Matts Blog

That may seem like an odd post title, but it has its reasons – I have had the joy of playing two very different games, and this is just an opinion/pondering rather than any kind of review. The games of this discussion happen to be Borderlands, of which I have now spent over 50 hours with – and Call Of Juarez: Bound In Blood, of which I have probably spent about 3 hours with. This is no reflection on quality of game, I should point out… but more in their design choices.

Also what I mean by the topic title is Borderlands traditional “Point+Click” way of playing, you point at a foe, and click to shoot – that is the most basic mechanic. BiB though takes a different tact, it applies gestures in some situations (as well as the P+C as above); so for example you can hit a semi sort of bullet time, and depending on your character you make gestures to target/do certain things.

I’m just not sure which one I prefer, on one hand you get the satisfaction of killing multiple foes with only a few gestures – it also adds more movement to the mouse than aiming, but in the process this can get in the way of actual player skill. Borderlands on the other hand actually requires the player to aim in the traditional sense, theoretically making your skill as a player stand out above all else, although of course there are more factors than just skill, such as weapon damage, damage type, accuracy, etc.

I wouldn’t want to say I actually like one over the other, its a design choice – but really ought to be one considered very carefully… even Max Payne’s “Bullet Time” still had an element of player skill – it just slowed the enemies down and gave you a very Matrix feel (some mods took this element even further).

Anyway, you can expect a review of Borderlands soon – imagery is my main hold-up. Expect one of Call Of Juarez: Bound In Blood, Wolfenstein and Dragon Age: Origins in eventual time.

For those who weren’t aware, the TeamSpeak 3 beta has started – infact there has been so much interest the TeamSpeak site ended up using a placeholder page with download links (and just the forum) because there was so much interest (according to their twitter feed, 70 million visitors).

I’ve already struggled and grappled with the server, it never helps matters that I often have to deal with the memory of setting up the Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars server – which needed both your local IP (NIC IP) and your external IP (from your ISP). But I have done it now, and feel quit pleased about that. So I’ll provide a quick run through of setting it up at the basic level for those who might still be having trouble (including wading through the forums).

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Incase you were confused, its about Colin McRae’s DiRT2 – released for the PC only yesterday [4/12/09] over here in the EU and UK. Unfortunately the US have to wait until the 8th forum posts suggest.

While I could write most of what I have said on in that thread on here, I won’t – I spent quite a while in the early hours (somewhat sleep deprived I should note) writing a post over on the EGC site. It goes into a fair bit of depth, and really I only want to expand on a few key notes which I didn’t go into this morning – but please, read the post first.

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Ever had that strange feeling that if you could just mash two or three games together they’d be perfect? I know I have, and a number of other people I have had the pleasure of gaming with online. Regardless of technical limitations there is no harm in dreaming, perhaps someone will be inspired to do it – perhaps not. It seems a damn shame that no one is willing to take a gamble on an ambitious project, probably because the likes of STALKER, or what it was initially promised to be – it ended up cut back and not what it was when initially announced.

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I have followed this game for a while, and have been under no disillusion about its namesake and past events. The first Operation Flashpoint (OFP) at the time was developed by Bohemia Interactive (developers of Armed Assault and Armed Assault II (2)), yet it was published by Codemasters (CM). It seems there was a falling out of sorts, and the developer got to keep the engine – but CM got to keep the rights to the name.

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Game piracy, or indeed any other electronic entertainment piracy… I have never really been fond of it – preferring where I can to purchase something legally. The only thing I can hate just as much is extremely intrusive anti-piracy which does not appear to actually change anything. I heard of a pirate-Steam at one point, though I never researched it or looked into it further… and recent trends of using an online database to track installations just frustrates me (though a CD key rarely bothers me on itself).

I was never really sure what kind of numbers you often see on piracy, and what makes developers decide “we won’t produce for the PC much, its full of pirates”… and to that degree I as an honest PC gamer get a little worried, will this series I enjoy now (whatever it be) continue on the PC? I certainly hope so, apart from the deterioration of PC quality thanks to the whole console porting. A recent game to come out trying something different (although it seems standard practice for the company in question) is Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising (OFPDR), released by Codemasters.

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Have I got your attention? Yep? Good. Recently I have noticed the gaming industry has received a bit of bad press, especially in regards to violence in its games. Its not entirely surprising, except that the media feed off it a lot – a gloom and doom story after all does sell well. Initially ITV have done three case-studies (yep, three) of children and their gaming addiction, how it was taking over their lives; the reporter herself then writes about her son and his “gaming problems”.

I feel like I should point out that games are a form of escapism, and given the right environmental scenario they can become extremely addictive, so-to-speak. Certainly in the case of Ned the reporters son, but alternatively they can give hope to those who have never had a good life… curing depression to some extent. Online communities^[1] (given the right one) can be terribly supportive to the point of gullibility and exploitation.

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So you want to have a 2 player beat-em-up on Street Fighter 4 on the PC? Having trouble setting it up so one player can use the pad and the other the keyboard? I have a solution for you, but it may not be pleasant.

There is a slightly broken logic in the idea that whoever has the 1P controller gets the keyboard, the idea being if the controller isn’t performing than there is a backup option to return to the menu and so-on. But this means that the second player is left without a controller, even if you attempt to assign the keyboard to the first player. To get around this we came up with a rather ingenious little trick – but it will require a second controller (which itself can also be a classical flight joystick, it really doesn’t matter what it is – as you won’t be using it).

Essentially you plug this second controller in and assign that controller to the first player (you may want to find out what the Start button is, or assign it yourself) – once done the Pad in question should work absolutely fine as the second players controller – game away!

I’ve had my eye on this game for quite a long time now, when I say this game I mean the entire series – mainly through its wonderful art both concept and after-release from UDON Entertainment. But in all gaming seriousness, I have never touched a console controller (much) — being a PC player has kept me out of the fighting game loop for many years, only now has one of any serious worth appeared on the computermabob. So I am getting in on the action, there are no shortage of reviews for this game – but this opinion outlet has an angle whereby I have no experience of this genre. I won’t jump into the multiplayer action in fear of getting totally trounced… so instead this review is based upon the harsh AI and QWERTY of my choice.

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Recently patched so a large number of players can now progress beyond a certain percentage of the game, Far Cry 2 attempts to immerse the player in and amongst a civil war happening in Africa. So with the recent patches I figured it’d be worth attempting to finish the game at least just this once… and so, I continue my ventures across this world.

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