Morrowind Your Skyrim into Oblivion

I think anywhere from 1/4 to 1/2 of my 'gaming' time is actually spent NOT gaming, but experimenting with gaming technologies. Yes, it's a mad party up in my rig. Or some such thing.

Lately, it's been perfecting my stream-to-TV setup using the Steam Streaming beta, and modding some older Bethesda titles.

On the streaming front, things are going very well. I was pleased to discover that it streams non-Steam games, as well, which is a HUGE win for my newer BioWare titles. Also, I've been having a lot of fun impressing my son with how good I can get some of these games to look on PC. Skyrim, for example, despite being almost three years old, can still achieve an insane level of graphical fidelity, once the right mods are introduced.

Right now, I'm just sliding the Alienware laptop under the TV, jacking into the secondary HDMI, then connecting an old wireless mouse and keyboard I had the foresight to hold onto.

Problems: power and wireless keyboard and mouse. My power situation behind my TV is a bit ... unstable, and I have no desire to introduce anything else into it. This means I'm running my power cable across the room, into a 3-2 converter, then into an extension cord. Also, the range on the wireless keyboard and mouse kinda sucks, so I have to run the access point halfway to the recliner, which means that people and dogs are free to accidentally knock it down right and left.

Both of these are easily resolved via minor expenditures. What's great is that the proof-of-concept is increasingly successful. I'm now curious to see how low I can go in terms of specs for the streaming machine. I'd guess proc is the key component there, as well as having an HDMI out. I plan to rummage around the house soon, and see what I can throw together.

As stated before, I'd like to just set up a dock at each TV for a super-powerful gaming laptop, and have that act as my streaming machine, that I can also take on the road, much like my existing Alienware.

Modding Mods
On the modding side, I've been looking a lot at Morrowind and Fallout 3.

The number of mods for Morrowind is staggering. On one hand, you have the official add-ons, about which I knew nothing, and then you have super-mega-huge overhaul mods, like MGSO, which transform the game entirely, into something almost modern.

 

I'd installed MGSO a while ago, started tweaking some shit under the hood, broke it, and then also got frustrated, because I tend to game on three different PCs, depending on what's going on, and keeping the install and tweaks across three different devices was a huge headache.

This time around, I knocked it down to two devices, and did the install one after another, keeping the settings very simple. The game still came out absolutely beautiful, especially once you hit the wilderness. It's not just visuals, mind you, it's also the ambience of the environment. Everything from insects to little splashes of water to rustles of leaves makes the world, finally, feel totally alive.

I wish I'd reinstalled this mod from the beginning of this journey, but now I'm glad I did it at all.

Speaking of Elder Scrolls, it was fascinating turning my older boy loose on Skyrim, and observing a) how he reacted to various scripted events (for example, he just wanted to watch the sky for the dragon, rather than act on its impending arrival), and b) how he approached the actual 'game.' He decided he was fine with letting his NPC handle most of the combat, since he was busy picking locks and looting corpses. Then, he wanted to move in straight lines across terrain to an end point, rather than sticking to the roads. Watching it, I was marveling at how many of those tendencies are tendencies that we share. We also share a tendency to be a backseat player, and drive each other crazy in the process.

The next Elder Scrolls Online beta can't get here soon enough.

I've almost been making some minor tweaks to Fallout 3. Mainly, the game struggles a bit with multi-core procs and can even crash sometimes because of that. A few minor edits to the game's config file nipped that right in the bud, and it runs rather nicely now. I'm also looking at a handful of graphical mods. The game looks a bit long-in-the-tooth now, and it'd be nice to up the textures on some of the faces and environments.

Oh, and randomly, I grabbed a total conversion mod for Oblivion called Nehrim. I'm curious to try this one out at some point. It's a whole new world, totally separate from the Elder Scrolls, and I love shit like that. I'd love to something like that someday.

Yes, but you will be talking about actual games at some point in this gaming blog, yes?
Morrowind. Yup. Been playing more Morrowind.

As I've talked about before in here, I find that with Morrowind, more so than any other game I've ever played, I have to be very conscientious about keeping myself in the right frame of mind when I play it, otherwise I'll never come back. I fight, sometimes, to keep myself from being obsessive about making progress. Morrowind is antithetical to this concept, in both its structure and its themes. Morrowind asks, or rather insists, that you chill the fuck out and just immerse yourself in the world. I'm now trying to bust a green librarian out of a floating sky prison above Vivec. This shit is just awesome.

Meanwhile, I'm also all set for Thief tomorrow. I've got my preloads done, one on the main desktop, the other on the laptop.

Interesting. I just noted that Thief is unlocking tomorrow at 1PM central. Looks like it'll be a late lunch tomorrow, and I'll be lugging the Alienware to work. Which is fine.

I anticipate that I'll play quite a bit on Tuesday, barring any technical launch issues, and have some impressions on Wednesday. I may even get all crazy and put up a Tuesday night post, as well.

Here's some Thief reviews, by the way.
EGM
Game Informer
GameSpot
PC Gamer
Polygon
Rock Paper Shotgun

Take from those reviews what you will. In there is some sort of aggregate, but I always wonder how much things like predisposition based on rumors, wanting to fit in with other reviewers, and consideration of being able to make a living because ad revenues are still flowing in inform some of these guys. Historically, I find that there are some reviewers that I tend to match up with, while others seem to be existing in a world that is in total dissonance from my own. And that's okay. I tend to find more use for reviews after I've played the game to completion, as I often enjoy engaging some of these guys afterward to compare notes.

Anyway, if you had a mad Thief boner, don't get upset by other people not loving something you've already decided was the game to ever come out tomorrow. Unless you love it and want them to make another one ever again, it doesn't matter what other people think.

I still plan on seeing what's what, and I'm looking forward to it.

Thanks for reading, and lemme know what you think of Thief!

-Blaine

RAWR! Consoles Hate Freedom! RAWR!

So, I was perusing the comments (WHY do I that?! WHY?!) of some article on GameSpot, when I came across an unexpected explosion of the anti-PC vitriol that has only intensified with the release of the 'next-gen' consoles.

I think the subject in question may have been the re-release of Tomb Raider for XB1 and PS4, with visuals that are closer to PC-quality than the PS360 release. I believe some trolling PC player may have made the mistake of disclosing poorly-timed truth and pointing out that all the new Tomb Raider release is a better-looking version that PC players have been able to enjoy since its actual release.

What followed was your predictable flame war, in which each child involved assigned some kind of emotional value to what a total stranger on the internet enjoys. I was tempted to jump into one of my alts and fan the flames a bit, but decided I was too out of practice, and that I had an actual life to go enjoy.

The Future
What both sides don't realize, I believe, is that we're marching toward a hybrid future, in which there won't be two disparate sides, but more of a spectrum. Ideas like the SteamBox offer a potential glimpse into what I'm talking about, in which you have a box that is built to a prescribed minimum standard, with a prescribed OS, like a console, but with the option of upgrading, similar to a PC (side note - I heard someone say, and I'm not kidding, 'simUlar;' I wanted to smack them. I don't even know how you arrive at that pronunciation.)

PC gamers, by necessity, are more tech-savvy than console-only gamers, and by and large recognize this fact. I think a lot of us PC-heavy players look at it, shrug, quietly hope it doesn't destroy the wide-open world of PC gaming, and then move on with our lives (or MMOs, in some cases.)

I'm concerned about the console-only gamers, though. Many have been reduced to parroting whatever the branding behind their console of choice is currently pushing ("M$ is MORE WORSER AND GAY!" "SONY IS FOR FAGS! RAWR"), and both Microsoft and Sony want NO infiltration into their space by Valve and its cadre of Steam Box manufacturers. The console-only kids, if Steam Box makes in-roads, are gonna be blindsided.

The Present
What's crazy, though, is that if you compare the Xbox One, PS4, and SteamBox, the SteamBox reflects precisely what is in play already among every single other device type. Blu-Ray players play all Blu-Ray movies, so long as you can pull firmware updates, no matter who the manufacturer is. Digital receivers all output HDMI, no matter the manufacturer.

In MS and Sony's worlds, many Blu-Ray titles would play on both platforms, but certain titles would only play on one or the other's platform, necessitating that all consumers buy two Blu-Ray players if they want to watch all movies.

This is stupid, folks, and we've all been endorsing it.

While I don't think the SteamBox is for me, since I already own multiple gaming PCs, and I have an Alienware laptop that I frequently and easily connect to the TV, I do hope it heralds an end to this console nonsense.

Don't get me wrong, I think consoles are great, but in their current form, they're a relic. Their closed platform model doesn't make sense anymore. In order to play all modern console games, you need an Xbox One, an Xbox 360, a PlayStation 4, and a PlayStation 3. That is four goddam machines. Yeah, it'll be down to two in the next couple years, but that's still two devices to play a single user's library of desired titles.

I don't need more than one optical movie device to watch my Blu-Rays, and I shouldn't need more than one console.

I'm not sure what the console player's argument against this is.

And don't even get me started on how stupid it is, in this day and age, to have a device that does only one thing. All devices can easily be multi-purpose now, without diminishing functionality on any one function.

Hope For Change
Frankly, I'd love to see the SteamBox come in and burn the whole thing down, but then see MS and Sony get back in the game, and offer a competing SteamBox-like platform. I think the Metro interface is ripe for it, and MS has the chops, if they ever give a fuck about PC gaming ever again, and not through their walled-off store. Maintain the current open PC gaming standard, so that you can play all titles via any box, and let the race be decided by better UI, ease of service, price, and who can be the first company to make a good mouse/keyboard combo for the couch.

At the same time, I hope Valve is careful in preserving what it is that makes PC gaming so great, and that's the openness of it. Anyone can release anything for PC. Period. There's no gatekeeper. It's truly open, and SteamBox inherently curbs some of that, since you have to get all your games through Steam. That means no Dragon Age: Inquisition or Titanfall or Diablo III or StarCraft II on SteamBox. That, right there, is the second-biggest reason I won't do Steam Box, but instead, my own solution. I love BioWare way too much to invest in a specialty device that automatically excludes them. Activision, though, I can easily live without.

The best part about PC gaming, besides the face-meltingly amazing visuals and bleeding-edge technology and the amazingly precise control schemes, is the proliferation of ideas. Because there's no platform-holder that can block your ideas, you are free to put them out there, and try to get to them to the masses any number of ways.

On the console side, there is no such freedom, and you better be prepared to play ball in the manner of the platform holder's choosing, should you choose to try and publish on their platform.

Also ...
I own an Xbox One and really like it. Forza 5 and Dead Rising 3 are a blast, and I love that the box is the perfect family entertainment hub. It handles anything from TV to movies to audio to games to fitness without batting an eyelash. I just wish it did 3D. And I wish I could at least stream my PC games through it.

This post was originally going to be about how restrictive it is to swear allegiance to just one platform, and then that kinda morphed into this. I guess where I kinda arrived with that was that there should only be one platform, which is an open platform.

I dunno. Maybe PC gaming is 'too open' for some folks, and they need their entertainment purchases spoon-fed to them. These must be the people watching 'Dancing With the Stars' and shit like that. Or maybe they're part of that massive conspiracy that insists that there has, in fact, been a REALLY good entry in the Killzone series, even if they can't name which one it was.

Side Quests
 - beta invites went out for this weekend's Elder Scrolls Online beta test. I don't know if you can still get in or not, but you can apply here. If you're playing the beta this weekend, PM me.

 - the next BioShock: Infinite episode arrives 3/25. I've finished the core game, but haven't tried to the first episode. I was gonna wait til they're both out.

 - I've gotten way back into Morrowind, and am loving it again. I've been kicking it Legion-style up on the northern coast, and am really digging being a ninja-thief-impCult-impLegion-dude.

In Closing ...
I love gaming, and I want it to be as accessible as possible to as many people as possible. I know that the platform and 'couch vs office chair' experience can be a deal breaker for some folks. I was a straight-up console gamer until I had children. I was not at all into PC gaming until a bit after my first child was born, and then multiple factors pushed me into PC gaming.

The key thing is that you don't one of those miserable fucks that uses your lack of income as a the basis for an elaborate fiction in which the only platform and games you can afford are the only viable gaming experiences to be had.

*HUGGLES*

-Blaine

Yesterday's Title Made No Sense, So Potatoes

I meant to talk about my 'gaming space' yesterday, but got completely derailed by ... oh wow, there's a trailer for Murdered: Soul Suspect. I think I remember hearing about that game somewhere, at some time, but damn ... and it says there's an Xbox One 'version,' which implies another platform. Maybe PC? Was that one of those that was gonna have a TV show attached to it? Can't remember. No, that was something from those guys that did Alan Wake. Yeah. Wasn't there a DS game kinda like this?

Oh. Sorry.

Anyway, when the baby was discovered as being a gestating fetus in my wife's body, it became apparent that I was going to need to surrender my home office for the purpose of storing the infant after it was extracted from my wife.

I did so, happily, as I was and am thrilled to have another son. I love being a baby-daddy.

I moved our home office to what we call the 'Sun Room,' since it's glass on three sides, provides a thrilling view of our huge, green, and stress-inducing backyard (it requires more maintenance than a General Motors product.) At the time, it seemed like a good spot for it. Nice view, big space, and I could spread out my setup a little more.

Since then, glare is a constant issue, as is people talking at me. I am not exactly an easy person to hide, but beyond that, there must be something about my back, or perhaps, backside, that beckons to people to start running their mouths. At my back.

If my back had a third ear, and a separate brain to process the information being verbally spewed at it, this would not be a problem. However, I frequently work from home, and the nature of my work (programmer) can, at times, require some fierce concentration.

The same can also be said of a 32-man raid in SWTOR.

There are no doors to this room, since it's part of an 'open floor plan' and that means everyone has to be able to be up in each other's grills at all times. Most of the day, I like this. I married an attractive, intelligent woman, and she is an nice to look at as she is nice with which to converse. She stimulates blood flow at opposing ends of my body, and often at the same time.

And my children are fantastic.

I have a near-perfect home life, but my gaming/home office setup is atrocious. Part of the issue here is that I'm not a very good person, and thus like being able to wall myself off at certain times. If I'm working, I need the ability to drop a cone of silence on myself at will. But I still want to be able to raise my voice slightly and call to a family member, or to be able to hear signs of life elsewhere in the house.

And most of the games I play are games that nearly require total immersion. From the Elder Scrolls to raids in SWTOR to Dragon Age to the Witcher, my games are each a plunge into a distinct ocean of fiction (that doesn't have any sharks because fuck that), and without intense focus, you stand to miss a crucial detail, and then you're on the game's wiki, and then you accidentally read that you're Revan or the Nereveerevereareaareeerrine, and then the whole game is ruined, and then Germany has won the war.

I may finally cave and move my setup to the workshop in the basement. I've only ever used it for storing baseball cards and Star Wars memorabilia up to this point. It's dark, it's dank. It looks like the kind of place where you'd both work on the Frankenstein monster AND cook meth. I may be able to spruce it up. We'll see. I still don't like how cut off I'll be from the rest of the family, but I'm pretty creative, and may be able to find a way around that.

Side Quests

 - remember how I was bitching that Star Wars: The Old Republic needs more story content? Looks like that's in the works. I'm not judging either way yet, since it's early, BUT they have two so-called 'digital expansions' coming, ONE of which is like Makeb, the other is like Galactic Starfighter. Eesh. I'd rather have two Makebs. Just sayin'.

 - Thief has gone gold and has a trailer that talks at you about all its features. Looks nice. I hope it's legit.

 - looks like 'Steam Music' is going to be a thing. You can stream your music library whilst playing a game. The UI looks nice. I'm already having visions of rocking some Billy Idol while dancing with Rinoa in Final Fantasy VIII. Check out the announced features here.

 - any time one of your generic console-only so-called 'gamer' friends starts teasing you about being a PC gamer, point at this shit right here.

Word. Thanks for reading.

-Blaine

I'm Old and I Game Like It

One of the things I've enjoyed about aging (I'm now in my mid-30s) is that my tastes have slowly narrowed in the gaming realm, and I'm very happy about that. I used to play the latest everything, plus a lot of interesting niche titles, and I really didn't look down my nose at a game unless it was just flat-out bad. I also didn't finish a lot of games, and actually developed something of a reputation for it. I also didn't really care. If it wasn't a Final Fantasy title, I didn't finish it. And if it was Final Fantasy VIII, and featured that horrid Junctioning system, I lost all motivation to play it late in the game.

Looking back, I should've financed an intern to come to my apartment and Draw magic for me from enemies for several hours. Seriously, how the fuck was that allowed to make it to the production version of the game?

Oh, and Squall ... ugh ... worst lead character in a Final Fantasy ever ... well, maybe second to that obnoxious daddy-issue-laden jerkoff shitbag Tidus. It's like some Japanese consulting firm came to the States, saw all the sad little emo boys of the late 90s, and decided that 'feelings' needed to be a bullet-point on the back of the jewel case for Final Fantasy VIII and X. As if having watched Cloud wobble in a wheelchair like a drunk, blonde cactus for 10 hours in FFVII wasn't enough 'feelings' for the entire series. Ugh. And Tidus ... I'm still disappointed there was no way to drown that whiny prick, even with all that water. Ugh. UGH. ACK. At least Cloud was an identity-stealing sociopath.

Anyway, now that I've thoroughly dated myself, I used to play everything, but only finish Final Fantasy games. FASCINATING, I know.

Nowadays, insane Steam sales aside, I play far, far fewer games, but finish a far higher percentage (let's just look away from my 300+ game Steam library and play along.)

Part of that has come from the fact that I just don't give a shit about your dudebro, mouthbreather, generic, annualized military shooter anymore, and part of it is from the fact that I look at my family, I see the years of wear and tear on my body start to accumulate, and realize that if I'm going to spend any time at all gaming, it needs to be spent on games that actually contribute something to my life, which for me, is RPGs (and some strategy and some driving sims.)

Yeah, okay, I'll still pop in for the occasional Battlefield match, but rarely. I don't play BF4 40+ hours a week, so I'm not good enough to really enjoy it, and multiplayer in games tends not to drive me down a thrilling narrative path, so I tend to regard them as a waste of time. Some MMOs, because of their structure, are exempted from this.

I'll also veer outside of this for games that aren't RPGs, but still tell good stories well, like the Uncharted series and various PC adventure titles.

There's just something about being swept up in a narrative experience that feels substantial, like a good novel, almost, and getting to explore another world in an interactive way deeply reinforces that perception. While my life is far less stressful than it used to be, I still find that I love totally checking out of this reality for a bit, and living in a world that is not this one, whether it be the rolling expanses of Tamriel, the politically-charged kingdoms of Thedas, the wasteland of post-apocalyptic Washington DC, the wind-swept tombs of Korriban, or the bright, endless expanse inside the Citadel.

On top of that, cracking open games, digging through their files, and either editing them myself or installing mods, and then getting to dictate my experience is fantastic.

For me, the interactivity with a game doesn't stop at the user interface, but being able to tailor the game even more to my tastes makes the experience more 'mine,' and so much more enjoyable.

And I still enjoy the occasional RPG on console, when it's the only way to play it, like the rare modern JRPG that's worth playing.

On top of that, I still have a pile of shame like you wouldn't believe. Between 90s PC RPGs of which I wasn't aware, and newer console-only (for shame) titles like Dragon's Dogma that I hate playing on console, and the entire Bethesda catalogue, I've got a pile of shame that is daunting.

Combine that with the fact that I hardly game during the week (8-5 as a developer, 5-8 with the kids, 8-? with the wife), most of my gaming is night-time binging on Friday and/or Saturday night, so I have to be fairly selective, and force myself to focus on one, maybe two, game(s). And I've sometimes been known to sneak in some time during sports broadcasts by seeing how long my legs can stand the Alienware laptop while in my recliner (my normal gaming rig is a custom build ['of course it is, you pretentious dickbag,' is what you're thinking, but it's okay.])

What's funny, too, is I used to experience something approaching anxiety about not being super-plugged-in to the gaming scene when I decided to start scaling back my purchases and genre interests. Time and the realization that most so-called hardcore gamers are just awful people really changed that. Between the built-in racism and misogynism endemic to the 'hardcore gamer,' I was more than happy to divorce myself from that crowd. The 'anti-diversity' thing that pervades comments sections in gaming articles makes me want to throw up in your mouth.

Additionally, as I've gotten older, I've come to realize that the concept of being 'hardcore' about anything tends to imply that a person has a gaping emotional hole in their life that they're desperately trying to fill, only to further erode any shot at happiness they'll ever have. As great as that sounds, I'll keep my life interests diversified, and spend what little gaming time I have in a way that is fulfilling and fun.

I remember recoiling in horror, as younger man, at the thought of ever having to 'give up' the huge amount of gaming time that I had. Maybe that's where you are right now, and that's okay. I was like that, too, for a real long time. It's important, though, to remember that you're a moron, your priorities are beyond fucked, and right now is a good time consider completely overhauling your core identity, before you do something completely stupid, like reply in a way that is deeply passionate to a comment in an article about which is better: PS4 or Xbox One.

What about you? How has your gaming experience changed over time?

Also, I don't know why I've been bringing up Final Fantasy so much in these recent posts. Sorry about that. I hardly touch the series anymore. I don't know what that's about.

Thanks for reading, and I'll be back soon.

-Blaine

Mobile Gaming is Terrible Again

I used to mock people who played mobile games. I'd insinuate, or even flat out state, that mobile games (DS + PSP) were mostly terrible kiddy versions of games, and I wasn't wrong. Then Hotel Dusk happened. Then Phoenix Wright happened. Then, Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions happened. Things were looking up.

Since then, mobile games, mainly via iOS, have exploded, and have thus been properly watered down for the slack-jawed anti-intellectual masses. This is good and bad.

The good is that we got Angry Birds. The bad is damn near everything else that came out.

As I see it, we should be working to make mobile games more like games that can't be mobile. Throw in a 'save anywhere' feature on the mobile version, and you're good to go.

Granted, PC gaming has been there for years. I've been able to play any PC game I wanted on the road for a number of years, but it's difficult to deploy that setup in a vehicle while on a road trip, or on a train. This is where the PlayStation Vita comes into play (and maybe even some phones.)

The Vita has some serious horsepower, and should be the home for straight ports of PlayStation 2 & 3 games, and based on my experience with MLB 2012, continuing the same season on both devices is easy and a great way to play the game.

What I'm hoping happens is that the wall between 'home' gaming and mobile gaming goes away, and the two converge into one. It'd be great to have a deep RPG on the iPad, play it on the go, then come home and stream it to my TV via AppleTV. Same thing with the PS3 and Vita.

Steam Cloud has made this simpler than ever. I used to map my 'My Documents' folder on my laptop to my gaming desktop and set it to sync for offline, so that saves would stay concurrent, but I don't need to do that anymore for most games.

Get rid of the gimmicks, stop catering to the lowest common denominator, and focus on the technology and richness of experience.

What say you? What's your ideal gaming experience, both at home and away?

-Blaine
Buy my book!

Early Games of 2011

If you want to make sure that you don't win any awards ever, then you must release your game in the window between late December and before September. No matter how good your game is, the gaming press has a memory that ends at Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy VI, and then resumes a month ago, regardless of the date.

Or make the game a PC exclusive. The mainstream gaming press and generic humans are terrified of PC games. It's like the game just working is more important than the overall quality of the release, or something.

That's a whole other post.

Anyway, I've chopped my 24 games of 2011 into four groups of six, and I'll go through them chronologically. Once I'm done, I'll highlight my favorites in another post and comment a bit more on them.

If you don't see your favorite game on here, all it means is that I didn't buy it. If you think it's good, and I didn't buy it, it's probably from a tired franchise or genre, or it's a whimsy-filled, story-free cutesy game for babies. I'm sure it's great, though.

Here's the first six, with comments attached.

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
And this marks the first of several really great games that I barely touched this year, and have been tossed onto the pile of shame.

This is the next game from the Ace Attorney developers, and deserved a lot more attention than I gave it. I devoured each of the AA games, but for some reason, this one didn't quite grab me the same way.

I used to play these types of games at night, while in bed, but it seems my NookColor is winning that war. Or maybe I'm just having a LOT more sex now. No ... that can't possibly be it.

Anyway, I find that these games are perfect for end-of-the-day relaxation. They challenge the mind and tickle the intellect.

The visuals were gorgeous, the writing was solid, and these guys are great at really making games that use the DS well.


Dead Space 2
Wow. This is how to do a sequel.

I shouldn't like this series, since there are very few RPG aspects to it, but the storytelling is fantastic, and the action is reasonably good.

The first Dead Space startled me with how enjoyable it was. To prepare myself, I played the prequel PS3 Move game, Extraction, watched the first film, I read the comics and the novel, and found that I love the depth of this universe.

I blasted my way through the first game, loved it, loved everything about it, especially the story, then found myself tolerating the downloadable Dead Space Ignition, then found myself really enjoying the iPad Dead Space, then I watched the new movie, and then I found myself digging the new comic, and then it was time for Dead Space 2.

I wasn't sure how I'd feel about Isaac Clarke no longer being a 'silent protagonist' a la Crono or that retard Link.

It worked beautifully. I was surprised. In fact, I hope they keep it this way. Yeah, having him be silent raises the tension by making the player more invested as Isaac being 'me,' but I think Visceral realized that this isn't really a 'horror' series so much as an action-ish scary story.

This series nails 'immersive.' From the lack of a HUD to the way that the story is told through radio and video transmissions to the environments, everything feels 'real' in a truly unreal world.

Oh, and I never played the multiplayer. I'm kinda sad that money was spent on it, and sagged this game's budget unnecessarily, and then was built into the cost of my Limited Edition.

I haven't played the DLC, Severed, yet.

I haven't seen this game show up on any 'best of 2011' lists yet, and that's just wrong. This was the best game of the first quarter, but because of the way the gaming press's memory works, it's as if this game never existed. Idiots.


Marvel vs Capcom 3: The Fate of Two Worlds
Yeah, I've only played the multiplayer on this with my son (who is insanely good at this now.)

This game is fun, and I actually really do enjoy the fact that it's crazy imbalanced. And the art ... yeah, it's awesome.

This is the only fighting series that I own. My son and I love playing this.

Oh, and skip this game altogether and get Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 instead.


Bulletstorm
Sometimes, I make impulse buys.

This was actually kinda fun, though. It also made me realize how tired I am of the futuristic rough & tough guy.

This game reminds me of when a young guy takes a chance and starts dating / banging that girl that's clearly troubled and clearly high ALL THE TIME. You have a great time for a week or so, and then you start worrying about someone finding out about her or contracting a venereal disease.

In this game's defense, it did have a sort-of tongue-in-cheek over-the-top approach that was coupled with some pretty solid gameplay. I liked the sense of humor a lot and found the action fairly rewarding.

Actually, the more I'm thinking back to this game, the more I'm realizing that I actually really did enjoy my time with it. I may dust this off at some point, actually.


Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2 - Retribution
The longest title of the year, for sure.

I'm still working my way through the prior expansion, so I haven't done much with this, aside from the Last Stand mode, and a little multiplayer here and there.

This is a rock-solid series, though, from the best RTS dev in the world, Relic. If you like RTS games at all, check this series out.


Dragon Age II
Before the games that came out in 2011, I was ready to declare the 'Dragon Age' series as my new favorite series.

Let's get one thing straight right off the bat here: Dragon Age II is not a bad game. Fundamentally, it's a  solid RPG. It is. The writing is engaging, the gameplay mechanics that we loved in the first game are still intact, if de-emphasized, and while this title was skewed a bit more toward roping in the mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging Call of Duty crowd, the skeleton of what we loved about the first game was still intact. The problem was, the muscle and 'healthy fat' had been greatly reduced.

I consume everything that's Dragon Age-related, because I love the lore, the I love the world they've crafted, I love the characters, and I love the fact that it's fantasy tinged with the brutality of the real world. To take a series that is already known for its scope and to cram into one city is problematic at best. If the city had the life and vitality of a Shenmue, it'd be okay, but this is not the case.

Additionally, the whole game, much like Mass Effect 2, reeked of 'streamlining,' or in a more honest phrase, 'dumbing-down.'

Let's be real here. One need only look at TV ratings and game sales to see that most people aren't interested in intellectual challenges. Reality TV and 'modern war' games dominate the charts, and since there is no such thing as 'enough money,' every single franchise, from Star Trek to Dragon Age, has to be made less challenging to those who hate thinking and being patient. You're either the biggest, most saturated, most bloated intellectual property out there, or you're a horrid fucking loser.

In the attempt to curry the generic human, Bioware kept touting the 'action' aspects of Dragon Age II, and from what I've heard, the PS360 users greatly suffered on the combat side. PC users still had the same basic interface, which was a blessing. Well, if 'not totally sucking' is a blessing.

In any case, the game went from an emphasis on careful, considered approaches to twitch gaming. This started with the combat, but really trickled down to everything else. Like Mass Effect 2, the world and story felt much more constricted, and not a place in which I could lose myself for a few hours.

Where Ferelden felt like a sprawling, diverse world that contained multiple cities and multiple areas of adventure, Kirkwall felt like a boring prison that had some interesting stories that were artificially protracted by the 'story within a story' approach, as brilliantly narrated by Varric.

What gives me hope, though, is the DLC that was released. Each release has been incrementally better, and seems to have a little more soul.

Dragon Age II was rushed, dumbed-down, and the biggest disappointment of 2012. How can a good game be bad? By making the mistakes the developers made on this one. They traded market share for soul.

And that's the end of the beginning. Those are the first six games that I bought in 2011. Dead Space has been great, Dragon Age II was good, if disappointing, and the rest still need some attention.

What say you? What did you think of these games? What have I already missed? What else should be in further posts? TELL ME NOW! DON'T WAIT FOR THE TRANSLATION!

-Blaine

Best of 2011?

In a year that wasn't very good on the film, music, or TV front, I'm glad that gaming stepped up and dropped some truly kick-ass titles. No matter what machine(s) you play on, or what genre you love most, there was something good.

And, since we're obsessed with classification and pretending that we can have an objective 'best' in a subjective art form, I'll throw some titles out there, too, and contribute to the problem.

I will say, though, that one thing I love about reviews and 'best' lists is the discussion that can spring up. Sure, you have the 'my console is the only one I can afford and therefore it is the only true console' fanboys, and you have the anti-PC idiots, and the people that just get inexplicably defensive about a game that loved or hated (and still haven't played.) However, I've had some truly great discussions with other writers and fans, and have found that those discussions have informed my opinions and given me more to think about when playing a game.

To that end, I'm not going to provide a solid, numbered list. I'm going to just go through the year chronologically, and throw out some games that I really enjoyed, and some games ... about which I have some comments.

Before I kick things off, what about you? How do you feel about 'best of' lists in artistic mediums? How do you feel about reviews pretending to be objective? What games did you most enjoy this year, and why?

-Blaine

Flavors of RPG

So, the podcast is still sitting here on my HDD. It's still too big to upload, because Monday & Tuesday merge into one hellish day each week because I have so much I have to get done those two days. Well, I am free on Tuesday nights, but I'm so wiped out and angry by that point that I'm sure as hell not 'working' on something.

No, instead, I went all kindsa foaming-mouth mad for the new Dragon Age expansion, Awakening. More on that in a minute.

I do love it, though. What I've noticed is that the more someone in a forum post hates it, the worse they spell, so I think the problem may be that there is in-game reading required, and the retards/teabaggers get all sortsa mad about this, and spam-post in forums. I wish forums had a spelling test before someone was allowed to post at that moment. NO. A spelling/grammar test, so that their bile became readable. YES.

Anyway, I was instructed to write about Final Fantasy XIII, and I shall now do so.

Had you broken into my house and listened to the podcast, you'd know that the first point that I made was actually about the soundtrack, which I acquired some time ago. It's composed, rather well, really, by Masashi Hamauzu, and ONLY by Hamauzu-san. This is a first for the numerical Final Fantasy games, since even Final Fantasy XII, which was composed Hitoshi Sakimoto, still featured a handful of tunes from Nobuo Uematsu, who, until Final Fantasy X, scored every bit of music to ever appear in a numerical Final Fantasy game.

The fact that Final Fantasy XIII featured NONE of the classic Final Fantasy tunes told me everything I needed to know about this game. This was a new beginning for the franchise. They were really and truly, finally, severing ties with the past and moving on. I wasn't thrilled about that, but given how much I've enjoyed the game so far, I've let it go.

This game is perfect for people who do normal things in the Meatspace, like raise children, go to work, enjoy other hobbies, go to work AND school, go to work AND school AND raise children, go to work AND school AND raise children AND bribe the wife for sex, watch Lost, etc.

The sections in between save points are short without being microscopic, and let someone like me just sit down and place through as many of these sections as I'd like. If I were retarded, I'd refer to them as 'bite-size.'

What I've done is actually use these points as an excuse to dive head-first into the menus and get my 'nerd' on.

When I first started playing game, I like, everyone else, immediately noticed how streamlined a lot of things were. The battles can run with minimal input from the player, the areas and story are on a rail, so I was worried that my favorite part of any RPG would be gone, but (phew) one can still spend hours in the menus just dicking around with the Crystarium, customizing Paradigms, tweaking weapons and accessories, and on and on.

I'll be straight with you, though. I have found the linearity a bit stifling when I play for more than 2-3 hours at a time, I despise half the characters, and I don't like it as much I like the most recent Bioware RPGs.

Lemme talk about the characters right quick, though. Okay, Sazh and Vanille, you're cool, so you can go. Oh, wait. Wait. Vanille, I'd like you to stop having orgasms every time you make a sound. It's REALLY annoying, okay? Thanks. Bye, now. Hope and Lightning, please cover yourselves in this gasoline and go stand on the edge of that cliff. Closer. A liiittle closer. Little closer. Okay. Now, please set yourselves on fire and then jump. Thanks!

That pretty much sums up my feelings on the characters.

By the way, I really want to strat a petition that bans English-dubbed female Japanese-originated characters from having orgasms every time they make a sound. You know what I'm talking about right? These gals make a waterfall of non-word sounds OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER, but only in bad dubs, like this one. Know how I know it's a bad dub? The girls, with the notable exception of Lightning, who is too annoying to have a proper vagina, all act like they have vibrators in their panties every time they make a sound.

Whoah. Went on too long on that one.

Oh, and some people have had a real problem with the fact that one must read the Datalogs to have any clue as to what's going on in the game. I understand their position, and might feel the same way if I hadn't just gone and read the fucking Datalogs without having to be told to do so. Aside from the game telling me. And not spamming Twitter with all kinds of inane questions. Nope, I was that one smart American.

Anyway, it is an odd choice on the part of the developers to not provide an overt context for the events of the game, but it is all there. Also, if you hate reading, I have some Dragon Age 'fans' that you should meet...

As for the story itself, I'm intrigued. First of all, there's not a giant underwater thing that gently rocks boats instead of smashing them to pieces named Sin who is secretly the greatest Blitzball player ever and oh by the way Blitzball sucks ass and now that you mention it Final Fantasy X was pretty bad well except the battle system but the story and characters and dungeon design were so bad as to nearly be illegal in some countries.

Second, I'm not as into the story as I was in IV, VI, VII, IX, & XII, but it seems to be getting there. It just really hurts that (so far) two of the characters are so utterly detestable.

Oh, and for those who want to know, I'm currently towards the end of the animal sanctuary / bio-weapons development.

Also, some time, I want to elaborate on here about the discussion Laurance and I were having about the parallels between Final Fantasy XIII and Mass Effect 2, specifically pertaining to their mutual streamlining.

Now, I'm going to refuse to let myself play more Dragon Age - Awakening, and go play more Final Fantasy XIII and then maybe some Perfect Dark...

What about you? What do you think of Final Fantasy XIII? Or, why are you pigheadedly refusing to play it?

-Blaine

PRESSURE PRESSURE PRESSURE

A part of my brain is beginning to loathe Mass Effect.

Don't get me wrong, the game is one of my all-time favorites, as evidenced by it making our 'best of the decade,' but I've been really pushing myself to play through it a fifth time in order to a) have a save that includes all the DLC & b) have a 'perfect' save to port into Mass Effect 2.

Part of this is brought on by the fact that I switched to mostly PC gaming a year ago, in an effort to collect all my favorite games on one system, and one that I could lug around with me. I dropped a couple grand on a mega-laptop that I've since dubbed 'the Deathbook,' both for its shear amount of power, but also for how fucking huge and heavy and unwieldy it is, and I've proceeded to slowly migrate as many of my favorite games as I could to its hard drive. Steam's awesome random sales helped that tremendously, and Mass Effect was one of those games I snagged for a few bucks. I then played through a new game on PC and it was glorious. Getting to see how AMAZING this game looked in full 1080p was beyond words. This, plus the upgrades to how much more you could command your squad mates and how much better the inventory system is made the switch a no-brainer. So, yeah, my fourth playthrough was driven by the 'new' experience. Now that I'm on my fifth playthrough, I'm having moments that are starting to feel a bit like a forced march.

One of the great ongoing jokes between Tony and me on the podcast is how many games I buy and either a) never play or b) never spend more than a day on or c) never finish. What is interesting, though, is that the time I should spend beating other games, I spend replaying games I love. There's a lesson in there somewhere, I swear.

Here's the thing, though. I'm a dad, a husband, an employee, and a student, so I think I've moved into a gaming space where it's more enjoyable for me to be able to play something familiar in quick spurts, as I sometimes have to just STOP to either tend to a kid emergency, or take a call, or follow the wife into the bedroom rather suddenly. If it's something I already know and love, I'm not too worried about disrupting the flow of the game.

Also, since Bioware has essentially cornered the market on my gaming time, I have brilliant RPGs that are insanely replayable. RPGs are just about the only genre I play anymore (though I am batting my eyelashes at Rebellion's upcoming Aliens vs. Predator), since I'm a story junkie, and they're somewhat analogous to that Nook I keep on the nightstand and from which I read a chapter each night.

Anyway, I've gotten WAY off track here.

I'm really considering just porting my original level-50 PC save over, but I'm concerned, since I know that the higher the level of your save, the more you're rewarded in the next game, and Pinnacle Station isn't in there. Yes, Pinnacle Station sucks balls, but I'm a fucking completist, so shut up.

I dunno. The more I write about it, the more I'm actually wanting to go back and play more Mass Effect.

Part of what brought this on is that I had my first-ever lock-up in the PC game, and I hadn't saved after 45 minutes of conversation on Noveria. Life really sucked at that moment.

I've had a few beers, though, and I think I'm ready to jump back in.

Quick question, though.

There are a few games I've really put myself under pressure to finish, and I think I may want to turn this into a podcast topic, so let me put this out there. What's the most pressure you've ever put yourself under to finish a game, and how was the experience?

Please share this post far and wide, and please comment, as we'd love to have some experiences to read on the podcast. I think this is an interesting topic, and one that could damn near fill a grad student's thesis, so let us know!

-Blaine

Star Trek Online beta, part 1

So, last night, I got home, fired up the Star Trek Online torrent to FINALLY get the client, and that sucker came flying down @ 1.5-2MB/sec. Every digital download game should distribute via torrents.

But, like I said before, I won't run torrents on Windows boxes for safety reasons, so I then had to transfer it over the network to my gaming box, at which point I installed it, then fired it up, and BAM, their servers were down.

Long story short, I finally got things up & running somewhere between 0200 & 0300 last night.

I wish I hadn't been so exhausted by the time things really got rolling, because I might've been a little more patient. The game walks you through some character-building stuff, and there are some interesting customization options, but they say right upfront that not everything is in place yet. I built myself a basic human Federation dude, since I didn't see any Klingon options yet, but I know that will be happening (I may also have had a bit too much wine & missed my chance).

After that, you're dropped into a starbase, where you begin to be put through the paces in terms of movement, combat, talking, inventory, etc. It's the worst part of every MMO, but STO does a good job of keeping it interesting. Everything you're doing in the game makes some kind of sense, since everything in Star Trek is so hyper-detailed. Sure, the Borg are acting all fucked up and not assimilating folks, but I'm giving the writers the benefit of the doubt, and assuming that this is going to be explained at some point.

I gotta say that I LOVE the space combat, even if everything I did last night was baby stuff. Everything I saw showed me that Cryptic understands how Star Trek space combat is supposed to work, with phasers, photons, movement, shields, and most importantly, power reallocation, so I'm really pumped to do more of that.

The ground combat works nicely, too, but it's strange not having a cover mechanic (CliffyB is smiling somewhere). I dunno, it just seems ridiculous now to have shooting in a game and no cover mechanic.

Anyway, that very minor gripe aside, the ranged combat works nicely, via number keys assigned to recharging skills, and I had only minimal experience with the melee stuff, but I expect that it's smarter to just keep your dude out of melee.

Movement (ground) is done via the standard WASD, but I'm hoping that some tweaking can be done on the A & D keys, since they swing the side-to-side movement WAY too much. That was honestly the biggest issue I had, which is a good sign.

I've yet to actually communicate with any other players, though I could see them infesting the chat last night. I'm thinking I may just avoid 'human' contact 'til the game actually starts since half of what I saw was people not grasping intuitive game design and asking retarded questions ('how do I get to (next objective)?' 'I dunno, keep moving forward through the level?') and the other half was people bitching about the game running like shit, which I thought was running beautifully. I really got the sense that many of these people were strictly console gamers that sometimes dabbled with PCs and Star Trek and other things that require too much thought for most people. This is, by no means, to slight people who only play console games, since I know many, many very smart people who don't play PC games, since many PC games require at least a couple years of training just to install them and troubleshoot them yourself when they inevitably don't work the first time.

Anyway, I was very disappointed with the quality of player of most of the other players, but this is an open beta, so it's bound to attract the unwashed masses.

That being said, I do look forward to really, truly roleplaying with other Trekkies. This brings me to the big question.

How much does this game feel like Star Trek?

Thus far, a bit. It's hard to say, since all I've done is play through the info-dump training, but the sights and sounds are there (even if the visuals are your standard MMO blah-style, so as to make it as playable as possible for as many people as possible), and much of the lore is dead-on, but I have the sense that the 'war' that has broken out in 2409 between the Federation and Klingons is going to narrow the focus of the game and keep it from being a means of 'relaxing in Star Trek,' which is kinda what I want. Don't get me wrong, I'm all about kicking some ass in Star Trek, but I'd like to have the option of just chilling and relaxing in that amazing universe, as well.

We'll see. I just haven't had enough time with the game yet to really get a feel for it yet.

So, yeah, to recap, here's the basic breakdown of what I did in the game last night:

Locations I visited:
 - starbase in the Vega system
 - my ship, the U.S.S. Shepherd (exterior)
 - interior of another ship
 - a planet (forgot which one)
 - starbase orbiting Earth

Things I did:
 - created a Tactical-focused C.O. who is now ranked Lieutenant, j.g. after starting out as an Ensign

 - recruited a Bajoran engineer chick
- blasted the Borg with a phaser, a pulse rifle, and my FISTS; also blasted their asses in space
 - have been assigned as C.O. to the ship I created, the U.S.S. Shepherd
 - finished the info-dump training part of the game

Things I plan to do tonight & tomorrow:
 - customize my ship
- recruit more bridge officers, since this is how you add stats to your ship & crew
 - visit any locales that I can from the shows & films (DS9 is at the top of the list!)
 - start questing; maybe hook up with a friend to quest together
 - EXPLORE, EXPLORE, EXPLORE

What I Loved:
 - space combat feels RIGHT
 - uniform customization is neat, but when I do get my TOS movie-era uniforms for buying Star Trek on Blu-Ray?
 - authentic sights & sounds
 - lore is dead on
 - control is intuitive in every circumstance
 - lots of character customization

What I Didn't Love:
 - visuals are not very sharp; look outdated for a PC game, but I'm told many MMOs are like this now
 - very little NPC voice work; most of them communicate through text boxes; really pulls one out of the experience
 - A & D keys really swing character too much from side-to-side; this may be addressable through control options
 - other players; people on the internet just kinda suck

So, yeah, I'm gonna get showered up here in a minute, then jump back in, and I'll be back tonight and/or tomorrow with more reports on Star Trek Online. Sorry this is so late, but I'd hoped to get more play time before I put this up, but the fucking servers were down!

-Blaine