Pagoda of Gaming

Yep! It’s Day 40 of my PC Gaming Experiment, and with that it comes to a close. Hopefully you’ve been following my exploits closely, if not, I’ll try and sum it up for you in this post – what 40 days of pure uninterrupted PC gaming can do for you, but first I’d like to hit on some of the games I’ve played since last time.

Crysis Warhead was a very quick burn. It’s very odd – It’s another Campaign played from another character’s perspective that fails to answer absolutely anything at all about the previous game. Instead you get tighter gameplay that in the end makes it feel like a stock Sci-Fi shooter. Though I am very happy to say that enemies are no longer the bullet sponges they were, Ammo is plentiful, Vehicle use is now a viable strategy, and the super-gun you get at the end is both useful and usable more than once.

There’s less of a sandbox to go and dick about in and more of a guided experience, which in-turn is a little bit destroyed by the sandbox nature of the main character’s abilities. In one mission, leading up to an enemy naval base, instead of taking the route suggested by the game’s voice over narrative: a long stretch of road infested with Korean soldiers and guns pointed at my head, I decide to take the long way, an unopposed swim in along the river, stealthing practically on top of my final objective.

There’s a story in there, but I couldn’t figure it out, and after another non-ending I’ll leave it at that. Crysis 2 seems to have taken little bearing from it’s predecessors. Check out this newly released Dev Diary of the game, and pray that your PC is man enough to play it (Watch in HD):

It seems that I’ve finally garnered a taste for Left4Dead 2. The reason probably being that I’m not playing it on a system that makes the game lock up every 2 minutes whilst chugging along at 20 to 30 frames per second. I enjoy every minute of it, more so if I can get a decent team together.

The game’s “Idle” feature is a brilliant idea – in a co-operative game where stats are not a concern, you can up and leave for a couple of minutes and leave the AI to do your dirty work. This saves you from dropping from a match if there’s some immediate serious business. Though the AI doesn’t ever play to your style – I found that I’d often come back to completely different weapons, It’s dropped the Katana I’ve been hauling for the first 3 chapters or switched my – though really it’s playing to it’s own preference instead of mine.

If I had to say one thing bad about the multiplayer experience is that it’s sometimes hard to get into a campaign from the beginning – Many hosts tend to leave their lobbies whilst they’re AFK, for long periods of time. Long enough for me to come, get bored trying to communicate with the host who clearly isn’t there, and leave to try again. And Browsing for a group doesn’t show how many players are in that lobby, and who is hosting it, and their nationalities – which is an extreme problem when trying to communicate a specific strategy, and half your team is made of Russian. But I suppose this isn’t a problem for the gamer who is with-posse, I unfortunately am not.

I’ve played through all the campaigns, and I’ve got only one more to “Survive” through (In a PUG, it’s every man for themselves once the rescue arrives) and I’ll probably give it up after that unless swayed to by a friend or two.

On a whim I also picked up the Mafia 2 Demo on Steam yesterday, and I was really surprised. I’m not “Sold” yet but what I played was pretty slick (mid-1900’s car handling aside). I think I’ll have to wait until the reviews come in, but I think that’s the kind of game that’s built for a console (i.e. I wants my achievements) – though my PC does run it extremely well with all settings on high and at a smooth 60 frames, something the console version has yet to prove.

As for the game itself, what was presented was essentially GTA4 ported to the 1950’s, but with more modern aesthetics – for example, combat was extremely tight, and bore more of a resemblance to Gears of War than the GTA’s of old. However it is almost certain that the game will suffer from the idiosyncrasies of the open world genre, I was treated to a collectable in the demo, oddly “Classic Playboy Pinups” – all trademarked with exposed teats. I’m not really sure what’s going on there – the modern internet has effectively removed porn as a currency, so I’m not quite sure what the developers want from that.

Regardless, my eyes are now on Mafia 2, and I hope it all works out. Until then, check out this moment some intrepid internaut took from the demo. If these two characters were to touch, I’m sure the universe would enclose upon itself….

So now my experiment is effectively over and I should come up with a conclusion. This may take a while…Ahem.

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PC gaming has it’s charms that you just don’t get anywhere else. It’s the Wild West of gaming, something that Consoles have tried to effectively copy and control for years without total success. X-Box Live may the leading online gaming platform in ways of simplicity, but it’s always lacking something that it’ll probably never be able to emulate.

PC Gaming is raw, rugged, and powerful. You can pull off a constant 60-FPS with the right system to the point that the game stops being a race and starts being a roller-coaster. Everything can be tuned to become as slick an experience as you want. Crysis is still a game that mainstream PC’s are having a hard time Maxing the settings on, whilst modern Consoles couldn’t dream of running it.

The Experience of owning and building a PC, I would say, is intricate to the process. I would urge anyone out there who is a serious gamer to think about saving up for a decent PC, and then learn to put it together yourself. It’s an extremely gratifying process, and at that point you know your PC: you know what it can do, you know it’s little hang-ups, it’s become an extension of yourself – you have Birthed it.

PC Gaming will never go away as long as hardcore gamers (and World of Warcraft) exist. It’s where all games are Born, but sadly few stay. Whilst most developers see “sure thing” of console development and have moved on, there still remain developers and whole genres that work better on PC. I’ve never played an RTS or a MMO that has truly worked on a Console, and I’d even go as far as saying that a truly tactical shooter cannot work on a Console without a mouse, a keyboard and a steady 60FPS.

And then there’s Developers like Valve and Blizzard who have made constant innovation and extreme wealth on the platform. World of Warcraft is the Elephant in the Room of every MMO Developer from here to China, and if I could buy every game on Steam (save for the odd collectors edition) I most certainly would. These guys are successful because they have always supported and respected the platform and it’s people, a concept that sadly few modern developers seem to grasp.

The future is bright for PC Gaming despite what the doomsayers and trolls might think. It may take a little patience, a little brains and a little cash but gaming on a PC is well worth the experience that many a modern gamer dismiss. I hope that these words will convince the fallen and the uninitiated otherwise.

And that sirs, is my conclusion.

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Some news before I go. I’ve seen the trailer for Irrational Games’ new project, and I’m officially excited. I’m going to say that you should go HERE and watch the trailer (if you can get it to work that is) before reading my next paragraph, so I don’t spoiler your mind. I’ll blank the text too just in case…

So it’s called Bioshock:Infinite, and that’s a really weird name from my point of view. “Aeroshock” is a little on the head and so is “Fly’o’Shock”, but I’m sure they could’ve come up with something better. “Bioshock” as a title still evokes Rapture, and the name was a little sullied by the recent sequel. I dunno, it bugs me I guess.

But everything else seems really great, The original formula that Irrational has become famous for is intact, or so they say. It’s hard to say really anything about this game after seeing only a pre-rendered trailer. Hopefully we’ll get to see the gameplay demo for ourselves rather soon.

Kotaku’s got a great in-depth look at the Gameplay demo right HERE, which you should check out, as well as words straight from the Ken’s mouth. Unfortunately the game seems to be a 2012 release, which I guess means that it could slip to 2013, so it pains me to know so far ahead of time what those dudes are up to. But right now, I’m thinking they’ve got another classic on their hands.

So that’s it for the experiment, and that’s basically it for my holidays. I’ll be back with a “5 Reasons to be a PC Gamer” type article at the weekend, but after that I’ll probably be back to a fortnightly schedule, ergo Working. Right now, I’m Jekyll, but as soon as I go to sleep on Sunday night it’ll be right back to Hyde. I could say that I’m going to write this and that, but I’ll probably be in a emocidal mood by that time, so I’m not going to commit.

I’ve kinda got it into my head that WoW is the answer to my life, and I’ve had to refrain from re-subbing during the experiment for fears of skewing my data. Though the game is most certainly installed and patched, ready for my billing information. I’ve also got some Starcraft 2 to play – I keep putting it off.

Immediately on the horizon I’ve got some console games to play, not alot, just some things I’d like to catch up on. Crackdown 2 is not one of these games – I think the window’s been shut on that one. I’m also heading into Aberdull tomorrow to see The Expendables and do some other stuff. I’ll keep you posted on my Twitter.

I say good day sirs.

Pigs we get what pigs deserve

So the “Experiment” will end on Thursday, and then I will present my “Conclusion”. That’ll be 40 Days straight playing games only on my PC. So I’m going to branch out the last couple of days and play as much as I can. I’ve already put in a couple of hours into Crysis: Warhead and I plan to play to play a bunch of different Multiplayer games on top of that, specifically –  Left 4 Dead 2, TF2 and Starcraft 2, and I also wonder if I’ll finish Max Payne again for the umpteenth time, which I started again the other day.

Of course, I was in Fundee the past couple of days. I didn’t do anything specific – basically I just hung out for a bunch of days. But it was great, I got up to the usual shenanigans, and I’ll be back in September for more, as well as the Scars of Mirrodin Prerelease.

I’ve put just over 50 Hours into APB now. There was a new patch this morning, and since the last time I’ve quantified the game’s problems there are some noticeable changes. They’ve nerfed the Noob Tube, commonly  known as the “OCA-EW Undertaker” for starters. Infact, Shooting altogether is much tighter – I know where my bullets will go when I pull the trigger instead of scatter across the entire screen. And thankfully your car is now trackable with the waypoint system so I don’t have to remember where I parked it.

I’m at the point now that I cannot play Enforcer. They’re basically Nazi level of evil to me, much like the Alliance is in World of Warcraft. It could be my epic bias talking, but there’s some imbalance going on in the Factions – I’m sure that Enforcers level up much faster than us Criminals, I never seem to be up against Enforcers of an equal level of mine. There’s also a hell of a lot more organising going on within the ranks – Enforcers seem to party up more often, and you’ll see gangs of them going about the streets in the same jeep. There’s also the case of the Less than Lethal (or “LTL” ) Weapons. I’m not sure what we Crims are supposed to have access to that balances this, watch this video and you’ll see the extremes of what I mean:

The game’s got some serious hooks in me, so I don’t think I can drop it entirely, but if you can wait a year to get into it, you probably should – that is, if the game’s still active by then. If I was going to stop entirely, I’d need to play a game with greater hooks, thankfully one does exist.

I haven’t been playing as much Starcraft 2 as I’d like to. It isn’t quite the case that I don’t have the time – It’s been a mix of not being in the mood and the constant Nervousness the game forces upon me. I’m always under the impression that I’m going to get bum-rushed, and I’m not entirely prepared for that somewhat regular occurrence.

I have been checking out some of the deeper strategies – not so much to accrue professional skill, but rather to suck less and build up some genuine confidence. For example – before watching THIS basic video showing a standard Marauder/Marine rush, I had no idea you could hotkey a building.

But I’ll be back into full swing once I get some games out of the way first. I’m saving every replay of every match I play, so if something awesome happens I’ll put up a Video.

There’s finally some buzz about the long awaited, super-secret, World of Darkness MMO – Though the news is that we may hear something about the game very soon from the White Wolf Convention near the end of September. You know, I bloody hope we do – I really want to know about that game above many others. Hopefully CCP can do the job.

In the same vein of news about impending news, we’re going to be treated to a Battlefield 3 beta key with every purchase of this fall’s Medal of Honour. So I guess due to the time limit on the beta, we should hear something about the game within the next 12 months – Though it does look like the game is going multi-platform, which I’m worried will be to the PC version’s detriment, or even the entire dumbing down of the franchise. But it’s good to know that DICE have been working on it, presumably for a while now.

Arkham City is the next “Batman: Arkham” game and will be out next fall – which is pretty cool. Since we got that Teaser trailer earlier in the year I thought Rocksteady might’ve been forced to rush it out. Catwoman and Two-Face have basically been confirmed. Finger’s crossed that they hit it out of the park again.

I’m not one to talk about music much, especially a band that will probably make me look worse. But there’s a new Linkin Park album coming in September, and they released the first single along with an extended and “Joe Hahn” Directed Medal of Honour Trailer. Well the actual unedited song is now on YouTube, so I’ll embed it below. I really like it, but then again I can invalidate my opinion when I say that I think that Reanimation is my favourite LP Album…

So as I said at the start of the post, I’ll be ending this “Experiment” on Thursday, and I’ll do a Conclusions post and a Top 5 PC Games kind of post too. It’s not like I’ll be abandoning my PC at that point – not at all – but I’ve got a couple of things I need to check out on the 360. Limbo for sure will be my first stop, especially since it’s been getting some amazing reviews it’s been getting. After that I have to get the Alan Wake DLC and maybe I’ll check out that Monday Night Combat game, though from my current glances it looks a little too much like a TF2 Rip Off.

As for the Blog, well I don’t think I’ll bother doing any further videos. The First One doesn’t have a lot of views, which is a grimly public indication of how many people stumble across this blog, So as far as doing a ‘Series’ – that’s a No-No, but if I happen to have something awesome on video I’ll totally throw it up (take whatever connotation you want from that). Also thanks to my Fundee Trip I’m seriously craving some Magic, and I’ve got just the deck in mind that I could cook up.

YEAH YEAH YEEEAAAH!! It’s So Intense!

I’m still not sure how bad an Idea this is yet, but I’ll guess I’ll find out.

I figured that it’s easier to get people to watch some poorly created video rather than read a bunch of poorly written text – and I’m basing this on my current aversion to words on my daily internet trawls.

Anyway, here it is. I decided to record some of Dawn of War’s underappreciated “The Last Stand” mode. Watch in full screen 1080p for Extreme Quality, and sorry that the audio’s a bit loud on my part.

If you’d like to see more, you know, leave a comment and let me know how offended you were of this video, and maybe I’ll offend you some more.

‘Nin Out!

I’m starting to see a recurring theme here about when I actually do a Blogpost. The Parents have left for the weekend, leaving me free of headphones and a morning rush into the shower and leaving me to my own culinary talents. I can Breathe easy and my inner-fresh-prince is officially chillaxed.

Despite my swearing off of APB, I managed to play a bunch of it since my last post. I now know that I have a deep love/hate relationship with that game, in which I am compelled to play but when I get into the thick of it I’m cursing like a sailor. I am utterly perplexed by some of the things that happen in that game It’s about a month since it’s release and the cracks in the game’s balance are in need of serious patching.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m constantly being pitted up against teams of high-ranking, high-threat Enforcers – most of them carrying what is the game’s current noob tube, I forget the name – basically a MP5 that thanks to upgrades unloads bullets, powerful bullets, faster than any other close range weapon in the game. Thankfully most of these matches have me paired in a 3 Enforcers to 5-6 Criminals scenario.

I’m happy that Realtime Worlds have opened up their doors to the players, as last week we receive yet another update on the game’s overhaul process, and it all sounds very promising. Though one thing no-one’s touched on is the complete fail of the secondary weapon options – it’s a polar opposite of Modern Warfare 2, APB’s Secondary weapon choices are weak, inaccurate and for the most part pointless – you’re probably better off finding the quickest reloading primary weapon and never scrolling your mouse wheel.

There’s plenty to be done to APB’s gameplay to make it a more complete experience, and I hope they get down to it before the game falls into obscurity. In the mean time, there are still some bugs to catch…

Some more news came out of Realtime Worlds over the past couple of days, a small teaser of their next top-secret project, which… is something. Proof at least that Dave Jones is on something hallucinogenically mind-altering. Hold on, I need to watch that trailer again…

Oh, ok, so it’s the Future of Social Netwo-ZzZzZzZzzzzzzz…..

I suppose I’m just a little disappointed that it’s not a game game, you know what I mean? This is something that I do not want, so I’m not going to follow it. Just don’t screw up APB anymore OK?

Ok.

After playing a round or two of Alien Swarm the other day – where over voice chat I used my extremely bad wireless 360 Headset whilst wearing on top of that, a giant pair of headphones. Needless to say, it was extremely uncomfortable. So I went into the market for a new headset and I came out with THESE. I highly recommend them so far. They’re cheap for what they deliver, and the sound quality is good from what I can tell with the Windows Sound Recorder.

At the same time Starcraft 2 appeared at my door, a day late thanks to location-based-mail-lag. After work I got it installed and played a little bit through the campaign, and damn, it’s really freaking good. I’m a little bit into the second chapter at the moment and everything I’ve done so far has been really varied and at a solid pace, surrounding that a decent story that despite Blizzard’s near-retarded levels of back story, hasn’t thrown me off course yet.

I don’t have much else to say on it, it’s still early days, I haven’t even gotten near the multiplayer, which is a totally different kettle of fish. But I’m sure I’ll have something better to say next time. I’ve also got a couple of guest passes sitting around from my collectors edition, so drop me a line if anyone out there wants one.

Finally I want to mention that some news came out of Relic that Space Marine is coming out fir the PC aswel! … which I thought was happening anyway, but the released a new trailer with it:

That’s it for now. I’m officially on holiday for the next couple of weeks, and I’ve got plenty to keep me occupied. Next Thursday I’ll be heading down to Fundee for the usual shenanigans, after that I’ve got my Driving Test, and in between there’s plenty of games to play, and I’m thinking of doing a little cooking when the ‘rents aren’t around. I may also put up a little video gameplay podcast if I can find something actually interesting to say and a free equivalent of non-free Fraps. Until next time, where my body will be a near-dead bloodied Korean Protoss beaten corpse.

Why does every City start with ‘C’?

The Parents have disappeared for the day, so I figure I’d listen to some loud music and finally get round to transferring my old stuff off the old PC, all the whilst writing a long overdue blog post. Though admittedly I haven’t been up to much.

I’ve sworn off APB for the moment. Realtime Worlds has told the world that there are a ton of changes on the books for a soon-yet-future update that should make for a very different game. I can hold off until then.

I did have a solid night of TF2 Passion when Giant Bomb was hosting their Thursday Night Throwdown. The best part of it being that their server was not only full of players, but running the healthiest rotation of official maps. I hope they’ve kept the server up for when I go back to it.

It’s good to know that Valve aren’t done with updating the game with new content – The next big update is going to be full of User Created items farmed from a community modelling contest. They look bloody fantastic.

I picked up Blacklight: Tango Down from the steam store, though I haven’t given it a fair shake yet – player population is severely low. The only games I could get into were team deathmatch games, and at that ones that had about 4-players per team. But what I played was pretty good – though it is apparent that it is a game built for a Console, apparent through it’s god awful user interface – It’s as if they forgot a Mouse is involved. Regardless, if player population picks up a bit, I’ll happily jump back in for the luls.

I did manage to get down and dirty with the Dawn of War 2 Expansion last weekend. It’s much of the same as the main game’s campaign, though a little shorter and some additional throwaway mechanics – mainly “Corruption”, which sees your characters picking up some Chaos-like abilities and wargear. Though fully embracing the Corruption does make the game a hell of a lot easier, despite leaving some squads entirely unelectable towards the end of the campaign.

What I really have been spending time with is the game’s Last Stand mode. To break it down, it’s a DotA style Horde Mode where you gain XP and level up a single commander unit from the main Multiplayer. It’s quite fun though a little shallow. I’ve been playing the Chaos Sorcerer (think a Warlock in WoW) mainly because it’s one of the two classes that let you get the achievements – why this isn’t for every class is a mystery to me. And I intend to take him to level 20 and hopefully eventually Wave 20 of the horde – the last wave. And FYI I will not be playing any of the regular multiplayer, no freaking way.

So my verdict on Dawn of War 2 is this: It’s an interesting stepping stone for the franchise. Relic has done a bunch of experimental work with this title, and it’s all a bit shallow. I think they can do wonders in Dawn of War 3, if they ever get the chance to make it. They’ve moved away from base building so much that I’d really like to see them go all the way and make a title that’s more analogous to the Proper 40K tabletop game, where troops are determined before the begging of the game – a system that lends well to a persistent unlock system ala’ Modern Warfare. At that point it comes down a lot more to the overall strategy and skill of a player and not pain in the butt base building.

I managed to play some Alien Swarm the other day too, and I urge everyone to pick it up, because it’s on Steam and it’s absolutely free. It’s Left 4 Dead meets a top down twin-stick shooter, only Aliens and crap. It has launch bugs a plenty, but much of the functionality is there, just not easily accessible – for example, I really want to plug in a 360 controller in for the better fidelity granted by the sticks (this is about the only game where a 360 controller trumps the mouse for precision control), but there isn’t a menu option to turn that on, it’s all hidden away in console commands.

Valve are patching it about every other day, and they’ve already patched in a better server browser – one that actually tells you the difference between a game in process and one that’s still forming in the lobby. So hopefully it’ll mature with age – and again I remind you all that it’s freaking FREE. Check it. Plus, Giant Bomb has a sweet Quick look right HERE.

But of course all will be forgotten next week as Starcraft 2 Launches on Tuesday of all days. My collectors edition should be on it’s way soon. I think you need to watch this (Full screen and HD):

Need I say any more? Well I could say that Blizzard should really get into the Movie Business, they would SLAY Pixar in the FACE. I’ll be blogging and tweeting about the game when it comes through my door. But for the mean time, you may want to learn what the hell’s going on.

I’m off to enjoy my weekend. I haven’t chosen a game to focus on, so I’ll be bouncing between a bunch of PC games. And if anyone has a suggestion drop me a comment or tweet. I also picked up Fallen Earth off of Steam, which is on sale for only £13 including a month of play. It just really intrigues me, though I doubt I’ll play too much – Alternatively I’ve also got my Fallout 3 game Saves of the old PC, so I may trade one wasteland for another. I also picked up Duels of the Planeswalkers on the PC – It was cheap, can you blame me? The Magic cravings are coming back, and I require an outlet. Though I find their “DLC” packages an abomination.

and your hand on your HUT!