Again, long time no see

Hi folks! Sorry for the lengthy pause since the last update, but there were several real life things keeping me busy, as well as me spending time gaming rather than writing about it.

But today, I got some minutes off, so I just keep you informed on what I'm up nowadays.

On the Wii, I'm pretty hooked with the Metroid Prime Trilogy. I never got around to play the first two on the Gamecube, and as part three never got cheaper so I never bought it. It was a gift from the heavens of Nintendo to get a bundle with all of them, plus it was actially 5 Euros cheaper than MP 3 standalone.

Not really much to say about the game though, as I am only one third through with part 1. I can only say I like it. A lot. It's one of those rare games that makes me scribble down notes on rooms so I don't lose track of hidden things I found which are not yet accessible due to not having the proper equipment yet.

I do imagine it quite tedious to regain all of the equipment in each part, so I propably will take a lengthy break between finishing every part.

I haven't touched up on multiplayer, mainly for two reasons: living in a two person household, I lack adversaries, and my girlfriend just doesn't touch anything except Mario Kart Wii. Well, at least gaming wise... cough...

Wich brings me to the deepest gripe I have with MPT: no online multiplayer. Boooo!

On the PC, there are two things keeping me occupied. Firstly, I ran across a 10 Euro Splinter Cell collection, which I couldn't resist buying. Back in the days I only played part one, and have lost the disks since then, so it was a neat opportunity to brush up on Splinter Cell before the fith installment arrives. Right now, I'm about two thirds into part one, so plenty of sneaking to do until I finish it. Review-wise I don't think I have to say much, except that I don't know why I haven't played the Splinter Cell sequels when they were released.

The second game occupying my precious free time was Risen. It's made my the german developer Piranha Bytes. If you know them, Risen won't surprise you as they basically made the same geame thrice already: Gothic, Gothic 2 and Gothic 3.

If you don't know the series: They're RPGs without character creation. You start as a nameless generic char and decide if he will become a mage, a fighter, thief, hunter, alchemist, smith, whatever while playing. In all three games, the story telling is rather a weak point. But the huge believable worlds suck in anyone with a tiny bit of a need to explore. You have to beware though, as none of these games take you by the hand and guide you through it. You're pretty much on your own. And, at least at the beginning, even the lowliest standard monsters are a serious threat. So you better beef up before venturing too far from settlements. Which makes the games quite hard, especially during the first few levels, but ultimately, I like that approach more than level scaling like in Oblivion.

Little surprise that the only superficial difference between Risen and Gothic is that the again nameless hero has no goatee.

Beneath the surface there are some differences though. The one that gets most obvious is the scale. While Gothic 2 and especially 3 offered huge freely accessible landscapes, Risen only features a small island, not much larger than the prison in Gothic one. Also, while you could sink hundreds of hours into gothic 2 and 3 before finally beating it, Risen only takes twenty hours to finish.

While that sounds short, unless you compare it to FPS games, the small scale was the main reason Risen isn't such a bugfest as Gothic 3. Also, you spend less time wandering through vast, yet beautiful, landscapes just to get on with the quests. These two things make for a better paced gameplay and actually don't harm the overall game.

So I can definately recommend it to anyone who's into rather hardcore RPGs.

The next stage

Just a short update, as I haven't been following much recently.

After a discovery of a new track by a community member at a BTCC race, Scawen Roberts announced it officially: Rockingham will be the first real track in LfS. And it will be the first S3 content to be relased, along with another new car, which is yet to be disclosed.

I guess it's still at least a year off though, judging by the Scirocco, which should've come out back before Christmas 08.

The Final Frontier

Recently, I stumbled upon Naev via one of the forums I frequent. It's basic features are things I do very much like: 1) Space exploration and trade? Check. 2) Realistic Physics (on a 2d plane)? Check. 3) Open source? Check.

I played it for a few hours and I suck at it. It made me long for a more accessible and immerging experience. So I opted for the good old Darkstar One. I chose it over X3 this time, because I always get put down by the huge micromanagement neccessary later in game. I still love it, but I missed out on DSO back then, and I thought now was the perfect time to fill this gap.

It has a few quite nice touches like customizing your ship to your tastes, a better story than the X series and it feels a tad less generic. Stil, there are some quirks, like only having your one ship, dispite all the customizability, and it's impossible to run on Vista without some illegal measures, especially since the developers download server for all the patches and fixes doesn't exist anymore.

Playing this space opera, it made me wonder. Why did the genre die out, except for open source and fan made games, like Vega Strike or various releases for the Freespace 2 Source Code Project? Back in my time, those kind of games were bets selling titles, and especially Chris Roberts' Wing Commander series was pushing videogames forward in general, with their 3D technologies requiring the newest hardware to run, and hollywood like story telling.

Just imagine the beauty of space with todays technology, both graphically and physically. Instead of rendering a detailed world, all the processing power could be used to render vast armadas and highly detailed ships.

But it made me also wonder why all the space games still use the very ancient hitpoint mechanic. Thinking of Il2 especially, as the space dogfights play similar to WW2 dogfights, I imagine that a realistic damage system would be awesome.

You wouldn't just shoot your enemy to zero HP, but you'd have to hit vital parts to down him. The ships would have to have all those components and subsystems inside them so you could hit and damage or destroy them, with realistic effects.

Of course, realism in space games can only go that far to be annoying. While newtonian physics might work, having no sounds seems dull (well, no sounds as long as there are no particles effecting your ship... I guess you would "hear" an explosion IRL if particles hit your ship.. and you'd still hear all your own systems and weapons). Also realistic speeds wouldn't really work. Ships speeding at several thousands miles per hour would just speed past each other, eradicating the beloved dogfights.

Well, if any game developer is interested, just contact me, I'm full of great ideas for a game I'd like to play. Honestly!

Knighthood

Yesterday, I got accepted into the Mount & Blade Warband Multiplayer Beta.

There was no NDA to be agreed to, no serial, just a plain and simple download link for the installer. Even the official beta discussion forums are open for everyone to see, so I guess it doesn't do any harm to discuss it here a little.

The basics are simple: Warband is the upcoming addon to Taleworlds' great Mount & Blade. Its main features are slightly updated graphics and more importantly a multiplayer option. The beta being solely a multiplayer beta, I don't really know how and if the single player aspect has been altered or improved.

After a first few rounds, I can say it's going to be awesome. At least if the few remaining quirks are gone by the release date, which, by the way, isn't announced yet.

Not surprisingly, the multiplayer ditches the global aspect of the game, so you won't lead an army around the fictional medieval continent of Calradia, there are no taverns to visit, no tournaments to be fought, no quests to be fulfilled. It's just two completely player based armies fighting for survival.

The game mechanics themselves aren't really that spectacular. First, you choose a faction, then a role, and after that, you can spend gold you earn by killing the opposition, winning, and at best even surviving a round to beef up your equipment. Once a team is obliterated, a new round starts.

So far so good, but thankfully TW didn't just make two same teams with different colour schemes. The server determines the factions from the pool of kingdoms already in Mount & Blade, and the factions have each very unique and special troop types. The Nords for example are mainly an infantry faction, while the Khergit Khanate features only cavalry, with the other kingdoms sporting a mix with focus on pikes, armored knights or crossbow archers, et cetera.

While it's obviously a balancing nightmare, it does have it's merits: No map plays the same, as each faction needs to develop a distinct strategy against any enemy on any map. While a horde of Khergit Horse Archers might sweep the floor with Nord Berserkers on sweeping, open hillsides, the outcome changes drastically if the map features a city. Even one team falling back to a farm house can turn the tides of a battle greatly. I really do love that concept, especially since I am no fan of artificial balancing. I prefer if a team has to do with what it has got and make the best out of it.

Speaking of balance, the basic troops pretty much act as they would in real life: archers kill melee infantry with no problems if they don't let them get near, but are usually wiped out by an onslaught of cavalry. Cavalry on the other hand is pretty dead if it tries to storm a group of pikers. The pikers stand no chance against ordinary infantry though. Then there are hybrid troops like Horse Archers who fill in some gaps. Other gaps can be closed via your equipment purchase, so you can buy some javelins for example to give your pike wielding soldier a means to attack from a distance.

Also, player skill can overcome the class differences. A talented piker for example can skewer almost anyone who's approaching from the front.

The small community of Mount & Blade has it's advantages. Even on public play, there are serious tries to create some tactics, which is especially great if they work. I can't wait for real competitive play between clans. That's where Warband should really shine.

And for those of you who haven't heard of Mount & Blade yet, here's a brief description. It's made from a small turkish team (that has been internationalized a bit) and it is the most realistic medieval RPG/Action Combat/Sandbox game. It looks dated but still nice, which means it runs on older rigs just as well. It has some bugs, which can be overlooked if you share both my love for realism and my kind of generosity towards small independent developers, and best of all, it's open to mods and there are tons of great mods out there for for it.

Go check it out. It's available in stores and via Steam. And there's a demo which let's you play until you hit level 6 or 7, so plenty of time to judge it.

Return to Wolgograd

On the Homepage of the german magazine Gamestar, there surfaced some info on Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad. Some of you might know that I dearly loved RO back from whet it was the tiny little version 1.2 Beta as a mod of Unreal Tournament 2003, up to when it got released on retail.

The info is as follows:

*There will be a SP campaign for both russians and germans, and it will be beatable in coop. Coop is also available in a skirmish mode.

*You will be able to position troops with a simply user interface.

*Heroes: You can become an online hero. Only hero players have access to the bets and rarest weapons, plus they boost the moral troops on their own side while causing fear on the opposite side.

*All earned medals and perks will be available to check by players in game.

*There will be a first person cover system.

While it has some features that I do like, like the SP campaign from both the Russian and the German perspective, Coop play, and finally a First Person Cover System. (All caps on purpose, for more info, see the very first post on this blog.)

But other than that, It too much sounds like CoD4 for my tastes. I think it's especially worrying that there isn't a single word on how RO is more realistic than any other game out there. At least on infantry level.

Well, these news do put me in a great position though. RO2:HoS just became a very unlikely candidate to dissapoint me. Sadly, that's because my expectations plummeted.

Good Exercise

Sorry for the lengthy absence, but I was preoccupied with loads of work. Sadly, none of it involved any payment. To be more precise, I helped my girlfriend's brother, who shared the flat with her, to move out, I helped a friend of my girlfriend to move, and I moved in at my girlfriend. That meant a lot of carrying heavy stuff, a lot of assembling furniture and a lot of cursing. No surprise then that I won't touch Sokoban for a while now.

My moving in came to a premature halt, as we discovered a huge mold patch on the wall in her brother's room, which is going to be my office with a guest couch. So we're not done yet.

But now back to gaming: Not having much time at hand, and starting to get used to physical exhaustion, and also because I really craved to try out WiiMotion Plus, my new gaming fix is Wii Sports Resort. Actually, I wanted Grand Slam Tennis, but I chose not to get that due to various reasons:

Firstly, with Wii Sports and Mario Power Tennis, my girlfirend would've given me the look if I'd brought home another tennis game.

Secondly, my girlfriend isn't much of a gamer. The only thing she plays is Mario Kart Wii. Quite excessively. So there's a potential to turn her into a gamer, but it has yet to be tapped. So I thought going for something versatile would help.

Now let's discuss the game. Having twelve sports tripled the offer of Wii's standard title Wii Sports. Now I won't review every game, especially as most of them come in up to three different flavours, making mastering them all quite an effort, even more so if you're also after the Stamps, which, according to the IGN guide, can be a PITA to get.

There are two sports which shine brightly, because of their visceral and very satisfying gameplay: Swordsplay and Archery. I dare say those two alone are worth the actually quite humble price Tag of 45€, as the package contains the game and one WiiMotion Plus addon. Having played those two modes excessively, I can't wait for a medieval action or RPG game to use those controls. I'm thinking along the lines of Die by the Sword or Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. Could be a Samurai or Ninja themed japanese game too.

The three games more or less directly ported from the original Wii Sports - golf, bowling and table tennis play nicely as usual, allthough I found the original bowling a tad more intuitive.

Which brings us to the downsides already: the other sports range from unremarkable to annoyingly gimmicky, and I'd stay clear from the biking and air play modes. They simply are not fun.

Especially flying planes is not very well thought through: you ought to hold the WiiMote like a toy plane, meaning at it's "belly", but you need to press the buttons on top of the controller to play it. I'd rather had the WiiMote upright as flightstick and the nunchuck as a throttle control. That might have upped the complexity a lot, but would've been much more intuitive.

Other things I don't like: Most games make you play in turns, which makes four player games quite lengthy and tedious. Of course this allows you to multiplay without having 4 WiiMotion Plus controllers (Which add up to 85€ each, if you have to buy the WiiMote, WiiMotion Plus and a Nunchuck), but it makes mulitplay less frantic and fun.

Also, limiting table tennis and dogfighting to two players takes a lot of possible fun away.

The worst part is that there is no online multiplayer possibility. It would make the game much more interesting, especially if there isn't someone else around if you want to play.

Another annyong point is having to unlock most of the games and features. I know that's not a Wii Sports Ressort specific problem, but still, I can't understand it. Either you don't have every game at your disposal, or, because you already unlocked everything, you're considerably better than anyone you play with, making them not wanting to play with you.

Of course, in Wii Sports Ressort you can unlock most things in multiplayer mode, but still the problem somewhat exists, as you don't always want to wait for a friend to unlock a game mode you want to try out.

On other news, I can highly recommend Neotokyo is a great TC for the Source Engine. It has an Akira or Ghost in the Shell like setting, and gameplaywise it strongly resembles the good old Frontline Force for HL, which I really liked back in those days. I'd only whish they'd go down more towards the anime looks, which would make the game more stylish and somewhat mask some realism problems, like having a generic screen zoom rather than using the beautifully modeled optical sights on the guns.

And lastly, RO:Ladder has announced the next Red Orchestra Nations Cup. We're trying to field a team, so if you're Austrian and interested, get in touch with me, or sign up on roladder and reply in the topic on the forums there.

Migration

Now I know what most of you think: the blog's migrating to somewhere else. But that's wrong, I am physically migrating. Now, as a part of a lengthy process, I brought my gaming and work PC to my girlfriends place, where I actually do spend most of my time. So it's one very significant step of moving in together officially, which should be completed by the end of the month. Whish us luck.

And now let's get back to gaming related topics: Angband got released on the Android Market recently, and I'm hooked. It's a concept that's so simple , yet still so deep and realistic that I truly long for something similar with a technically modern approach, without losing the initial depth of it. Also, it made me play Iter Vehemens ad Necem again, whenever I'm near a PC. Yay for rogue-likes.

Just one small warning to those of you who want to download the app for their Android phones: It needs a keyboard, so you're pretty much screwed if you went for a HTC Magic rather than the good old HTC T-Mobile G1.