Bioshock retrospective

I went to visit my parents last week. They have quite a large house so it's where I keep most of my crap from when I used to live there. A considerate son would throw it out but I have an aversion to throwing things out. IT MAY BE USEFUL LATER.

Anyway, one of the things I should really throw out is my collection of old PC gaming magazines. I do love re-reading them, though. Reading previews for games that turned out to be shite and, of course, reading rapturous reviews that didn't find any flaws with deeply flawed games like Half Life 2 or Oblivion.

It was in this nostalgic haze that I came across their review of Bioshock. It really made me want to play through that flawed masterpiece again because they highlighted the unparalleled atmosphere, graphics etc.

So This morning, I installed it, patched it and started playing it again.

And half an hour later I stopped because it was shit.

The thing is, everyone who played Bioshock through the first time (including myself) got sucked in by the incredible graphics, atmosphere etc. These are still there and still excellent.

What none of us noticed until a couple of months after originally playing it is - It's not any bloody fun.

It just isn't.

There are four main problems with is:

1) It's a shooter but you never have enough ammo.

There are supposed to be numerous ways out of every encounter but most of the time, the only sensible one is to start blasting. This is directly linked into:


2) It's too goddamn linear:

Corridors. That's what Bioshock is, corridors, corridors, corridors. Even the Corridor-tastic Call of Duty 4 had more open areas than this. The direct consequence of this is that there are few opportunities to avoid conflict - meaning you have to start shooting, meaning you run into problem #1

3) The shooting is no damn fun:

Even if you can cope with problems 1 & 2, you'll hit problem 3. The weapons lack feel, there's no real accuracy system and they're all pretty damn generic. This is the problem with all games set in the past, the guns really weren't very interesting. You'd think they would sort this with the pasmids but no. They're either far too powerful (lightning or incinerate) or completely useless (telekinesis, sonic boom, shooting bees from your hand).


4) There are no RPG elements:

So you're not even really given the opportunity to improve your character, other than by being given Adam by the little sisters. This means that there's no way round problems 1, 2 & 3. You HAVE to get engaged in gunfights. There's no Bloodlines style melee options if you get bored of the gunfights.


There are other problems, of course, but the fact that it isn't fun lands neatly at the top of the list.

This really disappoints me. I was hoping to get past the flaws of Bioshock and really get into the story again. Sadly, this has proved impossible.

Iron Man 2

A lot of news has been breaking at Comic-Con, which is understandable.

One bit which has really dismayed me, though, is that Scarlett Johansson is going to be playing one of the baddies in Iron Man 2.

If you're one of those deluded idiots who thinks that this woman is still one of the best actresses in the world, I suggest you go and watch The Prestige. That film is fantastic. Christopher Nolan even managed to get a briliant performance out of Hugh Jackman, who's not exactly the worlds greatest actor. But EVERY TIME that useless bloody woman walks on screen the charisma is sucked out. She kills almost every scene she's in, it's remarkable.

I haven't seen her in a good film. Ever. Lost in Translation was hugely over rated, she was easilly the worst thing in The Black Dahlia and don't even get me started on The Island.

Admittedly, I haven't seen Ghost World where apparently her total lack of any talent or charisma is quite in keeping with the tone of the film but...

Seriously, people, I get that people like her because she's good looking but can we stop thinking with our dicks, please? She is not a good actor, period. Kate Winslet? She's a good actor, as is Maggie Gyllenhaal, as is Grace Park.

Hopefully she won't be in too much of Iron Man 2 because if Christopher Nolan couldn't get a decent performance out of her, there's no way Jon Favreau will be able to...

Gaming podcasts

Daniel Floyd appeared on a gaming podcast a few days ago so I checked it out.

I've always avoided gaming podcasts previously, mainly because whenever I load one up, they always start the same way:

"Hello"
"Hello"
"I'm Dave"
"I'm Charles"
"Welcome to The Awesome Gaming Podcast"
"Hi"
"Today we're talking about-"
"Yeah, we're talking about shooters today."
"Yeah"

Then one of them makes a crap joke and they laugh.

Gaming podcasts are one of the only things I can find online where people seem to genuinely think they don't need any form of editing. These damn things can stretch to over two hours.

But whatever, I thought. I need to go to the market, I'll stick it on my Zen and check it out. Floyd's on it, it can't be too bad.

So I listened to it. I got through the first hour whilst being very entertained. In this particular episode they had a bunch of industry podcasters on there. Most of them were pretty interesting. They were talking about things that annoyed them in video games.

It was a bit like intellectual masturbation but the guests were clever enough to properly argue. It was great to hear some real vitriol aimed at things such as quick time events and games that don't end properly. Hearing someone mention Assassins Creed and then have to compulsively yell "FINISH YOUR FUCKING GAME" is really cathartic.

Anyway, Daniel Floyd came on, he wasn't very good but whatever.

Then the podcast started to decline sharply. I eventually had to stop listening because it got boring and painful. I loaded up another of their Room 101 podcasts and found it to be even worse.

So I thought I'd detail what I don't like about the damn things. Why? It's my blog, no-one reads it and I like setting this sort of thing out.


1) They're all too long

In theory, there's nothing wrong with a lecture/discussion lasting for an hour and a half. But.... I'm going to have to illustrate this with an example from my own life

I've kept a diary for most of my life because I'm quite narcissistic. However, when I was very young (14ish I think) I kept an Audio diary where I talked at a tape recorder. This didn't work at all because if I lost my train of thought or I didn't have something to say, I'd pause and wait for something to occur to me. I wouldn't pause the tape though. In a pen and paper diary (or a Blog, to keep up the podcast comparison) If you haven't got anything to say, you don't write anything. Similarly, if you need to work something out in your head, you wait until you know what you're going to say before you say it.

Consequently, my audio diary, as well as every podcast I've ever listened to, consisted of about twenty minutes of decent material, surrounded by an hour of badly formed sentiment and people going "urr".


2) Peoples personalities come through

This guy came on the Podcast, called Chris O'Reagan from the Super Happy Funtime Show. Now, he did say some quite interesting things but the *way* he was saying everything and the belligerent way he approached the topics... it made me want to fucking punch him.

Here's where text wins again, you see. If anyone read this, they wouldn't really get a feel for my personality, they'd just get a feel for my writing style. The good part of that is- with the exception of annoying formatting stuff like italics and *putting* *asterisks* *next* *to* *words*, you're interpriting the sentences how you want to. That way, you decide if I'm being an arse hole or not.

If someone's just chatting with someone, their personality is there. And, I gather from my unrepresentative sample of the 12 or so guests on these shows, four are boring, four are interesting, four are complete dick heads.

Two Bullshit Sci Fi Stock Devices

Sci Fi is often the most inventive and interesting genre out there. That doesn't mean it doesn't have its fair share of lazy writing, though. What do the lazy writers do? They fall back on these:



1) Evil organisations that execute their own employees

Now, I'm not saying that no company has ever killed an employee of theirs but this device is never about realism. This device is used by extremely lazy writers as a way of saying: Look! Look! This company is evil! They're killing their employees! Bastards!

The thing is, it's usually totally pointless. It's always done when an employee has "served their purpose" or "seen something they shouldn't have". If an employee has served their purpose, get them to do something else. It's no wonder a company has to keep hiring assassins if they bump them off after every successful job. And if they've seen something they shouldn't have... good for them. These are Sci Fi films, remember? It's not as if they can ever go to the press or the police in these films...

Worst Offenders:
Prototype Scientists try to save a mans life, he wakes up and escapes. Solders ask scientists a few questions and then kill them. Those scientists probably had some useful information, you know. Now you'll have to spend days going through their research and working out where they were in their projects.
Cube 2 A covert operative goes through hell to retrieve some data from the ultimate hiding place - another reality. How is she thanked? With a bullet to the back of her head. She is probably the most talented individual in your company, guys. At least try her out at marketing or something first...


Are there any examples of this actually working?
Not in Sci Fi, as far as I know... Leverage had an episode called The Mile High Job which played with this concept very nicely though.



2) Ultimate Stop Anything Force Fields

What happens when a force need to invade a planet? They need to stop the populace defending themselves. Clever shows like Battlestar Galactica have the enemy infiltrate the humans for years in advance, learning about them and planning precisely where and when to strike.

Lazy shows have the enemies invent a force field that will stop any weapon in the world, including nuclear bombs.

Now, I can cope with the idea of a force field but what's important to remember is that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. If a nuclear bomb explodes on your fancy alien hull I don't care if you've got a fancy force field, you're still being sent flying a few miles in the opposite direction.

Worst Offenders:
The War Of The Worlds Remakes, Independence Day etc. etc. etc.: This is especially bad in War Of The Worlds. They hit the aliens with missiles, rockets, bombs... the damn things don't even flinch. That's not how physics works, guys.

Are there any examples of this actually working?

Oddly, yes. The Christopher Eccleston series of Doctor Who gave their ultimate death machines, the Daleks, a stop anything force field. It's different for two reasons, though. Firstly, bullets fired at this force field are not stopped in their tracks, they are slowly absorbed... the implication being the daleks are using the power and momentum of these bullets to power their own systems. Secondly, if you and several buddies concentrate your fire on one small are, you can break through the force field and do some real damage.

Granted, in series 2, 3 and 4 of the same show this rather clever sci fi device get's unceremoniously stomped on by Russel T Davies, one of the all time great Lazy Writers but it was good whilst it lasted.

Street Fighter 4

I have a long and patchy history with fighting games... I never really liked them for a long time - mainly because learning special combos is quite high on my list of things I have no time for.

This all changed at university when I discovered Super Smash Brothers and Soul Calibur 2. Leaving SSB on one side, let's look at soul calibur 2.

I love several things about that game.

1) It's in 3-D
This means that you can block and dodge - they're two different moves. So if you want to avoid a strike, you can move back. This means the game is far more tactical than most others as you can just avoid most attacks and then chose when to strike.

2) There are hundreds of special moves.

The down side of this is that none of the special moves really feel that special. However, what it does mean is that it's incredibly easy to perform them. It's also fairly intuitive as different combinations of buttons generally mean the same thing.

3) Button bashers will always lose out to skilled players.

This is because skilled players know when to dodge, when to block and when to attack. These three things are far more important than the actual moves being performed. I like that.

4) The characters are all genuinely different.

Each character has a weapon and each weapon feels different. They all have different ranges, strengths and weaknesses. I know most fighting games have this but in the Soul Calibur games the weapon is a fantastic illustration of this.



So, with my parameters stated, what do I think about Street Fighter 4?

Plus points:
1) It's quite pretty.

Negative points:
1) It's not in 3-D so you can't dodge.
2) The characters all feel very similar to each other
3) You have to learn special move combos and they're much more powerful than the normal attacks so if you can't be bothered to learn them, you're fucked.
4) There seems to be very little strategy


It really does seem to be the anti Soul Calibur. It's what I hated about every bloody fighting game from Mortal Kombat to Marvel Vs Capcom. And it's got a metascore of 93. Now, I get that some people might like this sort of thing. If you like your fighting games to be about learning special moves rather than choosing when to attack and when to defend, it's probably very good.

I don't think this. I think it can fuck off.

Games what I have been playing (part 2)

We're in the traditional summer drought as far as games go but there have been a few interesting releases.

1) Overlord 2

I completed this yesterday and I do really like it. It has moved on a little from Overlord 1 in that it's less of a freeform RPG type thing. You move from area to area to area, there's a definite plot this time round and so on. This is good/bad if you ask me. I liked the general directionless evil the first game reveled in but there is a reasonable plot this time round as well as actual characters rather than standard fantasy archetypes.

As far as the rest of the game goes - everything's been tweaked. The graphics are better, the RPG elements are slightly better thought out... there are a few extra features like mounts for your minions which are entertaining if a little pointless.

What does annoy me slightly is- the moral decisions you take this time around are not to kill or not to kill, it's to dominate or to kill. To dominate someone, you use an evil presence spell until they lose their willpower and follow you unquestioningly. This may have been a good idea on paper but in practice, it's unclear which of these two options is more evil. As the game is supposed to be a cartoonish entertaining romp whilst being evil in many different ways, moral ambiguity doesn't quite fit in.

Anyway, it's not perfect, there are more than a few bugs as well as the above issues but I did really like it. I think I probably enjoyed the first one more as it was fresher but if you have to play one of these games, this sequel is probably the one to go for. And I do really recommend playing them, by the way, there's nothing else really like them at the moment.


2) Call of Juarez 2 - Bound In Blood

I've been faintly interested in this game for a while. I never played the first one but the previews all made it seem fairly interesting. I loaded it up this morning, though, and hit several roadblocks straight away.

I) The game is set in the American Civil War and your character passionately believes in the Confederate cause.

Morally, this puts them slightly above someone fighting passionately to preserve the Third Reich. I know the south weren't as bad as the Nazis but they were pretty fucking bad.


II) You can't turn the auto aiming off.

Thankfully, there is only auto aiming when you're using two pistols (for single pistols and rifles, it's normal) but it's still really, really fucking annoying when your cross hair follows an enemy literally half way across the screen. I'm playing on a PC, guys, I don't need you to aim for me, I have a mouse.


III) The engine feels artificial

This is harder to define - when your character walks around, you keep getting stuck on things that you should be clearing with no trouble... your sight line is a little bit low... it feels like you're playing a really short, fat guy. Everything feels really artificial.


So yeah. I don't like it.


3) Trine

I've only played the demo of this but it's a highly entertaining 2-D puzzle platformer thing. The graphics are lovely, the music is entertaining and it has three player local co-op which is fucking fantastic.

If you have a mate who lives near you who enjoys his games, get them around and try it out, it's great fun.


4) Unreal Tournament 3

I got this as part of the Unreal pack that I got mainly for Unreal 2 - which was one of my favourite games of yesteryear. Miracle of miracles, though, I actually found it quite entertaining. The single player game, this is. It may have great multiplayer but I don't really care.

The single player campaign has a ridiculous plot and over acted cut scenes. However, that puts it several dozen places above Half Life 2, for example, because at least Unreal Tournament 3 does have a plot. It's also got a clearly defined antagonist, goals and relationships for the player... you know, all that stuff HL2 dramatically failed to have.

It's not actually that fun, though. Warfare (territory control) is quite fun but UT3 seems to be really, really convinced that 21st century players enjoy Capture the Flag. I don't. I have never liked Capture the Flag and as I have grown older, my contempt for it has only increased.

There are also straight death matches, which are fun in a vague way.

Part of the problem is the guns - they're just not very fun. The minigun is entertaining but all the other guns lack feel and character.

One good side to UT3, though, is the vehicles, which are imaginative and often genuinely awesome.

UT3 is often good in spite of itself. I would never recommend actually buying it - partly because Epic are dicks who have all ready made far too much money from a vastly over rated game but mostly because the vast majority of the game is pretty damn underwhelming. Occasionally it puts a smile on your face but far too infrequently to be worth it. If someone buys it for you, though, enjoy.

5) Blueberry Garden

This is another of those indie games I like. It's an odd one. You play a bird/man thing who is in charge of this huge garden thing. You can pick up fruit from one location and leave it somewhere else and it'll grow. If you eat fruit, it will affect you or the landscape. Some make you fly more efficiently, some cause earthquakes. But in a good way.

It's a very hard one to describe. I did enjoy the time I spent playing it, but I have no idea why. The gameplay itself is basic at best. The graphics are good, the music is absolutely fantastic...

The best thing you can do is check out the demo, really.