Shadowrun Returns - Review

Finally, it's a long time since I've actually finished a game like this, to be actually qualified to review one so I'm going to jump right in here and get to work.

Shadowrun is an RPG of old school design, you navigate diaglogue tree, make moral decisions and command troops in turn based combat as you make your way through a cyberpunk story featuring evil corporations, morally ambiguous runners and spoiler alert, evil space bugs.

So, this is where I flash my credentials. I played through Baldur's Gate 2 back in the day and had countless hours of fun with Fallout one and two. This is my kind of game, no two ways about it and it's been so long since we've had something decent I jumped right in.

The Theme: The theme here is cyberpunk, a particular form of cyberpunk involving Elves and Orks called Shadowrun. Personally, I don't like the Fantasy in my cyberpunk but really, you can get away with just pretending those guys are just horribly mutated individuals. The different races have little impact on the story and you'll really need to be focusing on a skill hard for the race restrictions to matter much.

Fantasy elements aside everything cyberpunk is in place, mega corporations, hackers in cyberspace and so on. Overall it's satisfying but I could see people being put off by the lack of cyberpunk “purity” in the setting.

The Story: The story starts strong but tapers near the end, perhaps outstays its welcome by one or two hours while being a very short game in the first place. It took me about six hours to finish, the first four hours were very solid but then things got a little downright stupid. It also loses points for being extremely linear which hurts the most in the sections you spend in cyberspace. In what is essentially the internet being railroaded to one or two points, fighting the same enemies and then reading a piece of text just felt like such a wasted oppurtunity. What can't I hack into people's personal bank accounts, blackmail corporations or just be a general nuisance.

There's enough story here to pull you through the game, that's for sure. Not the strongest but serviceable.

The Combat: First of all, the combat is fun and that's the most important thing for a game like this. It's not overly challenging but you'll find yourself making some interesting decisions and nowhere is this more pronounced than in the sections where one of your team is in cyberspace hacking away and the rest of the team need to hold off enemies in the real world. These sections represent the game at its best and are extremely enjoyable.

Being fun, it's easy to forgive the combat for being completely and utterly broken. For example, I build a decker character. A decker focuses on combat in cyberspace and neglects it in the real world, that said all I needed was the starting assault rifle and the “Full Auto” skill to two shot essentially every enemy in the game. Full Auto is unlocked incredibly early, the only drawback that it forces a reload after being used twice. Things get even more fun when the same skill applies to the automatic shotguns in the game, these will more often than not take fools out in a single action. Is this thematic and fun? Yup. Is this balance? Probably not, but I can get over that. The one issue that can't be forgiven as easily is how underpowered close combat weapons are as a result. But whatever, who brings a knife to a gun fight. Likewise with magic or shamanism, leave that Dungeons and Dragons shit at home.

Overall: Shadowrun Returns will not be remembered as a classic, the controls are too finnicky, the story too janky and the combat poorly planned. What it will hopefully be remembered as is the harbinger of the wave of Kickstarter RPGs that blow our minds. It's a light aperitif that whets our appetites before the main course arrives and it fills that role remarkably well. 

Shure Se210 Sound Isolating Earphones Review - Sweet Silence

I have these earphones almost six months now, so I'm in a good position to do a review.

Now, when I first set out to buy my first high end set of buds I got a bit of a shock. Everything over forty euro seemed to be in-ear and while those usually sound fine I usually find my ears get sore after a long enough period of use which kind of prevents me from enjoying the music.

But I settled on these in the end. It was a cool ninety euro for these bad boys so I had my fingers crossed that they would be worth it.

The Agony of Choice: The first thing you'll notice opening the box is the selection of different ear inserts. Instead of the different sizes of the same shape that you get with cheaper buds here you actually get a selection of different type. The default inserts are foam, like ear-plugs. I didn't like them too much and they didn't feel comfortable in my ear, so I decided to experiment. Eventually I settled on the type called "triple flange" which felt comfortable in my ear without having to be pressed in too far.

Sound Isolation: The inserts are seriously good at cancelling noise, in my old job there would be frequent shouting matches and while I might take the buds out if I felt like enjoying the drama I always had the option of completely ignoring them. Nothing interrupts your music, so at the very least the sound isolating part of the name is very true. This also means you don't need to turn your music up too high to drown out ambient sound so can be good news for your ears and you don't need to worry about bothering the guy sitting beside you with whatever crap you are listening to.

Quality, isn't that all that counts: These are the cheapest pair you'll get in the Shure range but they are also by far the nicest sounding buds I have ever owned. Classical music is rendered clearly and vibrantly so I can't really fault the treble. While I can't say it has blown my earlier set out of the water I have a feeling that these guys are limited more by the quality of my mp3s than anything else.

The bass is okay. I would say that it might be the one area I found disappointing because it does lack some power for example Rob Dougan tracks or similar Techno music. It doesn't ruin the songs but it is outshone by even the most basic of speakers here.

So, should I buy them? If you're looking for a pair of buds that will block out all sounds (I use mine as earbuds when sleeping sometimes, they really work) and sound great I can recommend these.

If you are looking for pure sound enjoyment I do feel there must be better out there for maybe fifty euro more. This is a nice purchase that I in no way regret but I will probably buy slightly higher end for my next purchase.

Spelunky - Game Review

It all started when I had that giant spider right where I wanted him. He had chased me down a tiny tunnel but I had managed to climb up a ladder to safety.

I could hear him bounce around, making that terrifying noise. I felt utter joy as I primed my bombs and threw the down the tunnel. Two explosions later the monster was dead. I then heard somebody scream "Terrorist!".

Turned out the tunnel had been situated directly over one of those subterranean shops and the shopkeeper was not happy. He had dashed out of the shop with his shotgun to hunt down the source of the explosions so I, not being one to pass up an opportunity used another bomb to create an entrance to the now empty store and helped myself to his wares.

Little did I know, I was now a wanted man. My poster was hanging in every store and every doorway had a shotgun armed shopkeeper waiting for me. I actually did pretty well, evading them for a time. The items I had helped myself to certainly helped, especially a pair of climbing mitts.

Well, there was one particular tunnel, that lead to a doorway. My plan was just to fall through and enter the door before the shopkeeper could blow me away.

Well, I stuck to the wall half way down and was brutally murdered by the shopkeeper. Kids, crime doesn't pay.



Spelunky is a truly amazing game. It's a random experience every time so you might spend one game barely surviving and eventually dieing on level three to some inconveniently placed death spikes.

Other times you'll have adventures like the one I described above. What makes it so good is the variety of items and character behaviours in the game. This is excellent game design and it really works. You'll find yourself developing ways of approaching threats and navigating the cave networks. Does the way open before you look too dangerous? Well, you can use bombs to make your own pathway.

And the bombs, to me, are the real star of the show. They can kill anything in one go, including you and you really respect them. Priming a bomb is no joke in this game. In fact, everything is no joke. You get a certain amount of hits and once they're gone your game is over.

This is some of the best fun I've had in a long time and I recommend everybody give it a go. It takes some time to get into but it is immensely satisfying when things work out and what's more it is legitimately satisfying. You have one chance to make things work, quick save and checkpoint culture has destroyed these sorts of experiences in gaming. I want to see more like this, a lot more.

The game can be downloaded here.

As unique as it is, I will not try to give it a rating. Just play it.

The Text Adventure

I've never played much in the way of Text adventures, in a way I suppose they were before my time. I came into gaming at the high point of graphical adventure games, or the beginning of their descent depending on how you look at it.

There does seem to be a fairly active online community for them, people brought up on Multi-User dungeons, Zork and that hitch hikers guide to the Galaxy game. One thing that surprises me is that lack of user tools however.

First a bit of education, there are two major ways of developing a text adventure. The first is Inform 7 an english based programming language and TADS3 a Java like language. One thing these both lack however is an online interpreter, which makes them all but completely useless to the casual gamer like myself.

Behold, prometheus, a work in progress by yours truly. It's only had two days of work so far but it's been interesting so far. I can certainly see the potential of the medium but there's a reason I've never really got into one before.

Learning all of those stupid commands, typing north north north etc. Boring. And the amazing things about Inform 7 (The only one I've tried) is that it doesn't have any system for conversation trees. What the hell?

So Prometheus will be a text based system for making text-based adventure games, not an interactive novel.

Play Ruse, quick!

A short post to alert the world to the fact that RUSE, a new WW2 strategy game has a free beta currently on steam. I'd write more but my flu has rubbed me of all stamina.

What will have to suffice is that RUSE is probably the first time that actual strategic level gameplay has worked, and it's set in WW2.

So think supreme commader, as it should have been with the same feel as company of heroes. It's damn good, go try it now.

The Game I'm Looking For

It's easy to deride the gaming industry as it stands but the question is what does PC gaming need to be great again? What has it lost that once made it so great.

One word comes to mind, Bullfrog. Dungeon Keeper, Populous, Theme Hospital, each a completely unique idea perfectly executed. Peter Molyneux of course is still around but we no longer get games of that caliber. I wonder if it's because of the fact that authorship of games has disappeared. They are now the products of corporations, not the vision of one man.

Before, a small team could create a game that could compete on a world wide market. Now, with graphics paramount this has disappeared almost entirely. One man operations like Gratuitous Space Battles are frankly shallow. On the opposite side we have ASCII based games like Dwarf fortress which have depth but no graphics to speak of at all.

It's amazing to me that something has not happened to bring back authorship. But the fact is that tools like XNA do make it all easier but there is a huge difference between making some pixel art and building 3D model and traversing 3D space in code is no trivial task. Before a writer or developer could mock up a game with a chance of being successful in a few days (at least a simple one.) Now it would take much longer, we see people trying to sell their 3D pong remakes that it took them months to create. Creativity has given way to necessity.

I hope that we will see soon that the power returns to the author, Prometheus needs to come down a second time and put things right again.

Game Review - League of Legends

I haven't played many releases lately, I have to admit. In fact I'm beginning to realize that I have settled into a new market category lately, I am now a casual gamer. But have mainstream games given me a choice? Their constant rehashing of the same ideas frankly makes me sick, Dragon Ages bored me to tears, the latest Call of Duty about as interesting as glaze drying on terracotta. No, anybody of above average intelligence has no place in the modern gaming world.

So, you have two choices. Make your own game (I am trying to do this but it's hard.) Or maybe just taking the whole thing less seriously, don't look at games as an investment, look at them as just a bit of fun. And the best fun of course, is that which is to be had for free, this brings me to a recently release DOTA clone; League of Legends.

For those not familiar with the concepts of DOTA (Defense of the Ancients, an immensely popular mod for Warcraft 3), you essentially pick a hero from over 40 candidates and enter a team based battle to overcome the other side. Through the course of a single game you go from level 1 to 18, unlocking abilities and purchasing items as you go. It is a damn good recipe for a game which provides a good variety of experiences within the thirty to forty minutes it takes to play a game. Let's break it down.



Community: This is a multilayer only game and DOTA, if famous for anything, is famous for it's awful community of highly strung thirteen year olds. My impressions of the community so far, it's okay. If you "feed", that is die too often thereby giving the other side a huge advantage in experience, you will probably get given out to but that's understandable to some extent. Trash talkers do exist but I've found once I became competent at the game people were friendlier.

All in all, don't expect too much help while you are learning the game. Luckily there are excellent guides on the games forums that will help you along just fine. Once you aren't dying every two minutes the community is relaxed enough in general. The best part is that unlike certain other games (Looking at you Demigod) you can always find a game and it's really easy to pair up with a friend in a matched game. It's all as easy as it should be and then some.

Graphics: We live in an age of 4850s, GTXs and whatever else you happen to have strapped to your motherboard and Leage of Legends won't be using the majority of the available power. The design is great however and every hero looks unique and is fun to watch. Hero abilities are well realized and everything is distinct on the screen so visual confusion (in what can be a very visually confusing game) is kept to a minimum.

Interface: The interface is sublime, from the air based application that handles finding a game and managing your heroes, allowing you to have it in the background while waiting for a game to the amount of information neatly available on your screen at any one time. This game sets a standard for things to come with its ease of use.

Gameplay: Gameplay ranges from frenetic to relaxed. Comebacks happen all the time and every kill you get is extremely satisfying. Each hero plays fairly uniquely, even if they aren't all equally viable. It's a genuinely fun game to pick up and play but the depth is there too that keeps you interested.



Summing up now because I've run out of time. League of Legends is a great little game that you don't need to pay a penny for. So if you are like me and just want to have a bit of fun without getting annoyed at the horrid state of modern gaming give it a try. I'm in there as Vonkrieger.

85/100