HROT

One thing I'm surprised I didn't question as I was playing it was "What the fuck does Hrot even mean" and apparently its Czech for "point" or "spike".  Thanks Google

HROT is a first person shooter that came out in 2023 although looking at I wouldn't blame you for thinking it came out 1996.  Its a fast paced boomer shooter thats wearing its Quake influence so hard that the developer may as well be kicking down your down with a giant "I FUCKING LOVE QUAKE" neon sign draped around his neck while he plays a Nine Inch Nails album at full volume directly into your eardrums.  That's not a bad thing though, its not like iD are making oldschool Quake games anymore so its nice to get some fresh nostalgia bombs from time to time.  Another game that it reminds me of is Chasm: The Rift, but I've not played that so I'm not sure if it actually resembles that game in any significant way outside of the visuals.  I've just seen a review of it via a Civvie11 video on YouTube.  What is obvious is that it's made by people who are passionate about boomshoot history so either way if you're craving some real old-school style shit, HROT is a good place to go.  

HROT has 3 episodes and 24 maps (plus some secret ones) where you shoot your way through what I think is 1980s Czechoslovakia.  Despite the "realistic" setting of the game, the actual presentation is quite fantastical.  The first few enemies are dudes in gasmasks with guns and grenade launchers but quickly turns into you fighting floating heads, zombies, weird newt looking things and those statues from Dr Who.  Bosses also include things such as gorilla ornaments on carnival rides that come to life, sentient pommel horses and the floating heads of politicians.  If you were worried the grey brown environments were going to be devoid of any personality then you'd be quite wrong.  The art direction is following the Quake brown style but you're never sure what weird thing is waiting around the next corner.  One minute you're in a sewer shooting dudes with shotguns, next minute you're in a courtyard desperately hopping away from a horse in a gas mask while zombies in wheel chairs obliterate your HP.  There are also a ton of funny little interactables in a few of the stages which includes the standard FPS mounted turrets but also fully functional keyboards and little LCD games.

One thing that annoys me about the general presentation of HROT is that I felt a lot of it went over my head.  There are nods and winks to all this Czech art and literature scattered throughout the game, I think, and because I'm not privvy to basically any of it as a nerdy British man who grew up in the 90s, some of the charm is lost on a player like me.  For example there's a level in episode 3, the first one, that feels like it comes right out of left field.  It's called War with the Newts and it seems maybe a bit lol so randum to an ignorant player like myself but it turns out to be based on famous novel of the same name that I've never heard of but now want to read.  I forget how I even stumbled on this information after playing, maybe in the wiki or something.  It's not a huge knock against the game though, it's just I have no idea where to even begin educating myself with Czech history in order to get all the little details the game has to over.   

One other fun thing the game does is that upon completion of each chapter the game gives you an actual cooking recipe to try.  The first one you get for the completion of Episode 1 is Beef Stroganoff which I actually tried making.  It turned out pretty well, was good for a couple of dinners

 The second recipe is for Cauliflower Brains which I'm not going to bother trying and the third is for "eggs in aspic" and honestly it sounds like something that makes me want to vom.  Regardless of my picky tastes though, its cool that such a feature is included.  

HROT is great and you should play it.  A fantastic Quake-like that shouldn't be missed by anyone even remotely interested in FPS's.  Shoot some guys, repel the invasion, learn to cook, simulate a clock when you're finished.  What's not to love?

The Xen Problem

 I think everybody knows what Half Life is, it's a game that needs no introduction.  If you don't know what Half Life is then I suggest you close this page and go play it right stat now because what the fuck is wrong with you? But no matter if your a die-hard fan or casual player I think almost everyone can agree that the games final area, Xen, is a gigantic pile of garbage and it would be more fun to eat a box of thumb tacks than play through this section.

The solid first person game play of Half Life takes a drastic change when you hit Xen.  Low gravity, sparse ammunition, flying alien babies, weird terrain and really on paper that doesn't actually sound so bad on paper but when you play it the experience is grueling.  Low gravity gives way to stupid, annoying first personal platforming with alien babies blasting you on all sides while you're trying to figure out where to go and how to not die.  The weird layout makes this a pain to get around and sometimes you aren't even sure if you're actually making progress or not.  Ammunition is sparse but enemies are plentiful so I hope you like using the Hive Hand because otherwise you're going to be struggling.  To top it all off as well you have to fight what is probably the most annoying boss in FPS game history, Nihilanth, a giant floating baby that will just teleport you into random jumping puzzles whenever the fuck it wants.

But I'm just talking about the original there.  The remake, Black Mesa, completely re-did Xen in an attempt to make it more enjoyable and I have never seen a developer fail at a goal with a remake as hard as Crowbar Collective failed with this.  Not only are all the old problems still there but they made Xen WAYYYY longer.  Not only is it longer, but it's also full of stupid switch and plug puzzles that bring the pace down to a snails pace.  There's even one extremely pointless bit where you have to deactivate 3 barriers by doing the same combat room over and over again.  We do have to give them credit though, the Nihilanth boss is significantly more fun in Black Mesa than it is in the original game, I can at least admit that was a welcome change.

Half Life has a massive legacy and for good reason but it's such a shame that it has to be tarnished by that absolutely fucking AWFUL final section.  Luckily though Valve realized what a terrible pile of shit Xen was and didn't include it in any of the sequels.  Hopefully it will stay that way if they ever decide to release Half Life 3

Doom 3

I’ve been playing through the Doom games recently in a sort of slow preparation for when Doom Eternal comes out, a game for which I am quite looking forward to.  The first couple of games are about what you’d would expect from titles that old, dated and kind of clunky but solidly made and still a ton of fun to play.  I got around some of that old DOS game clunkiness by using something called ZDoom which is a sort of mod that makes it look pretty and controls in a way that makes sense (mouse to move forward are you MAD?!) and Doom 2 on Ultraviolence in particular feels like a first person Bullet Hell game at times.  
But then there’s Doom 3, the weird black sheep of the family
Talking to people about Doom 3 it seems like it’s remembered rather fondly.  Hell, if I’m being really honest I myself has fond memories playing it up until the point I finished it last week.  But having replayed it I can’t help but feel that it’s just a bit shit.  It’s not because of its fancy graphics getting in the way for my DOS brand nostalgia goggles or anything like that, it just doesn’t feel like “Doom”, you know?
Sure it’s got “Doom” on the cover and it’s about a man on mars fighting soldiers, imps and other iconic monsters as well as a few new additions but it feels wrong.  Doom levels are maze like and sprawling while Doom 3s levels are claustrophobic and linear.  The “puzzles” in Doom 1 and 2 are about finding keys and navigating the various mazes while Doom 3 has you clearing poison barrels with a UFO Catcher and repairing bridges and doors.  Doom 3 isn’t Doom, it’s Half Life with a Doom lick of paint and the spookiness turned ALL the way up. 
What I’m not saying is that Doom 3 is a bad game.  It’s a fun little spookfest with competently made, satisfying gun play, great atmosphere and great enemy variety, it’s a great game that I would probably be talking about a lot more positively if it wasn’t for the title. 
Hindsight is a wonderful thing too because clearly when they came back to make New Doom they went BACK to big open areas full of monsters to rip and tear on.  Arguably they went a little TOO much the other way but I’d rather have it wide, fast and violent than slow, spooky and.....Half Lifey?
Anyway if you’ve not played Doom 3 I would still recommend checking it out, like I said it’s not a bad game by any stretch.  Do be warned though that if you’ve come off the back of new Doom or the re releases of the old ones, you are in for an extremely different experience. 
Here’s hoping that Doom Eternal is going to be an absolute banger!

Quake

A while ago I decided to replay Quake so I'll take a moment to blog about it.  It's a short and simple game so this will be a short and simple post.

I don't really feel like I need to introduce Quake in any sort of way.  If you're interested in games and you've not at least heard of Quake then you must have been living under a rock this entire time because this is one of the big bad granddaddies of FPS games.  It's basically Doom but with proper 3D which isn't really surprising since they are both made by the same people.

As fun as Quake is, and it still is a ton of fun to play even today, this game is really, REALLY ugly.  The level design itself is up to the usual id standard for these kind of games at the time but the graphics are all just brown, ugly castles full of swamp water.  Doom, by contrast, while still sort full of dingy corridors on space stations at least had some variation to its color palate.  The levels in Doom manage to maintain some kind of visual interest while Quake just looks like you're staring into a pool of sewer water the whole time.

Complaints about the old, brown graphics aside, the core gameplay is still really fun and the game itself is a classic.  You can actually get the collection of Quake games on Steam for about 5 pounds and with that there's all sorts of mods you can apply to make it look nicer/play a little better than it used to.  So if for some reason you've NOT played Quake in 2019, go ahead, pick it up and give it a spin.  They don't make 'em like this anymore

Apex Legends

I mentioned this game in the vlog above but unless you've been living under a rock for the last week or so then at this point you've probably heard of this hot new title that's taking the gaming world by storm.  A spinoff to title to Titanfall, it's a Battle Royale game that no one asked for but apparently everyone needed in their lives.

I think the best way to describe Apex Legends is sort of PUBG meets Overwatch.  At the start of each match you are grouped in teams of 3 and 60 of you (instead of the usual 100) are dropped onto an island with no gear and it's up to you to find loot and kill everyone else until you're the last team standing.  Of course there's a standard array of weapons to find and kill people with but to assist you in your killing each character you can pick has a different skill.  For example, one guy called Bloodhound has skills that reveal people close by to him  and as a passive he can sense "evidence" of other players if they did a thing within 60 seconds of you arriving.  Another character, Gibraltar, is a big dude who sets up big fat shields to help protect teammates when you get yourself in a pickle.  As of now there's 8 characters, 6 playable from the get go and 2 of which are locked and you have to "buy" with either in game or real currency.

When looting not only are you looking for guns, ammo and protective gear but you're also looking for gun attachments.  The guns themselves, for the most part, seem neither here nor there and you're allowed to freely pick and choose whatever weapons you like based on your personal play style.  What a gunfight really seems to come down to is what attachments you have for that gun.  As you're looting you'll find barrels, stocks, sights, mags etc that will help you kill your fellow man and it's these items that make ALL the difference.  In one game I had a fully kitted out rifle which turned my SMG into death laser but the next game I had the same gun with no attachments and could barely hit shit as the recoil sent my view flying about 180 degrees with every bullet.  I quite like this approach since it allows you to play with whatever you want while in something like Fortnite I was always just looking for rare versions of very specific weapons every game.

The absolute best thing about this game however is the team communication.  You can play with no mics and still be able to communicate really clearly thanks to an absolute genius pinging system.  Of course, mics are better overall but if you get paired with some really annoying morons you can give yourself some peace and quiet and still be able to point out an enemy or a useful bit of loot for them.  The downside of the coms in this game however is that if you DO have a mic, it's IMPOSSIBLE to mut it (at time of writing).  This is unfortunate for someone like me who lives in a Japanese apartment because if my wife wants to listen to music while I'm playing then I risk getting mad hate as Celine Dion blares down my playstation mic.  I could just unplug it but I shouldn't have to, just put a fucking mute button in goddamnit. 

Of course, since it's a free game there are microtransactions but they aren't too intrusive.  You can pay for currency or you can get an in game currency by leveling up and this will allow you to purchase characters or cosmetics for your character.  Also when levelling up you get a pack that contains items like gun skins or character related voice quips and other things and the drop rates on these packs seem pretty good.  I'm only level 13 and already have 2 epic tier skins and there is A LOT of skins despite the fact the game just launched so if you like Overwatch style lootboxes then this game has a lot to offer you.

Anyway, the game is free and it's surfing a wave of popularity right now.  Will it kill Fortnite? Probably not but it's gearing up to be a decent contender for a quality alternative. No longer will you have to suffer the buggy, broken mess that is PUBG or the skid stain that is that Call of Duty thing.  Worth trying once at the very least 

F.3.A.R

I've not QUITE finished it yet, I'm getting very close but I'm having a brain fart and don't know what to talk about so I'm just going to talk about it now.  Before I start talking about the game itself I just want to say that the title of this game is really fucking dumb.  One, because replacing the E with a 3 is something that only a 14 year old Counter Strike player would think is cool and two, because its not fucking scary.

Here is where I would try to outline the plot but I'm only going to skim over it very briefly because I'm so mad about how misleading the name is.  Basically you play as Point Man (from the first game) or his brother than you capped to stop Sada...no sorry, Sama....no sorry again, Alma from giving birth to ghost babies after she raped the main character from the second game.

Now F.E.A.R 1 was trying pretty hard to be a horror game.  It had the spooky set pieces, lots of areas where there wouldn't be any music playing, a little bit of misdirection here and there as to whats an enemy and what's a spooky hallucination.  It failed, really hard, but it tried and I can commend the effort.  F.E.A.R 2 was a lot more action oriented but the attempts at horror were still there, again, complete failure, but you can tell someone tried at the very least.  F.£.A.R just dropped the horror thing almost entirely and it just became Call of Duty.  They should have called it Call of Jumpscare or L.O.U.D or something.  They do little sections where spooky cultist men will come after you and there's blood on the walls or they'll have a twitchy beast jump out at you but 98% of this game is just shooting dudes in the face with a machine gun.  What's hilarious is I had a friend come over and he saw me playing it and he was like "Are you playing CoD m8?". 

That's not to say that it's a bad game, by any stretch.  The shooting is fun, Point Mans slo-mo mechanic is still satisfying, they now let you play as the brother if you like doing magic shenanigans instead of shooting, it's a generally well made game with a lot of polish.  Just that title is one of the most misleading things in the history of all games.  Still, it's only £13 on Steam and for what you get it's pretty good so if you like your FPS games definitely check it out, just don't expect to get any actual horror out of it, is all.

Legendary

I have no idea why I'm so disappointed with this game but after seeing it back in 2008, thinking it was a cool idea and then finally playing it 10 years later I just can't help but feel somewhat let down.

The game is about a guy called Deckard who gets hired to go and steal Pandoras Box.  As he tries to grab it the box brands him, he gets double crossed by his employer and he unleashes all manner of mythical beasts on the world.  You then have to team up with some British woman and a bunch of army type people to stop the big bad and put all the beasts back in the box.

This game came out at a time when shooters were dime a dozen and there was plenty of sort of, not really bad, but dull, bland shooters on the market.  Basically if you owned an Xbox 360 at any point you've probably played a game that's sort of similar in quality to Legendary.  Legendary though on paper seems like a really good idea because it was a modern shooter but the enemies weren't just dudes but mythical beasts.

When you actually play the game though it does have a decent number of mythical beasts to shoot in the face but there is also an abundance of dudes with guns.  That's only the start of the games problems though.  The controls for moving and shooting are fine but if you ever have to jump its the absolute worst thing I've ever seen.  Deckard for some reason can only jump about half a millimeter off the ground and while places where you actually HAVE to jump are few, when it does come up it's akin to trying to pull your own teeth out with your bare hands.  The absolute worst thing of all, especially for a game in this genre, is that the guns feel weak.  There's one part, for example, where you have to fight a Griffon and it's hard to tell if you're doing any damage because everything feels like a water pistol and the enemy doesn't give any indication that it's taking damage.  Even if your shooter is a bland, boring, by the books piece of shit it can be saved at least somewhat if it FEELS good to play.  F.E.A.R is a great example of a game that is quite shit but I still like playing it because mowing down guys in bullet time with that nail gun thing feels awesome.

It would be unfair to call Legendary a shit game, but it's definitely a forgettable one.  The kind of game that's only worth playing if you're absolutely MAD into FPS games and you've played literally EVERYTHING else.

Overwatch First Impressions

Very recently someone gave me a free copy of Overwatch for PS4 and I've been playing it quite a lot over the last few days.  It's been a game I've been kind of avoiding for a long long time, not because I thought it would suck or anything but because I've got a huge backlog so playing online games like this was something I was trying to keep away from.  However I couldn't say no to a free copy and now I'm fucking hooked.

If you've been living under a rock and somehow don't know what Overwatch is, it's a team based first person shooter akin to Team Fortress.  Each player picks a character and then you fight to take an objective on each map which can vary from pushing a big car to the end of a stage or capturing points or sometimes even doing both at the same time.  There's some kind of story but I'm not really paying attention to it but each character seems to have a backstory you can get into if that's your thing but there's no single player campaign to speak of, it's all online.

The game itself is actually really fun, there's a lot of style and polish to it and even though I'm playing on a console rather than PC the controls are tight and each character has a nice varied play style which prevents things getting stale.  Aside from that I find it hard to think of things to say about this game.  Nothing about it is particularly new, we've been seeing this exact kind of game since 1999 but what the game does do it does extremely well.

At time of writing I've only played the quick play mode so there's still a lot for me to explore.  There's an "arcade" mode that has players competing in other sort of mini game type affairs and they seem kind of fun and there's also a competitive mode but you can't access that until you're level 25 and I'm only about 14 right now.  I'll come back and do a followup post once I've explored much more of the game.

The one thing that might turn people off is the loot crate thing.  I'm sure there's a lot of people who would be wary of the term "loot box" after the whole Star Wars thing but I can promise you there is absolutely nothing game breaking in these boxes.  There's a mode where you can customize the skins of each character or change their victory poses along with other things.  The loot boxes ONLY contain this cosmetic stuff so you don't have to worry about another player having better gear or anything like that.  The loadouts and skills of each character is set an cannot be changed so everyone is playing with the same set of tools.

I'm looking forward to playing much more of this game and I'll update once I've explored more of it's content but right off the bat it's a solid class based shooter that I could recommend for any fan of the genre.

F.E.A.R 2

I've been on a little bit of a F.E.A.R kick again and about a week ago I played through F.E.A.R 2: Project Origin.  It actually took me a long time to finish because I'd play for an hour or two and then not touch the damn thing for about a week.  So a game that could have been finished in a single lazy weekend ended up being stretched to maybe a month or so.

The game starts out just before the ending of the first game where you play as a team going to get some scientist woman.  You have a couple of gunfights, the town explodes and you end up in a hospital where you've been experimented on and then there's a dude on a radio telling you how fucked you all but he also has a solution.  So you go to him, he gets murdered and from there you have a bunch more gunfights and then you get a girl pregnant and the game ends.  It took me so long to finish the game that I don't really remember the plot very well but I feel like I have the core parts of it right there.  The story is sort of dull and uninteresting and none of the characters are memorable aside from Alma so I just sort of tuned the whole thing out while playing

In terms of game play it's more of the same as F.E.A.R 1.  Rooms of dudes that you kill with slow mo vision followed by corridors of "scary" set pieces.  Instead of doing anything new with the core game play F.E.A.R 2 now lets you pilot giant robot suits in certain areas which, while fun, goes against the games tone a little bit.  Also everything looks and feels all streamlined and modern which I feel works against it.  There's a sort of charm about going back and playing the first one, that same feeling you get when you sit down to play something like Deus Ex or Half Life and the modern presentation, while probably a good idea at the time, sort of hurts the overall feel of the game when you replay it in 2017.

Once again, the game fails to be scary in any regard relying heavily on jump scares and lots of blood to try and get the fear pumping but falls flat on almost every occasion.  You can tell it's trying really hard but because it looks and plays like a modern shooter now all of the scariness feels even less effective.  The robot suits that I mentioned before pretty much put the nail in the coffin on any chance of it having any scary sections because nothing says horror quite like a giant invincible robot suit with machine guns and missiles mowing down hundreds of dudes who are walking out of doors in single file.

Still, it's not a bad game and if you need something easy and mindless to play then F.E.A.R 2 is a fairly decent option I guess.  The game is just so sort of "meh" that I promise you won't be remembering that lazy weekend play through about a year from now 

The Original F.E.A.R Trilogy

F.E.AR is a game that's been around for quite a long time now.  It's one of those games that makes me feel old because if you play it now it looks REALLY dated but I remember this shit coming out.  I originally had it on 360 and never played much of it and after my 360 and all its games got stolen I got in on the cheap for PC and have recently been playing them through.

F.E.A.R is an FPS horror (using that term VERY lightly) game where you play as a dude called Point Man in his quest to stop an army of telepathically controlled super soldiers.  This start to go a bit awry though once little cliche horror girl Alma starts showing up and fucking with the very fabric of existence or something, I dunno.  The plot is dumb and I wasn't really paying attention but the game itself played fairly well and I had a good time.

Point Man, being a member of the First Encounter Assault Recon or F.E.A.R (har har) team has the ability to go into bullet time mode and mow people down.  At the time, the AI for this game was fairly impressive and the areas in which you battle dudes in were sort of wide and there were lots of chances to get flanked and whatnot so the bullet time was a welcome addition.  The game is sort of mindless FPS stuff but there's something rather enjoyable about playing it.  Maybe the dated look and non regenerating health and limited health kits are reminding me of simpler days of my youth and that could be why I had such a good time with it.

The big problem with this game, and with the series as a whole I'm discovering is that despite the title there seems to be a lack of fear to be had here.  If the game isn't trying to jump scare you to death then there are often parts where the environment will change and you'll get some SPOOKY dialogue or you'll get shown some kind of horrible murder or something like that.  Those scenes aren't very effective though and all the scary parts of F.E.A.R do is serve to delay the action parts that you just want to get back to.

There were also two stand alone expansion packs called Perseus Mandate and Extraction Point which told the story from the viewpoints of different characters but were essentially the same thing.  However having already started F.E.A.R 2 which plays a bit more like a proper modern FPS, you know the kind designed for brain dead twats, I'm sort of missing the retro feel of the original 3 games.

If you're looking for a fun-ish FPS to spend a cozy afternoon on, the F.E.A.R is a good bet if you haven't played it already.  However if you're the kind of person who only likes modern shooters then you'll probably hate it and not understand why it was so interesting back in 2005.  Either way, fun little game.

Maybe Call of Duty Should Stop Making So Many Sequels

Call of Duty was a series that got its start in 2003, which I bet a whole bunch of the embryos that populate modern CoD servers weren't aware of and it's a series that I didn't have much interest in for the longest time.  A younger me would have looked at something like Call of Duty which was set during World War 2 and then I'd look at something like Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem or Unreal and I think I'd much rather play a game like that over something all gritty and realistic. 

But then 2007 rolled along and out came Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and at the time it really did blow me away.  People had liked CoD in the past but no one in my circle of friends had ever raved about a game in the series as much as they were with Modern Warfare so of course I end up trying it and really enjoying it.  The game was just generally really fun and the multiplayer really helped give it some sticking power.  I remember thinking at the time that this was easily the best console FPS multiplayer experience I ever had but my expectations were particularly low after trying out F.EA.R and Prey's multiplayer modes.

Fast forward to 2016 and I had to do a google search to find out what Call of Duty is up to now.  I had no idea what the fuck Infinite Warfare is but I think the series has gone all spacy and science fiction with multiplayer looking more like a slowed down, shit version of Unreal or something (in Black Ops 3 at least) rather than an actual Call of Duty.  Not that there's anything inherently wrong with this, it just seems that since I dropped off the series has taken a weird direction.  That doesn't mean however that the game has lost any traction by the sounds of things, there always seems to be some degree of hype for the latest installment and the multiplayer modes always seem well populated.

However a week ago I stumbled across an article on GameSpot that said "There will always be Call of Duty games", here's the link

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/activision-ceo-there-will-always-be-call-of-duty-g/1100-6443574/


I'd be upset by this if I was a fan of the series.  Every time there is a new Call of Duty game you have to shell out full price and these games come out yearly.  Sure, you can linger around on the old games for a while but if you're into the multiplayer, which most are, you WILL have to move to the next game or else be completely left behind.  Every goddamn year another full priced game with the inevitable DLC map packs that you'll have to buy a couple of months down the line.  The sheer blatancy of the money grubbing here is astounding and I'm actually baffled as to why there aren't huge numbers of fans just putting their foot down and saying "no".

Just look at Counter Strike as a great counter example of this.  Counter Strike Source was bundled with Half Life 2, a game that every man and his dog had, back in 2004 and then Global Offensive came out in 2012.  That's an 8 year gap and the game is consistently populated with a large number of players

To top that off the game is only like £12 and you don't have to worry about another one coming out in the next 6 months.  Sure, you can shell out extra cash for a few maps or to get some skins for your guns but this shit is all optional and you won't have trouble finding matches without the extras because despite having not played for a long time I'm sure DE_Dust2 is still a thing.

The fast sequel thing really turns me off to the series.  The game doesn't look shit by any means, it looks well polished and fun to play but the fact that I know Infinite Warfare will be perma-shelved in 2017 for the next one makes me not want to buy it.  I wish they could just give us ONE game that they update constantly with lots of cool shit rather than this yearly release stuff.  It's not like you couldn't have WW2, Modern Day and Sci-Fi War shit all in one game and just release it as a stand alone multiplayer experience at this point.  Still, if they did stop they might lose their license to print money so I guess the sequels will never end.

Git Gud or Go Home

So the new Doom got released and despite the less than satisfied reaction with the multiplayer demo, things seems to be going well for it.  I've not played it yet but there's a chance that despite a previous post I made about how its probably going to be shit, it's looking like I was somewhat wrong and that's not a bad thing.  In particular, after watching the first impressions video from TotalBuscuit I'm actually quite excited to get my hands on a copy.  Sure it's a bit modern and streamlined but it seems like the core elements of what made Doom Doom are there so thank god for that.

Anyway, I'm not here to talk about the quality of Doom, I'm here to bitch about games media some more when it comes to the reviews of the game.  Specifically a video review from video game shitrag Polygon.  Apparently they released a review video where the person playing the game absolutely sucked at the game which of course prompted many people in comment sections to laugh heartily and tell the sorry sack of shit that filmed it to "git gud".  Of course, Polygon being staffed almost exclusively by braindead crybabies they took issue with this and started moaning about the response.  This prompted other shitrags like Paste Magazine and Rock Paper Shotgun to write articles saying things like "git gud" is why people don't take gaming seriously or that "you don't need to be good at games to enjoy them"

Well you know what, partly they are right in that sense that you DON'T need to be good at games in order to enjoy them......if you're just a consumer having buying a title for the express purpose of having a good time.  But no, these aren't consumers these are professionals in the industry trying to critique a game and quite frankly you can't do that properly unless you have at least SOME skill at gaming in general.  These are people who GET PAID to give you information on games and you can't give consumers a good amount of information if you suck massive horse cocks at playing games.  It's probably the reason why Polygon likes to harp on about sexism and other non-issues in games because they aren't good enough to make enough progress in a given title to write a proper review.

Let's say you are looking to buy a new car and you go to a car dealer in order to get information on what the best car for you might be.  You arrive at the dealership and start asking the guy questions and he responds with things like "it has pedals and goes forward if you put petrol in it".  You'd probably leave without buying anything and be a little pissed off that he wasted your time.  We're not asking the salesman to be a pro racer but we're asking him to have a degree of knowledge that allows us to make an informed purchase.  Now I know these "journalists" aren't salesmen per se but a review of a game is what a lot of people will base their decision to purchase on so if these people aren't doing their job properly then they aren't helping the consumer make an informed purchase which is what they are PAID TO FUCKING DO.

I'm not asking these people to be pro gamers in the running to win tournaments or top tier speed running gods, just good enough to not be worse than my mum after I cut off her hands and stapled her eyes shut, that's all.  The whole "git gud" mentality that some gamers have is a GOOD thing because as long as it persists then some developers will continue to make challenging games.  Games are easy enough as it is and what we don't need is shit bag games "journalists" complaining on their big websites and making developers think that the market needs even easier shit.

I'd suggest that these idiots take up an easier, more relaxing hobby like Origami but then again they'd probably start publishing articles about how folding in straight lines is homophobic and paper cranes are racist.

Duke Nukem Forever

So I just got around to beating Duke Nukem Forever at the weekend.  Like everyone has known since the day this thing came out, it's a complete piece of shit.  It's one of those games that lives in infamy because of how long it took for it to came out.  It started development in 1997 but wasn't released until 2011.  I mean how many other games can you think of that took that long to develop?  There aren't many.  Unfortunately we weren't rewarded for our patience and Forever ended up being a stinking mess.

The game follows the titular Duke Nukem, a fucking asshole who's hobbies include sexing up women and shooting aliens in the face.  After saving the world in Duke Nukem 3D he becomes super famous and is living it up until the aliens come back down again and start making life hard again.  From there, it's just shooting things in the face and you do nothing but this until the very end of the game where you piss in somethings face and finally watch credits.

The thing that pissed people off though wasn't the terrible plot because Duke Nukem was never about plot.  The game play is so far removed from everything that made Duke 3D great that it's almost offensive.  Gone is that crazy good, labyrinthine level design from the good old build engine days.  Instead what we got was a shitty, linear 2 weapon shooter with regenerating health and crappy set piece battles every so often.  It wasn't Duke Nukem any more, it was just a Generic Console FPS #3671 featuring Duke Nukem.

I know for a fact that the games overall shittiness was down to its huge development time, engines changing every other day of the week and money issues but part of me wants to believe that maybe the dev team were a little smarter than that.  I desperately want to believe that they saw what a steaming pile of shit the FPS genre has become over the years and made DNF as a sort of parody and middle finger to the people who enjoy these kind of games.  Hell, there are multiple points in the game where you find little references to things like Halo, Dead Space and Gears of War where Duke or a supporting character will comment about how these characters are complete pussies.

However in reality that's absolutely not the case and the game just sucks because life isn't fair.  I wasted my time, if you haven't played it then don't bother and go play Duke 3D.

You Thought DOOM Would Be Good?

I'm so glad this happened because I knew it would.  A new Doom game being developed in the modern day and you didn't expected it to be anything more than another shitty generic FPS where you go around shooting demons instead of people from the Middle East? Please

The story is that the upcoming DOOM game released an open beta on Steam and so far user reviews of the beta have been pretty negative.  People are claiming it's basically not Doom and plays something more like Halo but with a vaguely Doomish coat of paint.  The kind of people who enjoy shooters like Doom, Quake and Unreal Tournament are of course upset that one of their most treasured franchises is being turned into another generic, console-esque arena shooter with experience points and character customization because that's never what this shit was about.

But hold on, you might say, it's just a beta and it's only the multiplayer component.  Even if that sucks surely the single player will be good right?!  If that's actually how you feel then I feel nothing but pity for you.  The only people who might think that new Doom might turn out decent now are either idiots or people who haven't been gaming long enough to have everything they love ruined.

I can promise you that the single player mode will be no different.  It will be linear, story driven and might even have some really stupid bullshit like levelling up or something.  The open beta of the Doom multiplayer is revealing exactly what the current development team think Doom is and clearly they are wrong.  The fact that there's already a season pass available for this title proves as well that they don't give a shit about Doom or it's legacy, they are beating an old horse to make a quick buck based on false hype and nostalgia. 

Let's face it, what we are really looking at here is the next Duke Nukem Forever but more serious and with less time and probably less effort going into the development.  Do NOT buy this game when it gets released and show these fucking idiots that preying on our nostalgia and abusing the legacy of one gaming's most classic titles will not fucking fly.

Absolutely disgusting

FPS Used To Be Better

FPS is one of the biggest genres in the industry and always kind of has been.  A long long time ago we had Wolfenstien 3D, Doom, Rise of the Triad, Duke Nukem 3D among many many others and now the big players in the genre are things like CoD, Battlefield and other more realistic military type shooters.

But that's kind of my problem with the modern FPS game.  Most of them are sort of realistic type military shooters like Call of Duty.  The only other thing we have aside from that are things like Halo but that's just a military shooter with a sci-fi coat of paint.  These games aren't bad by any stretch but they don't come nearly as close to the thrill of the old school FPS.  The fast paced, acrobatic, labyrinthine and colorful shooters of days passed has been replaced with gritty, realistic yet unchallenging games and I can't help but feel things are significantly worse off as a result.

Most people who hold this kind of opinion of older games are accused of having rose tinted nostalgia goggles but this is one of those cases where those games were just better.  I've recently been playing Serious Sam HD: First Encounter off Steam and I'm having so much more fun with this than I have with any other modern FPS title.  I can have more than two weapons, my health doesn't regenerate for free, equipment and enemies are colourful and interesting, there are secrets everywhere and so much more.  I felt a similar thing when playing Duke Nukem 3D: Megaton Edition a few months ago too.

Even multiplayer FPS was better back then.  It used to be all about speed, skill, knowledge of the map both for layouts and pick ups and that was just the tip of the iceberg.  Things like Quake which used a lot of rocket jumping had all sorts of weird shit in play that I can't even begin to wrap my head around.  Granted things are a lot more accessible now but it's a damn shame that the games just aren't quite as fun.

Still, this is just me and I don't want to completely disregard modern FPS games just because I feel the old ones are more fun.  I have a lot of fond memories playing Modern Warfare 1 and 2 online with buddies and sometimes I find myself getting tempted to try out  the latest version of Call of Duty.  Let's not forget the new Star Wars Battlefront which looks cool as shit.  That said, I'd much rather play some Doom, Serious Sam or Quake than CoD or Battlefield.  Luckily the genre isn't completely devoid of old style games and things like Painkiller and that new Rise of the Triad game are keeping things geared more towards fun than realism and prestige bragging.

It's Not Nostalgia Goggles

Sometimes I get into discussions with my friends or on forums and things like that about how older games are better than modern ones.  I'm one of those people who is inclined to agree with that idea because personally I find a lot of modern games to be a bit of a joke.  That doesn't mean I think modern gaming is bad but I just find the older experiences a lot more enjoyable.

At first I thought it was just a case of personal taste or hell, maybe it was really nostalgia goggles but on my long boring train rides I decided to think about it a bit more critically and old games are really just better.

So here's what I'm going to do to illustrate my point.  I'm going to take the first 3 genres that pop into my head and explain why old games in the genre are better than the newer ones.

First Person Shooters

This is a no brainer since if there's any genre that is guilty of being dumbed down for mass consumption its this one.  Take old games like Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem, Hexen and many many others.  These games were popular not only because of their ultra violence, but because of their big sprawly labyrinthine levels full of secrets and generally speaking you needed some degree of brain power and strategy to win at these games on higher difficulty levels.

Contrast that with now, where all the exploration and skill that this genre was famous for has been completely stripped out for an experience that people who don't want to spend time learning a title (read: idiots) can handle.  Regenerating health was the first big culprit, then came limited weapon inventories ruining strategy and limiting your play style.  Also every level in a modern shooter is basically a corridor and all you do is hide behind cover and pop heads.

That's right, modern FPS is nothing but the fair ground duck shooting attraction but with a military theme and attached to a roller coaster track.  Finally, don't give me none of that shit about Multiplayer either.  If you think Call of Duty or Halo stack up to something like Unreal Tournament or Quake then you need a slap.

RPGs 

RPGs barely fucking exist nowadays and that's a damn shame.  Just to qualify, when I say RPGs I mean both the J and W type, so don't worry I'm not discriminating between countries.  Western made RPGs used to be such deep and rich experiences.  Things such as Ultima, Baldurs Gate and old school Fallout were such joys to play with so much goddamn content in them that it would probably take a few playthroughs just to notice all the little details about the world you were in.  Japanese RPGs were a little more simplistic but the variety of what was on offer in that genre back in the day was absolutely staggering.  Most western games tended to focus on Tolkien-esque swords and sorcery settings while JRPGs tended to have more outlandish settings and characters.

Contrast that with now, where every Western made RPG just feels like a cheap knockoff of something that came WAY before it.  Most RPGs today have these terrible fucking "morality systems" and stupid branching dialogue trees with only 2 or 3 options on them and the extra tidbits about a worlds lore aren't even half as developed as they are in older games.  Just look at how Elder Scrolls started and look at it now and you'll see exactly what I mean.

Japan on the other hand seems to have forgotten how to produce anything that isn't shallow, moe, otaku pandering bullshit with every game box on a store shelf having some wide eyed anime girl on it doing something cute and the game play is much shallower.

The Point and Click Adventure

 Do I even need to explain this one to you?  Just look at stuff like Monkey Island, Sanitarium, Myst, Grim Fandango and god knows what else.  Then look at what passes off for an "adventure" game nowadays.  Gone Home, The Stanley Parable, Serina just to name 3.  A genre once known for it's insane mind bending puzzles and great stories now reduced to walking simulators with barely any game play produced by people who can't make a game worth a shit and can't write for shit either.

Let's just be happy that GoG exists to preserve all the great point and clickers so that people can still experience them and all this modern badly written bullshit can hopefully be forgotten about

---

Now I know I've been ranting and it sounds like I hate modern gaming with a passion but that couldn't be further from the truth.  Modern gaming is still great and there are still new titles that come out and I have plenty of fun with.  It's just that gaming has gotten noticeably stupider and I think it's a damn shame.

Also I know I've been talking about "modern gaming" in general terms but there are exceptions to all the above and in all other genres.  Some developers are still trying to capture the magic of the old school shooter with things like Painkiller and The Rise of the Triads remake to varying levels of success.  I've been hearing great things about Divinity: Original Sin and Japan is still producing RPGs of the old quality such as "俺の屍を越えてゆけ２" which looks fucking radical

The point and clicker is still being moderately screwed but an HD remake of Grim Fandango is coming out so I guess it's not all bad, just a shame that the newest thing I can think of in the genre worth a damn is Anna on PC

So to all you devs trying to make intelligent games for the modern age, keep on going.  Finally to all you devs making safe, mass appeal bullshit, try pushing out the boat a little more will ya?   You can still make buckets of money with a smart game, I'm sure it'll be OK.

The Problem With Hype

I know I made a post about a week ago about how totally hyped I am for the new Gauntlet, but getting hyped for something is not a thing I enjoy doing to myself.

You see, if you get hyped for a game and follow its development and look up all the information you can on it then you are setting yourself up for disappointment.  If the game that you've finally been waiting for comes out and it ends up sucking great deals of ass, then you are going to feel pretty crushed.  This has happened to me on numerous occasions and maybe that's why I'm a little jaded when it comes to new releases.

On the flip side, if a game comes out and you weren't really expecting much from it but upon playing you realise it's actually really good, then that's a really nice feeling.  That's not to say that you should go around hating on any release that gets any kind of press in the name of avoiding disappointment, but not getting too caught up in the whirlwinds of hype will help soften the blow a little if a game you were hoping to enjoy sucks.

But building excitement for a title is what's done for any entertainment medium, it's how sales are generated.  But for me, when certain games start getting a lot of hype or a lot of praise on release, I instantly start raising eyebrows and it causes me to judge a game a lot more harshly that I would have done previously.

Halo is the best example of this that I ever experienced.  Halo (the first one) was a good game, I enjoyed playing Halo on my friends Xbox when it first came out, it's a well polished FPS experience.  However, Halo got a lot of praise and I mean A LOT of goddamn praise.  It was being given perfect scores and hailed as one of the best games fucking ever made in the history of games.

However during the time of Halo's peak popularity, I couldn't help but find all the praise to be very silly.  I really enjoyed playing it but I had a lot of problems and quite frankly it felt like a massive step back from a lot of the FPS games that I played during my youth.  When faced with a Halo fan I would start to nitpick every little thing because of all the hype it received and in doing that I ended up kind of convincing myself that I didn't like it.  It was only when I got over myself and popped it in again that I realised that is IS a good game, it's just not the 10/10 supergame that everyone made it out to be.

It sounds really petty I know, but if you throw down a 10 I'm going to pull out the magnifying glass.

Estranged: Act 1

Estranged Act 1 was a game that just popped up in my Steam store one day and it's price was £0, so what the hell reason do I have to not at least try the damn thing out?!

Well OK, Estranged isn't exactly free since it's a mod for Half Life 2.  In case there is anyone reading this post who isn't aware of what that means; it means that you have to own a copy of Half Life 2 to play the game, otherwise it won't work.  Then again, Half Life 2 was released 10 fucking years ago, so if you're a avid Steam user and you DON'T own this game, then really what the fuck are you doing with yourself?

Anyway, I didn't know anything about this game going in, and I'm glad I didn't so if you want to experience it the same way I did, then stop reading this post, go beat the game, then come back and read the rest.

The game starts with an unamed protagonist in a boat.  You get a call on a radio about an island that's been overrun with something nasty and then your boat explodes for some reason and the game starts.  From the few screen shots I saw I thought I was going to be playing either a walking simulator or a puzzle game, but oh how wrong I was.

Estranged is a rather well made first person survival horror type of game for the most part with a bit more focus on action nearer to the end of the game.  The game isn't going to blow anyones mind in terms of innovation but what is here is really well made.  It controls well, the level design is solid, there are some original models, characters are fully voiced, there's a sort of interesting plot going on with a bit of mystery, the level design is good and it's the atmosphere for the game is really nice.

All the limitations that come with every Half Life mod are present, but that's more the engines fault than that of the people who made it and it doesn't really spoil any of the enjoyment of playing the game.  I suppose you could argue that the game is a little short, I beat it in one sitting in about an hour and a half, but for £0 that's pretty good value for money.

So go and give Estranged: Act 1 a go, you have literally nothing to lose in doing so.  Personally, I can't wait for Act 2 and I'd even be willing to pay for it as long as they made it a bit longer (unless they only charged like £1 or £2 for it).  You can tell that the creators put a lot of work in here and it would be a shame if they didn't get at least some recognition for their game.

The Next Marathon Has Been Decided

Do you know what Daikatana is? Have you seen this fucking game?

If you don't know what it is, Daikatana is a FPS game that had its development led by John Romero (of Doom fame) and is mostly famous for it's stupid "John Romero's About To Make You His Bitch" advert.

The other thing it's famous for is being a fucking terrible game.

So of course, upon seeing it on Steam, a friend of mine donated money to the charity and then gifted me the fucking thing and demanded a stream.  Well if it's for charity I'm not going to say no now, am I?  So there you have it folks, the next stream marathon has been decided.  Daikatana until I win or kill myself, whichever comes first.

I can't set a day for it just yet because I have to move into a new apartment and set up the internet there, but once it's done it'll be the first thing that I do, so keep an eye out on here for updates regarding the date.  I'll also install it and poke through it a bit to see if I can come up with some donation incentives, so keep an eye out on the twitch page for that shit.

The only thing to do now is for you to kick back, wait, and prepare yourself to see some true suffering.

24 Hour Counterstrike: Global Offensive Stream TOMORROW!

Right, this is the heads up.  Tomorrow, around 8am CEST the 24 hour Counter Strike: Global Offensive will start.

We've cooked up donation incentives and they include

2 players shoutcasting their own match
Different game modes
Donate to choose the one and only weapon we can use for 1 match

and on top of that, I'm willing to make any of my drops available in return for donations, so keep an eye on the stream for that fancy skin you might be looking for.

All this information will be provided on the twitch page tomorrow, check us out!

www.twitch.tv/taurinensis