest contributors over the years. Ignoring the recent ones who were promoted from serial commenter as Cutlack gradually lost interest in the site, the one who sticks in my mind is The Swill Man. God only knows where Cutlack found him, he seemed to be some yank teenager and he didn't last long. I seem to recall Cutlack eventually revoked The Swill Man's posting rights with a vague shrug.

More recently UK:R has been your one-stop destination for monthly "Here's a picture of a spiral. The Dreamcast logo was a spiral!" updates as the site continued its long slide into obscurity. Meanwhile Cutlack has become something of an underground celebrity in the gaming world, and the (relatively) large volume of comments which followed the closure are testament to the fondness literally dozens of people have for what he has achieved. Good luck with your future endeavours, Mr Cutlack, I salute you.

And I'm sure that wherever he is now, Dork is a cunt.

On the Subject of Reboots

Hey, you! Which game is this? No, it's not a Resident Evil sequel, or any of those interchangeable survival horror games. No, it's not Uncharted or one of those interchangeable adventure/thriller Tomb Raider clones, but you're getting warmer. I'll give you a hint, which iconic game character is it?
Of course it's from the Tomb Raider "reboot", and that's the new Lara Croft. Ah, yes, reboots, when a publisher doesn't have any new ideas and wants to lean on the security of an established and successful brand while pretending to be fresh and innovative.

Lara became iconic entirely because of her distinctive design. The big tits, the pony tail, the shorts, the dual pistols. You've seen her. The new design is so bland and homogenised and typical focus group toss that if you weren't told it was supposed to be Lara, you wouldn't have a fucking clue. Irrespective of whether you like the old design (or the new one), that doesn't seem to be a very clever use of a well-known and iconic gaming brand. In their clumsy attempt to leverage the Tomb Raider identity they've managed to throw away perhaps the most important aspect of it. What's left? The name? What have they actually achieved? What it's really saying is "we don't have a strong enough character or story or design to stand alone as a new property, so we'll slap the Tomb Raider name on it". Just like all of the recent movie reboots, it's sheer creative bankruptcy.

What I find tragic is when fuck-witted idiots start praising the redesign as some sort of right-on, politically correct feminist statement because they think it makes them look sensitive to women's issues and modern and mature and will get them laid. Dismissing the remarkably enduring appeal of the original Lara as childish wank fantasy just because they dared to give her a pair of tits and not make her look like a man. Why are you so afraid of the old design? More to the point, why do you prefer to play games which feature female characters who look like some sort of pre-pubescent David Beckham, you fucking paedophile?

The convergence of game design is sad and pathetic. Publishers are scared of creating anything which has a unique style or character lest some up-tight cunt finds it slightly at odds with their own preferences and doesn't buy the game. Slowly but surely the mainstream games are merging into one big indistinct mush, like that website where you can average pictures of people's faces and you end up with some sort of marketing wet-dream, a soul-less shop mannequin of indeterminate gender or race or age. The new Lara isn't Lara, she's "generic female protagonist". The only people she'll offend is those of us with a fucking clue, but we're an increasingly marginal marketing demographic.

Thought for the Day: Lorena

How better to celebrate the long-overdue release of TDU2? If there was a Bennett medal for "Thought for the Day of the Year" (now there's an idea) this would have it sewn up, no doubt about it.

On the Subject of Test Drive Unlimited 2

Sophie Howard and... someone else

Some time ago I picked up a steering wheel, just for shits and giggles. One of the games I bought to go with it was Test Drive Unlimited, which I didn't know much about but which was a driving game, and that's all that mattered at the time. I think I also bought DiRT and GTR2.
Of those 3, TDU turned out to be my favourite by far. GTR2 is undoubtedly great if you want the full-on sim experience, and DiRT (and the sequel, and similarly GRiD) are great for more focused, high-octane competition fun, but TDU's free-roaming sandbox gameplay really struck a chord with me. Sure, the racing is fun, and it feeds the collecting bug as you earn money to buy progressively more exotic supercars, not to mention houses to put them in, but it's great that I can load it up, pick a nice motor and simply drive around seeing the sights.
So of course I was looking forward to the sequel, which I also didn't really know much about. I steered clear of the beta because I'm not a desperate poser cock, so all I really knew was that it was delayed several times, and that there were a few vaguely pretty screen shots floating around.
They've run out of excuses to delay it now apparently, so we have the game in our grubby mitts (virtual mitts at least, when it's on Steam).
I have to say that it has been a curious experience so far. There was an initial massive tidal wave of furious hate online, largely perpetuated by one person from what I can tell, and someone who it seems has thrown his toys out of the pram because Eden wouldn't do what he said during the beta. He (I won't give him the oxygen of publicity by naming him) has popped up pretty much everywhere I've looked where TDU has been mentioned. As a result I'll admit that I was perhaps more apprehensive than I ought to have been when I first approached the game. The curious part is how I've come to like the game very much, despite the vocal minority of haters, and despite its various flaws.

Let's start with what is perhaps the most fundamental aspect of a driving game, which is the handling of the cars. I'm not one to start firing my AK into the air in disgust just because a driving game dares to be a game rather than a military-grade simulation. TDU was always a bit light in the physics department, and TDU2 definitely continues in that vein.
However I will concede there's a valid argument to be had that adding an additional, "proper" sim mode wouldn't have hurt the game at all. There are already 3 driving modes in the game, "Something I've forgotten", "Sport" and "Hardcore". It doesn't seem like it would have killed them to add a "Realism" option or similar. That way casual players (probably including myself) could opt for a less punishing mode while the GTR2 fans could get their simulation fix and everyone would be happy.
But the point is that while the handling isn't really improved over the original game, I don't really think it's any worse. I know some people disagree, but that's their look-out.

One interesting feature of TDU2 is the addition of off-road driving (and racing) as a fully-fledged part of the game. In TDU you could drive off-road, but there wasn't really any reason to. Now there are designated off-road tracks all over the island, a separate vehicle class for off-roaders and corresponding competitions. And I have to say that when it comes to the racing aspect of the game, off-road has definitely been the most fun for me so far. It's like a somewhat less punishing (i.e. easier) version of DiRT, and while you can argue the physical realism all you want, the fact is that's it's just damned good fun.

Less good fun are some of the other competition challenges. I hated the speed trap competitions in TDU and they're back in the sequel. I'm not really that fond of time-trials either, to be honest. I prefer a good, old-fashioned race. And it seems that they've done away with the vehicle delivery missions which is a shame, not so much because they were fun (they were fine as long as you didn't run into an invisible car or bottom-out for no reason on a perfectly flat road and lose the perfect score bonus) but they were a good way to gain a decent cash injection and keep the new cars coming. One thing I've found in TDU2 is that it's a lot slower to get going when it comes to making money. It's not at all helped by the fact that you can't seem to sell or otherwise dispose of the shitty cars you win in duels, which means you run out of parking spaces before you can afford to buy more houses if you don't keep ploughing through the competitions. And you can't enter competitions without appropriate cars, which you can't buy if you don't have any spare parking spaces, and which you can't afford if you have to blow all your money on houses. It could have done with a bit of fine-tuning in that department.

One thing about which most players seem to be in agreement is the half-arsed support for steering wheels. As far as I'm concerned the only way to play any driving game which isn't an unapologetic arcade racer like Burnout is with a wheel. You can dick around with a pad and a 3rd-person view if you must, and that might even be a better option if all you care about is competitive performance, but at heart TDU2 still has the gentle touring appeal of its predecessor, and nothing beats cruising around Ibiza (or Oahu) with a proper steering wheel.
Unfortunately the wheel support in TDU is very hit or miss. I've seen complaints that it flat-out doesn't work with some wheels at all, and others (like my admittedly basic but perfectly serviceable Momo) are usable but aren't recognised or configured automatically. It took me about half an hour of tweaking the control options to get a comfortable feel, not helped by a "sensitivity" slider which ought to be re-labelled "insensitivity" because it blatantly operates in the wrong direction. And I still dip in now and again to make further adjustments.
And then there's the force feedback, or more importantly the lack thereof. There's an option for feedback strength, but from what I can tell it doesn't so much affect "feedback" as "tension". There's a vague sense of the wheel being heavier or lighter to turn depending on speed, but there's absolutely no actual feedback. In the original TDU, as with most reasonable driving games, the wheel would happily buck all over the place if you hit something, or if you started to lose the tail end and let go of the wheel you could watch it turn of its own accord in response to the motion of the car. It may have been a little heavy-handed, but it was also very satisfying. TDU2 has lost that quality entirely, and instead the support appears to be limited to little more than the generic rumble that you get on a pad.
It's very disappointing when a sequel does away with options which were available in its predecessor. Mass Effect 2 was guilty of that, although that game made up for some of its shortcomings by shining in other areas. When it comes to controller support TDU2 feels like a game which has been designed around a console pad rather than a wheel, and that's just disgusting. By all means make it playable for console monkeys or poor people who can't afford a basic wheel, but not at the expense of the high-end functionality.

Other minor complaints include the automatic gearbox, which will happily sit on the starting line screaming its arse off for a good second before shifting in first, while you watch everyone else power off into the distance. Or else it'll stay in too high a gear for much too long if you lose speed on an incline or corner. In TDU you could force a gear change if you wanted to, even in auto, but that's no longer an option with my wheel at least.
Also there appears to be a distinct lack of traffic in TDU. In fact once I seemed to lose all the traffic entirely, maybe due to a server issue or something, but in general it's very light. It seemed like there was more on Oahu when I got around to unlocking that. But it could do with more, and preferably with better AI which doesn't drive into you quite as much.

TDU2 is noticeably prettier than TDU, although not to a jaw-dropping extent. There's more of a vague sense of polish and less aggressive lighting. And of course there's full day/night now which is a huge improvement, not to mention some decent variety in the weather including rain and even proper thunderstorms. Definitely a good thing, as the night driving in particular adds a lot to the racing, and the wet roads are very nicely rendered.
I suspected that Ibiza was slightly smaller than the Oahu of the original game, but I needn't have worried because I didn't realise that at level 10 (out of 60) you unlock the airport, and with it the option to fly back to Hawaii. So TDU2 includes the whole area of TDU in addition to its own island, which is quite impressive. And Ibiza has some great panoramas and nice little Mediterranean villages to make it feel fresh and new, while Hawaii obviously benefits from the graphical improvements.

In the grand scheme of things I'm still in the early stages of the game, and because 15 of the 60 levels are basically tied to the online multiplayer I doubt I'll ever progress to the "end", but I've definitely settled in and I'm finding it a very pleasant experience. I hope they patch in some better wheel support (especially force feedback), and preferably, if unlikely, better and more voluminous traffic. And lose the speed trap challenges, and also the ones where you have to get points for near-misses, drifting etc (no chance, sadly).

On the Subject of Pre-Rendered Trailers

Lorena B/G

I fucking loath pre-rendered game trailers. While I'm sure some jumped-up marketing whore can produce endless powerpoint presentations to demonstrate the promotional value of these pieces of shit, the fact is that they bear no relation to the game play experience. Trailers for movies and TV shows, while often misleading, do at least tend to be constructed from pieces of the actual thing that they're intended to promote. Rendered game trailers, on the other hand, are just lies. You're expected to watch something which took minutes, hours or more per frame to render rather than the milliseconds available to a game, and somehow convince yourself that "Wow, that was sooo cool! This game will be the best EVAR!!!". And the sad fact is that some people do. For fuck's sake, the trailer was almost certainly not even produced by the same company as the game.

Even successful, quality properties aren't immune to the lure of spunking away cash on worthless teasers, as demonstrated all too ably by the recent Mass Effect 3 promo. But that was nothing compared with the staggeringly worthless Skyrim teaser which made the basic mistake of not only being pre-rendered, but which also managed to be rubbish. Not that it made any difference to the rabid Elder Scrolls fans, of course.

It reminds me of 80s box art (remember when games came in boxes?), when it was routine for games to be swaddled in laughably misleading imagery which bore no relation to the primitive reality of the game itself. More recently Evony has become synonymous with this sort of thing.

Maria Whittaker's classic tits were nowhere to be seen in the actual game.

I'm also reminded of Sony's classic attempts to pass off pre-rendered graphics as real-time in the run up to the PS3 release, specifically for Killzone 2 and Motorstorm. Although now that I think about it I'm not even sure that that's worse than a simple trailer. Trailers don't even pretend to be the real deal, so it makes even less sense for people to mistake them for the game they're promoting.

Of course games aren't necessarily that entertaining as a passive experience. The whole point is interactivity, so even state of the art graphics may not make for thrilling, polished promotional material. But that's no excuse for going to the other extreme of blatant misrepresentation. In any other industry this sort of practice would be condemned as despicable and probably banned.

What's even more depressing is how much these fucking things cost to produce. You could probably buy a couple of man-years (if not more) of developer talent for the same money. That's money which could be spent on improving the game itself, instead being pissed away on pure, meaningless marketing twattery.

If you're going to disregard the fundamental nature of the product you're trying to sell, you may as well go all the way and come up with something like the recent Call of Duty "There's a Solider in All of Us" campaign which didn't even bother with pre-rendered graphics, but rather went completely live action (give or take negligible VFX). Not that celebrity cameos come cheap, of course, but at least it was vaguely memorable and entertaining.

But there's a difference between being entertained by a promo, and being susceptible to the subliminal "fancy trailer = great game" association. Far too many people appear to fall for that trick, usually without even realising. If you want to sell a game to me, show me the game. Or show me some big tits, that works too.

Speaking of tits, here's some more Maria Whittaker especially for anyone who felt short-changed by Barbarian.

Thought for the Day: April O'Neil

I could write something about Dead Space 2, or I could post some pictures of April O'Neil.