Or: how to fuck up, apologize, and fuck up again
All through my gaming life there was one name I trusted above all else when it came to hardware. Being a primarily PC gamer meant that I've had to buy and replace hardware a lot over the years, and it was important to have someone you could trust. For the longest time that name was Nvidia (EN-VID-e-yah). Nvidia were like Senheiser sound equipment, or Volkswagen cars, you just knew you could trust them to be reliable. But over the course of the last week or so now I'm not so sure.
In the world of PC graphics there are only two names: Nvidia and AMD. Both make great cards and the differences come down to things like power consumption, noise, and drivers. Nvidia has often had an edge over AMD for their partnerships and abilities to put out new drivers faster, whereas AMD cards are often a bit beefier and have better shelf lives and cost a little bit less. At the end of the day is usually comes down to petty squabbling, and both companies do just fine.
Back in September Nvidia released it's consumer level line of 4g video cards, the 900 series. The two cards in the series were the powerful 980 and the affordable 970, with a 2g card called the 960 just released a few days ago. The promise of these cards was to deliver next generation graphics at an affordable price, with the 970 looking particularly attractive at only $400, considerably cheaper then the next available high end cards.
Predictably, these sold like hotcakes, with the 970 being the best selling graphics card several months in a row. People were ecstatic at the idea of an affordable 4g card and the benchmarks from major publications all looked really good. It was a good card, AMD had nothing that could compete, and it far out-performed other 4gig cards on the market.
Then this week happened.
Here's the condescend, very nontechnical version of the situation:
The Nvidia 970 was advertised as having 4 gigabytes of video memory, the memory used to process graphics in games.
A memory diagnostic revealed that, in actuality, the card has difficulty rendering past 3.5 gig of memory usage, with the last .5gig being considerably slower.
Nvidia explains that the card's memory is split into two parts, a 3.5g pool and a .5g pool due to how the card itself was manufactured and cut.
Nvidia then explains that they knew about this from the start and that the 4g branding was a "miscommunication between the engineering team and the marketing team" whatever that means.
AMD responds with this ad:
http://i.imgur.com/tyO1lby.png
Disclaimer: I cannot confirm or deny this is an actual AMD ad, however it was tweeted by the head of AMD marketing.
AMD also starts offering massive discounts on their competing R290x 4g cards for people returning their 970s.
Nvidia promises to release a driver update that will change how the card allocates it's memory usage, meaning that the .5g would only be used in extreme circumstances.
Nvida backtracks on that promise. No driver is coming.
Memory usage of the 970 VS the 980. Note the sudden drop in usage for the 970.
Here's why I'm writing this, instead of my normal content: I have a 970, and more to the point, convinced two other people to buy 970's including someone who considered buying AMD's R290x card. Now I look like a bit of an idiot and I don't know if I can trust Nvidia ever again.
I'm not upset about the card. It performs far greater then my previous 650 2g card, and even though the infamous .5g is slow it's still considerably faster then any other card. The benchmarks that were released when the 970 came out are still correct, and it's a fairly beefy card. There are frame rate issues, but this only really concerns enthusiasts. The below video shows the 970 running against other 4gig cards and it keeps a consistent <30fps the whole time. Even on my own machine at home I'm able to run graphically intensive games like ARMA 3, Far Cry 4 or Metro: Last Light all at frame counts between 45-60fps.
I'm not upset at the card, it's a great card. What I'm upset about is the lying that Nvidia did, and the fact that the card I bought to last 5 years is now only going to last ~3 years at the most.
I'm upset that Nvidia keeps flip-flopping on the issue, refusing to give solid answers and not even promising a driver fix.
I'm upset that I saved a lot of money for this card and now they got my ass over a barrel because it still out-performs other cards in the same price range. The 980 card is, at the cheapest $600, and the AMD options are all between $600-$800 as well. It took me months to save the $450 for my 970 and there's nothing I can do to get rid of it, since it still performs better then the 4gig 770 card from Nvidia or the R290x card from AMD.
Lastly, I'm upset that I can never trust Nvida ever again. This is the worst part of all of this, and the fact that I now have to second guess every purchase I make is deeply upsetting. Let this be a lesson: never trust anyone, not even an old friend.
ARMA contains volumetric fog, dynamic weather, and some gorgeous vistas.
First Person shooters are, without a doubt, one of the most genres of games available. Regardless of the platform, regardless of the subject matter, FPS games are guaranteed to sell. Series like COD, Battlefield, and Halo regularly dominate the multiplayer scene with their fast paced gameplay and tight action. So is there room for an anti-FPS? A game the eschews all the genre norms and goes in the opposite direction? There seems to be, and ARMA 3 is living proof.
ARMA 3 isn't a good shooter, nor is it a functional RPG, racing sim, open-world adventure or "hiking sim". It's a combination of all of these and more into one functional, realistic, and occasionally hilarious package. It's the cure for the common COD, and the game Battlefield wishes it could be.
Long ARMA of the M72 LAW
The battlefield is often best observed from several kilometers away.
At it's core, ARMA is nothing more then a toybox of very advanced, very lethal toys. ARMA is the grown-up version of playing army men in the school-yard during recess. It's a completely open, largely unscripted experience that just lets you do whatever you want with the tools provided. Sure, there is a straight-faced military sim here, one that demands adherence to realism, but all that sort of flied out the window when you deal with a sniper by blowing his entire building sky high, or create a giant heart out of flaming car and tank wrecks.
The base of ARMA is, like I said, a military sim, and mechanically it sticks to that with a death grip. This is a military simulation, not a FPS game. Hell, even calling ARMA a "game" seems like it undersells the serious nature of it. The realism in ARMA is absolutely staggering, with things like realistic ballistics, fifteen different movement stances, or it's intricately detailed map of the Greek islands of Altis (Lemnos) and Stratis. It goes deeper then that, down to the actual basics of gameplay, with things like item weight affecting your movement speed, which also makes you tired, which makes aiming harder. If it seems like it would factor into real life, then ARMA 3 probably has it somehow.
It does still play like a shooter, at least that's the closest approximation of what ARMA feels like. You'll still move around, aim your weapon, and pull the trigger. That's the familiar, sure. Where it starts to feel different is how you move around, how you aim your weapon, and how you pull the trigger. Everything is realistic to a fault, and it's easy to get frustrated as the game tries to adjust to being a game and being a simulation at the same time. It's hard to explain in words, but play ARMA 3, then play any other shooter and you'll understand immediately. This is not a game for shooter fans, and liking ARMA means dealing with it's many flaws.
Danger Close
ARMA 3 isn't free of some...weirdness.
Chief among these flaws, at least for me, has always been how ARMA 3 handles. The controls aren't bad, as much as they're convoluted. But everything just feels...sluggish. A lot of that has to do with two things happening at the same time:
1) The adherence to realism, meaning that walking around with 75kg of equipment will make you move slow; and
2) The game rendering your character in 3rd person, even in 1st person.
You're not just a floating head with a gun in ARMA, you're an actual character, digital flesh and all. That means you can, and likely will, trip over yourself. The simple act of moving through a door can sometimes prove challenging, and the lack of a jump command can mean that sometimes you'll get stuck in the scenery with no way out. In fact, it's really easy to absolutely brake ARMA, simply by moving around the terrain. It doesn't really know how to handle vertical movement, so the smallest drop can result in a broken leg, and falling off a building can cause you to bounce off the ground like nothing happened.
Weirdness indeed...
Like so many other simulations, ARMA 3 also tends to forgo common "fun" elements for realism sake. Death comes swiftly in ARMA, and you'll rarely know from where or why. Being a realistic game, your character can only take, at most, a couple of shots before going down, and the densely packed terrain means you'll have issues seeing your target. There's a learning curve in ARMA steeper then most other games, and it's easy to get frustrated with it after the twentieth time dying from some unknown cause.
ARMA isn't a forgiving game on your computer either. This game is a beast to run, and if you want to keep up you'll probably have to pony up for a half decent rig. My machine is no slouch, especially after my recent purchase of a high end graphics card, and I still have problems running it occasionally. ARMA is a game you can benchmark with, and it'll make your system sweat.
"Think you can hit that?" "Let's find out" BOOM
ARMA 3 has so many different ways to position your character you're head will spin.
Contrary to everything though, ARMA is still a game that you can have fun with. There's a singleplayer campaign that'll teach you the basics, and it offers enough enjoyable moments to stay fun throughout. But the real meat of ARMA is in it's modding and multiplayer suites. This is where ARMA really shines and where you'll likely find the most enjoyment.
Let's start with the modding scene. Where other games seem to be moving away from modding, or actively discouraging it, ARMA was built to be modified. It comes loaded with an editor that's both incredibly complicated and yet simple to use. With no training at all any player can easily construct simple firefights and rudimentary missions. Spend some time with it and you can build entire campaigns, or new multiplayer modes. Best of all these can be shared on Steam workshop for others. The main campaign may only last a few hours, but there are hundreds upon hundreds of downloadable missions available through the Workshop, ranging from co-op missions, a randomized campaign for constant replayability, and so many more there simply isn't time.
Multiplayer though, that's ARMA's true strength. ARMA's multiplayer offers so many different ways to play that there's bound to be something you'll like. Enjoy classic deathmatches or point-capture missions? That's here. What emergent gameplay with dynamic events? Oh yeah. Want Player-VS-AI action? yup. There's even a mode called Zeus, where one player becomes a god and can affect the game, during gameplay allowing for truly bizarre moments of unscripted madness.
The world is huge, and filled with places to visit...
That's just what's built into the game. Like it's predecessors, some of ARMA's most popular game modes are ones created by it's community. A particular favorite of mine is the Wasteland mod, splitting players into three warring factions that kill each other while scavenging for survival. This brings me to one of my favorite stories from ARMA. Me and my friend were driving around, minding our own business when we were accosted by a helicopter gunship. We managed to evade the gunship and, in a stroke of luck, we found a ground-to-air rocket launcher. We tracked the helicopter until we were in range, locked on, and took the shot. The gunship went down like stone as we laughed our asses off at our accomplishment. These types of unscripted dynamic events are what ARMA was made for.
The most fun you'll ever have with an M16
To bad it's ultimately empty.
ARMA 3 is still a hard game to actually recommend to people. On the one hand it's an incredibly fun experience, especially online with other people. On the other hand, it's a difficult to use and psychotically unfriendly game to actually play. It's better then it's predecessor for sure, and it's much more stable to boot. Bohemia are also very involved, and their roadmap for ARMA's development in the next year or so is exciting to say the least.
ARMA 3 is a game worth trying if you're tired of common shooters. It's a game worth trying if you're looking for something the feels familiar, but offers so much more. It's a game worth trying if you want to see just what that fancy new graphics card can do. Lastly, it's a game worth trying if you've ever wanted to blow up a helicopter but can't afford the rocket laucher/helicopter/ federal prison sentence. ARMA 3 is a giant toybox, filled with fun, but it's covered in jagged edges and demands you earn your fun.
I'm cowering in the shadows of a stock yard. My mission is to get past a gate blocking my way through. I can see at least four different ways to get past this gate, but all of them some acrobatics, or at least the ability to jump. Were this Dishonored, or Thief 2 I'd already be past the gate and probably half-way through the warehouse that lies beyond by now. But in those games I can jump. And here?
I can't...fucking...jump.
Here's the thing about this blog. When I talk about a game I usually play it for a good long time. I want to get a full sense of the game, so, unless the game is exceedingly short or front-loaded with all of it's features, I try to put at least several hours into it. With Thief14 I quit after just two hours. I could't take it anymore. This is such a generic, bland, uninspired, un-fun, creatively bankrupt, IP-raping, classic basterdizing shitstain of a game that I just could not force myself to play one more minute of it.
Pumping Blood into a Corpse
Doing a reboot of an old IP is always a gamble, and despite recent success in the forms of Wolfenstien: New Order and Tomb Raider 2014, most reboots are doomed from the get-go. The fact is, the industry is sick, and often the people deciding to reboot a franchise have little-to-no idea what made the originals great. Worse, they attempt to just BE the original, and fail miserably because we already have the originals and wanted to see the series go in a different direction.
Let's look at my two examples, and why these are great reboots. Both of them recognize what was great about their original games, and decided to apply that to a new skin. With Wolfenstien, they made it a sort of stealth shooter, because in essence that's what the original game is. You are escaping from a dangerous situation with limited resources and must fight your way out. The original Wolfenstien couldn't handle stealth, but that was 1992, and this was 2014. Tomb Raider decided the weakest thing about the series was Lara Croft, so it decided to keep the gameplay and rebuild her, somewhat literally. A reboot shouldn't just be the original game, it should use the ideas of the game and apply them to a new game.
Thief14 doesn't do any of that. Sure, there's still sneaking and stealing, but that's about it. Everything is different here, and it's all pretty damn terrible. Be forwarned as I go through the various issues with this travesty, I'll be referencing Dishonered and Thief 2 a lot. In fact, here's a short list of better stealth games you can play to feel sneaky:
Dishonored
Thief 1&2
Thief 3
Hitman Blood Money
Splinter Cell Chaos Theory
Metal Gear Solid 3,4,and 5
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Batman Arkham series
The Last of Us
Far Cry 3&4
All of these games handle stealth and action better then Thief14 does. Let's break this badness down.
Like a Dump in the Night
Ok, fine, let's start with what Theif14 doesn't completely fuck up. Graphically it looks decent. There's an interesting pseudo-steam punk-but-not-really look going on that at least tries to ape the feel of the original games. Electricity is commonplace, even despite the wooden medieval exterior of the world and it blends together in an interesting fashion. The lighting engine is top notch, which is for the best considering your need to see what is and isn't in the shadows. Textures are, for the most part, pretty decent. There's a pervasive brown, grey and black, but the original games had that too, so it's not completely Theif14's fault.
With that out of the way, let's go through the bad. First up: the story. It's terrible. The original games only had the loosest of stories to tie them together. The plot was only there to give you a reason to sneak and steal stuff, and wasn't really the main draw of the game. Here though, the experience is entirely story driven, to bad the story is shit.
As always you play as Garret, a master thief who often gets caught up in conflicts much bigger then him. In the first games Garret was an uncaring misanthrope who actively avoided people at all cost, and scoffed at the squabbling of the various factions he associated with. Even Thief 3 still had him as an angry loner, and it fit him well. Here's he's portrayed as some sort of noble thief, a regular Robin Hood who bows to the beggar queen and has friends. The story concerns Garret's protege/girlfriend getting killed and his search for revenge, or something. It's annoying, and not helped by Garret's new voice actor that doesn't have any of the gravely charm of the old Garret.
That brings me to the matter of the sound mixing. It's also terrible. It's rare that I talk about audio design in a game, because most AAA games manage to at least get that right. Here though, the sound design is horrible. The music is way to loud in cutscenes, and it's impossible to hear anything. Voice acting is acceptable, especially given how much there is, but there only seems to be a handful of VO actors through the entire game, and enemy barks repeat infinitely. The script really doesn't help with some particularly cringe-worthy moments.
The list goes on...
As a master thief, you're main objective is to sneak around and steal stuff. In the past this meant approaching a situation, figuring out the best way forward, executing your plan, and adapting as the need arises. This time around it's slamming the F-key until you spot the obvious path you're supposed to go, then slamming space when you're in the right spot and watching as super fucking long animations play out, occasionally with unnecessary QTE's thrown in for spite. There's very little exploration, and when there is it rarely pays off. Every mission only has one, maybe two ways to move through it, and they're never satisfying.
I keep harping on how this isn't Thief 2, so ok, let's judge it on it's own merits. It's still not a great stealth game. We see the return of the infamous stealth gem from the original games, an indicator that you either are or are not in the shadows. This works, but feels antiquated, and pulls you out of the immersion. Dishonored handled this better by darkening the screen's edges so you knew you were hard to see as you leaned around corners. Oh yeah, Thief14 fucks up leaning too, almost forgot. Unlike EVERY OTHER FUCKING STEALTH GAME you can't just lean out, you have to awkwardly attach yourself to the corner THEN execute a lean. Why? Why can't I just lean normally?
Enemy AI is...workable. They see you when your exposed, and don't see you when your in the shadows. Actually, the AI is one of the better parts of Thief14, since unlike the original, they can actually see you when you're right in front of them, regardless of light levels. Fine, great, you got one thing right. Never mind the fact that stealth-game AI is one of the easiest to program, since really all it is is checking whether they see you or not, and if they do then they need to attack you. Patrols are predictable, and, while you can hide bodies, it's unnecessary most of the time since guards rarely share paths.
Combat is a joke, which almost seems intentional as a way to encourage stealth. But most stealth games at least make combat an option as a "just-in-case". With Thief 2 your sword was formidable and you could hold your own at least somewhat in a fight. With Dishonored combat was so frantic and exciting that many players forgot about stealth and just went around slashing people's heads off. Here, combat is awkwardly hitting the Q button to attack and dodging with timed V button presses.
Actually, that brings me to another point, the controls are awkward as shit. The mouse is completely under-utilized, save for looking around. The Q button is relegated for any combat actions, E is interaction, F is use Focus which allows Garret to see in the dark and spot things, and space is "jump" and (I'm being serious here) "swoop". Swoop is Thief14's shitty answer to Dishonored's Blink ability, and the hilarious attempt to speed up gameplay. It allows you to whoosh around the level like some sort of stealth based Sonic the Hedgehog.
Developmental trouble
Last thing I'll harp on here is how bizarrely put together Thief14 is. I was a big fan of the first two games, and when I heard they announced a new Thief game I was rather excited. To say that Thief's development path is messy is an understatement. It was initially announced in 2009 under the normal, not shitty title of Thief 4, later Thi4f for some fucking reason. It promised to be a return to style for the serious, going back to the first person stealth non-action of the originals and straying away from whatever Thief 3 is. Then, almost fittingly, silence.
Finally, something emerged several years later, and what it was looked terrible. It was a weird, scripted E3 walkthrough that ended with Garret escaping from a burning building in a QuickTimeEvent laden action sequence. QTE's? Burning Building? Action Sequence? These aren't really the hallmarks of a Thief game. Apparently the game's development was so riddled with office-politics that, according to one source close to the game:
"The current version of Thief barely resembles the initial concept"
Much as it pains me to do so, Polygon has done a good job of some of the back-room going-ons of this game.
What's immediately evident is that this version of Thief14, shat out onto us, the public, is a scrambled mess of half-finished ideas cobbled together. Notably, the end of the first real mission has you escaping through a back alley. There's the option to stealth this, in theory, but there are so many guards lounging around, and so few shadows to hide in, that it's pretty obvious it was meant to be an action scene.
The previously mentioned QTE's were removed late in development, replaced apparently by horribly animated cutscenes and endlessly repeating short scenes where Garret awkwardly stands still until you hit the correct button. The whole game stinks of half-baked ideas that were shoved out the door to try and recoup some of it's inevitable loss.
Out like a Light
I hope it's become evident how much I hated Thief14. It's not just that it's a bland, uninspired game, that's pretty crappy. But there are a dime-a-dozen bland, uninspired games on Steam or XBLA every day. What really sets Thief14 apart is how little it cares for it's own source material. This is a game by committee, made for an audience that doesn't exist. This is a game made for the sole purpose of reminding people that the Thief franchise is still alive, not forgotten in the mists of time. That the once great king of stealth has fallen this low is truly horrifying.
Thief14 is a dumb game with no redeemable qualities. It's writing is shit, it's controls convoluted, it's audio mixing awful, and it's gameplay atrocious. Even though the stealth genre is often strained for good games, I still can't recommend this game. The original thief games are each $10 on GOG.com, and The Dark mod is a free Thief homage game made with the Doom3 engine. All of these are better choices then Thief14. Don't pick it up on sale, don't pick it up period.
Microsoft have recently teased that Rare Studios could be making a comeback in the new year. This is probably a good move for Microsoft, since the X1 has been selling like shit and they could use a win. What better way to do that then reviving a much beloved developer from our youth and having them take another crack at some of their old IP's? I'm skeptical, since reboots are always a gamble, but if the new Rare can muster some of the old Rare's magic, they might just have a chance.
Today I decided I was going to look back at my two favorite Rare games from their golden age, their N64 shooters. Rare created most of the best games on the N64, including the Banjo-Kazooie games (which I've unfortunately never played) Jet Force Gemini, Conker's Bad Fur Day, and of course Donkey Kong 64, but I've always loved their shooters the most.
Being born in the 90's meant that I grew up with Pierce Brosnan as my James Bond. Although his four movies are usually reviled as some of the worst, I still like them and how Brosnan portrayed Bond. He had this regal air of absolute cool, and never once wavered in the face of duty. Out of the four Brosnan movies, Goldeneye is probably best remembered, and that's not always because of the movie itself.
Goldeneye is the embodiment of what game development in the 90's was all about. reportedly, eight of the ten developers hadn't even worked on games before, and Rare's only previous experience was developing 2D side-scrollers for the SNES. Nintendo had landed the contract to make the tie-in game for Goldeneye and somehow the job went to Rare. Most of the game was just throwing things together to see if they worked, and when broken down it becomes apparent just how cobbled together the game really is.
Levels have a tendency to be scatter-brained, with random useless rooms and doors thrown in at random. The AI is dumb as shit and has the aim of a stormtrooper, and there's significant slowdown when to much stuff is on screen. But Goldeneye is a game that only sort of works because of it's flaws. The random levels means there's more places to hide from enemies. The crappy AI means that the rudimentary stealth system does actually work. It's all scatterbrained, but there's an undeniable charm about the whole production, like a middle school play that's so funny because of how crappy it is.
Then there's the multiplayer. Goldeneye is probably solely responsible for the entire concept of a console FPS being successful. Years before COD was even an idea, Goldeneye was selling out based on it's multiplayer suit. People loved it, and for good reason. There were great, well designed maps, a slew of weapons, and enough modifiers to make sure that no two games were exactly alike. It's antiquated by today's standards, but most of modern multiplayer owes a lot to Goldeneye.
If nothing else, Goldeneye is a reminder that, when handled properly, you can make a great game out of a movie licence. It's still fairly enjoyable by today's standards, with multiple difficulty settings for each level and challenge modes too. Grab some friends, find a CRT TV, and get lost in the good ol' days.
How fitting is it that "Perfect" is right there in the title of the game? Perfect Dark is just that, the perfect N64 game. Everything about it is great, and it stands out as one of the console's best games, impressive since this is the console that gave use Mario 64 and Zelda: Ocarina of Time among others.
Image from the Xbox360 HD re-release. And my dreams.
From a gameplay standpoint, there's not a whole lot different between Perfect Dark and Goldeneye. Their both FPS games with rudimentary stealth, they both have expansive multiplayer suits, and they both prominently feature British people shooting guns. Where Perfect Dark set's itself apart is it's polish. This is a finely tuned game, refined to perfection and pushing the N64 to it's absolute limits.
Whereas Goldeneye was sort of cobbled together, Perfect Dark is a thoughtfully laid out and constructed game. The levels are seamless and have a flow to them that helps to push along the action. There's voice acting this time, and an actual story that moves you from level to level with actual purpose. Instead of just lowering your weapons off screen, each gun now has it's own unique reload animation, and most of them have multiple functions. Best of all it the ability to bring up an inventory menu, meaning you don't have to cycle through twenty items to get back to your assault rifle. It's so much better then Goldeneye in every way that playing Goldeneye after Perfect Dark proves difficult.
Perfect Dark is a shining example of console games, an absolutely enjoyable and well made game that never ceased to impress. It may not have aged well but it still remains one of my favorite shooters, even today.
Rare Sighting
So that's my take on my two favorite Rare games. After the N64, Rare were bought by Microsoft and, like a trained bear, made to do some horrible things. Every year it seems less and less likely that Rare will ever make a comeback, and it begs the question: would it still be the same? Regardless, I hold out hope that one day we'll see games as good as Rare one made. Until then, I'll keep my N64 running, and my cartridges dust free.
Guns are useful, but can summon a host of trouble.
Six guards. A and B patrolling the main room, C and D in the kitchen, E in the study and F in the bathroom. I've run this scenario about a dozen times already, and I've got everything mapped out in my head. I slam the door into B, slice up A and finish B off. Use B's shotgun to eliminate C and D, and when E comes to investigate I chuck the gun at his head and finish him off. F's the easy target, I rush in and slam his head into the toilet. From there I move upstairs and face my next challenge.
I take a deep breath, wait a beat, then execute and immediately fuck up. I mistime my swing and am met with a hail of gunfire. I respawn and try again.
Eventually I do it, I nail the perfect run. Everything goes perfectly and I escape unharmed. A man in an rooster mask asked me if I liked hurting people. In Hotline Miami, I really, really do.
The masks, each one holding a different way to kill.
It's difficult to quantify Hotline Miami. On paper it's a top down, twin stick shooter. But that places it in the same vein as games like Smash TV or Zombie Shooter, neither of which is anything like HM. Ok, so it's a fast-pasted 2D action stealth game, but that makes it sound like it's Monaco or Stealth Bastard which, again, it's nothing like. The fact is that Hotline Miami is only truly like one game, and that's Hotline Miami. It's a fast-paced, blood-soaked, neon nightmare, dredged up from the 80's and formed form a combination of cocain and dance-funk. And it's a hell of a good time.
The story is that you are a nameless hitman, given random missions by telephone, which you then carry out by adopting a persona through a rubber mask. Each mission sees you killing people in excruciating violent ways, systematically moving through the building till everyone is dead. After each mission you retire to grab a pizza, get a drink, or just rent a movie, all of which are provided by what appears to be the same guy, and it's always "on the house". Every once and a while you're treated to an interlude of three masked individuals yelling at you and questioning your humanity.
What's great about HM is how it manages to form a plot without actually telling a story. There's character development and even a twist, despite you never really know what's going on. This fits the game's frenetic, cocaine fueled pace perfectly, and it rewards multiple playthroughs if only to figure out what the hell is going on.
Play right and no one will be able to withstand your onslaught.
Gameplay in HM is fast, furious, and absolutely insane. It controls like a top-down twin-stick, similar to older GTA games or the aforementioned Smash TV. At your disposal are a variety of attacks. Your own fists are potent enough, but finishing off enemies often requires more time, so your best bet is to grab the nearest blunt object or sharp implementation and go to town. When you can, there's also guns, which can't be reloaded, but do allow for ranged take downs and can draw enemies in with loud gunfire. Everything can be thrown at enemies to knock them out which requires a brutal finishing move to finalize.
You'll spill blood by the buckets in HM, made all the more brutal by the animations. It's a pixelated game, and played top-down, but smashing in heads or squishing eyes out of their sockets is brutal as hell. You'll leave a trail of bodies in your wake, all of them a challenge.
HM is a difficult game, requiring precision and rewarding fast reflexes. You die instantly, be it a golf club to the face or a hail of gunfire. It's nearly impossible to finish a level on the first try, and restarts are quick and often. Like Dark Souls though, death becomes education, as you refine your strategy with each failure. You memorize patterns, figure out how to proceed, and learn how to adapt. The game requires recklessness, yet demands precision, and it forces you to think differently about every encounter.
Hotline Miami's madness extends to it's graphics. It could almost pass for a long-lost SNES game, and it's pixel animation is smooth and flawless. It's vibrant too, with tonnes of neon colors strewn about to create a facsimile of 1980's nightlife in Miami. Everything is well drawn and easy to pick out, even despite the myriad of things on-screen at once.
The real attraction to Hotline Miami might be it's soundtrack. This might be the best, most fitting soundtrack ever assembled in a game, and it fits every moment perfectly. The cool chill of Sun Araw's "Horse Steppin'" over the main menu, the intensity of MOON's "Hydrogen" and "Crystals" as you slice and slam your way through bad guys. The almost calming beat of Jasper Bryne's "Miami" in the quiet moments, and the tension and horror portrayed in the twisted guitar strains of CoConut's "Silver" as you converse with ethereal beings. Hotline Miami's soundtrack never once disappointing, and it remains one of my favorite soundtracks ever released.
Hotline Miami is a quick breath, a wave of blood soaked neon madness that defies explanation. It's a moment away from the norm, a short burst of crazy-awesome injected straight into your eyeballs. It's a shot of cocaine, with a vodka chaser and quaaludes in morning. Most of all it's a game that deserves to be played and experienced, since there's nothing else quite like it.
Fights will often see you outnumbered, and you'll need to think fast to stay alive.
It's raining, men are yelling, some screaming, and my horse has just died from an arrow to the head. I'm thrown forward as my mighty beast slides into the earth. I recover just in time to spin around and parry the axe being swung at my head. I return in kind and soon find myself covered in bandit blood. Eventually my small party overcomes the bandit scum, and as the sun breaks through the clouds we let out our collective victory howls.
This is Mount and Blade: Warband, an ugly as sin and mostly broken game that encourages you to create your own stories. It's less RPG then it is a simulation of a suck-ass life style, but when your charging the enemy lines with a full force of armored knights it's easy to forget the many faults of this game and just get lost in the moment.
Much of the game will be spent on the map screen, planning and moving around.
As the name suggests, Mount and Blade is a medieval combat simulation RPG. The game is actually split into two distinct parts: a world map where you move from place to place interacting with the world, and the 3D battles. It's this second section of the game that gets most of the attention, despite actually being the minority of gameplay, and it's here that M&B's best moments are forged.
Combat is the main focus of M&B, and it's for a good reason. Unlike, say Skyrim, or even Dark Souls, combat in M&B is all very realistically modeled, and requires a lot of skill. You'll need to properly position yourself and gauge the distance between yourself and your target to properly hit. That's just for landing a blow, in order to do damage you need to take into account where you're positioned, how fast your going, your skill with a weapon, and what armor the enemy is wearing. Combat is visceral and intense, and one-on-one duels to the death can be heart-pounding as you block, parry, and try to break the enemy defense.
That's the blade, let's look at the mount. M&B prides itself on it's mounted combat. This being the middle ages most open field combat involves horseback, and riding through a squad of enemy troops, cutting them down from your mighty steed is incredibly fun. Watch out for spears though, as being tossed back down to earth can often spell your immediate failure. Navigating around the battlefield, systematically taking enemies down with mighty swings of your weapon is a joy I will never get tired of.
Sieges are bloody and brutal, and will often cost you much for victory.
It's a damn good thing M&B: Warband is fun to play, since lord knows it's not pretty. There's no getting around this, it's an ugly looking game, with very little to be positive about. The terrains are well mapped I guess, but everything else looks bad. Character models are bland and expressionless, textures are low-res and repeated all over the place, and animations are stiff and unnatural. It doesn't even look good from a distance, despite how awesome full scale battles can seem. I guess on the upside, it runs on almost any computer available, but this isn't a game worth showing off.
On the audio side of things it's a little more positive. Battles are punctuated by screams and shouts, and the constant clang and smash of weapons, shields and armor mix well with the pounding of hooves. There's almost no voice acting, save for grunts and the occasional one-liners from bandits, which is for the best considering character mouths can't move. The score is a mixture of classic medieval fares, with whimsical tunes for towns, and bombastic battle songs for the heat of conflict. None of it is particularly terrible, although I find myself playing my own music instead of the games.
The Napoleonic Wars DLC takes Warband in a new and different direction.
Warband's particular contribution to the Mount and Blade series is it's inclusion of multiplayer. While the packaged multiplayer suite is functional, it's made even better by the collection of mods and expansion packs that have been released. Specifically is the Napoleon expansion, which overhauls Warband and turns it into a simulation of Napoleonic warfare, complete with musket formations, artillery, destructible terrain, and more. It's a great time, especially on servers with up to 200 players, and a truly intense experience.
Mount and Blade Warband isn't an outstanding game. Like I said, it's ugly and has a rollercoaster of a learning curve. What it is, though, is an interesting and unique idea and an experience like no other. If you've ever wanted to be a knight, merchant lord, or a cunning mercenary then Mount and Blade Warband is definitely worth a look.
The map is staggering, and completely open to explore.
The simulation genre is mostly a joke nowadays. A flood of sub-par, and bizarrelynichesimulationgames on steam, and the art of making fun of these games on Twitch have created this sort of black hole of simulators. Everyone is jumping on the shitty sim train like it was Train Sim 2015 (complete with obnoxious trailer). Steam's already questionable library is now overflowing with simulation games, with new one coming out seemingly every other day.
But lo, in that dark and murky sea of shit there are a few games that transcend the jokes, and rise above to become actually really fun. The aforementioned Train Sim, despite how it sounds, is definitely one, with a metric tonne of details and free yearly upgrades. There is one sim that goes even further beyond, one game that, despite it's incredibly mundane exterior, is a game that's actually worth playing. That game (as if the fucking title of this article didn't give it away) is Euro Truck Sim 2.
Get enough money and you can start your own trucking company, complete with AI drivers.
Just like it's title implies, Euro Truck sim is a simulation of driving a truck across Europe. That's it. There's no deeper plot, there's no cleaver jokes, just driving trucks across Europe. If you're looking for explosive action, moment-to-moment non-stop thrills, and exciting set-piece moments you have come to the wrong truck yard my friend. The only things you'll find in Euro truck are:
* Proper adherence to traffic laws.
* Signaling before turning.
* Pumping gas.
* Screaming at irresponsible drivers.
* Waiting at stop lights.
And a whole lot more!
Despite this ETS2 holds a special place in my games library. Its on the same level as games like The Sims, Harvest Moon, or Animal Crossing, for games to relax to. Seriously. I know people generally hate dealing with traffic, but there's an odd catharsis in ETS2 that can't be explained.
There's a multiplayer mod, for some online trucking action.
What really helps with ETS2 is how great the game looks. It's certainly no ARMA 3 or GTA V, but it does a damn respectable job of creating the world, with different countries and regions all looking visually distinct. You'll almost want to slow down when you're driving, just so you can check out the scenery. There are tonnes of details too, with trucks and cars all looking incredibly realistic. It's unfortunate that cities are so small, and all of them look the same, but this works well from a gameplay point of view, and it's easy to overlook.
That's the important thing about ETS2, is that it's all about the gameplay. This isn't really a hard-core simulator, like AC-10 Warthog or Steel Battalion. Rather ETS2's biggest strength is it's comfort factor. It's a game that's just fun to unwind with. It's certainly best played with anything but a KB&M, but it's cool if you don't have one. There's really no music in game, but you can add your own, or use one of the dozens of streaming radio stations (with the option to add your own too). This is the perfect game to play while listening to a favorite podcast a good audio-book, or some chill ass tunes.
Euro Truck Sim doesn't work for everybody, but it's totally cool with that. It's not a game that demands you pay attention to it, rather it just wants you to have a good time. ETS2 is that friend you have that loves hanging out, but when you got stuff going on he all like "s'cool man, we'll catch up later". Most of all, it's just a slow ride, and a nice change of pace from the hectic shooters and long winded RPGs of the "normal" gaming market.
It's midday on the plains of an unnamed central African country. I'm on a hill overlooking a small guard post. I spot my objective, a box of medical supplies that I need to keep me alive. I check my equipment:
My trust .45 hangun, two mags of ammo.
My 1903 Springfield rifle, half rusted, about 12 rounds left.
My RPG7, one rocket.
I look at the map one more time and try a headcount of the mercenaries in the camp. I count three, but know from experience there's likely six or seven. I take a breath, sight down my first target, and open fire.
Moments later I emerge, bruised, bloody, but victorious. My rifle broke after a few shots, so I had to resort to my handgun. I snagged an AK47 off one unfortunate soul and had just enough ammo to put down the last remaining merc. I got winged more then a few times, and once had to stop to yank a stray bullet out of my leg with my pliers. There is no time for pain here.
I grab the meds from the cabinet, inject myself with some life saving drugs, and pull out my map. My objective is still several kilometers away, and I'll be doing this dance at least two more times before my mission is through.
Rather than a static mini-map, you'll need to actually pull out a map to navigate around.
I've already spoken about the Far Cry series as a whole before, but the second game deserves particular attention. It's an odd game, flying in the face of other shooters and it's own offspring. It's a game that's worth examining and talking about, even seven years after it's release.
The setup for FC2's story is simple: you are a mercenary hired to enter a central African nation and assassinate an arms dealer known as The Jackal. He's a known sociopath that's been selling guns dirt cheap to the two major factions. You enter the country, faint, and are awoken by the Jackal lecturing you on how much you suck and how he can't be killed. Civil war erupts and, seeing as you have no other option, you decide to lend your services to the factions in exchange for information on Jackal's whereabouts.
What follows is a series of almost completely unconnected fetch or assassinate missions that see you trekking back and forth through the country, engaging in brief but violent gunfights with the local mercenary population. You'll take down targets, earn diamonds, buy equipment, rinse and repeat for ~15-20 hours.
Always make sure you have a friend on hand to save you in a firefight.
By today's standards, FC2 is somewhat antiquated. While not technically true, FC2 is widely considered the first open-world shooter, and as such it had quite a few stumbles. Most notoriously is the respawning enemy checkpoints, like the one mentioned at the beginning of this article. These are littered throughout the world, often at road intersections or strategic hard-points, and most of the time they can't be easily avoided. This might not be an issue, since most checkpoints have less then ten enemies and always contain useful supplies, but they respawn so fast that it feels like you never make any difference. Occasionally you'll clear a checkpoint, finish a mission, and comeback to see the checkpoint manned again, despite the corpses of it's former inhabitants still lying around.
The other big complaint is Malaria. You start the game with it and it comes back several times. It's a shitty disease, sure, but here it's an incredible annoyance. When it flairs up you won't be able to see very well, you can't jump or sprint, and you'll need to pop some pills. That means taking your finger off the trigger and staying exposed for a few seconds. Worse is that you only get pills a few at a time, and when you run out you'll need to finish a mission to get some more. It can't be cured, and actually gets worse as the game wears on, making it a constant annoyance.
Let's talk about the guns too. Like I mentioned in my story, my sniper rifle broke after use, forcing me to resort to my side arm. That's not an uncommon occurrence. The weapons of Africa are terrible, jamming all the time and occasionally just flat-out breaking. Weapons bought from the friendly arms dealer are ok for a while, but will slowly degrade. Weapons picked up out in the field, however, start shitty and only go downhill from there. You'll find yourself aiming at an enemy's head, only to pull the trigger and have nothing happen.
Slapping You Around.
Here's the thing about all of this, is that they're there to reinforce the story and atmosphere. Africa is a shitty place at the best of times, but war-torn Africa is a whole new level of hell that's impossible to quantify. That's what FC2 is trying to convey to you, that life is pain, everything is terrible, and people suck. FC2 doesn't have a great story, but it does have a great way of telling that story.
Life is brutal short, and this is constantly shoved at you time and time again. There aren't any doctors in Africa, so you'll find yourself improvising, yanking bullets out with pliers, twigs, or even your teeth. If you have the stomach, here's all of the possible healing animations:
If you wince in pain from that, don't worry, that's normal. That's how your supposed to feel. You leave a trail of bodies in your wake, but every fight take a small piece of you with it. Life is pain.
Here's most of the guns of FC2 jamming. Try watching and not getting annoyed:
Infuriating isn't it? In that video it doesn't show any firefights, but imagine that happening with bullets flying past your head. That's life in Africa. Dirty, grime, and dust getting into your guns and turning even the most rugged of weapons into scrap heaps. Everything is terrible.
There's a complete sense of moral greynes pervasive throughout FC2. No one is a hero here, not even your player character. At the start of the game you get to choose from a small roster, it's a completely arbitrary choice with no effect on the gameplay. But none of your choices are particularly good, ranging from professional mercenaries, to AWOL soldiers, to smugglers and known criminals. This extends to the cast of characters you meet, from the selection of buddies that'll give you side quests and save your life in combat, to the various faction representatives that give you missions. People suck.
Graphically, FC2 doesn't quiet hold up. When it came out in 2008 it was at the top of it's game, especially the PC version. In the face of more modern shooters like Metro Last Light, ARMA3 or even COD: AW it just looks dated and muddy. It's not a bad looking game, and it certainly has a great atmosphere to it, but it's a relic by today's standards and just can't hold a candle any more.
Where it fails graphically, it makes up with innovation. There are a staggering amount of first person animations in FC2, as evidenced in the videos above. Everything you do in FC2 feels real, from reloading and interacting with your weapons, to just opening a door or getting into a vehicle. This really helps to sell the immersion.
Even more innovative is they way FC2 handles it's world. There are things FC2 does that I have yet to see any other shooter do as well. Take, for instance, the time of day. Most games have it so that stealth is easier at night since you have the cover of darkness. In FC2 the AI's awareness changes based on the time, so during high noon they can see for a mile, but are usually distracted grabbing a drink or sitting in the shade. At night, they can't see anything, but because of this they're more alert and respond quicker to loud noises. Planning an assault also means picking the time of day, what weapons to bring, and how you're going to approach the situation.
The biggest selling feature of FC2's world is it's fire propagation system. Africa is a dry place, and as such fires can rage uncontrollably, burning down entire fields in the blink of an eye. Set fire to an enemy position to flush them out, or cajole them into a killing field. It's unfortunate that the fires end at arbitrary lenghts, mostly to stop you from burning down the country with one Molotov, but it's fun to play around with regardless.
Far Cry 2 isn't a game for everyone,and certainly not for fans of it's own sequels. It's a hard, ruthless game that challenges you and never plays fair. I hesitate to call it the shooter equivalent to Dark Souls, but there's no denying the difficulty of this game. It's a shooter for people who are tired of being the supersoldier, tired of instantly winning and being told "good job". It's the anti-shooter, making you hurt for your prize and spitting on you when you win. It's an odd relic of the past, and a truly one of a kind experience.
We're now one whole week into 2015, and I've a good portion of time thinking about what I want to do with this blog and where I want to take it in 2015. I realize it all seems fruitless, given that my average readership is between 10-20 views per post, but here's the thing: I don't write this blog for other people. This entire thing is just an echo chamber for my thoughts that I share with you. To all of my readers, I really do appreciate you, and we're nearing the big 1k page views more and more every day. I love talking about games, and the occasional movie or weird shit I run across online, and writing this blog has been a great exercise for me. Who knows, maybe one day it'll turn into something, but for now I'm just going to keep on keeping on.
That said, I'm going to take a moment to look at what I have planned for the future of LookingAtAThingInABlog and what I'd like to start doing in the new year.
No more film reviews
Sort of. Reading back some of my reviews that I did in 2014 I've come to the conclusion that I'm just not very good at it. I mentioned this in my review of Space Jam. I find I have a lot of trouble discussing why I like movies that I like, and I'm never really able to do them the justice they deserve.
The caveat here is that I'm going to keep reviewing bad movies, or movies that I don't really like all that much. Here I can have some fun with it, and it's a lot easier to discuss why I dislike something then it is to talk about why I liked it. Speaking of video reviews...
Reviews of videos
No, I'm not going to start reviewing random Youtube videos, that'd be weird. What I do want to start doing is looking back at some of the weird or obscure TV series of days past and discussing them. I have a strange backlog of old kid's shows and I love to start looking at them here. Shows like the various incarnations of Mario, The Legend of Zelda, or the Weird Al Show, weird shit from a time long gone.
Continuing with the theme of videos...
Video content
I'm probably not going to start doing complete video reviews, I just don't have a setup for that sort of thing right now. What I do have is video recording software, an editing suite, and a new graphics card that can actually render video without killing itself. I sort of teased this in my look at DayZ with video I captured during a session. Expect more stuff like that as I try to move more towards original content.
Non-review articles
I have several ideas for series that I'd like to try and things I'd like to write about. Here's the deal: writing opinions on games every day is actually difficult sometimes. I tend to run out of games to talk about, since I try to only discuss games I'm actively playing right now. Expect to see some new series popping up in the near future.
A Brave New World
Like I said, this blog is just an echo chamber of my random thoughts and opinions. I'm very grateful for the readers I do have and I look forward to what 2015 will bring. I love writing this blog, and I'm really excited to try out some new things with it. Stay tuned 2015, it's going to be a good year.
-10.jpg)
