Bulletstorm - Why did I ever doubt you?

The chaos of combat
Source: Giantbomb.com

People Can Fly tried to reinvigorate the first person shooter with Bulletstorm. But did they succeed? The FPS is a genre so staid that, despite drawing huge crowds for annual installments of its heavy-hitter titles, it seems to have lost relevance for many gamers.

The FPS hasn't changed all that much over the years. The deep rut it’s worn through gaming makes it difficult for developers to contribute anything original.

People Can Fly’s addition? Allow the player to close ground quickly. And it’s just enough to shake up the experience.

Bulletstorm is littered with excellent set-pieces
Source: Giantbomb.com

Bulletstorm introduced a leash to pull enemies out of cover. An environment that makes full use of the tool was then built around it. The level design revels in the chaos it invites. There’s a cohesion and inventiveness to the game that reminds me of a polished Nintendo title.

The leash allows the player to manipulate their environment directly, replacing traditional doors and switches. It functions as a powerful weapon too; pull down a walkway or leash an explosive and kick it towards and enemy to upset the status-quo.

Don't Cheer for Murder

For a long time I've wanted developers to contextualise videogame violence. Now along comes Naughty Dog (one of the worst offenders when it comes to casual in-game murder) with a title heavily influenced by Cormac McCarthy's The Road. It's kill or be killed in the post-apocalyptic world of 'The Last of Us'. The game's scenario demands violence and the developers don't hold back from representing it graphically.

Now that I'm finally getting what I wanted, I'm not sure how I feel about it. And I definitely don't know how to feel about the cheers and hoots of joy that accompanied every violent act on E3 stages this year. Am I the only one who found this gameplay walk-through a little disturbing?

Feeling disturbed is better than feeling nothing though right? If that's the case the above demo has already achieved more than most games. If Naughty Dog can sustain that discomfort throughout the game - can string together hours of consistently tense encounters that I'd rather avoid than get drawn into - then they may just be on to something with The Last of Us.

The Mass Effect Effect

How can the loss of a Mass Effect game-save lead to so much strife? Well, there are two reasons. And the first is simple, I love my Shepard. I didn't want to lose him. The second has to do with the appallingly small world of videogame journalism. And it's highlighted one unsettling problem that a 'year off gaming' might present.


Now that the old PS3 has received a new lease of life (thanks to my trusty hair dryer), I’m back in business with Mass Effect 3. Catastrophe averted. 

Losing a game save shouldn't be such a problem, right? The gameplay in ME3 is unrelentingly satisfying. I’d have been only too happy to play through those opening 12 hours again. Combat has real heft - although things can still get hairy, it's only too easy to dominate each encounter. It's crowd-control and it's fun.

Controlled chaos in Mass Effect 3

The game also benefits from a serious presentational facelift. Looking just as good as ever, it seems that developers Bioware finally hired a foley artist and/or sound engineer to bring the quality of their audio up to match their visuals. Weapons pop and the iconic sounds of the mass relays and reapers are pitch perfect. And those bizarre moments of silence that peppered previous games? Few and far between.

Most importantly, the game feels like a sequel to the original, rather than to its 2010 follow-up. I've been known to ramble on about how much I love (and hate) the first game so I won't labor the point here. With this third release in the series, Bioware have struck a careful balance between the original’s storytelling and its sequel's focus on combat. Shepard’s back in the thick of the action in this one. 

So if the experience of Mass Effect is all good, what exactly is my problem? And no, it's not the obvious one.

Hair Dryer FTW

If blowing a hot hair dryer into the back of an expensive piece of broken consumer electronics sounds like a bad idea, that’s because it is. But hey, it works. 

I followed the instructions of this well spoken gentleman - an unlikely find on the internet. He set out to test the validity of the hair dryer repair method. Still, I couldn't believe that it would work for me. I had other plans waiting in the wings.

I made sure to remove the hard drive before I started. I went for 20 minutes of hot air, followed by 20 minutes of cold. Then I let it stand for an hour before turning it on. And... success.

The whole thing cost €15. Three months PlayStation Plus let me back-up my saves to the cloud. It also netted me a free copy of Shank 2 to add to the ever expanding list. The Mass Effect 3 disc survived the process unscathed so I'm back in business this weekend.

Wohoo!

Options

There are a couple of possibilities for rescuing my data. All but one require that I spend yet more money. The internet tells me that the most likely reason for the failure of a system as old as mine is due to over-heating - the solder points on the CPU are no longer connecting to the motherboard. Another reason for the Yellow Light of Death, as it’s known, is a faulty power supply. So here are my options:


1. The hair dryer home repair method - Blow into the rear vent on the PS3 with a hot hair dryer for 15 minutes in the hopes that the solder will re-flow, connection will be reestablished and the unit will operate long enough to back up one’s saves.

        Pros:  Cheap.

        Cons:  It’s ridiculous!

                  I’ll have to pay for PS+ to do a quick backup.

2. The tear-down/heat gun home repair method - Void the warranty, open the sucker up and go at the motherboard with a heat gun available from hardware stores. This repair is said to last for weeks, it should easily allow me time to do a full hard drive content transfer via ethernet cable.
        Pros:  I get to buy a heat gun.
        Cons:  Costs a lot: heat gun, screw drivers, thermal paste, etc.

                  Not guaranteed to work.

3. If both of the above fail, it’s still possible that I have a faulty power supply. I could buy a used, broken PS3 on adverts.ie and switch one power supply unit out for the other.            
        Pros:   I get to dig around inside.
        Cons:  No guarantee new power supply works
                  Sony could have repaired the power supply for €160

I’ll report on each of these in turn over the coming weeks. The hair dryer test is happening today. In reality I’m unlikely to get past stage 2. How much does thermal gel cost?

Decision Time

I’ve reached a crossroads. My PlayStation 3 died unceremoniously over the weekend. I can afford to replace it (just about) but at the cost of giving up new games for the rest of the year. This presents an opportunity – to play through the ridiculous volume of unfinished and even untouched games in my collection. I intend for this blog to chart my progress through over 20 years of videogame design. 

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Gaming is an expensive pursuit. It costs both time and money. I have little of either to spend, but I do have a passion for videogames - for their mechanics and for the brief and beautiful glimpses of interactive storytelling that they provide. I love the art, the design and the music of games past and present. I read a lot, and listen to hours of coverage each week, on the wider industry as well as the creative individuals that make it up.

Now my PS3 has died. The soulless blinking of a single red light tells me I can no longer access the five years of data saved on the hard drive, or eject the disc inside. My last back-up is two years old – that's my own fault. I can always buy a new system, but a new system costs money and I don’t have money to spare. Something has to give.

The console will cost me at least €250. That equates to about five new games – the bulk of my budget for the rest of the year. So to keep myself entertained I'm turning to my embarrassing collection of unfinished games. Everything from NES platformers, to late nineties PC classics, to sprawling 2011 RPGs litter my home and my hard drives. And this is the perfect opportunity to clear the decks.

So why replace the PS3? I have to play Bioshock Infinite later this year and I won't be doing that on this six year old laptop. I also have unfinished business with my dead console. Mass Effect 3 and Dark Souls - games into which I've sunk unacceptable amounts of time and personal strife - are my main reasons for wanting to rescue my lost saves. In fact, Mass Effect is a problem for a whole other reason too but I'll come back to that.

There is hope. I can get creative with hair dryers and credit cards covered in reversible packing tape. I can try to save the old PlayStation, at least for long enough to back up my data to the cloud. I'll chart my progress with the hardware, as well as with games of yore here at Hackett Out over the coming months. 

Now I just need to decide where to start. And to think about some sort of design for this crisp white page.