I live BioWare. I'm not afraid to gush over this development company and their output over the past decade or two. They've been responsible for some of the best RPG's ever, including Baldur's Gate and the original Knights of the Old Republic. Mass Effect (or Mass Erect to the vast majority of the generally unimaginative community due to the fervor regarding sex in the game) is yet another gem in the crown of the company, gaining almost universally positive reviews and decent sales to boot. Cruelly the game was only available to the console jockies for the longest time, but finally the title has found it's way onto the PC.
It's at this point that the dream ends and the nightmare begins. BioWare, having been acquired by EA (which is sort of like the Fox Corporation of games, absorbing companies like a colossal amoeba and lowering standards as it goes), were subject to the palaver that is the SecuriROM "scandal". Previous BioWare had used the software for their own purposes, but EA managed to up the ante one better by enforcing borderline Orwellian constrictions on players.
SecuriROM itself is just an authentication program designed to make sure players haven't been naughty little gamers and downloaded games illegally. PC's for some reason are subject to much more stringent methods that consoles have ever had to endure. For many consoles it's a simple act of burning the game onto a DVD, messing about with the hardware a bit and bingo; free games. Yet we never see the quite frankly ridiculous methods of game registration and confirmation of purchase that we see on the PC. For many years it was the dreaded "CD-Key", a long-winded, 24+ character line of algorithmically created nonsense. This worked to a point; you could just use the same CD-Key for any copy so it sort of defeated the point. Then companies realised that there was this big thingy that the younguns were using; the internet. With it they could "lock" games and only allow them to run if the player registers.
In terms of an online unlocking system there's way to make it work. Take Valve's Steam system. Besides a few teething issues due to the volume of people who needed to register once their opus Half-Life 2 came out, the system generally works quite well. Provided you have your login in details you can download the game whenever you please and get it working. There were some who complained about such a system being in place due to the fact that they didn't have an internet connection, but to be quite frank that's like someone complaining about using a remote control to turn on a TV rather than a button on the set itself. I found it genuinely humorous that there were PC users out there who didn't have the internet. You may as well puncture the tyres on your car since a PC without an internet connection is just as useless.
The key issue with Mass Effect's registration system is the limitations it imposes. At first it appeared that users would only be able to install the game three times maximum, meaning uninstalling/reinstalling would cause them to lose an installation. Eventually this was confirmed as being limited to three separate computers. Which is fine in theory, but in practice it's just ridiculous. It has several implications for consumers; for one thing if they happen to suffer a series of system crashes that renders their game installations useless, they'll have to call up technical support at EA to get a further activation. How EA is meant to decide if a person isn't just lying their ass off for a free copy of the game (two subsequent major system crashes is an unlikely occurrence at the worst of times) I'm not sure. I can imagine down the line though there will be a lot of irate consumers unable to play a game they legitimately bought.
Another issue is that the game will be impossible to sell on second-hand in a few years, unless BioWare come through on their tenuous promise to maybe remove the authentication after a while. Think of it like this; imagine you go into a media outlet and pick up a second-hand movie. You take it home and pop it in the player; It doesn't work. Want to know why? Because the previous owner played in three different DVD players before they sold it. Want to play what you paid money for? Tough shit, you can't. This is the exact same situation that second-hand copies of Mass Effect will suffer from down the line. For consumers this is a very bad situation; EA can effectively keep the price of the game at full indefinitely. Since players can't "lend" the game to others or sell it on at a later date once they are finished with it, EA holds total power over the distribution of the game. They're like a gigantic Mr Bumble, screaming at players who dare to return for more gruel (gruel being Mass Effect).
What's worst about this whole ordeal, as mentioned before, is that none of the console market players have to deal with this kind of crap. It seems that publishing companies are purposefully trying to cripple the PC market in some effort to get players to always buy the latest console and the latest games. Right now the average rating for Mass Effect is 2 stars out of 5 on Amazon, by virtue only of it's poor and crippling authentication system. While we still have some heroes left on the good ship PC, many are now banging holes in the hull to sink her and get us onto the HMS Wii or SS XBox360. Excuse the metaphor, I've just been watching boats today.
So until further notice I won't be buying Mass Effect until the corporate machine has been brought to it's knees. Chop chop.
Thursday 5 June 2008
Sunday 4 May 2008
Selling out for violence - GTA4
I suppose this entry was as inevitable as the tides. It's kind of hard to ignore the behemoth that is Grand Theft Auto 4; there's massive posters all over the Tube in London, adverts all over the television (at least for the few seconds a day I bother with it's dross) and it even made front page news on Sky News. To have a blog on games and not write about GTA4 is like a Christian newsletter neglecting to mention the second coming of Jesus. Infact such an analogy isn't that far off the money; if every single reviewer is to be believed GTA4 is like some rapture of gaming, an utterly perfect creation from the colossal teet of God himself.
Which leaves me in quite a predicament because I don't have a copy of the game. I've never been that enamoured by the series as a whole; despite my liberal mindedness in regards to the artistic expression in games I find the wholesale recreation of street crime slightly wanting in personal motivation. I'm sure most people can get much joy out of driving over old ladies in the street or beating passers-by with baseball bats, but I personally need something a bit more to work with other than "LOL, U CAN SHUUT PPL!". Mindless violence is fun, but in short bursts and certainly not for the hours that GTA demands. Call me crazy, but there's little appeal to me about murdering innocents, virtual or not.
What I can report on is the reaction of my fellow gamers who have the bank accounts to support their addictions (I currently waste my time with WoW). So far the feedback has been a resounding "S'alright". While gamerankings and metacritic list GTA4 in the highest echelons of scoring everyone I talk to is no where near as glowing of the game as a whole. Most of the main gripes I've heard have been the driving, an experience delightfully described to me by a good friend as "like piloting a shit brick house on ice" and graphical glitches with the Xbox version. This got me to wondering; Is this yet another case of reviewing knee-jerk reaction? "It's a GTA game, therefore it must be good"?
It genuinely wouldn't surprise me. If there's nothing else I've learned about my tastes over the years it's that the consensus of the general populace is often misinformed and downright wrong. Final Fantasy 12, a game I previously deservedly ripped to shreds for it's boring gameplay, derivative story and tedious characters, was soundly cheered about from the highest mountains. Yet a quick peruse of personal review sites will reveal a decidedly mixed review about the game, the most prevalent example being the Gamefaqs review page, where the average hovers around the 6 or 7 mark taking the top reviews into account. So it seems then, if nothing else, GTA4 has proven just how tuned in many of us are to the apparent non-existent genius and worth of many games.
But the big question of course is why is GTA4, and indeed the series as a whole, put up on a pedestal in the first place? Well it's probably for a number of reasons, be it the sandbox environment, several missions to complete, the number of cars to knick etc. To me though the overwhelming appeal is the aforementioned mindless violence. Reading the testimonies of the few who adore the game, quite often the experiences they report are one's filled with various gruesome or nasty acts of violence. For example, one such anecdote recounted a player happily battering a prostitute he was hired to protected with a bat, before reloading the game just to crash a car into her. Granted prostitutes aren't the most respected or well-liked members of our society, but to me this sounded borderline psychotic. Inevitably for many people it comes down to unique experiences, but all of them are fixed into an ideal of slaughter, bloodshed and violence.
Which is of course all fine in my book. Don't get me wrong I'm not Jack Thompson. People should be entitled to their mindless violence. Because I can see what many naysayers of the games don't; that these violent tendencies aren't created by playing GTA, they are present long before a person picks up a copy of the game. Infact, the massive popularity is easily explained by the fact that it appeals to a large demographic; the frustrated male brimming over with pent-up angst and primal anger. In many ways it acts as a source of therapy, preventing a person from unleashing their rage against the general public and sedating the hypothalamus. It notably taps into the part of our brain that revels in seeing others destroyed. It gives the same thrills as hammering out an off-beat tune on a table with one's fists, engaging in some quality time with a punching bag or even taking a really massive crap. GTA doesn't encourage violence, the violence encourages others to play it.
That's not to say that only men play GTA or are playing GTA4 right now, but it wouldn't surprise me for a second if one were to draw up a demographic for the game and find a majority of males. In this sense the game poses a problem in terms of games in general, because whilst GTA4 is undoubtedly popular, weighed against the criteria of artistic worth in other forms of media it's notably skewed. GTA4 being the best-selling game is like the Transformers movie winning the Best Director/Actor/Actress Oscars, or a 'Lil Jon album being indoctrinated into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Many people looking at us gamers drolling over the mindless destruction of GTA4 and the like aren't going to see us than anything more than violence-obsessed creeps. Which is a shame, because there have been many games which are beautiful works of art as well as fun to play but will never reach the heady sales heights of the GTA4 series.
I won't be getting GTA4 anytime soon. Should the opportunity arise to play it I shall do so and report back my findings. Until then I see no reason to fall into the trap of blatant demographic targeting.
Which leaves me in quite a predicament because I don't have a copy of the game. I've never been that enamoured by the series as a whole; despite my liberal mindedness in regards to the artistic expression in games I find the wholesale recreation of street crime slightly wanting in personal motivation. I'm sure most people can get much joy out of driving over old ladies in the street or beating passers-by with baseball bats, but I personally need something a bit more to work with other than "LOL, U CAN SHUUT PPL!". Mindless violence is fun, but in short bursts and certainly not for the hours that GTA demands. Call me crazy, but there's little appeal to me about murdering innocents, virtual or not.
What I can report on is the reaction of my fellow gamers who have the bank accounts to support their addictions (I currently waste my time with WoW). So far the feedback has been a resounding "S'alright". While gamerankings and metacritic list GTA4 in the highest echelons of scoring everyone I talk to is no where near as glowing of the game as a whole. Most of the main gripes I've heard have been the driving, an experience delightfully described to me by a good friend as "like piloting a shit brick house on ice" and graphical glitches with the Xbox version. This got me to wondering; Is this yet another case of reviewing knee-jerk reaction? "It's a GTA game, therefore it must be good"?
It genuinely wouldn't surprise me. If there's nothing else I've learned about my tastes over the years it's that the consensus of the general populace is often misinformed and downright wrong. Final Fantasy 12, a game I previously deservedly ripped to shreds for it's boring gameplay, derivative story and tedious characters, was soundly cheered about from the highest mountains. Yet a quick peruse of personal review sites will reveal a decidedly mixed review about the game, the most prevalent example being the Gamefaqs review page, where the average hovers around the 6 or 7 mark taking the top reviews into account. So it seems then, if nothing else, GTA4 has proven just how tuned in many of us are to the apparent non-existent genius and worth of many games.
But the big question of course is why is GTA4, and indeed the series as a whole, put up on a pedestal in the first place? Well it's probably for a number of reasons, be it the sandbox environment, several missions to complete, the number of cars to knick etc. To me though the overwhelming appeal is the aforementioned mindless violence. Reading the testimonies of the few who adore the game, quite often the experiences they report are one's filled with various gruesome or nasty acts of violence. For example, one such anecdote recounted a player happily battering a prostitute he was hired to protected with a bat, before reloading the game just to crash a car into her. Granted prostitutes aren't the most respected or well-liked members of our society, but to me this sounded borderline psychotic. Inevitably for many people it comes down to unique experiences, but all of them are fixed into an ideal of slaughter, bloodshed and violence.
Which is of course all fine in my book. Don't get me wrong I'm not Jack Thompson. People should be entitled to their mindless violence. Because I can see what many naysayers of the games don't; that these violent tendencies aren't created by playing GTA, they are present long before a person picks up a copy of the game. Infact, the massive popularity is easily explained by the fact that it appeals to a large demographic; the frustrated male brimming over with pent-up angst and primal anger. In many ways it acts as a source of therapy, preventing a person from unleashing their rage against the general public and sedating the hypothalamus. It notably taps into the part of our brain that revels in seeing others destroyed. It gives the same thrills as hammering out an off-beat tune on a table with one's fists, engaging in some quality time with a punching bag or even taking a really massive crap. GTA doesn't encourage violence, the violence encourages others to play it.
That's not to say that only men play GTA or are playing GTA4 right now, but it wouldn't surprise me for a second if one were to draw up a demographic for the game and find a majority of males. In this sense the game poses a problem in terms of games in general, because whilst GTA4 is undoubtedly popular, weighed against the criteria of artistic worth in other forms of media it's notably skewed. GTA4 being the best-selling game is like the Transformers movie winning the Best Director/Actor/Actress Oscars, or a 'Lil Jon album being indoctrinated into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Many people looking at us gamers drolling over the mindless destruction of GTA4 and the like aren't going to see us than anything more than violence-obsessed creeps. Which is a shame, because there have been many games which are beautiful works of art as well as fun to play but will never reach the heady sales heights of the GTA4 series.
I won't be getting GTA4 anytime soon. Should the opportunity arise to play it I shall do so and report back my findings. Until then I see no reason to fall into the trap of blatant demographic targeting.
Sunday 27 April 2008
Short and sweet
Everyone seems to be reviewing old games these days, so I'll do the same;
Deus Ex:
For crap's sake, play it
Done and dusted.
(P.S. Proper article coming when I think of something to write. Then again who the hell reads this anyway?)
Deus Ex:
For crap's sake, play it
Done and dusted.
(P.S. Proper article coming when I think of something to write. Then again who the hell reads this anyway?)
Tuesday 22 April 2008
An Open Letter To Sega Re: Sonic The Hedgehog
Dear Sega;
As a lifelong fan of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, I think I can safely say that the series as a whole has lost it's way. I am not the only person who thinks this; you need only send one of your interns on a Google-search for any Sonic product post '99 to see just what the community thinks of the frankly inferior products you've been producing. It's a shame because Sonic made Sega the name it is today in many parts of the world, and the character still holds a lot of respect and selling power. However a name is only ever as good as the product it is backing, and in this sense recent efforts have been distinctly wanting. For this reason among others I want to suggest, for future titles, that you immediately forthwith implement the following changes;
1 - Get rid of the third D
Seriously, games like Sonic just don't work in three-dimensions. Since the original games relied on a combination of fast movement and controllable two-dimensional physics adding a third dimension just confounds things further. Believe me, you're on the right track with the Sonic Advance/Rush series. You can still make good looking games using all those fancy bells and whistles that come with modern consoles. Trust me, Sonic works when you're limited to up, down, left and right (and a + start)
2 - Shut Sonic up
Sonic was infinitely more endearing when he didn't open his stupid trap. In the context of comics and cartoons then there's a pressing need to have him speak dialogue, but much of his personality can be shown through inventive idle animations, actions within the games and so on. It's bad enough you made the poor guy speak, but to give him the prototypical "radical dude" vocal tics was stupendously obvious and above all obnoxious. Bill and Ted has long since passed, let it go already.
3 - Get rid of Shadow
I can understand; one day you were scanning through the music channels and chanced upon something by My Crappy Romance or other such tosh and thought "hey, the kids are into this misery deal, let's go with that". But really, come on, was it that necessary to start making spin-offs with the guy? Beside the fact that he has the personality of a wet tea-bag, the guy plays like wank in the games. Chaos control can suck my balls.
4 - Stop adding so many supporting characters
Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and possibly Amy. That's all you really need to make a Sonic game right there. Robotnik/Eggman/Whatever the hell you call him as the main bad guy and a suitable robotic anthropomorphic representation of a main cast member as a mini-nemesis. It's simple, it's effect and it's not sickeningly annoying. I needn't remind you that you're starting to run dry on the whole cute animal stock. For every cute animal on this planet, there's a thousand evil ones. You know you're scraping the barrel when you start using bats. I mean really, bats? Are they really so endearing? Name me one character that ever made his or her name by being associated with bats. Yeah, I thought not.
5 - Would you let us collect Chaos Emeralds and get Super Forms again for goodness sake?
I love going all Dragonball Z when I get fifty rings. I love being able to dash through levels at the speed of light destroying everything in my path. It's an incentive to explore to find the posts/rings to get to the special zone, it's a reward for me putting in so much darned effort in the first place. Brief storyline-based levels that last a few minutes do not count.
6 - No more cross-species love interests
I don't think I need to elabourate more. Just don't do it, okay?
7 - Stop adding pointless gameplay mechanics
What, I've got to deal with souls and do tricks in the middle of the air to get through a level? I've got enough going on avoiding bad-guys and the like without arsing about with such things. We get it, you're trying to do something different, but at the very least if you're going to implement such things make them a passive choice for the player and not a necessity for play. Kind of like the Super forms. See how that works?
8 - Remake Sonic 3 + S&K
Dammit all, just create a modern version of Sonic3K. Really you haven't made a decent Sonic game since then. From then on just make extensions on that same game layout until the end of time. We'll all thank you for it.
I hope you take my criticism on board because I'm telling you, I'm this close to getting a Mario game. I haven't bought a Mario game since '93. Is that what you want? Do you want the plumber to win? Do you want some overweight Italian municipal worker usurping my loyalty? I didn't think so.
In short, get your shit together.
-Captain Maxx Power
P.S. Actually I just realised, there's Batman, Batgirl and the actual Bat Man (as in a man who's a Bat). But not that many people know about the last guy so he doesn't count. My points are still valid though so get to it, chop chop!
As a lifelong fan of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, I think I can safely say that the series as a whole has lost it's way. I am not the only person who thinks this; you need only send one of your interns on a Google-search for any Sonic product post '99 to see just what the community thinks of the frankly inferior products you've been producing. It's a shame because Sonic made Sega the name it is today in many parts of the world, and the character still holds a lot of respect and selling power. However a name is only ever as good as the product it is backing, and in this sense recent efforts have been distinctly wanting. For this reason among others I want to suggest, for future titles, that you immediately forthwith implement the following changes;
1 - Get rid of the third D
Seriously, games like Sonic just don't work in three-dimensions. Since the original games relied on a combination of fast movement and controllable two-dimensional physics adding a third dimension just confounds things further. Believe me, you're on the right track with the Sonic Advance/Rush series. You can still make good looking games using all those fancy bells and whistles that come with modern consoles. Trust me, Sonic works when you're limited to up, down, left and right (and a + start)
2 - Shut Sonic up
Sonic was infinitely more endearing when he didn't open his stupid trap. In the context of comics and cartoons then there's a pressing need to have him speak dialogue, but much of his personality can be shown through inventive idle animations, actions within the games and so on. It's bad enough you made the poor guy speak, but to give him the prototypical "radical dude" vocal tics was stupendously obvious and above all obnoxious. Bill and Ted has long since passed, let it go already.
3 - Get rid of Shadow
I can understand; one day you were scanning through the music channels and chanced upon something by My Crappy Romance or other such tosh and thought "hey, the kids are into this misery deal, let's go with that". But really, come on, was it that necessary to start making spin-offs with the guy? Beside the fact that he has the personality of a wet tea-bag, the guy plays like wank in the games. Chaos control can suck my balls.
4 - Stop adding so many supporting characters
Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and possibly Amy. That's all you really need to make a Sonic game right there. Robotnik/Eggman/Whatever the hell you call him as the main bad guy and a suitable robotic anthropomorphic representation of a main cast member as a mini-nemesis. It's simple, it's effect and it's not sickeningly annoying. I needn't remind you that you're starting to run dry on the whole cute animal stock. For every cute animal on this planet, there's a thousand evil ones. You know you're scraping the barrel when you start using bats. I mean really, bats? Are they really so endearing? Name me one character that ever made his or her name by being associated with bats. Yeah, I thought not.
5 - Would you let us collect Chaos Emeralds and get Super Forms again for goodness sake?
I love going all Dragonball Z when I get fifty rings. I love being able to dash through levels at the speed of light destroying everything in my path. It's an incentive to explore to find the posts/rings to get to the special zone, it's a reward for me putting in so much darned effort in the first place. Brief storyline-based levels that last a few minutes do not count.
6 - No more cross-species love interests
I don't think I need to elabourate more. Just don't do it, okay?
7 - Stop adding pointless gameplay mechanics
What, I've got to deal with souls and do tricks in the middle of the air to get through a level? I've got enough going on avoiding bad-guys and the like without arsing about with such things. We get it, you're trying to do something different, but at the very least if you're going to implement such things make them a passive choice for the player and not a necessity for play. Kind of like the Super forms. See how that works?
8 - Remake Sonic 3 + S&K
Dammit all, just create a modern version of Sonic3K. Really you haven't made a decent Sonic game since then. From then on just make extensions on that same game layout until the end of time. We'll all thank you for it.
I hope you take my criticism on board because I'm telling you, I'm this close to getting a Mario game. I haven't bought a Mario game since '93. Is that what you want? Do you want the plumber to win? Do you want some overweight Italian municipal worker usurping my loyalty? I didn't think so.
In short, get your shit together.
-Captain Maxx Power
P.S. Actually I just realised, there's Batman, Batgirl and the actual Bat Man (as in a man who's a Bat). But not that many people know about the last guy so he doesn't count. My points are still valid though so get to it, chop chop!
Saturday 5 April 2008
The Decline Of Single-Player Gaming
Almost everyone who plays games online is either an asshole, an idiot or both. If there are any reasonable, smart people out there then they either don't make themselves known or their voices are drowned out by the static of teenage boys determined to prove their personal worth to their peers and in the process lose what little dignity they have. The internet is unique in that it offers no direct backlash from directed insults. It's probably not a stretch to imagine these same kids wouldn't call people who bump into them on the street "fukin n00b cockscukr". Still the relative anonymity of the internet allows for such perpetually soul-destroying stupidity to continue wide rife. For those of us who like to play games online, this makes the experience a combination of utter frustration and insane anger management, one that many of us could probably do without.
Yet the current trends lean towards a market that is saturated with multiplayer games. Of course we've been told since the early 90's that online gaming was the future, but it took a number of years for technology to catch up. Before that online gaming was a baffling task of IP addresses and modem settings, with MMOG's reserved to text-based MUDs that were about as penetrable as a titanium fortress surrounded by a moat of lava. Perhaps because of this earlier online communities were somewhat more bearable, although pomposity was just a big a virus as arrogance is today. With the advent of ADSL and Cable games such as Everquest and the like found their feet. At around this time games started integrating methods of finding servers to play on automatically. So it was that online gaming became available to the unwashed masses. They saw it and it was good...for about five minutes. Then it was a pre-pubescent "swear-off" of epic proportions, one that still doesn't abate. I may be exaggerating slightly of course, but I think most gamers can agree this is the norm.
By comparison the realm of Single-Player games doesn't experience this problem. The only contenders you have is the game itself, and even then it's unlikely to have a twenty minute chat log filled with cock and "your mama" jokes involved. Not only that but Single-Player games offer many experiences that Multiplayer just can't - Fantastic atmosphere, brilliant story-telling, and above all you don't have to retread the same places over and over again as you do when playing online.
But it seems the modding community in general is filled with those same idiots and assholes I mentioned earlier. Go have a look at somewhere like Moddb.com; most games are filled to the brim with Multi-Player mods, each one more disinteresting than the last. It seems that the idea that people just want to play online extends deep. Single-Player mods are a lot more sparse, which is a shame because most of them are brilliant pieces of work. Nowadays you'd be lucky if a Single-Player mod launched every two~three months. Multi-Player releases you can expect every week, perhaps even every few days. Of course the sheer volume of online mods means that the vast majority of them are underplayed. The major downfall of any online game is that you need enough people playing for it to be successful. Who's going to bother with SWAT-Tactics Combat 2 when you can just play Counter-Strike? Most online mods are not only bland, but theoretically unplayable. It's the metaphorical equivalent of Ford deciding to pump out Reliant Robins at a ratio of 5 to 1 against all their other cars. The modding market is saturated with this tripe, and it shows no signs of abating.
It wasn't always like this. In the hay-day of Doom and Quake, before the advent of the aforementioned faster connections, Single-Player maps and mods were all over. It was a flood of unique and interesting architecture and design, and one was never stuck to find maps that were both brilliantly made and fun to play. Then came the fast-connections, and with it seemingly the death of Single-Player maps and mods. It's telling that when I was still working for PlanetHalfLife (before I was unceremoniously dropped from their rooster due to being told to wait for a Multi-Player session for a mod that never materialised), I was the only staff writer who would do Single-Player reviews. Since my departure the output on Single-Player content has dried up to a trickle. It seems no one genuinely cares about Single-Player experiences any more.
So why is this? Surely with all these idiots and assholes the opportunity to get away from the moronic masses and play something fun on your own would appeal to pretty much every gamer? Well I personally don't know the answer to that. Maybe it's an odd sort of self-mutilation; people get a thrill out of dealing with these wankers. Maybe people just don't think there's any worth of Single-Player mods anymore. It's a sad state of affairs we have nowadays, and it's seemingly getting worse.
Perhaps I'm being a bit negative; In some years we may have a renaissance of user-created Single-Player content. But in the meantime those of us who appreciate the subtle poetry of Single-Player mods must content with the quagmire of trash that the online community largely ignores, sifting through for the small gems of gameplay experience left in a sea of waste created by our own hands.
Yet the current trends lean towards a market that is saturated with multiplayer games. Of course we've been told since the early 90's that online gaming was the future, but it took a number of years for technology to catch up. Before that online gaming was a baffling task of IP addresses and modem settings, with MMOG's reserved to text-based MUDs that were about as penetrable as a titanium fortress surrounded by a moat of lava. Perhaps because of this earlier online communities were somewhat more bearable, although pomposity was just a big a virus as arrogance is today. With the advent of ADSL and Cable games such as Everquest and the like found their feet. At around this time games started integrating methods of finding servers to play on automatically. So it was that online gaming became available to the unwashed masses. They saw it and it was good...for about five minutes. Then it was a pre-pubescent "swear-off" of epic proportions, one that still doesn't abate. I may be exaggerating slightly of course, but I think most gamers can agree this is the norm.
By comparison the realm of Single-Player games doesn't experience this problem. The only contenders you have is the game itself, and even then it's unlikely to have a twenty minute chat log filled with cock and "your mama" jokes involved. Not only that but Single-Player games offer many experiences that Multiplayer just can't - Fantastic atmosphere, brilliant story-telling, and above all you don't have to retread the same places over and over again as you do when playing online.
But it seems the modding community in general is filled with those same idiots and assholes I mentioned earlier. Go have a look at somewhere like Moddb.com; most games are filled to the brim with Multi-Player mods, each one more disinteresting than the last. It seems that the idea that people just want to play online extends deep. Single-Player mods are a lot more sparse, which is a shame because most of them are brilliant pieces of work. Nowadays you'd be lucky if a Single-Player mod launched every two~three months. Multi-Player releases you can expect every week, perhaps even every few days. Of course the sheer volume of online mods means that the vast majority of them are underplayed. The major downfall of any online game is that you need enough people playing for it to be successful. Who's going to bother with SWAT-Tactics Combat 2 when you can just play Counter-Strike? Most online mods are not only bland, but theoretically unplayable. It's the metaphorical equivalent of Ford deciding to pump out Reliant Robins at a ratio of 5 to 1 against all their other cars. The modding market is saturated with this tripe, and it shows no signs of abating.
It wasn't always like this. In the hay-day of Doom and Quake, before the advent of the aforementioned faster connections, Single-Player maps and mods were all over. It was a flood of unique and interesting architecture and design, and one was never stuck to find maps that were both brilliantly made and fun to play. Then came the fast-connections, and with it seemingly the death of Single-Player maps and mods. It's telling that when I was still working for PlanetHalfLife (before I was unceremoniously dropped from their rooster due to being told to wait for a Multi-Player session for a mod that never materialised), I was the only staff writer who would do Single-Player reviews. Since my departure the output on Single-Player content has dried up to a trickle. It seems no one genuinely cares about Single-Player experiences any more.
So why is this? Surely with all these idiots and assholes the opportunity to get away from the moronic masses and play something fun on your own would appeal to pretty much every gamer? Well I personally don't know the answer to that. Maybe it's an odd sort of self-mutilation; people get a thrill out of dealing with these wankers. Maybe people just don't think there's any worth of Single-Player mods anymore. It's a sad state of affairs we have nowadays, and it's seemingly getting worse.
Perhaps I'm being a bit negative; In some years we may have a renaissance of user-created Single-Player content. But in the meantime those of us who appreciate the subtle poetry of Single-Player mods must content with the quagmire of trash that the online community largely ignores, sifting through for the small gems of gameplay experience left in a sea of waste created by our own hands.
Sunday 16 March 2008
The Madness of Pokemon
When I was a kid I was a big fan of Pokemon. I even had a Pokemon-themed Christmas once; Pokemon Annual, Pokemon Pokedex (cheap little LCD and plastic job), Pokemon Socks etc. etc. Needless to say as I grew older I grew out of this habit. Strangely enough it was around about the time that the second generation of games came out on the GameBoy. Then again, there's probably nothing strange about it at all.
Pokemon is one of those eternal children's franchises, in the vein of Power Rangers, that constantly redoes itself using the same basic concept for each successive generation of parent-bothering midgets to flounder their cash on. There's really no trick to it at all; just add new Pokemon, perhaps one or two new gameplay mechanics, and ship away for billions of dollars. It's a surefire formula. The question is, just how much integrity do the people making Pokemon really have?
In essence the Pokemon games haven't changed at all since their first release some ten years ago. Each game has brought little to the basic idea of capturing monsters and having them cruelly beat the living snot out of each other for our amusement. What's perhaps most shocking of this is that, beyond the graphics, there's little that has been done to even improve the game. The latest incarnations on the DS haven't even gotten around to fully animating each of the Pokemon. Sure there's a hundred or so of them, but anything is better than simply warping the sprite. What annoys me about the games in general is that they fail to even deviate slightly from the tested formula, most likely because the fan base continues to buy the games.
But let's be serious, just about every other franchise of game has tried to improve in some respect. Heck even sporting games, which could get away with basic team line-up changes and are confined to the rules of the sport they represent, are a far cry away from games of the same genre ten years ago. Compare something like Fifa '97 with Fifa '07. Beyond the transition from 2D to 3D there have been numerous updates to the basic control system, the way in which the physics of the ball works, etc. Pokemon hasn't even done that, allowing the DS's touch-screen capabilities to fall to the wayside. In short, Game Freak are lazy, money-grabbing bastard. But we can't really blame them for that. They have to keep their employees pockets filled.
No, who we should really blame are all the people who plays these games and never once complain. I played through the very first Pokemon game (Blue in case you were wondering), and since then I can't bring myself to play through any of the others because I feel as though I'm just retreading water. The gameplay is nothing innovative and hardly captivating. There are much better RPG's to waste your time on. Yet the amount of information and time gushed into Pokemon boggles the mind. If you don't believe me check out this Gamefaqs guide on stats gaining in Pokemon; it's something like fifty+ pages long. The subject in question is getting maximum stats for Pokemon. Now in any RPG it's always something of a challenge to try and get the best stats possible. But it's insane just how far people are willing to go for about two or three points of stats difference; controlling levels, feeding vitamins at the right time, breeding the right pokemon, making sure they have the right "personality" - there's a lot of variables, perhaps too many for a game supposedly targeted at children. It's crazy, but the attention to detail the community at large is willing to give it is even crazier. Still crazier is the demand for such information; It's fair to say in the past decade the Pokemon games in their various guises have barely left the Top 10 viewed pages on Gamefaqs, and indeed the level of discussion into tactics in the game is immense.
What's startling about this is that the games themselves aren't even that difficult; you can quite easily complete all the challenges within using capture Pokemon that have been sufficiently levelled. The only real reason to spend hours upon hours gushing over Pokemon, carefully picking their moves list and stats, is two fold; Firstly to have a blast owning everything in the game without a moment's thought, and second to take on other Pokemon players (NOT trainers, that title is just stupid). In the first sense there's no real point to this besides a sense of superiority over the electronic world in which your miniature beasts reside, and in the second it's probably difficult to find players that you will have a real hard time defeating because most players know everything about the games anyway. Really when it comes down to it it's more probable you'll die because you had the wrong element of Pokemon out when the battle started than the hundreds of hours spent raising their stats.
Personally I feel that Game Freak's customers should demand more out of their products. The complacency of each new release to be nothing more than a rehash of old ideas is disgraceful for consumers and shouldn't be allowed. When all the other games companies are striving to create new products and failing to make a profit whilst Game Freak spits out the same crap and makes millions that should give pause for thought. We always complain about companies like Microsoft that release inferior products and have a stranglehold on the market; well now everyone has a chance to make a difference. When the next Pokemon game comes out, don't buy it. Bring down the sales. Stand outside of shops and bat back children with sticks so they don't buy the games either. Eventually the world will become a better place. Or at least a slightly more innovative one.
Pokemon is one of those eternal children's franchises, in the vein of Power Rangers, that constantly redoes itself using the same basic concept for each successive generation of parent-bothering midgets to flounder their cash on. There's really no trick to it at all; just add new Pokemon, perhaps one or two new gameplay mechanics, and ship away for billions of dollars. It's a surefire formula. The question is, just how much integrity do the people making Pokemon really have?
In essence the Pokemon games haven't changed at all since their first release some ten years ago. Each game has brought little to the basic idea of capturing monsters and having them cruelly beat the living snot out of each other for our amusement. What's perhaps most shocking of this is that, beyond the graphics, there's little that has been done to even improve the game. The latest incarnations on the DS haven't even gotten around to fully animating each of the Pokemon. Sure there's a hundred or so of them, but anything is better than simply warping the sprite. What annoys me about the games in general is that they fail to even deviate slightly from the tested formula, most likely because the fan base continues to buy the games.
But let's be serious, just about every other franchise of game has tried to improve in some respect. Heck even sporting games, which could get away with basic team line-up changes and are confined to the rules of the sport they represent, are a far cry away from games of the same genre ten years ago. Compare something like Fifa '97 with Fifa '07. Beyond the transition from 2D to 3D there have been numerous updates to the basic control system, the way in which the physics of the ball works, etc. Pokemon hasn't even done that, allowing the DS's touch-screen capabilities to fall to the wayside. In short, Game Freak are lazy, money-grabbing bastard. But we can't really blame them for that. They have to keep their employees pockets filled.
No, who we should really blame are all the people who plays these games and never once complain. I played through the very first Pokemon game (Blue in case you were wondering), and since then I can't bring myself to play through any of the others because I feel as though I'm just retreading water. The gameplay is nothing innovative and hardly captivating. There are much better RPG's to waste your time on. Yet the amount of information and time gushed into Pokemon boggles the mind. If you don't believe me check out this Gamefaqs guide on stats gaining in Pokemon; it's something like fifty+ pages long. The subject in question is getting maximum stats for Pokemon. Now in any RPG it's always something of a challenge to try and get the best stats possible. But it's insane just how far people are willing to go for about two or three points of stats difference; controlling levels, feeding vitamins at the right time, breeding the right pokemon, making sure they have the right "personality" - there's a lot of variables, perhaps too many for a game supposedly targeted at children. It's crazy, but the attention to detail the community at large is willing to give it is even crazier. Still crazier is the demand for such information; It's fair to say in the past decade the Pokemon games in their various guises have barely left the Top 10 viewed pages on Gamefaqs, and indeed the level of discussion into tactics in the game is immense.
What's startling about this is that the games themselves aren't even that difficult; you can quite easily complete all the challenges within using capture Pokemon that have been sufficiently levelled. The only real reason to spend hours upon hours gushing over Pokemon, carefully picking their moves list and stats, is two fold; Firstly to have a blast owning everything in the game without a moment's thought, and second to take on other Pokemon players (NOT trainers, that title is just stupid). In the first sense there's no real point to this besides a sense of superiority over the electronic world in which your miniature beasts reside, and in the second it's probably difficult to find players that you will have a real hard time defeating because most players know everything about the games anyway. Really when it comes down to it it's more probable you'll die because you had the wrong element of Pokemon out when the battle started than the hundreds of hours spent raising their stats.
Personally I feel that Game Freak's customers should demand more out of their products. The complacency of each new release to be nothing more than a rehash of old ideas is disgraceful for consumers and shouldn't be allowed. When all the other games companies are striving to create new products and failing to make a profit whilst Game Freak spits out the same crap and makes millions that should give pause for thought. We always complain about companies like Microsoft that release inferior products and have a stranglehold on the market; well now everyone has a chance to make a difference. When the next Pokemon game comes out, don't buy it. Bring down the sales. Stand outside of shops and bat back children with sticks so they don't buy the games either. Eventually the world will become a better place. Or at least a slightly more innovative one.
Tuesday 11 March 2008
Metal Gear Solid - Tacky Shit
I have this habit of vehemently hating games series that everyone else seems to love. Most of the time this stems from the fact that they offer gameplay that I don't find engaging and are as allergic to change and innovation as the Vatican. Prevalent amongst these games are the Grand Theft Auto series, which I have always seen as a sub-par Arcade-esque experience, not to mention the grossly insulting San Andreas version which has every Black and Hispanic under the Californian sun engaging in all manner of stereotypical gang-shootings and mother-effing possible. Of course people got more outraged by the extremely crude sex game than any of this other malarkey. Remember kids; racial stereotyping is OK, provided you don't get your cock out.
The worst of my bile, however, is reserved for the Metal Gear Solid series. It baffles me the lengths people will go to to prove how much they love the games (comparable to the madness that gripped people over Portal, culminating in an internet-wide love of; dignity handed in at the door). I'm convinced that by 2010 there's going to be a full-blown Hideo Kojima religion with large golden Foxes and people praying under cardboard boxes. It's like the guy's some kind of messiah of gaming, and before he came along every game was shit and now anything he touches turns into diamonds. Shaped like Jesus.
What's even more annoying about this is that I've yet to understand why the Metal Gear Solid series gets as much love as it does. So far I have played through half of MGS2, parts of MGS1 and a quick go on the other games. At no time was I having anything close to fun. It was torture, pure and simple, for a number of reasons. But since we have so many vehement fan-boys screaming their lungs out constantly over this gaming drivel, I feel it would be better to counter-attack against the noise by addressing certain factors that people love about the series.
TEH GAMEPLAYS IS SOOOOO GUD!!! SNEAK SNEAK SNEAK!!!!
Let' s get one thing straight; Metal Gear Solid is by no means the best stealth game ever. In fact I would say it ranks amongst some of the worst. There are a number of reasons for this, the main one being that other games have just done it much, much better. Take the fantastic Thief series. It has all the hallmarks of a stealth game; sneaking, knocking people out, evading capture etc. But it manages it infinitely better by simply the best viewpoint for stealth; first-person. I lose count of the number of times I had to fanny about with the camera controls just to see if there was someone around the corner from where I was. If only for an automatic lean function. The whole eye-in-the-sky spiel is odd because it kind of puts you in the chair of a limited-prescence God. In other words not much good for anything. Above-eye viewpoints are only to be used in RTS and Sports games. There's little you can do in terms of planning your overall route, there's no way to avoid going down the pre-set path the developers have forced upon you, and don't even get me started on the wonky senses of the guards who can switch from being deaf, dumb and blind wherein a rhinoceros couldn't get their attention, to having the eyes of a hawk, ears of a bat and self-awareness of a seventy-thousand eyed Beholder. Of course it doesn't help that the game suffers from gameplay schizophrenia. Actually that leads me nicely to the next point;
U CAN DU LOADZ OF FING, LOLOLOLOLOLOLLLLZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!
There's a place for excessive mini-games and reaction puzzles and that's the WarioWare series. What strikes me as odd about MGS in general is that it constantly throws you a curve-ball. The actual time you spend sneaking around is minimal. Most of the time you'll be pointing microphones at people while they whaffle on, trying to detected a bomb using a scent marker, dodging around lasers using a packet of cigarettes ad nausea. To me these seem like distracting padding, as if the development team realised that they couldn't make stealth exciting for the game's run so went out of their way to make these bloody things. I wouldn't mind if they were in the least bit entertaining, or heck, sporadic enough to make them special when they do show up. Sometimes being conservative is a good thing.
SNAKE IS SUC A BADASS!!!!!!! LOLOLLMAOROLFCOPTER!!!!
Solid Snake is marginally badass, I'll give you that. But he's not that badass. He can only take about three hits and he's down. That's weak as hell. He's also the type to avoid confrontation rather than seek it out, adding to his pussification factor. He only gains bonus points because of his voice and the fact he hits on every female he finds. I can name three computer game characters who are infinitely more badass right off the top of my head; Duke Nukem, Kratos and Max Payne. There, three people who could easily kick the crap out of Snake without a second thought. And they'd do it with more style to boot.
BUT TEH STORIES IS SOOO AWESEEESOMMEENS!!!!
This is perhaps the one thing I have most contention with when it comes to the MGS series. There's this myth that somehow the stories are artistic, brilliantly written works of art. Well they're not. I wrote stories when I was at Primary School that were more engaging and deep than any of the tripe seen in MGS. Hell, I've seen Steven Seagal movies with plots better than the one's in these games. The major problem is that it doesn't know what it wants to be; gritty Bourne-esque espionage or camp, frothy nonsense. The art direction would suggest the first, while every single line of dialogue and most of the cut scenes suggest the opposite. It's a bit like the Pope giving an interview about the dangers of condom use whilst juggling. You know what he's trying to say is important but for the life of you you don't know why in the hell he keeps throwing those balls around. The plots themselves are also utter nonsense. Actually they're the worst kind of nonsense - nonsense that takes itself very seriously. I mean, severed arms holding the personality of the bad guy? Cybernetic ninjas in a world of ranged weapons? Guys in tanks talking kitschy dialogue with all the seriousness of a Shakespearean play? It's trash, pure and simple. It belongs on some godforsaken late-night movie on the Sci-Fi channel. Stuff like this is why games aren't taken seriously.
Then there's the cutscenes. I'm not a big fan of any parts of a game that aren't interactive in some way. At least in Half Life you could mess around with the crowbar whilst people nattered on at you. The sense of immersion never went away. In this sense cutscenes for me need to be interesting, engaging and snappy. MGS's are none of these. They drag on forever, with every single line of dialog having close to a five second pause after it. Try counting the beats yourself, it's painful. Also there's no need for any gratuitous slow-motion shots unless it's showing something really awesome, like someone's head exploding. Even worse is the Codec conversations that are just painful to have to listen to. I don't know how anyone can sit whilst the characters babble to each other for fifteen plus minutes at a time about the same frothy nonsense I mentioned above with naught to do but wiggling their portraits about with the analog sticks. It's like Chinese water torture. Or Japanese game torture.
UR RUBBASH, MGS IS AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!
MGS has produced approximately two good things; Metal Gear Awesome and Metal Gear Awesome 2 . What's telling is that both of these fine, hilarious movies highlights why the series annoys me; utter nonsense taken way too seriously. Everything that happens in the movies is not exaggerated at all beyond the dialog.
I will stand by my convictions until the end; MGS1/2/3 are bad games, pure and simple. Other games play better, have better stories, are no where near as frustrating and are a lot more engaging. Of course my hatred of this series only adds onto the pile of things that only I seem to have a distaste for. Then again I'm aware of the fact that 50% of people have below-average intelligence. That would correlate nicely with the size of the voices that raise these games to the high heavens. So therefore I conclude that if you like MGS you must be an idiot. And you can't argue with logic mixed with statistics.
The worst of my bile, however, is reserved for the Metal Gear Solid series. It baffles me the lengths people will go to to prove how much they love the games (comparable to the madness that gripped people over Portal, culminating in an internet-wide love of; dignity handed in at the door). I'm convinced that by 2010 there's going to be a full-blown Hideo Kojima religion with large golden Foxes and people praying under cardboard boxes. It's like the guy's some kind of messiah of gaming, and before he came along every game was shit and now anything he touches turns into diamonds. Shaped like Jesus.
What's even more annoying about this is that I've yet to understand why the Metal Gear Solid series gets as much love as it does. So far I have played through half of MGS2, parts of MGS1 and a quick go on the other games. At no time was I having anything close to fun. It was torture, pure and simple, for a number of reasons. But since we have so many vehement fan-boys screaming their lungs out constantly over this gaming drivel, I feel it would be better to counter-attack against the noise by addressing certain factors that people love about the series.
TEH GAMEPLAYS IS SOOOOO GUD!!! SNEAK SNEAK SNEAK!!!!
Let' s get one thing straight; Metal Gear Solid is by no means the best stealth game ever. In fact I would say it ranks amongst some of the worst. There are a number of reasons for this, the main one being that other games have just done it much, much better. Take the fantastic Thief series. It has all the hallmarks of a stealth game; sneaking, knocking people out, evading capture etc. But it manages it infinitely better by simply the best viewpoint for stealth; first-person. I lose count of the number of times I had to fanny about with the camera controls just to see if there was someone around the corner from where I was. If only for an automatic lean function. The whole eye-in-the-sky spiel is odd because it kind of puts you in the chair of a limited-prescence God. In other words not much good for anything. Above-eye viewpoints are only to be used in RTS and Sports games. There's little you can do in terms of planning your overall route, there's no way to avoid going down the pre-set path the developers have forced upon you, and don't even get me started on the wonky senses of the guards who can switch from being deaf, dumb and blind wherein a rhinoceros couldn't get their attention, to having the eyes of a hawk, ears of a bat and self-awareness of a seventy-thousand eyed Beholder. Of course it doesn't help that the game suffers from gameplay schizophrenia. Actually that leads me nicely to the next point;
U CAN DU LOADZ OF FING, LOLOLOLOLOLOLLLLZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!
There's a place for excessive mini-games and reaction puzzles and that's the WarioWare series. What strikes me as odd about MGS in general is that it constantly throws you a curve-ball. The actual time you spend sneaking around is minimal. Most of the time you'll be pointing microphones at people while they whaffle on, trying to detected a bomb using a scent marker, dodging around lasers using a packet of cigarettes ad nausea. To me these seem like distracting padding, as if the development team realised that they couldn't make stealth exciting for the game's run so went out of their way to make these bloody things. I wouldn't mind if they were in the least bit entertaining, or heck, sporadic enough to make them special when they do show up. Sometimes being conservative is a good thing.
SNAKE IS SUC A BADASS!!!!!!! LOLOLLMAOROLFCOPTER!!!!
Solid Snake is marginally badass, I'll give you that. But he's not that badass. He can only take about three hits and he's down. That's weak as hell. He's also the type to avoid confrontation rather than seek it out, adding to his pussification factor. He only gains bonus points because of his voice and the fact he hits on every female he finds. I can name three computer game characters who are infinitely more badass right off the top of my head; Duke Nukem, Kratos and Max Payne. There, three people who could easily kick the crap out of Snake without a second thought. And they'd do it with more style to boot.
BUT TEH STORIES IS SOOO AWESEEESOMMEENS!!!!
This is perhaps the one thing I have most contention with when it comes to the MGS series. There's this myth that somehow the stories are artistic, brilliantly written works of art. Well they're not. I wrote stories when I was at Primary School that were more engaging and deep than any of the tripe seen in MGS. Hell, I've seen Steven Seagal movies with plots better than the one's in these games. The major problem is that it doesn't know what it wants to be; gritty Bourne-esque espionage or camp, frothy nonsense. The art direction would suggest the first, while every single line of dialogue and most of the cut scenes suggest the opposite. It's a bit like the Pope giving an interview about the dangers of condom use whilst juggling. You know what he's trying to say is important but for the life of you you don't know why in the hell he keeps throwing those balls around. The plots themselves are also utter nonsense. Actually they're the worst kind of nonsense - nonsense that takes itself very seriously. I mean, severed arms holding the personality of the bad guy? Cybernetic ninjas in a world of ranged weapons? Guys in tanks talking kitschy dialogue with all the seriousness of a Shakespearean play? It's trash, pure and simple. It belongs on some godforsaken late-night movie on the Sci-Fi channel. Stuff like this is why games aren't taken seriously.
Then there's the cutscenes. I'm not a big fan of any parts of a game that aren't interactive in some way. At least in Half Life you could mess around with the crowbar whilst people nattered on at you. The sense of immersion never went away. In this sense cutscenes for me need to be interesting, engaging and snappy. MGS's are none of these. They drag on forever, with every single line of dialog having close to a five second pause after it. Try counting the beats yourself, it's painful. Also there's no need for any gratuitous slow-motion shots unless it's showing something really awesome, like someone's head exploding. Even worse is the Codec conversations that are just painful to have to listen to. I don't know how anyone can sit whilst the characters babble to each other for fifteen plus minutes at a time about the same frothy nonsense I mentioned above with naught to do but wiggling their portraits about with the analog sticks. It's like Chinese water torture. Or Japanese game torture.
UR RUBBASH, MGS IS AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!
MGS has produced approximately two good things; Metal Gear Awesome and Metal Gear Awesome 2 . What's telling is that both of these fine, hilarious movies highlights why the series annoys me; utter nonsense taken way too seriously. Everything that happens in the movies is not exaggerated at all beyond the dialog.
I will stand by my convictions until the end; MGS1/2/3 are bad games, pure and simple. Other games play better, have better stories, are no where near as frustrating and are a lot more engaging. Of course my hatred of this series only adds onto the pile of things that only I seem to have a distaste for. Then again I'm aware of the fact that 50% of people have below-average intelligence. That would correlate nicely with the size of the voices that raise these games to the high heavens. So therefore I conclude that if you like MGS you must be an idiot. And you can't argue with logic mixed with statistics.
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