Moving your Valheim world form a server to your PC and recording videos

I've been playing a lot of Valheim with my gaming group. We've been taking it slow, focusing on building and careful exploration rather than boss murder and so we built up a pleasant homestead. It doesn't touch some of the crazy things that people have been building and posting online, but it was far more than functional and, after spending many hours in and around it, it was home.

Then PatchNarock came.

Valheim is still early in development so major patches drop from time to time and when they do the developers recommend a full server reset to avoid problems upgrading. Sigh - it's annoying, but the price of playing Early Access games.

Anyway, our home was going to be nuked along with the rest of the world and I decided to make a video before it went up. Great idea! List the problems!

1. How do I use the freecam?
2. How do I transfer my world to a local server, since I can't use the freecam on a multiplayer server?
3. How do I control the freecam effectively/?
4. What do I actually want to record?
5. How do I record game footage?
6. How do I edit the video?
7. What music can I use?
8. How do I upload this to YouTube?

Well, it makes for a blog post. So here it is - the absolute basics on how to record and edit Valheim videos. If you're just interested in the video, skip to the end.

Moving the world to your local machine

Firstly - the freecam is considered a cheat, so it will only work on a local server. We play on a hosted server, so this means transferring The World from the server to local machine. The reverse is a common enough problem with many online guides, but I didn't see any guides from server to local so here it is:

1. Get an FTP client (I use FileZilla on Win10)
2. Connect to your server via FTP - this will be different for each hosting company
3. For me, world files are held in .config/unity3d/IronGate/Valheim/worlds - you may need to show hidden files
4. FTP to your local machine and put them in C:\Users\PCname\AppData\LocalLow\IronGate\Valheim - again, AppData may be hidden

Now when Valheim starts your backed up world should be in the available local options. You may need to adjust the world seed to match whatever is on your server.

Note that this backs up the world, so if you're so inclined you could use this to duplicate items (since you can jump characters between worlds). Of course, you can also just use the console to spawn items then jump to multiplayer servers. I don't advocate this when you're on a public server.

The Freecam

Now we can access the Freecam. To do this, we need some console commands so first enable it by adding -console to the Steam startup options. Now F5 will display the console where you can do all kinds of cheating.

Key commands:

• devcommands - to enable the developer commands, which includes the freecam
• freefly - to turn on / off the floating camera
• ffsmooth 1 - to enable smooth camera movement (1+ for more smoothing, 0 to disable)
• tod .5 - fix the time to morning
• env clear - fix the weather to clear

Now you can move the camera around with WASD, change speed with the mousewheel, fix to a point (for a pan) with left click and ascend / descend with CTRL / space. You can also use a controller, which allows for more analogue control if your thumbs are appropriately trained. Mine are not.

This is an overview - more detailed instructions (and full credit) on these reddit posts:

• How to use Valheim's free camera mode
• Valheim's weather commands

The camera is surprisingly fully featured.

This is the time to pick what you actually want to record. Pick your route, practice your pans, etc etc. Place your character somewhere dramatic-looking and remember you can disable / enable the game HUD with CTRL+F3. This is where you get to be creative - good luck.

Making the video

With planning in place, the visuals need recording. I used the free version of XSplit Gamecaster. It's pretty easy to set up, but worth noting that recording over 720p embeds an obnoxious watermark. Set the recording to 720p and it can be removed - obviously there is no preset to do this.

I did my editing with Adobe Premiere. I am nowhere near competent enough to offer advice using it, but there are many YouTube tutorials readily available. If you're coming at it cold (like I was) then I did:

1. Remove audio
2. Chop off the excess at the start and end
3. Visual fade in and out
4. Add music track
5. Edit audio to loop and fit with visuals

The music I used was released under a Creative Commons license and came from Serpent Sounds Studios.

Bringing it all together

After quite a bit of fiddling with the video, I saved it out, uploaded to YouTube, and voila:

It's basic, but I'm actually quite proud of how this turned out. I'm also pleased I've got this record - this land no longer exists and while it is digital, I've spent a lot of time here. I genuinely miss this place - the new one doesn't feel like home just yet.

I find Valheim interesting in a way I haven't engaged with a game in a while. There are loads of great games out there, but the way this one is paced and realised is something a bit different. Maybe I'll write something about that.

In the meantime, here are some holiday photos as we explore these lost lands.

It's dangerous to go alone

I've played Dungeons & Dragons, alongside other roleplaying games, for most of my life. In the last few years I've been telling people that the skills learned from playing (and especially running) this game are incredibly useful in the office. And people think I'm mad.

Time to explain.

Firstly, for those who don't know, a roleplaying game is a co-operative game focussed around collaborative storytelling. There are hundreds of different rulesets and different ways of playing those games but essentially the Games Master (GM) tells a story. Everyone else takes the role of a single character (the player character, PC) and describes what that character is doing, and how they are responding the challenges of the world. Imagine telling someone the story Lord of the Rings, but instead of passively listening the audience has control of the behaviour of Aragon, Gimli and Legolas (or, if you don't want to imagine it you can read this happening at DM of the Rings). The GM provides context in the setting and the reactions of other characters. The rules define what the characters can do and gives a framework for testing for success.

There are some obvious skills which are gained by playing. Most of the systems involve some basic maths that needs to be done quickly on the fly, which helps with arithmetic. There are social skills from playing in a group, and needing to work together. There is the creativity of thinking up the details of your character, including their motivations and history and some basic acting involved in their portrayal. In fact, Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) was used as a learning tool in schools before it was deemed Evil for reasons which are too tiresome to explain here.

However, I think there is a lot more to it than this.

Consider a job interview. A very common question is along the lines of "imagine you're working here - how would you respond to X happening?". I've had many conversations with people who find it very difficult to put themselves in a fictional situation, understand the limits of their choices in that scenario, and decide on their actions within that context. It's a pretty unnatural thing to do and something of a niche skill, but is definitely a barrier to getting many jobs. It's also exactly what you are doing almost all of the time in a roleplaying game. Pulling out your dice and declaring you're going to stab the manager probably wont help you in interview, but having the confidence to think clearly and quickly in that environment definitely will.

At the heart of many roleplaying games are the challenges. How do we cross this ravine? Can we get the gem from the sleeping dragon? The realm is being invaded, what can we do? These all boil down to "how do I solve problem X with resources Y?" My career has been in technical delivery and management and this has been the question posed by work every single day for over a decade. Like in the games, the answers have varied enormously, and often involve multiple steps to grow Y or redefine X. Practising these thought processes in a safe environment has been very beneficial to me.

Solving problems in D&D often involves communicating with other people (played by the GM) and that involves thinking about their needs and desires. And now we're practising empathy and understanding - in higher stake scenarios and closer to actual conflict than many of us will ever encounter in real life.

When one is the GM and running the game, all the above is dialled to 11. Instead of a single character to track, there are potentially dozens and you have to remember exactly who knows what and how those people might communicate. This starts to sound like the communication that happens in an office which is very important at times of change, or any time information needs to be passed around.

A large part of running the game involves describing the scenario and keeping the story moving. This involves a myriad of narrative and communication skills, learning when to focus on details and when to skip over for the sake of pace. What's important? What makes things come alive? Being able to tell a story is important at interview, and important for talking about your latest great idea in the office and convincing others of its greatness.

Taking a step back a little, being a good GM involves keeping the game itself moving forward. That means taking a group of people, listening to their thoughts and discussions, providing information where required but also helping them come to a set of decisions. All the while, you need one eye on the clock (unless you really like playing to the small hours and getting nothing done) and to keep monitoring the room to make sure that everyone is included. These are key skills required to run a successful meeting.

I can go on, and probably will at some point in the future. For instance, I haven't mentioned anything about teamwork (D&D is usually impossible if the players aren't working together). I look forward to the day when management training is a group of candidates running through the Tomb of Annihilation.

I think playing roleplaying games has the potential to teach some very positive skills. But if nothing else, it is a good excuse to own a lot of pretty dice.

Into space with the Saitek X52 Pro

Since Christmas I have been playing a lot of Elite Dangerous. It’s a great way to spend time - floating around in space, deciding what to do with an evening, heading off to achieve things and gradually increasing in rank and skill.

I cut my teeth (whatever that means) playing on a keyboard and mouse setup, which is … functional. At best. Online People say that a HOTAS setup changes the way the game plays entirely and is a must for any serious Elite player so I thought I’d give that a go.

After much deliberation (should I spend £270 on a replica of the flight controls from an A10?) I decided to go for the Saitek X52 Pro. It was, apparently, the stick used by Frontier Developments when designing Elite so should have good in-game support. There is a strong body of opinion that it is better than the newer stick, the X55, in terms of button placement and general feel (and saves £50 too). Plus it looks exactly like the joystick your avatar is using in the cockpit of your ship.

The good

• the hardware is lovely - solidly built and satisfyingly weighty
• ergonomic stick, adjustable and comfortable
• button placement is equally good with most functions falling naturally under my fingers
• I keep finding buttons - after a month of using it I suddenly discovered a small wheel on the throttle I hadn’t noticed before

The bad

• the drivers are horrible - I mean really horrible
  • it took several attempts and a few blue screens to install
  • I have to plug the joystick in to the SAME USB port - I’m not quite sure how they’ve achieved that
• the control software is horrible, although less than the drivers
  • saving the profile doesn’t seem to work properly
  • I have to manually tell it to load a particular profile before playing
  • in Elite some buttons can only be mapped after changing the default bindings in the profile
  • for some reason I seem to need the control software actually open to make some of the remapping work in-game

This is running the latest official Saitek / Mad Catz drivers on a Windows 7 machine.

So, did it change my life?

Well, kinda. It really has made a difference in game. I can perform manoeuvres that were next to impossible with the keyboard / mouse combo. More importantly, the feel of the game is indeed very different. The joystick and throttle really help with the immersion and even routine activities are a lot more fun.

On the other hand, the driver problems really tarnish the experience. I would struggle to recommend a Saitek device to others - especially since I’ve apparently got away lightly (the control software rarely crashes for me and my system remains stable). None of these problems are insurmountable but, basically, I expect a lot more from a piece of hardware costing in excess of £100.

I’m happy with where I am now, but it was far more work than I wanted to go through for a premium peripheral. If I decide to buy a new stick in the future I will be reading about the software support very very carefully before selecting my product and it will take a lot to convince me to buy anything with software by Mad Catz again. It’s a shame because the hardware is really very nice.

Streaming gameplay with two sound cards

Another post on this. I'm not convinced my previous suggestions work very well and I've found a better way to do this by making use of a few pieces of free software.

So; round two.

The setup

I've been through this in detail on a previous post, so this is just the highlights.

• game audio through primary soundcard (the default Windows device)
• Skype audio through secondary soundcard
• input from a microphone

The problem

All the streaming software I've seen mixes microphone input into the Windows default sound. I need to also mix the output of another sound card to capture game audio along with both sides of a Skype call during multiplayer gaming.

The solution

The outline is:

• create a virtual input sound device
• mix microphone and Skype output into that device
• set the virtual input sound device as the "microphone input" in the streaming software (in my case, XSplit Gamecaster but this should work with any similar software)

But... how?

To create the virtual audio device we need some extra software. I used VB-Audio Virtual Cable (a donationware alternative to theVAC which costs $25 upwards). Find the downloader (there is a download link under the "VB-Audio Virtual Cable" heading) and install it and magically you'll have some new audio devices appearing in your Windows Sound dialogue.

Next you want AmaMix. The download contains a load of visual stuff, but you only need to worry about AmaMix which lets you route audio to different devices. Make sure you run it as Admin or it will just crash with no indication as to why.

AmaMix is pretty easy to set up. Hit Config and it will give you a dialogue which lets you choose both the secondary sound card output and the microphone output as sources and the new VB-Audio device as your target. There are also options for boosting the inputs and generally fiddling with them until the levels are as you want them.

If you can't find the output of your sound card go to the Sound dialogue and select the Recording tab. Right click and enable disconnected and disabled devices and it should appear.

Finally, in your game streaming software select the VB-Audio device as your microphone input. Now, when you want to stream (or record) you just need to remember to fire up AmaMix along with your streaming software and everything should be ready to go.

I hope this helps someone!

Streaming your game with multiplayer audio using XSplit and two sound cards

Catchy title, no?

When streaming a game, XSplit Gamecaster allows me to take the sounds from that game and mix in a single vocal input, however I have two sound cards to allow me to use a mixing desk to manipulate the levels of a Skype call against the game sounds (I posted before about the details of my audio setup on my gaming machine). The XSplit options work for me when streaming or recording single player footage with commentary, however there are problems when it comes to capturing multiplayer gaming along with the group conversations as essentially there are two vocal sources (my voice and everyone else's voice). This leaves me having to choose two of the three audio sources and ending up with either the game sounds plus friends talking to a silent me or the game sounds plus me apparently chatting to nobody.

Why XSplit and Skype?

I am sure there are better capture programs than XSplit Gamecaster (the more-featured Broadcaster, for example) but they require more work to set up and at a quick glance do not offer the required additional options to solve this particular problem. Whatever its shortcomings, Gamecaster does a fantastic job of getting streaming and recording set up with minimum fuss.

The choice of Skype for communication is because that's how my regular group communicates. Again, there are probably better options but this works for us at the moment. For this problem, it shouldn't actually matter as it is basically conversation out of a secondary sound card, which can be done with any chat program.

Also it is worth noting that this is all done on Windows 7.

My requirements

I game a lot but at the moment I record rarely, so any solution needs to both be easy to fire up (to encourage me to do it) and non-intrusive (so my normal gaming doesn't get any worse).

So:

• low impact on my normal gaming once set up
• easy to turn on when desired
• records game sounds and both parts of the Skype call
• I don't have my own voice echoed back to me through my headphones
• allow me to keep my current hardware configuration

How to do it

First, we need to get at the output of the second sound card. For Creative Cards, this will be a device called "What You Hear". The RealTek equivalent is "Stereo Mix". Hit the start button and look for "Sound". On the dialogue that appears, select the "Recording" tab. If the device isn't there, right click and enable disconnected and disabled devices. It should appear. In XSplit, select this device as Microphone Input.

At this point, if you are playing a multiplayer game with a Skype call you'll record game sounds and your friends' voices but your own voice will be missing.

Next, go back to the Recording tab on the Sound dialogue. Find your microphone, right click, properties and select the "advanced" tab. Disable exclusive mode (both boxes). Finally, go to the "listen" tab. When you install XSplit it creates a device called XSplit Stream Audio Renderer. Select it from the drop-down and check "listen to this device".

Done! Now, when you record again you'll find your voice is included in the mix.

If you look at the audio options in your system tray you'll see that you can set the levels on the XSplit Stream Audio Renderer which will let you balance your recording.

What is going on?

XSplit seems to create a software audio device (i.e. it doesn't physically exist) and record the output of that. Behind the scenes it mixes the Default Audio output and whatever is specified as the mic input into this device. All we have done here is add an additional audio stream to that device using native Windows options. I added the microphone to the XSplit device by hand and let XSplit handle adding the rest of the Skype call, but I assume it would work just as well the other way around.

Alternately

If you aren't using XSplit or you don't want to mess with one of its components you may want an alternative.

I am trying to mix three audio channels (game, mic and other vocals) when XSplit only allows me to specify two sources (default sound and mic input). In practice, XSplit lets me select any Windows audio input device as the "microphone input" and this gives me the option of creating a new (software) sound source and pre-mixing the microphone input and other vocal output. This requires additional software (such as AmaMix (free) or VAC) which is why I went with the above solution which only uses standard features of Windows.

Controlling your gaming audio through a hardware mixer

I play a lot of multiplayer games and getting the balance between communication and game sounds so both can be heard is very important. Alt-tabbing out of a game to fiddle with the Windows mixer is a pain and is potentially a one-way trip so I've been looking for a better solution.

My requirements

I have three different audio sources on my computer which need balancing:

• game sounds
• communication (my group uses Skype, I don't see why this won't work for TeamSpeak)
• music (from time to time)

And I want to be able to change the levels without leaving my game.

The problems

There are two problems - both with fairly simple solutions: how to separate the audio streams, and how to re-combine them after the levels have been set.

Separation

First, I separated communication. A second sound card solved this problem - Skype can be configured to use any audio output device. Like most gamers, I have a PCIe sound card (Sound Blaster X-Fi for me) which means I have an unused sound card integrated into my motherboard. Re-enable that in the BIOS, point Skype at it and we're away.

For music, I cheated. A while ago I switched the music systems in my house to Sonos - I've written about moving music to a NAS and getting it tagged properly in the past - and this means that it is already a separate stream. The problem with the Sonos output was actually mixing back it into the others so I could listen to music while gaming with headphones.

This leaves my game sounds coming out of the primary sound card in my computer. Three separate audio streams - done.

Re-combining

To re-combine the audio, and also allow me to fiddle with the levels while in-game, I went for a mixing desk. I chose a Yamaha MG124C which is a bit over the top but I really wanted faders (the sliders) for volume control, not just pots (the twiddly knobs) and this was one of the smallest desks available with that feature. I've also used this desk in a radio station in the past so I know it makes a decent sound, is well made and isn't covered in useless features which are likely to break.

Setting up the desk was straightforward - the stereo output from the main sound card and Sonos go into the main stereo channels and the Skype soundcard goes into one of the secondary stereo channels. Some decent cables are also required; I'm using a variety of Adam Hall cables like this. The different channels are routed through the group fader so I can switch between output to the amp and output to the headphones with ease.

Done

And that's it. Now when I'm gaming if I can't hear my team-mates I can simply reach over to the desk and turn up the Skype channel, or turn down the game channel. I can add in music as I choose, or mute it at the touch of a button if things are getting hectic. I can easily make ongoing adjustments to these settings without ever leaving the game.

Hopefully someone will find this useful. The biggest problem I've encountered so far with this setup is how to record game play along with the communication channel. I will cover the solution for that in the next post.

On a list

Recent statistics from Steam say that approximately a third of owned games remain unplayed. I'm as bad as anyone with this - between sales, Humble Bundles and people sending me keys from THEIR bundles I've got a long list of the things I'm sure I'll get around to playing one day. Obviously, when someone says "Hey, Splinter Cell: Blacklist is on sale - why don't we pick it up?" there is only one response: why not?

I've got a splinter

I'm not a long-term fan of the Splinter Cell series. Slightly odd national-paranoia storyline and slow slide into mediocre FPS territory aside, I've never really gotten into the gameplay. This is probably my own fault as typically I've played the games around five years after release and they really haven't stood up to the ravages of time. It's not that I dislike the games - it's more that each time I've sat down to play one I've found better things to do with my time. This time, though, there was something different. Blacklist has co-op.

Just the two of us

Things are better with a friend and gaming is (usually) no exception. Assuming you have a friend to play with, co-op can be seen as a magic bullet that can improve any game. Of course if you have to find someone via a matchmaking system it can be the most irritating thing in the world.

Personally, I like to be able to play whatever the game has as a single player campaign in co-op mode. Blacklist goes down the cheap and annoying route of having a single player campaign with some bonus missions in which you can bring a friend. Normally this leaves co-op as a bolt-on to be enjoyed for half an hour before you move on to the inevitable multiplayer. Blacklist manages to avoid short-changing you by making the bonus missions roughly 75% of the game content and this means many happy hours yelling at your buddy for tripping alarms and forcing a restart of the entire mission. It really is a lot of fun and substantial - which is good, because it was the main reason I bought the game in the first place.

I'm told the side missions are divided into four types which will be recognisable to fans of the older games. I can't comment on how good these missions are at evoking the spirit of the older games, but I can say that they all play differently and are a good way of keeping the game fresh and interesting. There are the "normal" missions, with normal defined as being similar in playstyle to the single player game. Then there are the full-stealth missions where the whole thing is failed if anyone catches sight of you. These are great as the tension ramps up towards the end and you risk losing the last hour of game time to a mistimed run from cover to cover. Next up there are the violent missions in which your job is to murder everyone in an area - ideally without being seen - which are a pleasant change in pace to the uber-stealth missions. Finally there are the survival missions, in which you need to hold an area using guns and gadgets until you've worked through the waves of attackers then either bail or stick around for more mayhem.

I've not seen co-op implemented quite like this before. It's a fantastic idea, giving me the co-op experience I like while leaving the main campaign alone so the writers can tell the story they want to tell without being hamstrung by the constant requirement of a second protagonist.

All by myself

So yes, there's also a solo campaign. It seems to do a good job of continuing the existing story while not alienating newcomers to the series like me. I found it easy enough to get a feel for the established characters - not the most challenging thing, but they are more rounded than most of hardened military or espionage types you typically find in settings like this.

The plot deals with a massive terrorist operation on US soil. It's heavy on the argh-foreigners paranoia, but interestingly you'll spend much of your time crossing swords with other US intelligence agencies and doing some pretty dubious stuff to get around them. It's a little odd to see a turf war breaking out while tens of thousands of civilians are at risk but it's credible and it makes for some interesting caveats on some of the missions. Nothing says "be careful" like the game failing you the moment you cut down an unsuspecting friendly trooper with a hail of silenced machine gun fire because you were too ham-fisted to sneak across a compound without them seeing you.

I also appreciate the game letting me do these things myself. It's depressingly common that a game's story is told through non-interactive cutscenes or via quick time events (note - a non-interactive cutscene does not become gameplay just because I have to lunge for a random button on my keyboard 3 minutes in) but in Blacklist the game does not feel in the way of the film the writers want you to watch. You get short cutscenes before and after missions and everything else is told in-mission. Like the extra work which has gone into making the co-op mission structure, this makes a big difference to the game.

Except...

Oh yes, except the end (bit of a spoiler warning for some of the game's ending here).

I assume there must be a QTE guy somewhere involved in this project. Maybe they sent him out for coffee every day so he couldn't interfere. Maybe he was on holiday. Either way, they managed to distract him for most of the game's production. Then at the last minute he was allowed back in and the FINALLY BOSS is defeated by a series of bloody quick time events - and not just ordinary events either. They are obnoxiously difficult and cause you to restart the entire boss fight (the rest of which is oddly mechanical and doesn't really flow properly but at least is gameplay) when you inevitably mess them up because after 20-odd hours of a proper game you really aren't expecting them.

ARGH.

I don't normally have a problem with QTEs (passing them, that is, not appreciating them) but the only way I could get through these was to learn the sequence and anticipate which button to hit. Thanks guys. It certainly doesn't ruin the game, but it does have a good go at ruining the ending.

Always a system

Back to something positive. The upgrade system is extensive but because of the variance in the game types in the extra content most of what is on offer is actually useful. The problem I had with something like Dishonored is that it gave you a big pile of toys with which you could cause mayhem then slapped your hands if you actually used them. In this you get everything from knockout gas to land mines and then the game lets you get on with it. Obviously you can't use hand grenades in the stealth-only missions, but you can go nuts in the survival modes. The guns aren't quite as generous as the gadgets - the silenced weapons are definitely more useful in all modes - but you can still find a use for the assault rifles if you try.

The only exceptions are the breaching charges (I carried these through SO MANY MISSIONS because they sound cool and didn't manage to use one once) and the final goggles (which appear to be the same as the second to last goggle but with a stylish chinstrap). Bonus points are awarded for not ruining the upgrade system with the DLC kit. Although it is very good there are still normal unlocks which are better so there is still something to work towards.

All the people

There's also a competitive multiplayer mode. It's another interesting Ubisoft game, with unbalanced teams fighting very different battles, and works very well. I haven't found it compelling enough to play for hours but what I did play was a lot of fun.

And so

I like Blacklist. I'm genuinely surprised to be writing that. In fact, I like it a lot and I'm sad that I've now played through all the content. I'd like a little more co-op, but frankly I'm always going to say that and despite completing it I can see myself going back to play more of the survival games. I hope the sequel is structured in the same way - if I can get another fix of sneaky co-op fun then you can finally me to the list of people who are excited by this series.

A city in Crysis

Oh look – I’ve got a blog. Seems I managed to forget that for most of last year. New Year’s resolution: write more. Let’s see how that turns out.

Games!

Back in the old days this was a blog about video games. I played through and wrote about Crysis and Crysis: Warhead and made certain criticisms of the design decisions. In my post about Crysis I praised the game but said the narrative was a bit wonky, lurching from shooting Koreans to shooting aliens and in the process utterly changing the way the game played – and not for the better. They fixed that in Crysis: Warhead. I also said that the nanosuit, while being interesting was overly complicated and that they’d be better off losing some of the power modes and having them always-on.

Which brings us nicely to Crysis 2.

Suit me up

We’re back in the nanosuit – now apparently only being worn by one person in the entire gameworld – but with some of the power modes removed and those functions always-on. Sounds familiar. The new interface is far slicker than the old one which makes the gameplay faster and more fluid. The missing modes (Speed and Strength) are still around, but accessed via context-sensitive prompts (Strength) and just running quickly (Speed) which makes a lot more sense, even if you’re sometimes killed by enemies because being shot has drained your energy leaving you unable to run away properly. Still – it’s your fault. Plan properly next time.

Me suit up 

But you can’t just remove the useless element from an interface - you have to add new and exciting buttons to push to justify the “2”ness of the experience. So we have nightvision, which I don’t remember in the original games and not really worth the bother now. It is only of any use in one (very brief) section where the lights fail and a couple of occasions when the playing area is randomly filled with smoke. It just feels tacked on, which is a shame.

Then there is TacVisorThing. I struggle with TacVisorThing. I like game worlds and generally I feel it helps immersion to build logical gadgets then incorporate them into the gameplay rather than adding something cool and hoping the setting can swallow it. In the gameworld, the TacVisor makes sense. Basically, you bring down the “spotter” sights and the nanosuit analyses the battlefield and overlays tactical options to help you out. Generally they are quite obvious (marking high ground as suitable for "sniping" or the bit at the side suitable for "flanking") but it can point out weapon and ammo caches which would otherwise be easily missed. The problem is that all this really does is put a series of button presses between you and continuing the action when you enter one of the more open areas. It’s just busywork and I can’t help feeling that an automatic overlay would have been a nicer solution (prediction for Crysis 3! Which has been out for nearly a year!).

Oh, and there is an upgrade system too. More on that later.

Up me suit

So, we’re suited up. Time to get going. The gameplay drops Crysis’s vaguely open world for a series of corridors spilling out into arenas. It keeps things focused, but does lose any real sense of planning. You’re going in at A and coming out at B. All you can really decide is how to progress between those points. Oh – you’ve chosen stealth. Well, that means you can just walk from A to B and ignore the guys hanging around waiting to kill you.

Damn.

Yes, the Stealth option basically lets you bypass most of the enemies and without ever engaging them. And there really isn’t much encouraging you to fight – sure the human opposition are portrayed as a bunch of thuggish tools, but you’ve got places to be and pretty soon they are all busy being eaten by aliens anyway. The aliens on the other hand are big walking robot things with tentacles coming out of their heads (gone are the flying squid-things from the first game) who … you can also walk straight past. Sigh.

Actually, this feels like a step backwards from Crysis 1 where the enemies would hunt you down once you’d shown yourself. Now re-cloaking utterly confuses them. They don’t try shooting where you might be, or throw things to make you appear. You can just scurry off and murder anew from a new angle. The AI in general seems universally dense – they follow very obvious paths and just don’t seem to react to what you’re doing beyond “turn and shoot” instincts.

In an effort to stop you bypassing all the enemies in stealth mode there is an upgrade system which is powered from the corpses of the alien troops. There is some pseudo-science explaining this, but suffice to say that it means you’ll 1. spend a lot of time running like an idiot through the middle of firefights because you don’t want to lose the XP, rather ruining game flow (why can’t the pick-ups drift to you?) and 2. become next to invulnerable horribly quickly. Pro tip when upgrading – get level 1 of all 4 sections, then save for level 3 stealth and armour in that order. Everything else is largely worthless.

There are also token collectables which do little other than say YOU’RE PLAYING A COMPUTER GAME (why am I picking up tourist models of famous buildings, exactly?). It’s important to not forget those.

Tell me a tale

The plot? Yeah, there's one of those too.

Come on

Eugh. Well, there is some evil-PMC nonsense, an alien invasion, a sinister businessman pulling the strings behind the scenes and some of the noblest marines you’ll ever meet. The characters are largely uninteresting and to a man unlikable and most of the time you’re glad you’re on your own. The marines do provide a particularly hilarious sequence though – you’re told that the normal humans basically have no chance against the aliens and you need to escort them back to base. However, these normal humans turn out to be invulnerable (presumably to stop the escort quest making you hate all of humanity which is what normally happens – definitely a good decision) which means you can cheerfully use them as shields or just cower in a corner while they PUNCH THE ALIEN MECHA-SUITS TO DEATH. Do NOT mess with the US Marine Corps.

You’re still typing

That’s about it. It all functions, but it feels rather uninspired. It’s as if Crytek have built a great engine, hired the best artists on the planet (even seven years on it looks amazing, but then you already knew that), thought about the nanosuit and basically free-styled the actual game part. Not to say that it isn’t fun – I had an enjoyable 10 or so hours blasting through it, aside from a horrible end of game fight against cloaked aliens who had to die to unlock a door for … reasons – but it feels like a missed opportunity. There was the potential to do an open-world game in a semi-ruined cityscape here which changed as the war evolved. Who knows – maybe some of your actions could have helped that evolution along different paths. In that world the nanosuit could have come into its own, allowing you to customise the game to your preferred play-style via your use of powers and upgrades. Instead, we have a corridor shooter with some knobs on. A good corridor shooter, with some very pretty knobs but still – corridors and knobs.

An FPS but a bit more

I find the mechanics of Republic Commando interesting. On the face of it, it's a basic FPS which uses the Unreal 2 engine. You can carry 5 weapons plus melee attack and you fight waves of droids and flying bugs. Underneath that, however, it is something a bit different.

At the heart of what makes Commando different is the squad combat mechanic. Instead of the usual lone commando setup, you are one of four and you can give your AI buddies orders to help out. So far, so unremarkable (although at the time perhaps not - I can't recall offhand when squad control started becoming a regular thing). The really nice part is the way the squad control mechanics are worked into the game.

Firstly, it is not a gimmick - rather it is a tool that is incredibly useful to progress. In a game such as Mass Effect 2 you can quite happily ignore your squad and they will do their own thing while you blast your way through the encounters, however attempting to do this in Commando this will likely result in a quick and messy death. On several occasions during my playthrough I blundered into a firefight and had my team slaughtered however on restarting the section, playing thoughtfully and actually using the options available to me the exact same encounter became a breeze. This isn't because your mates are victims of stupid and in dire need of micromanagement (the AI of your team is well above average in fact) but because there is a very tangible benefit to using the squad order system and instructing them to switch to sniper mode or hold a section of cover or whatever. Having said that, the order system does remain a tool. You are rarely forced to command your fellows and you can, if you're feeling light on your feet, play Commando as a more traditional shooter. Importantly, there are also some really bad command options presented so mechanically issuing orders doesn't work which avoids the danger of it becoming a simple "I win" option.

So the issuing of orders is a noticeably useful option given to the player. However it doesn't feel like a mechanic to be exploited because of the second great thing about its implementation - it is part of the game world. The obvious point there is that your character is the squad leader so you are expected to be telling everyone what to do. More subtly is the way the game encourages you to think carefully about your options. In any decent sized firefight there will be a dozen positions your squad can take up so you need to not only use the mechanic but think in real terms about the way this will benefit you. Most of the time it's fairly obvious stuff - but only if you're thinking about covering fire, line of sight and so on and then you're thinking about real world options rather than clicking buttons which helps with the immersion.

Something else important about the design of the squad is the commando skillset. Although each one of your team mates has a distinct personality, in terms of ability they are entirely interchangeable. While that may sound simplistic it helps avoid making everything too obvious. You don't drop your sniper in the sniper spot simply because he's a sniper, for example. You can have intersecting fields of sniper fire if you want - you aren't restricted to just one guy with a rifle. You also don't have the problem of needing to blow something up and your demo guy is the one who decided to get his face shot off - someone else can step up to the task.

Linked to this is the way you can define your own role in the team. You have the same skills as your team mates which means every time you order someone to set a bomb or hack a terminal, you can do it instead if you prefer. In the middle of a firefight, you can order one of your chaps to get on with hacking while you shoot the enemies off him, however if you prefer you can instead put yourself in danger and order your team to give you covering fire. It may not sound like much, but this really makes you feel like part of a team instead of above it which does wonders for the oh-so-important immersion.

There are other clever design ideas - regenerating shields but collectible health so you can barely survive a firefight and limp into the next bit without being completely crippled springs to mind - however the squad control system is what makes Commando interesting. It manages not only to avoid being a gimmick, but also demonstrate how a cleverly applied gameplay mechanic can enhance atmosphere and immersion.

Defending the Republic

I've been playing Star Wars: Republic Commando because sometimes you need to step back in to the past to remember a time when games weren't all about DRM arguments and chest high walls.

Before moving on, though, I have a confession to make: I am a huge Star Wars fan. Not the new Clone Wars nonsense, but the older stuff made before Lucas went completely mad and (particularly) the Expanded Universe. For those who haven't read any Star Wars novels, the EU is the place where (mostly) talented sci-fi authors were allowed to play in George Lucas's beautiful sand pit and contribute to a (mostly) curated timeline which spanned thousands of years of Republic history. The stories explored different aspects of the central characters of the original films, but also expanded on the lives of pretty much every being shown in the films and added hundreds more besides. It's in this tapestry of supporting characters that Star Wars really shines - the Jedi may be the knights errant of the universe, but there are a tiny number of them. The other characters bring them to life.

For anyone reading this in the future, this is why Star Wars used to be great before the Clone Wars retconned a ton of stuff and Disney made some new movies which undid the rest (these movies don't exist at the time of writing - my crystal ball is not optimistic).


Republic Commando, then. It's a game which focuses on the clone commandos of the Republic (no, really) in a series of engagements during the Clone Wars. It spawned a series of excellent novels by Karen Traviss and contains no lightsabers or Force powers. In fact, a Jedi only shows up once in a cut scene and he just gives some orders and leaves again. It really is very good.

Firstly, the game feels like Star Wars. The blasters make the proper noises, the vehicles move around ponderously, the architecture looks right and the music is spot on. Secondly, and more importantly, the central characters are plausible. The commandos do joke and banter while moving around but they are focused on the task at hand. Throughout, there is a sense that the plot is moving on because the main characters are driving it onwards through their ability to complete missions, rather than hanging on while events unfold around them.

Mechanically, the game is a fairly basic FPS with some squad mechanics built into it. The squad controls are very well streamlined and well worked into gameplay. Successfully commanding your troops makes a huge difference to the frantic firefights and there are just enough options to leave you feeling in  control, without becoming needlessly detailed and fiddly. The AI is pretty good too - you generally feel part of the squad, rather than the leader of a band of special needs troopers. Your team will heal themselves, pick each other up, take intelligent firing positions and sometimes even take point when exploring - and this is before you start giving them orders. It means you can often choose your role in an encounter. Want to stand back and shoot Separatists whilst your team go and set explosives? No problem. Want to set up a sniper crossfire while you run around in the open hacking terminals and taking fire? You can do that too, and your team mates will actually shoot enemies off you.

There are problems too, of course. The AI is good, but not great. There are moments when they run off the wrong way or melee the super battle droid you want to grenade. The contextual squad controls can sometimes be annoyingly fiddly to target. You non-squad allies are, to a man, completely useless and will usually catch a blaster bolt within a moment of appearing and some of the badguys are horribly unfair as they flit around, dodging your gunfire. All of these problems are ignorable because it's so Star Wars which, after sitting through Clone Wars cartoons and that horrible cgi film is so very nice.

Venetian Base Jumping

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

Round 1 - fight!

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

Round 2 - fight! Again!

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

Nostalgia

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

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

Oops, I'm sorry

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

Zooooom

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

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

Erm. Who?

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

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

That Desmond guy

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

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

Oh, and the end is hugely unsatisfying

Yes, it is.

So, no good then?

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

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

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

Rushing to catch up

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

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

Fallout 3

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

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

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

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

Braid

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

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

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

Plants vs Zombies

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

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

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

Dragon Age: Beginning

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

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

So, to get the content:

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

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

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

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

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

Hope something here helps.

War - the second morning

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

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

Resource Management

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

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

Battle Control

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

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

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

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

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

The AI

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

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

The Multiplayer

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

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

The Missions

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

The Units

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

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

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

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

Campaign Structure

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

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

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

Summing Up

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

Where's the Forest?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The First D&D Realtime Strategy Experience!

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.