Link (YouTube) |
All the joking about the insanity of shooting our way up a tower just so we can meet Thane in the middle of a job aside, this is totally a Cuftburt plan and therefore I am 100% behind it.
It’s just too bad I can’t steal absolutely everything on my way up.
Link (YouTube) |
It’s funny, I seem to remember more happening in this episode. I mean, not that I’m opposed to the idea of more dialogue, but most of this episode wasn’t even really meaningful dialogue, it was just “Oh hey you have to talk to this person so you can get the quest hook to go and do some stuff that the Illusive Man said you should do or something.”
Oh well, at least we get a little more interesting (and less Lawful Stupid!) dialogue with Samara. I hope she doesn’t mind that Shepard is the galactic Candy-From-Baby thief.
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Welcome to 1996. Please enjoy your internet.
I’m sure you’ve noticed that my site tends to go down a lot. It turns out this blog is a resource pig. According to my webhost, I had an entire machine to myself and it was still going down on a regular basis. About two or three times a month the machine would be overwhelmed for a few hours and the site would vanish. I could never get a definitive answer out of them if the cause was bandwidth or CPU usage. Bandwidth seems unlikely – this site isn’t that popular. I’ve survived simultaneous links from Slashdot and Make. But if the cause is a PHP script that runs amok, I’m at a loss to find it.
But last week they moved me to a new server, in hopes that this would improve things. I also installed supercache, which might help lighten the load. I’m very disappointed that web hosts track bandwidth usage but don’t give you any way of tracking CPU usage. It means I’m working blind and have no way to really look for problems.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Downtime: I hope you can read this”
When I was in high school I used to do this thing where I’d walk up to someone, lean on them for a minute or so, and then casually inject into the conversation, “You know, you’re supporting a teenager.” Sigh. At least I grew out of it.
Rachel, my oldest daughter, turns 13 today. Thirteen was when I got my first computer. So that’s kind of a big deal for me. It also marks the onset of the whole “teenager” thing, although she’s not yet suffering from any of the symptoms.
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She passed her mother in height last year. Now she’s only a couple of inches below me. (I’m 5’11 – 1.8m) She’s enthusiastic about being tall, which is good, seeing as how she doesn’t have much choice. Some tall girls are embarrassed by their height, but Rachel seems excited at the prospect that she could pass me.
I turn 40 later this year. Time seems to be passing alarmingly fast. At the current rate of acceleration, I’ll be 60 in about an hour and a half.
The interface problems in DC Universe Online feel very familiar to the issues I had with Unreal Tournament 3. It’s got an irritating console-style interface that makes no sense on the PC. This is interesting because both games use the same engine.
As I played, I began making notes. Those notes became this post. These are just quick observations made while playing. I might have overlooked some feature, or experienced some bug. Don’t read this as a review. Read this as a series of reactions over the course of about 30 hours.
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Continue reading ⟩⟩ “DC Menu Scroller Online”
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My reaction to the combat in this game: This feels so right. Why hasn’t anyone else done this before? This is the way it always should have been. Sadly, the problems with the game are evident after just a few hours, and I’m all but certain they aren’t going to be fixed.
The designers at Sony Online Entertainment have an almost tyrannical approach to level progression and player creativity. Some of the changes I suggest in the article are (relatively) easy, but would require changing fundamental assumptions about how these sorts of games should work. If the designers were capable of that sort of maneuverability, they wouldn’t have made these mistakes in the first place. So while bugs may be fixed and rough spots may be smoothed out, I do not expect the sorts of changes needed to give this game the depth it needs. If players get bored and leave, as I predict, the designers will blame it on Champions Online going free-to-play, or the bad economy, or any number of other obvious scapegoats. But I stand by my thesis: This game is in a straitjacket, and people will get tired of it quickly.
As I discovered this morning, you don’t even have freedom in where you quest. If you roll a Superman-based character but decide you don’t care for Gorilla Grod as an adversary, you can’t just do the Batman quests in Gotham instead. The quest givers won’t speak to you. This means if you hit a tough spot you can’t go elsewhere to level. And it means you can’t just really run around the world and sample the content buffet-style. In World of Warcraft, I can roll a Gnome and then do quests in the Night Elf area if I want to. Why? Because there’s no reason to deny the player that choice.
(EDIT: Looks like this was a bug. You’re SUPPOSED to be able to do other quests. But they pop into your quest log automatically. Odd way to do it, but you can change quest hubs.)
In DCUO, everyone is locked into a fixed chain. Same progression. Same powers. Mostly the same costume pieces.
The production values here are enormous. The visuals are wonderful. This game could have bitten deep into the player bases of Champions Online and City of Heroes. But the depth isn’t there, and an MMO can’t survive on graphics and spectacle the way single-player games can. I predict that a year from now, DCUO will be in third place among these big three.
And since I’m in a predicting mood, I’ll predict that the reaction to my Escapist article will be met with some hostility, just like my critique of Champions Online. Fans may even accuse me of being a hater. But the fans who rage against me today will be the same ones who will look at the DCUO icon a month from now and try to think of a reason to log in. This won’t be true for everyone, of course, but the narrow design will naturally lead to narrow appeal.
I’m having fun now. I’ll be very surprised if I’m still having fun in February.
Link (YouTube) |
This episode marks the return of the ever popular “episode long shooting sequence interspersed by tiny segments of largely irrelevant dialogue set against long, narrow corridors” segment.
To be honest, this is something that’s grated on me a little bit. For large portions of the game, I often find myself thinking of the game more as a plain old shooter rather than a “RPG Shooter.” It certainly feels like there’s more combat in this game than in the first one – and I don’t know if it’s just because I’m playing this game right now and haven’t played Mass Effect in over a year or if there is actually less “RPG stuff” and more “shooter stuff” – but it’s been bugging me all the same as we’ve progressed through the game.
A breakdown of how this game faltered when the franchise was given to a different studio.
This is why shopping for graphics cards is so stupid and miserable.
Which would you rather be: A king in the middle ages, or a lower-income laborer in the 21st century?
The comments on most sites are a sewer of hate, because we're moderating with the wrong goals in mind.
Cities: Skylines is bound to have a sequel sooner or later. Where can this series go next, and what changes would I like to see?
A videogame that judges its audience, criticizes its genre, and hates its premise. How did this thing get made?
Deus Ex Mankind Divided was a clumsy, tone-deaf allegory that thought it was clever, and it managed to annoy people of all political stripes.
Why killing you might be the least scary thing a game can do.
The Thieves Guild quest in Skyrim is a vortex of disjointed plot-holes, contrivances, and nonsense.
Ever wondered what's in all those quest boxes you've never bothered to read? Get ready: They're more insane than you might expect.
T w e n t y S i d e d
