Just slap an image of Crackdown 3 on here and you get the idea.
Are you old enough to remember seeing pictures of missing kids on milk cartons? It was a program in the US designed to spread awareness and hopefully find someone with information leading to their return. (It was also fairly scary; nothing says "you're next!" to a child like seeing someone your age on one of those cartons every morning.) Looking back, I wonder how many of those kids they actually found, and how effective that program was. But what the hell does this have to do with video games?
Well, I started to think about all the interesting announcements that have come out in years past, and whether or not those trailers ever turned into actual games. Seems like every FIFA game is accompanied by a Below or a Deep Down; something to get hyped up about, followed by years of nothing. I've decided to stick to games announced in E3 2014 or earlier; that means no Final Fantasy VII remake even if we won't be seeing that thing until late 2017 at the earliest. I'm also going with games that have had official announcements and trailers to go with them, which rules out games like Beyond Good and Evil 2 (which had a teaser trailer, but no title or release date announcement), and ones that were never games at all like (dare I say it?) Half Life 3.
So, this is my milk carton equivalent rallying cry: have YOU seen these video games?
Supposedly in development "for years" before being announced at E3 2013, Below has recently been delayed yet again, this time with no targeted release window of any kind, after expecting to be out this summer. There's been a steady stream of trailers and some convention demos to indicate it's still alive, if unreleased, but with an already nebulous release date shifting to none at all, Below isn't inspiring much confidence that we'll see it any time soon.
Perhaps the poster child for slapping the words "cloud computing" onto things, Crackdown 3 was announced during E3 2014 to the delight of orb collecting fans everywhere. A handful of videos and a few years later, we still have no Crackdown 3, with the last post on the website promising "While we won’t be at E3 [2016], we cannot wait to show you the future of Crackdown 3 soon," although that was three months ago. Current scuttlebutt is that the the delay has more to do with Microsoft's packed holiday release schedule than anything else, although no firm 2017 date has been given.
God damn do I want Cuphead. I guess beautiful hand-drawn animation takes a long time, as Cuphead is past the two year mark with nothing to show for it beyond a few trailers and the rare convention demo. I'm not optimistic about a blanket 2016 release date this late into the year, but my hope is that we'll be giving the Devil the ol' finger guns before too long.
Cyberpunk 2077
Announced: 5-30-2012 (although the trailer is from 1-10-2013)
I'd pull a Cuphead and place dice with the Devil if I could get my hands on this one, but the prospect of a cyberpunk RPG that is bigger and better than TW3 is so appealing that I'm happy to wait.
Current Release Date: 2016, 2017, or none, depending on your level of optimism.
Website: None that I could find.
Current Status: Undead! Get it? Because they changed developers? No? Never mind.
Dead Island 2 has the dubious distinction of having more news than a lot of the games in this list, and none of it good. Deep Silver canned one developer, leading to talks of cancellation, put another developer on it in early 2016, leading to talks of (obviously) major delays, the Steam page was removed (more cancellation talk)...you get the idea. I'm still hopeful; the first Dead Island was a bit of a clunky mess, but the combat and crafting was pretty fun, so I'm interested in a new game with more color and less female zombie torso statue things.
Deep Down (working title)
Announced: February 2013 (PlayStation 4 reveal conference)
Deep Down's a real mystery. We had two trailers in 2013, and then a whole lot of nothing. Hell, I'm not even sure if they are sticking with that name, or if they have plans to do a Western release, or...anything about it beyond the trailer, really. Chances are, if we ever see Deep Down, it won't resemble what was at that presentation nearly four years ago.
Dreams
Announced: February 2013 (PlayStation 4 reveal conference)
Current Release Date: We are supposed to get a demo in 2016, but, uhh...
Dreams is a weird thing, even from Media Molecule. It's also not exactly a real thing yet, and wasn't a real thing at E3 this year, or a real beta yet, or...well, anything real at all beyond a few trailers and weird stage demos. 2016 hasn't quite past us yet, so there's still hope for that promised beta, but with no information about it at all, I don't have high hopes for this one making its way to you anytime soon.
Current Status: Soon to be released, but I'll believe it when I see it.
No missing games list is complete without The Last Guardian, even if this may be the last time it qualifies. Easily the oldest announcement (if not the longest in development), "Will we see The Last Guardian this E3?" had become a well-known joke/podcast topic for more than few years. Well, you might finally get to see what (at least) seven years of development looks like this October, and hopefully it comes through better than Duke did.
Let It Die/Lily Bergamo
Announced: April 2013 (as Lilly Bergamo)/E3 2014 (as Let It Die)
Butt-rock live action trailers are always worth a smile, and Grasshopper Manufacture is always worth paying attention to, if just for the insanity of it all. Billed as a Free-to-Play PS4 game, this one has had a weird dev cycle, including a name change (even after revealing a now-discarded logo). For what it's worth, I think the second trailer has a bit more style and substance to it, even if it's also way more confusing. (Fighting monster people in a big mega city? Giant needles from nowhere? Wha?) They are still talking like this thing is on track for 2016, but as you'd usually have a day and month associated with that number by now, this one looks like it's going to slip to next year.
This is a weird one, as it's hard to say if the actual game that was promised will materialize in any form. Let me explain; during E3 2014, they announced a Phantom Dust reboot, without really saying what that entails. Then, they killed it, or rather they parted ways with the developer while not canceling the game (whatever the hell that means) and hinted that we'd see Phantom Dust released in some form. Now, we see what that looks like; a re-release of the old game that's being updated, including to work with the modern Xbox Live. Does that count? Well, you're supposedly going to get something titled "Phantom Dust" on the Xbox One, so...sorta? Maybe? You decide.
Rime
Announced: Gamescom 2013
Current Release Date: 2017? TBA? Depends on who you ask.
Anyone else remember Rime? It kind of looks like Ico and The Witness had a baby. It also looks like we won't be seeing this one for a bit, as developer Tequila Works has decided to go it alone, possibly meaning a platform change (or at least the opportunity to appear on something other than a PS4). I'm no game developer, but I can't imagine a radical change in the developer/publisher relationship would act as an accelerant. Either way, it seems like the game isn't dead, which is nice.
Do you have an old announcement that you're still hanging on to? Still believe you'll get to play Tekken x Street Fighter one day? (I'm going with no.) What games would you put on missing posters all over the country?
Less pretty because I didn't have to fight to get here?
No Man's Sky wants to be a chill game. It's written into its DNA; jumping from star to star, taking in the sights, scanning the local flora and fauna, chatting up some weird aliens, exploring for ruins, space trucking some minerals around, all of it. Sure, there's some harrowing planets, but you can easily hop out of your ship, realize you've landed on a crapsack hellhole, snap a few pictures, and bug the fuck out of there before you get irradiated if it's too much for you.
Barring a few tangles with some space pirates (with no penalty for death beyond a corpse run and a bit of damage to some installed upgrades), space cops, or wildlife, that's it. That's No Man's Sky. It's a chill game. Or, it should be. But it's not a chill game. There's a lot of shit that you need to wade through to get to the chill parts, including (but not limited to):
A chronic shortage of inventory slots at the start.
Clunky-ass space combat which forces you to dive into a menu during a battle to recharge your shields (all while you are being wasted by pirate assholes). It also controls pretty poorly.
Clunky crafting which requires a free spot for the item you want to make, even if you'd naturally free up some space in the process by using up some minerals. You can't stack most products, either, leading to "fun" inventory management.
Upgrades that won't tell you how many materials they need after they are installed, meaning that if you want to disassemble one and move it, or buy/find a new ship/weapon and install something new there, you need to remember how much X random upgrade Y requires, or you could find yourself short of something rare or critical. I forgot how much zinc or whatever I needed to fix a pulse engine, and on a planet with no zinc plants, that meant I had to find a trade post and hope to hell the RNG ships would be carrying some, or all my work was wasted.
Design decisions which make NMS a better/tougher survival game, but one that I personally find to be less fun, such as refueling thrusters/hyperdrives/pulse drives. It's so easy to do these things (there's always plutonium near most landing sites, always thaumium in orbit, etc), that I wonder why they make us waste the inventory space and time on tasks that bring out no joy or challenge?
And so on. Now, I'm having a lot of fun with it despite all that bitching, but I soon realized that all of this crap is getting in the way of the part of NMS that I actually enjoy, which is the chill exploration game underneath all of this survival stuff. Thankfully, I'm playing on PC, so I've got all the tools necessary to compromise the artistic vision/design decisions/whatever you want to call it, because I paid $60 for this game, goddammit, and I'm either going to enjoy myself, or it's getting refunded. So, let's chop this thing down at the knees:
NOTE: This is going to chop this thing down at the knees. If you think the above is why you are into this game (or aren't bothered by it), that's perfectly fine, and this isn't for you. We're really going to modify the gameplay loop here (i.e. kill a lot of the "challenge"), so if laid back chilled out 420 blaze it space drifting isn't your thing, this will only make the game worse for you.
Get Cheat Engine. Sorry, PS4 people, you're already out of luck. I'll name a planet for you in your honor. For everyone else, scroll down to the bottom of the latest release and pick up the .exe. The main website looks like a sketchy spyware site (it's not, but it looks like it), so stick with Github. Install that.
Grab the cheat table from here. You can use any NMS cheat table you like (including your own, but at that point you won't need my help), but that's the one I've been using.
Fire up No Man's Sky, head into the settings, switch to (borderless) windowed mode (as the game currently crashes on an alt-tab if you are full screened, yayyyy), and then reload the game as it won't take effect if you don't (yayyyy).
Fire up Cheat Engine, click the glowing button to attach it to NMS.exe, click the folder and navigate to where you downloaded the table, and load that in. Alternatively, you can just double click on the table to launch Cheat Engine with the table already loaded in (assuming it properly associated that file format), then click the glowing button to attach it to NMS, and answer "yes" when asked to keep the loaded address/code list.
You're done! Use the box next to each option to toggle whatever you want on and enjoy, and remember you can just switch them off whenever you like, without reloading.
Haven't found the "Stop Generating Nightmares" cheat. Or the "Only Generate Nightmares" cheat, for that matter.
Here's the options I went with.
Unlimited Health: Before this, I never even came close to dying to the space cops anyway, so all this does is prevent a corpse run when the space pirates come from you. I find the space combat to be really clunky, so this is one frustration gone.
Unlimited Sprint: The default movement is so slow!
Unlimited Jetpack: See above. Combine this with the melee trick (run, melee attack and hit the jetpack for a big speed boost), and you'll be cruising around in no time. Cooldowns aren't fun!
Unlimited Selling (aka items aren't removed when sold): I did this to get enough credits to buy a big ship, most of my inventory slots, and a good sized multi-tool, then turned it off. Inventory management isn't fun!
Bypass Atlas Locks: I had an Atlas Pass v1 (and v2/v3 don't unlock anything cool), so what this really did (I assume it's this option, at least) was make is so that I didn't have to craft bypass chips every time I wanted to use a scanner. Nothing more fun then going into a menu, crafting, scanning, going back, crafting the same item, scanning, etc. Until they do things properly (allowing you to just use the materials right from the "item required" prompt, or allowing you to craft multiple items and stack them), this is a hassle I don't want to deal with.
Ignore Crafting Requirements: I use this for buying a new gun/starship and refilling it with the modules I already have. After the third or fourth time I repaired a down ship, disassembled my old upgrades, and realized I was five iridium short of rebuilding my Hyperdrive Range Sigma or whatever, I said "Nope!" and that was that. This would be mitigated if you could see what an upgrade costs after having built it (so you can just do the quick math in your head), but no, you can't. Write them down or go to a wiki (just make sure you don't alt-tab!)
Unlimited Ship Fuel: More bar management I can do without. They don't make it hard to get fuel, they don't make it fun to get fuel, so why put up with the busy work? I could be exploring!
After reading that, you may ask yourself "What's left for you to do, then? You took out like 80% of the game!" Well, exactly what I want; exploration, finding alien words and monoliths, tagging weird animals, talking to space people, and resource hunting because I want to, not because I have to. That might not be enough for you, and over time (and with updates to the combat/survival aspects) I might go back to doing things the old fashion way. But for now, if you are on PC and think that some of this is a bit tedious, I hope I've pointed you in the right direction. Cheaters never prosper? Maybe not, but we sure know how to sit back and relax.
I'll see you all at Duder Pass. And yeah, that name was randomly generated. It's the little things that make me smile. :D
After collecting 100 medals and savoring the victory over countless invaders, I feel qualified to give you some tips revolving around co-op and how to make it as jolly as possible, as well as a few general observations I've had in the past 50 hours of playtime. (You don't actually get anything for handing in more than 30 medals and hitting Rank 2, sadly, but if you count it out, I'd be a grossly incandescent Rank 9.)
The State of Things
There's no better time to collect some medals than at the launch of a Souls game. Summon times are almost instant (as long as you are at an appropriate boss for your level), and the level range is wide; I was around SL115 and still getting snatched up in under 30 seconds for bosses that, frankly, I didn't expect anyone would bother doing in co-op (I'll get to that in a bit). It's also the best way of farming souls by a long shot; I was getting 20-25k for a boss that'd keel over in a minute flat. Even with a random failure here or or there, you're still pulling in hundreds of thousands of souls per hour.
And you get embers on top of it! The hell am I going to do with 100 embers?
However, not all is bright and glorious; this IS a Souls game, after all, which means the netcode can be sketchy. Somewhere between 10% and 20% of the time, all of the animations would just completely break, causing both the boss and other players to glide around in a T-pose. This is a blessing in disguise, however; you still do full damage to the boss, and he can't hurt you a bit. The flip side of that is when it doesn't break fully, and instead of a benign sliding statue, you wind up with a teleporting, undodgeable rage monster that you can't really land any hits on. But the worst by far is a bug that prevents you from crossing the fog door. No amount of emoting, rolling or pleading is going to save a host that is forced to fight a boss now balanced for three people.
Nothing left to do but lay down and wait for the end.
Still, the netcode is mostly not on fire, so it's well worth your time for an occasional lag fest.
The next batch of observations deals with being summoned and what you are being summoned for. One thing that struck me was just how often people would summon me in for their very first attempt at a fight. Certain bosses have tells; as the host, you might be able to run up to a boss before the fight actually starts, but you lose that advantage after your first try, while us phantoms are stuck at what would be the fog door until you actually engage him no matter what. I mean, I'm not complaining; it's more work for me, and that's a good thing. But it leads to silly situations like having a host with no clue what to dodge or move away from, and no amount of frantic "HEY!" emotes is going to save them.
Finally, I was summoned in the most for a boss that I felt was a pushover; his attacks are slow, he has very little health in comparison to other bosses at that point in the game, and most of all you've seen his attacks before. Again, not complaining; we could wallop this guy in a minute and I made thousands because of it, but it just goes to show that one person's easy is another person's difficult, or at the very least some people summon just to summon, and not because they're in a tough spot.
Tips and Tricks for Getting The Most Out Of Your Jolly Co-Operation!
There's a few things you can do as a host to get the most out of a random co-op buddy, and a few things you can do to improve co-op for everyone, with no cost to you!
If the summon sign is by a boss door, don't drag your new friend across the whole level.
Some Sunbros love to play tour guide, doing their best to point out hidden treasures and helping to slay the various flora and fauna that inhabit a level before a boss. I salute them for their determination and willingness to fight waves of invaders. With that being said, people who put a sign down before a boss door simply want to offer help beating a boss (and that boss in particular), and aren't interested or assume you've already cleared the level. Do everyone a favor and only use those signs if you intend on heading into the boss room immediately; it saves everyone a lot of time, and gives work to those who really want it in the first place.
You don't always have to summon in multiple people.
Far from me to tell you how to play your game, but unless you are really down for a three person gangland beatdown on a boss, just one Sunbro is more than enough to turn most enemies into putty. The AI just cannot handle target prioritization, so simply adding one other person into the mix will make your victory a near certainty. So many people are trying to grab up summons right now that your sign will often be picked within seconds, so spread the love unless you are really in the mood for a party.
With that being said:
Summon other people before summoning NPCs.
Every person you bring into a boss fight cranks up their health by a good amount. I would prefer if all summons had a functioning brain, and I bet you would too, so if you are going to bring more than one person to a fight, make sure to chose humans over NPCs if you can. While the AI isn't completely useless, I've found that things often go faster without them there at all. So, if you can, try to take humans first, or roll purely NPCs if they are available.
Try the boss once before summoning people.
There's nothing wrong with summoning on your first shot, but I think you'll find that you'll have a lot more fun in co-op if you aren't getting smacked around like a gnat by a boss with buffed health, and the best way to do this is to at least see the enemy's patterns once or twice before calling in the cavalry. Sunbros are in it to win it (for you), and we will happily solo the whole boss if that's your aim, but there's nothing more disheartening than doing 90% of the work only for you not to realize you're in-range of the instant death zone, and none of my frantic waving or emoting has ever saved someone whose death is due to inexperience over lack of skill. There's no quicker way to turn people off of co-op than a host with his thanatos drive set to maximum.
Don't want to lose your ember/souls on a failed run? Why not try and do some co-op yourself? You won't lose a thing and you still get to learn the boss' patterns before giving it a go for real.
Don't worry about invaders, they're going to have a bad time.
I almost feel bad for them. Almost.
Stick close to your summons.
Beyond generally knowing quite a bit about the area or the boss, your summons will often have area of effect buffs that they can drop before entering into a big fight. Rather than activating a sign and immediately running in, hang back a bit and see if your new friend needs a few seconds of prep time. You might fight yourself with a healthy armor/damage buff if you just wait a bit before throwing down. This goes double for exploring the level; not only are you better protected from enemies and invasions, but you might find a few things you've missed with the help of your buddy!
Toss any of those rules out the window if it means you won't try co-op otherwise.
In the end, there's no Warriors of Sunlight without people to summon us in, so if any of the above feels too restrictive or frightening, ignore it and summon away. After all, we're here for you, even if you sometimes act like a blind lemming with a penchant for blocking the biggest attacks with your face.
Have you done any co-op, either as a host or as a summon? Are you a dirty invader who's had a bad time? Let me know if your experiences match mine, and any tips that I've left out.
Release Date: Apr 30, 1988 - Mar 4, 1989 (Japan), June 26th - August 17th, 1995 (USA)
No. of Episodes - 39
Last Seen: In a hazy, foggy, fever dream, but probably sometime before 1998.
Rewatch Format: Pure, unfiltered, `90s dub. This was a mistake, but maybe the best mistake.
This has to be the oldest thing I could possibly have seen (except for Samurai Pizza Cats, but let's just pretend that doesn't exist), predating Gundam Wing by at least a few years, and is easily the oldest show to qualify for this retrospective. It occupies a very murky part of my life, in those odd years where you are rapidly learning so much about the world that, as you get older, the little details seem to blend in and get lost to time. Perhaps that was the universe's way of saying "This is a bad idea and was meant to be forgotten!" but fuck the universe, I'm a glutton for punishment.
After dealing with this kid for 39 episodes, I'm rethinking that philosophy.
Ronin Warriors involves the evil warrior spirit thing Talpa, his Dark Warlords, and the otherworldly forces of the Dynasty as they attempt to take over the world. Opposing them are the Ronin Warriors, five teenagers with attitude indeterminately aged guys with mystical armor who each embody an aspect of Confucian virtue, which they do their best to shoehorn into just about every episode or situation. This plot is bog fucking standard, and outside of one or two minor revelations, follows the exact path and pattern that you would expect. It is, in almost all things, a complete mirror image of Gundam Wing's tangled, confusing mess of a story, and at certain points I actually found myself wishing for a random organization or an out-of-nowhere motivation flip flop, but alas, it was not to be.
With that being said, what the show lacks in complexity, it makes up in pure gusto. Ronin Warriors dives headfirst at every possible trope and cliche, and does so with a kind of reckless abandon that I haven't seen since Space Battleship Yamato's remake (which was endearing in SBY but perhaps unintentional here). All of the villains are cackling madmen, who speak of global conquest while their shadows creep over the city, literally engulfing it in darkness, plot points are resolved by The Power of Friendship with a completely straight face...I mean, it's got the subtlety of a sledgehammer hitting a walnut but you can't deny its enthusiasm.
A big part of that is the dub, which is absolutely hilarious. My personal favorite is the Dark Warlord Anubis (featured above), played by Paul Dobson who obviously was having as much fun as possible; his shrieks of "QUAKE WITH FEARRR!!!" never fail to make me smile. The rest of the crew are equally horrible fun, with some very odd casting choices, such as:
Randomly give one of the (Japanese) Warriors a British accent.
Making our main hero Ryo sound like a surfer bro.
Inexplicably changing Mia's voice actress for one episode.
Having one of the Dark Warlords sound like Wallace Shawn.
While the dub is a lot of fun, the characters are not. Some of them barely even qualify as one-dimensional; Mia and Yuli in particular exist solely to be captured and do next to nothing in the entire series. They're also static portraits who neither change nor grow; Anubis is the only one whose character develops in any meaningful way, and it's more of a light switch flip-flop than anything subtle or deep. No, this is a show where good and evil are clearly defined, with the villains featuring no redeemable qualities and our heroes saddled with very few, if any, critical flaws that aren't resolved by the episode's end. The protagonists in particular slot neatly into the tropes they are assigned; the natural leader, the hard-headed but soft-hearted strong guy, and the slightly more mature, cool-headed dude are all on hand, with the rest so bland and uninteresting that I've honestly forgotten what, if anything, they exemplified.
I hope to hell you like transformation sequences, because they make up a good chunk of the runtime.
The animation is bad. I mentioned in my Gundam Wing musings that it was plagued by repeated sequences, but Ronin Warriors surpasses it in every regard; not only are scenes reused between episodes (including the aforementioned transformations), but sometimes the same shot is actually looped three or four times back-to-back, perhaps in a desperate attempt to pad the run time. Even when the action is fresh, it isn't particularly good looking even by 80s standards, with most fights ending up as a bit of a disjointed mess. The simplistic character designs don't do much to justify the reduced fluidity; the Ronin Warriors themselves sport pallet-swapped armor designs with only a few ornamental differences, the Dark Warlords are mainly split up by the weapons they use, and the cannon fodder are more or less clones of each other.
I've come to the conclusion that if you really want to go back and watch 80s/early 90s anime, your only recourse for high quality animation is in films. I recently checked out Patlabor: The Movie, and the difference is absolutely night and day, obviously thanks to the increased budget and decreased run time, but it goes to show that you can dig back into the archives and find yourself pleasantly surprised.
No, seriously, check this shit out:
Not bad for `89, right?
The most surprising thing about Ronin Warriors was the music. I have no idea if this is due to the dub, or if the original actually went for this vibe, but there was a LOT more hair metal rock guitars than I expected out of the soundtrack, especially for a show that features people dressed like faux-samurai fighting a weird demon guy. I understand the era that it was made in and I know they are actually fighting in modern Tokyo (so it's not a period piece), but it didn't fit all that well even with those caveats. There's just something about discussing a thousand year evil and fighting with a staff that doesn't mesh with music I could see my dad enjoying.
So, Ronin Warriors is bad. It's a bad show. The writing is bad, the plot is simplistic, the characters are one-dimensional, the animation quality is poor, and the soundtrack is confusing. The best part is the dub, but I don't know if you'd consider the hilarity to be intentional; maybe whoever licensed this dreck knew exactly what they had on their hands and decided to just have some fun with it, but I've heard that the dub actually sticks to the plot of the original for the most part, so who can say. Maybe they actually called for hammy performances in order to keep it faithful; regardless, the dub was where I found most of my enjoyment, as all nostalgia quickly fled from me in the very first episode.
I'm going to leave you with the Japanese ending, as it's a fun jumble of Engrish which doesn't seem to mesh at all with what's going on in the background, and thats always worth a giggle:
"That's XCOM, baby! That's XCOM. Sometimes the rolls are with you, sometimes they're not. -Jake Solomon, Lead Designer of XCOM and XCOM 2.
If you've been playing XCOM (either the originals or the reboot series) for any length of time, you've undoubtedly come across things that make you want to hurl your computer into the sun. Missing point blank shotgun blasts, seeing multiple 85%+ shots fail in a row, taking one extra step and activating another pod, watching as your flanking shots fail to connect while the aliens crit you in high cover, the list goes on and on.
But what if I were to tell you that not only is the game fair, it's actually skewed in YOUR favor. Hard to believe, right?
Enemy Unknown/Within had hidden modifiers in place to help you along, and XCOM 2 is no different. I'm going to warn you ahead of time; some of what you are about to read is going to make all those misses seem extra impossible, especially on the lower difficulties. Here's what I've been able to dig up in the ini files and the code (using the XCOM 2 SDK):
(Some of this isn't cheating, really, at least not in the "behind the scenes" sense, but just the differences between difficulty levels like you would expect. I got carried away and listed everything I could find, so consider it a comprehensive look at what each option actually means.)
Rookie
Not to disparage anyone's skill level, but if you honestly are having trouble or think the game is tough at this point, then you either have monumental bad luck or are just missing something fundamental. There's no way around it; on Rookie, XCOM 2 is cheating for you, and it's cheating hard:
Rookies start with +2 HP and +10 will.
XCOM's chances to hit are all multiplied by 1.2 times. The game doesn't show this, but internally all of your 50% shots are really 60%.
When you miss, you are given a flat +10 aim bonus on all shots over 50% until you land a hit for each miss. This means your 50% shot is now 70% (50 base * 1.2 +10) after one miss, then 80% after two, and so on.
If you get hit by an enemy, they get a stacking global -10 aim reduction on that turn, as long as you have less than five squad members. So, each landed shot makes it less likely that they will land another.
If one of your squad is killed (leaving you with less than four), or if you bring less than four units into a mission, you will see a +15 aim bonus for any shot over 50% and a flat -10 enemy aim penalty for each dead/missing unit below four. This means, if you deliberately bring only one trooper into a mission, you are looking at a +45 hit bonus and a -30 enemy aim penalty. Coupled with your flat 1.2 hit bonus (which is applied first), a 50% hit is now turned into a 105% auto-hit (except it isn't, as I'll explain later).
The game will try to steer inactive enemy pods away from you as long as you are fighting at least four enemies. You can still trigger nearby pods on your own if you are careless, but they shouldn't wander into you on their own.
Can get easier missions with less/weaker enemies on them.
Your troops take less XP to rank up, and various activities and timers such as building or wound recovery are faster.
Various other small tweaks, such as item costs and reward increases.
The hard cap for aim assisted shots is 95%. It's still XCOM, after all, so it remains possible for you to flub your shots unless it actually says 100% on it, and even then the enemy can dodge for reduced damage (which is HOT BULLSHIT I might add, but whatever). This just makes it much more likely that you will avoid multiple misses in a row as long as you are taking shots with a reasonable chance to hit.
It is possible that the AI is shackled at this difficulty level; not throwing grenades when they can, and reducing panic to just running and hiding versus friendly fire and suicide grenades, but I didn't see any explicit references while trawling through the code, so consider that hearsay.
Veteran
Veteran cheats, not as bad as Rookie, but more than you may suspect.
Rookies start with +1 HP.
XCOM's chances to hit are all multiplied by 1.1 times. Meaning that your basic 50% shot is now sitting at 55%.
When you miss, you are given the same +10 aim bonus on shots over 50% for each miss as you do on Rookie. Your 50% shot is now at 65% (50 * 1.1 +10) after one miss, 75% after two, and so on.
The "less than four soldiers" bonus is now down to +10 hit bonus (from +15) and -10 enemy hit chance (the same as Rookie). It still stacks.
The game will steer inactive enemy pods away from you as long as you are fighting at least six enemies (up from Rookie's four).
Can get easier missions (the same as Rookie) with less/weaker enemies on them (more/harder than Rookie but less than Commander).
Your troops take more XP to rank up than Rookie, but less than Commander. Build/wound timers are also longer than on Rookie.
Item Costs are higher than Rookie, with less rewards.
The enemy AI may still be shackled, but I can confirm your panic isn't. Troopers can and will throw grenades at your own guys when they freak out.
So, there's still a lot of background tweaking going on. All of your shots are still better than you think, you still get the miss streak busting bonuses, and you still get some major buffs when you have less than four units. The game will actively try to keep the number of units you are facing at a reasonable level, but not as much as it did before. It also removes the enemy's hit streak penalty, meaning that you can and will see a lot more landed shots on a single turn.
Commander
You've got to be kidding, right? There's cheating here too? Absolutely; not even a Commander level campaign is on the level, although things also start swinging the other way as well.
Rookies start with the 4 base HP, no bonuses.
Enemies are now given +1 health. No more surefire grenade kills on those early troopers!
XCOM's chances to hit have no base level modifications. 50% is 50%.
When you miss, you are given a +15 (!!) aim bonus on shots over 50% for each miss. Yes, that's actually higher than on either Rookie or Veteran, which I assume is compensation for removing the base shot multiplier. Now your 50% shots are actually 65% after one miss, and 80% after two. This means that it's actually easier to avoid miss streaks on Commander when you are right at the aim assist threshold (versus Veteran), but it falls behind once the unmodified chance to hit increases enough for that multiplier to take over.
The game will steer inactive enemy pods away from you as long as you are fighting at least six enemies, the same as before.
Can get easier missions than Legend, with less/weaker enemies on them (more/harder than Veteran, though).
Your troops continue to take more XP to rank up, and you will see even longer build timers and wound recovery requirements.
Still greater item costs with lower rewards.
The AI is unshackled, as far as I can tell.
I'm surprised they have as much behind the scenes cheating as they do for this level. In a way, I'm a bit sad; I figured Commander was basically the same as Legend without the re-balanced strategic layer and some enemy HP modifiers, but that's not the case at all. You still get the miss streak bonuses, although the "less than four soldiers" buff is totally gone, and you still have the game doing its best to keep engagements at six enemies or less.
If you want to do some modifications to basically make a Commander+ difficulty level (no hand-holding like Legend but without the major strategic re-balancing), you can tweak XComGamecore.ini (search for AimAssist) by dropping MissStreakChanceAdjustment=15 to 0, and XComAI can by modified (search for MaxEngagedEnemies, although it's right at the top of the file) by changing MaxEngagedEnemies=6 to -1.
(Those should be in Documents\My Games\XCOM2\XComGame\Config on Windows, although you can also modify DefaultGamecore.ini and DefaultAI.ini in Steam\steamapps\common\XCOM 2\XComGame\Config to the same effect. I like leaving the defaults alone, though.)
Legend
Cheating in Legend? Maybe for them, but certainly not for you.
Rookies start with 4 base HP as before.
Enemies are now given anywhere between 1-3 health and an extra 1-2 armor.
There's no aim modification at all. No miss streak bonuses, no enemy aim penalties, nothing. What you see on the screen is exactly what's going on...except for that bullshit dodge mechanic which isn't surfaced anywhere.
The game will not steer pods away from you. There is no max engagement size; if you are fighting six aliens, and that pod is set to path into you, it's going to path into you.
Legend is unable to get the easier mission types and all versions of the missions are as hard as they can be, including extra enemy pods not seen on Commander.
Harder enemies will show up earlier on Legend than on any lower difficulty.
The strategic game is totally re-balanced, to the point that it almost winds up twice as long. I won't go into the details as I doubt I've even found every change, but suffice it to say that everything takes longer, costs more, and is generally just harder to do.
Legend is hard, but I found it easier than Impossible in EU/EW. It's the only difficulty out of the four that isn't making modifications to your dice rolls without telling you, and it's the only one that isn't pulling any punches on the tactical layer. The strategic game is extensively modified from what you get in Commander, but that's to be expected.
If you know of any other behind the scenes or balance changes that I've missed, I'd be interested to hear about them.
Reposting this from the anime thread for posterity:
Step into a mental time machine and take yourself back to 1995 (or 2000 for us Americans) for the first installment of Kill Your Nostalgia!*
It's a small series (at least I plan on doing more than one, but resolutions are made to be broken) in which I'll review a show that's at least 10 years removed from when I last viewed it. That's a fairly small pool, mind you, but it does include some very popular titles (as it probably has to, since only the real money makers would cross the sea and wind up on television here) that you may remember fondly.
*You may not actually have any nostaglic feelings for any of these shows. Sorry. D:
First on the chopping block:
New Mobile Report Gundam Wing
(Yeah, that intro still does it for me.)
Release Date: April 7th 1995 - March 29th, 1996 (Japan), March 6th - May 11th, 2000 (US)
No. of Episodes - 49
Last Seen: Original US release, 2000 ( TV: Toonami, dubbed)
Rewatch Format: Subbed, to give it the best chance as the dub is "90s bad."
After seeing some Wing-related banter in the previous thread, I couldn't get this series out of my thoughts. It's a curious beast; I'd imagine it's probably the first proper mecha series I completed, but I remember very little of it outside of a few characters and some vague robot designs. In fact, the clearest memory I have revolves around how foggy the plot seemed at the time; words like Peacecraft or White Fang float around whenever I concentrate on Gundam Wing, but not in a way that leads to an identifiable group, or person, or motivation, or...anything. It's a big soup of terms and scenes; before I cracked open the first episode, I started to wonder if the complexity of this show was beyond what my younger self could handle, or if it really is a confusing, incomprehensible mess.
This guy knows!
Gundam Wing revolves around five young pilots and their titular war machines, who land on Earth in an attempt to destroy OZ, a military organization with designs on subjugating the space colonies for the Romefeller Foundation, a secret organization of ultra rich people who pull the strings of various world governments. There's also the United Earth Sphere Alliance, and the Sanc Kingdom, and the World Nation, and a bunch of other random factions, reactionary movements, clans, and guerrilla operations, but nothing winds up mattering as main characters switch sides (and motivations) often enough that there's little point in keeping track of them all.
Eventually, even the show loses the will to keep things straight and stops bothering to explain why people are aligning with whatever flavor-of-the-month group they've chosen altogether. Let me give you an example of how dumb this all gets:
After attacking the Alliance and showing their true allegiance to Romefeller, OZ splinters into two groups when Treize (the OZ leader) is removed from power by Duke Dermail, the head of Romefeller.
This "Treize Faction" is eventually forced from the Earth into space, where they come into conflict with the remnants of the Alliance and the members of OZ who are slowly taking control of the colonies.
With no indication at all, the Treize Faction and some remaining Alliance members join up with White Fang, a pro-colony group, despite the fact that they were just blowing each other up and never showed one iota of affiliation with the colonies. (Keep in mind, the whole show happens in the course of one year, so these battles are still very fresh.)
Treize returns to power as the head of OZ/The World Nation/whatever the mishmash of forces from Earth now decide to call themselves, but instead of rejoicing and joining him, the members of White Fang originally from the Treize Faction decide to fight him to the death.
So, the plot is all over the place, motivations are vague or flexible enough to be considered a joke, people are knocked out of power only to have nearly identical organizations and characters fill the gap, and the show provides zero justification for slapping kids into the most advanced killing machines ever made. In fact, the show treats the Gundam pilots as adults in every conceivable way (down to their muted emotions and assumption of command), outside of the obligatory and oft-repeated shock when a random soldier discovers who they've been fighting.
It's enough to give you a split personality!
The vast majority of the villains all suffer from anterograde amnesia, which manifests so frequently that I have to wonder if the writers intended to model the effects of traumatic brain injury after years of high G mobile suit maneuvers. Plans that fail are not only repeated mere episodes later, but with declarative statements that make most characters sound insane:
"Send the mobile dolls, they're invincible!"
*all the mobile dolls are destroyed*
Next episode, same character: "Send the mobile dolls, they've never been beaten!"
Not a single person ever points out the absurdity of these statements or plans, but given the gleeful abandon in which most commanders throw their soldiers' lives/equipment away, I guess they're just happy to be out of the line of fire.
Now, asking a Gudam series to have a stellar plot is like asking a buffet to deliver a Michelin Star-winning level of cuisine; that'd be fantastic, but as long as you are full when you walk out, it did its job. So, let's get right to the main course; how's the robo fighin'?
I'm so cool and so underutilized!
When I think of giant robots, I think of these giant robots. Far more than any other show, the designs of these particular mecha perfectly encapsulate anime as a whole: stylish, unique, iconic, and utterly impractical. You need to keep in mind what the "shows with big fighting robots in them" landscape looked like for me back in the late 90s; I watched Power Rangers around 95-97, and compared to those lumbering, blocky slowpokes, these things looked like jet powered ballerinas with whole arms replaced by Gatling guns or beam canons that could blow up a moon. I remember feeling enraptured by the combat; things crumpled and disintegrated with such zeal and with such speed that I could scarcely keep up. I loved how diverse the designs were, how each had a different way of dealing with enemies, and it really was an eye opener; everything that came before felt like kids stuff, but this, this was for adults!
Well, time can act like a veil or it can act like a lens, and here it worked to focus on the shortcomings of a show from this era of animation. The designs remain varied and interesting, but that only helps to emphasize how often they were forced to reuse shots and sequences; designing unique and varied animations for six or seven main robots blowing up the same generic enemies was probably too much of a strain on both the budget and the deadlines, whereas a story based around a single protagonist could probably keep things from getting too repetitive over the course of a season.
The reliance on mobile dolls in the later half of the show's runtime was a great way to avoid animating any more "just about to blow up" pilot reactions.We're just so pretty, it's depressing.
Continuing with the "overuse" theme, the designs of the characters themselves are all pretty similar, with an emphasis on "pretty." I had to do some digging as I haven't seen many other mainline Gundams, but this one seems to be the first to go all bishōnen with it's character designs, and boy does it ever. The adults are mostly spared, but the Gundam pilots in particular are more or less interchangeably beautiful pretty boys, to the point that you really can't tell them apart, and it doesn't help that they're mostly emotionally mute, with the occasional breakdown as the only sign that they feel very much of anything. In a way, it makes sense; you'd have to be a fairly messed up kid to hop into one of these meat tenderizers and just start gunning down anything that moves, but despite having ample time to do so, the writes don't really bother to flesh out the backstories of the pilots or explain just how they became so outstanding at killing trained soldiers. There's hints of a mentor-student relationship with the Gundam designers, but, again, the show is frustratingly light on giving anyone more than surface level characterization.
And yet, it's not all doom and gloom for Gundam Wing. In fact, the one big complaint I've heard in the years since I first watched the show turned out not to bother me in the slightest; Heero Yuy really isn't all that bad. Oh sure, he can get a bit mopey and he's very one note (a low, resonating blast from a tuba), but compared to some of the real annoyances (looking at you, Lady Une), he's very inoffensive. In fact, watching this show made me realize how many whiny, "oh I'm not sure I can do this" Shinji Ikari clones are out there, and how I vastly prefer Heero's mute fatalism over even an ounce of the coming of age bullshit most of these shows try to shove down your throat.
(I'd go back and do one of these for Evangelion but I don't even have a scrap of nostalga for it, so it doesn't qualify.)
And when the show gets going, it still can grab your attention. The fights between main characters are well edited, and the animations can be fairly intricate when it isn't dealing with the umpteenth unit of cannon fodder. Space (the great matte painting money saver) can be a bit dull, but the combat on Earth benefits from various locations and environments, with urban spaceports, featureless deserts, lush jungles, and Antarctic research bases all making an appearance at one point or another.
Unfortunately, the best part of this show can only be heard and not seen.
The sound design is easily the best part of the show. I'd go so far as to say that Gundam is to anime sound design as Star Wars was to sci fi movie sound design, with the caveat that if a series did it before Gundam, I'm not aware of it. Everything is iconic, from the classic warning beep to something as simple as pulling a lever, and it all holds up far better than the animation or the nonsensical plot. I now understand why I never noticed how dumb this show can be: I was too busy emulating all of the cool noises coming out of my television to care.
So, does Gundam Wing stand the test of time? Well, no, but it doesn't suffer the kind of stock slide that I expected it to. Yes, the fights are far more underwhelming now that I notice just how much footage is recycled, and yes, the plot makes just as little sense as it did back then. But the high points that I remember (cool sounds, and the clashes between the important characters) are still fun, and the low points that I expected to hate (mainly Heero) didn't bother me nearly as much as I had assumed.
So, Gundam Wing's nostalga is dead, but not my love of its opening themes:
The first sentence of a blog post like this always seems to be the toughest. How can you properly articulate your feelings for a person that you never met, never spoke to, never really interacted with at a personal level, and yet left such a mark on your life?
Shit. Let's just...let's just start from the top.
I followed Giant Bomb from the start. When the crew bounced from Gamespot and started doing their own thing, I was with them. A lot of us were. Giant Bomb became my primary source of online entertainment, my go-to for video games and stupid comedy alike. I devoured as much content as it could put out. This isn't that unique; after all, I've heard the term "cult of personality" mentioned more than once in reference to GB (and at the time, Whiskey Media).
However, the unique part comes in a few years later. I was in a very bad place at that time. I had just found out that my long term relationship had hit a snag; my girlfriend was cheating on my with one of my friends, both of them were quite happy with that arrangement, and it was determined that I was no longer deemed necessary in their lives. As I lived in a small college town (and attended the same university), such a clean break was impossible and I frequently, frequently ran into the two of them.
As you can imagine, this had a negative effect on my quality of life.
My refuge was alcohol. Lots of it. I don't remember that much of the next few months; such was my descent that nearly the entirety of that time period is lost to me. I stopped caring about school, about my (remaining) friends, and about myself. I no longer enjoyed any of what I used to, no longer had a presence in any of my online haunts, and basically just dropped off the map. I was nearly booted from my university, nearly evicted from my apartment, and nearly disowned by my parents. I was so broken by this betrayal, by the fast switch from idyllic paradise to complete ruin, that some around me were worried that it would lead to my death.
To sum it up, things were going poorly.
Now, don't ask my why I decided to turn on a Bombcast. To be honest, the aforementioned gap in my memory makes it impossible for me to recall why I decided to tune back in after four months. Something must have caused it. However dimly I remember my motivation, I recall what happened when I pressed play as clear as if it had been the only significant event in my life:
"Hey everybody, it's Tuesday!"
This is going to sound melodramatic, but for some reason that line was my saving grace. It ignited a chain reaction in my head, a intense truth that, for all the effort of my friends and family (which I would later thank them for, profusely) had some how eluded me. The world was still turning. People were still playing video games! Jeff was still making great rap references, Vinny is still having misadventures as a new father, Brad is still bad at games, and Ryan is still hosting the best damn podcast around. In that one moment, I had realized how much I had let things get out of control, that I was letting a small series of events, no matter how traumatic, rule over and endanger the entirety of my life.
So I listened, and laughed. My friends say, when I spoke to them the next day, that I was laughing for the first time in nearly half a year. I hadn't lost my capacity for enjoyment at all. It was right there the whole fucking time, and I had just been afraid to experience anything but the pent up sorrow that I had stored. That Bombcast broke the floodgates open, and for the next week I laughed enough to fill up two year's worth of time, let alone four months.
I decided that I could get my shit back on track.
And I did. I kept my apartment. I finished school. I made my peace with those who had hurt me. I repaired as many of the damaged relationships as I could. I started new ones. I became active and outgoing again, as I was before. Better than I was before! I am not lying when I say I honestly feel like that experience has made me stronger. It's certainly made me care for the people whom I love in a way that I no longer thought possible. I'm very grateful for those that stood by me, even when I didn't want them to.
And I firmly believe it wouldn't have been possible without Ryan and the rest of the GB crew.
I had always wanted to send him a letter. To tell him that his words had inadvertently pulled me from a deep depression. Hell, he may have saved my life. I don't want to downplay what the rest of the crew did, but just hearing that unchanged opening line framed it all so well, all so clearly. But I never sent it. It just seemed too sappy. Too easy to play off as a fake.
I'm kicking the shit out of myself now.
So, I felt like I needed to write this. To tell the rest of the crew that you've done more for a total stranger than you know. Since then, every time I felt myself getting too down, that things were getting a bit too tough, I'd flip on a Bombcast or a Quick Look and laugh myself back to health. I still do it to this day, though things have been going so well that I haven't needed that safety net. Lately, it's acted more of a reminder of how far I've come.
Until today. Now it feels like that net is gone. For now, there is no refuge in comedy. And while I know the Bombcast will continue, and that Giant Bomb will continue, the one who pulled me out of the water without even realizing it is gone.
I know that what I feel is only the tiniest, smallest fraction of pain and grief that those who knew him personally must feel. To his wife, his family, to the rest of the crew and all the extended network of friends and duders out there, you have my deepest sympathy. If there is anything that I, a random man on the internet can do to alleviate even a microscopic part of your pain, just ask. If it's within my power, I'll do it.
Because he did so much for me, and never even knew it.
I have a love/hate relationship with making lists.
For one thing, I feel that every game is its own unique experience, greater then the sum of its parts, and that each is a beautiful snowflake that is special and all that other bullshit kids are being fed in grade school. There's a grain of truth in it, though; even though I may agree that game "X" is mechanically, thematically or visually more impressive then "Y", sometimes "Y" just resonates in a way that makes me enjoy it more. This throws the objectivity of lists such as these completely out the window.
Then again, these things are all opinions, so no shit, right?
However, making one of these reignites my love/hate for the game in question; in a year with such highs and lows as 2012, it's easy to forget all the little things that made games at the start of the year evoke that specific something, that undefinable quality which makes you remember. You never forget a great (or terrible) game; if you do, they just weren't as memorable (hence good/bad) as you first thought.
So, without further blabbering, here are the top/bottom games of 2012. Keep in mind I don't mean "best" or "worst", but what I enjoyed the most (or was most disappointed by) out of what I played.
The Top Ten
10. The Walking Dead, or "Fuck everyone who wrote this game!"
Now, I know you don't need justification for why you put anything on these lists, but I feel this one is a special case: It's not at the bottom just to be contrarian. While I appreciate how well it is voice acted (even more then how it is written), and how well it builds up an atmosphere, the "game" parts of the game are fairly...light. As a guy who likes games to grind glass into the wounds its difficulty inflicts, I couldn't stop myself from saying "Shit, this would be heaven if the game part of this game was better.", which is a real weird thing to mention about, you know, a video game. Still, I cannot deny how much of an impact it's going to be on the industry; hopefully it ushers in a trend of games with real emotional investment weaved into their stories....and not the bit where you don't really do all that much. Pulling through on merits of story, atmosphere and voice acting alone, it takes #10.
9. Asura's Wrath, or "BURRRRRSSSSSSSSSSTTTTT!!!!"
BURST! What else is there to say? Sure, some of the gameplay elements aren't exactly the greatest. Sure, it's a big QTE-fest. That didn't stop TWD from working as well as it did! And Asura's Wrath has one extra thing going for it: it's fucking insane! The last third of the game had me constantly wondering if someone slipped LSD into my drink; it was all such a blur to the point that I went straight to Youtube and watched the whole damn game as soon as I finished playing it. I'm convinced that the entire design team had a part in writing the story: one guy comes up with a plot point, passes it to the next who adds his or her own, and then it keeps going until everyone had their say. It reminds me of that game kids play when they are really young: one whispers something to the next, and so on down the chain until the last kid is left with a completely unidentifiable mess. This is one of those times when I just have to say "Play it. It's the only way you'll understand.", and that's why it takes #9.
8. Super Hexagon, or "High Score: 8 Seconds"
Super Hexagon hits that primal center of my head that only sheer difficulty can reach. It's the main drive for me, the reason why I play games, the sense of accomplishment that only rigorous hand-eye coordination or strategic thinking can fulfill. It's also the first game I've ever played on a mobile device to make me think we don't need handhelds anymore; if you can encapsulate this kind of an experience on a phone for that cheap, sign me up. Making me rethink phone gaming is an easy way to earn #8.
7. Dishonored, or "What do we do with a drunken whaler?"
When you are crafting a world, the goal is to draw a person in, to make them forget that what they are seeing was crafted by a design team. When done properly, it should seem like a living, breathing thing, and Dishonored nails that. It feels like Tesla and Crowley had a baby, and slapped it around just enough to give it a bleak worldview. On the gameplay front, Dishonored does its best to alleviate some of the mechanical problems other stealth games have run into, and while you are still more or less pushed down a linear path, the addition of the blink mechanic does a lot to make it seem less like a hallway and more like a street in NYC; sure you are going to wind up in the same place, but you can duck through a bunch of alleys or dash across buildings on your way there. And while the game's ending leaves a bit to be desired, the characters it creates and the world it frames, when coupled with some interesting gameplay ideas, are enough to secure it my #7 slot.
6. Xenoblade Chronicles, or "What the fuck, Nintendo?"
Why the hell did this game take so long to escape Japan? Technically a 2011 game (one that I went out of my way to play even before it made the jump), I was forced to put it down and wait for a localized release because I was spending too much time figuring out the mechanics instead of actually playing it. When it finally came out, it confirmed what I first felt: this is a real time RPG done right. The story is unique and takes a few unexpected twists, the gameplay is absolutely stellar and engaging, and it proves that you can do big, expansive environments on the Wii....as long as you don't mind sacrificing some texture quality. While not technically stunning, it has a great artistic feel to it; I could only imagine how much of a response it would have generated if it was on the PS3/360 and the bump in fidelity that entails. Still, in a year where my Wii got less use then my SNES, making me wipe off the dust and strap on a Wiimote is easily worth #6.
5. Hawken, or "Why doesn't Armored Core look this good?"
I love me some Mech games: the Armored Core series, Mechwarrior, Steel Batallion...if it stomps around and fires missiles, it's an easy win for me. Lately, however, there had been a dearth of good mech games, and I'm hoping Hawken leads the supposed resurgence. While it doesn't have the customization of an Armored Core game, I'm more then happy to give that up for intense visual fidelity and a fast paced multiplayer that actually feels damn good to play. I've been following this game for quite some time and was lucky enough to get into a few of the closed alphas/betas, and I'm glad to see it finally come out. Plus, it's free to play! When was the last time a free to play game looked this good visually? I can't comment on the buisness model much as I haven't played a ton of the non-beta version, but as long as they haven't messed that up, free + robots + sweet-looking + pew-pew = #5.
4. Sleeping Dogs, or "Who needs the True Crime license?"
Games with troubled development cycles become a total crapshoot. For every TF2, you get a DNF. For every L.A. Noir, you get a Daikatana, and so on. Sleeping Dogs winds up on the proper side of that equation; conceived as the next game in the True Crime franchise, it was canned by Activision, picked back up by Square (without the True Crime license), went to another year of development (after the previous three), and came out no worse for the wear. In fact, it's fantastic; after being killed off for not looking like a potential GTA-killer, it (in my opinion) more then achieved it's aims. It's one of those games that doesn't do anything spectacular, but every ounce of it is fun to play. Its one standout strength is how well it contextualizes actions normally seen to be ridiculous (as it's not out of place for a triad member to toss a man in a trunk now and then), which I would love to see more of. Being the diamond in the rough that Square hoped it would be is enough to net my #4.
3. Hotline Miami, or "My heart is racing and I don't know why!"
I really don't get why Hotline Miami is so intense. Sure, it's swift and brutal. And yes, it has visuals and a soundtrack that make it seem like you were shooting speedballs before playing. But it's no more technically demanding then something like Super Meat Boy, and no more fucked up then Asura's Wrath (although in a totally different way). I guess it's the marriage of the two that makes it such a trip; it's the kind of crazy I imagine you'd get if they remade Scarface, with less Miami Vice and more Drive. I also have deep respect for a developer that tells torrent uploaders to make sure they are pushing the latest version; if you're getting it for free, you might as well get the best experience that might lead to to buying the game. It probably could have made my Top 20 with just the soundtrack alone, but for dealing a fucked up and brutal experience with it, Hotline Miami takes #3.
2. FTL, or "Little Jimmy Taco is dead and it's all my fault!"
Every time I fire up FTL, I know my poorly named crew is bound to die. Sure, I've won before. I know it's a possibility. But I've trained myself to let go from the beginning; it makes the blood on my hands at least a little tolerable. In all seriousness, FTL proves you don't need to have character dialog, voice acting, or defining personalities to get you to care about people in your game. All you need to do is place their lives in the player's hands and put enough obstacles in their way to make death a likely occurrence. The mechanics are fairly complex, but it's the real time nature of the game which ratchets up the tension; managing personnel, targeting weapons, dealing with boarding parties, and delaying the inevitable destruction of your ship all add up to a frantic and engaging experience. The knowledge that you sent Blast Hardcheese to his death in a flame filled room...only for the oxygen to blow up on the very next missile...damn it...pushes FTL to #2.
1. XCOM: Enemy Unknown, or "WHERE THE FUCK DID THOSE FLOATERS COME FROM???"
Speaking of Blast Hardcheese, XCOM takes whatever FTL does inside my head and cranks it up to 11. Sure, it's pretty buggy. But you know what, I don't care! It just makes it seem like the aliens are breaking the rules, turning even the code itself against me. Every time I come back from a mission with an empty seat, I'm replaying the fight in my head, wondering what I could have done better (unless it's a dead rookie, in which case everything has gone to plan). And none of them ever have a single character building moment outside of the ones you create for them in your mind. Anyone who thinks TWD can get you more emotionally invested never had your best heavy (poor Blast!) mind controlled and had to choose between their life or the potential lives of one of their teammates. On Impossible, every shot, every move, every overwatch was one step closer to the death of my liver. And with my own body on the line with every mission, XCOM easily takes #1.
(Honorable Top 10 mentions: Journey, Rhythm Heaven Fever, Darkness II, Binary Domain, Dustforce)
So, those were the good. The defining upsides of 2012 for me. But what's an upside without a downer to make it even sweeter? Here are the games that had me cherishing my Top 10 even more. Just keep in mind that these aren't necessarily the worst games I played all year (a few are), but the ones that were the most disappointing. This list is also a bit less serious then the first, so keep that in mind when reading.
The Bottom 10 Disappointments
10. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, or "So big, so colorful...so bland."
Here's one of those games that just didn't do it for me, for one reason or another. Actually, it's that distinct lack of a major flaw which puts it so low on this list; about midway through, I just realized I wasn't having much fun. None of the characters were doing it for me, none of the backstory was really grabbing me...I don't know. The combat was fairly interesting, and I thought it had some good ideas when it came to UI and inventory management...but all the voice acting and reams of script couldn't draw me in like the nearly silent crew of XCOM or the totally silent crew of FTL. Alas, it seems like a fair amount of people felt like I did, which is a damn shame; even though this game might not have been worth the money, the idea that a man spent his fortune to create it out of a driving passion to make games is more then worthy. Sadly, that doesn't make the game any more enjoyable to me, and as such it earns the #10 slot.
9. Mass Effect 3, or "Wait a minute, I have to do what now?"
Overall, I think ME3 is a pretty good game. It had some really high points, and the gameplay was pretty solid. So, why does it make this list? Well, the ending, of course! Now I know people are tired of hearing about the damn thing, but what can I do? I honestly feel that it squandered the potential that had been building over the entire trilogy, and to swing and miss so hard at the end...well, it's probably unfair to lay that solely on ME3, but god damn Bioware! What happened? In 15 minutes, you took a reasonable entry in the ME universe and flushed it all away. Fans became so desperate for something, anything to grasp onto, that they started to come up with crazy conspiracy theories. I never bought into any of it, and neither did Bioware as they caved under pressure and put out an extended cut which...helped. A bit. When the ending is so bad that you can't remember the rest of the game you played, and when the developers go out of their way to try and fix it, you easily take #9.
8. Borderlands 2, or "I dreamed a dream in time gone by...."
Oh, Borderlands 2. I tried to love you like I did your predecessor. I tried to remember the countless (or 200, but whatever) hours we spent together, the classes we missed, the people we stole loot from. But it was all for nothing! A year ago, if you asked me "Would you like more Borderlands?", I'd probably nod my head until my neck broke. But as it turns out, I may have played so much of the original that more of the same just didn't cut it. I thought the story was well crafted, for the most part; Jack was a decent villain, there were one or two good twists, and I liked the expanded variety of equipment...but I've lost the loot lust. The drive for more guns. The need to grab as much off of my teammates as possible and run into the night. Unlike some people (notably Jeff), I found a class that more or less played like how I did in BL1, but it....it just wasn't the same. Or maybe it was, and I've just moved on? Either way, losing that lovin' feeling is enough to net #8.
7. Diablo III, or "Look, another spear! Look, better pants! Look....let's play something else."
I have absolutely zero history with the Diablo franchise. Never played any of the first two, never even knew anyone that was a rabid fan, and so on. Every damn time I'd look at a video of it, Quick Look or otherwise, it just seemed like such fun. Punch and stab a bunch of shit, get some better loot, go back to punching and stabbing, and so on. But it just never resonated with me. I gave it a fair go, I swear; I pushed all the way to Inferno or whatever the hardest difficulty is. You'd think after that amount of time it'd be somewhere on the other list, but I felt compelled to do it in order to stave off buyer's remorse. It felt like a chore, something to keep me semi-occupied while I listened to podcasts. I had a bunch of friends who all dropped out long before I did, and while it took me longer to see the light, I now realize just how worthless the whole experience was. Inane story, bland mechanics and artificial difficulty are more then you need to secure spot #7.
6. Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor, or "Oh god, why? Just.....just why? What did I do wrong?"
I knew this game wasn't going to be any good. I knew it. After the Shangri-La that was the first Steel Battalion with the massive controller, I knew there was no way a sequel was going to be half as good.
But this?
What....why? It's...it's ruined! They're never going to make another one of these!
You maniacs! You blew it up! God damn you! God damn you all to hell!
(Making me quote Planet of the Apes is #6 material.)
5. Assassin's Creed III, or "I can't believe I kind of want Ezio back."
I think this one is all me, really. I think I'm just done with this series for a while. It finally wore out the good will that it had built up. It seems like series of weird judgement calls; the plot feels pretty disjointed when compared to something like Brotherhood, the cities are less interesting to traverse, they've added a bunch of mechanics that I feel are....questionable, and while naval combat is kinda awesome, the bugs that have seeped in make me wish they polished the rest of the game and left it on the cutting room floor. For me, the high water mark was Brotherhood; Ezio was still fresh, the added mechanics ranged from fine to awesome, and you actually felt like you were killing off high profile targets instead of...tougher normal redcoats. I don't know, my experience is probably atypical, but as it's my list giving me that "No, thanks. I'm done" feeling is enough to earn #5.
4. Hitman: Absolution, or "This isn't Blood Money! Give me Blood Money back!"
I'm usually all for trying something different with a new game in a franchise. I liked the move from Majora's Mask to Wind Waker, for instance. But in this case, all you had to do was give me more Blood Money. That's all I wanted! Make Blood Money, but prettier. Boom, $60. But no! This isn't anything like what I wanted. Sure, the contracts mode is pretty fun, but the main game is worthless! 47 completely blows all of his established character traits out of the water for some contrived reasoning and the rest of the game becomes a more or less linear approach to what Blood Money did so well. They also blew the difficulty; it goes from "Walk past the guards" stupid to "Seen across the map" brutal with no stops in between. When you've got almost guaranteed money in the bank and somehow find a way to piss it down the drain, you steal #4 without a struggle.
3. Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition, or "This is just straight up busted."
I love Dark Souls. Love it to death. But that was the PS3, and that was back in 2011. In 2012, I was jumping for joy when I heard that it was coming for the PC. It's my preferred platform, so if I can get a game I already own on the PC, I'm probably buying it.
But man, this port is FUCKED.
How did it go this wrong? I never expected a keyboard and mouse to be preferable to a controller, but they aren't even viable. I didn't expect a massive amount of graphical options, but to keep the game locked into 720p internally? I love the fact that the game has added DLC (good DLC, at that), but when you need a modder to come in and clean up your mess, you get #3.
2. Capcom, or "Holy shit, Capcom! What are you doing?
Capcom has lost their fucking mind! They've gone completely off the rails. Outside Asura's Wrath (and possibly Dragon's Dogma, but I haven't played that), everything they have touched has turned to pure shit: Street Fighter x Tekken is a joke of a fighting game, with mechanics that are actively contrarian to any sort of competitive environment. Resident Evil 6 is more or less the death knell of that brand of survival horror; even if you didn't like 5, it at least wrapped everything up fairly neatly. 6 is such a giant lump of shit that it makes Operation Raccoon City seem like a gem (it's not). I've already mention Steel Battalion, so even their published titles are turning to shit.
1. CAPCOM!, or "No, seriously! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"
Holy shit, it doesn't stop! You kill Mega Man Legends 3 and Universe, put out a shitty iOS game, drive Inafune out, and the best thing you do with that franchise is release a fucking fan game for the 25th anniversary (which is also the best thing you've done with that franchise this year)? Oh, good job closing Clover Studio back in '07, not like they've gone on to reform and put out anything interesting! I just don't get it. Who is even pulling the strings any more? I feel like Wily has actually manifested and taken over, and decided to indulge the same impulse that made him create fucking Spring Man over and over again. It's baffling; it's like Sega squandering Sonic but on a massive, grand scale. I bet there are even more that I'm missing, but Capcom has fallen far enough to take both #2 and #1 without a struggle.
So, that's my top and bottom 10. Sorry for the Capcom rant; I could have broken it up to just RE6 and the death of MML3, but they've kinda been a major minus for me this year. Feel free to pick at my points; after all that writing (and ranting), I think it's time for a drink.
I'm the digital equivalent of a hoarder. Not in terms of the mess, as I do try to keep everything organized, but in terms of sheer quantity of media. If I've got the space for it, I refuse to delete it. I've kept backups of all my disk-based games, even the ones I haven't played in 15+ years. I've ripped (or am in the process of ripping) my blu-ray library, both for ease of access and categorization. I've kept entire runs of television shows, hundreds and hundreds of gigabytes of music, and at one point I had something like fifty fucking gigabytes of just wallpaper. Who the hell needs fifty gigabytes of wallpaper?
Well, I did. At least until I decided to prune my overripe collection of digital artifacts in order to meet the physical limitations of my hard drive. I'd determine what was necessary, what I used on a semi-regular basis, and toss the rest out. Windows doesn't play nice when your hard drive is scraping up against the limit, and I've long ago maxed my laptop's meagre storage capacity, so every now and then I'd repeat the purge, only to acquire more media and restart the cycle. Each and every time, the core collection of "essential" media (as essential as you can get when you are talking about things like movies, music, and games, of course) would grow a bit, and each purge would free up less and less space.
Well, I've finally hit the breaking point. I'm unwilling to cut things down any farther. I've hit an impasse.
Not good.
So, what to do?
Man up and cut the media down again. Not going to happen; that's the shortest term of all short term solutions, and I'd rather avoid repeating this dilemma for a good while.
Slap another hard drive in there. Very doable; for $100 or so I could double or even triple the space I have. But there's some downsides; no redundancy (if a hard drive fails, it takes all the data with it), you're adding another drive letter (and will keep adding drive letters if you need more space), and it isn't truly a long term solution.
Go a bit crazy.
Now, before I explain what I mean by Option Three, I'm going to have to get a bit...technical.
RAIDing For Fun And Profit
When you start to talk about large amounts of hard drive space, you inevitably start looking at multiple disks. Even the largest hard drives tap out at four terabytes of space, and while that would serve most sane people for a good while, I just owned up to having fifty gigabytes of wallpaper. I think we know where I fall on the sane/crazy scatter plot. Anyway, you cannot look into multiple hard drives without hearing about RAID. RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, and it's a way to expand the capacity of your system by pooling drives together in order to increase redundancy, performance, and space in a sort of balancing act depending on exactly what kind of RAID you choose:
RAID 0 is pure performance. All of your data is spread across all the drives in the array, meaning cranked up throughput, but also a big downside: if ANY hard drive fails, you lose ALL your data. Yep, doesn't matter if three out of four HDDs are fine, if number four decides to eat it, then all of your data goes bye-bye. Needless to say, not the solution I'm looking for.
RAID 1 is purely about safeguarding your data. It's usually used with just two drives, where the first mirrors the second and will stop you from losing any data in the event of a single hard drive failure. Needless to say, there are no performance benefits, and you lose the capacity of an entire drive (so if you install two 3TB drives, you only have access to 3TB, not 6TB, as one whole drive is just a mirror). As it provides no space increase over a single drive, it doesn't fit what I need.
RAID 10 usually uses four drives, and combines RAID 0 and 1. Your data is split across two hard drives and the remaining two are used as a mirror, so you get the protection of RAID 1 and the speed of RAID 0. Still, you lose out on half of your capacity, and that's a big deal when you start talking 4+ drives.
RAID 5 uses up one drive's worth of space to calculate parity data, meaning that you can survive the failure of any one hard drive. As long as you replace that drive before another dies, your system will integrate that new drive into the array and you'll be back to full strength again.
RAID 6 is the same as RAID 5, but uses two drive's worth of space for parity data, and therefore can take two hard drive failures before you lose any data.
There are other RAID levels, but those are the most common. Now, RAID usually requires a dedicated piece of hardware known as a RAID controller in order to handle the above; most motherboards support some RAID levels, but I wouldn't trust them to deliver the performance nor the safety of a dedicated RAID card. However, we have other options, and that requires us getting VERY technical.
ZFS: Zebras For Science!
Got your attention, didn't I?
ZFS actually stands for Zettabyte File System, which why I didn't use that as the paragraph head. Not nearly as exciting. I'm going to leave out a LOT of the details, partly because I find them boring, and partly because I don't quite understand all of them myself. The key points, however, can be laid out without much trouble:
ZFS includes a lot of the high level benefits that RAID does, and does them all in software.
It lets you pool multiple drives under one drive letter.
You will never hit the limit on how much data you can access; it would take enough energy to boil every ocean on Earth to fill up this file system.
It allows for expandability under the same letter (Run out of space? Add in a few more disks under the same pool.)
When configured for it, you can survive hard drive failures in the same way that certain RAID configurations can.
The downsides? First, it loves as much RAM as it can get, on the order of 1GB of RAM per TB of HDD. Also, you won't be running this under Windows, as it has no support for it. That means you're either working with a virtual machine in your main rig (too messy for my tastes), or you're using a separate box build just to house the drives and run whatever OS you choose. That leads straight into the next component of this build: a NAS.
Getting NASty
While doing the research for this build, I figured it would be best if this new machine could serve up the files to all my various devices across a network since it would be the new central repository for all media. That meant building a NAS, or Network Attached Storage. Now, the difference between a NAS and a server is basically nil, with a few exceptions:
NASes are usually designed to be run headless, i.e. no monitor. My particular NAS will be totally web administrated, so that means no keyboard or mouse once everything is up and running, either.
NASes usually have smaller or stripped down operating systems, which means less features but less maintenance. They also can fit right on a flash drive!
NASes are usually meant to do a small variety of tasks with low power usage, while servers are much more robust and usually consume more power.
So, I decided I wanted a box that I can move between my house and my apartment fairly easily, with no GPU or monitor necessary, and I wanted it to be able to act as a media center to my various devices. That influenced the part listing quite a bit, and after some extensive research, here's what I came up with:
The Build
Case: Fractal Design Node 304: $100. The Node was such a pain in the ass to get my hands on, you have no idea. I've been waiting since June for this thing to come it, and it goes out of stock as soon as I order it. I finally was able to procure one and it should be arriving on Saturday. Now, why the Node? For one, it's tiny. 10" x 8" x 15". Not all that much larger than a shoebox, really. This'll be a big help when moving it from location to location. And despite its size, it can fit six 3.5" (desktop sized) hard drives at once. Plus, with no external 5.25" bays for something like a useless CD/DVD drive, it also looks quite good. I knew from the moment it was announced that it would be the case for this build, and I stuck it out. Here's hoping I was right.
Motherboard: ASUS P8H77-I : $100. A mini-ITX case means a mini-ITX motherboard, and there are VERY few that have six SATA ports. This one fits the bill and came in at a very reasonable price point.
CPU: i3 3220: $130. Overkill of the highest order, really. This is equivalent to a processor you'd find in most NAS solutions that companies sell for two or three grand, not a little home box like what I'm building. So, why all the muscle? For one, expandability. I want to be able to toss three times the amount of drives I have in here and make sure the bottleneck doesn't fall back on the CPU. Next, power. It's an Ivy Bridge CPU so the TDP is way down thanks to the 22nm process. Finally, price vs performance. The "reasonable" choice of processor would cost around $70, and frankly $60 is so little when compared to the cost of the drives I'm putting in, I decided not to sweat the details and go for the extra oomph.
RAM: 16GB Corsair XMS3: $50. I got these on sale, and they're perfect fits. They're low profile which is great for the small case and the amount I bought wwill not go to waste, either now or later. ZFS loves as much ram as it can get.
PSU: Rosewill Capstone Modular 450W: $65. Newegg's house brand which is made by other reputable manufacturers for them, the Capstone 450W is compact, rated 80 PLUS Gold for top notch efficiency, and modular so I only need to include the cables that I....need. Plus, it's gotten some stellar reviews...wow, this reads like an ad. I should get a commission.
All told before hard drives: $445. When you look at comparable, pre-built NAS boxes from big names like QNAP or Synology, you are getting a four drive (vs my six), single core Atom CPU rated below 2Ghz (instead of my 3Ghz+ dual core i3), with barely 1GB of RAM (vs my 16, granted for ZFS). Honestly, it was a no brainer to do this myself.
Now, the drives:
6x Toshiba DT01ACA300 3TB: $870 ($139 per drive). So, there's the expense of it all. Brand new 3TB drives from Toshiba (who bought up what remained of Hitachi's 3.5" drive business after WD was forced to give it up) which are using Hitachi's factories and techniques meaning the reliability and RAID performance should be the same. One of the nicer things about these drives is the fact that they only have one platter per TB, meaning they should run cooler and with less power vs other models.
I'm going to be running six of these in a RAID-Z2 configuration (the ZFS software equivalent of RAID-6), which means I should wind up with (drum roll please) 12TB of usable space. In a system the size of a big shoebox. Oh yes.
I'm going to need a LOT more porn.
Building the build!
Uhhhh, haven't done this yet. Some of the parts as still in transit. Still, if anyone is interested, I'd be happy to post some pictures and a build log of my slapping the whole thing together and crying as 3/6 of the drives turn out to be DOA. Oh yeah, I've already mentally prepared for failure.
If anyone has any questions about why I chose what I did, any NAS/ZFS questions in general (or a desire for me to go more indepth, as much as I can), or has tips/pictures of their own NASes/home servers, feel free to post `im!
EDIT: I'd also love to shove this over to the PC forum instead of just general, if any mod can facilitate that.
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