Life is a Mind Bending Puzzle

The original Call of Duty made a big splash when it came out on PC back in 2003. Call of Duty has since  become one of the biggest franchises in gaming. Even though most of the money is now earned from multiplayer and even though the series has long since moved on to modern day and futuristic settings it still visits World War 2 occasionally. I recently had the opportunity to play through most of the single player World War 2 Call of Duty games on veteran difficulty and I would like to share my thoughts and comparisons.  I have middle aged reflexes and I am far from a leet gamer but I chose veteran (the hardest) difficulty  because I have replayed these campaigns several times over the years and it makes sense for me to up the challenge. I also think that playing a 2003 game on a modern PC makes things easier. I remember jerky response times making it hard to aim and survive during the frenetic battles scenes way back in the day. A modern gaming PC can handle those early ...

  There have been a lot of bad Warhammer 40k video games over the years and only a very small number of good ones. The first two Dawn of War games were excellent RTS games while Space Marine was a great third person shooter but Necromunda: Hired Gun is the first 4k based first person shooter I can remember actually enjoying.  The game pits you as a soldier of fortune undertaking missions on the gang ruled munitions factory planet of Necromunda. There is an overarching plot which sets you up on the trail of a shadowy figure who is stirring up trouble but the story is utterly secondary to the gun play and the gun play is quite good. Movement is fluid and controls are tight. There is a good selection of appropriately powerful weapons and bionic powers available. The missions are set in large open levels which allow plenty of opportunity for parkouring around with grappling hook, wall running and sliding. The maps do feel a but repetitive by the end of the game but there is enough...

I am about three quarters of the way through a Dark Elf vortex campaign in Total Warhammer 2. Unlike previous campaigns I am deliberately limiting territorial expansion. I hold only three provinces and I am using diplomacy instead to secure borders. This slows down the game but it makes it much easier to defend against the random chaos armies that spawn during vortex rituals. With so few settlements it did take a while to get my economy off the ground but at this point some 150 turns in I am the strongest and richest faction and I have managed to disrupt the plans of my vortex rivals with expeditionary forces, allies and intervention armies.   Dark Elves are a very enjoyable faction to play with no obvious weaknesses and some very strong creatures and magic. The armour piercing crossbows of tier one Dark Shards mean that even early game Dark Elf armies can inflict serious damage. Dark Elves unique faction ability allows them to build black ark ships and use them as mobile...

Having enjoyed Halo 1 and 2 on my PC it has long been my desire to find a way to play the Xbox exclusive remainder of the series. The only question was whether emulation would provide a route before the price of an Xbox 360 console itself fell below my threshold of pain. Well it turns out that emulation loses this time because this weekend I realised I could pick up an Xbox 360 console and a few games for around €50. Even if I do no more than play the few Halo Titles (3, 4, ODST and Reach) I will consider this a reasonable investment. I was actually offered a console for €35 but on investigation it was a version without hard disk so I opted to pay an extra €15 for a Xbox 360 "Slim" with  250Gb hard disk. We already own a Wii and a PS3 so that now makes a full house of seventh generation consoles for us. I bought the PS 3 a couple of years ago hoping to play a few exclusives but in the end I only finished "The Last of Us"(excellent game). The PS3 itself is still used...

I am enjoying Destiny 2 enough to buy the expansion pack when Humble put it on sale a week after  the base game was included in the June monthly (nice move Humble). Nevertheless I don't have time or patience for mmo grind right now so I decided to see how far I could get just playing the main campaign. Hence the question: Can you avoid grind by just playing the main campaign? The answer is: "Up to a point". I made it all the way through the base game (Red War) and the first expansion (Curse of Osiris) without any conscious effort to grind. I did pick up the occasional side mission and public quest along the way and I even indulged in some PVP but I didn't make any concious effort to grind.  I still managed to keep on level for the main quest lines. Things changed when I hit the latest expansion (Warmind). I completed curse of Osiris at about power level 270 so I got something of a shock to realise that the introductory chapter of Warmind was recommended for level...

I have been playing a bit of Destiny 2 since I picked it up in the June Humble Monthly. The game is an mmorpg / fps hybrid. The FPS combat is pretty tight and enjoyable in its own right but the mmorpg bit adds quests and progression to the mix. The developers (Bungie) use level scaling in an interesting way however that impacts on how players deal with enemies of different level. Progression is based on level and gear but the two are closely coupled because the gear you pick up  is tied to your character level. Playing the game normally equipping the gear I got from drops and rewards I found that my Power Score (which is effectively a measure of gear) hovers around 10x my character level while the maximum power score achievable with exotic gear seems to be around 12x character level.  When I first started the game I occasionally wandered too far from the beginner zones and stumbled into mobs that out levelled me substantially. I was unable to inflict any damage on these mo...

I played a demo of Super Hot several years ago but I only got around to playing the full game recently. The full campaign took me just over four hours much of which was spent dying and restarting as I learned how to overcome each of the levels. There is an ongoing "endless" gameplay mode however for those who wish to keep playing. Superhot is a shooter with a simple twist that completely turns the gameplay on its head. When you stand still the game time slows to a trickle but whenever you move time moves.  You can rotate your vision while time is slowed but moving, attacking or even picking up a weapon allows time to flow normally. It is not like bullet time in other games because when you move at normal speed just like everyone else. You cannot move faster than a speeding bullet. You can however use the frozen moment of time to predict exactly where that bullet will travel and to try an ensure you aren't there. The main challenge of Super hot and its main learning cu...

Today was somewhat unusual in that I finished campaigns in two separate games: Total Warhammer 2 Lizard men campaign and Vanquish single player campaign. Of course I had played the majority of bot games over the last few weeks and it is just coincidence that I managed to finish them on the same day. The Lizard-man campaign (Kroq Gar to be exact) is perhaps my favourite Total War campaign of all those I have played. I just love the tough Lizard units and big stompy dinosaurs are awesome. The Vortex campaign is much more story line focused than previous Total War games which is an great direction for the series to go in. You race other factions to take control of the vortex through a series of rituals which spawn increasingly challenging waves of Chaos and Skaven armies. The race is a bit artificial because apparently even if one of the other factions beats you to the final ritual you get a second chance to stop them in a fairly easy final battle. I guess Creative Assembly had to inclu...

Halo Single Player Version 3 (SPV3) is a rather wonderful fan made re-imagination of the original Halo Combat evolved. The mod is free but does require a valid key code from an original game to install. Sadly only the first two Halo shooters made it to the PC along with a more recent RTS game called Halo Wars but I still love the series. SPV3 replicates all of the missions of the original game and extends them with extra sections, extra enemies,  new weapons, new vehicles and new abilities. Did I mention the extra enemies? There are a lot of new enemies.  Happily they game supplies you with a lot of extra firepower to deal with these enhanced threats. The mod is incredibly polished and feels like a professional game. If you are interested you can grab the latest version from this Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/halospv3/

I have 46 hours recorded in single player mode on Steam and the campaign only takes about 11 hours to beat. This game seamlessly combines old school running and shooting with new school collecting and achievements and it is a tonne of fun. Favourite weapon has to be the Gauss cannon. It fires a high damage accurate single shot which works great for running and gunning. You can't afford to stand around waiting for the automatic weapons to whittle down opponents. The Gauss cannon takes low level enemies out in a single shot even the really annoying shielded guys. The siege mode upgrade path allows it to charge up a massive area of effect shot. In my opinion the most powerful weapon in the game apart from the BFG. The only disadvantage of the Gauss cannon is that it does some much damage that it kills enemies before you can pull off glory kills.

I am currently about two thirds of the way through another replay of the 2004 classic fps Far Cry. It is one of a small number of games that I repeatedly return to. The PC has always had the best back catalog in gaming and it is one of the joys of being a PC gamer that it is possible to play the old classics on a modern PC. The lush tropical setting is still beautiful and the monsters are as ugly and nasty as ever. The huge open levels are still magnificient. The gunplay is still  good as are are the stealth features. I am enjoying Far Cry but I also have a niggling concern. The experience has not been as satisfying as I expected this return to one of my all time favourite games to be. The cause of my discomfort is straightforward enough. I find myself wondering if the effort required to get this classic game to run on a modern system is justified by the experiece. Time is doubly cruel to older video games. Every new generation of computer makes it harder to get old games runni...

The iconic Halo series has had a poor relationship with the PC. Halo 2 didn't come out for PC until two full years after the Xbox 2006 release and even then it was artificially restricted to those who had upgraded to Microsoft's unpopular Vista operating system. If all that wasn't enough to annoy PC gamers the port was badly optimised and buggy. The game has never been made available as a digital download so it has pretty much been forgotten by the PC community. Yet Halo 2 remains an important milestone in gaming history and I have long intended to play it so I finally bit the bullet last week and did so. The original Halo (Combat Evolved) was important because it showed that first person shooters could work well on consoles and introduced a number of innovations that have become standard to this day (the game pad control scheme, the two weapon carry limit and the recharging health/shield scheme). Halo 2 introduced on-line multi-player with automatic matchmaking  and its ...

If you want to get Just Cause 3 to run smoothly in high quality settings then you need more than 8Gb ram in your PC. I have 12Gb which is enough but even so I still need to be careful not to have too much stuff running in the background in order to play the game. For some reason the games official requirement is only 6Gb but many players have criticised the game for being a poor quality buggy port and adding more ram  solves most of the issues. Whether this is due to bad programming or not the fact remains that you need more than 8Gb ram to get the best experience out of Just Cause 3. This is the first game I have come across that actually needs more than 8Gb. Until fairly recently even 4Gb was enough,  a legacy of the memory limitations of 32 bit Windows but just over a year ago games like Witcher 3 started demanding up to 8Gb. Now it seems even that barrier has been breached. As for Just Cause 3 itself? Once I got it running I liked it a lot. It is very repetitive and th...

Somewhat surprisingly the game I spent most time playing over Christmas was Lichdom: Battlemage. The game is an intense first person zapper with lovely graphics and an incredibly comprehensive magical system. I enjoyed it enough to complete the full campaign but there are a few things worth knowing if you ar ethinking of playing it yourself. First off the good bits: It's a first person game with fireballs instead of bullets. What is not to like? Better yet you are a kick ass battle mage who never runs out of mana meaning you can rain down destruction to your hearts content. You fight your way through a series of frenetic battles across an array of stunning maps. The graphics in the game are really lovely both in design and implementation. Once you figure out how magic works you have a huge range of options for winning battles and eventually you will develop y our own blend of destruction and control for dealing with all of the enemies the game throws at you. Before you dive int...

How does 2007's infamous system crusher fare on modern hardware? Crysis's system requirements were so demanding when it was released that the question "Can it run Crysis?" became a meme that was humourously asked of the most inappropriate hardware such as toasters and ancient computers.  How does Crysis run on a modern Windows 10 64 bit system with a GTX 970? The answer I am delighted to report is as smooth as butter with all settings maxed out. I did have a couple of crashes to desktop during my play through but these were so rare that they weren't a nuisance. I was actually surprised the game ran at all because it has been mentioned as one of the games affected by Microsoft ending support for Securom/Safedisk.   When I installed from my old disk I immediately patched up to the latest version and it ran without problems. Both 64bit and 32 bit versions are installed. It defaults to 64 bit but the 32bit version can be run manually. I didn't benchm...

I am replaying Mafia City of Lost Heaven, a game I fondly remember as having one of the most atmospheric cities in gaming and one of the best story lines but is the reality really as good as my memories? Well first the bad news: Combat is awful and clunky. Camera angles when driving are frustrating.  The level design is often cruel with long difficult levels having few save points necessitating frequency reloads. I did remember that the game had an infamous unskippable race level which caused many players to quit and yes it is still a frustrating hurdle. It took me about twenty attempts on the humiliatingly titled "easy mode" before I got through. Spare a thought for those poor players who tried to play the game before a patch added  "easy" mode to the race. Some of the levels are so unfair that  wonder if was deliberate cruelty on behalf of the devs. Consider a mission where you must  shootout with a much of hoodlums in order to retrieve a payment for your Mafia ...

I am in a unusual position (for me) at the moment that I am actively juggling several games and not getting frustrated by it. I am playing a long campaign of Rome 2 Total War (Iceni start) which is true Total War fashion is sometimes very engrossing and sometimes tedious. It makes sense to intersperse my Total War sessions with a it more action so I have also been playing "Call of Duty Ghosts" single player. If you want a militaristic on rails interactive shooter movie then Call of Duty is probably still the best in the business and I do enjoy short bouts of shooty entertainment. However I do tire of the bizarre morality of modern shooters so when Call of Duty tires me I switch to "Blades of Time". This is a fantasy third person action adventure in which a scantily clad young heroine slaughters hundreds of assorted chaos monster who have taken over a mythical land of treasures. Blades got mediocre reviews but I am enjoying it a lot. It is very linear but the combat ...

Splinter Cell Blacklist offers three distinct playstyles: Ghost mode where you focus on stealth and non lethal take-downs, Panther mode which combines stealth with lethal take-downs and Assault mode which is guns blazing shoot outs. Different weapons and perks cater to each style and you are more or less encouraged to focus on one style.  Happily though you are not forced to stick to one style and I don't think that you miss out on any story elements by swapping between styles. This is important to me partly because I like variety but also because I tend to engage in a bit of subtle role playing in a game like this. I won't choose a course of action just to get the next achievement but instead I like to act in manner fitting with the protagonists mind set. When highly trained special agent Sam Fisher encounters a humble security guard just going about his job it makes sense that he would try to sneak past unobserved or at worst put the guard to sleep for a while. On the othe...

Is "The Bureau" a bad game or has it just been judged to an impossibly high standard? Firaxis's 2012 reboot of the iconic series XCOM, Enemy Unknown met with universal praise so why did "2k Marin's 2013 tactical shooter set in the same universe receive such lukewarm reviews? After reading some of those unflattering reviews I approached the game with hesitation. Now having played for a little over an hour I am confused.  I have only completed the long introductory chapter and one real mission but what I have seen so far is wonderful. This doesn't feel like a bad game. This feels like a superbly crafted great game. When does it start to fall apart?  The atmosphere so far is terrific. There is a beautifully constructed 1950's vibe going on with hard smoking square jawed men and women in severe suits who working for a mysterious government agency which is the last chance to save the earth from alien invaders. Lots of sound effects and incidental detail...

I recently played the Minerva's den DLC for Bioshock 2 and greatly enjoyed it which prompted me to get the Season pass for Bioshock Infinite which included Burial at Sea parts 1 and 2. Minerva's Den is a very fun stand alone adventure set in the Bioshock 2 Universe. It is has a self contained story about a scientist who invented the computing machine which controls much of Rapture's infrastructure (the Thinker) but who was double crossed by his partner. The story is well developed and engaging and the gameplay is fun too. It is intended for people who have already played Bioshock 2 so the difficulty level is reasonably challenging but you get a few new weapons and plasmids to play with which gives it a bit of variety. Burial at sea episode 1 is an add on for Bioshock Infinite which brings Elizabeth and Booker DeWitt from Columbia into the world of Rapture. I found the gameplay very challenging but a lot of the blame for this is down to my stubborn insistence on sticking...