About the Duke.

Okay so, Duke Nukem Forever has finally seen the light of day, and needless to say it's getting a post-launch lashing.

Some justified, some not. I've played it through, I've experienced it. I think that really the summation of the game could be put up as "1998 in 2011's clothing" and really is the victim of itself. There was absoultely no way in hell the game could be what we in 2011 were hoping or dreaming it could be.

In 1996-7 when the game was drafted, this game would have been fresh and innovative, even outstripping Half-Life 1 to interactivity and storytelling within games IF it had come out then. It didn't. So in 1998 when we saw it, it looked awesome, running on the then-shit hot Quake 2 engine. Then a few years went by of psuedo-silence before the 2001 E3 trailer literally blew everyones brains out. Even by today's standards, that was a HELL of a trailer. THAT game would have made game of the year. That didn't happen. By now, the official development time on DNF was 5 years, 3 of those with public interest. then nothing.

Literally NOTHING.

For 6 years.


The entire game industry went through SEVERAL full reiteration cycles in that time. Those who were around playing Duke 3D in thefirst place grew 10 years. If you were 12 when DN3D came out, you were 21 now, if you were 20 then you were 29. A fuckload of things happened.
Then we get a small 15 second teaser saying that Duke isn't dead. Then 3D Realms dries up, thne gets sued, then dries up more. Then in 2009 Gearbox picks up Duke's pieces.

So now we're lookign down the barrel a game that is so loaded on hope and hype that there is no chance that it could be good, lest of all if it stuck to the design docs from 1997. Which for the large part it did. Which is the problem.
not it's, yours.
Through all the development hell, the game didn't change. It's expectations didn't change over the years. Duke's humor didn't change, Duke's approach to the world didn't change. The developers despite fallout and reformation didn't change. You did. Your expectations of the game from 1998 to 2011 have changed so vastly that you're unwilling to even to enjoy this game for what it is-
A monument to the colossal fuck up that was it's development.

The game handles like a FPS from 1998, and if you're expecting anything more than that, your sights are FAR too high. The graphics are somewhat forward of that point, but only to the point where pixel shaders and polycounts are not 1998 level. AO helps the game in this respect, but don't expect Crysis.

While playing, at some point you'll probably ask yourself "Why did this game even get released?"
I have two answers, both likely worked in tandem:
1) 2K Games Recouping development costs for the project
2) Big names who worked on this game having far too much pride of craftmanship to let the game never see light.


Ignoring the lengthy time in the making, I actually didn't mind the game at all. The entire game felt like a game, which was refreshing after playing so many games trying to be movies, or reality, or comic books, or whatever. The game world worked like you would expect it to, with very few invisible wall moments. It made you constantly aware you were playing a game, which is the directly opposite of immersion. But you know what? That's fine. It's not a game to be immersed in character or story. It's game where you play a guy with a gun who's the center of his own world, and you've got shit to kill. End of story.  It's actually refreshing to play a GAME game for once though, where the game knows it's a game, you know it's a game, and nobody's pretending to be otherwise. You can see it's working parts, understand how everything works by simply looking at it.

Really, if I had to pick out any bit that could be picked out for poor implementation,  for certain, it would be a mid-section, romping through the desert on the monster truck. It felt stretched thin, and on average probably was the least aesthetically pleasing section of the game. If it were shorter, it'd probably have been less jarring. But no, it drags on, which is bad.

There's nothing I really can say about this game in deconstructing it that is either fair to expecations of gamers today OR the game itself without stepping on the toes of the other. The mechanics are telegraphed and overt (and apparently the console release is plagued with auto aim issues). The story is simple yet convoluted but is also played to irrelevance. The sound design is actually pretty nice, and is finished off with neat occlusion effects. The graphics are dated, but that's almost to be expected.

If I had to give an opinion on whether to buy or not, I'd say do it with three following caveats for that verdict-
1) You consider the purchase and play of this not as a purchase of a game to fill time, but as a testement to it's own nightmarish development.
2) You take no preconcieved notions about what the game could be like into it.(and play it on PC)
3) You have been waiting for this game for 12 years. You must buy it if only to say that you have it.

Me? I still love me some duke, and this game is the Duke-iest thing I've played in ages.
I'd give it a Duke/10.

OH MY JESUS

Okay so I’m un the interlearns now… it’s a nasty sticky business, but overally I’ve gotta confess I am rather enjoying the experience… except for one unit.

I have to say, I really am not one to like book learning art. I have real issues with it, like diametrically polarized against it. I find that art in the book sense tends to be full of pretentious WANK. Two and a half pages of words to explain that could be easily done in two lines. Sociology fares about the same (which thanks to the nature of my course I must dabble in at least twice more over my 3 years). So you can imagine my chagrin with a unit that is about 50% art history reading, 30% sociology in relation to art, and the final 20% being labwork. It is mountains of unintelligible text, followed by mountains of unintelligble wank text, followed by “now lets use the crop tool”.  So I spent today playing mass catch up with this unit, doing the rather large reading… WHAT IN THE LORD’S FUCK IS GOING ON HERE.

To quote my scribblings on the 10-pages

“Small summary of the Making friends with Jarvis Cocker text:

The Web. 2.0. Despite there being a perceived notion of the music industry decentralising, democratising (more power to the artists and listeners, less to record companies), this is not neccesarily the case. Let's use Jarvis Cocker as a case to sample against. Words. Words words words. Youtube. Wikipedia. More Words. Myspace. Quantifiable numbers validating that Cocker's Myspace is indeed seen. Youtube videos.Convergent Media. Thanks to WEB TWO POINT OH and SNS the artefacts of the pop idol and rockstar are being challenged, are being bridged, bringing people preceptively closer to their idols . All thanks to the web's society of archiving, we can map trends, we can correlate all kinds of social interactions, friends, top books ,etc etc.

The moral of the story-  DICKS and FUCK YOU .“

Sorry, needed to vent. Having NO free time between work and being actually at Uni leaves very little time for study (mostly on weekend), even less for free time, so naturally I’m a little vent-needing.

Please excuse.

Why do I even bother? (A rant-view)

You know, there are times when I don't know why I bother with these damn Chinese cartoons and mangoes. Sure, for every space epic, or well written drama, there's 3 HORRID, and I mean insultingly horrid, pieces of crap. Usually I'm game to weather their meagre offerings, hell, I got some perverse joy out of how BAD Kampfer was, but I have been almost bested this year.
Ladies and gentlemen, it's BAD ANIME time.

Asobi ni Iku Yo (lit:We came to play) is bad, no two ways you splice it. Naruto levels of bad. Do not come into this expecting something to enjoy, because it will rape your soul.

So the show starts off introducing the best friend of the Main Character, in profile,surrounded by techie nerd stuff, while the plot is whispered into her ears, which she thusly recites, along with some guff about the Browning High-Power pistol, because she will be revealed to us all as a huge kinder-/k/ wet dream whom at every chance drools over firearms all the while ignoring all gun safety and almost killing everyone. We then switch to a scene which is one NGE Asuka Langley introduction, part COD4 Crew Expendable, part MGS2. The main point of this scene is to reveal character TWO of the MC's harem- a flat chested quiet girl with a traditionally long black hair and glasses, who ACTUALLY works as some free agent spy in a stealth suit and can conjure guns and shit out of nothing.You can see where this is going.

So the show is set on Okinawa, the closest thing Japan has to an island escape within affordable travel distance. It also happens to be a major US military installation, and as you'll get thumb-screwed into you, the CIA and the international intelligence agencies are apparently running some sort of stupid not-so-secret mission hiring school kids to be double agents.... what a schoolkid could possibly know or get into that a well-trained agent can't is well beyond me, but hey, this doesn't stop the show.
And now 5 minutes in, we get our Main Character introduction, the stereotypical MC nerd, whose name is so irrelevant to the plot that I have actually completely forgotten it. He's that bland, so let's call him John McBland, or JM for short.

So JM is at a party on the beach with his bearded on-vacation CIA uncle or summat 'ike dat ('tis revealed later in the episode), who promptly offers some beer to McBland as he rounds on him for being the Main Character of a harem and not having any women despite being of the exact age that all MCs are that they begin their harem. CI-Uncle then points out the plot-girl in his harem, who has massive tits, huge curves, a skintight I-can't-Believe-it's-not-NGE jumpsuit and cat ears, who has mysteriously entered teh party.

Naturally she is not from this world, she is from a planet called....*long desparate groan*... Catia. They Went there. The planet of cats is CATIA. So John and Cat-bitch start talking and shit and they become Best friends forever n ever. Not really. He then realised that he's talking to a girl and promptly passes out, which is fine by me. Hope he stays that way. Scene change and he wakes up and "oh shit there's a girl in my bed scene happens" followed by "best friend walking in and getting all pissed off at MC" scene. She's also super uppity. No one actually likes her, so let's smile at her face and pretend she's got brain tumors preventing her being pleasant.
Oh and Did I mention that this show is HUGE on fan service and cheesecake. It's constant, never ending, and gets in the way of every single thing, obstructing any virtues the plot may have had.
Normally I'm willing to let it slide when a shows got reasonable amounts of the stuff, or is blatantly a show that is marketed as so, because usually there's some payoff or redemption in plot or art, look at Kampfer or Strike Witches, but oh my god, it's just ANNOYING in Asobi. It literally ruins every scene it's in ,and it's in EVERY scene.

Returning to the plot now, the show plows the plane into international spy conspiracies tower head on, as some agents try to get their hands on uppity Cat-girl's downed space ship, and get her to leave Earth. Furthermore, there is a bunch of insane sci-fi nerds who somehow have guns, even in the only country in the world where such things are completely outlawed, who are trying to get her to leave because she isn't the aliens they wanted (as in they wanted Close Encounters or Predators, or something less mundane)... which results in a full episode of WACKY AVOIDING BULLETS HIJINKS. Also John and Cat-bitch get hooked 'cause she's in heat... because, you know..CATS!

 Lemme just round up the plot summary here by saying it does not get better ,and even when the ending gets here, which thankfully is only 12 episodes from the beginning and does attempt to redeem itself by not being completely retarded, does nothing to make the plot endear itself. You will want to stuff it in a box and throw it into a river.



The voice work is merely fine, not above standard, nor below. it is exactly average. The standout character voicing is John Bland, and that's only because his portrayal is the immaculate birth of mediocrity personified.

So why is this show worse than it's last-season counterpart- Kampfer?
It's really that more annoying. Where Kampfer was overcome with being jsut hilariously over the top, the tone of Asobi makes it more grating to take in. If Kampfer was a mix of laughing gas and mustard gas, Asobi ni Iku yo increased the mustard density about ten fold, leaving  you gasping for air and covering with welts as you collapse in a pile of your own vomit and blood.

So why did I NOT stop watching? fading hope that it would improve. It didn't.

To weigh out the cons-
I did enjoy two characters - The Chief Maid of Antonia, and her underling, An ex-SAS chick with a penchant for cute things. They were very nice tongue in-cheek characters which raised a smile whenever they made an appearance. They were fun. Everyone else can go back to the swamp in which they dragged themselves out of.

Picture Related (Warning- Explicit Language)

Toadie out.

So THAT's where my hat was....

Fuck bricks, you can say what you want about the Japanese, but they are nothing if not deviously clever with technology.

See this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTXO7KGHtjI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmSoLpzhqUk

That is a live concert with No one actually performing the vocals. That's Vocaloid plus SOLID Holographic projection, with a guy on guitar and two guys on Synths/ drums.

How's that for mind blowing?
The sheer magnitude of the applications of this kind of technology are literally endless.Sure, we've all imagined those standard Star-Wars-esque telecommunication devices, but what about using the stuff to make an otherwise empty room appear to contain a small crowd? What about things like creating whole holographic diversions for a fraction of the price of actually doing the same of actual material? So, Japan, I tip
my hat at thy and raise my glass on high.

Speaking of Japan, let's have a look into non-synthetic music for a second.
I love music, music is awesome. Almost everything from classical to Urban (though with the latter, it's treated more case-by-case), it's all game. Everyone as a home genre, some sect of music that they inescapably latch to. For, me, as no surprise, it's Ska, and I am willing to share my passion with anyone who'll give me 5 minutes.
Now, I wasn't actually aware that Japan had a scene for this stuff, but after following a trail of breadcrumbs left through comments around the interhighways, I came to this exact realisation. What's more, it's a reasonably robust ska scene in Nipponland, which makes me just that much more curious to delve in and see what's on offer.

Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra, The Sideburns, Blue Beat Players, it's all great stuff and a real embracing of all 3 eras of the music. However, I wanted to bring to the table one band to the table today - Ore Ska Band (Literally- We're a Ska Band). They're a real treat, playing some tapping tunes which draw mostly from that classic two-tone sound, with some nice brassy horn lines. This, combined with three part harmonies and that flat out over-syllabic tendancy of the language, create one of those things you have to hear to appreciate.

Do the lyrics match the music? I have no god damned clue, I don't speak the moonrunes. Although, this band has given me the one reason to bother learning. To hell with Anime, stuff for kicks or other pretentious cloaked intentions, I want to know what they're singing about, just to bring that level of understanding up a notch. That being said, not knowing does not by any means diminish the listening experience, it's music that just beckons to be danced to.

Another point to bring up, OSB are one of only a handful of bands that play the genre that I know of that have started well after the late 90's "Summer of Ska". Just saying.


That's it for me for the first time in several months. Expect the uptick to increase as we get closer to the D (tm)
Also, while we're here- Sergio Mendez & Brasil '66 - this is required listening.

So, Medal of Honor.

So, apaprently I had access to the Medal of Honor beta. Given some playtime,I can safely say several things.

The first of these things is that the UI is FRIGGIN ATTROCIOUS. I know there is a orange/blue color thing that generally is one of those.. things, that has been shown to draw the human mind in like it a strobe light, but it's goddamn horribles. It's overstated tosay the least, eye raping to say the most. Worst of all it jsut doesn't work.

The menus need serious work, ranging from being vaguely non-functional through to just plain bizzarre.
Oh sure, I've seen WORSE designed interfaces, but this is probably up there as one of the less impressive out of a AAA title. It looks bad, it functions.. oddly, it's an allround dissappointment.

Gameplay has me confused though. It's clear that DICE was brought in on the project to make some sort of fusion BFBC slash COD game, and that's pretty much exactly where the game sits, from what you can play of it in the beta. Push mode from Bad Company, Closer combat from Modern Warfare. Here's my problem-
Why does this game exist? The Teamplay-ness is pretty alright, but it's detracted by that MW2-like fast pace, so it's nowhere near as coherent as BC2 for that aspect. Then there's the fast-pace shooter elements and levelling, which are very much like MW2 (all be it disfigured by ODD kit customising menus), but because of the teamplay elements , it's somewhat slower than it's inspiration, so it's not as coherent as MW2. You're left with a multiplayer game that tries to do two things, but pulls neither of them well enough to impress upon me.

I will say that the graphics, even on low are MUCH nicer than either of the other two games. So I guess that's a plus, even if at this point all the aniamtions are recycled from Bad company 2.

To be honest, I'm more interested in the Singleplayer. They've been saying a lot of big things about the SP in this game, and I REALLY hope they deliver on it... but the MP, as far as I care right now, give it a miss.

Can't sleep, housemates will eat me. (when it rains it pours)

So here I am writing vertically in my room, completely bottomed out. REally, I haven't felt so low since high school, and believe me if you knew me through year 8,9,10 you should know that that was indeed a dark fucking hole in my life.
Yeah I'm back there, back in the hole.

It's the night I confirms my monthlong paranoid fear that my housemates were indeed out to get me because I am, in my own words, a high maintenance fuckup with nothing but trouble for them. The worst thing is, the monster of my mind that I thought I had tamed years ago, all the barbs,stings and verbal punches they haveused on me all point to that monster being at large.

For those who don't know, I'm a dyspraxic, I have both motor and Developmental Dyspraxia (which for a quick blurb, see US NINDS For a better description, see Wikipedia ). It permeates it's way through my life like some invisible python, striking when I've got my back turned. Think you've got fine motor skills down? OH NO! THERE GOES A PLATE WITH FOOD. Think you've remembered something, something that you only needed to remember maybe for half a day? OH NO, WHERE DID THAT MEMORY GO? OOPSIES. Irregular routines? YOU MISSED A STEP.Quick what did you have for breakfast? YOU CAN'T.  Time management and logical processing? HA. Social Abilities? NOT TODAY SON. Sometimes it ain't a problem ,you know? You can get through a day, a week a month, fine, nothing goes wrong, then BAM. Right in the face, a week where everything that makes dyspraxia such a nightmare to live with comes haunting from high. You'll forget a bus, drop a plate, spill a cup, forget to lock a door, not manage a social interaction, find an exam you won't be able to write more than 5 minutes of without suffering debilitating hand pain, Trip and fuck up your nice smart business pants, misjudge someone's intentions and then to top it all off find out that all your friends now hate you because of it, and they want you out.

Like they say, when it rains, it pours. Goddamn is it pouring today. Could really do with an umbrella, or some understanding, Either or.

Review- WORKING!!

Can I preface this by saying WHERE THE HELL IS THE GODDAMN MANGA OR THE VN?! I know Working is indeed an adaption of a combo manga VN series, however I can find neither hide nor hair of them on the internet, other than spurious claims that they exist. Goddamn I want MORE.

Now onto the review.



Slice of life, Comedy, Workplace (what's that? NOT A SCHOOL AND IT'S A SLICE OF LIFE?! SHAKU HORA)
Moe - 2.5/5 - Can get a bit moe, but not enough to make you hate yourself for liking it.
Violence - 3/5 Lots of animated punching, mainly one character. No gore, not intended to be srs violence... think slapstick on steroids.
Cheesecake - Nil
Pandering - Nil
Cheese - Some. It can get cheesy.


A Family restaurant in Hokkaido one day during the middle of winter finds itself short a service attendant. Send out Popura Taneshima to go find anyone interested. Souta Takanashi, after mistaking her for a someone much younger than he (as it turns out, she is his senior), he agrees to work at Wagnaria, restaurant full of lively characters. These range from the seemingly innocous Popura Taneshima who has a height complex (hey it least it isn't BREASTS again, also, see what they did there?), to the katana-weilding chief Yoshiyo Todoroki. 13 episodes of intrigue, character development and comedy ensues. I'd give away more, but I'm not too sure how much more can be given away without ruining it. Like a parfait.


As probably eluded to by peicing the puzzle so far, you may have already figured, this a character-driven show. There is no big dramatic moment that any one of the characters is driving towards from the beginning ( or at least not traditional storytelling sense of the word, there is a conflict resolution and such and I don't want to give too much more than that away). It is of itself simplistic, but for a Slice of Life series, simple is fine, especially when it's pulled off well.
Anybody who's worked in a restaurant or fast food joint should feel pangs of familiarity about the place watching this, regardless of how bad it was where you were. You were always surrounded by a cast of crazies, each with their own bunch of odd and interesting things about them. Working brings THAT feeling straight to animation, and brings it well. With a bunch of colourful characters, that bittersweet mix of work and happenstance ,and of course the relieved walk away at the end of the day, it knows it's strength lies in the workforce. Popura the midget, Souta the worshipper of all things cute, Mahiru the androphobe (yes it's real, and so is gynophobia), Jun the gossipmonger kitchenhand, Yachiyo the Chief, the list goes on, eachof them created specifically to be an ingredient for HYJINX. The characters all play off each other without becoming grating, and it all feels natural which is indeed a credit with a series with this many ODDITIES.

The show also manages to weave in a few undercurrent narratives into the overall structure. These range from ones that subtly make their way into the main happenings, like the unrequited love of Jun toward Yachiyo. Others are mostly implied, like Kyouko's previous life as what can be safely assumed as a gang thug. I can't say these aren't unwelcome, it certainly gives extra depth to what could be a very flat piece.



In short, story is well played out and written, characters feel natural yet odd and unique. For laughs, there's one "normal" character in the show and she loses it when she is observed to be quite un-normal by virtue of not being as quirky as the rest of the crew. It's quite bizarre.




To go with the crazy characters that Working has, Working brings some decently executed character designs. Most of the time, you see characters in work uniforms, which I suppose are somewhat less interesting school uniforms by needs of utility trumping individuality, but it's rarely an issue, Working gives each character it's own readily attributable uniform tweaks. On top of that, there seems to be none of that uniform character height issue in here (please tell me I'm not the only one who notices this when it's prevailent). All the characters are readily identifiable and have just the right balance of authenticism and creativity to not come off either as "too cartoony/stereotypical-anime-y" or as too bland ina real world sort of way.


Animation in Working isn't like Haruhi Suzumiya (where a large percentage of the animation team of the entire company were spent dedicating their time to animating everything that could possibly move in every frame ever), it falls very much into the traditional anime framework, which is in essence animation on a budget. Don't get me wrong, the animation that's there is really great quality stuff  (despite a couple of rough hiccups during the second ep), but it's not as expansive for keyframes or percentages of screen real estate moving as the former. On the bright side it is a lot cleaner than K-on Season 1 was, and there's enough animation there to get the point across with just the right amount of conviction. A cautionary note for people who don't like chibification- there is some in this, you may rage. Don't worry, because it's for solidifying punchlines, not for it's own sake.


VA for Working is rather excellently cast and performed. From Kana Asumi as Poplar to Eri Kitmura as Yachiyo, every casting choice was well thought out here. Oh and Daisuke Ono. Yeah, each character was well cast here, expertly performed too. Never once did I actually suspect that Daisuke Ono was in fact Daisuke Ono.


Background art is well done, enoguh that it never really glaringly looked out of place or badly drawn. To it's credit then, I suppose.


I gotta say, I really do love the soundtrack to this thing. It's brilliant. For a change, all the catches, stringers, and background music, all done with live instruments, and it's an eclectic mix of mostly Light Music, Rockabilly, 4-bar rock and Third-wave Ska. Actually, the opening, Someone Else, is now on permenant loop in my head  with it very notable Goldfinger-cross-RBF style to the Horns and 'tar . I really have to give Okabe Keiichi a mound of credit for beng elcectic in his music styles but staying right the hell away from the synthesiser.

(ed note:Except for two tracks. goddamn it, almost flawlesss victory)



Overall,

Working!!, a show about working, and everything that doesn't involve actually working. Well executed hilarity with JUST enough oddball for it to be endeering. Major props for clean music and non-school setting, can be a bit static, but easily overlooked most of the time. Summary- a great watch, isn't going to win awards (thoguh I suspect it wasn't intending to). Good for all company.

RATING-
3 Poprawrs out of 5.

A rating of 3 means that it's overally entetaining. It's bad points outweight it's good.

Billy Blag and his Blog of wonders

Hey there generic, 5 person audience for my blog, sorry about not posting in here as much as I should, I've been looking after my other children ( Updated Tuesdays, For Hire and whatever mini project is the flavor of my month) amongst other things. I know usually I'm reputed for being lacksadaisical and apologistic towards repairing that trait, but sometimes I really do feel like looking after multiple side non-jobs gets towards the work effort of a real job, and likie a real job, you will forget things.

I guess the the Ranthole got the end of that stick this time. Anyhoo, when the UT website is finished and up (probably shortly after EXAMS) I'm gonna see what I can do to roll my Interblag the UT Interpipes blag. We'll see.

So I was having one of those existential moments, the ones I get every so often when I'm by myself (which is now frequent in my new home), I began thinking about WHY I even bother doing things like a webcomic or a Source Engine mod. I mean, it's not like webcomics nor cooperative games have never been done before. They have, alot, covering many aspect and angles. I know I'm probably not original for taking the routes, and it's debateable whether either of the two of my "kids" have anything that will add to the collective of either arena.
Still, "why?"

So after mulling this for a little I came to several realisations -
One - I don't really care if either Updated Tuesdays or For Hire "succeed": or "fail" in the end, I am right now quite enjoying working on them, and the end product is more or les jsut extra icing

Two- Even though the idea to start a webcomic wasn't origianlly my own, I'm really into it now. It's become it's own beast, which is great because if 12 months ago you said to me "You're going to make a webcomic that isn't failing", I'd have looked at you funny, especially if you told me it wasn't For Hire related. It's challenging me in a way that is different to the way For Hire challenges me too ,which is really handy, I suppose.

Three - They balance each other out in terms of my sanity karma. For Hire is balls to the wall accuracy of the realism variety, which is countered by my loose interpretation on reality in Updated Tuesdays. I guess one is like cerebral atonement for the other's.

Four- One thing's for certain - my art still sucks, either way. I am also fine with this.

Anyhoo, again, a post written post midnight that has a loose purchase on what could be considered conscious thought, I'd write these earlier, but to be honest, I'm not in a writey mood until like 11:50 pm..
So uh, yeah. This probably was a little too self0-indulgent of me, but I dunno, I just felt like writing it.  I guess it had to be written or something...
Oh and check out http://updatetuesdays.blogspot.com and http://www.moddb.com/mods/for-hire at your own expense, and I'll try to keep you blaggers up to squick when I can.

Toadie Out.

Blog Flogging

I know this is going to seem odd coming from someone who never once has owned a Sony console-

I really love the Metal Gear Series.

They are both well written, psuedo-realistic, and at the same time increibly camp and bizarre. It's this schizophrenic mix that isjsut like mad trail mix to me, and honestly I can't get enough of David Hayter doing VO work.

The reason I bring this up is because of the New Portable MGS game, Metal Gear Solid: PEace-Walker. I dunno how, but Kojima always manages to find that way to make whatever system he's making a game for POP. Peacewalker isn't just a solid shotoer game, it's friggin comprehensive Metal Gear Constructor set too, not to mention pseudo0business sim. The meta game of this thing is jsut immense, and when coupled with an already impressive sneak-and-shoot combat system, I'm really REALLY feeling something down there in my pats to go get this game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZXdCunDe_A&


I mean just look, aside from the retconing, how goddamn impressive is this. This is on a Fucking HANDHELD. It's unbelievable.

Can't Sleep Security'll eat me,

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No really, this shit isn't funny anymore guys, not giving me the option of sleep makes lanning much less fun. Uni middle managment, get ytour shit together.

Episode 3 : Character, the one we one Emmies for.

I don't know if it's just me, but has anyone begun to really hate, I mean REALLY hate, how simple and shallow game characters tend to be?

Okay I'll partially discount Roleplaying Games because by definition most of these are deep, though they fall into the trap excusing a whole tonne-of-brick typecasting characters, and generally only getting the term deep partially correct (where deep is word-replaced in their minds by "verbal diahorrea for dialog and backstory, and  exemplify characteristics by DnD Stats, and a look defined by the BIG BOOK OF MYTHOLOGICAL SHIT"), but still , big budget game developers should be truly ashamed of what they excuse as characters in their games and game storylines.

By character, I'm speaking to every essence of what a well-rounded character personifies-
A percieved history, personal traits both good and bad , behaviour that backs up their traits and history, and appearance. At the moment, games as a general medium address merely two of these most of the time and the rest is usually Mary-Sue/Marty-Stu'd from wherever that shit comes from (probably Fanfic.net). The result is dull characters that one could not give a crap about.

Okay, take Marcus Fenix. Epic gave him a marty-stu armoured-hulk backstory, hulking armor and a voice from the same guy who does Bender from Futurama. He is, however, not well rounded. His actions, or more importantly, the actions the player had at his disposal didn't do any credit to his character's demeanor or backstory, it went tangentical to it in fact. He shows little remorse about his actions, doesn't lament for the dead, and as far as the game will let you go toward being a psychopathic senseless killer.
While that's all fine and great in the scope of the game, where you're stopping an enemy that threatens humanity in all existence, it's still inconsistent with Fenix's background as a decorated soldier who was imprisoned after abandoning his post to save his father. Rarely does this get reflected in the game. In Gears, all he does is tow party line, at the expense of comrades and friends, mercilessly slaughtering locusts for the good of the COG.
For all intents and purposes too, Marcus' background is locked back tight with only a few surface shreds to show for it's existence, and it is never delved into. For the intents of the game, he could just be a robot with a gun and the game would play more or less similarly.

A comparable character to Marcus is Duke Nukem. Yes, Duke Nukem. Unlike Marcus though, Duke Nukem is that way by legay  and by design. He's shallow because he comes from an age predating Quicktime events and dead-serious drama in games. He's a cryogenically frozen and occasionally-thawed clone of 1980s Arnold Schwarzenegger, without the bad accent, in a game. The difference between the two is not in the gameplay (because they both are action heroes with over the top bloody combat and crazy weapons and one-liners). The difference is that Duke is 10 years Marcus' senior, and overal game story deisng has moved on, but Marcus hasn't.

Then of course the question begins to be asked- " Would I want to find out about Marcus?"
 Appallingly, the answer is no. Especially not in the midst of a psychotic chainsawgun-powered testosterone-injected superviolent action game. There is space for exposition, but it'd be a waste in Gears. I mean really, why even bother. Also while I'm at it, I'll thumb Halo for similar characterization.Though to it's credit, it does go out of it's way to break that where it can and has limited success, but fuck it anyway.


Of course someone will inevitably bring up one of several Bioware games, or Fallout (probably 3).Again, RPG games, and they are true exceptions to the rule, because they spend exorbitant amounts of effort doing it.. Except Fallout 3, 'cause fuck that. It shows, mind you, because Bioware games are AMAZING at that specific edge of storytelling. Especially Mass Effect 1 and 2 (and aside from Dragon Age) , do not fall back on DnD Cruxes and typecasting).

People go around and thumb their noses at Far Cry 2 for being quite "bland and boring", however there is a lot to be said for the writing and characters of that game. Like Anthony Burch, I find myself unequivocally attracted to the writing and storyline fuelling this game, as well as it's technical achievements. In particular the characterisation in the game is brilliant. Every characters is unique, with their own goals and ideals, and they back their traits with their actions. Even the Buddies, the interchangeable characters that the player can play as and have as help are all varied in their background, look and vocals. Then there's the Jackal, the elusive bad villain, who you pick up the tapes of in your quest to apprehend him as you venture through the very closest a video game has yet got to the genius introspective of Apocalypse Now, all be it as a subtext to the immediate plot. 

Far Cry 2 is characterisation done right. Uncharted 2 is Characterisation done right. Gears is characterisation done wrong, Darksiders is characterisation done wrong.

 Characters, at least in my book are not all generic Mary-sue. Everyone in the world has a certain amount of uniqueness to them, everyone has a story. Games with any shred of narrative structure should reflect this. It's almost Lit 101 grade basics here. Movies came to grasp with this, theatre REVOLVES around character, hell even anime/manga as a whole has a concept of how characterising works ( though typecasting is common, but it's still stronger writing than most games).

Characterising , in my books is the one area of game narrative that is being held back continually. It's probably the one thing stopping the progression of games as a progressive medium towards the realms of artistic recognition, and away from comic book territory. There is hope, as long as Bioware and Valve keep doing their thing, we may still cling to the hope the industry wakes up to realise that Rounded characters from design to execution are MUCH better for them than, say , Genenric overarmoured grunt, generic space marine, generic soldier (with insert twist), generic fantasy group, generic space travellers. Good design means you could Have ANY of those archetypes, but you can layer one detail of history, ideals , emotions, traits.

Guiltier than Gear and Halo though, are games featuring Modern day soldiers. Not joking, they are literally the shallowest of the charaxcter archetypes. Rarely do you get more than an "oh he's here, he's from X, he's here to Y".
Soldiers are people too, I should know, I know a few, and they all have personalities. When they get together, they have ways of speaking that aren't just text-book military lexicon. Especially in Military groups like Spec Ops or at the squad level, interactions between people is on a much more personable level than games lead you to believe. Game soldiers are, as a whole, cardboard thin cutouts of what soldiers embody. Granted, soldiering is their job, but like all jobs, that's not al lthat defines them, even "lifers".

I think, and I know I'm going to get rozzered for this, Rainbow Six, even Vegas are about the closest I've seen to characterisation in any Modern Day shooter. This maybe because Tom Clancy penned the original script to work off of, but there is enough character to even the NEW Rainbow Soldiers (Logan, Bishop, Kan, etc) to not worry about mary-sue syndrome. Every character has backstory, and even though the games aren't focused around character interaction much at all ,and game tech limited greatly how much visual characterization each had, every rainbow operative has backstory, a height ,weight, build, traits, things he/she excels at, things he/she fails at, and though All the games up to Lockdown couldn't visually or aurally express the difference, the AI for each handled differently, which in the game's scope was enough. Of course Lockdown and Vegas had proper characterising, complete with graphics and speech to boot, which was probably their only strengths, but my point remains the same. Rainbow Six - Best Character portrayals in modern shooters given it's scope.
Now imagine what you could do with a good script write, and today's game tech.


Lastly  A brief look at another excellent characterisation game- Battlefield Bad Company. Every one of the main protagonists has a back-story (it's not deep, but it serves purpose), and coupled with creative writing and easily discernible looks for each, you have a recipe for great characters. Though the back-stories are shallow, they are deepened by the actions ingame, a shared experience between the player and the 3 other characters.
The player's character was introduced the right way, scripted in cutscenes the right way, each of the other characters was executed the right way that it seemed almost seamless the way the characters grow on you.
Bad Company sets to change the tone of things for the characters, which I'm personally apprehensive about, but providing they don't mess the characters built out of the first game, I'd still probably find it acceptable.


So yeah, game characters are on a whole, shallow twigs. They shouldn't be, but are. One day I shall fix this. Maybe today, maybe tommorrow.

Umm that's all I have to say for now, tune in next week where I chew something even more massive out maybe. If you have anything you wanna say, drop it in the comments below or reach me at the usual places.

my grenades are calling me.

Before I Begin , I'd like to make an apology. I never intended to purchase or play this game. None. It was on my do not buy list. However, when gifted to you, where monetary value is nullified, I saw little reason not to take the oppertunity. Anybody upset by this turn of events, I apologise.

With that out of the way, I'd like to open up the can of worms I have fetched myself- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Also known as Call of Grenade: Oscar Mike 2.I'm going to try and keep my review as even handed, as there is a tendancy for Reviews of this game, particularly PC eviews, to be incredibly biased and bigoted. Not unjustly, mind, but bigotry none the less.
Where to begin?

Oh, and Spoilers. I don't care, but you might.

Singleplayer, May as well.

As the story goes, it's 5 years since the events of COD4 (and they even give an overly showy matrix green intro sequence with flashback for those not in the know.Basically, the Ultra-nationalists still somehow took over Russia, herald Zakhaev as a martyr.. and the US invaded Afghanistan. This Commander Shepherd is on the lookout for outstanding soldiers to promote into a Multinational Task-force he runs. First mission sees you as private Allen, a normal 75th Ranger Battalion foot mook with no discernible magic powers or powered armor, and you're in Afghanistan doing things that only Private Allen from the 75th Rangers can do. A convoy gets shot up, you go out on the counter offensive with a bridge-laying machine into a town that looks remarkably un-Afghanistani (More... Iraqi.. maybe? Definitely not A-stan though). Cue the Hans Zimmer music and the non-stop-sizzling action. From there you visit a Kazakhstani Airbase on top of a mountain (involving a left-click-right-click interactive quick time event and James Bond Snowmobile chase), An Airport in Russia, Rio Di Janiero, Virginia, USA and Oil Rig, A pre-soviet castle-turned-gulag, A Villa, and Afghanistan... Again. Sound pretty conclusive, but really, you're on a 6 hour roller-coaster that's tense enough that it's like someone's force feeding you adrenaline so you overdose on it. I think the plot does itself several disservices in the name of keeping succinct.

First of them is claiming Authenticity and realism then presenting what in some areas barely scrapes for Hollywood levels of realism. Now I know that some people are already about to jump to it's defense, claiming it still did somethings realistically. I will concede this, but for every single authentic ,believable thing it does, it does two things that if you've got a grasp of even basic military shit will twig with you as very wrong.
QED- in the First real level, in Afghanistan, a scramble of F16s topple a large building with Missiles, they observe a low, but believable flight vector across the place, peeling away well before the target, to confirm the shot.
Later in the game, during the Gulag mission, you'll see F16s again, but instead of flying at a low safe altitude, you see them , drop below the strike team of AH6 Littlebirds you are on, then decelerate to little-bird cruising speed (I think it's about 150 kph on he ground), fire off their missiles, then zoom through the debris. THE FUCK. Then mere minutes later, again, F16s do some stupid shit. That latter one,mind, was given a bit of credence and they do play that out properly, making the chopper shake and lose some altitude as the air's disturbed above and below it. But still. Only one small example out of several dozen I can think off of the top of my head.

"Wait, one MAJOR plot point is all fucked up though, how could i forget", he jests.
ACS, the Attack Charazcterisation System, the lynch-pin for hiding a soviet Force Projection Assault on Virginia. Now they say in the game, that the Russians managed to decrypt the ACS module off a downed satellite (which is why what you were retrieving in Kazakhstan), used it to create a phantom attack force over the West Coast, disguising a mass invasion force to the East(which is in itself a bit odd, but i'll slide that for the moment).Now, surely, a military and intelligence force as LARGE as America would have other , non-satellite imaging/radar-based ways of detecting and preparing for an invasion force. At the Very LEAST the CIA and NSA have field spooks, even in a hostile nation like an Ultranational Russia. There are about 4 or 5 different spectrum of dedicated radio frequency that can be used to transmit messages, without the use of a satellite relay. Several of these are even used under the bracket of ship-to-shore radio. SURELY somebody between Russia and Virginia SAW this force. SURELY. It's massive enough, hundreds of aircraft; migs, Heavy lift planes, Kamovs, Hinds and Hips. You'd have to be blind and deaf to not spot it before it hit you. And yet, somehow, that's exactly what happened.

Oh, then from there the story changes from a war shooter to a personal vendetta game, initially with Task Force 141 going after the Russians to find where Makarov is, then Captain Price and Soap after Colonel Shepherd after he for reasons not made clear at all stabs you in the back after getting the dirt on Makarov. It is indeed a bizarre tweest, and in opinion, probably the icy sta to the heart of the game. It was a cheap cut you never saw coming, and does nothing to explain itself. Then it sets itself quite cleanly to a sequel being pushed out.

Lastly on plot, I feel I have to address the Airport level in no short amount of words. It's uh... Very very out of place. That's the only way I can put it. It comes from nowhere, it goes nowhere in a game sense (though in theory it does actually forward the plot, it's very tenuous, ACS-level tenuous). Really, nothing it did couldn't have been done with a sightly longer level change video. This, coupled with the fact it's incredibly narrow-minded in design makes it more awkward than the disturbing shock to your sensibilities that it should be.

In Short, the storyline is tolerable with a forecast of horrible tomorrow. I want to take the writer out the back and scrub them down for being atrocious with their inconsistency. Military authenticity is hit and miss, and they scapegoat misses as hits, sometimes even contradicting their own fiction.


The Gameplay. How do I explain it? it's clean. If you've played a Call of Duty game, particularly COD4, it plays exactly as you expect. Except there is no leaning now, which is an odd removal,considering it's tactical implications...and it being a legacy feature of the series. A host of new guns, a host of little tweaks to the AI. should probably Break it all down.

The AI's been given a work-over. Notably, enemies are much less likely to be pants on head retarded. Probably a good thing considering that no longer does the game rely on indefinitely respawning enemies (though infinitely respawning friendlies is possible).What is a bit disappointing is that the game IS overall easier than the first Modern Warfare (bar two levels, which are hard no matter which way they're sliced.) quite a bit so, and this coupled with the shorter designed play time makes the game feel very short indeed by game standards. In fact, the length coupled with it's cinematic approach to design, and linear corridor execution makes the much closer by virtue to a movie than an actual game. I Beat the Easiest Difficulty without deaths or restarts in a smidgen over 5 hours. Veteran was tougher, and took about 8 just because of sheer numbers of deaths in two levels.

More bugbears I have with the gameplay - Enemy Weapon selection is very.. odd.. from a realism standpoint. Russians carrying American Anti-vehicle missiles, Israeli and Belgian ARs, South African Shotguns, and everything in between. Especially given the number of Russian weapon variants available in the world today, it is indeed a myth why Infinity ward didn't decide to put in AK74s, AN94s, even stuff like OC14 Grozas and VSS vintorezes, is beyond me. Oh, and the ACR is Bullshit.And changing the Default Keystrokes around from CoD4 was a dick move. Completely unnecessary.

Not to worry though, there's plenty of variety in the mission design, combining plenty of tried and true level design tropes,mixed with nearly every action movie ever. Sneak abord an Oilrig, boobie-trap bodies, be a gunner on a BlackHawk, a Hummvee, and several other vehicles, sneak through heavily patrolled areas. You know, the usual suspects. It's hardly innovative about itself most of the time.

Oh and there's Spec Ops, which is it's own up-to-Two player challenge mode. You're going to get more money out of Spec Ops than the campaign I reckon, 'cause Spec ops is gold. I haven't tried it with another player yet, but the single player was enough for me to be sufficiently pleased with the thing overall. Spec ops will take you a while to fully clock, I promise.


Onwards and upwards- Graphics.
Here is where I think Modern Warfare 2 really shines. The attention to atmospheric detail in the game is incredible, in every level. It is impossible to deny the beauty of this game. Not even joking, it's level of polish is incredible. Character animation is detailed and fluid, in that Infinity Ward twitchy kind of way, weapon models and animation are, compared to COd4, much improved. Character design is clever too, and I'll explain later on.the games visuals are overall nothing short of flawless, and it's clear that most of the money for the game went straight into sound and art.

Starting off, environments are richly detailed. Very few of them are brown messes, and particularly the levels set on US soils are full of minutia that while trivial, really make the scene. The Burger Town restaurant in "Wolverines!" looks scarify like a standard fast food restaurant that's taken a few hits, with cup stacks over the place, Broilers and Fry vats emptied, exterior with a few bullet holes.To ad to this, the amount of that minutia the responds when shot at is gleeful. Notably, Glass has been given a work through and now holds it's figure much more like real glass than sugar-glass. Most awe-inspiring visuals definitely go to the level "second Sun", without question though, especially combined with the silence and additional minor touches (like the EMP'd Optics gear), make it a stunning set.

Clearly, when Infinity Ward were taking input from COD4, they were listening when people complained about the models, and in particular how attachments were handled visually. The guns have been given a noticeable poly and texture boost, complete with excellent normals and proper specular mapping. This combined with well executed and fluid animations, you get probably some of the best visual representations of the weapons portrayed in games(except for for the enlarged rear apertures, and missing iron sights when scopes are attached). Additional points for managing to squeeze a Winchester 1887 in.
Now, character design I have to say is cleverly done. Main Piece characters like price and McTavish have been given full tailored designs dedicated to mostly only them (but still fitting whatever theme they're playing into), but piece characters, and enemies for that matter, follow a very clever modular design system. It allows for the artist just to make set number different pouches, helmets, faces, headgear, etc, and apply the variations in gear and camo ingame directly (saving hundreds of megs on texture and model data). Very Clever. Mostly it works, except for the Spetznaz/VDV in the US invasion levels, where it is right out of place (because it's all rigged up on mostly NATO gear).Camo was fine though.

Moving on Sound.
Sound, as usual, is fricking fantastic. IW once again one-upped themselves on sound design. Guns sound punchy and pingy, ambient sound has been ramped up again, and Foley. And everything. Is it realistic? Not painstakingly so. It's very hollywood sopund design, so take it as you will.

One pleasing little thing was the TMP and Mini-Uzi shooting. Now, if I had to onomatopaeia the sound for a Machine pistol, or a small sub-gun, it'd be BRAAAAP. Not a single game.. no wait, all games bar two so far... have managed to encapsulate that sound. Then we come to Modern Warfare 2, and suddenly, spraying a TMP and it just going BRAAAAP is the best experience I've ever got from sound in a game in ages.

So that's that then. Singleplayer is a very polished average shooter experience with the adrenaline valve jammed open and with a fun side coop thingy. I really with they'd made the game more like Spec Ops and less like the Campaign though, Ultimately that was too short, too over the top and just a little too.. convoluted.. all the time.It's fucked right up. Still a blast to play though and you should if you are planning on getting this game, just to say you've done it.


So that's it, get someone else to buy you MW2, because the two bits of game they give you aren't worth the retail + 10 they're charging...




..wait a sec...



Mul...ti...play...er? What's this?




OH fuck me with a brick I suppose I'd better talk about it, now I've sunk enough time into it (about 24 hours worth of game time in just under a month).
I really do think that this is a hard portion of the game to say whether I like personally or not, because I really don't know if I do or don't.

The first thing that strikes you about the multiplayer is is pretty much drops ALL pretense about realism. It's a pure multiplayer-driven game that is pat twitch shooter, part team-play. The visual and audio authtenticity is incredibly shallow, and for all intents and purposes doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of it. While it drops all pretense there, it makes up for it by being a VERY well designed experience, top to bottom. The Levelling system present in COD4 has been expanded and elaborated greatly.

Kills and points may be handed out a bit more liberally, but the level cap is proportionally much further away, and there are 5 levels of prestige. For those who haven't played the console version (like me) this was a change, PC players never received the Prestige system. But here it is now, which allows you to run the 1-70 leveling 5 times, each time resetting all your weapons and perks, but giving you some extra stuff unlocked initially (that were unavailable in the first run through). It's clever, and combined with call-signs and emblems , it makes the climb to the last prestige varied.

Oh there's callsigns and emblems. You unlock them through levelling, achievements, and just doing things the way you do them. You use them in a forum-like signature that people see when you kill them, or in lobbies. Just adds some personalizing, I do like that and it distinguishes it away from blandy-mcblands shooter number 5.

Let's see.. OH
Remember how Killstreaks used to be annoying? UAV was fine,but then Airstrikes were spammed, which led to Helo spam. Well, that's more or less irrelevant and/or a thing of a past. Modern Warfare 2 has customizable killstreak configuring, and it's effing brilliant. Not only does it give you that extra level of customization, you can ALMOST do away with airborne stuf if you want. Personally, I dig having supply drops and Sentry guns, so I usually rock them in my profile. That said, there's 15 killstreak unlocks, and even the ground-based ones (like the care package and sentry gun) get airdropped in. Don't worry though, there's a limit to 3 aircraft on the map at one time, and even stuff like Attack choppers can be countered, and very few of the killstreaks feel overpowered (except the AC130, and the nuke, one because it has cannons and the other because it makes for instant endgame where you win)

In fact, everything can be countered in MW2. That's probably the great thing. UAV can be countered by Counter-UAV and cold blooded, weapon perks balance, even the weapons do for the most part, and it all lets you tailor to your style of play, which is I must be honest, brilliant. The option to switch out your hand grenades for a Tactical Insertion flare is a godsend for team defensive modes like Domination, but the flares can still be shot or blown up to counter it.

Challenges return, and there are no shortage of them. Not kidding, there's hundreds. if you're a completionist, you'll be at them for a while.

Now, for the thing to take with a huge grain of salt.
IWnet. For those not in the know, IWnet was and is a huge source of contention with PC gamers, because of the lack of control over servers, matchmaking, especially regarding performance and bandwidth disparities. I am here to tell you that the fear of this IWnet is somewhat justified, at least Here in Australia.

The matchmaking is really odd I will admit. All the broadcasts for games are done via IWnet servers, which send back the list of games currently hosting, and your PC does a ping and filter through them until it hits one. Unfortunately, this leads to huge delays getting games up. and Unlike where in COD4 it was a 5 click job with minimal wait to get int oa game in your favourite server, now it's a 3 click process, with a potentially lengthy waiting period and a prayer. Lobbies seem to be quite volatile and players jump in an out sometimes by the second. It may work fine in the northern hemisphere where all the servers and players are within 100-200 ping of each other, but here where you've got to ping out to IWnet (which is a 400 ms round trip), then ping servers, it's somewhat nightmarish. Heck, Valve's matchmaking works better in L4D2 and L4D1. And host migration/Picking best host has a 50/50 chance of failing for whatever reason.
Once a game is Up though, generally it's fine, as long as the guy isn't an idiot running a torrent or something in the background chewing his bandwidth, or one of those exploiters doing that to farm levels (it's possible). So far, the game's been pretty clean of cheaters for me too, which surprised me considering all the oogie boogie people were screaming about.

Oh and there's no Offline LAN support. Forget it for LANs unless you've got an internet connection. IWnet, in short is the most disappointing thing about the multiplayer, and a huge frigging thorn in the side of the regrowth of PC gaming.

In short, the multiplayer is a blast, but the method of delivery is really letting the side down.

So, would I recommend you go out MW2?

NNNNNnnnnnnnnno.

Here's why - it's 10% more expensive than any other new release AAA PC game, and it's only about 80-90% worth the unmarked-up one, The SP is good but short if you put the blinkers on, and the MP is a blast, but is hampered by IWnet being a farce here in Australia. If someone gifts you it, by all means take it with both arms, or if it goes on sale, take it, but at $110 Australian, it's like Buying a Falcon for the price of a new Aston Martin-
Sure, they;re both decent cars, but the Aston is just that little bit more justifiable for it's price-tag, the Falcon jut isn't. MW2 just isn't. Almost, but not.


Here's a Bunch of pictars to go along with the review. Keep in mind, this is on a now-3rd-gen PC with shadows off (for whatever reason, my poor cassidy does not like to display the things AND keep a solid framerate)

http://tinypic.com/a/1jkuw/3

Cannular Infection

Time to review the First season of Darker Than Black. Yes, there is a second going on right now, and I'll review that separately later

Darker than Black is an oddly titled little scifi show that delves into a very bizzarre world. A world where stuff has gone awry. Really, a good analog for how awry would be it's a Japanese take on Roadside Picnic/S.T.A.L.K.E.R Shadow of Chernobyl, sorta. There's differences, but the mechanics of it all are similar enough . It's a bizzarre,depressing world where two giant anomalies appear in the world, one in South America(Heaven's Gate), one in Tokyo(Hell's Gate). When these anomalies appeared, much like in Roadside picnic, Odd things started to happen. The sky changed forever, a bizarre radiation emitted from the center of these anomalies, and seemingly at random, people were given supernatural powers at the cost of their conscience and their sense of emotion. These people, known as contractors are rapidly snapped up by governments all over the world and.. ah hell I'm not going to write down the entire bloody preface. You've got enough of the background story there, and it gets delved into during the show.
Anyway, the show's plot follows on particular power-owner (called contractors in the canon), Hei, also known as BK-301. Following him, and his exploits, you begin to uncover the bigger picture about what's really going on in the world, and more importantly, what's going on inside him.

I must admit this show isn't a very uplifting show. If you're wanting something light, this isn't it. You'll get a lighthearted joke now and then, but that's it. It's both deep and philosophical, and could easily give Shirow Masamune a run for his money. That being said, it's also very action oriented and in this regard, it delivers in spades. I'm rather amazed at the depth and diversity thats portrayed in just 26 episodes of 21 minutes each, and how very little the story grates when it switches between tracks. The shows canon just flows, and it's a great ride to be on.

The artwork, all done by Bones, is pretty delicious. The backgrounds and settings are mostly hand painted and full of detail. The character designs are well planned and executed, a real grounding in reality is felt about them, and it's not at all inconsistant across the entirety of the art.Short story, the art is great.

Sound in the show is excellent, showing excellent Foley mixing all over the joint. Voice acting is well cast, and all the voice actors seem into their roles enough that the tone is believable(NB, can't speak for the English dub, haven't heard it yet). The music, particularly the OP and ED tunes are all excellently chosen and mastered in. Particularly good choice getting Abingdon Boys School to throw a tune in, it really helps add to the show overall.

If I were forced at gunpoint to choose a negative point, I'd probably make a comment about point a gun at me being extreme, and then I'd say probably some of the humorous bits felt a bit forced and jarring, completely at odds with the rest of the show, but that's Japanese humor for you.

Overall though, Great watch. I'd reccommend this to anyon e with a.. I'd recommend this to anyone. It's that good.

Interesting point - I largely missed this show when it was actively airing due to the massive amounts of coverage Gurren Lagann and Spice and Wolf ( the shows that were airing directly opposite it in timeslots) were getting. DtB sort of faded into the background and relinquished itself to being a sleeper hit.
I though this review'd be longer, apparently it's not. Note to self- re-acquaint myself with the oxford dictionary.
Toadie, out.

Serious Gaming, and the Box art that inspired

Gather round internetlings of the weird and wacky varieties, lemme tell you a story about how I became a hardcore Tactical Shooter fan.

It all began in the heady days of... the late 90s, back when DirectX versions could be counted on one hand, and I was a wee lad in the land of penniless dreams.

At one point in time there was a Computer store in my home suburb, a little place called Doors Multimedia (Did anyone see what they did there?) used to be THE place to hang out in my neighborhood or suburb, and were a nerd. Truly the dog's bollocks they were, at least for a few years (my formative computing years anyway). They stocked EVERYTHING, and they even had Playstation, N64 and Dreamcast demo booths. Keen-as. Amongst the stock though, was probably the most varied collection of PC games I've come across yet. They literally stocked everything. from stuff that ran on 486s to stuff that needed the then-top-of-the-line Pentium Processors and 3DFX technologies. All kinds of genres, all kinds of awesome.

I used to literally spend hours after school and late night shopping nights (the ones where we didn't go into Midland) hanging around that place, gawking and handling all the AWESOME boxes. Now there were some truly awesome looking boxes for PC games, I'm not kidding. Evocative, visceral, sometimes purely just shiny. It was like candy land for me, feasting my eyes over the fronts and backs over games I could never afford or play on my 286, but that was fine, because all I needed was the boxes to let me imagine the games when I left. Some of the most notable ones, the ones that I never forget, were the covers specifically of The Doom Collection (including Final Doom), The East-vs-West Pack (Duke3D and Shadow Warrior), The Duke Nukem Kill-a-ton collection (which was the AWESOME shiny bronze box that screamed BUY ME FOR LIFE AND PUT ME NEXT TO YOUR CRICKET TROPHY), And the Box for Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six.

Now the first 3 obviously I loved for they beautiful hand painted art, slick graphic design thrown in to boot, and iconic imagery. The last one baffled me for a long time though, I never understood at all why I liked it.

Linked Below is the box as I first saw it. Imagine it on a box of A4-ish size, a bit bigger.

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six

Now though i understand it. It was Striking, and needed very very little trickery to achieve that. Just a photo, cropped and tinted, and BOLD text. It certainly didn't stop and take it's breath after that either, the entire box was pure thrilling class act. A fold out front, with similar styled designs on the inside,complete with the game's distinct (at the time) photo-realistic imagery, by cripes it's a gripping thing to behold. This WAS the Techno-thriller novel amongst the teen drama novellas, in almost every sense. Even making Flight Sims like Apache vs Havoc or Falcon 4.0 (which actually came with a 800 page Cut down Falcon Operations Manual) ook like weedy boxes.

I never did pick up the game, and year after year I skirted past boxes with Tom Clancy, and vivid Tacsim and Milsim boxes of one variety or another. Another set of boxes that never failed to draw my eyes were the Delta force games by Novalogic. Using similar aesthetics, again, simple design that just wanted me to buy and play them.

It wasn't until I was was well into my teens, and consequently, WITH money, that I did start purchasing these games (by first going back and getting the ones I missed). By now, my taste in games had matured significant, and I was beginning to savor for something more than just running around corridors blasting crap. This was a time when I started to get REALLY into deeper shooters, so games like Rainbow Six were fine now (and perpetuating my long-begrudging deep-held fascination with the 20th century, and now it's military aspects, to my own detraction at school).

So, after picking up the Main games in the series-es I loved ( Rainbow Six 1/2/Raven Shield, etc ) I was piqued to learn that another Rainbow Six game was in the works, and by all early reports was going to be an even more intense and deeper game. HOORAH, I thought. Then Lockdown came out, and between and my old chum Jim Lad, we were quite... disappointed. Even the Cover art (liked below) was a let down. I mean sure it was still striking, but nowhere to the extent the early boxes, or even the Raven Shield art. dismal Gameplay aside, the game's promotional material and box-art was a complete mess. Linking it below for you all to behold.

You can see that someone along the line here was slowly trying to change art style not only of the promo and box stuff, but the way the art ingame was done, moving away from the pure photorealism standpoint and towards a "styled" look. And from there, you can actually WATCH the art and tactical elements of the game fall off as the series continues forward.

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six:Vegas

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six:Vegas 2

As I said, styled look. I'm not saying it's bad, but it certainly isn't the clearcut striking images I idolized before I had money to do anything about it. I guess it's a bit disappointing that Rainbow Six will likely be forgotten to the gaming world in it's original form, and remembered as the glitzy modern-day-styled Gears of War that Vegas 1 and 2 are.

Not to me though, these boxes evoked me to be come a real tac shooter nut, and there are hundreds around the world that likely had similar experiences. Tactical shooter fans are small in numbers, but high in their passion for their particular game style.

I think thats what ultimately made me want to do For Hire. I wanted to do a tactical shooter because I think sadly that the Tactical Shooter is about to go way of the tradition adventure game, but I wanted to give it a proper roaring swansong. Something to really stick up there on the wall and knock Vegas 1 and 2 off everyone's recollections.

Anyway, Here's to the boxart that dragged me covertly into the shadows and scintillated my imagination. You will be remembered.

PS:If you are like me, and have a link to the tacshooter genre as much as I do, and feel you could contribute something, anything to the FH project, feel free to drop me a line, because I really will take nearly all the help I can get at the moment(toadie2k AT gmail DOT com).

AS AN ADDED BONUS, I put up a small album of the art, just so you can have a peruse and see the transitions it went through, and which exact point the Main developers switched from Red Storm to Ubisoft Montreal.

Gallery is here

Enjoy

Toadie, out.

PS: apologies for the loooong silence, been writing this on and off for like 3 months. Usual Rantnoise resuming ASAP.

Priorities - Addendum

In the last few days Robert Bowling at last came out from underneath Europe, assumingly in some sort of underground Reichstag bunker that filters his ability to respond to queries for all sides regarding the PC version of Modern Warfare 2 to confirm on several fronts a shopping list of PC-related queries.
So, here's the shopping list for what is now being called by some "Black Sunday" -

Modern Warfare 2 will not be using a client-server relationship with a populated server list based off a master server for it's multiplayer handling. Instead, Infinity Ward has built a matchmaking system that shotguns on Steam, dubbed IWNet. So instead of your usual relationship between gamers and GSPs/ISPSs, you will now be running all multiplayer entirely through ad-hoc networks, mastered through IWnet.

There is no plans for dedicated servers. Period. You can already see where this is going.

IWNet will be using Steam for Anti-cheat protection (which is good, because punkbuster sucked), Matchmaking which will essentially lock you into games with similarly ranked players(presumably to prevent griefing).
Servers will be able to be privatised and password protected with some degree of customisation.

In a two-parts Modding for MW2 and custom content is out for the meanwhile, and so is competitive gaming.

Now, before I go on a tirade about why I won't be putting money down for this game EVEN more than I was before, I'd jsut like to also put on the balance that there are positives to matchmaking. For example, it's great for playing with a bunch of friends you already know without all that setting up business. What it's not great for is all the reasons this is making PC gamers worldwide angry (Amazon is reporting losing 2000 PC pre-orders in the 24 hours since this broke).
Let's start off with the bottom end first-
Competitive Gaming. yes, I hate the snot-nosed arse pounders, but whatever chance of competitive leagueshad of starting for this game has now essentially slimmed. Particularly without dedicated server support, setting up CG events will be somewhat stymied by forcing the hosters to have X amount of individual dedicated machines running the game WITH THE MACHINES ACTUALLY IN THE GAME will be troublesome. Yeah you can pretty much kissthat goodbye. Scrims and stuff probably will be less affected, but the real hardcore stff for MW2, probably gone. Enjoy that

Custom Content. Robert Bowling said that there's no information on a Mod dev kit as of yet, and was reluctant to confirm yes or no. However, the silence leaves two things up in the air - whether there will BE custom content support at all, and if nothing is said between now and immediate post launch the likelihood of it being so decreasing.

Onwards- Bandwidth.
Bandwidth is going to be a real deal-breaker for a system that ONLY supports ad-hoc matchmaking. Do I even need to say it? Home ISP connections are by and large quite small and will severly limit the performance of the game, as well as the largest reasonable server capacity. This is of course assuming that the pipe is completely open and not being shared with other suers (which it rarely is).

Latency.
I do not know of ONE ad-hoc system that has reliably correlated latency users. There is always an outliers. There's been no word from IW whether there will be localised or even continentalised IWnet servers, so I do not hold high hopes for the system, as the further you get from the central server, generally the less accurate latency matching you will get... and if the matchmaking has to come from the US... We're on the other side of the world here in Australia, it's going to be attrocious (it already is through Xbox Live according to some people).

Now, I'm a big fan of dedicated servers. They're there like public arenas. They don't move around, and generally are designed to cope with internet traffic. They're ideal in the PC world, because you can just open a game, go to your favourite server, and jump straight in.
I'm also not opposed to matchmaking, as I've mentioned briefly before. However, matchmaking is far from the ideal solution for PC gaming. In fact, relying on it solely is detrimental to the multiplayer experience. The above two key logistical issues are a start. No dedicated servers means that you may potentially be stuck in high latency games just because whoever started the game decided he'd open up a torrent in the background(or his housemate, whatever). Dedicated sservers give a baseline reliability and connectivity for a game, and without them, large-scale multiplayer games aren't possible.They ease the burden on machines with low specs or slow internet to keep the game running smooth, and as such make the game enjoyable for everyone.
Point is, yeah, have matchmaking, but keep Dedicated Support. It works great for Left4Dead, which in my books is doing matchmaking more or less ON the nail.

Further food for thought- This matchmaking system is cutting into the running of an actual 3rd tier business - Game Service Providers (people who run and rent servers as a means of profit). This will no doubt cause them some headaches. THE number one game of this year (so says the media), and THEY are going to have a hard time trying to be part of it. It's not like L4D or even Blizzard's battlenet, where they actually HOST games even though there is a matchmaking system, this is completely designed to run around them.

MY biggest concern is this is a continuation of a worrying trend that would circumvent PCs are a viable gaming platform (for major publishing companies outside Valve... Indy pubs and devs will ALWAYS run stronger on PC).. to what end?


So to summarise-

• IWnet servers will host multiplayer
• DLC will be a charged item for PC
• No dedicated servers
• Matchmaking system used to play with similarly ranked players
• VAC instead of PB
• Semi-capable password servers
• Semi-capable ad-hoc servers
• Competitive play is dead
• MW2 mods would not be possible
• Steam integration - (how far not mentioned)
• Potential bandwidth and latency nightmare
• The beginning of the end- HAS IW shot themselves in the foot?

Hold your receipts people.
Further Reading/listening-

http://bashandslash.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=746&Itemid=69

http://www.kotaku.com.au/2009/10/new-modern-warfare-matchmaking-service-will-definitely-reshape-pc-community/#more-362322

Priorities

Okay so I'm going to do a hard sell here, and I'm going to ask you only one thing coming out of this - Do not under any circumstance purchase Modern Warfare 2.

Why, you may ask?

Allow me to elaborate in words of the queens english.

Argument the First- Bobby Kotick == prick.

I'm not sure how in the loop you are, but surely may have heard of this man who goes by the name of Bobby Kotick. He runs Activision these days, previously owning a boxing firm of some sort I believe. Anyhoo, past irregardless for the moment, he rose to power in Activision in a bloodless coup of stockholders sometime in the last 18 months.

In the last few months, he's been making a lot of negative noise. A WHOLE lot of it, in fact. Most of it is harmless stuff regarding his displeasure with the PS3 as a platform, bla bla bla too expensive, usual gripes. However, Early in September he make a pretty bizzare conference presentation to the Deutsche Bank Securities Group, which all in all has me incensed. To paraphrase and take all the good bits, addressing as I go.

"expect many of our products to be playable independent of a console,"
When asked about an untethered Guitar Hero. In principle, this isn't such a bad idea, however it's at best anther console which you'll have to fork out for, and at worst those stupid throw-away 8-in-1 LCD Gamin-and-watch-style deals ( You know, whole package games complete with hardware... except these'd have to be running stuff that can at least do pixel shaders, so they'd be expensive as shit, or using OnLive). Either way, it's trying to split your market away from everyone else's, which is probably not going to work in this case.

There was a section where he talked about how his friends in movies were quick to point out the bad mouth control and animation in COD:World at War (No shit, they syncing in that game was pretty bad).The executive said game makers just haven't reached a point yet where the mouth movement and facial animation of game characters is good enough to establish a compelling emotional attachment from the player. In many different ways this is untrue. There are plenty of games where emotional attachment to ingame characters or objects, and they didn't even need mouths to prompt it(Portal), and even when there are mouths involved, there are plenty of games out there that have excellent mouth animation and posing(Half-life2 for starters), just none of them I can think of were Activision games. OH, COD4 had some great mouth animation when they were scripted sequence closets.

".... And I think the goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks that we brought in to Activision 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games."

"I think we definitely have been able to instill the culture, the skepticism and pessimism and fear that you should have in an economy like we are in today. And so, while generally people talk about the recession, we are pretty good at keeping people focused on the deep depression."

"...You have studio heads who five years ago didn't know the difference between a balance sheet and a bed sheet who are now arguing allocations in our CFO's office pretty regularly,"

So essentially, he's sapping the fun out of making games, and turning it into the packaging industry. Great. As if we needed it. Admittedly, yes being fiscally responsible is pretty important, if you're ruling a bank, and I suppose you've still gotta worry bout th bottom line at Activision, but it shouldn't be DRIVING how you make your product. THAT, is bad game managment. If you're instilling pessimism and fear into your Developers, and making sure they're not enjoying themselves, you can bet your eggbasket that the games they make are noty going to be fun. It's really a symptomatic problem of some publishing deals (ie, game to movie tie-ins), but he's pretty plainly stated there he's got no intention of letting Developers enjoy making games, so don't expect me to buy anything from him. Seriously, I'm on Activision boycott now, and unlike my failed Vegas 2 one, I can actually achieve this quite successfully.

Argument the Second - Better games coming out if you're into semi-realistic FPSes, and don't care about the story.

You heard me correctly- there ARE better games out there coming out if you're not counting the Singleplayer experience. Say hello to Battlefield Bad Company 2 - a game that on many levels supercedes MW2.
For a start, let's have a look at the base multiplayer- It's Built off the Bad Company MP model, which in itself is built off Battlefield2, which is built of etc etc. The concept and the classes are all well defined and work. The gameplay modes work reasonably well, and the whole package just works. You'll find yourself a home in this game no matter what kind of player you are.
The Graphics- well, they're both pretty good, but the fact that BFBC2 scale to MUCH larger maps and gamplay, and I'm a personal fan of BC's animation style and effects over MW2's.As a package, they feel jsut that better composed and contiguous regardless of the situation (MW and MW2 have notable problems with player models and explosion effects). BC2 does actually kick MW2's arse for accurate models though. Sorry IW, not even complete remodels that you've done can save you from the blasphemous rear sights.

Sound Effects- No goddamn competion the BC2 has the better sound effects. Proper doppler, AWESOME sound Environmental feedback (reverb indoors, long fallof for outdoors sounds), none of this premix crap(1:1 what's on battlefield to what you're hearing), Best Explosion sounds in a game ever, and most realistic weapon sounds you'll ever hear too.

Gimmicks. Killstreaks? Deathstreaks? Fuck that. Destructible buildings. Fully destructible landscapes. How bout some of that? Fuck yeah. Why would you want anything more?
Seriously-
BFBC2-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQq6NQhXg1Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRlBI6FgMOs

MW2-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4PMRFkx07g&feature=channel_page
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdPn_6PddLQ


Argument the third - Better games coming out if you're into unrealistic FPSes, and do care about the story.

Contrarywise to the above ,there are also better NON-realistic shooter coming out with more inventive stories than MW2.
Borderlands- it's really worthy of it's own blog spruik, but I'll summarise-
Millions of guns, procedurally generated
semi-procedurally created lifeforms.
Set in a futuristic wasteland on another planet
Interesting characters
Great art style
drop in/out coop
Actual character progression and growth as you play
Think Diablo on FPS steroid
Has a tank chracter that can slam cars
Has a robot in it, which is like Gir on cigarettes.
It's got it's own style,which is more than can be said of MW/Mw2's rip-off-every-movie-we-can-before-the-end-credits style.

Argument the fourth - Deagle Brand Deagles- NOW WITH DUAL WIELD.

I mean in theory I hate Dual Wield. In a game that tries for authenticism, it sticks out like a goddamn sore thumb. Deagles. I Hate deagles for the same reasons. Noone uses them for combat, except hollywood. They have no place in a theatre of war. Combining the Two? FUCK THAT SHIT, IW. FUCK IT WITH A BRICK. You know this is what ALL people who use akimbo are going ot use, and you know that the'll be gold ones, and it will be the epitomy of Fucked up.
You only need to see how much people can own with them in COD4 to see exactly how fucked up it will be with DOUBLE THE DEAGLE.

Argument the fifth - 12 year olds, spawn rape, all that shit
All that went on in COD4 probably returns in CODMW2. This, compounded with overcrowded servers are why you wanna stay the fuck away from CODMW2 until at least like this time next year. Trust me, you'll thank me later.

Argument the sixth - Fuck this shit.
Yeah, pretty much. You're spending AU$100 on a game, that's riddiculous. Remember when games were AU$49.95? considering the length of the game, the enjoyment rate for your dollar is pretty thin these days. Unless you buy like scribblenauts or LittleBigPlanet, or something with a ModKit, anything to give it legs, you are getting a very finite value outa the game. Choose very wisely. MW2's campaign is short, Spec ops mode is 2-player-only and finite to an extent, and the comptetitive MP is just plain spammy. Buy Borderlands instead, you'll get at least 4 times the amount of fun outa it, I promise.

So there we go, I hope this at least makes you think twice about buying IW's next game.
I'm Toadie, I say things so you don't have to.

Okay so here's the thing about Valve Software.

I mean I don't hate them, nor do I spin madly in love with them, I just co-exist in the same world with them and sometimes we meet for coffee, if that analogy makes any sense.
I think that people both overstate and understate Valve, usually in the same breath.The overstatement is usually a sweeping positive or a sweeping negative, while the understatement is almost always just trying to ignore pitfalls.


Understatement
On one side, Valve are incredibly capable game devs. They've pulled off some of the best games I've played, possibly of all time (HL2: Ep2, Portal, HL1). They really know their shit and it shows in what I've seen from L4D2. They're really hands on with the community, and do support their product literally a decade after people would have bought it full price at a brick and mortar store. They hire high-class talent and produce high class work. However, they're not infallible.

People do treat them as if they are infallible. This is a problem, because they are not, nor are they delivering upon high mighty stone tablets. They are, at the end of the day, some guys in Bellvue Washington, who happen to make polished games and still support the PC platform with a reasonable amount of consistency.

They suffer from what I'd like to call "Game Science Syndrome". This more or less comes down to a game being designed from an initial point to reach a single hypothesis, which is then put to testers, who rigorously hammer, then it's passed back and forth until it's so tight that the hammering has turned the 50 cubic meter marshmallow is now a cube the size of a pinhead and full of glucose. Hence- Game Science. Have a theory, make a test batch, apply to mice, note reactions, modify and reiterate as necessary until it works with minimal flaws, push on public for fifty bucks. This approach is fine, and indeed should be part of all games, but relying on tester feedback and deliberately trying to smooth out the game leads to streamlining, and streamlining isn;t always necessarily GOOD. It has lead to some of my biggest beefs with Valve games cropping up (HL2's boring environments, TF2/TFC's useless class- the HWG, L4D's monotonous gameplay). I should address all these in proper reviews, but they're never going to get reviews, so I'll give a quick cover right now.

HL2's environments, immediately post acquiring the Gravity gun go from interesting adventurous places to be, to dull , gimmick-lined pains in the ass. Okay, let's assume that you're me, not a huge fan of using the gravity gun because of it's sheer gimmick factor. Yes, you'll use it when you HAVE to , but because you're not hunting for props and objects to throw at things constantly, the game goes from a tense run to downright boring. Props are all obviously there for you to punt. Hell, Ravenholm made sure you did by blocking your path with them time and again. It's a real problem especially around the sandtraps, where you must use your gravity gun (again, it's fine because that's the puzzle of that entire level) on everything. There is no other way to solve this level but to play shuffleboard with a door and a rotted boat (yes there are other props, no, get out of my head charles). THere is literally nothing more than this to the level if you don;t want antlions to rape you. You can of course try your best to cross withoutusing the gun, but you will find yourself physically alienated from the solution half way, because there is a gulf of sand wide enough that even if you could glitch it, you'd still probably miss. It's impossible. Then of course completeing this you get gimmick weapon two- the Antlion pheromone pod. Another story altogether. It's clear that Valve want you to play with the gravity gun, but I'm jsut not down with gimmicky tools in games. They're all like "Here, use this." and I'm like "No, I'll stick to trying my skill with the shotgun, thanks.". It reeks of the bad kind of game science, and it really irritates me.

Valve gripe number two - The Useless Class: the Heavy/Heavy Weapons Guy. Seriously, he's goddamn useless. Turns slower thank a tank, has the accuracy of a shower of rain. Sure, he's got 200 health, but he's so slow and his weapon is so useless that he jsut becomes a sponge for someone else to lob over the top of... and Trust me, being the sponge is not fun. Okay a bit ofa backstory. Before TFC, there was Quakeworld Team Fortress, made by a Queenslander in his bedroom. It was massive. Team based class gameplay, 9 classes, a bajillion maps. Yes, the Heavy was one of them, but he was a late addition. By the time he was added, Valve and said queenslander were already in talks for TFC in Half-life 1, so he was needles to say, a bit unbalanced. Minigun? unbalanced? never. TFC came out, and while some classes had become a bit softer, not got the nerf as hard as the poor HW guy.Admittedly, he wasn't as bad as he was in TF2, but he got a noticable step down in power from Quakeworld. TF2 made it worse, with the nerfing continuing, the removal of traps and grenades, and ultimately, becoming on it's own a different experinece altogether separate of it's roots. The HW guy went from being a good base of fire to being compltely and utterly useless. Sure, you could argue that some of the achievement unlocks for the heavy make him a bit more powerful ,but I'll be honest, putting 20 plus hours into a heavy, I've yet to see any of that shit, so fuck it. Again another iterative nerfing project that valve embarked upon.

And finally Left4Dead's boring gameplay. Mechanics directly from CS, step one for a resipe for disaster right there. Left 4 Dead, for me was this *hold down fire* *reload* *hold down fire and run* *wait for everyone * *fire some more**end level* *rinse repeat until last level* *receive rape*. That's it. there is literally nothing more to that game. What's more, the variety of weapons is shocking. Remember what I said about pruning and stuff? Heres where it was cut. Admittedly, any more guns might just be dupes, but they've no issue with it in two. What's more, the entire outside areas of Left4dead feel uninspired and boring for the most part. Especially the starting chapter. That set of levels was so very dull to be a part of. So dull it hurt my view of the rest of the game. L4D2 seems to cope with all this stuff and I'm much more inclined to get that over the wide berth I gave the first one.

So yes, people tend to understate or overlook minor or major downfalls to appease the actually-not-listening Gabe Newell head on their mantle, just because it's Valve.

Then again....
Overstatment

This happens a lot to Valve, because unfortunately, because they do seem to be such a community-focussed team, it makes them open to broad-siders about all sorts.
L4D2 Boycotts, the Anti-Steam movement, PS3 owners, L4D players, Portal addicts, TF2 addicts, CS junkies, CSS junkies. All of them overstate Valve's abilities or importance.. or totally go off the deepend regardless of the reality of the situation.

L4D2 Boycotters are nothing but a bunch of L4D gamers who immediately threw their hands in the air at the announcement of the sequal, not believing that valve could turn over a game in 12 months (thinking that this somehow invalidates their purchase or something), and in a leap of logic think Valve are jsut going to leave them in the lurch.

Anti-Steam people are just idiots. While there are a few bugs with Steam, it's a hell of a lot better than it was in 2004, and it most certainly easier to use and more convenient that maybe 70% of all competive game distribution platforms. Offline Mode may still be buggy to hell, but while I'm online, I've yet to see a problem with steam yet. Their leap of logic is thinking that Steam is somehow the worst concept in game distribution, because it's still better than discs. There, I said it.

PS3 owners who bought the Orange box are the only ones who should feel slighted by valve.. because the port (not actually done by valve) was crap. All other PS3 owners who are now whinging about Valve annoucement that they have no intentions for developing for the PS3. I'm not planning on making games for the PS3. What, you gonna cry 'bout that too?

L4D junkies TF2 addicts and Portal players all share one thing in common- their love for derivative material and memes. They think that no bad can be made of their game, and then have a hissy fit when someone does poke fun or point at a glaring fault. Get over it, they aren't perfect by long shots.

CS and CSS junkies (especially the Pro gamer type) just need to shut up. Valve don't specifically cater games to your tiny niche MLG market, they make games to be PLAYED by as many people as they can. Neither shields, FAMASes or Galils broke the game, AWP and Deagles were already ingame ,so the game was pre-broke.

Finally, I'd jsut like to reiterate, Valve software still support, and are one of the major pillars of, PC gaming. Despite all the back and forth, they're still worth putting money into, because at least they do this much for PC gamers like me. Few developers or publishers even recognise the platform at all these days it seems.