Field Marshal Bennett

On the Subject of 2012

2012-01-01T13:22:00.000-08:00

Some lovely new year boobs

As a shiny new year begins, let's have a look at what happened to those predictions I made for 2011, and concoct some new ones for the coming year.

Crisis 2
"Don't expect CryEngine 3 to be nearly as revolutionary as its predecessor ... This game is definitely on the "meh" list."

Pretty much hitting the nail on the head, I'm sure you'll agree. Crytek wanted to become console stars this year, but with gameplay never being their strong suit and ancient console hardware not doing justice to their tech expertise, neither the console nor PC audiences were terribly impressed.

The Witcher 2
"it's looking good, and even if it's no better than the original, it will still be a great game"

The Witcher was always going to be a tough act to follow, and like Portal 2, TW2 suffers from following in its predecessor's footsteps rather than blowing up out of nowhere. But it managed to be a solid and entertaining game in its own right, as expected.

Mass Effect 3
"Personally I doubt that this will see the light of day in 2011"

Damn, I'm good.

Dragon Age 2
"it could be a vast improvement over an already serviceable game, or else it could be more console trash"

Not so much console trash, as it turned out, but a pretty uninspired and rushed game by most accounts. I didn't bother with it in the end.

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
"I guarantee old-school RPG players will find loads of shit to complain about"

Funnily enough I haven't really noticed many complaints about the actual mechanics of the game, although that might just be because (PC) players take it for granted that they will be able to modify the game to their heart's content. Of course I'm yet to play it myself so it's hard to judge but it appears to be a pretty solid effort, even if it features Bethesda's notorious (lack of) quality control with respect to bugs.

Rage
"it will massively fail to live up to expectations"

Did it ever. As predicted, Rage was largely console trash. What was more surprising was how it suffered from a lack of Id's usual technical excellence, and the PC version had various issues at launch. Even the die-hards began to fear that they had lost one of the last bastions of hardcore PC gaming.

Diablo 3
"Another game which I'm not sure we'll see in 2011"

And we didn't, although there was various beta activity should you give a shit. I don't.

Guild Wars 2
"Who knows if we'll see anything from Arena Net in 2011"

We saw various profession videos, but as yet it has been all quiet with regard to an actual release, or even a beta.

So as usual, pretty much on the money. But what does the discerning gamer (and console monkey) have to look forward to in 2012?

Mass Effect 3

Slated for March, this is my big one for the coming year. As I recall, ME was supposed to be a trilogy so in theory this should tie up the central Mass Effect story arc, although I don't imagine for a second that they won't continue to milk this franchise for many years to come. As I suggested a year ago, I still suspect that there will be much less to differentiate ME3 from ME2 than there was with the first two games. But I'm a fan, and as I said when I covered ME2, I just want it to go on forever, so the more the merrier.

Max Payne 3

I initially dismissed this as a shitty cash-in on the original (and excellent) Max Payne games, but I'm finding myself strangely optimistic about this Rockstar-developed take on the MP series. I don't know much about it, but I'm tempted to support any game from Rockstar which is released on the PC (excluding the mediocre, and late, LA Noire).

GTAV

Which brings us to GTAV. The question isn't whether there'll be a PC version any time soon, so much as will there be a PC version ever? For some reason Rockstar thought it would be worthwhile porting the over-hyped LA Noire to the PC, even though it was long after anyone stopped caring about the game, but the potentially much more impressive Red Dead Redemption is still MIA, and will be indefinitely according to the developers.
I was a latecomer to GTA4, but it was a landmark gaming experience and one I'd be keen to continue.

Guild Wars 2

It looks likely there'll be some action on the GW front this year, although whether it's a succession of betas or an actual release remains to be seen. I don't really know any more about it than I did this time last year, but if they make it, I will come.

Alan Wake

Apparently there's going to be a PC version. Of the game which was originally supposed to be a PC exclusive and Windows Vista showcase title. Meanwhile Microsoft threw enough money at Remedy to make it a 360 exclusive, the game was seriously compromised to make it accessible to the console Neanderthals and so it'll probably be a load of old shit when it finally does make it to the PC. Too little, (much) too late, Remedy.

Diablo 3

Seems to be progressing towards an actual release, via closed betas. It'll be a colossal mountain of hype, expectation and now doubt disillusionment when it does arrive, but that's less to do with the quality of the game and more to do with idiot gamers and expert marketing.

Metro: Last Light

I think I have Metro 2033 in my Steam library after some sale or other, but I haven't got around to playing it yet. Sounds like some sort of STALKER-meets-Crysis linear shooter, but many people have good things to say about it. Some of the trailer footage for Last light looks pretty sweet, although that doesn't mean much. I would expect it to be serviceable as a game, and quite likely capable of bringing a high-end machine to its knees.

In fact there aren't really many noteworthy titles to look forward to this year. Maybe a few surprises will pop up out of the blue, and I already have enough of a backlog to deal with.

The Field Marshal's New Year Honours List

2012-01-01T06:00:00.000-08:00

I have been somewhat remiss in my reviews/rants/porn of late, but even I won't let a New Year pass without bestowing my traditional honours. 2011 couldn't have been much worse for PC gaming than 2010, but in fact there were a few gems this year, scattered amongst the endless tide of console dross. With no sign of any next-generation consoles, even console gamers are starting to notice the cracks. Meanwhile increasingly few developers are bothering to create games which take advantage of the PC's advanced technology and the unquestionable superiority of the keyboard/mouse combination as a FPS controller.
But that's a rant for another time. Let's get back to the business in hand.

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"

Serious Sam 3

In which Croteam gets out its pencil case and takes us back to the old school. Speaking of games developed for the PC, here comes a prime example. The game suffers from a slow start, something which has seemingly put off a lot of players (including reviewers), and really makes you work for each new weapon, but eventually you do get back to the classic SS hoards, and the game slips on like a comfortable old jacket. It's the first shooter I've played in a very long time where the mechanics just feel "right". The weapons have satisfying punch and each has value, so along with the carefully meted-out ammo you don't tend to just stick to one particular favourite.
SS3 features relatively subdued and more realistic, less cartoony environments than its predecessors (particularly SS2) but there's still humour and plenty of ridiculous, laugh-out-loud moments. There is perhaps too little variation in the environments (mostly being samey urban Egyptian streets and tombs), but apart from that it's just good old-fashioned fun. Too old-fashioned for some, but then SS3 walks a difficult line between being a proper old-school PC shooter, and incorporating the shiny innovations of more modern games. What exactly do you think it's missing, regenerating health? SS3 is easily the best single player shooter of 2011, although admittedly that's not saying much.

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

The Witcher 2

It may be a shock relegation to second place overall, but that's not to say that TW2 isn't a great game, and another PC exclusive (for a few months at least). It has been handicapped by the fact that I haven't managed to spend a great deal of time with it this year, but on the other hand it deserves to be penalised for the tiresome and lazy use of quick time events.
Still, it looks great, not including the unnecessary Geralt redesign, there are tits and swearing as befits a Witcher game, the combat takes a little getting used to but is slightly more involving than that of the original game, and the atmosphere and storytelling of the original remain intact.

The Bennett Medal
"... acts of gallantry and devotion to game play under fire"

Saints Row: The Third

I bought this on a whim because Amazon had the digital download for $40 rather than the increasingly-common $60, and that's something I whole-heartedly support. I hadn't played a Saints Row before, so all I knew about the game was drawn from one or two slightly odd trailers which appeared to feature pro-wrestling moves and giant dildos. Turns out it's a more cartoonish and amped-up open world sandbox which can be compared with GTA4, but only slightly. It's not quite as polished as GTA4, and swings much more towards the arcade end of the spectrum, but there's some good variety, well-presented core missions and lots of opportunities to upgrade and customise.

Honourable Mentions
Perhaps a slightly unfair omission from The Big Three, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim shot itself in the foot by launching in the stupid and unjustifiable $60 price bracket and was barely discounted by any retailers. I vowed not to buy the game before it dropped to $40 or less, which only occurred during the Steam Christmas sales, so it's currently languishing in my Steam library, unplayed. Test Drive Unlimited 2 is a pretty good game, but suffers from some short-sighted development decisions (shitty stearing wheel support) and a mediocre physics model which is neither arcade nor simulation. However, graphically the engine received a nice overhaul, there's a proper day/night cycle and varied weather, fun and well-implemented off-roading, and if you were disappointed that Ibeza seems, if anything, smaller than Oahu then at least they included Oahu as well. Portal 2 is more Portal, with a slightly more prominent narrative angle and a few more puzzles than the first game. Stephen Merchant's voice acting deserved better writing, and overall the game seemed much easier than the original, but it still features the legendary Valve polish.

Dishonourable mentions
Portal 2 may be a fun diversion, but it's not Game of the Year material, contrary to popular opinion. It's still too short for a full-price game, despite being maybe twice the length of Portal, and most damningly it still has absolutely zero replay potential. I haven't tried the co-op and I'm sure that adds a little to the initial longevity, but that's offset by the tiresome "humour" and surprisingly poor writing of the single-player campaign. Id Software are the kings of tech demos masquerading as games but with Rage they experienced something of a fall from grace even in the eyes of their more dedicated fans. Rage was an unashamed console game ported to the PC for the first time in Id history, and despite having "mega" in the name, the megatexture tech was designed more to work around console limitations than take advantage of contemporary PC hardware. If an Id game doesn't have impressive tech, then it has nothing at all. Oh and Crisis 2 came out in 2011, and while featuring some impressive tech, it ended up being just another console port from the PC point of view.

Neither Here Nor There
Battlefield 3 looks pretty and is the multi-player game du jour for the self-styled armchair pro FPS crowd. The increased focus (a relative term: increased from virtually nothing to very little) on a single-player campaign didn't really pay off, as it is reportedly short, uninspired, full of quick-time events and predictably just like all the Call of Duty: Modern Warefares. But as any fans will fall over themselves to tell you, the SP is irrelevant. Which is why the Battlefield games are irrelevant as far as I'm concerned.

On the Subject of Diablo 3

2011-08-06T00:59:00.000-07:00

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)

2011-07-04T12:27:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-09T22:27:00.000-07:00

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)

2011-05-25T13:54:00.000-07:00

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)

2011-05-18T21:53:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-03T15:15:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-31T00:10:00.000-07:00

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

2011-03-09T21:25:00.000-08:00

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

2011-02-15T08:28:00.000-08:00

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

2011-02-15T00:46:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-31T22:23:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-30T15:38:00.000-08:00

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

On the Subject of Money

2010-12-31T12:32:00.000-08:00

Random TnA

Back in the day games tended to be developed by gamers, for gamers. It was a nerdy industry, consumed by nerds, and none of them (us) cared. There were good, imaginative, innovative games which we all enjoyed and everything was good. Then, like any sizeable subculture, it began to be groomed and exploited and commercialised by big business. I'd suggest that a great deal of the responsibility lies at Sony's door, because it was really the original Playstation which triggered the transformation of gaming into a fashion, or at least the attempt to expand gaming beyond nerds and into the hands of the regular yahoos.
As a result, games are no longer developed by gamers for gamers, they're produced by corporations for their shareholders. Game development is being driven by anonymous "investors" who quite likely have no interest or experience in gaming, and whose sole focus is to maximise dividends. You don't do that by innovating, or by producing a high quality product for a niche market like authentic flight sims. You do it by churning out derivative, lowest-common-denominator trash which can be mass-produced, in terms of the sheer number of titles that are published, especially when you include sequels. So-called games which require minimal R&D, little development outside of slapping some new levels on an old engine, and end up forced down the throats of mindless console zombies by a bulldozer of marketing.
Or you hitch your pony to whichever social networking or consumer gadget phenomenon is flavour of the week, like Zynga do, and knock out some worthless, bullshit flash games which make next-to-no money per player, but which get played by trillions of Facebook obsessives.

The sad thing is, there's an increasing trend within society to consider that to be the "correct" direction for the industry. To question games that dare to be different because they're "doing it wrong", and "you'll never sell 100 million copies unless you make it simpler" or "you mustn't use that complex, gorgeous engine which will only run maxed-out on a high-end enthusiast PC". Because everyone, apparently, should aspire to be Mark Zuckerberg, and become unfathomably rich by creating something dumb, but glossy and accessible. Ignoring the fact that Facebook's success owes a great deal more to being in the right place at the right time than it does to offering anything particularly clever, innovative or useful.

So what we end up with is a torrent of tedious shooters like Halo, latter-day Call of Duty, or Gears of War, or trivial rhythm action games like Rock Band or Guitar Hero. And then we get their sequels. More and more sequels. Games mostly played by people who don't give a shit about games, but who want to have a laugh with their mates before going out clubbing (or before their mum makes tea). People who would probably be equally impressed by a bit of coloured rag on a stick. Wooo, look at the flappy rag!
And the businesses behind them are unrepentant. Even if they try to excuse their selling out by blaming piracy, or the used games market, or whatever it is this week, the fact is someone waved big bucks in their faces and they sold their souls. I don't blame them, but it sickens me when they try to pretend that they're still working to produce interesting, intelligent games when they can barely speak for all the corporate cock they're busy gobbling, and when the games they actually produce prove otherwise.

Which isn't to say there aren't people out there who would love to be able to go back to the days of pushing boundaries and developing the sorts of games they themselves want to play, and to hell with what some dickhead slouched in front of an xbox with his dickhead mates, or some dickhead reviewing his investment portfolio thinks of it. The problem those people have is that despite the console builders' best efforts to hold it back, technology has advanced to the point where it's simply not logistically possible for a small group of people to build a substantial game from the ground up, at least not outside of more manageable genres like puzzle or stylised platform or strategy games. Occasionally something will punch through from the underground, perhaps from people modding established games, and might get picked up by a big developer as happened with Portal and Left 4 Dead. But there aren't any garage crews building games of the order of Call of Duty or GTA or WoW or any other big name you care to mention.

Of course there are still a handful of sizeable independents out there. Valve is the obvious one, and are to be commended for holding out against the whorish charms and promises of public sale. I don't believe going public can ever be a good move for a creative industry. Of course neither have Valve really come up with anything interesting of their own (as opposed to buying mod groups, tarting up their work and selling it) since Half-Life 2, so they need to get on that. And hire some decent writers while they're at it.

So the future's looking bleak, but the game's not over just yet.

The Field Marshal's New Year Honours List

2010-12-31T09:02:00.000-08:00

Some Keeley Hazell (and friends) boobs to compensate for a disappointing year in video games

This year's awards have been the source of some serious head-scratching. Not only did I already know which game had taken the top slot back in February, but also there was very little else of any value released, or at the very least played, in the time since. This follows 2009 when I had already failed to award a full quota of medals due to lack of contenders. What the fuck is wrong with gaming at the moment? Of course, what's wrong with gaming is consoles. Console games are largely shit, and developers are so busy fellating Microsoft and Sony that PC gaming has taken a serious hit. Even established PC titles like Call of Duty (Modern Warfare was awarded the coveted Bennett Service Order in 2007, lest we forgot) have been run into the ground in the rush to make them as accessible and retard-friendly as possible.

Honourable Mentions
Despite awarding Dragon Age the Bennett Service order for 2009, 2010 was the year I actually got around to completing it. After a slightly shaky start it improves greatly although the combat is still too old-fashioned. Just Cause 2 was very impressive, but more in the tech-demo sense than as a coherent gaming experience. I could never really be bothered to spend much time with it, so while it's certainly an honourable mention it doesn't seem right to bestow upon it a more prestigious award.

Dishonourable Mentions
Mafia 2 could have been great and featured a great engine, but managed to be shit. Irrespective of whether it was due to the publishers fucking with the game in order to maximise the DLC potential, or just simple incompetence on the part of the developers, it was a very poor piece of work.
Red Dead Redemption might be a great game, but I wouldn't know because Rockstar haven't seen fit to release a PC version. Cunts.

So that was certainly an underwhelming conclusion to the year. Instead, let's have a brief look at some of the forthcoming releases due in 2011 (until they're pushed back).

Crysis 2

This should be the cause of much rejoicing, but contrary to claims made by idiots who believe this will be the long-overdue debut of a proper, next-gen game engine, experienced pundits are aware that it's not so much "Crysis 2" as "Crysis for Consoles". Don't expect CryEngine 3 to be nearly as revolutionary as its predecessor, unless you're a console gamer and never played the original on account of it being a PC exclusive. And lets not forget that the original Crysis wasn't exactly a masterpiece in the game play department, especially in the latter stages. Factor in the dumbed-down, dual-mode nanosuit and it's not looking good. This game is definitely on the "meh" list.

Test Drive Unlimited 2

Should have been released in 2010, and if it had been then maybe I would have had another title with which to pad out the awards. As it is I still know very little about the game, other than the fact that I enjoyed the original a great deal.

The Witcher 2

This is a big one, for me at least. The original Witcher was a fantastic piece of work and still puts the likes of Dragon Age to shame. The combat might have been somewhat basic, but the sheer atmosphere of the game is unmatched. I do have some concerns regarding the follow-up, in particular the dubious and in my opinion entirely unwarranted redesign of Geralt. Still, that aside it's looking good, and even if it's no better than the original, it will still be a great game and a potential Bennett Cross for 2011.

Mass Effect 3

Personally I doubt that this will see the light of day in 2011, and if it does then that raises doubts about the quality of the game. I suspect ME3 will be built on the same technology as ME2 and so will do little more than continue (and theoretically complete) the ME story. That would be a shame, considering the technological advances made for ME2. As much of a ME fan as I have become, I can't help feeling a certain trepidation with respect to the next chapter.

Dragon Age 2

I find it strangely hard to care about this game. There are reports that a lot will be different in part 2, mostly things which fans of the original are up in arms about, but things which seem entirely justified to me, like reducing the dialogue options so that your character can have proper voice acting like in Mass Effect. Or more streamlined, less wanky combat that isn't designed for people playing PnP games in the 80s. So it could be a vast improvement over an already serviceable game, or else it could be more console trash. Time will tell.

Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim

Very little is known about this game right now, thanks to an entirely worthless pre-rendered teaser being the only proof of the game's existence. With only 11 months until its supposed release, it's difficult to make any predictions although I guarantee old-school RPG players will find loads of shit to complain about. And if they don't seriously improve the levelling mechanics, voice acting and storyline after Oblivion, I will have complaints of my own.

Rage

All the id fans are working themselves into a masturbatory frenzy already, and I don't even know when this game's supposed to ship, but I predict that it will massively fail to live up to expectations. id have basically been releasing the same game over and over again since the original Doom, trading mostly on John Carmack's impressive engine technology with little thought or innovation evident in the game design. Not only will Rage be more of the same (albeit with vehicles), it'll also be a console release and therefore probably trash.

Diablo 3

Another game which I'm not sure we'll see in 2011. As someone who was never really into the original I'm not weighed down by historical baggage and so rather than bitching about the colourful graphics I'll at least be able to judge the game on its own merits.

Guild Wars 2

Who knows if we'll see anything from Arena Net in 2011. I would guess a beta or two would be likely, if not the final game. I do have high hopes for the game, on the basis that ANet have something of a history of doing things their own way rather than ploughing the same WoW-clone furrow as everyone else. On the other hand, GW went steadily downhill with the release of the later chapters, including an ever-increasing emphasis on grindy titles that doesn't bode well for the sequel.

I've just noticed that every single one of these games with the exception of Rage is a sequel. Although given that id have been remaking the same game over and over again since Doom 1, that's not saying much.

On the Subject of Gameophiles

2010-10-27T14:41:00.001-07:00

Jennifer Love Hewitt

I had an epiphany. I've (quite rightly) belittled audiophiles in passing, but it occurred to me that some of the more obnoxious behaviours exibited by an increasing number of gamers bear more than a passing resemblance to those sanctimonious, misguided and tragic individuals.

A common practice which I have observed amongst audiophiles is to immediately condemn any particular device or even brand as being generally inferior to some ambiguous, "serious" audio equipment. What is particularly notable is how many audiophiles will go out of their way to avoid in any way being specific about what exactly might constitute a superior alternative. This is of course born out of the pant-shitting terror that a higher-ranking audiophile might come along in turn and condemn that alternative, and by implication impune the credentials of the first audiophile. Thus there exists a situation where the only way an audiophile might consider exerting their (imagined and delusional) authority is by belittling others. There is very little in the way of constructive feedback, and consequently the whole scene tends to stagnate.

Now, this is an attitude which is becoming increasingly common within the gaming community (for want of a better word). First-person shooters are the prime candidate for this behaviour. Not a single shooter will be published without a seemingly obligatory round of smug ridicule from your typical PHaGS sufferers. The gun sounds aren't authentic enough, or there are no dedicated servers, or the field of view is wrong, or bla bla bla. It's increasingly rare for the complaints to be accompanied by any constructive advice on what might be considered a respectable alternative. Not because no such thing exists, but because should someone name names, you can guarantee it will be accompanied its own round of twattish mockery from other self-styled elite gamers. In the worst cases this can devolve into an infinite feedback loop between the aggressively partisan fans of directly opposing games or licenses, for example Quake 3 vs Unreal Tournament, or even Unreal Tournament (insert a version here) vs Unreal Tournament (insert a different version).

MMOs or even single player RPGs are another prime spawning pit for negative gaming energy. Unlike with FPSes, whose elite players are typically the deluded armchair pros who secretly believe they're skilled enough to rival properly qualified players on the basis that they came top on some random public server leaderboard one time, RPG players have the additional handicap of rose-tinted spectacles and the idiotic belief that innovation ought to be avoided at all costs. They're the sort of players who don't play EverQuest 2 any more because they've "been there, done that", but who still believe that any new MMO must adhere to EQ2's design principles, to the point where it would be identical. Cue an avalanche of criticisms regarding "carebear" gameplay, because the gamer has forgotten or is simply too stupid to recognise the fact that "hardcore" game play elements of veteran games were a result of technical (and creative) limitations and are not actually fun.

This isn't helped by the now-compulsary open beta period which every game must go through, as dictated by gamer law. This allows PHaGs to pretend they're especially "in the loop", as if they're some sort of industry insider who has been recognised for their gaming expertise, rather than simply a person with an email address. It also allows them to be early to the criticism party, and with the additional advantage of not requiring any financial outlay (i.e. asking their parents to buy the game for them). Because the sooner you can smear your pompous critical shit over the various gaming forums, the more important and insightful it must be. And then when the game goes live and inevitably slides into obscurity, you can claim you "called it". As if that actually means something.

The end result is a clique of gamers who are essentially unable to enjoy modern games. Any modern games. Because if you're seen to like something, someone you (or perhaps other people) respect more might come along and be critical of it, and you will shown to be a fool. These people are blind to the fact that it's them who suffer from this attitude. It's analogous to a typical audiophile's obsession with "reference" sound. Because they can't possibly enjoy music or movies unless they can prove, preferably with an oscilloscope, that the frequency response of their system is as flat as can be. It's almost as if the sound they're trying to hear is itself an inconvenience which spoils the audio purity. They may as well just listen to no input signal at all, so that they can sit back and masterbate smugly while they consider the exceptional signal-to-noise ratio of their DAC. Similarly, there's no real point in gameophiles (or whatever the equivalent would be) actually bothering to play games at all, since there cannot, by definition, be a game that lives up to their impossible standards.

On the Subject of Standards

2010-09-30T22:14:00.000-07:00

"Proper Actress" Sasha Grey

I've noticed a disappointing trend emerging over the last couple of years when it comes to AAA games. It seems to me that people's standards are dropping rapidly, leading to excessive laudation for distinctly mediocre titles. I have concluded that we're seeing a new generation of gamers who aren't old enough to have experienced games pre-Playstation. Because naturally I blame the PS and the associated mass-marketing of consoles beyond the traditional realm of spotty nerds and into the "lifestyle" sector for this phenomenon. It's all about accessibility now, accessible to the sort of idiots that consider ADD something to boast about. Why should you have to learn to play a game? Why should there be rules and narratives to follow when you just want to pwn some random online tard? Fucking gamers today, I hate them. They're all fucking idiots. It's all about competition, about "beating" a game, even if it's some single-player RPG. As if being good at a game actually means anything. It's like those idiots who think that being familiar with the latest, and especially the most obscure internet memes is somehow a valuable life skill.
Anyway, here I present some recent(ish) games that I consider to be indicative of an overall decline in game quality, but which have still managed to be feted by press and idiot gamers alike.

Exhibit A: Bioshock

An odd one this, because on paper it's almost identical to undisputed classic System Shock 2 but slotted into a submarine deco wonderland. So how come it fails to live up to its predecessor's standards, and how come a substantial number of people don't appear to appreciate its shortcomings?
Well the blatant consolisation didn't help. Console-tastic fov (aspect ratio issues notwithstanding), crappy laggy mouse controls, low-res effects and models and textures. Strange AI which I suspect is designed to cater for slow pads rather than superior keyboard/mouse players. Perhaps the odd sense of deja vu experienced by any SS2 fan worked against this game. I didn't really hate it, but I had to force myself to complete it and was left with a distinct sense of ambivalence. I didn't bother with the sequel.

Exhibit B: Assassin's Creed

AKA the most soul-less game ever released. Highly anticipated because of its Prince of Persia credentials, AC managed to take a pretty and impressive open-world design and shit out a tiresome, repetitive game all over it (Mafia 2 pulled the same trick more recently). Worthless sci-fi storyline, only about 3 types of mission from what I can remember, AC was one of few games I haven't been able to bring myself to complete because it was so fucking dull. Which didn't stop them from coming up with a sequel. Nor did it stop a lot of people from believing it was some sort of gaming masterpiece.
Of course we all know why this game was successful. It was because it was pimped by the lovely Jade Raymond. Lovely, lovely Jade.

Exhibit C: Dead Space

Shit. The fact that so many people cheer-lead for this game and the forthcoming sequel continues to baffle me. Why don't they see how terrible the controls are? (yes, I'm aware of the v-sync issue, but that's not the problem). Why don't they see how staggeringly bland and repetitive it is? Or how laughable the so-called scares are? I'm the first to admit being a big, scared baby when it comes to well-designed psychological thrillers. To this day I can't do that bit on the ladder in FEAR without closing my eyes. But Dead Space was utterly predictable and pedestrian. Even by hackneyed sci-fi game standards the story was abysmal. The characters are appropriately vacuous and forgettable. The third-person camera somehow manages to be absolutely awful. And yet the fans will claim all the many, many flaws are in fact intentional, and there to make the game more claustrophobic and immersive. They are wrong.

Exhibit D: Batman: Arkham Asylum

Another so-called "classic", and like Dead Space it has more than its fair share of fans cheering for the forthcoming sequel. I don't have quite so much contempt for B:AA largely because it mostly achieves what it sets out to achieve, unlike DS. Unfortunately, what it sets out to achieve isn't all that impressive, and so neither is the end result. It looks vaguely pretty, except that after about 10 minutes you've seen everything you're going to see. It simply lacks any real ambition, instead replacing it with endless worthless achievements to give a superficial illusion of depth and replayability. The locations all looks the same after a while, which isn't helped by trudging backwards and forwards through the grounds over and over again, fighting different combinations of the same enemies.

Exhibit E: Mafia 2

It is quite telling just how quickly this game fell off the forum radar. The first commercial DLC was generally lambasted for being a sack of shit (and no, I didn't bother with it). Other DLC includes new cars and even outfits for Vito. Why? What's the point of new cars in a game where there's nothing to do once you've completed the main story?
Then there's the quality of the game itself. Technically impressive as the engine undoubtedly is, the story is derivative wank of the sort a 14 year old who had just watched The Godfather might come up with. The dialogue was worse. The characters were even worse than that. The plot is disjointed to the point of incomprehisibility, with awkward cutscenes signposting the huge chunks which were cut from the game for whatever reason.
After the introductory war section my Vito stepped out of the cab and into the middle of whatever the pretend New York was called, tantalisingly right in front of a news stand. So naturally the first thing I did was attempt to buy a paper. And it wouldn't let me. I've since read that newspapers were supposed to be in the game, but were removed. That one experience, one of my very first in the game, ended up being representative of my whole time with it. Missed opportunities and a sad lack of attention to detail in the gameplay.
It seems like this game was butchered by the publishers as a blatant money-grab, but that hasn't stopped a lot of people attempting to defend it with the stupid "it's not trying to be GTA, so don't compare them" argument. The fact is if they'd tried harder to make it more like GTA, it would have been a much better game. I mostly bought it on the basis of the promising demo, but it turned out that there wasn't anything more to the full game than that.

The point isn't that these are bad games. They are, but what's strange is how a large number of people don't agree. They appear to have fallen head-first into the hype and believe that these must be good games because of the millions of dollars their respective publishers pissed away promoting them. They appear to have missed out on the requisite yardsticks of gaming quality that would inform any experienced gamer that these are sub-standard products. How could some who played System Shock 2 ever consider Bioshock its equal? Some people claim it is all the same, but I suspect their experience of SS2 occurred after its prime, when technology had moved on and the initial shine had worn off (SS2 wasn't particularly advanced technically, even when it was released).

There is some hope. The recent addition of Planescape: Torment to the catalogue of Good Old Games has been the cause of much rejoicing amongst RPG fans. Sadly I suspect that new-school gamers will take one look at the dated isometric graphics and recoil in disgust, to the sanctity and comfort of whatever new casual-friendly, glossy sequel has been released this week.

And all this nonsense isn't to say there aren't any good games made any more. There's the sublime Mass Effect series (which manages to shine despite encroaching consolisation), the possibly even more sublime The Witcher (TW2 being my #1 most highly anticipated game at the time of writing), not to mention undoubtedly solid releases from Blizzard, despite them being in bed with Activision (boo, hiss). The danger is more to do with the inevitable big business approach to the new golden egg-laying goose that they believe they've found in the video games industry. You only have to look at how Activision, the new enemy of gamers everywhere, has treated Call of Duty, turning it into the shooter version of Guitar Hero. These days it's all about squeezing every last penny out of a property, irrespective of quality. And why release a complete game when you can strip it for parts and sell them off piecemeal like 2K have done with Mafia 2? It's tempting to point to indie games as the last bastion of dependable gaming quality, but you can't ignore the simple logistics of creating a modern shooter or RPG, which put them mostly out of reach of small garage developers.

It's supply and demand, and unfortunately while younger (or dumber) gamers are incapable of accurately judging a game's quality, they're not going to demand quality games, and so the publishers aren't going to supply them.

On the Subject of Mafia II

2010-08-30T23:59:00.000-07:00

No idea who this is

I never played the first Mafia so I didn't really have a frame of reference for the sequel, but I played the demo and thought it was very pretty and seemed to be essentially a 40s/50s mob mod for GTA4, such were the similarities. And on the strength of that I pre-ordered the full game (see? demos work!).

Of course fans of the series (not to mention the developers) are quick to point out that M2 isn't supposed to be a GTA clone, that it's not a sandbox game and that any criticisms related to sandbox-style game play are meaningless. That is, of course, bollocks.

The engine is lovely. It's not really fair to compare the actual art direction of the game with GTA4, as the latter is intentionally stylised almost to the point of being a cartoon, and when you really look closely there's not much difference in the detail being rendered, at least in the locations. M2 does a very nice job of achieving a naturalistic, rich environment. It's not as large an area as Liberty City but there's a great deal more variety and a more organic design with better differentiation between neighbourhoods. There's day & night, as well as weather, but as far as I could tell it wasn't really dynamic. Like with the different seasons and eras you experience as the game progresses, everything seems pretty much locked for the duration of the current segment of the mission so that the narrative can begin and end at predefined times of day. The city does look good at night, though, with the streaky reflections of street lights in the road and glows on the lamps themselves. More surprisingly it actually runs pretty damned well, and much more smoothly than GTA4, certainly post-Episodes.

It wasn't all plain-sailing, however, as the first time I ran the full game (the demo had worked fine), it completely locked up my machine which then proceeded to blue-screen on the next reboot. Fortunately after I reinstalled the video drivers it started to behave itself. Then, from about half way through the missions, it started to CTD pretty much once per mission. Given the hit-or-miss auto-saving, that could be no big deal or a pain in the arse. It was odd that the early stages were pretty stable. I've read suggestions of memory leaks and the like, so it might be related to the time spent in-game.

The driving is worth a mention, especially given how much of it is involved. According to the stats, at the end of my run-through (which was mostly missions and little sight-seeing) I had driven 117 miles. More surprisingly I covered an additional 16 miles on foot. The driving attempts to be a little more physical than GTA's bumper cars, with the vehicles seemingly weighing about a thousand tons. The more advanced "physics" mode pretends to be more realistic, but one car chase in particular along a freeway felt more like Ridge Racer than GTR2. Mostly it's a bit more restrained and perilous than GTA which isn't a bad thing and works well in the more limited area available. The traffic AI is also better than GTA's, with non-player vehicles mostly managing to avoid you (and each other) and travelling at a fair old pace the rest of the time. The rozzers even chase other road users occasionally, which is nice. The rules of the road are supposed to be a bit stricter than in GTA, with the cops supposedly alert to speeding, running red lights and hit-and-runs, although a lot of the time they don't seem that bothered. Additionally M2 offers a speed limiter which seems to include other driver aids and works well for those times you just want to cruise around without attracting attention.

There's hand-to-hand combat which I found a little more streamlined and useful than in GTA, although it's mostly useful in a handful of pre-defined Fight Club-style encounters. While it's not exactly complex, I did think it would work well in The Witcher, which suffered from pretty lame punch-ups. Speaking of the unarmed combat, you mostly learn (and use) it during a chapter set during your character's time in prison. I was quietly impressed by that chapter, having expected a fade-to-black followed by a "10 years later..." title screen. Like all the other story-driven elements, it could have been longer and more involved. Instead it's mostly an excuse for a bit of the old chin pistons, along with a run-in with the inevitable old boss man who's living in luxury and running the joint.

While there's not a lot to say about the gun-play, it was by far the most entertaining thing you actually do in the game, although that's not saying much because apart from driving and walking and watching cutscenes (and the occasional fisticuffs) it's basically the only thing you actually do. A few different guns, satisfying head-shots, reasonable if not perfect cover system. Some nice set piece battles, but of course not enough. And one or two less impressive boss battles.

Ok, it's not supposed to be a sandbox game. The problem with that is if you disregard the sandbox elements, M2 doesn't really have a lot going for it. The plot, the excruciatingly-laboured dialogue and the characters so two-dimensional they're virtually transparent are all entirely worthless. Honestly there isn't a single likable character in the whole game, including you. It's an endless conveyor belt of mindless thugs, smug, smarmy bosses and wide-eyed, helpless victims. You could argue that it's a mob game so of course they're going to be unlikable, but it doesn't help me warm to the game when I want my own character to die. The worst was perhaps the goofy, hapless kid who starts hanging around wanting to play with the big boys. From the moment he showed up, I wanted to put a bullet in his head myself, (spoiler alert!) only for the (other) bad guys to beat me to it. He was from the JK Rowling school of characterisation where bumbling, facetious retards are supposed to be endearing rather than utterly infuriating. Joe, too, is seemingly supposed to be the dim-witted, fat drunk who makes you go "awwwwww" and want to pat him on the head every time you see him as if he's some sort of puppy. He ends up being an even less likable imitation of Roman from GTA4, and I fully expected him to call me up to suggest we go bowling.
At least the cutscenes are skippable, although with allegedly 2 hours of the fuckers there won't be much left if you do. There was also one phone conversation in particular where a bartender calls to get you to deal with a very drunk ~~Roman~~ Joe which was just interminable, with the bartender doing a particularly awful, over-wrought 50s jive immitation. And that wasn't skippable. As I read it described in a comment somewhere or other, the dialogue in general is "embarrassingly try-hard".
So ignore anyone who says the dialogue or characters or story are good. The voice-acting is passable, and the nice engine means the cutscenes themselves are pretty and polished, but in terms of narrative it was just third-rate, Godfather-wannabe shit. It reminded me of Graham Linehan's astute suggestion that games designers rarely read books and rely on movies as their only form of research.

My greatest criticism of the game doesn't concern the narrative. What bothered me more was the amount of time you spend doing inconsequential tasks compared with the time spent actually playing the game. As the Kotaku review described, in an average mission you will spend much longer driving to and from the objectives (not even in pursuits), and nodding off through countless cutscenes than you will shooting guido nonces in the face. There were innumerable occasions which seemed to involve nothing more than walking from one cutscene to the next. If I remember correctly there was even a whole chapter during which the only interaction involved 3 or 4 car journeys, plus the short walk to and from the car in each case. It's a shame because the gunfights, when they occur, are pretty good fun. It's also a shame because the narrow-minded disregard for the whole sandbox concept means there is essentially nothing to do outside of the missions, and there are only 15 of those.

When it comes to games it's not uncommon to have the technology fail to keep up with the ambitions of the game designers. Curiously M2 appears to have more than adequate technology, but the designers have suffered from what Richard Herring might describe as "a paucity of ambition". If it isn't a sandbox game, then that memo didn't get to the engine developers because this engine would be more than up to the job. It's a slightly tragic waste of potential really, although I suspect that at least some of that potential will magically be fulfilled as 2K start to milk the game with DLC in the future. DLC which some people have suggested was intended to be in the original game, but which was subsequently removed either due to time or budget constraints, or else at the behest of 2K who want to wring every possible last penny from the title.
I'm not about to fall for that trick, not least because DLC content implies more unbearable characters and endless dialogue to sit through, followed by 10 minutes of driving, followed by another cutscene, followed by 2 minutes of shooting, followed by more cutscenes, and another 10 minutes of driving to get home again. Just like every other fucking chapter.
On the other hand, there is the cheap and tawdry gimmick of dozens of classic editions of Playboy to collect throughout the game, including the associated centerfolds. You can't argue with big tits.

On the Subject of Vuze*

2010-08-25T00:05:00.000-07:00

"I'd rather go naked than use Vuze"

At one time I had a lot of love for Azureus. I was never that keen on it being written in Java but, hey, it did what I wanted with minimum hassle and Just Worked. Unfortunately, creating a useful and solid bit of software wasn't enough for the developers, so they had the bright idea of going all next-generation and turning good old Azureus into some bloated media portal server bullshit cunt-fest. In other words they turned it into Vuze, and Vuze is an unmitigated piece of shit.

I don't have crazy requirements for my torrent client, but I do need it to:

run on linux. And preferably not via Wine (i.e. no uTorrent). My torrent box is a linux box, and that's not going to change.
support blocklists. For obvious reasons.
have a remote gui app available (at the very least for Windows) so that I can associate .torrent files with it and automatically send them to the torrent box when I download them from websites from either my laptop or desktop machines. I know this functionality can usually be achieved with the various web interfaces that most torrent clients offer these days, but it's sometimes useful to have a standalone app. I was using AzSMRC for Azureus.
not be blacklisted on sites I frequent.

What I don't need is all the social networking, upnp media server, community bullshit that they've added to Vuze. I need a solid, reliable, stable torrent client that I can run 24/7. At a push I could live with Vuze (by turning off all the extraneous crap) if they hadn't managed to break the fundamentally decent client on which it was built. What do I mean by "break"? I mean that the more recent versions of Vuze are now blacklisted by some torrent sites because of the excessive load they put on trackers and/or for being "non-standard". That's a pretty good indication that you've fucked up your client.

And to add insult to injury, for the last few versions they've had the nerve to pop-up donation requests. As if I'm going to give them money for being a bunch of fucking idiots and breaking software I liked. Fuck off.

Anyway I had downgraded to an older version which had been creaking along with the occasional error message. But the straw which broke the camel's back was when, following a Java update, it finally went tits-up, seg-faulting Java on startup. Of course the latest Vuze still worked. Or, rather, "worked", but that's a fat lot of fucking good when it's banned by the trackers I need to use. So finally it was time to stop beating the shit out of that particular dead, diseased horse, and go back to basics. Deluge caught my eye mostly because of its Python core, but after running into some technical problems getting the web UI to work I've settled on Transmission for now. It does what I need (and the Transmission Remote GUI app is excellent), it doesn't do a load of fucking shit I don't need and it was easy and painless to get running. And it's not blacklisted by the trackers I use. I just hope they don't try and turn it into some ill-advised multimedia hub clusterfuck like Vuze.

* yes I know it's not a game

On the Subject of StarCraft 2

2010-07-30T13:22:00.000-07:00

These typical RTS fans* can't contain their excitement at the release of SC2

Don't care. Beneath all the "OMG new Blizzard game!!!1!!11" hype, it's an RTS. I neither enjoy nor excel at RTS games, I know it and no amount of fanfare or fan hysteria is going to change that. I'm not saying it's a bad game at all, obviously I don't know whether it is or not, but I'm not going to buy it in the same way I wouldn't buy the new single from the latest Pop Idol winner. Although in the Idol case, the single would inevitably be a load of old wank.

It's curious just how rabid the fan response has been. Not so much in terms of ferocity, more in terms of volume. Maybe it's a relatively small number of very, very loud individuals but it seems to me that RTS games have never enjoyed the popularity of, say, first-person shooters. Nevertheless, drop into any games-related forum in the last few weeks and there will still be a crust from the tidal wave of jizz spunked-up by all the furiously-masturbating fanboys.

I suspect SC2 will be bought by a) everyone who loved SC1, and b) a lot of people who are either intrigued by the feverish excitement or who have found themselves hitched to another Blizzard wagon in the 12 years since the release of the first game. in the case of b) I suspect a fair number will discover that RTS games are indeed a niche genre for the simple reason that while they can inspire religious devotion in a relatively small fraction of gamers, it is still a relatively small fraction. RTS games are like chess, and chess games don't dominate the gaming charts. Clear a space for that soon-to-be-dusty SC2 box, probably next to your copy of Spore.

Don't imagine that I'm being a curmudgeon, though, I have nothing against SC2, nor even against the people who play it. I do however suspect that the celebration and joy which have been inspired by the release of SC2 will pale into insignificance compared with what we'll experience when Diablo 3 rolls around. And at least that's a game I'll be vaguely interested in playing. Start stockpiling the Kleenex, Diablo fans.

* Typical RTS fans not pictured

On the Subject of Dragon Age: Origins

2010-07-23T20:52:00.000-07:00

Lorena

Damn the neverending Steam sales. Somehow the Dragon Age expansion appeared in my game library, as if by magic, and so I decided it was probably about time I completed the original game.

First time around I took what I presumed to be the straightforward route and built a standard issue tank character. This was fine to start with but I soon found the difficulty creeping upwards, despite lots of people posting on forums claiming that the encounters were "easy" (see my Guide to Forum Posting). If you find yourself in a similar position, you'll soon notice that all the people claiming the game is easy a) are playing mage characters, and b) recruited the additional healer party member Wynne. Unfortunately I a) was playing a tank and b) killed Wynne in the mages tower because I thought she was a sanctimonious old bitch. This leaves your party without a healer (unless you spec Morrigan as one, but that would be no fun), and I think you'll find that ups the difficulty considerably. Ultimately I got a bit bored of spamming potions and eventually moved on to other games, after completing perhaps 25% of DA.

So, lesson learned, this time I made a nice mage character, cranked up her healing skills, recruited Wynne (who turns out to be largely unnecessary if you play as a healer yourself) and set out to save the world from the nasty darkspawn.

It certainly was a lot easier this time, no doubt partly due to my familiarity with a large chunk of the game. Unfortunately that also made the early stages quite tedious, despite starting off from a different racial/class starting zone. I doubt I'll play DA again for a while, unlike both Mass Effect games which I've completely 2 or 3 times. I'm not sure why but I don't find the game world of DA quite as compelling, despite the storytelling and voice acting being very similar. Except for the fact that your own character doesn't speak in DA, which has quite an impact on your relationship with him/her. It sounds like that will be one of the big changes in DA2, and it's one I whole-heartedly endorse. Also there's a lot less party micro-management in ME which streamlines the game play a great deal. DA is quite an old-fashioned, almost turn-based game at heart so it doesn't "flow" as smoothly.
Still, once I caught up with myself and reached a point where I was facing new encounters it got a lot better. The story takes a while to find its feet, and of course it takes a while for your character to level to a point where you feel like a double-hard killing machine. Eventually you're felling dragons and laughing at the ragtag ruffians who dare to take you on and you reach that golden stage of really feeling like the hero you're supposed to be. I also turned my mage into a blood mage (at the expense of a poor, defenseless child), which is slightly odd in a game world where blood mages are villified while you're the great white hope for civilisation's future. You do get some cool spells though.

I'm still not keen on all the micro-management. I still want to play as my character and let all the others get on with their jobs. I don't mind gearing them all up, except for the fact that there are quite a lot of them, but forever pausing battles and switching party member to issue instructions or heal or whatever is a bit too RTS (not even "RT", mostly "S") for my liking. I could probably have tweaked the combat tactics a bit more, but in the end I just made them at least try to heal themselves, and to prioritise serious enemies, and protect my character above all else.

I'll admit I did cheat once, but I also maintain that it was forgivable. Essentially I wanted my pretty lady mage to get it on with naughty bard Leliana, but I ran into a bug where you can't trigger Leliana's personal quest if she likes you too much, so I had to make her a little less adoring temporarily.

And bugs are my main complaint. Not necessarily in terms of game play (although I did encounter stuck characters occasionally), but god DAMN the game crashed a lot. For a start if you play for extended periods then it begins to crawl, especially during loading screens. And I had any number of CTDs during battles, often "important" battles. I suspect they were audio-related, as a recent patch does list that as one of the fixes. But there were several sections, especially towards the end of the game, where the fucking thing would crash immediately upon entering a new area, over and over until by luck I could do a quick-save on the other side and restart. Given the relatively modest technical complexity of the engine (at least in PC terms) it was quite disappointing. Especially compared with the surprising reliability I had become used to while playing GTA4 (even if they did manage to fuck up the engine with the LC expansion).

Anyway, I got there in the end. The world was saved, the girl got the girl and various other boring shit probably happened but I couldn't be bothered with reading all the end-game text. I think I'll take a break before diving into Awakenings, though.

On the Subject of Episodes from Liberty City

2010-07-23T20:43:00.000-07:00

Perla/Simi

As I reported previously, GTA4 was a surprise hit for me and so it was inevitable that I would pick up the Episodes from Liberty City expansion. Naturally I did so immediately before it was sold for tuppence in a Steam sale. You'd have thought I would have learnt that lesson by now (cf Grid, Dirt 2).

Anyway, after completing the original game (no thanks to the fucking stupid helicopter bug in the final mission which still hasn't been fixed as far as I'm aware), I was straight into The Ballard of Gay Tony. In hindsight that was possibly a mistake, as TBOGT is superior to The Lost and Damned, so I would have been better off getting the latter over and done with first.

First things first, and Rockstar somehow managed to cripple the engine with the release of EFLC. It's supposed to feature fancy-pants clever shadowing trickery, but ultimately makes the game run like shit compared with the earlier version. Unfortunately this shittery now applies to the original game too, thanks to the patch which was released alongside EFLC (and which is of course mandatory if you play through Steam). After a lot of dicking around with graphics settings and turning down shadow quality, I was eventually back in business.

Since this is an expansion, there's not too much to say. It's the exact same game world, and there are some clever crossovers between the three stories, especially regarding a central diamond heist. To be honest I prefer Niko to either of the expansions' protagonists, who are slightly one-dimensional in comparison. On the other hand, TBOGT in particular adds a lot of variety to the game play, often involving a parachute. I cannot fucking stand the helicopter sections though, that fucking thing is virtually unflyable, or at least it is when you're trying to shoot something else at the same time. And doubly so when that thing is also in the air. During one particularly annoying mission I kept having to land and take out persuing choppers with the (ludicrously overpowered) automatic shotgun thing (don't ask me), before taking to the air again to continue. Fucking awful.
Still, there's not too much of that, and plenty of the standard-issue infiltration and general carnage. With a slightly worthless rhythm game tacked-on in the nightclub. Speaking of the nightclub, I believe there's supposed to be some sort of "nightclub management" mini-game, but despite being asked to show up at the club by the doorman, and despite the woman being in the office, it never seemed to trigger for me. Didn't seem to make any difference in the end, at least it didn't prevent me from completing the game.

So in TBOGT you run around clearing up the mess made by an over-the-hill, coked-up club empresario in freefall, and in TLOD you're a biker gang-member who's chief has gone off the rails and is running the club into the ground for no apparent reason. To be fair, TLOD did pick up eventually and does has its moments, but it doesn't offer the variety or the humour of the other campaigns and feels a bit flat.

Together they form a pretty satisfying extension to the game, and overall I had a lot fun. I suspect that when I do dip back into the game in the future it will be into the original story rather than the expansions, but that's not a criticism of the expansions as much as a vindication of the original.

Thought for the Day: Tera Patrick

2010-07-23T20:16:00.001-07:00

Get your pencil cases out, we're going back to the old school.

On the Subject of Batman: Arkham Asylum

2010-07-23T19:28:00.000-07:00

Kelly Brook

People have been bleating on about Batman: Arkham Asylum being a great game for a while now. In between playing some games I genuinely was interested in, I thought I'd give it a try.

So far, so shit. The basics are there; it looks pretty enough, it runs smoothly enough, the controls... work. I've been using a 360 pad because it's "one of those games" which benefits from one.

One thing that bugs me about the game is how Batman seemingly isn't allowed to kill anyone. It's not that you get punished for killing people, it's that you don't get the chance. Henchman come at you armed with everything from fists to sniper rifles, by way of shotguns and pipes and cattle prods, but once you've taken (knocked) them out, you don't get to pick up any of the leftover firepower. Oh no, you must continue with only your pacifist-friendly problem-solving toolkit. Rather than humanise Batman, or make the game more challenging or whatever the fuck it's supposed to achieve, all it does for me is work against the self-conciously "dark" atmosphere of the game and make it seem cheap and shallow.

Talking of cheap and shallow, there's the dialogue. What a load of uninspired, cliched shit. The Joker is a mind-numbingly irritating and tiresome character which absolutely makes me want to kill him (just like in The Dark Knight, funnily enough), which is fair enough, but then of course you know you're not going to get the opportunity to properly cave his skull in and he'll probably just end up incapacitated and ultimately locked up again at the end of the game. Harley Quinn (or however you spell it) has a certain fancy-dress whore charm (i.e. she looks hot) but she manages to be even more of a whining, screeching, vacuous cunt. And I have to say, "Bats" is such a fucking pathetic nickname. "Oh hello, Bats. Nice to see you again". The dialogue in general is just grating and awkward and bad.

But who cares about that sort of thing, it's all about the action, right? Maybe I'm just not in tune with old-school console beat-em-up mechanics or something, but I don't seem to get on with AA's combat system. It usually seems to descend into a load of random button-mashing which, 90% of the time, will win the fight. And the other 10% you just try again and end up beating it the second time for no discernable reason. It seems like it should be similar to The Witcher's timing-based combo system, but unlike with that game in AA I don't feel the same connection to the moves. The cues are probably there, but I'm too bored by the randomness of it all to notice them.

But what turns me off the most is how tediously repetitive the game is. The whole thing is just "chase the Joker, almost catch up with him, watch him run off to another indistinguishable part of the asylum while you fight a boss". Repeat. I'm not a fan of boss battles in any case because they're usually contrived and meaningless to the story and just serve to get in the way and artificially extend the game, and that's definitely the case in AA. The random combat doesn't help.

So I'm unimpressed. Increasingly I'm coming to the conclusion that gamers have either given in to the torrent of cash-grabbing, derivative wank that some developers are putting out or else are too young to be familiar with genuinely innovative and involving games and so don't have an adequate frame of reference when it comes to quality. That is especially true of the absolutely loathesome Dead Space, and to a lesser extent Assassin's Creed. Although AA isn't quite in that league of middle-of-the-road, cheap, lazy piss-stained blandness, it's certainly not the impressive experience I was hoping for.

On the Subject of PCZone

2010-07-22T22:58:00.001-07:00

Kelly Brook

I was slightly saddened to hear of the recent demise of PCZone magazine. That's right, "magazine". You know, bits of paper with words printed on them and glued together and sold in shops. Yes, shops - places where you would go to buy porn before the internet was invented. You know, porn - pictures of bare ladies printed in magazines and then dumped in the woods for kids who weren't old enough to buy them to find.

Slightly saddened, but perhaps more surprised that PCZone had survived this long. It was a must-buy for me back in the 90s, being significantly superior to the competing (and shit) PC Format. One of PCZone's most notable contributors was Charlie Brooker who started out as a cartoonist before emerging as one of the magazine's most memorable writers, and who has since gone on to become an established name in British TV and radio comedy, and who has been mercilessly ripped-off by that derivative, talentless hack "Yahtzee" Croshaw.

And lest we forget, PCZone was responsible for the magnificent Colin Culk, who's occasional videos were hidden away on the cover CDs.

Can't be arsed to link them all, just search youtube for Colin Culk, they're all on there.

Nostalgia aside, I won't really miss PCZone that much. I don't recall when I last bought an issue but the chances are it's been well over a decade. You could argue that's there's still a market for intelligently written, irreverent games-related journalism, but the fact is today's gamers are mostly fucking retards with single digit attention spans who think Zero Punctuation is a masterpiece of satire rather than repetitive, tiresome cuntery. In that sense the passing of PCZone is sad because its demise is a symptom of a broader malaise.

Thought for the Day: Anna AJ

2010-05-09T21:26:00.000-07:00

I appear to have been neglecting my duties here recently. Let me make it up to you with some TnA.

On the Subject of GTA4

2010-03-14T16:29:00.000-07:00

Maria Ozawa

I know I'm very late to the GTA4 party. In addition, I haven't played a single GTA since the very first, top-down version. That was fun enough, but I suspect I fell victim to media hyperbole with respect to the sequels. Not in the way the scaremongering media idiots would prefer, I suspect, but simply because I began to suspect Rockstar were becoming increasingly, needlessly controversial when it came to designing the GTA games in an attempt to sell games by way of controversy rather than quality.

Still, at $7.49 (I think) in the massive christmas Steam sale, I thought "why not?". Based almost entirely on forum feedback, I anticipated the game being a particularly poorly-performing port of the console version. And of course my expectations of the gameplay were no greater.

Another aspect I was aware of in advance was the ludicrous amount of hoops you initially have to jump through to get the fucking game started. Signing up to the Rockstar "Social Club" stupid online shit, then digging out my old MS GFW Live login from whatever piece of shit game originally required me to sign up for that, and then linking the accounts, and then logging into both just to get to the main game menu. Admittedly it's only really a hassle once, but bearing in mind that you're also running this from Steam itself if that's where you bought it, it really is quite unnecessary.

But as I said I was ready for that, so it didn't come as a surprise. What did surprise me was the actual quality of the game. For a "shitty console port" it seems to me that it runs pretty damn well, especially given the seamless scale of the city. I do experience a lot of flickering shadows, particularly in some indoor environments, but outside of that I really haven't had any technical issues. Not a single crash to date, despite some extended play sessions. Maybe the patches have improved the game, of course I can't tell.

More importantly though, I am impressed with the attention to detail and richness of the game itself. As far as story and missions go it's nothing mind-blowing, and the voice acting is very much on the cartoony side, but there's a great deal of warmth and humour, nods to various movies and some surprisingly subtle mocap acting which often adds more to the performance than the generic dialogue.

I have a soft-spot for big sandbox game worlds, and GTA's Liberty City is very impressive. From the more obvious touches like day/night cycles and the ever-popular steaming manhole covers, there's a decent weather system and a very good sense of a world going about its business. The city's civvies have a large library of behaviours and animations, there are all sorts of street vendors (and walkers), ambulances turn up when you beat someone senseless. On the first mission involving a helicopter I more or less ignored the mission objective and simply went on an extended aerial tour of the city, which is even more impressive seen from above in its entirety.

Of course there's the "controversial" stuff. Whether it's lap-dancing or street corner whores, a multitude of drug-addled storyline characters or the inevitable carnage, there's plenty to keep Fox news on their high horse. What Fox neglect to report is that there's plenty of "context" to the life of crime. Niko experiences plenty of introspection and a fair amount of humour, albeit before ultimately embarking on another killing spree. But the point is there is some depth to the game, it's not simply a teenagers' guide to carjacking and murder. That's what I wasn't expecting, and it was nice surprise.

I expected the game to be very gamepad-friendly, and it is, although it does a good job of not only supporting keyboard/mouse, but also switching between that and a pad on demand. Which is useful, because the firefights are much, much easier (for me) with KB/M, but I prefer driving on the pad, so I switch as necessary and it works very well.

So, much as I enjoy imagining Rockstar as being a bunch of mindless thug idiots, I have to admit I've been enjoying GTA4. I'm not finished with it yet, but I suspect I'm nearing the end. It does suffer from some repetition, but there are some more substantial missions spread out amongst the endless assassinations and car chases. The game also keeps coming up with new features as you progress, like a camera phone for spy missions, or the helicopter, or the various "loyalty" abilities (as I call them since playing ME2) of your friends.

On the Subject of Bioshock 2

2010-02-23T20:50:00.000-08:00

Some model or other

Today got off to a positive start, with me enjoying a good old chuckle over the latest developments in the Bioshock 2 widescreen fiasco. Of course I haven't bothered with buying the game itself, on account of the first one being a mediocre effort and all indications suggesting that this one is more of the same.

But that's neither here nor there. The important point is that Bioshock 2 shipped with the same console-oriented field of view as the original game. That's amazing enough in itself, given the furore that 2K faced first time around. Sure enough, once again people started mistaking widescreengamingforums for some sort of important authoritative organisation rather than the random collection of self-important twats it actually is. Once again they began bitching and moaning about "horizontal+" and overlooking the actual issue, which is the limited fov which was designed for people sitting on a sofa playing games on their tv, not for the more sophisticated PC gamer.

Unsurprisingly, 2K developed a patch to address the issue. Again. What struck me as particularly amusing is how they have chosen to address the "problem". Bear in mind that when they patched Bioshock the first time, they never really admitted that they were fixing a bug, instead choosing to have a sly dig at the naysayers, suggesting they found the game too "intense". According to reports, the new patch for B2 does indeed apply a "horizontal+" logic to the widescreen cropping. So it's all good, right? Surely all those fucking idiots who raged about people on 4:3 displays being able to see more of the game world than them, the oh-so-select few with their fancy widescreen monitors, can shut the fuck up and crawl back under their rocks.

Seriously, how many people even game on 4:3 displays now? Surprisingly, looking at the latest Steam survey reveals the most common resolution is the 4:3 1280x1024. But if you start summing the results by ratio (which I can't be arsed to do throroughly) then it looks like more are playing at 16:10 resolutions. And I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the 1280x1024 players are actually playing at the wrong resolution for their display. The idiots. In any case, widescreen monitors are far from some sort of exclusive luxury item available only to a privileged few, as some people seem to believe.

Unfortunately, rather than expanding the horizontal fov with increased aspect ratio, 2K choose to close it down as the aspect ratio diminishes. So players on 16:9 displays experience no change, players on 16:10 see a bit less than they did before, and 4:3 see a lot less. The reason I find that so chucklesome is because it really highlights the two-pronged nature of the problem. All those fucking cocks who moaned about the unfairness of people with 4:3 displays seeing more should be satisfied, but of course they're in the uncomfortable position of realising that the cropping wasn't the actual problem in the first place.

Who gives a fuck what people on different displays see when they play the game? Really, if the game is comfortable and immersive to play, what does it matter to you if someone else sees a bit more at the top and bottom of the screen? Especially in a first-person shooter which a) is not multi-player oriented in the first place, and b) features most of the action on the horizontal ground plane, not above or below you.
So yes, I do think the fov should be adjustable, because people's situations and preferences vary. But beyond that, why do you fucking cunts even care about cropping? If the fov was adjustable within some mad range, like 60-150 degrees, what difference would it make if the 4:3 image was vert-? It wouldn't make any fucking difference, but you can guarantee the same shit-munchers would still bitch about it being "wrong". Or to look at it another way, if the fov was simply more sensible in the PC version, but the cropping was still vert-, why should widescreen players complain? Of course they shouldn't, it should be the 4:3 owners who are up in arms about the fov being too high on their displays but you can bet you'll never encounter that complaint.

More on the Subject of Mass Effect 2

2010-02-14T13:42:00.000-08:00

Let's not beat around the bush.

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"

Mass Effect 2

I will be shocked if a better game is released this year, so I'm quite confident in awarding ME2 the top gong for 2010 even though it's only February.

Essentially it's like a big-budget Hollywood remake of Mass Effect, but without straying into Chris Roberts "I'm a proper director, me" pretension. Everything that was good about Mass Effect is cranked up to 11, mostly the characterisation, dialogue and storyline. The combat is more involved, and more fun, and "bigger". You're still stuck with only a couple of squad mates at any given time, and you can always see a firefight coming when you enter a region populated with convenient crates to take cover behind. But the action seems somehow better integrated with the cutscenes, maybe because the game has had an impressive visual makeover which can look quite stunning. Talking of cutscenes, there are lots and lots of them. Even the side-missions will feature a handful, even if the mission itself is no more involved than they were in the first game. It's all the more incentive to go exploring, because there are a lot of systems to visit which aren't touched by the primary storyline.
The paragon/renegade tracks are back, and have the amusing side-effect of being reflected in the state of Shepard's facial scars. Which just made me want to see how fucked-up she would look if I pushed her as far into renegade as possible. Unfortunately it seems to be difficult to minimise the paragon points because sometimes you get loads just for completing a mission, and as the paragon points increase they (visually) cancel out the renegade ones. Still, with glowing red terminator eyes which even seem to get reflected in the eyes of other cutscene characters, she ended up looking like a satisfyingly nasty piece of work. Plus the renegade dialogue tracks involve a lot of dark humour, not just Shepard being a bitch/bastard.

What's not to like? Well, some of the guis are more console-friendly than they ought to be in the PC version. No double-clicking to select options? Drilling down page after page just to change a quad member's weapons? Having to drop out to the main menu in order to get to the mission journal? Over-simplified RPG elements? Well, that last one is debatable. Yes, it is a shame to have to rely on drip-fed research to unlock new weapons and upgrades, and the armour selection is very limited compared with the first game. Is it a problem? Probably not. It's ultimately less micro-management, something which was somewhat painful in Dragon Age. The lack of variety and the reduced potential to customise your Shepard, both in terms of appearance and abilities, does grate occasionally. And as I already suspected in the preview, the Illusive Man is a pretty lazy, cliched addition which you could imagine the Half-Life "writers" coming up with.
I'm also not convinced that the repetitive and mindless planet scanning is an improvement over the repetitive and mindless Mako driving from the previous game. Scanning planets feels like something one of the Normandy's junior minions ought to be doing, not galactic savior and double-hard bastard Shepard.

Most importantly the game's too short, but only in the sense that it doesn't continue forever. Still, maybe they'll knock out a few DLC expansions to tide us over until ME3. Some Shepard back-story adventures would be nice. (S)he is "The Butcher of Torfan" after all, something you only learn about through some minor dialogue (and less so in ME2).

Anyway, enough talking about it, back to playing it. Meanwhile, pretty pictures ("Take pictures!"), including a disproportionate number featuring Miranda's impressive rack.

On the Subject of Dead Space 2

2010-02-10T21:25:00.001-08:00

No Dead Space 2 for the PC? Ahahahahahahahahaha. Good fucking riddance.

That is all.

Edit: it seems like the PC version is still TBD. Oh well, it was amusing while it lasted.

On the Subject of Bioshock 2

2010-02-10T20:31:00.001-08:00

Evie Delatosso

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. It looks like Bioshock 2 features the same widescreen cropping as (pre-patch) Bioshock. Which is to say "vert-", which as I've previously discussed, involves widescreen aspect ratios having the same horizontal field of view as lower ratios (i.e. 4x3, or 1.333), with the top and bottom cropped.

Now on the off-chance that someone stumbles across this while they're out and about with their flaming torch and pitchfork, hunting for 2K devs to string up to the nearest tree, let me clarify that it's not 2K I'm laughing/crying about, it's the fucking retard bandwagon-jumping reactionary cunts who continue to claim that Bioshock's widescreen support is "broken" or "wrong".

Aspect ratio support is only "wrong" if the image comes out distorted (i.e. stretched) due to the game essentially rendering through a camera set to one aspect ratio, and drawing the image to a display with another.

That aside (and it's relatively rare, if not unheard of, for a game's aspect ratio support to be genuinely broken in that way), there are actually two separate issues involved when people talk about widescreen support. One of those is the choice of aspect ratio support, whether it's "vert-" or "horizontal+". There is no fucking right or wrong way to do it. But try telling that to some fucking bottom-feeding cock who believes that widescreengamingforums is some sort of official widescreen architecture review board. "Waaaah, I have a widescreen monitor, therefore I should see more than some loser who doesn't, waaaah". That stupid argument, which essentially boils down to "entitlement", can easily be thwarted with the simple example of a widescreen monitor vs a physically larger, 4x3 display (for example, one which has the same physical horizontal width as the widescreen display). Why should the 4x3 display, which offers a considerably larger screen area, display less of the camera view than the smaller monitor? Should someone on a 3x2 eyefinity display have to put up with a narrower horizontal fov than someone on a 3x1 setup? Should someone on a 16x9, 23" display have a wider fov than someone on a 30" 16x10?
In other words the fov should be a function of the physical size of the display relative to the viewer, and that might result in either form of cropping, depending on the circumstances. Why is it the widescreen mode that's wrong, why not the 4x3 mode? Have fun trying to get some cunt who's determined to rage against 2K to even acknowledge that argument. They're much too full of ignorance and entitlement to respond to logic.

The problem is that a lot of people seem to be unable to differentiate between the issue of cropping, and the confusingly similar issue of field of view. It's increasingly common for games which are primarily designed for consoles to appear on the PC without any compensation for the different viewing geometry. A game designed to be played by someone sitting on a sofa 6' from their TV will not offer an optimal viewing experience for me, sitting 18" from my 30" monitor*. So there's a perfectly valid argument that PC games should in general offer a wider horizontal field of view than a console game, in order to maximise immersion and also reduce potential motion sickness in those people who suffer from it. But that is nothing to do with widescreen cropping. It's like when religious idiots try to entwine their bullshit sky wizard fairy tales with common sense notions like people not killing each other, the implication being that if you don't believe in their particular magic beardy man you must be some sort of child-raping murderer. "If you don't agree that all widescreen modes should be horizontal+, you can't possibly agree that the fov should be wider, because they're the same thing". They're not, you're a cunt.

That said, it's quite staggering that 2K have chosen to implement the same design a second time (especially given that they eventually patched the original game). Not because it was ever wrong, but because of the shitstorm it caused last time around. It is (probably quite rightly) being seen as a symptom of general laziness and disinterest when it came to porting the PC version of the game.

In any case I didn't think Bioshock was all that in the first place so I never had any intention of picking up the sequel.

P.S. Maximum respect to kotaku commenter saifrc who is the only other person I've ever seen offering a rational and informed rebuttal to the "controversy".

* incidentally, since most TVs are now 16x9, but most widescreen PC monitors are 16x10, does that mean the fov should actually be narrower on the PC than on the consoles? Obviously not, you cock.

On the Subject of Mass Effect 2

2010-01-30T18:37:00.000-08:00

Perla/Simi

I didn't really pay much attention to Mass Effect when it was originally released. I think eventually I picked it up cheap in Steam sale, and it really grew on me. To date I've completed it three times, most recently immediately prior to the release of the sequel. I'm still impressed by the storytelling, the dialogue, and the well-designed universe. It's interesting, reading back on my original thoughts on the game, that I had doubts about replay potential. It is true that there are sections which can be a bit tiresome, relying on simply skipping through some dialogue to complete an assignment. And the side-missions are still mind-numbingly repetitive and bland.

I'm not that far into ME2, so these will be more initial thoughts than a comprehensive review. Firstly, and mostly importantly, collectors' edition!

Thanks to the continued rise of digital distribution, a physical collectors' edition is becoming a rare thing of beauty. Fortunately the ME2 CE isn't too disappointing. At first it looks like a simple UT3-style tin box, but it turns out the tin is relatively slim, and accompanied by a separate package for the art book, comic and "Cerberus Network" card.

There could have been a bit more included, especially a figurine or similar. Instead the add-ons are complemented by some additional DLC, which is of questionable value.

Still, it could have been worse, and in general it's nicely presented. The biggest disappointment is that for some reason only the digital CE comes with a copy of the soundtrack, which is a bit cheap. Still, that's what bittorrent's for. I expect.

So, what about the game? Well so far I have some very mixed feelings, although on balance they're ultimately positive. First things first, being able to import a character from ME1 (assuming it completed the game) is a nice touch, and is well handled. Having played the games back-to-back it was very satisfying to see my familiar Shepard appear in ME2. The game does a good job of translating the character appearance, probably because if you look closely they haven't really changed any of the design options, just updated the textures and shaders.

Commander Shepard completes Mass Effect 1

Commander Shepard, the 2010 edition

And that's the big improvement in ME2. It does look very pretty, in the same slightly clinical style, while remaining pretty speedy. Thanks, no doubt, to being primarily developed for shitty old consoles. The characters look better, the environments look better. There's some quite subtle but impressive lighting trickery going on, and the shadowing in particular is a big improvement over the original.

But it can't be all good, right? Right. I think I read somewhere that the PC version of ME1 was outsourced, and it actually turned out surprisingly well. The inventory system often comes in for criticism, but I found it pretty workable. The mouse controls were painless and consistent. Unfortunately ME2, which was handled by Bioware as far as I can tell, is a major and frustrating step backwards in that regard. The game suffers from the same piss-poor mouse implementation as many other recent AAA titles, in particular Bioshock and Fallout 3. Turn down the mouse sensitivity enough to make your character controllable (and you have all of 3 settings to choose from. Seriously) and it's way too slow in 2D interfaces, including the time-critical hacking sections. So I'm forever switching my mouse's hardware sensitivity on-the-fly to compensate. It's shit like that which makes you wonder if anyone at Bioware even tested the game with a mouse. It's stupid, stupid crap which would take virtually no effort to correct, if they could just be bothered. Fingers crossed for a patch in the near future.
What almost certainly won't be patched, unfortunately, is the fucking awful inventory, or rather "loadout" interface. Because the looting of the original game appears to have been deprecated in favour of a convoluted, spoon-fed system of pickups and research which appears to offer a much smaller scope for customising your team.
Then there's the ship navigation. Instead of the relatively basic, but reasonable star maps with all the zooming in and out of star systems and driving around (very boring and repetitive) planets, there's some ridiculous micro-machines interface where you "fly" a mini ship around the map and... well there's not much to do. You can pick story locations to visit, or there's a bizarre resource gathering system which involves scanning planets for the materials you need to research weapons and upgrades. It seems very out-of-place, because at least driving around in the mako and shooting things felt like something Shepard ought to be doing.

The whole thing, along with the combined use/sprint/cover system has "console" written all over it, because obviously some drooling console monkey can't cope with having more than one button to press, or more than one thing being listed on a screen at any given time. It's very sad that the game has taken such an enormous step backwards in that regard, and it's a poor reflection on Bioware who are supposed to be the PC gamer's friend when it comes to this sort of stuff.
I mean, you can't even double-click on a menu item, you have to click the separate "confirm" or whatever button. Pathetic.
It's all the more frustrating because everything else is so good. The dialogue system is unchanged, which is a good thing, including the paragon/renegade options. The dialogue itself is first-rate, again, with some genuinely impressive voice acting. Even if you do end up with Fifty Cent as one of your first team members. The "Illusive Man" is a somewhat less impressive addition, reeking as he does of "G-Man"-style narrative stupidity.
The firefights are much improved, however, incorporating much greater numbers of enemies, and more variety.

So, like I said, a mixed bag. I'm really enjoying it from a story and action perspective, but pissed off that some elements of this game are absolutely worse than in its predecessor. It's both annoying and sad, because even if they hadn't changed those aspects at all, it would still be better than what they've become. It's like Bioware wanted to make changes for the sake of making them, or else they were simply too lazy to get the PC version right.
Anyway, because I'm not one of those cunts who thinks they have to "beat" a single player game as quickly as possible, I'm going to take my time and see what there is to see. I hope there aren't too many more disappointments in store.

The Field Marshal's New Year Honours List

2009-12-27T17:48:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-06T21:24:00.000-08:00

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

On the Subject of Dead Space

2009-12-03T21:34:00.001-08:00

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.