Loading ...Thoughts on Spec Ops: The Line
I finished recording Spec Ops: The Line this evening, it’s a short game that’s a third-person cover-based shooter with the emphasis on it’s story. And that story revolves around war(crimes), which makes it interesting. It’s not a terrific game or anything, but I remember hearing quite some debate over it’s story when it came out. As such I wanted to play it at some point. And considering it’s a short game the cover-based shooting wouldn’t trouble me that much.
I have to say that the game turned out to be rather good on the shooting part, all the weapons felt good to use which kind of surprised me. Normally average games don’t have a good ‘feel’ to the action, but that definitely wasn’t a problem here. The gameplay itself was completely fine; standard chest-high-walls everywhere for cover and masses of enemies to shoot. Nothing fancy, but if the shooting feels good it’s not a big issue for me, though I’m not a fan of cover-based shooters as you may recall.
The story however was interesting in the way it focused on the horrors of war, and the mentality that goes along with it. They definitely intended to make you think about what you’re doing, if you should listen or not. On the other hand some moments (mainly the white phosphorous) felt entirely unnecessary and forced upon the player.
At such moments it felt really weird to not be able to say “no” to what the story was alluding you to do. But largely I would say the story was quite interesting and left you wondering what the fuck was going on, only made worse by the ending(s). And that’s not a bad thing; because I believe this game wants you to think about war and what is right and wrong, and everyone will have a different outcome on that subject.
Here’s what I’ve been playing recently.
Quite a good looking game and rather enjoyable too thus far. The only downside so far is the disparity between in-game Lara and cutscene-Lara.
Fez – what a lovely looking game
I very much want to play more of this! I can’t get off work fast enough today.
Zeno Clash 2!
Either I forgot that Zeno Clash 2 was announced; or I simply didn’t know but OH MY GOD IT’S ZENO CLASH 2! I simply loved Zeno Clash, it was one of those games that I simply adored. Judging from my let’s play not many felt the same way; but I love the crazy world and the combat. And that’s all there really is to the game isn’t there? Yet; it’s one of those games that I don’t think I’ll ever forget and I just pray that the sequel will be a real good one as to not spoil the name.
This trailer makes me super excited to play more:
Thoughts on Resonance, NOX & Alice: Madness Returns
I recently completed some of the games I’ve been playing, which is not something I do too often. I also really enjoyed the games for various reasons so I figured I’d write my reasons for recommending those games and what stood out about them. So, let’s kick it off.
Resonance
What makes Resonance special is the story telling, the way it delivers the story is excellent, the voicework of the characters is good and contributes to pulling you into the story. You want to know what’s going to happen next and it largely succeeds in that. There was 1 moment after set 3 where I got fed up with it because I was stuck in a puzzle as I had forgot to do an (in hindsight) obvious thing, but after doing that it immediately roped me in. I also really liked the idea of the ending, it’s just a shame that you can get an actual “good ending”. Watch the videos to see what I mean with this.
NOX
A completely different beast, and much more action-packed! This one carries a lot of nostalgia for me and I think it’s a near-perfect game. It gets ridiculously difficult/harsh at times, but other than that – it’s an awesome game. It’s fun to play, it’s got a very loose but interconnected story of 3 characters with wildly different endings. It was one of those games that I just had to record a lot of whenever I played it, I recorded it in 2 days – something that I normally never do. But it was just impossible to not play more of it. I might just get back to it much later to maybe play through the Warrior campaign, but I’m also very curious as to how many people will watch me go through it; I’m expecting barely anybody.
Alice: Madness Returns
This one took me a while to get through, it’s a much longer game than I expected it would be. It’s also very good, I really enjoyed the whole story-arc of how Alice is doing psychologically and how it reflects on wonderland. I thought that this was exceptionally well done. Especially towards the end, it is simply wonderful and a delight to play through. The cutscenes deserve special mention as well, they had such a unique look which deserves praise purely from an artistic perspective as well as yet again drawing you in the world where everything’s just not right.. sort of unsettling in a way.
The combat system also is very good, I didn’t quite manage to upgrade all my weapons to maximum, but I also didn’t feel like I needed to. The combat system is very responsive and gives you slowmotion-moments when you’re about to get attacked. I still found it surprisingly difficult to not get hit at all despite of this system. I did however get a feel for it and proceeded through the combat at a good pace, it’s challenging but the systems and feel are there to make you really enjoy it.
I’ve been playing some NOX recently
I’ve found myself playing a lot of NOX over the past couple of days. It’s one of those games I played in my childhood that really stuck with me. I’m not a fan of hack’n'slash games, which NOX is similar too; but it’s easily different enough to grab my attention. For those not in the know about NOX, it’s a top-down RPG in which you play as 1 of 3 classes which have stories that are intertwined. You will get experience, buy skills, weapons, armor, level up and go through traps and dungeons. All the while feeling like an action game, and that’s where NOX shines. It’s an old game that still looks very good, it’s aged well apart from the obviously lower resolution now.
Nox starting Warrior
A good example of how much fun this game is is when I went to do a test recording, a normal test recording consists of maybe 5 to 10 minutes of running around and seeing if there’s any hiccups. With NOX I found myself playing for over an hour and suddenly realizing this as I was finishing some of the early chapters. I totally lost myself in the game and wanted to keep pushing on.
As far as the Let’s Play is concerned; I started recording the Conjurer (which is the mix character, unlike the straight-forward Warrior and spell-focused Wizard). I’ll probably finish recording the Conjurer soon, if I haven’t already by the time I post this. The question I currently have is if I shall go through the Warrior and/or the Wizard classes as well. I can think of some pro and cons of doing it and not doing it, but I’m favoring not recording more of it. Primarily because it leaves 2 campaigns of the game that are completely different for viewers to play through, which gives them more reason to buy the game which I’m hoping people will do because NOX is an amazing game I want people to play and enjoy.
Picked up some new games on GOG.com
GOG.com just launched their “End of the world sale” with a lot of games on sale. Amongst them was the “Indie RPG” bundle.
I already owned Legend of Grimrock, so GOG would let me have those games for… $11? 2 of the games were priced at “$NaN”. So I clicked to purchase and it said I saved $68, sounds good to me. As it turns out I guess there was a small glitch in the code as it seems to have given me 2 games for free, which must be the $NaN ones.
Afterwards I checked in another browser and the games did indeed have a price then. So I suppose I lucked out and got an even better offer than I was supposed to. I then also bought Divine Divinity & King of Dragon Pass, making my purchases:
- Inquisitor
- Geneforge 1-5
- Torchlight
- The Real Texas
- Divine Divinity
- Divinity 2
- King of Dragon Pass
Did you guys pick up anything on the sale?
The Walking Dead Episode 4 savegame bug fix
So I was one of many steam users that had problems with the 4th episode of the game, since the game didn’t recognize that I had finished episode 3. To fix it, you have to follow the following steps:
This is for the issue where the game says you’ve not finished episode 3 and you can select episode 4 it’ll say “do you want to start the episode with randomized choices?” Going through the end of episode 3 again will not help.
This indeed fixes that issue, you have to do the following:
- Go to the following directory in your steam folder: %steam%\steamapps\common\the walking dead\Pack\WalkingDead103 — (%steam% can be C:\Program Files\Steam for instance)
- Copy the prefs.prop file.
- Go to My Documents\Telltale Games\The Walking Dead
- Rename the prefs.prop file to prefs.prop.original.
- Paste the prefs.prop file you copied.
That will then most likely have fixed your savefile problems, it did for me.
Little moments that make my day #3
I was playing some Lord of the Rings Online when I was going through some crypts in the Barrow Downs, near Bree. I killed a named monster and it popped up a deed to kill all the masters of the crypts around there, which seemed like fun to me as it’s really beneficial to be around that area and just kill things for various reasons. I ran into a Master Elite monster which basically 3-shot me, I asked for help and sure enough, someone took their time to help me out and even went beyond that and helped me out with the remaining crypts.
That was all fun and nice up to that point, but then I noticed one of the items I picked up from one of the undead wights:
Barrow-Brie: “It’s Barrow-brie! It’s quite smelly and no doubt highly deadly. Only the unwise would eat it.”
So what do I do? I eat it of-course! and what happens? My character gets sick and dies. On the up-side, I did get a title “The Unwise”, I definitely earned that one didn’t I?
So I noticed I have a real problem
That problem being that I don’t know what to do in my free time. No I’m not going to be bored, at all. Instead I have too many things I want to do and way too little time to do them in. Of course there’s non-fun stuff such as cleaning, laundy and stuff like that but I’m not counting that as that’s normal. So the things I want to do tonight:
- Exercise – Gosh, it’s been a while since I’ve exercised with me moving and the holiday I had just before that. I want to get back into it as it’s really calming to me to exhaust my body physically after my job. However I already do cycle ~15-20km per day just to and from work. That’s already an hour per day on bike.
- Read my new books – I was buying some groceries during my break at work and then noticed a book-sale and ended up buying 2 books, they were dutch, which kinda put me off, but they seemed interesting and they were very reasonably priced.
- Read some books I’ve had for a while – Now as you may know I literally have a pile of books that I still have to read, ranging from all kinds of subjects, which I kind of like. But I’m currently reading 1 psychology- , 1 mythology- and 1 history book. And I want to really read them and the others.
- Finish re-watching LOTR – I started re-watching my LOTR blu-rays as I was ill before and have yet to watch the conclusion of it, which I love. I especially want to see Eowynn again during the battle for Minas Tirith. Eowynn is awesome, despite not coming close to the character she is in the books, but that is a story for another post.
- Game – Rift Online - I’ve been playing Rift Online for a good while again and it’s a game I just love, partly for Trion’s Management. The first expansion is coming soon’ish and I have yet to level my new character up to the maximum level, which I want to do at the very least.
- Game – GuildWars2 – Honestly I’ve not put a lot of time into this game yet and people keep telling me to do so, I have enjoyed my time with it initially. But it’s not really grabbed me yet. But I do want to explore more of it.
- Record Let’s Plays - Before I started moving I recorded a set of a new LP – The Walking Dead. I enjoyed it a lot and it was surprisingly good and I really want to get going on that again as I’ve not played it in ~2-3weeks. I also have a bunch of other things I want to do as well, such as a coop of Torchlight 2. That one should hopefully be recorded this coming weekend, if my plans allow me/us. Then there is also some PlanetSide2 that I might record, that game really surprised me on how much fun it is!