Thought for the Day: Sora Aoi Thanksgiving Megapost

Like I give a toss about Thanksgiving, it's just an excuse to post a few of the Sora Aoi pictures I happen to have kicking around.

On the Subject of Tabula Rasa

Kelly Brook

So it appears that Tabula Rasa is the latest casualty in the Great WoW War, where armies of hapless developers attempt to bring down the almighty King of the MMO scene and are ultimately crushed. I did buy TR, tempted by promises of sci-fi goodness in the face of countless, interchangeable, medieval, dungeons and dragons, swords and sorcery grind fests. Of course really it was just the same as every other MMO, except with pew pew gun animations instead of swordplay, and its own take on magic that was no different to anyone else's.

Another casualty of the war is the reputation of Richard "Lord/General British" Garriott. Once-revered for the Ultima games which I never played, or at least some of them, Garriott looks set to follow Brad McQuaid into the MMO history books with his erstwhile genius reputation in tatters. It doesn't help that he recently bailed on TR, citing "new interests" following his trip into space. Of course the gaming world saw that as abandoning a sinking ship because that's obviously what it was. Even more so than when AoC's chief of staff quit his own ship. At least AoC is still running. For how much longer is anyone's guess.

It's sad in a way, though, because at least TR was an attempt at something different, without being as overwhelmingly different as Eve. It just suffered from being a dull idea and from mediocre execution. It wasn't at all fun when I played it. It wasn't a compelling world in which to spend time, there was nothing interesting to do there, the class tree system was interesting, and certainly had potential, but was just one-dimensional and tedious in practice. I like the idea that you develop your character into a specialised role over time rather than picking it up-front like in most games. There just wasn't any depth to the system, and it was basically just a long-winded way of getting to the class you pretty much knew you wanted from the start.

But at least the Collector's Edition was good. In fact, it still ranks as my favourite to date and was a very satisfying, well-presented package which I shall hold on to. And when I look at it in the future I will shake my head and sigh and lament the passing of another game which could have been special, but wasn't nearly special enough.

Thought for the Day: Lia19

She's probably more like Lia29 by now.

On the Subject of Left 4 Dead

Kim Kardashian

So Left 4 Dead, the highly-anticipated, brand new game from Valve has just unlocked on Steam. I've played through a few single-player levels, and while I'm well-aware that the game is designed for multiplayer co-op rather than single-player, I still have a few early observations to make.

What concerns me is the rampant elitism that is already poisoning the forum scene when it comes to this game. Anyone who dares to suggest they find it difficult is immediately greeted by a chorus of self-important fucks falling over themselves to claim how easy it is, how it's only worth playing on the hardest difficulty, and how the person having trouble must obviously "suck".

The thing is, the game is primary designed for CO-OP. It seems that a lot of people have trouble understanding that concept and prefer to disregard it, instead using the game as an excuse for yet another competition. Another excuse to have a worthless pissing contest to try and find some reason for their own existence. "Well, I live in my parents' basement, and I have no job, and I dropped out of college because I was sickened by the whole rat-race, and not because I'm a fucking retard, honest, but at least I'm good at FPSes! You suck!"

And there's an even more common complaint, namely how it's hard to find "people who don't suck" to play with. Now, this is a subject I've examined in the past and I will reiterate my previous conclusion. If you find that every random group you play with is unsuccessful, perhaps that's because of you rather than the other players. After all, you were in every one of those groups. Furthermore, playing with random groups requires a different attitude and skill-set to playing with a static group of friends or a clan. The unpredictability should be part of the challenge, part of the fun essentially, and if you can't handle it perhaps you should consider not playing with random people. But then, if you were good enough to be in a clan, or if you actually had any friends, you wouldn't be PUG'ing, would you?

While the game seems to be fun, and would probably really shine played with a group of friends, I can't help but think it'll soon reach the stage where players get to "know" the levels and playing the game becomes quite mechanical and predictable. Rather like missions or dungeons in MMOs. The much-touted "AI Director" is all very well, but the more you play the more you start to see the ambushes coming, not to mention there's a great deal of potential for exploitation.

Anyway, it seems to be a pretty good, if one-dimensional, visceral action experience. I can't see it becoming a major feature of my gaming roster, at least unless I find a way to play with people who aren't self-aggrandising cunts.

On the Subject of Far Cry 2

Monica Bellucci

Having completed FC2, it's time for the post-mortem. The game has effectively polarised opinion with a very vocal group of players condemning it as some variation of "shit", and a more thoughtful group who consider it to be a very satisfying gaming experience. As it happens I'm in the latter camp, and think it's a far more immersive game than Crysis/Warhead.

It's not perfect, and there are some major flaws in the mechanics. Pretty much everyone who has expressed an opinion seems to agree that the enemy respawning could be improved. From my experience it appears that guard posts are repopulated as soon as you leave the local area (with the game being essentially open and seamless, there are no obvious "chunk lines" or anything, but the respawns didn't seem to be on a timer either). In practice this is a bad thing. Many missions, the vast majority in fact, involve attacking someone or some thing that is located in a "major" location. These major locations are, more often than not, located next to or near one or more guard posts. Completing a mission therefore involves fighting past the guard post(s) to reach the objective, and because of the way the game is designed as multiple missions in a single environment rather than a progression through multiple environments, you end up having to fight your way back out past the guards you've already killed once, because they respawned in the few minutes it took to complete the mission objective.
Personally I think it would be better if respawns took at least half a (game) day or so. And not just for the enemy npcs, but also for the buildings and other landmarks you destroy.

Another curious design issue concerns the whole notion of "factions" in the game. Most of the primary missions in the game are given by one or the other of two main political factions, the idea being that they're at war with each other. So right away you've got the odd situation where enemy factions are both happy to work with you even though you've been slaughtering their own people. And never mind they fact they both have headquarters a couple of blocks away from each other. The bigger issue is that the factions make absolutely no difference during the actual missions. You see their respective logo painted around the place, but ultimately you're "kill on sight" to absolutely everyone. The faction leaders who hand out the missions always make some wank excuse about how the mission is top-secret so even their own soldiers will attack you. There's also a flare gun in the game which is supposed to attract enemy troops to the area that will engage the locals and cause a bit of mayhem, but I never saw that happen. It only seems to be useful for setting fire to the brush.

The notion of being KOS to everyone is itself an issue which I think could be improved. There are no civilians in the game, outside of resistance safehouses. It would have been that much more immersive if there had been neutral npcs going about their business. I can see how that would be quite complex to implement, especially if you had proper faction allignment where there would be any number of contacts between enemy factions. But while it would be hard to balance, it would also add a lot of depth to the game, as you see little mini-battles going on that have nothing to do with you or your current objective. You could, and should have other freelancers going around the place doing their own thing, and maybe even competing with you for your own objectives (or attempting to thwart them).

Apart from that, I found few of the commonly-voiced criticisms had much validity. The fact that enemy vehicles are able to travel more quickly than your own is obviously necessary if you want to prevent the player blasting through every checkpoint or waterway without any difficulty. As for "fast travel", I thought they got the balance between fast and regular travel spot-on. Just like with MMOs, fast travel is always demanded by people who have no interest in immersion and simply want to push through the campaign as quickly as possible. It's something which destroys the sense of scale in the world if it's made too easily accessible. On the other hand, there are some dubious missions in the game which require excessive travel between opposite corners of the world, and in those instances the buses are just the ticket.

In fact that seems to be the root cause of some people's displeasure with the game. I can easily imagine how tedious and frustrating the game would seem to someone who is only interested in "beating" it as quickly as possible, to prove how godlike they are at first-person shooters. The numerous random patrols, and respawning guard posts would be a real chore to work through if you're not content to accept them as a part of the core game play. It seems that some people have a very close-minded attitude to how FPSes ought to be designed. Which is to say, they think every FPS should be just like CoD4. Far Cry 2, on the other hand, demonstrates that it's possible to have a different style of narrative progression and world design, and while it might not suit everyone that doesn't make it wrong or bad.

Ultimately the conclusion to the storyline is quite poor. The designers were obviously attempting a sort of poor man's Colonel Kurtz in the character of The Jackal, but unfortunately the pacing of the story is all over the place and the ending is spectacularly unsatisfying. It would have been great if the atmosphere had really been cranked up at the end, instead of being just another mission but in a locked-off part of the map.

Oh, and the bit where (spoiler alert!) you're thrown into an arena to fight all your previous "buddies" is fucking stupid. For a start half of them were supposed to be dead by that stage, and the whole scenario is horrendously out of place. Definitely the low point of the game for me.

This has turned out to be a discussion of the flaws of the game, and might make it sound like the steaming shit-pile that some people have attempted to claim it is, but I definitely found it more enjoyable than, say, Warhead. I spent about 5.5 hours playing Warhead, and have absolutely no inclination to return to it. Some people regard the "train" sequence as a particularly impressive part of that game, as if it's the Crysis version of Medal of Honor's Omaha Beach landing or something, but really it's like "Crysis meets Gears of War", taking the notion of "on rails" to a whole new level. No surprise that people who enjoyed that sort of spoon-fed set-piece wouldn't enjoy the freedom of FC2. Meanwhile, according to the in-game stats I've spent nearly 26 hours playing FC2, and that was without doing all the side-missions (in Act 1, at least). I will almost certainly play through again (after I've replayed The Witcher). As such, and even considering the fact that Warhead is cheaper, FC2 has been much greater value for money, and more enjoyable too.

Graphically FC2 might not be as "rich" as Crysis, but it often comes close, especially at sunset and sunrise. The random weather is great, storms are rare but impressive (although they could be more violent). The game is perhaps best seen from the water, as some of the waterways are stunning. The fire system, while it might sound quite gimmicky, is actually very well-implemented. From the way you can set fire to enemies and (some) buildings, to the way it spreads through the brush, to the way your own rocket launcher can create fires in it's exhaust. One top moment for me was watching an enemy soldier fire a signal flare, only for it to ricochet off a branch above him and set him on fire. Great stuff. The sense of destruction as you rocket boats or trucks or buildings, and the explosions starts secondary fires, is excellent, if short-lived.

For me it's the immersion that keeps me coming back to the game. As usual, I often caught myself thinking "I wish there was an MMO that looked like this". The sense of scale in FC2 works well without being annoying, but also without feeling confined. Of course it could be bigger, but within the technical limits (of the xbox, unfortunately) it does it's job very successfully. The missions are undoubtedly repetitive, but if you enjoy it then that's no bad thing. Plus, the alternative would be to "spice up" the game with mutants or aliens, things people have been very quick to criticise in Far Cry 1 and Crysis respectively.

So, in conclusion, great game. Expect to see this one on the Field Marshal's New Years Honours List.