Category: Video Games

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Tech Video Games

Gaming Rigs

Arcade Machines

It’s been a long time since I really cared about gaming hardware. Indeed, I got into console gaming and Macs partly to get out of the eternal upgrade cycle that comes with PC gaming. But then I got hooked into Lord of the Rings Online, and discovered that my iMac is a decent low/mid-range gaming machine.

I’ve been puttering along for over 12 months, and with a few exceptions, I have been quite satisfied with the performance I’ve gotten. And then, E3 came along with all its demos (which I have been ignoring), but I couldn’t quite pass up news of the Riders of Rohan update for LOTRO. Massively had this to say:

What really shined was how the character was able to roam the rolling fields of Rohan freely. Wherever the character walked, grass, weeds, and flowers reacted and gave way. When the character stepped into the Fangorn Forest, the light shining through the trees was very dynamic. It’s clear there was a strong graphical upgrade from previous versions.

Now, it’s a given that any update to a 5 year old game is going to seem miraculous, but it got me thinking: my iMac is two years old. For most tasks, it’s fine; the most strenuous non-gaming activity I put it through is basic photo work, and it’s more than adequate at that. Also, the ATI HD4670 is getting a little long in the tooth: it doesn’t support DirectX 11, and was kind of old and cheap when I bought the iMac (which was a recent model).

So I asked myself, “Assuming that I have the finances and will, what are my options?”

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Reviews Video Games

Saints Row The Third

It’s amazing what you can do when you put your mind to something. One minute I’ve decided that I need to pull finger and finish Saints Row The Third and the next, I’m staring at the closing credits. Admittedly, it’s not a long game, but I also find it difficult to push myself through any “entertainment” I’m not enjoying. There’s nothing deep and meaningful here: SR3 continues to succeed in its predecessor’s goal to escalate the levels of parody and hilarity and generally succeeds.

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Reviews Video Games

Portal 2 – Bigger, badder, bloated

It seems to me that Valve saw the pop culture success of the original Portal and played to that. Great for marketing, fantastic for sales, but great for making a sequel? I don’t think so.

The main attraction to the game seems to be the storyline, which makes up the majority of the game. There are interminably long parts of the game that are death by expositional voiceover. All about the founding and original work performed at Aperture Science. It even provides two-by-four sized hints about the origins of GLaDOS, and explains her motivation for constant testing.

All that left me asking but one question: why did I need that? The best stories are the ones that leave things unsaid. Fill in the blanks, and let your audience make things up. As Yahtzee puts it:

Portal 1 was as tight as a walnet corset; not an inch of it was wasted… Portal 2 is a sightseeing tour that begrudgingly has a puzzle game in it.

I may be in the minority, but I found that despite the increased length (I finished Portal 2 in twelve hours, compared to the 4-or-so flash in the pan that was the first game), the levels flew by. I was genuinely stumped only once, at that was only two or three puzzles from the end. Call me rhetorical, but what’s the point of a puzzle game that doesn’t puzzle you?

I have to say that I’m astounded by the Metacritic score for the game. 95 is far too high for something that begins with what critics and fans agree is a perfect game and makes it longer, less funny and less challenging to the point of being laughable. The best writers know the value of a good editor lies in their ability to find things to cut out. Valve obviously hasn’t figured that out yet.

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Video Games

Diablo 3 gameplay video

It’s been quite a while since I paid attention to Diablo 3 news. Not that I’m excited, but I have to be pragmatic: it’ll be ready when it’s ready. However, I stumbled across this video, and it’s looking pretty good:

The colours are still a bit intense, and influenced by World of Warcraft. That said, I think the mood is starting to resemble the first two Diablo games much better. I’ve already got it on preorder, and looking forward to whenever it comes out 😉

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Video Games

Hopes for BulletStorm

I’m still alive, honest, and still playing games. Yes, it’s still mostly LOTRO, but I’ve also added Minecraft to the mix. I’ll eventually do something worthwhile with that and post a YouTube video like everyone else or something.

In the meantime, though, I would like to talk about BulletStorm. One thing I do between gaming and work is try to stay up to date with what the next distraction will be (at least once they come close to release date). I saw an ad for BulletStorm (shall I call it BS?) on TV and thought it was right up my alley. You see, I’m from the Unreal Tournament school of FPS. I like fast-paced, bouncing off the walls games with ridiculous guns. And colour! Glorious colour! Like many commentators, I am bewildered by the trend of the last decade towards a palette of desaturated browns. Gears of War might have been a good game if not for their drab choice of games.

Back in the 1990s, there was plenty of choice: Doom, Marathon, Unreal, Halflife. And then CounterStrike came along, was stupidly popular (to be fair, it was a good game), and all of a sudden there was only Unreal Tournament… which got worse and worse with every release.

Where was I? Oh yeah, the TV ad:

Much more up my alley. Today, I caught this quick review on Facebook:

Dear epic games, Bulletstorm sucks. Way to fail.

My friend goes on to complain that it’s too repetitive, but I think that he may not have examined FPSs lately. Over at Giant Bomb, they’re saying something different:

In some weird alternate universe, John Romero is still a part of id Software and every first-person shooter out there is filled with new iterations on the old “riding the rocket” or “sucking it down” death messages found in the original Quake. Games went in a different direction in that universe, eschewing the petty grasps at realism found here in our dimension in favor of seeking out new–but stilltotally juvenile–ways to tell someone that they suck. On top of that, they’re all finding bigger ways to blow things up and new ways to have guns rip polygonal bodies apart, often while making as many “edgy” references to Satan as they possibly can. In that universe, Bulletstorm gets two stars for being too colorful, wholly repetitive, and a shameless bite of the ideas found in the Grudgehumper series, namely Grudgehumper VI: The Devil’s Warehouse. Back here in the real world, however, Bulletstorm is a refreshing shooter that challenges you to do more than just hide behind a burning car and shoot soldiers in the face.

That’s a game I want to play. I think I’ll get it tomorrow. I’m not expecting much because it’s been way too long since an FPS was fun for more than a couple hours, but I think it’s a worthwhile gamble. Besides, it’s made by the team who brought us the gun that shoots lightning and shuriken!