Author: Sonic Rob

Sonic Rob Has Bad Taste In Games – Last Stand

Is she gone? Cool. Let me duck briefly out of my deep-in-the-middle-of-crunch real-live-software-job and offer my perspective on the new DoW2 mode that’s coming out any minute now, if not sooner.

When did survival modes become the new light bloom? Seriously, it’s an interesting gamestyle, and it gives video games a sort of old-school charm, but it isn’t an absolute necessity. More to the point, it doesn’t automatically turn your game into Gears of War 2/Left 4 Dead/ODST/World at War/The Big-Budget Flavor of the Week. I haven’t seen it done in an RTS before Last Stand, but I never saw a time rewinding mechanic shoehorned into an RTS back when those were all the rage either, and I don’t feel like we’re missing anything.

I have to admit that I’m excited about getting equippable wargear with more stats and effects. It’s nice to see that leveling up between games will actually have a point now. But I wonder how they chose the 3 heroes they did, and why there’s no Tyranid character. Also, new race? I haven’t been able to play yet. Has anyone? Is it a palate-whetting taste of Chaos, or something else?

I also kinda like that Last Stand looks to be an online co-op mode, unless I’ve completely misunderstood it. That is something that I haven’t seen enough of in my games. More to the point, Dow2’s single-player co-op mode (oxymoronic, sure, but you know what I mean) was an absolute bitch to get going; trying to start that up with Fyre and slog through has resulted in the closest thing to a regular LAN party situation I’ve been involved in since the Clinton administration. If Last Stand works well via GFWL, it’d be very nice to see that networking functionality patched backwards into the co-op campaign. The least I’m hoping for is to see GFWL campaign co-op in Chaos Rising.

I was working on my map today at lunch when all of my save files starting crashing the World Builder. At first I was horrified at the thought that all of my work had somehow been corrupted. Now I’m hoping to Khorne that the World Builder was just screwed up by the update downloading or something. I’ll be pissed if I have to start this thing over.

Finally, I’m a bit appalled at how Relic is trying to characterize Last Stand as a faster, more arcade-style game experience. DoW2 wasn’t fast-paced enough?I can barely keep up with regular Dow play, and now they’ve made a more-arcadey mode? Fork me, there’s no way in hell I’m going to be doing anything but thrashing around like a 3-year old playing Street Fighter. I fear this thing.

-ssr

Chat Box

Sonic Rob: you know what I want?
Sonic Rob: I want a web 2.0 site
Sonic Rob: that spies on my Steam games list and XBL
Sonic Rob: and automatically downloads demo’s of games that I might like based on that
Sonic Rob: like a gaming TIVO
FyreHaar: G-IVO
Sonic Rob: yeah!
Sonic Rob: Call it Alfred
Sonic Rob: “your Brutal Legend demo, sah”
FyreHaar: ahh, thank you, Alfred
Sonic Rob: of course, sah. Can I fetch you a brandy, your comfy slippers, and a small fan to keep your controller sweat-free?

Dear Michael C. Hall

In re the Season 4 premiere of Dexter, the show you co-executive produce: Congratulations! Quick question: you managed to bring John Lithgow onto the cast for this season. He spends all of his screen time in the season premiere butt-ass naked. 2 seasons ago you gave us Keith “Ha, I bet you thought Wild Bill would be around longer than that” Carradine’s pale, quivering rump roast without any reciprocity from co-star Jennifer Carpenter who, to be fair, is now your wife.

So: what’s with all the middle-aged man-ass on your show?

-ssr

In Which Our Heroes Converse re: Souls, Demonic

Sonic Rob: did you read what Tycho was saying about Demon’s Souls, this RPG where you can die and then be summoned by other online players?
Sonic Rob: that sounds kinda no fun
FyreHaar: I like that being dead is just another kind of existence
Sonic Rob: but I don’t want to do what other players tell me
Sonic Rob: I mean, maybe if I can become some barely-controlled force
Sonic Rob: and they just point me at the bad guys and let me have at ’em
Sonic Rob: that could be ok
Sonic Rob: but I don’t want to be told, “ok, now you attack”
Sonic Rob: I don’t want to watch someone else play my guy, you know?
FyreHaar: yeah
FyreHaar: I think you are like caspar the friendly ghost
Sonic Rob: see, I want to be like friggin’ Samara from the Ring
Sonic Rob: like curse someone with a bad case of me and lemme go to work on ’em
FyreHaar: that would be awesome
Sonic Rob: and then give me a whole type of play where I chase you around scaring the bejesus out of you and being indestructible
Sonic Rob: I mean, make it fair
Sonic Rob: like I can only come out of TVs, or I’m slow or something

Call of Holy Crap is That Gonna Be In The Game?

The new Call of Duty 4 2 (or whatever the hell you call this game) trailer is pretty amazingly epic. Gotta admit, I was kinda taken aback at first. Don’t watch it if you care about story spoilers, because it looks like they’re blowing the whole plot open in this one:

Continue reading Call of Holy Crap is That Gonna Be In The Game?

Film Century 1.5 – 100th Film Gala Extravaganza!

Eh, I got nothin’.

Sep. 25 Surrogates – With the help of a poor man’s Jack Black and that creepy face-smoothing technology they used on Patrick Stewart in X-Men 2, Bruce Willis will murder the Internet to save his family! 97/150
Sep. 26 Whip It – Sports Movie XVII: You’re A Big Fat Pedophile, Rob. 98/150
Sep. 29 Paris – Something between fragmented and shattered. 99/150
Oct. 2 Zombieland – God bless Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg for inventing the single best genre of films ever conceived. 100/150

Chat Box

Sonic Rob: have you followed this goofy American Police Force story? The private security guys that bought a prison in Montana?
Sonic Rob: they track cheating spouses, do “covert pregnancy tests” and sell duffle bags and nuclear weapons
Sonic Rob: or claim to, anyhow
Sonic Rob: sounds to me like a Soldier of Fortune subscriber won the lottery and wrote up a very silly business plan
Sonic Rob: oh, and the CEO is a con artist from Montenegro
FyreHaar: yeah, it’s a scam
FyreHaar: who’s gonna file a fraud claim when the WMD they paid for over the internet doesn’t come in
Sonic Rob: LOL
Sonic Rob: Khaddafi’s there reading his email, wondering where his nuke is, and when that Nigerian finance minister’s widow will get back to him

A Quick Question for Peter Molyneux

Peter Molyneux has given an interview with Edge Online wherein he talks about the decision to re-release Fable II as an episodic download, with the first 45-minute “episode” available for free:

Now, I hate demos. I think demos are the death knell of experiences. Over the years I’ve done demos and they’ve either completely ruined the game, given too much to the player, or they’ve confused people, so I said that we should give away the very first 45 minutes of the game, completely free, and just before you get to Bowerstone up comes this message saying, ‘If you want to continue playing press this button, but if you want to buy the rest of the game, press this’. So people that are interested but don’t want to commit to the full purchase can play more, and people that are into it can buy all of it, and they don’t lose experience or gold they’ve collected.

So, uh, Pete. How is that not a demo? Maybe you and I are using definitions of demo from different sides of the Atlantic or something, but last I checked, a game demo was a brief taste of the entire game that allows you to try it out and see if you want to buy the whole thing. I’ll grant that you may have streamlined the process a bit (letting people buy the product from within the demo? slick!), but what you’re describing here? A 45-minute experience that ends with a tease to get you to buy more of the game? That’s a demo, buddy.

45 minutes. Come on, man. I can get longer “episodes” of Mad Men.

-ssr

Ordo Cartographicus – Map Sizes

Another quick info-dump of Relic’s map specifications. This time we’re tossing out the sizes for all maps as of There Is Only War. You’ll notice that there are two sets of sizes listed. The first is the size of the playable area, which is obviously the part of the map where HQs and resources can be located and the limits of where units are able to move. The terrain area (or whatever it’s called) is the actual size of all of the 3-d terrain that’s visible in-game; this has to be bigger than the playable area so that when you scroll to the edge of the map you aren’t looking off into the void.

You can use the sizes given to get a rough idea of just how big to make your map; if you want the time to get to the middle of the map to be about like it is in Angel Gate, for instance, make your map’s playable area 416×416. Note that map size is just a start; Calderis Refinery has one of the biggest playable areas in the game, but still feels cramped to me because of the way it vigorously funnels units around the map.

As a rough rule, I’d say pick a playable area size, then multiply that by 1.5 to get a usable terrain area size. You can go bigger with terrain area size if you want to put in a lot of details outside the playable area; see Argus Desert Gate or Angel Gate for some interesting examples. Seriously, does Angel Gate need all those burning buildings our in the city area past the gate? Can anyone even see those?

1v1 Maps Playable Area Terrain Area
Green Tooth Gorge 256×288 512×544
Siwal Frontier 256×256 384×384
Calderis Refinery 448×448 800×800
Legis High Stratum 320×384 672×768
Leviathan Hive 448×256 832×448
Outer Reaches 256×256 384×384
Green Tooth Jungle 352×320 512×512
 
2v2 Maps Playable Area Terrain Area
Calderis Refinery 448×448 800×800
Medean Cliff Mines 384×384 512×512
Golgotha Depths 320×320 576×576
Ruins of Argus 256×256 544×512
 
3v3 Maps Playable Area Terrain Area
Angel Gate 416×416 544×544
Typhon Arena 384×384 544×544
Argus Desert Gate 320×480 640×800
Calderis Refinery 448×448 800×800
Tiber Outpost 512×512 640×640
Capital Spire 256×416 384×544
Siccaris Plateau 416×448 768×800

Ante Carto, Nullum Mundus