The Reticule

[A brief public service announcement first.  For some reason (we honestly don't quite understand why) Mercurio has gone and signed up for twitter.  If you want to see more of his vitriolic hatred of various things to do with the internet, you can find him at MSilverESQ.]

Morons of the internet, gather round! I made certain to book an extra large room today, I know how many of you cretins litter the various tubes of our electronic kingdom, but if it’s a tight fit I apologise.

Apologise.

That word is very distasteful to me. I don’t use it often being, as I am, always right by point of fact. I use it today to make a point, to direct this little lecture for you. Today’s lecture will be entitled (for those of you that need a brief vox-pop for any semblance of concentration): Dear Internet, shut the hell up.

It seems that the laypeople of the internet, the cyber-cattle, have started gathering in unwashed, spotty hordes and attempting to quantify the purpose of a games review. I’ve been noticing this for a while in various places, commonly called “forums”, and today realised that these people need setting straight.

If there were to be a manifesto of how to review something it would, by the nature of its existence, be written by the reviewer or the reviewee. However, a review is ultimately a written piece and, as such, is entitled to the freedom of any written work. I will concede that, in some professions, ethics (irrelevant as they are) and other factors may come into play. Doctors and the police, they’re the people who need ethics. Not games reviewers.

I can hear your tinny mooing rising to a crescendo: What of the audience of the reviews? They want a scientific breakdown of the merit of the product! They don’t want a corporate shill vomiting press-packaged reviews in order to sell games! They want the truth! You must give that to them!

Let me tell you now that you’re wrong.

I understand that such a brusque statement may have confused you, you are simple after all, so I will endeavour to explain it for you.

What is it that you expect of a review? You want honest and unbiased and objective journalism, someone to deconstruct the game in question and tell you which springs work, which sprockets gleam with polish, and which nails hang loose and bent from the woodwork. You want a check list of the merits. What you want is a robot to review your games.

Up until recently, I always assumed that the world was aware of the humanity of reviewers, God knows they don’t try to hide it. Reviews are almost always written in the first person, or contain first person passages, detailing their experience with the game. I thought the world at large understood that.

I’ll sum that up in a sentence for you before I continue: Reviewers are people.

What does this mean? It means that they are reviewing things in a medium they enjoy, and as such their scores will be based upon how that particular product impacts upon their enjoyment of the medium. A very simple scoring method would be either: A) It makes me feel good about my medium, or B) It makes me feel bad about my medium. That, of course, isn’t enough for the nebulous audience, they demand quantification of merit. Three Sartres of profundity out of five, sir.

The scoring system offends me in general, so don’t think I’m merely focused on the laypeople today, oh no. The scoring system will no doubt get its own rant before too long, probably after I’ve finished deciding whether the one employed here is any better or not.

Back to today’s topic, however. If we accept that reviewers use grades of merit for products, we then move onto the prime point of contention: content of a review. Everyone seems to start their little list of what they want a review to say with the words “I want…”. This is as pure an indicator as any that everyone who isn’t me had bad parents.

When I was a young boy, a sprightly lad, my parents would often inform me that “I want” never gets. Did no-one inform you? You’re not in a position to demand, you’re detached from the production of said work. You are allowed a modicum of input with the comment boxes, but never be deluded into thinking that anyone reads them. Reviewers can’t provide objectivity no matter how many times you bitch and moan, the human condition prevents it. They could provide you with a check-list review, a systematic breakdown of everything that, well, broke down, but that would read like a patch log. Reviews are meant to be interesting, surely?

I’ll leave you to ponder on this, if your brains can actually ponder without starting to steam. You’ll probably disagree with me of course, and that is your right. If you want to be wrong then I can’t stop you from disagreeing with me, but there is one thing you must consider:

Reviews are meant as guidance, if you follow them to the letter without thought then you are an idiot.

Good day, morons of the internet.

It seems Webcomics are all the rage at the moment. Dead Space had one, Mirror’s Edge another, and I’m sure there are countless others that I can’t think of off the top of my head. Zeno Clash, indie darling and oddball extraordinaire, is the latest to colour their universe with some pretty pictures and clever dialog ahead of its April release. They’ve managed to keep it interesting, non-plot specific and somewhat amusing, what with it featuring squirrel death. I really hate squirrels. I think it has something to do with them stealing all my winegums when I was at school, and mutilating my apple juice. It’s really unsporting, and very rude. The images are below, but you can also find them high-res here.

A teaser trailer for Modern Warfare 2 is now live on the site for the game which has mysteriously dropped the Call of Duty label. The trailer doesn’t show much in detail, but Russians do seem to be involved indicating a possible continuation of the event of Modern Warfare. Embedded version after the jump.

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Stardock have revealed a new technology that they think will get rid of the need for intrusive DRM in PC games. The technology is called Game Object Obfuscation, or Goo for short, and looks set to make some radical changes to the digital distribution world.

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It seems we’re all too familiar these days with people hailing these days those of a dying PC gaming platform. Interestingly however, industry analyst Michael Pachter has in more words said that it’s consoles that are going through their retirement. Meanwhile, with news of PC actually being the biggest market, and WoW on track to make 2bn by 2013, things are looking significantly better for the PC, that’s certain. That Empire: Total War managed to knock Killzone 2 off the top spot here in the UK says a great deal about the sort of demand there is for quintessentially PC titles.

But games consolses seeing their last generation? That seems a bit rash to me; and also seems a little reactionary to the OnLive announcement, much like Dave Perry’s announcement that he’s working on a shiny version of his own – though on that front I think Mr. Perry, as a developer of no small esteem might actually provide something a little more consumer friendly. Granted, the whole streaming game concept sounds excellent, but I think it needs to work before we can start claiming it as the messiah. It’s great to see that there is another one of these new fangled things being developed by Perry actually; I’m not sure I like the idea that all my money has to go through the OnLive filter before it reaches the hands of the deserving developer.

I can also see consoles going down to the bitter end. The console is a tried and tested format. It’s a good format in many respects, even despite my personal aversion towards them. The Wii has finally made a family friendly version and has sold bucketloads as a response. I can’t see parents wanting to subscribe to another service like their cable TV. It would make gaming another bill to pay. I also imagine development of the new systems is well underway, and developers are already anticipating that change - including the previously PC Blizzard. It seems a to me a knee jerk reaction as I say, to OnLive. Before now, the industry has been developing with a new generation of consoles in mind. Until the past couple of days, no viable alternative has been available. Industries take years to turn around.

What does this mean to the PC? Nothing really. The Steam powered industrial revolution seems set to continue (“Now with low, low prices!”) aided I think by competition in the increasingly good Impulse (can’t wait for Demi-God!) and Good Old Games. The OnLive initiative will, I imagine, prove itself to be an alternative for the PC gamer, rather than the new big thing. We’ll keep steadily growing with the rest as ever.

The first trailer for Stalin vs Martians was full of Stalin dancing, but was lacking on gameplay footage. The new trailer features a whole load of gameplay set to the tune of All Hail Stalinator by Ilya Orange and Space Detective.

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Bethesda very nearly lost me for good with the last attempt at DLC. It really was genuinely atrocious. Thankfully, The Pitt proves a far more worthwhile, interesting and enjoyable experience. Technicalities regarding its use of Games For Windows Live weren’t much of an issue this time around – the experience of getting it running last time wasn’t repeated. But I’m sure there’s a better way of doing it in future once the deal with Microsoft runs out. Steam anyone?

Anyway. The Pitt then. As per Operation: Anchorage, the mini-expansion starts off with a crackly radio transmission from one Snake Pli- “Werhner”, a runaway slave from the hive of scum and villany, The Pitt, touched upon by a Brother of Steel in the main game. He wants you to help find – by find, he means steal – a cure for a mind and body warping disease ravaging the slaves of the Pitt from his former master, a bombastic, self-styled saviour named Ashur who is rebuilding Pittsburgh on the backs of kidnapped slave labour kept in line by bondage-fiend-bandits with a perchance for chains and corpses.

You’s is ugly bugly!

Right from the outset, you’re given choices; specifically on how to get to the Pitt. I personally didn’t like the idea of cooperating with slavers to get in so decided to fight/sneak in.  Still got beaten to a pulp with my gear nabbed by a rather green man mind (you’ll know what I mean when you meet him.) Things move fast from here; you meet your contact and the plan is set in motion with you being sent into the darkest corners of the Pitt occupied by “Trogs” – humans mutated to the point of madness. They’re a bit rubbish actually. Things are improved by the fact you’re given the excellent new Auto-Axe weapon. Perfect for cutting the blighters down. From here you gradually move closer to the target, finding out more about the brutal world of The Pitt on the way. I wont say much more on the plot however since I don’t want to spoil details; but it’s actually quite good. One thing I felt was a problem with Fallout 3 a few months on after playing it was the comparative lack of new factions; you ended up basically seeing the main protagonists such as the Brotherhood of Steel, the Enclave etc. from the previous games. There wasn’t much sense of any other political factions within DC up to much. The Pitt improves on that greatly. The plot essentially revolves around the reconstruction of Pittsburgh, and thematically it brings up some interesting quandries for you to decide on.  The “moral decision” isn’t a straight foward one of the oppressed against the oppressors, and is probably one of the most engaging plot lines in Fallout 3 so far.

The new content is generally quite good. As I said in the previous review for Operation: Anchorage, the new toys Bethesda are adding are genuinely quite fun. There’s a few new sets of raider armour for those who like that sort of thing, and an excellent new silenced assault rifle with a scope – should go nicely with the Chinese Stealth Suit I guess. The environments are brilliant too. While there’s no significant departure from the brown and grey of Fallout 3, the design of The Pitt has a sense of depth and individuality to it. It’s not just a generic tumbling ruin, and its design reflects the social structure brought to the fore in the plot. Things are a bit combat orientated, but not to the same degree as was the case in Operation : Anchorage. There’s more scope for alternative character variations to flex their talents in most parts of the Pitt. It’s also a bit short. I couldn’t help but feel that despite the plot being quite good, it came to a close just as it was teetering into the brilliant. It’s probably a good sign that I actually did want to play on afterwards though, compared to Operation : Anchorage where I wanted to finish the damn thing just to have my game save access the main game again instead of being stuck in the sim.

All in all, The Pitt is a welcome step up from the dire Operation: Anchorage. The content is good, technically functional (unless you have it on the 360, apparently) and I certainly liked the plot. But it is a bit short. At a rough £6.50 price mark, it’s not too bad. Considering it’s £1 a pint night at my local, I got 4 hours straight fun for 6.5 pints, and I can actually see myself going back to play it again. With that in mind, it’s not a bad buy.  Give it a try.

Solid Hit

The debut trailer for Need for Speed: Shift has been released. If you want to see some fast cars racing dangerously close to each with more overtaking than we will see in the entire Formula 1 season then check out the trailer after the jump.

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