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My Rogue Elf (below) uses swords and crossbows, but the game’s starting to get them mixed up. It’ll probably right itself if I ever get a new crossbow, which seems like a good reason not to.  You’re stuck with the surname ‘Tabris’, so I eventually went with ‘Altris’ for my first.If you’re playing it this weekend too, which Origin did you pick? Was it any good? The Female City Elf story is quite compelling, which is actually sort of a problem: the main story is nothing like as involving. I keep feeling like this is a slightly dreary sidequest I have to do before I can get back to the cause that interests me, so I’m feigning concern for the fate of the world.  Despite the weird lack of good shots before release, it’s actually super photogenic thanks to a remove-interface key.I’m enjoying it mechanically, but the five or so hours I’ve played are a textbook example of BioWare trying so hard to be epic that they’ve failed to make it personal. I hope and half expect that something I give a shit about will happen soon. Update: Just discovered you can not only see my character online, but read a bullet point summary of all the plot developments and major decisions I’ve made (spoilers for up to level 9) – they’re even time stamped. Scary.  I don’t want to talk about this quest. | ||
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MartinJ: Damn - I sold my wedding dress, otherwise I'd totally to that as well. He's already assigned on campfire-guarding duty, though, along with the Chantry rogue girl. (Since I'm a rogue myself so she doesn't make much sense as a tag-along)
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More Just Cause
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SAeN: Because of this picture and many of your grappling hook themed enthusiasm, I will definately be buying this game!!
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The quoted damage for weapons with elemental effects is misleading.
Repeater Pistols aren’t worth it.
Grenade mods of the same type can do different amounts of damage.
Don’t join a game with a much higher level player than you.
There are two types of combat rifles.
Inventory expansions and elemental artifacts just get dumped in your inventory.
It’s really cheap to completely re-spec your character.
Class mods only boost skills you already have.
Once you kill someone called Flynt, you can pretty much stop playing.  This guy. This guy here. | ||
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The_Noob: Not a member of this forum, but Borderlands pwns :)
On the Repeater Pistol thing... Mordecai with his 50% + 500% special attack skill (forgot name) + a repeater with 200% melee damage, why would you need anything else?? you can hit 99,999 with this combo if you are slightly above the enemy level OR if u hit criticals :) | ||||
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Setting aside that Valve have gone back to the bad old days of seeming as surprised as anyone when their stated release dates come and go without event, now that Left 4 Dead 2 is playable I sort of wish it wasn’t. I stayed up late for the grand, long delayed unlocking on Steam because it’s a Valve game, and Valve games are automatically Events. That’s partly because of the communal sense of excitement as they unlock all over the world at precisely the same time, and partly because they’ve established a level of quality that almost guarantees I’m going to love anything they deem worthy of release. It’s why they can get away with restricting access to this demo, for the time being, to people who’ve already paid for the game.
I don’t doubt Left 4 Dead 2 will be obscenely successful, and I don’t doubt that the full game is far better than what they’ve put out here. But this is the first time since the advent of Steam that getting to play a new Valve game has been a disappointment. It’s the first thing they’ve released in that time that doesn’t have that special Valve feeling: the sense that this is not only something new, but something exquisitely well crafted in every aspect. It’s probably not a coincidence that it’s also the first thing in that time that they’ve developed quickly. I loved Left 4 Dead’s structure and systems and look, but was never entirely satisfied with its rattly, insubstantial feel. My hope was that Left 4 Dead 2′s dismemberment and frying pans would fix that.
Instead, dismemberment adds little – I wouldn’t notice if a server had it disabled. Melee weapons are unconvincing: swift swipes that pass through everything, and vague staggers from the zombies inconsistent with the hit. And the new guns, which is basically all of them, are worse than the old ones. Almost comically so, in some cases. I had the urge to video some of their puny rasps and feeble gibbers to demonstrate how wrong they’d gone, until I reminded myself everyone would see them. It’s also truly shoddy, in its current state. After the three hour delay, the first thing that happened on starting it was a command prompt that closed itself. When it finally got as far as the highly cinematic intro, it quit to desktop at the end to announce “Installation complete!”. In-game, the matchmaking ditched me on a 200 ping server at the very end of a map. The engine locked up every few steps for five to ten seconds, looping sounds angrily until I switched to windowed mode. Melee hits frequently make no noise, several zombies forgot where ladders ended and kept climbing into the sky, my character got stuck with his hand protruding gropily as if he longed only to fondle the hordes – as you’ve seen – and then the game crashed my PC completely.
I’d love to say whether the disgusting new infected types add anything to the actual mechanics of the game, but since they’ve repeated the bizarre mistake of the original Left 4 Dead demo and only included half a campaign, there’s nothing approaching a finale to judge them on. In regular play, all three new types seem trivial to deal with – as of course are Hunters, Smokers and Boomers at that stage in a campaign. As I said before, this is as stupid and obtuse as releasing half of a song to promote an album – it doesn’t condemn the full experience, but it marks it with the sour taste of irritation and anticlimax while completely failing to communicate its presumed strengths. I am baffled by what they’re doing with this. What they show here doesn’t suggest a bad game by any means, but it’s making it look like a clumsy step in the wrong direction. I’m just going to write as much of it off as lag, rushing and a terrible choice of demo as I possibly can.
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Floodkiller: Yes, same as getting the Stashe Whacker achievement.
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I don’t think I wrote about it here much at the time, because it wasn’t publicly out when I was really into it, but Just Cause is one of my favourite games. Open world games don’t seem to have much trouble making a great open world – most of the big ones like Oblivion, Far Cry 2, World of Warcraft and GTA IV are all wonderful places I want to spend time in. The difference with the islands of Just Cause, which are as pretty and inviting as any of those, is that you can fling yourself at them.
I’d just finished a mission, one which left me exhausted and bleeding on a beach miles from anywhere. The next place I needed to get to was on another island entirely, and there were no boats or choppers nearby to hijack. So I called the agency to have them drop me off a motorbike. When it came, airdropped unceremoniously in a heavy wooden crate, I ignored it and fired my grappling hook at the agency helicopter that had dropped it off. It’s one of the only things in the game you can’t hijack, but there’s no rule against hanging on to it. I reeled in and took hold of a tailfin as it thundered off – in completely the wrong direction. It lifted me all the way over an inland mountain range, through a lashing storm, up through the cloud layer (the clouds you see in the sky can all be reached), and into a grey limbo where the island below was just a dark smudge. I let go.
Just Cause is the only game I know with a key for “I’m not falling fast enough, make me fall faster”. The heights involved are so sickeningly vast that even freefall can take minutes to drop you. So you can make yourself more streamlined, steer with your body, and choose when to open – and when to suck back in – your parachute. Mixing them to toy with your momentum vector gives you a wonderful freedom in that massive cold space, and I had so much height to work with that I was able to steer all the way back to the coast, then over it, then to the next island, and finally to my objective. I like to come in fast: chute open, but angled downwards to drop through the air; then pull up at the very last minute and spin 180, toes whipping the shrubs. Finally I cut the chute and land in a commando roll, stand up and punch my boss in the face. This may be why he goes AWOL in the sequel.
People really didn’t take to it, not even most reviewers. EGM complained that it was ‘unrealistic’ (…), Eurogamer said the terrain was ‘uninteresting’ (!), and GameSpy claimed Saints Row 1 gave it ‘a wedgie in graphics’ (;). Other than the glitches (which seem minor on PC) and the rudimentary shooting (which would be a problem if it were a hard or large part of the game), most complaints seem to stem from the assumption that open world games are obliged to provide five to twenty times as much hand-scripted content as linear ones. Certainly some of them do, but the sense of entitlement baffles me. They don’t cost more, and they seem if anything to be more replayable rather than less.
I’m writing this because I’ve stopped playing it, and I’ve stopped playing it because a mission was pissing me off. It has some sublime ones, and the last may be the greatest final mission I’ve ever played, but quite a few fall into obvious scripting pitfalls. My excitement about the sequel due next year is getting me thinking about what precisely they need to fix, because it’s not the weird quibbles its press critics decided to mewl about. Infinite helicopters. No good can come of infinite helicopters. If I try to concentrate on the objective, I’m constantly being shot at or rocketed and thinking “Fuck, I need to stop concentrating on the objective and do something about these infinite helicopters!” If I’m concentrating on the infinite helicopters, even perfect one-shot kills with a stash of limitless ammo doesn’t let me take them down faster than new ones arrive. Worse, it cheapens the value and significance of the most sacred bit of military hardware. Health. When fighting infantry, a trivial task for which you rarely need healing, healthpacks spew from them like medicinal pinatas. When fighting vehicles, which rip through your health mercilessly, there’s no reprieve. In multi-stage missions getting too worn down on an early objective can leave you incapable of proceeding from the checkpoint immediately afterwards. The risible regeneration system takes nearly a minute of utter tranquility to restore a useless 10% of your total health, and will never nudge it beyond that. Get on the gun, Rico! Hardly the only game to be guilty of these sections, but seriously, they’re so easy to avoid. It’d be great fun to grab a mounted weapon and tear through a huge army of pursuers if it were an option. When it’s forced, and the pursuers triggered by stage queues to show up in a convenient place for you to shoot, it starts to feel too much like a fairground ride. Get the truck to the waypoint in one piece! No.
I’ll probably be back here adding to this list once I’ve got a few missions further in, but for the most part I’m having even more fun than I remember. If you’re tempted, it’s £9 on Steam and a Universal Resolution Changer lets you run it widescreen.
More Just Cause
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Pentadact: If, like me, there's you get stuck on some bullshit bit and just want to see the rest of the mission, there's a Trainer here that works with the Steam version that binds F1 to god mode: http://www.cheathapp... ...p?id=21645
There don't seem to be any ordinary cheats. | ||||
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I didn’t realise the recent Red Faction game was by the guys who made the excellent Saints Row 2, and I didn’t even realise Saints Row 2 was by the original Red Faction guys. I just rather childishly thought “Ugh, Red Faction” and ignored it. I didn’t expect it to be the first game to claim freeform destructibility and not actually be lying. And I certainly didn’t expect it to be one of my favourite games this year. Anyway, here’s a thing that happened: I’m sandwiched between a GDF building and the compound’s armoured walls, angry APCs swarming the roads outside, when the crash happens. The cab of a large cargo truck bursts through the thick black wall in a fountain of rubble, run off the road by the careening GDF cars. The civilian driver bolts out, giving me both an opening and a free vehicle to drive through it. I clamber in and reverse out. There’s already a similar truck parked in the garage back at the rebel base when I arrive, and I’m not entirely sure my heavier number is going to fit. I decide to find out full speed, so I not only crash headfirst into the other truck, but actually drive up its crumpled chassis and punch through the roof of the garage.
I flop limply out of the driver side door onto what remains of the roof, pick myself up and assess the damage. I figure I can make it slightly less obvious if I can just push my truck back down through ceiling, so I start pounding on its roof with my sledgehammer. When the blast clears, I’m on a rock twenty meters away, black smoke billowing up from where the garage used to be. There’s a second detonation as the fire reaches the truck below, and the last few struts and girders clank to the floor. I back quietly away and talk to my boss. I’ve unlocked something called The Grinder, so main plot be damned, I’m spending my salvage on making one of those. I have a little left over to buy the ability to teleport to any safehouse, so I zip to the furthest one to try it out. It’s like a different planet, closer to Cumbria than Mars. It’s green, for one thing, and the cars are all differenty. One is a beautifully idealised designer vision of a future-car, impractically low, wide and sleek. I love it so much that I run directly towards it, am hit in the shins by a hubless hoverwheel, and somersault onto my back, beaming. I get up and hijack it – the doors open upwards! Of course they do! – and its one careful owner just says “Good luck!”
I speed off across the Martian countryside to the hostage rescue mission I picked up on arrival. The setting turns out to be a municipal building across a huge open plaza, and there’s a taxi in the parking lot so cool that I’m going to have to come back to admiring it later or no-one’s gonna get rescued today.
The guards let me stroll all the way up to the building itself before they get angry, at which point I finally try the Grinder on a live target. It charges for a second and then FOOSH! A razorblade the size of a dinnerplate has buried itself in the guard’s duodenum. Holy shit! I’m keeping this.
The Grinder swiftly clears out the ground floor – I can take little credit – but no hostages; they must be upstairs. FOOSH! One guard staggers back through a first-floor window with a blade in his diaphgragm. I have time to untie one of the three hostages before FOOSH! Another guard crashes over a balcony into the foyer, landing face-first on the razor in his skull. This is brilliant. This is every sci-fi fantasy I’ve ever had. FOOSH! A guard tries to high-kick me and finds a foreign object the size of an LP in her thigh.
Outside is an army, which I instinctively try to electrocute with the Arc-Welder before realising we’re going to have to double back. I hammer out a new backdoor to the building and lead my charges through the hole, on a painful dash to the cover of the next brick wall. FOOSH! FOOSH! FOOSH! I can’t razorblade them all, but they’re so pervasive that even in the quiet shade of a cafe I have to cut a few down to buy us a moment’s peace.
My friends make it round the quiet corner one by one, but the third girl lingers too long at the threshold to take pot-shots at the encroaching squadrons, and she’s felled. The survivors need no cajoling, we scarper for the carpark almost in unison. On arrival, we have a problem: futuro-car’s a two-seater. No wonder that bastard said ‘good luck’.
The taxi! It’s doors are portholes how cool is that? Once we’ve all climbed in, the discs of glass slide back into place and I speed off in a light drizzle of gunfire, my two fares looking completely unmoved by our plight. I’m having the time of my life.
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Caleb: Ghaa, looks very sweet. Damn my shitty computer limiting me in game choices! (Still, at least Torchlight and TF2 work fine)
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 Restaurant at London Heathrow misunderstands the relationship between round pegs and square holes with their Asian menu.
I took so many photos of the obscene food we ate that I put them all in a separate set. Part of me wants to review them. The other New York ones are here. | ||
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Pod: "This is where you start in Deus Ex."
That's exactly what I thought, too. APT. | ||||
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James was taken offline last week by my hosts, BlueHost, because something was spamming my database of posts incredibly rapidly with incredibly demanding data requests. It was using up so much CPU on the server that it was slowing down every other site it hosts. I was in New York meeting a nervous walrus at the time, so I couldn’t do much about it. Now that I’m back I’ve looked into it, done some maintenance, taken some precautions, and asked them to put it back online. The upshot is that it seems to be fixed for the time being, but I’m going to have to keep a very close eye on it for a while. If it goes down again, I’ll post updates on Twitter here. If you’re interested in the technical specifics, here’s what I found:
Thanks for sticking around.
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Chris R: Glad you're back up. Was missing the great articles you write!
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