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Jun 9th, 2016 at 15:44:58 - Medal of Honor (2010) (PC) |
This was short and sweet. It feels almost exactly like Battlefield 3, except in Afghanistan instead of Eastern Europe* (*I have no idea what terrorist stronghold BF3 was actually in; they all meld together). You play as several different soldiers fighting the Taliban (usually referred to simply as "the bad guys"). I've read about this and the devs came under a lot of pressure not to use the name "Taliban" in multiplayer. It seems that carried over somewhat to single player as the use of "bad guys" is forced and cheesy. "More bad guys over there!" "Watch out, this place is crawling with bad guys!" Yes friends, there are good guys and bad guys. The world is a black and white place. I'd read that this ideological pressure was from a place where people were disgusted that the devs would put people in the role of the Taliban. "The Taliban killed Americans!" Yes, well people the world over are role-playing as Americans in all these war games, and Americans have ruined a lot more lives. I'm sure this game is banned in Afghanistan though. I don't even know if people play video games in Afghanistan...maybe rich people.
Although I agree that soldiers often do heroic deeds, the extent to which these games portray the whole institution of military and war as heroic is disturbing. And playing Medal of Honor, I'm not not sure exactly what the soldiers are protecting us from, or even Afghan people. I hope that's a subtle point of the game, that war is meaningless. The events of the game are set off by the Taliban killing a contact that your team was going to meet up with for some reason (intel probably). And that's it. That's all they did. They killed someone who they were understandably pissed at for providing information to the enemy. They weren't killing civilians. They were just attacking the American military, who attacked them first anyway. I guess you have to buy into the context of 9/11 and Middle Eastern/Muslim terrorism (religion is never mentioned in the game, as if it plays no part in terrorism) to understand the justification for the war. None of that context is given in the game. I wonder what it would be like for someone born 20 years from now to play this game, after 9/11 is a generation behind us. I think they would find the conflict, as I thought, meaningless.
Anyway, the gameplay is incredibly simple. You point and shoot for 4.5 hours. The whole thing is on rails. Control is constantly taken away from you. Squad mates tell you exactly what to do all the time and objectives, key enemies, etc. are always highlighted on your HUD. I always wish that these military FPS games would unfold more like a sci-fi one, where you get tougher and tougher enemies, maybe get some upgrades or abilities. Not a lot of RPG mind you, just a little bit! Because you just shoot the same soldiers the entire time and there's nothing different about it except whether you're in a city or on a mountain. And can we please stop with the computer targeting from the plan segments?! Those are so boring! Let me actually fly the helicopter and shoot things, or let me actually aim the turret. Don't just put a screen in front of me with a target and ask me to "press F to fire missile."
You're constantly in a squad in Medal of Honor. Although the individual soldiers have no identities of their own, I think the squads as a whole do. There were several situations where I felt a little emotional about what was going on in the game because the soldiers are always chattering, a constant presence, and you really do have a lot of close (scripted) calls. A couple times I was convinced that characters were going to die and the way the game builds up these moments is pretty intense. There is one firefight at a landing zone where you get ambushed that had me nearly in despair for the thought of all this being for naught if the Taliban killed the four of us. But of course, the military is heroic, and heroes don't die (unless it's doing something heroic), and you do get saved in the nick of time (which is heroic, and said savior could have died then and it would have been okay).
Also, your character is jumping impaired. Other characters can jump up and climb walls, but you always need a "buddy lift." It's stupid.
So all in all, this was pretty fun, if bland. I have no idea why in the world it was in my Steam account. Humble Bundle? 20 best shooters of all time list? Random gift from friend? Well it's there, I didn't spend long with Counter-Strike this week, and XCOM left me with a hankering for more military combat; therefore, Medal of Honor. There are much better shooters out there though, but if you want a few hours of dumb duck shooting, go for it.
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Jun 8th, 2016 at 15:43:45 - XCOM: Enemy Unknown (PC) |
So XCOM: Enemy Unknown is nothing short of amazing. I've been having a blast all week with this. When I realized that I could name my squad members, I went to Facebook and announced that anyone who wanted to fight for humanity could be immortalized in my XCOM game. That thread exponentially grew, and I had a list of almost 30 characters to make. Downside: I doubt I'd want any of my squad mates to die, but since they are all friends of mine, i REALLY don't want them to die! And I don't want to save spam, so a lot of them died. Today I lost a Colonel (the highest rank) sniper, my friend Mark. He had been in my squad since the very beginning, had done like 20-something missions and had like 40 kills. I had to resist not reloading, and so he's gone forever.
One unit gave his life to stun a muton berserker so that my scientists could study it and develop armor.
My girlfriend died as a lowly Squaddie (rank 2).
My friend Daniel, a Captain assault, died by a freak accident, killed by a thin man.
My friend Chris got zapped by a sectoid commander before I realized that they had a primary attack. I thought they only mind controlled people.
And so on and so forth. Every death has a story.
Here's how the character development process works. You purchase new recruits. They arrive in a few days. You outfit them and take them out on missions, and they rank up after they get X kills. At each rank, you get a perk. There are 7 ranks, and it takes a while to move all the way up, although you can be smart about who you give kills to so that your Colonels aren't just mowing down weak aliens that your Squaddies could benefit more from killing. Standard SRPG/TRPG trick.
After you acquire a particular artifact from an alien crash, you can construct a facility that lets you test your soldiers for psionic abilities. I've found one in the whole game that has psionic abilities. Turns out that's good because you have to take a psionic soldier into the final battle! Psionic soldiers maintain their regular rank, but also gain access to tiers of psionic abilities as you use those abilities in combat. My psionic guy, Thad, is fun to use to mind control enemies. Mind control basically gives you an ally for 4 rounds, and/or forces the enemies to take the time to kill the mind controlled alien. Either way, they lose a unit and usually waste some actions.
One of my favorite things about XCOM is the R&D aspect. You have scientists and engineers at your disposal. Scientists conduct research on the aliens, on weapons and other things, then send their findings to engineering, who actually manufactures the materials that you can purchase. You also go to engineering to construct facilities that power your satellites, laboratories to make research go faster, a foundry to upgrade your items, and so on. There's a little base building component where you have to excavate underground and smartly build facilities to maximize synergies and ensure you have enough power to run the place, satellites to monitor alien spacecraft, etc.
The coolest thing about R&D is that it's ALWAYS happening. You're constantly choosing something to research and watching the time tick away until it's done and you can look at it (and buy it if you have the cash). And you don't really know the stats on armor and guns until you buy it, which is a cool design. You generally know that what you just built is better than the previous thing, but not how much better. It is never bad to purchase something new because you will use it and it will help keep you alive and/or kill aliens better. I had a huge turning point in the game when I got a request from a council nation to supply 4 laser pistols. I had one and they are only like $20 to make, so I bought the rest to give to Egypt or whoever. My reward? $800. Hell yes. All of a sudden, I had a nice new piece of armor and a bunch of new plasma guns and various other upgrades. That REALLY turned the difficulty of the battles down a notch.
I'm actually sort of at that point again out of necessity. See, I fulfilled all the requirements to do the final mission, which I attempted, and could possibly beat, but didn't manage it the first time. There's one room where you have to take on two sectopods (giant deadly robots) that broke me. They killed my sniper and critically injured my support. I managed to kill them with the remaining four squad members, only to die in the final room with the two (or three?) ethereals and muton elites. So, I loaded back before the final mission because I still have a ton of equipment I never bought and upgrades, and I never created a SHIV mech, and there's just a lot I didn't do! Also, at the end, the ethereals wreaked havoc on my squad with mind control, so I'd like to purchase some of those helmets that resist it. It's cool because I can just keep scanning for alien activity and doing missions and getting money, and upgrade away until I feel I am ready for the final mission.
Of course, I run the risk of my fav soldiers dying in battles along the way. Till next time!
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Jun 7th, 2016 at 18:49:15 - Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (PC) |
After a couple days of intense Counter-Striking, I'm glad that I Counter-Struck, but I doubt I will want to get very Counter-Stricken in the future.
The game is undoubtedly fun, way updated from the old version. It looks and feels great, love all the different types of guns. It's got some cool game modes I hadn't played in another game before. My favorite has to be Arms Race. It's like Deathmatch, but when you kill enough enemies, or the opposing team's current leader, you rank up and get a new weapon. The goal is to reach the highest rank, which awards a golden knife, and kill someone with it. That's how you win the match. I never got the golden knife, but I got to the previous rank a couple times. I think the weapons are randomized except for the golden knife so you're always getting something unexpected and everyone is forced to play with all different types of guns.
One thing I dislike is the constant chatter of other players, usually saying asinine things or calling one another derogatory names. I'm sure you can turn it off, but somehow I feel it's part of the online shooter experience you're supposed to have. Makes you feel like you're playing with others and not bots. I didn't actually learn anything from their chatter, which I thought I might at the beginning. I played one mode where I thought one team was supposed to plant a bomb while the other tries to stop them or defuse it. I got yelled at one time for planting the bomb! As I observed, it seems you can win by killing all of the opposing team, and that's what they were all trying to do. So I was actively detracting from my team's informal objective by following the formal objective.
What I learned a lot from was playing the same couple maps over and over. I picked up a lot of tricks from watching other players and from getting killed myself, including that you can open and close doors, that many people shoot through doors as they approach to kill people on the other side, that there are many, many more ways in and out of houses and rooms than it initially looks like, that you need to aim for the head or else you'll die a lot pumping bullets into people's torsos, etc. At first I was like, "Ugh, why do they keep picking the same map?! This is boring" and after a while I was like "There's so much to learn about this map, it never gets old!"
Anyway, there are hundreds of guns that I could spend hundreds of hours shooting at other players. It's good fun, but seems like idle time when I could be progressing through another game with a story. I'll keep CS:GO installed as people want to play it every now and again (and until 6 months ago I couldn't join in).
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Jun 3rd, 2016 at 15:43:50 - Outland (PC) |
I’ve confirmed there is FPS drop regardless of whether I use Big Picture mode. Can’t imagine it’s my laptop. It’s not too annoying, but it’s there. It smooths out so nicely when there are fewer enemies on screen and when it’s zoomed in to a smaller view of the area. That’s my only problem with the game. Otherwise I thought it was wonderful.
I’ve realized that the combat is deeper than it initially seemed. Early on, I was just hacking and slashing away, but you can actually do things like an uppercut sword swing and launch your foes into the air, stun them, hit them from above and below on ledges, launch bombs at them, make enemies hit one another, and use a whole barrage of special abilities in different situations. There is a really cool beam blast that annihilates anything in a line. There is another cool one that absorbs all energy balls (the red and blue bullets flying everywhere) and then sends a 360-degree shockwave out from your character that will similarly annihilate enemies. It’s a good way to clear a path through dense bullets and enemies.
The difficulty ramps up toward the end, which is great because there is so much room for complexity here. There are spots where the bullet patterns take a minute of observation to discern. Add enemies walking through those areas, and you’ve got a conundrum on your hands! How do you avoid the bullets and avoid/attack enemies at the same time? Answer: Rapid and precise color switching. Or lure the enemies out of the bullet area if possible.
About halfway through the game, the machines that shoot bullets start alternating sometimes shooting different colors. In the last of the game’s worlds (heaven or something), the enemies start changing colors too. It is a bit mind-bending to keep track of what color bullets are flying where and what color enemies are, keeping track of all of those things changing colors, keeping track of YOUR color, and trying to platform your way around at the same time. It feels awesome every time you get through an area.
All this craziness culminates in the final insane boss battle. It took me nearly 10 tries to get it and probably 45 minutes of repeating, getting a little farther, a little farther, stuck on one part for a while, a little farther, and finally defeating the boss. Here’s a video of someone doing a nice job of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTSNvPwiMEs. Somehow they can destroy the dragon heads in two hits, while it took me three. There were no weapon upgrades that I know of, so I dunno how the player was doing that. Also, I didn’t think to use special powers against it until the very end when I had 1 health left and thought I was going to die. I was just riding around on the outer circle and it popped in my head: “Oh! I bet I can just use the beam and shoot the sisters from here!” Bam, win.
Really great game, highly recommended if you like 2d platformers!
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