Visiting Old Friends
For the last couple of months I’ve been working overseas, and will be until the end of the year. With my Xbox 360 firmly sequestered back in Blighty, I’ve been getting reacquainted with an old friend: PC gaming.[1]
Actually, a lot of it has just reminded me why I left PC gaming in the first place. I enjoyed Crysis, but spent my whole time with it wishing I was using a gamepad rather than a mouse and keyboard. Yes, I know the mouse allows for more accurate aiming, but moving without an analogue stick? What is this, the dark ages? Besides, I like a controller I can use while sitting back with my feet up.
Finding myself being metaphorically beaten around the head by copy protection was an unpleasant experience, too. Ok, I get that games companies have to do all they can to counteract piracy, really I do. But when a game takes every available opportunity to point out that you are only being allowed to play it on sufferance (I’m looking at you, Company of Heroes), it’s gone to far. And, gah, having to fiddle with a game’s settings to get it running properly. An hour spent tweaking graphics options to get the best balance between performance and quality? No thanks. Just stick the disk in the drive and start playing, that’s more my style.
On the bright side, the PC has allowed me to go back to enjoying the one genre that has never worked on the consoles: real-time strategy.
There’s something about the classic RTS interface that just doesn’t work without the speed and precision of the mouse. Company of Heroes, the WWII RTS, proved to be an unexpected joy (once I got past the aforementioned hellish copy protection). It managed to capture a real sense of drama, something that the strategy genre has traditionally struggled with, by adding in elements more commonly associated with action games, like a great physics engine and destructible terrain.
Medieval 2: Total War also made an impression, and joined the select ranks of games that have caused me to actually shout at the computer, in this case when the damn treacherous Dutch launched a sneak attack on my French holdings. The bastards.
We do have, though, a couple of exciting, console specific RTS’ coming up in the near future. Or, more specifically, one exciting console RTS, and one that is sounding increasingly like a missed opportunity.
The exciting prospect is EndWar, another game from Ubisoft’s increasingly capacious Tom Clancy stable (although the association between the games and Tom Clancy is becoming ever more tenuous[2]). It’s voiced controlled, which if it works will be absolutely amazing, and takes a troops-eye rather than a top-down camera angle. There is some question about whether it will all come together as intended, but major kudos goes to Ubisoft for trying to develop something with console controls in mind, rather than adapting PC controls to a gamepad.
Halo Wars, the other console RTS on the cards, is something I really should be more excited about than I am. I mean, it’s Halo for crying out loud! Unfortunately, from what I’ve read, it sounds like Ensemble Studios (the developers of Halo Wars) have decided to hammer the square peg of top-down RTS micromanagement into the round hole of console gameplay. Given that I still wake up screaming with thoughts of The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth 2 on the 360, an optimistic prediction is that Halo Wars is going to be ‘adequate’.
Peter’s Fables
Like many gamers, and apparently the entirety of the gaming press, I’m eagerly awaiting the release of Fable 2. Unlike most of them, the reason I’m eagerly awaiting it is so that we can stop hearing about the bloody thing.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the first Fable, and it did some interesting things, namely allowing you to watching your hero develop visually in response to your actions. But it also did a lot of stuff wrong, like having a combat system so shallow you didn’t need to take of your shoes to paddle in it1, and a complete and utter lack of anything resembling a decent story.
It’s the latter that really bugs me. Every time, every damn time, Peter Molyneux gets up to talk about Fable 2, he keeps going on about emotional involvement, and every time he does it seems that everyone raises their voices in chorus to declare that when PM talks about emotion in gaming, you sit up and listen.
But frankly, I’m struggling to understand why. The good ship Emotions in Games has long since sailed. Valve were aboard, so were Irrational and Bioware. Hell, even developers like Bungie and Starbreeze were hanging gamely from the railings. Lionhead, meanwhile, were sitting on the beach, building sandcastles of out of fantasy clichés and bad voice acting.
The first step to creating emotional involvement in a game is making you believe in its world. If you don’t buy into it, then you won’t care what happens to any of the characters that inhabit it. But Fable never even tried to make me believe that Albion was a real place. From the fact that every character spoke in ‘Oh arr zurr’ exaggerated British regional accents (this from an English developer, mind you, who really should know better), to the fact that my character’s every emotion was conveyed through ‘comic’ mime. And that my most significant interactions with the populous involved either striking a pose, roaring, or farting at them. How witty2.
It’s not just Fable, though. There has never been a game from Lionhead, or from Bullfrog before it, that made even a passing attempt to generate any emotion other than mirth in the player. Perhaps I’m being to harsh. Perhaps the unbridled optimism for emotion in Fable 2 is based on Peter Molyneux’s stated plans. Which would be great, except that, from what he’s said, the emotional anchor for the game is…your dog.
I’m sure it’s going to be a great dog. If there’s one thing Lionhead do very well, it’s funky creature AI. But honestly, it’s just a dog. Yes, you can get emotionally attached to a pet, but it’s not enough to be a driving emotional force in the life of any character outside of a Disney film. The Half Life series has Alex Vance, possibly the most rounded and convincing digital character ever created, as its emotional heart. Fable 2 is going to have a dog.
Sigh.
Bottom line, I’ll certainly be buying Fable 2. I’ll probably be enjoying Fable 2. But I’ll bet my bottom dollar that I’ll be enjoying it for the same reason I enjoyed the first fable, which is basically for the chance to play The Sims meets Conan. For the next great stride in computerised storytelling, my gaze is fixed firmly elsewhere.
1Although not the point of this article, I want to take a moment on the combat system. It was, as noted, shallow, and so easy you would need to actually lack thumbs to lose a fight. The argument from Lionhead, which has expressly been applied to Fable 2 as well, is that although anyone can win the fights, a skillful player can work for extra rewards. Fight well, and you get more experience. Think about that for a moment. The good players, who already find combat too easy, get bonus experience, making them more powerful, and any future combat even easier. Hooray for game balance.
2I’ll admit, farting is inherently funny. It was highly amusing in, say, the Oddworld games. But in the Oddworld series, when you got past the bodily functions and slapstick comedy, you would find a game that was making a serious point about industrialisation and the treatment of native peoples. When you get past them in Fable, you realise that there is nothing but an endless vista of more farting and more slapstick on the other side, like the ninth circle of hell as designed by the Chuckle Brothers.
In-Creed-able
In the end, it was the sword fighting that won me over.
Games have been notoriously rubbish at really capturing the essence of a duel. What should be a tense ballet of parry and counter, dodge and feint, instead look like a pair of nine-year-olds hitting each other with cardboard tubes. It should be about timing and skill, with a fight settled by that one perfect blow, not slowing wearing away at an infeasibly colossal health bar with a endless series of hits.
But yesterday, finally, I saw sword fighting done the way it ought to be, and I just couldn’t help myself any longer.
Yes, yesterday my herculean will finally broke, my icy heart melted, and I made my pre-order for Assassin’s Creed.
Hardly news worthy, you might think. After all, the game has been receiving glowing previews from all corners, and the level of press excitement about the game is high. I, however, had been holding myself above the hype, telling anyone that would listen that the open world dynamic was merely a gimmick, the control scheme sounded awkward and the mysterious sci-fi sub-plot would be bollocks.
Two of those three fears have been pretty much put to rest. It seems that Ubisoft (Assassin’s Creed’s developers) have integrated the free-form, open world system nicely with the overall gameplay, and the more I hear about the controls, where different face buttons control the actions of various limbs, the more I like the sound of them.
The whole sci-fi plot still bothers me, though.
For those who haven’t been keeping up with Assassin’s Creed, allow me to recap. The game is set in the Holy Land during the late 1100’s, during the third crusade. You play an assassin named Altair, attempting to forge some kind of peace in the land by eliminating some of the nastier figures on either side of the conflict. So far so good; its a cool character and an interesting period of history.
What’s worrying is the fact the, beyond this, the game is going to contain some form of sci-fi influence. What that will be we’re not sure, and bets are divided between time travel, genetic engineering and virtual reality, but it will certainly be there: more recent videos have highlighted some jarringly futuristic elements in the games hud.
I cannot, for the life of me, think of any good reason for slapping this extra layer of complexity onto what already seems like an interesting, exciting story. All it seems likely to do is complicate things and damage the suspension of disbelief. Sure, I can see how it might sound cool when the game designers first came up with it. Historical fiction and sci-fi? What’s not to love! But in practise I can’t see it working, I can’t think of a compelling reason for it’s inclusion, and frankly I think Ubisoft’s scriptwriters should have strangled the idea at birth.
Here’s hopping it’s low key enough for me to ignore it and concentrate on a stonking historical adventure…and that I don’t have to play out the final levels in a steel bunker or something equally as disappointing.
Money Talks…
Imagine my delight the other day when I learned that Bioware/Pandemic had been bought up by EA for a cool $775 million. “Finally!” I thought to myself “Two struggling development houses have been taken under the EA wing, so that they can release the inherent talent within the teams much as EA already achieved with Bullfrog, Westwood and Maxis. Perhaps now we can look forward to some decent output from Bioware!”
As you have probably already guessed by the rampant sarcasm above, these were almost the exact opposite of my feelings. Hell, I cried a bit.
I’ve calmed down since then. A little.
You see, unlike some, I don’t think that EA are actively evil. I’m sure they don’t set out to crush talented dev teams, or stifle creativity in the industry with an endless stream of mediocre sequels. But nevertheless, they are a large company, and their shareholders and directors have realised that great games aren’t necessarily great investments, especially when average sports games and FPS franchises can generate guaranteed returns year after year after year.
At the end of the day, if Bioware and Pandemic’s well crafted, innovative games that take several years to develop can’t match those returns, then either the studios will be asset stripped and closed, or forced to alter their output to something that more closely mimics the company line. That’s business. Sure, in recent interviews we’ve heard a whole lot about how the two companies will maintain their independence from EA, but the reality is that Bioware/Pandemic are now wholly owned by EA, and they can do whatever they damn well like with them. EA want them to be independent, then they stay independent. The minute EA decides that needs to change…blam.
It’s Bioware that I am particularly concerned for: I love their style of story-driven games, and I respect their ‘it’s done when it’s done’ approach to deadlines. Even if EA tries to let them do their own thing, their company cultures just seem to be diametrically opposed. Bioware is known for great treatment of staff, EA has twice been sued by its disgruntled employees. Bioware take the time to polish their releases, EA are famously inflexible on their deadlines. Perhaps most importantly, there seemed to be a genuine sense of excitement at Bioware when they finished Knights of the Old Republic and could begin developing their own intellectual properties. Not any more: their IP’s will belong to EA, who can use them however the hell they like.
It’s hard to imagine that these differences in culture won’t have an impact on moral at Bioware. That, in turn, is going to have an impact on the quality of their output, however much leeway EA tries to give them.
Bioware/Pandemic, I salute your triumphs of the past, and I really do hope that, despite the buyout, you can keep producing great games into the future. But then I also hope that Lost will sort out its horrendous tangle of plot threads and become watchable again, and that Jessica Alba will respond to my marriage proposal.
Hope aside, I’m not holding my breath for any of those three.
The Hair-Pulling Continues
The legal scrap between Epic and Silicone Knights continues, with Epic counter-suing the developers of Too Human on numerous charges including, rather seriously, copyright infringement and misappropriation of trade secrets. But which of them is in the right?
If Silicone Knight’s claims prove to be true, then they really have had suffered some pretty serious harm at Epic’s hands. That is to say, if Epic supplied a faulty engine, late, and sold it on the basis of false information, which they then deliberately hamstrung in order to make Gears of War look good in comparison, then they are guilty of the worst kind of corporate malpractice, and deserve to be punished accordingly.
On the other hand, is it just me that feels that if Epic really had done all that, then there would be far more people than just Silicone Knights kicking up a fuss by now? Instead, we have a solid chunk of our next generation titles being powered by Unreal 3: Bioshock, Mass Effect and Stranglehold to name but a few, and all of their developers, as far as we know, entirely satisfied with the licence.
Perhaps Silicone Knights simply choose the wrong engine for Too Human, or maybe they felt the need to try and explain away last years poor reception at E3. Perhaps they do have a genuine grievance. At the end of the day, though, this lawsuit seems likely to hurt them far more than it will hurt Epic, even should they be successful. They have more than likely cut themselves off from ever again using an engine that has consistently been at the cutting edge of gaming technology, whilst Epic are unlikely to see any shortage of customers beating a path to their beautifully rendered door.
And if they lose, and are successfully counter-sued, then we may well see the premature closure of a creative and talented, if somewhat under appreciated, development house.
Digital Nostradamus
Listen, good people of the internet, and listen well, for we are living in the closing of an age!. For long years we have enjoyed a golden era of freedom and uncensored expression, but all that is going to change. Ye, verily the end has cometh!
Don’t believe my half-crazed doomsaying? You should. We’ve all become used to the internet as a place where you can say, show or do pretty much what you like, and all for free to boot. But that state of affairs may be about to change.
Two recent news stories, both involving Google, set me on this train of thought. First to catch my eye was this, which centers around Google being taken to court in Australia for allowing an advert, which allegedly infringes another company’s copyright, to appear in their advertising section. If found liable, Google will be made responsible for, and thus have to begin screening, any adverts they sell with their web searches.
Back in good old blighty, there have been calls, both from the police and other groups, for Youtube (owned of course by those ever-industrious folks at Google) to take a far more active stance in monitoring what content is posted on their site, prompted in this instance by videos of kids fighting that have been posted on the site. They feel that the system of flagging inappropriate material is insufficient, and clips should all be thoroughly screened before being available to view. Read the full story here.
By now you may be asking yourself what effect this has on you. After all, you might think, I don’t buy internet advertising or film happy slapping attacks for the benefit of the masses. What is there for me to worry about?
The potential problems are twofold. Firstly, it is only a small leap from requiring that search engines monitor the content of adverts and the sights they link with to requiring that they monitor and be responsible for every link they display. Once that happens, it will definitely infringe of the web-use of Joe Blogs and the millions like him.
Even so, as long as your not posting anything offensive or illegal, that shouldn’t worry you, right? Wrong. Because this level of oversight of content will be expensive for webistes and search engines to maintain, and that cost is going to be passed straight on to us. What does that mean? It means if you want Google ( or whoever) to display a link to your website when someone types in a relevant search, then you’re going to have to pay for it, mister. Goodbye, largely unrestricted free speech, fan-made forums and homespun blogs and podcasts. Hello, big corporations and soaring credit card bills.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Hail to the Master Chief…
Well, the chatter of battle rifles and the hiss of needlers has faded once more into the background, and would be flying in the face of popular opinion to open this blog with anything other than my opinions on the Halo 3 beta.
There’s something we ought to establish right from the off: the beta didn’t bring anything startlingly, jaw-droppingly new to the multiplayer table. What it did offer, however, was a gaming experience buffed to such a high level of sheen you could see your face in it. A number of small improvements, notably an enhanced lobby/matchmaking system (unexciting but essential) and some extremely well thought out maps made it a joy to play. Best of the new arenas was Valhalla, a team game exclusive map which is highly reminiscent of Blood Gultch, but on a massive scale and with a some rather nice terrain, such a a crashed pelican and central canyon, breaking matches down into a series of close-range firefights with empty killzones in between, rather than the out-and-out sniper’s paradise that was Blood Gultch.
The original Halo’s assault rifle makes a very welcome return as an effective short-to-medium range weapon. It makes a nice change of pace from the battle rifle, which encourages backing away whilst lining up those headshots. The assault rifle, in contrast, is a boon to all of us who prefer to charge screaming at our foe in a balls to the wall, death or glory assault, and then smack them in the face after emptying the clip into their shields. Satisfying in the extreme.
There were a few brand new implements of destruction on hand as well: the spartan laser, which fires a huge, red beam of death, but is slow to operate, and the brute spiker (my personal favourite). Think an SMG with a scythe strapped to the front and you’re pretty much there.
There was also a smattering a ‘equipment’, handily activated by a press of the X button, which serve to jazz the matches up some. The bubble shield, of TV ad fame, is the most impressive to look at, but surprisingly tricky to use well. Standing around inside after throwing it down is a quick way to get your head smashed in with a rifle butt. The mobile grav lift is less glamours, but far more practical, particularly in team matches, allowing some ninja-like attacks from unexpected quarters.
Some pleasingly solid net code rounds out the package: only once did I encounter a spot of lag, and it was swiftly gone. And indeed, only once did I get called a ‘gay faggot fuck-boy’, which is pretty good going during any extended time on Xbox Live.
In short, role on September.
Gaming Wisdom of the Crafty Banana 