Space engineers: When the game works, it’s fun.

Space engineers: When the game works, it’s fun.

Commencing countdown engines on.

Check ignition and may god's love be with you.

I sit staring at a twisting icon set against a pale blue screen, distorted ever so slightly by static. “Waiting for server response,” I've really made the grade.
It’s been about fifteen minutes of worn patience: putting a server up, getting the settings right, making sure we all spawn in the correct place and juggling the head fry of installing mods in such a way as to leave our clients able to connect. It’s not difficult just utterly tedious, all this and I've had to change into my white cotton shirt.

Once through the door we had to contend with slow sim speeds, bad connections and occasional crashes, the servers lagging too and there’s nothing I can do; but it’s worth it. You see there is a deep seated sensual arousal laden deep in the loins of every nerd. Even the harder incel from the darkest pits of the internet will offer a flame of hope if it means getting the gratification of building and flying around in spaceships.

Minecraft in space, is probably the most succinct way of outlining space engineers. But it’s not necessarily fair to compare everything voxel based to the titular behemoth. Minecraft these days is a full realised thing bursting at the seams with content and years of refinement while space engineers is distinctly more bare bones in it’s sandbox. They are of course adding to the game but it’s generally slow and doesn’t ever feel like it might get there.

The physics of the game are distinctly abstract, given the aforementioned voxel structure, which is a nice way of saying they’re horse shit. The way thrust handles especially, with the position of thrusters being totally irrelevant, is an easy point on which to gripe: were I have any investment in the laws of physics. Instead, as I do, favouring the rule of cool: a far more fundamental force in our cosmos, I can let this slide. Especially as it has allowed for my friends invention, the rotating hammers of total calamity (patent pending), to massacre even the most powerful of dreadnoughts with ease.

There’s only a limited set of wacky novelties one can produce in this fashion, unlike something more construction orientated like besiege, and one can never really categorise their usefulness. There’s no state of play as such, just the open, objective-less sandbox. This is freeing in part but also leaving much of the experience hollow and without direction. Mucking about very much is the game play and the endgame all rolled into one.

All the survival mode does lengthen this process with the continual setbacks that come with Trying to drag tonnes of rock down into the atmosphere of the planet safely. A friend of mine very much seems to get his rocks off to just this very thing. The big bertha, is a horrendous poxed lump of scrap that looks like someone built a spaceship out of rubbish bins and old shampoo bottles. Yet as far as industrialism is concerned it is a powerhouse having ventured to strange new worlds in search of more materials to fuel it’s abdominal maturation.

I get my kicks spending too many hours building sci-fi inspired ships, reminiscent of those in the shows i spent my childhood watching instead of being outside, trading one radiation box for another. It’s an itch then when scratch leaves me purring like a cat, a rather disturbing sight i assure you. Digital miniature construction, my sickly battered creations could be put up in the corridors of digital tank museum, a sort of nerdy interstitial between exhibits. But alas that is too high to aspire.

So with a space building game on one hand and a pile of issues on the other where does that leave us. Floating aimlessly through the void of space without fuel watching the gauges on our life support systems slowly tick down. Though I'm past one hundred thousand miles i’m feeling very still….

Fallout of bed and hit your head on the bin 4: you'll never believe what happens next?

I like to play the waiting game, with games. All things tend towards disorder; the only meaningful mark on a cosmic scale between today and yesterday is that today the universe is just a little bit less together than it was the day before. All things die, from stars in the sky to that i love you too lie.
This seems on the surface to be a fundamentally nihilistic proposition, that is until one remembers steam and humble therein games generally go on sale from lower and lower prices the longer one waits. Like the price drop tv of it’s time, steam tempts the plebs with it’s discounts only to reward the high IQ, (mental elo) buff that know to hold out for that sweet nectar: the 75% discount.

So what happened? Where is this going? And why are you saying all this? Well if you’d stop asking questions I'd very much like to get to that but it’s kinda hard when I have to defend myself from an onslaught of gun jumping.

Fallout four, not the fourth one but whatever, recently slipped below a tenner for the game + da DLC’s. This boy, full of greedy mirth, brought it and then spent the next three days downloading the girthy 30 gigs of effluent straight unto the hard drive. So in short, I have the game; suppose I could have just said that from the off but I'm not one to ever edit my/shaun’s ‘work’ (full stop here)

So the game itself, well to start with I was lukewarm, which isn’t typical for a nuclear firestorm but alas. My feeling on new vegas are that of any hand cranking fanboy and naturally like any true gamer i’ve never managed to get into the original two but hear they are very good. I know that at the beginning of the game, the bombs are due to drop any minute and with this meta-fictional knowledge in mind i wanted to avert their entire timeline by getting caught in the blast.

First off no matter how hard I tried the vault tec salesman wouldn’t leave me be, i wanted to die dammit. Eventually my spouse filled in the forms for me by exercising his patriarchal privilege to veto my autonomy, seconds later i was forced to march my way up to the vaults despite trying to catch a wave of thermonuclear scorching hate to practice my body boarding.

I don't like being railroaded and forced to play nice so when I emerged from the vault a some time later I began my journey dropping steamy hot sass on anyone dim enough to try and engage me in conversation. Showed the minutemen how sassy i was by putting a 10mm round in one of their guts via misclick. Truly, an epic gamer moment.

After that I slid into the game proper or rather the side quests, which are rather fun and vaguely retro camp in tone. I spent an hour mucking about on a robot crewed pirate ship only for it to launch itself into an adjacent building; where the jet fuel didn’t melt the beams and the first responders were a horde of feral ghouls. I ran around pretending to be a hard boiled super hero talking like i straight out of a 1950’s comic strip and it was wonderful.

I found this to be where the game was strongest, it’s not laugh out loud funny but manages to be humorous without crossing over into the classic video game pitfall of trying too hard. I think the word i’m looking for here is “fun” but you can’t call something fun and be a serious hard hitting video games journalist, an eight year old can call something fun and get away with it but after that everyone just assumes you’re mental if you can summarise a ‘text’ as fun.

The main quest-line by contrast is deadly serious and oh so emotional! I really don’t care for it. I much prefer laughing away my thermonuclear sorrows in a series of wacky yet cathartic adventures. That is somewhat the joy of sandbox game, i have though my own choice of when and where to interact managed to create my own narrative aside from that of the main games, one I find far more compelling.

So i there anything to be said for gameplay? NO. next.
Just kidding, gunplay yes. Base Building if you like. crafting, yeah it’s kind of alright.

Overall the game quickly became of haze of roaming around and questing, it’s a big game and an even bigger time sink, the hands of the clock turn awful fast while playing. This might be a sign that the game is “fun” or has “engaged me” but to that I say poppycock. I cannot be drawn in by the lure of video games that aren't mind bendingly complex. I mean it’s just drivel, pure and simple it’s the dumbing down of mass media and the corruption of the once ideal state of gaming and… oh god it’s getting to me? I can’t be trusted. I may yet be an unknown harbinger of their mad ideals, Or not, can’t be sure.

Not sure where I was going with that but oh well. So have i managed to go over the game without mentioning any significant plot details other than the nukes? Am i just expecting people to know via cultural osmosis or wikipedia? I mean given how long the game had been out and the widespread exposure the franchise has gotten, I'm going to go ahead a slap a firm yes on those questions.

In summary I give the game Fallout 4/ however many games there have been in the franchise.

my second anniversary of posting nonsense

I’ve not written without caffeine for a very long time. Honestly i’m not sure how well my style will fare without the super charged effluent of pulsing impulses (nice one) running through my system. It was something closer to demonic possession than an actual process. As king says, he is the vessel through which his writing, and cocaine habit flows. In my case the source of that flow is likely a monkey with a pair of symbols.

Okay, so last year, yesterday, was the second anniversary. yes i forgot it was my anniversary of writing this shit heel blog. I mean now i have my silver play button and a cosplayer girlfriend who will corroborate the stories of my abusive and morally reprehensible ways when it comes time for my fall from grace; or that was the plan at least. Not gonna lie i started at nothing and now I am several steps backwards from there.

Maybe that’s too harsh, it’s not the destination but the friends we make along the way. As such I have decided to do a Q+A session on my subreddit. Only I don't have one, hey that itself could bare examination. Okay new idea, i am going to ask myself questions and then you’re going to read the answers and think about how charismatic and off the cuff i sound. Ready? Go:

Q: When did you decide to start soiling the internet with your filth?
A: Honestly that’s kind of a hostile question right from the off, I'd like to keep things a little friendlier ....

Oh shit i’m stealing the SOPHITICATED GAMER's format he used for the guest post he wrote the other day. He’ll probably notice but for the sake of originality I need to… keep going.

Q: when did you stop referencing whatever music you were listening to while writing when you started to run out of ideas?
A: hey don’t call me, by blondie, out on my bullshit you’re meant to be my fans, god you’re a hostile lot that’s for sure. good call back.

Q: is this really the best you have to offer after two years of biweekly blog posts.
A: well biweekly is a fairly ambiguous term so on that basis I don't think the question is valid m’kay. Not really sure what you mean by that, like twice a week or one every two weeks?

Q: do you think the pretence of accosting yourself has any inherent comedic value?
A: look who’s finally getting meta.

Q: you are?
A: indeed I am. Good question!

Q: well maybe you should address the whole garbelled English thing. Is that intentional or…
A: i’d rather not talk about it. I’m not sure if I'm dyslexic or brain damaged and at this point I don't want to know.

Q: Did you just get distracted by tinder?
A: yes, one person’s bio read “i’m the most complicated person you will ever meet,” I laughed so hard I wanted to include it in my blogpost.

Q: Are you getting to a postable length blog now?
A: yeah, time to rap it up.

Well that’s all we have time for. I am a very busy man with all those things that need doing and happening when you run a media empire like my own. All I can perhaps say is: thanks for reading, it means a lot. Aus!

The SOPHITICATED GAMER's agony aunt on the subject of... i didn't read it

Urghhh. i told my friend, and inspiration, the sophit, wait i'll just copy paste, the SOPHITICATED gamer he could do like a guest post or whatever and now he wants me to post and it.... my life is so hard i just want to sit here and guzzle cheese puffs until my hands are raw from the amount of cheese soot sucking the moisture from my skin. yet hey here we are i make scarifies for your entertainment/ mental pollution. i haven't figured out a way to monetize this yet but like if you've got some food in the fridge that you don't think you'll eat before it goes off please send it to my PObox.  

without further waffle, he's the...monetize, nope. SOPHITICATED, there we go, gamer. 

DEAR AGONY AUNT / WISEST AND MOST EXPERIENCED SOPHITICATED GAMER – HOW DO I BECOME A YOUTUBER?

PROBLEM:

I HAVE A FRIEND THAT WANTS TO EARN SOME OF HIS MONEY FROM YOUTUBE BUT CAN’T MAKE HIS FIRST VIDEO. WHAT ADVICE CAN I GIVE THIS FRIEND?

ANSWER:

So there we are logging into league of legends, going through the title screen, seeing a light in the summer art’s eyes, being winked at by their butthole. The queue to champion select starts: great I’m AP SHACO.

For those that don’t play league of legends, shaco is a clown that can summon jack in the boxes. When enemy champions walk into range of these invisible jack in the boxes, they make their champion scared for a few seconds while melting their flesh from the PEW PEWdiepie. Sorry Freudian slip and we’re back on topic.

That that brings us to rule 1 from my 12 rules to lives.

RULE 1: STUDY THE MASTERS. Pewdiepie is a master youtuber. You want to avoid jealousy of your masters. This will let you have admiration, so you can contact your masters and learn from them. You can learn what they are doing that you aren’t.

And in the words of Arianna Grande, talking about her masters:

One taught me love
One taught me patience
And one taught me pain

RULE 2: DON’T play league of legends. It is so fun and frustrating and addictive it will swallow your time like having a baby

ROYAL BABY 3: But realistically your friend is a cloud headed piece of @£$! that needs to get a real job because that’s how we do it around here. My father had a job hitting milk bottles with spoons and then I took over the family business and used my engineering and business degrees to streamline the business. Now we have mechanised milk bottle and spoon hitting so that we get 150 dings a minute as opposed to the dinging by hand which you’d probably expected thirty loud ones or sixty quiet ones. Of course this depends on how good and capable your employees are, because sometimes people join with fancy degrees that simply don’t have the intelligence for milk bottle dinging. We had one person that had 14 cups of tea in one morning so I kept him behind to have a go at him, and that lazy piece of !$@£ was only dinging about twenty a minute.

ROYAL BABY 4: Remember you are dumb – stay humble. And I quote Gronk:

“GRONK IS BOSS HE IS SMARTEST. THEN PARDU WHO HAS BEEN AT COMPANY FOR SEVEN YEARS IS NEXT SMARTEST. THEN DORP WHO HAS BEEN AT COMPANY FOR THREE YEARS IS NEXT SMARTEST. YOU NEW HERE, YOU ARE DUMB”

Thank you for reading. C u next Tuesday.

https://scontent.fbrs1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.15752-9/69158110_375705636479440_1917693401491308544_n.jpg?_nc_cat=109&_nc_eui2=AeG_p43zgCd4_O6qosWzIykT0CYCmdvC5-OaEK772uj2YcJh5wdLQp2PT5hLXHf-tVAnFQTXDgkCxOFtD1KhrZXBqqMhpCJuDLcibnwzTPQOjw&_nc_oc=AQkLaxbc5_QcXZuAUkEYpSC7eMIHTeH5Hpi0x6csNcJIMiBrtbC4M9JazRaNLVEKCD4&_nc_ht=scontent.fbrs1-1.fna&oh=f25bd8bb33b8ee11ac5728737f0ab2a8&oe=5E0D671E

Video games turned my sweet child into a rabid dog

Why suggest video games cause people to act violently? It’s a serious topic given recent mass shootings in the United states and the discussion around it, and I feel myself straining against the format when I started musing over a discussion on it. There’s a good Wikipedia article that has collated the studies on video games and violence that lends itself to a firm rebuttal of the accusations that video-games are to blame. A polygon article (CBA to link it), published in march of 2018 talks about how effective rating systems are for limiting purchases by underage children, generally stating them to be more effective than movie ratings in preventing underage purchase.

So, then… well. Why is this still a thing? He asks suggesting by implication he yet has a theory to explain the trend. I do not, be assured, but if i muddle on long enough that might not matter.

“Video games are the most oppressed group of modern times” this is at least undeniably true. It’s harder to come as a gamer than it is as gay. Rightly so. After having been through controversies around: (deep breath) sexual themes, portrayal of gender, lgbt characters, race and countries; along with issues of addiction, online harassment, alt right associations and one game that featured “the killing of Sikhs at their most holy site” it is hard not to see video games and their players as a bunch degenerate cretins.

Video games don’t make people violent but the people who play them are bloody awful. Lets refine that statement a little, not much because I don't want people to think I'm letting up on my scorn. I’m fairly sure most people won’t defend that kind of bullshit. Let’s chance tack.

Film controversies are not listed as being of the medium in general but are organised by title which makes comparison hard (I'd actually have to do some research and that’s simply unacceptable), and some of these include minor aspects like the kingsman sequel being banned in Cambodia but misses out on some fairly major ones like the ‘triumph of the wills’ being made by Nazis, which you’know outside of gamer circles is a pretty edgy thing. The total given is 55 for films, 56 including triumph.

You know when i said that bit about games not being done by title, that was a lie or rather i hadn’t get googled it. The games industry, not including the hardware which isn’t inherently problematic, was worth 35 million, no, billion dollar $$$ in 2018. Conversely the film industry, including home entertainment is worth 136 billion. Proportionally to scale we would expect 0.257 times the controversies given the scale. 112. So where do you think games measure up? Drum roll please…. Oh, i already said it, 112 which doing some quick maths, 55*0.25 (carry the 1) 7 is 112. So it’s exactly as you’d expect. Where an industry a quarter of the size putting out double the controversy….

So where do we find an explanation for the data? A reporting bias? My method being bad? Well i don’t care really. I only set out to show why people are willing to saddle and already controversial hive of scum and villainy with yet more scorn. I feel very comfortable doing so myself and i have no gain from doing so. Simply my theory which i came up as I write this, is that there are terms of plausibility that make the idea of gamer, via their association to the medium, of being violent mass shooters a palatable idea even with evidence to the contrary. It is the 99 heinous acts that make the 100th assumed, of which you might be innocent. Not that it really matters as your reflex response to the accusation will simply be the posting of memes and another round of circle-jerking.

I have a massive boner for data and having just showered i decided to wedge in a rolling frequency chart of video game controversies. Each point is the sum of the prior five years, so the first point 1977 is the sum of 1973-1977, 1978 is 1972-1978 ect ect.

Clearly this shit show was at peak in the second half of the 2000’s and has since somewhat abated, CBA to claim statistical significance. My plan from here was to plot something entirely unrelated against the dependent variable in a scatter graph and claim causality but I have things to do with my day, a lie, so I think I'll just wrap it up here.

VR headsets ruined my sex life

Concerto for a rainy day softly plays. The gentle light of an overcast August day seeps in through breaks in the curtains as i chew a length of plastic, my imitation cigarette: itself an imitation of poverty for the 19th century artist attempting to clad their purple gowns in the washed out colours of proletariat authenticity. Nowhere in video games is the line between authenticity and the simulated more prevalent than in video games.

I’ve had the honour, no, the blessing, no… I’ve used. I like that one. I’ve used Vr headsets just a handful of times in my life: assuming that a hand can hold more than three and less than five Vr’s. I mean, I could have met a handful of elephants and had it only be the one, fetal, elephant. They gestate for 22 months, and now you’ve learned something, so this isn’t a total waste of time. How many elephant facts constitutes a handful?

Vr’s biggest limitation at the moment is that it’s hella expensive and does to hardware what a really intensive graphically complex 3-d image does to a GPU. Now if that sounds a bit too technical for you we can go back to elephant facts: Did you know that an African bush elephant weighs more than twice as much as a jungle elephant, and they weigh (a colossal) 2,700 KG. no i didn’t slip an extra Zero in there, they are just really heavy.

I punched my friends kneecaps repeatedly while playing super hot. The issue with having one move around a 3-D Space, is that if the audience’s knee caps enter the physical space that overlaps with the digital realm just where the enemies head is; there is a keen likelihood that i won’t see it the first time and won’t stop from the second to eighth due to the mind breaking immersion. Their trunks are a fusion of the nose and upper lip, if you pinch the two together you might get some impression of what being an elephant is like, but probably not.

Holy cow on a satsuma, I know this is the man draw of VR, other than people spoiling at the chance to look like a prat, but it’s dam immersive. One often forgets the fiction of the place, not in the overarching experience but in singular panicked moments that startle the reptile brain into getting it’s freak out on. Speaking of brains ours have 86 millions fibres which is good until you remember elephants have 257 million, then again elephants don’t have Vr headsets so who is really winning the evolution?

The issue with this whole piece is i have only experienced VR briefly as a guest, and as such can’t claim any specific insight. I’m not sure what actually living with the technology is like. Now just to be clear, I could have asked any of the people I know who do have VR and have chosen not to because I am lazy and not interested in the topic outside attempting use is as a vessel to discuss a species that eats specifics plants as a means to induce labour, a form of self medication that is indicative of their highly developed brains.

In summary elephants never forget but i forgot to… what did i forget again? I don’t seem to remember.

Grand theft auto 4: is doing crime worth it in the end?

If you gather a group of XXX rated hardcore videogame freaks in a room, but why would you; it might take a minute, it might take an hour, it might take all night but someone is going to blur out a racial slur.

...now loading...

...now loading…

Jesus christ, this is taking a while. I’ll go make a cup of tea.

...loading…

Oh it’s bugged out, back to the start then. Grand theft auto five warrants a full, luscious and silky review. Horns, trumpets and maybe a bass guitar for that swing slam hit. Shame i’m not doing it today, the loading times are too long and i’m not skipping steps. I’ve not reviewed a gta game since the edge of 2017 but that will by no means break my stride.

So now i need to do a check notes jokes to *checks notes* maintain a facade of spontaneity. Right.

Have you ever been driving along a busy highway only for your car to, without warning, spin out, roll, catch fire and then explode… ruining your no claims bonus and forcing you to drive a fucking micra that smells like cigarette buts and an acrid vanilla haze. This is the Grand theft auto four experience. I used to think it was just my club hands awkwardly smashing the controller as my voice broke and I realised boobies were a form of high art but have since found it to be a universal motif.

I played a lot of this game during my formative years, so take it from me when I say the cars handle like hot ass. Not that i’ve had much occasion to handle hot ass, but well, you’know.

The game is grey and dreary. Is the name of the prompt I was using to outline this paragraph, i thought it succinct enough to use as an opener. In terms of design it peak 2008 gritty washed out dreariness.. Which means none of the game’s scenery really stands out for me in any meaningful way, despite me knowing my way around town even now. It’s like learning your way around a bog, a very relatable experience for all my readers I'm sure, you crettins.

The game was kind of a pain in the ass too. It was a lot of driving, go figure, well no let me take that from the top, no? Well i will anyway, driving at triple digits along some kind of lakeshore drive while swerving in an out of traffic, such things are the prize opale of the experience but what gta4 had was traffic, more jams than a lonely grandma’s pantry and toll booths to boot. They hit the realism cue right on the nail’s head and drove it through the sternum to rupture the heart of the fun, killing it, fairly dead, not to be revived.

Well that’s if you don’t want to be shot at by pigs, which lets face it, we’re all kind of hoping for at this point. I had an officer of the law waltz into my work 5 minutes before closing.

“We caught you just in time” he said.
“Am I being detained?”
“Well you don’t close until 10 right?,”
“Don’t try and mindfuck me pig, i know my rights,”

When you do a crime in the game, any crime the popo come around and try to bust you up. This was the days before Immigration and Customs Enforcement, so the law was generally armed with low calibre weapons that gave the criminal a fighting chance rather than the modern drone strikes that level a block in baltimore twice a week. Don’t ask me to cite a source for that i made it up.

This is when the game is at its peak, the thrill of the chase, the eternal dogged pursuit that pits man against man in the game of the deadliest… game. The more you do a crime the more they send black vans and helicopters to swat you in a section what would make news editors pants pop up like a teepee. All of which is entirely freeform as set you your choice of soundtrack via the radio. The game even has the option to switch to a cinematic camera that swaps between low angle shots of the cars wheels and top down views that will almost certainly lead one to crash.

The story mission were frustrating. Yeah, that point makes itself, a lot of it was fun; but it’s the dog turds in the punch that ruins the party for all the guests, who now have roundworm: the larvae of which can cause blindness.
That being said missions and the story of the game were entirely secondary to its appeal. Weirdly enough a game called grand theft auto makes is mark with… bowling.

That’s right, you can go bowling, you can take your friends bowling and they will try and out bowl you, it’s a striking minigame that’s real show stealer, I'm split as to whether it’s revolutionary or just utterly outstanding. Niko, the umm.. Player character, can be down and out having just had the ass kicking of his life, then in a fit of pure impulse, spend the next three days bowling his life out until he plays the perfect game.

This review is getting a bit girthy so let's wrap it up with the next paragraph.

The end.