ZombiU Session 1

We got our Wii U on Tuesday night, but tonight was the first time I got a chance to sit down and play the one “real” game I got for it: ZombiU (we also got NintendoLand as a pack-in and Scribblenauts Unlimited for Angela, which I guess is a real game but not one I’ll be playing).

My first gaming experience on the Wii U went like this: after a few cut scenes a narrator (“The Prepper”) told me to enter a subway station to find a safe house. Suddenly I noticed zombies coming at me from three directions. I started to run but the Tablet Controller felt clumsy in my hands and I hadn’t inverted the Y axis yet. I stumbled around like a drunk. The Prepper told me to climb a ladder. I got to it and the screen prompted me to hit X to climb. WHERE IS X!!? I looked down at the controller but I was playing in the dark and couldn’t see the labels, but trial and error helped me find X. I got on the ladder just as a zombie grabbed my leg and pulled me down. I jumped up, spinning wildly, grabbed the ladder again just as another zombie leapt on me, dragging me to the ground to become a Zombie snack.

Fade to black, Game Over.

Or not! Suddenly I was another survivor, tucked snugly in the Safe House. After listening to more advice from The Prepper (who is your disembodied mentor/boss throughout the game), and adjusting some options, I crept out of the safe house. I scrounged around a bit, finding a few odds and ends that might come in handy. Then I found a machine gun turret! How fun is this? I used it, saw a zombie in the distance, sighted down the barrel and fired. The zombie dropped like a sack of potatoes. Then it got back up and started running at me, and not far behind him were a bunch more. They came surging up a flight of stairs and I strode forth to meet them, wielding my mighty Cricket Bat. I swung and hit! A zombie staggered back, then surged forward. I hit it again and again it was staggered, but by now 3 more were beside it. Seconds later there was another well-fed batch of zombies and I was waking up in the Safe House as a third survivor.

By this time I had the idea of the game. I snuck out of the safe house, crept up to where the previous survivor had died. And there she was, staggering around, moaning, with a backpack full of goodies. Taking her on 1 v 1 with the Cricket Bat wasn’t too much of a challenge. Whack her a couple times until she falls than smash her head in. I know how to do this from watching The Walking Dead on TV. Then I grab her pack and now I’m geared up and ready.

That survivor lasted a good amount of time until I opened a door that had an alarm set. As soon as it went off (and there was no way to know it was rigged) I was swarmed and quickly died.

Survivor 4 got back to the same location and found 3 or 4 cop zombies milling around with the undead version of Survivor 3 and all my gear. I found the safety of some scaffolding and used a pistol to thin the herd, then finished them off with the Cricket Bat when I was out of ammo. Got the backpack and pressed on. This guy died when he left a building (zoning in doing so) and found himself facing a punk zombie making a huge racket and drawing a horde from all over the area. Dead again.

And so on…and so on.

So far I really like ZombiU except for the ‘cheap’ deaths it throws at you, like alarms and zombies on the other side of zone lines.

It’s a relatively complicated game since there’s stuff you have to do on the tablet and other things you have to do on the TV screen, and you tend to want to keep half an eye on one screen while you’re focusing on the other. Looting stuff in particular can be really annoying. You loot on the tablet where you have to drag and drop each item from the container it is in, into your backpack. The Wii U tablet in general isn’t very responsive, so you have to drag and drop with INTENT. I keep mis-dragging things, believe it or not; I’m just not used to pushing that hard on a tablet screen. There are also annoyances like finding a few rounds of ammo but not being able to pick it up because your inventory is full. So you have to close the container, open your backpack, drop something, then loot the bullets, then equip your pistol and hit the Reload button (Y) to load the ammo into the gun, and then pick up the item you’d dropped. Remember that while you’re doing all this on the tablet, the game isn’t frozen and at any moment a zombie could jump you on the TV screen.

Your tablet also works as a scanner. You hold it up, press one of the shoulder keys and move it around to scan the environment around you (you can use an analog stick too, if you prefer). It’s a neat little mechanic that helps immerse you in the world a bit. You can also see messages from other players in a way similar to the system in Demons Souls and Dark Souls. One of the first messages you’ll find is from the Developers congratulating the people who’ve recently beat Survival Mode (where you only get 1 life). Pretty neat!

In order to like ZombiU you need to like that sort of Rogue-Like vibe of losing a lot of progress every so often. It’s a challenging game, at least for me. When a survivor dies the next one does pick up the same quest, so it isn’t like you’re starting the whole game over, but you are starting the ‘leveling’ of the character over (you get better with guns as you use them, for example).

I’ve only had one session but I think I’ll be chipping away at this game for a good amount of time. I had to quit after a couple of hours because it does get pretty intense and after a string of deaths the frustration level builds a little.

But yeah, I like it a lot. I’m looking forward to putting more time in it and I think it’ll get somewhat easier just as I become more used to using the Wii U tablet. I’m very happy with the purchase so far.

Planetside 2 launch day

Planetside 2 is here, yay! I played the beta of this one a bit and liked it enough to know I’d be playing the released version (it’s “free to play” so that was no bold decision) so I opted to not play the beta very much so the game would be ‘fresh’ when it launched.

That might have been a mistake because Planetside 2 can be brutal to newbies. I seem to remember that when I played beta you first spawned in some central hub that was a safe zone. Not in release. In release you’re dropped right into a firefight. I opened my settings menu to check things out and BLAM! Headshot. Dead. Oh well, it gave me time to look through the settings.

But damn is this game fun! I am absolutely rubbish at it but I generally play a medic. No one hates a medic. If I die 19 times but the 20th time I get to you to heal you up, then I’m OK, right? I just need to go into the game with a light heart and not get angry and frustrated at dying a lot while I’m getting used to the game controls and such. There’ll be time to be competitive later and remember, it isn’t costing me anything to play.

What I love about the game is the scope of it. When you’re running across the field and there’re like 20-25 other guys and gals on foot, plus a few tanks and troop transports rolling along beside you, and fighter planes screaming over head, and suddenly the tank off to one side goes up in an explosion from a direct hit from somewhere.. it just feels like what would be the opening cut scene in any other game. But this is all real gameplay.

Of course other times things are a lot quieter. You gotta take the good with the bad.

Unfortunately tonight their servers are slammed. I keep winding up in a Queue that never moves…never even manages to give me my position in the queue. I finally created another character on a West Coast server with only a “High” population just to be sure the game was actually working. While I was in there I grabbed some video using the in-game video capture tools. It doesn’t do a great job, and then once I upload it to YouTube I fear it’s going to look even worse (it’s uploading as I type this).

Someone tell me about the Wii U dual screen experience

I didn’t pre-order a Wii U. It didn’t feel like a system I needed to have on Day 1 so I decided to wait and see how things go.

But the other day I was playing the Need For Speed: Most Wanted demo, and more than once as I was racing around the city I glanced down at the radar in the bottom of the screen and that lapse in focus was enough to cause me to crash. I just seem to have a very narrow field of focus for whatever reason (I’m assuming this doesn’t happen to most people) so I’m really wary of having to glance all the way down at the tablet controller while playing a game. If I can’t keep track of something in the bottom corner of my TV screen, how am I going to keep track of something on a separate piece of hardware!!?

So to anyone who did snag a launch Wii U, is that at all an issue for you? Just curious.

* * *

The other reason I’m holding back is because a lot of what early reviewers are loving about the system wouldn’t really impact me. Being able to play your game on the tablet instead of the TV because someone wants to use the TV is a family-friendly feature but we have 2 people and 2 HD TVs in this apartment so it’s not a big issue for us. Also the multiplayer aspects where one person uses the tablet to do 1 thing and 4 others use Wii Remotes to do something else sounds really fun, but I’m a solo gamer; I don’t have people over to visit to play video games and it’s just me and Angela here and she’s not much of a console gamer.

I think these ideas are neat and I think the Wii U will be an awesome console for families or people who often have company over.

I’m still sticking to my plan of purchasing a Wii U when there are 4 games we really want for it. Scribblenauts is one (for Angela), so we’re waiting for 3 more…

[Update]

And yet another reason for caution, for me. I thought of this when I was watching TV today, couldn’t identify an actress, and grabbed my tablet to look her up on IMDB. I didn’t just grab my tablet, I grabbed my tablet and my reading glasses, which I have to wear in order to see my tablet clearly. That made me realize that if I was on a Wii U I’d have to, I guess, where my progressive bi-focals which I hate. I can see the TV fine without glasses but with the prog. bifocals on I have to make sure I’ watching the TV through the proper ‘band’ in the glasses.

Again, I’m a weird case. I actually have 3 pairs of glasses. Drugstore (non-prescription) reading glasses for reading books, magazines and tablets, a pair of “computer glasses” optimized for reading at arm’s length away (ie, computer screens) and then the progressive bi-focals which I basically wear while driving. I can read with those if I peer through the very bottom of them, usually having to tilt my head back in order to do so. I hate ’em though. If your optometrist every tries to sell you these things, say no. They’re stupid expensive and annoying as hell.

Hulu gets a game hub

Most of us gamers hit YouTube when we’re scrounging for the latest trailers or what not, but now Hulu wants to get in on the action. They’ve just added a Videogames section to their service.

In addition to trailers, they have content from Canada’s The Electric Playground and G4’s ExtendedPlay (which is destined to end soon with G4 rebranding itself).

They promise release info, reviews and more. For now this content is limited to the PC client but in the coming months it’ll make it’s way to the various Hulu Plus apps for smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, gaming consoles and set-top streaming solutions.

We’ll see if Hulu can attract marketshare from YouTube or even outlets like Twitch.TV!

Why do you hate Windows 8?

I’m seeing a lot of comments around the social networks from people who seem really passionate in their hatred for Windows 8.

I’ve been running it on my laptop since it launched and on my desktop (which I use for probably 12 hours a day) since last weekend, and I’m really quite pleased with Microsoft’s new OS so far. I find it to be much faster in terms of UI response, and I think the Start Screen is a huge improvement over the Start Menu (finding things on my system is way faster with the Start Screen than it was with the Start Menu, and popping open the Start Screen feels faster then opening the Start Menu), though I can still just use Fences on my Desktop if I prefer. I also am thrilled that I can have different task bars on each of my two monitors, and though this isn’t really critical, I’m happy to be able to run different desktop wallpaper on each monitor.

What’s really odd is I find I use the mouse less than I did in Windows 7. Sure Windows 8 works great with a touchscreen (well, I’m assuming that…haven’t tried it myself) but there are enough keyboard shortcuts that navigating around has me using the mouse less than I ever did (it could be many of these keyboard shortcuts always existed and I never bothered to learn them).

Anyway, like I said I see a lot of “Windows 8 sucks!” level comments but few of them with actual reasons why. I’d love to hear why people are switching to, or threatening to switch to, Ubuntu (good choice!) or Mac (awful choice!) because of the new OS.

Is Molyneux’s Curiosity the next Cow Clicker?

Does Molyneux’s Curiosity remind anyone else of Ian Bogost’s Cow Clicker? I haven’t played either, mind you. I just can’t get past thinking Molyneux is somewhere laughing his head off at everyone playing his new “game” (which, as I understand it, consists of tapping on a single, shared giant cube to erode it away until someone, somewhere, reveals the “secret” inside, which I predict is going to be “Remember to drink your Ovaltine”).

If you’re not familiar with Cow Clicker, it’s kind of a parody of Facebook games. You have a cow and you can click on it once every 6 hours to earn clicks. You can read more about it at Bogost’s post but essentially he is (I think, don’t mean to put words in his mouth) illuminating how little game there is (or was, times are a’changing) in Facebook games.

Molyneux’s title is getting press everywhere because he’s Molyneux I guess. And because he talks a good game (pun most definitely intended). So we get quotes like:

�The concept is, �Is the power of Curiosity enough to drive the world?,�� Molyneux explained, describing Curiosity�s conceptual origins. �Because now, mobile connects people together in a way we�ve never been able to before to solve a mystery and the mystery is what is hidden inside this big, black cube. Initially it�s black, but as it gets chipped away, there are going to be many images that are going to be coming across the cube, but what you do essentially is just chip away. Is just the power of mystery enough to drive people to find out what�s in the center?�

(From With Curiosity, Peter Molyneux Explores Whether A Cube Can Capture The World�s Attention over at TechCrunch.)

What really fascinates me is that you can spend real money on tools that help you erode the cube faster. I’d love to know how many people are spending money on this stuff. There’s a Diamond Chisel that apparently sells for the equivalent of $80,000 and I’m sure it’s in there as a lark. An Iron Chisel costs the equivalent of $8 and lets you destroy nine chunks at a time for 5 minutes. Pricey stuff. (Data lifted from The hidden truth of enigmatic experimental game Curiosity at VentureBeat.)

You can get Curiosity on Android and iOS, I’m told. Consider it an opinionated decision that I’m not going to bother to provide links to it. I kind of hate that this game exists, for reasons that I haven’t quite figured out yet.

Windows 8: the (almost) perfect ad-ware platform

So as I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been playing the Windows 8 version of Minesweeper for the past couple of days. Minesweeper is “free.” What I mean is, you don’t have to pay in dollars, you have to pay in time. Every so often you’ll have to sit through a 20 second video ad.

Normally I have no problem with this kind of system; developers have to make money somehow, right? My problem with Minesweeper is the same problem I’ve had with Hulu in the past. There’s no variety in the ads. No one likes to sit through ads, but having to sit through the same exact ad over and over makes it worse, at least to me (I’ve seen two ads so far, a trailer for Life of Pi and some car commercial).

So normally what I’d do is switch my focus to something else while the ad plays. Windows 8 makes this challenging, though not impossible. Minesweeper is a “Windows Store App” which means it normally occupies your full screen. Aha! But I have two monitors! Nope, they’ve thought of that too. As soon as I move my focus to a desktop (ie, regular old Windows) application on the other monitor, playback of the video ad in Minesweeper freezes.

Drat!

There is a solution of sorts, though. You can run two Windows Store Apps at once on the same monitor by ‘snapping’ them to one side. Use Windows+. to snap Minesweeper to the right side, fire up something else on the left (I generally go with mail), and let the video play over there in the right half of the window while you catch up on your email in the left half.

I’ve yet to discover a way to run two Windows Store Apps concurrently, one on each monitor. I’m not sure it’s possible but if anyone knows a way, I’d appreciate hearing about it!

Will Windows 8 “cheapen” Xbox Live gamerscore?

Last night I somehow managed to spend a couple of hours playing Minesweeper under Windows 8! I know, right? But I succumbed to the gamification of gaming! The new Minesweeper has an ‘adventure mode’ that’s kind of fun, but it also has Daily Challenges. Beat the daily challenges to earn points towards monthly medals. OMG I need a Minesweeper medal, right? Of course I do. You can go back and do challenges you missed so I did them all from Nov 1 forward.

And then I noticed there were Xbox Live Achievements you could earn. I’m not usually a fan of all this stuff but I went in and got a quickie achievement for setting off a mine. Talk about padding my gamerscore!!

Now all told you can earn 50 points in Minesweeper but I wonder if this is the tip of the iceberg? Will the Windows 8 store wind up overflowing with casual games that come with Xbox Live Achievements?

And if so, is that going to annoy hardcore Xbox players? I mean when some testosterone poisoned young man in his early teens finds out his mom has a higher game score than he does, and all she plays is casual games while he’s out there on the front lines teabagging noobs in Call of Medal Warfare VIII, how’s that gonna make him feel?

Just to be clear, IF this even becomes a thing, I just find it all very amusing. I’m quite proud of my 5 point “Happens to Everybody” Minesweeper Achievement, though. Particularly since it’s an achievement for failing (setting off a mine by accident).

Windows 8 upgraders: be careful with the free Windows 8 Media Center Pack code

Windows 8 Pro doesn’t come with Windows Media Center installed; instead it’s an add-on option. The good news is that until the end of January you can get it for free by going to this page and entering your email address. You’ll be sent a license key for “Windows 8 Media Center Pack.”

I went through the process on my laptop and it took a few hours before the key arrived, but everything worked.

When I upgraded my desktop I filled out the form again, but I got impatient and decided to see if the key I got for my laptop would work a second time. Since it’s a free key and I gave them no info other than an email address I figured it was worth a shot.

Windows happily accepted the key, installed the Media Center Pack, rebooted that machine and then announced that my copy of Windows was not activated because the key I’d entered was in use on another machine.

I checked it out and my Windows license key now appeared to be the Media Center Pack key. So I found my receipt and got my original Windows 8 Pro upgrade key and entered it. I was told that key wasn’t valid for this edition of Microsoft Windows. It appears Windows 8 Pro and Windows 8 Pro with Media Center are considered separate products as far as license keys are concerned.

I couldn’t figure out a way to ‘back out’ of the Windows 8 Media Center Pack installation to return my machine to a Windows 8 Pro install. I was stuck with an un-activated copy of Windows.

After asking on some forums someone suggested trying to activate via phone. I did that and for some reason it worked and now I’m out of that jam…I hope. I’m waiting to see one or other of my machines revert to un-activated at any moment.

Now this was my fault for trying to use the same key twice, but I’m drawing attention to it because it seems (from what I’m reading on support forums) that if you request more than one Media Center Pack key from the same email address, you’ll get the same key sent to you several times. So if like me you install the upgrade on two machines and ask for a Media Center key twice and happen to use the same email address to do it (which is likely) you’ll get the same key and you might not notice until after you’d sent yourself down the rat-hole that I sent myself down.

If you need a 2nd Media Center key for a second upgrade, best bet is to request it using a different email address.

Another odd Windows 8 issue – “the extended attributes are inconsistent”

I’ve been running Windows 8 Pro on my laptop for a week now and really digging it, so I decided to update my main system.

Everything went well until I tried to install some software, when I encountered a pop-up error saying “The extended attributes are inconsistent.” Well of course they are! All I needed to do was to homogenize the attributes and all would be well right? Wait, what?

So I’ll spare you the long story, but it turns out this can happen if you install a new theme (I picked a lovely autumn one!) that changes your sound settings. Changing the theme back to the default one should fix it, but an even less drastic solution is to open your sound settings (search for “Change System Sounds” in the Settings category) scroll down to Windows User Account Control, and set the sound to (None). That should make the problem go away.

For a detailed explanation of what’s going on, check out this link where some guy who is my hero spent a lot of time tracking down what the heck was going on:

https://chentiangemalc.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/case-of-the-broken-uac-prompt-extended-attributes-are-inconsistent-2/

Hopefully Microsoft will patch this issue out soon, but until then it’s a pretty easy fix.