tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-354480282024-03-05T02:02:02.140-06:00Gas Bandit GamingPrimarily PC gaming opinions from a rather opinionated author.Gas Bandithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06099444660425923409noreply@blogger.comBlogger788125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35448028.post-23945383761695434272014-09-16T19:07:00.002-05:002014-09-16T19:07:50.068-05:00Are video games sexist?A breath of fresh air in a room too long dominated by shrieking.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/9MxqSwzFy5w" width="480"></iframe>Gas Bandithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06099444660425923409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35448028.post-77889803905579516512014-09-15T10:09:00.001-05:002014-09-15T10:09:42.339-05:00Start the funeral dirge for minecraftFrom Mojang: "<a href="https://mojang.com/2014/09/yes-were-being-bought-by-microsoft/" target="_blank">Yes, we're being bought by Microsoft.</a>"<br />
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To quote ThatNickGuy - "I can't wait to see what they bring to the table for Microsoft, like Rare and Lionhead studios have! Oh, wait..."Gas Bandithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06099444660425923409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35448028.post-29955355313317682532014-09-07T10:10:00.000-05:002014-09-07T10:10:53.919-05:00Quick Review - BanishedIf you think you're good at management sims, you should step up and try Banished. It will humble you. Unless you do everything right and provide for about 17 different needs for all your people at all times without fail or delay, people are going to die. A lot of people. The game's resource generation vs consumption is incredibly tilted against you. Unless you have fully educated villagers using the best tools and wearing the warmest clothing and in exactly just the right amount of houses (not too few, not too many), it's a long slow slide into starvation and desperation. My village has been going about 43 years, but because villagers apparently age at 4 times the normal rate (I started off with 10 villagers in their 20s, and within 5 years the oldest ones in the village were in their 40s easy) there have been generations of turnover, especially due to all the starvation. You can't farm enough. You can't forage enough. You can't mine enough, you can't quarry or herd or smith or log enough, fast enough. At my peak, my village boasted almost 100 residents. After about a 20 year recession that worsened into depression (not helped by the frequently completely useless merchants that came to call, no I don't want to buy your stupid pumpkin seeds, I already grow my own, why the hell didn't you bring iron), I'm back under 30 residents, mostly from starvation.<br />
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The game plays very similar to Tropico or Gnomoria in that instead of controlling individual villagers you simply order the places for them to live and work built, and manage as a taskmaster/city planner. It starts off kind of easy because a new map will have abundant resources just lying on the ground around you... but once you use that up, it's much slower and more expensive to mine it/cultivate it/quarry it. There are no goblin attacks, no rebels, no hurricanes or zombies... just your silent mental wail as you watch people under your charge wither and die because your skills at management were a single iota less than divinely perfect.Gas Bandithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06099444660425923409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35448028.post-58388640516600506762014-08-19T19:42:00.001-05:002014-09-16T19:08:15.299-05:00Quinnspiracy Theory: The Five Guys SagaAKA "The death knell of online game journalism and perhaps the indie dev scene itself."<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/C5-51PfwI3M" width="480"></iframe>Gas Bandithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06099444660425923409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35448028.post-85783934620315319812014-08-12T16:13:00.001-05:002014-08-12T16:14:56.614-05:00Space Engineers - XBox One Official Announcement Trailer<br />
I am not a happy camper. Or engineer.<br />
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Let's dumb down Space Engineers for obsolete hardware and the tards who play on it!<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/22TUhI6phKs" width="480"></iframe>Gas Bandithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06099444660425923409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35448028.post-74205693253476074882014-08-04T14:31:00.001-05:002014-08-12T16:14:14.593-05:00Space Egineers: Cyberweed Works Space Police<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/vr3rPfund7I" width="480"></iframe>Gas Bandithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06099444660425923409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35448028.post-60716611179175424992014-08-01T07:53:00.001-05:002014-08-01T08:02:29.776-05:00Gas Bandit Plays: Robocraft - Railguns are Pretty Bullshit Too<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/fkkQjOaefXk" width="480"></iframe>Gas Bandithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06099444660425923409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35448028.post-43871718389388379082014-07-31T00:53:00.000-05:002014-07-31T00:53:00.274-05:00Gas Bandit Plays - Robocraft: Today I Am Someone Else's Bullshit.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Gas Bandithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06099444660425923409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35448028.post-89599018228925933372014-07-30T12:16:00.000-05:002014-07-30T12:16:05.379-05:00Gas Bandit Plays: Robocraft Bullshit<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Gas Bandithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06099444660425923409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35448028.post-11389024436538933862014-07-29T07:21:00.001-05:002014-07-31T00:54:15.519-05:00Gas Bandit plays: War Thunder<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/ataBWdTyKvw" width="480"></iframe>Gas Bandithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06099444660425923409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35448028.post-73213345133536899862014-07-28T19:23:00.001-05:002014-07-28T19:23:43.912-05:00Space Engineer Tutorials by Gas Bandit<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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My loyal readers (all four of you) might not know I've been a little more active on my youtube channel of late, and I've done a series of beginner tutorials for the game Space Engineers, currently in alpha/early access. I'm really liking this game, and if you think you might as well, or are daunted by the admittedly unintuitive startup the game offers, I offer <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTyd0tLdukI_TMN73wwfJWwG-UJh7kmJM" target="_blank">my tutorial series</a>, available from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/Gasbandit" target="_blank">my youtube channel</a>.<br />
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The game is... basically minecraft in space with a faction-based PVP endgame. You mine asteroids for materials that you then use to build ships, eventually going to war with other player factions for territory or access to resources or whatever or no reason.Gas Bandithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06099444660425923409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35448028.post-42570285026820584392014-04-13T13:33:00.000-05:002014-04-13T13:33:00.642-05:00Gas Bandit Hates Your Mech: Part 2Welcome back, ladies and germs, to part two of my insulting your favorite 50 meter K'nex set. It's Gas Bandit Hates Your Mech, Parte the Seconde!<br />
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So we'll jump right into the Heavy mechs now.<br />
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16) The Dragon:<br />
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No mech has disappointed me like the Dragon has disappointed me. This is a heavy mech! This is where things are supposed to start really kicking ass! Why does the Dragon just stink... so... bad? On the one hand you got your energy hardpoints, on the other, you got your ballistic hardpoints. And you got missiles in the middle... and enough tonnage to actually do something with em! But the damn thing is just too sissy to stand on the line with its larger brothers, but it's sure as hell too slow to keep up with the smaller guys. Once it sticks its HUGE ridiculous schnoz out from behind cover, it never fails to catch more pain than a pro wrestler in a folding chair factory. Could be because it's big beaked design encourages catching damage from the sides - and like several of the heavies, the side torso armor is much weaker than the center. Whatever the reason, I seldom see a Dragon that doesn't fly to pieces within 5 minutes of dropping.<br />
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17) The Quickdraw<br />
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Ohhhh-ho-ho-ho. The Quickdraw. The Quickdraw is a sneaky little bastard. Anyone who's ever seen the tabletop model for a Quickdraw has a hard time taking it seriously - it looks like C-3P0 had sex with a bug-eyed anime chick, and then they drilled holes in the chest of the cyberbaby. One has to give PGI credit for improving the thing's looks as much as I suppose could be expected, but they tacked on these wacky insect-antenna things that jut out like the ears on a scared cat. Plus the thing is short and chubby now, and all of these factors come together to trick the unwary into thinking a quickdraw is less of a threat than it really is. Despite being the same tonnage, it fields more armor than the hapless Dragon while still able to mount a decent amount of firepower - albeit with no ballistics, but let's be honest - you can't really excel at every weapon simultaneously in a 60 ton mech. So your energy (and probably to a lesser degree, your missile) weapons get beefed up by necessity, you got more armor, you got the same speed, this is the first real honest to god heavy mech and it looks like the Kintaro's short, fat cousin from back east. So it gets underestimated, and that's dangerous. We all have to thank our lucky stars it looks so dumb because if more people could get past its goofy aesthetics those of us in actual balanced mechs would be in a lot of trouble.<br />
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18) The Catapult<br />
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Here it is, kids, your Beginner's Easymode Combo Pack. Who needs aiming skills? Let your teammates aim for you, and if you don't end up winning or doing enough damage, bitch at them for not holding targets long enough! Your average Catapult pilot is found at the back of the pack with his feet on his instrument cluster, sipping on a drink that has both an umbrella and a bendy straw. There's one button in the cockpit of the catapult, and that button is "ALL THE MISSLES." Most times when your mech is being jostled about and all your armor readouts are constantly blinking, there's a Catapult somewhere to blame for it. Of course, every once in a while you run into the crazy sonofabitch who gets himself a K2 variant, which dumps the mickey mouse missile ears for giant energy pods, and since they're up above the cockpit it's great for peeking over rises and blasting then ducking. God only knows what horrors would be unleashed if the K2 didn't have the jump jets stripped off. But yeah, don't associate with those K2 pilots. Those guys are psychotic. Bad news. Dangers to themselves and others. You'd HAVE to be to say, "Gee, I've got this nice comfy mech with one button that makes it so that either I'm instrumental in our win or blameless for our defeat, but I think I'll ditch on that to take my awkward chickenflappy ass right up on the line in a mech with the biggest, easiest to target cockpit in the whole damn universe and start drawing attention to my massive crazy self. Yeah, that's a good idea!"<br />
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19) The Jagermech<br />
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I want to take you back in time to the 90s. Mechwarrior 2 had just come out, and the nerdosphere was positively twitterpated with it. Big stompy clan mech fun. But while most of the comparatively normal nerds were enamored with their Timberwolves, their Warhawks, their Dire Wolves... there were the wierd kids who were head over heels for this derptastic stick-figure thing called the Rifleman II-C. Sporting a rotating restaurant at the top and arms entirely comprised of gunbarrels attached to a shoulder actuator with a single degree of movement, these mechs became the darlings of the kids that ate paste all the time and whose mothers wouldn't let them go outside after 5pm. But, as we all know, a short few years later there came the Massive Litigious Butthurt Copyright Wars that erased several iconic mechs from existence, and the Rifleman was one of them. But by that time, it had carved out a niche that many pilots (or their fellow players) had come to rely on... and when the dust cleared and Harmony Gold had taken away their precious Rifleman, the closest faximile was this... thing. This big, fat, slow, doorstop-shaped mess of a mech with guns mounted up high on the shoulders like a blackjack, but which nobody laughs at any more when it starts mounting AC-20s. Or AC-2s, for that matter. Or god help you, gauss rifles. It's hard to find a better dedicated direct damage platform right now than a Jagermech. The only thing stopping it from complete battlefield domination is it has the same weakness several other heavy mechs seem to have - soft, gooey side torso armor. And it's a rare day indeed when you find a JM what doesn't have an XL engine. So pick a side torso and keep hammering away at it... and brace yourself for the flow of obscene invective that vulgarly points out that, on paper, you should be dead 9 times over before you even saw the Jagermech.<br />
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20) The Thunderbolt<br />
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This mech is a myth, it doesn't actually exist. All sightings of Thunderbolts in the field have actually been shown to be confused pilots barely catching hazy glimpses of Battlemasters or Griffins through scum-smudged canopy glass. If you think you see a Thunderbolt, or someone tells you they have, take comfort in the knowledge that this simply isn't possible. Next they'll be talking about Warhammers or Maulers, the poor bastards.<br />
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21) The Cataphract<br />
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Now we're getting into the bread-and-butter of the heavy mechs. The Cataphract is a big bad battletub with good stats on paper, and a lot of people are drawn to them for obvious reasons. However, once you pilot a Cataphract, you very quickly come to learn their rather glaringly-obvious-in-retrospect shortcoming. Imagine you're a soldier. Your commander issues you two weapons... good weapons! Except they're mounted along the hinges at the bottom of a pair of briefcases, with the triggers in the handles. So to fire them, you have to hold your arms curved down and out to the sides, and blaze forth ruination from the level of your kneecaps. A Cataphract in low cover is a Cataphract who can't shoot you. They plod around like the universe's most disgruntled bellhops carrying their briefcases of doom that will surely pound you into paste so long as there isn't a knee-high wall between you and him. Word has it that the team that designed this mech next went to work on toe-mounted sniper rifles, before their funding was axed and they were sentenced to chemical castration lest their obviously defective brains be passed on to future generations - no doubt through their lower legs.<br />
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22) The Orion<br />
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Choosy moms choose Orions, when it comes to heavy mechs. It's a little on the slow side but it's got heap big center torso armor on a heap big center torso. Depending on who you talk to, that can be both a blessing and a curse, but when your CT has almost twice the armor your side torsos do it seems to me that if your hitboxes were more "fair" you'd end up sharing a room in heartbreak hotel with the Dragons and the occasional Jagermech. Its arms mount weapons at the elbow instead of dangling from the hands a-la cataphract. You know, it's actually hard for me to say much bad about the orion. Except I HATE THEM. Whenever I turn a corner and find an Orion there, I KNOW I AM GOING TO LOSE. And it's the worst kind of loss - the kind of loss that makes sense. It's not bullshit like a Spider or Jenner, it's not easymode like a LRMboat, it's right up in my face, kicking my ass like it ain't no thang and I HATE YOU ORION WHY DOES MOM ALWAYS TAKE YOUR SIDE<br />
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Assault Mechs<br />
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23) The Awesome<br />
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I like to call the Awesome the NoobTrap. The least expensive of the assault class, it makes for a tempting buy for new players who want to stomp across the battlefield in an honest-to-god assault mech dealing out devastation. And to the untrained eye on paper, the Awesome sure looks devastating. Look at all those energy hardpoints! You can even mix em with missiles if you feel like it! This is great, why doesn't everybody drive an Awesome?! I'll tell you why - because they cook you. You derp your way into loading up your awesome with PPCs or ER Large Lasers and because it's so slow the biggest XL Engine you can cram in it, and suddenly you're a walking cannister of thermite with a great big easy-to-hit sillhouette. The only way you can utilize all those energy hardpoints is if you load them up with medium and small lasers, but you haven't got the speed to keep things in range if you do that, so you gotta go big, right? If only the Awesome was 10 tons heavier, then you might put in some heat sinks too. That's what your poor mother will wail over the coffee can that they scraped you into with a toothbrush... what little of your charred remains they could find in the mountain of cinders that used to be your mech.<br />
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24) The Victor<br />
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There are few pilots as contemptible and pitiful as those who sit in a Victor. The lore behind the Victor, and the exploits of Prince Victor Steiner-Davion in the first Clan Invasion make this mech a lodestone for mary-sues - and you know they're out there. You can hardly make a drop these days without seeing some poor bastard who's affected a last name like "Kell" or "Kerensky." But much more eyerolling is that this is the first in this list in a (thankfully short) line of mechs with the biggest BS dynamic in the game, tabletop precedent or no - Assault mechs with jump jets. It's never been adequately explained to me why a Cicada or Centurion can't have jump jets, yet the Victor (and even more egregiously, the Highlander) can. Taken all things together, these factors make Victor pilots think they are some kind of super grand special snowflake warrior of destiny type person - a trait quite nauseating to those around them, and thankfully MWO, as with every other online PVP game, very quickly disabuses such people of their quaint notions. Not that it changes how they act. Bleaurgh.<br />
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25) The Battlemaster<br />
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Ahh the Battlemaster. The milquetoast of the Assault class. The everymech for those who want to stand out without standing out. S'matter, champ? Couldn't quite swing the c-bills for a top top TOP of the line mech? Ah, that's fine. Who needs the GT package on their car, anyway? This is just as good. Better maybe even! It even says it right in the name. Battle. Master. Master of battle. I master the battle and battle the masters because <strike>I couldn't afford a Banshee</strike> I've got the tools and the skills to make it happen. Really, 85 tons is all you need. And who cares if it's the only Assault mech without a hero variant? That doesn't mean anything! It may not be the flashiest brick with arms and legs and a cockpit, but who needs fame and fortune? Not the Battlemaster pilot. No sir. Plain toast, that's what gets him up in the morning. Frozen dinners are what he has every evening. No frills, fuss, or nonsense, just plain old boring efficiency. You won't see a Battlemaster tarted up with flames and angry eyes and gaping, tooth-filled mouth decals. In fact, it's almost a waste of time to shoot a Battlemaster. It's already dead. On the inside.<br />
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26) The Stalker<br />
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Here it is. Great Grand-daddy Bullshit of the Oh-Pee brigade. The Stalker is what Catapult pilots move up to when "All the missiles" aren't enough missiles. This great ugly tub can carry enough LRMs to saturate a battlefield, do thousands of points of damage from complete safety - and have meter-thick armor with no inconvenient, easy-to-shoot-off mickey mouse ear missile pylons to boot. Or, you can even load up a stalker with enough energy weaponry to turn a planet into a charcoal briquette. Or hey, do a bit of both? Why choose? With a stalker, you can do thousands of points of indirect damage AND have four large lasers just in case anybody comes looking for you. And you can't even give them a taste of their own Lurmsauce because it's likely the damn thing has TWO AMS defense systems as well. So when you're ready for a mech with push-button death dispensers with little in the way of drawbacks, this is the mech for you. No wonder it has the profile silhouette of a flaccid bell-end. Congratulations, you're barely even playing a game any more. You twat.<br />
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27) The Highlander<br /><br />
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28) The Banshee<br />
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Somebody let the Shadowhawks get into the steroids and now there's pumped up goons everywhere. Sure, maybe they can't jump anymore (thank God), and maybe it moves like a fat man trying to run uphill to catch a trolley, but it's hard to argue with 95 tons of direct firepower with just a dash of missiles. They might as well give this mech a letterman jacket and trust fund because this is the king superjock that took the girl you like to the prom and got her pregnant afterwards, leaving you to sit alone in your parents' basement wondering about what might have been while you spank it to old copies of national geographic within which you used a sharpie to draw lingerie on the natives. Years later you'll google/facebook stalk them and find out they got married and divorced and she's off in Vermont with a black eye and two of his kids doing who knows what to put her shattered life together and he's still living it up off his inheritance and a sinecure position as vice president of scotch and soda, banging his secretary and buying the neighborhood you grew up in to bulldoze and sell to a mall developer. Fuck you, Chase. I mean Banshee! Banshee. <i>This entry is about the Banshee and nothing else</i>.<br />
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29) The Atlas<br />
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Here we go! Mister 100 tons himself. You know why you bought an Atlas. Everybody has to buy an Atlas. Because it's the biggest, so it's the best! Obviously, it's the best. It's the mech even people who have no love or familiarity with battletech see and recognize. So why rock the boat? Why be original? Why tweak out something with less tons and balance advantages and disadvantages and situational utility when you can just get an Atlas D-DC and be the goddamned best. To borrow (or lift outright) a phrase from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp1kuo6xkbE">Mr. Regular</a>, it's the best. It's the best mech. It's the gleaming gold standard against which all mechs are measured. And it's the best. It's number one. You drive an Atlas because <i>you want the best</i>. You <i>deserve</i> the best. Only the best will do! You root for the Yankees and you love the Cowboys because they're <i>number one</i>. You drink Sam Adams. That's the <i>best</i> beer. You have the BEST MECH. You put on "Dark Side of the Moon" at every party because it's the best and really, who's gonna complain about Floyd?! Classic rock! Volunteer firefighters! BABY PHOTOS ON FACEBOOK! The BEST! THE BEST!! ITTH THV BVRRSST! RRAGAGGHRHHGH!<br />
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<br />Gas Bandithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06099444660425923409noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35448028.post-17933846533982600802014-04-02T14:02:00.003-05:002014-04-13T13:33:48.865-05:00Gas Bandit Hates Your Mech, Part 1 of 2<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
This one's going out to all my Mechwarrior Online buddies.</div>
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Hello, you disgusting mutant pimple! I'm the Gas Bandit, and we've only just met, but I hate you. More than that, I hate your mech. Why? SO GLAD YOU ASKED. Let me go down the list of mechs I hate.<br />
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1) The Locust<br />
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A Locust? Are you brain damaged? There's one thing a Locust has to recommend itself, and that is it leaves the minimum amount of smoky debris to clutter up the scenery when it inevitably explodes. It doesn't matter what variant you pick, you haven't got enough tonnage to mount anything much more powerful than a flashlight. The Locust is the mech to drive when a pilot has decided he's tired of life.<br />
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2) The Commando<br />
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Things are not improving. In fact, I'd say they're getting worse. The thing about the commando is, it's a locust for people who can't stand mechs that don't look like people. THIS IS IDIOCY. There's probably no less efficient way to build a mech than to constrain it to the shape and proportions of a human being. Plus, the Commando has a hero mech variant available! The Death's Knell, for people who want to <i>pay</i> to get stepped on!<br />
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3) The Spider<br />
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You don't have to take my word for it, just ask around. Do a couple drops. It's a statistical impossibility you won't run into a spider, and everybody hates them because spiders are <i>bullshit</i>. The internals of the Spider chassis are comprised entirely of hammerspace and bags of holding - there's no other explanation for how this anorexic little shit doesn't snap like a twig under its own weight, let alone burn to a crisp when the first medium laser gently caresses across its spindly little limbs. The spider is the only mech to mount HyperAdamantine armor by default. As long as the spider is moving and jumping and twisting and whatnot, it takes the concentrated firepower of 4 assault mechs to bring it down despite all sane reason telling you that should not be the case. Of course, spider pilots tend to be the smuggest, most self-assured pilots out there - because naturally they credit their own (cough) skill (cough cough) rather than the gamebreaking ridiculousness of their mech for their wins. Everybody hates them. Everybody.<br />
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4) The Firestarter<br />
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What do you get when you have a light mech chassis entirely comprised of guns welded to guns welded to guns? A Firestarter. Held together by sheer denial and insecurity, the Firestarter is the mech middle age pilots buy like guys in midlife crises buy vintage sports cars and toupees. The official mech of NAMBLA. From a distance one could be forgiven for mistaking a Firestarter for a closer Commando, due to the typical complete lack of originality in the design of mechs that look like humans. At least this one comes with something of an intelligence test - the test being, did you remember to strip off the flamers and put something of actual use on the mech?<br />
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5) The Jenner<br />
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ALL HAIL GRAND KING ASSHOLE MECH. Jenner pilots are the worst people. Yeah, your mech runs faster than sound, jumps higher than skyscrapers and mounts enough firepower to core out an Atlas' back in one alpha strike. GRATS ON YOUR EASYMODE, you filthy distended rectum. Swarms of Jenners infest almost every single drop because GOD FORBID we have any balance in the game. The Jenner is the poster boy for everything that is wrong with light mechs. For example, IT HAS A WAIST. One of the balancing factors of the original game that kept bullshit from happening was that mechs like the Locust, Jenner and so on didn't have torsos to twist... but here, Jenners can practically twist all the way around to shoot behind them as they run. Because god forbid aiming weapons on a light, fast mech have any sort of drawback.<br />
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6) The Raven<br />
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Ravens are mechs for emo iconoclasts who think they are snipers. These smegma chewing douchenozzles always load up their Raven-3L with ECM and an ER Large Laser or two and to find something high to stand on that is far away so they can attempt to snipe from safety. Trouble is it never quite works out right. Snipe loadout or not, a Raven is still a light mech and that means standing still is death. Maybe if these pilots could turn down the Dashboard Confessional and brush their shoe-polished bangs out of their eyes for 10 minutes they'd see they're not doing anything of consequence.<br />
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7) The Cicada<br />
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What do you get when you feed a Jenner too much and let it sit on the couch all day watching soaps? A cicada, that's what. No jump jets, weaker armament, slower top speeds and a bigass silhouette to shoot at - that's a Cicada for you. Despite its 40 tons classifying it as a medium mech, the Cicada clearly performs like a light - but not as well as most other lights. Anyone going up against a Cicada is aided by its coffee-table torso shape that allows any mech taller than it (or just with jump jets) to hit any of all six of its torso hitboxes at will from any angle The only thing a Cicada really has going for it is the fact that nobody takes a cicada seriously as a threat... so if he gets lost in among other, more fearsome mechs, he might actually get to keep shooting long enough to do some damage. But one on one, just about any other light or medium will beat a cicada. Except for Locusts, of course. Nothing's THAT pathetic.<br />
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8) The Blackjack<br />
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A 45 ton mech mounting an AC20? Talk about a tryhard. The Blackjack is your kid brother trying to pick up a 40 pound shovel and prove to Dad he can work with the big boys, too, if he can just keep from falling over. Blackjacks want SO BAD to be a main line battlemech, but they just can't take the punishment. The false confidence given by being able to mount one of the most unbalanced weapons in the game will make them try, though! With its forward facing knees and shoulder-mounted weapon structure, the Blackjack looks reminiscent of a person forever engaged in the act of surrender. Hands up! I yield! Probably the smartest thing you did all day, Blackjack pilot. Only way you could have been smarter is to NOT HAVE DROPPED IN A BLACKJACK.<br />
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9) The Centurion<br />
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Oh, you poor pitiful piece of crap. The centurion is the epitome of style over substance. Its sleek lines and stylish mohawk fail utterly to compensate for a mech that has the armament of a Cicada and the speed of a Dragon. It's also the first mech coming up the weight spectrum to have armament disassociative disorder. Energy! Missiles! Ballistics! It can mount them all! But only on a 50 ton frame so you're going to have to make some hard choices or end up with a wide variety of pea shooters and colored lamps. You can maybe fit one really good weapon on it, but chances are you're going to want that weapon to be ballistic, which means it's going to be on the right arm (the left arm is too busy being occupied with a completely useless and ugly hand actuator to mount any actual equipment). This means everybody knows the quickest way to neuter a centurion is to blow off the right arm. <br />
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10) The Hunchback<br />
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Well, speaking of easily neutered mechs! Don't let the startlingly large amount of weapon mounts for a medium mech fool you - this misshapen misbegotten misanthrope of a mech might as well be wearing a big neon sign on its right torso shoulder saying "SHOOT ME HERE TO MAKE ME IRRELEVANT." Favored by balding, potbellied former high-school athletes who can't let go of the glory days, the Hunchback catered especially to its pathetic demographic with its Grid Iron Limited Edition hero variant, which had the added bonus of spelling out the whole name "GRID IRON LIMITED EDITION" above its head on the display of anyone who happened to look its way. This, of course, translated into the minds of every enemy mech as "SHOOT ME FIRST BECAUSE I'M A PONCE."<br />
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11) The Trebuchet<br />
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There is no mech with as bad identity issues as the Trebuchet. This is SUPPOSED to be the first "real" indirect fire (read: LRM) platform, but how much Lurmsauce can you cram in a 50 ton mech? Furthermore, why would you want to, when you could get yourself a Catapult 15 tons up the chain? The end result is that the Trebuchet is a completely bland, generic and utterly forgettable mech driven by boring people. Trebuchet pilots are the ones at the party explaining that if you're going to spring for the 20 weight napkin, you might as well go whole hog and put down the extra for the 22 weight napkin (despite the fact that they metaphorically did the exact opposite with their own choice of mechs). <br />
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12) The Griffin<br />
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What do you get when you stick 5 Spiders together and hammer them into one mech? A Griffin. The griffin is probably the most bullshit easymode mech in the entire medium weight class. Despite having a big, idiotic looking bubble for a cockpit on top of its head, which in any SANE universe should pop like an overripe zit at the slightest damage, the Griffin is too fast to escape, too agile to hit, too armored to blast through easily and too well armed to ignore. The only hope this thing had of being balanced was being easy to headshot, but we can't have THAT, can we PGI? Especially not when this is one of those mechs you had to pay to get access to ahead of all the other schlubs! Zip up, you hacks, your pay-to-weenus is showing. You <i>disgust</i> me.<br />
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13) The Kintaro<br />
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Let's just get this out of the way. If your mech of choice is the Kintaro, you willingly fellate Satan nightly. The Kintaro has one job. That job is to make every mech lighter than the Kintaro curl up into a ball and cry. Well, that and to find Lucifer new boyfriends with pretty mouths. So two. The Kintaro has two jobs. Light-hunting and devil cocksheath providing. The hero Kintaro mech is called the Golden Boy. Could it BE ANY MORE OBVIOUS.<br />
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14) The Shadowhawk<br />
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The Shadowhawk is the hipster of mechs. It's enigmatic and confusing and gangly and awkward. It's got lots of hardpoints for every kind of weapon, which means no matter what situation you're in somebody's set up their shadowhawk to capitalize on it. Inexplicably, whoever designed it decided to put the ballistic hardpoints RIGHT UP IN THE FACE, next to the cockpit, so it blocks out any peripheral vision you have to the left, and with most loadouts, blinds you with muzzle flashes every time you fire. AND YET IT WORKS PRETTY WELL. HOW IN THE HELL. It's a Shadowhawk thing. Other pilots just wouldn't understand. Somewhere there's a mechbay where Shadowhawks congregate so their pilots can sip grande vente triple mocha latte frappuchinos and chortle quietly into their plaid fringed scarves as they use them to polish their horn-rimmed glasses while they think about how the rest of us are just so clueless and we don't get it. Where is this Shadowhawk mecca? It's pretty underground, I'm not surprised you've never heard about it.<br />
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15) The Wolverine<br />
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Somebody at PGI hates marvel comics. The wolverine is the 55 ton mech nobody's afraid of. Poor, poor Wolverine. Despite looking just as good on paper as a Shadowhawk, Griffin or Kintaro, the Wolverine never seems to get respect. Jenners and Cicadas and even Centurions routinely go toe to toe with Wolverines and win in a straight up brawl, against all logic. I'm convinced that one x-men hating PGI code-monkey smuggled explosives into their design of the wolverine and hit it next to the engine compartment, set to go off if the mech gets jostled too much. Save your money. Anyway, we're just about to get to the heavy mechs, where your money would be better spent anyway.<br />
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To be continued, with the heavy/assault class...<br />
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<br />Gas Bandithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06099444660425923409noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35448028.post-15657021079037816522013-05-22T00:48:00.002-05:002013-05-22T00:48:47.568-05:00The Xbox One Reveal, boiled down to essentials.Hope you didn't actually care about playing games.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/KbWgUO-Rqcw" width="560"></iframe><br />Gas Bandithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06099444660425923409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35448028.post-66031160370768181042013-03-18T17:23:00.001-05:002013-03-18T17:28:44.581-05:00Review: Ace of Spades<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5f/Ace_of_Spades.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5f/Ace_of_Spades.png" /></a>Ace of Spades is an indie first person shooter that combines the team/class shooter mechanic of Team Fortress with the voxel-based world of buildable/destroyable blocks of Minecraft.<br />
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Also like Team Fortress, the character designs and overall artistry of the game assets are heavily stylized to a specific period in the past (although here the aim is circa World War 1, not the 1960s), and like Minecraft, the "blocky world" motif is extended to all models in the game such that you will not encounter anything that isn't made up of 90 degree angles, albeit texture resolution is much higher than minecraft though the textures themselves are more simplified in nature, and the game's handling, level design and UI (as well as sounds and music) seem to be trying to evoke an old school atari/amiga feel. Like Minecraft (there's a lot of that prepositional phrase in this review, isn't there?), in screenshots this makes the game look old and ugly, whereas in game itself you feel what they're aiming for and it's not a detriment to the experience.<br />
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The game supports multiple modes, though all of them are multiplayer and take place on official servers divided into 4 geographic regions (West US, East US, Europe and Australia). Players can play in any region and on any server they choose. The modes are all variations of the first person shooter theme, many of which you've seen before, such as Capture the Flag, Team Deathmatch, and so on. However there are also other modes that are more uncommon (though not all unheard of) - "Zombie," in which players try to survive while a zombie player kills and infects them, turning them into zombies to then chase the remaining living players. Demolition shifts the focus from killing players to destroying blocks, or rebuilding your base - first team whose base gets destroyed loses. And there are many more, such as VIP, Diamond mine, and so on.<br />
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In most modes, you have a choice of 4 character archetypes to choose from. The Commando specializes in heavy weapons but lacks in construction and mobility (unless you count rocket jumping), the Marksman who can snipe enemy players to death with one shot but is nearly helpless in close quarters, the Rocketeer is the most mobile of the classes, using jet and rocket packs to zoom through the sky at faster than sprinting speed, but being more lightly armed than all the other classes, and the Miner who is by far the most adept at building and destroying blocks but whose weaponry is only effective at extremely short range. The utility of each class varies from map to map. Obviously in demolition game mode, the miner shines, and I find that in team deathmatch there's rarely a reason to use anything other than marksman or rocketeer.<br />
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There's also a mode called "Classic CTF" with no class selection - all players take the role of common soldiers equipped with a rifle, a shovel, and some grenades. They also lack predefined building options that the specialized classes have (they can build entire pillboxes with one click), instead being forced to use a 1x1 voxel tool. This mode is much more sedate, with much lower player mobility and a higher emphasis on WW1 style trench warfare.<br />
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The gameplay style may be derivative, but it has definite potential. There's something for everybody in this game, and it's possible to find a role and mode that suit you very quickly and to have fun with it. The game is technically sound - I found no bugs, though players with high latency connections are irritating for both that player and anyone trying to shoot him, as hit detection seems to take place client side (which I foresee could be trouble with cheaters down the road). There's also some halfway-nods to physics in that, instead of hovering in the air, blocks (or groups of blocks) with no connection to the ground fall and are destroyed, making it possible to chop down/dig out towers, trees, and other structures by completely destroying their foundation. When everything comes together, Ace of Spades is a lot of fun.<br />
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The problem is there is so much that can and does go wrong.<br />
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First and foremost is the playerbase. We've spent the last 10 or so years in online gaming discovering that if you give players a method by which they can exploit the game unfairly, or in a manner that allows them to irritate other players, they will do so relentlessly. I've never met so many unrepentant dicks in an online game as I have in my few days of playing Ace of Spades - not even on PVP servers of MMOs going back to 1998. Spawn camping is a rampant problem in all game modes except zombie (and only not there because there is no respawning in zombie games), and is often the easiest and best path to a high score - simply standing behind where player pop up, getting headshot after headshot as they spawn. Also, in the games I've played, at least half the time, my team's base structures were destroyed more by assholes on my own team than by any activity by the enemy team - your own teammates will frequently undermine and destroy their own team's structures and efforts out of boredom, confusion, frustration, or outright dickishness. <br />
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There are also flaws in the game's design - in CTF games (especially classic ctf), every fight invariably becomes a contest of tunneling - it's much easier to simply dig a tiny tunnel from your base to theirs and try to steal the intel briefcase right out from under their noses, and it becomes frustrating because there's no real defense from that - blocks you build dig away just as easily as regular dirt. Furthermore, a problem specific to classic CTF is that the intelligence never returns to base after being dropped, so you have to defend it where it falls for the rest of the game, unless it is grabbed and captured again. This is exacerbated by the lowest level of any map being a "knee deep water" tile which cannot be dug out and the intel cannot be raised off of by building under it - so once the intel is brought down to the "water table" so to speak, it cannot be moved back up to the surface by any method other than the enemy taking it and moving it there (which they never do) or capturing it (which seems an inevitability by that point). The game's communication is unintuitive and easily missed (tiny words in the bottom left corner with no box around it), which can foster frustration between cooperating team members, and often leads to competing ideas of what to build turning back into your team undermining your own buildings again because they're in the way of what THEY want to build. In 2013, I'm surprised there's not a proximity-based VOIP solution as there is in other games such as Planetside 2, Saint's Row 3, and pretty much every console multiplayer game currently out. And finally, the rectangular map design lends itself to players skirting the absolute edges of the map to shimmy their way around behind the other team's spawn - there really should have been some obstacles of "unbreakable" blocks (no such thing in the game as it stands) to prevent this sort of cheap maneuver. <br />
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There's also some missed potential in the form of private servers - there aren't any. All the servers you play on are official, company-run servers. This means there's no admin to monitor against dickish behavior or police the chat. Furthermore, each server sticks to one mode, but they all rotate maps after every round. Unlike TF2, where you can almost always be assured of finding a 24/7 YourFavoriteMap server, no such option is available in Ace of Spades. You want to play on a certain map, you have to wait for it to come around in the rotation again, or change to another server already running it - and hope the match isn't 90% over when you get there.<br />
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All in all, Ace of Spades is an intriguing concept put to market without requisite polish. When you play with good people, it's good fun - but there's lots of bad people and no way to avoid playing with them. It gets bonus points for being a low cost title from an indie developer, but some of its shortcomings could have been addressed in game design but were not. I've played a lot worse games with a lot higher price tags, but the frequency of in-game frustration can't be taken lightly and prevents this game from realizing its amazing potential.<br />
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Verdict: C+. If you can get it on sale for 5 bucks, it's worth playing, but it won't rise to the levels of infatuation experienced by either of its spiritual progenitors (TF2 and Minecraft). <br />
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<br />Gas Bandithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06099444660425923409noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35448028.post-78835394942651816802013-03-13T23:39:00.000-05:002013-03-13T23:39:50.816-05:00Google Reader closingAfter years of coming to absolutely depend on google reader for content consumption, I learned today that I'll be cast adrift. This is infuriating, and a tremendous blow to my confidence in google and its products. I used to be a dyed in the wool google supporter, championing just about all their initiatives, from android to the web - even when they started stripping functionality out of google reader in a transparently hamfisted attempt to force people into google plus.<br />
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But all that's gone down the tubes. Google's reasoning seems manufactured to me, based on a capricious whim from a company I thought was one of "the good guys" and had my back. This is an amazing service. Why on earth would it be shut down? I use google reader across a half dozen of my computers and devices. Surely google could easily figure out a way to monetize it - the method of its content delivery would make it effortless to inject advertising between panes.<br />
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I don't know what has brought this about, but I can guarantee that if this betrayal goes through, I'll be starting the process of divorcing my online experience from all google products. No more gmail, I'll be recommending my employer (for whom I am their IT director) start migrating away from google applications that we've been adopting over the last few years (because it would be a huge inconvenience to have to scramble for a replacement should google capriciously decide to pull their plugs), and maybe I won't be the tireless android proselytizer I've been up to now - since google is seeming to become just as tone deaf and jackbooted as Apple. <br />
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It's sad really... feels like the end of an era.<br />
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What's next? Blogger/blogspot getting shut down?Gas Bandithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06099444660425923409noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35448028.post-31717038433979254302013-01-28T10:47:00.003-06:002013-01-28T10:50:03.336-06:00Just Spreading the Word on SimCity 5Note - this story is not about/by me. -GB
<iframe class="imgur-album" width="100%" height="550" frameborder="0" src="http://imgur.com/a/8gNl2/embed"></iframe>Gas Bandithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06099444660425923409noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35448028.post-74222777264372705342012-10-31T15:47:00.000-05:002012-10-31T15:47:04.013-05:00Review: FTL<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">FTL: Faster Than Light</td></tr>
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FTL (Faster Than Light) is an indie Sci Fi game available on Steam. A prototypical kickstarter game, it shows how more and more low budget titles are now successfully making their way to market, completely ignoring the old AAA megapublisher paradigm, and the computer gaming world is better for it, in my opinion. This game really demonstrates what happens when it all comes together.<br /><span class="fullpost">
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The premise of FTL is that you control a ship and crew carrying vital intelligence out of enemy territory back to your fleet, and the enemy "Rebel" fleet is dogging your heels every step of the way. Over the course of your flight to safety, you must fight, trade, investigate, recruit and befriend your way across the galaxy as the challenges you face grow steadily more difficult. <br />
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This being an indie title, it's not surprising that the graphics are a throwback to earlier times - though for what they are, they are very clean, smooth and well implemented, making it feel more of an artistic choice than a limitation of talent, budget, or tech. The sound and music is also quite retro-future in feel, reminding me in some ways of Star Control 2. Again, they add to the experience rather than date it. <br />
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The game really brings together some well thought out ideas and puts them together into a very engaging game. There's a management sim with RPG elements in that you can purchase upgrades to your ship, and some systems function more effectively with crew manning them, and crew members improve in their ability to run said systems with practice. For example, having someone man the engineering station makes your ship dodge better and able to FTL jump sooner, and the more practice that crewmember has manning that station, the better those bonuses get. Most of the time, your wants will naturally far outstrip your limited cash resources, so you'll have to pick and choose what upgrades you take, and even then you might not have the cash to upgrade your reactor to provide power to everything all the time, so you'll have to manage power distribution on the fly in real time (though you can always pause the game with space bar and issue orders while paused). You also select targets for your weapons and time their firing, and you must send crew to repair hull breaches and damage systems (another thing they get better at with practice!), and you can even send and defend against boarding parties. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fighting a slug vessel. Shields down. Ouchy.</td></tr>
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The game might frustrate some people because it is actually very difficult, or gets there very quickly. There are two game modes, and even on easy mode, winning is difficult. On normal mode, it's rare I can get past stage 5, much less complete the game successfully. A complete playthrough, however, only takes an hour or two, so losing is less horrible than one might think. Personally, I do find it kind of refreshing to play a game you can lose at, in a video game market full of unlimited tries and infinite do-overs. And the game can be brutal. Your crew members are individuals with names and talents, but for them, death is permanent - there is no getting "knocked out" to be revived later after combat. Really, the game is often called a "roguelike" but I find it has very little to do with Rogue style gameplay. To me, it is much more akin to Oregon Trail - you have to balance risk versus reward in making decisions and overcoming obstacles, you have to manage the individuals in your party and any deaths are permanent, and really you expect to lose more than you win because the journey is that difficult. <br />
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And even all that aside, there are some genuine gripes I have with the game, as no game is perfect. Frankly, a bit more of the game is subject to simple random chance than I would have liked - the only deciding factor in the success of some endeavors such as navigating an asteroid field is down to the flip of a coin, or in happening to have the right systems equipped - which itself is also a flip of a coin or roll of the dice to determine if the game has even decided to grant you the opportunity to purchase said system. So there comes a time when you hit the ceiling of what you can accomplish with skill and judgement, and the degree of success or failure of your mission is determined by how kind your computer's random number generator is feeling today. Indeed, the game gives you the illusion of plotting your own course across each sector, it is merely just that - illusion. The outcome of any path you choose is largely random, so there's almost no point in there being a choice at all, other than to decide whether or not you go through nebulas. Also, while the short nature of the game helps soften the blow of losing, and the random nature of events helps replayability, it would have been nice to also have an alternate, longer sandbox or campaign mode to play in - something akin to the old Starflight or Star Control games. <br />
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But, those things notwithstanding, it's still an excellent game and a steal at ten bucks. I know I often say you could do a lot worse for a lot more money, but it's true - and you also get the bonus of the smug sense of self satisfaction that you are supporting "indie" gaming and sticking it to the big fat cat publishers who continue to rake it in while they ruin games you love (cough*EA*cough) or dispense the same sequelitis year after year. <br />
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Final Verdict: A solid A. Don't miss it.<br />
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<br /></span>Gas Bandithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06099444660425923409noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35448028.post-124286422199068082012-08-22T17:20:00.002-05:002012-08-22T17:30:19.507-05:00Gas Bandit's Handy Tips for the Technologically LazySo your wireless router is starting to flake out on the wireless part, but the computers connected by cables are still able to get their connection perfectly, and you've got a bajillion forwarded ports set up that you're really not looking forward to typing in on the new router you have to get?<br /><br />Here's a handy tip from me - find the setting in your new router that says "DHCP SERVER - ENABLE/DISABLE." Flip it to "Disabled," change it's LAN address to be in the same 192.168.THIS NUMBER.whatever IP range and plug one of the LAN ports (not the WAN port) into one of the LAN ports on the old router. Voila, your new wireless router is just an access point for your existing network and you can put off doing the actual work of setting up your new router until the old one absolutely dies completely, taking its settings with it, making it 10 times as inconvenient to remember and enter in all that information to the new router!<br /><br />Hrm, I'm starting to think maybe this isn't such a great idea. <br /><br />Ehhhhhh whatever.<br /><br /><img alt="http://hosiplan.com/memes/faces/fuck-that.jpg" src="http://hosiplan.com/memes/faces/fuck-that.jpg" /><br />Gas Bandithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06099444660425923409noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35448028.post-40244896898225292852012-08-06T01:22:00.001-05:002012-08-06T01:25:41.686-05:00Rise of the Triad Remake!Wooooo!<br />
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I LOVE THAT SONG (It's called "Going down the fast way," incidentally)!<br />
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I LOVE DOG MODE!<br />
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I LOVE LUDICROUS GIBS!<br />
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I... WILL PUT UP WITH... UNREAL 3 ENGINE. I GUESS. YEAH!<br />
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THEY'RE GONNA BURY YOU IN A LUNCH BOX! MMMUUUAAAAHH!Gas Bandithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06099444660425923409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35448028.post-43171430421271401002012-07-12T10:17:00.002-05:002012-07-12T10:18:43.291-05:00Borderlands 2 "Wimoweh" TrailerIt's gonna be fun on th' bun.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/nicvyhrmTDs" width="560"></iframe>Gas Bandithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06099444660425923409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35448028.post-80917559014250828492012-07-12T10:13:00.002-05:002012-07-12T10:15:42.014-05:00Ultima ForeverSo let me get this straight... <a href="http://www.bluesnews.com/s/133705/ultima-forever-quest-for-the-avatar-announced">Ultima meets Baldur's Gate, with some Diablo thrown in</a>? AND it's free to play?<br /><br /><blockquote>Ultima Forever is a throwback to classic Ultima games, with mechanics grounded in Ultima IV. Starting as either a fighter or a mage (a druid and paladin class are coming later), your hero sets out on a quest to become the Avatar, a person who embodies what are known as the eight Virtues. Using a Baldur's Gate-like isometric perspective, you'll guide your hero either alone or with friends through hours and hours of quests, battling it out with monsters and making hard choices until your character embodies the virtues and reaches the end-game dungeons. Once you beat it, becoming the Avatar, you then start a new game plus, playing through all the content again on an even harder setting.</blockquote>Gas Bandithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06099444660425923409noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35448028.post-19385007307735373072012-07-09T18:46:00.000-05:002012-07-09T18:46:19.173-05:00Review: DC Universe Online<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Really, with it being free to play on Steam, there's no reason NOT to check out DCUO, but in case you were wondering what you're in for while you wait for the 18 whopping gigs of the client to download, here's a heads up.<br /><span class="fullpost">
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DC Universe Online is, obviously, a superhero/villain MMORPG. However, unlike Champions Online, it does not feel like a "City of Heroes" clone. It does a good number of things different (some for the better, some not so much). Combat has an entirely different "flow" to it, character building and customization is completely different as is stat and item handling, and of course, it includes years of technological and gaming paradigm advances.<br />
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Combat has a much more "actiony" feel to it. The game has been described as very "X-Box controller-friendly" and I'd be inclined to agree. It works fine with mouse and keyboard but several factors indicate a controller might be a more convenient input device. There's no mouse cursor except when you open a menu. Instead there is a targeting reticle, and whatever last was in that reticle is retained as your target until you target something else in the same manner or your target goes offscreen. You can also "lock" your current target to make sure you don't switch or lose it. Attacks feel very diablo-ish in that it's pretty much "one click = 1 attack," as opposed to the old cliche of picking a target and turning on autoattack. Additionally, the types of attacks you do depend upon the "types" of clicks you enter, and often build combos based on successive moves, on top of the more conventional "1-8" ability hotkeys. This does very well at keeping combat fresh and interesting, but it also can lead to sore fingers and perhaps increased button wear. I can't be the only one who's worn out a mouse button here.<br />
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DCUO also incorporates a slightly more RPG-standard inventory system. You get money and loot drops from defeated foes and as rewards for completing missions. The gear you wear affects your stats and has a direct effect on your capabilites. Ordinarily I'm not a fan of games that define your effectiveness entirely by what gear you have, but this is mitigated somewhat from the fact that I've very rarely actually felt "underpowered." Oh, I don't agree with every design decision in this - I think it's appalling that they have two different stats for mitigating incoming damage that are separate for NPCs (called "defense") and enemy players (called "toughness"). That's a huge black mark in my opinion, necessitating a "pvp" suit and a "pve" suit of gear with no convenient way to switch back and forth between them with a hotkey.<br />
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But let me tell you something they did very right with gear: Styles. Every piece of gear's appearance is called a "style." For instance, you could have a pair of gloves that are "biker" style. You like how that looks? Putting them on unlocks that style for you <i>forever</i>, and setting your appearance with styles is a separate tab from the inventory. Thus, you do not have to give up a "look" you like when you get gear with better stats that doesn't match. I also like that the game only starts you off with a dozen or so basic costume options and then uses finding gear as a way for you to not only increase your character's power but also to build a wardrobe. Sure, there are also even MORE "styles" you can unlock by paying real world money in the game's marketplace, but hey, a free-to-play MMO has to make its money somewhere, and cosmetic upgrades are a good place to do that. Thus, you have a character appearance customization scheme which rivals City of Heroes without the drawback of getting everything at level 1 and having nothing else to strive for aesthetically. <br />
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Some people might think I'm crazy for saying that, but to me, that's the whole point of an MMO - you want to work to make your character better. To me, starting with every costume option now seems like starting at the max level. Sure it's fun right away, but it has no staying power, no accomplishment. Unlocking costume pieces also distinguishes players from each other - fancier costumes show more advanced characters at a glance, usually... though the game has the same problem COH and the like suffered, with plenty of "hero" types running around in black-on-black color schemes with spikes and chains and batwings and such with names like "DarkLordMurderDeathDemonGuy." Yeah, I'm sure the Justice League would love to have THAT hero on the watchtower. WHY didn't you roll villain again? I mean, you'd fit in there.<br />
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Another innovative concept the game adds is that the game lets you switch in and out of your archetype's "role" starting at level 10. Everybody starts off a DPS class, but at level 10, your power type gives you a roll you can switch into at any time - Tank, Healer, Controller. These roles don't do as much damage as your default "Damage" mode, but your abilities get extra effects that make you more group friendly (such as healing/ability power regeneration, better CC, better damage mitigation, etc). Thus, every character both has the ability to solo and the ability to contribute meaningfully to a group. <br />
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There are some parts that rub me the wrong way, however. <br />
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First off, you start off by making a character and picking a "power" and a "weapon." These two aspects are completely independent of each other. The first character I rolled had "mind" powers and dual pistols for weapons. It just struck me when I was rolling... why does a mind controlling telekinetic need guns? It may have no "story" reason but the pragmatic, in-game reason is that your "powers" chew up your blue bar really fast. You'll get 4, maaaybe 5 powers off before you're completely empty. That's enough to take out 2 or so common mook level adversaries, or perhaps bring a same-level player to half (if he doesn't drink a health potion). So, you will rely on your weapons for a great deal of your damage. That aforementioned TK/guns villain I made had his best results by using his "powers" sparingly as interrupts and crowd control while doing most of his attacking with his guns. Yank a guy in the air, shoot him a few times, repeat. <br />
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Which brings me to another part of the game I can't decide if I like or not - everything is all about stunlocking. Almost every attack, in every power line and every weapon specialization, comes with some kind of stun, or knockdown, or sleep effect, or entrapment of some kind. If you don't screw up the button mashing, you can potentially keep a target from being able to fight back at all, which in PVP (at least at the lower levels) often leads to whoever attacks first winning. But you can "break" out of being stunned and whatnot by hitting shift, the block key. If you release it and press it, you can shake off the effect, and have a chance to counterattack and turn the tables so the OTHER guy is now being juggled, but this doesn't have the best success rate. Most often it's somebody flubbing a mouseclick combination that changes the momentum of the fight, in my experience. There's also a dynamic having to do with blocking - some attacks will be blocked, other attacks break block but are interruptible. It feeds into the "actiony" combat I was talking about earlier. That's all very well and good but let's remember we're playing an MMO here - high latency is the rule rather than the exception. There may not be time to react to what's going on in a fight in that matter. It's less the case in PvE fights against bosses who tend to telegraph their attacks, but in PVP it adds a great deal of randomness. <br />
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The game uses the Unreal 3 engine, with all the good and bad that entails. That means the models are detailed and framerate performance is pretty darn good (I get better framerates in DCUO than I do in City of Heroes on the same rig, despite DCUO being much more detailed/higher polygon count). However, the game suffers the texture problems most Unreal 3 games suffer - blurry, low res smudges in place of textures for 5 seconds, replaced by slightly less blurry textures for 5 seconds thereafter, until finally the proper high res texture loads in. I think the "level of detail" threshold (how far an object has to be from you before it is replaced by a lower polygon version, or disappears entirely) is a smidge on the close side, and unfortunately there is no slider to adjust this in the options. <br />
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The game uses built in VOIP in groups but only once have I ever had somebody besides me use it. But it's saved my bacon to be able to say "incoming hero behind!" while fighting instead of having to type it, and have the others in my group hear me. <br />
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The game also goes heavy on the polish. There's a lot of voice acting, your mentors and questgivers' faces appear and animate on your screen's "communicator" to talk to you, effects are neat, the sound is good, and the soundtrack is very well done as well. My one nitpick is they got the wrong person (in Gina Torres, of Firefly) to voice Wonder Woman. It sounds more like Amanda Waller (the big mean government lady from Cadmus in the DCAU, remember?) attempting to do a humorous impression of wonder woman. But they got Kevin Conroy to voice Batman and Mark Hamill to voice Joker (and Arleen Sorkin to be Harley Quinn!), so even though they got a Baldwin to be Superman, we can let all that slide. <br />
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And, unlike previous games which, due to not being licensed or paying royalties, discouraged you from making your own lookalike of an established DC comic hero, this game not only makes it possible, not only encourages it, but some of the best loot is directly labeled as "Supergirl's Boots" and such and give you the style option to look exactly like them. There are plenty of Superman, Batman and Joker-alikes out there doing their things. So, if that's a plus for you, go for it.<br />
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There's also an option I find humorous - an option to not display all other non-hostile players. I haven't turned it on, myself, but I find it amusing that they thought to give you a box to check in your MMO when you want everybody else to go away. I wonder if you just see NPCs falling over for no reason. They should call it "Solipsistic mode."<br />
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So what's my final verdict? It's free to play, as I said, so there's nothing to lose in trying it out, and I dare say a lot of people (if they haven't already, I know it's almost 2 years old) already have. But even at this late stage, I'm sure many like me didn't bother to give it a look until it hit steam for free, and I'd bet a good number will find it worth paying money for - maybe not the full $15 subscription, but maybe a buck or two here and there for costume pieces and such. I've played many worse MMOs, and paid way more for the privilege. That said, I've also played better and it seems to lack content in the endgame so it won't be one of those games you play for years, and it won't be EVERYBODY's cup of tea to begin with.<br />
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Grade: B+ for a free to play, C as a subscription model.</span><br />Gas Bandithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06099444660425923409noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35448028.post-85827949676603131472012-05-29T17:32:00.002-05:002012-05-29T18:27:22.976-05:00Review: Moon Breakers<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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So I tried playing Moon Breakers, which is free on steam. I dusted off (literally, it was covered in dust from disuse since I stopped playing Wings of Prey) my joystick and plugged it in, then fired it up.<span class="fullpost"> Well, I should have saved myself the trouble. It doesn't use joystick. <br /><br />A flight simulator, that tries to insinuate itself as the spiritual successor to Wing Commander... has no joystick support.<br /><br />Ok, leaving that aside... there are further annoyances. It is 100% online, but you can't arrange games with friends or even control the game type with your own lobby. The game shoves you into a lobby and picks your side and the type of game at random. There's no way to arrange to play as a team with friends, you're just stuck with 29 or so random internet asswipes every time. There's no single player, either, so there's no plot. The game is "There's the Government and the Pirates and they fight over H3! FIGHT!!" <br /><br />There are basically 3 kinds of game: Team deathmatch, destroy the enemy carrier, or capture the flag. The game type is chosen at random or perhaps on a rotation, and if enough players click "veto" on it in the scant few seconds between the start of the lobby and the start of the game, it will change, but I never saw enough vetoes for it to happen. Then you pick your craft, and you're launched. Every game has a 15 minute time limit, so often the game will end just as things are really starting to get good.<br /><br />There are many craft available to fly, and by available to fly, I mean available for purchase. Oh sure, you can earn enough points eventually to unlock a ship without paying for it, but... well, the cheapest ship I saw was 160,000 points (or "cred" as they call it)... and on average I'd say I got about 2-4 thousand points per match (and I saw plenty of poor suckers who made less than a thousand every round). I don't see how I could possibly ever play 40-80 or more rounds of this game without going insane. And that's for one of the more modestly priced fighters - I saw some big badass ones for over a million cred. Compare that to League of Legends, a true free-to-play success story, where you could conceivably unlock a new character (granted, a cheap one) after 5 or so games, depending on performance.<br /><br />Anyway, the ships are separated into light, medium, heavy fighers and bombers. Light fighters are agile and fast, but lightly armed and armored. They don't do a lot of damage and can't take a lot of damage, but in the hands of a skilled player can jink enough to survive. Medium and heavy fighters trade maneuverability for firepower and armor. You can take more hits but it's harder to dodge... and dodging is often a better defense if you've got more than one attacker on you. Bombers are the slowest of the bunch, and only have moderate offensive capability versus fighters, but they carry torpedoes which are the only weapons that can do damage to enemy carriers. The torpedoes require time to arm after firing, so you can't fire point blank, and travel slow enough to be shot down by fighters and/or turrets on the carrier itself. <br /><br />Let's get some praise out of the way - the game looks sharp, and it can be pretty entertaining. While I lament lack of joystick support, flying by mouse is pretty easy and intuitive. Ships are good looking, and asteroids and broken moons are both pretty and functional as there were many times I shook an attacker by darting around a huge chunk of rock or zipping through a tunnel. There are some definite echoes of Crimson Skies here. I especially liked the torpedo paradigm - them being able to be shot down and relatively slow moving definitely adds to the experience because it gives light fighters a defensive role and means teamwork is still essential to attack a carrier because the turrets need to be destroyed or at least distracted by other targets, as do any fighters on defense. I also have to say the game had pretty much no latency-based problems that I could tell, and I ran into no bugs at all while playing it. That's impressive. And the voice acting in the background is a nice touch and actually sounds natural and in context - something else you don't always get these days.<br /><br />Unfortunately, the aforementioned lack of control over game lobbies is not my only gripe with the game. And the lack of joystick support. The instrument panel is nice and easy to read, but it needs a radar. Little arrows with names around the edge of the screen do not suffice - I need operational awareness in under 9 square inches. Also, more cues about things like torpedoes headed for your carrier would be nice - for instance, it could be a feature of light fighters that they automatically track and draw attention to enemy torpedoes in the HUD. The missiles carried by fighters always seem to dumbfire no matter what I do (I don't even know if they are SUPPOSED to lock on and track, there's practically no documentation on this at all). The afterburner reservoir seems to be a little on the small side... and yes, I know SPACE FLIGHT DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY but it's a game mechanic I can respect - a limited burst of speed to be used sparingly. But I still think it could be a little less miserly with the boost juice. I am highly aggravated that the targeting reticle for anyone I do damage too changes from red (enemy) to grey. I realize they're trying to go for a way to differentiate who you're attacking with a kind of automatic target flagging, but white/grey is the WRONG COLOR for that. Maybe a brighter shade of red or flashing red and orange or something... other games have hardwired my brain to equate a grey target with one that can be ignored... and indeed, against all that space-rock backdrop, sometimes it's all too easy to lose track of grey text. Most of all, I find myself irritated by the blatant "pay to win" business model the game employs - people who spend real money to buy the better fighters are at a distinct and immense advantage over those who stay free to play - to the point where really, the only pragmatic purpose the "free to play" players have is to be the legion of mooks the paying customers blow out of the stars by the dozen. Other free to play games (such as League of Legends or Team Fortress 2) take special care to balance what you can buy against the default, but this game clearly does not.<br /><br />All in all, I don't find this game to be worth my time. Sure, it's free to play, but that comes off as an excuse for shortcomings rather than a genuine selling point. The gaming experience is shallow, the interface doesn't have a lot of thought behind it (indeed, some of the menus look like a website from the 90s... I AM AWARE OF WHAT MY WEBSITE LOOKS LIKE SPARE ME THE COMMENTS, PEANUT GALLERY). The inability to control your gaming experience with personalized lobbies and setup controls is a big minus (and of course, such lobbies would require bot support if you wanted to just play with a few friends). <br /><br />Oh, and it needs joystick support, of course. <br /><br />Grade: C minus. And that's the word from Bandit Camp.<br />
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<center><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/-Njh4emueFo" width="560"></iframe></center></span>.Gas Bandithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06099444660425923409noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35448028.post-43285944840054320072012-03-29T22:39:00.002-05:002012-03-29T22:41:50.947-05:00Warhammer 40K MMO no mo'.<a href="http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20120329006328/en/THQ-Announces-Update-Warhammer%C2%AE-40000%C2%AE-Dark-Millennium%E2%84%A2">Source</a><br /><br /><blockquote>THQ Inc. (NASDAQ:THQI) today announced that it has refocused Warhammer® 40,000®: Dark Millennium™ from a Massively Multiplayer Online game to an immersive single player and online multiplayer experience with robust digital content, and engaging community features. Further product details, platforms and release timing will be announced at a later date. <br /><br />As a result of this change, team sizes at two THQ internal studios will be reduced by 79 full-time employees at Vigil Games in Austin, Texas, and 39 employees at Relic Entertainment in Vancouver, B.C. </blockquote><br /><br />The future just got a little more grim and dark.<br /><br />.Gas Bandithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06099444660425923409noreply@blogger.com0