Back in the late 90s, very much unlike now, I used to play first person shooters quite a lot. Duke Nukem 3D, Quake 3 Arena and Unreal Tournament were probably the most popular multiplayer games of that era for my friends and I. At one stage, I got the first Unreal game for free along with a graphics card (ahh, that old Voodoo3), and tried to play through the campaign with my bro and bro-in-law. We got to a map called the Sunspire, and got very stuck in its maze of darkness. I don't know why. Maybe we'd not figured out how to use flashlights or flares, or realised that the default dispersion pistol could be used to light the way. Whatever the reason, we got no further and went back to other games.

And then a couple of weeks back I thought it was about time I got that game finished at last. My bro was up for revisiting Na Pali, so we got it installed and dived in. After a couple of sessions, we were back to the Sunspire, and the Scoob popped round to join us in conquering it at last. It really wasn't that hard after all.

We're now about three quarters through the game, and I'll hopefully be able to tick this one off the list soon.

Show / hide extra pics

---

After playing a few hours of the original game, we got a taste for some FPS goodness, so we've also been enjoying more madness in UT2004 again.

A couple of months back the Scoob and I were looking for some games to try and take the place of our weekly journey to Valoran and the League. I'd got Torchlight and we gave it a little evaluation to see if it was worth buying number 2, which had a multiplayer mode. Though the sequel has DRM, which I am vehemently against, we really needed something to pass a few hours...
Shortly after, Torchlight 2 was installed and I was making an Outlander named Splap with his chakawary pet Gizmo, joined by Berserker Scoob and his pet wolf called Ragnar.

We set off into the world, and I struggled a lot with the controls at first. Clicking on fast moving enemies was difficult and as a ranged character any misclick would send me running into the melee instead of holding my ground. I had to change all the bindings and install a little program called AutoHotkey to get the desired method of control.

It was not a particularly stable game either. It never crashed or anything, but the lag over the network was evident throughout, even over my LAN, which should not happen. Very often, our avatars on each other's screens, and many of the enemies, would spontaneously jump around the screen as the game tried to keep both computers synchronised. At least, that's what it looked like. Also abilities did not instantly trigger, but there was a short delay which meant timing attacks was hard. Sometimes they didn't trigger at all. Not sure if this is in the game's design, or more lag over the network. It sucked whatever it was.

I don't think either of us payed much attention to the story. It was something about the Alchemist (a playable character from the first game, and the one I had chosen, no less) turning evil and trying to unleash some purple demon things out into the world. Whatever. We just found him and smacked him around the screen. It was very weird after fighting the Alchemist to have to fight more of the netherim, which felt kind of anti-climactic after assuming we had just completed it.
But it's over now. And that's another one down.

---

As I had finished Torchlight 2 after only playing about 15 mins of number 1, I decided to go back and try and continue that one. Unfortunately, even using AutoHotkey, I could not get the controls working the way I wanted them. The first game does not give you any in-game method of rebinding keys, and instead you have to edit text files in the game's folders. Even then, there is no way to rebind the actions of the mouse buttons, and there seems to be no way of separating move and attack, which are linked together as one command. I may have still been able to get it to work, but for some reason the Ctrl modifier, which is supposed to only move your character if you click on something that can be attacked or interacted with, does not work in this game like it does in the 2nd. Meaning as a ranged character I would constantly be running into combat if I misclicked. Annoying.
Alas, the adventures of Splapdinkle and his pet ferret Biggles will never be known, unless the game gets patched. Which it definitely will not at this stage.

So, been trying to play the Witcher at long last, after owning it for over a year. The games in the series have got a good rep out there on t'interwebs as being some of the best RPGs you can play. But unless the 2nd one is much better than this, I will most certainly have to disagree. I'm currently on chapter 4 of 5 chapters, and I'm really struggling to stay with it. The last couple of times I've played I've only managed about 20 minutes each. It's just so frustrating.

Combat is very boring and not very fast paced at all. Just click on an enemy, wait for Geralt to finish his combo and the cursor will flash yellow, then click on the enemy again. Repeat. Frelling snooze fest. You can throw in an occasional bit of magic with the right mouse button, but you have such small reserves of energy you can usually only cast one or two spells a battle. Pointless.

There is far too much hunting for information and reading of books. Many quests can't be completed unless you've read books about monsters you've got to fight, and many herbs can't be picked until you've read about them first. Wouldn't be so bad if the books weren't rediculously overpriced. I've had to repeat this procedure at the start of each chapter as I encounter new monsters, quests and herbs. Painful.

There is far too much back and forth, running between the same areas over and over again as you strive to complete the quests. Very often, finding a specific NPC to hand in a quest is a pain in itself, as characters move around at different times of the day, or vanish or relocate completely if other quests are currently in progress. Again, this wouldn't be so bad if the game would hint at why you can't find them or where they might be. But no. Just come back and try again later. And again. And again. You get the idea.

The camera is shite, especially in isometric mode, which I like to use when just moving around before switching back to 3rd person for combat. It just doesn't follow the character right, or allow you to click exactly where you want to go if there's any whiff of nearby terrain. Even in 3rd person I have no idea what is behind me, and regularly get attacked from the rear and have no idea it is happening. And if you end up in a combat situation where your back is to a wall then watch out. You ain't seeing shit.

A really funny thing is when you trigger a cut scene in the middle of combat. Enemies will stand and wait patiently for you to finish your conversation, before resuming when you're done. Comedy.

The game constantly dictates when you can unsheath your sword, and keeps automatically sheathing it when it's out. This is annoying as hell. I've found running around with a sword out makes Geralt run a lot faster, so that's how I'd like to keep it. Stupid game. Grr.

This one doesn't happen too often, but there are a few cut scenes where Geralt gets totally bladdered. So when you get control back you have to stumble around very very slowly and go and look for a place to sleep it off. Couldn't it just do that automatically and cut to the next day rather than make you waste a whole bunch of time walking around at a snail's pace? Talk about wasting the player's time.

The game has got annoying little bugs sprouting from every orifice. Be they graphics bugs like clipping errors, or interactivity issues like clicking on an NPC and having nothing happen at all. I've even had times where I've attacked and killed enemies and they've completely ignored me and let me do it. Even bosses. It's so bad.

Certain boss fights and other important cut scenes will only take place at certain times of the day. So if you trigger them the game leaps hours into the future to the time of the event. Big problem here is that if you were currently using any potions or damage enhancers on your sword then these will have run out and will have to be reapplied at the start of the fight while enemies are trying to bash your skull in. Thanks game.

The sex content in the game is laughable. Not really sure why they added it in. Here's an example of what happens: Geralt is talking to a woman on the street or in a forest or wherever. They're getting on really well and one of them suggests a bit of sweaty naked fun. Screen fades to a blurry cutscene during which we are to assume the deed is taking place. Cut back to the standard game screen where Geralt and the woman are standing in exactly the same places as they were before the little cut scene and no time has passed at all. Exactly when, where and how did they just have sex if they haven't moved? Weird and pointless.

And this is the enhanced version believe it or not. I'd hate to have played the original. Here's a few images of my adventures so far, as well as some of the interesting bugs:

So are there any good bits? Of course there are. The game wouldn't be so highly respected if there weren't. I'm just too much of a critical douchebag to have really paid them any attention with so many things wrong with the game. The story and characters are indeed pretty cool, even if the game assumes you know the story of the Witcher books and stories. Which of course I don't.

Most of the voice actors also do decent jobs. One in particular sounded very familiar so I looked him up and found out it was none other than Peter Marinker, who did the voice to Doctor Benn from awesome old kids TV show Star Fleet. That's definitely a plus. While I was reading about Star Fleet I also saw that Mark Rolston (Drake from Aliens) did the voice to John Lee?!?!?! What?!?!?!? That is something I can not believe. At all.
I know Star Fleet has nothing to do with this game. But that's what happens when I have such little good to say about it. Oh, the X-Bomber is still the best space ship ever designed. Period.

I'll try my best to finish the game seeing as I've come so far. But it's all very meh at the minute.

Pretty much sure I'm done with LoL at long last. I'd mostly played simple games with real life friends to chill out and avoid the very toxic community that is out there. But in a recent patch Riot Games have changed it so you can no longer get experience unless you play proper games with at least 5 players. Pretty dick move forcing you into having to join up with strangers. But hey. The game can go suck it.
Here's the last few images from our more recent adventures.

---

As we'd been struggling finding new games to play, we tried out some old stuff. First, back on the PS2 there was a Baldur's Gate game called Dark Alliance. While it's a game I finished back then, I never managed on the extreme difficulty. The end boss just killed me over and over. As Scoob had finished it on extreme, we decided to go through it together, confident we could both do it. But it was not to happen, as once at the end we just kept getting murdered, confusing us both.
As we fancied a bit more action RPG, we tried installing Diablo 2, as that is something I've never finished and Scoob's never played. But it just felt so old and bland that we couldn't get into it. Instead, we returned to more recent games and have been playing some Torchlight 2, as well as me finally trying to get through The Witcher. More on those soon...