Fallout New Vegas, follow up and temporally-concurrent sequel to Fallout 3, now set in Nevada's Mojave Desert.
NOTE: I only play on maximum difficulty, or in this case, Hardcore mode. Hopefully you'll realise my sheer gaming excellence and virility far outweigh the self-aggrandisement of this statement. Hardcore mode in any game is for Titans like me amongst the softcore men.
First the obvious: the game is almost identical gameplay-wise when compared to Fallout 3. It's still the same combination of first person shooter with role-playing game elements. The RPG elements have been tweaked to increase the importance of skills (e.g. explosives, speech, barter) and decrease the importance of SPECIAL stats (charisma, strength etc); the idea being that you can't just pump all your points into charisma and have awesome speech skills because of it. The game forces you to specialise rather than be a jack-of-all-trades like you could in the prequel. I guess they thought that a power-armoured super-soldier who could talk, sneak or shoot their way out of any situation broke the game somewhat.
Graphically there's very little difference between New Vegas and 3. There are a few more character models and some new baddies but other than that it's the same. However, NV is vastly superior in terms of atmosphere and setting - the Strip, the desert and the rural locations are far more interesting to behold than anything from 3 - it was the greatest relief to not have to spelunk through the same rancid sewer systems over and over. It took me 6 hours to encounter the first sewer, and having progressed another 12 hours I've yet to have the misfortune of further sewer surfing.
The desert is also more densely packed than ever - there's no more pressing down the forward key with a nearby paperweight and then going for a can of Schweppes Traditional, returning and finding Mr Wanderer halfway to the destination - only 10 or 15 seconds in any direction will arrive at something new, like a gas station, raider encampment or hapless town. It's a little strange that a desert would provide far more entertainment than a game set in Washington DC. I guess not having every building being a shade of gunship grey is a big plus.
NV suffers from the same problem that 3 had when it comes to voice acting - there are like 4 guys who do every voice and they were all recruited from the Naruto-dub studio. There's nothing wrong with the quality of the voice actors but the fact that Lieutenant Asshat sends you to Seargeant Jerkoff and they BOTH have the same voice is as cringeworthy as dead baby jokes at an abortion clinic. The worst situtation was in an army camp where two pairs of troops were chatting, all with the same voice. At first I thought there was something wrong with my audio but it turned out that there were several Tyler Durden situations going on.
In 3, aside from health you also had to worry about radiation - too much of it and you would lose health and eventually die. Evidently some genius at Bethesda Softworks thought that having to watch a geiger counter was awesome gameplay fun and decided to put in several more of the same - dehydration counter, starvation counter and sleep deprivation; meaning that if you don't sleep, drink and eat like a regular person, you can't play due to a bad case of deaditis.I know it's more realistic but I came to Nevada for some good wholesome post-apocalyptic raping and pillaging, not a lesson in mad survivalism in the wide west. For a game so obsessed with drinking water, it doesn't provide many ways to get water - I seem to spend all my time drinking out of toilets. Like I said, I play this game for fantasy, not reality.
The music is far superior - there isn't too much variety but the music is laid back and really sets the scene of a rustic desert country who have an identity; by the time I'd finished playing Fallout 3 I'd heard "I Don't Want to Set the World On Fire" so many times I think I'd have rather listened to Simple Plan, Black Eyed Peas and Justin Bieber on repeat.
My last thought is that in this game, this guy's limbs are made of wet tissue paper - geckos, rats, hollow-point bullets, missiles, golf clubs, base jumpinig without parachutes, bear traps and soft mountain breezes are capable of breaking your limbs equally well. It breaks the immersiveness when (and this has happened to me) an angry praying mantis the size of a shoe can fracture your skull and give you a concussion.
Still it's good fun. I do enjoy watching guys perform biforcatory splits because I sneakily planted a live frag mine in between their buttocks. I also persuaded a guy to build me a laser-armed sexbot and a machine gun that fires grenades, so I'll just enjoy myself for now :)
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Game Review: Alan Wake
Every so often I'll feel the urge to play a solid and scary horror game in an attempt to force some kind of emotional reaction from myself, thus I tried Alan Wake, the "intense psychological thriller". Somewhat odd to have a tagline as a subtitle for a game, though I can understand given that the cover art is merely a silhouette of a dude with a flashlight.
The game opens up with a guy driving into an idyllic mountain town with his wife in an attempt to have a holiday from writing so he can catch up on his writing. I can relate to Alan in his psychotic rage against his wife when his holiday from writing becomes a holiday FOR writing. It was all a trap and now Alan must escape the evil clutches of his ball-busting wife who demands that he works for a living.
Okay maybe that isn't exactly what happens but the initial plot setup makes so little sense that I thought of a more plausible scenario. In any case, after arriving in town and seeing some suspect old people, Alan and wifey get into their secluded holiday home where it promptly explodes and "something" takes his old lady to parts unknown. Alan loses consciousness, wakes up a week later with convenient amnesia and now has to find out what happened in that week and then to rescue the incessant nagger.
Gameplay is in third person adventure style shooter, more like Max Payne than Gears of War. Your primary weapon is not a gun but your handy Everyready-battery-powered torch; the main danger in Alan Wake is "the darkness" - an amorphous and ill-defined entity that can possess anyone wielding an axe or pipe wrench. Whenever you shine the light on one of these dark guys they freeze like a freshly shaved husky in the Arctic and you are free to blow chunks out of them with your pea-shooting pistol.
The horror aspect isn't too bad as the scenery is very atmospheric - moonlit mountain trails with rustling leaves and shifting shadows, welcome lodges (which are inherently creepy) and run-down motels, forests and eerie mines. The enemies are less scary though - the same 3 character models armed with the aforementioned farm implements charge at you and attempt to whack you like a baby seal at a Marilyn Manson concert; it's more frustrating than scary when your torch runs out of batteries and you are forced to run.
I have to spoil part of the story now as it really pisses me off. You eventually find out what happened in that lost week - you were writing. The darkness tricked Alan into writing his book. For a whole week. Not that he erased his memory to cope with the horror of his actions, or that he skipped out for a delightful vacation at Disneyland, or even that he was kidnapped by kung fu fighting brothel workers. Instead he sat at a desk and wrote. Shock! What an awesome revelation! Perhaps Alan Wake 2 can have him waking up after a night with his face in a bowl full of pudding and the mystery is that he got drunk and ate pudding!
It's strange that the worst part of the game about writing is the writing itself. If the story made more sense and the characterisation was better - I find it very hard to care about Alan or his fat comic-relief friend (who shows up when the plot starts to drag) considering they're jerks, and this can't be excused because they aren't funny.
I'd give the game an average rating - not good, not bad - worth playing if you enjoy horror games but will never hit a top ten list for anything.
Perhaps it would have been better if Alan had wanted to write and his wife wanted him to give up on his dreams, and he uses his writing to materialise the darkness to take the nagging wench to Disneyland for a week.
The game opens up with a guy driving into an idyllic mountain town with his wife in an attempt to have a holiday from writing so he can catch up on his writing. I can relate to Alan in his psychotic rage against his wife when his holiday from writing becomes a holiday FOR writing. It was all a trap and now Alan must escape the evil clutches of his ball-busting wife who demands that he works for a living.
Okay maybe that isn't exactly what happens but the initial plot setup makes so little sense that I thought of a more plausible scenario. In any case, after arriving in town and seeing some suspect old people, Alan and wifey get into their secluded holiday home where it promptly explodes and "something" takes his old lady to parts unknown. Alan loses consciousness, wakes up a week later with convenient amnesia and now has to find out what happened in that week and then to rescue the incessant nagger.
Gameplay is in third person adventure style shooter, more like Max Payne than Gears of War. Your primary weapon is not a gun but your handy Everyready-battery-powered torch; the main danger in Alan Wake is "the darkness" - an amorphous and ill-defined entity that can possess anyone wielding an axe or pipe wrench. Whenever you shine the light on one of these dark guys they freeze like a freshly shaved husky in the Arctic and you are free to blow chunks out of them with your pea-shooting pistol.
The horror aspect isn't too bad as the scenery is very atmospheric - moonlit mountain trails with rustling leaves and shifting shadows, welcome lodges (which are inherently creepy) and run-down motels, forests and eerie mines. The enemies are less scary though - the same 3 character models armed with the aforementioned farm implements charge at you and attempt to whack you like a baby seal at a Marilyn Manson concert; it's more frustrating than scary when your torch runs out of batteries and you are forced to run.
I have to spoil part of the story now as it really pisses me off. You eventually find out what happened in that lost week - you were writing. The darkness tricked Alan into writing his book. For a whole week. Not that he erased his memory to cope with the horror of his actions, or that he skipped out for a delightful vacation at Disneyland, or even that he was kidnapped by kung fu fighting brothel workers. Instead he sat at a desk and wrote. Shock! What an awesome revelation! Perhaps Alan Wake 2 can have him waking up after a night with his face in a bowl full of pudding and the mystery is that he got drunk and ate pudding!
It's strange that the worst part of the game about writing is the writing itself. If the story made more sense and the characterisation was better - I find it very hard to care about Alan or his fat comic-relief friend (who shows up when the plot starts to drag) considering they're jerks, and this can't be excused because they aren't funny.
I'd give the game an average rating - not good, not bad - worth playing if you enjoy horror games but will never hit a top ten list for anything.
Perhaps it would have been better if Alan had wanted to write and his wife wanted him to give up on his dreams, and he uses his writing to materialise the darkness to take the nagging wench to Disneyland for a week.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Chivalry
I used to believe in chivalry - to act with nobility, courtesy and charity of heart. The knightly qualities especially pertained to interactions with women; that they were deserving of greater levels of respect and civility - in general society, this would be opening doors, paying for dinner, letting her go first etc.
A few years back a met a girl who thought this type of behaviour was completely retarded - a feminist to be sure, but thought that that type of gallantry should be reserved for when true charity is felt in the heart. For her, feminism was about all types of behaviour - undeserved treatment was just as bad as misogyny. Her idea was that the same set of rules should apply to everyone. To be nice to someone because they are a girl was sexist for her.
I came to agree with this assessment though it never ends well in public; I wait in line for my turn, I let people in while driving and I don't hawk for car parks. And yet women still give me dirty looks and say I'm a dick because I don't enact their form of chivalry. I don't open doors for women, I don't let women go in front of me and I don't automatically pay the bills for women. I do do these acts but they never have anything to do with sex. Well, gender anyway.
This isn't a conundrum for me - it does make my life somewhat more difficult owing to these jerks who think I should treat women better than men, rather than treat all people equally.
People say cynically that chivalry is dead but they're only partly correct. The type of chivalry where we treat women as delicate little flowers unable to stand up for themselves is dead. The type where we treat people better to be generous or charitable is alive, if young.
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