Happy Holidays

So there's no article this week as the author feels that during the holidays one should not be spending ones time reading articles about video games.  Rather one should be spending this time of year with ones family or catching up on ones backlog of video games while ignoring ones family.  See you all next year.

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of the Worst Fighting Game Mechanic Ever

Wait. Stop. Before you read any further I'd like you to go to the link below and spend a little time getting your ass handed to you at rock-paper-scissors (RPS). First I'd like you to go with the 'Novice' setting and play a few rounds. Then I'd like you to reload the game but this time go with the 'Veteran' setting.

Rock-Paper-Scissors Game

So you're back. Having now likely gotten beaten soundly at rock-paper-scissors. At this point you're likely asking what was the point of that exercise? The point my friends was to use it as an illustration of how lopsided and poorly implemented what is, in my opinion, not only the worst mechanic in 'Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3' but what is also, in my opinion, in the running for worst mechanic is fighting game history in the Team Aerial Combo aka TAC. The TAC mechanic is essentially a skewed game of rock-paper-scissors in which the player initiating it has all of the advantages. Hmmm, I'm not explaining this very well. Let's get some of the technical mumbo-jumbo out of the way:

• TACs are useable in most aerial combos;
• The player initiating the TAC can chose between up, down or sideways (left and right are interchangeable);
• A successful TAC tags in the next character on the players team to continue the combo;
• Upwards TAC grants a damage bonus;
• Downwards TAC gives a full bar of super meter;
• Sideways TAC steals a bar of super meter;
• A TAC can be countered only by matching the directional input the player initiating it selected (i.e. up counters up, down counters down, left or right counters left or right) AND only if the direction is input correctly within 15 frames (~ ¼ of a second);
• If you (somehow) counter a TAC the person initiating it takes a miniscule amount of damage and the combo is broken.

So looking at all of that it should be clear that this mechanic is essentially RPS but worse in that there is only one condition for each situation where you can “win” and two where you can lose whereas in an actual game of rock-paper-scissors you have options where you can win or tie (i.e. not lose). Additionally the window for countering the TACs is incredibly tight such that doing so is, in my experience, more a matter of luck than of skill. Essentially TACs are a RPS mechanic where the attacker has the deck stacked significantly in their favor. So why is this a bad thing? Well there are three reasons that stand out in my mind:

1. TACs add a (significant) random element to the game.
2. They deter players from learning actual combos (you can keep these exchanges going long enough to kill or come damn close to killing most of the characters in the game).
3. The make online play an incredibly poor facsimile of how the game actually plays.

If you've seen them in action items #1 and #2 should be pretty obvious but what's that about #3. Well #3 is the reason I had you play the RPS game linked to above twice. I would say that countering a TAC offline against a human being sitting in the same room as you would be akin to beating the computer on the 'Novice' setting after its studied you for ten rounds. Now countering a TAC online would be more like coming up with a win against the 'Veteran' level computer after its studied you for twenty rounds, i.e. a lucky guess. The reason that you don't (usually) see players going for TACs constantly against offline competition is because of the (slim) chance that they'll get countered and that they'd usually rather go with something that's guaranteed. Online, eh, not so much. Given even the most minimal amounts of latency online (lag screws up the timing for countering) TACs go from a minimal risk with a high reward to no risk with a high reward as they are practically guaranteed combo extension and bonuses and that my friends makes for a terrible mechanic. See you all next week.

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Minor Improvements

Ok, so a couple of weeks ago when I said that 'Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3' made only one positive change I might have been a bit off. It's actually three. That's the final revised number. Seriously. So you inquisitively and enthusiastically ask what are positive fixes numbers two and three? Well if fixing the matchmaking was positive change number one then positive change number two would be the new connectivity indicator that has been added before a match is confirmed. Previously when you did a ranked match you set your preferences (I recommend 'Same' and 'Same'), hit the OK button and then started praying to whatever deities you believe in for a playable match. Now not so much. Now you get to see a rough estimate of your opponents connection to you before you greenlight playing them.

Names redacted to protect the innocent.

This change is a major boon to online warriors though I'm tempted to dock Capcom points for this positive change as it really is something that should have been in the game from the word 'go' and not something that gets added later after people spend nine months complaining about crappy online play. The ability to screen out people with bad connections is huge plus even if there's a small chance that people will use it to screen their opponents in general (i.e. fishing for easier matches).

For positive change number three we have another feature that should have shipped with the original game and that was omitted due what one can only speculate was a mixture of laziness and indifference in 'Spectator Mode' for player matches/rooms. This is another feature that perplexed people for its absence from 'vanilla' and it seems to be reasonably functional in its 'Ultimate' incarnation. The fact that it works makes the main reason that Capcom gave for not having it in 'vanilla' seem especially hollow (they said it would lag the game too much). Nice try. Well that's it for the positive changes see you all next week.

  

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Reactionary Whiners

Ok so this week we interrupt you're regularly schedule article to bring you what will hopefully be a marginally well articulated rant. Yes, it's still going to be about 'Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3', you're not getting off that easily. You see there was a large 'UMvC3' tournament this past weekend and the aftermath has been cringe-worthy. The issue that people seem to be having is that of the 26 (or 28, reports conflict) different team configurations that the top 16 players used 23 of those configurations used the same character. For a game that offers a playable roster of 52 characters assembled into whatever 3 character team your heart desires that is stunning lack of diversity. However that's all it is. It isn't indicative of a broken game, broken system (probably) or anything else. It isn't as one message board user cleverly coined the “Weskocalypse” (the character in question is Wesker, duh). It certainly isn't a justification for major, minor or any changes to the character in question. If you're seeing numbers like that in tournaments a year from now that would be indicative of a problem but for a single tournament less than a month after a games release, hardly. So let's look at the “argument” that people have put forward for knee-jerk reactionary nerfing:

I give you the “argument”: Wesker does too much damage too easily.

This statement actually manages to put out two highly flawed ideas at the same time. Firstly from a damage perspective Wesker is maybe (emphasis on 'maybe') in the top 25% of damage dealers in this game. That's a hard hitter but it certainly isn't the tops. With help of meter he's maybe going to pick off the lowest health characters in the game in a single combo but otherwise is going to need to hit the opponents character at least twice for the KO. Now that may sound kind of brutal but that's pretty much the way most of the characters in the game that are considered to be playable are*. So his damage isn't particularly aberrant. Well “What about X-Factor**?” you ask. Well, what? Practically every character in the game can do stupid amounts of damage when using X-Factor. Again not really an issue unique to one character. One could make an argument that the mechanic itself could stand to be toned down but that's not why we're here today.

For the second part of the argument people seem to think that for something to be good it should also be hard to use. This is, as best as I can tell, a call to the nostalgia of older fighting games where often there was a correlation between how good a character was and how hard that character was to use. The thing is that either way it shouldn't matter. What matters in a game where the goal is to reduce the opponents health to zero is the ends not the means. That is to say the individual moves and combos are what matters, not how easy or difficult it is to perform them.

A more correct argument regarding difficulty: A good character that's really easy to play stifles innovation.

This is a valid argument but whether or not it matters is a personal issue. That is to say are you OK with playing a game where a large portion of the roster may never see their full potential because the low hanging fruit is especially low hanging while also being fairly effective? I personally am fine with it at the moment because I really don't expect it to continue. I think that the tournament that's generating all this nerd-rage will eventually be looked back on as a serious outlier with regards to character usage as the prevalence of the character in question drops off. However even if it doesn't happen for whatever reason I'd still be fine with that too as I enjoy the challenge of trying to solve problems rather than having them solved for me (patched).

Another argument regarding difficult: Ease of play matters but only at the most difficult end of the spectrum where it's humanly impossible to execute with the character consistently.

This is, in my opinion, the only valid “ease of use” related argument in that if a character has what would seem to be phenomenally powerful tools relative to the game in which they appear but is, for whatever reason, so hard to use consistently that even the most masterful and dextrous people have issues with them then no matter how powerful they are in theory then they [the character] should be somewhat downgraded. It's worth noting that such characters are exceptionally rare and that there aren't any who fit this description in 'Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3'.

So, let's gather a bit more data before making any mistakes and altering a character that may or may not need it. This already happened once in 'vanilla' and I think in hindsight that the general consensus would be that it was a mistake. I for one would like to see a game given a chance to develop before it gets cut down prematurely by a bunch of reactionary whiners. Here's hoping cooler heads prevail. See you all next week.

*Yes, I realize that this is somewhat of a logical fallacy but people have singled out, in this case, a single character to complain about having already beaten to death the “Damage is too high in general in this game” discussion. When looking at average damage from viable, stable combos Wesker is hardly an outlier.

**In MvC3/UMvC3 X-Factor is a comeback mechanic that grants a significant damage boost. More specifically it grants each character a damage and (usually) a speed boost with the amount of the boost being character dependent and also based on how many members of their team are still alive. It also prevents chip damage, allows players to cancel out of block, to cancel a move and sets the damage scaling minimum absurdly high. It is, thankfully, only useable once per game.

Sweating the little things, i.e. minor improvements in Ultimate MvC3

Alright so there isn't too much to talk about this week. The creatively titled 'Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3' (which uses five different fonts in its title) isn't for better or worse really all that different than its predecessor. So other than the HUD (discussed last week) what's changed? Well we've got twelve new characters, eight “new” stages (whoop-de-doo), an allegedly improved online mode and a whole host of tweaks to the existing characters. Anything else? Yes! Of all the various systemic and menu options that I picked the “vanilla”  'Marvel vs. Capcom 3' apart for Capcom has changed...one of them. Wait, what? Yup, of all of the various design issues that plagued the non-gameplay elements of “vanilla” only one of them has been changed from “suck” to “functional”.

While I'm not complaining about the change they made it's a little frustrating to see how little else got fixed. Oh, the change by the way is how failed matchmaking attempts are handled. That's it. While this was certainly a source of frustration for me and I'm sure many others it wasn't what I would consider to be the highest priority issue in the game. That would be the button configuration (source of much time wasted) which remains inexplicably unchanged. So now with the search we start here:

Something about this looks very familiar.

We search for a bit and if something goes horribly, horribly wrong we get this:

Abort! Abort! Abort!

And then we end up back here:

Yes, I definitely feel like I've seen you somewhere before.

That's it. A simple and obvious change to something that shouldn't have been a problem in the first place. Good job. Ugh, really? That's it? I still have to use the second worst button configuration utility in fighting games, still have to sit through pointless post-matchmaking song and dance, still have to deal with the game saving itself three times after every ranked match? Gee, thanks Capcom. See you all next week.

Insert creative Vampire related article title

And now for something completely different. Wait, I'm sorry, I'm being informed that I already used that opener and that I'm contractually obligated to wait at least one calender year before I start recycling material. Well, OK, anyhow today's article is an examination of a PC gaming fossil in 'Vampire:The Masquerade Bloodlines', an action RPG with vampires. There are two reasons why I even played this game. The first was that I started seeing the title crop up on various gaming forums in topics along the lines of “Name your favorite under appreciated game” and then over the Halloween weekend Valve's digital distribution service Steam had the game on sale for five dollars. Figuring this was a pretty low risk investment I picked it up. Now, before I go any further I will say that the game was most certainly worth the five dollars that I paid for it and that it would also be worth it at the non-sale price of twenty dollars. There are just a few minor issues with the game but that's why we're here.

The first thing you'll likely notice once you install the game is that it likely doesn't work. There are, according to the support forums, any number of reasons why this could be but I'm going to go with computer voodoo as the reason why my copy didn't work. So you're going to need to download the patch for the game. But which one? Well as best as I can tell downloading both the developers patch and the fan made one should get things working for most people. Amusingly you might notice that the version history is a hell of a lot longer for the fan made patch than the developers one. The reason for this being as best as I've been able to tell is that the developers went out of business shortly after the game was “finished” and essentially shipped a product that was somewhere between non and barely functional whereas the fan support for this game (especially given its age) has been nothing short of heroic.

On to the gameplay side of things it would seem that for the sake of realism that 'Bloodlines' was trying to be a trendsetter in 2004 by not including a true map function in the game. In city and (most) sewer areas there are maps of the region posted that the player can consult to get an overhead view of the region. Everywhere else, eh not so much. Now this has actually become the somewhat in thing to do as there are a few recently released games that have either a pared down or non-existent map function. This is fine as long as you're dealing with small-ish and/or very distinctive environments and/or an incredibly linear game. You might be able to deduce from this being mentioned that 'Bloodlines' doesn't really meet any of those criteria and that it's somewhat easy to get lost (especially is non-mapped sewer areas). The funny thing is that the lack of a map wouldn't be an issue (outside of the sewer areas) if the game didn't automatically close doors after you. That is to say you open a door, go into the room and a few second later the door closes on its own with this same process repeating upon exiting the room. The reason that this is an issue is that without a map function it's hard to know where you've already been. Leaving the doors open to rooms you've already checked would've been an easy way to fix that.

This last issue is a minor one and may in fact be a function of my computer hardware but I found myself too often reloading from a previous save because I had wasted money on an item that I didn't want. What would happen was that I would highlight an item to examine it and in the process one too many clicks finds its way into the system and now I've bought the item. Given that many sales are final (you can sell the item back to the store at a loss) and that money isn't that easy to come by in the game this was certainly a source of irritation for me and as the game progressed (shinier/more expensive stuff to buy) I found myself having to quicksave before every merchant interaction.

So that's it. Those where the only real issues I had with 'Bloodlines'. Seriously, I was surprised at how solid a game it was and it's certainly a shame that the developers are out of the game. Pick it up for five dollars, twenty dollars or whatever. See you all next week.

I don't always play fighting games but when I do I prefer that they not remind me of Dos Equis.

And yes I realize I'm not the first person to make a joke along those lines. Anywho people, a new version of 'Marvel vs. Capcom 3' is out creatively titled 'Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3' and before anyone gets antsy it does in fact continue it predecessors proud tradition of making some seriously questionable design decisions. In this case the one that's going to jump out to most people (especially those who played the “vanilla” version) is the heads-up display (HUD). At this point I have to imagine that between the HUD, some of the system changes and many of the character “balance” changes that the number one action item for the 'UMvC3' team was: change for changes sake. While I won't be getting to the system or “balance” changes in this article I am going to be briefly going over the new HUD.

Pictured: A reminder of what the original HUD locked like

On the left you'll see the second most interesting man in the world.

The first couple of issues with the new HUD seem more like systemic issues with Capcom. Mainly being that no one asked for this as the HUD in the first game was perfectly serviceable and significantly more legible than the new one. Additionally when Capcom was debuting various builds of the game over the summer the community feedback on the new HUD was almost universally negative and it's nice to see that those comments went almost completely ignored. I'm not saying that a company should bend over backwards to accommodate every minor complaint that a fan base has but in this case some level of change was warranted. As far as I'm aware there was maybe one complaint to be had about the original HUD and that was that the indicator for whether or not you had a specific resource still available to you was kind of hard to see (the red dots next to the character portraits). Other than that it was fine. Ergo if you'd stuck with the original but fixed that one issue you'd have a HUD that is miles better than the one we've got now.

Furthermore I'm very curious who thinks a character order that goes 3-1-2 (new) is somehow more intuitive than an order that goes 1-2-3 (old). While this is a change where I agree with the apologists (i.e. people who're for some reason defending terrible design) that people will eventually get used to I have argued and will continue to argue that it's something that people shouldn't have to get used to. More change for changes sake. I get it that the designer wanted to make it more apparent which character was on point at any given moment but there really has to be a better way to do so than this.

Before we get to the last issue here's a test. More specifically it's a crappy web-based test for colorblindness. See 'UMvC3' like 'Bioshock 2' makes a mistake in its design that makes it difficult to impossible for those with certain forms of colorblindness to see the display properly. In 'Bioshock 2' it was a minigame that was literally impossible for those with red-green or blue-yellow colorblindness to solve. In 'Marvel' while I haven't seen the specifics of the complaints I have seen several colorblind players vocalizing their concerns about being unable to read several of the meters/gauges effectively. This is certainly an area where I don't recall seeing similar complaints about the old HUD.

Overall looking at the (ghastly) changes to the HUD it really does seem to reinforce the suspicion of change for changes sake. Even more-so than when the change results in something that is considerably worse than what it's replacing is the resources devoted to these unnecessary changes. As of the writing of this article (a couple of days before the games official launch) people have already found more than a few glitches ranging from silly to “Oh hell” that's a problem. Maybe a few less random changes and a little more QA/QC next time Capcom. Not a sermon, just a thought. See you all next week.

Breaking the bank i.e. how to cheat single player virtual economies

“Cash Rules Everything Around Me” a phrase coined by noted philosophers the Wu-Tang Clan is one of the most applicable phrases to survival in video games. I'm not talking about getting the money to buy games. I'm talking about how, in most games, even when it's your job to save the world that the shopkeepers are still charging you the recommended retail price for potions. You'd think that given the gravity of your mission that they'd be happy to comp you some supplies and you'd be wrong. At least one game whose title I forget made light of the situation with a shopkeeper who, when questioned on this, said that he had faith that you'd succeed and that he'd need the money after the world was saved. So then what's an adventurer to do? Well if you're like me the answer to that question is that you break the game. Which is to say you find a way to generate more money than you could possibly ever need. To this end join me in a trip down memory lane for a few examples of how to break game economies.

The oldest game where I actually remember the economy breaking tactic is 'Final Fantasy VII' for the Playstation. In this game you spent a lot of time gathering up various spells in the form of materia. In order to use the materia you had to equip them to your armor and weapons and like the actual character these materia leveled up after battles (very slowly). When they maxed their level the materia created a new copy of itself. Ok, so far so whatever. Well one of the materia that you got very early was a support materia called 'All' and what it did was allow for your spells to target multiple enemies (offensive spells) or multiple allies (healing or defensive spells). It was also a fairly commonly found materia as the game progressed but that's not why we're here. No, we're here because when “raised” to its max level the All materia was (for some reason) the most valuable item in the game (if I remember correctly). If you took the time (a not insignificant task) to raise 2-3 of these to the max level and sold them you had all the money you would ever need.

Well what about if you wanted infinite money? Glad you asked as that would bring us to 'Dragon Age Origins'. In this game you could (unless they've patched in since I last played it) get infinite money by raising one of your mages 'Herbalism' skill to the max level and then crafting and selling 'Potent Lyrium Potions', an item whose crafting components cost less than it sold for resulting in a small profit with every repetition. Now it's worth noting that this infinite money system is extraordinarily tedious and has the potential to crash your game (you'll be crafting literally thousands of items and eventually the game gives up if you sell too many to the same merchant) but it does highlight the issue that developers have in balancing crafting systems. You've got to make it a worthwhile alternate way to obtain items without oh I don't know something like this happening. 'Dragon Age Origins' fails in this regards as the only reason to put points into this ability is to generate infinite money as there's nothing you can craft that can't be had for easier elsewhere.

How about if you don't want to crash your game (at least not due to overloaded merchant inventories)? Well in that case we've come full circle to the game we've been looking at for the last several weeks in 'Fallout: New Vegas'. In 'New Vegas' you've got two, non-exclusive, choices on how to go about doing this. The first is via the 'Jury Rigging' perk. This perk is first available to the player at level 14 but requires that they've put 90 points into the 'Repair' skill. This perk allows for the player to repair (almost) any item with a similar item instead of a copy of that item. Sometimes and for our purposes it gets kind of ridiculous, like using the common (and cheap) shovel to repair the rare(ish) and valuable Super-Sledge. Basically use cheap common items to repair rare expensive items and then sell them. This method can run into the problem of merchants and traders actually running out of money and for characters with a low strength can be a bit more tedious (strength determines how much stuff you can carry) but slowly and steadily you can make crazy money with this method. The other method of breaking the bank in 'New Vegas' is via gambling with a really high 'Luck' stat. If you can get your 'Luck' via perk and/or implant (don't ask) and/or equipment to 10 (maximum) you will win at the various casino games at a highly disproportionate rate and while you'll eventually find yourself banned from casinos the fact is that there are 6 out there (including the 'Dead Money' DLC) to take for a ride. The 'Sierra Madre Casino' found in the 'Dead Money' DLC is especially profitable as its payout is 10 times the next highest casinos. In short between the 'Jury Rigging' perk and being a compulsive gambler its very possible to never have to worry about money in 'New Vegas'.

The examples given above are far from comprehensive and it is also unclear how intentional they where. Are exploits like this game breaking? In 'Final Fantasy VII' and 'New Vegas' I would lean towards 'no' as the best gear in those games is stuff you find and the copious amounts of money just lets you never have to worry about support equipment or healing supplies. In 'Dragon Age Origins' I would say that the infinite money trick is game breaking in more than one way. Even ignoring the fact that it can crash (though it won't if you're careful) your game much of the best gear is stuff you can buy and is (otherwise) prohibitively expensive so getting access to all of it can definitely present some balance issues. The next question is whether or not we as players should take advantage of such exploits? I dunno. I if I feel that it enhances the overall experience (usually at the cost of game balance) then I'll go ahead and do it. Am I a bad person for doing this? It's a video game. See you all next week.

Walking an apparently lonesome road in the post-apocalypse

So this is it. The conclusion. 'The Lonesome Road'. You're going to have to walk this path alone. Except when you don't because you're being accompanied by a hovering murder-machine of a robot for most of the journey. But except for that it's just you and a ton of monsters waiting for you to put foot to ass and figure out the mysteries of your past. Except when it isn't because the main antagonist of this DLC, Ulysses, will be communicating fairly frequently with you via your robot companion. So really the DLC title is lying to us about this being a lonesome anything. That said in this DLC the writers are doing their damnedest to try and wrap up as many lose threads left over from the character creation as they possibly can and bless their hearts because as already discussed in part 1 the fact that the game goes halfway between a blank slate and a predefined background it makes that task nearly impossible. So fairly early in the main game the non-player character (NPC) who, apparently, initially gave you the job that nearly got you killed mentions that someone else (Ulysses) was supposed to get the job instead but when he saw your name (whatever you chose to name your character) next on the list he backed out and let you take the job thus setting in motion the events of the game. 'Lonesome Road' seeks to explain the rationale behind Ulysses' decision and also fill in a bit more of your character's background.

So the fourth and final 'New Vegas' DLC starts off with you traveling to The Divide, a series of canyons and collapsed highways, to “meet your destiny” or something of that sort when you finally get to Ulysses. Throughout most of this journey Ulysses will, as mentioned above, be talking to the player fairly often (and without spoiling much of anything) about how the devastation seen the region is somehow your fault. This, in my opinion, gets fairly tedious fairly quickly. That said ***ALERT*** your answers to his questions and whether or not you find all of his journal entries (scattered throughout the region) has a significant impact on the endgame of the DLC so pay attention to these otherwise fairly dull conversations. Longtime readers (just kidding there aren't any) may remember how in the 'Old World Blues' article I mentioned how it was nice to have a villain that deviated a bit from the stiff stock types and actually brought a bit of levity to their destruction well Ulysses is totally not like that at all. He is, like the player character, a courier and unless the definition of that job has drastically changed its description in the future then he has an awfully high opinion of himself and a lot of resources at his disposal for someone whose, unless I really missed something, previous job was delivering packages. Basically imagine a FedEx employee with a messiah complex and you should have a pretty good idea of Ulysses' personality. So that's kind of meh especially given the frequency with which you have to sit through his philosophical rantings.

That said other than Ulysses the DLC is actually quit nice. A nearly linear narrative with just enough in the way of rewards for diverting off the main path and a very interesting environment. The Divide is also (and I realize that enemies scale with player level) one of the most challenging areas in the game even if the player character is a walking tank as nasty enemies have a habit of spawning in groups close enough to the player to make picking them all off before they reach you impractical/impossible. That's actually a good thing. After the cake walk that was 'Honest Hearts' it's nice to actually be moderately challenged. Also worth noting is that the region unique equipment for 'The Lonesome Road' is, after the toys found in 'Old World Blues', probably some of the best equipment in the game which is always nice (except for the rocket launcher, that thing can't hit anything).

Overall I would say that the various flavors of 'New Vegas' DLC added something to the overall experience (except 'Honest Hearts') and that while certainly not the best of the bunch that 'The Lonesome Road' did as much as it could to wrap up the questions surrounding your characters origins and that while that may sometime end up being incongruous with the character you've been playing it's probably as good as it's going to get. Check back next week for how to break the game.

We're off to see the wizard AKA Heart, Brain and Spine retrieval in the Post-Apocalypse

Ok, so imagine this. You pick up a strange radio signal and in responding to it are whisked away to a ancient research lab where a brain floating in a jar informs you that your brain, heart and spine have been removed/replaced. The brainjar further explains that even if you wanted your original parts back that they seem to have misplaced your brain and that you're likely going to have to defeat a mad scientist in order to retrieve it. Such is the beginning of 'Fallout: New Vegas' third DLC expansion 'Old World Blues'. Of course there's more to it than just a brain retrieval mission, you'll also have to eventually fight your way through hordes of crazed lobotomites and robotic scorpions as you explore the Big MT.

Like the 'Fallout 3' expansion 'Mothership Zeta' the 'Old World Blues' DLC takes a turn for the bizarre compared to the main game and to the other expansions. Unlike 'Mothership Zeta' (a DLC that takes place on an Alien spaceship) 'Old World Blues' manages a much lighter tone to match the absurdity of its premise and situation*. Most amusing to me was the results of a (lengthy) series of missions to restore the AI personalities to the appliances in the living space that your given as your base of operations. I found Muggy, a crazed mini-robot whose raison d'être is to collect and clean mugs, and the toaster "Ahahaha! I am on-line once again! Tremble, world, before my heating coil of doom!") to be the most amusing of the appliances but it seems like real thought went into all of their personalities (such as light switches that try to seduce you). The benefit for restoring the AI personalities of the appliances (other than amusing dialog) is that they'll each provide the player with additional resources to help in completing the DLC.

The overall story of the DLC is an interesting one as it manages to present some fairly horrible things in a fairly humorous manner. Examples would be the aforementioned lobotomy that the player is subjected to at the beginning of the DLC, the way the various researchers in the facility casually mention the horrifically inhumane experiments they've been conducting and the mad rantings of Dr. Mobius (usually threatening to release more robotic scorpions to attack the player). Overall the DLC fills in some of the blanks about the world itself (technology and creatures) a bit more than it fills in the players background though if you scour around the region you'll still find some information that transcends this particular expansion.

Overall 'Old World Blues' was my favorite 'New Vegas' expansion for a variety of reasons. The story it told was tragic while still being somewhat humorous. The villain was also a much needed deviation from some of the stiffer personalities encountered during other DLCs and the main game. The environment itself was interesting as you get to see where a lot of the critters and technology encountered elsewhere originated. A diverse and interesting experience that paces itself well and really draws the player in and one I would definitely recommend. See you all next week.

*The 'Mothership Zeta' has a few humorous moments but overall the tone is more somber as the player works with other abductees to escape from the aliens.

Post-apocalyptic sightseeing in 'Honest Hearts'

Be very, very quiet we're hunting rabbits. Oh sweet Jesus, that was no rabbit. Yes, in fact there are no rabbits or really anything that constitutes normal game animals in 'Honest Hearts', the second 'Fallout: New Vegas' DLC. The premise of this expansion is that your character is contracted to serve as security for a trade caravan and that en route to the destination everything goes hilariously wrong. And by 'hilariously wrong' I mean the entire caravan (except for the player character) is slaughtered by a warlike group of Native American wannabes somewhere in a post-apocalyptic version of Zion National Park in Utah. After a brief initial conflict you're contacted by one of the two less aggressive Native American-esque tribes in the region and you're off.

The funny thing starting off is that the criticism leveled against 'Dead Money' is actually the one I would turn around and level at 'Honest Hearts'. Namely that it doesn't feel like a 'Fallout' game. It's sunny. There aren't that many freakishly mutated creatures. There's very little sense of tragedy born out of greed and/or corruption. I mean, you're in a pristine national park and the only thing to worry about are a weird band of tribals who, if the player character headed the level warnings before starting the DLC, pose exactly zero threat to competent players. Hmmm, thinking about it I would definitely say that that was one of the things bugging me about this entire DLC. It was way too easy. In that unless you're trying to deflect bullets with your face you aren't going to have too many issues cruising through the enemies you encounter. This little warning actually struck me pretty early in the DLC as there was a brief in game cinematic for the appearance of a Yao guai (a mutated bear thing) that seemed to tout it as the regions apex predator. Now, these things appeared in 'Fallout 3' and unless there where a lot of them they weren't much of a threat to mid-level characters in that game either. For $9.99 I'd like at least maybe some kind of challenge or something.

'Something' brings me to the other issue with 'Honest Hearts'. It's really short. By far the shortest DLC. This is due to the fact that there aren't any areas that are especially difficult to access but also because as already mentioned there aren't any enemies that pose a threat thereby allowing the player to breeze through encounters. Hell, the toughest (as far as I can tell) creature in the entire DLC is part of an optional side-quest. But back to the length. What is a good length? See for me it really depends on the experience. The other DLCs in 'Dead Money', 'Old World Blues' and 'Lonesome Road' provided sufficiently compelling experiences that even if they'd been shorter than they where I would have still liked them. However here the player character is thrown into a storyline in which they themselves have no stakes and into an area with no threats so for me at least it would have helped if they'd compensated for this with a little more volume. More areas to explore. More unique stuff to find. Something. Anything really.

At this point it's pretty easy for me to say that 'Honest Hearts' was the worst of the 'Fallout: New Vegas' DLCs. It has a few moments. Being in a region in which you can actually make out the environment clearly is a nice change of pace but it doesn't really fit in with the rest of what the game is doing. Additionally it doesn't really advance the side-story, a more in-depth explanation of your character's back story told in bits and pieces in the other DLCs, at all. If you where going to skip one of the 'New Vegas' DLC expansions it should, in my opinion, be this one. See you all next week.

Playing post-apocalyptic blackjack in 'Dead Money'

Ok, so I hope that people have seen 'Ocean's Eleven' or else some of this isn't going to make a lick of sense to you. Maybe read the summary of that movie on Wikipedia or something and then come back here. For those of you who've seen the movie I'm sorry but we're going to have to wait for those who haven't to familiarize themselves with it. Oh look, they're back. Excellent. Now that that's out of the way it's easiest to summarize the 'Fallout: New Vegas' expansion 'Dead Money' as a post-apocalyptic version of that movie. A bit too simple of a comparison but at least a good jumping off point. They both feature a (hopefully) charismatic group leader in the player character and George Clooney who has to assemble a team of misfits for the ultimate heist. They both also feature an attempt to break into a casino in order to steal unimaginable wealth from within its vaults. They both...OK, so that's about it for the similarities and I'm sorry for wasting your time with Wikipedia.

So to explain the story of 'Dead Money' in greater detail a madman (Father Elijah) mentioned in the main quest line and in the other DLCs stumbled across the Sierra Madre casino and became obsessed with the possibilities of old world technology that it contained. To this end he began forcibly conscripting people to help him break into it. After numerous (the impression that he gives the player) failed attempts your character, responding to a radio broadcast, is captured and thrust into the heist of the centuries. You're forced to recruit three teammates to whom you're linked via exploding collars wherein if one dies all die in order, according to Elijah, to instill a greater sense of urgency and teamwork amongst you. Now one of the main criticisms I've seen leveled against 'Dead Money' is that it doesn't feel very Fallout-y and to this I respectfully disagree. While it may take place in a non-traditional environment 'Dead Money', to me, has all of the sense of oppressive tragedy brought about by greed that I feel generally characterizes all of the games in the series. The sky is this sickly red color, the result of science run amok. The casino sealed off to the world the result of greed and paranoia. The ghost people who haunt the villa despite now being crazed and hostile used to be the construction workers who built the it and whose degeneration from human into what the player encounters simply another example of mad science corrupting the innocent.

The actual gameplay in 'Dead Money' is probably where it really came alive to me. At the very beginning of the DLC you're stripped of all your gear and given a moderately effective rifle by Elijah. This very likely takes the player from a damage tanking god (given the level recommendations before beginning this particular DLC) to a mere mortal forced into a more stealthy approach to survival. As someone whose character was in fact a damage tanking god I actually loved this transition to vulnerability not really felt anywhere else in the game nor in any other game I've played recently. In the past I've found diversion in the survival horror genre (mostly Resident Evil titles) and have been greatly disappointed with that genres recent entries so for a game to instill even a modicum of fear of the unknown into me was very welcome. Oh, crap what's around the next corner? I can hear heavy breathing (the Ghost People make very distinctive noises) where is it coming from? I would go so far as to say that if a game could replicate the atmosphere and oppressive feeling from the first half of 'Dead Money' for an entire game that I would buy that hypothetical game in a heart beat. About the only places where 'Dead Money' drops the ball to me are in the latter half which is very enemy sparse and overall where the game allows the player to get a perk that allows them to permanently kill the Ghost People more easily. Sorry for not explaining this earlier but the Ghost People encountered in the villa are among the more difficult enemies in the entire game to kill, rising from the dead when dropped after a few short seconds unless dismembered.

Overall I greatly enjoyed the 'Dead Money' add-on and would certainly recommend it to others. I also think that other games could take a pointer or two from how it generates it atmosphere and not just the toxic red clouds that pollute the in game environment. Take care and see you all next week.

What Happens in New Vegas Stays in New Vegas...Sometimes.

Alright so let's get my biggest gripe with 'Fallout: New Vegas' out of the way real quick like. It isn't 'Fallout 3'. Now don't get me wrong I don't think it's a bad game or that 'Fallout 3' is that much better but there are a couple of things that lead me to favor 'Fallout 3' over 'New Vegas'. The first is the one that the game itself has the least control over and that would be where I live. As a longtime resident of the Maryland suburbs it was very interesting to see a designers take on what the region would look like after nuclear Armageddon and while the results weren't totally (or even remotely) geographically accurate* it was close enough that when I encountered landmarks that do actually exist that it really had an impact on me and greatly enhanced my immersion into the game's world. The other thing that 'Fallout 3' does better is the character creation. Now I'm not talking about all the stat configuration or ability selection though that is part of it more so though the fact that you guide your persona from birth through adulthood and then out into the wasteland. While in 'New Vegas' it kind of goes halfway with regards to the blank slate character as even though you're given a job title very little else about your character or their motivation is spelled out. This leads to a few too many questions about why your character is doing what they're doing and compared to the character in 'Fallout 3' it feels much more like Quantum Leaping into someones life to puppeteer them through a series of conflicts rather than actually molding “you” in the game world. Outside of those two things I feel that every other difference between the two titles is up for debate (somewhere else). So now that that's out of the way I'd like to go a little more in depth into 'New Vegas'.

So the question you may (emphasis on “may”) be asking is why the difference in the character creation is so crucial. The answer is that by starting from the beginning in 'Fallout 3' the game gives you the opportunity to define your characters entire back-story which in turn gives more weight to your actions and the actions of others later in the game. Did you pick on someone during the childhood phase of character development? Well, then maybe they won't help you out later in life because they still hold a grudge. Stuff like that greatly enhances the gameplay experience by making more actions have actual consequences. Now, I'm not saying that every game would be better off starting their protagonists off from birth and letting the player define their characters entire life story but the game needs to make certain decisions about how much of the character is going to be predefined for the player. Where 'New Vegas' makes its mistake is in hinting about the characters life before the events of the game but never actually explaining how the character got to the point shown at the beginning of the game in being ambushed by bandits, plot important item stolen, left for dead, etc. In short the game leaves too many “Why” questions unanswered. Even in its attempts to fill in some of this via Downloadable content (DLC; which will be discussed in the next few weeks) there are still a lot of unanswered questions. This became especially incongruous to me when the back-story filled in by the DLC didn't really feel like it matched up with the character that I'd created.

OK, so when I said earlier that there where only two areas in which 'Fallout 3' really surpassed 'Fallout: New Vegas' I lied. The other area beyond the emotional impact and the character creation would be the openness of the world. Now looking at your map in both games you might think that you're dealing with a large post-apocalyptic sandbox to explore and to some extent you'd be correct. However the world is much more open much sooner in 'Fallout 3' than it is in 'New Vegas'. This is because the latter uses a lot of high level enemies to sort of railroad the viable directions that the player can travel for a large portion of the game. Getting murdered by mutant wasp things and you're under level 10? You probably took, according to the developers, a wrong turn. By contrast 'Fallout 3' is perfectly fine letting the player screw around as long as they like as the nasty player murdering enemies either only show up as the player levels, as part of particular scripted events, or in very isolated areas of the map. In short 'Fallout 3' is a much less linear game than 'New Vegas'. Not that either is especially linear but it really feels like you're given more freedom earlier in the former whereas you really have to earn it (usually via heavy firepower) in the latter.

OK, so still building off the lie told earlier about their being only two significant ways in which 'Fallout 3' was better than 'Fallout: New Vegas' there is actually yet another one. That being quality assurance/quality control. Yes, both games, like almost every Bethesda Softworks game, have some significant bugs and scripting issues. However having extensively played both, 'New Vegas' is much, much worse in this department. The number of random game crashes I've experienced is staggering as are the easily replicable game crashing actions (for me fast traveling into or out of one region in the 'Honest Hearts' DLC crashed the game every time). That's not even counting the number of bugs with scripting issues (i.e. you give a non-player character an item and they give you the next step in the quest only sometimes they don't). By contrast I don't recall any easily replicable game crashing actions that I ran into in 'Fallout 3' and the scripting issues where much less of a nuisance. Now I realize that games as massive as these with as many variables as these are dealing with are bound to have some issues but it really seems like, somehow, the older game of the two handled this better.

So now having concluded our walkabout in the main wasteland of the game complete with all its foibles we're looking ahead to (hopefully) filling in some of the gaps in our characters back-story as we explore the DLC for the game in the 'Dead Money', 'Honest Hearts', 'Old World Blues' and 'Lonesome Road' expansions. See you all next week.

*This is a little weird as the game is made by Bethesda Softworks named as such because they're based in Bethesda, MD. I personally would have loved it if the game had simply copy pasted the entire region as accurately as possible just to see how it would have turned out. I also find it amusing that one of the few immersion killing things for me in 'Fallout 3' was the existence in game of Metro Stations that don't exist in real life mostly because it took this region five decades to fund highway expansion and I found it too hard to believe that the government would somehow find the money to build a dozen new stations between now and 2077.