Multiplayer Awesomeness with Bulletstorm

With four of us here at ScampLAN, it proved the perfect opportunity to try out some multiplayer Bulletstorm.

Anarchy Mode basically consists of setting up as many skillshots as possible between members of the team, to kill waves of enemies.  Solo skillshots apply as expected, but if two or more players work together to create the skillshot, it becomes a Team Skillshot, and earns more points.  This requires a little more communication.. or at least having players who care more about setting up skillshots than trying to get the most individually.. therefore, best played with friends 🙂

This was a lot of fun, with new skillshots being discovered during play.. such as Tug-O-War, for Leashing another player’s Leashed enemy.  This skillshot was apparently added at the request of the community, which I think is a good move on the part of the developer 🙂

(Screenshot from Ripten.com)

Some enemies appear with a specific Team Skillshot to achieve.. such as the Meatspin skillshot, which is earned by kicking the enemy into the rotating doors in the corner of the Grand Central map, or the Midnight Express, for kicking an enemy into the path of the train as it flies through the station.  These were harder to do as the enemy often appeared far away from the required location, but still worth going for based on points.

Echoes is the other multiplayer mode.. though this is more of a beat-your-friends’-highscore kind of mode.  Echoes are small sections from the campaign with plenty of enemies and loads of opportunities for skillshots.. the more skillshots, the more points.

As friends have already got decent scores, if I want to get to the top of our boards, every enemy needs to be taken out with a skillshot, and as many unique skillshots as possible, as only the first few uses get a high reward.  They’re all fairly quick to play through, though, so I should be able to fit them in somewhere! 🙂

ScampLAN

Instead of going to Multiplay’s messed up i43, we’ve gone for a smaller, friends-only LAN at home.. in our newly decorated lounge 😀

So far we’ve mostly played singleplayer games, with the guys nagging me to complete Crysis 2.. which I’ve now done, though I was shown up by Ali completing both Bulletstorm and Red Faction: Armageddon in two days!

The demo for Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine made an appearance too..

Yay for lots of dead Orks!  I found the first level harder than the second, with many retries of the last room.. the big Orks were a bit painful.  The second level was much easier as the Jump Pack meant that for quite a way, all I needed to do was land on enemies to kill them 🙂

This game is now on the wanted list.. along with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Gears of War 3..

I’ve also tried out DC Universe Online, but I’m not going to rush to buy it.  Although what I played was quite fun, I think the appeal may run out after a while.. from what I’ve heard, there isn’t a lot to do at max level, and unless I had friends playing too, I can’t see that I’d want to run around doing the same thing too many times.  Maybe if the game turns up cheap..

We’ve also picked up the DLC for Borderlands, as it was cheap on Steam.. though we now have to get on with our game sometime!

Rivals to Steam

Update: it was apparently Valve who removed Crysis 2 from Steam, due to some disagreement over their contract..

Today I see a number of posts on the web announcing that Crysis 2 has been pulled from Steam as EA begin to push their digital distribution store, Origin.  The Star Wars game and  Alice: Madness Returns are also to be ‘Origin exclusives’.. so we can only assume that other games will follow suit.

I like Steam.

I have easy access to my games library, I get automatic updates.. the Steam overlay allows me to talk to friends, invite them to my game or join theirs, without having to stop playing or mess around trying to find a server that we can all get on.  Steam is not without problems, most notably when a new game is released and the servers just can’t cope.. so I like having a few games that don’t rely on it to run.. but that’s all I want.

I picked up Bulletstorm and Crysis 2 from the EA store because of a 50% discount, and in order to have a few games that don’t rely on Steam, and then reluctantly installed Origin.. but now I wonder how long it’ll be before these games will require Origin.  I also have Dragon Age and Dragon Age 2, bought on Steam, but if Origin doesn’t fall on its face I guess I’ll soon need to add them there too, if I want to receive updates.

My friends play these games, so I know they’ll also be forced to install and run Origin.. but what when the next publisher decides they want in on the act?  A client per publisher?  Eww.

I don’t want to run multiple clients to do the job that one is doing now.

It’s going to mean hassle adding the same people to my friends list, hoping I’ll still be able to chat and invite them to games as easily as I can now.  I don’t really want to be forced into  advertising the latest new client at my friends: “Hey, I bought a game off this company, go and sign up to their website and forum, get loads of annoying emails, download their client, add me to yet another list.. then we can play”.

I can only hope that I’ll still be able to add games to Steam as “Non-Steam games”, at least allowing me access to the overlay so I can still talk to people who refuse to install all the clients I guess I’m going to be stuck with.

What about clients that nobody else installs?  A while ago, I was introduced to Green Man Gaming, another digital retailer.  I was given a free game, which is why I consented to downloading their gaming client, Capsule.  I have launched this client only a handful of times.. I don’t think I’ve even reinstalled it since reinstalling Windows.   I’ve not even bought a single game from them despite the fact that they allow you to sell back your games for credit, and despite the fact they have offers on from time to time.. my friends are on Steam, the majority of my games are on Steam, so I find myself barely thinking about Green Man Gaming and Capsule, let alone running it.

Bulletstorm Completed!

As well as completing my cube skin, I also completed Bulletstorm!

The rest of the game turned out to be just as much fun as the first part.  The sniper was the next awesome toy to be placed in my hands.. with added bullet-steering abilities!  I loved how the enemies tried to dive out of the way as the bullet got near to them.. but there was no escape!

Heading through the dam section, and ultimately destroying it was awesome too!

After this I encountered the Maneaters.. huge carnivorous plants which caught human-sized snacks!  I was caught by surprise a few times.. they move quickly and you don’t have a lot of time to press the button to try and escape once caught.  After being eaten by a plant I endured some mocking from a friend.. I’m looking forward to seeing how he manages!

The boss fight at the end of this level took a while, killing me with spores on the first attempt.  The sliding move turned out to be very useful for getting away from attacks and quickly getting around the boss to catch all the vulnerable points.. eventually killing him off to earn the Weedkiller achievement 🙂

After this, and knowing we were about to catch up with Sarrano, I thought I was heading towards the end of the game, and ended up staying up far too late.. in the end I had to give up and sleep.  So for length of game, I was rather impressed..  I was also impressed with the variety in the levels and enemies, as well as the story allowing us to meet up with Sarrano but in a twist, not letting us actually fight him until later.

There were a few tougher sections.. or at least, parts of the game where I stuck for a little while.. one started with a miniboss in the centre, and other enemies around the room, then more and more enemies and minibosses arrived while I was fighting which led to a few restarts 😉

These were especially satisfying to get through, especially after rampaging through previous sections.

I’ve now started playing through on Hard.. so far it doesn’t seem all that much harder, but I am used to the weapons now, and know what to expect.  Next up has to be the multiplayer, though 🙂

When Bulletstorm was originally released there was a lot of complaining in the media, with some idiots trying to claim that people would become rapists after playing, because of bad language, the fact you are rewarded for shooting bad guys in the nuts, and so on.  I took pleasure in shooting my enemies in the nuts (I struggled to get the ‘Mercy’ skillshot as I was killing them off too quickly), whipping them into environmental hazards with the leash, and gagging them with my flail-gun, as well as being rather amused at the language.. do I now want to go outside and rape people?  No.  That’s because I can tell the difference between a game and reality.. those who go out and commit crimes like that are going to do it regardless.

The media also rolled out the usual irrelevant whinge about children being affected, by seeing the violence and wanting to copy it.. well, young children shouldn’t be given access to games rated for adults, and if they are, then you have to ask what else their parents let them get up to..

Bulletstorm

I picked Bulletstorm up back in April, at i-42 after playing the first section on a friend’s PC, where Grayson and his group of ex-assassin-turned-pirates try to ram the General’s ship, the Ulysses.. and fail, crash landing on a planet filled with crazed gangs..

I finally got around to playing properly over the last few days, repeating the first section and then moving on to the planet where I came across the awesome Energy Leash!

I came to love this weapon when I found how easy it was to grab enemies from behind cover, dragging them to me and impaling them on nearby objects.  This also earned me Skillshots such as Pricked and Voodoo Doll.. and when I’d earned enough points, I discovered the Thumper upgrade, allowing me to fling all the enemies into the air.. this was more awesome still, and came in really handy when I found myself over-run 🙂

The Flail-Gun was also amazing fun, if a little sadistic a weapon.. two explosives tied together by a short chain, which easily wrap themselves around the targetted enemy for you to detonate at your leisure.. preferably near his friends to take them out too.  Normally I don’t really focus so much on guns, to the amusement and/or despair of those I’m with, but it seems the guns in this game are all rather fun.  Next up was the Boneduster, an insanely powerful gun up-close.. I discovered this just prior to heading into a miniature city in the Worst Family Fun Vacation Ever section, which meant all my enemies were up close!  Those who didn’t get shot by the Boneduster were kicked or whipped into surfaces which electrocuted them :>

I recently tried out the Duke Nukem Forever demo, and was disappointed by the fact you could only have two guns at a time, only changing them if you came across another on the ground.  Bulletstorm allows you to carry three, including the standard weapon, or four if you include the leash, with changes available at the Drop Pods.  So far, I’ve not felt that I’ve been limited.. maybe because the guns  are more fun to use, maybe because there are more enemies coming at you.. though I wouldn’t object to the Shrink Ray in here too 🙂

After escaping the miniature city, I got hold of the best weapon so far.. the MechaTon, aka “Waggleton P. Tallylicker”, a remote-controlled robot dinosaur which fired lasers from its eyes!

This section lasted longer than I’d expected.. many games don’t really let you play with the biggest weapons for very long, but this level let me kill lots of enemies and destroy rather a lot of buildings 🙂

i-42

Where i-40 was cold and windy, especially in the temporary structure we were seated in, i-42 was sunny and hot almost the whole way through.. 😀

I drove half the way down, with a death-grip on the steering wheel (I’ve not done very much motorway driving), past a ridiculous number of lorries and one place where an accident on the other side of the road caused our side to slow to around 10mph.  Tim took the last part of the driving.. we were hoping to catch up with another friend at this point, as text messages had shown we were only 5 minutes behind, but with a stop-off at Sainsbury’s we were never going to make it. 😀

Check-in was again nice and quick thanks to arriving early, and instead of waiting around to take our PCs in at 6, we headed to the pub for food and drinks first.

All in all this was far better than the cold and wet start to i40 last year.. we hadn’t been able to go into the site as the internet hadn’t been set up for our temporary structure!  Our group were seated in B1 this time, away from the loud and annoying people who think roaring for every reload is ‘atmosphere’.  Although it was still hot, there was a balcony to escape to, and it was a lot quieter and nothing was being thrown around.. definitely going to be pushing for this spot next event.

One of the first games I played here was the awesome Portal 2, which I had started earlier but lacked the time to finish.  Plenty of other people were playing, with some on co-op, so I had to get a move on to avoid being spoiled..

I loved GlaDOS’ malicious comments in the earlier part of the game, though I wondered how I was going to end up making a break for it as she seemed happy to test me endlessly.  Wheatley was quite funny up until his change, which I think I should have spotted.. but I was rather gleeful when he turned GLaDOS into a potato even if he did still have me trapped.

The different coloured gels were a lot of fun.  On my first encounter with the white goop though, I wasn’t entirely sure what to do and ended up covering as many surfaces as I could in frustration, before spotting the little ledge I was meant to go to.  I loved evil Wheatley, especially when he tried to kill me in stupidly obvious ways.. 🙂

The second day of LAN involved a barbeque with the rest of our group.. we had the weather for it this time at least.  I’m not sure if we’re technically allowed to have BBQs on-site, but no security turned up, so no matter 😉

We also took a look through the exhibition hall, where we tried out a few games on the Nintendo 3DS, including Dead or Alive: Dimensions, Kid Icarus: Uprising, and a Zelda game which made me feel quite ill trying to focus on the screen while moving it around to aim the catapult.  While I love the idea, I’m going to be staying away from the 3DS.. if I feel bad after a few minutes use, it’s just not for me.

Aside from this, the only other real point of interest for me was the Demon stand, where they had an amazing car simulator running DIRT 2.  The fastest lap was to be rewarded with a year’s free internet, and of course I came nowhere near the quickest time though I loved the experience.  The seat, pedals and wheel come to some crazy price.. I think £24,000 was mentioned..

Elsewhere in the hall it was surprisingly quiet.. no freebies, and very little attempts by staff to draw people in to the various stands either.  There were people playing on what might have been some kind of tournament, but with no real interaction, we wandered through and back out again.

There are usually a number of flyers on the desks, and this time there was a 50% discount for the EA Store.  After trying out Bulletstorm on a friend’s PC, I bought both that and Crysis 2.. so much for not buying any more games.. 🙂

I made a start on Crysis 2.. but there were too many distractions to concentrate on it during the day and I was playing Amnesia: The Dark Descent when it got late.  There were a few changes to the sections I’d seen in the demo, with a bit more puzzle in the form of the chemicals I needed to find and mix.  The part where I had to avoid an invisible enemy in the water made me just as jumpy as when I’d originally seen it, which was probably amusing for those near me in our row.

Other games which saw some action were Beat Hazard on a friend’s computer while he played GRID on mine, some Killing Floor, an attempt at League of Legends (seriously out of practise) and a round or two of Unreal Tournament 3.  I had also brought along my Xbox 360, so there was a quick look at Stacking, and a bit of the co-op Zombie Mode in Call of Duty: Black Ops, as well as an all-too-brief look at Homefront for a friend who hadn’t seen it yet.  Maybe next time!

Tim made some use of his 30 day trial of WoW, though it was hard to tell if he was enjoying it or putting up with it for the sake of saying he’d had a go.  I also managed to get a little bit of time in WoW, and started off collecting bits for the Noblegarden Easter Event.. there were plenty of bunnies hopping around, including a pet.. 😉

I also pestered a friend to show me where to get the rather interesting Venomhide mount.. a pet which turns into a mount!

Unlike my Warrior friend, I had no trouble in being poisoned the required number of times.. he had to take off all his gear and use the most useless weapon he could find, whereas I just hit the Ravasaur with the basket I was collecting eggs in 😉

Eventually I had been poisoned enough and I was given my own Hatchling to take care of..

Our last night of LAN included some non-gaming hijinks as one friend started falling asleep in his chair.. this meant he got plastic cups balanced on his head :>
There was no chance of an all-nighter this time either.. all too tired, maybe from the heat, and we headed back to the tents at around 4.30am.

The last day didn’t include the usual CFMN vs inv TF2 match; instead we had a big game of L4d2 versus.. for which I had to switch to Tim’s PC as my copy of L4d2 had managed to corrupt itself.  Awesome game.. will have to make sure that we get more of this played from home too 🙂