TOM FRANCIS
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Morn Of Brawl

The Dawn of War 2 multiplayer beta went public on Steam last night, so I imagine everyone who cares has played it or is about to. I can’t talk about the full game much until my review goes online, since there’s still an embargo for internets.

I just want to mention that of the three very different ways to play – single-player, co-op and multiplayer/skirmish – this is the least satisfying. It is, however, the only way to play as the Eldar, Orks or Tyranids, so get that out of your system as much as is feasible.

If you’re not much into RTS multiplayer, you can play this beta just against the AI. But doing so bears almost no relation to the real single-player game – it’s not even in the same genre.

Update: Just one more thing…

I think the worst thing about DoW2 multiplayer is that it always ends just as it’s getting good. I can’t play Annihilation because the bases are just so tediously tough – it seems to take hours to destroy them, during which you’re just watching a healthbar go down rather than smashing up power generators and barracks as you might be in a normal RTS.

But the Victory Point mode, while strategically more interesting, just freaking stops. In my review I say the rounds are too short, and they are, but I’ve since had time to work out why they feel that way. When the enemy team run out of victory points, it’s when you feel like you’re just poised to crush them and are relishing the prospect. When it’s you, it’s when you feel like you’ve just turned the tide and are back in the game.

It’s irritating because the solution is so obvious. When one team runs out of Victory Points, the match shouldn’t end. Instead, the nigh-invincible shield that seemingly protects their bases should go down. All players receive a message that those three bases are now vulnerable, and the winning side quickly sweep in to smash them up.

It could even incorporate a comeback mechanic, where if the losing team are able to capture all three victory points before the winners destroy their base, they’re protected again and will start to regain Victory points.

More On Making Music For Gunpoint

In the trailer I put up last night I said I’m open to suggestions for music for Gunpoint, then claimed there’d be a version of that trailer without my voice here on the site. There wasn’t! There is now!

So if you’re interested in doing music for it, I’d love it if you could add what you think is appropriate to this version of the trailer.

I’m mostly open-minded about what the music should be like, but here are a few thoughts I have on it:

• You’re a spy, and it’s a stealth game. It needs to be quiet most of the time – possibly silent. I don’t think constant music is necessary, certainly nothing too busy or active.
   
• Music can be triggered by in-game events, but obviously you need to know what specifically it should respond to – it can’t just be “Action” without a clear idea of what defines that.
   
• Gunpoint’s set in the near future, with some silly gadgets, but also tries to be noir-inspired wherever possible. So electronic stuff is cool, and lonely sax is cool, but by no means compulsory.
   
• A light touch is good. I’d rather people not notice the music than notice when it doesn’t fit.
   
• I’m personally not wild about chiptunes. I’m open to it, of course, but I’ve never heard anything chiptuney that feels like a good fit for this style, to me.
   
• The flow of the game will probably go:

  Mission: leaping around a building, looking for a way in, avoiding detection.
  Mission: Pouncing on a guard or two – sudden bursts of violence that’ll usually be contained and go back to quiet sneaking.
  Mission: reaching your objective, getting what you want.
  Mission: escaping – not usually to a time limit, but there’s generally a quick way out.

  Dialogue: debrief with a client, they react to your missions, you choose dialogue options.

  Menus: buying new gadgets, upgrading gadgets, reading briefings and choosing your next mission.

  Dialogue: briefing with a client, you choose dialogue options, ask questions.

  Then back to a mission.

If Gunpoint ends up being free, I can’t pay you anything. Sweet deal, I know! If we do end up charging for it, and you end up doing the music, you will get a share of it. I should warn, though, that it’ll be a very small share – I have to prioritise the stuff the game wouldn’t work without. Basically, for God’s sake don’t do this for the money.

Moon

Best not to know much about this film going in, so I’ll be vague. Continued

Month In Links: December

This is a thing I do now. Most of this stuff I mentioned on Twitter, but it’s not an ideal channel and I don’t like that I never link stuff here anymore. Continued

Mockba

Mark: Who wants to go to Moscow?
Me: What’s the game?
Mark: It’s not just about the game, it’s about getting to go to Moscow.
Me: I just want to be sure that I would be the best person for the job.
(All laugh) Continued

Mixtape: Ten Tracks Mostly From 2010

About the only new music I got into in 2010 was Said the Gramaphone’s round-up of the best music of 2009. So a while back, I asked Twitter for help, scoured The Onion AV Club, sifted through Spotify lists, and then pretty much went with Said the Gramaphone’s round-up of the best music of 2010.

Since I’m embedding a bunch of tracks from their site, I’ll also copy their referral codes for the buy links so any kickbacks go to them. Continued

Mirror’s Edge In Pictures

Just put some of my Mirror’s Edge shots up, and it turns out they make a rather nice slideshow. I’ll have another post or two about it this week.

Update! Fishbro points out that watching this slideshow whilst listening to the game’s theme song, Still Alive (!), quote “Felt good.” I therefore embed it here, that you might stream it in the background while opening the slideshow (which has expanded a fair bit) in a new tab and watching it full-screen. GOOD DAY.

Mirror’s Edge

I don’t often dribble about unreleased games here, except when they’re by Valve or a cool part of them has just been released or I’ve played them and can’t tell you anything useful. But I am in love with Mirror’s Edge.

The first trailer is a thing of wordless and tinglingly scored beauty. The DICE team have shown only hints of this artistic muscle before – both of the last Battlefield games were crisply depicted, but even 2142 only had a few properly striking scenes. Mirror’s Edge is fearlessly clear in its art direction, dazzingly stark and bleach-clean throughout. Like only the best oppressive dystopias, I want to live there.

It makes me laugh, and then feel sad, when people say that Gears of War 2 looks good. It looks like an ashtray.

GameTrailers did an uncharacteristically excellent recut of that first footage, halting to extrapolate the implications of every detail shown. I hope they eventually do the same for the new Leap of Faith footage (which isn’t the same as the stuff shown in the developer talkthrough).

Together, the three suggest an energetically tactile, flexible and powerful mode of movement. I love, love the notion of being able to cling onto something, then look freely around behind me and leap in the direction of my choice. It’s the antithesis of the hopelessly vague dictionary of airy, hands-free movement verbs we have access to in every other first-person game.

All three show combat in some form, and for the most part I really like the quick, linked series of light blows you can use to disarm or incapacitate people. But I don’t see how you get to them. In the demos, the player simply lets herself get shot to hell – they’ve got God mode on, so it has no effect, but it raises a pretty big question.

My answer to it, which they clearly haven’t gone for, would be a system of automatically triggered bullet-time. For the most part, you’re dashing around in real-time and bullets ping around you – your enemies should have Stormtrooper Aiming Syndrome, of course.

But whenever a bullet is fired that’s on track to hit you, extreme slow-mo is activated and a line of air-ripples shows the path the bullet is on. The more accurate the shot, and the closer the range, the further you’ve got to move your body in the shorter the space of time. Realtime resumes the second you’ve moved yourself out of danger.

It would be redundant to argue that the game would be better off without a plot; no-one could put that argument more eloquently or forcefully than the first trailer itself – especially in light of the groan-worthy second. Look at her:

She doesn’t have a sister. She’s too cool to be born.

Metal Gear Solid V’s Failure Spectrum

This post is part of a series. I mention abilities and tools but no story spoilers.

Being an outsider to the Metal Gear series, I was only cautiously optimistic about V. All I heard about the last one was that it had 90-minute cut-scenes. I watched enough of one of them on YouTube to determine that it was… not my cup of tea. Of V, I’d seen some fun stuff in videos, but I was half-assuming the story would barge in and ruin it.

Well, the story does barge in. But only for the intro and a few brief intrusions, spread out over the vast, ridiculous amount of time I’ve played the game for so far – at least thirty hours, I think. That’s a ridiculously tiny fraction, and the rest is extraordinarily good.

So many things about it are surprising or different or interesting and I want to write about all of them. So I think I’ll do that, one post at a time, starting with this: Continued

Memories Of Far Cry 2

Just found this in an old screenshots folder.

Memento

Genre: psychological thriller.

Stars: Guy Pearce (apparently in Neighbours at one point), John Pantoliano (the traitor in The Matrix), Carrie-Anne Moss.

Plot: an insurance claims investigator loses the ability to form new memories when he’s hit from behind during a struggle with a man he finds raping his wife, and tries to track down the second man with notes, tattoos and the help of a suspicious policeman friend. Half of the scenes are shown in reverse order, so that the film ends in the middle of its plot’s timeline.

Why It’s Great:

• The actual plot is astonishingly complicated and mind-blowingly clever.
• The intricate and beautiful scene-splicing interacts with the web of deceit and confusion brilliantly, unpicking it lie by lie.
• The two main characters are superbly written and are acted so compellingly that I still find them fascinating now, having seen it at least eight times.
• The fact that every scene starts with you having no idea what came before it mimics the protagonist’s condition cleverly, unravelling the plot in all the right backwards steps without keeping you in the dark about anything he knows.
• Although the themes are dark and even chilling, the atmosphere is mainly just exciting, and the dialogue and even plot are hilarious in parts.

Timeline:

Quotes:

Lenny: (running) Okay, so what am I doing? (Seeing another man running) Oh, I'm chasing this guy. (The running man opens fire) No, he's chasing me.

Maybe You Should Make The Crosslink Noise For Gunpoint

Competition / unpaid labour time! In Gunpoint, you break into buildings by rewiring things to each other. You switch to Crosslink mode, the blue outline view below, and drag connections from one device to another to link them.

I want a really satisfying, fun, excitingly electronic noise for when you switch into this mode. There’s a great web app called BFXR by Dr Petter and the incomparable increpare, for doing stuff like that. You just hit the randomise button a lot, drag some sliders around, and you can ‘Copy link’ to send it to someone as a URL. Here’s a weird one I just made.

Since that’s how I was gonna make the Crosslink noise anyway, and it’s easy to do, I thought it might be fun to see if you wanna come up with something yourself. Have a play around with BFXR, then when you’re happy with it, click Copy Link and send the URL to me – either via e-mail, or as an @GunpointGame reply on Twitter.

The only prize is making Gunpoint slightly better, getting your name in the credits, and sorta feeling like you did something today, if you don’t already. To be totally clear: don’t send me a link to your sound unless you’re happy for me to use it. That would be weird.

Maybe I Should Just E-Mail You When Gunpoint Is Out

I drew up a more specific and honest to-do list at the weekend, and realised Gunpoint is going to be done later than July. I’ve also set up a mailing list called Just Tell Me When Gunpoint Is Out. If you sign up, you’ll get two e-mails now, to confirm it’s your address, and one when the game is released. Continued

Maybe Back Up Your Google Stuff?

This tale of abruptly losing a Google account without explanation, via roBurky, made me realise I should be backing this stuff up. Not so much because “It happened to him, therefore it will happen to me!” Just because the story makes you realise how boned you’d be if Google did shut you out, and how absurd it is to have total faith they never could. In all probability someone hacked this guy’s account and did something bad without his knowledge, in which case it has nothing to do with anything he did. Continued

Maths Cop!

Holy shit, they finally made a TV series about cops who solve crimes with maths! This is like all my dreams come true at once, except only one of them, and one I haven’t actually had yet, but totally would have if I’d thought to. It’s called Numbers (ignore unreliable sources such as the official site calling it ‘Numb3rs’ – that would mean it was stupid), and I’ve only seen five minutes of the first episode so far, but already there’s been an educational speech on the relevance of mathematics over the credit sequence, and straight off the bat some dude with odd eyebrows is correcting a woman on her use of the word ‘exponential’. Now he’s said “We can create a Bayesian filter!” and I am sold.

In other news, I have this week off, then next week I’m going to Moscow. Having masses of free time seemed like a good chance to try Black And White 2 (as did getting Black And White 2) and so far it is surprising me. I thought it would be pleasant but insubstantial, but in fact it’s got more substance than Colombia. But it’s extremely irritating. I thought it would again be an aimless playground from which no satisfying game could be sculpted, but in fact it’s alarmingly close to a truly brilliant RTS. It’s just definitely not one in its current state.

I have uncensorified my Serenity thoughts now that the film’s out. I may go and see it again in the middle of the day at some point this week – I used to love being able to do that at university; it’s just you and a few old ladies, and you emerge blinking to discover that the day is still in progress. But if you’ll excuse me, I must get back to CSI: Mathematics.