Video Game Maps: Turok, Dinosaur Hunter

When Turok the Dinosaur Hunter came out, there really weren't very many first person shooters (FPS) available for consoles.  And, compared to today, there weren't very many FPS in existence.  Turok was the first in the genre to be released for the Nintendo 64.  It featured over-the-top violence, combat vs dinosaurs and really cool weapons.  However, I think the most important feature, and most innovative, was the map overlay.  

Unlike other common map features, which might require you to pause the game and bring up a subscreen, or be confined to a circle in the corner of the screen, Turok's map was drawn over the screen while you played.  The small arrow representing the player was located in the center of the screen, and could also perform the role of an aiming reticle.    

Oddly enough, the method never seemed to take, and I don't know of any games outside the Turok series that used this map style since.  I really love this map.  When I play Turok, I find a really cool mental zone where I'm watching the scenery and watching the map at the same time.  It's almost like playing two games simultaneously, and it's really cool.  

It helps that Turok is full of wide open spaces not too many enemies. When I get into that meditative zone, it doesn't seem to take that long to traverse the enormous levels.

Game Review: RAGE (PC)

You know what, for games that have been out for a long time, I think I am just going to put out "Game Review" articles rather than the usual "Full Review."  I just find it easier to talk about how I played the game, what I liked about it than have a set form. . .although that sounds easier now that I think about it.  

Fuck it, game review it is!

The first time I booted up RAGE, I was unable to play it due to the game skipping every two or three seconds, which would make any game nigh on impossible to play.  Only after downloading an update for a number of my drivers was I able to play the game.  Prior playing though, I knew a bit of what I was getting myself into: a post apocalyptic FPS from the makers of Doom that included a driving element that received mixed reviews (the reviews that I read anyway).

Looking back at the game, there didn't really seem to be anything "breakthrough" about how the game played.  It was a basic FPS where you were supposed to kill anything when you weren't in a town and everything in the world was out to kill you.  There were a number of additions though to the standard FPS formula which included a few mini-games such as racing one of your three vehicles against computer controlled opponents and a game show where your kills earned you points resulting in monetary winnings.  The problem with the game-show portion was that you were required to use ammunition you bought and I often felt that the money I won from the show simply paid for the amount of ammunition I used.

There was a crafting system in the game that I used quite a bit and currently, that seems to be the "in" thing for adventure based video games.

There were hints of a larger story what with the Arcs (survival pod/structures designed to allow those inside to survive an near-extinction level event caused from the impact by the Apophis asteroid) that the Authority were trying to locate and who took on the roll of omnipresent antagonist who didn't really show up until the last quarter of the game.  The world however seemed to be a lot smaller and more canyon-like than I would have hoped for.  While you could travel between certain settlements and "dungeons," the paths were all very linear with not a whole lot of room for further exploration.  It was like being shown a map and told that you can only travel along the roads and the mountains are off limits.

Something that impressed me a bit was the enemy AI.  While a lot of their animations were programmed, they were still interesting to watch.  While hiding behind a crate, they would often peer over or around the box to get a better look at where you were then the would either lean out from behind the box and shoot at you, run to another source of cover, or just stick the gun out from cover and shoot in your general direction; or they might throw a grenade if they were written to have them equipped.  Even the different factions would have slightly different fighting styles.  The bandit group "The Ghosts" would often jump, roll and climb via monkey-bar-type bars around the stage while charging you making them more difficult to hit.

94.7% sure this is modeled after  Grand Central Station.

RAGE even managed to get around the disappearing bodies by having some of the enemies be mutants (due to crazy-radiation exposure I think) whose corpses would simply dissolve.  The downside to going up against mutants (who would only be in certain areas such as the game show and sewer/underground areas) was that they would never leave behind any loot.  They were fast little buggers too, but nothing a point blank shotgun blast to the face or a bladed boomerang couldn't fix.

So the driving element, I should talk about that before closing out.

Driving in RAGE is a semi-big part of the game as it allows you to get from one settlement/dungeon back to wherever your home base is.  The controls were pretty easy to get used to (WASD) and later vehicles (everything after the ATV here) had some sort of machine gun or rocket launcher.  There are a number of required driving story elements that while never too difficult (some races required repeat attempts), seemed a little bit out of place, but again, it was a nice element to see in an otherwise straight forward FPS.

The only other criticism I have with RAGE was that it seemed a bit short for the story they wanted to tell.  Okay, so ~30 hours may not seem like a short game, but I felt that the ending came rather abruptly and I was left hanging.  It was like finishing the last stage, being shown that you completed your objective. . .then what?  Was all right with the world?  I wanted to know more, or at the very least see a sequel that allowed for further exploration of the world.  Even with the Scorchers and Sewers DLC, I wanted more.

One aspect of the game that I did not explore was the online multiplayer.  It wasn't my sort of thing and I can only assume that one of the racing formats was included, the other being a deathmatch setup, possibly in the game-show arena setting.  I am just making conjectures here.

In the end, RAGE was definitely worth whatever I paid for it during a past Steam sale even without having played any of the multiplayer content because as you all know, that is just not my bag of Fritos.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Something With A Bit More Of A Beat

And they all lived happily ever after.  Right?

My Time With the Evolve Big Alpha Weekend [Part II]

Welcome to Part II of my exceedingly late posted experience with Turtle Rock Studios and 2K's #BigAlpha test weekend for the upcoming FPS MMO monster hunting game, Evolve.

Before I get into the actual gameplay, I will say that Saturday of the alpha weekend was spent exactly like Friday: trying to see if the game would start and being greeted with the Steam Service Component and Bootstrapping windows.  It was not until Sunday afternoon, right after I had put some chicken in the fridge to marinate for an hour, that the game booted up and I was able to play, so let the game begin!

For my first game, I was with two other human teammates (and one computer controlled teammate) playing against a human controlled monster in "The Dam" setting which was randomly selected.  I played the Tank (TF2: The Heavy).  Prior to actually being thrust into a game, I was given a brief video only tutorial on Markov's abilities, gun options, jump/boost jump and how to work with my teammates.  This I found to be very useful considering everyone I was teamed up with was above a 1, which is the level that I was at as I had yet to play the game.  Theoretically, I was teamed up with people who were at a similar skill level, so I'm not what that said about the people I played with, but ah well.

I'm not sure what the flying guy counter in the upper left is all about.

First off, the biggest issue I had while playing was lag with two possible causes.  The first cause being that computer was not up to snuff for the minimum requirements for the game.

• CPU
• Intel Pentium D 3GHz or higher
• AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual Core 6400 2.4 GHz or higher
• RAM: 4GB
• GPU:
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 or higher
• AMD Radeon 5770 or higher
• HDD: 15 GB install
• OS: Windows 7 64 bit

I will just say that my processor is old by today's processors standards, which is probably the main reason my the game jumped/lagged/skipped very frequently.  To note a 1.7GHz processor vs. a 2.4GHz.  Apparently those .7 GHz are very important.  The other possible cause was that our internet connection was lacking for a came/build of this caliber.  

For this reason, I often felt that I was behind the other players in my team.  I did manage to catch up with everyone and helped in the loosest sense of the word to take down the Monster.  I will say though that it was very difficult to lock on a shoot at an angry moving target while playing at something like 10 frames per second, maybe less.  After the match, I was shown the amount of damage I did with each weapon as well as a comparison to the rest of the world's average for playing as Markov as well as player/weapon mastery/progression.

As you can tell, I was not a very productive member of society for this particular match.

The next game, after "helping" to take down the Monster, I spent as the monster.  

Prior to playing as Goliath, I was shown another tutorial video about how to control the Monster, their special abilities and how to generally delay death.  I started off with three skill points that I could put into any four abilities: Fire Breath, Charge, Leap Smash and Rock Throw.  I recall putting two points in Fire Breath, one in Rock Throw.

In that first battle/hunt, I was unable to use Rock Throw to deal any damage as the Hunters were too quick.  I was able to breath some firey death upon the Hunters though.  And by "death" I mean some first and maybe second degree burns.  Sadly, no one died.

Unlike playing as one of the Hunters, playing as the Monster was in 3rd person, which was fine by me, but I could understand if some people were offput by this perspective considering that the rest of the game was in first person.  Additionally, despite being so much larger than the Hunters and being able to cover more ground at a faster speed, I was still hunted down like the proverbial rabid dog the Hunters saw me as.  It probably also did not help that I was unfamiliar with the setting as this time around I was playing not in The Dam but in the Fusion Plant.

Things did not pan out for me in that round, that very short round.  I lasted less than three minutes and had nothing to do with the pictures I was trying to take.  The second game (third overall and last game before I had to go and cook the chicken for dinner) lasted just over four minutes.  That game (of which no pictures exist from) went a little bit better.  I was able to hunt down some of the smaller wildlife and consumed them to build up my defense capabilities and heal some damage caused by the Hunters.

As was the case with playing as Markov, playing as Goliath resulted in the same graphical issues that I experienced.  Granted the graphics look great in the pictures that I was able to take, even with the video settings at their lowest possible settings the game still had significant troubles on my computer.  Enough so that I would not be buying the game unless I were to play a demo and found out that I could play the game in a playable capacity.

The word from Turtle Rock Studios is that the game that was available for the Big Alpha Weekend was only a single gameplay-type compared to what will be available in the official release.  I have read a bit on the Steam forums for Evolve that some people are concerned about the amount of content with the game running around $60.  I will admit that even with promised added maps, character skills and whatnot available upon release, I would be a little leary about spending that much for a multiplayer coop game.  The impression that I got was that it was like a coop game of Left 4 Dead 2 with no associated single player campaign option.  Maybe that will be part of the official release in February (10th to be specific), but for me, it may not be enough to warrant a release day purchase; even if my computer could handle the game without skipping.

Thanks for trudging through these last two posts, regular nonsense will commence on Wednesday with another MIDI Week Singles along with whatever Dr. Potts and I decided to babble about.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Did You Lose It In A Hateful Fight?

P.S.

In case you wanted a reason to buy Evolve, here are a lot of places/awards telling you that you should buy the game, which was a screen/advertisement of sorts after quitting the game.  So if you're one of those people who only buy popular games, I believe this one classifies.

My Time With the Evolve Big Alpha Weekend [Part I]

What follows is Part I of my foray into Turtle Rock Studios and 2K's Big Alpha release testing of their still in development game Evolve.

So the #BiGaLpHa weekend started out alright.  I downloaded the 14.8Gig file  over night from Thursday to Friday (of last week).  The game opened at 9am PST although I figured the servers would be flooded with people a la Elder Scrolls Online's beta weekend.  Around 11am I gave the game a go, and was greeted with a Steam pop up window showing me how far along my installation process was?

After a few seconds of looking at this window, I became disappointed as I was then greeted with another Steam pop up window telling me that I had to download some service something-or-other first.

"Okay, since this is from Steam, I'll take it as legit," is what my brain told me.  So I thought I would install whatever service I was apparently now missing, but then this happened:

That damn Bootstrapper again!  So I had to close down Steam, but thankfully the previous result with the Bootstrapper did not happen again.  Whew!

An hour or so later, I tried again, just for shits and giggles.  This time the installation window that popped up started at 1%, then progressed to 24%, 30%, 62% and all the way up to 100%.  And the game started.  Whew!!

I was excited if you couldn't tell from the extra exclamation mark.  The game, or at least the menu was running smoothly with the monster in the background, breathing with its mandibles occasionally reaching out away from it's mouth in a way that implies smooth movement (having already used "smooth" earlier in the sentence).  I went into the options, did the obligatory switching of the axis for the mouse/y-axis, changed the video settings from "High" down to "Low" as I was 99% sure that my little laptop wouldn't be able to handle graphics of this potential caliber.  Then I clicked "Play" and was brought to the character selection screen.

I wasn't really sure what the jobs meant, aside from Assault (Tank) and Medic (Medic) and those were roles that I wasn't comfortable playing on my first playthrough.  My thought process was that playing a role that I wasn't familiar with would be excusable if I were to fuck up the rest of the people I was playing with.  So I clicked "Accept" and patiently waited to be put into a group.

After 20 minutes I was kicked out for "inactivity."  I thought, maybe it was because I actually didn't touch my computer in those 20 minutes of waiting (and reading a textbook).  So, I re-entered the waiting queue room place:

Another 25 minutes later I was kicked out of the waiting room due to inactivity, although this time I was sure to move my mouse around every 5 minutes (I had a timer running).  I know that I could have just clicked the "Back" button every so often to try and reset the waiting room, but I figured that since Turtle Rock and 2K were testing server capacity, that I would just let the game try and find a group for me.  Testing doesn't always mean being able to play a functioning product and my time with The Elder Scrolls Online beta test taught me this.

In total, I waited 1 hour 18 minutes and was kicked out three times (once was because the phone rang and temporarily killed our internet connection).  After that first taste of what was to be Evolve, I tried multiple times to log back into the game, but each time I was greeted with the first "Completing Installation. . . 1%" before being told that I needed to download the Steam service component whereby I can either hit "cancel" and I could forget about playing or click "Download" and have the bootstrapping error come up, and forget about playing.

The #BigAlpha weekend lasted from Friday October 31st until Sunday November 2nd and the article for Monday will include the 30 minutes I was able to spend actually playing the game.

Have a wonderful weekend.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

We Bring Forth Monstrous Birth

MIDI Week Singles: "City Zone" - Faceball 2000 (SNES)

"City Zone" from Faceball 2000 on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (1992).

No official soundtrack release

Composer: George "The Fat Man" Sanger

Developed by: Xanath Software F/X

Unsurprisingly, there is not a whole lot of music from Faceball 2000 out there in the Interlands.  There are even fewer videos up on Youtube to pull music from.  The music from Faceball 2000 was composed by George "The Fat Man" Sanger, who also composed the music for all other iterations of this game that previously came out on the Gameboy and Atari ST (1987 and 1991 respectively).

What I find interesting for myself, is that I never owned any version of Faceball 2000, but played the hell out of the copy that Dr. Potts had on the SNES.  I could probably still never sing you any of the songs from game as they are all odd in both their melody and cadance.  But, but, BUT, I still find them all catchy and make me feel like a 12 year old all over again, maybe riding my bike over to Dr. Potts house for a weekend of video gaming and pb&jers.

It is most likely one of those songs that unless you grew up playing this game, you may run the high risk of not only not liking this song or the rest of the music from the game, but find it grating on your ears.  Just throw in a bunch of "BOW" sound effects and you'll be right at home.  Nevertheless, I still like it, which is how and why "City Zone" found its way here to MIDI Week Singles.  

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Instrumental

P.S.  And if anyone out there actually has all the MIDI or mp3 files for this game, let me know, as I seem to be unable to locate them out there in the hinterlands.

First Impressions: SCP - Containment Breach (PC)

I am not sure where I first heard about SCP - Containment Breach, although it might have been through some mention on the Frictional Games blog or from the Precursor Games' forums, I am not 100% sure.  Wherever I heard about this game, I am thankful that I have.  In short, "SCP is a survival horror [free to play] game based on the works of the SCP Foundation", which really does not tell you much as to what the game is about.  The SCP Foundation can be summed up by their mission statement, which also puts you in the frame of mind for the game:

Secure: The Foundation secures anomalies with the goal of preventing them from falling into the hands of civilian or rival agencies, through extensive observation and surveillance and by acting to intercept such anomalies at the earliest opportunity.

Contain: The Foundation contains anomalies with the goal of preventing their influence or effects from spreading, by either relocating, concealing, or dismantling such anomalies or by suppressing or preventing public dissemination of knowledge thereof. 

Protect: The Foundation protects humanity from the effects of such anomalies as well as the anomalies themselves until such time that they are either fully understood or new theories of science can be devised based on their properties and behavior. The Foundation may also neutralize or destroy anomalies as an option of last resort, if they are determined to be too dangerous to be contained.

One downside is that the game is not available through Steam and does not seem to like to run through the Steam browser.  Each time I have tried loading/running the game through Steam, the game crashes after I finish with the setup window and says that there is a "Memory Access Violation."  There is a work around in the ReadMe file, but again, running through Steam does not seem to work, so playing is done the old fashioned way by double clicking on the application icon; so much work.

Part of what drew me into the game was that during the loading screen, I was introduced to one of the entities/artifacts located within the SCP Foundations compound, specifically SCP-012.

Just a picture and a couple of sentences containing bits of lore about an object.  It reminded me a lot of  H.P. Lovecraft and Arthur Machen, albeit a bit darker with a modern flair.  I like there is the hint of deeper and more in depth lore than is being presented to the player

SCP is played in first person with WASD for controls, Tab for the inventory menu, and spacebar for blinking.  Yes, blinking.  Blinking apparently is a key function of how things operate and how some events are triggered in the game.  There is even a blink meter that will force you to blink when the meter runs down.  Or, again, you can blink by pressing the spacebar.  This is how I was apparently killed (and nearly browned my shorts) during my first play/die-through.  I blinked and the entity that was across the room, hovering over two mutilated corpses a second ago, was now standing in front of me and promptly did the same to my fleshy form.  You can also find objects to pick up and combine items to create new concoctions, but I will have to figure out how to not die the next time I go in.

So I played, maybe five minutes of the game before I was killed.  At first I thought this was supposed to happen, then I realized that dying is what happens, just like any game, when you do not do something that you were supposed to have done.  I take it as just part of the process of learning the game and mechanics.  It feels like this game is designed to be played over and over knowing that you could be killed at any moment because of the way a creature reacts to the player.  There is the feeling of constantly learning to not die the next time through.

I am also having the problem that when I try and take an/the elevator up one floor, I am assuming to the next area, the game crashes.  I have tried closing down all other programs and even tried running around the room with the elevator doors to see if the game will not crash for some reason, but every time, the game crashes during the loading screen on my way up to the next floor.  I will have to figure out what to do next or what is going on to proceed it would seem.

I know that I have just barely scratched the gooey surface of what this game is and what is contained within its locked vaults, but I rarely feel this excited about a game having played not even 10 minutes.  And because the game seems to be updated and patched every so often with content created by community members, the game could hypothetically go on indefinitely, unless there is an endgame in mind (such as escaping the facility), but that could simply be modded too. 



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
There's No Escape, That's What They Say

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

Second Impressions & Review: Mirror's Edge (PC)

Whew!  Finally finished that game and it only took me nine hours, which is a bit less than I was expecting, but honestly, I am just glad that I am not being shot at by any more of the police.  As I did with my review (of sorts) of Dead Space, I do not plan on putting my my standard "Full Review," but instead my thoughts about the game and hopefully, I will not be repeating myself from what either myself or Dr. Potts have already said.

First off, Mirror's Edge was a very fun game with the level of fun being conducive to a couple of factors that I have worked into a handy dandy flowchart.

That is pretty much about it.  While I was indoors, I noticed that a lot of the levels were puzzle heavy., needing to figure out where to jump and how to get to where I am supposed to be going held a certain level of interest, but I quickly felt confined and claustrophobic.  I wanted to be outside, in the open smog-less air of The City.  Being indoors also meant that there was a good chance that Merc would call you up on your earpiece radio to let you know that there were some Blues on their way and they did not look like they were in the mood to exchange pleasantries.

One level in particular I had an increasingly difficult time with.  If you would rather watch how the level was supposed to be played, you can watch it here, otherwise you can finish reading about how I could usually manage a few jumps before I had to revert to watching the video to figure out where I was supposed to go next.  Considering how much of the game, by this point, has the player conditioned to look for red as a way of letting you know which way to go or to "jump off of this thing to go over there", the inside building portion of Chapter 8: Kate became the antithesis of fun even though there were no Blues in this portion of the stage.

The fighting in the game I also felt that I was never able to get a good grasp with.  Even just watching Faith in the loading screens made me feel that I was doing something drastically wrong when it came to hand-to-hand combat.  I always felt that I should be that adept at taking out Blues, but I ended up being very clumsy with my punches and attempts to disarm. Oh yes, while being shot at because those bastards were hardly alone.  Often times I would "simply" take down a guard, take his gun then play Mirror's Edge like I would any other FPS action shooter and take out the guards before going back to running.  With hope, the trailer from this year's E3 has hinted to a more streamlined and less annoying (meaning someone who sucks at the hand-to-hand combat) attacks and takedowns for Faith to execute.

As you can tell from the flowchart, any level where I was outside and not being shot at, I felt that the game excelled here and I would have really liked an entire game of just going from Point A to Point B.  I wanted more of that.

Another aspect of the game that I found semi-intriguing and liked was the use of animation for the cutscenes.  At first, the difference between the in-game landscape and the cutscene animation was a little jarring, but ultimately I liked it.

There was cutscene of sorts at the end of the game involving two characters that used the regular in-game graphics and not the stylized animation  and while I feel that that worked for the flow of the stage, I felt like I was missing the look that I had become accustomed to over the course of the game.  But, since the scene happened in the middle of a level, I understood the reasoning behind the decision.

At some point while playing, I did find out that there was a DLC map pack that EA Games released, but it looks like it is only for 360/PS3 owners and (maybe?) for people who bought the game through Origins as opposed to Steam.  This is sad because an obstacle course (without Blues) is something that I would love to play with, but I am not about to spend money on a console to buy a game (I already have) to then buy DLC.  I am not that hard up for a $4.99 DLC but I hope that sometime similar is included in the retail PC release of Mirror's Edge 2.

I think if I chalk Mirror's Edge up to a great "first attempt" then I feel there is a good chance that the sequel, when it is released in April 2016, will be spectacular in the strictest sense of the word.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Looking For Something To Believe In

First Impressions: Mirror's Edge & Bioshock 2

Dr. Potts has already talked a bit about Mirror's Edge so I won't go into a whole lot of detail about the game, just my general thoughts after having played for just about four hours.  And last month (technically in March), SneakyTiki got me Bioshock Infinite for my Nameday so that influenced me to have a go at Bioshock 2 and after five hours, I would like to talk at you about it.  Yes, I ended a sentence with it.  Again.

I can fully understand the appeal of this game as it fulfills one of the core reasons why I play video games: Mirror's Edge allows me to do something I cannot do in real life.  

Presently, I have played through the tutorial and, I think, the first four levels.  The tutorial threw a lot at me, almost too much for my liking.  I agree with Dr. Potts that Portal does a better job of introducing the player to game mechanics and I feel that the tutorial stage should have been a whole series of levels and not just a series of jumps (good, now you know that one), wall climbs (now you know that one), falling rolls (good, you didn't die, moving on) and wall-to-wall jumps (did you accidentally make it up the wall and not really know what you did, that's okay, moving on).  And that's just dealing with the terrain.  You are also given a very rudimentary crash course in assailants, disarming said assailants and avoiding them.  The tutorial/training course takes maybe 10 minutes and at the end, I feel like the game expects that I now have a firm grasp on being able to complete the game.  Not true, at least in my case.

So far, I get the impression that the game is broken up into sections.  First, there are the sections where you are chased by Blues (coppers) and shot at extensively by them and helicopters.  I somewhat understand them being included so that the player doesn't linger and they add a sense of urgency to get through the stage.  The down side is that I am not having fun.  I feel like these stages I could play in any first person video game and are not special to Mirror's Edge.  The other sections are chase stages, where you have to get from point A to point B while following someone who is just a hair faster than you.  There is still that same sense of urgency, but instead of being shot at, you run the risk of losing sight of your target.  This is what is keeping me playing the game, to have the chance to free run through a level with the only threat of death being my own stupidity as I jump a fence only to fall thirty flights down and hear by bones shatter and body splat as it greets the pavement.

One very interesting thing that I had to do with the game was lower a lot of the video settings.  This game came out back in 2008 and I would like to believe that my laptop is capable of running a game that was released four years before  the components were created could handle the graphic requirements.  Initially I had "everything" turned up to max (except Anti-aliasing which was at 2x), but I began experiencing sever lag whenever I was being shot at by more than one source.  The skipping/lag became so bad that I was unable to time my jumps, which is a rather important ability in a game that centers around parkour.  I then went back into the settings and turned down texture detail and graphics quality to medium and was forced to turn off anti-aliasing and "phy sx" support.  I can now play the game while being shot at by five coppers and a helicopter without having to worry if the game is going to start skipping as I approach that highlighted red board leaning haphazardly over the side of the building leading me to that other building across the street and two stories down.

Oh, and lastly, I have noticed, perhaps not too surprisingly, that I get motion sickness after playing for about 3o minutes.  The effect is more pronounced when I play on my laptop, but on the TV, I can play for about an hour.  So there's that too.

I won't talk to much about Bioshock 2 as I ended up talking more about Mirror's Edge than I had planned and I don't feel like editing down or breaking this up into two posts.  In short, I am very much enjoying Bioshock 2.  I have played about five hours and after the initial disorientation at the beginning, I am having a lot of fun.  I enjoy being back in Rapture and once I figured out that the prologue takes place before the first Bioshock and then the rest of the game begins after those events, I was able to enjoy the game even more.

What I find interesting, is that I had a preconceived notion/impression that Bioshock 2 received bad reviews.  That people did not like taking control of a Big Daddy, that the gameplay was redundant of the first game, that the story did not offer anything new to the world of Rapture and that the game needed a constant internet connection all played towards the game being a disappointing followup to the masterpiece that was the first Bioshock.

As it turns out, at least according to Wikipedia, Bioshock 2 was actually a very good game that expands on the universe.  As is the case with any game, there are going to be negative reviews so maybe that was where my pre-playing impression originated from.  So it turns out I am not as alone as I thought I was going to be by stating that I am currently liking what Bioshock 2 has offered in the way of story, game play, voice acting and music.  It feels good to be back in Rapture.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

While I Look Around For My Possibility

First Impressions: Slender: The Arrival (PC)

Slender: The Arrival is a full fledged version of the free game, Sleder: The Eight Pages that scared the shit out of the internet back in 2012.  For those of you all who are not familiar with the Slender Man mythos, you can read about it either on Wikipedia or any other numerous websites, but in short, Slender Man is a variant on a bogeyman who takes children.

Original pictures by Victor Surge, 2009.

So, what started out as a couple of short sentences in a "create your own paranormal image" thread has turned into a pseudo-legitimate urban legend with it's own cultish-type following, as well as two video games, Slender: The Eight Pages, in which you wandered around an enclosed forested area and picked up eight pages placed randomly on landmarks all the while avoiding the Slender Man.  And now, it's current full fledged iteration from Blue Isle Studios, Slender: The Arrival, which was released back in March, 2013.

I gave this game a go a few weeks back at the request of Conklederp wanting me to play a scary/horror game that had a story.  Both of us really enjoyed playing/watching each other having a go at Slender: The Eight Pages, so I began this new iteration only knowing that the full game had been expanded but not much else..

Slender: The Arrival, like it's predecessor is an FPS/POV horror game where you have to collect items/pages/documents as you progress through the level/stage.  You can walk briskly and sprint, look around with or without a flashlight (once you find one which is a nice touch) and pick up papers.  The game itself is pretty basic and the mechanics have pretty much stayed the same from the first game to this one, which is nice since they are trying to keep, maintain and grow the original fan base.

It turns out that my first playthough (I did not make it through Chapter 1) I accidentally accessed a secret hidden level, which Conklederp and I thought was a really elaborate glitch, but equally creepy and unnerving in it's own way.  The second time playing, I completed Chapter 1 and made it through part of Chapter 2 before I was "caught".  I feel like I am now stuck at Chapter 2, but just mentally stuck.

Chapter 2 is a modified version of Slender: The Eight Pages.  The chapter title is even called "The Eight Pages."  But what's that you say?  Isn't the whole game a modified version?  Well yes, but The Arrival is like an expansion as a whole, where as Chapter 2 in The Arrival, you are in an enclosed wooded area where you have to collect, I assume, eight pages before you can proceed while being "chased" by the Slender Man.

This is where I become mentally stuck.  I played The Eight Pages quite a few times and each time I failed to collect all eight pages as I would either be caught after locating X:8 pages or my flashlight would go out and inevitably be caught as I stumbled around in the darkness.  I would like to assume that this area in the game is easier than the whole of The Eight Pages, otherwise I just ran into a brick wall that I am not willing to spend a whole lot of time on figuring out how to climb over or dig under.

Jesus I hope I can't see it!

So that is where I am currently at with Slender: The Arrival.  I like that there is an attempt to create a story where there was very little to begin with and what I have played I really enjoyed.  The graphics are well done and the controls are your standard FPS PC WASD set up so as long as you're comfortable with the Left Shift being used for sprinting, then you are all set to go.  As long as you don't mind being scared by static, as if kids these days even know what static is.


~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
You Better Get Up While You Can