Finished both Dead Space and Fallout 3 within 48 hours of one another-both games represent in the own way the best and worst of the artform.
Dead Space left me (after a ginormous boss battle and an ending stolen from FEAR and a gazillion japanese horror films)with more questions than answers and feeling empty. Either purposefully or as an accident of omission the game never digs deeper than the surface regarding the plot and the character's relationships therein. Character setup early are eventually killed off arbitrarily, while the fates of other characters are foreshadowed so blatantly that the final reveal is more of a "meh" than a "doh!".
Having created such a beautifully rendered world as well as innovated in terms of the user interface it feels as if the story was left behind, where it had the potential to be something extraordinary as well. Worth renting.
Fallout 3 is entirely a game made of the journey not the destination. The final mission and the lead up to it is so abrupt you don't realize the game is about to end until it does. This is hampered by a late game character that is introduced as a deus-ex-machina solution to an earlier problem but then unable to be used in the same situation within the endgame. The emotional commitment made to building this character as it travels through the wasteland encountering some remarkably creative and unique situations is given short shrift in the resolution. While the mechanics of the plot ends, the emotional payoff is absent and there is no satisfying resolution to your character's story. Fallout 3 is in essence all foreplay and no climax.
Started and quit World of Warcraft last night after about 20 minutes of killing little fluffy animals. Don't get it, the essence of the game appears to be grinding. Was that ever fun?
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Game a Day-Ish:Demo-itis
Played a few demos in the last couple days, Left 4 Dead, Tomb Raider:Underworld, & Mirror's Edge. Demos for me are an important part of the gaming experience, because hopefully the demo is truly representative of the gaming experience. Like a trailer for a film, it should attract the consumer into parting with their money to have that experience, and like film, a good ad does not always denote a good game. However I have found that the percentage of "psych" in game demos are a lot smaller than in film trailers.
Some demos (though increasingly rare these days) are their own self contained experience that afford the gameplay, graphics and sense of story without actually being drawn directly from a level in the game. The legendary Half-Life demo remains one of the single best examples of this as it revealed the relationship the player would have with the NPC Barney, as well as the environments, enemies and gameplay in a rich intense but brief experience.
Left 4 Dead is from the same publisher as Half-Life, Valve (they bought the original developer and brought the game in-house). A stripped down multiplayer (either online or off,using bot's) the game is a series of encounters between four survivors of a zombie apocalypse and the aforementioned zombies. The sheer amount of bodies flung at the player is astounding as is the speed and intensity of the encounters. Graphically the game runs on the Source engine and while I was playing on the Xbox 360 I have to admit disappoint at the look of that version of the game. Like many PC 1st games (Fear, Half-Lief 2) the console ports just don't have the scalability or graphical fidelity of the the PC counterpart on a decently spec'd system. I am looking forward to trying the game on PC.
Tomb Raider:Underworld is a gorgeous looking game that shares the same developer Crystal Dynamics, as TR:Legend and TR:Anniversary, two games I like a lot. The gameplay and controls are tight and the level designs look to be as fiendishly platformy are the previous games. I am looking forward to playing the whole game.
The Mirror's Edge is an original IP from the maker's of the Battlefield series, DICE. Set in a dystopian future where information is controlled by corporations, "runners" like the player character "Faith" move documents and packages back and forth through the city by free-running across rooftops. Using a first-person view, the game provides vertiginous experiences as the player flings themselves on and around the tops of skyscrapers, precariously balanced on pipes and ledges. A fiercely original vision for a game, the gameplay is exhilarating, but if one is prone to motion sickness this game will kill you.
Some demos (though increasingly rare these days) are their own self contained experience that afford the gameplay, graphics and sense of story without actually being drawn directly from a level in the game. The legendary Half-Life demo remains one of the single best examples of this as it revealed the relationship the player would have with the NPC Barney, as well as the environments, enemies and gameplay in a rich intense but brief experience.
Left 4 Dead is from the same publisher as Half-Life, Valve (they bought the original developer and brought the game in-house). A stripped down multiplayer (either online or off,using bot's) the game is a series of encounters between four survivors of a zombie apocalypse and the aforementioned zombies. The sheer amount of bodies flung at the player is astounding as is the speed and intensity of the encounters. Graphically the game runs on the Source engine and while I was playing on the Xbox 360 I have to admit disappoint at the look of that version of the game. Like many PC 1st games (Fear, Half-Lief 2) the console ports just don't have the scalability or graphical fidelity of the the PC counterpart on a decently spec'd system. I am looking forward to trying the game on PC.
Tomb Raider:Underworld is a gorgeous looking game that shares the same developer Crystal Dynamics, as TR:Legend and TR:Anniversary, two games I like a lot. The gameplay and controls are tight and the level designs look to be as fiendishly platformy are the previous games. I am looking forward to playing the whole game.
The Mirror's Edge is an original IP from the maker's of the Battlefield series, DICE. Set in a dystopian future where information is controlled by corporations, "runners" like the player character "Faith" move documents and packages back and forth through the city by free-running across rooftops. Using a first-person view, the game provides vertiginous experiences as the player flings themselves on and around the tops of skyscrapers, precariously balanced on pipes and ledges. A fiercely original vision for a game, the gameplay is exhilarating, but if one is prone to motion sickness this game will kill you.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Game a dayish-Fallout 3
While this should be called game a week and I going to try and post something, even a few sentances regarding whatever I am playing at the moment. Today’s subject is the new multi-platform release, Fallout 3. Based on the original isometric RPG Fallout, Fallout 3 is an FPS-RPG and is a stunningly beautiful game. The RPG elements are a successful amalgam of the original post-apocalyptic world of Fallout blended with the dialogue tree sensibilities and scripted scenes of Oblivion.
Borrowing a page from the Metal Gear Solid design book, Fallout 3 leverages the graphics engine by using a carefully chosen limited color palette for the outdoor sequences. It makes for a wonderfully stylized yet gorgeous visual experience with a wide open world, outside of the urban environments.
Set in the ruins of Washington D.C most of the game is a literal “if you can see it, you can walk to it” experience outside of the city proper. Once inside the urban sprawl, environments are still expansive but limited in terms of accessibility. Load times are virtually non-existent but I long for the day when I can dynamically open a door and walk into a building without a load screen.
Due to repeated textures and elements artfully re-arranged in the world, the game runs at a solid 60 FPS on my PC, which is a small miracle in and of itself in these days of big budget, big buggy PC releases. This game runs some very tight code given the open nature of the gameplay and the non-linear world.
Exploration is rewarded but unlike Oblivion, enemies do not level dynamically with the player, so when you are in a place you shouldn’t be, you know it. However, once a zone is cleared, enemies do not respawn (at least not rapidly) allowing for a sense of accomplishment. This non-linearity can lead to moments where the flow of the gameplay is broken such a moment where I stumbled across a quest area that I was not meant to find for some time later in the game. My sense of discovery was tinged with a regret as I had now closed off who know how many side-quests I was meant to find prior to finding this area. It does add to replayibility as the engine does a fine job of modifying the world as you work through it, responding instantly to the unpredictability of the adventurous player.
The morality system of the game is simple but the moral choices presented are complex. There are always at least two solutions to an issue and the illusion of a living breathing world that will function with or without the player exists here as it did in Oblivion. I do find myself making a mental checklist of things I would do differently next time and that is always a good thing.
Finally the VATS combat system is a exciting way to spruce up the standard FPS play. A twitch shooter this is not, but VATS allows the player to stop combat in a frozen moment, allowing them to target specific body parts and also showing the stats on hit chances as well as damage already done. Strategy becomes a part of the shooting experience and it is a refreshing change.
Fallout 3 is easily once of the best games this year if ever, and a welcome return to that world.
Borrowing a page from the Metal Gear Solid design book, Fallout 3 leverages the graphics engine by using a carefully chosen limited color palette for the outdoor sequences. It makes for a wonderfully stylized yet gorgeous visual experience with a wide open world, outside of the urban environments.
Set in the ruins of Washington D.C most of the game is a literal “if you can see it, you can walk to it” experience outside of the city proper. Once inside the urban sprawl, environments are still expansive but limited in terms of accessibility. Load times are virtually non-existent but I long for the day when I can dynamically open a door and walk into a building without a load screen.
Due to repeated textures and elements artfully re-arranged in the world, the game runs at a solid 60 FPS on my PC, which is a small miracle in and of itself in these days of big budget, big buggy PC releases. This game runs some very tight code given the open nature of the gameplay and the non-linear world.
Exploration is rewarded but unlike Oblivion, enemies do not level dynamically with the player, so when you are in a place you shouldn’t be, you know it. However, once a zone is cleared, enemies do not respawn (at least not rapidly) allowing for a sense of accomplishment. This non-linearity can lead to moments where the flow of the gameplay is broken such a moment where I stumbled across a quest area that I was not meant to find for some time later in the game. My sense of discovery was tinged with a regret as I had now closed off who know how many side-quests I was meant to find prior to finding this area. It does add to replayibility as the engine does a fine job of modifying the world as you work through it, responding instantly to the unpredictability of the adventurous player.
The morality system of the game is simple but the moral choices presented are complex. There are always at least two solutions to an issue and the illusion of a living breathing world that will function with or without the player exists here as it did in Oblivion. I do find myself making a mental checklist of things I would do differently next time and that is always a good thing.
Finally the VATS combat system is a exciting way to spruce up the standard FPS play. A twitch shooter this is not, but VATS allows the player to stop combat in a frozen moment, allowing them to target specific body parts and also showing the stats on hit chances as well as damage already done. Strategy becomes a part of the shooting experience and it is a refreshing change.
Fallout 3 is easily once of the best games this year if ever, and a welcome return to that world.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Game a Day: Dead Space
In the hopes of getting a lot of the nonsense rattling around my head out into some kind of record I am starting what I hope can be a daily blog about one of the bunch of games I always have running.
Dead Space first hit my radar over a year ago in the pages of Game Informer (the single best overall gaming mag out there). The graphic design of the game leapt off the screen shot loaded pages and I knew this was a game I needed to play.
The setup for the game is nothing new, a rescue team is sent out to investigate radio silence from a massive "planet cracking" spaceship and havoc ensues, seperating the player character Issac (the engineer) from his shipmates. Borrowing heavily from the influences of Alien, The Thing and Resident Evil 4, Dead Space improves on some of its sources in areas while taking two steps back in others. In the holy trinity of gameplay, visuals, and plot, Dead Space manages a 1 1/2 out of 3.
Visually it has moments of stunning dreadful beauty, where the claustrophobic linear progress of bland metal-grated corridors will suddenly open up on a massive chasm in the ships bowels, or force the player into the vacuum of space on the ship's exterior.
The gameplay is RE4 sped up, with the same tank controls but a slightly more nimble protagonist and a camera butted up tight to the leads shoulder. Dominating the frame with the main character forces tension in the player mechanically making it harder to see what threats may lurk just off screen. The "dismemberment" aspect of the gameplay creates a diversionary method of playing, forcing the player to avoid the normal aim-for-the-head approach and rather cut the limbs off the enemies in order to stop them. While this forces a different method of play initially, again it is a mechanical method of creating tension, relying on hampering the player's abilities rather than innovating. In between skirmishes with varying creatures, the player is sent on seemingly endless "errand" quests of the "go there find this fix that" variety. while the gameplay is passable and the visuals often gorgeous, the story is laughably bad.
Cut off from the survivors of his crew, Issac meanders about the monolithic planet cracking ship, following directions from holo-projected crew-mates as they shock/horror! discover various technical issues plaguing the ship beside the mutant killers running around. Strangely enough this issues are only discovered one at a time, further reinforcing the heavily linear aspect of the game. At one point, one of the support characters even states how ridiculous it is for these things to keep happening, a moment guaranteed to break any immersion.
While Dead Space does a have a few genuine "scare's",it loses any emotional cohesion with its by the numbers plot. In terms of pure visual design the game is a triumph, something apparent from those first screenshots so long ago, but this is truly a game made of style over substance.
Dead Space first hit my radar over a year ago in the pages of Game Informer (the single best overall gaming mag out there). The graphic design of the game leapt off the screen shot loaded pages and I knew this was a game I needed to play.
The setup for the game is nothing new, a rescue team is sent out to investigate radio silence from a massive "planet cracking" spaceship and havoc ensues, seperating the player character Issac (the engineer) from his shipmates. Borrowing heavily from the influences of Alien, The Thing and Resident Evil 4, Dead Space improves on some of its sources in areas while taking two steps back in others. In the holy trinity of gameplay, visuals, and plot, Dead Space manages a 1 1/2 out of 3.
Visually it has moments of stunning dreadful beauty, where the claustrophobic linear progress of bland metal-grated corridors will suddenly open up on a massive chasm in the ships bowels, or force the player into the vacuum of space on the ship's exterior.
The gameplay is RE4 sped up, with the same tank controls but a slightly more nimble protagonist and a camera butted up tight to the leads shoulder. Dominating the frame with the main character forces tension in the player mechanically making it harder to see what threats may lurk just off screen. The "dismemberment" aspect of the gameplay creates a diversionary method of playing, forcing the player to avoid the normal aim-for-the-head approach and rather cut the limbs off the enemies in order to stop them. While this forces a different method of play initially, again it is a mechanical method of creating tension, relying on hampering the player's abilities rather than innovating. In between skirmishes with varying creatures, the player is sent on seemingly endless "errand" quests of the "go there find this fix that" variety. while the gameplay is passable and the visuals often gorgeous, the story is laughably bad.
Cut off from the survivors of his crew, Issac meanders about the monolithic planet cracking ship, following directions from holo-projected crew-mates as they shock/horror! discover various technical issues plaguing the ship beside the mutant killers running around. Strangely enough this issues are only discovered one at a time, further reinforcing the heavily linear aspect of the game. At one point, one of the support characters even states how ridiculous it is for these things to keep happening, a moment guaranteed to break any immersion.
While Dead Space does a have a few genuine "scare's",it loses any emotional cohesion with its by the numbers plot. In terms of pure visual design the game is a triumph, something apparent from those first screenshots so long ago, but this is truly a game made of style over substance.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Rage of Conan
Finally seduced into the world of Massively-Multiplayer Online games, which use a subscription based model of monthly payments, I settled on the “M” rated actioner. Conan has long been a favorite character of mine and the initial previews and reviews of the game were generally positive. I liked that the initial levels of the game would in fact be single player, giving the player an opportunity to get comfortable with the control and gameplay before throwing them into the online world.
Throughout the initial offline aspect of the game I was hooked and delighted-unlike the more stylized but attractive World of Warcraft AOC is a deeply textured and beautiful looking game. The real-time combat takes some getting used but once combos are mastered, there is a singular joy in finishing a foe with a fatality, a scripted kill sequence that can result in decapitations among other bloody delights. By taking the standard sword and sorcery play and embedding it into a harsh graphically violent world, it lives up to the expectation of the Conan brand. Online, the bread and butter of the game, is where the trouble began.
Once finished the single-player aspect of the game, online is the only alternative as several massive worlds are opened up to the player. I immediately suffered massive game stopping lag on a constant basis. Strangely enough it was very similar to the delays and issues I would have with p2p downloads using my cable provider Shaw. Shaw is well known, as is Rogers cable, for their extremely invasive throttling and packet inspection methods in order to free up bandwidth for their cable, VOD and VOIP services.
Several weeks of contact with both Shaw’s tech support as well as the game publisher Funcom were unable to rectify the problem, and I cancelled my account, disappointed.
In the middle of this I also started the switch from cable to my preferred DSL reseller Teksavvy. As I use them in Ontario and have been very pleased I was extremely disappointed about the 3 week odyssey to setup internet on my phone line. True to form, Telus did as Shaw, Rogers and Bell have done before, and screwed up the install. Only by checking my own phone line with a multimeter at both the jack and the patch board in the building’s utility room was I able to finally get a Telus tech out to the building. Once there it was clear that Telus had provided faulty information to Teksavvy about my DSL line, and the service was being sent to the wrong unit. Within an hour it was all corrected and I finally logged into my new internet.
During these events I made it clear to all involved that the latency issue with AOC, in my mind, was very much due to the throttling practices of my ISP. I measured throughput during gameplay and my speed’s never reached higher than 6 kb/s, far below what it would take to keep my client software in sync with the server generated world. Neither Shaw nor Funcom would address this issue.
As a test I initiated a bittorrent download on my new DSL line and was delighted to see speeds between 5 and 10 times faster than the throttled cable. Invigorated I reactivated AOC and re-entered the game world, wondering if I would continue to lag out.
Then I played for 3 hours without a hiccup. It’s clear that throttling is the single source of the issues I experienced with the game and this poses a larger question. Creating and maintaining an MMO is a hugely expensive undertaking. In a world where Net Neutrality is becoming more of an issue, the very fact of throttling could be the thing that prevents a game from reaching sustainability much less success. This leaves the developer, publisher and customer at the mercy of their ISP, which is absolutely unacceptable.
Happily I have leveled up from 24 to 32 in the last week
Throughout the initial offline aspect of the game I was hooked and delighted-unlike the more stylized but attractive World of Warcraft AOC is a deeply textured and beautiful looking game. The real-time combat takes some getting used but once combos are mastered, there is a singular joy in finishing a foe with a fatality, a scripted kill sequence that can result in decapitations among other bloody delights. By taking the standard sword and sorcery play and embedding it into a harsh graphically violent world, it lives up to the expectation of the Conan brand. Online, the bread and butter of the game, is where the trouble began.
Once finished the single-player aspect of the game, online is the only alternative as several massive worlds are opened up to the player. I immediately suffered massive game stopping lag on a constant basis. Strangely enough it was very similar to the delays and issues I would have with p2p downloads using my cable provider Shaw. Shaw is well known, as is Rogers cable, for their extremely invasive throttling and packet inspection methods in order to free up bandwidth for their cable, VOD and VOIP services.
Several weeks of contact with both Shaw’s tech support as well as the game publisher Funcom were unable to rectify the problem, and I cancelled my account, disappointed.
In the middle of this I also started the switch from cable to my preferred DSL reseller Teksavvy. As I use them in Ontario and have been very pleased I was extremely disappointed about the 3 week odyssey to setup internet on my phone line. True to form, Telus did as Shaw, Rogers and Bell have done before, and screwed up the install. Only by checking my own phone line with a multimeter at both the jack and the patch board in the building’s utility room was I able to finally get a Telus tech out to the building. Once there it was clear that Telus had provided faulty information to Teksavvy about my DSL line, and the service was being sent to the wrong unit. Within an hour it was all corrected and I finally logged into my new internet.
During these events I made it clear to all involved that the latency issue with AOC, in my mind, was very much due to the throttling practices of my ISP. I measured throughput during gameplay and my speed’s never reached higher than 6 kb/s, far below what it would take to keep my client software in sync with the server generated world. Neither Shaw nor Funcom would address this issue.
As a test I initiated a bittorrent download on my new DSL line and was delighted to see speeds between 5 and 10 times faster than the throttled cable. Invigorated I reactivated AOC and re-entered the game world, wondering if I would continue to lag out.
Then I played for 3 hours without a hiccup. It’s clear that throttling is the single source of the issues I experienced with the game and this poses a larger question. Creating and maintaining an MMO is a hugely expensive undertaking. In a world where Net Neutrality is becoming more of an issue, the very fact of throttling could be the thing that prevents a game from reaching sustainability much less success. This leaves the developer, publisher and customer at the mercy of their ISP, which is absolutely unacceptable.
Happily I have leveled up from 24 to 32 in the last week
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
The PC Piracy Crysis-(or why Crytek are whiners)
Crytek president Cevat Yerli announced recently that piracy is driving Crytek away from PC exclusives and towards the consoles. Though Crysis sold an estimated 1.5 million copies world-wide, Crytek, based on bittorrent tracker stats, feel their game has underperformed. Read that again: based on tracker stats their game under-performed. Noting that there were approx 15-20 pirate copies for each copy sold, and acknowledging that this does not equate 1 to 1 sales, Yerli still states “sales would be double without piracy”.
I am pretty sure the music industry ran this argument about 10 years ago and it is no more valid now than then. Pirated copies do not equate lost sales. Here are some thoughts about why Crysis “underperformed”.
1) Hype
Hype is an intangible fluid thing that can teeter in an instant from “just right” to “too much” depending on the sensibilites and tastes of the desired audience. A game announced early in development can drop off the radar unless it has a killer concept that “sells itself” (Brutal Legend and Dead Space come to mind). A game relentlessly promoted can become old news before it is released (ie.Black) and have to win back flagging interest.
The hype around Crysis encapsulates many of the reasons it “underperformed”, creating a whole much less than the sum of its parts.
For almost a year prior to the release of Crysis every gaming magazine and website whored screenshots and gushed preview “news” as the tiniest detail was revealed by the developers. The message behind it all: “This game will rape your last-gen or current gen top of the line hardware.” For hardware pigs with more money than brains, this is enticing as they are the ultra hardcore, the ultra-core, and they are a niche market. Knowing that a) the game is an FPS b) is coming soon and c) will require you to upgrade your PC that was great two years ago at considerable expense is not attractive to the mainstream. Add the generic “super-soldiers vs. aliens” plot, the details of which, when revealed, failed to excite, and you have a game that is over-exposed, to say the least. It’s as if the marketing team at EA had no clue how to sell the game, other than “Hey the guys who made Far Cry are making it”. To achieve mainstream penetration hype has to amount to more than specs and a thing plot, it has to be enticing to everybody. Thus far, games that have that level of marketability are accessible in terms of gameplay, hardware and content. Crysis is none of these things.
2) Hardware Specifications
Crysis was promoted from the get-go as the next step of PC gaming, in terms of the graphics. It was promised to punish current gen hardware and was designed, like Far Cry (to a lesser extent) to be “future proof” in that not-yet-released hardware would be required to run the game at its highest capabilities. While pushing tech is a hallmark of PC gaming, Crytek overshot this mark to the extent of alienating its audience. Buying a game knowing it will run on your machine but look like crap and knowing you can’t run it all are two different things. This is a failure on the developer’s part, simply because they either overestimated the install base of hardware that could (barely) run the game acceptably or their audience’s willingness to upgrade, or both. Taking a page from Valve’s playbook would have served this game well, given that the Source engine seems to be infinitely scalable and looks great, something Crysis, and its predecessor Far Cry fail at. As point of reference, I bought Far Cry to run on an over-clocked 1.8 gig Sempron, 2 gigs DDR and an ATI 512 meg 1650 video card. This same setup carried me through Quake 4, Half Life 2 Ep 1, and F.E.A.R., though in fairness, I had bought Far Cry prior to any of these games but never finished it (it would ultimately last me through 3 different PCs). While able to play the game, it was only until I upgraded my entire system to an overclocked 2.8 gig Core 2 Duo, 2 gigs DDR (dual channel) and a PCI-E overclocked XFX 6800 (256 megs) that I would be able to play it at 30+ FPS will all the bells and whistles turned on, at my monitor’s native res of 1440 x 900. This new hand-picked and built system cost a miserly (in Pc terms) $600.
This same system would wheeze through Crysis at 960 X 600 and manage at worst 11 FPS and at best 35 FPS with all settings on low. By comparison, I finished Half-Life 2 Ep 2 on the prior machine, with only the final strider battle giving unacceptable framerates and low visual quality. With the new system, I tore through the same sequence with everything maxed out and never dipped below 30 FPS. I also beat F.E.A.R on the Sempron box, but again can now run the game at native rez with settings maxed out.
The unpalatable and frankly intimidating aspect of Crysis is that not only will the game require a $5000 dollar machine to play it max, but just to look at it you need to be running a $1000 machine built in the last 2 years. What percentage of the hundreds of millions of PC’s in North America meet the minimum specs alone? 10%? Maybe 2% meet the max and that would be a generous estimate. The absolute maximum attainable sales this game could have at and around launch would have been 2-3 million units because no one else would be able to play it even if the wanted to. Yerli feels that the exclusivity of being a PC only release should have driven more sales, while ignoring the concept that Crysis was not only PC exclusive, but exclusive to a very few PC’s.
The end result is that Crytek effectively developed their way out of the market with this game, leaving behind 75% of the install base in their wake. This is especially glaring given the Sims franchise has just reached the 100 million sales mark. While they are two different genres and two different audiences, it is a clear reminder that accessibility will trump specs any day.
3) Quality
Crysis, if you can run it, is a spectacular looking game. The enemy AI is reasonably good, the environments are detailed and beautiful and the effects used in the game are excellent. However, while it is a massive step up from Far Cry in terms of story, pacing, character animation and voice-acting, it is still a fairly run-of-the-mill by the numbers FPS.
Game quality seems to have three distinct subsets: graphics, story, and gameplay. A great game excels at all three, while a good game has two. No game can be successful resting on the laurels of only one of these subsets as Doom III and Quake 4 can attest. While the gameplay in Crysis did achieve some moments of tension and excitement, it failed to reach the heights set by games like F.E.A.R. Despite the latter’s repetitive environments and so-so story, the intense and unrelentingly gameplay, aided by superior A.I. and beautiful visuals drove sales. Crysis raises the bar in visual fidelity while being average in gameplay and story. If your game requires a significant hardware upgrade then it better be really good at least two of the above, and Crysis is not.
Comparisons to Crytek’s previous effort may well have hindered sales also. Far Cry is a beautifully rendered game, with open non-linear exploration of its environment. It has reasonably tight gameplay and A.I., however the story is just plain awful with some of the worst voice acting on record. Gamers non-plused by Far Cry may well have skipped Crysis if only because they expected more of the same. In a market where your reputation precedes you, you are only as good as your last release.
In the end, Crytek were their own worst enemies in this case and unfortunately it appears to be a lesson unlearned.
I am pretty sure the music industry ran this argument about 10 years ago and it is no more valid now than then. Pirated copies do not equate lost sales. Here are some thoughts about why Crysis “underperformed”.
1) Hype
Hype is an intangible fluid thing that can teeter in an instant from “just right” to “too much” depending on the sensibilites and tastes of the desired audience. A game announced early in development can drop off the radar unless it has a killer concept that “sells itself” (Brutal Legend and Dead Space come to mind). A game relentlessly promoted can become old news before it is released (ie.Black) and have to win back flagging interest.
The hype around Crysis encapsulates many of the reasons it “underperformed”, creating a whole much less than the sum of its parts.
For almost a year prior to the release of Crysis every gaming magazine and website whored screenshots and gushed preview “news” as the tiniest detail was revealed by the developers. The message behind it all: “This game will rape your last-gen or current gen top of the line hardware.” For hardware pigs with more money than brains, this is enticing as they are the ultra hardcore, the ultra-core, and they are a niche market. Knowing that a) the game is an FPS b) is coming soon and c) will require you to upgrade your PC that was great two years ago at considerable expense is not attractive to the mainstream. Add the generic “super-soldiers vs. aliens” plot, the details of which, when revealed, failed to excite, and you have a game that is over-exposed, to say the least. It’s as if the marketing team at EA had no clue how to sell the game, other than “Hey the guys who made Far Cry are making it”. To achieve mainstream penetration hype has to amount to more than specs and a thing plot, it has to be enticing to everybody. Thus far, games that have that level of marketability are accessible in terms of gameplay, hardware and content. Crysis is none of these things.
2) Hardware Specifications
Crysis was promoted from the get-go as the next step of PC gaming, in terms of the graphics. It was promised to punish current gen hardware and was designed, like Far Cry (to a lesser extent) to be “future proof” in that not-yet-released hardware would be required to run the game at its highest capabilities. While pushing tech is a hallmark of PC gaming, Crytek overshot this mark to the extent of alienating its audience. Buying a game knowing it will run on your machine but look like crap and knowing you can’t run it all are two different things. This is a failure on the developer’s part, simply because they either overestimated the install base of hardware that could (barely) run the game acceptably or their audience’s willingness to upgrade, or both. Taking a page from Valve’s playbook would have served this game well, given that the Source engine seems to be infinitely scalable and looks great, something Crysis, and its predecessor Far Cry fail at. As point of reference, I bought Far Cry to run on an over-clocked 1.8 gig Sempron, 2 gigs DDR and an ATI 512 meg 1650 video card. This same setup carried me through Quake 4, Half Life 2 Ep 1, and F.E.A.R., though in fairness, I had bought Far Cry prior to any of these games but never finished it (it would ultimately last me through 3 different PCs). While able to play the game, it was only until I upgraded my entire system to an overclocked 2.8 gig Core 2 Duo, 2 gigs DDR (dual channel) and a PCI-E overclocked XFX 6800 (256 megs) that I would be able to play it at 30+ FPS will all the bells and whistles turned on, at my monitor’s native res of 1440 x 900. This new hand-picked and built system cost a miserly (in Pc terms) $600.
This same system would wheeze through Crysis at 960 X 600 and manage at worst 11 FPS and at best 35 FPS with all settings on low. By comparison, I finished Half-Life 2 Ep 2 on the prior machine, with only the final strider battle giving unacceptable framerates and low visual quality. With the new system, I tore through the same sequence with everything maxed out and never dipped below 30 FPS. I also beat F.E.A.R on the Sempron box, but again can now run the game at native rez with settings maxed out.
The unpalatable and frankly intimidating aspect of Crysis is that not only will the game require a $5000 dollar machine to play it max, but just to look at it you need to be running a $1000 machine built in the last 2 years. What percentage of the hundreds of millions of PC’s in North America meet the minimum specs alone? 10%? Maybe 2% meet the max and that would be a generous estimate. The absolute maximum attainable sales this game could have at and around launch would have been 2-3 million units because no one else would be able to play it even if the wanted to. Yerli feels that the exclusivity of being a PC only release should have driven more sales, while ignoring the concept that Crysis was not only PC exclusive, but exclusive to a very few PC’s.
The end result is that Crytek effectively developed their way out of the market with this game, leaving behind 75% of the install base in their wake. This is especially glaring given the Sims franchise has just reached the 100 million sales mark. While they are two different genres and two different audiences, it is a clear reminder that accessibility will trump specs any day.
3) Quality
Crysis, if you can run it, is a spectacular looking game. The enemy AI is reasonably good, the environments are detailed and beautiful and the effects used in the game are excellent. However, while it is a massive step up from Far Cry in terms of story, pacing, character animation and voice-acting, it is still a fairly run-of-the-mill by the numbers FPS.
Game quality seems to have three distinct subsets: graphics, story, and gameplay. A great game excels at all three, while a good game has two. No game can be successful resting on the laurels of only one of these subsets as Doom III and Quake 4 can attest. While the gameplay in Crysis did achieve some moments of tension and excitement, it failed to reach the heights set by games like F.E.A.R. Despite the latter’s repetitive environments and so-so story, the intense and unrelentingly gameplay, aided by superior A.I. and beautiful visuals drove sales. Crysis raises the bar in visual fidelity while being average in gameplay and story. If your game requires a significant hardware upgrade then it better be really good at least two of the above, and Crysis is not.
Comparisons to Crytek’s previous effort may well have hindered sales also. Far Cry is a beautifully rendered game, with open non-linear exploration of its environment. It has reasonably tight gameplay and A.I., however the story is just plain awful with some of the worst voice acting on record. Gamers non-plused by Far Cry may well have skipped Crysis if only because they expected more of the same. In a market where your reputation precedes you, you are only as good as your last release.
In the end, Crytek were their own worst enemies in this case and unfortunately it appears to be a lesson unlearned.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
The Evolution of Narrative:Gaming and the language of film
As with any burgeoning artform, game developers over the last 20 years have made their stumbling baby steps towards maturity of the art. Narrative, until recently (and with a few notable exceptions) has long taken a backseat (or no seat) to gameplay. The many constraints of the hardware and software capabilities until recently have precluded developers from exploring narrative (outside of text based games like Zork) as the challenges in just making a game run as a finished piece of code and be fun is daunting enough. However, with ever expanding technology in both hardware and software, and the maturity of over twenty years as an industry, gaming has finally begun to stretch its legs in terms of what can accomplished within the art.
I believe that interactive gaming is the next step in narrative and easily the most immersive. However, like any other maturing form of expression, gaming has come to consider other artforms as the mold on which to base itself, rather than seeking to create something the is unique unto itself. In this case, the language of film and terms like "cinematic" are now tossed about as identifiers of pedigree. Like the comic book industry, gaming is turning to Hollywood screenwriters to pen the storyline of a game as well as seeking ways to implement the visual language of film in the storytelling. While this in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing, it can lead, as it has in comics, to a turn away from the strengths of the form to become something that is less than the sum of its parts (ie. decompressed storytelling).
The language of film has developed over the last century to become a short hand in the public unconscious and this can only serve, if used well, to immerse the player deeper into the world. The greatest strength of cinema is the ability to elicit emotion, an area precious few games are able to reach. To use the visual vocabulary of film without understanding how that language developed does developers a disservice as it creates built-in limitations. By imitating the image without understanding the intent meaning is lost.
As an example, during the recent GDC conference, Canadian developer Silicon Knights previewed their new game "Too Human". While the development history of this game has been controversial and public, the gameplay demonstrated looked solid. While previewing the gameplay, the phrase "the language of film" was used multiple times, and to their credit, moments in the game gave credence to the developer's intent. Not having played the game I can only comment on the brief moments I saw but what struck me was the use of "standard" film shots in much of the cinematics (ie. establishing shots, over the shoulder dialogue scenes etc). While refreshed to not see the spastic camera moves of many cinematics (ie. Devil May Cry) it was strange to see a locked off panning shot, which established the epic locale as a character entered the area.
Had this been a live-action film of the same fantasy environment it would have been a matte shot, panning off a digital painting to a holdout area for the live action to be place, shot against a greenscreen and/or partial set. In real world terms, if the same shot was used to show a character stepping into a cavernous area, the camera would physically be on a crane or a skycam, limiting its mobility. Such limitations do not exist in the digital world and by copying the staging of a shot without understanding the reality of it, the developer does the game a disservice.
Should developers go camera crazy and move the digital camera around spaces that would be impossible in the real world? No, as this would destroy any verisimilitude necessary to immerse the player. Developers need to come to understand why a shot exists in a film before emulating it in the game. Once understanding the intent, they can begin to create a new language, combining the emotional dynamic of film with the unlimited potential of digital imagination.
Only then will gaming truly become a narrative force.
I believe that interactive gaming is the next step in narrative and easily the most immersive. However, like any other maturing form of expression, gaming has come to consider other artforms as the mold on which to base itself, rather than seeking to create something the is unique unto itself. In this case, the language of film and terms like "cinematic" are now tossed about as identifiers of pedigree. Like the comic book industry, gaming is turning to Hollywood screenwriters to pen the storyline of a game as well as seeking ways to implement the visual language of film in the storytelling. While this in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing, it can lead, as it has in comics, to a turn away from the strengths of the form to become something that is less than the sum of its parts (ie. decompressed storytelling).
The language of film has developed over the last century to become a short hand in the public unconscious and this can only serve, if used well, to immerse the player deeper into the world. The greatest strength of cinema is the ability to elicit emotion, an area precious few games are able to reach. To use the visual vocabulary of film without understanding how that language developed does developers a disservice as it creates built-in limitations. By imitating the image without understanding the intent meaning is lost.
As an example, during the recent GDC conference, Canadian developer Silicon Knights previewed their new game "Too Human". While the development history of this game has been controversial and public, the gameplay demonstrated looked solid. While previewing the gameplay, the phrase "the language of film" was used multiple times, and to their credit, moments in the game gave credence to the developer's intent. Not having played the game I can only comment on the brief moments I saw but what struck me was the use of "standard" film shots in much of the cinematics (ie. establishing shots, over the shoulder dialogue scenes etc). While refreshed to not see the spastic camera moves of many cinematics (ie. Devil May Cry) it was strange to see a locked off panning shot, which established the epic locale as a character entered the area.
Had this been a live-action film of the same fantasy environment it would have been a matte shot, panning off a digital painting to a holdout area for the live action to be place, shot against a greenscreen and/or partial set. In real world terms, if the same shot was used to show a character stepping into a cavernous area, the camera would physically be on a crane or a skycam, limiting its mobility. Such limitations do not exist in the digital world and by copying the staging of a shot without understanding the reality of it, the developer does the game a disservice.
Should developers go camera crazy and move the digital camera around spaces that would be impossible in the real world? No, as this would destroy any verisimilitude necessary to immerse the player. Developers need to come to understand why a shot exists in a film before emulating it in the game. Once understanding the intent, they can begin to create a new language, combining the emotional dynamic of film with the unlimited potential of digital imagination.
Only then will gaming truly become a narrative force.
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