Recent reviews by deadscreen

good focus and sounds

Originally published: http://thebotlife.blogspot.com/2018/04/35mm-wandering-russian-with-axe-seeks.html

Overall: 3.5/5

Story: 2/5

Playability: 4/5

Atmosphere: 5/5


Story

35MM immediately throws the player into the bleak countryside of what we have to assume is Russia as we begin our journey. There are abandoned structures and vehicles everywhere and not many signs of life. We gradually come to find out that a devastating epidemic has hit our country as well as the rest of the world. Some people were immune and some of the sick recovered, but a large percentage of the human race as a whole has been afflicted. As we progress through different locations, bits and pieces of our characters’ stories surface, though these tidbits are never very detailed. Importantly, we find out that our main character was one of the lucky ones who became sick and then recovered, and is now searching for his wife (or girlfriend?) and daughter (or simply the woman’s child). Flashbacks and text between the two adults are brief and filled with translation or grammatical errors, which at times can make it difficult to piece together what exactly was meant.

Our NPC partner is a constant though stoic presence at our side, and seems to serve no purpose other than to lead us on a strictly regulated path through our world. Our friend encourages us to explore the surroundings but to return to him if we want to progress. His motivations and background are mysterious, and I spent much of the game wondering if we would eventually have to fight each other. Our friend guides us for the first 2/3 of the game before disappearing near the end of our journey.

spoilers The conclusion of the story gives us the apparent motivation behind our friend’s presence, though leaves us with unanswered questions. After we have finally found the apartment of our wife and daughter, a cutscene brings us back to our friend, still in the sewers, who has found a picture of our family. He breaks down crying as he flashes back to killing our family in a drunk driving accident. Whether our friend knew this all along or is only now realizing who we are is left unanswered. After this cutscene, the game ends. spoilers


Playability

From start to finish, this game took me about 4.5 hours. Travelling from area to area is straight forward with the guidance of our NPC friend, and it is very difficult to get lost in the well-defined and small maps. There are a number of small puzzles in this game, ranging from fetch-quest type activities where we have to find a certain object, to using items we have received in game to accomplish less obvious tasks to clear our path forward. Only one “puzzle” had me stuck, due to not realizing that I had to continue a conversation with an NPC that was somewhat out of the way. There tended to be no indication of important objects, though with thorough searching I did identify some side quest opportunities. In the end, I could see through my unfinished achievements that I missed a number of optional activities, but there was nothing stopping me from completing the game without them. After reading through the achievements, I feel that there may be more than one ending to this game, though I only played through it once.


Atmosphere

The one thing that this game did spectacularly was to create an incredibly tense atmosphere. Through the use of sound and light, I felt like I was on the edge of my seat throughout all areas of this game except for the very end. With every step I wondered if something would jump out and scare me, or if the dead bodies surrounding me were really dead, or if I was leading my character to his death. Surrounded by images of death and decay, I was actually discouraged from exploring TOO thoroughly due to being frightened of what I might find around the next corner. There were also a few environmental hazards that ended up killing me by surprise several times. Overall, this game was interesting and worth a playthrough / buy if you can get it for $5 or less. I don’t remember what price I paid for it, but it was an interesting experience both to play and stream. Despite being shocked by the sudden ending, I was still quite impressed by the games visuals. I was extremely disappointed by either not figuring out how or simply not being able to get the pictures off of my camera, but again that fact did not stop me from completing the game. If you like good visuals and atmosphere, this game is for you.

Originally published: http://thebotlife.blogspot.com/2018/05/wheres-my-med-kit-problematic-l4d2-bot.html

Since L4D2 was released in 2009, people have been complaining about how dumb the bots are. Sometimes they attack you with health items; sometimes they just sit there and watch you die. It’s been almost a decade since the game was released – why hasn’t Valve done anything? Valve has been silent on updates like this, and that silence is telling. In several presentations and talks given by Valve developers, Valve has stated that the entire point of L4D was to be a community and team work driven game. Anyone who has played through even one or two campaigns can see that this is certainly the case. With that in mind, Valve would definitely not have a reason to update their bot AI. Certain bugs have been fixed that would be considered game breaking – bots becoming unresponsive in certain scenarios or becoming stuck in others – but their basic personality and decision making process will probably never get an update.


As the designers created the game, they wanted to be able to design levels around always having four survivors, whether there were four players present or not. Add in the bots. The bots enabled them to plan for this four player scenario 100% of the time, and also allowed real players to “take a break” or pop in and out of games as their lives permitted. In online games, it can be difficult to step away for even a moment, but the bot AI allowed a reasonably capable entity to step in at any time.


These bots were designed with the ability of (what experienced players would judge as) a new player. They could interact with the environment, follow real players closely, participate in combat, and act as support by saving or healing players. It was important that these bots not be TOO capable, however, for a very important reason. As part of their community building effort, Valve implemented several voting options that included the ability to kick players from the game. This was intended to allow the community to police themselves whenever griefers (players who intentionally play poorly or attack their teammates) were encountered. It also had a more negative potential in being able to simply kick out genuinely bad but honest players. If bots were designed with too much skill, players may be tempted to kick out these poor newbies and play with the more skilled bots. Though this may not have been the primary factor in deciding bot skill level, it certainly was in the mix.

If we’re going to discuss bots, we should take a quick look at what behaviors are actually being complained about. Complaints about bot behavior focus on two areas: inventory management and combat positioning and actions.
Inventory management focuses on use of health items, inability to use throwables, and strange weapon choices. Bots are extremely concerned with player health, at all times. Players start out with green (100) health, and can fall into the yellow (39) or red (24). If a player’s health falls into the yellow range, the bot becomes extremely concerned. If the bot has a med kit in their inventory, they will begin assaulting the injured player with a healing animation. Then, there are the temporary health items: pain pills and adrenaline ampules. These items give the player a temporary health boost that increases player speed if they have been slowed and gives them a buffer from being knocked down through further damage. If the player is in good health, the bots tend to gobble up any temporary health they can find, regardless of their personal health status. Bots have been observed to consume pills when their health is still green. They have even been known to eat their temporary health and then immediately heal with a med kit, cancelling out the temp health benefits. God forbid a player goes idle with a med kit in their inventory. In most difficulties, these behaviors aren’t a real problem because the drop rates of these items are fairly high. When you get to Expert and Expert Realism, however, players start killing bots if it even looks like they have the itch to heal.


Moving on to the next type of complaint, positioning and combat action issues focus on where to stand during hordes or events and either trying to save players at the wrong time or getting stuck in another action and ignoring players who need help. Experienced players know to stand in corners, or on top of objects, or with their backs to other players during a major event. Bots will tend to stare straight at players and ignore common infected running into their backs, as though searching for some sort of inspiration or waiting for the player to die. Bots are unable to follow commands like even a newbie player would be able to and are almost always sure to die during a horde event. Bots also get locked into certain actions, sometimes at the expense of survivors. During a tank or witch fight, enemies that are considered bosses, a bot becomes fixated on shooting the boss mob. If a survivor goes down, the bots may not try to pick up the player until after the fight. The exact opposite can happen during a horde event, when a bot becomes fixated on picking up a player while they are being beaten mercilessly by the large horde of zombies surrounding them.


All of these actions seem inappropriate given even a little bit of experience with the game, but these “problems” arguably all reflect how newer players who are unfamiliar with the game would play. Technical difficulties are definitely not the reason behind this issue. Community efforts have shown that the bots CAN be improved, even if it’s only a little bit. If community members are able to make improvements in their free time, imagine what a team of developers would be able to do. It’s true that a lot of these mod developers are very dedicated and skilled, but the fact that Valve didn’t put more resources into AI development just goes to show us that this is the way things are supposed to be. From Valve’s point of view, there may be nothing to improve. Players are just going to have to accept their noob bot stand ins and hope they are able to make more friends to fill up their team.