A mod I’ve been watching for a while now was release, the much anticipated WWI Source. I was excited to download it when it was released with its uninspired, yet easily memorable name. I’ve played a few hours of it, most of it I believe were enjoyed and not endured but that doesn’t mean the mod isn’t without problems.

Hopefully this post will help show some of the issues I’ve had with the mod so far, as well as some ideas I’ve seen on the WWI Source forums and my thoughts on them.

Problems and Bugs

• Friendly fire defaults to off: this may not seem like a big deal, but it was for the first couple of nights after release. Every server that had any player count what-so-ever was full of griefers ruining it for everone.
• You can shoot and bolt while moving in prone: even though there’s no animation telling you this, it does.
• You don’t spectate after you’ve died: nope, it should go to spectator. The code’s already there for it, they just don’t use it. Instead you hover with jerky movement.
• If you select a class that’s full after joining, the menu doesn’t reopen and you have to re-select your team: this is very annoying if the MG class is full. You have to select your team again as well, I don’t see why you would have to.
• The infamous spawning bug: sometimes, after joining, you will not spawn after selecting your class. Sometimes you don’t get a reinforcements timer, sometimes you do. When the round resets you spawn.
• You can constantly spam the prone button: in most games, there is a delay for how often you can toggle prone, but in this you can keep on doing it
• MGs take forever to deploy and undeploy: it’s very annoying once you have sight of someone and are just completely helpless to do anything. Which also leads on to my next point.
• You can’t move until fully undeployed: it would be nice to move as soon as I right click, so I can get out of danger.
• Phantom player clips: There’s some weird player clips around, some blocking things you wouldn’t expect to be blocked like the top of a hill near Allied spawn on the map Devil’s Wood.
• Bleed-out doesn’t remember the weapon that caused it: When you die from a bleed out, it uses the player who caused the bleed out’s active weapon, not the one that caused it.
• Low-resolution death notices: The icons on death notices are incredibly low resolution, attacker pixel victim
• Score padding bug: if you switch to spectate, then join a team and select a class, and repeat, you will be +1 score better off every time you do it.
• Ironsights not aligned properly: a problem on pretty much every weapon
• Overpowered officer pistols: or sniper rifles, as they currently should be known. They do way to much damage at range.
• Dodgy animations: hands clipping through the gun, all sorts of issues here
• Bolting and reloading is too fast: you’d think the SMLE was a semi-automatic.

What could be added

Medics or Wound Dressing

It don’t think a medic class would be needed, it just doesn’t fit because of the absence of field medics in the actual war. But, something to counter the bleed-out system would be incredibly nice to have. Being able to dress wounds or a friends’ would be a much needed addition, but as suggested on the forums it shouldn’t heal health – just stop bleeding. I can imagine it working like L4D, but to heal others it would need some kind of incentive that makes you want to give it to others over yourself.

MG Class sidearm

Very easy to do, melee or pistol would be nice. You can’t defend yourself unless you are deployed which makes it really frustrating when you die from an easily-avoidable death on any other class.

Other things to consider

I’ve seen bits of other things I’d like to see addressed is simplifying the UI, which Dead.Pixel puts a very nice looking solution to here.

I will update this post if I see or think of anything else.

First off, I’m a little behind with my Pile of Shame series. I’m really enjoying Mass Effect 2, to the point of really wanting to take my time with it, and explore as much of it as I can. Current plan is the complete it this weekend, and then try my best to catch up with Bioshock 1 and 2. I have a week off of college coming up, so I should be to do some catching up there.

Battlefield Bad Company 2

So I’ve been following this game for a while, the early gameplay videos made me quite moist. So I played the beta (read: demo), and I mostly enjoyed it. Playing it on my own on a random server the game was quite fun. It does take some getting used to, especially if you have just come from something like Modern Warfare 2. Guns actually have something called “recoil”, and it can take a fair few hits to down somebody.

The only game mode in the beta is Rush, and it’s something I’ve not seen in a game before until this. It’s a great fast-paced mode, that can really take things right down to the wire, and cause serious frustration if you have an incompetent team. The game starts off with two points on the map, that one team has to defend and the other destroy. Once those two are destroyed, the next section of the map opens up and the same happens again. This happens 4 times in total, and each time it does, the points become more advantageous for the defending team. The attackers have a limited amount of tickets (total number of deaths for the entire team) before they lose, while the defenders have infinite.

This game mode really comes into it’s own when you are playing in a squad with your friends, with voice communication of some kind. You can spawn behind anyone in your squad no matter where they are, and it’s great. If you have 3 or 4 competent players working together, especially when attacking, they can easily win the game for the team. It’s a great feeling when the three of you sneak into the building with the bombsite in it, chuck down a lorries worth of C4, and then, while jumping out of a window, detonating it, causing the bombsite, hell, the entire building, to crumble.

There are a few problems with the game, some of which are just because it’s a beta, some which are obvious design choices but I would personally like to be changed. Not having the ability to prone is a weird one. Seeing a tank coming towards you, and your first instinct, especially if you have played any other Battlefield game, is to prone in a nearby shrubbery. Instead you have to do with just crouching there, which is kind of silly. Actually, that is the only problem I have with it so far… Guess it’s even better than I thought.

So yeah, I’d highly recommend it. It’s free on the Xbox where it is actually called a demo, and for for nothing you do get a crap-load of content. On the PC you have to pre-order it to get a beta key, unless you are clever. So, yeah, go get it.

Global Agenda

A new MMO that came out last weekend, with the early start event starting on Friday, and a beta last a little shorter than a month before that. Firstly, at it’s core it is a third person multiplayer shooter, with different classes, game modes etc. It then also has a PvE side to the game as well, wherein 4 players take on a dungeon. It’s unique selling point though is it’s Conquest mode, in which player created agencies fight over a real-time world, attacking and defending zones.

The Conquest mode I haven’t personally experienced yet, because it wasn’t open for a lot of the time in the beta, and I have not yet put enough time into the game to get into a decent agency, and spend a decent amount of time in the game since it’s official launch – mostly because of Mass Effect 2. Also, this is the part of the game you have to subscribe to take part in, with the regular PvP and PvE been available to everyone just from purchasing the game.

The PvP is the part that I have found the most interesting so far. It’s a nice mix of Unreal Tournament, Team Fortress 2 and a few other inspirations, but it still feels like a unique game. It currently has 3 game modes; Control – control 2/3 points on the map to get points, Payload – push the cart to one end of the map and Capture the Robot – each team have a robot which a player controls and have to reach the other side of the map with it. There is another one similar to Rush in Bad Company 2, but the name escapes me at the moment.

The first 2 work really well, and I’ve had a lot of fun playing them. They require a lot of teamwork, which can be a pain as the maximum group allowed in a premade is 4, it can be quite random as to whether you win or not.

PvE on the other hand is a bit hit and miss. Great for some quick grinding, but the first 2 aren’t particularly inspired. They later ones, of which there are 5 in total, may get a bit more interesting and challenging, but the first 2 are just a case of rush through it as quickly as possible, with nearly any group setup working fine.

Finally, the 4 classes in the game are Assault (heavy), Recon, Medic and Robotic. All pretty self explanatory with the exception of the Robotic. This is the class I am playing now it’s launched, and it is a lot of fun. My play style is relying a lot on turrets, as they can do a lot of damage, and with Control and Payload often forcing players to be in one spot for a long time, turrets can be really affective.

In the beta I tried playing the Recon class as a sniper. I would not recommend it, and find it a frustrating setup to play. The bullets travel extremely slowly, and it takes around 3 shots to kill someone. It seemed to be almost impossible to hit a moving target, unless you were lucky and either they didn’t move, or they moved into it.

Anyways, in summary, I have enjoyed this game, but I don’t see myself really becoming to involved in the subscription side, as I cannot see me wanting to put that much time into the game. Those who are looking for a new MMO to sink their time into, but are bored of clicking abilities and want to shoot a gun, this could be for you.

Right, that’s me done until Monday / Tuesday. Back to Mass Effect 2, woop woop!

Spen

Dragon Age: Origins

What can I say? There is something about Dragon Age that just.. isn’t doing it for me. The weird thing is, I’m not sure why. When I have some spare time, I just didn’t feel like loading it up. The times I did force myself to play it, I was mostly having fun. It is really odd to me. The only thing I think it could be is the combat, as I did find it a little tedious at times, but I really do enjoy the story (as with all Bioware games) and want to play through it. The other thing is, other than the weekends, I’ll only ever have a spare few hours max at a time, and I think it is the sort of game you really need to just spend hours getting into, and you kind of lose the flow over shorter play sessions. So, yeah, I failed. I ended up sinking about 25 hours into overall, which maybe got me a quarter of the way through the game. I’m going to save it now, for Easter, or even Summer.. we’ll see.

Some thoughts on what I played though. The dialogue is amazing, as is most if not all of the voice acting. So far I haven’t run into anyone who I’ve specifically thought was poorly acted. The actual writing behind it also seems to be very crisp.. everything you would expect from Bioware really; they didn’t let up. The entire story I don’t really want to comment on though, as I’ve only done a very small part of it, but so far it is the reason I want to keep playing. Finally the combat is solid, if not a little tedious. I was playing on hard difficulty (which seems a little silly if the main reason I want to play it is for story…) and most of the time it was just the right amount of challenge. The kind of challenge where I had to think about nearly every fight, and a few mistakes would cost me. And because I’m terrible at remembering to auto-save, this normally sent me back 5 fights, and when they are all challenging it got a little monotonous. But well, that’s just my fault really. And you can change the difficulty at any point, so if I didn’t have such a high sense of pride I could just turn it down to easy to blast through the same fights. One more thing, graphically this game is pretty impressive. With all settings on max the environments look pretty impressive, spell effects are great. Character models and animation are a little lacking, but nothing too serious. So, that’s my one paragraph review of Dragon Age: Origins.

Torchlight

Okay, so I didn’t manage to complete Torchlight either. I did get a good portion of the way through it though, and I am going to try and complete it tonight, but wanted to write this close to the schedule I promised. I got to floor 35 of the 50 the main dungeon has to offer, while doing other little side-quest dungeons in between.

First off, this is coming from some one who has only ever played 30 minutes of Diablo 2, so I won’t be making any comparisons to that, and just judging the game on it’s own merits. For those that haven’t heard of it, you are missing out. Brought to you by a fair few of the guys that worked on Diablo 1 and 2, and the company that brought you Hellgate: London and the never released Mythos, this “budget title” is a great game full of character. It consists of 50 levels of dungeon crawling, a choice of 3 different characters with 3 skill trees a piece. Quests and side dungeons thrown in as well, with many loots to collect and with other things such as gems, enchanting and fishing this game has a lot to offer.

The gameplay is Diablo. There is no denying that at all. Click to move. Click on something to attack it, hold the click to keep attacking it. Right click to use an ability on it. The style on the other hand is where it differs. It has a great variation of environments that change every 5 or so floors, and personally it was one of the big things that kept me playing. I couldn’t wait to complete the next few levels to see what the next art style they would use. They start of with “the cave” and “the jungle” but then go through some quite unique areas. The areas are half randomly generated. As in, they have designed some large pieces, and then they are randomly generated together. In my opinion this is the best of both worlds. A nicely designed area, but still not the same dungeon over and over again when you replay it.

One complaint that most people make is the lack of multiplayer. Now, as I never played Diablo to any great extent, I haven’t really noticed a lack of this. I never thought that this would be especially better if I was playing it with some one, and would urge you to still play this game if that is keeping you from buying it. Also, Runic have said that they are turning the game into an MMO, and started work on it as soon as the game had shipped. They have also stated that it would take them around a year to do this. So, buy it now, play it, then just keep it safe for the future.

So, that’s week 1 done already. Or I am counting it as done. Don’t judge me. Anyways, this week is Mass Effect 2. I can barely contain my fluids over this game. First one was definitely one of my favourite games of all time. I just love everything about the story and the characters, and from what I’ve seen this is more of that, with improved combat… cannot wait. It was posted today, so should come on Thursday. Will be a push to complete by Monday, but every morsel of spare time will go to this game.

Spen

I finally got a Google Wave account from HTF, though I had to wait a week to receive it which was incredibly annoying. I don’t see why it couldn’t be like how Gmail worked back in the day, when it was you know, instant. But with Gmail being instant everyone had an account after not too long, even when it was still invite-only.

In essence, Google Wave is “how email would be if it was invented today” and everything is in the form of a single document. This single document can be edited by anyone added to the Wave, and pictures and attachments can be drag and dropped onto the Wave (as long as you have Google Gears installed).

Google took an hour and twenty minutesa to explain and show what Google Wave can do, and that one real-time document can be stretched to do a lot more. Simple examples of this include a Sudoku game and a Twitter client.

I’ve found that it makes a pretty good IM client as well, since any part of a document can then become a chat. You’re able to see what someone is typing and can start responding before they’ve even finished which I have found myself doing in the couple of Waves I’ve been a part of so far.

It does, in fact, work a lot better than say MSN, especially when dealing with more than one other receipiant. For example, if you want to send a file to multiple people over MSN you have to open a conversation for each person you want to send the file to. But this you can drop and drag any file to some friends and if the files are pictures they can see it on the web page without ever having to store it.

As a replacement for email, I can see where they are coming from. But, I don’t personally see it as a full replacement, though it’d be useful for design documents and project planning which is a lot of the corporate world covered.

In conclusion, I’ve got high hopes for this once more people get hold of this but as a complete replacement for email I don’t completely see it but a very good replacement for IM.