Monthly Update: May 2015

Happy May, or I guess "May the 4th be with you."  I'm sure y'all've already checked out the Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer #2 by now and even if you have, it wouldn't hurt to watch it again. . .for the 47th time. . .this week.  There're also apparently some new pictures up from the movie which may or may not contain spoilers.  Ye've been warned. . .arrrr. 

Reaction to Konami cancelling
Silent Hills.  Decency people!
(Public posts means I don't have to
black out names).

Aside from that, it's been an interesting month in the Land of Gaming where apparently a fair amount of people were pissed off at one person or another for any reason or another.  There's been the Silent Hills cancellation, and Valve allowing modders to charge for use of their mods in Skyrim (but only if they want to charge) then nixing that idea after less than a week. On Friday however, and on a happier note, (so technically May) the splinters from Rare who created Playtonic have started a Kickstarter for their game Yooka-Laylee (which is, as of this writing, 412% over their target goal of $270,041 and it's been less than 12 hours since their email announcement).  And there's Rare's announcement that they've been working on something that's been a lot of fun for them that will be announced at E3 next month.

But that's all well and good for the rest of the world, but what about little ol' me?  I've been keeping pace with course work which has left some time for putzing around with a couple of video games, this time across multiple platforms.

I've gotten back into playing the Atlus time travelling multiverse fantasy game Radiant Historia, which originally came out on the DS back in 2011.  The game can be a bit overwhelming with multiple timelines and people/items/skills that you might need to learn in an alternate timeline before continuing with your current timeline.  At the moment I'm only transitioning between two separate outcomes, but I have  feeling that things will begin to branch off in the next chapter or two.  Thankfully you have the ability to speed through conversations that you've had umpteen times before and the music is good as far as JRPG soundtracks go.  I'll stick this one out until the end, barring any 4 Heroes of Light graves that I manage to dig myself into.

On the PC gaming front, I'm finishing up Borderlands (the first game) and I recently started Mass Effect 2.  My first off is that Borderlands is a great FPS with a crappily weak story.  Mass Effect 2 is a great story with too much online emphasis about who Shepard is going to doink.  Who Shepard (male or female) ends up with relationship-wise and what is unlocked in Mass Effect 3 based on your relationship choices from the previous two games seems a bit overwhelming on top of trying to save the galaxy.  It's almost like in order to experience the "full" game, you have to have a separate save file for each decision regardless if you have the option of using a paragon/renegade response; basically like in Radiant Historia.  And then there's Miranda, who apparently is nude with painted on clothing that is frequently emphasized by the camera panning or holding over her gluteal maximal region.  I know body paint's a thing, I saw a video about it once.

Lastly, and back to handheld, is Silent Hill (1999) which I'm playing on the PSP, influenced from all of the Dead Space posts last month.  Presently my biggest complaint is that the game screen doesn't take up all of the PSP screen that it should be able to.   There is an empty black space around the entire gaming-viewing window when it looks like the viewable window could have been stretched out diagonally in both directions by a couple of more pixels.  I've actually been conversing with Dr. Potts textually while playing and it's very reminiscent of 1999 when we were living in the same abode and would frequently talk to each other about where we were at in our respective games.  It was nice.  I should probably also check to make sure he has an unlimited texting plan, or I'll just revert to Google's Hangout app which Chreekat inadvertently introduced me to last week.

Leading up to the December release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, my unofficial plan is to finish Star Wars: Dark Forces and start another of the Star Wars games that Humble Bundle bundled together a few months back.  There might even be a "Why A Star Wars Game?" post somewhere in there as well.

Oh, and D&D has now reached a "regular basis" status for which I am very grateful.  Maybe a post in there about this as well later in the month.  Although I should probably get everyone to sign a release form, but being the DM, I can always make up some threats.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

A Feast of Friends

God Damn Steam!

Hehe.  

No, this will not be an article about the faults of Valve's Steam gaming system.  This is about the heated evaporation of dihydrogen oxide.  

Steam as a mechanic is nothing new in video games.  It is often used as a permanent barrier or an intermittent one for the hero to cross on their way to Point B.  I don't know about you dear reader, but it's been one of those obstacles that I have often felt was a bit over the top and over exaggerated.  "What do you mean I can die if I get caught in a jet of steam!?  There's steam in the bathroom when I take a shower.  There's steam that comes out of a tea kettle and I'm pretty sure I haven't died from that."  It's been one of those annoying barriers that is, well, annoying.

From Penumbra: Requiem.

Then the event of Monday November 3rd, 2014 happened.  It was in the morning and I was making coffee for myself and Conklederp as I normally do.  So I had the water in the kettle boiling and letting me know that it was ready to be moved by way of its shrill whistle.  I walked over, turned off the stop top and prepared the Aeropress with filter and grounds.

That's when the steam still jetting out of the kettle hit the back of my hand.  I pulled my hand back immediately and may or may not have uttered an expletive, but I'm thankful that I didn't have anything coffee related in my hands.  I was genuinely surprised by the temperature of the steam.  Yes I know that H2O boils at 100° C (212° F), but I had never thought of it as scaldingly hot.  I then ran my hand under cold water for a couple of seconds and I didn't give it a second thought.

Throughout the day, the back of my hand felt like I had received a contact burn from something hot, which I had and I realize how stupid this makes me sound, but in my head I had rationalized it as "But it's only steam."  I've even been trained multiple times (every two years since 2007) in first aid procedures through American Red Cross, but for whatever reason, I just figured this out.  The next day the pain was still somewhat present, but by  the following Wednesday (November 5th), the pain was gone and I didn't give it a second thought.

Later in the week, Saturday I believe while visiting my parent's, my Mother asked what had happened to the back of my hand.  It was then that I noticed that about a two inch by one inch blob shaped region on the back of my hand had become slightly puckered and rough. What I had chalked up to a very minor contact burn on par with being out in the sun for an extra 13 minutes had changed the appearance and texture of my skin.  A few days later (probably around the 11th or 12th) the skin began peeling, similar to a sunburn, but really shiny (do not do a google image search).

I would like to think that now whenever I come across steam in a game, that I will think twice about trying to sprint through this caustic barrier as if it were a minor hindrance.  And if you find the time, take a first aid course.  The courses are helpful and hopefully won't make you oblivious to the harm that heated dihydrogen oxide can do to the epidermis of your largest organ.  

And don't go running through jets of steam!



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
It's So Hard To Believe

Pak Watch: Crypts and Towers

Slain: The Seven Towers
Slain is a PC game being developed by Andrew Gilmour and published by Wolfbrewgames.  It's in a retro style that I love, and is heavy on the gothic horror.  Demons and Bleeding trees and a hero with a big beard and a giant sword.  What can I say?  I like indie games with a 16-bit style with detailed backgrounds.  And gothic horror is always fun.  I think Slain fits the bill, so I'm in support of it.  The website over at wolfbrew games has information if you care to know more.  You can also like their page over on facebook.  I did.

---------------------------------------

Courier of the Crypts

This game is another 16-bit style game being developed by a tiny team- 2 people, by the names of Primoz Vovk and Zdravko Djorjevic.  The game is a top down dungeon explorer with the central mechanic revolving around lighting torches and solving puzzles.  This mechanic seems reminiscent of the third Zelda game.  Graphically, the imagery looks to be tailored to the different lighting effects.

The team did not reach their goal with their indiegogo campaign.  While the campaign is closed, there is a demo available, and the game did achieve greenlight status on Steam. 

I originally heard about this game from an article in indie gaming news, a prolific website with regular news on upcoming indie games.  

-D

Pak Watch: Non-traditional, traditional effects.

Lumino city 

I stumbled onto an article at the verge, about a new game called Lumino city by British developer State of Play. I was immediately taken with the visual design.  On their own, these images and videos are beautiful.  I am very curious as to how this game will feel and play.  The State of Play website pitches the companies products as 'Lovingly crafted games and animations.'  Isn't that sweet?

Lumino city was pitched as using 'paper instead of polygons,' Each setpiece was painstakingly crafted and designed.  Many of the sets are much bigger than they appear, as shown in some behind the scenes images in the verge article.   I'm a big fan of traditional effects, though in this case, these effects are not traditional to video games.

Lumino city is now available on Steam.  

Beeswing

Another game I stumbled upon, this time from a Gamasutra article by Talha Kaya.  Similarly to Lumino city above, this game's visuals are constructed entirely from traditional effects.  In this case, watercolors are the chosen medium.  Beeswing is a smaller production, put together entirely by Jack King-Spooner.  

King-Spooner has a track record of strange and artful games.  He comes across as slightly odd, but has an earnest desire to create art, and to use video games as an expressive medium.  I respect this goal and am even more interested to play Beeswing as a result.  Beeswing was fully funded in a kickstarter, but is not yet available to play.  

-D

Merry Monthly Update: December 2014

Falalalalalalalalala,

I think things of note in the past month are all the many fun links I discovered by using google + and joining all these indie game, game map and game design groups.   I will be assembling a collection of said links in a post coming soon to an internet near you.

Another thing is that I started playing Chrono Trigger again.  Been a long time for that one.  So far, so good, it's a nice way to get my 16bit jRPG fix.  I think I might actually like the game more this time around than I did when I first played it.  I think it's a lack of competition - back then I was always playing like three jRPGs.

A third thing is I read a Michael Moorecock book: The Sword of the Dawn.  Very interesting, vaguely familiar and completely pulpy fantasy novel from the 60s.  It’s a far-future dystopia situation, following a sword-fighting German hero named Hawkmoon.  It takes place on earth, but bears little resemblance to our world.  There’s magic, and technology, and the names of current countries are vaguely based on present-day countries.  It’s fun sometimes to figure out what they are.  Amerikh – America.  Granbreten – Great Britain.  Asiacommunista – china.  It was a fun book, light reading with plenty of swashbuckling and a dash of gruesomeness.

In December, if everything goes according to plan,  I’m going to stop by the comic shop and buy another book in the series.   I'm also going to play Chrono Trigger and Magic the Gathering - queue of unplayed Steam games be damned!  And I guess I’ll see my family or something.  

-D

P.S.  I also picked up the novel Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut.  So far, it's very Kurt Vonnegut, which is a good thing.  

Path of Exile: FOR THE LOVE OF ODIN PLAY THIS!

You know, do not even ask me about the "Forsaken Masters" part as I do not really know.  But Path of Exile, I do not think I have ever sunk this much time into a free-to-play game.  Even the previously mentioned Clash of Clans or Plants vs. Zombies 2.  No, not even Mafia Wars, which was way back in the day, as far as I am concerned.

At the moment I have put 35 hours into this game, although that number seems to be growing week-by-week.  But let us talk about the game.

Bloody hell this game is beautiful, just take a look at this dank and infested dungeon!

and a spectral-esque-type forrest.

Now if I only played good looking games, there would be room for an argument here, but I am also playing a lot of The Elder Scrolls: The Arena which looks a lot like Doom with a sword and heal potions.  PoE plays remarkably well too.  Think Diablo, with bits of Torchlight II thrown in (stationary waypoints) as well as MMORPG action hot key type actions as well.   There are even some improvements such as removable gem socketing in weapons and armor without damaging either the equipment or the gems.  I think that is one of the things that helped to sell the game.  

There are even little individual animations that the enemies do.  For instance, an enemy archer will run towards you, stop, pull an arrow from their quiver, lick the fletching, knock the arrow then fire towards you.  That is, if you haven't already shot them yet.  If you zoom in as close as you can, you can see the corpses of fallen enemies twitching a couple of times before they lie permanently prone.  At first I thought it was either a glitch or my eyes playing tricks, but no, you can see hands and feet twitching a few times.  Sometimes monsters will also roar at you before or during attacks, you know, because their wild animals that just happen to want you very dead.

Oddly enough, one of the best things about this games is all the ways Grinding Gear Games does not charge you to play and there are a lot of aspects to this game that I feel that could have been used to create options to pay real world money.  You want to enchant that sword to a +1 to damage, pay 50 gold (translates to $0.50).  You want to recover that life sapping gem from your armor that you no longer want, that will be 200 gold.  You want to create more than one character, pay us 500 gold to create extra character slots beyond your first character.  Of everything that I have seen that the game charges money for, everything appears to be cosmetic.  Sure you have your swag stashed in a chest that has four pages of a 12x12 grid and you can pay for a fifth page, but I do not foresee needing that much space considering I am currently only playing one character.

Basically, there was one time when I left the game for the sole purpose of finding out how I could give Grinding Gear Games money using real money.  Maybe buy a package thing via Steam using my Steam Wallet.  I could not.  There was nothing I could do but use their in-game market.  That was not was I was looking for, so I have yet to give them currency validation towards their great game.

Similar to Diablo and Torchlight, I do have a problem with hoarding.  When I found gems, I saved them until I could create the next higher quality gem, then I saved that gem until I could create the next. . .so on and so on.  I was always paranoid that I would find a better weapon or suit of armor and that gem that I had soldered into my equipment would then be lost forever.  Thankfully in PoE, this is not the case as I can take out and remove gems as frequently as I want (unless otherwise noted in the description of the gem).  Grinding Gear is making this game too easy to like and doing things that I had wanted earlier Diablo-esque games to do.

There are a handful of other features from the game that surprised me.  At first, I was annoyed that the maps were a lot smaller than what I was used to on Torchlight II, but I quickly realized that they were more like the Diablo maps and one of the sidequest goals is to kill every monster on the map.  That would be quite the feat in Torchlight II.  Another is that your health and mana potions autofill as you kill enemies and whenever you return to town, which makes healing spells almost obsolete.  It can become difficult however when you have to go up against a boss that does not want to summon creatures to help fight against you, which would then refill your potion bottles.

To date, I have only played cooperatively once with Chreekat a month or two back.  And while the game could be played with friends, you don't have to and I feel that playing locally would be a lot more fun than playing across the country.  That being said, I am usually up for playing cooperatively if people are interested.  That then brings me to the online-ness of the game.  Unless you are intentionally playing with anyones else, all the areas, with the exception of the towns/villages are instanced.  You do not have to worry about other people running around in the same area stealing your kills and loot.

The only negative statement I have to make about this game is that it takes a while to load.  The first couple of times I tried playing, I gave up because I thought the game was stuck on the loading screen.  It turned out that I just had to wait a minute or two, then everything was as I expected it to be.  There was no noticeable lag in the game and the only times the game had to load was moving between areas.

I am going to stop now so I can get this out there.  Path of Exile has been out there in the world for 13 months now and honestly, it is never too late to pick up this game and start playing.  So, you should go and start playing as it is just too much fun to not play.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
The Great Warriors of Doom and Wind

Game Review: Wizorb (PC)

Wizorb is a game that came bundled with Humble Indie Bundle 6 over a year ago and based on it's premise of a conglomeration of Breakout and a Dragon Warrior/Final Fantasy NES era RPG, this game should be right up my alley.

First off, I am not particularly great at Breakout and its many clones.  No, this does not mean that I suck at video games.  As it happens, I apparently do not have the stamina to play multiple levels of Breakout with a limited number of lives.

In Wizorb, you take on the role of Cyrus, a wizard tasked with saving the kingdom, or the world, I am not too sure on that point.  Once the story portion is completed, you are sent out to reclaim what was rightfully, someone elses, I think.  The plot, as far as I can tell, is a pretty generic JRPG plot but instead of playing a strapping young lad kicked out of his respective village, you play as an old man wizard/sorcerer/mage.  Maybe you have to rescue your daughter?  Suffice it to say, I do not expect any significant plot twists to occur.  Maybe the main villain is your son?  We will have to just wait and see.

After the not too long/deep story/exposition part of the game, you are then taken to the level where the Breakout-ness happens.  As you break blocks to clear the stage, you are often awarded with either nothing, gold, gems for store purchases, extra lives, vials that refill your magic meter, and eventually magical bits that can temporarily slow you down or reduce the size of your wand/paddle.  Magic is used to cast spells, the first two being a wind spell that moves your magical projectile (the ball) in the opposite direction and the other spell being a fireball that causes damage just like your blue ball of magical goodness.

So far, the game should not be too difficult, but often completing a stage requires additional support.  Throughout the stages, you can find shops to purchase temporary upgrades to your staff/bar-thing, extra lives or vials to refill your magic meter.  One time I bought a staff upgrade thinking that it would be permanent, but it turned out to only last the length of the stage and my staff was back to its normal size (after four hours) at the beginning of the next stage.  All the other times I have purchased extra lives in the store as I have found them to be much more valuable.  Apparently there is also a magnet of some-sort, but as I have never purchased it, I could not tell you what its application is.  Maybe it does not bounce the ball but just grabs and holds on to it instead?

So keeping all of this in mind, my initial impression was that I did not like the game.  I loved the visual aesthetic and the newish take on Breakout, but I found the level to be comprised of too many stages to be able to progress through to and defeat the level boss.  Being able to make it through I-do-not-know-how-many stages in each level and defeat a boss was too much for me the three or four times I tried out the game.  A few months later I came back and decided to give the game another go.  This time I used a controller and I noticed that if I did not make it to the boss, I did not have to start back at Stage 1 of Level 1, but I started whatever stage I was currently on, but with all of the blocks back in their original starting position.  I believe the game must have updated at some point, for which I am very thankful.  

It is also highly probable that the game has always operated this way and I just did not notice, but which is sad because since finding this game-saving-fact out, I have put in two hours into the game.  I find that I play a lot better with a controller and not playing through out TV set.  Something about the distance away from the screen seems to give me less time to react to where the goody magical blue ball is going to land.

So after as semi-disastrous first impression of Wizorb, I definitely plan on giving the game the time it deserves.  At least until I become so frustrated/aggravated/annoyed with my general lack of skill in the game that I give up entirely.

Happy Monday!



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconain
Igniting the Paralyzed Soil

First Impressions: Unturned (PC)

Remember that article I wrote a couple of weeks back?  You know, the one where I talk about the number of Steam games on early access that fall under the "early access massive multiplayer online open world zombie apocalypse survival first person shooter" category?  There is a new game (new as of July 7th, 2014) that was released for free that popped up on the Steam front page a few days ago, and because I have almost no willpower and 640Gigs of spare hard drive space, I figured I could spare 200Mb.

Logo courtesy of the r/unturned sub-reddit

No, Unturned does not even have a "proper" logo.  Well, it does have a kind-of-logo that comes from the Steam store page, but it is not as interesting.

See.  I told you it was not at all interesting.  The game however is fairly interesting.  It reminds me of a mix between DayZ, Proteus and Minecraft; except that I have never played Minecraft (I know, I know), but I at least know what the game looks like so I feel somewhat educated enough to make that assumption.

But let us break down these comparisons.  DayZ:  In Unturned, you start out the game completely naked and depending on the difficulty setting, you either start out empty handed, or you start out with a juice box, candy and a flashlight.  In one playthrough (I died) I did manage to find some clothes at a laundromat, then I found a gun which I was able to use a couple of times before being mauled to death by a zombie.  Zombies also tend to congregate near objects of civilization be it a lighthouse, small towns, military installations or seemingly abandoned beach blankets and lounge chairs.  If the zombies do not kill you, over time, you become hungry and thirsty and I am assuming that you will starve to death or die from dehydration.  If you jump off from a high enough distance you can break your leg or if you step in a bear trap (that you just happen to recently set yourself) you will bleed out until you are dead.  See, a lot like DayZ.  The zombies are even attracted to the sound of gunfire, which is very annoying, although I guess somewhat realistic, depending on which zombie universe you are the most attached to.

Dying is something that I have become very good at in Unturned as well, regardless of the difficulty setting.  Even on "Easy" each hit from a single zombie does 10% damage, which does not seem like a lot unless you are being chased/mauled by a horde of zombies.  That is unless you happen to find a body of water to swim out into, in which case they will simply hang out in the shoulder deep water and follow your every move.  On an upnote, you are capable of swimming indefinitely, even with those stubby blocky arms.  

So how is the game like Proteus then?  Well, if the island in Proteus were populated with buildings and zombies, then I guess that comparison would make sense.  There is music in Unturned, albeit it is not interactive in the way that the music interacts with the environment or as peaceful or as calming.  But it is there and everything is all block-like.  So there is that.  Maybe I am just reaching for straws here, but that was what I briefly thought right before I was shown that I acted better as zombie food than a naked dude safely running around an island community.

So Unturned is still in alpha-release although the developer Nelson Sexton with Smartly Dressed Games does seem to update frequently and the game is free to download and play.  There is a pay option which could be seen as a way of helping to fund the game.  The $5 one time "Permanent Gold Upgrade" gets you your name in gold in chat, extra customizing options for your character (hair, skin, facial expressions), access to special servers [extra loot drops, double experience, suit and shades (clothing options)] and a sleeker UI; if that is your type of thing.

You know, for a game and article about zombies, I sure have done a great job not including many screen shots of zombies.  If that was something you have noticed, then I leave you with the following image of my last play/die through and encounter with a group/horde of zombies shortly before they mauled me to death.

I would be lying if I were to say that I have not become just a little frustrated with not being able to often survive long enough to pick up a weapon.  The last three games I played I was killed by no less than three zombies while trying to pick up Playthrough 1) Baseball bat, 2)Crowbar and 3) what turned out to be nails.  Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I am only playing a single player game, which might be because I have not figured out how to log into/host my own online game.  There is plenty of time to figure these things out of course, as long as I do not get eaten in the meantime.

Good day everybody!



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Touch My World With Your Fingertips

Left 4 Dead 2 Mod: Day Break (PC)

Earlier in the year, I began looking through the available campaign mods for Left 4 Dead 2 on Steam and after finding out and playing the awesomeness that was the "Journey to Splash Mountain" mod by Dives and SM Sith Lord, I was excited to find "Day Break" by DannBo.

Now, before I start ripping DannBo a new one, let me first make this clear.  What DannBo has done with various areas of the city of San Francisco is pretty amazing and seeing as how creating the two part, five chapter mod took him five years, I am not one about to bash the ever living snot out of Mr. DannBo.

You know, instead of critiquing everything about the game, let me just go through parts of the stages and bring up things that I happened to find note worthy.

This first stage takes place somewhere in downtown San Francisco.  My biggest critique of this first stage is that until you reach the Palace of Fine Arts, I did not feel that I was in San Francisco.  The city design felt that it could have been any generic city that I had already played in any of the L4D campaigns.  Now, this is not to say that the level design was bad or broken, just that I did not get the feeling that I was in San Francisco.  I should also say that I have been to San Francisco a great many times so I am not basing my experience from The Rock or The Princess Diaries.

During my first playthrough, I was mobbed during my approach to the Safe Room which I found greatly annoying.  Yes, I would expect there to be a tank, but we (myself and three bots) were attacked by one tank leading up to the Safe Room then another tank spawned a short distance from the Safe Room door.  Yeah, we did not make it.  The second time though we did not run into any tanks.  I am not sure what happened, but I was thoroughly happy that we all made it to the room.

The next couple of levels I really enjoyed.  Without going into too much detail, they included an approach along the Crissy Field towards the Golden Gate Bridge.  Seeing the bridge was a pretty epic site followed by a feeling of dread as I knew that we were going to have to cross the bitch.

The Golden Gate Bridge sequence, I found to be one of the most terrifying sequences in this mod and not because we were being swarmed by hordes of infected (although that was equally terrifying), but because of having to cross on I-beams 245 feet above the San Francisco Bay.

The last highlight in the Day Break mod was being able to "visit" Alcatraz Island.  How the players get to Alcatraz is pseudo-well explained so I will take no additional time on that front.  Ultimately, I was a little disappointed with the Alcatraz portion of the mod.  It consisted of the end of stage four and the final grab all the gas cans stage five.  In the end, I think I would have liked to have played most of a campaign on Alcatraz and not just running through a portion of the outside grounds and a cell block or two.

Day Break ended up taking me an hour and thirty one minutes to complete and I only died one time (incapacitated three times).  I can say that while I did have a lot of fun with what DannBo created here, I felt that the campaigned was bookended by stages that I was less enthused by when compared to the rest of the campaign.  Is Day Break worth playing?  Definitely and I would love to see more real world settings from the community.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Disinterested in the Writhe of the Lone Survivor


P.S.  I would like to share a couple of pictures that could be seen as spoilers when in or out of context, but I liked their concepts so much, hence the showing of them here.

I do not know why I had never seen this before in any of Valve's campaign levels.  Seeing the Safe Room arrows is always a relief, but when I came upon this no-longer-safe room, my stomach dropped, mainly because as you can see I was running desperately low on ammunition although I was far from being close to death.  Just not a scene you want to come across.

Just your average swimming pool filled with corpses.  It will probably need more than chlorine.

The depths of the Alcatraz Island cell blocks, now with improved roof access.

SteamBoy: Steam Gaming on the Go.

Now why did I not hear anything about this until the Sunday after E3 was over?  Granted I was not huddled over my computer during the three days of the Electronics & Entertainment Expo but I am a little surprised that this one slipped by me until yesterday.  Although after doing a cursory search, it now looks like everyone, ourselves included is bringing up and talking about the SteamBoy.

The SteamBoy Machine, a split off of the whenever to be released Steam Machines looks to be mix of the Steam Controller and Sony's PS Vita.  While the "Steamboy Project" is not affiliated with Valve or Steam, this product makes me more excited than any of the other Steam Machine/Box projects that I have been hearing about in recent months.  

My biggest critique and maybe that is just because I do not understand the "concept" behind Steam Machines/Boxes, is that I already have a PC that I game on that I frequently connect to my TV via HDMI cable.  I also have a controller that works perfectly well with the games that I want to play that require a controller.

Which then brings us to the SteamBoy.  There are a lot of games that I not only play with a controller on Steam, but games that would translate perfectly well to a handheld device (Super Meat Boy, The Binding of Isaac, BIT.TRIP Runner, Braid, Limbo).  I can understand some people, primarily people who mainly game on a PC not liking the idea of the SteamBoy because of the size of the screen compared to the size of their current monitor/TV, but coming from a background of handheld gaming, I have come to accept that on a hand held device, gaming is going to be small.

The smallness of the screen would then lead to the obvious question about how powerful the SteamBoy will be in comparison to other Steam Machines and whether it will be able to play every game in your Steam library.  In an interview with the Escapist, the SBP stated that "SteamBoy won't be as powerful as other announced Steam Machines in the same way [the] Nintendo 3DS or PS Vita performance is not comparable to Wii U or PlayStation 4.  However, it will be possible to play the majority of current games in Steam."

To note, the current specs released for the SteamBoy "could be" as follows:

• Quad-Core CPU
• 4 GB RAM
• 32GB built in memory
• 5" 16:9 touchscreen (no word as to screen resolution; 720 or 1080p).
• Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity
• 2 directional touch pads
• 4 Directional pad/buttons
• ABXY buttons with L/R shoulder-type bumpers, two trigger buttons and two additional buttons on the back.

Right now the biggest questions I am seeing are about the distance of the connectivity of the device, as in will you have to be connected to an internet signal in order to play if your game is not directly downloaded to the devices 32GB of internal storage?  Will you simply be streaming from a separate Steam account; although that does not sound too likely.  I would also like to know if there would be a separate memory card slot.  But, now that I am thinking about it, I do not think that I would want my entire Steam library on a portable device and not only because there are games that I only play with the keyboard and mouse.  I do not think that all games would transfer well to a portable device, but that is to be expected with any game that moves to a smaller screen and/or a differing control scheme.

Actually, the idea of downloading a couple of games to the SteamBoy then syncing them up to my main Steam account in order to maintain game progress, time and achievements is a very inviting notion.  If this is a possibility, then the SteamBoy would immediately become a much more attractive hand held gaming system than the PS Vita and, dare I say it, the 3DS.  I know that it will not replace my 3DS, but as far as buying a new hand held system, the SteamBoy may jump to the top of the list (are we tired of clichés yet)?

There has also been no mention of the estimated battery life, which would be one of my biggest concerns.  Right now, my 3DS can last about 5 hours if I do not have the 3D slider turned on and I feel that anything less than five hours would be very detrimental to the life of the system, both in terms of battery life and how well it sells.

At the moment, the word is that SteamBoy will be released sometime in 2015, which the beginning of is less than six months away, so if the stars are properly aligned, this will be a product that will see the light of day before the end of next year.  We will just have to wait and see in the coming months as new information is released regarding system specifications and almost as importantly, a price tag although the company's word is that "the device will balance performance and cost. . ."

It is now only a waiting game.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
You Might Get What You're After

DayZ and the Unfinished Survival Genre

The survivalist horror genre, if it is indeed a genre, seems to be a big thing right now, either that or I just happen to like the genre enough to notice games cropping up here and there to think that it is becoming "a thing" in the video game industry.  And just to clarify, I am referring to "open world survival" games that center around your character surviving out in the big bad scary post-apocalyptic world where you have to scavenge supplies in order to survive from either zombies or the more deadly, other humans.  I do not plan on touching on the forebears of the survival horror genre (Sweet Home, Alone in the Dark, Resident Evil, Silent Hill), so aside from their obvious name dropping, I will not cover those games here.

The games that I do want to cover are, coincidentally enough, are all "Early Access Games" through Steam.  Before I get down to it all, I want to mention that the only game that I will be bringing up here that I have played is DayZ as it was the first game I heard about in this genre back when it was still a mod for Arma II; yes, I intentionally made a hipsteresque comment.

To date, I have only managed to put in about two hours into DayZ, thirty of those minutes I put into the game just before writing this article.  The fact that I have not put as many hours into this game has made me a little sad.  Ultimately, the game that is available to play, albeit an early alpha build of the game, is not very fun.

I understand that the game is based heavily off of a mod for another game and that the game is played on one of dozens of servers with anywhere between zero and 30-50 other people.  In a game where the goal is to survive both zombies and humans, people are going to be very competitive.  In a recent podcast of The Patch, it was "reported" that there were certain aspects that were broken, such as people server hopping after looting an area and becoming overly powerful with respect to people, like me, just signing on.  

Somehow, not normal behavior for a zombie.

To date though, I have not run across any other survivors.  In my last playthrough, I ran across a total of four zombies.  No, make that five.  The first one beat/ate the crap out of me while I tried to climb a ladder up to a roof.  I later threw myself off the roof rather than go about a slow death bleeding out.  One zombie ran through the wall of a house and became stuck in the floor.  The other three mobbed me one after the other after I came out of a house.  The first I clubbed to "death" within a couple of hits with a massive wrench I recently found; the second took way too many hits and I then thought that I had to "target" the head, but that was not the case; the third kept chasing me into the house I had recently vacated before I could manage to close the door behind me.

I must admit though that the player is warned before each playthrough that the game is not complete.  The disclaimer states that "This game is in Alpha and will be for some time.  This means you will experience bugs, unfinished features, problematic design decision, and many more things that disrupt your game experience.  We will be working with the community to fix these. . . Above all, please remember that this game is not finished, and is a work in progress."  I think I may just give DayZ some time to work things out and check back every few months to see how the development is going.  Steam even recently updated their FAQs for Early Access games (possibly due to the Earth: Year 2066 debacle) to state that "You should be aware that some teams will be unable to 'finish' their game. So you should only buy an Early Access game if you are excited about playing it in its current state."

This now brings me to the other games that I did not mention, but as I did mention, there seems to be a fair amount that fit within the DayZ model of open world survival and most importantly "not finished."

• 7 Days to Die
• Beasts of Prey
• Dead State
• The Dead Linger
• The Forest
• The Nether
• Planet Explorers
• Project Zomboid
• Rust
• Starbound
• Starforge
• The Stomping Land

A lot of these games tout their "procedural worlds," which makes me wonder if that means that the world is being constantly created while the game is being played and can be different on each playthrough or for different people, which is kind of what it is, in laymans terms.  Crafting is also a very big aspect in almost all of these games.  Be it crafting weapons, shelter, bandages or cooking food, "creating" is a big aspect here.  I cannot tell from the trailers of the above games if eating/drinking is or will be as important as it is in DayZ, where you can actually die from starvation and dehydration, but I would not be surprised if maintaining your health is another part of these games.

This looks to apparently be "a thing," an idea I thought about in the last couple of days due to Extra Credits' posting about the effects of future games from a generation who have grown up on Minecraft.  These series of games just might be the link between massive worlds where you build stuff to survive and the Left 4 Dead zombie action game.

But, they do not pay me to make assumptions.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

And I Believe In The Promised Land