The Facepalm Roundup: Issue 2

Let me start this off with a simple, direct statement. I hate people that intentionally try to take advantage of or scam others. I find it to be one of the lowest forms of ugly behavior. With that in mind, I've spent the past two weeks piecing bits of information together, forming a mosaic of scamming and shady behavior that makes me cross-eyed when I try to understand all of it. And, while much of this information has become common knowledge amongst the community over the past six months, I have made an attempt to add the smaller bits that may have gone unnoticed.

I don't know who Max Kovtun is, but I don't like him. Based on what I've seen, he's been at the core of several of the scam projects that this post will discuss. The first one that he tried of which I am aware, was an indiegogo campaign for a "Nuclear Energy Space Station." The pitch is filled with a bunch of buzz words. It was also complete bullshit. Check it out here.

His second project was a game called "Space Pioneer." Its Kickstarter campaign claimed to have cosmonauts and scientists involved in its development. Based on what I've seen, they dropped a bunch of names and posted pictures of people that are part of the scientific community and can be found through a Google search, but their actual involvement was questionable at best. At any rate, this project was clearly another scam from the get go. The Kickstarter contained stolen concept art. It once again, used a bunch of buzz words. The video had nothing to do with the game itself. The Kickstarter campaign failed. When that happened, Kovtun took to encouraging people to donate directly through Space Pioneer's website. The site seems functional on the main page, and I'm quite sure the Paypal donation links work, but clicking on the forums, or anything that would actually be relevant to the game itself, lead to nowhere or provide no real information whatsoever.

Now, we come to the project that brought all of this to the public eye and brought all of this garbage to my attention. Early last year, a team calling themselves West Games, who claimed to be made up of "core developers of the STALKER franchise," began a Kickstarter campaign for Areal, a spiritual successor to STALKER. The team/project was lead by Eugene Kim, a Ukrainian, yet the Kickstarter page said that it was based in Las Vegas. Interestingly enough, the campaign money was supposed to go to a man named Leonid Kovtun. That is just the tip of the iceberg. In order to make this go faster for you, the reader, allow me to quick-list off the veritable litany of bullshit that they pushed onto people. They are in no particular order.  
*Their involvement in the STALKER series turned out to be greatly exaggerated.
*The initial version of the campaign page contained alpha footage of Stalker, although it was implied that it was footage of Areal. 
*They set the goal at a measly 50k, despite the fact that they were supposedly creating a custom engine, and planned on releasing Areal on consoles.
*Once they were called on the fact that they hadn't shown anything original, they posted an update with screens of the Areal "prototype." Those screens turned out to be comprised of store-bought Unity assets. A whole map, in fact, from the Unity Apocalypse pack. All they did was make the billboard on the map say "Areal." That's all.
*Their first "gameplay footage" was, once again, store bought Unity assets. 
*When the word "scam" started to circulate, West Games (Eugene Kim specifically), accused the press of being dishonest, posted personal information of Kickstarter backers in public areas, created fake Kickstaer accounts that spammed the comments section of their campaign (in order to troll or bury those that knew what was happening), and even claimed to receive a letter of support from Vladimir Putin.
*Eugene Kim performed a reddit AMA that was a complete disaster. Kim refused to answer basic questions about the project and the company, and the whole thing only reinforced the notion that something sketchy was happening. Several accounts that had been created that day seemed to be the majority of the positive feedback being directed at Kim. 
*It didn't look like they were going to hit their goal, but at the last minute, a couple of backers contributed several thousand to push them over the edge.
*Thankfully, Kickstarter suspended the project, but West Games tried the same "fund us directly through our site" crap that was attempted with Space Pioneer.
*I'm sure I have forgotten a couple things.

Have you read enough yet? Is your skin crawling? Its not over yet. Late last year, a website was privately registered through Godaddy. World Wide Funder claims to be a crowd funding website similar to Kickstarter. And wouldn't you know it, Areal (now rebranded as STALKER: Apocalypse) and Space Pioneer (rebranded as Project Tool) are both on the site. Any money donated goes straight to the project owners. They don't need to meet their goals. Most of the links on the project pages, predictably, lead nowhere. At least one of the very limited assets shown on the STALKER: Apocalypse age comes standard with Unreal 4. Project Tool's campaign video is actually a video stolen from an indie film creator, which can be found here. The rest of the projects on the site are clearly scams. All written in the same broken English, one of the projects is for Counter-Strike 1.6 for Pete sake. Stolen Youtube videos, generic images found on the web, and complete nonsense make up the majority of the content on the site. They even keep pushing back the end dates of the funding campaigns on the projects.

So, let's piece it all together. The Kovtuns, Eugene Kim, and the people that are involved with them are scamming people out of their money by claiming to be working on projects that members of the gaming community would love to see. Everything they display as part of their projects is either stolen, or thrown together with the laziest of efforts possible. Every time one of their scams fails, they come up with something new. They are heartlessly preying on people's gullibility and passion for certain genres and intellectual properties. They are bad people. They are scumbags. And it makes me sick that there are people out there damaging the gaming community in such a way. To be fair, this entire situation has basically become a joke amongst most members of the gaming community, because almost everyone sees this for what it is. However, if even one dollar goes to these charlatans, then we have failed in stopping them. This points back to the importance of being an informed consumer. Now, people shouldn't NEED to lock their car doors, carry mace, or make sure they aren't being scammed when donating to a crowd-funded project, but the reality of the world we live in is that it is often necessary to take precautions in order to protect ourselves.

Hopefully the gaming community can come together and get their scam site (and all future scams of theirs) shut down. Until that time, spread the word. We need to stick together and protect each other. The members of the community are often at odds with one another. "This platform is better. This game sucks. You're a fanboy." However, we should be able to put all of our differences aside in these situations and work together to put a stop to this sort of thing. This behavior goes beyond gaming. Scams are something that threaten to affect everyone, every day. Whether its the old "Nigerian Prince" e-mail scam, or credit card fraud, we have to put a stop to it. The first step in halting this sort of behavior is paying attention, and noticing the little indicators that something is amiss. So, in the words of a great man, "Stay frosty and alert."

The Facepalm Roundup

This is a new type of post that I will start writing intermittently. Its sole purpose is to expose and chronicle some of the shady, underhanded, or dishonest types that have begun to make headway in the industry.

The first member of our roundup is developer ImminentUprising. A part of Digital Homicide Studios (they're the same people from what I can tell), I've heard that they are a two person team, possibly brothers. Their release in October of this year, The Slaughtering Grounds, was not well received. It was universally panned by Steam user reviews, and Jim Sterling gave it a less than stellar review of his own. Overall, it is seen by the community as a lazy attempt to cash in on the zombie/wave survival genres of which everyone is so fond.

How did ImminentUprising respond? They took Jim Sterling's initial review video and put snarky, sarcastic text comments throughout the video. Very classy. As I understand it, the video feud continued on for weeks, with Jim Sterling and ImminentUprising making response videos to their response videos. In addition, ImminentUprising began removing any negative feedback on the Steam forums. The game's forums are a ghost town even now, because they burn down any threads that aren't complimentary. They also proposed a giveaway on their official forums in which they would give a free copy of the game to anyone that gave The Slaughtering Grounds a negative review. Instead of receiving a copy of the game, anyone that participated got banned. On top of all of that, several people noticed that The Slaughtering Grounds consisted mostly of premade assets that had been purchased, or in the case of the game's blood effects and concept art, stolen from a Google image search and an artist they do not know, respectively. In a moment of panic, ImminentUprising leveled a case of some form of copyright infringement at Sterling, which was utter bullshit. It predictably failed.

Wow. Just wow. This kind of behavior is that of a spoiled, ten year old brat. The "developer's" at ImminentUprising don't deserve to have access to development tools of any kind after a legacy of douche-baggery such as this. But wait, what's that? Its not over yet?

They are now working on a new game called Forsaken Uprising. It is basically a Rust clone, and from what I've seen, its faring a little better than The Slaughtering Grounds, but not by much. They seem to have an active presence on the game's Steam forums, and are at least trying a little bit harder with this one. The reviews are still mostly negative, but that's not what is bothering me. What is bothering me is the fact that they have lazily tried to distance themselves from The Slaughtering Grounds by creating a new Steam developer profile with a slightly different formatting of their Developer/Publisher name.

The Slaughtering Grounds format:
ImminentUprising
Digital Homicide Studios LLC

Forsaken Uprising format:
imminentuprising
Digital Homicide Studios LLC.

There you have it. Switching from uppercase to lowercase and adding a period. If you're going to try and improve your image, don't hide from your past mistakes. Don't try to continue to cover them up. Embrace them, apologize for them, learn something from them, and move on.

This was just the warmup round. Check back in the near future. I'll be doing another edition of The Facepalm Roundup.

Happy Birthday Doom

For Doom's 21st birthday, I played through its entire first episode, Knee Deep in The Dead. Enjoy.

The Verdict...Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare

I was in the shower today when I realized my ambivalence towards Call of Duty can be neatly categorized into either optimism or realism. These two sides often duke it out, and much like Call of Duty's own multiplayer matches, the victories only last for a split second. Here is how the internal discussion often takes place...

Optimistic Tony: "A brand new studio, a longer development cycle, and new gameplay mechanics that make sense! Advanced Warfare is going to be the breath of fresh air the series so desperately needs. Its in the future, it includes new movement abilities, and even has a loot drop system. Sounds good to me."

Realistic Tony: "Yeah, but its still Activision publishing the damn thing, which means issues from previous iterations will still exist, and the total amount of paid content will be enough to make Bobby Kotick's money-stuffed mattress even more full than it already is. Its a cash cow for the publisher at this point, pure and simple."

Optimistic Tony: "Well hopefully they'll adjust some of their methods before they run the franchise into the ground, close all three development studios, and cause a lot of people to become jobless."

Realistic Tony: "Are we really up to three development studios for a single franchise? Is that what gaming is becoming? And if you think Activision cares about what happens to the franchise, or its associated developers, you're sorely mistaken. The only thing they understand is a revenue stream."

Optimistic Tony: "Don't think that way! They might do the right thing!"

Realistic Tony: "Good luck with that buddy..."

Advanced Warfare really is a fun game. It contains a large amount of content straight out of the box, it introduces some spectacular new gameplay mechanics, and the PC version (the version I purchased) is not a lazy port. However, lingering under all of this, are the same freaking issues Call of Duty has had for several years. The potential Advanced Warfare has to truly be great, makes the presence of those issues all the more enraging.

The campaign is primarily about Atlas, a private military corporation that rivals many countries in military might. As Mitchell (voiced by Troy Baker), I join Atlas after losing my arm during my brief time in the Marine Corps. Jonathan Irons (voiced by Kevin Spacey), the CEO of Atlas takes Mitchell under his wing, outfitting him with a high-tech prosthetic arm and putting him to work for the PMC. That's about all I know so far. I'll be honest, I haven't beaten the campaign yet, as multiplayer has been my primary focus. Its safe to say that it's standard Call of Duty. Corridors filled with bad guys, and scripted use of awesome gadgets that would really shine in more open environments. There is an upgrade system that allows you to improve your Exo-Suit Battery or Reload Speed between missions, but its nothing that will knock off any socks. The cut-scenes in between missions also stutter to the point where they are unwatchable, but I haven't fiddled with the settings enough to see if this can be fixed.

Exo-Suit Survival is a pretty cool diversion from the other game modes. Wave based survival with limited time in between rounds to upgrade weapons and your Exo. There are objectives to complete, such as finding and disarming bombs, or collecting intel from fallen enemies, so it isn't just killing all the enemies to move onto the next round. There is also a brief zombie level if you complete certain challenges within this mode, hinting at what is to come with DLC packs. Now, a lot of people have gotten really worked up about the fact that zombies was not included with the base game, but I feel that Exo-Suit Survival provides a comparable amount of content, even if zombies is the more beloved mode. It makes sense that Sledgehammer would want to introduce their new gameplay elements into as much of the base game content as possible.

As usual, multiplayer is the focus of most players.

Now, onto the big one. Multiplayer. The movement system involving the Exo-Suits, along with their abilities, does make things fresh as long as everyone isn't hopping around like a bunch of jackasses. I've found that maintaining forward movement in conjunction with my vertical boosts and horizontal dodges has been pretty effective. Still, the overall increased game speed due to the new movement system can make things hectic. Its sometimes hard to see where the enemy is located. I simply die and have to watch the kill-cam to understand what happened. I've noticed that this increased speed has also made it more difficult to utilize certain gameplay styles. There are light machine-guns, but it takes so long to aim down the sights with them, that I am dead before I can get a shot off. SMG's and assault rifles are king right now. EM weapons, the new category of energy-based guns, are pretty fun to play with. They don't use ammo, but they can overheat.

The pick thirteen system, an extension of Black Ops 2's pick ten, was a great idea. It allows you to tailor your loadouts to your liking without becoming awesome at everything simultaneously. Scorestreaks have also made a return from Black Ops 2, and are now customizable. The customization options for the scorestreaks are both numerous and interesting, but all of them make their associated streak more expensive. Still, for a better than average (barely) player like myself, its good to add the support upgrade to several of my streaks so that my earned points carry over even when I die. You can also click on locked slots with the spade emblem to automatically equip the proper wildcard and open that slot up. 

The pick thirteen was a solid move.

 The single greatest addition to Advanced Warfare, in my opinion, is the supply drop system. Every hour of game time (give or take) rewards me with a supply drop. When I open it, it gives me weapons, cosmetic equipment (hats, gloves, knee guards, etc.), experience boosters, and boosters that lead to more frequent supply drops for a time. The variants for each base weapon are cool, and allow you to fine-tune your loadouts even more. They contain slightly different stats and sometimes have attachments permanently affixed to them. Any attachments and camouflages that are unlocked for a weapon are available for every variant as well.  

Loadouts are just one category of customization. You can also choose your gender, your face, and many other options.

Most equipment earned from loot drops can be sold for XP.

 

All of this would work together to create a phenomenal multiplayer package, if lingering issues with Call of Duty as a whole weren't glaringly present. Quick-scoping with sniper rifles is still a big issue. There have been several instances when I've watched the kill-cam and should not have died unless the sniper rifle projectiles are three feet wide. The spawns are often atrocious. It becomes one giant game of leapfrog as I kill someone and then am killed by a recently spawned enemy ten feet behind me, who is killed by someone that spawned ten feet from him, and so on. I have literally died, and come back facing my killer, who lit me up again since he had the advantage and I was attempting to take a few milliseconds to get my bearings. I'm fairly certain in a few of these instances, I respawned and saw my body still collapsing to the ground, just a few feet away. That does not create tense and hectic firefights. It builds a clusterfuck with advantages often being the luck of the draw.

But the worst thing, is that Activision is still trying to shove their proprietary matchmaking down our throats because apparently they're too cheap or stubborn to spring for real dedicated servers. This has resulted in massive amounts of unfair deaths, ping spikes, disconnects, and generally a bad time for a lot of people. I've had it pretty easy so far, but it isn't uncommon for me to open up the scoreboard mid-match and to see red bars on my ping indicator. There have been several instances where I seem to only take a few bullets before I die, when in fact the enemy player had started shooting much sooner, as indicated by the kill-cam. Michael Condrey stated about a month before release that we would receive dedicated servers, and that we should expect an announcement "soon." We have been given no information since then. In the past day or so, when asked again about their status, he merely shared this statement from Activision...

" Advanced Warfare employs game servers hosted at data centers globally on all platforms and listen servers as part of our proprietary matchmaking system. Our goal is to ensure the best possible connection and greatest gameplay experience regardless of location and time of day."

This has indicated to many people (myself included) that perhaps we may have been misled. I'm getting the vibe that Activision simply won't allow dedicated servers, even if Sledgehammer tells them that its for the good of the game and its what the players want. If that is the case, then that's a bunch of crap and several people somewhere need to pull their heads out of their collective asses. The conspiracy theorist in me also wouldn't put it past Activision to deny superior post-launch support in the form of dedicated servers, because they only care about the initial influx of sales and it herds everyone towards next year's release.

 

Until they straighten out the inherent issues present in the Call of Duty franchise, it will continue to piss a lot of people off. People that put their faith, and their money, into each yearly release hoping that it will be better than the last. Unless Sledgehammer and Activision turn some of these issues around, Advanced Warfare will frustratingly solidify the fact that Call of Duty is the Justin Bieber of video games. It sells to the uninformed consumer and the young, but the number of frustrated people that don't want it to be around anymore, is growing exponentially. The only way we'll ever make any headway, is to speak with our wallets. Unfortunately though, we spoke with our wallets when it came to Guitar Hero, and Activision is still a giant in the industry while Guitar Hero's developer, Neversoft, is no longer in existence. 

Something needs to change, and unfortunately, Advanced Warfare is the poster child for that fact. I truly think Sledgehammer wants to give us the best game they can, but it seems like their money-hungry overlords are standing in the way of that. This is the last year I'm buying a Call of Duty title on release. I've skipped entries in the series entirely, but I've always given others my money on day one, because I wanted to believe the fundamental issues would be cleaned up at some point in addition to new mechanics.

Verdict: Some amazing improvements to the tired Call of Duty formula are painfully marred by Activisions' inability to treat their customers as more than walking bank accounts. Until we receive dedicated servers and fixed spawn points, let this ship sail.

I'm Excited for Advanced Warfare, and That's OK

I'm starting to get excited for the new Call of Duty. I tried to avoid it, I tried to prevent it, but its happening all the same. As I've said before, my COD love affair is one I would like to rekindle, but it has become very difficult these past few years. Still, I feel like I can maybe break out my little black book this year, and give the old girl a call.

Sledgehammer Games seems to really be putting forth their best effort to make this a fresh experience. For those that don't know, this is their first full COD title. They assisted on Modern Warfare 3, but spent the following three years working on Advanced Warfare. I think a new studio and a longer development cycle is just what the doctor ordered, but I am still concerned about having three studios producing titles for the same franchise. Even with this new blood, I'm wondering how long it will take for the fatigue to set back in. On the other hand, its not like anyone has to either buy all COD titles or none at all. I've picked the titles I wanted to purchase on a yearly basis. I skipped Modern Warfare 2, Modern Warfare 3, and Ghosts. The Black Ops franchise is more my speed. I understand people not liking the setting as much, but for me, it was always about the gameplay mechanics. Things like Black Ops 2's pick ten system and score streaks were large steps forward in my opinion, and I think many of the gameplay mechanics becoming a part of Advanced Warfare are great ideas.

First of all, they've added a whole new movement system to the game. They've added exosuits, which will be a standard part of your loadouts. They allow the player to move faster, jump higher, and enable abilities like cloaking for a short period of time. These core mechanics will help the franchise move away from "whoever shoots first, wins." In addition, score streaks have made a return. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. Score streaks can now be modified by upgrades. For instance, you may equip a standard auto-turret as one of your score streaks in your loadout. You can then modify that turret by adding a rocket pod to it. However, this will also make the turret more expensive. This will hopefully prevent score streaks from becoming overpowered. Advanced Warfare also brought the pick ten system back, only they have expanded it to a pick thirteen. I would imagine this was done to make room for the exosuits and their abilities.

The biggest and most exciting thing for me, is the addition of supply drops. These act as random loot drops. They provide thousands of different cosmetic customization options, weapon variants, and reinforcements. The player will still unlock Advanced Warfare's 35 base weapons as they level up, but each weapon also has nine variants that are earned through supply drops, for a total of 350 weapons. All of the weapons are still customizable as well. Reinforcements, on the other hand, act as single-use boosters to help you out of a jam. Think of them as Titanfall's burn cards. I'm a bit of a loot fiend, and as long as Sledgehammer keeps their promise of not charging for any supply drops, I will be a happy camper. I'm still a little wary, though, as I know how Activision likes to monetize their products aggressively.

I read that Advanced Warfare's campaign is going to be longer than the past few in the series. Hopefully that means it will be at least ten hours. Recently a co-op mode called exosuit survival was announced as well, so it seems like there will be a huge amount of content available when the game launches. All of this is sounding really good. Hopefully its not too good to be true, but we won't know for sure until November 4th. Here's to hoping I can reconnect with my old flame, and begin our relationship once more.

You Need to Give Me Something, Just Because I Want It...

This seemed like a logical follow-up to my previous post. There is a horrific disease that runs rampant through the industry. That disease causes people to act like ass-hats and prevents any sort of meaningful progress to be made. That disease, is an overgrown and misplaced sense of entitlement.

First, let's look at the primary carriers of this disease; the players. For some reason, a specific group of gamers have begun emerging in droves over the past couple years. This group, for some reason, believes that games are made easily, made cheaply, and are supposed to be made to meet their individual specifications. Of course, developers are going to try and make a game that appeals to as many people as possible. But there's never enough time, enough manpower, or enough money to give everyone everything they want. Even if they could, they shouldn't really need to appease everyone, especially since these requests are often baseless and lacking any sort of real thought. I once saw someone ask if Gearbox was going to implement a Gears of War type cover system in Borderlands. At which point, I quietly shut down my computer, stood up from my desk, and immediately went upstairs and went to bed. My day needed to end after reading something like that.

The problem with situations like the one I just described, is that the people that are making the suggestions (and often speaking the loudest) are the people that have not researched the game they are trying to "improve", know nothing of actual game design, and more often than not, cannot form a whole sentence that is grammatically stable. Social media has done wonders for game developers as both an advertising tool and a method of communicating with their player base. Unfortunately, it also allows far too many people to post things like "add dis gun fur free or elz I stahp playin." Its too much effort for people to make a clear and well written argument as to why a feature should be added, yet they are the first ones to complain about how long something is taking, or how lazy the developers are because their desired feature has not yet been added. These are the same people that go to indie development pages/sites and say "how can I make a game?" That's it? No more information? Are you trying to make a particular type of game? Any specific features you had in mind? It speaks to how accessible this industry has become (in both a good and a bad way) that people think they can just sit down and make a game. It doesn't work that way. Games take months of planning, mounds of technical knowledge, a cohesive team environment, and more often than not, a lot of money. The sooner more people begin to understand this, the better off the gaming community will be. That's not to try and dissuade people from becoming indie developers. I'm trying to get there myself. But I've spent many many hours watching tutorials, studying workflows and asset pipelines, and have written tons of documentation. Guess what? From a technical knowledge standpoint, I am sub-par when compared to most professional developers.

Now, to be fair, I'd like to examine the other side of this disease. Unfortunately, developers themselves seem to become afflicted from time to time. A development team is bringing their vision to life, and they are not obligated to appease anyone with their creation really. However, since creating a product that people enjoy is how they feed their families and stay in business, it is important for them to listen to solid feedback. There are far too many developers out there that have gotten too big for their britches and ignore overwhelming feedback from long time customers (we buy a product, we ARE customers), who state that a gameplay mechanic is either broken just not fun. I feel like the publishers that loom over developers and push release dates and ramble on about share holders are partially to blame for these situations. However, developers still need to be in tune with the wants of their communities. It is virtually impossible to make a game that will please everyone. But, if swarms of your fans are saying that a new concept doesn't work, or are telling you to bring some new concepts to life because you have gotten stale, you should probably listen. There have been several situations lately where this has occurred, and to their credit, the developers have eventually gotten the message and changed things for the better, but the mark has been left and a reliable group of customers have suddenly become wary of any future products you release.

Let's make this simple. Gamers; unless you buy a game based on the promise of certain included features, and those features are missing, developers don't really owe it to you to implement everything you want, just because you want it. Developers are people with families and goals and passions, and they do not exist just to make you happy. Developers; if the people that regularly buy your products stop buying your products because you didn't listen to clear and concise feedback, you have no one to blame but yourselves. Your customers are the ones that make sure you get  paycheck, so always keep your ear to the ground, even if you have to listen to absolute nonsense some of the time.

The Hellgate Fiasco and the Importance of Being an Informed Consumer

Hellgate: London was originally released on Halloween in 2007. I was pumped. I had a collector's edition waiting for me at my local game store, and my parents had offered to buy me the lifetime subscription as a late birthday present. It was pretty much the amalgamation of everything I had ever wanted in a video game. It was also the first game I ever played during its beta phase. There had been a lot of issues during the beta, but I was sure Flagship had cleaned them up in time for launch. I took it home, installed it, and twenty minutes into the game, it crashed. I fired it up a second time, and I only made it another ten minutes before it gave me a memory error of some sort, crashing again. Patches were released at least once a week, but only for the multiplayer component. The single-player component was always two or three patches behind. Such is the story of Hellgate. A game that had enormous potential, but also seems to have been cursed from the onset.

A 1st/3rd person Diablo type title that takes place in a futuristic and post-apocalyptic London, Hellgate had no real reason to fail. It was developed by former Blizzard employees, contained plenty of loot, skill points, and hellish monsters, and was published by the gaming giant EA. What could go wrong? Well, for one, the game was released in what I would call a late alpha/early beta condition. Bugs ran rampant, content was clearly unfinished (they used the same three tilesets for most of the game), and the game was not feature-complete. A faction ranking system was in place, but did nothing. In other words, it was a mess. Some people blamed Flagship studios for dropping the ball. I know that at one point they utilized the time and resources necessary to get a playable build onto the Xbox 360, despite having no plans to port it over. Some people said that EA forced Flagship to release it, despite its unfinished state. I don't know what really happened, but I would imagine it was a combination of mismanagement and lofty goals. Flagship had even built their own engine, "Prime," to be used as Hellgate's foundation. Admirable, but I wouldn't recommend writing a new engine when you have a brand new, untested IP on the line. The game, and Flagship studios, crumbled in a matter of months.

Fast forward to 2011. T3Fun, a Korean developer, had the rights to Hellgate. They re-released it as Hellgate Global, changing the game to a (mostly) free to play format, adding an item shop, and updating the game with the content that Flagship had actively been working on when they went under. Things had seemed to take a turn towards good fortune. But then, after releasing the Tokyo expansion (which was, once again, developed by Flagship and merely implemented by T3Fun), T3Fun ceased all real support of Hellgate: Global, outside of the occasional server maintenance. According to what I've read, T3Fun did not acquire the rights to access the Prime engine's source code, or something along those lines. Therefore, they were able to implement the completed content that Flagship couldn't, but couldn't add any new content, bug fixes, and general updates of their own.

It has been almost three years since Global was updated. The Hellgate forums on T3Fun's website do not function. The servers are ghost towns. The supposed sequel that was in development was shut down in July because the team was unfamiliar with the Unreal engine (which is a joke, right?). Then, a few days ago, there was a halfhearted update on Hellgate's Facebook stating that Hellgate was on Steam Greenlight. This has caused absolute chaos a midst what is left of the Hellgate community.

Misinformation is running rampant. People think its a new game. People think its an indie game. People think its a sequel. And, worst of all, there are some people that think this means new content/updates for Hellgate: Global. Unfortunately, if any of these people had followed this fiasco as long as I have, they would know this is a last ditch effort to make some money off of the in-game cash shop before the game dies entirely. If I'm wrong, then great. But there haven't been any updates in three years. I'm not wrong. T3Fun did the same thing with Mythos, the other Flagship IP. They bought it, implemented the finished content, and then let it run its course until the servers were shut off.

Now, to the crux of the matter. These types of situations are exactly why we need to educate ourselves as consumers. Research the company developing a game. Research the game's history, if it has any. Read comments, articles, and other bits of information so that you know what's going on. T3Fun conveniently left many of these details off of their Greenlight page, but posted the original Hellgate trailers, and are using the Tokyo expansion as the main image for the Greenlight page, making some people think it is a new Hellgate title. The bottom line, is that knowing what you are buying before you buy it is incredibly important. And, I have to say, most games and their development history are not nearly as complicated or as much of a cluster-fuck as this has been, so we have no excuse for not doing our research on titles before spending our often hard-earned money on them. If a developer states multiple times that a game will not contain a particular feature, we have no reason to bitch when the game does not contain that feature. The buyer beware.

I would like to make a special mention of the folks over at Hellgateaus.net. I was one of the first members over there, and it has been the best place to go for Hellgate: London mods and information for several years now. When it comes down to it, Hellgate was the game we always wanted. We wanted to see it succeed with all of our hearts. But sometimes, things don't work out the way you want. The majority of the Hellgate community is a good group of people, who all happen to be extremely passionate about the same thing.

Hellgate gave me my first real insight into the gaming industry. Up until that point, I had just kind of played games. It was the first time I had seen a studio struggle first hand with completing something into which they had poured every fiber of their beings, and it was painful to watch. Members of Flagship would post replies to our questions and concerns, and I would say "a developer, talking to me?" But then they would say how they had been up for over 48 hours straight trying desperately to crush a few more bugs. Towards the end, there were stories of some of the employees sleeping on the floors of the office so they could take round the clock business calls to try and save the company. My seeing this side of the industry taught me a lot, but it also destroyed part of my childhood; part of the wide-eyed wonder I had always felt when playing games was gone.So, with these latest developments, I think its time to let go. There will some day be a sequel or a spiritual successor that will hopefully live up to the potential of the Hellgate IP, but until then, let's take a break. I've been riding this particular roller coaster from the beginning. I think I'm ready to get off now.

Company of Heroes Multiplayer: Part 1

I am really enjoying the multiplayer for Company of Heroes 2, despite the fact that I am a sub-par player. I purchased the Western Front Armies the day they were released, and have spent the past couple weeks trying to figure out the best strategies for the American army. I will be uploading several of these replays over the next couple weeks. Some will be victories. Some will not. Either way, I hope you enjoy them.

My Body Is Ready For...Homefront: The Revolution

I intentionally left the new Homefront off of my E3 roundup. It deserves its own post. I know what you're thinking. The original Homefront had a few problems. It is the only game I've ever played that literally gave me headaches from the low texture resolutions and draw distances. I didn't think an Unreal Engine 3 could have poor visuals. Still, the premise of America being occupied by Korean armed forces in a very near future and average Americans having to become resistance fighters is a pretty solid concept. So, after THQ was broken up, Crytek purchased the rights to the Homefront franchise. After reading the previews and watching footage from E3, I am confident that Crytek is doing all that they can to make the most of this renewed opportunity.

Homefront is about an everyman becoming a resistance fighter, but to be honest, I couldn't care less. That's not to say I won't come to enjoy the story down the line. Its just that my focus so far has been on the details of the gameplay. The Revolution is about Guerrilla warfare in an open world environment, so the idea is not for the player to destroy the enemy all by themselves, but to employ more subtle tactics. The footage I've seen involved raiding explosives and an RC car from a hidden resistance stash. The player then assembled a mobile bomb from the components, and used their in-game cell phone to drive it up to the entrance of the local police station. Apparently, the KPA are holding prisoners there. The player pressed the "call" button on their phone, and the bomb exploded, setting all of the Korean forces into motion. Gunfire erupted from the defensive positions in front of the station, and the player utilized the game's cover system to hide behind a concrete barrier, and then pop up to fire bursts from their assault rifle. Later on, the player swapped the entire upper receiver of their rifle for one that functioned like a light machinegun. Interestingly enough, this is an actual feature of the AR-15 platform, and only requires that two pins be pushed out, although the thought of carrying around multiple upper receivers is a tad unrealistic.

At its core, the new Homefront doesn't seem to do anything that other first person shooters don't do already, but the context and the smaller details, combined with the open world playground inject quite a bit of potential into this. Being the underdog, crafting my own equipment, and tackling objectives in a manner I see fit all sound like a good deal to me.

The Verdict....Wolfenstein: The New Order

Warning: This review may contain minor spoilers.

Wolfenstein: The New Order truly surprised me. Not because it is an amazing game. I fully expected to get a polished shooter filled with buckets of blood, and plenty of Nazi killing. It delivered those things. It also delivered a thoughtful narrative, and true, raw emotion. 

Just fifteen minutes into the game, I was vertically scaling the wall of a large Nazi fortress as a giant three legged machine stalked the trenches behind me, killing other allied troops as they attempted to join the assault. Wolfenstein starts in 1946, and "The world has gone to shit." It is clear within the first five minutes that the war did not go the way it should have. In the first level alone, I saw armored attack dogs, the aforementioned machine (called a "Monitor"), advanced Nazi fighter planes, and hulking monstrosities comprised of both metal and flesh. It created an unbelievable, yet familiar aesthetic for me. My submachine gun was clearly a Thompson that was given a few extra years to be modified and improved, just as the Nazi assault rifles I was happily dual-wielding were some derivation of the MP-44. 

The assault on the compound fails, leaving the protagonist, B.J. Blazkowicz in a sort of coma, and the antagonist, Wilhelm "Deathshead" Strasse very much alive. B.J. spends 14 years in an asylum, watching helplessly as the Nazis come and take the "sub-human" patients away in small groups to become test subjects for Strasse's experiments. He also is very much aware of the young woman that cares for him, Anya. When the Nazi's come to shut the asylum down and begin executing everyone, it shakes B.J. out of his catatonic state, and after watching a Nazi execute several helpless people, I gleefully pressed the appropriate button to execute him with the knife I had grabbed from my nearby dining cart a few seconds earlier. I grabbed the fallen Nazi's gun, some form of futuristic Luger, and set off to escape from the Asylum and rescue Anya, who had been dragged away by the troopers. They escape to the home of Anya's grandparents, where they explain that the Nazi's won the war, and rebuilt the world in their image. 

And that was just the first hour and a half.

First, let's examine the gameplay. Every weapon feels great, and dual wielding weapons feels suitably heavier and more powerful. I played much of the game with an assault rifle in each hand. Bullets tear into enemies, leaving them broken and bloody on the ground, and the LaserKraftWerk (my new favorite word to say) causes most enemies to simply explode. Something that all of the Wolfenstein games has contained is plenty of Nazi cannon fodder that don't require an entire magazine of ammo to dispatch, which makes it all the more difficult when the big guys show up. Stealth combat is also present, and is not some half baked gameplay mechanic thrown in for the sake of variety. In most situations, and stealth and the balls to the wall approaches are equally viable, especially with the game's perk system. The player unlocks perks as they complete certain tasks tying into their play style. So, after getting five knife kills, I unlocked the ability to throw knives, making me a more efficient stealth killer. There are three full perk branches. Health is regained through pickups, which include medical kits, meals on tables, and yes, dog food. Armor is present as well. Health can be overcharged for a limited time. All of the weapons can be carried simultaneously. In other words, Wolfenstein utilizes many of the old school gameplay mechanics that I grew up with in first person shooters, while modernizing it simultaneously with the perk system, the presence of viable stealth combat, and weapon upgrades. The levels are varied and well designed, providing multiple paths with which to approach most situations. This, once again ties into the varied combat options, and provides quite a bit of variety in the gameplay, and has thus far prevented fatigue from setting in, even as I was replaying levels to find collectables I had missed.

Killing Officers Quietly Prevents Them From Calling Reinforcements.

The visuals are, for the most part, gorgeous. Id Tech 5 is still a new engine, and has some room to grow, but it is definitely powerful. I had some minor performance issues until I downloaded updated drivers for my GTX 660, and there was visible texture pop-in whenever I turned too quickly. Beyond that, the characters, weapons, and environments are all varied, and extremely detailed. After the prologue, the war-torn European aesthetic is left behind, replacing it with the monitored, almost sterile look that a Nazi world in the 1960's would possess. Huge buildings draped with swastikas, security cameras on every street corner, checkpoints with armed troops (and mechanical guard dogs), and a massive prison right in the middle of downtown Berlin, all help to establish that the Nazi's are indeed in control. 

The characters are quite a rogue's gallery. Each character has a real presence, and the dialogue is extremely well written. B.J. is still the stoic Nazi killing maniac, but there's much more to him in this game. His inner monologue especially paints a much larger portrait of who this man really is. I felt a supreme sense of loss, hatred, and pain in everything he said.
"Such raw sorrow. Can't partake. Mine would flood oceans. I would drown...if I let it out," he thinks during one particularly emotional scene. The other characters are all just as extreme, and feel right at home. Anya, B.J.'s savior and love interest seems fragile at first, but ends up being stronger than I could have imagined. Caroline Becker, who somehow survived being shot by Hans Grosse in 2009's Wolfenstein, is wheelchair bound, but still an excellent resistance fighter in her own right. Fergus, the sarcastic Scot with a foul mouth. Wyatt, the young soldier that looks up to B.J. Frau Engle, the Nazi officer that loves to play games, especially when other people's lives are at stake. Deathshead, the sick man that likes to dissect still-living humans and is responsible for crafting the war machines that stomped the world into submission. They all come together to paint a story that, if you pay attention, is more emotional and thought-provoking than anything I've seen in an FPS since Half-Life 2. Yup, I said it. 

I beat my first playthrough of Wolfenstein in about 15 hours. I played on the second to hardest difficulty (I Am Death Incarnate), and did not manage to find all of the collectables. I have just started my second playthrough in order to find the rest of the collectables. There is also a fairly large decision to be made in the prologue that affects the rest of the game in several ways, and I am enjoying seeing the other side of that. I was not bothered at all by Wolfenstein's lack of multiplayer, as I'm up to almost 18 hours of game time, and I feel as though I am getting my money's worth, and then some. Some of the collectables I still need to find include Health/Armor upgrades, records of 1960's German music (which often imitate real tunes from that time period), enigma code pieces that unlock extra game modes, and of course, pieces of gold that serve no real purpose whatsoever. In other words, there's plenty to do if you take the time to look for it. One of the extra game modes I've unlocked is 999 mode, which starts the player with 999 health, gives them unlimited ammo, and sets the game's difficulty to Uber, which is the most difficult. 

I'd like to make a special mention of the song "I Believe" which can be heard during the end credits and is sung by Melissa Hollick. I won't give anything way, but it really helps to convey the emotion found in Wolfenstein: The New Order and was an excellent addition to the game. 

In closing, Wolfenstein: The New Order is an excellent shooter with a heart and a soul. It also provides plenty of ham-fisted Nazi slaughtering that we've come to expect from the Wolfenstein franchise. In many ways, it is a return to the roots of first person shooters. At the same, it takes a step forward to the future, adding depth and emotion to a genre that is often seen as stale and lifeless.

Verdict: Play it. Now. Just do it.