Modern Warfare 3 – First Impressions

So, I preordered MW3 on Steam a while back. There’s an interesting story to that, which I may or may not get into later. To put it simply, I was going to go for the other big shooter, but didn’t want spyware on my PC and didn’t want to give money to a company that is so evil. So I bought MW3, and have been playing it since it came out. I’ve played through the entire campaign, but my online experience is limited to a single match, so keep that in mind. A surprising proportion of players simply buy the game for the multiplayer, which is very disappointing. In my opinion, the singleplayer campaign is the best part of the game.

I won’t spoil the plot, but I must say that it starts off feeling more like MW 2.5 than MW3. The game begins right on the heels of the second one, not several years later like the first one. As the plot progresses, it starts to separate a bit and feel more like a true sequel. If I didn’t know better, I’d think that they screwed up the ending of MW2 and had to tidy up the loose ends before moving on. Anyway, the campaign feels pretty good overall, and although it’s heavily scripted and extremely linear, that’s what makes it great. It feels like an interactive movie, almost, a cinematic ride through the theatres of war. It does that even better than the first two games, but seems a bit lacking and repetitive at times. We’ve done the AC-130 how many times now? I think it’s a good thing they’re ending here, because after the stuff they pulled in the second title, it’s kind of hard to top that.

And here’s the bad news- Modern Warfare 3 doesn’t really do it. There are some pretty epic moments, and the conclusion is amazing, but it just doesn’t do the shock and awe thing as well as the first two games. There’s lots of explosions, sure, but they don’t have any impact. However, in terms of Action Movie Quiet Drama Scene, MW3 has quite a few, and they are well done. I know I’m going to piss off a lot of people by saying this, but if you’re looking for video games as art, start with the Modern Warfare series. The visuals are stunning, not necessarily because of the quality but because of what they are. I’m a PC guy and can’t say for the console guys, but MW3 looks great. Yes, there are probably better looking games, but it’s well presented. The sound design is equally excellent, and really rounds out the game. This was Medal of Honor’s failing, if anyone remembers that.

Remember how I said that this feels like MW2.5? That is reflected most in the menus, which are nearly identical. Control configuration is much the same, and the graphics options seem to lock certain settings for some reason, forcing me to override from the nVidia control panel. The game closes and starts a different executable when you switch to multiplayer, which is very glaring especially for Steam users. The campaign completion meter is totally useless- it doesn’t measure how close you are to the end of the campaign but how many achievements you got, or how many intelligence briefcases, or something. I thought I was less than halfway through, when I was really almost done. Multiplayer-wise, at least the dedicated servers are back but as I said I didn’t really try it much.

At the risk of sounding like a Straw Feminist, I’m going to bitch about one last thing before I’m done. WHERE THE FUCK ARE THE WOMEN?! There was a pilot that you don’t see, some civilians that you barely notice, and a hostage. I am not joking. I could understand the first game, which was all about special forces, but still wish it didn’t have the sexist subliminal messaging. The second game was a serious mind screw. Yes, I know they are not allowed in American combat units. Are the lines really going to be that clear cut when your country is being invaded? The Russians are here, all men to the front lines! What the hell are you doing, I said all MEN! Go back and cower in the bunker. The situation is similar (though not exactly the same) in Modern Warfare 3.

Although the story arcs are definitely concluded, there are still loose ends after Modern Warfare 3. What’s going to happen in Russia? How is the Western world going to recover? What’s the story on Israel and the Middle East? What about Asia? There’s room for more here, but I don’t think Infinity Ward should do it. It would only be more of the same, and the horse is pretty tired now. Do Future Warfare. Embrace the near-future sci-fi shooter, and take the same cinematic approach. Walkers, powered armour, space combat, that sort of thing, but big and epic like the other Call of Duty games. We’ve had two Captain Prices, let’s have a third for some continuity. Make her a her this time.

Last but not least, did anyone notice that the Occupy Wall Street?

 

Save Default Female Shepard

Seriously, BioWare, what the fuck? First Ash’s new “armor”, and now this.

BioWare wants you to vote for your favourite new FemShep, out of six candidates. This will be the new default female for ME3 and appear on the alternate cover of the collector’s edition. While I love that Sheploo’s Distaff Counterpart is getting some attention, and that they are asking fans for input, I don’t agree with that at all.

First of all, all six concepts suck. Open them up in another tab and follow along. The first three have either really short hair or a bun, I can’t tell from the angle. They’re kind of ugly, but don’t look badass. Number three isn’t as extreme as the other two, and isn’t too bad. Still, they look kind of pale and look like they are wearing makeup. Number four looks like a pop star or maybe a prostitute, not a galaxy saving heroine. The first three at least look the part… mostly. I like the face of number five, but the hair is way too messy and long. I actually wouldn’t mind her face as a reimagining of the original FemShep, as long as the long blonde hair goes. Seriously, will that even fit in a helmet? As for the last one, just no. I don’t know if it’s the black hair, the hairstyle or the dark skin, but I don’t like her look at all.

That’s not the biggest problem, though. The biggest problem is that we already have an official, default, female Shepard. Why not just pretty her up a little and use her? To some of us (well, me, anyway), the green-eyed, redheaded woman is just as iconic as the default male model. Changing that is akin to putting a different guy on the cover of Mass Effect 3, or giving Chief blue armour for Halo 4, or making a version of Minecraft with realistic terrain. Maybe not the latter, but it’s still ridiculous. We have a default Shepard already, why change her?

Mass Effect 3 – My Wishlist

So, the epic conclusion to the Mass Effect trilogy is coming. I’ve been a big fan of the series since I first played ME1. It was a bit tedious at times, and the combat could have been better, but I enjoyed the epicness and storyline. By that time, ME2 was already out, and I bought it and played it too. I found it darker, more focused, and less epic, but having improved gameplay overall. I’m hoping ME3 will be the happy medium between the RPG-heavy, epic ME1 and the shooter-heavy, focused ME2.

Late Post- SGU Cancelled

I’ve been too busy to post about it sooner, but I am so happy that SGU has been cancelled.

For those that don’t know it already, I hate Stargate Universe (SGU). I’m a huge fan of the prior two Stargate shows, but SGU just left me disgusted. I forced myself to watch it hoping it would get better and eventually gave up. Later I tried again, then gave up again. I made my opinion absolutely clear- SGU sucks.

PunkBuster Sucks

Everyone who plays PC games online knows what PunkBuster is. Evenbalance’s anti-cheat software is used in virtually every online game. Why? I have no fucking idea.To put it simply, PunkBuster sucks.

Supposedly it updates automatically, but I’ve had to update both CoD4 and BFBC2 manually. If you don’t have it up to date, you get kicked with a cryptic message. Why doesn’t it update automatically? Is this deliberate or just bad coding?

Apparently the method PunkBuster uses to identify cheaters is dubious at best. One group injected a stream of characters made to look like a common hack into an IRC stream while playing. The result? A ban. PunkBuster also has the (in my opinion scary) ability to PERMANENTLY ban cheaters from ALL PunkBuster enabled servers.

All this would be forgivable if PunkBuster did a good job of stopping cheaters. But it doesn’t. PunkBuster is woefully ineffective. I’ve played against so many aimbots and wallhackers it’s not even funny. And I’m not the only one experiencing this. There is no replacement for a good server admin.

PunkBuster is terrible software. And the guys at Evenbalance seem to be flaunting it like it’s the best thing since sliced bread. Why are game companies incorporating this shit? Are they simply too lazy or cheap to implement their own, proper anti-cheat software?

Codecs, Media Players, and Web Browsers

During the last couple of days I’ve been screwing with my media players more than usual.

A while back I installed K-lite Codec Pack. It’s a pack consisting of DirectShow filters, splitters, and a whole bunch of other stuff I had never heard of before. Any DirectShow player- WMP included- can take advantage of it and play anything. So, in a nutshell, I no longer needed QuickTime and I can play things in formats I didn’t even know about. Unfortunately, I had to keep QuickTime around since Premiere Elements relies on it for MPEG 4 support. I never use it, though.

So, just recently, I decided to try Media Player Classic. I liked the amount of control it gives you. You can select codecs, change rendering settings, and apply shaders. I found that changing settings doesn’t really do a lot, at least not the ones I changed. The interface was okay, not great but usable, it was a bit slower to load. It doesn’t have any media library functionality. Though I rarely use that stuff, I at least want to have playlists handy. Which is something MPC can’t do. Basically, the only thing I gained over WMP is .vob support (you can get .vob to work in WMP by changing it to .mpg, by the way), so I ditched it after less than a day. It was interesting, but I missed the familiar interface and playlists.

On to web browsers. I’ve been getting screwed by IE for a while now. It messes up the order of pages- what I mean by that is sometimes if you go back a page, forward a page, it screws up the order they are in so you go back two and they are swapped. A minor problem, but really annoying. And of course, it doesn’t display certain pages correctly. And crashes sometimes for no apparent reason. So I decided to make the switch to Firefox.

Overall, Firefox is a better browser. The interface is pretty much the same, though a few things are in different spots. It’s faster. It has a lot of addons, some of which I use. At first it refused to import. Oddly enough, if I import things one at a time (favorites, cookies, internet options, history) it worked fine. Dealing with imported bookmarks was a nightmare. The bookmark manager felt awkward and is slow as hell. I got over the awkwardness but it never sped up. I actually had to reimport my bookmarks/favorites once because I deleted half of them. But I got it all sorted out eventually. I was annoyed by the lack of clicking sounds when browsing- an addon fixed that. The download system is a bit odd, but I’m getting used to it. I’ll probably make the switch if I can get over the little quirks.

SGU – Merely Bad

I watched SGU 1×19 and 1×20 Divided. I’m neutral to say that SGU is no longer unwatchably awful and now merely bad.

Of course, they’re still a bunch of idiots doing stupid shit, it’s still full of “drama” and plot holes. But at least there’s some bad guys and some action, and something resembling a plot. Since I was watching it on a computer, I skipped past most of the scenes with Eli and Chloe, because I don’t like them. I took a moment to remark how bad the characters are. O’Neill and Carter appeared briefly, and O’Neill actually acted somewhat like O’Neill this time. I still don’t understand why they sent 302s instead of beaming a team in just outside or bombarding the Lucian Alliance base from orbit. The whole gamma ray burst thing adds an additional element, but I don’t understand why a ship that can fly through a sun has any problem with it.

There’s one scene where Wray (I think it was Wray) gets handed a ballistic vest that as far as I can tell, has no plates in it. I briefly wondered why they’re still using that crap after two sets of Kull armor and all the knowledge of the Asgard. Not really a complaint about SGU, more of a random thought. Anyway, I actually found myself cheering for the Lucian Alliance. They’re actually competent and can function as a unit. That said, I was still happy when it seemed like everyone was going to die at the end of the episode.

Summarized? Still too much drama, too many unlikeable characters, and a lot of continuity fail and plot holes. But it’s not unwatchable anymore. It’s gone up from a horrible TV show to a bad TV show.

Avatar

I recently found this among my drafts. I must have been distracted or tired when I wrote it and hit the draft button instead of the publish one. Original date is April 25, 2010.

Well, I watched Avatar yesterday, and it was a mixed bag.

Let’s start off on a positive note. The special effects were as good as they are hyped up to be. Pandora looks really well done and cool-looking. The battle scenes were impressive both visually and aurally.

And that’s where the good part ends. The story is overlong, overdone, and preachy as fuck. I found myself rooting for the humans. The North American Indians metaphor was incredibly obvious and slammed you in the face.

A lot of stuff, including the design of Pandora itself, seems unrealistic and unlikely. Who the hell was the military advisor for this thing? The tactics used by the humans were completely retarded, even (or maybe especially) for mercs. Whoever designed their vechicles should be shot too. There was nowhere near enough sci-fi stuff- cool technology, technobabble explainations, etc. In fact, the movie felt more fantasy than sci-fi. The whole movie felt 40 years into the future, not 140 years. In fact, the only really futuristic technology was the Avatars themselves.

Overall, Avatar is a great movie for showing off your home theatre or seeing once because everyone else is. But really, it’s not as great as it’s hyped up to be.

fanfiction is great, FanFiction sucks

I love fanfiction. There’s just something about it that I really like. Maybe something to do with reshaping established canon into something else. It’s impossible to explain. A lot of people think fanfiction is pointless and stupid. Though I do not agree with them, fanfiction is mostly a love-it or hate-it thing. You’re either for it or against it.

I don’t like FanFiction, though. Not only does it have several stupid guidelines and restrictions, horrible administration, and an awkward design, but it’s also filled with idiots.

I try my damndest to write good fanfiction. I know I’m not a good writer, but I try to keep characters in character, strive for canonical and (if applicable) factual accuracy, and make a decent plot. But I might as well write crap! Case in point. Halogate, my Halo/Stargate crossover (under the name Chris4221). My chapters are horribly short, averaging about 1500 words long, and the writing isn’t that great. It’s not like it’s full of spelling errors, but it’s just not very good. I thought the plot out a lot, and spent a lot of time doing research (read: I wasted hours on the Halo wiki), and blended the universes together as seamlessly as I could.

Then some random guy (or very possibly girl) churns out a fanfic that’s longer and better written than mine. However, it lacks things like a (semi) original plot, characters in character, or a nice blended universe. It’s a horrible fic, but despite (or because of) that, it has more, better reviews, and probably more views overall. This really pisses me off. I guess people just like things that are written better, even if they make no sense.

I really need to find another place to post my stories. Right now, I’m tempted to write crap, because people will probably think it’s better. Maybe I’ll write the millionth Jack/Sam fic, even though I don’t even like that pairing.

I should take the time to mention one thing I really hate, a pet peeve if you will. I hate it when someone has a really good idea, usually well written too. Then they ruin it with pointless romances (shipping?) that shouldn’t be there and make no sense. Usually this type of story is full of factual or canonical errors as well, but I digress.

http://www.fanfiction.net/Stargate_SG-1_and_Halo_Crossovers/68/1342/
http://www.fanfiction.net/~chris7221

Matchmaking (and other gaming pet peeves)

I love my dedicated servers. Sometimes they have a mod I like, the people are my skill level, I like the map, or maybe it’s just less laggy. I usually only play on a few; finding servers I like. I was totally unimpressed with MW2 because of the lack of servers. Matchmaking just sucks. It may be fine in the console world where people are used to having no control over anything, but it just doesn’t fly with PC gamers like me. It’s not as bad with Alien Swarm, since you can pick your map and it’s only four players, so it wouldn’t really work with servers. Red Alert 3 is nice in that it has both options, but very few people seem to bother with servers.

I’ve seen a lot of good and bad console ports. Am I the only one who thinks “rotate the left analog stick” on a PC game sounds incredibly stupid? Especially ones with crap control layouts that you can’t change. Features taken for granted in the PC world but nonexistant in the console world are missing. Like the ability to change resolution, for example. And the controls, since they are so awful. I guess bad ports are less stable and don’t perform well, but I haven’t really noticed it. Sometimes it’s just minor flaws, though, like over-large text sized for a TV, or controls the opposite of the predecessor (I’m looking at you, Mass Effect 2).

Finally, I’m seeing games mostly on DVD. For a while, it was insane. Some games needed four CDs! At that point, we were well into the sixth generation era where consoles were DVD based and almost every new PC was sold with a combo drive (CD-writer and DVD reader) at the least. I buy most of my games through Steam now, so it doesn’t matter as much for me.

Another archaic practice that seems to be going the way of the dinosaur is having to insert the disc to play. It’s a huge pain in the ass if you have as many games as I do, and pretty much unnecessary. I fail to see how it would do anything about piracy. You still need a disc, copied or legit. Sadly, we get SecuRom instead now.

This is m0re a wish than a complaint, but I wish network play was possible without purchasing two copies of a game. Remember how the old Command and Conquer games came with two discs, both of which could be used to play the game? Something like that. It wouldn’t work with digital distribution, though.

What’s with OnLive? Playing a game on a server? First, laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaag. Second, HD video takes up a lot more bandwidth than playing online normally. Third, you have no control over your game files, which means your save could disappear and you can’t play mods. Lastly, I paid for this quad core and Radeon HD 4670, I’m damn well going to use them!