Except there wasn’t Total War.

Don’t worry, this will be short.

Gotham City Impostors (Trial Mode)

First we get a very compelling and amusing intro movie where the game’s general theme is revealed. Unsurprisingly, it appears lots of people are showing up as Gotham City characters after the disappearance of the genuine article. Unlike their real counterparts, their outfits are cheap, and their equipment substandard and involving more weapons and explosives than they probably should. All the little screens are arty and cute. Two pages of legal agreements later, it asks me to create an ID. Yes, another one, your EA / Origin one won’t work. It allows you to skip for the demo. Then asks if you are really, really sure. Then warns you about an autosave. Play Now, Team Deathmatch. Asks if I want to play the tutorial first. I said no, it made me do a tutorial. With two screens of text centered and small in the middle of the screen. Searching for group.

Then it couldn’t connect.

Went through it all again, connected, now have to wait 30 seconds. Then another 10. Then a loading screen. Then a loadout select screen. Have you noticed a pattern forming yet? Finally, after agreeing to a two-page contract and getting a tutorial after asking for no tutorial, we’re finally, finally in the game!

It’s a shooter.

Turned off in disgust. Might be a perfectly good shooter, but sometimes, things aren’t worth it.

Syndicate (2012)

Both of the older Syndicate games were very good, the idea being a tactical management of your agents whom you can upgrade and buy new weaponry for wander around cities doing stuff to enemy corporations, or the enemy faction in the sequel Syndicate Wars. The games were wonderfully dystopian cyberpunk affairs back before everything became steampunk instead. Gameplay was divided into two main screens where you’d either play your game, or do upgrade stuff and get new missions. It had an interesting system where you’d direct up to four agents at once from a top-down perspective, and still managed to make the transition into 3D well.

Syndicate (2012) on the other hand …

… is a shooter.

I didn’t have to go through a dozen screens to get to it though, that’s something, right? The sad thing is that it still has more to do with Syndicate than the XCOM shooter has to do with X-COM.

You may have noticed that at this stage in my gaming, I have developed a general malaise.

Asura’s Wrath

I have a certain reputation for defending the use of quick-time events in games, so long as they’re done right. For example, you should get a little warning, failing a few should neither be the end of the world, or an excuse to make you do the entire sequence again – especially for long sequences. I have jumped to many a game’s defence over accusations that the game is nothing other than a sequence of quick-time events. Many arguments spring to mind. That Rock Band is one huge quick-time event, that most games have quick-time events, but they simply pretend they aren’t, and that most games have events that can be described as quick-time events anyway, (push left stick left to go left!).

Asura’s Wrath isn’t just one long sequence of quick-time events. It’s also a bit Dragon Ball Z, awkward to control, shooty, and, ugh, you know, I couldn’t be bothered to finish this one either.

It took them six years.

Everyone clap slowly.

This isn’t going to be a complaint about that shop, they were great, it’s the backup bit that’s important.

I get the PS3 home, try it out and it works absolutely fine, but I think, you know, since I’ve taken the backup, and I haven’t for a while, I’ll do a restore. I tend to keep a lot of data on the PS3 and I figure at this point with it getting a lot of use at nearish full capacity, it’s probably pretty fragmented. A restore should do the trick since it formats the hard disk first.

I wish I hadn’t. Got to 66%, stayed there. Tried again, got to 66%, stayed there. Think about that though, this isn’t a try something quickly type situation. These backup cycles take a good four hours. I generally do them overnight. Okay, perhaps it’s having a problem reading from the external drive. So I copy the backup data to a local drive. Well, no write problems to the computer then. Once again, this copying process isn’t fast, this is another two hours. Just to make sure I’ll copy the data from the external to a Windows OS too, to copy back onto the backup medium after a native FAT32, maybe that’ll help. Ah, the backup’s partition is still ntfs, that could be it, maybe some incompatibility having a FAT filesystem on an ntfs partition, although it backed up without errors and copied without them, but no need to risk it. Oo, and partition along cylinder boundaries, just to be on the safe side. Of course, Windows doesn’t let you format drives over a certain (far too small size), so I’ll stick with Linux and use gparted instead.

Still gets to 66% and then no further. I hear looping-read noises from the external hard drive. Hmm, maybe it’s failing to write to the PS3 rather than failing to read from the external backup drive. Let’s make sure. First of all, I’ll repartition the external once again, make it the first partition, along cylinder boundaries, and format that. Normally I’d try different devices, but this is, like the drive in the PS3, quite big and so the only one I have. Then, since I don’t have another laptop hard drive of the same capacity, I’ll just do a full (nine hour!) format of the PS3 hard drive to make sure it doesn’t have any errors on the disk either. It’s a while before I do this now. You see, all this had taken about three days. In the meantime, I’d gotten a new game I wanted to play, which was partially the reason I sent off the Playstation to be repaired in the first place. So between all this, I’m playing the game and saving the save. Format completes with no problem.

I had developed a plan.

When the partial restore is as complete as it can be, I can simply cancel the restore process and keep at least the 66% of data which I used to have, then I can hopefully redownload the rest. I mean, is there an order used when backup and restore are used? Does it prioritise data? For example, if I were designing this application, I would make sure saves are recorded first of all, they’re important, what’s next important? Well, probably all the rest of the user’s data after that, they might not be able to get it back, then DLC, that’s a pain to download, then the most updated game data, so they don’t have to re-download massive patches, and so-on. I suspect it might at least do saves first and then everything else chronologically So I’ll lose 34% of my data, but hopefully the least important part. After that, I can delete a bunch of data that I don’t really need (smaller backup sets seem more reliable), backup to a different backup set, and then restore from that just to make sure there’s no corruption from doing a restore and then having it fail. That way I still have the original backup, just in case.

Then when I do the last restore it gets to 90%.

Is that a good thing? Quite possibly. I’m not sure. It certainly makes me wonder what to do next. Why did it crash? Will it crash if I do it again? Why did it get further this time? Did it actually stop at 90%, or was it just the display crashing, I mean, I could still hear sound as of moving a cursor? I don’t want to lose the 90% to only get 66% again.

Many of these problems could have been resolved by simply having a better backup / restore program, and that thing that Sony isn’t very good at doing, documenting its features. Then I wouldn’t have to worry how the backup process works, I could just go an read the documentation. I’m not even talking about shockingly hard things, just the stuff we’d expect from DOS back in the early days of the home PC.

Abort, Retry, Fail?

I’d rather lose a single file of a backup than 33% of it due to the lack of a fail-over function.

There are some arguments for having a very feature-sparse backup and restore, but since Sony stopped storing the entirety of the firmware in flash memory, instead placing some of it on the hard drive, it has become somewhat less of a concern.

In the meantime, it’s good to have the Playstation up and running again.

As most people are saying, they do seem to have recognised the linearity of the previous game which is a good thing. The demo was full of little sidequests, optional paths, more people to talk to, even a shop, etc. I’m glad to see that they haven’t listened to all the criticism though, and the combat system remains intact.

The ATB system seems to have come out unscathed

FF1-6: Played these, but honestly, so long ago, they’ve kind of merged into one another in my memory. I haven’t felt any major compulsion to replay them. Sometimes even very good games of the past just don’t age well.
FF7: Still awesome, there was something special about this one, and it isn’t rose-tinted spectacles since I enjoy this game now as well. I suspect it’s because it was the first one to be on proper 3D hardware and have a longer development time.
FF8: Interesting system, but with too many flaws for me to enjoy, ended up not finishing it. Disliked living in the ridiculously colourful, stomach-churning idyllic setting and going to school, last boss wanted to Kompress time and delete Rinoa. It was never explained why this was a bad thing.
FF9: Back to how it should be, although I enjoyed this less than 7.
FF10: OH GOD WHAT HAVE YOU DONE. Awful, awful game in almost every way, whilst some characters were redeeming, Wakka and Tidus certainly were not. Overly idyllic world, guide mandatory to figure out the one single method of killing certain enemies in the game (dark aeons for example). Put me off Final Fantasy enough that it was only when 13 came around did I play another one all the way through. I had a go of 12, but it just never caught my imagination like even 9 managed to easily.

Here’s the thing. Final Fantasy 13 was, in my humble opinion, a massive, massive leap forward for the Final Fantasy games, not the step backwards that some people (well after release at least – most critic reviews at release rate the game very, very highly) thought it was, probably by comparing it to the classics rather than the games it is closer to. Compared to FF10, massive step forward. Even the cinematic quick time sequences are done tastefully (i.e. warns you when they’re coming, doesn’t over-punish you for missing some, no repetition).

Final Fantasy 13-2's Quick-Time Events are well handled and don't suffer from the problems most often cited

Final Fantasy 13 – 2 apparently fixes most of the problems with 13 – in fact, so much have they reacted against the linearity of 13, that they’ve made the game involve deterministic time travel. Yet it is still being rather unfairly dismissed.

Just a couple of notes here at the end. Something that ruined the post-game portion of Final Fantasy 13 for me was the random number generator. A quick hint to developers, players get frustrated if your item has a 5% chance of popping and they still haven’t gotten the item after 50 tries whilst wearing items that make it more likely a rare item will pop. Here’s a solution, make it so that there is also a counter so they get it automatically after a certain number of tries. For example, say an item has a 1 in 20 chance of popping, it should pop automatically after 40. Random chance can drive games, but there is a very small chance that we’ll never actually get the item, so instead can drive us insane. The other thing is that isn’t it strange how the graphics don’t seem so impressive anymore, but then, in the meantime we’ve had LA Noire and Heavy Rain.

No, I don’t mean trophies, it will have those, hopefully reasonable ones. Nor do I mean the abundance of extra outfits you can open up by entering codes. I’m talking about the one thing missing from the PC version.

The few extra scenarios and the extra enemies that were opened up by the presence of a PS2 save from Silent Hill 2 when you loaded up Silent Hill 3. Like the scene with Heather and the wallet, or at home with the mail boxes (no letters from any dead wives).

It’s a shame, that sort of thing seems to have rather died out, but was always nice. I hope it’s present.

Amy was intended to be hard with few checkpoints.

Here’s their statement from their Facebook page:

Hi all,

Today is the official release day of the PSN version in the US and we wanted to take this opportunity to come back to you. As many of you have already heard, AMY is a HARD game. Some people totally disliked that while other really enjoyed it. We believe this is part of the survival experience we tried to build as we wanted the game to be challenging. However, we actively listen to the community and comments and hence recommend the non-hard core gamers to launch the game in EASY mode (in the settings) for now. This will give them a much more pleasant and smoother experience, especially as the checkpoints are scarce.

In addition, we wanted to thank those of you who bought the game and rated it on the XBOX market and the PSN Store. Indeed, AMY has been #1 in the daily XBLA charts since its launch in all major territories and players have rated it between 3 and 4 out of 5 on XBLA and more than 4 on the PSN despite the controversy. For us, the players’ ratings (almost 9500 so far) are the most important ones.

As always, we will come back to you with updated information as soon as we can.

Thanks a lot.

I wonder if this is how Bioware felt when people reacted badly to their Mass Effect 2 inspired changes to Dragon Age 2. It’s funny, people complaining that they don’t want to repeat loads of portions of the game, when with some games they say they like it. The best one is the complaint about few checkpoints when I remember certain gamers getting really excited about Dead Space 2 having a difficulty mode that only lets you save thrice. They must be asking themselves, “… but it’s hard, isn’t that what people want?” The sad thing is, reading a lot of commentary about current gaming, they’re right, or at least that’s what people claim they want.

IGN’s Colin Moriarty starts by calling it “a supremely muddled mess of controller-throwing frustration and piss-poor game design choices”. The poor game design choices? “Want to pick up that item on the ground? You better be positioned in a pixel-perfect fashion … How many times can a gamer possibly be expected to do the same few things over and over again? … Amy’s checkpoint system wouldn’t necessarily be so unforgiving if the game was even remotely playable, but since so much of the game requires insane amounts of trial and error — and a myriad of unfair deaths due to terrible controls both in and out of combat — this might be the most frustrating aspect of the entire experience … replaying the same 20-minute segment of a chapter a dozen times as you try to figure out what you’re actually doing wrong … gave up out of sheer anger and frustration”.

Nothing wrong with that, I dislike all of that stuff in gaming too. However, even lightly rephrased it is used often as praise.

“Remember when games used to be hard? … one of the most difficult, but fair, action titles this generation has ever seen. The twist … is that when you die — and you will die a lot — the game gets even harder. Oh, players can also invade your world at any time to try and kill you online. Scared? Good … Only real gamers need apply.”

That’s IGN on Demon’s Souls.

Insane amounts of trial and error, requiring pixel perfect precision?

“… a painfully difficult game that will truly push you to your limits as a gamer.”
“Your reward is getting to see a replay of all the times you died.”
“Never once do you believe the game is trying to cheat you, you quickly realise that if you timed that jump better, or hit this platform 2 pixels further left, then you will get through that section.”
“… a game made by sadists, for masochists.”

Yep, Super Meat Boy.

I’m not going to find positive examples for every item and I’m sure you’ve all seen it before and could probably find your own examples. The point is that praise for a game and condemnation for a game are sometimes only distinct by tone. If this merely reflected the differing opinions of critics & publications, it would actually be a good thing, but that isn’t what I think is going on here. I think it’s more a matter of a failure to be objective, or perhaps worse for a writer, laziness. The attitude of, “I can’t think of why I dislike this game, so let’s just blame it on trial-and-error gameplay”.

It’s a fashion thing.

Right now it’s very fashionable to like games which are very challenging, retro-styled, steampunk, and a little bit survival horror. Westerns have also been quite popular lately, better yet, other settings mixed with Westerns, like Fallout: New Vegas, Borderlands, Rage, et al. It’s fashionable to claim that games aren’t hard like they used to be when in a lot of cases, they’re harder because in the past games weren’t made as a reaction to games being too easy.

For that matter, have you noticed that most of the criticism of Dynasty Warriors can be applied as praise for Pokemon?

Amy ticks all the fashionable boxes. It’s hard, punishing, uses retro-style checkpoints, is survival horror, starts on a train, doesn’t hold your hand, is for real gamers, is like how survival horror games used to be, and of course the old stand-by, has zombies in it.

It’s design by committee and we asked for it.

“It seemed cool enough in premise, and indeed, Amy no doubt looks good on paper.” – Colin Moriarty

If Amy was even slightly more finished and a PC exclusive, it could have well became a cult favourite.

Now I have to do the requisite things. Like complain that the gaming industry isn’t catering (high resolution textures we can’t use) to me and the seven other PC gamers enough, well the seven gamers who aren’t playing the casual games I’ll use to prove that PC gaming is relevant. Or that games are bad console ports because they don’t have a DirectX 11 mode that only 30% of PC gamers can actually use. Complain that 64-bit versions of games should come out to take advantage of the over 4 gigs that most PC Gamers don’t have. I can also talk about how the technology in consoles is really old and dated now on my far superior mouse (1963) and keyboard (1940) system.

Complaining about console games and gamers and ports now takes up all of my time, so I’ll quickly add something about how games are ruined by dumbing them down for the wider console audience. Then go frag some d00dz before even thinking about starting the ‘story-driven plot’ single player of the latest shooter. Leave a comment with your specifications so I can discount anything you say based on your hardware.

Actually, I think I’m going to turn on my rather neglected Wii.

With thanks to Wikipedia and the Steam Hardware Survey. Piracy.

The one thing that was different about Chrome is when you went to the preferences page, there was an extra “Google” entry in the Manage Search Engines… button menu. Disabling this meant that it no longer appeared. Never seen anything like it, but since I have the platform here and most of the advice was utterly useless, I thought I would share my (temporary?) solution. It’ll hopefully get picked up by the security program guys soon so it can be cleaned out properly. What a nasty piece of malware AutoComplete Pro is.

As I suspect was the case with most people who played the original X-COM games, the original announcement of a new X-COM game was a source of hope rapidly followed by a sense of disappointment. The problem being that outside of generally being about aliens and having “XCOM” in the title, it had almost nothing to do with the, and let’s just be honest here, better X-COM games (why have both new “XCOM” games dropped the dash?). By this I of course mean the first two. The funny thing about the series is that it isn’t really a game where you can say it was never really given a chance. The series had copious numbers of sequels and spin-offs. Whilst some of them had some redeeming features, for example, Apocalypse had its moments, and Interceptor’s management part was actually kinda fun – they just didn’t recapture the brilliance of the first game.

X-COM: Enemy Unknown - yes, there was a version called that.

What was the magic factor that made the game so great? Mostly, for me, it was the atmosphere. In many respects the original X-COM was a horror title with an oppressive sense of dread, the subtle ambient music score combined with the night-time terror missions grab your attention so thoroughly as to block out all other stimulus setting you up for that definitive moment you hear the sound of a Chryssalid zombifying a human. If that didn’t just send a shiver up your spine I would recommend giving the game a go. It’s on Steam (I believe they have it as X-COM: UFO Defense on there, but it’s also been called UFO: Enemy Unknown and X-COM: Enemy Unknown) and still very awesome, but a little hard to get into at first. I would recommend getting it for the original Playstation, but that’s not so straight-forward.

The recent news that there was going to be a new, new X-COM game mostly engendered confusion more than anything else. By Firaxis, who are, of course, the people behind Civilisation Revolution. And turn-based. Now, myself personally, I’ve been wanting an “HD remix” treatment of X-COM: Enemy Unknown for some time, add all the extras you want, but make them optional. However, a fully-fledged new game by one of the few companies successfully making popular, well-selling, and most importantly, very good, turn-based strategy games is possibly even better. By few, I mean they’re the only one I know of. So I’m delighted.

Of course, due to my recent articles, I’m wondering if XCOM: Enemy Unknown will be done with Gamebryo like the last few Civilisations.

N.B. The Playstation version has three big advantages. CD quality music rather than MIDI, MIDI is fine, but the software MIDI decoding that most modern computers will use does a terrible, terrible job. Proper cutscenes. Consistent fixed running speed. Best played with a Playstation mouse.