Start the funeral dirge for minecraft

From Mojang: "Yes, we're being bought by Microsoft."

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..."

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Quick Review - Banished

If 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.

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.

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Space Engineers - XBox One Official Announcement Trailer

I am not a happy camper.  Or engineer.

Let's dumb down Space Engineers for obsolete hardware and the tards who play on it!

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Space Egineers: Cyberweed Works Space Police

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Gas Bandit Plays: Robocraft - Railguns are Pretty Bullshit Too

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Gas Bandit Plays - Robocraft: Today I Am Someone Else's Bullshit.

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Gas Bandit Plays: Robocraft Bullshit

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Gas Bandit plays: War Thunder

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Space Engineer Tutorials by Gas Bandit

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 my tutorial series, available from my youtube channel.

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.

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Gas Bandit Hates Your Mech: Part 2

Welcome 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!

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Gas Bandit Hates Your Mech, Part 1 of 2

This one's going out to all my Mechwarrior Online buddies.

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.

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Review: Ace of Spades

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.

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Google Reader closing

After 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.

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.

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.

It's sad really... feels like the end of an era.

What's next? Blogger/blogspot getting shut down?

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Just Spreading the Word on SimCity 5

Note - this story is not about/by me. -GB

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Review: FTL

FTL: Faster Than Light

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.

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. 

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. 

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. 

Fighting a slug vessel.  Shields down. Ouchy.

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. 

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. 

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. 

Final Verdict: A solid A. Don't miss it.

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Rise of the Triad Remake!

Wooooo!



I LOVE THAT SONG (It's called "Going down the fast way," incidentally)!

I LOVE DOG MODE!

I LOVE LUDICROUS GIBS!

I... WILL PUT UP WITH... UNREAL 3 ENGINE. I GUESS. YEAH!

THEY'RE GONNA BURY YOU IN A LUNCH BOX!  MMMUUUAAAAHH!

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Borderlands 2 "Wimoweh" Trailer

It's gonna be fun on th' bun.

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Ultima Forever

So let me get this straight... Ultima meets Baldur's Gate, with some Diablo thrown in? AND it's free to play?

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.

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Review: Moon Breakers

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. Well, I should have saved myself the trouble. It doesn't use joystick.

A flight simulator, that tries to insinuate itself as the spiritual successor to Wing Commander... has no joystick support.

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!!"

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

Oh, and it needs joystick support, of course.

Grade: C minus. And that's the word from Bandit Camp.

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Warhammer 40K MMO no mo'.

Source

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.

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.

The future just got a little more grim and dark.

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