Titanfall [PC, Xbone, Xbox 360]

Titanfall, the most talked about game of the year so far and finally I get around to reviewing it. Thanks to an anonymous donor for a copy of the game. If you haven't heard Titanfall is a First Person Shooter (FPS) with no single player campaign, it's multiplayer only. It's not the first of it's kind but it is probably the first from a big studio with lots of backing.

There is still a campaign but it is a multiplayer affair and it needs to be completed in order to unlock everything. Honestly, it kind of sucks for a lot of reasons. As Kotaku pointed out, you can finish the campaign without having ever fired a shot. It's really just a set of multiplayer matches that have to run their course. Secondly, I'm not impressed with the story at all. People yell stuff at you, there is the odd interesting idea but it doesn't impact what you are doing at all in terms of gameplay. The other factor with this is that, paying attention to the story will wind you up shot in the head; it is too fast-paced to stop and smell the CGI. Finally, it's really hard to find a match, especially for the particular campaign mission you are up to. The campaign seems to be amongst the worst for this but as you'll find out, matchmaking in general is a big issue.

Matchmaking is almost totally automatic, which could be nice but it is riddled with troublesome issues. You can choose which data centre to use, whether that be Australian, US, etc. and which type of match you want to play but you can't see a list of servers to choose from. Titanfall offers 5 game modes at the moment but if you want to login and get to a match straight away you'll just be playing Attrition. It's so hard to find a match of anything else except for maybe the Variety Pack mode. Titanfall does not support cross-platform play, which I think really contributes to the server desolation. I thought Xbone and PC players would be able to link up, at the very least. Also there is no autobalance of any kind, you will not even be swapped to the other team if they have several less players, let alone if you/they are kicking arse. It's incredibly rare to find a match that approaches an approximation of even.

Titanfall Makes up for all of this by having awesome gameplay. It's frantic and the rewards come thick and fast. Whether it be a new weapon or you've just received a burn card, something is always causing you to check your build. The burn cards are a cool idea, they give you a little boost such as a more powerful version of your gun but once you die it's gone. A lot of thought went into making this game accessible to a range of players. The clever thing about it is by adding those dumb AI minions into the mix even poor FPS players like myself can build up confidence. You kill a couple of those and then you are in the swing of things. I have done stuff in this game I never thought I would be capable of in a FPS, going on kill-streaks, actually detonating a satchel charge on time, the list goes on. However I think some fudging does go into this. It seems easier to kill someone in this game then in other titles. The hit-boxes seem to be larger than average and I swear I have killed people when technically they should have been around a corner. It certainly happens a lot to me in the replays. This is not to say there is no skill in it, there is a lot to learn from good parkour technique, when to activate your special abilities and of course, being accurate enough to get a headshot.

Respawn Entertainment have announced they are working on matchmaking and perhaps in time it will be a lot better. There is also a promise of some free DLC as well. Either way, Titanfall is a great game, that just has a few niggling issues. As long as you are willing to focus on playing the Attrition mode, (face it, it's the best anyway) you'll never have to worry about getting into a match quickly but then what is the point of all these other modes? Still, if you want a shooter to play with your friends who aren't the best at them, this could be a way to encourage them to join you. In that sense Titanfall really achieves it's purpose. Go buy it and join a non-Attrition mode, maybe I'll see you waiting in the lobby... 8.4/10.

Mavericks 10.9.2 Review

There comes a time in everyone's life when they must update their operating system to the latest and greatest. So a mere two patches later and Mac OS Mavericks seemed usable. With great trepidation, a Time Machine and a (fully bootable) SuperDuper! backup, I set out to ride this wave.

I came from Lion not Mountain Lion but the first thing I noticed and liked, is that it really isn't that different. There are a lot of features Apple has listed to wow you but most of these are really only for a minority of people. Enhanced Dictation is a bit of fun but it only has limited appeal and gets half of what you say wrong anyway. It is great that iBooks is finally on Mac but at the same time I don't really see myself reading that many books on it anyway. The power saving features are probably the biggest boost to most users with LAPTOP reporting a 41 minute gain in battery life during their testing. The main features I like, are the iCloud features introduced in Mountain Lion but now I get all that for free. I think this is the update Apple had to have. Firstly it's free, secondly as much as they want you to think it, it isn't that exciting of an upgrade. Instead it focuses on getting the core things right and although it took them two iterations, in my testing at least, it is finally stable.

Oh look, Apple Maps how great! I can't wait to delete that. Oh, you can't, what a surprise.

It gives you features that nobody wants like Apple Maps and a harder to read yet still kinda ugly calendar. The notification centre is a combination of cool and annoying. I find it most useful for iTunes and extremely annoying for text messages, as it means I get one notification on my Mac and then a spilt second later on my phone. Yes I know you can turn it all off but there isn't even a simple way to default it to all notifications off. Instead you either have to do each app manually, or set "do not disturb" mode up, which will still leave a 1 minute gap where you could receive notifications.

Now onto performance. First I'll start with my 7 year old MacBook Pro 3,1. Now I have to say it does not have a functioning battery right now, so it is underclocking itself as a result. Both of these tests were performed without a battery though so they are even. As you can see in the NovaBench scores below, Lion performs better, though Mavericks' graphics performance is much higher.

Lion

Mavericks

Now onto my 2011 iMac 12,2 testing in Xbench. This time Mavericks outperforms Lion hands down.

Lion

Mavericks

It isn't particularly surprising that Mavericks only improves the newest machine but I would like to do some more testing on the MacBook Pro as soon as I can get a new battery for it. The most disappointing factor for my sad old MacBook, is that there aren't really any customisation options, out of the box, that increase the speed of Mavericks at all. Yes there are Terminal commands one could run and plugins to download but there isn't really any option to turn off the bells and whistles and just focus on the core tasks.

Overall I am pretty happy with Mavericks, it was easy to get everything up and running, even things like Logic Pro and Ableton were easy to get going again. I didn't have any issue with getting both of those programs talking with my MOTU 828mkII, so I was back recording again in no time. I also really like Safari 7.0.2, mainly because Safari 6.x can't handle browsing most websites these days. There are probably only one or two, major new features that most people will use in Mavericks, so there is little to be excited about but I think it is worth the update because of some of the more boring things going on under the hood. Whilst older computers aren't going to see an upgrade in speed you may want to upgrade them just to get around any compatibility issues you may have. For those who are Mac purists and aren't familiar with using iOS, I think Mavericks may be a little alienating, though it doesn't change a huge amount, it is a definite step in the direction of linking the two together. My official recommendation is to backup heavily then upgrade and I'll see you when 11.0.2 is out.

South Park: The Stick of Truth [Windows, Xbox 360, PS3]

The coveted stick of truth, whoever controls it has limitless power. This much delayed title is finally out and I've been playing it on PC. Yes I have the unedited version and no, I don't think you'll be missing out on anything exciting if your copy is censored. It's just a couple of disgusting mini-games that in terms of gameplay mechanics are pretty boring. Anyway on to the experience as a whole!

Gameplay is broken into two distinctive parts, roaming the world and turn-based battles. Roaming about the world is mostly about puzzle solving. Using things like your long-ranged weapon, your allies abilities and fart-magic, you unlock the path before you and find hidden treasures. When you encounter enemies as you are roaming about, you can hit them with an arrow to stun them in combat, or, if you get the first hit on them, you get to strike first. Then you enter the turn-based battle screen. The style of fighting is akin to a Mario RPG title, where timing and the mashing of buttons will ensure successful attacks. It's mostly pretty fun and you get to learn a lot of different attacks but by the end it is all a little repetitive.

The storyline is great but if you couldn't see yourself watching three episodes of South Park back-to-back this game isn't for you. The story takes a lot of the classic South Park episodes and mashes them into one big plot with a few new ideas for the game. Whilst this does mean it often treads on old ground there are plenty of hilarious and unexpected moments to keep you going. However, there are some moments where the gameplay/storyline overlaps in strange ways and doesn't really feel cohesive. For example, I had already spoken to the goth kids and learnt that I had to dress like them to hang out with them but as this later becomes a quest, I was forced to hear it all again. Mostly though the next plot twist or silly joke is what really keeps you driving along into this game. I wish as much time was spent on the design elements as they had put into the storyline.

Some poor design choices have stopped this from being the game of the year. When you see a mob of monsters on the screen, you battle them all as one, yet when it comes to picking up loot you have to search each monster. Why not streamline this into one loot bag and make it funner for everyone? There is no way to easily see how your weapons and armour compares to what you are buying. Some of the gameplay mechanics are immensely frustrating to use and the game teaches you these fart mechanics that you don't actually need to use in the game. Throughout the whole game you use the WASD keys to move but all of a sudden you need to use the arrow keys to do dance moves. I can't tell if this is a bug, a joke, or Matt and Trey being arseholes, either way it just comes off as frustrating. Plus half the time you are doing the right thing but just not standing in the right spot which adds to the frustration. Of course seeing as I played it on PC there are plenty of bugs and work-arounds but I guess this is the new normal.

It's a good game with good ideas but not enough time has been spent developing it. You will go through moments of pure joy, laughing at the gags and enjoying most of the gameplay, only to be snagged by poor design choices and bugs. South Park: The Stick of Truth is one for the fans and whilst I had hopes it could transcend that status and be an all round fun title it's gameplay isn't solid enough. There is a huge adventure here but only someone who is a fan of the series, could actually stand to play it for that long 7.9/10.

Creating Music for a phone game.

So a friend and I are currently developing a game for the iPhone and hopefully, if it receives even modest success, Android too. It is going to take a long time for us to finish this project as we are only doing it in our spare time, so I won't go into too much detail just yet. What I want to talk about now is a song I have recently created for it. If you just want to hear the song, scroll down to the bottom.

The Setup

iMac mid 2011
Logic Pro 9.1.8
MOTU 828mkII A/D
Newer Technology miniStack v3 (explained below)

The Instruments
Korg Microkey 25 key USB keyboard
Roland TD 15

The Cables
1x (Extra Long) Firewire 400
1x MIDI
1x USB, type A to type B
1x Firewire 800 (explained below)

The Music Creation Process

It's hard for me to say how I create music, because I don't think I really have a technique per se, it's more that I just blurt something out and then I begin working with the mess I've created. This whole song began because I was testing out a Christmas present, the Korg Microkey. I just wanted to have some fun with it and out came this riff. I used some sneaky short cuts to help me create this song. There is the obvious copy and paste of sections but also copying and pasting sections into different instruments to help me get an idea of the sound. Then I would take out unneeded notes, lengthen them or move them as necessary. Once I had finished using the keyboard and editing notes in the piano roll I moved onto the drumkit.

The Problems

Some of you may notice straight off the bat that the 828mkII uses firewire 400 and the mid 2011 iMac only has firewire 800. So to fix this, I used my powered portable hard-drive/hub, which handled all my connection issues. Next we come to the latency issue. I've never really noticed any latency issues with anything but drums in Logic and of course I wanted to record some drums, via MIDI in this project. I switched on Low Latency Mode in the options, which did nothing. So I Googled and read manuals and tweaked this and that to no avail. Turns out you have to switch the button in the arrange window, the option in settings does nothing. I guess it's a feature.

Mix for Mono

The first thing I noticed about my mix was that it sounded terrible through the tiny iPhone mono speaker. The combination of a stereo mix and the heavy bass sounds of Logics instruments meant I was getting some problems with sound going out of phase. To correct this I changed to a monophonic mix and I tweaked every sound I used. Mainly I needed to take out the bass, pretty heavily but on some sounds I had to cut some high frequency and adjust their volume/compression levels. After nine mixes I was happy to say it was listenable on that tiny iPhone speaker.

Read Before Listening: A Warning

Because Google are not the masters of the internet we thought them to be, mp3s are quite difficult to load into Blogger, so I have uploaded a video instead. I decided to use some footage I had taken with my iPhone at MONA and a gig I went to.

Warning: The video contains strobe lighting that may be dangerous for some viewers. Also it is of such poor quality it is recommended that you close your eyes and simply enjoy the song.