Wednesday 27 May 2009

Whoever Wins, We Lose

So I haven't blogged in a few days.

Sue me.

Cleaning your entire house for a BBQ where you get insulted by your friend doesn't do itself. I also watched a load of 24. More on that later.

This is going to be pretty quick fire because I want to play some Bionic Commando as I need to review it at the weekend.

Speaking of Bionic Commando, I have an issue with a lot of modern videogame music. Most of it is insipid orchestral rubbish or the most derivative guitar/techno silliness ever committed to a DVD. There are four exceptions; Halo, Clamato Fever from SSF2HDR, anything by Jesper Kydd and anything associated with Bionic Commando and Bionic Commando Rearmed.

When Grin did Rearmed they enlisted their composer, Simon Viklund, to redo the NES soundtrack and bring it back up to date. I don't use the word perfect a lot (other to describe anything I do) but Viklund's work is perfect. There is no other way to describe it. You can't write a normal review of it because it would be one word long.

Perfect.

Anyone that says otherwise is lying.

Simon Viklund has also done the soundtrack to Grin's Bionic Commando that just came out. Again he has taken the soundtrack and had another crack at it.

Guess what?

Perfect.

The main theme has been given a hauntingly beautiful piano treatment on the frontend and last night I had the most amazing fight with some pumping battle music. In the latter quarter of the game you are put into a hall with two levels, a big ceiling, lots of cover, grenades and rafters to swing on. By that time you have mastered the swinging and combat mechanics and the enemies that stream in are just toys to play with. I was swinging everywhere, dropping grenades on fools and chaining zip combos into dudes while the most awesome music ever plays.

Go buy either of the Bionic Commando games, grab a few beers, crank your surround sound and soak it in. When your angry suburban neighbour comes round and mouths off about it being too loud, don't knock that fool out like usual. Put your arm round him and make him sit with you as you play. Give him a beer. Be there for him as he cries with joy. Then listen to him through the wall as he goes home and beats his wife because nothing she has ever done was as life defining as what he just experienced.

Speaking of Grin, Terminator Salvation drops this week (in the UK) and despite the terrible reviews, I am excited for it. The fastest way to my heart outside of Corona is a game with a cover mechanic. I have worked on three games with a cover mechanic and I love me some blind fire. I'm not going anywhere with this, I'm just excited s'all.

Next up, IGN just put up a super positive preview of Aliens vs. Predator. Let us gather around and read it together. Tell your partner that you'll be back later, you need to soak this in.

Back to 24.

If Jack Bauer or Keifer Sutherland are reading this, I will make your game for you. I understand that twenty minute sequences in grey corridors is not what you are about. I understand that the game will need about 50 different mechanics and each level will be no longer than 5 minutes. I get it.

24 is a difficult game to make. It is completely unlike any normal game. Levels would not last half an hour and Jack would shoot a maximum of 20 dudes in the entire game. Not in the first five minutes. You would need to create good torture and interrogation mechanics. And driving. And some kind of RTS interface as you play Bill Buchanan directing field ops.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about this recently as I have been binging on 24. It is one of the reasons I lie awake at night not sleeping.

Anyway, I'm done. Bionic Commando time.

Wednesday 20 May 2009

Asses and Elbows People

I like Alien vs. Predator.

You like Alien vs. Predator.

We all like Alien vs. Predator.

Here are some images of the new AvP game being developed by Rebellion which yours truly was lucky enough to do a bit of work on last year.

I saw a demo of it today and it looks s-weet.



Wednesday 13 May 2009

An X-treme Review From an X-Treme Kinda Guy

My review for HAWX has just hit over at NTSC-UK.

As usual it is awesome.

The support from the NTSC-UK staff was awesome as well.

The rest of my reviews are here.

However, this review is the last you'll see of this kind of review from me. I am subscribing to the Cliffster's school of reviewing games.*



Reviews need more balls.

No more "The player can switch between 'On' mode and 'Off' mode at any time with a double tap of either trigger."

Instead you can expect "The bad ass in control can switch it up between 'Pussy Ass Bitch' mode and 'Balls To The Wall' mode at any time with a fist pump. This makes shit get real."

* With regard to this image; I WOULD.

Sunday 10 May 2009

Simulation vs. Metaphor

I have recently been talking with the Cool Kidz in my Warhammer group about why we rail against some of the rules in 40K. Often a situation will arise that seems like total bullshit and does not reflect how troops would fight on the battlefield. The rules are queried and checked and then someone will be left with their jaw open at how seemingly unfair or unrealistic the rules are.



This, I explained, is down to the fact that the rules are not there to simulate every battlefield situation. Back in the 1st and 2nd edition of 40K (we are now on 5th) the rules were extremely complicated and elaborate and were designed to try and cover everything and simulate as closely as they could the battlefields of the 41st millennium. This meant that there were an incredible amount of tables, bespoke charts and rules and it took an ungodly amount of time to resolve things like combat. The Irresistible Force and Immovable Object situation would arise again and again because Codex entries would conflict with the rules, wargear items would clash and all sorts of modifiers would apply to the simplest table roll.

When the 3rd edition rolled round the designers stripped it all down, dumped nearly all of the rules and started again. They boiled it down to the most important elements and rather than simulate a battlefield they tried to create a metaphor for a battle.

Miniature wargames have the inherent problem of using miniatures. Imagine a war zone in the far future. Infantry crouch behind cover and blind fire at a horde of aliens swarming over a ruined building. Grenades detonate around power armoured war gods and commanders scream over sabotaged comm lines to ill disciplined troops. The battlefield is chaos and cannot be conveyed by miniatures. Miniatures cannot be reposed on the fly to show that they are crouched behind cover and we cannot physically check to see whether the hoofed aliens trip on the exposed cabling of the bombed out office they are attempting to move through.



This leads to a breakdown in simulation and the need for an essence capturing metaphor arises.

Using the example above, in the old rules if you wanted to fire through your own troops to an enemy beyond, each trooper would have to individually check to see if they had a line of sight and then resolve their shooting as normal. This would mean that you would need to check the LOS for potentially up to 20 figures. This would often result in conflicts and arguments between players and thus an effort to provide granularity and simulation in the rules slowed the game down with unnecessary complexity and bad attitude.

In the 5th edition rules the simulation has been scrapped as it helped no one. Checking individual line of sights would suggest to the players that the figure's pose represented a snap shot of their actions on the battlefield which is nonsense. Soldiers do not remain in one pose or even one posture during a battle. They crouch to avoid fire, go prone in craters and charge across streets. Now all friendly units are allowed to fire through each other without any line of sight checks. Instead, the enemy receives a bonus cover save.

This has gone from providing a simulation to creating a metaphor. Instead of being pedantic about the position of a miniature, we imagine that as the Storm Troopers turn to fire at on coming Orks through an allied squad of Guardsmen, the Storm Troopers time their shots as the Guardsmen duck into a crater or dive down as squad leaders coordinate their attack. The cover save that the Orks receive represents the Storm Troopers taking difficult shots through or round a mass of bodies as artillery lands around them and their comrades are cut down.

This attitude sits better with some people than it does others. The entirety of Warhammer is abstract silliness and as a designer it is easy for me to see where they have chosen to capture the essence of the situation and provide the most streamlined experience they can. Games Workshop designers also choose to outright contradict common sense in order to provide a better game.

In previous iterations if a unit wiped out an enemy squad in close combat they would be able to move into combat with another nearby enemy unit. This is pretty dramatic tactically as a specialist close combat unit could very easily destroy a huge amount of squads over the course of a couple of turns. Now they cannot do this which allows weaker armies to have a chance to shoot the rampaging combat monsters and level the playing field. This infuriates close combat players but it benefits the game greatly.

As designers, be it of table top games or videogames, we craft a set of rules that allow players to have an enjoyable experience. The above close combat rule is the 40K equivalent to the rubber band AI in Mario Kart. Is a game more interesting if one player very quickly gains a huge advantage that cannot be overcome by the other player or is it more interesting if it comes to a nail biting finale where two players have dealt blows to each other and kept on equal footing until the exciting end game?

In a fun game the player's advantage should not come from the rules but rather the tactical application of those rules.

But how does this relate to videogames?

Well, modern videogames have a problem with players perceive them as simulating reality. Players often wish the rules of a videogame were different to allow them to perform actions that they imagine their character could do in the real world.

This problem is unique to modern games that have realisitic graphics and that take place in real world locations. This is because the rule system is less obvious as players assume these games are simulations. Someone once described Rainbow Six Vegas as a simulator to me. They argued that because the game has realistic art, realistic weapon handling and took place in a real geographical location that the game was attempting to simulate real life.

This couldn't be further from the truth. R6V has a very definite set of rules that are no different to the set of rules in Mario. No one questions Mario's rules though. How can you question whether it is a simulation when you control a plumber that jumps on the heads of some mushrooms, collects other mushrooms and is friends with other mushrooms and where a family of dinosaurs command an army of ghosts, turtles and grinning bullets?



Rainbow Six Vegas (to carry on with this example as I fucking love the game and have a lot to say about it) is essentially the same game as Mario when viewed in a reductive way. The game provides a setting for the player to move in and combat enemies with a number of tools. The player must learn the rules of the game and use their understanding of these rules along with a selection of tools to get from the beginning to the end.

The difference is that players can relate to the Rainbow Six characters and setting more easily and can impose their own desires and perceptions or reality upon the supposedly realistic aspects of the game. The fact is that R6V is entirely unrealistic. You can disembody your vision and view yourself in the third person, heal fatal bullet damage, the weapons are not at all realistic and instead of neutralising a terrorist cell you kill an entire army.



The game has a very defined set of rules and does not create what we traditionally call a simulation of combat. Instead it creates a metaphor of a special ops team clearing buildings of terrorists. This is because a game where you rappel through a window, throw a flashbang, shoot two dudes and then order your team to blow open a door and clear the next room is far more fun than trying to rappel through a window to find that there is a knot in your rope and then being shot in the legs and waiting for an hour for the rescue team to clear the building and extract you and then spending days of gameplay in a military hospital.

The former is a metaphor for how we wish combat was and the latter is a simulation of the actualities of combat.

What people actually want is a believable context. They want to perform the actions they feel they should be able to in possibility spaces that feel contextually realistic. When a player resorts to saying "That's not realistic" at a point in a game it means that the metaphor has been broken and that they now view it as a simulation. This is a fine line to tread when we have games that look like Crysis and are the nearest to photo realistic as we have gotten.

Designers must strive to create games that are like the 5th edition of 40K. Games where the players buy into the fantasy and do not resort to wanting a simulation but instead are happy with the metaphor for whatever scenario we are trying to create.

Friday 8 May 2009

Today I Die


This blog isn't getting more emo than it already is, don't worry.

You need to play this game. I mean, really need to. Like you currently think you need to go poop or get on with some work.

You don't.

You need to play this game.

Thursday 7 May 2009

Bonding Whilst Killing

If I may just throw down a few random thoughts.

Today has been an odd day. I am crushingly tired and have been fairly bored. This leads me to one of my philosophical depressions which I am hoping to banish tonight by killing that son of a bitch Wesker with Phil.

We have been playing through Resident Evil 5 in coop and being very thorough with the emblems and treasure and it has been a joy. Phil and I used to be inseparable. We would skate together, were in the same band, worked in the same pub, played games together and crash at each other's place all the time. Then he abandoned me for uni and eventually his wife and we haven't been as tight as we once were. We still see each other now and then but we have taken some serious Chop and Phil time recently to plough through Resi 5.

Shit is off the chain.

Resident Evil 5 promotes coop in a way that some other games don't. Shit gets real constantly and it has been great to be in desperate fire fights as a pair and come out triumphant with pockets full of treasure. The game is perfectly balanced so that each player makes a very real contribution to the fight and the game just throws rewards at you.

I'm glad that we've been brought back together as a pair to save the world again.

It's a very similar feeling to when I play games with my brother. We have always been very close and since we've lived away form each other for a few years we have kept in contact via Xbox Live. When terrorists invaded Vegas, we were all over it. The Mexican coup? Squashed. The Russian gold conlict? We stole all that ish.

And then there is Halo 3 and Halo Wars. Halo is a franchise I love and if there is one person who has a similar reaction, it is Beast. We have saved the galaxy so many times I have lost count.

My point with all of this is that we friends use these games to hang out in often rather than going to a bar and wishing we are cooler than we are. We need more games like this.

More games need to offer a social experience that give high rewards for casual parties of people and I'm not talking about MMOs because they are too off putting and time consuming. In the modern world our best friends often don't live down the street anymore but we still want to play games together and hang out online.

Saving the day with your team of bros is one of the best feelings in the world.

Wednesday 6 May 2009

When Will Tycho Stop Being Right?

Last week I posted up a discussion between myself and Ben about DLC. That was before the second wave of broken Fallout 3 DLC hit. I am currently making a game for Bethesda so as far as I am concerned, this is all part of their glorious master plan and you complaining heathens should just be glad that they have chosen to grace you with more content. Now quit your whining and buy it.

Having said that, Penny Arcade have once again cut straight to the heart of the issue.

Whilst I understand complaining about paying for broken content, I am tired of the cost vs value argument that keeps cropping up. From Tycho's post:

"I only buy things I want, so much of the conversation surrounding the generalized villainy of downloadable content doesn't get very far with me."

I am like Tycho, I only buy content that has some value to me. Y'know, like a normal person would do. I am not one of those despicable wretches that inhabits GAF (and god forbid the GameFAQs forums) that still lives in a world where the expect every piece of content that is released is directed solely at them.

That used to be the case. Once upon a time publishers would build their portfolio around the needs of the hardcore gamer and those needs and tastes were pretty narrow. We would consume nearly everything released but nowadays a lot more people play games and so publishers release content that a broad demographic might choose to buy and play. And they will release a lot of it.

Do I complain about about the price of the Cops and Robber pack for Burnout Paradise? No, I just won't buy it as it of no interest to me. No one is forcing you to buy it, stop assuming you must and then railing against the price. The fact is that Ubisoft could charge any amount they want for Rainbow Six content and I will lap that up because it has value to me. The only price something has is the value you put on it.

I'll cop to the fact that I am drunk and extremely tired and that the above may have made no sense.

Also, never let it be said that I do not appreciate my fans. I was going to post something to do with Chun Li to appease certain factions in the Cammy vs. Chun Li war but fate stood in my way. Never under any circumstance Google image search for Chun Li with safe search turned off. Just be glad that Capcom decide what content you can download for SF4 on the consoles and do not even dare to imagine the horrors that will befall the female characters in the PC version.

Tuesday 5 May 2009

Me and My Boy Fiddy

50 Cent has said that he wants a sequel to the recent Blood on the Sand game, which if you don't know, I was involved with for a period of time. The guys and girls at Swordfish (as it was then) did a great job with the game and I had a lot of fun playing it. Its strength was also its weakness; it was the game equivalent of a dumb action movie and it had no pretentions of anything else.

I don't want to say it was throw away entertainment because that does a disservice to what Swordfish did but it was the kind of good fun popcorn game that you can consume, have a lot of fun with and feel like you got value for money. Sometimes that isn't enough for some reviwers and the less than favourable reviews weren't necessarily on the money.

Blood on the Sand is starting to show up in the sales so there has never been a better time to pick it up. If you like blowing stuff up in coop, you could do a lot worse.

I also want to post a link to a video interview my senior producer did at the recent unveiling of Rogue Warrior. Hit this ish.

There is also a Facebook fan group here. This has sprung up without us knowing and wasn't initiated by any of the developers. Show your support!