Category: Games

Missing game features is not a feature

Shortly after Grand Theft Auto 3 came out, a recurring topic on GTA message boards was, “Do you think we will be able to swim in the next one?” There was an aggressive group of players who reached for reasons why the ability to swim in a GTA game was “stupid” and “pointless.” (Never mind the franchise was hugely popular in part because it was seen by many as an “everything simulator.”) One side of the debate casually thought that such a mechanic would be cool. The other side took up arms as if such a suggestion was holy blasphemy, presumably because some people are hyper-defensive of anything they like. (Swimming was indeed introduced in San Andreas, and when Grand Theft Auto 5 released, the very first freeroam activity I engaged in was riding a Sea-Doo straight into the ocean and swimming off of it for no other reason than it was fun. Go figure.)

Similarly, the first time I played Perfect Dark Zero and witnessed the NPC combatants jumping over my bullets in the combat simulator, I logged into internet forums to see if the player-character was also capable of the same gymnastics. Perhaps you’ll notice a pattern emerging in one of the responses: “What are you? A circus clown or something? Why the hell would you want to leap around like a [insert expletive here]?” When Halo 2 released, I asked a forum why the sound design of the guns didn’t pack a satisfying punch on my surround sound system. The sole response was “no.”

More recently, I took to the Steam forums to ask those who had played the Mortal Kombat 1 beta to confirm or deny if there were any functions that relied solely on a right thumbstick (such as using Konsumable or navigating the Krypt in previous titles) because I was frustrated by not being able to play a fighting game solely on a fightstick, which has no right thumbstick. It was clear neither of the responses had actually played the beta, much less read my question past its title, but they had opinions nonetheless. One went so far as to suggest the Mortal Kombat moveset was “never really intended for joysticks…” as if I wasn’t there in the 90s when the first batch of games hit the arcade with—you guessed it—two big ol’ American-style joysticks.

Have you ever been frustrated that the latest racing game doesn’t play nice with that expensive steering wheel you purchased? Well, according to the forum geniuses: that game (it doesn’t matter which game it is, there will be fanatics who blindly defend its oversights) is obviously more of an “arcade racer” and “arcade racers are exclusively designed for gamepads, not steering wheels.” Yet almost ever single racing game I’ve ever seen in the arcade has a steering wheel controller. So why does this community accept “arcade racers” that are uncontrollable by a steering wheel? Rather, why does the part of the community that doesn’t own steering wheels feel the need to voice an opinion on the matter at all?

A current hot topic seems to be: “Why does travel in Starfield rely so much on menus and fast traveling?” Those of us who expected space travel to operate more like No Man’s Sky or Elite Dangerous have been told exactly why we’re absolute morons for wanting that extra step of immersion that many find boring. I get it. Not everyone has dual flightsticks and a penchant for roleplaying deep space isolation. Not everyone lit up upon hearing Sean Murray’s pre-release promise that if you see a star in No Man’s Sky you can visit it. But I certainly did and so did millions of others. It’s now a genre standard that’s eight years old, set by indie game studios. And while there are definitely assholes on my side of this issue (any issue, really), it seems to me that those who are staunchly aligned against such a mechanic are doing the same thing the anti-swimming GTA players did: reaching for any reason why Starfield is absolute perfection.

(For the record, I have close to 50 hours logged in Starfield as of this writing so I don’t want to give the impression that I dislike it. My disappointment in the lack of tooling around a galaxy has more or less melted in lieu of what the game does right. On the other hand, it does plenty wrong, too, and I suspect the chorus of 9/ and 10/10 reviews are very much on a runaway hype train. Compare it to Baldur’s Gate 3 and you will see it is very much not a next generation title… it’s not even as good as Fallout 4, but I digress.)

We can have it both ways, you know. In fact, previous Bethesda games did just that: gave the player the option to fast travel or travel to a destination in “real time.” (Quotations because the term is relative to its science fictional setting.) Obviously players can’t spend the actual time required to travel to a destination that’s lightyears away, but Elite Dangerous and NMS both found clever ways around those limitations that didn’t require the use of an awkwardly placed loading screen. What I find most hilarious is that the people defending Bethesda’s omission are the ones who got their way and they’re still angry.

Starfield: 3 Hours In

Let’s get this out of the way quick: Starfield appears to be a great game and I suspect everyone who’s even a little interested in it should probably try it. So far, all of my complaints are nitpicks. Let this post serve as a spoiler-free indicator of what to expect. I’ll either temper your expectations or kick your hype train into overdrive.

I’d heard two reports that the game was more like “Red Dead Redemption 2 in space” rather than a traditional Bethesda title. My brief time in the game conflicts with that statement. The music of the title screen immediately gave me Skyrim vibes. These vibes strengthened as the game faded into a cutscene that had me expecting one of the characters to say, “Hey, you… you’re finally awake!” Soon after coming into contact with the game’s MacGuffin, your character develops temporary amnesia, at which point the character editor is unlocked as you “remember” who you are, Fallout style.

The character editor has one strength: characters look better than they’ve ever looked in a Bethesda game. Unfortunately, the editor has many weaknesses, too. Recent titles like Street Fighter 6 and Diablo IV offered enough options for me to create fairly accurate replications of Brandon Lee’s The Crow (I don’t know why that’s my go-to character lately). Starfield’s character editor isn’t even close to being robust enough for that kind of detail. It offers you around thirty presets, maybe thirty hairstyles, and lets you change the oddly similar (and oddly familiar) faces within some pretty rigid parameters. Instead of having control over ear height, eye separation, etc., you decide if the preset face is round, square, thin, etc… that’s it.

As someone who has countless hours in No Man’s Sky and Elite: Dangerous (not to mention over a hundred games in my Steam library with the “space” tag), I was disappointed the first time I climbed aboard the starter ship to fly to another planet. There’s a short but rousing cutscene as the ship takes off, but then the game clumsily enters a loading screen. The next thing you know, you’re suddenly in space. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have expected an immersive sim from what could very well be the year’s best seller, but as a staunch fan of seamless ground-to-space transitions, this is my biggest disappointment so far.

Speaking of boundaries, on the first planet I visited after leaving the starting planet, I completed a main objective and was told to go back to my ship to continue the story. I decided to ignore said message and started walking to see if I could find any invisible walls. I set my sights on a distant piece of scenery that was so far removed from my landing spot that I was certain I would reach some sort of invisible wall or at least a warning to turn around. Not only did I not find any such boundaries, I saw a point of interest blip on my radar much farther away than my initial destination. I will experiment on this more when I play again, but so far (and I admit my sample size is relatively small) it looks like the explorable areas of planets might be absolutely huge. Though, I must confess my walk was quite boring.

Having recently played the new System Shock, I feel like I’m in familiar territory: so far, Starfield feels less like a next-gen defining game and more like a highly polished next-gen remake of a previous gen-game. So much of The Elder Scrolls and Fallout’s DNA is in this, which is to be expected and even desired, but some of the Bethesda aspects that have started to show signs of their age are present, too.

At any rate, I am absolutely hyped to play again and spend more time in the combat and checking the dialogue out with NPCs.

I’ll post more thoughts as I progress.

Gone Gamin’

It’s been a while since I posted here, but I haven’t given up entirely. It’s just that most of my blogging time is now spent on the video game I’ve been working on, Blood Ship. You can follow development of it on Neurocrasher.com.

Here’s some very early game footage:

Be sure to like and subscribe and all that annoying stuff to keep updated on the development!

Arcade game woes

Last Friday I decided to pull the electronics, but a fever I’ve been having on and off for about a week knocked me on my ass. I’ve been alternatively freezing and sweating my ass off ever since. Hopefully I’ll be able to start the bodywork next weekend.
Whenever I haven’t been too exhausted to stand, I’ve been playing Gyruss on my MAME cabinet. It’s one of the few space shooters I might like more than Galaga. 

full disclosure: this guy is way better than me

Gyruss music is just flat-out fucking rad, isn’t it?

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I’ve finished the first draft of Church Camp. It’s easily the best first draft of anything I’ve ever written. More details soon.

First impressions of Resident Evil 7 (2017) [PC]

This isn’t a review. More like notes I made during my first session. No spoilers. No VR headset, either. Current hardware: i5-4690k @ 3.50 GHz, GTX 970, 16gb RAM.

My first disappointment came immediately after launching the game: a text screen asked me to create save data and I couldn’t select the “YES” option until I plugged in a gamepad. Once I plugged the gamepad in, the mouse cursor appeared and I was able to continue with the keyboard and mouse.

I miss the spooky voice intoning “RESIDENT EEEEEVIL” when I start a game. Why abandon one of the game’s most memorable trademarks.

Motion blur is turned on by default and I’ve never been a fan of motion blur in a game. I can only imagine how nauseating it must be in a VR headset. Changing the FPS option from “VARIED” to “60” made the mouselook feel a lot more natural and responsive. Besides upping the FOV, I left the other settings on their default values and the game looks and feels great.

The controls are responsive, and the times you get stuck in a deliberately paced animation have been significantly reduced… no more waiting forever for a door to open up.

I can’t believe how fast this game loads from the desktop. Loading times in general are exceptional.

At times, the main character sounds awfully causal about a lot of the fucked-up going-ons.. he simply isn’t emoting enough fear (to give specific examples would spoil some of the surprises). I feel this is a voice directing issue rather than an acting one. Otherwise, the voice acting is good, sometimes great, but the dialogue and the character writing is frequently weak. The game indulges in various horror movie cliches, such as the dumb cop who gets himself killed before calling for backup (that’s not a spoiler for anyone who’s ever seen a horror movie… it’s immediately obvious that’s what’s going to happen).

I am really digging the Texas Chainsaw Massacre vibe.

I like that the game gives you more bullets than the first handful of installments did, but fewer than the action-oriented sequels. (Not that bullets do much good in most situations.) It seems to balance the frustration and suspense factor a lot better, too.

I grew tired of the hiding mechanic in Alien: Isolation. Haven’t grown tired of it here yet. You’re not hiding in lockers, but staying crouched and almost always moving.

Instead of saving at typewriters, you save at cassette players, which are found few and far between. You don’t have to worry about collecting limited ink ribbons, either. (Horror games which allow you to save freely can get fucked.) The punishment of having to replay certain sections upon death gives the experience legitimacy. Thankfully, this aspect is also balanced well… it’s frustrating, but not fun-breaking.

The map design is brilliant. It feels like a first-person Metroidvania style game in the way you progress and backtrack… the environment is always changing, which opens up new paths to old checkpoints and points of interest. Other games in the series have done this, too, of course, but it’s just so much more refined now.

Occasionally you pick up a VHS tape and play it in a VCR to get additional chunks of the backstory. The ensuing cutscenes require player input, which kind of breaks the immersion for me. I would rather watch the cutscenes through the main character’s eyes than play as secondary characters. Imagine trying to watch a tape for important clues while constantly checking over your shoulder for ax-wielding maniacs.

In one of the aforementioned cutscenes, it seems more like the demo, in which the game favors trial and error to skill. (At one point I didn’t really know what I was supposed to do until a hint on the death screen told me.) In the game’s defense, I haven’t played it long enough to see how important this gimmick will become later on, if it all.

Puzzles. I’m getting bored of puzzles in video games, but they haven’t annoyed me in this installment… yet. I love that, during one of the complicated puzzles, the main character wonders aloud: “Who the hell makes this shit?”

I have a feeling this game’s going to be short or repeat itself by the end. The richness of it seems too great to sustain for several hours.

That’s it for now. I can’t wait to get back into it tomorrow.

No Man’s Sky might be the most disappointing launch of the year [PC]

  • Current hardware: i5-4690k @ 3.50 GHz, GTX 970, 16gb RAM

No Man’s Sky launched at noon today in my timezone. I got a good three hours out of it before it began giving me major problems. (Naturally, Steam only lets you refund it if you return it before two hours of playtime have elapsed, which means I’m fucked there.) I was having occasional stuttering and FPS drops from the get-go, but for the most part it was playable.

Then, three hours into it, my CPU overheated and the PC shut down. No other game has ever done this to my current setup. I applied a number of fixes from various forums, booted it back up, and tried again. Thirty minutes later: roughly the same problem. This time my computer locked up entirely as the speakers croaked. I’m reluctant to try again even after they release another patch.

Technical issues aside, here are my first impressions about the gameplay itself: so far, it’s nowhere near as fun or polished as Rebel Galaxy. It’s not as satisfying as Elite: Dangerous. The ship controls are shit and I don’t see them improving at all, whether you jump through the hoops required to make a joystick work or not. I honestly wouldn’t bother trying. You can’t even pitch the nose down, as if that makes any fucking sense, while the dumbed down landing and docking procedures would be forgivable in a mobile game, but not this one.

This could have been a decent indie game if Sony hadn’t gotten their hands on it. I have a feeling the developers knew damn good and well it wasn’t a $60 title before the corporation stuck its proboscises into their brains. It’s the same way Facebook managed to corrupt Palmer Luckey and his Oculus VR platform. This is not a fun game at launch and I don’t see it getting much better, although I had a little more hope for it before my technical issues began.

Although I don’t think the dev team is entirely to blame (who would refuse Sony’s money?), I can’t remember the last time I was this disappointed. I’ll probably try it again after a future patch, but so far it looks like a major dud.

Here’s a big list of space games you should play instead of No Man’s Sky:

Empryrion – Galactic Survival $19.99

Despite being in early access, Empryion has just about everything you wanted from NMS, but weren’t actually going to get, including real multiplayer, base-building, and satisfying planet-hopping. The only reason I took a break from this one was to give it more time to ripen. It’s tough, challenging, and building your own spaceships is extremely rewarding. If you like supporting developers who actually take early access seriously, this is your game. It’s rough around the edges, but the freedom more than makes up for it.

Eve Online $19.99 (plus monthly subscription)

Eve has one of the friendliest, most helpful communities in the world. It’s dry, but that’s just the nature of this variety of science fiction. (If you love hard SF, you’re probably going to enjoy this.) The only thing I dislike about it is the fact it lends itself better to a mouse and keyboard than my joystick setup. I’m allergic to paying monthly subscriptions, too.

FTL: Faster Than Light $9.99

Deceptively simple at first glance, FTL is more fun per minute than NMS is per hour. If you wanted NMS because you like emergent stories, this is the one you should get. It’s insane how attached you get to your crew members, all of whom are likely to die at any minute.

Kerbal Space Program $39.99

I think everybody knows how good KSP is by now. It’s perhaps the greatest early access title in history. Despite the cartoonish characters, it’s by far the most realistic space simulator on this list. The joy of making it to “the mun” (or successfully rescuing a character who you stranded there) is beyond words.

Rebel Galaxy $19.99

I was skeptical of simplifying what I like so much about Elite: Dangerous and games of that nature, but Rebel Galaxy is tons of fun. In fact, if you haven’t played Eve or Elite (or you didn’t get what all the fuss was about) think of RG as a kind of entry point to those games. A gamepad is a must, so it’s a great option for couch gaming, either via Steam Link or playing on a console. The NPC interaction in this game is leagues better than what I experienced in NMS, and the combat is naval style, meaning you mostly fire from and at the broadsides of ships.

RimWorld $29.99

Okay, this one doesn’t exactly let you travel through space, but it’s one of my favorite games in years. You will die. Your colony will die. It might be best for those who expected a science fiction flavored challenge out of NMS, which I certainly never saw in my admittedly short time with it. I didn’t ever feel like I was in danger once in NMS.

Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion $39.99

I can’t believe Sins is still $39.99, but it’s probably my favorite 4X RTS this side of Red Alert 2. This one will scratch your itch for deep, tactical gameplay.

Space Engineers $24.99

I love Space Engineers and they’ve been slowly but steadily folding survival elements into it. If you were drawn to NMS because you were drawn to the insinuation you would be able to do just about anything, this is a much better bet.

Starbound $14.99

I really enjoyed my brief time in Starbound, particularly in multiplayer, and it offers better planet exploration, looting, and crafting than NMS at the moment. I also think it has a better sense of wonder.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go play Destiny for the first time.

Here’s what I did this weekend

So I picked this up on Friday:

And I got it into fairly decent shape by Sunday:
I’ve got a marquee coming in the mail and I still haven’t decided what to do with that awful Taito overlay. I’m also unsure of what I want to do for a bezel at the moment. 
Right now I’m running Retropie on a Raspberry Pi 3 with a 23″ LCD monitor and 4-way joysticks. Yeah, I know I should have gotten a CRT, but I already had the monitor and I’m keeping an eye out for a cabinet that’s worthier of a complete restore. I’m hoping to find an upright Pole Position, Dig Dug, Galaga… something like that.
The guy who sold me the cabinet said it used to be a Silent Dragon machine, but judging by the manufacturer’s plate (Exidy) and the original holes beneath the overlay it’s obviously an old Mouse Trap unit. 
See more of what I did to this thing on my first ever Instagram account.

Dead By Daylight: First Impressions

Dead By Daylight Review

Dead By Daylight gives you the choice of being a victim or a Jason-like serial killer. In order for the killer to win he must kill the victims, which requires catching, disabling, and hanging them on meat hooks. Survivors just have to escape, but there’s a catch: the killer’s compound is entirely fenced in. The only way to open the gate is by repairing the generators which are scattered about the map and it takes a long time to repair each one, adding to the suspense. The killer knows where these generators are at all times, but the victims have to actively search for them without the aid of a HUD.

There’s also a point system. The more points you have, the more items and power-ups you can buy in between matches. The point system encourages the victims to help one another, as opposed to fending for themselves (which happens, too), while inspiring the lone killer to get creative with his traps and tactics. I’m actually surprised by how much teamwork is in a title which doesn’t feature in-game chat.

What’s even more surprising is the fun factor’s longevity. There’s only the one game mode and all the maps look more or less the same beyond their drab color schemes. You’re either going to be one of three available killers (which requires hosting a game and sometimes waiting damn near forever for four other players to join) or one of the four survivors, meaning there’s not a whole lot to see beyond your first few matches. With so few combinations, I expected this one to get stale quick, but I find myself loading it up frequently. It’s really easy to jump in and out of it.

Matches last only a handful of minutes and, generally, don’t take long getting into. The overall boot time is fairly low, too, which is probably a big reason I play CS:GO so often. Like that game, Dead By Daylight provides a surprising amount of replayability not in spite of its simplicity, but because of it. The randomly generated layout of maps helps, too. Meanwhile the graphics are more than acceptable and the sounds of blades and meat hooks puncturing flesh are crisp and satisfying—really satisfying.

Theme goes a long way and that’s the biggest thing Dead By Daylight has going for it. Unfortunately (for me) it doesn’t completely bring that 80s horror vibe which the upcoming Friday the 13th game promises. It just looks a little too much like a late 90s/early 2000s horror picture for my liking, while the victim roster is curiously lacking a teen heroine, a dimwitted jock, and a clueless police officer. Still, stalking real-life players with a brisk, intimidating walk is even more fun than you might think.

If you’re not a fan of slasher movies, you should probably skip this one. Otherwise, I certainly don’t feel like I threw my money away as the twenty dollar price tag seems just about right. Besides, the thrill of finding a victim hiding in a closet is something I can’t convey with words. I find the game’s strengths more than makes up for the bugs, most of which aren’t game-breaking.

At the time of this writing, the game doesn’t have a serviceable party system. Players are constantly entering and immediately leaving lobbies in search of their friends, which sometimes makes soloing take longer than it should. The devs have tweeted they will address this issue soon, but a party system could potentially break a game that purposely omitted in-game chat because those players will no doubt be using VOIP software to coordinate against the killer.

I beat the hell out of DOOM 2016

So how much did I like the new DOOM? I think the following image speaks for itself…

I already did my first impressions on launch day, but considering I haven’t been this obsessed with completing every single aspect of a game since Perfect Dark (that was sixteen years ago, believe it or not) I think it’s safe to say I loved this game. There really isn’t much more to say about the campaign. It’s so good it reminded me of playing Half-Life and Deus Ex for the first time. 

* * *
Now it’s time for a big but.
I thought the multiplayer was okay, but after getting around level 20, it’s basically dead to me. I didn’t get my hopes up to begin with, but I can think of several games which had better afterthought-multiplayer modes and they didn’t even need a separate company to do it. The lack of free-for-all deathmatch, however, isn’t just disappointing, it’s mind-boggling.
As for SnapMap, it seems awesome at first, but then you quickly discover its limitations. Want to make a proper DOOM map? Well, considering you’re limited to a dozen enemies, fat chance. The only way to get more enemies into the game is jumping through hoops with the (admittedly impressive) logic system. I spent a few hours trying to make a map and wasn’t at all happy with it. What I ended up submitting (in order to get the Shareware achievement) was so bad it’s embarrassing. The modular design just isn’t cutting it.
If id doesn’t open up proper modding for the new DOOM (and I’ve read more than a few persuasive arguments suggesting they won’t) I’ll more likely go back to the old games before I pick this one up again. Whatever happens though, I look forward to the sequel. What a ride.