asgaard

BioShock 2 review

Sat, 30 Mar 13 19:58:20 +0000

The first thing I'm going to say about BioShock 2 is that it's encumbered with "Games for Windows Live", and due to this, my steam copy was unplayable until I downloaded a third party DLL to disable GFWL, which was just giving me unhelpful error messages. Maybe I was unlucky and for everyone else it works fine, but a quick glance at the Steam forums suggests not.

I like BioShock 1. A lot. I also like BioShock 2, because it's much the same.

You [minor spoilers] play as a Big Daddy called Subject Delta. Your little sister is Eleanor Lamb, who just so happens to be the daughter of Sofia Lamb, who filled the power gap left by Andrew Ryan. Ryan was something of a literary masterpiece, which makes it doubly unusual for him to be encountered in a game. Sofia Lamb has turned Ryan's libertarian dystopia into something that's equal parts strange communist religion and insect hive. She has done this roughly in the same way Ryan built the place originally; she appeals to the shortcomings of their daily lives with a huge overhaul which turns out to better two ways and worse in about a million. She goes a bit crazy in search of her ultimate selfless utopia, and decides that (other people's) consciousness and desires are overrated.

The problem with sequels is that it's hard for them to live up to the original, regardless of how good they are. Especially when there's nothing in the original that really demands a follow up story. And this is the case with BioShock 2. Sofia Lamb is a strong character, but she can't live up to Andrew Ryan. It's unfair to dismiss her on that basis, because she's still 10 times better written than most game and indeed film and book characters. Her voice acting is also superb, with her presented as a fiercely intelligent woman who believes resolutely in what she's doing, for whom the ends justify the means. She is strangely charismatic, but not in a glossy political way. She wants to make the world a better place. She's thoroughly insane, but not a cartoon villain. But Andrew Ryan was all of that too, she's just a communist.

That's not to say all the writing is great, it is occasionally undermined by bits that make you say "uhh, what?", but most of it's solid. Ryan hasn't completely disappeared - he's still present through his audio diaries, but you get a much more 'personal' side of him. Behind the propaganda, he's depicted as a man becoming more and more weary as things go wrong around him. Sofia Lamb's existence being one such thing.

The core experience is largely unchanged. Atlas has been replaced with someone called Sinclair, who gives you helpful hints via the radio. Sinclair is a great character; unlike Atlas, it's pretty clear he's not entirely honest, but there's something likeable about him anyway. You originally hook up with him via our old friend Dr Tenenbaum, but then Tenenbaum seems to disappear off the grid, which is a bit of a missed opportunity.

In terms of game-play there are a few changes. Our stock early guns still get partly obsoleted by opponents' unlikely ability to absorb bullets more effectively as the game goes on, but on the other hand, we get an uber-powerful speargun which provides us with hilarious weightless rag-doll physics. The plasmid/weapon system has been streamlined so you can use both at once, but this means switching plasmids is a pain, because your mousewheel only switches weapons. This might be for the best, with the right plasmid selection you do become ridiculously powerful. Hint: if you get Insect Swarm and Summon Turret, you might never have to fire another bullet (spear) again...

The game's conclusion and morality dimension is played out much better in BioShock 2. One of my problems with 1 was that there were basically only two endings, and although I spent three quarters of the game being 'nice', I still got told I was more-evil-than-Satan, which just didn't gel at all. BioShock 2 handles the ending better, and gives the player more varied opportunities to affect it. Although there are changes of pace, unlike the first game, BioShock 2 keeps it together all the way through.

BioShock 2 experiences and Games For Windows Live

Sun, 24 Mar 13 16:38:43 +0000

Download from Steam.
Run BioShock 2
Steam pops up and tells me "this is a CD code you'll need to enter". Guys, I bought it from Steam. The whole point of CD codes was to stop me from copying the CD ... ah never mind. Enter CD code. Expect BioShock 2 to appear.
BioShock 2 does not appear. What appears instead is an ugly Windows dialogue box telling me to enter my CD code so something called SecureROM can "activate" my copy. This is marketing speak for asking some remote server which may disappear at any point for permission to play the game I legally own.
It activates and launches BioShock2. At which point a big "Games for Windows live" browser appears at the top of the screen. It tells me to create an account, which boots me out of BioShock and into Internet Explorer (not even my default browser). Realise I already have a Microsoft passport thing, let's use that instead. I go back into the game.
Games for Windows live asks me to sign in and accepts my existing details. Then it makes me enter my CD key (AGAIN!).
Games for Windows live tells me there's an update. It won't let me play until it's updated. It runs something and asks me to quit.
I quit and then some install process runs.
Restart game. Windows live asks me to sign in. It hasn't remembered my password, despite being told to.
Windows live tells me there's an update, tells me I can't play until it's updated... deja vu. Download and restart game.
Windows live pops up and asks me to sign in. It has remembered my password this time, but hasn't auto-signed me in like I told it to.
Windows live tells me to wait while it downloads my "profile".
"Games for Windows(R) - LIVE Client has stopped working." BioShock 2 still running, Windows live browser still open inside BioShock.
"There is a new terms of service for Games For Windows Live, you must accept this before I can let you go on any further".
Generic windows live error message, probably because it crashed.
Restart BioShock2. At this point Steam tells me I've "played" 22 minutes.
Windows Live has remembered a profile called "LissomLawyer33". When I click it it seems to have my email address. I have absolutely zero idea why it's called me LissomLawyer33.
Windows Live error message. "You will now be returned to the title screen [yes]"
Do some Googling, remove GFWL from Control Panel => Programs and features (Look under Microsoft)
Download newer GFWL from xboxlive.com, despite not having an XBox, nor understanding what this has to do with XBox.
Same problem - starting to consider looking on the Pirate Bay now...
Eventually find a DLL that removes GFWL, from Timeslip.

45 minutes after thinking "I'll play some BioShock 2", I am now playing BioShock 2. I am grateful to Timeslip for using his (or her) free time and considerable skills to create the DLL, but the fact it is necessary for me to use a third party DLL to be able to play the game is mind boggling.

BioShock review

Mon, 18 Mar 13 20:42:50 +0000

BioShock is a pretty weird game. I'm massively out of date because I'm talking about the first one. I've never played it before; I had some technical issues with it previously, and I've only just got around to it. I had another go, and after getting sound to work, (bizarrely by plugging in a microphone,) I don't regret it.

You are [someone], you find yourself in a strange underwater city called Rapture, and in general FPS fashion, some Irish guy called Atlas starts talking to you on a radio and decides you should save his family for him since he's useless and depends on the help of random strangers. He introduces you to Rapture and points out the crazy drug induced psychopaths who want to kill you, then advises you get drugged up yourself because it gives you superpowers. Your character happily obliges by dramatically plunging needle after needle into his arm with no apparent regard for the fragility or cleanliness of the average hypodermic needle that you might find lying around a ruined city. And as luck would have it, it's impossible to not follow Atlas's quest because all the other doors are locked.

Despite the lazy setup it's quite engaging. Rapture is wonderfully developed; it's a city founded by a man called Andrew Ryan (the partial anagram of Ayn Rand is probably not coincidental...), an extreme right wing libertarian type who wants to get away from pesky government regulations and run a truly free-market capitalist utopia. Rapture is founded on the principle that a man should be entitled to monetise the sweat of his brow, his own property, and indeed the city's oxygen supply.

Unsurprisingly for a community founded on personal greed, it goes bad and things end up in a bit of a mess. The game's back story is fed to you by Atlas and through the perspective of other characters via audio diaries they helpfully leave around, incriminating themselves in all sorts of things. It's rare to play an FPS, no scratch that, a game, with such a well delivered and intriguing plot. It's also rare to play a plot-heavy game which manages to convey its story without breaking the player from the game with cutscenes.

The core gameplay itself is fairly standard FPS stuff with a hint of RPG. You wander around fairly non-linear trying to satisfy fairly linear goals while picking up ammo and supplies that have been helpfully scattered around for a maruadering invader like yourself to pick up and utilise against Rapture. You also get drug induced super powers.

The combat itself is a bit clunky and a bit fast, it plays too much like a Quake 3 deathmatch to pretend it has any real tactics behind it, but on the other hand, ammo is in fairly short supply so you do have to be a bit careful. The exciting part of the game is upgrading your superpowers which you do by harvesting something called ADAM, which seems to involve murdering small children. Supposedly this presents a moral quandary for the player; you can either rescue the small girls and receive less ADAM or kill them and receive full ADAM. The little girls, however, aren't really little girls, but are instead strange monsters cultivated inside small girls by a nutcase German (of course) scientist, and they're rather creepy. Quandary averted.

Like most games that start off so well, BioShock does go downhill a bit towards the end. To increase the difficulty, it does the standard lazy FPS thing of making enemies soak up damage more readily. It just seems a bit ridiculous to unload a full Thompson clip in someone's face for them to go "Ha ha ha!" at you. Then there's an escort mission. Then there's a multi-stage boss fight, i.e. you kill him. And then you kill him again. And then you kill him again. This is lazy and frustrating. Aren't we past this yet? And for some reason the final boss more closely resembles Darth Sion (sleeps-with-vibroblades) from Knights Of The Old Republic than anything you've seen up to this point.

The story strays too far into cliched cartoon baddies who put on a cliched evil voice when they talk to you. The masterfully created Andrew Ryan, who was essentially a naive and deluded person trying to make the world a better place, gives way to a standard evil bad guy trying to make the world a worse place. This is what we call "Star Wars morality", and it works quite well when we're 9 years old but less well thereafter.

The ending, unless you were either lawful good or chaotic evil, makes absolutely no sense and is a bit of a letdown. Again, the binary good/evil state is at odds with Ryan. Especially considering how hard I worked on the escort mission to keep my companion alive in the face of zombie bullet sponges.

In any case, for most of the game, BioShock's gameplay is solid and its world and setting are very strong. Its world is most obviously comparable to that of the Fallout universe, partly because depending on your point of view it either nods towards or directly plagiarises it, but also because it's a solid atmosphere with a strong retro art direction.

Most games struggle to forge their own style. BioShock doesn't.

Probably 8/10. The 2 points knocked off for the story degradation towards the end, the fact the game overuses darkness for "atmosphere", which gets annoying after a while (and makes screenshots look rubbish), and how annoying it can be to switch between weapons/plasmids/ammo in fights.

Tropico

Mon, 11 Mar 13 22:47:06 +0000

With the recent SimCity debacle, and Valve's not so subtle decision to put Tropico 4 on sale for a week, you might be wondering if Tropico is any good. It looks fairly good, but it doesn't seem to have the marketing that AAA titles do, so maybe it's rubbish, yes?

The answer is a resounding no. Tropico is great. All your suspicions demonstrate is how vulnerable you are to exploitation by marketers in an industry saturated with misleading advertising. Which, ironically enough, is a property that would make El Presidente value you as an co-inhabitant of his little spot of paradise.

Tropico is a real gem of a game.

Tropico has character. Not just your character, El Presidente, a strangely lovable Banana Republic dictator, the magnitude of whose ambitions are matched only by the magnitude of his facial hair. No. There are many other characters too. Like Penultimo - your hapless second in command, Sunny Flowers - the resident hippy radio host, and Antonio Lopez - a man so serious about capitalism that he made extra space under his chart to show you how quickly the markets were collapsing.

But that's not really what I meant by character...

It's not really a sandbox city simulator, although town planning certainly plays a big part, it's much more a story driven game. The plot unfolds throughout each mission in comically ridiculous ways with comically ridiculous racially stereotyped characters with silly accents. "El Presidente, the mighty Chinese dragon is hungry for your goods". It's all very very tongue in cheek and adds a wholly different and entertaining view onto a solid management game. And the well made and fairly long story campaign adds much more focus over a more sandbox oriented game.

It's rare that I'm entirely positive about a game, but there's not a lot you can criticise Tropcio for; it's well made, it's stable, it's original, and it's really enjoyable. Oh yes, and the music is top notch.

Possible downsides are that it's a bit complicated to start off with (although the campaign eases you in, if you pay attention, and there are tutorials, and a PDF manual on Steam).You also need a (free) Kalypso account, but once done it's unintrusive and there's no additional DRM beyond Steam.

To put it in perspective, I bought Tropico 4 in a Steam sale over the summer, and 9 months later I still boot it up sometimes. Now that all the DLC are on sale too, I've bought them also. You get a lot of value for money with Tropico. As an extra bonus, it's graphically unintensive while not being ugly, and should therefore run on most non-ancient PCs.

I can't recommend Tropico 4 enough. It's great.

By the way, if you missed the Steam sale and don't want to pay full price, wait a bit. It seems to go on sale every few months.

Bored of PlanetSide 2

Wed, 06 Mar 13 19:48:54 +0000

I am largely bored of PlanetSide now.

For a supposedly open ended MMO game, it hasn't held me captivated for long.

I think the main problems are:

it's pointless

The game has no real objective. On the micro scale, you shoot people. On the macro scale, you trade territory.

In reality, SOE have created an XP farming game, where you build up XP at a snail's pace in the hope of being able to unlock something next week which allows you to play with more variety.

everything is about an order of magnitude too expensive

Both in terms of real cash and XP, the pricing is ridiculous. £7 for a virtual weapon?! I think I'll pass. Most weapons are 1000 certs (1 cert = 250XP), and you earn about 30-40 certs an hour. Do the arithmetic. It's awful.

it's unstable / buggy

It's unstable in several ways:

SOE change the rules often so you never know where you stand with a particular weapon. I'm currently sitting on 1500 certs because I don't feel confident spending any significant portion of them.
It's unstable in that the servers go down at peak times far too often (once every few weeks on average)
It's unstable in that patches generally break things, which tend to remain broken for quite a while afterwards. SOE are simply bad at software engineering.

And there are incredibly irritating bugs that never get fixed. My favourite is the random mute 'feature'. I regularly find the game has decided to mute members of my outfit, forcing me to manually unmute them. How does this even happen?!

A side effect of this is the number of hackers. It's not amazingly fun to get killed by people who are under the terrain or inside a wall. You'd think the game would be able to tell when someone was under the terrain, but apparently not.

there are plenty of other minor issues...

A lot of the time it's just not very fun. Rolling with an outfit helps for a while, but often you're just one zerg versus another. Other times you're sat at the warpgate for 10 minutes while your outfit tries to get itself together. Or you're running around capping territory that doesn't matter and that nobody's defending, which will be re-capped in 30 minutes when their zerg cottons on, and the only obvious reason to do it is to earn precious certs.

SOE have carefully cultivated this game to make the player continually chase after certs for unlocks. The extensive amount of unlocks and the painfully slow rate at which you can acquire them appears to be their strategy for longevity. But once you get past the fancy light effects and the large scale of the game, there's not really a lot else there other than XP grinding.

It's a shame that so many games now need unlocks and other gimmicks and manipulate the player into attaining them. Back in the old days, people played thousands of hours of Counter-Strike on the strength of CS as a game, not because they were forever chasing experience points.

SimCity, regional release dates and pre-ordering

Tue, 05 Mar 13 22:36:02 +0000

The much anticipated SimCity release seems to have turned into a bit of a damp squib. The gaming press love it but everyone less likely to have been bribed/threatened doesn't. Ars Technica especially think it's a bit rubbish, and they're far more reliable than dedicated gaming sites.

There are a lot of people on r/gaming and r/games who are upset that they pre-ordered it and are being hit by unreasonable DRM problems which make it impossible to play the game. The Amazon.com reviews are consistently terrible, too.

For some reason, there's an artificial delay in the UK release until Friday. Which nicely gives everyone the chance to cancel their pre-orders. Good guy EA memes incoming?

I was hesitantly looking forward to SimCity ever since I read a preview, if you can call it that, on none other than Ars around a year ago. They framed it to sound fantastic. I even liked the idea of giving it online components. If they've done it right (i.e. not made it into a traditional multiplayer game, not some shallow Facebookesque 'social' game, and made it optional to people who want real single player), that could be great.

Unfortunately I'll probably never know. I'm not buying anything with always-on DRM, and I'm not buying anything on Origin (I'm already tied into Steam, I don't need another problem thankyouverymuch). Plus, at £45 on Origin... err, no. Wasn't CliffyB telling us a few days ago that games hadn't adjusted for inflation? Haven't adjusted, have had 50% inflation... easy mistake to make.

As a sidenote, one of the big problems in gaming is the amount of promising IP that gets consumed by bad publishers/developers who acquire it on anything but creative merit, who then drive it into the ground in a destructive quest for short term profit. Tribes, Fallout, SimCity...

Skyrim thoughts

Mon, 04 Mar 13 22:39:49 +0000

I just can't get into this game. I don't understand the hype. It seems massively overrated. I have tried three times now.

It's offputting from the start. Technical issues betray the fact it's a console port; strange input lag thanks to forced v-sync and strange audio mixing which renders NPC voices almost inaudible against other sound to such an extent I had to turn on subtitles. Google reveals v-sync to be removable by an ini tweak, but it causes physics to be unstable (huh?), and although the second issue is reasonably common, none of the community proposed fixes worked for me.

It's not a great first impression. And the rest of the game pretty much lives up to this. The UI is annoying, the combat is clumsy and the world is unengaging. At least Fallout 3 had VATs to cover up how poor the combat mechanic was.

How did we go from Dragon Age: Origins to this?[...]