When did boss battles go from being a means of ramping up the players experience to culminate in a hopefully satisfying use of the skills learned, to being game-breaking punishments?
Boss battles come in a gazillion different forms ranging from escaping ever-increasing hordes of enemies in a ever-decreasing area (COD 4), to a big alien dude you shoot stuff at its weak spots to make it roll over and die (Lost Planet). Shadows of the Colossus is an example of a game made of nothing but boss battles as the player finds way to attack an kill massive creatures, all with unique weaknesses and behaviors. All of these games create these battles organically withing the story, using them as storytelling elements to drive to plot as well as engage the player.
Gears of War 2 has one of the worst boss battles I have ever played, to the point that I actually quit playing. The battle is not only achingly repetitive and tiresome, it actually breaks the immersiveness of the game and violates the physics engine. Facing the locust villian Skorge, the player has to avoid grenades, falling rocks, explosive "tickers" and finally, massive wood columns that Skorge chainsaws through, causing them to topple.
Directly on the player.
Even if they are behind the column when it starts to fall.
I screamed cheap at the screen more than once because the developers were so unrelentingly lazy making this game that they broke the gameplay in order to make the battle more difficult. This is unacceptable. Gears 2 is a mediocre rehash of the first game at best and its makers are clearly resting on their laurels.
Rise of the Argonauts uses the same engine, as does Brothers in Arms as Gears 2, the Unreal 3 engine. Epic has often been labeled as the only developer capable of manipulating the engine to its fullest (including a lawsuit from Silicon Knights) and I am starting to get an inkling why. They are the only ones who don't try to make the engine do something its not good at. Of the the three Epic games made on the engine, they are rely on tightly controlled, small,linear environments surrounded by lush, but unreachable, visuals. Rise, Brothers, Mass Effect, etc etc, use the engine to create massive environments where you can usually go to what you can see. This engine is not made to do this, resulting is massive amounts of texture pop-in, frame-rate issues and general glitches. It makes one wonder if other developers were sold a bill of goods on the capabilities of the engine, specs that Epic itself does not have the engine do, only to have it fall short.
Rise of the Argonauts, in direct comparison to Gears 2, is receiving an entirely unfair critical drubbing compared to Gears, which I consider to be an inferior single-player game. Rise has a compelling emotional plot that drives the player forward. It does exhibit a lack of final polish in its animations, voice work and gameplay, but overall the game is fun and tells a great story. It seeks to engage the player emotionally rather than viscerally, using Mass Effect inspired dialogue trees and some very clever writing. Any fan of Greek myth should rent this game. It too has a boss battle that frustrated the snot out of me but I finally beat it, because I wanted to see what happened next. I didn't care with Gears 2. Argonauts also has babes in it, which is nice. I beat Rise of the Argonauts in 2 days of non-stop play, I liked the game that much.
Brothers In Arms 3 also draws the player in emotionally, asking us to invest in the characters, including a "Previously on..." cutscene that shows the first two games. Using a linear layout, like Gears, BIA drives the player and their squad forward against the German defenses.Reasonably smart AI (other than when it runs down the middle of the street rather than following you through back yards) drives the squads and they follow commands well. The control scheme is smart and intuitive and the cover system allows the player slightly more protection from the hail of bullets.
Satisfying and challenging without being stupidly difficult, BIA 3 is fine game that deserves more attention than it is getting from consumers. I am looking forward to beating it soon.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Monday, December 1, 2008
Secur-bomb
DRM (digital rights management) has been a growing concern for years now as publishers of any and all media try to find new and different ways of controlling the release and prorogation of that media to consumers.
Unfortunately, last century paradigms are still being applied to 21st century media, and industry by industry try and fail, repeating the same mistakes over and over again. Napster lead the way in the 1990's in regards to music and the internet. Consumers came to like and more importantly desire portability of music in manner never before scene. Mix-tapes and CD's become irrelevant in an era where hundreds and eventually thousands of songs could be shuttled around in smaller and smaller devices. Relatively small file sizes allowed consumers to transfer and share their music with others over email, the internet and peer to peer.
The music industry slow response was first to litigate everyone in sight to try and prevent music sharing, then misguided attempts of DRM were implemented (Sony rootkits, magic marker workarounds). Only Apple's monolithic hardware allowed them to leverage the music industry to become the single success story in monetizing digital delivery of music with Itunes, and even they have DRM laden product, though workarounds are easy to find.
As broadband internet has become ubiquitous, fast and cheap (relatively) the film industry has fallen into the same trap. By not adapting to the media rather than trying to force the media to adapt to an outdated business plan, movies are now traded on the net through P2P almost as frequently as music. Blockbuster hits can be found, in varying quality, on the net within days or hours of the films release to theaters. Like the mistakes made by the music industry, the RIAA have tried to litigate everyone they can find, while forcing different forms of DRM into their product. Unfortunately, each new encryption program is cracked within its first year of existence up to and including blu-ray. In a war of mutual assured destruction the music biz has shown they cannot win, because the courts and governments move exponentially slower than technology. Laws will always be far behind the ability to circumvent those laws. The only reasonable solution is to create a new paradigm for a new form of business.
Piracy and DRM have always been a bone of contention in the games industry with many early PC developers growing their fanbase and bank accounts by giving aware portions of the games as "shareware". The advent of consoles made piracy more difficult but like any encryption eventually beatable given time and a world of hackers who will do it just to prove they can. This has lead to a dichotomous approach to protecting and monetizing the intellectual property of the company while also trying not to alienate an increasingly well-informed and pro-active audience.
Various forms of DRM have begun to plague the releases of major companies, the latest and most prevalent being Secur-rom. Once a simple disc-check to ensure the game is in the computers drive when the game is started, secur-rom is now an invasive and often invisible piece of spyware that sits on the user's harddrive long after the game has been uninstalled. Lawsuits have sprung up regarding this as have virtual attacks against the bottom line of companies like EA with hundreds if not thousands of users spamming consumer review sites like Amazon with bad reviews on product because of the restrictive DRM.
Most disappointly my beloved Fallout 3 uses securom, but as quoted by the developers, "only as a disc check" which is fine, except that if I try to have a process explorer running (showing me what is running on my system and eating up resources) when I try to start the game, securom crashes out. Apparently it doesn't want you to know what it is doing on your computer, which to me is unacceptable and the behaviour of spyware or a virus.
It appears the game industry is now heading down the same path as music and film before it, the question is only whether there are lessons to be learned.
Unfortunately, last century paradigms are still being applied to 21st century media, and industry by industry try and fail, repeating the same mistakes over and over again. Napster lead the way in the 1990's in regards to music and the internet. Consumers came to like and more importantly desire portability of music in manner never before scene. Mix-tapes and CD's become irrelevant in an era where hundreds and eventually thousands of songs could be shuttled around in smaller and smaller devices. Relatively small file sizes allowed consumers to transfer and share their music with others over email, the internet and peer to peer.
The music industry slow response was first to litigate everyone in sight to try and prevent music sharing, then misguided attempts of DRM were implemented (Sony rootkits, magic marker workarounds). Only Apple's monolithic hardware allowed them to leverage the music industry to become the single success story in monetizing digital delivery of music with Itunes, and even they have DRM laden product, though workarounds are easy to find.
As broadband internet has become ubiquitous, fast and cheap (relatively) the film industry has fallen into the same trap. By not adapting to the media rather than trying to force the media to adapt to an outdated business plan, movies are now traded on the net through P2P almost as frequently as music. Blockbuster hits can be found, in varying quality, on the net within days or hours of the films release to theaters. Like the mistakes made by the music industry, the RIAA have tried to litigate everyone they can find, while forcing different forms of DRM into their product. Unfortunately, each new encryption program is cracked within its first year of existence up to and including blu-ray. In a war of mutual assured destruction the music biz has shown they cannot win, because the courts and governments move exponentially slower than technology. Laws will always be far behind the ability to circumvent those laws. The only reasonable solution is to create a new paradigm for a new form of business.
Piracy and DRM have always been a bone of contention in the games industry with many early PC developers growing their fanbase and bank accounts by giving aware portions of the games as "shareware". The advent of consoles made piracy more difficult but like any encryption eventually beatable given time and a world of hackers who will do it just to prove they can. This has lead to a dichotomous approach to protecting and monetizing the intellectual property of the company while also trying not to alienate an increasingly well-informed and pro-active audience.
Various forms of DRM have begun to plague the releases of major companies, the latest and most prevalent being Secur-rom. Once a simple disc-check to ensure the game is in the computers drive when the game is started, secur-rom is now an invasive and often invisible piece of spyware that sits on the user's harddrive long after the game has been uninstalled. Lawsuits have sprung up regarding this as have virtual attacks against the bottom line of companies like EA with hundreds if not thousands of users spamming consumer review sites like Amazon with bad reviews on product because of the restrictive DRM.
Most disappointly my beloved Fallout 3 uses securom, but as quoted by the developers, "only as a disc check" which is fine, except that if I try to have a process explorer running (showing me what is running on my system and eating up resources) when I try to start the game, securom crashes out. Apparently it doesn't want you to know what it is doing on your computer, which to me is unacceptable and the behaviour of spyware or a virus.
It appears the game industry is now heading down the same path as music and film before it, the question is only whether there are lessons to be learned.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Eat my testosterone
Gears of War 2 is the follow-up to the gorgeous, yet thinly plotted, spectacularly linear Gears of War and thus far, is exactly the same as the first, but up-sized. More enemies thrown at you, larger vehicles on larger rail sequences. And more Brumak, way more Brumak.
People often wonder why the Gears and Unreal games running the Unreal 3 engine all look better coming from Epic than virtually anyone else using the engine (a lawsuit is pending about this very issue). The answer is pretty simple a)they designed the damn thing b)they cheat.
By cheat, I mean in the traditional film jargon sense, as in "cheating" the camera over a few inches, or using forced-perspective. The idea is to cheat the eye into seeing something that really isn't there and Epic have always excelled at this.
By creating vistas that you can never actually explore and funneling gameplay down narrow path surround by the appearance of beauty, Epic games seem like they look better. They are simply better optimized for the gameplay, whereas a game like Mass Effect uses the engine to show vistas that you can actually walk up to. That makes the engine work harder and it doesn't have the sheen Gears does. It's smart design, if limiting, which seems to be Epic's trademark.
From the intial Unreal, Epic has thrilled with visual tricks and story ideas that never live up to the potential. Epic has become the new ID, with their games standing more as entertaining tech demos than immersive experiences. The story sessions seem to have been frat-boy keggers where Cliffy B continually asks "what's cooler than..", ie. "Hey what's cooler than a shitload. (beat) Ten shitloads."
That there is some fine writing Cliff.
What does appear to be true is that the games are not purchased for the single player experience, which is simply the gravy to the online experience of curbstomping your pals.
Thus far I am underwhelmed by the story, but the game mechanics are as compelling as ever
People often wonder why the Gears and Unreal games running the Unreal 3 engine all look better coming from Epic than virtually anyone else using the engine (a lawsuit is pending about this very issue). The answer is pretty simple a)they designed the damn thing b)they cheat.
By cheat, I mean in the traditional film jargon sense, as in "cheating" the camera over a few inches, or using forced-perspective. The idea is to cheat the eye into seeing something that really isn't there and Epic have always excelled at this.
By creating vistas that you can never actually explore and funneling gameplay down narrow path surround by the appearance of beauty, Epic games seem like they look better. They are simply better optimized for the gameplay, whereas a game like Mass Effect uses the engine to show vistas that you can actually walk up to. That makes the engine work harder and it doesn't have the sheen Gears does. It's smart design, if limiting, which seems to be Epic's trademark.
From the intial Unreal, Epic has thrilled with visual tricks and story ideas that never live up to the potential. Epic has become the new ID, with their games standing more as entertaining tech demos than immersive experiences. The story sessions seem to have been frat-boy keggers where Cliffy B continually asks "what's cooler than..", ie. "Hey what's cooler than a shitload. (beat) Ten shitloads."
That there is some fine writing Cliff.
What does appear to be true is that the games are not purchased for the single player experience, which is simply the gravy to the online experience of curbstomping your pals.
Thus far I am underwhelmed by the story, but the game mechanics are as compelling as ever
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
FU I am done
Beat Force Unleashed despite constant screams of CHEAP and resisting the urge to toss my controller through the window. The story is simply amazing and though the cutscenes are available on youtube, it is somehow more satisfying to have slogged through the messy gameplay for the sweet reward of story. Very Pavlovian. I only wish the gameplay was of the same caliber of every single other aspect of this game, then it would truly be one of the greatest games ever made.
Now its just mediocre.
Now its just mediocre.
Friday, November 21, 2008
The Force Unleashed
Force Unleashed or as I like to call it, FU, is like dating a person whose personality you can't stand but when you occasionally have sex, its like the best ever.
The game is beautiful to look at and has the single best Star Wars story (outside of Kotor) since return of the Jedi. It is however, horribly marred by lazy and/or plain stupid design decisions making getting to the story the time before you have done the crime.
Platforming is essential to the gameplay, but unlike other games it has taken many many cues from, FU fails to provide the player with simple courtesy's, like designing a platforming level with narrow ramps and bridges, but building in auto-catch animations should the player accidentally and often FALL OFF THE EDGE. You don't see Kratos falling to his death too often and he doesn't even have a lightsaber.
Sloppy controls, brutal camera and bad level design don't quite drive this game into the ground as the visuals and the story have enough heft to almost carry the player through. Almost.
After spending an hour engaged in an act that should have been the ultimate expression of pure unbridled power I was ready to toss my controller through the window. The developers had managed to reduce the ridiculously cool act of yanking a Star Destroyer from orbit using the force into a tedious series of minigames.
Par for the Force (Unleashed)
The game is beautiful to look at and has the single best Star Wars story (outside of Kotor) since return of the Jedi. It is however, horribly marred by lazy and/or plain stupid design decisions making getting to the story the time before you have done the crime.
Platforming is essential to the gameplay, but unlike other games it has taken many many cues from, FU fails to provide the player with simple courtesy's, like designing a platforming level with narrow ramps and bridges, but building in auto-catch animations should the player accidentally and often FALL OFF THE EDGE. You don't see Kratos falling to his death too often and he doesn't even have a lightsaber.
Sloppy controls, brutal camera and bad level design don't quite drive this game into the ground as the visuals and the story have enough heft to almost carry the player through. Almost.
After spending an hour engaged in an act that should have been the ultimate expression of pure unbridled power I was ready to toss my controller through the window. The developers had managed to reduce the ridiculously cool act of yanking a Star Destroyer from orbit using the force into a tedious series of minigames.
Par for the Force (Unleashed)
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Game-a-day-ish:Premature Endings
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?
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?
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.
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