20 Years of Quake 3

Well holy crap, Quake 3 is officially 20 years old today.

And… it’s still the best DM shooter out there! But it was a long time to fall in love for us, like that funny looking girl on the bus that is into motorhead and jigsaw puzzles. While I had a kick ass time making levels for the game (I think I made a whopping 3 until my HD died and I couldn’t get my source files back and sorta gave up level making) other than to practice for LAN’s I didn’t play a ton the first 6 months or so it was out. I think it hit me when I was stuck in the house for a weekend with shitload of snow (big ass blizzards in ’99 I tell you what) and played vs the bots to 999 frags on a single map. That’s right, 999 frags. No one was around and when I told people they didn’t believe me. After this, I loved the game forever.

Oh how opinions change. Here is Keneda and I’s un-edited reviews of the game from the year 1999. At the bottom is the animated John Romero Gif from that day and age (sorry dude….we were kids).

Quake 3: Arena

(my new girlfriend)

littlemute

Predication is necessary as it is essential to provide my biases walking into this review.  I love Quake. Not Quake 2, Not Unreal, not Doom, but Quake.  I love the speed, I love the level design, I love the totally unbalanced weapon selection, I love the gibbes, I love rocket jumping over a shower of gibbes.  What this means is that any later incarnation of this game will be brutally scrutinized, as Quake 2 was. Quake was made by a bunch of people that had already tasted massive financial success with Doom and slacked in production.  The design of the game drastically changed in mid-development and by all rights it should have been shit.  The reason it wasn’t is that the game designers means of development was to play deathmatch, constantly.  I assume from rumors that they “playtested” the game instead of working for months and months. Look what happened: Dm2, Dm4, E1M2. It’s hard to compare the experience of running “The Bad Place” with 4-6 other people to any other game. Nothing comes close. So there I am, standing in the middle of Dm4 writing this review.

There are a lot of shitty things in Quake 3a:

  • Most of the levels are either built with only beginners in mind or are “trick” levels with a lot of jumps and silly lifts.
  • Prediction.
  • Some of the models are disappointing, and the bot’s “ai” feels like an slightly humanized omicron bot; no suprises there.
  • The weapon selection is also questionable. The Grenade launcher is disappointing for Quake players used to the creamy goodness of the OG GL. The plasma gun is the worst “no skill” weapon I’ve ever seen. It’s weapon effect slows everything down as well as crowding the screen so you can’t see what the hell is going on while firing it.
  • Some of the design choices are extremely questionable. Fat people running around? Vertically challenged levels? An Eyeball with legs? The bot chat feature is absolutely lame. The taunts, already meaningless coming from a machine, are so inane as to turn the stomach. The final boss is the best example of this. For example: Major says “just get my tombstone right” or something to that effect. Now since she’s been killed, this is ok, but instantly she respawns to be killed again. It’s just not internally consistant! If they are fragged but not killed as evident by their respawn, why then talk about themselves being dead?
  • The processor and video card requirements are astronomical. The box should read: “System Requirements: Computer not yet built to run this game, please wait until March of 2000.”

I completed (and I mean completed; ie never to play again) the single player in three hours. It felt like a chore. The bots, with their complete reliance on superior aim gave little satisfaction in tactical play.  You can ALWAYS get the armor or RL when you need it.  The bots ALWAYS run around, never camping anywhere.  There really isn’t anything “new” about Q3a except the engine and art. The game-play is the same, the weapons are the same and the style of game is the same.

With all these problems it seems impossible that Q3a is worth buying. But jesus H christ it is! What id has done with the single player is fine, but makes no difference. Some of the models suck, but it makes no difference. Most of the levels are aesthetics over game-play, but it makes no difference. No one I know has a system that can run it well, but it makes no difference. In four months time there will hundreds of new models, thousands of new levels and a dozen or so mods that ameliorate almost ALL problems. The Voodoo 5 should be out and people will have systems that will be able to run the game. And, of course, someone will remake Quake DM4.

Playing through the single player, I constantly said: “I hate this,” but then during tier five, I started having a bit of fun. Tier five is a stint with some rather good levels in it, like Brimstone Alley, and it contains some of the better models. A few of the levels in that tier are super tight, rather than the typical Q3a flat open area with some curves spread around, so I was in my element: fucking bot ass. It was during this tier that I was able to get the “haste” power up and I realized that there was a ray of hope in terms of runspeed slowness.  If server admins can set run speed…. Excellent!

After I finished off Xeroe (hi, yes bot you can aim better than I can but you jump to the same places every time) I started up a skirmish with nine or so bots on Brimstone Alley with a frag limit of 100 and went to town. Within 10 minutes I realized I liked Q3a, within 20 I loved it. It’s hard to describe the moment where I shifted from hating to loving Q3a, but it happened and here I am writing this review.

Basically the Q3a you get in the box is good, but it’s what you will be able to get off the net in four months that will make this game fantastic. Better CTF with the hook, better levels, more models and more fun and silly mods. With time and better processors we will be able to actually play without a ton of slowdown when someone is gibbed or uses the plasma gun. There is a lot more to be explored in Q3 so I’m going to cut this off for now. It’s not my beloved friend Quake, no, and only time will tell if it’s a worthy successor.  It IS certainly beautiful graphically.

Binary score: 1

[Ed: a Binary score of 1 was the highest possible award for a game. Either worth playing or not worth playing– no in between]

Keneda

» Wow, ID lost its soul, quake3a is proof.
» Anyone have a voodoo4 or voodoo5? You’ll need one to play Quake3a lag free on ANY system. Some people say a TNT2 or GeForce256 can provide a lag free experience, BUT why buy that shitburger when you can get a $600 voodoo5 6000 this spring/summer. Back to Q3A, it’s a beast of a engine, lagg’en the fuck out of my voodoo3 2000 on a p3 549 with 128megs of pc100 memory. Damn… I hate lag. I hate Q3A cuz it lags. Understand?
» The graphics are beautiful. MUCH better then the crap seen in Unreal Tournament. The Lighting, Textures and Weapon effects are bar-none perfect.
» Level design. None. Wastes of curved surfaces abound. My god there’s TONS of useless detail… time could have been spent forging through Fileplanet for examples of GREAT levels. Christ the could have remade all the Quake DM levels. Of the 20+ levels I can say I enjoy 3 or so.
» Sound. Fine. Nothing to great… the music is barely present in the game. Who the fuck listens to the in game music when they are playing DM or CTF? Only net nebbishes. So I guess who cares about music in FPS’ers. Not me, I just pop some Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, or John Zorn in and I’m ready to go.
» Gameplay is fine. Two people meet, one person dies. There’s not too much “getting away” like in Quake. Movement is faster than Quake2 but not nearly as fast as Quake. This makes for duels in which one person usually frags the other. The levels aren’t helping the gameplay at this point. In two months we should see remakes of all the gould DM levels for Quake/Quake2 so gameplay will see a improvement. I have not tried the CTF yet… more people in the clan have to buy the game first… and is it worth it?
» Q3A models are fine to TERRIBLE… and the animations are still VERY limited. I’m not saying that Q3A models are any worse than Quake’s BUT, they’re not any better…. more of the same, with little, barely noticeable, death animation tweaks. Of course they have a higher polygon count, but more doesn’t mean better… it just means more lag, and for what ends do we have to suffer to see a more detailed enemy get fragged?
» Gibbs are real nice in Q3A. They make lag for a voodoo3 like playing over a 2800 baud modem. CHRIST!!!
» Binary score: 0 until I have a voodoo5, at which time I will review the game a second time.

Links

Q3A = Lag

Necromunda – the release we’ve been waiting for!

Holy Shit. After what I can only assume was a successful run with Necromunda Underhive, GW has brought out the big one: a $290 set with a crapload of beautiful, modular, lego-like terrain and two full gangs.

One of the reasons I think Necro has done well, other than being awesome, is that the gang boxes themselves are VERY well priced at 35$ for 10 models in the kit, and the Underhive box was not super expensive either. At MOST you will need 2 gang boxes which, for 70$ being all you will ever need for a gang is fairly reasonable (Forgeworld weapon and head sets aside). You want to get a gang and play with a bunch of books and prigles tubes for terrain? Fucking go for it. 35$ and some of the special dice and you’re rolling. Barrier of entry is very low.

I won’t go into the way they sold the books much, but that was a bit of a gouge and for early purchasers like me, annoying. The specific gang tactics cards being printed once and then never again is also SHIT but that can easily be fixed with your own set of cards printed at gamecrafter or something similar. As for the books, I would trust the community rulebook at this point more than anything GW comes out with going forward. Like all these small games from Blood Bowl to Epic, the community typically owns the rules at a certain point and I think Necromunda is there.

So this new set…the cost… is horrifyingly high. at $200? yeah! $290? Wow. That said, the terrain in the box looks simply amazing. I just don’t know if this is the best thing for starting Necromunda players because of the cost.

The old set from 1995 had a good, low cost solution to the terrain problem inherent in this type of game, but it was cardboard and did drop you out of the immersion quite a bit. When we played a lot (’95-’96), we tended to just leave the exact same map set up because it was fragile to take apart and put together. I still have all of it minus a crapload of bulkheads.

Despite the cost, I definitely want the new set– it’s just how to justify that much, especially since I have the HULK in the basement which is TOTALLY READY FOR NECROMUNDA any time. I get a fucking massive woody thinking about the new terrain pieces combined with the Hulk.

The hobby project around the new set is also looking insane, but as far as I can tell, almost all of it is non-glue so that just leaves the priming and painting, which can be done in stages…. very looongg stages….

“Finished” Goliaths

Since I got my Goliaths finished (at least the first 10), we played this weekend for the first time with the new version and I was very happy with it. It was far too long coming to really sit down and give it a go as I purchased the first Underhive set the week it came out. I was worried about the switch from IGOYOUGO to chess style but it flows well with the ‘leader moves’ mechanic from the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game. If people didn’t notice, GW has been maintaining a ruleset similar to Necromunda for a long time now with the LotRSBG.

I was also concerned with the close combat being boring compared to the old Necromunda (2E 40K) which was fantastic, but it works very well– the acting model has an advantage but if the defender survives, they get a counter.

One thing that was odd to me was NO OVERWATCH. I had my leader stuck around a corner between two groups of adversaries and didn’t know what to do and I was like: oh can I put an overwatch counter on him? Nope. You can’t just sit back and automatically get the drop on someone in the new Necromunda and while strange at first, I think that improves the gameplay flow throughout.

The game is more complex with gangs in the beginning as you get skills right out of the gate. In the old Necro, all the gangs were the same at first except for their equipment choices. In the new one, any Champions and your Leader get a skill at the start.

Anyway, looking forward to more Necromunda. Here’s some shots from the games this weekend which were played on the tiles rather than the 3d board.

Lots of burning…
Escher on Escher Action!
This is a blurry shot, but my leader was trapped on a bridge over green muck by three gangs!

Root – First annual Wisconsin Championship!

The first annual Wisconsin Root championship is in the can and I had a ton of fun running it. We had a full group with 16 players and four tables, which was a great turnout. About 3-4 of the players were new to the game so it was also fun for everyone to introduce the game.

I’m going to go through the rounds, then the winners and then some stats at the end. There were some beautiful and vicious games throughout the tournament but I couldn’t watch them all.

I just want to say that I did pull out a crushing win with the Otters while the final was going on and I hope to see more Otter players next year– they really are easier to win with than the Lizards!

Faction Selection

Players rolled dice and the highest down got to select their factions. This allowed players to play to their strengths but also forced players to play factions they weren’t great at sometimes as well.

Scoring

I did a two round swiss (~2 hours each) with a final with the five players with the most points. All other rounds were 4 players. 1 point for a win, 0.5 for a second place. We had a very large group of people tied for slots in the final, basically because we had so few rounds (only 2), so I would not do it like this again.

Dan is contemplating his future dominance move…

Round one

The Cats pulled off a win at Table 1 (Joe S) with the Vagabond in 2nd place (Graham).

Table 2 was won by the Eyrie (Courtney) with the Alliance in second place (Adelheid).

Table 3 was won by the Lizards (Chris K) with the Alliance in second (Chris S). Dan G went for a Cat dominance victory in the game and was crushed outright!

Table 4 was the Alliance for the win (John R) and Lizards in second (Matt T). IIRC Matt had 29 points as lizards again in this game.

Silas makes a move with the Lizards

Round Two

I put the winners and second place all mixed up together and the rest of the group on the other two tables. We didn’t have any drops between rounds which was great.

Table 1 the first Vagabond victory by Wyatt dominating the game with Beth taking second with the Eyrie.

Table 2 Brad Z pulled out another win with the Cats with Dan G in second place with the Eyrie.

Table 3 was won by Joe S who played as the Alliance with a couple of the other players tied for 2nd place (Courtney and Adelheid).

John R won table 4 with the Alliance and Chris S took 2nd with the Eyrie.

Tables 1 and 2 in round 2 (and Wyatt has some kibitzers)

Finals

This is where my point system didn’t work out well, as we had three people that had either multiple wins or took one win and a second place who were for sure in the finals, but four people that had a single point. Matt T and Wyatt decided not to continue in the final round so we had our five. Again, I would be more granular next time with this few of rounds so this didn’t happen.

The final Table was:

Brad Z – Eyrie
Chris K – Vagabond – Tinker
John R – Woodland Alliance
Joe S – Vagabond – Scoundrel
Courtney – Marquise de Cat

I was playing in another game during the final (these guys all knew how to play and didn’t need me much at all to arbitrate) so I don’t know how it went play by play, but it looked like everyone was at parity early and the Tinker jumped ahead and then got it done.

Kris K pulled out the win as the Tinker Vagabond with everyone else in second place except the Eyrie.

Joe giving the LOOK.

And below are our winners. I had a first and second place prize (the BGG Root bags for each faction) so I told Kris I would owe him some bags since he doesn’t own the game yet and gave the prizes to John, Joe and Courtney.

Courtney, Joe, Chris K, John.

STATS!

While the winning faction was no surprise to anyone (and probably got a few groans from experienced players), there were some surprises for me in terms of what factions were picked, and which ones won games.

Woodland Alliance

Another heavily favored faction to win, the Alliance was selected in 7 games and won 3. Selection to win ratio was 0.43.

Marquise de Cat

Assumed to be one of the weakest factions in the game, nevertheless, the Cats were a force to be reckoned with yesterday. Games without the Cats get very strange for other factions and really turn the faction ‘tiers’ on their head as well. The Cats were selected in 7 of the games and won twice. Selection to win ration was 0.29.

Vagabond

While the winner of the tournament and heavily favored in any given game, the Vagabond was only selected in 8 of the games (twice in the final) and won twice. IIRC we saw a Tinker, Scoundrel, Thief, Ranger and the Possum played. Selection to win ration 0.25.

Lizards

Considered the most difficult faction to win with, the Lizards were selected in 5 games and won once for a ratio of 0.20. I noticed a few players were playing them wrong so watch the rules carefully.

Eyrie

The birds were selected in EVERY game of the tournament and there were some very good bird players. However, they only won once with a selection to win ratio of 0.11. The Eyrie took second in almost every game they were in so watch out!

The Otters

The Otters were only selected once (by a player new to the game) and they didn’t pull out a win. I did score a victory with them in the game I played while the final was going on. Trust me, they are MUCH easier to win with than the Lizards!

Rules and Arbitration

Root is not an easy game to learn and many players (including myself) get small rules wrong, especially with the Vagabond, Otters and Lizards. The main thing I was looking out for was that the Lizards must discard a random card when they lose a garden, and it’s critical that they know what actions they take require a DISCARD and which ones are just REVEAL. The Vagabond is very ticky-tacky with a lot of rules. I reminded players that if you exhaust and item that’s not in the satchel– it goes immediately into the satchel (like tea).

We had one set of boards that didn’t have the 3rd printing update on them, so we had to layover printed sheets. Hopefully for next year we will have that all squared away.

I only had to look up stuff a couple of times. One question was whether or not you could play multiple Ambush cards in a single battle. You cannot.

So thanks to all the players and Gamehole Con for hosting and of course Leder Games for making Root in the first place. Thanks Matt, Dan and Brad for letting us use your sets of Root!

Remember how bad it is

Now that we are getting painfully close to the next cascade of space-piss called [DISNEY]Star Wars, some of you may have forgotten just how bad the last movie in this series of films is.

Just in case you need a reminder in incredible detail: READ THIS.

Note, I’m not talking about Solo or Rogue one, both anchored by the old plot-lines and characters as they were, and prequels to boot–I’m referring to Disney’s creative failure: the post Return of the Jedi films. This series and it’s financial (wait for it), artistic and narrative failure pretty much assures that Disney will never successfully move FORWARD in time after the Return of the Jedi and will likely cannibalize the past (before the prequels, etc.) from here on out. Hopefully though, Disney will stop making Star Wars films altogether.

“The people sometimes called fanboys, but by the wise called loyal, lifelong, cash-heavy customers with disposable income, did not make undue demands. All they asked was not to be bored, not to have their intelligence insulted, not to have their beloved space fairytale of princesses and star-knights mocked and derided and deconstructed and turned into a political football.

All the filmaker had to do was not suck. That was all.”

Justice League – The Giffen/DeMatteis years

I found the video below and wanted to post it for those of you that may have an interest. Even though I was a little kid, I was definitely OFF normal superhero comics by the mid-80’s, especially the DC ones who seemed super cheesy next to the Xmen– that is until Crisis on Infinite Earths, which was amazing beyond compare. Note: generally people think Marvel got WORSE after Secret Wars, and DC got BETTER after Crisis and set shit straight that DC was and is better than Marvel. Out of that came a new Justice League comic that was pretty much one of the best –and certainly my favorite— comic runs in the history of (standard) superhero comics.

This series takes a bunch of second run heroes, many of which were acquired from other comic companies over the years, and mixes them up in some high-stakes trouble while following many of their domestic lives. The core series with the writers lasted for 60 issues and is collected in trades. Like Swamp Thing, Groo, the Claiborne Xmen and Byrne Fantastic Four, JLI is a must read series even today and has had a huge influence on the direction of DC. The also excellent and much more recent Mr. Miracle series is almost a sequel to this work.

Gencon fuckn whirlwind

This con went FAST, which usually means we were having fun or we were drunk or a mix of both.

We got in our Shadowfist draft after many years, which I will detail in another post on it’s own, Matt and I played in the Keyforge sealed tournament, we played a lot of ROOT, some Runequest and Mutant Crawl Classics.

The house of cards was still there after all these years of DEAD CCG’s.

Keyforge

This was damn fun and the people were great. It’s hard to be a complete pysse-ant when your decks are randomized and no one knows what they are going to get. My deck was absolute shit, and since I’m a n00b player, I didn’t do well. Really, I can blame the deck on this one for sure which is how the cookie crumbles. Fun game, cool expansion and really cheap buy in with the core set and two random decks. And they had a fuckn vending machine for decks.

One thing to remember is that you can MULLIGAN if you don’t like your first draw.

Mutant Crawl Classics

MCC/DCC: you can be nearly certain that you’re going to get a good GM, a good CON adventure and a romping good time when you sign up for one of these games, and we did. The scenario took place on the Metamorphosis Alpha mothership and involved our (funnel) characters being ejected from our home area to the “death zone.” A bunch of us got robot parts (my pure strain human got a robot head!), we defeated some mutant cyborg hippo and then had all but two of the 18 characters wiped out by someone failing to learn to use a grenade properly while we stood on a ledge with no railing (I had gone off to piss when this happened, so I can’t be blamed!!). Only my manimal Squirrel with her bubble helmet survived. Looking forward to more of this one once Matt fires it the fuck up!

Runequest

This is the Chaosium RQ and not RQ6, so heavy Glorantha throughout. It was the second time I’ve played and it was OK, the combat system is not on the same level for easy of play and intensity as Mythras (RQ6) at all, but Glorantha can be interesting. I’ve had RQ GM’s that have shown up with just a piece of scratch paper, some pregens and dice and it was fantastic, but this wasn’t one of those, it was just OK and for four hours of your con, that’s tough.

ROOT

We played two games, one 4 player and one massive 7-player game at the Hyatt. Both Patrick Leder and his ops manager came by to say hi during the (5 hour?) game which was awesome. The 7-player game is absolutely insane and some factions just don’t stand much of a chance (i.e.: the area control ones). While the vagabond didn’t win, it was the Lizards at 29, Vagabond (Ranger) at 26 and the Otters at 30 in the end FTW, which should tell you a bit about how the game went. The Cats and the Birds had to simultaneously chase the vagabonds around, destroy sympathy as well as trading posts while at the same time trying to score a few points here at there. While certainly a bit unbalanced for the area control factions, 10/10, would play 7 player yet again.

Near the end of the LOOOONG 7 player game.

Other stuff I saw

Other than gaming, I did a share of wandering around the dealer hall and the various areas.

DUNE is really coming out, and soon! GF9 really got on the horse and produced the game quickly–I figured based on the past that they would take long into 2020 to get the game out but, nope, it’s out next month. The new set looks good and I am very interested in the rules changes. I do think the leader pieces are too small, but the art is good and the map and box both look beautiful. We will be able to play this again rather than our 1980 copies sitting in the safest shelf possible in our houses only to be brought out every few years!

Having the board game ‘check out’ be a ticketed event SUCKS, it’s much better at Gary and Gamehole con where you just walk up, give your drivers license and play whatever.

Pathfinder 2nd edition was a big release during the con and again, like 2008 or so, they had MASSIVE stacks of books. It’s got to be tough when you build a direct clone of an older game and then do a second edition of that clone.

Harassment signs. I’ve been going to GENCON every year since 1993 or so and I think it is the most accepting convention for ALL types of people, freaks, deviants, nerds, etc. one can imagine. It just goes without saying that it’s completely unacceptable for people to be mean to the weird or normal alike, so I’m not sure why these signs are necessary to put up on every single door in the entire convention center. Do they really mean ONLINE harassment?

The Gencon App was really helpful– and saved a lot of paper with those big con books with their (outdated) event lists. Get it for sure if you go.

BIRDS and LIMES. This was a fantastic addition to the Con. We had one incident where Matt parked the car and JP forgot his badge, and instead of having to walk 45 minutes to the car and back, we tossed a few bucks at the BIRDS and it was really and excuse to ride a motor scooter for 15 minutes total! In Milwaukee, everyone had to have helmets and ride on the road and stuff, which is fine. However, in Indy you can ride all over the place, no helmets no nothing. I would only say people SHOULD have to ride with a helmet, but then be able to go all over, on sidewalks, whatever. Sure there will be drunken accidents and all that, but no different than people riding a bike around.

Gwar was there again, and they had a game to boot.

Gencon Auction! I hadn’t been in this thing for years and it was great. I may spend most of a day in there one of these cons. So much shit for cheap and the consignment store had some ridiculous deals.

Triumphant Entrance Man. We saw him again at an MTG booth looking and triumphant as ever (and lost some weight as well) and took some pics.

Best cosplay of the con!

Gencon bound tomorrow!

Here we go for another fucking Gencon. When oh when will I learn? The overpriced everything, the MASSIVE crowds (and I mean that on every level) and the constant hunt for the awesome thing– when really this year I would be fine staying at home with a bunch of friends and playing a whole lotta ROOT instead.

That said, I’ll be able to see some homies from across the lands (not as many this year are going), and play some stuff that I wouldn’t ever have a chance to, so that’s good. I think until our kids are old enough, gone are the days where a whole shitload of us would ditch the kids for the weekend and go down for all four days. It may be better to go back to what I used to do: drive down Friday, stay saturday and leave Sunday. Ahhhh well, in a moment of weakness and Maat’s prompting, I’m in it for all four days.

Events! I’m in what should be a very cool FASERIP miniatures Free For All battle. I’ll post impressions and the rules and all that shit when I get back from the con. Second I got into the Keyforge tournament, which should be ridiculous. RPG-wise we are in a Mutant Crawl Classics game and a game of Mythras on Saturday morning at 8 AM (let’s see if we make this one).

Most importantly though is the self run SHADOWFIST DRAFT! I got together all my remaining boxes of Shadowfist and we have a few people ready to draft and play. It’s going to be a real shit swarm of decks as we are starting with:

Standard Starter – Absolute DRECK of cards, the lowest of the low. When I look at this stuff, I’m shocked that Shadowfist survived after it’s first Limited run…so much garbage.

Boosters of the following:

  • Standard Booster – More of the same crap and still no hitters to find…
  • Empire of Evil – everyone will be hoping for the best with their booster here
  • Netherworld 2 – good stuff, just need to get lucky
  • Throne War – great set, but pretty big… so chances are slim
  • Boom Shaka Laka – in for the LOL’S. Maybe someone will get a good dragon card or…?

This should be enough to get a semi functional deck out of and we have pods of feng shui and foundations. Should be a great time, if we can only get a couple 3-man tables anyway.

So see you after with pics and other nonsense. Luckily I can’t spend much money on anything, so there won’t be the horde of crap I come back with this year. Hoping to find a decently priced John Company, Conquest of Paradise or Fire in the Lake, but that’s it.

Superhero BEATINGS

We had a tournament with all 22 characters from My Hero One’s Justice last weekend. We only had three players, so we had to switch off and play different characters and even sometimes play each other’s mains when two of a player’s characters got into the same bracket.

We seeded them based on this tier ranking, which I now feel is pretty out of date and maybe is only for what my kids would call ‘try hard’ players and not for dirty, dirty casuls like us, actually, reading other stuff online, it’s just out of date, by a LOT.

A S S

A brief description of the game: MHOJ is an arena fighter like Naruto Ultimate Storm, and some of the DBZ games but with strange hyper-Japanese superheroes rather than ninja or… uhhh whatever the DBZ guys are. Basically, you can run all over the fighting area, which is usually inside a big cube or rectangle that looks like a city street or a park or a classroom (!). There are standard attacks, counter attacks and unblockables (most are grabs, but many are something else). Counter attacks give you super armor (like Hulk in MVC2) so you cannot be hit out of your attack animation, but you still take damage. All characters have two ‘quirk’ attacks that are specials unique to just them and are part of the normal move set (as in, you can constantly do them). All characters also have a meter that increases during the matches like most other fighters of any type. When full the characters can pull off Ultra attacks which go into a cinematic if it connects. Usually I hate these cinematic moves due to one of Budokan 3 on the PS2, which constantly had these super looonnnggg cinematic attacks where you could get up and take a piss during. Luckily, the MHOJ’s Ultras are short (for the most part) and rarely occur as meter takes a long time to build up.

You also get to pick two team mates from the roster that you can call to help you either break or extend combos a bit like KOF 2013 and again like MVC2. I thought it was a 3v3 fighter at first, and was like huh.. I can’t play as all these guys? But with play, I really enjoy the team assists.

There is normal movement on the map which seems to make the game slow as shit, but the game has dashing which makes you pretty vulnerable but speeds the game up crazy. Basic cancelling is typically done with the dash button mid combo, leading obviously to some crazy combos like every other game with a specific move for a cancel rather than cancelling normals into supers and stuff like that (which you can also do).

Because it’s a superhero game, you can knock people across the maps, and even knock them into the walls so they get stuck and you get a free attack (which usually leads into the truly huge combos). The game is remorseless about characters with ranged attacks–firing off constant fireballs is not a punishable offense and can be done with the press of a single button. The first time you play against one of the ranged characters (like Todoroki or Dabi), you will be like WTF sort of game is this?! as they seem uber over-powered. Most of the ranged/zone characters are weak close in, so there is some balance. However, a few are good at range and close up, which makes it very difficult to win against them at any time.

Even as n00bs with very few matches under our belts, the tournament was quite a bit of fun and there were some intense match ups, and some matches that people just sloughed off in apathy around the characters. Since he’s brutal at range and close up, everyone expected Shoto Todoroki to dominate, and he was logically placed at the highest seed. Yet, in a chilling upset in the semi finals, he was taken down –not by my well-practiced Momo (practiced for a couple hours that is) –but by a button mashing MUSCULAR who went on to win the final vs All Might.

Here are the winners and the runners up:

  1. Muscular
  2. All Might
  3. Todoroki
  4. Jiro

Semi finals (in no particular order)

  • Momo
  • Deku Shoot Style
  • Shigenaki
  • Kaminari Deki

In the final 8, we have three hardcore zone characters (read as ‘fucking annoying’) with Todoroki, Jiro and Deki and all the rest are either close-in combo characters or weird AoE types (Momo and Shigenaki). It was very annoying to go up against Dabi, Endevour and Ihasa the wind dude, but in the end, all the zone characters had their tickets punched by the large fists of Muscular and All Might.

All that said, I really, really like the fighting engine in this game and I’m very surprised by this. My first ‘arena’ fighter was Ehrgiez and the last one I really liked was Urban Reign by Namco. I played a couple of the Dragonballs games but the characters are just not my cup of tea at all. What I like most is that the dash cancels (and therefore combos) are easy to figure out and timing is relatively easy (we play on Manual mode). With the support characters, there’s just a ton of shit going on in the game yet it’s all very tactical, despite the fact that a few of the characters can beat you down with the press of a couple buttons if you don’t know what you are doing. All of the 22 characters feel very different from each other and some have radically different quirks including one that can become the other character they are fighting during the match, and one that can use his powers so much that he stuns himself and leaves himself open for a massive beating.

MHOJ is also surprisingly good since Superhero fighting games usually suck. You have Marvel vs Capcom 2, which is incredible, but since then: what is there? Many tries, but not much that’s good. The new Marvel vs Capcom games are lackluster at best, especially without the Xmen: I mean, why bother? Injustice is a SNOOZE fest, especially for a superhero game. MVC2 pulled it off because it was completely insane and the Marvel universe does not have a Superman/Supreme/Saitama/Marvelman (Miracleman) to defy the canon by placing them in a fighter where they would normally destroy all foes easily. When I see Superman standing there punching batman in a 2-d fighter, it just seems very stupid. Granted, these types of games are very difficult to make in the first place. You have crazy ass powers, some of which only tangentially work in a fight, and certainly any characters that can fly or really jump high are ridiculous to try to model. MVC2 pulled it off, and MHOJ has also.

While we wait for the Kill la Kill game, and the One-Punch Man game has just been announced, there are more ‘super’ arena fighters right around the corner. Meanwhile, My Hero One’s Justice is excellent fun, even for plebian filth casuls. With it’s stupid name and severely unbalanced roster, so far, MHOJ seems like the best super hero fighting game that I’ve played outside of MVC2.

Rage 2 – solid shooter, missing car combat and really ugly women

I just finished Rage 2 this weekend and overall, I think the game is solid. I have yet to finish Far Cry 4, and yet Rage 2 kept my interest enough to plow through the game over a couple weeks, which is saying something, especially when I was playing Bloodborne on the PS4 at the same time, which is a holyfucking masterpiece.

Basically the story is fairly generic, the intro to the game could have been Serious Sam style funcheese, but it really felt like it took the middle ground of taking itself too seriously, sort of. The character you play (Walker… Ranger.. .get it?), while voiced well, is supergeneric action hero man with very little to cling to character-wise. The main guy from Bulletstorm or the a’fore mentioned Serious Sam are done quite a bit better. I was waiting for some more Chuck Norris jokes, but I didn’t notice any.

It’s got to be rough for a Bethesda studio to take on post-apocalyptic without it being Fallout, but for me, I was glad that it’s totally separate as Rage 2 has a different focus; one that I felt they hit right on the nose: the firefights and gunplay. This is where id software absolutely shines and damn the firefights are fun, especially the set pieces at various bases. Everything else in the game is just a distraction from the firefights really.

The guns are good, but I found myself using the shotgun for just about everything and then the assault rifle for the rest with occasional use of the rocket launcher. You can pretty much get through the game with those three weapons no problem. The ‘nailgun’ type weapon that does more damage the more it fires is useful for boss fights, but that’s about it. The ‘set people on fire’ pistol is solid fun, but I found myself just always wanting the shotgun instead. Overall, nothing really crazy here in terms of weapons except some are full on useless compared to others (the settler pistol for instance). I loved the fact that there was no sniper rifle! None of that wussy shit!

What I didn’t like is when you get in firefights, your enemies don’t drop ammo so you tend to avoid any fights while you are on your way to a mission zone, there isn’t any reason other than feltrite to kill stuff. They also don’t drop guns– you have special Ranger-only guns throughout the game so their guns are shytte anyway. However, I’ve found myself out of ammo and it would have been nice to pick up a crap submachine gun to finish off the last few guys without having to wait for my Ranger Power timers to cooldown.

Which brings us to the powers. The MEAT of Rage 2 is the creative and combination-al use of the environment, weapons and powers in the game. When you start to get access to powers, you start to be able to do all sorts of funky stuff and interact with the physics of the game. Some of the stuff I used a lot (the big ‘stomp’ power just like Saints Row 4) and some not at all (the hold-jump while aiming thing or any of the grenade knock back powers). My favorite thing was probably setting up an electrified shield and then throwing out the mini-black hole thing which would suck everyone into the shield to get electrified. There’s a lot of fun play here due to the chaos of the physics and what the powers do. If I play it again with the next expansion, it will be for this stuff alone.

I found the actual upgrade system really frustrating, with levels purchased with feltrite and perks and nanotrites and what the hell is all this shit? This is a game where I may have just wanted straight unlocks without any choice on my part, just to remove the hassle. Plus on PC, the UI for upgrading levels was so weird I had to look up on the interweb tubes how to do it.

If you get this game and want to get to the fun real fast to see if you like it, start the game, sit through the intro then press the FOCUS key when you get out of the first town. On the horizon you will see these rainbow colored beams shooting up into the air. Go to all of them as quickly as you can and get the stuff inside the arcs. Do this before anything else!

Cars and stuff

I liked this better than Rage 1, but … it was lackluster. What I wanted out of the game was TWISTED METAL and they just did not deliver. They had all these different cars, monster trucks, tanks, funny wheeled tanks, some advanced vehicles– but there simply wasn’t any meaningful car combat AT ALL. Yes you can go after the big rigs and their escorts, but the escorts don’t break off and engage, they simply stay in formation and let you shoot the fuck out of them. You do not get vehicularily attacked on the roads either except by a couple punks on bikes which do nothing. They have a big race track, but NO arena style combat. This was a fucking HUGE opportunity missed in my opinion and I’m not sure how this could have happened, it almost feels like they were going for it but had to cut it out.

Overall, there are two vehicles you need. The first one you get (that… talks….) and the flying Icarus bike. The first one is good for combat and is fairly fast on the road and the Icarus flies so you can avoid all the nonsense twisting around of roads to get to where you gots to go much faster. The racing cars were fun to drive too, but no weapons. All the rest of the cars and especially the motorcycles were not that fun to drive, and not fast enough (with enough control) to warrant using.

Encounters and set pieces are a mixed bag, with some being incredible and some being pretty boring. A lot of the random road encounters are of two types. First are just people standing in the road waiting. Not going anywhere, just standing around. That’s pretty odd. Secondly there are two groups fighting at very close range, also sometimes in the middle of the road. Every once in a while you will see a group carting something somewhere or carrying boxes or sitting around a fire, but it’s fairly rare. There are very few ambushes on the roads, I think I saw only two.

whachu waitn’ fo?

The set pieces, like bases and road blockers are all pretty solid, with some very interesting environments mixed in. Fights in big towers, cliff faces, all seem to be goon squad base which are the best. The Mutants have caves, which give interesting (but eventually repetitive) indoor environments. The River Hogs and the Shrouded have pretty boring bases compared to the other two, but the fights are more difficult as their weapons and armor are better. Many of the set pieces are similar in pattern, so when you’ve destroyed 2-3 bases, you sort of know what all there rest will be like, with the exception of the Goon Squad (punk looking dudes) which seem to have the most interesting and varied bases.

The boss fights are not too bad, but nothing awe inspiring. The boss designs are cool, but not really all that varied. Only fighting one type of boss during the game would have been better (like in the Souls series– you never fight the same boss twice unless it’s an early game one that shows up as a normal enemy late game. Early in the game, I got in a situation with one boss where I skilled through the fight before the boss and then with my load out at that time of powers it was impossible (I tried like 20 times) to defeat the boss and his respawning minions. At this same time I took down the Blood Starved Beast and Vicar Amelia in Bloodborne…so this was very frustrating.

Lastly the environments, characters and visuals. Graphically this game is fanfucking tastic. The places you can go are trashy and beautiful at the same time. There is amazing amounts of detail in the buildings and environments and, like ALL id games, it pays to look around at everything and how lovingly crafted it is. I loved loved loved the look of the explosions, GREASY explosions all over the place and could probably watch that shit all day.

Character wise, I was impressed at the visuals, but man the people in this game have all been beaten with the ugly stick, and I mean BAD. Especially the women. All of the women in the game with the exception of two that I remember seeing were made to be as physically repulsive as possible. Terrible haircuts, awful facial features, dirt and grime, puking on themselves, and generally women, even in the civilized settlements, that have zero concern for their attire or appearance at all. These are not irradiated desert dwellers, but people that live in rooms and apartments. I get that video game women are typically either supermodels or elderly with nothing in between (Kingdom Come does a good job of mitigating this a bit, since none of the women are supermodelesque, but they aren’t ugly either), but Rage has swung so far to the ugly that I can’t help but mention it over and over. Here are some examples.

And a shot from RAGE 1 of the hottie just for memories.

her sole purpose in the game is to teach you the wing stick…

And didn’t Moonbeam McSwine teach us that you can still be hot and live in FILTH?

My overall take on Rage 2 is that it has some bugs, it’s got GREAT shooting and powers combat, but is lacking in the Twisted Metal vehicle combat department, which I was really expecting. The bosses are underwhelming, which may be a product of it being very hard to make large bosses for a first person shooter. The story… doesn’t matter. While it has some flaws, Rage 2 finds it’s redemption in it’s core gameplay as a crazy shooter.