Let’s Be Vague

Decided to pick it up again, maybe finish it. Seven levels.

Tag

The Game Informer reveal of Portal 2 details led to speculation that new gameplay elements will follow the same path as Digipen student project Narbacular Drop (which the original Portal was inspired by). Colour me as again missing the boat, but the 2008 release of Tag (~50mb download) passed me by. It was a first-person puzzle platformer with a goal to simply navigate through levels. It’s really a tech demo, but its possibilities really highlight how to improve Portal‘s mechanics… and it just so happens its creators may now be under Valve’s employ.

The fun core of the game is manipulating surfaces through use of a paintball gun to allow jumping, speeding up your running speed, and allowing you to pull off a gravity-defying walks on any surface (like Prey‘s ceiling-traversal). The open-air urban setting (used due to the jumping component) recalls Mirror’s Edge environments but with monochrome, texture-free geometry combined with a graffiti aesthetic. Check it out if you want to see what Portal 2 may play like at year’s end.

It’s the 16th Anniversary

New Super Mario Bros

I don’t even think this one is a tool-assisted speedrun like the last Mario video posted.

Rise

You Thought Battletoads was Hard

I’m a Vaporware Marksman

Someday I’ll figure out how to finish what I started.

Deus Ex

Given my propensity for procrastination and petty pretentiousness, my alliterate self sometimes take its sweet time when it comes to taking in media that has long ago hit critical mass, such as the case with Deus Ex. While its namesake cues intercourse jokes amongst the intercourseless demographic, this super fucking subversive action FPS/RPG title was created by the niche of Ion Storm the unwashed (literally) gaming hardcores really can’t hate (well, aside from the sequel.)

This Isn’t Quake II

Another snapshot of what may or may not see the light of day in 2008.

Baby, You’ve Come a Long Way

Odium (1998)

Odium (2008)

Maybe this Doom 2 project will actually come out some day.

Bioshock

I snatched Bioshock in late summer for $10 during a Steam half-off weekend sale and since then have spottily attacked it to finish a relatively short game (under 15 hours) over a two month period. As a spiritual successor to System Shock 2, it raises the bar in the RPG/action shooter genre with top notch graphics, equipment upgrade systems, and inventive writing.

Over the decades, designers have been finding new ways to artificially enclose their game world. Early FPS games were always indoors (you can’t run into the vacuum of space), then with more advanced graphic engines, we went to the \_/ shape (inaccessible buildings or canyons for outdoor areas). Once the skymap graphics were quality enough, we then got tall cliffs (Half Life’s “Surface Tension” chapter). So for Bioshock, hey, why not throw it underwater?

Audiosurf

Flick of the wrist and a grip on your hips.

Three days ago I purchased Audiosurf after a mere 20 minute demo of the game. It’s kind of F-Zero meets Wipeout meets Tetris while being completely soundtracked by you. The premise of the game is to use the waveform of any music file on your hard drive to create a virtual racetrack that’s used as a basis for a fast-paced puzzle problem. This sounds like a Winamp visualization plugin gone wrong, but’s actually pretty fantastic. There are multiple modes available, one of which includes collecting blocks of multiple colours to attempt configuring a contiguous sequence. My personal preference is “Ninja Mono” where you attempt to collect one type of coloured blocks (the colour transitions based on the music’s tempo) while avoiding gray barrier blocks. It’s very fucking challenging on elite.

It’s the type of game you can jump right into without any instructions really. I made the mistake of using the keyboard for my first 15 or so songs but once I tried the mouse for movement, I quickly realized the err of my ways. The game is mostly single player, with a mode for two people to play on the same PC, but there is no online networking yet.

Since there are fairly low system requirements (1.6 GHz processor, 512MB RAM, 32MB video card, DirectX 9), trying out the five song Audiosurf demo is a no-brainer. It doesn’t quite have the party game appeal of Guitar Hero or Rock Band, but it’s available on Steam for only ten bucks, price including the attached Orange Box soundtrack.

I’ve tried a variety of music genres with the start/stop dynamic tracks having the best fit. Math rock (Candiria, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Minus the Bear, Q and Not U, The Dismemberment Plan), EBM/trance (Front Line Assembly, VNV Nation, Infected Mushroom), post-metal (Pelican, Russian Circles), and industrial rock/drum’n'bass fusion (Pitchshifter, Cubanate, Pop Will Eat Itself) all worked pretty well for the game’s fun factor. Check out that steadily increasing outro of PWEI’s “Karmadrome”! Just don’t try it with Venetian Snares unless you want to suffer from technology-induced epileptic seizures.

So in the future, musicians can use the following metric to decide on the quality of their music – is my song fun in Audiosurf?

Eternal Doom 4 SLIGE

Reference: Eternal DOOM IV: Return from Oblivion

Visit the Doom textures resource, download at least half of the sets. Attach them to the Eternal Doom resources. Open your level editor and add the follow:

• respawning enemy gate to artificially elongate the level
• doors that cannot be opened, ever
• dead ends
• obscure hidden switches (shooting dead bodies!)
• teleporters as a layout crutch
• long square hallways as a pointless exercise in connecting symmetrical rooms
• random symbolism (Christian and pagan imagery within the same room? No problem!)
• random architecture (we can now utilize slopes, so let’s make arbitrary use of them!)

Ensure to apply in excess so the final product is a tedious clusterfuck of unfun sequences. Espi’s MAP27, “The Shrine”, excepted.

SiN Episodes: Emergence

Ritual Entertainment loves The Matrix

Since Steam started their holiday sale, I decided to pick up Ritual Entertainment’s SiN Episodes: Emergence, regularly priced at $14.95, for only $7.45 (also snatched Psychonauts for $9.95). This way, I could avoid the family, pull back my rate of drinking, and enjoy some old school FPS gaming.

A little too old school. For one of the design goals being emergent AI, the enemy behaviour is fucktard stupid. There is no cooperation or cover system. An enemy yells, “take the left flank”, while him and his mate stand awkwardly on a narrow skyscraper ledge. The game does have a difficulty system that adjusts according to your performance, however I didn’t find it too difficult overall, since you’re only taking headshots at endless mercenary grunts and fast-moving zombies mutants. It’s just a plain run and gun.

The Orange Pie

Constipation is no laughing matter

I can throw down mini-reviews tardy like the rest of them, so Valve’s The Orange Box is now appearing in full force. By cleverly including Half Life 2: Episode Two, POrtal, and Team Fortress in one package, the developer jam-packed a barrel of fun into one entity as to rate higher in Game of the Year awards. Priced at $49.95 on Valve’s online-delivery platform Steam, on the surface it seems like a deal especially with the inclusion of Half Life 2 and Half Life 2: Episode One totaling the value at $129.75 (go, go gadget infomercials for this clever marketing technique.) When you consider the majority of customers already own the two previously released games in the set, their attachment to The Orange Box was really just to make up for the lack of content (from the perspective of playing time), whether it was high-quality or not.

Best Individual Add-On Doom Levels

Verbosity will be used and abused.

I am a massive nerd, this much is true. I make lists related to gaming on the Internet. This list is very subjective. They are my favourites and maybe not yours. This is the best Ultimate Doom and Doom 2 have to offer in the single modification department, when the technical limits of their engines are stretched and creativity is forced to run rampant. When reading this list, keep in mind I do not actually play this game. Every level I download and run through is done just as that: with god mode and an eye open for pleasure. I do not care too much for game balancing. This is why I loathe RPGs. Give me material that’s creative in music, story, visual splendor, and breasts. As a warning, this article is wordy as fuck. Here are the entries, in no particular order:

Need For Speed: Porsche Unleashed

Bumper view all up in your grill.

At a certain point in time, EA Games decided to turn the NFS series into a 2 Fast 2 Furious-inspired clusterfuck focused on the import ricers, the glorification of illegal ghetto culture and the desire for the New American Dream (it involves bling now, ya hear?). Great market research, basditos. Before that, Porsche Unleashed was made. This game exemplifies the history, class, and integrity of the Porsche series, which I guess is too vanilla for kids these days.

Knee Deep in ZDoom: When Design Goes Wrong

What’s this bullshit? I don’t fuckin’ care! It don’t matter to Jesus. But you’re not foolin’ me, man. You might fool the fucks in the league office, but you don’t fool Jesus. This bush league psyche-out stuff. Laughable, man – ha ha! I would have fucked you in the ass Saturday. I fuck you in the ass next Wednesday instead. Wooo! You got a date Wednesday, baby!

Half-Life 2

Gordon Freeman vs. Hugh Laurie

This is a review for Valve Software’s Half-Life² along with its sequel, Episode One, that are embedded with spoilers. So if you were living three years in the past like me, don’t read on unless you’re OK with plot details being revealed. Ariel dies. My opinion is mixed as I can recognize the assets that were well executed and the decisions that reduced the game’s replayability. That’s a fancy way of saying there are obvious pros and cons (not of hitchhiking).

Wii Baseball, You Have Been Conquered

Since moving a month ago, I was lucky to move into a home housing a Nintendo Wii. My initial tasks were to master the arts of Wii Sports. I quickly decided boxing and golf were bollocks, but tennis and baseball were going to be made my bitch. Tennis is relatively easy to gain points on once you realize to just flick your wrist forward for hard hits, rather than swinging your arms, but baseball was another animal. Once I got to 900 points (with 1000 being “pro”-level), the computer AI’s hitters were crushing every one of my pitches and every ball I hit was a sharp grounder straight at a fielder. This was made more upsetting by my fielders constantly making errors, keeping in mind in the game you don’t even control your fielders as it’s all automated. All you do is pitch and hit.

After reading a few tips online, I turned 7-0 mercy rule loses into 10-2 drubbings of my computer opponent. Some simple rules:

1. Double-tap the directional pad left or right when pitching to ensure the ball goes off the plate. Sometimes when holding it in, my balls would still go straight down the middle.
2. Try to never use a fastball, instead relying on Jamie Moyer-style junk. Just don’t emulate his 2004 season (44HR given up in 200IP!?).
3. If you’re a righty, pitch curve balls inside to left-handed hitters and screwballs inside to right-handed hitters. Southpaws do the opposite pitching techniques. This jams the opponent, reducing the likelihood of solid contact.
4. The odd time, mix up a screwball away to lefties and curve ball away to rights, making sure to throw the pitch slowly and _off the plate_.
5. You can sometimes get away with an inside 95MPH fastball to strike players out, but use it very rarely. Keep in mind, if the computer makes contact, they’ll likely hit it harder than the softer throws.
6. Mix in splitters to keep the AI honest as they’ll sometimes chase in 2 strike counts.
7. Change arm slots every couple pitches, using 2 to select sidearm and 1 to go back to overhand. I mostly stick to sidearm as it makes the softer pitches harder to lift for distance.
8. For hitting, recognize splitters by their lack of movement and do not swing as they are outside the strike zone 99.9% of the time and the only contact you can make is a come-backer or a foul tip.
9. Do not swing at a pitch until you get a called first strike. Never. Seriously. 1000pt+ opponents always throw splitters and junk outside for 75%+ of their pitches, so you’ll end up walking a couple times in the first inning alone. This tires out the pitcher by the second inning.
10. … and a tired pitcher leads to failed splitters that end up being 70MPH faster balls down the centre. You’ll recognize these by the red exclamation mark that appears over the pitcher’s head. Anticipate and pull a sharp line-drive into the seats.

Use these tips wisely and become a master at being a huge nerd!