BANned?

LSTAR: Last night Blizzard, of Diablo and assorted Craft fame, came out with one of the most baffling statements I've seen in a long time. It seems that Starcraft II, the second iteration in the insanely popular sci-fi RTS series, will be dropping LAN support. What's that? LAN support? You need support for a LAN!?

Yup, it seems that when SCII launches at some as yet undisclosed time in the next year, multiplay will only be possible via Blizzard's revamped Battle.net system.

Wow. I'd never really thought of LAN play as a feature, it's just always been there. Ever since Doom we've had the opportunity to bring together a cluster of computers together and let the good times roll.

Now one game, albeit a blockbuster, isn't going to be that much of a big deal to most people. The scary thing is that the decision makes a hell of a lot of sense, and could easily become that much more common in the future.

The big appeal of the LAN, at least other than having all your buddies there beside you for easy access goading (mileage may vary depending on friend quality...), was that in the dark ages of 56k and 28.8k modems, you weren't relying on bouncing (relatively slow) signals to your friends, waiting for the reply and generally being pissed off by the devil Lag. Connection was fast and smooth in a way we never dreamt the internet could provide. These days, with more and more of my acquaintances getting 20Mb and even faster internet connections this is becoming less and less of an issue. We were able to have a quite comfortable 4 man game of Team Fortress on an internet server a while back with no noticeable issues.

The real issue, at least in Blizzard's corporate perspective, is the ever-present scourge of Piracy (Yarrrrr!). When the Ethernet cables go in and internet goes off, anything goes. Phone-home scripts have no where to call, CD key checks are easily spoofed and there is next to no evidence. While normally a fairly clean-cut, straight edge digital denizen, I'll admit on numerous occasions to sharing around a full game on a memory stick. To me it's not much different to syncing an extra controller to my 360. Just adding another player into a game I own and have payed good money to enjoy. And on quite a few occasions it's even convinced people to buy games I'm sure they'd never have considered without the gratuitous taster of a free copy. But, of course, I'm pretty certain Blizzard don't see it that way... To most sales execs, anyone playing a borrowed copy is someone who won't be handing over money at a till any time soon. Something they, whether correctly or incorrectly, want to avoid.

Connecting through Battle.net will of course mean that every player will need not only a directory full of ones and zeros, but a genuine, unique CD key to play. Somehow I find it hard to believe that some of my less PC savvy friends will be able to justify the expense of a game they may play once a month at best...

But it is an interesting situation. Play an RPG and you hardly expect everyone to pick up a Player's Guide; pay for cable and you hardly expect to be charged extra to let your friends come over and watch a movie... Less and less now are we treating videogames as "products" and more as "licenses to use services". How far is too far?

Great job Blizzard. It seems you may have taken a damn good shot at killing off one of the best parts of Freebooting. Playing the damn games.

Well, I suppose for as long as it takes for Razor or some other bunch of aspiring "info-terrorists" to rig up a working keygen...

What're You Buying?

LSTAR: As you've probably seen, Sehane at the moment is a bit of a General Interest blog. By which I mean, we write about things we find generally interesting without any real sense of focus.

Not that we pay much attention to criticism (hey, that's our job!) I thought it might be prudent to ask you folks what you want us to focus on.



And yes, you may vote for multiple categories.

Missed Playing Resident Evil on the PS1?

LSTAR: Great! Now you don't have to, thanks to this hi-definition/hi-fidelity remake!

Dan Deacon - Bromeister

"I've Been Wrong So Many Times Before - But Never Quite Like This."

LSTAR: Dan Deacon has always been a favourite of mine ever since Spiderman of the Rings found its way into my CD Drive. So far, Bromst - his latest effort - hasn't disappointed, mixing the classic elements of his previous work with a hitherto undisplayed maturity. Wheras Spiderman was very much an Ode to Playtime and Milk and Cookies, Bromst, while keeping the fun jungley jingles and overall insanity, shows a much more complex side to Deacon. Richer, more organic and ultimately more listenable.

Also, the fact that people can now overlay their comments on the actual videos on YouTube is as exciting as it is sickening. A new venue for expression, a new venue for people to ruin...

SteamWatch - Zeno Clash and Dark Messiah

LSTAR: This week's Steam Deals (Steals?) are two flawed favourites from the Archives of Sehane. While arguably not worth the full entrance fee, with 50% off on both titles they should become a lot more appealing to even the most cynical of reader...

On the one hand, Zeno Clash, the jewel of Chile's game development scene, an insane romp through a prehistoric world via the medium of kicking, punching and stomping. It feels very much like a cross between a modern shooter and one of the sidescrolling classics of the 90s like Streets of Rage or Double Dragon. At £7.49, while not an essential purchase it should be considered, especially if you find the possibility of kneeing an Elephantman in face even slightly tempting. The newly released (free) DLC also helps to lessen the painful briefness of it all.

On the other, fantastically grim fantasy action courtesy of Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. Leaving its dusty RPG roots behind, Dark Messiah is an all Kicking all Stabbing action-game with nary a dice-roll in sight. Fun and compelling virtually the whole way through (with the exception of the Goddamn Evil Spiders...)At £3, this source-powered gem is an absolute steal and I'd be hard pressed not to recommend it to anyone. Easily amongst the top 5 games I played last year, Metacritic be damned.

Buy it. Now. Twice.

Sehane Review Here.

Layar - Reality, Augmented.

LSTAR: In my steady march towards renaming this the "Things that are Kinda Like Shadowrun Blog", this caught my eye. An Augmented Reality system deigned for Andoroid-powered mobile-phones and (soon) the iPhone 3GS. Through a mixture of GPS, Electronic Compass, Internet and Camera technologies, items of interest are highlighted on your camera's view by AROs (Augmented Reality Objects), with more information available with a touch.

While this demo seems mostly focused on real estate (and who isn't focused on real estate?) the Application can cover Bars, Hotels, Restaurants and pretty much anything else worth adding to the database. Although the currently released edition only covers the Netherlands, "Layars" for other countries, including America and Britain, are promised by the end of the year.

Although staring into your mobile might seem like an impractical way to get around town (not that most of us don't do this anyway already...), this could make for a perfect excuse to ditch those tourist guides further afield. And hey, it can't be long now until true Optical Implants...

iEye... I can see it now...

GameWatch: Prototype Review

LSTAR: This week I got Prototype. This week I finished Prototype. That should tell you two key facts off the bat: It's very compelling, but oh so very short. While such a short campaign would be easier to forgive in Corridor Shooter X, in a free-roaming game like Prototype, isn't 70% of your time spent travelling from place to place anyway? I guess it's in Prototype's favour then that transport is so well done. A little like Assassin's Creed, if Altair was able to fly and didn't have to worry about falling off things...

Loved

That's a lot of... "Fisting" action...: With 5 biological forms of hand-to-hand (or tentacle-to-hand) combat, not to mention an array of handheld weaponry, there's no shortage of ways to make yourself felt on the shifting battlefields of New York City. From the slow and heavy Hammerfists to the lithe, lethal Blade it's easy to find a favourite. Although I settled into using the awesome Whipfists for most situations, the fact that the game kicks in a burst of slowmo upon opening the radial Powers Menu makes it easy to mix things up when the circumstances demand it.



The Venn Diagrams of War: As the game goes on, the two factions occupying NYC move their areas of influence, based in part on your actions. Reduce a Marine staging point to rubble? Chances are the boys in khaki aren't going to be securing the Upper West Side any time soon. Light up an Infected Hive with a thermobaric device and soon there'll be tanks running roughshod over disease ridden corpses. Some of the best scenes in the game occur when the two factions' areas of influence overlap. Soldiers, mutants, monsters, tanks, helichoppers get to it, while civilians flee and you take advantage of the distraction.

Man-Glider: One of Mercer's most useful and awe-inspiring powers is his ability to glide. While not capable of true flight, running vertically up the side of a skyscraper, leaping off the top and swooping to your destination, bouncing from rooftop to rooftop like some sort of urban flying squirrel is almost better.


Close to Home: Even with all the virulent imagery and state brutality, the most disturbing thing is watching pedestrians walk through central park and blocks of traffic honk their way through rush hour when barely five blocks away, in a neighbouring district, you can hear the sound of frantic gunfire. After all, how close would we let a pandemic come before taking notice?

How... Intriguing: The Web of Intrigue is a very interesting way of letting the player unravel the story of Prototype. While, in function it's not too different to the Journal Entries that have been cluttering up corridors with prevailing frequency since they appeared in Bioshock, the WoI has a much stronger flavour. With Mercer's ability to consume enemies, both body and soul, it makes tremendous sense for him to investigate his predicament by snatching persons of interest from the street. In any case, these mobile memory banks make a Hella lot more sense than assuming that everyone of importance will pour their hearts and souls into a diary any could stumble across... Oh wait.

These Times, They Are A Changin': It's also interesting just watching the City change over the course of the campaign. Seeing increasing numbers of soldiers patrolling the safer districts, propaganda posters ("Do YOU Know The Signs?") being pasted over adverts for TV shows and perfumes, then being defaced when people realize that the closest thing to a cure is a Tactical Nuclear Missile.

Hated

Haven't I Seen you Round Here Before?: For a game that's supposed to be about a dynamically evolving super-virus there's a disturbing lack of variation. Pedestrians are decently mixed (not that you ever pay much attention to them) with a variety of ethnicities and styles, but the meat of your enemies, the Military forces have less than a dozen different models, the Infected only 3 or 4. It's really is hard to see why Radical didn't just alter the existing civilian models for their Infected counterparts.

Deja Vu Demolitions: Bizarrely, while Marine Outposts and Infected Hives move across the city throughout the campaign, they always, without fail, settle in the same type of building. It's a real shame that with all the sky-scrapers, warehouses, sports stadiums and apartment blocks in Manhattan that the Infection always infests the same, dull, squat building. Always.

Fightin' Der Final Boss: The final boss is, well...
A: Frankly Unnecessary.
B: A Repetition of a Previous Boss.
C: Set Against a Timer.
D: Barely a fifth the size of the boss that came before it.
It's hard to think of any Golden Rules it doesn't break...

The villain's gambit is also faintly ridiculous...
Villain: "Don't kill me! Only I know the code for the missile!"
Mercer: "I can eat people to learn what they know!"
Villain: "Oh no! A Big monster!"
Mercer: "Let's fight!"


All in all, Prototype is an immensely enjoyable experience. Any technical or design quibbles are quickly swept under the carpet when you realize just how much power the game is offering you. By the end of the campaign you're swatting helicopters like flies, taking out entire squads of infantry with a single sweep of you fists and sending people flying like ten-pins just by running past them. While the Web of Intrigue does provide a bit of extra content, longevity will still be the deciding point for most people. That is, people who aren't already completely sold on becoming a cross between Wolverine, The Hulk and the Common Cold.

Care to nitpick?

Scribblenauts: Child-friendly Badassery?

Scribblenauts at IGN.com

Shed: Sorry for the hiatus, folks, been too busy playing games to write about 'em!

So here's Scribblenauts, a new puzzle/action/platformer from 5th Cell, to be released later this year on DS. The concept behind the game is that "anything you write, you can use". So with the DS stylus, you can write the name of an object, and it will spawn: you can then place it where you want in the game world and it will behave as it would in real life (or in fiction as the case may be.) The aim is to collect Mario-esque stars to complete the 200+ stages and challenges the game contains, in any way your imagination can think of.

The example in this E3 demo is one of the most badass things I've ever seen:

He makes Cthulhu. He makes God. He gives god a skateboard. And a shotgun. He makes them fight (to make it an... even battle?!) I'd be incredibly worried if a kid put in "Cthulhu", but seriously... Awesome? Yes.

Boycott Left 4 Dead?

LSTAR: In the time following its announcement, there's been some negative sentiment building up about the impending Left 4 Dead 2. I'm going to write a bit more at length about what I think went wrong, at some point, but I'm in a bit of a hurry today, so I'll let Boycott Hitler handle your enlightenment.

Kawa-E3 - Mindthinks

LSTAR: Just finished watching this E3's Microsoft Conference. So. Much. Stuff.

Shadow Complex - Looks like a great "Epic" mix of Castlevania, Bionic Commando and Spelunky!

Splinter Cell - Looks okay. Never been a fan of the series, but the way they present information on the world is so goddamn stylish!

Modern Warfare 2 - Really. Long. Climbing Sequence. I don't know... It looks polished and pretty and everything, but something about this whole franchise recently has been rubbing me the wrong way. I loved Cod1 for its freshness even after so much Medal of Honor. For the way it made you feel vulnerable. Just another mug in a fancy uniform. I still haven't quite got used to the Cockney wiseguys fighting infinite waves of respawning Russians with Ice-Pick-Fu.

Left 4 Dead 2 - !!!!!!!!!! (Plus, who the Hell are these Hicks!?) P.S. That better be a Southern Gentleman at the end there!

Halo: ODST + Reach - ODST looks like your standard run and gun adventure, but with a plot a little closer to Medium than Halo. Wandering through a dying city, stumbling upon significatn objects lets you relive the experiences of the soldiers who came before you. Odd.
Reach is, I'm guessing, the new MMOFPS project in disguise.

Final Fantasy XIII - One of the things I liked about VII when I was replaying it recently was the way it merged battles with storytelling at some points. This looks to take it a country mile further, seamlessly springing from CGI to ATB and back again. Plus, incredibly shiny.

Alan Wake - Finally, after so long it looks like it's just around the corner, dated for Spring of 0'10. I like the way you have to melt the Shadow-shield away with your flashlight. And the narration. And the flares. And the whole "Previously Seen On American TV" style. The Axe-tossing villagers (Mountain bandits? 20th Century time-travellers? I don't know...) reminds me a lot of Resi 4.

Hideo Kojima - The Hideo Kojima on stage with the Microsoft Reps? Too good to be true? Maybe. Looks like we won't be getting MGS 4, but a new entry in the franchise called Rising. Raiden looks to play a starring, and the new tagline "Lightning Bolt Action" probably hints at a change of pace from Old Man Snake's sneaky sneaking. I predict lots of jumping about, slow-motion and slashing metal things in half with swords.

Natal - Prenatal, postnatal, Project Natal... I'm about 50/50 over whether that was futuristic Wizardry or a pile of Marketing Bullhocky. The Attractive Teens (tm) in the advert didn't help much, but the live demonstrations... Other than some strange contortion in the Avatars, the live demonstrations looked like this could even work... Looks like Microsoft could be about to show Ninty where to stick that Wiimote.
Well, except that "Milo" bit. To me, that looks like pure Molyneux Bullhocky, but I wouldn't mind being proven wrong.


And that was the first presentation...

Men on the Cheap. Again.

LSTAR: I didn't make anywhere near enough fuss last time Men of War was on sale. This time round, in celebration of GamersGate's recent redesign, MoW is 60% off, bringing it down to a quite reasonable £10. Time to set things straight...

Sequel to one of my favourite RTSs of all time, Soldiers: Heroes of WW2, MoW is a repackaging of some of the more recent entries in Russia's Outfront series of tactical RTSs, adding more units, maps and general gleam. MoW's genius is that it doesn't have to resort to "Experimental" and speculative units to make its encounters interesting. Through a mix of physics, environmental destruction and direct unit control MoW makes even the most derivative of Tank battles into a tense and entertaining thrill ride.

Men of War ups the ante on its predecessors in almost every way imaginable; better AI, visuals, writing, more units for each of the 4(5) factions; America, Britain, Russia and Germany (along with Japan, when the next patch hits). The only feature that really lacks compared to Soldiers is the voice acting. In Soldiers, units spewed out relatively convincing drivel that's so hilariously out of place it really deserves a post all of its own. In MoW the accents make it hard to take even the best prepared briefing seriously. It's as if the Quality of writing is weighted against the Quality of voice acting on some kind of ridiculous aural see-saw...

The real star of the show is Direct control, allowing you to swoop down and take on the roll of almost anything on the battlefield, from a 300mm artillery piece, to a humble rifleman or even a fighter plane. Although still seen from overhead, the controls become more like the WASD of an FPS than the click and drag of an RTS, hijacking the AI and changing the course of a battle by  nailing a perfect shot or cutting off an enemy retreat. Or, incompetantly driving over a mine and flattening a charging line of friendly infantry.

The environmental and physics effects are also more like those seen in modern shooters than any RTS. Ice cracks sending tanks sinking into the depths, fire spreads from house to house in cramped villages while explosive shells flip halftracks on their sides and turn infantry into paste. The game is also meticulously detailed with hundreds of different units and vehicles. Heck. There's 7 variations of the SdKfz alone... With the depth of research that's clearly gone into MoW, it really makes you wonder how the team let it go on sale with such an uninspiring name. But then, 1C seem to have made this their specialty in recent years...

I should probably add here that the GamersGate version uses StarForce DRM. Unlike 90% of the blogger community, I really don't give a piss. If it bothers you that much, run a SF Removal tool. Or, ya' know, deprive yourself.

To close, if you only buy one bizarrely esoteric RTS on my say so this year, make it this one.

Snaaaaaaaaake!

LSTAR: !

Kojima's teaser site for his upcoming project has began flashing a most handsome mug! This, along with other flashing symbols could spell an inbound MGS5 or another PSP instalment, depending on how you interpret it.

So we know it's going to be Metal Gear... But what form will it take? Guess we'll find out in 100 hours.

Also, the Badge on the Beret reads "Militares Sans Frontier". Saucy!

Mad Cat vs T36/85

LSTAR: It's not so long ago I was thinking to myself, "Hey, wouldn't a Battletech mod for Best Way's fantabulous Men of War be awesome?"

Guess what...?

TRICO: Cat eagle... rat... bat?!

Shed: So, after waiting long time for some details, the new Team Ico project has been partially revealed (or maybe not at all if this isn't legit.)

Considering Shadow of the Colossus featured 1 man (+ horse) against 16 huge bosses, it was to be expected that they might try to invert the odds in the next sequel. Here we see an Ico-like boy befriending some sort of giant cat eagle rat bat creature, which he obviously has some control over. Potentially this could mean removing the barrier that was ever present in the previous games- unclimbable structures.

Here we see the CERB (Cat, Eagle, Rat, Bat, natch) climbing a fair bit, and letting the boy reach greater heights. In Ico we played a boy attached to a fragile woman, a very immobile set-up; in SotC we played a grown man attached (loosely) to his horse, a speedy but not infallible set-up. In TRICO, we seem to play a little boy attached to a giant creature, who (along with obviously being fast) can climb structures and allow us to reach places otherwise unreachable. It'll be interesting to see how they adapt the level design of the game to match this new ethic.

As for the trailer itself, I'm not entirely sold. The style doesn't seem as developed and dark as Shadow of the Collossus, or as developed and beautiful as Ico. Of course, this could be NICO syndrome; simply Fumito Ueda's original pre-rendered view on what the concept of the game is, not necessarily what it will finally look like. However, the game has been in development for a number of years now: releasing the original Beta video would be a strange move.

Some of the trailer is a bit odd, but interesting. Feeding the CERB griffin thing barrels of what; food, wine?! Can it see in the dark? Is that what the reflective pupils are all about?

One specific part of the video looks like in-game footage: when the boy is clinging to it's rat-tail as it climbs onto a ledge. If that IS in-game, it looks a treat, whereas some of the model textures (the tattoos on the boys arms) leave a bit desired.

Overall it could be good, potentially great, but we need to wait and hear what the Team have to say on the matter. And see if they release anything any more tantalising...

Also- it seems the fan community's speculation on the original advertised image was right... not bad, you guys!

Band Meme - The best Bands Never Made

LSTAR: Here's a little Meme-game for today...

1 - Go to Wikipedia. Hit “random”
or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to Quotations Page and select “random quotations”
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote on the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to Flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use Photoshop or similar to put it all together (or paint)

"Mon petite choufleur..."

LSTAR: I'm not quite sure how they're keeping this up, but each "Meet the Team" video Valve releases blows everything that came before straight out of the water. This is how you make a trailer.

What I wouldn't pay to give the L4D Team a chance...

Oh Hell No

LSTAR: Next week's Team Fortress 2 update, in addition to bringing a few new toys for my favourite class, is also making things ever so slightly easier for the bane of my existences to do what they do best.... Yup, Day 4 of the Sniper Update has been revealed to be... The Spy Update!?

While anything that results in more Spies is generally a "bad thing" in my books, the new gizmos do indeed look rather funky. The Dead Ringer resurrecting the "play dead" ability of Team Fortress Classic's Spies, and the Cloak and Dagger letting Spies stay cloaked indefinately, so long as they stand perfectly still, depleting only when they decide to move. Fine by me!

Dozens of Spies battle dozens of Snipers beginning next Tuesday, as everyone else stands aside looking confused. Better school up on your Moscow Rules!

ConcertWatch: Andrew Bird at Oran Mor, Glasgow

Shed: Bird strode on stage like a youthful Bruce Campbell when I least expected it, and when I turned he was playing his violin. On it's side. Like a ukelele. Strumming away, he just didn't seem to care- yet the music that emerged from the instrument was so well rounded and crisp, like an autumn thermal, it really didn't matter how he played it; this was quintessential Andrew Bird. Lovely whimsical folk genre bending and songwriting.

Throughout the basic but elongated set Bird only used three instruments (with, surprisingly, no bandmates at all); his violin, his electric guitar, and his mouth. However, out of sight was an obviously complex set of sampling machines, lending him the abillity to record and repeat any musical segment he chose from one of his instruments. Other artists have used this to some degree; KT Tunstall's original performance of Black Horse featured her looping her own voice and harmonising with it, whilst a seperate looped drum beat she had recorded earlier played in the background. Bird's use of the technology was a little more complex. Many of the songs were stretched to twice their normal length, him drawing together multiple parts recorded on his violin or from his whistling. Even the structure of the songs was often unique- a multi-layered introduction segment that faded out was suddenly drawn back in during a chorus, as if some invisible band had just suddenly erupted into motion, filling out the whole backdrop to the tune. A couple of songs in particular had him pull off some amazing feats: play a two bar riff on the violin, loop it immediately, harmonise over the riff fluidly, loop the harmony, then play a bassline over them and loop that also- in the space of ten seconds you had a chamber orchestra style backing track for his honeydew voice to sing over, all with one violin.

It was an extremely impressive show, but the use of such technology comes with it's vices. A couple of times he mistimed his sampling (or maybe the sampling machine mistimed him), and he had to start a song over. To his credit, he shook his head with distain at the machines each time, causing the audience to laugh, and then started again without errors. No harm done. The music itself was fantastic; seeing the legendary musician live was considerably better than listening to him on record. You got all the little details this way: being able to watch his fingers as he trilled virtuostically on the violin, or examine his pinched face as he slid into an epic whistling part halfway through a song. Not a single note was missed throughout the entire show. What suprised me most was his lack of pretention, his easiness with the crowd and his music- he came across as a restrained but cool guy. His character shone through the stage setup too, with the symmetrical doubled Gramophone heads he dubbed "Spinny" (because they spun whenever he hit a certain pedal) perched behind him, and a red hue cast accross the scene. His between-song chat was quiet but quirky, explaining some of the history behind songs on Armchair Apocrypha and Noble Beast, although there could have been more of this conversation. The latter half of the show seemed to drag a little: the relatively few songs were very long, and there wasn't quite enough variation in the instrumentation to keep the punters' attention. Even though the arrangements were excellent, I felt my interest starting to wan at a few points.

The show stripped down some of his more complex tunes, and added more depth to some of his simpler tunes in a fantastic, nearly symphonic, style. Songs like Dark Matter shone through in this arrangement; the music being beautiful then the song being wonderful once he had started his drawling vocal expedition. We got better singing than on the records, better violin than on the records, and (in some cases) better arangements than on the records,
but the same strange off-beat lyrics and overall Birdian impression as on the records. Great atmosphere, great sound, and (even if it became a bit much by the end,) a great show.

Dot. Dot. Dot.

LSTAR: Wow... I mean, just... Wow.

Yuss!

LSTAR: Only one question remains... What the Hell's a "Thiaf"?