Sunday 31 October 2010

An Observation

Given infinate time, it is said that a thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters will write a line of Shakespeare,

In the meantime, perhaps the damned monkeys could stop coding for World of Warcraft.

Thursday 28 October 2010

Nation of Procrasti

So you know how I keep promising reviews?

Fall season is taking up all my free time. Sorry. Blame the game publishers.

Have a rabbit instead. Isn't it a cute wickle bunny?

Sunday 24 October 2010

Bonfire of the Fanboys

Spoilers within for Modern Warfare 2 and Bad Company 2, don't sue.
Browsing a favourite forum of mine recently, I came across a thread entitled.

Stop Trying To Challenge Call of Duty

A thread which was so idiotic and fanboyish that I am going to have to take down every point it makes. Bit by bit.

I say this, not because I'm an obsessed, overzealous keyboard warrior, but because there just really isnt any point in doing it anymore.

Yes you are.

COD has just well, nailed it. At least, better than anyone else really has.

It hasn't. It really really hasn't.

I rented out and played Medal of Honour recently, along with Killzone 2 and Bad Company to see how they stacked up, and by comparison they were just awful. Sure, maybe they wouldnt be so bad if I didnt have something better to compare them to, but for christ sake they bored me.

I haven't played Killzone 2 or Medal of Honour, but Bad Company is something I play regularly, and I, my friends, and professional reviewers have all managed to see that it kicks the living crap out of Call of Duty, I am sure that if Call of Duty had 'nailed it' then it would have compared favourably to the sublime Battlefield franchise (hopefully me being a blatant fan of said franchise doesn't lessen the credibility of this, truth be told I quite like Call of Duty's singleplayer, but I'm sure that the fanboys are blissfully oblivious that it exists)  so obviously the opinion of one fanboy makes it far more true that Call of Duty is superior to these other games. Perhaps he just can't handle anything less than a deluded power fantasy.

Is Killzone even trying to compete with Call of Duty anyway? It's set in the future.

Aiming the weapons was a sluggish chore, point blank hails of bullets took a solid 6 seconds to bring down an enemy, the close combat animations were lame, the characters were highly punchable, the story was broken and unfocused and badly told, and the set pieces made me yawn.
For one thing, you can't fire most weapons for 6 seconds. Your standard assault rifle will be roughly 600rpm with a 30 round box magazine, that's enough to fire for 3 seconds. Guns don't immediately jump to the nearest target when you close your eye either. Most of the time you'll need to carefully track their movements lead the target just right and fire a shot or small bust to take them down, you don't keep blinking like mad and squeezing the trigger until the entire room is dead.

There's no way I can really respond to the last three points there in text, so lets break them down.

The close combat animations were lame,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3KuklbNM80
Apologies for linking like it's the stone age, but it's the only way this damn thing will work right now. Embeds be broken.

 The characters were highly punchable


The story was broken and unfocused and badly told, and the set pieces made me yawn.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gt4IwjU2jrU

Okay, I'll admit, it's pretty well done, but really? Double crossings have been done by everyone, hell, even Bad Company decided to throw one in, the reason was more humanly motivated, and it seemed at least a bit more real than 'LOL I'MMA SHOOT MAH OWN SIDE, 'CUS AMERIKEE' but it still didn't quite work. It's honestly been done to death, I doubt it was even fresh when Deus Ex did it.

As Yahtzee once said, popular things are often popular for a reason, because they are good.

He also said that Emm Dubya Two was a pile of tripe.

So who agrees? Is anyone else sick and tired of hearing about "COD killers" and just wish these bland imitations would stop so new first person shooters could just be good on their own merit, or is it actually possible to knock COD off its perch with a new title? (That would be, off its perch in its prime, not when it starts releasing endless successions of clones after MW3.)


History lesson time!

Medal of Honor - November 11th 1999 (Releasing a war game on Rememberance Day, good job, America)
Battlefield 1942 - September 10th 2002 (A day before the first anniversary of the September 11th attacks?)
Call of Duty       - October 29th 2003 (No conspiracy theories there. Something to do with Halloween.)

Now, these are all World War 2 games, so lets examine how long these franchises have been stuck in the modern era of Marines shouting about apple pie.

Battlefield 2               - June 21th 2005
Cod Four: Mod War - November 5th 2007
Medal of Honor 2010- October 12th 2010

Not sure where all this 'bland imitation' stuff is coming from, if we're going to claim that only one person can hold a certain genre or subgenre, then it looks more like Activision wanted some of EA's shooty pie. Maybe only Stephen Spielberg should be allowed to create arcade shooters, and that would be a horrible thing, Call of Duty and Battlefield at least recognise that wars tend to involve more sides than just America. Though BC2 and Black Ops would hint that they've forgotten that. Apparently America has assassinated Fidel Castro as well. You know, that guy that they've failed to assassinate about 638 times, and that number is not an exaggeration or sarcasm against America.

I think I've lost my train of thought now though.

I'm sick of being shot by my own side.

Monday 18 October 2010

Eight year old prohibits worldwide sales of Gay Tony

Yeah. You read that right. Due to international copyright law, the controversial and acclaimed series Grand Theft Auto has been stopped not by insane disbarred lawyers or hidden warm beverage based mini-games, but by the intellectual property of an eight year old and his father. A song on the Ballad of Gay Tony soundtrack entitled 'Conga Kid' by Daniel Haaksman and featuring aforementioned eight year old; MC Miltinhino was found to contain an apparently aunauthorised sample of "Bota o Dedinho pro Alto" by Brazilian composer Hamilton Lourenço da Silva, the father of the MC himself.

Though Rockstar showed documents claiming they had the permission to use the sample, the court discovered that the signatures on these were not those of the authors, as a result Rockstar is being fined $3000 for every day the game remains in stores, but because this is international law we're dealing with, this effects more than just Brazil.

Whether this will have a widespread effect or not remains to be seen. Deep down though, I can't help but laugh. Eight year olds really are killing gaming, aren't they?

Saturday 16 October 2010

Foe at the Door

Remember, No Russian
Warning: Minor spoilers may be within.
Enemy at the Gates is a 2001 film depicting a highly fictionalised version of the life of Sniper and Hero of the Soviet Union Vasily Zaystev, in this depicted by Jude Law, for, as far as I can tell, no reason at all. He doesn't even try to replicate (nor do many, or even any, other characters in the film) a russian accent, something which Call of Duty has taught us you can hire any big name western actor to do and it will obviously work. Speaking of Call of Duty, actually. If you're familiar with the games then parts of Enemy at the Gates will look very similar. And for good reason. It would certainly seem that Spark Unlimited and Treyarch have both seen the film, and their Stalingrad levels have had moments based off of it. Or, at risk of sounding overly aggressive towards the developers, ripped bloodily from the film as it kicked and screamed. Not that that's a bad thing, if anything it brought a smile to my face as I saw the impact different media forms could have on each other in motion.
Look Familiar?
Though references existing in a certain game series aside, Enemy at the Gates is well worth a look if you're a fan of the genre, particularly World War 2 movies such as Saving Private Ryan and others.You'll eventually end up ignoring that everyone sounds like they're from any given part of London, and be drawn away in the excellent crowd scenes, with various shades of brown and grey being contrasted vividly by the red banners being held by the charging Soviets. These scenes, displaying brutal (though inaccurate) battles in the streets of Stalingrad are likely the film's best, comparatively the scenes of sniping and hunting are slower paced, and quite frankly on the dull side, the build-ups to a shot or a death are a relief from this boredom, but the moment itself feels anti-climactic and everything in-between is just as bad. Some thrill may be found in the scenes following the propaganda that makes Vasily the hero he is, though again, it pales in comparison to the battle scenes at the start of the film, the way the film leads up to his status is interesting, however, though not explored too much.

The acting, in an all round sense is good, the characters feel believable with the possible exception of Vasily himself, who feels like Jude Law. I've already mentioned the lack of Russian accents throughout the film, and I never really got the feeling that anyone in this film was a grim, determined soldier of the Red Army, fighting for their life, and even though you stop noticing the lack of accents so much, it always feels like they'd be more at home in the Ritz than on the streets of Stalingrad. It's not too off putting as long as you push it to the back of your head, but as soon as it crawls to the front, it's hard to drop again. A few characters also needed far more screen-time and development, the most obvious example here being Ron Perlman's veteran sniper, disillusioned with the Communist regime who is, annoyingly, killed about ten minutes after his introduction. It's really a bit of a waste, especially given how interesting the character was to begin with. But nope, he gets shot.

I guess, in the end, as I said at the beginning, the movie is worth watching, it's good, not too great, but good, the score is wonderful to hear, the crowd scenes are utterly brilliant, and you really get a feel for the battle, but it can be brought down by the duller scenes, bad characterisation at certain points (all you ever really get from Vasily himself is that he's a Shepherd from the Urals and he can shoot things) and a few problems with accents. Though all of this isn't enough to make the film bad, or even 'meh', they just bring it down to good, it's a fun watch, an entertaining way to kill a few hours and if you're a fan of World War 2 movies then you should definitely see it if you haven't already.

Friday 15 October 2010

That's the power of love

Bioware announced this week that gamers that pre-order Dragon Age 2  before January 11th 2011 will receive an upgrade to the 'Signature Edition' with no extra charge and an extra $20 of content. This is good news, as well as it rolling seamlessly into EA's project ten dollar, I love getting free stuff with my games. And I love Bioware and Dragon Age, so, hurray. Anyway, signature edition includes a downloadable soundtrack, a new playable character (Party character, I guess) as well as downloadable items and such for in the game. It's also bundled up in a neat looking package.

So in other news, we're getting Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare a lot sooner than I had assumed, and will be available in disc form for those without an internet service for their console, the DLC should be released in time for Halloween and promises another five hours of zombie fun, as well as a multiplayer mode which sounds a lot like Halo's Firefight meets Left 4 Dead meets Clint Eastwood.

All we wanna do is eat your brains.

Sunday 10 October 2010

Forever and ever and ever...

Goodness me, is that the time? I almost got lulled into the bliss of the weekend far too much to remember to post something, so, whilst I got Castlevania: Lords of Shadow on Saturday (expect more from that perhaps next week) and it's so far proving to be a lot harder than I'd given it credit for when I was selecting difficulty, one can only tremble in fear as they imagine what 'Paladin' difficulty must be like.

Anyway, before I jump to my main feature of this post, allow me to point out that, the tag at the bottom will correspond to all things related to my college work, and will probably be the only time I bother to add a tag, in fact. So to make sure said tag isn't wasted: I'm currently modelling a Browning M2 Heavy Machine Gun as part of my 3D modelling unit, I'll post a few pictures when I can, getting a wip would be difficult at this time.

Now, hopefully your attention hasn't wandered by the time it's taken you to get to this paragraph, so. Duke Nukem Forever. The Chinese Democracy of the gaming world, and like said album, it seems like it will actually come out... eventually. The lucky people who went to the gaming con Firstlook in Amsterdam got treated to the following gameplay.



So, what have we learned?

- People get damned annoyed if you shut off a game to stop them from watching someone urinate. They've waited twelve years to see that, damnit!
- Whiteboards will never be as fun again, not to mention it appears to be rather hard to draw a circle with a controller for Steve there.
- Phallus = Brilliant tactical plan.
- Don't send SWAT against robot monsters (when did this ever seem like a good idea?)
- Duke is a gamer?

That's all I really have for this post, other than that, Battlefield has gotten me into some 1960's music, listening to a good deal of CCR and Buffalo Springfield at the moment.

I'll be back in another twelve years!

Thursday 7 October 2010

Blast from the past

My mention of how I hate Mass Effect style dialogue wheels has brought something up in my memory, possibly what I consider the zenith of RPG games. This gift from the gods that I speak of is Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, and all things considered I felt it was about time for a retrospective review of the game.

Released to critical acclaim in September 2000 by the Black Isle studios, and developed by RPG moguls Bioware, the Baldur's Gate games were a shining example of how wonderful the two's partnership could be, the second, tweaked and improved, game following on not long after the first left off, even with the option to import your previous game, something often seen in RPGs today.

Usually I would give a synopsis of the story as it begins, but everything screams 'no' within me at this, all I can bring myself to say is how the first game starts; you take the role of a character of your own creation, who has been brought up by his or her adoptive father in the closed off, scholar filled walls of Candlekeep, a town so obsessed with knowledge that one must donate a rare book to their extensive library before they will be allowed entrance. All you know is that your father is planning to take you on a journey, something which he has been keeping very secret, and that you must finish what studies you can as well as buy some road worthy equipment before you meet him. So begins what, in this writers opinion, is the greatest series of RPGs ever made.

I don't want to dwell much on the story, however, as I believe that in this case it must be played through and experienced, in whatever form it may take. So I must move on to what is usually my last resort when reviewing a game; the graphics. I've bumped this up my list of priorities because, well, they're beautiful. Not just by the standards of the early millenium, where every 3D character looked more like a series of cubes stuck together, I mean the game could most likely stand up on its graphics today, people would complain about the isometric viewpoint and the lack of ability to customise your characters cheekbones, I'm sure, but the graphics themselves are timeless, and whilst the character sprites may give away the games age, everything about the environments, the colours, the contrasts, the textures, gives off a beautiful, if slightly aged look, almost like the art deco of gaming. I must admit, it's not often I'll gush over the graphics of even a new release, a comment, perhaps, but nothing too interested, but then, when these games are past their tenth birthday, like Shadows of Amn is, will we look back on them the same way? Or will they seem like crude crayon drawings when compared to the probably photo-realistic graphics we'll have by then.

A brief skim over the essential gameplay mechanics because, really, that's not what I'm here to talk about, the same system was used in 2009's Dragon Age: Origins and, well, frankly it has aged terribly, being auto-paused just in case you want to reassess your strategy every time you take a bit of damage got annoying even at the time, and though watching your party destroy whatever enemy you were against with a flurry of spells and abilities that left the entire battlefield devastated would feel oh-so rewarding, sometimes it just wouldn't be worth the effort when you would mostly be fighting bandits. So no, combat is not what we want to talk about, what we want to talk about is characters and their interaction, the partial voice acting in the game was an impressive addition when it came out, though games such as Deus Ex (2000 as well) boasted the full voice-acting, and even limited dialogue options, that most games have today, the sheer amount of dialogue to be had in Baldur's Gate blew it out of the water, the way characters would interact within your party independent of you, or stop to question you on some matter, and the answers boiled down to more than the bog standard 'saint, neutral, jerk' options that I loathe about the dialogue wheel. At one point you could even claim you were on a quest to find 'the holy ground-hog'. Even if the game did use an utterly superfluous alignment system, it was more of an aid than anything, if you really wanted you could make a Lawful Good character who insulted people at every opportunity, it would be pointless and I'm not sure why you'd want to, but you could do it.

It was this freedom that made Baldur's Gate seem so wonderful, perhaps lacking when compared to more modern, open worl games such as Morrowind and Oblivion, but something to be commended for its time, and a brilliant demonstration of how the RPG genre should be.

Definately well worth whatever pittance is being charged for the entire series in one pack.

I am disapoint

So I mentioned Eurogamer in my last post, where I also played Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. A game which is meant to be out today in Europe. As I tend to do with games I want to play, I put in a pre-order and waited eagerly for it in the mail.

Thanks to the damned Royal Mail and Play.com not shipping early, however, I am currently left gameless, which puts me in ranting mood. As always the knowledge that someone outside of America may be playing something before me scares and infuriates me, this is going to mean I have to pretend the game doesn't exist until I own it. Just as long as they don't start making Review Supplements on the Escapist or Achievement Hunter videos.

Once I get it though, I'll probably update the site with a full review.

Wednesday 6 October 2010

Woah, stuff.

So, just created this and at the moment it's looking pretty ugly, far too clinical even for my tastes. Regardless, this  is, appropriately, where I dump anything I can't stick on a forum or that I want to save so I can tell some future employer that my time spent on the internet is constructive (honest!)

I guess I'll have to apologise now if I'm forcing this upon you through msn, gotta pretend someone cares, right? You still love me. Presumably.

Anyway, without further ado, lets stick on my journalism hat and talk about something that, if you're a friend of mine, I've probably been rubbing your face in for about a week now. Betcha loving it.

Well, on Friday, last Friday, that is, unless I'm secretly a time traveller and I'm screwing with you, I went to London, a city paved not so much with gold as with rain and styrofoam, to the mythical strongholds of Earl's Court, there within to nerdgasm over the wonders of Eurogamer 2010.

God, I didn't even know they did such things outside of the States, and probably Japan, shows what I know given that some of our first looks at Duke Nukem Forever come from Amsterdam. I'll try not to lose my train of thought here, as I talk about the various things I've played. Which you probably haven't. Hah!

I'll start off with Dragon Age 2, seeing as this was a surprise for me to see it, and probably the thing I waited longest to play. The ten or so minutes I played didn't do it justice though, it confirmed one thing for me though; it's going to be great. Whether it was hype, brilliance or giddy excitement about playing it, the game drew me instantly in, or at least far enough in to notice that the character customisation didn't seem to be working properly and the hack'n'slash combat was quite clunky, or that I can't stand the Mass Effect style dialogue wheel. All I know is that Hawke sounds great, the default character looks great, hacking through waves of Darkspawn feels great, especially given the way they've kept the special moves from Origins and made them into fancy flourishes and charges that leave unrealistic explosions of blood in your wake.

Which does, in fact, bring me to something, whilst perhaps poorly implemented, I had to love the way blood would coat your character in Origins (though how it managed to soak through your armour, through your clothes and onto your skin was beyond me) but this addition seems sadly missing from the sequel, whether it will be implemented at a later date, I'm not so sure, but it would be nice. I'll forgive Origins for making me watch Leliana, blood soaked and saying "The Maker told me to."

Oh, and they've ruined Flemeth.

More from Eurogamer later, probably, sometime in the future I may write my feelings up on one of the following.
Fallout: New Vegas
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
SOCOM and why I didn't play it.
Fable III
Why I'm great.
Kirby's Epic Yarn (though probably not, given the fact they had someone warning you not to take pictures, I get the feeling someone from Nintendo would break my legs)
Not to mention how I repeatedly humiliated myself in front of crowds of people.

I managed to play on the new Castlevania as well, though my thoughts of that will be reserved for when my pre-order arrives. They're looking positive right now though.

I'm oscar mike, stay frosty.