Looks like I wasn't done with talking about Borderlands 2, after all. How curious. I will move away from this subject, I promise. Seriously, I don't want to flog a dead horse, it only gets messy.
I'll just reiterate, though, Gearbox did a good job on building what they'd created with Borderlands. They've created this fun and addictive game. The only reason there was so much for me to complain about is because I've spent so much time going through the game. Having clocked up so many hours* playing the game the flaws are magnified. The fact I'm willing to spend so long playing the game says as much on its own.
You see all that content? Some of it coming out over a year after the game was released is still pretty fucking impressive. And their still rolling out fixes and support** in that same time. While they might look like they're not sure how to handle some of the gameplay stuff, they do have a handle on the technical stuff.
So Gearbox did a good job. We clear on that?
It still could have been so much better. My main gripe with it is the nature of the loot drops. I'm not going to go into it, but this gives a good overview: Evolution of Loot. I'll give you some time to look through that. It's a big fucking post.
One thing I'd like to point out is '1 in 30'. It's the standard drop rate for a lot of the bosses in the game of their best equipment. This doesn't sound bad, but when you think about it, it veers quite hard into the stingy territory, especially when you consider some of the bosses can be very challenging. Yes, it's better than the one in ten thousand chance normal enemies have to drop top-tier gear†, but it still leaves you at Stingy Station with a bit of straw clamped in your teeth.
You shouldn't need to fight the one boss anywhere near that number of times to get their best gear. Getting to and fighting one boss ten times is a tedious exercise of Sisyphus-like proportions, thirty times can be brain-mushing. And because it is probability and as close to random as technology allows you're likely to find yourself fighting that boss a lot more times to get the piece of gear you want. There have been some horrifying statistics posted about how much chance you have of getting certain pieces of gear and they go into the hundreds before it starts to look decent. That's not fun. A game should be fun. No it shouldn't just hand you the good stuff the first time you hold out your hand, but it shouldn't point and laugh at you when you're trying to get it while tripping over your grey beard‡. Rewarding you for your persistence in a half-way decent manner without taking a grinder to your patience.
I've thought about how they could do this with my non-codery brain. My suggestion can't be implemented in Borderlands 2, unfortunately, though I do hope Gearbox tweak the drops before they finally have to walk away. Perhaps for Borderlands 3? Maybe? Perhaps? Dudes? Please?
Anyway what I thought would be a variation on the RNG reliance. The RNG sounds good in principal for the loot drops, but, as many people have seen it actually turns out to be very unfair. I think the game should note when you've fought any boss. Each time you fight a boss, a little note to say no loot was dropped and to start with there's that one in thirty chance at the good gear. If by, say, the fifth boss fight without a drop the game starts to incrementally put its thumb on the probabilities scale. Each time a boss is fought that doesn't drop its best loot the game weights the probability more and more until it hits a high probability, like one in five. Once a boss drops its highest level loot the count resets. Not perfect, by any means, but it would redress the imbalance gamers feel. Or just really make it more likely to find good stuff across the board, that could work too.
That's the important thing that's forgotten in the reliance on the RNG, it's how the people playing the game feel. Whether or not its completely random doesn't always register in our emotion-fuelled ape-brains. We get pissed and start to see negative patterns where there aren't any. We feel like the game is mocking our efforts§. That's not a feeling to be engendered by a game, characters in a game, perhaps, but we shouldn't feel like the company behind the game are sniggering every time we kill Hyperius and get a pile of white gear§§. It's childish to think they might be, but in the halucinatory haze you find yourself in while farming§§§ it's easy to start thinking it.
This unwillingness of the game to part with its most prized items leads to behaviours that are considered cheating: duping and gibbing. Gearbox have gone to great pains to wipe out gibbing in particular, but neither would be the problem they are if drop rates were more generous, less Ebenezer Scrooge and more Père Noël. Never going to get rid of people cheating, but minimising it by making game mechanics feel more fair to the players.
No, we don't need these weapons or equipment – well maybe some of it to make progress in the hardest level of the game, but we want it. Gearbox created the demand for it for those of us with the particular brain damage that makes us crave it, but they haven't quite furnished the supply. Would it be so difficult for the unsung heroes of the games industry, the quiet programmers and coders, to bump the drops more in the player's favour? That's the main aim, to create a game with even more lasting appeal, without doing it in a cheap way.
There are other criticisms, like the poor Krieg and Maya players who got shafted in the Overpower levels, but I think I've gone on long enough about the subject, don't you? Next time something different, I think.
* I'm now too terrified to calculate it. My self-esteem can't handle that kind of knock.
** The most recent one redresses, a little, one of the stingiest drops in the game. That's pretty cool, I have to say.
† Which is just jim-dandy, sir. You don't want some schlubby gimp basic enemy dropping the best stuff, that would just be weird and make it pointless to fight the bosses once you've finished the game. Yes, I do see the merit in replayable bosses, that's pretty cool. I just don't agree with the low possibility of good gear.
‡ Yes, even the ladies, because nature is cruel and hates everyone.
§ Especially those fucking loading screens where it shows a parade of some of the rarest items in the game. Three Pearlescent weapons in a row? You fucking cunt!
§§ If you don't get the reference, don't worry. Or maybe you should, you made it this far not knowing what the fuck I'm talking about. What's wrong with you?
§§§ A term I discovered last year for fighting the one enemy over and over again to get a piece of equipment. It's about as boring as my explanation sounds.
Will
Showing posts with label computer games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label computer games. Show all posts
Wednesday, 19 March 2014
Wednesday, 12 March 2014
Pointless or Ahurgaflurgan?
I may have mentioned before that I enjoy Borderlands 2. I may have mentioned something along the lines of being a little addicted to Borderlands 2. You probably don't get the scale to which I threw myself into this game. It's so bad I'm embarrassed* to talk about it. Really, I shouldn't even be admitting to it. Am I creating strong enough picture? No?
Right. I got sooooo into this game that I spent three fucking weeks looking for the rarest weapon in the game. I found the bloody thing and then Gearbox did their Loot Hunt** month and for a glorious day one boss enemy dropped the weapon one hundred percent of the time, and now I have a bunch of them.
This doesn't even cover the HUNDREDS of hours looking for other slightly less rare, but still hard to obtain weapons. I give one word to people who might know: Norfleet. I'll now give you two words: fucking Norfleet.
Anyway. Now that I've given you some idea the extent to which I let this game take over my life, I'm going to go through a few things about the game since it's coming to the end of it's very long cycle†. Is it a review, is it an overview, is it me taking an opportunity to whine about things I don't like about the game? Who can say? I present this little essay and I'll let you, demented reader, make up your own confused, confused mind.
I'm pretty heavily into the game is what I'm trying to get across to you.
Let's start with what Gearbox got right with Borderlands 2, shall we? From the outset it's a pretty game. The overexposed opening reminds those of us who played the first game just how unforgiving the planet of Pandora is. Each of the playable characters is distinct and quirky, as you would expect from a game as quirky as this. Once you're knee-deep in the game you're presented with bleak environments and amusing new enemies in wonderful cel-shaded-fi. Lovely.
We also get to meet the two characters that eased us into the first game: Angel and Claptrap. There are too many spoilers when it comes to Angel, so let's not bother with her. Claptrap, I perversely find a lot more likeable than in the first game. I know he's supposed to be a really irritating character and he was much more annoying in the first game. In Borderlands 2 he's just kind of tragic and everyone hates him, even though he turns out to be incredibly useful. Maybe it's my sympathy for the underdog, dunno.
The story is coherent, which is always a plus in an FPS. I'm staring directly at you COD. It doesn't suffer being lost quite as much as in the first game, though there's so many side quests to do, there's still that drift and you can sense it on the periphery of you consciousness. But there are so many amusing asides and so much funny dialogue, you don't actually notice too much and by the time you might be in a position to notice, you're too busy killing baddies to really care. Which, mostly, is the point of a game like this.
That brings us to the extra content. So much of it. A good lot of it I haven't indulged in because it's in the form of skins and heads. I mean they're cheap and all, but I can't get terribly excited enough to fork over the money to buy them. It's a clever way to grab a few extra quid without people feeling like they're being squeezed, even though they are a little bit, not a full squeeze of the testicles‡ just a little pull of the sac.
What I have paid for are the DLC campaign add-ons , and largely I've been happy with what I've handed money over for. You get a few extra hours of gameplay for about eight quid. Can't complain even when they don't quite measure up to the main quest, though I was very pleased with the Tiny Tina DLC, which was huge for an add-on. And then there are the other bits, like the extra characters, level upgrades and the Head Hunter packs. That adds up to a lot of extra stuff. And we consumers do like our extra stuff, unless it's hot coffee in the crotch, we're not so keen on that.
The whole package is crammed full of references. Brimming over, dammit. I like me a good old reference, and this kept me amused, I'll tell you. There were so many references I didn't even know them all – not that I'm some kind of pop culture guru, it's just amazing the breadth of things they pulled in. There's even one I'm sure no one's copped to and that's from the Torgue DLC with one of the gangs called the Burners, looking very similar to a faction in the game Rage called the Scorchers, even having a thing about bikes. Am I seeing things? Hmmm.
There is a lot to like in this game. Perhaps not enough to take it to the insane extremes I've gone to in playing it, but a fun game all the same.
Of course, it isn't all good. I wouldn't have written this if it were a fannish look at what makes it work. You're not getting off that lightly, oh no. I have things I want to say and I want to suggest. As if anyone from Gearbox is going to read this. Just like Dean Koontz is never even going to be aware of my open letter. It's all just honking in the dark.
I'll not bother with bugs and glitches and things, because you could write a book about them. Borderlands 2 isn't quite as bug-ridden as, say, Fallout: New Vegas, but it has its fair share.
What I am going to say, is repeat what a guy who goes by the Youtube user name Morningafterkill observed about Gearbox's handling of the game: they don't seem to know how to handle it. The first Borderlands felt slight and experimental and it almost feels like they were throwing stuff at to see what worked. This extends into the DLCs for the first game which were kind of messy and, in the case of the Mad Moxxi DLC, was just badly put together. Yes they hit the right notes with some parts of campaign add-ons, but you could feel they were kind of winging it. For all that Gearbox addressed a lot things to improve the experience of Borderlands 2, there's the niggling feeling of not being sure what to do with it.
Sure their blogs make it seem like they have everything well in hand, but when you look at certain things, you start to see cracks. It was most illustrated for me when someone on their forum asked a question about one of the big mechanics of the game and the developer who answered essentially explained the point of the mechanic and then said it wasn't desirable§. Bit of an odd thing to do when you should be in control of the game. Their last couple of non-Borderlands games have been embarrassing failures and it makes you wonder how good they are at producing games.
Even the Loot Hunt event had shades of this. Actually, more than shades. Huge big signs, telling us, "WE DON'T HAVE A FUCKING CLUE!" The first part of giving players the opportunity to find some rare items, yeah I can get behind that. It was a fantastic idea. Gets the interest again. But the added stuff, like buffing the game's weapons went a little awry. There were a handful of weapons that got good upgrades and then the rest just got tweaks, like the weapons known for having huge magazines getting an extra one ammo. One, in weapons that carry hundreds. A lack of awareness there, Gearbox. Lots of people were disappointed by that, but what was most disappointing was the inability for international players to help out with the targets. It was made clear from the start we couldn't get the prizes and no one was surprised, but when we couldn't even help out in the US players reach the goals, it felt a bit like the company couldn't give a shit about their overseas players. This might not be the case, but you feel that twinge, like non-US players aren't important. WE'RE PEOPLE TOO! And if it wasn't apathy, it gives even more this impression of not knowing their market reach. A tad strange, don't ya feel?
For the record the Loot Hunt is a great idea and wouldn't go amiss being part of the ongoing promotion of a third Borderlands game, and not just for other corporate sponsorship. Something other than the golden keys. Keep interest and maintain a cool connection with the fanbase, doing these events one weekend a month or something. See, I'm still trying to be positive in this sea of criticism.
They added a third playthrough to the game. It was designed to be very tough. The main problem you see with it, is it kinda broke the game. It's actually incredibly difficult to progress in this playthrough without specific weaponry, even with multiple players. In a game of 'a bazillion guns' it's a little strange you find only about a dozen weapons make doing it feasible§§. How much thought did they put into this mode that wrecks the notion of customisable characters? Probably not quite as much as they should have, as they added in regeneration to enemies that negates another major mechanic. I can't say that was well-thought out. It's one of the things the first game got right. You could go through any mode with gear that wasn't the rarest and have a good time making it through, even when it was quite challenging.
Then there's the tendency to aim to be annoying and frustrating with game mechanics. Yeah, they actually want to frustrate their player base with enemies. What the fuck? Going out of their way to make something so annoying it will make people rage-quit? Is that really a desirable goal for a game? I don't want to play a game to be frustrated and angered§§§. I want to have fun on a game for a few hours, not have the creators yank my fucking chain.
The rarities of equipment is all fucked up. It shouldn't take days or weeks to get certain weapons, no matter how good they are. Fighting a tough enemy for hours or one that has a fight time that's tediously strung out shouldn't yield rubbish and fucking consolation items. It's not rewarding. At the moment I'm trying to get weapons that only drop from enemies that only occasionally occur. Someone quoted these weapons have a drop rate of one-in-thirty. I started counting and as of writing this blog I've fought ninety of these enemies and not a one of these weapons has appeared, and some people have talked about fighting one or two hundred of these guys and only got one or two weapons. And remember these are rare enemies already! If you're going to have these things in the game give a fucking decent chance of a drop§§§§, because the enemy's rarity is going go on top of the item's rarity. I'm not some fancy mathematician, but even I can see that. It's clear most gamers aren't even going to encounter them, as they play through the game once and move on, such deeply buried items seem pointless, don't you think?
Players want to feel rewarded. It's something that Minecraft – a game Gearbox admire so much they have an entire section pay homage to it, including fighting enemies from Minecraft – understands all too well and though you can spend a long time doing something it never feels frustrating. Yes, Borderlands 2 is a very different game and that's my point, it's a fast-paced shooter that's repetitive enough with three playthroughs available, adding in sections that need to be done over and over and over and over and over and over§§§§§ for the item an enemy is supposed to drop takes away from that. S'not rewarding. Players want rewards not grinding chores. The slavish adherence to the RNG in the inevitable sequel§§§§§§ has to go and with it the mindless 'random is random' mantra.
And finally, probably more personal to me, but I've seen a few grumblings about it: ditch the fucking raid bosses. This convention of MMOs isn't required in a game like this and it feels like giving the single player or people playing splitscreen at a home a raw deal. I've told you my feelings on forcing people to play online – I'll give a hint: I don't think it's good. That's only part of it. Super powerful, can take a ridiculous amount of damage and, the cardinal sin, most possess unfair attacks you can't defend against marks all of these enemies. It doesn't fit in with the rhythm of the Borderlands games and, again, feel desperate, like Gearbox don't know what the hell's going on.
There you go, the good and the bad of a game I've spent far too long playing. There's more to love and more to get annoyed about, but I've rambled enough. Don't you people ever sleep!
* And mortifying. Don't forget mortifying.
** I think some people were pissed off that the super-rare weapon they'd spent ages looking for was now very easy to get a hold of. I thought it was only fair of Gearbox.
† By the time the final DLC comes out Gearbox will have been supporting the game for eighteen months. Quite amazing for an FPS when most other companies give up on a title after a year. Unless it's Insomniac games with Resistance 3 and they walked away after about months, the fucking wimps.
‡ Or ovaries. Whichever, it all adds up to the same.
§ I would link it, but I don't have time to dig through the forum to find the thread.
§§ Although the minority of really good players will claim this is nonsense. They're talking out of their arse.
§§§ It will likely happen anyway, but that's not the point. The creators of the game baiting the player that way is trollish to me.
§§§§ Yes, yes, they drop other rare items, but only at the top mode and the rare items aren't that good and, again feel like patronising consolation prizes. I don't want to be patronised any more than I want to be frustrated, man.
§§§§§ ...over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over...
§§§§§§ Because it will happen. They made too much money on it and had too many high-profile fuck-ups to not support the Borderlands universe with a second sequel.
Will
Right. I got sooooo into this game that I spent three fucking weeks looking for the rarest weapon in the game. I found the bloody thing and then Gearbox did their Loot Hunt** month and for a glorious day one boss enemy dropped the weapon one hundred percent of the time, and now I have a bunch of them.
This doesn't even cover the HUNDREDS of hours looking for other slightly less rare, but still hard to obtain weapons. I give one word to people who might know: Norfleet. I'll now give you two words: fucking Norfleet.
Anyway. Now that I've given you some idea the extent to which I let this game take over my life, I'm going to go through a few things about the game since it's coming to the end of it's very long cycle†. Is it a review, is it an overview, is it me taking an opportunity to whine about things I don't like about the game? Who can say? I present this little essay and I'll let you, demented reader, make up your own confused, confused mind.
I'm pretty heavily into the game is what I'm trying to get across to you.
Let's start with what Gearbox got right with Borderlands 2, shall we? From the outset it's a pretty game. The overexposed opening reminds those of us who played the first game just how unforgiving the planet of Pandora is. Each of the playable characters is distinct and quirky, as you would expect from a game as quirky as this. Once you're knee-deep in the game you're presented with bleak environments and amusing new enemies in wonderful cel-shaded-fi. Lovely.
We also get to meet the two characters that eased us into the first game: Angel and Claptrap. There are too many spoilers when it comes to Angel, so let's not bother with her. Claptrap, I perversely find a lot more likeable than in the first game. I know he's supposed to be a really irritating character and he was much more annoying in the first game. In Borderlands 2 he's just kind of tragic and everyone hates him, even though he turns out to be incredibly useful. Maybe it's my sympathy for the underdog, dunno.
The story is coherent, which is always a plus in an FPS. I'm staring directly at you COD. It doesn't suffer being lost quite as much as in the first game, though there's so many side quests to do, there's still that drift and you can sense it on the periphery of you consciousness. But there are so many amusing asides and so much funny dialogue, you don't actually notice too much and by the time you might be in a position to notice, you're too busy killing baddies to really care. Which, mostly, is the point of a game like this.
That brings us to the extra content. So much of it. A good lot of it I haven't indulged in because it's in the form of skins and heads. I mean they're cheap and all, but I can't get terribly excited enough to fork over the money to buy them. It's a clever way to grab a few extra quid without people feeling like they're being squeezed, even though they are a little bit, not a full squeeze of the testicles‡ just a little pull of the sac.
What I have paid for are the DLC campaign add-ons , and largely I've been happy with what I've handed money over for. You get a few extra hours of gameplay for about eight quid. Can't complain even when they don't quite measure up to the main quest, though I was very pleased with the Tiny Tina DLC, which was huge for an add-on. And then there are the other bits, like the extra characters, level upgrades and the Head Hunter packs. That adds up to a lot of extra stuff. And we consumers do like our extra stuff, unless it's hot coffee in the crotch, we're not so keen on that.
The whole package is crammed full of references. Brimming over, dammit. I like me a good old reference, and this kept me amused, I'll tell you. There were so many references I didn't even know them all – not that I'm some kind of pop culture guru, it's just amazing the breadth of things they pulled in. There's even one I'm sure no one's copped to and that's from the Torgue DLC with one of the gangs called the Burners, looking very similar to a faction in the game Rage called the Scorchers, even having a thing about bikes. Am I seeing things? Hmmm.
There is a lot to like in this game. Perhaps not enough to take it to the insane extremes I've gone to in playing it, but a fun game all the same.
Of course, it isn't all good. I wouldn't have written this if it were a fannish look at what makes it work. You're not getting off that lightly, oh no. I have things I want to say and I want to suggest. As if anyone from Gearbox is going to read this. Just like Dean Koontz is never even going to be aware of my open letter. It's all just honking in the dark.
I'll not bother with bugs and glitches and things, because you could write a book about them. Borderlands 2 isn't quite as bug-ridden as, say, Fallout: New Vegas, but it has its fair share.
What I am going to say, is repeat what a guy who goes by the Youtube user name Morningafterkill observed about Gearbox's handling of the game: they don't seem to know how to handle it. The first Borderlands felt slight and experimental and it almost feels like they were throwing stuff at to see what worked. This extends into the DLCs for the first game which were kind of messy and, in the case of the Mad Moxxi DLC, was just badly put together. Yes they hit the right notes with some parts of campaign add-ons, but you could feel they were kind of winging it. For all that Gearbox addressed a lot things to improve the experience of Borderlands 2, there's the niggling feeling of not being sure what to do with it.
Sure their blogs make it seem like they have everything well in hand, but when you look at certain things, you start to see cracks. It was most illustrated for me when someone on their forum asked a question about one of the big mechanics of the game and the developer who answered essentially explained the point of the mechanic and then said it wasn't desirable§. Bit of an odd thing to do when you should be in control of the game. Their last couple of non-Borderlands games have been embarrassing failures and it makes you wonder how good they are at producing games.
Even the Loot Hunt event had shades of this. Actually, more than shades. Huge big signs, telling us, "WE DON'T HAVE A FUCKING CLUE!" The first part of giving players the opportunity to find some rare items, yeah I can get behind that. It was a fantastic idea. Gets the interest again. But the added stuff, like buffing the game's weapons went a little awry. There were a handful of weapons that got good upgrades and then the rest just got tweaks, like the weapons known for having huge magazines getting an extra one ammo. One, in weapons that carry hundreds. A lack of awareness there, Gearbox. Lots of people were disappointed by that, but what was most disappointing was the inability for international players to help out with the targets. It was made clear from the start we couldn't get the prizes and no one was surprised, but when we couldn't even help out in the US players reach the goals, it felt a bit like the company couldn't give a shit about their overseas players. This might not be the case, but you feel that twinge, like non-US players aren't important. WE'RE PEOPLE TOO! And if it wasn't apathy, it gives even more this impression of not knowing their market reach. A tad strange, don't ya feel?
For the record the Loot Hunt is a great idea and wouldn't go amiss being part of the ongoing promotion of a third Borderlands game, and not just for other corporate sponsorship. Something other than the golden keys. Keep interest and maintain a cool connection with the fanbase, doing these events one weekend a month or something. See, I'm still trying to be positive in this sea of criticism.
They added a third playthrough to the game. It was designed to be very tough. The main problem you see with it, is it kinda broke the game. It's actually incredibly difficult to progress in this playthrough without specific weaponry, even with multiple players. In a game of 'a bazillion guns' it's a little strange you find only about a dozen weapons make doing it feasible§§. How much thought did they put into this mode that wrecks the notion of customisable characters? Probably not quite as much as they should have, as they added in regeneration to enemies that negates another major mechanic. I can't say that was well-thought out. It's one of the things the first game got right. You could go through any mode with gear that wasn't the rarest and have a good time making it through, even when it was quite challenging.
Then there's the tendency to aim to be annoying and frustrating with game mechanics. Yeah, they actually want to frustrate their player base with enemies. What the fuck? Going out of their way to make something so annoying it will make people rage-quit? Is that really a desirable goal for a game? I don't want to play a game to be frustrated and angered§§§. I want to have fun on a game for a few hours, not have the creators yank my fucking chain.
The rarities of equipment is all fucked up. It shouldn't take days or weeks to get certain weapons, no matter how good they are. Fighting a tough enemy for hours or one that has a fight time that's tediously strung out shouldn't yield rubbish and fucking consolation items. It's not rewarding. At the moment I'm trying to get weapons that only drop from enemies that only occasionally occur. Someone quoted these weapons have a drop rate of one-in-thirty. I started counting and as of writing this blog I've fought ninety of these enemies and not a one of these weapons has appeared, and some people have talked about fighting one or two hundred of these guys and only got one or two weapons. And remember these are rare enemies already! If you're going to have these things in the game give a fucking decent chance of a drop§§§§, because the enemy's rarity is going go on top of the item's rarity. I'm not some fancy mathematician, but even I can see that. It's clear most gamers aren't even going to encounter them, as they play through the game once and move on, such deeply buried items seem pointless, don't you think?
Players want to feel rewarded. It's something that Minecraft – a game Gearbox admire so much they have an entire section pay homage to it, including fighting enemies from Minecraft – understands all too well and though you can spend a long time doing something it never feels frustrating. Yes, Borderlands 2 is a very different game and that's my point, it's a fast-paced shooter that's repetitive enough with three playthroughs available, adding in sections that need to be done over and over and over and over and over and over§§§§§ for the item an enemy is supposed to drop takes away from that. S'not rewarding. Players want rewards not grinding chores. The slavish adherence to the RNG in the inevitable sequel§§§§§§ has to go and with it the mindless 'random is random' mantra.
And finally, probably more personal to me, but I've seen a few grumblings about it: ditch the fucking raid bosses. This convention of MMOs isn't required in a game like this and it feels like giving the single player or people playing splitscreen at a home a raw deal. I've told you my feelings on forcing people to play online – I'll give a hint: I don't think it's good. That's only part of it. Super powerful, can take a ridiculous amount of damage and, the cardinal sin, most possess unfair attacks you can't defend against marks all of these enemies. It doesn't fit in with the rhythm of the Borderlands games and, again, feel desperate, like Gearbox don't know what the hell's going on.
There you go, the good and the bad of a game I've spent far too long playing. There's more to love and more to get annoyed about, but I've rambled enough. Don't you people ever sleep!
* And mortifying. Don't forget mortifying.
** I think some people were pissed off that the super-rare weapon they'd spent ages looking for was now very easy to get a hold of. I thought it was only fair of Gearbox.
† By the time the final DLC comes out Gearbox will have been supporting the game for eighteen months. Quite amazing for an FPS when most other companies give up on a title after a year. Unless it's Insomniac games with Resistance 3 and they walked away after about months, the fucking wimps.
‡ Or ovaries. Whichever, it all adds up to the same.
§ I would link it, but I don't have time to dig through the forum to find the thread.
§§ Although the minority of really good players will claim this is nonsense. They're talking out of their arse.
§§§ It will likely happen anyway, but that's not the point. The creators of the game baiting the player that way is trollish to me.
§§§§ Yes, yes, they drop other rare items, but only at the top mode and the rare items aren't that good and, again feel like patronising consolation prizes. I don't want to be patronised any more than I want to be frustrated, man.
§§§§§ ...over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over...
§§§§§§ Because it will happen. They made too much money on it and had too many high-profile fuck-ups to not support the Borderlands universe with a second sequel.
Will
Wednesday, 12 February 2014
The Modding World
I’m no fancy coder. In fact I’m no kind of coder at all. I can fiddle about a bit with very basic HTML, but otherwise I’m completely clueless when it comes to making things happen with computer code. I tried to learn a bit as a kid, but it turned into a dizzying swirl of things that didn’t make a whole lot of sense and the can-can music started playing in my head. This is BASIC we’re talking about here, the same language we were forced to use in computer studies, so you can imagine the miserable, though musical, time I had of that particular class. As much as I tried, I couldn’t work out how to get the damn thing to work – and I so wanted to know how it worked. This was the first suspicion I got that I’m a bit on the dumb side.
Still, even now, as a sophisticated* – but still dumb-ish – adult, there’s something fascinating to me about the whole coding side of gaming. It fills me with wonder that they can put together strings of gibberish which coalesce in the characters and worlds floating around on your screen – often trying to kill you. It’s something I’ve always found sort of arcane. I just can’t get my brain around the whole business at all; to the point where I’m almost Rain Man-style punching myself in the head. Nyaaaaaaaa!
Even more fascinating to me are those folk who crack open games and fiddle about with their innards, like mad Roswell autopsy doctors, rearranging and replacing the quivering innards of the game to come up with something different. Not always better, mind you, just different. I’m fascinated by this world, mainly because I don’t have access to it. I just hear things about it on the internet wind, whispered by those in the know or all-capsed by crazies who insist it’s all just the Illuminati desperate for new thong underwear**.
Modding isn’t a new phenomenon (and neither are crazies blurting about why their underwear disappears into their rectums) the early days of home micros had plenty of modding. To be honest if it weren’t for modders, if what I’m led to believe is correct (I refer you to my statement about dumbness above), a lot of games on the Spectrum and the Commodore 64 wouldn’t exist. There were also those who came up with ‘pokes’, the quaint term (and, let’s not kid ourselves, hilariously dirty) for creating strings of code that by-passed the games’ functions to make them easier – you know, a cheat: infinite lives, infinite time, invulnerability or infinite ammo. They were great, when they worked. About ninety-five percent of the time you sat through the loading of your prospective game only to discover the pokes mangled a bit too much and it crashed or, even more infuriating, the game loaded fine, just as if it was running normally, which you soon realised it was. Someone, somewhere was cackling ‘Suckers’ to themselves. Oh, yes, I know their game. Bastards.
Whether the game worked or not, wasn’t the point, the fact was there were industrious folks out there breaking open the code of games, prodding around inside and making changes. Now you have guys prising up the hood of a game engine and tweaking it in different ways. They’re adding their own signature to the game, and going to great lengths to do so.
There are even those who improve games. Our old, buggy friends Bethesda have benefited greatly from those industrious little modders. These guys have swooped in and covered over the cracks in games like Fallout 3 and the Elder Scrolls games after the company has left the games alone.
How great would it be to have that kind of resource on the consoles? And by that I mean the PS3, of course. If I had an XBox 360† I’d talk a lot about that too, but I don’t, so I won’t. We’ve kinda been left with still-broken forms of the above-mentioned games. Imagine if Sony allowed players to get in and faf around with the code of certain games? What wonders we could behold! A game of Fallout: New Vegas that doesn’t have a fucking seizure when you go to too many settlements. How great would that be?
Of course there would be the other side of the equation: nasty little creeps messing with the code and creating malware. As it is we already occasionally get that with the PS3, like the evening I was playing Modern Warfare 2 online and suddenly the game seemed to decide that psilocybin mushrooms would be good in an omelette. No harm was done to the system, but it did kind of break my game when I was getting millions of XP for kills. I couldn’t really look at Modern Warfare 2 in the eye again after that, like I’d seen it get into a car for money.
We’re never going to see the wonder of modded games (outside of the very limited ways some games will allow) on the PS3, but a man can speculate on the world that could be.
* Okay, I can’t help but laugh at that either. Me, sophisticated, the very idea.
** Fine, it's hyperbole for comic effect, so sue me.
† Or them thar new-fangled PS4s and XBox Ones.
Will
Still, even now, as a sophisticated* – but still dumb-ish – adult, there’s something fascinating to me about the whole coding side of gaming. It fills me with wonder that they can put together strings of gibberish which coalesce in the characters and worlds floating around on your screen – often trying to kill you. It’s something I’ve always found sort of arcane. I just can’t get my brain around the whole business at all; to the point where I’m almost Rain Man-style punching myself in the head. Nyaaaaaaaa!
Even more fascinating to me are those folk who crack open games and fiddle about with their innards, like mad Roswell autopsy doctors, rearranging and replacing the quivering innards of the game to come up with something different. Not always better, mind you, just different. I’m fascinated by this world, mainly because I don’t have access to it. I just hear things about it on the internet wind, whispered by those in the know or all-capsed by crazies who insist it’s all just the Illuminati desperate for new thong underwear**.
Modding isn’t a new phenomenon (and neither are crazies blurting about why their underwear disappears into their rectums) the early days of home micros had plenty of modding. To be honest if it weren’t for modders, if what I’m led to believe is correct (I refer you to my statement about dumbness above), a lot of games on the Spectrum and the Commodore 64 wouldn’t exist. There were also those who came up with ‘pokes’, the quaint term (and, let’s not kid ourselves, hilariously dirty) for creating strings of code that by-passed the games’ functions to make them easier – you know, a cheat: infinite lives, infinite time, invulnerability or infinite ammo. They were great, when they worked. About ninety-five percent of the time you sat through the loading of your prospective game only to discover the pokes mangled a bit too much and it crashed or, even more infuriating, the game loaded fine, just as if it was running normally, which you soon realised it was. Someone, somewhere was cackling ‘Suckers’ to themselves. Oh, yes, I know their game. Bastards.
Whether the game worked or not, wasn’t the point, the fact was there were industrious folks out there breaking open the code of games, prodding around inside and making changes. Now you have guys prising up the hood of a game engine and tweaking it in different ways. They’re adding their own signature to the game, and going to great lengths to do so.
There are even those who improve games. Our old, buggy friends Bethesda have benefited greatly from those industrious little modders. These guys have swooped in and covered over the cracks in games like Fallout 3 and the Elder Scrolls games after the company has left the games alone.
How great would it be to have that kind of resource on the consoles? And by that I mean the PS3, of course. If I had an XBox 360† I’d talk a lot about that too, but I don’t, so I won’t. We’ve kinda been left with still-broken forms of the above-mentioned games. Imagine if Sony allowed players to get in and faf around with the code of certain games? What wonders we could behold! A game of Fallout: New Vegas that doesn’t have a fucking seizure when you go to too many settlements. How great would that be?
Of course there would be the other side of the equation: nasty little creeps messing with the code and creating malware. As it is we already occasionally get that with the PS3, like the evening I was playing Modern Warfare 2 online and suddenly the game seemed to decide that psilocybin mushrooms would be good in an omelette. No harm was done to the system, but it did kind of break my game when I was getting millions of XP for kills. I couldn’t really look at Modern Warfare 2 in the eye again after that, like I’d seen it get into a car for money.
We’re never going to see the wonder of modded games (outside of the very limited ways some games will allow) on the PS3, but a man can speculate on the world that could be.
* Okay, I can’t help but laugh at that either. Me, sophisticated, the very idea.
** Fine, it's hyperbole for comic effect, so sue me.
† Or them thar new-fangled PS4s and XBox Ones.
Will
Wednesday, 22 January 2014
Some Minor Points
There are loads of ways to improve our gaming experience. I’m sure there are more than a few out there who’ve happily guzzled some mind-altering drugs and freaked when they came across their first feral ghoul in Fallout 3. You’ve also got those people who like to immerse themselves in the game: from the people screaming sexist and racist insults over headsets while playing [insert FPS of your choice here] to the people who spend mortgage-sized chunks of money to bring their MechWarrior fantasies almost to sweaty life. That’s not forgetting the bunch of mates who get together, have a few drinks and gradually get more sullen with each other over Need for Speed or FIFA 2012*.
Just like any art form it’s as much about what we bring to the table that determines our level of enjoyment. I mean, studying a Matisse for colour and technique in a gallery is just as valid as sitting in your underwear of a night, playing Modern Warfare 3 and eating Doritos from your navel. It’s all about what makes you happy. The medium is there to form a framework on which you hang whatever experience you want to create. It depends on what that framework is and what you want it to do for you.
Of course that doesn’t divorce developers, creators and publishers from giving us, the average gamer, the framework and experience on which we base our leisure time. If they could get away with it publishers would release ‘games’ like The Life of Sticky the Stick in which the whole game is moving the eponymous character from one side of the screen for two thousand levels. No variation, other than which side of the screen you started on, for hours of mind-numbing fun. And they’ll charge you fifty or one hundred of whatever currency you use for the pleasure of doing it. If you don’t think this is true your cynicism is woefully underdeveloped and I suggest you go and read some comments sections and some forums. Once you’ve wept the first time things get so much easier.
Fortunately we don’t live in that alterna-world where consumer rights are so flagrantly disregarded, and we don’t have to suffer through games in which we convey simple shapes from left to right, right to left, endlessly and forever. It would make game pad design that wee bit simpler, mind you, only having left and right buttons. We live in a world of glorious complexity in which control pads consist of arrays of buttons, D-pads and analogue sticks promising to take us through adulthood with carpal tunnel syndrome and arthritis. The games we play demand this level of hand-crippling controller design in order to deftly or, as is often the case, not so deftly negotiate the games of the 21st century.
Humanity, however, has this habit of not being completely satisfied with anything. There had to be a few people who looked at Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man and said, “Whoa! Do we really need to see that?” or thought that the Mona Lisa looked a little on the podgy side. Then again we have to thank the guy who looked at those early cars trundling out of the Ford factories and considered them a bit boxy. Without a bit of critical thinking nothing in the world would ever improve. We wouldn’t have dazzling games like Uncharted, Batman: Arkham City or the constant stream of indie games that challenge those who want to go looking for them.
With this in mind, I would like to offer some of my humble thoughts on what could be tweaked in order to make our mainstream games that little bit more enjoyable. Now, there are well-worn paths in this kind of thing: story, blah blah blah; mechanics, yada yada yada; and offensiveness, um, wibble, wibble, wibble. These are THE BIG ISSUESTM and I think I’ll avoid them as much as possible, because, frankly, they activate all kinds of crazy. I don’t want to get crushed under that particular juggernaut, thank you very much. My wife would be pissed at me, I’d never hear the end of it and I’m not a courageous man. What I’m going to suggest here are some minor(ish) things to perhaps make things better in just small ways.
Number one: Bigger, clearer text. Start with something small, shall we. Or something I perceive as small. We don’t all have wall-sized screens that show reality-altering vistas from the dimensions of sight, you know. Some of us semi-luddites still possess CRT televisions** that were once considered big. I’ve come to accept that sometimes not seeing a character because my TV doesn’t have the chops is going to happen. But the least developers could do is give us the option of larger text for those prompts or important bits of information that make the game go easier. My ambitions in this really are quite humble.
Number two: Let’s split off the hardcore gamers from the casual gamers. Yes, I’m using some quite fascist language there, just to get your attention. I love getting trophies on my PS3. I’m not afraid to admit that. It stabs at the poor, twitching OCD part of my brain when I can’t get all the trophies for one game. Batting all the arguments about challenge and playing games for fun aside, I feel somewhat downhearted when I see a trophy for something that I clearly will never have the skill to do pop up on the list. I’m not going to sit for hours or days vainly trying to perfect my skills in this area to get the trophy, even though I want to complete the collection sooooo much.
It’s crazy and is aimed at really good, often dedicated, gamers. My proposal is an alluring one for publishers: have two tiers of trophy, one of which you pay extra for. When you buy and install your game, you get a basic set of trophies or achievements to collect that are straightforward (but can still be weird and time-consuming) to do. If you feel you want more of a challenge spend a little bit more, something like a dollar or a pound or a euro to get those tougher trophies. People with the same head-sickness as me can sleep easy and the dedicated gamers can still have their prizes for having skills I can only dream about.
Number three: Graphics aren’t everything. Okay, thinking about it, I may be wrong, this does encroach on THE BIG ISSUESTM, I think. But does every game need to have such insane work done on the graphics? Realism doesn’t always improve a game. Take L.A. Noire, for example, it was an okay game with a lot of ambition. You can’t fault what they were trying to do with the facial motion capture business. It didn’t quite work. Trying to read the expressions in an interrogation turned into an excruciating exercise that makes you question just how far along the autism spectrum you are.
Graphics take up a huge amount of space that could be used for interesting game mechanics and more content. Squeezing in more realism doesn’t instantly make a more enjoyable game. It doesn’t even always guarantee greater immersion. Using L.A. Noire again, it could have been done with simpler, stylised cartoony graphics. I can’t imagine it would have taken more work than the hours of filming actors and then mapping their faces. Just imagine how huge and immersive games could be if developers had water thrown over them when they get too excited about the pretty, pretty visuals.
So there you go: three minor (or two minor and one not so minor) suggestions to make the world of gaming smoother for everyone – or perhaps just me. Perhaps these thoughts will become moot as the games industry evolves. Though that just means we’ll find different ways in which it can be further improved. And that’ll be nice.
* It kinda looks like I’ve got it in for these games, but I don’t really. Although, strictly speaking, I wrote this article first.
** Since upgraded to a big LCD, but the argument still stands.
Will
Just like any art form it’s as much about what we bring to the table that determines our level of enjoyment. I mean, studying a Matisse for colour and technique in a gallery is just as valid as sitting in your underwear of a night, playing Modern Warfare 3 and eating Doritos from your navel. It’s all about what makes you happy. The medium is there to form a framework on which you hang whatever experience you want to create. It depends on what that framework is and what you want it to do for you.
Of course that doesn’t divorce developers, creators and publishers from giving us, the average gamer, the framework and experience on which we base our leisure time. If they could get away with it publishers would release ‘games’ like The Life of Sticky the Stick in which the whole game is moving the eponymous character from one side of the screen for two thousand levels. No variation, other than which side of the screen you started on, for hours of mind-numbing fun. And they’ll charge you fifty or one hundred of whatever currency you use for the pleasure of doing it. If you don’t think this is true your cynicism is woefully underdeveloped and I suggest you go and read some comments sections and some forums. Once you’ve wept the first time things get so much easier.
Fortunately we don’t live in that alterna-world where consumer rights are so flagrantly disregarded, and we don’t have to suffer through games in which we convey simple shapes from left to right, right to left, endlessly and forever. It would make game pad design that wee bit simpler, mind you, only having left and right buttons. We live in a world of glorious complexity in which control pads consist of arrays of buttons, D-pads and analogue sticks promising to take us through adulthood with carpal tunnel syndrome and arthritis. The games we play demand this level of hand-crippling controller design in order to deftly or, as is often the case, not so deftly negotiate the games of the 21st century.
Humanity, however, has this habit of not being completely satisfied with anything. There had to be a few people who looked at Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man and said, “Whoa! Do we really need to see that?” or thought that the Mona Lisa looked a little on the podgy side. Then again we have to thank the guy who looked at those early cars trundling out of the Ford factories and considered them a bit boxy. Without a bit of critical thinking nothing in the world would ever improve. We wouldn’t have dazzling games like Uncharted, Batman: Arkham City or the constant stream of indie games that challenge those who want to go looking for them.
With this in mind, I would like to offer some of my humble thoughts on what could be tweaked in order to make our mainstream games that little bit more enjoyable. Now, there are well-worn paths in this kind of thing: story, blah blah blah; mechanics, yada yada yada; and offensiveness, um, wibble, wibble, wibble. These are THE BIG ISSUESTM and I think I’ll avoid them as much as possible, because, frankly, they activate all kinds of crazy. I don’t want to get crushed under that particular juggernaut, thank you very much. My wife would be pissed at me, I’d never hear the end of it and I’m not a courageous man. What I’m going to suggest here are some minor(ish) things to perhaps make things better in just small ways.
Number one: Bigger, clearer text. Start with something small, shall we. Or something I perceive as small. We don’t all have wall-sized screens that show reality-altering vistas from the dimensions of sight, you know. Some of us semi-luddites still possess CRT televisions** that were once considered big. I’ve come to accept that sometimes not seeing a character because my TV doesn’t have the chops is going to happen. But the least developers could do is give us the option of larger text for those prompts or important bits of information that make the game go easier. My ambitions in this really are quite humble.
Number two: Let’s split off the hardcore gamers from the casual gamers. Yes, I’m using some quite fascist language there, just to get your attention. I love getting trophies on my PS3. I’m not afraid to admit that. It stabs at the poor, twitching OCD part of my brain when I can’t get all the trophies for one game. Batting all the arguments about challenge and playing games for fun aside, I feel somewhat downhearted when I see a trophy for something that I clearly will never have the skill to do pop up on the list. I’m not going to sit for hours or days vainly trying to perfect my skills in this area to get the trophy, even though I want to complete the collection sooooo much.
It’s crazy and is aimed at really good, often dedicated, gamers. My proposal is an alluring one for publishers: have two tiers of trophy, one of which you pay extra for. When you buy and install your game, you get a basic set of trophies or achievements to collect that are straightforward (but can still be weird and time-consuming) to do. If you feel you want more of a challenge spend a little bit more, something like a dollar or a pound or a euro to get those tougher trophies. People with the same head-sickness as me can sleep easy and the dedicated gamers can still have their prizes for having skills I can only dream about.
Number three: Graphics aren’t everything. Okay, thinking about it, I may be wrong, this does encroach on THE BIG ISSUESTM, I think. But does every game need to have such insane work done on the graphics? Realism doesn’t always improve a game. Take L.A. Noire, for example, it was an okay game with a lot of ambition. You can’t fault what they were trying to do with the facial motion capture business. It didn’t quite work. Trying to read the expressions in an interrogation turned into an excruciating exercise that makes you question just how far along the autism spectrum you are.
Graphics take up a huge amount of space that could be used for interesting game mechanics and more content. Squeezing in more realism doesn’t instantly make a more enjoyable game. It doesn’t even always guarantee greater immersion. Using L.A. Noire again, it could have been done with simpler, stylised cartoony graphics. I can’t imagine it would have taken more work than the hours of filming actors and then mapping their faces. Just imagine how huge and immersive games could be if developers had water thrown over them when they get too excited about the pretty, pretty visuals.
So there you go: three minor (or two minor and one not so minor) suggestions to make the world of gaming smoother for everyone – or perhaps just me. Perhaps these thoughts will become moot as the games industry evolves. Though that just means we’ll find different ways in which it can be further improved. And that’ll be nice.
* It kinda looks like I’ve got it in for these games, but I don’t really. Although, strictly speaking, I wrote this article first.
** Since upgraded to a big LCD, but the argument still stands.
Will
Wednesday, 15 January 2014
So, Your Favourite Feature's Gone...
There are some ways in which I envy developers: the money, the fame, the adulation. Mostly the money, though. However having the power to create worlds in which players can get lost for hours is a tempting prospect. Being a writer affords you a little of that, but there’s something mesmerising about how a good game can worm its way into your mind and you find yourself thinking about it at odd times*. A funeral somewhere has to have been inappropriately interrupted by some derp shouting, “Shit! That’s how you kill Crawmerax!”
Developers hold the keys to our gaming experience. You can see them as benevolent overlords, handing out nuggets of golden gameplay to while away your hours, with a beatific smile and generosity of heart. Or you can see them as cackling bastards, sitting atop their piles of shimmering experiences, demanding body parts for the privilege of just a few moments of rapturous joy and then peeing on our shoes and asking for a kidney when we want to extend the game**.
Whatever your view of developers, they are the ones who control the content of the games that we see on the shelves. If they so chose they could fill their game chock-full of whoopee cushions that every time you did anything in the game you made a fart noise. Actually, I think I’ve just created gaming perfection, go me! Just imagine it: the climactic fight between you and the Great Murder Soul Hellstomper and with every move the hilarious sound of a violent evacuation of gas from the backside. Thinking about it, it might be a bit crap.
We have to believe that the people who put together the games we buy have the best interests of enjoyment at heart (you know, outside of the fame and money) – though sometimes it’s hard to see it that way. When the developers look at a mechanic or option they have to make a decision about whether it’s right for the enjoyment and feel of the game. They are human and sometimes they make mistakes, after all there are lots of considerations to putting together a game, even with armies of people working on it, but they also quite often, through study and experience, get the decision right on the button, and we as gamers do a little happy dance – well I do anyway, don’t you judge me. Then there are the other times, the instances where you look at the choice that’s been made and you think, “Someone should have sobered up before they stuck that in.”
This is more of a problem, I suspect in sport simulation games. I read about people muttering about the loss of a mechanic from FIFA 12 or the latest Need for Speed. I don’t know much about that kind of thing, since sports games aren’t really my bag. Football’s never been of much interest to me and driving just bores the hell out of me – except maybe Chase HQ, I was crap at it, but it was fun. Having said that these games aren’t the only ones to suffer or gain from feature shuffling.
Games franchises where the basic gameplay elements never really change can live or die on what’s added and what’s subtracted. Up to a point for a lot of games it’s mostly about what’s added that makes them better and better games. Take Assassin’s Creed as an example. The first game in that franchise was okay, for about half an hour, and then the boredom set in. And what boredom it was. The same pattern of climb, do viewpoint then go to a dull mission, repeat. In Assassin’s Creed II (along with Brotherhood and Revelations) the addition of more flavourful and enjoyable missions made for a more interesting game. Yes, they maintained the same basic gameplay, but it was made more fun with the variety of what you got to do with the character. For me they did go a step too far in a desperate attempt to cash-in on the multiplayer market, but I seem to be the only one in the world who thinks multiplayer Brotherhood and Revelations are both as much fun to play as cornering a rabid rat.
Features are, of course, a hotly contested element of the super-money-spinning industry of FPS, whose multiplayer elements bring out some of the best and worst of the feature shuffle. You can see that these guys watch each other very closely and, quite often, you can see that they’re gleefully lifting ideas from their contemporaries. It sort of looks like they’re walking up to each other in the street, saying hello and then taking that packet of M&Ms right from the other’s pocket and grabbing a handful. That kind of handsiness makes me worry about ever meeting them – it could get awkward.
Arguably the most controversial feature in the recent Call of Duty games has to be the ‘quick scoping’ ability. This, for anyone who doesn’t know, is something that apparently predates Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, but these games have run with it. In a nutshell it’s the ability for snipers to run around and shoot people at close range with a minimum of aiming. Since most sniper rifles in the Modern Warfare games are one-hit kills, you can see that some people can get a bit frustrated with it. I have to admit, it frustrates me too, even more so when I experimented and discovered how easy it is – I got a lot of kills and I’m a middling player at best. As you can imagine there are a lot of people who detest this feature’s very existence. So, when Call of Duty: Black Ops came out Treyarch decided to ditch the ability. Can you guess what happened next? Yes, in a fit of ‘oh dear, human nature’ there was an outcry; a huge vocal group started angrily asking what happened to their favourite annoying feature. And, like that, in Modern Warfare 3 quick scoping was back to test just how far a game can increase my blood pressure.
And then there are the baffling omissions. As annoying and unfair as quick scoping can be you can understand why it was put back in place. Insomniac Games, going a little crazy, did something that almost beggars belief. In Resistance 2, a game that a lot of people were lukewarm about, there was included a multiplayer co-operative mode. This was a huge amount of fun, if a tiny bit repetitive, with groups of players working together to complete missions of varying difficulty. It included three classes that could, in fine RPG style, be boosted the more you played. I sure, correct me if I’m wrong, this game managed to boost the life of a game that otherwise would have disappeared into dim memory by perhaps a year. I waited in patient hope when Resistance 3 was announced to see if they would update and expand this mode. When I got my copy and discovered there wasn’t anything like it available on the disc, there was a tear in my eye. Yes, they vastly improved the single-player experience, but they gave us a clunky and buggy multiplayer that was like everything else out there – don’t even get me started on the disheartening swarm mode, blech. Discovering, the other week, that Insomniac Games were finished with the Resistance universe I fell to my knees and bellowed at the heavens. They’ve moved on to the Ratchet and Clank games leaving no possibility of replicating that wonderful gaming experience from Resistance 2†.
Developing games is clearly a juggling act, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, why don’t you take to the comments and give an airing to the game features that you love, lament, mourn the passing of or would happily dance the grave of?
* Fuck that was prophetic, considering what I did last year.
** Or they’re a bit trollish and like to take this piss and frustrate players. They still giggle like the nasty cunts they are.
† Turns out Insomniac yoinked it for Fuse and kinda screwed up the experience by making it a deeply mediocre game.
Will
Developers hold the keys to our gaming experience. You can see them as benevolent overlords, handing out nuggets of golden gameplay to while away your hours, with a beatific smile and generosity of heart. Or you can see them as cackling bastards, sitting atop their piles of shimmering experiences, demanding body parts for the privilege of just a few moments of rapturous joy and then peeing on our shoes and asking for a kidney when we want to extend the game**.
Whatever your view of developers, they are the ones who control the content of the games that we see on the shelves. If they so chose they could fill their game chock-full of whoopee cushions that every time you did anything in the game you made a fart noise. Actually, I think I’ve just created gaming perfection, go me! Just imagine it: the climactic fight between you and the Great Murder Soul Hellstomper and with every move the hilarious sound of a violent evacuation of gas from the backside. Thinking about it, it might be a bit crap.
We have to believe that the people who put together the games we buy have the best interests of enjoyment at heart (you know, outside of the fame and money) – though sometimes it’s hard to see it that way. When the developers look at a mechanic or option they have to make a decision about whether it’s right for the enjoyment and feel of the game. They are human and sometimes they make mistakes, after all there are lots of considerations to putting together a game, even with armies of people working on it, but they also quite often, through study and experience, get the decision right on the button, and we as gamers do a little happy dance – well I do anyway, don’t you judge me. Then there are the other times, the instances where you look at the choice that’s been made and you think, “Someone should have sobered up before they stuck that in.”
This is more of a problem, I suspect in sport simulation games. I read about people muttering about the loss of a mechanic from FIFA 12 or the latest Need for Speed. I don’t know much about that kind of thing, since sports games aren’t really my bag. Football’s never been of much interest to me and driving just bores the hell out of me – except maybe Chase HQ, I was crap at it, but it was fun. Having said that these games aren’t the only ones to suffer or gain from feature shuffling.
Games franchises where the basic gameplay elements never really change can live or die on what’s added and what’s subtracted. Up to a point for a lot of games it’s mostly about what’s added that makes them better and better games. Take Assassin’s Creed as an example. The first game in that franchise was okay, for about half an hour, and then the boredom set in. And what boredom it was. The same pattern of climb, do viewpoint then go to a dull mission, repeat. In Assassin’s Creed II (along with Brotherhood and Revelations) the addition of more flavourful and enjoyable missions made for a more interesting game. Yes, they maintained the same basic gameplay, but it was made more fun with the variety of what you got to do with the character. For me they did go a step too far in a desperate attempt to cash-in on the multiplayer market, but I seem to be the only one in the world who thinks multiplayer Brotherhood and Revelations are both as much fun to play as cornering a rabid rat.
Features are, of course, a hotly contested element of the super-money-spinning industry of FPS, whose multiplayer elements bring out some of the best and worst of the feature shuffle. You can see that these guys watch each other very closely and, quite often, you can see that they’re gleefully lifting ideas from their contemporaries. It sort of looks like they’re walking up to each other in the street, saying hello and then taking that packet of M&Ms right from the other’s pocket and grabbing a handful. That kind of handsiness makes me worry about ever meeting them – it could get awkward.
Arguably the most controversial feature in the recent Call of Duty games has to be the ‘quick scoping’ ability. This, for anyone who doesn’t know, is something that apparently predates Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, but these games have run with it. In a nutshell it’s the ability for snipers to run around and shoot people at close range with a minimum of aiming. Since most sniper rifles in the Modern Warfare games are one-hit kills, you can see that some people can get a bit frustrated with it. I have to admit, it frustrates me too, even more so when I experimented and discovered how easy it is – I got a lot of kills and I’m a middling player at best. As you can imagine there are a lot of people who detest this feature’s very existence. So, when Call of Duty: Black Ops came out Treyarch decided to ditch the ability. Can you guess what happened next? Yes, in a fit of ‘oh dear, human nature’ there was an outcry; a huge vocal group started angrily asking what happened to their favourite annoying feature. And, like that, in Modern Warfare 3 quick scoping was back to test just how far a game can increase my blood pressure.
And then there are the baffling omissions. As annoying and unfair as quick scoping can be you can understand why it was put back in place. Insomniac Games, going a little crazy, did something that almost beggars belief. In Resistance 2, a game that a lot of people were lukewarm about, there was included a multiplayer co-operative mode. This was a huge amount of fun, if a tiny bit repetitive, with groups of players working together to complete missions of varying difficulty. It included three classes that could, in fine RPG style, be boosted the more you played. I sure, correct me if I’m wrong, this game managed to boost the life of a game that otherwise would have disappeared into dim memory by perhaps a year. I waited in patient hope when Resistance 3 was announced to see if they would update and expand this mode. When I got my copy and discovered there wasn’t anything like it available on the disc, there was a tear in my eye. Yes, they vastly improved the single-player experience, but they gave us a clunky and buggy multiplayer that was like everything else out there – don’t even get me started on the disheartening swarm mode, blech. Discovering, the other week, that Insomniac Games were finished with the Resistance universe I fell to my knees and bellowed at the heavens. They’ve moved on to the Ratchet and Clank games leaving no possibility of replicating that wonderful gaming experience from Resistance 2†.
Developing games is clearly a juggling act, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, why don’t you take to the comments and give an airing to the game features that you love, lament, mourn the passing of or would happily dance the grave of?
* Fuck that was prophetic, considering what I did last year.
** Or they’re a bit trollish and like to take this piss and frustrate players. They still giggle like the nasty cunts they are.
† Turns out Insomniac yoinked it for Fuse and kinda screwed up the experience by making it a deeply mediocre game.
Will
Wednesday, 23 May 2012
Sore wrists, swollen thumbs.
Yep, I'm back for a ramble, deal with it.
I don't have any wonderful insights about the computer gaming industry. Let's throw that one out there. I have only a little more insight about the writing industry, and given my situation, you can tell that ain't a whole lot. As far as insights go you might as well go and ask a tree stump, it isn't my forte.
What I do have is a long history with computer games. I remember Christmas, 1987, opening the box my ZX Spectrum +2 came in and being delighted*. I didn't even mind the squeaky squarky five minutes of loading for a game that I was shit at or, even worse, decided not to work at all, because I had a computer. Over the next four or five years I built up a library of tapes, most of which lay unused while I obsessed over the games I enjoyed and were within my abilities to play **.
Games like 'Robocop', 'Chaos' and 'Target: Renegade' took up a great deal of my time. Time I could have been using to go out playing with other kids or masturbating was dedicated to making shitty collections of half-dozens of pixels scoot around the screen to beat or shoot each other. It was a golden, very pale time.
The bug was there and over the years I've had brief affairs with Nes, Gameboy (original and Advance), Saturn, Playstation, Playstation 2, Dreamcast, Gamecube and even PC. All dependent on money and my interest. Each in their own way fascinated and ate my time for the period they were in my life. At least three of those were instead of having a girlfriend. Fuckin' hell, I'm a cliche!
My wife and I now own a Playstation 3. Recently I've gone into one of my periods of not playing games. After finishing up the last ending for 'Fallout: New Vegas' and playing the millionth team death match on 'Modern Warfare 3' I was starting to feel a little fatigued.
It happens. Although I've felt it more with modern games. Particularly ones like the recent two 'Fallout' games, where RPG elements are crammed in. These elements are almost guaranteed to get me playing, but I always feel like they're flawed, the main one being promising to allow the creation of characters your way and making it clear characters need to be tailored in a particular way if you want to complete the game, "Sure you can create a super tech-savvy character, just don't come crying to me if large, angry mutants spend most of the game eating her head off." These RPG elements also mean you have to play for a minimum amount of time in order to get your character good enough to complete the game. And, while this is a whole lot of fun for a while it can become tiresome (the 'Fallout' games are good at staving this off, mind you).
I would love to write plot lines for computers games, as it seems, sometimes, though creators want amazing narratives, they (seem to, I have no evidence this happens) kind of leave the actual writing to their stoner mate. There are exceptions: the above-mentioned 'Fallout' games, 'LA Noire' (although it did come undone a bit at the end) and 'Portal 2' to name but three. It was amazing to me, playing the first 'Resident Evil' with its dodgy dialogue and frustrating controls, that a game could have that structure. This was after I hadn't played games in five or six years. And now we're at the stage where they're pulling in David Goyer to write the next 'Black Ops' game. Pretty cool.
And I want in on that, man.
Although, just like lots of other kids who grew up in the eighties and nineties, I'd love to create my own game. A bit more of a problematic situation since I have no idea how to code or any of the dozens of other things required to develop a half-decent game. One can always hope, though.
* So many people have nostalgia hard-ons about those bastard little rubber-keyboard fuckers. Screw that shit. The +2 had a real keyboard, it looked slick, man.
** Fuck those retro-gaming snobs who think the mark of a game was how impossible it was. Fuck 'Manic Miner', it was retarded. And you can shove text adventures up your arse, too. I got enough frustration from games I liked playing, never mind trying to work out the right fucking command to type that didn't get me, "Pick up cup is not recognised". Gaaaah!
Will
I don't have any wonderful insights about the computer gaming industry. Let's throw that one out there. I have only a little more insight about the writing industry, and given my situation, you can tell that ain't a whole lot. As far as insights go you might as well go and ask a tree stump, it isn't my forte.
What I do have is a long history with computer games. I remember Christmas, 1987, opening the box my ZX Spectrum +2 came in and being delighted*. I didn't even mind the squeaky squarky five minutes of loading for a game that I was shit at or, even worse, decided not to work at all, because I had a computer. Over the next four or five years I built up a library of tapes, most of which lay unused while I obsessed over the games I enjoyed and were within my abilities to play **.
Games like 'Robocop', 'Chaos' and 'Target: Renegade' took up a great deal of my time. Time I could have been using to go out playing with other kids or masturbating was dedicated to making shitty collections of half-dozens of pixels scoot around the screen to beat or shoot each other. It was a golden, very pale time.
The bug was there and over the years I've had brief affairs with Nes, Gameboy (original and Advance), Saturn, Playstation, Playstation 2, Dreamcast, Gamecube and even PC. All dependent on money and my interest. Each in their own way fascinated and ate my time for the period they were in my life. At least three of those were instead of having a girlfriend. Fuckin' hell, I'm a cliche!
My wife and I now own a Playstation 3. Recently I've gone into one of my periods of not playing games. After finishing up the last ending for 'Fallout: New Vegas' and playing the millionth team death match on 'Modern Warfare 3' I was starting to feel a little fatigued.
It happens. Although I've felt it more with modern games. Particularly ones like the recent two 'Fallout' games, where RPG elements are crammed in. These elements are almost guaranteed to get me playing, but I always feel like they're flawed, the main one being promising to allow the creation of characters your way and making it clear characters need to be tailored in a particular way if you want to complete the game, "Sure you can create a super tech-savvy character, just don't come crying to me if large, angry mutants spend most of the game eating her head off." These RPG elements also mean you have to play for a minimum amount of time in order to get your character good enough to complete the game. And, while this is a whole lot of fun for a while it can become tiresome (the 'Fallout' games are good at staving this off, mind you).
I would love to write plot lines for computers games, as it seems, sometimes, though creators want amazing narratives, they (seem to, I have no evidence this happens) kind of leave the actual writing to their stoner mate. There are exceptions: the above-mentioned 'Fallout' games, 'LA Noire' (although it did come undone a bit at the end) and 'Portal 2' to name but three. It was amazing to me, playing the first 'Resident Evil' with its dodgy dialogue and frustrating controls, that a game could have that structure. This was after I hadn't played games in five or six years. And now we're at the stage where they're pulling in David Goyer to write the next 'Black Ops' game. Pretty cool.
And I want in on that, man.
Although, just like lots of other kids who grew up in the eighties and nineties, I'd love to create my own game. A bit more of a problematic situation since I have no idea how to code or any of the dozens of other things required to develop a half-decent game. One can always hope, though.
* So many people have nostalgia hard-ons about those bastard little rubber-keyboard fuckers. Screw that shit. The +2 had a real keyboard, it looked slick, man.
** Fuck those retro-gaming snobs who think the mark of a game was how impossible it was. Fuck 'Manic Miner', it was retarded. And you can shove text adventures up your arse, too. I got enough frustration from games I liked playing, never mind trying to work out the right fucking command to type that didn't get me, "Pick up cup is not recognised". Gaaaah!
Will
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