Alan’s Blog

Just picked up Marvel Ultimate Alliance for our gaming evening tomorrow night. I forgot to order it online in time for Saturday, so I had to go out and try and find it today. Ugh.. my local Game store had it in the preorder section with preorder boxing only. The game was released on the 3rd of November and yet my local Game store still thinks it’s coming soon… Anyway, as a last resort I tried HMV, and they had one copy. ONE COPY… I must have got the last copy on the entire Island…

Sound like an awesome game, should be a lot of fun hopefully.

Spent the entire weekend playing Neverwinter Nights 2. When I say the entire weekend, I actually mean just over half, as there were some issues we encountered before we could start playing.

Ultimately, it was a blast. It’s not too far away from the original Neverwinter Nights in terms of gameplay and such. It feels like what would happen if Neverwinter Nights and Knights of the Old Republic 2 had children. I think it’s only out of love for the series that we didn’t just give up and wait for a few patches.

It’s got a ton of problems:

• Dragging an item onto another player opens the trade window with that item already on offer, however 3 times out of 5 it will add the item to the trade window but not show it.
• We had some weirdness with save games and remote characters progress sometimes not being saved if the remote character disconnected and reconnected.
• Timeouts whilst connecting to a LAN game. Defragging seemed to help this.
• The User Interface is not great. It seems they didn’t decide, “Lets take Neverwinters Interface and make it better or simply streamline it” but rather “Lets start again with our own interface and make it kind of look like Neverwinters”.
• Crashes. This mainly happened on one machine, and could be indicative of a problem with that machine.
• The pathfinding seems to be taken directly from Neverwinter. It’s still shit. In fact, it might even be worse.
• The Camera is terrible. It might be playable if you go into “Knights of the Old Republic driving camera” mode, but if you want to play it like Neverwinter Nights, then you’re screwed. It’s too fast/too slow/too jittery.
• The Map is crap. Utter crap. Why can’t I click on a point on the map and have my character try and run there (you know, if the pathfinding didn’t fuck it up too badly). Why can’t I leave markers, or do anything else apart from look at the map? WHERE THE HELL IS MY ON SCREEN COMPASS? How do you expect me to navigate? The best I came up with was using the visibility cone on the mini-map to kind of point in the general direction of a map point I wanted to get to, but with the camera setup, that’s pretty useless too. Why do the location markers on the mini-map not have tool tips?
• Loading times - ugh.  I ended up needing to run in a window due to some keyboard/focus problems I was having, which thankfully allowed me to check my email and browse the net and check email whilst it loaded.

And then there is just the things they changed and we’re not happy with, such as:

• Any Co-op players just seem to be along for the ride. All players seem to be considered the same ‘character’ in the story. While this is to be somewhat expected, Neverwinter at least had some different dialog based on whether you were the player that did some action or not. For instance “hey, thanks for getting the badly needed item, we really appreciate it!” for the person who just dropped off the item, and “hey, did you hear what they/<character name> did? They found us the badly needed item”. Nothing like that has happened so far. Basically, you’re “the dude” depending on whether you got to the event first, or you are the party leader (the default decision as to who is in the story). A nice touch was the other players being in the cutscenes, but wasn’t really enough without some clever script writing.
• The Henchmen interaction isn’t great. Suffers from the same issue above, so getting ‘friendly’ with your henchmen is impossible, as there are two people being considered the same person. In the original game, each player could take 1 henchman each, and that player would be the only one who could get information or history out of the henchman. If you tried talking to someone elses henchman, they would say “sorry, I work for someone else.”. In the new game, you don’t have that level of involvement, especially if you aren’t the party leader.
• Related to the above. Conversations are group conversations now, whoever triggered it is in control, everyone else is locked watching the conversation until it is over. In the original you could have multiple conversations going at once. You could both be doing different quests. While this makes sure all the players are keeping track of the dialog, it used to be up to the player.
• Again, a similar problem. Players trigger level changes for all players. This means you cannot be in different stores. It makes little sense my talking to a blacksmith when I’m a Wizard, however I’m forced to go there when our Paladin character goes to get new equipment. In the original game, arriving at a city usually meant “I have to go buy some stuff, we’ll meet up at the Inn” and off everyone went.
• There are some other issues, but these are the main ones.

Some other changes I dislike, but aren’t major issues. For instance, my actions on behalf of the group have no bearing on the alignment of other players. So we’re the same character, but independant in terms of actions? If I tell an NPC I’m going to gut him and end up killing him, what does that say about the Paladin who must always be a beacon of good yet just stood by whilst I butchered the innocent NPC? (or even worse, helped?). It makes sense in certain instances. For instance, stealing some weapons is an unlawful action, but if I don’t care, I should be able to. But there should at least be some ‘group’ alignment decisions. In the original, it was only group alignment, So I would need to be careful I didn’t screw up a Paladin’s alignment when we were grouped. However, he could leave the group and not be affected.

There are some fairly big issues in the game, hopefully some of them get fixed eventually. The story itself is being a little reserved so far, but if I recall, the first chapter usually is (I think we’re still in the first chapter). We’ve been able to work around most of the problems so far.

In terms of the original game, it’s just more of the same. They’ve fucked some things, and improved some things, so it works out about the same.

That’s enough for now, might post more about it later.

Managed to finish the main story arc in Oblivion last night. I found it extremely entertaining although did feel it kind of ended abruptly.. well, not abruptly, but it just kind of ‘ended’. I don’t know, it felt like there should have been a touch more story inbetween some of the action. I guess that’s the price we pay for open ended gameplay; everyone is still trying to work out how to work story-telling into that kind of structure in a nice way. That is probably a topic for another post though.

Anyway, with that done, I’m ready to start on Neverwinter Nights 2. Planning on playing that one Co-operatively, as has been the case for all previous Neverwinter Nights stories (with the depressing exception of Hordes of the Underdark, where they decided “we wont flat out say the main story is not playable cooperatively, but you know - if you’re gonna make assumptions… It’s a shame you bought that many copies…“). Yes, you could play it certain ways if you were careful or had some helpful scripts running, but the experience was too trying on our patience.

My Neverwinter Nights 2 Lawful Good Collector’s Edition arrived today. For the price, I can’t complain. Nicely done. Not going to have a chance to play it until this weekend, fingers crossed I can finish Oblivion before then (hah). Looking forward to getting some Co-op action going on.

I took some pictures of the material, which you can see here.

I would probably have preferred Chaotic Evil, but couldn’t justify the extra price (Game were charging a lot more than Play, and when you’re buying two copies, that makes a lot of difference)

I’m still working my way through Oblivion. Really enjoying it. My only complaint so far is clearing the Spoiler ▶Oblivion Gates is really monotonous. I’m past the first big push of that now, so hopefully things get better.

Neverwinter Nights 2 is out today. Looking forward to that, loved the original. Splinter Cell Double Agent is also out today, which should be fun, I really enjoyed 3. 16 days until Gears of War, woo!

Friday I was at a friends place for a few drinks. Great fun. The evening ended with us all sitting around laughing at old Iron Man episodes. So unintentionally funny it was awesome.

Saturday night the same group of friends were around at my place for our usual Saturday night gaming. Unfortunately Bankshot Billiards 2 doesn’t support 4 players, so we had to cycle who was playing.

Thankfully the games for the most part didn’t drag out too long. Looking forward to Fuzion Frenzy 2 later this year. We’ve played the crap out of the demo.

We ended up playing 4 player Gauntlet until the wee hours. Going to pick up Marvel Ultimate Alliance for our next session. Sounds awesome.

Last night I watched The Usual Suspects. Excellent stuff. I thought I might have seen it before, or at least parts of it - but it turned out I hadn’t.

I got some bad news last night. Turns out my Great Grandmother passed away Saturday night (28th October 2006). Apparently it was painless and wasn’t really unexpected, she was 102 years old - so it was really a matter of time. I last saw her in May 2003 at her 99th birthday. It’s a shame I didn’t get a chance to visit her again. I’ll miss her

Spent Saturday night playing 3 player Bankshot Billiards 2 on the 360 with a few beers. It was a lot of fun although the physics were a little wonky. Shots that should not have happened in real life tended to occur with a high frequency. This actually ended up causing much hilarity as taking potshots at a clump of balls would occasionally net 4-6 balls potted. Ultimately we had a lot of fun though, the game just needs more 3 player modes - the only mode that supported 3 players was called Cutthroat where there are 3 colours on the table and the goal is to sink the other players colours first; the last player with their colour on the table wins. I assume some of the other modes would allow 4 players (doubles), but I don’t have 4 controllers

Currently working through Oblivion again, with the intent to finish the main story this time. Last time I played I did the Thief’s Guild and the Dark Brotherhood, sunk like 20 hours into the game, and then got bored. This time I’m playing the same character (Assassin) but I’ve modded my game a bit. It is a lot more fun this time and I’m confident I should make it to the end. One of the aspects I disliked last play was that my Archery skills meant nothing (enemies required 3 - 5 arrows to go down, which meant a lot of back-peddling after I’d been spotted) - I have a few mods installed to try and correct this problem without making me too ‘godlike’, so far it seems to be working.

Ugh, being sick sucks. I don’t know how, as kids, we thought this was preferable to school.

Company of Heroes arrived last week, and I managed to get in some multiplayer action on Sunday ( I think ) before I got completely bed bound. The Multiplayer is awesome fun, I haven’t tried the Single Player Campaign yet. but I’m told it too is awesome.

Grouping Units by numbers is still useful, in fact, the combination of the grouping improvements I mentioned in my last post along with the units being listed down the right of the screen ( listed by grouped number or those ungrouped ), makes unit management the easiest I’ve ever experienced in any game ever.

The Multiplayer, as mentioned, is awesome. There are two game modes, Victory Point Control and Annihilate. Annihilate is your standard ‘pound the opposition into the ground and remove all trace of them’ fare. Victory Point is kind of a play on King of the Hill, but with multiple strategic points you need to control. You each have a starting score, holding more points than your opponent makes their score decrease. The game doesn’t promote the ‘build up a superior force and destroy everything’ game style that guaranteed success in past RTS games. Strategy plays a key role. You have to secure territory in order to increase your force ( the map being broken down into sections ). Taking territory involves planning, especially later in the game. You cannot simply stroll in and take the territory. Even though you may succeed in doing so, you certainly wont be able to hold the territory for long.

I also love the lack of upgrade paths. There are some upgrades you can do to your units/buildings, and some of them are worth doing depending on how you’re playing. What they’ve done instead is give you commander points which can be allocated to one of three divisions, Infantry, Airborne and Armor. These give you actions you can use at any time subject to the actions recharge rate and available resources. I’ve only played with Airborne so far. Basically it allows you to order in air strikes, drop supplies or troops and request aerial recon of areas of the map. Really awesome stuff.

Anyway, that’s enough Company of Heroes for now. Highly recommended.

Played the Company of Heroes demo the other day. Wow pretty much sums it up. I’m not really a huge RTS fan, I’ve always liked them because they usually included a multiplayer skirmish mode against the AI, but Company of Heroes is amazing. This game is much like the Rainbow Six of RTS games.

The AI is tricky, but what struck me more was the AI controlling your squad movement. In CoH you don’t control individual units (human units anyway) but a squad As your squads advance a point, they make use of natural cover. It adds a whole new level of realism when you can watch units which you gave broad orders traverse intelligently towards their destination.

I haven’t played it enough yet to know if some of the old ‘gotchas’ of RTS games exist, for example, your units having unparalleled knowledge of a battlefield and running half way around the map simply to get down a cliff which looks impossible to get down based on your current information.

The grouping system is excellent. In traditional RTS games, you group units by selecting each unit or dragging a box around them. Once the units are grouped, you can usually assign a number to this group so you can refer to them later. I do not know if CoH has such a feature. I don’t know, because I haven’t needed it. In CoH you group in much the same way, drag a box around a number of units/squads. The difference lies in the fact groups are persistent in that you issue orders to individual squads within that group, and then jump back to every squad in the group to issue generic orders. In larger battles, you may still need to assign group numbers. But I haven’t found the need yet.

Visually, the game looks great. No complaints there. Its one of the few RTS games that is done in 3d and still manages to make units easy to see. I have found in some previous titles, the units just blended into the scenery too much. The level of destruction available in the environment is very nice. Watching tanks crash through brick walls is quite satisfying. The ‘Squad Cover’ interface is nice and easy to use. Every location you can move to will have a series of dots on the ground denoting where you squad members will end up. You are told whether the location affords no cover (red), light cover, medium cover (orange) or heavy cover (green). This allows you to make decisions of the destination of your troops quickly.

Resource management seems to be less of priority compared to good tactics. Hopefully that will make multiplayer games less of a “rush to amass resources, build a huge army and win” and more interesting with smaller battles happening more often. The fact that you have a retreat option also gives me hope.

The game hits stores on Friday 29th here and it looks as though it’s one to pick up. Hopefully it will tie me over until Supreme Commander is released

I seem to recall saying I would endeavour to update this more often. Currently I’m probably going to have to go with once a month. Things are happening. Quite a few things. But it’s all work related, and I can’t talk about it.

Things I can talk about:

• I finally watched the Sergio Leone Spaghetti Westerns. A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Really enjoyed them. I had heard a lot of people say the last one was the best, but personally I enjoyed the first two a bit more. Overall though, they lived up to everything I’d heard and a lot more. Highly recommended.
• I picked up the PopCap Collection off Steam. I’d played a few of the trial versions before and had spent far too much time in the past playing the online free versions. My favourites are still AstroPop, Bookworm and Zuma - however some of the others seem like they could grow on me. Paul has been playing a lot of Talismania, which seems pretty cool.
• Also on Steam, I picked up the Uplink/Darwinia pack. I haven’t had a chance to really get into Darwinia yet, but I played the crap out of the Uplink Demo back in the day. If you haven’t played Uplink, you should. It’s pure awesomeness. Also looking forward to Defcon, which is coming out soon (this month apparently). It looks exactly like Global Thermonuclear War from Wargames, which is awesome.
• Played a bit of ShadowGrounds as well, which seems like a lot of fun. Was hoping for LAN co-op rather than same screen co-op. But oh well, any co-op is good co-op.

I might update some more a bit later, but I need to head out for lunch now.

Update

On the Xbox side:

• I’ve been playing Lego Star Wars (2 player). That game is too much fun. We’ve finished the story and are currently going back through again to get all the Mini Kit and Super Kit pieces.
• We’ve also been playing Hunter: The Reckoning (3 player), which is a blast. It’s getting a touch frustrating due to the difficulty level, I’m thinking the balancing isn’t quite right with 3 players in the game (either that, or we just suck ). Regardless, it’s been fun. We’ve got Hunter: The Reckoning - Redeemer on the horizon too, which we might try out just to see if it’s better balanced.

That’s it for now.