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'.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Friday, 23 August 2013

Around

I've been very inconsistent with this lately, not that it really matters, but I'm still here for anyone who actually notices. Swung the other way on this whole Adsense thing, wanting them to realise that I generate insufficient page views to warrant placing ads here. When I discovered that I'd probably need thousands of views and clicks to make any money, I thought it time to give up that idea - I only seem to get views after a new post and that's probably from people who click on every new link that shows up on Google+.

Still playing Marvel Heroes even though I think I'm nearing the end of enjoying it, at least for now. Recently played MASHY SPIKE PLATE, uh, I mean Portal 2. Good fun. Bought Mortal Kombat Komplete Edition during the Steam sale, and I regret paying $20 for it... no fun. While I think fighting games should make a return to the PC due to the availability of controllers, I still really need actual people to play against, computer just cheats. And since I have no friends it's unlikely I'd enjoy PC fighters.

Uni has been postponed for me again, personal issues which I don't want to divulge to complete strangers, I don't even like speaking to family about it. Still have ideas for articles, just not the motivation to actually write them. But I'll be around, if you really need reassurance...

Sunday, 28 July 2013

Whittlin'

So no new post for three weeks. What have I been doing with my time? Playing Marvel Heroes, despite the somewhat tepid review I gave it. I've even spent money on it, so any complaints, well I've only myself to blame. Not much to say really, just letting any of my fans (chortle) know that I'm still here. Just passing time, whittling down the stick of my life until it eventually forms the shape of my existence - I'm guessing it will be an abstract.

Uni started again, yay. If you can't hear the sarcasm it's because you're reading.

Thursday, 4 July 2013

Marvel at it

So, Marvel Heroes.

Not heaps to the story of this one, save that they went with their go-to guy Doctor Doom as the main villain. Not that there aren't plenty of other villains along the way. Free-to-play, so most of my complaints should be offset by the fact that not only did I not pay for it, but the developer is still working on the game. Seems to me that there are plenty of people paying for characters and costumes. Characters are unlocked with rare item drops, so you could effectively play the game totally free. Plus, this game does right what DC Universe Online got wrong - namely, you play as the famous (some not so famous) heroes from the comics.

Gameplay - much like Diablo, but with Wolverine and The Punisher. Isometric view and randomised dungeons crawling with enemies and the occasional boss enemy. Loot grinding is the name of the game here. Random maps, random loot, level up and keep going. Most games try to hide the fact that you're really doing a simple repetitive task, this one can't hide it. Click, click, click. Over and over. Just keep clicking. Then click some more. Story mode is fairly short and straight forward, that's where the repetition comes in - with daily challenges and of course levelling up your other characters. Or if you really really want to, you can reset the story and play it again.

The microtransactions I can forgive - free-to-play after all - it's that the in game currency is so hard to come by. You can sell your loot, obviously, but in order for the vendors and crafters to have better stuff available you need to donate you gear to them in order to level them up. That takes a loooooooooooong time. I've racked up over 50 hours playtime, and I've got the crafting vendor to rank 10 (of 20). Other vendors nowhere near that high, and the most suckiest thing about it, is that the crafters require components and credits and they demand a HUGE PILE OF MONEY just to put a fairly ineffective low grade randomised buff to your costume. That's just ridiculous - play the game and you'll soon see what I mean. 150000 credits for a grade 4 affix. Even the 25000 needed for a grade 3 is too much of an ask, because instead of selling your loot, you'll need to donate it in order to have access to the upgrades.

What I liked: I like the simple clicking gameplay - provided I'm in the right mood. The character personalities are fleshed out with random banter based on other nearby characters, or combat taunts and whatnot.

What I didn't like: In game currency, just so poorly handled. Maybe they'll fix it, since they seem to be interested in feedback. They are also apparently into updating the balance issues you come across while playing. They've already patched a few times and it's only been out for a few weeks. Also, the free-to-play model only has a few characters to select from at the start - and whichever one you pick, that will be your only character for a while. I did receive a new character token fairly early on, but I'm not sure if that's the standard or not. At least Daredevil was one of the free characters, the others were not some of my favourites (I'm looking at you, Hawkeye).

Play or not, I don't think I'm that persuasive a writer. If you try it free, at least you've only spent time instead of money. Unless you like it, then you can go nuts if you want.

Tuesday, 2 July 2013

Dunno

Things might change, I could be back on course for this whole world domination thing - Adsense is actually trying to review my blog instead of just carrying on about "copyright material". Also, still have some ideas for a few posts, they just won't be very current. Although I've been mucking around in Marvel Heroes and might have some nice things to say... Give me a day or two (which is rather absurd, as I have nothing but time on my hands at the moment).