THE SMOKING GUN

I stated before in previous posts that I am aghast at the state of PC gaming and the more titles I go through the worse it gets. I mean that literally.

The worse it gets with games the worse it looks for reviewers.

Yesterday and today I have been playing Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Blacklist.

Now to give you an idea of how ridiculous it appears to be in all aspects I ordered the Splinter Cell Blacklist game at the same time as I ordered Call Of Juarez Gunslinger and Red Faction Armageddon. For some bizarre reason the Splinter Cell Blacklist game took a great deal longer to arrive than the other two. Now then where one thing stands out...

While the Splinter Cell game was downloading its second patch which seemed to also be 17GB I finally completed Call If Juarez Gunslinger. Well I say finally because I was stuck at this stage where I was in a huge gunfight with not only all the famous US outlaws but each character had several versions of themselves...hardly seems fair does it?

Did I mention they were all ghosts? Lol.

No I say 'finally' because I was stuck for a fair old while. I did not realise this was the end of the game mind you. I could not believe I had finished it while waiting six hours for Splinter Cell Blacklist to finish installing despite ordering the games at exactly the same time!

I doubt I have completed 20% of the other title, Red Faction Armageddon.

When I started playing Splinter Cell I really did not know what to expect. I have always wanted to try all the Tom Clancy games but read such bad things about them all. There are a lot of titles and the vast majority of them get extremely bad reviews by magazines and gamers.

I have scratched my head over this for a fair old while and it simply makes no sense, how the hell are these idiots making any money? Unless it's just the PC versions of the games in which case see something needs to be done. 

The more and more I play the more and more I think that either games software houses or the publishers or perhaps both are taking the right royal piss out of PC owners.

A few new titles in to my return to gaming and I came across something I never had before and I very much mean this literally. I was completely confused when I paused and tried to save my game progress. I was stunned and spent bloody ages looking for something that simply was not there?!

How very bizarre that is! It's literally unnerving because you don't trust whatever is it has shut its saving checkpoints. 

Now the odd thing about realising you have this bloody stupid, yes bloody stupid, system in games but I have one series where this literally occurs, read changes, during one particular series. I think this was where it occurred and that was Crysis. The first one you good safe your games and a quick look at Crysis 3 and it was gone.

I don't know whether it's pure laziness or they are literally taking the piss but I have gotten so frustrated about this that I feel I want to contact the coders and publishers and talk then to piss off over you consoles completely and one come back when they have they have grown up!

So my first few titles of Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas and Elder Scrolls Skyrim and the old fashioned way.

Yet all those three titles I mentioned all have this checkpoint system and one game dies this very badly. Very badly.

This is so obvious and potentially game breaking that's it's amateurish but the fees they command are anything but. 

Splinter Cell Blacklist is the one that implements it badly. Also the design of the game is also somewhat bad too. In fact the whole Tom Clancy bunch I have are still really messed up. I will explain each and with the reasons...

Ghost Recon Phantoms

Was told by Game Store was single player but the exact opposite is true. Was surprisingly better and more fun to play than I thought it would be. I also paid for it die it being a free game. Graphics pretty good and nice controls, especially the getting into cover button as well as firing from cover.

Pay to win which I detest as utter angreed and will destroy the gaming industry for all but idiots, believe me.

Ghost Recon Future Soldier

Expected and hoped it would be similar to Phantoms and it was... mostly. A bit short though and menus and other noon gaming screens where abysmal and bland.

Ghost Recon Advanced Warfare

Thought this would be like Phantoms but no, old, bad graphics and bloody hard. You get seen when it's impossible to be seen. Uninstalled it.

Ghost Recon Advanced Warfare 2

As above but not uninstalled just yet.

Splinter Cell Blacklist

Odd as it has the best graphics out of my bunch but other things let it down badly. I think that gamers get bitter about shite games because they want to like them so badly but that they end up feeling let down.

Aiming from cover often really stupid and does not work! Why you would it something in the game that's still broken I have no idea. Often your cross hairs are on a wall when submitting to aim from cover.

Saving checkpoints often too far apart in sections that will become boring quickly and then frustrating soon after. The first mission went like a dream but then the same thing happens with the two next missions?!

The controls are clunky like the aiming from cover is. It is already like this was a prototype to test the new controls? 

After a break for sleep just then I returned to playing Splinter Cell Blacklist and I am afraid to say that the three games I just bought are very disappointing, very very disappointing indeed.

The layout of the missions are absolutely dreadful and so is the game elements. Everyone is scattered about and each part is like a game of chess with everyone on high alert?! They simply would not be like this unless there was a full on attack or they knew one was coming. There is also no skill involved devastate toy work from trial and error which you have no choice in doing because along with far too many men scattered about they have the aforementioned dogs and can survive several bullets to the face while wearing normal clothing while your downed with a lot less.

I also had a really fecking annoying part where I managed to progress further and fur done bizarre reason they placed in the odd guys with armor?! I guess the cheers thought they were being clever and smart, err no your not, in suggesting that they can only afford helmets for one in ten men?!

Here is a tip guys, anyone in the spy or military industry that wants to be covert in their actions they do not go wading right through the middle of a complex with so little in the way of cover.

The controls are clunky whereas in Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Phantoms game is just right and not only are they clunky they are also terribly unresponsive.

If this were any other type of gadget you brought the would be an uproar about it, often making the news and at times millions of things can be recalled from a hoover to a car. 

But hey, is only pennies your wasting right? I mean fifty or sixty quid is nothing really...or should I say twelve quid a month for god knows how many months? Or both?!

There should be a body set up that makes sure these games are not either shite or broken before going out the door. If they are and insist upon releasing them then they should be told they can only will them at gashed the price.

I tell you the only way you get through to anyone is money...well outside of physical violence towards them and no I don't mean threats, murder or manslaughter!

I am not saying this because of my own frustrations, you will really need to get you realize this about me. Have I bought a game on release at full price yet? No. So this does not affect me really and the only frustration I have is that I would want to buy one at full price within the first week of release but it is foolhardy to do this. I mean you would have to be a complete fool to just keep doing that!

Two titles I was looking forwards to were Dragon Age Inquisition and FarCry 4. Now with FarCry this was down to since really stupid game design. When it is that bad and you the discovery that 80% of gamers dry the same and it's even listed in games magazines in their to ten of cardinal rules you do winner to who these people are?

Now when I took my...sabbatical from games they had just worked out that the driving force behind games should be gamers and gaming access not money. Oh? Well no it shouldn't and anyone can say what as many times as they like it simply won't change facts. Done and done! The euphoria from playing games is as old as anything whereas the fault ridden idea that everything is driven by money is wrong, been around only five minutes and already proved itself as being felt ridden and simply does not work. The pioneers did it because they enjoyed it with the very idea if being paid to do that which you enjoy was a good thing to achieve.

But like everything else everyone starts to view others as reaching the point ode sitting on your arse while the dollars mount up. When this happens you lose focus and do not strive so hard to come up with ideas. The may well be exceptions to this rule but I cannot think of any. Though I did read an inspiring article about a couple living in a tree house while making thrift own games!

The of course you have the seeking of their souls because a few hundred thousand is not enough, they want millions. Or millions are not enough they want billions. Lol.

Like a man with a name like Dyson you start up thinking you could create something new or vastly improve something that already exists. You want to recreate something or you want to create something completely new. But surely you want it to be good, right?

If and when I create something I want it to wow people. I would want it to blow their minds. I would want it to be both polished and operational as well as well built and reliable. These are the golden rules for seeing the boat out to sail.

Full stop!

But this has evaporated over time with everything. Now you have these groups of people that simply want to buy a customer base. They buy something that's successful and then make a pile of bull manure to flocks of people hungry for more of the same.

They think of spending far less money while taking the same or very similar amounts of the surf. This simply does not work. They stupidly and stubbornly state it does and is the only way, well they are not going to admit they are idiots ate they, to you things. No...it's not. Your just unbelievably stupid and naive and think that the customer base are more stupid and naive than you are?! Which I rather find offensive somewhat, dear boy!

Hmm shoveling shite out the door. Sounds like a good line to use for the headline? Lol.

No I have yet to purchase a title that's new because I am still missing one component for my PC, put off because over £300 has gone to...help others. Even saying that I would still wait awhile. Oh yes, I wandered off there for a meander, sorry a bit light headed right now.

FarCry 4 got lower scores than I expected it to get and everyone seems to say something derogatory about the missions! This really annoyed me because I immediately thought the exact she things that marred FarCry 3 had remained.

This to me means someone wants firing or at least kicked in the gonads to be taught a lesson. Stupid, stupid, stupid. 

I have listened to the absolute garbage doing the rounds for years about PC gaming is going to die a death. They were staying this long before my computer science degree and for the last 14 years since then.

I started to think at one point that the rumors of these PC's demise was manufactured by either the game coders themselves or by the publishers? With the idea of doing people complaining so they can get a while new pile of cash for the same product. Could be both but I imagine the publishers would be the likely culprits?

What amazes me with the Tom Clancy games is that I have five titles here now and only two are alike while the others differ drastically in their controls. Weird.

I would be interested to speak to people that are fans of this lot, would be interesting to see what they say.

Now I did have A Tom Clancy title many years ago. I think it was likely prior to Quake 3 Arena but could have been after that title was released. Whichever one it was I am sure I remember you belonged to a group of four. I seem to remember, perhaps wrongly, having to control each one of the four which was confusing at the time.

A world away from a couple of titles of theirs I played recently with Future Soldier and the two Advanced Warfare games. Though the two latter titles are ridiculously hard. 

It seems to me that there were stages in game making when it was not just physics they needed lessons in but eyesight too! Maybe they're still is? Just tonight I was playing Ghost Recon Phantoms when I was killed by a sniper watching a passageway I did not even go anywhere near?! The were a couple of times tonight when I was killed and the culprit was shown behind a wall, one so badly I thought there must have been the user of cheat codes because a few bullets that found me actually rounded a corner by several feet!

Now also quite bizarre was the fact that this was not the only oddball thing to occur. The was a period where everything just went mad. All the opposing side seem to be running around like nutters for several minutes before I noticed a couple of them were moonwalking backwards?! The was also a period where I emptied two complete clips into an opponent who survived only to turn around and kill me with a single bullet?! This happened twice and another time was when I shot someone several times who disappeared fur a split second behind a corner and then appeared again getting my last couple of bullets in the magazine but this opponent, who had been struck by at least ten of my bullets, just carried on walking towards me while aiming his gun at me as if he or she knew they would not die?!

No they did not have that strange glowing red forcefield thing going on either. I did at least figure that one out. Not the red shimmering fog either which interferes with electronics, or appears to.

Oh yes, I am also extremely interested to know how I can be invisible (cloaked), laying on a floor and 200 yards away and after shifting my position I do get my head blown off as I raise my head before I even clap eyes on them?!

I don't know if updates can make things go awry. These strange goings on did not happen previously. It was almost as if I was playing a team that were several tiers above me in the weapons and gadgets department. 

So there matchmaking is a bit odd either that or I'm not completely all up on how everything works. I got added to a fire team and I have no idea what that is. Not sure how the clans work yet either.

Well I did say I was new at this.

Maybe when I've finished typing and posting this I will actually go and look. Well I have planned to do that several times but.. well I forgot. I do that and I tend to lose track of time too.

Would be interesting to drive into this with the relevant companies and governing bodies and due to what I managed to acquire on all the public services, bar two, and several big name retailers I should do rather well. Especially as I have learned new tricks and plenty of gadgets too. 

I would have to wait until I have cleared some of the backlog of things I have been working on for my corrupting blog. The two Police forces along with the DWP, Atos and the NHS will all likely be cleared over the next 6 months. My 7 concurrently running plans shod have it since reached their destination too? Metaphorically speaking of course.
I find one thing extremely bizarre that is not merely just going on but seems to be the case right across the board and everywhere I look...

Over time as we, human beings, learn so we then improve the things that we use and the things that we do.

Of late the opposite is true and all actions and creations seem to have gradually for worse and worse in the last ten years of so.

I hope this changes before to long?

Unfortunately those that now need to take action to change things for the better wing because they will either fail to see it or just be stubborn and wait for it to fix itself.

I for one simply hope that where games are concerned that we have now had two Fallout games and one Elder Scrolls with Skyrim asking with FarCry 3 and now 4 and the greedy companies will realise that they will benefit more if they concentrate on both working models and fun to play ones. 

Though the tithes might have their own little niggles the are easily forgiven when the title is something special.

Hopefully these linear games with mad chess like sections that threaten to bore you to the point of blood setting from your nose and eyes?! Lol.

If Splinter Cell Blacklist had a large open world a little harder than Skyrim with the control line that of Dead Island Riptide or Call Of Juarez Gunslinger ir even its own Ghost Recon Phantoms it would have been up there with the greatest games. What you are left with is a stylish and good looking game with a great idea adrift in a confusing sea of mediocrity.

I am hoping that this all now ends but then does not get fucked up by a bunch of greedy idiots that wasn't micro transactions and okay to win methods in games who did only prove themselves to be even now stupid than this by doing that "..this is the way it's heading"?! No it's not you moron! Just because the greedy corporations you sold your souls too stress all insisting they want it this way you only get permission to do so from gamers. Because they will be the ones to part with their cash. Only complete idiots pay to win on these things and while many gamers with a brain are already up in arms over this it won't be that if before even the most naive realist its a con. Yup a con.

Luckily for me Pink Floyd, Mike Oldfield, Jean Michel Jarre, Moby and Radiohead among others never asked for a monthly fees to continue listening to the music on a CD every month. Otherwise I would end up paying several thousand each month?!

So hopefully I am keeping my fingers crossed that they realise their mistakes?

Though somehow I doubt it.