🚀 go-pugleaf

Happy Halloween! I come not to offer you treats and candies, but
instead an opportunity to share opinions about what games we've all
played over the last 30 days; that's just as good, right? Hey, stop
that; why are you all egging my house?

It's been a month and I doubt you've forgotten the drill, but just in
case you are new or amnesiac, here it is anyway. Play the games, then
tell us all what games you played here. Optionally, share a few
thoughts about them. But just in case you still don't get it, I'll
show you all how it's done... again ;-)


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Short and Sweet
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* Halo: Reach (replay)
* Eurotruck Simulator 2 (replay)
* Duke Nukem Forever (replay)
* Flashback (2013) (new)
* Crysis 2 (replay)
* State of Decay (replay)
* D/Generation HD (new)
* Skyrim Special Edition (new)

TL; DR 
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* Halo: Reach (XBox360) (replay)
The main games of the Halo series are - at their best - a mediocre
experience more notable for their innovative control scheme than
anything else, but I've always had a bit of a soft spot for the side
titles: Halo Wars, ODST or Reach are all far more memorable to me than
Halo 2 or Halo 3. Reach was Bungie's swan song with the franchise, and
it shows; it has the best characters, set-pieces and graphics. Again,
that's not too high a bar to pass given how average all the rest of
the games were, but it's still a step up.

Okay, in truth Halo: Reach is still fairly average, with a humdrum
story and gameplay gimmicks of questionable value. But the backdrop of
an invaded planet sets a terrific mood that is well supported by the
excellent music and saturated graphics. Some of the gunplay remains
tedious - it wouldn't be a Bungie game if some sequences didn't
overstay their welcome - but in general there is enough variety and
change of pace to keep things from becoming too bogged down. Reach may
not be a great FPS, but it is possibly the best of the Halo series and
a enjoyable enough romp through the battlefields of the future.



* Eurotruck Simulator 2 (replay)
I have very little new to say about this game; for all that it's
difficult to explain its appeal, I find Eurotruck Simulator 2 to be
one of the most relaxing games I own. But I'm at a loss for anything
else to say about it. 

The biggest problem I had with the game this month had less to do with
the title itself and more to do with Steam and its idiotic and
gamer-hostile policy of forcing updates on players. ETS2 has a
significant modding community despite the fact that updates to the
base program frequently break the mods, and this problem is
exacerbated by the fact that you can't prevent Steam from applying
patches. This stupidity hit me hard this month, as just as soon as I
had finished downloading and installing the latest versions of my
favorite mod, Steam patched the game and I had to start all over. Long
story short, it was two frustrating days before I could play a game I
usually rely on to bring me zen tranquility. This resulted in a rant
of which this is a blessedly edited and shortened version. But damned
if I don't hate Steam.

And that's all I have to say about that.


* Duke Nukem Forever (replay)
Ah, Duke Nukem Forever, the running punch-line of game development. I
decided to give the game another try just to see how bad it really
was. And it was really bad; terrible enough that I gave up on it after
five or six levels.

A lot of reviews claimed it failed because its humor and attitude -
Duke's gross sexism and dated pop-culture references - just didn't fit
in well with modern sensibilities. Personally, I disagree. I think
that Duke's hyper-masculinity and love-affair with memes-from-the-80s
would have been quite enjoyable HAD THEY BEEN DONE WELL. But
everything about DNF was awful. Its levels were cramped, linear and
uninteresting to look at. It's weapons were boring. It's monsters
lacked threat and character. The controls were stiff, the graphics
were unappealing. The dialog too was tedious, but not because of its
subject matter; it was just badly written. It felt like an amateur
effort rushed to market. Personally, I'd love to see Duke make a
comeback, with all his hoary quips and politically incorrect opinions
intact. I just want him in a game developed by a team with talent.



* Flashback (2013) (new)
The reviews for the Flashback remake game were all negative, but
nostalgia - and a sharply discounted price - convinced me to give it a
chance. And you know what, it wasn't half bad. My biggest complaint
would have to be with its voice-acting, which was just awful.
Otherwise I felt the game was a decent-enough remake. I think a lot of
the problems other reviewers had with the title was that the original
game wasn't all that great to begin with, and the remake did little to
fix the original's gameplay or narrative problems. Then again, the
reviewers would also have cried foul had the remake strayed too far
from the original, leaving the developers in a no-win situation.

Flashback HD isn't a great game, but it's a good remake of an average
title. It gave me a chance to play a title of yesteryear that I
semi-fondly remembered with modern graphics that worked on a modern
system. Not expecting more than that, I came away pleased with my
miniscule investment of time and money.


* Crysis 2 (replay)
Crytek - the developers of Crysis 2 - were such a marvel when they
burst upon the gaming scene in 2004. Seemingly coming out of nowhere,
their first two games were graphical powerhouses backed up with
impressive - albeit not flawless - gameplay. And then it all went
wrong with Crysis 2. That game is such a far cry (ha!) from its
predecessors; linear maps, brain dead enemies, and unexciting gunplay.
It's almost a chore to play to the end of the game. This time, I set
myself the self-imposed challenge of only killing aliens just because
I was bored of the usual grind. I wasn't fully successful at this goal
- there are several set-pieces where you have to kill some human
opponents to progress - and sadly the game and plot took no notice of
my attempted heroism (I was still frequently accused of murdering
fellow soldiers even though I'd done no such thing). Even so,  this
didn't make the game a jot more difficult; the AI was so stupid that
sneaking by them was effortless, and even when I was forced into
combat, the computer-controlled opponents rarely put up much of a
fight. The levels were rarely interesting to play through either - too
linear to offer much in the way of tactical maneuvering, and not very
interesting to look at either. Crysis 2 suffered from the ultimate sin
of computer gaming: it was dull. 



* State of Decay (replay)
In many ways, State of Decay feels like a prototype for a bigger,
better game. It's not so much a game that focuses on what it does have
- an open world, hordes of zombies, bases, recruitable NPCs, crafting
- as what it doesn't, but feels like it should. Like co-op, or a
story, or being able to have more than twenty monsters on-screen at
once. I was constantly running into the game's limitations and wishing
for more features or decrying some of its amateur game-design
elements. It felt like the developers planned to have more in the game
but - either because of lack of resources or talent - were unable to
follow up on those ideas. Nonetheless, the core of the game remained
enjoyable and I enjoyed wandering the wilderness bashing zeds even if
the specific nuances could have used improvement.


* D/Generation HD (new)
I have a story about the original D/Generation, of which this is a
remake. Back in the day, I purchased this game from an Egghead
computer store (remember them?); upon taking it home, I discovered
that not only was the box missing a disk, it also had half a pencil
incongruously stuck into the carton. Upon taking it back to the store,
the manager there refused me an exchange or refund, savagely accusing
me of attempting to pirate the game and trying to rip me off. He later
went bankrupt and I still laugh at his misfortune every time I pass
the storefront that once housed his business.

It's not a very interesting story, I know, but neither is D/Generation
HD a very interesting game. The original had an appealing look, but
suffered from loose controls that contrasted poorly with the accuracy
required by its puzzles. The remake is slightly more forgiving - it,
at least, allows you to use a gamepad while the original didn't even
support a joystick - but suffers from a range of other issues. The
graphics are atrocious, even compared to the twenty-year old pixelated
artwork of the original; it looks like it uses the graphics engine
from the Sims, but with worse animation. The use of a "lives" system
while also allowing unlimited saves is a poor choice, however, and
forces tedious save-scumming. The game is insufferably buggy:
important clues don't show up, dialog boxes get stuck on the screen,
the graphics mess up if you change the default settings, and the game
locks up if you access certain computer terminals. It's embarrassingly
bad. 

The core gameplay, however, is identical to that of the original and
that alone saves the game from being completely terrible; it is an
interesting blend of shooter-action and puzzles and I played it until
- inevitably - the game broke and I could progress no further. But I
probably would have just been better off playing the original.


* Skyrim Special Edition (new)
I didn't so much play this game as give it a brief look-over. Kudos to
Bethesda for offering the "Special Edition" as a free upgrade to
anyone who owned the original game. Having said that, I have to say I
was pretty disappointed with the end result, even if I wasn't
surprised. Having heavily modded the original, the Special Edition was
a significant step backwards not only in graphics but also in
interface and features. Honestly, until the modders get up to speed
and port all their fixes and upgrades to the new version, there is
absolutely no reason to even look at the special edition and -
although the original has remained on my hard-drive since its release
- the remake barely lasted an hour. Maybe in a year or two I'll give
it another chance; until then, I'm satisfied with the six-year old
version.


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So, that's what kept me busy over the past month. How about you guys?


What Have You Been Playing... IN OCTOBER 2016?