First Impressions: Dead Island Riptide (PC)

This has been a combination of my experiences playing the game so far.

Images like these:

Coupled with frequent noises like this:

The noise that I recorded is only at 80 dB whereas it can jump at random (as if this isn't random enough) to 120 dB.  This is what I have read from various sources online as I do not actually own a decibel meter. No I do not have one on my phone.

My last session lasted an hour so that I could get an idea how often the screeching static noise would last and how frequently it would grace me with its presence, so in an unscientific manner, here is what I recorded:

7:07 minutes of no noise

0:43 seconds of noise

3:12 no noise

2:29 minutes of noise

0:26 no noise

3:38 minutes of noise

1:44 no noise

6:29 minutes of noise

1:13 no noise

5:21 minutes of noise

0:35 no noise

2:27 minutes of noise

0:02 no noise

0:03 seconds of noise

12:59 (unknown as the volume was turned off).

Týr knows why, but I've presently put five hours into this game even with the sound effects volume in-game turned down to practically nil and even then, the sound (120 dB) will still poke it's ugly head out of my speakers.

Last week (as 0f when I wrote this back in December) I contacted tech support at Deep Silver relating my problem to them to see if they knew what was going on.  I was then prompted to run a diagnostic tool and email them the results so they could have a better idea as to the specs of my computer and what I was dealing with.  I felt perfectly fine doing this as I did something very similar when I applied for the Elder Scrolls Online Beta request.  Within 24 hours I received a straightforward reply which suggested that I update my drivers, which I hadn't realized that I hadn't updated in a while.  So I followed the supplied links and was able to download three of the five drivers.  The two sound card drivers I was not able to download/install  as they are integrated drivers and even knowing the manufacturer and name, I could not locate the correct driver to download.

So I went back to the game with bright polished up video drivers hoping against hope that my problems were fixed.  The game played fine for about eight minutes before the screeching wail of dying souls and banished ear drums returned to mock my computer and mine own ears.  I played for maybe another 15 minutes before ultimately giving up.

I do not know if I will be going back to Dead Island: Riptide anytime soon as it is the only game that seems to have a problem with my apparently lackluster sound card.  Even games that have come out more recently than April 2013 have operated fine without any sound issues.  Maybe after I acquire my next computer (do not know what that will be) I will come back and see if my experience improves.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Instrumental

Monthly Update: October 2014

Madd MS Paint Skilz Yo!

It's that time of the month again, and I'm pretty sure I've used that opening before. . . but you know what?  Neither do I.

This is going to be a hectic month.  First off, Conklederp and I are getting married on Saturday (11th) so some of the posts early in the month might be sporadic, depending on how much I am able to get accomplished ahead of time.  We are presently (at the time of posting) preparing to make our way to Nor*Cal tomorrow, with our goal being ultimately in the south (by California standards) and we'll be back about the middle of the month.  Goodtimes shall be had by all and yes, "goodtimes" is a legitimate word.

I spent a good amount of time during September playing both The Elder Scrolls: The Arena and Path of Exile.  It would seem that the Diablo type of play that is PoE is more enticing and engaging than what I found with DOTA 2, which makes me a little sad that I'm not as interested as I was hoping to be with the free-to-play MOBA, but I think solo game playing is too ingrained in my system.  I did play a session of PoE with Chreekat for an hour or so a few weeks back and since then I haven't seen him on Steam playing PoE, so I'm hoping that I didn't tarnish the 37 hours he's put into the game, but it looks like he was on yesterday.  I on the other hand, have only quested for a paltry 26 hours.  Oh the humanity!

And this just in, I am a Steam Stalking Creeper, but no, I still haven't played Minecraft in any of its many iterations.  Line me up to be stoned.  Again.

What the hell!  While writing today's post, music from Dead Island: Riptide (composed by Pawel Blaszczak) has come up a couple of times and it's a lot better than it has a right to be.  Now I've never played Dead Island: Riptide, yet anyway and I'll get to it eventually, but this soundtrack (acquired through the Humble Deep Silver Bundle) is really good.  I'm tempted to even say that it's "beautiful," but. . . you know what?  No buts.  The track that just played, "Let it be Haven," was indeed a beautiful simple piano piece.  There I said it.  Cue the onslaught of hate.  Maybe, but probably not.

Let's briefly take a look at October.  I restarted schooling a couple days ago so I'll be trying to get ahead for the first couple of weeks seeing as how doing school work during a honeymoon so video gaming and said activities will not be as prevalent as normal, at least for the first half of the month.  Game-wise though, October will probably be fairly similar to September with PoE, Arena and I might even delve into Fallen Earth, which I just spotted as being an open world free-to-play post-apocalyptic adventure game.  If I'm able to find time that is.  Although in the next week, I'll be hoping to play another round of Mansions of Madness with our friends so I'll have more tales to tell upon our return.

So have a happy October and I'll see y'all when I'm around.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Instrumental

Monthly Update: June 2014

Happy June everyone.  I come to you from the past, specifically Saturday May 31st, 2014, but as you will be reading this on or after June 2nd, 2014, it will all be kosher.  I am join you with Joey Mjölnir Explosion (the cat) patrolling around my feet and a bourbon with Pepsi in my hand.  Well, it was in my hand before I started typing.  And now JME is attempting to eat my pizza on a plate across the room.  

May has been a pretty standard month, except that it hasn't.  Unemployment aside, I have had some time to spend on reading, playing video games and contacting lawyers (more on that after everything has been settled).

I have been playing quite a lot of Elder Scrolls Online and as previously mentioned, I am doing a very good job of playing an MMO like a good introvert: solo.  I might have around 40 hours clocked in the game (just an estimate) and I still have yet to figure out how to use the chat window to talk to other players.  It is not very high on my priority list of things to do in the game.  I frequently have my ass handed to me when I try to take on groups (read 3-4) of enemies whose level is on par with my own.  I have been invited to join three groups and have turned them all down as politely as pressing "X" can be.

One interesting thing I noticed about the ESO is that your character never sleeps.  Time passes in the game, about the same rate as it does in Skyrim, but sleeping and Inns are not a thing.  This first struck me as very odd, but then I quickly realized that that sleeping in an MMO game would be hard to do as everyone, at least in North  America , is on the same server to time jumping in-game would be a bit difficult to manage, quantum physics aside.  So I just imagine that my character hates me while I have him adventuring for five in-game-days straight then sleeps for a couple of weeks when I am not playing.

There is another MMO that I just started a couple of days ago although this one is a MOBA (Massive Online Battle Arena) in the form of the Dead Island: Epidemic closed beta.  I thought it an interesting idea coming from only having played the first Dead Island which is an FPSRPG.  The drastic transition of formats is like the difference between The Legend of Zeldas top down versus The Adventure of Links top down and side scrolling with levelling RPG elements.  The game actually reminds me a lot of Torchlight, although I have not played Torchlight co-op, so maybe it is nothing like that.  But  in  DI:E, you pick one of four characters with their own set of abilities and go from point A to point B and kill a shit ton of zombies/walkers along the way, usually culmination with a boss battle.  The 40 minutes that I have put in it, I did enjoy.  Maybe more on that later this month.

I am also in process of internally debating how much more aggravation I want to put into Assassin's Creed as I have hit a wall that I do not feel prepared enough to break through.  It seems to be one of those points in the game that you should feel comfortable completing but I think I may have missed a training session or skill set along the way.  I have no Yoda to help me this time.

Lastly, I broke down a couple of days ago and paid (albeit not as much as would have liked, but I am unemployed) for the Humble Weekly Bundle featuring RPG Maker VX Ace and a whole lotta DLC (6 DLC just for VX Ace alone).  As Dr. Potts recently postulated, I too have stories to tell, both in written and video game form; and in D&D module form for that matter!  I also have music to write and creating my own "game" just might be the kick in the tuchas that I need.  With the help/advice from a good many episodes of Extra Credits, I am in the process of writing a story before I get down to the creating part although I plan on tinkering around a bit before the story is finished so that I am aware of the limitations of the program.  A nightmare would be to find out that the program is incapable of doing storywise what I want it to do and I have been down that road before the the authoring tools in Neverwinter Nights.  I am also very tempted to take existing Ravenloft modules and turn those into games, but that might be in the future. 

So in the meantime, I am doing research for my story and hopefully the NSA reads this before looking over my cache and browser history and decides that I am a person of interest.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Whispering the Words You Never Should Have Learned

When Is A Game Too Much Game?

I have a queue of unplayed games and this time I'm not referring to just the games that I haven't played on Steam (although that list might be growing again due to Steam's Winter Holiday Non-Denominational Sale), but also the games for the PSP and 3DS that are patiently awaiting their turns to embed themselves in the emotional center of my brain.  This queue of games has recently gotten me thinking about the amount of time required to play all of these game to their conclusion. 

Now, when I say that I beat a game, I'm not referring to "completing" a game with every available character/car/plane, watching every ending and achieving every single achievement.  I just mean beginning a game and playing through until the credits finish rolling.  If I happen to unlock new features and earn achievements in the process, then bonus points for me.

I recently just completed Dead Island after playing roughly 62 hours.  That is a lot of time to spend on anything, let alone a video game.  Recently though, I have noticed that some games are becoming almost too long, or more likely, I am drawn to games that take up a lot of time.  Between the two of us, Conklederp and I have clocked in 571 hours on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and expansions; I currently have 115 hours on The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and have only just completed the main quest, not to say anything about either the Bloodmoon or Tribunal expansions; on Final Fantasy XII, I spent around 125 hours and I still didn't finish all of the hunts or collect all of the Espers.  When Grand Theft Auto V was released last year, it was touted as having over 120 hours of game content.

When does game content become too much content?

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem and Dead Space took my about 16 hours each while Amnesia: The Descent took 18 hours, but Gone Home and Evoland both took only 3 hours.  Those were perfect lengths of time for their respective games.  Horror games are a hard thing to do for an extended period of time.  I have never played a horror game that lasted as long as, say Morrowind and maintained that level of tension and fright.  Is it possible to maintain that level of tension for 50+ hours?  I honestly don't know as I feel like game length is relative to both the game itself and the person playing the game.  

For myself, as long as the quests make sense, I don't really mind fetch-quests for which both Skyrim and Dead Island are pretty notorious for.  I understand the argument against them as they do eat up a lot of time, especially if fast travel is not an option, but again, I enjoy exploring and looking at the worlds that I explore.  But, as is the case with anything in life, too much can be annoying.  Too many fetch quests to gather supplies for an outcome that is never witnessed is too much. In Morrowind, I was tasked with taking 20 jars of sujamma (local liquor) to the middle of nowhere.  What irritated me was that I had to reallocate my inventory to accommodate 60 lbs of items and travel to a mine just so that some miners who were most likely slaves, could have their liquor.  What I didn't mind was that I was travelling to a part of Vvardenfell that I had not visited so I was exploring. 

So how long should a game be for it to be both entertaining and fulfilling?

I don't think there's a correct answer here.  

Some games work better as a five hour short story while other games, primarily sandbox games almost demand that they last 100+ hours.  And there-in lies one of my problems:  I like sandbox games.  GTA, The Elder Scrolls, I like these games and I like to experience the worlds and the people who populate them.  I recently just started the Assassin's Creed series and I can see Fable, Mass Effect and Dragon Age on the horizon and I know that I will spend as much time in those worlds as I have in others. 

What I have come to realize while putting down my thoughts, is that I am drawn to long, drawn out narratives.  While I do enjoy playing shorter games like Evoland, Dear Esther and Nightsky that may take up only a couple of hours, I also love spending hours upon hours being immersed in a world and it's fictional culture.  Sure, I'll play some games that I know that I can finish in an afternoon, but maybe with the exception of a few games that I cannot recall at the moment, but that doesn't make them any less worth playing.  Sometimes a game that can be played in short segments is just what I need between the doses of massive epic quests.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

I'm Not Ready To Make That Kind Of A Commitment

Full Review: Dead Island (PC)

What says "Christmas" more than being on a tropical island?  How about killing thousands (my total came out to 3,641) of zombies and their ilk?  That's where we will spend our post (albeit a day late).

50 hours, 38 minutes later, roughly, I completed the main campaign for Dead Island, playing as the fallen copper, Purna.  For my First Impressions of the game, you can read about that here.  This however will be the more traditional full-on-review.

STORY

As I mentioned in my FI, not comparing the game to the announcement trailer from 2011, the story in the game is somewhat lacking.  The game opens with your character waking up after a night of partying/binge drinking while on the fictional island of Banoi, off the coast of Australia/New Zealand/Papua New Guinea, hence all the Australian-esque accents.  When you come to, everything has gone to shit.  Zombies have very well established themselves as being a part of this island world.  It really feels like something that would have taken at least a couple of days to happen, but it appears that events happened only over night.

Throughout the game you are able to locate articles titled "Facts" although accessing them is something that I was unable to easily figure out.  You also find audio recordings left by a journalist.  At first it seems plausible that you just happen to be following the exact same path as this journalist-man, but when you find the last recording, why he is "there" doesn't make any sense.

There were some story elements told through cut-scenes that also didn't make much sense.  Thankfully this game didn't use cut-scenes to tell the story of the game (as if you were playing a movie), but were mainly used as transitions between pseudo-key events.  Even then, there were a couple of times when I felt that the cut-scenes were revealing information that I felt like I was supposed to have known earlier or would leave me confused as to what just happened.

Throughout the game, you travel between the beach side resort area, downtown Moresby, the jungle, laboratory facilities and an offshore prison.  The frequency of changing locations is nicely paced.  There's the first stage of getting used to an area, the second stage of being familiar enough that you know where you're going and the final stage of being tired of said area and wanting to go somewhere else.  Then there's the nostalgia factor when you revisit a previous area and you're happy again.  This is done very well here.

The game ended with a boss fight that also didn't make much sense.  It felt like it was tagged on at the end to give the game a Resident Evil feel to the end after the game was finished and some executive/producer said, "There's no boss fight?  Throw in a monster that we haven't really seen yet and have it be that guy.  Now rewrite that one part in the game so it makes sense why he's a bad guy, ignoring the 90% of the game up to that point."

GAMEPLAY

As previously stated, the controls took me a little bit to get used to, having just come from playing Left 4 Dead 2 and being familiar with that control setup.  The keyboard layout was "relayouted" and axis' were inverted and all was right as rain after an hour or so.

Now, I'm sure that somewhere online there are FAQs about how to properly build your character.  Yes, build.  Dead Island is an FPS with RPG skill tree elements.  As you kill zombies (and the occasional human with a gun), you gain experience points and level up.  When you level up you have three skill trees that focus on either special attacks,  or increasing HP, types of loot drops and increasing the integrity of weapon customization.

I already stated that I felt that certain aspects of Dead Island felt like it played like an online game, a claim which I am able to make not having played m/any online games.  But the fact that there were times when I would get mauled by one or two zombies (walkers, infected) and die very quickly, only to respawn seven seconds later.  I stand by my assertion that death wasn't something so much as something to be feared as it was something that was a great inconvenience.   During the final boss battle, I stopped caring about using my health packs as I knew that I could get a couple shots in with the shotgun and do a bit of damage before I died and especially since the boss did not regain any noticeable amount of health whenever I respawned.  I was basically an immortal god who just lost consciousness frequently.

GRAPHICS

I had no issues with the graphics.  There were two cut-scenes that skipped a bit, but nothing too distracting.  Overall, the game looked really good.  I wasn't going in expecting life-like semblances of limbs strewn about the place.

Regarding the zombies and their types, with the exception of the Butchers and Tanks, I felt that there was enough variation in who I was killing.  I liked that I didn't feel like I was killing the same five zombies over and over.  Also, depending on which area you were in, the clothing changed, although sometimes heads were reused, but that didn't bother me.

SOUND & MUSIC

I was very pleased with both the music and the sound effects used in the game.  Specific zombie growls were easily recognizable and when wearing headphones, it was a lot easier to tell from which direction the attacks were going to come from.  There was one particular sound effect that was never explained, which I kind of like, but at the same time, I wish that I knew what was going on.  Throughout the game (I think it was present in all areas) there was the sound as if a zombie (possibly a Thug) was being broadcast over a loudspeaker, possibly after having it's legs cut off.  I found that this sound was occasionally unnerving especially while trying avoid large groups of zombies.

FINAL THOUGHTS
I think it is safe to say that I enjoyed Dead Island as I spent 50 hours playing the game.  There were times when I got frustrated with the frequency of dying and respawning seven seconds later and felt as if I should be playing with other people online, combined with the 164 times I died, that works out to dying every 18 minutes.  At times, the game really felt like it was a mash-up of Skyrim and Left 4 Dead 2, which are two games that I really love playing and Dead Island did both of those games successfully, and while not a perfect combination of both games, it certainly achieved its goal, despite the weak ending.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Destination Chaos

First Impressions: Dead Island (PC)

I picked up Dead Island during Humble's Deep Silver Bundle which included a bunch of games that I've since forgotten about, and Dead Island with Dead Island: Riptide.  I started Dead Island one afternoon last month after playing L4D2 and wanting to play something else that I already had that contained those wacky zombies.  I remembered about Dead Island and remembered that amazing trailer from two years ago.  You know the one, not the E3 trailer, but the announcement trailer.  How could a game (an FPS at that) possibly live up to that trailer?  It can't.   There's too much good stuff that belongs in a TV miniseries or in a feature length movie that will not translate well into an FPS zombie video game.

The actual game on the other hand, I've really enjoyed, but there was a brief moment when I thought I would not make it past the hotel.  I played for just under an hour, which included time to tinker with the keyboard layout (inverting the mouse, changing the keys to more towards a L4D2 scheme) and making the 'jump', 'kick', 'crouch' keys more intuitive than the default settings.  Oh yes, the game is an FPS and no, I have not suffered from FPS yet.  I was also concerned with the sluggishness of the mouse in the menu screens.  Yes, I know about altering the mouse sensitivity, but in-game the mouse is perfect.  I was also worried because I couldn't sympathize with any of the characters, which I mounted up to the fact that I've never been to an island resort so I had no memorial-emotional attachment to the setting or the people who would inhabit said setting.  Does that make me a bad person?  I don't think so.

Well, 23 hours later, you could say that I've gotten over any and all initial hang ups I thought I would have with the game.  Having now entered Act II (of V), I have some brand new hang ups.  Let's bullet list this!

• Nearly everyone (zombies and non alike) is either in swimwear or ripped.  It is hard for me to sympathize or empathize with this particular group of people.
• However, in Act II when you move into the city of Moresby, people are dressed how you would expect them to dress in a 
• Dying is too "MMO" for my tastes.
• When you die, you loose a percentage of your money and respawn 7 seconds later at a nearby checkpoint/location.  Dying isn't so much something to fear as it is an inconvenience.

Okay, that's really my only hang up, now that I'm in Act II, which takes you from the beach front resort area to the inner/downtown city area of Moresby.  It's there that groups of zombies are introduced, compared to the very few and far between groups in the resort area.  In Act I, I died twice.  In Act II, I've died a lot more.  Even on "easy" fetch quests, I died four times climbing down a ladder that seemed to constantly have fast moving infected constantly respawn after every time I respawned, which I guess is only fair, but still frustrating.

There are a couple of other small things that I don't really like, such as randomly equipping bottles of alcohol when picking them up; it is difficult to "button" switch away from a firearm after throwing a combustible (propane tank); 

As for things that I really like about the game are thus:

• Combat is based heavily on melee weapons.
• Weapons become dull and damaged over a short amount of time, each with their own durability rating, but can still be repaired.
• Granted repairing a weapon costs money, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but that's suspension of disbelief during a zombie apocalypse.
• There are different classes of zombies, somewhat based on their degradation.  People who have been infected but haven't turned yet are fast moving (a la 28 Days Later).
• There are a couple other "classes" such as ones who seem to be releasing a lot of smoke/fumes who are very flammable, large bro-types who do more damage and take more damage to kill and some hulking ones in straightjackets who are basically like L4D2 Chargers.
• I feel the game doesn't take itself too seriously considering that snack bars and energy drinks are the most common form of health replenishers.
• The cast of characters (both zombie and non) are very diversified.  I can't see Techland getting into hot water over having to kill any kind of ethnic group or gender.  Everyone gets the chance to die and be killed in this game.
• I like the nods to other zombie-lore, such as:

being a reference to:

And, and, and, the standard walker/roamer/zombies are slowish moving in classic Romero style.  I really like that.  This was most likely done because so much of the game (at least Act I & II) is based around melee combat so having fast moving zombies a la L4D would make the game if not impossible, then at least very frustrating.

So that's where I'm at right now.  27 hours (I've played 4 hours since starting writing this) in now and I've got to get back to Banoi (which is one of the most real sounding fictional islands off the coast of Papua New Guinea that I've ever heard) and save the day, except not.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Falling Towards Nightly Terror

Monthly Update: October 2013

Does anyone else question this?  This is the third month that we've done a regular "Monthly Update" with the current month in the title, although most of what I've said in these articles has to do with the previous month.  And I have now just answered my own question.  What I've just said would most likely then be titled "Month in Review."  That is now out of the way.

So during the month of September, I really got into Dead Island.  After playing L4D2 quite a bit, I remembered that I had purchased Dead Island in one of the Humble Bundles and wanted to play something else with zombies.  At first I wasn't sure about the game, which needed some tweaking in the keyboard input department, but after that first questionable hour, I've managed to put in 21 hours and I only recently started Act II (~33% complete).  You can expect a First Impressions article to pop up within the next week.  I've put some time in on Torchlight II and Symphony, which will also get their own First Impressions, hopefully soon.

I also just entered the world of smartphones which I last talked about.  I also picked up the Humble Android Bundle 2, because now I have another outlet for my gaming needs/desires.  As I may've stated in my previous article, I don't see the new phone becoming my go-to for portable gaming, that will continue to be my 3DS.  But, that doesn't mean I won't use if for such purposes.

For those of you interested in miniatures, Reaper is doing a second Kickstarter to promote their Bones line of miniatures.  I got in on their first Kickstarter and came away with well over a hundred high quality plastic-ish minis.  This time around, instead of having multiple tiers, there's the "Thanks $1" tier and then a $100 tier and the earlier you support, the earlier you will get your shipment of (currently) 140 miniatures of varying sizes.  With only a week in, they are already over $1,000,000.  If I didn't already have a backlog of minis that I needed to paint then I would definitely get in on this Kickstarter again.  I just don't know if I would be able to swing it this time around.  With hope, there will always be Bones III next year.

Lastly, Conklederp got me Antichamber because she's awesome/amazing and because we've been together now for over half a decade.  I played the game for about half-an-hour before accidentally deleting my saved progress as I didn't initially know how to exit out of the game.  I know now.  I'll delving in that strange world again soon, probably with Conklederp watching or watching her play.

And I need to get back to playing Papo y Yo and Penumbra: Requiem, although those games are pretty similar in their execution of puzzle-platformers, so I may have to put one on the back burner (speaking of which, I need to go drink some coffee) until one is finished so I don't make myself completely puzzled out. 

So that's where I am, here at the beginning of October 2013.  Nothing too new or out of the ordinary, just plodding along when I'm not at work.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Instrumental