So yet another post referring to PAYDAY 2 but this time it's totally the same. I just undid all of the "fixes" that were supposedly helping the game to run and it ran fine for a couple of hours. I'm convinced that not even the people making computers and software understand the problems, it's just some cult of "insider knowledge" and they're all huddling in candle pentagrams and chanting the OS system code out loud.
I did also forget to mention in my attempt to be helpful that though you can redistribute your points in each skill tree whenever you want, you don't get all of your money back, so experimentation can cost you. Or did I actually mention that?
And wow there are some weird ads showing up on this thing. I suppose I might have to do some kind of moderation for it to seem more in line with the theme (if any) of my blog. Have I mentioned that "blog" isn't even a word and I hate it along with many other things so it kind of gets lost in there with the rest I don't have time to focus on; and even the spell-checker doesn't like it.
Thursday 31 October 2013
Wednesday 30 October 2013
Helping somewhat
With a thought to all the recent youtube videos I've watched recently that were about build ideas for PAYDAY 2, here is some of my own advice:
First of all, be sure you want to play it.
Second, if like me you encounter the random crashes and have followed all the forum listed advice for preventing it and find that they still occur, try this: lower your graphics settings. This seems to have helped me (at least so far) and it was much the same issue with Marvel Heroes, for some reason most, if not all of the crashes for PAYDAY 2 are C++ errors, and lowering the graphics settings made a difference. Other than making the textures look all blurry and ugly.
Third, unlike most of the videos I've watched, I've only played it after they altered the in-game descriptions of skills and weapons. Which means as far as build concerns go, you can get a much better idea of what a skill will do for well before you are even able to purchase it. While I wouldn't discourage experimentation such as I did, if you don't plan to play this obsessively for a few weeks you won't really have enough money to experiment with how different skills work together. So checking beforehand means you can plan around your play style in advance.
Third part 2: weapons are a little more difficult to plan around because while you can see the base weapon stats in the shop, you don't get any idea of what kind or how many mods can be applied to it, meaning that you can't really pick the most appropriate weapon ahead of time and save up for it. The most obvious clues you get are the stats such as "concealment" and "damage" as they will give you some idea of which build style they will fit with most. High concealment suggests they're good for a stealth/Ghost build (and the Ghost skill tree has skills affecting SMG so they're an immediate association). High damage weapons will most likely have a very poor concealment rating, meaning they are for going LOUD!
Third part 3: the above information about guns doesn't quite cover secondary weapons so much as primaries. All SMG are secondaries, and pistols can be quite powerful with a fairly good concealment rating. Though as above you can't get a great idea of what kind of mods can be applied. There are several basic types of mods though. There's a bunch of suppressors that have varying degrees of damage reduction mitigated by improved concealment or stability. Barrel extensions that improve damage at the cost of concealment. Extended magazines that reduce concealment. Generally a mod will either increase combat effectiveness or increase concealment, usually at the expense of the other.
Fourth and probably final: don't go nuts. Sure, there's no real consequence for failure, it is after all, a game. But you will avoid the ire of fellow players if you don't act like a retard. When you start out, don't go assuming that you can undertake a job on overkill difficulty and not die repeatedly and irritate your fellow gamers to no end. You'll find yourself kicked out of many lobbies if you try to reach beyond your grasp. Unless of course you already know someone who has played the game a while and is willing to help you level up faster by carrying you through harder missions. But stay away from "Pro" jobs while you're still a noob.
That is probably it for now. I'll likely only be playing PAYDAY 2 for a little while longer, then I guess I'm back to Marvel Heroes unless I find something else to play. I'm tempted to add an "advice" label but I'm not sure how many times I'd be using it. Maybe a future advice thingy for Marvel Heroes might be in order, they've apparently got a fair amount of marketing geared up for the release of the new Thor movie.
First of all, be sure you want to play it.
Second, if like me you encounter the random crashes and have followed all the forum listed advice for preventing it and find that they still occur, try this: lower your graphics settings. This seems to have helped me (at least so far) and it was much the same issue with Marvel Heroes, for some reason most, if not all of the crashes for PAYDAY 2 are C++ errors, and lowering the graphics settings made a difference. Other than making the textures look all blurry and ugly.
Third, unlike most of the videos I've watched, I've only played it after they altered the in-game descriptions of skills and weapons. Which means as far as build concerns go, you can get a much better idea of what a skill will do for well before you are even able to purchase it. While I wouldn't discourage experimentation such as I did, if you don't plan to play this obsessively for a few weeks you won't really have enough money to experiment with how different skills work together. So checking beforehand means you can plan around your play style in advance.
Third part 2: weapons are a little more difficult to plan around because while you can see the base weapon stats in the shop, you don't get any idea of what kind or how many mods can be applied to it, meaning that you can't really pick the most appropriate weapon ahead of time and save up for it. The most obvious clues you get are the stats such as "concealment" and "damage" as they will give you some idea of which build style they will fit with most. High concealment suggests they're good for a stealth/Ghost build (and the Ghost skill tree has skills affecting SMG so they're an immediate association). High damage weapons will most likely have a very poor concealment rating, meaning they are for going LOUD!
Third part 3: the above information about guns doesn't quite cover secondary weapons so much as primaries. All SMG are secondaries, and pistols can be quite powerful with a fairly good concealment rating. Though as above you can't get a great idea of what kind of mods can be applied. There are several basic types of mods though. There's a bunch of suppressors that have varying degrees of damage reduction mitigated by improved concealment or stability. Barrel extensions that improve damage at the cost of concealment. Extended magazines that reduce concealment. Generally a mod will either increase combat effectiveness or increase concealment, usually at the expense of the other.
Fourth and probably final: don't go nuts. Sure, there's no real consequence for failure, it is after all, a game. But you will avoid the ire of fellow players if you don't act like a retard. When you start out, don't go assuming that you can undertake a job on overkill difficulty and not die repeatedly and irritate your fellow gamers to no end. You'll find yourself kicked out of many lobbies if you try to reach beyond your grasp. Unless of course you already know someone who has played the game a while and is willing to help you level up faster by carrying you through harder missions. But stay away from "Pro" jobs while you're still a noob.
That is probably it for now. I'll likely only be playing PAYDAY 2 for a little while longer, then I guess I'm back to Marvel Heroes unless I find something else to play. I'm tempted to add an "advice" label but I'm not sure how many times I'd be using it. Maybe a future advice thingy for Marvel Heroes might be in order, they've apparently got a fair amount of marketing geared up for the release of the new Thor movie.
Friday 25 October 2013
Mechanical decay
While I'm on the subject of my dying computer and incompetence related to people making things for it - for some reason lately after closing a game the sound will occasionally stop working. The sound device will claim that it's still functioning but I can't hear anything and as soon as I attempt to run a program the will utilise sound, said program will not operate correctly if at all. This happened to me sometimes about a year ago and I could disable the sound device and then re-enable it to restore sound. But not now, now I have to restart the computer to restore sound. This is maddeningly retarded, "you've stopped using the sound device, so you don't need it anymore right?" It's like cutting out your tongue after you finish a meal.
Fear not, once I've obtained a new computer I will still have many, many things to complain about, it's just a matter of remembering them long enough to write them down...
Fear not, once I've obtained a new computer I will still have many, many things to complain about, it's just a matter of remembering them long enough to write them down...
Wednesday 23 October 2013
Meander
I suppose some extra information should be provided so that there is more clarity - I do think I am in need of a new computer so many of the complaints I make about games stuffing up should be tempered by this. And since I'm unemployed and poor my next machine is likely to be some cheap(ish) laptop that will be far from ideal for gaming which might end up making me complain even more.
If all this swinging back and forth makes me seem like a moody bastard it's probably because I am. Carry on. I'll be doing something. I'll figure it out and maybe get back to you. And when I say "you" I mean "me" because this is akin to a great big reminder note except other people can see it. Eventually I might get around to writing up some of the other article ideas I had. Won't you be lucky?
If all this swinging back and forth makes me seem like a moody bastard it's probably because I am. Carry on. I'll be doing something. I'll figure it out and maybe get back to you. And when I say "you" I mean "me" because this is akin to a great big reminder note except other people can see it. Eventually I might get around to writing up some of the other article ideas I had. Won't you be lucky?
Tuesday 22 October 2013
Retraction of retraction
Or recanting my recant. PAYDAY 2 is back to random crashes or loading screen crashes so I'm back to my original theory of game developers being incompetent at the one thing they are supposedly good at. They suck, and they wonder why people pirate their product.
Don't bother with it, it gets more full of BS the longer you play.
Don't bother with it, it gets more full of BS the longer you play.
Saturday 19 October 2013
More pay... day... 2 (well, 3)
Just going to start with the reason these are separate posts instead of edits onto existing ones: because I have very little readership and I doubt I get many people coming back to see if I've added to my existing rants and stuff.
Something I forgot to include in the "what I don't like" about PAYDAY 2 was the purchasable assets for each job. Some of them are downright misleading, such as the "insider info" for the Bank Heist, which provides a blueprint with the location of the security room and vault. Except there are two potential locations for each, meaning that you are always given the same one of four different possible layouts. I learned quickly never to buy this. Another is the "expert driver" which prevents you from having to do an escape if the police are alerted. An escape is not a certainty either way, but with the expert driver you never have to do one. What I don't like about this is you are unable to designate an extraction point, which would be really useful on the Nightclub job, where one of the exit locations is in an alley accessible from within the club, making it a brilliant place for a stealth operation to depart. But you can't choose where the driver goes, meaning a full stealth infiltration of the club could leave you needing to exit through the front door, running past guards and civilians, not exactly a clean getaway. For that same job, there is the option of a "loot truck" that will pull up outside the manager's office window, allowing you to divest yourself of the loot without having to carry it all the way to the escape van. But you aren't told this in the asset menu, all it says is "loot truck" and tells you that it's an alternate way of retrieving the loot, no details.
But then again, I did just complete my very first solo stealth bank heist. It took over an hour, most of which was picking locks on safety deposit boxes, but it felt good at the end of it. There are more efficient ways to gain XP and money than this, but this way actually feels like an accomplishment. Make of that what you will.
Keep on gamin'.
Something I forgot to include in the "what I don't like" about PAYDAY 2 was the purchasable assets for each job. Some of them are downright misleading, such as the "insider info" for the Bank Heist, which provides a blueprint with the location of the security room and vault. Except there are two potential locations for each, meaning that you are always given the same one of four different possible layouts. I learned quickly never to buy this. Another is the "expert driver" which prevents you from having to do an escape if the police are alerted. An escape is not a certainty either way, but with the expert driver you never have to do one. What I don't like about this is you are unable to designate an extraction point, which would be really useful on the Nightclub job, where one of the exit locations is in an alley accessible from within the club, making it a brilliant place for a stealth operation to depart. But you can't choose where the driver goes, meaning a full stealth infiltration of the club could leave you needing to exit through the front door, running past guards and civilians, not exactly a clean getaway. For that same job, there is the option of a "loot truck" that will pull up outside the manager's office window, allowing you to divest yourself of the loot without having to carry it all the way to the escape van. But you aren't told this in the asset menu, all it says is "loot truck" and tells you that it's an alternate way of retrieving the loot, no details.
But then again, I did just complete my very first solo stealth bank heist. It took over an hour, most of which was picking locks on safety deposit boxes, but it felt good at the end of it. There are more efficient ways to gain XP and money than this, but this way actually feels like an accomplishment. Make of that what you will.
Keep on gamin'.
PAYDAY2/Steam supplement
Apparently the way to get Steam to recognise the game data that you already have is to make sure to "delete local content" then copy the data to the "common" or "(username)" folder of the "SteamApps" folder (where username is your Steam account name, somewhat obvious I would have thought but here for the sake of clarity). Then you go into Steam and tell it to install that game, then it will find the data already there and reinstall. This has seemingly worked to (for the moment) prevent random crashes in PAYDAY 2 so thereby allowing me to continue to play it.
While I'm on the subject, if I gave a favourable impression of the game, let me be clear: PAYDAY 2 is really frustrating to play. In addition to the already mentioned issues, I've since been reminded that a lot of the game is complete BS. Cops can shoot through otherwise impenetrable objects, preventing you from returning fire. There is no real clear indication of how "concealment" affects anything outside of Casing Mode. The Enforcer, ostensibly the combat class only really fares better in combat when equipped with the heaviest armour and because of passive tier bonuses that increase health by up to 50% total, which can still be wiped away in seconds because enemies never miss. Just now, within five minutes of the first day of the "Rats" job, a Bulldozer appeared, which is again, complete BS, because there is no way an enemy that tough should show up that early on the lowest difficulty.
Stealth is really only viable if you've several people all geared for it and who are very high levels so that they have access to the best abilities. Otherwise you will end up relying on luck, and out of every 10 or so stealth attempts, one might be successful. This still applies to what are seemingly the jobs tailor made for stealth: Framing Frame and Firestarter. Both of which are quite well paying and clearly designed for stealth, yet so frequently end up in combat anyway. As I said before, this is a shooter with a potential for some stealth tacked on. I'd recommend serious thought before plunging yourself into the swirling pit of madness that is PAYDAY 2.
While I'm on the subject, if I gave a favourable impression of the game, let me be clear: PAYDAY 2 is really frustrating to play. In addition to the already mentioned issues, I've since been reminded that a lot of the game is complete BS. Cops can shoot through otherwise impenetrable objects, preventing you from returning fire. There is no real clear indication of how "concealment" affects anything outside of Casing Mode. The Enforcer, ostensibly the combat class only really fares better in combat when equipped with the heaviest armour and because of passive tier bonuses that increase health by up to 50% total, which can still be wiped away in seconds because enemies never miss. Just now, within five minutes of the first day of the "Rats" job, a Bulldozer appeared, which is again, complete BS, because there is no way an enemy that tough should show up that early on the lowest difficulty.
Stealth is really only viable if you've several people all geared for it and who are very high levels so that they have access to the best abilities. Otherwise you will end up relying on luck, and out of every 10 or so stealth attempts, one might be successful. This still applies to what are seemingly the jobs tailor made for stealth: Framing Frame and Firestarter. Both of which are quite well paying and clearly designed for stealth, yet so frequently end up in combat anyway. As I said before, this is a shooter with a potential for some stealth tacked on. I'd recommend serious thought before plunging yourself into the swirling pit of madness that is PAYDAY 2.
Thursday 17 October 2013
PAYDAY 2 - the sequel to a game I only played on a free weekend and didn't really like all that much (now with more pointed complaints)
So random crashes aside, which by the way when the suggestion for fixing a crashing game involves uninstalling the game and video drivers and supplementary software and disabling features of the launch system it was designed to run through, well that just isn't right and says that all this technobabbling nonsense we are relying on daily is really, well, unreliable.
Anyway. Issues, in reverse order of my normal reviews I'm starting with what I don't like. Bloated file size for one, apparently PAYDAY 2 takes up heaps of disk space because the developers are generously endowing us with assets that they aren't currently using but think they may want to some time in the future so can we just hang on to them for a while, as a favour? If you're saying I need to reinstall to fix your mistake, I had better not blow half of my monthly download quota and spend half a day doing so. Especially since Steam decided to go and make its game data immune to substitution - a recent need to reinstall Steam also deleted most of my game data and it seems that the games that survived will not be permitted to be copied from the remaining data. Computers suck. And they lie, Steam tells me that it's a 6GB download that takes up 20GB of disk space, go figure. Oh and it seems that the game may have been built on Mac and then ported to PC, because that's a great idea (something about .bundle files being a Mac thing that some person said on a forum post).
Infinite replay value means grinding for what you want from a random drop at the end of every heist, because letting the player get away with "millions" needs to be restricted for some reason so that they can't simply get what they want out of a game that they paid money for. The "offshore account" is insulting, sure you can spend it all getting the missions you want - because that part is random as well, of course, why would you want to be able to consistently choose from one of the very few available missions anyway - but otherwise it has no value, no purpose. You have spending cash with which you buy guns and apply mods (which are randomly attained from the end-heist-drop) and buy skills, because why not have two currencies for character improvement? (skill points and money). Offshore money would have been a reasonable way to acquire weapon mods and masks, but no, let's randomise.
About 90% of the time you will end up in combat. One of the things that made me actually buy and try PAYDAY 2 was the lure of being able to approach missions with stealth. In reality we're left with a stealth component tacked on to a first-person shooter. Even the stealth "class" Ghost has combat improving abilities. Every class is geared for combat, because the slightest little thing can turn your stealth run into a relentless police assault. And if you didn't gear or spec for combat, you're going to die. The Enforcer class is ostensibly the combat focused class, and even then it's mainly because they can get the heaviest armour, which they can only acquire but taking a particular skill, which is top tier, meaning that you can't get the heavy armour for quite some time. In fact you don't gain any armour until you reach a certain level. The levels required aren't all that high, but it does mean that you are seriously screwed as a noob unless you play with some really good or at least high level players.
A nitpick for the combat is that you are not provided with any notion of a gun's range, only its accuracy. I suppose the idea is that higher accuracy means you can hit targets further away and you're just missing them with poor accuracy guns. Except that effective range is actually a component of the game. Up close, you can kill someone in one hit with a shotgun blast, especially to the head. Go a short distance away and it can take three or four headshots with a shotgun to get a kill. So having some kind of range indicator would have been nice. And as a corollary to the class combat system, it mainly associates different classes with different weapon types. There are a few skills that give a general buff, but Mastermind is pistol focused, Enforcer shotgun, Technician rifles and Ghost sub-machine guns (with a general buff to "silenced" weapons).
Armour gives a massive speed reduction the heavier you go, but on higher difficulties you're still going to die in a few hits. A beat cop with a pistol took out my heavy armour in one shot on overkill difficulty. And they never miss, I hate that games like this sabotage the player so heavily, first by greatly outnumbering us, then by making enemy skill so proficient that there is no learning curve. They either kill you in a few hits, or kill you in one hit. The best you can aim for is to shoot them before they shoot you, that's the only margin you're given. So you can't move very fast and you can't take many hits and they still expect you to sit in one place guarding a damn drill while you wait for it to get you into the vault where you still have to bag the loot and then get it to the escape van without dying.
And why does everyone always bang on about the graphics. I'd make this a separate post but I'd probably never get around to writing it but when I was a kid we had an Atari 2600, and today I would still play Joust or Pitfall because they were awesome. One of my favourite games of all time is X-COM: UFO Defense (or UFO: Enemy Unknown in some parts of the world, and I think it's a way better title) and people today would probably puke at the sight of it, because they're so used to CGI rendering in movies and complain if a game doesn't have high resolution textures. What about the game part of this that somehow escapes your attention? Early 3D games do tend to look rather ugly compared to recent ones but I've seen people complain about Mass Effect 3 looking like it came out in 2011. It's running on an engine that came out in 2007, retard, most of these games are built to run on consoles that are using fixed hardware from the time of their manufacture, get over the graphics already and pay attention to the game in video game. System Shock 2 is not pleasant to look at by today's standards but it is one of the best games of all time, and you'd be missing out on that if you simply turned away after glancing at some screenshots.
Anyway. You know what I do like about this game. It's fun. I won't be playing it for the next week or so because I don't want to use up all my download quota to reinstall it, but aside from that... It is exemplary of all the design issues endemic to the current mode of thinking about video game development; but when you successfully escape after clearing out a bank vault, it feels good. It feels like an actual accomplishment. We're Pavlov's dogs in this instance, drooling at the mere thought of an intangible reward related to whatever conditioned behaviours we willingly entangle ourselves in to distract ourselves from the vast mind-numbingly pointless existence we have been thrust into without our consent and we'd do anything to turn off awareness of abstract concepts just to escape the creeping madness in our consciousness.
Or at least that's why I play games, what's your excuse?
Anyway. Issues, in reverse order of my normal reviews I'm starting with what I don't like. Bloated file size for one, apparently PAYDAY 2 takes up heaps of disk space because the developers are generously endowing us with assets that they aren't currently using but think they may want to some time in the future so can we just hang on to them for a while, as a favour? If you're saying I need to reinstall to fix your mistake, I had better not blow half of my monthly download quota and spend half a day doing so. Especially since Steam decided to go and make its game data immune to substitution - a recent need to reinstall Steam also deleted most of my game data and it seems that the games that survived will not be permitted to be copied from the remaining data. Computers suck. And they lie, Steam tells me that it's a 6GB download that takes up 20GB of disk space, go figure. Oh and it seems that the game may have been built on Mac and then ported to PC, because that's a great idea (something about .bundle files being a Mac thing that some person said on a forum post).
Infinite replay value means grinding for what you want from a random drop at the end of every heist, because letting the player get away with "millions" needs to be restricted for some reason so that they can't simply get what they want out of a game that they paid money for. The "offshore account" is insulting, sure you can spend it all getting the missions you want - because that part is random as well, of course, why would you want to be able to consistently choose from one of the very few available missions anyway - but otherwise it has no value, no purpose. You have spending cash with which you buy guns and apply mods (which are randomly attained from the end-heist-drop) and buy skills, because why not have two currencies for character improvement? (skill points and money). Offshore money would have been a reasonable way to acquire weapon mods and masks, but no, let's randomise.
About 90% of the time you will end up in combat. One of the things that made me actually buy and try PAYDAY 2 was the lure of being able to approach missions with stealth. In reality we're left with a stealth component tacked on to a first-person shooter. Even the stealth "class" Ghost has combat improving abilities. Every class is geared for combat, because the slightest little thing can turn your stealth run into a relentless police assault. And if you didn't gear or spec for combat, you're going to die. The Enforcer class is ostensibly the combat focused class, and even then it's mainly because they can get the heaviest armour, which they can only acquire but taking a particular skill, which is top tier, meaning that you can't get the heavy armour for quite some time. In fact you don't gain any armour until you reach a certain level. The levels required aren't all that high, but it does mean that you are seriously screwed as a noob unless you play with some really good or at least high level players.
A nitpick for the combat is that you are not provided with any notion of a gun's range, only its accuracy. I suppose the idea is that higher accuracy means you can hit targets further away and you're just missing them with poor accuracy guns. Except that effective range is actually a component of the game. Up close, you can kill someone in one hit with a shotgun blast, especially to the head. Go a short distance away and it can take three or four headshots with a shotgun to get a kill. So having some kind of range indicator would have been nice. And as a corollary to the class combat system, it mainly associates different classes with different weapon types. There are a few skills that give a general buff, but Mastermind is pistol focused, Enforcer shotgun, Technician rifles and Ghost sub-machine guns (with a general buff to "silenced" weapons).
Armour gives a massive speed reduction the heavier you go, but on higher difficulties you're still going to die in a few hits. A beat cop with a pistol took out my heavy armour in one shot on overkill difficulty. And they never miss, I hate that games like this sabotage the player so heavily, first by greatly outnumbering us, then by making enemy skill so proficient that there is no learning curve. They either kill you in a few hits, or kill you in one hit. The best you can aim for is to shoot them before they shoot you, that's the only margin you're given. So you can't move very fast and you can't take many hits and they still expect you to sit in one place guarding a damn drill while you wait for it to get you into the vault where you still have to bag the loot and then get it to the escape van without dying.
And why does everyone always bang on about the graphics. I'd make this a separate post but I'd probably never get around to writing it but when I was a kid we had an Atari 2600, and today I would still play Joust or Pitfall because they were awesome. One of my favourite games of all time is X-COM: UFO Defense (or UFO: Enemy Unknown in some parts of the world, and I think it's a way better title) and people today would probably puke at the sight of it, because they're so used to CGI rendering in movies and complain if a game doesn't have high resolution textures. What about the game part of this that somehow escapes your attention? Early 3D games do tend to look rather ugly compared to recent ones but I've seen people complain about Mass Effect 3 looking like it came out in 2011. It's running on an engine that came out in 2007, retard, most of these games are built to run on consoles that are using fixed hardware from the time of their manufacture, get over the graphics already and pay attention to the game in video game. System Shock 2 is not pleasant to look at by today's standards but it is one of the best games of all time, and you'd be missing out on that if you simply turned away after glancing at some screenshots.
Anyway. You know what I do like about this game. It's fun. I won't be playing it for the next week or so because I don't want to use up all my download quota to reinstall it, but aside from that... It is exemplary of all the design issues endemic to the current mode of thinking about video game development; but when you successfully escape after clearing out a bank vault, it feels good. It feels like an actual accomplishment. We're Pavlov's dogs in this instance, drooling at the mere thought of an intangible reward related to whatever conditioned behaviours we willingly entangle ourselves in to distract ourselves from the vast mind-numbingly pointless existence we have been thrust into without our consent and we'd do anything to turn off awareness of abstract concepts just to escape the creeping madness in our consciousness.
Or at least that's why I play games, what's your excuse?
Tuesday 15 October 2013
Getting paid
I've been playing PAYDAY 2 a lot these last couple of weeks, and I find myself frustrated at an industry that can't seem to couple enjoyment with competence - a quick search reveals that I'm far from the only person experiencing persistent random crashes and I have to wonder if anyone in the gaming industry really knows what they're doing. Or is it just that the games that are more fun to play come from smaller developers who don't have the resources to ensure their product functions properly?
In short, PAYDAY 2 is quite a lot of fun when it actually works, which is not very often. Last night I played for four or five hours without a crash, today I can't seem to last much past half an hour before I'm looking at the desktop yet again.
In short, PAYDAY 2 is quite a lot of fun when it actually works, which is not very often. Last night I played for four or five hours without a crash, today I can't seem to last much past half an hour before I'm looking at the desktop yet again.
Wednesday 2 October 2013
Nostalgia
So the video game industry has looked to Hollywood in order to find their direction. And that direction is "backwards". A couple of re-releases have appeared this year in promotion of remakes. Rise of the Triad got the treatment. Shadow Warrior has just come out following its re-release. Now there is promotion of a remake of Thief: The Dark Project cleverly titled Thief. Oh and Flashback is getting the treatment too. Thief and Flashback I can kind of deal with, even though they're unnecessary. It might be good to see a good platformer and a real stealth game (don't think about Dishonored [sic]) to open up the landscape away from endless first- and third-person action shooters. But RotT and Shadow Warrior? Do we really need these throwbacks. I know that a large portion of the gaming community is getting older, sure, but when everything has been going Modern Warfare and Gears of War do people really want old-school (not very old, but anyway) shooters a la Doom?
Ah, what do I know? Maybe kids will embrace the silliness and simplicity of simple run & gun gaming. I'm unqualified to accurately predict human behavioural patterns.
Ah, what do I know? Maybe kids will embrace the silliness and simplicity of simple run & gun gaming. I'm unqualified to accurately predict human behavioural patterns.
Tuesday 1 October 2013
Going nowhere
I've been a while away from here, wasting my money, time and life plugging away at Marvel Heroes of which I must now rescind any hint of a recommendation that you play it, because it has been endlessly crashing with no fixes or help from the developers. So fuck them, fuck that stupid pile of coding errors they call a game and I really suggest you avoid not only that game but anything developed by Gazillion. They're dedicated, yes, but incompetent and nothing really makes up for that. Technically the game is free, but I have spent money on it and I think it reasonable to expect a functioning product in exchange for currency, they have not delivered.
Otherwise carry on, nothing to see here.
Okay, they are dedicated, and not everyone is having my problems playing the game, but still, I was mad and wanted to tell the internet so.
Alright, might have sorted out my problem with Marvel Heroes constantly crashing, so neat. But still, they push out patches way too quickly and then have to address additional problems caused by that so they take ages to get around the problems that have been around for a while.
Otherwise carry on, nothing to see here.
Okay, they are dedicated, and not everyone is having my problems playing the game, but still, I was mad and wanted to tell the internet so.
Alright, might have sorted out my problem with Marvel Heroes constantly crashing, so neat. But still, they push out patches way too quickly and then have to address additional problems caused by that so they take ages to get around the problems that have been around for a while.
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