Battletech

Battletech was always going to be my thing. A game system I've owned (though not played a lot) since the early 90s, purchased with money from my first job. When I discovered the digital games, Crescent Hawks Inception/Revenge, I played the hell out of them. Mechwarrior (1,2,3,4) rocked my world, particularly Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries. Turn based tactical games in particular are my jam, going way back to Empire on the C64 (I realise this was a strategy game, but it is the first turn based game I remember playing) and then moving through XCom and on to more modern games like Divinity: Original Sin.

In spite of the above, I waited for a long time to pick it up and play. There are a lot of games on my to-play list and I try not to bump them just to take up the latest thing that grabs my attention. Even after purchasing it sat on my desktop for another month or two before I decided it was time to have a go. I'm not going to lie, it was a bit of a let-down initially. The first four or five hours feel pretty generic and after levelling the pilots for a while I had this feeling that combat wasn't particularly complex. A thought sat in the back of my mind for some time, when I reach the 100T mechs this is just going to turn into a toe-to-toe slugfest. Never fear, it didn't.

I don't want to go over the top in word count so let me summarise the game as I played it. I focused quite heavily on doing non-story mercenary missions to build up my lance tonnage and level my pilots, only recruiting and maintaining 6 mercs. The dropship by the end of the game supported 3x this number and I have no idea why. Perhaps on higher difficulties (I was one notch above normal) you take a lot more casualties. Combat, starting out fairly simple, did eventually flesh out to require some more lateral thinking when I found my 4 mech lance taking on 8 or more mechs coming at me in waves. Using mobility and terrain became imperative to success and rarely did it devolve into the toe-to-toe slugfest I feared. When it was a punch-up, it was only because I loved initiating melee combat (stomping on a ground vehicle never grew old). In general the turn based ruleset worked great, though it is highly recommended you disable most of the combat cinematics and animations to speed things up.

There are enough mechanics away from the combat to keep you occupied. Mechs need to be repaired and refitted and you can modify their weapons, armour and equipment. Pilots need to be trained across 5 (?) attributes which add bonuses and unlock new skills, both active and passive. I trained each to have a particular speciality like indirect fire (using a catapult with many many missiles) or long range with autocannons, or melee. The dropship itself can be upgraded in many different areas such as medical facilities, mech repairs/bays and so on.

I won't go into the story too much as it's fairly generic fare. Someone loses their position of power, you used to work for their clan, now you're a mercenary. That person engages your mercenary group to help take the power back. After a bunch of things™ happen, you come to a bittersweet conclusion involving guns and explosions. Tidy, but unremarkable. When the story ends you can embark on an endless series of randomly generated mercenary missions picked from locations all over the galaxy (or at least the portion the game is set in).


VERDICT: I really enjoyed it. A definite recommendation for lovers of stompy robots, science fiction, or turn based tactical combat games.


Final Word: RECOMMENDED

(game link)

OG Xbox Game Reviews

A bunch of OG Xbox review notes, mostly taken after one or two hours of play. You can probably tell that a minimal amount of effort has been expended. My impressions are very shallow and based on minimal contact with each game. As much as anything this is my attempt to document some details and thoughts on as many games as I can get my hands on.

007 Agent under fire: An old school shooter with gadgets. Like No One Lives Forever, except not as good. Very dated but it ran smoothly and the shooting was brisk.

Aeon Flux: Lots of cut scenes. LOTS of cut scenes. Very zoomed out and stylistic, flashy lights, reflections, weird camera angles. It's basically a 3D platformer and would probably appeal to people who like that sort of thing.

Alias: Like a cut-rate Hitman without the killing (maybe?). I didn't play enough to find out, it was booooring and I never watched the show. Game seemed to assume I was an Alias fan, so nothing was explained.

Aliens vs Predator: Extinction: Looks like fun. It's an RTS, but in the squad management mould - no base building or unit building. I'll play this again. - https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/aliens-versus-predator-extinction-review/1900-6072952/

Arx Fatalis: A great old RPG from around 2002/2003 that plays like an elder scrolls game. I've played it a bit on PC but never got that far. Runs well and looks pretty good, though of course everything is a little clunkier with a controller. Defn play again, though it might prompt me to finally run through it on the PC if the UI annoys me too much. https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/arx-fatalis-review/1900-6083711/

Battle Engine Aquila: A game about piloting a transformable mech. You either stomp around shooting things, or fly around shooting things. The tutorial was fun. https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/battle-engine-aquila-review/1900-2909822/

Blazing Angels: If you like WW2 planes and shooting things down, this seems like it's a cool game. Played the intro mission and enjoyed it. Looked decent, ran well - annoying American voice overs. https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/blazing-angels-squadrons-of-wwii-review/1900-6146935/

Black Stone: I couldn't find a working review link for this one, that's how good it was. A slow, clunky, janky gauntlet dark legacy clone. The best I can offer is this metacritic page, which flatters it. https://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox/black-stone-magic-steel

Burnout 2: Drive. Crash. Explode. Re-spawn. A racing game.

Close Combat First to Fight: Bog standard old-school squad based FPS. Apparently the co-op is split screen and a bit of fun, but no chance to test that yet. Run down streets, run into buildings, shoot muslim soldier caricatures. It was...mediocre. I'd give co-op a try.

Dynasty Warriors 5: A terrible fighting game. You, plus an army of nobodies, versus hundreds of meat shields. So bleh. I played something similar on the Xbox One a while ago and this is a worse version of what, ten or more years later, was also a bland game. Maybe it gets better if you put some time into it, but the reviews I skimmed online did not support this hypothesis.

Fallout - Brotherhood of steel: An Action RPG using the Dark Alliance engine. Supports 2 players max I think. Definitely more adult than Dark Alliance. Worth playing co-op.

Baldurs Gate - Dark Alliance: Action RPG. Co-op for 2 ppl, hack and slash with spells and stuff. Loot things, level up...WARNING: Jumping puzzles.

Demon Stone: A Forgotten Realms action RPG featuring the voice of Patrick Stewart and an emsemble fo characters to play. Combat is against multiple enemies at once with lots of things happening around you. Simplistic so far but looks to have a lot of skills/perks to gain while levelling. Fun.

Full Spectrum Warrior: A squad based cover shooter, Has co-op.

Land of the Dead: An FPS based on the movie of the same name. You're a farmer at home alone when a zombie outbreak hits. Seems to focus more on running away and solving simple puzzles (find the key, cut the chain etc) than trying to kill zombies, though I still killed quite a few. Enjoyed what I played. My wife sat with me, dispensing suggestions both helpful and unhelpful. Also a lot of "LOOK OUT" and "I told you so."

Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis: A park building and dinosaur breeding game. My son loved it for 2 days then never talked about it again.

Iron Phoenix: A martial arts fighting game that appears to only support online or system link games. I think it is all about arena battles against multiple enemies. Offline play is just you vs a bunch of AI. The moves are the usual jumping, chi based powers, kicks and punches. There are multiple characters to choose from but I got bored before learning or caring how they differed. Weapons could be picked up and used and the moves were interesting, but ultimately it's just a series of chaotic arena fights and the main draw from the original release - multiplayer - is no longer viable.

25 to Life: A 90s gangster style 3rd person shooter. The gameplay didn't suck balls, but it was nothing new. Run to a spot, use cover, shoot at cops. Run to cover, etc. I hate the whole late 90s/early 2000s cop-killer gangster thing, so this one was duly deleted. (you might protest and say, but what about GTA San Andreas, you loved that! Actually, no, that's the one I hated. Like, REAAAAAALLY hated.)

4x4 Evolution 2: A bland racing game that may have been interesting 15 years ago, but is now just a footnote in history. Very little of interest here for the modern gamer. It runs well, smooth and without any over weird behaviours, controls are precise. Looks like shit and the nature of the vehicles - off-road things of various types - do not lend themselves to beauty in the first place. All the usual basic racing modes plus split screen.

Advent Rising: An action adventure game in 3rd person. Sci-fi, first contact deal, some good guy aliens appear and warn you that the bad guy aliens will be here in a few weeks - then the bad guy aliens drop in an hour later and fuck everything up. It looked pretty crap visually and stuttered a lot in complex scenes, but it was obviously trying hard for the time to be something cool and unique. The shooting and punching was okay and the story is by Orson Scott Card. Looking back it felt like a proto-Mass Effect. To be played again I think, there was a lot of potential in the mechanics I saw and the story was engaging enough.

Airforce Delta Storm: An arcade "flight sim" from the late 90s (around 99, maybe even 2000) that was ported to Xbox. Flying a jet of some kind you select hotspots on a map and fly a mission at that location. When back at base you can unlock new jets and munitions. I dominated with the base jet, destroying all air threats, tanks, trucks and even navy vessels with ease, so I assume these new jets are needed for future threats. There appears to be only the two weapons, missiles that lock on to both air and ground targets equally well, and a cannon that is about as useful as you would expect. Once or twice I used it on a ground target. You don't resupply munitions until you return to base. Runs fine, plays ok. Was probably a bit of fun 20 years ago.

Alter Echo: A scifi third person hack and slash featuring psychic powers and manipulable matter. You stab, you jump, you use the powers of your mind to do things. Initial thoughts:


America's Army: A fun, squad based, FPS with an emphasis on 'realism' and using real world tactics. Or so I assume, I'm not in the army. I enjoyed the training missions and though the skill system could potentially extend interest and playability by allowing for character customisation. Initial thoughts: This was fun, by far the best put together of the squad based shooters I have played so far. I forgot it was such a huge genre back in the early 2000s.

American Chopper 1 and 2: A game about bikers going around doing motorcycle things. Based on a television show I think. Pure horseshit. Initial thoughts: Fuck off.

Apex: A game based around building up a fictitious car company that is focused on racing. The driving and customisation are basic and bog standard. There was absolutely no lee-way on corners (hitting a raised curb on an apex almost stops you dead). Even though I hit everything imaginable and drove off the road a lot I still came third, so, it was fairly forgiving. Game runs fine but looks bollocks and blocky. Apex is a dressed up arcade racer defined only by the ability to build up your car brand and race them against real world car makes. Initial thoughts: Bored. Nothing I haven't played 100x before.

Aquaman - Battle for Atlantis: Awful garbage

Arctic Thunder: A snowmobile racing game of all things. Looked shit when I was selecting options and setting up the race, then it hung. Probably the best of all possible outcomes. Initial thoughts: Terribad.

What the hell is going on with this review site!

Have I abandoned it!? Hell no. What's happening is an amalgamation of several occurrences coming together at once to slow my rate of writing.

First and foremost, I'm not playing a lot of small games right now. ARMA3 Liberation, Outer Worlds and Battletech have dominated game time and I don't feel people need yet another review by a backwater site on the subject of a AAA game release. Suffice to say I like all three games and you should defn buy them if their genre is in your wheelhouse.

Second, it's spring where I live, coming into summer. This time of year I play more sport, do more training and spend a lot less time gaming. For this reason I might branch out into board game reviews or board game session reports. I tend to play more board games when the weather is good.

Third, I've been playing through a heap of games on my original XBox. I might post a bunch of micro reviews, I just want to touch on every title I have even a fleeting interest in and give a brief summary of the underlying game style plus my thoughts. Maybe.

Fourth, work is busy. Life is busy. I'm older (as the banner suggests) and I have older children whom I spend a lot of time chasing around or doing things with. Last night I was playing Street Fighter 2 and Dead or Alive with my 15 year old. He's never seen either and we had a great laugh.

Fifth, I'm doing a lot of other writing that kind of takes up what little creative time I have. These are fiction I'm going to submit in the next six months in the hopes of following up the publication of my first story earlier this year.

Do I have a lot of games to play and review? Oh my god, yes. Do I have time to do it? Probably. But it would mean pushing aside a bunch of other jobs and hobbies, and right now the focus is on them rather than game review. Soon though, the pendulum with swing this way once more. Until then...game on.

Original Xbox: Project Resurrection - Part 3

Life has been busy lately. Between training twice a week, Saturday mornings being taken up with an MMA session plus footy training down at the oval, various social engagements, and some big name games taking up my downtime (Battletech, Arma 3, Outer Worlds) - I am strapped for time to sit and write, and I don't have easy target subjects to write about. As an apology for being away, here's a pic of the world's awesomest icecream.

I meant the Unicorn, but the Sanga is equally great)

Back to business. Last week, the final part for my Xbox rebuild arrived. This post is both an anticlimax and a triumph due to the ease with which it all came together. Perhaps this is because I spent so much time researching and preparing, perhaps it's experience, but there were no glitches in the final build, no major obstacles to overcome, no big surprises (other than good ones). Apart from an 80 pin IDE cable that folded the opposite way to the original (proving a pain in the ass to origami into the box), I encountered zero technical impediments.

In summary, to get this off the ground I needed the following:

• New hard drive - I purchased a Western Digital Blue 500GB SATA drive (Ebay)
• An 80 pin IDE cable (Ebay)
• An IDE to SATA adapter (Amazon)
• A blank DVD-R disc
• Hexen 2018 tools burned to a DVD

The hard drive was easy (and cheap), as was the cable. In terms of uncertainty, the adapter was a complete unknown both in ability to fulfill the requirements, and the level of quality control. This thing is handmade somewhere in mainland china and looked flimsy even in the Amazon pics. You know what though, it worked first time - though I can't yet comment on its long term ability to keep working.

You know what took forever to find though? Blank DVDs. When was the last time you went out and purchased some? Who the hell sells them anymore? Sure as hell isn't my local supermarket. All I wanted was one disc (plus a backup or two in case it didn't work properly first time), but I couldn't even find that. I went further afield, to the local shopping centre (mall for you o/s readers), but the best I could find after a LOT of walking were spindles of FIFTY discs for $40AU. So, uh, no thanks. After almost an hour on the road and in various shops I wasn't about to turn around and give up. A quick search online told me Officeworks might have them. Now, Officeworks and I have a fractured relationship after Laptop-gate 2018 (another story, another time), but I was desperate. As usual, Officeworks had no staff rostered on, and/or they were all hanging around the photo machines pretending to twiddle knobs and pore over colour settings. However, what they did  have were boxes of 10 DVD-R discs at a reasonable price. After some lining up (by myself I might add, it's not like I was waiting for other people to be served), I was on the way home.

See below for actual footage of me securing these

The build went (as mentioned), well. First I removed the DVD and caddy, then I plugged in the new IDE cable. After some fancy cable folding I got the DVD caddy and drive back in place and plugged it in. The HDD was a little trickier due to the IDE cable, but I figured it out after a couple of careful tests. First the drive was screwed into its housing, then I carefully threaded the power cable into the little conduit on the side. When that was in place I plugged the adapter into the HDD, completed my IDE origami project, and got the two cables plugged in. I'm not proud of the way it turned out, but it seems to work.

Oh, I also snapped the front bit off of the DVD drive, but it should glue back on. Right?

Whoop a-day - that's not supposed to be there

The final hurdle was partitioning and formatting the drive then installing the dashboard again. I thought this was going to suck, because I remember it sucking 15 years ago. I was wrong, seems that not only has technology advanced in the intervening years, the world of old school Xbox modding has too. I grabbed a copy of Hexen 2018 (found in the usual places, just search for it), burned it to one of the hen's-teeth-like DVDs (using no special software, just the iso burner built into Windows 10), and popped it into the Xbox DVD drive. It worked. Rather than write an essay, I'll simply embed the video I watched. 

That was it really. To get the games on the drive you'll need to connect your Xbox to the local network with a cable, configure the network settings, and use an FTP program (I use Filezilla) to copy the files over. If you have trouble with copy operations failing, make sure the FTP program is only making a single connection at a time. The OG Xbox cannot handle multiple connections and many errors will occur. Create a folder called Games on the F drive (and G drive is you made both partitions), then simply copy your game folders into those. You need a folder for each game and in the root of each game folder is the xbe file and all supporting files, you cannot nest a root game folder inside another game folder (ie F:\Games\Game A\Game A\<files here>).

Finished! (well, almost, I'll leave the cover off for a few days just in case)

Ok, that's all for this update, and pretty much for the project. I might post some game reviews (or summaries at least), it depends on time. My ONLY regret is not hunting down a cheap 2TB and installing that. Perhaps in part 4...

Disclaimer: You need a chipped/modded Xbox to do it this way. If you have a softmodded Xbox you'll either need to softmod it again or clone your old drive to the new one. I don't know how to do those things.

Original Xbox: Project Resurrection - Part 2

And I'm back with a second installment of "When I found my xbox at the back of a shelf in my shed and decided to try it out". You may remember, back in part one, when I booted it up and...well hey, why not read it for yourself HERE.

Done? Okay cool. So after the great disappointment which was:

I wouldn't let it go, I had to make this thing work and I didn't want to wait a few weeks until the converter arrived. Everything else works fine and I have some games ready to copy to a hard drive, I just had to work something out in the interim. From a little research I learned an SSD wasn't necessarily a great idea due to bandwidth considerations and that sticking with a spinning disk was both cheaper and more practical. I looked around online I was confident I could get my hands on a spinning SATA disk super cheap (refurbished). For now, being the impatient person I am, I decided it was time to pull it apart and check things out.

First, unplug that bastard and pop it open. I hadn't taken this apart in a decade and, given the sudden death of the HDD, I didn't know what to expect. Screws out, case off, and everything looked pristine, just how I left it. What else to do now but dismantle. Why? Why not! Out with the internals, out with the hard drive and DVD! I took that thing to pieces and then, job done, I cabled everything back together (though I didn't put it back in the case).

 

This is where the magic happened. I booted it back up, as much in hope than in anticipation of having fixed anything, and it was alive. Alive! Of course the first thing I did was back up any files I already had on there, delete them to make room, and then copy across a handful of my games to test.

Obviously, this was a resounding success

So why was it working now, HDD dangling in the wind, pants around its metaphorical ankles? I really don't know, but I can play Arx Fatalis so I don't care.

Looks way better in real life

For the past week then I've been ordering parts, researching options, backing up games, and getting my hands on new ones. I'm going to install a 500GB SATA drive and fill it with everything I have, and everything I get my hands on in the meantime. My ultimate goal is to have every Xbox game I'm even remotely interested in on a machine set up in my lounge room. I already have a laptop and router configured that I can use to swap games around so, for now, I can chop and change between about 20-25 games and compile a list of the best couch co-op options for a retro night. Who knows, perhaps I'll even post a micro review or two.

More to come when the parts arrive.

Knights of the Chalice

Take a good look at that screenshot, really lean in there and soak up the 90s aesthetics. Knights of the Chalice plays like a mix of Ultima 6 and Pools of Darkness, both classic games from the <brief internet investigation> very early 90s (1990 and 1991 respectively).

Ultima 6 (via Wikimedia)

Pools of Darkness (via MobyGames)

KotC is a relatively simple game on the surface, a veneer of simplicity layered over a fairly complex implementation of the DnD 3.5 ruleset. On the downside, there are only a handful of classes you can choose from and the party size is limited to 4. The array of weapons, armours, and spells (especially the spells) make up for any lack of classes though.

I imagine the visuals turn a lot of people away when they come to consider purchasing. Personally, I love way the it looks and feels, though perhaps that's me reveling in nostalgia, The pixel art, isometric viewpoint is a style I really love, so delightfully retro, harking back to Amiga games I owned in the 1990s. The UI is serviceable though clunky (I'll get back to that in a moment). None of this is a problem for me as I've never been one to worry too much about visual or UI, so long as the core game is a cracker. To answer that unstated question, let's consider the real meat and potatoes of the game - combat.

Combat is triggered whenever your party wanders close enough to a trigger-able area or a group of bad guys. Most encounters are tied to a particular area and wandering monsters are few and far between. Once triggered, the game shifts from real-time movement to turn-based. There are a heap of combat options from the ruleset and careful tactical thought must be given to the placement of heroes and the use of their abilities as these do not refresh until the party reaches a camp to rest. Having a spell-less wizard at the end of a dungeon when facing up to the big bad boss guy pretty much forces you to reload an older save. There are a few encounters I had to run through a dozen of times to get right, even with spelled up wizards and healthy fighters. Wands, wands are your friends. Craft them. (I'm not going into weapon, wand, scroll etc crafting, just know that it exists). So you move your heroes around one at a time, using up movement and actions to accomplish something - it's a tried and true system that works here as well as it works in something like Divinity: Original Sin. You'll chop, cast, run, heal, and cackle with glee as your ice storm devastates an entire room of gnolls. One nice touch is loot after battles. If the enemy carried or wore it, it drops for you to collect. Sorting through the cheap junk to choose only the best to keep (or more regularly, sell) is both fun and a bit of chore due to limited inventory sizes.

Quick note about the ruleset, it's all very well documented in-game and easily accessed per item. By this I mean it's only a single click to look up info on a weapon, how a spell works, what an effect or attribute is and how it affects your overall build. This makes a potentially complex and obtuse game very accessible (though you'll spend the first couple of hours reading a lot of info, or perhaps this was just me).

What about the parts that don't work so well? To begin, with let's hit on the mechanic that gets more knickers in a knot than a wave pool set on maximum - camps. I understand the hate, they frustrate me too, but I also get their function. You can only rest and regain spells and hitpoints when you're at a designated camp spot (a little fireplace), and they're few and far between sometimes. Thing is, camps force you to plan ahead and fight smart rather than barreling in, spells a-blazing, letting your tanks take the hits and not giving a shit. They make you think several battles ahead. In the early game they make things REALLY difficult, sure. With just four heroes and a handful of hit points between them, you're going to get pummeled on the regular. Just be liberal with your use of the save option and don't lose heart, things get (slightly) easier. I grew to admire how camps actually enhanced my gameplay rather than limited it, forcing me to re-consider that fireball in case I needed it later, and making me plan ahead with wands and scrolls rather than just the spells I might have memorised.

Back to the UI then. The interface is workable but clunky. You'll go back and forth between various screens to achieve even the simplest tasks. If I'm being honest, the UI is probably the only part of the game I'd scrap and rework. I can't think of any other part of the game that frustrated me as much as having to re-organise inventories. I know I'm doing negatives here, but the breadth of shortcut keys is a real win. The game is completely playable with just a keyboard (I think, I can't recall any part that relied on a mouse to work). For commands. each is nicely highlighted with the key letter being a different colour, and the excellent in-game help provides a nice run-down of some of the more obscure but useful keys.

Finally, quests are generic fantasy stuff. Slavers are bad, go here and fight orcs, kill a dragon, stab your way to glory through an entire army. If you're looking for a compelling story arc, look elsewhere. KotC boils down to choosing a location, going there, killing everything in satisfying ways, looting the place to hell, heading back to the castle to pawn your loot, resting, and talking shit with the wizard. If that gameplay loop sounds like fun, I happen to agree with you. If you're still not convinced, try the demo and make up your own mind.

VERDICT: An excellent turn based fantasy RPG. Light on the story and characters, but heavy on the underlying ruleset, tactical combat, and retro feels.

Final Word: An excellent turn based RPG, well worth the money. Don't let the retro looks or UI put you off.

(game link) (original website)

Original XBox - Project Resurrection

One of the great thing about having worked with computers for longer than I can remember is owning a lot of old hardware. One of the sad things is looking back, with the benefit of hindsight, and realising how many great things I sold or gave away. On the great side is everything of note I've owned since around 2001. All the consoles and handhelds and phones and various bits of technology worth keeping (including the titular Xbox, which I'll get to in a second).

On the sad side lie my Commodore 64, Amiga 500, and the first PC I ever owned. I wish I still had them but they were given away, sold or scrapped for parts long long ago. Most likely they lie at the bottom of a landfill somewhere.

On the weekend I came across my old Xbox while looking for something totally unrelated and decided to resurrect it. The idea was to back up some of my old games to the hard drive and run them from there - many many years back I had this box chipped and installed a much larger hard drive from which I ran XBMC and an Amiga emulator. Everything went well to begin with, I browsed through media I hadn't watched for over a decade, I played Hunter on the Amiga emulator. Everything was looking cool. Until just now.

After a considerable amount of planning and set up (I needed cables, a router, a laptop) I could FTP back into my Xbox again. It was quite the nostalgia trip, I hadn't done this for...I have no no idea how long. I guess I was in my 30s, if not my late 20s! I had a back-up of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance still knocking about so I started copying it and went back to my day job. About 5 minutes later, I heard it. The sound of death.

Click. Silence. Click.

Over and over.

The hard drive stepper was dying. Some frantic scrambling and I had the core files for Evolution and XMBC backed up. Phew. Next I started backing up the other content but it was laborious, I would copy a couple of hundred meg then the HDD would go back to clicking so I'd shut down and wait a few minutes then kick it off again. Eventually though...

So yeah. It died. Thing is, it all happened between starting the article a few hours ago and right now, when the red ring of death showed up. What a disappointment. On the upside I found a bunch of RAM while searching for stuff to use with this XBox project, and some of it fit my game server. At least I had some kind of win.

Where to next? I just ordered an IDE->SATA converter from Amazon which, according to the internet, works with my original Xbox. There are a few old SATA drives lying around the house, SSD and spinning, and I managed to back-up the most important files before the drive failed. I have a way forward. Project postponed until the converter arrives.

Battle of the Indie Spaceship Simulators - Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator vs Pulsar: Lost Colony

Flying somewhere important to do important things with important people! (Artemis)

Adrift, in the deepest reaches of space, there is only you, your ship, and a third rate crew who spend the game swearing at each other, running in circles, pressing all the wrong buttons and, ultimately, exploding and/or freezing in vacuum. This is Artemis. It is also Pulsar: Lost Colony (Pulsar from now on). Two games with the same core premise, but very different ways of expressing them.

Set phasers to...actually just wait a minute while I carefully adjust these sliders for 10 minutes (Pulsar)

 

In brief, both games are about flying off into space to meet the challenges of an uncaring galaxy. You'll move from place to place, operate various systems to stay alive, meet and kill various generic enemies, and try to make a difference in this big ol' universe of ours (or at the least the tiny corner the games are set in.) At this point, the two games part ways. Artemis achieves it's premise by giving each player control over a console (navigation, power, weapons etc) and therefore a role to play. Pulsar takes different approach. Each player chooses a role, but the game is played as an avatar - walking around on the ship to interact with things. Any player can control any system, along with other side duties like fire fighting or away team combat, however each system is better controlled by the relevant role. Leftover roles can be taken care of by AI bots.

Did someone order more sliding controls for careful adjustment of things? (Artemis)

Artemis takes a minimalist approach to visuals. Apart from the "main screen", which acts like a bridge viewport into the wider world, a game is played in 2D on consoles and maps. The captain gives orders and the various crew carry them out via their controls, hopefully combining to take out the bad guys, dock for repairs or zip across the map to explore. The main play loop is pretty much; going somewhere on the map, fighting something, going back to the space dock to repair and rearm. It's pretty tight and to the point, and offers a fun bridge crew simulation experience.

Haha! I adjusted my controls more carefully than you did! (Pulsar)

Pulsar in contrast is mostly played as a 3D avatar inside the ship, on an enemy ship, or on a station or planet. Controls are interacted with in the 3D world. Screens have buttons, there are levers and dials to manipulate, and other screens provide feedback and information. The main play loop is a little more complex but boils down to warping into an area and interacting with whatever is there. It might be an enemy ship, a friendly ship in need of help, a merchant prepared to trade, a planet or station to explore, or some other random situation dependent on the areas alignment. It's all very serviceable, though not particularly polished, and there is a lot of empty space everywhere. It's looser than Artemis and you can find yourself wandering around aimlessly.

Navigating the map in Artemis. No pithy remark here.

At the end of the day, both games set out to accomplish something and they do it well. I played Artemis several times with four people and we had a good time. I played Pulsar with one other person and the gameplay was generally free-form and a bit wacky - we never knew what was about to happen to us. Ultimately, regardless of their base ideals, they end up being totally different games. Artemis is the more serious simulation, while Pulsar doesn't take itself so seriously. They may both appeal to you (as I found); Artemis' focus on bridge command might be your thing, or Pulsar's more flexible and open ended paradigm of galactic exploration could float your boat.

A bizarre bazaar in Pulsar (not a slider, knob or button in sight!) 

VERDICT: Two excellent spaceship command simulators. Artemis nails the feel of being a captain or crew member in a dangerous sector, while Pulsar allows you to free-form explore a bunch of different areas and environments while also trying to juggle multiple systems on-board.


Final Word: RECOMMENDED. Wait for a sale and get both if you have enough friends interested. You can generally buy multi-game packs and gift them if you're feeling generous.

(game link - Artemis)

(game link - Pulsar: Lost Colony)

ConCentric 2019

Spring in Adelaide means several things; hay-fever, sun, swearing at last seasons shorts for suddenly becoming a size or two smaller, and ConCentric.

To describe what ConCentric is I was going to head over to the website (http://con-centric.com.au/), steal their blurb, and paste it here. Instead, in a fit of inspiration, I decided to describe what ConCentric means to me, in my own words.

ConCentric is a two day game-fest spanning a weekend in early-mid September. There are five major components of the convention: playing board games, playing RPGs, buying from the Bring and Buy table, checking out the major sponsors display (Board Game Master), and catching up with various players in the local gaming scene to remind them you exist.

The board gaming room

On the board gaming front it's a simple proposition. Roll up solo or with friends, find a game to play (from a large selection generously loaned by various attendees), elbow yourself some space at a table and give it a crack. In years gone by I've attended with three other people and we've tackled some heavy games (Scythe, Dominant Species etc) and slogged through the manual in an attempt to get a game off the ground. This year it was harder to procure a ticket and only two of us made it, perfect for digging into something lighter. After some deliberation, and arguing (I suck at picking smaller games), we emerged with a hit list. 5 Minute Dungeon was popular and probably suited our situation best. We came back to it at the end of the day, determined to knock over a second boss monster (which we did). This might be something I pick up in the future. Forbidden Desert was fun but super lightweight and we knocked it over in about 40 minutes (including reading and setup). The third game we tried was about picking mushrooms and cooking them, not my favorite setting and the game-play was only "okay". I've also forgotten what it was called. Overall, the gaming portion of our day was a complete success.

5 Minute Dungeon

This game was more difficult than it looked on the box

The RPGs had a room of their own (as befits their generally more boisterous nature) and for a third year running I didn't have time to join in. To get on-board with an RPG you pre-register (this year via Warhorn) and then roll up to your allotted game time. On the day, a group may be short on players so you can squeeze in (totally unprepared), but I wouldn't count on it. I'm planning to a get in on an RPG next year, looks like a lot of fun.

The bring and buy table was out of control. I would say partly due to the smaller venue, but mostly because every attendee had packed between one and several hundred games to offload - this included me (but unluckily no-one wanted my cast-outs which meant less buying power this year). There was a LOT of desirable stuff on offer but, due to the afore mentioned lack of funds, I only picked up two books (a Traveller book and something from Palladium). On one of the tables sat an entire box of Battletech books I would have grabbed if only I had the means.

Forbidden Desert (I'd just like to note that this is not me in any of these pics)

This years major sponsor was Board Game Master, and they came along with a great selection of games from their library. As above however, I didn't have the money to buy anything, ah well - bring on 2020.

On the socialising front I chatted with a few people I've not had the time to catch up with much in 2019. Matthew Lee (numero uno at The Campaigner Magazine, and organiser of local game testing days) was a busy man and I only caught him briefly to chat about The Campaigner Magazine (and my desire to contribute if possible). Ben Nelson, the man in charge of ConCentric, made me a coffee and found a minute or two to chat about the future of ConCentric (tickets for 2020 may be on sale much sooner than you think, and there was a hint of other surprises to be announced). Thanks for the drinkable coffee, Ben. Last but not least, it was great to catch up with with Heath again - champion of the local gaming scene, lover of all things Lone Wolf, maker (or orderer) of cool knick-knacks, and all round nice guy. Check out his Facebook page, The Antipodean D20, for much discussion on all of the above and more.

So that was a wrap for ConCentric 2019, so glad I could make it after the initial panic of missing out on a ticket. If it wasn't for a slight case of "being under the weather" on Sunday, I would have backed up this year with a second visit. Possibly next year.

The face of a winner

Humble Monthly - September 2019 - Bonus giveaway!

A quick and dirty round-up of the Humble Monthly games for September 2019.

I'm giving away Distance, Guacamelee 2 and Shady Knight. If anyone wants them, leave a comment below and I'll get you the key. Odds are I won't get to the other games for a while, so if you want them let me know.

Distance

Distance is an atmospheric racing platformer. Fusing futuristic arcade racing with parkour, survive a deadly, mysterious, neon-drenched city by jumping, rotating, and flying.

Belligerent, uninformed opinion: It's Wipeout with fancy graphics

Guacamelee! 2

Uppercut your way to victory across stunning new hand-crafted levels. Featuring a dense and colorful world, new luchador moves, sassy new bosses, twice the enemies, and 300% more chickens!

Belligerent, uninformed opinion: Punch things. Enjoy "humour". Listen to jangly music. Get bored.

MOTHERGUNSHIP

MOTHERGUNSHIP is a bullet-hell FPS where you craft your own guns, fight gigantic bosses, and defeat a robotic alien armada that conquered Earth.

Belligerent, uninformed opinion: Traverse generic levels while shooting the shit out out of things with ridiculous weapons.

State of Mind

State of Mind is a futuristic thriller game delving into transhumanism. The game explores themes of separation, disjuncture and reunification, in a world that is torn between a dystopian material reality and a utopian virtual future.

Belligerent, uninformed opinion: Most likely pretentious "high-minded" clap-trap that impresses 14 year olds with it's pop-culture take on various philosophical ideas. I'll still play it.

God's Trigger

Slay enemies with speed and precision in an over-the-top show of blood and explosions. Play solo or with others, make split-second decisions, dodge bullets, and use weapons and abilities to inflict violence in the most graphic way possible.

Belligerent, uninformed opinion: Looks interesting. Sounds tiresome. The second half of the blurb transformed into "blah blah blah" before my eyes.

Shady Knight

Shady Knight is a fun little one-hit-one-kill first person sword fighting game where you use timing and precision to battle your way through a knight filled dungeon

Belligerent, uninformed opinion: A super indie stab-a-roo that may or may not be an evolved prototype from a game jam.

Ghost Recon: Breakpoint - beta test thoughts

Ghost Recon Breakpoint is the latest upcoming game from Ubisoft and they recently conducted a closed beta test. I'm one mission away from completing Ghost Recon Wildlands, so being involved in the beta was timely and...interesting.

Without going into too much detail, Breakpoint is pretty much the same game as Wildlands. Gun and character customisation had been extended a little, but felt overall the same as before. The class system meant more of a focus on one skill tree or another, but again, overall it felt very similar to Wildlands. There was a plethora of gear, like pants, hats and gloves, to switch in and out, with a constant stream being dropped by dead enemies. Some of this gear gave you a bonus for various stats, but most simply pumped up the gear level (an arbitrary number that the game used to measure you against various enemies). The gear system felt like unnecessary busy-work, but at least it wasn't too obtrusive. To confuse things a little, the character clothing customisation was separate to the gear. You could display your ever changing hodge-podge of gear, or override that and show the character get-up you configured at the start of the game (obviously update-able).

Chillin'

On the topic of guns, an obviously important one, there were a lot of them. Unfortunately they all felt and sounded very similar (within their classes) and the bonus I got from being one class or another didn't really seem to translate into real-life results. As an assault guy I was apparently better with assault rifles and shotguns, yet there wasn't any downside to carrying an LMG and sniper rifle instead. What I did enjoy was the consumables; grenades, intel devices, rocket launchers, sync shot drones etc. I particularly enjoyed the sync shot drone, it sort of worked like sync shot in Wildlands - you selected it a target then fired on a second target and it would eliminate the first target at the same time. Handy. Even though each gun felt very similar, the shooting was fun still and worked well.

Guns, guns, guns. Also pictured, gear. Oh lord, so much gear.

Quick note: gone, thank god, is the all seeing drone from Wildlands, You'll need to do a lot of the scouting yourself and that was far more realistic.

Movement felt clunkier than Wildlands, I've never been a fan of the third person perspective but in Wildlands it only occasionally got in the way. In Breakpoint, I forever seemed to be standing in the wrong spot or facing the wrong way or struggling to get into cover due to the inertia being applied to all my moves. I felt ungainly and only partially in control, and I didn't like it.

Last two things, one good and one bad. The AI was good - mostly. It flanked (or tried to) regularly, they moved in numbers, they seemed to notice more anomalous things and investigate them, and they pursued quickly. When I messed things up it was a lot harder to reset and try again, the persistent little buggers would chase me all over, throw grenades, EMP my vehicle and fire mortars. Good stuff.

Skill selection

On the other hand, no matter what I did it looked and ran pretty averagely. I started on High visuals and found everything to be slightly jaggy and fuzzy. It ran decently, though only in the 35-45fps range (I have a mid-spec PC). I swapped this to Very High later on but barely noticed an improvement. To see what I might be missing I cranked it up to Ultra on the last day of the beta, and though the textures were a little crisper and the effects more abundant, it still looked worse and performer more poorly than Wildlands. If there was one real disappointment from the entire experience, that was it.

Stupid helo

Overall, given this was a beta, I enjoyed the experience and can forgive the bugs and general average looks and performance, hoping that these will be addressed in the final release. In terms of game play it continued the open world, play as you like, mechanic that I love, and did it well. Looking forward to finding it cheap and jumping back in.

Alien Isolation

Stay in there mate, it's far more entertaining

I remember the first hour or so of this game vividly, it looked and felt like classic Alien. From the old-school technology, to the aesthetics of the corridors, and the mood setting sound, perfect. I berated a couple of friends into watching a (choppy) stream of me playing, and they both agreed it looked and felt like the original movie. So it's a shame about how the game plays out.

Don't get me wrong. Technically it works well, and the first few hours are genuinely entertaining. When the androids came along I loved it, at first, then I was a little frustrated. My atmospheric exploration game had become a sneaky game of crouching under tables and hiding in lockers for REALLY long periods. The punishment for mucking it up was pretty much instant death, Alien Isolation is not a forgiving game.

The fixed save positions suck, I mean really suck, I'm not a man with infinite time to replay whole chunks of game just because I didn't know there was an alien up that vent. It's a cheap, dated game mechanic that belonged on the consoles of the 90s and needs to fuck right off.

So anyway, an alien up a vent dropped on me and I was insta-gibbed, losing all my progress to that point. There was little warning, apparently I needed to know about the alien goo dripping from the roof, though this was never communicated to me in-game. Great, lesson learned. Realistically, this is probably not the end of the world and I could have worked through it had it not been for the fixed save points. I hate repeating myself, but we're not all 15 year olds with infinite time and patience to replay the same part of the game over and again. I want to see new content, not the same room/corridor/underneath of a table for an hour.

So then the titular alien showed up properly and the cat v mouse gameplay it introduced was fun - for about thirty minutes. Thirty minutes was the time it took for me to be killed several times because I failed to get things just right. The alien moved in unpredictable patterns, used vents and pipes and could hear and see you from really far away. It was fast, omniscient at times, and hard to track when it got into the ceiling. If it sighted you, you died. If you moved to fast, you died. If you wanted to get on and keep enjoying the game, too bad - dead.

Let's break out into a little aside here and get a few things straight. I like sneaking mechanics, I often choose to play sneaky characters in RPGs and first person games and whatnot. I like sniping, and sneaking, and backstabbing, and hiding. I played through SOMA (so I don't mind being helpless) and it only caused some mild anger at various stages. It was fair (and excellent). I also like choice, I like to choose my approach. Another game that does this well (and fairly) is Dishonored. If I feel like sneaking, I can. If I mess it up, I have avenues to escape and try again without being killed (unless I'm trapped or incompetent). I'm not forced to hide in a cabinet for several minutes while the alien wanders around aimlessly only to have it suddenly find me in a very unwelcome game of hide and seek.

You get to do a lot of this. Enjoy.

This is what Alien Isolation became for me, and at one point I tried over and over to progress, reloading and reloading, swearing and banging my mouse (gently) on the desk. I looked up a walkthrough, yep, I was doing it right, you just had to time it perfectly. There was no clever solution, just be lucky and time it right. Even if you did time it perfectly, you still had to be lucky. I got past that part through sheer determination, but that was pretty much the end for me. The magic was gone.

Verdict: Technically great. Atmospherically excellent. Mechanically interesting. Gameplay, terrible. I don't play games to be angry and frustrated, that's why I have a job. And on a really specific point, seriously, it's not 1995 anymore, ditch the fixed save points. If anyone wants to call me a savescummer, fine, I'm over 40 years old and don't have any qualms saving as I progress, WHEN AND HOW I WANT TO. If I have to leave the game running because life intercedes, that's BAD. If I have to make up all of my progress again because I forget where I was at and died, you  fail at being a good game. Your game sucks if it leans on this outdated crutch to extend play time. Alien Isolation is a missed opportunity, though it probably appeals to lovers of games like Dark Souls.

Final Word: Get it for five bucks and play it for the first few hours, otherwise - NOT RECOMMENDED

(game link)

3030 Deathwar Redux - A Space Odyssey

3030 Deathwar Redux - A  Space Odyssey, known from here on in as Deathwar, is a game of many parts. Some of these parts are good, like the jam in a sponge cake. Some of these parts are bad, like the rest of a sponge cake. Let's run through what makes Deathwar tick (and I'll ditch the cake analogy - for now).

First up, flying around in space. Here you'll pilot a 2D ship through 2D space, beautifully rendered in 24 caret sci-fi themed pixel art. There's combat, junk busting, cargo collecting, exploring, missions, and possibly a few other things I've forgotten. It works well, runs smoothly and has a few quirks and perks along the way to keep things fresh (pilots randomly offering to help, or to sell you illicit goods).

Then there's the on-station portion of the game. When you need to stop off and stretch your legs, you dock with a space station and get around in a side scrolling, adventure style UI. Pretty much all stations look and play the same (with art changes on the bar area and different styles of background, but fundamentally it's the same makeup every time). You can go to the bar and talk to the patrons; interesting for the first few dozen times but after that you'll start ignoring all but those required to fulfill your current mission. There's also a mission computer and a market/ship/parts computer. Pretty run of the mill, you take various kinds of missions to make money and sometimes advance the story. Ships get bigger, faster, better, have more storage etc, depending on how you want to play. You can play the market and be a trader, but I found the mission route was far more lucrative and only went to the market for fuel and to sell the crap I found on salvage missions (more in a second). Very occasionally you have to fight someone with your pistol while on the station. The shooting part worked about as well as pasting head-shots of your new girlfriend over the face of your old girlfriend on the pics you have hanging over your fireplace. Actually I'm not sure that analogy works, but I spent five minutes dreaming it up so it stays. Stations play a valuable role in the theme and feel of the game, while the shooting part felt shoehorned in, slapped over the top for the hell of it. It was just one more thing they tried to jam into an already crowded game - one thing too far. I mean, now I read that statement and compare it with my girlfriend analogy, it's painfully clear how crap that analogy is. Moving on.

Salvage. When encountering a hulk you have the option of conducting a salvage run. This was pretty cool the first 10 times, zipping about in your space suit, zapping aliens, collecting cool stuff and looting the dead meat popsicles. After that magical 10th time it kind of waned in entertainment value, which is a shame. You weren't forced to salvage but it could be a lucrative income stream. I'm not sure what the developer could do anything to improve things without an overhaul; the mould was cast and each salvage mission played out like like the previous ones. Float, dodge, shoot, grab, escape. Never once did I feel particularly threatened.

Now take these parts, smoosh them into a single game, and what do you have? Is it coherent? Like the proverbial sponge cake, you have some good parts (the jam center), some okay bits you can tolerate (the cake), and some parts you sort of ignore or flick off onto your plate (cream, half priced fruit the baker added in a failed and misguided attempt to jazz things up). I loved the first ten hours of Deathwar. Zipping here and there, zapping this and that, getting into the game loop of making money, exploring a bit more, getting a new ship, upgrading that ship, taking on new missions. Repeat. The story was ok. I could ignore the dull bits and it just sort of progressed on its own time-frame. Then, once more akin to the majestic sponge cake, it all stopped being fun and became a chore. The words "rinse, repeat" spring to mind.

If Deathwar was the only game I owned, I may have persisted. I mean, it's not bad - in fact, it's quite a good game - I just don't love this sort of game enough to persist and push through. Like every gamer these days, my collection is frighteningly large and half of them remain unplayed, or with a play time still shy of the single digit hour mark. Therefore, I dropped it. Right or wrong, fair or not, I felt I'd played though all the cool content, seen what there was to see, and future content was all going to be variations on the same themes. However, I can definitely see that if you do like this sort of game, or love the art style, then that'll be enough for you to plow on and see the end credits.

With all of that said and all of the caveats and the hand wringing and the fact I dropped it after 13 hours, it is with only a tiny amount of hesitation that I recommend 3030 Deathwar. It was a game I loved, then played casually, then dropped like an old sponge cake I just found at the back of the fridge in an orange Tupperware container.

VERDICT: Layered like a sponge cake, no wait...damn it I should have used layer cake as an analogy. Anyway, like a dessert option with more than one component, Deathwar is greater than the sum of its parts and can be enjoyed as one big, messy whole. Definitely worth playing on the cheap, or worth playing anytime if you love this kind of game (Space Pirates and Zombies comes to mind as something similar).

Final Word: It's a decent game with lots of parts. RECOMMENDED

(game link)

(shit, I forgot to say the music was cool. Hey, the music is cool!)