To begin with: yes, I write for the Escapist, no, this has nothing to do with the Escapist, it's entirely my own thing, and no, this isn't a review. I've only been playing Batman Arkham Origins for about 4 hours on Hard difficulty; I've penetrated Penguin's lair, and am currently fighting Deathstroke.
If someone were to ask me, right now, whether or not this was a good buy, I'd have to say no. Wait for a sale.
I don't have that option - video games never go on sale down here, particularly console versions - and besides, I enjoyed the first two episodes, so I didn't mind shelling out for this one. The first two were made by Rocksteady; in 2009 Arkham Asylum put that studio on the map, and in 2010 Warner Brothers bought the studio. City followed soon thereafter, and was a huge success. Then something odd happened. Though a sequel to City had been announced in 2012, there were mixed messages about its content - was it Silver Age, was Paul Dini attached as writer, who would voice Batman and the Joker? - and in February 2013 it was announced that Rocksteady would not be the developer this time out. Instead, Warner Brothers Montreal would be the folks in charge. Perhaps it was thanks to talent drain; a Rocksteady developer lamented in February 2012 that an unfriendly business climate at home was forcing UK developers abroad. Be that as it may, from Feb 2013 to its release that October, Montreal was in charge, and to my mind, it shows.
After four hours, I haven't seen anything here that I didn't see in City. The environment's the same, since every outdoors location so far - and again, it's only been four hours, so that could change - has come from City. That same covered mall which was sprinkled with mines and a pain in the Bat-side to sneak around in City, is where I just foiled Penguin's gun deal in Origins. The same environments and rooftops I glided around in City, I'm gliding around now. The only thing missing is that bloody great wall, and Strange's armed thugs; but if early gameplay teasers are any indication, SWAT will be playing the role of Strange's Tiger teams. No doubt as soon as they appear, so will the choppers I remember spying on me in City. At least the wall hasn't been built yet.
The interior locations are a change of pace. Blackgate didn't really stand out. I'm enjoying Penguin's floating casino, though it seems a little small for what it is, and I can't help thinking that the basic premise is much the same as Penguin's Museum base in City. There are signal jammers outside, so deal with them first. Bust in to Penguin's lair, find your way to the fight pit, have a big fight, have a mini boss fight, move on. The Electrocutioner first appears in Penguin's lair, and what a big bag of wind he turns out to be, but the character that wins my 'least enjoyable' award so far is Tracey, Penguin's secretary. I've heard better Mockney from Jamie Oliver. The writers didn't dare say Fuck, but Bugger's ok, is it? Numpty? Have the 1970's returned, and nobody's told me?
I don't think Tracey's from the books, but I haven't followed comics since I was in uni, so I can't be sure. I hope, if she is, she gets better treatment there. Her biography doesn't say one way or the other, which is a departure from the other games; Rocksteady was always pretty good about telling you who first appeared where, and when.
The boss fights are interesting, but really not significantly different from previous outings. Killer Croc, who you fight early on, has broadly the same tactics as the Titan-boosted thugs found in both previous titles and the minor boss Siamese twin goons seen in City. He's quicker, but that's about it. Stun him, hit him, and keep hitting him. There's a really annoying Hit A Repeatedly QTE half-way through; I hope you have strong thumbs. But the bigger problem in that fight is the camera, which whooshes around like a drunk on a spree. You don't see enough of the Electrocutioner in his first fight to really test his mettle. Deathstroke has a curious block-block-hit him thing going on, but if you remember Ra's al Ghul's fight in City, you'll see a lot of similarities. It doesn't take place in a dream zone, but other than that, it's a very familiar fight.
Speaking of fights, yes, they're just as you remember them, and just as fun to plow through. The upgrade system is very odd. You get experience, much as you did before - hit things, smash objects, do well in predator encounters - but before you can buy any fun combat upgrades, you have to buy all the armor upgrades first. I've just bought the Blade Takedown, which will help deal with those pesky knife-users, but I had to fully upgrade my close combat armor first. Other combat moves are specific to bullet resistant armor, which I haven't fully upgraded yet. I'm not sure what difference that system makes to gameplay, but it did make me feel as though I was being forced to upgrade the way the developers wanted me to, rather than as I wanted to.
Again, this is a first impressions, not a review. I will play through to the end - I may even tell you what I thought of it, once it's done - but so far, I'm not impressed. Arkham City felt completely different to Asylum, right out of the gate. Origins feels like City's warmed-up leftovers. That's not necessarily a bad thing - City was a brilliant game - but it's not great for WB Montreal that my initial thought, as soon as I see the outdoor environments, is 'hang on, Rocksteady was here first - and Rocksteady was better.'
Saturday, 26 October 2013
Sunday, 20 October 2013
Trail of Cthulhu Sordid London: Fabian of the Yard
Detective Inspector Robert Fabian, ex-Scotland Yard, author, and TV personality, is one of those sources you have to treat with caution. His book, London After Dark, is in my collection, and it's an entertaining read. The difficulty is, Fabian's a relentless self-publicist intent on creating his own mythology, and you have to be cautious about taking his word as gospel. That said, anyone seeking source material for a Bookhounds of London game would do well to seek out a copy, particularly if they want to create a Sordid London setting. Endless data mining can be had, provided you're prepared to hold your nose when Fabian goes off on another tangent.
Bob Fabian started his police career in the early 1920s, and rose through the ranks, eventually becoming Detective Superintendent, and head of the Vice Squad. He's the eponymous pipe-smoking British hero, the kind of brains-and-brawn policeman that wouldn't have been out of place in an Agatha Christie novel. If he ever failed, you wouldn't know it by London After Dark; time after time, he collars the crook he's after, often in spectacular fashion. After retirement he turned his career into a television series, Fabian of the Yard, drawn from episodes of his career, bookended by appearances by Fabian himself, describing what happened in the real-life case. And what a career it must have been; everything from dope king Eddie Manning right through to Satanist enclaves and perverts in the 1950s. Fabian's the sort of detective who'll casually describe blacks as having the "brains of children" while at the same time displaying pictures of himself having a pint with his "colored" friends; who'll describe marihuana and cocaine in the most lurid terms imaginable; who'll casually link homosexuality with perversion and child molestation. He's a man of his times, no error, and very fond of the spotlight to boot. It's not as if he was the only one publishing his memoirs - Edward Greeno's War On The Underworld's well worth looking at, among others - but there's something slightly off-putting about Fabian's eagerness to be in the center of things. As a reader, you're left with the impression he'd let nothing stand in the way of a good story, which can be very worrying if you're relying on your source for factual accuracy.
As this is Trail of Cthulhu we're talking about, factual accuracy is the least of our worries. Let's get down to cases, and talk about two useful things to be drawn from Fabian's reminisces: night clubs, and young criminals.
"There are 295 registered clubs within one mile of Eros Statue in Piccadilly," says Fabian, "where music, dancing drinks and companions await the well-filled wallet. The job is to empty that wallet - whether they do it with pink champagne and satin-quilted walls; or by meth-and-ginger ale, marijuana cigarettes and tope-jumpy teenage girls who, for two pounds, would cuddle a baboon." Of course, if there are 295 registered clubs, there are bound to be plenty of unregistered ones too - Fabian claims to know of fifteen - none of them very expensive to set up or run. A single room, a few tables, some chairs, and girls; that's all a clubman needs. Then, much as now, a club could shut up in a week crushed by debt, or run for years with the efficiency and morals of a rat trap. Some were very inventive. "The Hell Club ... was installed with hidden lighting that changed color slowly, at a time when this was quite a novelty, and sank from pink to deep red and ghastly purple, and with various effects to make flickering shadows. I have no doubt that some of the patrons must have thought they had actually arrived!" Or there were the American clubs, like the 21 and the Be-Bop, with the exotic appeal of the foreign and unfamiliar. It was a toss-up which approach worked better, the no-expense-spared or the budget option; a club's appeal is ephemeral, and often depends as much on the mood of the moment as the decor or the head waiter.
From a Bookhounds point of view, the typical Club is in Westminster, and the contacts most often met there are barmen, bright young things, inspectors and bobbies (during a raid), prostitutes and gamblers. Gambling is illegal in London, as is prostitution, which - according to Fabian - led to a novel defense against the income tax brigade. Fabian alleged that, when asked, notorious women would declare without shame "I am a prostitute of London," at which point the income tax inspectors backed hurriedly away. The last thing they wanted to do was get involved. Gamblers had a different problem; when they lost, they were expected to pay up. Sometimes gamblers relied on the Gaming Act, which essentially said that debts arising from gambling were unenforceable. They hoped to brazen it out. But if their creditor has criminal connections, they might sell the debt on to a gang, which has its own means of debt collection.
Now let's talk about criminals.
"'Pity you wasn't here last night, Mr. Fabian,' said the barman. 'You never seen such a mess as those villains made of that girl!'" They suspected her of being a nark, a police informant. The three walked into the bar, ordered three pints, and a bottle of brandy. They drank their beer, then poured the brandy into an empty pint pot. "'He goes across to this girl. Have a drink, Rabbit, he says, and tips it all over her. Face, hair, clothes - the lot! Ever get neat brandy in your eyes, Mr. Fabian? Well, she starts to scream, claws at her eyeballs. He just grins. He takes out his cigarette lighter and calmly sets her off like a Christmas pudding!"
It's well known that the police and the criminals they chase, in period, seldom carry firearms. That doesn't stop violence; if anything, it becomes more inventive. Some of the worst offenders are children. They might wear makeshift armor, metal shields under their shirts that cover them from wrist to elbow, intended to protect their arms and wrists from knives, razors and chains. They always have some kind of sharp weapon, whether it's a set of rings with hooks embossed, or fish hooks sewn into their jacket sleeves and hat brims. If that sounds like something trivial, imagine having half a dozen fish hooks embedded in your face, then pulled out in one long scraping motion, just by a seeming casual brush-by. There isn't a criminal in London that goes unarmed, and the Keeper should assume each has the equivalent of a knife (-1) at the least. The only saving grace, when dealing with a professional crook, is that the pro is usually too careful to get mixed up in violence. They don't like prison, but it's never difficult to find an amateur - again, often children, or teens - willing to do something drastic for a nominal fee. "There are crazy young hoodlums of the underworld, hungry to make a reputation for being tough, who will slash your face for twenty five pounds, though they know they will be arrested within a very short time of doing it!"
But there are gunmen. "The true gunman is always slender, with agitated appearance, like a man who has been kept waiting. He is solitary. Also, he loves his gun. He cleans it frequently. When I arrested the gunman who did London's first daylight armed robbery of a jeweler's in Oxford Street, he was busy loading his gun in his bedroom. He had polished every cartridge until it glittered. If he hadn't been so particular his gun might have been loaded when we burst in." The true gunman always has grey eyes, according to Fabian; make of it what you will. The gunman knows that his natural prey - cashiers and clerks, perhaps carrying payroll - is also armed, but they couldn't hit a doorway at ten paces, and frequently don't bother to take care of their weapons. The true gunman doesn't fear them, but he'll be wary of shooting a policeman, not because he has a conscience but because he knows that, as soon as the deed's done, every single patrolman and officer - 16,000 men - will be after him, day and night. And after arrest, the hangman.
I hope you found this useful! I may return to Fabian later; he's a fund of odd trivia, even if I wonder about his reliability as a source.
Bob Fabian started his police career in the early 1920s, and rose through the ranks, eventually becoming Detective Superintendent, and head of the Vice Squad. He's the eponymous pipe-smoking British hero, the kind of brains-and-brawn policeman that wouldn't have been out of place in an Agatha Christie novel. If he ever failed, you wouldn't know it by London After Dark; time after time, he collars the crook he's after, often in spectacular fashion. After retirement he turned his career into a television series, Fabian of the Yard, drawn from episodes of his career, bookended by appearances by Fabian himself, describing what happened in the real-life case. And what a career it must have been; everything from dope king Eddie Manning right through to Satanist enclaves and perverts in the 1950s. Fabian's the sort of detective who'll casually describe blacks as having the "brains of children" while at the same time displaying pictures of himself having a pint with his "colored" friends; who'll describe marihuana and cocaine in the most lurid terms imaginable; who'll casually link homosexuality with perversion and child molestation. He's a man of his times, no error, and very fond of the spotlight to boot. It's not as if he was the only one publishing his memoirs - Edward Greeno's War On The Underworld's well worth looking at, among others - but there's something slightly off-putting about Fabian's eagerness to be in the center of things. As a reader, you're left with the impression he'd let nothing stand in the way of a good story, which can be very worrying if you're relying on your source for factual accuracy.
As this is Trail of Cthulhu we're talking about, factual accuracy is the least of our worries. Let's get down to cases, and talk about two useful things to be drawn from Fabian's reminisces: night clubs, and young criminals.
"There are 295 registered clubs within one mile of Eros Statue in Piccadilly," says Fabian, "where music, dancing drinks and companions await the well-filled wallet. The job is to empty that wallet - whether they do it with pink champagne and satin-quilted walls; or by meth-and-ginger ale, marijuana cigarettes and tope-jumpy teenage girls who, for two pounds, would cuddle a baboon." Of course, if there are 295 registered clubs, there are bound to be plenty of unregistered ones too - Fabian claims to know of fifteen - none of them very expensive to set up or run. A single room, a few tables, some chairs, and girls; that's all a clubman needs. Then, much as now, a club could shut up in a week crushed by debt, or run for years with the efficiency and morals of a rat trap. Some were very inventive. "The Hell Club ... was installed with hidden lighting that changed color slowly, at a time when this was quite a novelty, and sank from pink to deep red and ghastly purple, and with various effects to make flickering shadows. I have no doubt that some of the patrons must have thought they had actually arrived!" Or there were the American clubs, like the 21 and the Be-Bop, with the exotic appeal of the foreign and unfamiliar. It was a toss-up which approach worked better, the no-expense-spared or the budget option; a club's appeal is ephemeral, and often depends as much on the mood of the moment as the decor or the head waiter.
From a Bookhounds point of view, the typical Club is in Westminster, and the contacts most often met there are barmen, bright young things, inspectors and bobbies (during a raid), prostitutes and gamblers. Gambling is illegal in London, as is prostitution, which - according to Fabian - led to a novel defense against the income tax brigade. Fabian alleged that, when asked, notorious women would declare without shame "I am a prostitute of London," at which point the income tax inspectors backed hurriedly away. The last thing they wanted to do was get involved. Gamblers had a different problem; when they lost, they were expected to pay up. Sometimes gamblers relied on the Gaming Act, which essentially said that debts arising from gambling were unenforceable. They hoped to brazen it out. But if their creditor has criminal connections, they might sell the debt on to a gang, which has its own means of debt collection.
Now let's talk about criminals.
"'Pity you wasn't here last night, Mr. Fabian,' said the barman. 'You never seen such a mess as those villains made of that girl!'" They suspected her of being a nark, a police informant. The three walked into the bar, ordered three pints, and a bottle of brandy. They drank their beer, then poured the brandy into an empty pint pot. "'He goes across to this girl. Have a drink, Rabbit, he says, and tips it all over her. Face, hair, clothes - the lot! Ever get neat brandy in your eyes, Mr. Fabian? Well, she starts to scream, claws at her eyeballs. He just grins. He takes out his cigarette lighter and calmly sets her off like a Christmas pudding!"
It's well known that the police and the criminals they chase, in period, seldom carry firearms. That doesn't stop violence; if anything, it becomes more inventive. Some of the worst offenders are children. They might wear makeshift armor, metal shields under their shirts that cover them from wrist to elbow, intended to protect their arms and wrists from knives, razors and chains. They always have some kind of sharp weapon, whether it's a set of rings with hooks embossed, or fish hooks sewn into their jacket sleeves and hat brims. If that sounds like something trivial, imagine having half a dozen fish hooks embedded in your face, then pulled out in one long scraping motion, just by a seeming casual brush-by. There isn't a criminal in London that goes unarmed, and the Keeper should assume each has the equivalent of a knife (-1) at the least. The only saving grace, when dealing with a professional crook, is that the pro is usually too careful to get mixed up in violence. They don't like prison, but it's never difficult to find an amateur - again, often children, or teens - willing to do something drastic for a nominal fee. "There are crazy young hoodlums of the underworld, hungry to make a reputation for being tough, who will slash your face for twenty five pounds, though they know they will be arrested within a very short time of doing it!"
But there are gunmen. "The true gunman is always slender, with agitated appearance, like a man who has been kept waiting. He is solitary. Also, he loves his gun. He cleans it frequently. When I arrested the gunman who did London's first daylight armed robbery of a jeweler's in Oxford Street, he was busy loading his gun in his bedroom. He had polished every cartridge until it glittered. If he hadn't been so particular his gun might have been loaded when we burst in." The true gunman always has grey eyes, according to Fabian; make of it what you will. The gunman knows that his natural prey - cashiers and clerks, perhaps carrying payroll - is also armed, but they couldn't hit a doorway at ten paces, and frequently don't bother to take care of their weapons. The true gunman doesn't fear them, but he'll be wary of shooting a policeman, not because he has a conscience but because he knows that, as soon as the deed's done, every single patrolman and officer - 16,000 men - will be after him, day and night. And after arrest, the hangman.
I hope you found this useful! I may return to Fabian later; he's a fund of odd trivia, even if I wonder about his reliability as a source.
Thursday, 26 September 2013
Digital Intrusion (Nights Black Agents)
There are all kinds of techno toys on offer in Night's Black Agents, but - as the NSA has done its best to remind us - communications, electronic or otherwise, are very vulnerable to attack. This can have severe consequences for the Agents, but can also be used by them to good effect. What possibilities are there?
To begin with, telephonic communication is extremely vulnerable. There are several sophisticated gadgets that have been built for the sole purpose of intercepting and tracking phones and their data, but I'm only going to talk about a couple: the Kingfish, and Gossamer.
Kingfish is a small device, easily hidden in a suitcase, that can be operated wirelessly, with a Bluetooth-enabled PC. According to Ars Technica, Kingfish "does not appear to enable interception of communications; instead, it can covertly gather unique identity codes and show connections between phones and numbers being dialed." It's the perfect device for keeping tabs on those pesky Agents; one call, and you're caught, and each call you make extends the net, until the user knows exactly who you've been talking to, and when. While it does not appear to be able to intercept communications, there are upgrades which may enable that functionality, as well as other upgrades that extend its range and allow it to home in on a selected telephone number. The chief attraction, from the Keeper's perspective, is its relative inexpensiveness compared to similar devices on the market. A price tag of $25,349 puts it well within range of a civilian, or criminal, group.
Gossamer is slightly less expensive, at $19,696. "It sends out a covert signal that tricks phones into handing over their unique codes," says Ars Technica, allowing it to identify users and home in on particular devices of interest. It''s also smaller than Kingfish, being about the size of a clunky walkie talkie. But the real sting in Gossamer's tail is its denial of service attack; it can overwhelm a target, preventing it from receiving or making calls. Ever wondered how you can stop the Agents from making that vital phone call? Wonder no more.
In game, the Keeper should use devices like these as Electronic Surveillance or Digital Intrusion tools. In the event of a Contest, possession could reduce Difficulty, if the Keeper's feeling generous. Obtaining one should be very difficult; the devices mentioned here are at the cheap end of the spectrum, but more sophisticated systems can run into the hundreds of thousands.
Of course, there are other ways of getting hold of data. Hacking's been popular ever since WarGames, but what if you lack the skills to do it yourself? Hire someone, of course, and there are plenty of someones out there. Kapersky Lab has been tracking groups like these for some time. Icefog's a tight-knit group that's been attacking government institutions, military contractors, maritime and ship-building groups, telecom operators, satellite operators, industrial and high technology companies and mass media, mainly in Japan and South Korea, since at least 2011. Shanghai-based Comment Crew have been going after US and Canadian targets since 2006. Hidden Lynx, another Chinese crew, has been active since 2009, and has hit targets in 15 regions across the globe. "Given the breadth and number of targets and regions involved, we infer that [Hidden Lynx] is most likely a professional hacker-for-hire operation that is contracted by clients to provide information," Symantec researchers claim. "They steal on demand, whatever their clients are interested in, hence the wide variety and range of targets."
But should you choose to hire mercenaries, there's always a risk you'll get burned. Does a bought hacker stay loyal? Are your own machines free of the organization's malware? If they're willing to sell anyone's data, then they certainly have their hooks in yours; after all, you never know when it will be strategically useful to sell on a former employer's information.
In game, the most likely employer for organizations like these is the Conspiracy, but it's up to the Keeper whether they've been subverted or not. A subverted group is likely to be small - Icefog numbers perhaps 10 in all, but Hidden Lynx has 100 - mainly because it's difficult to keep large groups of highly independent people, like hackers, quiet, without using force or significant economic resources. This is particularly the case with groups like Hidden Lynx and the Comment Crew, which may - or may not - have Chinese government connections.
And then, as this somewhat mournful NBC news blog points out, there are all the usual ways of tracking a person. Cameras read your license plate. Other security cameras dot your path in every major city, tracking your movements on foot. Social media users, and computer users in general, are always being monitored by someone, either for marketing or more sinister purposes. Each swipe of a fob to get you in and out of a building is traceable. Just by reading this blog, you're being watched by someone ... and it almost certainly isn't just me.
But what about email? Surely there are services out there that are uncrackable? Would that it were so, but in the wake of the Snowden affair it's become painfully obvious that there's no such thing as a secure email provider. Snowden's provider Lavabit shut down not long after the NSA story broke. It claimed it would rather not have the data than hand it over to the government. After Lavabit came SilentCircle, a company that had, until that point, offered a secure means of communication. Its CEO, Michael Janke, said he saw "the writing on the wall," and destroyed Silent Circle's servers. The problem was the data: by keeping it on the servers, it was constantly vulnerable to seizure. "It is always better to be safe than sorry," said Janke, "and with your safety we decided that the worst decision is always no decision." SilentCircle also pointed out that, even if the information within the email could somehow be kept secure, the metadata - who sent it, when, and to whom - is always vulnerable. The email protocols demand it, because without it nobody would ever be able to send a message. "Email as we know it with SMTP, POP3, and IMAP cannot be secure," said Janke.
I hope this gave the Keepers out there some useful information! Just remember, in the internet age, someone's always watching ... and you'll never know who. Until it's too late.
To begin with, telephonic communication is extremely vulnerable. There are several sophisticated gadgets that have been built for the sole purpose of intercepting and tracking phones and their data, but I'm only going to talk about a couple: the Kingfish, and Gossamer.
Kingfish is a small device, easily hidden in a suitcase, that can be operated wirelessly, with a Bluetooth-enabled PC. According to Ars Technica, Kingfish "does not appear to enable interception of communications; instead, it can covertly gather unique identity codes and show connections between phones and numbers being dialed." It's the perfect device for keeping tabs on those pesky Agents; one call, and you're caught, and each call you make extends the net, until the user knows exactly who you've been talking to, and when. While it does not appear to be able to intercept communications, there are upgrades which may enable that functionality, as well as other upgrades that extend its range and allow it to home in on a selected telephone number. The chief attraction, from the Keeper's perspective, is its relative inexpensiveness compared to similar devices on the market. A price tag of $25,349 puts it well within range of a civilian, or criminal, group.
Gossamer is slightly less expensive, at $19,696. "It sends out a covert signal that tricks phones into handing over their unique codes," says Ars Technica, allowing it to identify users and home in on particular devices of interest. It''s also smaller than Kingfish, being about the size of a clunky walkie talkie. But the real sting in Gossamer's tail is its denial of service attack; it can overwhelm a target, preventing it from receiving or making calls. Ever wondered how you can stop the Agents from making that vital phone call? Wonder no more.
In game, the Keeper should use devices like these as Electronic Surveillance or Digital Intrusion tools. In the event of a Contest, possession could reduce Difficulty, if the Keeper's feeling generous. Obtaining one should be very difficult; the devices mentioned here are at the cheap end of the spectrum, but more sophisticated systems can run into the hundreds of thousands.
Of course, there are other ways of getting hold of data. Hacking's been popular ever since WarGames, but what if you lack the skills to do it yourself? Hire someone, of course, and there are plenty of someones out there. Kapersky Lab has been tracking groups like these for some time. Icefog's a tight-knit group that's been attacking government institutions, military contractors, maritime and ship-building groups, telecom operators, satellite operators, industrial and high technology companies and mass media, mainly in Japan and South Korea, since at least 2011. Shanghai-based Comment Crew have been going after US and Canadian targets since 2006. Hidden Lynx, another Chinese crew, has been active since 2009, and has hit targets in 15 regions across the globe. "Given the breadth and number of targets and regions involved, we infer that [Hidden Lynx] is most likely a professional hacker-for-hire operation that is contracted by clients to provide information," Symantec researchers claim. "They steal on demand, whatever their clients are interested in, hence the wide variety and range of targets."
But should you choose to hire mercenaries, there's always a risk you'll get burned. Does a bought hacker stay loyal? Are your own machines free of the organization's malware? If they're willing to sell anyone's data, then they certainly have their hooks in yours; after all, you never know when it will be strategically useful to sell on a former employer's information.
In game, the most likely employer for organizations like these is the Conspiracy, but it's up to the Keeper whether they've been subverted or not. A subverted group is likely to be small - Icefog numbers perhaps 10 in all, but Hidden Lynx has 100 - mainly because it's difficult to keep large groups of highly independent people, like hackers, quiet, without using force or significant economic resources. This is particularly the case with groups like Hidden Lynx and the Comment Crew, which may - or may not - have Chinese government connections.
And then, as this somewhat mournful NBC news blog points out, there are all the usual ways of tracking a person. Cameras read your license plate. Other security cameras dot your path in every major city, tracking your movements on foot. Social media users, and computer users in general, are always being monitored by someone, either for marketing or more sinister purposes. Each swipe of a fob to get you in and out of a building is traceable. Just by reading this blog, you're being watched by someone ... and it almost certainly isn't just me.
But what about email? Surely there are services out there that are uncrackable? Would that it were so, but in the wake of the Snowden affair it's become painfully obvious that there's no such thing as a secure email provider. Snowden's provider Lavabit shut down not long after the NSA story broke. It claimed it would rather not have the data than hand it over to the government. After Lavabit came SilentCircle, a company that had, until that point, offered a secure means of communication. Its CEO, Michael Janke, said he saw "the writing on the wall," and destroyed Silent Circle's servers. The problem was the data: by keeping it on the servers, it was constantly vulnerable to seizure. "It is always better to be safe than sorry," said Janke, "and with your safety we decided that the worst decision is always no decision." SilentCircle also pointed out that, even if the information within the email could somehow be kept secure, the metadata - who sent it, when, and to whom - is always vulnerable. The email protocols demand it, because without it nobody would ever be able to send a message. "Email as we know it with SMTP, POP3, and IMAP cannot be secure," said Janke.
I hope this gave the Keepers out there some useful information! Just remember, in the internet age, someone's always watching ... and you'll never know who. Until it's too late.
Saturday, 21 September 2013
Not Quite Book Review Corner: Firewall (Andy McNab)
It occurred to me, as I read through Night's Black Agents for the umpteenth time, that I had a problem, and my problem was thrillers. I hadn't read enough. Or to be more accurate, the thrillers I read tend to be Anthony Price / Ian Fleming vintage; British, and a little out of date. Determined to update myself, I picked up The Bourne Identity second hand and ploughed through it. Fun stuff, but I hadn't realized how old it was. A 1980s spy fest wasn't updating me. Then I saw Andy McNab's Firewall.
McNab, for those who aren't familiar with his work, is a former soldier and ex-SAS who started writing in the 1990s, and kicked off his Nick Stone series in 1998. I've known who he was for a while - you can't go into a bookstore in the UK without seeing his name on a dustjacket somewhere - but I've not read any of his stuff until now. Nick Stone is his primary protagonist, an SAS turned deniable asset who works all over the globe, for all sorts of odd people. British Intelligence is his primary paymaster -for an insultingly low amount of money, if Firewall is to be believed - but he's willing to take almost any job that pays. In Firewall, the story begins when Stone's hired to kidnap a Russian oligarch, but when things go a bit pear shaped Stone not only sets the oligarch free but ends up working for him instead. Thus begins his escapades in Russia, as he attempts to stop the ROC from getting hold of the West's most sensitive electronic data. Firewall is currently being turned into the movie Echelon, still in production.
It's entertaining. I don't know if I would have picked this up had I not been interested in data mining it for Night's Black Agents, and I'm still not convinced I like McNab's writing style, but I liked it enough to pick up another of his, so I suppose that's a good sign. It's written in what I'm going to call First Person Fucknugget, or FPF for short, and the reason I'm calling it that is I'm firmly convinced that, if Stone ever paused for thought, his brain would explode. I've never read anything quite so much in the present tense; everything's explained from Stone's point of view, as Stone's seeing it, and Stone's constantly moving from point to point to point. It's like reading the adventures of a heavily armed movie camera with legs. It reminded me, oddly enough, of those old Games Workshop Felix and Gotrek novels, where the protagonists exist only to do massive amounts of damage and move on to the next scene.
McNab's thoroughly absorbed the old pulp dicta that, whenever things start to slow down, you should have a man come in the door with a gun, except this time the man's Stone and he's probably got at least two guns and a combat knife. That said, the body count is remarkably low, at least in Firewall. I didn't count, but I think Stone's bag didn't exceed a dozen, all told, not counting miscellaneous Russians who may or may not have died when Stone blew their building up. Felix and Gotrek, by contrast, would have gone through a Skaven army in the time it takes Stone to describe his meeting with his British Intelligence bosses.
I really liked Stone's fallibility. It didn't strike me until after I'd read it, but Jason Bourne's a bit too perfect. Yes, he has his memory problems, but when he goes into action he doesn't put a foot wrong, even if he does worry himself to death. Stone, by contrast, is a walking disaster. He gets into his latest scrape by screwing up a kidnapping. He reports back to his Intelligence bosses - who don't know he's contracting out on the side - looking for work to pay off his debts, only to be chewed out by his soon-to-be ex boss for the screwups he perpetrated in the last novel. "You trusted the femme fatale, you pillock!" screams the man who's about to be sacked because of what Stone did last time. "Cheery bye," says Stone, and he immediately trusts Firewall's femme fatale, who leads him off on a merry chase. Not only that, but Stone doesn't even get a shag out of it; the support character, the guy with the "I'm going to die tragically, and it's Nick Stone's fault" sign hung around his neck, is the one who gets her into bed. Cue mishap after mishap. Stone scuffles with the American NSA, beats them up because he doesn't know who they are, Stone gets mugged, Stone loses his support character, Stone gets a car from Russian mafia connection, Stone's car is stolen, Stone goes in search of his support character, massive explosions. If ever, as a Keeper, you've wondered how the players will get out of their latest cock-up, read a bit of McNab. There's always a way, if you're willing to get beaten up a bit first.
It's also a fascinating look at what happens in the middle of all this action. There's a tendency, on the Keeper's side, to make everything connected. The guy you meet in scene one will turn up in scene four, that sort of thing. Not so, in McNab's world. People pass through in the blink of an eye, get shot, and vanish, never to be seen again. Most of them don't even have names, or at least not names Stone's prepared to learn. If a civilian's wife gets killed in the kidnapping scene, and the husband's last seen sobbing over the body, that doesn't mean he's going to be an important diplomat who now swears revenge against Stone, as I was half expecting; he's just some random dude who got off the elevator at the wrong moment and walked into a gunfight. That will happen in the real world, but it doesn't often happen in fiction. I think this is where McNab's ex military experience really comes through; not in the technobabble or the action, but in his understanding that, in any action scene, there's going to be chaos, confusion, cock ups and misfires. It happens, and the work of a professional isn't to overcome the opposition, but to overcome the problems that the mission throws up, usually at the worst possible moment.
I'd definitely recommend McNab to anyone wanting to run, or play, Night's Black Agents. I don't say he's brilliant; I say he's useful, and a fun read, particularly if you want a better idea of how a gunfight might play out or what a good chase scene needs. But I'd add the caveat that it only really works if you're running an action-packed game, with mooks aplenty; if you were aiming for something a little more sedate and vicious, like John le Carré, steer clear.
McNab, for those who aren't familiar with his work, is a former soldier and ex-SAS who started writing in the 1990s, and kicked off his Nick Stone series in 1998. I've known who he was for a while - you can't go into a bookstore in the UK without seeing his name on a dustjacket somewhere - but I've not read any of his stuff until now. Nick Stone is his primary protagonist, an SAS turned deniable asset who works all over the globe, for all sorts of odd people. British Intelligence is his primary paymaster -for an insultingly low amount of money, if Firewall is to be believed - but he's willing to take almost any job that pays. In Firewall, the story begins when Stone's hired to kidnap a Russian oligarch, but when things go a bit pear shaped Stone not only sets the oligarch free but ends up working for him instead. Thus begins his escapades in Russia, as he attempts to stop the ROC from getting hold of the West's most sensitive electronic data. Firewall is currently being turned into the movie Echelon, still in production.
It's entertaining. I don't know if I would have picked this up had I not been interested in data mining it for Night's Black Agents, and I'm still not convinced I like McNab's writing style, but I liked it enough to pick up another of his, so I suppose that's a good sign. It's written in what I'm going to call First Person Fucknugget, or FPF for short, and the reason I'm calling it that is I'm firmly convinced that, if Stone ever paused for thought, his brain would explode. I've never read anything quite so much in the present tense; everything's explained from Stone's point of view, as Stone's seeing it, and Stone's constantly moving from point to point to point. It's like reading the adventures of a heavily armed movie camera with legs. It reminded me, oddly enough, of those old Games Workshop Felix and Gotrek novels, where the protagonists exist only to do massive amounts of damage and move on to the next scene.
McNab's thoroughly absorbed the old pulp dicta that, whenever things start to slow down, you should have a man come in the door with a gun, except this time the man's Stone and he's probably got at least two guns and a combat knife. That said, the body count is remarkably low, at least in Firewall. I didn't count, but I think Stone's bag didn't exceed a dozen, all told, not counting miscellaneous Russians who may or may not have died when Stone blew their building up. Felix and Gotrek, by contrast, would have gone through a Skaven army in the time it takes Stone to describe his meeting with his British Intelligence bosses.
I really liked Stone's fallibility. It didn't strike me until after I'd read it, but Jason Bourne's a bit too perfect. Yes, he has his memory problems, but when he goes into action he doesn't put a foot wrong, even if he does worry himself to death. Stone, by contrast, is a walking disaster. He gets into his latest scrape by screwing up a kidnapping. He reports back to his Intelligence bosses - who don't know he's contracting out on the side - looking for work to pay off his debts, only to be chewed out by his soon-to-be ex boss for the screwups he perpetrated in the last novel. "You trusted the femme fatale, you pillock!" screams the man who's about to be sacked because of what Stone did last time. "Cheery bye," says Stone, and he immediately trusts Firewall's femme fatale, who leads him off on a merry chase. Not only that, but Stone doesn't even get a shag out of it; the support character, the guy with the "I'm going to die tragically, and it's Nick Stone's fault" sign hung around his neck, is the one who gets her into bed. Cue mishap after mishap. Stone scuffles with the American NSA, beats them up because he doesn't know who they are, Stone gets mugged, Stone loses his support character, Stone gets a car from Russian mafia connection, Stone's car is stolen, Stone goes in search of his support character, massive explosions. If ever, as a Keeper, you've wondered how the players will get out of their latest cock-up, read a bit of McNab. There's always a way, if you're willing to get beaten up a bit first.
It's also a fascinating look at what happens in the middle of all this action. There's a tendency, on the Keeper's side, to make everything connected. The guy you meet in scene one will turn up in scene four, that sort of thing. Not so, in McNab's world. People pass through in the blink of an eye, get shot, and vanish, never to be seen again. Most of them don't even have names, or at least not names Stone's prepared to learn. If a civilian's wife gets killed in the kidnapping scene, and the husband's last seen sobbing over the body, that doesn't mean he's going to be an important diplomat who now swears revenge against Stone, as I was half expecting; he's just some random dude who got off the elevator at the wrong moment and walked into a gunfight. That will happen in the real world, but it doesn't often happen in fiction. I think this is where McNab's ex military experience really comes through; not in the technobabble or the action, but in his understanding that, in any action scene, there's going to be chaos, confusion, cock ups and misfires. It happens, and the work of a professional isn't to overcome the opposition, but to overcome the problems that the mission throws up, usually at the worst possible moment.
I'd definitely recommend McNab to anyone wanting to run, or play, Night's Black Agents. I don't say he's brilliant; I say he's useful, and a fun read, particularly if you want a better idea of how a gunfight might play out or what a good chase scene needs. But I'd add the caveat that it only really works if you're running an action-packed game, with mooks aplenty; if you were aiming for something a little more sedate and vicious, like John le Carré, steer clear.
Thursday, 12 September 2013
The Cop Shop (Trail of Cthulhu / Night's Black Agents)
At some point the player characters are going to run afoul of the law, even if they are the law. The things they get up to - breaking and entering is often where it starts, but never where it stops - almost guarantees that, at some point, the local plods are going to want to have a quiet word. Or possibly a loud one, depending on the jurisdiction, but in either case you, as Keeper, need to have some idea what to do next.
First, let's set the scene. It doesn't matter what era the game's taking place in, for this purpose, as the scene's broadly the same. The characters have done something blatantly illegal, and evidence remains that might indicate who did it, and how. Moreover there's always the chance that the police know more than they ought about the occult aspects of the campaign, whether it's infested with bloodsuckers, or a mere bubble of fragile humanity lodged in a sea of unthinking chaos. Then what happens, and what ought the characters to do about it?
The Keeper needs to bear in mind that:
But what happens when the police know more than the characters would like them to? Some fantasy novels - Ben Aaronovitch's Peter Grant series, for instance - assume that there are organizations, or people, within the police who understand the spooky stuff, and who can take action against it. What happens then?
A great deal will depend on the setting. Trail of Cthulhu posits two types of game, Purist, and Pulp. Bookhounds of London further divides into Arabesque, Technicolor, and Sordid. A Pulp or Technicolor game is probably best suited to a campaign setting in which the police have a Peter Grant style organization within it, dedicated to dealing with occult threats and capable of using arcane powers. In that kind of setting the police could be very useful allies, but even more dangerous enemies. If the Occult Sciences secret division of whatever passes for Military Intelligence decides that the player characters know too much, it has all the resources of a vengeful Government to bring to bear on them. At that point the characters had better leave the area as soon as they're able.
A Purist setting allows for more nuance. There probably are policemen who've seen too much; there may even be one or two who've begun putting the pieces together. But those are lone wolves, disbelieved - even mocked - by their fellow officers. Promotion doesn't come easily to them. In some situations - an Arabesque campaign, for instance - these policemen may have other resources to bring to bear. Imagine a setting in which the constable who always seemed to have that certain something about him, is actually a Knight of the City, protected by London itself; though he, oblivious, may not realize it, the City is helping him each day, keeping him from harm, helping him in his work. Or one in which, being a seventh son of a seventh son, he has the gift of second sight.
Sordid has its own complications. There may be police who know a little about the occult, or even the Mythos, but nothing's free in a Sordid world, and everyone's on the take. Expecting someone like that to be a faithful ally is expecting far too much. On the other hand, a cop with that kind of knowledge may throw their weight around, leaning on the characters when they need to, even blackmailing them if the opportunity arises.
Night's Black Agents is a different situation. In those games, the police exist mainly as roadblocks or barriers, to be thrown in whenever Heat gets a little too much for the characters. Exciting chase scenes can be had, maybe even a gun battle or two, but the characters generally aren't expected to do much interacting with the local law on a face-to-face basis, particularly since the agents probably aren't going to be in one place long enough. Athens tonight, Paris tomorrow, and if they happen to leave two bodies behind in their travels, they're too far away from the scene to care.
In those situations, it may be worth the Keeper making a note of where the characters have been, in case they go back. Say they made a mess in Athens, went to Paris, had several more adventures, and then, after the Athens debacle has long since faded in the players' memories, they go back to Greece - Heraklion, why not - for another piece of the puzzle. The characters may have forgotten, but the Greek police won't, and old sins may come back to haunt the agents. Sure, they've changed covers since then, but it only takes one careless moment for Heat to suddenly skyrocket, as the cops realize the doofus they caught taking photographs of a military base is actually the same person involved in multiple homicides a year ago.
First, let's set the scene. It doesn't matter what era the game's taking place in, for this purpose, as the scene's broadly the same. The characters have done something blatantly illegal, and evidence remains that might indicate who did it, and how. Moreover there's always the chance that the police know more than they ought about the occult aspects of the campaign, whether it's infested with bloodsuckers, or a mere bubble of fragile humanity lodged in a sea of unthinking chaos. Then what happens, and what ought the characters to do about it?
The Keeper needs to bear in mind that:
- The cops don't know everything. Outside of television and Agatha Christie, there really isn't a master detective out there who, having taken only a cursory look at the crime scene, understands exactly how it was done and who did it. To the players, what happened may seem painfully obvious. To the first responders, it's a pool of blood, some expended rounds, and maybe some body parts or a corpse.
- Finding out what happened takes time. Investigating the scene, making drawings or taking photographs, collecting evidence, the canvass, interviews;all these things take hours, days, maybe even months before any kind of resolution is achieved.
- There are always other suspects. That cult leader or necromancer the characters put down like a rabid dog undoubtedly had plenty of enemies, and the police are going to go through that list name by name. It only gets more complicated if anything screwy's on the scene, like a burial pit with a dozen or more other dead bodies in it, or physical evidence that suggests the decedent is someone, or thing, completely out of the ordinary.
- There are always other cases. To the protagonists, this is the only crime in town, but to the cops this is maybe the third shooting tonight. It could just go cold, as so many cases do, or something much more urgent - a terror threat, a spectacular burglary - may come up to distract the law.
But what happens when the police know more than the characters would like them to? Some fantasy novels - Ben Aaronovitch's Peter Grant series, for instance - assume that there are organizations, or people, within the police who understand the spooky stuff, and who can take action against it. What happens then?
A great deal will depend on the setting. Trail of Cthulhu posits two types of game, Purist, and Pulp. Bookhounds of London further divides into Arabesque, Technicolor, and Sordid. A Pulp or Technicolor game is probably best suited to a campaign setting in which the police have a Peter Grant style organization within it, dedicated to dealing with occult threats and capable of using arcane powers. In that kind of setting the police could be very useful allies, but even more dangerous enemies. If the Occult Sciences secret division of whatever passes for Military Intelligence decides that the player characters know too much, it has all the resources of a vengeful Government to bring to bear on them. At that point the characters had better leave the area as soon as they're able.
A Purist setting allows for more nuance. There probably are policemen who've seen too much; there may even be one or two who've begun putting the pieces together. But those are lone wolves, disbelieved - even mocked - by their fellow officers. Promotion doesn't come easily to them. In some situations - an Arabesque campaign, for instance - these policemen may have other resources to bring to bear. Imagine a setting in which the constable who always seemed to have that certain something about him, is actually a Knight of the City, protected by London itself; though he, oblivious, may not realize it, the City is helping him each day, keeping him from harm, helping him in his work. Or one in which, being a seventh son of a seventh son, he has the gift of second sight.
Sordid has its own complications. There may be police who know a little about the occult, or even the Mythos, but nothing's free in a Sordid world, and everyone's on the take. Expecting someone like that to be a faithful ally is expecting far too much. On the other hand, a cop with that kind of knowledge may throw their weight around, leaning on the characters when they need to, even blackmailing them if the opportunity arises.
Night's Black Agents is a different situation. In those games, the police exist mainly as roadblocks or barriers, to be thrown in whenever Heat gets a little too much for the characters. Exciting chase scenes can be had, maybe even a gun battle or two, but the characters generally aren't expected to do much interacting with the local law on a face-to-face basis, particularly since the agents probably aren't going to be in one place long enough. Athens tonight, Paris tomorrow, and if they happen to leave two bodies behind in their travels, they're too far away from the scene to care.
In those situations, it may be worth the Keeper making a note of where the characters have been, in case they go back. Say they made a mess in Athens, went to Paris, had several more adventures, and then, after the Athens debacle has long since faded in the players' memories, they go back to Greece - Heraklion, why not - for another piece of the puzzle. The characters may have forgotten, but the Greek police won't, and old sins may come back to haunt the agents. Sure, they've changed covers since then, but it only takes one careless moment for Heat to suddenly skyrocket, as the cops realize the doofus they caught taking photographs of a military base is actually the same person involved in multiple homicides a year ago.
Saturday, 17 August 2013
Not Quite Review Corner: Plants vs Zombies 2: It's About Time
OK, the traditional round of disclaimers. Though I do write for the Escapist, this review has nothing to do with that publication; it's entirely my own doing. Second, I'm reviewing this title having only completed the first of its three levels, the Ancient Egyptian segment. I'll explain why in a minute.
Plants vs Zombies 2 is the sequel to PopCap's Plants vs Zombies, an enchanting tower defense game designed by George Fan. Sometimes that simply means 'this dude was more or less in charge, way to go', but this time around it means 'this title was his very own baby, and it shows.' Way back in the mists of time, EA acquired PopCap, announced a sequel to Plants vs Zombies, and fired George Fan. What could be expected from that sequel?
Not much.
Art design is broadly the same as before. There are some minor tweaks to reflect the plot - Crazy Dave has gone back in time looking for his taco, and you now have to fight through Ancient Egypt, the Age of Piracy and the Wild West to get to it - but if you played the first, you'll recognize the second. In fact some of the tweaks make it not so much fun; the spud mines used to explode in a spray of thick cut chips, and now they don't, the walnuts used to cry as they were being munched on, and now they don't. Little tweaks like that don't sound like much, but taken as a whole they tend to detract from the experience because they remind you that the original design aesthetic has been compromised. The night and water levels appear to have been removed, so now it's a straight tower defense with no terrain variables, but - as I haven't played through the whole title - I can't be sure of that.
Game play hasn't changed much. There are new plants - the Bonk Choy with its fists of fury, and the Bloomerang's three-hit ranged attack are the two you'll meet in Ancient Egypt - and new zombies, but the basic plants and zombies are what you'll be seeing most of the time. Plant your allies, make sure the zombies don't get through your defenses to munch your brains, and you're golden. Fans of the first won't have any trouble recognizing the pattern, and there is a handy tutorial for the new players. There have been some attempts to add extra stuff, with Plant Food that boosts your plants' abilities and power ups that let you zap the screen, but neither really impact the game that much. Plant Food is easy to come by and most of the time you won't need it. Power Ups might be more useful, but you have to buy those with coins from the store.
Which leads me to the main event, and why I probably won't play this title to completion. This is a freemium game, and that means microtransactions. In some games, that isn't a major hurdle to leap. In this one? Oy.
You soon find out just how free this freemium title is. First it reminds you - every chance it gets - that you can buy more stuff from the store. Want the Jalapeno? It's on sale! Remember, the Bundle Pack can be yours, for a mere ... blah blah blah, buy our stuff. It doesn't even stop with in-game items. The story has a link to T-shirts, cups, plushies, the whole merch enchilada. I don't think I've been playing this more than about five hours, and I've been reminded at least six times that the store has something to sell me. But there's more ...
To progress further in the game, you need two things: stars, and keys. You need 15 stars to get to the Pirate level. At the moment, I have 4. Now, I could play through all the other levels and earn stars. Several new levels have popped up, offering 3 stars each. Great, except you can't earn three stars in one play session. You earn one star per session, which means I'm going to have to play 11 more times to have enough stars to get to the pirate level. Guess what else I could do to get there faster. Go on, guess. It starts with micro and rhymes with youjustwantmygoddamnmoney. Oh, and those keys: you find them every so often throughout the zone, and they unlock special areas with new plants and other fun stuff. I think I need about 13 or so to get through all the doors. I currently have 1, and they drop very infrequently. Or, I could just go ahead and buy some with real money. Y'know, from the store. There's that link over there. It has a shopping cart logo. You can't miss it.
I have no quarrel with companies wanting to make money. That's more than reasonable, but I object to being treated like a wallet on legs, and that's how it feels right now. I can't move five feet in the game without being reminded that there's stuff to buy. I can't progress without fighting through tedious level after tedious level ... not unless I'm prepared to pay. This isn't just killing the golden goose. It's processing the goose's carcass and turning it into cat food.
Verdict: game play is fun enough, and fans will find a lot to enjoy, even if the best parts are the old parts in new clothing. The new elements add little to the experience, but at least they don't ruin what was already there. However you need a really strong tolerance for microtransactions to play this title. Either that, or a bottomless wallet. Don't expect to enjoy yourself unless you can ignore, or tolerate, the game's attempts to rake as much cash out of you as it can.
Plants vs Zombies 2 is the sequel to PopCap's Plants vs Zombies, an enchanting tower defense game designed by George Fan. Sometimes that simply means 'this dude was more or less in charge, way to go', but this time around it means 'this title was his very own baby, and it shows.' Way back in the mists of time, EA acquired PopCap, announced a sequel to Plants vs Zombies, and fired George Fan. What could be expected from that sequel?
Not much.
Art design is broadly the same as before. There are some minor tweaks to reflect the plot - Crazy Dave has gone back in time looking for his taco, and you now have to fight through Ancient Egypt, the Age of Piracy and the Wild West to get to it - but if you played the first, you'll recognize the second. In fact some of the tweaks make it not so much fun; the spud mines used to explode in a spray of thick cut chips, and now they don't, the walnuts used to cry as they were being munched on, and now they don't. Little tweaks like that don't sound like much, but taken as a whole they tend to detract from the experience because they remind you that the original design aesthetic has been compromised. The night and water levels appear to have been removed, so now it's a straight tower defense with no terrain variables, but - as I haven't played through the whole title - I can't be sure of that.
Game play hasn't changed much. There are new plants - the Bonk Choy with its fists of fury, and the Bloomerang's three-hit ranged attack are the two you'll meet in Ancient Egypt - and new zombies, but the basic plants and zombies are what you'll be seeing most of the time. Plant your allies, make sure the zombies don't get through your defenses to munch your brains, and you're golden. Fans of the first won't have any trouble recognizing the pattern, and there is a handy tutorial for the new players. There have been some attempts to add extra stuff, with Plant Food that boosts your plants' abilities and power ups that let you zap the screen, but neither really impact the game that much. Plant Food is easy to come by and most of the time you won't need it. Power Ups might be more useful, but you have to buy those with coins from the store.
Which leads me to the main event, and why I probably won't play this title to completion. This is a freemium game, and that means microtransactions. In some games, that isn't a major hurdle to leap. In this one? Oy.
You soon find out just how free this freemium title is. First it reminds you - every chance it gets - that you can buy more stuff from the store. Want the Jalapeno? It's on sale! Remember, the Bundle Pack can be yours, for a mere ... blah blah blah, buy our stuff. It doesn't even stop with in-game items. The story has a link to T-shirts, cups, plushies, the whole merch enchilada. I don't think I've been playing this more than about five hours, and I've been reminded at least six times that the store has something to sell me. But there's more ...
To progress further in the game, you need two things: stars, and keys. You need 15 stars to get to the Pirate level. At the moment, I have 4. Now, I could play through all the other levels and earn stars. Several new levels have popped up, offering 3 stars each. Great, except you can't earn three stars in one play session. You earn one star per session, which means I'm going to have to play 11 more times to have enough stars to get to the pirate level. Guess what else I could do to get there faster. Go on, guess. It starts with micro and rhymes with youjustwantmygoddamnmoney. Oh, and those keys: you find them every so often throughout the zone, and they unlock special areas with new plants and other fun stuff. I think I need about 13 or so to get through all the doors. I currently have 1, and they drop very infrequently. Or, I could just go ahead and buy some with real money. Y'know, from the store. There's that link over there. It has a shopping cart logo. You can't miss it.
I have no quarrel with companies wanting to make money. That's more than reasonable, but I object to being treated like a wallet on legs, and that's how it feels right now. I can't move five feet in the game without being reminded that there's stuff to buy. I can't progress without fighting through tedious level after tedious level ... not unless I'm prepared to pay. This isn't just killing the golden goose. It's processing the goose's carcass and turning it into cat food.
Verdict: game play is fun enough, and fans will find a lot to enjoy, even if the best parts are the old parts in new clothing. The new elements add little to the experience, but at least they don't ruin what was already there. However you need a really strong tolerance for microtransactions to play this title. Either that, or a bottomless wallet. Don't expect to enjoy yourself unless you can ignore, or tolerate, the game's attempts to rake as much cash out of you as it can.
Saturday, 27 July 2013
It's Been Crazy
What with stuff happening at the Dramatic Society, and my other writing work, I've been busy busy busy. However to keep you folks updated: edits have finished on three Pelgrane projects. One of those is the Great War anthology, which should be out sometime soon, another is a Spanish Civil War project - of which more later - while the third is something I may not be able to talk about, but is also Trail. So if you're looking forward to more of that kind of thing from me, your luck's in!
Which is as much as to say, things being a little easier now, I shall be posting more regularly here. Soon, in fact ... watch this space!
Which is as much as to say, things being a little easier now, I shall be posting more regularly here. Soon, in fact ... watch this space!
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