The 2015 Wrap Up

Here we are again, with 2015 almost gone. I generally think this year has been a great year for gaming in general, with some really good games being released this year. For me, it saw a big change in how I approach games too. Trying not to buy into the hype of big games has been a great choice for me, as I generally feel more positive about games in general because of it because I don't get let down by an over hyped game.

It seems that I like to start with the bad and end on a high note however, so let's dive into some of the muck from this year. To start, the PC release of Batman Arkham Knight was so buggy that it was pulled from sale to be fixed. And when WB finally re-released it, it was still a steaming pile of bugs that meant they had to continue to offer refunds from all outlets. At the time, I called out WBIE for handing off the PC port to Iron Galaxy Studios, but news came out later than they knew about the issues well before the release, leading them to delay the release twice. WB has since said they are "modifying the internal review process for all of our games". I tell you what WB, I'll do it for you for free: if you know the game doesn't work, don't release it. Modification done.

I played Battlefront during the beta, and was left feeling underwhelmed by it. People have been saying it's just a Battlefield 4 re-skin, but that couldn't be further from the truth and if it was just BF4 with a Star Wars them, I would probably enjoy it a lot more. From an audio visual standpoint, the game is perfect, especially the audio. From a gameplay standpoint however, it feels like it's lacking something to really make it stand out. All of the blasters have a randomized element that negates a little bit of skill, and while the cards and unlock system makes it a little more balanced, I actually prefer the Battlefield style of unlocks. But the biggest thing stopping me from buying it is the outrageous price EA is asking for it. At $90, it feels like a poor deal for what is on offer, especially when you then have to buy a season pass for $60 to keep up with all the DLC maps that will be added to the game. I genuinely think that if the game was $40 for the base and $30 for the season pass, I'd probably have bought it at launch but for what you get, $150 does not feel worth it.

On to far more positive things. This year also saw Steam add a refund option. All I can say about this is that it was about time. For far too long developers had been able to drop any old broken, buggy, non-functioning piles of crap they called games onto steam and if you bought it, you were then stuck with this non functioning game. Going back to the Arkham games, Arkham Origins was released buggy too, and when asked if they were going to fix it, WB responded by saying they were "working hard on the upcoming story DLC" and that there were no plans to release another patch to address the issues players were reporting. With Arkham Knight, WB were quick to remove it from sale to stop the flood of refunds they were no doubt experiencing. I don't want to praise Steam too much for adding refunds, because it should have been there from the start, but it is certainly a step in the right direction.

The standout surprise in 2015 for me has without a doubt been Rocket League. I heard nothing about the game until a day before release when a streamer I follow on Twitch was playing it. The idea of the game really impressed me, and it looked fun to play, so I bought it and gave it a go. For a game that I knew basically nothing about until I was actually playing it, Rocket League has really impressed me. As I mentioned in my top 10 list, I'm also really impressed by Psyonix and how they are releasing DLC, with only cars and cosmetics locked behind the paywall. All in all, Rocket League is brilliant game.

2015 has generally been great, and I've loved most of the game I played this year. But all good things come to an end, and I really hope that 2016 can be as good as 2015 has been. Roll on the new year!

As always,

GAME ON!

My Top 10 Games of 2015!

Wow where did that year go? It seems like yesterday I was deciding to call Shadow of Mordor my favourite game of 2014, and yet here we are in December again. Little change to my top 10 this year, I have decided to not do a worst games list, mainly because I want to maintain a positive vibe to my blog. I will however be talking about some of the games I was disappointed with in my 2015 wrap up, if that kind of thing is what you are looking for here. Now as usual, these are "my" top 10 games. That means the games here are the games that I've enjoyed this year, so games that I didn't play aren't included, regardless of how good they may or may not have been and what good things I've heard about them.

So without any further faffing about: onwards to my top 10 games of 2015!

No 10: The Sims 4

When it was released in 2014, the Sims 4 received a lot of criticism from long time fans of the series for being a step backwards from The Sims 3. I admit, I had some reservations about the changes made to the game. When you saw the list of features removed, it was large and seemed to point toward EA monetizing those things when added back into the game. However, despite the cut content, I really enjoyed my time early this year playing The Sims 4. The removal of the neighborhood "worlds" system had such a positive impact on both game performance and loading times that I don't even miss it any more. It still suffers from the same issue as The Sims 3 of having expensive expansion packs, meaning that you are basically paying for the game again every year. The gameplay is refined, and in my opinion, improved from the previous games. I certainly wouldn't rate it higher than 10th on this list, but it still deserves to be here.

No 9: WWE 2K15

Full disclosure: I'm a massive wrestling fan, and WWE 2K15's pc version could have literally been a nugget of poop in a game box and I'd still think it was the best thing since Shadow of Mordor. Luckily, the game is reasonably solid mechanically and very stable. It suffers a little from the "movie tie in" syndrome of relying a little too much on quick time events, there are physics bugs, the career mode's ending reeks of being rushed. Despite all of that, it's a wrestling game on PC! It can be modded! It even still has CM Punk in the game! Similar to how the Sims 4 can't be higher on the list, neither can WWE 2K15 because the only thing that puts it here is the fact that I'm a massive wrestling fan willing to overlook the games flaws to focus on the positives.

No 8: Prison Architect

Finally out of early access, Prison Architect is exactly what it sounds like: a game where you build a prison. A simulation lite game, the basic gameplay of Prison Architect is simple enough that building a basic prison is easy. Every prisoner has needs that have to be met, such as hunger, sleep and cleanliness. Being a prison, security is of course a concern with guards, dogs, and metal detectors being just some of the ways you can try to maintain the peace of your prison. Digging deeper into the game reveals systems that allow for reformation of prisoners, segregation of high, medium and low security risk prisoners, and even workshops to help make your prison some money. It's a great little game, and the time spent in early access has been well used to both refine the core concepts of the game, and also expand on them in ways that make sense.

No 7: Cities: Skylines

Cites: Skylines is what the 2013 SimCity should have been. Starting out on a plot of land about the same size as the plots in SimCity, C:S allows you to expand your area up to 8 times in the base game, and mods are out there that allow you to use all 25 available plots on each map to build a giant city. There's no need to focus your cities to one specific task like SimCity, as you have the room to build everything your city might need. I honestly haven't spent as much time with Cities: Skylines as I'd like to have spent, but there are pictures of some truly amazing cites out there and what I have played, I've really enjoyed. Worth a try if you like city building games.

No 6: Grand Theft Auto V

Two years. That's how long PC gamers had to wait for GTA5 to come to their platform of choice. Released on the Xbox 360 and PS3 in 2013, and then again on the Xbox One and PS4 in 2014, the long awaited PC port of the game was released in April 2015, and boy was it worth the wait. GTA5 is really, really fun when you have a group of friends all playing together, just playing around in the open world that Rockstar has created. Driving and flying is much better than the previous games, and combat is improved by the addition of a true first person mode to the PC version of the game. As I had already played the through the story on my 360, I went into GTA5 purely for the multiplayer, and when you are messing about in the world, it's a lot of fun. However, the big thing Rockstar advertised with GTA5 was heists, and I can't help but feel a bit let down by them. Essentially multi mission campaigns, heists have some crazy rewards, but were released buggy and in some cases were unable to be completed at all. All of the online lobbies are buggy and have crazy load time to get into the games. Eventually, my group of mates who were playing GTA5 gave up and moved back to other games. If the lobbies were more stable, I think GTA5 would be a brilliant release. That said, the single player is great and just driving around in the game is a lot of fun if you are into that kind of thing.

No 5: Blood Bowl 2

Blood Bowl is Warhammer Fantasy crossed with chess and american football. Teams of fantasy races such as orcs, elves and dwarves all play in a league to see just which race is the best at football. A turn based strategy game, Blood Bowl 2 takes the tabletop game, animates it and puts all the teams in your control. Being a tabletop game at heart, a lot of the game is based on random dice rolls, and Blood Bowl 2 takes a lot of the guess work out of the chance you have to succeed at a given roll, telling you the exact percentage you have to succeed at what you want to do. Being a game based around american football, the goal of each match is to score as many points as you can by running a player with the ball to the end zone. Being a Warhammer game, you can stop the other team from scoring by placing them in "tackle zones" or just beating them up. Most races are either agile, and good at passing and running the ball to the end zone, or strong and good at bashing up the other team until nothing can stop them getting to the end zone. The game is very easy to pick up, with the single player acting as an extended tutorial. Each match adds in more complex mechanics until you are playing proper Blood Bowl. I really enjoy Blood Bowl 2, and think it's well worth the buy, especially if you like turn based strategy games.

No 4: Rocket League

I wrote a review about Rocket League back in August, and since then the game has changed a lot, and all of it in good ways. First, they've been releasing small DLC packs that add in new vehicles and customizations. There has also been some new maps added for free, including the first of many "non-standard" maps, answering my only criticism of the game. Psyonix's approach to DLC has been refreshing, with each DLC patch only locking the vehicles and cosmetics behind the paywall, but allowing everyone to enjoy the new maps. Even without the DLC, the game is well worth the money they are asking. There's not a great deal to add to my review, so I'll finish this the same way. Rocket League is beautiful in how simple it is, yet how complex it can be. I highly recommend it!

No 3: Fallout 4

Another game that I reviewed recently, Fallout 4 is still the game that's eating up most of my spare gaming time at the moment. Having spent another 30 hours on the game, I've installed some mods to fix some issues that I've found (for example the radio station used to alert you if a settlement needs help has some obnoxious music that loops continually, and that's gone now). I've also beaten two of the possible endings for the game, and while I can see why some people have an issue with the "twist", I personally enjoyed the story. I'm still really enjoying the exploration of the world, meeting some new companions and factions out there in the wasteland. I've also come to realization about Fallout 4: it's in no way an RPG any more. It is however, a rock solid open world action game with RPG elements. The only thing holding it back from being higher in the list is the buggy state of the game at release. Yes it's a Bethesda game and bugs are expected, but I personally can't rate it any higher because of those bugs.

No 2: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

In my review of the Witcher 3, I flat out stated that it's my favorite RPG. I stand by that 100 percent. The world that you experience as the witcher Geralt feels so lived in. You can find notes that lead you to quests without ever talking to someone who sends you on them. The combat makes you feel like a fast moving, superhuman mutant who could take down dragons and wyverns. And as I stated in my review, the story telling is brilliant, with characters who aren't black and white "good" or "evil" characters, but rather shades of grey with flawed characters who have redeeming qualities that almost force you to overlook the bad ones. It's a brilliant world, and I love it. Fully deserving of the top spot on this list, it's only trumped by one thing: the sheer amount of enjoyment I got from my number one game.

No 1: Kerbal Space Program

Last year was the first time I'd ever done one of these top 10 lists, the first time I'd ever sat down to work out what I enjoyed the most and why. Last year, the choice was easy. Shadow of Mordor was hands down my favourite game of 2014. This year however, was a lot harder to decide. When I sat down to write the list, I thought the choice had been made ages ago during my review for The Witcher 3 where I called it my new favourite RPG. Fallout 4 during its honeymoon period had me convinced that I was going to name it the game of the year. But the more I think about it, Kerbal Space Program truly deserves the top spot in my list. On sheer playtime alone it was definitely my favourite game, but even more than that, I can't stop talking about it with other people.

Kerbal Space Program was the first game I ever wrote a review for back when I started up this blog in 2013. I had no intention of writing reviews at the time, and this blog was supposed to be more about current events in gaming and my thoughts on them. But then I was so excited by KSP that I had to write a short review of it. It's poorly written, very short and a prime example of how I feel my focus has changed for this blog. When it was fully released earlier this year, I was still playing KSP on the odd occasion, but the release got me focused on it again and I wrote another, more lengthy review of the game.

I can't help but feel that KSP is aimed at people, who just like me, built spaceships out of Lego instead of houses. Those of us who have always been interested in how mankind has been able to take metal, plastic and some fuel, combine those things into a rocket to send people to the moon or probes deep into space. It's a game that captures that sense of wonder and awe about space that I had at 10 years old, and allows me to feel it again at 26. And clearly I'm not alone in this, because KSP has one of the most passionate communities, one that is welcoming and friendly, willing to help out and teach you the ropes and even set you challenges to try and help you learn. I've said this in every review, but KSP even makes failure fun, and that it's not just because of the explosions, but also because you learn something. You learn that this design needs work, or even completely redone from the ground up.

And that's the point of the game: Kerbal Space Program makes learning about spaceflight fun. I've learnt more about spaceflight in 2 years of playing KSP than I ever did from watching documentaries, reading news articles or browsing Wikipedia. Concepts like delta-v, Hohmann transfers, aerobraking, lithobraking and all of the maneuvers required to efficiently fly in space are things I and many others would never have fully understood without playing this little indie game about green men trying to get into space. I could talk for hours about the many different missions I ran, the goals I set for myself and how I achieved them (or failed them in a blaze of glory), and I have done this with real life friends, who I'm sure won't be surprised by this choice when they read this. Kerbal Space Program will forever be in my top 10 games of all time, not just the top 10 of 2015.

So there it is, my top 10 games for 2015. Stay tuned to this blog for a big announcement regarding a little project that I'm working on that will be taking place right here! Consider this the announcement of the announcement. It's been a great year for gaming this year, and I'll be talking about that more in my 2015 Wrap Up coming soon. Until then, and as always,

GAME ON!

Fallout 4

Anyone who knows me in real life knows just how much I love Bethesda games. Something about their open worlds have shaped how much I enjoy open world games. I first started playing them when Oblivion was released, clocking up well over 600 hours on my XBox 360 (so completely unmodded Oblivion too!). I’m not too ashamed to say I’m a Bethesda fanboy, so take my recommendation with a grain of salt: Fallout 4 is a really fun game, wrapped up in a package with the usual Bethesda flaws.

For some reason, people like me are able to ignore the flaws that every single Bethesda game has and just get immersed in the giant worlds that they create. Fallout 4 is no exception. Exploring the irradiated wastelands of Boston with your trusty dog by your side is some of the most engaging gameplay I have had since The Witcher 3. Sure, the game’s physics are tied into the frame rate, and you have to edit an .ini file to turn off mouse smoothing, but I don’t care because I got to shoot a super mutant camp with long range artillery.

Gushing aside, F4’s core gameplay is much of the same from New Vegas and Fallout 3. You explore ancient buildings, scavenging what you can, fighting off the bandits and creatures of the wastelands that attack you. The biggest change to the base Fallout gameplay is the addition of Settlements. I can only assume the people at Bethesda were looking at all of the multiplayer survival games that allow base building when this system was thought up, and I think it really changes the whole feel of the game. Where previously you felt like a drifter, running from place to place but never making any part of the wasteland yours, now you can create settlements all across the map, making buildings and defences. You can use radio towers to attract settlers to join the settlements, commanding them to man towers, farm crops, or even run shops to make caps for you.

The settlement system also impacts the scavenging side of the gameplay. Previously I would only collect guns, ammo, stimpacks, and caps. Now, almost everything is useful, as junk items are broken down into their parts, and even unwanted weapons and armour can be scrapped for additional components. These components are used for crafting the parts used in settlements, or even upgrading your items to be better. Gone are the days of needing to repair weapons and armour after every fight (a change I welcome completely), instead replaced with upgrades to allow you to play the way you want. If you prefer long range then you can give your weapons scopes and long barrels to increase the range of them. Or for close encounters you have the option for reflex sights and silencers.

Combat is improved from New Vegas, and vastly improved from Fallout 3. All of the guns have functioning iron sights, and the developers have included a couple of different types of sights for those who prefer a particular type (reflex sights have a dot or circle option to give one example). The guns feel different enough, and even the look of the early game “pipe” weapons suit the scavenged style. As an example of how different weapons feel, the laser musket, a gun you get very early in the game, requires you to charge the weapon manually before you can even fire, but does massive damage. As I mentioned previously Bethesda have done a great job of trying to allow for different play styles with the different weapons, providing options via the modding system. Some people have criticised the game for becoming more of an FPS than an RPG, but I personally have enjoyed all aspects of the combat.

Armour now has individual parts, allowing you to mix and match pieces for maximum protection. If there is one complaint about armour in the game, it’s that the best armour in the game looks the worst, and the complete sets that look great have some of the worst stats. If you are playing in first person it’s not that big a deal, but you do see yourself more in Fallout 4 than any of the previous games. However, this isn’t the biggest change to the armour system in F4. Power armour is now a separate suit, treated almost like a vehicle that you get into and use until it’s out of power. 

You get your first set of power armour very early in the game, and can customise and upgrade it however you see fit. Customisation includes paintjobs, built in stealth boys and even a jetpack. The limiting factor to the power armour is the fusion cores they use for power. You will find these out in the wasteland scattered about, but at least in my travels I’ve only found 18 in about 35 hours of play. This gives the power armour a feeling of escalation. Were you just murdered by a deathclaw? Go back with your power armour and show him who’s boss! I personally like this system, as I never liked wearing power armour constantly in the older Fallout games. Along with that, going back to base to get your best weapons is something I appreciate. Power armour is also more common on enemies in higher level zones, and you can obtain many different versions of it that can all be individually customised and even given to followers to wear.

The world itself is always an interesting topic for open world games. I’ve never really liked the map size comparisons that occur whenever a new open world game is announced or released. My metric for how good the world in an open world game is has always been how much fun it is to explore and ‘live’ in that world, and Fallout 4 impresses me in that respect. Even 35 hours into the game I’m still seeing something new, and more importantly, interesting to explore. The settlements help a lot with that, as you can even just get lost into the act of building this base up for your fellow settlers, and then exploring the world for more materials to continue building that base. Along with this, the world also feels very alive. While exploring, you will often hear gunshots in the distance and if you head toward them, you’ll find some bandits harassing settlers, or super mutants attacking some soldiers. It’s little details like this that go a long way to making the world feel alive without you.

Graphically, the game has improved a lot from New Vegas. Gone is the green and brown tint they put over everything in the two previous games, in favour of bright colours, blue skies and god rays. Weather effects look fantastic, especially the thick fog that occasionally rolls in, making it hard to see what that shape in the distance is. The wasteland has never looked better. However, if there is one thing the game doesn’t do well, it’s run above 60 FPS. I personally have not had any issues, as I decided to keep vsync on after reading the reviews, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. There have been reports of any framerate higher than 60 causing issues with the physics of the game, including not being able to exit terminals or the lockpicking screen not coming up. Bethesda tying physics to framerate is not new, and was a big criticism of Skyrim as well.

Speaking of standard Bethesda game issues, there are also bugs aplenty. The game has never hard crashed for me, but I have had several cases where the gun models stopped rendering entirely, leaving my character standing there with his hands awkwardly outstretched. The menus occasionally bug out and won’t display, with the only way to fix that being to quit to desktop and return. Sure the bugs will eventually be fixed, if not by Bethesda, then by a modder. For some reason, gamers in general like to give Bethesda a pass on those bugs, but it’s a source of constant frustration that one of my favorite game companies continues to rely on modders to fix their games for free. If this was a Ubisoft or EA title, there would be riots. Along with the bugs, there are also reported performance issues with the aforementioned god rays on AMD graphics cards due to their tesselation issues (tip: turn them down to low. The difference in looks during gameplay is tiny and you get an immediate performance boost even on nVidia cards).

Now to the elephants in the room: skill trees and dialogue systems. If you’ve read anything about Fallout 4, you’ve probably read about the new skill tree and dialogue system, and maybe not in a positive light. Personally, I like the new skill system, and I am indifferent to the dialogue system. 

Let’s focus on skills for now. In previous fallout games, there were individual skills for every part of the game, and if you never improved that skill, you would never get better with that part of the game. So when you picked up a laser rifle, and had never improved Energy Weapons, your damage was reduced. At level up, you would get a number of skill points you could distribute into the different skills, as well as being able to select a perk every level in Fallout 3, or every 2 levels in New Vegas. In Fallout 4, they have scrapped skills entirely, in favour of using perks to progress your character. When you level up, you gain a single point that gain be used to either increase a special stat, or improve a specialized part of your character, such as improving damage with pistols by 20% or being able to pick better locks. I like the change, as it streamlines character progression, and allows you to immediately improve an aspect of your character without needing to be hyper focused on one particular thing. On the other hand, purists of the RPG side of Fallout may find the system too streamlined, causing them to consider it dumbed down. It’s a massive change to the way Fallout plays, but one I feel Bethesda have done correctly.

As for the dialogue tree, the biggest immediate change is that your character is fully voice acted now. While some people prefer the silent protagonist, I have always loved voiced characters, as I feel more like I am playing a character, rather than a camera with a gun. The other big change is the addition of a dialogue wheel instead of the selection screen previous Fallout games have used. On this change I am torn. On the one hand, the wheel uses a simple up for question, down for yes, left for calm, right for aggressive, meaning you can always play your character in a particular way. On the other, they never actually tell you that, and I only figured it out after about 20 hours of play. It’s very vague as to how your character might respond until you work that out. A simple change of colours for the buttons would have solved all those problems (green for yes, red for aggressive, blue for calm, yellow for question if we use the Xbox button colours for example). I can certainly see how people dislike the voiced protagonist and wheel, however it’s a very small bump to an otherwise solid game.

Fallout 4 is a massive game, and what I have typed here hasn't even touched on the main story at all, because in 35 hours, I've not progressed past the introductory quests for the story quest. I may look at writing a review of the story if I ever get around to completing it. I mentioned in the outset of this that I am a Bethesda fanboy. I want to say it again here, because I know I get blind to some of the more glaring issues with Bethesda games until the honeymoon period is over (like the menus in Skyrim until SkyUi came out). If there was some advice I might give, it’s this: if you haven’t already picked up Fallout 4, consider waiting until it’s on sale. I love the game, and I have no hesitation shouting that from the hilltops. However, I think time is still needed for this game to become truly amazing due to the bugs. If you are likely to want to push the game above 60 FPS, wait until a fix is found for the physics issues the game has (if a fix is even possible with how they have tied in the physics).

However, if that warning doesn’t stop you from wanting to play Fallout 4, then I highly recommend it! Come and live in the wasteland.

As always,

GAME ON!

World of Warcraft: Legion - My Thoughts So Far

I completely missed most of the Blizzcon intro because it starts so early here in West Australia, so I only got to catch the tail end of the Warcraft Panel. However, MMO-Champion had the key points detailed in a post as usual, and reading through it some things jumped out at me. Here's my thoughts on what we know about Legion at this stage.

First of all, I'm an Illidan fanboy. I've detailed this before, and seeing him come back, especially after the hints last year at a redemption story for him, is a massive draw for me to the game. I'm interested in the prospect of playing as a Demon Hunter too, but will definitely reserve my judgement until I can actually try them out (double jumps sound cool though). The lore explanation for why the demon hunters are only the elvish races makes sense to me too: you are an Illiadari, one of Illidans followers captured by Maiev Shadowsong at the end of the Burning Crusade and locked away.

Artifact weapons are a big part of the Legion as well, and I have mixed feelings about them. Each spec in the game will get a weapon that is unique to them. For example, a Beast Mastery Hunter will get a gun, while a Marksmanship Hunter will get a bow. While the prospect of using these legendary weapons is cool, I'm not sure how they will handle it in a lore sense. Weapons like Ashbringer (the weapon that shatters Frostmourne in ICC) are important in the lore, and Ashbringer is currently used by Tirion Fordring. So how paladin players will get an Ashbringer, or really how players get any of the other Artifact weapons, is a question that needs to be answered carefully. Blizzard have also said they intend to not have weapon drops at all this expansion, and that the artifact weapons will be upgraded in a similar style to how the last two legendary questlines have worked, including visual customisations. If you want to have a look at the artifact weapons for each spec, click here.

On to something I'm a lot more apprehensive about: scaling zones. They intend for you to be able to quest in the zones Azsuna, Val'Sharah, Highmountain and Stormheim in any order and at any level, with all zones eventually leading you to Suramar at level 110. Using what they have learned from flex raids, Blizzard want the zones to scale to your level, with the idea being "if it takes 12 seconds to kill a boar at level 102, it will take 12 seconds when at level 106". Before I really started playing WoW, I played Guild Wars 2 a lot. For those of you who didn't play GW2, they have the player scale down to the zones level. So when you enter a level 32 zone, your character is now level 32. It's fun for a while, but I never got the feeling of progression that WoW gives when you can breeze through mobs in a zone that gave you trouble before. Again, I'm reserving judgement until I can play with it, but I hope that at level 110 there is some kind of buff to damage you do via better gear.

Dungeon content is going to be getting an overhaul in Legion. Blizzard have announced 10 new dungeons (though if all 10 are in the final release remains to be seen), with 5 of them being leveling dungeons and 5 endgame. Blizzard are making some bigger promises regarding dungeon content, saying they want them to all of them be viable as endgame content, instead of just one or two as has happened in the past. They are also introducing a new way to run challenge mode dungeons: the Challenger's Keystone. This item can be leveled up to gain access to harder content with better rewards, as well as introducing some different mechanics like enrages, bigger packs, or the party taking constant damage. They are intending for this system to complement or even replace raiding based on how you play with it, being true endgame content.

The last thing I want to talk about is the release date. Blizzard have the release date as "On or Before 21 September 2016". There has been some unhappiness about how far away this date is, and I agree with it in theory. If Legion was to release in September, that would be too far away in my opinion. However, I think a lot of people have missed the part that says "before". Beta has been announced as "soon after Blizzcon", and most beta's have been around 4 months. It's my hope they release it a lot sooner than September, with my ideal time being May. Here's hoping they get to release it a lot sooner than we expect.

I'm looking forward to Legion. Like most people there are things I like and things I don't, but I'm still generally positive about the games future. While they have been bleeding subscribers, I still think WoW is doing ok, and people are just burnt out on the game from playing it for 10 plus years. I'd like to play the beta, but we'll have to see how they handle the invites. Here's hoping I get in.

As always,

GAME ON!

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

When I started playing The Witcher 3 I didn't expect to have a new favourite RPG. I like it so much that it's toppled Mass Effect 2 from that position in my list of favourite games. A brilliant melding of fantasy, action, story and character progression, The Witcher has completely changed how I look at characters and their stories in games. I'll preface everything else here by saying: I'm no where near the end of the game. With the move, being distracted by Rocket League, game crashes, and various other real life things happening over the last few months, I have not had as much time to sink into the game as I would normally like. Despite this, I do feel that I have a good enough hold on the game to write up my thoughts on it.

To begin, I confess that I never played the first Witcher game, and only briefly played the second. While I liked the concepts behind the second game, it never grabbed me like this one has. Perhaps that's something to do with the open world nature of Wild Hunt. In a time where everyone is talking about how the new Mad Max game is "just another open world game", The Witcher succeeds in being more than that in my mind. Everywhere you go throughout Temeria, there are interesting things to see, loot and fight, and the best part is that none of it feels forced, something most recent open world games fail to do.

You play as Geralt, the titular Witcher, a kind of monster hunter for hire. Not entirely human, Geralt has undergone witcher mutations, a series of procedures that greatly increase his agility, durability and stamina. Because of these mutations however, Geralt and his fellow witchers are regarded with disdain by the general population, occasionally drawing insults or even violent reactions when attention is drawn to them. However, when the townsfolk are attacked by monsters, they call upon the witchers to hunt down and kill them, usually with the secondary silver sword that witchers are known for carrying.

At a glance, the Witcher's combat could seem overly simple. You have a fast and heavy attack with a sword, some magical abilities called signs, and two different types of dodge (a roll and a sidestep) that move you different distances and have different recovery times. Combine this with the fact that enemies take off massive chunks of health, and combat will often turn into you using your superior agility to try and avoid damage, then dart back in to deal the killing blow. As you progress through the game however, you start to gain access to potions, oils that increase damage to certain enemy types, bombs with different effects and a crossbow that can help interrupt attacks, or bring flying enemies crashing down to earth, adding to the depth of the combat. The game does a fantastic job of making you feel powerful against normal human enemies or some monsters, but a lot weaker against the larger and more scary monsters.

At release, not everything was rosy for me with The Witcher 3. The game would hard crash after about 20 minutes of play, with no error messages or any indication as to what was causing the issue. I updated drivers, scoured the net for solutions, but nothing worked. However, CD Projekt RED has been very active with releasing patches, and finally the game is in a state where I feel I can recommend it to other people. On top of bug fixes, CD Projekt have also kept on top of feedback from players, going so far as to implement an optional alternate movement mode for people who originally found that Geralt's movements felt floaty and disconnected. They have done a great job of acting like a company that actually cares about the experience people have with their product, and implementing features that help with those experiences.

Not the kind of griffin found in high fantasy right?

The Witcher is a decidedly adult aimed game. Monsters are not "high fantasy" style, more of a dark faerie tale style, with everything looking as though it could kill you just by breathing on you. There is frequent gore, occasional nudity, and stories about themes that definitely aren't aimed at kids. That said, I mentioned in the outset that the Witcher has redefined how I think about story telling and characters in video games, especially when it comes to these themes, and I'd like to expand on that a little here: 

Warning: Spoilers for one story arc early in the game are ahead in the next paragraph. Skip ahead to avoid.

There is a character who initially appears to be nothing else but a drunk and a bully. When you meet them, his wife and daughter have disappeared, and there is some evidence that this character is involved. You eventually find that his drinking lead to an argument with his pregnant wife that got physical, leading to the miscarriage of his unborn child. At this stage you, as a player, can simply dismiss the character as nothing but an evil man and carry on. If you choose to progress through the storyline however, you get options in conversation with them to hear their side of the story. At no point does this character try to justify his bad actions, and he knows he has done wrong. He knows that his actions have lead to losing his wife and daughter, and he is making changes to try and fix his life. The game doesn't condone those actions, but still manages to discuss it in a way that is very mature and engages you with the characters. It lends an amazing level of humanity and depth to them, without making them simple one dimensional "hero or villain" characters. 

Everything about the characters in The Witcher shows a level of thought that I haven't really experienced in any other game. Characters are expressive, the voice acting is top notch, and the stories are varied. I find myself looking forward to conversations because I might learn something about characters that I didn't know before, something I've honestly never experienced with any game. It really does a fantastic job of immersing you in this fantasy world, making you feel as though you are the witcher Geralt. Choices you make can also come back to haunt you. Ridicule someone who has some sway in the community, and you might find yourself attacked in the street. Make a choice to go out of your way to rescue someone, and that persons relative might give you something as a reward because they want to.

The Witcher 3 is a huge game, and I haven't come close to touching on all aspects of the game in this post. Needless to say, I highly recommend it, even for the story telling alone. You can find it here on Steam, or here direct from CD Projekt on GOG. 

As always,

GAME ON!

Moving House!

Just a quick post to let you all know that I'll be moving house over the next two weeks, and as such may miss posts about any major events that come up during that time. However, when I get back online, I will more than likely have my thoughts on the Witcher 3 all typed up and ready to post. As a preview, I will just say that the game is brilliant, but massive, making it hard to write a review earlier. In any case, I will update as I get the chance.

As always,

GAME ON!

Rocket League

Four small cars barrel around an arena, using boosters and jump jets to chase after a large ball. The two orange ones manage to get the ball past the two blue ones, lining up a shot at a blue coloured goal. The ball flies through the air, and passes through a sensor exploding and knocking everyone flying into the air, as the crowd goes wild. Team Orange has won again!

Rocket League is a game where you play soccer with cars. That's it. It's so simple in fact that you could be forgiven for thinking the game has no depth to it. But that's where you'd be wrong. You see, unlike Fifa, where you control an entire team of soccer players, in Rocket League you directly control one car. There are no predetermined button presses to pass, shoot for goal, or tackle.

The controls are deceptively simple, one button to throttle, one to brake, a boost, a jump, and a slide or drift button. Learning to control your car takes a moment, but learning to master the controls and make your car race around the arena is a matter of practice. From simple kicks by jumping and rotating your car a certain direction, to flying halfway across the field using boost and scoring a goal. It's not easy, but when it all comes together, skilled play in Rocket League is beautiful to behold. Take a look:

In single player, Rocket League offers an exhibition mode, where you play one off matches, a season mode, where you can play through a season with your team, and lastly training, where you can hone your skills. Honestly, single player in Rocket League is great to learn, but poor AI can sometimes leave you feeling angry, as it seems like your team mates don't adapt to what you are doing. They rarely set you up for shots, and when you set them up, they won't take them. I've actually seen AI players run the ball directly into their own goal, which is great when they are on the other team, but rage inducing when they are on your team.

Where Rocket League shines however is in multiplayer. Playing with friends online, especially while on some form of voice chat is some of the best fun I've had in some time. The closest way I can describe it is like playing Super Smash Bros on a couch. The game is simple enough that literally anyone can pick it up and play, so you can get people who normally wouldn't be interested in that kind of game to play as well.

Something else I am extremely impressed with is the business model that the developers have decided to go with. They release updates that contain maps for free, meaning that the player base isn't split by updates, and then DLC packs with new cars, and cosmetic upgrades. At this stage, the cars all handle fairly similarly, with bigger cars having a slightly larger hitbox making for great defenders, and smaller cars having a flatter hitbox, meaning you can aim shots a little easier for better attack, so even the DLC cars have no advantages besides looking cool.

In fact, Rocket League is so good that the one criticism I have with the game is a minor one that I'm sure they already have plans to change. The maps in Rocket League are literally all the same. They look different visually, but the same basic layout is used. While I understand the reasoning behind this, especially with how the game is being treated competitively, I feel a mode with more varied maps for more casual players would definitely increase the fun factor of the game. I also highly recommend a controller for the game. It's playable with a keyboard and mouse, but feels right at home on a controller.

For a $20 game that you could be excused for not knowing anything about before release, Rocket League has really taken a hold among the gaming community. And it's no wonder. Rocket League is just a good, maybe even great, game. I know I keep saying this, but it really is beautiful in its simplicity, and addictive in its challenge. I highly recommend it.

As always,

GAME ON!

Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment: Kings of DLC and Pre-Order Culture

At the 2015 San Diego Comic-Con last weekend, Warner Bros. showed the trailer for the upcoming Suicide Squad movie. As usual, the trailer was immediately leaked to the internet, and for the next 24 hours WB's "anti-piracy team" tried endlessly to stop it getting out. After dismally failing to do so, they eventually just uploaded the trailer to Youtube, with a super passive aggressive message about how they wanted this trailer to be a "unique experience for Comic-Con". Now, none of this has anything to do with gaming, so why am I bringing all of this up? Well this attitude extends into Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, their game publishing arm.

You might have gathered from my extremely moody post about Arkham Knight and its PC port, I'm not super happy with Warner. Holders to the rights of some of my favorite franchises, such as DC Comics, Scribblenauts and Lord of the Rings, WB have a hit and miss record when it comes to games they produce. As a fan of Batman, seeing that my preferred platform to play these games on was treated as a second class citizen behind the consoles hurt me more than I'd like to admit.

Arkham Knight is just the tip of the iceberg however. WB has a history of shady practices, ranging from poor ports to slicing parts of the game out to offer as DLC or pre-order bonuses. When Arkham City first came out, they put codes in all of the boxes to access the Catwoman missions, content that was already on the disk, but locked to try and stop people buying the game preowned instead of new. If you did buy the game second hand, the Catwoman missions had to be purchased, ensuring WB got their little slice of the pie. I actually initially bought Arkham City on the Xbox 360, because they delayed the PC release, and in my brand new, sealed copy of the game, my code for the Catwoman missions failed to work, meaning if I wanted to access the content I had paid for, I would have to purchase it again. That copy was returned immediately, and I decided to wait for the PC version.

Not pictured: the rage this bug caused me.

Every one of Warner's games I've played has adverts for season passes and DLC right there in the main menu. Exclusive pre-order bonuses from certain retailers ensure that to get the complete game you would need to order the game multiple times, or more commonly in Australia, that you just can't get access to them without paying for it later. The very first trailer for Arkham Knight ever released included an advert for the Harley Quinn missions, but only if you pre-ordered. It always seemed to me like WB treats games as more of a platform to sell more DLC. After all, this is the company that straight up said they weren't going to fix bugs in Arkham Origins because "the team is currently working hard on the upcoming story DLC." They did eventually fix the game breaking bugs, but to this day there are still non game breaking ones all throughout Origins.

Even games that are completely worthy of praise aren't immune to controversy due to decisions made by WB marketing executives. Shadow of Mordor, my game of the year in 2014 and possibly one of my top games of all time, faced some poor publicity after they offered Youtube personalities early access to the game in return for only positive coverage of the game. Jim Sterling, then at the Escapist, got his hands on a copy of the contract and revealed just how strict it was. With messages like "persuade viewers to purchase the game", "videos will promote positive sentiment of the game" and "videos must not show bugs or glitches", and giving Warner the final say on if a video can be put out, the contract reveals just how strongly WB wants to control the messages about its games. Oddly enough, the contract also forbade mentions of the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit movies, characters and books, arguably hamstringing anyone who actually likes the Tolkien universe from being able to compare to them, even in a positive light.

The ridiculous thing about this contract was that the game was good in the first place. Had WB not tried to control the message so hard, all of the news surrounding Shadow of Mordor on launch would have been overwhelmingly positive. The PC port was amazing, the story was strong for fans of the established lore, and the Nemesis system is a mechanic I really hope to see implemented in future games. As it stands, Shadow of Mordor will always have that black mark in its history, and WB will always be remembered as trying to control a message that didn't need controlling.


Even when Warner eventually did the right thing and pulled Arkham Knight from sale on Steam and other digital distributors, they had to spin it to sound like they weren't doing it to stop the flood of refunds they were no doubt getting. Rather than just saying, "yeah we messed up, and are going to fix it," they had to say that a significant amount of players were enjoying the game on PC, just to twist the knife to those who were having problems.

Realistically, Warner are probably worse than EA and Ubisoft, both of whom have copped a lot of flak over the years, and rightfully so. But where EA and Ubisoft at least make efforts to try and fix things, the message we get from Warner is "lololol too busy making more stuff to sell you suckers". I can pretty much guarantee that the only reason they pulled Arkham Knight from sale on Steam was because of the recent addition of the refund option by Valve, and they saw the number of people who weren't going to put up with their crap. Had the option been there with Arkham Origins, I'm convinced that the message wouldn't have been "we're too busy making DLC", it would have been "we're going to fix those bugs".

All of this has been stated before, many times, and by people with far larger audiences than me, and still Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment show us that they don't understand why we dislike the stunts they pull. I've never been one to complain about the commercialization of video games, but I'm done with way WB treats us, especially those of us who prefer the PC platform. And really, in my mind, it comes back to how they reacted to the inevitable leaks of the Suicide Squad trailer. Warner is old media, trying to hold onto that sliver of tenuous control they have over their message, being dragged kicking and screaming into the new age of the internet, where people can share information faster than Warner can suppress it. Get with the times WB, and maybe I'll play your games again.

As always,

GAME ON!

Star Citizen and My Thoughts on Derek Smart's Blog Post

There's something about all of the marketing for Star Citizen that never fails to excite me. The Freelancer and Constellation commercials both make me tingle with excitement. Whoever is doing the marketing for Cloud Imperium Games is doing a stellar job of hyping the concepts of Star Citizen (pun completely intended). But as time goes on, I find myself doubting if Star Citizen will ever actually happen, and if it does, if it will live up to the expectations that Chris Roberts and his team have created for the game.

Derek Smart - litigious game dev &
self confessed troll.

Small disclaimer: I at no stage have put any money toward Star Citizen. My wish for the game to succeed is not from a financial standpoint of wanting my 'investment' to pay off, but a general love of space sim games.

This whole post started because of a blog post I recently read by Derek Smart, the president and lead developer at 3000AD Games. Derek's games have always been controversial (putting it politely), and unfortunately, his response to criticism usually involves bans and threats of lawyers. Smart has also said in the past that he will occasionally "post just to piss these guys off", and "go in there (forums) and start trouble", essentially describing himself as an internet troll. However, despite his history of poorly made games, litigious nature and generally toxic personality, I still feel like Derek raises some valid criticism of CIG and Star Citizen, even if I disagree with his message of wanting everyone who backed the game to demand refunds or sue CIG.

When Star Citizen was Kickstarted back in 2012, the features they listed were reasonably humble: a 'rich universe' with single player (online co-op available), persistent online multiplayer, the option to create modded servers (not hosted by CIG) and submit player created ships to CIG for implementation into the main game. Where Elite Dangerous promised, and delivered, a massive universe, Chris and his team promised a smaller universe with far more depth to individual systems. All of this was slated to be released in November 2014, and the game eventually raised $2.1 million on Kickstarter.

We're now in July of 2015, and at the time of writing Cloud Imperium Games has raised just over $85 million from just under 925,000 people. You can actually watch in real time how much they have raised here. That page also contains all of the stretch goals they have hit. They are no longer adding stretch goals, giving the reason for this move as they don't want the game to have too much feature creep. However, I would argue that the game already has some pretty severe feature creep.

Today the list of features has grown to immense levels including:

• 100 star systems (handcrafted)
• Professional motion capture, including facial capture
• Orchestral score
• A single player campaign, Squadron 42, that has at least 50 missions (although further stretch goals hint at more than that)
• Ship boarding
• Immersive capital ship gameplay (putting out fires, repairing systems, etc)
• Ship modularity, the ability to completely customize any aspect of your ships performance and features
• Pets
• Fully fleshed out AI characters on planets
• Real alien languages created by linguists
• And much, much more

Chris Roberts - has his baby gotten too
big for its own good?

It's starting to look more and more like something Peter Molyneux would put together as his list of "features that are totally in my next game guys, please trust me please I need money". It's also not unlike Freelancer, where Chris Roberts promised a dynamic economy and world that would change around the player based on actions of other players and even AI factions. Freelancer was eventually released, and while regarded as one of the best space sim games, fell very short of these promises due to technical limitations. And here we are again, with Chris promising a lot and perhaps not able to deliver as much as he would love to. The game pitched in 2012, while not as grandiose as the game presented now, was at least achievable in a reasonable amount of time.

Another point of criticism CIG comes under is the "pledge system" they have used to continue crowdfunding. You can buy ships that grant access to the games packages with prices ranging from $30 to $325 for individual ship packages that include other in game goodies (most of which don't exist yet). There are also multi-ship combo packages that range from the $1,100 "Battle Pack" that contains every fighter sized ship currently available, to the $15,000 "Completionist" pack that contains almost every single ship. 

The stretch goals page that I linked to earlier has an auto update function. Just for fun I left it running while I wrote this post: around $1200 from 11 people over about 3 hours. In the last 6 months, they have made more than $2 million every month. The hype around Star Citizen, and the amount of money that some fans have spent on the game has also created a culture where any criticism is shot down in flames. Because they feel the need to justify their investment, these hyper fans go out of their way to defend any aspect of the game, including legitimate concerns about the direction the game is going, how long it is taking, and that CIG might be in over its head with what has been promised.

Even if Star Citizen fails, the Redeemer will remain one of my favourite
ship designs. Props to CIG for running the Next Great Spaceship competition.

Yet, despite all my misgivings, and as I mentioned in the start of this post, I really do want Star Citizen to succeed. Something about the idea of piloting a ship with friends in a persistent universe has captured my imagination. I want to explore a universe with a crew just like in the Constellation trailer. I want to ship cargo and fight off pirates like in the Freelancer trailer. There is no doubt in my mind that if Star Citizen actually somehow manages to live up to the hype, it will be remembered as one of the greatest games in history.

However, if it fails... if they don't deliver the product they've promised... it'll go down as the biggest internet scam in history.

As always,

GAME ON!

CCP Rise Comments on Eve's New Player Experience

Earlier this week, CCP Rise posted some interesting ideas regarding the new player experience of Eve Online on both Reddit and the Eve forums. In these posts, he posts an answer regarding the amount of skill points that a new player to Eve would start with:

Q: 'Starting skills are a huge barrier, can we give a lot more to new players'
A: Yes. But this is not a simple change. You guys seem fairly agreed that the small amount of starting skills, combined with a high amount of 'must have' support and requirement skills, leads to some really icky barriers to participation for new players. We are inclined to agree and we are in the process of laying out a plan to address the problem. Nothing is set in stone yet but it seems likely that we will try and move new players towards starting with significantly more SP. Maybe between 1 and 2 million. It also seems likely that we will probably avoid any major skill reworks or skill removals. As this plan solidifies you will hear more from us.

Finally, CCP is actually looking at doing something about the NPE that makes sense. Here's why I'm in love with this idea, and I genuinely believe it will make an impact to retaining new players in Eve.

Skills in Eve are all trained in real time, and depending on who you ask, this is either the best way to handle progression in an MMO, or the worst. Each skill has 5 levels, with each level taking more and more skill points to obtain, and thus more time. As a new player coming into Eve, you are confronted with a lot of choice, and freedom to do any number of things. However, nearly everyone agrees that there are a core set of skills that are extremely important to train:

• CPU Management: Gives a bonus 5% CPU per level
• Power Grid Management: Gives a bonus 5% power grid per level
• Capacitor Management: 5% bonus capacitor capacity per level
• Capacitor Systems Operation: 5% reduction in capacitor recharge time per level

Then you need skills to suit what type of tank your ship has, either Shield Management, Shield Compensation and Shield Operation, or Hull Upgrades, Mechanics and Repair Systems. In this time, nothing exciting, like guns, missiles or drones have been even thought about.

Granted, these skill trains are reasonably short, but I know from personal experience, during this time most new players will quit the game because they don't see any pay off for the time spent training these 'must have' skills. To put it frankly, it's boring to have to wait for all of this to train when all you want to do is blow stuff up because you're new to the game and lack the patience that veteran Eve players have developed.

The figure that CCP Rise gives of 1 - 2 million skill points would cut off around 2 months of training time, allowing for people to more quickly jump into the action. New players would no longer have to only be "hero tackle", essentially ships that dive in to hold other ships and then die because they can't handle the damage output of the enemy. They don't need to have the skills trained to 5, giving them even more skill points to play with, to make mistakes with.

To wrap all of this up, I honestly hope that CCP goes ahead with some variation of this plan, because I can only see this working in favour of new players, without giving older players advantages. Ignore the people who are saying that because they had to train skills, new players should have to as well. Do it!

As always,

GAME ON!

Batman Arkham Knight

Warner Bros, why did you have to outsource development of the PC port of Arkham Knight away from Rocksteady? You saw what happened to Arkham Origins right?

Arkham Knight was released yesterday on PC, and almost immediately users reported that the port was, to put it simply, terrible. Capped to 30 FPS and buggy to boot. Users also reported that you could uncap the frame lock with an edit to the config ini. However the game does not like running about 30 FPS, and would crash even more frequently after the change was made.

This isn't the first time an Arkham game has run terribly on PC. Arkham Origins had some massive issues on release, including one gameplay breaking bug that I encountered where you could not leave a room, forcing you to reload an earlier save. That port was made by Iron Galaxy Studios. Take a look at that list, and note the most recent entry. Sigh. I shouldn't be surprised, but I am. Rocksteady, who made the previous core Arkham games (including the PC ports), have generally released great products for PC gamers.

So as a PSA for anyone who reads this, don't buy Arkham Knight right now. If you did fall into the preorder trap, remember that Steam now has a refund option, and this is the exact sort of situation where using that option is the best course of action. Don't support publishers and devs who treat our platform like this. If they fix the game, then look at picking it up. I'll keep my eye on the situation as it develops.

EDIT 1: Apparently the port was developed by just 12 people from Iron Galaxy Studios.

EDIT 2: Further news points to the PC port almost being deliberately downgraded. An image showing the differences in rain textures between the PC port and the PS4 edition shows a crazy amount of difference. Rock Paper Shotgun also posted this video showing the PC version in all it's "glory".

I'm still showing restraint on the crazy theories about WB Games deliberately doing this. That said however, I doubt I'll be purchasing this game at all.

EDIT 3: There is a theory that Iron Galaxy Studios only had 8 weeks to port the game. It's only a theory, but could definitely explain where the issue started.

EDIT 4: Rocksteady have suspended future sales of the game on Steam, and made a post regarding the issues here.

As always,

GAME ON!

Kerbal Space Program Full Release

A little green man grips the controls in his space pod, firing the rocket engine on his lander to slow his descent to a moon. It's taken many attempts to get to this position, and all the practise has finally paid off. He lowers his landing gear, throttles the engine up, touches down gently... and the lander promptly falls over on its side, and the pod rolls down the hill to rest at the bottom of a crater. No matter, that's all par for the course in Kerbal Space Program.

It's still good right? (All pictures can be enlarged)

This isn't the first time I've written about KSP; there was a short piece on it as one of the first posts on the blog in 2013. I stopped playing KSP regularly after they added in the career mode to the alpha (October 2013), only taking a quick look at the asteroids in the April 2014 release. I didn't want to burn myself out on the game before it was actually released. Now it has been officially released and I've got to say, the game has really improved since the last time I played it.

The tech tree. Everything is unlocked from here.

When you first start up a game, you can now choose 3 different game types: sandbox, science mode, and career mode. Sandbox mode does exactly as advertised, allowing you to create unlimited rockets and aircraft with nothing locked away. It can be a little confusing being dropped into the game with so much to choose from, but for those of us who want to just mess around, sandbox is the place to be. Science mode is a slimmed down career mode, removing the need to manage money and reputation, but allowing you to progress through the tech tree at your own pace.

Career mode is essentially the story mode of the game, placing you in control of your very own space program. The goal is to explore the Kerbin system, a place that has 4 terrestrial planets, 1 gas giant, 2 dwarf planets, and 9 moons scattered around the various planets to explore. To do this, you launch rockets and fly planes, performing various science experiments to gain science points. These points can be used in the Research and Development facility to unlock various new parts that make exploring easier or unlock new experiments and ways to explore.

So many contracts, so little time.

Of course, nothing is free, so you have to manage the funds of your space program. Each part you put on a rocket has a cost associated, so keeping things simple and recovering as much of the rocket as possible is the best course if you find your program strapped for cash. However, even doing that can put your budget in the red. That's where the contract system comes in. Contracts are essentially goals for you to work toward, ranging from simple "test this part" goals to  complex "collect data from another planet" goals. Managing the reputation of your space program is important too. Killing the kerbals that man your ships or failing contracts makes your reputation take a hit, whereas completing contracts increases it. The higher your reputation, the better contracts you can get, giving you more money.

The release version gave us a whole host of added features and changes to the physics. Parts can overheat now, so ships require heat shields to safely come back down to Kerbin (the earth-like home planet of the kerbals), and getting too close to Kerbol (the sun of the system) will also cause parts to overheat. Survey scanners and mining drills allow you to exploit the ore found throughout the system to make fuel, allowing for the creation of refuelling bases out in space. Aerodynamics were also tweaked to be more realistic, with more streamlined designs actually flying faster and heating up slower. There are also now procedural fairings, allowing you to put a streamlined cover over the payload of a rocket to take advantage of the new aerodynamics.

This game has everything: Orbital mechanics, explosions, and more!

Unfortunately, at the time of writing, an update has caused some issues. Version 1.0.2 broke the aerodynamics in the game, making the air soupy and slowing down anything falling from orbit to the point where re-entry isn't as dangerous as it was previously. Overheating display bars also cause a memory leak, causing the used RAM to jump up into the 4gb range from around 2gb. Fortunately you can turn off these bars (hit F10), and the current aero doesn't really cause anything other than exposed batteries and solar panels to overheat to the point where they break. Update: Squad are aware of all these issues, and are working on them now. Also, when KSP is installed on a regular HDD the game takes an awful long time to load to the menu (I had it take around 4 minutes at one point), so I recommend installing it on an SSD to drop the load times down to around a minute.

Not shown, the GIANT rocket needed to get this to space.

All of the changes to Kerbal Space Program give it that finishing touch it needed to be a complete game. No longer just a physics sandbox, the game has direction now. My feelings for the game generally haven't changed. It's simple enough that anyone can built a basic rocket and launch it into the air, but complex enough that more experienced players can replicate entire space programs. Even failure in KSP is fun, for two reasons: you usually learn from it, and sometimes you get beautiful explosions. On the other hand, success in KSP leaves you feeling a sense of accomplishment that few games can. Even partial success situations like the one described at the beginning leave you grinning, and for me, an opportunity to plan the rescue mission for the stranded kerbal. I highly recommend it.

As always,

GAME ON!

Swing and a Miss: Valve and Bethesda's Paid Mods.

Modding is a cornerstone of PC gaming. Some of the most popular games in the world right now started as mods for other games: League of Legends, DotA 2 and Counter Strike to name a few. For some people, modding is one of the main reasons that they play games on a PC. So when Valve and Bethesda announced they would be trying out a system of paid mods for The Elder Scrolls Skyrim it was bound to ruffle some feathers.

For those of you who don't know, modding refers to modifications to an existing game. They can range from a simple tweak that changes small parts of the game, to a completely different game mode, like those mentioned at the start. The mods available for Skyrim range from unofficial patches that fix bugs, and SkyUi that fixes the issues with the default ui on PC, to visual upgrades, and complete companions with unique quest lines. They fix issues, add content, and are generally considered to increase the life span that a game has.

Valve's announcement was simply not taken well. At best there was unrest in the community, and as usual, the very worst of the community started with the death threats and general vitriol that we've all come to expect. Some modders were even against the idea of paid mods, and made their thoughts known in the Steam community forums. The final result? Well after four days of complaints from the community, Valve announced they were shelving the paid mods idea for Skryim, while still leaving the option wide open for them to try again with future games.

So why did the community react the way they did?

Of course, there is the obvious fact that people don't want to pay for something that was previously free. While some mods definitely are worthy of payment, most of them are tiny little things that people made for fun and decided to upload. There is also the report of a mod being pulled from Steam because it contained someone else's work without permission, adding to the idea that paid mods were just going to hurt the community.

The main justification for paid mods came down to supporting the mod authors, which in my opinion is completely fair. They did all the hard work, and by all accounts in situations where donation buttons were setup, they were rarely touched by those who used their mods. However as more information came to light about the exact model that Valve and Bethesda were using in the Workshop, that argument started to lose some weight. Bethesda disclosed that exact split of money from the sale of a mod was 30% to Valve, the standard cut Valve takes from all sales, and 45% to Bethesda, leaving only 25% to go to the mod creator. To many gamers, myself included, this seemed like Bethesda trying to profit from something they didn't work on.

There is another argument too. Skyrim without mods on PC has one of the worst UIs I have ever used, more bugs than you can shake a stick at, and the depth of a plate. Don't get me wrong, I love Skyrim. But I don't play it without the unofficial Skyrim patches, SkyUi and Live Another Life. I just can't. The thought of Bethesda profiting from those mods, mods that fix problems they still haven't fixed, feels wrong to me. It rewards Bethesda for releasing a buggy game, and encourages them to do it again.

Fortunately, mod authors seem to have rallied against Skyrim's paid mods. If that is because they don't want to face a backlash from the rest of the community, or because they truly feel that way remains to be seen. Valve will definitely be trying the paid mods route again in the future, so this is only the beginning. And if I'm honest with myself, I'm 100% against it. I don't mind paying full price for a game. I dislike DLC, but understand why it exists. But being forced to pay for a community made mod, especially when the vast majority of money goes to a developer who put nothing into that mod is not something I ever want to see. For me, donation buttons where the mod creator gets the lions share of the money would be ideal.

As always,

GAME ON!