Ramblings about crap in my life.
Gaming
Mini-review of Sniper: Ghost Warrior
Jun 28th
I rarely write about games in here, but when I do it’s usually because I’ve been annoyed by one, and that is also the case today. I got interested in this game after watching the E3 walkthrough video, so I decided to give it a go. Now, when I think “sniper game” the gameplay element “stealth” comes to mind. I would expect a game where full frontal assaults are not advisable, where you get in, take out your target, and get out. Well, that is not the case in Sniper: Ghost Warrior. In your first mission you are supposed to take out a general, you line up your shot, shoot, and for some reason you don’t hit and everything goes to hell. The general escapes, and now you have to hunt him down. And this is where it starts go down hill, because instead of chasing the guy by hiding in the jungle, you’re told to assault the base he’s no longer in. With a sniper rifle. First I thought I’d just stay in my position and take out all of the enemies, but for some reason they have no problem hitting you from across the base, while you’re hiding in the mountains, with regular, unscoped assault rifles. So yes, you’re forced to jump into the base and try to gun down everyone, not very sniper-like.
And on top of that the game is littered with annoying design decisions and bad implementations of these. For example, if you choose the hard difficulty, you have to account for wind and distance to your target. This intrigued me and looked interesting in the mentioned video, but the problem is that you are not told how to properly do this. You can see the distance to your target and the wind strength, but there is no way to know how much you’re supposed to move your crosshair, you simply have to guess. When playing on easy and medium you get a small, red dot, which indicates where the bullet actually hits, but I’ve found this dot to be very imprecise.
My First Foray into Strategy Board Games
Apr 10th
There’s something very fascinating about board games that successfully envelop you in fictional universes in a way that’s usually reserved to computer games and movies. Twilight Imperium is the first big strategy board game I’ve tried, and it did just that. Yes, it takes several hours just to set up and get into, but when you’re there it’s very entertaining and actually not very complicated. Ten races make up the game, and in the duration of a single turn you set up trade agreements, vote on political issues, gain technology, increase your fleet size, invade and capture planets, fight space battles and much more. One game consists of 10 turns, which didn’t sound like much to me, but when we stopped playing after 10 hours, at 6 in the morning, we weren’t even halfway there.
Setting up the game and getting into the rules, which took us about 2 hours.
Under way!
Moving units.
This was near the end of the game, a lot of units and battles, but we were just too tired to continue.
Army of Two is a turd
Oct 21st
Army of Two is a third-person shooter focusing on cooperative strategies, which is what kind of peaked my interest. Now I’ve been playing the co-op campaign with my roommate for about six hours, and I have no idea how we made it that far. This game has so many unforgivable mistakes. First of all, it’s centered around an aggro/invisibility-system, where one player takes aggro and the other player flanks. This doesn’t really work, and most of the time it’s easier to just rush and spray. Then you try to save, but the system feels like it should load the game a campaign earlier before that long cut scene you had already seen but still can’t skip. What still held us mildly hooked was the weapon system, making it possible to buy more weapons and upgrades. But after playing for two hours we could already buy the biggest weapons in the game, just in time to realize they were totally useless. Who the hell wants to run around with a minigun or a huge grenade launcher when the cheap AK-47 is much more effective? And then there’s the fucking AI. The enemy soldiers act like they’re on speed and spent most of their time jumping over crates to run right past you. Finally you have these ridiculous back-to-back sequences where you stand, you guessed it, back-to-back and have to shoot some bad guys in slow-motion. This happens whenever the two players are in a particularly tight spot, because standing in the middle of nowhere is the most efficient way to kill people. The worst part; this game has a 74% rating on Metacritic.
Focusing and Freelancing
Mar 28th
I’m going to a focus group at Danish video game company IO Interactive, this wednesday. My friend Simon works there, as a game tester, and he forwarded a mail about it. It’s gonna take 2-3 hours, and I think it’ll be a lot of fun. I’m also about to organize focus groups at school, as part of our semester project, so it’ll be nice to see how the pros do it.
I’ve also been freelancing for SDI Media for a while. They make language dubbing, translations, subtitling, etc. for clients like Sony, Fox, Warner Bros., and Paramount. I’m translating subtitles, and that’s really all I can say, they didn’t make me sign a 5 page confidentiality agreement for nothing.
Oh yeah, my Macbook is making weird creaking sounds when I move my hand around, on the left side, so I probably have to have it replaced. Crap.
Left 4 Dead Versus Gameplay Tips
Jan 12th
I’m highly addicted to Valve’s latest hit, Left 4 Dead, but instead of writing what I think about the game, I thought about describing some things me and my friends have found to work out very nice when playing Versus. This is directed towards the No Mercy campaign, since I haven’t played Blood Harvest much.
Infected
Hunter
- Don’t crouch until necessary, when crouched the survivors can hear you shriek.
- You can walljump by lunging at walls, then do a 180 degree turn, and jump again. You can also lunge at walls at a more acute angle, like this guy.
- If you land on a survivor from a long distance, you do more damage.
Smoker
- Get up high.
- When attacking from rooftops, which you should mainly do, don’t stand at the edge, it’s very easy to see you there.
Boomer
- You are slow, have low health and a short range. Ambush the survivors, e.g. by jumping from a rooftop into their midst.
Tank
- Hit someone until they are incapacitated, then go to your next target.
- Hit cars to increase the Control meter.
Witch & Cars
If you’re playing againt beginners, it’s rather easy to trick them into startling the witch and hitting the cars with alarms. Just stand right behind the witch or cars, make sure you get the attention of the survivors, and then hope they don’t have pro aim skills.
Shortcuts, Tips, etc.
A pretty standard, but effective, strategy is also the most obvious one; gang up with the entire team, usually 1 Boomer, 1 Smoker and 2 Hunters. Wait for the survivors, vomit on them when they appear and sacrifice yourself as boomer if you don’t hit more than 2, blinding them, and then attack in the ensuing chaos.
The following deals with the places we usually gang up and wait for the survivors, when I play.
Chapter 1: The Apartments
1. Hole
The first bottleneck is on the 2nd Floor, where survivors jump down through the hole. Since they can’t go back up and help their friend(s) this is a good spot to try and catch survivors after their friends jump down. This requires a lot of timing, but it is so sweet when you succeed.
2. Streets
Next spot is on the streets, near the stairs to the savehouse. There’s a perfect spot for Smokers here, you can crawl into a 2nd Floor apartment overlooking the stairs to the safehouse, and the entire street outside. You get there by crawling into the window, next to the big truck, at the road’s corner. From here you can catch survivors running down to the safehouse and those battling in the streets. At the same time you have pretty good cover compared to the rooftops. While the Smoker is in here the rest should be on the ground trying to get the survivors to hit the cars and/or the witch.
Chapter 2: The Subway
1. Start
It’s possible to get a good attack in the beginning of the map. Quickly spawn under or near the savehouse, and make a quick attack when they run out. If one or two guys runs to the right, you may be able to seperate them when they jump down the shaft.
2. Subway Tunnels
It’s easy to get seperated and confused down here, the standard attack with all four players seems to be fairly succesful down here.
Chapter 3: The Sewers
1. Truck Parking Lot
This is a great area for Infected, there are two options depending on the action of the survivors:
1A. The Lift
If the survivors take the lift, get a Smoker to drag a survivor down from the roof, and get your Boomer to vomit on him.
1B. The Door
If the survivors break through the door on the landing bay, you can get your Hunters and Boomer on the inside of the door, and a Smoker outside. When they break through drag one player away and surprise the other from the inside.
Chapter 4: The Hospital
1. Room With Half-Circle Fence
This is the big room reached when you run up the first staircase. The survivors need to run through it, go up stairs, and then run along a landing. Before they reach the room go to the landing and break the fence. Then a Smoker can pull a survivor down, while the rest of the team attacks together.
Chapter 5: Rooftop Finale
1. Rooftop
Immediately run to the elevator shaft, and crawl up on the roof. Put your Smoker on the nearby roof with the satelite dish, put the rest on the roof. Hunters should not crouch, since the survivors will hear you. Go to the edge of the roof, because there may be incoming molotovs. When the survivors climb up the Smoker pulls the first guy over the edge, hopefully killing him, and the rest smash the shit out of the other survivors.
Survivors
Two simple rules: Stick together, and move fast. Especially when you spawn, grab a health bag and a weapon (this fills your ammo), and rush out the door before the Special Infected get set up. Also, take note of how many Special Infected you kill, i.e. if you kill three you know that you have 15-30 seconds with only normal zombies and one Special Infected as opponents, so rush.
Shortcuts, Tips, etc.
Chapter 1: The Apartments
None found.
Chapter 2: The Subway
1. Big Basement Room
This is the room you reach after leaving the subway tunnels. The standard strategy here seems to be throwing a pipe bomb inside and rush through the room afterwards.
2. 2nd Floor “Safe Room”
After waiting for the gate to open, you run upstairs to a room with ammo. There’s a shortcut here, when you run out of this room go straight ahead instead of taking the stairs, bash the window out and jump down, into the garbage on the street. If you hit the garbage, you don’t lose health.
Chapter 3: The Sewers
1. Garage
If you run through the room right outside of the savehouse you’ll reach a garage, sometimes the good weapons are here.
2. Truck Parking Lot
In the parking lot you’re supposed to take the lift to the roof, but there’s an easier way. If you take the lift you risk getting pulled down by Smokers, instead go to the far left of the landing dock, there’s a gate here that can be destroyed, so hit that left trigger. Inside go right, and then right again, not up the stairs.
Chapter 4: The Hospital
None found.
Chapter 5: Rooftop Finale
When you reach the radio, stay inside the room. Smokers can’t drag you out of the windows, and it’s hard for Hunters to jump inside. When the tanks arrive run outside and have him chase you around while your friends hopefully shoot at him.
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