T w e n t y S i d e d
More proof that I am a hopeless romantic at heart.
The Escapist Show: Crytek
The Escapist Show: Episode 38: Crytek
You know, seeing this guy talk about his work really changed my perception of Crytek and, by extension, Crysis. I still think their pursuit of graphics spectacle is self-defeating, but I was glad to see it was because the guy has a genuine passion for graphics, and not because they thought it was the key to great sales. I thought it was hilarious that he began by talking about the fact that his favorite games were always the ones that didn’t run on his computer, since Crysis has now become the poster child for that very problem.
I do take issue with his praise of the AI they have. I think it is and was the weakest aspect of their games. (Aside from the difficulties in running them.) The fact that sticking your elbow out from behind a fern at 100 meters will result in every single foe in the area zeroing in on you and then flawlessly tracking you through the foliage is a major frustration. The fact that they can hear your footsteps three rooms away and then know that they are the footsteps of an armed foe (and not one of their own guys) is another glaring shortcoming. They’re not particularly good at flanking you or working together to flush you out. They’re drooling morons with superhuman eyes and ears.
It’s also interesting to see how deliberate the play of Far Cry was. They made it big, bright, open, and unscripted because other games (I’m sure they were thinking of iD Software) made games about fighting in dark tunnels. Looking at Far Cry, you can see what parts of the game they cared about and had a passion for (lush outdoor visuals, action set pieces, dynamic encounters) and which ones they thought were unimportant. (Story, dialog, acting.)
And yes, the graphics are pretty amazing. It’s five years old and Far Cry still looks great.
Stolen Pixels #109: Let me Tell You About “Evil”
Overlord II: First Impressions
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Crap. I was supposed to save that last bit for the end. Maybe I should have used a spoiler tag. Ah well. Just pretend like you don’t know how the series will turn out and I’ll make like I didn’t say anything.
The gameplay in Overlord II is much improved over the original, fixing my various gripes and polishing the established gameplay. The game is a much improved version of an established formula, so why don’t people dig it? I think the main problem here is that the designers did a poor job of introducing newcomers to the series. I’d point out how stupid this is, but I just did the same thing. Let me back up…
If you’re not familiar with the game and you’re too lazy to read my series on the original, then here is the short version, O impatient one:
You play as the Overlord, a towering guy who looks like Sauron and sounds exactly like the main character from GTA III. In the game you command groups of minions: amusingly mean little imps who will obey you without question. They come in four colors: Brown (damage absorbers) Red (ranged attackers) Green (damage dealers) and Blues (healers). Most of the game revolves around managing these groups to get the most out of them in combat. Sometimes you’ll be fighting waves of hapless wimps, sometimes you’ll be fighting organized forces, and sometimes you’ll be fighting a single large foe. Each one requires a different approach.
Your Overlord also has some melee prowess and a few magic spells, and you can generally improve the survivability of your forces if you don’t mind placing yourself in harm’s way. (But if you’re risking your own life to protect your underlings, then I have to wonder just what sort of Overlord you are. What is it about this whole “evil” thing that’s confusing you?)
The original game lacked any sort of map or compass, which led to players becoming frustrated by the occasionally labyrinthine areas. Now you get a nice in-game map. The original game had occasionally frustrating areas where you might see your forces wiped out several times and still have no idea what you’re doing wrong. In the new one the transition from “combat strategy mode” to “puzzle mode” is much cleaner, and it does a far better job of teaching you how gameplay elements work before expecting you to use them under pressure. The gameplay adds a bit of depth without adding too much complexity by introducing mounts for your minions to ride. The strategy gameplay is more interesting, the puzzles are more fun, your tower is cooler, the controls are better, the interface is better, and the changes to the story undercut the entire point I’m trying to make about this one being better. Still, this is one of those sequels that will ruin you for the original.
As an aside: The game has SecuROM:
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To my knowledge this is the standard garden-variety of SecuROM that just… I don’t know… mildly inconveniences hackers? It’s not tied to online activation or phoning home or anything insidious. Still, it’s there and you should be aware of it. I wouldn’t have noticed it if not for the dialog that popped up when I tried to play without the CD.
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This is a console port, but it’s a graceful one. I have a USB controller which is the functional equivalent of the current-gen console controllers, and I was able to set it up to behave exactly like the Xbox. It feels like I’m getting the best of both worlds: The clean controls of the console version and the higher resolution of the PC version. (I’m not actually all that into high resolution for the purposes of gameplay, but it does make it much easier to make comics.) Startup time is short. Load times are brief. I’ve plowed through the game twice and had one crash.
I’ll get into the gameplay in a later post. Try the demo if you’d like to play along at home.
The Top Seven Sexiest Women of Fantasy!
I don’t usually go in for lists like this. They invariably end up loaded with skanks and dunces who think “sexy” means “malnourished and underdressed”. For example: I’ll take Audrey Hepburn in her Sunday best over a bare-assed Jessica Alba any day.
However, I must admit that the #1 spot in this list of the Top Seven Sexiest Women of Fantasy is a triumph.
EDIT July 2020: The original link to thetorchonline.com is long dead, now claimed by malware scam site. However, archive.org remembers the original.
Gamethread July 20
Once again: How are things going on the Twenty Sided Servers?
If a moderator is harshing your mellow, this thread is the place to out him. Everyone having fun?
Just a reminder that you can donate to keep the servers running. I’ve pledged to pay for one of them if the fund runs dry. The Team Fortress 2 servers are $30 a month, each. The billing cycle hit about two weeks ago, and we’ve got $13 USD in the hat. That’s amazing, considering I haven’t mentioned the server fund (much less linked it) in over a month. You folks are great.
If you want to nominate some fresh maps, I think we’re due. The Lawful server will stay 100% vanilla stock levels, and will stick to ones that have broad appeal. (Ergo: No 2Fort.) But we can add some controversial or community maps to Chaotic if enough people demand them. Just nominate in the comments. (be sure to specify which server.) If the comments don’t paint a clear picture, I’ll take the nominees and run a poll later in the week.
Also, Rutskarn (one of our mods) has a post that allows us to view the game through the lens of hilarious, fiery death: A Review in 11 Deaths. I appear in one of the deaths. Also, congratulate him on 200 posts if you’re a base-ten landmark sort of person.
Also be sure to read this bit: SPAWN CAMPING FOR FUN AND PROFIT. (It’s not actually advocating spawn camping.) It’s from bbot, one of the server regulars and (last time I looked) one of the top players on our server. It’s a good bit and has a lot of insight on the game for new0ish players like myself. (It’s a rare game where you can clock 100 hours and still be “new”.)
A July Wedding
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| My brother-in-law, with my new sister-in-law2. I don’t want to talk too much about them here on my blog without permission, but I hope they’ll forgive me for revealing that they’re great people. Too bad they live 1,000 miles away. I love having great people around, but he works in the aerospace industry and we launch surprisingly few space shuttles here in Pennsylvania. |
Smashing wedding this weekend. Well, it was for those who got smashed, which was a very small minority. Which is good, because everyone had such fun and it would be a shame if nobody remembered it. It was an outdoor wedding, and it’s always a gamble to place that much of your wedding day in the capricious hands of mother nature. In this case it paid off. The weather was clear for the ceremony, which was full of weeping women and beaming men in equal measure, up to and including the bride and groom themselves. They said their vows with conviction, which is always encouraging. I mean, they’re vows. It’s always odd to hear adults pledge these mumbling oaths in the voice of a second grader trying to ramble their way through, “Pedge amegense to the flag”. None of that sissy crap here. These two were getting married, and they didn’t mind telling the folks in the back. Even if they knew already.
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| Left: My budding programmer. Right: Me. The tie (because I know people will ask) is Animaniacs. The pocket watch was a gift from the groom at the previous wedding. It’s stamped with a personal message and the date: September 22. I always love pointing out I’ve got a watch with Bilbo’s birthday on it. (Well, Frodo’s too, but of course everyone just calls it Bilbo’s birthday.) |
As soon as the ceremony ended the weather changed gears. Dark clouds rolled in and began raining on us with big splatty droplets that reached underneath umbrellas and awnings, threatening makeup and meticulously constructed hairstyles. The sun peeked out a few times during the shower, just to let us know this wasn’t going to go on all day. There wasn’t a rainbow, but that’s fine. It’s rude to upstage the bride on her big day. Moods brightened, then the weather.
If I ever find myself involved with the planning of another wedding (odds are good: I have two daughters) I will implore them to do what they did today and have the whole show at one location. It was about fifty exceptionally scenic meters from the ceremony to the pavilion where the reception was held. It wasn’t until today that I realized how asinine it is to have the two halves of the event in different locations. It’s just a lot of hassle to gather everyone up and drive someplace, and then have a cell phone drive to figure out who went home and who got lost. Today we just walked across the conservancy. Why don’t people do this more often? Members of the clergy can do their thing anywhere, and (for us theistic types) so can God. Seems daft to drag a couple hundred people into an unfamiliar church to fight with traffic, parking, and Google maps if they’re just going to have to do it all again an hour later.
As the reception began, the rain let up and left us with a lovely parting gift: Cool air. A half hour of rain was worth it to get rid of the July heat, which would have blunted our appetites and made dancing uncomfortable. It was sixty degrees, which is perfect. The sun came out, naturally.
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| There were only a half dozen kids but – due to the quantum nature of childhood – it felt like about fifty. |
I danced until my feet hurt, took a break, danced some more, and then hobbled around wondering how in the hell women do this in heels. Was shamed by this, and so danced some more. A silver-haired couple got out and reminded everyone that you never really forget how to dance, and their generation did it for years before they got around to having our parents.
The sun went down, the disco lights spun, and there was a full palette of music to suit people of all different walks of life, levels of dancing, and sobriety. Everything from Chubby Checker to Garth Brooks to Def Leppard to Sir Mixalot. You know, wedding music. The kids danced like giddy savages and ate like Hobbits. They darted in and out of the crowd, meeting each other and forging instantaneous friendships in a way that adults can only envy.
You know it’s a good wedding when the married folks sit together and run through the list of singles, deciding who needs to go next. Everyone went home happy, tired, and full. And a couple of them went home married. It was a good day all around.
From The Archives:
The Dumbest Cutscene
This is it. This is the dumbest cutscene ever created for a AAA game. It's so bad it's simultaneously hilarious and painful. This is "The Room" of video game cutscenes.
Tenpenny Tower
Bethesda felt the need to jam a morality system into Fallout 3, and they blew it. Good and evil make no sense and the moral compass points sideways.
Diablo III Retrospective
We were so upset by the server problems and real money auction that we overlooked just how terrible everything else is.
Overthinking Zombies
Let's ruin everyone's fun by listing all the ways in which zombies can't work, couldn't happen, and don't make sense.
The Best of 2017
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2017.
Twelve Years
Even allegedly smart people can make life-changing blunders that seem very, very obvious in retrospect.
The Death of Half-Life
Valve still hasn't admitted it, but the Half-Life franchise is dead. So what made these games so popular anyway?
Trusting the System
How do you know the rules of the game are what the game claims? More importantly, how do the DEVELOPERS know?
The Best of 2016
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2016.
What is Piracy?
It seems like a simple question, but it turns out everyone has a different idea of right and wrong in the digital world.