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Venetian Base Jumping

2010-10-09T10:41:00.000-07:00

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

2010-03-15T10:53:00.000-07:00

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

2009-11-07T09:45:00.001-08:00

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

2009-07-16T11:35:00.000-07:00

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?

2009-05-02T09:33:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-03-03T10:39:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-27T05:19:00.000-08:00

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.

The First D&D Realtime Strategy Experience!

2009-02-25T13:43:00.000-08:00

The wonderful Play.com gave me the opportunity to have a look at a game that mildly intrigued me when it was released a few years ago (back in 2005). That game was (and is) Dragonshard, which proudly boasts that it is the first D&D RTS. It is so proud of this fact that it is part of the box art, and also splashed across the screen as it loads up. Clearly it is going to be something special then.

As we first delve into the magic that is going to be The First D&D RTS(tm) the first thing we find is the menu screen. You remember back when DVDs were new and studios felt compelled to make their menus different and interesting? You remember the beauty of the interface to something like Crouching Tiger, where it played exciting clips of the film each time you clicked a button? You remember that that particular feature got old about 18 seconds after you first thought "wow"? Welcome back to that happy time.

The menus are a pain. They have cogs turning in the background in some bizarre homage to steampunk (which is absolutely nothing to do with Eberron, the world where this is all set) and instead of pleasing music or just silence we are treated to the sounds of heavy machinery. Very clever and different, but also deeply annoying - and this is the noise playing throughout the seemingly eternal installation sequence. Even ignoring these audio trials, clicking around is a pest resulting in much scrolling and things moving about and not much actual navigating around the options.

There is one exception, which is the voice over bloke. He is from the "IN A LAND, FAR AWAY..." school of voice acting and when you click on a race on the campaign screen he growls the name of that species in a deeply sinister voice. That alone is worth his fee as far as I'm concerned.

The Game?

Anyway. After clicking around for what seems to be a week and rattling through the lengthy and tedious tutorial missions you're thrown into the game proper and - there is no getting away from it - it is like playing a poor man's Warcraft 3. The point, click, drag interface is exactly the same, as are the rpg elements where you "interact" with npcs around the map. I use that term loosely as without exception they all say "go kill that" or "fetch me this thing after you've killed the guardian" so it's hardly a work of genius. Even the animation is in the same style - the distinctively comical way Warcraft characters run around by punching forwards with their firsts rather than powering onwards with their legs is copied flawlessly, which is particularly amusing when the main chaps are standing around having a deep plot moment and some npc goon struts up to say his piece.

There isn't really much else to say about the gameplay. Although I say it's like the three years older Warcraft 3, it actually hasn't evolved a great deal from Command & Conquer back in 1995. There are two resource types, which is mildly interesting (and annoying when you realise you can't swap one for the other and you find yourself unable to find any gold) and the troops all have special abilities but otherwise gameplay is the same: control the resources, control the choke points on the map, wear down the enemy, force your way into its base. Repeat.

Good Stuff

Actually, I'm being a bit unfair. There is a 14 mission campaign (seven for each of two of the three races - oddly, nothing for the third) and there are some interesting maps along the way with some attempts to do something a bit different. The inclusion of Kyber (the underworld - a cave system that runs under the maps you're playing on) is something I haven't seen before, adding a bit of pseudo-dungeoncrawling to the proceedings where you can earn experience points (XP) and gold to boost and build your army.

Army management has gone through an overhaul too. You get the usual Champions (hardbloke special characters) and rank and file troops, but also special units called Juggernauts of which you can build one and send it off to devastate the enemy. Sadly these Juggernauts are not worth the resources they cost to build so I typically ignored them, but still - the option is there.

As you kill enemies you generate XP which you use to upgrade your troop captains, allowing them access to more powerful abilities and also having them drag around soldiers (less powerful versions of themselves) to help and take the hits for them. This initially seemed like an odd decision - you're upgrading disposable rank and file troops rather than the champions who drive the story - and after playing through the game I'm still not sure how well it works. Mechanically, it's great. It means there is some strategy in deciding how to spend the XP and choosing your troops, deciding which extra abilities you want but it is all oddly soulless. Supposedly the magic items are for upgrading your champions, but it still feels weird that the main characters don't substantially change from the beginning of the game to the end.

Crumbling with Age

One thing that struck me repeatedly whilst playing Dragonshard was how dated it all looks. I accept the game is nearly four years old (as an aside, I am going to start writing about more modern games - honest) but that is two years younger than Freelancer and I still go back and play that regularly. Perhaps it is because it takes all the things I hate about RTS games and builds upon them like the tower built on the sandy beach. And the tower is made of sand.

The camera doesn't zoom out far enough, so battlefield control is limited to watching individual skirmishes. Except you can't control the skirmishes very well because switching between units is a pain and the control system isn't precise enough to move troops exactly where you want them (not that they stay there anyway) so skirmishes consist of pouring troops into an area and hoping for the best. This means the micro-strategy involved in any given skirmish is precisely nil, but also the close in camera coupled with the limited resource and population caps stops you coordinating macro-level strategy where you attack an enemy base from two different directions to draw off the defenders or capture high ground to control an area whilst your infiltrators scout out the terrain ahead. I think this is a particular complaint of mine, since pretty much every RTS game irritates me in much the same way but it seems to me that in a real battle the commander is either managing the troops locally in the skirmish or he's delegated that to his subordinates and is coordinating strategy. He's not trying to do both at the same time.

If you want to find some strategy in Dragonshard, you need to look at army composition. You need to find a good selection of troops to put with your hero in your strike force before you either hit your population cap or are buried in an unmanageable mess and just have to click and hope. This means getting a couple of healing units (tip - put your XP into these guys first), a couple of melee units to hold up the enemy and a handful of archers to shoot them to pieces whilst the soldiers are getting chopped up. Of course, once you've cracked that you can win the game without thought, but there are enough unit types to try other combinations. Each unit comes with its own unique special abilities - another one of my personal hates because they all need triggering manually. This means that rather than accepting you cannot affect the coming battle and sitting back to enjoy the visuals, you have to sit there tabbing between the various units trying to remember what all the various abilities do and firing them off properly so you spend your entire life watching your mana metres and looking for targets and ignoring the graphics.

Oh, and the AI cheats - attacking you with horrendously powerful forces before you've had a chance to build anything. Except for the times when it doesn't bother and you can wander all over the map without problems building a DoomArmy to blast through its base - and these differences can occur between different loads of the same levels. Weird.

It goes on, but you've probably had enough by now. Before moving on though, I have to mention the spectacularly poor writing which strings the game together in campaign mode. Each army has a series of cutscenes starring the champions (each side has the same architypes - the leader, the sage, the violent thugish one and the instantly forgettable one) and every scene consists of the leader and the sage taking things seriously, the thugs wanting to smash everything in sight and the useless one quipping in an entirely unfunny way. I have to wonder about D&D games and films - considering the heart of tabletop D&D is roleplaying and storytelling, you'd think these big money productions would have a storyline superior to the sort of thing your halfway decent DM writes in his sleep.

Also, do watch out for the bugs. Even four years on, and after a pile of patches, there are moments when quest items mysteriously vanish. Or it eats your save games. Thanks.

Summing up

Despite all this I did find Dragonshard quite entertaining (I have finished it, which at the time of writing makes it better than Storm of Zehir - do NOT buy that game). Whilst it is in no way ground breaking, it is inoffensive and not too irritating. You can cruise through it without having to engage too many braincells which makes it quite fun evening play and if you can find someone daft enough to want to play it with you, I'd imagine the multiplayer can be a laugh. Why you'd want to when there are so many other games out there is another matter - I picked it up for £3 because I was interested and was expecting something a bit different. It isn't different.

There hasn't been a second D&D RTS.

Running The Rooftops

2009-01-21T15:01:00.000-08:00

Crikey - nearly two months since my last update. As is usually the case when there is a long gap between posts, I was wrestling with a game I am not enjoying very much. This time it was the fundamentally awful Neverwinter Nights 2 expansion pack Storm of Zehir - something I will no doubt write about when I have completed it. In the meantime I have been amusing myself murdering the residents of the Holy Lands in Assassin's Creed.

Where to start with this one? Well, you play a bloke in a lab set somewhere in the future but you're put in a machine which lets you relive your genetic memories of an assassin who lived back in the times of the third Crusade which is the main body of the game. Back in the past you are disgraced assassin Altair, working to regain his standing by killing targets of note in the area. What this translates to is hours of fun running over the rooftops of three different ancient cities, leaping like a fool from giant towers and getting into fights with irate guards who don't approve of your antics.

Initial impressions are good. Assassin's Creed looks beautiful - there is no other way to put it. From the detail on your bloke's clothing and weapons to the gorgeous panoramic views of the cities as you first approach it never fails to impress. It isn't just the individual pieces either - the way the character models fit together when they are interacting is very precise which gets rid of that strange weightless feeling you sometimes get with graphical games when someone seems to be sliding over a landscape rather than walking, or someone picks something up and you get the impression the object is following their hand around rather than actually being grasped by it. None of that in Assassin's Creed - everything feels satisfyingly weighty. When Altair plummets from a rooftop and hits the ground, you feel the impact. When he is stabbed by a guard (and he will be - a lot) you feel the impact. It is great for the atmosphere and really draws you in from the first.

After a short while of enjoying the visuals and playing through the initial tutorial phases of the game you'll be thrown into the plot proper and told to go kill someone in nearby Damascus. There is a quick hike through some more lovely terrain and your first breathtaking view of a city before you find yourself standing in a full ancient city wondering what to do next. Fortunately your assassin is an accomplished free runner so it's time to indulge in the next distraction from the main game. Point your chap at a wall, press the appropriate buttons and - look! - up he goes! You can spend hours running through the streets and over the rooftops before you even remember there is a game involved and you should really get on with your mission.

As an aside, if you don't know what free running is go and look for some videos on YouTube. It is quite possibly the coolest thing you'll ever see. Go now. We'll wait.

Anyway, in your time running around like a loon you've probably stumbled across one of the submissions. There are six for each assassination, each revealing a bit more information about your target and allowing you to plan your approach but if you fancy winging it you only have to do two to be allowed to get on with the stabbing. Then you are off on the heels of your chosen ne'er-do-well, wandering up to him and filling his face with your blade. Then you get to do it again - eight more times.

So - does any of this actually hold together? Well, yes. The movement controls are excellent, allowing you to stride purposefully through a crowded street one moment before hitting the free run button and climbing straight up a wall and jumping from rooftop to rooftop. They are possibly a little simple - almost everything can be accomplished by pointing in the direction you want to go and holding down the free run button - but it all looks so stunning that you can get lost in the cinematics and just marvel that you are making your man do all these cool things. Then there is the combat, which is a bit harder to get to grips with. It is also a very simple one-button affair, but relies on precise timing to pull off some of the flashy moves. Whilst that is fine as a concept, either I couldn't do it right or something about the sequence recognition wasn't quite right as I couldn't consistently pull off some of the block / counter combinations and when surrounded by a horde of enemies (something that happens a lot later on) my bloke didn't appear to react in quite the same way as when facing fewer opponents. So the combat isn't great, but with a bit of practice you can become quite a proficient swordsman and again it is helped enormously by the sound and visuals. Both have significant and satisfying weight behind them, meaning you really feel it every time you ram your sword through a hapless guard.

Obviously there are problems with Assassin's Creed. The assassinations - something you'd expect to be a main part of the game - are actually a very small part of the playing time and planning your route to the target, whilst fun, is hampered by both the interface and the cinematics. You are constantly told that clearing the rooftops of guards is a good idea before you go in and eliminate your target. Sadly, to get into the assassination sequence you have to go and stand on a predetermined point and allow the cutscene to play. You can move in these cutscenes but not actually act so I ruined my first kill by moving into position and being unable to stab the target whilst he spewed his piece. Sadly when the cutscene ended he turned round and bumped into me, recognising me instantly and setting every guard in the city on me. The game expects you to stand back and watch the cutscene from its chosen position (one in which on some occasions you really don't want to stand) and then think about your plan and how to execute it. It takes a little getting used to and can be really quite irritating.

That's the cinematics - but the interface is worse. You have a map (accessed by TAB) which is great for getting around, but doesn't zoom in enough to show your target area. It also doesn't remember your zoom level so if you check your map frequently get ready for a lot of scrolling. There is also another screen, accessed through the escape key, which shows the results of your investigations - including any maps you've picked up and the routes suggested by it. But no overlay between the pieces of information or any way to collate them into one place so if you've found a couple of maps you're going to have to flick between them (slowly) to absorb it all. It's a real pain, and hidden in a bizarrely obscure place - I had performed 4 assassinations before I even found these screens, which is nearly half the game.

There are other niggles. One of the last pair of assassinations takes place in Acres's port and for some reason your super-fit free running champion assassin cannot swim so every step is dicing with instant death - and many of the denizens of the docks are drunken sailors who love to try and shove you in. Killing them is frowned upon so you have to be careful. There are also moments when the climbing breaks down a little - for some unexplained reason you have to manoeuvre yourself to precisely the correct position before it will let you proceed which is remarkable mostly because it is so unusual.

These faults do not spoil the game though. I have seen Assassin's Creed get a rough ride in a number of reviews and I'm really not sure why. It is like being in a highly interactive film - the two-levelled plot I mentioned at the beginning may seem pointless but it does evolve in an interesting way, and the story is worth following - and the fact is that you can spend hours just running around enjoying the scenery before even worrying about anything else. Overall though, I think it's the pacing I love the most about Assassin's Creed. When you want it to be slow, it is. You can stride around the city like you own it or entirely disappear into the crowd. But if you want to up the pace you can step on the throttle and zoom to the rooftops and if you want it even more interesting just stab a guard and wait for his mates to descend on you like a pack of wolves.

I loved playing Assassin's Creed. If it wasn't for Mass Effect and Portal I think it would be my favourite game of the last twelve months. Even so, that puts it in the top three and that's hardly a shameful place to be.

Return to the Citadel

2008-11-29T09:47:00.000-08:00

If I were to be honest, I would have to admit that sometimes I play games that I do not expect to entertain me a great deal. Sometimes that is because I have bought the thing and want to see it through, if only to see if I can salvage some value. Other times it is because I am intrigued enough by the story to do battle with the dodgy game to see where it leads. There are times when I have to fill an afternoon and playing a game on autopilot is better than the alternative (wandering round the 'net trying not to spend money) and then there are the times when all the critics say I should be enjoying something but, despite this encouragement, I really am not. Sometimes (very occasionally) the tedious experience I expect from the game doesn't materialize and I am pleasantly surprised.

This leads me nicely on to Half Life 2: Episode 1.

If you read my last post you will know I am not a fan of the original Half Life 2 for a whole variety of reasons, not least because it is lengthy and empty and the characters are almost entirely unlovable. Somehow, HL2E1 manages to address these problems without any gaping gaps in logic or dramatic alteration in personalities and I think the secret to all this is a greater sense of immersion in the world you are wandering around (and destroying).

HL2E1 opens up with a bit of a rewrite of the end of the previous game, then you being rescued from a huge pile of rocks by Alyx and Dog. Alyx is, predictably, pleased to see you and for the first time playing HL2 I genuinely felt she was pleased to see me. She moves around in a believable way, talks to you about your previous experiences in a way you can relate to and then the two of you call her father and decide to head back into the Citadel to stop a cataclysmic explosion. The set piece dialogue is still slightly odd in that you aren't saying anything, but the NPCs make up for it by successfully expressing a whole range of emotions, which lead up to one overriding fact: you are going into the Citadel and you aren't expected to come out again. Whilst this may seem like a trite bit of storytelling, it was conveyed in such a way that I could feel Alyx's sadness as she told her Dad not to worry and her sense of desperation at the task, but bizarre confidence that Gordan Freeman would get her through it alive. That's you, that is. I cannot get across the difference it made to actually be able to relate to the characters in my vicinity and it gave me a wonderful sense of purpose. I would not let Alyx die in this place, and I would get her back to her father. And thus, immersion was injected into Half Life 2.

Technically speaking, HL2E1 is a step forward from HL2. The graphics have been noticeably tarted up. The set pieces are tighter and closer together - far less wandering from one place to another for no apparent reason - and there are puzzles within the combat encounters which need solving before you are overwhelmed by the continual stream of badguys. Alyx follows you around for most of the episode and it is the first time I have played through such an experience without developing a strong desire to blow apart the second character. Alyx is intelligent enough to stay out of the way when she needs to, as well as tough enough to hold her own in combat and not die (with inevitable mission-failing results) the moment she is exposed to a stiff breeze. Coupled with that, she has enough lines to be an entertaining companion - firing off a selection of one-liners that are amusing and in character and chatting to you like you are a human being (as opposed to a crowbar-waving mute gorilla). Alyx is genuinely likeable and it's great to see a character as well scripted as her.

The second big problem with HL2 as far as I am concerned is the length. It takes hours to play though and that time is spent driving from one abandoned place to another shooting faceless nameless goons, monsters or zombies. Since Valve have moved to episodic gameplay for the next part of the HL saga, HL2E1 is much shorter and it is all the better for it. The lengthy, tedious driving sections have been removed. The sections of the world populated entirely by people with no name and no personality are gone and instead the good ideas are packed together. This has the added benefit that if you find yourself in a section you are not enjoying you can push onwards, safe in the knowledge it wont last much longer. Unlike, for example, Ravenholm in the original. I can only approve of the compressed nature of this game as it makes it far more entertaining.

Do I have any criticisms? Well, inevitably yes. The sections fighting the striders, whilst very exciting, do have a very contrived feel to them - you have to keep running and dodging and you find just enough medpacks to keep you alive whilst finding single rockets in what amounts to a breadcrumb trail. At the end you find a big box of rockets which you can use to finish the strider off. You can't use any other tactics because a combination of the ammo restriction and the sheer number of shots the striders take before they do the decent thing and die forces you to follow the planned path - and woe betide you if you stray off it by mistake because then you are stuck in a place with no ammo and an enraged walking thing out for your blood. This obvious linearity draws attention to the fact you are playing a game, not fighting a battle for humanity and acts a bit like the modern equivalent of collecting floppy disks for bonus points in a platform game as far as damaging atmosphere goes. Gordon not talking or showing any emotion grates a bit when you are part of an emotionally charged set piece and you want to interact with it, but that is part of what makes Half Life what it is, so I can see why that happens. The requirement to use the gun the game expects is another big flag being waved with the words "Hey! This is a computer game!" written across it, but it is tempered by occasional caches of ammo for other guns so if you're a good shot you can just about get by on these secondary weapons. Oh, and why didn't it save my key mappings from HL2? Finally, the plot still lacks direction. Whilst it is very clear someone knows where it is going, because the NPCs don't share their long term plans with you (well, their plans any more specific than "save the human race") you still don't feel like you're fighting for anything much. True you now like you're striving towards something but the lack of specifics is quite frustrating at times.

So; to conclude: HL2E1 is HL2 with the biggest problems ironed out and a nice sense of humour added in (towards the end of the episode Barney gives you a new crowbar - there is no point to it by this stage, but it's nice to see the NPCs as well as the players think a Freeman without a crowbar is just wrong). This makes it brilliant and by far the best reason to play through HL2.

Half of a Life

2008-11-15T13:50:00.000-08:00

Many years ago I played through an excellent first person shooter. It redefined what was possible at the time with its puzzles and excellent set pieces. It went on for quite a long time and at by the end I was shooting things on an alien world. That game was Half Life - the game staring everyone's favourite mute physicist Gordon Freeman (aka Jeff Goldblum) and his crowbar. Rocking along with him were a pile of expendable scientists and guards (to talk to) and a platoon of marines (to shoot). That game was good. Now it is time for the sequel. And by Now, I mean four years ago. Bring it on.

So, HL2 then. The game opens with you being brought out of some kind of suspended animation by the G-Man - a sinister bloke in a suit without a name. You're stuck on a train and sent into a dystopian city run by your old boss along with some aliens. You meet some old friends, shoot some people and head off to meet some more old friends. When you get there everything goes wrong, the place is attacked by the police and you run off elsewhere. Eventually you meet up with the people again and get attacked again and run off again - but this time with a gravity gun and Physics on your side. And so it goes on. And on. And on.

I'm going to lose all credibility by saying this, but I did not particularly enjoy Half Life 2. Although the graphics were beautiful, the controls slick and the physics engine very clever I found the game far too long with too much wandering from place to place with little or no reason for doing so. The set pieces were still very well put together, but that did make it feel like all I was doing was walking to the next one and the plot was purely to string it together.

I have moaned about plot in first person shooters before, and I still think I am quite alone in caring (certainly I am alone in criticising HL2 - it has a phenomenal 96% in metacritic) but for me the plot means immersion. Although I understood the world that HL2 presented me, I just didn't understand my place in it. Everywhere I went I was saluted as a hero - the one who could save mankind - but I never really understood why. They seemed to be doing well enough forming their little rebellion against the aliens and all I seemed to be doing was wandering from place to place with the authorities chasing me. It wasn't until right at the end I felt my actions had any kind of influence on the plot (at this point I was storming a stronghold with a load of insect things at my back) and then I was suddenly sent off with a girl who was invulnerable. Why on earth she needed any help from me I cannot imagine. And still it dragged on and on...

Maybe I'm being a little unfair - although the vast majority of characters you meet just say their piece and get blown to pieces, those that have a name are genuinely likable (or hatable in the case of the villain) and you do start to bond with some of them. The girl (who is clearly the long-term love interest) is actually very cool and behaves credibly which makes a nice change for a character you are supposed to like and the various scientists are all pleasantly eccentric. There just isn't enough character development or plot hooks for my liking - wandering round a base trying to free the girl's father doesn't feel like you're engaged in a rescue mission; it feels like a series of tunnels with people to mow down with your shotgun. This in turn makes it very difficult to get lost in the atmosphere - I found myself playing on autopilot a lot of the time, occasionally surfacing to wonder how much further I had to go. The only place I felt any kind of atmosphere was during the (as far as I can determine) utterly pointless Ravenholm section - and I got so sick of things jumping out at my face that I stuck on some happy disco music and charged round with the shotgun trying to get to the end as fast as possible.

It wasn't until the very end when things really picked up. At this point your allies have taken your signal to start the rebellion (although you set that off by accident I think - it's not like you've made any choices for yourself) and you're left running round the ruins of the city taking on giant walking things. At this point things are very cool - and they remain so whilst you break into the citadel for the end gunfights along with a supercharged gravity gun.

I'm not sure what else to say about Half Life 2. I honestly can't see why it has gotten so much praise. That isn't to say it's bad - bits are great fun and you'll love the set pieces. But the thing goes on for so long it is very easy to lose the will to live as you just wish that all your cool shooting would actually accomplish something. And that's it. Worth playing, but only if you have a lot of free time and some good music to stick on the stereo whilst you're doing it.

I'm an artist

2008-10-12T12:28:00.001-07:00

It turns out someone on the internet likes my art.

That's about all really, I'm just slightly surprised.

For more pictures by (and indeed of) me why not visit my flickr pages.

Another Crysis Averted

2008-10-12T11:46:00.000-07:00

I was supposed to be playing Half Life 2 these last few weeks, but due to a social schedule which actually included Things and a room with no obvious way out (in Half Life that is, I didn't get trapped in a cupboard somewhere in real life) I didn't get very far. Then EA irresponsibly released Crysis Warheard and I decided nanosuit powered gunfighting was more tempting than wrench waving in an underground labyrinth. Half Life 2 will no doubt bubble back to the top of my as Warhead has done the usual FPS thing of dying without a fight.

So anyway, Warhead. Set during the events of the first game, you play Jason Statham-alike Sergeant "Psycho" Sykes as he rocks around the other side of the island shooting Koreans and aliens in what is basically Crysis - again. This time out there are a couple of new vehicles (which, mercifully, you don't have to drive very often) and a couple of new guns, a new range in totally useless explosives and an all new plot. During this plot you discover you are not the only Delta Force nanosuit team on the island which does raise the question of quite why you're being sent to the other side of the island alone when they could have sent another team but lets not quibble as everything else is really well put together.

For me, the biggest problem in the original Crysis was the massive lurch in gameplay when the aliens appeared - most of your moves became redundant and you ran around in a normal FPS blazing away with whatever gun the game decided you should be using at a time. This time around Crytek have realised that Koreans are more fun to shoot than aliens so right through the game your primary adversary are the KPA with the occasional appearance by the aliens for some all-out shoot em up shenanigans. The pacing is a huge improvement over the original and because you are raiding bases and strong points throughout your various suit modes remain useful. I'd also say the nanosuit is better catered for this time out - I found many more situations where using Speed or Strength was worthwhile (last time I stuck almost exclusively to Shield and Cloak) although that could be extra experience on my part and an extra dose of creativity in solving the problems put before me. Even the graphics have been overhauled and now look even more impressive.

So is there anything wrong with Warhead? Well, there is a mine section which gets quite irritating as the level wanders all over the place and it's very easy to get turned around. There are a couple of times when things get quite difficult simply because your chap doesn't seem to like talking to HQ on his radio (in fact there were a couple of occasions where I felt quite rude because HQ would call up to give me some new info and Psycho wouldn't even bother to acknowledge - maybe that's just me) and the end boss fight is truly pathetic, although you do get to play with Das Uber Gun and this time around the thing is actually as badass as the NPCs are promising. These are all trivial gripes though - Warhead is generally an excellent game, really good fun from start to finish and even pretty well written as a story, fleshing out a character I genually liked from the first game and filling in holes in that games' plot.

There is one concern I have about Warhead though, and it is to do with the plot. Crytek have released it as a stand alone game, you don't need the original Crysis to run it. It plays better than Crysis, looks better than Crysis and stars a more interesting character than Crysis. The concern I have is that I'm not sure how well it would work without the original. The plot is heavily tied to Crysis' as you'd expect and I'm not convinced it stands up on its own - there are many references to what is going on behind the scenes and the characters sometimes discuss your chap from the first game which I would imagine would make no sense if you didn't know who he was. It also lacks a clear beginning and end - you suddenly start on the island under assault by Koreans and the end has you flying off to the carrier to take part in the final scenes of Crysis. This is fine when you fill in the blanks yourself, but may be unsatisfying if you are just playing Warhead without the backplot knowledge. That said I think I'm about the only person in the world who cares about the plot in a FPS so I doubt it will impact too many people.

Oh, and you don't have to pilot that bloody VTOL over the carrier as Psycho does in the final scenes of Crysis. For this I am very thankful.

So Warhead then. It's great. Buy it.

Lost on Micronesia

2008-08-31T14:26:00.000-07:00

Whilst awaiting Force Unleashed to arrive on the PC, or another Mass Effect episode to appear to give me the excuse to play it through again I decided to track down the Half Life 2 Orange Box and play through one of the biggest PC games of the recent times - one which inexplicably managed to pass me by entirely. Sadly that failed to arrive in time to entertain me this weekend so I found a copy of Farcry for a fiver and sat down to play through the predecessor to Crysis.

Farcry is very much a game of two halves. For the first half you are sneaking round an island crawling with mercenaries, using stealth to... wait - this is strangely familiar. I did this a few weeks ago, although that time I was wearing a nanosuit instead of a horrific Hawaiian shirt. Let's be honest here - Farcry is more than eerily similar to Crysis both in setup and execution. For the first half you're sneaking round an island shooting mercs (although in the earlier game you don't get the luxury of a cloaking device - or even a silencer for your gun, bah) then you turn a corner, meet a girl and suddenly you're up to your appallingly gelled hair in weird mutant creatures. What is surprising is how much better it holds together than its successor. In Crysis half way through there is a huge bang, everything becomes cold and the human badguys de jour are replaced by the alien things. In Farcry the mutants escape and the mercs have fun battling them whilst you sit on the sidelines enjoying not being in everybody's crosshairs for a change. Gradually the island is overrun and you see the mercs engaged in more and more desperate battles as they are pushed back to the central labs, which you then gleefully run in and blow up. It is all quite credible and helps the atmosphere no end. And helps you survive and you can let the two factions get on with annihilating each other whilst you run around the side - and believe me you're going to need all the help you can get.

Farcry is hard. From the moment you start playing through to the final scene there is rarely a moment when you're not afraid for your life, whether it is crawling slowly through the undergrowth to avoid the notice of yet another mercenary patrol or ducking behind rocks in case that lovely empty field ahead of you is actually a deadly crossfire between guard towers stationed on the surrounding hills. Ramp the difficulty up a little and you'll find your life expectancy drops even further. I played it on Challenging because I am getting sick of wandering through games in a daze, waking up with a start when I suddenly realise it's all over, and the first scene saw me getting mobbed by mercs all intent on shooting me in the face. All of this is great - a game that puts up a fight is a rare thing these days (and yes I know Farcry is more than 4 years old, humour me) as long as it plays fair - and this is where things go a little wrong. Whilst the game is totally within its rights to shoot me dead with extreme prejudice when I sneak into a hut only to find it is full of mercs standing around chatting I feel it is less fair to carefully eliminate the guards to a small camp then, as I run through the middle to grab the objective, find myself being cut to ribbons by deadly accurate fire from the turret mounted machine gun of a jeep parked inside a closed garage, firing through the wall. This is clearly a bug, but generally speaking the mercs seemed to be blessed with prescience and an amazing ability to acquire a target as you flash past windows and blow your head off. At least they announce their every thought to you ("I can see him!" "I can't see him anymore!" "I'm going to shoot you in the face!") so you can work out how long before you're filled with holes.

Despite these annoyances though, Farcry is great fun and I think a lot of this is to do with the superb pacing. The initial sneaking, sniping and surviving keeps you interested for a while and then just as you are thinking that maybe you should take your chances swimming to safety instead of massacring yet another outpost you are thrown underground for some linear tunnel-based action and a trip to tradition first person shooters-ville. Then you're introduced to the mutants which are the genetically enhanced animals / people. There are various flavours of fiend and in an excellent piece of storytelling you actually meet most of them as corpses left over from a merc clean-up before you face them in combat. "Doyle! These things are huge!" remarks your chap just as you're staring at the screen thinking "oh balls" and your contact Doyle then discloses a little more of the plot as you continue exploring and generally being scared. Eventually you meet the creatures in the flesh and they turn out to be super-hard - fast moving and blessed with the ability to take an entire clip to the face before dying. Eventually the game gives you a shotgun which helps (a little) then sends you further into the depths to massacre more of the damned things. Things quicken up considerably at that point and it is a little while later you are suddenly thrown back into a section where it pays to be stealthy - something which by this point requires a serious shift in mental gears and consequently a couple of very messy deaths.

The vehicle sections, the bane of Crysis, make an appearance here too. Again I was surprised by how much better they were the first time round - it is rare you actually have to get into a vehicle and most of the time the roads are easy to navigate and you can blast through firefights by simply running over anyone in the way. The worst part of driving is the weapons - turrets depress realistically, which is to say not quite enough, and getting the camera to let you see what you're doing as well as shoot is deeply irritating. There is also a section where your friend drives your jeep whilst you shoot that had the potential to be unbelievably annoying but thankfully my skillz were on fire at this point and I left the enemies in smouldering ruins using the turret grenade launcher. In fact, despite introducing the bullet-resistant mutants then the also-bullet-resistant special forces troops, Farcry manages to maintain its fun right until the end when it sadly all goes horribly, horribly wrong.

Picture the scene - you've fought your way through an island of horrific monsters and tooled up mercenaries, then the game designers decide to throw frighteningly hard special forces troops into the mix. But how to make them hard? Well, they have the best weapons of course. They have super-effective body armour. They have helmets which can absorb gunfire of course, but what next? How about giving them bullet resistant riot shields so they looks like some bizarre modern day Roman legionnaires marching into battle impervious to your gunfire. You've sighed at the need to, once again, empty entire clips of ammunition into the enemies heads before they drop. Ok, now we have the special forces troops what do we do with them? They need an explosive encounter. How about forcing the player into a lengthy entrance corridor, locking the door behind him (literally NO previous doors have done this) then having a dozen of them run up the corridor towards him? Sound fun? Well, if that is not enough why not have a couple armed with rocket launchers and give them a huge suicidal streak so their tactic is to run right up to you and unleash their rockets of doom killing you, them and their friends in one huge explosion? Of course the player cannot advance up the corridor at this point because he will be instantly caught in a crossfire and cut to pieces.

I got through this section by getting very angry and switching to the semi-automatic grenade launcher attachment on my rifle. After carpet bombing the halls for the twentieth time I got lucky and killed them fast enough to avoid being splattered up the walls in the process. Cue a cut scene then straight into an impossibly hard boss fight with another posse of troopers and a huge mutated man who seems to be able to spot you and shoot you the instant you step out of cover. This fight, whilst rock hard, is at least moderately fair. Sadly next you're thrown into the finale proper in a giant arena assaulted by a squadron of walking tanks (one of which cheerfully walked through nine rockets to tear my head off - I'm not making this up) which, while hard, are at least slow. Luckily for them they are backed up by the mutated soldier things armed with machine guns who can shoot you with deadly accuracy whilst they are so far away they are outside of draw distance whilst you are using your goggles on maximum zoom. Oh yes, and you are trapped in a corner again too so if you sit still for too long the slow tank beasts track you down, crowd you into a corner and mortar you. From point blank range. Bastards. It's a real shame because up until this ending all is going well and much fun is available. This ending comes close to ruining everything though - the finale was so annoying I actually dug out the god mode cheat. I didn't use it, but that was more because it didn't work for me than any sense of honour on my part.

So that's Farcry then. Great fun, great pacing, shite ending. I bought it for a fiver - well worth that price. Oh yes, a word on the sequel. To my knowledge it is by a different group of developers, set in a different place, has a plot completely unlinked to the original and lacking any of the characters from the first game. I must admit I am struggling to see how it can be called Farcry 2. Apparently they thought of putting in Jack Carver (he of the hideous shirt, your character in Farcry) but the gaming public thought him too unlikeable and unmemorable. Presumably because he doesn't fall instantly in love with the female character and is more interested in saving his own skin than solving the mystery of the island and was hence believable and interesting, an anti-hero in the loosest possible sense of the word. Maybe if they put him in some kind of futuristic armour, turned the mercs into Koreans and made the mutants aliens...

Playing with Technorati

2008-08-08T04:05:00.000-07:00

And why not? Here is my Technorati Profile.

Facing the Invasion

2008-08-08T01:41:00.000-07:00

After a weekend of playing, plus a couple of hours in an evening, I have completed the PC-eating Crysis and, for once, it was pretty good fun. The game kicks off with your Delta-Force type being dropped off on a Korean island to rescue some US hostages from the evil clutches of the invading KPA and you rock around in a futuristic nanosuit mowing down Koreans with a variety of weapons. Delta Force Command helpfully declines to send you a decent supply of ammunition so you spend most of the game using the Korean's own toys, which in practice means you want to pinch an assault rifle and you're set.

Your nanosuit gives you the ability to modify your personal skills, boosting strength, shields, speed or cloaking you. This is demonstrated in the exciting introduction as your character leaps over a leap whilst blasting away with his assault rifle then punches an enemy through a wall. Sadly in game life isn't quite as exciting - I found myself switching between Cloak and Shields for the first part of the game and just stuck with Shields for the second part. Aside from some set pieces where you HAVE to use Strength to jump or avoiding boredom trudging across the landscape (and hence kicking in Speed) I barely used the other modes and I can't help wondering if they would have been better served leaving those modes enabled at all times and giving you the choice between stealth and shields for your distributable energy.

Crysis is very much a game of two halves. For the first half you are sneaking round an island crawling with the KPA, using stealth to creep around the edge of bases, sniping enemies unsportingly, then racing across open areas, leaping walls and hosing the remaining defenders. All the while they are hunting you in packs, closing in with their superior numbers (excitingly there are moments when there are FAR too many badguys and your best option is to employ all your stealth abilities to escape rather than attempting to take them all on). It is all tremendously exciting, if not quite as "open" as you might hope - you can rarely tackle objectives in an order other than the one presented to you for example. This does not deminish quite how thrilling it all is though, as you pop up from a bush and scan the land ahead with your binoculars before popping off badguys from half a mile away with single shots of your silenced rifle. Sadly you only pick up a telescopic sight much later on, which is a shame because they add a whole extra level of tactical planning.

Towards the end of the KPA section some cracks start to show as you start to face enemies seemingly encased in steel who take forever to kill which knocks stealth out of the window somewhat as you pop up, snipe a person, then switch to full auto and empty a clip into his face before he finally does the honorable thing and dies. Fortunately it is about this point the aliens put in an appearance and you forget all about stealth. So, cue entrance to the alien ship, a frustrating zero-G section where it is unbelievably easy to get turned around (saved by the beauty of the environment you are in and your character saying "this looks familiar" if you start going back the way you came) and finding a use for the shotgun. If you are blessed with quick reactions, switch it to narrow-burst mode and blast the alien squid-things at point blank range with it as they swim towards you. Very satisfying, and I did find myself shouting a variety of lines from Duke Nukem whilst blowing away the enemies.

Unfortunately this section sees the end of multiple entry point bases and any need for stealth and the game reverts to being a standard FPS. It holds up reasonably well at this, but personally I found far less satisfaction picking up a gun with unlimited ammo and using it to hose jumping aliens than I did in the previous commando-stealth sections. Then there is the end sequence on an aircraft carrier which gives you the most disappointing gun ever - a tactical nuclear grenade launcher which sounds phenomenal until you realise you can't use it on anything other than the mothership. Not, for example, the flying alien planes, or the huge walking thing that takes ages to blast out of existance with conventional rockets. The game reasons this by refusing to lock on to these targets and the gun doesn't fire without a lock - but this isn't really explained so if you're like me you'll die several times trying to work out why your new gun of coolness doesn't appear to work.

So is Crysis any good? Well, yes. I had a great time playing through it, even if I wouldn't rush to do so again (the vehicle sections induce keyboard-destroying frustration and some of them you cannot avoid - I'm a commando, why do I have to fly a damn plane?) and the best bit about replaying is that all the really good stuff happens in the first half so you can just forget about the aliens once you've seen the plot through once. Maybe recommending throwing away half of the game is a sad statement, but I think the first half stands up to the rest of the world of FPSs much better than the second and you'll have far more fun in it. So yes, I'd recommend Crysis although cautiously - and do remember to check the specs on the back of the box (as I was told four times in the shop) as it does require one hell of a PC to run well.

What the critics say...

2008-08-04T03:32:00.000-07:00

In a blatant attempt to massage my own ego, I thought I'd record some of the feedback from my talk:

"A presentation worthy of Expert Village. I liked how I could watch both you and the screen move about." - Choik-Sing Li
"Nice video! I think all this self-deprecating was just a compliment fishing exercise lol. One which appears to have worked, though!" - Dani Tynan
"Thanks for the session to-day, a VERY useful practical session, I now have
RSS feeds working." - Chris Carr
"The bit where 'information is chasing you all over the internet' has just made me laugh out loud at work. And I work in a comedy department. Lovely illustrations." - Lyndsay Fenner
"Tell the one about the bus!" - Gareth Gwynn

How nice. If you missed it the first time round, they are referring to a talk I gave on the basics of RSS and Atom feeds.

My face on TV

2008-08-01T03:29:00.000-07:00

A short while ago I delivered an entry-level talk about RSS and Atom feeds in the University of Bath. It was a very simple talk - what a feed is, why you should care, how to spot them and what to do with them once you've found them. Despite a 6 week gap between writing it and performing it (damn that illness) it went down very well, with much praise and thanks being heaped on me.

This talk was the second in a series of talks given by my team and was the first to be filmed in front of a live studio audience. The film can be found here. It's not the most polished piece of presenting I've ever done, but it was good fun.

Upgrading to Hardy Heron

2008-07-09T03:36:00.000-07:00

Finally, mere months behind the rest of humanity, I have upgraded my machine at work to the latest release of Ubuntu. It's too early for any fair impressions but there is one thing that has come up that has annoyed me a great deal and I thought I'd share a solution for it. For some reason the gnome devs have seen fit to remove Multimedia tab from the Removable Drives and Media Preferences window in the Preferences menu which prevents you changing your default actions for when (for example) a CD is inserted. Strangely the icon is still CD, but that's another annoyance.

So how to make this change in Hardy? These options have been moved to the Nautilus Preferences menu (Edit -> Preferences -> Media tab) but thanks to a change in the way mime types are handled in Gnome you may well find your favourite applications are not listed in the drop down lists provided. For some reason you can't manually specify a program to run (thanks guys) so until the various package applications catch up with Gnome and this is done automatically we'll need to make changes to the application's description file.

So:

Go to /usr/share/applications (or /usr/share/applications/kde for a kde app)
sudo vi $application.desktop
Add the appropriate MIME types. I used this line:

MimeType=application/x-ogg;application/ogg;audio/x-scpls;audio/x-mp3;audio/x-mpeg;audio/mpeg;audio/x-mpegurl;application/x-flac;x-content/audio-cdda;x-content/audio-player;

(I was playing with grip in this case and there is almost certainly more than I need here, but I was in a hurry)

sudo update-desktop-database
sudo update-mime-database /usr/share/mime

Bingo. When you open Nautilus and look at the options menu you should see your application in the list.

Credits:
The solution came from here, I am merely distilling it to avoid having to hunt through pages of comments

Tourist of Albion

2008-05-29T14:22:00.001-07:00

I've spent about a week playing through Fable: The Lost Chapters and I just can't decide about it. It's certainly good looking, and the attention to detail in places is lovely but there is something missing.

Ah yes, that's it. A challenge.

So I've hacked my way through the monsters populating the unbelievably weak plot (some generic nonsense about a masked man who looks like a reject from a Shredder convention trying to Destroy The World because He Is Evil) and valiantly managed to ignore the temptation to vaporise the airheads populating the world until I finally faced off against EvilDude himself. I slapped about the supporting minions as you do, charged up my sword with the MultiSlap spell and let fly. And he died. Not took damage, not swore revenge whilst retreating to a new corner. No, he died. Cue rolling credits, me saving the world and then a trip into the expanded areas - something like 3 more hours of happy hacking before a second encounter with EvilDude except now, inexplicably, he's a dragon. Wonderful.

Admittedly this second fight, to finish The Lost Chapters (as opposed to the original Fable) is a bit tougher - I had to hit him maybe 20 times and use a couple of potions - but the main reason it's hard is because the swine flies above your head where you cannot hit him with your sword or even see him because of the restricted camera views and rains fiery doom on you. Ok, so you can shoot him with your bow but for reasons unexplained you don't appear to be able to lock in on him (you can on literally every other badguy in the game) so you're reduced to using the manual aiming on a moving target. Good luck there. Anyway he lands eventually so it's back to MultiSlap with DoomSword and you've won. Cue more credits and everyone lives happily ever after.

So why am I undecided? Well I think I had fun playing Fable. Trouble is, it doesn't seem to know what it's trying to be. Sometimes it's a light hearted rpg, such as when a Demon Door (hiding secret treasures) wishes he was a chest instead. But sometimes it gets very dark, such as when you discover your mother alive and well then spend years in prison being tortured. It moves between these ends of the spectrum with shocking regularity and this really stopped me engaging with the plot or world at any level higher than simply hanging on and wondering what madness would appear next. Such as communing with an oracle by doing the YMCA. I kid you not.

Another barrier comes in the form of the game's bizarre morality. Lionhead have clearly attempted to design a world where you can behave however you like letting you choose your alignment as you go on. However this means you have a Hero Guild happily handing out missions such as "Slaughter The Traders" alongside "Save The Picnic Area From Wasps" and this Hero Guild is central to everyone's life - the residents of Albion seem to exist purly as fodder for these people to chop their way through or around and then massage their ego afterwards. There is no sense that the world operates without you in it which seriously strains any credibility. And why does everyone have a painfully jarring stereotypical west-country accent?

Overall though Fable is good fun. Combat is reasonably intuitive, you have freedom to wander round beating monsters / traders / children / chickens / guards to death with your sword and it requires no brainpower or particular skill to enjoy or progress. A good way to spend an evening unwinding, as long as you're not expecting a game which requires any brains or skill to progress...

Return to Flickr

2008-05-26T08:09:00.000-07:00

Due to a variety of reasons, not least my own personal lameness, I have been extremely quiet on Flickr for the last few months. Since I've summoned the enthusiasm to go back and have begun a quest to lower the barriers between me taking a photo and it appearing online. First on my list was a memory card reader. Previously I was using Bluetooth to shift photos around but the software was flawed (Float's Mobile Agent 3 - lovely right until it crashes, which it does with alarming regularity) and Bluetooth just too slow for me. After a false start I now have a Maplin's home brand card reader - don't be put off by the thing needing you to put your card in upside down (of course), once you've worked that it's fast and flawless to a big thank you to the chap in the shop who helped me out.

Secondly I've installed the Flickr Uploadr 3.0.5. I've heard bad things about this (mostly from Phil Wilson) but so far it is working brilliantly for me.

With these bits in place I hope to upload a lot more often, and then to start working my photos a bit more.

Facebook thinks I'm a loser

2008-05-20T02:59:00.000-07:00

I think I'm going to have to change my relationship status on facebook as the left menu on my homepage is being filled with adverts for dating websites:

25 and Still Single?
Why not join $latest-slappers-R-us-site?
And look! Here is a picture of someone you'll never meet on our site!

I particularly love that phrase:
"25 and STILL single?!"

Which may as well say "Are you a LOSER?" Thanks facebook - and I thought you cared.

rubygems

2008-03-26T07:51:00.000-07:00

Rubygems on Ubuntu seems to break itself when you update:

sudo gem update --system

I've lost track of the number of times I've had to fix this (and inevitably forgotten how to do it each time) so for anyone interested here is the fix:

* Open a terminal
* sudo vi `which gem`
* under the line:
require 'rubygems'
add:
require 'rubygems/gem_runner'

Job done.

I can't remember where I first saw this fix, but I know I've found it here at least once, so thanks for the help Nick.

Leaving Neverwinter

2008-03-26T07:24:00.000-07:00

So I've finished Neverwinter Nights 2. Took a while - well over a year including the gap in which I (finally) bought myself a new computer. I chopped my way to the end of this RPG slaying giants, dragons and anything else that got in the way and finally defeated Das Uber Evil - the scarily named King of Shadows. Turns out he wasn't that tough after all. So now my hero, who has become a knight of the realm, ruler of a keep and a member of the Neverwinter Nine (the nine elite warriors who act as bodyguards and advisers to the Lord of the area, not that anyone I met ever cared...) can return home and bathe in the glory of being somewhat leet? Oh no, that would be TOO easy...

I don't know what it is about endings these days. People seem to hate the Happily Ever After ending. You'd think that after several days playing you'd be entitled to hear your chap headed off with the girl to be venerated and respected to the end of his days. But it seems that's too much to ask. Instead
you're politely informed that "whilst trying to escape after killing BigBad, the roof falls in and your party is never heard from again". Thanks guys - I guess this is an attempt to add some mystery to the ending? Maybe set things up for a sequel? Doesn't feel like much of a reward though.

It wouldn't annoy me this much if this game wasn't so close to being great. Storyline (up to this point) is interesting, plenty to do, characters are usual fantasy fare but not too bad for that, control is reasonably intuitive, even the graphics are good. Thing is, for every thing of which you approve there is a tiny niggling thing that makes you doubt the care taken. Mostly, it has to be said, it comes down to the characters. Dialogue is extremely weak. One great example is where you spend a passionate night with the love interest who then totally forgets about it in the next scene and gives you the same conversation options you've had since you met her. Then there is the choreography of the characters when they are speaking. Think back to Monkey Island, where the characters would stand in a room and wiggle their heads whilst talking about things all around them, never pointing or making any indication the object of their discussion was in their immediate vicinity. Now imagine that, but in 3d. Add some vague lip sync and there you have it. It divorces your character from the world they are in and manages to seriously damage the atmosphere the game tries so hard to build.

I'm now playing the expansion pack and I'd have to say the character interaction seems a much happier prospect so I'm tentatively interested in what is going to come next. That said, despite memories coming back from the previous game your character doesn't seem overly bothered his love has gone missing along with all the people he had been travelling with. God forbid the roof falls in again...

Worst Ending Ever?

2008-02-01T15:27:00.000-08:00

I've just gone back to Heroes of Might and Magic 4. My esteemed colleague Kelvin Gan would say I'm a sucker for punishment. Right now I'm thinking he's right.

So here's the scene: the final battle of the Nature campaign involves you hacking your way through untold masses of enemy armies to defeat your nemesis - the less-than-scary Lord Harke. You then have to return to your true love who is safely on an island. She'll know how things went because you've previously agreed to use blue sails if you win, or red sails if you lose and someone else is coming with bad news. Rather than, for example, simply waiting a few minutes for the messenger to dock and tell her. Anyway, you stumble upon Harke and his posse of badness hanging around by a small town. I found this a surprise as I was simply exploring. Nevertheless my band of happy psychos cut his army to ribbons and killed him. Cue a piece of dialogue where you spare his life, then rather than simply ending the game with a happy story you have to go hunt down your ship. This is where it gets fun.

You can look up "Scenario Information" at any time. This may tell you more, less or something entirely different from the initial mission brief. In this case it says "Kill Harke. Sail the correct ship back." No hint as to which colour ship that might be. Oh no. So if, like me, it has been some time since you've played the thing you have NO idea how to end the mission successfully. I had to save the game, reload the level to get the briefing back, then reload my save. Great.

Now if you think that's a genius piece of game design how about this: you find the correct ship (blue if you're stuck) and sail over to the island. Then you get a lovely dialogue from some of the other people there saying your love has seen the sails and gone off to kill herself. What? It appears you've sailed the wrong ship. But the game doesn't end? Queue reloading and getting in the other boat - this time you don't even reach the island before being told she's dead. So back to the other boat and we finally find out what's going on. It seems that in order to create a "dramatic" ending the authors decided to have your crew change the sails to the wrong colour! The swines! Anyway, the woman runs off to kill herself but if you go inland (not that there is any reason to do so - you've been told she's dead remember) you trigger another event where you start with a bit of angst before going a bit further and finding out she's not dead after all. Queue happy endings all round. Seriously, what were they thinking when they put this wonderful twist in? Are they just trying to alienate anyone playing for any length of time? A dangerous game considering you can beat the entire game using pretty much the same set of tactics. And there is a lot of game...

That said, this is the game where one of the 6 campaigns ends up with your character having no legs and a miserable-ever-after. You lose your legs in the final cut scene - AFTER you make your last move. No choice, no chance to do anything about it.

Rubbish but fun?

2007-12-27T13:35:00.000-08:00

It is a with a sense of unease that I've noticed an interesting trend binding together the computer games I've enjoyed most recently: they're rubbish. It's a difficult thing to admit - I've been playing these games for many years and have spent many hours critiquing them; I like to think I know what makes a good game. But recently I've been playing a lot of Hero's of Might and Magic 4, Command and Conquer: Renegade (both on the PC) and Red Steel (Wii). In brief:

HoMaM4 is a vast, sweeping rpg / strategy game which chronicles the major events of six factions in the MaM world. Unfortunately the strategy is incredibly simplistic and the rpg elements came from the Big Book of RPG Cliques.

C&C:R was the first attempt to stick a first-person shooter into the ever-popular C&C universe. You play the Commando as featured in the first strategy game and must sneak into various installations and blow them up, occasionally running into an old flame who (predictably) wants to kill you. Unfortunately the game was a collection of set pieces and was impossible to actually enjoy until you gave up all pretense of stealth and simply rocked around spraying the badguys with automatic fire. The levels were uninspired, the weapons pathetic (they gave you the best gun right at the beginning) and the graphics were severely dated.

Red Steel is a lot more recent and hence its focus is on oriental criminal organizations. You are running around trying to rescue your girlfriend and protect a powerful katana from an evil clan of evilness. Occasionally there is a break in the shooting whilst you beat someone in the head with your sword. It's eerily reminiscent of C&C:R in that you have to give up on playing it "properly" and instead run around like a loon mowing down enemies with your shotgun and shouting every time a sword duel comes up because you have to engage in close combat rather than (say) emptying your clip into the idiot's head. The Wii controller jumps all over the place and the cutscenes appear to have been drawn in crayon.

Anyway, the point is the one thing these games all manage to capture is a sense of fun. Despite many, many flaws (and believe me, there are many) there is a great deal of satisfaction in beating them and a lot of excitement in running the gauntlet of minor bugs. Recently I've also played Resident Evil 4 on the Wii, which is far more competently put together - better graphics, much better use of the controllers available, better plot, better game design - but it'll be Red Steel I'll probably return to. I guess the point I'm vaguely stabbing at is that much as "great graphics don't make a game", neither does sound construction. It can still leave you cold; still be missing that X factor that really hooks you into a game. I really wish I could clearly define that feeling of entertainment - aside from making a fortune in the video games market I'd like to see where I could find similar effects in other walks of life.

A thousand ways to wish someone Merry Christmas

2007-12-18T03:16:00.000-08:00

Buying Christmas cards should be very easy these days. Clinton's Cards has provided cards for every type of family - Daddy and his New Wife, Daddy and his Girlfriend, Mummy and her Husband, Brother and his Special Friend. Sadly (and I use that word entirely incorrectly) my parents are still together and yet I'd quite like to buy them a card each. You cannot imagine how difficult this is proving. I haven't yet bought cards to "Mum and her Husband" and "Dad and his Wife", but the temptation is growing.

Insult someone and feel smug

2007-12-14T00:19:00.000-08:00

I was on XFM Wales this morning, insulting the presenters as part of a competition. If you're in the South Wales area (and by that I include Bristol, or indeed on the web) I'd recommend The Roop and Tom Breakfast Show from 6 till 10.

And the insult?

You, sir, have the intellect of a monkey's scrotum. Your odour is more usually found in the matted hair of a cow's anus and your face can only be described as "unsafe for children". I am less amazed by your dress sense than that you have the sense to dress and your spasmodic gait is beyond my comprehension. One day you might rise above yourself and be compared favourably to a satsuma but until then you shall remain as you are - a veritable turd of a man.

Compiz-fusion is a nice place to visit, but i wouldn't want to live there

2007-12-13T07:49:00.000-08:00

Gutsy Ubuntu then (yes I know, not exactly cutting edge). Is it exciting and are the new desktop effects going to usher in a new era of cooperation between man and computer? Hmm, probably not.

It looks great, make no mistake about it. The way windows bounce around and beam into existence is suitably pleasing. I especially like the mammoth number of options which make your desktop anything from mildly annoying to utterly impossible to use. For most fun try turning down friction on the windows and watch as the slightest twitch of the mouse sends your window shooting off into the distance.

There are clearly more options than any sane human being could possibly want, but this is a new feature so they'll be playing with them and then removing them as you'd expect in gnome. Problem is the defaults - they don't really replicate the existing desktop but with added whiz. Try using the mouse wheel to switch between desktops for instance. The poor old wheel seems to have been neglected throughout in fact. I'm reliably informed these options can be turned on but either these people are lying to me or I don't have the patience to hunt through a million menus trying to find the option that makes my desktop behave as it did before.

I'm willing to believe the fault is with me here, but patience is something that's sadly lacking when I'm using a computer. It's a tool - I don't want it to get between be and what I'm trying to do, in the same way I don't want to spend an hour gently stroking a hammer before hitting a nail with it. Especially when, in this case, it's just garnish that slows things down. When I hit a key I want a response now, not half a second later when the graphics card has finished rendering everything or the desktops have finished scrolling around or
whatever.

I have to say I'm somewhat disappointed, but again I suspect the fault is mine. I was hoping for a great leap forward in usability. Something that makes the computer a joy to use. Something different, like the glove things in Minority Report. Instead I got the same thing as before but slower and with the ability to add fire trails to my desktop. Thanks, but I'll be switching this off for a while I think.

Orange Squash

2007-12-13T02:48:00.000-08:00

Imagine the scene: you've arrived at the station to catch a train. You've arrived a short while before the train is due and you're standing on a freezing cold platform waiting. The platform gradually fills with members of The Public all stamping their feet in an attempt to keep warm. Suddenly the train pulls in to the station and people start climbing into the carriages. It's busy, but you're confident everyone will fit. You remain confident until the moron a dozen people in front of you suddenly decides, for no apparent reason, to stand in the isle and entirely block it. Ahead of him you can see a third of the carriage remains empty. He's clearly happy where he is though and will go no further.

Behind you the orderly queue has descended into chaos. People are pushing, trying to get on the train before it leaves. The guard comes past and helpfully instructs the people at the back to move down the carriage. A few moments later he angrily informs all the people still on the platform that the train isn't going anywhere until they've filled it and he can wait all day if necessary. Meanwhile the fool continues to stand still - either ignorant or oblivious. For reasons best kept to themselves, those directly behind him choose not to get involved despite their increasingly irate fellow passengers and the inevitable shrill woman shouting "move down, move down". Finally the guard gives up in disgust and slams the door in the faces of the people waiting on the platform and the train moves off with half of the potential passengers still on the platform.

Sounds insane. It wouldn't be tolerated. People would complain to the railway. And yet this is exactly the scene that greets anyone catching the Bright Orange Bus from central Bath up to the university every morning...

Orange Juice

2007-12-12T06:35:00.000-08:00

News from the Orange network. For the last 2 days we've had all Orange phones in the office saying "no access to network" and (predictably) refusing to work. Orange have said they cannot find a problem, but since it affects everybody one would be forgiven for thinking they haven't looked hard enough.

So, 2 days without any kind of mobile phone access from the office. This is an amusing enough problem for such a large company, but consider that the university hosts an Orange transmitter and indeed runs all its staff mobile phones on that network...

VOIP Phone - a new era of productivity?

2007-12-04T01:35:00.000-08:00

I have a new phone on my desk. It's black and shiny, has lots of buttons and I can't figure it out at all.

There are bits of functionality I have discovered though. It makes calls, but that's just dull. It also has a (programmable) button which lets me permanently set my phone to busy (as in engaged) for some lovely peace and quiet. It has an auto-answer function: if someone calls me the phone rings once then answers itself putting them on speakerphone. Then I can shout vaguely in the direction of the phone and they can shout back at me thus allowing us to have a barely adequate conversation AND annoy the office at the same time, or allow people to ring your desk and shout helplessly because you're off having coffee. What larks.

However the very best function (so far) is the "page another phone" option which lets you speak directly through another phone's speakerphone speaker, regardless of whether that person wants you to or not, or indeed if they are currently speaking on the phone. So you can page ANY of these phones in the university and shout at the person sitting at the desk and they can do NOTHING to stop you, other than call security. Thus far I have found no way to override this option and lock my phone down.

Truly the days when your desk phone was your friend are long gone. I strongly suspect the person who designed this beast has never worked in an office.

The Blog Reloaded

2007-12-04T01:32:00.000-08:00

I've been told I should have a blog - and by a chap who reads a lot of blogs. Since this is the closest thing to a compliment I've ever heard pass his lips I couldn't really say no. Hence I've decided to resurrect a blog I was using for testing purposes and actually try to post something meaningful occasionally. And, no doubt, much drivel in between.

My First Post

2007-09-11T07:48:00.000-07:00

I'd imagine everyone does this. It's my first blog, here is my first post, I just want to see what it looks like. And I'm no exception. This is my first post. Thank you and goodnight.