Nov 29 2011
This time we are looking back at the birth of a genre, with what is considered by many to be the first of the proper RTS games: Dune 2.
One of the often overlooked foundations of modern gaming, from these humble origins a whole genre would form, and without Westwood’s seminal early masterpiece, there would be no Command and Conquer, no Starcraft, no League of Legends and ultimately, no World of Warcraft. But how does it stand up today; perenial genius or cultural relic?
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Nov 28 2011
A slow week this time with only a few hours spent playing games. So slow in fact I even tidied up the studio instead of playing, and that’s saying something.
Assassin’s Creed: RevelationsIt turns out I was only two hours from the end of this so I pushed through and completed it, then I went and did the Desmond missions so I knew what was going on. They didn’t help.
The game is as solid as ever and I really don’t get people who are saying that it’s worse because of it. The game plays the same and nobody is doing these things better so why expect each version to be a massive change when small tweaks are more suitable for yearly franchises. Still, now that the next game is free to be the third game in the trilogy (and the 5th released. No, I don’t quite get it either) they should mix it all up a bit. The ending certainly hints that the next one will be different.
There was some nice storytelling along the way. I found the older Ezio an interesting character and his attempts to find happiness was really the bigger drive in the plot than the gathering of artifacts, which was nice but I’m not sure that reviewers saw it that way with their complaining that there were far too many distractions along the way. That’s the point of the story, the journey of older Ezio compared to his younger self and a quest for stability in his life and those of his fellow assassins. At least that’s the message I took away from it after the big exposition hammer was used at the end, but I suspect it wasn’t good enough or people really don’t go looking for the meaning in game stories. And with that Ezio’s journey finishes, as does that of Altair as stored memory fragments give Ezio insight into what happened to his ancestor, the end of that story being quite a nice touching scene.
The big question is about the third one. Will the big name addition to the cast in this one actually have a meaty role in the next one as all the real world stuff was really on the sidelines this time round. Who will the third historical person to be controlled be? Or is Desmond actually that third one and it’s all being done by somebody in the future? There is a whole year to wait, which is really annoying me. How about releases every six months?
Star Trek OnlineI jumped back into STO for a day in order to polish off a few things before the big patch comes. I finally hit the level cap (all I needed to do was spend some skill points…) and got my diplomacy up to the point where I can do the first contact missions. I then tried a Klingon character to see the new (for me) areas. Man that’s a boring quest line of running around between NPCs exploring the place.
After a few hours play I’m satiated again and so can drop it until some time in December. I really struggle with these MMOs nowadays, it’s just all so slow and pointless! Roll on the featured episodes again.
Halo: Combat Evolved AnniversaryThe gameplay is still as perfect as ever, but I’m really getting annoyed by all the backtracking.
I know it’s fashionable to say that modern shooters are just a long pathway with cut -scenes being the only thing that breaks up the action. The problem is that when you do end up having to retrace your steps it really does feel annoying and I’m not sure that a game that was designed like Doom nowadays would feel very good. These last nods to that kind of structure in Halo really do feel painful and old fashioned now, but I’m glad they didn’t remove them.
A very light week going by hours played, and the one completed game this week brings my total up to 35. This usually means I’m about to go nuts and play constantly for a few weeks, but if I’m lucky I’ll manage to stay sane and avoid that.
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Nov 23 2011
I finally got around to getting properly underway with my self-imposed Hugo Challenge, starting with the very first winner in 1953.
Review: The Demolished Man, by Alfred Bester (1953)
Ben Reich is the head of the system spanning mega-corporation, Monarch Enterprises and a powerfully driven man accustomed to getting whatever he wants. When Monarch faces dire financial troubles at the hands of the rival D’Courtney Cartel, extreme measures are needed. Reich first proposes merger and when rebuffed, turns instead to murder. But when the police are telepathic and no-one has been successfully murdered for seventy years, how on earth can he hope to get away with it, avoiding detection, capture and the seemingly unavoidable penalty of Demolition?
The Demolished Man is very much a psychological thriller and a fascinating character piece, played out mostly between Reich and Police Prefect Lincoln Powell, a first class ‘esper’, one of the increasingly abundant new generations of telepathically capable human beings.
Not so much a who-dunnit as a how-dunnit, the initial premise – premeditated crime in a precognitive world – is quite a hook and the cleverness and determination with which Reich tackles the problem makes for compelling reading, and unusually, a likeable villain. Reich comes across as a confident and resourceful magnificent bastard, and from very early on I wanted him to succeed and win.
The crime is committed and Powell is introduced, bringing with him a B-story focussing on the espers themselves, their ways, societies and the hopes, dreams and domination of the Esper Guild. Telepathy is extremely well mapped and detailed in this work and far from the vague magic it is in many stories, is very much a psychiatric science and heavily integrated into the day to day workings of the world. This in turn raises all sorts of questions of race, bigotry, privacy and suspicion which Bester is not afraid to tackle.
Powell’s investigation and subsequent sparring with Reich becomes the main event intertwining the two parts of the tale, and shifting focus back to a more equal footing and by the end, it really is hard to say who the hero is and who the villain. The unravelling of the mysteries really does lead to a mind blowing conclusion and a surprising end, making the whole journey a tight one, well-paced and yet allowing for sufficient side-trips to briefly explore the world Bester has built.
Its worth noting that The Minority Report, the Phillip K Dick short story about precognition and crime which inspired the 2002 Spielberg/Cruise film of the same name, wasn’t written until 1956.
I’ve also seen the term ‘cyber-punk’ used and not without merit. Thirty years before Gibson’s Neuromancer (Also a Hugo Winner – 1985), Bester describes a world in which megacorps do battle across the solar system, a class of technical elite immerse themselves in a powerful alternate world of information, technology dominates a kind of commerce tainted by grime and greed and ruthless men stop at nothing to gain wealth and power. The pacing is quite similar too – Reich and Powell’s jousting across the solar system echoed in Case and Molly’s own odyssey for resolution. Mind you, the styling and feel of the thingdoes still date it a bit; imagine Neuromancer meets Mad Men!
It is a good book; punchy, clever, intricate and engaging, and yet it isn’t a great book. I wonder if a lot of that wasn’t my own pre-emptive sense of over anticipation, a slight sense of awe in fact; in a list of The Best, this is The First. I think I was probably expecting something life-changing, an epiphany of sorts, which is plainly unfair. Something to remember for my further Hugo explorations – at the end of the day, it’s just panel voting for the best sci-fi book of that year, not some new universal physical law or anything.
Having read quite a few of the more recent Hugo winners in my time, I’m actually finding this a useful cautionary tale about self-imposed hype, but also a very encouraging thing. The very first winner, in 1953, isn’t the best sci-fi book I’ve ever read, which suggests the field as a whole is improving as time passes, which can only be a good thing!
Expectations aside, it is still worth a buy, being a very engaging detective drama set in a fascinating future and a good page-turner in its own right regardless of any awards it may or may not have won.
TLDR; A commendable start to the list, setting a suitably high standard for many even better works to come.
Interestingly, 1953-52 also saw publication of part two of Asimov’s epic Foundation opus ‘Foundation and Empire’. Hard to say which is better, and definitely a matter of taste rather than skill. Asimov wouldn’t get a Foundation novel into the list until 1983 with ‘Foundation’s Edge’.
Permanent link to this article: http://howtomurdertime.com/blog/2011/11/23/expectations%e2%80%a6.html
Nov 21 2011
It’s the last big week of releases of the year. Now it’s a rush towards the new year by finishing off all those games I’ve been distracted from.
SkyrimI really slowed down on this for a couple of reasons, but the main one is that my boiler broke and I decided to not play games set in cold places!
I’m also sort of holding back as I’m playing on PS3 and there’s a really annoying slowdown bug that people are hitting. Nobody ever said that they could ever make a bug free game. I shall return after I complete the next two games on this list.
Halo: Combat Evolved AnniversaryAn updated version of the original Halo that doesn’t ruin anything? Amazing. New graphics enhance nostalgia protected memories about gameplay and needless to say I’m having a ball. The level design is still a bit suspect of course as they haven’t changed that, but it’s a fun thing to dip in and out of as the mood takes me.
The game has a re-recorded score that is a lot less MIDItastic sounding so I recommend the soundtrack as well.
Assassin’s Creed: RevelationsA game that I suspected would be a contender for my game of the year, and so far I’ve not been wrong. More lovingly created rooftops to run across whilst being distracted by inane tasks that I should be ignoring. As usual I’m all about the base building and so I’m obsessively building up a nice army of assassin minions and not trying to open a door that the game tells me is sort of important.
Luckily for me the things like free running and climbing in the game have always been natural for me and so I don’t have half of the control complaints that other people seem to have. I am still bouncing off walls occasionally, but that’s why parachutes were invented!
Saints Row 3From the moment that the first game clicked for me (oh, it’s not about stupid gangs, it’s about mayhem!) the games have been getting sillier and sillier. I may have gone slightly nuts and completed it on Saturday night (after getting it on Friday) so take that as a resounding vote of confidence in the game.
The first part of the final mission annoyed me no end, and was an otherwise uncharacteristic blip on the gameplay. I solved it through the simple change of not taking the pickup truck that it gives you for the mission and instead taking the prototype tank I had been given after a previous mission. There is no problem in life that can’t be solved by using a big tank. Well, OK, staying in power if you are a dictator is not exactly working if you use tanks nowadays, but everything else still stands.
Six times during the game I giggled like a schoolgirl at something awesome. That’s six times more than most games manage. I’d even managed to avoid a spoiler about the cast too, which made it even more awesome. The destroying planes in mid-air makes more sense than in Uncharted 3 as well.
Minecraft (iOS)Minecraft finally reached my iPad and so I’ve had a play. I’m unfortunately finding it dull as it’s all infinite blocks selected from a menu and not hunting for resources and crafting, something that the full version needed for the game to really take off and something I really need to have fun. Just being able to create without effort is no reward. It looks good though, and the controls don’t totally suck but are still limited by being of the virtual joystick type. Now that it’s out for all the other platforms (full Android and iOS) and not just for the PlayStation branded phones hopefully it will get a bit more love and features. Incidentally the Xbox version was being talked about last week and it seems a lot more fully featured.
So that’s it for another week, and probably it for new releases for the year. The one game I completed this week brings my total up to 34 games completed in 47 weeks. That number is starting to scare me if I’m honest. I expect one or two of the games above to be added to that list next week.
Permanent link to this article: http://howtomurdertime.com/blog/2011/11/21/what-jon-is-playing-week-47.html
Nov 18 2011
What with me being a cool refusenik hipster and everything, instead of Skyrim, Arkham City, Saints Row 3, Assassins’ Creed Revelations, Battlefield 3, Modern Warfare 3, Mass Effect 3 and about a million other cutting edge, highly applauded and Metacritic 100% -ing recent releases, I seem to have become obsessed with a three year old space trading combat game.
With a curiosity mostly sparked by Jon’s ongoing research project and a general hankering for something spacey with laserguns, I ended up getting X3: Terran Conflict, the most recent in the long line of ‘X’ space combat trading games. My last go at one of these was the almost impenetrable X2: The Threat, some years ago and it was a very unusual experience, full of frustration, pacing issues, grind, clunky UI and controls and the worst cutscene puppetry and voicework I think I’d ever encountered in a digital medium. Despite all that though, there was a definite underlying genius to the design and format, most of which didn’t become apparent until a good fifty hours in.
I did persevere and was just starting to get to the point where the whole thing opens up like a misunderstood closed thing, that elusive cusp of empire, when my savegame got lost in a PC reinstall. I hadn’t had the energy to start again until this last few weeks, and then I got about two missions in to the introduction and thought, ‘Hang on… before plunging into another million-hour X2 epic, why not upgrade the game to the most recent one?’
I’m glad I did actually, because X3:TC is a vast improvement over the earlier games, and yet manages to successfully keep the bits I admired too.
The improvements are many. Superficially, it now looks amazing, compared to the nasty grubby low-res X2. The models are more detailed and much better looking, in particular the stations, which have lost those tedious interior docking areas. I’m especially impressed with the planets, which are now enormous and dominate the sky in many sectors. The Terran faction are particularly impressive, with ridiculously large stations that all carry something of the universe of Mass Effect in their lines and styling, and flying about with well detailed landmarks of our own solar system filling the sky is a surprisingly nostalgic experience. It’s also nice for the Terrans not to be the Galaxy’s remedial class for a change, and in X3, Earthman technology is highly advanced and doesn’t suck!
Functionally, the game has come on a long way too, with perhaps the most significant improvement being the inclusion of the Freelancer style mouse-flying system, with the draggy cursor now steering the ship. Pretty much every space game does this now and I think X2 was probably the last time I ever needed my aging and dusty Sidewinder Force Feedback Pro Joystick. I doubt I’ll ever need it again.
New weapons spice things up, particularly the addition of ‘flak’ style batteries and missiles – weapon systems that cause big clouds of explosions, designed to help big ships against fighters. Very unnerving being on the receiving end of that! Marine boarding combat is a new thing too – which presumably allows the capturing of larger capital craft. Not got that far yet!
Pacing is much better than X2, seeing the player get to a decent footing much earlier on. Becoming independently wealthy is still a challenge, but there’s a lot less scrabbling about at the very low end and you start to amass respectable resources far sooner. The large availability of space station missions of a surprising variety of types helps the cash flow jumpstart too, which X2 didn’t really do that well.
They’ve taken the wise step of getting rid of awful supermarionation cutscenes entirely. Such campaign story that exists is told through space-camera fly-by of ship models, and with cockpit pilot face cams. Mind you, even those manage to be quite cringeworthy in places and they seem to have kept the honoured tradition of getting the English localisation voicework done by actors who have never heard English spoken, only seen it written down. Pronunciation gaffes are frequent, plentiful and actually quite wearying after the initial amusement wears off. It’s probably all quite powerful stuff in the original German. The Terran Defender start story is okay; not especially thrilling, but decent enough not to intrude if you want to go sandbox for a while, and it does form a good way to get a decent fleet of ships started up in a short time. Mostly though, you’ll play X3:TC for the sheer single player EVE Online of it all.
The basics are still there; the dog-fighting is serviceable and satisfying, with ship speed and ship class dictating various types of engagement, small and big fighters needing different tactics. The trading game is similar; buy low, travel, sell high, etc and the internal economy is very robust indeed. The exploration is substantial too, with a vast network of sectors to explore, most of it in plain sight, but with significant hidden bits too.
It ticks all the required boxes of a solid Elite Clone in a modern age, but the most remarkable thing about it all is the realisation that actually, it’s more RTS than space shooter. In addition to the usual upgrade path of space fighters and cargo ships, almost everything else you see in the game can also be bought and owned, including patrol battleships, carriers and stations themselves.
This is made workable by a ridiculously elaborate Auto Pilot feature. Using a variety of software packages available in-game, almost every aspect of every ship or station can be automated, from simple ‘go to’ commands right up to a suite which turns cargo haulers into entirely autonomous intergalactic trading magnates who beaver away out of sight and mind, and continually earn you money. Combat patrols, carrier-based multi-wing attack squadrons, resupply transports, navigation satellite deployment, sector mapping, couriers; anything the game’s own AI ships can do, you can replicate in your own minions, and the upshot of it all is a vast military and economic empire that rivals those found in EVE Online, but all managed by just one player.
It’s not perfect. Sometimes wingman escorts have a habit of not spotting starbases and slamming fatally into the side of them, and it’s usually much more effective to be manually piloting critically important combat ships. The Fight Command Software isn’t a great shot. But it is nice to know that while you’re out gadding about exploring or dog-fighting, elsewhere dozens of other ships are off carrying out your will too, and getting on with the dull stuff on your behalf. The whole system appears to support scripted modding too, for even more elaborate fan-made automation.
This single-player sandbox approach opens all sorts of entertaining avenues, particularly regarding the various different story campaigns. Being able to bring in two or three combat wings from my own private military consultancy that I’d been running on the side helped no end with some of the trickier Terran combat missions and I’m looking forward to jumping the Battlestar Hemlock in on the last mission in the chain for extreme fire-support, when it’s expecting me to be in a lone space Spitfire!
A huge part of the fascination for me is just seeing how extreme it can get. From the humble beginnings of learning to fly in a dinky M4 fighter in orbit around Uranus, I’m working my way up to being a full-fledged additional faction of my own, an empire with holdings throughout the galaxy and the fleet, infrastructure and logistical backbone to assault, conquer and settle entire hostile sectors. Big dreams indeed, and almost uniquely achievable in this particular game series.
I imagine it’ll take several phases of interest to achieve these lofty dreams of galactic empire, but I don’t mind, and look forward to multiple future revisits. For now, I’m just keen on obtaining the Battlestar Hemlock and taking the fight back to those damned Xenon Qs.
I think at this point, X3: Terran Conflict is the current leading light in the ever marginal and often endangered Elite Clone genre. Surprisingly deep and complex, and thoroughly immersive, it keeps the dream alive.
TLDR: If you like being an alliance leader in EVE Online, but hate people, this is just the game for you!
Steam currently have most of the X back catalogue available, including X3:TC itself for about £20. To be honest, if you never played any of them, just go straight for Terran Conflict – the others are largely the same game, just not as technically well-executed.
Permanent link to this article: http://howtomurdertime.com/blog/2011/11/18/automations.html
Nov 17 2011
Star Trek Online goes free to play early next year, and it’s about time. I do wonder if it’s a bit late.
It’s been a rough year for Cryptic. First off Atari dropped them in an effort to get some cash and refocus the business into (rolls a D6) extreme fishing simulators. This seems to have placed them in an awkward position for a few months when they couldn’t hire more people and couldn’t do anything that could damage the share price. It turns out that this includes releasing many things. The featured episodes stopped being released and all hands were on deck working towards Season 4, which released to near universal disappointment.
Luckily everything is all right as the featured episodes will be back in three months. Only they always say it will be three months so I’m not holding my breath. It will mark a whole year between the third and fourth set of episodes if they release around when they say they will, which is kind of shocking and very disheartening as somebody who loves them.
Next month we current subscribers get access to all the spanking new features they’ve been working on for, well, forever. This is a smart move as you really want the issues to be worked out before all the impressionable new players stream in when it’s free. There’s some nice changes coming in that update, including a revamp of the overly complicated skill system that is desperately needed.
I do wonder if it’s not too little too late at this point. After a quite frankly non-event of a year in the game as far as progress goes will going free to play actually bring people back in? The featured episodes are jewels in the crown of the feature list and they will pull me in weekly without fail, but it depends how they are handled for free to play people. Actually it depends how they are handled for paying players too come to think of it. Will they charge for them, but charge less than the stipend that gold players get? Give them to gold and make free players pay? Or will they be free to all and used as a draw to bring players in? The last option is the best to my mind, but I know nothing about what’s going on behind the scenes of course. The real good pull here is the picture that’s included in this post. That’s the new Enterprise, which is apparently considered canon as the replacement for the ship from the last few Picard and co films and will be introduced via a featured episode. If that can’t draw in curious Trek fans then nothing can. Actually from that angle it looks like the old ship. Never mind.
The future should be bright, but I’m not sure. They have effectively wasted a year (not by their own choice it seems, even the free to play is something they claim they wanted to do from the start but were told no) and I wonder how much good will they have left with the existing players and anybody who might consider it.
It’s all daft really, when the featured episodes are being released it’s nearly unbeatable if you like stories in your games. That should count for a lot more than it does at the moment. Maybe TOR will show people that it’s the way forwards and people will appreciate them more.
Permanent link to this article: http://howtomurdertime.com/blog/2011/11/17/star-trek-online-and-the-future.html
Nov 16 2011
Another cultural relic here!
Review: Descent, by Parallax Software/Interplay Entertainment Corp (1995)
The Post Terran Minerals Corporation (PTMC) is a huge operation, with profitable mining facilities on every planet and moon in the solar system, but one by one, these installations have become overrun by an invasive alien computer virus which turns ordinarily industrious mining robots into vicious adaptive killing machines.
They’ve taken hostages, the virus has reached the Moon and the Earth is next. You are a mercenary pilot hired to halt the tide and drive it back. You are kitted out with an extremely manoeuvrable space fighter and authorised to self-destruct each mine, from the inside. It’s the only way to be sure!
The game takes place in around thirty underground complexes of increasingly tortuous design, with fairly simple objectives. You fly your spaceship around the map, locating blue, yellow and red keycards. These allow you access to the level’s reactor core, which you shoot until it blows up. This starts a 45 second timer, during which you have to find the now-unlocked exit tunnel and escape, in a very Return of the Jedi manner. Along the way a set of vicious and surprisingly cunning floating robots are trying to kill you, various powerups and ammo lie scattered and hidden, and in each level extra points can be had by remembering to collect the imprisoned hostages before you vaporise the whole complex.
Descent is fluid, fast, and hectic and carried out on a truly three-dimensional footing which is almost unique even today. First-person shooter meets flight-sim. ‘Down’ is a negligible concept, maintained only by visual level design cues, ‘floor’, ‘ceiling’, and often you’ll think you’re flying along the bottom a horizontal tunnel, only to arrive out of the ceiling of the next room or the floor of another. Dizzying in places, the mines become claustrophobic complex warrens full of homicidal robots, lava, secrets and traps. Despite all this, and the sheer age of the thing, it still manages to impress with the occasional unexpected vista or spectacular vault, and superb overall performance even back then.
Basic gameplay follows the established blue door, yellow door, red door pattern which was big in the nineties. This leads to a limited exploration phase to begin each mine, plotting out the routes, finding keys, powerups and hostages. Descent loves its hidden doors too, and many are disguised well enough to make their hunting a fun game in itself!
Eventually, the reactor is located and then the game takes on a quite unique phase. I don’t normally like timed gameplay, but the frantic self-destruct sequence plunge for the exit is still exhilarating even today. It helps to find the exit beforehand, but even then it isn’t always certain – some of them are on the opposite side of the level to the reactor and many are guarded by killer robots in hidden cubbyholes.
The robots do deserve special mention. They vary from the feeble to the lethal, but all of them are smart. They hide, dodge, work together to distract and decoy you and far from just charging at you on sight, are perfectly capable of picking their moment and waiting until your back is turned before striking. Some of them are cloaked, some of them break into lots of smaller robots when killed, most of them use the same weaponry you do – often with better effect and every now and then, you get a boss robot who in addition to all that, also is that level’s reactor! Worst of all, the virus itself shows up in most levels, as a kind of chequered purple stain on certain walls, capable of just spawning an infinite amount of new robots! I still twitch when I see that pattern or hear that noise.
The whole thing is paced well. The early levels aren’t too harsh, which is just as well, given how alien basic gameplay is – just getting used to circle strafing on two independent axes is hard enough without killer robots taking potshots as you learn. The Moon, Venus and Mercury serve as a good introduction to it all, but then the game ramps up significantly and by the time you’re into Saturn’s moons, it really is a tooth and nail fight, but very satisfying with it.
It features eight-player deathmatch and significant modding support. I remember both being quite remarkable, and some of the custom homemade level designs were quite literally mind-blowing. The design of the engine allowed for impossible levels to be designed. I remember one particular example which had you flying along a 100m tunnel and then emerging from the side of a floating ball, about 20m across, suspended in a 60m spherical chamber. You could then fly around the back side of the ball and see a smooth surface. The tunnel you arrived through can not exist! Portals, twelve years before anyone had ever heard that the cake was a lie!
Descent is very much a vestigial cul-de-sac in the grand evolution of gaming. It was successful enough to spawn sequels, but not imitators and never really became its own genre. In many ways, I think that this is because the game was too clever for its own good.
While for some it ‘clicked’ and was an amazing release and a taste of true freedom, for many it degenerated into a bewildering and in some cases vomit-inducing mess of required spatial hyper-awareness and mind-mangling frustration. Pressing tab brings up a wire-frame map which likely hindered more than it helped, and laid bare the sheer complexity of a truly three-dimensional play-space which we, as a fundamentally ground dwelling two-dimensional species, aren’t really equipped to deal with. D2’s Guide-bot helped a bit, but it isn’t really surprising that the more conventional two-dimensional shooters like Doom and Half Life became the main genre instead, and even modern space and flight-sim games tend to present things as a series of stacked two dimensional layers. It’s a shame because in Descent, we see a glimpse of something truly original, from a very derivative age.
Parallax went on to make Descent II (1996), which really was just a ‘more of the same’ mission-pack sequel with improvements, then they split into two. One part, Outrage, went with a rather different style of game for Descent 3 (1999), featuring a more outdoorsey and planetary surface type gameplay (which had been done much better in Terminal Velocity (1995) by then anyway), but somehow losing a lot of the spirit of the original format in the process. Outrage closed in 2004.
Not all is lost though! The other bit became Volition Inc, who you may remember from Freespace, Red Faction, Summoner and of course Saints Row, the third game of which is out any day now and promises to be huge, and mad. My, how they grow up.
Apparently, The-Company-Currently-Known-As-Interplay has plans to develop a Descent 4. Unfortunately, these plans seem to rely quite heavily on some sort of Fallout MMO being a World of Warcraft Killing Success, so probably not one to get too excited about just yet. Maybe Bethesda will buy up the IP and turn it into another massively-massive wander-about-a-moorland type sandbox game? Who knows?
As for Descent itself, you can find that, as usual, on Good Old Games for $6, which includes Descent 2 as well, along with all the tedious monkeying about necessary to get a game that old working on a modern PC. Other shops are available – I’m just a lazy surfer.
Interestingly, you can also legally play much of it for free. A curious ethnic custom of the early nineties was to give the entire first third of the game away for free, as a demo, something you don’t see a lot of these days! I think that takes you up to the first Boss in the last Mars mine, and is easily enough game to get a feel for what it is about and to see firsthand what made it so unique. You can find that here, but will need DosBox for that.
Permanent link to this article: http://howtomurdertime.com/blog/2011/11/16/dimensions.html
Nov 15 2011
Another week, another bevy of games played.
I first played DCUO back at release, but didn’t think it was worth a monthly fee so I let it go away at the end of that first month. Now it’s free to play and I’m back on the PS3 version having a good look round again.
I see to remember that at launch the game did better on PS3 than PC, but now it’s the PC version that has server login queues and the PS3 version has let me in every time. The first pain was a 7gb patch, which totally ties up the PS3 so you can’t do anything else with it. There’s a killer right there, totally unacceptable on your main living room entertainment machine.
As for the game, I stand by my original review of “meh”. Graphics aren’t that good, combat is loose, targeting is awful. Much better superhero games out there that aren’t MMOs. Actually much better superhero games out that that are MMOs too come to think of it…
Yes, I got this on PS3. I can’t face fighting my PC over making it run, so I’ll catch it in a year or two on a Steam sale for next to nothing. In the meantime it’s time to 100% an obsessively large RPG on the console! I think Oblivion was the first real game I got 100% on with Xbox (King Kong doesn’t count as you got all the achievements for completing the game) so it shouldn’t be too hard… In fact that’s why it’s on PS3, should help to raise up the completion percentage for me.
What can I really say about the game? Despite the flaws that pepper the mechanics it’s still one of the best experiences I’ve had all year. It’s hard to even compare the world design and immersion between this and, to pick something totally not at random, any fantasy MMO. OK, I can compare. It’s the difference between a world that feels like it was created for you to do things in and a world that feels like it exists for its own sake. It’s the differenced between NPCs getting on with their lives and NPCs that stand around hoping that an adventurer will come for them. It’s something that I don’t think any MMO has ever got right, and I don’t have any hope that they ever will. Current total: 3 dragons killed. There’s an achievement for 20. I’m currently hunting them so I can afford to buy my first hours. I have no idea why, but it sure beats saving the world. It’s one of two game of the year contenders for me so far, but we’ll see how I feel in another 50 hours playtime.
This is a strange little game. You send seeds/spores between asteroids, build plants and basically take over the universe. It’s one of those insanely relaxing games that seem to end up on the PS3 after starting out on Flash.
The start of the game is great, but before long the tactical side starts to be shown up for being a bit too simplistic and the zerg rush becomes the only viable solution to win any fight. It’s a shame, but it’s a great idea that doesn’t quite stretch out into a full game. It’s worth look though as it’s great fun to start with.
This was one of the games I was most looking forwards to and technically it’s a stunningly solid game. The combat just works and zipping around the city as Batman really feels right, but there’s just this lack of focus that stops the game being great. Too many villains, not enough justification for their actionsis the main problem. Seriously, what was the main villains actual plan? Why was the prison even made? I’m going to have to play it again and take more notes this time and actually try and deconstruct it I think. It’s a shame, it could have been my game of the year.
This is a dangerous one for me. I got a bit bored of X3: Reunion but so far Terran Conflict has kept me going quite strongly. I’ll have to ditch the missions soon as there is trading and pro-active salvaging of pirate ships to be done, but I have two ships now and will soon have a small fleet beavering away on their own under their own AI. A few solid trade routes should get the cash incrementing up, setting me free to go after the high ticket goods like abandoned pirate space ships. The tricky thing with them is getting the pirates to abandon them in the first place.
For week 46 I didn’t complete any games! Maybe I can rush Skyrim before Christmas. Or maybe X3. Damn all these long games… Now as long as something like Assassin’s Creed isn’t due out today I’ll be fine!
Permanent link to this article: http://howtomurdertime.com/blog/2011/11/15/what-jon-is-playing-week-46.html
Nov 14 2011
This episode we are throwing away what little remains of our street cred and we broke out the Warhammer 40k starter set, Assault on Black Reach.
This starter set gives you a massive 46 models, a miniature rulebook, some templates and an utterly insufficient number of dice considering the number you will need to roll!
Does this boxed set give you a good introduction to the game? Listen to find out.
Permanent link to this article: http://howtomurdertime.com/blog/2011/11/14/how-to-murder-time-warhammer-40k.html
Nov 11 2011
It’s Friday and I’m excited, because Fridays are currently Icewind Dale nights!
Regular readers/listeners/stalkers will know of my penchant for retro gaming, a constant underlying fondness for games of the past* which is likely to only get worse as time goes on, because as time goes on, there is more and more of the past, and less and less of the future! Eventually, there will only be past left, so ALL games will be retro games, which means I am getting an important head start on the rest of you!
I also enjoy hanging out on Mumble and giggling uncontrollably at ridiculous gaming spectacle in the pseudo-company of friends, so our recent experiments with Icewind Dale work well to tick both boxes. In part it’s a general dissatisfaction with MMO gaming, which is very much about putting the game first and friends second. Only City of Heroes does much to defy this, for all the reasons I’ve ranted about before.
So to find what I’m after, perhaps the type of game needs to change? I’ve been following Tipa’s adventures in proper online D&D with great technical interest, but it’s been a very long time since I tried my hand at any kind of freeform roleplaying and to be honest, I think I’d feel a bit stupid firing my regulation adventuring Ten Foot Pole** at The Darkness where anyone else could hear me. I’m still a gamer at heart, so actual D&D isn’t quite what I’m after, at least not yet anyway. Then I remembered Baldur’s Gate, which as far back as 1998 supported six player co-op over IPX networking. Had it, played it and even now remember imagining how amazing it would be with five other friends.
Of course I didn’t actually have five other friends back then, much less five friends with PCs who could bring them all over to my house for one of those most exotic and decadent orgies of hedonistic excess, the LAN Party! So it all rather passed me by, and instead, I gamed in isolation until FFA PvP Rallos Zek Everquest taught me some entirely different things about playing games online with other people!
Nowadays, it’s all a lot easier in every respect, and so upon burning out of our last MMO, instead of just casting about for yet another, a bunch of us have form an Icewind Dale troupe. I figured that since Icewind Dale was always the least story-driven of Black Isle’s offerings it would be the easiest to break into, rather than the exposition-heavy Baldur’s Gate itself. (Thankfully, Planescape: Torment was never multiplayer!) Of course the process is fraught with hurdles, but all are surmountable.
First the game itself; to play together, we all need the same version. In the end, despite me owning it from the initial release, it turned out to be easiest for us to all go and buy the last/latest version anyway, just to cut out a lot of archaeological patch-hunting. Good Old Games *** have the whole thing here for $10, which includes expansions I never even knew existed. Not bad a deal, apart from the whole buying the damn thing twice aspect. I don’t know if Steam have it too, but they’re probably too busy to check just now. (Which is another rant for another day.)
Having the game alone is not enough and in this modern age of Windows 7, IPv6, rayguns and holidays on the moon, getting six Icewind Dales to talk to each other across the Internet is not trivial. I used to have to use the now defunct Microsoft Gaming Zone for that kind of exercise even back then – a kind of intermediary lobby for matchmaking games together. We’ve managed to find an online service which carries the torch into the raygun era, Gameranger.
Seems the usual thing; free-with-ads and not obviously crooked – it does the job. It offers voice chat for premium membership I think, but we’ve already got the usual Mumble server for that. IWD does feature a chat window, but Voice is pretty much essential, given how manic and fast paced everything is.
With all that in place, it’s green-light Go For Adventure! After about fifteen minutes of arseing about getting connected. That is getting shorter each week though!
Playing Icewind Dale with five player co-op (I still couldn’t find five interested friends!) is a whole different kettle of fish to the solo experience in a number of important ways:
Don’t Be Shy With The Space Bar!
Unlike MMOs, any of us can pause and unpause the game. It all happens too fast to not pause it, even when you are controlling all six party members yourself. All sorts of problems of etiquette enter the fray when five people all have the pause button, a kind of bizarre extended Prisoner’s Dilemma takes place where none of us want to halt the action, so we all end up dying. Expect the format to appear as an ITV gameshow one saturday soon!
Top tip; have the game’s host turn on the ‘Auto-pause when enemies first sighted option’ to alleviate some of this, but as the team Cleric, I’m finding it very useful to be able to stop everyone running about like headless chickens when trying to target heals! IPausing is especially helpful in combating the significant lag we’re seeing – warping monsters and the like. Since the ‘server’ is just whoever starts the game and issues the invites, home-grade internet has to do the job of a massive datacentre in California or wherever. It’s playable of course, but needs to be kept in mind.
Only One Schoolchild In The Shop At A Time, Please!
Quirks of how the game was made result in it being impossible to change between interior and exterior locations while another party member is in a shop screen. Also Player B opening a shop screen closes Player A’s shop screen, if open. Hilarity can ensue and the best plan is probably to make one player designated Team Shopper. As team Cleric, who wears metal armour, but who used Strength as a dump stat, I eschew material things (because I can’t carry anything else) and usually just loiter outside the shop scaring away pensioners instead.
The less said about quest dialog by committee, the better, but I now believe any kind of SWTOR group-based story-work is going to be a hysterical trainwreck. If we ever find ourselves in Neverwinter Nights, this will greatly improve, as the design of that meant that even playing alone, it ran as a server and client – much more robust for multiplayer.
Pickpocket Works On Players!
One of several reasons that it’s important not to wind up the Trap Specialist by following them into the room that looks A Bit Trappy when they go to look for Traps. Also shouting ‘That looks A Bit Trappy’ doesn’t go down to well either! Amusingly enough, reverse pickpocketing works for everyone, and the game does not announce that Player A has given Player B an item – it just silently goes to their bags. I amuse myself by loading everyone else down with trash loot when they aren’t looking. Also, it’s FFA PvP if you misclick with the pointer!
2nd Ed. D&D Takes No Prisoners!
Icewind Dale always was quite hardcore, even back then. The traps are almost universally fatal. Many trashmobs are armed with bows, (1d6hp/shot) which until you make it to character level three or so can one-hit wizards (1d4hp/level) and thieves with alarming ease and regularity. We didn’t make it out of Easthaven with a live Wizard on our first go! As team Cleric my heals start out at 1d6hp/level and take about 15 seconds to cast. I get four of those per ‘day’, making healing duty in IWD more a matter of patching people up afterwards, than the more usual MMO maintenance footing. Resting to recover spells, etc seems to have a 50% chance of just spawning a load more monsters, onto an injured group with no spells left, making things take on a surreal survival horror aspect that the game’s original designers probably didn’t intend! The first dungeon is full of zombies too! I’m not sure when I get Raise Dead, but until then there’s a lot of reloading, rising and repeating as we slog our way through.
The pace is so different to MMOs it beggars belief; our party fights four skeletons, then rests for 16 hours, then fights three more, then rests 16 hours. Good job I vetoed the ‘realtime Icewind Dale’ idea that was going around – some of the inital dungeons have taken days!
It’s finicky and quite frustrating, but also a surprising amount of fun. Simple enough dungeon-crawls as single player become genuinely heroic as a team of disparate players. We’re pushing through at a necessarily slower pace than solo, but the progress we’re making really does feel earned, some kind of absurd iron-gamer challenge. I’m not sure we’re even a tenth the way through yet, but it is definitely making for a refreshing alternative to a general MMO malaise that doesn’t seem to just be my own.
If/when we’re done with Icewind Dale there are literally dozens of intriguing titles of yesterday being played today in groups in the Game Ranger sessions list; more Black Isle maybe; Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, etc, or something even more unexpected; Xwing Vs Tie Fighter, Diablo II, Descent, Civilisation… all those great classics of the past that were perhaps always meant to be played like this, but only now can it be done so easily and causally. Perhaps we don’t need the centralised over-server of the MMO that much afterall?
TLDR: I highly recommend Black Isle’s back catalogue co-op mode, via Game Ranger and Mumble, as a holiday for jaded MMO static groups!
* This is why I get so angry about bad DRM. When I buy a game, I expect to be playing it for at least twenty years, probably longer, so when half-arsed copy protection systems go wrong because I’ve changed my PC in that time, or when the super-swish server-side authentication gets mothballed five years down the line, there better damned well be a DRM removal patch made available too! It’s sad that I’ll typically care about a computer game long after the people who made it have stopped.
** Seriously, take a moment to pace that out. Carrying ten foot of curtain rail or doweling to the checkout in a DIY store is typically an Escheresque exercise in topology, let alone lugging one into mortal monster combat in a trap-laden tomb of antiquity, while also wearing armour and carrying all the other Standard Adventuring Equipment. But in my D&D dabblings, I never left home without this crude but essential form of Trap Insurance!
*** I’ve only just forgiven them for pulling that stupid ‘We’ve shut down!’ ‘Actually, fooled you! Just wanted more PR lolz!’ stunt a while back.
Permanent link to this article: http://howtomurdertime.com/blog/2011/11/11/cooperations%e2%80%a6.html
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