Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Beta

It's been a long time - 8 years to be more specific -  since I've gotten my hands dirty with Counter-Strike. For me, CS might have actually been the last FPS I'd played since Team Fortress 2 became free-to-play. And soon in 2012, we will see the latest iteration of this cult franchise, Global Offensive. For me, I cannot believe how fast time (as well as so many games) have passed me by since those good old days of alcohol-fueled LAN parties in university halls. For others however, CS: Global Offensive might simply be ignored by some sections of the CS's community, like CS: Source was; with a specific version of the original game with certain updates applied only satisfying these diehard fans. Why the trip down memory lane and an exposition of the bleeding obvious, I hear you ask? It is for the simple fact that I personally wasn't great at CS back in the day, but given my general aversion to FPS's, it has become horribly clear whilst playing CS:GO that what 'skill' I had, deserted me long ago. So this is a warning for all FPS enthusiasts reading that my experience with the Beta might be the most undeserving opportunity anyone in gaming has been offered. 

Starting up CS:GO, the menus and their animations are a far cry from the original. They remain simple, yet slick and their style out of the shadow of Half-Life 2. When starting a game, there are only two options available; jumping into a random online match or creating my own locally. Game type is also restricted in the Beta to only Bomb Defusal and there are just two selectable maps; the cult classics Dust and Dust II.

Choosing to jump into a random online match was a big mistake on my part. No sooner had the match on Dust started I was left behind by the rest of my team mates as I leisurely browsed the weapons available to buy. With a trusty, no-nonsense Colt M4A1 I headed towards the sound of the gunfire. No more than 20 seconds from leaving the starting spawn point, I'm taken out by a sniper on the all the way down the street hidden in darkness of a ramp leading down to the underpass. I haven't even fired a bullet yet and I've taken a headshot from a camper! Round after round, I continued to receive headshots and it took until round 8 before I managed to acquire my first kill. By that point, it was pretty obvious that no amount of online multiplayer practice was going to improve my skills. I needed to go back to basics and figure how the accurate the different weapons were from various ranges and body positions, so I fired up a local game and populated it with bots on casual difficulty. It became very apparent how bad I was when I took headshot (albeit not a quickly in the multiplayer game) from a bot in first round. I was official. I sucked, and to compound it all, I couldn't even respawn until the remainder of the bots had duked it out & finished the round.

New to CS:GO are decoy grenades and molotov cocktails. Whilst decoy grenade are effective into luring lone wolf players (or those who are just lost in my case), molotovs are work well in restricting the distance the enemy can close you down; due to the large spread of the flames. This is particularly useful when first encountering multiple enemies in enclosed close-quarters; usually right at the beginning of the round. One minor criticism, and whilst nostalgic, the catalogue of voice dialogue is still the same. After 8 years of not playing CS, I would have at least thought that they could have updated these.

All in all, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive retains all of the gameplay charm and finesse of it's predecessors whilst dragging the graphics and UI into the HD era. It will no doubt compete head-to-head with the latest FPS's like Modern Warfare 3 and Battlefied 3 across multiple platforms, which begs the question; with the games market already saturated with these kind of games, can a lone multiplayer game really make it mark in this generation of consoles? For Valve's and nostalgia's sake, I really hope so.

Renegade Ooops

A couple of weeks ago, I purchased a few games from the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale in the Steam store. It's been a while since I'd been on Steam, so I thought it was about time to fire it up and at least let Steam and Team Fortress 2 updates run their course. Amongst the games I purchased, I bought a 4 pass version of Renegade Ops, which I gifted to a couple of friends that I play TF2 and Alien Swarm with.

I had previously played Renegade Ops a little when I was at the Eurogamer Expo back in September, but my game time was cut short when the demo locked up and crashed. In hidsight, I should have perhaps taken that as a sign to avoid this game. Don't get me wrong. I would never buy a game I've previously played and didn't enjoy, but personally I think it's developer Sega needs a take long hard look at itself when it comes to non-gameplay elements to this title.

So I downloaded & installed the game before firing it up. After 20 seconds, nothing. I double-checked that I pressed the 'lanuch game' button, and Steam brought up 'The Game is Launching' pop-up box, but that quickly disappeared and I'm still staring at my Games Library. The next 90 minutes are spent trawling through Steam Support pages and forums to trying to find a solution. In one last action before giving up, I check for the game's systems requirements and I soon discover the cause. It's not Windows XP compatible. Seriously?!?!?! It can support the bastard child of the Windows family, Vista, but not an OS that I would imagine is still the used by the majority of PC users? I cannot believe that neither Sega or Steam thought that perhaps something as a simple error message stating XP non-compatibility should have been needed instead of having to waste my time to diagnose the problem myself. Whilst I'm partially at fault for assuming that a game that should be able to run a first generation Xbox 360  could also be played on a 3 year old XP machine, it is lazy coding from Sega to not accommodate for such simple error messaging. Thanks for wasting my time! I could have been using that that time playing in the Counter Strike: Global Offensive beta, but more on that for another time.

LOL Time: Garrus Vakarian

Source: http://ow.ly/i/nAMR/original

The Turian has every right to be not fussed about this current meme!

LOL Time: Cyanide and Happiness

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

I wish I could do this at work!

Namco X Capcom Industry Fight Club Christmas Special For GamesAid

Last night I was fortunate enough to attend the UK Games Industry's Christmas Fight Club. Organised by Namco and Capcom, it was an evening of intense rivalries between different industry factions, with grudge matches such as:

• Sony vs  Microsoft
• Imagine vs Future
• SEGA vs Nintendo
• 2K vs Ubisoft
• Target Media vs Maverick
• Premier PR vs Indigo Pearl
• Capcom vs Namco
• Access TV vs Inside Xbox
• VG247 vs Destructoid

Despite all of the pre-match smack talk, everyone in the Games Industry had come together to the event to help raise money for GamesAid; a UK video games industry based charity that distributes funds to a diverse range of charities. At the time of writing this, over £6200 was raised from the event's entrance fees alone. Mirroring the industry's solidarity, we were also honoured with the attendance of Katsuhiro Harada and Yoshinori Ono, producers of the Tekken and Street Fighter franchises respectively; both of whom have had a long standing rivalry over the years, but yet have collaborated closely together on their upcoming crossover ventures.

Amongst the freeplay arcade machines (and the only time I'll be able to afford to complete Time Crisis 3) pool tables, bowling, dodgems, the DJ, breakdancing troupe and the bar, there were about over three dozen screens set up with Namco and Capcom titles such as Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition, Soul Calibur V, Street Fighter x Tekken, Tekken Tag Tournament 2, Tekken 6, Tekken 3D Prime Edition, Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 and Dragonball Ultimate Tenkaichi.

Soul Calibur V

Having arrived promptly for the 6pm start, I had the luxury of being able to choose which any of the games on offer. The lure of  the appearance of everyone's favourite Italian master assassin proved too much and so I started by testing Ezio Auditore's skill set against new and returning cast of the Soul Calibur universe. As expected his primary weapon were his hidden blades, but he also utilises his dagger, sword and crossbow as well as his hidden pistol. As a result, he has to fight at much closer range than most other characters when using normal attacks. Ezio unsheathes his sword for heavy attacks as well as during combos.

From long range, Ezio can use his crossbow attack in either standing or crouching positions. However, when standing, Ezio spins to face his opponent before firing and ultimately gives the opponent time to sidestep out of the way. Another long range attack is his hidden pistol shot, which is unblockable, but can be avoided by ducking and sidestepping.

Ezio's Critical Edge attacks his opponent with every single weapon in his arsenal; finishing off the combo with the crossbow and the adversary's slow-motion 'dying swan-like' fall to the ground. A thing of cinematic beauty!

What slightly concerned me when I played as Ezio was his attack speed. He didn't feel like he was as fast as other characters, whom similarly fight in the same proximity to their opponents. I'm not hugely experienced with Soul Calibur titles, but it could have been the lack of weapon animation, given the nature of the hidden blades, that might have given me that impression. The fact that I'm currently playing Assassin's Creed Brotherhood and the sluggishness of the AI enemies in that game might also have led me to believe that Ezio is much faster than he really is. It might explain why I was beating much better players who were using Ezio and I was button mashing with a mid-range fighter like Patroklos.


Street Fighter x Tekken

As you would expect from the Capcom beat 'em up, Street Fighter x Tekken plays a lot like Super Street Fighter IV. This is especially so for the Capcom's side of the roster, but I personally struggled with the Tekken characters. It could be that I genuinely don't know what their moves or that I Tekken is slower paced than it's Capcom counterpart, but it does means that Capcom have done an excelletn job replicating Namco's style of gameplay.

One issue that I hope is fixed by release is the load times. There were occasions where I had chosen finalised both of my choices from the character select screen and neither images had appeared on the screen until five seconds later. Each match also took 30+ seconds to load before starting, which was tortuously slow especially when compared to the load times of Super Street Fighter IV or Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3.


The Friendly Rivalry

We all know that Ono-san and Harada-san are good friends and are always up for entertaining an audience. But seeing Ono-san and Harada-san dressed as Father Christmas and an elf respectively competing to see who could eat the most mince pies in a minute is undoubtedly one of the more stranger moments of the year!

A massive thank you Lee Kirton, Hollie Bennett & Peter Oliver of Namco Bandai for organising such a memorable evening! Same again next year? :D

LOL Time: Achievement Hunter - Joel & Jack meet the Kinectimals

They say you should never work with animals, but how bad can video game animals  actually be?

For more awesome videos, check out AchievementHunter.com and RoosterTeeth.com

Star Wars: The Old Republic Beta Test Event

I'll happily admit that I'm not the biggest Star Wars fan, nor have I had any experience or interest in playing any MMORPG before (I try to avoid them since I have a slightly addictive personality), but when I received a beta code from Bioware through their Bioware Social Network (having previously signed up for Mass Effect 2 DLC), my curiousity peaked. What was all the fuss about? MMO's have come and gone, yet WoW still remains unrivalled. What could this massive beta testing event possible do to persuade me otherwise?

Initial impressions weren't great, if I'm honest. I wasn't expecting to have to download almost 17GB of data to install the test client on a Friday evening, so I'd have to leave that to finish overnight. Then come Saturday morning, with everything installed and ready to go, I find that all of the servers are down for maintenance; stupid Central Standard Time! I am able to finally start creating my character a couple of hours later.

Ultimately though, after accumulating 24 hours of building up my character over the three days, SWTOR had really won me over. I'm huge sucker for a good narrative and if the look and feel of the gameplay fit as well, then I'm sold. Bioware (surprise, surprise, also the creators of Mass Effect) have done good on both accounts and I find myself wanting to even more spend hours leveling up my character (Trooper Commando, ranged DPS FTW!) and further abusing the fair usage policy on my broadband connection in the process. My one regret is that I'm not able to continue playing this offline, since I'm so low level that I'm not looking for groups to take on flashpoints; I'd rather take on the solo missions which rely on the game rather than other players on the server.

I have Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Batman: Arkham City on OnLive to play once I find some time, so I won't be playing SWTOR at launch (not that I can afford it at the moment), but hopefully I'll be able play it some time later in 2012. Perhaps when I'm not competing against hundreds of thousands of players for the same starting area objectives. But what with Mass Effect 3 coming out in March 2012, it looks like Bioware will be taking a lot of my time and money in the near future!

Pure Tech Racing

Yesterday, my friends and I went down to Horley; a small town near London Gatwick airport. Thanks to a mutual friend, we had been given gift cards to have a race experience at Pure Tech Racing. Essentially, they're a consumer arm of the manufacturers of professional racing simulators, Ball Racing Developments (BRD). BRD's simulators are so advanced that they supply many of the Formula 1 racing teams with their technology!

We began with briefing on safety issues and on how to operate the car, but before we knew it we're sitting in the simulators themselves ready to start the qualifying session.

Each 'car' was actually the carbon fibre cockpit of a single seater racing car. We were seated very low down in the car; so low in fact that half of my field of vision was blocked by the steering wheel. Luckily, the accelerator and brake pedals were adjustable so my short legs could reach them. Behind the steering wheel, the paddle shift gearbox was located. These manual gears took a long time to get used to since I always pick an automatic gearbox when playing Forza 3! It was vital that I listen to the sound of my engine to establish if I was in too low or too high of a gear; the audio of which was provided by plugging a pair earphones into the a 35mm socket in the cockpit.

My view of the race track, partially blocked by the steering wheel, consisted of three large monitors which displayed the track, other cars around you and any barriers/obstacles you were about to crash into.

We were advised to wear the racing seat belts provided since each of the cockpits are raised on a set of motorised rollers, which move forward/backwards and side-to-side simultaneously to re-create some of the forces we might experience if we were in real racing car (up to 1.5G). For example, if you turned the car too violently and fast into a corner, the cockpit would move in such a way that you felt the back-end of the car flick out and lose control, and all through the seat of your pants.

The 15 minute qualification gave us a chance to get used to the car and each of the corners, as well as setting a fastest lap to provide the grid order for the race. I found the barriers and gravel traps all too often, but luckily crashing incurred no damage to the car. Otherwise, we'd have traveled quite a way for just 30 seconds of racing! As I was still getting used to the car, I managed to place 5th out of 8 cars, ahead of both of friends in 6th and 7th respectively.

After the qualifying session, we were given a telemetry sheet and a debriefing from the race instructor on how we could improve our performance in the race. The telemetry sheet of race data showed that I was "treating every corner like hairpin" just so that I wasn't flying off the track into the nearest barrier!

With the information in mind, we returned to our simulators and started the 15 minute race. I had a horrible start off the line as I found cars streaming past me into the first corner. Thankfully, practically everyone in front of me went straight off or collided with other cars whilst I carefully kept my car on track. I managed to take back a couple of places, but the majority of cars ahead began to disappear into the distance. But that didn't matter. My battle wasn't them, it was with my friends (and keeping my car on the track); not that I knew where they were anyway!

Corner after corner, lap after lap, I hardly saw anyone else in this race! I thought I must have been last since I hadn't seen any other cars and I'd been off the track a number of times. As the race finished, I looked up and saw the results and to my astonishment I managed to finish 3rd! my mate's girlfriend finished where she started in 6th, whilst he sadly brought up the rear as he had somehow managed to spectacularly crash into the barrier and flip the car into a grandstand of virtual spectators!

Overall, I was great day out. Having an extra sensation of the car movement, G-forces and the car setup certainly added extra dimensions to the normal docile routine of playing Forza or Gran Turismo. It was a real adrenaline pumper, but at £35 a time, it might be while before I come back again.

Assassin's Creed Merch

I've still to finish Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, but I feel that I have the proper knowledge and threads to do so now before I get my hands on Assassin's Creed Revelations.

Hoodie is from Insert Coin Clothing.

The Assassin's Creed Encyclopedia (White Edition) was purchased from UbiWorkshop.

N.B. That's a letter opener, for those of you curious/worried.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 Community Event

Saturday afternoon. Portabello Road, London. It's world famous (no thanks to the film, Notting Hill) market is in full swing and it is busy. I'm walking at snail's pace, trying to push past dawdlers and tourists taking their sweet time. If only they'd just let me pass and get to where I need to get to. That place being the Electric Cinema; the venue for the Final Fantasy XIII-2 Community Event, run by Square-Enix exclusively for community members on their website (i.e. people who bother to sign up).

I stand at the front of the queue, having got there ridiculously early, and as it grows I hear curious locals and non-gamers asking such questions like "I've never seen it so busy. What are they queuing up for?" and "Isn't Final Fantasy a love film?".

Inside

After an hour, it's finally time to let us into the lobby and have my name checked off the guest list. As I enter the main room I think "wow".

A goody bag and poster are found to adorn each of the leather armchairs (Yeeeaahhh! My own armrests!) that make up the entire seating in the room. Not only are the seats comfortable, but each seat has it's own foot rest to put some weary feet up. How could this any better?

As I look over to my right hand side, I find a chocolate cupcake and a coke. Not bad, given the 5 minutes spent signing up to the website to attend this free event. I was already a goody bag up anyway!

On with the show

The presentation starts with a 'you're some of the first people in world to see this new footage, so please no photo or filming' disclaimer, so hopefully I'll still be making sense as I try and describe what happens. After a short interpreted speech (probably pre-written in both Japansese and English) from FFXIII-2 producer, Yoshinori Kitase, we jump into a mid level gameplay session. According to guy talking us through, we are in the Act 3 of the game wondering about a returning area called Sunleth Waterscape. Controlling Noel Kreiss, a character new to FFXIII-2, the person running the demo leads a party of Lightning's sister, Serah Farron, and returning character & Serah's fiancé, Snow Villiers.

The demo goes through a couple of random encounters whilst traversing the level to demonstrate the different fiends that will aid Noel and Serah in the game as their '3rd party member'. Having already played a FFXIII-2 demo at Eurogamer Expo 2011 back in September, this is nothing new. However, the fact that Snow still participates as a party member, but isn't involved in Paradigm Shifts is an interesting reveal.

There's an emphasis on exploration on FFXIII-2, which is not exactly hard given how the majority of FFXIII was so linear. There are many branching routes to take throughout the level, but for the sake of time, we only explore one alternative route, which involves riding on the back of a giant four-legged beast. Ideally, it was also a good time for Square-Enix to reveal a feature, called Moogle Throw, where despite protests from the poor creature, you pick up Serah's Moogle (and the party's companion), Mog, and aim him at out-of-reach treasure orbs whilst in a first person view. He will then open and retrieve any items picked up from the treasure orbs and return to the party; no doubt hoping that he won't be thrown again.

The main objective of this part of game is to collect an artefact, which are used at the Time Gates, as part of the story's progression. Once obtaining the artefact, a cutscene initiates, which is very promptly skipped by Square-Enix, so not to reveal plot spoliers. The demo comes to an end and a small raffle of three FFXIII figures and an Xbox 360 begins. The couple immediately sitting to my left win the first figure and the eventual Xbox 360. So much for being at the front of the queue! The short event is over and all that is left to is get a couple more pictures and then set off to re-negotiate the busy Portabello Road.

Yoshinori Kitase and I. My Japanese doesn't extend far enough to allow me to ask him 'Why was FFXIII so linear and is Kingdom Hearts 3 ever going to be made?'

Persona 4 - The Animation

So I just discovered that there is now an anime series on the one of the last (& favourite) PS2 game I've ever played, Persona 4. As an fan of the anime genre, I'm extremely excited by the prospect of a game-based series. It's currently 3 episodes in and practically takes the same art style and cutscene images straight out of the game. Hell, at the start and end of the mid-episode commercial breaks, it even shows the main character's personality stats in the same spider graph as it does in the game's menu!

I'll be interested though in seeing how they adapt an RPG storyline into a series that can only be so many episodes long. I'm well aware they will have to take some liberties with the storyline to fit as much as they can a limited number of episodes, but I really hope that it's only with the minor plotlines/sidequests. One instance of the adaptation that I've immediately noticed is that the show has simply given the main protagonist the name of Narukami Yu. This does get around the issue where the main protagonist's name could be changed by the player at the start of the game (and thus other characters in the game give the Protagonist titles; like Senpai, Sensei, Leader, Partner, Big Bro, when directly talking to him). However, I needn't worry, as it's not really an issue since the art style is practically identical to that in the game so it's almost like you're watching someone else playing the game!