Bill Paid

  • EVE Online Announce New Catalyst Expansion Launching November 18th

    The developers of EVE Online, CCP Games, have today released details for their upcoming “Catalyst” expansion, and it looks like a lot more changes are coming than anyone had anticipated.

    The first changes are in mining. Ultimately resource extraction underpins everything else that happens in EVE, so it seems like a likely target for new content. But on the other hand, it’s also something that needs to be treated delicately. Unfortunately recent expansions targeting mining have had major knock-on effects to the games economy, with Equinox completely changing the moon materials ecosystem as well as the play style of mining altogether, and later patches taming the price of the nullsec and Pochven only mineral “Mercoxit”. Whether these changes were a positive for the game is matter that is, as always, up for debate. To see even more changes in mining so soon is quite surprising, but the changes do at least look to be innovative rather than minor stat adjustments.

    Phased Fields will be be a new way to mine, and along with that comes a brand new resource “Prismaticite”. CCP explain that this will be extremely valuable, but that will be for EVE’s player-driven free market to decide. The concept appears to be that there’ll be a new deployable you have to anchor in order to mine from these phased fields, and CCP have released a video of a “hyperspace fracture” at one of these phased fields. This will seemingly be a time limited activity, with the similarities making it seems like a mining focused variant of the Concord Rogue Analysis or “CRAB” beacon.

    The Prismaticite, as the “prismatic” part of its name suggests, will be refined into different minerals at random, but with the ability to control the outcome using reactions. The value and practical application of this ore is going to highly depend on the cost of reprocessing it this way, as well as that statistical likelihood of each mineral being produced. I’m especially interested to see this data, as it presents a brand new much more granular way for CCP to control the mineral supply of each material independently without the sweeping changes to ore spawning mechanics we saw in the Equinox expansion.

    Beyond this new mining activity, we are also being given a new mining ship, the Pioneer. The first of its kind, the Pioneer is a mining destroyer intended to sit between the current options of frigate or barge sized mining ships. While the Pioneer will be available to alpha characters, there will also be a Tech 2 version and Consortium Issue variant of the ship, and that tech 2 version at least will likely be limited to Omega accounts.

    Getting more into the nitty gritty parts of mining, some adjustments are being made to the more core elements of the activity. Mining cycles are now going to be much faster, but with the same overall yield. So you can imagine for example, a mining laser that was once pulling in 60 units of ore once every minute, could be pulling in 1 unit of ore every second. This will be of great relief to multi-boxers managing large hulk mining fleets, as compressing ore before your hold fills up is going to become a little more forgiving. Even single account players however will probably enjoy the more “responsive and dynamic” mining experience, as CCP describes it.

    Mining crits are being added, which seems pretty straightforward. Much like a wrecking shot in ratting, this promises a bonus to the amount of ore mined purely relying on chance. What percentage chance we are looking at, we don’t know yet. But CCP have said that there will be skills and modules designed to improve the chances. I can’t say I’m particularly excited or interested by this change really. Mining is an activity that’s done over a long long period of time. Anyone who’s doing this as one of their primary activities in EVE is likely to be dedicated many hours to even just one site, so any chance based crits are really going to average out into an overall slight increase in yield, and by proxy adding yet another mining skill needed to maximise your mining income.

    There’s a UI update for Survey Scanning, adding a completely new button to the interface that when clicked, will scan nearby rocks, overlaying an ISK per m3 number for each rock selected in space. This is… interesting. It’s still going to require the Survey Scanner module, but doesn’t appear to give the overall m3 of the scanned rocks, which is the primary use for this module really. Plenty of third party sites like Cerlestes can tell you which ore you should be mining to remain ISK efficient, but maybe this is just an oversight in CCP’s promotional video, or maybe even locked behind tier 2 survey scanner modules. Hopefully there will be more information and demonstrations from CCP over the coming weeks to clarify this.

    Highsec mining is getting some visual love. I honestly love seeing CCP put effort into the highsec content. I may not have been a highsec player for a few years now, but it’s where almost everyone starts their journey in EVE, and it deserves some care and attention for those that choose to stay there too.

    Mining mutaplasmids are finally adding a way to uh… abyssal fit your exhumer? What’s not to love about that. I already see mining pilots getting up to all kinds of hijinks with their expensive hulk fleets, so why not give them even more bleeding edge efficiencies to invest in honestly. Creating more risk reward like that rarely hurts the game, and I look forward to seeing some multiple billion ISK barges hitting zKillboard.

    Not to be left out, explorers will be happy to hear that the Sisters of Eve ship line is receiving a command ship, the battlecruiser sized hull “Odysseus”. The Sister of Eve ships have a habit of being real beauties, and this one is no exception.

    CCP kind of buried the lead with this one though, as a close look into the ships stats unveil something a little deeper. The ship is going to have a larger cargo hold for more loot, bonuses to gas cloud harvesting, and the introduction of a new “Expedition Command Burst”. What effects this command burst will have is unknown, but perhaps a combination of gas cloud harvesting and hacking efficiencies would make sense, given the Odysseus’ dual role design. Unlike any of the existing Sisters of EVE ships, the Odysseus will also be able to sport a Zero-Point Mass Entangler, previously reserved for Heavy Interdictors, allowing them to pass through wormholes with a considerably lower mass limit than the ships unmodified mass, and reducing the rolling effects of the ship passing through a wormhole.

    If you’re more of a K-space explorer, for some reason, CCP are introducing the 2D map that they first teased some months ago. While improvements to the map are long overdue, most pilots have long since replaced any sort of reliance on the in-game map with third party tools like Dotlan and RIFT, so it remains to be seen how much utility the new 2D map will have.

    The Sisters of EVE Epic arc has held a top spot for many years now on PvE content recommended to newbros. Providing a good opportunity to travel around New Eden, and easily accomplished in early-game ships with few skill requirements, it’s been an understandable common answer to “What should I do next?” in rookie chat. With the Catalyst expansion we’re going to see a brand new arc, designed to introduce the expansions new content, specifically mining. This is a change of fundamental expansion release design for CCP, and I’m excited to see how it plays out. Many MMOs introduce new questlines and narrative experiences designed to tutorialise new expansion mechanics, but EVE as always doesn’t usual dare to hold your hand like this even a little, favouring trial and error with community conversation to get to the bottom of new metas and activities.

    PLEX transaction logs being added is great, honestly surprising that it’s a new thing, but better late than never.

    For the final major rework of the patch, another adjustment to carriers, which already saw a major change in functionality last year when carrier conduiting was introduced. This was in my opinion, a great change to foster the growth of smaller corporations and alliances who may not be able to rely on constant titan bridge coverage. CCP are playing their cards close to their chest on this one however, as the changes have been described only as “a buff to utility, a visual refresh, and a reduction in manufacturing cost”. They also say these aren’t going to be drastic, which is a shame honestly. Carriers as PvE or PvP ships sit in a tough place right now, struggling to achieve a good ISK to output ratio in comparison to marauders or dreadnoughts, so a massive decrease in their manufacturing cost would be welcome to bring about a more relevant position in the game’s meta.

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  • Metro 2033

    A product of its time, Metro 2033 (even in the Redux version) lacks much of the polish that you would expect playing a shooter today. It does, however, more than make up for this in character. Released in 2010, and subsequently remastered in 2014, it uses 4A Games’ proprietary engine – which has seen only one release not in the Metro universe. While the game is based on the 2002 book of the same name by Dmitry Glukhovsky, it shares only its universe and title character. Most of the actual story beats are either brand new or heavily adapted for the new medium. It’s good to see an adaptation understand that direct copy-pastes between the written and interactive formats usually leave much to be desired.

    The game pitches itself at times as a survival horror, something which seems to be widely agreed upon by the fanbase too. Honestly, I think it’s a stretch. Unless you’re playing on hardcore, even a relative novice to the genre will have no difficulty keeping up with the survival elements of it. Primarily you are limited by the resources of ammunition, and filters. Ammunition’s necessity is rather self explanatory, but it split between premium military grade ammunition that can be used as currency, and general lower quality ammunition used in your weapons. You can use the military ammunition in your guns too in a pinch for a boost in damage, but this will make purchasing weapon modifications/upgrades more difficult at the occasional trader encounters. Filters are required for your gas mask, each extending the duration of time in which your character, Artyom, can explore hazardous environments. Neither are particularly rare once you understand where to look, and the game does a good job tutorialising this early on.

    The horror element will always be more subjective. There are plenty of disturbing and creepy atmospheres to explore. However, the 2010 AI is quite predictable and lacks any really novel behaviour. For the most part enemies behave very similarly regardless of the visual design put into them, with one notable exception: Librarians. The Library mission in Metro 2033 is somewhat infamous and for good reason. Unfortunately, it is as much hated as revered, providing a common barrier to people’s desire to replay the game. Pitching you against hulking behemoths resembling the gorilla, the game introduces a new mechanic a la Weeping Angels. Stare down these enemies and they pose no threat, theoretically.

    Once you have gotten through your first few (undoubtedly doomed) attempts of this level, it becomes clear what flags the AI is looking for, and interacting with each creature becomes tedious rather than scary or even interesting. This would be an interesting mechanic to use sparingly throughout the game, never quite letting the player get the hang of it, but also making segments short enough that the adrenaline drop of panic is likely enough to help you survive. Instead this is used for one chapter only and boy does it drag. You will encounter these librarians one after the other as you traverse the building looking for the objective, and the game seems to be fully aware of the tedium, because upon finding the objective it cutscenes your escape rather than expecting you to navigate out again.

    Metro seems to have a real habit for this unfortunately, and it’s for this reason the game slips far more readily into the action genre. You would hardly call Doom a horror game, but if it weren’t for the frenetic combat that makes it a boomer shooter, what would we have left to call it? A shooter presumably, and the glove fits Metro here. Most of the tense but ultimately harmless traversing between the major story beats is written out into a 5 second cutscene, or in a few cases, just a fade to black and subsequent appearance at the distance destination. From what I’ve heard, this is massively improved in the future games in the franchise, allowing the player to feel more immersed in the world of the Moscow Metro. I feel duty bound to find out.

    The narrative of this game while not particularly immersive, is well written and interesting. There are likeable and interesting characters with motivations that make sense, your antagonists are not cut and dry “baddies”, and hidden beneath what feels like a linear story is actually more of a branching karmic system. The game does an excellent job hiding these elements from the player just the right amount. From very early in the experience it is clear that there are elements which are optional to engage with, and the occasional strict fork in the road choice. It isn’t clear early on that these will amount to a change in the narrative, but by the time your story is coming to a conclusion you will feel the weight of your decisions on your conscience without a doubt.

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  • TCG Card Shop Simulator

    Yet another title proves what the industry fails to see, games don’t have to be perfectly polished to be good. Still in Steam Early Access at the very reasonable price of £10.99 (with frequent sales at even lower prices), it would be reasonable to expect that this relatively new tycoon title is more of community playtest than a complete experience. I couldn’t have been more wrong when I went into the game with this expectation. OPNeon Games have done an impressive job at keeping their eyes on the prize and prioritising features that matter.

    The game menu prominently features a roadmap of intended future features, with lofty goals like making the trading card game “Tetramon” fully playable. The actual shop management and tycoon elements of the game are certainly complete – providing a Cookie-Clicker-esque constant supply of dopamine as you watch your wealth grow exponentially through your shop’s expansion. More complex mechanics are present in the game, including price manipulation of different item categories via the play tables in your store, and mass card pack opening stations to specialise in unique rare cards rather than the packs themselves. The genius is that these are completely optional, giving you many different ways to approach the game.

    While the varied mechanics and store layout allow for replayability… I sincerely doubt you’ll be needing it. Many games in this genre are targeted at a very casual audience with only 20-30 minutes a day to play and therefore progress very quickly. This is particularly noticeable in the mobile games market where progression is fast and the ceiling impossibly high, making for ludicrous endgames. TCG Card Shop Simulator however is not afraid to make you wait for progress. Things will pick up fast as you make more money of course, but you can expect to be 20-30 hours deep into the game before you’re in a position to afford all the different placeable furniture in your store. For full completion of all the sellable items you could easily be looking in the 50+ hour range.

    I highly recommend checking out the game if you’re looking for something to chill out with while enjoying second screen content.

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  • DEATH STRANDING DIRECTOR’S CUT

    Very rarely are the initial notes I make for the first 2-3 hours of a game so vastly different to my final impression. After a few decades playing a wide variety of games, you get a pretty good feel for when it’s hitting the spot, or if there’s a swing and a miss. Death Stranding however, bested my instincts. Above this very paragraph I can see notes which I can almost chuckle at now with hindsight, but I’m glad I made them so as not to lose sight of this game’s imperfections.

    First things first, play this game on a controller. Bless my friends for quickly making me aware of this one, as it is responsible for a considerable amount of frustration in the initial hours of playtime. Graduated speeds of movement and the vibration force feedback are both incredibly crucial to even basic interactions and locomotion in Death Stranding, it really needs a giant popup to warn you as such – similar to that of Hollow Knight: Silksong. The game doesn’t help itself when it comes to feeling familiar with your control set. Early on, Hideo Kojima is determined to ensure you understand a great deal of context about the world you are about to navigate well before you get any extensive experience navigating it yourself. You will be expected to endure what is essentially a feature-length film’s worth of cutscenes at the beginning – so strap in for a long session one.

    As for the actual controls (once you have your controller plugged in…), you are expected to learn a lot from feel an experience. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but the tooltips designed to explain things mid-game are almost teasingly quick to disappear. They are mercifully very easy to navigate to in the game’s menu, but going for a small reading break after your feature length film is concluded will definitely turn some off from getting their teeth sunk into this title.

    Much of my early trepidation came from something that it turns out you really have to get used to throughout Death Stranding: A mechanic, concept, or storytelling device will come up once and never really come up again. What may at this stage seem like a tutorialisation of a vital mechanic will turn out to be a throwaway experiment. The best example I can think of this is in one of the earliest cutscenes, in which you are given control of the camera. This very much felt like being the director of a movie that you’ve never heard of, so the entire freedom of looking wherever you like felt like pressure to actually identify where in this vast world I’m supposed to point the virtual lens. This though, basically never happens again until the end of the game, at which point you have a much better idea of what you’re meant to be looking at.

    The visuals and the storytelling actually occurring through them are of course stunning. Being my first Hideo Kojima game, I hadn’t really appreciated how poignant it was to use the language of film in the “DIRECTOR’S CUT” part of the games title. The game is in many ways structured much like cinema. The writing suffers a little from the sheer amount of exposition wedged into the early game, but having since seen the amount of optional readable content in emails and interviews available in your virtual terminal, it’s clear that the writers had a lot they wanted to get into the players brain. If you choose to engage with this content, you can experience a level of world building and immersion rarely achieved in the video game medium.

    Eventually you are released from being strapped to the chair while someone reads to you, and allowed to venture out into the world through what is ultimately the core gameplay loop of Death Stranding: Take X from A to B. You are a porter, a courier, dystopian DoorDash, however you prefer to see it. Your task is to trek from the east coast of North America, to the west coast – connecting facilities as you go and encountering many smaller storylines along your journey. This opens up another of Death Stranding’s challenges: Scale.

    Putting an entire continent to scale would of course be near impossible. Or rather, near impossible to make enjoyable. The map representing the entire middle third of America is about 2 miles long and 2 miles wide, for example. It is of course full of treacherous terrain and many obstacles which successfully make it feel considerably larger than that, but it is a challenge to envision it as the grand journey initially explained to you.

    This issue however, like many in Death Stranding, can be quite self-selecting. At some point (god knows why) I decided to be a bit more of a completionist than my typical approach to games allows. I decided I would get every facility along my journey to it’s maximum connection level. This requires a lot of surplus hauling of goods not at all relevant to the story, but forces you to engage much more complexly with the environment between facilities that you otherwise may only need to traverse once or twice. This approach really helped with the sense of scale, but I’m not sure I could recommend it. Somewhere about 75% of the way it really started to feel like a chore fuelled by sunk cost fallacy, rather than some deep appreciation for a game. On the other hand I struggle to imagine how the game would play if you just did one storyline mission after another. The pacing is very clearly designed for you to self-insert plenty of padding between events, but those who find no inclination to do this may feel the story is rather frenetic and lack the sense of achievement brought on my the 90+ hours spent delivering superfluously.

    As you approach the ending of the game, the density of cutscenes once again increases tremendously. In this way, Death Stranding clearly struggles to decide on what it wants to be. Instead playing to a wide audience and suffering greatly for it. If it wanted to be a game that appeals to the meditative experience of repetitive progression, then spacing these cutscenes out more generously would have done wonders to the pacing. If it wanted instead to appeal to a more action adventure genre of player, primarily pursuing the main storyline content, then including that story more diegetically as part of the deliveries, rather than a cutscene at the end of them, would’ve made much more sense.

    Despite all this criticism, my nit-picking comes from a place of love. Death Stranding was a mind-blowing experience all-in-all. Frequently it tested my patience to the extreme, made me walk a mile (or two) in a porter’s shoes, and truly allowed me to connect with its excellent ensemble cast. It takes the time to poke fun at itself occasionally too, with great lightweight breaks from the otherwise deep and existential key story beats. If you’re the kind of person for whom The Silmarillion appeals, then this game will be for you. Deep down hiding under dozens of hours of toil hides some of the best narrative content I’ve come across. But Kojima is going to make you work for every second of it.

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  • Starship Troopers: Terran Command

    It’s safe to say we’re not exactly in a golden age for the RTS genre, but that shouldn’t stop us peeking between our fingers occasionally for a glimmer of hope. Slitherine Ltd. and The Artistocrats adaptation of Starship Troopers is by comparison a blinding ray of light for the future of the genre.

    Starship Troopers: Terran Command

    Progress can’t come without change, and unfortunately the hundreds of Command and Conquer clones that hit Steam every year are proof that a simple reskin and aesthetic adjustment isn’t going to pump the life back into RTS games. For that reason, if you’re not willing to make some adaptations to the way you engage with these games, it might not be for you. Starship Troopers: Terran Command is not afraid to flip a mechanic on its head occasionally and the game is all the better for it.

    Starting you off in the ill-fated counter-attack on Klendathu similarly depicted in Starship Troopers’ 1997 film, the game guides you through the core mechanics with a pace suitable for even those who have never touched an RTS before. If you have plenty of experience with RTS games – don’t worry. The handholding doesn’t persist, and before too long the reins are completely released.

    What will likely strike you from the very beginning, whether you’re consciously aware of it or not, is the games soundtrack. Courtesy of Kejero’s Better Adaptive Music (BAM!), the action has never felt more reactive.

    I also want the music to behave like film music. Games have been trying that for years – the composer writes multiple versions of the same music and the game crossfades between them according to the action on screen. These traditional techniques are 86% effective, but in a movie you don’t intensify the music by fading in trumpets. Why accept it in games? So I created a new system and I call it BAM. With BAM, every instrument in the orchestra decides individually how and when to start and finish playing a melody.

    – Kejero

    Whether you’re on the offense, valiantly retreating, or skulking around the spooky bug tunnels, the soundtrack’s reactivity is palpable. It’s not often an RTS can get you holding your breath in anticipation, but Starship Troopers: Terran Command manages this level of immersion comfortably at times.

    Unlike the majority of similar games, there is no skirmish mode or multiplayer for Starship Troopers: Terran Command. The entire game focuses on a sequence of campaigns included in expansion packs. While this could be a dealbreaker for many, the campaigns are not the tacked-on cringey rush-jobs that have become quite familiar. The story is satisfying enough and the scaling of gameplay depth alongside gradually increasing challenge make for an enjoyable experience. Admittedly the end of the game does scale to the extreme and will occasionally prove challenging in unsatisfying ways, but that’s what difficulty sliders are for…

    There is an intended “Territory Mode” update expected in the future, but what exactly this will entail is not certain. I respect the developers for being transparent with their roadmap for the future, but it will be interesting to see if they go through with such a major update for free to a game now three years into its lifecycle.

    The game’s core mechanic is that of line-of-sight. While in most RTS games it is perfectly viable after a certain scale to select your entire army, Ctrl+1, then right click on the enemy base – this is not the case in Starship Troopers: Terran Command. The ability to shoot over or beyond your own troops is a unit type specific ability and cannot be taken for granted. If you find yourself in a narrow valley only 2-3 units wide, then that may be as many as will be able to fight the oncoming horde of bugs. Similarly, units are incredibly vulnerable once the bugs do manage to get up close. Arrange your army incorrectly, or with the wrong target priorities, and you might find your elite Fleet Liaison split in half by a simple warrior bug coming from behind.

    With a UI decisions similar to the Cossacks series of games, your troop formation is clearly laid out with every potential movement, making for gradual but deliberate movement around the map. The games pathfinding is absolutely fine, but for maximum tactical benefit you are expected to control much of it yourself.

    Every RTS seems obsessed with the idea of creating Forward Operating Bases (FOBs), like a secondary base halfway across the map to speed up reinforcement. Usually in vain however, as this speedier reinforcement usually just leads to drip feeding your resources into the opponent and doubling the locations you have to keep an eye on for defence. Starship Troopers: Terran Command in contrast uses Radio Operators as a fairly inept combat unit that serves as a mobile barracks, allowing you to call down aerial reinforcement drops – occasionally even aerial bombardment.

    If you do finish the core missions and expansion packs, then still find yourself wanting more, the game has a faithful community keeping content fresh through Steam Workshop. There are numerous additional scenarios available, including many ported directly from Starship Troopers: Terran Ascendancy, a MicroProse title with similar themes released in 2000.

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  • Hi-Fi RUSH

    How reassuring to know you aren’t completely without a sense of rhythm.

    Picture the most intense boss battle, final mission, last wave, whatever it was that last got you into a flow state with a video game. That feeling where you no longer have to think about your inputs. You’re plugged in. Someone made a whole game of that: Around a dozen hours of gameplay painstakingly crafted to put you in the zone.

    At its core Hi-Fi RUSH takes the concept of a rhythm game and asks “How much is too much?”. While you can expect the usual concentric circles of timing and Guitar Hero-esque scrolling fret board, Hi-Fi RUSH puts the rhythm in every nook and cranny of the universe. Your characters steps and arm swings move in casual synchronisation with a nearby maintenance robot. The cogs of a mega-machine turn at one with the pistons of a nearby engine. Every set piece is carefully coordinated with one of the many original and licensed tracks at a variety of BPMs, setting the difficulty of the combat and the attack patterns of your enemies.

    Beyond the inherent beauty of it all, it’s impressive how easily the rhythm comes to the combat. Don’t worry if you’re a little clumsy for the first 15 minutes, getting a feel for what the game is trying to guide you into can take a moment. But once it click, it clicks. Attacking, dodging, and parrying in time to the music makes for incredibly satisfying engagements. Enemy variety keeps you on your toes, with a good gradual drip feed that pits you against a gradually increasing arsenal of Vandelay Technologies robots. (Not to be confused with the latex manufacturing company from Seinfeld: Vandelay Industries).

    Crucially, the game does not take itself too seriously. Littered with self-referential humour and occasional tongue-in-cheek jabs at the state of modern capitalism, it’s sure to catch you off guard at the most inappropriate of times for a good chuckle.

    Tango Gameworks have been careful to balance the depth of the game with its potential audiences. You can get incredibly far on Normal difficulty without engaging too closely with exploration, complex combo moves, or the in-game upgrade store. For those willing to look behind every crate and barrel however, there is much to find. Rhythm games have the unique ability to unleash some absolutely unhinged rage at times, and this balance was a good decision to avoid that frustration. There are of course higher difficulty options for the masochists amongst us.

    Hi-Fi RUSH’s strongest highlights expose some of its early game weakness however – the game leaning heavily on original scores rather than licensed music. While these tracks are outstanding in themselves, they are ultimately unfamiliar. During later levels, licensed music is used more frequently and in quick succession. In particular segments played out to Invaders Must Die by The Prodigy, and a remix of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony really highlight how much deeper a flow state can be achieved when you are already familiar with the beat you’re playing to. More of these moments sprinkled into the early game would’ve gone a long way to help new players understand the mechanics, rather than familiarising themselves with a unique track alongside a whole new style of hack and slash gameplay.

    While the studio behind Hi-Fi RUSH was thrust into limbo by Microsoft cutbacks, it has thankfully been acquired along with the Hi-Fi RUSH intellectual property by Krafton, best known for publishing PUBG. Fingers crossed its not the last we see of wannabe rockstar protagonist Chai and his gang of “losers”.

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  • Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War – Definitive Edition

    Cleanse. Purge. Kill.

    In a move that we’re now aware was to drum up interest for the upcoming Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV, the Warhammer universe saw the welcome return of a classic on August 14th. Advertised as the “Definitive Edition” of the origin Dawn of War real-time strategy game, Relic Entertainment were soon swept up in the remastering trend that exploded this year, courtesy of Bethesda’s surprise Oblivion Remastered release in April.

    It’s true at least, that some remastering work was put into Dawn of War – Definitive edition, but those expecting it to be brought up to par with modern titles will be sorely disappointed. Upgrades have been made to the gameplay camera for modern display resolution compatibility, higher resolution textures, more readable UI elements, and higher draw distances. More in the nuts and bolts of the game, 64-bit platform support and an integrated mod manager have been added to reinvigorate the games modding scene. Unfortunately it appears they overlooked the holy grail of modern modding integration, Steam workshop support.

    As with most beloved classics, it’s not exactly like the original Dawn of War community wasn’t already faithfully putting their nose to the grindstone and producing mods even prior to Definitive Edition’s announcement. This gap between the expectation of an extremely loyal fanbase, and the games advertised improvements, has been reflected strongly in its reception so far. Unfortunately I can’t help but think this was not Relic Entertainment’s error at all, as they have at no point tried to portray the Definitive Edition as a huge jump.

    As well as doing their best to manage expectations, the game is currently at a 30% discount for anyone who already has the original Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War – Anniversary Edition in their Steam library. Perhaps not steep enough a discount, but considering other studios pattern of releasing and re-releasing ultimate, special, or anniversary editions at full price regardless, this is a refreshing move.

    What I think the most avid fans of the game are overlooking however, are the players like myself. Dawn of War released in 2004. Practically before the Earth cooled, and certainly before common digital distribution of video games. The vast majority of people looking back at the fun times they had purging the heretics, probably did so from a CD-ROM.

    For this audience, the Definitive Edition is a perfect excuse to pick it back up and relive the experience without spending your first 30 minutes in the config file, or downloading mods you’ve never heard of just to bring the experience to “acceptable” for 2025. With 40+ hours of campaign content easily, when you account for the expansion packs included with your purchase, there’s certainly no concern that the game lacks the depth to be worth revisiting.

    If phrases like “Glory for the first men to die!” and “My face is my shield!” remind you of long nights dedicated to the conquest of Kronus, you will find the same pleasure very much still awaiting you in this edition of the game.

    Do you hear the voices too?

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  • Black Mesa

    The story of Black Mesa’s development is an inspiring one. A rare reminder of what’s possible when passionate fans and reasonable companies can work in tandem rather than opposition. Originally scheduled for release in 2009, the game began as a mod with the goal to remake Half-Life in the Source engine. Valve of course had seen this opportunity too, releasing Half-Life: Source in 2004. It however failed to take advantage of most of the engine’s features, made limited attempts to upgrade the visual fidelity, and was riddled with bugs not present in the original game.

    The gap in the market for a remaster was clear even in the 2000s, but it’s safe to say that Crowbar Collective missed their scheduled release date slightly… In September 2012, the work they had completed so far was released as a mod for Half-Life 2. Notably absent from this remake however was the Xen portion from the end of Half-Life, but given its poor reception in the original this was hardly a major setback.

    Xen Islands – Half-Life

    Despite this, Crowbar Collective made it clear that a full remake of the Xen chapters was in the works. In doing so, Black Mesa began to divert from the true remake pathway and more into a position of spiritual successor or faithful tribute. To stand up straight and tell gamers they were going to beat Valve at their own game… Excitement was certainly mounting.

    These lofty expectations did not come without the appropriate wait expected from anything where Valve is involved. Shortly after the release of the mod, Crowbar Collective were given permission by Valve to give the game a commercial release, massively amplifying the reach of what had been barely more than a passion project. Finally in 2020, Black Mesa released in full on Steam – clearly not a second was wasted.

    Xen – Black Mesa

    To say that the game had made some improvements to Xen would be to say that the iPod made some improvements to the gramophone. With the addition of longer and considerably more beautiful Xen chapters, as well as the fleshing out of many early chapters, Black Mesa took me about 18 hours to complete compared to the original Half-Life’s 12 hours according to HowLongToBeat.com. It’s amusing in hindsight to see Black Mesa’s Steam Store description…

    Relive Half-Life.

    A slight underselling of years of work and community input. So much so that even the loyalist of Half-Life fans have taken to recommending Black Mesa and Half-Life as separate experiences, both must-plays in their own right. Black Mesa does however meet an important goal; Providing a way for a new generation of gamers to enter the Half-Life universe without some of the foibles of a 1998 title. As a 1998 title myself, I can understand the importance of this.

    My original engagement with Half-Life had been at the age of 6, after my father purchased the Half -Life 2 Collector’s Edition – coincidentally creating his Steam account and in the process realising a brand new outlet of hoarding for the both of us… I was unashamedly far too scared to play the game beyond a certain point, so most of my experience was that of watching him play while I sat quietly on a drum stool beside the family PC hoping that my bedtime would pass by unnoticed.

    By the time I had my own PC, Half-Life’s system requirements were already laughably minimal, so naturally I revisited it and Half-Life 2 a few years later to form my own experience of each. They had aged, so had I.

    Blast Pit – Black Mesa

    With the release of Half-Life: Alyx coincidentally a matter of weeks after the commercial release of Black Mesa, the completionism instincts kicked in for a brand new audience to the series. What better way to understand the origin of these stories, characters, and mysterious world, than via a modern reimagining. In 1998 jaws were dropping at some of the sequences in Half-Life, in much the same way as my jaw dropped many times while playing Black Mesa.

    That is not to say that Black Mesa is without its faults. The Xen chapters, while, beautiful, really need to be played with the context of the game’s long development cycle. As well as the reception of the original Xen chapters. Picking up this game blind to the significance of Xen will make it overstay its welcome. I found myself rolling my eyes at times as the pacing slowed, the Interloper chapter being a particularly weak spot for this. I could definitely have seen myself setting down the game at this point had I not already been very aware of this criticism prior to playing.

    Sometimes the art of preservation isn’t about the material itself, but the way it makes you feel. The excitement, anticipation, frustration, all that it makes you feel. Black Mesa captures every essence of this.

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  • Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun

    Being just about the wrong generation to have really enjoyed the height of the boomer shooter genre, I have the privilege of enjoying many of these titles without the rose-coloured glasses of another era. Boltgun immediately stood out to me both on its aesthetics and unapologetic freneticism, a combination that meet perfectly when intertwined with the Warhammer 40,000 universe.

    As well as harkening back to a historic genre of video games, it cannot be undersold how much Boltgun resides in a past era of Warhammer too. That, I cannot claim to see without the bias of past experience, as someone who got heavily into Warhammer in the late 2000s and early 2010s. While modern 40k sits on mountains of lore set in stone by the Black Library, the setting used to maintain some level of mystique. Lore was hinted at, subtly nodded towards across all sorts of mediums, requiring some true deep knowledge and theory crafting to arrive at a narrative that made sense. Similarly, Warhammer has had to move on in terms of its “main characters” in order to keep the setting fresh for its audience.

    In both those respects, Boltgun goes beyond just the 2.5D graphics to emulate days gone by. You play the game as Malum Caedo of the Ultramarines chapter. It takes very little exposure to the work of Warhammer to have heard of the Ultramarines, and that’s part of their problem typically. For many years it felt like the Ultramarines were the true main characters of the universe, with other chapters of Space Marines seen as a edgier hipster pick for the kind of player who provides a mandatory lore dump before laying out their army on the 6′ x 4′.

    Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun

    Now, from what I can gather with my significantly lower exposure to the setting of Warhammer, the pendulum has swung and the Ultramarines are being nudged towards the side lines to make room for fresh stories to be told, and of course new models to be sold. For anyone who played 10-15 years ago however, the Ultramarines will probably occupy a special place in your heart no matter the direction of the lore’s grander narrative. Your first memory of them is likely to be your starter set, probably shoddily put together to fight the green skins over Black Reach.

    The game remains rather lore-agnostic, thank god. The line the Black Library treads between deep meaningful fantasy storytelling, and a modern day G.I. Joe to help sell more toys, is a fine one. I can picture myself getting very absorbed into it in the right circumstances, but spend 15 minutes around someone who has met that fate, and you’ll be scared off for life. I do not greatly enjoy needing an encyclopaedic knowledge of a universe to appreciate its setting, and thankfully Boltgun sets no such expectations.

    Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun

    Standing on its own two feet as a game, Boltgun is not without issue. It reeks of a planning process in which the main progression beats were laid out, then filler was equally distributed after the pacing of the game had been set. A big proportion of the Steam Review mention the game feeling repetitive and boring, quite an achievement for a game you can finish in less than 10 hours. But they have a point.

    In trying to keep each “act” of the game fairly equal in length, the player is stuck for their first few play sessions in monotonous environments, limited weapon options, and very very few variants of enemy. It’s not until the second act that you are brought into the outside world of a desert landscape, immediately injecting fresh energy into the game, but unfortunately too late for many players. It’s hard not to contrast this with Doom (2016) which will happily bounce you between different environments in 20-30 minute chunks, with a very similar total game length.

    Chapter III of Boltgun really brings out some of their best work. The culmination of all the mechanics, weapons, enemies, and environments. There’s even some refreshingly new content near the end that I can’t help but feel would’ve served better teased in Chapter I, even if only momentarily, in order to give the player reassurance that there was something new ahead to look forward to.

    The AI in Boltgun is basically terrible. Not unlike many games however, if you play it in good faith and just naturally follow your instincts, reading the language that the game is writing, it’s fine. The moment you discover some of its flaws however, the illusion does kind of slip away. The levels are absolutely full of vantage points from which you can deal damage, but not receive damage from the distant enemies. This incentivises a very slow and methodical approach to conserve health and ammo, at times even meaning a 0 damage boss fight is possible. This is heresy for a boomer shooter, and Malum wouldn’t approve of it.

    If you’re satisfied following the yellowest of yellow paint, rocking out to an excellent soundtrack accompanied by the rhythmic thud of your bolter, you’ve come to the right place. For innovative level design, lore, or challenging mechanics, there is little to be found.

  • Pacific Drive | Embrace The Vibes

    A conversation about Pacific Drive, by Ironwood Studios.

    My first project like this, thank you for watching!

    All music by Picratio:
    Daenglaeada – The Hour of Junk – DISC 2
    Flagrante – The Hour of Junk – DISC 1
    Steinfaser – The Hour of Junk – DISC 1
    Trailblazing – The Hour of Junk – DISC 2
    Zpenezit – The Hour of Junk – DISC 2

    The songs in these albums are licensed under: CC BY via Free Music Archive.

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