Gunplay in Metro 2033
I recently reinstalled Metro 2033 in preparation for the upcoming release of new content. I fired it up to futz around a little, and decided to start cleaning up some achievements.
I loaded up the level "Outpost". It's an outdoor level, and it's crawling with Nazis. Nazis everywhere. I check out my inventory and I've got a silenced, scoped revolver, a scoped AK-47, and a double-barrel shotgun. I know the shotgun isn't going to be very effective, so I opt for the revolver while the Nazis don't know I'm about.
I poorly line up a shot and hit one in the chest. It doesn't kill him, and it attracts the attention of his buddies. They're shooting at me from three different directions, so I quickly swap the revolver for the AK, and blast the closest ones. They drop with a couple quick bursts. After I've cleared the floor of the decrepit building I was in, I check my ammo.
Metro 2033 has two kinds of ammo: military grade, and low quality. Military grade is accurate, and does a lot of damage. Low quality is less accurate, and does less damage. There is a noticeable difference between the two and there is a reason why military grade ammo can be used as currency in the game. With how quickly I dispatched the Nazis in what was basically a botched encounter, I was convinced I was shooting my money away.
But I wasn't. It was cheap ammo the whole time. The rest of that level consisted of some small scale encounters, primarily two or three Nazis at a time. This really gave me an opportunity to examine the gunplay that nearly every single review for Metro 2033 complained about.
It is entirely false that weapons in the game are wholly inaccurate. Each weapon has varying degrees of accuracy, and the ammo you use has an effect on accuracy, but if you're using an accurate weapon (like a scoped, silenced revolver), and you aim down the sights, and you pull the trigger when it is pointed at the Bad Guy's face, they die with one shot. This works with the revolver, with the AK, and pretty much every weapon in the game.
I am no sniper. I'm awful at it. Sometimes I get lucky, and catch some Bad Guy's off-guard, and I get the time I need to line up those headshots that make life so much easier. Usually, however, I'm relying on putting enough bullets in things to kill them.
Enemies in Metro 2033 react to being shot in a manner in which you would expect them to. When you shoot human enemies without killing them, they go through a pain animation. Obviously, when they're writhing in pain for one or two seconds, you have the advantage of being able to dump more bullets into them without them shooting back. You can't really use this to "juggle" multiple enemies because the pain animation simply isn't that long, but it is a significant advantage and rewards you for focusing on killing one enemy at a time.
Most of the monsters in this game, more animal than man, react how you would expect an angry animal to react if shot; they charge at you as if they don't feel pain! Yep, it's going to take a few more bullets to kill a charging beast, and you're going to have to do it a little more recklessly than if it were a man, but just because most monsters don't react to being shot doesn't mean your weapons are ineffective against them.
There is really no point for me to write all of this, except that it is my hope that it convinces one person that Metro 2033 is worth playing. I got a bad vibe from most of the reviews I read that kept me away from it for several months, but I absolutely must say that the reviews are wrong. 4A made a fantastic FPS that will probably not get the attention it deserves. And that's a damned shame.
How good is Borderlands?
I beat it on Xbox 360, getting nearly all of the achievements. I beat the Zombie Island of Dr. Ned DLC. I quit on Mad Moxxi because that DLC suuuucked. But between the main campaign and Dr. Ned, I put a load of time into it.
I just beat it again on PC. 14 hours, 30 minutes. I just started Dr. Ned. Then I'll do the Secret Armory of General Knoxx.
I'm still amazed by some of the weapons this game throws at me. A lot of them are garbage. Then you get something absolutely fucking magical. Like an accurate shotgun with high damage, fast reload, large magazine, and ammo regeneration. This is the gun that Zombie Island was made for. I can't lose with this thing.
Brutal Legend
Oh boy, I sank some time into this one this weekend. Brutal Legend is the definition of a mixed bag. When it starts out, you're hacking things to death with an axe and blasting them lightning bolts out of your guitar. Soon after, you've got a car and it's an open world game where you're driving around and doing side missions and collecting stuff. Then you start collecting followers and guiding them into battle. About halfway through, you've got a handful of units, you can fly, give orders, build stuff, and it's a full blown console RTS.
The transition from simple action to RTS is very smooth, and you never lose the open world aspect when you're not in the middle of a story mission. What is kind of a jarring is that the whole first half of the game is the tutorial into the RTS side. The game has three continents and that whole first half of the game takes places on the first one alone. On top of that, there are two other factions in the game, but you spend that first half fighting against the same units you're using. You then spend almost the rest of the game fighting the second faction, and you only really fight the third faction in the absolute final mission.
It's pretty obvious to me that a lot of time and effort went into the first continent and first half of the game, then the rest was cleaned up and rushed through. Everything about the pacing in the second half of the game is off and rushed, and the end drops like a hammer. There's that final RTS mission and one final action sequence and then you're done.
Despite this, Brutal Legend is a ton of fun. It's fun to drive around in. It takes place during the Age of Metal and the backstory and environments and soundtrack are all fantastic. It's simply a fun world to exist in if you're into metal. I'm pretty horrible at RTS games, and I still enjoyed the RTS battles. The controls kind of take some getting used to because they focus on your character as a leader, and so you can only issue orders to your units if you're near them. This is probably why the first half of the game feels like a tutorial, but by time you get off the first continent, you're definitely proficient at commanding your units.
I don't know how to recommend this. I was turned off of it when it was released by reviews saying it was half-baked, and not that fun. It is true that it was definitely a rushed release, but it never feels incomplete. Everything is there, it's just paced poorly. And I definitely had a lot of fun with it. I guess it boils down to whether or not you like metal. If I didn't enjoy the setting so much, I probably wouldn't have spent so much time playing it.
Metro 2033
This game caught me by surprise. It didn't get much hype and what it did get didn't excite me. Crawling around in tunnels in the dark, who cares? Then I found out that the developers are the engineers who made S.T.A.L.K.E.R., which I loved. It got pretty positive reviews, with some complaints being about the difficulty and poor gunplay and dumb AI.
I'm pleased to report these complaints are mostly unfounded. Metro 2033 is a beautiful game with a strong narrative, even if Artyom's motivations are somewhat unclear. I beat the game on normal difficulty without much trouble. The weapons in the game are no less responsive than those in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. I knew from the start that bullets were currency in the game, and that crappy bullets existed, but I didn't figure out how to use those crappy bullets until halfway through the game. The crappy bullets really are crappy, being much louder, less powerful, and more inaccurate. It really makes you value those money bullets and forced me to decide when it was worth shooting my money away.
Around the halfway mark, there's a vendor who will sell you either heavier armor or stealthier clothing. I had spent nearly all of my good bullets on a better gun, which was poor foresight on my behalf because guns are everywhere. I was duly punished for it though, as I was never offered the opportunity to buy a different armor again.
I got Metro 2033 on sale, and it's one of those games in which I wish I had bought it on release. The game is short, but it's really immersive. I hope 4A made enough to keep developing, because I'll definitely get their next title the minute it comes out.
Doom 3
Unlike a lot of people, I really enjoyed Doom 3. It's a big departure from the first two in terms of atmosphere and gameplay, but it holds its own and looks good. I'm doing what feels like my yearly replay of it, except on Veteran (hard) difficulty and I feel like the increased difficulty is really exposing some of the less obvious flaws in the game. I may not even finish this playthrough.
Half of the enemies jump out of closets. It's one of those obvious flaws that you learn about in the first 15 minutes of the game. On medium, it's no big deal because you take a hit, turn around, pop them, and they die. On hard, you still take that first hit, and it's always at least 15% of your health. So you can take two paths with it; you can keep rolling and slowly bleed out from repeated monster closets, or you can quick save after every fight and reload when you find a monster closet so you can better deal with it. It sucks.
Lost souls are the fucking worst. They were an annoyance in Doom 1/2 but never a real threat. In Doom 3, they're tiny, they hit for at least 15%, they bounce out of the way if you hit them without killing them, and when they hit, your view moves. I died in the first encounter with lost souls. LOST SOULS. Flying, screaming skulls pecked me to death.
The shotgun, which sucks at any range beyond 1 meter in front of you, is the best weapon to kill them with because it'll almost always kill them in one hit, except you have to wait until it's charging at you and it's right in front of your goddamned face before you can think about pulling the trigger. The shotgun only holds 8 rounds, and it takes forever to reload so you better not miss!
And let's talk about how much the shotgun blows. The shotgun in Doom 1/2 is one of my favorite weapons. It is versatile and possesses a good amount of stopping power. The shotgun in Doom 3 is worthless beyond 1 meter ahead of you. If you are not jamming that shotgun into the bad guy's face before you pull the trigger, you're going to have to shoot them twice. That said, it will kill ims, soldiers, zombies, maggots, and those dumb teleporting things in one shot, so what I've found myself doing is dancing around while they shoot at me, and then charging at them before I blast them in the face, then running backwards in case that first shot didn't do the trick. It's a huge letdown. It's horrible. Thankfully the plasma rifle is even more awesome than it was in Doom 1/2.
Even playing on hard, Doom 3 is no more difficult. It is just more annoying. Playing it feels like work. I will probably abort this playthrough, and remind myself next time to play it on medium again, when the game is more fun.
Shogo
I have finally, finally, finally finished Shogo: Mobile Armor Division. I missed the boat on this one when it was first released, picked it up from GOG when it was re-released there, got stuck finding an exit, and now I've cleaned it up. This is an old Monolith game, and it shows. It's not as buggy as Blood 2, but it has its fair share of glitches. Still, the action is fast, the mechs are fun, and it still sports some impressive-for-its-time effects. The mechs have a useless vehicle mode, and some of the fights are in unreasonably cramped quarters. Gun fights are super-short, as nearly all the enemies have machine guns and you can't particularly afford to take a lot of damage from them. It's usually a case of who spot whom first, because if you can get a couple bullets in them first that's nearly enough to kill them, or at least interrupt them long enough to mop up some others. The game is clearly heavily influenced by anime and the designs and sound effects work fantastically towards this purpose. Overall, rather fun!
Post Ubuntu 10.04 instructions
http://blog.thesilentnumber.me/2010/04/ubuntu-1004-post-install-guide-what-to.html
This is a fantastic guide to a lot of the common things people need/should do after installing Ubuntu 10.04! Simple instructions and lots of picture!
Ubuntu 10.04 LTS released!
I am a huge fan of Ubuntu! I'm a big fan of linux and OSS in general, but Ubuntu is linux done right. It is a clean, well-made, easy to use distribution. This release is particularly important because it is a Long Term Support release. These releases come every two years and are good for three years of updates and support from the Ubuntu developers. See, Ubuntu has a six month release cycle. Every six months, you get a new Ubuntu release! Usually enough aesthetics are updated and tweaked to make it feel like a whole new OS, but the underlying changes usually revolve around kernel updates and program updates.
Free software thrives on a constant flow of updates and fixes. Usually these fixes improve the program, but sometimes they break things, and sometimes they really break things. When you get a typical six month release of Ubuntu, you're getting software that's been tested, but may still be a little unstable in some far-out conditions. The appeal of the LTS release is that it is software that's been vetted for stability over the last two years, and will continue to be supported for the next two years.
If getting a new OS every six months is a little overwhelming, than the LTS release is the perfect option! It's not the bleeding edge, so you're not going to get burned by buggy software, and it's particularly tested for stability. I'm a mad man and I love installing a new version of Ubuntu from scratch every six months, but what I suffer through in buggy software (which is rarely buggy at all) pays off when the new LTS is released and everyone gets to reap the benefits of well-tested software.
If you're thinking about getting into linux, now is the perfect time. Installation could not be simpler, and this version even has a full blown manual.
Finished
I'm kind of done with numbering the games I finish and writing up shitty little reviews. I've most recently finished Batman: Arkham Asylum and The Darkness, and there's been plenty said about both of them. I guess if I feel I have something significant to contribute I'll write something proper, otherwise you can listen to yammer on about crap on Facebook.
Things I’ve been obsessing over
F.E.A.R. 2
I can't deny it; I love F.E.A.R. 2. I don't even understand why I love it so much. The F.E.A.R. games just feel so right to me. This is one of my favorite sections; where you get to stomp around in enormous power armor, with unlimited ammo, turning replica and Armacham soldiers into red mist. The effects when you're in this power armor are fantastic, between the sounds of the chainguns firing and how the whole hud behaves like you're inside a machine looking at a display screen. It distorts and corrupts as you take damage and it's awesome.
I saw this episode on Adult Swim two weeks ago and it motivated me to watch the rest of the series. I've made it through the first season, Bollo was my favorite episode. This song, however, is amazing.
3. Mindless Self Indulgence If
My friend Ed is really into Mindless Self Indulgence, and I never really got it. I've listened to Frankenstein Girls Will Seem Strangely Sexy before and was seriously unimpressed. At his birthday party he was trying to play If but the files were corrupted. Afterwards I thought I'd give them another shot. It took at least two playthroughs to really enjoy it, but If is fantastic. It's definitely not for everyone but it's a huge improvement over Frankenstein Girls.
4. Demetri Martin "Break-up Lines"
Demetri Martin is a funny guy and this is a recent favorite of mine. I have a special place in my heart for the last line.
This goes along with my F.E.A.R. 2 obsession. Monolith made a few funny videos to go along with their DLC releases, and this is my clear favorite.
6. AV Club: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists cover Tear for Fears "Everybody Wants to Rule the World"
Ted Leo is basically awesome and this is a fantastic song, so this is a fantastically awesome cover!