Battlefield 3 Beta

Nearly finished, but not yet published, drafts: 6

Warning: Rant ahead

3/5

Oh Battlefield 3. What hopes the internet has for you. The position it occupies deserves a whole post on its own – the internet has backlashed against Call of Duty (“they” say its because it’s become a yearly franchise, is linear and perhaps not too good creatively – all of which I could agree with – but I think it’s more about CoD being popular and mainstream, which the internets don’t like).
But yes, the minions of the internets think that Battlefield 3 is the second coming of the man himself. Even more so if the person talking about it is a PC player.
So, this is probably the most blind hype for a game (last “core” BF was 2005) I’ve seen.

Right, the problems:

Holy fuck it’s buggy. And not like “whoops, a physics bug” buggy – more like “urr, how was that not fixed” buggy.
Mar shampla:
1) Buggy clipping – players seem to be able to glitch through the floors of the map, killing you from inside the level.
2) Random framedrops – my Xbox dropped to about 15 fps at one stage, didn’t recover, then did a hard freeze (might have been overheating?).
3) Random artifacts in the level – what looks like traces from bullets, or light traces, hanging in midair.
4) Some strange lag correction – I was having trouble walking from a hall to a room (walked forward, wouldn’t go into room), walked back a bit, I jumped to a different area in the hall.
5) Buggy physics – think that grenade will go through those leaves? NOPE. Sticks to them.
6) Buggy player items – I’ve watched a guy reload a magazine, then have the magazine suspend about two feet in front of him.
7) Buggy animation – players occasionally default to their arms out, back straight posture, they remain in till they die.
8) Buggy sound – all sound, apart from my bullets and announcer just stopped in one game.

Now all of these I’ve encountered myself, and my playtime (over work PS3 and home 360) is just 90 minutes. If I was able to encounter all of these bugs in such a short time, what the fuck has their QA department been doing.

So let’s move onto the good stuff!
1) Suppression – love this idea. One rebel is killed for every 250,000 bullets fired by the US army in Iraq – the vast majority of bullets are fired just to keep peoples’ heads down, in cover. With the addition of blurring and reduced movement to the suppressee, it becomes a viable tactic to spray where the enemy is hiding with bullets.
2) Animation – the little bits you can see, like your legs’ vaulting animation and arms prone/crawling animation, are lovely.
3) Sound – a lad at the Eurogamer Expo said sound was 50-60% of the experience, that’s certainly the case. The weapons all have a unique weight to their sound, and all the other weapons firing create a soundscape around the level, ‘s great.
4) Weapon attachments – I’ll come back to these later, but being able to see lasers on your vision, be blinded by flashlights, see the glint of a sniper rifle (I think this is what I saw) is awesome.
5) Battlelog – it’s not as expansive as Elite, but it has a nice feed of “stuff you earned in game”, runs faster than Elite, and seems to be updated in realtime.
6) Long distance accuracy – it seems quite easy to kill someone at a distance equivalent to an entire Blops level. The switching of fire modes (semi/automatic) helps.

And now we’ve cleared up the bugs and the good stuff, the bad stuff:
1) The menu system. Holy fuck. Nevermind the bugs, how did this one get through the meeting it was proposed in. “Hey, y’know what’d be a great idea? Don’t allow the user to enter any menus at all unless they’re spawned in game! That will certainly win us friends!”.
Problems with this:
Users cannot adjust any settings unless they’re spawned in a fucking game.
Users cannot quit unless spawned in a fucking game.
Users cannot adjust loadouts or admire their unlocks unless spawned in a fucking game.
It is possibly the worst single design decision, that is so easy to fix, I’ve seen in a game, ever (and I’ve lived through Beyond FUCK YOU DIFFERENT INVERT CAMERA SETTINGS Good & Evil HD). As an example of how fucking infuriating it is – say you’re playing a game, “One more” you say. Oh, it’s the end of a round? Sweet, time to quit! Wait, you’ve to watch the “Your team won/lost” screen. Then watch your ribbons from the game. Then watch the post-game screen. Then load the next map. Then choose a squad to spawn in. Then you can quit. It’s so fucking ridiculous I find hard to fathom what the reasoning behind it was, other than “if we stop a player quitting, they might play longer”. Laughable.
2) The unlock system. This is a tricky one to get right – MW, MW2 both went with global unlock-as-you-level; Blops went with global unlock-as-you-level-but-you-have-to-buy; BF2 went with slow-as-fuck-unlock, choosable by player. BF3 goes with unlock-stuff-for-the-class-and team-you-played. Now, that sounds like it could work – like playing assault? Here’s more assault stuff! In practice, it means there’s no room to experiment. Want to try being a sniper for a round? Fuck you! Basic sniper rifle! No attachments! Bollocks. Even better is unlocking it per-weapon, when the weapons differ on teams, so when you switch teams, FUCK YOU NO ATTACHMENTS ON THAT TEAM! It penalises experimentation. Again, bollocks.
3) The after-death cam. What better way to show you who killed you than a camera zoomed in on their character, with no context, not showing you from which direction you were killed, not showing you how you were killed, not showing you where they are. I really love not knowing where someone is so they can kill me the next time I run into that area, that’s great fun.
4) Controls? What controls? Not having a list of the controls in game is pretty unforgivable. As is putting “spot enemy” on the back button. YES BECAUSE THAT IS VERY EASY TO PRESS WHEN YOU’RE SHOOTING AT SOMEONE. Where’s the button to switch firing modes? Up on the dpad! Cos that’s easy to press when you have to quickly change modes to shoot someone in the face! Granted, they’ve not got many to work with, but surely combining reload and “activate” on X (360), with “spot” on B, would’ve been ok.

The only explanation I can think of why this was released – it’s so buggy that it must’ve changed more peoples’ opinions negatively than positively (myself included) – is that EA mandated DICE had to release a beta (and as early Medal of Honor adopters were to be given early access to such a beta). With the release/master submission fast approaching, they cobbled together the beta with a “fuck it, we’ve got more important things to do” attitude. Which is right – the retail release should always take priority – but fuckin’ hell, it’s so buggy they shouldn’t've released a beta at all.

I’m still going to buy it (I buy games for the SP, not MP), but it’s so frustrating to see how good it could be without bugs, and with tweaks to the design (allowing the user press start to see a menu). Definitely shows how good and solid Blops’ design is (or how its become so ingrained that anything else isn’t as fun).
It still is fun, but fuck EA/DICE made it difficult to enjoy.

Alone in the Dark (2008)

(have to start writing about the games I’ve finished over the summer)

2/5

I bought Alone in the Dark shortly after it was released in summer 2008 – it was only a few weeks after it came out, but was already marked down a ridiculous amount (something like €25, down from €40). I’d heard good things, so I decided to pick it up. Played it twice (maybe), never bothered with it again, then it got robbed towards the end of last year.
So with the lack of games in summer (last decent game: Child of Eden, middle of June – next decent game: Deus Ex, end of August), I decided to buy it again and polish it off.

It’s a terribly frustrating game. There’s so many nice ideas (real time inventory management! atmospheric camera! use of fire! some of the best set pieces I’ve ever seen!) totally ripped apart by some terrible ones (real time inventory management! no user-controllable camera! woeful combat! horrific script!).

So its faults are many. Let’s get started:

The real time inventory management is a nice idea (game continues as you select/combine etc), as is how the inventory is presented (the inside of your jacket). Now, as this is my second time through it, and I’m not havin’ any messing, I’ve adapted quite quickly.
Favourites are used liberally – primary is gun with flame bullets, I drop unnecessary things when needed, it wasn’t really a problem. I’ve also never died while using the inventory, which, while completely ridiculous I even have to point this out, isn’t too bad, but its a serious irritant to casual players.

The camera is nice in a way too, it has a little bit of zooming-out-when-there’s-something-important-to-see, which I appreciate. Unfortunately, not having user control (though we’re not talking about Resident Evil levels of un-usability here) leads to a terribly frustrating experience. The lack of a strafe option is irritating, as is the sluggish-ness of the main character’s running.
But again, like the use of favourites, there’s a handy workaround – first person view. I’ve been playing the majority of the game in it. The combat’s quicker as you can walk round with a gun ready to fire, it’s easier to spot enemies above and below you, you move at a brisker pace. Again, I shouldn’t have to do this in order to make the game remotely playable, but I’m happy that I was able to.

Fire plays a big part in the game. Often puzzles have to be solved by burning down something, or putting out a fire. It’s also the only way to permanently kill enemies.
So, when I played originally, it involved some woeful melee combat until the enemy dropped, then either lighting something and setting the body on fire or dragging the body over to a fire.
Again, I like the core idea behind the combat – control the melee weapon using the right stick, so moving it left then right will cause a left-right swing. Good idea. Doesn’t actually work in practice, as the depth is hard to get right, so a lot of the time you’ll swing at thin air.
Yet again, there’s a simple workaround that removes this entire issue. Combine bullets with a flammable liquid, and you’ve got magic flame bullets which, and let me emphasise this, allow for one or two-hit kills of all grunt enemies.
So, instead of finding a melee weapon, hitting the enemy 5-6 times, while sustaining damage, then going to find a fire and setting the body alight (all before the enemy wakes back up, hopefully), you can just kill the enemy in one shot from a distance.
While ridiculously unbalanced, it definitely makes for a better game.

I tend not to pay much attention to plot in games – Valve do it well, Naughty Dog do it well, Rockstar North do it well, Bungie can do it well when they want (Reach), everyone else seems to struggle a bit. Either I don’t care what’s going on (Gears), or I’m actually confused by whats happening (Modern Warfare 2, LA Noire).
Alone in the Dark has the unenviable position of being quite clear in describing what’s going on, but the script is so horrifically bad it’s difficult to care.
SAMPLE DIALOGUE
Sarah: You just got a text saying Path of Light. I never did Latin in school, but I know light is Luic and path is fer. So that’s Luicifer. Are you the devil????
SAMPLE DIALOGUE
Edward: I’ve met you about 40 minutes ago, we’ve spoken maybe 10 or 15 lines to each other, but hey, I LOVE YOU! (this actually happened)
Towards the end, I was just skipping cutscenes. Something about the devil and somethingsomethingsomething key something. No idea.

So the first three-quarters of the game, a lot of the cracks were glossed over, if you played smartly (fire bullets, first person, totally avoiding melee combat), you could’ve avoided most frustrations. Unfortunately, it really starts to fall apart in the final quarter.
Hilariously, an open-world fetch quest (go round the world destroying these trees) is shoehorned in, presumably to lengthen the game. There isn’t even any story justification (“URRR…YOU NEED TO RAISE UR…SPECTRAL VISION!!!!”), it’s just “Here are things on the map. Kill them”.
Now, the vast majority of fetch quests are bad (Wind Waker comes to mind), but when you need items to complete each portion of the quest (each tree required one explosive bottle and one bullet to destroy), which are often fairly hard to come by in the open world (best bet: cars), it becomes a horrific time sink.
So many a time, after struggling with the woeful jumping (WHY CAN I NOT JUMP UP THIS WALL BUT CAN JUMP UP OTHERS?)/whatever controls, I’d reach my objective but have no method of killing, so I’d have to hop round looking for bullets/explosive things… Great fun.

As a final mechanic that just seems broken – the save system. The location you respawn after death in the open-world section seems a little random. Brilliantly, it also seems to randomly deprive you of items. Oh, you just died in a firey explosion, using the last of your explosive bottles to blow open a door? I know, I’ll respawn you without the explosive bottle, but with the door still intact. It seems to randomly spawn you without ammo (happened several times I’ll have a full clip, but respawn with nothing. Yaaaay.

Horribly broken, yes. But there’s so many decent ideas floating around – parts of it reminded me of Uncharted 2, that’s the level we’re talking about.
In the end though, it just became a jumbled mess of rubbish. Some great ideas, but so badly implemented. It might be worth trying if you approach it in a I’ve-got-nothing-to-play-and-I’ll-definitely-finish-it way. Otherwise, jesus no.

LA Noire

4/5

Beware: Spoilers Ahead

I am a total whore for Rockstar. Rockstar release a new game, I’m all over it – I’d consider Rockstar North to be the best development team there is (though I hear rumours of it being a sweatshop), consistently turning out quality games.
So, with Team Bondi developing, and Rockstar publishing, we’ve got LA Noire.

I’m never one to complain about things being slow moving, in any medium, unless they’re really slow moving. Early cases, flashbacks and side plots don’t really seem to have any connection or relevance for at least the first two-thirds of the game. Even when the story finally starts getting going, its as though the writer(s) are hanging the threads of the story in front of you, but expect you to fill it parts of it yourself.

I’m also not one to complain about linear games. Some of the best games I’ve played (Half-Life 2, Eternal Darkness) have been very tightly scripted (events and writing) linear single-player games. So when I read in the reviews complaints about the linearity, I wasn’t particularly bothered.
Unfortunately, it’s not really the linearity that’s the problem, it’s the lack of choice.
Relatively early in the game (first half), you encounter some murder cases which are obviously the work of a serial killer. The MO is exactly the same for each, but you don’t get any choice in saying “Hey, maybe there’s a seial killer at work” (though its hinted the main character is thinking that), you’re just given one or two suspects and either automatically charge one, or are given a choice who to charge.
Another problem with this is your charging options seemingly limited by interrogation successes. I fucked up the interview with one of the suspects (who I thought was more likely to’ve done it, but didn’t think was the serial killer), which resulted me being unable to charge him. Locking off portions of a case based on the player’s performance is fine, but when I have to decide on something myself, I prefer to not have my options restricted.

The plot itself is quite odd. Like I’ve mentioned, flashbacks appear and seem to have no relevance to the overall arc. I also have issue with the main character – you’re playing as him, and yet I was surprised to learn he was married (and has kids!). An extramarital affair was hinted at, then confirmed later, through events the player had no control over (cutscenes). Detaching events from the player like that reduces immersion, and got me annoyed – don’t like the idea that I as the character was being blamed for something the character did while outside my control.

The facial animation is, as you’ve no doubt heard, far and away the best I’ve seen. Tiny tiny movements, people swallowing, the way they move their eyes, shift their weight, clench their teeth, it’s all picked up and easily visible. Other games now stand out as having terribly facial animation (I watched a Witcher 2 video review shortly after finish Noire and was struck by the lack of expressiveness of the faces).
It does make other parts of the game stand out as less refined though, as Edge pointed out, people always wear their hair up, and some of the animation can be jarring.
Combine that tech with Euphoria for GTA V though, nomnomnomnom.

I tend to be against unskippable cutscenes in games – ones like in Hot Pursuit are the worst offenders – HEY YOU’VE JUST UNLOCKED A NEW THING AND I KNOW YOU ALREADY KNOW WHAT IT IS AND WILL USE IT VERY SOON BUT I’LL JUST SHOW YOU WHAT CAN ONLY BE DESCRIBED AS A TWO MINUTE UNSKIPPABLE MARKETING VIDEO FOR A FICTIOUS COMPANY – Valve’s are on the other end, unskippable, but I’ve never had an issue with them.
LA Noire’s are kinda in the middle. I certainly don’t want to skip them on the first run through, but if I want to play cases over again (and I did, 100% achievements), I don’t particularly want to sit through cutscenes and dialogue again. I’m inclined to believe it’s a quirk of the engine (like things need time to stream), rather than a conscious design choice.

The gunplay is a little less satisfying than GTA’s, with the lack of lockon and only being able to pull your gun at certain points (there’s less combat generally), and the seemingly arbitrary nature of pulling a gun from the boot of your police car (Left and Right on the stick to change gun? but there’s only a shotgun!). There’s the odd entertaining bit though – one case involved a guy taking a woman hostage, holding a gun to her head. He started on some speech, she moved slightly, I shot him in the face one or two words in. Don’t fuck with me!

So yeah, it’s interesting, and its certainly a new genre of game, but it wouldn’t be for everyone and some bits can irritate.

Just as a final aside – there were rumours last year some time about Rockstar people doing recon in Hollywood for (supposedly) the next GTA game, but playing Noire, it feels like they’ve already done LA, so something else might be on the table.

Bull: Looks Like Part of Shop Display

A bull went mad in Brazil Wednesday, running round the place, into a shop, that sort of thing.

Mr Dry Wit RTÉ Caption Writer is in the house:

Bull – Looked like it was part of the display

Could’ve been funnier, but it’s nice to see s/he’s still around!

Kindle 3: 10 Months On

5/5

So, after getting a Kindle feckin’ ages ago, and Sully having posted his long-term impressions of it recently, I decided it was time for me to do the same. On the whole, it’s the job.

The Good
—————–

3G
Lifesaver this. Free international 3G, so you’re always in touch, even when in the middle of nowhere. The browser’s rough but passable, easy to pick up mail and RSS.

Choice
No longer do I have to decide what to bring home for a weekend, or even decide what I want to read off the bookshelf. Grab the Kindle, read some Instapaper for ten minutes. Bored of that? I think I’ll read about Iraq. Bored of that? I think I’ll read about Zombies.

Dictionary
Don’t use it too often (probably two-three times per book), but it’s very useful to have. It’s one of those things you miss in Real Life (OS X’s system-level spellcheck is another, as is Quicksilver).

Heat resistant
Something that always annoyed me is how books warp in heat. A book that’s in perfect condition will be fucked after an hour or two’s reading in a hot car. Not so with the Kindle, always pristine!

Highlights
Again, something you wouldn’t think you’d need, but really comes in handy. Clipping things from articles or books to tell people later is very useful indeed.

Instapaper
I’ve been a fan of Instapaper for ages, had the iOS app since it was released ’round July 2008. But reading stuff on the iPod Touch just isn’t very nice. Sure, it’s handy to catch up on the odd article, but having to remember to open the app and resync articles before leaving the house, combined with the app’s general sluggishness (more to do with my 1G Touch, rather than the app itself) meant I didn’t use it too often.
Enter the Kindle. Auto-syncing (via email) of the latest 20 unread articles once a week means the most recent articles are always ready to read. It’d be even better if it could tell which articles you’d already read on the Kindle, but y’ can’t have everything!

Samples
Oh, that book looks interesting, I’ll just download the sample. What’s that? I can download the sample from the book’s page on Amazon direct to the Kindle? That’s unreeeeeal! Oh, that sample was good, I’ll just buy the full book directly from the sample.

Screen
People are always shocked when I say the screen improves in sunlight. It does.

Size
Even with a case, it’s only the size of a slim notebook (the only book comparison would be a novella) – small enough to go into a jacket pocket in winter, be held in the hand in summer. Beats carrying round a paperback.

The Meh
—————–

Browser
The browser’s described as “experimental” – some pages don’t load at all, the interface is clumsy, there’re no multiple tabs or windows. Results in a workable but rough browsing experience.

File formats
Mobi is nice and all, but I’d prefer it to have support for any format I could throw at it (epub, lit).

PDF viewing
Again, pretty rough. Navigation isn’t the best, rendering is slow, but it’ll do the job if you’re stuck.

Screen
An unfortunate sideffect of the eink screen is the refresh time between pages. You get used to it very quickly, but it can be jarring at first.

The Bad
—————–

Apps (lack of)
I’d love an email/rss app. Just something barebones, hooking into Gmail/Greader, that’d be unreal – no need for push updates, if I had the apps I’d be quite happy to pull down the stuff myself.

Batteries
Not the Kindle’s fault, but my own. Waiting at the gate for MIA-LHR flight (8h), time to read something, battery dead. Dammit!

Kindle Store (parts of)
Seemingly arbitrary books being available on the US store, but not on the UK store. Differences in releases between regions, despite the download being the same.

MP3 Playback
Fairly useless – at least provide some sort of UI to it!

Organisation
There’s no easy way to organise books – creating folders is easy, but there’re no sub-folders, and adding books to said folder is a torturous process. It’s so bad I’ve found it easier to delete the majority of books and organise them by Fiction, Non-fiction and Samples, rather than anything more fine grained (genre/series).
This could easily be solved by a software update so the creation of folders, and movement of content in those folders, through Windows/OS X was reflected in the Kindle itself.

Overall
—————–

Far and away one of the best bits of tech I’ve bought in the last few years, don’t let the few negative points detract from that – the organisation is the only one that affects day-to-day usage. It’s no iPad, but it’s not designed to be. I look at it as the best black and white tv you can buy – it can only do black and white, but it does it really, really, fucking well.
Definite buy, with the 3G and some sort of cover – the Amazon ones are pricey, if durable.
Don’t buy the cover with the light. When you read a book now, does the book have a light in its cover? No it fucking doesn’t.