Hello there friend,
So as you probably guessed from the title of this post, I have just seen the first look at Dead Space 3. Being a huge Dead Space fan, this has actually caused my physical pain to watch.
Dead Space 3 Reveal
First thing's first. Co-Op is a fun little addition that has many games popular and brought about good times had by all. However, the tone that naturally comes with Co-Op is opposed to the heart of Dead Space, namely Horror. Though games such as Left 4 Dead have made great use of a co-op mechanic, the game itself is not particularly scary, and that's often because you know if something goes wrong, you or your friends are able to pull your backside out of the fire.
This makes Dead Space particularly difficult to make a Co-Op game and still keep the horror alive. In fact, I'd dare say the game seems to have more in common with Gears of War and Resident Evil 5 than it does any previous Dead Space.
I'd like to be proven wrong. I'd LOVE to know there was some innovation to having horror work in a multiplayer situation, but thus far it has not. The best horror games, the survival horrors in general, have always been one person against the overwhelming unknown.
Dead Space 2 has a remarkable scene where nothing happens for almost half an hour. It's your imagination that is pushing on your nerves as you walk through the empty husk of the Ishimura. I cant see a second player in that situation improving it.
And yet here we see co-op in large set pieces with no pacing really found (or wanted) in a horror game, however commonly found in Action games all the time.
Particularly, it reminds me of Gears of War with it's modified cover mechanics and pacing.
Now, the particular issue I have with it becoming Gears isn't because I think Gears is a terrible game (Far from it), but I feel it's an abuse of brand recognition to push titles for a completely different game. I am not particularly hard to please in games, hell, I aboslutly loved the rail-shooter Dead Space Extraction for the Wii, which though had some clumsy pacing, it felt rewarding and sometimes would offer a good jump and frayed nerves.
I will admit when I wrote about Dead Space 2 I had simular issues, and they proved themselves right with a poor Vs mode that was inspired by Left 4 Dead that just did not mesh well with what the game was capable of being, and the same went for Bioshock 2's multiplayer component.
I am assuming that it was a push by producer execs to make it have a multiplayer/Co-Op component, but this is probably one of the most inappropriate places to do it. As it stands, Horror is rarer and pushing titles to become action orientated only creates a vacuum, for another title to do the same thing Resident Evil and now Dead Space do. It's honestly feeling like moving a Survival Horror title to the Action genre is putting it out to pass. It's a shame, because I have a lot of faith in Visceral games.
I am hoping they offer up more gameplay footage, something to make me know this is the Dead Space I've grown to love over the years. But as it stands, I guess I should just load up Gears of War 3 and play that in the dark, because I am feeling the experience will be the same.
Until next time,
- D-Pad Duke
Monday, 4 June 2012
Tuesday, 8 November 2011
My Problem With Graphics
Hello there friend,
With the release of Battlefield 3, I've had a lot of conversations based around how good it looks on the PC compared to it's console counterparts. This keeps leading me into a conversation that continues to become an impasse when I discuss as a primarily Console Gamer. That comes down to how much better things look on the PC.
Now my problem with that argument simply comes down to a jaded 'So What?'. The reality is we could execute near photo-realistic aesthetics and about the only thing that'll put us is in the uncanny valley. The reality of graphics is we're just killing anti-aliasing, adding rendering power, and none of this contributes to how a game plays, or new restrictions on the player.
I can understand the want to see the most realistic visuals capable in games, but the reality is they don't change anything about the game itself. Battlefield is a perfect example of this, where the core game has changed very little (From Bad Company 2, my experience with the franchise), and though it is a gorgious looking game, the visuals have not changed much of anything.
Much like looking at a Troma film, I dont see there being much benifit to seeing it again in HD quality.
The big reason I feel at odds with people who promote graphic quality is two fold. One, I am rarely discussing the game's aesthetics, particularly when the game is a military shooter. I know it's an over-stated point, but there are only so many nice ways to make brown and grey look visually appealing. Two, there seems to be a sharp disconnect between graphic fidelity and game play, and I have to really ask what do the graphics really add to the game, more so what can we do with it that we couldn't do with a lesser system.
The processing power in the current console generation leaves a lot to be desired, which I agree, but when where processing power can open up many new avenues and complexity in games, I have to wonder why trying to make a realistic dirt-pile seems to be the goal.
When do we stop looking at the window dressing and start worrying about the cracks in the foundation?
Until Next Time,
- D-Pad Duke
With the release of Battlefield 3, I've had a lot of conversations based around how good it looks on the PC compared to it's console counterparts. This keeps leading me into a conversation that continues to become an impasse when I discuss as a primarily Console Gamer. That comes down to how much better things look on the PC.
Now my problem with that argument simply comes down to a jaded 'So What?'. The reality is we could execute near photo-realistic aesthetics and about the only thing that'll put us is in the uncanny valley. The reality of graphics is we're just killing anti-aliasing, adding rendering power, and none of this contributes to how a game plays, or new restrictions on the player.
I can understand the want to see the most realistic visuals capable in games, but the reality is they don't change anything about the game itself. Battlefield is a perfect example of this, where the core game has changed very little (From Bad Company 2, my experience with the franchise), and though it is a gorgious looking game, the visuals have not changed much of anything.
Much like looking at a Troma film, I dont see there being much benifit to seeing it again in HD quality.
The big reason I feel at odds with people who promote graphic quality is two fold. One, I am rarely discussing the game's aesthetics, particularly when the game is a military shooter. I know it's an over-stated point, but there are only so many nice ways to make brown and grey look visually appealing. Two, there seems to be a sharp disconnect between graphic fidelity and game play, and I have to really ask what do the graphics really add to the game, more so what can we do with it that we couldn't do with a lesser system.
The processing power in the current console generation leaves a lot to be desired, which I agree, but when where processing power can open up many new avenues and complexity in games, I have to wonder why trying to make a realistic dirt-pile seems to be the goal.
When do we stop looking at the window dressing and start worrying about the cracks in the foundation?
Until Next Time,
- D-Pad Duke
Tuesday, 14 June 2011
Eternal Red - A Diagnosis
Hello there friend,
While I type this, hundreds of thousands of black outlined enemies are being gunned down. I got a fully upgraded machine gun, and I am not afraid to use it. Actually, I am still waiting to use it.
Right now, as I am typing, I am playing through Eternal Red, a Tower Defense mixed with some Action Platformer elements. The visuals are pretty good, very unique, the music though a little low-tone is about what you'd expect, and though I am partly annoyed at the sound of their machine gun turrets, it's not the big complaint. That comes down to the Mechanics.
Now what do I mean by mechanics? Well, it's simply the method of play, how the user interacts with the game, and what those choices do to effect an outcome. This being a tower defense game, the objective is simply stopping spawning enemires from reaching the end, as the game progresses, the spawns become faster, harder to kill, or gain some nifty abilities to keep the player on his toes.
Eternal Red gives you money for kills, and in turn you spend the money on turrets, floor panels, weapons and upgrades. Seems like a simple reward system. The first problem with this is that if you're doing well, you'll almost always be doing well simply because you have the money to keep up with upgrades and weapons, while if you fail to stop the enemies early, you wont have the money to continue on and catch up.
The second issue comes down to turret and panel placement. You have specific areas to build turrets/panels, and a choice of turret types, being Machine Gun, Acid, Mortor, and Money (Machine Gun turrets that give cash for damage). And all you will ever use is the Machine Gun.
Machine Gun turrets have very good range, damage, rate of fire. When 5 are maxed out, you will find they can focus-fire down a target with relative ease.
Mortors on the other hand use high damage with splash, with very low firing rate. The issue here is there is very rarely a time where Mortors are hitting more than a single target, maybe two, so their splash mechanic isnt even needed, and in fact serves as a handicap later on. The only time I've found Mortors to work is when I have a Slow Panel (More on that later), to slow walking enemies (derp!) down enough that flying ones can catch up.
Acid turrets deal damage over time, and since everything dies so quickly to Machine Gun turrets, there is no circumstance in the game that would benefit from this turret being used.
Money turrets are interesting, and I tried to use them in the first two play-throughs, but to be frank, by the time you get the money to buy this turret, you will have missed out on a lot of upgrades that makes the game significantly harder. It will take a long time and alot of upgrades before this turret even starts making it's money back, and near as I can tell it functions as just another Machine Gun.
You also have panels, Spikes, Slow and Acid. Panels work great in the opening levels, and then become entirely useless in the later ones, due to the amount of flying enemies.
Spikes are basicly direct damage to walking enemies. The longer they are in the Spikes, the more damage they take walking through. They are alright for supplimenting turrets early on, but I havent found a use for them in level 20+.
Slow is a freezing panel that when stepped on, reduces the enemy movement for a short duration. Though a useful tool in most Tower Defense games, this one does not feel like a necessity.
Acid Panels work much like the Acid Turret, Damage over Time. They dont feel particularly useful, but are probably more useful than their turret counterpart because they are not stopping you from putting up a Machine Gun.
There are three kinds of guns you can buy, the pistol, the shotgun and the 'machine gun'. These guns have reload/cooldown mechanics, unlike the turrets, but their damage potential exceeds anything else in the game, and I suspect this is what the developer was trying to keep most of the focus on.
So why am I bringing so much attention to a game that I just dont take much joy in playing, more so one I am activly still playing while I write this article? Well, it's mostly because I do see how this game COULD have been so much better, and through alot of minor things! It's a game where it is trying to do too much at once, and not checking if all the parts are working with, or against each other.
Let's start with the lynchpin problem. If you're doing well, you're killing everything, and if you're killing everything you are now gaining so much money to get better at killing everything. It's a cycle that gives players two extreme circumstances. where if they are doing well they will do very well, and if not, they have no chance to recover.
It's a cycle that needs some up-close scrutiny. The good part is you have a 'carrot' at the end of a stick to guide the player and give their progression, but this system only works if the challenges are difficult enough to warrent the resources being gained.
(Note: I now JUST finished this play through on the previous paragraph)
In my example when I decided to simply build five Machine Guns, all I did was upgrade the power on the front two, and range on the back three. This allowed my defense to kill every spawn with focus fire and then it just became a simple task of upgrading ranges so they could all hit the same target in the front, and then upgrading the damage and rate of fire afterwards.
Once this was set up, it wasnt until wave 60 out of 70 did the mobs start breaking past, which gave me a reason to spend my income that has been storing up for the past 25-30 rounds to buy a gun or more turrets and quickly fully-upgrade them.
If you want to keep the player engaged, you cant have the player watch his pretty turrets do all the work and wait until circumstances give him something to do. Sure it's nice to know the defense you set up works, but I knew that 40 rounds ago.
Let's take a quick look at another Tower Defense game you more likely played: Plants vs Zombies. In Plants vs Zombies, the income was Sunlight. You needed to actively click on these little suns that fall onto the field while managing your plants, and it was through sunlight you made your defense.
We have a character with a gun able to build turrets and jump like Mario, I am sure we can give this guy something to do if his turrets are enough defense.
The second issue comes down to the enemy spawn. The enemies spawn to rythem, constantly marching in to pace, it becomes very easy to focus-fire them down one at a time when all of your turrets are in range the second they pop out of the gate. However, this is an easier solution.
If you can randomize how many enemies spawn each time through the gate, or have it speratic spawning, you can over-load the front turrets with targets and allow the future enemies to go a little further in, forcing player interaction to stem the damage.
Now, after 70 some levels, I have to say though it's not a game play issue, it is an issue of pacing. The wait times between levels are there for you to have a chance to upgrade your turrets and panels. Again, while the route of the Machine Gun setup makes my character all but useless, I am upgrading as I get the income available, so to me (and many players I suspect) I am often sitting for long periods of time idle.
So is it a simple matter of reducing Machine Gun Turret damage? Well, not exactly. The Machine Gun Turret's biggest advantage is that it has an absurd range. If all five turrets were spaced and no enemy could be hit by two turrets at once, eventually one of those enemies might draw fire for another to slip through unscathed, and may get by two or three before any damage is taken.
With the turrets so close however, and their range so far, every target that comes into play is killed almost immidiatly. The turrets are never put in a position of having multiple targets, because the first one is always killed off so quickly that it offers the next one little more than an additional step before meeting the same fate.
As stated before hand, the other turrets dont offer much in the way of practicality, because the Machine Gun just becomes a clearly better route. Well, what could we do to change that?
A simple way to do that is to change a fundamental but important mechanic. How Damage works.
Let's re-design for a moment the Machine Gun, so that it does Low Damage and has a High Firing Rate. It's damage comes from an unrelenting amount of lead being poored out, and now fundamentally works in the same manner. However, if we take a unit and give him 'armour', reducing damage taken down to menial chip damage, then suddenly your Machine Guns arnt killing him quite as quickly, and may drop him by the time he gets to the end of the line, but by that time all the mobs behind him have moved so far passed your defenses that some will sneak by your defenses.
Now we have a reason for the Mortor. The Mortor deals High Damage at a Low Firing Rate. So now the Armour isnt reducing every shot down to scratches on the paint!
What about Acid? Well, I think the first thing we have to look at is the Damage Per Second that is being brought out of most of the Acid attacks. Acid can offer an interesting 'constant' damage, and perhaps be another way of getting around Armour. It also is one of those turret/panels that need to be placed in the front, because catching an enemy at the tail-end of his lifebar makes for a wasted investment. That simple point means you can force your player into some interesting decision making.
At the end of the day, what really holds Eternal Red back is that all of it's elements dont work together, they detract from one another. You don't need panels to win, you don't need guns to win, and your turret decisions arn't decisions. Instead, it's a player waiting for something interesting to happen, and unfortunetly, found writing a blog about it was more engaging.
I think what really makes my blood boil about this is that the good elements are there, and they want to come out. There is a good flash game here, somewhere....
Until next time,
- D-Pad Duke
While I type this, hundreds of thousands of black outlined enemies are being gunned down. I got a fully upgraded machine gun, and I am not afraid to use it. Actually, I am still waiting to use it.
Right now, as I am typing, I am playing through Eternal Red, a Tower Defense mixed with some Action Platformer elements. The visuals are pretty good, very unique, the music though a little low-tone is about what you'd expect, and though I am partly annoyed at the sound of their machine gun turrets, it's not the big complaint. That comes down to the Mechanics.
Now what do I mean by mechanics? Well, it's simply the method of play, how the user interacts with the game, and what those choices do to effect an outcome. This being a tower defense game, the objective is simply stopping spawning enemires from reaching the end, as the game progresses, the spawns become faster, harder to kill, or gain some nifty abilities to keep the player on his toes.
Eternal Red gives you money for kills, and in turn you spend the money on turrets, floor panels, weapons and upgrades. Seems like a simple reward system. The first problem with this is that if you're doing well, you'll almost always be doing well simply because you have the money to keep up with upgrades and weapons, while if you fail to stop the enemies early, you wont have the money to continue on and catch up.
The second issue comes down to turret and panel placement. You have specific areas to build turrets/panels, and a choice of turret types, being Machine Gun, Acid, Mortor, and Money (Machine Gun turrets that give cash for damage). And all you will ever use is the Machine Gun.
Machine Gun turrets have very good range, damage, rate of fire. When 5 are maxed out, you will find they can focus-fire down a target with relative ease.
Mortors on the other hand use high damage with splash, with very low firing rate. The issue here is there is very rarely a time where Mortors are hitting more than a single target, maybe two, so their splash mechanic isnt even needed, and in fact serves as a handicap later on. The only time I've found Mortors to work is when I have a Slow Panel (More on that later), to slow walking enemies (derp!) down enough that flying ones can catch up.
Acid turrets deal damage over time, and since everything dies so quickly to Machine Gun turrets, there is no circumstance in the game that would benefit from this turret being used.
Money turrets are interesting, and I tried to use them in the first two play-throughs, but to be frank, by the time you get the money to buy this turret, you will have missed out on a lot of upgrades that makes the game significantly harder. It will take a long time and alot of upgrades before this turret even starts making it's money back, and near as I can tell it functions as just another Machine Gun.
You also have panels, Spikes, Slow and Acid. Panels work great in the opening levels, and then become entirely useless in the later ones, due to the amount of flying enemies.
Spikes are basicly direct damage to walking enemies. The longer they are in the Spikes, the more damage they take walking through. They are alright for supplimenting turrets early on, but I havent found a use for them in level 20+.
Slow is a freezing panel that when stepped on, reduces the enemy movement for a short duration. Though a useful tool in most Tower Defense games, this one does not feel like a necessity.
Acid Panels work much like the Acid Turret, Damage over Time. They dont feel particularly useful, but are probably more useful than their turret counterpart because they are not stopping you from putting up a Machine Gun.
There are three kinds of guns you can buy, the pistol, the shotgun and the 'machine gun'. These guns have reload/cooldown mechanics, unlike the turrets, but their damage potential exceeds anything else in the game, and I suspect this is what the developer was trying to keep most of the focus on.
So why am I bringing so much attention to a game that I just dont take much joy in playing, more so one I am activly still playing while I write this article? Well, it's mostly because I do see how this game COULD have been so much better, and through alot of minor things! It's a game where it is trying to do too much at once, and not checking if all the parts are working with, or against each other.
Let's start with the lynchpin problem. If you're doing well, you're killing everything, and if you're killing everything you are now gaining so much money to get better at killing everything. It's a cycle that gives players two extreme circumstances. where if they are doing well they will do very well, and if not, they have no chance to recover.
It's a cycle that needs some up-close scrutiny. The good part is you have a 'carrot' at the end of a stick to guide the player and give their progression, but this system only works if the challenges are difficult enough to warrent the resources being gained.
(Note: I now JUST finished this play through on the previous paragraph)
In my example when I decided to simply build five Machine Guns, all I did was upgrade the power on the front two, and range on the back three. This allowed my defense to kill every spawn with focus fire and then it just became a simple task of upgrading ranges so they could all hit the same target in the front, and then upgrading the damage and rate of fire afterwards.
Once this was set up, it wasnt until wave 60 out of 70 did the mobs start breaking past, which gave me a reason to spend my income that has been storing up for the past 25-30 rounds to buy a gun or more turrets and quickly fully-upgrade them.
If you want to keep the player engaged, you cant have the player watch his pretty turrets do all the work and wait until circumstances give him something to do. Sure it's nice to know the defense you set up works, but I knew that 40 rounds ago.
Let's take a quick look at another Tower Defense game you more likely played: Plants vs Zombies. In Plants vs Zombies, the income was Sunlight. You needed to actively click on these little suns that fall onto the field while managing your plants, and it was through sunlight you made your defense.
We have a character with a gun able to build turrets and jump like Mario, I am sure we can give this guy something to do if his turrets are enough defense.
The second issue comes down to the enemy spawn. The enemies spawn to rythem, constantly marching in to pace, it becomes very easy to focus-fire them down one at a time when all of your turrets are in range the second they pop out of the gate. However, this is an easier solution.
If you can randomize how many enemies spawn each time through the gate, or have it speratic spawning, you can over-load the front turrets with targets and allow the future enemies to go a little further in, forcing player interaction to stem the damage.
Now, after 70 some levels, I have to say though it's not a game play issue, it is an issue of pacing. The wait times between levels are there for you to have a chance to upgrade your turrets and panels. Again, while the route of the Machine Gun setup makes my character all but useless, I am upgrading as I get the income available, so to me (and many players I suspect) I am often sitting for long periods of time idle.
So is it a simple matter of reducing Machine Gun Turret damage? Well, not exactly. The Machine Gun Turret's biggest advantage is that it has an absurd range. If all five turrets were spaced and no enemy could be hit by two turrets at once, eventually one of those enemies might draw fire for another to slip through unscathed, and may get by two or three before any damage is taken.
With the turrets so close however, and their range so far, every target that comes into play is killed almost immidiatly. The turrets are never put in a position of having multiple targets, because the first one is always killed off so quickly that it offers the next one little more than an additional step before meeting the same fate.
As stated before hand, the other turrets dont offer much in the way of practicality, because the Machine Gun just becomes a clearly better route. Well, what could we do to change that?
A simple way to do that is to change a fundamental but important mechanic. How Damage works.
Let's re-design for a moment the Machine Gun, so that it does Low Damage and has a High Firing Rate. It's damage comes from an unrelenting amount of lead being poored out, and now fundamentally works in the same manner. However, if we take a unit and give him 'armour', reducing damage taken down to menial chip damage, then suddenly your Machine Guns arnt killing him quite as quickly, and may drop him by the time he gets to the end of the line, but by that time all the mobs behind him have moved so far passed your defenses that some will sneak by your defenses.
Now we have a reason for the Mortor. The Mortor deals High Damage at a Low Firing Rate. So now the Armour isnt reducing every shot down to scratches on the paint!
What about Acid? Well, I think the first thing we have to look at is the Damage Per Second that is being brought out of most of the Acid attacks. Acid can offer an interesting 'constant' damage, and perhaps be another way of getting around Armour. It also is one of those turret/panels that need to be placed in the front, because catching an enemy at the tail-end of his lifebar makes for a wasted investment. That simple point means you can force your player into some interesting decision making.
At the end of the day, what really holds Eternal Red back is that all of it's elements dont work together, they detract from one another. You don't need panels to win, you don't need guns to win, and your turret decisions arn't decisions. Instead, it's a player waiting for something interesting to happen, and unfortunetly, found writing a blog about it was more engaging.
I think what really makes my blood boil about this is that the good elements are there, and they want to come out. There is a good flash game here, somewhere....
Until next time,
- D-Pad Duke
Thursday, 9 June 2011
New Hitman Game!
Hello there friend,
I cant express how happy I am to hear that Hitman: Absolution will be releasing in 2012.
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3-2011-hitman-absolution/715542
Also, here's an interview you may be interested in (Starts at around 1 hour in) from the creative director.
http://e3.gamespot.com/live-cam-tour/?tag=calendar%3Btitle%3B2
I hope this will be worth the wait!
Until next time,
- D-Pad Duke
I cant express how happy I am to hear that Hitman: Absolution will be releasing in 2012.
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3-2011-hitman-absolution/715542
Also, here's an interview you may be interested in (Starts at around 1 hour in) from the creative director.
http://e3.gamespot.com/live-cam-tour/?tag=calendar%3Btitle%3B2
I hope this will be worth the wait!
Until next time,
- D-Pad Duke
Monday, 2 May 2011
Some thoughts on putting Halo in Gears of War
Hello there friend,
For those of you who cringed at the title, let me rest your minds at ease that it's not happening. Yet.
http://kotaku.com/#!5797291/cliffy-b-implies-no-master-chiefgears-crossover-because-microsoft-is-kind-of-squeamish
Now aside from what has already been said in the article, there was something in the comments that got the 'gears' turnin'.
Spartain-458: Nichole.
For the uninitiated, during the earliest releases of 360 launches, Dead Or Alive 4 had an additional character. Many at the time thought this was Master Chief, but this was suppose to be 'another' Spartan. Paper thin mind you, how ever, if we can distinguish anything from her play to what she is like, she is ALOT better of a character for this task. Particularly when we are talking about someone who had a maneuver in Gears of War 3 BEFORE we were even playing the originality. Try and pick it out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRoy9Jgu_cM
If Cliff Bleszinski wants to try and find a loop-hole to give him a chance to play with a Spartan model, perhaps this is the better route. Not only that, it injects something a little different; A character who would be in multiple games, be a part of the world of a franchise, without BEING a part of that franchise.
Nichole has never made another appearance, but if you ever played DOA4, you know she's one of the most entertaining characters to play, and surprisingly requiring skill to play competently.
Of course, he could try to get a different Spartan in (Hey, why not Spartan 1337?! Oh wait, they already have Carmine), but I digress.
Until next time,
- D-Pad Duke
For those of you who cringed at the title, let me rest your minds at ease that it's not happening. Yet.
http://kotaku.com/#!5797291/cliffy-b-implies-no-master-chiefgears-crossover-because-microsoft-is-kind-of-squeamish
Now aside from what has already been said in the article, there was something in the comments that got the 'gears' turnin'.
Spartain-458: Nichole.
For the uninitiated, during the earliest releases of 360 launches, Dead Or Alive 4 had an additional character. Many at the time thought this was Master Chief, but this was suppose to be 'another' Spartan. Paper thin mind you, how ever, if we can distinguish anything from her play to what she is like, she is ALOT better of a character for this task. Particularly when we are talking about someone who had a maneuver in Gears of War 3 BEFORE we were even playing the originality. Try and pick it out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRoy9Jgu_cM
If Cliff Bleszinski wants to try and find a loop-hole to give him a chance to play with a Spartan model, perhaps this is the better route. Not only that, it injects something a little different; A character who would be in multiple games, be a part of the world of a franchise, without BEING a part of that franchise.
Nichole has never made another appearance, but if you ever played DOA4, you know she's one of the most entertaining characters to play, and surprisingly requiring skill to play competently.
Of course, he could try to get a different Spartan in (Hey, why not Spartan 1337?! Oh wait, they already have Carmine), but I digress.
Until next time,
- D-Pad Duke
Make Way For The Bad Guy! - Making Evil Fun Again
Hello there friend,
I was reading an article about the game Dungeon Keeper. Created by Peter Molyneux and Bullfrog Productions, it was a Real Time Strategy (RTS) game where you played as 'The Keeper', a rotten-to-the-core no-good bastard who lorded over his dungeon and slapped the hell out of the worker imps for not working fast enough. With torture chambers, graveyards, a few lairs, and other horrible monstrosities, you could eventually dig out a labyrinth of evil that spanded far and wide, ready to mince-meat any champion that dare brave it's dark passages.
This kind of game is designed to bring out the Mr.Burns out in all of us. It's where you wont just unleash the hounds, you will laugh maniacally, and quite possible put your fingertips together in front of your face while saying 'Excellent'. Considering the way the louder portions of the gaming community tend to act towards one another, you would think there would be more of a market for this cartoonish super-villainy.
Well, you'd be wrong.
One of the first games that proved to me that we've lost touch with how to do 'comicly evil' is Overlord (and it's sequel). To be fair, I played Overlord for maybe 2 hours, hoping it would pick up. It didnt. The reality of the situation was you were running a liniar corridor crawls and any evil acts you commited were not by your choosing, but by the games narrative.
Overlord's biggest mis-step is that the player is rarely taking an active part in the evils they commit, instead you are more forced to watch the game tell you the evils you commit, but often times they feel bland and forced. For the player to really get any kick out of it, the action has to be chosen and activly done by the player.
Let's take some more of the 'hardcore' varriety games as an example. We're going to talk about Grand Theft Auto 4 (GTA in general, but 4 for specifics), and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2(COD:MW2).
In GTA4, the absolute bane of your existence was your cell phone, and who ever was calling for a pick-up, drop-off, mini-game, and return-home grind. Even in story progression, it really does feel like many missions are designed to drag on and on. The FUN in GTA, comes not in following the game and it's story, but in simply running around causing mayhem. Drop a few moltovs on the freeway and watch your star rating go up, and then trying to either fight off or get away from the oncoming chase, would often force some split-second decisions that would give some horrendous yet hilarious outcomes as you accidently hit granny and see her tumbling through the air, and the police ride over her body without a care trying to catch you.
Looking at COD:MW2, it'd probably be no surprize that I am bringing up 'No Russian'. 'No Russian' puts you in a situation that for many was a little extreme (Go into an airport, shoot up civillians, escape), and though I feel the chapter itself is a great example of games being able to evoke strong emotion through story telling, it's at this point you are given a choice, you can walk along and witness the carnage, or you can create it. I know there are many people who claimed to never pulled the trigger during the first half of that chapter where you are walking among civilians, but consider what you would be envoking in yourself to do so.
And that is the key point I think we should really discuss. In Dungeon Keeper, to play it effectively you had to choose to be a douche, and the game would reward this kind of behavior, but at not point were you FORCED to do so. In fact, it would be quite amusing to throw your own minions into the torture chambers (Or in case of the Dark Mistresses, just leave them be and they'll find their own way to the chamber).
Pulling back to a less serious tone, the same reaction can be given in The Sims. If you ever listened to someone who has played this game for a few hours, inevitably they will build a house that is a death trap. They will take the ladder out of the pool so their Sims cant escape, build rooms around them with no doors, not place a bathroom, and eventually this malevolence in the player emerges where they actively are destroying their Sims lives. Dispite this is NOT something enforced by the game, some of the most entertaining moments from The Sims comes from these horrific stories of what people would put the Sims through.
For players to really enjoy being 'Evil', it needs to be a choice. In Dungeon Keeper, yes there was a benefit to slapping your Imps around, but the reality was you'd do it anyway just because you could. Much like repeatedly clicking on a unit in Star/Warcraft just to make them mad and spew forth comedic dialog, the player does not need much provocation.
I am sure you can think of several instances where a game that was not intended to be 'cruel' just became so through the players use of the tool sets. I still play Prototype so I can pick up a random person and bring him to the tallest tower I find, just to throw him as far as I can and see if I can keep up with the body to watch the landing and distance before the flailing corpse despawns for going too far away from me.
The second part is levity.
Levity can be created simply in the absurdity of the action you take. This is the big difference between that car-chase with granny getting ran over by the police, and walking through an airport with an machine gun. In GTA Chase and the Prototype Shot-Put the levity comes from the rag-doll physics, and gravity physics. The bodies are being flown through the air like they are weightless, yet land hard enough to make an audible 'thump' in the Wile-Coyote fashion.
This is a far cry from 'No Russian', where the design of the level is ment to make this horrific act all too real.
In the actions in Dungeon Keeper, aside from the dialog which was fantastic even for todays standards, it's comical to imagine you, 'The Keeper' trying to stop your Dark Mistresses from wandering into the torture chambers and lashing themselves (those saucy wenches), or watching an imp slacking off in need of gentile back-hand-motivation. It's these odd little interactions with the player and the game that bring the levity.
Though it does enforce the idea that you have to play as an evil bastard, it leaves it up to you in the How, and because of that choice, to just play the game or to channel your inner Mr.Burns.
I really do hope that we get another series that tries this take on role-reversal. It's a great situational comedy in game and I think under-explored and under-appreciated.
Until next time,
- D-Pad Duke
I was reading an article about the game Dungeon Keeper. Created by Peter Molyneux and Bullfrog Productions, it was a Real Time Strategy (RTS) game where you played as 'The Keeper', a rotten-to-the-core no-good bastard who lorded over his dungeon and slapped the hell out of the worker imps for not working fast enough. With torture chambers, graveyards, a few lairs, and other horrible monstrosities, you could eventually dig out a labyrinth of evil that spanded far and wide, ready to mince-meat any champion that dare brave it's dark passages.
This kind of game is designed to bring out the Mr.Burns out in all of us. It's where you wont just unleash the hounds, you will laugh maniacally, and quite possible put your fingertips together in front of your face while saying 'Excellent'. Considering the way the louder portions of the gaming community tend to act towards one another, you would think there would be more of a market for this cartoonish super-villainy.
Well, you'd be wrong.
One of the first games that proved to me that we've lost touch with how to do 'comicly evil' is Overlord (and it's sequel). To be fair, I played Overlord for maybe 2 hours, hoping it would pick up. It didnt. The reality of the situation was you were running a liniar corridor crawls and any evil acts you commited were not by your choosing, but by the games narrative.
Overlord's biggest mis-step is that the player is rarely taking an active part in the evils they commit, instead you are more forced to watch the game tell you the evils you commit, but often times they feel bland and forced. For the player to really get any kick out of it, the action has to be chosen and activly done by the player.
Let's take some more of the 'hardcore' varriety games as an example. We're going to talk about Grand Theft Auto 4 (GTA in general, but 4 for specifics), and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2(COD:MW2).
In GTA4, the absolute bane of your existence was your cell phone, and who ever was calling for a pick-up, drop-off, mini-game, and return-home grind. Even in story progression, it really does feel like many missions are designed to drag on and on. The FUN in GTA, comes not in following the game and it's story, but in simply running around causing mayhem. Drop a few moltovs on the freeway and watch your star rating go up, and then trying to either fight off or get away from the oncoming chase, would often force some split-second decisions that would give some horrendous yet hilarious outcomes as you accidently hit granny and see her tumbling through the air, and the police ride over her body without a care trying to catch you.
Looking at COD:MW2, it'd probably be no surprize that I am bringing up 'No Russian'. 'No Russian' puts you in a situation that for many was a little extreme (Go into an airport, shoot up civillians, escape), and though I feel the chapter itself is a great example of games being able to evoke strong emotion through story telling, it's at this point you are given a choice, you can walk along and witness the carnage, or you can create it. I know there are many people who claimed to never pulled the trigger during the first half of that chapter where you are walking among civilians, but consider what you would be envoking in yourself to do so.
And that is the key point I think we should really discuss. In Dungeon Keeper, to play it effectively you had to choose to be a douche, and the game would reward this kind of behavior, but at not point were you FORCED to do so. In fact, it would be quite amusing to throw your own minions into the torture chambers (Or in case of the Dark Mistresses, just leave them be and they'll find their own way to the chamber).
Pulling back to a less serious tone, the same reaction can be given in The Sims. If you ever listened to someone who has played this game for a few hours, inevitably they will build a house that is a death trap. They will take the ladder out of the pool so their Sims cant escape, build rooms around them with no doors, not place a bathroom, and eventually this malevolence in the player emerges where they actively are destroying their Sims lives. Dispite this is NOT something enforced by the game, some of the most entertaining moments from The Sims comes from these horrific stories of what people would put the Sims through.
For players to really enjoy being 'Evil', it needs to be a choice. In Dungeon Keeper, yes there was a benefit to slapping your Imps around, but the reality was you'd do it anyway just because you could. Much like repeatedly clicking on a unit in Star/Warcraft just to make them mad and spew forth comedic dialog, the player does not need much provocation.
I am sure you can think of several instances where a game that was not intended to be 'cruel' just became so through the players use of the tool sets. I still play Prototype so I can pick up a random person and bring him to the tallest tower I find, just to throw him as far as I can and see if I can keep up with the body to watch the landing and distance before the flailing corpse despawns for going too far away from me.
The second part is levity.
Levity can be created simply in the absurdity of the action you take. This is the big difference between that car-chase with granny getting ran over by the police, and walking through an airport with an machine gun. In GTA Chase and the Prototype Shot-Put the levity comes from the rag-doll physics, and gravity physics. The bodies are being flown through the air like they are weightless, yet land hard enough to make an audible 'thump' in the Wile-Coyote fashion.
This is a far cry from 'No Russian', where the design of the level is ment to make this horrific act all too real.
In the actions in Dungeon Keeper, aside from the dialog which was fantastic even for todays standards, it's comical to imagine you, 'The Keeper' trying to stop your Dark Mistresses from wandering into the torture chambers and lashing themselves (those saucy wenches), or watching an imp slacking off in need of gentile back-hand-motivation. It's these odd little interactions with the player and the game that bring the levity.
Though it does enforce the idea that you have to play as an evil bastard, it leaves it up to you in the How, and because of that choice, to just play the game or to channel your inner Mr.Burns.
I really do hope that we get another series that tries this take on role-reversal. It's a great situational comedy in game and I think under-explored and under-appreciated.
Until next time,
- D-Pad Duke
Thursday, 28 April 2011
Call of the Dead - Holy Shit, A Reason to Pick Up a COD Map-Pack?!
Hello Friend,
For those of you who HAVENT heard, this is suppose to be the next 'Zombies' map for Call Of Duty: Black Ops which is a part of their newest map-pack.
http://ca.kotaku.com/5795845/buffy-freddy-and-machete-are-call-of-dutys-new-zombie-slayers
Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Freddy Kruger, Machette, and Merle Dixon.
This
is
AWSOME!
I can imagine that many have already put aside the funds they need for this map-pack (Escalation), but quite frankly I havent picked up a map-pack for a Call Of Duty game in quite some time, namely because they are far too expensive for the amount of time I play the game. However, if there was something to get me to re-assess that stance, this is definitely the kind of stunt they need to pull.
Unfortunetly this is also proof that celebrity cameos in video games does have some selling power, which no one better tell 50 Cent or else we may have ANOTHER terrible game on our hands.
I call Robert Englund!
Until next time,
- D-Pad Duke
For those of you who HAVENT heard, this is suppose to be the next 'Zombies' map for Call Of Duty: Black Ops which is a part of their newest map-pack.
http://ca.kotaku.com/5795845/buffy-freddy-and-machete-are-call-of-dutys-new-zombie-slayers
Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Freddy Kruger, Machette, and Merle Dixon.
This
is
AWSOME!
I can imagine that many have already put aside the funds they need for this map-pack (Escalation), but quite frankly I havent picked up a map-pack for a Call Of Duty game in quite some time, namely because they are far too expensive for the amount of time I play the game. However, if there was something to get me to re-assess that stance, this is definitely the kind of stunt they need to pull.
Unfortunetly this is also proof that celebrity cameos in video games does have some selling power, which no one better tell 50 Cent or else we may have ANOTHER terrible game on our hands.
I call Robert Englund!
Until next time,
- D-Pad Duke
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