The Dark art of Video Game Resurrection

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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.

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.