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written at work this morning ...
May. 18th, 2010 07:32 pmWork … Busy … Etc …
I’ve been meaning to write about work, but got distracted yesterday.
Anyway, work is very “busy” these days. Yesterday I read through 600 pages of dieselsweeties archives. About 3 of those comics were funny.
I’ve had an intern for the past two weeks. He didn’t come to work this past Friday though, thinking that since all his school mates had a day off he probably had too.
He was supposed to do another two weeks of internship, but those might not happen now.
I’m not too fond of having an intern anyway. Most of the work I do is very Europcar-specific and therefore only good to learn for someone who intends to work for Europcar.
Also, it’s often boring here. Most of the time I have a few hours each day that are busy, and as for the rest of the day, I’m sitting here answering one phone call every few hours. And reading online comics.
Oh well. I’m getting a new intern these days, so I’ll have to start all over again teaching her stuff. But at least she’s got a driving license, so I can send her to do some more errands, like delivering cars or getting them washed.
Splinter Cell: Conviction
I’ve been playing that for a few days now, and so far it’s really quite disappointing.
As seems to be the trend in computer games lately, this game concept has been dumbed down to suit casual gamers as well. Gameone.tv pointed out that the controls have been simplified compared to previous Splinter Cell games. I don’t get how they think that’s a good thing though. Granted, controls in Chaos Theory were complex, but it was still manageable to quickly learn and use them, and they gave you the flexibility to solve problems in different ways. You could play the game like an action shooter and just go around killing everyone. You could also sneak around the level watching the enemies and grabbing / disabling individual ones non-lethally (and since you could interrogate many of them, you learned more about the plot, making this a more rewarding playing style). Or you could just sneak past them without them noticing you at all. The level design was such that in most scenarios you could do any of these things.
This isn’t the case anymore with Conviction. The levels are designed to be much narrower, tunnel-like. You don’t get the option to sneak around enemies anymore, instead you usually have to take a frontal approach and just shoot your way through them. Playing it reminds me a little of Mass Effect 2, where you just go from cover to cover and get rid of waves of enemies.
Enemies in Conviction come in waves too. Whenever there’s plenty of cover to use you can be sure a wave of enemies will suddenly and pretty much out of nowhere appear to make your live difficult, and once the last of them has been taken care of, your character makes some comment and you know that’s the last of them. When this happens you can just walk to the next save point, where the same thing will happen all over again.
Of course you can still sneak around, and occasionally even climb up somewhere, but there’s not much point to it really tactically. Since the levels are very narrow, the enemies are always close to each other and you rarely have one separated from the herd. As a consequence the game rewards you in a very unrealistic way when you do manage a silent hand to hand takedown: You get the option to “mark and execute”, where you can mark several enemies with an arrow and then with the press of a single button execute all of them. Looks cool the first time you do it, but doesn’t make any sense.
The choice of weapons doesn’t really help with the sneaking either. You can choose between several hand guns, SMGs, assault rifles, and a shotgun, but none of them is really good for the sneaky guy. Some of the hand guns aren’t silenced, and of those that are, there’s only one with a sniper scope. And that one’s too weak to kill most targets with a single shot, so you give away your position anyway. As for the bigger guns, they seem to be either suppressed / silenced *or* scoped, never both. So you can choose between not hitting your targets from a save distance or having to change positions after taking a shot because suddenly the whole world knows where you are.
Something that came as a bit of a surprise to me was the level of violence shown when you interrogate some characters. In previous games hurting enemies to obtain information was always only hinted at graphically, in Conviction it’s been done very explicitly and a lot more interactive. I prefer the more subtle approach. The way it’s done in Conviction seems unnecessarily violent and graphic.
Oh, you can pick up weapons now. It’s the same button you use to dive from cover to cover or to jump over obstacles. So you might end up suddenly holding a different rifle in the middle of a firefight instead of hiding behind cover.
Also, there’s only one night vision gadget. It works through sonar I think, and has some very bad interference occasionally. You can find enemies hiding behind walls with it, but you might not perceive the wall between yourself and your enemy anymore. It’s a little irritating, especially during one level where you can’t see *anything* without them and you keep bumping into walls and other obstacles. Some of your opponents have the same gear by the way, so whenever you’re using it you might be giving your position away.
Anyway. I think I’m going to re-play Chaos Theory for the third or fourth time. Way better game.
I’ve been meaning to write about work, but got distracted yesterday.
Anyway, work is very “busy” these days. Yesterday I read through 600 pages of dieselsweeties archives. About 3 of those comics were funny.
I’ve had an intern for the past two weeks. He didn’t come to work this past Friday though, thinking that since all his school mates had a day off he probably had too.
He was supposed to do another two weeks of internship, but those might not happen now.
I’m not too fond of having an intern anyway. Most of the work I do is very Europcar-specific and therefore only good to learn for someone who intends to work for Europcar.
Also, it’s often boring here. Most of the time I have a few hours each day that are busy, and as for the rest of the day, I’m sitting here answering one phone call every few hours. And reading online comics.
Oh well. I’m getting a new intern these days, so I’ll have to start all over again teaching her stuff. But at least she’s got a driving license, so I can send her to do some more errands, like delivering cars or getting them washed.
Splinter Cell: Conviction
I’ve been playing that for a few days now, and so far it’s really quite disappointing.
As seems to be the trend in computer games lately, this game concept has been dumbed down to suit casual gamers as well. Gameone.tv pointed out that the controls have been simplified compared to previous Splinter Cell games. I don’t get how they think that’s a good thing though. Granted, controls in Chaos Theory were complex, but it was still manageable to quickly learn and use them, and they gave you the flexibility to solve problems in different ways. You could play the game like an action shooter and just go around killing everyone. You could also sneak around the level watching the enemies and grabbing / disabling individual ones non-lethally (and since you could interrogate many of them, you learned more about the plot, making this a more rewarding playing style). Or you could just sneak past them without them noticing you at all. The level design was such that in most scenarios you could do any of these things.
This isn’t the case anymore with Conviction. The levels are designed to be much narrower, tunnel-like. You don’t get the option to sneak around enemies anymore, instead you usually have to take a frontal approach and just shoot your way through them. Playing it reminds me a little of Mass Effect 2, where you just go from cover to cover and get rid of waves of enemies.
Enemies in Conviction come in waves too. Whenever there’s plenty of cover to use you can be sure a wave of enemies will suddenly and pretty much out of nowhere appear to make your live difficult, and once the last of them has been taken care of, your character makes some comment and you know that’s the last of them. When this happens you can just walk to the next save point, where the same thing will happen all over again.
Of course you can still sneak around, and occasionally even climb up somewhere, but there’s not much point to it really tactically. Since the levels are very narrow, the enemies are always close to each other and you rarely have one separated from the herd. As a consequence the game rewards you in a very unrealistic way when you do manage a silent hand to hand takedown: You get the option to “mark and execute”, where you can mark several enemies with an arrow and then with the press of a single button execute all of them. Looks cool the first time you do it, but doesn’t make any sense.
The choice of weapons doesn’t really help with the sneaking either. You can choose between several hand guns, SMGs, assault rifles, and a shotgun, but none of them is really good for the sneaky guy. Some of the hand guns aren’t silenced, and of those that are, there’s only one with a sniper scope. And that one’s too weak to kill most targets with a single shot, so you give away your position anyway. As for the bigger guns, they seem to be either suppressed / silenced *or* scoped, never both. So you can choose between not hitting your targets from a save distance or having to change positions after taking a shot because suddenly the whole world knows where you are.
Something that came as a bit of a surprise to me was the level of violence shown when you interrogate some characters. In previous games hurting enemies to obtain information was always only hinted at graphically, in Conviction it’s been done very explicitly and a lot more interactive. I prefer the more subtle approach. The way it’s done in Conviction seems unnecessarily violent and graphic.
Oh, you can pick up weapons now. It’s the same button you use to dive from cover to cover or to jump over obstacles. So you might end up suddenly holding a different rifle in the middle of a firefight instead of hiding behind cover.
Also, there’s only one night vision gadget. It works through sonar I think, and has some very bad interference occasionally. You can find enemies hiding behind walls with it, but you might not perceive the wall between yourself and your enemy anymore. It’s a little irritating, especially during one level where you can’t see *anything* without them and you keep bumping into walls and other obstacles. Some of your opponents have the same gear by the way, so whenever you’re using it you might be giving your position away.
Anyway. I think I’m going to re-play Chaos Theory for the third or fourth time. Way better game.
