Hey Man, well this is Babylon

Ammunition in shooter video games is up near the top of my list of Most Ridiculous Video Game Conventions out there today. Seemingly implemented because “that’s what you always do,” the mechanics are purportedly intended to instill a sense of urgency within the player, who should try and make every shot count. In reality, legacy imbalances within the standard implementation of these mechanics almost universally result in half-assed pacing mechanics that seem tacked-on at best, and controller-throwingly frustrating at worst. Read more

I’m slowly falling out of love (again) with Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition. My love affair with this game has been a tumultuous one, I admit. When I first perused the leaked PDF copies pre-release, I practically loathed it. It did not seem the game for me. When I finally got a chance to actually play it, I was wowed by the tightness of its combat mechanics, the interoperability of the team roles, and the constant awareness of all your available options. In recent times I fought a brief addiction to the process of character-building, very similar to a previous addiction I had when first introduced to 3rd Edition’s drastic rules changes.

But now I feel that fling coming to an end (again?). The big kicker for me this time are the jolting unnatural transitions between the game’s core modes of play. In no other tabletop game do the words “Okay, everyone, roll for initiative” make me cringe so deeply. The switchover from Talk-Time to Fight-Time is so drastic, sudden, and severe that it breaks me out of my imaginative reverie and reminds me that yes, I really am only here to grind mobs for XP.

Consider these transitions as if they were part of a Japanese video RPG. These games have three basic modes. In Exploration Mode you move Your Guy around a typically disproportionately-represented dungeon, town, or world map. Sometimes you interact with the scenery when exclamation points appear above Your Guy’s head. Sometimes you talk to other NPCs in the game setting, most of which just repeat the same lines of dialog every time you select the talk command. Read more

Been a damn busy week. Not enough time for blogging! So here’s my weekend update, a day late.

First, a link. Check out Universal Dead, a new low-budget web series about zombies. It’s… not bad. Not bad at all.

For the last few days I’ve been going back and forth between Dragon Age and Alpha Protocol. My current goal in Dragon Age is to play as a solo Archer Rogue + Dog combo for as long as I can manage, outside of the few spots in the game where other companions are forced upon you. I’ve always been a fan of odd “challenge runs” in video games, and I figure this one would be called the “Post-Apocalypse” DA run – survivor + dog, in other words.

Alpha Protocol has been fun. I see a game series in the making here, and this one’s a good start. It reminds me a lot of the original Mass Effect – awesome in many ways, but marred by some rather aggravating design choices. I’m only a few hours in, though, so I’ll save my full decision for a later time after more hands-on experience with it.

I met a few awesome folks and sold a few more copies of Cannibal Contagion this past Memorial Day. Guardian Games hosted their second annual “May of the Dead” celebration, and I was there pimpin’ my game and hanging out with my fellow nerd. Had some great talks with a fellow from the local chapter of the Zombie Squad, and ran a hilariously fun session of my game for a new crew of survivors. Thanks for playing, folks!

I’ll close this post with some thoughts on video game trailers. First, read this article. Go ahead, it’s a good read. Watch all the trailers.

Done? Understand that I get where the writer is coming from, and I whole-heartedly disagree. I want actual game-play footage in my video game trailers, goddammit. Without actual gameplay footage, I might have made the mistake of purchasing any number of generic “guns plus one cool trick no one else does” first-person shooters. I want to actually see how this game is different. You can take a shitty game, give it an awesome story, and fill the trailer with so many awesome cinematics and popular industrial tunes and the consumers won’t know the depth of your deception until they pay for it and hate it, because you never showed them the actual game.

I want to see the game. I don’t give a rat’s ass about marketing cinematics which most likely won’t even be in the final product, and probably look better than that product will, too. Yeah, that new Deus Ex trailer looks cool, and shows us a wonderful cyberpunk world with a compelling story. SO did the trailers for Neocron. Remember how much that game sucked?

This past weekend, I finally made the official complete switch, fully translating the events, characters, and setting from my KnownWorld “Timiro Nights” campaign into the Burning Wheel game system. This particular campaign is relatively new (only a handful of sessions so far since inception), but it has been a consistent source of gaming joy for me since getting the group together. It’s been a while since I’ve had a group this responsive, and this eager to extend the game talk well into our downtime. I’m glad to say that so far, the conversion to the new rules has been a success. I’d like to take a few here and talk about the juicy technical bits behind that conversion, and my own ideas of how the Burning Wheel system should work. Read more

I can hear the unwashed thousands of die-hard old-schoolers right now, screaming cries of “blasphemy” and “heresy” at my entitlement of this post – but then again, I doubt any of them actually read this blog, so perhaps I’m just hallucinating. But for a second round of added emphasis, I will repeat: Shadowrun is finally awesome again.

That’s right. I said it. Shut up. Read more

I tried playing a little more of Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, and it just further solidified my opinions on this game. I really like the game’s mechanics. I love third-person shooters, and I think the way that gameplay was implemented in K&L is perfect for the heist style of game. But goddamn, I hate both of the main characters in this game, and have absolutely no sympathy for them whatsoever. One is a mass murdering bank robber who misses his family (boo fucking hoo), the other is a mass murdering schizophrenic nutjob who is just misunderstood by everyone (boo fucking hoo), and neither of them have a single quality trait that makes them likeable. Seriously, designers, what the fuck were you thinking? Trying to cash in on the wave of lucrative immorality made popular by that terrible Grand Theft Auto franchise, is my guess.

Read more

Let’s start with the quickies, and then we’ll talk gaming:

Reading: RunePunk
Wearing: Comfortable close-fitting clothes suitable for cycling. I love this weather.
Planning: The first session for the Sky Pirates game, this Sunday
Playing: Rule of Rose and Skies of Arcadia
Not Playing: The Siren: Blood Curse demo. Laaaaaaaaame. Tried it last night, and seriously, what’s with these crap-looking games not making the most of their platform’s hardware specs?
Writing: Some notes for various game design projects, mostly an Art List for the Cannibal Contagion book.
Listening: Pimsleur Spanish I
Watching: The Wire, Season 4. Man, the end of Season 3 almost brought tears to my eyes. One of the things that gets me the most is seeing people fail when they’ve worked so goddamned hard to succeed.
Anticipating: Dead Space in October. Read more

Recently, Bethany (the wonderful roommate) and I have had some scattered discussions about Challenge and such in video games. What I find most rewarding are the challenges in games that require ingenuity and grit to overcome. When I fight a bad guy and have to use the environment to my advantage, and only barely manage to come out of it with a bar or two of health and no ammo, that’s rewarding (who’s yo daddy now, motherfucker?!). When there’s a complex series of puzzles involving non-ridiculous assembly and manipulation of in-game objects and variables, and I figure it out after a good deal of puzzling over the components, that’s rewarding. When I defeat a Big Bad against which I exhaust all my ammo and am forced to resort to using only a crowbar or a rusty pipe, that last meaty crunch is a very satisfying reward. When I defeat a gaggle of goddamned Malboros despite all my party being Doomed, Poisoned, Charmed, Berserk, and/or Confused, that’s rewarding. When a game gives me a task to complete and leaves the choice of resolution up to me, figuring out interesting ways to complete it is definitely rewarding.

When the game environment steps away from the game’s mechanics and tells me I have to press a button in the next 0.7 seconds or flat-out die? That’s not rewarding. When a section of the game can only be overcome by memorizing a precise pattern that can only be discovered by either A) reading a walkthrough or B) playing it over and over and over and over again until you learn the pattern, that’s not rewarding. When the only way to solve a puzzle is by assembling seven completely unrelated (and completely missable and forgettable and droppable) items from scattered stages of the game either by A) reading a walkthrough or B) doing it accidentally, that’s not rewarding. When I fight a normal human boss that can only be overcome by filling it with twice as many bullets as it took to take out every stage enemy from the last three game levels combined, for no other reason than “that’s just how stage bosses work” (I’m looking at you, Max Payne), that’s not rewarding.

Frustration does not equal reward. Essentially, when the gameplay becomes grueling, the game loses me.

Also…

The fact that Fallout 3 will come to the PS3 really excites me. Even more exciting, though, is this video – Dead Space has strafing and total camera control, yay! The camera controls and movement look pretty damn perfect for my preferred style of play. My day is now complete. WANT. VERY MUCH WANT.

What a weekend!

Good Times (anytime you need a favor!)

Friday night Avatar: good times! Thanks for bringing over those episodes, Trinity. I’m glad you’re finally getting to see Season 3. Soon you will understand why I love Zuko so much! And thanks for Skies of Arcadia Legends, Andrea. I’m enjoying it greatly. Plus, it’s good inspirational fodder for the Sky Pirates game (further below). Also, Bethany picked up a copy of No More Heroes for the Wii, and so far, it’s pretty sweet. My one complaint: so far, I don’t notice any strategy in it. There’s several things you can do in it when facing enemies, but mainly it seems that the “hit A repeatedly to beat them down” strategy is really the best tactic. Regardless, it’s bloody and brutal and lots of fun. Read more

In this article, Tycho loudly lambastes Electronic Arts’s chosen DRM encoding which will be present in the upcoming PC port of Mass Effect. Sounds awesome of them to say so, right?

But lookee here, they’ve gone and added it to their own game!

That is just not cool, man. Not cool at all. I was looking forward to this game. I really, really hope there is some kind of misunderstanding. If not, this will be yet another game that I can add to the list of “new games which are driving me further and further away from PC gaming.” It is indeed getting close to time for me to purchase an Xbox 360. Thank the gods I’ll soon be living with a proud owner of a PS3. At least the consoles never have to deal with this total BS.

When I spend money on a game, I want to purchase it; what I do not want to do is purchase the right to request permission to be able to play their game.

EDIT:

Here’s the link for the discussion at Penny-Arcade. Here’s the link for the discussion at the Greenhouse forums.