Tag: gaming

Hearts Of Iron

~ e.v. ~ Leave a comment

I bought Hearts of Iron IV in the Steam Summer sale. It’s a WWII grand strategy game and it’s engaged me more than I thought it would. I started off a campaign as the UK (of course) and promptly realised I had no idea what I was doing so I watched a few YouTube videos. People advise avoiding naval combat in the first play through, so the UK wasn’t the best choice. The recommendations are to start with either Germany or Italy, so I went with Italy because I’m not quite ready to be a full blown Nazi. And Italy isn’t really famous for its WW2 maritime endeavours… despite 95% of its border being coastline… I should have thought more about that actually.

Everything was going well to begin with; I was happily conquering Ethiopia (the game starts in 1936, when the Italians were invading Ethiopia) and building up my military production which was going mainly into my land units. Then I started developing my colonies in Libya to secure more rubber and oil while working on my air force.

But then Germany decided to go and invade Poland and it’s been downhill from there. Germany is most of the way through conquering mainland Europe, meanwhile my naval fleet in the Mediterranean has been almost entirely destroyed by the French and British navies. Occasionally my bombers manage to take down a destroyer or a submarine, but my fleet is dwindling and theirs isn’t. I managed to kick the British out of Somalia entirely, which is pretty much my only success in the entire war.

Things started to look up after France capitulated to Germany, as more German ships started appearing in the Mediterranean and the French navy disappeared entirely, but even so, Britain is steadily taking Libya both via their forces in Egypt and through naval landings. I’m just about holding on in Ethiopia, but my supply lines aren’t looking great as the British control the Suez canal. Really, the British are a huge problem for such a small island.

Anyway, I feel very enriched for playing this game, because now I can talk authoritatively about the second Italian-Ethiopian war and I can confidently put Libya and Somalia on a map.

Material possessions

~ e.v. ~ 3 Comments

I’ve been playing Hitman. Apparently I got it free on Epic Games at some point, so I thought I’d try it. It’s a fun game in an unexpected way. It almost plays more like a puzzle game and isn’t what I expected at all. It’s very detailed. My one criticism is that there is too much focus on making the targets bad people so that the player isn’t too offended by the idea of murdering them. Hello, the game is about a hitman. It’s very patronising as your boss insists in your ear-piece that the world will be a better place without these people, and, believe it or not, I don’t accept a shady assassination-for-hire business as being a reliable arbiter of morality.

In other news, ROYAL MAIL!

I have ordered a little set of steps for Monty. I’ve been letting him upstairs more recently, now that he’s a bit more well behaved(!) and his new favourite place is my bed. When he jumps off my bed he seems to land very heavily and I think he would benefit from not doing that. So I found a really nice looking collapsible set of steps designed for dogs to get on and off beds.

It was despatched on Wednesday, with Royal Mail Tracked 48. You might think that this means it will be delivered in 48 hours, but, no, it’s just a brand name. It was estimated to be delivered either Friday or Saturday. Was it? No. It’s now Monday and the tracking has not updated past “Sender has despatched item”, which means Royal Mail are not yet admitting to actually having the item. What does this mean? Actually, it means nothing, because their tracking doesn’t work at all. I looked at some past orders and Royal Mail tracking shows no progress on any of them, even though they have each been delivered.

I just want my little set of steps!

I can get a refund on Thursday if they haven’t turned up. Amazon are selling them but with a 10 day delivery time because it’s only on Amazon EU, not Amazon UK (thanks brexit!). I found another shop selling them supposedly with 2-3 days delivery but their product listing is a bit rubbish and doesn’t actually specify the manufacturer so although the marketing image is the same I’m not 100% sure that what will turn up is actually what I expect. I’ve sent them an email…

And then we have my watch. My trusty Garmin Forerunner 245 developed a stuck button (the down button). I tried the standard suggestion of soaking it in soapy water to dislodge any dirt, but it made no difference. I bought it from John Lewis about 18 months ago, and it came with a two year guarantee. Anyway, it’s going back and they’re going to refund me as they no longer stock the 245. I’ll probably get the Forerunner 255 in replacement, which is a little more expensive. Not ideal but I’m only really paying the difference, so it’s not too bad either.

As far as I can tell, the 255 is a very broad incremental upgrade over the 245 in many ways. There is also the 265 which adds a much higher quality touch screen (the 255 and below are not touch). I don’t really want a touch screen on a running watch because I had one on my old Vivoactive 3 and have fond memories of trying to do interval workouts in the rain, with my watch deciding that the rain on the screen meant I was manually advancing the stage of the workout. Plus, some people say the screen is harder to read in bright light, which I can believe. It looks amazing in marketing photos, but I’m not buying a photo. The FR265 is £130 more than the FR255, which seems a bit steep for a screen of dubious usefulness. So I think I’ll go for the 255.

I’m not in an immediate rush though as I have the dreaded tibialis posterior tendon (inner ankle) pain again, so I’m not going to be doing much running for at least a few days.

Max Payne

~ e.v. ~ 2 Comments

I played and finished Max Payne on the Steam Deck. I played the PS2 version (emulated) because I thought it would better map to the controls of the Deck, though actually I found the controls pretty horrible so I might have been better with the PC version after all.

The gameplay is very dated, though it did feel modern in the sense that you shoot people and they die, rather than absorbing 50 bullets first. The storytelling is quite unique in how it uses Max’s eloquent narration and then shows comic book esque drawn panels instead of cutscenes. I suspect they went this route because the graphics and animation are a bit hideous and in-engine cutscenes wouldn’t have allowed them to express what they wanted. It’s a bit weird but it adds a certain charm. The in-world details are nice too. There are parallel stories that run via the TVs in the game. It’s clearly a game that was overseen by someone who really cared about it.

The story is set up three years before the game, when police officer Max returns home to find his wife and newborn child murdered by crazed drug addicts. It’s never really explored whether or not Max is a reliable narrator but I like the alternative interpretation that he’s the drug addict in a semi delusional state and he killed his own family. The dream/nightmare sequences look into his subconscious and hint that he killed his wife though I think it’s probably more just that he feels responsible. But at one point he is given an overdose of the drug, intended to kill him, and he shrugs it off after a nightmare… Because he already has a very high tolerance to it? Hmmm.

Anyway I enjoyed it overall and I think it still stands up today because of the story and its presentation, but the gameplay really is very dated!

I also have to note that although I’m praising the storytelling, a certain amount of the story is progressed by Max breaking into mafiosos’ offices and reading the letters their bosses have sent to them, helpfully putting in writing their criminal activities and plans. I think I can hear Tony Soprano having a panic attack…

I’ve started Max Payne 2 now and it’s a lot less dated.

Over Christmas my sister gifted me Cyberpunk 2077. You can supposedly run this on the Steam Deck but it’s quite a demanding game so I’m not sure it’s the best way to play it. I ended up signing up to Geforce Now, which is a cloud gaming service. So far I’ve been quite impressed at how well it works. My internet connection is an unremarkable fibre to the cabinet. I get about 55mpbs downstream. I think that’s fairly average for the UK, though on a global scale it’s definitely below average (blame the government, I guess). But it’s enough for GFN running at Steam Deck resolution. Network latency is around 10ms and that’s not noticable at all.

It kind of makes me want to build a beefy gaming PC and do it myself (i.e stream the PC to the Steam Deck over the local network), but the cost of Geforce Now is actually quite favourable. It’s £10 a month, and an equivalent gaming PC would be, well, I don’t know, I’m guessing nearing £1000 with GPU prices as they are.

Stopping

~ e.v. ~ 1 Comment

My running isn’t going very well at the moment. This is partly because of the virus I had a few weeks ago (COVID?) and partly because of the coaching. The virus sapped my energy levels, which is fine, but I feel, ironically, that the coaching is intefering with rebuilding because there is such a focus on strength work that it’s leaving me with too little energy for running. The outcome is that I seem to be paying to add kilograms to my deadlift, which isn’t that exciting and not something I’d really put a monetary value on, if I’m honest. So I feel like we’ve lost the plot a bit. Last week I felt really down some days, possibly from the virus, possibly from fatigue, and thought about it a lot, and… I’ve mentally checked out from it now. Before my next session I will email her and let her know I won’t be continuing with it past the current month, but to be honest if we could just stop right now I’d be happy. It feels like when you give notice in a job and suddenly it seems completely pointless.

In gaming news… I did get bored of Mad Max after all. I went back to Fallout 4 but I struggled to be interested in that too. It just seems very mediocre. In the end I went with Wolfenstein: The New Order, which I must have got free a long time ago but never played. I had low expectations but they were completely surpassed – this game is great! It has you go from breaking out of a hospital to breaking in and out of a concentration camp to stealing nazi helicopters then stealing a nazi nuclear submarine and then infiltrating a nazi moon base to steal the nuclear warhead encryption keys. All in a day’s work for Captain Blazkowicz. But it’s well written despite being kind of stupid and doesn’t take itself seriously at all. I really liked Frau Engel, the seondary villain.

I enjoyed it so much that I bought a pack of three other Wolfenstein games. I have now started the next one (The New Colossus) and one of the more unusual things is that you can overhear some of the nazi enemies talking about the events of the first game and discussing how they found it traumatic to be hiding from the American lunatic with the laser rifle while he slaughtered their friends and that they still have nightmares from it. Err, sorry 🤷‍♀️