December Round-up

December is now a time for two things: Christmas and the Steam Christmas Sale. Thankfully this year’s versions of those things did not rob me of all my money, though I did buy a few decent games from the Steam Sale which I’ll get onto in a moment.

First though, a couple of links to stuff I wrote on Gaming Daily in December. The first, a review of indie puzzler English Country Tune, can be found here. The second thing is a ‘Games of 2011′ piece in which all GD writers assembled words about their favourite games of the year and what made them so good. It’s well worth reading because my personal GOTY may surprise you – here it is.

Random Thoughts

- I was lucky to get some cracking games over the Christmas period. About a week before Christmas I got my copy of Star Wars: The Old Republic and have joined my old WoW guild in some adventures on Hydian Way. I’ve really been enjoying SWTOR so far and I hope to get a video out soon in which I summarise my thoughts on it so far (because I haven’t played anywhere near enough to consider reviewing it). On Christmas Day I got Saints Row: The Third which I haven’t played yet, though I have only heard good things about it from people so far. Unsurprisingly I have found myself sinking deeper and deeper into Skyrim as well but perhaps the big surprise over the last couple of weeks has been a little gem I picked up in the Steam sale called Dungeon Defenders.
I’ve known about Dungeon Defenders for a while, but something unknown to me stopped me from buying it before now. Since it dropped in price for the Steam Sale, I decided to go for it and I’ve had so much fun with it since then. It just feels like everything that should be in a tower defense game is in there, including towers and defense. I may well write something or make a video about it in the future because it really deserves the praise.

- 2011 really was a superb year for games, perhaps the best ever for me personally. With all the quality that we’ve been given this year, I think I’m quite happy to wait until March before Mass Effect 3 comes out and becomes my first big game purchase of 2012. I do, however, need to play through Mass Effect 2 again before that happens because some idiot forgot to backup his save file before formatting his PC last year.

- With all the gorgeous screenshots that I’ve been taking in Skyrim and SWTOR, I’ve been thinking of setting up a Flickr account just so I have somewhere to keep them other than my hard drive. The title image for this post was a particularly lovely scene, I felt.

- In an incentive to write more things, I’ve been considering turning this into a more multi-purpose blog because there are a lot of things like sport and ‘real world’ things that I would love to write about but don’t really fit into ‘PC Gaming Diaries’. So I’m brainstorming ideas, trying to work out whether I should make a new blog or ‘rebrand’ this one to become more broader and more personal. If you’ve made it this far, your input would be appreciated.

Adios!

A week’s worth of game rambling

I bought Skyrim. I haven’t had much time to play it due to uni commitments, but I played Oblivion before purchasing it and managed to have fun with it. I still think a different mindset is required when it comes to playing Bethesda games compared to most other studios. My way of playing games has always been to plow through with the story, often having a clear idea of what the best way to play my character is. Having come to terms with Bethesda being different, I’m starting to enjoy it quite a lot. It’s one of only two games this year (the other being Deus Ex: HR) that makes me want to sit in the main menu just to hear the theme play out.

(I know, the idea of that being the highest form of praise I can give to Skyrim is stupid – I just thought it’s kind of cool).

One of the reasons I didn’t get to play much Skyrim is also down to my involvement in The Old Republic’s beta weekend. I went into the game almost blind, having not done much reading into the classes or abilities and such, but after that weekend, colour me fucking impressed. That was the most polished beta I’ve ever played in. The biggest bug I could find in my many hours of play was my character’s lips not moving during conversation pieces. When that’s the biggest problem you find in an MMO beta a month before its full release, you know it’s in pretty good shape.

There are some improvements that could be made, of course. I’d like to see a bit more done with character customisation – a common request from the testers during the weekend, but having only four different body shapes is restrictive. It did, however, allow me to play as a morbidly obese Sith Warrior, so all clouds, silver lining etc.

I can see myself playing quite a lot of The Old Republic. Most of my old WoW guild mates are making the switch and I’ll be playing with them which is a big plus. As to whether I’ll do much raiding or endgame content, I’m not sure. I’ve really enjoyed playing with different characters, mostly for story purposes, so I might turn into one of those MMO players who just levels tons of alts and doesn’t necessarily focus on one character. Part of me quitting raiding in WoW was because I felt like I wasn’t enjoying it and I was just doing it out of habit rather than for fun, which is something I’m still conscious of avoiding – particularly with a game with as much promise as SWTOR.

So yeah, The Old Republic; it’s pretty much exactly what you’d expect from an MMO made by BioWare and set in Star Wars. That’s just about the best way I can sum it up.

The Problem with Bethesda

In roughly a week from now, the gaming world will be whipped into a frenzy over one game. It would have been two, but the sequel to Get Fit with Mel B got delayed, sadly. I am, of course, referring to Skyrim. Many of the people who I work with on Gaming Daily will probably be part of the frothy-mouthed masses while wandering through the alleged 300 hours worth of content. However, it’s with some trepidation that I say I doubt I’ll be one of them.

I know that the last two times I’ve said ‘I probably won’t get this’ have been with Crysis 2 and Starcraft II, both games I didn’t end up ‘probably not getting’ at all. I bloody well did get them and finished neither of them, but I really don’t think I’ll be buying Skyrim on November 11th – a notion that will no doubt see me cast out from the world of PC gaming and treated like a leper until the end of time.

I do have a bunch of well-rounded reasons for not being excited over Skyrim. They all come back to a root cause; Bethesda.

I bought Fallout 3 about 18 months ago. I’ve played approximately two hours of it.

I got Fallout: New Vegas last year as a Christmas present. I’ve not played it at all.

I bought Oblivion during the Steam Summer Sale this year. I’ve played exactly 60 minutes of it.

Now at this point I’ve probably rattled a few cages. All of these games have been adored on such a grand scale, played and replayed by so many, but I just can’t do it myself.

While playing Fallout 3, my first foray into a Bethesda title, I felt insignificant. I felt like I didn’t understand a damn thing about the way the game worked and that I was just blindly winging it throughout the early quests in a nearby town. I had all these points available to spend on skills but not a clue about which would benefit me the most at that given time, nor did I know what I wanted to focus on building throughout my character’s life. I haven’t returned to it in over a year.

Why, then, did I even bother with starting Oblivion? For the same reason that I wanted to try Fallout 3; critical acclaim. I feel like if I’m going to be a decent games reviewer, to have a knowledge of these sorts of games may well be crucial, as they come up in conversations all the time. As I played through the first hour of Oblivion, I felt less intimidated than I did with Fallout 3, but I still couldn’t shake this feeling of not knowing what the hell I was doing or what I was building myself up to be in the many hours to come.

So when it’s come to Skyrim trailers and the like, I’ve seen a lot of cool things. Dragons! Flashy spells! Big environments! But with each cool thing has come a nagging doubt: ‘Bet I won’t be able to kill dragons.’ ‘Bet I won’t be able to work out how to do those flashy spells.’ ‘Bet I’d get lost in those mountains there.’

The most annoying thing about all this is that I know it’s all wrong. I know there’s some accessibility to Bethesda’s games that I’m missing (for the purpose of this blog post, we’re forgetting their other games beyond what I’ve listed; Brink etc) and I’m sure that it boils down to them being an ‘acquired taste’ or me just having to stick with it. So I’ve come to the conclusion that before I buy or play Skyrim, I want to finish either New Vegas or Oblivion. This is just to prove to myself that I can commit to and finish a Bethesda game, so that suddenly Skyrim is not a scary thing but instead, something I can look forward to playing and throwing my life into just like everybody else.

Portal 2; or how I learned to stop waiting and love the indie

So the last time I did a bloggity post I talked about how Valve were the best behaved bastards I’ve ever loved in their Christmas Steam sale, which overdraws millions of people every year. This time I’m going to be talking about a very similar thingy. Assuming you have any interest in Portal 2 and have had access to the internet for the last week or so, Valve have been running an ARG to promote it and that culminated today with a countdown. Speculation was rife that the countdown was to the release of Portal 2, but when it hit 0 all we got was another page; which GLaDOS has named ‘the final challenge’.

The Potato Sack has been on Steam for a while, offering 13 indie games with strange, often tenuous links to Aperture Science involved. The final challenge requires that we (and I do mean we as a collective unit of gamers) play anywhere between one and all of these games in order to speed up the launch of Portal 2. Otherwise, it will launch on its previously announced date of April 19th.

Great, right? Well, no. Not according to some people.

Some people reckon that if Portal 2 is ready, why should its release be delayed? Why is it being surrounded by this marketing bullshit?

Here’s why I think you’re misguided:

Firstly, Valve are not delaying the game. We’ve known for a long time that Portal 2 will be released on April 19th. They are giving us a chance to play it sooner than that. In what universe does this mean the game is delayed? Heck, in what universe is this morally or ethically wrong to do? There are worse things to do to earn an early release of a game than play some indie games, after all.

Secondly, ‘marketing bullshit’ has never been quite so interesting. ‘Marketing bullshit’ is when Rio Ferdinand shows up to an event in London to play the game, claiming it to be the finest gaming video he’s ever played then leaving 20 minutes later to claim his cheque. This has been an ARG that has captured the interest of thousands. People have been on treasure hunts around Seattle, people from all walks of life have been chipping in with pearls of wisdom to help figure out the next stage and now we have this; an opportunity for hundreds of thousands of gamers to collaborate towards the release of one of the year’s best games. This isn’t standard rubbish you’d see a typical developer do, this is something that’s taken days of effort and coordination that only Valve seem capable of pulling off.

Don’t want to play any of the games in the Potato Sack? Fine, thousands of others will. Just realise this; Valve are doing us a favour, continuing to show us why [standard PC blogger gushing] they’re the best developers in the world. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you, lest you never be fed another potato again.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP

One of the things to look forward to at any important time of the year is a Steam Sale. Christmas is the time where things really start to get going on that front. People spend themselves into debt with games that they might never play but are just so cheap. This Christmas will probably be the biggest sale Steam has ever handled, and there’s bound to be a few surprises, as there always are (I bought Mass Effect for a ridiculously low price this time last year). A surprising build up to this event has been the Steam Treasure Hunt, an event in which you are presented with four challenges to complete in a variety of games every couple of days. The games are typically indie titles and are priced below £2, with other more mainstream titles busted down to about £5. Herein lies the problem; I can’t stop doing these bloody challenges.

I’m typically a sucker for attempting goals in games. If you present me with a challenge I typically won’t shirk from it. If you present me with a dirt-cheap game and tell me to complete a certain objective, I will buy the game and try it. Of course if you present me with the chance of getting another hat in TF2 then I’ll be 110% more likely to do it. Here are the games that I’ve bought over the last few days as a result of this damned event:

AaAaAA!!! – A Reckless Disregard for Gravity
Beat Hazard
Bob Came in Pieces
Chime
Just Cause 2
Magic The Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers
Shatter
Zombie Driver

Frankly, this Treasure Hunt may soon mean that I embark on a hunt of my own…to my bank as I request a loan. I could happily say that my investment has, so far, been rewarded by some very decent games. Sadly, not all of them are very fulfilling, and I plan to write an article on either here or GamingDaily about some of these offerings. I know one thing for sure, if the Christmas Steam Sale is anything like this, I will have to sell my kidneys. Again.

Moving On

On October 5th I was browsing Twitter as I do during my brain-dead moments. I was sick that day so I had a pretty fine excuse for being in such a state. During my little browsing session I saw a retweet from a certain Jaz McDougall, writer for PCGamer magazine. It was originally by a profile named GamingDaily, and it said:

“Hey, PC gaming types – want to write about PC games? Read this: http://www.gamingdaily.co.uk/write-for-us/ (RT’s would be appreciated)”

Immediately I knew that I had to go for this. I contacted the editor and showed him some of the things I’ve written here over the course of the blog’s lifespan. Sure enough, he gave me the go ahead. Now, one month and a few trial articles later, I am a registered writer with PC gaming blog Gaming Daily, and I’m over the bloody moon.

I’m just so happy with how things pretty much fell into my lap. One Twitter link and an email, job done. I suppose it goes to show just how powerful that little social networking tool can be, but that’s for another post I guess. I’m just overjoyed to now be on the first step of the ladder. From here I can meet new people, make connections, start doing what this blog was made for on a professional level.

Yes, I’m moving on, but I’ll always remember that this little journey started with a pokey little blog made for a Journalism assignment at Uni. I’ll be here from time to time, but the majority of my content will now be posted on GamingDaily

Elliot.

Why Team Fortress 2 Is Still The Way Forward.

Team Fortress 2 is still the FPS game to beat

Last week, Valve released Team Fortress 2′s most controversial update yet. Since 2007, the game has been patched and updated for free (provided you’re playing on PC and not the much-neglected console version). Sadly, with the Mann-Conomy Update, this has changed. Yes, you can still download the update itself for free, yet the game now has those dreaded ‘micro-transactions’, in the form of paying real money for in-game items. Surprised? Confused? Angry? You aren’t alone, the community was in uproar.

A couple of days after the update came out, I uploaded a commentary to Youtube of my thoughts on the issue. I came to the conclusion that while I wasn’t dead against the money issue, I felt it was a shame that Valve had suddenly gone down the ‘Activision / EA route’ of charging money in-game seemingly for the sake of it and immediately creating a division within the community. Valve have been the best developers for the PC for a long time now, and part of what made them great was their caring for the community, the way they communicated with us, and their free content for TF2. After all, what started as a game with six maps, two game modes and 25 weapons is now a game with 32 maps, 10 game modes and 77 weapons! Yet, people wanted things to stay the same. The people who had gotten used to this free content were the ones screaming the loudest. Here’s a few of the comments to the video I created which took people round the new Mann Co. Store:

“In my views, this killed the game.”
“Now the whole game is like a shit mmorpg.”
“Valve has sold out, they are dead to me now.”

Having seen these remarks, it puts things right into perspective for me. It really is not that bad. Not so bad to the point where the whole game has changed, at least. Almost all of the items that were added with the update are available through regular means, such as trading, crafting or finding. The items that aren’t available through those methods are purely cosmetic and give you no bonuses over other players whatsoever. To balance that out, there are also some items that aren’t available in the store but can be found, traded or crafted. Ironically, this is the least publicised aspect of the update. Funny, that. The second least publicised aspect of the update is that pretty much all of the new items were created by the community for a competition. The new items are the winning entries and part of the reason for them being available for money is so that the creators of these items can take a share of the money that Valve makes from them. If that isn’t being generous and supportive to your community, then I don’t really know what is.

While Valve have annoyed a lot of people who were once loyal customers in the last few days, there’s no denying that, for me, TF2 is still the ultimate online FPS experience. The community is still top notch, the weapons are still balanced more than most big-name shooters currently on the market and it still costs less to buy the full game than any competitor. While Activision give you £11 map packs for Modern Warfare 2, Valve have given you the option of paying 50p for that Flare Gun you carelessly got rid of and now really want again. Hats are more expensive but, seriously, hats? If hats provided you game-breaking bonuses then maybe I’d understand criticism for them being available for money, until then they’re just cosmetic. Chill, and you can get one in a trade from another kind player (of which there are many). If more developers were like Valve, even with this quite turbulent week they’ve had, there would be many more very happy gamers.

Obligated Gaming: No More

Video games are not jobs. No matter how involved they may be in your professional life, if you’re a games journalist or even a designer, they’re just an elaborate hobby. No more than that.

In June last year I was offered to become an officer in the guild I had long been a part of in WoW, Primal. It was, in many ways, the happiest time of my WoW career. I’d always wanted to experience the game at the business end where all the hustle and bustling activity were to be found. I was warned that being an officer was no picnic, that there would be hard times and yet I stuck with it and accepted the offer. For 13 of those months, I was a happy officer of Primal. Yes there were bumps in the road but ultimately I can look back on those 13 months as enjoyable. For the most part, I was able to log in and enjoy myself and play as I wanted to. For the remaining two months, things turned sour.

I was no longer logging in because I wanted to, I was logging in because I had to. This wasn’t a game anymore, this was a glorified job in a virtual world where you pay someone else to do some occasionally very tedious tasks. Raiding was all that kept me in the game. If you take that out, there really is very little to do at the max level. As such, the idea of rushing dinner on four nights of every week just to be online on time was becoming less and less attractive. Why was I still logging on? Did I feel like I was logging on out of obligation, rather than a desire to? Yes was the answer, and that’s why between now and the launch of Cataclysm, I won’t be logging into WoW again.

Let me make this very clear; this is not a bitch post. I’m not airing out dirty laundry or finally unleashing long-held-back bitterness at my guild or WoW in general, because the sense of community in Primal is second to none. The purpose of this post is exploring the whole notion of ‘obligated gaming’. Video games are, almost by definition, supposed to be enjoyed. Whether you work full time and use them as escapism or you are surrounded by them all day as a tester or programmer, the idea of playing because you have to should never come into the equation. If your job is centred around video games, you took that job because you damn well enjoy playing video games. At no point should you feel as if you’re playing because you have to. The moment that thought even enters your mind, you have to stop there.

When I play a game from now on, it’s going to be on my terms and when I want to play it. This medium is too dynamic and too lovable to ever be treated as a job. Don’t let it be.

Alright, it happened

Why I got Starcraft II:

1. Peer pressure.
2. Damn good reviews. Seriously, I took extra special notice of the ones that responded to the ‘omg 3 separate games’ criticism. The campaign has been very worthwhile so far.
3. I wanted to return to RTS games. A long time ago I was having the time of my life while playing Age of Empires II. I wanted to hark back to those glory days.
4. I stopped playing WoW, I need another game to step up to the mark. JEREMY KYLE STYLE.

So yes, I bought Starcraft II and I don’t regret it. Yet.

Why I Probably Won’t Get Starcraft II

1. Is it true that they’re splitting the singleplayer campaign up into 3 separate games? If so, I don’t really want to wait that long to finish off a campaign that I have no previous interest in, let alone spending that much money on.
2. GRAPHICS CARD MELTDOWNS! Seriously, I just invested in this brand new PC that I worked my fingers to the bone in an attempt to build, I don’t want to trash my graphics card thanks to Blizzard.
3. I haven’t played Starcraft.
4. I haven’t played an RTS game in about 5 years (Age of Empires III was my previous foray into the genre)
5. Due to #3 and #4, I would get myself absolutely creamed in multiplayer. Yes, Blizzard supposedly have this matchmaking system in place that matches you up against equally skilled players. I don’t really buy it, I still think I’d lose more than I win thanks to my multi-year hiatus from RTS games.

Coming up next week: 5 reasons why I bought Starcraft II (probably).