Worth the wait.

Sorry for the unannounced hiatus, but my new PC is here. There's plenty in store, all tucked away waiting to show up. For now, however, I leave you with this. Enjoy.

It's been a while!

Christ, I have no idea how many times I've started a post with saying something along the lines of "Sorry, I haven't X in an X"

Truth be told, I've thought about posting a lot- but I haven't had anything to post about. I've bought nothing new, and all the game related news you guys might be after isn't going to be here first. So, I'll share what little news I do have. I've been getting into playing League Of Legends quite a lot recently, more serious than I ever used to. We've got a ranked team going on, and we've only got one slot less to fill. We're holding "tryouts" as it were, meeting lots of new interesting people every day- it's pretty fucking cool to me.

I'm also going to brag about naming the team: "Nuggets In Paris"

So yeah, I've got that going for me.

My new mouse: A Hobbits Journey

It's been about 2 weeks I think since I've ordered a new mouse, my 7 year Razer Viper had served me well- but it was time to put him to sleep. When my new mouse first arrived, it didn't work particulary well. The buttons worked, but the pointer did not. After roughly a week of frustrations, searching for drivers, checking years old forum posts, even re-installing windows I finally thought that perhaps its the mouse. So, I booted up a Linux liveCD and tried the mouse there. Same issue. So, it was either my PC just not liking this particular mouse, or the mouse was faulty. So, my first plan was to contact amazon and just get a monetary refund & save up for a new Razer of some description. That, however, would be too easy. My credit card was refused constantly for 2 days. they just wouldn't pay me back. After the third day of white hot rage I decided I'd just take my chances and replace the mouse- and despite all my rage, it was seemingly washed away. The replacement worked.

I've always been playing quite a lot of Skyrim, I've completed the main story of both the DLC's (I'll need to start another character to experience the Dawnguard fully though) and played around with dumping lots of my gold into Hearthfire. I don't really want to get into to talking about Skyrim as a game at the minute, so I'm just going to say that it's just a fun as I remember it and the new content certainly adds even more stuff to do on top of a game that was already overflowing with ways to waste your time.

Now, with new mouse in hand, I can finally go play some League of Legends.

So yeah, E3 happened.

I didn't watch E3 this year, or the past two years. I've lost interest in watching a 5 billion hour advert. However I have been unable to avoid all of the news from E3 thanks to about 3 different YouTubers I'm subscribed to have reposted the same videos. I don't think anyone was surprised that the PS4 seemed to be a better deal than the Xbone- that's really not some kind of shocking revelation. The Xbone has all this stupid DRM and pseudo always online, you can't lend your games more than once yada yada. Whereas the PS4, has none of that. Simple really. It also included your usual suspects in terms of sequels, Halo 5: Killing more bad aliens and all that great stuff I'm sure no one is bored of yet. However, Mirrors Edge 2 & Kingdom hearts 3 were confirmed that was a little bit of a shock to be sure.

In other news, my new mouse doesn't like my PC and whilst all the new shiny buttons work- the pointer refuses to do anything like some prankster stuck some clear tape on the bottom. I checked, they didn't. Good thing I bought Skyrim legendary edition then I suppose.

Hitman Absolution Review

I'm not finished with Hitman Absolution, I haven't completed it either. I'm about 5 hours in and I don't see the gameplay changing- so I think I'm more or less qualified to talk about the game. The gameplay not changing isn't a dig at Hitman by the way, I think it's great fun. For the most part the gameplay is solid, there's some funny rag dolls now and again, manoeuvring  in small places can be a hassle & I feel like some aspects of the game aren't explained very well and I don't much care for certain aspects of the story- particularly the parts that focus on Diana- Agent 47's previous handler. Still, it's pretty good.

Now, Hitman is quirky in places- the animation during the cutscenes can look a little silly in places (everyone looks like a wax model in the rain & 47 always looks cartoonishly mad) and since they're pre-rendered you can open the door dressed as a chief, and walk in 47's trademark suit. Despite this the cutscenes are still well executed, but seem to suffer from what appears to be a stylistic choice I'm not particularly fond of- odd muted colours and seemingly impossible light sources. In places the cutscenes remind me of the style Max Payne 3 used- albeit not to such an extreme degree.

I've ran into no game breaking or annoying bugs to speak of, a few amusing ones have popped up though. For example, one of my targets that I had recently shot in the head & hidden in a dumpster expressed his irritation with my close proximity to him, posthumously of course.

 For the most part the controls are solid too, sadly in all their wisdom the dev's decided to include quick time events in places of any real hand-to-hand combat system & to enter precision mode (to aim super hard, opposed to the nearly perfect reticle anyway) you need to hold the trigger "halfway"  then press it all the way to take the shot. I can't tell you how many times I've fired before I'm supposed to because I'm trying to use this feature, after a while I just gave up using it in place of trusting the "unfocused" reticle- the difference between the two is negligible to be honest.

Another feature that I disagree with is the checkpoint system. Certain levels, depending on their length have checkpoints. Little symbols on the floor that you can activate that will allow you to respawn there if you die/choose to restart from checkpoint. The idea of these self activated checkpoints is cool because you don't have to use them- I prefer to do a level in a whole run rather in little segments- however, if you do choose to respawn all the enemies will respawn too. I feel like this is a silly choice, it doesn't checkpoint your progress in terms of what you've done in the level or the bodies you've hidden for example. All it does is respawn you in the same location, with everyone & everything you've done undone. If the enemies didn't respawn, I wouldn't be anymore inclined to use this feature- but it would've been better for it.

Another questionable feature, the "bullet time" kind of thing. Or whatever. It's another feature that is entirely optional, so that's fine- it just feels out of place. It allows you to tag a bunch of enemies as time stops. Then after you've tagged everyone you want, or the timer has ran out you fire. Allowing you take out large groups of enemies with relative ease. This feature feels deeply out of place in a game that is focused mainly on stealth, that being said- when you fail a mission or get detected, it's always the most fun thing in the world to go crazy banana's and kill everyone in a blaze of glory.

I was going to write two parts for this review thing where I write about videogames I sometimes play. It ended up being pretty short though, so I've just tacked it into the end of the first post.

Most of my notepad is just full of story related quirks that I don't really want to talk about for fear of spoiling the plot. So, concerning the plot I will say this- It makes little to no sense & it's not a story that really needed to be told, but I LOVE the places it takes me. Put that on the box.

I get the feeling that whenever I'll talk to my friends about this game, it'll be concerning the stupid shit I've pulled off or the ridiculous ways I've killed people. There is nothing wrong with that whatsoever, I don't feel the game takes itself too seriously & it is just plain fun. Like this one time, I popped out of a strippers cake and just blew away 5 dudes. It was so fucking sweet. After completing this game, the very first thing I did was try to complete all the different challenges, I'm also planning on playing it on the super hardest mode. So, in short (don't you hate it when people put the TLDR's at the bottom of the post?) Story is retarded, gameplay is solid and it is just the most super fun I've had in awhile.

See ya

Hitman Absolution: Bigger, Badder, Balder

Today, a few days before my new mouse & my legendary edition of Skyrim arrive (I caved, I thought I could resist buying it) the latest hitmans found itself on my doorstep. I'm an hour or two into it so far and it's pretty good. Long story short I'm having fun, a lot more than I did with Mirrors Edge. I've got about two pages of my notebook full of ideas and points of interest I want to write about- but I'll save writing about the game proper until I'm either done with it, or I complete it.

So for now I'll just talk about my history with the Hitman series- I don't have one. I've never played a Hitman game to completion. I've played a couple of levels of the most recent one, blood money I think- but that's it. I'm told that the latest one- absolution- is a far cry from what it used to be. So I guess I'm glad I'm not a Hitman purist. This might make for a slightly less bias read, or it might make me look like an idiot for liking a game that is Hitman in name only.

So yeah, that's pretty much all I have to say right now. Back to playing more Hitman!

Mirrors Edge: Dull As Dishwater

I've been playing Mirrors Edge on the 360 to alleviate my boredom whilst I wait for my new mouse to arrive, of course my old mouse has decided that the right click is going to start working again- most of the time anyway. I've still got hitman on my list, so I figure I might as well give that another bash before I start trying to play LoL again- if I can handle it.

Anyway, Mirrors Edge- I didn't get that far in before I just got flat out bored of it. The only story element I really ran into was something called "Icarus" some big bad secret something or other. It's right here, when I hear that word that I start to lose interest in the story. The cutscenes are gorgeous & the voice acting is fine and everything. Thing is, I've just got beef with using Icarus as code for any kind of plan or technology or whatever. Human Revolution did it too & it was stupid, but at least not a part of the plot.

 For everyone that doesn't know Icarus is a story from Greek mythology about some guy that wanted to escape from Crete by using wings made of feathers and wax, he flew too close to the sun, the wax melted, he fell into the ocean and drowned- the end. So in it's most basic form- he failed.

I get why video game devs use this word, it's from Greek mythology so it's inherently cool & it's a story or at least a name everyone has heard of. Thing is, Icarus failed. Not only did he fail, he died- so you're basically condemning your plan to fail or your technology to have some stupid flaw. It's like naming your new super cool water based technology the Titanic.

Mirrors Edge has a very limited colour scheme & most of it is red, white & blue. With objects of interest being red/blue thanks to "runners vision" a visual aid to show you objects of interest like platforms to jump from/onto, this mode is disabled on hard mode- so I dread to think how dull the game would look without runners vision. I suppose DICE tried to do something interesting with the visuals here, and there's merit in that- sadly I feel like it failed.

 The game, at least on the 360, is riddled with Half-life 2 circa 2004 mid level loading screens & Mass Effect loading elevators. This makes dying so much of a chore that I'd often give up playing after one death and go play TES: Oblivion instead. The free running & platforming mechanics are pretty good, for the most part they flow well & are fun to use. However, the combat system is so janky that I found myself avoiding combat not because it was safer, but because running away allowed me to not have to use the awful fighting controls. It was certainly refreshing to have a female lead & I do wish I had the will to play more just so I could be exposed to more of Faiths life.

So for me, Mirrors Edge basically sucked. I had fun for an hour or so, but I wasn't interested in the story & the only themes the game really seemed to be portraying were about freedom and dystopias. I've seen that so many times that it honestly didn't hold my interest.

Lets hope Hitman can keep me from trying to game on my PC with an unreliable mouse.

Edit: It totally didn't stop me, It was a ranked game of League of Legends. Logic.

We can rebuild him, we have the technology.

As you may of noticed, the blog has changed a little, the header has changed- I removed the stock ass photo of a controller and embiggened the Joypad Athletics logo. My YouTube channel also managed to swing it so it could have a nice button too. I've also linked to my twitter, so you can hear my inane thoughts whenever I have them. I've also added some scripts to my template to make the blog a little bit easier to navigate- the blog archive is now collapsed by default & the blog also has infinite scroll, akin to how Facebook or the Reddit Enhancement Suite works. To the right there's also some info about various streamers I'm affiliated with, and my own stream (not yet up & running) I've felt that these small, albeit important changes have been a long time coming. I hope it makes the blog feel a little bit easier to use.

In other news (those of you that've seen my fancy new twitter widget may know this so bare with me) my right mouse button has entirely stopped working. My current one click mouse was a hand me down from a friend that had bought a new one, and I received that gift about 5-6ish years ago. I'm surprised its survived this long. Alas, a new one is on its way so I've had to spend my spare time catching up with Spider-Man (dear God FUCK brand new day) & playing console games. Sadly, for the time being I've become a filthy console peasant. I bought a couple of cheap games for my 360- whilst you can still buy pre-owned games without being scanned into the matrix, or being peeped on by the kinect 2 or whatever. I got hold of Hitman Absolution, that I've yet to play & Mirrors edge. Mirrors edge is an interesting game, in that it has that special ability to make me refuse to admit something was my fault & blame it entirely on the game. Despite that though, it's fun- i'd of been pissed if I paid £40 for it, but it's fun. I'll talk about both these games in their own posts when I've completed/smashed the shit out of them.

Wish me luck.

Dragon Age: Origins Part 5- It's a love hate thing

So, in summary Dragon Age is a game I both love & hate (hence the title) I love the fantasy setting, I hate how the graphics present it. I love the characters, but hate how any non party member feels lackluster. I love the story and the journey it takes you on- but I fucking HATE the gameplay. It's a mixed bag I suppose, but I can't stop myself from falling in love with it- despite its flaws. I'm often wishy washy on the games I feel like LPing- but I don't think that this game is on that list. I felt that I've said pretty much all I have to say about DA. That being said, I often find myself with more to say when I talk about it when I'm with someone else. So perhaps that's an idea for the future.

Anyway, that's all my musings condensed in the most coherent way I can think of.

Dragon Age: Origins Part 4- With Flying Colours

At the core of both Gears of War, Dragon Age: Origins & indeed countless other video games. The plot can be boiled down into "Save the world" RPG's will allow for your own reasons as to why, and sometimes even how. Sure, it's possible to go into a huge degree of detail as to why we have to save the world, how we're going to do it, why it has to be us etc. The crux, however, often remains the same. We just have to.

I feel like before I go on, I need to address something else though. It may seem unfair to compare DA to Gears of War. Gears, is a 3^rd person shooter and DA is an RPG, surely one is going to be (and forgive the choice of words) geared toward story due to its nature? No. A game doesn't need to make sense to be fun, I've had fun with "Fusion Frenzy 2", an RPG doesn't need a good story to be an RPG & likewise, a shooter doesn't need a story to be fun- doesn't mean it wouldn't be improved by mixing these things together though. Consider games like Farcry 3 or Spec Ops: The line, both arguably just shooters- however they're improved by how their story conveys an interesting message.

Regardless, Dragon Age passes the first test of having a story that requires something of you and gives you a reason to fight. You need to save the world, not a particularly uncommon plot hook.

Now we move onto the characters.

There is a whole host of characters in Dragon Age, and to go into why I like each particular one and what I feel the bring to the entire experience of playing the game would be a foolish. There are so many, that contribute in big ways both to the story & the setting of Dragon Age. I will try to give an overview and perhaps I will talk about one in particular in another post. For now though, I'll try and stay as general as possible.

Each and every possible party member has a very well defined personality in Dragon Age, after interacting with them for just a few minutes- you understand them. You don't know them, and their goals aren't made clear right away- sometimes not at all. However, you get a general idea of the sort of person they are- without having everything given to you right away. Like meeting real people. Each party member has a bar for how much they like you, starting in the middle i.e. neutral, and either raising or lowering based on if you're a dick or not.

Talking these people and letting them know how you feel, in either a positive or negative way is a very rewarding experience. You'll learn about their past, what they think about other members of your group, what they think about you, their past, their fears and even their cherished memories. This process takes time, you can't just spam click different members of your party until they like you- Sims style. Certain conversations are only available during particular missions, or after them. Some members will even comment on your relationships with other members, either because they're concerned, jealous or just don't like them. Of course, all of this was ruined with DLC- you can just buy gifts to give to them and have them love you within the first hour of the game.

Dragon Age: Origins Part 3- Gears of War...

I promised I would talk about the good features of Dragon Age, now, I'm not trying to sell the game to you or "review" it in any real sense of the word, these posts are just my musings on Dragon Age: Origins.

Last post, you'll remember that I very briefly touched on DA (in places) having good presentation & style. I didn't really want to talk about that in my last post, because of the other issues I was writing about, but seeing as this post (and possible subsequent ones) are going to be praising the game, a least a little more than the others, I figured I would try to explain exactly what I mean by the general idea of style & presentation without today’s triple HD turbo remix graphically enhanced semi-sentient consoles/PC's.

For me, and huge part of gaming is story & characters- it may seem like an obvious thing to say, but if I'm not playing multiplayer, then I'll at the very least want interesting characters & a bare bones plot that gives this person/these people a reason to be doing whatever it is we're doing. Often, this doesn't have to be much more than “Shit, we've gotta save the world” I'm not asking much here.

So, lets take a game with more or less this exact plot, Gears of War 2: Gear Harder. The general plot, as far as I was interested enough to remember is the locust want to kill us & we want to kill them, if we don't kill all of them first then for all intents and purposes the world has not been saved & we have failed. What about the characters? Well, according to the very low standards I've set for myself GoW2 passes. These people have a reason to be fighting, or to be here, as it were. Because if they aren't, the world isn't going to fare as well. Right, that's ½ of what I'll need to even engage me slightly.

So here comes the tricky part, despite the list- in it's most basic form- being two items long, making your characters interesting isn't as easy as giving them a reason to be somewhere. Even more so when the basic premise of the game is saving the world, because they have to be here. They're part of the world, and of course they want to save it. So, perhaps there's another reason they're/we're fighting, a slightly more personal reason? A reason that will, over the course of the game, let their character develop and grow as a person. Gears attempt at character development is the whole Dom's wife situation, it's far too ham fisted to even remotely work from my point of view. So then the game falls back on “You have to save the world” hook, and for me, that just isn't enough.

Now keep in mind, that doesn't stop a game from being fun. I find Gears of War fun, I find Darksiders fun, I find dude bro shooters fun, but that's it. There are so many more ways to enjoy & experience a video game that isn't along the lines of “Sweet, that head shot was awesome”

Dragon Age: Origins is one of them.

Dragon Age: Origins Part Two- Honestly, this game IS good!

If you guys remember, the last post was a brief overview of the Dragon Age series- combined with some hate for Mass Effect- that eventually and unavoidably turned into an entire different topic all together, but I did use DA as a segue- so it’s all good.

As I’ve said before, Dragon Age 1 suffers from a lot of issues from both a game play and a technical aspect, but it’s still fun. I touched briefly on this subject & gave the vague reason as to why I still think it stands tall amongst the vast sea of modern RPG/JRPG’s. Before I really get into the why feature or character X makes the game stand out, I think it’s important to talk about the flaws this series suffers from. Because without knowing what this game has done wrong, and how much that would drag down most other games, you can’t really get a sense of how much good dialogue & character development can save a game with terrible game play & visuals- a game that otherwise would be simply awful.

First things first, this is going to be from the Xbox 360’s point of view. One day I may tackle the PC version in some other format, like an LP, but don’t quote me on it- because I take ages to do anything.

Graphically, Dragon Age is a mess- there’s clipping issues, terrible animation, dated graphics, stupid ass walking animations (particularly when you have your weapon drawn) awful lip syncing and in places underwhelming environments. So in conclusion it looks like ass. On its own this isn't that much of a problem, you see a lot of people give a lot of praise to games that don’t have great graphics- but have great presentation & style, and in places, DA does have this.

Another of DA’s issues (and this is console specific) is its interface, on the PC the interface makes sense for the type of game it is- you’re given a standard World of Warcraft style action bar. However, on consoles you get 3 quick binds- the XYB buttons and another set when you hold the R trigger and whatever the equivalent on the PS3 is. This is a large problem when you’re controlling a party of 4- each with their unique skill set & build. It makes combat a lot slower than it would otherwise be on the PC. Speaking of the skill set, this games skill tree (and I use the term lightly, because it is in no way reminiscent of a tree) is terrible. It is improved on in Dragon Age II, but that’s another post all together.

To get to each skill on the tree, you need the one before it. This basically means that your end game character will have an entire truck load of skills that you won’t be using, because all you really want is the end tree skill- in most cases anyway. Of course, with progressive skills this makes sense- to get level two speech craft I obviously need level one. However, to shoot a fireball why do I need to know how to shoot an ice blast? It’s a game design flaw that gets worse as the game goes on. Your first few levels you’re blazing through and it doesn't matter if you have to spend a skill point to get to the next one because you’ll level up in another 5 minutes anyway, but in the late game where you level up once every hour or so it makes your time feel completely wasted.

So, in conclusion playing Dragon Age Origins for the combat, on the console versions anyway, is a very acquired taste. It's quite slow paced (especially if you are on the harder difficulty) and I feel like it can drag when you're fighting Darkspawn for the most time if you've played DA as much as me- you'll learn to hate the Deep roads as much as any sane person. Dragon Age II improves on the combat system and comes off as a lot more action RPG like. So if that's what're you looking for, just pick up Dragon Age II. Whilst you can carry over saves, they have very little impact as you don't play the same character. So you're only going to miss larger information about the setting of Dragon Age in general, nothing a Google search can't sort out for you.

Next time, I'll talk about the features of Dragon Age that really justifies the response & praise it gets given or maybe I'll talk about the combat, not going to lie- I haven't written it yet.