The Reticule

I am not, by design, a very sporty person. This makes me a curious person to review a game that, behind all its violent trappings, is still a sports game. I don’t watch or play sports, but Blood Bowl still manages to speak to me in a way that I imagine football and rugby speak to the ordinary and well adjusted members of society.

Blood Bowl is a curious sort of mash up of American Football and Speedball, created by Games Workshop as a tabletop game and finally brought to the PC by Cyanide Studios. You choose a team from a handful of typical fantasy races and kick, punch, bite and claw your way into scoring more touchdowns than the other guy. On the face of it, the game is simply a turn based American Football in fantasy trappings, but to declare Blood Bowl merely that alone would be incorrect.

My biggest issue with sports, as an objective observer, is the lack of violence. There is something primal in me that requires all team sports to relate back to gladiatorial combat, and few sports manage that in reality. There are violent sports, sure, but the hideous rules and primadonna players make them less interesting. Blood Bowl avoids this by pushing out almost all of the in-game rules, opting to make the majority of the constraints related to player stats rather than how they are allowed to act.

Your players in Blood Bowl have four specific stats: movement allowance, strength, agility and armour value. These influence your dice rolls and declare how effective each player is in a specific role. High agility players will be good runners and have enviable ball skills, but will tend to be rather squishy, whereas high strength players will be much more suited and smashing the opposition into the dirt but will likely also be clumsy as a newborn lamb when it comes to ball control. The different teams have different arrangements of these stats, and as a result picking the right team for your play style is of the utmost importance.

My preferred team during the game is Dwarfs. When portrayed against other teams, the Dwarfs are ridiculously hardy, but also ludicrously clumsy. The majority of a Dwarf team will be made up of players called blockers, which should give some indication as to the usual Dwarf tactics. They’re all about being violent enough to prevent the opposition from getting close to the one player who can actually carry the ball. Yes, the Dwarfs are so monumentally clumsy that only the handful of more specialised players can even come close to maybe picking up the ball.

During my first few hours of play, it was this quirk of the Dwarf race that led me to absolutely loathe the game. I did eventually overcome this irrational hatred however, once I realised the true cause of my frustration. It is very important that you understand this if you have any intention of buying this game: despite including a single-player mode, Blood Bowl is for online play. The playing the game offline, while somewhat fun on easy, is dangerously unforgiving on normal and higher. I don’t want to claim that the computer fixes dice rolls, as that would be childish and unprofessional, but if I were playing the tabletop version against an anthropomorphic personification of the CPU I would find myself surreptitiously checking to see if they were using trick ones. The computer will pounce on any chink in your defences, sometimes with attacks that you could swear would never ever work, with unprecedented accuracy and crush you. It’s frustrating, and after four hours of back to back matches I was about ready to surrender.

Some may say that this stems from my total failure to grasp the metaphysics of sports in general, that athletic tactics are useless when provided by me for I cannot understand the nuances of a competitive sporting event. That may be true. On the bright side, however, taking the game online made the game much more enjoyable. Once I had worked out exactly how to navigate the somewhat clunky interface, the online competitions were much more fun and engaging, and the persistent nature of the online universe means that you can become attached to your players, levelling them up and choosing which talents you want them to have after each outstanding game. This makes it all the more painful when they die horribly, of course, but also all the more sweeter when it is you who does the killing.

It’s a game of stark contrasts then. On the one side you have a satisfying tactical system, where every movement you make will have a direct affect on the flow of the game, on the other a fiddly interface at times and a great source of mind numbing frustration at times. When things work the game feels amazing, but the one time a dice goes against you will be enough to start the hair pulling. But that’s how it should be, right? Isn’t that how sports tend to unfold, every mistake by your team becoming a beacon of rage and hatred for the fans? Blood Bowl captures that perfectly, except with the added bonus of being able to literally kill a player that has wound you up something chronic.

Example. A recent online league match pitted my Dwarfs against a team of Lizardmen. Lizardmen are tougher than Dwarfs but even more clumsy, with the exception of their star players, the Skinks. These things are tiny and weak but can run like the clappers, and their high agility means they can slip through your defensive line like they were mist. As a result, I quickly went 1-0 down and spent the rest of the game trying to claw my way back to a draw. Despite a spirited attempt, my beer-pickled Dwarfs fell short and I lost the game. Still, I went away happy in the knowledge that, in one of the last few turns, one of my Dwarfs punched a skink so hard that it dropped dead on the pitch. In my mind I pictured the slippery little bastard’s head erupting in a volcano of gore as twenty pounds of Dwarf-fist punched right through. Skinks are cheap to replace, but that sweet taste of vengeance is priceless.

So I suppose the best way to describe Blood Bowl would be as a legitimate sports game, albeit with sanctioned violence and a legal channel for revenge. It has a few design oddities that can become frustrating: the unashamedly evil AI, the clunky interface, and the brain-strippingly annoying commentators (who can be turned off, thankfully), but the core game is enjoyable enough to keep you coming back for more, even if sports are not your thing.

Word of advice, though. I recommend playing a nice online league with friends or people of a kind disposition from your preferred online community. This game will annoy you from time to time, and it’s best that you experience that with people who aren’t going to be sending you ‘lol noob’ messages every five minutes. Just a thought.

In spite of a few oddities this is a game that makes me wish this sport were real.

Need for Speed Shift is the first game in the reborn Need for Speed franchise, gone are the days of playing cops ‘n robbers and street racing, this time with developers Slightly Mad Studios (of GTR2 and GT Legends fame) the series is entering the same territory as Codemasters’ highly impressive GRID. While Shift is a very strong entry into the racing game genre, it falls short of what it could have achieved.

The main failing of the game lies in the career mode and the confusing array of ways in which your progress through the game is tracked. You have driver points which progress your character level, stars to unlock new races and plain old cash for all the car related purchasing you could ever dream of.

The ultimate goal of the game is to progress to the World Tour, to get there you will need to compete in several other tiers of events, if you win an event you earn stars and you are able to earn bonus stars by completing tasks such as earning 600 driver profile points or causing five cars to spin out. Your in-race actions, such as barging people off the road or following the racing line around a corner with some speed earn you driver profile points.

As you accumulate points in either aggressive or precision categories you will rise through the ranks of the game, each rank rewards you with something, be it more room in your garage or invitational events which give you the chance to earn some more stars. Of course you also earn money from each race in you finish in a good position and you can even earn badges once you have performed x amount of perfect starts or dirty overtakes.

All of this just comes across as clutter that is designed to appeal to those gamers who spend all day trying to get every last achievement in a game. It is just too much here though, the game would be much better and more streamlined if Slightly Mad Studios just did away with the badges totally and use either profile points or stars to track career progressions, not both.

One of the big features of the game is the driver profile points, and yes they are a novel feature, but for the large part they just get in the way. In a race you have a bar at the top of the screen constantly telling you where you are earning points, this clogs up a race interface which isn’t the best even without this. One of the easiest ways to accumulate points is through following the racing line, the trouble is that if, like me, you aren’t one to use pre-defined racing lines you will find yourself missing out on loads of points simply by taking the line that you think is best through the corners.

I have been critical yes, but that is just because these are the features which drag the game down, well them and drifting, but that is more personal dislike than a poor feature. The heart of the game, the racing is immense and really gives GRID a run for its money. There are plenty of ways in which you can tune the realism to your preference, turning the settings to Pro present a real challenge, especially compared to Normal. Simulation enthusiasts will find room to complain, but for most people the different levels provide a good learning curve.

The racing itself is physical, rival drivers are just that rivals, they will jostle with you and others for position and are certainly susceptible to sliding off the track without any interference from your fender and they are certainly willing to give you a nudge here and there. You will find that highlighted drivers in different series’ will seemingly run away with the lead, but you come to expect that from racing games, however annoying it can be. Another positive part of the racing is that you don’t have an annoying mechanic constantly shouting down the radio to you, you may get a short pre-race message talking about those aforementioned drivers, but once in the race you are free to put the pedal to the metal and let your engine roar.

Shift shines when it comes to its’ excellent drivers eye view. While you are stuck behind the steering wheel, you are able to turn your view in the cockpit to look out of the side windows, though that isn’t something you will want to do when you are driving at top speed when your view of the outside world and your dashboard blurs as you concentrate on the road. This effect can take a while to get used to, but it certainly adds something extra to the game and makes the speed feel more real, something which you lose when driving with the third-person camera.

A racing game wouldn’t be complete without some great racing tracks, and following the current trend of racing games you can drive the Green Hell of the original Nurburgring circuit along with several variations on the track. This is one of the most spectacular tracks in the racing world and it is an awesome experience to drive around it in Shift. There are a host of other great real world tracks such as Spa, Silverstone and Laguna Seca, these monuments of racing stand out from the crowd which is rather poor. Yes you can race around the streets of London, but sadly it feels a hollow experience, a problem you will find with other tracks built for the game.

Shift is visually impressive and the cars are extremely well modelled and when you use a pre-set sponsorship pain scheme they come to life as real racing machines. It is a shame then that they don’t suffer the impressive kind of visual damage you find in GRID, smashing into a wall at 150mph should do more than just disorientate you, your car should look like it has received some punishment with wheels hanging off and missing windows. However you have to really beat up your car in order for it to really look like it has been in battle.

Shift has problems, the driver points and stars system are too much for one, but one a whole the issues don’t ruin the game, but they do detract from the amazing driving experience that lies at the heart of Shift. This is a fine racer let down by other elements, a sign that mixing arcade and simulation styles doesn’t always pay off.

Far from perfect, but not that bad at the end of the day.

Jakub Dvorský, Machinarium’s lead producer just dropped me a line with news about a new trailer, some amazing concept art and the release date for the game!

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A short backdrop narrative slideshow, and a difficulty screen later, and Strife quickly drops you in it: An angry machine gun totting guard and nothing but a glove with a knife attached for comfort. So far, so Doom. Two bloodied corpses later however, and the next chap you encounter seems distinctly more sedate; furthermore, he wants to talk to you. Strife was a Doom-clone with a difference.

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Lovely readers, I would like to take this moment to introduce Laurence Elliott to the staff here at The Reticule and explain a handful of other changes taking place. The comment/sidebar problems are being worked on.

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Ok so it’s been out on the PC for over a year now. And on the Xbox 360 even longer. But I only just got round to playing Mass Effect, and speaking as someone who has become gradually disillusioned by the RPG genre, I was completely blown away by what is an absolute creative masterpiece. It’s also the first console port I’ve played that isn’t a total, head-spanking mess.

Having been weaned on the proverbial teat of Star Trek, Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica, Mass Effect was the ideal vehicle for my re-entry into the fantasy saturated world of RPGs. Not a single mention of an elf, a goblin or a magical spell of any kind, which, when you tot up the ratio of fantasy to non-fantasy RPGs and MMORPGs being released, is actually an incredibly refreshing thing to be faced with.

Although not the primary appeal of the game, I was very excited about getting stuck into the combat, as this was the first RPG in some time whose combat wasn’t semi-turn based, with you and your opponent standing in front of each other taking it turns to click the attack button and bop the other with a big sword. Incidentally, this is also why I have never played a single MMO in my entire life. As narrow minded and ill-informed as it might sound, the whole World of Warcraft phenomenon passed me by entirely because it, and others like it, are completely hinged on this dice-roll combat, which usually results in static battles that are very dull to watch. That may seem like a petty reason not to play a game, but I remember feeling incredibly disappointed, angry almost, at how misleading the cinematic trailer for Warhammer Online was. There was a Dwarf breathing fire on hordes of charging Orcs, an Elf ducking and diving in combat with another Orc, some Priestly looking fellow clashing metal with a tall, angsty looking guy, blocking and parrying attacks, growling some incantation that ignites his hammer into flames as his head gets impaled by a mace. “Great”, I mused, “this really captures the raw and gritty spirit of Warhammer”. Wrong. I later discovered after watching a clip of gameplay footage that, once again, combat consists of you standing in front of your opponent, queuing up attacks and abilities, taking it in turns to hit each other.

The idea behind all this is obviously that the battles are supposed to be representative instead of literal, and the focus is on preparation for them; maximising your chances of victory by gaining the right abilities, items and skills beforehand by doing quests and gaining xp. With so much focus on the preparation, however, the battles themselves seem like foregone conclusions and woefully anti-climactic.

Mass Effect, on the other hand, manages to maintain this fundamental role playing format whilst integrating an action-based, third-person shooter mechanism. Although not the first to do it, it blends the two together beautifully, and in spite of the occasionally cretinous AI, it makes for a thoroughly enjoyable system that doesn’t undermine the importance of either preparing for the fight or your own personal skill employed in the fight itself. This formula works perfectly, as much like Deus Ex, it rewards adequate preparation as well as good aim, with both being equally important requisites for victory. Squad management took too much of a back seat, however, with very little direction for your comrades actually being required (with the exception of the occasional remedial request, such as moving out of the way of incoming gunfire).

I can hear the WoW fanboys protesting already, and I do realise that I am making a somewhat tenuous comparison here. But there is really little reason for developers to rigidly stick to this dice-rolling mechanism anymore, especially with APB and Dust 514 on the horizon promising to raise the bar and successfully blend action with role-playing in an MMO context. Don’t get me wrong, I was a huge Neverwinter Nights fan- but I enjoyed it in spite of its combat system, and don’t see any reason to grudgingly cling to this for sentimentality’s sake. With this in mind, is a Mass Effect MMO really that difficult to imagine? If implemented in a similar way to EVE, with varying concentrations of AI controlled ‘police’, then it is perfectly feasible, with no changes to the fundamental principles of the game or the addition of the traditional dice roll-combat being required (hint hint Bioware).

It has been generally agreed that Mass Effect is a great success both critically and financially, but in the year after its release it was still subjected to a continued torrent of criticism, some justified and others not so.

Amongst the most baffling was from Eurogamer’s very own Kristan Reed, where the game was accused of failing to gradually ease the player into the world and prod them in the right direction when things became a little overwhelming . Not only does this show little awareness of science-fiction and of RPGs in general, it criticises the game for something that is actually one of its biggest strengths. Mature players don’t want to be patronised with continuous explanation, exposition or “prodding”. They want to be plunged into the world they are interacting with headfirst and allowed to explore it at their own pace without having the illusion shattered with reminders of what you ‘should’ be doing. That may well turn off the more impatient players, but this isn’t a game about action necessarily- it’s a game about dialogue, narrative and exploration, which Bioware have achieved to near-perfection in almost all of their titles, particularly Mass Effect.

I would, however, be the first to concede that the Mako is probably the stupidest vehicle ever designed in any game. Ever. Seemingly indestructible, it has a mounted gun that can only aim horizontally as well as having the mind boggling ability to climb almost sheer cliff edges with ease. It does some of the most ridiculous things that not only defy gravity, but tell it to fuck off and give it a big kick in the nuts. The side quests became somewhat repetitive after a while, and the DLC has added little in the way of substantial material. These are forgivable flaws, however, as the fully-fleshed out plot, reactive narrative and diverse, detailed characters redeem it spectacularly, and make it one of the most enjoyable titles I have played in years.

It also has a pretty good sex scene. What more could you want?

If there is one thing I really enjoy doing after a session of Need for Speed: Shift or Resident Evil 5, it is to hit up the closed beta of Tiger Woods Online and play a couple of rounds of golf. Yes, I have been playing a golf game, and I am enjoying it. Tiger Woods Online is a free-to-play game from EA, in which you play some rounds of golf and improve your characters skills.

The closed beta features a nice variety of courses, I’m no golf expert but at the very least I recognise the famous St. Andrew’s course in Scotland. So far a couple of extra courses have been added to the game thanks to the willingness of the beta testers to complete several thousand rounds of golf within just a few days.

When I am out on the course with my nice bright cap I will generally find myself finishing around ten shots over par. This is because I will often skip the short introduction to each hole which informs you of the various hazards you will face, or I won’t pay attention to the win gauge and I will see my shot land with a gentle ‘plonk’ in the nearby river. I won’t talk about the sand traps or the number of times I have found myself stuck trying to hit a ball out of a massive thorny bush.

The simplest way of playing involves the so called ‘three-click-swing’ where you measure your power and accuracy along the bar on the bottom of the screen. Being an online game though, if you are experiencing some lag you will often find yourself badly miss-timing your clicks and hooking a shot deep into the rough. The other way to play is ‘true-swing’ which involves you moving your mouse with enough gusto and the right direction to get the ball to go where you want. I personally find myself sticking to the three click system.

As I indicated earlier, you can develop the skills of your golfer, you can improve your driving power and accuracy, purchase more putt previews which show you where you putt will go and even buy new shots like the chip, flop or punch. Unfortunately you aren’t able to punch your invisible caddy or break your clubs over you knee. You can develop skills by completing different challenges on each course, score your first birdie or finish under par earn you big bucks. Smaller things like subsequent birdies, getting to the green within a set number of shots and others earn you smaller amounts of money.

There is also a strong community element to the game, you can join or create groups which allow you to keep track of what your friends are up to and try to become the best group in the game. Daily and weekly tournaments are also present for players of varying skill levels in which you compete for big prizes.

It may not make up for the lack of a proper retail PC release of a new Tiger Woods game for some, but the new Online version looks very promising, there are issues which have to be resolved, namely shot lag and various other bugs that users have spotted. It will be interesting to see how EA monetise the game and how many more courses and features are added before it goes public. I for one will carry on playing, even if it is simply to relax after a hard day blasting zombies.

GFWL makes me feel like him.

Three of the biggest PC releases from the past two weeks – Batman, Resident Evil and Red Faction – all have one thing in common, Games for Windows Live. Three of the biggest PC releases in the past couple of weeks all use Microsoft’s PC interpretation of the impressive Xbox 360 Live system. Surely this should be a great time for PC gaming with these top titles using a system designed to improve the gaming experience for PC users, unfortunately it is not so. Games for Windows Live is flawed, there is no denying it. The requirement to be signed into the service to save your progress in some titles is perhaps the most significant problem with the service. A good friend of mine had played two hours of Red Faction: Guerrilla recently, when he came to save his progress he was told he had to sign in to Live. He hit a problem when it turned out Live required updating, after following the update process hoping that he would then be able to save his progress he was informed his computer needed to restart for the update to be applied. Two hours of gameplay down the drain because Games for Windows Live doesn’t allow offline/online integration. My friend promptly uninstalled the game after releasing what had happened, and I am sure this is a problem that many others have experienced.

Personally I have had my fair share of problems with the service, most notably an inability to sign in to Live despite full internet connectivity and the correct log-in details. It is extremely frustrating to have to restart a game like Fallout 3 several times just to be able to access my saved games. This is coming from a service which lists, amongst others, ‘Quality’ as a key aspect of what the Games for Windows brand means. A quality service would not present so many problems to the user, a quality service would not require users to pay for DLC using Microsoft points when Steam allows you to, in some circumstances pay in your own currency, but at the end of the day using real money, not Microsoft points. For further analysis of the awful payment system, just read about Greg’s problems with Fallout 3 DLC.

The sad thing is that if you ignore that little word ‘Live’, Games for Windows is a great idea. It brings PC releases under a unified banner and helps to establish the importance of PC games in the wider gaming market, it also ensures that all titles released under the Games for Windows banner work on 32 and 64-bit versions of Windows, they support Xbox 360 Control pads and provide widescreen compatibility. It is hard to comprehend how the basic Games for Windows service promises so much, yet when the Live element is introduced so much trouble arises. In a world where Steam and Impulse offer almost everything Games for Windows Live does, and more in a much more user friendly environment with less problems it makes you wonder why developers insist on adding Live to their games. It doesn’t help us, the end users one bit. To top it all off Bioshock 2 will be using Games for Windows Live.