Plaxico Burress shot himself in the leg while unloading his gun for the bouncers at a New York club. The gun was unlicensed and thus he’s facing a minimum of three years in prison. Seems like there are a LOT of people in certain situations in America who go around carrying unlicensed guns. It’s a bit like drunk driving I guess – loads of people do it, very few get caught, if you get caught you get an extremely hard punishment. The approach to a hard-to-enforce crime is to make the punishment more severe I guess. Thought provoking.
I’m almost back to being able to work on Synapse. Just a couple of weeks more on TV work and I can get back to it. I can’t wait.
I’m watching the Terminator TV show. It’s pretty good, and is unusual in that it tries to make every episode like a mini film with a structure very similar to Terminator 2. It ends up being a bit slow for my liking (each episode has a LOT of reflection. More than Desperate Housewives. In fact, imagine the stupid narrator bits of DH that happen at the start and end and make them twelve minutes long and you have it), but it’s very original and pretty good. I don’t think it holds up to multiple-episode sessions as well as, for instance, 24.
The demo of L4D has finally downloaded after a week of trying. Will be interesting to play it.
I think that El Hombre and I may be developing a difference of opinion over Fable 2.
Here’s what I think so far, and this is after about fifty minutes play…
Fable 2 is casual Oblivion.
Now, I haven’t played Fable 1, so I can’t talk about sequel interrelation – this makes me a bad reviewer. However, if we sideline my personal inadequacies for just a moment, I’ll explain myself a little: the “open-world” nature of Fable 2 is clearly influenced by Bethesda, but the core philosophy of the game is a paradigm shift away.
Fable 2 wants to be an open world fantasy game that puts no pressure on the player. It wants to tug you gently in certain directions, mostly intended to encourage you and say, “Look at this weird cave over there” or “Look at this ridiculous hat you can get when you progress”, but it doesn’t want to punish you for…well, anything really.
That’s an interesting proposition to me: I like designs which try to eliminate the nonsense parts of gaming. I don’t know why I should be hunting around for the right direction to go all the fucking time in a game – that is my personal bugbear. Fable 2 just completely takes that out of the equation (for the main quest at least) with the controversial breadcrumb trail. I love the breadcrumb trail.
Now, it’s known that I’m broadband rubbish at games. I get lost all the time in the most simple environments because, well, I’m a bit of an idiot. I don’t pretend that I’m important as a demographic, but someone coming along and saying, “This thing you hate? Yeah, we don’t need that”: pretty gratifying. I liken getting lost to insta-death in adventure games: people used to think you needed insta-death as a stick to threaten the player. You don’t, and I believe it was Lucasarts who proved that. People weren’t playing those games so they could die.
Fable’s core goal is to simplify everything, then turn down the intensity to the lowest possible setting.
I think this is going to be the cause of the divide between me and El Hombre, who recently declared that he “nearly fell over with boredom” on entering the first dungeon. The slow-burn, cotton-wool nature of everything will probably get to him and make him kill himself, because (and I’m trying to elucidate someone else’s needs here, so he’ll almost certainly disagree with me even if I’m right, which I don’t profess to be) he needs to feel profoundly in control of his character and to be exerting a strong influence on the situation. I found the first dungeon relaxing because you basically don’t have to do anything – it’s essentially there to introduce the first real combat and teach you the idea of diverting from the path occasionally. Lionhead have targeted this game SMACK at the casual market – it tells you what to do all the time; it teaches you very, very slowly.
Now, if that continues then, for me, the game will become boring, but I’m anticipating that the pace and intensity will start to be ratcheted up as you gain familiarity with the systems. I’m hoping, anyway.
Here are my current negatives:
1. If you’re shooting for simplicity, why are you using every button on the flipping controller?
Button juggling is very prevalent in this game, yet still the A button is confusingly overused, and certain actions are not particularly predictable. There’s tapping, holding, pressing, combining, bad menu page design…LOTS of simple interface problems.
I find the menus, and triggering conversations, so ANNOYING, I’m not sure I want to get into all of the deep stuff in the game, like trading etc. That’s a bad problem: it’ll become easier with familiarity, but it’s still bad.
All this stuff, making it hard to find key items in the menus – big problem for the casual player. The dog elixir is in a STUPID place like “Misc items” or something, not with all the stuff that heals you WHERE IT SHOULD OBVIOUSLY BE.
2. Animation
Animation breaks too much for my liking, and the transition between directions is pretty poor.
3. The camera in co-op mode
The camera makes offline co-op unplayable. I played for 5 minutes and couldn’t REACH a valuable item because of the camera. Why doesn’t one player have control of the camera? I’m assuming there’s a reason for that I haven’t thought of actually, because it would seem to be the first port of call. But the solution of giving control to nobody and using a shit zooming camera was not an adequate one. I’m not playing offline co-op again.
4. My 360 is too loud.
That’s not a problem with Fable 2.
I’m not willing to straight out say that I love it yet, because it still hasn’t opened up into a proper game (after the first dungeon and the “bandit” mission). I’m betting on it doing so soon, and then I’ll be able to consider my overall reaction, but until then I embrace its slow-burning nature, and hope that more designers will get rid of stupid gaming appendices like being lost.
I was having a drink and a bit of games industry analysis with my good friend Liam last night and we got into a discussion about Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2, and I realised that there are some real concerns.
Start off, a disclaimer. I am not a Blizzard fanboy and I haven’t played Diablo or Starcraft in the last two years. However I was a MASSIVE fan of both games (and D2) when they were new. I’ve probably put more hours into those three games than most I wax on about here.
I haven’t paid a massive amount of attention to the unvelings, I’ve only read previews and news items on the major sites (ie what Blizzard want the general populace to hear). Here’s what I’ve heard:
“We’re making sequels to Diablo and Starcraft! They won’t offend you!!”
That’s message number one. Here’s message 2:
“No, seriously, we won’t offend you. We especially won’t offend Starcraft tournament players!”
And 3:
“Starcraft 2 will have physics for corpses“
I want to know why the richest games company in the world (or one of the top three at least) is being such a pussy with it’s ultra-heavy weight IPs. Let’s take these case by case.
Starcraft 2
You cannot win with this tactic Blizzard. You just cannot. You have two options. Either remake Starcraft exactly but with amazing graphics (yeah yeah better netcode and I’ll let you have your corpse physics that’s fine), or make a new RTS in the SC universe with at most THREE old units. Three is probably too many.
Listen. How often has a sequel to a game you loved been better than it? Hardly ever. That’s not because sequels are worse, it’s because when you love something a sequel can never live up to the strange affections you have created in your heart for it. I can prove this: how often have you played a sequel without having played the prequel, loved it, then played the prequel and preferred it? Again, almost never.
Aparently, Blizzard keep dropping new units anyway. Maybe they agree with me and are just making Starcraft+.
And honestly… corpse phsyics? That’s the first thing you wanted to tell me about? I don’t care about your aesthetics, I know they’re going to have amazing production values, be very accessible and popular, and (nowadays) just be a little teensy tiny bit soul-less. I’d like to know how you’re going around doing what you (used to) do best – taking a genre and really pushing it to the next level.
Diablo 3
I thought Diablo 2 was an add on pack. It introduced almost nothing new, it just doubled the size of everything old. And it had a LOT less character. And it ended up being nowhere near as good as Diablo’s real add-on pack, HellFire. Shut up
You know what I’ve heard about D3? I’ve heard monsters drop health so you don’t have to carry potions. I’ve also heard you don’t have to go back to town to identify stuff any more… BING, yes you did just hear the sound of something being made more accessible. Ouch. Did you also hear Diablo 3 is being published by Popcap and is a browser game now?
I’m calling Diablo 3 being a mess which struggles to score 80 in the respectable magazines.
I can understand Bliz being ultra-conservative with Starcraft. The RTS is the worst genre in gaming (no more letters please) and they probably realise they can’t make it any more mainstream than Red Alert 3 has anyway. It’ll get good reviews and 30% of the fanboys will like it and within 4 months more people will be playing Starcraft 1 online. But they’ll make some money and it won’t hurt their reputation.
D3 on the other hand could be a real car crash. The action-rpg is a slightly dodgy genre and noone’s managed to make a game which people like more than Diablo. Usually, I’d say Bliz are the ones who could manage it. But they’re not going to do it without a big innovation in actual combat mechanics and that’s now what I’m hearing coming out of Glendale.
Those of you who know me personally probably know I play a lot of Bridge Baron. There are many great things about the game of Bridge – and it’s implementation in ‘Baron – but I think one of the biggest draws in the computerised version is that when I play it I am somehow in training for my “real” bridge play (I play for Oxford Uni in various capacities, but I’m really not especially good). For me, having somewhat real world meaning to my single player gaming is quite a draw.
Bridge Baron’s AI is pretty damn good. In fact, it’s extremely good. Presuming you were trying to make it more like a human (and that’s a bit of a presumption) you’d probably just make it slightly less consistant – human players make amusing mistakes at the strangest times, whereas the Baron’s are mildly predictable. But really, playing against the Baron AI is actually properly good training. As long as you don’t factor in that a pause in his play guarantees he has more than one card in the called suit. And you don’t use the undo key too much.
Of course, a massive part of my love of Bridge comes from it’s social nature. On a normal bridge night you will meet thirty-odd new people in a situation where you can safely completely ignore them or start a conversation. I joke that it’s like speed dating but really it’s like speed dating + 10. Anyway, removing the human competition obviously removes a lot of the appeal. But by no means all of it.
This post has been rambling, but it does have a point. Can any Chess fans here tell me how they feel playing against Chess AI? I believe that Chess AI is even more “human like” than Bridge AI. How important is social contact in Chess?
Was in Bruges with Lizzie for three nights, a very nice “romantic break”. Prices were RIDICULOUS (euro is 1-1 with the pound now which really badly sucks) but we had a lovely time and mainly drank strong beer in the hotel room, good times.
I’m absolutely rearing to get back onto Synapse. I just want to put my head down and refine it for an entire month non-stop. I’ll have to wait till end of December for TV stuff to calm down and to get that time, but when it comes it will come. I really really can’t wait.
Talking of TV stuff, we’re gearing up for another show and I may be making an actual game for it, which sounds like it could be fun. It’ll be very pared down though.
Post more later when I’ve got in control of my inbox.
I spoke a bit about my fond memories of Sierra catalogues from the 90’s in my talk at Gamecity, but I’d never come across this truly astonishing video until this evening…
This probably would have blown my mind if I’d seen it at the time. It’s just so fantastically intense, despite the slightly tongue-in-cheek nature of everything. But seriously, live re-enactments of King’s Quest 4 and Police Quest 2? Nothing compares.
Now, I know certain well-known fans of point-and-clicks out there will continue to protest the abject shitness of the King’s Quest series until the cows come home, but as they were basically the first games I ever played seriously, they’re always going to have a special place in my slightly esoteric heart.
I’d never heard of Gold Rush! before…and, er, now I have.
Manhunter: San Francisco…I have actually completed this game. An utterly misguided night-long session with my university gaming companion Mr Richard Bush resulted in us achieving the dubious honour of completing this utter cack. Don’t ever touch it, unless you have no self-respect.
The Space Quest bit is just horrible. But good shots of the game…neeeargh.
For those who don’t know, “auto levelling” is a process Bethesda use in their recent games (Oblivion, Fallout 3). It’s a process which basically means that all enemies you come accross in the game are always levelled to be “suitable” to your character – if you’re level 8, you’ll be facing level 8 super mutants. If you’re a combat-oriented level 8 character you’ll probably find combat in general easier, as you’ll be relatively better at combat than your “average” level 8. If you’re a speech or stealth or whatever oriented character you’ll find it relatively harder. Fallout 3 also introduced a new wrinkle, which is that if you visit a location at level 8 say and then leave and come back at level 12 you’ll still be facing level 8 enemies.
It’s generally pretty controversial. Actually, strike that, it’s just plain unpopular (and I can just feel Malakian getting ready to launch his bi-monthly Morrowind vs Oblivion rant at this thread). But I think it’s a good thing. Oh I’m so contrary.
Let’s say you have 100 missions in the game. If they are auto-levelled, then you can wander around the landscape at will and be able to tackle any mission you find. You have a lot of freedom. If they aren’t auto-levelled, then let’s say 10 are suitable. Suddenly you’re entering missions you can’t do, or ones which are facily boring. Don’t get me wrong, I think there should be some incredibly difficult missions (and some hugely easy ones), but I think they should be the exception. I don’t want to find a cool mission I can’t do because I haven’t got far enough into the game yet. In my mind, the less auto-levelling there is the more linearity there is. “Good” linearity can come from quests – long strings of missions. If Bethesda are going to let you roam completely freely – an attribute universally lauded – then I think it would be pretty bad if could hardly tackle any of the missions at any one time.
I do understand why people don’t like auto-levelling though. It feels… slippery somehow. And I also think that Bethesda don’t mix it up with enough stupidly difficult/stupidly easy missions. But I think it’s a very important part of their games.
I’d like to go further. I’d like to make missions come to you, instead of you coming to them. Instead of having mission A set in an abandoned apartment building, how about having mission A set in ANY abandoned apartment building – when you wander into one and the game decides you need a mission, it’ll place that mission there. I do like exploring in Fallout 3, but I’d also like a bit more density to the missions as I don’t have 200 hours (unlike Bin) to put into seeing everything.
I had just finished the flame-ant mission last night and I came out of the subway and this dick from Talon Company started jawing at me about having a price on my head. I killed him and then I very quickly found a Brotherhood vs Super Mutants mission that got me involved. And I just thought – wow, that was awesome, because it was both completely non-linear but also wrapping me in missions (which is where I’d like to be) the whole time and it felt completely serendipidous.
I think a game which allowed missions to take place in general spaces – this mission requires an apartment building, this a bunker, this an open field – could give you even more freedom by giving you an experience as polished and designed as a great fps but within a freeform world.
I have a feeling the auto-levelling deniers are going to HATE that idea.
At the moment, we’re getting the chance to work alongside two (and, soon, maybe three) very successful small businesses, and it’s deeply inspirational. We’ve always maintained that the best thing for indies to do is to keep their mind on the money without losing their creative soul – this is very very difficult and I think that we’re only now just starting to go about it in the right way.
Like most small businesses, we’ve alternately committed the sins of not spending enough money and spending too much money. Money should be invested where quality cannot be compromised and quality has a direct impact on ROI: it should be used to enable the impossible or facilitate the great. You should only spend tiny, teeny amounts on gambles, but you should spend enough on investments so you don’t get trapped.
You should not spend money without having a clear idea of when and where it’s going to come back. It’s that simple.
If you are an indie games company and you see a robust, fresh financial opportunity (you’ll get better at spotting these) run like fuck towards it because 1.) I promise you need it and 2.) real opportunities bring real benefits. These are the real “work hard and be nice and it will pay you back” situations that proper businesses need.
OK rant over – now we blunder onwards into the big darkness to make more mistakes and live to talk about it!
Final footnote – my ruminations come from a place of massively reduced productivity due to an epic, epic man cold. Thanks to everyone in my life for putting up with my current array of odd clothing choices and bizarre hacking noises.
Getting into a heavy week of TV coding now, then on holiday to Bruges with Lizzie, should be fun. Don’t have anything else to say really right now… so I won’t.
