The above screenshot depicts the southern deployment zone of a battle map that is so reviled that many players either suicide rush the enemy the moment the match begins or destroy themselves in a fit of pique. Its official name is Malinovka, but its legion of detractors refuses to call it anything but Campinovka. Malinovka wins every “most hated map” poll on the official forums by an order of magnitude and is the subject of endless threads calling for its deletion. I don’t agree. While it’s not my favorite battle map, I appreciate its challenges and enjoy fighting there.
After the jump: why I like going to camp Continue reading →
HUDs used to be essential. Without them, you couldn’t know how much ammo or health you had, or what the score was. Now they’re unfashionable. In the name of immersion, interface engineers do away with as much HUD as possible, or they find ways to integrate it with the game world. Now you read your ammo count off the gun’s built-in display. In Dead Space, your health gauge runs up the spine of your character’s suit.
After the jump, HUD is where the heart is Continue reading →
One of the graphically impressive features of Section 8: Prejudice is the way that you spawn in multiplayer. Instead of magically materializing at a location you drop from a ship 5,000 meters (~16,000 feet, ~3 miles) onto the map. This is done in third person (pictured) so you can see all the cool streaking effects and how your battle-hardened avatar casually sways side to side as you plummet.
But it not only looks good, there’s some gameplay in this mechanic beyond a respawn timer.
After the jump, it’s not just for show Continue reading →
My new IS, a Tier 7 Soviet heavy tank, just got deployed to the southwest side of the Murovanka battle map. Murovanka is one of several maps ideally suited for defense. The northeastern deployment zone is dominated by a dense forest that provides fantastic camouflage for stationary tanks, while the southwestern zone boasts a somewhat covered ridge with a commanding view of the battlefield. Both areas also have several indestructible buildings that can shelter tanks from incoming fire.
While the countdown timer is ticking away, I advise my team not to attack the forest until the enemy herd has been somewhat thinned. Long and painful experience has conclusively demonstrated that an early attack into the teeth of their defense is certain to fail. Patience, however, is a winning strategy. Many players can’t stand to sit still for more than a few seconds, no matter how good their cover is or how much sense a defensive strategy makes. Perhaps it’s their FPS background, where “camping is for noobs” seems to be the eternal mantra, or maybe they’re just ritalin-popping adrenaline junkies. On Murovanka, the team with the largest number of impatient players is in serious trouble.
After the jump, my teammates get me killed Continue reading →
I’m in the Skull Dungeon, a warren of chambers spread throughout the bizarro world version of the Lost Woods. I’m getting frustrated. It is at this point that, had I not promised myself to complete the game, that I would quit again. It had been awhile since I played Link to the Past, so at the outset, my reasons for abandoning it in the first place seemed vague and unconvincing. We’re talking about Zelda here! My favorite games! But absence, fondness, etc. Proofing your nostalgia may always be a doomed enterprise.
After the jump, can you go home again? Continue reading →
I’m sitting in the starting area of Karelia in my KV, waiting for the battle to begin. Karelia is one of my favorite battle maps. One team (mine, this time) deploys in the northeast corner on a two-tiered hill that looks like a short, wide wedding cake. The other team starts on a similar hill to the southwest. A road with very little cover runs directly between the two, but most players decide early in their careers that it’s explosive suicide to venture down it.
The northern and southern edges of the map offer much better avenues for attack. The northern axis boasts a number of large boulders that provide shelter from enemy fire, and some of them are even tall enough to block arcing artillery projectiles. The southern route is dominated by a high ridgeline with sheer cliffs on its northern face that can be skirted to the south. The team that commands this approach can move tanks to the top of the ridge and fire down on large portions of the battlefield. Both axes eventually lead to the enemy base which, when captured, ends the fight.
After the jump, choosing and losing Continue reading →
“What are you doing?”
As I turn around to face my wife, I hit the small button on the bridge of my guitar. The lightshow on the television screen freezes, and my avatar halts in mid-sneer. The music that had been blasting from the speakers goes silent. The cooing of my son in the bouncy chair next to me becomes the most prominent sound in the room.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I thought it was no TV until they’re two?” she replies with a pointed but amused expression.
She’s referring to one of the baby books we had read while she was pregnant. In it, the author makes a case for no television before the age of two based on studies that show a worrisome impact on babies’ attention spans later in life.
“This isn’t TV,” I say.
“That’s not a TV?”
“Yes, that’s a TV, but this isn’t TV. It’s Rock Band.”
“I can see that,” she says. “What’s the difference?”
After the jump, the worst possible answer. Continue reading →
The original Section 8 didn’t really have a single player mode. It was a multiplayer skrimish mode tied together with a few cutscenes. This time around Section 8: Prejudice boasts a full-featured single player mode called the Campaign.
After the jump, how the Campaign stacks up (or doesn’t) Continue reading →
See that tank up there? That’s me. No, not the sexy US T29 in the foreground, with the sloped armor, twin aerials, and muzzle-braked cannon. I’m the one behind it. The big olive drab thing that looks like a square box perched on top of a rectangular box. That’s my KV, and I love it. It’s kind of like a bulldog: ugly as sin, tough, loyal, dependable, and the last thing you want to see leaping for your throat.
After the jump, meet the KV, terror of the early game Continue reading →
In the course of my tomb raiding, Link has recovered all manner of potent artifacts. Completing the Palace of Darkness earned me a magic hammer. Other excursions have netted me gloves which confer the strength of a giant, the miraculous hookshot, and a cloak of invisibility. To get these, I’ve heroically slashed through legions of carnivorous plants, helmeted lizards, and leaping skeletons.
After the jump, it’s all about the milk bottles Continue reading →
Take a beautiful woman. A classically beautiful woman, not some latter day slattern. Convince her to stretch out on a big fluffy bed. Nothing raunchy. Something tasteful enough to paint on the nose of a bomber. Now send her home. Carefully analyze the topography of the bed where she has just lain. Calculate a track over that topography. Now you have the Glendale Raceway.
After the jump, Shift 2’s greatest track Continue reading →
One of the main themes that has run through this series is that time is precious. Therefore, it’s fitting that the most precious thing in my life — my family — takes up almost all of my time. But as the earlier entries have shown, there are still fleeting moments when I can play a game or two.
But for how much longer? Much to my dismay, I’ve discovered three adversaries that are conspiring to take all of my remaining time and consign me to a game-free life.
After the jump, the villains revealed. Continue reading →
At some point first person shooters and I parted ways. I was there at the beginning, playing Wolfenstein and downloading the DOOM preview off of the campus network. I learned the ways of WASD and circle strafing. I followed the evolution of the genre. I even jumped over to consoles to learn how to twin stick with Halo. But somewhere after Battlefield 2, sometime around Medal of Honor and Call of Duty, I began to drift away. My brief dalliance with Modern Warfare confirmed my feelings that I was no longer a “mainstream” FPSer. So I slunk off to strategy games. At least I didn’t fall all the way into wargaming.
Fortunately with a mature genre like FPSs, plenty of games will excite an almost 40-year-old father of a sub-2-year-old, homeowner, and mouselook inverter. If you’re willing to look past the multi-million dollar ad campaigns and dig around the edges you’ll find some gems.
After the jump, I “drop in” on Section 8: Prejudice Continue reading →
We resume Link’s quest in the middle of the game’s fifth dungeon, the Palace of Darkness. Something about it must have pissed me off, because I am in a sub-basement with no inkling of how to progress. Zelda games are nothing like bikes — they’re nearly impossible to pick up again. Each dungeon requires the player to assemble a mental map and the few skills necessary to solving its puzzles. After not playing for a year, I remember none of these tricks. I’m stuck in a room with a locked door and three giant, bipedal rats — two green and one red. Experience with the series tells me that if I clear the enemies from the room, that door will slide open.
After the jump, easier said than done Continue reading →
When I first learned that my wife was pregnant, I knew that my life was going to change. And it has, even in the most mundane ways. Going to the grocery store now requires D-Day level planning and preparation. Buying a taco sets off an internal fiscal debate. A slight temperature deviation in our apartment means frantically dialing down radiators or cranking up space heaters.
I was less prepared for the personal changes. Sure, there are the usual things like a sense of responsibility more potent than ever and an ineffable love that swells each time I look at the twins. But the surprises come from the smaller stuff. Like the fact that my burning hatred of scatological humor has mellowed after months of my kids’ boisterous and unrestrained flatulence. Or that my rock solid faith in the medical profession has crumbled thanks to the parade of obstetric and pediatric bozos we’ve dealt with since the births.
And then there are two recent revelations that came to me through games.
After the jump, friend becomes foe and man becomes mental. Continue reading →
