RETRO REVIEW: GRIM FANDANGO

This is definitely one of the biggest pluses of PC gaming for me: that as well as all the latest games I can also play games from back in the day. Want to go one better than that? If you’re like me you’ll probably remember your favourite games having crystal-clear graphics when you played them the first time. However, go back and look at them now, you’ll realise that unfortunately they look like something a half-blind chimp made out of Lego. Never fear though, we live in the era of the HD remake, so you can play them without having to slather Vaseline in your eyes to take the jaggy edges off.

THE GAME

You play as Manny Calavera: fast-talking travel agent to the dead, providing poor souls with options for traversing the Land of the Dead to get to the afterlife. Unfortunately for Manny, he has some karmic debts to pay off, so can’t move on himself. Even more unfortunately, he’s having a hard time of making any progress with his repayments, because the company for whom he works is corrupt to the core. He discovers this when he comes across Mercedes (Meche), a modern day saint who should be fast-tracked to the afterlife, but Manny can’t seem to do anything for her. He digs a little deeper and discovers that the corruption by his employers goes much higher. Meche is spirited away and Manny vows to rescue her.

The game draws inspiration from the Mexican tradition of the Day of the Dead in its character design, music and overall aesthetic. It’s a look that works for it. My theory is that the character design was made deliberately bold so that the characters could be made out on screen when the game first came out with the original crappy graphics (see mini-rant above). The characters transfer well to HD. There is an option to switch between the fancy new version and the original, for nostalgic purposes presumably. It shows just how far graphics have come since this game was released in 1998. The backgrounds are pre-rendered and don’t change with the HD makeover. This is a plus and a minus. They don’t benefit from the advances in graphical technology, but the plus is that the backgrounds were clearly rendered with love the first time around, and to change them would be change for change’s sake. Pre-rendered backgrounds are rare nowadays, but there is definitely something to be said for them. It gives a game the appearance of an interactive painting, and they are an art form in and of themselves. I can recall some of my favourite games from the 90s, such as the Resident Evil and Final Fantasy series, looking amazing because of their pre-rendered backgrounds, and in spite of their crappy character animations (even for the time).

In the HD version the characters are nothing special. They are an improvement on the original, no doubt, and they make the game playable to someone who has become used to crystal clear graphics, and who would be put off by having to revert to squinting and using ones imagination to work out what the hell is going on onscreen.

The game’s control system will make you wonder at times if your computer has been hacked and is being controlled remotely by a patient in a mental hospital, but that’s fine, the game rarely (although sometimes) requires quick movements. For the most part it’s a thinky-thinky-problemmy-solvey kind of game, but the times when it tries to be a quickly-quickly-do-the-thingy kind of game you might find yourself risking an aneurism. If your doctor has advised you that you are at a higher risk of brain bleeds than the general population then I would advise that you get someone to help you with the tar-swimming beavers puzzle.

Level design can likewise be a pain in buttcheeks. The game follows the tried and tested point and click puzzle-solving game archetype, but without the pointing and clicking. You explore your environments as Manny and investigate/pick up things that capture his attention. Exploration is key, and as with any puzzle game, solutions are not obvious. There’s no Doom-esque ‘blue key opens blue door’ nonsense here. Sometimes you collect things that are useless; other things have no immediate use; other things require to be used multiple times; and occasionally you can obtain more than one of a given item. There is much thinking outside of the box in this game, and you will not believe how many uses a collapsible scythe has.

HOW DOES IT RUN ON THE REASONABLE RIG?

Um yeah, the rig can handle this one.

VERDICT

Great game. Very simple to pick up, but devilishly complex in parts. Occasionally it will cause rage-quitting, but that’s ok. Sometimes a puzzle needs to be left alone for a bit before being re-attempted.

Recommended.

Review: Civilization V - Digital Cocaine

I guess I'm not exactly with the times reviewing a 5 year old game, but screw y'all, I'm still playing it.

The best way to stop is to never start.

This is less of a review and more of a public service announcement.

Civilization V will ruin your life. Let me tell you about my friend. We'll call him Clark. Clark had a girlfriend, and a job, and a family. Everything was going real well for Clark until one day he fell in with a bad crowd. They offered him a copy of Civ V over Steam. Clark had never really experimented with video games before, he was a very clean-living kind of guy. But for reasons best known to himself, he tried it. He'd heard that you can't get addicted from just trying it once, so he jumped right in.

It was like nothing Clark had experienced before. The joys were overwhelming. He founded cities, trained workers, discovered wonders, built an army, and gathered treasures for his citizens. The ecstacy he felt was more intense than he had felt since playing Final Fantasy 7 in the days of his youth.

But soon things changed. When Clark tore his eyes away from the screen he discovered that it was 4am. He hadn't done any of his chores, his dog had pissed literally everywhere, he was hungry, the house was cold, and his girlfriend had sent him about forty texts. The game had turned against him too. That son of a bitch Napoleon had declared war on him, and because he hadn't focused on science enough he found himself going up against WW1 artillery with some stupid little crossbow assholes. One by one the cities in his empire fell and he was defeated. Clark felt horrible. It was late, he felt exhausted, and he had nothing to show for it.

"Screw this piece of shit game," thought Clark.

The next morning he woke; sleep deprived and cranky. He met his girlfriend for lunch. She could tell something was off. Clark wasn't very talkative. His mind kept going back to the game. Lunch ended with a fight, and Clark returned home alone. He didn't even think about it: he went straight to the computer and booted up the game. "Round 2, Napoleon," he thought.

Anyway, you get the picture. Long story short: Clark ended up prostituting himself for expansion pack money.

I've been playing this game for a long time now and every single game I find myself saying 'just one more turn', which is a phrase that I gather so many gamers have used over the course of the Civ series that the developers have incorporated it into the game's win/lose screen.

It's difficult to put a finger on exactly what is so addictive about the game, but addictive is what it is. Like everything that's addictive it gives you some free little highs to draw you in, and then they become more difficult to come by. But even although you have to work for them: you do, and that makes them all the sweeter. Early in the game you send your scouts out into the unknown and find treasures in the ruins which give you a cheeky boost over the competition. Mid game the addictive highs come from building wonders before the other players, advancing along the technology tree, improving units, earning enough points for social policies, and in the case of warmongers: crushing your enemies, seeing them driven before you, and hearing the lamentation of their women.

It's a solid formula, and although after a few (dozen) games the middle becomes a bit dull, there are enough ways to play to keep it fresh, and once you have a preferred way to play you will find yourself refining your strategy game after game until you are either a wise and benevolent emperor, or a great and terrible master of war.

HOW DOES IT RUN ON THE RIG?

Looks great, loads fast, plays about as fast as a turn-based strategy game can be played, I think.

The rig does get kinda hot after a while and the fans get so loud that my Vietnam-vet neighbour starts having flashbacks.

Not being an expert on these things (I'm trying to learn, but it's hard, dammit!) I'm not sure what the exact reason for that is. I can't imagine it's the graphics. Pretty as they are, it's not as if it's The Phantom Pain I'm asking it to run. I can only imagine it's doing lots of AI strategising. If I had to take a stab of a guess, I'd say it's the processor that's getting hot?

The point is: keep your houseplants away from your PC when you're playing this game.

CONCLUSION

This game is fun. You should play it.

(note to self: work on conclusions)

The Final List

Note the ultra-high quality of the iPhone 5S camera.

So you'll see that I went a bit over the budget on build.

You will recall that the idea was to keep to a price comparable to a PS4/ XBONE. The PS4 is currently £278ish on Amazon, about half the cost of the rig. The XBONE is £263, which is less than half.

That's quite the failure of the experiment isn't it?

Not necessarily.

I'm not going to rhyme off all the advantages of a PC, but the pertinent ones are that it's vastly more future-proof than a console. If there have to be upgrades down the line, it won't be a brand new computer, it will be some extra ram or a graphics card upgrade, meaning it's a longer lasting investment than a console. Secondly: the graphics are better than a console, which matters to me. What can I say? I'm a sucker for pretty things.

So, how does it perform? Find out on the next exciting instalment of The Reasonable Rig!

To the 120 viewers of my blog: sorry it kinda sucks

Evening y'all.

Or morning y'all, if that happens to be when you're reading this.

If you're reading this in the afternoon: get back to work! If you're unemployed and reading this in the afternoon: carry on.

I did have quite high hopes for this blog, but unfortunately I have zero time for many things, like writing. And as you've guessed, based on the subject matter of this blog, I am also a gamer, and if I have any spare time I like to spend it gaming. So if I have some free time I'm more likely to spend it gaming rather than writing about gaming.

I'll try to make more time for you readers though.

So here's an update.

The rig is built! I wasn't blowing smoke when I started a blog about building a PC for reasonably cheap. I actually did it, and have been in financial difficulties ever since, but that's really down to my own inability to manage my money.

Games: well that's the point isn't it? I built the rig to play games on it, and play games on it I have. I will be doing reviews from time to time. I'm going to have to come up with some sort of system for rating the graphics though, because I don't really understand the technical side of things, and quite frankly can't tell the difference between 32fps and 48fps like many people can. But I do like me some sexy graphics, so I will probably use a scale from "like having shit flung in your eyes" to "like looking at a perfectly formed diamond through a pair diamond binoculars," or something like that...

Other hopeful features for the site:

News? I'm pretty out of the loop when it comes to developments in any industry that isn't my own, so there probably won't be much in the way of news.

Entertaining stuff? Hopefully everything on this site will be entertaining. If you've enjoyed this post so far: stick around! If you think this post, and the ones that preceded it, have been shit. Well, maybe it's best you leave now and try to forget you ever came here.

Commentary on stuff? Probably. I consider myself to be fairly adept at pointing out the failures of others in a smarmy, hurt-durr, neckbeard kind of way. So there will probably a snarky article or two about stuff I don't approve of from time to time.

Articles about nonsense? Yup. I'm a lawyer in my non-internet time, which is quite a low-nonsense job. That's why I'm a fairly high-nonsense writer.

Well-researched and poignant pieces of literature that will find their way onto the Pulitzer shortlist? Ha. Aha. Ahahahahahahahahaha. No.

Anything to do with the technical side of PC-ing? I don't know much about that, but I shall try my hardest.

Ambitious, yes. But Gods dammit I'm committed-ish to making this the best half-assed gaming blog on the internet.

Yours,

Steve

Square One It Is Then...

Per the last post I fired up my old computer to see if anything was salvageable. As it turns out nothing was.

When my buddy and I turned the old machine on it gave a constant high-pitched beep, much like one would expect to hear from a flatlining patient in any good hospital drama. We checked online and that noise tends to indicate that there has been some sort of catastrophic failure with the motherboard: something has overheated, melted, and the whole thing is now fucked. Bad Times.

So that means I'm working with a completely clean slate when it comes to this project. Nothing will be used from the old machine; I'm even getting rid of my gaudy, plexiglass-sided case and going for something more living room friendly.

The upshot of this is that it will give a much more transparent view (pun?) of what the build actually costs.

Cost is an important consideration in this project. It's not a limiting factor as such, I have some disposable income each month (yes, it really should be going to the wedding fund and our flat needs a new carpet, but god dammit I want to play The Witcher 3!), however, the whole point of the project is to match/beat XBONE/PS4 performance with a PC for around the same price. This means that while in theory I could afford Nvidia's latest monstrosity known as the Titan, I won't be using it in this build because I could buy an Xbox, a PS4, and take a short holiday abroad for the same price.

So what is my upper cost limit? That varies depending on how much I've been playing about with options on PC Part Picker, but it should really be based on the PS4 and XBONE prices, which are £324 and £278 respectively.

At first I said: fine, £300 is the average between the two, so that's the cost limit. It makes sense, but here's the thing: investing a bit more just now will mean the rig will stay relevant for longer. The current build I have weighs in at £450.00 and should last a good long while. It should vastly out-perform the current gen consoles and when the next gen comes out there is room for improvement, hopefully without having to completely rebuild the whole computer.

Details to follow. I'm finalising the parts list and am aiming to order at the end of this month (after the credit card bill has been paid).

Until then,

Steve

The Challenge

Welcome to The Reasonable Rig.

This blog is about my quest to build a gaming rig that keeps up with the latest console equivalents, and matches or beats them in price.

Why?

Several reasons:

1. I'm a gamer, always have been, maybe always will be, and I want to be able to enjoy the latest games in the best way possible.

2. I like tinkering with stuff.

3. I want to be as financially efficient as possible, which doesn't necessarily mean going for the cheapest option, but going for the option that provides most bang for buck. This includes considerations such as me being easily persuaded to pay a little bit more for the next step up in quality if I can afford it, and including an element of future-proofing.

Why Now?

Because of this bullshit:

As you can see, a PS3, Xbox 360, Gamecube, Nintendo 3DS owner like myself is shit out of luck. I do own a MacBook (I gather that many people will now be navigating away from this blog on the basis of that revelation, so it's best to be up front about it) and it tries hard. I have no problem playing Civ V and Cities: Skylines, but for games where things like graphics and frame rates are important I don't think it will be up to the task.

Why Blog About It?

To document the process, and because I like writing (see sidebar).

Are You Starting From Square One?

Maybe.

A few years ago I had a fairly good gaming PC, but then a part of it broke. I didn't have the knowledge to work out what broke it myself, couldn't find anything online, and didn't have the money to pay someone to check it out. It's been gathering dust at my mum's house ever since.

Since then I have gained a buddy who is much more knowledgable than me in such matters, and I am in employment, so can replace whatever needs replacing, and upgrade whatever needs upgrading.

The tech in the old machine is pretty outdated, so I expect the majority will need replaced (if it still works at all). At very least I'm hoping to be able to salvage the SSD for the new machine's operating system.

So that's my job for today. I'm about to head into work to get caught up on the stuff I didn't get finished last week (a wonderful use of my Sunday) and then head over to see the aforementioned buddy to try and resurrect this bitch.

I shall report back soon.

Steve.