Hey people, so today we moved over to a new site and we would like to tell all our readers about it. We’ll only be posting on that site from now on. We hope you move over with us, and enjoy the future of Organised Nonsense.
PC
News, articles and reviews pertaining to do with Personal Computers, be warned though PC Master race reins supreme here.
The wonders of Counter-Strike:Global Offensive
We found this new podcast called Organised Nonsense— so I’ll link it down in the footer if you guys want to check it out. We were on the youtube channel today and my comment got like 69 upvotes or something like that, so it was a pretty small reception, but it was like the coolest feeling ever. I ended up following them on Twitter and stuff, and they all hit me up and they’re talking to me about potentially being friends.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive or CS:GO is a tactical multiplayer shooter created by Valve with the Source engine. It is the successor to Counter-Strike: Source. It is team work oriented, like TF2 or overwatch, but the similarities to those games end there.
CS:GO is a lot more precise, with higher stakes compared to other team based shooters. When you die, you’re dead for the entire round. 5-6 shots with any weapon will kill anyone. Headshots are a death sentence unless you’ve paid extra for a helmet, and then it’s not exactly a slap on the wrist either, it will permit you an extra shot before dying. Kinda like a first offender’s program or something. Running and Gunning is less viable because when you get hit, it slows down your movement speed very significantly.
Graphical settings
Graphical settings in games often come with an inadequate explanation, and it can be hard to know what’s best for your setup. Here I’ll attempt to explain various graphical settings, I’ll describe their effect, how they work and what sort of impact they’ll have on performance.
Arma 3, tight.
Lately — ‘lately’ being extra relevant having played till 4 AM last night — I’ve been enjoying Arma 3.
It’s a realistic, near-future millitary strategic FPS. And when I say FPS I mean “first person shooter”, if you actually expect to get several frames per second you should re-adjust your standards.
Being the first game I’ve had to turn my settings down from max on(I tend to live 3 years behind in the gaming world, for those discounts), it feels weird to think this is a 2013 title. Performance isn’t that bad considering the beautiful graphics and massive scale it achieves, but they can’t be reduced very much — and they shouldn’t be anyway. Having an AyyyMD card coupled with Nvhitleria GameWorks likely doesn’t help.
Arma 3 consists of several default maps, and hundreds of community made ones, which along with missions, vehicles and game modes can be browsed in the steam workshop.
Altis(Previously Lemnos), one of the default maps modeled after some meditarian island no one’s heard of(which in reality is 470 km²), is massive at 270 km². For perspective, Skyrim’s map is 39 km², Far Cry 4 46km², GTA V 81km², and The Witcher 3 136km². Thankfully there is a speed up time feature for when you’re walking large distances, but unfortunately and understandably it doesn’t work in multiplayer.
That’s just the largest default though, If you want crashing your pickup truck into a camoflarged wall half way to your objective to be any more annoying, there is an fan-made map modeled after a a slightly bigger meditarian island no one’s heard of
Gameplay
Combat in Arma 3 is highly strategic. Depending on your rank, troops in your squad can be individually commanded or in group to do almost anything you could do yourself(Patch up x, shoot y, pilot z), and to work as a group member by flanking etc.
The AI have their occasional rough moments, but are still very impressive compared to everything else out there, it’s pretty hard to tell AI and player apart, save for the AI’s overly cautious driving and players walking around like idiots.
There is also a High Command, which allows you to order larger squads with less precision through the map. You get cool markers a variety of strategic waypoints, here is a nice imgur story to show what I mean by /u/chowdig
I’ve learned the aim sway and bullet droop intricacies well enough to be much more efficient shooter compared to when I started playing, but what makes a far bigger difference, and determines whether you do a mission with 0 casualities or complete failure is a good strategy — both in planning and in compromise. Arma 3’s realism throws in hundreds of strategic nuances, which sound trivial on paper but are incredibly helpful in good practice, here is a gyfcat of a good strategy making a big difference. eand can be game-changing with some ambitious creativity and unconventional tactics. Of course there is your standard counter, counter-counter, and counter-counter-counter… flank, enemy funneling etc., but I’m talking about that Ghost Army shit.
For example you could booby trap a friendly parked vechle, detonate when an enemy squad checks it out, have a squad shoot up the reamining survivors and place friendlies in the right place to tear up the inevitable enemy backup.
Convoy coming through the area and you want to hit them with artillery, but it’s too dangerous for a spotter? Set up a claymore or two and fire everything from a safe distance when you hear the explosions.
And you could probably distract a whole army and sneak into the enemy HQ while they try to shoot one of them damn RC quadrocopters too.
When you pull an ambitious plan off it’s very rewarding(Humming along to the A Team’s theme tune after saying “I love it when a plan comes together” is obligatory, else you face harsh reprimandations)
The gameplay is very fun for me, but it won’t be for everyone. The exciting buildup and prepration between battles could be interpreted as long waits. 1 bullet in the wrong place could end you 30 minutes into a mission, which some people may find very frustrating, and you need a pretty good PC to enjoy it to its full potential. I give this a 9/10 because what it tries to do, it does very well, even if what it tries to do is not everyone’s cup of tea. If this seems interesting, I encourage you to check out their pretty site, and if you’re not sure, to use the Universial Try Before You Buy Machine(TM) 😉
You Should Play 999
999: 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors is a 2010 visual novel and puzzle game for the Nintendo DS, developed by Spike Chunsoft and it might nearly be perfect. I feel this post will be a bit vague due to spoiler etiquette but I simply had to get the word out.
The game’s central premise is that there are 9 people trapped in a sinking ship who are forced to play the Nonary Game, in which the only way to win is to leave through the 9th and final numbered door within the ship. The game has an introductory puzzle as somewhat of a tutorial before you are introduced to the game’s colourful cast of characters, who may at first come off as one-note clichés but a great deal is revealed about them over time making them perhaps one of my favourite casts in gaming bar Persona and the Metal Gear prequels.
Dying Light is good I guess(PC)
Dying Light is an open world survival horror game where zombies happen in a quarantined section of a relatively run down city called Harram and you’re sent there to retrieve an important ducument. DL incorporates a dynamic parkour system to a large degree, which you can often use to avoid slicing through hoards of walking meat(are humans Kosher, or are they Harram?).
Combat
Dying Light is almost a sequel to Dead Island, and by that I mean it pretty much is a sequel but it’s creators are not saying it is and it doesn’t appear to be set in the same universe, just one that’s very slightly different. They are both quite similar, but Dying Light is a major improvement over Dead Island.
Like Dead Island, combat is melee focused and finicky until you learn it’s intricacies, where it would definitely become rather rinse-and-repeat had Techland not include the progressive addition of enemies and abilities, which do well to keep it exciting. The abilities in Dying Light are mostly well designed and balanced — their use depends on your scenery and what you’re fighting, a trait which successfully avoids over-reliance on a single combat routine over and over. A small nitpick is that there are a few things which feel out of place in the usually realistic feeling Dying Light universe such as craftable remedies that are way too effective and some other slightly cartoonish effects(Electricity for example stays with an object for seconds while arcing across its surface)
All melee weapons have a finite durability, they can be repaired but only a few times. I think this is a rather cheap attempt to make weapon retrieval more rewarding and to get players using multiple weapons. It makes using good weapons feel bad, like I’m wasting it. Mediocre weapons are plentiful, but saying goodbye to my favourite, customised weapon when it breaks forever makes me feel sad :(.
I certainly understand why Techland made weapons have such a short lifespan, if a player found a good weapon that lasted forever, they would have no insentive to search for loot, collect money etc.
They already sort of fixed this by having zombies get stronger as the player levels up while also unlocking new weapons, which in effect slowly makes your weapons less effective against them so when you get a new one it feels very powerful against them, but actually isn’t(weapons do improve slightly faster than zombies). Though I’m not a fan of this method and its affect isn’t strong enough keep players interested in looting on its own.
Dying Light is certainly better with finite weapon repairs than without them, but its a flawed solution.
Story
I’ve only seen people complain about it, but DL’s story is pretty good. The plot provided a constant sense of urgency(Maybe too much urgency, I felt bad having a free-running race while my allies were slowly dying). Some moments were misses, DL has some issues showing emotions and I think maybe it needs to be told it’s okay to cry, though there were certainly some good emotional scenes.
The worldbuilding however is amazing, Techland did a good job constructing an immersive universe with depth that still fits well in game format.
Night time is terrifiying in a way that gets my adrenaline going, and it does it without jump scares or making the player powerless – A lot of horror games lock the player in a flight position which isn’t particularly difficult and ‘flight’ often doesn’t require very much attention. In DL, we have fight and/or flight. There were several instances of these physiological affects happening to me as I played the game.
Summary
The levels are massive, populated, diverse and the player and infected both interact with them nicely. The art and graphics are great(apart from the unwanted effects and Gameworks), combat is exiting, the campaign is good and the side quests are plentifuloverall, I’d give Dying Light 7.9/10
I’d recommend this game if you liked Dead Island or melee action games and you have a good PC(Gameworks doesn’t work so well with AMD because nvidia works better with profits than consumers). The horror is good, but not overwhelming and can be avoided by sleeping through the night.
The Magic Circle review
A genre-obliterating 1st person epic. A singular journey, 20 years in the making. Ishmael Gilder, a.k.a. STARFATHER, a living legend of game design – brings you a cutting edge 4D * graphical re-imagining of the classic text adventure that swept the globe. Through it, STARFATHER met you, the Player… his co-star – and at first sight, he knew just how he felt about you. The Magic Circle is more than a sequel – it is a state of consciousness, utterly without precedent – and at last, it is worthy… of you.
*4D technology is a stretch goal, pending the contribution of backrs like you
-from The Magic Circle’s kbackr page
I couldn’t write it better myself so I just copied and pasted their description of the game.
Though, I can add the details and views that need to be mentioned but cannot be said by TMC games without sounding too full of themselves; The Magic Circle is perhaps the most complete 4D* experience this side of the 2015, Ishmael Gilder is not living legend, for gods such as himself should not be tainted by the classification ‘living’. In fact, I punish myself for using the year 2015, as the more suitable epoch of which to base modern time off is the day the world was blessed of his creation.
/bs
The Magic Circle is a puzzle/adventure game where you take control of a play tester gone rogue, who through the help of synth Nick Valentine — originally from Fallout 4 but left that universe when the Automatron DLC had all these new, customizable robots replace him as the player’s favourite — hack your way through the game you are testing, to the dismay of it’s semi-competent creators who have been stuck in development hell for over 10 years.
The game is filled with various creatures with unique abilities and attributes, which can be hacked to do your bidding. Puzzles are solved by taking attributes from creatures, putting them in others and getting them to work together for your nefarious intentions, like taking the fireproof from a rock, putting it in a turtle and riding it across a lake of lava(A much easier way to learn about the Entity Component System)
The Magic Circle is probably the most original game (that actually attempts to be something people enjoy playing) I’ve ever played. Earlier I described this as a puzzle/adventure, but it doesn’t feel like any game in that category I’ve played before because of it’s hugely non-linear nature, I am interested how other players solved various puzzles, not because I didn’t solve them, but because there are many ways to solve any given puzzle, and the order you do the puzzles(and even which ones you do) is largely up to the player. And the non-linearity does not take away from immersion like it would in other games, I am supposed to be breaking the rules. Completing puzzles my own way is more rewarding.
TMC has an excellent VA cast, with Stephen Russell, James Urbaniak, Ashly Burch and Karen Dyer. There are developer notes hidden throughout the game which deliver a story that’s very funny, with a niche, meta satirical humour with lots of game designer inside jokes and references. Though, some of the character’s rants could do with a laughing track so you can make the satire out from the truth. The general plot is nothing groundbreaking, but still impressive and goes along with the gameplay very nicely.
In conclusion, The Magic Circle is a very original, entertaining, funny and rewarding game with great voice actors. By far it’s main flaw is being too brief, otherwise nothing much stands out as a problem. So, On PC, at a 20 euro price tag, I’ll give it a 7.65(recursive, of course) out of 10. I’d definitely recommend it if you are interested in game development at all and are ok with spending 20 on a 6.5 hour game.
Organised Nonsense 