lost in games

Downloading now………

It’s not a slow week by any means but compared to what’s coming up in the following weeks and months one could call it just that especially non-football fans. This Friday will see the battle of the footies. With FIFA 2009 already released and having received good to great reviews and comments it is now the turn of PES, once the undisputed king. Is there room for 2 top football games in our hearts? You bet!

Then there is the “GTA wannabe” as some people like to call Saints Row 2. It has a cool limited edition version by the way.  Bioshock also sees its availability on the PS3 (a game that is near the top of my pile of shame) and last but not least is Persona 3 FES for the PS2. That’s one title i will end up getting at some point in time.

The complete list of releases (after ignoring several garbage titles for the Wii and DS):

PES 2009 (360, PS3, Wii)
Saints Row 2 (360, PS3)
Golden Axe: Beast Rider (PS3 360)
Rapala Fishing Frenzy (PS3, 360)
Order Up (Wii)
Bioshock (PS3)
Persona 3 FES (PS2)
Exit (DS)

Following my post Consistency and realism of the game world i came across Manveer Heir’s Design Lesson 101 column on GameSetWatch. He is a game designer by profession, therefore a more authoritative person than myself, and has written about how the new cover system implemented by Gearbox has affected the game. He scrutinises the choice made by the developer to change the first person view, when covering, to third person.

It’s very  interesting because this decision, as he explains, has affected both the gameplay and the immersion of a player in the game. Here’s the link.

I am reading The Great Crash 1929 by John Kenneth Galbraith and in the first paragraph of his foreword to the 1975 edition he writes the following:

“There is merit in keeping alive the memory of those days (1929). For it is neither public regulation nor the improving moral tone of corporate promoters, brokers, customer’s men, market operations, bankers, and mutual fund managers which prevents these recurrent outbreaks and their aftermath. It is the recollection of how, on some past occasion, illusion replaces reality and people got rimmed.”

FTSE 100  - 8.85%
DAX  - 7.73%
CAC 40 - 7.01%
CySE  20  - 8.14%
Nikkei  - 9.6%

At the moment DOW is falling by 5.53%.

Have a great weekend!

When a game incorporates a physics engine to a game should it go all the way and apply it in the entirety of the game? If it cannot do so should it add at all?

These are two questions I have been asking myself this past week as I am making headway in Gearbox’s Brothers In Arms: Hell’s Highway. The game introduces destructible cover for the first time in the series. This destructibility varies depending on whether it is sandbags, brick or wood. You and your squad mates can only stay behind soft cover lying around in the battlefield for only a short time before it is completely destroyed. It adds an element of realism which also increases the factors to consider when making tactical decisions in the battlefield. That’s a good thing.

At the same time however the game breaks its own rules as the physics only apply to preselected objects and not to all materials found in the game world. For example haystacks are impenetrable to bullets. Walls of a wooden building are indestructible even to rocket launchers while at the same time wooden furniture next to them can be shredded to pieces by MP40 fire. The developer also uses indestructible wooden furniture to block the player’s path to prevent the player from deviating from the pre-determined path.

This inconsistency spoils the immersion and the believability of the world that I might otherwise had enjoyed. It seems that as technology is improving and developers drive towards more and more realistic environments this can backfire. The more lifelike a game is or tries to be, then the more evident are its unrealistic elements (reminds me of the comments I heard about the Beowulf movie, which I have yet to watch).

This is where the developers must spend time and money to refine a game in order to camouflage these issues. For example do not have wooden walls or furniture unless they can be destroyed. Use rocks, concrete or steel instead. While not entirely realistic it will ensure that the rules of the game world are consistent much like in real life.

Just a quick non gaming post. I watched the first 2 episodes of HBO’s Deadwood. Very promising.

I have not been following the Tokyo Game Show this year but there are some announcements worth mentioning:

1. PSP direct store access in Japan from 15th of October. Hopefully the European launch will follow and there won’t be any restrictions if you are in Cyprus - Eurogamer
2. Halo 3: Recon - Wired
3. Xbox 360 dashboard update on 19th November - Wired
4. New Res 5 trailer (haven’t watched it as i want as many suprises as possible when the game finally comes out) - Gametrailers

Last year was the first year since 2000 that I did not buy PES. Instead FIFA 2008 was added to my collection. It was a momentous decision as the last FIFA I purchased was in 1995 on the Mega Drive. Partly, this was to punish Konami for releasing a poor product, especially the online component and partly because FIFA had really improved. Its strongest feature, at least for me, was the Be A Pro mode where you locked yourself onto a single player of the team. The problem was that the mode was only available in one off matches against the CPU or in the 5v5 online games. But the potential and promise was there.

FIFA 2009 EA has taken this mode in the right direction. The game now allows you to control an established/existing player and guide him to glory. You can also create your own player and decide in which team he will start playing in reserves matches and then in the first team as long as you catch your manager’s eye. Not only that but if your player’s chosen nationality has a team in the game (i.e. not Cyprus) then you will also be called to the National Squad. So you can build your reputation both on a club level but also on a national one.

Once you finalise your created player’s appearance you are given 10.000 experience to allocate to attributes found under 5 different categories. It offers a RPG element to the mode as you start building up your player according to your position and also depending on how you want to play. You can either be a fast winger running down the flanks of the opposition or be your team’s playmaker with superb short and long passing.

It’s here you that begin to realise however that EA is still not sure on how exactly the Be A Pro mode is going to work. First of all you are not given any explanation as to what each attribute does. Some are simple enough to understand such as short passing, finishing etc but others are less clear so. For example I fail so see how the attributes found in the mentality category e.g. tactical awareness, vision can affect your player when you are controlling him.

In the matches you really need to wait for the cut scene showing the formations as there is no other way to confirm where you are supposed to play. You don’t have access to any team management or tactics prior to each game. Team management is unlocked when you become the team’s captain. However I think going into a match you should be informed in some way on how the team is expected to play and what to focus on. It does not feel like the team has a personality apart from the kits, players and the stadium. This is something that EA can learn from Footballl Manager’s approach at creating relationships between staff, players, fans and also the personalities of these people.

Then you have the in game action where you are rewarded with ratings depending on how you perform. This works fine to an extent but it could have a more permanent effect than just rating. You should be able to increase your stats based on what you are doing i.e. increase in dribbling skills if you manage to go past players, passing skills, heading and so on. This is like modern RPGs (see Oblivion) where you also increase your stats depending on how you play with your character. Of course this requires a lot of thought in order to incorporate this in-game levelling up suitably and not feel like “grinding” and also so as not to be exploited in any way.

Finally, you have your ratings at the end of each match where depending on how highly you are rated you get your experience points. My impression so far is that you are mostly overrated. In one match for example I was rated higher than a player who had better stats and who also had scored the winning goal. This is in stark contrast to the 3 objectives you receive prior to each match which can be near impossible to achieve. One objective is always to get a rating higher than either 7 or 8. The rest can be to have 2-4 shots, win by 3 goals or score 2 goals. When you are playing against Manchester Utd and you are asked to score 2 goals and get a rating higher than 8 then you realise that the game is randomly selecting these objectives without taking into account the opposition nor your club’s strengths and goals. Furthermore I am not sure whether these objectives are the same even if you are a defender. EA has to make sure that they would make sense in a real football match. A defender should get a bonus of experience if he manages to secure a clean sheet (much like Fantasy football works) or prevent a specific player you are man marking from scoring.

By the way I am still not convinced about the Pro camera angle especially when compared to Tele in the other modes. Although it is aiming for more realism I find that the view is even more restrictive than when playing real life football especially when determining the depth/length of the pitch. I don’t have any ideas on this but I believe that it can be improved in some way.

The Be A Pro mode has the potential to become an excellent mode in FIFA or even a stand alone game in the future. It can be similar to FM but from a player’s perspective. I really hope so. Anyway that’s enough for now as I still have not finished even a single season yet. More is sure to follow. Stay tuned.

Oh yes. FIFA 2009 is released today and i have a copy and a couple of friends waiting for me so i expect this game to dominate my time over the weekend. That, along with Brothers In Arms, Hinterland and NHL 09.  I should not forget Avatar: Book 3. I am on disc 4 and loving it thus far. Good times.

Unfortunately a birthday party and two weddings will come between the above and myself during the weekend but what can you do…….