In some ways, 2011 has been the best year for gaming i can think of. In others, its been as disappointing as finding out Christina Hendricks’ tits are fake. I mean, they’re real and all, but Jesus, can you imagine if they weren’t? I dont know how i’d cope.

Space Marine

Poor old Space Marine. Space Marine was dealt a shitty hand from the start. For starters, it’s called Space Marine. And while the Warhammer Universe pretty much invented the idea of taking normal everyday Marines and putting them into outer space back in the fucking 80′s, the very term ‘space marine’ is nowadays pretty much a nom de plume for generic, uninspired 3rd person shooters, e.g. “Oh it’s just another bald space marine shooter”. It’s the equivalent of calling your brand new First Person Shooter “GRITTY BROWN DESERT SCENARIO WHERE EVERYONE SAYS “OSCAR MIKE” AND “DANGER CLOSE” ALL THE TIME”.

WAAAAAAAUGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sadly it’s not just the name dragging Space Marine down, the gamepaly comprises of doing pretty much the exact same thing to the exact same enemies in the exact same location for roughly 80% of the entire game. There are 2 varities of enemy, the Orks, and Chaos Space Marines. One of these enemy types charges at you in a brainless mob, over and over, screaming WAUUUUUGH and saying SPOICE MAWINE in a cock-er-ney accent, the other at least attempts to show some AI and fights you with a modicum of intelligence. Take a guess which variant you’ll spend the majority of the game fighting.
You could actually spend an hour playing the demo and you’ll have seen everything the campaign has to offer. Aside form some thrilling on rails shooting moments. Sigh.

Dead Space 2

In a parallel universe somewhere out there, James Cameron was never born. And in his place, Michael Bay directed Aliens. Vasquez was turned from a butch as fuck lesbian icon into Megan Fox and spends half the film bending over to pick up shit. Hicks was played by Shia LeBoeuf and instead of being an ultimate badass space marine, he’s now a quirky self conscious proto geek who discovers that through adversity he can overcome his adorable geekiness and bang Vasquez. All the aliens were replaced with CGI and there are 2 Aliens called roofus and doofus who provide the comic relief because theyre so inept at orally raping humans.

oh no a zombie child how terrifying

Thankfully, this universe doesn’t exist, yet. But in it’s place, we got Dead Space 2. Which is like if Transformers 2 Dark of the CGI jerk off session was actually renamed Aliens and marketed as the sequel to Alien. Dead Space 2 went to great lengths to take as much of a shit as humanly possible on it’s predecessors good name. Gone was any attempt at tension or atmosphere (cause it’s in space! lol!) and instead we got bombastic setpieces every time you turn a fucking corridor, a sassy female sidekick, and some of the worst, most cock headed game design this side of an Atari 2600 game about a man with a penis for a head.

Mortal Kombat

Insipid fucking trash.

Crysis 2

What the FUCK did Crytek do to my beloved Crysis? Crysis is a masterpiece FPS. Not because of it’s graphics, and the fact that it still looks better than pretty much everything released 3 years after it first came out. No. It’s a masterpiece because it’s a game that understands that in a game, fun should be whats paramount. Everything else is secondary. Crysis gives you a bunch of skills that can be used in any manner you like and an environment that practically begs you to have fun fucking about with it. It’s everything a shooter should be, forward thinking, fun, gorgeous, and not a corridor in sight. (just don’t mention the aliens). So the sequel was even better, right?

WRONG!

Crysis 2 is a game that assumes you, the player, are a fucking moron. It’s a game that much like a person rubbing a dog’s nose in its own shit, grabs you by the neck and says “hey, you, simpleton, look over here at this exciting fucking setpiece cause i spent a whole afternoon animating this shit and i’ll be fucking damned if im gonna let you miss it because you were too busy having fun to look in this direction”. It’s like the game is tolerating your presence as you would a particularly annoying child. It tries to placate your constant demands to throw boxes at enemies and blow up houses by showing you some TOTALLY AWESOME uninteractive setpieces, and by wrenching control from you so you can sit and watch some of the worst acting seen outside of an Ed Wood film get married to a script poorer than the Greek financial sector and a plot so incomprehensible you’d think it was being written on the fly by the 5 year old who writes Axe Cop.

L.A Noire

LA Noire is not a game. LA Noire is what happens when a game designer mistakenly thinks he has the talent and directing ability of Hollywood’s finest, despite never actually taking any directing classes or studying films or basically doing anything that qualifies a director as being someone who is able to successfully direct a film. Much like how Crysis 2 thought it would be the world’s worst Sci-Fi action film first, and a videogame second, LA Noire decided it would try and be the stupidest, most laughable attempt at a Film Noir murder mystery first, and a game, eh, pretty much fucking nowhere.

Excuse me m'am, do you recognize this hideously creepy attempt to render a real life facial expression in a videogame? Is it 'confusion' or 'constipation'?

LA Noire is actually pretty fucking hilarious in it’s attempt at being a videogame. Every now and again while roaming the streets you’ll get called to the scene of a crime and have to chase down a suspect. But you cant ever chase them down and arrest them. You have to shoot them. So my first instinct as a cop was go for a non lethal takedown and at least shoot the guy in the leg. So i aimed carefully and hit him square in the shin. Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be a fatal gunshot to the fucking ankle. Ditto when my attempt to disarm a pistol wielding thug by shooting his hand resulted in the suspects instant death. It gets to the stage where you know you’re going to wind up killing the suspect anyway so you may as well just shoot the fuckers on sight and get it over with. For a sequel, Agent Cole Phelps should pretty much be followed around by the Coroner and a Hearse at all times.

Then There’s the interrogations. A fucking laughable attempt at virtual Simon Says where you’re supposed to ‘read’ the facial expressions on the suspect, but its kinda hard to read their expression when every one of them looks like someone who’s had a facial transplant after a vicious chimp attack and is working as hard as possible to stretch every single facial muscle at all times. The facial animation is impressive at first, but after the initial wow factor wears off, you’re just left with talking faces that look like they’re being superimposed onto a mannequin in the world’s first ‘walking and looking at things-em up’.

And then there’s the story. The story is so fucking stupid that it makes Crysis 2′s attempt at sci-fi look like 2001. There’s a murderer in LA. And it’s up to agent Phelps to arrest every man in LA and wrongly charge them with the murders until through sheer luck he stumbles across the real perpetrator. The Detectives in LA Noire make Frank Drebin look like fucking Sherlock Holmes. You arrest a bloody neighbourhood’s worth of guys and charge them with murder, even tho the murders all have the exact same MO, in the same location, same type of victims, and even tho none of the details are given to the press, the reason for arresting so many obviously innocent men? They’re all copycat killers. Yet none of these innocent men ONCE protest their innocence, or deny murdering the women, or even get released once you do arrest the real killer! THIS SHIT MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE.

LA Noire fails as a game, it fails as a film, and it fails as a display of supposedly ground breaking animation because it just looks fucking wrong.

It’s that time of year already. Time for every website occupying server space somewhere to churn out a ‘best of’ list as if they’d be permanently shut down if they didn’t. Well, im getting it out of the way early so i can spend my Christmas holidays sitting around in my housecoat, eating chocolate for breakfast and washing it down with a White Russian while watching Raiders of the Lost Ark & Trading Places. Fuck yeah Christmas!!

The Best of 2011

Minecraft. 

Minecraft is an oddity, in that there’s really no game to it at all. Sure you kill things and avoid enemies, but thats not the real game. The real appeal of Minecraft is when the giant manchild that you are suddenly realizes that you’re playing the best lego simulator never created.
Lego is amazing. Video Games are amazing. Yet there has never been a lego game to capture that ‘rooting around in a box full of lego looking for that fucking block thats only 2 bits wide and one bit high which you can never fucking find but AHHHH THERE IT IS now i need a lego tree and and a door and where’s the single bit block thingy gone oh man this house is gonna be awesome’ feeling quite like Minecraft does.

I MADE THIS!!!!

It also deserves massive Kudos for having the best multipalyer mode ive experienced all year, where the closest thing you get to killing people is encasing someone who’s AFK in Obsidian. Instead of shooting and killstreaks and the usual run of the mill multiplayer bollocks, Minecraft lets you build, play, and generally be massive, massive geeks together.

Marvel Vs Capcom 3

Fighting games are, to me, alot like sex. I fucking love it, but i’m terrible at it. Which is why MvsC3 is so fucking great. Even the most cack handed brain dead mong can hammer on a few buttons and pull off some amazing screen filling 100 hit combos which almost always finish up with some chick with large breasts waggling her bosoms about, or for the ladies and gays among you, Chris Redfield will flex his dick muscles.

I have no idea whats happening here but i know its awesome

Seriously, if more niche/shit genres included scantily clad women and/or awesome comic book characters in them i’d play the shit out of them. An RTS featuring Morrigan, Trish, Felicia and Phoenix?? Rhythm action dance central shit starring Deadpool? SIGN ME THE FUCK UP!

DiRT 3

Much like 2d Beat em ups, Driving games are another genre i love, but i play like i’m severely mentally impaired, and not just moderately mentally impaired. My philosophy for racing games has always been ‘the faster i drive the more chance i’ll win, especially if i take every single corner at max speed’, a philosophy nurtured by the original Ridge Racer, and subsequently shit all over by modern racing games and their hard on for ‘realism’, and ‘physics’, and other crap that people seemingly love nowadays.

A car of some sort

DiRT 3 was great in that it could take even the most inept drivers (me), and give you a consolatory pat on the head and a bronze star for even the shittiest driving. Yet if you actually didnt drive like a moron and play it properly it’s one of the most enjoyable racers out there. Even the gymkhana which at first seems like the product of a focus group comprised of redneck Americans and children with ADHD becomes an enjoyable, solid challenge. And when you see the stunts some people are able to pull off in it, you can see just how much skill is actually required to be good at it

Bulletstorm

WHY DID MORE PEOPLE NOT BUY THIS??
I honestly dont understand it. Was it too dudebro for people? Was it not dudebro enough?? What do you people want?!
Whatever the reason, Bulletstorm was sadly a bit of a commercial flop, but a roaring critical success. Gamers are constantly crying about the popularity of Modern Warfare, and how it’s single player is the same in every single CoD game, and is living proof of the retardisation of modern FPSes:

you can thank CoD for this

And while Bulletstorm might not have done anything to change the retardisation of map design, what it did do was change up how you play, thanks to its Skillshot system. Every encounter could pan out differently, and offer higher and higher scores depending on how well you played and what weapons you used, offering less points for reusing the same moves over and over but more points for mixing things up and trying new stuff. And then of course it had a larder full of dick jokes and childish humour to keep the less cerebrally gifted player guffawing and slapping their hands together like a trained seal, and managed to wrap all these elements around a story that was at it’s core, a well told and involving revenge tale. Yet hardly anyone bought it. Fuck the lot of you.

I still love you, Bulletstorm.

Dead Island

I’m gonna hold my hands up and say i fully expected Dead Island to be a complete load of zombiefied bollocks. The trailer released at the start of the year may have been an amazing bit of CGI, but it set alarm bells ringing for several reasons, firstly, it had no gameplay in it, secondly, there would not be any zombie children in the game (cause youll never be able to kill kids in games unless youre one of those weirdos who downloaded child killer mods for Fallout 3, and if you are, fuck off), and lastly, no game would ever be able to make a fight against a zombie horde as emotionally involving as that trailer made it look.

Insert 'Gon' get raped' joke here

And while i was right about the trailer bearing as much resemblance to the final game as Michael Barrymore does to Straight men who never raped anyone to death in a swimming pool, Dead Island was nevertheless fucking brilliant. A perfect zombie film survival atmosphere, a unique setting, the terror of hearing an infected scream followed by the sound of running feet, Dead Island was the zombie game i’d been waiting for since Resident Evil stopped being good, sometime after Resident Evil 2. Yeah the end of it is shit, and iv’e actually still not finished it, but i got about 30 hours of enjoyable zombie head stomping, which is good enough for me.

Stacking

I haven’t finished Stacking yet. In fact, i only bought it last week in the XBLA sale, and have put in about an hour and a half of game time. But if there’s another game released this year that features a single entity as charming and grin inducing as Charlie Blackmore’s adorable little face and the way he totters along, i’ll eat my fucking hat.

Awww!

I don’t care who knows it. I am full on gay for this game. If this game were another man, i would be camping up a mountain with it herding cattle and secretly bumming each other in a Tent every night. Every time i see Charlies little face, i want to hug him. When i stack into the body of a little kid in a sailor suit and press A to make him puke, or stack into a Victorian Gent and Glove slap everything in sight, i grin like an simpleton. This is the most charming game of 2011. And possibly the best, and only, game about Matroyshka dolls ever made.

Alice: Madness Returns

Oh God. I honestly dont know where to start with this. Alice turns me into a squealing, giggling little schoolgirl with just how fucking wonderful it was. If i was gay for Stacking, i’m full on, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, leather daddy outfit, pushbroom mustache dick up ass homogay for Alice: Madness Returns.
So what was so great about Alice? Where to begin? From an aesthetic point of view, its beautiful. Possibly the most aesthetically pleasing game ive played that wasnt Stacking. Every level has a different theme, and not one of them is ‘gritty brown middle eastern scenario’. Each location is more bizarre and beautiful than the last. From a Victorian London straight out of something Tim Burton would have made before he got shit, to miniture Alice climbing a Fuedal Japanese styled Ant hill where the peace loving Ants are being Terrorized by Samurai Wasps, to a floating Castle made of playing Cards, Alice is fucking beautiful. It’s art style has so much imagination that a single level of Alice would put every single gritty military dudebro shooter this gen to shame.

I LOVE YOU SO FUCKING MUCH

I could wank over this game all day long, but seeing as i’ve already done that, ill just leave it by saying that Alice is one of the best games of the year, from a story standpoint, from a visual standpoint, and from a gameplay standpoint. Only the arrival of Dark Souls stopped it from being my uncontested GOTY. Sadly it seems EA didnt quite have as much faith in it and it was somewhat sent to die, with little marketing and little hype, but if you’ve any love for the medium of Gaming, and you actually want a game that is challenging, both gameplaywise and storywise, you owe it to yourself to play Alice. Also, Quintin Smith of Eurogamer is  a CUNT.

Dark Souls

Dark souls. Dark Fucking Souls.
At time of writing, i have spent 133 hours on my first, and NG+ runs of Dark souls. Plus another 33 hours on a new character. And now a further 10 hours on the 360 version. Because yes, i bought PS3 and 360 versions. Currently i feel like an Autistic child trying to crack an FBI code. Almost 200 hours and counting. And just when i thought i had finished my last PS3 run, i realized i hadn’t killed Stray Demon. Or crafted any boss soul weapons. And that  i should really go back and kill all the NPC’s for their gear before i start another NG+…and so forth.

True Love

Like Alice, i have previously wanked myself dry over this game. So ill leave it by saying, buy this game. If you consider yourself a gamer, buy this game. If youre sick of dumbed down FPSes saturating the market, buy this game. If you hate the casual-fying of modern gaming and want a game that is 100% anti-waggle, anti-casual, and has no Kinect enhancements, buy this fucking game.

There it is Ladies & Gents, Dark souls, the hardest core swinging dick fuck Ubisoft and thier 3DS catlogue of imagine babies not a single flailing arm in sight and NO I WONT SHOUT “XBOX, PLAY DARK SOULS” at my TV because if Dark souls even thought i was using a Kinect it would hunt me down, oneshot me with a fucking backstab and steal my Humanity, game of the fucking year.

Coming tomorrow, Part 2 of our best and worst of 2011, The Agony.

Dark Souls
Format: PS3
Release: Out Now

Do you remember Rick Dangerous? He was Core Design’s attempt at an Indiana Jones rip off, a 16bit Era platformer where you raided Tombs, killed indigenous people and stole thier shit, and was probably the inspiration for Core’s most famous creation, Lara Croft’s tits. But this is a Dark Souls Review, so why the fuck am i talking about Rick Dangerous?

I recently fired up Rick Dangerous while under one of those moments of nostalgia that compels me to play shitty 16bit games so i can remember my childhood and escape the crushing monotony of adult life. The first thing that happens in Rick Dangerous is you get crushed by a giant rolling boulder. Out of nowhere. Seriously, you move to the right and this boulder just rolls out and kills you. If youre not prepared for it you’d die instantly. Then there’s the sections where the game fully expects you to either posess some sort of Ghost Whisperer psychic abilities, or die several times trying to figure out what the hell you’re supposed to do before you can move on. You walk into a room and for no fucking reason at all i can think of other than fuck you, you have to walk to a certain point on the floor that will trigger a moving block (that will kill you if it touches you), then walk to another part of the room that will move the block to another area, while avoiding one hit kill spikes (no health bars here kids) and the entire fucking game is like this. And you get SIX fucking lives to do it in. And six bullets.
Rick Dangerous was fucking hardcore.
And then i realised why Dark Souls had grabbed me the way it did. It awoke the gamer in me that had been dormant since bastard hard games like Rick Dangerous were the norm, rather than the abberation.

This thing is lovingly referred to as "The Vagina Dragon"

Games this generation, for the most part, are crushingly easy. Most games idea of difficulty is just ‘throw another wave of enemies at the player’, or ‘make a really fucking crap boss fight’, as seen in practically every single game released since 2005. And it’s difficulty spikes like that in otherwise relatively easy games that stick out like a sore dick. Remeber the ‘all dat juice’ section from Gears 1? Or how the most talked about thing in Deus EX:HR seems to be how absolutely fucking hateful the 2 or 3 boss fights are? This is what happens you design a game that’s so easy a narcoleptic infant could probably breeze through it, but then realise youve got to pad out the lenght a bit by throwing in an arbitrary boss fight or choke point so you can tick a box that says CAMPAIGN LENGTH: 10 HOURS.

Dark Souls laughs at General RAAM. Dark souls crank phone calls the bosses in DX:HR. All of them. Dark Souls took a shit in the toilet cistern of CoD 4′s Mile High Club on Veteran. After eating a curry.
Dark Souls is HARD. From start to fucking finish. And it’s a breath of fresh (decaying) air. Because while its hard, its never cheap. And it’s never afraid to treat you like an intelligent human being. Games for the most part nowadays seem to think that 90% of players dont like to be challenged, or are just plain fucking stupid. Hence the rise of what i like to call, the idiot walk. That first half hour of a game where youre given such helpful hints as SHOOT BULLETS OUT OF YOUR GUN, or DONT TAKE COVER BEHIND EXPLODING CRATES every 2 seconds. Or the game wrestles control of the camera from you to force you to look at what it deems to be an exciting scene. Jesus Christ, last night, for my sins, i played Modern Warfare 3′s campaign. I got an Achievement for TURNING ON THE FUCKING GAME. How is that an achievement?? Do you think im so brain dead i actually have trouble putting a disc in a console and pressing the fucking on button? I’ve been able to do that for years now!

This guy was actually relatively easy. He only killed me like 4 times.

Dark Souls is a game of true achievements. Of actual, real, accomplishment. And it manages this in the best way possible, by making you feel completely powerless for the majority of the time you play. It smacks you down at every turn, laughing at your attempts to beat it. Feeble enemies like the hollow spearman can and will wreck your shit. Bigger enemies like the Balder Knights will have you fumbling your controller like a teenager fumbling at a Bra strap, your hands a sweaty writhing mass of sausage-like ineptitude, powerless to stop him from skewering you with his Rapier. But when you do finally beat that boss who was beating you in seconds every time, or when you survive your first ever invasion, and when you finally saunter up to that fucking Balder Knight bastard and backstab him, you better fucking believe that feels like a genuine accomplishment.
You start the game absolutely helpless. Your only weapon, a broken sword hilt. How can i beat this massive fat arsed Boss demon with only a pointy stick, you cry. You cant. He’s going to fucking flatten you. But by the time you get yorself a real weapon, and maybe spend a few souls to level up, you’ll have a fighting chance. But only just.
Victory is never, ever assured in Dark Souls. I’ve lost track by now of the amount of times i’ve thought i’d easily walk through a boss fight, or a previous area, only to find myself respawning at my nearest bonfire because i completely underestimated a seemingly puny enemy who bit my fucking face off cause i was so busy acting smug and thinking i was a badass. But it’s this difficulty that provides the real sense of Achievement. Almost every single boss (bar Pinwheel, who was so easy i thought maybe hed been drafted in from a different game to make up the numbers), left me thinking ‘this is fucking impossible. I can’t beat this guy’, after taking another ass pounding from them. But its the way you memorise attack patterns, modify your equipment and tactics to suit every boss or area, that will make you feel like an absolute fucking champion when you finally do come back, and shove your boot right up Seath’s Scaleless Arsehole.
When you do finally beat that boss who had been plaguing you for hours, or even days, it feels like From software have jsut thrown you a champagne and hookers party, unlike the aforementioned ’achievement’ for just starting the damn game, which felt more like a condescending pat on the head and a ‘aww isn’t he special’ kind of congratulation.

After you die you get booted back to your bonfire. Get used to this. Cause youre gonna be doing it ALOT.

Dark Souls is also a game that genuinely makes you think. And not in a ‘should i choose option A and kill my teammates or option B and save them, oh what a moral dilemma’ kind of way. It makes you think constantly about how you should be playing it. Should i upgrade this weapon, or that one? Spend souls to upgrade my armour or spend the souls levelling up? Kill that suspicious NPC or let him live? What armour is best for this situation? Go to Anor Londo or Lost Izalith? Or just shoot myself in the head right now?

It’s an honest to god relief to find a game this late in the console generation that hasn’t decided it needed to be more user friendly, or easier, or more casual to shift some extra units. Games like Dark Souls come along once a generation, or twice if you were lucky enough to play Demons Souls too. If you want to play a game that respects your intelligence, and isnt afraid to actually challenge you (no Activision, putting the disc in my drive wasnt a fucking challenge or an achievement, you cunts), Dark Souls is the game you’re waiting for. It’s not perfect, it improves on Demons in some areas, yet does things worse in others, it’ll make the casual gamer that had been growing inside you like a tumor thanks to how fucking easy everything is nowadays rage so hard you’ll be throwing your controller like it was a Wiimote. And it will absolutely kick your ass. But you’ll feel like an actual gamer again, the kind of player who just accepted that death was a natural part of gaming, something to be conquered, not something developers should be afraid to add into a game in case some casual pussies cry their little eyes out because they died one time.

Dark Souls
Format: PS3/360
Release: Out Now

A little while back i wrote a piece called “The reasons why Demon’s Souls hates you”. (on retrospect i realized it should have been called the proof that demon’s souls hates you, but whatever). For some reason, possibly because Demon’s Souls was amazing, it proved to be a pretty popular article. So here we are, over a year later, and the cruel mistress known as Dark Souls has arrived. I say Arrived, it’s more like it kicked my front door in, tied me to a chair, beat me about the face and neck, then sexually assaulted me in the best possible way.

NB: I am currently only (only!!) 18 or so hours in game. So there’s probably about a million more dick moves in store for me which i will add later)

You have to fight this things brother. With a fucking Sword Handle

The Proof Dark Souls hates you #1: You don’t even get a weapon to fight the undead horde

Demon’s Souls had a difficult start. After a few enemy encounters, it chucked you into a boss fight you were woefully unprepared for in which every single person who played the game died first time. Hell, getting killed was the whole point of that fight.  Dark Souls takes a leaf out of Demon’s book. And then gets a chainsaw and takes the whole fucking tree. Not only is the very first enemy you encounter a giant fucking demon who can kill you in one hit, for maximum trolling, From Software decided your starting weapon should be…a fucking sword handle. Not even a stick, or a club, or a fucking rock. Taking on the Asylum Demon with a sword hilt, is the equivalent of taking on dirty toilet with your tongue as the only cleaning equipment.

The proof Dark Souls hates you #2: You are about as badass as the Chuckle Brothers

See that guy in that picture? That’s the Taurus Demon. The first Boss you’ll encounter that you can actually fight with actual weapons instead of a fucking Sword Hilt. The first few times you fight him, you’ll probably lose. Unless you’re a cowardly bastard and read up about it online. You will die, several times, in several humiliating and or embarrassing ways. Maybe you’ll charge head on to meet him and get shot int he back by the archers on top of the tower you just left. Maybe you’ll climb that tower, kill the archers, and peer down at poor old Taurus Demon thinking “a ha, a safe spot! come at me bro! Cant climb fucking ladders can you, dickhead!”, only for Taurus Demon to leap about 50 feet in the air and land on your head.
You will eventually overcome Taurus Demon, by fair means or foul (the foul being the cheap ass way of jumping off the tower and whomping him on the head over and over), and then, celebrating your first Boss fight success, you will stroll of thinking your’e a bad ass, that all the citizens of Undead Parish should bow down and start sucking your cock whenever you pass, and right about then, you’ll get set on fire by the Dragon you didn’t even see, and die, and somewhere in From Software’s offices, a level designer will chuckle softly to himself, close the lid on his laptop, turn off the lights, and go home to his beautiful Wife in his Mansion made of Diamonds, while you weep softly in a corner.

The proof that Dark Souls hates you #3: Start as you mean to go on

Most games follow a relatively straightforward design ethos. That is, you start slowly, and gradually build towards tougher enemies, bosses and levels. This has been true of most games since pretty much forever. You want to entice the player in with some easy yet enjoyable gameplay, then gradually increase the difficulty to keep the player challenged and engaged in your game. Dark souls laughs at your design ethos. It laughs at it, and kicks sand in it’s face. Then walks off with your girlfriend, and fucks her right there on the beach, giving her the unbridled pleasure you never could, while you sit there with an ice cream cone covered in sand.
Dark Souls starts tough, and gets tougher. From pitting you against a giant boss armed with only a broken handle in the opening 5 minutes, to your first battles with lowly Undead Warriors in the Undead Burg, everything will kill you in a couple of hits. And that’s if you actually take the easy route and go to Undead Burg, for some unfortunate bastards take the wrong way out of the starting area and end up in The Catacombs, facing off against Skeletal Warriors they have no hope of killing, or worse still, they wind up in New Londo Ruins, and end up facing enemies they cant even physically hit. There is no let up in Dark Souls. It’s a game that sets out it’s stall very early on and doesn’t change for a second. And that stall is labelled “Free punches in the dick. Get yours here”.

Proof that Dark Souls hates you #4: Blight Town

You may remember from the ‘reasons why demons souls hates you’ article that one of the reasons was ‘The Valley of Defilement’. A level in which the very act of being in the level was harmful to your characters health, and in which the camera would cause roughly 50% of all your deaths due to getting hidden behind scenery for a laugh while you tried desperately to protect yourself from the giant club wielding depraved monsters who would routinely use your arsehole as a makeshift condom for their oversized clubs.

Blight Town, in Dark Souls, is somehow worse. Half of the level is set on rickety wooden scaffolds from which a plunge to your death is always a viable option. The other half is set in a swamp which will poison you to death in seconds just by standing in it. If the endlessly respawning poisonous flies don’t poison you to death first that is. Then there’s the framerate, which dips to single digits if you point the camera in a specific direction. Generally that direction is ‘toward where most of the enemies are coming from’. It’s supposedly a ‘technical issue’, but personally, im guessing there’s a level designer somewhere in From software who’s getting a Christmas bonus this year for ‘most subtle trolling’ thanks to his ingenious idea to troll players by making a level even harder but without altering gameplay.

But the worst part of Blight Town? It’s not the framerate, and it’s not the swamps. It’s not even those little bastard dogs the size of a chinchilla who you look at and think youre gonna stomp all over them until they roast you to death with their fire breath, while you look on bemusedly like a dog who’s just been shown a card trick.
The worst part of Blight Town is your reward for killing the most difficult enemies in this area, is literally, a shit sandwich. For killing the fat club wielding bastards, you’re given an item called a Dung Pie. From are basically saying, ‘hey, congrats on beating blight town, HAVE SOME ACTUAL SHIT.’

Proof that Dark Souls hates you #5: Anor Londo

Blight Town is Shit. Literally, shit. Anor Londo however, makes it look like the easiest, most carefree gaming experience since Flower.
Whereas Blight Town is made out of rickety walkways and poisonous swamps, Anor Londo is just. fucking. brutal.
If you’re like me, youre a rapidly ageing geek with a fetish for Asian pornography. Just kidding. But if you’re really like me, you’ll start off in Anor Londo, admiring the beautiful vista you’re presented with upon arrival, like something out of that city full of gay elves in Lord of the Rings, and think to yourself “well this is a nice change from all the dank miserable hovels ive been exploring, how could such a pretty area be bad??”.
Then you’ll spot the first enemy. A giant steel warrior fully twice your size, and think, “a-ha, a mini boss, thank christ these guys dont re-spawn when i use a bonfire”.

And then you see 2 more of them in the room beside you. And 3 more ahead of you. And then you realize these tough as nails giants aren’t mini bosses, they are in fact the bread and butter enemies of Anor fucking Londo. And from there, it all goes downhill like Stephen Hawking with his brake line cut.

Those Black Knights you cowered in fear of in Undead Burg? Theres 4 of those just chilling out in a single room. Theres 2 even bigger Steel Giants hanging out on your way to the boss room. Black Knight Archers who can knock you off the tiny walkway that leads to the main palace. 2 Gargoyles chillaxing on the central bridge. And a boss fight that’s basically like fighting King Allant & The Flamelurker from Demons Souls at the same fucking time.
In years to come, phrases like ’it’s not Rocket Science’ or ‘it’s not Brain Surgery’ will be replaced with ‘it’s not Anor Londo in NG+’.

Proof Dark Souls Hates you #6: All the little things

At this stage i’m actually having trouble recalling all the times ive been trolled by Dark Souls.
But i’m gonna try and recall most of them here in a handy list format for you, so one day you might be able to avoid some of the more embarassing moments in Dark Souls:

• No matter what level you are, chances are the walking penis shaped mushrooms will oneshot you. There is nothing more emasculating than having killed a giant 7 Headed Hydra, only to die several minutes later by being punched in the dick by a giant Mushroom.
• In order to restock your health, you have to revive and restock every single enemy you killed/wounded in your area.
• A large proportion of your deaths will be from being hugged to death by a walking bush.
• Its completely possible that some point, you will have eggs laid in your head and wind up looking like this:
• 
• At some point, you WILL get cursed by a cutesy bug eyed frog, reducing you to 50% health until you lift the curse.
• The entire level of Sen’s Fortress
• Noone around to invade your game? NO PROBLEM! Dark Souls now invades itself for you with NPC invaders!!
• A man wearing Stone Armour will beat you to death with a giant Dildo.
• Tomb of the Giants is another troll level that simulates what its like to be a blind man playing Dark Souls.

Firstly, heres my PC spec. I’m currently getting 60FPS solidly, using the high quality config posted here.

ATI 4870 1GB
Quad Core Q6600
8GB Ram
Windows 7 Ultimate
1TB HDD

Texture pop in woes

Rage is quite a good looking game when it’s not busy looking like shit. One of the worst offenders is that the game streams its Textures as it goes, meaning you get hideous texture pop in if you turn your head in any given direction. To counter this you can create a temporary cache folder for Rages textures. This may not work on Win XP however. For Vista/W7 users:

Go to C:\users\your user name

Go to the ‘appdata’ folder (this is a hidden folder)

Then  into the ‘local’ folder

In here, create a folder called ‘id software’, and inside that, create a folder called ‘rage’ (all lower case)

Rage should now use this folder to store its Cache, greatly reducing texture pop in.

Glitching Graphics everywhere in this Bitch

This was how Rage looked for me at first

And this is it afterwards

For starters, install the latest ATI hotfix (this especially applies to 4000 series users) http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/GPU121AMDCatRagePerfDriver.aspx

Then go into Catalyst Control Centre:

Enable Catalyst AI (this fixed the glitching textures for me)

Enable Triple buffering

Force Vsync to ‘always on’. (forcing vsync removed ALL screen tearing, and kept the game at a stable 60FPS constantly)

Shitty Textures on my mind 

Another fix that rolled out in the steam patch was the removal of the auto configurator. However if youre on an unpatched version, you may want to add in a custom config to remove the horrible low res textures you get on distant objects. Heres my config which seems to be working perfectly (created by FusedCore on the steam forums). Copy and paste this into a text file, save it as rageconfig.cfg, and palce it in your Rage\base folder. Heres a link to the thread, jsut in case wordpress squashes the code and messes it up at all
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?p=25524360#post25524360

//HD Config v2.0 By FusedCore
echo “^1 Loading the HD Config v2.0 by FusedCore…”
//cvar_restart //use this setting to use the games default settings
cvaradd s_lockListener -1; seta s_lockListener 0; echo “^1Setting the Cvar listener to unlock the settings so this game can use the config…”
seta jobs_numThreads 0; echo “^1Setting the threads…” //CPU Threads Use 0,2,4,6,8,10,12 for the number of threads your system has. Use this only if your having Stuttering or hanging
seta com_videoRam “1024″; echo “^1Setting the Video memory size…” //sets the Video Card memory Set this to the amount you have in MB
//cvaradd com_synctotime -1; echo “^1Disabling the framelimiter…” //Use this command to disable the 60fps locker
//seta com_maxfps “60″; echo “^1Setting the fps to your settings…” //limits the frames to 60 can be changed to what you desire
seta fc_maxcachememoryMB 1536 echo “^1Setting the File Cache size…” //Increases the default file cache size to completely eliminate the popins
seta image_anisotropy “16″; echo “^1Setting the Ansistropy Filtering…” //Using the highest setting here but you can set as 2, 4 or 8
seta image_usecompression 0; echo “^1Disabling the Image Compression…”
seta image_filter “GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR”; echo “^1Setting the image filtering…”
seta image_blend “GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR”; echo “^1Setting the image blending”
seta image_preload “1″; echo “^1Enabling preloaded Images…”//Use preload images when ever possible
seta image_lodbias “-1″; echo “^1Setting the image LoD…” //LoD settings
seta image_ignoreHighQuality “0″; echo “^1Setting the HQ images…” //Sets up for using HQ gfx
seta image_ignoreLowQuality “1″ echo “^1Setting the LQ images…” //ignores the low textures
seta image_useCache “1″; echo “^1Setting the image cache…” //Enabled Cache to allow the textures to load properly without popping
seta image_cacheMegs “1024″; echo “^1Setting the cache maxsize…” //Cache size in Megabytes
seta image_cacheMinK “10″; echo “^1Setting the cache minsize…” //Cache minimum size in kilobytes
seta r_aspectRatio “1″; echo “^1Setting the Aspect Ratio…” // 0=4:3, 1=16:9, 2=16:10, 3=5:4 TFT, -1 custom
seta r_fullscreen “1″; echo “^1Setting the fullscreen option…”
//seta r_customAspectRatioV “10″
//seta r_customAspectRatioH “16″
seta r_swapInterval 1; echo “^1Setting the Vsync option…” //VSYNC 1 enabled, 0 diabled
seta r_useHighQualityPostProcess “1″; echo “^1Setting the HQ post proccessing…” //Fore High Quality post proccessing
seta r_shadowsHighQuality “1″; echo “^1Setting the HQ Shadows…” //Fore High Quality shadows
seta r_displayRefresh “0″ //keep it so the engine doesn’t double render a frame
seta r_renderer “best” //highest rendering options
seta r_multiSamples “32″; echo “^1Setting the MultiSampling…” //Set this to 16 or 8 if you’re having low-fps as 32 is the Max Multi-sampling
seta r_useHBAO “1″; echo “^1Setting the Ambient occlusion…”
seta r_useRenderThread “0″ // 0 Disable or 1 Enable threaded rendering useful for newer cards to increase performance.
seta r_visDistMult “1″
seta r_useMotionBlur “1″; echo “^1Setting the Motion Blur…” //use blur
seta r_skipBump “0″
seta r_skipSpecular “0″
seta r_skipNewAmbient “0″
seta r_shadows “1″; echo “^1Setting the Shadows…”
seta r_cgFragmentProfile “best”
seta r_cgVertexProfile “best”
seta vt_lodBias “-1″; echo “^1Setting the Visual Texture LoD…” //LoD settings
//below is cache settings And advanced GFX settings
echo “^1Setting the Textures type…”
seta vt_pageimagesizeuniquediffuseonly2 “8192″
seta vt_pageimagesizeuniquediffuseonly “8192″
seta vt_pageimagesizeunique “8192″
seta vt_pageimagesizevmtr “8192″
seta vt_maxPPF 64; echo “^1Setting the Pages per file…” //Set this to 64 for Quad-cores CPU’s or higher, 16 or 8 for dual-cores CPU’s
seta vt_preload “1″; echo “^1Setting the Visual Textures to Preload…”
//Begin Advanced GFX Filtering and Sharper Images. Comment these 3 lines out if you are having issues or don’t like the way it looks.
echo “^1Setting the Visual Texture Filters”
//seta vt_filter “GL_NEAREST, GL_NEAREST_MIPMAP_LINEAR”
seta vt_envf “GL_TEXTURE_ENV, GL_TEXTURE_ENV_MODE, GL_MODULATE”
seta vt_blend “GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR”
//End of Advanced GFX Filtering
seta vt_useCache “1″; echo “^1Setting the Visual texture cache…”
seta vt_cacheMegs “1024″; echo “^1Setting the cache maxsize…”
seta vt_cacheMinK “10″; echo “^1Setting the cache minsize…”
seta vt_ignoreHighQuality “0″; echo “^1Setting the HQ Visual Texture…”
seta vt_ignoreLowQuality “1″; echo “^1Setting the LQ Visual Texture…”
//Begin HD Settings
echo “^1 -Loading the HD Settings…”
seta vt_qualityhdplossless “1″
seta vt_qualityhdppower “1″
seta vt_qualityhdpspecular “1″
seta vt_qualityhdpnormal “0″
seta vt_qualityhdpdiffuse “1″
seta vt_qualitydctpower “100″
seta vt_qualitydctspecular “100″
seta vt_qualitydctnormal “100″
seta vt_qualitydctchroma “100″
seta vt_qualitydctluma “100″
seta vt_maxlockedpages “2048″
//HD Image settings
seta image_qualityhdplossless “1″
seta image_qualityhdppower “1″
seta image_qualityhdpspecular “1″
seta image_qualityhdpnormal “0″
seta image_qualityhdpdiffuse “1″
seta image_qualitydctpower “100″
seta image_qualitydctspecular “100″
seta image_qualitydctnormal “100″
seta image_qualitydctchroma “100″
seta image_qualitydctluma “100″
seta image_maxlockedpages “1024″
//End HD Settings
echo “^1 -HD Settings Loaded…”
//seta vt_maxaniso 4; echo “^1Setting the Visual Texture anisotropy…” //Set this to 0 if your having lots screen tarring issues and do NOT set this higher then 4 otherwise it will corrupt the Mega-Textures
echo “^1-If you Have seen NO Unknowns above this line then it has all been Loaded without errors-”
echo “^1 …HD Config v2.0 by FusedCore Loaded, Enjoy the game!!!”

Game: Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
Format: Xbox 360

Why am i reviewing a year old game now? ‘This isn’t cutting edge enough for me!’ i hear you say! Well fuck you then.
I recently bought Lords of Shadow for the Princely sum of 13 Euro, and i know now that the vast majority of the enjoyment i can glean from this miserable piss streak of a game will be slagging the shit out of it over the course of this review.

If there’ one thing i hate, its God of War 3. And midgets. But mostly GoW 3. That game is single handedly responsible for ruining the entire week of my life spent playing it. Considering you only get 52 weeks per year, i think i’m entitled to some sort of reimbursement from Sony, like maybe if they let me just land one solid, undefended punch right on David Jaffe’s jaw. I emailed this idea to Sony’s European offices but am still waiting on a reply.

Anyway, if there’s one thing worse than God of War 3, it’s a game that wants to be God of War 3. It’s like when i was a teenager and every second arsehole i met wanted to be Eddie Vedder. As if you’re not irritating enough, now you want to emulate an even bigger arsehole than yourself? This is the case with Lords of Shadow. You’ll note iv’e dropped Castlevania from the title and only refer to this game as LoS, and thats because aside from shoehorning in a reboot of that franchise’s story, this game is as closely related to Castlevania as Mother Teresa is to Adolf Hitler.

Oh no Begbie, don't fall off the beam! THAT WOULD BREAK MY FUCKING HEART

Lords of Shadow is the story of Francis Begbie, a psychotic Scottish criminal who is out to resurrect his dead wife by killing alot of supernatural monsters while Captain Picard sits on his arse and narrates the proceedings.
Begbie uses a Crucifix that is also bizarrely a whip, to beat up everything from Goblins to Werewolves, yet sadly seems unable to use it to wring the fucking necks of the Chupacabra enemies, which are the most insanely irritating, pointless enemies ever seen in a videogame. The Chupacabras probably seemed like a great idea to the developers after a half hour spent sniffing glue, when someone thought ‘why not put in an enemy who does nothing but pad out the playing time by forcing you to play hide and fucking seek with them and you cant progress any further until you find the little bastard’. AWESOME IDEA, FUCKNUTS.

Anyway, Begbie has your standard array of light and heavy attacks you’d come to expect from a GoW rip off. Sadly what else you’d expect it to rip off, like say, a combat mechanic that’s actually remotely enjoyable, they forgot about. The combat in this game has such a monumental cock up it’s arse that i’m beginning to think even the Developers didn’t play their own game before release. Even in games i hated such as Bayonetta & GoW 3, they at least managed to get the basic combat correct. Enemies telegraph their attacks so that you know when to block or dodge, LoS just says ‘fuck it’ and let’s enemies attack however the fuck they want, nothing is telegraphed so you’ve no fucking idea when you should be blocking or dodging, and there’s not even a hint that your attacks are even doing any kind of damage. Begbie may as well whip his dick out and start cock slapping the enemies for all the damage you seem to be inflicting. Hell at least that would be entertaining.

oh no Begbie DONT DIE WHATEVER YOU DO

Another incredibly irritating facet of this clusterfuck of a game is the hilariously named character ‘Zobek’, voiced by none other than Captain Picard. Picard is apparently some badass Holy Warrior who follows Begbie around and writes a Journal of whats going on with him. Instead of, you know, FUCKING HELPING HIM. He crops up for one chapter as if to just say hello and prove that he is actually in the game, and Picard didn’t just accidentally wander into the wrong recording booth and what we’re actually hearing is a voiceover for a different game.
After his one appearance,  Zobek  (fucking Zobek?! Who came up with that fucking name??) goes back to walking 20 paces behind Begbie and hiding in a bush writing shit about how Begbie is having a really hard time and could use some help but then refuses to give any. Thanks Picard, that journal will come in real fucking handy AFTER I’M DEAD if i want to read about how i fucking died.

Not content with completely fucking up the combat from GoW however, LoS then decides its going to fuck up the Platforming from Uncharted. Yes, Mercurysteam took a look at Uncharted, and decided, ‘we simply must incorporate the worst aspect of that game into LoS‘. That’s like being in a Beatles cover band but only playing songs that Ringo wrote.  Half the time the camera is so far away from you it may as well be in a different fucking game, and then the game bizarrely switches from ‘you cant possibly fail’ auto-platforming to ‘where the fuck am i going oh for fucks sake iv’e died again because of this shitty fucking level design’ platforming. And then theres the ingenious moments where LoS expects you to have figured out gameplay mechanics it never bothered to show you or even hint at. Like when i had to make Begbie run down a long hallway filled with spikes only to be greeted with a locked door. ‘Hmm’, i thought, ‘the solution must be around here somewhere. Must’ve missed a pressure pad or something to open it’. NOPE. What a dunce i was. I should’ve known that what i was expected to do was turn around and fling a dagger all the way down the fucking hall to hit a pressure pad in the previous fucking room, even though up til that point youve never been shown, or even told that this was something daggers were capable of.

Oh fuck it JUST DIE, BEGBIE, and take this piece of shit game with you

As a game, i’d have a pretty hard time recommending LoS to anybody other than lost African tribes hidden deep with the Congo who have never seen a White man, let alone a video game console. As they’re about the only group of people who could possibly be wowed by this derivative trash.

Just watch Trainspotting while playing Symphony of the Night instead. You’ll get the same general vibe as LoS, only you wont want to punch your own face off every 2 minutes.

It’s simple really, the iCenhancer mod.
It’s a modification for the PC version of GTA4 that affects lighting, shadowing and Car reflections that, hyperbole aside, turns GTA4 into what i would consider to be one of the most photorealistic games iv’e ever played. Combined with other mods that can add in real life Cars, or replace the in game billboards with thier real life equivalent, and it’s hard not to be impressed by this.

The mod be found here http://www.gta4-mods.com/misc/icenhancer-125—enb-graphic-mod-f9503
And updates are regularly posted on the facebook page of the developer http://www.facebook.com/icenhancer

So just what is so fantastic about this mod that it inspired me to scrawl a hastily written, masturbatory blog post about it? Well, first off, we need to take a long, hard, depressing look at what GTA4 actually looked like when you first played it back in 2008:

Now, normally, i’m a trolling asshole. And what i’d do in this situation is try and find the worst possible, lowest resolution, ugly as shit console screenshot to compare the glorious PC screenshots to. But no, these are actually the highest resolution screens i could find online, hell, the 3rd shot is a pre-release official Rockstar screenshot that was designed to make the game look better than it did by adding in post process effects that aren’t even in the final game. So there you have the best looking console screenshots i could find.

But it’s time to strap your testicles to your leg for fear they might actually be blown off:

OH SHIT SON

Holy Shit! I know, right?! How is this possible? How has a game that looks like regurgitated anus on consoles, and even looked about as rough as a Hobos stubble on its initial PC release now look like digital pornography? Well, the good kind of Porno, like with Ashlynn Brooke maybe, not the overweight amateur on a webcam kind or anything. The only possible explanation is: VOODOO.
Ice La Glace, the modder behind this, obviously rattled a bunch of chicken bones around his PC and then smeared it in goat’s blood to produce the desired effect. It’ the only logical explanation i can think of.

Get your kleenex out and make sure noone’s watching, here’s some more:

And some videos proving this isn’t just an elaborate hoax to get Rockstar working on GTA5 asap:

So you have the PC version of GTA 4 and wish to become a card carrying member of the Master Race and experience this for yourself, what do you do?

Step 1: Install patch 1.0.4 which you can download here: http://www.filepulse.com/patches/Grand_Theft_Auto_4_Patch_1-0-4-0.shtml

Bear in mind, if you’re an ATI owner, this patch is still horribly optimised for ATI cards. You may want to consider using patch 1.0.7 which runs better, but doesn’t have full functionality with the latest version of the mod. It’s worth noting that all these screenshots and videos were recorded by me using an ATI HD 4870, running patch 1.0.7, and iCEnhancer 1.2.5

Step 2: Download and install iCEnhancer 1.2.5: http://www.gta4-mods.com/misc/icenhancer-125—enb-graphic-mod-f9503. Installing it couldnt be any easier. Extract the files to your GTA foder and overwrite any conflicts. Done.

Step 3 Download xliveless from here: http://public.sannybuilder.com/GTA4/xliveless-0.999b7.rar
Place the xlive.dll into the root folder for GTA4. (the folder that gta.exe is in). READ THIS SHIT: you’ll have to launch the game now by going into your GTA folder and clicking launchgta4.exe, otherwise youll get the ‘drunk’ camera bug.

Play the game!

You may want to tweak your iceconfig.ini settings. Ill post my config settings at the end of this article as its long and would take up the rest of the damn page.

Also, you’ll need this tool if you want to mod in custom cars or other mods

Spark IV for GTA version 1.0.4 http://www.gtagaming.com/downloads/gta-iv/tools/1824

Spark IV for GTa version 1.0.7 http://grandtheftauto.filefront.com/file/GTA_IV_Spark_IV;116155

And a few mods you may want to try out

Viva New York (replaces all billboards in Star Junction with the real life ones in Times Square, also replaces Cop Cars & Taxi’s with real life versions of NYPD and NYC Taxi liveries)

http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=439322

All of the custom Cars you see here are freely available on http://www.gta4-mods.com/

And last but not least, here’s the config i’m using for GTA 4. Just copy and paste this into your own iceconfig.ini file, overwriting anything else thats in there.

/ENBSeries Based configuration file for iCEnhancer.
//Does the same thing as ENBSeries , Google it if you don’t know what you’re doing
//Edited by H1Vltg3

[PROXY]
EnableProxyLibrary=false
InitProxyFunctions=false
ProxyLibrary=d3d9_1.dll

[GLOBAL]
AdditionalConfigFile=nothing
UseEffect=true
CyclicConfigReading=false
ForceNVidiaCard=true
ForceNVidiaCaps=false

[ENGINE]
ForceDisplaySize=false
ForceAntialiasing=false
ForceDisplayRefreshRate=false
ForceAnisotropicFiltering=false
MaxAnisotropy=16
AntialiasingQuality=0
DisplayRefreshRateHz=60
DisplayWidth=1280
DisplayHeight=720
ReflectionsForceHighPrecision=true
ReflectionsExtremePrecision=true
AntialiasingUpScale=0.87

[EFFECT]
EnableBloom=true
EnableAmbientOcclusion=true
EnableSkyLighting=true
UseOriginalPostProcessing=false

[INPUT]
KeyUseEffect=123
KeyCombination=16
KeyScreenshot=44
KeyAmbientOcclusion=121
KeyShowFPS=106

[BLOOD]
ReflectionAmount=0.8
SpecularPower=1.0

[TREE]
LeavesReflectionAmount=0.0
LeavesSpecularPower=0.0
LeavesAmbientAmount=0.95
LeavesColorMultiplier=1.0
LeavesColorPow=1.8
LeavesColorFilterR=1.0
LeavesColorFilterG=1.0
LeavesColorFilterB=1.2

[BUILDING]
WindowLightIntensity=1.05

[LIGHT1] //siren and some internal
LightIntensity=0
LightAOAmount=0
LightILAmount=0
EdgeLighteningAmount=0.0
ColorPow=0
LightCurve=0

[LIGHT2] //street light
LightIntensity=0.4
LightAOAmount=1.0
LightILAmount=0.65
EdgeLighteningAmount=0.1
ColorPow=1.5
LightCurve=1
ColorFilterR=1.0
ColorFilterG=1.0
ColorFilterB=1.0

[LIGHT3] //car front light
LightIntensity=1.0
LightAOAmount=1
LightILAmount=1
EdgeLighteningAmount=0.0
ColorPow=1.5
LightCurve=0.7

[LIGHT4] //secondary
LightIntensity=0.02
LightAOAmount=1
LightILAmount=1
EdgeLighteningAmount=0.0
ColorPow=1.0
LightCurve=1.0

[LIGHT5] //ambient spheres
LightIntensity=1.0
LightAOAmount=1.0
LightILAmount=1.0
EdgeLighteningAmount=0.0
ColorPow=1.0
LightCurve=1.0

[LIGHT6] //ambient spheres for omni light
LightIntensity=1.0
LightAOAmount=1.0
LightILAmount=1.0
EdgeLighteningAmount=0.0
ColorPow=1.0
LightCurve=1.0

[CARHEADLIGHT]
EmissiveMuliplier=3.5
LightIntensity=1.0

[LIGHTSPRITE]
UseExternalTexture=true
Intensity=2.5
IntensityInReflection=6.0
UseRays=true
RaysNumber=70
RaysIntensity=0.5
RaysRateOfChange=10.0
RaysLength=1.0

[CARWINDOWGLASS]
ReflectionAmount=1.25
SpecularPower=100
SpecularAmount=10
OpacityMultiplier=1

[CHROME]
ReflectionFront=1
ReflectionSide=1.0
SpecularPower=10.5
SideFade=1.0
MetallicAmount=0.05

[WHEELS]
ReflectionFront=1.2
ReflectionSide=0.8
SpecularPower=0.08
SideFade=0.125
MetallicAmount=0.2

[REFLECTION1]
ReflectionFront=1.57
ReflectionSide=1.25
SpecularPower=10.0
SideFade=1.0
MetallicAmount=100

[REFLECTION2]
ReflectionFront=1.0
ReflectionSide=3.0
SpecularPower=1.0
SideFade=0.5

[REFLECTION3]
ReflectionFront=0.6
ReflectionSide=1.0
SpecularPower=10.0
SideFade=0.3

[BLOOM]
BloomQuality=0
BlueShiftAmount=1
Radius1=2.0
Radius2=20.0
Contrast=9.0

[SSAO_SSIL]
ApplyAntialiasing=false
SamplingQuality=-1
SamplingRange=-1
SizeScale=0.2
SourceTexturesScale=0.2
FilterQuality=0
AOAmount=1.2
ILAmount=1
EdgeLighteningAmount=0.2

[SHADOW]
FilterQuality=0
CharacterShadowMultiplier=2.0
CarShadowMultiplier=2.0

[ADAPTATION]
ForceMinMaxValues=true
AdaptationTime=0.1
AdaptationMin=0.5
AdaptationMax=0.95
AdaptationMinMultiplier=1.0
AdaptationMaxMultiplier=1.0

[ENVIRONMENT]
DirectLightingIntensity=1.15
NightLightingIntensity=1.15
DirectLightingCurve=0.67
ReflectionAmountMultiplier=1.1
SpecularAmountMultiplier=1.2
SpecularPowerMultiplier=1.1
ColorPow=1.3
AmbientSunMultiplier=0.9
AmbientSkyMultiplier=1.0
AmbientSunSaturation=1.0
AmbientSkySaturation=1.0

[SKYLIGHTING]
FilterQuality=0
AmbientSunMix=1.8
AmbientSkyMix=1.0
AmbientContrast=1.0
AmbientMinLevel=0.56

[SKY]
AzimuthHeight=1.9
AzimuthMultiplier=0.5
AzimuthSunAffectPower=1.6
AzimuthSunAffectAmount=0.7
TopColorMultiplier=0.4
ColorSaturation=0.5
ColorPower=1.2
SunIntensity=1
SunMaxBrightness=100.0
SunColorFilterR=1.0
SunColorFilterG=0.8
SunColorFilterB=0.55
SunColorFilterCurve=5.0
SunCoronaCurve=2
SunCoronaIntensity=2
SunDesaturation=0.0
OverallPower=1.0
OverallIntensity=0.65
BrightnessUpperLimitMultiplier=4
CloudsUseCustomTexture=true
CloudsCurve=2.0
CloudsIntensity=1.0
CloudsDesaturation=10.5
CloudsEdgeClamp=1.2
CloudsEdgeIntensity=2.5
CloudsEdgeRange=1.5
StarsUseCustomTexture=true
StarsAmount=0.3
StarsIntensity=10.5
StarsBrightness=3.0
MoonIntensity=100.0
MoonGamma=1.5
MoonSize=0.03
MoonLightingCurve=0.9
NightCloudsEdgeClamp=3.5
NightCloudsEdgeIntensity=5.0
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Meet the cunt:

Our reviewer is Quintin Smith. You can read more of his high-larious and totally informative and worth reading drivel here http://twitter.com/#!/Quinns108
For the purposes of childish namecalling, we will be referring to him as Cuntin Smith.

The offending ‘review’ :
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-06-14-alice-madness-returns-review

Whats wrong with the review:
More or less everything. Alice scored a whopping 5/10 and was recommended in a smug way for people who are into shit games, basically.

Whats right with the review:
Well…the spelling and punctuation is probably better than mine.

The Review:

Cuntin wastes no time at all, getting his first bout of wrongness out of the way in the second paragraph, proving that he may be a cunt, but hes a damn efficient one.

 Worst of all is that exploring Wonderland is, in practice, about as full of wonder as watching paint dry. Paint the colour of blood and dreams, but paint nonetheless.

Now, i can actually remember the last time i watched paint dry. And while it was fun, i don’t remember there being many wow! moments like exploring a world filled with giant floating mechanical steampunk teapots, enormous snails, floating cities made of playing cards, flying Trains made out of Cathedrals, Cities filled with Ants made of Origami, or Samurai Wasps. I mean, maybe if i huffed enough paint fumes while i was waiting for it to dry i’d have seen that shit, but no, im fairly sure there was more wonder to be had playing Alice. I’m assuming Cuntin probably spent his afternoon huffing paint fumes himself before writing this shit.

BORING, BORING, BORING

The level design of the platforming sections is fine, in the sense that you can and will jump from one floating platform to another without clipping through the floor, but it’s mostly uninspired.

Yeah, i guess thats why most of the gamers who’ve played it are drawing comparisons between Alice: MR and the golden age of N64 platformers. Cause it’s platforming is so uninspiring. Saying it’s fine in the sense that you can jump on a platform without clipping through the floor is literally the most ludicrous complaint you could make, akin to saying “yeah well this new FIFA game is alright cause any time you kick a ball in it my Dog doesn’t get raped”.

Similarly, the puzzles are of that sad breed where they don’t involve any actual brainpower – you’ll find a lever or button, use it, and it will open up a new path through the level that will speed you onwards.

Oh i’m sorry, i’ll petition american McGee to make it so you have to do the fucking countdown conundrum in order to progress next time.

Weirdest of all, you might find one of the game’s hundreds of bottles. I collected these with the eagerness of a boy scout until I realised that they served no purpose at all.

Or, if your’e not suffering from being a massive cunt disease, you’d have copped that each bottle unlocks bonus content in the menu.

Then we have the other problem – it not being mad enough.

Really? So what wasn’t mad enough for you Cuntin? The bit where Alice arranges a stage show for a group of singing oysters? When Alice shot a flying pig snout with pepper from a gatling gun made form a pepper grinder? When a 50 foot tall Alice stomped on an Army of soldiers made from a deck of cards? When Alice is literally committed to a mental asylum? None of this was mad enough for you? Hey, maybe if they had made it so you clipped through platforms while jumping they couldve made out that its all your fault and that your’e actually going mad in some awesome 4th wall breaking shit. Perhaps that wouldve been mad enough.

REMEMBER RICO FROM KILLZONE 2? HE WAS MORE ENTERTAINING THAN THIS

While Madness Returns looks thrilling in screens and trailers, what you’re seeing there is almost all of the assets that the game has to offer (you’re also seeing the PC version, which is slightly prettier than the console versions). Those are the environments that you’ll see, repurposed and arranged in different ways, for hours on end.

This, again, seems like another complaint that is so fucking lunkheaded i can actually feel a few IQ points slipping away every time i read it. So, basically, what Cuntin is saying is that, youre going to see stuff int he trailer that you see in the game….and it’s going to last longer in game than it does in the trailer. Oh FUCK! No!! Really?? Aw that’s bollocks that is.
Now, if im being thoroughly neutral, i can 100% agree that some chapters in Alice are overlong, and can drag after a couple of hours.  Where i have to disagree with Cuntin Shit is that a game like Alice, which has literally the most imaginative art style and unique settings and backdrops seen in a game for quite some time, is somehow committing a cardinal sin by reusing it’s assets throughout the course of a level. Name me one fucking game that hasn’t done that.

NOT AS GOOD AS HOMEFRONT

With its ostensibly wondrous setting, this game should have felt like a celebration of creativity. Instead it feels cynical and even cheap, as if it were the official game of a Hollywood movie that was never made. The strangest thing about this is that there’s probably almost enough content here to make for a pacey and surprising 12-hour game – but it’s all spread out over 22 hours instead, making the game’s title irritatingly apt.

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is where Cuntin literally transcends being just wrong, and has actually written the most factually incorrect statement in the history of mankind.
First off, Alice has the most imaginative, creative art style seen in a game, possibly this generation. Aside from maybe stuff like Kirby’s epic yarn, it’ the most glorious celebration of colours shapes and sounds on the HD consoles. There is not a single segment where the art direction fails to impress. From Victorian london which looks like you could be playing an interactive segment of Corpse Bride, to the demented beauty of Wonderland, the aforementioned origami Ants, the Doll Faced Ruin enemies, the shambolic, insane beauty of the Red Queens abandoned Castle, to the haunting, disturbing introduction to Chapter 5, Madness Returns puts every single me too FPS or grim n’ gritty third person shooter of this generation to shame. Not just to shame, but to fucking shame. To compare this to some Hollywood movie cash in a la Transformers, proves that this man literally has shit for brains, or this is the first videogame he’s ever played and has zero to compare it to. I think its more likely his head is just actually filled with human feces.
Also proving how utterly wrong he is is the little gem about what a great game Alice would be if its running time was 12 hours, not 22. Which is rather odd as most people completion times so far seem to be weighing in at….12 hours. I guess it’s possible that if you are the kind of person legally required to wear a bicycle helmet all day and you stand around on street corners waving at Buses and Puddles, and your name is Quintin Smith, and you play the game using your feet, it might take 22 hours.

The further you push into the game, the more the ideas feel hollow, unfinished and unloved.

You are literally a walking, talking, cunt.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my Review of Eurogamers review. Alice, one of the most imaginative and interesting games in recent memory, is a game that they scored lower than Homefront (6/10). And lower than Resistance 2 (fucking 9/10). Lower than cookie cutter run of the mill tripe FPS’es like Singularity (8/10). Even lower than the most generic of generic, brown & grey, linear, foul mouthed military FPS’es, the high (or low) watermark of videogame mediocrity, Killzone 2 (9/10). Ladies and Gentlemen, Alice is less fun than listening to Rico Velasquez say ‘motherfucker’ for the 4,324th time.
The next time Eurogamer runs an article about the loss of creativity in the medium of videogames, please, point them in the direction of this review, and remind that shower of smug tossers that they gave Homefront a better review than Alice.

Poor Duke Nukem Forever. At this stage i dont need to have to explain its troubled development to you, you already know it. It’s the game that was scrapped, redeveloped, redesigned, and went through more reinventions than Madonnas haggard face.
The signs are all over it that it’s a game whos development was like that of a troubled child, passed from foster home to foster home in an attempt to stop him from setting fire to bins and pissing his bed. There’s levels where you can clearly see 3D Realms had been playing Half Life 2, or how they mustv’e fired up a game or two of Halo and (retardedly) thought theyd’ ‘borrow’ that games 2 weapon limit and recharging health system.
Then there’s the graphics. Jesus Christ. How Gearbox thought they could get away with charging full price for a game that is literally more offensive to look at than watching a Bernard Manning stand up routine is beyond me. It looks ugly. And despite having graphics that wouldve shamed it had it been released in 2006, it performs as well as a freshly coked up Amy Winehouse.
Then theres the ‘controversy’. And i’ll freely admit that i found the alien abortion whack a mole game to be quite tasteless. However people crying a river of rage filled tears over the fact that you can (if you want) shoot women who are for all intents and purposes, zombified, need to actually check between their legs and see if they still have testicles, or if they’ve shrivelled to prunes and poofed out of existence in a wisp of pot pourri fragrance.

People have accused Duke of losing touch with what made Duke Duke, way back in Duke 3D in 1996. For these people (and for people, read: retards) i’ve compiled this handy list of things Duke does in Duke 3d, and things he does in DNF, which are apparently totally out of character with Duke.

In Duke Nukem 3d, Duke does the following:

• Pays Strippers to strip
• Kills women who have been cocooned by Aliens
• Rips an aliens head off and shits down its neck
• Kicks a field goal with a giant Alien Eye

Yet despite this, most reviewers seem to have concocted a mental image of Duke Nukem over the last 13 years as being some sort of loveable scamp

Duke Nukem circa 1996

Which is why they’re crying their eyes out over how grossly offensive it is that in DNF, Duke:

• Hangs out in a strip club (with strippers!)
• Kills women who have been cocooned by Aliens
• Rip’s an Aliens eye out and pisses in the hole
• Kicks a field goal with an Aliens eye

Yes, completely out of character and so very Un-Duke.

Now lets take a look at some of the absolute bullshit the reviewers are saying. We’ll start with this gem from Destructoid:

For a game that prides itself on being a big, dumb shooter, you’ll be surprised to note that the game features comparatively little shooting.

Now, i’m not saying Jim Sterling is full of shit, but i will say if this is what he actually thinks, he’s a fucking retard. Who is full of shit. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say he played the game by looking at the box and imagining what the game is like, because in the 7 hours it took me to finish DNF, most of my time was spent either shooting shit, or driving a monster truck.

After the rehash of the Duke Nukem 3D boss fight at the start of the game, it’ll take thirty minutes before you’re even given a gun.

Erm, yeah Jim, that’s called an introductory sequence. Sadly not all games can be Modern Warfare, and start off by letting you Nuke a continent or force some ethnic minorities to eat glass or some shit. What Jim fails to mention is that while your’e running around Gunless, obviously having the completely miserable time that being gunless infers, youre actually wandering around Duke’s hotel & casino, interacting with a ton of enjoyable little distractions, signing autographs for starstruck kids, playing pool, beating up a Christan Bale impersonator having an on set freak out, driving remote controlled cars around obstable courses, etc etc.

One level in particular takes place in an alien nest where Earth’s women are being inseminated by giant penises. The women writhe and moan in a fairly humiliating fashion, and they regularly sob with no small amount of implied misery. In essence, the women look like they’re getting raped. In fact, they are. That’s the big joke of the level. The aliens are raping the women to create babies. Now, I’m a fan of offensive humor, but the “joke” in this level is so morbidly presented, so dark and downright unsettling, that I simply do not know if Gearbox intends for us to laugh or to throw up. I certainly found I was in danger of doing the latter over the former.

That’s because youre a fucking pussy, Jim.
Now, if you read that paragraph and thought, “my god, this game has women being raped? And thats supposed to be funny??”, you’d be justified in thinking that DNF is the most offensive game of all time. Because thats what Jim wants you to think. But if you’d actually played that level, you’d know that this statement is a complete fucking fabrication. There are no giant penises inseminating women, unless Jim unlocked some horriffic easter egg that  i missed. The women look like theyre getting raped? Again, pure bullshit. Im beginning to think Jim doesn’t actually know what rape is. The women are wrapped up Aliens-style in a cocoon, and yes they sob and moan, as you might expect someone to do if they were about to have an alien burst through your fucking chest. I guess they all shouldve been singing a musical number from the sound of fucking music to denote how happy and un-rapey they feel at that point. They definitely shouldnt have been sobbing and moaning, cause obviously, that implies theyre getting the shit raped out of them. My outstanding memory of that level was not “god damn, this is awful. These women are being raped. By giant penises!“. It was “I should shoot that woman before she explodes in a shower of alien enemies”. Im guessing again, that Jim forgot that this all happened in Duke 3D, in 1996, albeit in less impressive graphics.

Another, somewhat baffling, criticism comes from Gamespot:

there are frequent stretches in whichnothing is happening. The game slows to a crawl constantly. Take, for example, a series of levels in which you drive Duke’s four-wheeler. In these sequences, you drive over aliens and use ramps to jump across chasms. You see a lot of the same brown canyons and cliffs in these sections, and on scripted occasions, the rover stalls and you have to get out and search for gas cans.

This is literally the equivalent of complaining that in  Halo, you have to drive a warthog occasionally, and look at the same green hills, and occasionally stop to shoot stuff, and it somehow equates to ‘nothing happening’. This makes it sound like the truck drives itself while you do nothing more than watch and wait for it to stop. Its a fucking driving section. Where you drive a monster truck. It’s not ‘nothing happening’.

Duke Nukem, doing nothing. Just some boring shit like killing a giant alien on a football field. Run of the mill shit. Nothing much happening.

While i think it’s a bit of a cop out to say “you cant review DNF the same way you would a modern game”, it’s somewhat true. You really cant compare this to Modern Warfare, or Battlefield. Because in essence, its a game from 1998, wrapped up, rather sloppily, in a modern day engine. You may as well review a copy of Doom running a high resolution texture mod and compare it to CoD. Of course it’s going to come out worse off. Yet it seems like most reviews out there actually seem to expect a game that was rewritten more times than the line “hands in the air/just dont care” has on a Will Smith album, to somehow come out and wow us with gameplay and graphics comparable to any of its modern day peers.

Duke Nukem has a raft of issues, from its shonky performance, to its outdated humour (although the rabid Commando fan in me grinned like a lunatic when i heard Duke rip off the “remember when i promised to kill you last? I LIED!” line from that film. It’s also worth noting that Dukes most famous line about kicking ass and chewing bubblegum was taken from ‘They Live’, a film released almost a decade before Duke 3D, so even that games humour was old). But Duke Nukem is not a game that deserves scores of 3/10 (Eurogamer) or 2/10 (destructoid), much in the same way it doesn’t deserve a score of anything higher than a 6, 7 tops. (and a 7 would be generous). Consider this, Homefront, a game that most players would be hard pressed to describe as anything other than ‘a load of complete bollocks’, and containing barely any gameplay other than walking in a straight line, scored a 6/10 from Eurogamer. Duke may have its problems, but there’s more imagination on display, more interactivity, and more fun to be had in the first half hour of Duke than in the entirety of something as insipid as Homefront.

It’s a painfully average game, and had the name Duke Nukem not been attached to it, i’m almost certain the game would’ve reviewed slightly better and been forgotten about a week later. For some reason, criticisms of Duke have been harsher than any other title i can remember recently, wether it’s a reaction to 2K games holding back on review copies as they knew the game wasn’t up to scratch, or maybe it’s reviewers seeing who can give the lowest score and most scathing review in an attempt to attract readers, i dont know.
What i do know is, that having played and completed DNF, it’s far from being the worst FPS iv’e ever played, and far from being the best. And at least 3 points higher than a 3/10.

I am a cunt

In one of the worst kept secrets since Hitler tried to convince Europe he DEFINITELY WASN’T PLANNING AN INVASION OF POLAND ANYTIME SOON *wink wink*, news filters through the intertubes like urine dribbling down a tramps leg today regarding the imminent introduction of a monthly subscription based model for upcoming interactive set-piece simulator, Modern Warfare 3.

Well let’s face it, Activision arent a charity, and Bobby Kotick needs the blood of newlyborn infants to stop himself from turning into this

And that shit isn’t cheap.
So what’s a global megacorp gonna do? Take it’s biggest selling franchise, shove it’s hand up CoD’s pretty pink training bra, and squeeze that tit til it turns blue.

And so it begins:

LOL CONSOLES

So on top of paying for the game, paying for an xbox live subscription in order to play said game online, (unless your’e lucky enough to be on PSN, OH WAIT PSN DOESNT WORK LOL) Activision are now transcending evil megacorp status and evolving into some sort of tyrannical, Nazi-esque cadre of ultra-bastards by asking people to pay for a subscripion on top of a subscription. Sort of like if OCP from Robocop hired Josef Goebbels to do their PR work.

Hello, Dawg. We heard you like subsciptions, so we put a subscription in your subscription so you can give me more money while you get ass molested

 It was obvious to anyone who’d ever heard of the Call Of Duty franchise that this was the direction Activision were heading in. Why give away something for free when you can charge for it? Sluts of the world, take notice. You too could be making money via prostitution if you follow Activisions business model.
So what exactly are you getting for this Inception-esque subscription within a subscription? Lets take a look:

Youtube: unavailable to CoD players until now

Well suck me sideways, you actually get a youtube uploader for call of duty! Now you too can upload 480p SD 30 second clips showing your EPIC CHOPPER 99 KILLSTREAK or your SICK DUDE DUCK COCK. Just like millions of people are already doing, right this instant, for free! Lord knows, if there’s one thing youtube needs, its several hundred extra terrabytes of pure shit.

Only 1,370,000 results? NEEDS MOAR SUBSCRIPTION

You’ll also get access to map packs first, so you can totally rub it int he faces of all those people you’ve never met by telling them you’re playing the ANAL INSERTION MAP PACK before they are. Unless they shell out 24 euros worth of microsoft moon bux to buy it. Jesus Christ Activision, this shit prints money. If i were a ginger haired satanist who feasts on the blood of infants i too would be all over this shit.
So we’ve established now that you can do totally awesome radical bromigo shit like watching a shitty youtube clip of some gormless twat doing a totally sickass chopper rape of nanking on CoD Elite, but there must be more to it than that, surely. Bobby, if you want my 7.99 extra per month, you better show me something thats gonna blow my balls off:

STATS?! JUST TAKE MY FUCKING MONEY!!!

So in closing, only an utter, solid gold retard would pay for this latest attempt from Bobby K to slide his scaly, blackened, man-goat cock into your wallet. It’s literally giving you everything you already fucking have, only charging you money for it. Will there be retards who will actually pay for this? Of course there are, after all people are actually, bafflingly shelling out 1200msp for 4 maps. For 1200 points you could probably buy something like Limbo, or Stacking, something that isn’t a the last squirt of milk fromt he wrung out teat of a cash cow so long since milked dry of any ounce of creativity it resembles a the dessicated husk of bobby Kotick when he hasnt feasted on the souls of Children for a week. This is the demographic that Activision lovingly refers to as ‘chumps with more money than sense‘.  Please, for gaming’s sake, don’t find yourself in this demographic.