Imperium

Finally, after a relatively short transition period, the new blog I announced in the previous post has materialised. It is now time to chop off the head (and limbs if you’re feeling a bit of a Lecter vibe) of old swampy Imperium, and usher in a fresher, more exciting endeavour - One More Turn.

Echoing the difficulty I’ve experienced in character creation processes in every RPG I’ve ever played, most of the aforementioned transition period was spent coming up with the name for the blog. I think it’s catchy enough, in spite of MozzerV12’s less than praising remarks upon hearing it for the first time. I don’t tend to put much stock in his opinion (since he is a complete bastard), and even if he’s nearer the mark than I percieve, One More Turn is but a name; not the platform, and not the content.

Without further ado, allow me to bid Imperium farewell (before the axe falls) and direct you to our new venue - One More Turn.

Signing off,

- Chris

A rare double post for you - the supposed visitor to my blog - today. First, allow me to apologise for the absence of a review of Sins of a Solar Empire. At some point I will begin work on it, but for now I’m enjoying writing these smaller, more diary-like posts. I am now playing Sins again, as I’ve said, and I’ll make sure I’m in full critic mode henceforth.

In other news, tomorrow my brother and I are meeting MozzerV12 in London to see The Dark Knight, a film I have been desperate to see since Batman Begins swooped into my favourites list in 2005. Furthermore, we’re to see it at the IMAX, which I’ve never been to before. Hopefully, as long as there are no cretinous children in the theatre at the time, we will experience something quite magnificent.

I’ve not talked much about my interest in film on this blog, if at all, but let it here be known that my passion for movies is just as strong as my passion for games. To that end, sometime in the following weeks I will be combining my blog with my brother’s, Lack of Faith, where he posts his film reviews. I will stop contributing to Imperium, he will stop contributing to Lack of Faith, and we will create a new (as yet unnamed), stronger blog, enhanced for the Tiberium Age!

One vision, one purpose!

- Chris

I don’t know what exactly got me thinking about Deus Ex (the second best game of all time) this morning. I think it may have been an advert for the Game of the Year Edition on Steam (on sale for $10). Perhaps it was a link to the now deceased Planet Deus Ex in my bookmarks. Who knows? The point is that when I thought about Deus Ex I naturally thought of playing it as soon as possible.

Then I thought about the Deus Ex High Definition Texture Project (HDTP), currently in development. I realised I hadn’t heard anything from the HDTP team in a while, so I took a look at their website, and discovered that it (the site) has undergone a visual reboot. There are some new screenshots (one of a high def model for the knife that I love), and a video (below) showing off some of the team’s work.

What I can’t find is a progress report on the mod, which was present on the previous website, in the form of a list of the various areas of the game that were being worked on, and how much more work (as a percentage) needed to be done. As a result I now have no idea how close the mod is to completion. It’s been a long time (certainly more than a year if not two) since I last played Deus Ex, and the visual kick that I hope will come from the release of the HDTP project is the reason for the delay. My logic is that when I do return to the game, a graphical overhaul will go a long way toward making it feel like a new and more exciting experience.

The HDTP project is now in my RSS reader, so I’ll be keeping tabs on it from now on. For the time being though, I have plenty to play. I have a single player game going on with Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl, which is proving to be hardcore but extremely atmospheric.

I’m playing through the final act of Diablo II on normal difficulty (with the expansion Lord of Destruction) as a barbarian, not (funnily enough) because of the recent announcement of Diablo III - not that that’s a bad reason to start playing Diablo II (if there even is such a thing).

At level 34 on the slopes of Harrogath, we’re on our (I’m playing with a friend, MozzerV12) way to kill the last of the surviving prime evils, Baal, before restarting the whole story on nightmare difficulty. We’ve been wiping the floor with every demon we’ve fought, even beating down the bosses (including the usually horrific Duriel and Diablo) thanks to my friend’s crippling curses (notably decrepify). I’m building my character to be a beserker, dealing massive damage that’s hard to resist, but at the same time leaving myself more vulnerable. That’s just how I roll.

I haven’t played any Civ for a week or so now. Pigmental has gone on holiday (you can trawl through his illiterate dribblings on his new blog World Hop if you’re masochistically inclined) and a new game with MozzerV12 certainly isn’t rocketing forward. Sins of a Solar Empire has resurfaced with a new patch and we’re playing a game of that as well.

I’m spreading myself too thin. At this rate I’ll finish Stalker in September.

- Chris

Baldur’s Gate has been on hold for weeks now. Race Driver: GRID, the second racing game I’ve ever bought (the first being Driver, which I remember buying with Quake III when it was released), has devoured most of my spare time. It’s so addictive that a few weeks ago I had clocked 17.6 hours of play time according to Steam. I’ll add it to the list of candidates in the next review vote.

The other game that I’ve been playing a lot of in the past few weeks is one that I’ve mentioned before (in my Birth of the Federation review), the similarly addictive Civilization IV. I think we (me, my brother and friendly Pigmental, previously dubbed Raedwulf) started playing our current game about a month or two ago. We’re on the second easiest difficulty setting, warlord (because we’re noobs), and we’re in all in a team against three teams of two AIs each.

At the close of our last play session we were well into the modern age. A while ago (at the beginning of the gunpowder age) we fought and won a war against Bismark and Pacal (an unlikely pairing to say the least), by concentrating our three-pronged invasion on Pacal’s island, quickly overwhelming his defences and leaving Bismark alone and helpless. After crushing Pacal we juiced Bismark for technologies, cash and anything else we could get our hands on (much like bloodthirsty ticks on a sweaty dog) in exchange for a cease-fire. He accepted our offer and we entered a prolonged period of respite and recuperation.

Unfortunately our peace has been shattered by a series of terrible betrayals. A few sessions ago, without any previous indication of animosity, Stalin and Kublai Khan suddenly declared war on us and instantly conquered two of Pigmental’s cities. This came as a shock to all of us because we were gearing up for an invasion of our own against Hannibal (who’s teamed up with William of Orange) which was going to be our strategic magnum opus - a D-Day style invasion that would make our domination of Pacal look like a playground scuffle.

Pigmental’s anger was combined with an equal measure of despair. Those two cities accounted for a substantial percentage of the total mass of his empire. We’re playing on a small map where land to build on is scarce. The loss of even one city is a catastrophe. We had been stung, and it was a painful sting, but we were still standing. Allied forces rapidly flooded to the front line, initially to shore up defences but later in preparation for a wrathful counter-attack. A few turns later we had snatched back the lost cities and we were ready to unleash hell.

It was at that moment, when we were quietly confident in our future victory, that the unthinkable happened: Hannibal and William entered the fray against us, bringing with them our old bitch Bismark, now acting as their vassal (an even lower rank of bitch). Now we were three at war against five - it wasn’t looking peachy. With Pigmental’s continent secured, we began a phased withdrawal of our forces back to our own lands.

We’re currently fighting on two fronts - east and west. To the east lies the main threat of Hannibal and William; to the west Pigmental is struggling against Stalin and Kublai Khan. All is not lost however. I’m now able to train my (America’s) unique unit, the Navy Seal, and as such my island has stayed free from the dreadful yolk of Dutch/Carthaginian government. The waters around America are fiercely disputed, I’m still losing plenty of battles, but the tide is gradually turning in our favour.

What’s struck me in retrospect though, is how crudely the AIs behave in Civ IV, this latest world war being a prime example. One moment we’re relaxing in our post-war paradise of reconstruction, scientific research and general consolidation, and the next the entire world snaps and decides that we have to be disposed of before we get too powerful. I admit we were eventually going to conquer the planet (preferably one team at a time) and I don’t object to the concept of an AI coalition against us in the end-game, but when the diplomatic climate shifts so fantastically without any catalytic action to justify it, what little immersion existed beforehand immediately goes up in smoke.

It’s not like there’s any heated conversation going on between civilizations that builds an atmosphere of restrained aggression or lingering envy. All there is to diplomacy in Civ IV, as in all strategy games, is a simplistic mixture of gift giving, technology trading, highly superficial matchmaking of civics (policies) and religions, and a cumulative record of your past offenses. This is all summarised with a single word signifying disposition, ranging from ‘friendly’ (good) to ‘furious’ (very bad), but it’s a word to be taken with a healthy gallon of salt. William was ‘pleased’ with us right up until war was declared, at which point the other (’furious’) half of his split personality - the part that enjoys kicking pigeons (and occasionally babies) when he comes across them on the street - took control.

I still greatly appreciate Civ IV and I won’t stop appreciating it anytime soon, but the way that Firaxis seem to have put developing AI on hold since Civ II (correct me if I’m wrong) seems to me a missed opportunity. One can’t rely on AIs in Civ IV, there’s no room for building trust with them, and without that there’s no way one can regard them as anything other than impersonal, rigidly programmed entities.

Throw us a bone Sid Meier… throw us a bone.

- Chris

Baldur’s Gate is (predictably) moving at a slow pace. But games always end up on the back burner when I’m playing them with three other people, all with different social and academic engagements, online on some days and not on others. When we have been able to play though I’ve found the experience to be extremely mixed. It’s certainly nothing like how I remember it when I played it single player many years ago. The simple fact is that, as in multiplayer Neverwinter Nights, the storyline is ill suited to being shared with companions, simply because it was written with a single (hero) protagonist in mind. The host of the game has become that protagonist, and the rest of us are along for the ride, so to speak.

Most enemy encounters have been a doddle, including some boss fights and dungeons that previously would have sent a shiver of dread down my spine at their even being mentioned. Prior to this re-run my lasting memory of the mines of Nashkel (an early quest area) were of a kobold infested subterranean hell, where I felt the difficulty slowly tightening its grip around my throat as I struggled in vain to keep my party rested and fresh for combat. Fast forward to the here and now and we’ve blasted our way rather casually through those mines and quite effortlessly vanquished the source of the evil, the anti-cleric Mulahey, in his deep sanctum. I can’t remember having rested once.

We’re all making a conscious effort to immerse ourselves in the dialogue, taking turns acting those parts (the majority in the Baldur’s Gate series) that aren’t voiced in-game. I don’t know how much it’s brought us closer to the characters, but it can be hilarious when someone you know tries their hardest to portray fantastical personalities, or instead caricatures an otherwise run-of-the-mill paragraph. I like to think this exercise constitutes dipping our toes in the warm pool of hardcore D&D role playing (table-top style), where nothing exists in the game world that you don’t imagine, describe or enliven.

Sadly with BG running on modern PCs that pool is infested with bloodthirsty piranhas (bugs and glitches) constantly swarming around our feet and chewing away pieces of the immersion we’re trying to build. Quests are generally less tightly woven than those in BG II. Some have vague goals, and others seem to tail-off without any satisfying resolution. We recently picked up an elven ranger, Coran, who, when we happened upon him in the wilderness, was desperate to hunt and ultimately slay a fabled wyvern (a relative of the dragon). Being adventurers in name and stature we naturally accepted, allowing him to join the party on a temporary basis.

He’s been tagging along now for far too long, slowing us down by dying repeatedly (low constitution and third-rate gear making him an easy kill). We’ve gutted many a wyvern, but he’s not said a single word in recognition of our achievements. Consequently we care less and less about Coran as the game goes on (barely enough now to travel back to a town and resurrect the bugger at a temple), and we’re no closer to knowing how to bring about an end to his quest.

We’re particularly bitter about the Coran fiasco because of a rather blatant and catastrophic crash involving the aforementioned wyverns, which occurs whenever one is killed on screen. When the bug first popped up we ignored it (having been somewhat desensitised to them by now), rebooted the game and carried on, only to find that the bug was recurring. A search online confirmed that it was a common problem, and that it was caused by some cock-up with the wyvern death animation. Lacking any decent troubleshooting suggestions or fixes, we stumbled upon a work-around: we don’t look. You see, as long as the wyvern is off to the side of the screen (not in view), the game doesn’t crash.

What you’d think would be a bullet to the head of our game has enthused our wyvern battles with much joviality and mirth. They’ve also been prolonged (to dramatic effect) because we have to pause more frequently to communicate our next move, and ensure that everyone has averted their gaze before unpausing.

When our resident cleric, Thorian, proclaims during a pause that he’s about to summon his skeleton mob (really nothing more than cannon-fodder), I yell back “No! Don’t summon them there you silly bloody dwarf! I’m already casting fireball! Get the hell out of there!”, and then (as I’ve come to expect) everyone moans about how they’re still in the area of effect, and that I should have warned them before I started casting. I instinctively compound my error by forgetting to initiate a visibility check (where we all sound-off that we’re looking away) before hitting the space-bar, unpausing just in time for my comrades to watch their computers freeze as a wyvern falls before our fighter Gloddson’s final sword-stroke.

I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t feel a measure of disappointment and shame with BG at the moment. It was one of the games I played on my first PC (a 400Mhz Celeron-based machine from Gateway), and for a long time my favourite. I even remember rating it more highly than Half-Life (the first PC game I ever owned), when I was younger and a great deal more deranged. Playing BG has made me appreciate more than ever the startling leap made by BG II in terms of quality. I fear that for my companions, the series may be in dire need of redemption when we begin BG II. I hope that BG II will serve well as redeemer.

- Chris

Round two of the great voting experiment commences now. I’ve added in Max Payne 2, which I finished a few days ago. Sins of a Solar Empire is a definite favourite. And I’ve decided that I’ll do a comparative review of Dreamfall and Psychonauts. I played the two games one after the other and there were many interesting points of contrast I noticed between the two. That sort of stuff makes for juicy review fodder. Here are the candidates:

Sins of a Solar Empire
Dreamfall/Psychonauts
Max Payne 2
Prey
Crysis
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic

Annoyingly I’m unable to install plugins into Imperium, so I can’t add a proper poll. Until I migrate the blog to a better platform please accept my apologies and vote by e-mail at c.scrace@gmail.com, or by posting a comment for this post.

Also, Jesus Christ!

Many thanks,

- Chris

I’ve decided to conduct an experiment of sorts. I’m trying to decide which game to write about for my next review, and I want to see if I can get a popular vote here on Imperium. If you’re sufficiently concerned to pick one of the games in the selection below and leave it as a comment, or indeed e-mail me at c.scrace@gmail.com, then I salute you.

Crysis
Gears of War
Sins of a Solar Empire
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic
Psychonauts

I’ve thrown Dark Messiah in there because I started writing a review of it many months ago, but for some reason I can’t recall, I stopped. I’d have to go back and refresh my memory of the game, which would be fun. The other four games are much fresher in my mind. I completed Crysis only a week or so ago, I’m still playing through Gears of War on insane difficulty (sporadically), and I’m nearing the end (or at least I think I am) of Pyschonauts as I type this post. Sins is a special case. So far I’ve devoted myself to playing as the Advent, so if I’m going to evaluate the game properly I’d have to play as the TEC and the Visari - an interesting prospect.

I’m already making notes and gathering my thoughts in preparation, so don’t keep me waiting long. Stick a knife in me!

- Chris

And lo, Crytek didst bring forth a new patch (1.2) for their flagship action game Crysis, and the people waited for the download to complete with much nervous twitching. The change log was extensive, the fixes were many. The download came to an end, the people fell silent with quivering anticipation, and then, shit happened.

What exactly is wrong with patch 1.2 for Crysis? Oh, nothing much really, I’m sure there are a lot of fine fixes hiding behind the scenes, things are probably generally better, but I can’t help but notice a certain something has gone horribly wrong. You see, there are no rear wheels on the jeeps.

No rear wheels on the jeeps? Come on! How does something like that slip through the patching process? These wheels aren’t itsy-bitsy; they’re big bastards. We’re talking about Humvee size tires here. Granted, this isn’t a first - there are load of graphical screw-ups in Crysis that I’ve noticed (Koreans occasionally getting stuck in floors, US marines stacking on top of each other as they skip down the ramp of a VTOL craft, and phoney flashlight effects to name a few) but it can’t be a good sign that more are being added after the game’s release, can it?

I had a bit of a scare for a minute or two after I installed the patch too. All of my settings (graphics, hud, sound and all) had been reset to their defaults and my save games weren’t showing up. If you’ve had this problem, don’t fret: simply reselect your profile and your saves should appear.

Maximum game, indeed.

- Chris

I may have made a mistake yesterday.

For as long as I can vividly recall, playing Call of Duty 4 multiplayer for more than fifteen minutes has caused my computer to freeze and a blue screen of death to appear. I’ve occasionally had the same problem with Medieval II: Total War as well.

In troubleshooting this issue, I’ve searched the Internet and found numerous forum posts, guides and Microsoft Knowledge Base articles related to this particular BSOD, succinctly labelled ‘KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR’, but no single solution presented itself. Some people reported that it was a hard drive issue solved by successive check disk runs, some that it was a memory problem, and some that it was a more overarching incompatibility with the motherboard/BIOS.

I’ve since checked all my volumes with check disk (more than once), and run two instances of the memory testing application, MemTest, twice, but the BSOD still lurks in the shadows, ready to pounce just as I’m about to land that perfect sniper shot.

What I did yesterday was attempt to explore the motherboard/BIOS route by flashing my BIOS and installing the latest motherboard drivers for my ASUS P5B Deluxe. The flashing went surprisingly smoothly, with just one slightly worrying ‘overclocking failed’ message on startup, and the motherboard drivers installed fine too, so I was anticipating a swift resolution.

I booted up COD 4, joined a random server and discovered that I was, as I had suspected, cursed. My frame rate had dropped to the point where the game was essentially unplayable. My newly acquired optimism was dashed against the rocks and disintegrated, leaving behind a residue of consternation. Adding insult to injury, the BSOD problem seems to be untouched: though I haven’t actually had a BSOD during my recent testing, I have experienced the sound glitching that typically occurs before one.

I’ve consulted my tech-savvy friend - the same friend who constructed my PC and recommended the BIOS meddling as it happens - who advised me to attempt a reinstall of Windows. I tried reinstalling, but I’m apparently unable to boot from my Windows CD, and when I try to reinstall from the CD menu from within Windows I receive a message that the install can’t proceed because I’m running Service Pack 2 (the CD version of Windows being SP1).

My attempts to uninstall SP2 have only further harmed my system. This morning I was still hearing interference through my speakers, and all of my iTunes purchases have had their rights management associations reset again. I don’t know if I even have any authorizations left after the many reformats I’ve had to do in the past.

After reinstalling SP2 today the frame rate problems and the sound stuttering seem to have vanished, but after all that I’ve done I’ve accomplished nothing more than to piss myself off, waste the majority of my Saturday and break my music.

I’m thankful to the makers of the 2D carnage fest Soldat, who have created a game that ran entirely unscathed through my time of troubles, and that I was able to turn to (much like a cuddly bear) for succor.

My review of the Knights of the Old Republic games will hopefully be complete soon. Until then, if you’re a Star Trek fan, check out Star Trek: New Voyages, a community project that seems to be showing a lot of promise.

- Chris

I can’t believe the size and stench of the heap of crap I found myself stuck in last night.

I’ve been playing Hellgate: London on and off since my last post; getting some hack and slash time in whenever the server decided I was fit to connect. My evoker is level 18 now, and I’m questing from the safety of Temple Station.

I haven’t really been paying much attention to the dialogue for a while. There was some marginally intriquing plot development going on about 5 or so levels back involving enigmatic seers, but that’s all been forgotten because of an apparently apocalyptic (as if an invasion of demons who are immune to conventional weaponry wasn’t apocalyptic enough) infestation of boils, slimy sacs of demon-spawning goo.

The order of business last night was to do away with a gargantuan mothership called the Exospector, the source of the purulent plague. In order to reach the battle, I had to make my way through a couple more generic randomly generated areas blighted by the usual zombies, floating eyes, leaping lizard things and flying creatures intent on pecking out my eyes and feasting on my genitals. There were a few larger monsters, that I suppose could be classified as demi-bosses, that spiced things up a bit.

After all that moderately joyous destruction I was looking forward to a satisfyingly epic boss fight. Unfortunately it was not to be. Flagship Studios let me down once again; and this time, the let-down was catastrophic. The showdown consisted of me, on my own, manning an emplacement rocket launcher and repeatedly launching salvos at the stationary Exospector: a challenge that might have been bearable if the salvos did a decent amount of damage. As it turned out, I had to stay at the launcher for what must have been at least ten minutes before the big bastard finally ceased to exist.

The gameplay mechanic was simplistic to say the least: fire salvo, wait five seconds, fire salvo, wait five seconds, rinse and repeat five hundred times. There was no hint of excitement; not the slightest whiff of drama. I felt like I had been tricked. If someone had asked me if I had wanted to endure this arse beforehand, I certainly would’ve turned them down. I had been lured, and I resented it. I didn’t even get a bloody explosion at the end; the thing just phased away like a disappearing ghost.

Nevertheless, I shall plod on. At least it’s over with. I didn’t get disconnected half way through and have to start over again. For that mercy I am most grateful.

- Chris