#oneaday Day 508: Come Get Some

The observant amongst you who have me on your Steam friends list (and if you don't, add me) will have, well, observed that I've been playing Duke Nukem Forever tonight. I played it for quite a while, actually, which I took to be a good sign. Here are some initial thoughts.

"Duke, you're a relic from another time." This line spouted right near the start of the game is clearly deliberate. The game itself is a relic from another time — not just in the sense that it's the world's most notorious piece of vapourware, but also in terms of its gameplay sensibilities. A lot of people seem to think this is a bad thing, but given my general distaste for the po-faced nature of Call of Duty and its brethren, I have absolutely no problem with this whatsoever. Consequently, I expect to love the game and everyone else to hate it. It certainly wouldn't be the first time this has happened.
Interactivity! Duke 3D, despite its primitive engine, was all about walking up to things and pressing Spacebar to see if they did anything, or if not, enjoying the sound of Duke muttering "Where is it?" Duke Forever takes all this to the next level by providing all manner of things to see and do, including fully-functional pool and pinball tables, weightlifting benches and lots of other things besides. There's a purpose, too — using these items adds to Duke's maximum "Ego", aka his shield. So you're encouraged to piss about with the world — exactly as it should be.
Pacing. It's interesting to come to this off the back of Far Cry (which I'm still intending to finish, but the introduction of silly and hard-to-kill mutants has dulled my enthusiasm somewhat) as they're polar opposites. Far Cry is mostly about evaluating a situation from afar and determining the best way to tackle it. Duke is about charging in screaming and blasting the shit out of everything, and then punching it in the balls a few times for good measure.
Whatever your opinion on Duke the game, Duke the character is still a strong one. Sure, all he does is spout one-liners from movies, but his attitude gives the game a great deal of character. Cheesy, stupid character, sure, but that's all part of what the Duke experience is supposed to be all about. When he growls something amusing after a particularly gruelling firefight, it's satisfying to be "rewarded" with that.
Multiplayer looks interesting. I haven't tried a game yet, but there's a full Call of Duty-style progression system, with a Duke twist. Levelling up and completing challenges gives players the opportunity to customise both their multiplayer Duke and their own apartment, which they can then wander around, ogle their babes and bum around in. A nice touch.
The graphics are reasonable, but not stunning. There's also a few frame rate issues at times — I doubt very much it's that my computer's not up to it, as for the majority of the time I'm getting 60+ frames per second. But there seem to be certain things that cause a little bit of stuttering — not game-breaking stuttering, but noticeable. A shame. Perhaps they'll be patched out — or perhaps there's a setting I can tweak somewhere. Turning off anti-aliasing helped a lot, actually, and didn't degrade the quality of the graphics that much.

So. There you have it. Duke Nukem Forever, the game we thought we'd never see. Sure, after this long, it's never going to live up to the hype. But having played it for quite a bit this evening, I can say with some confidence that I like it quite a bit.

#oneaday Day 507: Bang

I often labour under the mistaken assumption that I don't like shooters. I know, I know, to assume is to make an "ass" out of "u" and "me", and to incorrectly assume things about yourself is doubly stupid because after all, you should know yourself pretty well by now.

But anyway. What I mean to say is that I've fallen a bit out of love with recent shooters. Sure, they're pretty, and spectacular, and they make a bucketload of money. But they're boring. With a lot of modern shooters, you have two choices: incredibly linear, tightly-scripted single player campaign, or endless hours of multiplayer against people you will never, ever beat because all they do is play Call of Duty all day.

In the Ubisoft sale a while back, I picked up the two Far Cry titles for an obscenely low price, along with Crysis. I tried Far Cry 2 briefly and am looking forward to delving into that later, but the original Far Cry in particular is reminding me that the genre can indeed be fun if handled correctly.

The difference is in feeling like you have a choice of how to handle things. In my (admittedly limited) experience with the Call of Duty series, it's very scripted — go here, do this, proceed to this mission objective, use this weapon right now because we say so, BAM — car chase, things exploding, save this guy, oh you can't because it's scripted that he should die, etc. etc. But Far Cry is a bit different. Besides featuring hilariously atrocious voice acting and the most sarcastic protagonist I've ever had the pleasure of looking out from behind the eyes of, Far Cry's objectives are less tightly scripted, being of the "There's a thing you have to do about a mile away" variety, and then leaving it up to you how you approach it.

Do you steal a vehicle, powerslide through the middle of a bunch of enemies then pick off the rest with a mounted rocket launcher? Do you swim out to sea, jump atop a rock and pick them off from a distance? Do you lie in the bushes, observing their patrol patterns and assassinate each of them quietly one at a time? The answer is "yes", because you can handle situations in pretty much any way you please. The "all guns blazing" approach rarely works, but that's good — it forces you to think of solutions that are a bit more creative.

Even the indoor missions, while necessarily slightly more linear, have multiple paths and alternative routes to try. Do you open the door, throw in a grenade then clean up afterwards? Or do you crawl through the air vent in an attempt not to be seen? It's top-quality stuff, and the simple fact that when you die you don't have to go back and handle the same bit in the same way makes the whole experience infinitely more appealing than a more linear — albeit probably more spectacular — recent title.

So, good job, Far Cry. I am enjoying you. And I am looking forward to your sequel, despite it apparently having literally nothing to do with you.

#oneaday Day 506: Monetize Me

Comin' atcha like a machine-gun today. And by that I mean I will be using bullet-points.

I have changed my day counter to the number of days since I started posting every day because 1) it's more satisfying that way, 2) I'm annoyed I missed my 500th day and 3) I'm sick of having to bring up a calculator every time I want to work out how many days I've done this non-stop.
E3 coverage has calmed down somewhat. Most of the big announcements have been made. Now it seems to be mostly up to the show floor team to flesh out those announcements with some hands-on impressions. Kind of sad I'm not there. One day! Maybe.
Getting people to pay for things is complicated. Whiskey Media did a bold experiment with charging for content and so far it seems to have been mostly successful for them. I haven't signed up, but then I don't read their sites that much. If I was more attached, I might be convinced — as someone on the other side of the potential paywall, I'm all for ways in which content creators can get paid for their work. Unfortunately, some people are still wary of this sort of thing — although porn sites have been running a successful "pay for content" industry for years. Like most things technological, porn once again leads the way.
I think about this every time I cover a Facebook game. Who is paying for the stuff in these games? There are fucking hundreds of the bastard things, so they must be making money somehow. Are people really forking over hard-earned money purely so they can pussy out of completing a quest objective? Are people really spending money on an "exclusive" cat statue to put in the middle of their field that is not real?

Then there's the free-to-play "proper" games — many of which are actually getting seriously good. These I can actually understand paying money for somewhat more. The recently-remastered APB, for example. You can play it for free, but for access to full character customization (which is probably something of a bandwidth hog) you have to fork out for a premium subscription. This is still cheaper than the game was on its initial release, though, because although you're paying monthly, you didn't have to pay anything for the game in the first place. Unless you went out and bought it when it was released, in which case more fool you for not reading reviews first. (As a free to play game, though, it's pretty good fun — I suggest you check it out.)

The key, it seems, is to make sure that people don't feel like they have to pay for something. If you grind to a complete halt in a game until you fork over some Facebook Credits or you bank details, that's a bad thing. If you can make progress in a game without having to pay anything, but spending a bit of money speeds things up a bit or gives you some sort of additional (non game-breaking) benefit, that's a good thing. If you can spend money in order to not have to complete mission objectives, that's a bad thing, although some people really are that lazy, I guess.

The next few years are going to be interesting to see. Will people start paying for content on websites? Will people want to shell out $60 for Call of Duty and then subscribe to Elite on top of that when free to play games offer competitive services for significantly less?

Will this bullet point ever end?
Why yes, yes it will.

#oneaday Day 158: Wii3

More E3 gubbins today, with the big news being Nintendo's announcement of its new console, the Wii U, which features a controller with a big-ass touchscreen in the middle of it. It looks pretty damn impressive, to be fair, but it remains to be seen whether or not it'll become just another gimmick for people to deride.

That said, I liked the Wii. It was a good console for social gaming. And I'm not talking about bollocksy "Share This With Your Friends!" Facebook titles — I'm talking about getting together with actual real-life three-dimensional people in the same room and playing fun games. Maybe the Wii's games weren't the most hardcore — but have you ever played a "hardcore" game with friends who aren't particularly up on their gaming? It becomes an exercise in frustration, with experienced players either deliberately having to nerf themselves or the less-experienced ones giving up out of sheer frustration. The Wii knew exactly what its market was, and it tapped it perfectly with the minigame collections and the motion control. Hardcore gaming it was not, but the 360 and PS3 covered that more than adequately, so Nintendo had no need to compete.

Now, though, it's a different story. Microsoft is wooing the former Wii market with all its Kinect shenanigans and running the risk of alienating the core user base, were it not for platform mainstays such as Call of Duty, Gears of War and the like. Microsoft's E3 press conference left a lot of gamers frustrated that there wasn't more for "them" on offer, but Microsoft have seen the success Nintendo had with the Wii and want a piece of that pie — and given the Wii's dated technology, are perfectly entitled to that.

Nintendo, in response, fight back with a new console that purports to offer the best of both worlds — a casual-friendly console that supports all existing Wii hardware and software that is also a hardcore-friendly console that will see hopefully great versions of big-name games like Batman: Arkham City with the additional benefit of both the world's biggest VMU (Dreamcast-five!) and the ability to carry on playing whenever your significant other and/or housemate bursts into the room desperate to watch Britain's Got Desperate People Who Really Want To Be On Television Despite Being Shit and Absolute Cunts. It looks awesome, though a lot will depend on the price of the system — and its crazy controller.

Meanwhile, in PC land, we continue to have the most backward-compatible system in the universe with the cheapest games in the universe (excepting that little games exchange on Zargon Prime, they actually do have the cheapest games in the universe) and consoles start to look just a little bit gimmicky. Possibly.

Oh dear. PC snobbery is starting to infest my brain!

#oneaday Day 157: E3

I'm in the middle of covering E3, with only Sony's press conference left to go today. It's in half an hour and is likely to be about a million hours long, so I'm hoping I'll stay awake for it.

I've got to say, considering that E3 is the biggest event in the games industry's calendar, I'm largely underwhelmed by what's been on show so far. Battlefield 3 is impressive — even for a non-military shooter sort of man — and of course there's a tent in my pants over TrackMania 2 Canyon, but when the most impressive thing you've seen so far is arguably a new 2D Rayman game, you have to wonder what's going on.

Perhaps it's cynicism. It's easy to become jaded by endless news posts and press releases about how awesome this not-particularly awesome feature of some obscure game is. You get to a point where you just stop listening to the endless hyperbole and make your own mind up — but unfortunately by that point, all you can hear when you see something genuinely impressive is the PR person in your ear going "Revolutionary! Innovative! Game-changing! First time ever!" and you just want to punch yourself in the nose. Well, maybe not. That would hurt.

Cynicism aside, though, there's a few disappointing no-shows so far. Ubisoft still won't make Beyond Good and Evil 2, despite it being an obvious fan favourite. Microsoft's press conference is depressingly predictable, being full of Kinect and other bollocks. And EA didn't announce an Xbox Live Arcade version of M.U.L.E.

EA's conference has, so far at least, been the strongest one, with some great-looking titles on offer. Need for Speed: The Run in particular looks fantastic, and the addition of QTE-driven "get out and run away frantically in a 24 stylee" sequences look set to give the whole thing a wonderful action movie vibe. QTEs aren't to everyone's tastes, but I like them when used effectively, and The Run looks like it will be using them well to create a dramatic, exciting road adventure. Plus it uses Autolog, so it's time to get ridiculously addicted to challenging each other's times again.

As for Sony's conference, which is coming up in about 20 minutes at the time of writing, I'm not sure what to expect. Couldn't give a damn about Resistance 3, though I'm sure someone out there is excited. Will be intrigued to see how uncomfortable it all is following the PSN woes of recent months.

One thing's for sure, though: I will sleep well tonight. Or indeed this morning, whenever I am able to actually get to bed.

Head over to GamePro to check out my show coverage so far.

#oneaday Day 156: PrE3

LOS ANGELES, June 06, 2011 — GeneriCon is today proud to announce its announcement of an announcement at the world's largest electronic entertainment expo — E3! The announcement is for a top secret project that will not be revealed at E3, but the announcement will not reveal what that project is — rather, it will reveal when to expect the announcement of the project!

"I'm tremendously excited about this announcement," said Papa Bear, CEO of GeneriCon. "Our 15 years of experience at teasing the industry is sure to pay off this E3 when we build up to absolutely nothing of any substance whatsoever. They'll be begging for more by the time we're finished — but they're not going to get it!"

GeneriCon's announcement ceremony will feature a special appearance by the Cirque de la Lune, a fraternity of performing minstrels from Paragon City who have not yet realized that they are fictional constructs born from the imagination of massively multiplayer online RPG players. Supporting Cirque de la Lune will be a troupe of performing badgers and the worlds most synchronized brigade of elephants.

"The practice of announcing a new project at E3 is passé," said Julian Ivanov, VP of Commercial, Corporate and Certifiable Communications. "We are revolutionizing the practice of announcements. After this E3, people will be wondering whether they should even bother attending the show in the first place, so little will actually be revealed on the show floor. But the answer is simple, of course — come to see our elephants."

Visit GeneriCon's booth on the show floor, booth number 6969, to see absolutely nothing whatsoever. Private media showings, including exclusive reveals, can be arranged by emailing suckitup@genericon.com.

ABOUT GENERICON

Founded in 1996 by the son of an advertising legend and a Belgian, GeneriCon has since proven itself to be a world leader in the field of PR and marketing teasers as well as having the highest staff turnover of any company in history. Despite ample coverage from the press, consumers have not yet noticed that the company is yet to release an actual product onto the market.

CAUTIONARY NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

From time to time, GeneriCon may use statements such as "will", "might", "should", "hope to", "want to", "intend to", "will possibly", "maybe might", "probably", "definitely will", "definitely won't", "possibly will", "almost certainly will", "absolutely, positively, totally will", "really wish we could", "have extremely good intentions to", or "think we might just". These statements should not be taken as official confirmation of an intent to do anything at all and, in fact, it's probably safer if you just ignore them altogether, just like you're ignoring this whole paragraph because it waffles on forever and ever and doesn't really make any sense. GeneriCon reserves the right to decline all knowledge of the use of any forward-looking statements at any time, even if they were on the record and appear on audio or visual evidence, because you probably just made it up because that's what journalists do, isn't it? Any use of forward-looking statements is not admissible in a court of law and is not an admission of liability should someone come to injury as a result of waiting for a non-existent product. All rights reserved, except the ones which might cost us money.

#oneaday Day 155: Shop Shop

Shopping's a bit rubbish in the 21st century, isn't it? You have to drive all the way somewhere, pay a billion pounds to park and then walk around a bunch of shops that don't necessarily have the thing you're looking for in the first place and you just know that you should have phoned ahead to see if they had that thing and you didn't and blah.

In the age of the Internet, of course, there's really very little need to go out to the shops. Internet stores are much cheaper, don't require you to interact with sullen shop assistants (who are probably just as non-enthused about interacting with you as you with them) and have a selection of everything in the world. (You can also get pornography shipped to you in discreet, plain packaging as opposed to a plastic bag proudly emblazoned with "Bounty Bob's Big House o' Porn" on the side of it.)

Very little need, of course, but for one thing: you still can't beat the convenience of actually walking into a shop, handing over some cash (or your plastic of choice) and walking out of there with an item. The quickest somewhere like Amazon can get stuff to you is the next day, which is pretty good going, but still not quite as good as thinking "I want that thing" and being able to go and get that thing immediately. (Also, if Amazon decide to ship your shit through Home Delivery Network, you can forget about seeing it for at least a week. Free Super Saver Delivery is free for a reason.)

Going to the actual shops can be a social event, though. Some people enjoy the experience of wandering around small, cramped spaces that have never heard of air conditioning, rummaging through thirty-seven almost-identical products until they irritably state that it's just not right and go off to have a half-caff frappucino mocha with extra foam.

And then there's the shops which are specifically designed to be hands-on. You can order an iPad from the Apple website, sure, but you can go in and fiddle with one before handing over your money if you walk into an Apple Store. That's kind of cool, and in an era where more and more sales are moving online, it's sometimes difficult to imagine why more "brick and mortar" (ugh, hate that expression) stores aren't moving to a more interactive system. GAME, for example, would be awesome if you could pick up a game you were curious about, try it out for a few minutes and make your mind up. Better than buying something whose pack art looked great/had massive tits on it and discovering that it's actually a load of old bollocks when you get home. Of course, this plan is inherently flawed by the fact that if you let people sit and play games in your store, they will sit and play games in your store. All day. Just ask anyone who works in an Apple Store.

#oneaday Day 154: Shame on You

Have I told you about The Squadron of Shame? If you're a long-time reader, then I probably have, several times. But if you're here by chance, you might not be familiar with our little group.

Born in the dim and distant past of 1up, before the various 1upocalypses which have hit the site since then, The Squadron of Shame came about as a result of a podcast feature dubbed "The Pile of Shame". The concept of The Pile of Shame seems to have entered into popular consciousness in recent years, but the first time I ever heard it was on 1up Yours, when it was used to describe that ever-growing pile of shrink-wrapped games (or, these days, things in your Steam Library) that you somehow never get around to playing for one reason or another.

The 1up Yours guys agreed to play Tim Schafer's Psychonauts, which was widely regarded as being "good" and somewhat overlooked by the masses. They lasted a week before they gave up, so a number of members of the community stepped up to the plate in an attempt to succeed where they had failed.

Putting together forum threads and a 1up Club page to discuss the game, we found a number of like-minded gamers who enjoyed coming together to discuss games at considerable length, and in a markedly more intelligent manner than many of the "lol noob"-type people out there on the Internet. Over time, we took on a wide variety of other "missions" — taking on games which the masses had passed by and delving into them to discover whether it was actually worth going back and exploring them. Sometimes it was, sometimes it wasn't.

The turning point came when 1up merged its largely-disparate forums into just three general-purpose areas. The formerly intelligent discourse found on the 1up Radio boards was drowned out by the million voices of 12 year olds who thought Master Chief was da bomb, and our experiences were sullied by trolls coming on to our threads, criticising us for "walls of text" and completely derailing the discussion.

Before UGO took over 1up, we decided it was time to leave once and for all. We took to Twitter for a while, but we were scattered, and not everyone in our group used Twitter. It felt too "public" — although we always were a public group, there was an element of the "book club" mentality about it — a group of friends who knew each other well and enjoyed each other's company, but were still welcoming to newcomers.

Over time, we tried to come up with a way to resurrect the Squad formula. Thus, the Squadron of Shame SquadCast was born. Beginning as a game-focused podcast in which we concentrated on a single game and discussed it at great length and morphing into the topic-led discussion show we have today, the show has always been an enjoyable thing to be part of — and to listen to. We also have a small but active community at our "temporary" home: the Squadron of Shame Squawkbox. And we've all remained fast friends through thick and thin, through everything life's thrown at each one of us.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what the Internet is all about. And you can be part of it, too — our latest episode was released today, with a discussion of game worlds. You can check it out by paying the Squawkbox a visit, and there are links to subscribe there if you so desire, too. If you have a WordPress account, too, you can join the discussions on the 'box, too — don't be shy. We like new people, and we also don't mind "walls of text". So long as you use paragraphs. So far as conditions for entry go, that's not an unreasonable one, I don't think.

Anyway. There you have it. They're my favourite group of people on the Internet, and I haven't given them a plug for a while, so there you are. Join us. Or at least listen to our new episode.

#oneaday Day 153: Things That Make No Logical Sense But Are Clearly True: Food Edition

Life brings with it a number of learning experiences, and you store these pieces of information away in your dome-like for future reference, ready for subconscious recall at any available opportunity. Some of these pieces of information are, of course, complete nonsense and have absolutely no basis in scientific fact, but you become convinced of them anyway.

And so it is that you, like me, may have come to believe such rubbish as the following facts, which are clearly true. And all food-related, oddly.

Coke tastes better in a can.

It just does. Cans get colder than bottles and stay colder longer than bottles. Plus something about the metal particles makes the Coke taste better than the plastic particles of a bottle. There are people who will say that a glass bottle is the best way to enjoy a Coke, but they are wrong.

Sandwiches taste better when cut into triangles, unless they are bacon sandwiches.

This is also true. Eat a sandwich that has not been cut in any way and it tastes clearly inferior to triangular sandwiches. And don't even get me started on people who cut rectangular sandwiches. There's nothing even a little bit right about that.

Bacon sandwiches taste better when cut into small squares.

The exception to the sandwich rule is the bacon sandwich rule. Try it. Next time you have a bacon butty, cut it into quarters and you'll see that it's clearly better.

McDonalds chips taste better when consumed by the handful.

Milk tastes better swigged from the bottle.

As everyone (who enjoys milk) well knows, having an illicit glug from the bottle is far nicer than pouring out a glass. I fear that some of the Coke Science may be coming into play here.

It's impossible to make a good cup of coffee for yourself.

Make yourself a coffee. Taste it. Put up with it because it's "all right". Now get someone else to make you a coffee. Taste it. Enjoy it. Accept their making you a coffee that one time as acceptance of a non-verbal contract to make you a coffee whenever you want.

Tea only tastes of something if you believe in it.

I don't believe in tea, therefore it tastes like hot water — particularly the herbal teas. They smell great, but I never believe that they're going to taste of anything, so they don't.

Ketchup and HP sauce are opposites, and if they touch each other they will spontaneously combust.

What other reason could people possibly have for putting dollops of each respective sauce on opposite sides of the plate?

You are not allowed to have soup on a hot day.

It's not that you don't want soup on a hot day, your brain tells you that you must not have soup on a hot day.

If a piece of food you don't like touches a piece of food you do like, the food you do like is forever tainted.

This one is actually true. I hate onion — particularly raw onion. Even the slightest hint of a taste of it makes me retch. This includes if a salad once had raw onion on it and said raw onion has since been removed. It leaves a flavour residue that makes anything the onion once touched completely unpalatable.

Cheese sauce can be used as the strongest adhesive known to man.

If you've ever burnt cheese sauce onto a saucepan, you'll know that this is also true.

The most exotic-sounding sandwich on the menu is always the best.

This one is, unfortunately, not always true. Many's the time I've had a chicken tikka sandwich hoping for a gorgeous curried revelation and walked away disappointed, wishing I'd gone for the tuna and sweetcorn.

The dessert that mentions chocolate the most times is the best.

Also not always true, since too much chocolate can lead to becoming completely gummed up with sticky, gooey goodness. And while that can be fun, it can also lead to feeling a bit sick. And no-one likes feeling a bit sick.

If you don't have some sort of sauce on a kebab, you are Doing it Wrong.

Because why on Earth would you eat that shit if it wasn't covered in chilli sauce that can strip paint, or garlic sauce so strong it can be used as insect repellent?

#oneaday Day 152: Geek Post

Computers are bloody clever sometimes. It's almost as if the people who designed them know that you're going to fuck things up sometimes and put in various fail-safes to ensure that you can de-fuck yourself in most circumstances, barring catastrophic hardware failure. Having been a Mac user for quite a while, I've got used to using Time Machine to recover things that I've deleted (often as a space-saving measure) but I hadn't used Windows 7 that much until I got my new PC a short while back.

EA released a patch for The Sims 3 today that was ostensibly to update the main game and make it work with the new expansion Generations, but it also added a bunch of new functionality to the base game. Trouble is, the patch they released didn't patch the other expansion packs, leaving the game in a mess of unsynchronised versions that didn't quite work with each other, causing slowdown, flickering inventory and all sort of other shite.

And so it was that I came face to face with the Restore Previous Versions dialog box for the first time. I'd installed the patch a little before 10pm tonight, I remembered, so out of curiosity I checked the Restore Previous Versions option from the Windows right-click menu. Sure enough, there were old versions of my folders backed up from 21:39, and after a bit of whirring and clunking, I was able to get them back where they were, theoretically (hopefully) erasing all trace that the patch was ever there until EA fix it. Not only that, the installer for the patch had the foresight to put a restore point in for my save game, too, so hopefully that should be in sync with the game, too. I'll have lost about half an hour of gameplay, but I'd rather do that than have a juddery game that doesn't work properly.

I realise that the Restore Previous Versions feature is something that you Windows users will have been taking for granted for a long time now, and I'm sure there was an equivalent in XP — I just never had cause to use it. I've got to say, though, colour me impressed — it was quick and simple and didn't require any faffing around. Nice job.