The Shooter Report

When I'm not working my ass off, playing dad, running tabletop on Wednesdays and the occasional Saturday, reading, cooking, or cleaning, I am enjoying the time honored tradition of gunning down virtual foes in digital land.  So here are a few more games I tried recently that are worth talking about (or warning you about...). As always, I remind you that I am not always playing these games for very long (especially if the initial experience was horrendous) so my comments will be based on the actual length of time spent in the game.

Bulletrun

Not sure what to make of this. I played it a bit, and noticed that it felt like a competent shooter which tried hard to emulate the control scheme and even the feel of Call of Duty. It's basically a shooter title portrayed as a lethal gameshow event of the future, where glamorous gun-stars blow each other up then get resurrected to come back into the fray; it only has two play modes, one of which was team deathmatch and the other I don't know because I couldn't find a game. On my brief play through I noticed the following features/issues:

1. The match lasted a long time. It was basically a "whoever has the most kills wins after 15 minutes" type of approach and frankly felt excessive.

2. Quick match making was troublesome....I tried several times to get into a game, any game, before it finally took.

3. Starter characters have almost zero customization; the game's cash shop is built around making you look prettier, although you can earn cash to unlock stuff. One full game was just short of enough cash to unlock one interesting trait; at 15 minutes a pop, it was clear that doing it the free way would be tedious. I didn't stick around long enough to see if the game supported the "pay to win" concept, a deal-breaker by far (looking at you, APB).

   My fifteen minute play through suggested there's potential here, but not enough to recommend this game over other F2P shooters, especially Blacklight: Retribution which is a very solid and enjoyable game, and even though Blacklight has a cash shop I still haven't figured out how it benefits me, too much fun playing it.

I wonder how much time and money it takes to look this cool in Bulletrun

Team Fortress 2

I don't even know what to say about this anymore. I loaded it up (again) to check out the co-op experience recently added (Mann vs. Machine or whatever). The game inevitably throws me into the tutorial mode (maybe I need to skip that sucker) and in doing so I am reminded that TF2 is a game about spazzy super-fast characters, insta-kills, general insanity and a total lack of cohesion in the classic old-school style. Uninstall, scrub brain, move on, enjoy videos about characters without playing. This is the third or fourth time I've tried to play TF2 and I can't get ten minutes in before I question why it is so popular. I guess I know, but it's just not my cup of tea: TF2 is in the same genre as Nexuiz, Unreal Tournament, Quake Arena and other older-era shooters where characters move ridiculously fast, cover is something you duck behind while mouse-strafing faster than a jackrabbit, and there are no chest high walls because the dude who's crouching is also dying. In other words: a game that appeals to a very specific segment of PC shooter fans who don't grokk realism or an attempt at such in favor of characters who can mouse spin faster than a normal human could ever manage without passing out.

I mean, I could be wrong....but it doesn't matter, something about TF2 just rubs me the wrong way.



Counter Strike: Global Offensive

I've only played beta so far, but the game unlocks...tomorrow, I think (writing this Monday night). I decided to get in on the newest iteration. I've played the old version, and it's sort of lacking in this day and age, though I can see within its crusty shell the bits and pieces of a game that would have been far more interesting five or ten years ago (had I been more into shooters back then....bear in mind, my engagement with this sort of game is a fairly new phenomenon, a sort of liberating assertion that youth is not the sole requisite for enjoyment of games in which you play a murderhobo with a shotgun).

Anyway, the beta is kinda cool, but the maps so far seem a bit small compared to what I'm used to in other games, although it does keep the focus tight. They have a bot mode which is always commendable, though I noticed that the difficulty ratchets up from "retarded" to "lethal every time" with virtually no step in between. Also, the bot mode seems sort of hollow and just less interesting than regular competitive mode with live players. This is in contrast to some other bot modes I've enjoyed, such as Black Ops or Gears of War 3, where bots seem just fine and (usually) act smarter than your fellow man, so I would suggest there's more of an issue with the way they are programmed in the game than with bots in general. But I plan to play more pvp directly once it goes live. For the pre-order price ($13.49) it was hard to resist.

UPDATE: since I wrote this CSGO went live and I've been playing it a lot more....it's matches are pretty quick. About the worst thing I could say is, "some of these guys are damned good," but given the lengthy history of this game that's no surprise. I do have two observations after playing a bit: is it just me or do the terrorists always lose? And, sorry to those allies who died thanks to my twitchy gunfire! I'll get better, I promise.

This game does have its claws in me, and I like that I can play it in short bursts and feel satisfied. The maps are, as I mentioned earlier, very "tight" so the angles of approach and accompanying strategies become apparent for each one after only a few playthroughs.

Max Payne 3

I'll get this out of the way right off: I liked the multiplayer so much in Max Payne 3 I went ahead and bought the season pass. This is highly unusual of me (last and only time I did this was with Gears of War 3). It's that fun. Not everyone would agree.....the vast majority of players in the new player zone  might disagree and some of the people I spoke with seemed downright frustrated. I had two suggestions for them:

1. try the softlock mode if they weren't already (hard lock is for the mouse/keyboard people, I think)

2. Get a controller. This game is clearly optimized for controllers and might be accused of being a proper console port, but I'd say that Rockstar did that in a good way.

So I haven't even played the single player campaign yet and I can't get enough of the multiplayer in this game. It's third-person perspective, you get a random mook of various nationalities and ethnicities, and you shoot the hell out of all sorts of exotic locales (with many more available in the DLC). It's wonky, it's got a variety of additional play modes I am looking forward to exploring. Most importantly, after two games in the noob zone I felt so bad for everyone I was ganking (averaging an impressive KTD ratio the likes of which I've never seen before) that I moved myself over to the full regular game experience because it wasn't fun blowing away all the noobs with their enigmatic control schemes on the keyboard tripping them up.

Once I was in the regular area with experienced players I felt more comfortable; these were people who "got it" and although I saw accusations of hacks flying around, the people so accused were clearly not hacking, because I wasted them plenty and often....I think our entitlement gamer culture can't handle the idea that they might simply not be very good at something; "I  can't be bad at this, no! It must be the other guy is cheating. Yeah, that's it." Mhmm. (exception: boosters in MW3; those guys suck)

I'll report more on this game soon enough. It's addictive fun, and maybe I'll even get to see the single player experience at some point. It's definitely moving into my "continue to play" corral.

(UPDATE: Finally got to try the single player. Another story-driven hit for Rockstar, I'll have to devote a future blog just to talking about this game. Interesting stuff.)

Follow up on the Other Games

Still keeping up with Mass Effect 3's multiplayer, if only because I'd like to unlock everything, and it's still actually fun. The moment it goes from "fun" to "grind" I'll be closing it out, though.

I played a bit more Gotham City Imposters. Was startled to find myself in a game with a couple level 600 dudes. How does that even happen? These were extremely good players. If the game starts to fall into that pit, as they often do, of games dominated by a handful of elites to the detriment of less experienced players then I may eventually give up. We'll see. Is it even possible to get level 600 under ordinary circumstances in that game? How many hours would that take? If one reasonably advances about 3 levels an hour, which seems about right for my game experience so far, then to reach level 600 would require 200 hours of play time invested in the game.

I would get very, very sick of fake Batmen and punky Joker-wannabees after about hour 60, I think.

Not quite related, but I decided to clear out Rage to make some room on the hard-drive. I think I was about 1/2 of the way through the campaign, but despite some very comfortable shooter elements, I'll be honest: playing through Quake 4 again recently, and anticipating the Doom 3 HD BFG edition has only reminded me of id's old greatness, and Rage falls short. They should have left the car combat parts out and gone for classic id formula, instead of making it a crude faux-sandbox/Fallout wannabe with some fun but hollow drive-y bits. Or, they could have made it a real sandbox game. If Rage had actually been like Fallout 3 or GTA IV, instead of a pretedn cardboard mockup of the same, it would have done a lot better, I think.

Finally there is the aforementioned Blacklight: Retribution. I'm only playing an occasional game here or there, but I remain impressed at this free to play title. Still haven't figured out what their motivation is to get me to buy stuff with money. Still haven't seen direct evidence that it's got a pay-to-win element. If I keep playing, I may eventually buy stuff just to support them, because the game is very smartly designed and provides a very solid experience so far. Not a match yet that wasn't interesting or enjoyable.

War Z, Arma II, Blacklight: Retribution and More

Another episode of video game stuff!


The article here on Massively talks a bit about it, but a not-quite-MMO zombie survival game is on its way called War Z. It sounds like it will be more my cup of tea; I've been eyeballing videos of Day Z (the Arma 2 mod) while also playing Arma 2 to get familiar with it, but I am not sure I want to play a game where the player population is so aggresively into ganking. I once argued that a "permadeath" approach to some games would lead to a player population in which people were more circumspect about who they shot and why....as it turns out, not the case from the sound of it, people seem to become more psychotic instead, predating on their fellow players with wild abandon. At least, every Day Z tale I've read seems to indicate such. Apparently the nominal "I might die and lose all my work on this particular character" component is not as thrilling as the "I can kill another character and take all his stuff" element. Maybe the only way permadeath would work, then, is if the game proceeded to uninstall itself after death. Who knows....the idea does appeal, but being a person who's time is valuable, I rather prefer to keep the progress I've made in a given game, and not be subject to some 13 (or worse, 30) year old version of Gyges online.

So the Steam sale is about to conclude, and I get to look at my total casualty report. I added the Arma 2 series to my roster, along with a few other oddballs (namely the Prince of Persia series, which was too cheap to ignore) and got several games for my wife (including Skyrim and Kingdoms of Amalur which she wanted, and Gotham City Imposters which she took as a big hint that I would be delighted to play with her on that one).

So now for some more Capsule "First Impression" Reviews!

Actual game may not be as fun as screen shots suggest

Deep Black: Reloaded

Here's the deal. I liked the premise of this game, and I found a review online which made it look okay. Must have been a friend of the devs doing the review, or someone who doesn't play a lot of these games. There may be something worth investigating in Deep Black: Reloaded, bit its going to have to wait for a weekend when I am especially bored and desperate, because I barely got halfway through the tutorial before I realized I had potentially made a Huge Mistake.

Based on a tiny bit of playing, the game feels "off" and not in a good way, but in a stiff, unrefined way. It's visuals are okay, but the best way I can describe it is like this: did you ever, like me, play Half Life 2 and Doom 3 back in the day and then go try to play Chrome: Specs Ops? The Chrome games were based on the older version of the Chrome engine, which itself was not nearly as refined as the two genre-defining games of an older generation (Doom 3 and HL2, that is). As a result, Chrome just felt "off" and not in a good way. Plus, it had lots of annoying issues, such as uncanny AI that can shoot you from a mile away.

So Deep Black: Reloaded feels like that to me right now. Uninstalled, will investigate at a future date when I am bored and want to explore something of its kind with a lot of patience, because this game was testing my patience almost immediately...in the tutorial level no less.



Arma II

Okay, I admit I picked this one up with the idea that I might download the Day Z mod. However, I haven't found the time or interest to mess with what I understand is a buggy mod filled with gankers, to go by the internet talk. That's good though, because it turns out Arma II is a really amazing game all on its own.

Arma II is a tactical shooter, which means I guess that its keyboard arrangement does not precisely mimic Call of Duty and it has a great many more options available. Getting shot once or twice is usually fatal and engagements are almost always won by the astute person using their brains and taking advantage of the environment. I just completed Call of Duty: World at War (a few years late I admit, but it was fun) and it's a shockingly welcome contrast to jump into Arma II where the main goal is thoughtful strategic movement, contrasting with CoD's run and gun "bullet sponge must swarm the enemy lines to stop them from infinite respawns" approach to single player play.

Arma II looks pretty good for a game a few years old. I got the three expansions with it, and the graphics get better with later expansion, but the only "hmmm" moment I had was in the opening scene on the first campaign, which starts on a decidedly low-rez aircraft carrier. The on-island graphics are very nice, though.

It took me a replay on the first major mission before I got things "right," at least partially because the controls are complex. I remapped a few items to suit to taste, which insured I was not accidentally prematurely planting explosive charges deep in the woods that were needed for a later task.

Anyway, I'm getting that same "vibe" with Arma II that I got with Fallout 3 (my most played game, fyi, although Raptr doesn't know since I only started using that metric-tracking service about nine months ago). Looking forward to playing this one a lot more.



Blacklight: Retribution

I haven't had as much time to play this yet as I'd have liked but I thought I'd mention that it's been pretty good so far (barring a server maintenance shutdown in the middle of a match) and for a game that is F2P with microtransactions I have had some great success, implying that this is not another "pay to win" game. If you played its predecessor (Blacklight: Tango Down) do not try to compare the two; this is a much more polished and fun game. It also has mechs, and getting into one of those in the middle of a match was a real pleasure. I'll report more on this later as I find more time to play it; probably would have played more if Arma II hadn't distracted me!

ANY CRPGS?
If you wonder why I seem to talk so much about the shooter genre and don't touch as much on the CRPG genre, the answer is simple: as much as I enjoy Kingdoms of Amalur, Dragon Age, and Skyrim (among others), I tend to binge on those games at distinct moments, and otherwise find my "role playing game" quotient for entertainment is actually met by my weekly tabletop events (which are dominated entirely by Pathfinder right now, although Runequest 6 may rear its head soon for at least one bi-weekly game).

So yeah, shooters, survival horror, and competitive firefight-style games online are something that appeals to me precisely because its where the medium excells, I feel. By contrast, tabletop RPGs continue to have a corner on that market for me, so the CRPG descendants just don't get as much playtime as they otherwise should.

That said, I do feel a desire for a "binge" coming on soon, my preferred method for enjoying large scale CRPGs, although the reality of my situation is I don't have the kind of time blocks necessary to do that anymore. Its hard to binge the way I used to with my son now. He goes to bed fairly consistently at 8 PM these days--well, with an occasional recent exception; he's just about 8 months old now, and he's developing the "separation anxiety" phenomenon kids get, so he doesn't like going to sleep unless he knows mom and dad are present. Problem is, Dad is "the fun guy" who winds him up, and he doesn't want to sleep if I'm trying to put him to bed because he might miss dad doing something funny...I'm basically "Mr. playtime" now. So it's up to my wife to be the calming "time for bed" parent.

It's very nice to do this as a team....it insures we get things done, manage time for ourselves, and still manage to raise our child with as "interactive" an approach as possible. I sometimes worry we're overdoing it, but then I look at the giant family across the street from us with the ginormous, bellowing dad who appears to have only two settings ("pissed" and "domestic dispute") and his wife who ignores their children while slugging down tequila shots and yelling at the husband, and realize that we're doing fine.