My thoughts on the "Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association" law

I promised myself I wouldn't go on a huge, passionate rant about the subject. Instead, I offer you two links...

- http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/1961-Free-Speech
- http://videogamevoters.org/pages/learn

...and a small rant-ette on the subject.


The future of gaming as a medium is pretty much in the hands of people who don't care about gaming and are uneducated about gaming.

At least, the future of gaming as a medium for artistic expression. It's hard to argue that Bioshock isn't pretty, in the sense that it's an enormous underwater city that's falling apart with a fascinating background (and the graphics aren't bad either).

But, the Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association court case, currently pending before the Supreme Court of the United States, could crush games like Bioshock.

Because the whole 'banning the sale of violent video games to minors' thing isn't the real issue. And by violent video games, they mean anything with blood and/or bullets in it.

No, the actual issue here is this law could totally crush the game industry, primarily in two ways:

#1. Essentially, the government is telling what game devs can make and what publishers can, well, publish. This means less innovation and less edgy games that push the envelope, meaning out 'Call of Duty's, 'Bioshock's, 'Half Life's and others will be a thing of the past. But, perhaps more importantly-

#2. If this does pass, retailers will be far more hesitant to put these kinds of games up on the shelves. But worse than that, all the states that did have these kind of laws that lost will resurrect them, and you can bet they'll vary from state to state, making it impossible to create a game that you can sell all over America without making a 'family' or 'kiddie' game.

I don't like to really admit it, but if game publishers can't sell their games in America, they won't sell them anywhere else. They couldn't get enough sales to cover their costs, and just give up.

So, without any of these kinds of video games being sold, the Xbox 360 and the PS3 will have lost most of the games it relied on. Think "Xbox 360 minus Halo and Gears of War (just to name a couple), and the PS3 minus God of War and Metal Gear Solid (just to name a couple)". What use are those consoles anymore?

Oh sure, the Kinect and Move will come rolling in, but they'll just be the Wii all over again with minor variations and nothing to really drive them forward apart from 'cool' technology, and technology won't cut it.

If only the people who are in control of the future of gaming actually gave a damn about it. But they don't. And they don't give a damn about the people who love gaming either.

Somebody made the point to me just before I started writing this post that this law won't kill gaming outright. I absolutely agree. We'll still have out Wii! ...Probably. And you and all your mates can sit around the TV, bowling and playing tennis! Or hey, maybe you could, I dunno, fork out half your life savings to pet a virtual tiger.

As I said, this law won't kill gaming. But it will change it so dramatically I don't think anybody will want to go back to it.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent

It's hard to type - I'm still loaded with adrenaline from escaping the Storage.

Amnesia had two modes - walking around terrified, and running for dear life. Most of the time, you're walking around terrified.

It's the sound that gets you - it's the sounds of a living castle locked in a nightmare. You hold onto your lantern just to keep yourself from descending into madness - literally, in the case of your character.

As I mentioned, I just escaped from the Storage room, carrying the two rods. I reckon it was the explosion that set the two zombie- actually, no. Those... things aren't zombies. Zombies are slow moving, groaning mindless undead that you can easily dispatch. I don't even want to think about whatever the hell those things are, but they are certainly not zombies.

So, I decided to sit down and write about one of the only times (so far) the second mode Amnesia shines through. I'll describe my thoughts as they happened in that 45 second long sprint for survival. [Anything in quotation marks are things I've said, anything in asterisks are sounds from the game, and anything in square brackets are comments.]

Ok, got the two rods-*GOOOOOOORRRRRRAAAAGH*

Oh great. Monster time. You know what? Let's check the walkthrough.
[blah blah blah]
Ok then - keep stealthy, monster unpredictable. Fine.

[I sing to myself to calm myself down during this game. Sometimes it makes things worse. What? Don't look at me like that.
This is almost what was sung, I might have messed a word or two up.]

"Dooown the hall-way I go,
trying to forget about the noise,
oh god, there he is, thank god he hasn't seen me,
now I sneak, sneak, sneak down the staaaaair-case."

Great, he's dissapeared into the darkness. Now I can-*sound of my boot stepping on something loud*
Awwwwww.
*zombie grunts and turns around* Oh no.
*SSSSSSSSSSSISSSSSSSSSSHISSSSSSSSSSSSSIHSSSSSSSSSS* [Imagine the sound of sharp, rusty nails down a chalkboard. Now amplify that sound and it's roughly what you hear. You fear this sound. It's the 'you're probably going to die' sound].

SHIT it saw me! Aaaaaaah runrunrunrunrunRUN!
DAMN IT! It's behind me! I can hear it! NO! Can't look behind me, can't look behind me...
Around this corner, yes! Main roo-OH FUCK THERE'S ANOTHER ONE! "AAAAAAAAAAAAH!" RUUUUUUUUUUUN
*SSSSSSSSSSSSSSISSSSSSSSSSSSIHSSSSSHISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS*
THE DOOR! CLICK THE DOOOOR!
[click door, transitions into the 'back hall' area. Saftey - no monsters here.].
*SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSIHSSSSSSSSsssssssssisssssssshisss...*

At that point, I'm shaking too much to even hold down the W key. I hit escape and lean forward, my elbows planted on the table and I thought I heard a quite "yessssss" sound coming from between my teeth.

I lean back up in the chair and hold out my arm - it's damn near vibrating. So, I stand up, walk around a little bit, then decide to sit down and write about it.

I'm not yet ready to give a review for Amnesia: The Dark Descent; I want to finish it first. But if you like the sort of games that really screw with your head and terrify you as a psychological level way before they terrify you with anything on the screen, Frictional Games is your developer, and Amnesia is your game.

Game Dogs: Satan's Retrievers (Part 2)

You know how they could have improved it?

They could have made it a whole lot better if they just made a Doom mod.

I'm serious. All they'd need is a working copy of Doom II (which you can get on Steam), an art guy, a story guy, a level guy (with the Doom II level editor), and you're away laughing.

The AI would be there and the weapons are already done, so I imagine very little programming would be necessary. The environment is the big thing that needs to change, which can be easily accomplished with the level editor (that thing is ridiculously easy to use) and gratuitously replace the textures for everything.

They could have made it quite interesting, but they went the way they went, and I hate them for it.

[Game Review] Game Dogs: Satan's Retrievers

I hate you, Chet. Whoever the hell you are, I loathe you.

I will find you, Chet. One day.

Sleep with your eyes open.

*ahem*

Game Dogs: Satan's Retrievers is not fun. It's the most mind-numbingly boring "game" (and I use that word loosely) I've ever played.

It's an insult, that's what it is. No thought went into this... this thing (I'm sure as hell not calling it a game).

The story is you are a dog/goat/muscle-y armed thing with equipped with a pistol and a minigun. Your goal is...
Is...
Well, it never really tells you. The actual goal of the game is to reach 666 kills. After that, you win. I'll get to that later.

You're on a street. Most of your enemies come from behind you, off screen, where they run in front of you into your field of killing. Other enemies include a two man team of pig cops (oh ho, very clever) and, at some point, a swat team of dogs armed with Riot Shields.

Those guys are your only real problem (there's about 8 of them, and if they get you in melee range you're screwed).
I never saw them again. I killed all of them with the minigun (using the pistol is a good way to lose the g-, sorry, time-sink very quickly), and then went back to shooting excrementally stupid dog civilians and equally stupid pig cops.

The pistol has about 8 bullets, doesn't do much damage and it takes about a second or two to reload. The minigun has a ton of bullets, way more damage and an instant reload, and not to mention you have infinite ammo, so the game has already been broken before you even start.

So, you walk down the street, mowing down these dogs and pigs. Then, I said "Screw it! I'm just going to walk and hold down the mouse button".
I ran into some cops who I managed not to kill. They very slowly pulled out their guns and shot at me.
Damn! I lost some health. Maybe I'll be somehow penalized later on.

But I looked back up to the top left side of the screen and found that my health had regenerated.

This... thing is unbeleivable. There's very easy, there's games made for your mum, than there's Satan's Retrievers. So long as you don't let the cops finish pulling their guns out painstakingly slowly, you'll be fine.

The only "boss fight" is at the very beginning of the game, where you get hit by a swarm of SWAT dogs and a few backup pig cops. And even then all you need is the minigun to mow them all down, then it's onto the rest of SR - hold D, stop, hold left mouse button, repeat.

So after you've wasted your time... "playing" this, you finally get six hundred and sixty six kills.

Then the game says (and this is the biggest insult of all) "That was just a trial version! To play the full game, please give us $50 in American currency."

My thoughts, in chronological order. (Note: I didn't immediately register the "buy full game plz" thing in front of me.)
- That's it? No boss fight? Nothing?
- That was a huge waste of my time.
- Hang on, new thing.
- ...How much?

It wouldn't be so bad if they hadn't even mentioned the full game, but they did. They had to say this was "only a taste" of what the full game is.

I barely remember, but I think the gameplay is largly the same. The screenshot looked identical to whatever just sucked away time I could have spent doing something, anything, else.

That pissed me the hell off. How dare these guys charge $49.95 American when Penumbra: Overture (an actual game) is almost half that?* (*Over Steam, that is.)

They have the audacity to even call their... thing a "game", and whats worse they're going to make people pay for it.

In my honest opinion, somebody needs to make space for this game in a New Mexico landfill, right next to E.T.
Where it belongs.

(Go here for Part 2 [How they could have made it better])

Cataclysm's Talent Trees

I can't remember if we're still on an intermission. Frankly, that got out of hand.

But anyway.

I've yet to accomplish anything today. My mind just isn't up to anything, and as of right now I've got a headache. So I decided, hey, let's write a blog entry.

What I want to talk about today is how the new talent tree changes for World of Warcraft's new expansion, specifically the ones that are pissing me off.

I'm trying to get into the beta for the sole purpose that I can complain about this.
Well, that's a lie. But it's one of the biggest reasons, because that's the only way I'm going to get the designers at blizzard to, at the very least, skim my complaints before throwing them away, short of flying to California and forcing my way through Blizzard's heavily guarded compound, battling through waves upon waves of employees, penetrating Blizzard's inner sanctum and slaying the 'big names' (Chris Metzen, for example, presumably riding atop his winged steed of doom), before reaching it's core and starting the countdown sequence that will...

Jesus. I forgot where I was going with that.

Anyway, the talent tree changes.
First off, they're making the talent trees much, much smaller. You only get a talent point every second level though, so to the person who wanted to have a ton of points in two different specs, tough luck.

But the way some trees are constructed is stupid. Lets take Warriors.
I'm a Fury spec (I loves me some critical strikes). Naturally, I want to check out the Fury talents for Cataclysm, just to make sure my spec is largely unchanged.

I'm disappointed. I know this sort of thing isn't set in stone, but you could have worked harder.

Here's one thing I would do right off the bat - move Blood Craze over to Protection and Incite over to Fury. They just don't make any sense where they are - Blood Craze has a chance to heal you if you take damage and Incite gives your Heroic Strike an increased critical strike chance and makes your Heroic Strike critical strikes give your next Heroic Strike an increases chance to critically strike.

Say that five times fast.

I would also increase the length of Enrage. Anything but 4 seconds. 4 seconds is barely enough time to make that 10% extra damage count. 7 seconds seems a lot better - it grantees at least 2 auto-attack hits (assuming you're using a two hander), and how many special attacks you can cram into that tiny window of opportunity.

Battle Trance and Cruelty are weird, too. Why would I care about Mortal Strike or Shield Slam? Answer is I don't. All I want is Bloodthirst.

Tell you what - find a way to migrate the Shield Slam and Mortal Strike bonus to their respective trees, and give us bonus that we Fury warriors actually care about - Heroic Strike, Slam, and/or Execute in addition to Bloodthirst.

And what's the point of giving me Die by the Sword? That has no place in Fury. Give it to Protection.
Seriously! Why is that even there?
And what the hell is with Booming Voice now? "Reduces the cooldown of your Battle Shout and Commanding Shout by 0.05 seconds".

ZERO POINT ZERO FIVE SECONDS? And the next level reduces by 0.1 seconds! What the hell is the point? Can't you increase it's effectiveness instead of decreasing it's cooldown by a fraction of a fraction of a second?

Titan's Grip and Single-Minded Fury will no doubt cause a LOT of debate. No longer is there a no-brainer choice when it comes to Fury warriors - now we have to really think about what one is better.

I assume Titan's Grip does more all out damage, but Single-Minded Fury is faster? Perhaps Single-Minded Fury does actually do more damage, and Titan's Grip is just for the "I want to wield 2 two handers at the same time" crowd. Maybe some rethinking in that department would be useful, or perhaps giving us a little more information by writing a TG vs. SMF article.

Maybe they're trying to make it so that either choice has very little differences so it's easy to choose, or they're trying to weed out Titan's Grip altogether, to which I ask; WHY!? Why not have the two talents good for different things?

How about this - TG automatically grants heavier hits, increases damage for, perhaps, Cleave (by hitting with both weapons). SMF is faster, and increases damage for, I don't know, Slam maybe (by hitting with both weapons), and both talents grant a small, passive bonus to critically hit with their respective abilities.

(Cataclysm's Warrior Talent Tree here.)

Let's look at another talent tree.
Hmm... Resto shamans look pretty good... wait, hang on.

Spark of Life confuses me. Shouldn't you give more priority to healing done than healing received? After all, shamans shouldn't tank, and they don;t have any real need to get extra healing. Now, if it were a tank, yes. But a DPS/Healer class? No.

Change the 6% to healing received and the 15% to healing done and it should be sweet. Telluric Currents doesn't make any sense - after all, it's a maximum of 40% of the damage dealt, surely that would be less than the mana cost. I could be wrong, but it seems like a stupid way to gain mana when you have Water Shield and Mana Tide Totem.

Lesee, lesee... Assassination Rogues look pretty good, Druids... oh dear.

Restoration Druids.
At least, they used to be.
I remember a time when the Restoration talent tree used to be about healing, not a filler tree for the other two trees to put points into when they filled up their own.

No. Blizzard, the Restoration tree for Druids is just criminal.

Blessing of the Grove is pretty pathetic, even for the other trees, and for a Restoration Druid, Forur is useless (as it doesn't contain any bonuses for Tree of Life form). So, the only talent of any real use is Master Shapeshifter, and even then it's only to get the 2% bonus healing for Tree of Life form, something you get only at a veeery high level, so It's completely useless from the start anyway.

In fact, the real talent that actually does something for you is in teir 2, which increases your Swiftmend and Rejuvenation healing by 15%. So, I have to spend 19 levels with largely useless talents before I get a proper one.

Either make Blessing of the Grove more friendly to healers (increasing the effect of Healing Touch and making my rejuve better than just 4%?) or start redesigning the talent tree.

Migrate things like Moonglow and Genesis over to Restoration. Give Perseverance to Feral, they need it more. I would have thought you guys over there actually thought about this, but apparently none of you have a Resto Druid, or if you do he or she is so utterly timid he/she is too scared to voice a complaint.

(Cataclysm's Druid Talent Tree here.)


Hunters look good, but please call their 'resource' something other than focus. Pets have focus, and apparently so do Hunters, which makes it confusing to tell whether or not Termination affects you or your pet.

Don't play a Paladin or Priest... yet. Fire mage looks pretty good, and I haven't played my Warlock enough to formulate an opinion about them.

So that leaves Death Knights.
Death Knights are being screwed with in Cataclysm. Gone are the days where all three trees were good at either tanking and/or DPS. Now, Blood is the major tanker, and Frost and Unholy get to squabble with each other about who does the better DPS.

As of this moment, Blood has all sorts of things that make it attractive to tanks - increased healing, Improved Death Strike, Bloodworms, ect. Frost has a lot of damage reduction abilities in it, and Unholy has the thing where it's got... look, I don't know. I don't play a Death Knight anymore (not since I embraced healing and my Shaman) and I never really got Unholy. Sure, you got a cool zombie pet, but Blood just seemed so, so much better.

Anyway, Blizzard finally set the record straight and, in my mind, fixed the talent trees. Blood is now the definite tanking class (most of the talents reflect tanking and it has Bone Shield now), Frost improves things like Icy Touch and Obliterate as well as being able to dual wield, and Unholy has diseases, zombies and spells.

Getting back to the point, looks good for Death Knights as a whole. The three talent trees are a lot better now, in my opinion.


So, that concludes our adventure into Cataclysm's talent trees. Hopefully, Blizzard will read this blog post and discover what visionary of design I am and offer me a job immediately.
Actually, nobody reads this blog, so the likelihood of that happening is slim to none. But still, it's possible that somebody will find this, and that somebody will know somebody who knows ect until it gets to Chris Metzen's golden throne polisher who will in turn direct Mr. Metzen to my blog.
That's probably never going to happen. But I will remain optimistic.

Also, I've entered the Cataclysm Beta Key Contest that Wowhead is hosting, and I've signed up as a Beta tester with Battle.net, so there's always I chance I could get in.

The ups and downs of being a healer

About a month or so ago I pulled out my level 25 Shaman. I was getting a bit tired of running around in Northrend with my DPS spec'd Death Knight, doing random dungeons (or pugs) almost every day, hacking and slashing my way through enemies with my enormous axe.

I pulled out my Shaman to try this 'healing' thing out. I was lead to believe it was the job with the most responsibility, so I didn't take it. Almost every class I've ever played has been spec'd to DPS, and I rarely play any class that can do otherwise. I've never played a priest, and my druid is resting happily on level 25, waiting for me to start caring about my Alliance characters again.

So, I wheeled out my Shaman, respec'd in Restoration, and clicked the 'Join random dungeon' button.

Not one second - not one second - passed before I saw the familiar "Enter dungeon" button in front of me.

I was starting to like my Shaman, who I made god knows how long ago and abandoned in favour of a different class.

Thrust into my first dungeon as a healer, I did rather well. The party didn't wipe, and the tank stayed above 50 health almost through the entire dungeon.

I did bare in mind that this was a reasonably low level dungeon, and the dangers posed there aren't nearly as deadly as some of the later dungeons I would face. And I did use Healing Wave every time the tank took damage, even if it was nothing more than a simple scratch.


My Shaman's now 42, and I've learnt a lot about the art of healing, and I respect healers a hell of a lot more than I did when I played my Death Knight.

I suppose it is true that healers have the most responsibility on the party. Coming in close second is the tank, and they share about an equal amount of stress - the tank is supposed to keep all the enemies attacking him, and the healer is supposed to keep that tank alive (and make sure the rest of the party stays alive too).

My time as a healer has changed me somewhat. My aim is to no longer cause damage - it is to heal it. It was a massive shift from how I used to play. Playing used to be rather simple - keep hitting the guy until he falls down. Now, I have to make sure certain people don't fall down.

As a healer, you learn to manage your mana. If you don't, you'll be either running out of mana in the middle of a fight [very, very bad] or you'll be stopping after every fight to drink you mana back up [makes the dungeon take twice as long]. For example, only healing the tank when he or she actually needs it (as opposed to healing them whenever they took even the most pathetic amount of damage), and using Chain Heal when most of the party needs only a little healing to keep them going.

I've also learnt that most people don't play healers for a reason. Healers have a huge amount of pressure to make sure the tank stays alive, and ever since I started dungeoneering (going into random after random) I've found the tank does as little as possible to help you.

Out of every ten dungeons I go into, only two tanks ever bother to watch the party's health and mana, and at least another two are complete dickheads - charging off into the distance and expecting everybody to follow him, and when everybody inevitably doesn't (this type doesn't tell everyone he's making a massive pull) he leaves because it's everybody else's fault. And then other people start leaving because it takes ages to find another tank.

The other six don't really care either way. They'll probably stop if you say "I'm out of mana", but they expect you to take care of the party as a whole.

Another thing that I've learnt is some people can't handle wiping. It's an enormous deal for them, like it's the end of the goddamn world (the actual end of the goddamn world is coming later on this year, hopefully).
They don't realize I'm a Shaman with the maxed out Improved Reincarnation talent and Glyph of Renewed Life. By the time I'm ready to reincarnate, the drama queens have already left, and there's a high likelihood that one of those drama queens will be the tank.

Healing is still something I'm having fun with, though. It's a lot more different than playing a DPS class, and I'm enjoying playing my Shaman if only for the reason that it's a different experience.

Plus, you get into random dungeons a lot quicker. And at level 80, once you start doing raids, everyone is looking for a healer.

Don't be afraid to play a healer - once you've got the basics down, it's a lot simpler than you think.

Intermission: SC II irritation

Yes, StarCraft II is officially out. And yes, this god awful intermission that's been plagueing us will come to a close at some point in the not to distant future.
But not today.

It's a little complaint. My name on StarCraft II is simply 'Spectre', unfortunately missing what I've come to call my trademark '4802' stamp on the end of it.

You can't have numbers when your putting in your username for StarCraft II when you first sign up. Keep that in mind if you eventually get it.

I know a lot of New Zealand and Austrailia gamers are pissed off about being put into the SEA bracket, which impairs thair ability to play online or something. I don't keep up with the bicker about that, but it's stirring up quite a hornets nest.

Right now, I'm plowing through the campaign, and then I'm going to immerse myself in the Galaxy Editor, so online play is something I'm going to consider when I've had enough of either the campaign or the Editor for a while, and want to play with what i'd reservedly call 'people'.

Actually, that's a little unfair. I assume they're a certain breed of person who communicates through insults and the "word" lol. Someone who's mother had been messing around with the internet on a forum one too many times and ended up getting pregnant.

Either that, or the majority of the people who play multiplayer games like this (specifically on Battle.net) have the maturity of an eight year old.

Because, the StarCraft II beta wasn't the only place I've seen the kind of behaviour exhibited on Battle.net. I still sometimes go into Battle.net with Warcraft III, usually for an online tower defence game, and the people there can be charitably described as a bunch of complete dicks.

And let's not even go to online first person shooters, specifically the likes of Halo and Counter Strike. I mean, the whole screaming at your opponent was practically invented by John Romero of id fame when they came up with Doom multiplayer. (At least I think it was Doom multiplayer.)

The last thing that pisses me off about StarCraft II is the people who say "oh, it's just StarCraft v2.0, not 2 (or maybe it's just StarCraft with better graphics)" and "I regret getting my copy because of X (usually online problems)".

To the first group, get out. SC II has an awesome campaign (and a much better campaign experience), plenty of new units, even things like different music (certainly for the terrans, anyway) and a few changed mechanics (resources, for example, have been tweaked).

Blizzard set out to make it a new and interesting enough without making it feel completely different, and they made damn sure the game retained it's nostalgic feel when you played it.

But maybe we should give those people what they want. Maybe Blizzard should release a third expansion set, which it's simply names "StarCraft II, not 2.0", which has very little of the original units, factions, characters or 'details' (resources, environments, ect), and a story very loosly based on the previous one. That should make those people happy.

As for the second group, StarCraft II has been out for no less than 48 hours. You can't seriously expect me to believe that everything was going to be fine and dandy on release date, did you? In my eyes, July 27 was the start of the unofficial StarCraft II beta test.


P.S. Yes, I insist on calling it "StarCraft II".
P.P.S. If you're really that utterly desperate that you want to know what I think of the game right now, I'd give it a 8.5, probably a 9.

Intermission: Gish (part 3)

I promise to try not to bitch about this game any more after this post. I'll try my darnedest.


I've been thinking hard about what really, really pisses me off about Gish. I've been trying to nail down the one thing that makes me think it's so excrementally bad. Good news is I think I may have found it. Bad news is there's more than one.

#1. Gratuitously frustrating gameplay

I've come to the conclusion that Gish was designed to be as frustrating and difficult as possible, especially in the later stages.

If you cock up one small thing, best case scenario is you have to slowly get back into the starting point to try it again, like in that church stage where you need to gather enough momenteum and hit the right movement keys at the right time for the right length of time to pass, otherwise you'll just miss it, and then you have to crawl all the way up to start again.

And of course, worst case scenario is starting the level from scratch, and let me tell you, fighting your way through the same section of level for the seventh time in a row doesn't make me any less likely to go to my nearest Ammunation and let loose inside my local mall with a fully automatic firearm.

The very last level requires you to punt a block up two or three levels. I tried this, and it's really, really hard. The physics and the certain states of compression Gish needs to be in for it to be punted a certain height make it nearly impossible, and most of it's got to do with pure chance.

All of that wouldn't be that bad, except you have this psycho Gish clone that will give you a maximum of two chances to screw that up before you have to restart the level.

I'd hate to see anybody do the game on normal difficulty (if you lose all your lives it's back to the begining of the stage, X-1, not the level). Or the state of the local post office afterwards.

#2. Brutal and evil dickmoves

A "dickmove" can be described (in gaming terms) rather easily.

Hypothetical situation - say your character has just undergone a very hard level, where he had to traverse from rickety platform to rickety platform, most of which were already crumbling before he even stepped on them.

A dickmove in this situation would be where the final platform, the one after the rickety, cumbling ones that looks anything but, gives way and the character dies.

THAT is a dickmove. And Gish is full of them. Some of them are small, some are reasonably large, and all are evil one way or another.

For example, in one of the 7 Planes of Hehenna levels (level 5, I believe) you have to grab onto the back of a big block in order to get past a tight corridor of spikes. Spikes kill you very fast and you stick to them, even if you don't have sticky mode on.

Anyway, you have to click to the back of this block, while trying not to get too high or two low for fear of latching onto some rust and death flavoured spikes. Then, you have to very carefully move from one block to another that's quite a respectable distance apart in the space of about two seconds, otherwise it's back to square one.

So, once you do get onto the other block and eventually to the platform at the end, said platform starts getting pulled up and a bunch of walking mouths get quite literally dumped on top of you.

Another example is one of the church levels (the hardest by far, but they are the last so it's understandable) where you're forced to gain a considerable amount of momentum (holding down the down arrow key) and plummet down one shaft (on Heavy and Slippery modes), then very quickly change gears two times (coming around the corner, you hold down whichever arrow key seems logical (left for left curves, right for right curves) and then take off Heavy and hold up, and as you reach for the top, turn on Sticky so it gives you that little bit extra traction to try to reach the very top bit) all before doing it again.

At least three more times.
[Of course there is a hidden secret to bypass all but one tunnel, and it's under the stairs - the ones that keep rising and falling.]

Then, once you get to the end of the course (in this room with half the floor on a slant), you think "thank god, now time for something reasonably relaxing to ease me into the next level".

Except you won't think that, because you'll get to "thank go-" before the walls dissapear and thousands of diabolical walking mouths come pouring out, devouring your poor, confused, and above all, exhausted blob of tar while you presumably rage quit.

Turns out you're supposed to leap up and Sticky onto the rising block the very second you hit the ground. Not that they tell you that.

Then there are the little things. The pebbles they throw at your window in between the big rocks like that. But, while still pebbles, they make an awful racket and eventually leave that window all scratched to hell, and the stones make it look like a swiss cheese maker has gone to town on it.

#3. The "Airship" campaign

Saying this "campaign" is mean kind of like saying Hitler was a bit wacky.

I have a particular grudge against this "campaign". It's more brutal and evil than the main story, something I thought quite literally impossible. I don't know what designed it, but obviously whatever it is is an amalgimation of the most evil people in the history of the human race with a little Lucifer mixed in.

One level will kill you if you don't press anything in the first second or two. To quote Yahtzee, "That's the sort of gameplay I'd expect from a f&#%ing ROM hack. Designed by Hitler."

Almost all of the levels are ruthless in difficulty. I'm shocked that it made it past playtesting.
Of course, there's nothing to say that it did.

The only level in that cesspit I've been able to pass is level 4, and I could only get that by finding it under "Start > Custom levels > Load level".

#4. Gish

Actually, no. Gish is kind of cool. He never speaks, even when he's being torn apart by a pack of ravenous mouths, and he's always mute when being taunted by bosses. In fact, the conversation before the final boss goes something like this:

Hera: Hello Dave Gish.
Gish: ...
Hera: I'm a psycho. I've been thinking about you ever since highschool.
Hera: MARRY ME! MAAAARRRRRRRRRYYY MEEEEEE! OR DIIIEEEEE!
Gish: ...
Hera: RAAAAARRRGH HERA SMASH

#5. The map editor

As frustrating and annoying to use as the real game.

First, you have to hit F1. Only in a forum post on the designer's website does it actually tell you. Because, you know, putting it in big letters up the top of the screen would be too easy for these guys.

Selecting tiles is also very fiddly. I think what you're supposed to do is click and drag the tile you want onto itself. if you click and drag it onto another tile, it'll replace it.

Why? I don't know. Pretty sure the designers don't know either.

And how exactly do I cycle through the list of availible tiles? Well, I have two sets (again, not sure why) and they're moved by two sets of different buttons.

Bonus points for anyone who guessed that they don't tell you what those buttons are.

They probably tell you in the forum post, but frankly, not packaging the controls with a text document was just bloody stupid.
Yeah, Gish doesn't come with a "manual" on all the controls. I always thought that was sort of important.

#6. Impossible platforming challanges

Ok, Gish developers - making me jump from bouncing suspended block to higher bouncing suspended block is nearly impossible. The physics engine makes it so.

That example is most prolific in the Airship "campaign", but it also rears it's hidiously deformed head in the main story campaign and it was hard enough there. But tying all the bouncing suspended blocks together? Thats just not funny.

Thats. Just. Not. Funny.

#7. Give me something - anything - that tells me what or how to do something

In Gish, there is a serious communication problem. The tutorial actually tells you how to do things pretty well, but you never see that again. What I would really like to know is what sort of strategies I need to defeat the boss.

Even somewhat cryptic clues would be nice, but that doesn't happen. Sometimes, you can justify making the challange greater by telling the player what to do. That way, the player already knows how the beast will die. All he needs to know now is what he's going to do to get to that point.

In Gish, you need to fogure it out for yourself. Sometimes, the simplicity of the map will make it sort of obvious, but there could be two or three ways to kill a said boss, and you'll spend a life or two (or more) investigating that option, and when it turns out to be false you spend another life or two (or more) trying another.

#8. Indie game = amazing, innovative game that's awesome, always

It's the rule of Indie games, isn't it? If there's some bright eyed young group of people, usually a designer, a artist and one other person who fills in for all the other roles where nessesary, often their game will be given lots of positive reviews and be hailed in some way as "innovative" or some other buzzword.

It will win awards, too. Lots of awards.

And after playing Gish and seeing how immensly frustrating, difficult and evil it is, it makes me seriously wonder whether the award givers and reviewers actually took time out to play the full game.

Maybe they were given a demo. The demo would probably include the first stage, and I'd say that's pretty easy. Yeah, it's cool and really nice and it has good graphics and a cool physics engine ect ect. Never mind the later levels, we're only looking skin deep here.

Or maybe it's just a case of "a brand new indie game design company just sprang up, let's make them feel really kick ass and awesome by giving them tons of accolades. We'll actually look at their games once they come in a box."


I think that's all of it. I think it's out of my system now.

Let me make this clear - Gish isn't bad. And I know that sounds counter intuitive, but hear me out;
It's extremely frustrating, difficult, and some parts are truely evil, whether by design or by accident, but the game itself isn't bad.

I would probably say to anyone who wants to play it, "Yeah, go for it, but keep an eye on your blood pressure and stay away from any loaded weapons."

Intermission: Gish (part 2)

Saying Gish is hard is kind of like saying George Bush comes across as a wee bit daft. Or that Microsoft is a tad evil. Or that Captain Price from Modern Warfare 2 "does not have situation under control!"

But even so, the game is still possible. I trudged my way through that cesspool of frustration. I endured the many, many dick moves it pulled throughout each level; I put up with the difficult-to-handle enemies; I withstood all the bosses, killing them only after a good hour of trying to figure out how.

And then the game was over. In fact, it's officially over at level 5-6, or "Church stage, level 6".


No. Do not try to contact me to tell me how you beat it, because you can't. It's impossible. The game is over by then anyway - I'm pretty sure that's the very last boss fight.

Here, you meet Hera. Hera being Gish's ex-girlfriend. She's a blob, just like Gish, and shows just how terrifying she is when she begs Gish to marry her. Which is funny, because she's constantly trying to kill you. And I'm pretty sure you can't marry a dead person, let alone a dead blob of tar.

Anyway, the game ends here because Hera is impossible to kill due to programming, and the dickiest of all dick moves is pulled on the final level.

You've got to grab a block of stone and very expertly punt it up to the upper level. Why? So it can hold down the button you need to hold down so you can A) rescue the love interest and B) kill the crazy b!*@# who wants your blobby hand in marriage and is trying to kill you at the same time.

Here's the problem, though: Hera can easily kill you. all she needs to do is crush your tar like body with her... whatever the hell she's made out of. It's like a light grey/white colour, and a few unsavoury things come to mind when asked to think of anything that colour.

Anyway, you can't kill Hera because she goes into heavy mode whenever you touch her. In Heavy, you can't be crushed unless something with an anomalous amount of pressure is being pressed onto you. Thus, Hera = invincible.

As I've mentioned earlier, you need to grab a bit of stone and 'punt' it up to the level above. Only problem is getting Hera off you for long enough to do that, which is near to impossible. Once she is on you, it's all over because you have to be out of Heavy mode to build up enough of a bounce to launch the block of stone. Unfortunately, no Heavy mode = able to be crushed, and crush you she will.

The conditions of getting that block of stone up to the second level have to be absolutely perfect, and I can guarantee they won't be. And even if they are you only have one shot at getting said block of stone up the level before Hera finds you and screws everything up, and that's too much of an unreasonable goal.

I don't know. Maybe the designers intended this to be impossible. Maybe they intended it so only two or three people could possibly finish the (presumably) final boss fight, most of which would be sheer luck.
But for everyone else, game ends at the last boss fight.


By now, you may be wondering whether or not to even consider looking at the game. Well, personally, I think getting the game is worth it. Yeah, the last stage isn't worth the time and blood pressure, but the rest of the game, while making the level 3 times more difficult than it should be, is still possible to get through. After all, I did them. Took me a while, but I eventually got through them.

If you don't mind never seeing the conclusion to Gish's tale, go right ahead and download that sucker. If you like to see a game reach closure, with out hero rescuing his girlfriend from the pit of lava she's about to be dunked in, Gish will disappoint.

Oh yeah, and what the hell is with the "level editor", guys? Didn't even package a readme to explain what you're supposed to do.

Intermission: Gish

I swear, this game was built to frustrate the player. At least, in the stages later on.

Having just got past the "7 planes of Henenna" stage (which, personally, whoever happens to beat that part of the game deserves a goddamn trophy and possibly a purple heart), and moving onto the Egyptian stage, I've come to the realization that Gish is hard and frustrating.

Not that that's entirely a surprise. This is a platformer, and by nature platformers have to have at least one level in every 5 or so that are frustratingly difficult.

But Gish takes it a step further by implementing a frustratingly difficult bit of platforming or a damn annoying puzzle every single level. For example, it literally took me a good day or two to get past level 3-3, and another day to get past 3-5 due to a brutal bit of platforming. Whats worse is that in the case of level 3-3, that godawful bit of platforming was the very end of the level. Yeah, thank god for that, right?

Well, when you die you get catapulted back to the beginning of the level. Do that enough times to the player (as it happened to me) and he or she will start questing their own self worth and, more importantly, wonder why they're playing your game at all.

Another thing that pisses me off about Gish is the implementation of "lives".
Some of you older readers may remember lives from the old days of arcade gaming where, if they ran out, it was game over.

Well, when you die in Gish your off to the beginning of the level. Same thing happens when you run out of lives. There's no visible disadvantage to running out of lives, and you get a batch of five fresh from the game's oven every time you run out, which just raises the question of why the hell they're there in the first place.

It would make sense if you had checkpoints, and every time you ran out of lives you got sent back to the beginning of the level, but dying normally sent you back to the last checkpoint. But that doesn't happen in Gish, so really it's a mind bogglingly confusing feature that has no purpouse.

Intermission: Bloons Tower Defence 4

Bloody hell, this is a long intermission.

Anyway, Bloons Tower Defence 4 has caught my eye. NinjaKiwi, the guys who made it, have always done good games. But I fear Mochigames, the guys they decided to integrate their game with, have screwed them over a bit.

For one, MohciGames is evil. Very evil. But we'll get to that later.

Bloons Tower Defence has always been a reasonable sort of game. It doesn't pull too many "dick moves", like having a special sort of balloon that can't be killed by anything else apart from one or two towers.

...ok, metal ballons. But frankly, if you didn't have a cannon tower by then you were doing something wrong anyway. And it tells you to get your act together and make one at least two levels before that stage anyway.

But Bloons Tower Defence 4 has got me a little worried.

There's this new balloon called a Camo Balloon. Camo Balloons can't be targeted, so all your towers are useless. Tacks and Mortar Towers are your only hope, but it doesn't specifically say that the Mortar Towers are good against Camo Towers, and I don't remember seeing much of a warning either, although that might be because I'm playing on a laptop and the team didn't design their game for a small screen.

But you won't spend any money on Mortar Towers because A) they've never been implemented before and you automatically distrust them and B) you have to aim them so there's a micromanagment issue.

So once you get to the stage where there are a ton of these guys, it's all over. It's just annoying that they can't be killed by anything else.

I can't help but think that these guys have a new fresh faced designer that thought a new balloon was a good idea. And it was. But maybe it shouldn't have been the Camo Balloon.

MochiGames, though. It has Mochicoins that you can use to upgrade your game. Which is super cool, until you realise that you need to pay for the bloody things.

With real money.

Screw that. I do not pay real currency for false currency. That'd be like buying gold for your character in WoW, but this time the Mochi team actually encourage it.

You know what would have been great? Giving me coins for activity on the site. Finishing levels in games could give me, say, 20 coins. It's nothing compared to what you could buy, but it's something little that, with a little more activity on the site, you could build up quite a lot in a reasonably short amount of time.

But maybe that's the point. These guys need to money through Mochicoins to pay for the site. Makes sense - these guys don't use ads on their site.

But so much of the game is for sale. In Bloons Tower Defence 4, you can "buy ranks", letting you access new towers early if you give them money. That's almost exactly like buying levels for your character in WoW; and what if Blizzard would let you do that? Well, it would take the fun out of the game. All you would need to do to get a character up to level 80 is, I don't know, a hundred or so dollars.

That means you get no experiance playing the character all the way up to 80, and thats a serious problem because, well, you don't know how to play it. You don't grow attached to your characters either, and you end up giving up because it's "too easy". Being forced to claw your way up means you get to see the world and get used to your character, and also get satasfaction out of doing so.

Yahtzee, in his Scribblenauts review, said the same:

...sometimes I get the urge for a grilled cheese sandwhich and after going through the trouble of digging the Breville out, chewing up my knuckles on a rusty cheese grater and finding that my special Brandston Pickle has solidified, the struggle makes it all the tastier. If I could just wave my hands and conjure not just a grilled cheese sandwhich but two grilled cheese sandwhiches, being worn as a bra by a swimsuit model constructed from grilled cheese sandwhiches, it'd take all satasfaction out of life.

Intermission: Overgrowth

Apparently, the Lugaru team are making Overgrowth, the sequel to Lugaru, the game that I'm forced to play in my own personal hell 24/7.

Having finished Lugaru only by cheating, I have to say that there are a few problems they should probably iron out. So let's go through them with the biggest problem first;

#1: For the love of god, make the wolves less powerful

I understand that I'm a rabbit and they're wolves, but it's just ridiculous. One smack from a wolf can take you down regardless of your health, and they always, always use that goddamn annoying trip up attack, so you spend 3/4ths of the combat with your face planted in the ground.

Their attacks are lightning fast, so half the time you won't be able to counter attack the insta-kill hit and you can't sneak up on them either to perform your backstab attack because A) your sneaking speed is about as fast as their walking, so good luck catching up to them and B) they can smell you, so you can't get behind them anyway.

I'd love to find out who playtested this game so I can hang the stupid bastard.

#2: Stop disarming me every time I pick a weapon up

It doesn't matter what weapon I pick up, it's going to get taken off me. The sword is the worst of all - it doesn't matter how many times I do it, every single attack I make with the stupid thing gets countered and taken off me. The funny thing is, I can usually counter the guy back, so it's like a backing and forthing of counters and weapon disarms until eventually I just drop the bloody thing so one of us can die.

The dagger has a chance to go flying off you whenever you trip up (so against wolves you can kiss it goodbye) and the Bo staff can easily be blocked and countered because it's the slowest weapon in the game, so you'd better get used to fighting with your bare fists.

But... but you can holster your weapon so it won't be disarmed.

Well you're not using it then, are you? Not even another computer is quick enough to attack, holster and attack again to make sure it isn't disarmed (especially not against wolves), so a human certainly won't be.

#3: Let me explore the world

Even though there's this big pretty world to explore with randomly generated terrain, you don't get to see any of it. It's tragic because the rolling hills or the arctic tundra or the sweltering desert has the potential to go on literally forever because of the clever way Lugaru handles the terrain.

So, would it not make sense to let me explore rather than fight all the time? You've got a great world here guys, but it might as well not be there. You might as well have the game take place in a series of boxes.

#4: Make multiple enemies easier to handle

In Lugaru, if you had multiple enemies on you at the same time, they attacked you all at the same time, which meant even if you managed to counter one, you couldn't counter the other. This means that if you want to get through the level, you've got to take only one at a time.

Games like Assassin's Creed and Batman: Arkham Asylum handle a lot of enemies well, by making them all crowd around you (but not too close) and having one, maybe a maximum of two come at you at any one time.

I don't know whether the Lugaru team even thought of that or whether they deemed that style of play "too easy", but Lugaru doesn't handle it's combat like that (as you can tell by reading the last few posts).

Well, there's a reason games like that handled the fighting that particular way. Imagine if you were playing Assassin's Creed and all the guards came at you at once, swinging their weapons against your robed assassin body at the same time. You'd be ribbonified before you could even say Rage Quit.

#5: Slow things the f*&% down

The Lugaru team must have played a lot of Sonic in their youth, because the protagonist (and everyone else) moves blindingly fast.

They also attack really fast (I should stop bringing this point up because it's starting to sound like a broken record) and countering them requires a hair trigger shift key and lightning reflexes.

The only thing they're allowed to speed up is your crouch speed. It takes forever to get in range of the enemy's jugular and there's a good chance you'll be outed before you get there.

#6: Give me a better ending

I'm going to give away a spoiler here, so if you desperately wanted to play the game than avoid all the text within the [SPOILER] tags.

[SPOILER]At the very end of Lugaru, main character goes back to the rabbit fortress (which you never get to see properly) and essentially says "I'll travel the world to find myself".[/SPOILER]

Awesome, I thought, I get to finally explore. But no, it just reset my map to the start of the game which infuriated me to no end.

So not only did you give me a stupid ending, but you didn't even give me the chance to go back and redo all the levels I wanted to do again, or give me the open world option. It's just an enormous middle finger to the player.

Come to think of it,

#7: Give me a better character

"Main character" (because I can't remember his name) came across as worryingly naive in the first part of the game. Later on, he lost all emotion because his wife and child and whole village was brutally slaughtered.

They need a better dialog writer, too. He, and every other character he meets, comes across as wooden, like they're all marionettes.

Oh my god. That's it. They are all marionettes, aren't they? That's why they get ragdoll'd so easily - because whenever a wolf trips me up my manipulator accidentally slips up due to sweaty hands.

#8: Make it more of an RPG

In the first level of the game you can talk to people. All they need to do is implement a quest system and they're away laughing.

Also, give me stats and use challanges to let the player improve not only his style but also his stats.

For example, smacking people around will increase strength, meaning more damage dealt. Getting hit a lot increases stamina, making the character more resiliant to damage. Running a lot improves speed. Countering a lot improves countering speed. Throwing your dagger a lot increases dagger speed and at the max level the dagger will curve to find their enemies, although you might want to make it so it won't act like a homing missile.

It sounds like a bit of a grind but players will still do it, because they'll want to give themselves the best possible advantage over their enemies.


In conclusion Lugaru, while a bad game (in my eyes anyway), has the potential to be a good game. Indeed, fixing all the issues won't make it the perfect game an there are a few more to take into account, but it will be a definate step in the right direction.

But if Overgrowth is just another Lugaru I'm going to be dissapointed. Angry, yes, but that'll pass in time; the dissapointment probably won't.

Because Lugaru had - and still has - potential as an open world RPG or even just an exploring game, but it made exploring the world a waste of time and doesn't have any RPG elements. It's just an extremely hard third person fighting game.

Intermission: Lugaru

I have a serious problem with this game.

It's built soley around combat, but this has to be the worse combat I've ever seen in a game of it's type.

If you've ever played Assassin's Creed, you'll know the guards are very slow. They make it quite obvious when they're about to attack, so you have just enough time to hit the counterattack button before they hit you. Another thing the guards in Assassin's Creed do is they attack you one at a time.

In Lugaru, those rules are inverted. The bastards attacking you have lightning fast attacks, and in order to counter them you have to have a hair trigger keyboard.
And the enemies in this game have no problem ganging up on you, making the fiht impossible. if three or more enemies have latched onto you.

For example, you eventually come across a pack of anthropomorphic wolves. These guys are nearly impossible to kill - they can smell you from a mile away and move faster than you, and their attacks are terrifingly strong.

And since they're faster than you, they can make it to your ragdollized corpse much faster than you take to get up, and the second - the very f&%#ing second - you get up, the smack you right back down again.

There's one wolf that you can't kill.
I'm serious - he has impossible to counter attacks and those attacks are a damn near instant kill.

This wolf also loves to kick your legs out from under you, and will do that three times in a row before hitting you with a insta-kill claw attack.

Oh, I would love to be able to actually hit this wolf, but he automatically counters any attack I make, so it's pointless.

In short, Lugaru handles it's fighting mechanic like a toddler handles a chainsaw with it's handle covered with barbed wire.

Intermission: GTA: SA part 2

I should probably mention I've gotten past the godawful flying tutorial and back onto the game again.

I would say "let the fun recommence", but to be honest I don't thin-

Wait, Dan Houser? What are you doing he-*BANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANG*

Intermission: Humble Indie Bundle

Humble Indie Bundle is an interesting concept.

Essentially, you get a selection of indie games, and you get to choose how much you pay for it.

A friend sent me a Humble Indie Bundle gift... thing [I'm hesitant to call it a 'bundle'] which gave me access to all the games available.

So I did what any rational human being would do - thanked said friend and downloaded all of them.
Wait, except one. But I downloaded the rest.

So, lets go through the games the site has to offer;


Gish
Gish is a platformer where you control a 12 pound ball of sentient tar.

Gish was taking a stroll through the park with his lady friend before said lady friend was kidnapped and taken by this big... thing. It might have been an enormous blob.
Anyway, our titular hero jumps down into the sewers after his lady friend.

Story out of the way, it's onto the platforming, and I have to say the gameplay is really quite cool.

Gish can cling to walls, make himself extra slippery (to slide down small tunnels) and, through sheer willpower, make himself heavier to smash through walls. Because you can cling to most surfaces, though, it makes the platforming kind of interesting. They introduce spikes early on, and as Gish walks over them he takes damage. In order to get over the spikes, he has to cling to the ceiling.

Further on, Gish comes to a set of suspended blocks. If he's careful, he can make the blocks swing, cling under them and grab the coins that are below.

And because he can stick to stuff, he can grab blocks to maneuver onto a button.
Music's good too, but that's not terribly shocking because it's an indie game - the music's almost always good.

Of course, Gish isn't perfect. It doesn't you tell what to do or where to go, and the enemies can be quite unforgiving. But that could be forgiven because the game is essentially linear.


World of Goo

...is out next game. I must confess, I downloaded WOG because it was there. I already have the actual game, but it isn't that big and I reasoned it wouldn't make that big a dent in our 50 gig a month broadband plan.

Anyway, in World of Goo your goal is to reach a pipe. To reach said pipe, you must (usually) construct a tower out of goo balls. At first, it seems very straight forward, but as it introduces different types of goo it starts getting interesting.

There's usually only one way to complete any given level, but it's still cool when you figure out how to do it. And it teaches an important lesson about structural integrity.

Third up, we have...


Samorost 2

Said game is one by a company called Amanita Design, the same guys who did the game Machinarium, which is my favourite point and click puzzle game to date.

Anyway, the first level introduces us to the story (at least, the story for the first level). Aliens, while collecting fruit, have stolen some kid's dog. Said kid is the protagonist, and he takes off in his "house rocket" after the dastardly aliens.

Point and click games all have this problem where it's not immediately obvious what's clickable and what isn't, and the very first couple of screens for Samorost 2 illustrate that, but from then on it's reasonably easy to decipher what they want you to do.

Figuring out the puzzles will make you feel all clever and smart, and most of them are somewhat easy, if a little easy. At the time of writing, I haven't got to the second half yet.

It's an interesting world this game takes place in - apparently, you can breathe quite happily in space, and asteroids can actually grow grass and plants without having any atmosphere.

But who gives a damn? It's supposed to convey a sense of fantasy.


Lugaru

Game number four is Lugaru. Jumping right in, I get a flash of red screen and a massive black eye staring at me.
Not the best way to start off, guys. I feel like the thing before me has been freshly killed.

The tutorial showed me the ropes, as tutorials do - you play a anthropomorphic rabbit, and in most of the tutorial you spend your time fighting a rabbit illusion made of smoke.

The gameplay seems to be built around the combat, which is a shame, because exploration would have been a good direction to go in for this sort of game.

Combat can get hectic and panic-y, and whenever you're hit with a particularly hard attack and sent flying ragdoll style (which happens very often), you loose your weapon and the enemy can pick it up, meaning you spend most of the fight punching the guy to death.

Whats worse is that combat in this game is extremely unforgiving. When the enemy send you tumbling, they often hang around your ragdoll'd body waiting for you to get up and do it again, and with two or more enemies it becomes insanely difficult.

Worse still is that Lugaru lacks a quest log, or indeed quests at all. The map you see every time you progress to a new part of the game is pretty lackluster, and there isn't much of a ultimate goal hovering overhead, apart from "kill the bastard who betrayed your village".


Last up is Penumbra. My laptop can't hack it when he steps off the boat, so I'm currently transferring the .exe to my other computer. Give it a sec.
...
...
Here we go.

Penumbra draws you in. There isn't much doubt about that. The most interesting aspect of Penumbra so far is you need to really use the mouse.

For example, you need to smash a piece of ice that's frozen up a wheel to an underground bunker. You need to do a little bit of exploring to find a bunch of rocks.

In any other game, it would do the smashing for you. But in Penumbra, you need to heft the rock up using the mouse and smash down using the mouse too. Turning the wheel needs the mouse as well - you actually need to turn the wheel as opposed to just clicking on it.
You want to do a melee attack? You have to swing that bastard.
There isn't any hud either, deepening the immersion.

Once you figure out how to open the big steel hatch that was closed for a damn good reason, your taught about stealth. This means turning your flashlight off, something your not going to want to do.

You know something is out there. You just... can't see it. Or hear it.
It's the whole psychological horror thing - it gets into your head and screws with you. It makes you fear the slightest noise, the faintest flicker.

Did I mention your totally alone? No audio logs (yet), no NPCs, not even any monsters that you can see (so far). You are totally, completely alone.

In short, Penumbra isn't for those who consider themselves "jumpy". And even of you aren't, this game will make your skin crawl.

Intermission: GTA: SA

Or, for the acronym impaired, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

For those looking to buy it, I hope you like not being able to finish your games. I know I don't.

Two thirds into the game your let into the last island, Las Venturas, essentially the last leg of the game before it's conclusion.
There, you meet a character names Mike Toreno. The first few missions of his include driving up along side a tanker and getting your friend to hijack it, which was quite fun when other cars on the road wern't punting you off your bike.

But eventually, he sends you to buy the airstrip, a boneyard for unused planes. Then he instructs you to learn to fly, with the mission about it titled "Learning to fly", which not only conveys the overall objective but is also a nod to Pink Floyd, incidental or not.

Anyway, the first two flying challanges are relativly easy, so long as you don't touch the roll or yaw keys.
The third one forces you to fly through a big ring of hoops around the airstrip. You've never had any experience turning the plane before this course, so it seems a bit like teaching you how to hold your breath underwater then making you do laps, with no proper instruction on how to swim.

So you'll fail. It's inevitable - in fact, it's never a case of if in the GTA universe, it's when.
You will die eventually, and you lose 70% of all the missions you do on the first try, and most of them on the second and third. That's just the way it is.

But that's ok, because I sort of knew that when I came into the game. But the flying and driving school is set out to be as frustratingly difficult as humanly possible.

In the third challange, you have to get each ring pretty much perfect, and if you miss any one of the many you're forced to restart. It's an endless parade of failure, entire days going by in game as you try to meet the challenge's unreasonable goals.

Evnetually, after at the very least four solid hours of game time trying, over the course of about a day or so, I finally do get it. I think I got a bronze, but hell, I finished the course. I was feeling damn good about myself - I beat the game.

Then it told me to do it again, only this time I had to land the plan as well.
That was it for me. The game makes damn sure that if you are on your high horse, you aren't on it for long. For every genuinely fun mission, there's one which is abysmally hard, and it's not just because of objectives. Sometimes the game likes not telling you anything at all, or giving you the bare minimum of the mission objectives.
Sometimes is the abominable controls, like the Red Baron mission for Zero, and occasionally it's based on a random dice roll within the game, like with "wrong side of the tracks", where you winning is entirely determined to whether or not Big Smoke woke up on the right side of the "can actually shoot straight" bed.

It's come to the point that I'm starting to believe nobody playtested San Andreas, or at least not the PC version, because if they did they would notice some serious problems with the key bindings.

One mission with Zero, everyone's favourite RC enthusiast and professional whiner, where you have to control a small RC helicopter to help get Zero's RC car to his compedator's base.
If they had tested it before release, they would know that binding the magnet control with your helicopter to the LMB (Left Mouse Button) while the rest of the helicopter controls are spread out along the keyboard is not good design, and as far as I am aware nothing else works apart from the LMB.

When the players of your game spend two or three days trying to get through just one mission because it's gratuitously dfficult, then you don't have a good game. And, of course, you can't proceed until you have mastered all the courses in the flying school.
I can't remember the last time I had any actual fun playing San Andreas after being introduced to that godforsaken part of the game. Seriously. It seems so long ago.

Intermission: 'Braid'

Ah, Braid.
I hate Braid.

Well, that's not fair. I used to like it, you know. I actually got all the puzzle pieces for level 1 and 2. It was at the world called "Hesitance" [the world with the ring] that I gave up on the game.

Oh, I finished it (that is to say, passed it but didn't get all the puzzle pieces) and I almost finished the last world, but what really pissed me off about said level/world was the time mechanic.

Placing the ring slowed down time in a fixed radius around the ring. The rest of the level went at normal speed, but whatever was close to the ring was slowed down.

That's fine. nothing wrong with that. It's actually pretty clever, because you can think of all sorts of interesting puzzles to go around it. And they probably thought they were.

I would seriously like to know who playtested Braid. I wouldn't be surprised if they got a few guys (presumably friends) in to do it for them instead of an actual team, because (being an indie game) they didn't exactly have that much money. Except that's a lie, because Jonathan Blow sank $200,000 dollars into Braid, most of which included hiring the artist and, according to Wikipedia, "living expenses".

Several of the levels in this world (hell, in the entire game) are complicated at best. The game does everything it can to keep clues on how you're supposed to finish the level as far away from you as possible.

Yeah, I know that's the point of a puzzle game and you don't need to point it out, but Braid seems to take it a step further.

My favourite level in the whole game is the Boss level in the last world. Not the last-last world, the shadow mechanic world.
Get this - two shandeliers. Both shaneliers have a shadow each. This equals (essentially) 4 shandeliers. Boss has 5 health.

That last fact just blew my mind. How the hell was I supposed to chip away the last health bar? What's worse is the bastard keeps moving all the time - he never stops, not even for a second, to give you a chance at hitting him. That's fine, you think, I'll predict his path. No you can't, I say, because the boss in intelligent and will walk away from whatever shanelier you happen to be waiting under, and all the while he's lobbing fireballs at you.

What I think your supposed to do is get it so the shandelier hits the boss, then rewind time so it hits the boss again, but this time it hits him a microsecond before his health comes back, so essentially you get three hits in one, but I'm not even sure about that.

All the walkthroughs I've read about it word the information in strange ways, so you have to decipher what they're saying.

The Braid website even gave you a page called "walkthrough" or "cheats", where it explained how to complete the first level (which is about as easy as explaining to someone how to click something with a mouse) and then went on to say how you should figure it out for yourself and you'll feel totally smart because you did and if you use a walkthrough you won't. (I'm paraphrasing here.)

A valid point Mr. Blow, but that goes out the window when I've spent the last half hour trying to figure out how to do a level.

And there's one which you have to execute perfectly, and I'm talking right down to the last PIXEL, if you want to get the puzzle piece.

But, with a heavy sigh, I have to say that Braid is worth whatever the XBLA (XBox Live Arcade) or Steam is selling it to you for, because its oh so unique. And it does feel cool when you do master a certain level, no matter which one it is.

So yeah, I guess Braid is worth it. But don't be all that surprised if you never see the "brillaint" end of the game. I know I probably won't.

Intermission: 'Sydney Shark'

Newgrounds disappointed me with Coil the other day, a game that's main feature is not telling you how to play the bloody thing or giving any hints as to your motivation for wanting to play, which is pretty high up on the list of stupid game design decisions.

But Sydney Shark is a pretty damn good game. For one, unlike Coil, it's, you know, an actual game. And it tells you how to play it.

Sydney Shark is based on Miami Shark, a game made by the same guys. Both games had you play a shark (literally), cruising down one of the beaches or an extremely long dock in Miami causing all sorts of mayhem.

At first, the game was too fast paced for me. The shark screamed through the water very quickly, so it was hard to do any of the mayhem the game wanted me too.

But the antithesis of the game for me was when I discovered the best way to get points.
If you dive to the very bottom of the screen, you can rocket up out of the water. This is useful for taking out some of the larger boats, but it's main porpose is to (and I hope your ready for this) let you grab onto the wheel of a Boeing 747 and, through sheer strength and willpower along (plus the rapid tapping of the down arrow key) pull it into the water.

yeah you heard me. And that's just one of the 10 aircraft you can do this with. You can bring ruin to great vehicles such as the Concorde, the Space Shuttle, and an Apache just to name a few.

And Sydney Shark expands on that. You get a new selection of planes to destroy, including an Airbus A380, a Zeppelin, a 'Crocodile Jet' and a UFO. Plus, you can eat the heads of horses that pass by occasionally in big boxes (presumably to annoy the local mafia) and best of all, you can latch onto a Soviet nuke and blow the place to smithereens, where it cuts to an astronaut watching that part of Australia be obscured by a nuclear mushroom cloud.

It's high octane, pure liquid fun from start to finish.
You can find the game here.

Starcraft II Beta, part 8

I made a shocking discovery today - Protoss players actually have two other strategies!

Protoss Strategy #1: Void Rays
Protoss Strategy #2: Stalkers
Protoss Strategy #3: Both of the above

It's a little sad that no other strategy exists for Protoss players other than the ones listed above. Blizzard might as well have not bothered making any other Protoss unit apart from the ones I mentioned and saved themselves some time.

No, seriously. Protoss players are that predictable. If your fighting against a Protoss player, air superiority is vital. Also, it helps to have a strong anti-ground force for the guys that use Strategy #3.

If your Terran, build a lot of Vikings and Banshees. Zerg, build a lot of Corruptors and upgrade some of those Corruptors into Brood Lords. Protoss? Void Rays. Carriers if your feeling lucky. And Phoenix's aren't a bad idea either.

I don't really know where to go from this point. I've played a lot of multiplayer, and there doesn't seem to be much else until Blizzard roll out the AI patch so I can critique the difficulties in order of "Babies first RTS" to "How did he rush me with Battlecruisers in the first two minutes?", which should be a fun little exercise.

Actually, there are two things I can still do. First, give an overall review of each race, primarily talking about what's changed (for better and worse). And I can get into the Galaxy Editor, so I'll see if I can make something. I've been thinking of this enormous mod already, making a few delicate changes to the game (such as taking out the entire $#%&ing Protoss race).

Oh yeah, the obscenity filter doesn't filter "god", but (I may have mentioned this before, but it still bewilders me) it filters "damn". That just doesn't make any sense - it's possibly one of the tamest "swear words" in the English language without making one up, unless you wanted to go full on silly and say things like "Blast! The little blighters have infested my base!" or, god forbid "Oh fiddlesticks! Well, good game and all that, old chum."

Intermission: 'Coil'; level by level

Game here: Coil

Coil is advertised as "an experimental flash game with no instruction or clear direction", and players are told to "Please keep an open mind while playing".

It's an interesting sort of game. It has no sense of direction whatsoever and no instructions, which is a little annoying, but it's reasonably simple.

Level one starts you off as a sperm and you have to move the mouse left and right to make it swim. Your looking for an egg.

Second level is difficult, but essentially you need to make it so all the coloured blobs are in seperate clusters and then let them drift together.

In between each level, you get a small piece of the story, which is fascinating to read by itself.

I hope you brought a book though, because the load times are biblical. I've been writing this whole thing ever since completing level two and I've spent 5 minutes doing it.

There's nothing to say how you get past the story screen, or anything telling you to proceed.
Clicking rapidly doesn't work, although- wait, lemme try that.

The third level just loaded. Outstanding.

So, the thrid level your controling this thing. I presume it has an embryo inside it.
Again, no instruction. You move left to right by rapidly circling the little embryo with the mouse, making him sort of spin.

There are these little bastards that make your life hell by pushing you up. There are a small group of them every 'level' (your aim here is to reach the bottom) and they are hard to break out of.
Still, enventually you'll pass.

Level four has you using a thin tentacle thing to draw food into the very small thing your trying to keep alive, however the players motivations for doing so are unexplained.

You don't even need to play that level, just wait for a minute or so for it to do the work for you, becuase the food will sometimes spawn directly over where you need to bring it via tentacle.

Level five is wierd. No instruction means you have no bloody idea what your supposed to do. I figured out that I could make the various parts of the body or organs or whatever we're dealing with here do stuff by using the mouse, but that's all I could be certain of. Never fear though, because after a prolounged period of time it just moved on as if I had finished the level. I'm not sure what I did. Seriously.

Level six. Apparently I'm flying.
Flying up I suppose. The no instructions thing is starting to piss me off - there's not even a hint as to what we're doing. Level one and two were sort of explanitory, but the rest of them.

I finished level six by bumping into one of the other flying bulbs and letting it spray tiny arrows from itself so eventually it made them both change slightly.

I figured out that rapidly clicking the mouse does indeed make the damn thing move on when your stuck on the story screen. Not that they tell you that.

Level seven is similar to six, but at night. You make him float up by holding him steady with the mouse, a task which isn't exactly easy.
Especially since you don't know what your supposed to be doing or how.

Then that's it. It's all over. With another two story screens, the game ends and it catapults you to the starting screen.

What did I just play? No, seriously, what the hell did I just play? What was the point of it? If you just going to say "screw it" half-way through making the game and not give the player a proper ending, which he or she deserves because you made him or her sit through your stupid, badly designed game. I wouldn't be so harsh if you made the slightest attempt to give the player something, anything, but you didn't.

In summary, Coil is confusing and unsatisfying. The story doesn't make up for it, and niether does the art.
Worst of all, it ends too early. It's missing at least three levels, at most five or six.

Although, I'm forced to say you should play it just because it's so unique. As I may have said before, I've never seen a game like it, and probably never will again.
It's worth checking out, but only once.

Intermission: Death Knight class changes

Blizzard - what are you doing to the Blood tree?

For those who don't know, the Blood talent tree is the DPS [damage per second] tree for Death Knights in WoW. Essentially, it gives the Death Knight increased damage output with it's various talents.
At the moment. Come Cataclysm, that may all change.

I can sort of see Blizzard's thinking, but turning it into a full on Tanking tree?

Let me take a step back. There are three trees - Unholy (improving the DK's various diseases and magical attacks), Frost (improving the DK's various Frost spells and tanking ability) and Blood (improving the DK's damage output and giving him the ability to heal himself).

It's only logical to make Blood the new tanking tree, what with the ability to heal him or herself.
My only problem is what's going to happen with my DPS tree?

I don't do tanking. It's just not my style. And Unholy makes little sense to me - I'm supposed to be War, or Death. Not Famine or Pestilence.

I don't wanna dual-wield either, not unless I get to dual-wield two-handed swords like Fury spec'd Warriors do.

I can't say goodbye to self healing. But I can't say goodbye to my precious damage increases.
Damn you, Blizzard! Why?! Why do you make me choose?!

Starcraft II Beta, part 7

Sportsmanship.
I'll say it again; Sportsmanship.

Most of the players on Battle.net are now running to their parents and asking "mummy, what's that word mean?".

Recently, most of the people I go up against on Starcraft II don't have the decency to say something as utterly simple as "gg" before it's all over.

"gg" stands for "good game". Even if it wasn't, it's generally a decent thing to say before either crushing the other guy or being crushed yourself.

Of course, being Battle.net, most of the players online (certainly the ones I've faced) are at least teenagers. They're also under a alias, meaning there is no retaliation apart from verbal, and that's only before the match is over. Thus, most of them don't know what the first word of this post is.

It's funny how the defeated say "gg". Does it imply that they accept defeat? I think so. It's the case with me - the other guy was simply better.

It's also funny how the winners almost never. It's not as if they need to take their eyes off the battlefield for a second - they aren't going to lose. They already have a million Void Rays launched at your base; there's no way they can lose.

So why don't they say it? Maybe it's the sense of inflated self-worth. Perhaps their enemies they've just defeated are peseants in their eyes, and do not deserve the satisfaction of knowing that they will 'stoop to their level' and waste their time on something as trivial as that.

Perhaps they think that it wasn't a good game because (for example) there was little challange, and will not choose to comment. For people who do think this way, spare a thought for the poor bastard your Void Ray-ing to death.

But then there are the sore winners. These guys mock and, sometimes, insult you before they destroy you. They suck.

But usually there are sore losers. The same guys who don't say "gg" are the same here. They leave before you've even destroyed them, and I'm not talking about after you rip apart their economy or their biggest assault force.

A while ago, I played against some guy in 1v1. He was Protoss. I was Zerg.
He had Zealots. Quite a few, actually, and he had Photon Cannons to defend his base. He had the goddamn match.

I sent about 8 Zerglings his way. After shredding them up on his Zealot's Psi blades and Photon Cannons, I sent another 6. And another. While I was doing this, I was upgrading to a Lair and building Hydralisks. The Zerglings were to keep him on the defensive, and they were.

And it wasn't like they posed any sort of threat. He was just cutting them to ribbons and chewing them up afterwards.

I'm not sure what was going through his head that match, but after about the third wave of 6 Zerglings he left the match, giving me an un-earned and un-deserved win.

That's it. He just left. No "&%#$ this", no "I see where this is going", just rage-quit. And for no good reason, too.

But even worse than the above bastards are the sore losers who happen to be on your team in a 2v2.

Why, just a moment ago I was playing with someone who teched (that is, put all his resources into getting the best units) all the way to the top.

I, meanwhile, sent a force of Zerglings to the other player's base. Taken unaware, the other player was soon crippled by my attack. 16 Zerglings later, he was gone.
"nice", my ally said.

My rushes almost never work, so it wasn't just "nice" to me. But still, I took down an enemy all on my own, without any help from Mr. tech.

So, he got a few Overlords and sent them over to the other enemies base, where a Nydas Canal popped up in front of the player's workers and Ultralisks poured out.

And by poured I mean poured.

Unfortunately, I was too budy building Spires when my ally decided to attack. We were fighting two Protoss players, and we all know the Protoss's only strategy.

His Ultralisks were shredded by a thousand Void Rays. I had only built a few air units when he started yelling at me to build them. So I did, but there wern't nearly enough.

So, having had his ground forced ahnialated by predictable Protoss air units, he then started blaming me and only me (because god knows it wasn't even slightly his fault) for our inevitable failiure.

There are a few things wrong with his argument.
1. I had took out the other player single handedly, a fact he seemed to forget. And even if he didn't, it didn't matter now.
2. He used ground units that can't attack air against a race that I can gaurantee, with absolute certainty, to be a strong air race late in game.
3. He didn't warn me to be ready when he attacked, so it was impossible to be ready for such a retaliation.
4. He didn't have any air units of his own to protect himself from such a retaliation, despite having collected much more resources than me.

I even pointed out to him that if he had teched air, we would have easily won. Void Rays aren't, by any stretch of the word invincible, and against a swarm of collectors that are focusing their fire, they would have been shredded. And Brood Lords would have tore apart the enemies other base.

But no. It was my fault for "not being ready" and "not having any AA units", something that was very hard for me to do becuase of the aformentioned reasons.

Yeah, I probably should have made some air units. In fact, that would have helped quite a lot. But, I shift some of the blame onto my ally for why we lost.


Getting away from all that, there has been another thing that's really bugging me about multiplayer; the obsenity filter.

I don't know who did it, but they went way too far. Things that are completely reasonable words when used in certain contexts are bleeped out.

Things like "suck(s)", "damn", "prick(s)" and "bastard(s)" are all turned into a rnadom combonation of "$#@%&*^". So your words come out like "Aww man, that #$@%s" or "#@$%, those guys are tough" or "The $#@%s! I hate it when they rush" or even "#$@% [damn]!. Those &%*^&@#$ [bastards] really hit us hard."

But you the funny thing is? "Christ" isn't an obsenity. Nope. I would never dream of using that word out of religeous context or saying said name in vain. Pretty sure "God" isn't either.

So it's pretty obvious to me - the obsenity filter for Starcraft II was made by a bunch of christians.

Starcraft Beta, part 6

First off, full apologies to Blizzard about the Hydralisk thing - they will use their claws in melee range.


I've been playing a lot more of Multiplayer (because you can't really do much else) recently, and I'm proud to say I've gotten better at it.

There are some things I've picked up along the way, too;

1. The Protoss

I hate the Protoss. If they don't run up and build a little mini-base right outside or, even worse, inside your own, they amass Void Rays.

I'm not sure who you got to do the Protoss, Blizzard, but they only have one strategy.
I'm serious. The only strategy I've seen Protoss players use is "Stalkers and Void Rays", and sometimes it's just "Void Rays".
Zealot Rush? Bah. While effective, most Protoss players don't much care for it. Carrier Swarm? Nope. I can't recall a single match where I saw a Carrier. Colossi? Get out of here. They're big, slow and don't actually do all that much. Plus, they can be targeted by air units last time I checked, meaning they can die very fast.

That leaves Void Rays, which are very nasty. Their damage output is phenomenal, and when grouped they can make your entire base into their little quivering b#@%&.

Fortunately, they are quite fragile, and 8 Marines, un-upgraded, can take one on quite happily without serious losses. Unfortunately, most players don't realise this.

Since most Protoss players go for air you had better do so as well. The most evil combination of races I've faced in a Multiplayer match is Zerg (ground, early rush) and Protoss (air, mid-late annihilation). So your praying at least one of them is incompetent, otherwise you'll prepare for one and get slaughtered by the other.

2. Terran Ghosts

One of my biggest complaints with the Terrans is the Ghost. Not the actual unit, no - that's fine. I'm talking about the voice actor.

In StarCraft, the Ghost's voice was growly without being incomprehensible. It was a cool voice, the kind you tried to imitate while following a group of strangers.

*ahem* Uh, but the Ghost's voice in Starcraft II is clearly someone who's voice is not growly trying to pull off a growly voice, and it sounds terrible.

And it's not like you have to start again from scratch - the Ghost is wearing a helmet (for want of a better word) so there's no fine tuning for the speaking animation needed in the unit portrait.

Actually, the model is also a little weird. Why are his visor and scope colours controlled by the team colours? They shouldn't be - they should have always been green.

3. Zerg

I've gotten used to the Zerg sounds now, Blizzard. I still don't love them, but they don't irritate me as much.

However, one thing that really gets on my nerves about the Zerg is the Brood Lord.
Now, I love the Brood Lord to bits. It's my favourite unit in the entire game. But there are several things wrong with them.

A) they are just out of reach from the wrath of every defence structure - missile turrets, photon cannons and spore whatevers, meaning that the only way you could take them out is with air units, since they can't attack air. Forget ground units; they'll rip them to shreds.

B) they are a tad slow the same way that Santa is a tad imaginary. Any attempt at giving them a fighter escort will end up in you micromanaging them all the way to the enemy base because, and this is guaranteed, the escort will be faster.

C) they take a lot to make. You need a Hive before you can even think about making one, then you need a Greater Spire, and then you need cash to evolve the bloody things from Devourers. I understand that it's kind of the point to make the player work for the super unit, but I'm damn sure a Terran player can get Thors/Battlecruisers faster and a Protoss player can get a Mothership faster, or at least a Carrier.

4. Terran Strategy

Terran is my favourite race to play. The Zerg require someone with a fast, rushing sort of brain and the Protoss take too long and are too expensive for me to properly get my head around.

The 'Marine Swarm' is my favourite tactic. I can't thank you enough for Reactors, Blizzard, because without them I would be useless.
Reactors let you build two Marines at once. Enough Barracks with Reactors and you have a lot of Marines.

Some players don't realise the true potential behind these brave little soldiers. Even un-upgraded, they can still hold off even the toughest of enemies.

I remember one match where a player decided to throw about 10 Battlecruisers at me. He wasn't expecting the intense resistance of my 60 Marines, all firing on one ship at a time. All Battlecruisers down, and at least 20 Marines left. And they weren't fully upgraded either. Nor did they use Stim Packs (drugs are for losers).

I would recommend backing up your Marines with Thors though, especially if you plan on attacking the enemies base. Without Thors, the Marines have a chance of being outgunned by the likes of a group of Ultralisks (which are rare in multiplayer) or a lot of air units. Thors also do more damage verses buildings.

5. Zerg Strategies

First, the Zergling Rush. While it's still a viable strategy, I think Blizzard have nerfed it just a bit.

The Spawning Pool requires 200 minerals, whereas in the original StarCraft, it only needs 150. And the collection rate of those minerals has dropped so you won't be building them as fast.

Still, it's a vicious and "rage quit"-inducing strategy, but it's only truly effective against a slow player.
I don't quite know how the Zerg player does it, but I keep getting shunted with the 'Not enough minerals' message when trying to build my Supply Depot to shut up the 'Not enough supply' message. And when I've built, if I'm lucky, 1 Marine, the bastard already has 6 Zerglings en route to my base.

I would not recommend such a strategy against Protoss. A Zealot can take on 2 Zerglings, and Photon Cannons make quick work of them.

The second strategy I use as often as possible for the Zerg is the Brood Lord rush. Getting them as quickly as possible means my opponent is in for a world of hurt. Slow and unprotected yes, but utterly devastating.

6. Protoss Strategies Strategy

Void Rays. As quickly and as many as possible.

7. Units you will almost never see in Multiplayer

Ultralisks - they need a Hive to build and Brood Lords are better. Cost quite a bit, too.
Mutalisks - Strangely enough, these guys are pretty rare. (At least, I almost never see them.)
Banelings - Slow and easily slaughtered wholesale. If they could actually get to the enemy in time they would be devastating.
Changelings - Never seen one of these either. Only useful against AI or extremely thick Multiplayer opponents.

Carriers - Who needs 'em when you got Void Rays?
High Templars - I've never seen one. Ever.
Archons - These guys are extremely rare, too.

Raven - A rare sight.
Ghost - I've only ever had one used against me.
Medivac Dropship - As shocking as this may be, I've only ever seen it used twice.

Finally,
8. The Terran Predator.

Originally, Blizzard was going to use a unit called a Predator to replace the Valkyrie from Brood War as an air-to-air fighter, presumably similar to the Protoss Phoenix. However, it was taken out during an early release in favour of the Terran Viking, an air unit that could go from air-to-air fighter and ground-to-ground assault unit.
So, it had an adequate replacement. So who cared?

Well, I care. The Predator looks way too cool to leave out. At least make it a hero unit, there's no need to throw it away.