Catching up with Dragon Age 2

So I've being catching up with Dragon Age 2 now and shut up so it's been a while stop making this difficult because I remembered that I don't have to give EA any money if I can get someone else to lend me the game.

(No to very mild spoilers at best, possibly aided as I've yet to finish the damn thing yet.)

It's so far giving me a typical Bioware experience... only if Bioware had only thirteen days and seventeen pence to make a game and only the coffee boy had the time free to do any writing and level design. Basically, what traditional Bioware problems have are worse, and a few new ones have crept up.

In every Bioware game I've played, there's always been a moment where I went, "Whoa there, that is not what I wanted to say!" Mass Effect 1's moment was when talking to Joker about his disease, instead of politely asking if I he needed further accommodations, Shepard went all Jack Bauer in his face demanding his disease secrets least he betray me anew. In Dragon Age 2, I don't have a moment because it. Is. Non. Stop. I like my snarky Hawke - often because I like the neutral option between flowers, hugs vs, murder, voting UKIP but Jesus, Hawke. Pick your time. Or stop having such a cack handed delivery. I have the subtitles on, and when Hawke remarking wryly on the pun of a potion seller using the word remedy, I read the response and laughed... before Hawke then spoke the words, draining all humour likes the dregs of last night's curry down the pughole. Whee.

Your delivery is bad and you should feel bad.

Another traditional Bioware issue - repeating dungeon assests. Now Mass Effect 1 was bad, but we told them to knock that shit off and they did, even mocking it in a few occasions in later games. Dragon Age 1 had a few - mostly ambush sites and fields. I let that (mostly) slide. Dragon Age 2? That seventeen pence rears its ugly head because the world is awash with deja vu as everywhere I go I've been there before. It's getting embarrassing traipsing into the bandits lair, formally the spider lair, formally the old mine, formally the old caves, formally a different bandits' lair, originally the smuggler's cave. I tend to walk in, and walk past the enemies straight to their super secret treasure room out of habit.

At least they've worked on the influence system. I had issues with the precious one - to make sure everyone loved me (and thus would have better stats) I would say whatever I felt a party member wanted to hear in front of them. "What's that Morrigan? You love the colour red? Oh, me too! It's my favourite! And yes, Leilana, I do agree, blue is the best colour. No doubt. Oh and Zeveran? New black boots? Best colour choice ever, even when that's a shade!." I didn't feel my noble had a personality, just a shell of lies surrounding a deeply insecure person who'd no doubt go on to become the greatest politician of all time.

Now, instead of pissing off people and they leave, I can piss off people and they stay out of pure spite. Delicious. I still have the odd issue of min-maxing - I am paranoid of starting new quests without the right people in the party to approve / disprove of my choices, and every quest I hand in becomes a shuffle contest - right, this guy I'm squeezing for coin, best get Isabela in here, this lass, I'm letting go to flee from the Templars - Anders, Merril, you need to hear this, fetch Fenris too, he's going to lose his shit!" It's got the point I have temporarily stopped playing as I am paralysed as I can't talk to anyone without consulting a guide. Stupid min-maxing habits.

Amusingly, I am successfully seeking friendship with my whole party... aside from Fenris, who I am starting to feel that me singling out for abuse is now me role playing a playground bully. That aside, it is hilarious to think of a group of people singing my praises whilst Fenris glowers in the corner, the smug git.

To victim blame here: it's all his fault. Look, Fenris - I know you hate mages, and think they should be under Templar control every second of the day. Tragically, my dead dad - and my still living sister, you ass - are mages. Who aren't blood magic abomination psychopaths. So it might mean your current audience - me - for your spoutings isn't fucking interested! So shut your face. I'd make a bigger deal of this, but rather annoyingly every time in this sodding series a mage escapes a Templar's gaze for a gnat's blink they blood magic all up in this hiz-house. Super awkward. YOU GUYS ARE NOT HELPING YOU OWN CASES, HERE.

Because doing this to yourself was clearly the smart choice.

That said, they're are a few good characters lurking. Fenris I count as acceptable because he at least makes me want him to stick around so I have pull his hair and give him wedgies (oh god I am a bully, I am a terrible person.) Merril surprised me - up came her blood magic, and out came my high horse to preach about her folly... and every time I tried to get on that sodding high horse I was beaten back by a wave of pure niceness and upbeatness. I don't even... wut? I imagine the demon she pacted with attempted something horrible but by the time Merril was done with it she left it making floral patterns and gushing about Pinterest. I wuv her so. No joke, with a w. I wuv her and if anyone messes with her I will pound them into the filthy Kirkwall street.

Varric is awesome, and is my bestest bro. A ranged rogue with a kickass crossbow? Count me in. I love his interrupts - Varic, please step up to the plate and weave a tale of something magic, please. I've enjoyed Bethany as well, but that may be based on enjoying the presence of any character for heals my main character constantly due to his disposition to find large groups of enemies irresistible to leap into.

And they solved the dog issue too! He's now a summon, not a party member who can't equip armour or weapons and has shit skills.

Of course, there is a saturation of bleh characters. Anders once was amazing, funny, witty... now is angst driven and full of literal Vengeance. Whee. Way to fuck him up. Also, come on Anders - I don't like Templars either, but these mages just will not stop with the blood magic. At a certain point, this animosity is kinda self-inflicted. Carver is allegedly a boring ass too, but he was polite enough to get his boring ass killed in the prologue for me.

Then we roll round to Isabella. You see, Isabella likes sex.

She likes sex so much she even forgets to put her trousers on in the morning, just in case it delays a chance of sex. Sexy, sexy sex. Sex. She's a sailor, a pirate queen of sex. Sex. Sex. Did I mention she likes sex?

BECAUSE SHE WON'T SHUT UP ABOUT IT.

WE GET IT ALREADY.

Look, I'm not hear to slut shame, or demand wimmen cover up. Nah. That's some bullshit right there. But her personality points are that she's a liar and wants to get laid... and nothing else. She reminds me of a 13 year old virgin boasting to his mates about all the sex he's getting - you know the type. On top of that, party conversation revealed that's she's riddled with STD's that even Ander's spectacular healing skills can barely hold back the cornucopia of venereal discharge - great. Fucking great. Instead of a sex-positive commanding pirate queen I have a pandering eye candy character. I can't take her seriously as every conversation, like the tides, inevitably rolls back to boning. I have had to texture mod her to possess a set of pants because I started feeling sorry for how cold she must be, let alone before I could see something that wasn't written and designed to purely stroke my ego... or at least the ego that Bioware thinks I have, which is kinda insulting. It does not help that as a melee rogue, she has no durability so constantly falls down on combat. Sigh,

Sooner or later I pray I see a glismpe of actual character or personality in there, but by then I'll be too busy dancing through the fields with Merril. You know, I honestly think I had exactly the same moan about this sort of shit in the Witcher 2, which is like, two articles down, not accounting for time. Hmm. Oh, also Aveline!

Aveline is there, I guess.

There might be another character but I'm pretty sure he is overpriced DLC. Big loss.

So that's how the characters are written, what about the plot, aka part two of my you buy a Bioware game? Unfortunately, the plot suffers from two faults. Firstly, they want Hawke to be Sheppard... so badly. So, while Sheppard did incredible things over the course of multiple games that you were part of, Hawke... has time skips, and everyone you meet next is like "Wow! Cool, Hawke, I'm your bestie from back then! You're so cool, because of the cool things you did, BUT YOU WILL NEVER SEE," Look Bioware, this isn't difficult - if it happened off screen, it doesn't count. The end. Don't tell me Hawke is a badass. Show me. Or better yet, let me be the badass. I am playing your bread and butter, a fucking power fantasy here people; work with me.

Secondly they seem to believe I am fascinated by the Qunari.

I am not.

One of the major problems with the Qunari is how insufferable they are. The subscribe to a code called the Qun, which is sort of interesting for five minutes until you coin onto the fact there is no code. Like Lost, there is no grand plan; just bullshit made up moment to moment with vague hand gestures trying vainly to pretend that they know what they're on about. Once you figure that out all sense of mystery is gone. So what is the Qun? A code glorifying slavery with a spiritualistic aspect. Boom. Done. Or in game turns, justfication to have them do whatever the plot demands they do because the Qun said so/ Here's me, like in every Bioware game, trying desperately to learn about this new and fascinating culture... but as they don't have one, they have to awkwardly shoo me away whilst keeping their noses firmly up their own asses. Basically, I am half way through this game and my official opinion on how to deal with this tense, diplomatic, multi-faceted problem is for me to load up and slaughter every one of the bloody horned bastards and call it a day... for a bunch of dudes essentially just chillin' out on the docks.

The combat is... well, it's different to the past game. Way more hack and slashy. Not inherently bad, just not the itch I was looking to scratch. The auto attack is a bit finicky, and it's not unoften I have party members stand around doing the medieval equivalent of checking their phone's Twitter for a few minutes until I notice and remind them we're in a desperate life-or-death struggle. Melee rogues have made slight steps to being usable compared to the first game, the issue remaining though that melee rogues ground themselves when attacking, and doing breaks them. Without the flank, they die, and rogues won't path to find the flank, and when you personally micro manage them the whole team groups up on the new leader and ruins the battlefield dynamic. There's a few new moves that let's rogues manoeuvre easier, but I've had rogues jump into the middle of a group and die horribly as often as jump out. Weirdly enough, I have found no party members that use longbows at all, but I keep finding them.

The sad thing is that with all these gripes, Dragon Age 2 isn't a bad game. Most characters are interesting, and even better Bioware games usually has one or two that fail to engage anyway, the combat is fun but needs work, and there is a sense of the grander world. The problem is that Dragon Age 2 does not measure up to being a Dragon Age title. The first set the bar pretty high for new IP and this is a blatent cash-in. If this was Hawke the RPG: Bullying Fenris from a little developer, I'd be a lot more generous with my praise. Instead this is the equivalent of Ferrari announcing the next Enzo... only to reveal it's a functional 49cc moped with middling mileage. You're better than that, Bioware.

So I hear Dragon Age 3: Inquisition is really good!

Just have to get over my Origin resentment first.

Witcher 2: It hates you with a passion

So I started on the Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings a while back and shut up Payday 2 beginner guides are coming.

Anyway.

What was I saying?

Ah, yes, Witcher 2. It fucking hates me.

He ain't coming for the monsters, he's coming for you.

Okay, some of it was my fault. I booted it up, and thought to myself, "Hey, it's ported to Xbox, so it must mean I can use a gamepad on it, sweet." Oh, poor, stupid past me. I forgot it was an exclusive PC game first, and the first game in the series was a PC exclusive period, no fucking around. Witcher 2 sees your consoles and sniffs disdaininly.

I could feel it's contempt for me as I plugged in the gamepad, like I promised a good night of lovin' but immediately went for the off-limits back door. However, like a fool, I persevered with my decision. Along I went, until the combat started. And, well, the Witcher 2 likes their combat more realistic then most RPGs. This means if you fight multiple opponents at once... they surround you, and stomp your kidneys out of you via your testicles. And it's not like Assassin's Creed 'surround' you, where they surround you whilst politely attack you one at the time,like gentlemen, nah. Witcher 2 will gang slap you upside the back of your head and you'll tough it out, son.

Well, combat started, and went wrong instantly. Yeah, you can use the gamepad, like you can strictly speaking use a USB cable to drink soup. It's not going to easy, you'll do it in drips and drabs, you'll look stupid and everyone will wonder why you're not just using a spoon. The worst was the quick menu - I couldn't select a bloody thing, no matter where I waggled the stick, which wouldn't be a problem if the quick menu paused the game... which it doesn't. Ouch. So much ouch.

So I switched to the keyboard, mid-tutorial, without thinking about it. Most games nowadays recognise if you switch inputs and alter their instructions accordingly - not Witcher 2. It seemed to take my attempts to ingratiate myself with it poorly, and punished me for being a little brown noser. So whilst I was running around in little circles weeping to myself futilely trying to press the left trigger button that no longer existed, I came to the conclusion we weren't going to get on so I should just suck it up and start anew before it physically manifested itself and started strangling me in hate.

The second time round went a little better. Couldn't skip the tutorial so had to do it all over again... gah. However, Witcher 2 grades your performance on the combat tutorial - said tutorial, where they shrugged, listed each move in order, and called it a day. Great. Thanks. The fuck is Axii? Or Quen? Why aren't my spells called Knockback, Control, or Shield - you know, their actual descriptions? Nope. Take your made up words and go with it. And whilst I did a little better it still amounted to my embarrassing myself and collecting more swords in my upper intestinal tract than the Iron Throne. So Witcher 2 looked at me, sniffed again in disappointment, and decreed if I was going to be so shit perhaps I'd like to play it on easy, baby mode, like the ham-handed idiot child that I was.

By this point I was thoroughly beaten down, and just wanted to play the bloody game I had paid less than £3 for on Steam Sale. So the game started proper, and straight into some full frontal female nudity. Twenty seconds past of being humiliated for being shit at games and there's vagina and tits right in my face, with pubic hair modelled also. Normally I'd have to download a mod to have not. Er, not that I'd ever do that.

Look, video games? We need to have a talk. Stop that. Stop throwing female nudity in my face to attempt to please me. It's juvenile. Once again, if I want porn, I'm on my computer, the internet is here, I got this covered. Quite frankly at this point I wouldn't mind at least a little balancing this out with some wang. I don't really want to look at copious amounts of wang, but quite frankly with have to balance this shit out. You put wang in, I'll enjoy the tits more, because at least I won't feel that I'm enabling in the exclusion of a gender from my hobby.

Nope, not good enough. Take off the pants.

Moving on, all was well and good as I taught myself combat, as the game wasn't gonna. Namely, rolling. Rolling is the path to victory. Roll, roll, and roll some more. Fuck parring or riposte - nah, roll. Rolling then use Quen, which is the shield spell. Slap the shield on, and roll faster and further than Sonic the Hedgehog and you'll be able to manoeuvre around enough to stop being stomped into the crappy medieval pavement.

In terms of the story - okay, guys? How did you not see that monk was clearly an assassin? He was like eight foot tall and built of pork shoulder, with spiked knuckle gloves. How metal are the monks in your world that this sight didn't throw you? And secondly, Geralt, whilst being the brooding loner clearly works for you, next time you might want to point out nice and early hey fuckwads, my sword's shiny clean and why the fuck would I kill the king now? We're like bros. Coulda killed him way back, and you'd never suspect me, why now? Nah, instead go all dark and mysterious... and wind up being tortured and blamed for regicide. Smooth moves, genius.

Then the game crashed.

Repeatedly.

Turns out the game crashes with too many saves. Who'da funk it? This wouldn't be an issue, unless you're playing an RPG which requires plenty of saves, (which the Witcher 2 is,) or if the game autosaves every seventeen seconds (which the Witcher 2 does.) So. Manual deleting away we go.

And Jesus! This game still doesn't like me, after all the effort I put in. There's a billion fucking different menus, with cross-purpose uses - okay, so you get monster knowledge, right? That goes in the Journal, on the Monster tab. Great. Ah, no. You see, that's just lore knowledge. If you want to know tactics against a certain monster (and more lore knowledge, weirdly enough) you have to... keep up with me here... go in the Quick Menu, select Meditate (which is not always available) select Character, go in Attributes, select Monster, and then scroll down to what you want. Why. WHY THE FUCK IS THAT SO NEEDLESSLY COMPLICATED? WHY DO I NEED TWO. FUCKING. MENUS. TO DO ONE THING? ONE. THING!

This game screams 'PC exclusive' with is unnecessary complexity. Simple little things, like demanding I use the Enter and Arrow keys. No. Listen you bastards, the left hand is on the WASD keys, the right on the mouse. Don't make me move my right hand back on the keyboard when I'm just gonna need the mouse in a second. It's ridiculously inefficient and an uneconomical use of your input device. One time, I had to draw out a glyph by instructing a man to toddle around at a distance. I'd been given the glyph earlier... but could I pull up that page so I could look at it whilst directing the dude? Could I fuck. I had to wander away, open up the inventory, find the bloody page again - a fucking nightmare, as by this point I had thousand of quest items cluttering up my inventory because once the quest's done they don't go - draw out the glyph on a piece of envelope left on my desk and then do it. Did I feel clever? No, I thought the Witcher 2 was being annoyingly bloody minded and inconvenient for kicks.

...I have no idea what's going on here.

Tragically, by this point I was drawn in. Originally, I was setting out to beat it to prove I could, now the story was interesting enough to make me continue looking up forums and videos to fix the many, many bugs. About a few hours in, though, something clicked, and there was no ham-handed idiot child - I was Geralt of Riveria, murder machine. I'd charge into combat high of multiple toxic potions and purée multiple opponents with my sweet skills, before rolling off into the horizon, setting a few traps, chucking a few bombs, and blam! Back in the frey again, my sword awash with blood.

That said, the lore and story definitely kept me going as my skills in combat grew. Watching a whole world attempting to tear itself apart whilst you struggle to hold it together purely to clear your name - and I'm a monster slayer, damn it! I kill monsters for you! For very little pay! I deserve a motherfuckin' parade, you miserable bastards! And I'm still debating going through and playing a second time, this time with skill and bugfixes at hand to explore what I missed, and choose perhaps better life choice.

Do I think it was worth the trip?

Eventually, yes. It did help I brought this on the cheap, paying full price for such a buggy game would of infuriated me. At least I got a dev on Twitter to point me towards some help.

The combat was very different to what I was used to, and was very entertaining once I grasped it. It's a pity that the game itself was so bad at teaching me what I needed to know, but getting into it was very rewarding. Once I had it down, I went into many fights only taking hits when I was messing around, and wanting to up the difficulty for more challenge. It hit both my challenge and tactical movement buttons. Each time I saw a fight approaching, my though process was "Hell yeah!"

The story was definitely engaging. Unfortunately, knowledge of what happened in the first game is kinda important, and whilst I managed without, they threw words, politics and factions at me thick and fast at the beginning and I got swamped, to resurface later and get my place. The lore of witchers are fascinating - here's your powers to kill monsters, and here's your powers to bone women better. Not a bad deal, really. Whilst I had issues with the brooding Geralt, an early scene with his friends opened him up to me - he doesn't like people in general, but values his friends, and actually smiles and jokes around. Without that scene, just seeing his brooding poker face would of got tedious. Around people he trusts, he actually inflects things! Nice. And yeah, there's some bad guys you're gonna want to rip into tiny pieces.

Lots of little touches pleased me - Dandelion's voice actor was superb, as was your journal entries, which he writes for you. While I've complained about it being needless obtuse, sometimes they get it right and send you on a quest with enough instructions that lets you explore and feel clever for figuring it out, without resorting to hand holding. Which, admittedly, a little would be nice. It's also very pretty - so damn pretty. Like, staggeringly pretty. There's quite a few games out there that could learn a thing or two about it's optimization.

I'll be awaiting Witcher 3, but just might put off buying it immediately... yeah. Not 100% confident about the developers releasing a fully working game right out the gate. But I see it's gunning for a simultaneous console and PC release, which should iron out a few of the more prevalent menu waffle and stop it from falling back on a slipshod buggy release. I hope.

Metro: Last Light shows you how not to do a silent protagonist

Why do we still have silent protagonists? Or rather, why do we still use them so badly?

I've been catching up with Metro: Last Light recently, or perhaps known by it's less catchy name: 'Miserable and Bleak Soviet Apocalyptica: The Game.' Whilst I'm being drawn in by it's world, the atmosphere, I am constantly being taken out of it by the way my character stares dumbly at people whilst they talk at him. By the end of what's laughably called a conversation, I wordlessly go do what they said. It's gone from unsettling to really creepy, and it's putting me in mind that my character is the world's ultimate doormat.

No, this doormat is way to interesting for Metro's main character.

I doubt I would feel this way if I was playing the first Metro game, but I'm playing a sequel. Silent protagonists are great for putting yourself into the situation, but that's not really relevant now. My character, WhatsHisNameSki, has done stuff without. Done a lot of stuff the last game. A lot of world changing, morally ambiguous stuff. So what this character has, strictly speaking, is character. He's no longer the blank slate; his slate has been appropriately muddied with experiences and life choices and the fuck I know of any of it, making the doormat feature of my personality super awkward.

I live in terror of playing Half Life 2 again and finding myself unable to enjoy it because of the shared mutism.

Twice now I've ran into old friends, who've greeted me warmly and I've stared at them quietly for a bit, before getting bored and rifling through their stuff for ammo, which they've either politely ignored me thieving what precious little they have left of they view it as an endearing character trait of mine, and if it is, I'd love the game to share it with me. What's WhatsHisNameSki likes, dislikes, what's his parents like? Does he have hobbies? Does he like ham? I would really like to know. Fucking seriously. Tell me - something - about this dude. His room was sparsely decorated - it had a box of books in, so he might like reading? But I couldn't see the spines so I have no idea what he reads (aside from the Metro series of book ha ha get it?)

My only other insights into him is a little internal monologue between chapters and his diary, which apparently he writes ahead of time for everything that'll happen in the day and scatter them randomly about the level ahead of him, because adding collectable items is a quick an easy way to extend game length of reasons.

So clearly he's a amnesiac time-traveller.

The internal monologue has indicated he doesn't like communist, but he dislikes Nazis way more. Well yip-dee-fucking-doo, everybody dislikes communists but hates Nazis more. Also he's sort of conflicted about killing the last Dark One off, but Grr Grr Duty Grr. Actually, come to think about it, the last time I passed a mirror the developers never bothered to animate the character in. So I have no idea of what my character looks like along with no knowing what he is. Aside from being a vampire, obviously. An amnesiac time-travelling vampire.

It's a definite pity, because god damn is this word interesting. The very first opening fight is against the Dark Ones, who look weird and toothy and as you drop each one, they turn into your mates and that is creepy as all hell. They get into you mind, but my character has somehow communicated with them before, which no one has accomplished before or even though possible. So I'm an amnesiac Chosen One time-travelling vampire.

But I'm a post-apocalypse nut, and this is one of the few downsides. As stated, the world is vividly interesting - mankind stuck after the bomb in old Russian metro stations - and the scavenging aspect to survive on the poisoned surface really appeals to me. What's especially interesting the the weird physic phenomenon on the surface. I was wondering around on a crashed plane, and my partner warned me to keep it together. Keep it together, geez. What, is my dude well known for having an over-active imagination? Do I need to add it to the bullshit list I made up? It's getting kinda long now.

Well, it turns out that the world itself gives you an over-active imagination, as we both starting having flashbacks of the plane's final moments. It really killed my partner, as to escape the smoke filling the cockpit in the flashback he ripped off his gasmask... and proceeded to choke on the poisoned air of the surface. A little later, whilst dicking around looking for bullets and filters dead men started to appear in the corners of my vision, and I ended up crawling out as they got more real. Well done Metro: Dead Space taught me to explore through my fear, you taught me to stop exploring as it's terrifying again.

Then I run into another person who talks around me for a bit, and I'm completely taken out of the experience.

Say something! Anything! TELL ME YOU LIKE HAM.

This is not to say silent protagonists are inherently bad. I'll contrast another - Isaac Clarke from the first Dead Space. Now Isaac Clarke didn't speak, and was ordered around a lot. Fair enough, you're a low ranking engineer, and most of the orders you're getting involve the phrasing 'for god's sake fix this part of the ship before we all die,' which doesn't necessitate much response other than 'yep, on it.' No leisuerely chats between friends, here. But we know we're looking for his girlfriend (look, a relationship!) we know he's scared out his damn mind, and everything else has been stripped out to put you in the place he is so you are likewise scared. Unlike Metro, your weapons are cobbled together tools for the most part, and you lumber around in a heavy rig suit, taking away the super-soldier feel. By the time Dead Space 2 rolls around, having survived and grown some, Isaac talks and is his own character SEE METRO. That's what you do. In horror games, a blank slate can be key for helping you to immerse yourself in the threat.

And don't try to contradict me by saying Metro is both a horror game: once you have a shotgun and thus can apply said shotgun to threat's face the horror is suitably diminished.

Pictured: Reassurance (in noisy form)

Want to have a silent protagonist with a past? Make it mysterious, and make it the point of uncovering it. If your past is spread over previous games, and you keep running into prior acquaintances, then trying to justify your inability to open your damn mouth and say, no, I don't want to go down the spider's nest alone where the horrible spiders that eat your eyes and lay eggs in the empty sockets are, as that sound's fucking stupid...

Well, it get's rather daft, see?

That being said, please don't mistake this bitching as that I'm not enjoying Metro: Last Light, that while your character may be bland the world certainly isn't, and I look forward to seeing what the amnesiac Chosen One time-travelling vampire becomes next. I'm hoping for a robot!

Sim City an MMO, except when it isn't

I once wrote about Sim City, and how it was a sack of shit game that didn't work when released. The thing is, the necessity to log on their shitty servers was essential to the core running of the game (no, actually, it wasn't) because Sim City is; get this - it's an MMO. Yes, I know they never advertised it as an MMO until after it's shitacular launch, but that's just beacuse they were busy, I dunno, swimming in prostitutes or something. Nah, it's not a single player city building simulation like all it's predecessors, it's an MMO! A Massive Multiplayer Game! And they have to be online, that's the whole point! Why, if it's not online, it can't work, so you can't be mad at a full price game that doesn't work!

Only that you can be mad, because it didn't fucking work.

...and now, it's quietly not even an MMO anymore.

Yeah, this week it was announced in the next big patch they'll patch in an offline mode. So since fucking March last year, anyone owing Sim City has had to tolerate shitty useless logins. But hey, it's about 10 months down the line, and it's finally taking steps to be playable at last! You'll probably still want to be checking in online a fair bit though, because this turd of a game has needed essential patches like clockwork every month since release. And the pathing still doesn't work. Yeah. So, if you've been holding out until you get the Sim City you actually want, well, it's still a ways off, but it's marginally closer now. Pity for all those people who's had to deal with its shite for the last ten months.

I bring this up because I'm actually trying to remember about what my obscenity and typo riddled rants have been in the past, and wanted to catch up the stories. And it's nice to have good news to follow. Sort of.

You know, it's stuff like this that makes my wonder just how long mainstream, triple A big budget titles can last. Nowadays, it's rumoured for our shiny new current generation can cost more then eight times what the last generation did- and when you consider that when Tomb Raider and Resident Evil 6 can sell five million copies apiece and still weren't considered a financial success you have problems. Big fucking promblems.

Admittedly it doesn't help that you take 'safe' risks like the big names of Sim City, Resident Evil, Final Fantasy and whatever 1980s games they can dig up for nostalgia's money sake tank because the the publisher would rather panic and make everything a 3rd person shooter with turret sections with a tacked on multiplayer. Let's take a look at my current games I am playing from Steam:

Must... get... all... the... gun mods...

Yeah, so that's three independent titles and a game that I think was made in the '90s. The last big budget game I brought was Bioshock Infinite, which I waited until Steam had a ludicrous sale on it first. A lot of gamers like me are finding themselves more and more to be trained to avoid a games launch (where those first 90 days most games make their money) because they won't work and later on, if you're nice and patient, Steam will sell it on the cheap. And you'll get all the dlc thrown in with it, and the patches will have it working. Why buy on launch any more? That behaviour isn't our fault. That behaviour is on the publishers.

And no, the answer isn't to have more pre-order bonuses.

We know that given even time a publisher's lust for money will sell that 'exclusive' pre-order dlc as later dlc.

Also pre-order bonuses are crap. Moving on.

Quite frankly, I'm wondering how sustainable this sort of budget is when many people like me are happy enough paying much less for a less graphically intensive but clever and enjoyable experience. Sure, it's not rendering each individual facial hair follicle in HD, but only the nutbar David Cage wants that. Hell, in certain situations, even Minecraft looks hella pretty, so pumping in all that money for a graphically superior but poor design aesthetic doesn't make a lot of sense.

So what we're getting is an exciting time of video games - we see small, cheap-in-comparison games that rely on wits, unique gameplay, humour and fun vs the big, lumbering, whiz-bang blargh bleh dross of the mainstream big players, who adapt as well as the mighty dodo. It'll be a hoot to see what we get because of this.

What I should do, and what Payday 2 should really not do

So it's another year past, and now is the time for some serious reflection of what we've done, what we did but shouldn't of done, and what we should of done but didn't.

And if you're still following me after that mess of the sentence, now is also the time to look at things we should do in the new year... and what things we really should do but probably won't.

Unfortunately all this introspection has been interrupted by the that is what I've done is had about four Christmas dinners in as many days, which is quite frankly now starting to look like something I've done but shouldn't, whilst simultaneously making me realise what I should of done but didn't was eat less. Thinking on this subject a bit more, this puts me to mind that next time the season swings round is that what I should do is to eat less of the turkey / chicken / beef, and in all honestly that's definitely something I really should do but won't.

So while I'm absent of genuine thoughtful introspection, at least I'm being efficient.

Eh, close enough.

In my complete defence, I don't want to see another chocolate for at least the next... seventeen minutes. Now that may seem flippant, but considering I'm sitting waist deep in a pile of gifted chocolate it's kinda inescapable. I've been filing it away under the 'well, that's a flat surface' method and I am one sneeze away from a death via a chocolate avalanche. Which while this death is incidentally number seven of my top ten list of preferred ways to die, is not something I intend to do tonight. I mean, I've yet to see the new Sherlock, so that death can at least wait until later in January.

So with a lack of anything intelligent to talk about I'm going to waffle on about Payday 2 for a bit.

Now Payday 2 is a game where you play a bunch of organised criminals pulling various heists, from simple jewellery store robberies, to bank hold ups and more elaborate schemes: one has you steal a variety of sold paintings to add tiny cameras to the frames to enable you to see inside a penthouse apartment of a man you were paid to frame by planting somewhere in the region of half of Columbia's annual cocaine production in their personal vault. So it's not same-y, is what I'm trying to say.

It has one of the best weapon modification systems I have ever seen implemented in a video game, and you can also modify the masks that you wear as well for an added bonus. You also can level up with a variety of skills in different trees; I'm currently managing a blend of enforcer and mastermind. As an enforcer, I get heavier armour more damage and terror output, while as a mastermind I provide a variety of buffs to my team. I was originally attracted to the mastermind by one of it's skill descriptions, Stockholm Syndrome - civilians you have threatened have a chance to help you up if you've been downed.

My crew's plans normally blend between stealthy and brutal - the first twenty minutes agonizingly eliminating patrolling guards and security cameras before kicking down the doors and screaming GET DOWN ON THE FLOOR. GET DOWN ON THE FUCKING FLOOR. NO HEROES. NO FUCKING HEROES. I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL FUCKING KILL ANYONE WHO FUCKING LOOKS LIKE THEY'RE MOVING. AND THEN I WILL SHOOT TWO MORE FUCKING PEOPLE AS A LESSON. NOT. TO. BE. A. FUCKING. HERO.

That bit is admittedly a rather disturbing amount of fun. So all good, right? Eh... well...

Payday 2 is one of the most unfair, cheap games I have even encountered.

Once the stealth fails, at higher difficulties, you basically have to restart as there's no way you have enough firepower to blow away the five million police in riot gear that were chillin' just two minutes down the road. That's fine, no worries. However, some missions decide the Fuck You approach, like having a chance to spawn extra guards (whom you can only kill so many before the police gets automatically notified) in areas already cleared, turning a twenty minute prep into wasted time. And certain missions you can't even stealth, so you're fighting Bulldozers all the time who only go down when you've fired enough lead to physically pin them to the floor by sheer weight. Who can also spawn in cleared areas on stealth missions, for funsies. You're never safe - enemies can, will, and do just appear.

It doesn't feel fair, and you start feeling really cheated. You realise that in a lot of missions; success depends entirely on luck - will their be three trucks, or two? Will the escape van come here, or over there? Will the guard notice me this time, or will he not? Will there be a fucktonne of Bulldozers, or a metric fucktonne of Bulldozers? As you don't get paid until you do enough missions to get to the titular payday - and a few times now, me and a crew have played for hours failing repeatedly until everyone realises they aren't having fun. And I admit that while I'm not that good, everyone else on my crew is, so ham-fistedness ain't the issue.

So you quit. Wasting all your time with no payout. And as money is needed to do EVERYTHING in game that's painful. And rage-inducing. So you grind the missions that don't have the fun and interesting twists to them to get the much needed cash, because those twists, while original, isn't worth the unfairness.It doesn't help that I also feel the DLC is unfair - without the Gage Pack 1, you have no grenades, and most the guns in the Gage Pack are better and cheaper then any other equivalent, giving a pay-to-win vibe.

Right now it's a balancing act, and it's tipping into the 'why bother?' point, which is worrying, because it's definitely fun. So much to scream at people and out wit the police, cackling into the night. Tragically, that fun is dependant on the game's internal mood and chance. I worry that without some behind the scenes balancing and tinkering, this game will fall off my recommend list. Don't pick it up at full price, is what I'm saying.

It has convinced me however that on my to not-do list for next year, that I should never try to actually rob a bank. And the stats back me up here.




Payday 2 is available here, but check out the Steam Store for the holiday sales and Kinguin when out of season for a discount.

Garfield hates Mondays. I loathe them.

You know what's been really pissing me off recently? This:

Yes, because clearly that was Monday's fault.

Fuck you. Fuck you Garfield. You are a fucking cat. Like you understand how tremendously shitty Mondays are.

I work in one of those jobs where it doesn't even have the good grace to enter a stasis time-freeze when I leave for the weekend. No, because that would be bloody kind. When I leave, the job's still happening. Ticking away, over and over. Never ending. So a weekend for me starts to feel like instead of being my time, it's just time when I forced to watch things pile up without me, whilst I'm unable to influence it. I'd rather it just be my only a chance to release the tension by burning something down or playing too much Bioshock Infinite.

CAWCAWCAW MOTHERFUCKERS

God I wish I could spout crows from the skies on command. Work to do? CROWS. Credit card payment due? CROWS. Need to shave? CROWS. Too long line to wait? CROWS. Being unsatisfying in bed? CROWS. Quite frankly, the day they sell a potion on the street corner that allows you to summon an army of murderous carnivorous crows at will is the day society comes to a screaming halt.

Anyway. Garfield's hatred of Mondays.

So really, my weekend is basically less of a weekend and more of two plus days of work not done silently building up in the background, stacking up, over and over on the sly, until it comes crashing down in malicious glee Monday morning. Which would in an ideal world be my entire problem, and thus not really worth complaining about. But no! Work is a harsh mistress, who is not done with me. Because I work on the dispatch end of sales, throughout the day, I get to see my impossible in-tray fill even bloody higher due to sales still fucking happening, from those anonymous selfish pricks who keep my job afloat.

Honestly, I have no idea how people manage to work in retail. Whenever I see another sale come through on my already silly busy schedule, I bitch and whine and gripe like a champion. I am the ultimate 200 metre Bitch Fit premier. You have no chance against me. But I can do this in the privacy of my workplace, far away from customers. In retail, you're in the customers eye line and earshot. All the time! How? How do these paragons of saintly patience and infinite tolerance put up with the unremitting torrent of stupidity and busywork their customers spew? And when they're not bothering you with nonsense, they're messing up what was a pristine store. I know how I would deal with it. CROWS.

That shirt display was immaculate before you messed it up! RARGH.

Because customers are stupid. Please. When not at work, I am also a customer of many things. Believe me when I say we customers do stupid and insensitive things all the time as standard sodding practice. We should, as a nation, hell, as a combined species, preface any and all interactions to people behind the counter with an apologetic head bob at our ineptitude and time wasting...

...Unless you are facing people who work at PC World or Currys, because those companies take a perverse delight at hiring people how have no idea about computers. At all. Once I had a man attempt to sell me the malware which is Norton as he said that Microsoft wouldn't update Security Essentials. Er. Wut? Honestly, if you yourself don't know much about computers, bribe an eight year old with chocolate and get them to help you decide what to correctly buy.

It's become a thing recently to try to encourage Black Friday to migrate it's way overseas to here. Seeing that Thanksgiving is a made up fictional holiday, I guess it's fine because at least you get the day off and have too much food. I can support that. But Black Friday? The day of sales notorious for customer related violence? Fuck that. You can keep that tradition, America. Keep it, and we'll share with you the mysterious wonder of Boxing Day. You'll like it! It's a day when you roll around in your own flab, nursing a hangover after over-indulging on Christmas Day. It is honestly the best holiday ever.

What has Garfield got to worry about on a bloody Monday? No, I don't see his declarations as gesture of solidarity with a plebeian such as myself. It's like a politician claiming he understands that all those poor people are going to freeze to death and that's just not jolly well right, is it? Garfield is a overweight cat, living rent free and meals included, like a politician, living with amenities paid for by expenses. No. Fuck your attempt to connect with my woes.

It almost makes me yearn for the time I was unemployed, when days of the week ceased to matter. Why hate Mondays? It's just like every other day... Until you remember the poverty and the depressing shattering of self worth that unemployment brings. But hey, Mondays stop mattering! Yay?

My Mondays are shite. Of course, some people's Monday's are considerably shitter than mine because they have jobs which are actual serious business, or even legitimate danger or great physical effort. But, in absolute fairness, those people aren't me, and thus their problems are not my problems.

So, in summary, go clean your own balls Garfield. I have to go to work tomorrow.

Don't you start.

Star Wars possible return to form? And I couldn't care less

Oh look, one of the original writers of the original trilogy of Star Wars is returning to write for the new Star Wars film. As a fan of Star Wars, I should be excited, right?

No.

I could not give less of a pulsating rat's testicle.

Also, he's involved, so expect so much lens flare you'll be forced to see it in 3D just for the darkening effect to avoid blindness.

And that, my friends, is evidence of the worst thing a franchise can suffer from: franchise burnout.

I was a good age for Star Wars. Obviously, I was not around for the original trilogy to be aired. However, I was a young boy when the remastered versions of the original trilogy came to the big screen, and I watched those, year on year, an instant convert. I had a steadily growing collection of the toys, had a few posters, and before I'd even got the toys I'd make intricate X-Wings and Darth Vader's out of Lego. When David Prose was on the radio, I called him up to ask about how they fought with the lightsabers - you see, I knew they were painted onto the film, and thus wasn't actually in the actor's hands, so I was wondering how they clashed sabers when logically they would have no idea where the sabers were at. He politely explained that they had these spinning bamboo dohickeys that were a right menace as they broke all the damn time. Later that day, I went to a fan convention he was at, and I had him sign a Darth Vader card I owned, which I still have somewhere.

This was before I knew that David Prose would sign anything, but hey, at the time, it mattered to me. Still does a little, in fact.

Linking Star Wars to my video game hobby, I've seen a fair few good to great games made by LucasArts, now a defunct studio. The Jedi Knight / Academy series, the Rogue Squadron series, and later, by Bioware, the first two Knights Of The Old Republic.

Of course, this happiness wouldn't last. I'm not going to give another lambasting of the prequel trilogy - far more talented individuals have already done so - but even back then I had hope. Genndy Tartakovsky made a fantastic Clone Wars mini-series,(which you must check out) but as the final prequel crawled in, I made a conscious decision to not pay to see it. I knew back then it wouldn't be worth it. Later on, I borrowed a pirated disk and fast forwarded it whenever it got too boring. I skipped most the film in the end, to weary to bother trying to engage. It broke me, broke my patience, broke my enjoyment of the whole damn experience.

This weariness wasn't exactly a new thing, as I had suffered it during Return Of The Jedi. Seriously. Knowing that the only reason bleedin' Ewoks were in that movie was to sell toys, and that the original concept had the fight be on Kashyyyk, the Wookie home world? Not only does the resulting fight make more sense, but how awesome would that of turned out? But no, Ewoks. Because the toys.

So many little things can burn out a franchise. Pushing to sell. Piss poor acting. Ignoring basic continuity. Flanderization of characters. Terrible, awful dialogue. Cameoing previous characters. An idiot director with no checks on his dross. Star Wars had it all. And when I felt it mattered to the people who made it, it mattered to me. It was art. Now, I see Yoda shilling phones. It's clear that Star Wars doesn't matter as an expression, as a story, as art: it's a soulless product. Boring. I'll pass.

Just... fuck you. Fuck you whomever thought of this. Fuck you with a rake. Fuck you with a rusty rake.

Now I've seen my fair share of beloved franchises become meaningless to me. Assassin's Creed has gone on a down slide as their incessant drive to produce annual title's has not only slowed the story down so much it becomes meaningless but by the time I can afford one the next one's out. I'm skipping Assassin's Creed 3, and going to try AC 4 when I find the money. It does help that not only did I feel that Connor from AC 3 was boring, but Ubisoft did as well and have quickly passed over him for AC 4. Passing quickly over the Mass Effect series, whilst I can say I brought even piece of dlc for the second game - I gobbled every piece up - I didn't for the third. While I could not get enough of Mass Effect 2, I could not stomach another second of heartbreak from Mass Effect 3. In fact, the only reason I brought any dlc for the third game was an attempt to purge the worst of the pain of the ending from my mind, but it never was like the second game, with me paying good money of useless cosmetic differences.

I may have brought this outfit purely to make stop her looking like a prostitute.

It's not just me. Hear about this one - audiences reacted positively to trailers of Devil until M. Night Shyamalan's name cropped up, resulting in derisive laughter? So what you're toxic, any publicity, right? Right? Ah, no. As we see films more and more nowadays trend to sequels, we also see the rise of diminishing returns. Whilst a sequel is seen as a safe risk, the reviews (and more importantly, the cash) starts to dwindle rapidly. So yes, make annual sequels, sell on your IP to someone else (I've belatedly remembered in fairness seperating George Lucas from Star Wars is only a good thing) and push the merchandise - but if you don't care, nor will your audience.

Overexposure, soulless shilling and being generally crap does in the most beloved franchises. Or, you could just try to make sure you respect your product and try to do a good job with it. But beware, by the time you grasp that concept, don't let too much time pass that the audeince just can't be brought back.

Oh, hey, another Pokemon game is out.

I DON'T EVEN SO CUTE WUT

Oh god shut up and take my money Nintendo.

Energy price rises and stabbing people go together suspiciously well

I wasn't paying attention, and the next thing I know, I've been doing this blog for a whole year. So, happy birthday blog. Well done.

Have some cake.

Now if I was clever, I could link this article back to my first thing I did, which was probably me talking about going to the dentist and having her pin my head to the table and command me to floss more. However, considering that quite got the point across, my teeth and gums are things of great health, so much so my dentist barely wants anything to do with me anyone. Pah.

So today, all I have left to talk about is the traditional mix of politics and video games. Because those two topics go together so well!

For starters, I am overcome with mirth over energy prices situation right now. A few weeks ago, we had Ed Miliband get up on stage an announce he intended to challenge the energy prices of this country, including a price freeze.

The response to this was predictable: plenty of people guffawing about how little Eddy knew nothing about the free market and how he was a socialist or communist, depending on the source. That speech also apparently managed to knock a billion pounds off the energy stock marke. So. Whoops. Not perhaps the greatest idea.

...until recently, when SSE declared it'll raising prices by an inflation-busting 8.2%, after great profit, with other companies predicted to be right behind in offering similar rises. It would be a surprise, if they hadn't done the same bleedin' thing last year as well. And those same people, admonishing Eddy for his foolish socialist-imposed folly, have been lamenting the mean old energy companies for fucking over, well, everyone.

Mmm. Hypocrisy. Delicious.

Anyway, I don't want to make a bug fuss on this point, but I think Eddy may have a bit of a point on taking on the energy companies here. For starters, no matter what you say, it's not a free market. It's owed by a mere six companies in this country, and let's face it; I can't start a power station in my backyard as small start up business and compete. Nah. Not only that, tariffs are as confusing as possible and it's not exactly something the consumer can do without. It's sort of necessary today, unless you found a way to do without heat, hot food and internet. And the way most people find to achieve that is by dying cold, alone, hungry and horny.

And you thought there wasn't a way out!

It's the sort of market you can leave to it's own devices and watch as it becomes a mangled mess as the biggest boy dominate and set prices and to hell with the customer. Or you could regulate it, like most EU countries do, but, pfft! Fuckin' commies. I mean, France has energy prices regular, and EDF, who supplies power to both France and here, well, France's power rates are considerably cheaper... but that's probably because... <insert francophobic joke here.>

Of course, I might not of announced a big prices freeze pledge, but snuck up on energy companies like a ninja and blindsided them, but that's possibly because I've playing Mark of The Ninja way too much recently.

Black clothes? Check. Sword? Check. Kunai? Check. Lack of Madara? Double check.

It's a side scrolling stealth-em-up, (I think that's a thing?) where the play a ninja doing ninja stuff - sneaking in air vents, stabbing dudes, infiltrating skyscrapers, stabbing dudes, planning and executing distraction strategy, stabbing dudes, recovering scrolls, and once in a rare moment stringing a guy up by his neck as a lesson to every other dude in the area.

Before you stab them, of course.

Now Mark of the Ninja really appeals to the part of me who is, to be brutally honest, a complete asshole. It's a similar state I explored in the Batman Arkham games, where I'd be sniggering in a dark corner as the pelted the sole remaining guard in the room with Batarangs as you deliberately coaxed him around the room to discover, one after one, the beaten, broken, and strung up bodies of his friends. Like Arkham, Mark of The Ninja has a robust terror mechanic, where dead bodies found lying or strung up can provoke understandable fear responses, including the one time where I chucked a dead body at a patrolling dude for a laugh. Look, I either do this sort of thing here, in the safety of video games, or I go out and do this outside.

I jest.

It's too cold outside.

Just like Spider-Man, if that guy used chains and was about to use his dude's throat as a handy pocket.

Aesthetically, it's very pleasing style of cel-shaded cartoony looks, which makes it look very clear and crisp, with some beautiful smooth animations. The music does a brilliant job of setting the mood and keeping you entertained as you wait for a dude to hurry the hell up and wander over here so you can stab him. You'll observe the room in sight and sound, as your position dictates your line of sight, but out of it a small outlier of sound will appear letting you track dudes in need of a face stabbing. The story, while feeling a bit simplistic as a revenge tale, has the interesting hook that whilst you're better than the average ninja due to your bitchin' magical tattoos, said tattoos will eventually drive you more insane than the Daily Mail's reader comment section so previous champions tend to commit suicide to avoid gnawing off the faces of members of their own clan. Which is nice. That being said, simplistic does not mean bad - it provides more then adequate context to your actions and escalations.

My only complaint so far is that the checkpointing is kinda weird, and it sometimes knocks you back a room further than I'd like, meaning that the odd difficult room will result in you having to navigate a previous trap room for the millionth time and you'll die in the easier room a bunch of times as you get impatient and try to charge through it. Mostly the game gives you enough variety of routes and equipment that taking out a room makes you feel smart rather than being hand-held across.

And in the worst case scenario, if you botch it you can beat the tar out of dudes before sneaking back into the shadows grumbling about how it's bizarre the jump button is also the 'drop down' and 'open hatch' button. It's okay. We've all done it.

Now if they'd like to create some DLC where you hunt down the CEOs of a ruthless energy company - just spit balling here - there's plenty of people in this country that would buy it.





Mark of The Ninja is available in a multitude of places, including Steam and Xbox Live Arcade. Please check out there site, http://www.markoftheninja.com/ for more details.

Guns of Icarus flash sale!

One quick bonus thing to say here. You've heard me talk / gush about Guns of Icarus a lot, yeah? Well, for the next 45ish hours, Steam is having a sale, and it's now sitting at a grand total of £2.49. Yes, Guns of Icarus is currently on sale for what I'd expect a crappy sandwich to cost.

Pictured: More fun then a sandwich, if less nutritious

If you don't have it, I'd highly recommend dropping the few quid and giving it a whirl! If you're feeling particularly flush, they're offering the Collector's Edition which includes a costume pack and soundtrack for the bank breaking cost of £2.99, the fiends.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/209080/

SteamOS - A potential headache and game changer for Microsoft

In their relentless drive to dominate everything in our gaming lives, Valve has recently announced their next big thing; the SteamOS. But to properly discuss it's potential impact on how we use our computers, let's take a trip down memory lane.

I've been building my own computers since college - or high school in American terms for you Yanks that keep wandering over here on my blog - ever since I discovered it was way easier than I thought and way cheaper then buying a whole unit. Computers had a mystique around them that building my own was the first step into breaking it.

Now the operating system you'd have ten plus years ago was a bit of a given. Yes, Linux and Apple existed, but neither were anywhere close to Microsoft's dominance with Windows. Linux remained in the hands of the few that truly got and understood computers, and I felt at the time it was seriously beyond my capabilities. Nowadays I find Linux a lot less intimidating, but that's because if a Linux device starts going wrong I have plenty of web-enabled device to search for a fix. Back then, the computer with Linux on would be the only device you owned that could traverse the internet so if shit happened... well, let's just say it involved a lot of travelling back and forth to your friend's house, or to be specific, your friend's internet connection. Mac's were there, but I only ever saw them used by media professionals, not everyday usage.
(For the record, I acknowledge the existence of iOS and Android but I won't be focusing on them on this article as they're newcomers, and not had a great impact on the desktop market.)

There was also another reason for Window's dominance; video games.

Oh yeah, look at me cater to the Ultima crowd like I have a clue what's going on.

If you wanted your video games on a PC, and I did, then Windows was pretty much the only way to go. Mac's had Warcraft... and that it. Linux had even less than that for the triple-A titles. Windows was the only way forward if you wanted to play, and I've used Windows almost exclusively on home rigs because of this. Between cornering the home video game enthusiast market and the gigantic business market, Windows was, and still is, top dog in the operating system producers.

But Microsoft's hold on that title had not exactly been absolute. They are perfectly able to fuck up along the way. The seemed quite happy to fuck up every other iteration of Windows, from ME, Vista and now 8. And 8 is a whopping fuck up. A real whopping fuck up. Most laptops don't come with touchscreens, let along desktops, which screws over Windows 8 something awful. Every person who I've ever asked about Windows 8 has come back quite clear - don't go near it, it's dog-shit awful, stick with 7. I despised it as I was forced to resort to Google search to help me find basic things like the Control Panel and the fucking option to turn off the fucking laptop. So it's fairly said it's not the most intuitive of OS's...

I get some of the ideas presented. I mean, looking at it for half a second, a unified interface across all platforms seems like a good idea. Of course, the next half a second of thought would of brought up that phones, desktops, tablet and games console not only do vastly different things but have require vastly different input from the user, which just goes to show why you should plan things for a whole damn second. Phones and tablets are primarily used for media consumption and entertainment, with input that's designed around small screens and inaccurate thumbs, where desktops straddle a myriad of tasks from work related spreadsheets, programming, rendering, data crunching and media consumption, with highly accurate and precise mouse manipulation input. There's a slight fucking difference there. Could you imagine trying to use an accounting spreadsheet on your iPhone, or trying to render an 3D animated object on a Galaxy's tiny CPU?

It doesn't help that I don't feel like Microsoft recognize their error, and would rather force it down everyone's throats with the attitude of, hey, we're the top dog. What else you got? All rumours point to more of the bad, more apps, more walled gardens, more 'no Start Menu' crap. And me, who wants my games, would sigh. Triple-A titles don't come to Macs often, even if I could afford their lubricious price tag, and Linux is a non-standardized mess, which is also shunned by the gaming development community - regardless of the irony that most games were likely programmed on a Linux computer.

But now SteamOS is here.

Sort of like the moon from Majora's Mask slamming into Mircosoft's Hyrule.

Oh. Fuck. Yes.

For starters, it's Linux with political muscle behind it. Steam is a massive distributor of games, and if anyone could say to developers 'Here's the OS baseline you're working to - not Ubunto, Red Hat or anything, this,' it's Valve. They're already pushing the porting of video games to Linux before this all went down, and with the Steam Box, they offer home network streaming for any game that isn't compatible. Plus they're already a Triple-A content producer anyway... when they get round to it.

In fact, I highly expect to find many games slowly but surely starting the port to Linux if this takes off. We've just seen Nvidia turn around and start pledging more Linux support from a historically poor stance of Linux support, and I doubt that SteamOS being and Nvidia's turnaround are not somehow related. One of the biggest issues I heard about Linux thus far is the sheer lack of support from companies like Netflix - and considering that SteamOS has already been stated to want to be big on all media, specifically mentioning streaming media, I remain hopeful that a breakthrough in support is around the corner.

As it's Linux based and designed to run on a smaller console, it'll also be mercifully lightweight on your system resources. No more of the whole 'I'm using over 33% of your entire system resources to sit here idling' nonsense, which I've come to resignedly expect from later iterations of Windows.

If they come out and say that they're also going to get some office programs on there as well...

Oh.

Oh boy.

Oh, and it'll be free by the way. Yup. Free.

That's some serious competition to Microsoft right there. While in yesteryear if someone mentioned picking up a new computer you wouldn't ask about what OS they intended to have because it was assumed Windows - in 99% of all cases - today we're looking at a very different market. I hear people express disappointment and dissatisfaction with the latest showing from Microsoft constantly, and I have often heard people with lower experience in computing voice idea of going over to Apple - even with their hefty price, their slimmed down OS experience is becoming quite attractive.

Microsoft's latest offerings have, in a serious understatement, not been good. I trashed Window's 8 enough so we'll pass that mess. We've seen the disaster of the Surface, and now we see the Surface 2, which is exactly the same but with HD. So that will be the next big disaster. And that was after the humiliating climb down and backtracking of the Xbone, which unfortunately for many of their core audience was too little, too late. Whilst Microsoft are unlikely to backtrack again and reintroduce such hated policies, many of their audience has been turned off by the toxicity of the Xbone and become vulnerable to Sony who has been exerting serious effort to woo Microsoft's unhappy possible customers. It's got so bad that Steve Ballmer didn't so much as step down as was pushed.

And here's SteamOS. It'll be free, and it'll be striking at that lucrative gaming market. While it may not have shots to fire at Microsoft's colossal earning ability from the corporate market, it is worth considering that increasing the amount of home users comfortable with using a different OS cannot be good for Microsoft in the long term. If the next generation of employees are happy and able to use a free OS on their work computers, how long will that money hold for Microsoft?

So what's next for Microsoft?

Well, if SteamOS can deliver, I for one won't really care. And coming from a person who's been married to Windows for well over ten years, that's got to be alarming.

Ben Affleck as Batman? Well, I gu-SAINTS ROW SAINTS ROW SAINTS ROW

You know, there is something out there I should be getting angry at. Maybe something I should be getting happy at. Maybe even something I should be getting introspective at.

And then Saints Row IV happened.

Hey, you know what this gun does?

Oh god, I have played so much Saints Row IV that it's legitimately concerning. I think in two days I've had it Steam is showing I've put close to twenty four bleedin' hours in, and I have to stop before my body atrophies and I die of arse cramps. And dehydration... because the kitchen in like, five metres away and that's far too great a distance to walk.

IT ALIEN ABDUCTS THEM. FOR REALS.

But no. I will tear myself away from Saints Row IV and become a human being again, one that is a productive member society, inasmuch as a human being who regularly writes a blog can be considered a productive member of society, rather than yet another creature who hurls poorly written expletive-riddled mess into the abyss that is the internet.

STOMP. Heh, look at the innocent vehicles and civilians fly.

That thought was brought to you by the fact I am highly aware how piss poor my grammar is and how many typos sneak their way into this. I re-read so old posts recently. Omph, Ow. Yeah. Have I ever apologized to you for inflicting that on you?

Anyway, something semi-serious. So. We have a new Batman. It's going to be Ben Affleck. Everybody is upset.

Myself, I don't really care either way. For starters, I started to wane (hehe) on the ultra serious super gritty and realistic Batman a while back, and by the time the finale of Nolan's Batman trilogy ended repeated playthroughs of the Arkham series of games, and my rising enjoyment of the Marvel franchise films had hit my enthusiasm hard. I've stopped caring about grim, dark and gritty, stopped caring about films that seem a little ashamed of their source material and has to stop every five minutes to attempt to explain something that didn't need explaining or to take digs at the source material. Hell, in the Marvel films they throw garish colours everywhere, and will only end movies on happy notes - and I'm cool with that. I don't need to leave  every film theatre depressed.

The ticket and food prices already do that.

However, as the grimdark new Superman movie failed to reached the staggering profit that the Batman movies did, DC are shoving Batman, their most lucrative asset, in to boast sales. It's a cynical, and more wearying, obvious cash ploy, which doesn't assure me much of quality at the end of the day. Though, one question people; why is the new Superman so grimdark, in navy and crimson and not the blue and red? Because Batman was grimdark and earned billions. That is why. It doesn't matter that it makes no sense for the characters to be portrayed that way. Grimdark Batman made phat cash, so Superman will be grimdark, and will supposedly earn phat cash by that logic. So what that Superman, in his own fucking name, is designed to be inspirational? Pah. Make it realistic 'n shit! Have people afraid of him and have him destroy everything! People liked Zod, drop him in there! Ca-ching!

My apathy for the mistake already in the making of the film aside, another reason I'm not jumping on the hate wagon for Ben Affleck is that I've yet to see him in action, and I reckon it's fair to at least see him play Batman before shitting on him. You know, reserve judgement until seeing it, which is very hypocritical of me admittedly because I just bashed the new Superman movie without seeing it, and have been shitting on a future film without seeing it. I am aware of the hypocrisy, and as everyone knows, being aware of your own hypocrisy makes you immune to criticism. I think.

The notion of giving an actor a chance however is remarkably mature of me, because in animated versions of Batman if it's not voiced by Kevin Conroy I have a tendency to throw them across the room as blasphemous material.

It's not that Kevin Conroy sounds like Batman, it's that Batman sounds like Kevin Conroy.

But look, we all shit on pretty-boy Heath Ledger's casting as the Joker and look what we got - something god damn terrifying. Anne Hathaway gave us an impressive take on Catwoman, and while very different to the traditional gangling and awkward Doctor Crane, Cillian Murphy did a great job throwing the character in a new angle. In an animated Justice League movie I saw (Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths) William Baldwin of all people voiced an acceptable Batman. Not a Kevin Conroy standard performance, (duh) but an acceptable performance, and I was not expecting that from William bloody Baldwin. So, Affleck? He's worth a shot. I'm not expecting much, but I think Affleck has the chin for it.

So. Internets. Calm down. Take you stupid sodding petitions (which I refuse to link to) and chill out. It'll likely be a shit film anyway. If anything, you should be encouraging Affleck to put in as poor a performance as possible - a medicore film is boring to sit through. But a poor film with insane levels of over-acting?

Do I even have to say it?

That's comedy gold.