Monthly Archives: October 2012

The Android's Deranged Killing Spree (Action), The Android's Skein Of Flesh (Stealth)

Dishonored. Also a TV show.

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Apologies for our lax updating lately, Pike and I have been completely engrossed in WoW’s Mists of Pandaria expansion. Contrary to our prior cynicism about WoW and Blizzard’s direction, and our nostalgic view of the Burning Crusade era, MoP is quite honestly the best WoW has ever been. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about, that’s just an excuse for being lazy.

In between long stints in Pandaria I’ve been putting some hours into some other games; XCOM I’ve already talked about, and I’m going to write something about The Walking Dead soon having just got it last week on the advice of my bro Barry Manilow, but today’s topic is Dishonored.

In Dishonored you are Corvo Attano, the strikingly handsome personal bodyguard of Empress Jessamine Kaldwin and her daughter Emily. Within a few minutes of starting the former is killed in front of you and the latter kidnapped, with Corvo arrested and thrown into prison for the foul deeds. So begins your career as a nightmarish magic assassin. Now, do you guys remember BioShock? Remember how it was hyped as a game with a huge variety of possible playstyles, but which really turned out to have only a tiny handful of situational options and tended to be very samey? Well, Dishonored is everything BioShock was promising to be; you truly do have a good array of tools and abilities to play with, and you can play in some dramatically different styles. Stealthy thieving pacifist, stealthy and precise assassin of your target and nobody else, stealthy murdered of everything, noisy murderer of everything, using or not using any of a half-dozen neat abilities. It’s a really neat mix.

What really sells it though is the world and level design. Both on the aesthetic level and in the literal “how things fit together” manner, Dishonored is a tour de force. The world works perfectly with your skills to let you explore in a way that never feels forced. When you use your skills in some creative manner you feel like you’re clever for figuring it out; routes are generally shown and/or hidden sensibly and you feel sneaky when you find them. The city of Dunwall, where the game takes place, recently underwent a whale-oil fueled Industrial Revolution, and is filled with all manner of devices relating thereto. It’s also beset by the “Rat Plague”, which is carried by the creatures and causes massive hemorrhaging. Upwards of half the city is dead of it, and when you see mounds of corpses disposed out, and entire districts abandoned, it’s a truly grim vision. All but the very wealthiest experience the troubles arising from this – you’ll see peeling paint and cracks in the walls of all but the most important buildings and those belonging to the very richest. It’s one of the most immersive and unsettling dystopian settings I’ve ever explored.


It’s also Asshole Simulator of the Year, for my money.

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Now, to step away from Videogames for a moment, even thought Pike won’t give my head peace once she sees it. There is a TV show I would briefly like to mention. It is a show about superpowered people. But it is a show which is not about the powers, it is about the people. The powers are things to be dealt with, with realistic constraints that never seem like forced efforts to hamstring people but rather clever and logical downsides. The characters are amazing and you want to spend time with them, the show is witty and hilarious a lot of the time, but also dark as fuck at times. The show is called Alphas, and I would really quite like to see them make a Season 3 so if you like great TV go watch it and talk about it!

The Android's Mother's Basement (MMO), The Android's Nonsensical Gibberish (It is too hot today/we are lazy)

WoW races that need to be playable

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As it turned out Pandas was a great idea, so with that in mind I hope for greater open-mindedness from Blizz regarding new playable races to be introduced over the coming years. Here are some suggestions that I, with input from Pike, would especially like Blizzard to consider:

1) Tuskarr. These are top of the list, and should have been playable since Wrath instead of adding DKs. They are The Best Race. They are big fat Walrusmans who build big Walrusman moai and I forget to finish my sentences AND they have the best lines! “Visit again when you can!”
2) Ethereals. They are the Second Best Race, and I can’t even begin to fathom why they’re not playable because they’re blatantly superior to everything else that isn’t a walrusmans.
(everything after this point is in no particular order)
3) Ogres. They really should have been playable since Day One, let’s be honest here.
4) Mantids. These guys look metal as all hell and I’d very much like to be able to say things like “It’s time to swarm.” or “I must speak with the Adjunct!”.
5) Grummles. I love them and their constant talk about luckydos is amazing. I especially like how their name is their luckiest luckydo, so some of them have names like “Half-eaten Fish” and “Wooden Spoon”.
6) Naga. The quests in Vash’jir where you are a Naga Battlemaiden are great, because you get to see how cool as heck Naga are. Turns out they’re refined, treat their underlings reasonably, and act with respect and decorum! Also they have that crazy spinny-blade blender move that minces everything.
7) Iron Vrykul and Iron Dwarves. Rock-based robots covered in baller glower runes? Yep I’m okay with that sign me up please.
8) Tol’vir. Yesssss these guys are also baller as hell. Hanging out in Uldum being big old cat-taurs looking like they really do deserve to be in charge? Do want.
9) Arakkoa. I wanted to be one of these bird-people when I first saw one in Hellfire Peninsula all those years ago, and I still want to. Because creepy bird-people.
10) Aqir. Yes more bugs. I like being a bug! I want to be a bug leader of a gigantic, terrifying hive-mind that consumes the world, deal with it!
11) Faceless Ones. Tentacles and a complete inability to have pronounceable names add together for a pretty amazing race.

Blizz please make Wilford Brimley playable.

What about the rest of you guys? Any races in particular from the WoW setting you want to run around doing dailies as?

The Android's Bunker (Strategy), The Android's Favorites, The Android's POG Collection (Retro)

This just feels right.

Pike wrote extensive about XCOM: Enemy Unknown yesterday and I’m going to follow up on her post now that I’ve had the chance to spend a few hours with it. Through methods. As you can infer from the title, I’m a big fan. I’m a HUGE fan.

Anyone with even a passing familiarity with classic PC games will probably be aware of X-Com even if they’ve never played it; it’s regularly highlighted as one of the best games ever made and this is not a reputation attained without sound reasons. It is an absolutely masterful blend of strategic and tactical thinking, it crafts an atmosphere of extraordinary tension, and it somehow manages to combine a very strong attachment to your troops with a massive rate of attrition among them. It also featured the torture of watching your brilliant tactical maneuvers getting completely undone and everything going to hell.

This game masterfully recaptures that. The mechanics are different in a lot of ways, such as the removal of Time Units (Something that caused a sudden intake of breath among X-Com vets when it was revealed) and the smaller squad sizes. But it’s an isometric tactical game with a strategic layer on top, and it’s all about tension and everything going downhill and your desperate efforts to pull it off despite all your best laid plans going the way of George and Lennie’s.

Moreno, Okamoto, and Mack were good soldiers, and good people. Their sacrifice won’t be forgotten. Also despite this loss the mission had a good outcome, because Classic Ironman is hardcore and this is XCOM.

Indeed, most of the changes are very sensible and nice ones and it’s patently clear that the team at Firaxis put a huge amount of work into figuring out what worked and what didn’t and then polished the thing nicely. Which isn’t to say it’s not buggy as heck, because many reports suggest it is, but the underlying design decisions and mechanics all seem to be very, very solid. One nice touch I’d especially like to point out is the addition of three characters in your base, your chief scientist, engineer, and your right-hand man. It adds a lot to hear their commentary on various matters, but their suggestions are never more than that. They’re a wonderful little addition that add a lot to playing.

What this game does though is it takes me back. Like an old war vet, playing this game reminds me of the original, and it pulls me back to when I was a kid playing that game all summer long, getting destroyed by Cyberdiscs and Mutons (Not to mention Tentaculats and Lobstermen oh god), and this just feels like a game from a bygone era, when they were unforgiving bastards that made you incredibly angry but were far, far too damn good and addictive to actually put down for more than five minutes.

If you were worried about this not being true to the original, you can rest assured that all the changes I’ve seen so far have allayed that fear completely. The mechanics and look may have changed but the spirit absolutely has not.

(It should be noted that Pike and I are both playing the PC version of the game, and indeed one of the few genuine criticisms I have is that the UI is clearly intended to allow consoles to play the thing. I’m all for a game this relentlessly ballcrushing on a console but I hope Firaxis patch in a few tweaks for the PC side of things.)

The Android's Bunker (Strategy), The Android's Favorites

This is it. This is the game X-Com fans have been waiting for.

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So let’s talk about XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

I was originally going to wait until I’d clocked more hours in this than just the tutorial, but honestly I feel that said tutorial has got me confident enough to make a valid assessment, so here we go:

This is the strategy/tactics game of the year.

The short version is that they took the original X-Com: UFO Defense, beefed up the graphics and redid the UI, tweaked a very small handful of features, packaged it up and are selling it right now.

Sold yet?  No?

Here’s the long version, then: all of my fears about the game have been thoroughly laid to rest.  This isn’t an easy, casualized version of the game (unless you specifically put it on the easy difficulty.)  This isn’t Babby’s First Turn-Based Tactics.  This is X-Com.

In fact, that last sentence was something I just kept hearing in my head over and over as I played.  This is X-Com.  This is what it’s supposed to be.

Everything is there.  The rookies from every country in the world with the appropriate name.  The Skyranger.  The Interceptors shooting down UFOs.  The research.  The construction.  The money management.  The geoscape.

“Hidden Movement” is there; it’s called something different but it’s there and just as terrifying.

The music is there.  They redid the mission music from the original and added it as a track in the game and when I heard it I felt my heart jump into my throat.

Which leads me to my next and perhaps most important point; the sense of sheer white-knuckle thrill is there.

Let’s talk about Firaxis’s most controversial choice, which is the removal of time units and the replacement of them with a fixed set of moves.  They pulled this off really, really well.  There is still a sense that you can move a certain number of steps if you also want to shoot something, and thanks to a very clear UI you know exactly when you’re going to overstep that boundary.  It doesn’t change the core mechanic, it just makes it easier to “read”.

They have also added a “talent tree”,  so to speak, to your soldiers.  Different soldiers come with a different specialty– or “spec” if you will– and as they improve you can pick up talents for them.  Some of the talents are a real difficult choice because they could all be useful in different situations.  This also ups the stakes, considerably, because it makes it all the more acute when one of your really spec’d out guys dies.  (And he will.)

The other thing they added that I was originally iffy on– occasional cuts to a third person view of your soldier as he shoots or moves– was pulled off superbly and does nothing but heighten the tension.

I don’t have much else to say here that isn’t a fangirly mess of random letters and numbers and exclamation points.  All I know is that the guys at Firaxis have outdone themselves with this one and pulled off something which I didn’t know could be pulled off.  Absolutely worth every cent of the full price.

In closing: over a year ago, when I didn’t know that this game was in production, I made a post about what an X-Com reboot would need to be a worthy successor.  Firaxis followed it word for word.  Much love.

Available on Steam and also for consoles.

The Android's Casting Magic Missile (RPG), The Android's Deranged Killing Spree (Action), The Android's Shower of Giblets (Hack'n'Slash)

Torchlight is a Great Little Game

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Happy weekend all!  Pike here.

I haven’t been posting much on this blog lately, and I do apologize for that.  The truth is that I’ve been having an obscene about of fun with the lastest WoW expac so I’m playing a lot of that.

Today, however, I thought I would give something new a shot and I booted up Torchlight, which I have somehow never played before.  And I promptly wound up playing it for the next few hours, because it was just that addictive.  For the few of you who haven’t played it, it’s an action-RPG along the veins of Diablo, and it is just wonderful.  You can pick from three classes and I promptly picked alchemist because the guy is wearing goggles, and I think I made the right choice.  I love hurling poison bolts at my enemies from afar, watching them all expire, and then going around and collecting all sorts of great loot.  It’s simple, straightforward, and a whole lot of fun.

Also, one of the questgivers is a steampunky robot.  I approve.

The sequel recently came out and I look forward to playing that as well, but for now I’m having a blast with the original!  Anyone who hasn’t looked into this series should really do so.  It is well worth the price!

The official Torchlight website is here: http://www.torchlightgame.com/

And now, here is a cat picture, because it’s always time for cat pictures:

Cats are also the best choice of pet in Torchlight.
The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical), The Android's Party Cannon (Holidays and gifts), The Android's Red Flag (Quasi-political ramblings)

Vidya season and Mr. Adequate is mad

It’s that time of year, when the dearth of summertime videogames leaves us behind and we begin to be swamped by an increasingly heavy deluge of videogame releases over the months running up to Christmas. Mists of Pandaria, TL2, and Resi 6 just came out, soon arriving is XCOM, then there’s AssCreed III, Dishonored, Farming Simulator 2013, Halo 4, Hitman: Absolution, ZombiU, Company of Heroes 2, and a bunch of other games besides on the way. In short, it’s a busy time for folks like us – please tell us in the comments what you’re looking forward to in the coming weeks and months, and any cunning plans you have to avoid other obligations in favor of the important things, i.e. playing videogames!

But despite this deluge of delectable distractions I’m not altogether happy. No sir. Let’s take one of the games in the above list, XCOM. Now obviously anyone will be well aware that Pike and myself are tremendous fans of the series, and from what we’ve seen the new tactical game actually has a chance of being a true successor of that series, especially with things like the difficulty modifiers for NG+ runs (In fact a couple of those, such as depleting Elerium stocks, are even more hardcore than the original!) So hooray, I can’t wait until Friday so I can play!

Please mister can I have some videogames please?

Wait, Friday? Well yes, because as you may recall I live not in the glorious United Syndicates of America but in the Union of Britain. And whilst Americans typically see things released on a Tuesday, Brits instead have Fridays. This makes some sense of course; you can grab your new videogame and run home to spend all weekend playing it. In times past it was of little consequence, but the ever-increasing ubiquity of the Internet means that this sort of thing is utterly ridiculous in this day and age.

X-COM is a digitally distributed game. I’m sure there are physical copies, but who buys those for PC games anymore? No, we’ll mostly be getting the Steam version, no doubt – and yet Steam will distribute this game to people in the UK days after those in North America. If you folks can begin to see sense in that, I’d love to hear it, because I sure as hell can’t. The really weird thing is that many companies are learning you can’t get away with that anymore, because the same distribution channels opened to them by the Internet open less savory methods up as well. I want to play X-COM, I really really do, so why am I being made to wait an arbitrary few extra days? Because it seems to me that I’ll be able to get it elsewhere without needing to wait for no reason. I hadn’t intended on turning this into a treatise on piracy, but one of the lessons learned over the years is that perhaps the single biggest thing you can do to prevent piracy is to make your product as absolutely convenient as possible for people to get. The lack of paying money is only one appeal of piracy – getting what you want how and when you want it is also a huge incentive.

So, because of the no reason whatever, British fans of X-COM (A British series, I’d point out) have to wait longer to play it. If all this seems like I’m getting mad about videogames, well – I am!

I am as mad as the grumpiest cat