What Your Fellow Man is Capable Of

IT IS ALIVE

2010-02-25T20:36:00.002Z

Right, that's it. The party is over. Pack up your keg, the cops are here. It's time to bail.

Bail from this blog that is!

My website domain has gone live. www.chopemon.com is now open for business, servicing all of your game design needs. Kind of. Maybe. I wrote a good piece on decision making in cover shooters at least.

I will be doing the art for it soon.

Enjoy the new site!

Changing Opinions

2010-02-18T19:16:00.001Z

I have changed my Game of the Year list.

Batman wins.

Post about it here.

Updates Over Yonder

2010-02-15T00:12:00.002Z

Good news!

My proper site nearly has a proper domain name. Hopefully www.chopemon.com will be working by the end of the week.

While you wait, here are some links to recent posts should you still be frequenting this blog and not my site.

First up, an article about how stealth games have evolved.

Secondly, how about some talk about decision making within cover shooters?

Here's the start of a level I'm creating in Unreal 3.

Here's another level, this time in Sandbox 2.0.

I also got recommended by some fine, respectable folk.

Enjoy!

Hiding Blades in Venetians

2010-01-25T10:58:00.002Z

First order of day; my blog has moved, I am posting this here again to make sure everyone is redirecting their World Wide Web viewing devices to my new home.

Side note: remember when everyone introduced their web sites by saying "Welcome to my corner of the web..."? Remember Geocities? Remember Angelfire?

I realise that the web address is currently awful but you can the folks over at UK2.net for making the acquisition of a domain name the hardest thing in the world. Should you ever choose to get a domain name, do not use UK2.net. When the revolution comes I will personally make sure that they are the first against the wall. I should have a proper address by the end of the month.

Hit it here.

I also want to peep you to my Assassin's Creed 2 review over at NTSC-UK. I am taking a break from reviewing as I find a new job and other than this review I have one more waiting to go up.

Don't forget to move over to my new site for future updates. Hit it here.

New Site

2010-01-12T17:05:00.002Z

I am moving my blog over to a new site. Exciting!

The process of doing it has been a total pain in the ass thanks to awful domain name providers and delays in transferring the domain name.

In the mean time though, my new site is under construction. You can find it here.

It is all first pass and I need to sort out proper art and update a few pages, the blog also needs to catch up. In the coming days I will make a full transition to this new utopia and this blog will fall into disrepair, to be abandoned like a next gen wasteland.

I'd love to hear any feedback you have on it. Currently I would rate it 10/10 because there is a picture of Ice T on the homepage.

The Era, it is Ended

2010-01-12T17:02:00.003Z

If you have been following the news sites today you will have seen this (nicked from Gamesindustry.biz):

Aliens Vs Predator developer Rebellion has said it is reviewing the need for its Derby studio as it continues to grow its offices in Oxford and Runcorn.

CEO Jason Kingsley described the process as "painful", and staff in Derby are currently being consulted about their future. GamesIndustry.biz understands that a number of staff have already been made redundant - although the company denies that posts have yet been cut as that consultation continues.

"Growth is sometimes painful, never more so than in the current climate and we have had to take a long hard look at how we operate our studio network," said Kingsley in a statement. "Strategically we have decided to review the need for the Derby facilities, and consultation with staff at Derby is ongoing."

"No-one has been made redundant by Rebellion in more than a decade, and the Derby studio is very much still open while we conduct the review. We are currently undergoing a process of consultancy with our staff to get their ideas, and establish the best possible future for the Derby studio."

As you can imagine this has delivered a shoryuken to my life and I am scrabbling to find out what I am doing next.

Expect bloggingz to become slightly infrequent while I get sorted.

Resolving Resolutions

2010-01-02T22:08:00.002Z

I've decided to post up my New Years Resolutions here as a matter of public record so that I can be held to them by you, the baying masses and teeming throngs of people that read this blog.

If 2009 was a year about getting my life in order and exploring myself then 2010 is to be a year of pushing myself much harder than usual.

I spent 7 hours today doing my 3rd Mass Effect playthough. So not a great start but onwards and upwards!

Finally publish an indie game.
Finally publish a new music track.
Finally get a tattoo (or acquire Tatu, whichever happens first).
Learn to write betterer.
Write or draw something every day (I have actually already started this and it hasn't gone too badly).
Not use the word 'gameplay' until it actually has a definition.
Learn about more 'things'.

So there we have it. Eight things that I have resolved to resolve. Or something. I will update as they happen. Should I get really drunk one day you may even get to see my sketchbook but I wouldn't count on it.

Game of the Year of Our Lord 2009

2010-01-01T18:26:00.002Z

Let’s Talk About Game of the Year

It’s time to discuss my games of the year. Every game site is doing their own list and all the usual candidates are present along with surprise award winners like Demons Souls picking up Gamespot’s GOTY which lit up Twitter with its announcement. Before I do my list of games though, here are some stand out moments of the year which I thought deserved a mention with special rewards. Exciting, no?

Game Which I Wish I Had Played: League of Legends

This game is something I know I would love and would lose a lot of time to but due to my lack of gaming PC, I haven’t been able to get into it.

Most Crushing Moment of the Year: Torchlight’s Netbook Mode

I have a pretty awesome netbook and so on Boxing Day when Torchlight was going for super cheap, I grabbed it and fired it up and hit the netbook mode in the game which is supposed to optimise the game to run on my computer of choice. Even on the lowest settings and in netbook mode, the game runs at an unplayable frame rate so I can’t click where I need to and die a lot. It breaks my heart.

Console That Got the Least Use This Year: Either of my PSPs

I really would love to use my PSP more. Perhaps I should pick up Half Minute Hero. As it is, I played the MGS Peace Walker demo for half an hour and that was it.

Most Rage Inducing Moment of the Year: Trying to Beat Seth With Crimson Viper in SF4

GAaaaaaaaaaaaaaahaaahhhhhhhhhaaha.

Best Thing I Played On the PS3 This Year: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

This, ladies and gentlemen, is how you make an action adventure game. The combination of acting, variety of mechanics and absolute polish present throughout was truly breathtaking and incredibly rare today. The only other game that matches it is Arkham Asylum which shared many similar elements of pacing.

Best Music: Halo 3 ODST

Surprisingly for me this beat both Canabalt and Simon Viklund’s amazing Bionic Commando score. Marty O Donnell crafted a beautifully subtle and understated score for the Mombasa Streets sections of the game and the action music was up to his usual rousing standards. The change in musical direction for the series while sneaking around the streets of New Mombasa was executed perfectly with a haunting jazz/noir theme.

Best Thing I Downloaded: Shadow Complex

I never knew I liked Metroidvania games having never played them before but I’ll be damned if I didn’t love me some secret area finding in this game. The game is an excellent length and while the story is largely forgettable, the action in the game is another example of excellent pacing of mechanics.

Best First Impressions That Quickly Go To Hell: Silent Hill Shattered Memories

This game is one of the scariest and atmospheric games ever made for the first half hour and then the nightmare sections start happening. In these sections you are chased by monsters you can’t kill around a level you can’t navigate as there is nothing to guide you through the darkly oppressing world. This means you keep running around and dying until eventually you manage to find your way either by luck or by trial and error. This ruins all of the atmosphere and tension and just makes you throw the controller down. Also, if you rage quit and turn the machine off because you are sick of screaming in frustration, at no point previously has it auto saved. The rest of the game is simply amazing and if you can, you should play the first hour or so to see all of the amazing ideas the devs have crammed in there.

Best Textbook for Multiplayer Designers: Modern Warfare 2

The bar has been set way beyond the capabilities of most studios by this game. Infinity Ward has almost perfectly nailed triple A multiplayer with the combination of constant unlocks and rewards and excellent map design.

Most Expressive Shoulders in a Game: Buck in Halo 3 ODST

Buck communicates all of his emotions through his shoulders. Go and look.

Worst Thing That Happened in 2009 Award 1: Studio Closures

A lot of talented people lost their jobs this year. There are many reasons for these job losses but I think most can be traced back to the games industry being immature and a place where an awful lot of bad business decisions are made every day.

Worst Thing That Happened in 2009 Award 2: DLC Adverts in Dragon Age

In a fantasy RPG there is a dude who advertises DLC in my camp. Let me say that again. In a game about role playing a character in a fantasy world, there are adverts for DLC. AND IN YOUR QUEST LOG. My friend Beast recently bought the DLC for the PC version and took me through the ten or so steps it took him to acquire it. He had to buy Dragon Age Points. Why should anyone ever have to do that?

Best Thing I Played On My 360 This Year: Modern Warfare 2

Over the years I have become quite a fan of serious looking dudes with guns shouting at other serious looking dudes with guns. In Modern Warfare 2 there are a great number of men that are not messing about. Keith David defends the Whitehouse.

Best Use of the Phrase Oscar Mike: Operation Flashpoint 2 and Modern Warfare 2

Two games may have won this category, but really we’re all winners. In Operation Flashpoint 2, your character says it at least once during every radio transmission and will often follow it up with another one when ordering the squad. Modern Warfare 2 used it when characters moved to cover or described other characters moving to cover. Every time is was glorious to hear.

Games I Have Hated Most in 2009: Anything on Facebook

Farmville and Mafia Wars and all the other stuff clogs up Facebook and on top of all the other inanity that goes on in status updates, has entirely turned me off Facebook.

Chopemon’s Game of the Year List 2009

This list has changed since I initially wrote it and I have updated this list to match my new list.

This list does not intend to objectively state which are the best games released this year. It exists to allow me to write a list (because the internet likes lists) of the top ten games that rocked my world in 2009. They may be on there because I fell in love with them, got hugely excited for them, had amazing multiplayer experiences or maybe they took me by surprise and had an unexpected impact on me.

1. Batman Arkham Asylum

2. Resident Evil 5

3. Modern Warfare 2

4. Street Fighter 4

5. Halo 3 ODST

6. Borderlands

7. Canabalt

8. Mushihimesama Futari ver 1.5

9. Blazblue Calamity Trigger

10. Assassins Creed 2

All of these games blew me away. Real life affirming or life changing stuff. I’ve already talked about or reviewed these games so I don’t want to retread old ground but when I looked back at my year of gaming, these were the games that had stayed with me and the experiences I had with them are ones I will never forget. This list proves that some amazing games were released this year and they are paving the way for more greatness to come.

Other Things of the Year

Best Comic I Read This Year: Batman the Long Halloween

I got into Batman comics in a big way with the release of Arkham Asylum and Long Halloween perfectly captures the kind of Batman I like; dark, shadowy and realistic. Tim Sale’s art captures the shadows of Gotham superbly and Jeff Loeb can really write some good Batman.

Best Film I Saw This Year: Inglorious Basterds

Tarantino writes the best conversations ever. The dialogue in Inglorious Basterds is full of tension and suspense and puts a lot of script writers to shame. The performance by Christophe Waltz steals the show and is utterly mesmerising.

Best Gig I Went To This Year: MC Frontalot at PAX

Seeing and meeting one of my favourite musicians was an awesome experience made all the more special by the crowd at PAX. If nerdcore could rise up, it could get elevated.

Best Album of 2009: Next Level by Dual Core

These guys have really matured their sound over the years which is saying something when you consider how good Zero One was. This album is full of intelligent rhymes and heartfelt lyrics with some incredible beats.

So there we have it. This year is ghost like Swayze and it has been a year full of quality games and unforgettable gaming experiences. 2010 has a lot to live up to.

P.S. I’m predicting now that Splinter Cell Conviction will be my GOTY next year.

"Salt The Wound!"

2009-12-28T00:21:00.003Z

My review for Borderlands is up here.

Borderlands was one of the surprise hits of the year for me (and many others). It was announced without much excitement and when press events were held, people talked more about Randy Pitchford than the game itself.

I love the game. Check the review to see why and if you haven't grabbed it yet, hopefully it will sway you (be best if you had a coop partner though).

I have been given Mushihimesama Futari to review for NTSC-UK and it is fair to say I am spell bound by it.

For those not in the know, Mushihimesama is a pretty hardcore shmup, specifically of the bullet curtain variety and is not something I normally play as they are incredibly daunting. I popped it in on Christmas Eve to have a quick look at it and before I knew it, 3 hours had flown by.

People always relay stories about how they lost track of time playing a game and this was a genuine and honest example of that. I don't want to spoil the review but from out of nowhere this has made it's way on to my GOTY list.

So, how was Christmas?

I spent a couple of days at my parents and discovered that I am right in my assertion that British TV is mostly terrible (none of my TVs are tuned into receive a signal in my place and thus it is only when I go to other people's houses that I see TV). I long for the day when families consider it traditional to sit around with a game rather than sit and watch terrible British sit coms. I'm not saying games should replace TV but in my family, games are considered something that kids and nerds do and are not part of any family time. My parents grew up without games in their lives until I got a Mega Drive and don't consider games to hold any merit or worth as family entertainment. This is due to a lack of education about games and also the same fear of playing them that paralyses a lot of people that haven't played games before. Which is why I stayed up for hours after people had gone to bed to play Mushihimesama.

Just before Christmas I embarked on a game that both delighted me and infuriated me. My girl was awesome enough to give me a copy of Dragon Age for Christmas (we did presents early) and I popped it in on the day before Christmas Eve as I was curled up on the sofa being ill.

That game is straight up awesome. It is late and I want to go to bed so instead of writing a lengthy paragraph about why it is awesome, let me just say this: it is a Bioware RPG.

THEY MADE KOTOR.

So the delight is obvious but what about me being infuriated with it?

In your camp there is a guy that wishes to speak with you. When you speak to him he describes a wonderful, epic quest filled with adventure and riches. You get several layers deep into his conversation tree and find out the quest can only be embarked upon if you buy more content.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

In my fantasy RPG there is an advert for DLC?

To make matters worse, there is a separate space in your quest log entitled 'DLC'.

This fantasy RPG is filled with adverts for some DLC. This kind of behaviour is repugnant and despicable and I'm probably talking myself out of ever having a job at EA (which will hopefully be remedied by my upcoming blog post about how much I love the Army of Two characters).

For the past year I have been saying that in either 2010 or 2011 we will start seeing ad breaks in games. I'm not talking about a cheeky logo in a loading screen or FMV but a full on advert between levels. When I say that part of me thinks it is nonsense and will never happen and part of me remembers that Need for Speed Pro Street had adverts in the achievements.

One last quick thing before I hit bed; I have just finished Wanted which means I have played the holy trinity of console based Grin games and the fact they are gone breaks my heart. All of their games have some issues but they all have some amazing ideas in them. Absolute gems of design implementation like Wanted's cover hopping system or the way the grapple was worked into combat in Bionic Commando. I would have loved to see what those guys would have made if they got to do an epic project with their own IP.

Um, Um, Um, C'mon Everybody, Get Down!

2009-12-15T19:28:00.002Z

After an exceedingly ball bouncingly awesome 50 hours Phil and I have finally put a bow on Borderlands.

We have hit level 50 with our main characters and got all of the achievements. The game never got boring or frustrating and it feels strange to no longer have it as a regular fixture in my life. We played through the amazing DLC twice as well.

I don't want to say much more as my review for it will be going up soon.

Speaking of reviews (how does my segue taste?), my Modern Warfare 2 review has gone up over at NTSC-UK. Check it out to see what I have to say about a game full of very serious dudes with guns. Check out Spatial's awesome banner!

Something I didn't say in the review, but will mention now, is that the characterisation of some of the characters in that game is pretty subtle. By that I mean an awful lot of it isn't done in cutscenes and instead it comes from the chatter between Gaz (I'm calling it) and Soap. Once you play this game, go back and look how quiet other games are. Check out Ubi's squad shooters to see a bunch of soldiers currently on the edge of death but being very quiet about it.

This also plays into the way they call out what they and the enemies are doing. The constant chatter describes the chaotic battlefield in surprising detail. I guess it helps when the actors read the lines that they are told to and not selectively pick from a script that a very attractive and intelligent game designer has written for them.

It Continues

2009-12-13T16:22:00.002Z

In my last post I talked about the inconsistencies and inbalances within different iterations of rules and army lists in the game of Warhammer 40,000.

It has recently been found out that the Tyranids are receiving a new unit that can appear in the middle of one of your units and will inflict a whole load of high strength hits that negate most armour.

The Tyranid army looks a lot like Aliens crossed with bugs from Starship Troopers and have traditionally tended to march across the table and then crash upon you like a wave of claws and teeth. During this time you would be able to shoot them and cripple parts of the army you couldn't deal with in close combat and then soften up the teeming hordes of grunt troops.

They are very much like the Zerg in that swarms of small creatures shield larger, more devastating creatures. This balance of them having to run into a hail of bullets before meeting your army in close combat tended to work quite well with games being fairly even sided. Tyranids have always had units that can avoid this by coming on to the table in different positions but that was something that could be coped with if you were clever.

So understand that 40K is played like this: two armies line up in front of each other and then engage in moving, shooting and close combat across the width of a table. This is a massive generalisation and simplification but that is the idea that the original rules were conceived around and it is how they have evolved.

So in this situation we have the Witch Hunters which are weak, under powered and difficult to use effectively. Across the board from them is a swarm of close combat based creatures that can shoot but are weak at shooting and must run across the board to get into close combat. They must survive a hail of bullets and doing so will allow them to enter into combat and tear apart the Witch Hunters but the game will be pretty close and exciting and interesting.

The Witch Hunters are relying on a couple of turns of long range shooting and one turn of rapid firing and flame throwing to thin out the numbers. They must focus their entire force into weakening the incoming bugs.

Now imagine that during those crucial shooting turns a huge monster appears in one of the Witch Hunter's units and destroys them. There is nothing in my army that can match it in close combat so it is free to munch through my troops. I can turn to fire at it with several units and this *may* take it down in a turn. So at least one important and crucial turn is spent shooting at that creature as the rest of the Tyranids charge toward me. And there are double the number of bugs as there used to be. And, under the new rules, can out shoot an army which is all armed with guns.

The balance of the game has been destroyed. Fun with Warhammer is two balanced armies facing off against each other and letting the battle be decided by the best general. It is not fun to have the battle decided by who has the newest army list.

So now I can't really have fun playing against one of my best friends. We bond and relax over a good game of 40K and now that has been ruined.

An old business model of releasing books and escalating the power and reducing the cost of troops has left some armies far more 'playable' than others.

This is a game design post and not a rant post. A good analogy would be if in Left 4 Dead's Versus mode the infected could make a Witch spawn in a safe room and then double the number of zombies in the map. Imagine if when you are playing Gears of War the Locust could suddenly make a Corpser spawn behind you when you are in cover.

Games Workshop used to make fantastically balanced games. They were consistently fun and fair and now we have a situation where the game is decided as soon as people choose who to play against.

If this was a videogame this would be patched within a week. I get to wait for at least 12 months for a new army list. The modern world is leaving Games Workshop behind.

Balancing 40K

2009-12-09T11:51:00.000Z

Warhammer 40,000 is a sci fi themed battle game played on a table top with plastic and metal figures that stand about an inch tall. The figures depict soldiers from various alien races and they are moved by players and enter into combat that is resolved by dice rolls.

A huge part of game design is balancing the rules and variables within the game to achieve an optimal play state and experience for the player. This will involve tweaking a vast array of numbers to try to ensure that as large an amount as possible of players have fun that they consider challenging, engaging and fair. In videogames this normally falls to a group of designers that use their own knowledge and experience combined with feedback from everyone that plays the game up until release to change enemy health values, player aim assist and so on until the game feels ‘just right’. This ‘just right’ status is usually incredibly hard to define and achieve but we are fortunate in that a designer can dramatically affect the balancing of the game for the better in the space of a few minutes. Anecdotally I remember sitting with the values of every weapon in the game in front of me and making a whole host of changes and in the space of a half hour we were testing the changes and agreeing that they made a world of difference. This is a total luxury and an aspect I relish and enjoy.

Not everyone is so lucky though.

Warhammer 40,000 can only be balanced by a new edition of the rules and by new army books (army books or codexes describe the special rules for each army) and these have several years turn around. As with all rule systems, you can only design Warhammer to a certain level before it is released. As soon as it is released into the wild people find all sorts of situations cropping up that weren’t accounted for.

Codexes are even more problematic as discrepancies arise between them and new editions of the core rules and then they can break when going against other armies. This is especially apparent to me as a Witch Hunters player. I play a branch of humanity called the Inquisition. These are Gestapo like characters that hunt out aliens, witches and daemons and are backed up by a legion of hard line warrior nuns. The last time they got a new codex was at the end of the 3rd edition of the 40K rules. We are now half way through the cycle of the 5th edition and they are one of the worst armies out there. Other armies have had multiple army book iterations since the Witch Hunter book was released and these have all been changed in line with the trends that Games Workshop have placed in the core rules (greater variety, cheaper troops). Witch Hunters are not so lucky.

There has been an overall increase in power and reduction of gaming points cost in newly revised armies and the Witch Hunters can’t compete. For example, I have nothing that can kill a Daemon army. Other codexes are more than capable of dealing with them as they have more powerful and cheaper troops. The new Tyranid codex (imagine the Aliens) has halved the cost of the basic troops so they can now field double the amount. They have also increased range weaponry so they can now out shoot some builds of my army and can certainly rip them apart in close combat. These changes as a whole are better but it leaves players like me at a distinct disadvantage. The game is no longer balanced and thus not as much fun. Unfortunately not many people play Witch Hunters and so it is not good business to make a big push to bring them up to date.

I guess the best gaming analogy is class changes in an MMO. Things can change and break the game but they can be fixed the next week. I have been waiting several years for my rules to be fixed.

Games Workshop is a strange beast in that people still put up with this in 2009. We live in a world of rapid iteration and change. If people don’t like something because it is broken and unfair it is dropped, discarded and it fails. Not GW though. For some reason they can release broken rules and we are still drawn to it. This could never happen to this degree in the world of videogames but it is utterly fascinating in the world of Warhammer. How long will it last though? How long before they get rid of the established army book business model they have and we get into rolling revisions that we see every year? Maybe every six months? Maybe every month? How would they deliver this? Ebooks are a good idea. I’d happily pay a few quid every six months to get an updated army list on an ebook reader or something.

It is interesting that GW seem to be following the same curve as videogames. Once we released products that could not be changed until the next big iteration, now I download patches daily. It will be interesting to see how GW deals with this.

2009 - Chopemon's Year In Review

2009-12-07T00:13:00.004Z

This may seem early for a year in review post but I know that my Christmas and New Year is going to be mad busy so since I am sitting on the train listen to some guy loop music, I may as well get it done now.

So, wow. What a year huh? Certainly a stunning year for game players and makers all round as genuinely amazing games set the bar increasingly higher. The year started on a high with the return of the Street Fighter series and ended with me discovering that the iPhone held one of my games of the year.

On a personal note my year has been crazy. I have found ‘the one’ and fallen madly in love, I have had three games released (one of which became a small gaming pop culture meme) and have learnt a tremendous amount about myself and my abilities in life. It has been a refreshing year in that it started single and happy, neither of which I had been for a while. After being unhappy for a couple of years I finally had some space where I wasn’t derided for various things in my life by the person I was living with. I had space to grow and learn both about what I want and who I am and also about the world I live in. I then met the most wonderful girl in the world, my darling Rachel, felt a love I had never known before and have discovered that my soul mate DESTROYS me at Tekken. I also went to PAX and met two rappers that changed my life and then met MC Lars (who also changed my life) later in the year.

For the first time in a while I can see a new year ahead that is full of promise, wonder and excitement. I mean genuine, unbelievable excitement. MC Lars is playing Nottingham in March for God’s sake! The feeling of having a proper partner to start a new year with is life fulfilling.

One more quick thing before we get on to talking about games, it has been wonderful to explore some new music over the last few months. Realising that you have lived a life without Jay Z in it makes you realize you should never dismiss something out of hand again.

On the games front it has been a year of continual highs. I don’t want to go through every game as I’m sure all the major sites will cover you on that but instead I want to talk about the games that have personally effected me.

The year started off incredibly. Many years ago a friend of mine blew my mind with a little game called Street Fighter 2 Turbo. From the moment I played it I thought about nothing else until I got my own (hard earned) copy. A child’s pocket money doesn’t buy many Mega Drive games so by god I hammered that cart. Even though I only had a three button pad and was at a distinct disadvantage I could hold my own against all my friends and fell in love with all the characters and the game has become a yard stick against which I judge an awful lot of things. When Street Fighter 4 hit it was like a dragon punch to my mind. The game is simply incredible. It looks amazing, it runs like a dream and the fighting has a perfect balance of accessibility and strategy. I am not a good SF player. I can destroy pretty much everyone I know except a colleague’s Blanka but I know that as soon as I step into the real world of Street Fighting, I am out. I love it though. Everything about just feels right. It controls and plays with the right speed and weight. Every time I lose I can see what I did wrong and it feels great to learn and grow within my character. Seth and the lack of proper lobbies and matchmaking issues stop it from being perfect but my God they came close.

As a side note, someone of indeterminate location on the train is playing a game that sounds incredible. Is the game actually awesome or are the sound effects and me not knowing what it is elevating it in my mind?

February also yielded Halo Wars which once again brought Team Awesome together and provided a venue for us to rock out and socialize. We still continue to play the game and much like Street Fighter, when we roll up against opponents that take us apart, we learn an incredible amount and go into the next match as wiser generals. The game didn’t review as well as I would have liked and I think this is down to a view that a traditional RTS game like Halo Wars must somehow be as complicated or fast as Starcraft. That is an impossible dream while Microsoft still shackles us to a controller but Halo Wars does an excellent job of taking the essence of a RTS and making all the necessary changes to make it work on a console. It does however cause friendship problems when SOMEONE pre orders it and has awesome flames on their Warthogs and I don’t.

February was a strange month for me as both Shellshock 2 Blood Trails and 50 Cent Blood on the Sand came out. I worked on both of those (6 months on 50 Cent and over a year on Shellshock) and they were both received very differently critically. Shellshock 2 had a lot of problems during development and one day I hope I can talk about them in an academic way, which is to say that rather than it be a war story I’d like to use it as a case study about game development. There are things to be proud of in everything you do and I can point these things out in Shellshock but I’d far rather talk about me riding on the coat tails of the guys and gals of Swordfish.

I worked on 50 Cent for 6 months and it was an experience where I learnt a lot about myself. Swordfish (now part of Codemasters) was an amazing studio with genuinely talented and amazing people. 50 Cent went through some tough times during the Vivendi/Activision thing and that game only came together due to the great team in the studio as it bounced between publishers. People look down on the game because it has 50 Cent in but it is a super fun shooter with a lot of “heart” (Jeff Gerstmann). That game needs your attention as it is really enjoyable and shows what can be done with a questionable license. What was really nice to see was that levels and decisions I’d made as part of that team were still in the game and the guys did a great job of finishing off the levels I’d worked on.

I can now tell you that it is Zelda. I should pick that game up.

Moving into March, Phil and I got stuck into Resident Evil 5. This was another game that I thought was exceptional but seem to be in a minority about. The way people judge games never ceases to amaze me and the bizarre and arbitrary ways people determine what a sequel is puzzles me. Regardless, Phil and I dived into treasure hunting and not-zombie hunting and played through the game multiple times on harder difficulties and with game breaking weapons. The draw of leveling up weapons and farming treasure kept us coming back and the game remained tremendous fun despite us knowing exactly where and when the lickers were going to jump out. I also have a total crush on Sheva.

Let’s skip ahead to August and the brilliance of Batman Arkham Asylum. Good God that’s a good game. Rocksteady really know how to make a good game that fully embraces the license. Batman has been talked to death in the press but let me offer a pro tip: hit up their Urban Chaos game in either PS2 or Xbox flavor. That is an excellent game and I always enjoy seeing how a studio has matured in its design theory.

Speaking of which, I thoroughly enjoyed Grin’s Bionic Commando and I think I’m one of only a handful of people that really did enjoy it. I also played Terminator Salvation by Grin and despite its short comings; it was really interesting to see two games by the same developer in such a short space of time.

Jumping to October/November things remained excellent but familiar. Many of the games that came out in the ‘Fall season’ were known quantities. Last year we had several new franchises or re-imaginings that were different enough to be almost new franchises and this year held very little of that. Last October and November gave us Dead Space, Far Cry 2, Left 4 Dead, Fallout 3 and Mirror’s Edge which were all incredible games and as they were all new in concept or style it was a genuinely exciting time. The excitement and fervor in the press and gaming community was palpable and thrilling. This year the big games have been Uncharted 2, Modern Warfare 2, Assassin’s Creed 2 and Left 4 Dead 2. A lot of 2s there.

These are all excellent games but the level of excitement just hasn’t been there. Or maybe it is a different kind of excitement. It was electrifying to be going into the unknown territory of last year but this year we know exactly what each of those games are. They are iterations of things we love and while that is exciting in itself, it is not the excitement of not knowing exactly what a new IP holds. I’m not one of the bitter forum dwellers that complains about the lack of innovation in games but I just missed that excitement that I felt last year. In fact, the only game that gave me that feeling to any degree was Borderlands.

Borderlands was full of surprise and outright fun. It is excellently balanced and crafted and a joy to play. I am playing through with Phil and after one playthrough plus the DLC, we are heading in for a 2nd playthrough to hit level 50. Plus I have a crush on Lilith. I see a pattern.

Cooperatively working through stuff has been a theme of this year as Phil and I are partway through the masterpiece of Saints Row 2 and I have been doing Xbox LANs with work colleagues to get through Operation Flashpoint 2 on the hardest difficulty. I never thought restarting an hour long level when you die right at the end would be fun but it is. It helps that we are bro-ing out together while doing it I guess.

The only other game to mention (these aren’t all the games that I’ve played. I can’t even put a number on the amount of things that have either entered my disk trays or been downloaded) is Canabalt. I’m a bit worn out of writing about Canabalt because before writing this I wrote a review of it but suffice to say that it is the only game released this year that I would call perfect. It is a one button platformer and the art, fiendishly clever gameplay and music all combine to make it perfect. There is no other word to describe it.

Oh and Rogue Warrior came out and I worked on that. If you pick it up, tell me what you think of the multiplayer maps. Or hit me up if you need someone to play it with.

Looking into next year, the gods have smiled upon me and are giving me a new Street Fighter. And Resident Evil 5 DLC. So it might be something of a re run of this year. We also get a new Splinter Cell (GOTY already decided), Bioshock 2 (award for having the most potential to get it wrong), a new Army of Two (fist bumps and M4s with drum magazines) and Halo Reach which I imagine will blow my mind. Next year has the potential to be an outright great year and I can’t wait.

The only potential downside might be the persistently annoying preorder nonsense which has been so prevalent this year. I don’t want to choose between retailers or make sure I preorder something to get the full package. I want every new copy of a game to be complete. Make gold guns, and bonus maps something for every customer rather than punishing customers that value one retailer over another. Next year EA are giving away a preorder only game mode in Army of Two and if you buy the limited edition of Bad Company 2 you get the best weapons and a homing rocket launcher. Wicked. Can’t wait.

With that I’m done. I think the guy opposite me has stopped mixing electronica and after 2 reviews and all this nonsense, I’m done. Time for Advance Wars. I think you’ll agree that it has been a good year for games. It has been a personally stunning year and life is looking pretty rosy from here on out.

Stay tuned for my Game of the Year list in the coming days.

Bad People Are Ruining My Life

2009-11-30T21:44:00.002Z

I haven't been updating the old blog-o-tron recently as I am in the process of migrating all this awesome content to a new site.

The site is ready to go except that it turns out that registering a domain with www.uk2.net is just about the worst idea you could ever possibly have. I am struggling through their transfer process (which they hide from you, charge you for and don't answer their phones about) but I should soon have a web site with a blog and portfolio and possibly more Ice T pictures ready soon.

In the mean time, here is a quick list of things you should check out:

Assassin's Creed 2, possible GOTY contender.
Any of Atom And His Package's discography. His music resonates deeply.
Me on Twitter. I need followers that aren't spam.

Picking a Side

2009-11-15T12:41:00.004Z

Ice T is your God.

You may remember a while ago I posted up a piece about tutorials in multiplayer and easing the player into the online portion of a game. Check it out.

Modern Warfare 2 has landed and the first time you play multiplayer it is totally brutal. There is no easing in or tutorial and it is hard and frustrating. The game came out on a Tuesday and thanks to a retailer sending it out early, I had it on Friday. I jumped into the online a few days before the game came out and I was already getting *destroyed*.

In the first Modern Warfare I would consistently place in the top three players on my team and was fairly happy with my performance. When I played MW2 I was always near the bottom until I hit level 4 and then I jumped right to the top again because I unlocked a gun that was usable. For the first hour and a half of playing I was angry and frustrated. I felt gimped by the default classes and as soon as I unlocked the M4 I felt liberated and I could play the game and compete.

The first four levels in multiplayer do not allow you to compete, they are there to show you all the cool stuff you can unlock. They are frustrating and painful but you play and get through them because every kill you happen to make is something to savour and cherish.

MW2 is an amazing game top to bottom and the shooting and moving is so well honed that even though xxxSepiroth69xxx keeps no scoping you, the game is still fun.

It is a brave move to make the barrier to entry for the multiplayer so high in a game aimed at such a mass market crowd but it works. They won't get 100% people enjoying both the single and multiplayer portions of the game becasue of the skill level but their multiplayer player base will grow substantially because despite being hard, it is rewarding.

In other Ice T related news, Borderlands is excellent and is the epitome of a social coop experience. In coop the game doesn't scale until you get four players and so me and Phil have been tooling around and thoroughly enjoying playing a game together and just chilling out. The quests are typical for an RPG and it is the complete opposite of MW2. There are no set pieces or brisk pacing in Borderlands, it is all about grinding through quests at your own pace and enjoying the loot system. It is rare to see a game as focused as Borderlands and it is all the better fot it.

I also have a total crush on the Siren. DON'T JUDGE ME.

Other business:

I'm on Twitter now, www.twitter.com/chopemon
Rogue Warrior hits the shelves at the end of the month and people were really enjoying it at the Eurogamer Expo.
I'm going to be a company shill and evangelise the multiplayer in Alien vs. Predator. I can talk about it as it has been showed to the public. It is super tense and exciting and the species based game modes are amazing. Look for it in February.
Rachel has just posted a small Tekken 6 review which blew me away when I read it. Check it here.
A colleague of mine writes a very funny blog (he is a very funny man) and you should hit it up here.
One last thing before I hit the 360, A bunch of us recently went to see MC Lars and he is good peoples. He puts on a fantastic show and he is a super nice guy to hang out with. Here is a picture of us being all hyphy:

So Little Time

2009-11-09T21:29:00.002Z

Apologies friends, I have been busy.

Busy with videogames, work, the love of my life, MC Lars and Warhammer. In an attempt to write more I am making adjustments (I quit my D&D group!) so that I can bring you more awesome sauce.

As a stop gap and to provide you with suff to read with your morning coffee before I get all up in some bandit's face in Borderlands, here are two reviews I recently had published:

Mini Ninjas

Transformers: Revenge of Megan Fox

Enjoy!

Thought For The Day

2009-10-22T23:53:00.002+01:00

I know, I know, I'm behind on my blogging.

Do you know how many good games are coming out at the moment?

Anyway, to get the ball rolling on a bigger piece I want to post up a quick thought. And by thought, I mean something I read in a book and want to repeat.

Success and failure is the satisfaction or frustration of desire.

When applied to games it helps to frame the recent trend in games that some call accessibility and some call dumbing down. For the record (and this is a longer post for the future) I don't agree with the dumbing down statement.

What I will say as a way to spark a train of thought in my head that will lead to a proper post on the subject, in many modern games success is not winning at a game but rather having fun through personal expression (there is no way to 'die' in DJ Hero). Failure is the frustration of not being able to express yourself and have fun because of circumstances outside of your control (inconsistencies between vulnerability and invulnerability between enemy and player animations) .

Simulation vs Metaphor v.2

2009-09-28T21:35:00.000+01:00

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.

Changing Tracks And Mixing It Up

2009-09-28T21:24:00.002+01:00

For various reasons a load of posts on here have been deleted and some have been edited and reposted.

I started this blog to talk more about games than I actually have so I want to refocus it a bit as a way to encourage me to write more about the game design issues I think about all damn day.

Some kind of normal service will be resumed in the coming days.

P.S. One of the devs over at Gearbox has promised that if you send him a picture of you buying Borderlands he will play it with you.

Oh yeah?

Check this out: if you buy Rogue Warrior I will play it with you. If you buy Rogue Warrior and make a donation to Child's Play, I will come to your house (so long as you live in the UK) and play it with you.

More Death From Above

2009-09-28T20:42:00.003+01:00

The first multiplayer trailer for Modern Warfare 2 just dropped like a payload from an AC-130. In the same way Infinity Ward started showing off Call of Duty 4’s multiplayer, they have chosen not to do a reveal trailer or a trailer that captures a broad swathe of gameplay. Instead they have chosen to show one mechanic of the game, which is an interesting way of showing people the experience.

This is not a video aimed at the same crowd as the single player reveal but rather it exists to stoke the excitement of people who like to tweak the hell out of their perk selection. Way back in 2007 the first glimpse of the multiplayer game we saw was of what looked like mad haxx0rz. One dude shot another dude THROUGH A WALL. This showed off the game’s bullet penetration and Deep Impact perk and was especially amazing as no game had done bullet penetration to that extent. In an RPG you might choose to buff your Intellect. In Call of Duty you choose to buff your ability to make bullets go through walls into other players.

The new Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer trailer shows off unlockable kill streak rewards. Call of Duty features a ‘the rich get richer’ mechanic where the better the player does, the more rewards they get. In COD 4 after 3 kills the player would get a UAV which would show the positions of every enemy player on the radar. After 5 kills the player gets to call in and target an airstrike and after 7 kills, an AI controlled helicopter gunship circles the map and targets enemy players with a devastating barrage of fire. In Modern Warfare 2 you get to pilot a Spooky gunship.

This system has caused some consternation amongst some players and designers. To be straight up, in the case of Call of Duty I don’t have a problem with the kill streak rewards because I’m not that bad at COD and will semi regularly unlock the kill streak rewards. It is an interesting problem though. Multiplayer shooters have a notoriously high barrier to entry because as soon as a player has played a map they have a large advantage against a new player for the obvious reasons. Newer players are weak and vulnerable in a system like COD’s where those players that have played more of the game are not only better in skill but unlock skills and weapons that allow them to more effectively gun enemies down and unlock circling death machines.

The same system occurs in single player games. Devil May Cry punishes players that struggle with the game by giving them fewer unlocks. Good players will gain more in game currency to buy better abilities and upgrades which will then ease them through the rest of the game. Worse players will gain less currency and thus be able to buy fewer upgrades and will have a tougher time getting through the game.

Some designers take the view that the player should be working hard to become better at the game. Ex Ninja Gaiden designer Tomonobu Itagaki deems that only a select few players should be able to enjoy his games fully as Ninja Gaiden takes a lot of hard work to understand and play. That is a fine view to take as long as you can accept the consequences of lower sales, a niche audience and critical reviews. FHM famously scored the original Xbox Ninja Gaiden 1/5. This is a perfect example of a review catering to the magazine’s readership because most readers of FHM simply won’t be able to grasp and enjoy Ninja Gaiden (I’m not being a snob here, I have never got past the second level of a Ninja Gaiden game) as it is not their play style.

Imagine you are new to Call of Duty and you try the multiplayer. You enter the game, emerge from your spawn point and a sniper drops you through a wall. You respawn, stick low in cover and work your way through a building. An enemy player strafes into the corridor and you both open fire. Despite both having assault rifles, he kills you first as he has unlocked a rifle with a higher rate of fire and has a perk which causes each bullet to do more damage. This gives him enough for an air strike. As you respawn the world explodes around you as the air strike rains down. This gives him the extra two kills he needs for the chopper. As you respawn again you see the names of your team scroll up on the killed list as the gunship hoses them. You creep down an alley and as you emerge, the chopper appears from over head and kills you again. You take the disk from the tray and trade it in. This is not a worse case scenario, this is can happen with worrying regularity.

Maybe you are thinking that this is just something you need to suck up and with time you will be the one calling in air strikes. This is true and after some persistence the rewards come thick and fast but you will potentially lose a large percentage of your player base after their first game. I am something of an advocate of levelling up systems that reward players with cool shit as I am capable of braving the meat grinder of online shooters to get to the sweet candy centre filled with red dot sights and gun ships. But what of the players entering the world of multiplayer for the first time and are being thrown to the heavily armed wolves with only a burst fire M16?

Videogame designers are almost all universally bad at tutorials and I struggle to think of any recent high profile game with a good tutorial.

Note: I use the word tutorial to describe a sequence of events where the game explicitly describes its mechanics to you. I am not counting the games that just drop you in and tell you to go.

Single player portions of games have yet to find an elegant way of explaining the mechanics of a shooter that uses every button on the pad in multiple ways and multiplayer shooters have yet to really start exploring tutorials. A notable entry into multiplayer tutorials is Team Fortress 2 with the intro movies it plays for each map. However these are often ignored and skipped past. Shadowrun had training missions against bots but just thinking about those actually pains me.

Call of Duty more than any online shooter needs a tutorial as it is deep and complex and draws in players who are experiencing online shooters for the very first time. Who knows, perhaps Modern Warfare 2 has a tutorial system but in the absence of any information, let's consider some potential solutions.

The following all use Call of Duty as an example and presume you have some knowledge of the mechanics present in the game.

Until the player ranks up to level 3:

A simple voice over description of the mode plays during a load screen. A non threatening voice is important so don't make it sound like Marcus Fenix.
Enemies are drawn with a Ghost Recon style diamond around them. Players can get used to the sillouhette of an enemy and recognise the shape of an enemy in prone and also behind cover.
All bullets have exaggerated tracer rounds to show exactly where the bullets are landing.
The radar could display all players at all times.
The game uses an under the hood system to determine if the player is exposed or in cover and displays either a warning message or a supportive message when this happens.
The grenades have a trail attached to them or a marker is displayed in the world to help predict where they will land.
Good firing points are indicated in the world.
Perks are displayed by colourising an enemy when the player is in combat with them to show if they are using Juggernaut etc.
Some kind of dialogue is shown when the player dies to explain what caused their death in simple language.
Surfaces are colourised and maybe labelled to show their resilience to bullet penetration.
A warning indicator shows that they are in the scope of a sniper.
A proximity warning indicates that claymores are near (not their exact lcoation though).
The game detects whenever someone calls you a "fag" and mutes them, filing automatic bad rep.

There are a hundred ways we can ease the transition into multiplayer without achingly boring tutorials. All can be optional and they could even fade away as the player becomes accustomed to them. Many of the above would never work in a single player context as they would smash any kind of fiction you are trying to build but a multiplayer environment allows us to not worry about whether we are colourising walls or drawing boxes round characters for the first few matches.

Due to this being the internet and knowing how people often misinterpret what someone writes, I want to be clear that I am not crapping on Call of Duty. Call of Duty is just a good game to talk about as it is at the fore front of modern shooters and its influence can be felt more and more.

Thanks to Sustainability on the Infinity Ward forums who I stole these images from. His analysis of the trailer is something to behold.

Making Your Game Smell Like a Bakery Revisited

2009-09-28T20:37:00.002+01:00

I have been on a bit of a cognitive science and consumer psychology kick with my reading at the moment in order to get out of the habit of reading nothing but game magazines and nerd fiction.

I chose to get into some light psychology about decision making and such like because psychology is often over looked by designers and many games are released where you can tell absolutely no thought has been given to the player’s psychological experience. Granted, principles of psychology and cognitive science are hard to get into a game as it can often produce intangible results when you are focused on hitting milestones.

I do not profess to be an expert or even well read on this subject but something I read in Martin Lyndstrom’s (the world’s leading brand expert and neural marketing evangelist) book, Buy-ology, relates to an aspect of games that is often the poorest part of the game.

Did you know that the so-called ‘new car smell’ comes from an aerosol? Or that the smell of flame grilled burgers in burger restaurants is pumped in through the ventilation system? Supermarkets have taken to placing bakeries near the front of the store because the smell of freshly baked bread makes people hungry and leads them to make impulse purchases above and beyond what they came in for. Some supermarkets that don’t have a bakery pump the smell of a bakery in through the ventilation.

The point is that companies start engineering your experience to be enjoyable as soon as you enter their building or start using their product. Most videogames present several minutes of frustration before you start enjoying the experience.

Contrary to popular opinion the ambiguous term gameplay starts as soon as you put the disk in the tray, not once the first level has loaded. Think about what developers and publishers make you sit through before the proverbial rubber hits the proverbial road and you are blowing heads off dudes. You will be forced to look at (often unskippable) legal screens, company logos and will often have to endure a loading screen FOR THE FRONT END. Once those precious minutes have been lost you will probably find that the main menu is confusing, hard to navigate and unresponsive or uninspiring.

To tackle the first issue, can we developers just admit that 99% of people don’t care who made the game they are playing? They don’t want to see a logo screen and they don’t care which middleware we used. Maybe it is my anger management issues but I am instantly enraged by seeing logo screens and legal text. My rage subsides a little bit if you are allowed to skip these screens but the damage has been done.

We are wrongly taught about the Seven Sins. There aren’t seven, there are eight. Having a loading screen for a menu is the eighth. Menus are not made better by loading 3D graphics or FMV. A good menu is clean, easy to read and navigate and also loads quickly. The player is not impressed by a feast of moving objects on the screen; they are impressed by a menu that lets them efficiently get into a game.

There is no bakery at the front of most games, just a few minutes of annoyances before we are able to play the game. We need to start giving the player enjoyment as soon as they insert the disk and stop irritating them with nonsense. I understand that people think certain messages have to be shown and that developers want to show off their outsourced logo animation but let’s think about the damage that does to the player experience.

Anyone that has played The Darkness will remember the opening level. Starbreeze wanted the game to load the level and start the game immediately if no save was detected, assuming it was the player’s first time playing the game. This opening level is pretty incredible and this would have made the first play of the game much more enjoyable. The ESRB, however, made the developer display the online warning message first and scotched the idea. Why couldn’t that have been shown when the player goes into multiplayer instead?

Why can’t company logos be shown in a more artistic way as well? A better idea than the logos before the main menu is to have them integrated into the opening sequence. The first person execution level in Call of Duty 4 has scrolling credits and the Activision and Infinity Ward logo could easily have been placed as graffiti on the walls that the player character passes by. Perhaps a character can where it on his t shirt? Perhaps it can be on a flag? Perhaps it can just be shown on screen as a credits roll?

There is also a psychological technique known as priming and this is where before someone experiences something they are primed to feel a certain way by the use of suggestive words or images. I recently went to see Derren Brown who is a master of hypnosis and manipulation. The climax of the show (no spoilers, don’t worry) involves the audience as a whole making a choice. This choice had been primed by suggestive words being used throughout the act without us knowing. The ‘trick’ worked flawlessly and everyone was left in awe at what he had manipulated us into doing.

In games there is no positive priming. Before a user starts the experience they must suffer logo screens and legal text and then a loading screen for what is often an unhelpful menu. Instead of taking steps to prime the player positively we give them a group of annoyances that, whilst in the scheme of things are slight, negatively prime the player before they even get to control their character.

By trying techniques influenced by cognitive science we can prime the player before they start level 1 and we can also create the supermarket bakery effect by rethinking what happens the second after the disk tray closes. We have a short amount of time to grab the player’s attention and must do all we can to fully immerse the player in the experience we have worked so hard to craft.

I'm Reloading, Cover Me.

2009-09-22T23:21:00.005+01:00

Warning: this isn't the most reasoned post in the world and isn't a necessarily a well thought out argument. I hope it makes my point though.

I've just put the bow on the ODST campaign (Normal difficulty on solo) and I feel like I can wade into to all the nonsense surrounding the reviews that all the internauts are getting so worked up about.

In summary for those who have not followed the parade of insanity, Halo 3 ODST isn't a valid game/worth the cost because:

It is around 6 hours long.
It doesn't bring much new to the table.
The adversarial mode is just Halo 3.
Looks a little bit rough.
Some other nonsense.

Leaving reviews out of it for the moment, I want to go through the list and talk about why I hate videogame ragenauts on the internet.

It is around 6 hours long

So we're judging art (which games are) based on length are we? You know, the problem I’ve always had with the Mona Lisa is that it only takes me a couple of seconds to look at it. Maybe if someone were to pad it out with more space I might like it more. Or maybe blow it up way big so I can't just walk into a room and see it. Make it so I have to crane my neck and take a few steps back. Maybe you could make it so big that you have to put it on the side of a building and I have to go outside and on to the roof of another building. Basically anything that adds length to the experience as that will be better.

To be blunt, anyone that judges a piece of art based on its length is missing the point.

It might only be 6 hours but what if those 6 hours are the most potent hit you’ve ever taken? Are these people saying that if it was longer and full of filler they’d be happier? Length does not mean better. ODST weighs in at whatever length it takes you to finish it and when I played through it (without counting the hours) it felt like a nice neat package. Small but perfectly formed. Sure, I could have gone for some more but that’s because I could play Halo all day.

If you say that you are only going to play through it once and be done and you feel cheated by that, cool. You are missing out on the coop, the collectibles and the harder difficulties in a game that can happily stand multiple playthroughs but good for you. I know some people don’t play online or have friends but that’s not the game’s fault.

It doesn’t bring much new to the table

Anyone that sits on an internet forum postulating that every game has to innovate needs to look at other entertainment mediums. My integrity as a designer was once called into question by someone who said they feared for the industry because I argued that Call of Duty World at War was still a good game despite not innovating very much. For every game that innovates I am more than happy to have a truck load that don’t because I play a lot of games and sometimes I am super cool with just shooting stuff in the same way people watch episode after episode of the same TV show.

In ODST’s case it may not bring much new to the table but by God does it do things right. I’m going to do a study on the level and combat design of the game soon so I don’t want to spoil that but I will say that Bungie have really honed their craft. Over the years they have experimented and iterated on their combat sandbox and every combat zone in ODST is the best they’ve ever done. The placement of cover, lines of sight to enemies and pick up placement is some of the best to ever grace a videogame. If you don’t like Halo’s combat model then sure, you’re not going to like this but for people that do enjoy Halo, the combat here is some of the most thrilling and fun Bungie have ever done.

I doubt you will ever get the feeling of the Silent Cartographer again but get over it.

The adversarial mode is just Halo 3

Do you ever stop to think about whether something is fun rather than how you can dismiss it in the comments section?

The adversarial may be Halo 3 but it is all of Halo 3. All the DLC is included. If, like me, you have already paid for all the DLC Bungie have put out then you are re-buying stuff but think of it like this: as angry as you are now, think back to all the fun you’ve had over the last two years with it and how it was money well spent. I can’t really offer an amazing argument that will change your mind about re-buying the Halo 3 multiplayer but there are poverty stricken children around the world who would do anything to be in a position to whine about the hardship of having the option to buy a luxury entertainment item. Grow up and get over it.

Yes, I realize the irony.

Halo 3’s versus multiplayer is still awesome and is still the multiplayer destination of choice for a lot of people. Just because it isn’t new, doesn’t mean it detracts from the product.

It looks a little bit rough

Ok, you got me there. The visuals are a bit jaggy and the textures a bit blurry. That being said, I adore the lighting in this game. In places it is literally stunning. It really compliments the art direction of the game and there were times when I just stopped and looked at the vistas. Other times I was having fun actually playing the game and wringing my hands about the fact that it doesn’t do native 720p couldn’t have been further from my mind.

Some other nonsense

This is the bit that really bugs me.

Most internet commenter posters and forum members are close minded and are either trying to look cool online or judge and comment about a game they either haven’t played or that has irked them for some random reason. I have commented before about the bizarre mindset some gamers have where they treat every game as something that has to justify itself to them and if the game doesn’t meet some arbitrary standard they have set they deem it offensive and proceed to tell the world about it as if anyone cares.

Someone once told me that Rainbow Six Vegas 2 isn’t a sequel as it doesn’t use a new engine, it recycles some assets and doesn’t add a whole lot new to the franchise. This is like saying that Episodes 5 and 6 aren’t sequels as they both used cameras, the same actors and some of the same props as Episode 4.

In summary

I realize this isn’t the most reasoned post I have ever done and I’m sure I come off as the ODST Defense Force or whatever but I wish more people would realize that 99% of people buying games are not the people whining about the review score and that these fools didn’t garner so much discussion on podcasts, news sites and blog posts.

It annoys me that at the launch of an excellent game, the discussions I’m having with people are about the comments section in the Edge review rather than how awesome the first time you meet a pair of Hunters is. I was basically asked to defend the game by people that haven’t played it but are aware of the reviews and people’s feelings about said reviews.

I’m not saying the game is without flaws and I am not saying that people shouldn’t be discussing all aspects of the game but I wish all close mindedness and immaturity on display on the internet could suddenly become intelligent discussion. Look at the Dyack/Neogaf debacle where a highly intelligent and interesting developer managed to get dragged into avatar wars with forum trolls and that became a news story that overshadowed the games launch.

We want to know why the ‘mainstream’ doesn’t discuss games intelligently. Perhaps it is because the fans of games can’t do it either. This is a quote from the comments section on the Edge review:

“As I haven't played the game, it's hard to comment accurately. But I must admit that my first response, after reading the text of the review, was absolute shock at the fact that the final score was a 9. The review read like a 7.”

Apparently commenting accurately about a game means debating which random number someone gave it.

Jesus wept.

The wine has worn off now and I don’t know if I have properly made my point so let me leave it at this: instead of judging games against random standards based on outdated preconceptions of what a game should offer for a certain price and how you are offended by stupid things like the time it takes someone that isn’t you to complete the game, how it doesn’t change the world and what number some dude wrote at the end of a block of text, judge a game based on how much fun you’ve had with it. And please stop acting so offended by it on internet forums. There’s a whole world out there to be really offended by and worked up about.

You Make Me Break Out

2009-09-22T12:54:00.002+01:00

Time for some super niche game design folks!

I want to talk about the importance of animation breakouts in shooting games as some games still ship without them.

So what is an animation breakout (from now on referred to as an anim breakout)?

Anim breakouts are points in an animation that are flagged to allow the player to trigger the playing of another animation. This might be at set points in the animation or the entire animation might allow this. They are used to allow the player to react to situations in the game and change what their character is doing. Depending at which point the animation is broken out of, the benefit of the animation is still conferred to the player despite the entire animation not playing.

Example:

Let’s say that the reload anim for an assault rifle comprises the following actions:
The player character ejects the clip.
The player character draws a new clip from their body.
The player character puts the new clip in.
The player character cocks the rifle.
The player character returns the gun to normal position.

This animation will only take two or so seconds but in a fast paced shooting game, those two seconds can see you killed if you can’t react in time. If you can’t break out of the animation being played to return fire, throw a grenade or melee kill you will feel cheated and frustrated. For this reason, designers allow you to break out of animations like a reload to respond to the game as it changes states (targets present themselves, you come under attack etc.).

Breakouts also allow for a higher level of play as you can (for want of a better word) combo actions. In Battlefield Bad Company every weapon reload has a cocking animation but counts as fully reloaded as soon as the fresh clip is loaded. The heal animation of plunging a syringe of adrenaline into your chest also has about half a second of animation that is played once the syringe has hit your body and you count as being healed. Thanks to the anim breakouts you can hit reload and as soon as the new clip is in the weapon you have full ammo. You then hit the weapon swap button to bring up your syringe. This cuts the cocking animation short and shaves half a second off the reload time. You hit the use syringe button and as soon as the syringe hits your chest, you are healed. You can then hit the weapon swap button to get back to your assault rifle and cut the syringe anim short, losing another half second. In total you have saved a second from the total anim time and that second can cost you a kill/death/the game.

Many games still don’t ship with anim breakouts and this is one of the many reasons reviewers may refer to controls as being frustrating and clunky. Often titles with anim breakouts have controls that are called tight or responsive when they are being discussed and this can often make or break a title’s success. The simple act of being able to break out of a reload to throw a grenade in Call of Duty elevates the ‘fun’ a player has as the game responds in a way that they want.

When a player picks up a game and starts playing they are immediately given a world of choices and decisions to make. As this world changes with the state change cycle, players want to respond and act with total immediacy. Games that don’t let you break out of animations inhibit the player’s ability to react to new choices and decisions and this lets frustration creep in and the player will complain that the game has bad controls.

Not only is it important to have anim breakouts, it is also important that the purpose of the animation is applied to the player at the appropriate point. In the Battlefield example above, as soon as the player character has fully inserted the clip into the weapon, the weapon counts as being reloaded even though the cocking part of the animation may not have been played as the player has broken out of it. Sometimes games don’t apply the benefit of the action unless the anim has completely played out and once again, this is incredibly frustrating.

I’m sure to many people this article is fairly obvious and elementary but having played a number of games in the past few months that don’t have this basic user functionality in, I wanted to post something about it.

Box Arts

2009-09-09T20:20:00.002+01:00

Here are some more box arts that I like. Come, gather round and Regard Things.

Katamari Forever (European flavour).

WET.

WET as a whole is very stylish and should you play the game/demo, take a moment to appreciate the licensed music in it. You can listen the track from the demo here. It is an unofficial Youtube version and most of the soundtrack appears to be there for good or ill. While searching for the title of the track I wanted in Google, I was surprised to learn that most of the hits for dodgy game OST sharing sites are Russian. I had no idea they are so into game OSTs.

My Guerrillas, Let Me Show You Themz.

2009-08-29T10:38:00.003+01:00

Like a futuristic sledgehammer to your minds my Red Faction Guerrilla review is up over at NTSC-UK.

I had a lot of fun with this game and can't wait to see what Volition do with the series.

As always the rest of my reviews can be hit up here.

I head to PAX next week so if you're lucky you may be getting daily posts. I am also going to endeavour to write a proper feature about it.

Finally, Some Good Box Art

2009-08-16T08:41:00.002+01:00

You may remember that a while ago I talked about box art. Heady times indeed.

2K has recently revealed the box art for Borderlands (a post apocalyptic shooter RPG for those not in the know) and it is probably the best box art ever.

Come, let us regard it.

This box art is beautiful and somewhat surprising. Where is the hero? Where is the gritty backdrop? Instead one of the low level enemies is miming shooting himself in the head and the blood splat shows a glimpse of vehicle combat from the game. It's nice to see someone doing something like this.

I'll also mention the Halo 3 ODST box art.

I really like this box art and not just because the word Halo features on it. I think it captures some of the atmosphere of a lone special ops trooper in a hostile city. It thankfully isn't like the Halo 3 box art where all I can see is Master Chief tipping over.

New Gadget Get!

2009-08-10T21:17:00.002+01:00

I've added a new gadget to the of the old, heh heh, blog where I will list the games I'm currently playing. As I update it you will get a post like this:

I'm currently a fairly wide selection of games. I'm rocking import goodness like Blazblue with my girl and revisiting RV62 and SR2 with friends in coop. Sometimes you forget just how good some games are. Saints Row 2 is a total masterpiece and the fun me and Phil have in coop is just crazy. We are currently tearing it up in Ronin territory and the amount of fun we are having can only be measured in increments of 'hella'. Rainbow Six is a game that is have played a lot of at home and at work and I never get sick of it.

I have a weakness for anything that has "2D" and "fighter" in its description. Unfotunately that weakness usually involves me either buying them and playing them once or indeed, not at all. There are currently 3 different 2D fighters sat unopened on my shelves. Fortunately Rachel has taken a real shine to it and so our Sundays are spent taking the fight to Xbox Live where we encounter an ungodly amount of people playing Jin. It's like SF4 and Ken all over again. Except I'm still not adept enough at it to counter him all that well.

Dynasty Warriors 6 Empires is a game that is thoroughly excellent but will be over looked. People need to check out DW games and this is an excellent one to jump into.

And then there is Damnation. As a designer I take my gaming literacy pretty seriously and will always find time to play bad games. There is often a lot to learn from them and Damnation is a game with many, many problems but at the centre there is a small glimmer of genius. Blue Omega bit off way more than they could chew with the tech and the combat designer needs a guiding hand but there are many interesting things to take away from it. It also has the most gratuitous cleavage I have ever seen in a game (I own and have played both version of Dead or Alive Volleyball).

Anyone want to talk about what they are playing in the comments? It's strange saying this but I don't get to talk to people enough about the games they are playing.

Bionic Assassin

2009-07-12T10:09:00.002+01:00

My reviews for Bionic Commando and Velvet Assassin went up recently over at NTSC-UK.

As ever, writing with those guys was a great experience.

I also want to point you to the review we recently put up of Rainbow Six Vegas and the ensuing comments thread.

Many people questioned why a review of a (nearly) three year old game went up now and why it criticised the game so much. Pretty much everyone in thread disagreed with the text and score with one person saying that because because it goes into Metacritic we should be embarrassed about putting a review up that so many consider 'wrong'.

Rather than being considered an embarrassment, it should be considered a celebration. NTSC-UK publishes reviews that have something to say, no matter the game or the release date. When reading them I tend to look at reviews as a discussion between myself and the reviewer and that reading their critique I inform, enforce and explore my own feelings and views on the game.

I will go ahead and say that I disagree with many of the points in the R6V review but it is a fascinating read because the reviewer's view point is so opposed to my own. He came at the game from a totally different angle to me and that is super interesting to me.

When we are subjectively reviewing a subjective piece of art, can someone be wrong?

I would argue not.

Of Juarez and it's Call

2009-07-04T11:00:00.002+01:00

Another huge delay between blog posts.

Remember the carefree days of GDC where I would post multiple times a day and you would lap the posts up like the salivating dogs that you are? Happy times.

Life has been incredibly busy for multiple reasons and I have been hard pressed to actually sit in front of my Xbox, let alone write some ish. Last week I failed to get any achievements. I know, right?

I have actually instructed my family that if I am offline from Xbox Live for more than seven days, I am probably dead. Or dying. Or wishing I was dead. Last week I was offline for four days straight. They had already pre-emptively warned the relevant authorities.

So, like I say I haven't had a chance to play a lot of games recently so I'm still slowly plodding through RF Guerrilla but last night I managed to get an hour in on Call of Juarez Bound in Blood.

The original Call of Juarez completely fascinated me. The developers Techland have flashes of stunning genius but can't maintain a constant level of polish across an entire game. Like From Software, Techland create games that are very much bound to the intended atmosphere of the game and they don't necessarily conform to game design conventions.

The level design places a great deal of faith in the player buying into the scenario and moving through the sequence without trying to break it. Set pieces will trigger and events will happen regardless of whether you are in the right place or not and if played 'properly' (as much as I shudder to type that) the game is enthralling experience.

It might not be the strongest FPS out there but it is rare in that it attempts to craft a first person experience that relies heavily on story and actions other than shooting to draw you in and through.

In the first chapter you enter a quick draw shoot out with a law man and instead of just blasting him away like any other enemy, the camera goes third person and focuses on your character's hand and holster. You can manipulate the hand with the right stick and the objective of the mini game is to wait until you hear the town bell toll before drawing your pistol and not blowing your load too early. My mouth was agape with how simple but amazing it was.

After that you drive a stage coach (complete with horses) through buildings.

My hetero life-mate Beast has requested that I post more than about games. I'm not sure what about though.

Stay tuned for a post this week which will hopefully be off topic as they say.

Smashing Their Stupid Shit into Tiny Pieces

2009-06-22T21:17:00.003+01:00

Red Faction troubles me.

When not playing it I am haunted by visions of a trench coated hero standing amidst a pile of other people's property, hammer clasped in hand with said property reduced to a state approaching nothingness. Around me, overall clad rebels cheer at the fact that I exist and that I am hitting stuff. Continuously.

When I am playing it, I tool around smashing stuff up marvelling at how some people just get it.

I didn't use to think very much of Volition. Red Faction and it's sequel were so-so shooters and Saints Row drove me up the wall. Saints Row 2 on the other hand is a masterpiece. I use the term masterpiece in most cases as a subjective rather than objective term. When I say masterpiece it means I fell in love with something completely and then I have to explain the reasons why.

Saints Row 2 knows exactly what it is and then revels completely in the execution of this vision.

Saints Row 2 allows you to create a hermaphrodite who is tasked with throwing C4 at ninjas and pirates WHO ARE HAVING A TURF WAR. It never takes itself at all seriously and it is brimming with excellently crafted content.

Red Faction Guerrilla is another excellently crafted vision. It is more serious in tone than SR2 (but no less self aware) and Volition have obviously struggled without the ninjas and pirates and the excesses of crime comedy but have otherwise very competently filled a game world that feels coherent and whole.

I started out not having much fun as I was just running around, smashing stuff up and not really enjoying the combat and getting killed a lot. The gun play is lifeless and best avoided but the puzzle gameplay of demolishing buildings is fiendishly excellent. I found that to best enjoy the game I needed to knock it down to Easy so I could just run into a base, hit a bunch of fools with a sledgehammer and pick apart their buildings by identifying and crippling the most structurally important walls.

This post serves three purposes:

I felt like writing something.
I wish to evangelise RFG.
I want people to start engineering their games to cater to the player's needs.

Decide on a vision and stick to it. Make the core concept excellent and then deal with anything that you didn't have time to make amazing by providing options that allow the player to adjust their experience. Difficulty settings should be allowed to be changed at any point during the game. In RFG's case, I don't think this blocks any achievements either.

Red Faction Guerrilla is a brilliantly focused game that never strays from it's strengths and marries mayhem with very thoughtful destruction and it derserves to sell by the truck load.

I also want to talk about Fuel seeing as quite a few people are slamming it.

I love Fuel.

It isn't the best racer and it has a fair few flaws but I want to point a couple of things out:

It is beautiful and huge.
You race through the centre of a tornado.

Don't listen to the haters and give it a chance.

Over and out.

Outbursts Revisited

2009-06-16T19:56:00.005+01:00

The last blog was pretty angry. I have been having a few outbursts recently. There are many reasons why but I feel bad about not properly explaining the Red Faction and Prototype comments (I stand by everything I said about that news post).

Note, the post this refers to has since been removed. Professionalism and what not.

Creating a great game is incredibly hard. For a studio aiming to produce triple A content on a current gen platform there are incredible and massive barriers to overcome. You have to create tech that is up to and maybe above a certain standard, generate a huge amount of art, get the backing of a publisher, create a solid and/or innovative design and then hone the gameplay. That is before the natural problems of dealing with a team of 100+ humans arise.

Prototype and Red Faction Guerrilla are both fantastic games. Their core concepts are exceptionally well realised and are amazing experiences. Special mention must go to the tech in each games. Wow, just wow.

Anyway, my problem with both games is that the difficulty curve doesn't match the game progression. Both games have a number of quirks that are incredibly unfair in certain situations and I specifically want to talk about Prototype in this regard.

For all their victories, videogames have never solved the super hero problem well. In a traditional videogame that has all of the trappings of a videogame (specifically a health bar in this case), super heroes often cause ludonarrative dissonance. How can Wolverine die? Why is Superman taking damage from things that aren't kryptonite?

Prototype runs into this problem as you play a character that is basically a god. He may not have the ability to create matter (maybe I didn't unlock that) but he outclasses every other character in the game. He has an overwhelming amount of powers and many of these dramatically change the game.

As a designer you are faced with a problem. How do you kill a god?

In this case they chose a high level answer and a low level answer.

For the high level they created an engine that can handle Godzilla. That is to say that at any time the screen can be full of fleeing civilian AI, military infantry and vehicle AI, zombie horde AI and monster AI all interacting. It is total chaos and it looks stunning. For the player it means there's probably one hundred things all trying to kill you at once. Therein lies a massive player weakness; chaos. Sometimes you just get overwhelmed, can't crowd control, get pinned and beaten to a pulp. It is frustrating but one of the few ways the designers can actually get you killed.

The low level solution (by which I mean discreet values or mechanics) is that in certain animations during which you have no control, you can be hit and killed. When hijacking a vehicle or consuming something for health you can be hit and knocked out of said animation. You can choose to enter into the animation but due to the zoomed in camera during the lengthy animations you cannot see what is going on and can be hit by the Hunters (which are really annoying as they have very little group AI to stagger their attacks) or missiles or tank shells and lose all of your health. This is really frustrating and eventually forced me to give up on the game.

Prototype is a great game and there is a lot of fun to be had but I am done with difficulty spikes and dying through no fault of my own.

I must reiterate though, Prototype is a great game.

On the subject of writing about games (last post), I want to link you to four of my favourite pieces of writing about games.

Ex GFW editor Sean Molloy talking about personal gaming.

Tim Rogers talking about Super Mario Bros. 3 as a memoir (read all 7 pages or die).

A review of Dead Space by Tim Rogers (I adore Dead Space BTW).

Leigh Alexander talking about the completely misguided Silent Hill Homecoming reviews.

I have also been wanting to pimp MC Lars for a while but haven't found a reason so whatever, here it is. He is one of my favourite rappers and it has been a joy to watch him grow as an artist. His new album is thoroughly excellent and it worth buying the physical CD for the emotional liner notes that catches you completely off guard. So here's a video (it's about videogames y'all).

Whoever Wins, We Lose

2009-05-27T19:07:00.003+01:00

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.

Asses and Elbows People

2009-05-20T19:33:00.002+01:00

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.

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

2009-05-13T19:31:00.004+01:00

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.

Simulation vs. Metaphor

2009-05-10T14:24:00.004+01:00

Today I Die

2009-05-08T10:01:00.003+01:00

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.

Bonding Whilst Killing

2009-05-07T19:15:00.005+01:00

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.

When Will Tycho Stop Being Right?

2009-05-06T21:57:00.005+01:00

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.

Me and My Boy Fiddy

2009-05-05T13:19:00.002+01:00

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!

Of Unlock Keys and Cammy's Ass

2009-04-30T14:05:00.000+01:00

First order of business is that Oli Clarke Smith Presents an Oli Clarke Smith Game: Rogue Warrior has been featured on a podcast! This comes courtesy of Idle Thumbs and the discussion starts about 30 minutes in.

Hit it up here.

Thanks to James for the hook up.

Myself and Ben have done another discussion. This may be the last one if Ben doesn't learn how to fucking type. God gave us capital letters and punctuation for a reason. This one is about DLC and specifically value perception of downloadable content.

As always, if any of you want to be involved with these, let me know. Ben and I have got ideas for a more quick fire version of this that would be suitable for multiple people to join in with. I also crave feedback on these.

Plans for a podcast are afoot as one of my hetero life mates (in this case Phil) has offered to produce for me and also do a theme tune.

Enjoy!

Chopemon says:
Welcome to the second discussion. I'm Oli Clarke Smith and with me again is...

Ben says:
Benjamin R. H. Gouldstone

Chopemon says:
This week we're going to hit up the topic of DLC and some of the recent issues that have come about because of it.
First up is attaching value to content. The recent Resident Evil 5 versus pack caused a bit of an internet storm when two new game modes clocked in at 400 MS points for a 2 meg file with many people believing it was an unlock key. I think people reacted badly to it because of the file size even though it was not and unlock. How do you feel about paying for just code and no new levels or characters?

Ben says:
I wasn't best pleased to be honest
I got the multiplayer pack, and I knew what I was getting for my money. The problem with it, is it feels like you are being ripped off even though it isn’t an unlock code. People realise that that extra 2 meg of code would have fit on and should have been on the disk anyway.
As far as pricing goes, why should we be getting charged for something we should be entitled to?

Chopemon says:
How are we entitled to it? It is Capcom's product, they can sell it to us as they like. Their excuse is that it was created outside of the main game. As you know, there is usually a fair amount of time between a game hitting beta and it getting released. It could well have been done in that time. Also, in this instance, Capcom games tend to retail at a slightly lower price point than other games so maybe they felt that they could charge for an optional extra mode?

Ben says:
I would agree, if the Mercs mode wasn’t in there. This might sound strange, but I would have been happier paying the price I did for the original game without Mercs mode, then paying more to download it as an add-on with the multiplayer included. The reason is the cost doesn’t reflect the content. In terms of value of content, often DLC feels rather wayward in pricing.
For example Psychonauts on classics is 1200 points (I think) and the 2 meg of code for Resi 5 was 400, so far as value for money is concerned, it just doesn’t feel right.
What do you think?

Chopemon says:
Playing devil's advocate on this, your perceived value of it doesn't feel right. Your Doublefine boner aside, pricing subjective experiences is always going to be hard. For some people the value of Resi 5 will out weigh the cost of a full game. I am happy to pay any amount of money for something that I am going to enjoy. This does lead on to the subject of unlock keys though and I'll admit that after hating the Soul Calibur 4 bullshit, I got some of the Street Fighter costume packs. I was happy to pay for them despite them being unlocks. The sad fact is that unlocks are the only way to sell online costumes though. MS don't allow you to patch in content so it has to already be on the disk.
It hurts but Cammy's ass helped me get over it.

Ben says:
Well I can understand that, it gave me my Doublefine boner as you mentioned
It hurts because it can be seen as the problem of the dev or MS, its either the dev’s fault for locking the content, or MS' for not allowing the patching. The non patching front can be seen as a plus, because it stops devs releasing for the most part broken and unfinished games, but that stops as you said content being patched "in".
I think sometimes the value of the content is taken too much from the effort put in by the dev not the value to the consumer if that makes sense?
What was stopping that Soul Calibur costume rubbish from being a 10 point download?

Chopemon says:
You can still release broken games (Gears of War 2) and patch code but because there is no built in hard drive you are not allowed to patch content.
You can't do 10 point downloads, MS have several pricing tiers. I think the problem is that DLC is still a fairly new content and people aren't entirely used to paying for digital content. That doesn't excuse the feeling of being ripped off by withheld content. I recently paid 1600 points for The Lost and Damned and despite that being relatively expensive for content it still felt completely worth it. What's the best piece of DLC you've grabbed?

Ben says:
Specifically on Xbox?

Chopemon says:
Give me an Xbox one but anything else that you've had would be cool.

Ben says:
I've gotta say lost and damned, because it made me appreciate GTA 4 again. I think that can be a good indicator of really strong DLC, it makes you want to play the game again. At no point playing lost and damned did I feel like it was lacking, it was polished, it played well and the feeling it gave you was strong like GTA 4, but different enough to make it new.
Other than that it would have to be Portal over steam, even though I aced it in pretty much 1 lunch hour
What about you, what was your best?

Chopemon says:
Lost and Damned is obviously amazing but outside of that the Rainbow Six Vegas and GRAW DLC has been amazing. I love those games and Ubisoft did a great job of supporting them. Some friends and I have recently been playing around with the Burnout Paradise DLC and that has been wonderfully supported. Which allows me to segue into release windows.
How important do you think DLC timing is? Too close to the game's release and you get the Resi 5 problem and too late and you get the Saints Row 2 content. In the transient world of gaming people have moved on from SR2 and I don't think it's doing well.

Ben says:
It’s strange you should mention Saints Row 2, because for me, recently chatting with my friends on live, there has been a new buzz going around. I don’t know if it’s the DLC, or if its people being tired of brown games but its there. But that said, timing is key. Taking the Resi 5 angle, if that same DLC would have come out 2 months from now, for the same price, I would happily get it.
I think lost and damned hit the nail on the head, but that’s off the back of a successful game, Saints Row 2 did ok, but it was sent to die against GTA 4, so it started bad and could only get worse. With all the furore around the episodic GTA 4 content, it’s no wonder it got lost to the ether.
Something that adds to a game’s longevity is great, but it has to come at the right time. After 4 weeks of GTA 4, clawing to the end, I’m ready for a rest. Rockstar gave that to the consumer and the lapped it up

Chopemon says:
That's like saying Burnout was sent to die after Forza, SR and GTA are very different games. I've regularly kept up with the Halo 3 DLC but not the Call of Duty or Gears DLC because very few of my friends play those online.
Some games just work really well with DLC and others don't. What would you like to see happening more with DLC?

Ben says:
The pricing reflecting the content, but from the angle of the people paying for it. The Microsoft brackets aren’t flexible enough to accommodate everything and as far as I know there is no regulation of pricing outside of the developer’s discretion. I think the key phrase is value for money, if I’m paying the equivalent cost of 30% of the original game; I want the content to reflect that cost
What do you think the next logical step is with DLC, so far as regulating content and pricing?

Chopemon says:
MS advise on pricing but have brackets you have to fall in with. I'm hoping that consumers vote with their wallets and we see content reflecting this. I'd like to see new models emerge as well. Ubisoft demoed DLC with their first Naruto game and that was pretty rad. I want stuff that revitalises a game and not have it focus so much on multiplayer. I know multiplayer is cheaper than single player but stuff like the Prince of Persia and Mirror's Edge content would be really good.

Ben says:
I have to agree, things like new weapons. Thinking about it, what they did with the re-releases with the original Resi would be interesting as DLC. The original game "re imagined" with puzzles swapped round and different camera angles. I know it’s a simplistic definition, but that sort of thing gives a game new life.
I play a lot of single player games and I almost prefer it, I want to get lost in the game and have it feel special for me alone. Anything that can give me that experience again or at least extend it cant be a bad thing. Map packs and new perks are great, but it’s not always something I want
What about themes and gamer pictures, what's your take on them?

Chopemon says:
I occasionally buy gamerpics but never themes. The trouble with gamerpics is that they are usually over priced and shit.

Ben says:
I think they are dying a death, with the new avatars, no one really wants them. I can’t think of 1 person other than you that has a gamerpic instead of an avatar shot because they are free

Chopemon says:
But soon they will charge for avatar clothing as well.

Ben says:
You can bet, but the systems already there. your face doesn’t change as much as your clothing does, but I don’t think its something that people are gonna go mad over. I think extra customisation options for themes might be a good idea. I have the premium sf4 theme, and the Chun Li image is on marketplace or something and for my main dash its Ryu’s ugly monkey face.
If I could swap it around, I would be much happier to pay for them.
The other thing is you don’t always know what you’re really getting.
There needs to be images, videos anything to illustrate better what DLC really is and what you are getting. I've been let down too many times, getting something, and it not being anything I really wanted

Chopemon says:
On that rather depressing note we'll wrap this up. There have been some good points raised, thanks very much Ben.

Ben says:
Thank you Oli, it’s been a pleasure.

Sharkman of the Delta

2009-04-27T18:43:00.000+01:00

The game I'm working on got announced today. Rogue Warrior is a first/third person cover shooter based on Richard Marcinko. Richard Marcinko is a famed Navy SEAL who could not only beat up Chuck Norris but he'd rip his fucking arms off.

Demo Dick is about as maverick as it gets and he pissed off the American army so much they threw him out despite being one of the best soldier they ever had. He then formed Red Cell, a group designed to test military defenses. He proceeded to break into Air Force One and inspire Dead Cell from MGS2. I like Marcinko because he is the action hero incarnate but without bullshit stunts.

One of the highlights of the project came the other day when I was asked to write some script for Mickey Rourke. Mickey fucking Rourke. He will be reading the script I wrote. How fucking incredible is that? I assume I'll be getting blown at Hollywood parties soon.

The game has been great to work on and I want to peep you a link and screens.

Preview at Eurogamer.

Game Discussion ver 1.0

2009-04-22T19:52:00.000+01:00

Last week I teased a something exciting, something I had cooking. Here it is.

I am a big fan of listening to discussions so I decided to start hosting these discussions. This is a trial run. We all have to begin somewhere.

I enlisted my comrade Ben to talk about a subject over MSN. The following text is largely unedited; I tidied up some of my spelling and Ben's punctuation (full stops aren't something that happen to other people) but that's about it. We could have gone on for longer but I'm very aware of internet attention spans so we cut it short. We are going to do at least one more as just the two of us but I really want to open it up to more people.

If you want to take part in one of these please let me know. If you have any feedback about length, quality or content let me know.

Chopemon says:

Ok, this is the first of a hopefully successful discussion roundtable with developers about game issues. I am Oli Clarke Smith aka Chopemon and today we're going to be hitting up the subject of demos. With me is...

Ben says:

Ben Gouldstone, aka Yaw Momma on Xbox Live.

Chopemon says:

Ben and I have worked together in the scary world of development and to start we're going to talk about how to demo 60 seconds of fun in a demo. Ben, why don't you take it away.

Ben says:

well from my perspective, when i start up a demo the first thing I want to see is gameplay
too many times I've downloaded something and I'm barraged with menus and options and lots of stuff I don't need to see. In terms of demos, my personal opinion is that it should send the player right into the thick of it, if you are going to get a punter to buy the game, do it with the experience of playing the game, nothing else. What do you think?

Chopemon says:

I think the problem a lot of demos have is that they barrage the player with a crazy loading screen with insane controls from the start. That is off putting to a lot of people. I see it, decide that it is mostly nonsense and just try to pick it up as I play.
Then there's usually a cutscene. Cutscenes are silly in demos.
I tend to skip them so I can experience the story in the full game. Then you are in the unique problem of demoing gameplay.

Ben says:

I agree, I can understand why some companies do use cutscenes in demos, they want to set the scene for the gamer so they don't just feel dumped in the deep end. I think the problem stems from developers making demos from a developers perspective, not from the angle of the person who is going to play the game.
The average gamer doesn't care how much time a company puts into their cutscenes, mo cap or any of that stuff, if the game that follows it doesn't cut the mustard.

Chopemon says:

By demoing a cutscene you are placing some value on the cutscene, you are telling the player that this cutscene is a selling point of the game. Most games have a laughable story and cutscenes are generally poorly animated and rushed. Look at the Wheelman demo. That game is about driving fast and jumping between cars, not story.
There is almost no value in showing a games cutscenes. But maybe that is our perspective. As designers we only care about how it plays, not the fan-fic style story they are trying to tell.

Ben says:

I think one of the strongest recent demos was Resi 5. The reason it worked so well for me, was the fact that there was a small amount of exposition, so you understood what was going on, there is already a well established back story with the franchise, so you know what to expect and it let you play the game without stopping you to explain boring control schemes.
Gamers are smarter than a lot of developers realise, they know how most games work and can figure it out for themselves. I'm dreaming of a day when you fire up a demo for a racing game, and it starts you mid race doing 100mph and just says, sink or swim.

Chopemon says:

Nice point. Resi 5 worked because of the imagery. People react well to being surrounded by zombies. We know that situation and we know (kind of) what to do.
The Resi 5 demo did what Microsoft suggested a couple of years ago; demo the best 15 minutes, not the first 15 minutes. The Resi 5 demo is balls to the wall and shows the best bits of the combat and sells the mechanics of the game well. In comparison, it takes about an hour to get through the Too Human demo. Do a lot of people care enough to put that much time into a demo?

Ben says:

I didn't.
It almost killed me playing that. It makes you feel dumb. I think that's a crime a lot of demos suffer from, is a lack of active learning. Look at Burnout Paradise, you start the game and it tells you, this is a map, this is a car, this is a short cut, this is a road blah blah blah.
I loved it when you could play a game, and not know everything that was going to happen or everything that you could do. The Burnout Paradise demo just gave you everything and it put me off. Which is sad, because the full game is great if you miss all the tutorial stuff.

Chopemon says:

I agree. Developers haven't completely honed how to make a demo. It is hard though. How do you sell your game in a small amount of time whilst explaining the controls and providing a learning curve? Tutorials are boring and are normally badly done anyway but games have such complex control schemes that they are hard to just dump on the player. The only demo I can think of that got the balance between tutorial and freedom of play right was Crackdown.

Ben says:

You're right, the fun to be had from that game was the fun you found. The play it your way approach is great for demos, because there is no punishment, you aren't affecting high scores or ranks. I think the reason Crackdown worked so well as a demo, was that the best aspect, or at least the most addictive aspect of that game was free running.
The ability to leap as high as a sky scraper never got old, and that's why it worked, because the most fun part of the game was there from second 1 in the demo.

Chopemon says:

I want to ask, what would you say is your demo to purchase rate? Mine is pretty high. Regardless of me buying most games anyway, my purchases are often affirmed by a demo. Recently I was umming and ahhing about Red Faction Guerilla but the demo sold me on it.

Ben says:

I wouldn't say it was that high for me, there are few games that have really sold themselves to me based on a demo. Most of the time I know if I want to buy a game before I play the demo, the demo usually just confirms my thoughts. Sometimes it almost works the other way, warning me off something i didn't want
I can honestly say the last time I remember a demo selling me the game was Grim Fandango;
I played the demo and wanted to know more.
For me, Red Faction Guerilla put me off.
I'm very much into character development and narrative and plot in games. If done right I think they are just what a game needs to draw emotion from a player. I know its hard but it is possible. When i played the Red Faction demo, I thought, oh cool, you can smash everything.... now what? It just felt like same old same old.
To me anyway
Why did it excite you so much?

Chopemon says:

I guess I just how it appealed to the lowest sense of fun in videogames. I could blow stuff up and it looked real pretty. It was just mindless fun, a good fun sand box, playful experience. I tend to be like you, my decision to buy has been reaffirmed. I buy so many games that demos become a reassurance rather than a converter.
Did you used to pick up demo disk magazines before the rise of online demos?

Ben says:

Yeah I did, much more for PC than console though. I think it was just the range of available demos. I used to install all of them and then give each one 5 mins, if it didn't have me buy then I dumped it. I would even sometimes replay a demo as soon as I finished it because it drew me in so much.
I think part of it is the fact that we know so much about games that are going to come out these days there's no surprise any more.

Chopemon says:

I can't remember how many times I replayed the Starcraft demo mini campaign.
I think for us we already know what the game is but the vast majority of people often have no idea what a game is until they play a demo. We keep our ears pretty close to the ground and watch all the videos and read the previews. A lot of people don't. That's why I wonder if demos do enough to sell themselves.

Ben says:

You hit on it earlier, but don't you think timing in demos is sometimes dubious?
Like with the Too Human demo?
Way too long, where as some don't even let you get started.
The Mirrors Edge demo worked well for me length wise, but it was punishing, making you re-run sections over and over if you pressed a wrong button.

Chopemon says:

That was the game though. The game was brutal if you were 'bad' at it. The worst bit of that demo was the tutorial! I enjoy demos like Ninja Blade and FEAR where they do remix levels. The levels are chopped and changed so that you play the demo, enjoy some excellent buts but the levels in the game are still fresh and relatively unspoilt.
My last point for this topic is where do demos go in the future? Microsoft TRCs don't allow save games but the PS3 TRCs do. This allowed the orbs collected in the Ninja Gaiden Sigma demo to carry over to the full game. More linking of demos to games could be vital in the demo to purchase rate so they don't feel throw away. What would you like to see demos start doing?

Ben says:

I like the idea of linking demos to the released titles, some people might see it as a cheeky marketing scheme though. I think more than anything I want to see more trust in gamers, in terms of skill and intelligence. Let them work some things out for themselves, surprise them.

Chopemon says:

That is an excellent closing comment. I think this went pretty well for a first effort. Thanks a lot Ben, good to have you aboard for this.

Ben says:

Really enjoyed it, thanks for asking me.

The Good Nazi Zombie is a Dead Nazi Zombie

2009-04-18T11:59:00.000+01:00

My review for the Nazi Zombie mode in Call of Duty World at War just went up over at NTSC-UK.

Check it here.

This was a great review to write because of all the fun I had playing it with S-Dog during our beer soaked evenings at his place. Discovering all the ins and outs of the game mode with his was one of the best gaming experiences ever. Props also go out to my brother who I have fended off the undead with online.

This review is a great example of the ethos of NTSC-UK's review system. I didn't really have anything I wanted to say about the full game of World at War but I have a lot to evangelise in the Nazi Zombie mode. Most sites would require me to cover the entire game but because NTSC-UK values quality over quantity I get to write about aspects of games that mean something to me. Check out Charles's review of Mirrors Edge to see another example of a writer focusing on a particular aspect of the game and producing a really strong review.

As always, the rest of my reviews are here.

I also want to tease a new feature I'll be posting up next week. Myself and Ben G are collaborating on a game design feature for this blog that will either be off the chain or a massive disaster. We'll see later next week.

I shall also be posting up some kind of brain fart about a slightly scientific way to place cover in your shooting games. It may lead to my Gamasutra piece, we'll see how it goes.

If You Can't Do Box Art Yourself, Let GAF Do It.

2009-04-14T18:54:00.000+01:00

As we have already covered, most game companies don't know how to do box art.

Enter GAF.

For the uninitiated, NEOGAF is the biggest, and some would say the most important, gaming forum on the web. Developers often frequent it and Dyack and Jaffe have been known to throw down with the community on there.

They recently ran some kind of art project where they took the Criterion approach to box art (classy and artistic) and mocked up some game box arts.

The results are pretty fucking stunning.

What Even is Fun?

2009-04-12T22:50:00.000+01:00

Dig in for another rambling post...

Fun is inherently entirely subjective and indescribable which makes my job incredibly hard. Game design has very little science. There are very few hard and fast rules that can be applied in a given situation. You have to feel it out, poke and prod the scenario or mechanic you're working on and apply the knowledge you've gained from consuming the various sources of knowledge that input into your life and hope for the best.

One of the main items of discussion between designers is the subject of fun. This can be an overt discussion where we talk about the definition of fun or it can be shuffling the location of two staircases in a level to provide the 'fairest' firing lines between opposing combatants. The most minor thing is a discussion on fun. Which buttons can the player use to exit the pause menu is a great example of a low level decision that has nothing to do with how awesome we can make a head explode but has a dramatic impact on the fun of using a menu.

So one would presume that us designers have a definition for this whole fun thing, right?

Well we don't. This is part of the larger discussion about how we don't have any kind of usable vocabulary for discussing games but for now we'll deal with the concept of fun. Or more precisely the concept of fun and negative emotions.

To a lot of people fun is simply a case of how fast their car goes, how many bullets it takes to down a guy or how long the coloured fungus makes you invincible for. The theory behind this fun is expertly written about by Raph Koster in his book A Theory of Fun. The main thrust of the book is that fun comes from exploring a rules system, learning that rules system and then mastering it.

I think about how I enjoy media a lot. What kind of fun am I experiencing that leads to my enjoyment?

This leads to the question as to why we only really have games that are simple fun and we don't have games that promote negative experiences. Randy Smith recently wrote in Edge about how we don't make games that are like Requiem for a Dream. Publishers and a lot of developers often don't see the value in the fun of the catharsis of a negative experience or they don't care enough to tackle the issues raised in doing such a project. Famously David Jaffe was once working on a game that explored the horrors of war but it was cancelled because it wasn't fun. We have no way of knowing why it wasn't fun and I imagine that finding out would be fascinating.

We have a games industry where fun is measured in 30 second increments rather than over the entire period of playing the game. This means that we can't design games that are cathartic experiences that deal with anything other thanvisceral joy. We can't explore anything other than the type of fun that Mario so well defines.

We watch horror movies because we enjoy working through negative emotions. We read books about horrific experiences because we enjoy working through negative emotions. We play games to get simple minded rewards. Notice the discrepancy?

All too often a negative experience in a game in down to shitty controls or cheating AI and not down to exploring emotions. We keep talking about advancing games as art and one of the ways we can do this is opening up the range of emotions that we have in games and realising that the exploration of these emotions is fun.

Fun isn't just mastering head shots, fun is exploring our emotions and learning about ourselves in the process. Even if something is hard work or gives off negative stimuli, it can still be fun. I want to see games that are experiences rather than expanded demos. I cried three separate times during Metal Gear Solid 4. We have achieved games that makes us cry. Now we need to make games that go beyond that. Chainsawing dudes in half is completely satisfying but perhaps we can have a game where the fun is derived from working through the guilt and disgust that cutting someone in half could bring.

Why Isn't Losing Fun?

2009-04-07T19:43:00.001+01:00

So I play Warhammer 40,000.

Don't judge me.

I play regularly with guys that I work with. By play I of course mean lose against all the fucking time. But this is a unique experience. I have played amazing games against these guys and despite continually losing I have had a blast.

Beware: this piece may not go anywhere and may just be a ramble.

Last night was one such occasion. The game went back and forth between myself and my opponent and it could have gone either way. It was completely exciting (the only time I pray to a deity is when I roll armour saves for an entire squad) and I had a great time. I learnt a lot about my opponent, his army and myself and my army. I went up against the unknown and didn't pick the right units and the units that I did pick weren't used as they should have been. I came away after having a great evening with some great war stories.

After this battle I went home and myself and Beast played the last level of Halo Wars on Legendary difficulty. Ignore what the reviews say, Halo Wars is excellent. No doubt. I've clocked 24 hours on it which was news to me as time has flown by as I have had so much fun.

This last level was the exact opposite of the Warhammer battles where I have faced crushing defeat. It was no fun. I was angry, shouting and about to rip my controller in half. It took us about five attempts to get through it.

I get it, Legendary is supposed to be difficult but should a game really make me want to smash inanimate objects?

So my question is this: Why isn't it fun to lose in a videogame?

In single player this normally comes down to cheating AI (Seth and Jinpachi) or things being outside of your control. For example, I recently died in GTA 4 because some enemy happened to clip a barrel near me with a bullet and sent my character ragdolling into the water. Seeing as this was my fourth attempt at the mission I had a small rage stroke.

This is part of a much larger discussion that should possibly be had when I haven't been drinking but why do game creators not engender a sense of fun in losing? We're spending an awful lot of time in preventing losing (Prince of Persia, Gears of War 2) instead of making losing fun.

I realise that bro-ing out over Warhammer is totally different to fighting a group of moronic AI characters but perhaps we should focus not on getting 10 dudes on screen but rather focus on making fighting 2 enemies really thrilling.

Game designers are acutely aware that players don't like failing in their games. This is mostly because the fail conditions are unfair. Players either die because the AI is spamming grenades, enemies have magically invulnerable frames of animation or physics ruins a perfect racing line. Instead of being preoccupied with preventing failure, lets make failure fun.

It is important to note that I subscribe to the theory that fun comes through learning and mastering skills and then expressing those skills. So lets make encounters with enemies promote that fun. FEAR 2 almost mastered this. In the early part of the game I got flanked by an enemy and almost died. I did some heroic shit and survived and then realised that I was playing a Monolith game and I need to bring my A game. I died and came close to dying a number of times in that game and each time was thrilling because I learnt something new about the AI, my reactions or the weapons and reloaded a checkpoint and kicked some ass.

Time is precious to us and winning is a good way to spend that time. Surely losing can be winning though? By losing we may learn a new skill or have an exciting experience and this is a totally valid and valuable way to spend our time. I want to see more games take a good hard look at their fail conditions and work out a way to make them fun.

Like I said, this is a ramble. I'm still finding my writing feet.

EDIT: I want to put a shout out to my bros at (what was once) Swordfish. I blasted through 50 Cent and then went back to play some levels on easy to grind out a few achievements. I died because I was being cavalier and I got an achievement for dying on easy. I actually lolled. Like out loud.

Well played guys, well played.

Trev Everybody

2009-04-07T19:33:00.000+01:00

This is a pimping post. Not pimping as in "having two wands is pretty pimp" but rather, pimping a friend's work.

Trev used to work aboard the good ship Rebellion and is the most fly Halo 3 player I know. He also is an artist! And has a blog!

Come, let us marvel at his creations!

Stuart's Contribution

2009-04-05T19:23:00.000+01:00

Seeing as all you kids are into this web 2.0 ish where everyone gets to have an input, this week's Community Spotlight falls on to Stuart 'S-Dog' Yarham who pointed out the Ico box art differences between PAL and NTSC.

Stuart also gets special mention for finding one of the two things that makes me projectile vomit whenever I see it. The NTSC box art for Ico is an abomination. Fortunately the PAL version is much better and is a joy to behold.

If this kind of exciting blogging doesn't get both myself and Stu laid (hard) I really don't know what will.

When Game Covers Get it Wrong - Part 1

2009-04-04T18:07:00.000+01:00

Being a game designer is a curse and a blessing. The blessing is obvious, I have the greatest job in the world but the curse is less obvious.

It ruins your life.

For once I'm not talking about my heroin addiction and I should perhaps clarify my statement; specifically it heightens your critique of everything and how you look at everything you encounter. Every designer should have read The Design of Everyday Things and have a thoroughly analytical view of everything they come across.

In CSI New York, Gary Sinise's detective character said "It's my job to know a little bit about everything." This is especially true of game designers and an analytical view along with a buckshot spread of knowledge are the best qualities of a good designer.

Apparently this doesn't apply to the rest of the fucking industry. By which I mean box art designers.

Example A - Ninja Blade

I mean, what even is this?

For the record, I like Ninja Blade and am a From Software fan boy but whoever let this out needs firing.

There is fuck all worth buying at the moment besides this and so the question has to be asked, why was this the final box art candidate?

Ok, it isn't particularly offensive (and certainly doesn't feature Master Chief falling over) but it breaks several (what I consider to be) rules of consumer psychology.

Imagine walking into a store and seeing this on the shelf. Get up out of your chair, brush the cheese puff dust off your belly and walk past this image, just glancing at it as if you were in a store.

What can you tell me about it?

The only thing you will note is that it is mostly black with what appears to be random noise all over it. Upon closer inspection that random noise is actually a ninja (replete with blades) and something with a tongue falling down a skyscraper.

Fair enough, this actually tells you a lot about the game but doesn't help sell copies. The art is indistinct and nothing stands out. There is nothing memorable and this is all important in retail space. If someone doesn't walk past and instantly see something appealling they have moved on and are not picking up a copy of that game.

In a couple of weeks where there is nothing to buy other than Chinatown Wars (which is goddamn excellent thanks for asking) and Mad World, this could have been a huge seller on the 360. Hell, in a similar release schedule a couple of years ago, Tenchu Z broke the top 20. People like ninjas and they like buying games for their 360, this could sell a shitload but it probably won't. I'm not saying this is all down to the box art but it has an effect.

When I saw this in a store the other day I walked right past it, acknowledged the words Ninja Blade and moved on. Later I thought back to the box and realised I couldn't actually picture what was on it and this inspired this very niche interest blog post (sorry I haven't kept up with my one a day count recently. Work, Halo Wars and Warhammer painting has kept me busy).

So there's an insight into a designers mind. The slightest thing about product design triggers off totally OCD amounts of thought and neural processing cycles. Box art design is one of my favourite topics as some are things of beauty (PAL Resident Evil 4) and some are fucking abortions (NTSC Resident Evil 4). And for the record, I liked the Orange Box box art.

Far Cry 2 Review is Up

2009-03-28T22:11:00.000Z

When not making or playing games, I sometimes write about games. At the moment I only write for NTSC-UK, a wondeful import gaming site full of intelligent people and great discussion. Recently I graduated from just being a forum member and into being a writer for them.

NTSC-UK is a little different from most review sites in that we don't get sent games to review (publishers don't like our pro import stance) and so we review games that we own and feel that we have something to say about. This is why I think the writing on there is so good, people aren't just reviewing any old bilge, these guys have something important to say.

The reviews sometimes aren't timely either for one reason or another. In this case, Far Cry 2 came out last October. My review only just went up as I only completed the game in January/February time and because NTSC-UK likes to give each review a refreshing amount of breathing space it took a while for it to get posted. Normally each review gets top billing for a week with full banner support before another review is posted and takes the banner spot.

This was an interesting review for me as my time with the game was pretty uneven. I spent the first six hours absolutely hating the game. At the six hour mark something just clicked and the next fourteen hours were absolutely wonderful and I fell in love with the game. I wanted to focus on this love and also to talk about the questions the game asks and the kind of metaphors it brings up. These aren't fully explored in this review as it was hard for me to articulate them and talk about the rest of the game in the word limit.

It was great fun to write and the writing staff at NTSC-UK are a great bunch to work with and have proved invaluable in my recent reviews. I have spent a number of years writing almost nothing but bullet pointed lists of rules for programmers and very brief reports for work so this kind of critical writing was hard to get back into but I was given excellent support from the guys.

The Far Cry 2 review can be hit up here, and the rest of my reviews are here. If you like reading about games in a way that isn't in the god awful Gamespot style, please browse through the rest of the site, there is some great content up there.

Retro Game Challenge

2009-03-26T21:05:00.002Z

I've been playing Retro Game Challenge over the last couple of days after all the talk it's had recently on various podcasts. For those not in the know, the game is a collection of pseudo retro games and the player is tasked with completing specific challenges while playing these games. The player is aided in these challenges by reading tips and cheats for the games in mock magazines.

The game tries it's hardest to recapture the feeling on the old days of playing games and completely succeeds. The games are delightfully 8-bit and the magazines are how they used to be; content generated from rumours and whispers coming out of Japan.

I don't play a lot of DS games as I'm not really into JRPGs or shovelware and I don't have a lot of friends that play DS (even the ones in the goddamn industry) so it's hard to get recommendations. Every spring/summer I go through a phase of buying DS games as something will happen that will leave me stranded outside the house and away from my 360. This DS phase normally leads to me getting burned by my purchase (The World Ends With You last year) but this time I appear to have struck gold.

The game's challenges are all happily achievable after a few attempts and provide nicely bite sized gameplay. I can happily while away the time whilst my compatriots are in lectures with the games and the last couple of nights have seen me retire to the hotel room after a few drinks to play it.

I'm hoping this success in game buying will carry when I go and pick something up for the horrifically long trip home which will probably be China Town Wars after the guys at NTSC-UK have been pimping that ish.

I also just tried a demo of the new Ghostbusters game. I hate playing demos at conventions as there is invariably loud music blaring around you or someone leaning in a tad too close ofr comfort. This demo was more to showcase Nvidia's new processor as it was at the Nvidia stand and as such it threw a boss at you that was made up of physics objects. The mechanics weren't explained and the boss didn't have much feedback as to my attacks being successful. Although that could be because the game has no HUD and a lot of stuff is communicated by Egon and Ray and the techno music around me prevented me from hearing them.

Anyway, blogging time over, I gots to find food that will hopefully not make me want to throw up. Which probably means looking outside of the convention hall.