There are two kinds of people on the internet. People who hold a special place in their hearts for Duke3d, and those who give out stink that anyone still cares about it.

To people in the latter group, Duke Nukem 3d was a game about shooting aliens, and giving money to strippers. It was fun when it came out, but games have moved on, and we’re all sick of killing aliens, right? Can’t we just forget about this old fossil and move on with our lives?

To people in the former group, Duke Nukem 3d was a game about having fun with the environment in a way that had never been done; about ridiculously cool guns; about both mocking and paying homage to so many dodgy 80s action flicks (evil dead, total recall, they live and aliens to name but a few); about chucking pipe-bomb after pipe-bomb and setting them all off; about setting laser trip mines on cans of c9 and then sitting back to watch the carnage. But crucially, it was about adding to the experience by writing your own mods, creating your own maps, adding your own weapons.

User created content was not new of course. It was something which had been possible with the Godfather of 3D games, Doom. However, Duke made it easy – and fun. There was an entire library of cool stuff to use in maps. You could recreate your whole town with all the urban textures and sprites that shipped with the game (and many people did). A simple top down level editor allowed you to draw out a map, and then you could raise or lower sections while in 3d mode. You could import your own art (I’ll never forget the gack shade of pink required to set transparency).

Just writing about it brings back so many memories of mods. I remember one that turned the freeze ray into a flame thrower. I remember a total conversion set in Vietnam which had a sniper rifle and allowed you to call in airstrikes – two things that shouldn’t have been possible with the engine, but people found ingenious workarounds to the limitations. I remember a hilarious and actually pretty useful mod, which would drop a duke turd when the player crouched and pressed ‘space’. This turd would then explode if stepped on by an enemy. It was a simple combination of the laser trip-mine code with a blood spill sprite with the hue altered to a lovely greeny-brown colour, but it added so much to the game.

I myself made an aliens Total Conversion that combined 3 maps from other mappers (after I got permission), along with a mod someone had made replacing the lizard troops with aliens (also with permission), and a mod I made myself which replaced the RPG and machine gun with the Pulse Rifle / Pulse Rifle grenade launcher, and added replaced the freezer with a flame thrower. I only wish I’d kept a copy, it was uploaded to a few duke mod sites as Xeno TC, and I’ve googled for it now and then over the years but I can never find it (There are a few aliens mods out there but none of them are the one I made).

However, my proudest moment was crafting a detailed map of my school, filling it with various easter eggs and putting exploding walls all over the place. It was probably the first and last time I put that much effort into mapping. Sadly, I also don’t have a copy of that map either. =(

During my last year in school (1998), I was getting a bit tired of waiting for DNF so I decided to buy a new game which also shipped with a level editor – Unreal. I played around with unrealEd, and while it was easy to use and light-years ahead of Build (and went on to form the groundwork for half of todays games) it never really pulled me in like duke mapping did, and nothing has since.

I’ve been on and off the 3dr forums since 1997, posting and reading, contributing, wondering, imagining. No game can ever live up to the hype that we all built for DNF, and I don’t expect it to. However, it still needs closure. A whole team of developers at 3dr have been working on DNF for the last 12-13 years, and it needs to finally see the light of day.

I look forward to the day Duke gets released, and I look forward to buying a copy, and I look forward to playing it. I don’t expect it to live up to the hype, but I’ve waited 13 years for this game, and I owe it to my 17 year old self to play it.

Seems like I’ve been writing a lot about FarCry 2/3, but I never posted any of it to the blog for some reason. Now that I’ve actually finished the game (finally) I feel like I’m in a postition to actually share my thoughts on it.

FarCry 2 was not perfect. It had flaws. Some would say it had more flaws than good points, but I have to say I enjoyed it for the most part. I’m going to cut right to the chase and list what I think it did right and wrong, and what should change for the sequel (if it ever gets made)

Things FarCry 2 did right:

Beautiful Scenery - Nothing looks as pretty as FarCry 2. Probably not even the real thing! =)

Interesting weapons - FC2 was full of weapons exciting weapons. Uzis. M79 Grenade Launchers. Dragunovs. IEDs. Silenced Shotguns. Explosive Crossbows.

Fire – Fire was a dangerous weapon that would often backfire on yourself (no pun intended). Fire is cool.

Immersion – From the map that needed sunlight to be read, to the phone that would appear from a pocket somewhere, I always felt immersed in FC2.

Things FarCry 2 did wrong:

No outdoor friendlies – In the intro we must pass 50 ordinary civilians, and drive through a checkpoint manned by soldiers who don’t fire on sight. Why can’t we have this in the game? All the civilians left in the country are huddled in a handful of buildings. And I would really have appreciated if the ‘checkpoints’ were ceasefire zones. Random gunfights could still have erupted if you drove through too fast, and bandits in their own vehicles could still have been driving around ready for a fight.

Not enough modes of transport – It’s been said before, and it was addressed somewhat in the DLC, but there weren’t enough modes of transport in FC2. Only one (!) type of car, no pickup trucks, no vans, no flatbed trucks, no motorbikes (the quad doesn’t count), no bicycles, no inflatable speedboats, no jetskis… these could have all been in there without changing the fundamentals of the game.

Missions too far apart - For most missions I’d have to bus to one corner of the map, then drive for 5 minutes, then blow up one truck, and then have to make my way the whole way back to the HQ to pick up another mission. Would have saved me a lot of time, and therefore given me more time to ENJOY the game, if could have had a phone which would receive SMS missions or something. Could even introduce an interesting mechanic of having to fit the mission briefing into 140 odd characters, leaving some open to interpretation. You could go pay the contracter a visit to clear up the details of the mission or press on in your own way.

Psychic Enemies / No Stealth – You just can’t sneak up on people in FC2. If you cap someone from half a mile away with your uber sniper rifle, within about three seconds AK rounds will suddenly be smacking the ground right next to you. With a rifle, it should take a few shots before your enemies figure out where you are. Also, it would have increased realism for me tenfold to see soldiers firing at empty bushes where I had been a minute ago, or having weapon jams of their OWN. I could never sneak up on people and machete them, and no matter how silently I killed a guard every other guy suddenly knew about it. The machete brings me to another point

No Dedicated Melee button – Sometimes, I’d come up against an enemy and either have a weapon jam or run out of ammo, and have to either reload, unjam or switch to another weapon. If I wanted to melee the guy I have to switch to the machete while he shoots at me, and then hack him with it. One dedicated melee button would have been invaluable. Fair enough, it takes time to pull out a machete, but being able to just clock a guy with the butt of the shotgun that just jammed would have been hugely helpful, and more realistic to boot.

Not enough freedom with weapons – Lots of weapons contradicted each other in ways that didn’t make sense. For instance, you couldn’t carry a pistol and an IED at once. That’s a bit odd? Surely I should be allowed to drop a weapon from one of my other slots instead? In that instance, IEDs should probably go in with grenades rather than being in weapon slots, but there are more examples of that kind of incompatibility. It was possible to have an explosive launching weapon in every slot, which was a bit ridiculous. I admire that it was possible, but making it possible meant that it made lots of other options impossible, such as carrying the MGL grenade launcher and any kind of sniper rifle or assault rifle or the shotgun. I’d much rather a weapon slot swap mechanism like in Halo or Modern Warfare

Not enough interaction - While the game was immersive, in that you felt like you were really in Africa, your only outlet of interaction was shooting things, picking up guns, opening doors and driving vehicles. You couldn’t pick up or mess with anything in a building except for Health packs and Weapons. In a town, you couldn’t talk to anyone who wasnt there to give you a mission etc. At the very least, I’d like to see a black market where I can buy and SELL weapons, first aid kits and other equipment.

So to sum up, here are some things I’d like to see in FarCry 3. Devs, if you’re reading, I’ve split it into categories of levels of difficulty for you =)

Easy Stuff

• Friendly NPCs. tired of everyone being a raging psychopath
• More Vehicles. It only takes some modelling.
• Better mission management. a PDA for missions, Or missions via SMS messages. give our guy a blackberry held together by tape.
• Better weapon slot management. Go to a CoD / Halo style universal slot system.
• Proper working stealth. No more psychic enemies.
• Dedicated melee button. let me hit someone with the butt of a jammed gun. extra points if I can use it like a baseball bat.
• More health stuff (food, drinks etc)

Medium Stuff

• Even more kinds of guns & weapons than before. Go nuts. more importantly, distribute them all over the place. I want to be able to pick up exotic weapons, not just buy them.
• The Ability to slap an IED on a vehicle and jump out of it. Rolling bomb!
• More interaction with the environment
• Pay buddies to assist on missions; these are MERCENARIES, right? Why can’t I pay them to come do a tough mission with me?
• Bribe people instead of killing; would be nice to pay a weapons shipment guy to deliver to my house instead of having to kill him.
• Stun / smoke grenades; Ok, flashbangs are useless outdoors, but smoke grenades could have been useful at times. Even just to create a distraction.
• Play dead. plenty of times I found myself surrounded by the bodies of guys I had just killed, when another patrol arrived shooting. If I could lie in the dirt next to the bodies until the patrol starts looking us over, that would have been wild.
• IED Booby Traps; Far Cry instincts went a bit crazy with unrealistic tree traps, but it would be nice to set up a tripwire or an improvised claymore here or there

Complex Stuff

• More freedom to what you’re allowed carry, maybe an inventory like STALKER.
• More chances to deploy ‘the element of surprise’; taking out the leg of a building on stilts, or sending a stampede of wildebeest in on top of your enemies would be nice
• Buddies that hang around all the time, not just when you’re in a pickle.
• Search bodies; They’ll have diamonds, food, health packs, bullets etc.
• Drones. Modern combat is all about drone warfare, so I’d like to see the cheap african improvised version – RC cars, planes and choppers with bombs strapped to them.
• Customize weapons;  I want to put scopes, grenade launchers, laser sights, silencers etc. on whatever I like.

So yesterday I had some free time while my wonderful fiance made dinner, and decided was going to have a ‘quick’ game of Batman Arkham Asylum. It was a pained and frustrating experience, and here’s how it went.

I fire up my games PC, (hooked up to the TV) and launch BatmanAA from the shortcut. I just installed it a few days ago so I decided at bare minimum I’d have time to play through the cut scene and get my game set up for proper action next time I play. The game loads, plays through the usual company logos and incessant nvidia whispering and gets to the menu. A box pops down from the top of the screen telling me I need to log in to GamesForWindows Live. In a pleasant stroke of luck I remember both my username and complicated password. I fill them in, and tell it to remember my details and sign me in automatically every time, lest I forget said password. I am presented with a message that “this game requires an update. If you decline this update you will be signed out”. Signing out means I can’t save my game progress, so I don’t want to do that.

I do the update. A message tells me my computer “may restart” after the update. MAY restart? I take it I have no choice in it then? It’s a bit vague and misleading. While it continues updating, it sits there with Batman AA in the background, meaning I literally can’t do a THING with my PC until it’s done. No surfing while I wait. No reading emails. Three minutes later its done, no restart required. Lucky me.

I relaunch Batman as it has dumped me to the desktop. I have to log in again to GFWL again, though I had already told it to sign me in automatically every time. Maybe I didn’t check that the first time afterall. Oh well. Check it this time for sure. Now I am once more presented with the update message. Looks like it didnt work the first time. I try to update, and it won’t connect, then it kicks me out to desktop. I change tactics and run GFWL from the start menu. That tells me I need a different update, not for the game but for GFWL itself. A prompt urges me to enable automatic updates (for Windows i assume, no I don’t want that – already had it screw up my Nvidia drivers on me once) OR I can download it manually and run the install file. I choose the manual option, and it starts to download the gfwlupdate. I’ve now spent 15 minutes trying to play a game.

I Install the update to GFWL, and restart the app. Have to log in AGAIN. Tick automatically sign in AGAIN. Now there’s an error message, a very helpful error 80154002.

“Click here to resolve” it says. I click. It launches IE8 even though Chrome is my default browser. It takes me, not to GFWL, but to the Xbox Live site where I am prompted to set up a profile. I know I’ve already done this for GFWL but I’ll try anything at this point. I create a new profile for myself, same microsoft passport login. It creates the profile, redirects to another page and gets stuck in a redirect loop. After a minute or so it bombs out to a cert error page.

I navigate back to the Xbox Live site and put in the username and password of the profile I just created. It tells me I cannot use my profile with this site.

I google Games for Windows Live and go to the page it was presumably trying to send me to. This page is a giant empty hole where Flash should be.

I am prompted to install Flash, despite already installing it when I installed the OS. Flash installer crashes without installing in IE, reloading the page keeps prompting me to install it.

At this point I’m trying to remain calm, and I realise that the profile HAS been created so I probably don’t NEED the website to work, as long as GFWL works now. I close it the IE8 window and start the desktop app for GFWL again which asks me to log in yet again. This time it works, prompts me to install Silverlight.

I follow the prompt. Silverlight installer launches in Chrome this time, not IE8.

Can this really be the company that created Xbox Live? Seriously? Between all this mucking about and documenting it, it’s been half an hour or more. I have GFWL running now. It is cropping its own Silverlight ads so I can’t see what they want me to buy, but I am logged in and GFWL is updated and thats all I can care about right now.

I start Batman again.

Unbelievably, I am prompted  to log in a fifth time. It is now “Downloading profile”.

I get the update message for the game. Again. I now realise “your computer may restart when the update is complete” does not mean it’ll reboot, it means it ‘may’ forget everything I’ve done for the last five minutes and start at the beginning again. 45 minutes of Non-Gaming has now elapsed. This time it appears to actually be downloading something. 10  minutes later the progress bar is at about 40% (although there are no numbers). At around 60% it bombs out with error 0×80004005. This turns out to be a problem with my internet connection, as windows 7 has decided that my wifi network is gone, even though XP and android phone are picking it up fine. I go get a 15ft Ethernet cable and hook it directly to the PC and restart the process. Start game again. Log in again (6th time). Download update again. At this point. Fiance has long finished cooking dinner and is wondering why I’m so angry when I got to sit on my arse ‘playing’ with computers while she had to cook. I give up on the game, and we watch The Daily Show. Jon Stewart roasts some american politicians I’ve never heard of, and it’s still very funny. 30 minutes later I check back in with GFWL and it has finally installed. My game is now ready to play, just a mere hour or so after I started the PC.

Rather than just yelling about how useless microsoft are, let’s examine everything that went wrong here.

1. Most Crucially, the system failed to work correctly. It took several attempts to finish the process of updating the game so I could play it.

2. Communication breakdown: error messages were either vague or too technical.

3. A dodgy login system: even though I’m running the GFWL app and logged in, I’m forced to re login to GFWL when I run the game I want to play. It also never remembers my password at any point

4. Forcing the updates: I didn’t NEED the updates in order to play. I could have been given an option to play as is

5. No background updates: Steam will happily update my games in the background while I play others. GFWL not only requires my full attention to install updates, it also locks me out of doing anything else at the same time without resorting to CTRL+ALT+DELETE. And I can’t alt tab on Win7. Updates for individual games are not shown in the GFWL desktop client, and I can only download them once I start the affected game. This means that I can’t play when I want to because the game has to update. In Batman’s case, this update was made mandatory by GFWL threatening to log me out if I didnt do the update

6. Design inconsistency: GFWL on the desktop looks different to GFWL in the game which looks different to xbox live and the xbox live website. Not in mind altering Black is White, Up is Down ways, but different enough that buttons are not where you expect them to be all the time. GFWL login on the desktop looks like MSN Messenger with the numbers filed off, but not the in game or web signups. Sometimes they call it Xbox Live, sometimes GFW Live. One side uses Flash, the other silverlight. Some errors launch in the default browser, others do not. Some show codes, others don’t. UI elements like progress bars and buttons do not sync up.

Games for windows live presents a user experience which is at best third rate and at worst a non-functional nightmare. The fact that Microsoft can deliver an experience like xbox live and then turn around and deliver THIS, is amazing.

Far Cry 2 is starting to piss me off, because I can't go anywhere on the map without being attacked about 6 times by the guys at checkpoints.

A (very) simple mod would fix this problem. Either the checkpoint spawn points could be removed, or more ideally the guys manning them could be replaced with those faction type guys from Pala. This would be ideal. You'd pass through the majority of checkpoints unharmed, or you might go through too fast and run over a guy, incurring the wrath of the other soldiers.

Unfortunately, Ubisoft didn't see fit to release a Dunia SDK, and therefore no mods can be created. There is a map editor, so its possible someone could edit the game files and remove all the spawn points, but this wouldnt be distributable since it would a) be huge, and b) consititute a pirated copy of the game.

Cold Fear (2008)
Is that the thing on the boat? That sucked. Although I've seen films with worse plots.

Fear Effect (2008)
Nope. Don't remember that game.

Area 51 (2009)
Game Plot – There are aliens in area 51, shoot them.
Film Plot. There are aliens in Area 51. Watch someone who was in Smallville or Stargate SG1 shoot at them, and eventually escape.

Castlevania (2009)
How does one make a platform film? This will be interesting.

Clock Tower (2009)
Is this a game? A building perhaps, but surely not a game!

Halo (2009)
I thought this was cancelled? Werent there rumours Peter Jackson was to direct then the whole thing went belly up?

Kane & Lynch (2009)
Bank robbers usually make for good film material, but I think the game origin negates that.

The Legend of Spyro (2009)
Cartoon maybe….

Metal Gear Solid (2009)
this could be interesting… a nice anime film of it would be better

Onimusha (2009)
This one is CGI, probably the only genre that suits the game-to-film fiasco

Sabotage 1943 (2009)
Again, I've yet to hear of it.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009)
Anime? God I hope so.

Spy Hunter (2009)
Cock Hunter.

The Suffering (2009)
The Audience will do all the suffering (LOL I AM SO FUNNY)

Tekken (2009)
Sweet Zombie Jesus. A StreetFighter, a DOA and Two Mortal Kombat films later and they still haven't learned. Wake up hollywood suits – you can't just take every popular game and turn it into a film!

Warcraft (2009)
How would this even work?

Bioshock (2010)
I used to whinge about how bioshock could suck as a film, but its the only one on the list so far with any potential!

Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars (2010)
Or maybe it isn't….

Driver (2010)
Starring Jason Statham, being apparently the only actor left who can drive.

Earthworm Jim (2010)
There was an earthworm Jim cartoon I think, but I'm guessing this would be a guy-in-a-suit movie like those hilarious Martin Lawrence capers.

Gears of War (2010)
If we can successful offload that wankbag Cliffy B onto the film industry, the unavoidably awful film that results will have been worth it.

God of War (2010)
starring Brendan Fraser. Probably. Did anyone see him drunk on the Graham Norton show the other night?

Joust (2010)
Or 'A Knights Tale, The Game' The Movie. Except without Heath Ledger obviously.

King of Fighters (2010)
See 'Tekken'

Mortal Kombat (2010)
OMFG See Tekken Already

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010)
Is this with Jake Gylenhall? did he read the script at all? Hey that rhymes!

Resident Evil 4 (2010)
I have a funny story for this one. My friends 7 year old cousin has ADD, and he loved Resident Evil. After he saw it, he started writing the script for a sequel. Well, to be honest he was more drawing page after page of men shooting dogs, but apparently thats what happened in the first one. Anyway. When the second one came out, I read a review that stated that the script was so convoluted that it appeared 'to have been written by a 7 year old with ADD'. I can only assume the kid sent in his pages of canine hatred and they actually used it.

Splinter Cell (2010)
Has some potential, in a kind of a Tom Clancy writes Jason Bourne kind of way.

World of Warcraft (2011)
Wait. Wait wait wait. They're making a WoW film seperately to a Warcraft film? Oh wait!  Maybe the i film will go straight to DVD, but you'll only be able to download the WoW film.

I am shocked. Shocked! Well I'm not that shocked. Hollywood is all about the dosh, and all these films rely on the same principle. Trick just enough people who played the game into going to see it to make the costs back, and hopefully a get a few quid more out of them.

So what games would make for good films? It's hard to say. I could take the moral high ground and say that there simply arent ANY games that translate to the screen properly, but then again I feel like Monkey Island would have made a cracking film, if only the guys who made Pirates of the Caribbean hadn't stolen most of the plot and characters from it.

And now that I think of it, there are a few others that would have worked.

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis – anything would be better than the Crystal Skull. This could have come close to Crusade.
(the argument here of course, is that this wouldn't be a movie of a game, but simply a sequel to an existing film, on which the game is based)
Crimson Skies – either the PC original or the Xbox sequel. But again, Sky Captain pretty much stole its thunder.
Grim Fandango – it might be quite beetlejuice-ical, but that would be no bad thing.

- No stupid plot involving mutants and invisible freaks
- Voice acting that doesn't make you laugh / grit teeth / want to stab yourself
- No more unrealistic weaponry
- No more stupid banter from AI bad guys

More than that, Far Cry 2 corrects many flaws of FPS games in general. It does things right that so many have failed to do.

- No more load times. The only loading screen is when you start the game
this is a godsend. I can't stand the action being interrupted by load screens. I hate them. they should have been eliminated when we moved to CD-ROM
– More realistic health kits
ok sometimes pulling a bullet out of your wrist involves a little more hoopla than we see here, but its certainly a start
- Hands
A few games have started to do this, but Far Cry 2 has done it better than most. Picking things up is almost fun.

Coming Soon
Fallout 3, Dead Space, GTA IV, Left 4 Dead, HL2 : Ep3, Mirror's Edge

Here already
FarCry 2, Stalker : Clear Sky

A Long Way Off
Deus Ex 3, DNF, Rage, Borderlands, Fable 2 (on PC), Operation Flashpoint 2

I bought it on steam 5 days ago to avoid the SecureRom bullshit (and added paddy tax) that comes with the boxed version.

It's currently trundling along at 10.5 KB/s, at around 74%, up from 68% yesterday.

I've been downloading it for 5 fucking days.

I've blogged in the past about how convenient steam is, about how it brings something to the table that piracy can't, and encourages people to buy games rather than pirate them. Now, I'm beginning to question my beliefs. I would have had the pirate version (assuming there is one, and I'm SURE there is) downloaded about 6 times by now. But here I am still waiting for my legitimate version to come down the tubes.

I have a 2mb connection which runs great for everything else. I've tried all the tricks – firewall rules, deleting the clientregistry.blob, downloading that MS TCP tool and deleting TCP connections – it never goes above 17 KB/s.

This is madness. MADNESS! In these days of bit-torrent, how come they can't build a distributed system for downloading this stuff? It should be easy! I can't be the only person in ireland download Far Cry 2 over steam. Can't we all just download a different piece each and get them off each other? Can't we then authenticate those pieces with a central server?

Of course, between work and moving house and all, I wouldn't have time to play it even if I did have it downloaded, but its the thought that counts.

This has the potential to be the greatest computer game ever created.

In fact, its top of my list of games I'm looking forward to on PC, which looks like this

1. Far Cry 2
Sequel to the fantastic but flawed far-cry, which gave us gorgeous scenery, great weapons, fab combat and then ruined it with a stupid monster storyline

2. GTA-IV
Does this need explaining?

3. Rage
IDs New shooter / racer / Post-Apoc Sandbox FPS game thingie. Looks a tiny bit Doom 3 but still excellent

4. Borderlands
GearBox seem to be making nearly the same game as ID, except set on another planet. Its a good time to be a fan of mad-max style games (re-make Interstate 76 I say)

5. Fallout 3
Oblivion with machine guns and post-apocalyptic cityscapes. Yummy.

6. Left 4 Dead
Another small time game thats been bought up by Valve.

7. Stalker : Clear Sky
The Prequel to the refreshingly original Stalker

8. Whatever Valve come up with next
Apart from left 4 dead I mean.

9. Fable 2
I was one of those 12 people who missed the hype over fable and ended up thinking it was an amazing game as a result. The melee combat was intense, the music and atmosphere just sucked you right in.

10. Duke Nukem Forever
I've seen footage, and although it didnt quite live up to what some people expected (read: the second coming) it still looks like it could be a whole world of fun. And after 11 years it bloody better be a decent long game. ]]> http://roryok.com/blog/2008/08/12/far-cry-2/feed/ 0