The week in gaming

What's up everyone?  It is the 29th of October and here is what I have been playing:


Fallout New Vegas

Totally awesome so far, really enjoying this.  I find the criticisms of the game rather interesting.  Listening to people Like Jess Chobot and others, the game has been criticised for being too much like the first one, for being buggy, for having a weaker story, and various other things.  A few people have said it plays exactly like 3.  Well, yes and no.  Many of the mechanics are the same, but the fact that you keep spent shell cases and make new ammo, the fact you can create an awful lot more stuff, and the fact the game is much harder and forces you to make use of things like food and water sources, unlike 3, makes it a rather different beast to play.


Even without hardcore mode on, this game feels far deeper, more immersive, and far more like a survival game than 3 ever did.  As far as the story goes, I much prefer this one, the story in 3 I found a little irritating and rather incidental to the plot, New Vegas to me feels much more important in scale, and gives you real choices about what you do.  In 3 you pretty much just follow the main quest, whereas in New Vegas you shape the way the events go from an early stage.  To me this makes it more much involving and rewarding, and gives you real choices, which is something I talk about an awful lot I know.
Jess complained too about finding a large number of radscorpions blocking her way to the next main quest location.  Well I think that is inevitable in a large open world like fallout, and also is inevitable in a game where so much of it is based upon side quests and leveling up.  If you can't get somewhere, get better until you can, that is pretty standard gaming stuff.  Almost immediately upon starting the game my brother was attacked by a giant radscorpion in goodsprings, it wouldn't leave no matter how much he waited, slept, or hid in buildings, and in the end he had to just run away until it stopped chasing him.  Unfortunate, but I think it is just one of those things, we both found it very funny.

If you really want to be disturbed, google 'fallout new vegas' and go to images, rather near the top is a pic of a naked man having sex with a giant scorpion...

As to the bugs, since I am in Britain the patch was out by the time I got the game home last Friday, and aside from the odd strange animation, nothing major has happened.  It has only crashed the once too, which isn't bad in probably 20 hours of play.  Yes I would have liked the game to work straight out of the box, and releasing a buggy game can be considered bad form, but they patched it immediately and so far I for one have had no real issues, so I am not bothered.

[youtube clip_id="BMHkFUQiQzo"]

this video made me laugh so much

So far I give this an excellent 9.5 deathclaw hands, and think it is a much better game than 3.


Castlevania Lords of Shadow:

Now this game too has drawn a lot of flack from many people, too much like other games, not enough like Castlevania.  An awful lot like God of War/Dante's Inferno/Devil May Cry...
so?

Personally I do not care, the combat is excellent, the graphics great, the story is interesting.  God of War is an excellent series, so if Lords of Shadows is a lot like it, well great, so it should be.  The combat is every bit as deep and varied as God of War, they have done an excellent job on it.  It is funny really, nobody thinks twice about there being lots of games all featuring shooting, or lots of 3D platformers, or 2D platformers, they are just types of game so there can be lots of them, but we got a few games taking the combat system of god of war, and suddenly they are copying.  What exactly is the difference?  Nobody makes this complaint of Super Meat Boy for example, a 2d platformer in which you press a button to jump, 'hey they have copied this from Mario' well yeah, it is a good idea.


As to the second point, it not being a Castlevania game, well that is kinda the point of a reboot, bring in some new ideas and new themes.  The recent one, Harmony of Despair?  shows the 2D Castlevania is still very much alive, so why shouldn't they change the 3D one, which in the past was always rubbish.  All in all I am really enjoying this game so far, though I haven't played it all that much, the combat is done very well, characters are cool, story is interesting, I look forward to more.

awesome

Ongoing score, 9 staked vampires.


Front Mission Evolved:

Just picked it up this evening on the way back from work, played for an hour when I got home.  I am a huge mech fan, and so far have always been really disappointed in mech games, which usually suffer from having too much time spent on the customisation side, and no time spent on the actual mission side.  Armored Core could be an awesome series if the massively detailed customisation process was actually supported by missions you wanted to play.  But they are always pretty dull in the actual game, so my enthusiasm for this game was wary.

boom

In actual fact I am finding it awesome so far.  Not too far in, so this may change later, but at the moment the mechs look really cool, the guns and explosions are big, the combat is very fast, and the mech customisation has lots of variety and options.  Really everything you could need.  I think Square Enix must have been listening in on my conversations lately, because not too long ago I told my brother I felt that mech games really needed to make the gameplay be more like a traditional 3rd person shooter, and that is what they have done.  The four shoulder buttons control your two hand and two shoulder weapon mounts respectively, you can boost about at high speed, collect armour and ammo restocks, it has a lot in common with other traditional shooters.  But you unleash very powerful weapons, boost about, and destroy buildings, so it still feels like a mech combat, lots of heavy impact.
All aspects of the game have been simplied and/or made more 'arcadey' which is exactly what it needed.  Square have brought along their RPG trousers too in the form of skills.  Skills can be equipped to each weapon slot, and have a chance of conferring a bonus, a melee skill for example gives you a certain percentage chance of scoring an instant kill critical hit, missiles can have a skill which triggers a larger area of effect, and so on.  The visuals are good, it sounds good, and it is lots of fun.


It does have on foot sections too, which are usually the death of games not based around them (see some of the star wars games, Rebel Strike, Clone Wars) but these parts don't let the game down too badly.  It is incredibly basic, but it all works, and I was very surprised at how cool the guns sound in these sections, really throaty and cool.  So a simple distraction, it wont bother you too much either way, an inoffensive diversion.  The characters are quite interesting too, in as much as they are quite generic JRPG types, whereas mech games are normally more gritty and hardbitten, this lot wouldn't look out of place in an episode of GUNDAM.

8.5 rockets of doom

Halo Reach:

Really enjoying this now, gotten quite near the end (so I am told) but see my blog post about it for more details here.


Yes, I have bought a lot of top titles this last week, but I worked for two solid weeks without a day off, so treated myself, what the hell.  Now I am spoilt for choice, life is tough sometimes.

Halo Reach, first impressions

Ok, I decided in the end to see what the fuss was about.  Many of you will be aware I am not a Halo fan, I find the games mediocre.  But I felt a curious desire to try this one out and see if it had gotten any better, so picked it up earlier today to tide me over until Fallout New Vegas tomorrow (day off, lots of free time, and feeling ill, so needed something to sit around and do).

this is pretty, I'll give them that

Initial thoughts were mixed.  The graphics are an improvement over the others.  I know many people reported no real difference to ODST, but there is some improvement, especially I think in the simple choice of colours used.  Halo's 1-3 were too bright and garish for me, ODST too dark to see anything most of the time.  Reach has finally struck the balance, a slightly more muted colour palette than 3 gives it a more realistic appearance, immediately a plus for me.

looking good

On the other hand, the gunplay is still massively underwhelming.  In any sort of shooter, the guns and their use are the key element for the whole game.  Halo for me has always been disappointing here, and this one is no exception.  They don't sound powerful or dangerous, and have little to no effect on the enemies.  I have surround sound and noticed rather bizarrely that everyone else's guns are actually louder than my own, the main gun in particular, the assault rifle, is barely noticeable when it shoots.  The other thing I realised is there is no recoil effects, which is a serious lack.
Now, a game I am a big fan of is Gears of War, and enemies in that also require an awful lot of shots, so what is the difference?  Why does that work for me?  Simply put, it is down to impressions.  In Gears, I get the feeling that the guns are very powerful, and the enemies are incredibly tough.  In Halo on the other hand, I get the impression that the enemies are not especially hard, and that it is the gun which is rubbish.  This makes Gears feel very satisfying, and Halo very frustrating.  The length of time it can take to bring down an enemy makes every shootout feel like a real grind, and really slows down the action for me.  It is a far cry from something like Modern Warfare or Bad Company which is all about rapid reactions and itchy trigger fingers, a few rounds kills you or the enemy alike.  Conversely Halo feels like chipping away at each individual enemy.  This is the same reason I found borderlands very unsatisfying, the action is just slowed down too much.
It also feels to me a bit random as to how much damage an enemy can take.  Maybe Halo veterans can work it out, but sometimes it seems like half a dozen shots kills an enemy, and sometimes it can be two magazines of fire.  Even the grunts can sometimes take a great many rounds to down.  One of the biggest criticisms I have is the lack of aimimg, it pisses me off in Left 4 Dead, and it pisses me off even more in Halo, the inability to just look down your gun and increase accuracy.  As someone who likes to place single shots, or short bursts, with precision, the lack of aiming is very frustrating.  Coupled with the previously mentioned lack of recoil, it just makes the shooting feel incredibly basic and unsatisfying.
Grunts.  Oh how I hate grunts.  They were a stupid idea in the first game, and as the series has developed they have only gotten worse.  Halo has become increasingly serious and gritty, the story more drawn out and mature.  More and more it makes the grunts seem like a dreadful mistake.  Reach is all about tragedy, yet we have little hairless ewoks waddling around waving their hands in the air.  Please get rid of them for the next game, they just ruin the whole thing.

spoiling it for everyone

AI is still below par compared to many modern shooters, your allies have a dreadful habit of shooting at enemies they cannot actually hit.  Now this is a problem in a great many games, don't get me wrong.  The problem is not unique to Halo, but it annoys me in every game.  When you have a team of super soldiers with you, you expect a bit more than them to stand behind a wall pouring magazine after magazine of rounds into the very wall they are stood behind.  I also destroyed an anti aircraft gun by simply standing in its' shadow and letting an enemy wraith demolish it with its' mortar, it took quite a few shots, you would think they might have realised at some point.  The other thing I have noticed multiple times is allies general chatter shouting 'all clear' or words to that effect, when in fact there are very clearly still enemies around.  I even had a door unlock and a computer voice say something like 'base secure, welcome lieutenant' whilst there were still three covenant about...

painting that on must really restrict his vision...

The sound track is ok, it is something people seem to universally rave about, but so far I haven't heard anything special in 3, ODST, or Reach.  What I have noticed so far in Reach is a resounding crescendo score, the sort of thing that ought to be saved for the end of game finale, starting up occasionally during minor skirmishes, which makes the whole thing sound rather sad.  I know it is a major struggle, and will all end badly, but having a big score start up every time you shoot an ewok rather spoils the impact.  On the subject of audio, Kat has some truly dire voice acting, was she done by some sort of robot being trialled?  Personality wise too she is just Michelle Rodriguez in every film she has ever been in, rather cliched.  I found the others a bit stereotypical too, ticking all the standard action squad boxes, but they are at least bearable.

definitely her best angle

Despite all said above, I am enjoying it.  It is fun enough, don't get me wrong, just really nothing special, exactly like all the others.  I am not very far in so far, on 'tip of the spear' trying to destroy an anti aircraft gun whilst drones, hunters and a wraith mob me.  I will come back and update this with final impressions once I finish, which given the length of the other games probably wont take long at all.

The evolution of gaming: open worlds

The open world game is a phenomenon that has seen an enormous surge in popularity in recent years.  All manner of games now incorporate exploratory elements, side quests, treasure hunting, as a key gameplay element.  So what exactly has given rise to this explosion of exploration?

Captain Ash, world's greatest explorer

In the main I would consider it to be down to technology.  Designers now have the ability a) to create a large world you can explore, and b) create a large world you actually want to explore.  If you are going to have a wide open world, then there needs to be a reason for players to go and look around it.  Typically this will be some form of reward, new weapons, secrets, loot, powerups, whatever it may be.  This could be the sole purpose of the game, Crackdown is a fine example of this, the only real reason for playing is orb hunting.  The story was rubbish, the action not terribly satisfying, what people do is leap about chasing orbs.  Alternatively it can be a side quest.  This is the approach many games take, such as Prototype, where you collect a range things, noticeably in this instance the back story.

streets to explore, buildings to climb

A third approach is to make the exploration semi-integral to the gameplay.  Examples of this are the Metroid Prime series, Mario, or the Zelda series, where exploration rewards you with extra life/magic/ammo/items which makes the rest of the game easier but is not necessarily absolutely essential.  Fallout 3 is another good example, side quests and exploration will make survival much easier in the long term, and may prove necessary so you have enough cash, experience etc. to prevail.

you don't have to find every star, but many

The sandbox is, rather like the morality system, all about immersion.  It gives you the opportunity to put your own stamp on the game by allowing you to do as much or as little as you like.  You can spend as much time as you wish exploring every corner and crevice of the map, or simply ignore much of it and crack on with the main story.  What it does is give the developer the chance to appeal to a broader range of gamers, from the more instant gratification types to the more patient grind type gamers.  Each person in theory can take their own approach at their own speed.
This sense of freedom draws you in, it allows you to express yourself within the game and thus can make you more invested in the process.  There are a few different types of open world game, and whilst they all tend to carry the same label, they do very different things.  Some of them will be all about the exploration, this is usually RPG type games such as Neverwinter Nights.  These games are often played by the more meticulous gamer, people who like to spend hours traveling around on a general search, collecting quests, leveling up, you are looking to get better.  Other open world games are the 'sandbox' games, where you are simply presented a world and allowed to do what you want with it, almost make your own fun.  I would class things like Mercenaries here, where a player can spend half an hour planting explosives all over a few square blocks of city before setting the whole lot off.  Just Cause is another good example, the story missions are there, but mainly it is a case of 'there is a load of islands and cities, here are some guns and vehicles, have fun.'  There is no real purpose behind what you do, unlike in an RPG where you are out for quests and levels, you are instead just encouraged to make your own entertainment with the world.

blow stuff up

Typically an open world game will be pretty large.  You can expect to invest a great many hours into its' completion.  After all there is no point creating a vast landscape and then not populating it with anything.  This however gives rise to some very difficult issues.  First and foremost, how you balance rewards.  As I said before, some people will do little to nothing in the way of side quests, others will do them all.  Yet you want both players to feel they have developed their character, whether through interactions or simply through better firepower.  Gamers want to feel more powerful at the end than they did at the start, your inventory improves, your skill improves, you get feats or abilities to invest in.  But a game the size of Mass Effect 2 for example will have a significant difference between the amount of time the story driven gamer spends, and the amount of time the exploration player invests.  You do not want to punish the people who do nothing but the essential missions, likewise a player doing everything possible wants to have something to show for it.

hot bisexual blue aliens for the win

Whilst I do like Fallout 3, I felt this was a problem here.  I am in the meticulous search everything camp, I like physically walking over every square inch and looking round every corner, if there is a fog of war type effect, I want every bit of it removed from the map.  But in Fallout 3, I reached the level cap long before running out of stuff to do, and at that point, I had to decide whether to keep playing or not, simply for its' own sake.  Much as I like exploring, I want something out of it.  If I spend ten minutes walking to some remote location, I expect there to be a benefit for it.  Whilst the level cap was increased in the expansions, again I felt it was not high enough.  I recently bought the four big expansions, Broken Steel, Operation Anchorage, Point Lookout, and the Pitt, and reached the higher cap within Broken Steel, which left me with three expansions to look through without leveling up.
So the balance needs to be well struck.  Returning as ever to my beloved Zelda, the search for pieces of heart is fun and challenging, and there are enough about that you can find them fairly regularly without being disheartened, the pacing is well done.  Fable 2 on the other hand I found the looking round especially tedious, no part of the game was satisfying enough that I wanted to continue.  Yahtzee put it best when he summed it up as 'you can, but why would you want to?'  This is an open world game where I just gave up after a few hours because I found no reward in trudging back and forth.

two more pieces...

Open worlds then are either a means of drawing you into the realm, or of simply letting you do what you want.  Even if you do nothing but main quests in fallout 3, the fact the wasteland is there gives you a real feeling of scale and atmosphere, it is just fun to walk around even if you don't want to go hunting stuff.  Even better than that is STALKER, which also gives you a large world to explore, but conveys the desolation far better, you really feel like you are in a wasteland, rather than a videogame wasteland.  It feels very realistic and engrossing, you can really picture your own responses.  If not about immersion and role playing, open worlds are about you going nuts, often with large guns and high explosives.  I lived with guys at uni who spent hours on Mercenaries blowing up all manner of stuff, but it is not my thing, I couldn't get into Crackdown, GTA, or any of those where you simply cause mayhem and run around for the sake of it.  Many people do find hours of fun in them however and they are as valid a game format as any other, certainly so long as it is not done in order to avoid having to provide the game purpose.  If it is going to be a sandbox game, it needs to be well built, the systems need to function as you would expect them to and it needs enough controls, moves, means etc. in place to really give you the chance to do what you want to do.

hostile environment

I think we will continue to see an expansion in the number of open world games in future, and I think we will see more crossovers of genres like Mass Effect (part open world, part shooter, part RPG) and the like.  Open world need not be just one large map, it could be any game with places to explore.  Scale is very important to give you a feeling of the universe the developers have created, larger maps make events feel larger, and can be fun to traverse as well if done right (something the original Just Cause failed at, but the sequel did far better), larger maps can also add to the strategy involved.  One of the best features of Farcry, whilst not exactly sandbox, was the size of jungle which allowed you to ambush enemies, pick off stragglers in patrols etc. without such events being heavily scripted.  Open worlds can add an awful lot to games, and make a real break from strictly linear events, though each has a place within gaming.

Gaming habits...

You know when you get those private jokes, things that develop out of shared experiences...
I love The Onion News Network, and the In the Know video about guys getting stoked leads to my brother and I now laughing every time we see the word stoked.
Gaming has led to a lot these in jokes and memes taking over.  After being a big street fighter on the SNES, now whenever I see a country mentioned, if that country was a street fighter venue, I have to say the country name in the accent street fighter 2 had.  Japaaaaaaaaan
Also, Command and Conquer Generals gave me the 'China has been generous' every time China do something in the news...
A lot of unit catchphrases from RTS' too, especially red alert, warcraft 3, and starcraft
So what habits and jokes have you picked up from games?  are they repeatable?

Today....

Been working a lot of shifts lately (bar work) so had no time to blog, which makes me sad.  I am exhausted and have aching feet.

The evolution of gaming: the shooter

The majority of games I play are FPS’.  I love other genres, strategy in particular, but I dabble in brawlers, racers, and RPG’s.  What really grabs me though, is the shooter.  First or third person, I love them all.  Such is my enjoyment, that I am easy to please, even many unpopular games, such as Dark Void.

What I want to talk about today is the importance of the shooter in shaping the development of gaming across the board.  It doesn’t matter if you don’t like shooters, or have never played one, they have probably shaped the games you do play.

What makes good games great?

This is a question I want to throw out to all of my loyal and avid followers.  There are games I like, games I love, and games I obsess over.  I am pretty easy to please when it comes to gaming, so long as I have fun, I can overlook some issues.  I am sure everyone knows a game everyone raves about, but you just don’t get the fuss.

The price of gaming

Last week I discussed the financial impact of gaming, all those bits of hardware and software that keep you spending your hard earned cash.  This week I want to talk about the other side, the costs to you as a person.  Are there any?   If so, are they important?

Hardware and the gaming industry

So you have bought your console, and you buy some games now and again, not too bad right?  Yet the games industry is always seeking new ways to make your bank manager cry.

Video games, mythology for our times

A commonly discussed topic is the nature of characters in video games, are they too big, too strong, the females too big chested?  Characters can often be criticised for their over the top physiques or lack of realism, people ask if female characters are bad for women, and so on.

Perceptions of video gaming in the wider world

I spoke yesterday about the internet and the effect it has had on gaming in the last decade or two.  To recap briefly for those who haven’t read it (why not?) the internet has resulted in what was once a very private hobby being brought out of the living room and into a global theatre.  Gamers from all over the world come to IGN and many other sites to discuss their digital passtimes.  What this tends to view is create a mutual opinion, gamers talk to other gamers, their beliefs are reinforced.  We all write about gaming related topics from the point of view of gamers.  Of course this is perfectly reasonable and can lend credibility to what we say, our beliefs are often vindicated by others who come to these places with the same or similar beliefs and opinions.

The internet and the evolution of gaming

When I started gaming over twenty years ago, I had no idea what the internet was.  In this day and age, the internet and gaming are inextricably linked.  The internet suffuses every aspect of gaming, the online community instrumental in orchestrating development, releases, and sales.

have you tried switching it off and on again?

I am not going to write a history of the internet, it is terribly dull, and that is what things like wikipedia is for.  What I want to talk about is the role that the internet has come to play in every aspect of our gaming lives.  Of course in writing this blog here on my IGN, I am accessing an online community of gamers that would not have been possible when I began gaming.  Even when not playing, I am still involved in the gaming community, it no longer switches off when I press the power button on my console.

communication before the internet was limited

Growing up, gaming was much more insular, consoles were not online, there were no networking games.  You played a game, on your own or split screen, and then you went and did something else.  Each person’s gaming activity was a distinctly personal affair.  There were no worldwide leaderboards, no achievements or trophies, and no youtube of clips.
Yet over time technology has improved in all aspects of life and has settled in, making space for itself.  Like a symbiote, the internet has grown and encompassed what was once a private hobby, and brought it to the forefront of the world’s attention.  Now you can see scores posted by people you have never met, and never will.  What changes then has this wrought on gaming?  Is it a good thing?
dialup was very basic…
The internet has allowed people to share.  All manner of data is now transferred globally, whether it be email, twitter, facebook, youtube, or any number of other sites and apps.  Opinions flash back and forth, hundreds of thousands of debates go on at all hours of the day.  Walls have crumbled, and a living room can encompass the world as terabytes of information flash between countries, cultures and beliefs.  This fundamentally open platform gives everyone a soapbox.  In the past, if you wanted to talk about gaming, you went to a friend who gamed, and your circle of those could be quite limited.  Now if you want to say something about a game, you simply go online and tell a thousand faceless individuals.  This of course has its’ good and bad points.  There are people who have things worth saying, and those who really don’t.

not everyone's opinion is valid

On the positive side, and in my opinion one of the greatest benefits of the internet, is the opportunity to seek new people with similar beliefs and likes.  The opportunity exists for true multiculturalism, people from all kinds of backgrounds can find common cause.  This of course extends to all sorts of topics, but how does it affect gaming?  What it means for gaming is that good games become known.  If you have been gaming for a while, what did you do before IGN and its’ like, before forums?  Maybe you bought a monthly magazine like me, where half a dozen people could inform the decisions of hundreds, if not thousands of people.  Now, if you want to know about a game, you click online and a hundred people can tell you.  That means that news on games worth playing travels fast.  No longer do you make a decision based on some guy who played it, now you can base it on dozens of guys who played it.
Hopefully this drives up standards.  If a game is poor, everyone finds out about it.  Of course different people have different opinions, some people will like something more than others, that is inevitable.  But if you look around online, there is typically one overriding opinion.  Scores between different review sites don’t tend to alter by much at all.  Developers must be wary, gamers have become far more savvy.  Likewise if a game is released and has issues, people talk about it.  Forum posts spring up, arguments break out, flame wars burn.  A developer can sort through this information, pick out commonly held issues, and hopefully take them to heart.  People can mobilise and get their thoughts heard.  A good recent example of this is Cole from Infamous.  The backlash against his change in appearance for the sequel was profound, and the developers have conceded.  This is good news for both sides, if people get what they want, the developers sell more copies.

who are you and what have you done with the angry potato?

Continuing on quality, developers now have the chance to do beta testing.  Making a game can occur truly epic costs, the amount of money required is staggering.  An online community allows developers to get their product to people essentially for unpaid quality control and bug hunting.  Again by listening to feedback, developers can make the tweaks necessary to cement better sales and a better reception.  Furthermore, the vast organism that is gamers online means that far more market research can be carried out.  Given the financial risk involved, developers can get an idea whether something will work or not.  The wealth of data to be had can track all kinds of trends, buying habits, and fashions.
The downside to this however is that certain games might appear unpopular or unfeasible on paper and be dropped that might have otherwise been excellent.  Given the financial risks inherent, it can lead to a more cautious reactive production, rather than something truly innovative.  Both the Move and the Kinect are perfect examples of watching market trends and seeing the consumer power of Nintendo.  The risk with all this information available is an overly risk averse developer community.  Will the Move be sufficiently different from the Wii to be worthy?  Many of the Kinect games look like carbon copies of Wii games, just as Microsoft stole Miis wholesale.  Some games are simply impossible to predict, who could say before hand how well something like Flower or Killer 7 would do?  Will off the wall games like this keep getting made as costs spiral?

an unpredictable gem

So the internet has provided a wealth of information to the developer, it also does the same for the consumer.  Along with the afore mentioned reviews, what the consumer also gets now in many instances are game demos.  In the past, a few demo disks might be distributed to stores, and I recall friends with PS Ones going to the store for specific demos, which would often be snapped up within a day or two.  Now, if I want to see what a game is like, I check online for a demo and try it for myself, any time I like.  In the last 24 hours I downloaded around eight demos to inform my future purchases.  Games are an expensive hobby, and having more information about a game can help you spend that money effectively.

ask the internet?

These things all feed into gaming from the net, but what about the other way round, gaming to internet?  As more and more people get connected across the world, games increasingly use multiplayer modes as a means of pushing sales.  The internet is such an essential part of life these days that multiplayer options have become pretty much standard.  Go back ten years and no console gamer played online, yet in 2010 a console without an online capacity is a bizarre concept.  Many games now have a significant emphasis on multiplayer, or focus on it exclusively.  Xbox live gold membership is driven by online titles, the likes of Halo and Call of Duty  are what guarantee subscriptions.  Sales of these titles would be a fraction of what they are if they had no multiplayer aspect, it is that which people return to night after night in deathmatches spanning continents.  A vast economy has sprung up around online gaming, from gold membership to microsoft and sony points, to extra peripherals like headsets.
Whilst the internet may have aided in a degree of caution in game developers, it has also opened up the market.  A few years back, the gaming market was dominated by a few big developers, independent studies were being bought out and subsumed into huge conglomerations.  Whilst this process is continuing to some extent, what we see now with the introduction of Wiiware, XBLA, and Playstation Network, is a resurgence of old fashioned independent game creators.  I mentioned in my blog on retro gaming that these online distribution forms have caused a certain resurgence in old style games, and we can see evidence of that point.  The likes of Castle Crashers or Shadow Complex conjure memories of games on previous iterations of consoles, and we even see the distribution of those very same old games with the virtual console and the Sony/Microsoft  equivalents, not forgetting Steam on the PC.  Old games are being introduced to a new generation of gamers, just as new games are made in their image.

steam has revolutionised PC gaming

Smaller studios can make lower budget games for an online release and get themselves and their talents noticed.  Their vision can become easier to realise.  In this age of big corporations, let us not forget that games are still made by people who love them, and who want others to love them.  As I said in the retro blog, Limbo and Shadow Complex, two XBLA titles, are two of my favourite titles of the last year or so.  The ability to make great games for less could allow a flowering of talent and a broadening of horizons, rather than a narrowing driven by risk assessment.  Digital distribution allows people to buy games when and where they  want, it can overcome geography and timezones.  If you want to play something at 4am when the shops are closed, you can buy a game online and download it immediately.  This makes the entire medium far more accessible.

he finds digital distribution invaluable

The internet has brought a significant proportion of the western world into gaming.  People who would never dream of buying a console now spend hours poring over facebook games and iPhone apps.  Millions of people now play games and spend their leisure hours engrossed in adventures both mundane and fantastical.  Even if they do not necessarily think of themselves as gamers, their input and attention can only serve to improve the industry as a whole.  By becoming mainstream, gaming is increasingly ceasing to be a hobby and becoming simply something that happens.  Just as people often wouldn’t describe themselves as tv watchers, so gaming is less and less something to be remarked upon as unusual.
Of course whilst the internet has arrived on PC’s and consoles to broaden diversity and enable small independent studios, it also has caused significant damage to the industry.  Pirating games has become a real issue, I was once introduced to someone who had over ninety titles for their PS2, not one of them purchased.  With the sharing of information, it is inevitable that some of that information is illegal.  Games get ripped, zipped, and distributed around the world overnight.  The leak of Halo: Reach is a clear indication of the risks inherent in an industry where everyone’s living room is just a click away.  This hurts a company’s profit margin, it hurts their ability to make games.  In turn this hurts the gaming community.  The need to sell well further heightens the cautious view mentioned earlier in which sequels and franchises dominate.

yarr?

The other problem for consumers that piracy brings about is that of copy protection.  All manner of methods have been tried to prevent piracy, seeking to prevent disks being copied, requiring long and irritating authentication keys and so on.  This can cause unintended hurt to gamers, PC gamers in particular, who can find that perfectly legit copies have games wont run on their machines, starfire (I think that was the name) caused this issue for many gamers with genuine games.  The most recent issue of protection harming the consumer is that of Starcraft II, which requires and internet connection throughout the play, even when playing the single player campaign.  In my local video game store recently a boy and his mother were returning a copy of the game because they had no internet connection.  It would no doubt seem odd to most people reading this that not every gamer has a net connection, but the internet is by no means universal.  This young boy was a dedicated Starcraft fan, looking forward to nothing more than playing the latest and long awaited installment of his favourite game.
I had a similar problem with Half Life 2.  It was released whilst I was at university, and the college firewalls blocked Steam.  As such we had to use a tunnel client over a dial up connection to bypass the firewall and decrypt the entire game, which took many hours.  Thus we have a vicious circle where piracy hurts the developers, and they seek new ways to prevent it, hurting the consumer.  Personally I see no easy solution to this issue, and I think the problem will persist for quite some time as methods and counter methods develop.
The internet has therefore brought about a significant evolution in gaming.  From gaming being a small personal hobby, it has grown into a vast entity spanning the globe, gamers have been brought out beyond their own homes and joined a network of gamers the world over to share, discuss, and game with.  Going back to my days gaming on the Commodore 64, it is truly amazing to see the way gaming has changed, what we now take for granted would be utterly alien not so many years ago.  I am certain there are many more changes to come as digital distribution takes off.  I doubt it will spell the end of dedicated consoles and hard copies of software any time soon, not within the next decade in my opinion, but it is coming, and our beloved medium faces a great deal of change ahead.
How it passes through that, and what it will look like on the other side remains to be seen…

the pros and cons of co-op gaming

I have stated in a couple of my previous blogs that I do not play all that many competitive online games.  For the most part competition is not something that appeals to me, if I play a sport, I do so for the enjoyment, if I play a game, the goal is the same.  Competitive gameplay has its’ good and bad points, but it does not tend to appeal to me either way.  The only exception to this are certain online shooters, which can be incredibly satisfying, but equally incredibly frustrating.  What I want to talk about today is a side of gaming I much prefer, that is perhaps a little smaller and less well supported than competitive multiplayer.  I will however return to the competitive side in relation to my preferred gaming style, that of co-op.

not the super market chain...

For me co-op gameplay is probably my favourite feature of gaming.  It is inherently sociable, bringing together as it does groups of players.  These might be good friends in your living room, or strangers on the opposite side of the globe.  Personally I find co-operative play to be more fulfilling than head to head, it is a chance to combine skills and have a laugh, without there being a ‘loser’ as there is in head to head matches.  This can create a more genial atmosphere and can be more relaxing since it may result in a reduction of tension.  Of course this will vary depending on what you are playing, and who you are playing with.

she isn't calm, vista user?

By and large I think competitive multiplayer is in the majority, a great many games feature deathmatches of various kinds, and even when gamers are divided into teams, there is very little co-operation taking place.  There are plenty of games featuring multiplayer modes that really have no place being there, and this trend appears to be growing.  Multiplayer has become in many ways a default part of a game’s backbone, like pressing the start button at the launch screen (ever notice loads of games say press start, when in fact you can press any button?).
Whether or not this expansion into multiplayer territory is a good thing or not remains to be seen.  I am all in favour of multiplayer modes, so long as, if there is a single player mode, it isn’t sacrificed.  Modern Warfare has been a particular victim of this.  Call of Duty is a series with a long and healthy pedigree, famed for the quality of their single player campaigns and epic battle sequences.  It was with some disappointment therefore that I found the modern warfare single player campaign, in the second game in particular, to be a rather token affair.  It felt very much like an afterthought, a little padding to justify the price, which was, and remains to this day, higher than most games.  I was sad to see such a distinguished series pay only a passing lip service to a history of single player excellence.  Multiplayer should therefore not just be a default option.
Despite the expansion in multiplayer gaming in general, there seems to have been much less of an increase in the number of games to feature co-op gameplay, and in many instances we have not seen the same level of quality improvement we have seen in many competitive multiplayer modes.  For me this is a real shame, I greatly enjoy getting a group of friends together and venturing into a digital world of camaraderie and mutual appreciation.  You can enjoy enjoy each other’s skillful plays, and joke about poor performances alike.

one for all, and all for one

There are of course a number of games over the years that have featured excellent co-op gaming, or even been entirely co-op based, and I would like to look at a few of these, and what makes them great.
My favourite, as I mentioned previously, is conflict desert storm 1 and 2.  This was in many ways the ideal game for me.  The pair have excellent gameplay coupled with superb level design and pacing.  The missions are varied and interesting, the guns and gadgets satisfying.  What of course really makes these two games shine, is the four player co-op.  The games feature a team of four expert soldiers, Bradley, Foley, Connors, and Jones.  The four are perfectly balanced, being team leader/all rounder, sniper, heavy weapons expert, and explosives expert accordingly.  Each character has a distinct personality and a key specialisation that gives them ideal roles.  Yet every level is designed in such a way that all four characters with their different weapons and abilities can each contribute equally.

have at you vile truck

Co-operation is built into the very foundation of the game mechanics.  You need your team mates and you share resources like med kits and grenades.  Because all four are vital (in the second game, you couldn’t have a character die) if someone is injured and goes down, the tension is instantly ramped up as you have a limited time to get to them, and heal them before they bleed out.  Situations arise where you are pinned by enemy fire with an ally trapped and wounded, you must think on your feet and get to them in time.  Because team work is so vital, it is essential to have a group of players that can work together effectively.  All four of you must talk constantly, work out plans, set up ambushes and be in harmony at all times.  If you don’t, you will fail.
What helps to emphasise this aspect are the various missions.  As I stated, the level design is superb, and the enemies are excellent.  AI is tight and efficient, and your character cannot take many hits.  This makes every fire fight important, each encounter matters.  But there is one thing which really instills fear into the four gamers, and that is the sound of a tank.  In so many shooters, tanks turn up occasionally, you destroy them, it is a matter of course, run of the mill event.  Super human soldiers and massive guns make short work of armour, leading one to wonder why the enemy bothers at all.  In Desert Storm however, your character is a simple man.  Expertly trained undoubtedly, but small and frail in the face of an armoured behemoth.  Each tank becomes like a boss battle.  If you are unprepared, a single shell can kill your whole team.  All four of you must work together to bring them down, either finding rocket launchers, or using C4 and guts.  It is these encounters that raise the game to brilliance on a co-op level.  All in all these two games create a perfect atmosphere of mutual dependence and excitement.

some tanks are scarier than others

Another game to feature co-op gameplay as a fundamental mechanic is of course left 4 dead.  I was terribly excited about this game, being a fan of both valve and zombie films.  A co-op survival horror game sounded like exactly my cup of tea.  I picked it up immediately, and loved it.  For about an hour.  I played each chapter, and really enjoyed them.  Then I played them again, and they were just the same.  After a few goes I knew exactly what was happening.  In theory the AI director makes changes to each level as you go along, but in reality the changes are so small as to be hardly there.  The big problem I had with it was that the atmosphere did not hold up.  When I could hear another horde of zombies rushing in, and the music starting up, I was not concerned.  I felt no real threat from them.  The game for me reduced zombie slaughtering to a mundane task.

4 is the magic number?

This lack of threat and atmosphere combined with a small number of short levels meant it became stale and repetitive, exactly like a zombie, in a very short time.  It is of course a popular series, and my friends online play it ad nauseam, but I quickly grew bored.  The co-op mechanics are solid.  Players must share ammo, items, and health kits between themselves, and the incapacitating special infected attacks are designed to ensure that players have to stick together and help each other out.  This is good stuff, and like desert storm makes working together essential, but the lack of atmosphere and excitement meant I just couldn’t really care.  What I think the series really needs is less linear levels.  If each level had multiple routes through it, then you allow the possibility of players inadvertently becoming separated and isolated in the heat of battle.  It also helps prolong the life of each level as you can go through it multiple times.
I can understand the issues at play here.  In having a co-op game online, with four human players, and maybe infected players too plus hordes of zombies, they had to ensure that the game ran smoothly on all connections.  Lag is of course the bane of online gaming.  But for me this lead to a shallow game.  The shooting lacks depth and excitement, for a survival game there is too much ammo, the lack of detail in levels like debris and multiple heights (e.g. a lack of ladders, stairs, balconies etc in one place, creating multiple tiers in one space) meant the whole thing was very linear and unsatisfying.  So whilst the core co-op mechanic is as well done as desert storm, the actual game it is set in isn’t.
What is needed, is both a game with depth and real involvement, that goes hand in hand with well worked co-operation.  Just like in single player modes, if the game play is not exciting, then it doesn’t matter what else you do with it.  Co-op games can suffer from the same problem as games spanning multiple genres, in that they simply don’t have enough focus.  Left 4 Dead contrasts with Gears of War for example if you play that with a friend.  Left 4 Dead is a co-op game first, and a shooter second.  Gears is a shooter first, and a co-op game second.  Conflict Desert Storm is a co-op shooter.

made me laugh

Lots of detail these days is going into multiplayer modes, look at Modern Warfare or Bad Company and you can see a well done levelling system, modifiable equipment load outs, all manner of stat records, kill streaks etc.  I am hoping that this detail will filter through into co-op gaming also.
One game which does feature this kind of depth is Army of Two: 40th day.  I did not play the first game, but I picked up the sequel and played it through with my brother.  Both of us loved every minute, choosing and modifying weaponry to suit our individual play styles and sitautions, combined with a really great shooter, and some cool moral choices to be made as well.  Plus those masks are just funky.  It is another game built around co-operation, and the level of detail gone into it is superb.  You can have one player mock surrender to enemies, drawing attention away from the other player who sets up an ambush, then you get a cool slow motion shoot out.  I also found the two main characters really engaging and funny.  If you like to play co-op, and like shooters, it is a must have.

co-operation at its' best

Coming back to my opening paragraph about competitive gaming, the last style of game I want to talk about is the team based online shooter.  For some games, teams are fairly arbitrary and are just there to have a load of players shoot one another.  There is often little to nothing taking place beside simply dividing the players in half.  Dice really set the standard for team based shooters with 1942, and then their big hit, Battlefield 2.  In that you can form squads who then have squad leaders who determine objectives, and commanders who call in artillery and field supplies.  Battlefield 2 is still the first choice for many online gamers.

though everyone hates the pilots

One game has raised the bar above any other though for squad shooters, and that is MAG.  I adore MAG, I think it is quite breathtaking in its’ scope.  For anyone unfamiliar with it, MAG can have over 100 players on each side.  Squads are compulsory, not an opt in like other online games.  Every player goes into a squad of eight, each squad has a squad leader.  Four teams make up a platoon, and the type of game determines the number of platoons on each side.  Each platoon has a platoon leader, and in large games there is an overall commander too.  The level of work gone into it is really amazing, squad leaders can communicate with their squads, or with other officers, each tier of officer has access to particular abilities, from local squad powers to overall battle changing abilities.  Each squad is charged with a specific objective, usually a certain point to capture/defend.  This results in squad on squad battles that take place within the wider context of a huge game.

have you?

MAG has the team shooter pretty much down to perfection, and what this means is that how much fun you have depends on the people you play with.  Therein can lie the problem.  Because teamwork is so vital, if your squad contains people who don’t co-operate, you are pretty much guaranteed to lose.  badly.  The gameplay is really amazing, near flawless, it is the human element that causes issues.  If you have an objective to capture and all eight people in your squad work together, you can take it fairly quickly.  But what can often happen is that players run in on their own and die immediately.  They then respawn and do the same again.  You cease to be a team, and become eight separate players.  Given the design of each mission it then becomes nearly impossible to achieve your goals.  On the other hand, if you have eight team spirited players, you sweep to victory.

best team game out

What this creates then is a situation whereby the enjoyment you get from a game is directly dependent on the people around you, and in a game the size of MAG, they are likely to be total strangers.  This is really the crux of the problem, and the problem with creating co-op games in general.  Can you rely on people to play well together?  Unfortunately the answer is of course often a no.  The bigger the game, the more people you have, the more likely it is some of them wont co-operate.

there's always one...

This is always going to be a very tight line to walk, it is something incredibly difficult for designers to cope with.  There are ways to mitigate certain elements, Battlefield 2 for example (and I am sure others) have a system whereby you can punish teamkillers.  But you cannot stop every idiot who wants to ruin it for everyone else.  Co-operative games will therefore always be at the mercy of the wider public when played online.  For that reason I would like to see more split screen local co-op used.  It was quite common in older consoles to have split screen co-op, but many games now seem to use online co-op only.  It is a real shame that now technology has improved and become cheaper, gamers are more likely to have good sized TV’s, I was looking forward to split screen games on my 50″ tv, because everyone would be able to see easily, yet they have become much rarer.  I hope we will see a resurgence of split screen gaming though, the new Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light is initially split screen co-op only I believe, which is refreshing to see.
There are plenty more co-op games I haven’t covered, and feel free to sound off in the comments about your favourite.  This has been a look at just a few, and what they do right or wrong.  All in all, the co-operative game is a fragile beast, requiring co-ordination and a willingness to put aside personal gain.  So if you are playing something like MAG, please be sure you have everyone else in mind.

Stick together, work together, and have fun.