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Warhammer 40K Inquisitor – Martyr

July 22, 2020 by L. Bane. Leave a Comment

Another game with a mile long title…

My first experience with this game was in trying to get it to play (on the PS4).The developer had an account creation process for their backend, which is not that unusual (though it kinda is for a smaller studio) but some wires got crossed somewhere when I tried to sign in. When I went Neocore Game’s site to cruise through their English-As-A-Second-Language support I found several support threads where someone on staff would ask for the user’s sign-on because it had to be manually deleted so that the player could join. No wonder this BBB game initially had a AAA price.

The experience is a common thread in the game, it’s enjoyable to play, but every now and then it’s non-AAA budget would pop up to put a damper on the festivities. It was never anything big, an occasionally unstable opening menu when coming out of rest mode, a weird voice actor here, a piece of low-grade art there, AI that would suddenly become lobotomized, etc. ; but taken together it made it seem a little “unfinished” at times.

And it’s not as if the game has a ton of play variety, basically go to one of a half dozen mission types and hold down the trigger button for 5-10 minutes. Story missions gave the missions some context, but, with very few exceptions, they were still essentially the same missions that you could play on ‘random’ mode. Since it is a ‘looter’ game the concentration on variety was put into the somewhat ridiculously deep inventory system which, along with the level mod system, that ramps to a curve worthy of Sisyphus.

And yet, I couldn’t stop playing it. The story missions added just enough substance to bring the interesting 40K universe to life. One of the games detriments, that it was obviously developed to be on PC first, was a slight boon since the game had more depth than one would usually see on console exclusive game. Lastly, the co-op multiplayer worked out pretty well and added a level of replayablity. Not great, but way, way better than it deserves to be.

Filed Under: gaming

Death of Art

June 23, 2020 by L. Bane. Leave a Comment

I’ve thought that, perhaps there might be something to salvage from our train wreck of our current civilization, but also figured that if art comes under assault that will be a sure sign that the totalitarian boot is coming down upon our face. Unfortunately, that’s where we’re at.

It’s interesting since artists tend to be self-infatuated individualists and thus natural allies of the highly narcissistic left, but like the autistic Libertarians on the right they feed the beast which will consume them. No longer will they be able to freely make any sort of art that they’d like, but only art that comports to the style guide put out by the U.S. politburo. A recent mild example is in comparing the concept art from the video game Horizon Zero Dawn with an in-game character:

Now I will admit that I’m cherry picking to a degree, but the concept art for the characters from this tribe were all like the one on the left: Caucasian with hints of Eskimo and East Asia. In the game though it was, as I put it, like a group of random people snagged off of a New York subway platform. The issue here is that the initial art had a definitive message for how the game might flow, but instead there’s an awkwardness in that black characters are supposed to add something “black” but are supposed to act just like the white characters, or not, it’s never clear what’s going on there. It was obvious from any time spent in the game that such a societal structure wouldn’t last a month, let alone the thousand or so years that it supposedly persisted. This isn’t any different from much of the media today which is exchanging the inspiring and original with the tedious and banal.

So then it would seem that artists would generally favor a society that enjoys more artistic freedom rather than less, but, they realize that much too late.

Of course the more distressing act today is the outright wanton destruction of art. Anyone halfway attentive will note that this only breaks one way. In the continuing slow motion genocide of whites (this is not an overstatement) it obviously goes that the markers of their civilization must be destroyed. The statues, books, movies, churches, and paintings must fall to the sword of the fanatics that rule over us. In short, all the art has to go, everything from cereal box mascots to God have come under attack from our pedophile-satanist rulers and their useful idiots.

Where does that leave artists then? For a clue they should look to the Soviet Union or Communist China (which in our case are probably optimistic scenarios in terms of art, and probably much else). On first glance some of this statist art does have a certain glam to it, but it’s the same (or variations thereof) year after year, decade after decade. And that’s the good stuff, below the surface of the “workers murals” and sharp cut Lenin statues is…nothing. It’s just rows of gray apartment blocks, entertainment whose only goal is to glorify the current oligarchy and their views, and news organs that only parrot press releases from the inner party.

Art will be dead and artists who can still find employment will be anything but. This saddens me since I’m a fan of art generally, but it’s also easy to see why the proletariat in oppressive societies felt that the artists generally got what they had coming to them.

Filed Under: art, gaming

Control (the video game)

June 16, 2020 by L. Bane. Leave a Comment

Probably the hardest thing to deal with in regards to this game is it’s title. If I want to find something in, say, Borderlands, I just search for “Borderlands s-” and the search engine usually autofills what I’m looking for. However, with Control, even trying to control the search by typing something like “Control video game chest behind bars in Warehouse” would give a bunch of false hits, in this case for chest exercise control.

Anyway, the woman-with-paranormal-powers art for the game pretty much says it all. You travel around a building that is home to a Federal agency tasked with investigating and mitigating supernatural events while acquiring Jedi-like powers to defeat an inter-dimensional evil that threatens the operation. Yes, before you ask, all of the standard PC story elements of the day are in here: The tough as nails female black security chief, expert in their field women scientists, the stodgy white guys holding back the organization, “mystery meat” characters who are supposed to check a bunch of boxes at once, etc.

Unlike other games though, it is just PC window dressing for what is an otherwise well designed game and is a bit of a nostalgia trip for an old tech hand like me. The office is stocked with the best tech the late 70s and early 80s had to offer wrapped up in an X-Files-like feel. The office design features a huge vacuum tube mail system, reel-to-reel audio decks, copiers the size of small cars, and one of my personal favorites the vending machine for smokes that features a pack of smokes with a gun for a logo:

Even the horse in the logo is having a smoke

Although the overall design is a little gloomy, the designers went with varying wide and narrow approaches, never letting the game get too dark and cramped (and thus unpleasant to play). This was even more apparent in the DLC where an inter-dimensional rift causes some areas to be as if they’re inside of a florescent bulb even though the whole thing takes place deep underground. The controls are tight and at higher levels it gets to be a blast sawing through waves of enemies with your super powers, or, at least it used to be…

I had taken a break between finishing the game and awaiting the DLC and in the interim various changes were made, the mods/upgrades I was using were stripped off of my character (and “nerfed” if I had to guess) and enemies were scaled higher in difficulty. In playing the DLC it reminded of one of the most grating design issues with the original game: although the individual pieces worked great, I got the feeling the game was not sufficiently play tested from beginning to end. There would be missions that were pretty normal in difficulty, then almost impossible, then sleepwalk easy, and it didn’t seem like there was any rhythm to it: a chapter ending boss might be a cakewalk only for you to be stomped by peons the very next section.

Aggravating that it can be at times I did have a hard time putting down the game. The mix of powers gelled well, some of the NPCs, especially Dr. Darling and Emily Pope, made up for your character’s cardboard personality, and the huge trove of interdependent lore in various formats brought the game-world alive in a very personal way. Three and a half stars, it’s great in a lot of ways but it’s not for everyone.

Filed Under: gaming

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