Intermittent scar3crow

Serious Sam: The First Encounter HD

Speaking seriously, CroTeam recently released Serious Sam: The First Encounter HD on Steam. Should you get it? Well that ultimately depends on if you liked Serious Sam: The First Encounter. There is nothing redundant about that statement, they really did just release the same game, again. Only this time they HDed it. In fact they capitalize in their marketing on the fact that they didn't change the game itself, with statements such as the probably misquoted "More Polygons = More Fun" and similar precepts. This is one of those moments where a blatantly incorrect statement yields more honesty. This release is strictly graphical, in fact you could say it contains 'graphic content.'

How graphic is that content? Shadowvolumes with shadowmaps, tonemapping, normal maps, water refraction and ragdolls. That's pretty graphic.

So once again, is it worth getting? Once again, if you did like Serious Sam: The First Encounter, yes. The gameplay is not hindered, and it certainly looks less dated (but with time, it too shall as well). The shadowmaps give each monster a much more weighted presence in the game world, though inexplicably they still have circular shadows rendering on top of the shadowmaps, however this can be removed via a console command which I do not recall for sure at the time (but tab completion is present, so experimentation with ren_ as the start will you get there). That little oddity aside, the game often looks gorgeous, with the sands looking positively cool in the shadow of a charging Werebull, though the blooming hot dust trail left in his wake, particularly at the peak of a dune, is gorgeous and really serves to announce his presence. Blood streaks seem to be progressive, spreading over time, and streaking with some inheritance of their originator's velocity, making the downfall of a charging enemy all the more pleasant, and is even more rewarding when you topple an Arachnoid Minor from the peaks of the Memphis metropolis, watching then ragdoll over the edge, their stinger trailing as they leave a thick streak on the wall as they plummet.

Co-op is still a blast, and truly calls for cooperation on harder difficulties (not the false cooperation of L4D where the game forces the action of cooperating, versus the requesting of it through meaningful odds changes), however it isn't without defects. Playing with a flag to respawn where you died, one player fell into a spike pit, and then continually spawned and died on the spot, which was very annoying, but we neared the end of the level, so he waited it out. At the next level, he was still spawning and dying, though we never saw where he was. This continued until he oddly enough changed his player model, and from then on spawned normally (and continued to do so after changing it back). This moment aside, a great time was had, as the original release offered, only now it was far shinier (by contemporary standards of shininess of course).

An aside, and borrowing a rant from my good friend Jehar, a lot of people cite the likes of Serious Sam, Painkiller and even Will Rock as hearkening back to "old school gameplay", a statement which must be curious to "new school gamers" who then check out such games for an example of what first person shooters were like before they got into them. This is problematic for one simple reason: these games are not old school in style, they represent their own distinct form of shooter best demonstrated in and of themselves. If you say to me "old school gameplay" and reference first person shooters I will assume you are speaking of Doom, Blood, Quake or similar, pseudo non-linear titles with a powerful central character facing large odds in many different combat circumstances in an episodic manner. Serious Sam is focused primarily on the horde subset of gameplay within the aforementioned titles, and is an exploration of that manner of gamepacing and level design via arenas. Serious Sam, Painkiller and Will Rock all largely focus on arenas with hordes of monsters, which is usually a decidedly very linear process, though nowhere near as linear as what the likes of Infinity Ward or Valve deliver. Serious Sam is not old school, or retro, but rather it is arena combat against hordes, something it does very well, and delivers alongside a tongue in cheek approach to games as a whole (the only good example from another game I can think of being Blood 2's research lab level with the objectives of running around shooting and pushing buttons). Of course this is not to say that Serious Sam is simple, and if you think fighting its hordes is a simple task, likely you are playing on too easy of a setting.

Is it worth $10? Yes, unless you didn't enjoy it the first time, then quite simply don't bother. But if you got any joy from the original, this is $10 well spent simply to enjoy it all over again, with fewer harsh edges.

One last thing though CroTeam, when applying an Achievements system, surely you can come up with some unique ones? These are all fairly grindy, and really doesn't suit your creative history.

Left 4 Dead 2 demo

There is something awkward about having a sequel number for a title that already has a number in the name, it really breaks the speaking flow, but also makes for awkward abbreviation, such as L4D2. It reads like the beginnings of a Megaman level skip code, or maybe a strain of the flu. Without Megaman or the flu in mind, I loaded up the Left 4 Dead 2 demo.

Where Torchlight could be summed up, though not fully justified with "Diablo", Left 4 Dead 2 can be articulated with "mod" fairly succinctly, if the demo is an indicator of its quality (as a demo is typically supposed to be). It really is more Left 4 Dead, only during the daytime, with more accents, and some horrendous music. I don't mean anything negative to the cultural music of that region, but just shoving it in with Left 4 Dead's original themes, and set to the action of shotgunning hordes of zombies... that just doesn't make good gumbo for me. Left 4 Dead was already plenty silly, putting marching band bass drums and bright brass in the middle of it just seems like a parody.

The combat is very much the same, the AI Director still seems to be little more than a counter which resets itself if you make enough progress, the melee weapons are... exactly as you would imagine: various model files with an associate hit sound. They all seemed to behave the same, and also worked very well through grated windows somehow. In short, the main thing they add is to a bullet list of features. The new special infected are... decent, though their combination with the returning special infected almost makes it seem like these variants are a "southern thing." Where the Hunter shook things up by jumping on you and removing player input, and the Smoker shook things up by dragging you away and removing player input, the Charger shakes things up by ramming you and removing player input, and the Jockey shakes things up by riding you away and mitigating player input- oh who am I kidding, they don't add much and their health is so low that the slightest bit of concentrated fire makes them just another infected, only with a larger bounding box. The infected seem much more agile, at least more so than I recall from Left 4 Dead, in fact they seem practically compelled by their past live's gymnastics calling. If you want to slow down a horde, simply get a lightpole between you and them, not only will it buy you time, you will get to witness at least a dozen of them immediately climb that lightpole, and then hop off the top in their pursuit of you. They react this way to most anything actually, if they face a wall, they will leap to reach the top of it and climb over. It reminds me of the soldiers in FEAR who would senselessly jump and roll through windows, looking very cool but exposing themselves to fire - only the soldiers in FEAR didn't leap 12 feet to reach the top of a wall, or scurry up every tall cylinder they could find.

There is certainly more visual variation in the zombies, making them feel less generic despite still feeling like test models for a ragdoll experiment (we've already had Painkiller and UT2003, we know about ragdoll), however you do get to encounter an armored cop infected. By armored, I don't mean kevlar and a hardened plastic visor and helmet, though they would have you think that. No, apparently this is a time traveler, clad in the flesh of fierce dragons of old, but he forgot to get any for his back. I actually put three Uzi clips into this guy at a range of 3 feet or so, but nothing harmed him, until he turned his flank slightly. These are the sorts of things that really just make the game feel arbitrary.

As you may have seen with my repetition earlier, L4D2 (zombie flu) still holds close to the tried and trite cooperative school of taking hostages, and in fact the only special infected that don't do this are the Boomer and Spitter; the latter of which is reminiscent of a horrible CRACKED magazine drawing depicting a slovenly trailer park woman with a cold, and fails to elicit any sense of threat. True, the damage of her toxin is not only cumulative but apparently exponential, but it expires so fast its but a mere pause to reload your weapons, and if you were somehow confused by the red flashes, your decreasing health, the pain sounds and the sizzling sounds, the game will actually message you about how you need to keep away from the slime.

In fact, that is one place where L4D2 excels so well that it fails, it messages everything. I mean everything. Floating icons point out weapons and ammo, which are already outlined, it tells you to melee close enemies to push them away, or to turn around if someone hits you in the back. I am waiting for the game to instruct me on when to fire the gun... It messages so much, apparently they are very concerned about winning over the paramecium sales, in hopes to capture the ill treated protozoan market.

So what of Left 4 Dead 2? Well, I don't feel the 2 is with merit. Maybe 1.25? Left 4 Dead: Reloaded? I've got nothing, and this release doesn't feel like much to me either. I might purchase it at some point, if I ever catch up on other games to play, but only for $10 or less. Until then, there are plenty more interesting and developed things to try. I'm just glad they released a demo.

Torchlight demo, again

A good bit more playing through the Torchlight demo has revealed an important thing: the gunplay in this game is awesome. Steampunky, good visual and audible feedback, and a satisfying reaction from the monsters. You can duel wield pistols (or a pistol and a staff just to be crazy) or carry two handed rifles with longer range (I think), higher damage but slower fire rates. They also can carry elemental effects, and this is reflected visually. It is nice to wield a poisonous ax, emitting toxic green fumes, trailing behind me, even nicer to dual wield it with a frost sword, mired in chilling fog - but to switch to an alternate of a wood handled, bell-curved barrel rifle, swirling in flame? That is when you really feel capable of doing some damage. This folks, is where graphics count.

I am very much enjoying how though the main campaign is rather linear, there are tons of off-shoots, quest oriented, and simple dungeon crawling (you can actually buy scrolls which will give you access to long abandoned and otherwise unreachable areas, rife with treasure and tyrants). The inventory juggling is made all the better by being able to not only give things to your pet to hold on to, but you can send your pet back to town at no cost, where they will sell all of the items on them, and return with your money, surprisingly quickly - and you never have to leave the dungeon (now if only I could give it a list... 5 identify scrolls...). This is good because it lets me keep on fighting, and the fighting is for the most part very fun, but also because it avoids load times (please fix the load times...).

Still running into difficulty picking through items on the ground when they're bunched together, there does seem to be some sort of depth sorting logic which you can trigger, but the detection radius on that seems to be slightly above the label, which can get... awkward. Also still facing the ever present genre problem of "I clicked on that guy to shoot him, why is he running towards him? Oh hes running to get in range with his gun. Thats a short range gun. Now hes in his face... ...and he came to a complete stop without attacking." Not that these cases are particularly dangerous, as playing on Normal I rarely find myself even looking at my health, and in fact only once have I felt the need to use a health potion before continuing. Nonetheless, I shall continue my torchlighting, and enjoying what is thus far a very long demo.

A last note, my character is no longer Unremarkable, he has ascended to Tolerable! I feel so loved, thank you NPCs.

Torchlight demo

Torchlight as a phrase is perhaps the penultimate statement of dungeon crawling, more than hack and slash itself, as without that torch, the other aspects fall behind. Torchlight as a game does not stick quite so close to its name, as the dungeons are not so dark or dank, and actually you have both hands free to wield all manner of weapon. I am but a short ways into the demo, having just reached the exit for level 3, playing as a Destroyer, a character with a torso larger than my body, but legs smaller than my own. Torchlight is very much a cartoon world, it looks drawn, it feels drawn, and the women have a 2:1 bust:waist ratio. However cartoony is a good thing, the lines are mostly clean, the game world is visually well messaged, it is coherent and consistent, and everything seems to be made of "the same stuff." This goes nicely hand in hand with the fact that it seems to be rather simple, graphically speaking. I'm yet to spot any fancy post processing, no screen space ambient occlusion, no depth of field or penumbral wedges; rather the game uses a simple draw distance fogging to enhance a sense of distance (as well as dungeon) and runs great with system requirements on par with, and I am only partially joking, a web browser.

Bioshock, part one

Late to the game, pun intended (as always) I dive head first into the world of Bioshock. I imagine most everyone who might be reading this is already familiar with the game, and if not then you can skim the wiki article to your minor curiosity's content. I started the game back in September, and played for about an hour. I then saved my game, exited, and forgot about it until late October. The capacity for a game to not even cross my mind as something to do is a rather foul note to start on, and though this can be defended by citing that I was only in the first hour of gameplay, an hour is a lot of time to ask of someone with even the most meager of responsibilities; however, I loathe leaving a game "unfinished."

Bioshock could be called a first person shooter, as it is first person, and you do shoot (and cast spells, called "plasmids" and tied to gene altering in the storyline, yielding a combat system eerily like 2001's also Unreal engine title, Clive Barker's Undying), though the game seems almost decided to make the whole process very unpleasant. Low fire rates, small clip sizes, significant kick, loud sounds, and lots of screen effects for shooting, being shot at, and being shot mixed in conjunction with the low movement speed makes for a very groping style of gunplay. Though the game does seem to have the always satisfactory Flat Footed scenario where you can deal critical damage to an unaware enemy, making for the ambushing one shot kill, if the opponent is in their active state, their health always seems a little arbitrarily high, and they are generally unaffected by your attacks (they do not seem to have the parallel to the full screen bloom and blur you experience when damaged), and their transitions in combat are very quick, from being completely unaware, to zeroing in on your position, from being incapacitated by lightning to being fully capable of any form of combat, from having a shotgun blast go through them to watching keenly for your next move. All of this from chaps in party gowns, vests and manual labor getups; true they are hopped up on gene alterations, but it doesn't stop it from feeling silly when combined with how weighted down the world feels in its movement. Never mind that the AI has the attention span of a strobe light with a short circuit. I've had enemies enter into combat with me, and when I backpedal through a door, they chase after, but when the door closes right in front of them everything seems to stop. I go and open the door, and they're walking away in their idle frames, cuing one of their random idle chatter sounds. I've had this happen more than once, and I've also had enemies take aggressive shuffling maneuvers as if seeking cover under fire, while I am stationary, not firing.

The game world seems to run on a restrained inventory mechanic, ammo counts are low to persuade the player to use plasmids more, for which the plasmid ammo called Eve is in comparatively more ready supply. Even then, you only have so many slots for your plasmids and gene tonics (passive skills), and the game quickly has you bump against that restriction so as to create a desire to expand it, which encourages combat over stealth in the scenario of the Little Sisters, which I will get to later. It does allow you to switch out your active and passive skills via a vending machine of sorts, meaning you can coerce a player to make repeat visits to the same area, and thus cue a monster spawner to create a sense of the game world being inhabited, despite the fact that the levels do often feel like just setpieces, rather than part of a coherent city built at the bottom of the sea. Through this, it is established that you will likely be doing even more back and forth behavior than what the quests will have you. Of course, if you have more slots (and don't ask me about more gene tonic slots, I've not figured out a way to purchase additional ones yet) you can keep more active skills available, but this costs Adam, which can be taken in small or large amounts depending on which set of animations you want to see after you encounter a Little Sister. Little Sisters seem to be the game's attempt at a moral mechanic, but it feels so directly pressed against me, that it creates a resentment towards the whole situation; I don't feel torn by the decision, especially when if I try to avoid the whole situation, the game seems to wag its finger at me about exiting the level without saving/harvesting all the Little Sisters, which of course entails fighting the Big Daddy, a beast of horrendous ammo consumption.

Bioshock thinks you are stupid. Seriously. There are tool tips for everything, and tool tips for things you didn't think could dare to be simplified any more. Don't progress fast enough? Hold H to get a hint. Moving about aiming down the sights of your gun, perhaps because you're hoping to get in the first shot on a nearby monster? Hold Z to exit zoom. A Safe, press V to Hack, or What is this? (press M) (hint: it's a safe). They prompt you with your own controls at nearly every moment, as if you can't hit Escape and look at any or all of the controls. Saving the game? They recommend you not turn off your machine while it is doing this. This is all well and good if you are new to gaming at all, but I can't help but chuckle that I still can't find a way to replenish my Eve via a Eve Hypo like I do my health with a first aid kit. Maybe I'm just reading past it every time I look over the controls screen? I also can't see what section a gene tonic is for when I purchase it, I just have to purchase and hope it isn't for a category that I already have two strongly preferred tonics in. A word to the wise, the weapon upgrade booths, theres a reason they don't list the prices, there are none, its free, but you only get one. Yeah, thanks for the warning game.

There is a lot more to be said, which does speak not necessarily to the game's depth (as tempting as that pun may be), but to its breadth. Bioshock thus far has introduced a lot of well garbed mechanics, but has been inconsistent in its delivery, messaging, flow and over all compelling nature. I really don't want to get to Andrew Ryan, in fact I actually just want to get back to my land of origin, the only reason I ended up in this place was a plane crash, so why am I now the only person capable of doing any good in the game world? There are many other troubling things about Bioshock, and it is thus far shaping up to be... very much the same as we've all seen before, only more heavy handed in controlling the pacing, and more arbitrary in the reasoning for that hand. I know I skipped a lot of things, but I'm not far into the game yet, and I will cover some other aspects in another post.

General About

The main theme of this is basically mini-reviews of whatever I am playing at a given moment. These will usually be small observations, notes, comments, and relative to where I am in the game. The game may be new, old, very old, or it could be a community made mod or level. I might also randomly comment on something that has happened in gaming news, though I will try to focus the content towards my at the moment impressions of a given game experience.

Hello posterous

Oh hi there, I've heard you are nice, I think I shall try you out.