I guess it’s time I admit that I can’t make this comic while employed. I wanted to, but it just doesn’t feel possible. I’m not saying that I’ll never draw a new comic, but they’ll be few and far between, if at all. I’ll surely revive this project once my contract ends, but it won’t be this year. That said, since I have this site and some of you liked my words more than my comics anyway, I’ll keep writing about the games I play. Something like a purchase guide for the patient.

I recently played through Sleeping Dogs. I don’t have a clue what the name is about, but I didn’t see a single sleeping dog in the game. The game runs great, occasionally looks stunning, and is rather enjoyable. FoV is very low though, and the keyboard and mouse controls are horrible. I switched to a 360 controller in five minutes. I really love the city when it’s raining, it’s gorgeous, at other times and in other places the game looks rather basic. That’s why the occasionally stunning.

The story is what you’d expect from a GTA clone. It works well enough, but doesn’t offer anything new or special. It doesn’t drag on like GTAIV though, I completed the game in about sixteen hours occasionally goofing around but mainly doing the plot missions. Due to the setting, I consider the plot more interesting than it actually is. Same goes for the city too. The game felt oddly fresh, though it really wasn’t.

The focus on the melee fighting is a nice thing though. It’s really enjoyable to run around and beat up evildoers and the occasional pedestrian. There are firearms too, but luckily the game doesn’t force you to use them too much. Shooting mechanics are ok’ish in the genre’s standards. Not enjoyable but not detrimental either.

I can’t really recommend the game at a full price, even though I really enjoyed it. You see, there really isn’t as much to do in the game as you’d imagine after the first hour or two. It isn’t terribly fun as a sandbox either. I managed to grab a retail copy for 28 euros, and that was a fine price for it, a bargain even. I’d say GTAIV is more fun for vehicle stunts and that Sleeping Dogs is only slightly more fun as a sandbox. It’s a nice open world beat’em’up, but if you just want pure madness, you’re better off with Just Cause 2 and Saint’s Row 3.

So it took me two weeks to finish this comic and it’s not even good? Hah. Neither is the game though. I had most fun with the game when I went down a zip line and didn’t move right away, and then my AI buddies just crashed into my back. I stopped to wonder why this was so amusing to me and then I realized that it’s because the game tries so hard to be serious. It’s a try-hard.

The sole purpose of the game seems to be to make you feel bad about your actions in the game. There’s just one problem: they aren’t your actions. You can’t really decide anything significant in the game, why should you feel any guilt for watching what the devs have written? Bad shit happens in the game due to a very questionable decision made by the main character. I anticipated this shocker scene a mile away and it just felt forced and awkward. Kind of like the infamous No Russian level in Modern Warfare 2.

Normally I wouldn’t give a shit if I can relate to a character in a shooter or not, but Spec Ops is very plot driven, so it’s kind’a important. Afterall the game is made to make you feel bad, and that doesn’t really work if you don’t relate. It’s alright to try to make a serious game, but this one tries so hard that no one can take it seriously. Even the loading tips try to place blame on the player with lines like “Do you feel like a hero yet?” and “Everything is fucked in Dubai because of you.”

The game itself then? It’s just a mediocre third person shooter with some nice setpieces and clunky cover mechanics. The plot surely is stronger than the game play, but that just tells you that the game is rather weak overall. I switched to a controller immediately, because the mouse sensitivity was terrible even at the lowest setting. Pro tip to devs: Maximum turn that a player may need to make on a single move is 180 degrees. There’s no reason to be able to make a 3600 degree turn on the lowest sensitivity, is there?

Announcement

If you’ve read my twitter feed you already know that I’m starting a day job again. So far I’ve managed to release a comic every Saturday (except last week) but I likely won’t be able to anymore. I will keep actively making NoLineOfSight but the updates will happen when they happen.

I’ve been a bit busy this week so I wasn’t able to finish the comic in time. Sorry. It’ll be about Spec Ops: The Line though. My recommendation? Don’t buy.

This comic is supposed to make fun of the victim traumatizing behaviour of Phelps in L.A. Noire but mainly it just mocks my artistic skills. Maybe I shouldn’t call it crap since some people may actually like it, but I’m not one of them. At least not hundred percent. The same is true with the game itself too.

Alan Wake was a flawed game that I still recommended but L.A. Noire is a flawed game better left on the shelf. Like Alan Wake, it starts somewhat strong (not as strong, mind you) but plays its best cards within three hours. After that it was a grind of routines and copy paste cases. The overarching plot about a serial killer tries to justify this but ultimately shoots the game in the leg. I managed to grind my way through the homicide section to Ad Vice, but just couldn’t get myself to play anymore. I lost faith in the game ever getting any better. So if you picked the game from a sale like I did, just play until you get to homicide and quit while you’re winning.

I never really understood the collectibles every game now has to have, but Alan Wake may well have the least sensible implementation so far. I may be forced to draw another comic on the same subject since it’s just so nonsensical. He is chased by some omnipresent darkness and axe-wielding semi-zombies and for some reason is compelled to collect coffee thermoses. Really? Why do they add these things? Is it not clear that they are detrimental to the feel and atmosphere of the game? Yes, I know I don’t have to collect them, and it’s not like I’d been constantly scouring my surroundings for them, but I felt stupid even collecting the obvious ones. And I know there are gamers who just gotta catch ‘em all.

That said, I really liked Alan Wake. It’s an exceptional game and you should play it right now. It’s not without its faults though, and the gameplay itself isn’t anything special. It’s a well made shooter but where it really shines is the story and atmosphere, Alan Wake is nothing less than ambitious. There’s just too much of that shooting. I really wish there’d been more daytime scenes in the town with talking and such, and that the game had prolonged its sense of mystery and horror longer before turning into an action game. At its best it gives a glimpse of how magnificient games could really be, but just doesn’t go there itself. It’s a shame, but it’s still something gamers should experience.

Finally it’s here. A Minecraft comic, everyone needs one of these, right? Most of my Minecraft hours happened what now seems ages ago. I was originally sold to it by Quintin Smith’s awesome write-up on Rock Paper Shotgun. I think around day three I loved mr. Smith too.

Occasionally I try to get back to it. The problem is, I’ve already built a thousand castles (more like cottages) and everything and anything I build seems to lack a function, a meaning. I just wish I had a reason to build the stuff. I really want to have an impact on the world on a scale grander than a pickaxe. There probably are some mods that add these things that I yearn for, like Industrialcraft. Speaking of mods, this high resolution texture pack is absolutely lovely if you enjoy a cartoonish look rather than a realistic one.

The event on the comic is a true story by the way. My first and last dog in Minecraft. I’m more of a cat lover.

I guess that might be a slight spoiler? Well you read it already and the game’s been out for a while. There aren’t any more spoilers in this post. This Captain Obvious thing is a sin of movies and games, they tend to make it way too obvious who’s the bad guy. Usually they just look plain evil, or act so that it’s obvious the very minute they are introduced to the viewer or player. Also, Max spends most of the game totally clueless about what’s happening and who is who so that kind of underlines the issue. But then again, maybe it’s just because he’s a sad old drunk. Just like me, har har.

I went back to playing Diablo 3 after a few weeks of break. Having that crowd control ability on the Templar isn’t especially helpful for a class that mainly focuses on area of effect damage. The Templar is a jerk anyway. He babbles on about how pretty the Enchantress is, yet says nothing nice about me. It’s like he didn’t even notice that I’M A WOMAN TOO.

Now after two days of playing I sense there’ll be another longer break. I’m fed up with it again. Soloing the harder difficulties feels much like you’d try to do an instanced dungeon solo in any MMO. I’m playing a public game but there hasn’t been much company lately, when there is though, it’s a whole different game. A good game. I suspect the lack of company is due to everyone being in the endgame and the odd rest not having any interest in the higher difficulties.

Seems the game really is designed around the auction house. Generally the gear you’d need to progress drops later on in the game, so you need to buy that stuff from the auction house or suffer through a painfully hard hit and run grind. So the loot you actually do get is stuff you try to sell to others to fund your own progress. I guess it’s fine, from the gold auction’s point of view. The RMAH is a different beast though, one I’ll avoid. It’ll be an interesting shitstorm to watch when the inevitable expansion comes out and raises level cap and item levels by ten making that two hundred euro axe you just bought totally obsolete.

Don’t have much to say about this one and I don’t think it needs any explanation either. Had great fun drawing it. I watched the recent Medal of Honour Warfighter gameplay trailer, how bad can it really look? Not the graphics, they are all good, but the gameplay. That’s exactly the stuff that I’d expect of Battletoads 2013. I won’t bother going into details but every minute of that trailer had me thinking “is this for real or is this parody?”

I’m really waiting for the next thing already. For some time now the thing has been these gritty and grim and single coloured linear action reboots and/or prequels. Guess the previous thing was cartoony graphics.  I’m getting a grimdark overdose. I’d even be ready for some cheesy high fantasy. Surely there’s a German studio making one right now, they aren’t big on following trends.

I reinstalled X3: Terran Conflict and have been trying out new get-rich-quick-schemes. I have this space phase going on now, just want to play everything space related. Here I complained about Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion being too unengaging. They improved things to release, it’s easier to see pew pew now and the combat audio is actually audible. It’s an enjoyable RTS now. Endless Space is pretty exciting, bought my way to the ongoing beta and it is very promising indeed. There’s a strong Master of Orion 2 vibe to be had there, just without the tactical combat. ES has a unique way of handling combat, which I enjoy, but am not sure if it has enough depth in the long run. I won’t write more about it now though, in case I end up making a comic about it.

I haven’t had much ideas for comics lately because I’ve been playing so much Cities in Motion and Simcity 4. This is one of my old ideas that have been staying in reserve for times like this, and it was actually really fun to draw it. As you know I began this site with a World of Tanks comic and now watching that one and the current one side by side I can see the progress I’ve made. It’s also fun to compare the explosions to the previous explosion I drew.

World of Tanks hasn’t been gathering dust either though. I played a few days of that too and finally reached the tank I’ve been dreaming of: the T-54. It’s my first tier nine tank, but I have plenty of tier eights, it took me a long while to find that the USSR medium tanks are the ones that suit me best. After I figured that out I haven’t been playing with other tanks much at all . And I never play as artillery.

Sooo what else in gaming, Max Payne 3 was pretty great. Would want to draw something about that. Diablo 3 has become too boring for me to keep playing it, just like I predicted. It was worth the money but I never expected to play it for much more than 50 hours. Grabbed Naval War: Arctic Circle from the Steam Paradox sale, been playing a bit of that too.

I increased the comic resolution by some 40 % so it should be a lot smoother but I’m fairly sure you can’t notice the change on a computer display. Congratulations if you did though, you probably have better than average eyes. Or display.