Simplicity, it's often what makes games look and work very well. Some of the simplest games have turned out to be incredibly popular. I mean look at Tetris, look at Pong, look at that infamous app about the bird that flaps which drove everyone crazy, it was literally just tapping the screen, you can't get any simpler then that. Of course maybe thats a little too simple, sometimes you just need a bike and some beautifully crafted mountains to ride down. I'm not sure where I first saw Lonely Mountains Downhill, perhaps it was on Steam, perhaps it was Facebook, but I have had it on my radar to play for a while. I'm a mountain biker myself you see, so seeing a game based on one of my favourite pastimes I definately wanted to have a go. Lonely Mountains Downhill or (LMD) as I will refer to it as, is one of those games that just really stands out, the low-poly graphic style just jumps out at you and you know when you jump in yourself it's going to be punchy and responsive and quick and flowy. Thats a term we mountain bikers like to use, though LMD is most often not very flowy, it's more technical I suppose you could say. LMD was developed by a small german developer Megagon industries who were previously unheard of. The team used Danny Macaskill's The Ridge as a major inspiration for the game, understandably so as Danny charges steep down rocky mountain slopes with impossible drops down the sides with any mistake possibly costing him his life.
A nice looking rolling hill
LMD puts you against the mountain, there's no enemies or animals that you need to avoid it's just you carving your own path and if you crash or fall off a cliff or into water then thats just your own fault. The wondrous low poly graphics were selected to apparently make the game's environment look more readable to the player and it does indeed. The sheer amount of things around is astounding, there's grass, trees, rocks, shrubs, rivers, waterfalls! there is even wildlife but it's limited to birds and butterflies. Leaves fall off the trees, you hear the sound of water and birds chirping. I can't really describe it it's something you have to experience for yourself. Also this isn't a racing game where you go so ridiculously fast you can't even see anything, mountain biking whereas fast downhill, you still need to brake in sections so you can enjoy the scenery.
My first experience of the game on the Graterhorn Mountain
As soon as you enter the main screen you see a beautiful mountain vista of the last mountain you rode and then after you click enter it goes to your camp in that mountain with you and you're bike. One important thing to note there is no music in LMD, it's just the gentle breeze and and sounds of the birds in the distance. This is quite serene but I found I did actually need some of of gentle music as having nothing was a bit, well, lonely and sad. So in that case I found the Minecraft soundtrack a perfect fit. There are 4 mountains in LMD with one as a DLC which have 3-4 trails down the mountain with some trails being DLC themselves. The mountains are based on real locations with each getting harder in difficulty.
Redmoore Peaks, a lovely autumn forest.
So you select your mountain and then you can select which trail you want. At the start you have one mountain the 'Graterhorn' which looks kind of like a Canadian sparsely vegetated mountain. The controls weren't too hard to get used to, the isometric view was. Sometimes you can't really see whats coming and it makes it hard to decide where to go next especially if you're looking for shortcuts, though I don't hate the view as it's what makes it LMD as opposed to say games like Riders Republic or Descenders which are similar but the cahse camera view as always. LMD is in it's own world where it's just you, not a huge event with crowds and music and other riders. The first time you attempt a trail you do it in 'Explorer' mode which is not timed and allows you to ride the route at your own pace going through the checkpoints, looking around and finding any shortcuts which are vital for later. You then can unlock in order the Beginner, Expert and Freerider challenges each with varying degrees of difficulty. The beginner and expert challenges have time limits or crash limits or sometimes both which can make it very difficult if you're trying to make the fastest time between each checkpointbut you keep crashing trying to do so. If you crash you can restart immediately at the previous checkpoint. Freerider is the hardest mode I think is that you need to do the whole course in one continuous run and if you crash it's all the way back to the start which you could imagine leads to a lot of frustration.
I do a few trails here, and crash quite a lot
I had to consult some youtube videos to complete most of the expert challenges, the freerider challenges I haven't done much of I just find them too stressfull. LMD is quite unforgiving one slip could cause a crash and if you're not careful you've crashed three more times in the one run because you weren't paying attention or getting frustrated. What keeps me going is unlocking all of the bikes and cosmetic items, a feature of which is in most games now. You can dress up your ride with different helmets and clothes but the bikes make the real difference. There are bikes with varying suspension which are slower but allow for bigger drops or no suspension which are faster and one with bigger tyres to ride fast through rough terrain. Personally I often go the trailblazer which is a sort of all-rounder since I'm not good at judging how high my bike can drop down without crashing. There are challenges which require specific bikes to unlock different paintjobs for them so you end up using all of them anyway.
Devils Spire from the 'Sierra Rivera' canyons
The actual bike physics handle well I do feel like I'm riding down some singletracks being a mountain biker myself. The isometric view makes some things tricky especially when you're going from left to right across the screen or vice versa. Two things that I think could be improved is the ability to stop and turn around, currently you can't get off your bike, so if you run yourself into a dead end and don't have room to do a complete turnaround your only option is to crash. The other thing is the ability to pop the front wheel up, all mountain bikers do this, if there's an obstacle ahead you pull up on the handlebars and lift the front wheel up to get over it, you can't do this at the moment and I think a lot of crashes could have been avoided if this was possible.
Who put that rock there?
LMD has alot of replay value specifically by the challenges for each trail which keep you coming back, even completing some of the freerider events unlocks night mode for that trail which has it's own set of challenges. A big part of the game is the daily rides where you do a random trail with various parameters including using a specific bike, infinite sprinting (or sprint bar), night mode, double time penalty for crashes and the very well thought out 'many obstacles' parameter which forces you to take routes different to the main path making you discover shortcuts though this does often result in crashing many times before I figured out exactly where to go. The changed checkpoint parameters also make things interesting. You're used to all of the checkpoints being in the same place for each trail though and when they've changed you need to do a bit of exploring before finding them again. I was trying to complete a daily ride the other night and spent about 5 minutes trying to find the checkpoint I kept missing.
Eldjfall is one scary mountain
LMD is an unforgiving game and and you can easily get frustrated trying to complete the challenges, it's one of those games where you can be going great then one mistake wrecks your whole groove and you end getting frustrated and failing 3-4 more times when restarting from a checkpoint. I've managed to complete most though it's the expert challenges that require you to make x time with less then x number of crashes which makes it very difficult, either/or is not too bad. Reading the reviews a lot of people find the game too hard, but for the first time I can remember I would actually tell them to "harden the f up" I'll admit I'm not very good at games, and the camera angle makes things difficult sometimes but I had no trouble completing most of the game, it just takes practice. Maybe people are used to games being easy.
Customisation!
It's a game thats good for a quick spin before you play something more involved like for example I play it before playing Elder Scrolls Online. I enjoyed the variety of mountains which range from alpine, to autumnal forest to desert canyons to finally a dark dense and rocky forest. I liked the game so much I even purchased the Eldjfall DLC which seems to be based on a scandinavian island as the challenge rewards are all viking related though the most prominant thing about it is that it's got a volcano! as if the trails weren't dangerous enough already now instead of waterfalls your jumping across lava flows. Honestly I do wish they would put in multiplayer in the future, being able to follow a friend or even a random and bomb down a hill discovering all of the shortcuts, imagine it with 4 or more people! You also should be able to have the option to both restart at the last checkpoint if one of you crashes to make it more a team thing.
One of the beautiful 'Rest Areas' which are hidden through the trails.
Lonely Mountains Downhill is not easy, but it looks beautiful and rewarding and a must for any mountains bikers out there. One of my friends even made a skiing game that is similar you can check out the trailer here. I've still yet to try Riders Republic and Descenders but I reckon I will still like Lonely Mountains the best, I've said it many times but it's one of the best looking games I have seen and as a mountain biker I just keep coming back.
It’s been official for a while now, “Battle Royale” is a
new PC and console game genre, just like when League of Legends was
formed from the base mould of Defense of the
Ancients and the term MOBA
was coined, the battle royale genre has just as rich a history. Our tale beings
with the 1999 novel Battle Royale by
Japanese author Koushun
Takami which tells the story of a large class of junior high school
students who are forced to fight each other to the death in a program run by
the authoritarian Japanese government. The novel was made into a film in 2000 and
I must admit, is pretty damn spectacular having seen it myself and would agree
that this is excellent fodder for a game. I suppose you are wondering how this
fits into the gaming world, well there is a game called ARMA 2 which is a
realistic military combat simulator which takes place over some very large
landscapes and islands, you also may have heard that there was a mod created
using the ARMA engine called DayZ,
DayZ took place on a huge island inspired by the Arma landscapes and featured
players trying to survive while being hunted by zombies and other players.
Inspired by this mod and by the Battle Royal film Brendan ‘PlayerUnknown’ Greene
created DayZ: Battle Royale an
offshoot of the DayZ mod where players would scavenge for weapons and supplies
and would hunt each other down over a large area with a constantly shrinking
safe area. To make a long story short Greene was contact by the Korean
developer Bluehole/Ginno games (now PUBG Corp) who liked his idea and
wanted to turn it into a standalone title, Greene accepted and moved to Korea
to work with them as their creative director and eventually created Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds as
we know it today.
Onward my leather-clad friends!
When I first heard of Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds (or
‘PUBG’ as it’s commonly referred to) and saw the screenshots, it looked like
just a cheap flavour-of-the-month thing that people would play for a bit then
stop just like the hundreds of other multiplayer games that died out eventually
but as more and more of my friends started playing it, I soon thought that this
may not be the case. So after my housemate bought the game and I had a look at
it I decided to get it myself around May 2017 during the early access it indeed
was different from any First Person (or technically third person) shooter I had
played. To start with the whole thing looked unique, back then main menu was in
a destroyed church and you could see your character model and your squadmates
standing there too, in their underwear, yes everyone was in their underwear
when they first started, which was probably why so many players created female
characters. Firstly though I had to create my character and basically all you
could pick from was a fit, attractive male or female, I thought about going
female but decided not to as I wanted to play as it was me playing though that
itself was unrealistic as I’m not quite in as good as shape as my character heh.
So then you click on ready and you’re warped onto an island off the coast of Erangel the first and main map of
PUBG, this is a spawn island where you could run and jump around amongst the
other players and even test weapons that were sitting on the various tables and
around the island, in the lobby the player count usually had to reach 100
before the 60 second countdown appeared before the match start but this wasn’t
always the case if there weren’t enough players. And so once the timer was up
you were all spawned into a moving cargo plane. Interestingly you could change
from first to third person using the V key and wow seeing all us sitting
shoulder-to-shoulder silently was like we were about to be air-dropped into France. The game also ahas a voice chat feature primarily used for communicating with teammates but you can switch it to be heard by everyone if you really want to listen to people mic spam.
Hey guys, what up? (I so miss being able to see this)
The plane then flew in a straight line in a random direction
across the island and you had the option at any time to jump out with a
parachute and start freefalling. Of course where you decided to head for was
one of the biggest decisions you had to make, the island of Erangel is a
fictional island in the Black sea near the Ukraine which was once occupied by
the Soviet Union (hence the military base) and home to a large populace which
revolted against the Soviet forces and eventually the island was abandoned, and
that’s about as far as the storyline goes, if there was one. So now the island
is used as a huge arena for a ‘battle royale’ with a hundred attractive morbid
thrill-seekers in their underwear. So I decided to avoid any major towns and
touched down in a quiet-out of the way village where I could “loot” in peace.
And yes strewn in buildings and houses all over the island were various types
of weapony, ammo, attachments, medical supplies, backpacks and clothing
including protective gear such as vests and helmets. So I ran from house to
house finding things to both arms myself with and cover my body but all of a
sudden a warning flashed up that the play area was shrinking and indeed when
checking the map this blue circle was coming in, and noticing that I wasn’t in
the white circle I decided to skidaddle. I found a dune buggy and headed
straight to the middle of the circle, getting shot at at one point but getting
away safely. Finding a safe place in the wooded hills I decided to abandon my
buggy and hide in a bush in a low part of the hill. And there I lay as the
circle got smaller and smaller hearing many shots and viewing the remaining
player count go down until the I needed to make my way down from the hills to
stay in the circle. So I crouch-ran my way to the circle feeling very exposed
but managing to keep to the trees and eventually got inside the circle, though
as I was making myself comfortable in another bush there a was a BANGBANGBANG
and I was shot down in a second by an unknown enemy and I also jumped about
half a meter off my chair.
Basic example of me running to one of the final circles, spoiler alert I don't make it but this video is interesting as I can see the whole thing play out to finish from the view after I died, which is very useful when playing in groups so you can let your teammates know where the enemies that killed you are.
And THAT was my first game of PUBG (solo that is) the screen
after I died displayed a blaring “better luck next time” text and all I could
do then was go back to the menu and start the whole process again. Of course
there is a few more things to the game too and things have changed a bit since
I started playing in 2017, wow 2017 it really hasn’t been that long has it
though it seems an age ago. There has now been a vast number of changes and
improvements as per the usual way of games these days, especially ones that
start as ‘Early
Access’ on Steam. PUBG development started in March 2017 was once thought
to be one of those games stuck in ‘eternal early access’ with things slowly
being added over time slightly improving the game each time, and only 9 months
later your mother gave birth to youpatch
1.0 was live and the game was now officially a game or something I don’t
know it was out of early access anyway. That may seem like a while but there
are some games who have been in early access for years so the release was applauded.
You have to have your skydiving skills down pat
Playing PUBG now basically the gameplay is the same but a
lot of changes and fixes have been implemented since the early stages as one
would expect. It’s a pretty simple affair, you create your character then
simply jump into the game. One thing I like about PUBG is that you have so much
choice as to what you want to do, play solo, play in a team of 2 or 3 or 4 etc
other options include which maps you would like and the option to play locked
in First-person mode. As I detailed in my story playing solo is an exciting and
tense affair for me at least as I try to avoid direct combat, though the best
experiences come with playing with a squad. You can of course play with random
teammates which can be fun but playing with your friends on Discord (or whatever other voice chat you
prefer) is the best. My friends and I usually play third person and I actually
like this the best as I like seeing my player run and jump and crouch and hide
in the bushes and reload and shooting using third person looks awesome, it all
looks very cool and you don’t get to see it much in multiplayer shooters which
are usually all First-Person. Another reason is that I’m not ashamed to admit I
third-person-peek
which in case you haven’t done this already which I know you have, the act of
positing your player character in cover then using the camera to look around
where you wouldn’t be able to in reality. Yes it’s a bit suss but everyone does
it and First-person only servers weren’t introduced till almost patch 1.0 so
everyone did it.
Just taking a peek around the corner with my golden shotty
There are advantages and disadvantages of third and first
person, first person gives you a more immersive experience and is more
difficult due to you not having much visibility especially when prone so it
makes the last few circles a bit more tense as almost everyone is in prone
position and they can’t see each other. Third person allows you see around you
much more easily resulting in you being noticed more easily especially when you
are crawling through the grass thinking you are invisible. In first person you
can admire your gun and all the rest of the item models, in third person you
can admire yourself and all of your cool gear which is why I am seriously
considering changing to a female model at some point. Other things you can do
in the menu is customize your character, get rewards (more on these in the next
section) view your stats and view replays of your previous games, the replay
feature is very cool as it records your previous matches (up to about 20) and
you can play them back in full 3D with a large assortment of replay editing
tools inc the ability swing the camera around, slow down or speed up etc
basically all the things you would come to expect for making some cool videos.
The main menu
Just like any popular game these days, PUBG has a form of
the infamous loot crates. As
you play matches in PUBG you acquire Battle
Points (or BP) and these can be spent on two things, firstly if you are
unhappy with your gender or appearance you can change it for a mere 3000 BP. I
had never used this but after playing as a default guy for the entire period I
decided to try out a female character, which is something I don’t usually do as
I’m a bit uneasy with the whole thing but as I can change back at any time it’s
okay. Though man these female models are skinny and I totally realise the irony
of that statement, I mean after being the male models they look so damn small
and skinny and their necks are so long and seem to turn at impossible angles
and they look really frail and er well I’d better stop now before I get into
trouble. Anyway, the other use for the battle points is to purchase the loot
crates, there are different types of loot crates which have come out over time
and contain player clothing and weapon skins. This is fine as a reward for
playing though unfortunately some of the creates require you to purchase a key
with real money to open and that just makes me sigh and realise that’s just how
things are now.
At least I tried a female character, by the way this is the loadout screen where you can loot items, modify your weapons and view your character, as you can see I'm pretty well kitted up here
Previously the clothing was strewn around the floors of
buildings as loot but now you are given a basic set of clothing to use at the
start and if you want anything else you must spend your Battle points on crates
which will give you a random item of clothing each time, most often things you
already have. If you are like me and want to look unique, you can buy and sell
your clothes and weapon skins on the Steam Marketplace,
I had never used the Marketplace before as it was mostly used for games like CS:GO
and Team
Fortress but this I was actually interested in. What happens is your PUBG
in-game items are connected to your steam account and you can view them in
steam, I’d never really looked at this and found I had items from other games
too which I promptly sold as I didn’t play the game and didn’t want them and
then I had money to spend! Except it was Steam currency which you could only
use within Steam, as I looked at the items on sale I balked at the price of
some items like the Female
Ivory School Uniform set which was going for upwards of $1000 I mean
seriously who would pay that much and even if you sold it what could you look
forward to? Never having to pay for steam games again? You’d hope they started
selling pc parts or something on the marketplace. It didn’t take me long to
notice a lot of the clothing came from the original Battle Royale film as you
can see in one of the first promo images a girl wearing the ivory school uniform
set itself and the tracksuit
that Takeshi Kitano
wore plus a range of other clothing items from the movie.
I have a rather large wardrobe
One thing I like about games (especially multiplayer games)
is the ability to customise your character and being able to customise what you
are wearing in PUB is great, it may sound silly but I like to roleplay a bit, I
like to wear what would be appropriate for what I’m doing, which is parachuting
out of a plane followed by a lot more physical activity like running and
jumping through windows and handling weapons and explosives and crawling around
and hiding in buildings and foliage. My outfit has changed obviously as more
and more clothing becomes available and also specifically because of the
inclusion of weather and the
second map Miramar which is
based in the desert, (more on that later) so had to change things up a bit.
Though after much research on the PUBG Wiki
and PUBG Showcase (which has an awesome
outfit builder by the way) I think I got the right amount of comfort and
camouflage. I went with some brown high-top sneakers, some khaki green cargo
pants, a black long sleeved t-shirt, camo fingerless gloves, sunglasses and a
brown leather cap, the sunglasses and cap can be removed of course depending on
the weather and most of the time the cap will be removed anyway after you find
any sort of helmet. Miramar
being a desert map I change things up a bit with brown khaki cargo pants and a
brown t-shirt and this is basically it for the maps as there is basically just
forest, desert and jungle landscapes currently. Of course although I do my best
to camouflage and blend in to the environment by wearing similar-coloured gear
and not things like that freakin yellow tracksuit from the film that I see
others wearing, it doesn’t really make much difference in A. Close quarters
combat and B. basically whenever you move at all. As a friend of mine had said,
your chance of being spotted is affected the most by you how much you move
around, so you could be wearing a ghillie suit but if you’re
running through an open field someone is going to notice you.
This is one of the special event modes in the game called 'War Mode' which allows you to respawn after you have been killed, this one gave you basically just a Ghillie suit and a Kar98 Sniper Rifle. There is a funny moment at 4:45 where soemone walks right over me and doesn't notice I am there heh
One of the things that has changed now is that clothes are
no longer strewn around the buildings in the world, when you start the game for
the first time now you are no longer forced to run around in your undies as you
get a basic set of clothes and that’s it, anything else you must acquire from
loot crates or on the steam marketplace. I am somewhat ashamed to say that I
have spent about $42 US on clothing items as I have been trying to get the
right look, I even purchased a brown leather coat for about $25 AU as part of
the desert map outfit I was making that looked pretty cool but then I decided
it was too hot so just wore a t-shirt. Of course there are still items of
clothing strewn around the map that are regarded as ‘equipment’: Helmets and Vests provide
protection while Backpacks and Belts provide more carrying capacity, the latter are not
actually found in the world and are equipped by default. One of the most
annoying things at the start of the game is finding all this loot then not
having a backpack to store it all, sometimes when landing at quiet spots squad
matches become a ‘looting party’ where everyone travels across a few locations
looting as much as they can for about 20 mins unchallenged then we make our way
to the next circle armed to the teeth only to be shot and killed in a few
seconds by someone we never saw.
No we aren't doing a home renovation show this is an unofficially named 'loot drop party' where everyone drops loot they dont need then we all look through it and grab what we need.
That’s the reality of pubg, it’s sudden, it’s
unforgiving, vests and helmets can protect you slightly and if you are shot but
your squadmates are alive you enter a ‘downed’ state and can be revived by a
squadmate but if the enemy finishes you off it’s all over red rovor. Dropping
into high/risk/high loot areas is always a gamble and you get to know what
areas are hot and cold from experience though generally if you want to avoid
people you just avoid the cities and land far away from the flight path. One of
the worst things that can happen is if you are playing in a squad and you get
shot and they do the really annoying thing of finishing you off and then the rest
of your squad survives and you have to sit there spectating, and give coaching
or just do something else while your squadmates have fun heh. ‘Reviving’ is one
of the things that make playing with others all the more enjoyable, if you get
shot down you still have a chance especially if it was from miles away. Playing
alone there’s this constant fear, it’s so quiet, you can hear distant gunshots
and if you’re inside a buildings then hear footsteps coming from the bottom you
have to stop yourself from freaking the fuck out, there is a button to sneak so
you make no sound though it’s just so goddamn slow (and awkward to hold the
caps button) and when you do get shot at man you jump like hell because you got
the sound turned up so you can hear footsteps etc and then BANG. Playing with a
squad is much less tense but still nervous and fun if you know danger could be
coming around every corner and over every hill.
In the minivan with the squad hoping I don't get shot out, I like this shot heh
The Danger in PUBG isn’t just form other players of course
the Playzone aka the
‘Circle’ is one of the biggest killers in the game, though there’s technically
two of them. About two minutes after the plane passes over the dropzone the
white circle appears, this is the “safe” area then the blue circle appears and
starts shrinking the play area, but takes a leisurely 12 minutes to reach the
edge of the white circle. If you happen to be caught outside the first circle
you do take damage but only a small amount, it’s just a reminder for you to get
going, though as the circles get smaller they do much more damage, especially
if the blue circle has stopped moving and you’re still not in the play zone.
The play zone shrinks at 8 different times, circles 1-4 are relatively tame
with circles 5-8 have you sweating and questioning whether to cut all ties to
your teammates and make a break for it. The play zone itself resembles a giant
wall of blue electricity which is rather imposing though not as opposing as
some other versions
I’ve seen, it leaves you with a few dilemmas. Things like: “Do I keep looting
or get going?” “Do I leave my buddy who has been downed to die or risk losing
my life too” “Do we wait for that other squad we were trading shots with to run
when the circle comes or do we make a break for it now” usually in these
situations I choose to run first as I hate dying to the circle, it’s such a
goddamn waste and disappointing.
Sometimes the circle can look pretty damn scary as it rapidly surges toward you
Apart from the wall of death there are other
mechanics in the game to liven things up, the Red Zone indicated by a red
circle on the map appears as a warning that the area will be carpet-bombed
though this rarely results in death if you are stuck outside, all you really need
to do is get inside a building as apparently the bombs don’t penetrate through
roofes (they built them strong XD) There are also random air drops from planes that fly
past, these creates contain rare items such as the AWM Sniper Rifle, the 15x
PM II Scope and the Ghillie Suit all of which can only be found in these
crates. Because of this they are often dangerous to go near as they fall to the
ground slowly by parachute with a blinking light then when they hit the ground
a red flare comes up marking their position so basically every man and his dog
would have seen it come down. I generally don’t go near drops unless it’s
either right next to us or it’s in a hidden out-of-the-way place where I know
theirs is not many players around, but you never know so it’s always risky.
An longish journey across Erangel where we loot up then keep travelling, clear out a shed and find a drop crate then make a final stand in the forest.
So now we get to the maps, the sprawling landmasses of
both spoilt and unspoiled natural beauty with eerily abandoned and decayed
villages, towns, industrial centres, military bases, farms, quarries, ruins,
prisons, basically anything a small regional island (or area) would have. The
alpha map Erangel
was the first map set in the and possibly my favourite, I don’t know why, it’s
an island in the black sea in an eastern european setting and is based off the Chernarus map from DayZ which
itself was taken from Arma II,
maybe it’s the beautiful scenery with forests and farmlands and mountains, it
all just looks nice, the man-made structures though not so much. There’s really
no indication why the island is uninhabited, there wasn’t in the film really
either, there’s some story in the wiki page about the island was used for
military testing then there was a rebellion by the island’s population then an
electric field was used to keep rebellious towns contained but I guess it’s
just a filler, there’s no single player campaign and we don’t really need to
know why this is happening. A story I could believe though is that prisons are
overpopulated so they decided to kill some off by dropping us all on an
abandoned island that is abandoned maybe due to previous nuclear radiation danger
and letting us hunt each other down in a picturesque wasteland.
And a nice sunset cruise to finish off a day's killin
The Erangel map
is technically 8x8 miles though a large part is taken up by the ocean, getting
around the island quickly means making use of the various vehicles lying around the same
as everything else, yes in Erangel there are 4WDs, motorcycles (some with
sidecars) dune buggies, boats and oddly a Dacia 1300.
You know I love vehicles and using them is a lot of fun especially with friends
though as you could imagine vehicles are loud and can be heard coming not to
mention obvious to others as you zoom along the landscape though for the most
part you’re safe, you’re going fast so you are hard to hit. Vehicles are
necessary at times especially if you like to drop into the far edges of the map
or find the circle is nowhere near where you landed, they are useful to travel
to and from groups of houses looting as you go with all your buddies travelling
together, convoys are also fun too. I am fond of the motorcycles though they
are quite dangerous and prone to flipping where you could either knock yourself
down or kill yourself easily in solo mode, usually when two vehicles with
squads in meet it turns into a drive by shooting match with people often being
shot out of the vehicle and left behind which happened all too often to me or
everyone decided to bail out and take them on, bridges are often a haven for
ambushes especially when the circle is across a bridge.
One of my favourite PUBG videos I have made, this was quite a roadtrip.
Erangel was ‘the’ map for the majority of PUBG’s life, it
was only in December 2017 that Miramar
came along. We were all very excited for a new map, out in the desert, a
completely different landscape and it worked out well I think. There were
concerns that Miramar was too much of a city-centric map, the desert was hilly
in parts with some mountains and mesas if was a sniper heaven with little trees
and lots of exposed land, fighting mainly took place in towns and villages of a
South American country, though it seems more Mexican desert to me. One things
for sure, there are quite a lot of open roads and highways with a sort of
Biker/Mad Max feel to it and indeed the new clothing creates the Biker Crate
and Desperado
Crate did have that exact style of clothing which was pretty cool. And
along with this there were a host of new vehicles including an off-road
friendly Ford-esque pickup truck, a slow but roomy Volkwagon-esque van which
can seat 6 though unless it was a special event wouldn’t really be needed, a
Chevy-esque open topped muscle car and the weirdest looking jet-ski/dinghy
hybrid I have ever seen called the “Aquarail” though it’s fun to use to zoom
between the small amount of islands. Miramar is currently the only map that is
not an island as the western edge is blocked by a high mountain range and the
northern edge is blocked by a large steel wall which I think may be a reference
to Donald Trump’s comments.
After Miramar there was the introduction of weapon skins which was met with
mixed feelings as now with weapon
skin and clothing crates there were multiple versions and again some you
actually had to pay to purchase a key to open even after you spent your battle
points, this game was becoming like CS:GO
and Team Fortress all the time.
The entourage in the Chevy on Miramar
Anyway so after that a new map Sanhok was announced, this new map
would be different from the last two as it is much smaller 4x4 miles instead of
8x8 which would make for some much more action-packed and fast paced gameplay
and immediately I wasn’t impressed. I liked pubg being big cause I liked
landing in the middle of nowhere, travelling large distances across a huge
landscape and hiding in houses with your squad scanning the fields and hills
with the thrill of when you eventually seeing someone. I didn’t want the game
to become a closed-in cityscape gun battle like I’ve seen happen with the
Battlefield series and also games like Counterstrike that take it to the
extreme with maps that are overly simplified, like a bunch of 4 pillars in a
room and that’s the whole map, but anyway the map was going to be half the size
not like a quarter so I guess that was ok. The landscape itself was this time
going to be a mixture of Thailand and the Philipines which was pretty cool as
the name ‘Sanhok’ is a mixture of the Thai word for fun: ‘sahnook’ and the
Philipino word for chicken ‘manok’ so it basically means chicken-fun.
The current three maps in PUBG (Sanhok not to scale though you can tell it's smaller)
Sanhok is
a typical tropical south-east-asian environment feature rolling green hills,
lush jungle vegetation, rice fields, temples, beach resorts and traditional
rural housing. It also has a heavy military presence with many military camps
dotted around which reminds me more of Vietnam then Thailand or the Philipines
as they have names like “Camp Alpha” and “Camp Charlie” and even some of the
rural villages are called things like ‘Ha Tinh’ and ‘Ban Tai’ which to me sound
kind of Vietnamese so there seems to be a very Vietnam War things going on with
the naming but most of the scenery is reminiscent of the two countries as there
is a large cave that you can parachute into from the plane similar to the Pham Lot cave in
Thailand. Sanhok now has some new vehicles including the iconic Scooter and the Tukshai which you
may also know as the Tuk-Tuk.
Ahh sunny Sanhok, one of my friends who is Thai says that some of the trees on the island aren't quite correct though
After Sanhok the Training Mode featuring a smallish island where there are facilities to practice practice pretty much anything you do in the game, shooting, driving on land or water, parkour, parachuting, throwing grenades etc It's pretty fun to mess around with friends driving around the test tracks and jumping around the parkour course. A new survival reward system has also been created allowing you to gain more clothing items for doing specific task for example getting kills with an SMG or surviving at least 20 mins.
I have a snipe at my friends at the Trainign island boatyard, you can the boating course further out and the 800m sniping range on the top right
In case you didn’t know PUBG is developed using the Unreal
Engine 4, which made development faster than games such as ARMA and H1Z1,
which were built with proprietary game engines. Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Green
said himself that development was difficult when creating such huge maps as the
engine was never built for that sort of thing. To be honest I think it looks
great, it looks pretty damn realistic and despite the fact that I may hinder
myself by playing with decent graphics I like to because the game looks so good
and I don’t think it really affects me, I’ve played things like 7 Days to Die
and to be honest they almost seem to have been made with the same engine,
though 7 days to die seems so freakin depressing. Anyway the graphics look
realistic, nuff said, there’s a bit of glitching but it’s fine, the game has
had some major graphical updates since its inception and now looks much better,
only after watching the Zero
Punctuation review where Yahtzee mentioned that most of the models look
like they were taken from the stock military/survival/fps and it’s kind of
correct, as your character doesn’t really have any kind of personality their
just a base multiplayer model that yells in pain on occasion but no change in
facial features though who needs that really it’s a multiplayer game.
We are all very serious with our apples
I for one
like the beautifully rendered, grass trees and bushes and hide in them quite a
lot in fact a running joke about me is that I like to hide in a bush for most
of the game but with graphics like this, why not? I’m also a big fan of the
weather effects as at one point ‘evening’ ‘rain’ and ‘fog’ matches were
introduced and man did I like the rain and fog ones. The noise of the rain
muffled footsteps and even some gunshots and slightly limited visibility, fog
was the best as it severely limited your visibility making sniping virtually impossible,
but this was the same for everyone so it was fine. Bluehole actually removed
the fog and rain weather after players started intentionally leaving the match
which had this feature, which really sucks to be honest couldn’t they just
leave it in? To combat this, the maps now have dynamic weather so they usually
start off with clear weather then fog or a storm will roll in which is ok but I
really like to dress for the occasion.
"Oh no and it was so nice and sunny when we first started too, oh well I guess they won't hear us coming over the thunder"
There are hot drops in the middle of every map, and in Sanhok it was definately Paradise Resort, with the school for Erangel and Hacienda Del Patron for Miramar
Another good way to practice this is
events, yes PUBG has had a fair few official
events from simple changes like 8-man squads and weapon spawn changes i.e
Crossbows and Ghillie suits, Shotguns only, 45.acp ammo weapons only to more
complicated things like flare guns scattered around the map that can be used to
summon armoured 4x4’s. And then there’s the game-changing War Mode, yes War
mode is basically a static circle, (about the size of circle 4) at a random
point in a map and there are planes constantly flying over the area so if you
die you can respawn, it’s based in teams and the highest kill count wins. War
mode is fun and good practice but it still makes me nervous as I don’t want the
entire game to be like this. And then there’s the custom modes, yes you can customise
the game to be almost anything you want, one of the weirdest modes I have
played was vehicles only, no weapons, so it was basically just everyone driving
around and tryingto squeeze each other
out of the final circle before it disappeared.
Have you ever seen this many cars at the same place?
PUBG has grown into one of the most popular games in the
world, as of 10/8/2018 it was Steam’s top
game by player countand has
officially cracked the top 10 best
selling video games ever and has seen a lot of publicity though not nearly
as much as publicity as you know what
but I’m kind of glad it isn’t as when the game you play is being featured on A
Current Affair it’s not often a good thing. PUBG is definitely my favourite
of the Battle Royale genre as it is now, I have never played Fortnite but I’m
not a fan of the graphics and the generally more fast-paced gameplay though the
building mechanic looks like a fun thing to mess around with.Totally
Accurate Battlegrounds was released
from the same creators of Totally Accurate Battle Simulator as a Battle Royale
clone with a very comical style complete with silly, locations, flailing dummy
player characters and a large and ridiculous weapon arsenal, I played with my
housemate and it was a lot of fun and I gotta say the TABG version of the
‘wall’ is the best I’ve ever seen. I haven’t tried out Ring of
Elysium yet but I it looks ok. Lastly I’d never thought I’d say this as I
am not a fan of Call of Duty but their upcoming ‘Blackout’
battle royale mode for Black Ops 4 looks pretty good. PUBG is also available on Xbox1 and interestingly Android and IoS too, I did install it on my tablet and have a play but frankly you know how I feel about using the tablet screen to play a game and it currently has no controller support, probably to stop others having an unfair advantage. Of course people have managed to use a controller through rooting their device, something I will never do. And even managed to get a keyboard and mouse working on their phone which leads to a massive advantage to someone who decides to do this and obviously the general playerbase is not happy as this tips the scales a lot when you're fumbling around with the touchscreen controls.
I like the angle on this shot
So if PUBG is that popular the developers must be doing
something right, but you wouldn’t think that when hearing from the community,
yes that’s right much like any kind of product or service, you often only hear
bad feedback and complaints if anything at all and with a game as popular as
PUBG this is a true as ever with one of the most toxic
communities around, on Steam the reviews are “Mostly negative” if you trust
that sort of thing. Yes PUBG has had its fair share of complaints including
things I’ve never heard of such as claiming the game has bad ‘optimization’
which can be described in this way "Good optimization means that the game
works at the same framerate across a wide range of hardware specs, including
low-end configurations." So this explains why I see complaints from
players super god-like high end system not displaying the constant 60fps framerates
or whatever they are after but tbh the only time my framerate seems slow is
when I’m locked in a gun battle with another player and that’s no time to check
your fps counter. I admit that PUB from the start isn’t the most stable of
games but you would expect something like this from a game in BETA. Though even
when PUBG reached patch 1.0 and was officially released a lot of the issues
were still there, things like not being able to see friends in the menu,
invisible walls, rendering issues, graphical issues, framerate issues and a
large one being server and connection issues as you often get random ‘server
busy’ and ‘cannot connect’ etc screens but you seem to be able to overcome them
by just trying again.
Fog, hard to see whats in the distance, but much better frames per second!
And then there’s the inevitable hackers the mostly Chinese
hackers are well known within the community. While I’m sure there are
people who hack from other countries it’s evident that a large number of the
playerbase hail from China as many a time in the lobby you hear Chinese
language-speakers, even in the Oceanic lobbies there were many. We didn’t
really know the reason that they were here though we guessed that there were
too many players (and hackers) in their own server so they decided to infect
us. Thankfully there is a deathcam feature in PUBG so you can see exactly how
you were killed however embarrassingly or illegally it was done and yes we saw
each other being spotted through buildings and landscapes and the suspect’s aim
snapping onto us then being shot at long range with no recoil and we can then
choose to report them for all these abuses but it’s just sad that a game needs
to implement this level of tools to combat hacking. More recently the oceanic
servers seem to be dead as queuing in that region leading to wait times of
almost half an hour if the game ever happens, I’m not sure whether it’s due to
failing interest or a server problem as we have to resort to playing on the
South East Asia servers which although we will have a ping disadvantage we are
able to get a game quickly. PUBG Corp interestingly released a new ‘Fix PUBG’ campaign aiming to make the game
better, something that has come a little too late for many players.
Eeeyowch, you can see the death cam and report options on the lower right, this guy was thankfully legit
Despite all of these issues PUBG is one of my favourite
games still, it’s a great game to play with friends and I have had the good
fortune of the game to be adopted at my (sortof) local large-scale Lan Lan-slide with not one but three comps,
Squad, Solo and War Mode Duos. I don’t play it as much anymore as it seems
everyone just wants to play Sanhok and not the old maps and I’m a bit sick of
it though I will get back into it once the new Snow map is released. I will still
always regard Battlefield
2 as my favourite Multiplayer FPS and Vietcong as my
favourite combination of both story and multliplayer ever but this comes a
close third though they are all different in gametypes, in Battlefield there
was only conquest mode, in Vietcong we always played capture the flag and PUBG is battle royale (most of the time
anyway) If you’re looking to get in on the battle royale action then I can only
recommend PUBG as the original of these games, I can’t recommend Fortnite or
any of the others (with the possible exception of TABG) as I have not given
them a go. Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds is all I need and I will continue to
support it, well until the usual two reasons I leave multiplayer games, the
playerbase dies or something better comes along, that’s just the world we live in.
JD
10/10
Things I liked:
Battle Royale is awesome!
I like hiding
The ever present sense of danger
Great game to play with friends
Choice to play alone or with one, two or 3 friends, no set
number
Realistic graphics and environment
Character model and clothing customization
Very large play area, slow paced gameplay
Ability to rejoin game when game crashes.
Great death cam and replay feature
Leave and start a new game whenever you like, very minimal
waiting times
Things I didn’t like:
Many many bugs and issues
Many hackers
Mostly unpleasant community
Oceanic servers no longer playable
Having to purchase keys with real money to open some loot
boxes.
Getting killed early on then having to wait for your
squadmates to finish.
Release date: July 1994 Genre: Space Simulation Publisher:LucasArts Developer: Totally Games Platforms: Windows and Mac Modes: Single Player only
When I was younger I played the much loved Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter
(XvT) though due to a lack of
story mode I couldn’t really get into it, I recall just doing the tutorial
missions again and again as when I tried the other missions etc it was just too
complicated. The problem was that I was starting off one of the most beloved
Star Wars game series with a game that was (initially) conceived as a
multiplayer-focused version of the first two games, and indeed it was a
mishmash of different training exercises, “furballs” and only two
“battles” that can’t technically be called Campaigns because they follow no
chronological order. I had a vague understanding of the other games in the X-wing
series but hadn’t made any particular effort to go back to them as I’m not
really fond of flight sims, it was only many years later when I saw my
housemate watching some videos of the original X-wing that I got interested
again. X-Wing had a storyline as you are actively involved in a number of key
battles before, during and after the Battle of Yavin.
X-Wing vs Tie Fighter basic gunnery training, ah the memories
My housemate recommended we purchase our star wars games
from the Good Old Games (GoG) which I had
not actually heard of at the time. GoG specializes in old games of course and
they are different from Steam in
the fact that when you purchase from GoG technically you own the game as you
download the files andplay using the
executable file without using any other program, whereas a game purchased on
steam must be played through Steam itself, sort of like a jukebox. I couldn’t
actually handle the freedom of GoG i.e. I couldn’t just put the icons on the
desktop could I? it would be too messy, so I downloaded GoG Galaxy which is GoG’s own gaming
client which is actually pretty cool. It allows you to revert back to a
previous version of the game easily, which is a very good feature that Steam
does not have.
Anyway GoG had their usual “May the 4th be with You” sale of
all of their classic Star Wars games and I got quite a haul with the following:
TIE Fighter Collector's CD (1995)
X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter
X-Wing Alliance™
Rogue Squadron 3D
Star Wars Starfighter™
Republic
Commando
Empire at War: Gold Pack
Jedi
Knight: Dark Forces II
Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II - Mysteries of
the Sith
Jedi Knight™
II - Jedi Outcast™
Star Wars™: Jedi Knight™ - Jedi Academy™
Knights of the Old Republic
Knights of the Old Republic™ II: The Sith Lords™
STAR WARS™ Battlefront™ II (Classic,
2005)
Rogue Squadron 3D, originally on the Nintendo 64
And the
original Dark
Forces which I have previously reviewed, though Tie Fighter was the first I
wanted to try. There was then the issue about how to control the game, as you
know this would be nothing less than a joystick, I still had my almost 10 year old
joystick though without a USB port that thing wasn’t gonna fly so Brok and both
chose our joysticks of choice. Being a Logitech fan I went with the Logitech
Extreme 3D Pro as it was nice and cheap and suited my needs, Brok being a
lefty when it came to joysticks opted for the Thrustmaster T16000M
(the names these things have... I know) being an ambidextrous joystick.
The Logitech Extreme 3D Pro, no fuss functionality
So there we were, we had our games and our sticks it was
time to get it on, I would have liked to start with X-Wing but Tie Fighter was
already released earlier then XvT and X-Wing before that so it was the most
basic one and I didn’t want to go that far, plus Brok said that If I played any
of them again Tie
Fighter would be the one, and so I did. 1994 was a big year for gaming
indeed and it’s only fitting that what is possibly the best starfighter game LucasArts ever developed would come out in the same year as classics like Donkey Kong Country,
Super Metroid, Doom II and the very first
Warcraft game, Orcs
and Humans. The version of Tie Fighter was the Collector's CD-ROM Edition
which was a re-release of the original game which came out in 1994 and it
included the Defender of the Empire and
the Completely new Enemies of the Empire
Expansions.
Whee Tie Fighter!
From the very moment you enter the game you feel nostalgic with the
the 8-bit theme music, speaking of which, it’s the only Star Wars game which does not
feature the Star Wars main theme in the title crawl, instead using the classic Imperial March
theme which is a cool difference. You get to see the Emperor, Darth Vader and
the might of the Empire in all of its glory before you seemingly wake up in
front of a man at a very tall desk and with a rather brusque tone asks you to
“identify yourself pilot!” which is where you create your profile, well at
least the stormtroopers stand at attention when you walk in not before aiming their guns at you if you try to do this before registering.
The game intro and one of the in-game missions, I'm flying an assault gunboat in this one.
Tie Fighter had
some innovative features for its time, the menu screen was a concourse inside
the Star Destroyer Vengeanceand you moved your mouse around the various doors to access the menu
options. Among these options was the Tech Room where you could view the
technical specifications of every craft available in the game which I remember
from X-wing vs Tie Fighter. There was also the ‘Film Room’ as the game had a
camera capture feature which allowed you to record your flights and view your
missions and amazingly jump into them and play at any time which was pretty
cool for back then. Setting up the controls wasn’t too hard as you could
map everything through the dosbox interface, though I only mapped controls to
the immediate buttons on the stick itself I didn’t do any for the controls on
the bottom as it was far easier to just remember the keyboard
commands as I had the joystick set up on my mousepad with my mouse on the
desk and used my left hand for keyboard commands, Brok did it this way and It
worked much better then when I tried to only use all the buttons on the
joystick base. I think the only other joystick controls I used apart from the
trigger to fire were to target any attackers, target incoming missiles and spin
my craft around so I was right way up.
The ship's concourse which acts as a menu
Then it was time
for the training simulator which I
thought was the best choice for starting out. And it was, I became proficient
at maneuvering the various fighters though that circular obstacle course that
got more complicated with every few laps and shooting those yellow balls for
more time. I then tried the combat chamber where you flew your selected craft in
different scenarios with some based on historical events, I did actually end up
doing them all for every craft which I probably shouldn’t have as I forgot that
this version included the expansion and I technically wasn’t going to fly
things like Tie Defenders for a while so I
got to experience the newer craft in the simulations which I thought was fine
hah. Your choice of craft go from TIE Fighter, Bomber, Interceptor, Advanced,
Defender, Assault Gunboat, and Missile Boat. It’s remarkably simple flying a Tie Fighter,
there are no shields, no advanced missiles, no beam weapons, it’s almost scary,
just your lasers and missiles and flight expertise most of the time, I would
have liked to stay with it for most of the game but I found that for most of it you
were in the more advanced fighters unsurprisingly but I did get sick of being
in an assault gunboat or missile boat. I’m still not exactly sure which is my
favourite but it’s possibly still the Tie Advanced with
the Tie Defender
coming in second.
Tie Fighter Combat Chamber mission 2, oh it was damn simple back then
So after all the training it was time for the real thing,
the Tours of Duty! Oh yes we’re
getting canonical now and boy I was excited to take part in the historical
battles. Of course before you get into the flying you go through the “New
Battle” door and choose your first “battle” or “tour of duty” Tour
of Duty I: Aftermath of Hoth and then go into the briefing room for your
first mission Patrol Jump Point D-34 (Holy shit! Jump
Point D-34 I can’t wait!) and there was another one in third tour of duty simply
titled “Hold Position”
(FUUUAAARR!)The missions actually have
a more exciting name in the wiki “Skirmish at Outpost D-34” and “Second Battle
of the Pakuuni system” respectively and I can assure you in none of these
missions does everything go exactly to plan or I’d have to start taking shots
at friendly ships seeing how much I could piss off the Flight Officer.
Speaking of which, you have various options in the briefing room, you can view
the mission briefing, you can talk to your flight officer about the mission or
speak to a mysterious figure who is actually an envoy of the Emperor, and he
gives you hints for bonus objectives in the mission. Then that’s pretty much it,
you choose your armaments (missiles, beam weapons) then launch.
Your flight officer near the briefing screen and the masked figure hiding in the back there.
Having played
XvT before and practiced on it recently I didn’t have much trouble setting up
the controls, I had basically just configured them through the dosbox setup to
use the joystick buttons and only used about 3 or 4 of them. The trigger to
fire of course and the thumb button to “roll” the craft around to the right way
up, the rest were to target nearest fighter and nearest warhead and the hat was
for looking around though I never really used them most of the time I just had
the joystick on the mousepad and used my left hand for the keyboard controls
which worked fine.
Oh no, not those pesky A-wings, this was before they had the red paintjob.
The improvements over X-wing are numerous, the most obvious
improvement was the graphics which were much improved and the game engine
supported much larger numbers of craft in the missions and higher detail and
much more smoothly, the AI was also improved allowing for more challenging
opponents. There were many more flight options added like flight dialogue and
messages, a message log, a list of objectives, ships' status and behavior,
three-dimensional map, and HUD, a sub-target system and other additions such as
an option to choose armaments before flying. I swear I took these things for
granted as I had started with XvT and watching my housemate play X-Wing just
reminded me more of how I didn’t want to start with it hah, the HUD was heaps
better as it had a 3D rending of the target craft with stats on their shields,
hull, distance etc and you also now had a button to attempt to match
speed with the target which helped a lot to stop you crashing into slower craft
which I almost did many times trying to take them down (we all know the feeling,
just one more lasercannon blast!)
About 3 minutes in I have a squizz at the interactive map, Imperials are red, rebels are green and neutral are usually blue or pink
The initial missions were fairly easy as the craft you were
fairly simple (Tie Fighter, Bomber and Interceptor) The storyline was basically
the events from the Battle of Hoth
to the Battle
of Endor though you do not have any direct involvement in each, in fact for
many of the missions of the storyline you are fighting off pirates and Imperial
defectors such as Admiral
Harkov and Zaarin
in the Zaarin Insurrection
instead of the Rebel Alliance itself though you still fight them on occasion.
The game maintains that you are playing as yourself never calling you by any
name, the canonical pilot for the game is Maarek
Stele an ace imperial pilot whose plight is written in The Stele Chronicles
which actually came with the game itself similar to The Farlander Papers that shipped with X-Wing.
Vice Admiral Thrawn from the opening cinematic
I didn’t have much trouble doing most of the missions, just
look at the mission briefing, talk to the cloaked figure, check the mission
objectives and then go at it, I made myself familiar with the shield, cannon
and beam weapon recharge rate and dumped energy into one or the other before
the action started. The missions objectives vary from attack this and defend that
to more involved things like inspecting and using tractor beams to stop fleeing
craft. Objectives sometimes change whilst in the midst of playing: new
friendly/enemy craft leave or show up, things get destroyed, people defect mid
battle even, I tell you what I press G (the button to show your goals) a lot
during a mission. Some of the most difficult missions involve safeguarding a
friendly ship which were often very fragile and would be destroyed in a direct
assault so you had to keep an eye on them at all times often destroying any
threatening craft before they got close enough to launch missiles, I got stuck
on a mission like this where I had to defend a freighter while being harangued
by a Tie Advanced but apparently I got past it and I’m not sure how. I was up
to the last tour of duty before Enemies of the Empire but by then I’d had
enough.
New craft alert!
After the mission you can meet with your flight officer and
debrief, and then that’s basically it, you go from different battles and the
missions in between. There are a small amount of cutscenes to show the
storyline and some awards ceremonies showing the medals you receive, the story
is actually quite good with the betrayal storylines but then again I’m going
from XvT which was basically just a big multiplayer combat sim. You can also
speak to the cloaked figure again who after completing enough bonus objectives
initiates you into the Secret Order of
the Emperor and the more bonus missions you complete the more you gain rank
and title in the order though it doesn’t give you anything special apart from an an arm tattoo. In the options
menu you can see the medals you have earned, training certificates and gameplay
records such as scores and hit rates, you can also see your arm on the left of
the screen and when you roll your mouse over you can see how far you have progressed
in the secret order of the emperor from the complexity of your tattoo. You
change the difficulty level and other settings whenever you like too which is
helpful as if you were having trouble with a mission you can change the
difficulty to easily to get past it then change back.
Medals, Records and options viewing screen
The graphics although primitive looking now were very nice
for back in 1994 and they run nice and smooth on modern machines so the dosbox conversion was done well, pretty much
everything has been updated from X-wing, the ships look better, the environment
looks better (well it is just space but it still looks looks good) the graphics
system supported Gouraud shading which apparently is an effect that makes
curves of low polygon objects appear more realistic. I can’t
really say much apart from that as I didn’t play X-Wing only XvT in which the
major new graphical feature were thefeature were the textured ships. But from what I can see from X-wing
anyway the graphics are better on Tie Fighter, the game runs smoother and sort
of has this timeless feel like Super Mario World and Yoshi’s island have. I
think there was something different about pc graphics compared to console
graphics in the 90’s as I was mostly playing console back then and from
experiencing the transition from 2D to 3D on consoles (Super Nintendo to
Playstation in my case) I think the PC just did it better.
Beautifully rendered Star Destroyer there
The music of course is one of the best things about a Star
Wars game and I don’t need to tell you that taking part in hectic battles with
the Star Wars official soundtrack blaring is amazing. The good thing about the
X-Wing and Tie Fighter is that they use the iMuse music system which
basically is a system that changes the music depending on the events of the
game, for example, new ships entering the battlefield, a change in objectives,
a craft being destroyed, a mission being complete or simply just going quiet
when there is nothing happening at the time. XvT didn’t have this system it
just played the music consistently so I could really tell the difference
between the soundtrack and it sounds so so much better and I wish most games had this feature, in fact SWTOR has it to an extent when certain events
or player abilities are triggered while in game. The audio was as clear you
could expect with the speech being able to be heard absolutely fine and the
voice acting done well. You can’t exactly hear everything that goes on in the
battle as you are inside your star fighter in space so you mostly only hear
your own activity unless you are being shot at or ships are shooting near you
but it’s still great.
I have no idea what I'm doing at this point, you can hear the music change when I fail the mission
I’m not exactly a big fan of fight sims, or space flight
sims I guess if you can call them that, but Tie Fighter isn’t quite that. At
the start you are a bit daunted about all of the controls and functions of your
craft (especially the later ones) and all the targeting and wingman orders and
recharge rates and HUD
information etc but it’s easy to pick up and pretty soon becomes second nature.
I’m glad I played Tie Fighter though I didn’t quite get all of the way through up
to Tour of Duty X if I remember correctly though that was far enough as I’d
done pretty much everything I could in the game. Tie Fighter is one of those games
that true classic gamers remember and get all nostalgic when talking about it,
I certainly do but it’s for a slightly different game. Anyway it’s currently on
Good Old
Games but it’s best to pick it up on the May the Fourth sales
that happen every year, if you’re a Star Wars fan or a fan of Flight sims or
even if you’re not it’s still well worth a go. I remember sometimes going back
and playing old games and just being underwhelmed with the magic of it
seemingly gone, not so with Tie Fighter, nostalgia is rarely this good.
JD
External view is quite nice sometimes, though you can't swing the camera around yourself
Fighting for the Empire
gives me a strange sense of purpose and righteousness
