On the Subject of Episodes from Liberty City

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.

On the Subject of Mass Effect 2

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.

On the Subject of Mature Content

Perla

One subject that keeps popping up amongst the waves of shit that pass for the AoC forums is mature content. AoC was always positioned as the "mature" MMO, featuring "mature" themes, profanity, gratuitous, bloody violence and nudity in keeping with the world described in the original Conan novels. Or at least so I'm told, because I've never read them.
In practice AoC has wimped out and become pretty much a generic fantasy MMO. Yeah, there are one or two "gruesome" fatalities for some classes but that loses it's novelty value pretty quickly. I've encountered a single topless (female) NPC, who has probably already been censored out of the game thanks to an overhaul of the dungeon she inhabited. There are whores, although it's all a bit tame and implied and ends up seeming more childish and immature than if they'd just been up front with it.
The Witcher featured mature content, but managed to appear a great deal more sophisticated than AoC largely by virtue of not trying to hide the fact. It was just there, taken for granted as an integral part of the game world. Whores were whores, you could shag them but you didn't have to. There was lots of swearing that was often so well written that it was actually funny. AoC's awkward, sniggering schoolboy approach pales by comparison. Perhaps it's better off gone altogether, but then without it there wouldn't be much left to the game.

In AoC's case there's an overwhelming suspicion that the taming of the content comes in preparation for the planned XBox release of the game. Because you wouldn't want to offend the poor little chiiiildren. Waaaaah! Who will look out for the poor little chiiiildren?
To hell with the fucking children. It's bad enough that so much mainstream media is already dumbed down so as not to offend all the religious shit-sticks and legions of fucking simpletons who infect society.

Of course it all comes down to money. They musn't offend anyone lest it alienates potential customers and compromises their target demographic. Never mind the fact that compromising the very foundations of the game will similarly offend many players. Ultimately people who find the notion of nudity or violence offensive aren't going to be playing AoC in the first place, so trying to cater to them will end up pleasing no one at all. And that's what is in danger of happening.

What makes me laugh (with contempt) is when the issue of mature content comes up on a computer game forum, with people understandably asking why there isn't more tits and arse, more swearing, more sexual themes, more outrageous blood and guts in games, especially when those games are built on an IP which featured all that and more. It's not the fact that the topic arises, or that people lament the lack of adult games designed for adults that makes me laugh. It's the inevitable rejoinder from some holier-than-though fuckwit chiming in with the token "you should grow up / get a life / get a girlfriend" response. You know what, fuck-face? It's a video game forum. You can't pretend to be some super-cool, aspirational role-model when it comes to "having a life" and frequent a video game forum. The fact that you're trying to appear superior to other peeople in such a context by citing your relationship credentials just comes across as desperate and pathetic.

If there's one thing you learn on the internet, it's that for better or worse, whatever you're into, you're not alone. Frankly if you don't like to look at a nice, plumptious pair of breasts then you must be dead inside. It doesn't matter if you're male or female. So there's no reason why there shouldn't be games made for people who like a bit of old-fashioned nudity. Or why people who appreciate a bit of good, old-fashioned swearing shouldn't be similarly accomodated.