Game Curmudgeons

Look what you’ve all done to Steam. Look at it!

This is what happens when the hottest titles on Steam go on sale for ridiculous prices. Hell, even the ones you’ve never heard of. “What is this “The Pipe?” Adventure game…looks European. A little odd. How much is it? $1.24? Shit, sold!”

It’s a Steam sale again, and just like the January sale this one is utter madness. One day sales, deep discounts, and all the best games for bottom barrel prices. Telltale Complete packs for $50, THQ complete packs for the same, 33% off anything Ubisoft.

Say goodbye to your money.

Microsoft seems to be dropping the ball on this one. The most recent Xbox update provided the ability for players to save their gamertags to a USB drive, a great idea for those who play on the go since tag recovery can take an hour easily. Unfortunately within a few days, people figured out how to hack the files to change their displayed names (often to something spectacularly racist), or even unlocking additional prestige levels in Call of Duty. Live had been reasonably free of hacking thanks to the closed nature of the system, but a good idea has gone horribly wrong quick.

Unlike hardware hacks, this isn’t such an easy detection, and I’ve seen no official comment on the problem. Here’s hoping Ryan Treit, aka Treit and True, addresses the problem or Mircrosoft expands the mod teams to deal with this. Most of the gamertag hackers, afterall, just can’t seem to resist flaunting it via colorful display names or ones using system symbols.

Coming up later today, a review of Major League Baseball: The Show 2010, a PS3 exclusive. Hint-It’s got problems.

Right now, Portal is free! If you’re not familiar, 70 game of the year awards, 3 hours or so, rioutously funny. And it’s free, so what’s your excuse? Get it here.

Mount and Blade: Warband has a spectacular addition to the combat of the first.

Kicking.

This doesn’t seem like a huge deal at first, but when you’re locked blade to blade in close combat, it can give you the space you need to swing a bigger weapon, or get a good thrust.

Or you could be like me and accidentally drop your two handed sword in the last round of a tournament facing an opponent on horseback with a lance. Which sounds like a recipe for disaster, of course. But it wasn’t.

I got off my horse, let him run into a corner, and buddy, I kicked that horse hard. I kicked and kicked until it buckled as my foe launched thrust after thrust, unable to hit me. He hit the ground and started dodging, using his superior speed as best he could, but I wouldn’t give him a target. He’d wind up, and I’d step to the inside, around the lance, and I’d fucking KICK.

I kicked him into a corner of the arena, mercilessly delivering boot after boot to the nethers.

It was a drawn out battle, and he landed a few true strikes between the weak blunt taps at face to face range, but was almost completely unable to use his weapon.

If Mount and Blade: Warband had a crowd, it would have been cheering. Women would have been throwing handkerchiefs and, dare I say it, entire corsets at me.

Wercheg would have erected a bronze statue in my honor. It would show me in mid-kick, steel booted foot in the air. My opponent’s face was hidden by his helmet, but his eyes would show terror and pain, a confusion as to how he started in this noblest of tournaments and ended up in a world without dignity. His spear would be thrust outward, under my arm, effectively harmless. His shield facing down, but unable to lower enough to protect him.

It would be inscribed as such.

“HERE STANDS MONUMENT TO THE GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS OF SLASH OF CALADRIA, WHO FELL KING RAGNAR IN THE FINAL ROUND OF THE GRAND TOURNAMENT OF WERCHEG WITH NAUGHT BUT THE SOLES OF HIS FEET AND THE ENDLESS DETERMINATION OF THE HEROES OF LORE. FROM NOW UNTIL THE END OF TIME SHALL HIS EXPLOITS BE KNOWN, UNTIL THE LORD GOD DOES END THE WORLD SHALL CODPIECES WITHER AND FOLD MERELY BY HIS PRESENCE.”

Say what you want about the sex included in Heavy Rain and Fahrenheit, at least it wasn’t this bad.

God of War III‘s obligatory sex minigame is a 45 second affair that feels like an hour. While just as before the camera pans away from the action but the sound continues, this time, it gets worse.

This time there are two lovely undressed ladies in the wings, watching and commenting on how great it is.

“By the gods, is he going to?” “If it’s so great watching, imagine how it must feel!” “Oh my, such power!”

And as the scene progresses, they start groping each other more and more, until the end where one pushes the other down and they themselves go at it. It’s as close as it can be to porn without actually being porn, and yet it’s somehow MORE embarrassing to have it seen/heard by other people. At least then there’s an excuse of it being passive. In this, you have to get INVOLVED for those precious experience points. And it’s a known, gamers will do anything for precious experience points, no matter how degrading.

But let’s just try to keep this one from happening again, okay guys?

After tons of conjecture created by Valve’s newest patch additions to Portal, today, Portal 2 has been announced officially. Considering Portal was god damn perfect, this is a big deal. Does it also herald Half-Life 2:Episode 3? A new Orange Box? Only time and press releases will tell.

VALVE ANNOUNCES PORTAL 2

Sequel to 2007′s Game of the Year Coming This Holiday

March 5, 2010 – Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Left 4 Dead, Counter-Strike, and Half-Life) and leading technologies (such as Steam, Source), today announced Portal 2 for shipment this coming holiday season.

Portal was originally released in 2007 and earned over 70 industry achievement awards.

The Complete Overlord Package is available on Steam right now for $8.75. That’s 1, Raising Hell, and 2, for under 10 dollars, normally 35 dollars. Overlord is a ton of fun, best described as an evil Pikmin game, with adorable goblin minions who wear pumpkins as helmets and attack with candlesticks they find.

Really!

If you feel the need to crush your foes and commit comically evil acts, jump on this immediately, it’s the Steam Weekend Deal.

Call of Duty 4 was great, don’t get me wrong. But it was FAR from flawless, and a few points were absolutely frustrating.

For one, as much as it’s supposed to be a challenge, veteran mode was WAY out of line and it showed a few real weaknesses in level design. CoD4 was loaded with infinitely respawning enemies, traps for non-psychic players, and areas that required a multitude of plays before being completable on veteran. They’re old trappings of the series, but they’re ones that need to be shed.

Veteran mode, when it works, is fun. It’s a serious challenge and makes players rely on their squad as much as themselves, and use cover wisely. But without any ability to see around a corner without being exposed, and no ability to retaliate when wounded thanks to a tremendous screen jerk, it’s an exercise in memorization as much as anything. What it should be is slow, careful movement, peeking around corners, and judicious use of flashbangs and flanking enemies through teamwork. Instead, players are the only target that the AI cares about, have to make suicidal charges to unmarked enemy respawns, and die often from bad luck. It forces players to exploit the code, and that’s where something has gone wrong.

Don’t get me wrong, most of the levels were great. But then you had hells like “No Fighting in the War Room”, “Mile High Club”, and “Heat.” Ones where you just had to memorize the level and pray that the enemy was in place for a flashbang to work.

Hopefully, Modern Warfare 2 remembers veteran should punish players for mistakes, not kill them for a lack of prescience.

Oh, and seriously, the clipping planes. I’m pretty sure CoD4 exists in an alternate world where every surface is coated in adhesive of some sort, because touching a wall or barrier of any sort will stick you in place, and often it takes up such a tiny portion of the screen, if any, you don’t realize you’re going to be stopping until it’s too late and you die. It’s annoying with walls and objects to the side of the player, it’s downright awful with low barriers that are below the camera. And there’s a ton of it.

Seriously guys. Implement some kind of feedback at least that it’s a wall stopping a player from moving. I died more from walls and boxes than bullets, and that’s even with my aim relatively low. If I’m aiming for the ass, I should see low obstacles.