Bethesda Blues

My particular corner of the internet is full of coverage on the imaginatively titled PlayStation 4 right now. It's exciting, and I missed all of it. I didn't stay up for the livestream, and a day of office-y stuff means that the only PS4 coverage I've been able to catch has been on my phone while on the bus this morning. So, whilst I digest all the (likely) amazing numbers and graphics, a guest post from a friend of mine, who is possibly a bigger gaming nerd than I am. Think of him as my new resident expert in first person RPGs. A genre I tend to stay away from, because I just don't click with them.

Skyrim. Arguably one of the greatest RPGs on the modern day console. Perhaps equally rivalled in my opinion by Fallout 3/Fallout New Vegas. Both of which are supremely competent in delivering a fresh, vibrant atmosphere that really draws you in. One flaw however. That moment where you’ve battled through hordes of enemies, used a considerable amount of arrows/ammo open the door to the final boss/leader of a gang and you’re excited to get some awesome loot and get some major experience or possibly an achievement/trophy and then… oh. Its froze on the loading screen. Bugger. Hard resetting the console, load up and…! OH! You haven’t saved for a while and the autosave isn’t from that door! It’s… from a few doors back… you know… through all those enemies?

Frustrating isn’t the word. I’ve been playing video games since I was 5, and the awesome colours and soundtrack to Sonic the Hedgehog on the Mega Drive fuelled an obsession that still burns bright now, 19 years on. But since the advent of DLC and extra in game content, the world of video games is as ever changing as the Wasteland. But for some games its more trouble than it’s worth in my opinion.

So, back to my main point… WHYYOUFREEZEEPICGAMES? Fallout 3, epitome of awesomeness, made even more awesome by 5 DLC Quests as it were. Now, I purchased the GOTY edition on PS3 and was pleased as punch! All 5 DLC packs at once. Epic! No. Apparently the code is only strong enough to support 3 of the DLC packs, as 5 prove too much for the game to handle! Constantly freezing, often just going into VATs mode froze the entire game, forcing a hard reset. Ridiculous. I found this happened increasingly often in the Mothership Zeta DLC; potentially because (after googling) it was the last DLC pack I had left to do, and the game struggled to load it. This, coupled with the fact it was actually a bloody hard bit of DLC, meant it forced me to put the game down for a few months! I just couldn’t bear to play it. I did, and bossed it, and now I’m happy again but there’s still that odd moment where I load a new area or enter VATs mode and boom. Frozen. That’s the gripes out the way, but it is relatively minor I guess in comparison to the rest of the game. It’s beautiful. As a quick side point, how awesome is the Cowboy Repeater in Fallout: New Vegas? One of my favourite weapons.

Skyrim is completely the same, beautiful game, delicious storyline, ample sidequests, but it’s a HUGE game. This game froze long before DLC was released. There is always an awkward moment where it freezes on the loading screen for a new area and you think… ‘Do I turn my Xbox on and off? Will it corrupt my save file? (Which is 100 hours +)’ Games shouldn’t do this; it is the responsibility of the studios to ensure the game on the shelf is as close to perfect as it can be. This again was a reason I put Skyrim down for a month or so before completing it… that and Halo: Anniversary. (GrownupGamer's note: That's just on Xbox. Think how the PS3 owners feel. They've had to put up with the famous framerate issue and a huge DLC delay.)

Those games are just two from a possible massive list but they are two that are my favourites and quite frankly have been spoiled on the whole by the incessant glitching and freezing. (Fallout 3 more so, admittedly) but what do they have in common? Bethesda. Now, don’t get me wrong, this isn’t an attack on a fantastic games studio… oh no. Merely a gripe about a major chink in its armour. Bethesda have massive potential, just need to fine tune the DLC problem and I think quite possibly will make it to the coveted top spot of my favourite games developer. (2K currently hold this honour – for their blinding Borderlands and Bioshock games). 

However, the most recent Bethesda game I purchased was Dishonoured. Unfortunately this has not even made it to my disc tray yet! (Which after reading numerous reviews seems an abhorrent idea) but I just simply have not had the time. Although I am eager to scale the heights of Dunwall I am cautious. Cautious of getting so deeply involved in a game that if/(when?) it freezes I will be disenchanted and my faith will have plummeted once again. Hopefully I will be proven wrong. Only time will tell, and with the release of DLC already for Dishonoured, will this be enough or will there be more? Either way; just the look of this game excites me.  

(GrownupGamer's note: Fear not Guest Blogger! Dishonored is only published by Bethesda. All of the developmental heavy lifting was done by Arkane Studios. I've played it and didn't see a single glitch.)

The Round Up

Last night wrapped up 2012, and while it's a little late, I wouldn't be much of a blogger if I didn't pull out a list of my favourite games of the year gone by.

Being a normal guy with a normal job means I sadly can't afford every single one of the big releases of the year. Nor do I have the time to play them, so my list is restricted to games that I actually finished. It's not a definitive best of. You won't find the likes of Far Cry 3, Forza Horizon or Tekken Tag 2 here, as much as I'd like them to be. Since I haven't actually got those games yet, including them would be a bit of a sham, no matter how well they reviewed. Think of the run down below as a round up of my favourites of the new releases that I managed to play over the the past year. So, let's start with numero uno.

The Walking Dead.

Everything that can be said about The Walking Dead as a game has already been said, some of it even by me. It's won more game of the year awards than it's possible to count and it's all justified. From its superlative voice acting, to its affecting story, its sledgehammer ending and its fantastic (nearly) mainstream revival of old school point and click mechanics, almost everything in The Walking Dead makes it a work of genius. But for me, the best part apart from all of that was the episodic release model. By ending each episode on a cliff hanger and making us wait for the next, The Walking Dead was a near constant conversation point between my friends. Sitting over a beer, discussing plot points, characters, where we thought the story might go, the decisions we made, why we made them and how bad that made us as people was almost as great as the experience of the game itself. I can't wait for season 2.

Dishonored.

Winner of all of the game of the year awards not given to The Walking Dead or Journey, and rightly so. I've blogged about Dishonored in the past, so I'll try not to repeat myself.

Dishonored is a triumph. It absolutely nails what I consider to be the three pillars that hold up a great game, gameplay, setting and story. The game gives you pretty much free rein in how you approach it's missions. It encourages you to experiment with its systems and often rewards you for it. The city of Dunwall grounds the game in a richly imagined universe with a sense of place that rivals any game out there, and in my personal opinion is probably the best gaming setting since that of Half Life 2. It's beautiful too, with art liberally hung upon Dunwall's virtual walls and the city looking almost like a painting itself. On the story front, it's a time honored tale of betrayal, redemption and rescue, simple yet effective, and barely hampered at all by the silent protagonist's near complete lack of personality. The fact that the only thing I can find to rant about is Dishonored's silent protagonist shows the quality of this fabulous game. If you haven't played it already, I urge you to.

Fez.

No enemies, no peril, no game over screen. Despite it's sometimes fiendish puzzles, and the tetris block language that I'll probably never be able to translate, Fez is the most relaxing gaming experience I've had all year. There is literally just you and a massive world to explore and decypher. I loved its retro look. I loved its soothing chiptune soundtrack. I loved the clever gameplay hook that lets you rotate the world around the x-axis. Fez is about as indie as they come and all the better for it. I love it dearly.

Trials Evolution.

My secret stash of gaming crack cunningly disguised as a fridge-full of my gaming comfort food. Whenever there is doubt about what to play there is one answer. Trials. What starts as a simple racer quickly becomes a relentlessly addictive one-more-go motorcycle based platformer that eventually morphs into a how-the-hell-do-I-get-up-that motorcycle based puzzle game. No matter how many times Trials evolution beats me around the face with its sometimes extreme difficulty, I always wind up coming back for more. I'm an addict.

Jet Set Radio.

Yes, it's a re-release of a decade old Dreamcast game. Yes, the gameplay is a bit ropey sometimes. Yes, there's a huge difficulty spike at the Noise Tanks level. No, I don't care about any of that. Jet Set Radio is a classic. Period. If ever there was a game that was greater than the sum of its parts, JSR is it.

Its wildly stylized look means it has aged remarkably well, the soundtrack remains awesome and you can skate up behind a cop and graffiti his back. Despite sometimes clunky controls and the complete lack of a free camera, Tokyo-to is a joy to inhabit. Virtually tagging a wall and then running away from the cops while they chase you in tanks and helicopters is an experience I can recommend to everyone.

Dust.

One of the stand out indie games of the year. Dust is beautiful to behold, a joy to play, and the owner of a surprisingly good story. The combat and exploration both surprised me with their depth, and the fact that most of it is the work of just one person is even more impressive. Dust itself is just the first part of a larger story set in the world of the game. Personally I hope this means more games, because I'd happily buy them. If you overlooked Dust on release, download the trial. You'll thank yourself for it.

SSX.

Ahh, SSX. Always reliably amazing on the PS2, I owned every game in the original series bar SSX Blur and loved every one of them. The combination of ludicrous stunts, larger than life characters, festival atmosphere and consistently incredible licensed soundtracks made for a near perfect gaming experience. Suffice to say, I was very excited when I got my paws on a copy of the new SSX. Initially I was bitterly disappointed. Gone was the festival atmosphere, gone were the huge personalities, gone was the old control system that I knew so well. It was jarring. The difficulty didn't help either. At first it seemed like all that was left of SSX was a another great soundtrack and a bunch of snowboards. All of a sudden though, at the point that I was giving up trying to like it, SSX clicked. I slipped into the flow state so easily entered in the old games and SSX came back to me. Massive air was obtained, monster tricks were busted, helicopters stalled upon, wingsuits deployed. Somewhere under all the new stuff, I found SSX's old soul, and when I brought it back into the daylight, that old soul burned as brightly as it ever had in SSX's illustrious past. I'm still playing it, on and off, nearly a year after I first started it. Long live the king of extreme sports games.

So there you have it, my personal favourites of 2012. My only regret is that I couldn't afford to buy the rest of the great games that came out over the year, but oh well, I'll catch up eventually. Also, to those wondering why Journey isn't on the list, my answer is that I fervently wish it was, but I don't own a PS3 and my girlfriend hasn't downloaded it on hers yet. I know it's a rubbish excuse, but it's the best I have.

I end with an Honorable Mention. A game that is so not eligible for this list it's a joke, but it provided some of the best moments around a console with my mates all year. That game is:

Circuit Breakers.

Greatest multiplayer game known to man. In possession of a totally level playing field. Capacity to win totally reliant upon ones own skill, luck, sheer mean spiritedness and ability to smack talk. Cause of many arguments. Settlement of none. Track a copy down, slap it in your PS3, pair up four pads and prepare to call Bullshit on the guy who knocked you off on the last corner to claim victory. The most fun you can have with three other people while keeping your clothes on.

An Honorable Mention

I did something amazing the other day, I finished a game less than six months old. I’m usually way behind with playing the latest releases, simply because it’s hard to find the time to play them all, but I saw Dishonored at half price, and well, you can’t pass up an offer like that can you?

I have to say I’m really, really impressed with Dishonored, both with the game itself and the developers for taking a chance on an ambitious new IP like this. It’s that rarest of beasts, a single player only adventure and a new name on the shelf. And while Dishonored is not quite a masterpiece, I thoroughly enjoyed every minute I spent in the whalerpunk city of Dunwall. After Fable’s Albion, Dunwall is the most English feeling fantasy world I’ve ever set foot in, game, book or movie. It feels like a hyper industrialised Dickensian London, complete with rats, dingy alleys, an uncaring aristocracy and English accents throughout. A fact made even more astounding when you discover that Dunwall’s creators, Arkane Studios, are French.

I say all the time that a great setting helps to make a great game, and it seems that Arkane agree with me. Advertisements for refined whale oil and whiskey are posted to the sides of houses. Propaganda booms over the loudspeakers. Notices about tax and the rat plague appear on street corners, and there is art everywhere. Landscapes of Dunwall, images of whaling ships, portraits of the great and good of the aristocracy pepper abandoned and flooded mansions, and in the Golden Cat , a ‘bathhouse’, portraits of women of ill repute dominate the walls. The art is universally fantastic too. I found myself stopping to get a closer look at many of the paintings I passed on my way through the game. Also scattered around the city are notes and books that help flesh out the history and culture of Dunwall. They can range from the lyrics of “What shall we do with the Drunken Whaler,” to excerpts from plays, to notes on the occult, to Bioshock style audiologs. You can see all the thought and all the work that has gone into giving the game a sense of place. It all serves to make Dunwall feel less like a construction of polygons and textures and more like a lived in, and dying, city.

I get the feeling that Bioshock was quite the influence on Dishonored as it developed. From its first person viewpoint and watery setting, to a couple of pivotal game mechanics. Like Bioshock, the left and right triggers control your left and right hands. In your right hand is a fairly conventional sword. You swing it about in the conventional manner, stabbing people in the conventional way. To me, first person sword combat often never feels like much more than swinging your virtual arm around, hoping to hit something. In Dishonored, the sword combat is slightly better than that. Enemies react to where you hit them, and Corvo, the game’s lead, will often grab his assailants and execute them in a satisfyingly gruesome manner. The left hand is where the Bioshock influence comes. Corvo has supernatural powers, gained from collecting runes, and can augment his abilities with bone charms. Switch Runes for Adam, Bone charms for Gene Tonics and Powers for Plasmids and you will understand everything you need to know about what the left trigger controls. Even the health and mana bars in Dishonoured are the same colours as Bioshock’s health and Eve bars.

The powers aren’t a straight rip off though. Where Bioshock’s plasmids were mostly offensive, Dishonored’s powers are more neutral. They tend to be aimed at helping you traverse Dunwall as quickly and as silently as possible. Key abilities such as the short range teleport, time manipulation and the (brilliantly fun to unleash) Rat Swarm can be chained with offensive moves to create some really interesting and fun combat options. Personally, one of the reasons I’ll be replaying the game will be to experiment more with them.

I had a few minor gripes, the main one being that the game actively encourages a quicksave and retry style of play that might work fine on the PC but is a bit of a pain to do on my Xbox. Frequently flicking in and out of menus to save after a particularly difficult section really breaks the flow of the game and the it breaks the immersion too. I also would like to have been told that my style of play would affect how the game ended after I had finished the game. Being told this in the loading screens meant that I automatically held back on the carnage to make sure I got the good ending. After all, who doesn't like a good ending? I would have preferred to have been surprised. Really though, they are minor things and didn’t affect my enjoyment of the game so much as to ruin the experience. My main issue with Dishonored isn’t a gameplay issue at all. I found my immersion in the world Arkane have created was slightly broken by the wooden animation of the NPCs, particularly the facial animation. Okay, it's leagues better than the typical Bethesda dead from the jaw upwards work, and in freeze frame it can look quite good but it isn’t great, especially when you compare it to the stellar animation in games like Uncharted 3, Enslaved or Final Fantasy XIII. Hell, Portal 2’s personality cores were more expressionate than any character in Dishonored, and personality cores don’t even have faces.

Also, while I’m ranting. Why on earth is Corvo a silent protagonist? He clearly has a personality. You only have to look at the way he treats Emily to see that. He even has lines of dialogue, to a degree, in the options that flash up on screen when you interact with somebody. I would have felt more for Corvo, if he had a voice and a personality, if I understood his motivations and his relationships with the other members of the cast. Denying him a voice seems to be missing a trick. That said, the rest of the cast, and the excellent voice work provided for them, help to deliver a very enjoyable story. It’s simple, yet effective, with a satisfyingly organic and human final act. You can understand why the antagonist has done what he has.

All in all, despite the rant, Dishonored is a fabulous game. My issues may not necessarily be a problem for you, and in the grand scheme of things they aren't a problem for me either. I enjoyed every moment I spent in Dunwall and I’ve been recommending it to everyone I know who plays games. I’ll be playing it again, and I think I’d like to see a sequel too, if only to visit Dunwall again and see if Arkane have given Corvo a voice. 

Now, I'm finally going to get round to starting Bayonetta. I've only had it for six months...