No Zytrons In Range

(Some spoilers below.)

The Good:

• The entire concept of basing a game on an intelligent popular book (that isn’t a pen and paper RPG sourcebook) is a great idea, and I hope more companies do this in the future instead of basing their games on crappy dumb action movies.
• This game is scary as shit. The all-in-your-mind sequences are incredible. The gas mask sequences actually made me feel like I was suffocating (I’m not kidding; when the filter was nearly gone, I stopped playing, and hid my character in a corner until he replaced it.) The introduction to the game, with the zoom out from the photograph of the beautiful untouched city, revealing that it’s just a post card in a dingy tiny apartment built into the side of a subway tunnel is brilliant. The phone suddenly ringing in the military base abandoned for 20 years after you restore power is amazingly creepy. (No, you can’t answer it.) When the companions with you start going kind of crazy, even the extremely with-it Rangers, that’s also amazingly creepy. The ghost sequence was brilliant.
• Despite that, it can also be uplifting at times, in fact at just the perfect times when you were just about to put the game away because the setting is so goddamned depressing.
• The sequence where a little kid is riding your back, which completely screws up your aim, is amazing. I loved everything about it. Especially the ending. (See the previous point.)
• The game engine and level designs allows you to go through the entire game without killing a single human if you so choose. I think this should be standard practice, frankly.
• The dual endings, represented by two characters in the game. Hunter (“if it’s hostile, kill it”), and Khan (“To break this vicious circle one must do more than act without any thought or doubt”). I was originally going to complain about how this was implemented, but then I realized: I think they did the right thing. The catch is, the game doesn’t hand-hold you into either ending (think of a Bioware game where dialog options are clearly labeled for what ending they contribute to). The only (minor) problem is that the game has no indication that there are multiple endings at all… but then again, the “good” ending is supposed to be for that rare player who really explores the game world in detail and does things a little different, and that’s basically what happens now.
• One of the characters plays a practical joke on you that’s genuinely funny. Humor is hard in video games. Especially localized versions of video games. Especially video games as dark and gritty as this one.
• The improvised weapons and flashlight were great. I liked the way you had to recharge the battery (or pneumatic weapon) during your free moments, or God help you when you run into the enemy later on and the battery’s dead.

The Bad:

• The escort missions aren’t very clearly labeled as escort missions, so you’re likely to lose the first one simply because you don’t realize that the guy you were supposed to be escorting doesn’t have infinite health like the rest of the Rangers with you at the time. This might be a localization problem.
• The second escort mission involves a hallway full of slime monsters. The only way to win this mission is to shoot the monster nests- but since the game gives no indication you can do that, you either end up accidentally shooting one or finally ask a friend, “how did you beat that damn level?”
• Additionally, when the slime monsters explode, your framerate goes to shit, making it nearly-impossible to keep playing. (In fact, monsters in the game always have kind of a herky-jerky motion. I’m not sure whether that’s a stylistic choice, a quirk of the game engine, or something specific to my particular computer.)
• There’s exactly one named female character in the game. She’s a prostitute. She steals all your stuff. No Besthesda-esque equal-opportunity bandits in this game.
• Quick time events. Ugh. Fortunately, you can easily predict when they’re coming, they all use the same key, and they aren’t in the middle of 5 minute long cutscenes. Hey game industry: nobody likes quick time events.
• The monsters are generic; they look like they came out of the “discount Doom 3 monster rip-off bin”. (Doom 3 was an awful game, but it sure influences the hell out of monster design in video games.) Plus, demons (in an otherwise realistic game) are proportioned all wrong for flight, and way too small to be able to tip over an armored 4×4 truck.
• The ghost sequence was brilliant, but it would have been nice to get another one, one without a guide where you have to get through using your own wits. Yes, one of “the bad” is, “there wasn’t enough of this great level!”

The summary:

This game is excellent and I recommend playing it and I regret not playing through it earlier.

Bethesda, I love you guys. I love Skyrim. But it’s fucking buggy as shit, and it’s bugging the shit out of me. Mainly because I have the weird type of OCD that requires me to finish every quest in a RPG, and your bugs make it impossible to finish a lot of Skyrim quests.

Before we start, some basics:

1. I’m playing Skyrim on PC, the Steam distribution of the game.
2. These bugs are all from my second play-through. My first was actually quite a bit more buggy than this one.
3. This game was started before the November 30th patch, but the bugs still exist after the patch. (This may be normal. I know frequently patch fixes only apply to new games.)
4. This list is ridiculously incomplete. I’ll try to add to it as new bugs arise.

Beware! Spoilers below!

Stuck Quests:

• (Misc) “Go to Dorian in Solitude and pick up the item” – Dorian is inside a ship, doesn’t exit. When you go inside the ship to talk to him, he says only “you shouldn’t be in here” and doesn’t engage in conversation. (Edit: Managed to complete this quest; see Michael’s comment.)
• (Misc) “Return to Esbern” – Esbern has been broken most of this game (and most of my last play-through). He won’t engage me in conversation. I believe this quest is supposed to lead up to the potion Esbern gives you to help fight dragons, so I can’t get that buff this play-through. (And for those who have played through the main quest, no the state of the quest “Paarthurnax” doesn’t have anything to do with Esbern’s broken-ness… he’s busted either way.) (On another note, this is my second play-though, and Esbern has been ridiculously broken both times. It’s actually hard to tell when Esbern’s busted, because I have no idea how he’s supposed to work!) Guys, the NPCs required for the main quest are broken!
• (Misc) “Ask Esbern about dragon lairs” – Since Esbern’s busted, I can’t turn this one in, either.
• (Misc) “Visit the college of Winterhold” – Quest points to Nirya, who is standing in Winterhold (not in the college), and only has one dialog option which does not complete the quest.
• (Misc) “Investigate the Bards College” – Quest points to Viarmo, who has two dialog options, neither of which complete the quest.
• (Misc) “Disrupt the skooma operation” – Quest points to a cave, Cragslane Cavern, where illegal dog fights were taking place. Every NPC in the cave is dead, but the quest isn’t marked as completed. If killing every single skooma dealer in the city doesn’t “disrupt the operation”, I don’t know what would!
• (Misc) “Kill the bandit leader at Broken Helm Hollow” – The objective pointer points to the wrong location.
• (Misc) “Purchase a house in Windhelm” – Apparently this quest cannot be completed after joining the Imperial faction, but remains in my quest log all the same. The steward says only that there has been some trouble and the house is not available.
• (Misc) “Speak to Verulus about the Hall of the Dead” – Verulus is dead.
• (Misc) “Collect bounty from Brina Merilis” – This is a weird one: this quest can’t be selected! As opposed to the Svidi quest, where it can be selected but there’s no objective arrow, this one simply can’t be selected at all. Weird.
• (Misc) “Assist the people of Haafinger (5/5)” – As you can see from the quest’s name, I’ve completed it by assisting 5 people in that region. And yet, the quest hasn’t been marked as completed, and nothing I do can complete it.

Weird Stuff:

• A character named only “Khajit” wearing orcish armor and attacking with magic attacked me for no apparent reason. He had no bounty notes on him, and nothing identifying what organization he was affiliated with. Maybe not a bug?
• My character got stuck mining a Corumdum Ore Vein for… well a very long time without actually producing any ore or gems. When I finally cancelled the ore mining, the rock face wasn’t mine-able anymore (but it also wasn’t depleted.)
• In a cut-scene as part of the main quest, Alduin is supposed to appear but didn’t. The other characters involved just stared dumbly in the direction he was supposed to show up for about 4-5 minutes before I gave up on it. I ended up having to re-load my game and start the cut-scene over again. Guys, the cut-scenes in the main quest are broken.
• Characters occasionally appear buck-naked (well, wearing underwear), when (I presume) they’re supposed to be clothed. One of these characters was the Courier.
• After the end of the civil war quest line, you’re instructed to destroy camps of the opposing faction as you come across them. Despite this, the commander of those camps are still set as non-killable, and so it’s impossible to actually clear the camps.
• After completing The Forsworn Conspiracy and escaping Cidna Mine, Markarth guards stay stuck in quest mode and won’t let you pay your bounty in the normal way. It gets worse – if you tell the guards to take you to Cidna Mine, they won’t. Instead they just immediately arrest you again and again. This bug makes Markarth practically inaccessible.
• The treasure that goes with Treasure Map X does not exist on my game. This drove me nuts, I spent something like a half-hour looking for it before Googling for a walkthrough… turns out it just doesn’t exist in my little Skyrim.
• Oghma Infinium disappeared after being read – this makes it impossible to achieve the “Oblivion Walker” achievement, as only 14 Daedric Artifacts exist in my game world. (There are 16 total; one of them, Skull of Corruption can be destroyed based on your choices during the quest.) Edit: Researching this some more, the book is supposed to disappear when you use it! But on the other hand, the UESP blog says “Using the book before acquiring all Daedric Artifacts will not break the Oblivion Walker achievement. It will still count toward the 15 required.” So obviously this is another bug. (Needless-to-say, using the console to add the item doesn’t work, as it marks that save game as “invalid for achievements”.)

Graphical Glitches:

• Khajit sideburns clip through helmets, which is hilarious:
  

Utterly Inexplicable Design Decisions:

• Unlike every other Elder Scrolls game, Hand-To-Hand is not a first-class skill. It has no perks, and it doesn’t contribute to leveling. Despite this, it’s got its own custom animations, it’s even used as a persuade option. So the game’s pretty bi-polar on this!
• Quest items cannot be dropped or stored in chests. Which is fine except… they also have weight! Sometimes they are quite heavy. This reduces the amount of items you can carry as your inventory is full of useless undroppable items. (Special bonus goes to dragon claws, where each dungeon requires a specific one, and figuring out which is quite a challenge when you’re holding 6-7 of them.) Especially egregious, because (correct me if I’m wrong) this wasn’t an issue in Oblivion.
• The guy who’s famous all over Skyrim for winning a war and personally killing a dozen dragons still gets attacked by bandits wearing hide armor. I know people didn’t like the auto-leveling NPCs in Oblivion, but this is ridiculous—better would be the bandits trying to bribe you to leave them alone, or simply running when you approach. Either would still give the player the desired sense of badass-ness.

Remember when you could just double-click the icon for your game and be playing right away?

I just ran an inventory, and I have eight games installed on my computer (the oldest being Overlord II, Oblivion, meaning they’re all newish), and six of them have launchers. Let’s take a look (as always, click to enhugeify):

Sony’s DC Universe Online

Hi-Rez studios, makers of Global Agenda and Tribes Ascend

Ubisoft’s Might & Magic Heroes VI*

Special added super-bonus: it crashed in the 45 seconds it took me to open the window and take a screenshot!

Blizzard’s World of Warcraft

There’s certainly a pattern forming here:

1. Either a non-rectangular window shape, or (what we in the Mac Classic era used to call) a “borderless” window. None are resizeable, and finding a “handle” with which to change the window’s position is difficult.
2. No standard Windows controls in sight! Forget that they’re well-designed, have been tested to rock-solidness over 20 years, and are instantly readable. Not good enough. Only the WOW launcher deigns so much to have menus.
3. Everybody loves black. “Make the background black”, the designers say, “it’ll make us stand out!” Look at how much those launchers stand out! Color schemes are either black with offensively-colored call-to-actions (Hi-Rez, WOW), or just plain offensive all-around (DC Universe Online).
4. The primary purpose of the launcher seems to be “buy downloadable shit!” (Or, in a noble exception for WOW, “watch a TV commercial!”) Sure, the launcher also patches the relevant game, but that is obviously a tiny, secondary concern.
5. 75% of the launchers have creepy people/things staring at you. (Maybe 100%, depending on what the Tribes dudes are looking at under those helmets.)

Now that we have the pattern down, let’s look at the last two:

Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

What… what are these? They’re actually… tasteful? They’re not offensively-colored, or animated, or trying to sell me some worthless downloadable junk (and yes, both games have downloadable content for sale)? There’s no Twitter feeds, no Facebook links, no social features of any kind? The options presented are actually all relevant to the actual game itself? Nothing creepy staring into my soul?

Of course you still have to ask, “why do these launchers exist?” (Actual answer: because PCs don’t have a unified way to handle installing/uninstalling content packs and mods, and console versions don’t have advanced rendering settings necessary on PC, and thus the PC version needs a UI for those things somewhere, and they didn’t want to put it in the actual game because then the Xbox and PC versions of the game code would diverge too much. It’s a good reason, but still an compromise that makes for a worse product.)

So what is the lesson we have learned? Fuck if I know. Maybe, “launchers are only present for games that are trying to nickel-and-dime you to death, or bad console ports.” Maybe, “don’t have creepy things staring at the guy trying to play your game, sheesh.” Or maybe even, “Sony sucks.”

I think it’s really, “details matter.”

*) Note: the name is no longer “Heroes of Might & Magic”, it is now “Might & Magic Heroes”. So in addition to a awful launcher, it breaks alphabetization on my Steam games list. Yes, I also complain about the first DOOM showing up in Steam as “Ultimate Doom” and thus is near the U’s instead of D’s. Details matter, people. Pay attention to the details.

Don’t get too excited, this isn’t a full blog entry, just a quick list of obvious bugs:

• Font sizes are too small and there is no ability to enlarge them. Additionally, Steam doesn’t work properly with Windows DPI settings, so fonts can’t be enlarged the usual way.
• Cloud data can’t be browsed or deleted except through a support ticket. If you are in an environment with limited space (an SSD drive), and download a game with large saves (Oblivion), Steam forces you to also download the cloud data content for that game– even if there are multiple gigabytes of it.
• Pre-ordered games don’t have a scheduler to “unencrypt” their files when (or slightly before, ideally) the game is released. Since the “unencryption” can take a significant amount of time, half an hour or more, this forces gamers excited to play their new game to wait before playing– even if the game has been pre-loaded on the computer, and even if the release date was hours and hours ago.
• Categories: Once you’ve created a category, you can never rename or delete it. Ever. You can’t make subcategories. You can’t drag&drop games into categories. You can’t assign a category to a dozen games at a time. There are no auto-generated categories (for example, game genre.) There’s no way to turn on/off category display in the list of games (except that categories aren’t displayed in Grid View, for some reason). The feature as implemented is very, very weak.

In general, Steam has a habit of half-specifying features (or fully-specifying them and only half-implementing them), and then never ever ever fixing them. For the font size issue, I’m hoping eventually a disabled rights groups gets on their ass about it, but for the other bugs I don’t see much hope.

Although it is worth noting that Steam support representatives have the capability to clear-out cloud data for a specific title for a specific user. If Valve had enough support requests to do this, they might finally add a self-service option just to save the labor costs.

Yes, seriously.

It’s really hard to review this game, because it’s really just middling in every way except one: it’s just as misogynistic and artificially offensive as you’d expect a Duke Nukem game to be. There’s not a lot to call out, and there’s not a lot to get excited over. I’m not going to call-out the long development time, because you can read that in pretty much every other review of this game.

Before we get into the review proper, I should mention in all fairness that I’ve never played all of Duke Nukem 3D, except the free demo that was everywhere back in the late 90s. For this review, I played the Windows version of the game, distributed through Steam, using both Xbox 360 controller and a mouse/keyboard controls.

Duke Nukem Forever takes place in a strange alternate-reality version of Las Vegas, where Duke Nukem apparently owns every casino and restaurant in the entire city, having become rich and famous after the events of Duke Nukem 3D. The game opens, confusingly, with Duke Nukem playing, uh, Duke Nukem Forever, I guess? Playing a recreation of the end of Duke Nukem 3D? I’m not sure exactly what’s going on during that whole sequence, to be honest. The story kicks off when the aliens come back, and the President decides to begin peaceful negotiations with them, ordering Duke to stay well-away from the aliens. Meanwhile General Graves believes the aliens are up to no good again. Obviously the aliens attack again, because that’s basically the entire point of the game, and if you’ve ever played a sci-fi FPS game before, you already know exactly what happens.

The weapons include the standard FPS set (pistol, machine gun, shotgun, rocket launcher) along with a few more creative additions. There is a freeze gun, which encases an enemy in ice to smash with a melee attack. There is also the famous shrink ray. Bigger enemies become significantly less of a threat while shrunk, and smaller enemies can be stomped in their shrunken form. I generally went through the entire game with the shotgun and the rocket launcher, and found the alternate weapons weren’t particularly useful in most situations. There are also mounted weapons, which are constantly overheating.

Unfortunately, you can carry only two weapons at a time, so you frequently have to decide to drop the creative freeze ray to pick up a standard machine gun. The game shot itself in the foot with this one. Note that the two weapon limit is a game mechanic taken from Halo.

The game focuses on interacting with physics and the environment, but instead of it being part of gameplay it’s usually just in the form of “ego items” you can play with as you proceed through the game. The first of these you encounter is a turd, sitting in a toilet, which you can pick up and throw, or use to draw turd-messages on the walls. The second, and more dignified, of these toys is a whiteboard you can write whatever you want on, and erase. The best is a fully-functional pinball machine. These are a little inconsistent: if you see yourself in a mirror, you can “Admire” yourself, but if you find an action figure of yourself you can’t.

To give you a reason to play with these toys, Duke Nukem Forever ties your total hit points (called ego) to the number of toys you’ve played with. I think it’s kind of stupid for the game to tie something as pointless as dragging a turd around with something as important as your total hit points, and it’s definitely not a decision I would have made.

Your hit points/ego regenerate over time if you take cover. I mention this because it’s a game mechanic taken from Halo.

The best parts of the game are the two extended driving segments, one where you’re driving a remote control car, and another where you’re driving a monster truck. Both vehicles drive exactly how you’d expect them to, physics-wise. Blasting the remote control car over long gaps using fallen posters as ramps is great, and the four-wheel steering mode on the monster truck lets you pull off some fun stunts. The absolute best is ramming an alien with the remote control car, and watching them hop around holding their foot in pain.

Second to these are the segments where Duke is shrunken to action figure size. These generally take the form of Half-Life-esque jumping puzzles, where you have to figure out how to get tiny Duke to interact with normal-sized items like pushing an elevator button. Normally harmless enemies, like rats skittering around on the floor, are deadly threats when shrunk.

One of these segments involves a wet floor, electrified by a loose wire, where you have to determine how to loop around the room to get to the power box. I mention this because it’s basically identical to a room in Half-Life with the same premise.

Let’s talk about the humor. Duke Nukem Forever isn’t very funny. It tries. In fact it probably tries too hard. The funniest jokes are the somewhat subtle ones. For example, the physics puzzles in the game require the use of barrels to weigh-down physics objects. These barrels are labeled “F’ing Heavy, LLC”. That made me chuckle. Nothing Duke, or any of the other speaking characters, said was funny enough to note in my opinion.

The worst jokes are the jokes made at the expense of other, much better games. After seeing a discarded suit of SPARTAN armor, Duke says “armor is for pussies!” When encountering some planks covering a mine entrance, Duke snarks, “a crowbar would come in handy about now!” The problem with these jokes is not merely that they’re not particularly funny, but that they remind you of much better games. To quote Mystery Science Theater 3000, “never show a good movie in the middle of your crappy movie.” And as I mentioned above, these are games that Duke Nukem Forever took mechanics from wholesale.

Graphics: Other reviews have talked about the bad graphics, but the truth is that the game actually looks quite good with one exception: people are made from plastic. If the plastic-y look of the people only applied to the women, then I would assume it was intentional as a gag (Barbie dolls), but it applies to every character in the game, and is distracting. Landscapes and objects looked pretty good, and the frame rate remained steady.

Gameplay: The combat is unsatisfying, the levels uninspiring and sometimes annoying, and the end boss was particularly pathetic. Introduces almost no new ideas or game mechanics to the genre, which is lazy. There is a long “intermission” level in the middle of the combat levels where you have to find a stripper’s vibrator which really contributes nothing to the game, and I wonder why it was included.

Quality: I didn’t experience any game-breaking bugs, or any crashes. Additionally, this is one of the few games where alt-tab worked all the time and without any quirks. Surprisingly, I’d say Duke Nukem Forever is of significantly higher quality than most other Windows games.

Duke Nukem Forever is what it is I guess. It’s not terrible, but it’s not good. There’s definitely a place in the market for comedic first person shooters, but this just isn’t filling it.

If you’re the kind of person who thinks, “you can pick up a turd? Awesome!” then you’ll probably love this game. If you’re just a general first person shooter fan, buy it if you find it cheap or if you’re really bored. If you’re not a fan of first person shooters, give it a pass.

(Click to see full-sized)

Thing the first:

I’ve been playing Left4Dead recently. One of the zombie types is the “smoker”, which shoots out a long tongue that ensnares one of the survivors and drags them away from the group.

Take a look at this approximation of what happens, in cute Valentine’s Day form:

So when I was playing the other day, I was surprised to learn that you can actually save a survivor being dragged by using your melee attack. Somehow, in the magical zombie-infested world of Left4Dead, slapping someone upside the head with the butt of your automatic shotgun will unravel a mutated tongue wrapped around their neck. I’ve been playing the game for several weeks, and I’d never heard this before, but lo and behold it works.

And it makes no sense.

Thing the second:

The other day I signed up for an account at Mint.com. I put in my bank info, and it went and retrieved my balance sheet from Bank of America using magical Internet technology somehow. It worked pretty good, except for one thing: for some reason it categorized ATM withdrawals as mortgage payments.

So I dive in and try to fix the problem. For each transaction, Mint.com has a list of dozens of categories you can select from. But for some reason, I couldn’t find ATM Withdrawals anywhere on the list. I knew it existed, because a friend I was talking to told me as much, but where was it? Turns out, the category “ATM Withdrawals” is a sub-category of “Uncategorized.”

And that makes no sense, either.

Lesson learned:

Maybe I’m some kind of freak, but if I think that something’s not going to work, I don’t even try it.

For example, in Left4Dead, since whacking a fellow survivor with your melee attack is something to be generally avoided, and since there’s no possible way that could (in real life at least) uncoil a choking snakelike tongue, it never occurred to me to try it.

Similarly, when looking for a category named “ATM Withdrawal” it would never have occurred to me, in a million years, to check underneath the menu item called “Uncategorized.”

In short: things are easier to use when they make sense. Make sense.

I have no idea why I visit or post to Slashdot.

There was an article up a couple days ago about a new open source multiplayer FPS game. I like multiplayer FPS games, and I like free things, so I thought I’d give it a try. Big mistake.

After one of the game developers (“qreeves”) received a lot of negative comments about the game, he posted a plea for fair treatment. So here it is.

The game was actually not that bad, but the website was abysmal. Anyway, after struggling for over 15 minutes just to figure out how to download the game, there was the following exchange:

My Challenge to Slashdot Users (Score:2, Insightful)
by qreeves (1363277) Alter Relationship on 09:31 AM February 26th, 2009 (#27000285) Homepage

I’ve noticed quite alot of misinformation and negativity from the users of Slashdot, and I must say that I am quite disappointed by it. Geeks are supposed to be intelligent people with thought out answers and responses, and it seems to me everyone who comments either did not bother to try the game at all, or find some other off-topic fault to complain about.

I have worked in Open Source for a decade now, and this is the reason most developers become jaded and rude to their users – nothing else. You all want Free and Open Source Software, but where is your empathy? What do we get out of it other than an earful of crap? Please wake up to yourselves and do something to benefit the community for once, rather than idly making rude remarks to inflate your own sense of ego.

My challenge to you all is this: Actually play the game and come up with some constructive criticism. Otherwise, please just ignore this post and move along.

Re:My Challenge to Slashdot Users (Score:2)
by Blakey Rat (99501) on 12:12 PM February 26th, 2009 (#27002825)

The download link on the website doesn’t work. It took me 15 minutes to find how to download the game, and that’s only because I was deconstructing how terrible the website actually was (so I could talk about it to some co-workers.)

In short, what did you expect would happen? You couldn’t be bothered to test whether your own website works, and it’s *our* fault you’re seeing negativity.

Re:My Challenge to Slashdot Users (Score:1)
by qreeves (1363277) Alter Relationship on 06:46 PM February 26th, 2009 (#27007683) Homepage

You’re still not providing any useful feedback. I can only test it on so many configurations considering my limited access to everything under the sun.

Re:My Challenge to Slashdot Users (Score:2)
by Blakey Rat (99501) on 08:40 PM February 26th, 2009 (#27008305)

Dude.

The download link, on the website, does not work. The website. It’s HTML, it’s the same for every platform. It doesn’t work. Does. Not. Work. Clicking it does not begin a download, instead it takes you to the release notes. Every platform’s download link does this. If you think the download link works, you’re living in some bizarre fantasy-land full of flowers and daisies. How is that not useful feedback?

It took me something like 15 minutes to figure out how to download the game. But since I did, WTF, here we go:

1) Is the name of the game “Blood Frontier” or “BloodFrontier?” The website has it one way, my Windows Start menu the other way.
2) On first startup, the game sets the resolution of my main monitor to … something, and also blanks out my secondary monitor for no reason whatsoever. Despite changing the resolution, it still runs in a letterbox, which prompts me to ask what the hell the point of changing the resolution was. Kudos on it correctly handling Alt-Tab, however.
3) When I’m typing in my username, and I press shift to capitalize a letter, my “character” seems to duck down, even though I’m typing in a username and not actually playing… WTF?
4) When I’m done typing in my username, nothing happens? I think I’m in a game, but there’s no other players, and no way of figuring out how to get to the menu. (Turns out escape, or walking up to the bank of monitors, does it. If I were new to the world of FPS games, I’d have no idea either of those two options existed.)
5) The font used for menus is almost unreadable on my monitor. It has some kind of shadow effect, and it’s really tiny.
6) Turning off “fullscreen” in options/display does nothing. (Although the option stays unchecked.)
7) Changing the game resolution in options/”gfx” does nothing. The resolution you check doesn’t even stay checked. Some quality settings are in “gfx”, others are in “display” with no apparent rhyme or reason.
9) You can’t simply set all options to “slow and pretty” by clicking the text that says “slow and pretty” in options/”gfx”. That would be too easy. So would auto-detecting what my hardware is capable of, apparently, since it’s running at 120+ FPS in the default configuration.
10) The radio buttons in options/mouse are backwards. For some reason, the COLUMNS are labeled “fixed, panned, free” yet the rows are labeled as the specific mouse mode you’re setting. Actually, this might make sense if it were presented as a single table of radios instead of three columns next to each other, but as-is it’s pretty unusable. (You also have to ask: how many people will change this? Seriously? I doubt it’s enough to warrant the code to support it.)
11) While speaking about options, the tabs at the top don’t give any sort of mouse “grace period”, therefore it takes very deliberate mouse movements (vertically straight down, then left) to interact with the options. If you move your mouse quickly, like a normal rational person does, the tab will be accidentally changed before your mouse pointer reaches the option you want to change.
12) Also, there’s no tooltip telling me what the hell some of these options are. “Absolute mouse?” “Mumble positional audio?” “stencil bits?” … uh, WTF are those? “Yes, please, I’d like the positional audio to mumble. I hate it when it’s too clear.”
13) Autoexec.cfg? Seriously? Did I go back in time 15 years to when this crap was acceptable?
14) To start a bot match, I go to “Game” and click “Vote?” WTF.
15) And why is there a “mystery map” in the middle of the maps list? Does this mean randomly select a map? If so, why is there a text field next to it? What do I type in the text field? “Yes, I would like a random map please!” was my guess, but it did nothing.
16) The “Get online support” option under “Help” does… some… confusing… thing. I suppose this is the IRC interface? (It’s hard to tell because I can’t read the damned font.)
17) It says “if you do not agree please part now.” Part what? Do you mean DEpart? Also, how do I do that? There’s no X button or any visible way of closing the IRC window. (Although escape seemed to work. For all I know, that just hides it and doesn’t exit it.) … Oh wait, I’m still seeing people’s chat, presumably in IRC, so I guess “escape” didn’t exit it.
18) My game is still in the intro/menu level, and the message says: “Please Wait, Ready to respawn.” Ok, but how? Left-clicking does nothing. Right-clicking does nothing. Space does nothing. What would be the point of respawning in an empty map anyway, except to walk up to the monitors to see the menu again? (Also, how did I die on an empty map with no enemies?)
19) While I’m in observer mode, I can pass the camera though solid objects. (Possibly intentional, but it looks like crap on screen because of the clipping.) If you’re going to let the camera pass through solid objects, follow the example of most games and make the object translucent proportionally to how close the camera is, then entirely transparent when the camera “enters” it.
20) While I’m in observer mode, the menu no longer opens when I bring the camera close to the monitors.
21) Opening the “Servers” menu doesn’t ping the servers by default. What the hell else are people going to open this menu for? It should just do it.
22) Of the 5 servers running, one is me. One is labelled “v156 != v157″ which I assume is a version mismatch error, but who the hell knows. 3 are empty.
23) 1 player. The server has 1 player, and that’s it. And it’s me. Hard to play-test a multiplayer game when there’s nobody playing! Shadowrun has a more active community, and it sucks.
24) So I join an empty server, other than my own. There’s a map marker named “base” which is off-screen, apparently. No matter which way I turn, it’s always stuck against the top or bottom of the screen.
25) Grenades fly in a straight line, apparently not subject to gravity.

There, 25 pieces of feedback, and I didn’t even play against an actual human. Happy?

Re:My Challenge to Slashdot Users (Score:1)
by qreeves (1363277) Alter Relationship on 12:21 AM February 27th, 2009 (#27009313) Homepage

14:17.19 * Blakeyrat (n=Blakeyra@pool-71-113-17-244.sttlwa.dsl-w.verizon.net) joined
14:24.31 [+bfbot] Blakeyrat has joined the game
14:28.36 [+bfbot] Blakeyrat has left the game
14:28.36 * Blakeyrat (n=Blakeyra@pool-71-113-17-244.sttlwa.dsl-w.verizon.net) quit (“Blood Frontier, It’s bloody fun! www.bloodfrontier.com”)

Yeah buddy, you really gave it a chance.. So no, I am not happy; your feedback is done with malice and spite. While you make valid points; for a beta you are just nitpicking. You made no attempt to talk to us or work out how to do things, you’re just too self involved to care. I’m not afraid to say these truthful things either; people like you, we do not need – people who are helpful; they’re more than welcome.

Re:My Challenge to Slashdot Users (Score:2)
by Blakey Rat (99501) on 06:14 AM February 27th, 2009 (#27011083)

Wait, I played, according to your IRC log, 11 minutes on an EMPTY SERVER (a server with NO OTHER PLAYERS), and I didn’t give it a chance? What’s the typical user behavior when joining empty servers? Sticking around for an hour? Three hours? What’s the cutoff for me having “given it a chance?”

Look, I’m trying to test a multiplayer game, there’s no players. It took me 15 minutes to figure out how to download the damned thing. As pointed out in the issues I brought up, which you apparently don’t care about despite (most of them) being valid bugs, the usability of your game is abysmal. Arguably the two most important functions for a game (changing to Windowed mode, and changing the game resolution) simply *do not work.* The menu text is impossible to read. Maybe I’m an old fogey with bad eyes, but it’s impossible to read.

We’re talking about a game that is, supposedly, in beta and you don’t even know what the NAME of it is. (“BloodFrontier?” or “Blood Frontier?”)

I think I’ve jumped through about a dozen more hoops than anybody should EVER have to jump through to test a beta product, and you just come back with: “oh well you only played for 11 minutes.” Dude, 11 minutes of this shitty game with no players is an ETERNITY.

Oh well, just like every experience with open source, it just encourages me to never, ever help open source programmers. You simply do not give a crap about the quality of your product. Someone points out tons of low-hanging-fruit bugs, and you just reply with “oh well you weren’t serious.” Screw that.

Do I come across as a jerk? Yah. I am a jerk most of the time. But that list of bugs, they’re all valid. And people who will get Slashdot to post an article to thousands of people before even checking that their own website works, those people piss me off. What a colossal waste of time.

Much like Sonic the Hedgehog in 2007, Prince of Persia shares a name with the 20-year-old original. I suppose that means it’s a “reboot” of the series although (full disclosure here) I haven’t played any Prince of Persia games since Sands of Time on the old school Xbox. (That said, I have played both of the original 2D games, so I got street cred.) It’s not just a reboot, it seems to actively taunt the player by actually making fun of Sands of Time—Farah is a donkey in this game! Bastards.

Prince of Persia also discards Sands of Time’s “rewind” mechanic in exchange for a pretty interesting variation: you can’t die. Whenever the Prince falls off a ledge, or gets struck too many times in combat, Eilka restores him back to life as good as new. When jumping and climbing, this means you’re reset to the last piece of solid ground you were standing on before you died. If you were in combat, you and the enemy reset back to your original positions and the enemy regains some health.
Oh, in addition to not being able to die, there’s no health meter in the game. Instead, powerful hits from enemies will make you vulnerable for a short period of time, indicated by a red glow on the edges of the screen. If you’re hit while you’re vulnerable, that’s when the combat resets.

These two factors lead to an extremely uncluttered appearance to the game: there’s no UI at all to ruin your immersion. With only one huge, huge, exception. Some of the bosses spit what I can only assume is tobacco juice, not at the Prince, but at the camera of the game. This obscures the camera, making it hard to see what the hell’s going on, which I suppose was the point. More to the point, though, it makes the player aware of the camera, effectively breaking the fourth wall. Boo.

(Back in “the day” when 3D games were still a pretty new and crazy invention, one of the selling features of many games was that their graphics were so good, the game engine would actually render lens flares when the camera was aimed at a bright light source. It’s a great graphics demo; lens flares require multiple transparent layers and lots of math to draw correctly. And, if you don’t think too hard about it, it makes the scene look more “real.” The problem is that if you do think about it, it doesn’t make the scene more “real” at all; it just makes it look as if it’s being recorded by some non-existent lens in some non-existent camera. In fact, the programmers of these game engines were expending massive effort simulating something that actual photographers try to avoid. Crazy.)

Gameplay consists of 70% running, jumping, climbing, etc. about 20% fighting stuff with a sword and about 10% solving moronic puzzles you’ve solved 500 times before in every game you’ve ever played. Environments consist of a lot of cliffs, columns, hooks, magical rocket-y things that I think they stole from Sonic the Hedgehog, and ladders. And of course, no floors. This Prince has more moves than the Sands of Time one, including one where he can run upside-down along a roof which makes no goddamned sense at all. Oh and he has some claw thing on his hand he can use to slide safely down vertical surfaces.

Combat consists of four basic moves: sword, gauntlet, acrobatic, and magic (performed by Elika), which can be used in various combinations to defeat enemies. The general tactic harks back to the original 2D Prince of Persia, where you block the opponent’s attacks until you have an opening to hit him, then string together as many moves as you can. The gauntlet can be used to toss enemies in the air, allowing you to hit them with another type of attack on the way down. In addition to attacking monsters directly, you can force them off platforms and laugh manically as they fall to their deaths, which frankly is a real time-saver.

The puzzles are moronic, and you’ve solved them 500 times before in every game you’ve ever played.

Prince of Persia takes place in an open map, and you have more-or-less complete freedom to go where you like in it. There are a bunch of fertile grounds, which can be tackled in (almost) any order, so if you’re stuck on one boss, just take off and move to another one. You can also fast-travel between fertile grounds you’ve completed. The one exception is that some of the fertile grounds are “locked” until you collect enough glowy-things for Elika to magically unlock them, but you’ll come across more than enough glowy-things during normal play and you shouldn’t have to spend any time grinding for them.

Now to the story: it sucks on toast. The Prince sounds like a total douche, partly because his voice was recorded by a total douche (or at least a voice actor who is very good at emulating a total douche), but mostly because his dialog was written by a total douche. And to make things worse, he jabbers on constantly. Not only that, but the game nags you if you don’t trigger the horrible dialog on a regular basis. Supposedly, listening to Prince Douchebag can reveal tricks or tactics to use on the next boss, but in practice you’ll either purposefully never trigger the dialog, or you’ll be too busy shoving scissors in your ear canal Uzumaki-style to listen. Even his scarf pisses me off.

(The voice actress who does Elika’s voice is fine. No offense intended towards her.)

If you’ve been exposed to virtually any media whatsoever, you already know the story of the game. An ancient evil who’s been snoozing for a thousand years wakes up and starts… well, he doesn’t really do anything I guess, except send minions to guard strategic points. The main character, a thief who is obviously a Prince because although the narration doesn’t say so we’ve all read the title of the goddamned game you idiots, teams up with the attractive young female magic-user who happens to also be a Princess because it’s always a goddamned Princess in any fantasy book, movie, or game ever written ever. Also, it’s always a thousand years, never like 570 years or 834 years.

I’m only about half done with the game, but I can confidently predict the following:

• There will be a big reveal in which it turns out, gasp, shock, amaze, that the thief is actually a prince.
• Elika, because she has recently-gained magic abilities, will be possessed by the vaguely evil entity and the Prince will have to fight and defeat her.
• Even though the entire point of the story is “healing the fertile grounds” as to prevent the vaguely evil thing from waking up from its slumber, you’ll fail towards the end and thus be forced to fight against the vaguely evil thing itself. Because otherwise where the hell would the end boss come from?
• James Schend will get very bored of this cliche-ridden crap and skip every dialog option possible to skip.

Anyway, to summarize: medium-to-good game, bad story.

Take a quick look at Steam’s Holiday Sale. I’m sure that link would be good for long, so here’s the screenshot:

(Click to enlarge)

Nice. I’ve been looking to buy Colonization for a long time, and it’s a 2K game. Let’s go ahead and click the 2K games icon that says, quite clearly:

25-75% OFF ALL TITLES

And we get the list of 2K games:

(Click to enlarge)

So, uh… last time I checked, Steam, 25% off $29.99 would be $22.50. Not the price you have listed, $26.99.

I’ve been wary of the entire Steam concept since the first time I installed it. It didn’t help that the first Steam experience was spending hours downloading Half-Life 2, and then even more hours “activating” it. Things like my Dark Messiah install haven’t exactly increased my confidence. And now I find out that they can’t even get basic pricing right.

Well, the sale’s over, and Steam never answered my support request. Feh.