THE HIGHS
Phil Savage: Driving to distraction
Myself, Tom Senior and Samuel all finally attempted GTA Online's heists last weekend. Honestly, we didn't get very far—a combination of low level characters and multiple pints of cider ultimately hindering our criminal ambitions. Despite that, it was great fun. GTA Online is a weird thing. In public groups, it's a lonely and sometimes broken mess. But with a few friends on a private map, it's a much more enjoyable playground—even when, outside of missions, there isn't that much to do. Eventually, we all piled into a car and took off to steal a bus. We failed, but had a damn good time anyway.
Tom Senior: Witcher 3 mods
It begins. Modders were always going to crowbar open The Witcher 3’s insides, now CD Projekt RED has given them extra leverage. The official modkit isn’t the most comprehensive editing suite, but it’s an official endorsement of the mod scene, and modders have a tendency to do far more than you’d expect with almost nothing. Mods do wonders for a game’s longevity, particularly if the game is a sprawling RPG. The mod scene is one of the main reasons that you still see Skyrim hovering around the top ten most played games on Steam years after launch. When it started to age, modders gave it a new lick of paint. When the quests ran out, modders made more. Good mod tools can convert a self-contained lump of linear entertainment into a flexible platform that can sustain new adventures and even drive players to madness.
Chris Livingston: From Dawn to Duskers
I've gotten an early look at the sci-fi roguelike Duskers, which will hit Early Access on August 20th, and I'm enjoying it so much I haven't even played Rocket League in the past few days, which is saying something. I'll have a proper write-up next week, but it's a sort of real-time strategy game about exploring derelict spaceships to harvest their resources. You accomplish this by piloting drones through the ships' interiors while trying avoid, trap, or destroy dangerous alien life forms and hostile security systems.
It's also a bit of a puzzle game, as you move your various drones around, trying to determine the safest way to navigate these ships, power up and use certain nodes, access all of the rooms, and get your drones safely back to your ship. There are also some scares, and plenty of dread. You can't see inside of rooms without your drones physically entering them, and while your drones can have various abilities, such as motion detectors, sensors, and probes, it's still a harrowing experience to open a door without knowing for sure what might be behind it. Throw in hull breaches, radiation, equipment failures, and the fact that your drones have names which means you wind up caring about them, and it's an enjoyably tense experience.
Samuel Roberts: Resident Evil 2 returns
Capcom has good form of bringing ports to PC, even when they’re not necessarily as optimised as I’d like, and this week the company announced that Resident Evil 2 is being remade. I played Resi 2 on PC originally, and it was a fairly handsome port, even though I remember it being awkward to control with the mouse and keyboard. It was, for me, the best of the first era of static camera/survival horror Resi. I’m not entirely sure what form this remake will take, but whether it’s the over-the-shoulder shooter approach like Resi 4 or something a bit closer to the original Resi’s traditional-style remake (which was remastered for PC earlier this year), it’s definitely worth a revival, even if just to retell that story in Raccoon City without the especially annoying voice-acting from the original.
Tyler Wilde: Pretending to be good at Hearthstone
I hadn’t launched Hearthstone since last December, but after Tim published this supposedly surefire Tavern Brawl deck, I decided to test his claim. It works. It’s evil, and it works.
I’ve won 10 games and I’m not sure it’s even fun for me anymore. I was kind of thrilled when I made someone concede on the second turn, but also kind of disgusted with myself. I haven’t even played the game in over six months! It’s not fair!
Here’s what happened, in layman’s terms: My opponent went first, which meant I got an extra card and the Coin, a special card I can play to get an extra Mana Crystal during a turn. And that made all the difference. I’d been dealt a perfect hand.
My opponent did nothing on the first turn, and then it came to me. I played the Coin, which gave me two Mana Crystals to work with. The special rule in this Tavern Brawl is that every time you cast a spell, you summon a minion to the board. The Coin counts as a spell, so there’s one minion out. I then spent my two full Mana Crystals on Wild Growth, which gave me an extra empty Mana Crystal. Another minion appeared on the board. Then I cast Innervate, a zero-cost card that refills two Mana Crystals. Another minion appeared on the board. With two more mana to work with, I cast my second Wild Growth, and got another empty Mana Crystal.
It didn’t really matter what I played on turn two. I had four Mana Crystals to my opponent’s two and four minions already on the board. I could have cast Savage Roar to give all my minions +2 attack and then hit his face for nearly half his health, but I didn’t. I played Soul of the Forest because, whatever, and that’s when it ended. I’m sorry, whoever you were! Blame Tim. He corrupted me with this power.
Wes Fenlon: No, Sonic, Noooooo
Somewhere deep inside, we've all known that Sonic the Hedgehog is not a platforming mascot, but a conduit for soul-deep otherwordly terror. But we've never truly had proof, irrefutable proof, even as the Sonic fan-fiction and Deviantart forever scarred the children of the Internet generation. Until now. Experience the Sonic Dreams Collection, and be forever changed.
THE LOWS
Samuel Roberts: No campaign in Battlefront
The old Battlefront games had dubious single-player content that was little more than a rebranded version of the multiplayer maps with some cutscenes around it—the new Battlefront drops even that and only functions in multiplayer. I think it’s a bit of a missed opportunity, more because it’s been so long since we’ve any kind of Star Wars single-player experience rather than my desire to blast through a five-six hour campaign of scripted setpieces. We’ll see how much longevity there is in the online modes, but charging £40/$60 for a multiplayer-only FPS only makes sense if it’s the sort of competitive experience we still want to play after a month.
Tom Senior: Prepare to cringe
This week’s low is almost too rubbish to write about, but this seems like a good place to laugh/cry about it together. MSI launched this advert for a mini-PC featuring a patronising “even an air hostess can do it” tone, some painful overdubbing and a reckless disregard for the proper use of thermal paste. It’s awful. It’s hilarious. I love the shot that attempts to show how “compact” the PC is by showing how it barely fits in a suitcase. I love that they pack it into a suitcase with no monitor, keyboard or mouse. It’s a terrible advert for a mini-PC, but an amazing advert for a good gaming laptop.
Phil Savage: Kickstart my enthusiasm
There's nothing like a Kickstarter campaign to slightly dampen my enthusiasm for a project. That happened this week with Divinity: Original Sin 2. I'm sure the eventual game will be great, but first we've got the whole crowdfunding process to endure. I'm not even sure why they need one. I get why, for instance, GRIP—the Rollcage successor that's currently searching for funds—needs to raise cash to exist. But Divinity: Original Sin was a huge success, and will soon be released on consoles where it'll probably be a huge success again.
In a statement, studio founder Swen Vincke paints the D:OS2's Kickstarter campaign as a creative decision—a way to get fan feedback during development. But you can do that without charging people upfront. It's called forums, and we've had them for decades.
Chris L.: Et tu, tutorial?
My low this week is tutorials, but honestly it's probably more about me and how I'm never, ever happy no matter what because I'm an impatient grouch. I started playing an Early Access space survival game called Empyrion, which has quite an intricate crafting system but no tutorial on how it works. After blundering around for a while, I left the game to watch a 30 minute Let's Play, which was quite informative on the basics. Thing is, after watching the first half-hour of the game, I wasn't really left with the desire to then play the first half-hour of the game for myself, going through the exact same motions I had just watched. So, I quit.
Next I tried a space trading game called Cosmonautica, which has a robust tutorial. A little too robust? It's the kind where instead of simply presenting on-screen instructional text there's, like, a peppy tutorial character who chats to you in a friendly manner to set the mood instead of just telling you what to do so you can start playing. I found myself too impatient to even sit through it, so I quit.
Next, I took another stab at space survival with Interstellar Rift, which also didn't have a tutorial. Again, I wandered around the interior of a ship trying to figure things out for myself, and then I thought about watching some videos, but eventually I decided to go for the hat trick and I just quit. See? Tutorial? No tutorial? Doesn't matter. I'm impossible to please.
Tyler Wilde: Fighting anger
Some games make me madder than others. Rocket League, for instance, doesn't make me mad at all. I don't care if I lose 10-0. Not mad. Having fun. Rising Thunder, however, can make me fume. It’s how fighting games are designed. It’s why the word 'salty' is associated with them.
In most fighting games, when you score a hit, you're given the opportunity to score a second hit. You can do this for as long as you can sustain a combo. If you're really good at it, it's like holding someone down and slapping them, and it's intensely frustrating to be on the receiving end of. It reminds me of being the extremely ticklish kid I was (I'm now an extremely ticklish adult) and being held down by my older sister, gasping for air, unable to speak or escape. She wasn't trying to be mean—I was laughing, after all—but I felt helpless and angry.
Rocket League almost never takes away control. The worst that can happen is that you'll get bumped into a few times, or blown up and then tossed right back into the game. I don't mind losing because I'm always standing up (figuratively), always trying to score another goal, always in control. And no matter how much the other team is dominating, the game is always a little messy, with unexpected bounces and accidental plays.
Playing Rising Thunder against a better opponent, by comparison, is like trying to beat up a swarm of bees while wearing a straightjacket. I don’t fault it for my own stress and frustration—it’s doing what fighting games do—but I do have to limit how much I play to manage the stress. It's different when I'm playing fighting games against friends, in the same room, and we're sort of all rooting for each other—Street Fighter IV is all friendly fun. The experience really changes when I'm fighting a player I can't see, and I wish I knew how to stay relaxed even when I'm getting crushed.
Wes Fenlon: 'Killer' networking features on motherboards are a waste
Too often 'gaming' branded hardware is actually a complete waste, more marketing buzz than innovative design. And from our testing with an Atheros Killer network interface compared to a standard Intel one, there's no gaming performance to be gained. In fact, we found that they underperformed Intel networking and often cause users more problems. There might be some small advantage to being able to shunt unimportant network tasks to the wireless adapter when you're gaming via Ethernet, but the truth is, most gamers know not to run intensive background downloads, anyway. And that hand-off via software can cause its own issues. If you're motherboard shopping, don't make Killer networking a priority.
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