Wasting Time

So instead of catching up on my reading, cleaning, socializing, or developing any other hobbies, what do I do all weekend? Play games, of course. Pseudo-reviews ahoy:

Thief 2: The Metal Age

The original Thief is well-known for having a big hand in creating the whole ‘stealth FPS’ genre and is fondly remembered as a classic. I never played the original so I’m not sure how its sequel stacks up in comparison, but I got it free with some video card a while back and eventually got around to giving it a whirl.

It’s definitely the type of play that suits me. I’m no good at all at the ‘twitch’-type constant-combat FPS games like Quake, but despite the FPS-style similarities, there’s almost no direct combat at all in the Thief games. Instead, you focus on exploration, evasion, maneuvering, and timing, so that you’re in just the right place at the right time to deliver that blackjack blow and knock a guard out. Or avoid him entirely, if the conditions are right.

The atmosphere in Thief 2 is of particular note, as it’s more of a ‘steampunk’ setting than most medieval-type setting games, with advanced-yet-primitive machinery like security eyes and clunky robots abound, built by an offshoot religious sect. The robots are especially creepy, not just for their looks but for their little sayings that they mutter to themselves as they wander around. “Blessed are the Welded, for they shall know the Builder’s love<skip>the Builder’s love.” “When I was newforged, Karras took me away from the Foundry Mother and said, ‘Thou are the child of my endeavours. Follow me and thou shalt inherit the Earth.'” Karras himself, the leader of the sect, is also quite clearly deranged and yet completely serious, and chews a lot of scenery.

There is apparently an active mod community and plenty of fan-made missions available, so I could continue playing it for quite a while longer, but not for now. Time to move on to…

Thief: Deadly Shadows

Thief: Deadly Shadows is essentially Thief 3, developed for the XBox and PC at the same time. There was a lot of concern that making it an XBox title would ruin the game since they would have to simplify and water it down to make it a ‘console’ game, but fortunately those fears were unwarranted. It still retains the same gameplay as the previous games; the only real consession made to making it a console game was that mission levels had to be split into separate areas instead of just one huge map due to XBox memory limitations. Having to travel between the separate areas is annoying, but doesn’t have to be done very often.

Otherwise though, T:DS is more of the same kinds of stealth missions as in the previous games, which in this case is a good thing. Although the robots from Thief 2 are gone and the focus is back on human enemies, there’s still the occasional creepy moment. The Shalebridge Cradle mission in particular is filled with delightfully spooky moments, even when there aren’t any enemies around at all, and the whole mission is definitely one of the best I have ever played in any game.

The plot isn’t too bad either, continuing the uneasy relationship between the titular character and the Keeper organization he abandoned, and the prophecies that tie them together, with a twist thrown in here and there. It’s really optional though, and it’s easy enough to enjoy each of the missions as their own separate challenge with the plot just as a convenient excuse to be there pilfering items.

There are a few other differences in this version. Instead of rope arrows for climbing walls, you can use climbing gloves instead. Some people like the change, some hate it, but I didn’t really care too much either way. I never used rope arrows all that much in T2, and there are only a few places you really need to use the gloves in T:DS. Another change is that instead of having a specific equipment loadout for each mission and the opportunity to buy a few extra items, with restrictions, you now keep all of your equipment and can restock at stores between missions. This makes it easier to keep yourself fully stocked on the good items like gas arrows, but does reduce the challenge a bit; part of the fun of the missions in T2 was trying to figure out just how to do what you needed to with the limited supplies available.

By far the biggest change is the addition of ‘city’ zones. Instead of being taken straight from the end of a mission to the start of the next one, like in T2, there are now a bunch of areas representing the city you live in and you travel within those city zones to get to the start of the mission areas, with guards and shops along the way. It’s a good idea in that it’s more immersive, and gives you more opportunities to get some extra items and cash along the way, but towards the end of the game it does get a bit annoying going back through the same old alleys and knocking out or dodging the same guards over and over again… It does provide the opportunity for some amusement though; at one point you’re constantly being stalked by some ‘enforcers’ who are hostile to everybody, including citizens and city guards. Enforcers would bump off guards, guards would discover bodies and panic and run off looking for the culprits and run into more enforcers, and every so often one side would gang up on the other in force, and I’d just sit back in the shadows and watch the carnage. :-)

Overall I’d highly recommend both T2 and T:DS (and probably the original as well) to anyone who would like a somewhat slower-paced but still action-oriented game.

Battlefield 1942 Anthology

I’m a sucker for cheap ‘gold’ collections and couldn’t resist picking this one up, even though I didn’t know much about it beyond it being a WWII FPS that got a lot of good reviews.

I’ve only tried the single-player campaign so far, but it’s clear that it’s a different style than the usual FPS in that it’s not a one-man-against-the-world setup like most of them. Instead, it’s team-vs-team and you’re just another member of it, with the rest of your side filled in by bots, so even in the single-player mode there’s more of an emphasis on acting as a team and assisting each other. If most of the bots on your team have picked an anti-tank role at the moment, you’d probably be best off taking an assault role instead and clearing out enemy infantry to protect your bazooka troops. Or if you’re expecting enemy tanks to be coming through an area that the bots don’t protect very well, become an engineer and go lay mines down in that area. It’s not too ‘twitchy’ either, since you have limited supplies and you’ll get killed quickly if you just charge ahead boldly, so you have to move carefully and aim well.

You select which role you want to be (a scout with a sniper rifle, assault infantry with a machine gun, anti-tank infantry with a bazooka, medic, or engineer with land mines) just before you spawn, but there are other possibilities once you get on the map, too. There are numerous different vehicle types available, from jeeps to halftracks to tanks to landing boats to planes, and different positions in each, so you could be either the driver of a halftrack or its gunner. There are also fixed installations such as machine gun nests, flak guns, and anti-ship cannons that you can control to help defend a particular spot. There’s enough of a difference between how all these roles play that it should be easy to find something comfortable. Apparently I’m really good at running people over with a jeep…

Given all this emphasis on team cooperation though, it’s quite clearly meant to be a primarily multiplayer game, so I’m not seeing the full effect in the single-player campaign. There isn’t much point in taking control of a flak gun and just standing around picking your nose if the rest of the bots never bring the action anywhere near you, so in the single-player campaign it’s best to just head straight out and either follow the other bots or create your own action. The difficulty also tends to the extremes — I started the campaign on ‘easy’, and it seems so lopsided that I could probably spend the entire mission doing nothing and the bots on my side would still win. I expect that the opposite will probably be true and ‘hard’ will be so overwhelming that one good human player won’t be able to make much of a dent against a dozen suped-up enemy bots. It’ll make for good practice before heading online to get squished instantly by the pros, though…

This game also reminds me why I should at least remember to read the manual and find out what the basic controls are. On one mission I had run out of ammunition and hadn’t yet discovered how to pick up supplies dropped by dead enemies, so I was running around with just my knife ready. I ran across two enemy bazooka troops lying down and taking shots at our tanks off in the distance, so I ran straight up to them and started swinging away. Unfortunately I hadn’t learned how to crouch down to their level yet either, so I was just standing above them there waving my knife just slightly over their heads…

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

This post is getting too long already, so I’ll just say that it’s quite addictive for such a simple game. Or at least it starts out simple…and then it starts to feed the obsessive-compulsive in you and you just have to have every job represented in at least one character. And you have to learn every skill per job. And keep every member of your ever-growing clan levelled up. And free every area. And clear every mission…