It’s recommended you have ARMA 2: Combined Operations (ARMA 2 + Operation Arrowhead) to enjoy the game to the fullest. At the very least please have Operation Arrowhead, although I’m not sure yet if downloadable maps are backwards compatible. I will update this thread once I get more information.

If you don’t have ARMA 2 also, you may download the free to play version. Think of it as the lite version of the game, as it still lets you play online, but without the high res textures or user mods. So there’s no excuse for you guys not to come try it with us.

I’ve been personally been wanting an ARMA 2 server for the longest time and can’t wait to get into the thick of it with my fellow OMGeeks!

If you’ve been frequenting the OMGeek forums ever since 2012 started, or even for the past month, or even for the past week, you’ll probably have noticed psycrow117′s enthusiasm for sharing the news about very interesting indie games, both the ones in development and the ones on sale at whatever Indie Bundle with a cute name has managed to sprout this week. We thought his stuff was worth being seen by a greater amount of people on the front page blog, and we offered him a contributor spot, and luckily, he accepted! Expect to see some posts from him very soon, right here on the OMGeek front page.

Chatroom regulars will also know psycrow117 by his Steam name, Laughing Man. Welcome aboard, and thanks for contributing to the community!

Happy week of February 20, gamerfriends! 2012 continues to plod along at a very relaxed pace, if you ask me; nothing major or earth-shattering, although the announcement that Transformers: Fall of Cybertron isn’t going to get a PC release made my world crumble for a split-second or two.

Bastards.

Anyway, to business.

• We’re trying something new with the OMGeek Battlefield 3 server: hardcore mode! I personally wasn’t around to try it out during last night’s Skirmish Sunday, but if you liked it (or hated it), share your thoughts with the community. Was it tense? Did you find yourself humping the ground more often than you thought was comfortable? Did you like it?

• OMGeek’s review of The Book of Unwritten Tales is now up for your perusal and consideration. I wrote 2,000 words about the game in that article, so I won’t bother with any side comments now. Spoiler: it’s good. The game, not the review. Check it out!

• Minecraft players, be ready for another big update concerning the OMGeek server soon! We be punching trees again in no time. We be punching grass. We be punching dirt. You be punching stone, if you like, but you make sure to let me know so I can hang around and watch when I’ve got nothing better to do.

That’s it for now, but be assured that this isn’t over. NOT FOR CYBERTRON. NOT FOR ALL SENTIENT BEINGS.

Everybody knows that PC gaming is dying.

PC gaming and adventure gaming: soon to be banished to Dimension X (maybe)

The heralds have been trumpeting about it for a couple of decades now. With every new console release, the death of PC gaming gets pushed to the forefront of prophecies that are finally set to be fulfilled. It’s inevitable, like the-sun-is-eventually-going-to-burn-out inevitable.

You know what, though? Something else has been in the process of dying for even longer than PC gaming has: the traditional point-and-click adventure game. Twenty years ago, the market was flooded with adventure games like the market today is flooded with cover shooters with regenerating health. It was a grand time for adventure games up until the whole thing died under the huge demand for more FPS and RTS games in the late 90s. Even RPGs managed to flourish past the DOS age, thanks to titles like Fallout and Baldur’s Gate. Meanwhile, any adventure game released after the year 2000 is considered some kind of retro throwback to the good old days of gaming.

Sometimes, though, a game comes around that attempts to recreate the glory days of the adventure game: high production values, amazing visuals, and superb storytelling. It doesn’t happen often, but every time it does is reason enough to sit up and take notice.

The latest case in point: The Book of Unwritten Tales, from German developer KING Art Games. Could this be the adventure game renaissance people like me have been waiting for?

There’s a dragon. And a ring. And a quest. And, of course, a book.

Any game with a loading screen that insists on rolling a nat 20 can't be all bad!

Like any good fantasy tale, The Book of Unwritten Tales (BoUT) appropriately opens with a peaceful vista, a sudden chase into parts unknown, and an enigmatic MacGuffin. In this particular case, the MacGuffin is a shriveled little gremlin actually named MacGuffin — Mortimer MacGuffin. From the game’s opening to its final moments, BoUT constantly reminds you that it is a self-aware animal that isn’t afraid to take jabs at itself both as a fantasy story and an adventure game. Fortunately, the jokes are clever, funny, and not awkward at all. Anachronisms abound, like a cunningly-placed snippet from the Psycho soundtrack during a scene involving some mischief with sharp objects. At that moment, I laughed out loud at the absurdity and at the appropriateness of it all.

If I had to describe the world in relation to another fantasy game setting, I would say that BoUT feels closest to Westwood’s Legend of Kyrandia games, with the added bonus that there is no one nearly as dry and boring as Brandon from that series in BoUT’s cast. If I had to describe the world to people who only started gaming less than a decade ago, I’d say it’s closest to Warcraft in its cartoony nature and the melding of traditional swords-and-sorcery with steampunk engineering and gnome inventions.

Nevertheless, BoUT is ultimately a game with a setting that is initially derivative, but soon makes it its own through intelligent and thoughtful writing.

I’m going to try to avoid saying “charming” when describing the characters.

That cooking pot on his head is a bad, bad omen.

I’m going to try to stray away from any spoilers here, because much of the pleasure I got from playing BoUT reminds me of how fun it was to play adventure games back in the day: no internet, no expectations, and no inkling or warning of what’s to come. Much like the way it was then, every hour spent brings a new surprise in the form of new scenery, or a new task to complete, or a new character to interact with.

However, I think it’s safe to say that you’ll eventually be taking control of four distinct characters over the course of the adventure: the capable (and only half-dressed) elf princess Ivo, the gnome tinkerer Wilbur (who actually desires to become a mage), the airship pilot Nate (who is really Han Solo in a fantasy setting), and his partner-in-crime Critter (who is really Chewbacca in a fantasy setting).

Steps were obviously taken to keep the characters distinct and unique, and they really are fleshed out nicely, especially by today’s standards. They work off existing archetypes: Ivo is a hot elf and Wilbur is an innocent, unassuming gnome and Nate is a scoundrel and Critter is The Weird One. They’re much more than that, though; the writing gives each of them an additional third dimension that makes them well-rounded characters in their own right.

When the story begins, BoUT will automatically shift you from one protagonist to the next as the circumstances that will bring them together play out bit by bit. Later, once the story goes into full swing and you’ve gotten the hang of playing the game, BoUT will let you switch between certain party members at will, Day of the Tentacle-style. Characters in the vicinity will be able to trade items amongst each other, and each character will have his or her own skills and personality types that will be needed to overcome puzzles as they appear.

It’s just so hard to believe this game wasn’t originally written in English.

Upon being faced with this difficult choice, I went with the obvious answer.

BoUT’s localization deserves some special mention, as this is where I have no qualms in calling it superb and top-notch. Admittedly, I didn’t follow the game’s development and the devs’ fight for its localization, but I’m really, really glad that BoUT eventually found its way to the English-speaking market. This is quality localization right here, with appropriately British voices comprising much of the cast.

There are no awkward translations or strange cultural jokes, and I slipped right into the experience with no effort whatsoever. The humor is really, really good, too. All the jokes felt like they were written in their native language. Kudos to the localization team, and I’m hoping they port more games over to the English-speaking community in the future.

Here’s how to play a point-and-click game.

You've all seen Raiders, right?

Unfathomably, the bulk of this point-and-click game requires you to use your mouse to point and click at objects, places, and characters in the game world that you wish to interact with. Gasp! The game hotspots are contextual, so your cursor will automatically turn into a magnifying lens for things that can be examined, a wrench for things that can be manipulated, and a grabby hand for things that can be picked up.

A new feature that I vicariously avoided for all of two hours was the hotspot indicator, which briefly shows you all the available hotspots in a scene with a tap of the spacebar. I found it a welcome relief from pixel-hunting once I got into the groove, however, though I’ll never let it be said that BoUT ever plays unfairly with impossibly tiny and hidden hotspots in any of its scenes. At the very least, the spacebar feature is a boon for players like me who want to squeeze out all the lines and descriptions of a game during a playthrough — I’m one of those people who like to exhaust every single line of questioning in Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers everytime the interrogation screen comes up. I make it a point to try to “move” Grace whenever she’s sitting on her stool, too — which was all the time, of course.

I can’t say I have any complaints about how the gameplay is set up, although a right-click-to-examine feature would have been nice. The puzzles are made no simpler or easier with the context-sensitive action icons, although I never encountered anything that made me cheer audibly after I solved it. Think Babel Fish, or that thrice-damned Spider Chair in Myst IV. Nonetheless, BoUT’s puzzles are challenging but not frustrating, and very pleasing to solve. The later ones involving multiple members of your party are particularly gratifying.

The game looks beautiful.

The lighting is subtle but impressive.

Let’s not talk about technology for a moment and just discuss the aesthetics of the game. BoUT is beautiful, as you can see from these stills. Each location is intricately detailed; when Wilbur comments on the masterful stoneworking skills of the dwarves, you can see it and believe it yourself when you examine the giant hearth in the dwarven brewery where he begins his quest. The same is true for every location, from a snow-covered mountain with snowflakes falling all around, to a dark and dingy cellar underneath an archaeologist’s home, to the tentacle-strewn cthulhoid nightmare that is the Big Bad Evil Guy’s throne.

The animation, however, leaves a bit to be desired. Most of it is workable, but as an animator myself, I feel that most of the animation work lacks a bit of bounciness and exaggeration to properly convey the whimsical-yet-serious-at-times tone that the writing tries to reflect. There are also a lot of generic “use” and “pick up” animations, which are understandable in a project of this scope, but also very obvious. Funny little touches in earlier adventure games come to mind, like Tex Murphy slowly drawing a ten-foot-pole from his trench coat like a magician, or Guybrush Threepwood forcibly stuffing a large dog in his coat, only to have it run wild underneath his clothes for a few seconds. The lack of expression in movement is a bit of a shame in a game that otherwise looks as excellent as this.

This next bit could be slightly disappointing, or it could make no difference to you whatsoever: BoUT is a 2D/3D hybrid in terms of presentation. The backgrounds are pre-rendered and animated with 2D layers, while the characters that populate the world are rendered in real-time 3D. It works extremely well for the most part, and the integration is better than I expected in terms of shadows, light rays, and the like, but the background will look suspiciously flat when the camera starts panning around and in and out. It’s no big issue; again, it only sticks out because the game itself looks so good.

Good thing the game also sounds beautiful.

The game's music is appropriate and memorable.

Voice acting is another big issue for localized games, with the expected quality ranging from “quite convincing”, all the way down to “the office messenger played the hero”. Fortunately, the team went and cast exactly the right people for their respective roles, and the end result sounds like they didn’t skimp on anything to ensure the quality of each character’s deliveries. Each performance is nuanced and heartfelt and full of emotion, and none of them managed to ruin my suspension of disbelief. Simply put, BoUT has very good voice acting all around.

The music consists of the kind of jovial fantasy fare you’d expect from a setting such as this — heroic melodies, slightly creepy and foreboding atmospherics, and mischievous tunes permeate the soundtrack. There’s some use of classical music too, as Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King” features prominently in the prologue chapter, part of which happens to take place in an almost-abandoned dwarven bastion high in the snowy mountains.

If there’s a weak link in the audio department, it’s in the sound effects. They’re there when required, and a guy wearing a cooking pot on his head being shot out of a cannon (sound familiar?) sounds like you’d expect it to sound, but many times over, an action that I expected would be grand or snappy or painful felt weak and floppy because it wasn’t conveyed properly by the sound effect that accompanied it.

Ultimately, The Book of Unwritten Tales is a game worth playing and worth remembering.

I'm still iffy on the whole elf princess costume, but that is one nice-looking house.

It’s no secret that KING Art Games set out to rebottle the kind of magic that games like King’s Quest and Monkey Island offered by the bucketful long, long ago. Have they succeeded? I have to say yes. It’s not a perfect game, but it shines in all the things that count.

The Book of Unwritten Tales is undoubtedly epic in scope, but it’s also intricately personal in detail. It’s a game that takes the tried and tested point and click adventure formula and updates it for a new generation of gamers. It may be more linear than what we’d had in the past, and the spacebar feature might irk some of the more passionate purists out there, but there’s no doubt that KING Art did an excellent job in translating what many believe to be the essential elements of a point-and-click adventure into a format that is accessible to more gamers today.

The question remains if people — or newer gamers, at least — still have the attention span for games like this. I’m not worried, though; if Skyrim can captivate the average gamer for hours on end, The Book of Unwritten Tales can effortlessly do the same thing for anyone who’s adventurous enough to give it a chance. Try it. You’ll probably love it.

The Book of Unwritten Tales is now available for purchase and digital download at the game’s web store!

frags reviews Bastion in this edition. If you haven’t tried Bastion yet, perhaps this is the piece that will nudge you off the fence. Also, what’s wrong with you? Read the full review here.

It’s been a long time comin’… but the kid never gave up… always trucking along…always eating away at the obstacles… The Bastion calls to him like the fireflies that are attracted by the light… but he ain’t about to get burnt by it… oh no Sir! The Bastion beckons…

Bastion is the début offering from Supergiant Games, made up of former EALA staffers that worked on Command & Conquer Red Alert 3. And it’s an absolute cracker! It’s a 2D action game with an interesting narrative and a unique approach of presenting itself to you. As you probably already know, Bastion makes use of a dynamic narration gimmick, which while sounding rather gimmicky, works amazingly well.

Bastion is set in a child like fantasy world of Caelondia(it looks childish, but turns out to be a lot more darker than the game’s aesthetics implies). A world that has been ravaged by an apocalyptic event called ‘the calamity’, it is now populated by wild beasts gone mad(such as those pesky squirts). The Bastion is the only remaining bastion(no pun intended) of civilisation and life.

Continue reading the review

About the author: frags prefers playing his first person shooters with background music from Pink Floyd. It’s a religious and spiritual experience. Recommends others to try it out.

Welcome to the very first installment of Coop Commendation, where Koop is King, and spelling goes right down the drainpipe. Through this series, we intend to share our cooperative play experiences and opinions, as well as give our impressions of games that offer cooperative play as a gameplay mode. Coop Commendation is not a review column; we will still feature specific games, but we will mainly discuss the cooperative experience, and how fun it was for us to play through the game as a group.

In this post, we’ll be discussing the high-octane twin-stick blastfest that is Renegade Ops!

Mike:

Awesome. That’s how I can describe my experience playing RenOps. From the ridiculously over the top dialog to the gorgeous Avalanche Engine 2.0 based on Havok’s solid tried and tested physics engine. When I first played this I was thinking to myself, wow this has BF3’s graphics from a top down view with matchbox cars under your control. What else is this game about? Explosions and blowing things up. Over and over again. The physics engine allows for stunning visuals of tanks, armoured vehicles and helicopters blowing up in spectacular fashion like a Michael Bay movie, only better, so much better.

Bratatatatat piew piew fwoooooooosh!

When it comes to coop, what I really enjoyed was the experience of moving from point to point with your buddies capturing or destroying objectives while the chief bad guy shrieks at you in comic form. There are 9 missions which you can play with up to 4 of your buddies, and I must say this is the best way to enjoy the game. Make sure you have a gamepad controller and fire up voice chat and sit back to enjoy a really pleasing coop experience that leaves you laughing with your friends and blowing everything up in your path. The strength of this game is its simplicity. At its very core this a no frills and fun game to play while you kick back after a long day at work or school. In my opinion it’s a great game to unwind with, like an ice cold beer.

"And we would've gotten away with it too, if it weren't for those meddling Renegades!"

Jed:

Renegade Ops is already perfect. The only thing they could do to drive Renegade Ops into new dimensions of greatness is to turn it into M.A.S.K.: The Game. Sure, I had a blast guiding Gunnar and his bouncy little jeep through jungles, deserts, gigantic military platforms, and mysterious underground complexes, but imagine how much better it could have been if I could play a cool 80s dude in tinted aviators whose lime-green motorcycle could transform into an attack helo at the press of a button. The game’s cast is composed of the staple 80s gimmicky heroes of the ragtag variety, but unlike the grunts of G.I. Joe, these heroes are savvy enough to know that You Never Get Out of the Car. Therefore, I love this game, even if it isn’t M.A.S.K.: The Game.

I want this game to have these guys in it.

The coop aspect more than makes up for the lack of snappy acronym-based team names like M.A.S.K. and V.E.N.O.M. The game supports up to four players playing through the campaign, and with the full complement of four, it is sublime. Because you never run out of ammo for your basic gun, you can basically drive everywhere and do all sorts of powerslidey stunts while firing enough rounds per minute to whittle down Ayers Rock into a fine mound of instant milk chocolate. Multiply this by four and you’ve got Contra on wheels with two additional players, minus the notable dying-every-two-seconds habit that most classic Contra games tend to feature. The bottom line is this: Renegade Ops is all about shooting and blowing things up and laughing at the barefaced shameless 80s bluntness of it all with up to three of your friends. On wheels. I love this game. Even if it isn’t M.A.S.K.: The Game, it’s close enough for now.

If you see this often, you're playing the game right.

James:

I think Jed and Mike totally summed up how good the game is with coop. Blowing shit up and laughing at the cheesy lines that Bryant and Inferno throw at each other is gold right there. It’s a simple game to pick up and play with your buddies, if you want something relaxing while looking at some pretty explosions.

The healing barrier is one of the more team-friendly special abilities.

Each character has its own unique special ability, so knowing when to dish out your special attack is vital for this coop-centric game. Calling an air-strike, commanding some antlions (yes for some reason Gordon Freeman is around) or getting an energy barrier up that heals, needs some straight-up communication with your buddies. To control your awesome vehicle, a game pad is highly recommend with dual analog sticks. I personally used an Xbox 360 controller as the game was made for it, but I’m sure any 3rd party gamepads will work with the game. Movement and combat feel very natural with the controller. Delivering some hurt to the enemies felt very very satisfying (my favorite secondary weapon are the missiles).

You will be imitating every word that comes out of this man's mouth. We guarantee it.

For the love of everything coop and huge explosions (I do love me some explosions), get this game and get some of your closest buddies to join you. You will thank us after.

Not these space pirates, though. I CAN ONLY WISH.

January is ending. The world is ending. Everything is ending.

Not us, though; like many an occult-themed story has pointed out, the death of something means the birth of another. We’re starting to institute some big changes at OMGeek, all in the name of the players and the mythical Good Game.

I apologize if I’m spouting nonsense. It’s Monday.

Here’s a rundown of last week’s events:

• The big news, of course, is OMGeek’s brand new Singapore-based server. Expect better pings, more exciting games, and the bigger likelihood that the guy you just knifed in the face can drive over to your house to punch you in the nose, all without crossing any major bodies of water.

  Our Southeast Asian server is finally located in Southeast Asia, though. That’s cause for celebration!

• INQUE’s crusade to tweak and test our Evochron Mercenary server to perfection continues. If you haven’t tried it out yet, Evochron Mercenary is a free-roaming sandbox of space trading and exploration that reads like an all-star feature list of everything that came before it: the trading of Elite and Privateer, the Newtonian physics of I-War, the modern fancy graphics of X (though admittedly not as fancy!), the multiplayer cooperation and competition of EVE Online, and the unique feature of being able to enter a planet’s atmosphere and land on the surface, all in real-time.

  Planet-landing. It’s jaw-dropping the first time you pull it off.

• Finally, you guys might be interested to know that we’re moving our Minecraft server to Singapore as well. This means that yes, we’re finally doing a world restart, and yes, we’re going to make a fun community event out of it. It’s an endless world out there; let’s make this one last!

  If you can’t bear to part with your creations and you want a copy of our currenet world, stay tuned on the Minecraft server forum thread for details.

It felt appropriate to pull this out again.

Gamerfriends, let’s not preface this very important announcement with the usual nonsensical discussion about unicorns firing laser beams and tanks with feet. I’ll just go ahead and say it, although the huge title up there may have spoiled the surprise just a tad.

We’re very pleased to announce that we are now hosting Battlefield 3 on a new server, and this one’s in Singapore. INDEED. We’re now hosting in Singapore! One* could say that our Southeast Asian server has finally found its way to Southeast Asian soil. One** could also say it’s a new server to go along with a new year. It brings a tear to my eye. I think it may even bring two.

Expect better pings, more of our Southeast Asian friends to play with, and the same brand of OMGeek fun that you’ve [hopefully] gotten accustomed to in our games. Thanks for your continued presence and support, everyone. Here’s to an awesome year of gaming!

*Mike
**James

In this article, frags raises the valid question of whether game pricing should be adjusted equitably towards the purchasing power of the people in any given region or country. I don’t have any exact figures on how much damage the local retail industry is taking in this age of Steam, but perhaps it’s time retailers started pricing games as entertainment, and not luxury products. On the insanity of the local pricing for Starcraft II, I have nothing good to say. Read the full article here.

Pricing has always been the eternal question in Malaysia and around our region. Well, at least for video games(PC or console games for that matter). It is one that has divided so many gamers into those that buy original and to those that continue to buy pirated game(or instead drop into the slew of free to play games available now). Although it can be argued that even pirates(you have to be fair here) could afford original game, just not that too often. This isn’t the main reason for piracy, just one that is often quoted. At least in Malaysia.

And this is a common argument amongst fellow Malaysians, and one that I’m finding myself starting to fall into recently. Fact is, our purchasing power is just not equal to Singaporeans. Publisher often lump us Malaysians together with Singaporeans which often means we’re getting local retail copies of games adjusted to the Singaporean cost of living. The Thais get further price drops, but we Malaysians get a minor discount, when you think about it, the cost of living and purchasing power parity of Malaysians with Singaporeans is just not the same or even fairly similar.

Continue reading the article

WE ARE THE REAL MONSTERS

Why does the game insist on calling it “Forest” when American and Russian weapons of mass destruction have turned it into a clearing? Truly a mystery for the ages.

Yesterday was the first time I’ve seen Caspian Border’s point C–Forest–fully bathed in sunlight, its tree canopy blown away into last century by a non-stop barrage of tank shells, mortars, chopper strafing runs, and god knows what else that goes boom. What I’ve learned? The 1000-ticket setting leads to deforestation.

Here’s what happened last week.

• Operation Dragon Black was a success of the prolonged, edge-of-your-seat, nail-biting kind. Each 1k ticket map we played took an hour on average, and with a longer playing time and more wiggle room to strategize and take back lost ground en masse, the games we played turned into fierce territorial disputes for premium ground like Caspian Border’s hilltop. By the time we were finished, not a tree or building [that was designed to collapse] had been left standing in the area. All we needed to cap it off with style was some guy stumbling into the suddenly-bright sunlight yelling “Madness! Madness! Madness!”

  Many thanks to everyone who showed up to participate! We had tons of fun during the op, and we hope you did, too. Be here every Sunday afternoon for our regularly scheduled BF3 Skirmish Sunday!

• OMGeek is now hosting Evochron Mercenary! We still have a few kinks to iron out on the server, so we strongly suggest that you drop by our chatroom or leave a post in the forums if you encounter any problems.

  Evochron Mercenary is a huge sandbox game that channels all the best bits of last decade’s Privateer, or the even older Elite. Each player takes on the role of a pilot out to make a mark on the great big galaxy…and that’s it. The game is wide open, whether you’d like to mine for minerals, serve as an interstellar bodyguard, or participate in a few starship races. You can even create your own space stations in space, although I haven’t gotten that far with my character yet. If you’re even remotely interested in space sims, check it out!

• Another warm welcome to all the new OMGeeks who joined up recently! If you’ve been posting or hanging around in the chatroom, chances are we know you already. Thanks for joining our growing community. We look forward to playing some games with you!