IN BETA Critical Hit Gaming - Undoer@Critical-Hit.co.uk |
Took me a while but I finally got round to making a video of my game against Ravag3r, as mentioned before I lost but you can see how and why here.
I’m considering more videos like this if this goes down well, or even doing commentary as I play games.
It would seem The Undoer has been Undone.
The Dawn of War II – Chaos Rising tournament over at THQ Insider was great a great experience I intend on repeating, though in future I think I could use more preparation. I managed to make my way into the second round through a bye (due to my opponent not turning up) and played against an excellent fellow Eldar, Raven3r. I don’t think I did things wrong in many ways, I was just generally out skilled. My opponent seemed to know the best ways to use troops and had some excellent group placement. For a correct term: I got roflstomp’d.
He slowly but surely managed to close in on my territory, when ever I had stolen back a Victory Point, he was there taking my resources and the Victory Point back. Eventually he managed to close me in my base and lay what was all but the killing blow. To wipe out literally all of my units so effectively, he did several very clever manoeuvres.
His first act towards the killing blow, was to run a falcon into my base.This distracted my remaining guardian squads long enough to build a Warp Gate at the back of my base. Once the Warp Gate was open, he released a swarm of Howling Banshee’s and his Farseer upon my remaining units. With no remaining resources I had lost.
Even with no remaining resource points my opponent still knew I could have some stocked up resources, and he left a gargantuan wall of death at the front of my base. At this point it was “Good Game”.
Raven3r went on to the finals and won in the end, and to be fair, he earned it. THQ Insider admin, Kristine, said they’re planning to do more tournaments in the future so it might be worth keeping an eye on the site.
For the studies of the Craft World, I may prepare a informative video document on my defeat *winkwink*.
Demos
To bite back the boredom until Cataclysm’s release, I’ve been playing a hell of a lot of demos. Steam has a wonderful library of the li’l buggers, and I decided to try out three different demos: Amnesia: The Dark Descent, The Ball, and Audiosurf.
Audiosurf
I tried out Audiosurf at i40, stealing a friends computer away from them. The games motto is “Ride your music” and that’s exactly what you do. You ride a li’l spaceship down a three lane track, moving from left to right to avoid grey blocks and hit colourful blocks. The speed of the game is in relation to the music you play, the hotter the colours the more points you get. Sadly the demo had limited rounds, so here is a picture I stole off of Fileplanet!
The Ball
The Ball was probably my favourite of the three. It’s a puzzle game where you have a weapon called “The Hammer” which pulls “The Ball” to you, and punts it away. Different parts of the environment can effect your ball, I covered mine in oil once to set some rope on fire (as you lack hands to simply pick a torch up, you must make a trail of oil between a burning torch and some rope).
Whilst the campaign is mostly about puzzles there are enemies lying around and a Survival mode dedicated purely to defeating these enemies using the traps you find lying around or the ball itself. Survival is my preferred mode of Gameplay due to how satisfying it is to get a wonderful line of zombies following you, and to just drag the ball towards you slaughtering each and every undead minion until your faithful companion is back at your side. I would highly recommend checking this game out, even if you only try the demo.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent
You might have heard of Amnesia, the latest horror prodigy to come out, and if you haven’t get out of your cave! Like The Ball you solve puzzles, but you solve puzzles not whilst being chased down by zombies, but whilst being scared to death and requiring new underwear. This, like The Ball, was one excellent game but definitely not for the faint hearted, I did consider buying it but decided not to due to the same reason a Friend did: I’d never complete it.
This one is very much worth checking out, right from the moment you start there is something wrong, something not quite right and as you progress it gets worse and worse. The sanity meter really adds urgency to the game, the longer you sit still in the dark gathering your thoughts the more likely you are to go mad. If you get engrossed in the game it gets worse, you want to die less and less. Although I never did die, I was constantly afraid of the possibility. 
Time for some Undoer Undoin’.
Since the dawn of WoW time Shamans have been OP, we foretold the Clan Leaders of floods and earthquakes, we told the huntsmen where to go to catch deer. But never have our spiritual eyes been called out on their leetness, now is that time to call them out on said leetness. Due to a thread on www.mmo-champion.com all about the secrets still hidden in WoW my interest got peaked into what still lay undiscovered on the map (my personal interest is in secret areas).
My first stop was to explore Mount Hyjal using Far Sight on my Shaman, Gronka. Starting off in the Neutral Cenarion Circle hub in Felwood I began to make my way over the mountains until I reached Hyjal, that wasn’t the hard bit though. What proved truly difficult was traversing the area, I had no map and the zone is very different to the raid instance in Caverns of Time. Sure enough I found Nordrassil (the original World Tree), and it had one awesome secret at it’s feet. When I sent the picture below to a friend he asked if that Skeletal Corpse was an Old God, but I suspect most Warcraft III players can answer that question for me. (Spoilers (WC3))The skeletal corpse is Archimonde, one of the three demon lords of the Burning Legion who died at the end of WarCraft III. This sight alone was well worth the trek up Mount Hyjal.
I took this next picture on my way south (or I think it was south) in the direction of the Scourge Encampment. I don’t know what it is but it’s pretty damn close to Nordrassil, and it felt bad ass enough to be worthy of a mention. (More spoilers!: Cataclysm) From my looks at Beta Videos it seems to play a role in Cataclysm (with Baron Geddon in there), but that’s really all I know.
I also felt this one was worthy of a mention. This is the encampment to the Scourge base, it seems to be one of the few resemblances to the raid, as the rest is obviously aged or just different. For those of you who have yet to play the Warcraft 3 campaign, or venture the raid: DO NOT ENTER. This should be written in big bold letters at the gates, in the Raid it is filled with Undead who will tear you a new one, and in the campaign it is filled with Undead who will tear you a new one. Just don’t do it, it’s bad. Mmkay.
As a final mention on Hyjal before we leave to have a look at Karazhan, one thing I did notice was the lack of Alliance, Orc, or Elvern bases. There were ruined highborne buildings lying around (LIKE ALL OVER NORTHERN KALIMDOR), I thought this was kinda odd, also the Scourge don’t advance out their base, I’m pretty sure they were at the tree clawing my face off on my attempts at the Campaign.
Now for Karazhan. Reading the thread over at mmo-champion, someone mentioned a hidden room in the tower, reachable from outdoors. I explored, using my Far Sight ability I reached the top of the tower and found several things of interest, the picture below is the Gryphon Roost with a third Raid portal. Rumour has it you would exit the top of Karazhan and these lovely gryphons would flap their way over to Netherspace (I feel sorry for those gryphons, carrying half a 10 man raid each?). Personally I prefer how Blizzard incorporated Netherspace with gradually spookier things the further up you get.
A few other findings around Karazhan: at the top of the tower a unreachable staircase inside the tower itself. I don’t know why this is in there, but it’s probably just a remnant of scrapped development. I also found the Jade coloured dome by Nightbane to be hollow. It has no contents though sadly.
Hopefully one day we’ll get a passage into the Crypts outside Karazhan and search more into the mysterious Medivh’s past (Is he dead? Is he alive?)
Me and a Friend decided we’d like to check out the Tauren Village off of the coast of Silithus. This turned out to be quite the trek, even when using Water Walking and Epic mounts, but also well worth the look. Considering the peaceful nature of Tauren, their lack of farms is quite unusual.
Another stop, was a hidden Goblin valley with logging contraptions in Stone Talon Mountains. Odd place to go logging really, considering one important factor: The lack of trees.
I did have a couple more stops on my mystical magical journey through Azeroth, let me show you them.
Whilst searching Azshara for something of interest (anything of interest, just a speck of interest!) I came across a random flight pad out at sea, not too far away from the Gnomish housing, isn’t the sky pretty?
This is probably the oddest thing I found, but so bad ass it’s worth a mention. Take a guess where this is? Zangarmarsh? No, you’d be wrong. This is Desolace. in a hidden valley near the eastern Centaur Clan, there are big crazy mushrooms and a purple sky. Your mind is now blown. I know what you’re thinking “Something interesting in Desolace? HOLY SHIT.” but yes, that’s exactly what it is. Enjoy your mindfuck.
Dawn of War II
I managed to find an interesting competition to win a game of Blood Bowl legendary edition, and I took it up. Over at THQ Insider they’re having a Dawn of War 2 Chaos Rising 1v1 tournament, and I have foolishly entered to have my brains scrambled by how bad I am at this game. I think it shall be Fridays blog post, I’ll try and get some screenies (rules allowing of course).
So StarCraft II has been out a good while now, and obviously a lot of people have enjoyed the game, so I decided it was time I actually did a review of something (and I had nothing of interest to blog about). For those blissfully ignorant folk who do nothing but play banjo’s outside a bungalow in the middle of no where StarCraft II is a future themed RTS where you take the role of Jim Raynor, rebel leader of the… Rebellion? Yeah, when you’re flying around space in a space ship saving the world from insect like aliens and Draen- Protoss you don’t get much time for imaginative naming. Straight off the bat, I’m going to say this is a spectacle of a game with great story, great gameplay, and some of the best characters I’ve seen in an RTS, and if you’re not convinced to go out and buy it now as a PC gamer then read on.
Let’s start with the story. Story is something that could easily be forgotten in an RTS but is heavily used here to make you want to win, make you decide which battles you should fight in, and which choices to take. Although it follows on from the original StarCraft, as someone who never played the original I can safely say the game tells you enough to let you enjoy it instantly by telling you the story of the original game through the install screen. This is a great way to allow the player to instantly jump into the action without having to watch cutscenes in multitude to learn why they’re doing what they are.
Blizzard have obviously learnt since the days of Warcraft III and StarCraft on how to tell you a story, and how to give players the extra information they want. A lot of players play StarCraft simply for the gameplay, which is fair enough and that portion of the audience shouldn’t be ignored, but a lot of other players have decided they would like to see what all the hype is about and would prefer the whole Sunday roast rather than just the desert. Between missions you return to your headquarters, in most cases your magnificent ship, The Hyperion, and wander around buying new upgrades for your units or mercenaries to assist your troops in Battle, but whilst doing this you can talk to a whole host of plot characters you have picked up along the way and listen to their views on recent events, ask them what they think will happen, or just simply watch the news so you can learn the aftermath of your actions. All in all, the addition of extra story along side a fantastic well developed story pacing out your missions really adds to the feel of the game and makes you choose how to act and what missions to choose.
I mentioned the act of buying Unit upgrades and Mercenaries to aid you in battle, after a mission you receive money which you can spend on upgrading your army. There are normally two upgrades per unit, and most of the time they’re passive upgrades but they give a noticeable change. I get the feeling that from what Blizzard said they’re doing with WoW talents at Blizzcon 2009, they’ve also put similar ideas into StarCraft II upgrades. The tanks do large AoE blasts, but with an upgrade you can reduce the damage they deal to friendly units, thus making them a much safer way to deal with rushes, another upgrade adds a turret to the roof of your bunker, allowing it to deal damage without being occupied by valuable infantry, this all adds up to a more customizable experience in StarCraft II. Mercenaries are much less customized but feel equally valuable when you buy them. Unlike other units they instantly zone in via Drop Pod and can lay waste to your opponent far more effectively than a normal unit. These can be a great fall back if you keep a large reserve of resources and don’t want to leave units around your base when heading out for a killing blow, alternatively these can be a great killing blow due to the large damage output. Although mercenaries are not customizable they can be used in several ways, and no matter how you spend your money it should turn out to be a very effective purchase.
The game also offers you research, where you’re ships scientists are hard at work finding out about the Protoss and the Zerg species from artefacts and specimens you bring back from your missions. Research allows you to collect new units and become a very effective fighting force. This is again something Blizzard have learnt from the WoW talent system, by forcing you to choose about what you would like to research first you must decide what you really want, and not what is optimal because if it turns out something is better but it doesn’t work with your play style, because there is no going back on that decision. On the other hand these upgrades are normally two ways to the same objective so you should never feel like you must restart the campaign if you don’t like a decision. This leads up to the final product being a very customized experience, and more tailored towards your personal needs than most games choose to be.
The missions in StarCraft II are some of the best I’ve ever seen, again learning from WoW Blizzard have learnt that a generic destroy X’s base, or gather X resources is quickly going to get boring no matter how much you spread it out. To counter this they add in a optional mission to destroy X’s base whilst say, not using more than 500 minerals (This is an example, no such mission exists). A mission I really fealt was unique was a resource gathering mission where every 3 minutes Lava rises and you must retreat your units to the high ground in order for them to not be burnt up, obviously the resources are submerged in lava at that point in time. By the end of the mission I’d eliminated all enemy bases, had minerals being pumped from every other direction, and a sizeable army. It advises against making a sizeable army as this comes from the resources you require but who needs resources when you have tanks? Loads more missions are like this and almost all of them are unique in at least some way.
For singleplayer content I’d have to say this is a brilliant game and a must buy for any PC gamer with even a remote interest in RTS’, it’s a classic RTS style of gameplay with new and unique mechanics to keep you drawn in. The story flows excellently and made me want to know what would happen in the end. I personally can’t wait for the next installment, StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm.
-The Undoer.
The latest video is up today, a guide showing you how to reach the infamous Dancing Troll Village.
DISCLAIMER: GM’s might go ninja on yo’ ass if you do it. You’ve been warned.
WeGame Fix
From what I gather a lot of people (myself included) get a bug where WeGame crashes on launch. I fiddled with it today and came across a solution.
Clear out any video footage produced by WeGame, leaving videos from Fraps, WMM, Premier, Sony Vegas etc alone as they don’t appear to effect the issue.
After doing this my client launched fine.
The Plan
The plan for this site is to put up content 3 times a week. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Monday will most likely be a video, as will Friday leaving Wednesday for something more “blogtastic”. If content isn’t up by early in the morning don’t be too surprised, I’m probably still asleep and will have it up by 6pm (GMT) most likely. If I don’t get something up, it’s most likely because I am away and can’t. In most cases I’ll leave a message at the end of the last post.
-The Undoer-
Yet more Undoer Undoin’! Don’t worry, there’ll be different things up when I get bored of these. It’s another one of those weird titles you might be thinking, well I’ll sum it up for you. Last weekend was the weekend of i40, the UK’s largest LAN festival, to say the weekend began well would be an over statement. The level 80 corrosion refers to my efforts to get the Corroded Skeleton Key on my latest tank, Vorlak of the Shattered Sun, and my recent ding of a fresh new level 80 Shaman. The excessive mining refers to Minecraft, a game I was introduced to at i40 and have been barely able to put down since starting.
Let’s start of with some WoW, and if you don’t like WoW skip ahead, or the kitten gets it. I might have mentioned in an earlier post I returned to WoW on the Horde faction, after quitting six months before on the Alliance faction. Before I quit I had been working on a Shaman which was level 71, and loved punching things in the face with the power of the elements behind each and every strike. I decided instead of remaking my Shaman (Like I had my warrior), I’d simply transfer her (Who really wants to level an Enhancement shaman?). Slowly but surely I’ve been levelling her up and last night I dinged 79, soon followed by 80. Having respecced Elemental (Buff enhancement!) I’m now obliterating dungeons and trying to keep tanks alive when they run off in the Culling of Stratholme whilst I’m trying to do a Pre-Quest (I caught up with my tank during the 3rd wave of a dungeon, after he stupidly decided to pull without checking if his healer was there).
One of my first heroics on Gronka Jenkins was Gundrak, a dungeon infested by Trolls who are stealing the power of their animalistic deities and using it to fight back the scourge. Ever since seeing a fist weapon known as the Fist of the Deity drop from the third boss in the dungeon I’ve wanted it, today was my lucky day as the group politely let me roll on the item without any complaints and now I have the coolest looking weapon ever. Now I shall give you a picture to bask in the cloth wearing glory of my Elemental/Restoration Shaman!
I also mentioned earning a Corroded Skeleton Key on my Warrior – This trinket by far surpasses my other trinkets, by actually doubling the statistics on my previous trinket. It was a long 3 week grind of doing a Heroic a day, the Weekly Raid, and last but not least Vault of Archavon when ever I could. There’s not really much to say on this but I felt it was worth sharing.
Let’s move onto Minecraft shall we? Minecraft is a sandbox zombie survival gmod esque crafting game thing. During the day time threats are minimal and you are meant to go out into this never ending sandbox and find materials to build a home, you’re choices are quite infinite as to what you’d like to do. On most of my maps I create a cave the first night and then move onto something more complex. My personal favourite form of shelter is a tree house. In the current build Zombies and Skeletons (Denizens of the night) are incapable of climbing ladders so making a “water tight” home is pretty easy. The game is a current obsession of mine and I’ve barely been able to tear myself away. My intentions are to make a fully sustainable home with a constant supply of food, minerals, wood, and a lava moat (I tried this once and the lava moat actually burnt down my tower). It has to be said I’m really enjoying Minecraft and look forward to trying out Multiplayer with it.
The graphics in Minecraft leave room to be desired but they sort of have their own charm, and really who cares? Most of the time you’ll be using the third party program InvEdit to give yourself dynamite and blow a massive whole in the ground. This just goes to show a game doesn’t require millions of dollars of backing to be good, it just needs to have a team behind it who want a good game.
In my last blog post I mentioned I was going to i40. Having spent my weekend there and meeting some truly awesome people (Such as CoffeeScamp, and Tim) it’s fair to say I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it. That’s not to say the weekend started out too well though. Setting out at 8:30 am to arrive around 12 in the afternoon wasn’t such a great idea, many people in the British Midlands will know the weather was awful and not good for camping, thankfully it began to clear up later on. Once I got in I checked in got ready to take my computer in, but Multiplay wouldn’t let us in until 6pm, then 7pm as they hadn’t managed to get the Network running. This wouldn’t have been such an issue if it wasn’t due to the fact we were receiving “equal treatment” in a temporary structure when we actually were the last people in. After several rounds of Run Kitty Run and CSS over the Lan I returned to my tent and sure enough the next day the internet connection was up and running. After that the weekend moved pretty smoothly, with a few internet blips along the way.
Loads of great games were played such as StarCraft II, WarCraft III, World of WarCraft (Can you say “I love Blizzard”?), Unreal Tournament 3, CSS, and Minecraft. But what I will probably remember the most out of all of those is the awesome game of Team Fortress 2 I played in the last hour with the CantFitMyN clan against Crazy and Invaders. There’s playing a game, and there’s playing a game with people you know and the latter is always more satisfying. In the end I believe the score was 4 to Crazy/Inv and 2 to CantFitMyN.
That’s really all I have to say except that the next video will be up on Friday and I hope this is enough to tide you over until then.
Hello interwebs! Welcome to another Undoer Undoin’, where I talk about what I’ve been doing in the gaming world and perhaps some new games or news that’s come out. This post is going to be World of Warcraft, the hugely popular MMORPG with around 11 million players, so if you’re not a fan of WoW or even interested it might be worth reading a different post.
Anyhow, I decided to name this article “You’re So Offensive” after an achievement in World of Warcraft, which is called “You’re So Offensive”. To earn this Achievement you must gain exalted reputation with an old Burning Crusade faction, the Shattered Sun Offensive. All of this is old news though, but with the Catacalysm coming a lot of players are looking back to try and soak up some of the old world as it has been since release, before Deathwing comes along and messes it up. Personally I’m going around this in a very peculiar way, whilst most players are doing the old quests, completing classic quest grinds and Dungeons, I’ve decided to do Burning Crusade content. This may come across as crazy but I don’t see the point in redoing content that I’ve seen far too many times as it is (Though I assure, old raids are a different matter all together!), I’ve levelled so many characters up to 60 that when the change comes I will be thankful for the refreshing singe that Deathwing spreads over Azeroth. Many old Burning Crusade players will know the more “miscellanious” factions had redeeming features other than gear and Dungeon Keys, some of the factions had mounts, some had pets, the Shattered Sun Offensive had two things that caught my eye: The rare (yet easily obtained) “Of The Shattered Sun” title; and my personal favourite tabard currently available in the game. At 4.5K rep a day, and 19 dailies this rep grind is pretty easy, and it doesn’t feel grindy, for people who mostly missed out on TBC or just didn’t do much during that period of time now is a good opportunity to check out some of these old Factions.
I don’t intend on stopping with the Shattered Sun Offensive, my overall goal before Catacalysm’s release is to earn a Nether Ray mount (The much sought after Flying Squid), a Nether Drake and a Kodo. My obsessions for these items is mostly fuelled by nostalgia, I once quit WoW for several months before coming back earlier this year and my overall goal in playing was to finish off a dream of having every class at level 80 (I currently only lack Rogue and Priest – Both of which are above 60). Before I quit I had a large menagerie of characters, ranging widely in Class, Spec, and Race. The first character I ever made was a Warrior and I played him through Burning Crusade content. During this period I earnt the right to fly upon a Squid, and wear the title “Of The Shattered Sun” with pride. Now having moved to the Horde Side and restarted I decided to create a new Orc Warrior who shall rise to the challenge of outdoing my Dwarf Warrior.
Shattered Sun Offensive reputation is quite easy to come by, 4.5K rep in an hour from doing the dailies and then an additional 3K for each Magisters Terrace run you complete. Getting a group for Magisters Terrace could prove difficult but I found telling my pet collecting friend CoffeeScamp about the mount and pet that drops from Kael’Thas a good enough form of compensation for having to heal my fat Orc ass through a beautiful spectacle of dungeon making. I have fond memories of Magisters Terrace, I never completed the dungeon before the “Great Nerf of 2008″ came in, but even before wiping 13 times on the trash before Kael’Thas was sort of… Special.
Anyhow, I still desire to do Magisters Terrace, if only to hear the “Squee” of excitement when the pet or mount actually drop, and CoffeeScamp damages one of my ear drums. At this point I have actually completed my Reputation Grind, and I proudly tank as “Vorlak Of The Shattered Sun”.
The last thing I’d like to talk about in this is the new World of Warcraft wallpaper Blizzard have released, I’m currently using it and damn! It looks awesome – I honestly don’t know if Varian and Garrosh are fighting to get to each other and kill each or fighting to kill the elemental, either way it feels catacalysmic, check it out here.
I did recently mention that my computer had been completely reinstalled. As a quick update most games are now installed and I’ll be heading off to i40 tomorrow! This is pretty much me saying there won’t be a video on Friday or Monday, and the next video will be a week on Friday.
The latest video is up on the YouTube channel, filmed, edited, and uploaded this morning. I had honest doubts that I’d be able to get a video up this week, whilst preparing for i40 and panic installing just about every program I own.
It’s more StarCraft 2 gameplay, but damn that game makes great video potential. I hope to get up something different (Perhaps Half Life 2 related?) next week. A fresh install of WeGame appears to have fixed all the issues I was having with it, so video production should be going on at a steady rate now. Anyway! Here’s the video.
I got the build from the Liquopedia (a wiki for StarCraft 2 builds) , click here to check it out.
This is a trial of “Undoer Undoin’”, an attempt at Gaming Blogging to see how it’s received and whether or not to make it a regular segment of critical-hit.co.uk.
Hello internet! This has been one hectic week for me. As many UK readers will know, next week is host to the start of Multiplay’s i-Series, and as a good PC gamer, I shall be going in all my nerdy glory. The last thing you’d really want on the build up week to a major LAN party is a computer killing virus forcing you to completely reformat your computer, amirite? Managing to get one during the twilight hours of Monday morning, I stressed thinking “How can I fix this?”, not only did I get a virus, I got the mother of all virii, bypassing my anti-virus and turning it off, then removing just about everything from my desktop. After finally managing to launch my computer in Safe Mode and get a virus scan running, it crashed on me. So out of ideas and without a Windows XP Boot Disc at hand, I had to send it off to be repaired. Having arrived back to my loving arms this afternoon, completely wiped of any programs I now have the wondrous job of reinstalling 200gb worth of games, around 50% of which will be downloads from Steam, before I arrive at i40 on Thursday morning. Though that is in the future and I can’t really blog about something in the future.
You’re probably still confused as hell about the title, and if you haven’t realised that it’s all the topics that will actually be discussed in this already, the title contains all the topics that will be discussed in this post. Let’s just say it amuses me, but so do clapping toy monkeys, and shiny objects.
Let’s talk Racist Italians. Over the past few days of no computer, I’ve been feeling quite secluded from my usual flow of gaming news and media. One of the first few things I did upon the return of my computer was browse the internet for recent gaming news. Amongst the recent news I found an article claiming that Unico National has decided Mafia 2 (upcoming Mafia game) is racist, due to it’s use of stereotypes amongst the characters. Let’s talk stereotypes. They’re bad things no one likes when used in a real world situation, but what a lot of people don’t realise is: THIS ISN’T REAL. A stereotype immediately gets you thinking about a character and allows you to develop ideas about it, if given a Nazi Character (Godwins Law) we immediately dislike it (or are meant to) and the chances are, the stereotype that will be used is a blindly loyal follower of Hitler (Godwins Law #2!).
I personally don’t understand this issue at all, and again I think people are being over-sensitive to it, but that’s just me, and I’ll probably receive fifty angry emails telling me to go jump off a cliff. The reason I personally don’t believe this is an issue is that I’ve been gaming my entire life, and I don’t really think that anything has come out of it in a negative way except my pale complexion and being a tad too awesome. A lot of people argue that this is an “interactive media” and thus different from other situations with television and books, but honestly I don’t believe it is. With a film or a book you try and envision yourself within the story and attempt to unravel it, which is interactive in it’s own right: only a truly awful form of media completely separates the audience from the story. Back to me having gamed my entire life, as I said I’ve played video games my entire life, from an early age I played FPS’ and driving sims, I suspect it has effected me, but no more than having been exposed to religion and politics. I’m now trying for the life of me to think of a game with racial hate, and all that comes to mind is Crysis, which depicts Korea as a very militant country, I honestly have no problem with Koreans, they’re “just another group of people” to me, no different. Can’t we just whack a screen at the start of games with any racial “issues” saying “The stereotypes depicted here are merely stereotypes and not to be taken seriously”, and then stick it on every book, film, and magazine as well? It’d save a lot of hassle.
Let’s move onto the PS2 part of the title. As I said above my computer contracted a virus and has been being repaired, so to fuel my gaming addiction for the mean time I had to resort to other methods. I had two obvious choices to me: first, I could play Warcraft 3, Half Life 1 and Trackmaia Nations on an old laptop with a magnificent 512kb of ram, or I could dig out my old PlayStation 2 (The last console I used before falling in love with PC gaming). A whole host of uncompleted games awaited me in the box of goodies, Champions of Norath, which I gave upon after being asked to do something that I did not have the time or patience to figure out, Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers was another option, I had given up after Frodo had been kidnapped and returned to Unreal Tournament 2004, another option would be completing the campaign in Simpsons Hit and Run, let’s just say I prefer shooting to kicking.
I decided to whack in one of my favourite games, Star Wars: Battlefront. It has a special place in my heart as a console game, it feels polished and well done, the combat flows well, and each class has a distinct feel to it. By choosing the Pilot class you get a passive bonus when in a vehicle which causes your vehicle to automatically repair (slowly) as you go along, and increases your life span significantly, by choosing a sniper you are given the obvious job of Recon and the worst weapon to be in close range with, and by choosing a more specialist class, you actually feel like your doing something others can’t. The Empire have a fantastic jump pack soldier with a shotgun, allowing the player to close gaps easily with a Jump Pack and shotgun people, the clones get a air-t0-ground specialist with a rocket launcher and a jet pack, making him an optimal character for decimating large groups of enemy infantry or surprise attacking your opponent from an unexpected opening, the rebels get their infamous furry friend, the Wookie. He has a much higher survivability rate than the enemy and a bowcaster which doubles as a shotgun. The wookie doesn’t do much special but honestly feels powerful with a devastating attack at close range. The Droid army get to play around with Droideka, the pesky ball shaped guys from just about any Star Wars game set in the prequels. I kid you not, setting up one of these in an actively used corridor has devastating effects upon your opponents reinforcements. I managed to gain a killstreak of somewhere around ten which is not bad at all for someone who rarely plays on a console.
A more impressive killstreak came from my sniping attempts, on a map where the only way to my location was to run past me twice, sniping was an obvious choice, opponents spawned below me with me at a safe distance from me, yet close enough for me to be able to “pop a cap in yo’ ass” , I’ll just leave the Kill Death Ratio for you here and let you be thankful I never got PSN working on my PS2: 53-1.
This is pretty much all I did over my computer-less time, other than a few rounds of Lego Star Wars (Damn, gotta love those Star Wars games), which somehow managed to challenge me which is embarrassment enough without putting it on the Internet (That last fight with Anakin is hard!). Lego Star Wars is more of a puzzle game with combat elements than a combat game. It doesn’t play like a combat game, it plays like a puzzle game, where you switch between characters to counter opponents or get around certain issues: whether it is using the force or just striking at the correct time, it’s a pretty tricky game.
All in all this has been a pretty eventful week for me, and now I’m tasked with installing a couple hundred gigabytes worth of programs on my computer in a few days. Something that probably sums it up quite well is this
As it says in the massive banner at the top of the page, this site is currently in beta. The site is currently viewable as all the content is here, stuff will be added, stuff will be removed, but I can’t properly fix some of the issues with the site without installing a couple of programs first.
I’m normally not to fond of demos, they’re designed to sell a game and give you a taste of the full final product, but the industry, like all other industries, is fuelled by our money, our hard earned Gold Pieces, and this isn’t a bad thing- Well it is, but we have to accept that fact, but it means that demos are polished further beyond the final product.
And a final product I’m interested in (Having always been an interested observer of Grand Theft Auto games), is Mafia II. It’s pretty much a Grand Theft Auto clone set in the 50′s following the exploits of a mobster, and damn, it feels like a mob game, but I’m worried if the demo I’ve played is just a polished nugget of Fools Gold, you can polish a turd and people will be interested (perhaps as to why you decided to polish a turd) but it will remain a turd.
The demo came out earlier this weak and the full game isn’t to follow until the 27th of August if I recall correctly, and I played through looking at some pretty cool features. The game limited me to only playing so long outside the missions for… No obvious reason what so ever, but never the less I got a pretty nice look around.
I did intend to go in and make a video for the YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/GameCrit) But sadly I couldn’t get WeGame to run for the life of me (I even checked a single forum thread… Apparently technical issues require a VIP account), so I launched up my old friend Fraps (from the oldest of the old videos), and tried to get that going, I failed miserabely but didn’t come out empty handed, I brought with me some screenies.
Fancy a sandwich? Going through the fridge of my characters appartment I found some ammusing contents, beer, cola, and a “Classic ham and cheese sandwich”.
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Don’t run! It’s only ham! I dunno if this is to prove itself as a worthy adversary or powerful ally later on in the game, but damn… It looks delicous. Much to my amusement across the kitchen from the fridge I found an old Fifties play boy Magazine, and by pressing my use key it brought up a lovely picture that… Took me some time to fully appreciate. I also found another Playboy in the gun store, and the demo promised me another 50 if I buy the full game, amusing as that is I reckon I’ll be looking into the game more and waiting for some Reviews and/or Gameplay videos on it first!
I was also offered a Wardrobe with lots of new clothes inside to take a look at, I decided to don the perfect Mafia guise, the Black Suit and brimmed hat. Taking a stroll out on the town I came across an “all American 50′s diner”, and needless to say I was impressed and loved the feeling of authenticity. In the picture below you can see to the left of my Character a yellow and brown object, that my friends is a gorgeous blast from the past, a Jukebox! For $0.01 dollars or (1 Cent) you can change the track, I tried this but to my disappointment it restarted the current track, I’m gonna assume this is a flaw with the demo and will be fixed by release or in an early patch though.
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I’m going to assume all this fondling over my sharp fashion sense isn’t what you were after? To make the route from my River Side House to the diner I had to travel, and this mobster travels in style. Just like most GTA style games you can steal any cars around you, or buy your own. In the demo you are given 3 cars, and I tried out all 3. My favourite was the Smith Thunderbolt, it drove like a dream, looked like a dream, and damn, it killed me in style during a high speed collision with a wall. Driving in this game is incredibly hard and not something to tackle on a Keyboard and Mouse setup, ideally I’d have used my brain and picked up the PS2/USB Gamepad from over the desk and used that, but thinking isn’t my strong point. Amusingly during one of my joy rides in the Smith Thunderbolt, the police pulled me over for speeding… Or my to the point tried, there li’l indecisive Black and White motors couldn’t keep up with the excellent spectacle of a car I was driving. Though even if I was caught, the fine for a minor offence (collision with another car, speeding, holding a Fire Arm in public) is only $50, and my large wallet of Demo cash let me off quite easily. The two pictures below are my beautiful spectacle of a motor, and my tragic defeat.
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Eventually after my tragic defeat and joy riding I did get around to playing an incredibly satisfying mission, but I was saddened to have the car chase at the end cut so short by a police road block. Before jumping head first into my mission I did make sure to be fully equipped to deal with a gun fight (That I knew would happen thanks to Total Biscuits full play through of the demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfY0-yXpIkc&playnext=1&videos=kHg8oOQ9ob0&feature=sub). I stopped by the local gun store and picked up a Shotgun, some Pistol ammo, and a Revolver, I did unfortunately have an accident with the shotgun leading to an awesome gun fight and brilliant introduction to cover mechanics. The cover mechanic literally sticks you to a wall and puts you in an unshootable position, to lean out you press your right mouse to aim down your sites. Whilst in a cover position you are pretty safe, and the majority of the fire fights involve moving quickly between cover positions.
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As you can see the shop keep is in a pile behind me whilst I am hiding behind the counter waiting for the N/APD to stroll through the door. In a similar fashion to other games you may notice a wanted sign above my minimap, this dictates I’m wanted, normally next to it (in the presence of Police) there would be a sort of rating, dictating what type of force could be used.
After my short but sweet scuffle with the rather short arm of the law, I returned to the main mission. The gunfights were frequent and split up by an appropriate amount of Cut scenes and in-game happenings. Your mission begins in a 2nd story appartment and you get to play with a beautiful MG240, unleashing terror whilst trying to pin a shot on a obese fella you have been hired to put down. You then chase him into a brewery across the road where it really kicks off, you have to make quick use of the cover system and frequently move behind obstacles in order to maintain health (See above, the green bar on the bottom right. It’s part of the minimap). During the brewery shoot out, some buffoon sets off some kegs causing your escape from the brewery to not only involve shooting, but also a bit of route finding.
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Those are some pretty awesome fire effects.
On a whole the demo was incredibly satisfying but I’m worried, is this just a demo or are we going to see a 10 hour long (doubt it, more like 6) version of this, with more interesting missions? Also another factor that worries me is that this won’t be in the full game, or at least I’m lead to believe that and all the curiosity I have about the outcome of this task may as well go out the window.
That’s not to say this demo is without its faults though, the driving is horrific, and my inability to record it was rather annoying (though I doubt that will be a major concern of the Developers). Aslong as the driving is simply to top off or cut up a mission so that it’s not all shooting (This is ofcourse excluding the obvious travelling) I’m not to bothered though, the shooting aspect is great fun. This is also a PC port, a type of game I am truely getting sick of as a PC gamer, but this appears to be a pretty well done port on all aspects but Driving.
As I said above, I’ll be waiting for reviews and Gameplay Videos to be available before I jump to any full conclusions and if I do buy it you can expect a full review of it, and maybe some pictures of the 50 playboys (Though I doubt it).
If you’d like to watch a full indepth video of the Mafia 2 Demo WoW Podcaster Total Biscuit recently released a full playthrough and here’s a link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfY0-yXpIkc
At the time of this post critical-hit.co.uk is currently in a Beta stage, most content is available on our YouTube channel at www.YouTube.com/User/GameCrit