The retardation of Rockstar Games: RDR2

For shame such a cool game is getting killed

I realize this is old news at this point, but I'm shocked that I didn't mention it here before. Red Dead Redemption 2 is a massive success with gamers and is a huger success in terms of sales for Rockstar Games, but a while back they said that they will no longer be supporting the online component for the game within a few months. 

This does nothing but prove two points, one: Rockstar Games are again proving that they are incompetent morons; and two: is that the reasons for them doing this just help to illustrate that the gaming industry is blatantly wrong for not giving players the ability to host their own online servers. 

Yes, I know that the reason why is that Rockstar wants to push micro-transaction with their dumbass shark cards and gold in the case of RDR2, but they are shutting it down as players freaking hate the paid services and are cheating as an alternative to paying to win. As a result, there is a rash of cheaters on Rockstar's servers that they are unable to control in any meaningful way, who are doing nothing but griefing other players, making the whole experience awful. 

If they had just given players the ability to host and regulate their own servers, this would not be a problem that Rockstar would even have to manage or spend money on at all. Yes, it would increase your development costs and time, as well as cut into your micro-profits, but would see a far larger return on investments, as that would allow for people to more freely mod the game, increasing long term sales and popularity, as the community would self police their own servers. 

But hey what do I know? Heaven forbid you actually let people play a game online that they paid for, instead of freaking pulling one of the highest grossing games from being able to be played at all. I honestly hope this ends up in multiple lawsuits against them and it proves very costly to them.

Generation Zero

The concept art comes really close to what the game is like.

Generation Zero is a game developed in Sweden and takes place in the same country during the 80s. The premise being that you are among a group of teenagers coming back from a trip to an outer island only to discover that the local population is gone due to extermination by rouge military robots. The game has a unique setting that allows for a little more fun when exploring, and it has a fun premise that provides for some interesting combat. 

The game is not without it's faults, though. The game feels far too empty, with the looting being pretty bland for the most part, there's also not enough survivors to interact with, nor enough remnants of people to explore.  It makes for a very uneven feeling while exploring the world, with there being all sorts of interesting places and architecture to see from afar, but then it feels like a bit of a let down once you get there to find it's mostly generic when you are actually exploring inside it. 

See? The screenshot is pretty close.

This isn't the only issue, as the landmass you inhabit is massive, but can be a bit frustrating as there are no powered vehicles to use, and the game kind of devolves into a walking simulator at times. There are bicycles you can use, but they feel pretty unpolished and buggy, and seem like more trouble than they are worth. There is an in-game explanation for this, but still it feels flimsy. Some of the player gear seems to be pretty unbalanced and a bit underwhelming, such as the gas mask not actually giving you full protection from gas at all. 

To be frank, it seems the game may have either been rushed so that it doesn't include features initially planned, or that there were technical hurdles in which they couldn't implement more into the game. To me, it would have been good to have the world be populated with more human NPCs both friendly and enemies to interact with as well as the numerous death robots.

Despite this though, there are some great aspect to the gameplay. It's meant to be a drop-in cooperative PvE experience more than anything. As I mentioned before, the combat and guns are enjoyable, with a good customization and quality system, all sorts of player customization and armor, a decent story, and I do find the setting and scenery to be utterly enjoyable. Since launch, they have also added a good number of DLCs, that add a larger variety of weapons as well as expanding the crafting system, as well as the feature of base-building. So far, I say it's certainly far from being a perfect game, but that's also what gives it some of it's charm. Overall, it if you can get all the DLC with the game while it's on sale, it might be worth it to you, as you can certainly do worse. 

Thief Simulator

I don't think I mentioned it here before, but I was big fan of Thief Simulator. It was a very low budget game, with some technical glitches, but was a great amount of fun. Frankly, whenever I'm playing any kind of open world RPG, I always start off by playing a sneak-thief of some kind and am not satisfied enough to try any other kind of build until I've literally stolen everything in the world. So it's nice to see a game just straight up cater to that and have everything built around it. 

I would certainly highly recommend the game despite any flaws as it was great amounts of fun, but I had no idea that the creators had also come up with a prequel of sorts, called American Theft 80s. The premise is pretty self explanatory, with it being set in the USA during the 80s, and has all the retro aesthetics and sounds, but otherwise plays very similarly to the original game, but with a few more RPG elements, which is a welcome addition. So, I'm planning on snagging that one up and trying it out as soon as possible. 

Space Marine

I make no secret that I love the lore of the Warhammer 40K universe. However, Games Workshop is nothing less than a despicable company for a multitude of reasons, one of which being that they seem to love pushing out completely garbage low budget video games for the franchise as a whole. There have only been a few that I thought were good, those being: Dawn of War II, Battlefleet Gothic Armada, Space Hulk: Deathwing, and Space Marine. Even among those one, though, they still have the feel of being shoe-stringed nearly to death on their budget. Despite that, I am still looking forward to the release of Darktide and Space Marine 2.

Anyways, this post is really about Space Marine. The game is a third person shooter in which you play as an Ultramarine in a campaign against the Orks and the forces of Chaos. The game really nails the setting and gives you that over the top action-movie feeling right from the get go. My only complaint about the story is that I feel like the Ultramarines are really one of the more boring aspects of the lore compared to other chapters of Space Marines, and you can tell that they were a little self indulgent with some of the cut-scenes and they drag on far too long. 

Sheer awesome.

Overall though, the game is absolutely great and has some excellent moments the especially funny ones being with the Ork boss. It's full of all the coolest weapons and has plenty of blood and guts to satisfy all. The game is usually on sale or even when not, is usually just straight up super cheap, and I would highly recommend it.

Destroy All Humans

So there has been a rash of remastered/remade games lately, some blatantly not good like Rockstar's bullcrap classic GTA games remaster which actually made the games worse. But thankfully there are also some really good ones out there like the Destroy All Humans remaster, which I happened to like a lot.

First off, I haven't actually played the original games when they came out, so take everything with a grain of salt when comparing the two here, but from what I hear they didn't do anything to ruin or change the story, characters, setting, or overall story in any way from the original, so massive win there. Why is this so important, you ask? Well in this day and age when even video game developers aren't immune to the tides of woke bullcrap and try to include "the message" in everything, it's nice to a developer sick to it's guns and insist on retaining all it's political incorrectness that made the original characters and dialogue so good to begin with.

The game is really prized for it's excellent humor, and straight up leans into an insanely exaggerated late-50s little green men from mars setting and story that works so dang well. With all your favorite tropes to play an wreak havoc with like mind control, ESP, telekinesis, ray guns, jetpacks, gelatinous goop, and of course, flying saucers with tractor beams. My favorite aspect to the gameplay is that it feels like a more demented version of what an Invader Zim game would be like and it even features Billy West straight up doing the same voice as Zim for the character of your boss in the game!

Needless to say, I'm eager to get the remastered version of the sequel as well. 

What's kind of new in games

So recently, I got two newer games that I have been meaning to get for some time now. The first being Hitman 3 and the (quite a mouthful) Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 ‘Complete Edition’. I don't quite feel like giving full reviews to either but I figured I'd give a initial impressions or may be a mini-review to both. 

Still as fun as ever, and that's no accident.

Hitman 3: If you are familiar with either the first or second game in the series, you're getting more of the same, and that's not really a bad thing at all. I haven't beaten the game yet, but so far, the pros are: slightly increased difficulty in certain areas, and still very unique and impressive map designs, as well as you can carry over your unlocks from the last game. Also, they really took the time to give the player far more to do than just assassinating their targets and exploring the maps, as I had a grand old time doing a murder mystery on the second map, that was completely optional. Also worth mentioning is that the soundtrack is even better this time around and they weren't exactly phoning it in last time, either. 

Sadly, the Cons are pretty much the same as the previous games, since they don't seem to have learned any lessons at all from the last ones. Specifically, the unlock system is still as dumb as ever, there's still no dual wielding, weapon customization, and the non-stealthy gunplay is still crap overall. Also, I still don't like that people will just lose out on rewards from completing exclusive contracts if they don't play at a specific time. That is straight up crap and insulting to players with actual lives. Not to also mention all the pricing shenanigans when it first released, but now that it is on sale, it's still worth every penny. 

An underrated series that has gotten much better over time. 

Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2 Complete Edition (say that fast ten times in a row): Some people look on this game as a cheaper, modern-day knock off of the Sniper Elite series, and I don't think that's a bad thing. The earlier games in the series were more than a bit clunky, but they are using the Cry Engine, and that is notoriously difficult to work with, especially for a small, mid-tier studio. 

Anyways, the Pros are that it has a much more fine tuned upgrade and unlock system for the guns and gear. There is a much better system of challenges and achievements, making the maps far more re-playable. The maps/missions are fantastically long to start with, but can be done in little piecemeal segments for those who don't have the time, with no penalty to the player at all. Also, unlike Sniper Elite 5, it also has a much better system of controls and I had far less issue with them than the game from a supposedly AAA studio (Hear that? Get your shit together, Rebellion).

As for the cons, unfortunately there are some hitches in the unlock system, with the the fact that you need to get "intel tokens" as well as money to get new gear which really hampers the experience in my opinion. There's also the problem where I think the devs of this game also see Sniper Elite as their primary competition and have implemented a similar problem with the unlocks for guns are completely retarded and unrealistic, which is a bigger problem here, as this series was initially wanting to be more realistic than the Sniper Elite series. Lastly, the gameplay time per map is great, but still felt like the maps themselves were far more restrictive than in previous games and should have been more open, as well as have at least one or two more of them in the game if they were going to be that restrictive. Overall, despite the problems I mentioned, it's still worth it. 

It could have been: the Dirty Harry video game

It's another month, and I have to give a big hat tip to Razorfist for reminding me about this one when listening to one of his streams a while back, and motivating me to make a post on it. 

Back in the early 2000's there was a little video game developer studio called The Collective, which was given the rights to make an official Dirty Harry video game and was to be published by Warner Bros. Now, before I go any further, you'll have to put on some music to read the rest here. 

The developers described it as being set in the time period between the first two films, Dirty Harry and Mangum Force and was meant to have an original storyline to give more depth to the character of Harry Callahan as you play him. 

The game was to feature a fully free-roaming/open world 1972 San Francisco, which would have been pretty amazing for the time, and the devs stated along the lines that the city of San Francisco would be a character unto itself. 

The other only known aspect to the gameplay was to be that you had to straddle the line between rouge and good cop. With the devs planning to have reactive AI for both crooks and cops that would react to the player's choices. The idea being that if you were too soft on crooks, they may not take the player (Harry Callahan) seriously, but if you were too brutal, it will put you in trouble with the police chief.

Unfortunately, the studio was having financial troubles and the game was cancelled back in 2007, which was not very long into it's development, and the studio went under. 

I can't begin to tell you what I unspeakable things I would do for this project to be resurrected and fully realized. Can you imagine if they had different crimes you follow like storylines based on the book series, or I would still love it if you just played through alternate versions of the first three movies. 

Holy freaking awesome sauce if they could get all those stories into a game.

Hell, just to have a game with a fully realized early 1970s San Francisco that actually feels alive would be amazing just by itself (Watch Dogs 2 was a boring piece of crap that doesn't count). Also, seeing the success of games like LA Noire makes me think that a far more politically incorrect and action oriented version starring the famous Harry Callahan would be nothing short of amazing.  

Though, knowing studios these days, I have no hope of it ever actually happening, as they would never be able to properly capture the political incorrectness and would likely have to pair Harry with some minority, oppressed woman that always does the job better than him and puts him in his place as a racist bigot all the time and lecturing the player on a constant basis to push "the message". On a related note, can you imagine how cool a Death Wish video game would be, if someone could get it right? To quote Harry himself, "Nothing wrong with shooting as long as the right people get shot."

Anyways, there was never an official gameplay trailer released, but a teaser trailer with assets planned to be used in the game was created for the 2006 E3 show that you can watch below. The really sad bit is that it still completely sells me 110% on the concept, despite the visuals being pretty dated nowadays.  

Sniper Elite 5: two steps forward, one big step back

So, I did get the new Sniper Elite 5 game, and especially after having replayed the 4th entry in the series recently, the 5th one seems like a mixed bag. Don't get me wrong here, it's still a very enjoyable game with some welcome improvements, but it seems like it's nowhere near the level of polish and intuitiveness as the last one. 

First off, let's look at the pros: The maps are far bigger and far more open than any of the previous games by far. This also means they are far more populated, which also ups the difficulty, in that there are far more enemies to converge on you if your position is discovered. Certainly a welcome improvement. There are also a lot more opportunities in each map to create distractions, booby trap, sabotage, and sound mask your shots with them than in previous games. 

Another Pro is that some of the new shooting mechanics are also welcome improvements, as bullet travel time, bullet drop and windage are far more noticeable than in previous games. Another great feature is that there are more new ammunition types that have a much greater affect when using them. 

Another great pro is that they added more realistic properties to suppressors in the game by making suppressors a component that needs to be added to your gun either before a mission or at a workbench, as they cannot be added or removed on the fly, which is nice. The suppressors also still make noise that can be detected by enemies, and depending on the type and ammunition you use will affect the sound level they make and the range they can be detected at. Secondary weapons are also far more useful than in previous games as they can also be equipped with suppressors and be customized. The ability to use mounted and dismounted MG42s, is also a really cool addition. 

Okay, so on to the weapon customization, which is a pretty big give and take. It was certainly something that should have been in the last game, and a very welcomed feature here in this one, but there are some serious issues with it. As far as the good aspects, there are the suppressor properties mentioned, and there are also some really neat little historically accurate options to add to some of the guns that change the characteristics/properties of the guns and how you use them.

On the flip side of this is that there are also a lot of dumbass additions that make no freaking sense whatsoever.  First there are the attachments that affect stats for no reason whatsoever. Why the flying fudgesicle would a gun's stock or magazine affect my freaking rate of fire or damage? Why the hell are basic aspects to the gun not accurate and/or why don't they use real modifications that were available at the time? Why the hell are other guns crap being added to the wrong guns when they don't even have stuff that would have been actually available to them as mentioned earlier? This is horrendously bad considering a basic google search would have given the dev team some easy options to add instead of butchering the look and feel of the guns in the game, and would have taken less than 5 min to research. Note to the devs: It's not fun when you do that, it just makes you look like a bunch of lazy freaking idiots.

Then there are the blatant cons: The game is nowhere near as polished as the previous entries in the series. I can't tell you how many times I was frustrated by my character doing actions I did not want him to do or just not doing the thing I asked him to at all, get stuck or fall through the environment, blatantly not perform the action I wanted to quick enough, or somehow switch ammo types without me wanting to. To be fair, this had been an issue with previous games in the series, but it was far more noticeable this time around and I had recently played the last two games in the series, and I did not have anywhere near as much trouble with the controls in those games. 

Another con is the fact that the list of weapons you get access to is really freaking small. I understand they wanted some kind of unlock system, but with how few of weapons they have, it feels really restrictive and dumb. Especially when they start you off with some exotic experimental British rifle right off the bat, but with no access to basic rifles like the No4 or No3 SMLE, M1 Garand, MAS 36, or Mosin Nagant, NONE OF WHICH ARE IN THE FREAKING GAME AT ALL! I would gladly get rid of all the retarded, fictional weapon customizations, or the crazy experimental guns in favor of having more weapons, especially the basic, most readily available ones in the world at the time, you dolts.   

That's not all for the cons though. Now the series has always played a little fast and loose with historical accuracy, but this one seems to go all in on the woke crap. For example, in previous games they would still try to be somewhat historically accurate by using real programs, events, and technology, but simply sensationalize/ramp up it's effectiveness/impact/importance. But in this game there's a number of problems. First off, the story revolves around a black woman who is a French resistance fighter who does field ops better than you, which is pretty lame. Especially considering there were no notable black female field operatives in the French resistance that I'm aware of (note: plenty of intelligence gatherers, but no field operatives I know of). I was never overly invested in the story of the games, as even the last one was pretty dumb as they insisted you were working with partisans in Italy, but Italy never had partisan groups, only communists. So I guess historical stupidity is par for the course here, since they are already doing it with the weapons. 

Another minor gripe I have is that despite the maps being bigger and more populated, they feel far less interactable. In the last couple games, you could do all sorts of damage to the enemy even if it wasn't your objective. You could blow up artillery pieces, AAA batteries, trucks, and all sorts of bits to the environment if you wanted to, but now, it takes much more effort to blow up trucks, you cannot blow up AAA unless it's a secondary objective, and you have no ability to destroy all those artillery pieces everywhere. Another thing to tack on to that complaint is that you can no longer shoot out or break all the lights, with only some being able to be broken. This really kills some of the stealth elements, and replacing the throwable rocks with bottles was another stealth-breaking choice that just hampers the player compared to previous games. 

Lastly, there is the weird. Among the new features is an option to perform non-lethal takedowns on enemies and also the newly added non-lethal ammo. Now, usually I would say these are essential additions to any stealth-based game, but in this case I think it really defeats the point here. The game revels in the gore displayed when shooting and taking down enemies, as well as the fact that all your enemies are Nazis, so who in the hell are they appealing to with these (likely never used) features? I sure as hell never touched that stuff.  

Note that there aren't two thumbs here...

In summary, despite all my very heavy criticisms here, the game is still darn fun. But with the amount of stuff that's broken, and the fact that there's a much smaller armory, and less content outside of the much bigger maps, I'd wait until the game is on sale or they include all the future DLC in the base price rather than pay for it all now. 

Forgotten Fan Films: Prelude to Axanar

This one will be a bit longer than most of my posts on films, especially for a film that is known for being so short. It's also not really that forgotten, but rather, I don't think it is given the recognition for it's huge significance today and at the time. 

Basically, during the great drought of Trek shows before the garbage that is Disco, but after the nu-Trek Jar-Jar films released, there was a small number of fan studios putting out some high-quality Trek content. In particular, a new one was just starting and released a preview for what was to be a full length feature in a faux-documentary style. Thankfully the full preview is still available on Youtube:

Why was this such a big deal, you ask? Well, first off, instead of trying to re-imagine the original series era of Trek, this one faithfully recreates it. The Jar-Jar Trek was required to be different and was way too heavy on the gloss and lens flares, making everything seem fake on screen. On the other hand, Axanar tried to feel more grounded in it's sets and effects, giving it a more gritty feel. Unlike Enterprise and the nu-trek shows, it also wasn't trying to re-tread old ground, but was trying to flesh out something that had never been told first-hand in the trek universe before. As well as being faithful to established trek, it was also respectful to it's audience.

Naturally, because of these things, it was getting much higher viewing numbers than the new show that released at the same time, Disco. It was also getting a lot more fan hype and enthusiasm surrounding it, and the entire internet was praising it while using to compare to Disco and how trash that show is. 

So, naturally, because the boneheads in charge of CBS hate both Trek and it's fans, and have no business sense whatsoever, the lawyers started seeping out of the woodwork to swarm on Axanar like flies to a carcass. Because Axanar wasn't doing anything conceptually different than has been done with Trek fan-films in the past, CBS came up with new draconian restrictions on fan-films with the threat of legal action if it was breached, and handed cease and desist orders to the studio. That action had the affect of not only killing Axanar, but nearly all other trek fan projects going on at the time. 

I look back at this now and realize my worst fears at the time were completely right in that this was the first big blow to the Trek fandom and was the beginning of the end for Trek in general. Now Star Trek is permanently dead, never to be born again. 

The only place that Trek lives on is in a small community of the PC gaming sphere, despite the garbage that is Star Trek: Online. With the revival of many Trek PC games on GoG.com, and with the release of one of the greatest trek mods of all time, Armada III for Sins of a Solar Empire, there is a bit of a resurgence of classic trek fandom that lives on. Not only that, but little known to most people, there was to be a major mod project tie-in for Axanar at the time it released. 

The same team behind the Armada III mod were asked to help make this tie in, and they started work on it even before the final version of Armada III was finished, calling it Axanar: Strategic Operations. However, because of the CBS actions, this project was quickly cancelled. But the same team still couldn't be kept down and now have a similar project to carry on the original spirit and setting now called: Ages of the Federation: The Four Years War. It is well into an early build release and it is still undergoing development with additional releases expected soon. 

At the same time, the same team also announced a sequel to the mod that takes place purely between the Motion Picture and the TNG era, which is what I am most excited about, as it's my favorite era of visual style for Trek, but with not much exploring that time frame. So, all you real Star Trek fans who like stuff that isn't trash, go give 'em a look-see. 

The Roddenberry Archive

Big hat tip to Scott at the Unwanted Blog for posting about this one a while back, and I figure I'll forward the news along. 

So the big news in nerd circles a couple weeks ago was the announcement of the Roddenberry Archive and the projects it announced. First, they stated they will be making full digital recreations of all of the Enterprise starships, including ones not seen on screen, all of which will include every room and prop in excruciating detail. 

Next they announced a project to recreate the pilot episode of "The Cage" as a a full scale holodeck simulation, whatever that means. I assume that they mean a VR-style, fully 3d experience, but that's just a guess. But, they do include the famous Michael Okuda in the project as well as the original director of the episode as well. Below is a little video of the projects they are working on at the archive so far:

Now, as Scott pointed out, how the projects will be digested or distributed is a complete mystery to me at this point, and I don't know if they will be products to consume by the public at large, or just an internal thing, so we'll see how that pans out, I guess. Hopefully is is something that the average person can enjoy, as true Trek fans have been getting nothing but runny excrement with nutty chunks as official content for more than decade or so.  

The Uncensored Library

click to enbiggen

Minecraft is truly the game of the century, not for what it set out to achieve, but what it inadvertently has. 

One of the greatest accomplishments achieved in the game is The Uncensored Library. It seeks to use the game as a medium for all banned media/news in countries with oppressive and restricted rights to an individual's speech and freedom of the press. In even the most restrictive countries, the game is still often available and can connect to servers hosted abroad to be accessed by anyone playing the game. It very well may be one of the greatest achievements a video game has made in the name of freedom for the oppressed. 

Go check it out their site that has a bunch more info and downloads at: https://www.uncensoredlibrary.com/en

Ground Branch

So, so many years ago I heard of a very small group of developers wanting to make a true spiritual successor to the Rainbow Six franchise. Some have since attempted this, and in my opinion failed miserably. Not to mention the actual Rainbow Six franchise, which not only become a non-tactical mainstream game, but also cowtows to the commie Chinese government censors. 

So, what does that leave us? I already talked about Ready or Not, which aims to be more of a SWAT series spiritual successor, but has a few of the same vibes. But as for an actual, improved one for one experience, I think there is only one out there and it is called Ground Branch.

This being made by a very small team of devs, and they have been developing this game for nearly 15 years. They have had a number of things to delay them, including completely switching game engines, getting bought out by a publisher, and outsourcing and hiring other teams to make modules/components to the game. 

A 747 map just like in Rogue Spear!

However, all the time seems to have paid off, as the game is available now as an early access title and despite being in a pre-alpha state, is coming together very nicely. No other game has given me quite the same feeling as the old R6 games, but this one delivers in spades. Heck, even some of the maps are near identical to some that were in Rogue Spear, along with some more inventive ones like the Bin Laden compound in Pakistan. 

Very in depth customization for gear and weapons.

Personally, I don't recommend buying games in an early access state, so I would tell most people to wait until an official release to ensure you not only get a product, but that the one you get is both good and what is promised. However, if the current state of the game is is any indication of the future, things are looking really good. That, and if you are like me and just are comping at the bit for an experience like the old Rainbow games, even if in an unfinished state, then go sign up!

DCS: the free stuff

You know, with all my talk about all the Digital Combat Simulator flight sim on here, I've rarely mentioned some of the better aspects of it, which is that there is a plethora of free content for it. The base game itself is free to play and includes the Su-25 Frogfoot and the trainer variant of the P-51D Mustang. I've also mentioned the fabulous A-4E Skyhawk mod here before but in addition to that, here's a list of other mods available with download links that don't require any paid component of the game to work:

A-29B Super Tucano - Not my favorite aircraft, but a great one to include in the game.
AH-6J Littlebird - I can see this one being extremely fun.
C-130 Hercules - I bet you don't see that too much on the multiplayer servers, but I like it.
MQ9 Predator B - Interesting to make a drone mod for a flight sim.
MB-339 - Such a cool and often neglected little jet trainer.
Alphajet - By far my favorite of the Euro jet trainers. 
T-45 Goshawk - Almost a must with all the naval aviation features in the game.
Su-24M - Now that is one heck of a project to develop this mod.
Tu-22M3 - Another cool and underappreciated jet that must have been a complex mod to make.
F-117A - Hey, that's pretty cool. Didnt' think someone would be able to make the wobblin' goblin.
Mig-23UB - Not the best jet out there, but an essential and interesting addition IMHO. 

There's also a slew of commercial, acrobatic, and other military support and civilian aircraft out there, too that can be found with even weak google-fu skills, but I figure if you're playing a combat flight sim, the combat aircraft are gonna be the ones that interest most people. 

Max Payne remaster/remake

Catch the actual announcement here.

You know, I was just thinking about all the older PC games that I loved that could use a good remastering due to the tech just not aging too well.  Well, it seems that Remedy Entertainment has entered an agreement with Rockstar to have the original two games to be given a remastering. As long as they don't try to reinvent the wheel and they keep the story and characters exactly the same, I can see this being pretty darn good. Count me in. 

My abandonware

I love talking about free games on here, more specifically, I love talking about free games that are actually good that you can actually play. However, this one will be a little bit different, as I'm just gonna throw the entire kitchen sink at you. 

If you haven't heard of it, there's a great little resource out there to help with finding some types of free games. I don't mean the crappy free to play games that have a terrible paywall that rapes your wallet of cash at a certain point, but actual freeware and abandonware games. Go to the myabandonware site to check out the ever-growing and already huge list of free games you can download. 

A word of caution, though. It isn't like GOG or some other platforms that actually try to update the game for modern systems, so some (or even most games) will still require some technical tinkering like unofficial patches, no-cd cracks, and file editing know-how to work properly. But, if you are missing an old or classic game, one that is no longer distributed, or just plain forgotten, then this is the place for you as they have all sorts that you just can't get anywhere else.

Falcon BMS: Aiming High

It's back, baby! The old, yet popular flight sim Falcon 4.0 made by Microprose was staple for anyone who loved realistic flight sims in 1998 when the game first came out. It was unprecedented in it's realism and detail, even including a manual that was thick as a phone book written with help from actual F-16 pilots. The game was just downright groundbreaking in the complexity and number of features for the time, including a dynamic campaign, dynamic weather, digital encyclopedia and reference library of aircraft, ships and equipment. Even with the early access release of the F-16 for DCS, Falcon 4.0 is still lauded for being one most accurate flight sims for the F-16 ever made (likely to say so until the DCS version is fully released.  

Properly resurrected from the dead

However, the game was not immune to the vast strides in improvement of video game technology from the time it came out to now, and it certainly does show some age and can be rough around the edges to say the least. But ever since the leak of the source code to the game by one of the devs in April of 2000, there has been an active and vibrant modding community surrounding the game. 

BenchMark Simulation's mod team logo

Thus enters the ambitious mod called Falcon BMS (Bench Mark Simulations) that first released in 2012 to breathe new life into the old game. It is nothing short of a complete overhaul to vastly improve both the visual fidelity and gameplay. It adds a completely new terrain engine to the game, improved weather effects, weapon and animation effects, vastly improved 3d models, and greatly improved skins across the board. As far as gameplay, they have introduced fully 3d interactive cockpits to replace the older models, improved multiplayer code, and improved AI to better facilitate better dynamic campaigns, support for newer versions of the F-16, and adding a host of new friendly and enemy aircraft, and these are just some of the new features. 

A picture of the difference between the game and the mod circa 2015 from the Steam community page.

Of course, being a mod, you'll still need the original game to play it, which used to be a difficult endeavor for some time, as the game was not in circulation for quite a while. Thankfully, as of now, you can find copies of it available at both GOG and Steam for reasonable prices. So go check out the mod as they are still releasing new versions as of 2021, and plan to continue to improve it and release new versions in the future. 

Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed - Announcement Trailer

It seems a new Ghostbusters game was just announced a little while ago, I think the concept is good, hopefully the game turns out that way. I stated on here how much I really liked the official game that came out a few years ago, hopefully this one is just as good if not better.  

Black Mesa: The Half Life we need

I've said before there are a few games responsible for me getting really into PC games. The holy trinity being Rainbow Six, StarCraft, and Half-Life. Half Life is one of those games that has just aged well, but despite that, people had endeavored to remaster/remake it and that has resulted in the excellent Black Mesa. This week there was a pretty good documentary released about the making of Black Mesa on youtube that was pretty good that got me thinking how much I liked it's soundtrack.  

The Black Mesa Soundtrack just has the perfect blend of mystery, horror, and action movie vibes that really enhance the setting. So, I'll have to put in a few of the best examples to ensure you're getting even more bang for your buck today.

The original theme song above is still the best. Unfortunately they used a remix for the game that is nowhere near as good. More are beyond the jump:

Noah, get the Ark! Or not...

Lost Ark is another game I've gotten into recently. Free to play and developed in Korea, then brought to the US by Amazon, I was rather surprised by it. It's a top-down, hack and slash fantasy MMO-RPG that has some gameplay elements that are very similar to the Diablo series of games. 

To be honest, I liked the Diablo games, but was nowhere near as into it as much as everyone else I knew. Another thing I generally loathe is MMOs, and in particular free to play ones, as they usually are designed to just rape you of your time and money. So I was very unenthusiastic when I heard of the game and was not in any hurry to try it out. Color me surprised when I actually fired it up and tried it out after a friend who's opinion I respect insisted I play it.

Boy was I wrong; the game is not only good, but downright impressive! On a technical level alone, the customization options for the HUD, the quality of life options and functionality to the menus, and gameplay is superb.  The visuals are pretty, the animations are astoundingly good, the environments are pretty and unique, and they do a far better job utilizing and showing off the environments than Diablo could ever hope to do. 

Speaking of which, I really detested Diablo 3 after a short while as it seemed they engineered the game for you to waste your life on it as it was a game that just did not respect your time. That, and nearly everything other than the initial campaign was an exercise in frustration dealing with all the hassle.

Not so in Lost Ark. It's so refreshing to see a game that is considered an MMO, that doesn't force you to use it like social networking. It's a free to play game that I haven't spent a dime on, as it's engineered to fleece your wallet. From what I see, it's not constantly down for maintenance like so many other online only games.  

But Saint Grendel, you ask, how does it play? Well, to be honest, I wasn't impressed with the first couple hours of gameplay, as it seemed like just another Diablo wanna be. However, it wasn't long after that, in which the game really flexes on you and you start doing thing you never have in that type of game. Truly epic, LOTR sized battles where you man artillery pieces, climb up siege towers to raid castles, and that's just the campaign. There's literally dozens of things you can do if you don't want to do that. Sail the high seas as an explorer or a pirate, play card games, build up a base where you can farm and manage buildings, or spend time crafting. And that doesn't even address the amount of content and depth to the game which already feels endless, but they are still working on implementing a plethora of new content as well! The sky is the limit here, and all without spending a penny!

That isn't to say the game is perfect, there are a few issues here and there. For example, the game does take eons to load up for some reason, and I have noticed some continual clipping issues when using any sprint ability, and the UI could still use some small refinements, and because of the free to play model, there is a bewildering number of currencies for almost no reason. 

That being said, it's far from anything that would stop me from really enjoying it so far, and I'm looking forward to all the new content coming down the pipe. Give it a try, as I guarantee it won't cost you a thing unless you really want it to.

Simulators have come a long way

Its' funny to me how it seems to be more and more common for either news outlets or governments to either mistakenly or purposefully use game footage and try to pass it off as real life for propaganda purposes. 

I remember a while ago that game footage from ARMA 3 was used by Russian news tying to pass it off as actual footage of the military. Or another instance when an Indian news outlet tried to use ARMA as well to pass it off as evidence of Pakistani forces aiding the Taliban.

Now more recently, another similar situation was when someone posted some footage of the DCS flight sim game to Twitter last week and tried to pass it off as evidence of the Ghost of Kyiv. They almost got away with it if it wasn't for those meddling kids, as DCS is quite possibly the most life-like flight sim ever made, both in visuals and mechanics. So I guess aside from making the news even less credible and trustworthy (but what else is new?), it's an excellent endorsement for the games. 

Another good youtube channel I like, Growling Sidewinder has a good laugh at it in a recent video: