Picking a Side

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:

Thought For The Day

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) .

I'm Reloading, Cover Me.

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:

1. It is around 6 hours long.
2. It doesn't bring much new to the table.
3. The adversarial mode is just Halo 3.
4. Looks a little bit rough.
5. 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

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:

1. Let’s say that the reload anim for an assault rifle comprises the following actions:
2. The player character ejects the clip.
3. The player character draws a new clip from their body.
4. The player character puts the new clip in.
5. The player character cocks the rifle.
6. 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

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.

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

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!

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.

Smashing Their Stupid Shit into Tiny Pieces

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:

1. I felt like writing something.
2. I wish to evangelise RFG.
3. 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:

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

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

Over and out.

Outbursts Revisited

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).

Asses and Elbows People

I like Alien vs. Predator.

You like Alien vs. Predator.

We all like Alien vs. Predator.

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

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

Simulation vs. Metaphor

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



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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But how does this relate to videogames?

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

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

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



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

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



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

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

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

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

Today I Die

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

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

You don't.

You need to play this game.

Me and My Boy Fiddy

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

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

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

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

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

Of Unlock Keys and Cammy's Ass

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

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

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.

What Even is Fun?

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.

Far Cry 2 Review is Up

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

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.