Venetian Base Jumping

A long while ago I played through Assassins Creed and thoroughly enjoyed it. In fact, I have been heard to say that it ranks in my favourite three games of all time. High praise indeed, so you will understand the sense of excitement I felt when Ubisoft announced their sequel. After swallowing the horribly aggressive DRM* I had it installed and ready to go.

Round 1 - fight!

The game kicks off with you, as Ezio, starting a fight in the street. Actually, that's not strictly true - the game starts off with you are Desmond in the meta-plot that carries on from Creed 1. Since that exists mostly as a vehicle to get you your past self, I'll ignore it for the moment. Back in the past, Ezio goes through some street violence then runs around town with his brother as you learn the controls. So far, so dull but I guess you need a tutorial section. After some faffing around you get to meet Leonardo De Vinci and ... carry his washing? Something like that - mother isn't forthcoming. Suddenly the developers remember you're supposed to be playing a game and your idyllic life collapses around your ears and you swear vengeance on the conspirators. Some more violence ensues and you stab the lead badguy - and accidentally discover a much bigger problem that will require your new-found stabby skills.

Round 2 - fight! Again!

Next up you're chasing off on some more errands (which usually result in you fighting more folk) before an extended fight sequence. Then some more fighting. It was about this time I started to wonder where the actual assassinations were going to come into this game. Several hours later I was still wondering.

Nostalgia

One of my favourite things about the original Creed was the way the narrative was structured. There were several lengthy sections, each focusing on Altair eliminating a well-characterised individual. You were continually reminded that collateral damage was the mark of an amateur and forced to go and forage for clues to avoid bloodily hacking your way to the target then beating him to death with a blunt object. This structure was criticised for being too samey and getting in the way of the murder but did do a great job of changing the pace so that the game didn't deteriorate into one long fight scene and the information gained was used to plan a way to eliminate the target cleanly.

Creed 2 takes a different approach. Rather than forcing you actually plan the assassinations there is usually an the NPCs on hand to put some helpful way-points on your map. You no longer need a particularly stealthy approach either - a typical "infiltration" will have you stumble in the direction of the target, trigger a patrol of guards, butcher them then rock to the next group. In the original game you could use this heavy-handed approach to killing but you better be a really good swordsman because the guards would rip you to pieces whilst the target fled. In Creed 2 the only time the subtle approach is of any real use is when (for no obvious reason) the game decides you fail your mission if someone spots you.

Oops, I'm sorry

The biggest disappointment with Creed 2 is how easy it is. Creed 1 was pretty hard in places - more importantly, it punished you for stepping outside of your role. When you violated a law the guards would chase you down and beat you into a bloody pulp and trying to escape inevitably attracted the attention of more guards until you were overwhelmed. This meant that you had to weigh the consequences of doing something wrong - even running over the rooftops was risky in some places because the guards would immediately start chasing you. In Creed 2 it is trivially easy to escape pursuit. You do not have to find hiding places most of the time - simply running around a corner is enough to shake the guards because, apparently, they have better things to do than chase down heavily armed psychopaths. In a nod to realism, not all guards can keep up with you over the rooftops which should be a good thing, but it does mean that in the first half of the game you can escape by legging it to the rooftops. All of this means that the guards are no longer frightening - which in turn means there is no reason for you to try and stay below the radar.

Zooooom

A combination of the change in narrative structure and the difficulty problem results in the pacing basically being ruined. You can complete most of the game on full throttle and hacking your way through every scenario does get very tedious after a while. It changes the focus from stealthy assassinations to extended dramatic fight scenes which, of course, draws attention to the weakest part of the game - the melee fighting. This actually seems worse than the first game - previously you had to time your counter attacks and think of a suitable move to chop down some of the harder enemies. While it was by no means a great experience you did feel you were out-fencing your opponents. The different enemies in Creed 2 all fight differently, which is a good thing, but many of them are basically immune to your attacks until you use a particular attack pattern - at which point you win. You remember collecting floppy disks for points in old games? You remember that it acted as a big flag saying "THIS IS A COMPUTER GAME"? It feels just like that.

I'm being a little unfair. The set-piece melee combat is reasonably exciting and surprisingly controllable. You have plenty of moves and weapons available, even if most of the latter are completely worthless - especially since you can use your Concealed Blade as a (very) effective melee weapon now. There is just so much of it and, as is becoming a reoccurring theme, it is so unbelievably easy (especially with the pile of health potions you can carry) that it ends up being nothing more than a series of speed bumps to slow your progress. I stated before that there is no reason to fear the guards. In actual fact you end up avoiding them not out of a fear of being killed or a desire to not kill more than you need to but because you can't be bothered to kill yet another group of them.

Erm. Who?

While we are going through the problems it is probably time to mention the targets. In Creed 1 they were all distinctive and interesting individuals. In Creed 2 there was a point where the cutscene revealed the next target and left me thinking "I've already killed him once". Turns out there was two guys wearing pretty much the same thing - both of whom were so forgettable that they blurred into one in previous scenes. One of them was referred to as "Maestro" early in the game - to be honest I'm still not sure which.

I realise that the first game was set in a time when everyone was wearing plate armour - presumably that made it easier to give the targets a distinctive look - but there really is no excuse for the totally forgettable set of enemies.

That Desmond guy

A quick word about the meta-plot. In the first game it was used to string together the sections of the game. In the second game you rock straight into the next section without stepping back to reality, which is hugely confusing since you jump up to five years between sections. The meta-plot used to be an interesting aside from the main game, but this time around it seems far more important and yet gets far less screen time. It is a very strange experience but the biggest concern is that the narrative just feels so much more ... smug. Unlike last time it seems to be trying to make a point, although I have no idea what that point might be.

Also, if the inevitable Creed 3 is anything like Creed 2, you would do well to take notes on the occasions you jump out of the animus to be fed a bit more plot because no recap is will be forthcoming.

Oh, and the end is hugely unsatisfying

Yes, it is.

So, no good then?

Well, that's not true. Although I have focused on the negatives of Creed 2, they are all in comparison with Creed 1 - a game which I loved. I did have a lot of fun playing Creed 2 and in many ways it is a much better game than its predecessor. You get a lot more weapons, the missions are a lot more varied and there are many side-quests and mini-collections to keep you going for ages. Upgrading your home is fun, if a bit Fable-esque-pointless and you get to play with vehicles other than a horse. The graphics are still excellent and the animation and sound still lend a good sense of weight to the proceedings, ensuring you wince every time Ezio falls from the top of a building to smash onto the cobbles below. The game is still something I would recommend playing - it is still one of the better games I have played this year - but it does seem to have lost its way. Certainly, I will be playing Creed 1 instead of Creed 2 if I need another fix of assassination and maiming. Worryingly, my biggest gripes with the game are to do with the evolution of the series and the resultant changes in the format. I hope they think long and hard about the directions they are taking before Creed 3 gets too far into development because if it continues in the current direction I may totally lose interest in the series.

And feather hunting is just as annoying as flag hunting in the first game.

*As an aside, I detest DRM as much as the next man however man other people have written well thought out pieces about the problems with the various types so rather than me writing much the same thing all over again if you’re interested, go read those posts. I suggest starting with Shamus Young.

Rushing to catch up

The thick sea mists roll by, propelled by the gentle breeze. Everywhere is calm - the only sound is the gentle lapping of the waves against the hull, the rustling of the empty sails and the creaking of the ship's timbers. The captain steps out on deck and looks up into the murk. "Do you see anything?" he calls. Far above the deck, atop the mast, sits the lookout. He stares into the mists until his eyes burn, looking for something - anything - that might suggest where they are, what is going on. Anything that might suggest there is life out there. Finally, he replies. "I'm sorry sir. It's all quiet on the blog front."

I've got out of the habit of posting about games and writing on here in general. Other projects have taken my time and this blog has been quiet. Time to do something about that by running through the games that have kept me at various levels of interest recently - omitting Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2 both of which deserve a longer post.

Fallout 3

I am a big fan of roleplaying games so when I found out I could spend time wandering around post-apocalyptic, alternative-history America in a game described as the best thing EVAA in far too many places, I jumped at the chance. To begin with I enjoyed myself, wandering around and drinking in the atmosphere generated by the lovely setting. I met a few monsters, shot them with a gun, and found my way to a town where I got to decide whether to nuke all the local inhabitants or rescue them with my previously-unknown bomb diffusal skills. I wasn't confident of success, but the sheriff seemed quite keen for me to give it a try (despite the horrific consequences of failure) so I told him I'd give it a go. Looking back, this is where my Fallout 3 experiences started going wrong. I should have stopped and left the gameworld with my expectations untarnished. Instead, I made the mistake of ambling around the town talking to the NPCs.

I should explain that I don't like playing arseholes in games. Whilst my characters take no crap from the NPCs, I do not enjoy playing through games like Mass Effect or Knights of the Old Republic on "evil" mode being a dick to everyone I meet. Because of this the decision to save the town rather than detonate the nuke should have been a no-brainer but after half an hour of talking to the slack-jawed locals I needed no encouragement to wipe the snivelling lot of them from the face of the planet. Instead, I set myself a different challenge - if I could find ONE person worth saving I would spare them all fiery immolation. That town was saved by one person - and only one - who I didn't want to kill.

This sums up much of my experience with Fallout 3. I walked from one side of the (huge) map to the other, poking my nose into all manner of horrible holes and really trying to find something - anything - to care about. The scenary was lovely, but there are only so many empty shopping malls (or subway stations) I can stomach before losing the will to live. If you want me to engage with the world I need NPCs to care about. They need to say interesting and engaging things - preferably in a voice that doesn't feel like someone running nails over a blackboard (Moira, I'm looking at you) - and they need to give me sufficient dialogue options to be convincing. They don't need to, for example, thank me for saving their brother from a lifetime of drug addiction and say they will do anything to help me, then in the same breath call me a tool for because I asked stopped them and asked for directions to the shop (especially when THEY STOPPED ME in the street).

The thin dialogue is a result of the open world approach. It's great that I can go anywhere and shoot anyone, but it means that the game has to keep track of hundreds of different statuses all over the map and each NPC has to have sufficient dialogue to respond convincingly. To do anything else strips the experience of any immersion - in the case of Fallout 3 it leaves a lovely gameworld, but hollow with oh so little to care about inside of it. It doesn't help that the map is so big. In the end, I found myself wandering around the map with a laptop open on the desk beside me so I could look up places of interest and go sightseeing - something I'm sure the game designers didn't want me to be doing. Then my computer crashed before I could finish the campaign, I lost my save game and I couldn't face restoring it and trying again.

Braid

Steam is a wonderful thing. You can be sitting around, wondering what you're going to do to escape the mind-numbing tedium of treking through the Fallout landscape and all of a sudden you get a pop up telling you Braid is £3. So long Fallout, hello weird platform game!

Braid is a platform puzzle game which asks you to find a pile of jigsaw pieces and make pictures on the wall of your house as you attempt to find your lost princess or ... something. The game is incrediably arty - and I don't mean it has an interesting art style (although it does), I mean it wears a scarf even when it is warm and thinks that not explaining something is a great way of getting over a message. The story unfolds through a series of books that contain half thoughts and make little sense until you read them all together and analyse them and then maybe - maybe - you'll reach the same page as the author. Whatever, the story is largely irrelevant and only becomes intriguing during the excellent end sequence when everything changes.

The game itself is tremendous fun. The basic platforming is spiced up by a series of different time maipulation mechanics giving you the ability to rewind your mistakes, change the state of the level and a whole load of other things too complicated to describe. The puzzles are mostly well thought out and pleasingly mind-bending. Not that it is without problems - various levels have keys break if you put them in the wrong lock which renders you unable to finish the scene (thanks for that) and there is a super-secret star collection game that relies on you doing things at the correct time throughout the whole game and can easily be irrevocably messed up requiring you to start the whole game again. There are a couple of places where you have to perform pixel perfect jumps to get the jigsaw piece, rather than the challenge being working out the solution in the first place and after a while the music starts to do strange things to your brain. Despite this, Braid is well worth playing if for no reason than it is unusual. The presentation is beautiful and like all good puzzle games there is a real sense of accomplishment when you get that little bit further.

Plants vs Zombies

Another Steam impulse-buy - this time to give me a break from Dragon Age - this time for the bargain price of £1. Plants vs Zombies is like electronic crack - unbelievably addictive and impossible to put down.

PvZ is a simple strategy game. You plant plants in your garden which act as resource generators, defenders or attackers and use them to hold off wave after wave of zombies assaulting your house. As time flows past unnoticed, the zombie numbers and types increase and everything becomes far more frantic as your lines buckle and threaten to collapse under the onslaught before finally the blessed end of level sign appears and you get a new type of flower to make your life easier. Then you do it again, and again, and again. Then the birds start singing outside and you realise the world beyond your PC is getting up again and you're about to pass out.

Fortunately, there is an end to PvZ and that releases you from the madness. I urge you to play it - it's a charming, characterful defend-the-base style game that will keep you utterly addicted for hours and hours.

Dragon Age: Beginning

Yes, it has been a while. I have had something of a break from games recently, although I did go over to Cambridge to meet the nice folks at Jagex, Team Runescape. In the last months I have had a play with Batman: Arkham Asylum (excellent), Fallout 3 (painful), Braid (odd but cool) and Tales of Monkey Island (pretty good). I'll no doubt write about some, all or none of these soon but for the moment I have a Dragon Age tip for Steam users.

If, like me, you have been very excited awaiting this game and decided to pre-order the Deluxe edition you'll have some bonus content awaiting you. Be aware, however, that this content is not automatically installed - you need to jump through some hoops to get it.

So, to get the content:

1. Load Dragon Age from Steam
2. Go to Downloadable Content and follow the instructions for creating yourself an account on the Bioware site
3. Exit the game
4. Go to the Bioware site and find the redeem code page making sure you're logged in as you
5. Enter the "Pre Order" key code
6. Start the game
7. Go to the DLC page and note there are some things downloading
8. Exit the game
9. Go back to the redeem code page
10. Enter the "Deluxe Edition" code
11. Start the game
12. Go back to the DLC page and note the new things downloading

This is incredibly round-the-houses but it worked for me. Things which I think tripped me up:

1. The Bioware site will not accept your product key if your game is running
2. The Pre Order key could be entered WITH the dashes in it
3. The Deluxe Edition code was NOT accepted until the dashes were REMOVED

I haven't extensively tested these three, but they might help you out if you are having issues.

Also, if you ramp up your resolution in-game and get an "out of range" error from your monitor, you need to come back to windows and drop your monitor refresh rate. This will probably only bother you if you have an ancient CRT monitor. Like me.

Hope something here helps.

War - the second morning

It has been a couple of months since my last post and as usual when there is a lengthy gap it is because I am stuck in a boring game. This time it is Fallout 3 - latest in the list of games everybody seems to like but leaves me cold. Since I do not like writing about a game before I have completed, I though I'd go back to something I played through a while ago - Dawn of War 2.

You may remember my comments on Dragonshard, the first D&D RTS. In it I criticised the way real time strategy games forced you to control the low level tactics of the battlefield along with the higher level resource management and then gave you totally inadequate camera options to do that effectively. Well, it seems I am not the only one who thinks this - Relic have been hard at work trying to do something different. How did they do? Well, let us take each aspect in turn.

Resource Management

There isn't any. Nor is there any tedious base construction relying on you knowing your tech tree inside out nor any need to make sure you save your spice / gold / tiberium / random other thing you have harvested so you can build a vehicle depot instead of churning out more troops. Instead, you have a team of four space marine squads - chosen and equipped pre-mission - who are chucked into the action in a drop pod. They surge forth guns firing from moment one and don't stop shooting until every last enemy (or rather, Xeno) is riddled with bolt gun rounds.

In order to get any reinforcements, the squad leader needs to make his way back to a resource point. At that point new space marines are teleported in free of charge to make up the numbers. This may cheapen the game for those who like to run out of resources and have no way of defeating the enemy but on the upside it does change the emphasis of the game. Rather than stepping out, capturing resources, then retreating and turtling down in your base until you have enough troops to be worth sending out to fight your missions are all about pushing forwards and engaging the enemy. Kill them, capture their turf and get some reinforcements. Job done. How do you do that? Well, now we are on to...

Battle Control

When you engage the enemy in most RTS games the usual routine is:

1. select units
2. click on enemy
3. sit back and watch your troops swarm over the enemy troops until one side is dead

If they game designers want to mix it up a bit, they give the units special powers you have to manually activate which increases the frustrating micro-management tenfold as you struggle to get the best out of your troops. In DoW2 you have four units. This means that the special abilities are much easier to find and use. And because you never have more than thirteen troops on the battlefield the fights rarely turn into the kind of horrendous cluster fuck that makes it impossible to target enemies effectively. Overall it gives you a much greater sense of control over what is going on which makes the carnage far more satisfying.

And carnage it is, too. This is the Warhammer 40000 setting after all - troops on both sides of the battlefield die in droves as machine guns chatter away, flamers burn enemies from cover and rocket launchers blow huge holes in enemy formations. In keeping with the Dawn of War series, everything is beautifully detailed and - more importantly - the sound is superb. Once again battlefields reverberate to the sound of gravelly-voice space marines shouting "PURGE THE XENOS" and the thundering of the heavy bolters as they chew the onrushing xenos to pieces. The sense of immersion it lends to the atmosphere is incredible and makes the extreme violence of the missions all the more enjoyable.

New for DoW2 are buildings you can enter and garrison (although be warned that getting your space-blokes back out again can be a challenge) and buildings you can blast to pieces when they are full of enemies. Sure, there are other ways of clearing them out but there is nothing like some serious property destruction to spice up clearing out a town of the invading alien.

The AI

Although battlefield control is much improved it is not perfect. The AI of the enemies is sometimes lacking - they often display the stupidity of badguys from yesteryear - very obviously standing around waiting for your HardBlokes to show up then rushing you in waves, very kindly making themselves fodder for your rapid-firing heavy weapons. Your own troops don't always do much better. Aside from sometimes displaying extreme reluctance to leave a building, there are problems with the route-finding algorithms which seem choose the best route from one place to another based on the entire map rather than the discovered area. On occasion the result is the squad you have withdrawn from combat to get reinforcements attempting to catch up your main force by walking through a previously-undiscovered enemy base and consequently getting slaughtered. Also it is all too easy to target an enemy strongpoint with grenades then, whilst those troops move (slowly) into a position to throw them, have a melee unit auto-target the same unit and charge into the blast zone before getting blown to pieces. The clots.

None of these problems seriously threaten the game though and if you find yourself overwhelmed with the task of babysitting your triggerhappy psychos you can find escape in what is the best (and arguably the worst) part of the game:

The Multiplayer

Competitive multiplayer is one of the two biggest criticisms of DoW2 and you can see why. It is back to basics - choose your force, build your base, rush the enemy - but because the main game is based around small unit combat with no bases it all feels very tacked on the side. I can't really comment on the quality of the maps having not spent much time playing this game mode, but they all seemed very symmetrical and not very interesting. Since I dislike the build / rush gameplay of multiplayer RTS games I mostly avoided this mode but be warned that if you are into lots of head to head violence you are probably better off with the original DoW.

To counter the bad multiplayer there is the sublime co-operative mode. Now I have to admit I have a soft spot for co-op games but even so I think DoW2 is something special. Slaughtering your way through hundreds of Xenos is enough fun when you are by yourself but when you have a friend to chat to whilst you are doing it the fun increases dramatically. It also opens up a whole host of tactical options - making pincer attacks something that can actually be co-ordinated properly. Or, if your troops are hard enough, you simply take one side of the battlefield each and go for a time bonus.

The Missions

The other big criticism of DoW2 is in the variety of the missions. This totally unfair as, whilst most missions boil down to "advance through territory X and kill BigBeast Y along with all his mates" you sometimes are given a "advance through territory X and kill BigBeast Y along with all his mates AND blow up some buildings". Ok, so the missions (with the exception of the odd plot-important mission) are all exactly the same but the sound and visuals are so good you can get lost in the experience and it is always fun trying out the new toys of your units.

The Units

Your assault force consists of your commander and three other squads chosen from a pool of five. These troops all gain XP through wanton slaughter and consequently pick up new and interesting abilities. You can also give them different weapon / armour / special combinations to vary how they play. It doesn't sound like much but the different loadouts really do change how the troops perform in battle and the small number of squads mean each one can be led by a named character, each with their own distinct personalities. This in turn means you can get attached to them and they become more than cannon fodder being thrown forward at the enemy for your amusement.

A special mention has to go to the Commander who, with a certain combination of advances and equipment, becomes a close combat monster who is actually impossible to hurt. By himself he can chop his way through entire armies which means you can experiment with the other troops and leave the serious killing to him.

Other notable units include the dreadnaught who, armed with an assault cannon and with his ranged combat score pushed nice and high, could cut down entire waves of attacking enemies with a single use of his Hellfire stand-and-hose special ability and the cyclone missile launcher you can stick on your terminators which never once failed to cause more damage to my own team than to the enemy. Good times.

It has to be said that as your troops hit maximum level it all gets a bit silly and you rarely lose any troops despite facing waves a hundred strong at times. But still, with the splendid visuals and the deep thundering bass it never stops being tremendously exciting.

Campaign Structure

I haven't mentioned the story which, whilst basic, is a lovely introduction to the 40k universe and explains rather nicely why there are only ever a handful of troops charging from one side of the sector to the other doing every last little task to defend the place. The small number of main character space marines are suitably overly dramatic and all come across well as characters. A couple even develop somewhat as the story progresses. It is a nice distraction from the killing and strings everything together rather nicely.

The narrative gives some structure to the campaign and allows it to progress from a "do these missions in some order" to a section where you have many missions to do and have to think very carefully which ones you undertake to hold off the invasion for as long as possible. The campaign planning element is simplistic but is a fun addition and the interface for doing it is lovely - it captures the essence of being a future-general sitting in front of your control panels very well.

I assume the story ends well - one of the reasons I have taken so long to write about DoW2 is that I haven't finished it. I am just before the final mission with my team of HardBlokes all ready to go but my partner in co-op is finding himself without an internet connection to play to the end. Which is quite annoying.

Summing Up

Dawn of War 2 is excellent. Enormous fun in the campaign mode and even better in (co-op) multiplayer. More than that though, it represents a significant change in formula to the RTS genre. Whilst it remains to be seen whether this different approach will catch on, it is a very important game none the less. Relic took steps forward in the original DoW by basing resource collection on capturing areas of the map instead of harvesting something from the ground, and doing without resources entirely seems to be a sensible (if very bold) next step. Congratulations to them for trying something new and congratulations on making it work so brilliantly.

Where's the Forest?

I'm constantly amazed at how much the Half Life 2 series has come on in the three games. The Half Life 2 was a lengthy game chronicling Gordon Freeman on his travels through and around City 17. It was hailed as ground breaking and was much loved by everyone. And, despite many elements of genius, I didn't like it. Episode 1 was the next installment which took the genius parts and squeezed them together to produce a superb game. And I liked it. And now we have Episode 2, which is another one of Episode 1.

HL2E2 continues the trends set in HL2E1. The level design is superb - tight and winding corridor sections explode into wide open forests / toxic bogs / warehouse rooms and all are filled with details and interesting people to meet. And crawling with monsters too, naturally. The progression through the levels, whilst still as linear as the other games, now loops around. You frequently spend some time enjoying some plot exposition in one area, then are sent off down a tunnel to do your violence-thing before being brought back to the open area for some more discussion. This may have present in previous HL games, but it seems far more pronounced this time around and has the effect of making the surroundings feel a more integral part of the game, rather than just somewhere to talk to people and shoot things.

Aside from the clever level design, the set pieces continue to be excellent. Way back in the mists of time, when he reviewed HL2E2, Yahtzee commented that the set pieces in the HL2 saga are repeating themselves. Whilst this is true, they are also very obviously evolving - both in content and in how they are woven into the narrative. In HL2E1 moments like the zombie shoot whilst waiting for the lift were exciting and frantic, but also contrived as it became clear that the developers wanted to put that set piece in at that time and so forced the world to accept it. In HL2E2, events of the game flow seamlessly into the set pieces so you end up in your vast shoot-out situations without realising it and the game is all the better for that. The pieces are cleverer too - usually there is a violent, ammo-expensive way through them but if you think about what is going on around you and pay attention to the terrain you can usually find something to interact with which makes your life much more easy.

The vastly improved storytelling in HL2E1 returns, with the characters continuing to gain emotional depth. One of the major plot hooks early on is Alyx getting injured, forcing you to go into the depths of an antlion hive to find the egg extract you need to make a cure for her and it was at that point I realised how much I have come to care about the characters in this story, as I found myself getting genuinely angry with circumstances and determined to blast my way through to the end and rescue the girl as quickly as possible. So out of the window went exploring, replaced with naked rage and a massive stack of shotgun ammo as I ran the hive leaving a trail of destruction in my wake. This emotional involvement with the game continues all the way through, right up to the emotionally charged ending and is the best part of the entire game - quite a feat when you consider how much else is excellent. I regularly found myself shouting at characters on screen, or talking to Alyx whilst we explored a ruined building which I choose to take as a good sign, rather than the more likely explanation that I am going mad.

With the emotional involvement in the characters, it seemed strange for Valve to introduce a new bloke, Dr Magnusson, who takes centre stage in Team Crazy Scientist. It is suggested that he and Freeman know each other from back in Black Mesa, but that is never really confirmed. It's a little jarring to have a new face in the familiar crowd, but he's added reasonably well and is characterised quickly - although his character is irritating and shouty. Like all the HL2 NPCs, you can't shoot him which is a shame in this case. After getting an itchy trigger finger for much of the initial scenes with him, I went off and was partaking in an interesting and deep moment with Eli and Alyx when he barged in and demanded we went and did something useful. At that point I actually spun round and shot him in the face with my shotgun - another sign of being emotionally invested in the game I suppose. I do wonder why they made the chap a scientist though - he acts like the petty tyrants Hollywood habitually use for military officers, and I can't help feeling his role would have been more convincing if he was a General fighting against the Combine.

Oh, and for the first time the plot started to reveal a bit of what was going on behind the scenes and hinted that one day all the strange events might actually be explained. Which was encouraging.

So what else has changed? Well, certain annoyances from earlier in the series have been fixed - the driving section is short and not too horrible for instance - and some small variations to the FPS formula have been made. Traditionally in these games you start with the crappy little pistol and gradually find ammo for the bigger and better guns. In HL2E2 you pretty much start out with the shotgun and that is your main weapon for two thirds of the game. It's not a big thing, but it's nice to be using a weapon with some punch and finding plenty of ammo for it - aside from the "you have no ammo" forced sections where you have to be ultra-careful and use the gravity gun a lot.

The final thing to mention about the game is the sense of humour. I found HL2 mostly lacking in any humour, then HL2E1 added a lot in as the characters became interesting. HL2E2 pushes the humour again - a wonderfully dry sense of humour which sees the various NPCs quipping realistically and some genuine laugh-out-loud moments. The Vortigaunt who wanders round with you for a while is particularly hilarious, taking everything you do very seriously but obviously being unimpressed. "The Freeman leaves no path untrod. What did you expect to find down there?" he asks deadpan after you climb out of a pit you fell in. But there are also moments of minor slapstick, such as when Alyx climbs up into a loft to fix a machine, which you, unseen, plug in and she thinks she's done something unusual to make it work. This sense of humour can be seen in the Achievements too - something which has probably been in all the HL2 series, but is particularly funny this time round. Basically it's a scorecard for performing certain tasks in the game - and this card is public on your Steam profile. The harder tasks include saving all the buildings in the strider battle (undertake it if you hate yourself) but the more interesting and bizarre tasks include carrying a garden gnome from the beginning of the game to the end - you can see more about that one on Tom Francis's blog (he from PC Gamer UK).

Half Life 2 Episode 2 is excellent. A thoroughly enjoyable experience, and I can't wait for the next episode.

Posable Phil!

Last post I mentioned that Wired picked up one of my photos. Seeing how exploiting Phil Wilson's face could be fun, Liam McMurray (chief web designer at the University of Bath) sprang into action and created Posable Phil - the new must-have toy this March.

Need to launch something in image form? Why not have Phil do it!

Need to make light of a difficult scene? Why not have Phil do it!

Face immobile? Incapable of expressing surprise for yourself? Why not have Phil do it!

With just a few quick clicks you (yes, you!) can create a whole series of pictures expressing surprise! Like this!

And how much is this wonderful toy? £1000? £100000000? £100000000000000000000? No! Thanks to the wonders of the Creative Commons license, it will cost you absolutely nothing (terms and conditions apply, original license states non-commercial use only)!

You can download this amazing gift here.

The original photo, with attached license, can be found here.

My Name In Lights

A while ago I expressed surprise that someone used one of my flickr pictures in their blog post. Well, it seems to be catching - a rare google search for my stuff online has shown that my pictures are popping up all over the place. The most interesting one for me: I'm on Wired!

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised - this is, after all, what Flickr is for. The social and searchable aspects make my (and, indeed, anyone's) photographs available for anyone who is interested and the work done by the Creative Commons license people mean others can use my material. On top of the theory, there are the stories about people whose lives have been changed or saved by various social networking sites. The difference in this case is that, in its own small way, it has happened to me. And that is nice.

For anyone interested, my flickr stream is here.