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.