Murder, Death, Kill
There are many, many ways to kill someone in Skyrim; you can crush their skull with a war hammer, you can decapitate them with an axe, you can stab them in the back with a dagger, you can hit them in the head with an arrow from half a mile away, you can even slip poison into their pockets and watch them die slowly. Killing NPCs is trickier as you need to do it without being seen, but you can always sneak into their house at night and bludgeon them with a mace.
That said, the best method I've found so far? Wait until your target is in the middle of town and hit them with a Rage/Fury/Frenzy spell from somewhere out of sight; they go postal, start attacking people at random and the city guard charge in and put them down for you. They don't even seem to care when you wander over, loot the corpse and then toss it over some railings into the water.
Why get your hands dirty when you can have someone else do it for you?
Modern Warfare 3 Confuses Me
I would like to preface this by saying that I haven't played MW3, I probably won't, but I have played Battlefield 3; take from that what you will.
I really don't understand how Modern Warfare 3 is getting the review scores it's getting; 4/5, 8/10, etc. Every review I've read, seen or heard has said pretty much the same thing, that the game is formulaic, only a small iterative improvement over the previous one, that it's a lot more scripted than the previous one, that half of it is on-rails shooting, that the multiplayer is pretty much the same as the previous one - if not worse in some aspects due to design choices. On the upside, it's a polished version of MW2 and it does resolve the story that has been built up through MW1 and 2.
So how does this equate to an excellent game? Because it's sold more than 9 million copies? Because it's a big AAA title? Because it's part of a popular franchise? Surely none of these things should have any impact on the review score. It seems to be getting worse and worse over time; reviewers basically saying "This game is essentially the same as the last one and doesn't really do anything new. 5 Stars!" or "Well the single player is shit but, you know, there's multiplayer that's really good. 5 Stars!"
For the record, I have nothing but bad things to say about the Battlefield 3 Single Player campaign because it's a poor attempt to copy Modern Warfare and should never have been shoehorned in to the game. It would have been much better not to include a single player component at all. That said, people don't buy Battlefield games expecting a solid single player game, they buy it for the multiplayer and I'm willing to cut it a little slack from that point of view but I still believe that it should negatively affect the review score because it's a part of the game experience that is substandard.
I'll admit that I don't put much stock in review scores, because they've never seemed to me to be a particularly good metric with which to measure something as complex as most games, but if you're going to have them then please try and make them consistent with the text of the review, otherwise you're just making yourself look bad.
Freem!
Today marks the subscriber headstart for the new City of Heroes: Freedom, erm...thing. It's both the launch of Issue 21 (the 21st free content update for the game) and the move to a Free-To-Pay/Freemium gameplay model. For all the details, check out the website here: http://www.cityofheroes.com/
In essence, they're taking the same hybrid approach as a lot of Free-To-Play games and offering a Gold, Silver & Bronze level of access for Subscribers, "Paying" users and Freeloaders respectively, with the obvious goal being to tempt players to move up the tiers until they're paying a monthly subscription.
Anyway, if you haven't played City of Heroes before, or have but have drifted away from the game, then I highly recommend you take a look at Freedom when it goes live for everyone in a couple of weeks time.
Update: Freedom is now live, so go sign up for free here: http://bit.ly/nXEw6L
Alpha Protocol: A Retrospective
Or: Sometimes when a game says that your actions have consequences, they actually mean it.
Now I would like to preface this post by saying that I don't think Alpha Protocol is the greatest game of all time; I wouldn't even say it was necessarily a great game. It has a fair few bugs and the controls can be a bit ropey, especially on the PC, but I have played it to completion at least 10 times and that puts it into a very select group of games (not counting ones such as Civ & Football Manager which necessitate repeat playthroughs). The rest of this post contains minor spoilers; mostly names and places and nothing hugely significant story-wise. You have been warned.
Alpha Protocol
So, one may very reasonably ask, why have I played through it so many times if it's not that amazing a game? The answer is simple: aside from it being fun to play you really can have a different experience every time you play it, there are choices that I still haven't made in all my playthroughs and I know that those choices will have a genuine and often substantial effect on how the rest of the game plays out. In recent years every game with RPG elements has claimed to a greater or lesser degree, that your actions as a player will have real consequences in the game, that what you decide to do will directly shape the world around you and on the whole it's total bollocks. Take something like Mass Effect 2, which has a "morality system" and makes the aforementioned claim, whereby all of your choices are binary - Good or Bad - and whilst there there is some degree of persistence in the way that characters behave towards you based on your actions towards them, most of how they respond to you comes down to your general morality. The fact that you were a complete dick to the shopkeeper next to them and kneecapped him when he wouldn't give you a discount doesn't seem to matter to them in the slightest as long as, on balance, you're a good guy. What this means is that for the most part you can run a very fluid morality, picking a side to suit whatever you think will benefit you most at the time, without any real consequences. This isn't without its advantages, of course, as it does allow you to be The Good Guy for most of the game and still take advantage of the Renegade quicktime events (because they're always fun to watch and almost always better then the Paragon option).
Alpha Protocol, on the other hand, takes it very seriously. Don't make a local contact your first destination when arriving in Taipei? He'll be upset that you carried out an operation on his turf without having the decency to go visit him beforehand. Visit Moscow before anywhere else and the locals won't have any idea who you are, go there last and your exploits will be common knowledge among the connected. Kill off certain plot characters (and nearly all of them can be killed off) and it will drastically change the way that other people react to you depending on their relationship with the deceased, or make no difference at all if they'd never met and don't care about them. Want to go in, guns blazing and kill off everyone in sight, including innocent local police and government agents (who will happily kill you if given the chance)? Feel free, but be prepared for certain people to be appalled by your actions, chastise you for turning into such a monster or even refuse to help you any more because of what you've done.
There are several factions in the game that you can choose to ally yourself with, or screw them all and go it alone, and they each have their own preferred way of going about things. Some prefer a stealthy approach, others are fans of brute military force and Stephen Heck is just completely insane. Team up with G22 and then charge through the mission with a shotgun throwing incendiary grenades around and you're not going to impress them; likewise non-lethal takedowns will just make Stephen Heck sad and he won't simply have forgotten about it by the start of the next mission, he'll be reminding you about it until the end of the game. In addition, your allies aren't simply shadowy backers who send you out on errands, they help you out on your missions and ultimately they are your missions; don't want to go rescue a captured ally? Then don't. Or you can go save them just so you can have the pleasure of putting a bullet in their forehead, though they're unlikely to give you much help after that.
In essence, what makes Alpha Protocol so good is that everything you do or say, however insignificant, has an impact on the game world. From little things such as being nice to someone in conversation so that they don't tip off the guards at your next target to really significant ones like whether to arrest someone, let them go free or shoot them on the spot - all of which have their own benefits and drawbacks - you're always having to consider how your behaviour will affect your situation. Your conversation options are always timed, to a greater or lesser degree and usually non-specific, so you have to think on your feet and whilst the options can sometimes be a little ambiguous - does "Haircut" mean you're going to ask for a haircut, give them a haircut or make fun of their haircut? - they rarely railroad you into simple Good/Bad choices and you never find yourself at a point where you can't act like a complete dick towards a key character at a critical moment in the plot just because it's funny.
The PC version is currently available on Amazon.co.uk for £6.99 and I highly recommend it.
Farcebook
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13775479
That people need to be told these things speaks volumes for the state of the human race.
The root of the NHS financial problems
Do you know why the NHS is so short on cash? It's because they make people who have worked in it for years go on multi-day induction courses where they're told a lot of things they already know and given free food and drink instead of, you know, actually doing the job they're being paid to do and being productive.
Did you know that non-clinical NHS staff have to do Manual Handling training every 4 years? That's how to pick up boxes. I know box technology is advancing at a frightening pace but I think I'll still be able to pick one up in 4 years time without a refresher course.
It's pathetic.
Tron
This Album is fantastic.
I mean, the movie was OK; looked great, sounded amazing, but was a little lackluster overall - this, however, more than makes up for any shortfall. Buy it. Buy it now.
The Angry Admin
You may have noticed the new link under My Sites over there on the right of the page ->
The Angry Admin is the new home of all my IT related postings, rantings, ravings and, on rare occasion, insights. I've backposted a bunch of stuff from this blog, but most of it is Brand New Material, so please enjoy.
Ed Vaizey Is A Fucking Idiot
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11773574
He says: "We have got to continue to encourage the market to innovate and experiment with different business models and ways of providing consumers with what they want.
"This could include the evolution of a two-sided market where consumers and content providers could choose to pay for differing levels of quality of service."
He also suggests that content makers could be charged for the first time for the use of the ISP's networks - provided they too were clear about what they were getting.
How many times do we have to say this? Slashdot (for example) already pays their ISP for bandwidth to host their content. It is not, therefore, OK for my ISP to then charge Slashdot again for me to access that content. Just like it's not OK for Slashdot's ISP to charge me to access that content, because I already pay my ISP for that. This is what Peering agreements are there for and if ISPs don't feel they're getting a fair deal then they need to take that up with the other service providers, not the people at the end of the pipe.
This is on top of the fact that this "market" idea for QoS will inevitably end up with ISPs acting like TV companies. "Get our basic package to access the internet very slowly at low priority, only £9.99/month. Want to be able to use the iPlayer during waking hours? Get our BBC pack for only £4.99/month extra. Sorry, but due to a dispute with Google over pricing, we're unable to offer our Search Engine pack this month, so you won't be able to find anything on the internet". And so on.