OFP2 - It's Like Phantom Menace

I want to do a longer post on some other stuff that's been happening, but for this one I wanted to do a preview-review... thing. I played a game for a few hours and want to give 'impressions' as you see so often online.

So, Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising needs a few bullet-points to start off this review:
-It has nothing to do with Operation Flashpoint.
-It is designed by codemasters, who really seem to love talking about the engine.
-I played it on a friends computer at work over a few lunches. I'm on about the 3rd/4th mission.

So, OFP:DR. From now on referred to as the much easier to say, though less true, OFP2. If there was to be an OFP2, it'd be Arma, and Arma2 would be the one to follow that. This one involves no-one who worked on OFP - and it shows.

Firstly, this is not a realistic game. And I don't mean that in terms of CoD4 isn't realistic - anyone with brains knows that. What I mean is, things that most realistic games have, this one doesn't (or shouldn't), such as:
-Non-bullet proof enemies. I get that people don't die instantly to certain bullet hits, but I can assure you that a 5.56 hitting someone 100 metres from the shooter is not going to continue running and fire back. My record for hits on someone is 7. At 125 metres. I don't know what part of him was still working, but even after 6 shots he was firing back (and hit me, actually.)
-If I'm running, and want to give orders, I have to stop running and tell them. Even orders like 'follow me' and 'don't stare at that bush.'
-You can change weapons while moving, unless you press the 'change weapons' button, which allows you to cycle through them. I'm... not sure why this is the case.
-Enemies can see through all vegetation. That bush you're hiding in? They don't see it. That bush they're firing through? You do see it.
-You can't lean. Who the.. why the fuck? Seriously? You can't fucking lean?!

Now I could do all sorts of witty remarks how about how this game should rename AI from Artificial Intelligence to Artificial Indecisiveness (oh ho! the wit!) because the vast majority of the time the NPC's just sit there and do nothing, but I won't. What I'm going to say is this:

Hire designers, Codemasters. The best you can, and pay them whatever they want.

Because it's not that the coding is bad, or the models, or the texturing, etc etc, it's the design. For example, who the fuck designed that oil refinery level so you couldn't get the AI to jump over the foot and a half wall. Fuck Hadrians Wall, this is like a pen for toddlers. Why does the game tell me something will happen in 1 minute, that is actually a triggered event? Why the fuck does one even trigger a message that I'm going to have to defend something, but in actuality it means I have to move 100 metres forward to trigger the attack, then fall back to the defend-area? Why does blowing up a troop-carrying helicopter destroy the chopper, and have the soldiers jump out unscathed when the body of the copter hits the ground!?

Who the fuck passed off on this shit?

Honestly, there was a big debate to see who'd win - Arma2 or OFP2, and in my eyes they've both done a pretty poor job. Moreso OFP2, because at least Arma2 pushes envelopes (and inspires people to do cool stuff like this) - even if it doesn't push them well, or where it wants to, it's trying. OFP is like oldschool rainbow 6 bugginess combined with CoD4'ss 'realism.' You can't even change your loadout before a mission for fuck's sake! If you're going to abandon realism, do it so the player is at least rewarded.

So in summation, avoid OFP2. Rent it if you have to, wait for the demo, but don't buy it out of hand. While Arma 2 may have it's faults, it at least has a larger multiplayer, more robust engine, less invulnerable enemies, more character, and actual soul. OFP is like the walking re-animated corpse of someone's Cthulu FPS nightmare.

Also, fuck them for having the gall to rip off Bohemia by using the name Operation Flashpoint. I was willing to give the game a chance - I know what it's like to be given someone elses IP - but the games are entirely un-related. It would be like the next CoD game by Treyarch being called Return To Castle Wolfenstein - Call of Duty - World At More War.

Shalrath; "Roger, moving to face brick wall."

Another Card Bites the Dust

So yeah, obviously haven't posted in awhile. There's been all sorts of stuff going on I won't bore you with. In terms of gaming stuff, let's see if we can make a list:

1) I've been playing a fair bit of Section 8, which is much more fun than I ever would have guessed. The weird thing is just how approachable it is, and how, well, fun. The customization of your loadout is impressive - I've customized every slot available (Eight?) with different scenario loads. One for VIP hunting, one for sneaking into empty bases, one for backstabbing snipers, one for close-quarters fighting, etc etc. My favourite is an Assault Rifle/Sniper Rifle combo, with the Repair kit and a Sensor Blocker. Allows me to get behind people, snipe from afar, do decent at close range, and heal myself in combat. I tweak the armour slots a lot, but I mostly run damage and movement speed heavy. It's not a glass cannon, but it puts out the damage.

I think one of the most impressive parts of the game is the time to load. From the main login screen, I clocked it at 8 seconds to PLAYING in a quickmatch. Thats login, click quickmatch, in.

Go watch the videos and so on, but the one description of why you should play the game is: You can dive through the atmosphere, and land on a guy, killing him. Seriously, it's awesome.


2) Natural Selection 2.

There's a tonne of stuff to say about this game that is incredible (at least in looks so far), but check out the site for the best info. Really, I think a good chunk of NS1 players will move over, as will a lot of new people. It's prettier, grittier, and more buzzwords. They're quite receptive to fan feedback over there, so go check it out!

I'm debating getting the pre-order dealy they have. Black armour is great and all, but really I just want to give money to those poor guys. They deserve it.


3) Pimp My Gun

That interesting little application has sucked more of my time than I'd like. But God is it fun; the ability to make pretty much any assault-rifle you'd want is quite the thrill. To me anyway. I had a chat over email with the guy who put it up, and he has a whole tonne of ideas for how to expand it. I hope he finds a crazy good job or something through it, because something so useful to designers has to be worth something.

Go try it out. When you lose a few hours to it, let me know, hahaha ;)


4) My video card. (No link, sorry.)

My EVGA video card is dying. Or is mostly dead, it's hard to say. Mostly, what occured is the fucking things fans screwed up and the fucker overheats. Turns out, those Fallout 3 crashes I got (and there weren't a lot, just more than anyone wants to happen) were graphics card overheating, not the game itself. At least for the most part I assume, but it was quite a bizarre crash when it happened. Screen turns off, computer is still 'on,' no input.

I talked to the guys at EVGA, and apparently I have to RMA this fucking thing. It's my first time doing that, so we'll see how this experience goes for me. I'm expecting utter failure, but I guess that's how it is. Going for 2-3 weeks without my computer is going to be complete and utter fucking balls though.

I might have to, ugh, console game for awhile. At least until my 360 bricks and I have to RMA that fucking thing too. A friend of mine had his RMA the day he got one back from Microsoft. He was.. unhappy.


So, that's about enough of that for now though. I played through some of Gears of War with my girlfriend last night, and enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. Not because of her, but because I really don't like the game. As I may have mentioned though, co-op makes pretty much everything more fun. We had a blast making fun of the latent homo-eroticism, the awful gray everywhere, and the hilarious situations these people manage to get in. Also, she would scream at me whenever I'd go anywhere not lit like a super-nova when you're avoiding the bat things. It was good times.

Anyway, I'm off. I'll update soon, I promise. It'll be brief though, as I won't have a computer. I'll try to use my mind or something, you know, 'hook into the net' ala William Gibson.

Shalrath; "I'm downloading songs from the internet with my mind."

Battlefield Heroes Fragged My Modem

I have no idea why there are so many positive reviews of Battlefield Heroes. Seriously, I have no idea. Yes, it's free -- but so is dogshit on the sidewalk. And the difference between a free game that sucks, and a great one for 30 dollars is that one is free and sucks and the other is cheap and doesnt suck (and is also five fucking games.)

This is not to mention that I got three, count 'em, three BSOD's playing the game (my first BSOD's on XP) and it fragged my router so badly I couldn't connect to the internet at all until I flushed my DNS redirect and reset the fucking modem. Apparently I am not the only one with this problem. In fact, a friend of mine looked up BFH while I was dealing with these errors and said, and I quote: "Holy shit. Yeah, uh, apparently heroes tends to screw peoples modems. I got a good 12 links on google about it."

So yes, avoid that shit.

Try a game that, you know, doesnt suck, and is 20 dollars.

Shalrath; "Right Behind You, Shepard."

Who You Gonna Call? Not Threewave.

I haven't been up to much in the gaming world recently, other than doing another playthrough of Mass Effect to get ready for Mass Effect 2. I've been trying desperately to not learn anything about 2 at all, other than game mechanic changes, but have failed in some ways.

I won't give anything away (unlike my retarded co-workers), but there are some pretty large story ideas going on. I like the sound of what I (didn't want to) hear. I'm really curious how they're going to take characters you've already played through the first game with, and translate that to the second game. Obviously there will be a lot of gameplay tweaks, and while the story-side of the transfer is obvious (if you killed 'x' guy, he is not in ME2. If you helped 'y' alien, they will help you in ME2) it's the core mechanics I am wondering about. They've stated (somewhere, I don't have a link, go look it up yourself) that you won't carry over your weapons/abilities exactly -- does this mean you get to reconfigure your Vanguard, or Soldier, into a new version? Does it mean your old maxed out skills transfer over? Does it mean you could have had an Engineer, but in the sequel make him an Adept? Time will tell.

Personally, I hope they allow as much change as possible, as more freedom for players is almost always a better thing - especially when we're talking about an single player RPG. I wonder who I should bring over, my Paragon Soldier, my Renegade Vanguard, or my bi-polar Adept, who is either charming or stabbing at every opportunity...

I was going to get Ghostbusters, but after the shit they pulled on the PC version [Thanks RPS!] I said forget it. Seriously, if you're going to treat some of your customers like second class citizens - fuck you. On the plus side, I saved fifty bucks, so that makes me happy.

I am trying to figure out what was going through the minds of these people when they're doing this. You're a company, money is tight, you have to cut something, so you cut.. PC multiplayer?! And to follow it up with the kick-in-the-balls-quote like "Therefore, we kept our focus on making the console versions deliver on the promise of being an integral player on the Ghostbusters team." Well fuck you too. Seriously, look at the awesome precedent you're setting for your company here. "Hey, we make claims we can't deliver on, and then screw a quarter of the playerbase over. But don't worry, the other platforms will be feature complete!"

I've had about three different versions of this video bookmarked, but apparently it violates the terms somehow. Either way, this is one of the most hilarious videos I've seen in ages. I still laugh my ass off whenever it plays. The spy is a dashing rogue, so it does not lie.

That's all for now, I'll update as time allows.

Cheers,
Shalrath; "Say goodnight, Manuel."

Some Bastard'd Shoot At You

Before I get all depressing, I want you to watch this video. Yes, there's an add, suck it up.

So I just got back from my grandfathers wake - and it was a wake, as is my family's style - and I'm not in a fantastic headspace, but I wanted to tell a quick story about my grandfather. I'll do my best to type as he'd speak, but not knowing him is your loss, and having him gone is mine:

You see, the problem with the war was that everytime you'd get bored some guy'd shoot at you. I wrote half of my letters under a damn truck; "Those aren't tears on the page," I'd say, "but those damn Germans are shelling us again, so I'm writing this from under the troop carrier." So, in order to avoid getting bored, we'd do just about anything. I remember one time we were sitting on the back of a truck, which had a burning barrel inside to warm us - those damn winters are cold in Italy - and we were throwing stuff into the fire. Rocks, dear John letters, whatever was around. So we're all sitting there and suddenly this weird smoke starts pouring out of the thing. Some guy had thrown a damn mustard gas pellet into it! So we all pour out the back, literally falling out of the truck, everyone swearing and running. Later we laughed, but I just about died there, I think.

Then we had the damn guard detail. I dunno why, but some genius up high figured we needed to guard everything, so at some point I got suckered into it. Anyway, we weren't allowed to smoke on guard detail - they said we'd 'give our position away,' which was silly because we were in the middle of a damn supply base! Anyway, what I used to do was start smoking, and whenever we heard an officer coming (and you always knew) we'd flip our cigarettes back into our mouths, salute, and then flip it back out when he was gone. It sounds tough but you get enough practice and it's pretty easy.

So anyway, this whole story is leading up to the main story, which was me, in my bike - I was a messenger you know, running letters, orders, ammunition, whatever they needed - following this damn convoy. Now, the roads weren't so good, so I had to ride around them, then wait, then catch up again. It was pretty boring. Anyway, it's getting dark, so we pull into this field to sleep for the night. I used to wrap myself in two blankets, and then just fall backward into the mud. It was the best sleep of my night - that was some good mud! - and you'd just unwrap the blankets, and be ready to move. Anyway, so we all wake up, and we hear shouting, swearing, the usual soldier talk, and some kid comes running over yelling something about the field, but we can't hear him over the racket of trucks starting and the orders bein' yelled and so on. So we look where he's pointing, and you know what we saw? This sign, in German because we'd overtaken them again, says "Minenfielden!" We'd parked in a damn mine field the whole night! So the trucks back out along the lines they made comin' in, but I tell ya, 'military intelligence,' yeah right! How'd we get in that field then?

As I said, I can't do him justice, but I always remember that story, and I can still hear him say it whenever I think about it.

On to more video game related things, I just wanted to mention that Natural Selection 2 not has both a release video, and a release date. I'd like to think I honour my grand-dad every time I hide under something whenever stuff attacks me, occasionally firing back. I bet, had he been born in today's era, he'd have been a gamer, and he would have just wished we could all get along, and stick it to that damn AI that keeps messing us up.

Proud Of My Heritage; "I'd take boredom over some guy shelling you any day."

Everyone Dies

By now I'm sure you've all heard about 3D Realms closing, and the subsequent deluge of hilarious shots at Duke Nukem Forever, and how yes it will be forever, and then we all laugh at the witty writing.

I'm actually quite sad about it - the work done thus far on it looks absolutely awesome, and it is truly a loss for gamers that we will not get to see it. I remember seeing a gameplay video some time late last year, and I was genuinely interested. It's a huge blow that they're gone, and frankly, (even on the off-chance it's 'not true' and they get bought out or something) we're all the poorer for losing it.

While it does not explicitly pertain to gaming, this is just fucking awesome. I watched it quite a few times, pausing to watch the directors act like fake ass-holes and so on. It was really quite the experience, and I hope that one day we'll have more interactive versions of stuff like this, such as, you know, video games. Can you imagine graphics and interactivity like that? Damn.

I've mostly been playing two games recently: Gemcraft, I remarked to a friend, was "better than most 40 dollar plus games." It's not incredibly deep, but the fact that you can play it for long periods of time without screaming in rage is a plus. Not to mention that it's free, and designed better than most 80 dollar games. The second game, when I have time, is Left 4 Dead survivor mode. I converted a friend of mine to it, and he is attempting to shoe-horn windows into his Mac, rather than heeding my advice that he should just buy a fucking real PC given that nothing he needs to do on it requires a double-the-cost Mac. There's nothing quite like the feeling of screaming "OH FUCK A TANK!" completely surrounded by co-workers, who are all remarking on the games menu flow, how fun it looks, and how easy it is to late-join and use voice-chat.

These things all happened, I assure you.

-Shalrath; "I Hate Vans."

Metal Has Come

It's been a long time since I've been so psyched about a game that I actually dread waiting for it.

A new game has come to take that honoured, rarely held, position of honour.

And this.
is
it.

Tim Shaefer is a God masquerading as a designer. He's in my mind, with pincers glowing like halos, deftly prying loose everything I love and making it even more awesome. Metal? Check. Heavy Metal? Double Check. Killing enemies with heavy metal riffs? Oh my God, where do I sacrifice virgins?

You're killing me with the wait, Shaefer.

There are no words to describe the sheer combination of awesome this is. Atheists in disbelief, Christians cower in remorse, Buddhists shame Buddha with thoughts of coveting tangible things.

This. Will. Rock.

Shalrath; "He's The One Who Makes You Feel Alright."