Press [F] to begin heist

Payday: The Heist is the result of mixing three cups of Left 4 dead with a whisked quantity of Modern Warfare and glazing the resultant cake with generous portions of awesome. Payday: TH takes the four player cooperative approach so brilliantly executed by L4D and adds wads of cash and rather irate Police officers. Sure, there are still guns and enemies that assault you in unrelenting waves but apart from that the presentation and style of the game are very different and exceedingly compelling.

There are six missions (of which I’ve only tried two so far) which are designed to never truly play the same way twice. Each is concerned with some sort of get-rich-quick style encounter the title of the game alludes to and the reward for in-game achievement is currency. This forms the experience and progression system unlocking new and better equipment progressively for the three distinct player types, each of which feel different and nicely mutually complementary.

The only minor negative point is the story – not much is explained and any inter-character banter feels largely there to cynically dispense with the story as quickly as possibly and make way for the action. In this game however, that’s absolutely fine by me.

The price and the quality of the experience and overall finish mean no second thought should be required here, I heartily recommend Payday: The Heist.

Oyster Cards Not Required

I finally took the time to complete Metro 2033 (it was only sitting on my shelf for around a year..) and I loved every minute of it. A lot of new games feel quite similar these days but being produced by a Ukrainian developer has really imparted a unique feel to this title. The visuals are spectacular and the gameplay has some unique and interesting elements.

Despite the developer 4AGames having a bust up with the GSC chaps (the developer behind the STALKER series) over originality of technology and IP, Metro 2033 is a very different game from STALKER. Ok, sure it is set in a post-apocalyptic world irradiated by the folly of man, but therein the similarities stop. Metro is a linear and highly polished romp through the tunnels and factions of a destroyed Moscow with a psychological gameplay element thrown in. These give Metro an almost FEAR style angle and my main criticism is that these were not developed further.

That said, the game is a competent, challenging and engrossing eight to ten hour gas masked adventure through some truly memorable areas which I have no hesitation in highly recommending.

My thanks to Nick for the snappy title 😉

STALKER Sale on Steam!

Steam have a rather timely offer given my last post on STALKER 2, buy both STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl (SoC) and Call of Pripyat (CoP) for £6.24 !! Interestingly the offer doesn’t include Clear Sky but that is another story 😉

This is a real bargain and a perfect opportunity to experience these fantastic games, so go and grab your copies.

Remember, to get the most out of Shadow of Chernobyl get the STALKER Complete fan made spruce up mods.

Ah STALKER, we meet again..

STALKER 2 in the works, STALKER 2 in the works, STALKER 2 in the works. … (calmly reclining) and I’m mildly excited about this. 🙂 Not a huge amount is known about the follow-up to the first trilogy of STALKER games yet, the original press release was somewhat short on details. However, we do know that the same studio (GSC) are already working on it and it might use the Crysis engine.

I found the original trilogy to be somewhat of a flawed gem – breathtakingly exciting, compellingly authentic and very engrossing; but sadly each title lacked a certain ‘something’ that ended up detracting from the experience. Luckily a number of talented community members have released various spruce up mods which (especially in the case of Shadow of Chernobyl) really make the games feel MUCH more complete and enjoyable, greatly enhancing what is already a phenomial gaming experience.

If you’ve not played a STALKER game before I can’t recommend enough grabbing a copy of Shadow of Chernobyl (£9.99 currently on Steam) along with the STALKER Complete 2009 fan made spruce up mod and Call of Pripyat (currently £19.99 on Steam or £14.99 if you own either Shadow of Chernobyl (SoC) or Clear Sky). Somewhere between these great titles is pure gaming gold, I really hope GSC find it for STALKER 2. Roll on 2012!

Mediaportal 1.1 is Final(ly released)

I think I am going to give Mediaportal another go, now that 1.1 final has been finally (after so much time and so many release candidates) released. I had been using Mediaportal as my media center software of choice since about 2007 (back in the 0.2.x days) but recently I had been lured away with some of the shinier features of Windows 7 Media Center.

Although overall I have enjoyed the user experience and polish of 7MC, the frustrations and limitations (lack of good plug-ins, local content, themes etc..) continue to mount. There are a lot of things 7MC is simply great at (series record, intelligently recording at another time to deal with timing clashes, Windows integration, four-foot configuration and so on..) but I think I am ready for a bit more freedom again from my media center.

Twitter downtime and flailbots

I am rather surprised at the amount of downtime Twitter has had today – the site is up and responsive, but I’ve not been able to access or update my timeline for at least six twelvetwenty eight(!) hours! Twitter is of course famous (especially in the early days) for downtime but this is stretching credibility given the lack of prior notification.

Looks like the flailbot is here to stay, at least for now.

Update – twenty eight hours into the down time I am really shocked at the lack of acknowledgement of the problem on the Twitter status blog. For what is a mature social media network I’d have expected a better response than this, even if it is ‘we have a serious problem and we are trying to fix it’.

Final Update – well clearly whatever the problem was it was rectified. Oddly enough, as many people I spoke to were affected by this as those that weren’t. Odd.

New XCOM remake in the works

I discovered a rather exciting new UFO: Enemy Unknown remake project a few days ago called UFO: The Two Sides. What makes UFO:TTS  different from previous remakes is that the team are aiming not just on reimplementing the fantastic gameplay mechanics of the original but extending the possibilities with online multiplayer.

Multiplayer remakes of UFO: Enemy Unknown are not new, I remember playing something called XCOM: Gladiators back in the early 2000s (gosh, yes we can now say the ‘two-thousands’ – I refuse to say naughties .. eek), a project that became known as UFO2000 – a fairly well-known and mature open source game. What separates The Two Sides from UFO2000 is simply grandeur, whilst UFO2000 sought to reimplement the turn based element of the game to allow for player vs player gaming, The Two Sides seeks to reimplement the whole game (both geoscape and battlescape) such that it can be played from either the side of the Humans (as in the original) or the Aliens. I’ll let that sink in for a moment. 🙂

The best thing however about this remake is that there are already early downloads available to play with. At the time of writing, version 0.90 was available and, whilst having a few bugs and missing functionality, is still playable and hints at some of the ideas the TTS team have in the pipeline. It has been a while since I have been excited about UFO: Enemy Unknown (or X-COM: UFO Defense as the US chaps call it) but this project has definitely rekindled my interest. I strongly recommend you get over to the UFO: The Two Sides site and check out their progress.

Image credit to the XCOM:TTS site.

Farcry 2 post completion report

So, as I wrote before, I have now finished Farcry 2 on my second attempt. The first time I picked up this game I got bored in about five hours, but to be honest, that was my fault. You see, I was expecting a standard Farcry 1-esque run of the mill fairly open world shooter with clear objectives and some HUD monkey telling me what to do and where to go. What I wasn’t expecting, was this:

Completely open space and complete freedom to explore the world. There is little or no hand holding from a very early stage in the game which both empowers (and certainly in my case) confuses in equal measure at the start. To players not used to going (or unwilling to go) out and have their own adventure, this game quickly can become boring. But those who do get frustrated and stop playing will miss an incredible, but slightly flawed, experience.

The world in Farcry 2 is large and breathtakingly stunning. Ubisoft have done a fantastic job of creating an engine that not only paints the harsh African landscape in its rightful splendor, but also requires no annoying and immersion sucking inter-area load pauses. In fact, this is so well done that it wasn’t until I had played for a few hours did I realise I hadn’t yet seen a load screen. The landscape is also ever-changing, with wild animals roaming, patrols roaring up roads between checkpoints and a beautiful day-night cycle. As such, they few areas of the world the player revisists repeatedly always look and feel different.

The environments range organically from wide open sun bleached deserts to dense thick jungle and vast open water areas. My only minor criticism is that, while the world feels huge, it is possible to drive from one side to the other in around twenty minutes. Despite this, the number of times I stopped simply to look around and take in the scenery really stunned me.

Although there are no RPG character creation elements to Farcry 2, it is such an open game that it allows the player to play in a wide variety of ways. For example, I started off as a bit of a rookie taking potshots with rusty, inadequate weapons. But as I started unlocking equipment, I learned the joy of picking off patrols from afar with my sniper rifle and closing in for the kill with an Uzi. Then there was the unmitigated joy of destroying arms convoys with IEDs and picking off survivors with my green dot scoped M4. I also went through a phase of only attacking at night, creeping upto guards armed only with my machete, possibly using an IED planted on a nearby arms crate as a diversion. Finally, I enjoyed using guided rockets and mortars to soften up enemy strongholds before assaulting with a light machine gun.

Although playing at night did encourage the use of stealth, I was disappointed that the night never seemed to be quite dark enough. It was no where near the ink black darkness of STALKER, a series that really sets the benchmark in this regard.

This is only the tip of the iceberg but one further element I do want to mention is the inclusion of buddies in the game. Buddies are NPCs who (depending on your history with them) will provide side missions that either help or extend main faction quests. But their main lure is as backups – if the player falls from enemy fire and a buddy is available, they can turn up and drag the player out of harms way allowing the wounded player to patch up and either go back for their vehicle and equipment or simply run to safety.

This really raises the bar for NPC characters as far as I am concerned, as does the fact that, occasionally they will genuinely need the help of the player to stay alive. I painstakingly kept each buddy alive throughout the game, although I was pleased and slightly irritated by them towards the end (although I don’t wish to spoil anything for those who have not played the game through yet.)

On the subject of the end of the game however, I felt that, overall the ending was rather poor. Actually there is more to it than that- the story and story telling aspects of this game were poorly presented and, frankly, uninteresting. The player is given one goal when they start Farcry 2 : “Kill the Jackal”. Apart from a few minor references and appearances by this character, he is (just) barely mentioned by the main characters during the story quests. None of the quests even seem to have anything to do with him. Most missions inevitably boiled down to the simple formula of ‘GOTO A, Do Buddy Side Quest, GOTO B, Kill X / Destroy Y’. While this echos what I said about the openness of the experience and gives the player a great deal of freedom to pursue their objectives in a number of different ways, it still gets rather lacklustre after a few times.

Unfortunately, there is no getting around it, the storyline is weak. The player rebounds from one faction to another doing quests which, whilst eventually upping the ante of the conflict, really don’t serve to engage the player in the world or develop the story. What is even more disappointing is that there is no option to pick a side in the conflict or remain neutral.

Frankly, if you are the type of player that just ignores side quests and just goes like a Bull in a China shop towards the main objective – don’t. At least not in this game, otherwise the whole experience will be over very quickly and the story will have been even less satisfying.

This was the first game that made me break my promise to myself of never buying anything laden with SecuROM. In my defense, I didn’t know at the time Farcry 2 came with such an annoying free extra as it is only stated in very small writing at the bottom of the back of the DVD case. That said, as of a recent patch activation and disc checking were removed although I will still have to remember to deactivate my machine when I come to uninstall it or reinstall Windows. As a result, I consider this point rather moot as it serves as an example of how, if a game has to use SecuROM, it can be done without inconveniencing the honest customer base. (Although I really am not a fan of DRM in any shape or form in my games.)

Overall the game is an amazing experience. The story, although poor, acts like a tour guide taking the player around all the noteworthy places in the world. Pyromaniacs will also have a field day as the game has some of the most pretty and satisfying explosions and fire effects of any game I have played before. The so described ‘realistic fire’ of the Dunia engine really is impressive and can be used to great tactical advantage. Sadly, it does feel as though Ubisoft created Farcry 2 as a tech demo to highlight the capabilities of their Dunia engine and simply slapped on a story afterwards rather than the other way around. That said, the beautifully modelled African wilderness resulting from this is so fun to play that I think I can just about forgive them.

All the screenshots I have taken whilst playing Farcry 2 can be found on my Xfire FC2 screenshots page. Although a word of warning – they are in chronological order with the newest (i.e. the end of the game) first so be wary for spoilers.

Surely some things do not need to be said?

Well I finally sat down and finished Farcry 2 (frighteningly I bought it back in 2008) ! I hope to write-up my thoughts shortly (UPDATE – now available), but for now I was struck by the rather redundant nature of this screen at the end of the unskippable (GRR -thanks for that!) credits.

As if anyone who jumps into an SUV or truck in-game will think it is representative of real world performance and handling, sheesh. Clearly from the ‘some one will sue us if we don’t slip this somewhere near the end’ department.

Gasp… an update?

Hello Interwebiverse!

Yes I am still around (as some of you who are following my meanderings on twitter are aware) and am still interested in my blog. Finding free time at the moment is a huge issue for me (just one look at the stack of games in my ‘to-do’ pile speaks to that) but I hope to use my blog as something akin to a more verbatim twitter feed. Twitter has been much easier to post to given the (forced) laconicity of the medium and I have been tweeting fairly regularly for the last few years. Naturally there have been times when I would have wanted to expand what I was tweeting about into a more concise discussion allowing it to coalesce outside of the 160 character limit.

I have formerly made no bones about my aversion to micro blogging (or link blogging for that matter) and this is not where I am leaning. To be honest, I am not entirely sure exactly how this new setup will come together yet, I am looking at the possibility of moving away from a hosted wordpress account to doing something self hosted. Whilst that would give me the opportunity to develop my own (or tweak an existing) CMS system, the problem of maintenance rears its ugly head. Security on the web is paramount the issue of platform is a double-edged sword. Developing a proprietary solution (fun, although likely very time consuming) would prevent off the shelf attacks against known exploits although I do not have enough experience in PHP/MySQL yet to be sufficiently confident in my hardening skills. On the other side of the spectrum, using an off the shelf solution like wordpress would give me the instant bonus of a CMS that I could customise, although I would have to be strict about keeping up with patches and security bulletins for the platform (highlighted by recent history).

So, as you can see, not only am I unsure where / how I am going to take this, I am also unsure of the platform I am going to use. A great start :-).

My interests have evolved and grown a lot in the last couple of years. It goes without saying (as it is my job) but I am very into coding and software development, I regularly write code in C++ and python outside of work now. This presents something else that I need to consider, I would love to write posts about some of this code and make it available for free on here, but I need to figure out how it all fits with the existing content on my blog.

But anyway, before I start rambling, I will be shortly looking into tweaking and starting up writing again. Please bear with me whilst I get everything together. 🙂