Crocs + outback + aussies = a great game!

I can't quite remember whether I have made a post on this game or not. But I feel inspired to write about one of my old time favorite games, so you'll have to excuse me. DUD was a simple point and click comic adventure game. Throughout the course of the game you fall out of an airplane, find a bunch of hill-billy-esque outback Aussies, and try and find your way home. I played the game when I was probably 10 or about there, so most o fthe game was trial and error but I'll never forget it.

The game had simple but logical puzzles, a few jumping/platforming puzzles, mixed in with some good old rabbit shooting and croc jumping. I'll never forget the time, when I must have been playing through the game for the second time when I came to the part where you have to cross a certain river infested with crocs. The only way to get accross was to jump from log to log, avoiding the crocs. It was possibel to actually land on the crocs themselves, but you had to time it very well so you wouldn't land anywhere near their mouth.

As little kids me and my brothers would save every time we made a successful jump, because at that age it wasn't easy. So I was jumping accross the river when I made a jump onto a croc. Except I didn't actually wait for myself to land, because I thought I was going to make the jump. I quickly saved and resumed the game to find out that the jump landed me right in the mouth of the croc, resulting in death and a return back to my last save point.

Problem was my last save point was of me in the middle of jumping once again into the croc's mouth. There was nothing I could do except start the game all over again, but I don't think I minded too much. Down Under Dan, what a great game. :)

Starcraft 2 design

Just a little summat I knocked up.

I've been watching a ton of SC2 replays on youtube, which I only got into over the past couple of weeks. (Quickly resulting in breaking the download cap :S) Even though I've never played the original I've been sucked in and am thinking of getting one version of Starcraft or another, despite how much I despise Blizzard. :P

What's your excuse?

A couple of days ago a user on youtube left a comment on one of my videos. In the video I was detailing why I quitting RoM, and he interpreted my bottom line as "the game is boring." He (I assume it was a he) considered being bored with a game obviously to be a completely insufficient reason to stop playing it. But I thoroughly disagree.

A game's purpose is to entertain those who play it, and if it fails on that level then it really failed altogether. If you are not enjoying a game then, seeing as you have no obligation to play it, discontinuing to play it is a very logical and reasonable step. Of course, not every game is going to be entertaining 100% of the time, but most people aren't going to quit a game the moment it fails to interest or entertain them for a single moment.

It also depends on the pacing of a game. The dialogue, story, and problem solving in a game such as Half Life 2 are of a very high level, but could be considered boring compared to shooting baddies. Nevertheless, without the slower sections, the "shooting baddies" section would get monotonous in itself. All good games will slow down their pace at some point, unless the action is absolutely brilliant, the question is whether the slower pace is as enjoyable and entertaining as the faster action.

If none of us quit a game when it became boring and samey, we still would all be playing pong.

Exponential Storytelling

A friend commented the other day on how hard it must be to get a good storyline going in games. Because, by interaction, the player can change the story and create an alternative ending. This means that the writers then have to create not just one great story to play through but numerous ones. Of course in such games as Call of Duty the developers decided that freedom of choice wasn't going to be a feature of their games so the player can only play through one story. Replayability is a pretty big thing nowadays with players expecting to get a lot out of their games, and if there is only one way to play through the game then the player won't feel much incentive to play.

In my earlier years (It makes me sound much older) I played Neopets, and Neopets had this one game which I think was called Adventure Generator. In this 'game' you were able to write your own 'Choose Your Own Adventure' type story. Other players could read your story and vote on it. Not too surprisingly, the most popular stories were simple 'take care of this obscenely cute neopet' stories which all sounded and ended the same. However, I was not deterred, I went crazy because I loved to write stories at the time and began. Some time later I came out and admired my handiwork. Originally I had planned to make an epic story with a crazily good ending by the time I thought I had achieved that I realized that the person reading it would probably lose interest, because it would be like reading a book; having no impact on the story whatsoever. The truth was that the story would get exponentially more complicated the more decisions you gave the reader. And the same is certainly true for most games.

Gamers praised Crysis for having a sandbox type layout, where you were generally free to complete your mission however way you wish, but that sort of choice is easy. No matter how you kill the guy, you are still killing the guy, giving you no real choice or freedom. So lets encourage those games which give you real options in impacting upon the story. Its incredibly hard to create a great storyline that branches out into equally good resolutions with the player driving the story forward. So for those games that try and fail in this regard lets give them full points for effort, and for those games that succeed, well, give the devs your money and enjoy truly great gaming.

Choices, choices, choices

I received COD2 in the mail the other day, after looking for something to waste some of my precious study time with and have been enjoying quite a lot. I have never been particularly good at FPS games, mainly because I don't like the extremely competitive nature of most of them.

At the core I am a MMORPG person and am still looking for the one true one. I have been tempted on many occasions to take up both WAR and LotRO again. Its been a long long time since I have played LotRO and since I quit I have heard nothing but good news about it. I adored the PvE book aspect of the game and would love to try it out again some time.

WAR also has been calling to me, as I often think about how many fun times I had in the PvP. I loved the graphics and RvR, but in the end there wasn't enough variety of good quality end-game to keep me there. I am considering resubbing when the Choppa comes out, because I think the class looks fantastic.

Lastly I have been having a look at Guild Wars 2. I haven't played the original but reading some of the FAQ of GW2 it looks like it is going to be a very popular MMORPG option, especially with the unique pricing option.

Why can't we have both?

First of all where is the line that governs whether a game is singleplayer or multiplayer? The most common answer would be that a multiplayer requires more then one player, so two people playing at one time. Would that mean they would have to be playing together for it to be a multiplayer? Of course it would. Many people complain that playing an MMO is like playing a singleplayer game. In most circumstances this is due to the fact that there are not a lot of players around that area, or they just don't group a lot. However, even if a MMO is first and foremost a multiplayer game why does it always seem that the singleplayer sucks?

Every major objective in an MMO is generally achieved by teamwork, whether it be in a raid group fighting an instance, or a warband participating in PVP, or even in something more subtle such as using the AH to get gear/money. So with all the focus on the multiplayer side of things the solo stuff tends to suffer greatly. But why is this so? Many singleplayers nowadays have at least some form of multiplayer - this has now become normal. Its not often particularly great, but its just there to fill in space because it is expected. So in nearly all games that have both a singleplayer element and a multiplayer element one of these will inevitably stink. But why? Why can't we have more games that have a solid grounding on both aspects? Perhaps in the future of gaming, games will lose their 'singleplayer' or 'multiplayer' tag and all have both equally good. That will be something to look forward to.

BTW just endured my first week of Year12 which was pretty tough. All of a sudden I have a whole lot less time to do everything and right now I really have to do some homework, before doing my '500 words a day' and then get ready for my brother's uni friends to come over. Wish me luck. :)

Indi vs. Mainstream

Is it just me or do Indi game designers seem much more hardcore then major mainstream developers?
I recently read a couple of articles about Indi gaming and the discussions and courses they have on it is incredible. They seem to have such a large pool of knowledge and so many ideas about what gaming should be in contrast to what we see mainstream developers as. In the article they were talking about how they saw gaming as art and how they could reflect this. It was very interesting and slightly confusing seeing as their ideas and concepts were so 'original' and different to what we see all the time in gaming.

I'm thinking when an Indi game designer sees something like Crysis that cry into their tea at the thought of not having the same resources as the people at crytek, while the people that do have the resources waste it on such an eye-candy centered game. It got me thinking about where do the mainstream developers come from? How do they become so different to the Indi guys? Is it the large gaming companies who just tell them what to do or they lose their jobs? I'm curious.

Gaming at Uni

i read in a magazine the other day that the government were considering using Civ4 or something to teach students at school. Furthermore I heard that there is a course somewhere at uni totally focused on Starcraft. In the Starcraft course they would study all sorts of mathematics and units strengths , as well as even psychology I think in relation to strategies. The students would be required to record two full length videos of themselves playing Stacraft and submit it to the teacher to analyze. If they had time/could be bothered then they would go over some of the tapes in class.

When I first heard about it I thought it was some sort of joke, but when I started reading into the notes then it became obvious that this was a truly serious course, and looked like it was pretty hard. It got me thinking what kind of gaming university course that I would like best. After much deliberation I decided that studying the MMORPG would be the most interesting. What makes these games so durable? What makes people play them? And also, what can we learn from MMORPGs?

Too bad, everything sucks here in Western Australia, where little happens, but here's to hoping. In other news I bought COD2 so that should be arriving in a couple of weeks. I was going to buy it off steam but it costed more then getting it off ebay.

Warrior Epic class video

Having subscribed to MMORPG.com I regularly receive random news about random MMOs. Today some studio released a class video about a game called Warrior Epic. It has some pretty ordinary classes, graphics look nice, and thats pretty much it. The problem with these kinds of videos is that they really tell you nothing about the game, just some random gameplay videos. Seems a pretty cheap way to release a game's classes.

Pox Nora

The world of blogging seems to be in a state of uproar. Bloggers everywhere are being consumed by the beast that is WAR. All of a sudden everyone is in the beta or just about to, after registering their codes. Countless tortured souls live with fear in their hearts of accidentally breaking the NDA. It would seem very odd then to talk about something not at all related to WAR, but this blog is about what I'm playing and thats not going to change. While I was on a guild's vent the other day I heard one guy talking about a game called Pox Nora. Supposedly there was a new expansion to it. I vaguely remembered seeing an advertisement for the game, and perhaps even checking out the website, but I hadn't played it. Since he was pretty excited about it I decided to go back to the website and see what to fuss was about.

It caught my interest, or maybe just caught me unprepared (longing after WAR) but I decided to give it a go. The download wasn't too big and I was soon going through the tutorial. Pox Nora is a strategy game in which you get a dozen or so runes, which act as warriors, spells, or something like buffs. You can only place down a certain amount of these runes a turn as they require something called Moga, which you acquire automatically after every turn. Each player has a keep which when destroyed ends the game. Pox Nora is quite strategic and will take one or two games to get used to, but even then its pretty fun. I played a few online matches and lost miserably but learned some new things. After the end of a match your units gain some experience, and when they lvl they get stronger. So far I'm enjoying myself so I recommend you trying it out.

Hyperlicious

I thought I should make a post about hype because it seems as though everyone is talking about it. And by everyone I mean just a couple of my fellow bloggers. The word is going around that Mythic have been over-hyping their game like crazy, and when its going to be released there will be some repercussions. The repercussions may be in the form of raging gamers who thought that WAR would be THE next game, maybe others will just be slightly disappointed. Personally I feel that the complaints of over-hyping a game are pointless until the actual game comes out. Why? Because you can't tell whether the game is going to actually live up to the hype until you have actually experienced it. Perhaps, of course, some of the bloggers are in the closed beta and have been playing for a while and do not feel that the game lives up to the hype which is understandable.

I don't think that Mythic have over-hyped their game. I think what they have done is clever marketing. (which can be I guess be seen as just another way of saying 'over-hype') They have released a lot of production podcasts which explain the interesting and exciting aspects of the game, they have made their development interviews exciting and interesting (Thank you Paul Barnett) and they have listened to their fanbase and given them what they asked for. Can this be classified as hype?

About a year ago I had recently quit WoW and was looking for a new MMO and I came across Fury. It was a game developed by an Aussie team which focused completely on PvP. The hype for Fury wasn't significant, and certainly quite timid as opposed to WAR, yet I was still really excited about the game. Sadly there were many, many things wrong with it and it didn't sell. Only a few days ago it shut down its servers. Why am I mentioning this? Well, I think that there is nothing wrong with hype. While there was very little hype for Fury I still was very interested in it, and consequently was extremely disappointed with the result. WAR (apparently) has been overloaded with hype and I am waiting with sweaty hands to play it, yet I know that if the game doesn't turn out as I hoped I will be no more disappointed then with Fury. Developers should not be blamed for over-hyping their game; its their job and in the end hype is not what the developers make out their game to be, but what the player makes out the game to be in their mind. While this ideal may be effected by the stuff churned out by the developers it is not totally dependent on it as demonstrated by my experience with Fury.

20 years in the future

I was talking to a friend the other day and we were discussing what games were going to be like in 20 years. Games have developed astronomically in the last 20 years but could they do that again? My instance idea was of course not, graphics already are incredible, virtually life-like, think Crysis-they really can't get any better then that. But the longer I thought about it the more I realized that I was looking at it from a very linear view, meaning that graphics aren't the only things that are going to improve greatly. Here is my idea/hope of what games are going to be like in another 20 years, this is from the view of PCs.

The computer, monitor, keyboard, mouse, and speakers will all be one single piece, slightly like a console. There will be of course the option to buy additional speakers but it is not a necessity. Games will be nearing current Pixar animation-like graphical detail. The gaming worlds will be much more interactive, such as leaves blowing out behind you as you gallop past on your tame war tiger. (In World of Warcraft; The Wrath of the Never-ending MMO) Damage models will be almost life-like, violence in games will need to be reduced because of it's life-like feel and atmosphere. There will be a huge array of animations for the simplest of things- instead of bumping into a log and having to either jump over it or move around it, the player will be able to simple 'climb' over it with only the slightest pause. AI will be beefed up and bots will be programmed to play exactly like humans, programmed to make minor mistakes, but also to think for themselves in a much broader way then in today's games. Oh, and you will never need to go to a store again-you will be able to buy any game online, download it in a matter of minutes and play it.

Some of this prediction is pure wishfulness, but I believe that much of it will occur. The strength of the gaming community is only growing and more and more 'casual' gamers are popping up. Gaming is not just for nerdy teens anymore, it is for everyone. As such the industry will get bigger and bigger, with more money being invested in new technology. I mean, just imagine what the people in the late eighties early nineties would have said if we would have shown them this;

as opposed to this;

Letter to the editor; ignorance is bliss

Here is a letter I wrote to a gaming magazine today. I'll just stuff it onto my blog for filing purposes, and also because I haven't posted in a while. I guess the letter slightly mirrors my writing style for this blog and its not much of a letter, fulfilling the role of a blog post very well.

For some time now I have noticed that many other friends who are unusually obsessed about gaming (At least, slightly more then me) continually compare recent games to ones that they have played before. They say that WoW was nowhere as good as Ultima Online, that they liked certain aspects of the first COD better then a game that was made 10 years ago, but they aren't quite sure whether COD4 is any better.
To me these people never seem to be able to enjoy any part of a game because they recall back to another game where the gun models looked shinier. With a seemingly endless inventory of previous gaming experiences from which they can pull out any example of something better. To me I would think this would take all the enjoyment out of the game.
I am particularly new to games so I do not know the history of gaming in the 80s, and I haven't played every fps that was released in the late 90s, and I enjoy it this way. The way I see it is if I did play all the fps games during the late 90s and knew the history of gaming in the 80s then I would do exactly the same thing as my friends and thereby, perhaps unknowingly compare the modern games to the ones I enjoyed ages ago, thus making me unsatisfied with the game. Whereas I could have enjoyed myself perfectly without the torturous knowledge of some aspect being slightly better in another game. That is why I value my gaming ignorance, and will stick to my narrow-mindedness despite what others might say.

Tutorialization

For the past couple of days I have been playing Sid Meirs' Colonization. After writing up a post about it a few days ago I started looking around for a place to download it. I was a bit uncertain whether it would actually work on this computer and was not to suprised when a few downloads turned out bad. However, I eventually found one that did work and have been playing that since. It is very much like the Sid Meirs' Civ series but despite the horrible graphics I find myself loving this old game. Everything is right about it, and even me who is a hopeless tactical player, can appreciate and enjoy it. Being the tactical failure that I am I first played it on easiest which basically lets you win. But non-the-less it was very enjoyable.

My sister noticed me playing the game and asked if she could have a go. I left her alone for an hour and came back to see chaos. She had no idea what she was doing or what she was supposed to be doing, saying that the game had no tutorial from which to learn what to do. And I realized that she was right. The game just launches you straight into the action-packed world of building your own colony without explaining a whole lot. This seems to be true for many of the early games; the player is just expected to 'figure it out' with minimal explanation. It may have been difficult for my sister, who is definitely not a gamer, to play properly without a tutorial but I had no problems even though I hadn't played for over 8 years.

Nowadays nearly every modern game that comes out has a tutorial. Sometimes these are separated from the game's overall mission or storyline before you get to play the actual campaign, while others integrate the tutorial into the campaign/story. But they all have a tutorial. But why? What has changed through the years? Do modern computers and games provide a much steeper learning curve then they did back then? Or were games just for ultra nerds who didn't need tutorials? I have to say that I detest tutorials, many leaving me feeling more confused about the game then when I started. For some games they don't need much of a tutorial like Call of Duty because it is simple and everyone has played that kind of game before. But its rare that you come across a game which is different to others yet is simple enough not to need a detailed tutorial. I consider colonization to be one of such games, except I think my sister would disagree.

Slow times

The gaming scene for me has come to a standstill for the moment. There is just nothing out there that seems particularly good. I was never interested in AoC. WoW has nothing going for it, and I am definitely not going to try out WotLK, it will just be more of the same even with their new siege ideas. LotRO looks slightly tempting so I jumped on it for a day but it didn't excite me as much as it should have and so I'm not playing that. The blogging community seems to have gone into hibernation, posting endless speculation topics that just get annoying after time.

Tobold started the idea of a card-based mmorpg which didn't seem to go too well. In the comments section people seemed to be ripping it apart. I think the game could be interesting but Tobold is approaching it the wrong way. With the card-only trading scheme, and questing both which aren't particularly well thought out. Tobold's not a game developer, he is just stating his dream game which is fine, but I think he would have given it a bit more thought before releasing it to his 5000+ readership.

E3 is big at the moment. Keen and Graev are giving some interesting coverage but nothing really seems to be going on.
WAR is quiet, but it will be interesting what will be in next month's newsletter.

I am playing Combat Arms at the moment which is surprisingly good. It has recently come out of beta and Nexon are adding some nice new features regularly which is good to see.
Maybe we should make up our own gaming news to keep things moving along I could also always pretend I am playing a game and make up stuff about what I am doing. I am starting to see the advantages of running a blog with more then one person, right now I could do with someone who could write about anything where there really is nothing going on and nothing to say. Anyone?

Bartle's quiz

I took the Bartle's gamer quiz today and here are the results;

Based on your answers you are ...

AKSE

AKSE players like to be the best-of-the-best at everything the game has to offer. They like to be high on the ladders of whatever metrics the game uses, including PVP. They like the best gear, the most power, and they love being the 'first' at something. Their prowess in PVP is generally supported by a large degree of understanding and posession of the best equipment and skills.

Breakdown: Achiever 73.33%, Explorer 20.00%, Killer 66.67%, Socializer 40.00%

Take the quiz here to find out what type of gamer you are!

Which are you?

Are you a mouse person or a keyboard person? I'm talking about games like space invaders where you move your little ship accross the screen shooting endless waves of aliens. Nowadays, in the more modern versions it gives you and option either to use your mouse to move the ship or use the regular keyboard. But the thing is that these kind of games were designed for computer parts 5-10 years ago, and carrying on the tradition simply doesn't work.

Now I don't normally play games like space invaders but the topic was brought to my mind when my little brother tried out a demo of Chicken Invaders. After playing a while I really couldn't understand why they even gave you the option to use the keyboard because it was so awkward to use, and not nearly as quick and sensitive as the mouse. I found myself dying so often because you move sooo slowly using the arrow buttons. I wonder if they are keeping with old traditions back when there were no laser mouses, and every gamer had the big ball-type mouse that got caught and clogged up all the time. Can you imagine playing CS with a mouse like that nowadays? If CS was released 10 years ago with all the shoddy mouses maybe you could play that equally good with the keyboard, but as technology had moved on and mouses have got upgraded and better nobody would use the keyboard even if there was an option to do so. But why don't keyboards get an upgrade with the times, why can't keyboard users be able to be just as fast as mouse users? Its a sham. Disgraceful.

The only use I can see for the keyboard option is for 2-players, where one uses the mouse, and the other uses the keyboard. But before laser mouses which type did you use? The faulty big ball-type mouse or the keyboard?

PS. I aplogise for any spellign mistakes as the stupid bloogger word correcting this isnt workign.

Runescape gets a makeover

Wow, I have just discovered that Runescape, every 10-year old gamer's first love affair, has just got a whole new makeover. I once played the game when I was 11 or 12 for about 2 weeks. I didn't really enjoy it because I couldn't see anything due to the gamma being far too low, but I had no idea how to change it. As a result I really had no idea where I was going or what I was doing. I ran off the tutorial island without really learning a thing. But I don't really want to get into my experience of the game as it is pretty short and bitter.
But the change between the graphics are simply astonishing; the previous graphics were particularly awful even for 50 years ago, but the upgrade really looks quite spectacular and I am sure that many now-twenty-years-olds will be rushing back to experience their childhood world in full-screen. Its exciting and has been a long time coming and hopefully its going to do wonders for Runescape's fans and reputation.
After this announcement I simply have to play it again, I have no idea how long this curiosity and interest will last but will get back to you later.

A slightly delayed opinion on Diablo 3

At the moment the whole gaming community in clamoring over the recent announcement of Diablo 3. Nearly all the blogs I read have given their opinion on the news and what they think it means for a third Diablo to come out, many commenting on how Blizzard's massively popular World of Warcraft will effect the reception to their new addition to a much loved series.

Suprisingly many people reading these blogs gave strongly opinionated comments stating their surprise at Blizzard's decision to bring out another Diablo, stating that they couldn't see how the hack and slash style of gaming is any fun, and even more so with it being the third in the series. I was interested by this because, by comparison, when a new, excellent fps in a series such as Call of Duty comes out people don't go about saying how they can't understand how anyone could enjoy it; that they played it and it sucked, that they wanted a refund, that it was sooooo boring, and they just can't understand how it could be entertaining to anyone else. Now, normally people don't do stuff like that but its understandable I guess because of Diablo's unique nature and Blizzard's history with WoW.

Blizzard made a pretty daring decision to make a game that is loot focused in which you have to kill masses and masses of enemies. There was so much potential for disaster there and yet they managed to pull it off. Then they made WoW which now has over 10 million subscribers. Now everyone thinks this translates to whether they will change from the roots of Diablo to something that may use some of the magic from WoW to get more people to play Diablo 3. Fanboys all over the place are sitting in dark corners with their fingers crossed, screwing up their eyes wishing for Diablo to stay the same, and in the end I think this is what Blizzard is going to do.

The game looks great so far, and it will be interesting to see what the response to it will be when it is released.

Another Aussie Gaming Mag

After my rage over that gaming magazine in my previous post I began my search for something new and better. Previously a couple of friends had brought a magazine called PC Powerplay to school and I had a look at it. First of all it is only about games for the pc which eliminates all the boring game reviews of stuff that I don't care about, and it also reviews various pc components which I am also very interested in. The articles are nice, the reviews are good so at the moment I started to think of getting a subscription.

Being the cheap sting that I am, I first went to eBay to check out the prices. there was a bulk lot for $55 but it had many old editions and I wasn't too keen on that, as well as there were quite a few people interested so the price is sure to go quite high. I then found an eBayer who was actually selling his copy of the magazine for even cheaper then the long term subscription plan, that includes postage. he says he just opens it up, rads it then packs it up ready to sell. Crazy, and he was 60 something judging by his profile photo. A nice thing to see for a change but I really can't see the benefit of going onto eBay and waiting until he puts the next issue up, then buying it just to save about 30c.
So I went to the PC Powerplay website and clicked on the 'subscribe' button and checked out the prices. Its $99 for a years subscription, which is quite steep, but I guess it includes the disc which includes tons of recent game demos and even full games. I pondered this for a little while before opting for another option; a two year subscription without the discs for $90 which I think is a bargain.
I have been known to buy on impulse and I have no wish to do it again so have decided to sleep on it for a few days before I get it...because I am going to get it; the sleeping on it is just for show.