Just Cause 2: Physics Don't Real

Just Cause 2 represents something wonderful in the video game world.  At some point, video game companies decided that they would try for realism.  It was an okay idea, with graphics getting better and engines gaining the ability to have complex AI and huge advances in level design they figured that realism would make a more immersive and enjoyable game.

I somewhat agree, well thought out, story driven realism games are great, things like Metro 2033, Call of Duty 4, Spec Ops: The Line, that sort of thing.  But it gets taken too far.  If a game is going for realism then it starts gaining the same criticisms as action movies, there's no earthly way that any of the stuff is possible.  It becomes almost comical how unrealistics supposedly realistic games become and it takes out some of the fun.

Just Cause 2 is realistic in the ideas that you at least appear to be human and bullets kill you and other people, that's about it, but damn it's fun.

Fuck you realism

Modern sandbox games are going in a good direction in my opinion.  The whole idea of freedom is, well, to be free.  Making you completely human and fragile makes the game less fun.  Just Cause 2 understands this and made the game over the top, completely crazy and fun.  If I want to grapple hook a person off a motorcycle and then drive it off a bridge, free fall for a bit and then hijack a plane mid flight the game obliges me.  And no, I don't want to go bowling with my cousin, I don't care how "real" that is, it's fucking boring.

Just Cause's glue, the thing that hold the whole game together is fucking around.  You fuck around until you get enough points so you can go fuck around with some factions and eventually fuck around with the CIA.  It flows nicely and rewards you for doing what you actually want to do, nice and straight forward.

Mmmm, chaos

It's a good thing the fucking around is fun because the rest of the game is kind of terrible to be fair.  The story is god awful.  It's stupidly short, there's zero character development and no twists or turns, it's pretty linear and predictable.  The faction missions are a bit better but horribly arbitrary, nothing seemed to carry any weight at all.  Sure they were fun, but what was the point?  The dialogue is cringe worthy in some sections and has zero flow to it at all.

It also had some really strange balance issues.  The difficulty of the game is all over the place with some missions being incredibly easy, especially if you brought a helicopter to play with, while others are stupidly hard.  The upgrade system didn't seem to make much sense either, there's hardly any change in the guns when you do upgrade them and I didn't even bother with the vehicle upgrades because they only apply to the over-priced vehicles you order off the black market.  My average time in a car before it exploded, got flipped over or I ran it off a cliff must have been less than two minutes.  I'm not going to spend four missions worth of cash on something that I'm going to wreck the second I get it.  The fast cars are stupidly hard to drive in anything but a straight line and those would be the only ones I'd be willing to buy, aside from the fucking awesome single seat jet.

Wish they'd let me buy one of these

But I did have fun, quite a lot of fun actually.  Just ignore the shit story and go blow some stuff up and you'll get the full experience of the game.  The controls are nice, the weapons and most of the vehicles work well and the world is huge and fun to explore.  That and it often goes on sale for incredibly small amounts that is well worth it.  Now on to some of the best screen shots I've ever taken.

Homemade one-way jetpack

It is possible to land the planes, kind of

Dark Souls: Prepare To OH WHAT THE FUCK!?

And thus answers the question of why haven't there been any posts recently, I got caught up playing Dark Souls, for 40 hours, because I couldn't stop, because fuck if I know.

Dark Souls might be the most notorious game to come out in recent memory.  It's been called, "NO FUCKING WAY DID THAT SHIT JUST HAPPEN!" and, "I AM GOING TO RAPE YOUR UNDEAD MOTHER WITH THIS CLAYMORE YOU FUCKING CUNT STAIN!" and who could forget, *Breaks controller and swears off video games forever*, but prepare to get out your pitchforks because it's really not that hard.

Don't be a wuss

But before I explain my rather unique perspective on the game's difficulty, I need to touch on the awful bits.  Dark Souls is the laziest port I've every played.  The only change I can see in the entire game from the Xbox version is the resolution selector, and it's not actually a resolution selector, it's a window size changer.  The game will render at a set resolution not matter what.  That means your 1920x1080 screen is going to look fuzzier than my last drunken weekend.  And the frame rate is capped at 30.  Why?  Fuck you for asking.  There is a fix for the resolution though which is MANDATORY if you want to play the game without a headache, but ain't nothing you can do about consoles shitty frame rate.

Next up, get a controller.  Once again, not optional.  The keyboard controls are mind-blowingly awful and will kill you more than anything else in the game.  They just don't work.  No effort was put into making the keyboard a viable control system for anything other than the knight and even then you still don't want to try it for too long, and you can forget about PvP with it, back stabs galore.

And last but not least, the story is shit, I can't even tell if there was a story really, you're given two objectives in the whole game and they say go, the objectives don't really change, there's a bunch of stuff that seems totally random, but whatever, there it is.

Thanks asshole

But after I got all the graphics sorted out, after I dusted off my trusty controller and finally settled in to beat this game, I found one of the best, most organic and engaging RPGs of my gaming career.  It's so good, it gives me hope for future RPGs.

Dark Souls demonstrates that it's possible to make a mature RPG that doesn't simply consist of a ton of blood and saying "Fuck" every fifth word.  It shows that players are not stupid and do not need to be coddled and it shows that function can be form.

Dark Souls starts off with you, a zombie, thrown into an asylum for the hordes of crazy undead that have taken over the world.  After an incredibly brief tutorial that consists simply of a few messages written on the ground about what the buttons do you're on your own.  The first level does not hold back much, it's very much out to kill you.  And that's it, tutorial and hand holding is done 3 minutes into the game, game has started, learn fast.

The controls are beautiful in their simplicity, two attacks, a block, a parry, a roll key and a run key, it takes two seconds to learn, hours to master.  The controls really are fantastic on the controller.  It feels tight and right.  I was very mad a few times during the game, very, very mad, but never once did the controls screw me over, it was always my fault.

Feet, don't fail me now

The combat is damn near flawless.  It is 100% skill based with nearly no luck involved.  You got hit?  Your fault.  You killed a boss with taking no damage?  All you, nice job.  The combat is simple and complex.  No two enemies have the same attack patterns, you have to learn as you go.  In a similar vein, no two weapons you find have the same attack patterns either, so you better practice with that halberd before you take on the boss.  Everything just feels nice and well thought out.

The design, in all aspects, is the new gold standard for RPGs.  The levels are breath-taking at all points of the game.  No two areas look even remotely similar, from a broken down city, to a crazy deathtrap castle.  From sprawling forests to lava drenched ruins, the visuals of this game are simply amazing.

Demon Ruins

Crystal Cave

Anor Londo

The amazing visuals don't just stop with the landscapes.  The hordes of enemies you'll be slashing your way through are equally astounding and terrifyingly beautiful.

Just run

Not your average Mimic

That flaming mountain behind me is actually just a mini-boss

The Bed of Chaos

But on to the actual difficulty of the game, the selling point, it's point of infamy, it's not that hard.  Sure, the game is challenging and at points can be incredibly frustrating but what no one ever seems to bring up is how incredibly fair it is about it.  Dying involves losing all your hard earned souls, your used humanity and respawns all the monsters on the way to the boss you just died at that you're going to fight through again to get back, but it really is your fault for carrying too many souls and humanity and especially your fault for not dodging properly.  You even get the chance to get all you lost back and even that's fair.  If you fell off a cliff, your souls will be waiting for you a healthy distance back from the edge in an easily accessible point.  It doesn't make you try to get your souls floating in midair where you fell.  If you die again, well then you weren't being careful enough and it's your fault for dying before you got back to where you already proved you can get to.  It's the classic, "Let the child touch the hot stove, they're sure not to do it again." lesson technique.  There's no impossible monsters out there, everything is very beatable, even the first time you run into it and this includes the bosses.  Attacks from bosses are either blockable or not, dodgeable or not, there's no question after the first time, and if you try to roll past an attack you can't that's your fault for not learning fast enough.  There's not really any one shot kill moves any of the enemies have, you always have the opportunity to pick yourself back up with the lesson learned and carry on the fight.  It's consistent and becomes predictable if you're willing to follow the rules.

In conclusion, this is not the game for everyone.  It requires patience, concentration and shear willpower to play well.  If you can muster that, it's one of the greats.  But if you are easily angered, looking for a game that you can just pick up and play casually or have trouble keeping your burnt fingers away from the stove, I'd probably pass.  Your unshattered monitor will thank you for the chance to stay that way a bit longer.