State of Decay 2: Odd Friends of Haven

[Part of the Diary of Zombies]

Hearing that Trumbull Valley is open again, Zeb, Hailey and Kraken from Hamlet Squad arrive to the radio welcome of Ray Santos, "the valley's protector", but find rumors of it being safe are false as it is home to plague hearts just like everywhere else. Luckily, since Kraken assisted an odd stranger named "Clutch pinya" (multiplayer for 15 minutes) she was gifted some godlike (definitely hacked) weaponry from him: a trio of automatic weapons with 999 bullets all in one clip!

Mmm, that looks legit...

Hailey and Zeb use these weapons and within the first day eliminate all the plague hearts around (standard difficulty only) and start doing jobs for bounty salesman Cash Beaumont and a group of scientists up in the mountains working on some computer gizmo called CLEO. This group includes Dr. Hoffman, IzzBee the hacker and reformed thug Mickey Wilkerson who comes along for some scavenging missions and find the grave of someone named Malik while doing so.

Taking the leadership position, Hailey decides to go recruit loner Al, gardener Poldo, sexter Raney, soldier Rhino, electician Buck, and lawman Anselmo to move from their checkpoint base to a Red Talon fort at the fairgrounds where ex-Red Talon Chavez and his buddy Beebo Bee assist in getting things running again and after over a week of helping the scientists they eventually them to visit the base to install CLEO's Haven defense protocol.

The zombies launch a siege during Haven's installation but are outmatched by the guns the team has. More so when the Haven finally activates as it boils the head of any zombie within safe zone distance to make their heads explode! Zombie sieges are now a thing of the past.

Insight: Haven is fueled by spare parts. LOTS if you don't have power and water. Only 25 per day if you do.

Watch Dogs: Beginner Tips

I thought I'd just put up six quick tips to help people survive ctOS Chicago in Watch Dogs.

1 - "Open your World"
Lots of your cooler and more useful skills will be locked until you complete the act one mission with this name, so unlike the Assassin's Creed series where you probably should do all the side stuff as soon as it becomes available, just power through the main story until you get to it (it's near the start) before doing any of the side missions.

2 - Silence is Golden
You can almost clear out an entire gang base if you use your silenced equipment (which mostly means the starter pistol at the beginning) and aim for the head, which always nets a kill unless you are shooting someone with a helmet. Civilians also have less chance to call the cops since they don't hear gunfire (unless you keep missing). Use focus once you've unlocked it to help steady your aim.

3 - The Destroyer of Criminal Convoys
Once you do enough criminal convoys (10 I think) you get to unlock this rifle (called "The Destroyer"). Choose those first 10 missions wisely as some are much harder than others but once this gun is in your hands none should pose a problem. One hit from a rifle disables a vehicle and since NPCs NEVER get into a car that they didn't start with it makes all the chase x person tasks much easier as you can force your prey to be on foot. A head shot from this will also kill the heavily armored guys, just aim for the goggle section. Once again, focus is your friend.

4 - Bad boys go to the beach, and sleep in their cars
The Chicago police are ridiculously aggressive, willing to kill bystanders to get to you. While unlocking your magical phone abilities to use the city infrastructure against them is certainly a good way to slow them down, an easier method is to head for the nearest marina and catch a boat since they are incredibly allergic to water and will not chase you there. The helicopters will, but your magic phone can disable them. And if they have snipers well, bullets (especially from the Destroyer) can help with that. If there are no boats nearby a good alternative is to use a blackout doohickey (or cause one the old fashioned way) then hide in your car, especially if you have the related bonus skill. I've managed to hide in the middle of a freeway, with a police cruiser right beside me. It looked at my smoking wreck of a vehicle for a bit then drove off. :P

5 - "Steal a Vehicle" contracts need Skill
The "steal a vehicle" fixer contracts were the hardest ones in the game for me, since you can't really get out of the car for longer than 20 seconds. You'll definitely want as many/all of your skills unlocked before attempting them, along with pockets full of consumable items. Being familiar with how various vehicles handle and the various short cuts and back road ramps as a player is also handy.

6 - Be Crafty
Crafting stuff is great, but since its a pain to go buy equipment or collect them it might help to know what stuff is used most (or at least, what stuff I used most). The number one item is: Jam Communications, followed by Blackout, followed by Focus pills. Frags and IEDs had some rare moments, mostly during campaign missions but I didn't really use any of the others so unless your play style widely varies from mine, save your resources! I found lures to be especially useless, but perhaps have some value to those who want a "no kill" play through (yeah, good luck with that).

That's it, hopefully it's of use to someone out there! :)

Watch Dogs

Where you play as a gun-toting wizard with a magical mobile phone.

Ubisoft has a thing for open world games, and in this one you get to explore modern day Chicago as a very flawed, hypocritical and ultimately boring murdere vigilante with a magical cell phone. This is to make up for his lack of parkour ability when compared to the other well known Ubisoft open world series: Assassin's Creed. The many nods to that game here are pretty funny.

The city is huge, and as expected there are a good number of mini-games to do and skills to unlock while exploring it. Fortunately getting around via train, car or boat is pretty easy once you get the hang of it - complete with a decent enough selection of radio music to listen to while traveling. Another thing to get a hang of is the magical phone which simply gives too much information on the many NPCs. You can turn off the profiler, but most/all the good things only happen when its up.

Doubles as a handy cultist finder!

While it is certainly an entertaining game (and possibly addictive if you like Grand Theft Auto type chaos) there are a number of things that I found annoying. First it's a soft game audio wise, I needed to turn up the volume a bit to hear anything. Also, the protagonist and most of the other characters (specifically those related to him) are morons. I guess it runs in the family? Some tasks fail because you killed the main target, despite killing all his henchmen, some civilians and possibly some police officers in the process, while others it's ok to just go on a killing spree? 

Also half the missions are working as the exact type of person the protagonist is supposed to hate (killers), but if you want total completion then... oh well? There's also one part where you run the same map three or so times (because plot device), when really if you just did the "third" time first it would have saved everyone a lot of trouble. At least the difficulty (on Realistic anyway) is good, but there's just something lacking. A likable protagonist maybe? I didn't really give a crap about him or his feelings throughout the entire game.

The game is alright for one ride but pretty much becomes "meh" soon after the first act. I give it two and a half stolen cars out of five. If you want an open world title where you actually care for the protagonist, try Assassin's Creed: Black Flag instead. Edward Kenway is awesome.

MMOs: Cheaters in the Third Party

[Part of my MMO Design Folder] 

"It's ok to cheat if you don't get caught."  That line of thinking seems to extend into MMO's.

In most MMO EULA's I seem to recall a line wherein "the use of third party software" is a punishable offence. This might not be the case anymore (I tend to gloss over EULA's these days) but if it is then there would be a lot of people who commit that crime (ooooh cyber crime, so futuristic). I think we should pop on some definitions though for clarity. Let's define "third party software" as code created by a company or person, unaffiliated to and/or not endorsed by the game publisher/creator, which gives the user an advantage over someone without the same software while playing the game. That's pretty fair isn't it?

I think we'd all agree that someone who has code to give them god-mode would be pretty unfair (happens regularly in GunZ the Duel I might add), and the guy that runs faster on foot than someone flying in a jet plane is probably hacked. Throw in the farmbot plague which is impressively far reaching when you think about it. These are usually very obvious and no one, other than the exploiters themselves I imagine, would really have an issue with the game masters going after these particular players (or robots, whatever).

But what about that program that changes the font for your client so you lag slightly less, or the one that lets you see the specific durability value of items, or the mod that changes your HUD to make it less cluttered than the vanilla version? Do they give you an advantage over someone who doesn't use it? Let's blur the lines further and ask - what about teamspeak? Or that program that lets you monitor the real time auction house prices (like gw2spidy)? What about youtube walkthroughs? They are all technically software.

Ofcourse the game might actually endorse some 3rd party stuff (eg. GW2 put Dulfy -in- the game, so I take that as an endorsement) in which case those should be absolutely fine - but as for the rest? Guess justice isn't so much a solid line and more a wavy faded noodle, around which the "cops" tread lightly and are fearful or are simply too impotent to go uphold their own laws when it becomes difficult or inconvenient to police (mirrored in real life). That leads to the question - if something is not policed, is it still "cheating"? At what point does "being resourceful" cross the line? I guess the answer to that comes down to you.

It's ok, she's not looking anyway.