Some Assembly Required

 So like so many others right now, I've bought the Avengers game. I've not played much so far, but I have observed something: this game doesn't know who it's aimed at. Combat is crowded and a little frantic but instead of plowing through like you'd think for a game with mass appeal, you are supposed to dodge and parry based on fairly short warnings that are almost constant when surrounded by enemies. Fail to do so and you are not only injured (as one would expect) but your attacks are interrupted. You're supposed to play like an expert or you'll just keep stumbling around feeling far from a super powered hero.

Then there are the skill trees and gear systems. Playing the story missions requires a "power" level otherwise you'll be unlikely to succeed, but gear and skill management is one of those annoying things that gets in the way of pursuing the story. And you have to constantly manage gear, because you have so little inventory space, most equipment will just become fodder for deconstruction, because multiple resource systems are also another thing that is present but interferes with the average person who just wants to play the story.

The game keeps throwing this and tutorial missions at you to teach you the systems you'll be diving into when you "finish" the game and focus on grinding the multiplayer. But why does the multiplayer need to intrude on the story for a single player experience? It seems like a lot of the multiplayer is recycled missions and assets from the story anyway, but in an effort to drag out the content and squeeze it for all it's worth, the game has an unintended (or perhaps not) side effect of alienating someone who just wants to see a story and feel like a superhero.

Perhaps it's just me, but it seems like games are being designed now where the closest to "fun" you can get is just picking the lowest difficulty and hoping it's not too aggravating.

Limited Functionality Is My Nemesis

Well, it's been a while. I wanted to take a little time to complain a little more coherently than I did during my live streams of Resident Evil 3. This does concern more than that game specifically however. My thoughts are a but scattered but the essential point to make is about functionality. Although it could also fall under that derided gaming attribution: "accessibility".

I've personally found RE3's dodge mechanic to be inconsistent, rather like that of Bayonetta, which I went back and forth about during streams pointing out how late it needed to be then suddenly getting a perfect dodge way earlier than I expected, only to find myself then dodging too early then pushing for late dodges then getting hit, and so on. Some people seem to have no trouble perfectly timing a dodge in RE3, good for them. But to me that only draws attention to the problem, that the dodge is ineffective.

By which I mean that pressing the button for "quick step" does indeed step quickly, but in most circumstances it is useless. One exception that springs to mind is the sequence when fleeing from Nemesis while shoots you with a rocket launcher. Otherwise, using the dodge can actually cause harm rather than evade it. Try dodging past a zombie and they grab you, even successfully timing a perfect dodge away from one enemy can send you into the clutches of another. There appears to be no invincible frames of the animation when used normally and you still have some recovery before you can move normally or dodge again.

The perfect dodge on the other hand, evades the attack, provides some invincible frames, gives you an opportunity for a counterattack, and recovers faster. The regular dodge is largely pointless save for being a vector for perfect dodges. Frankly, this is a terrible idea. Rather like games by From Software (which I haven't played, this is going off of observation not experience) or some fighting games, function for the average player is rudimentary, with most of it being reserved for more expert players.

This itself is not quite the problem, for instance I understand there aren't many ways to make some things easier such as learning a musical instrument (that one is from personal experience). The problem arises when packaged in an entertainment format, such as a video game, that is sold to all. This is not a skill that one learns to be able to produce creative expression, this is someone paying to be entertained and instead being frustrated. If your response is along the lines of "get good", I would offer the frustrated a better piece of advice: get a refund.

It brings to mind the "controversy" that arose around Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, last year. From Software made a game for expert players, but sold it to everyone. I don't want to delve into all that nonsense here, I bring this up mainly to point out why there was bad press and negative feedback about the game - because it was not made for the average player, but they were certainly willing to take the average player's money. Due to that, they have to take that criticism, because the skill of the player doesn't invalidate their experience. Not to mention there are so many other aspects to a game than just its difficulty, but gamer elitism is also not the point of this post.

Function was limited for average players. Rather than being something that worked for everyone, but was more rewarding for those using it effectively, it was something that had little practical value for a non-expert player. Personally, I found myself trying to avoid using the dodge in RE3 and falling back on my RE2 experiences of keeping distance and wearing enemies down. Unfortunately, the game isn't designed to let you do that most of the time.

If instead the dodge worked as some sort of action-roll with some invincible frames, but if timed perfectly allowed for a follow-up attack with higher or guaranteed critical chance, then at least it would have universal function but reward expert use. Even in such a situation there are ways to limit the practicality of spamming the dodge and never being hit, since of course you'd be spending all your time not attacking. For a game that really seems intent of having you avoid regular enemies anyway, it sure does restrict your ability to do so. And not just with the dodge, but also the environment.

Sorry it took so long to get to the main point I wanted to make; I do try to explain myself and the situation, and also it's been a while since I did a lot of writing. What it boils down to is: you can ignore all my ravings and complaints made while enraged if you want, but they are my experiences with the game, and they're no less valid than your own. Whether you think it's a good game and I think it's a bad game is irrelevant to the fact that I'm not going to say that I like this game, certainly not when compared to its predecessor (by which I mean RE2 remake, not the original RE3).

As I found with a second playthrough on a lower difficulty, my complaints from that first run were not because of the difficulty setting, because I had the same complaints on standard as I did on hardcore. I'm not even attempting nightmare mode until I've unlocked some good bonuses. Which means, yes, I'll still be playing the game - but I didn't call my channel Joyless Gaming for nothing.

My Complaints from RE4

EDIT: The below was written a week after an unpleasant experience playing the game so I must clear up that there is indeed some camera tracking with movement, specifically turning. However the character still controls independently of the camera since you can make it off-centre and run at weird angles. After a little investigation it turns out this is because of the PC version's mouse controls - strangely enough with a controller, movement of the camera with the right stick reverts to centre after the stick is released, which is possibly the reason many Steam reviews suggest playing with a controller. It must however be the only reason as everything else is still just as horrible only now you're aiming with your thumb instead of your whole hand.

I still feel my complaints are justified and that my criticism stands because the controls are still not great and they are not the only problem with the game, just the most immediately noticeable.

ORIGINAL POST FOLLOWS:

If anyone had actually watched my streams of RE4 they might wonder why I complain so much about their beloved game experience, so for those weirdos who have actually seen my atrocious gameplay I thought I'd clarify. The control scheme for RE4 is bad. It wouldn't be so much of a problem if the game weren't constantly foisting combat upon the player, but it does and it highlights how bad the game controls for action.

Most significantly, the character moves independently of the camera, which is a holdover from the previous games and their fixed camera angles. This wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for the fact the you are also given control of the camera. When you turn, the camera stays in place, the only time character movement and camera movement coincides is when you're running, and due to the fairly large turning circle, the camera doesn't move very quickly - which is probably why they only matched the camera to movement under those circumstances, since it would be easier.

Now what this means is that during combat situations (of which there are many) you can't easily respond to threats because spotting them doesn't correspond to moving away or towards them. It does correspond to aiming - which is really the only reason I can see that you have control of the camera in the first place - however aiming always roots you in place and further restricts your view to allow for "precision" aiming. I say "precision" because it is a bit wobbly and while there is a laser sight it's not always easy to spot - basically it turns a marginally accurate shooter such as myself into an even more marginally accurate shooter.

This move to more accurate aiming is likely what most people found to be an improvement for the series, however with the restricted viewpoint and awkward movement it turns being surrounded by enemies into a mess of frustration. I may have said this elsewhere but: if you're more afraid of the mechanics of a game than of the content, it's not a scary game, just a bad one. Fighting the controls at the same time as trying to fight enemies is not fun. I know that it's supposed to be survival horror, but the real horror is the control scheme. As I said above - if the game wasn't constantly throwing enemies at you the controls would totally serviceable, but as it stands they are a hindrance. Limited resources can make a scary game as long as there's also limited combat, but the resources aren't all that limited in RE4 (although I'm only playing it on "Normal") and the combat is frequent.

In a nutshell: the amount of action in RE4 really should have a better action game control scheme. That is without all the added frustration of sudden quick-time events and escort missions (not really missions as such, just action sections where you have to protect someone, but "escort mission" is a more recognised term). The controls didn't have to conform to the whole strafing movement model, but having control of the camera relate to control of the character is a much better option.

That all took a little longer than I anticipated but as a final thought I wanted to make reference as to why the "tank" controls and fixed cameras were used by Resident Evil in the first place. The short answer is because of Alone In The Dark. The slightly longer answer is that Alone used fixed cameras because it was rendering a 3D environment (a very early 3D rendering), and that is easier to do if the camera doesn't move. The Resident Evil developers managed to make a more detailed environment by not actually rendering the environment but using high resolution (for the time) images and mapping player paths into the rendered image.

The point being that when you have a fixed camera, controlling your character relative to themselves works fine, especially since Alone didn't focus too much on combat. None of those technical limitations were a problem for the team making Resident Evil 4 and there was no need to retain the controls traditional to the series.

So I guess in summary: my gripe with the game has nothing really to do with the content and everything to do with actually controlling and playing the game. So if you enjoy watching someone not have fun while sucking at games, I guess you'll like my play of RE4, maybe?

Unjustified Greed - Grind, or Buy

So I just wanted to make a slightly more articulate addendum to this video I just posted (warning for coarse language):



The Source Crystal currency in Injustice 2 is the real-money "premium" currency. Thankfully I've not found a way to spend them on the RNG loot crates called Mother Boxes (at least on PC, maybe you can buy them on consoles?), but they are still the only guaranteed method for obtaining shaders and "premier" shaders (which completely reskin the character into someone else, such as turning Superman into Bizarro). Shaders may be randomly obtained from Mother Boxes, key word being "random" (getting sick of "random" appearing so often in games), so it's grind or buy.

That aside, you can also spend large amounts of Source Crystals to instantly level up characters, a "feature" that only exists because they decided to make it so characters have levels instead of just being as they are. This "feature" only exists to encourage players to spend money in order to save time, time which is only being saved because the game was designed to make you grind instead of just being playable. Characters also have equipment, which is levelled, and of varying appearance. So another "feature" is being able to spend Source Crystals to either level up your gear (because it has stat boosts, obviously), or to change its appearance to that of another piece of gear, to get the look you desire.

Cost of levelling or morphing gear is unknown to me since I've not even wanted to know. Cost of a "common" shader is 4000 crystals; Cost of a "rare" is 5000; Cost of the "premier" shaders is 6000 crystals. Levelling a new character to 20 costs 10,000 crystals. As I mentioned in the video, these two Multiverse events combined award 1000 crystals. Crystals are also awarded from the story mode, the first time you play it, as well as levelling up your account ranking. I currently am at account level 72, and have just under 18,000 crystals, my intent being to unlock the remaining premier shaders with them.

I would like to emphasise the word "unlock" from that last sentence - because of course this content is already in the game, so that I have the data available if I encounter someone online who is using a shader I don't have unlocked, obviously. So I already have them, I'm just not permitted to use them, because I'm supposed to pay more money to unlock something in a game I already paid for. Yes they could eventually be obtained without paying extra, but the sheer random nature of loot boxes means it could take an unreasonable amount of time, which is ignoring the fact that it is already unreasonable to manipulate random drop rates to encourage players to buy instead of play.

If you can't encourage people to keep playing your game without random loot drops and fishing for microtransaction payoffs, maybe you shouldn't be making games. Well, I guess it makes money and who cares about customer satisfaction? My general point was that this Multiverse offering does not constitute generosity, given how often it would need to be available to unlock content through play rather than microtransactions. I'm not the first to make any of these points, I don't want to have to point this stuff out in the first place.

MEH - a Mass Effect retrospective (I couldn't think of a better title that also included the initials "ME")

So it's that long awaited thingy I was going to write about the Mass Effect series, and it's going to be a disappointment... I think that was meant to be a joke about the reaction to Mass Effect 3. It's not going to be detailed or well researched since I'm barely mustering the effort to do anything these days, but it will be done. Also not going to bother recapping story or anything like that, too much effort.

EFFECT THE FIRST

Mass Effect was at the time something quite different from what I'd played before. Not wholly unfamiliar, but it was not the kind of game I'd been playing. In retrospect it's rather like a throwback to old 80's and early 90's types of role-playing computer games: epic story, underdog hero, gear progression, lots (and lots) of talking (but now fully voiced like living in the future). Oddly enough, while I think there is merit in older RPG styles and implementations, I must be getting old because Mass Effect now just feels so bloated.

Most of it is busy work - the story itself is fairly long and the side stuff usually quite short, but all that side questing feels necessary since you need the XP otherwise you'll have a hard time getting through the story since you'll not be a high level. Example: early part of the story where you get to choose which mission you take, well to me the obvious first choice was to go get Liara (daughter of early confirmed villain Beneziah). However, after going through all the stupid crap to actually rescue Liara you then have what I guess amounts to a boss fight against some mercs led by a Krogan who will kick all manner of excretions out of you unless you've levelled up sufficiently (or put it on the lowest difficulty setting, which is another nuisance these days where it seems like you (I) need to play in the lowest difficulty for it to be fun; like "easy" = fun, "normal" = hard).

So the game can really drag on which kind of sucks, since a lot of the side stuff is where the fun actually is - exploring a planet's surface in the Mako, scouting uncharted worlds for resources and information; not always essential to the plot, which is why it's fun, but when you must to do it to level up, well it becomes a chore rather than an indulgence.

I didn't mind the gearing up, or even the skill selection since it allowed you to play a certain way and support strengths/weaknesses with gear and squadmates. But again, when you must do this, it gets annoying. Combat was... well it was there, at least. About the only thing that made it interesting to me was that guns never run out of ammo, they just heat up, so it was a different kind of weapon control rather than just "empty the mag". They killed that for the sequels, but at least they also streamlined the combat ("streamlined" doesn't necessarily mean "improved").

Oh yes, the talking. So. Much. Talking. Again, the number of options available in dialogue (also reduced in the sequels) would not normally bother me if it weren't for the fact that most of it is irrelevant. There's such a simplistic karma system (and it's not alone) that you'll stick to the "Paragon/Renegade" choices to ensure that there's a point to your even bothering to talk in the first place. At least the streamlining of the dialogue for the sequels works, since it was unlikely they were going to make that many variables be accounted for in character interactions.

In sum: fun at the time. Now I'd like the notion of replaying it, but not the reality.

ME TOO

Well they kill you in the opening sequence, that was unexpected (unless you watched all the promotional material, I guess).

The story here seems so much more focused, not so much in a good way, because it makes you and all your actions seem smaller. Hell, the environments feel smaller (most of them actually are, too). The importance of your mission is relentlessly hammered into you, yet the game and it's world (well, galaxy) seem so much smaller than in the first game. I'm not quite sure how this happened, maybe it's just because you spend less time on the Citadel and interacting with the Council than in the first, coupled with the smaller environments.

Pretty much no gear progression here, there are slightly better versions of each weapon type that you can purchase going through the game, but they're not so spectacular that it matters. Your own progression matters a little more because of this, despite the reduced number of skills and that all active powers now share a cooldown rather than have their own. This I think was supposed to make you rely more on your squad, since they introduced power combos here, but they didn't really get that right until ME3. So combat is a lot more cover-based action shooter than the first, even though the first was still technically a third-person cover based shooter as well.

They did make your class selection more significant for combat though, with each class getting a unique power that was supposed to define them and their playstyle. So you cloak your sniper, or warp your Vanguard into your enemy's face before shotgunning them into oblivion. It worked better than class distinction in the first game, but was again something that was more refined in ME3.

A little less conversation, a little more shooting people in the face. The Paragon/Renegade system got an upgrade with the "interrupts" that can occur during dialogue. They were heavily scripted, usually it was one or the other, not many places where you could use either one, and those situations usually presented the interrupt that tied with your preceding dialogue choices (the immediately preceding choices, it wasn't so sophisticated as to recognise your entire persona, but given that you would be going all good or all bad for the most part, it doesn't really matter). Generally, the Renegade options were more fun and entertaining, even if it does reveal your inner sociopath.

And the tedious resource collection that was essential for upgrading the ship which was essential for not letting all of your crew members die during the final mission. The crew loyalty missions were fine, there was character development and backstory contained within them. But instead of exploring worlds for fun and seeing what was there, you're firing probes at them to get minerals. NOT ENOUGH MINERALS! It's like playing Starcraft again...

ME2 really focused on the one mission that is stated from the beginning, the only reason the game is as long as it is, is because of recruiting your team and then gaining their loyalty. The actual "story" is really short this time around, and with a larger cast of characters, the world feels smaller? It's strange, but BioWare accomplished it here.

In sum: more "fun" to replay, but damn does it take a long time to make sure no one dies in the final mission.

MASSIVELY EFFECTING

I actually like Mass Effect 3 a lot more than my original review would let on. Probably because, more than the previous two, it actually made me feel something. Or maybe it just happened to come along when I was suffering emotional instability. The Paragon/Renegade thing is so far streamlined in this game that there aren't really any "neutral" responses any more. But beyond that, this time around being a Renegade actually feels like you're the bad guy. All Renegade decisions (and Renegade decisions inherited from the previous games) feel like the wrong choice. Sure the game still lets you go on after doing it, but instead of making you feel like a badass or even just a likeable dick, now you feel like a supervillain, abandoning many to die, condemning species to extinction, classy stuff.

Needless to say, this did not aid my mental state. On the other hand, being the good guy felt overwhelming emotionally as well, but at least I wasn't sacrificing all my friends to a damn near impossible to see "greater good". So, it actually feels like your choices matter in this game, until you get to the ending, which is why everyone hated it. The two complaints about the ending that I usually see are that it was perfunctory, which was addressed (somewhat) by the "Extended Cut" free DLC; and that after three games worth of stuff, everything came down to the "war assets" counter in the third game and a simple dialogue choice of which ending you'd like. Without enough war assets then you don't get to choose the ending, but you'd have to speed-run the game to not accumulate enough, especially after the Extended Cut reduced the required amount for maximum readiness.

But everything, story-wise, up to the ending was, as stated above, massively effecting, at least to me. Game-wise, well...

Combat was more finely tuned here but still much like ME2 in style. Powers still share a cooldown but now your weapons (or lack of) affect cooldown reduction, meaning you can play more powers-based classes (tech, biotic) more effectively on your own, and the return of weapon mods means you can just run around with a pistol boosting your powers, or armed to the teeth with high-powered guns and forget about powers altogether. I'd not recommend the second approach though, since you need to be in cover quite a lot otherwise you die a lot. Higher difficulties are actually easier with powers rather than guns, at least for me.

As mentioned in my first review though, combat it really just filler for continuing the cut-scenes or getting to new conversations. The fact that you can win a fight, nay, you must win a fight in order to witness a cut-scene where you get the crap kicked out of you is really galling.

Interactions are a hell of a lot more limited, there don't seem to be as many "interrupts" as before, and not quite as many charm/intimidate dialogue choices. They also seem to be tied to the generic "reputation" counter rather than the specific Paragon/Renegade meters, meaning that for the most part, you can play either way you want in a single play-through if the mood takes you. I was attempting such with my recent play-through, but haven't mustered the will to keep playing it, which leads me to...

TRILOGICALLY

There are so few real variations between character interactions that you end up replaying really long games to see minor differences or hear a few different lines of dialogue. The series, as a whole, is a real slog to replay, I'm surprised I managed it as many times as I have, but most of that has not been recent, so it's probably a combination of personal issues as well.

The music was great across the series, interesting to hear the progression there (I'm fairly certain they all had the same composer).

The scale of the games went up and down, ME3 really did manage to get back to a real sense of significance and large scale impact.

The characters were always a high point, well written, well acted, fun to have around and chat with.

One place they really botched it was with the Reapers and their origin. Apparently there were different ideas but then certain people left the company so they came up with something else, which happened to be quite stupid. Original ideas aside, with what was included with the Leviathan DLC for ME3 you could of still made it somewhat logical: instead of them being machines created by the apex of biological evolution to prevent the loss of lesser "thrall/tribute" species to their own machines which, surprise, then turned on their own creators to prevent them being destroyed by machines (and the Reapers are too dumb to realise that they turned on their own creators and thus actually failed their task but they think it's OK because they've preserved every species they've harvested)  - just make it so that they were just trying to preserve those species from natural attrition, and the machines had the insight that they should "preserve" their creators as well, just in case.

But no - "hmm, these organics keep getting destroyed by their own machines, let's make some machines to destroy them first, but preserve their genetic code, and hope that those machines don't then do what we seem to think all machines do, which is to turn on their creators and destroy them". My way is using the exact same setup and framework, yet manages to be infinitely less stupid. Hell, even if it were just a rip-off of the Borg where they were using other organisms to further improve themselves it would've been less stupid.

So yes, I'd prefer not to have to sit through another "machines will destroy us all" story, they are mostly garbage, pandering to people with technophobia, in a computer game... I'm all ironied out.

Overall, everything is still a straight line and it gets more noticeable every time I play it. I mean, I'll play new ones if/when they make them, but I don't know if they'll generate the same enthusiasm for replay like they did originally.

TACKY

The multiplayer for ME3 was alright I guess. Could be fun, short-form so not necessarily a huge time investment. Bastard hard sometimes though. And tying it to the single-player war readiness thing was kind of annoying, but it does mean that I've got so many assets available that I don't need to do the small side missions any more.

But EA will pull the servers soon enough and you'll never be able to play it again, who knows, that may inadvertently pull the authentication servers and you won't be able to play the game at all. And I bet even after that, EA will still leave the ME trilogy available for purchase through their crappy Origin shop.

A SHORT AND DISAPPOINTING ENDING

That was it, you waited two and a half years for it. Enjoy.

You will be upgraded!

Whether you like it or not.

Obviously Microsoft is no longer intending to support Windows 8 since it has gone and downloaded 8.1 even though I repeatedly told it not to. Once it had, I repeatedly told it not to install, until today, when postponing installation longer than 4 hours was not permitted. So far it has not demonstrated the same screw-up that it did with my laptop (disabling the display when idle and not being able to re-enable without hard reset) but it did already confuse me with it's stupid audio problem: at first sound wasn't working, then it kind of was, but apparently now 5.1 surround sound means "front, centre and side" as opposed to "front, centre and rear".

So now I'm running a 7.1 surround setup without side speakers, because apparently that's how things work now...

Tech industry needs to die...

And why am I still seeing Asian dating ads on my front page?

Fascism, Australia welcomes you

So I've heard about something that passed with way less fanfare than should have accompanied a change of this magnitude.

The National Security Amendments Bill (No. 1)  is now a thing here in Oz permitting practically unrestricted monitoring of Australian internet activity by ASIO & ASIS (hi guys).

Don't you just love a government that decides that "these are the rights you are entitled to as a citizen of this nation unless we determine otherwise on a whim" and claims it's in the name of "national security".

Uh... are we under threat? I'm pretty sure we're more of a threat to ourselves than from faceless foreign stereotypes, we voted for this stupid government after all (well, I didn't but a vast majority of shiftless morons in this country did). If our neighbours are pissed at us, maybe stop being a dick? Or is that what scares you? Corruption from within!

Seems kind of plausible, but not in the way that you think.

If I had more inclination and know-how I'd throw some stupid image meme thing together with a picture of a cruise ship and the caption "STOP THE BOAT PEOPLE!" because that's what retards need to convince them to maybe try thinking at least a little.

Don't worry, the world won't end. It will take more than that. But don't let other people take credit for it because they were "watching out for us".

"Game" Theory

First off, yes I'm still here for those of you who read this (hi Mum).

Second, why am I seeing Asian dating ads on my page?

Third, I'll preface this brief entry with the announcement that I am clearly insane, because I still play Marvel Heroes.

But this has led me to have an interesting thought about the nonsense of random drops and clickfests. Go back far enough and a "game" was not much more than a mildly amusing teaching tool. Well to some it was serious business and still is in some cases, but they were designed to teach a skill outside of the application of that skill. Like chess, it was designed to teach battle tactics, without the noise and bloodshed and pressure of a real battle situation.

There, victory could be earned. By out-thinking your opponent, or even just knowing them well enough to gauge their tactics, you could win. And that's about it. Of course these days there are tournaments with prizes and such, way back when it was created, maybe a display of skill meant a promotion, so there probably was a tangible reward for playing.

Now take the ARPG. For the most part, "rewards" are simply things that you can use in the game that enable you to keep playing, making your character more powerful or durable so that you can be better at the game and get more stuff. Except usually all that stuff is randomly assigned. Most frequently it's just equipment that has a random chance of dropping and has a bunch of randomly rolled affixes on it. And all it does is let you keep playing the game.

OK, fine, it's somewhat endless and mindless so you can use it as entertainment... which means it's not really rewarding you, as it is enticing you to keep playing, for whatever reason (money usually). This is nothing new or controversial, I'm hardly the first to say it. But if it isn't really rewarding play, then it's not really great entertainment. If it's not trying to teach a skill, it's not really a game.

If anything, you could suggest that because all things will eventually drop, that it rewards and/or teaches patience. I don't think something that teaches patience should be so fast-paced. I don't think that something trying to teach patience should induce RSI or Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

I get that the frustration it causes can be seen as an attempt to encourage patience. I don't think that you should get paid for it.


So yes, I'm still embittered and full of hate, but maybe I'll be trying to share more of it with you in the near future, aren't you excited? I had an idea a while back to do a more proper review of Mass Effect 3 and couple it with a sort of retrospective of the series, and the original idea was to do this around the first anniversary of its release. Then at the first anniversary of my first review. Then at the second anniversary of its release.

Well it's coming up on the second anniversary of my original review, so look forward to that being postponed as well.

New crap, same as the old crap

So I got a new computer today, a proper one, not the laptop I've been uncomfortably adapting to over the last few months. So far, it's been more trouble than it's worth. Damn thing arrived in the morning, all built and everything, and wouldn't accept the key for Windows (8 that is, they'll be supporting it for longer and 8.1 sucks, and it seems an OEM copy will actually let you use Microsoft's anti-virus)...

So I carried it back to the builders (actually carried, damn I'm out of shape) over the course of the morning and into early afternoon only to find that they didn't know why it wasn't accepting the key, but reinstalling Windows seemed to work...

So, carry it back home (took a cab for the last leg, lugging this thing around was really tiring) and begin the rounds of Windows updates, interrupted by the occasional bout of nonsense when trying to "trust this PC" and now comes the installing of all the programs I was used to using on the old machine...

Makes me start to hate computers and the whole damn tech industry.

Late hate for 8

I posted a while back about my purchase of a laptop with Windows 8 and my issues trying to get 8.1. Well, as near as I can tell, the issue blocking acquisition of 8.1 was a free trial of McAfee anti-virus; after the trial had expired I removed it and suddenly no issues with getting 8.1. However, it wasn't exactly a step up. I needed 8.1 because plain 8 wouldn't support Microsoft Security Essentials (which doesn't really exist anymore, it's just lumped into Windows Defender, which now has anti-virus capabilities) and I don't want to have to pay extra for protection from the dangers of the internet when it's in MS' best interest to keep it free from corruption. Either that, or go back to AVG free which has been annoying me for a while.

Anyway, this resulted with me now actually having 8.1 and I've got to say, 8 was better. There are so many little things wrong with 8.1 that it's not funny, and there's nothing that I would call an improvement since not making full Defender protection available in plain 8 is just really mercenary. But while the desktop now has a "Start" button, all it does it take you to the Start page, which you could already do in 8, you could always get back there and now we have something that quite specifically doesn't let us access system tools and applications with any ease.

Most strange is the fact that my laptop cannot now be put into sleep mode. Do that, and you'll never wake it without a hard shutdown and restart. Same goes for any situation requiring "wake up", such as the display being switched off to save energy. And I've just today discovered that some silly little update I did yesterday that mentioned nothing to do with display or graphics reverted my settings from "never switch off the display", because that's what it just did.

I'd say steal it, but it isn't even worth the effort. Either stick with 7 or 8, but give 8.1 a pass, Microsoft needs to learn that they aren't the slightest bit in touch with the consumer. All this crap just because some upper management idiot realised that they were losing to Apple in the tablet market; screwing over the PC market hardly seems like a sound business decision.

Windows Hate

So I found myself realising that my current computer is definitely dying and I'd rather prolong it's suffering by not using it for gaming anymore. Having not so much money available, I went affordable and grabbed a laptop - which came with Windows 8 installed. I thought: "Not too much of a problem, apparently this 8.1 thing is supposed to be a marked improvement for non-tablet users, and they'll be supporting it for much longer". Note that this is the same rationale I used when I got Windows Vista, self-delusion basically.

Got it home, fiddled a bit, looked around for 8.1, spent the afternoon waiting for it to download, then hooray, install time. Except it won't let me. It seems others have had this issue, and still others refuse to make/use a Microsoft account and provide contact information (one person was even paranoid enough to think they were giving this info to the NSA, which is silly because it's more profitable to sell it to direct marketers, and they're far less discreet with it). But not I, you see. I got to the step that says "Help us protect your account" - which is where they ask for further contact details - and while there is a "skip this step for now" button that just reloads the same screen, it won't actually let me provide further information. I enter an alternate email and it says it will send a code to it in the next step - a step I can't get to because the "Next" button just reloads the same screen. Try a phone number for text (or call), same thing.

This is a new level of incompetence here. They go to all the effort of making the damn thing only to screw up the part where people get to use it.

Howl stretching time

So the people at Overkill decided to extend the Halloween event for PAYDAY 2 for a few more days... I'm noticing a pattern, let's call it the "holiday season" (because it's already called that anyway). The weird thing here is that it's an extension after the holiday in question (though it's not so holy). All that build-up to Halloween and all its associated nonsense fueled by capitalism. Although it might have been slightly overshadowed by the fact that preparations were also underway for Christmas, as of a couple of weeks ago I've already seen the "photo with Santa" stations in shopping malls. Anyway, the point being that prolonging the season after the holiday (whatever, it's the word people use) is what is striking me as odd. Since it's usually all prelude then out with a bang and then roll over and fall asleep. Christmas being the noteworthy comparison here where the only extension of the holiday is the post-Christmas sales. Then it's a week long plateau before the great piss-up known as New Year's Eve. You don't really get extensions of those holidays.

And why the hell was I seeing children doing trick-or-treat? This is Australia, we don't do that sort of thing here. I wouldn't be surprised if it were being used as a way to teach children the importance of disappointment. That I would approve of.

Nightmares in 1080p

So I actually get to do a Halloween post, complaining mostly about the PAYDAY 2 Halloween weekend event. In short, it's BS. Overkill have decided that what gamers find scary is ridiculously overpowered enemies that are in the game just to piss off the people who paid money to play it. The Bulldozer enemy has been upgraded to a headless horseman with at least four times the health of the regular Bulldozer. Yay, just what we all wanted, even more BS in our "entertainment". They even added a special Halloween job called "Safe House Nightmare" because apparently bank robbers have nightmares about evil forces taking their hard-stolen money away. And floating baby face masks, because why not? In this job, the only enemies you face are Bulldozers. Lots of Bulldozers. I found it easier to try to avoid them than fight them, that's how BS they are.

Most of the youtube videos I've seen about PAYDAY 2 were from a couple of months ago, after which there seems to have been a game patch that made enemies do more damage, or armour less effective, because I've seen videos of Enforcers really tanking, and you can't do that now, you die too easily. So here's another developer who seems to think that when you're facing endless swarms of respawning enemies that outnumber you 50:1, the biggest problem is that the players don't die quickly enough. The other developer would be Gazillion, the makers of Marvel Heroes. At least those are two I've encountered recently, I'm sure there are more.

Basically, if you normally play PAYDAY 2, I'd recommend you avoid trying to grind for experience this weekend, it's more trouble than it's worth.

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...

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.

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?

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.

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.

Just plain dead

A quick word about the new Deadpool game. Don't buy it, because it's a game you don't want to play. You'll endlessly repeat sections and boss fights because all that tactics that the game teaches you will fail to save you from hordes of enemies with automatic weapons. The aim feature of guns actually centres on the chest and keeps pulling back there, making headshots difficult. Most of the melee enemies will block your attacks and you have to wait to counter their attacks before being able to retaliate. They want you to build up long combos, but you can't try to pay attention to the combo meter because the action is too hectic.

Despite its being relatively cheap on Steam, I'd still say stay away from it. Watch a video of someone else playing it, because as far as I'm concerned, it would be better watching than playing. It's absolutely hilarious, until things go against you, which they always will.

ADDITIONAL

Just to elaborate slightly - the writing, humour and performances in this game are great, spot on for the character. It's just that the game gets far too frustrating to play, and I'm not even playing on hard. If playing on easy is the only way to enjoy playing the game, sorry guys that isn't proper as far as I'm concerned. Maybe I just suck at it, but I don't think it's just me. If you think you can handle the irritation - go right ahead and try it. I wrote the original post just after a rage quit, but the point still stands - the game has an artificial difficulty made by swarms of enemies. The controls are kind of awkward as well, the original "use" key was U, that's just wrong. There was something of a focus on the melee and it looks fine, handles OK, but it's when you're dealing with melee enemies while also being shredded by gunfire that the game gets annoying. And Deadpool's healing factor doesn't kick in until a few seconds after you stop taking damage, so if you've got nowhere to hide, you're screwed.

ADDITIONAL ADDITIONAL

Seems that the fight causing me the most frustration (took nearly an hour to do, retried about 25 times) was actually the prelude to the final boss fight - which was actually less frustrating than the build up. Now my other complaint is that the game is fairly short. Since it might technically be classed as a budget game ($29.99 on Steam) I suppose there is a little less to complain about, except that now I know how annoying it would be to play on hard. I think all my points here still stand, which is why I haven't retracted them. Hilarious, but frustrating.

Illusion of Choice

As something of a corollary to my Bioshock Infinite review (which I thought of updating but it really would be just to discuss this issue) I'd like to point out one of the great nuisances of its gameplay. The few "choices" you're presented with have either little or no impact of the outcome of the game. The pendant choice is purely cosmetic; not killing Slate has him show up in a prison cell later, eliciting a comment from Elizabeth; and a choice I'd forgotten - whether to draw on a ticket booth guy or let him stab you in the hand has the impact of some comment from Elizabeth followed by her bandaging the wound, or not if there is nothing to bandage. And it seems that if you are aggressive and harm unarmed, non-combatants, someone notices and offers you gear as a reward for your bloodlust.

That's it. Completely linear rail shooter of a game (with some literal rails) that offers choices that really have no impact. If anyone wants to complain about my complaint, let me put it this way: If the choices have no meaning, then don't bother putting them in there. If a game says it's a linear story game, I can deal with that. Giving me choices as if a second playthrough could lead to a different outcome only to leads to my disappointment. You want people to pay $80 for something that gives about 10 hours of fun? At least in other games there is lateral gameplay, such as "RPG" (to be discussed in a future post) like The Elder Scrolls series, which lets you do different things and play the game different ways. They're equally disappointing in terms of not really being able to change the outcome, but they're also relying on that lateral gameplay (not to mention lots of exploration) to extend the life of their games.

Bioshock Infinite is a straight line, and if it had been upfront about that, I wouldn't be as irritated as I am.