Balls of Fail

Oh noes, he lives!

The joke is over – 15 years in the making, Duke Nukem Forever has been released. I held little hope that the game would be any good after being in development hell for so long, but I bought the Balls of Steel Edition regardless – figuring that the collectibles would be a nice throwback to my childhood as well as simply being one of the better Collector's Editions I've seen for a game of late. (As an aside, what's with “Collector's Editions” that simply provide an extra weapon and a tin box? There's nothing to collect there!)

It is a functional game, with a beginning and an end. It didn't bug out on me, apart from one time the subtitles and all other on-screen text refused to show me the center of each letter, rendering it quite difficult to read. Annoying, but not game breaking – and all it took was a reload to fix (happily provided by a pipebomb to my face).

I Liked:

• One liners

Occasionally, when Duke does something interesting (like exploding a pigcop, or interacting with the environment) he will make a one liner. This attempts to bring some character into the game – and to a degree it succeeds. It works some of the time – for example, earlyish in the game there is a sequence where you are offered power armour by a soldier. The power armour is an exact replica of Master Chief's armour (of Halo fame). Duke responds with “Armour is for pussies”, which I found mildly amusing. The problem I find with these is that they are not frequent enough, they get old very quickly (particularly when the same five kill phrases are repeated ad nauseam). A little more variety in these would be great.

• Interaction with some world elements

There are some elements in the world you can interact with. I found this to be nice. For example, you can draw on the whiteboards which have battle plans (probably a bad idea since most people who buy this will just draw genitalia), you can eat the donuts, you can play the pinball machine, etc. This was kind of cool, particularly since you get rewarded for “performing Duke-like actions”, because apparently using the toilet is something that Duke Nukem would do, and others wouldn't (great logic there, 3D Realms). The problem here is that not enough of the world is interactable, so it becomes fairly obvious when an object you can interact with is placed. Compare this with HalfLife 2 – where almost anything is interactable due to the use of a proper physics engine. While not everything is interactable, it feels like the objects in DNF that you can do things with were placed there purely to give you something to do.

I hated:

• It's Halo All Over Again

While it makes fun of Master Chief's need to wear ridiculously heavy armour, the game actually takes a lot from Halo. Even though its on the Unreal Engine, it felt like I was playing the original Halo game again. Only being allowed to hold 2 weapons at a time is a limitation that should not apply to Duke Nukem – particularly since the game just prior allowed him to hold everything all at once. Not to mention the regenerative health/armour (creatively renamed Ego), the jump animation (or lack thereof), and the need to constantly flip your monster truck back over because it handles like shit (and the ability to simply flip the truck effortlessly). Which leads me to...

• The Goddamn Monster Truck Level

This level was terribly designed. It seemed like it was trying to do what HalfLife 2 did with the driving section. However, they couldn't think of anything interesting to do to make Duke stop, to break up the tedium of driving (and the truck doesn't have a gun). Their final solution? To make the vehicle constantly run out of fuel, so you're forced to get out of the car, walk down a hallway or two of death, get a fuel canister, then return to refuel and continue driving. Seriously. Why are they suddenly trying to make Duke realistic? THIS IS NOT RIGHT.

• As Linear as a Line

Normally, I don't have a problem with linear games. They give you a clear goal, occasionally hold some secrets, though also give you the illusion of freedom by scripting interesting events, or placing you in a city where things block your path but you can see beyond. Duke does this to a degree, though it also falls into the JRPG trapping of placing treasure at the end of very short alternate dead end paths. To compare apples to oranges, Final Fantasy 13 is one of the most linear games I've ever played (until you reach the late game, where you are suddenly given a lot of exploration space). Duke Nukem Forever is, to me, more linear than that. Think about that for a few minutes.

• Duke is Suddenly a Wuss

There is a cutscene where the President speaks to Duke through his BatCave like communications center. The President flat-out tells Duke to stay out of it, and that the aliens are there peacefully. This is after power has been shut down to multiple buildings – seemingly by the aliens. Duke remains silent.

There is a cutscene where the President screams at Duke for a few minutes over all the destruction caused during the alien invasion (the President blames Duke for it all). Duke remains silent. This isn't Duke Nukem!

Seeing a trend here? Duke does not speak when he should, and never says anything relevant to the plot – he speaks entirely in quips and one-liners. If your character is going to talk, they should not suddenly get silent when the plot is being moved forward.

• The Guns Feel Weak

The only gun which feels like it could kill anything is the shotgun. The railgun is also quite good, but the other guns feel like they're toys. I can't quite pick why, perhaps their firing sound isn't loud enough, perhaps there's not enough kickback (if any), but it feels like it's impossible to kill anything. Even the explosive weapons feel unsatisfying. The freeze ray is the most pathetically weak weapon I have seen – even though it was ridiculously cool back in Duke3D.

The crux of the problem with this game is outdated design wrapped in current tech, it seems. The game feels like its taken the worst of current games, wrapped it up with Duke's universe, and then been thrown against the wall a few times for good measure. While not completely a mess – I enjoyed the game for the first hour or two – it felt like a chore to finish – and that's exactly the opposite of what a game should be!

To sum it up – if you remove all references to Duke Nukem as a character or a universe from DNF, you get Halo 1. And this is a terrible thing.

I don't blame Gearbox – they just finished what 3D Realms started. The lack of fun in the new Duke Nukem rests entirely on 3D Realms' shoulders. There is hope left for a new Duke game to not suck – if Gearbox can do it right.

Supanova Sydney 2011

Spritza and I in our costumes

Supanova 2011 has come and gone, and it was awesome. There were parts about it which weren't so awesome, and those will be mentioned, but in general it was pretty good. Photos were taken, much geekery was around, and I spent money.

Lots of money.

When Spritza and I arrived at the venue, we found that they had split the attendees up into multiple lines. Two lines for the people who were exchanging their pre-bought tickets for stamps or wristbands (split according to where the ticket was purchased from), a line for people who had their entry stamp/wristband, and a line for the people who hadn't bothered to pre-purchase their tickets. This system worked well enough for before the convention opened, but I can't help but feel it would be fairly overkill once people were getting inside.

After queuing for what seemed like an eternity, we were finally allowed in the building to... wait for it...

To queue again! They opened the building, but only to let people in the first room - which contained a total of one stall, and all the booths for people to get autographs. Of which none were there yet. This was ridiculous! Eventually, they opened the gates blocking the rest of the convention, which caused a minor stampede for the actual convention stalls. Why they didn't open those gates at the advertised time of 10am I'll never know...

Inside there was a plethora of people hawking their goods. Geeky goods, of course. Plenty of generally geeky figures, DVDs, random art prints, and the like were being sold left right and centre. Except for centre, I supopose, because they had put a huge freaking wrestling ring in the middle to accommodate the crappy Australian Wrestlers that noone actually cares about. Well, I say noone cares about them, but when there was a match on the central area got ridiculously packed, making it hard to move and purchase things from the stalls in the area.

Which leads me to the first problem with Nova – space. The convention seems to grow yearly, and they've clearly outgrown the space that The Dome at Olympic Park offers them. It was quite difficult to move around – especially during the aforementioned wrestling matches, but in general it was quite difficult as well. On Sunday it was much easier to move, mainly because there were far fewer people. Hopefully the organisers will see this and move somewhere bigger – or organise the spaces better. 

There were many stalls that were positioned in places that caused massive traffic jams – for example, one particular stall had the guy who was selling the stuff (dressed as Duke Nukem – awesome) on the outside, since his section was a wall with shelves of stuff. Every time I went past that section, there was a massive traffic jam due to people checking out the wares and buying things. While it took no more space than the stalls that actually had desks and people behind them, it seemed kind of out of place, and more difficult to maneuver past, since generally the desk ones had a defined area where you could tell if someone had stopped to look and spend money, or were just passing by.

As per usual, the cosplay was quite good. I didn't get a chance to watch either of the competitions, but simply walking around you get a good idea of what was there – as well as being part of the cosplay chess game! There were multiple Minecraft creepers walking around, Captain Falcon, Hercule (who I'm sure was the same guy as Hercule, done on separate days), many, many Miku's (including two male Mikus – one being THE TALLIS OHMYGODNO), a few Haruhis, etc.

This is the tamest Tallis I could find. I refuse to look at the others.

Of course, I spent a lot of money, though this convention holds the distinction of being the con I have spent the most money at in a single event. I won't go into details of how much I spent (it was much more than I expected to, but not more than I took with me), though the loot I got was incredible. This includes the Shiva Bike figure I've been eyeing for over a year!

On a related note, while shopping for things, there were some kinds looking at the stalls – as you get at these events. There was a stall with a bunch of phone straps of nicely geeky things – anime characters, game characters, weapons, etc. These kids saw a particular phone strap, and immediately dismissed it with “Ergh its just a Minecraft block, why would you buy that?” This “Minecraft block” was the POW! Block from Mario. These children have clearly not been educated properly. I blame the parents.

Pictured: NOT a Minecraft block

Also, as you can see, the costumes turned out awesomely. Admittedly there was a minor disaster on Sunday – I knelt to get into my bag, and at that moment, the crotch of my pants ripped. I hid myself in my cape until an emergency sewing kit could be borrowed, then headed off to the restrooms to stitch myself back together. Imagine my dismay and panic when I opened this kit to find there was no needle! In the end, I simply pinned it closed and went the day constantly checking myself to make sure I hadn't come apart. This had happened in the line in the morning before we got in – quite funny in retrospect!

Obligatory loot photo!

This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

For some reason, being a gamer in Australia is terrible. We rarely get our game releases on time (though game companies are getting better with this - and in some cases we beat America to the punch). We get anything that has anything remotely controversial banned (well, refused classification which is effectively the same), and there are plenty of games which flat out never get released over here - leaving me with little option but to import.

Let's start with the most angernating one - banned games for stupid reasons. Or at the very least, inconsistent reasons. The most recent and stupid one is a (apparently) temporary ban of Dead Or Alive: Dimensions for the Nintendo 3DS. This is a fighting game with no blood or gore, from a successful series which has had no trouble having games released here before, so why now?
Well, according to our politicians, it contains child porn. I shit you not.
And what causes this concern? Well, 3 characters are under 18. This, in itself does not make child porn, not even our pollies are that stupid, right?
No, the game has a photography mode, where you can look at the characters in various outfits and poses. And you are able to look up the skirts/dresses of said underage female characters. Apparently, this constitutes child porn. Note that these same characters were wearing string bikini's (which leave nothing to the imagination) and pole dancing in Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball. Yet somehow, the ability to see up their skirts in a photo mode is too far. Not just a stupid ban, but inconsistent with itself.

This is not the first time the ratings board has refused to classify a game for stupid reasons entirely inconsistent with itself. Fallout 3 had a large issue in Australia with the fact that the health kits were called "Morphine" - apparently having a positive effect from a drug is a bad thing. Because, you know, morphine is such a bad drug. In the end, to avoid arguing with stupid people, the devs renamed it to Stimpacks. For everyone in the world. Australia's dumn politicians caused the game to be changed for everyone. While it is a tiny and inconsequential change, the implications are huge.
Not to mention that they were fine with Bioshock showing a graphical representation of your character constantly shooting himself up with a  mystery liquid, which enabled the player to shoot lightning from his hands (among other things). I don't know about you, but the ability to fire lightning at will as a result of using a drug seems like a positive effect from a drug!

Random mystery drug - more legal than morphine apparently

Mortal Kombat (the recent edition) was flat out banned due to violence. I imported the game (at risk of it being seized at the border and a fine of up to $110 000 - I shit you not), and found the exact reason why it was banned in Australia. It is an extremely brutal game, full of decapitations, bone breaking and evisceration.
I seem to recall there being no difficulties with Splatterhouse (again, the recent edition) being released in Australia. That game, while I have not played it, also seems super brutal. Some of the videos I saw of it showed some utterly disgusting things!

This is, of course, largely caused by our lack of R18+ rating for games - something which we have been working towards, but seemingly making no progress in. I'm not going to talk more about this issue since it gets political and I hate politics.

Another issue with gaming in Australia is the price markup. Look on any game shop on America. The typical price of a new release is $50 - $60 US. We have a strong Australian dollar at the moment, the last I checked it was worth more than the US. So why do we consider $80 cheap for a new release? I can understand the GST affecting it, but that's 10%. Last I checked, $80 is not 10% more than $50. I see no reason to not import every game that I want, apart from the instant gratification, preowned cheapness, and region encoding (which is becoming less of a problem).

Add to this the host of games that are never released here. For example, I have NEVER seen a Persona game in the shops in Australia. A friend of mine did find a couple, and when I mentioned that they are supposedly good, he snapped them up. However, to this day, I still haven't seen one in the shops here. Not to mention that by all accounts via Internet searching, Catherine, a game I'm looking forward to, does not seem to have any data related to a local release. Another game that I'll have to import (and will do so happily - it'd be cheaper like that anyway).

Yes, it's a strange cover. It's a strange game.

This aside, they won't stop me from gaming. It's what I do!

On a related note, my Backloggery page has been set up, and is in full swing showing off the 300 or so games I have yet to finish. I really didn't realise it was as bad as it is until I filled them out. Take a look if you wish, my backlog link now takes you to that page.
Even better, create your own account and friend me on it! We can compare lists :P

Hail to the King, Baby

Apparently, Duke Nukem Forever was released. I'm still in doubt over its existence, even though I bought the game (the Balls of Steel edition, of course) and have some of the goodies sitting in front of me as I write this.

I maintain that this game, and the package that I paid for are the culmination of the most elaborate and longest-running troll in the history of the Internet. I will continue to believe this until I am sitting at my PC on Monday (public holiday woo!) playing the game for myself. No matter how many screenshots, trailers and player accounts I see, watch and hear respectively.

And if it is a troll, well at least I got some cool goodies out of it. Not worth the price of admission, but still cool stuff. Photos of this stuff follow.

Look at all that stuff!

Apparently its real. Note that the Duke signed it

Deck of cards, dice, two poker chips. Only two chips? How am I supposed to play poker with just two chips?

 

 

Postcards. Duke's been in space!

Bust of the Duke. Yes, that says Carpe Nukem

E3 Impressions

As any gamer with even a passing interest in keeping up with new games would know, E3 is this week, and the main press conferences have all finished. And so, I will post my impressions of what I've seen. What impressed me, what was meh, and what made me utterly rage and want to throw things at people.

Let's start (much like the big 3 did) with Microsoft. While I did not catch any of their press conference yet (I plan on watching some of the trailers and things when I get a chance), I did read the cliffnotes. It seems that they brought a lot of "meh" to the table this year, as well as a lot of Kinect. I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about the Kinect. There's no question that it is impressive technology, and I do want to have a play with it. However, my wanting to have a play with it stems more through development tendencies, rather than finding any games that I want to play on it!
Microsoft have, of course, unleashed information about the first thing that made me rage. The promise of four more Halo games. One being simply a remastering of the original, which I can deal with. The first Halo game was decent. However, from there it began a decent in mediocrity punctuated by the fact that the game didn't actually change at all from there, with the exception of pretty graphics. The announcement that there is going to be a new Halo trilogy, while not altogether unexpected (it did, after all, make extraordinarily stupid amounts of money for Microsoft and Bungie) it also did not assure me in the slightest that it would be trying anything new either.

The Vita. I want one so, so badly

Sony released some interesting information. I only caught bits and pieces of their press release, so there is probably a lot I've missed, but what really caught my eye is the Playstation Vita. This would be the NGP (Next Generation Portable) that they have been talking about. It looks just like a PSP with a second thumb stick, no UMD drive (it reportedly uses flash cartridges for games), and a touch pad on the back of the console.
I have been asked repeatedly why a touch screen on the back. I can wholeheartedly answer this question with a "Why the hell would I know? Do I work for Sony all of a sudden?" I would assume that this is for things like noncritical functions. The guy demoing the latest iteration of Modnation Racers demonstrated this to great effect when he used it to raise and lower terrain surrounding the track, in the track creation mode. It was also quite quick to load and test the new track he created, which I liked.
By far, the thing I liked the most about Vita is its connectivity. It connects to a Sony PSN cloud, allowing someone playing games on the Vita to play multiplayer with people who are on the PS3. And not just in the same room or anything - this works via wifi and 3g as well! Aside from this, the fact that you can stop playing a game on the Vita and load up from exactly where you were up to on the PS3 was also quite awesome. They demonstrated this using some random action-rpg, which I cannot recall the title of.
That said, when they showed Street Fighter X Tekken I began to rage. Not because I dislike Street Fighter or Tekken - I quite like them. No, the problem is that they've decided to do another one of those stupid bad cameos I raged about on Monday - this time adding the guy from Infamous to the game. Why would you do that? It wasn't necessary! It's not even cool! It's a game based almost entirely on cameos (being a crossover title and all), so why add more. He doesn't fit into either universe!

The Wii U

Nintendo talked a LOT about the 3DS. I was excited about the new Kid Icarus game, until it was revealed to be on the 3DS. I have posted at length already about how 3D is retarded and should be set on fire, so I won't bother repeating this.
What was interesting was the Wii U - the new console. Sporting a controller that seems to me a cross of the Playstation Vita, the Wiimote and an iPad, it promises to retain the accessibility for the "casual gamer" peon hordes, as well as provide depth for the hardcore gamers. I consider myself to be far far beyond the casual gamer, so a little added depth fron Nintendo is exactly what I wanted.
As for how I like the new console... I'm very undecided. They were able to do some interesting things with the demo, for example someone changing channel on the TV, and the game being simply moved onto the controller is a great addition. The AR meets Wiimote functionality seemed kind of interesting too, though it has to be done well. I plan on trading in my Wii for the Wii U, if only for the HDMI input (with my TV-less monitor-centric setup, it makes the Wii much easier / more appealing to use) to use in conjunction with the backwards compatibility.
When it comes down to it, the fate of the Wii U is in the developer's hands. If they do good thigns with it, then it will fit in quite well to my gaming collection. If not, then it'll be an expensive paperweight.

On another note, its The Legend of Zelda's 25th anniversary this year. To celebrate, they're doing a world orchestral tour for the music of Zelda.
Also, the insane people who bought a 3DS can get a free AR based Pokedex. This was really cool, but completely inaccessible to people who are like me and can't actually look at 3D without their brain haemorrhaging.

As for game trailers, I finally caught up with Devil May Cry. The new Dante design is epic fail on every level, though the game itself looks to be as much demon-annihilating fun as it's always been (except for DMC 2). Final Fantasy XIII-2 confuses me with its lack of most of the main party, and focusing on Serah and newcomer Noel (which will anger me GREATLY if they try to hamshoe in a love subplot between Serah and Noel, since she was engaged to Snow for the entirety of the first one - the ending even including the line "we've got a wedding to plan!"). I could care less that Hope disappeared, but Snow and Sazh need to reappear!

Game Cameos

Game developers and publishers occasionally do funny things, in an attempt to sell more copies of their game and make money. Sometimes they are ridiculous marketing campaigns, promising things that never arrive in the completed product (the original Assassin's Creed, anything Peter Molyneux is involved with). Sometimes they make extra little games to draw attention (Bulletstorm with Duty Calls), or just draw attention to odd things ("Duke Nukem has been in production for around 12 years, but its coming out! Quick, buy it!").

And sometimes, they insert random character cameos. Oh noes...

A cameo can either work really well as an added little bonus to the game. It can also fall flat on its face, making it seem like a stupid little cash in - or even worse, completely breaking a game and rendering it unplayable.

The "Tales of" RPG series does good cameos. They tend to have characters from other games in the series feature as a special optional boss in the coliseum. This works well because it completely does not intrude upon the game - they have nothing to do with the main plot. Indeed, you could miss the cameo entirely if you do not fight much in the coliseum (there's only one coliseum battle required in Tales of Symphonia. I do not know about the other titles). Once the battle is over, those characters disappear and never appear again. A true cameo role.

Viewtiful Joe also does a decent cameo. You play the entire game through, and unlock Dante, from Devil May Cry, as an alternate character to play as. He has nothing to do with the storyline as it stands regularly (as far as I can recall, anyway), and is completely optional, fun extra.

I have no problems with these cameos. The problem arises when the cameos become stupid, and adversely affect the game.

The single biggest example of this is Soul Calibur 4. It is quite an entertaining game, until you bring Star Wars characters into the mix! Soul Calibur is a sword fighting game with a medieval age type setting. Swords, armour, staves, etc clash in an all out slashfest. Quite entertaining.

So why the HELL did Namco decide to do a deal with George Lucas' people, and add in Darth Vader, Yoda, and the apprentice from The Force Unleashed? These characters affect the game badly in a few ways:
# They have an extra game mechanic which applies only to them - the Force. They have an extra meter as a result.
# They get in the way of random character selection - I like to do the random character selection, but I sure as hell don't want to be playing as Yoda when I do!
# Yoda is both useless, and gamebreaking. If you learn how to use Yoda half-decently, you're essentially immortal because HE IS TOO SHORT TO BE HIT WITH A REGULAR HORIZONTAL ATTACK. They seemingly tried to mitigate this by making every movement of his involve jumping around like a monkey, but seriously this is as bad as Dr B in Tekken 3!
# The Apprentice throws lightning. Nowhere else in the game do I recall seeing a projectile attack.
# Star Wars + medieval fantasy = fail.

Another example of where a cameo didn't make me very happy is the recently released (and banned) Mortal Kombat on the PS3. Kratos from God of War appears in it. At least this time the universe crossover works - Kratos is exactly the kind of guy who belongs in Mortal Kombat, due to the brutality of both their universes. However, I played a few levels as him, and it wasn't executed well at all. In a (mostly) unarmed fighting game, he permanently has weapons. Also, he only seems to have one voice acted line, simply lifted from one of the GoW games.

Seriously devs, if you're going to include a cameo in your game, think it through. Make it an Easter Egg, or a hidden secret that isn't a fundamental part of the game.