Sorry for the delay, I didn't have any time to play in the past week so I'm writing this fresh off my experience earlier today.
This game is tough.
Like, real tough.
It's not necessarily a bad thing, but man does it get frustrating some times. It's not the kind of frustrating due to things that have plagued older stealth platformers, or older platformers in general, like shitty hitboxes not letting you grab onto ledges, or requiring pixel-perfect maneuvering through the air to land on something. No, the frustrating thing is the exact timing you have to hit sometimes when you've got roving enemies who can fry you to a crisp instantly when they see you. Also frustrating is how dark the game is, but for a game based on stealth in the shadows I don't know that I can complain too much about that. It's just that I had to turn the brightness up on my monitor to the maximum so that I could see some of the passages that were in shadow because they were too dark to actually see while I was playing. If the game had a Gamma setting that would help immensely.
Jesus, this game is brutal. I've had to take many breaks to cool off once it gets too frustrating. So far across 28 levels I've died 155 times in less than 2.5 hours. I'm certain this game, along with They Bleed Pixels, was heavily inspired by Super Meat Boy which came out two years earlier.
Each set of levels have a central theme of something: the first group focuses on your movement; the second introduces autonomous turrets and roving robots who will fry you on sight; the third introduces laser trip sensors which can do all manner of things like keep death rays turned off, move blocks, and open doors. The fourth group focuses on teleporters.
I'm really going to be hard-pressed to recommend this game, unless you really like I Wanna Be The Guy and wanted something like that but mixed with Splinter Cell stealth gameplay. The base game price is $10 but it's been discounted to $2 during the steam sales for the past couple of years. If you like to collect indie retro platformers this is a solid addition, but otherwise I don't know that you'd like it.
Thursday, August 31, 2017
Thursday, August 24, 2017
Playthrough 013: Stealth Bastard Deluxe
The next game I'm playing is Stealth Bastard Deluxe.
Originally released on November 28th, 2012 it is currently holding a "Very Positive" score with 89% of the 437 user reviews giving it a positive recommendation.
I bought Stealth Bastard Deluxe as part of the Humble Bundle with Android 6 on June 24th, 2013. From the store page it looks like a 2D stealth platformer, which I think will be an interesting blend of Splinter Cell and Super Meat Boy. Here's hoping it lives up to my expectations.
Originally released on November 28th, 2012 it is currently holding a "Very Positive" score with 89% of the 437 user reviews giving it a positive recommendation.
I bought Stealth Bastard Deluxe as part of the Humble Bundle with Android 6 on June 24th, 2013. From the store page it looks like a 2D stealth platformer, which I think will be an interesting blend of Splinter Cell and Super Meat Boy. Here's hoping it lives up to my expectations.
Thursday, August 17, 2017
Sniper Elite 3 Impressions
Man, I am not cut out for espionage infiltration. At the end of my 3 hours I have still not completed the first mission after the prologue/tutorial. I've failed this mission several times, in a row even, because I seem to be unable to properly assess and exploit the advantages I have against the patrolling soldiers.
The prologue is fairly straightforward: You're sent in to hold a city that is under siege by German soldiers that you have to take out, then move into the mountain as you make your way out to a mortar encampment that's in the process of sieging the town you were in. What I find simple and satisfying about this is that in the outpost, most of the Germans are preoccupied with running their mortar guns and you can pick them off brew by crew without worrying that someone might creep up behind you.
The first mission is much more challenging: You are tasked with infiltrating a German base to hunt for and collect some information about an officer who has been sent there on special assignment. Here you have to sneak around guards who are patrolling or stationed about in strategic locations that can be very inconvenient at times. There are no large artillery pieces being actively used drawing their attention and/or drowning out other sounds, instead you're given some gasoline-powered generators that can be made unstable and will start knocking from time to time and can be used as aural cover but those are few and far between.
This is why I say I'm not cut out for espionage infiltration, there are not enough "gimme" situations for me to effectively accomplish the mission goals while remaining unnoticed. The only strategy I've come up with so far is to slowly work my way from one end of the map to the other killing everyone along the way like a slow wave of creeping death. This takes a long time, and stops being effective about halfway through the mission when I come across a more largely-populated section of the camp where everyone is in plain sight of at leas two other people at any given time.
The gameplay itself is very solid. When not sighting down the sniper scope the game handles like your typical third-person shooter, movement is smooth, camera control is pretty tight, though some of the use keys are a little awkward to reach with your left hand on the WASD keys. For example, looting a corpse requires holding the "Z" key which is down and to the right from your ring finger on the "A" key and is the closest finger to use; speaking as someone who does not touch-type, pressing the key isn't that difficult but holding it is what becomes uncomfortable. You hold the right mouse button down to use the Iron-Sights on your alternate guns which isn't difficult now that that's become typical of 3rd-person shooters. The big draw of this series, though, is of course the titular Sniper rifle. I don't recall if V2 had a customizable loadout system but SE3 does, and it gives a lot of modification options to the rifle: beyond the base model, you can swap out the stock, trigger, scope, and barrel and each will have benefits and detriments to the rifle's overall stats like scope wobble, muzzle velocity, recoil, and damage. So you weigh each piece against the others like comparing armor pieces in Diablo until you're satisfied.
Using the rifle has its own set of things to keep in mind: your heartbeat becomes very important as a relative measure of your body's calmness and you can't effectively shoot if it's too high; you can also focus by emptying your lungs much like that one scene in Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows when everyone is escaping from the munitions factory and the camera is speed-ramping all over the place--there's a close up of Moriarty's sniper guy while he prepares to take an important shot and the film is very careful to let you hear him exhale in a controlled and deliberate manner just as he pulls the trigger--anyway, you do that in this game to get a better shot because a new targeting reticle shows up in the scope showing how much bullet drop you'll have due to gravity over the distance between you and your target that you would otherwise have had to guess at and probably miss.
Also, the game takes the trajectory of your shot and if it will pierce an organ you get a special slow-mo X-ray cutscene of the bullet travelling its entire distance from your gun to your target and then entering their body wherever and going through. It's somewhat realistic, and somewhat mired in movie tropes. Everyone's body snaps backwards, like their spine is a spring under tension that's released the moment your bullet hits them, which has been a movie trope for decades. The more realistic part is the difference between entrance and exit wounds in the X-ray parts of the cutscene, like one time I shot a guy through the back of his head and the bones of his entire face just came apart in the X-ray.
Overall, I would recommend this game. It is not Sniper Scope, but I don't know that much else could or should be trying to be Sniper Scope. It's very slow and deliberate, you can't go running in guns blazing and hope to survive; you're very much just as fragile and human as the people you are fighting so you have to be very careful about how to handle yourself. I would also recommend getting the Season Pass because having many of the DLC weapons available when you start the game for the first time is very nice. The game + Season Pass package has been discounted to 75% off for the last 3 Steam Sales, so I expect it will continue to do so in the future. At $12.50 I think it's a really good deal.
The prologue is fairly straightforward: You're sent in to hold a city that is under siege by German soldiers that you have to take out, then move into the mountain as you make your way out to a mortar encampment that's in the process of sieging the town you were in. What I find simple and satisfying about this is that in the outpost, most of the Germans are preoccupied with running their mortar guns and you can pick them off brew by crew without worrying that someone might creep up behind you.
 |
| Maybe it's the fact that this is an active battle rather than an infiltration, or that I'm not just fighting on my own that makes this mission easier than the next one. |
The first mission is much more challenging: You are tasked with infiltrating a German base to hunt for and collect some information about an officer who has been sent there on special assignment. Here you have to sneak around guards who are patrolling or stationed about in strategic locations that can be very inconvenient at times. There are no large artillery pieces being actively used drawing their attention and/or drowning out other sounds, instead you're given some gasoline-powered generators that can be made unstable and will start knocking from time to time and can be used as aural cover but those are few and far between.
 |
| This is from the first vantage point in the mission. There are five people I need to take out, two of which are on patrol and there's a sixth guy up in the tower that I forgot to tag before I took the screenshot. |
This is why I say I'm not cut out for espionage infiltration, there are not enough "gimme" situations for me to effectively accomplish the mission goals while remaining unnoticed. The only strategy I've come up with so far is to slowly work my way from one end of the map to the other killing everyone along the way like a slow wave of creeping death. This takes a long time, and stops being effective about halfway through the mission when I come across a more largely-populated section of the camp where everyone is in plain sight of at leas two other people at any given time.
The gameplay itself is very solid. When not sighting down the sniper scope the game handles like your typical third-person shooter, movement is smooth, camera control is pretty tight, though some of the use keys are a little awkward to reach with your left hand on the WASD keys. For example, looting a corpse requires holding the "Z" key which is down and to the right from your ring finger on the "A" key and is the closest finger to use; speaking as someone who does not touch-type, pressing the key isn't that difficult but holding it is what becomes uncomfortable. You hold the right mouse button down to use the Iron-Sights on your alternate guns which isn't difficult now that that's become typical of 3rd-person shooters. The big draw of this series, though, is of course the titular Sniper rifle. I don't recall if V2 had a customizable loadout system but SE3 does, and it gives a lot of modification options to the rifle: beyond the base model, you can swap out the stock, trigger, scope, and barrel and each will have benefits and detriments to the rifle's overall stats like scope wobble, muzzle velocity, recoil, and damage. So you weigh each piece against the others like comparing armor pieces in Diablo until you're satisfied.
 |
| You can have up to four loadouts saved so you can play with various gun combinations. |
Using the rifle has its own set of things to keep in mind: your heartbeat becomes very important as a relative measure of your body's calmness and you can't effectively shoot if it's too high; you can also focus by emptying your lungs much like that one scene in Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows when everyone is escaping from the munitions factory and the camera is speed-ramping all over the place--there's a close up of Moriarty's sniper guy while he prepares to take an important shot and the film is very careful to let you hear him exhale in a controlled and deliberate manner just as he pulls the trigger--anyway, you do that in this game to get a better shot because a new targeting reticle shows up in the scope showing how much bullet drop you'll have due to gravity over the distance between you and your target that you would otherwise have had to guess at and probably miss.
Also, the game takes the trajectory of your shot and if it will pierce an organ you get a special slow-mo X-ray cutscene of the bullet travelling its entire distance from your gun to your target and then entering their body wherever and going through. It's somewhat realistic, and somewhat mired in movie tropes. Everyone's body snaps backwards, like their spine is a spring under tension that's released the moment your bullet hits them, which has been a movie trope for decades. The more realistic part is the difference between entrance and exit wounds in the X-ray parts of the cutscene, like one time I shot a guy through the back of his head and the bones of his entire face just came apart in the X-ray.
 |
| We follow the bullet from the beginning of the shot... |
 |
| ... to the end of the shot. What's really interesting is that the "X-ray view" follows in a nearly fixed radius around the bullet as it approaches your target. |
 |
| There are even dramatic slow-mo pans around the vehicles as they explode when you detonate the gas tank. |
Overall, I would recommend this game. It is not Sniper Scope, but I don't know that much else could or should be trying to be Sniper Scope. It's very slow and deliberate, you can't go running in guns blazing and hope to survive; you're very much just as fragile and human as the people you are fighting so you have to be very careful about how to handle yourself. I would also recommend getting the Season Pass because having many of the DLC weapons available when you start the game for the first time is very nice. The game + Season Pass package has been discounted to 75% off for the last 3 Steam Sales, so I expect it will continue to do so in the future. At $12.50 I think it's a really good deal.
Thursday, August 10, 2017
Playthrough 012: Sniper Elite 3
I'm going to do something a little different for July and August, I'm going to play through and do writeups of the three games I bought during the Steam Summer Sale 2017.
The next game I'm going to play is Sniper Elite 3.
Originally released on June 27th, 2014 I've had my eye on Sniper Elite 3 since I learned about it after getting Sniper Elite V2 for free via a Steam Promo. It currently has a rating of Mostly Positive with 79% of the 7,978 reviews being positive.
I really enjoy ranged combat and sneaking around. Last week's Shadow of Mordor impressions post should be evidence enough of that, but also every one of my characters in Skyrim have ended up being some sort of Archer Thief because I prefer sneaking through the dungeons and thinning out the groups of bandits, Falmer, or vampire thralls that I come across.
Anyway Sniper Elite is one of those games that really scratches that itch, especially with showcasing the grisly damage a well-aimed shot does to its victim. I stopped playing V2 once I got to the third mission or so because I was sent to infiltrate an underground rail system of some kind and I got frustrated because there was no good way to move around undetected since the shot reports were so loud and would echo through the tunnels alerting the rest of the guards who would then swarm me. I played a demo of Sniper Elite 3 some time around when it was launched and I really liked the bright North-African setting compared to the drab West-Germany setting of V2.
I'm really looking forward to this playthrough and I'm curious to see what I got with the Season Pass.
The next game I'm going to play is Sniper Elite 3.
Originally released on June 27th, 2014 I've had my eye on Sniper Elite 3 since I learned about it after getting Sniper Elite V2 for free via a Steam Promo. It currently has a rating of Mostly Positive with 79% of the 7,978 reviews being positive.
I really enjoy ranged combat and sneaking around. Last week's Shadow of Mordor impressions post should be evidence enough of that, but also every one of my characters in Skyrim have ended up being some sort of Archer Thief because I prefer sneaking through the dungeons and thinning out the groups of bandits, Falmer, or vampire thralls that I come across.
Anyway Sniper Elite is one of those games that really scratches that itch, especially with showcasing the grisly damage a well-aimed shot does to its victim. I stopped playing V2 once I got to the third mission or so because I was sent to infiltrate an underground rail system of some kind and I got frustrated because there was no good way to move around undetected since the shot reports were so loud and would echo through the tunnels alerting the rest of the guards who would then swarm me. I played a demo of Sniper Elite 3 some time around when it was launched and I really liked the bright North-African setting compared to the drab West-Germany setting of V2.
I'm really looking forward to this playthrough and I'm curious to see what I got with the Season Pass.
Thursday, August 3, 2017
Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor Impressions
This game is incredibly challenging, but that's the point. As soon as I understood this, the difficulty became motivation for me to play it more rather than driving me away.
When I began the game I was tying not to engage the Nemesis system, just skulking around killing orcs as I was able to while trying to find some of the hidden upgrade items. At the end of my first hour of playtime I was killed by a pair of orc captains and was disappointed to see that both of them had been granted more power as a result of my death. But then when I came back later I started doing a couple of the main missions and started getting into the game a bit more. I'll tell you now that I will definitely be playing this beyond the three hours as I've barely scratched the surface of the combat system and I want to see how the further character upgrades will affect my ability to deal death to the unending swarm of orcs in Mordor.
The setting of the game really helps establish its oppressive tone and grim mood. In Peter Jackson's Return of the King film adaptation we see that Mordor is basically All Orcs All The Time and in Shadow of Mordor it feels much the same. The black landscape reflects the fact that its erstwhile tenants pay little heed to the overall health of anything aside from their war machines, the rock walls and ground often look slimy and dingy in the twilight. Once you unlock the rideable beasts, starting with the Caragor, the landscape becomes even more hostile because any non-tamed Caragor will just as soon eat you as any unwary orc that gets in its way.
So, I had to look up Mr. Elf's name on Wikipedia, which is Celebrimbor, because I haven't unlocked it in-game just yet. I think that's revealed later in the game after some more sub-quests. Anyway, his powers are cool, but they can make things a bit complicated during battle. He can drain the life force out of orcs to make them terrified of you, or kill them depending on how wounded they are. Another thing he can do, but with an entirely different key combo, is interrogate orcs for information about the various orc captains littered around the game's map. While drain is simply pressing "E", to interrogate an orc you have to grab him with Ctrl, then hit Space to grab his mind, then hit Space again to rip the intel from his brain.
It wasn't until my most recent play session that I understood the difference and was able to start gathering intel on the various orc captains that were otherwise silhouettes in the "Sauron's Army" screen in the game menu. There are two kinds of Intel: a captain's name, and his weaknesses. You can get names from any orc, but you need to find a specific orc called a Worm and given a different icon on the mini-map in order to get weaknesses to exploit. Captain's weaknesses can vary from being terrified of Caragors to being vulnerable to ranged attacks, though there are strengths you can learn about as well. There were a couple of orc captains, like Pigug Skull Bow for example, who are invulnerable to ranged attacks which means you have to get up close and personal once you find them.
As I mentioned earlier, I am definitely interested in playing this more than my allotted three hours for the blog. At $4 the Game of the Year Edition is an absolute steal, and I've already had enough enjoyment to make it worth what I paid. I don't know that I'll jump on the sequel, Middle-Earth: Shadow of War that's coming out in a couple months, right away. Since its big draw is being able to port your Sauron's Army from Shadow of Mordor into Shadow of War, I think I want to get better at killing orc captains for a while first. Still, Shadow of Mordor delivers on what it presents and if you're into that you'll enjoy the game.
 |
| There's a female ranger skin! It's so much more fun to be a badass woman than the main dude. |
When I began the game I was tying not to engage the Nemesis system, just skulking around killing orcs as I was able to while trying to find some of the hidden upgrade items. At the end of my first hour of playtime I was killed by a pair of orc captains and was disappointed to see that both of them had been granted more power as a result of my death. But then when I came back later I started doing a couple of the main missions and started getting into the game a bit more. I'll tell you now that I will definitely be playing this beyond the three hours as I've barely scratched the surface of the combat system and I want to see how the further character upgrades will affect my ability to deal death to the unending swarm of orcs in Mordor.
 |
| It's incredibly weird to have the orc captains reference killing you before, though I suppose it's more from resurrection not being established in Middle Earth before. Unless I'm wrong? |
The setting of the game really helps establish its oppressive tone and grim mood. In Peter Jackson's Return of the King film adaptation we see that Mordor is basically All Orcs All The Time and in Shadow of Mordor it feels much the same. The black landscape reflects the fact that its erstwhile tenants pay little heed to the overall health of anything aside from their war machines, the rock walls and ground often look slimy and dingy in the twilight. Once you unlock the rideable beasts, starting with the Caragor, the landscape becomes even more hostile because any non-tamed Caragor will just as soon eat you as any unwary orc that gets in its way.
 |
| I spend as much time as I can in high places so I can scope out the next area I want to get to. |
 |
| This is Mr. Elf, the wraith who accidentally gets bonded to you in the game's prologue. He gives you Elf Powers. |
It wasn't until my most recent play session that I understood the difference and was able to start gathering intel on the various orc captains that were otherwise silhouettes in the "Sauron's Army" screen in the game menu. There are two kinds of Intel: a captain's name, and his weaknesses. You can get names from any orc, but you need to find a specific orc called a Worm and given a different icon on the mini-map in order to get weaknesses to exploit. Captain's weaknesses can vary from being terrified of Caragors to being vulnerable to ranged attacks, though there are strengths you can learn about as well. There were a couple of orc captains, like Pigug Skull Bow for example, who are invulnerable to ranged attacks which means you have to get up close and personal once you find them.
As I mentioned earlier, I am definitely interested in playing this more than my allotted three hours for the blog. At $4 the Game of the Year Edition is an absolute steal, and I've already had enough enjoyment to make it worth what I paid. I don't know that I'll jump on the sequel, Middle-Earth: Shadow of War that's coming out in a couple months, right away. Since its big draw is being able to port your Sauron's Army from Shadow of Mordor into Shadow of War, I think I want to get better at killing orc captains for a while first. Still, Shadow of Mordor delivers on what it presents and if you're into that you'll enjoy the game.
Tuesday, August 1, 2017
July Game Purchases
Here are the games I bought in July:
Steam Summer Sale 2017
- Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor
Humble Capcom Rising Bundle
- Umbrella Corps
- Dead Rising 2: Off the Record
- Resident Evil HD REMASTER
- Resident Evil 0 HD REMASTER
- Resident Evil 6
- Dead Rising 2
- Dead Rising 3 - Apocalypse Edition
Humble Telltale Games Bundle
- Sam & Max: Season 1
- Sam & Max: Season 2
- Bone - Episodes 1 & 2
- Telltale Texas Hold'em
- The Walking Dead: Michonne
- The Walking Dead: Season 2
- Game of Thrones: A Telltale Games Series
- Batman - The Telltale Series
- Minecraft: Story Mode
- Jurassic Park: The Game
- The Wolf Among Us
Humble Saints Row Bundle
- Risen 3: Titan Lords - Complete Edition
- Deadlight: Director's Cut
- Mighty No. 9
- Sacred Franchise Pack
- Secret Files: Tunguska
- Lost Horizon
Free Games
- Space Codex - IndieGala Promo
- Sleeping Valley - IndieGala Promo
- Slash It - IndieGala Promo
- Defend the Highlands - IndieGala Promo
- Battleplan: American Civil War - IndieGala Promo
While I already owned all of the Saints Row franchise, I decided to get the Saints Row Bundle at the Beat The Average price because for $4.40 is a huge discount for all the Risen 3 DLC that wasn't included in the Humble Deep Silver Bundle 2 back in May, 2016. The second week reveal was the Sacred Franchise Pack, Secret Files: Tunguska, and Lost Horizon; the former completes my collection of the Sacred series, and the latter two are part of the Animation Arts Collection that I'm interested in getting as it's on sale this week for a good discount. Look for that bundle in my "August Games Purchases" post in September.
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