Fantasy vs Reality by Pure Pwnage
Posted 25th February 2008 at 1:28pm by M1ke, tagged as Games | Commenting Closed
Most of those in the gaming community have heard of Jack Thompson, the man who seems to believe that video games are at the heart of most of the world's evils (despite living in a country with lax gun laws and a warmongering President) and will take time to profit heavily from any tragedy (usually involving shootings and suicides by individuals with mental problems or serious issues overlooked by an overworked education system and an uncaring health system) by suing various video game manufacturers if the shooters have ever played any of their games. He tends to overlook the other issues because suing those responsible wouldn't get him as much press coverage. Nevertheless the folks at Pure Pwnage don't entirely condemn him and have instead decided to make an amusing song which one of their forumites has put to video.
Steam ID
Posted 29th October 2007 at 6:40pm by M1ke, tagged as Games | Commenting Closed
I just realised that the new Steam ID thing to go along with all its community features has a "personalised" URL so people can share them. So I thought I should probably join in!
Steam ID: M1ke
Fortress Forever: First Impressions
Posted 15th September 2007 at 12:53am by M1ke, tagged as Games | Commenting Closed
Today a mod that I've been waiting a couple of years for has finally been released. Fortress Forever is the Source mod that attempts to replicate Team Fortress Classic, a mod for the original Half-Life released with a patch 7/8 years ago. It was a mod that never had the massive fanbase of Counter-Strike or Day of Defeat, but nevertheless it was a brilliant mod, and a large, dedicated fanbase built up around it. Some of its maps became iconic for the clever design, even if few gamers ever actually played them. It mattered not, TFC did things its own way, with a sniper rifle that took some skill in finding a good spot and waiting until the right time, rather than just strafing left and right and hoping your ping beats theirs ala Counter-Strike. Tactical use of grenades due to the fact that you could hold down a button to throw them whilst still using other weapons, and even time their detonation by waiting to throw (an idea first replicated by Halo 3 years later). It also deviated from the standard CTF of most team games, with progressive assault maps, tug of war maps and even VIP escort maps - all before most mainstream games had come up with them. TFC is such that it's still great fun today, especially as its running on an old engine means it's virtually lagless over broadband. What of it's modern day remake then?
I was quite pleased upon loading that there were already over 200 servers up - pretty impressive for a mod that hasn't been out a day. Obviously the entire TFC community has been watching for it (even though the "official" sequel TF2 is being released in beta by Valve on Monday) and it shows in the numbers. I saw Jolt were running a 24/7 Dustbowl (an assault map) server so I jumped in. It took quite a while to load the map, but the loading screen had an over-head view and an explanation of the objectives, handy for new players. Once in the buttons for teams are big and obvious, and each shows the team's score and number of players. On the class screen you can see a description of each of the 9 classes skills and what they look like before picking one. You spawn immediately and can set out doing whatever you're team is meant to. I began as a sniper, and found the sniping mechanics to be very similar, apart from a little bar under the cross-hair which makes it easier to tell when the rifle is charged. I won't describe every movement, but once the game started and I started shooting it felt like everything was all second nature. The maps look excellent as far as recreations go, with all the random faceless buildings and tunnels of old decorated and painted and generally made to look like a real place. There are a couple of texture details in the map, but nothing that puts one off the gameplay itself. It's the gameplay where FF still has that TFC shine - the grenade tactics are there, with a handy progress bar for timing the perfect shot, the health and ammo readouts are obvious but don't get in the way, and your "Fortress Point" score is shown permenantly at the top of the screen. The points system is good, as rather than just award one point for a kill and 10 for a flag capture, it awards varying points for all kinds of things, and still records kills and deaths seperately. Even something as simple as an engineer repairing a team-mate's sentry gun nets 6 points - not much compared to the 100 for a kill, but a nice way of encouraging more teamwork than just all shooting the enemy.
A complaint would be that a few of the weapons don't quite feel right - especially the sniper's auto-rifle which doesn't actually show any sign of being fired other than a faint noise. Similarly the Heavy-Weapons Guy's cannon is nice and powerful (with a new overheating feature to prevent them hosing an area for too long) but sounds a bit weak. Admittedly it probably sounds like a real mini-gun, but the roar of the old cannon does feel missed. The engineer has a much easier time building turrets, as they can be selected and "ghosted" in front of you before building, which also shows a handy progress bar. An even better feature is the pie menu that makes up an engineer's "special" ability. Using this the engineer can re-target his gun, and detonate or dismantle guns and ammo dispensers by clicking once and moving the mouse - very flash.
Overall the game felt very fun to play, and with more people jumping on and more servers starting it will only get better. They might all run away to TF2 when it hits but I reckon this will be a more faithful reincarnation of TFC - TF2 is afterall a sequel and as well as changing the graphics style I'm sure the gameplay will feel different as well (I've not yet seen any evidence of the tactical grenades, for example). Regardless my point is that there's hopefully room for both games to co-exist, because after spending just a few hours playing only three of the classes on a single map I already like FF a lot, and want time to come to love it. If you own Half-Life 2, go and get yourself this mod now.
Afternoon on a 360: Bioshock
Posted 7th September 2007 at 9:35pm by M1ke, tagged as Games | Commenting Closed
I've read a lot about Bioshock, the spiritual successor to the great RP/Scary Game System Shock 2 by developers Irrational Software. I'll give them that it's certainly atmospheric - from the moment it begins the graphics shine out, firstly rendering flames over the best water I've ever seen in a game, then rendering an under water city as you are taken through it in some sort of capsule. The game is set in the 1960s, and brings you to the underwater city of Rapture, a place built on a man's dreams of freedom from tyranny and opression, and a place that's gone totally insane.
During the first hours of playing I'd smacked dozens of angry humanoids known as splicers (some still wearing party masks from before whatever kicked off the whole freakshow) with a conveniently located wrench, chucked myself off a balcony after injecting something called a plasmid into my veins (I personally wouldn't do that if I found a syringe lying around), shot lighting and fire from my hands, picked up a gas canister telekenetically and thrown it at a made plastic surgeon with a machine gun, pulled a slug like creature out of a small girl and had my ass handed to me by a giant... thing with a drill for an arm. It's fairly intense, wondefully artistic, clever, scary and more than a bit confusing.
It's the aformentioned confusion that has to be pointed out as the bad point (with it also being pointed out that this isn't a review and I've not played that far in - I shall save that for when I get the PC version). You cleverly end up with a guide talking through a radio. His name is Atlas and he tells you how to go about various tasks as the game progresses, including the early bits where you're learning. The thing is at times he seems fairly absent,and it's at those times when you're clueless as to what to do. When trying to find the aformentioned plastic surgeon I was clueless as to where to go, and despite randomly finding a fire plasmid allowing me to melt some random ice which led to a telekinesis plasmid I was none the wiser. When I did locate the door it was an unmarked (albeit large) one in the room I'd started and the first obstacle through it required the telekinesis plasmid to get past. All well and good for use of abilities but quite lacking in any subtle hints for the first time player.
The fight with the surgeon was confusing for another reason - up to that point to kill an enemy I zapped them with electricity then whacked them in the head with my wrench. However after performing the same trick with the doctor he just kept running around shooting me, so I had to do it again. Then again about five more times. Then I ran out of EVE (the substance which lets you use plasmids) so I threw a canister at him with telekinesis. Once again, it was unexpected for him to be so tough, his movements made no sense and it was hard to work out what I could throw to damage him. I can understand this later in the game, but not so early on.
When fighting the first Big Daddy later on I was utterly clueless as to how to proceed, seeing as emptying all my ammo and electricity into it only damaged it to about half its health, then it proceeded to tear me a new one. Another avenue of confusion opened up here as I was reincarnated handily at a nearby machine. So I went in and shot it with some more ammo I found along the way. I died again, came back and just started beating it with a wrench. After another death it died, but by this time I'd lost all ammo, health packs, EVE syringes and the Little Sister (they give you plasmid upgrades once the Big Daddy is dead) that I was after in the first place. Confusion, both in how to fight the bugger, and in how you can basically just keep hitting things until they die, even if you die a few times in the process.
Playing further would doubtless have given me more to praise the game on, and apart from those few confusing moments I spent a good few hours loving Bioshock. Maybe it will be easier to cope when it's on my good PC, but at the end of the day I wouldn't let some teething troubles spoil what seems like the best game of the year.
Afternoon on a 360: Guitar Hero
Posted 7th September 2007 at 9:10pm by M1ke, tagged as Games | Commenting Closed
I've not had that much play-time on the Xbox 360, and most of what I have had has been Gears of War or Halo 2, so it was nice to be able to spend an afternoon on one today - on a widescreen HDTV at that. First to the bat (or controller, as we're calling it these days) was Guitar Hero II. Now surprisingly for someone mostly concerned with the PC I have played this before, and on a Playstation 2 nontheless. I can of course confirm that the 360 version looks better, but with this game it's not about the looks - which is certainly nice to say in this world of HD, pixel shaders and DirectX 10. The game uses a special controller shaped not surprisingly like a guitar. It has 5 buttons on the fret board and a little clicky thing to strum where you'd normally hit the strings. You choose from one of the many rock songs (noting that unless you're into older guitar music you won't have heard of that many of the songs) and then go about playing it.
The actual game is a sort of Dance Dance Revolution style affair. The 'notes' come towards you on one of five lines (coloured green, red, yellow, blue and orange). You press the button for that note and strum as the note reaches the bottom of the screen. Sometimes you'll have to press on more than one note at a time, sometimes the notes will be held and you get points for wobbling a wah-wah handle. Once you've played well for a certain time you can wave the guitar around to turn on "star power" which makes everything go blue and flashy and you get more points. Conversely if you muck up to many notes (either hitting the wrong buttons or strumming at the wrong time) you'll loose the attention of the crowd (indicated by a gauge at the bottom of the screen) and should you fall too far below their expectations you're booed offstage.
As the difficulty level changes you get more notes to play (and the orange fret isn't used at easy difficulty) and more notes to play at the same time. Added to this the crowd will be more picky, to the level that on Extra Hard it's possible to be booed offstage if you absent-mindedly pick at the strumming button before the song begins. There is a practice mode if one is finding it too hard, this allows you to practice any song, section-by-secion if you wish, and change the speed to allow you to get the rhythm right. Once you've mastered making sure your fingers stay in the right place on the buttons and get the rhythms you'll get more points, more stars and a place on the high score tables (unless your friends are all better than you). I've not had a chance to try out the Career mode, but I did see that you get to customise the look of your band - one of the ones I played with had a lead guitarist that looked like Buzz Lightyear had joined Slipknot and got himself a mask. It's a fun game, innovative too, and I just wish they'd bring out a PC version. Additionally, I wish that playing it for a while didn't make it appear like everything else in the room was "zooming in" to the extent that blinking repeatedly was required.