Twenty Two Token Nutshell

Well it's time for my one and only post for the year, the one time I even try to attempt some sort of writing and keep my blog alive.

Actually its kinda funny, one of the podcasts I've been listeining to have been talking about how, with the implosion of twitter and his typical outsource of creative talk, he has decided to return back to his blog and revive it there.

It's part of what got me jumping back this year, and then the numerous other posts I've half written up and drafted because I can't seem to keep my own subject focus. i'm barely able to keep my own sentences here going, having to backspace every few words just to make it sound "right". i just deleted the word unquote becaue I couldn't be fuckin arsed going back and typing quote.

anyway, I want to talk about video games. there's been a bunch I've played and I've had thoughts galore that are just drivels on epiphanys and just wanting to rave about games Ive had fun with.

Like Metroidvanias. so I've had little experience with them growing up. i didn't have a Nintendo so Metroid and the like weren't in my pervue. So when I started playing Hollow Knight and having the time of my life, which is fair because it's a beautifully crafted piece of work, I wanted to delve more into the genre.

I now have a Switch Lite, combined with a relatively cheap comfort grip, I grabbed a few of the popular and interesting Metroidvanias available: axiom verge (1 & 2), Blasphemous, and Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom.

I'll start with axiom verge because they are the most like the original metroid game, literally taking the 8 bit style and going gangbusters with it. the black backgrounds with weird tiled platform environments; tunnels circling about and confusing me until I happen to find one tile that isn't quite right and either shoot it or use a weird wave gun that changes a bunch of walls and floors because everything seems to be a biological but digitally real. It's a weird kinda game, where your character is thrown into a weird dimension of gigantic automaton trying to save themselves from another human who killed almost every other living creature. naturally you're tasked with fixing the issue, while also futzing about killing off minibosses that dont do an easy job of dying.

I havent said anything about the plot twist, because frankly that is something I was really confused and surprised about, and you should too.

Axiom Verge 2 is much the same, but jumps up to 16 bit era, and really pares down on faff. the first game had like 16 weapons, whereas now you've about 4 to work with, and maybe a few more tools after that. But again, the plot twist and the surprises, the fascinating levels and designs, just kept me going until I finished it off and moved on to the biggin.

Blasphemous is a fascinating game. It's a hard 15+ game because throughout the game, including the first few scenes, are very gorey. After you kill the first boss, you cut open his belly, pour the blood into your helmet, and put it on as the red pours down your bit-art body.

the appeal in it is that it's an interesting take on religion, and this in particular is a very old and spanish catholic art style, doused with literal examples of what are called miracles, like a boy the size of a building having the face of an old man growing in his chest, and as the game progresses the old man grows more and climbs from his chest until the one are two and they both die In The Name Of The Lord.

Weird and strange and horrific things that people and creatures allow to have happen to them because their faith demands they do it. Its a heavy theme and because it's so obscene in how it goes, it's fascinating to discover and learn, to read stories found by collecting bones of different saints across the world, to speak to different characters who are dumbstruck by everything out of the ordinary. It's a curious and gorgeous world to explore. genuinely, the art is phenomenal for something that could have been on a sega 32x.

Then there's Monster Boy. I actually haven't played much of this, truly about 3 or 4 hours in? Even that feels optimistic. And the reason is incredibly petty: I'm jaded by a related title.

So one of my favourite games from my Sega days is Wonder Boy III: The Dragons Trap. It's a fun game that has you changing forms to solve puzzles and reach different dragon bosses to return your character to normal. It's really the closest thing to a Metroidvania style game that I can attest to playing, because it has a hub area and a bunch of regions you can branch out to explore from there. It's more like a star than a series of infinity loops, but you get the idea. I'm going to have to find a name of that type of loop now, a magnus loop or something?

Anyway, a few years ago a company made a remaster of it and I fucking loved it. The core game is exactly the same, I could play the game on both a Sega Master system and whatever modern consoles side by side and I would literally have the same results. What's changed is the visuals and the soundtrack, all perfectly crafted for the game, adding so much more character to levels that weren't much more than plain blue backgrounds, but all the while making them feel like they were always there. Like they had built rose tinted glasses for this game, to make it feel in every essence the same game I played when i was a kid.

as such, Monster Boy is related in that it has the same ideas as The Dragons Trap, but sets it in the future of the characters life and allows him to change into different monsters on the fly, and having a whole new world to explore and delve into.

And my petty problem is that it's just not a similar game except by name. The controls and feel are different, the art is more of an anime cartoon style than the slightly gritty style of The Dragons Trap, and the soundtrack is just... so yeah, it's really surface level things that I don't like, and nothing I can really do about because it was all made by a different company.

All it really makes me wish is that The Dragons Trap gets a DLC addition to tell a story they want to tell, but after so many years I assume they're onto bigger and better things.

there's been a lot of that lately, last year brought in a good handful of blockbuster games that I was keen to get my hands on except for a few, and for the most part i was left disappointed early on.

Halo Infinite is really the biggest heartbreak. It's my own fault, I set up expectations that it was going to be a lot like Destiny, with having an open world that becomes incredibly deep and complex and interconnecting and having secrets in any nook and cranny you care to gawk at.

it wasn't that. it felt like a halo game, don't get me wrong, and it was super pretty in a lot of places, but... it really just felt flat.

part of that I blame on the grappling hook. that's been a big gimmick of late, to launch a grappling hook and traverse levels and encounters constantly. And it's a good thing in combat, you spot a vehicle running past and you grapple hook yourself to it and board it with ease. or you can pull an explosive barrel to you and launch it away into an enemy pile just to see them scatter.

But if you can use it to travel about, you're about to find that everything is easy to reach and youre going to spend a fair chunck of time just ninja roping your way around town.

But knowing that, you work around that. there's a bunch of different collectibles across the world and good handful of them are designed for that consideration. One type of collectible that didn't is the High Value Target (HVT), an individual enemy that carries a specially designed weapon you can pick up and use. So when Im about to cross a Jackal who carries an alien sniper rifle, standing at the top of a long slope littered with cover, brutes, shield jackals, and grunts, I would expect to run the gauntlet while he's spamming shots at me and driving me mad with each headache. Not reverse abseiling behind him and clocking him with the scifi equivalent of a boxing glove with nails in it and calling it good.

Its been a year and I havent really returned to it, partly because my Game Pass sub ran out and I havent renewed it, partly because I'm not even sure I want to yet. They have online coop implemented to the game, but I'm not finding it worth the time until they add something new or different to the game.

In the same vein, I keep thinking about Borderlands 3 and just came to the conclusion that they should just give in and become an RPG. They have all these characters, and these whole worlds they wanted to introduce, and all you're doing is just dakka dakka dakka. Which is cool, but for whatever reason it just isnt fun.

That's why I want a Tactics RPG, so you can get both hand in hand. Fix their writing, expand everyones story, have your Combat that you delve harder into to build stronger strategies than "this has big DPS", and have a god damned campaign the setting deserves that isn't just a bunch of popular memes strung together.

And while you're at it, take a look at the Mario and Rabbids games and build from that. They tackle, they slam, they shoot the shit out of stuff, all things you can do in the FPS, so why the fuck not?!

Tactics games have been pretty good of late. They re-remastered Tactics Ogre again and put them on every console available (actually I should check if it's only available on Playstation and Switch or not); Mario and Rabbids is actually pretty good, the sequel I'm playing has a LOT of improvements, especially in the free roaming where there are puzzles galore; I rebought Darkest Dungeon on my Switch so I can run that while something plays in the background on TV; Also rebought XCOM 2 when it came to the Switch because I do like a lot that it has to offer.

I did grab up Warsaw, the Darkest Dungeon-like rpg, and I've been bouncing pretty hard off it, mostly from information paralysis. It doesn't exactly ease you into the game very well and I want to learn more about the occupation of Warsaw more through this like i learnt about World War 1 from Valiant Hearts, which is getting a sequel on mobile through Netflix's service, which is a bit hurtful.

After that I have The Banner Saga which I hear is really good, it looks absolutely Captial-G-Gorgeous, but Im having trouble hitting that epiphany point with the combat. You have Armour and Strength, Strength Doubles as your Health, but the less Strength you have the less damage you deal, and you can counter it by having higher armour, which the enemies tend to have along with matching strength, so when I'm having my hard hitters get attacked first from either ranged enemies or just getting the first strike, I end up being on the back foot the whole match. I know the game is supposed to be a bit hardcore, but I just need that epiphany moment.

What I've learnt through the last few years though is that my Switch is an MVP. There's a lot of people ragging on about how it needs a hardware update and Nintendo should try to rival Playstation and Xbox in capability, but I don't really think so. It's become an Indie machine and it'll play just about any Indie that gets thrown at it.  

Speaking of Indies, Sega should let others get involved with the Sonic IP more. Sonic Mania when it came out was absolutely lourded for being a fantastic rendition of the Sega Mega Drive games made into one fun package.

i enjoyed it for the most part, some of the new levels felt a little too goofy and I didn't particularly like them, but that's a small complaint compared to the positive. Really, it's a fun game and I hope those teams dip into more of the Sonic games. Rather than the latest collection they put out.

So Sonic Origins is a bundle of the Sega Mega Drive games including Sonic 1, 2, 3 & Knuckles, and Sonic CD. Only Sonic CD I haven't actually played, but it's nice to have such a collection of games available. The problem is that they put out their purchasing options and they were Horrendous, items clearly for a cheap cash grab on top of an already fairly expensive game. Background menu Items? The option to move cosmetic things around? A Hard Mode sounded good but should have been part of the base purchase. Same with Remastered Music.

I had a plea written out that if you're going to release a remaster bundle and then offer up downloadable content, why don't you just keep remastering other games? Get the Sega Master System games and remaster them, use the Mega Drive Assets to zhush them up into something more interesting to the eye and tack it on! You'd get more than your moneys worth with remastering those underappreciated classics than you would trying to offer up the same fucking music played on a better synthesizer.

The only other big thought I had this year was of Elden Ring. It came out early 2022 to mass appraise, even got game of the year I think, and it kinda has me curious to get into it. It's a hardcore game and I can think that the only game I've played similar to it is Monster Hunter World, which I had a bunch of fun with. Next down would be God of War, but that is very much a Souls-lite, not to it's detriment though.

About a month or two later a Final Fantasy game came out called Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin. A strange name for sure, pun not intended. It had a cool idea, a prequel to the first Final Fantasy game played out in an Action RPG, running around with your party and casting spells between whapping away with whatever weapon you had equipped. There seemed a pretty good variety of options at its core, some pretty environments as you would expect of its ilk. But it fell flat at it's writing. It was dreadful. Not because of the translation, but genuinely just... just terrible. I only watched a few hours of it in play, watched the scenes on youtube, and laughed with pity at the memes generated from it because it's really that bad it's not particularly funny.

Well, to circle back, quite a few of the reviewers I follow were comparing this game to Elden Ring, saying it's Square Enix's answer to Elden Ring because of the style and combat. I couldn't agree any less. Actual gameplay in hand might be different, but looking at it I was immediately thrown into thinking of Kingdom Hearts. It may not be as zippy and floaty as Kingdom Hearts is, but I would rather that comparison than with Elden Ring.

Thinking of a Final Fantasy Soulslike just puts Vagrant Story front and centre: A single character running around a labrynthian city; using different weapons and equipment against a variety of enemys, large and small; a dark mystery surrounding all characters involved in the world. It all adds up and falls short when the combat comes and you're showing the difference between a strange turn based game, and an action game.

I think that's a wrap up. My 2022 thoughts that were half baked in the first place and just didn't have much more point than what they do here.

Returning from hell never to be the same again

The Face of

The nights I've spent playing Doom have driven me into a deep, subconscious madness. Every time I hear that growl, that strange guttural snore, of the inactive Imp, my skin crawls and beads of sweat begin to form, my heart races and I'm thrown straight back to those long nights wasting ammunition and time scouring levels for that last secret area because I can't stand that little voice laughing at me, scoffing at my mistakes, mocking me and my futility.

I had simple reasons for pushing through, crawling through the labyrinthine hellscape to reach the demon at the end of the game, and prove that I am a god amongst evil.

Come my birthday and the sweats started again. I peeled off the wrapping paper and looked over the cover, those foreboding, jagged letters burning past my eyes and into my soul. The laughing was starting again.

I knew what was ahead of me, a weekend of playing with the devil again. And again I was going to enjoy every last moment of it.

From waking up in that stone sarcophagus, crushing skulls of those poor souls lost to the power of hell, to actually going to hell and ripping and tearing my way through those monsters again and again, even with no end in sight, redefining the term serpentine as their fireballs and energy waves flew past me by mere inches as I closed in with with whatever barking iron I had in hand.

Again I heard those laughs, those cthulian incantations rising in my mind to pummel me into submission. Their hymns only drove me harder to kill, until I had nothing more ahead of me.

Time came when the final demon fell and the exhilaration and adrenaline had come to a close, and I fell back in my bed and relaxed, proud of my accomplishment. But I needed more.

Doom was not the only prize I received that day.

When Final Fantasy Meets Science Fiction

Time was that I played a game called Halo, a story of a super soldier gifted with powered armour fending off aliens and viral monstrosities, and now leading into a cybernetic society hellbent killing our stalwart hero and his demigod girlfriend.

Guardians continues that story, splitting it between Master Chief and his rag tag team of Spartan allies as they chase down said demigod, and Spartan Locke who has been tasked with bringing Chief back into line, the romantic killjoy that he is.

Regardless of his intent, the game opens with a wonderful scene of badassery, freefalling out of an aircraft onto the slope of a mountain while shooting, stabbing and generally parkouring their way through Covenant and Prometheans, soldiers and vehicles alike.

Then the game begins. I make the first move and my first thought is... "Are we under water?"

These super soldiers trudged their way through snow, cement in their shoes, arthritis apparent in all joints, rust ruining the joints of their suits. I wonder to myself "Has it always been this way? Have Halo games always been this slow grind amongst firefights? Have my years of frantic commotions been seemingly immobile?"

Hell. The realisation hits me. The Demons have persisted in my mind. Their gift of agility haunts me, frustrating me as I try to defeat this handicap, all while wondering if I will have the same problem in other games, to be forced into a quagmire that doesn't exist.

These are the demons that will now forever haunt me, as I reminisce on my time returning to hell, never to be the same again.

Heh.  Cute.

Game Evolution

And that's when he realised they did nothing at all.

I was on Kotaku and they showed a video of and updated Halo: Combat Evolved done by Modders.

I watched it and thought "Yeah, that's pretty cool.  It's nicely detailed and has a heap of additions that would mix up the game nicely."

Then I was thrown back to the Halo Master Chief Collection, that Tetralogy being released by 343 Industries and how I want them to remake the older games to match the current system iteration of the game.

After watching a presentation video of the MC Collection, showing the Menu and options available to players and one of the cooler features was a Playlist creator, allowing players to cater the entire campaign to playing as Master Chief, and exempting the handful of Arbiter missions.

Conversely, you can play the Arbiter levels.

That's pretty cool.  But as I said those few weeks ago, I would like to see those older games modified so that it used the same system as the latest game.  Assassination moves, Weapon and HP interactions, Sprinting.  It would refresh the original game, and improve things further on.

And because it's a Campaign, why not give it a more permanent feeling?  Find Armour Abilities, like Active Camo, and keep them for your loadouts.  Gain particular achievements and you can claim Tactical Packages and Support Upgrades, and maybe even weapon skins.  Heck, give Armour customisation a point and allow it to improve something.  Add in effects to weapons by customising each weapons loadout, increase Magazine size or a more efficient battery on plasma weapons.  Things like that.

But lets face it.  That sort of thing isn't going to happen.  Honestly, this is the sort of thing you hear about in something like Halo: Reach, probably my favourite spin off of the series.  The problem there is that 1: Halo Reach came to a pretty solid ending, so regardless of how customised your Noble Six was, they were NOT coming back.

What really appealed to me about Halo: Reach was that you weren't Master Chief.  You weren't one soldier leading the fight against the Covenant and Company.  You were part of a Squad, either NPC or actual players in Coop.  You were Haloguy, so to speak.  Same goes with Spartan Ops in Halo 4.  You were part of a Squad having their own encounters in the Halo Universe.  I want to see more of that sort of thing, and have a much larger campaign too.  Sure, 50 levels is pretty epic, but they were still lacking a few of those personal touches.  Especially since it was reused multiplayer levels.

But happily, there's Destiny.  Destiny is everything that I imagine a Halo MMO to be, though without actually being Halo.  More on that next week.

Speaking Aesthetically...

Gobble Gobble, Bitches

One of the things about games lately is the customisation options. Sure, customise your equipment loadout and such, things that can actually change the way you play the game, but that's not what I'm going to focus on.

Jetpack Joyride has little more to it than it's Gadgets, outfits, and jetpacks. The player can play as much as possible, earning as much coin as possible just for the goal of changing outfits. Then you have the three options of "Random Head", "Random Outfit" and "Random Jetpack". Every time you load it up, you get random options out of what you have purchased.

I like that. I don't particularly care about the Aesthetics of my character, so long as they play that way. I've had Wonder Woman with an Indiana Jones Jacket and Whip with a Golden Pig Jetpack that propels the player with cash.

I don't see why it can't be implemented into something like Borderlands, where I have dozens of custom aesthetics for my characters, and I don't see why Axton can't rock up in bright Eridian Pink with a Head like the Ravenous Wattle Gobbler.

With something like the Halo series, then sure. It's a fair cop that there isn't a random armour generator since as you gain levels an achievements you unlock pieces, which makes it a sign of achievement. You could still look like a Recruit once you reach Spartan Rank 100, but you can always go ahead and change that look as you please.

But hey, I want randomness. I don't care about what Armour I rock up in. I could be in a Gstring and a smile and it would mean diddly for gameplay because the armour is all aesthetics. So send me in wearing whatever, even if it doesn't match.

Not that anyone can really care anyway, it's not that they're going to look down their Sniper Scope at me and say to their teammates "That chest piece with those leg braces? Bitch please."

Halo Tetralogy

I remember Halo: Combat Evolved.  It was fun, using a pistol until someone got a tank and then running for your life because the cheeky bastard has also gotten the Rocket Launcher, the perfect Rock to their 90mm Tungsten Shells.

Uhh, I mean Scissors.

It was a cool game though.  We had plenty of fun, whether we were walking around Blood Gulch with Permanent Invisibility and Sniper Rifles, or playing the Master Chief campaign, taking on everything with just the Pistol.  That is until we ran out of the Ammunition, then we howled in disappointment and put the little hand cannon down and moved on.

My friends and I have kept playing the Campaign as the game continued releasing sequels.  Halo 2, 3, 4, Halo Reach.  I think the only game we didn't Coop was Halo ODST, and that's a bit of a shame.

So hearing about the Halo: Anniversary Edition, I got a little excited.  I picked it up and thought "Yeah!  This'll be great!  Halo 1 updated!"  I was wrong, but I still had fun for what it was, which was simply a much prettier game from back in the day.

Sadly though, I suspect it'll be the same thing for the Halo Master Chief Collection coming out for the Xbone later this year.  Which is a shame.  I would love to see the game updated with all the little tweaks that have been implemented in the series, from AI to the effect of weapons, to action items.

But that's something I doubt will be implemented, since each of the games are very different in their own ways.  Any new players to the series would be able to fully experience the stories and evolution of the game from day dot to it's current iteration, but I have my doubts about whether they really want that.

In which case, I'm tired of the old staying old and just being prettier.  So I may end up saving myself a few bucks in that.

Continuing to Cry about Crysis

LIKE A BOSS

Just the other day i was looking at Kotaku.com.au and a post came up about a guy who decided to take the highest resolution he could for Crysis 3 and take pretty photos, which was difficult in that he had to change the resolution mid-game to take his photo, because it runs at 2 frames per second while it's at 8k ratio.

And they were stunning photos of the most picturesque scenes, like the Dam.  The Dam is one of the most beautiful levels and it's pretty fun to boot, and the majority of those said photos are from that very level.

But it still makes me cry.  The game still feels a little wasted for opportunity, simply because they have New York in a Dome and they didn't maximise it.  Yes there were big levels, but that's not enough.  Sure you may have been running through th dry banks of Manhattan to support your allies, or driving across desert ruins of suburbs, but that's just not the same.

I remembered a game called Halo: ODST.  It was a spin off from the normal series, much like Halo: Reach, but instead of a Spartan you're an ODST soldier.  The hardcore maniacs of Soldiers.  They die into the fight with piss and vinegar in their veins.

The main story follows the player as he wanders around the open streets and buildings of the city of Mombasaa encountering different events and campaign stories, and fighting groups of enemies while playing a stealth game.

It's fun and while it still has some sections to improve it still executed a good idea.  An idea that Crysis could have executed too if they weren't simply in it for the dough and Multiplayer.

Another exercise in literary spewing

Happy Birthday Scott 2011

I've been staring at this blank page for about 2 hours now and I originally planned to write about how I wanted to go to scotts birthday, well I'm going but what i wanted to do like get a keg of cider but couldn't find anything but one keg which disappoints me because even though Pear and Strawberry sounds like a good cider, it's the lack of options that disappoint me, and that's a big thing too because sometimes I just want to get just 5L of Bulmers Pear Cider because it's a nice cheap cider, and I like the pear flavour better though Kel says he doesn't like pear cider because it's too sweet, but I just find it easier to drink, but anyway, Scott's birthday is this weekend and it's going all weekend so with my other plans of going to Kel and Tash's to see Alex on friday and then my nephews birthday on saturday (it's a lunch/dinner at sizzler) I can work it all together very well so long as I can get back to my house before mum heads off to sizzler, then I can get back to Scotts to play Warmachine, or Dystopian Wars, or Talisman and all the various expansions scotty has for it which will be crazy fun though I reckon we'll have to make an effort to do something about getting to the top because it can be very easy to just circle around the centre and level up and then climb your way to the top, so we might try and get a relic from each end of the three corner expansions and then climb up the middle, whether it's the normal version or the alternate dragon options, but that's something to sort out when we get there, otherwise we can play our xbox's like Borderlands and maybe even Halo 4 though I think I'll have to share with scott because i don't have a copy of Halo 4 and naturally that makes things difficult, but we'll find other games to play I'm sure because there are plenty of games out there, heck we might even play Gears of War 3 and finally get me to that level 50 of Horde Mode, and hopefully take on a goddamn lambent berserker and have her chase me while I Torque Bow her to death and, well, that'll be fun all in it's entirety, and now I'm really starting to run out of things to talk about even with this mindless ramble that I have because it's all I've been thinking about except for my arcade cabinet which I really want to do but can't because without a job i haven't any money and also if I leave it here it'll probably just rot away because it'll be made of wood and the dust might even set fire inside the playstation 2 that I would have inside it and Mum wouldn't appreciate me burning the house down while i'm living with Jenny, so I have to put that on hold until I move back and get my own place with jenny, and having my own man cave with a sonic the hedgehog arcade machine in the corner.

Halo 4

I have summoned you here for a purpose.
"Nobody summons Master Chief!"
Then it pleases me to be the first.

I'm in a bit of a financial rut at the moment, what with being a dole bludger and everything.  Mind, I'm doing that Bar and Gambling TAFE course, so it's not all bad.  But with the lack of dosh it stops me from getting brand new games.  Like Halo 4.

Now I wasn't particular optimistic about Halo 4.  Though I thought it was cool that the cover looks so be Unicron trying to gobble up the Master Chief.  But surely that wasn't going to happen, so I added a dash to my reserve of disappointment.

The last Halo game that involved the Master Chief, namely Halo 3, was disappointing.  It was pretty for a little while but before you even finished your cuppa, the game was over.  There wasn't really much to say about it after that.

The game as a whole was pretty much a series of encounters, nothing to motivate you along except to "Finish the Fight" before to moved on to being called a chap with a miniscule length of manhood by children who didn't even know what to do with their supposed manhood.

 So that's why I kept my reserves of disappointment.  Then the Reviews came out.

I take reviews with half a grain of salt, because there's always a chance that the other half of the grain will be the dignity half and will have been sucked off by those who want the game to sell well.  And I figured that was exactly the case when every single review that I came across said "Halo 4 is Top of the Pops".

But I let them be.  It's not my place to say "YOU'RE WRONG YOU SLAVE MONKEY" since I hadn't played the game itself.  But given time, I probably would.

And I did.  My friends picked up the game on the midnight launch, and they contacted me the next day to say that it was the best Halo Game to date.  And Scotty gave me an offer I wanted to take up.  He invited me to play the game with him at his place on Thursday, because he had the day off.

So Thursday, I rocked up to his place and woke him up because, expectedly, he was up until about 5am the night before playing.  We set up the Xbox and we began the latest chapter of the Master Chief.

One of the first things I noticed was the exempilary level of cinematic detail.  It's not just a set of crap looking muppets, I was almost convinced that they had gotten actual actors to play.  The twitches, the motions, all those little things that a person actually does.  Even the look of stunned silence was emphatic.

And slowly, but surely, all those reserves of disappointment drained away with the voice of Master Chief, speaking infinitely more than the entirety of the rest of the series.

The game at its core is still a Halo game, a rock-paper-scissors game with some new enemies and gear.  And new stuff is always fun.  But in the end, my only problems are that I would've liked more diverse range of enemies, and a better boss fight.  But if they're my only complaints, then that means I think it's a good game.

The Dark art of Video Game Resurrection

Click the pic for the original site

A long time ago I was somewhat excited about HD Remakes of games for multiple reasons, the biggest two reasons were that I would be able to get games that I hadn't been able to get before, and games that I did have but couldn't play would be made available.

But after picking up a handful of them, I came to a realisation that they weren't putting in any effort into it.  Take Splinter Cell for example.  It's a good game in it's own right.  But the FMV's were literally torn from the original game and put in the remake.  No buffering, not even an upscale on resolution.  It looked like crap.  Even in-game, one could tell that little effort was put into it except for reskinning various awkward polygons.

Same with the Halo Anniversary Edition.  They advertised that the only thing that would be changed about the game is the environment details would be significantly updated.  And yes, they granted that, but I felt it was a bit dumbed down by the experience of fighting an AI that was about 10 years old.

It was disheartening to say the least.

Mind you, there were a few remakes that I haven't been disappointed in.  One of which is Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together.  It was rebuffed in style, fixed in a few areas and provided a few extras here and there.  Subsequently, I've spent over 150 hours on it.  Probably another 10 on top if you include the times that I deleted the save file to start again after a few months time.

But it's what you would want from a remade game.  It's like a sequel, it's cleverer, it's cleaner, it's smoother, and it's a more entertaining experience.  And remakes like that are few and far between.

One of which that came out sometime in the last month was Black Mesa.  It was a fan made remake of the first Half Life game, and they look to have done a fantastic job re-imagining the game with an up to date game engine.

And they admitted to performing a few tweaks to the game itself, and they were based on the changes made for Half Life 2.  That gets a massive Thumbs up in my opinion.  Rather than just buffering the visuals, empower the entire thing.

Returning to Halo Anniversary Edition, I voiced my opinion on how different the game would be like if the enemies reacted the same way as they do in Halo Reach, the last addition to the series, and how nice it would have been to simply have the option to go into the game thinking "I'm playing a game that started an era.  But not as I know it."

I had the same perverted thought with Borderlands.  When I started playing Borderlands 2, I picked up on all the little things they did to improve the game.  Like certain enemies zig-zagging around as they approached you; the Rock-Paper-Scissors effect of weapon elements and enemy types are more significant; the need to actually take cover because you're not as effective of a bullet sponge as you were in the first game.

The thought occurred that the developers of Borderlands could release a patch, an update with some of these changes, for the first game.  I for one would happily return back to the game and start playing again  Especially if they rehashed the Skill Trees.

But the point remains the same: Question whether the remake is worth it.  Because you could just be suckered into buying disappointment, rather than what you want: A steadier, cleaner reintroduction into familiar territory.

Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary Edition (Expanded)

I'll just start off to say... It's not the Halo I quite remember. It could just be the Graphics Throwing me off, it could be that it's been so long since I last played it, or it could be that I'm trying to find the flaws that whatever . But the game doesn't feel comfortable, I'm still thrown off for some reason and it's starting to bug me.

I feel there could be improvements, but then again, the original Halo could have had improvements too. Less repetitive and winding corridors mainly. Any further improvements were left to later Halo Games because they had more of a direction of what they want out of their games.

What they've done is very nice indeed. The game is very pretty, and the new skins for the enemies and friends are very cool. It definitely makes it want to feel like a new game. The AI remains to be as docile as it was in the day, leaving you to do most of the dirty work, seeming really sluggish as you circle around hunters to score that one pistol shot in his arse. And the Warthog feels so heavy and sluggish it's almost not funny.

It feels like the old game, but prettier.

Then you roll it over to the Classic Mode using the "< Back" button. The screen blacks out for a moment and everything rolls back to what is supposedly what Halo looked like back in 2001. That's something that I'm quite sure is not quite right. It doesn't seem to change it to what it did look like, but rather to a version of the game still being half made. Tiles textures, and hardly any actual detail. the original halo had plenty of detail.

I'm going to give it a go again tonight, maybe leave it on Classic Mode for a little bit to see if the graphics are actually loading or not.

---

Okay, so I had a look at it again last night and ran through until I got past the Library level. I even spent a better part of a level in classic mode to see if I was actually correct in my assumptions, and I think it was a case of what level I was looking at. The first time I loaded up the classic level, it was right at the beginning when Master Chief was taken out of Cryo stasis. That was a rather piss poor example to look at it, really.

And occasionally I'd flick it over to see the difference between the two, and the graphical difference is significant. Croist, the overall layouts may be the same, but you don't feel so lost. I went through the Library level and it was exactly the same level, with those son of a bitch flood coming out of the wood works, and Guilty Spark leaving you in a closed room which gets Flooded (See what I did there?) and you're always panicking because your shotgun is trying to get reloaded and you're getting shot at and whipped at the same time, and etc etc etc.

It was a time like this that I wish that the Flood were as easy to kill as they were in Halo 2 and 3, where a Melee Attack will, at worst, knock them down.

As for my weird feeling, I think it's just the three suggestions I made. The Time since I last played, The Searching for Flaws, and The Refreshing new graphics. Everything else is pretty much the same as it has ever been. When i said you don't feel lost before, it's mostly because the new graphics compensated for that. Each different segment you go through, there are large symbols on the walls at the ends of corridors so you know you're in a different section. Doesn't mean anything else has changed, but hey.

I do like the extended scenes though. The Master Chief talking between Cortana and Guilty Spark was really fulfilling. That's one flaw I was sure on, Cortana's animation. Seemed a little dodgy at first, but thought it was just me. Then it happened a second time. And then the third time, I was sure. It was clunky and didn't really sync very well. Or at all.

Anyway. Playing through the game, on Normal difficulty because I'm more curious on the changes than the challenge at the moment, the levels look wonderful, the skins on the enemies are distinct and interesting, and the visuals for each level are vastly improved and more impressive.

There's always a wonder though of how different the game would be if it used the same system as Halo Reach? The better AI and controls would be a nice change, such as the less sluggish Warthog mounted by dopey AI friendlies, and the Scorpion Tank mounted with 2-4 marines with Sniper rifles... that could be ridiculous actually.

And poppers reviving knocked down flood? And transforming the dead bodies!? The Library would get as dangerous as it would easier! You blow apart bodies with melee attacks and shotguns, but they get back up from the BILLIONS (That may be exagerrated) of poppers that crop up.

Campaigning for fun

Now a month or two ago, I said about how I was going to play Gears of War 3 with my friends, playing through the wonderful campaign as a Four-player Cooperative rather than running around by myself. It's a lot more fun, especially if we all start off at the same point, then we all experience the same thing, achieve the same goals, save the same damsels, etcetera etcetera etcetera.

When I got my new Xbox and downloaded my Gamer profile, I found that I'm missing achievements for certain games, like Halo 3 and Gears of War 2. I ran through Gears of War 2 again alone because I didn't think of inviting anyone. But it wasn't as fun as with a friend. Not to say it wasn't a fun game, it was still as awesome as I remember it the first time, but I know it's better when you have someone playing with you, whether it's through the internet or sitting next to you laughing their heads off as you decapitate a couple of people with a hydraulic powered crossbow.

So in preparation to playing through the Halo 3 Campaign, I've asked my friends to gauge who would be interested in playing the Halo 3 Campaign with me. I've asked Scott and his only apprehension is the control scheme being so different to the Halo Reach scheme. It's rather different, but I'm thinking of adjusting my own settings to use the Green Thumb control scheme for all Halos upward of Halo 3.

Other games that I want to play Coop are Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One. I want to get that game and play with Scotty. I know he's waiting for me, but it's just a matter of picking up the game so we can start. Also, Portal 2 has an update for it's Cooperative Campaign, so we're going to get in on that at some point when I mention it to Scotty.



Next year, when Borderlands 2 comes out, we're going to dive into that one as well through the Xbox. Scotty was planning on getting it for PC, however it was put down to general consensus that we would all play on the Xbox. Which brings me to the subject of Cross-Platform gaming, but that's another blogpost that I've drafted away and haven't bothered to type in since I started it.

I was thinking of making a Blog for our escapades through whatever games together, somewhere we could organise times to play and such, but that seems a bit much. Though we could apply it as well for our Wargaming as well, if we decided to use as such if we were doing a campaign amongst ourselves. That would actually be really cool if we were, but we're not.

Actually I thought about running the old campaigns for Warmachine amongst friends, but haven't sat down with a copy of Escalation or Apotheosis and worked it out for MKII Settings. I don't know if there are any very good conversions out there, or even if there's one released from PPress, but I'm going to give it a crack. I'm really wanting to go with "Point Cost / 2, Rounded up" to determine Victory Points.

So wondering about whether or not I should do the blog or not. It wouldn't be interesting, I think it would mostly have notices for what and when we're next playing, unless we do a battle report for each of our campaign games, but I dunno about that.

Now I've completely lost track of what I was talking about.

Free Hole to Hole Action!

Ah, a Blogpost about games. Apologies to those who expected otherwise. May I direct you to Youporn or Redtube?

Some things don't change, and I just haven't stopped playing games. But rather than the usual PS3 I rant and complain and piss and moan about, I've gotten back into Xbox 360. Why? Because I picked one up on the cheap. Rather than fork for a new box, I picked up second hand for about half the price along with extra gadgets (2nd controller, skins, cords and co). I already had a reasonable collection of xbox games, some of which were to be expected (Halo 3 and Gears of War), but I also borrow games from Scotty because he's so behind on his games it's ridiculous. He has about 2 dozen games that he hasn't touched, or only played for 5 minutes, while there are about a half dozen games he plays incessantly or has put them on high priority. Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2 are prime culprits, causing him to play and discover every single aspect of the game, from different classes, races, moral choices, new and old characters, etc etc. It's put him behind on his new games which are slowly stocking up in the background.

I've taken this opportunity to dive on some of these games. First up: Splinter Cell Conviction. Now I've played all but the PSP Splinter Cells. They were great games and Conviction doesn't fail to entertain. It's a more vicious take on Fishers adventures where instead of maybe disabling and knocking people out, you simply kill. There's no option to save them, to keep happy the family of the poor oblivious fellow who's standing in the doorway to your next destination. You simply pull the trigger into his kidneys while you silence his cries with a hand over his mouth. The most difficult level I found was the Flashback level, where you don't get much in the way of stealth moves as you go to save Sam from his demise in the middle of the Gulf War. You don't get to Mark anyone for a chain of kills. You can't kill people sneakily in the middle of the day. And everyone is in your fucking way. I ended up distracting everyone by throwing a grenade into the distance and sprinting to the next area. My favourite part of the game is the Interrogations. There's no fucking about with this, you grab the bastard by the neck and hold him up. When he doesn't talk, you walk over to a nearby piece of scenery and smack him into it. If there's a grand piano nearby, Sam punches him and then lines his teeth with ivory. If there's a TV, he lets him see the stars up close and personal. It's several layers of awesome to see Sam finally getting the bullshit out of his system.

Next I move onto is Portal. Okay, so this isn't actually for Xbox in my case. I logged into Facebook one day and saw one of my mates make a massive announcement that "PORTAL IS FREE!" Now, the only thing I really remember out of Portal is Scotty beating the boss (With considerable ease) and then playing the credits song for us, because it is absolutely adorable and has references to Half-Life in it. But when I got the chance to play it myself, by downloading it for free, I jumped on the chance. It was short lived, as I finished the game MUCH sooner than I expected, but it was s till good fun while it lasted. Portal flashed it's "Speedy Thing Goes In, Speedy Thing Comes Out" system awesomely and I'm quite excited for the sequel which is due to release sometime in the future.

Back to the Nerd-box, I plundered games from Scotty and got my hands on Halo ODST. I've enjoyed Halo for as long as I can remember. I still can't get past the beginning of the second level on Legendary on the First Halo game, but that's why I drop it down a notch and start getting through the fucking game. Halo ODST was fun, and different to the usual Halo style of play not only because you're not a Spartan but because your main character, known only as ROOKIE, runs around an open map that he can either sneak about on, or he can go ahead and shoot the shit out of some Brutes. He can find Audio logs littered across the map as a side option and as more are collected, weapons cache's are revealed. Very fun game and Firefight and game modes like it (Gears of War 2: Horde) I take my hat off to.

Moving on we have Wet, the Quentin Tarantino Video Game. Acrobatic, Slow-mo, Gunfights with a hot computer generated form of Eliza Duschku? Game on. It's not the most fantastic of games. Sometimes it's a little confusing, especially when everything goes to Red, White and Black, but that's just part of the fun. And I have a Dodgy old TV, but that's to be expected. But it's a fun game that I'm yet to finish.

Otherwise, games have been pretty stagnant. I've got my models slowly getting done (and I mean slowly) and I'm spending this week at home because 1: I'm rather sickly, 2: I'm tired, 3: The two together concoct into something that really drags out a day and motivation at work.

Apologies in advance to Kel, as it is another week I don't get to see him. Shit, I got hate texts from Sherrie because I didn't come into Fastbreak today!

Some days, I just want to play Cribbage

Excitement boils inside me like an egg waiting to be chowed down with a Caesar Salad, and skewered using those tiny little forks that cost about $2.50 at any kitchenware store.

Being the nerd that I am, I enjoy a good video game. Recently, I have had no desire to play video games, whether by personal motivation or by social motivation.

Some games look interesting, but not interesting enough to play myself as they seem very monotonous. An example of this is Crackdown. Now, I enjoyed Grand Theft Auto. It's a fun game. However, it became monotonous by ending up as a game that just wanted you to shoot the shit out of everything you could see, and mini-missions that encouraged this. I'm all for video game violence. Nobody actually gets hurt, and I'm not one to be influenced by this sort of inanity. Heck, I played Sonic the Hedgehog a ridiculous amount as a child and teen, and I don't jump on people.

Now, where was I going with the lead to Crackdown? Well, it's that after seeing someone play Crackdown, it seems to be the same deal as GTA. Just a bunch of missions where you hunt people down and things blow up all around you while you try not to get hit yourself and maybe deflect a missile, throwing it into a building, knocking it over onto the car of the target you're hunting, causing them to drive off into the water and because they can't get out of the car, it explodes, killing them.

While the situation is entertaining, it's a rare event. Most likely, you'll run down the vehicle, pick it up and throw it into the water.

Which is not my idea of entertainment, as later on in the game one would come across another mission where a moment of Deja Vu will occur and the same thing will happen again, except maybe more missiles for you to practice your fly kicks.

It's a 'leave your brain at the door' game.

I'll give it credit, however. Within my friends, I generated a good tagline for the game: "Crackdown: It's bullshit and it fucking knows it". This also applies to Prototype, a game of similar lineage of Crackdown with an added twist: Mutations and Cannibalism.

Thats right, Cannibalism. He's not a bad guy. He's not a good guy either. He IS a strange version of a Cannibal.

Leading back to my point, the same shit with a different smell is not my idea of entertainment for extended periods of time.

Mind you, the comment about Sonic the Hedgehog as a child probably had something to do with it. I became uncannily good in Sonic the Hedgehog 3, and while I'm a little rusty at the moment it still shows that I know most of the neccessary tricks and tidbits for completing the game.

So, in search of a game to entertain me, I recently bought a couple of games from EB the other week: Stalker, Shadow of Chernobyl, and Stormrise.

I bought Stalker because I have been in the mood for a First Person Shooter. Unfortunately, this hasn't had the same effect that I was hoping. I began play and after completing a mission or two, I became disinterested.

It is a Role Play game. Unfortunately, I'm not one for playing Role Play games these days. While this does provide a desire to actually use my intelligence to complete a mission, it is not the same receptors flashing away in my brain that I'm desiring.

Which leads me to play Stormrise, a Real Time Strategy game.

I enjoy a good RTS. I bought Warcraft III and Starcraft, along with their expansions, a long time ago because they are good RTS games. I've really enjoyed them, yet have grown a little tired of them. I've gotten into the habit of playing Dota on Warcraft III and not much compells me to play Starcraft at the moment.
I do patiently await Starcraft II. As mentioned, I do enjoy Starcraft, its world and its story. So I nibble on the little treats that are the rumours and Question batches taken from the development team, and the Battle Reports that I download and convert to play on my PSP.

Returning to Stormrise however, it requires Vista or later to play.

My beast of a computer, aptly named "Beast-09" by its builder, The Dick, coincidentally also a Warmachine Reference, still only runs on Windows XP.

What kind of developer makes a demand of it's player base to use an unpopular and dysfunctional Operating System just to play a game? Microsoft. The same company that knows that this OS is extremely buggy, and are halfway through development of the next OS Generation, "Windows 7".

This disappointed me.

Unfortunately, I can't return the games at full price, as it has been over a week. I may just trade it in for a new copy of Frozen throne, as my old copy has disappeared from the face of the earth, leaving me with a plastic Case with a near useless CD-key. I say Near useless as while the CD-key is valid, I receive another CD-key with the new copy.

A long time ago, I played Dawn of War as well. It was the same genre with a few little tweaks, mostly the currency and reinforcement options. The Currency format may have been done before, where you claim points on a map to increase your rate of requisition, then hold them off from your opponents as they batter against your forces. To keep the battle large and continuous, they have the reinforcement, where you spend requisition to add more members to your units over a small build time. Orks enjoy this because if you have more WAAAUGH! the faster they reinforce and the more they overwhelm the opponent.

Continuing on, I have bought Dawn of War 2. A similar system where you collect your points across a map to gain Requisition and Power to upgrade and spawn units. It was good. The single-player kept me entertained through its duration, although was a little monotonous with it's end missions where my squads were close to invulnerable with their Terminator Armour, Rally! ability used when someone is on low health, and Thunderhammers being able to tear apart a heavily armoured enemy in a few swings. Carnifex's, Killa Kans and Wraithlords have no chance of surviving when they are released onto the world.

A video game that is either in development, or soon to be released, I'm not entirely sure honestly, is Splinter Cell: Conviction. I have played the majority of the previous Console titles. I enjoyed them immensely, with Double Agent being quite well favoured. The meticulous execution of espionage in a variety of interesting settings really sets the game high in my favourites list.

The next addition to the series seems to kick it up a notch, speeding up the processes of the game for the player rather than sitting and waiting for a particular trigger to finish before moving on, repeating this process through the better part of the game. While triggers are still an occurrence, reflexes will be on demand more often.

But, that is for the future. For now, the only similarity I can find to this without repeating the previous games is to play World of Warcraft, playing a Rogue.

This is a game that grasps Monotony and expels it into an interesting spiderweb that will splatter across your face and leave a strangely salty taste in your mouth.

Now, I imagine that quite a few people are lacking a bit of iron in their diets, so I can't entirely blame them for the fact that it has taken over their lives. Anemia is a serious problem. But, I have reached close to the characters level limit with one character. I feel like calling myself Snowball Sally sometimes when I think about it. To make things a little more hypocritical, I've begun playing again with a friend. Mind you, I've started at a bad time as my schedule is rather cramped with birthday parties and other gaming events, but will be clear eventually, I'm sure.

Steering away from my occasional fetishes, we move onto the more fast paced games. Returning to the same developers of Splinter Cell, I present Rainbow Six. To date, I have only played the Las Vegas versions. These games are very entertaining with their fast paced action and Teamplay. While the computers are insufficiently intelligent to compliment your own skill, they do provide a good enough distraction here and there for you to take out your opponents. Overall, it keeps the mind at a rise and fall reminiscent of a drive through Brisbane's suburbs.

A few games match this. Gears of War and Army of Two come to mind. Both games that play a third person, cover-interactive style of shoot-em-up with a fast paced sense of mind.
Very entertaining games that had me enthralled all the way through. While Army of Two did lack that little bit of UMPH, a term I use for something inexplicable that reels in the barramundi of interest, it did still have its entertaining moments.

Gears of War did fantastically, keeping things interesting through the whole campaign. And, to top off the ice cream with a cherry, the sequel included an new cooperative option: Horde.

The basis of Horde is that you are a squad of humans taking on waves of Locust that become harder and harder to kill. While the enemies are somewhat set depending on what level you have, with generally easy enemies to start and then increasing to much more difficult enemies at level 10, they increase the difficulty of these enemies with simple things such as increasing damage, and health. It had kept myself and friends entertained for weeks, trying to reach the coveted level 50 where we were confident that enemies were near impossible to defeat and would kill you just by saying "CRUSH". Stupid Maulers.

Continuing through the first person Genre, another game that does enthrall me is Halo.

While being the Love Child of the Xbox franchise, it does stand as a very entertaining game with its setting and occasional aspects of gameplay.

There are only a few aspects that the games really lack, in my opinion.

Halo 1 and 2 suffered from repetitive level scenes. Whilst advancing, your sense of Deja Vu is only shattered by the enemies present in the area. Halo 2 did not suffer as much as the first, but lacked the UMPH.
Halo 3, truly the masterpiece of the set, only lacked from a short campaign. After returning home from EBGame's midnight release of Halo 3, cackling away with excitement with Aaron, we arrived home to play until the dawn with an only complaint that the flood levels were... Dissatisfying. Being that they were the final levels, it was a let down, but still very entertaining.

Which leads me to it's next addition to the family: ODST. ODST's are also known as HellJumpers due to their reckless and life risking entry into combat, dropping from orbit in specially designed pods to land in the midst of combat to disrupt aspects of the battlefield for quick missions.

The scene is different. You, of course, are an ODST. But you have been set off course, and have to make your way back to your squadron. This, to me, implied that it will have to be much more sneaky, maybe more like Splinter Cell. And with the setting of the Halo Universe, it would be very entertaining for an ODST to snap the neck of a Jackal that was in the wrong place, and the player would have to interact with cover alot more.

This is half true. The player will have to be sneaky. The player will have to interact with cover much more, however not with the ease of Splinter Cell, or even Gears of War.

No, the game is relatively much the same.

I'll still play, when it is released, but I may not be as enthralled as I would with my dreamt alternative.

So where does that leave me?

It leaves me waiting for the future. Starcraft II, Halo ODST, Army of Two: the 40th Day, Splinter Cell: Conviction... All very exciting, which is the aforementioned Egg.

What do i do in the mean time? I have World of Warcraft. Yes, it'll pass the time. But I won't be satisfied.
So what SHOULD I be doing? Painting. Painting my models for Gencon 09, in September. Only a few months away!

I play table top games. Warmachine and Hordes, specifically. I enjoy these games. The setting is entertaining, the system is interesting, and currently it works to be a fantastic mental stimulus.

I have lost quite a lot of interest in playing. My models are there, and they are collecting dust because I simply don't want to play. Heck, Vassal is on my computer and I don't even want to play that.

I will still attend the tournament events, of course. The only problem with that is that there haven't been any.
The regular get together I haven't attended due to a little bit of motivation, and a very disrupted sleep pattern. I still get myself into trouble for staying late at Fastbreak of a Tuesday night and waking up like a Zombie, so Wednesday Night I am a little apprehensive to attend.

Blind Pig is set at a good time. Fortnightly from the first Saturday of the month.

I don't attend because, frankly, if I can't wake up early enough to get there before the Sausages are on the BBQ, then it's not worth it. It's nothing against the players there, by far. I enjoy their company. They're all really good people. I'm just lazy.

But I have a mission for the next 2.5 months: Paint my Army of Skorne.

Where I was going with this blog, which has wasted the better part of todays worktime, I have no idea. But I have vented. I want Starcraft II now, to play in peace, to dabble in the intricacies of the Map Editor, and to get into an exciting game.

Update: Oh, yes, I do remember where I was going.

The intrigue that the mentioned games had is now, mostly, lost. I still have the hankering on the odd occasion to play them, but these new games coming out have me excited and anticipating their arrival, as they bring some of my favourite things and expand on them.

But, Time is still going. And I have no idea whether I can get the game any sooner. The game I look forward to most is Starcraft II. While it not only expands on the previous game, it also adds features in Warcraft III such as 3d graphics, and hero aspects. The hero aspect of Warcraft III was a very entertaining thing, because it added more character to the game.

Not to mention, it brought out DOTA. Dota, for those who are unaware, is a Hero-based melee map, where 5 players on each side choose a hero and then level up their characters, buying equipment to power themselves up, and eventually make their way to the opponents prized structure and destroy it, all the while defending their own prized structure. Three pathways, each with a set of 3 defensive towers, lead to these structures. It is one of the more popular Warcraft III: Frozen Throne maps, and is fully supported by the Blizzard Development Team.

Well, time will tell when the game is released.