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Episode 5 Pause Break returns with a vengeance! Well, maybe not a vengeance. More like slight...

Sun, 17 Jun 2012 23:48:00 +0100

Episode 5

Pause Break returns with a vengeance! Well, maybe not a vengeance. More like slight disgruntlement. In this episode, we discuss all sorts of vidjagames! Like Gears of War, Fez, Team Fortress 2, Minecraft and the obligatory mention of Mass Effect. We also talk about the E3 press conferences and how everyone except Ubisoft pretty much dropped the ball.

Bear in mind, we drop a couple of spoilers during this episode, so if you want to avoid them, make sure to mark the times where we discuss them:

Mass Effect: 3:23 - 5:23

Fez: 17:09 - 22:30

We also gave a shout out to Michael Corrigan and his Let’s Plays with Nic. Be sure to check ‘em out here!

Remember, Pause Break is also available to download from the iTunes Store! Tell your friends! Tell your folks! Tell your dog! Pin him down until he hits the ‘download’ button! If he co-operates, give him a treat.

Until next time…

Fez Review

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 18:53:00 +0100

I could simply point out that any game named after my favourite headwear gets my seal of approval and then clock out. But Fez deserves more than that. What we have here is one of the most unique and enchanting puzzle-platformers in recent memory. Not to mention one of the most challenging. No matter what you might think of the creator, what he has created is, for the most part, a marvellous experience.

Fez’s idyllic world is one in which the cube is regarded as a creature of myth. In this world, you are Gomez, an average citizen. When a seemingly random cataclysm turns his world upside down, Gomez is bestowed upon with the titular felt helmet and must set out to right the wrongs by exploring what his peers fear the most: the third dimension.

Fez’s gameplay is reminiscent of that of the PSN title Echochrome – though considerably more restrained – in that changing your perspective of the world allows you to overcome previously insurmountable obstacles. While Gomez is only ever able to traverse a 2D plane, tapping the left and right triggers on the controller will rotate your current view of the world by ninety degrees. In an instant, the layout of the level changes. New platforms and doorways are revealed. A mile-long crevasse is reduced to a tiny gap. Two separate ladders line up to form a new path. It can take a while to wrap your head around these multiple perspectives but the speed and ease at which you can transition between them makes the learning process a little easier.

Fez’s world is three-dimensional but Gomez is a little special; he can only process two dimensions at a time.

And what is all this jumping between planes in aid of? Trinkets, of course! The object of Fez is to collect cubes. Thanks to the aforementioned cataclysm, the world is now littered with them. Thirty-two golden cubes are to be earned by collecting shards scattered throughout each level and essentially by navigating the world. In addition, for each golden cube there exists an anti-cube, which are primarily earned by solving puzzles, bringing the total cube count to sixty-four; a hunt that will keep you occupied for around eight to ten hours, depending on your puzzle solving abilities.

And let me be perfectly clear; this is not a game where you can leave your brain at the door. In fact, you might want to bring along a notepad. Fez’s puzzles range from manageable to downright devious, with only a couple of unfortunately obnoxious ones that you’ll wonder how anyone could have figured out on their own. By the end of it all, you’ll have had more to wrap your head around than just the multiple perspectives, with a sizeable chunk of the harder puzzles revolving around cryptic messages and mysterious ciphers.

It’s these more cryptic puzzles that help form Fez’s enigmatic atmosphere. This is one of those worlds that you can feel truly lost in; immersed, intrigued and, more often than not, confused. The levels range from sunny countryside to darkened sewers, with dozens of memorable landmarks to explore and help you find your bearings. The presentation also serves to draw you in, with a serene soundtrack not unlike Minecraft’s and slick, old-school graphics that look gorgeous in motion.

“They always said to wear a helmet when climbing…surely this will suffice?”

There are a few nits to pick besides the occasional logic-defying puzzle. For example, the world map requires almost as much skill to navigate as the world itself. Each level is represented in a 3D model of connected nodes, and while the map is kind enough to tell you which levels have been cleared of collectibles, some nodes will vanish from the map completely until you hover over an adjacent node, occasionally resulting in an unnecessary kind of connect-the-dots puzzle as you search for the node you’re looking for.

With such an expansive world, navigating from one side of it to the other can also grate, when all you want is to go back and solve a puzzle you earlier forsook. Warp gates placed throughout the world help but most of them are only one-way. Long-distance traversal also isn’t helped by Gomez’s inability to survive long falls, making the journey down a level often slower than the journey up.

However, none of these niggles raised my eyebrow more than the game’s ending. For better or for worse, Fez is destined to be lumped into the same category as Braid; an ‘arty’ platformer with an undeniable air of pretentiousness about it. If this trait isn’t evident enough through the game’s cryptic dialogue, the ending will make it as clear as day. I’m not sure if what I saw after collecting all sixty-four cubes can be classed as a ‘conclusion’, it certainly didn’t provide any closure. In fact, as the credits rolled, the only thought running through my head was “I’m going to get called out on by cultural snobs for not understanding this”.

I wish mine did that.

But Fez’s charm and intriguing gameplay ultimately allow it to rise above these issues. While I can’t say for sure that it’s something every gamer will enjoy, anyone who pines for a game besides Portal that will truly test their intelligence shouldn’t be afraid to invest.

As if there was ever any doubt that a game called ‘Fez’ would turn out badly.

Just Thought I'd Drop By...

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 22:14:19 +0100

…and leave this here.

You’re welcome.

People Still Like Minecraft

Sat, 12 May 2012 14:03:00 +0100

Who knew?

So, within hours of the release of Minecraft on Xbox Live Arcade, it was not only profitable but broke all previous sales records for the platform, with over 400,000 downloads in the first day. And that’s despite being - if I’m not mistaken - the priciest XBLA game to date at 1600 MS Points. Which I guess proves Activision’s point in overcharging for Call of Duty’s map packs; if something is popular enough, it doesn’t matter how large the number on the price tag is.

But I digress. Yesterday, I decided to join the mob after downloading the Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition trial. My first few hours with the game were well-documented but since then I had not returned, mainly because it had failed to hook me but also because it had changed so much, with new modes and new mechanics I couldn’t bring myself to wrap my head around. The port, however, is more resemblant of the state the game was in when I started playing, though the word is that it will brought up to date further down the line (you wouldn’t want to disappoint those 400,000 consumers, after all).

This will probably surprise no-one but already I prefer playing Minecraft on the console than on the PC. But not for the reasons you probably think.

Firstly, and most importantly, Minecraft 360 has what many people missed the most from the PC version: a tutorial. Of course, I’m not completely clueless this time around but it was still much appreciated having the game explained to me, rather then being forced to find help from external sources. There are also a few new touches that make the game much more comprehensible. For instance, upon collecting a new resource, a pop-up box explains its properties and purpose. Crafting has also been simplified. I personally thought that manually placing each material into the crafting grid in a specific was a complete waste of time, whereas now, you can just hit a button to craft a pickaxe instead of arranging all those blocks into a T-shape.

Furthermore, the crafting menu organises every craftable object into categories and shows you what ingredients you require to build each one.

Let me just step out of my element here, for a moment…THANK. F**K.

This is what I personally missed the most from the PC version; the crafting grid basically served as a trial-and-error method of figuring out what you could build with what you had, with no way of knowing what else you required to build it. Again, this just wastes time. I don’t know if the PC version has been updated with this functionality but if it hasn’t, then I still don’t consider the PC version of Minecraft to be complete.

Controls…yes, I admit, the mouse beats out the controller when playing Minecraft but I was honestly expecting the game to handle much worse on 360 than it does. The right trigger mines, the left trigger places blocks and interacts with objects, X opens the crafting menu and Y opens the inventory. In the latter two menus, the tutorial instructs you to use the left thumbstick to navigate a mouse-like pointer around in order to select objects. Honestly, though, using the D-pad to move between each slot is much less of a hassle.

If you’re accustomed to Minecraft’s PC controls, it might take you a while to adjust; I’m still walking up the the furnace and hitting X to open the crafting menu instead of pressing the left trigger to open the furnace. And yes, placing blocks with a controller is a tad less accurate but really not by that much. As for the lack of mods and texture packs, I rarely make use of mods in any game, so it personally doesn’t bother me. Of course, if the developers choose to include them in a future update, I wouldn’t protest.

And lastly, you know your PC is old when Minecraft runs smoother on the 360.

I can’t help but feel that Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition was made specifically for people like me. I enjoyed my time with the game on PC but not enough to devote as much time to it as others have. It’s what’s been added to this version, not what’s been taken away, that has drawn me back in. And I didn’t even mention that it has 4-player splitscreen.

I have a feeling this second stint might be for keeps.

A Week With... League of Legends - Day 7

Wed, 02 May 2012 17:02:00 +0100

I’d like to begin this instalment with a short visual presentation:

Moving on…

If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of a ‘week’, today marks the last day of my initial run with League of Legends. How did I spend it? Improving.

Kayle has pretty much become my go-to gal, as I continue to excel in PvP matches. Of the two I played tonight, the first was without a doubt my finest hour in the League.

Or should I say, my finest twenty-nine minutes.

My quickest match yet also happened to be my best, as I finished with a record 9 kills and just 2 deaths, with an unbroken 6-kill spree in the first half. I don’t know if it was because the other team was struggling, or if I got lucky, or if I was genuinely getting better. But nothing was knocking me down. I haven’t smiled so gleefully since…well, actually, since seeing The Avengers* last Saturday. You get the idea.

I’ve pretty much spent the last two posts retelling my experience with the game, much like my flatmate would to me before I started playing. What I want to wrap things up on is what makes League of Legends special.

Personally, this is like no other multiplayer game I’ve played. But it does resemble another RPG I hold in high regard, and that is Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. For the first few hours, I wondered how you were supposed to have fun with this game, constantly right-clicking on enemies and cycling through perplexing abilities as I waited for my character to finish chopping up droids. But then I had some kind of ‘eureka’ moment where my mind suddenly grasped what I was playing and I got sucked in so far, I even forgot I was playing a Star Wars game. It ended up immersing me in Lucas’ world more than the films. Yeah, all six of them.

League of Legends is like playing Knights of the Old Republic at an accelerated rate. The sense of progression, the growth of your character in strength (not so much morality, though I guess it’s only a matter of time before we see a Paragon/Renegade meter in a multiplayer game) and the point-and-click combat which, on the surface, looks simplistic, but reveals itself to be just as much about timing and reflexes as any action game. All condensed into a forty minute match.

League of Legends brings back good memories of Knights of the Old Republic.

I know other games like LoL exist but this just feels so refreshing. Going back to the growth of your champion over the course of the match, I personally think the minions are a genius feature. Fighting them and the champions simultaneously provides a good balance of gratification. You can cut the minions to ribbons no problem, especially late into the match, which provides a warm feeling of empowerment throughout. But then there are the moments when you take down a champion, which is almost always a hard-fought battle. The sense of accomplishment in these instances is massive but the trade-off is the frustration of when you don’t come out on top. Fighting the champions and the champions alone would make LoL a tenser game, for sure, but it would be blighted significantly by the ever-increasing wait to get back into the action once you’d been slain.

That’s what’s great about the minions, they’re a go-to source for instant gratification. If you keep falling to enemy champions, go take your frustration out on some minions, they’re hardly going to put up much of a fight. Furthermore, they serve as a great aid for new players. If there’s one thing I’ve proven, it’s that you don’t even have to engage enemy champions to do your part in winning the match. It helps, but you’ll be sat there a while if you leave the minions to destroy the enemy turrets by themselves. Plus, so long as you have them to protect you, the enemy probably won’t engage as you often. They’re like training wheels on a bike, easing you into the experience.

And that, I believe, is the hook. League of Legends just works. It doesn’t set a new standard for content or presentation in free-to-play games…oh, I said I would talk about graphics, didn’t I? OK, quick summary, there’s nothing remarkable about LoL’s visuals. In fact, it’s on the level of a really, really nice-looking PS2 game. It does run at a smooth pace, however. On my fairly par PC, it was pretty much locked at 45 frames per second, outside of massive scuffles. It has a colourful art style, which is distinctive enough, but there’s really not that much detail to speak of. Difficult to tell, anyway, with that camera angle.

Anyway, as I was saying, LoL doesn’t set any new standards for the type of game it is but all its mechanics and concepts come together to form a game that just clicks. The lack of maps turns me off a bit but I’ve come to realise that given the game’s mechanics, you surely can’t shake up the Summoner’s Rift formula that much to warrant a completely different map. Some champions have fairly unbalanced powers (the biggest culprits I found being Garen’s minute-long pirouette and Master Yi’s super speed) but if you learn the ins and outs of your own champion, you’ll find you can overcome them.

Other than that, I really don’t have that much beef with League of Legends. I wouldn’t say it’s convinced me to explore the genre, though, which I find kind of surprising given how much I’ve praised its gameplay. It hasn’t convinced me to spend more game time with my PC either. Some things are just hard-wired.

But what it has done is convinced me to keep playing, which I definitely did not see coming. I like League of Legends. I’ve had fun with it. I hope to continue having fun with it (for how long is another matter). So I guess what you should take away from this, is that you should keep an open mind. Don’t feel pressured to (dis)like anything. Step outside your comfort zone every once in a while and you might find something you’ve been missing out on for way too long.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to dole out a little Righteous Fury.

*Prioritise seeing this movie above all else. Then carry on as normal.

A Week With... League of Legends - Day 6

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 22:51:00 +0100

Goddamnit.

I think I might be getting really invested in this.

Strangely, I came to this revelation about League of Legends in the wake of a defeat. It wasn’t a blowout but it wasn’t a close call either. Respectable stats on both sides, the other team’s were just slightly better. All that mattered to me were the three numbers next to my name on the overview screen.

8. 6. 1.

Eight kills, six deaths, one assist. After an utterly shambolic performance yesterday, I suddenly found myself with a winning record. And I felt pretty chuffed.

Therefore, I am placing the blame for that incident squarely on the shoulders of my cohorts Craig and Caithan. Quit holding me back, guys. Honestly.

Alright, so where are we at now? My session today kicked off with the purchase of my second champion. After browsing through the catalogue, I settled on Kayle, whom I initially thought was a dude until she opened her mouth during my first match with her. I based my selection on the fact that a) she cost very little IP and b) I wanted to try out a melee fighter.

It’s like Metroid all over again.

I stretched my play-time a bit today, cramming in three matches. The first was a solo custom game against the AI. I quickly became acquainted with Kayle’s attacks and once again there was one in particular that stuck out; Righteous Fury, which allows Kayle to dish out splash damage from afar instead of getting in close for her standard attack. Unlike my first outing with Ryze, I won this match handily, though I still emerged with zero kills.

My second match was a co-op game against the AI, another victory. This one wasn’t without casualties, however. Two champions dropped out towards the end of the match, one who had failed to make much an impact and the other who, up until that point, had been the MVP. Despite some particular vicious champions on the AI team (looking at you, Master Yi), we were able to prevail after a long and hard-fought battle. And for the first time, I emerged with a positive kill/death ratio of 4:3, along with a team-leading ten assists.

Bolstered by my winning streak, I decided to brave the PvP killzone once more, this time with my new champion. I was connected to a game without issue, unaware of what was about to take place.

The match begins. My allies divide themselves amongst the middle and bottom lanes, leaving me to defend the top lane. I take up position in a bush near one of the turrets, hidden from sight, and wait for the minions to spawn. Before they get the chance, however, I spot not one, but two enemy champions sauntering down the lane. I stay perfectly still. One soon heads back in the direction he came, while the other, playing (surprise, surprise) Ryze, stays put.

Now’s my chance. <cue music>

I arm Righteous Fury and leap from my hiding place, pelting Ryze with fire. At level 1, his health is quickly diminished, but he fights back, knocking me down a peg or two. Ryze’s buddy quickly realizes what’s happening and rushes back to help. Knowing I can’t take on two champions in my present state, I make a dash for the nearby forest. By now, the minions are pouring in, so the two follow me in. Clicking away like mad at any clear ground I can find, Ryze and friend (I forget exactly which champion it was) suddenly become separated. I double back and start hitting Ryze with Righteous Fury again.

At last, he falls. First Blood.

But it’s not over yet, now I have his friend to deal with. We exchange blows until I reach single-figure hit points. Not enough space to teleport back to base without getting hit. Nothing to heal myself with. Only one option. I lead my attacker around in circles for a few crucial seconds until I finally emerge from the forest out a different exit. He follows me out, only to be hampered by a friendly turret, presumably just out of his sight. I land the killing blow before he can make a desperate escape. Two kills up within three minutes.

I head back up the lane to assist the minions, only to find Ryze waiting for me again. I quickly arm Righteous Fury once more, as well as a new spell I gained on levelling up, Reckoning (basically, a fireball that also slows people down). One quick scuffle later, Ryze is out for the count again.

We’re not five minutes in and I’ve scored three unanswered kills, including the first of the match. Not gonna lie, it’s up there on my list of ‘magical multiplayer moments’.

The rest of the match played out in suitably epic fashion. The enemy team was levelling up much faster but we were able to keep them at bay outside our walls. Twice, they actually broke through and started pounding at the nexus. On both occasions, I could only watch as I waited to respawn. One brave fellow, however, saw them all off single-handedly both times. I’m not quite sure how he did it, but I applauded him accordingly.

And, of course, the result of it all: 8/6/1. It might have been a defeat but it was an honourable one. It proved that is was possible to enjoy League of Legends, even when you’re on the losing team. And maybe…just maybe…I might have found the hook I’ve been looking for. The reason people keep coming back.

But I think I need one more day to be sure.

A Week With... League of Legends - Day 5

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 00:12:00 +0100

Since yesterday saw an unscheduled intermission (I was tired), I made up for it tonight by playing two matches. Although my session threatened to finish before it had even started. While waiting to begin a co-op vs. AI match, and waiting several years for one player to connect, my ping suddenly sky-rocketed and I found myself back at my desktop. After trying several times just to get back into the client, I eventually made it and found myself in the same game I’d initially joined. So nice of them to save a spot for me.

By now, it’s pretty clear that Summoner’s Rift is really the only map in the game. It’s the only one available for co-op vs. AI games and outside of that no-one seems to care for the others. I honestly don’t see where the lasting appeal lies in a single map, but I guess 11 million people can’t be wrong…

That first match was relatively fine, though one key element was different; someone else on our team had chosen Ryze, leaving me with approximately sixty seconds to decide on a new champion. I eventually chose Graves, ‘the outlaw’. I warmed to him almost immediately, with his gravelly voice, flowing cape and shotgun as tall as himself. For his first run, he proved fairly effective, with a kick-ass buckshot that, once fully levelled up, could take out a line of minions in one hit. He could also fire a smoke grenade and what appeared to be a giant meteor that proved particularly effective against champions. It’s a wonder the latter made it out the barrel, though.

“Draw.”

My stat sheet showed a small improvement from last time, too, with a 1:1 kill-death ratio and several assists. I still haven’t got the hang of using the map’s tactical assets to my advantage, such as the bushes that conceal you from sight and supposedly set you up to ambush other players. That said, keeping my champion on a leash isn’t too much of an issue anymore. Clicking more really does seem to help. And just to top everything off, I took out the nexus single-handedly.

As I glance over the match overview, a notification springs up. Craig, my former lackey, and my flatmate Caithan have invited me to a match. Only this time, it’s player versus player. No bots.

Time to play League of Legends the way it was meant to be played.

<Forty-five minutes later>

Drat.

Even with my friends by my side, and despite slipping back into Ryze’s familiar shoes, I went scoreless with 0 kills and 11 deaths. Oh, we won, but I didn’t exactly feel like celebrating. For when it came to direct confrontation with another champion, I never survived longer than six seconds. It seemed liked all of them had attacks that would break off half my health bar in one swift stroke. By contrast, I could barely bring them down by half after throwing my whole arsenal at them. I pretty much resorted to becoming a minion, only one who knows when to run away when sh*t hits the fan, i.e. when a frickin’ ghost centaur shows up.

A dramatic reconstruction of the latter half of my first PvP match.

No multiplayer game is fun when you’re losing, but I’ve never felt more like I’m letting my team down than in League of Legends. Partly because of my general incompetence and partly because my mistakes are allowing the opposition to level up and outclass us. In the match’s early stages, I often confronted an opponent also playing as Ryze in the middle lane. He won every single encounter. He wasn’t exactly a good sport when his team lost, either, calling us out on the text chat as a ‘noob team’. To be fair, one of his team-mates told him to shut it. I’d heard…sketchy things about the LoL community’s attitude toward new or struggling players going in, and though I’ve now seen a sample of that, it was a relief to see there were also those who showed courtesy in defeat.

Control is no longer LoL’s main issue; with the right guidance, you can adjust. No, the main issue now, at least for me personally, is one of longevity. One notable map and one notable game mode (there exists another, Dominion, which also takes place on its own, separate map, though what it entails remains a mystery to me) for a game that is free to download is fine, I guess, but it amazes me that the number of people that play League of Legends, a number which, you’ll recall, now exceeds that of the world’s largest MMO (a game with substantially more content), keep coming back to follow essentially the same game plan in match after match.

Then again, maybe I haven’t found that drive yet. I’m certainly not going to if I keep getting trounced by other humans like I did today. Do I still like it at this stage? Yeah, but like Minecraft before it, even after several hours of play, I’m still waiting to be hooked…

A Week With... League of Legends - Day 4

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 23:37:00 +0100

Ready to put last night’s unpleasant events behind me, tonight’s session of League of Legends begins with a rendezvous on Skype. My lackey tonight is Craig, a relative newcomer to LoL himself but with weeks more experience than me. So, I guess that makes me the lackey. Disgruntled face.

Together, we leap into a co-op versus AI match on Summoner’s Rift, the same map I’ve been playing on before. Why the repetition? Complaint #4: League of Legends has only four maps. Many more are still to come, apparently, but have yet to materialise. Until then…

We’re quickly matched up with three other players and must select our champions. As always, I choose the trusty Ryze. Craig goes for Veigar, another mage, who might as well be the evil twin of Vivi from Final Fantasy IX. Our allies choose Twisted Fate (whose weapon of choice is playing cards), a jester-like character named Shaco and…ugh…Garen. At least he’s on our side this time.

On the left, Vivi from FFIX. On the right, Veigar from LoL. And plagiarism.

I mentioned on my very first day that there were some aspects of the game’s design that I really liked, so let’s talk about those now, as they’re relevant to the balance of the game’s multiplayer. At some point in the match, your champion will die, i.e. run out of health. At the beginning of the match, you’ll respawn back at the summoner’s platform after a few seconds, less than ten. As your champion’s level increases, however, so does your respawn time. By the time you hit level 18, you’re up to a minute. This serves two great purposes. The obvious purpose is for balance; it’s only fair that a feeble level 3 champion should take less time to respawn than a titanic level 15. The not-so-obvious purpose is that it serves to slowly wind down the game. By the time everyone is level 18, the game has probably lasted almost an hour, and slaying a champion at that point will present a nice big open window for you to overrun the enemy base.

Another nice feature is that you earn more experience for simply being in battle, even if you’re not the one landing the killing blows. This discourages camping out in the base or hiding in secluded areas of the map for long periods of time. Leave it too long and you’re going to get overtaken in terms of rank; you won’t stand a chance in battle.

As for the match I and my colleague are playing, it all goes rather swimmingly compared to yesterday’s rigmarole. I’ve since been given the following tips by my fellow players. When playing as Ryze, stick to the middle lane. Buy items that boost ability power (i.e. magic). And click more. Lots more. Apparently, clicking gives you more of that control I crave. It’s still a bit awkward, and I still would like to see how the game would hold up with the WASD keys, but I can see where everyone is coming from.

I really need to remember to print screen my own matches.

Craig advises me not to stand around auto-attacking for too long and to know when to retreat. Turns out he has a point, as I was able to halve my death count from my previous match, although I was only able to take down one champion this time. He also advises me that, even in the early stages where it’s quicker to die and respawn at the summoner’s platform instead of activating ‘recall’ and teleporting there, it’s important not to ‘feed’ the enemy and let them accumulate too much gold and experience. Which, unfortunately, is what the player commanding Shaco spends most of the match doing. In other news, I think I may have found the reason why they all levelled up so fast yesterday.

The match was a long one, clocking in at just under an hour, but it was a victory for us. Enough to put LoL back in the good books, at least. All it took was a little guidance but I felt much more in control of my actions than I did yesterday, and I’m starting to adjust to the occasional insanely overcrowded battle. With a full team of friends, I could see this being a real hoot. But now the big question is starting to take shape: with only four maps (essentially three, one is a winter variation of Summoner’s Rift), how long is League of Legends going to hold up?

Clearly, this isn’t a problem for my flatmate, who’s clocked in thousands of matches, but for someone like myself who not only doesn’t frequent the PC, but also has many other titles in his library to play through, what else can LoL offer that would convince me to stay beyond a few matches with my friends?

A Week With... League of Legends - Day 3

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 00:07:00 +0100

Control is a really understated feature in games, I feel. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that it’s the most important feature. It’s the conduit between the player and the plaything, yet in most people’s eyes it takes a back seat to the fidelity of the graphics or the breadth of the game’s content. If I don’t feel like I’m in complete control of what happens on screen, I tend not to enjoy myself. It’s what frustrates me about games I otherwise really like, such as Street Fighter and NBA 2K. Think about first-time players, too. If the controls don’t make a good first impression, they become disconnected, disinterested and disheartened before they can adjust.

You can probably see where I’m going with this.

Yep, those two complaints I have about League of Legends so far? Overcrowded combat and counter-intuitive targeting? Turns out they can really turn the game sour. And now there’s a third complaint to add to the list.

My flatmate informed me following yesterday’s post that the option does exist to play against the AI by one’s self, through the Custom Game option. So I set up a lobby of bots, all on Beginner difficulty. Same map as my previous battles.

We lost. On Beginner difficulty.

Now, I’m not saying I didn’t have a hand in our eventual defeat, but I believe I have a legitimate excuse.

Somehow, the opposing team was levelling up faster than us (I suspect my team was too keen on kamikaze runs for their own good). So whenever an enemy champion showed up to brawl, he would often be two or three levels above me. This is where my third complaint comes into play; I believe some of the champions may be somewhat imbalanced. An enemy champion by the name of Garen boasted an ability that allowed him to spin around like a top, brandishing his sword, and it lasted just long enough to chop off all my health in one go. There’s nothing I had that could match that level of cheap. Another enemy champion, Cho’Gath, was able to launch me up into the air, stun me on my return to the ground, then wipe out the last of my health.

Seriously, f*** these guys.

I admit, this could just be me being sore. In fact, I am still a little bitter of how frequently the supposedly Beginner AI managed to slaughter me and my - by comparison - useless team mates.

But it definitely wouldn’t have been as sore if I felt like I had an ounce of control over my own champion.

Imagine the following scenario. My champion is behind a group of friendly minions. We are all attacking an enemy champion and his minions. The champions are attacking each other. The enemy champion is low on health and retreats backward slightly. My champion follows him the same distance. My champion is now in front of my minions and all fire is now focused squarely on me. Death inevitably comes, all after just one button press. Repeat to fade.

I’m tired. I’m writing this in bed. I said I would talk about graphics but that can be saved for another day. I need to collect my thoughts for when I’m not so jaded over how I was bested by the computer on the “easiest” difficulty. Just know this; LoL lost points tonight. If the multiplayer experience gives rise to the same control issues I encountered tonight, our time together will not extend beyond this week.

A Week With... League of Legends - Day 2

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 22:18:00 +0100

Last time, we outlined LoL’s premise, rules and basic gameplay. Now let’s talk about progression. What fills the RPG quota of this RTS-RPG?

After logging in, I swing past my summoner profile; since I’ve yet to participate in any real matches, I have no statistics to speak of. It is here that I start to piece together the game’s monetary system. Outside of battle, LoL has two currencies: Riot Points and Influence Points (in battle, gold is the only currency). IP are earned for simply playing the game, ranking up etc. RP are purchased with real money. Both of these currencies can be used to unlock champions and other items, though some things can only be purchased with RP.

My current champion, Ryze. He likes reading, long walks on the beach and summoning lightning storms.

After I unlock my first champion - Ryze, a rogue mage with a fearsome beard and a giant scroll on his back - I come across ‘masteries’. These were very poorly explained prior to my first battle but I’m able to deduce their purpose; they are essentially skill trees. Points earned on ranking up can be spent on three different trees - Offense, Defense and Utility - each providing boosts to certain stats or abilities. Most masteries require more than one point, which makes sense, as the trees aren’t massive, and I got two points just for ranking up once.

Here’s the cool part, though. You can create multiple mastery ‘pages’ and spend your points all over again on different masteries, presumably depending on which you role you need to fill in a match or which champion you’re playing as. You can then select which page you want prior to beginning a match. Another page you must select before battle is your ‘rune’ page. Unlike masteries, I still haven’t quite figured these out yet, but I later noticed that runes were available to purchase from the online store and it appears they simply boost stats. I get the impression there’s more to them, however.

By now, I’m ready to jump into another match with the AI but I’m disappointed to find that no option exists to fight the AI by yourself, outside of the battle training. So I head back to the map I played yesterday, hopefully a little wiser.

The summoner’s platform. You know, with all the wares that shopkeeper has, you’d think he’d be invincible on the frontline.

Things certainly move along a bit quicker this time. I experiment with the effectiveness of my spells in different situations and learn some of their advantages. One of Ryze’s spells, the Spell Flux (or as I like to call it, the ‘Pinball’) is particularly useful when facing groups of enemies alone; it produces a ball of energy that bounces off and deals damage to anyone in the area - friend or foe - in turn. If there’s only one enemy in the area, the ball returns to Ryze and is sent out again until the bounce limit is reached.

During the match, gaining experience causes your champion to level up, but not in the same vein as a regular ranking system you might find in, say, Call of Duty. Your champion starts every match at level 1, and levelling up provides all the traditional RPG perks; increased health and mana, plus points to upgrade your spells and abilities. Items purchased in the shop back at the summoner’s platform will boost your stats even further, grant you regenerating health or mana or rejuvenate one of the two in a pinch. This accelerated progression constantly gives you the feeling that you’re accomplishing something, and it’s a good feeling. One thing I was initially confused by was that a separate level-up system exists outside of matches; your summoner rank. Levelling this up gives you points to spend on masteries and allows you to unlock new champions and slots for runes.

Upon completing a secondary quest, I’m presented with a reward other than gold; a wizard that I slay passes his special ability to me, summoning a ring of red crystals around me. It looked promising, but unfortunately the enemy nexus went down before I had a chance to test it out. It was nice to know, however, that those kinds of rewards for completing secondary quests existed.

Turrets are fixed; they can’t be placed and they can’t be rebuilt.

League of Legends continues to amuse, but not addict. To be fair, though, this game is made for online play, that much is evident by the lack of an option to play the AI alone on different maps. I have but one complaint to add to my previous list of one, and this time it’s to do with control. Right-clicking on an enemy to attack will cause your champion to follow that enemy if he runs away but the game also insists that you stay behind your minions and let them take the brunt of the blows. This has led to several occasions where I’ll be battling a champion near a turret along with my gaggle of minions, only to suddenly find myself in front of them with the turret suddenly pointing at me. And turrets hit fairly hard. A solution might be to alter the controls slightly so that a single right-click would make your champion attack an enemy so long as they’re in range (without chasing them when they run away), while a double right-click or a right-click-and-hold would make your champion run after them if they turn tail and flee.

Tomorrow, we’ll talk presentation and visuals. And who knows, maybe I’ll find the courage to play with some other people…

A Week With... League of Legends - Day 1

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:31:00 +0100

After a relatively harmless download and install, plus a couple of patches, I’m ready to throw myself into the unknown. I pray for a safe return. Got my safety rope and flare gun handy, just in case.

After a simple login, I’m asked what kind of players I’d like to be matched up against, with four difficulty levels to choose from - Beginner, RTS Player, Veteran and Expert. I’m no stranger to RTS games, but like fighting games and PC shooters, I tend to steer clear of their online components for fear of emasculation. I humbly choose Beginner.

The experience kicks off as every game should - with a tutorial. The game is played from a top-down, isometric perspective a la StarCraft. I am apparently a ‘summoner’, and it is my task is to take down the enemy’s ‘nexus’, a crystal structure that, when destroyed, ‘severs the connection between the summoners and their champions’.

The ‘nexus’, guarded by turrets and minions, who look like they got lost on the way to Final Fantasy IX.

These ‘champions’ aren’t the standard peons you find in regular strategy games; the ones that come in boxes of fifty and all look identical. Before the match begins, you must choose one of a wide variety of champions, all with unique abilities and appearances. For the tutorial, I control a female archer, who has the ability to launch a large volley of arrows upon multiple enemies, among other tricks.

Of course, the champions aren’t the only opposition you’ll face. Autonomous ‘minions’ will spawn from both bases at regular intervals and are instrumental in forging a path to the enemy nexus, as well as defending your own. By ‘instrumental’, I of course mean that they serve as willing cannon fodder. To reach the nexus, you must first destroy several enemy turrets that the minions will protect you from as you chip away at their health. Once the turrets are down, you must enter the enemy base and destroy the ‘inhibitor’, an act which allows you to spawn more powerful minions for the final push: destroying the enemy nexus.

LoL is just as much an RPG as it is an RTS, but we’ll discuss the role-playing aspects of the game tomorrow. For now, let’s walk through a standard match, played with two teams of three to five champions. At the beginning of the match, you and your team spawn on the summoner’s platform, where health regenerates and the shop is found (more on that another time). Minions begin spawning after a short period of time, and then you’re presented with a primary quest and a secondary quest. Primary quests must be completed in order to further the goal of taking down the nexus. Secondary quests can be completed for extra gold to be spent at the shop and experience to level up your character.

Minions are your first line of defense against turrets (that thuggish looking statue).

The map (or ‘field of justice’…yeah, I’m just going to call it the map), which is square in shape, is split into three ‘lanes’. The top lane goes from your base at the bottom-left corner to the top-left corner, and then on to the enemy base at the top-right. The bottom lane is its mirror image. The middle lane, the square’s diagonal, goes straight up the middle. Each lane is lined with friendly and enemy turrets. The other areas of the map are reserved for secondary quest objectives and other tactical assets, which I’ll go over later.

You move around the map and attack enemies by right-clicking, but certain selections in combat are made by left-clicking, which can get a bit confusing sometimes. Hopefully that’s something I’ll get used to. Your champion’s abilities are mapped to the traditional movement keys (W, A, S, D etc.) and are quick and easy to use in a pinch. When the action is really heating up, though, the word that comes to mind is ‘clustered’. It can be really difficult to see what’s going in with 10+ minions and multiple champions on-screen. In these situations, I found myself quickly firing off my abilities and hoping for the best.

Reaching the nexus takes a while; I hear the average match of LoL takes around forty minutes. Hopefully, the feeling of accomplishment following a hard-earned victory will make up for the lengthy game time. I conveniently hit the end of my hour-long time limit as the enemy nexus crumbled to the ground.

First impressions of League of Legends are good. There are several aspects of the design I like a lot (again, I’ll discuss these another time), the basic features and mechanics are very easy to grasp and use effectively, and overall it’s surprisingly very pick-up-and-play. The only real complaint I have so far is how crowded the battles can get, though to the game’s credit it keeps a steady frame-rate during these moments.

All that’s missing are the dust clouds and the cries of ‘biff’, ‘bam’ and ‘ka-pow’.

Next time, some more AI battles to get into the swing of things, and we’ll discuss how the game implements RPG elements into a strategy game.

A Week With... League of Legends - Prologue

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 20:48:00 +0100

Since I started writing about games, I’ve held the belief that scepticism does not give way to slander. There’s nothing wrong in looking at a game, film or TV show that many regard in awe and saying “it’s not for me”, but broadcasting any unjustified and defaming conclusions you’ve drawn on it is something I personally take offense to (looking at you, fanboys). You won’t know until you try.

I, for instance, once sat down and attempted to watch Twilight, to see if it merited the somewhat negative light the internet has shone upon it. I made it about halfway through before I had to stop. Not out of protest for its portrayal of vampires, or fear of catching ‘the gay’, but out of sheer boredom. It’s a dreadfully bland film, like it was written by emotionally overbearing high school students.

On the flipside, earlier this year I decided to see what all the fuss was about the TV show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. As of yesterday, I’ve now watched every episode. I’m not about to devote myself to the ‘brony’ cause, but I will defend the show if I have to. It looks amazing, the cast is terrific, its morals are all in the right place, it doesn’t try to beat you over the head with its cuteness and - most surprisingly of all - it’s funny.

You won’t know until you try.

Which is why I’ve decided to break out the journal once again for another ‘Week With’. I’ve known about League of Legends for quite some time now - my flatmate plays it religiously and, on several occasions, has regaled tales of victory that really don’t make a lot of sense to me. I wasn’t about to consider getting sucked into it when I already had a massive back catalogue of games to work through, some requiring more devotion than others.

But recently, something strange has occurred. Like a zombie virus, or trading cards, it has spread. More of my friends are playing it. Suddenly, it crops up more frequently in conversation. And each time it does, someone attempts to persuade me to submit. A new circle has formed within my circle of friends. The LoLers.

Now, in a scenario where I am the first to have discovered League of Legends, I would probably have steered clear of it anyway. From what I can tell, the game is essentially a combination of two things I’m hopeless at: real-time strategy and PC multiplayer. However, I am also very keen to see what it is about the game that has captivated not only my friends, but millions more across the world. LoL now draws in more users than World of Warcraft. Any game that manages that is at least worth a look, and considering it’s free to download, it can’t hurt either.

So, this ‘Week With’ is going to be a little different from the last two. This time, it’s not so much an attempt to see as much of a huge game as possible, but more like an experiment. I’m going to try to get as much time with what LoL has to offer as I can in roughly seven hours, one for each day of the week. Enough time to form an educated opinion, I hope.

Starting tomorrow, League of Legends is on probation. By the end of the week, hopefully we’ll see if it’s worth some laughs out loud.

Episode 4 In this very special episode of what remains our most regular feature, we are joined by...

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 22:12:00 +0000

Episode 4

In this very special episode of what remains our most regular feature, we are joined by RGU Gaming Society alumni Stuart and Ceri to discuss pants. Mostly. SSX and Pokémon Black & White 2 are briefly mentioned, as well as Mass Effect (yet again) and the controversy between EA and GAME.

But mostly pants.

Also, I’ma put a link to where you can download Ceri’s book, Fiendlord, right here.

Please direct all complaints regarding the lack of outro music and/or smooth jazz to our sound engineer for this episode, Steven Wood.

EDIT: Bonus outtake!

For those who are still playing catch-up, this is… In the transition from the era of the...

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 00:51:00 +0000

For those who are still playing catch-up, this is…

In the transition from the era of the PlayStation 2 to that of the Xbox 360 (and their respective counterparts), the message was clear: online was the future. A prediction that I think you’ll all agree turned out to be correct, for better or worse. There were some things that made the generational leap a bit more attractive, though. Like the introduction of a system for tracking specific accomplishments across your entire gaming library - assigning each one a value depending on their requirements - and sharing them with your friends.

Today, Achievements mean different things to different people. To some, they appeal to our inner magpie (the same one that’s kept the Pokémon franchise going for so long), the desire to collect everything for no justifiable reason. To others, they pose as bragging rights; a form of competition between friends and siblings.

I once saw Achievements (and Trophies) as both of these things. Now, I see them for what they really are; the trinkets of an omnipotent presence, silently persuading you to play the game his way. A little over-dramatic, perhaps, but since the day that Trophies were introduced, I forgot that games were about the journey, not the prizes at the end. It took one very special game to help me come to my senses.

That game was Mass Effect.

While the world waits with bated breath for the conclusion to BioWare’s epic sci-fi trilogy, I’ve only recently finished Commander Shephard’s first adventure. Looking back on it, I don’t think my opinion of a game has oscillated so much as it has with this one. Perhaps it’s a tad more difficult to judge by today’s standards, but I’m pretty sure some aspects of it that are unacceptable today would have raised just as many eyebrows back in 2007.

Let’s outline the pros and cons: Mass Effect’s strongest aspect is its rich in-game history and intricately detailed universe; the encyclopaedic Codex is brimming with information on the game’s races, technology and historical events, all crying out for expanded universe material (which it got). It also spins a good yarn; the plot tries a bit harder to be more than just standard sci-fi fare, with a few twists in the tale towards the end. The principal cast is well-acted and well-written, never without anything at least mildly interesting to say. And while this is often an exaggerated line, in this case it’s 100% true: I cared about my crew.

Chatting with them in between missions revealed intriguing backstories and opinions they’d usually keep to themselves. Their banter during missions made them more than just NPCs, though it certainly didn’t improve their combat awareness. From Wrex’s tales of his days as a bounty hunter to Liara’s…in-depth…description of asari mating rituals (guess who I chose for the Paramour achievement), I was surprised to realise by the end of the game just how much emotion I’d invested in them.

As I mentioned, however, there are a few abnormally large nits to pick. Besides technical issues like frame-rate drops and texture pop-in, most of them can be traced back to the sidequests. Quite simply, they are no fun. Those that don’t take place in the Citadel are carried out on various worlds throughout the galaxy, and they follow the same letter to a degree that would make the Power Rangers jealous. Land on the planet in your space buggy that could moonlight as a bucking bronco, drive around looking for arbitrary debris to fulfil the monotonous ‘collection’ side quests, then pull up at the bunker/warehouse in the middle of nowhere (possibly guarded by rocket turrets), clear the building of enemies, find a MacGuffin, leave the way you came in.

These sidequests don’t expand on the game universe as much as you’d think - definitely not as much as the story missions - and so they contribute nothing to the game’s strongest aspect. The gameplay can only carry the game so far; provided you play as a biotic or tech class, it can be fun to mess around with all the unique powers, though the radial selection wheel breaks the flow of combat constantly. Score 1 for the hot-key system on PC. Mixing your squad up keeps things interesting for a bit longer, and if you’re strategic enough you can combine their abilities with yours to great effect, but the game discourages you from rotating out your allies regularly.

And that’s where the achievements come in.

Mass Effect’s combat can seem dull at first, but there’s some depth to be found.

If you want to fill out Mass Effect’s achievement roster, you need to play through a minimum of three times. Most of the achievements are tied to skills that only certain classes have, such as using a certain biotic 75 times. I quickly entered a pattern of encountering enemies and then spamming each biotic I had one after the other without much thought for tactics, barely relying on my pistol. Needless to say it made the combat much duller than necessary.

Others, like Paragon, Renegade and Charismatic, force you to stick religiously to one of the two moral alignments throughout most of the game. In the latter case, you must ‘use Charm or Intimidate to resolve an impossible situation’. Obviously this insinuates that you’ll want to max out your Charm or Intimidate stat, even if you don’t want to. But since you have no clue about what makes an ‘impossible situation’, you’re forced to choose the specialised options in each conversation on the off-chance that convincing a civilian to testify in court might be regarded as ‘impossible’. An example of an occasion where the better option would have been to make the achievement secret.

Then there are my least favourite, the ally achievements. ‘Complete the majority of the game with this NPC’. One each for all six. Again, not only is it coy about how much the ‘majority’ of the game entails, but like I said earlier, it discourages gameplay experimentation. With a game that can clock in at around the 30-hour mark, you want to keep things fresh, not adhere to routine. It also makes a lot of the loot you collect (emphasis on the word ‘lot’) redundant. If you’ve decided to roll Garrus and Ashley out for every mission, that fancy pants Krogan armour you found for Wrex is just going to go to waste.

I kept up this needless obedience for around 15 hours. Using Wrex and Tali on every mission, maxing out my Charm and selecting every Paragon dialogue option, trudging through sidequest after boring sidequest…I was ready to call Mass Effect overrated. I let it gather dust for a while. At least, as much dust as a Game on Demand can gather.

The mission on Virmire is undoubtedly the game’s highlight, with twists abound.

But then a few weeks ago, as the hype for Mass Effect 3 grew (and mindful of the fact that my copy of the supposedly angelic Mass Effect 2 was still unplayed), I decided to drop back in. But this time, I told myself, I was going to do things my way. I would do what I wanted, say what I wanted, and roll with who I wanted. It’s a role-playing game, so why not role-play?

Those final 10 hours flew by. As I approached the endgame, I was forced to make tougher, more consequential decisions. And since I knew they would carry over into the sequel, they felt consequential, in ways that games like Fallout and Deus Ex couldn’t hope to match. I was so compelled by what I had witnessed, so utterly immersed in the game’s world that I did something I haven’t done since Ratchet & Clank on the PS2.

As soon as the credits finished rolling, I hit ‘New Game’.

I put together a female Shephard and jumped right back in at the bottom.

Which brings us to today. I have finally started Mass Effect 2. I haven’t even looked at the achievement list, to avoid falling into the same trap as before. And while I’ve only played a couple of hours, I can already see some changes I love, and some I don’t. We’ll save that discussion for another time. But there’s a moment early on where Shephard’s new boss, the Illusive Man, tells you that your old team has all gone their separate ways and (with the exception of Tali, whom I’d already been reacquainted with) would not be joining me on my mission.

I felt my heart sink.

Don’t make the same mistake I did. Don’t turn your gaming experience into a routine. Treat it as an adventure, and not a checklist. You’ll find that it can turn what may initially seem like a sub-par product into something you’ll never forget.

Episode 3We’re back with another hour-long spiel of our latest gaming anecdotes. We ran into...

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 21:49:00 +0000

Episode 3

We’re back with another hour-long spiel of our latest gaming anecdotes. We ran into some technical difficulties this month but being the resilient forces that we are, we found a way to turn it to our advantage. Tune in and see what we mean.

And if your internet browser can’t contain our dulcet tones, Pause Break is now also available directly from the iTunes Store! Now your iDevice of choice can strain under the weight of our sultriness.

EDIT: Contrary to what I said, Double Fine had not raised $2 million on Kickstarter by the point we’d recorded the podcast. They had ‘only’ raised $1.5 million.

Players #10: Better Left Unfez'd 4

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:48:17 +0000

Players finally finishes what it started. Click the above image for a prize.

(Prizes consist of: A brand new Players comic.)

Starhawk Beta Impressions

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 01:17:00 +0000

Allow me to briefly describe the premise of Starhawk’s multiplayer component. You and up to 15 team-mates fight to capture flags, control territories and basically murder anyone who looks at you funny. Original concept, right?

What if I told you that you could also pilot vehicles such as a 4x4 with a mounted turret? No? How about jetpacks? What do you mean, it’s been done before? Alright, well how about fighter jets which can transform into ground-based mechs at the touch of a button? Yeah, thought so.

Oh, is that Negative Nigel sitting in the back there with his arms folded? Well, Nigel, this one is for you; what if I told you that you had access to structures such as walls, bunkers, turrets and shield generators with which to build your own bases?

Nice to see you smile for once, Nigel.

Previously a private affair, Starhawk’s beta is now available to all…of those who have a PlayStation Plus subscription. If you’ve yet to sign on to the service and you’re a frequent PS3 user, I’d seriously recommend it; after a slow start, you can make back your money back in no time with all the discounts they offer now. As a beta, there’s obviously a lot of restrictions in place besides a rank cap. Two of the four available modes - Deathmatch and Zones - are off limits, half of the on-foot arsenal is unavailable and there are only two maps, both of ‘Small’ size.

That said, even with half the content locked out, I can already tell that Starhawk is more than going to live up to its spiritual predecessor.

You see, Starhawk is being developed by LightBox Interactive, which is mostly composed of those who worked on the sublime Warhawk. Released all the way back in 2007, Warhawk was one of the PS3’s first real blips on the multiplayer radar, and holds a special place in my heart as being the first online multiplayer game I invested a significant amount of time in.

As such, Starhawk and its older brother have much in common beyond the family name; both are 32-player third-person shooters with a heavy emphasis on vehicular combat. Both have a fairly basic but varied armory; the sniper rifle, lock-on rocket launcher and trusty automatic rifle all return but the pistol has been replaced by a shotgun, with four more weapons yet to be revealed. Both share the same menu of modes: (Team) Deathmatch, Capture the Flag and King-of-the-Hill variant Zones, which work how’d you expect without much innovation.

But most significantly, both are crazy fun.

Where Starhawk differs most from its predecessor, however, is in the unfortunately-generically-named ‘Build and Battle’ system. Upon entering a match in Starhawk, you might think that the developers were a bit lazy with the map design. Despite being set in drastically different locations, both maps are alarmingly empty. But you need to think of it like a canvas, and Build and Battle is your paintbrush.

The Build and Battle system opens up dozens of strategical options.

Each player has access to a quota of ‘rift energy’ which is spent on calling down structures. You spawn with two bars of energy and can carry up to about ten more. Walls and small, automated turrets are the cheapest to build, with shield generators and high-powered beam turrets being more costly. You can earn more energy in three ways; your main base is marked by a rift mine that dispenses tiny amounts of energy every three seconds or so to any friendlies who happen to be in the area. This process is perpetual but incredibly slow. There are also barrels of energy scattered around the map which you can break open for another bar or so. But the most effective method of harvesting this precious currency is - you guessed it - taking out the opposition.

Once you have enough energy to spend, you open the B&B menu with Triangle, choose a structure from the selection wheel, and use the analog sticks to position its outline wherever you desire, so long as it doesn’t interfere with the world geometry. A couple of seconds later, it’ll come crashing down and build itself akin to a strategy game. Placing walls adjacent to each other connects them, and they can then be upgraded into automatic gates if you so wish. You can reclaim most structures - including those that you didn’t build yourself, surprisingly - and take back some rift energy by approaching a terminal on the structure and holding Square. Furthermore, anything produced by B&B is destructible, so your base can be razed to the ground if you’re not careful.

B&B is also effectively the vehicle depot, as it allows you to spawn jetpack dispensers, garages for the ‘Razorback’ 4x4s (which now resemble buggies as opposed to the jeeps in Warhawk) and launch pads for the ‘Hawks’, the aforementioned transforming jets. Each one of these structures comes with a free sample of whatever it deploys; further models have to be bought with rift energy. One niggling annoyance I’ve found in playing with strangers, however, is that upon spawning, they will immediately call down a launch pad, sprint for the complimentary Hawk and fly away, leaving me and AFK Andrew to maintain the base on our own. It got to the point where I turned around after constructing a supply bunker to see no less than four empty launch pads taking up half the land.

The Hawks are just as much of a joy to pilot as ever, though their arsenal in the beta is even more reduced than that of the foot soldiers.

While I’m complaining, the gunplay is where Starhawk struggles to step out of Warhawk’s shadow. If the latter’s arsenal were an ice cream flavour, it would be vanilla. While that might sound like a complaint, it was one of the game’s biggest advantages. It didn’t need to introduce you to each weapon. There was no alternate fire. You saw something that looked like a flamethrower, picked it up and hey! It was a flamethrower. It was a great decision to ease players into the game, and then give each weapon a strategical edge for the player to discover (who would’ve thought fire would be more effective on tanks than RPGs?).

The weapons in Starhawk, by contrast, are so ugly and inelegant that you have no idea what each one is going to do until you fire it. The rocket launcher in particular literally looks like a cardboard box with a metal finish resting on your shoulder. On the rare occasion that I used the shotgun, I found it to have a ridiculously long range. And the sniper rifle no longer fires a sleek bullet trail packing massive recoil, but instead a woolly-looking laser that barely makes the controller vibrate. Annoyingly, weapon selection still uses the D-pad, so you can only ever comfortably choose one when you’re standing still. On the plus side, you no longer have to hold down the fire button to lock on with the rocket launcher, and the default automatic rifle is actually reliable in a pinch and deals some decent damage, unlike Warhawk’s default pistol.

Surprisingly, the game feels pretty balanced; even when the Hawks convert to mech mode. An overwhelming defeat is almost always justified.

I’ve spent a good bit of time with the beta now, having advanced to rank 4 of what I believe is a 10 rank cap. It’s quite frankly the most refreshing competitive multiplayer experience I’ve had in years. From the moment I arrive on the map by crashing down to the surface in an escape pod (from now on, the only way I want to respawn in a game…and yes, you can take out enemies with it), the same part of my brain that hums into life when playing games like LittleBigPlanet and Minecraft starts laying the foundations for an impenetrable fortress. Once the makings of it are complete - and several wandering insurgents are effectively dealt with by its defences - I grab a jetpack and a rocket launcher and follow the sound of explosions. Or maybe I jump into a Hawk and take to the skies for some epic dogfighting. Or mount the turret on a Razorback being driven by an ally preparing to the storm the enemy base. Or set up camp on a sniper tower, watching the horizon for the subtlest movement.

All the while, memories of Warhawk come roaring back to me, as I remember what it was like to experience the thrill of an online deathmatch for the first time. Because that is the power of Starhawk; it reminded me that multiplayer gaming can be worth more than just defending - something that not even a high-calibre title like Uncharted 3 could manage. I’ve yet to play a single-player campaign in any game that creates the same rush of adrenaline as dropping into the enemy base, grabbing their flag and hightailing it all the way back home does in Warhawk. Starhawk’s pedigree alone was enough to make it my most anticipated title of 2012 (yes, even more than SSX); after playing this beta, even with the reduced number of features, I now yearn for the discovery of time travel more than ever. May can’t come soon enough for this compelling hybrid of shooter and interior design.

This is a Public Service Announcement

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 00:42:20 +0000

If you have not already, I strongly advise you do the following:

Buy a PlayStation Plus subscription.

Download the Starhawk public beta.

Install the Starhawk public beta.

Play the Starhawk public beta.

Experience ecstasy.

Thank you for listening.

An Update

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 03:39:00 +0000

If you’re still keeping up to date with this blog then you may be wondering whether we’re still going or not. The short answer is yes.

The long answer is going to take a while, so you might want to get comfortable for this one…

Poor circumstance and other priorities are the reasons I’ve been inactive as of late (I cannot speak for Jack, but I presume he is in a similar situation). First of all my laptop died towards the end of last year, and my desktop computer was in a persistent stage of nearly-built. In the lead up to getting my desktop PC I made the conscious switch to become a PC gamer - buying titles for PC instead of console wherever possible. The lack of a functioning computer meant that I had a stockpile of games that I could not play and/or review, and a deficiency of console games to fall back on. It also meant that I did not have access to Photoshop in order to work on Players.

Shortly thereafter I found myself in the coursework grind that crops up towards the end of every semester, so although I did finally get a new laptop I did not have time to create. After turning in coursework I was in the lead-up to my exams, so after a short break to recuperate I began studying. By this point my desktop was up and running, but primarily used to look at learning materials.

My exams are now over, and I’m still on vacation. Today I finally resumed work on content for this blog - the finale of Players’ “Better Left Unfez’d” story arc. Normally a single strip will take me anywhere from 5 to 10 hours to complete, but this strip is taking longer due to it’s complicated nature, completely new content (nothing to reference) and just a lack of practice. I hope to have it completed within a week, and moving on to new things.

Admittedly I find myself devoting the majority of my PS2P time working on Players, since I enjoy it more, I feel that it speaks to a wider audience than the blog does, and because Jack can pick up my slack on the writing front. I do hope to get back in action, and representing the PC gaming elite. Trust me, we’ve got a demographic to win back.

Finally I want to talk a bit about Pause Break - our shiny new podcast. As Jack and I spend the majority of the time living in separate cities, podcasting isn’t exactly easy. Truth be told we could try it over the internet, but in my opinion it lacks the dynamic of a group of people chatting in a room together.

It’s our plan for me to continue to record and publish Pause Break while Jack is away, co-hosted by Marty and featuring a rotating cast of some of our friends. A side effect to this is that Pause Break will end up as more of a general gaming podcast, rather than a PS2P-specific podcast. I like to think of this as a good thing, as I’d like each project that we work on to be judged on its own merits, regardless of whether or not our audience keeps up to date with the blog.

I am the president of the Robert Gordon University Gaming Society in Aberdeen - a collective of gamers of all tastes and opinions. I’m planning to pick my co-hosts from this group, so while there should be a good variety at times it may feel like the unofficial RGU Gaming Society podcast, especially as we cover our society’s upcoming Omegathon. Hopefully this will prove entertaining even to those who are unfamiliar with us. We are planning to get a good variety of coverage for the Omegathon, so outsiders should be able to keep up with us when we talk about it. We’ve got some good things planned, so it should be a great event.

So in summary expect more content soon - we hope to be publishing more reviews, more articles, more comic strips and more podcasts this year, so stay tuned for what’s to come.

Batman is the 100%

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:14:00 +0000

I can’t remember the last time I completed 100% of a game. And I don’t know what it was about Batman: Arkham Asylum that had me ploughing through everything the game had to offer. But I did it.

Beat the story on Hard? Check.
Find all 240 riddles? Check.
Beat all the predator challenges? Check.
Beat all the combat challenges? Check. Just.

I personally class a game as ‘hard’ if you still find it challenging even once you’ve mastered its mechanics. I don’t consider games like Street Fighter or NBA 2K hard (yet) because I know for a fact I’m not using all their gameplay aspects to their fullest potential. To that end, I think the hardest game I’ve ever played up until this point is either Super Meat Boy or Ninja Gaiden Sigma. Those games are fairly easy to grasp, but once you have a good hold, they’re not shy about stepping up their game. The bouts of frustration you might experience from playing them are outweighed by the sense of accomplishment you feel afterwards.

Having beaten all of Arkham Asylum’s combat challenges, I can now confidently say that they are single-handedly the hardest game I’ve ever played. Not the story. Not even on Hard. Just the challenges.

This guy makes it look pretty easy. From this, I conclude that ‘this guy’ is an advanced cyborg sent from the year 2807 to make us all look like chumps.

Arkham Asylum’s combat is right at the top of the pile for me. As stylish as Devil May Cry and as visceral (not to mention satisfyingly balletic) as God of War, it feels so natural after just a few minutes of play. Then once you unlock the rest of Batman’s gadgets, it expands into something that can only be described as graceful. And maybe also by the word *thwack*.

But the final three Freeflow Challenges in Arkham Asylum - all that stood between me and the Platinum trophy - tested me, my skills, and my patience. After restarting Shock And Awe Extreme for the hyper-zillionth time, I began to wonder if it was all some sort of cruel joke.

But several days and several screams into a nearby cushion later, I finally made a breakthrough, and the elusive 100% was mine. I made it with my sanity and my anticipation for Arkham City intact. What’s surprising is that I thought those last few battles would sour my overall opinion of the game. Quite the contrary; as I type this up, I find myself reminiscing about all the game’s high points. As part of my mission to clean out the dustiest tomes in my gaming library, I’m glad I decided to go back and wrap this one up. My only regret is that I didn’t do it sooner.