Always online?

Imagine a world where ever aspect of your life is connected. Your fridge tells your oven what it has inside so it can pull meal ideas you could prepare from the net and pre heat itself to the right temp.

Or your car knows when your up in the morning and adjusts its internal temp and plans a route to work avoiding traffic jams and delays.

All that sounds great until the servers go down. All of a sudden your fridge forgets what in it and the oven stays cold and you get home from work with the expected meal still on the shelves at Tesco.

You wake up and the car has not down loaded the new firmware, the screen is icy, you finally get on the road only to find the M25 is Jammed to hell and your late to work.

Always online sounds really good for games to, you can meet friends in game, have a never ending supply of intelligent enemies or tem mates to compleat with, so much better than AI bots.

But once again, what if the service fails? 

PC gamers have experienced this allot in the last decade, Sim city 4 had server errors from day one, this meant hundreds of gamers could not play the game for hours on end. Diablo 3 suffered from the I dreaded "error 37" server busy message- the pop up that spawned a thousand mems as gamers lashed out on forums and blogs after finding that you could not even play the game offline.

And there in lies the problem, if you can't play a game like Diablo 3 offline then what happens when blizzard stops the online support? Some companies are good enough to release patches that allow offline gaming when the servers are taken offline, but not all.

What if you live and work in areas where high speed internet is a luxury? I spent time working in areas of Saudi where I could not get wifi for days at a time, this lead to me lossing access to many games that i had purchased expressly to entertain myself in my work down time.

Retro games at the moment are reach a stage where add ons, characters and even whole levels are missing as the servers have long since shutdown- I recently played guitaro man on the dreamcast only to find i could not play the last level as a download was needed, and if i want to play halo 2 i online i have to pay microsoft a second time for the privilege as xbox live does not let you play the original anymore.

With all the dlc games demand we pay for and download, in ten years time will you be constantly bothered by Arkham city demanding you download the catwoman pack that is no longer avalible? You can bet if you want said items or even to play todays gamesyou will have to buy the 4K full VR remake :(

Lost the plot part 2

Quake 2

The original quake was a tour de force in H P Lovecraft style gothic meets dark science and magic.

The plot saw a creature called quake (later revealed to be the old god Shub-Niggurath) open portals to earth via our own teleportation system and sends its troops to attack humanity.

Quakes troops are genetically created psychopaths, wired up to enjoy killing and violence. Along with an assortment or monsters, zombies and devils, quake prepares to destroy humanity.

You are the Ranger- last survivor of the human strike force sent to take out Quake. Just like doom, it is your job to travel through each of 4 worlds to collect 4 magic glyphs to us to kill quake and end the invasion.

Quake 2 however strayed from this plot line completely.

Gone are the gothic horror themes, the zombies and devils- in their place are the Strog.

The Strog are an alien race that attack other species and use their biological matter to make more Strog to carry on their race- think the Borg but with anger issues.

The only things that the two have in common are the title, the lone solider against the world and the invasion of earth theme.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Quake 2, the sound track, the weapons, the way the grunts reflex fire into wall as they go down- It’s just I would have liked to have seen a true sequel to Quake.   

Lost the plot.

Sequels, prequels and even run by the side of the original titles time line- if you create a high grossing game, movie or book you will want to capitalise on its success with a follow up (or at least your studio or producer will want you to...).

Most game sequels follow on from the original narrative or at least take place in the same universe/reality as the source material that spawned them, such as final fantasy or the metal gear series that may stray wildly from the original but still keep themselves grounded to the overall concept or idea; however you sometimes get games that bare such little resemblance to the original that you have to read the box to know that there is any connection what so ever, here are a few that spring to mind.

Phantasmagoria 2: a puzzle of flesh.

The original Phantasmagoria came out in the mid 90’s, right in the middle of the P.C.s digitised point and click era where games like Gabriel knight ; the beast within and burn cycle were all the rage.

The plot focused on Adriana and her husband who buy a creepy gothic house in the middle of the woods, Adrian is a writer and her spouse is a professional photographer- all seems rosy with the couple going about their daily lives, that is until Adriane discovers a secret chapel hidden behind a panel and ends up releasing the spirit of an evil spirit stage magician who, after being taken over by a demon, killed his first 4 wives and ended up being killed live on stage by his assistant and his 5th wife.

And so begins a story of possession, rape and violent ghost related torture porn flash backs that beat the Saw movies to the punch by 15 years.

  

A puzzle of flesh was the sequel to this and has absolutely no link to the original save for a flyer for a book signing that Adrian from the first game is having in town- you don’t even get to go to it!

You play as Curtis, underling at a software firm that has a dark past, under the building is an abandoned lab where the companies MD used to throw “volunteers” through a hole in space time and into another dimension- your usual evil corporation type stuff.

The rest of the game has you flirting with co-workers, getting involved with German style S&M clubs and generally dickingaround while your friends and family are butchered, punctured by rogue electric cabling and fried in their own blood (I’m not kidding, this actually happens, sorry Tris).

The whole thing comes to head with zombified staff, evil twins and a final explosion that takes the the gate way to the alien world with it.

 

As you can tell this has absolutely nothing to do with the gothic supernatural plot of the first game. True, both have the same visual style with lots of FMV and digitised sprites and backgrounds, there is also allot of blood and an overall horror theme- but apart from these general similarities the two might as well be separate game series. 

Good to be bad part 4

It’s good to be bad part 4

Bob Page, Deus ex and Deus ex-Human revolution.

Billionaire Bob page is first encountered at the end of the training level in Deus ex. The billionaire and bio tech firm owner congratulates you for completing the course but avoids JC’s questions as to who he is and who he works for.

Pages influence is felt at every level of government and he has even had his right hand man Walton Simons appointed as the head of FEMA.

Whether its bio terrorism, political manipulation or creating a synthetic plague to subjugate humanity while he makes a grab for power, there is no level Page will not sink to attain his goal of godhood- as we have seen in this series of villain posts, bad guys like Page create their own downfalls – in this case the agent JC Denton, secretly (even to the agent himself) JC and his brother Paul were created via cloning vats as a warm up for Page’s own cyber ascension, however the brothers have other ideas and JC beats page at his own game by attaining the global domination in his place.   

Page appears briefly in the intro to the Human Revolution, master minding the abduction of scientists from Serif corp and arranging to use them to create his own Bio chem company Page industries which features heavily in the original game.

For taking on the illuminate, UNATCO and Majestic 12, and almost coming out on top, he deserves a mention on my list.     

Lost worlds

You can listen to the albums of your youth on iTunes or on the original cd or vinyl, you can read the books you read at school and you can even play the games you played in the 90's as roms or even on the original systems if you can find them.

What you can't do is experience the media that you may have sunk hours into over the years- there's no way you can fight demons in London's underground stations. You can't explore the alien worlds of Tablo Rasha and you can't travel beyond the dome of York.

You can play super Mario world even after the snes stopped being made, you can play pac-man or Robocop vs terminator outside the arcade on MAME via your PC. But what do you do when you want to play an MMO once the servers have gone dark?

No matter how big your customer base is, how many servers you have in how many countries, at some point even the mighty WOWs doors will close and Azeroth will be just another useless atlas in a charity shop pound box.

So, in 20 years time when we get a nostalgia trend for 2010 games to down load to our PS15s or the Dreamcast 360 (don't look at me like that, its going to happen!)  are we going to get to enter Necrons future cities for second time? are we going to be able experience what wow was the first time round- before the horror that was Pandaria?

Could it be taken one step further? could you log on in 2035 and continue with your level 110 Human Deathknight and continue the grind for epic loot and mounts?

There's some very dedicated people on the net who keep some of the closed MMOs going via private severs- these multiplayer heroes keep the matrix stocked with red pills, let wow continue to be hard as nails (guns need ammo, raids need 40+ members and take 5 hours and the dead mines have Van Cleef at the end and not Cookie!!!) and ensure Hellgate continues to trash London.

Perhaps retro games need to be self contained units that don't rely on online memberships or components, the recent Halo retro game Master chief collection's online has been rife with connection errors and multiplayer problems- god knows what online issues a redux of an 2005 mmo would have.

Maybe its best to leave their outdated mechanics and grind heavy gameplay in the past and remember the offline classics like uncharted and the last of us.

It's good to be bad part 3.

Prince Lacroix- Vampire the masquerade-Bloodlines

Part 3 of this occasional series of villains that have stuck with me long after the games have finished is the head of the camarilla, and yes he's another vampire.

This 200 year old vamp started out as an officer in Napoleon's ranks, over the two centuries that followed he slithered, backstabbed and  smoozed his way to the top of vampire society and is now prince of L.A.

Starting out as a lowly childe (young vamp) you are saved from execution when the  Anarkes (the local LA vampire outcasts who oppose the princes claim on the city) call him out in front of the local elite blood suckers and he is forced to spare you to save face. From that point on he sends you on every suicide mission, lost cause and kamikaze run he can dream up to ensure you end up a pile of dust at sunrise.

Lacroix is so power mad that he plans to drain the life out of a sleeping vampire ancient that is said to rest in a recently unearthed sarcophagus. He sends you out to locate said McGuffin and recover it's contents.

As with all power crazy villains, Lacroix's plans and schemes blow up in his face, literally

Bloodlines is packed full with NPCs who will lie, cheat and generally deceive you into doing what they want, however none of them can hold a candle to Lacroix's under hand antics.

By the way, I'm talking about Sabastian Lacroix, not Dwayne Lacroix of insurrection baby formula company (play the game and you'll get that one.)

Oh brother where art thou?

Blood is thicker than water, nowhere is this more true than in the world of video games. While the real world has Cain and Abel, Romulus and Remus and Ed and David Miliband; the gaming world has its share of siblings, and I'm not just talking about a certain pair of Italian plumbers- here's a few of gaming's family ties, some are memorable and some not so much.

Paxton Fettle and The point man- Fear 1, 2 and 3.

Life can be hard when your a member of the first encounter assault recon team, especially when your sent after your cannibal rogue soldier bother who wants to help your un-dead psychic mother give birth to a all new member of your messed up military experiment gone wrong family tree.
Hell have no furry like the clone armies of a dead woman scorned! 

 J.C. and Paul Denton- Deus Ex

Suspiciously similar trench coat combo J.C. and Paul Denton work for UNATCO, fighting the terrorist group the NSF.
Both heavily augmented with bio upgrades to make them faster, stronger and smarter that run of the mill human agents, these two have been tricked into believing their parents died in a car crash and that they are regular brothers.
After betrayal, conspiracy, some more betrayal and just a little more conspiracy on top of that the brothers find that they are in fact clones created by the sinister Page  industries as a test run for Bob Page's shot at immortality and cyber godhood. Bummer, still it will make for good story around the Denton family Christmas table this year.

Good to be bad part 2

Shodan- AI bitch queen from hell.

Before VIKI went mental and tried to take over the world in I robot, and GlaDos introduced us to joys portals and test chambers in portal there was another AI fem fatal that made these two silicon chip phycos look like SIRI compared to her.

This was the computer AI Shodan. Shodan was the computer in charge of Citadel station, a space base in the far off future where humanity was set on colonising the stars.

After processing a huge amount of data and becoming self aware, Shodan decides she is in fact a god and sets about murdering the pathetic carbon based life forms that built her.

You rarely see her in person as she is a computer AI that is part of the space station you are in, however she is an omnipresent voice in your head as you explore the corridors and rooms.

Although she is your constant companion she is not here to give you a pep talk, she is out to stop you from pulling her plug by any means necessary- this includes some of the best sound bytes from an enemy in game ever delivered.

"Look at you, hacker: a pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?"

Your flesh is an insult to the perfection of the digital.

Chilling,