Blizzard apology and more

Well, the AAA game world keeps on keeping on.

First up, EA is returning to Steam. Starting with Jedi the Fallen Order, they will slowly expand their catalog on Steam. There has been speculation whether you will still need an EA Origins account to play their games there, and the jury is still out, but the best guess is that it will vary from game to game.

Leaks suggest that Bethesda has made good money on Fallout 1^st and are now looking to expand their vile service even further. New items on the Atom shop for subscribers only, new gear (though no info on what is meant by that), and so on. I wouldn't be surprised if they hide the Wastelander's expansion behind F1st, or at least some important part of it.

A sad state of affairs for a once beloved company. To go from designing games that top the lists to putting up paywalls behind paywalls in a desperate effort to monetize just a couple of bucks more is rank. I once held great faith in their future games, but now it has gone from “Must Have” to “Wait and See”. I do not trust this company or anything they say anymore.

Blizzcon 2019 was this past weekend and there have been some interesting developments. Games wise, they did announce Diablo IV with a truly amazing cinematic. No joke, it was super cool. Too bad the game itself doesn't even have a release date yet, it's that far away. After last years scandalous “Don't you guys have phones” fiasco, they did have to out up something and they did.

World of Warcraft gets a new expansion, Shadowlands, all as expected. It had a cool cinematic too, but nowhere near as good as Diablo.

There was some other announcements, but I really didn't pay those any mind. What was interesting was the opening speech by CEO J. Allen Brack.

He started by looking sad and referring to the Blitzchung scandal, but without actually mentioning either Blitzchung, NetEase or China. He then went on about missed opportunities and failing to live up to standards and apologizing for reacting too fast and then being to slow to respond to people. This is pretty much a non-apology. Like being accused of stealing your neighbor’s lawnmower and then saying “Your lawn looks awful and for that, I'm sorry.” Way to dodge the point there J.

Yesterday, PC Gamers Steven Messner interviewed Brack by phone. It's an interesting read, but for me the biggest takeaway is that he confirms that the “defending the pride of China” comment came from NetEase, with no involvement or approval from Blizzard. Seems they can't do anything in China without going through a Chinese partner. In other words, Blizzard is in business with a company that can say and do whatever they want with no input from Blizzard in their name. Must be lucrative to make that worth it.

Check it out if you're interested:

Brack's “apology”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcOblZYHxFg

PC Gamer article: https://www.pcgamer.com/blizzard-president-clarifies-decision-to-ban-hearthstone-player-and-two-casters-over-hong-kong-controversy/

That's it for me this time. See you again next Monday and until then, have a great week!

Sniper Elite V2 Remaster

Earlier this month, Rebellion released their remaster of Sniper Elite v2.

I just got done playing it, and I got to tell you, it's nice. On Steam it sits at a rating of Mostly Negative, which I do not understand. If you read some of the negative reviews, people seem to be mad about not getting it for free or then they're upset at not getting more out of it.

Yes, Bethesda gave their Skyrim remaster for free if you owned the original and all the DLC, but Skyrim like all Bethesda games lives on through mods, and the Sniper Elite series can't, to my knowledge, be modded at all.

Rebellion gave a nice discount if you own the old SE v2, but they had no need to give it away for free.

The graphics are updated, and it looks great, but I guess some people expected it to be even prettier, somehow. The sounds are as they've always been and the gameplay is smooth and fun. No complaints from me.

Rebellion added some extra goodies, though. The remaster includes all the DLC, it has an option to choose your weapon load out and you can choose which character you want to play as, since they added in the characters from the Sniper Elite spin-off, Zombie Army Trilogy.

There is also a photo mode, that I can't talk about as I have ignored it completely. I'm awful at taking screenshots anyway, so a photo mode isn't relevant to me at all.

This is by all accounts a fun game to play, if the Sniper Elite games are your thing. Now, that said, if you came into the series later, particularly in SE4, then this will feel clumsy and old, because it is old. Most of the things that sort of annoy me were fixed in SE3 and 4.

For example, a staple in the series is using your binoculars to tag enemies so that you know where they are even though you can't see them. In V2, those tags vanish after a while which is annoying.

Likewise, instead of running in, on a few occasions an enemy will just spawn in instead, bypassing any traps you may have laid out.

These things are annoying, but in the greater scale, fairly minor. Sure, the maps are somewhat small, compared to what came later, but the original came out in 2012 – seven years ago.

Bottom line: if you have played Sniper Elite 3 or 4 and missed V2, play it, it really is a fun game. The haters really seem to hate for no reason, in my book at least.

In other related news, Sniper Elite 5 has been announced with no further info yet, but I'm eagerly waiting to learn more.

That's my 5 cents, and until next time, have a great week!

The Epic Metro scuffle

A story broke late last week concerning the upcoming game Metro Exodus, the third game in the post-apocalyptic Metro series.

The game had been prominently featured on Steam for weeks with pre-orders front and center. Then, out of the blue, the game gets pulled from Steam and moved to the new Epic Games store. Valve was forced to issue a (angry) statement explaining that this was not their doing, but that anyone who had pre-ordered this game would still get it on launch. No one else can buy this game on Steam until a year from now.

To say people were furious is an understatement. Posts appeared across the net calling the move everything from unfair to criminal. Some more, lets call them passionate, people started review bombing the other Metro games on Steam while others loudly called for boycotts and piracy.

As a disclaimer, I want to say that review bombing, i.e, giving the other games negative reviews because of events not connected with them is scummy in itself. And piracy is illegal. Let's leave that there.

On Saturday, one of the developers of Metro Exodus (and I assume, the others in the series), Scynet, wrote a very angry post on a Russian game site venting his frustrations. In a nutshell he stated that if Exodus gets boycotted and pirated, then the next Metro game won't be on PC at all. He added some comments about how people who aren't developers can't do what he does, so their opinion doesn't count. I'm sure he farms his own food and attends to his own medical needs as well...

More importantly, he said and I quote:

“That is, it turns out that we (the developers) for years have been hard and painful, with losses, trying to do something special, but a certain category of players believes that our work is not worth even a couple of minutes to install the launcher. Naturally, it is their life and their right, but then what do they care about the Metro?”

Note the “couple of minutes to install the launcher”, we'll get back to that.

Yesterday, a spokesperson for Metro's developer, 4A, stated that the post was only Scynet's private opinion and a reflection of the frustration he felt at receiving such hate and vitriol for something he can't control. The spokesperson went on to say that of course the next game will be on PC. Finally he added that the decision to suddenly move from Steam to Epic lies with the publisher, Deep Silver, and their parent company Koch Media. (apparently not affiliated with the American Koch brothers). Any and all criticism should be sent their way, he added.

So, Epic Games new store...

When Scynet said “a couple of minutes to install the launcher” he completely missed the point. I've read hundreds and hundreds of posts on Reddit and Youtube about this, and of course opinions go from “I don't care” to “Burn all the things”. There are however lots of people who agree with my opinion:

It's not about a couple of minutes to install a launcher. It's about trust and service, and I don't trust Epic Games, and they don't deliver the service. Yes, they are very new and so was Steam back in the day. BUT – no one had done what Valve did. They had no examples to follow. Epic has all the examples they need! Steam, GoG, Uplay, Origins, etc... and they still don't seem to get it.

Let's look at service first.

As of writing this, Epic has only two basic services in common with Steam: Friends list + chat, and Refunds, and the refunds policy is really new. Their old one forced you to divulge IP address and tons of invasive personal data, but it's now the same as Steam.

All other features found on Steam are missing from Epic including; Linux and Mac support, gifting and trading, user reviews, cloud saves, forums, broadcasting and streaming, library sorting, etc. The list goes on.

On top of this comes the security concerns. Epic is partially (40%) owned by Tencent and rumors have been flying around for years about their connections to Chinese espionage. That may or may not be nonsense, but there are no such rumors about any other game companies that I've heard of.

On top of the espionage is the fact that the Epic Store is not compliant with GDPR, in other words they are not properly protecting your data. Data that includes your credit card number, as that is saved automatically, without asking for your consent. With other services like the Playstation Store being hacked and card details stolen, Epic's refusal to comply with security standards in a big NO from me.

Beyond security comes price. Epic doesn't do any other currency than US dollar, which means that a game that costs (rough numbers) $50 becomes 60 in Europe, 70 in Brazil, and 80 in Australia.

We still haven't talked about splitting your games library between too many services, the toxic effect exclusivity has in splitting the gaming community and other issues, but I think I've gone on long enough – especially since I don't personally care for the Metro games anyway. But fair warning, use the Epic Store at your own risk, it may all be safe and above board, I'm not risking it.

That's all, so until next time, have a calm and safe week!

The Charnel House Trilogy

A couple of months ago I saw a review of a game called The Charnel HouseTrilogy on Youtube. I'm not a huge fan of point and click games, but this one caught my attention, and didn't want to let go. So, during the Steam Summer Sale, I picked it up for next to nothing. To be fair, it's not expensive at normal price either, it's about five bucks.

The Charnel House Trilogy is a horror game, like the title suggests, but it avoids things like jump scares and cheap gore. Nothing in this wonderful title is left to chance, and it shows, it is truly well crafted. I builds up the atmosphere and the mystery without constantly hitting you over the head with cliches. Quiet moments are allowed when appropriate.

The puzzles are easy for the most part. I myself am not a great puzzle solver so that came as a pleasant surprise. One could argue that they are so easy that they are almost unnecessary, but they serve to bring you in closer. Besides, without them it would be a walking simulator.

Graphically it's good, though not amazing. But it doesn't have to be either. As a point and click horror/adventure game, you don't expect or indeed need, graphics that strain your GPU to the limit. The sound is good too, and a special mention needs to be made concerning the voice work. The game is fully voiced, and at first I thought it was a bit lackluster, but that's because I've come to expect over the top voice acting in games like this. Here it's more subdued, and I think that's a good thing.

It should be pointed out that although it's a trilogy, the whole game is about two hours long. I have in the past criticized games for being too short, but this is not a triple-A game that costs $60-70, it's an indy title that costs $5. Besides, because it is short, you have an easier time finishing the whole thing in one sitting, and retaining the whole story. Here, it is a good thing.

I went into this expecting an OK time, and ended up having a great time. So, if you are in the mood for a horror title that's heavy on creepy atmosphere and a good story rather than buckets of gore and jump scares galore, then The Charnel House Trilogy might be for you. It certainly was for me.

That's it for this time folks, so until Monday next, have a great week!

Last of 2015

Alright, it's the last Eccentric Sphere for 2015.

The Steam X-Mas sale has been nice, but I have to say I miss the flash and daily sales. Valve says that they got rid of them to be fairer, since a great sale might pop up when you are at work and thus you miss it.

OK, fair enough, but without these varying extras, the sales aren't as much fun. What you see is what you get, but that means that a great holiday sale is just a big weekend deal. The same deals are up from day one to the end. If they at least had some 48h extras it would be more interesting. And that's just it, it's not even about the money. It's less exciting to visit the Steam store when nothing changes, and I miss the thrill of hoping a game you've been waiting for shows up.

Oh well, here's hoping they bring the short sales back.

For all my complaining though, I have picked up some good ones.

My wife got me Pillars of Eternity for X-mas. A grand old-school RPG. Looking forward to getting deeper into it, but it does require that you really pay attention. It's not a game you play when you're tired or distracted.

SunlessSea is a game I've been eying lately. It's Victorian-Steampunk with Lovecraftian elements. Madness, monsters, and really weird stuff (sentient rat engineers) abounds in the seas around Fallen London. So far it's very good, but damn hard.

I bought Stranded Deep, but I haven't installed it yet. It is however shaping up to be one of the best survival games out there. So once winter hits properly, I'm escaping to my own paradise island. Coconuts, crabs and the risk of dehydration awaits. Oh, and sharks, lots of sharks.

Finally, as we're drawing towards New Years eve, I want to talk about PartyHard. Here you play as a man who just wants peace and quiet. But a huge party rages on and you can't sleep. So naturally you kill everyone there. In Party Hard you have to slaughter all the guests at party after party without getting caught. It's great fun but sometimes truly frustrating, like when you have three guys left to stab and the cops spot you near a body. If you're caught it's game over.

That's it for this year. I want to thank you all for reading my ramblings, and I hope you'll continue to do so in the coming year.

So until 2016, have a great week and a happy new year!

I will survive

Lately I have been playing multiplayer Project Zomboid with some friends. It's a zombie survival game and it is really good. But there is one problem. It's not finished yet.

The zombie apocalypse survival genre is currently extremely popular and there are dozens and dozens of games out there. From the accomplished like Dying Light (crap ending and all) to cheaply thrown together Unity asset “games”, there's no shortage of titles to choose from if the idea of running around and trying not to become fodder for the ever growing army of the undead sounds appealing to you.

Of course there are other games in the survival genre as well. Games like The Forest (run around a forest dodging cannibals) and Stranded Deep (run around tropical islands dodging sharks) and The Long Dark (run around in snow dodging wolves) run the high end of the genre, but there are currently seventeen pages of survival games on Steam alone. So if you want to test yourself against the elements and some kind of enemy trying to eat you that's not a necessarily a zombie, you can.

But before you do, there is one thing every survival game must have, and most currently don't, and that's an end game.

To be fair, games like Project Zomboid are usually indie developed and that often means that they lack money and manpower. This in turn means that it takes time to finish the game and the Zomboid guys have done an amazing job so far. The problem is that the game becomes pointless after a while if you can't win somehow.

Sure, it's fun to see how long you can survive and how many zombies you can stomp to death before succumbing, but how many times can you be bothered to restart again?

The crux of the matter lies in the core of survival:

1. Find shelter
2. Fortify said shelter
3. Stock up on rations
4. Wait

But if point number 4 never happens, you have ultimately nothing to do in the long run. So you start to take stupid risks in order to be entertained, which is why you play games to begin with.

I really like the survival genre, and if you find a game you think looks interesting, maybe support the developer, but playing an unfinished survival game is kinda nuts, because you can't ultimately survive it.

Until next time, have a great week!

Paid Mods

Hello. It's Monday and that means a new issue of Eccentric Spheres.

The hottest controversy on the gaming scene at the moment has to be the paid mod scheme for Skyrim cooked up by Valve and Bethesda. As a disclaimer I should point put that I have never used mods for Skyrim, and I certainly have no knowledge of how to even begin making one.

That said, I found it hugely entertaining as well as interesting to follow the debate on this subject. I first became aware of the issue when I woke up, went on Reddit and saw the site on fire from this subject. But I'm not going to go into it in great detail for two reasons.

One, I couldn't do much more than parrot what others have said, and I'll link a couple of really interesting videos below if you want to learn more.

Two, I have a case of the Mondays, and I'm feeling lazy.

But in a nutshell, the idea that came out of nowhere to smack gamers in the face, was that Steam would be hosting mods that you had to pay to download. Valve would then take their share as the host, Bethesda would take a cut as the IP owners, and the modder who did all the work would get the pittance that's left over. A lot can and have been said about that alone.

The biggest fury though seems to have come from the very idea that you would have to pay for mods at all, since they have always been free. And they pretty much have to be. Otherwise the modder would be making money from a company's intellectual property without permission, and that's illegal.

Anyway, Both Valve and Bethesda braved the storm of discontent and defended the system, only to then promptly scrap the whole idea. This whole kerfuffle (I love that word) came and went so fast that you missed it if you blinked. But the idea is now out there, and had it been handled right, it could have been good, but for the moment it's pretty toxic.

Some have speculated that Bethesda is gearing up to release Fallout 4 this summer and that the Skyrim project would have been the test pilot.

Now keep in mind that there is no evidence of Fallout 4 so don't get all excited. It has always been Bethesdas policy to announce a game only when it is done. Not like so many other companies that announce as soon as they come up with the idea of a game, only to scrap the whole thing two years later. But they have stated that they have a big announcement at E3 this year, which is something they apparently never do. And keep in mind that The Elder Scrolls series and the Fallout series have been very closely linked game-engine wise so there is hope. But no evidence. Remember that.

In other “news” most game stores have sales on Star Wars games today, since it is May 4^th, so you might want to check that out.

Here are the links I mentioned:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGKOiQGeO-k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aavBAplp5A

That's it for me this week so until we meet again, May the Fourth be with you!

Grand Theft Auto 5

As I mentioned in last weeks post, my Blood Bowl career has been slowed down a bit by the long awaited arrival of Grand Theft Auto V.

GTA V for PC was delayed at least three times, and every time I shrugged and said “Oh well, it's better that they push it back and get it right at launch”. So the question becomes; did they get it right? The answer is yes, yes they did!

It's a real joy to play a game that's actually finished, unlike so many games these days that ship half done and get patched later, if at all.

GTA V on PC is an absolutely amazing game. The graphics are gorgeous, the voice work is great and the gameplay is the best in the series so far. The level of detail is insane. From the garbage on the streets to the characters actually using body language while carrying on a conversation in a moving car, the amount of things going on is astounding. Everything feels so incredibly alive, it's a joy to merely move around.

In a big departure from the previous games in the franchise, you control three main characters instead of just one. You have smooth career criminal Michael with his crazy family, streetwise Franklin working his way out of the 'hood and Trevor the lunatic. Trevor is not my favorite by a long shot, but I think he is the most entertaining of the three, he's just so outrageously insane.

Initially I was skeptical about this three character system, but it works really well, and makes the story considerably better and less linear. The only downside is when you want to keep playing say Michael, but he's out of things to do and you have to move on to one of the others. But overall I'm very pleased.

Being a game with such a focus on cars, I'm pleased to say that the vehicles handle better than ever. The streets are wide, and driving is a lot of fun.

The other major part, fighting, is also really smooth. From gun play to fisticuffs, I have no complaints at all. Well OK, one small complaint. You tend to get stuck on corners a bit. This can delay you at a critical moment, but once you're aware of this, it's no biggie.

The one “bad” thing I've found so far is the radio. Compared to previous GTA titles, this iteration has the weakest soundtrack of the bunch. But as always, you can put music in a designated folder and you have your own radio station. And this is the cool part: they have both a DJ and commercials on this station, which makes it feel more legit and less than a playlist.

For some odd reason, all versions, even the Steam version uses the Rockstar Social Club as a kind of DRM. 99.9% of the time this is a non-issue but I understand that it went down at one point which made it impossible to play even the single player story mode. I had hoped we would have moved past this by now. As with all DRM it punishes the genuine customers and ignores the pirates, since the DRM is cracked anyway. Especially on Steam this is so unnecessary since you can't have a pirated game on Steam. At least as far as I know. I myself haven't seen the Social Club problem, but I've run into similar issues with Uplay, Ubisofts “launch platform”.

To sum up: if you've ever played a GTA game and liked it, this is a game for you. Simple as that. I can see no reason for any fan of the franchise to skip GTA V. Now, there is an online mode that I have yet to try, so I won't comment on it. More on that when I have some experience.

That's it ladies and gentlemen, so until next time, have a great week!

Summer Sale 2014

Another week is upon us, and the Steam Summer Sale is in full swing.

Apart from the obvious pleasure of getting games I've had my eye on for some time really cheaply, the whole event is pretty interesting.

Take the voting system as an example. Every eight hours new Flash Sales pop up. That's four games with a discount of about -75%, and at the same time, you get to choose between two set of games that will be on sale next. The set with the most votes goes on sale.

Now, I'm a very selective gamer. There are several categories that do not interest me at all, like sport and racing games.

Even within categories that I do like such as shooters, strategy and RPG's I'm very choosy. In part due to financial reasons but also because of time restraints. So what to do when neither set of games is of any personal interest?

Well, I could simply not vote, but that seems petty to me. Rather I either look for the biggest price reductions or games that I've played and know are good. Simple guidelines, but sometimes I really have to sit and think.

There are a couple of new features this year though. The most obvious is the Summer Adventure. When you get your first virtual collectible sale card, you're randomly added to one of five teams; Red, Green, Pink, Blue and Purple. Much like Steve Buscemi in Reservoir Dogs, I was dismayed to become Pink. But that's not important. Ostensibly, the teams earn points every day based on some stuff I'm not entirely clear on. I think it's a combination of sales and badges.

Anyway, having observed the process for four days now, I'm pretty sure it's a sham.

You see every day, 30 of the winning teams members get three games from their wish-list for free. And so far each day, one team has been in the lead with a huge difference. All the other teams are clumped together in a pretty similar mass.

If this event was in fact totally up to the customers, it couldn't possibly look like it does. I of course have no evidence, and if I did I wouldn't care, since some people get free games. It's all good, if pretty weird.

What's not so good, is that I can't get any more cards from voting until my Steam Account gets to level 8! You can use the cards to craft a badge that will give you some small in-game cosmetic changes in a couple of games I don't even play.

So it's not like I really care, it's just pretty rude to have this system of card rewards for votes and then say “If you want more cards, you have to spend A LOT more money”. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Over all though, I'm pretty happy with my Thus-far-haul. My major score was getting Banished, but I've also picked up Hitman: Absolution, E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy (for 98 cents), Stronghold HD and Assassin's Creed III.

I'm still hoping to pick up Thief, Starpoint Gemini 2 and Murdered before the sale is over.

Well that's it today. Have a great week!

Eldritch Gaming

On the day before yesterday, i.e. Saturday, I grabbed a copy of Eldritch from Steam. At first glance I thought it was a Minecraft clone or at least some kind of spin-off mod. Something like that anyway. The reason is the similar graphics. It has a very blocky 3D style to it's graphics, not unlike the famous mining game.

But Minecraft it is not. What we have is a fun little indie game set in the 1930's Lovecraft-verse that my readers know I'm so fond of.

Eldritch is incidentally created by David Pittman and his brother J. Kyle Pittman. They've previously worked on titles like Borderlands, The Bureau: XCOM Declassified and Bioshock 2, so we're talking experience here.

Now the object of the game is to collect three souls from three realms in order to avert the familiar “The Stars Are Right” scenario. (At least I think so, the game is not too bogged down by story). In order to do this you have to traverse said realms and either avoid or defeat the squamous denizens that dwell therein.

There's nothing too revolutionary about the game as such, apart from one feature I haven't seen before. If you loot a dead enemy, it'll respawn. If you don't, it stays put as well as dead. This leaves you in the position to judge whether you need the resources badly enough to risk encountering the enemy again later. You are very squishy in Eldritch and you go down fast if an enemy gets the drop on you.

The first realm, The Temple of Dagon, was pretty easy, so I was completely unprepared for how hard the Realm of Nyarlathotep was, and I died pretty fast. When you die, you can resurrect in the Library, where the game starts, but you loose all your gear except for any artifacts you have stored in your chest. Only artifacts can be squirreled away, so I lost my gun, all my ammo, my boots of jumping and my compass. Ah well, back in the saddle and off you go again.

I really like this game. It's suitably tense without being stressful. But that said, expect to swear a lot when you die over and over again... Unless you're a Lady (who don't swear) or a better gamer than I am.

In my opinion well worth the about 10€ it costs on Steam. Check it out.