On the Subject of Video Cards

Gemma Atkinson

Because I'm not poor, I have an 8800GTX in my PC. In fact it has been there, give or take an RMA, since November 2006. That's right, two thousand and six (and to anyone who pipes up with "uh, my 8800GT/GTS512 is pretty much as fast, and much cheaper", fuck off. Where was your poor man's GTX back in 2006 when I was already running the genuine article? Oh, that's right, it didn't exist).
The point is, with the exception of the overpriced Ultra, the GTX is still essentially top of the nvidia product line, and what's even more amazing is there's nothing lined up to take it's place in the foreseeable future. No, I don't count gimmicky shit like triple SLI, or some pretend next-gen card which is just two underclocked current-gen gpus strapped together.
ATI/AMD is/are to blame really. They're on the second or third generation of cards which still can't compete with nvidia's top of the line, so nvidia is sat back getting fat and lazy from lack of competition. I was on a 6 month video card upgrade cycle prior to the 8800, but now I'm twiddling my thumbs waiting for something new to appear on the horizon. Even giant-slayer amongst games Crysis hasn't managed to inspire any serious speed improvements.
Some cockwits pretend we don't need anything faster. That a GTX can run all current games at max res and max detail so why demand more? To a certain extent that makes sense - the fact is a lot of PC games are developed as half-hearted ports of console games these days, so they're not going to push the limits of a top-drawer PC which could shit all over a "next gen" console. And many games that aren't ports, for example WoW, are developed to work on as wide a range of PCs as possible to maximise their potential market (and that obviously worked for WoW). Still, you can't ignore Crysis, nor the likes of Far Cry 2 and Alan Wake which look like they might also draw and quarter your monster rig.
2006, for fuck's sake.

On the Subject of Age of Conan

Jane Seymour

Delayed yet again. Hahahaha. Hahahaha. Hahahaha.

What's the matter, Funcom, is your game a piece of shit? Is it in such bad shape that you need yet another couple of months to polish that turd and vainly attempt to make it even slightly playable and fun? Do you really think a couple of months will be enough?

Don't know why I'm laughing, I've preordered it. In my defense it was the Limited Edition. And I still expect it will be shit.

On the Subject of Mods

Heidi Montag*

As Field Marshal, I spend a lot of my time delivering the good news to our sand dune-dwelling chums in various sweaty arse-cracks around the world. But that has nothing to do with this rant, other than to explain my recent absence from the blogging airwaves. But fear not! When I am not busy defending our glorious Great British way of life, I am still committed to delivering my glorious judgment on all matters relating to gaming, with the added bonus of pictures of hot women with big (or in this particular case, medium) jugs.

And so, on with the show.

This evening I will be musing on the venerable subject of mods. In principle, mods and modding are good. They are a large part of what sets us futuristic PC gamers apart from the knuckle-dragging console neanderthals. Unfortunately, even though the daunting task of building an operational game engine is already done, it's easy to underestimate the work required to bring even a small mod to completion. Raw code, models, textures, animation, levels, sounds, effects; they're not going to magically appear without substantial human intervention.
This brings me to a phenomenon I observe with special derision. Imagine, if you will, the scene. Some leeeeeeet gamer types are gabbing away on Vent or some such after pwning some noobs in their FPS of choice.

"Huh huh huh we pwned them"
"Noobs!"
"huh huh yeah"
"hey, let's make a mod. Then we can pwn more noobs"
"yeah! I can do the coding, I ran a script that someone gave me once, I'm teh leet haxor"
"dude! I'll grab photoshop and 3d studio max, neither of which I've ever used before, off bittorrent"
"we'll do it this weekend, then we can sell it like counterstrike and be rich"

I guarantee 90% of mods start out like that. But we haven't even got to the derisive part yet. What I really hate is how the majority of mods spend their "active" lives with nothing more to show for themselves than some shitty offline renders of guns.

This is shit

They're easy to spot. Someone on the "team" will spend hours putting together a ruthlessly-accurate but entirely inappropriate model of some rifle or other and produce the obligatory ambient occlusion render. This render will then appear on the mod's website, which will be another area in which someone will expend a great deal of effort without accomplishing anything of any value.

This also is shit

These renders seem to be compulsory for any FPS mod, but what really riles me is just how worthless they are. Even if by some miracle the author has produced a model which would be appropriate as an in-game weapon, the guns really have to be the least important part of the game. How are the environments looking? How are the character models, textures and animations progressing? How's the game logic coming along? What's that? No one has actually done anything to develop the mod, rather they've been too busy creating a theme for the website and trying to prove they know how to use 3D Studio or Maya or XSI? Oh dear.

complete fucking shit

For me, ambient occlusion renders of guns are like a great big sign saying "this mod will never actually exist other than in our imaginations".
And tell me, does your mod feature real-time ambient occlusion on all the high-res models? No? So why did you render your little gun model like that? And why was it grey? Will it be grey in the game? Are you too lazy, ineffectual and talentless to texture it? Yes, I thought so.
You almost have to feel sorry for the modeler, he's undoubtedly the only person on the "team" actually trying to do something constructive. You might even put it down to naive, youthful enthusiasm.
But let's not. They are annoying, pointless fucking shit and every mod that has any on their stupid fucking website should just pack their bags and call it a day right now. You're not going to create the next counterstrike. You're not even going to ever get your piece of shit mod into a playable state, let alone create a polished final product that people beyond your little Vent channel will actually bother to install.

* I feel I must apologise for the blondeness of this update. Put it down to my righteous indignation concerning the subject of the post. Still, she does have a great body, albeit a surgically-assisted one.

On the Subject of 2008

Sophie Howard

I was reading an article on technology predictions for 2008 when coincidentally I had the completely original idea of writing some of my own predictions, mainly for games, for the coming year. When it turns out I'm right on all counts I will quote myself at great length. In the unlikely event that I turn out to be less than right I will edit this post 1984-style to make it look like I was correct all along.

MMOs

2008 is supposed to be the year when both Warhammer: Age of Reckoning and Age of Conan are released. Of course so was 2007, but that didn't happen.
AoC, which looks like the slightly less PvP-orientated of the two, is currently name-checked by anyone and everyone who writes a tedious, self-important, wanky "leaving" post on the forums of current MMOs. "waaaah this game sucks, Age of Conan will be so much better". I confidently predict that it won't. In fact I confidently predict both games will be shit, and will see plenty of their own leaving posts shortly after release.
As a PvP game, WAR will undoubtedly see continuous class balancing/nerfing until there's nothing left to differentiate between classes and the players condemn it as bland. Of course if they don't balance it, the same players will condemn the game as unfair.
AoC, which will also be released on the 360 (a huge flashing red warning sign if ever there was one for MMOs) will be dumbed down to the point of idiocy, with nice big chunky menus and easy-peasy mechanics for the console kiddies. It's also worrying that the screen shots that are being released are getting gradually worse and worse, no doubt as they struggle to make the game remotely playable.
AoC has "disappointment" written all over it in permanent marker pen. I'm really looking forward to it because of the told-you-so satisfaction I'll get as the deluded fanboys discover it's not the beacon of MMO perfection they claimed. It'll be like watching a kid who has told all his mates that he's getting the best christmas present ever, only to discover on the day that it's a pair of shit-stained pants.
As for WAR, well I don't really give a toss about that anyway because it's just PvP which is of course worthless.

Far Cry 2
Following in the wake of Crysis' narrative mediocrity, Far Cry 2 could turn out to be the game Crysis ought to have been. It might not be as jaw-droppingly pretty, but it looks more open, with some interesting features like dynamic weather and NPC sidekicks and the ever-popular dynamic fire. As a PC-only title this already deserves the Field Marshal's seal of approval. It's hard to make a prediction about it because relatively little is known, but I suspect it will be good fun and will address some of Crysis' shortcomings, although I also suspect it will come bundled with a lot of bugs and other issues. Still, I'm quietly hopeful and it's probably the game I'm most looking forward to next year. And maybe there'll be a limited edition!

Alan Wake
This will undoubtedly be the Crysis of 2008 as far as hype is concerned omgwtf it looks teh amazing!!!!111 And then it hits the shelves and suddenly everyone will be distinctly underwhelmed by the gameplay, and probably by the poor performance and bugs and other contentious issues like the widescreen implementation etc etc. At least it will give me something to write about. Oh, how I look forward to legions of clueless mongs claiming it's badly coded just because their piece of shit PC can't handle it. Yeah? Have you seen the game code? Can you show me something that looks as good but runs faster? And no, CoD4 doesn't look as good you FUCKING MORON.
Another potential limited edition for my collection, though.

Spore
Back in the day I was sucked in by all the hype surrounding Black and White. Oooh, the graphics. Oooh, the funny animal avatars. Oooh, zooming in and out and using a godlike hand to drag yourself around the terrain. Unfortunately I found the game boring as hell and only ever played 2 or 3 battles or levels or whatever they were.
That's what I imagine happening when I think of Spore. Yes, it makes for very impressive tech demos. Oooh, you can design your own arrangement of legs. Oooh, it goes from single cells to space battles. Unfortunately I can only imagine it being incredibly dull to "play". Maybe if you're into all that Civilisation/Sim City sort of stuff it'll be ok. However, I predict that a lot of people who aren't will buy into the hype and then shelve the game soon after they've installed it. But the fact is they'll have bought it, so it'll be hailed as a massive success by the games industry and probably lead to a resurgence of god games.
I won't be buying it, limited edition or not.

On the Subject of Leveling

Eva Green

Time for an MMO-related rant. I hope you're sitting comfortably.
In the course of some typical holier-than-thou hardcore-vs-casuals thread on the official Vanguard forums that I can't be arsed to look up, one self-styled hardcore player noticed that the in-game character belonging to someone he was arguing with was only in the mid levels of the game. Naturally this led to much scoffing on the part of the hardcore, who was of course fully level cap'd to the max. The assertion was that if you haven't reached the level cap, you can't possibly understand the fundamental mechanics of the game. Having written that, I suspect it's something I've touched on in the past.
As bullshit MMO arguments go, that was a classic. The idea that there's some tectonic shift in gameplay at the high levels is hilarious. What was really happening was that the hardcore was trying to justify the ridiculous grind and tedium he had endured in order to reach the level cap by pretending there is some holy grail of endgame enlightenment, some sort of MMO epiphany that is out of reach of lesser players.
Anyone who's played Vanguard knows that there is really no change in gameplay from level 1 onwards. Oh sure the various numbers get bigger but then the combat stats (necessarily) cancel out for the most part. All you're left with in Vanguard is increased grind. The number of items you need to collect for collection quests increases. The scarcity of those items increases. The number of creatures you have to kill for farming quests increases. The time it takes to kill those creatures increases. The amount of faction required before you can undertake a quest line (and therefore the number of creatures you have to kill to achieve that faction) increases. The number of quests you need to complete, or random farming you have to endure to level increases.
What did he honestly think changes at higher levels? Of course an answer to that question was stubbornly avoided in the course of the argument, dismissed with variations of "you wouldn't understand, you're not high enough level".
Perhaps the AI improves. Perhaps instead of stumbling zombie-like towards you and proceeding to fire off their signature sequence of attacks the enemies suddenly demonstrate genuine variation and unpredictability. Hahaha no of course not.
Perhaps, instead of the same old fed-ex or farming or assassination quests there is suddenly a range of immersive, story-driven quests with multiple possible outcomes? Hahaha no of course not.
Perhaps combat becomes more than pressing a set of buttons in whatever order makes the damage numbers the biggest? Hahaha no of course not.
I'm sure a hardcore would argue the last point. I know you get newer, bigger skills as you level and thus the order in which you press the buttons will change, but that really doesn't constitute a change in gameplay. Any group-based healing or buffing tactics are just as valid at low levels as they are later in the game (again, skills permitting). I know the bigger, badder foes might employ pop-up adds to increase the "challenge" but again, those adds are using the same, tired AI.
This is essentially why I ran out of motivation in the early-30s in Vanguard. Nothing changes. It's more (and more and more) of the same old grind. Until that changes, there really is no reason to keep ploughing through the game. The end result is that the casuals, who would stay the course if there was variety and something to look forward to later in the game, can't be arsed to keep banging away at it and leave. Meanwhile the power-leveling hardcore hit the level cap and (until the recent, long overdue and still typically flawed introduction of the Ancient Port Warehouse raid) run out of things to do and leave. The difference is, the "casuals" had the insight and sense to quit flagellating themselves in the pursuit of some elusive and arguably non-existent "achievement" that has nothing to do with skill or ability.