lost in games

I finished Fable 2 on Sunday and i will be writing a few things about the game. Although i really enjoyed playing more than 30 hours of this game and i will probably play a few more hours too, there is something that i found particularly disappointing. But i will write about this sometime in the future. Soon i hope.

Also making progress on God of War: Chains of Olympus (PSP). It’s a good game but i am getting tired of QTEs and GoW is full of them. I find the gameplay to be too much button mashing and the controls on the PSP don’t help. Especially the thumb stick. I love the game’s score (soundtrack) though.

I also started playing LittleBigPlanet on the PS3 and it’s fantastic. The game has met my expectactions BUT (1) The game is a truly multiplayer experience. Single player is only for unlocking stuff and levels. The fun gap between playing alone and with friends is huge (2) The damn servers are down most of the time and cannot play the user levels and there is also considerable lag to play online. They need to fix this as that’s what the game is all about. I will also write more about LBP in the future.

Stay tuned.

On Sunday I completed Hotel Dusk: Room 215 on the DS. It is a deeply flawed game that still managed to captivate me. It had the promise of being a fantastic game but did not deliver. Its strengths which were the characters, writing and plot proved to be its greatest flaw.

If you didn’t already know, the game requires you to hold the DS like a book as well i.e. the screens are on your left and right instead of up and down. Unfortunately the excellent writing and dialogues overwhelm the game at the expense of gameplay which is in short supply. Too much time is spent tapping the screen with the stylus to read the next text instead of actually playing the game.

Maybe that is what Cing, the developer of the game, was aiming at. I don’t know. I believe however that the company needs to decide what it wants to do. Develop games with great stories AND gameplay or just great stories? A story in a game, as great as it is, must be delivered through or alongside strong gameplay because ultimately that is what makes a game what it is.

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.

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.

I downloaded the demo over the night and played for around 40 mins single player this morning. What can i say. It feels like a board game of the Civilization series. Not much to do compared to the PC versions. Although i will need to play a few more sessions i can’t see myself playing the single player mode. Is too simplistic.  Maybe multiplayer but only time will tell.

The controls are quite good though. Easy to access most things like units and cities and since most Civ options are missing this makes it even more accessible.

I will write a more in depth impressions during the weekend.

Just a very quick post. I bought, downloaded and played an hour and a half of LostWinds on WiiWare. First of all let me just correct a mistake i made in my earlier post. Not all WiiWare games cost 500 points. Specifically, LostWinds costs 1000 points which is GBP7 or Euro8.79.

Believe me when i say that it is worth every point or euro cent. It’s supposed to be around 4 hours long. LostWinds is the first Wii game that has made me smile and have that warm feeling inside when playing (disclaimer: have failed to play Super Mario Galaxy). You move your character, Toku left and right using the nunchuk while he automatically jumps when running off the edge of a platform. All other actions are on the Wii’s motion sensing controller. Every motion is easily performed and recognised even while leisurely lying on your couch. I love the art and LOVE the chillout music (except in the presence of enemies) and the sound effects.

What can i say. A gem. A real gem.

After a couple of months of non-gaming activities (i.e. working hard to meet deadline after deadline at the office) I finally managed to clock a few hours of gaming in the past 5 days or so.  

Last Wednesday I played an hour or so of GTA IV on a friend’s console and I have to say I really enjoyed it. Although an hour is not enough to make a judgement on a game like GTA IV I have to day that what I loved most about the game was the convenience of it all. The use of GPS to always direct you to your target, even when missing a turn, the use of the mobile phone to call contacts, get ambulances and also arrange missions and finally the ease of how one can replay missions. Rockstar have greatly reduced the choreload of previous GTAs and instead allow the player to just enjoy game. So it’s a positive start to the game and I hope I play some more this week.

I also made a return to Settlers of Catan on XBLA combined with finally playing the actual board game with friends twice over the weekend. This game is truly exceptional. Probably the finest board game I have ever played. There are many kinds of strategy you can use, one game is almost always different than the others and it allows great comebacks. Superb board game and I really recommend both the excellent XBLA version and of course the physical board game. One thing I should stress about the XBLA game is that I always managed to find people to play against online. It seems that there is a dedicated fanbase for this game.

Last but not least I continued playing Panzer Tactics on the DS. It’s an obscure turn based strategy game during WWII. It is a shame that while Advance Wars is getting all the fame and sales this is a little gem just waiting for DS strategy fans to discover it. I have been playing the single player campaign which has three levels. In the first level, the easiest, you take control of the Axis and start invading Poland, Norway, Belgium and France and so on. Then these are followed by more difficult stages with you leading the Soviets and Allies against the Axis. There is only a US release so anyone interested will have to look in stores on ebay or something. A highly recommended turn based strategy game.

Although I am swamped at work I hope I will able to keep gaming a bit as well. I would be interested in playing cops n crooks with some of you guys on GTA IV.

Your PE teacher takes you and your classmates to the school’s basketball court, gives you a basketball and says “Ok guys let play some football!”. Stupid?

Well, that is what Bioware is asking you to do with Mass Effect’s combat system. In an age of space travel and super biotic abilities it seems that the fundamental principle of the enemy’s AI is to charge head on. As soon as a battle begins at least 50% to 75% of your enemies (an arbitrary percentage which gives you an idea of the frequency and magnitude of the problem) will charge on you even if they are holding a pistol.

They should be holding spears or swords. It would then make sense. They should also give these weapons to the human player to arm his squad for that matter as when that same enemy charges you won’t need to keep backing off to get a clear shot with your assault rifle 10cms away.

The enemy AI just complements your squadmates’ AI who habitually get stuck behind doors or keep moving despite you having placed them behind a crate or a wall and thus dying all too frequently or just getting in your way if you are lucky. One time i had to go back a 3-4 rooms to locate one of my squadmates (i am not revealing names!) who got stuck behind a door which opens automatically!!!!

The game introduces some of the most unreliable weaponry I have ever seen. How can your weapon overheat in 2150 something because you fired it two times in a row in the space of 5 minutes…..

Mass Effect gives you all the elements of a shooting game while it is asking you to play it like an RPG game. In the end it does neither genre’s combat system any justice.

All the information that follows was taken from the game’s booklet.

Name: Adam Marcus a.k.a Kane

Brief history: Kane’s son died at the age of two in an accident when he got hold of Kane’s police service gun. Kane’s wife blamed him for the death of their son and left him. He has not seen his daughter since she was five years old.

Years later Kane became a member of The7, the most powerful clan of Mercenaries in the world. A mission that went badly wrong led to the death of 25 Venezuelan citizens. Kane was the only survivor from the mercenary group and it is rumoured that he escaped with a vast amount of loot. Kane was arrested soon after his return to the USA. He was found guilty, sentenced to death and awaits transportation to death row.

Name: James Seth Lynch

Brief history: James Seth Lynch was found guilty of the murder of his wife and sentenced to death.

He was interviewed after he received the death sentence. Lynch remained calm throughout the interview, pointing out that he had only admitted his crimes in court on the advice of a lawyer and added that he was innocent. He presented himself as a perfect husband but when it was pointed out that this did not actually coincide with the crimes which he admitted having committed, he responded excitedly and forcefully that he had given everything to his wife “including the occasional beating”.

Lynch displays all of the common characteristics of schizophrenia.

to be continued

I finally started playing Mass Effect a few days ago. About 5 hours into the game and i have some mixed feelings about it. Things started to go wrong from the start.

Let me explain. When choosing your character’s class you are given 6 options. But after reading some reviews and listening to podcasts it was clear to me that apart from the Soldier and Vanguard classes the other 4 were somewhat broken. It made finishing the game from normal to extremely difficult and frustrating. To be honest if i had not known about this i would have chosen either the Engineer or the Infiltrator. Instead i chose the Soldier. I find it incredible that a role playing game can miss the balance of classes so much so that it makes the game harder instead of just having a different experience.

Once i made the remaining choices in my profile off i went to be finally impressed. I love the dialog tree from Bioware and although not revolutionary it is a great touch combined with the fact that what you choose is the basic context of your conversation and not the exact words. It makes the whole conversation feel more real.

But then there is the actual combat. It feels clumsy and so very gamey. While it is a nice touch to have to use cover, when shooting the controls feel imprecise. Plus, the AI of my squadmates is ridiculous. They keep dying on me and even though i place them in safe poistions, they keep moving on their own and getting killed in the process. Worrying about them takes more of my time than the actually killing of the bad guys.

Then you have your technical issues with the frame drop being an issue throughout the game and the pop ups especially just after a screen has been loaded. I mean come on Bioware…

My last grievance has to be the inventory system. This is one of the most unfriendly RPG inventories i have encountered. I usually like to mess around with the equipment or other items i pick up but to be honest in Mass Effect i hesitate to enter the menus because i have to scroll through all the items i have, even when in dublicate, to find what i want. In addition visually the difference between equipment is not the most accessible it could have been. I am not sure whether it’s the colour or the way these are presented but it just not user friendly.

I might be giving the impression that i am not enjoying Mass Effect. On the contrary, i am enjoying it but when compared to other titles this year (well of 2007) , Mass Effect is doing so many things wrong. I can not accept that it is because it is so ambitious.

Having a decent AI is ambitious? A simple, easy to use inventory is ambitious? An RPG which is restricting your choice of characters due to the inconsistency of difficulty is because of its ambitions? Bad impressions indeed.