Left4Dead easily ranks in my Top 5 gaming disappointments of 2008, battling for top spot against such disasters as Spore. It wasn’t inherently a bad game in and of itself, indeed, it earned almost universal acclaim from press and gamer alike with its unique brand of survival action. I was excited to pick up the game on release, eventually struggling through the lengthy install brought on by a non-functional boxed copy. 7 gigabytes seems like an eternity when you’re desperate to join in the fun and in the case of many British internet connections, eternity is not far from the truth. I must confess, my exposure to the game prior to release was limited to previews. I had not taken part in the beta nor jumped in to take advantage of the 4-pack deal, pre-ordering my copy as an afterthought, from Amazon instead. The main reason the game was taking up a spot on my radar, aside from the obvious desire to purchase anything and everything Valve released, was the excitement of WoW Radio’s gaming community. Those who have been a part of it can attest the friendly peer pressure that’s involved in upcoming releases, the desire to play with people that we know can be relied upon not to suck and/or annoy is an extremely strong pull and can give greater purchase incentive to those who might be on the fence. Left4Dead was just such a game, interesting but not a guaranteed day one purchase, that is until various ventrillo voices shouted in unison from the murky depths of the beta ‘get this now!’. I was convinced.
Unfortunately, there are times when one should not pay any attention to what his peers are squawking. Left4Dead was simply not my thing. What other way is there to describe it? After all, it’s a universally acclaimed cooperative multiplayer experience that I didn’t enjoy, therefore must surely be a case of personal preference getting in the way of my enjoyment. I haven’t touched Left4Dead in over 8 months, so let me delve into the recesses of my game-addled mind in order to recall the details of my dislike. The first gripe to be dredged up has got to be the sheer lack of enemy variety. Hordes of fast moving zombies are interspersed with a spattering of so-called ‘special’ infected, with 5 types in total. Only 3 of these types are a constant threat, appearing with reasonable frequency to harry the survivors as they make their way through whatever infested hellhole they’ve managed to find themselves in this time. The Tank and Witch are reserved for special occasions, dire threats if not dealt with properly. The special infected vary in terms of their actual threat value. Hunters and Smokers exist solely to punish players who wander off on their own and bring down the guillotine on disorganised teams, posing little threat otherwise.
This lack of variety continued into the weapon selection, a paltry offering totalling just 6 firearms. I could have forgiven this were Valve obviously trying to portray a pseudo-realistic survival horror, where supplies were scarce and survivors had to improvise to stay alive. This is not the case however, as Left4Dead is part of the ever-growing survival action genre that Resident Evil 4 began, pitting you against hordes of horrors with plenty of ammo to spare. The horrifically generic weapon selection and the metric ton of ammo available for each made the game feel like a fast-paced shooting gallery and I soon tired of it. There is a lot to admire about the game, including the impressively sized hordes, innovative death mechanics which are now being ripped off piecemeal for titles such as Modern Warfare 2, astonishing character design and top-notch voice-acting, to name but a few. Left4Dead had all the polish one would expect from a Valve title but unfortunately, in this player’s view, none of the substance. It felt light-weight and flimsy, from the lack of variety to the tinny gun-shots and lack of punch to the weapons. I found it lacklustre, unable to quench my now growing thirst for zombie genocide and for a time, that thirst would have to wait.
On May 14th 2009, Tripwire Interactive released their budget-priced zombie shoot-a-thon Killing Floor. You may be familiar with it if you followed the Unreal Tournament 2004 modding scene, since that’s where the original version first let loose its ravening hordes upon an unsuspecting world. The story behind its development as a fully-fledged commercial title is short, but one of those heart warming tales that indie development is known for. Tripwire had previously released a rather hardcore online shooter by the name of Red Orchestra, touting realistic weapons, 50 person battles and a variety of World War 2 era vehicles. What they had also done is endorse a mod for their own game by the name of Mare Nostrum, certifying it and releasing it through Steam as a free download for all Red Orchestra owners. Alex Quick, the mod team leader for Killing Floor, contacted Tripwire about porting the mod over to Red Orchestra and, as the story goes, Tripwire liked the mod so much they offered to create a full, commercial release. It’s all rather fitting when you think about it, Tripwire was created by the team behind an Unreal Tournament 2004 mod (also named Red Orchestra) and now its next title would come from the same source.
I hadn’t even read a single preview for this game when I pre-purchased it, I had no idea what to expect. It is testament to the power of budget-pricing, particularly since it was 25% off for pre-order customers, that I was able to purchase it without blinking. Hey, it’s £11, what could possibly go wrong? It’s surprising that I still fall into that particular trap, having been burned several times on budget price titles which sported good concepts but thoroughly awful execution. I can overlook budget-related issues such as voice-acting, sound-design and graphics but if I’m unable to play your game because of your hamfisted approach to whatever original concept you’ve dreamed up, expect very little sympathy from yours truly. Tripwire’s previous effort, Red Orchestra, at least gave me some confidence that I wasn’t about to walk into a disaster area with a slightly dented wallet.
This time it was my turn to apply peer pressure onto my fellow WoW Radio gamers with relative success. When the game launched, we were able to deploy full squads of 6 to commit Killing Floor’s particular brand of zombicide. What followed was joy. Sheer, visceral, bloody-spattered joy. You see, Killing Floor has a simple premise. England has been taken over by hordes of bio-experiments known as Specimens or ‘Zeds’. Your mission? Kill as many of them as possible and hope to survive long enough to engage the Patriach, a bio-engineered monstrosity armed with miniguns, rocket launchers, a cloaking device and a thoroughly unpleasant temperament. Your team is dropped into the level, often with no rhyme or reason and expected to slaughter several, increasingly difficult waves of specimens. The maps are rather open ended, allowing you to choose where you wish to engage the hordes, causing them to spawn accordingly, depending on your position.
From the outset it became clear that this was not the run and gun experience of Left4Dead. Enemies move far slower and more deliberately, approaching in groups from every conceivable angle. Careful shots are the order of the day, as in typical Red Orchestra fashion, there are no crosshairs to be seen. Right Click allows you to look down your gun’s iron sights. I’ve always been a fan of iron sights, not for the sake of realism, but for the trade-off one must usually make in order to use them. Killing Floor allows you to trade mobility for accuracy and a somewhat reduced field of vision. While it might seem insignificant at first glance, Killing Floor’s iron-sights add to the game in two very vital respects. Firstly, the use of iron-sights introduces a sense of tension. Will you stand your ground in the face of enemy and unleash a fusillade of hot lead into their fetid brain-pans, or will you cut and run, relocating to a new position? Having to make that choice is important in any survival horror game, reminding you that this is not your typical shooter and that you are always vulnerable, all of the time.
The second advantage that iron sights possess is the ability to give your firearms a real, weighty and satisfying feel. Assuming it hasn’t faded from your mind, you will remember my earlier remarks regarding.Left4Dead’s lightweight, unsatisfying weaponry. Killing Floor is just the opposite and gloriously so. Weapons feel powerful and relatively realistic and it’s not just how they handle, but how they sound. Tripwire did a fantastic job sourcing the perfect audio assets for these weapons, each one is meaty and packs a real aural punch. Combine this with the iron sights, recoil and exceptional enemy feedback, as specimens stagger or are simply dismembered and decapitated with satisfying graphical and aural displays and you have a recipe for thoroughly enjoyable gunplay. Just to add the icing on the cake, occasional ‘zed-time’ slow-motion effects, resulting from particularly stylish or gory kills add a precious few seconds of breathing room, allowing players to line up their shots, as well as the added bonus of looking cool. If the Matrix taught us anything, then it’s that everything is better with bullet-time.
While we’re on the subject of my Left4Dead gripes, allow me to point out two areas where Killing Floor equally trounces it. The first is weapon variety, which just this past week received a very generous boost. Killing Floor launched with an impressive arsenal of weapons, ranging from the simple, yet brutally effective combat knife, to the hefty LAW Rocket Launcher. The game launched with 13 weapons in total, not including the dual-wield option for both the 9mm and handcannon pistols as well as the obligatory grenades. Since launch a further 9 weapons have been added, bringing the total to 22. This number includes several melee weapons which, rather than backups to be used in a pinch, form the foundation of the ‘Berserker’ perk, a melee-centric class with several, powerful benefits. I started off as a Berserker but found myself disappointed that the meaty visual and aural production of the firearms was not replicated in the melee weapons. Often it feels like you’re flailing at the air, with very few sound effects and little confirmation that you’ve hit anything. I consider this a big oversight that I hope is rectified by Tripwire in a future update. The guns on the other hand are outstanding and each one feels unique. Various ‘perks’, the game’s classes, favour different types of weapon but any class can use anything, provided they have the money and carrying capacity to do so. Progression from the humble pistol to the most powerful weapons such as the SCAR battle rifle and M32 grenade launcher is well paced and buying that shiny new weapon after saving up sufficient ‘dosh’ to do so never fails to excite. It is also important to note that there is no ‘best’ weapon. Even the game’s BFG equivalent, the LAW, is extremely impractical in many situations and has very limited ammunition. A mix of weapons and perks amongst your team is always the best way to stay alive and it is good to see players assuming various roles.
Killing Floor also has a greater variety of enemies. Where Left4Dead has 6 types in total, Killing Floor has 10 and has no qualms about mixing it up to force you to deal with a variety of threats. Even the humble Clot, the game’s basic, shambling zombie type, can grab and immobilise the player, quickly tearing them apart. Each enemy type has several distinct attributes and knowing how to take down each one is rather important. Sure, apply gun to head works, most of the time, but you’re also dealing with enemies of various different speeds, movement styles and occasionally, invisibility. Enemies like the Scrake and Fleshpound rival Left4Dead’s tank in terms of toughness and appear a lot more frequently, requiring some seriously focussed fire to take down. In the case of the Fleshpound, a precise alpha-strike is the preferred method because attempting to simply whittle him down will cause him to enrage, charging your squad and slaughtering everything he can get his hands on… well, whatever they are, pounders I guess, the Fleshpound doesn’t really have hands per say.
Left4Dead took a lot of its ideas from the original Killing Floor mod but they are both very different styles of game. Left4Dead requires the players to stay on the move, whereas Killing Floor favours setting up in a well-defended location in order to survive. Thankfully the maps are designed with this in mind and with one notable exception which I’m sure all Killing Floor players are familiar with, there are no universally safe locations. Literally every place you could possibly decide to make your stand in has multiple entrances, along with sneaky entrances for the insidious crawlers to spew from. Doors can be welded shut but this is a temporary measure that requires the constant attention of at least 1 player and stronger creatures like the Fleshpound can smash their way through regardless. Such camping style gameplay could be considered tedious at first glance, but the game presents a constant challenge and threat to your defences, particularly as ammunition can become scarce on harder difficulty levels and running off on one’s own to find more can be a very risky prospect, as can moving the entire team. One mistake, one nasty specimen let through the defensive lines can spell quick death for your team. Even the basic Clots can do heavy damage that puts Left4Dead’s infected to shame, not to mention their ability to immobilise you. This, in essence, is what allows Killing Floor to straddle the line between survival horror and survival action. You may be a heavily armed, wise-cracking paramilitary force, but your carefully laid defensive plan can turn into complete chaos with the slightest mis-step. The adrenaline-laced panic as your former fortress is overrun, leaving your team firing wildly as they attempt to retreat to a safer location, only to find the way crawling with specimens, never gets old and that’s where the game’s true strength lies. Under the persistent levelling and class system and the myriad of different weapons to choose from, Killing Floor is a simple game with a simple idea, slaughtering zombie hordes with your mates is fun, if done right. While a decidedly B-movie affair with an old graphics engine, spotty voice-acting reminiscent of Dog Soldiers and a cheesy metal/industrial soundtrack, Killing Floor is a blood-soaked riot that can and will justify the asking price.
Monday, 26 October 2009
Thursday, 22 October 2009
Tales from Firstlook – New Super Mario Brothers for Wii
When it comes to cynicism, there are few targets more tempting than Nintendo. Over the last couple of years they’ve provided more rage-fodder for angry internet men such as myself than anyone else, but now that Activision has safely stolen that crown it is perhaps time we talk about one of their new products which is actually a game as opposed to a work-out machine. Nintendo’s display at the First Look Expo in Amsterdam was surprisingly muted. There were 2 titles on display, one of which was the forthcoming DS Zelda title Spirit Tracks, which appeared to contain trains and also Link. I like trains, but I don’t like Link, conundrum! Instead of fighting this particular battle myself and my colleagues decided to take a look at the other title on offer, New Super Mario Brothers for Wii. In an uncharacteristically sensible move, Nintendo provided each pod with 4 controllers and a knowledgeable rep to talk us through some of the basic concepts, though it did not take us long to realise what was going on. Selecting either Mario, luigi, yellow mushroom guy or purple mushroom guy, we had access to all of the levels in World 1 and started to make our way through.
Initially it played as one would expect. The controllers were held sideways in the classic NES style, no nunchuck in sight and thanks to the excellent d-pad and well spaced buttons the game handled perfectly. The graphics were colourful and polished, making the already impressive DS version look very dated in comparison. All of the sound assets one expects and is perhaps sick of by this point were present, which is sure to please traditionalists. Soon enough however, it became abundantly clear that none of that mattered, as great as it was, because we were rapidly discovering just how many opportunities one had to be an obnoxious bastard to your fellow players.
New Super Mario brothers for Wii features 4-player “co-op” and the use of inverted airquotes there is well justified. At first glance is appears to be par the course, with up to 4 players running the level alongside each other, able to cooperate to kill enemies and bounce on each other’s heads to reach otherwise unreachable items and platforms. The death mechanic also requires the assistance of other players, since upon losing a life, a player will return in a bubble which must be popped by another, living player. So why do I use those airquotes so readily? Well the answer is, that the game also counts up your points at the end of each level and ranks you depending on how well you did against the other players. This score is dependent on several factors including the number of lives you have left and how many coins, mushrooms and other such things you managed to collect during the level. By introducing this competitive aspect to the co-op, it flips the entire experience on its head and turns it into a contest where the most ruthless player wins. There are several examples of this in action.
Firstly, the vast majority of power-ups in the game come in packs of 4, so that’s one for each player, right? Wrong. While you could share and give a power-up to everyone, you can also steal as many of the power-ups as you can get your hands on. Red mushrooms for instance give you 1000 points per pickup if you already have one. The scramble for these power-ups particularly as the screen continues to move if a player reaches the front edge of it, is fast and intense. This pilfering however is only the tip of the iceberg. The death mechanic can also be exploited to cause problems for your fellow players, since popping the bubble over a pit or deathtrap will result in yet another life lost. By far the most fiendish thing we found to inflict upon our bitter rivals was Yoshi’s ability to eat other players and then spit them out into pits or enemies. The howls of anguish were frequent as was the raucous laughter.
One might think that we were, to use the phrase, ‘doing it wrong’, playing the game in a manner which was not intended. I would dispute this, based on several factors. Firstly, rather than disapproving looks and attempts to get us to play the game one particular way, the rep was laughing along with us as we gleefully screwed each other over at every possible opportunity. It was clear that this playstyle had been going on all day and that the game facilitated it, glorified it even in places. If you recall Nintendo’s otherwise lacklustre E3 presentation, you will also remember the competitive aspect being discussed at length. This deliberate design choice recognises the desire for a new kind of cooperative experience, that of competitive co-op which is equal parts helping your fellow players as hindering them. In a social environment with 3 other players in your sitting room, the fun factor and lure of such a title is obvious. Some games have touched on this before, such as Castle Crasher’s princess-kissing sections, where players who were otherwise working together, must fight to the death for the right to kiss the damsel in distress, but none has yet come close to capturing what this new style of play could become, as New Super Mario Brothers for Wii. It’s a truly joyful experience, where your fellow players are just as much of a threat, if not more so, than the enemies and pitfalls of each level. Any questions about the difficulty level of this title, particularly with the introduction of ‘Play it for me’ mode, or ‘Super-guide’ as Nintendo likes to call it, should be tempered with the knowledge that constantly having to watch your back makes things an awful lot more interesting.
Initially it played as one would expect. The controllers were held sideways in the classic NES style, no nunchuck in sight and thanks to the excellent d-pad and well spaced buttons the game handled perfectly. The graphics were colourful and polished, making the already impressive DS version look very dated in comparison. All of the sound assets one expects and is perhaps sick of by this point were present, which is sure to please traditionalists. Soon enough however, it became abundantly clear that none of that mattered, as great as it was, because we were rapidly discovering just how many opportunities one had to be an obnoxious bastard to your fellow players.
New Super Mario brothers for Wii features 4-player “co-op” and the use of inverted airquotes there is well justified. At first glance is appears to be par the course, with up to 4 players running the level alongside each other, able to cooperate to kill enemies and bounce on each other’s heads to reach otherwise unreachable items and platforms. The death mechanic also requires the assistance of other players, since upon losing a life, a player will return in a bubble which must be popped by another, living player. So why do I use those airquotes so readily? Well the answer is, that the game also counts up your points at the end of each level and ranks you depending on how well you did against the other players. This score is dependent on several factors including the number of lives you have left and how many coins, mushrooms and other such things you managed to collect during the level. By introducing this competitive aspect to the co-op, it flips the entire experience on its head and turns it into a contest where the most ruthless player wins. There are several examples of this in action.
Firstly, the vast majority of power-ups in the game come in packs of 4, so that’s one for each player, right? Wrong. While you could share and give a power-up to everyone, you can also steal as many of the power-ups as you can get your hands on. Red mushrooms for instance give you 1000 points per pickup if you already have one. The scramble for these power-ups particularly as the screen continues to move if a player reaches the front edge of it, is fast and intense. This pilfering however is only the tip of the iceberg. The death mechanic can also be exploited to cause problems for your fellow players, since popping the bubble over a pit or deathtrap will result in yet another life lost. By far the most fiendish thing we found to inflict upon our bitter rivals was Yoshi’s ability to eat other players and then spit them out into pits or enemies. The howls of anguish were frequent as was the raucous laughter.
One might think that we were, to use the phrase, ‘doing it wrong’, playing the game in a manner which was not intended. I would dispute this, based on several factors. Firstly, rather than disapproving looks and attempts to get us to play the game one particular way, the rep was laughing along with us as we gleefully screwed each other over at every possible opportunity. It was clear that this playstyle had been going on all day and that the game facilitated it, glorified it even in places. If you recall Nintendo’s otherwise lacklustre E3 presentation, you will also remember the competitive aspect being discussed at length. This deliberate design choice recognises the desire for a new kind of cooperative experience, that of competitive co-op which is equal parts helping your fellow players as hindering them. In a social environment with 3 other players in your sitting room, the fun factor and lure of such a title is obvious. Some games have touched on this before, such as Castle Crasher’s princess-kissing sections, where players who were otherwise working together, must fight to the death for the right to kiss the damsel in distress, but none has yet come close to capturing what this new style of play could become, as New Super Mario Brothers for Wii. It’s a truly joyful experience, where your fellow players are just as much of a threat, if not more so, than the enemies and pitfalls of each level. Any questions about the difficulty level of this title, particularly with the introduction of ‘Play it for me’ mode, or ‘Super-guide’ as Nintendo likes to call it, should be tempered with the knowledge that constantly having to watch your back makes things an awful lot more interesting.
Tuesday, 20 October 2009
Tales from Firstlook - Call of Duty : Modern Warfare 2
This is the first in a series of articles about some of the upcoming titles I had the chance to play at the Firstlook Expo in Amsterdam. I wouldn’t consider these reviews, since the time I had with each game is limited, but they should hopefully provide some insight into the games in question. Let’s start with the self-proclaimed big-hitter, Modern Warfare 2.
Upon walking into the expo, a quick glance to the left unveiled a towering black structure with green waveforms painted on it. Flatscreens with pulsing green graphics and the release date for Modern Warfare 2 adorned the outside walls. We were able to enter the expo a few hours before the general public, which gained us two important things. Firstly, a delicious breakfast of stereotypical dutch cuisine (ham and cheese). After eating our fill we took full advantage of the other benefit of press access, early access to the pods. After a thorough session with Bayonetta, which I will talk about in a future article, we decided that it would be best to approach the MW2 ‘booth’, which is hereby referred to as The Dark Tower. Queueing for The Dark Tower was almost as surreal as walking into it. Burly and slightly psychotic looking bodyguards flanked the entrances, along with a slick PR guy who was doing a solid job of talking up the game to various inquisitive press. He visibly glowered as myself and my colleague cracked jokes about what might be inside The Dark Tower. A new price-hike perhaps? Bobby Kotick himself, there to devour our souls? After all, we were sure we’d seen less people walking out than going in. The humour was a mere mask for the terror in my heart, OH GOD, MODERN WARFARE 2 IS GOING TO FLAY ME ALIVE.
We entered The Dark Tower in a group of 6. Lead by the most psychotic of the bodyguards, we were instructed to stand on a series of X marks on the floor. Fully expecting an anvil to drop at any moment, we adorned the surprisingly shoddy headphones that hung from the ceiling and stared blankly at a concave projection screen, which one presumes was setup to make sneaky photography and filming difficult. The next couple of minutes consisted of a trailer which used the in-game engine, but didn’t actually show any game-play. Having played, but not entirely finished (or indeed paid much attention) to the single-player story of the original Modern Warfare, I can safely say I didn’t really understand what was going on. Things exploded, people talked about more things exploding. Bullets flew all over the place, various locales were shown. I must say the usually stellar audio production was notably absent from this demonstration, perhaps due to the inferior quality of the headphones. In a futile gesture of immersion which would not be out of place in a school theatre production, air was blown in our face at various intervals and bursts of smoke shot into the viewing room. We had to stifle a chortle at the absurdity of this half-arsed attempt to impress, lest The Dark Tower’s bodyguard crush the life out of us with his bare hands. He looked capable.
As the presentation ended with a rather unimpressive climax, we were asked to stand there for a minute or so and then lead into a room with demonstration pods. We were told that we had 5 minutes and that we were to share a pod between two. While this sounds odd at first, you should bear in mind that the pods were set up to show off the ‘new’ Spec Ops mode, Infinity Ward’s replacement for the promised co-op which was cut at the last minute. We played on standard Xbox 360 pods, which aren’t ideal for split-screen setups due to their small displays. At least the high resolution capability ensured the visuals were sharp and crisp.
The demo allowed us to play a Spec Ops mission on a hard difficulty setting which I assume must be Veteran, involving the two of us using a breaching charge to penetrate an enemy stronghold and clear out those inside. A surprising and thoroughly inappropriate bullet-time segment followed the breach, allowing us to gun down a shocking number of enemies before they were able to mount a reasonable defence.
This initial triumph was short-lived as it became abundantly clear just how unfair this particular mission was going to be. Large groups of laser-sighted gunmen appeared on expansive balconies either side of us and proceeded to rain bullets and grenades down on our position. Dashing from cover to cover was the best option and I equipped myself with a shotgun to clear the room as my partner picked off the gunmen on the balconies with his own laser-sighted rifle. More and more enemies flooded in and I was eventually overwhelmed while reloading, taking 4 or 5 hits before falling to the ground. It was at this point that we experienced the truly bizarre nature of the death mechanics in co-op. I was able to pull out a pistol, Left4Dead style and gun down a couple of opponents, before starting to crawl back to my partner, with a lengthy ‘bleed-out’ timer emblazoned on the screen. The enemies quite literally ignored me as I crawled in front of them and eventually, I made it back to my partner’s position who with a simply press of the B button, laid hands upon me and filled me with the power of the Holy Spirit. I assume that’s what happened, nothing else makes sense since the healing was so incredibly fast. There was literally almost no risk involved in getting me back on my feet. No dressing of the wounds, no temporary vulnerability as he heaved my hefty, bullet-ridden carcass back onto its feet. It seemed cheap, reminding me of the bro-slap system of Gears of War, which effectively involved insulting your partner and calling him a fa***t for going down to a mere 20 bullets to the face. It was an immersion-shattering experience. As someone who has real difficulty dealing with regenerating health as a mechanic, finding the concept of hiding behind a pillar for a few seconds to pick the bullets out of your face truly alien and more than a little stupid, this blatant arcade-y nonsense did absolutely nothing for me. The enemies eventually overwhelmed us and we attempted the mission a couple more times, to no avail. At least my concerns about difficulty were without merit, it was balls-to-the-wall hard. So why, pray-tell, could the entire game not be this challenging and therefore, by Infinity Ward’s flimsy justification, have co-op mode? Forgive me for my scepticism of IW’s reasoning after being presenting with their own demonstration material which appears to contradict their statement.
In terms of production values, it’s hard to judge how impressive the game is by a demo inside what is effectively a warehouse. Sound assets seem on par with the previous titles and I saw little upgrade in terms of visuals from the original Modern Warfare. It was a good looking game to begin with so that’s not a big issue. Gunplay was also almost identical so if you liked Modern Warfare’s gunplay I see no reason why you wouldn’t like this. It’s also rather hard to judge enemy AI in such an enclosed space. The snipers on the balconies did what snipers do, snipe. Picking them off wasn’t exactly difficult considering they had virtually no cover, so it was a shooting gallery for my rifle-toting partner. It was rather hard to tell if we’d been flanked at any point since we were dodging bullets from all sides to begin with, but I didn’t get the impression that the AI was stupid, beyond their insistence on piling into the room through a chokepoint which I riddled with buckshot at every possible opportunity.
The overall impression I was left with upon exiting The Dark Tower with my complimentary t-shirt is of a game and a publisher with delusions of grandeur. This is not the ultimate evolution of FPS, it is merely competent and overly reliant on it’s monstrous budget. It does not, judging by the limited playtime I had with the title, do anything to justify the price-hike beyond having spent too much money during the development cycle and on pre-release marketing. The recent Kotick-driven decisions have done nothing to warm me to the game and while console players might be limited in terms of their FPS back catalogue, PC gamers are not and do not desperately need this title to round off their 2009. I somehow doubt that those who enjoyed Modern Warfare will pass up this title on consoles, though the recent snub of PC players in the form of an unmoddable game and no dedicated servers may send some the way of the pirate and/or boycott. For me, as someone who found Modern Warfare inexplicably over-hyped and thoroughly lacklustre in many respects, my hands-on of Modern Warfare 2 has done nothing to change my opinion and it will not be getting shelf-space in my collection.
Upon walking into the expo, a quick glance to the left unveiled a towering black structure with green waveforms painted on it. Flatscreens with pulsing green graphics and the release date for Modern Warfare 2 adorned the outside walls. We were able to enter the expo a few hours before the general public, which gained us two important things. Firstly, a delicious breakfast of stereotypical dutch cuisine (ham and cheese). After eating our fill we took full advantage of the other benefit of press access, early access to the pods. After a thorough session with Bayonetta, which I will talk about in a future article, we decided that it would be best to approach the MW2 ‘booth’, which is hereby referred to as The Dark Tower. Queueing for The Dark Tower was almost as surreal as walking into it. Burly and slightly psychotic looking bodyguards flanked the entrances, along with a slick PR guy who was doing a solid job of talking up the game to various inquisitive press. He visibly glowered as myself and my colleague cracked jokes about what might be inside The Dark Tower. A new price-hike perhaps? Bobby Kotick himself, there to devour our souls? After all, we were sure we’d seen less people walking out than going in. The humour was a mere mask for the terror in my heart, OH GOD, MODERN WARFARE 2 IS GOING TO FLAY ME ALIVE.
We entered The Dark Tower in a group of 6. Lead by the most psychotic of the bodyguards, we were instructed to stand on a series of X marks on the floor. Fully expecting an anvil to drop at any moment, we adorned the surprisingly shoddy headphones that hung from the ceiling and stared blankly at a concave projection screen, which one presumes was setup to make sneaky photography and filming difficult. The next couple of minutes consisted of a trailer which used the in-game engine, but didn’t actually show any game-play. Having played, but not entirely finished (or indeed paid much attention) to the single-player story of the original Modern Warfare, I can safely say I didn’t really understand what was going on. Things exploded, people talked about more things exploding. Bullets flew all over the place, various locales were shown. I must say the usually stellar audio production was notably absent from this demonstration, perhaps due to the inferior quality of the headphones. In a futile gesture of immersion which would not be out of place in a school theatre production, air was blown in our face at various intervals and bursts of smoke shot into the viewing room. We had to stifle a chortle at the absurdity of this half-arsed attempt to impress, lest The Dark Tower’s bodyguard crush the life out of us with his bare hands. He looked capable.
As the presentation ended with a rather unimpressive climax, we were asked to stand there for a minute or so and then lead into a room with demonstration pods. We were told that we had 5 minutes and that we were to share a pod between two. While this sounds odd at first, you should bear in mind that the pods were set up to show off the ‘new’ Spec Ops mode, Infinity Ward’s replacement for the promised co-op which was cut at the last minute. We played on standard Xbox 360 pods, which aren’t ideal for split-screen setups due to their small displays. At least the high resolution capability ensured the visuals were sharp and crisp.
The demo allowed us to play a Spec Ops mission on a hard difficulty setting which I assume must be Veteran, involving the two of us using a breaching charge to penetrate an enemy stronghold and clear out those inside. A surprising and thoroughly inappropriate bullet-time segment followed the breach, allowing us to gun down a shocking number of enemies before they were able to mount a reasonable defence.
This initial triumph was short-lived as it became abundantly clear just how unfair this particular mission was going to be. Large groups of laser-sighted gunmen appeared on expansive balconies either side of us and proceeded to rain bullets and grenades down on our position. Dashing from cover to cover was the best option and I equipped myself with a shotgun to clear the room as my partner picked off the gunmen on the balconies with his own laser-sighted rifle. More and more enemies flooded in and I was eventually overwhelmed while reloading, taking 4 or 5 hits before falling to the ground. It was at this point that we experienced the truly bizarre nature of the death mechanics in co-op. I was able to pull out a pistol, Left4Dead style and gun down a couple of opponents, before starting to crawl back to my partner, with a lengthy ‘bleed-out’ timer emblazoned on the screen. The enemies quite literally ignored me as I crawled in front of them and eventually, I made it back to my partner’s position who with a simply press of the B button, laid hands upon me and filled me with the power of the Holy Spirit. I assume that’s what happened, nothing else makes sense since the healing was so incredibly fast. There was literally almost no risk involved in getting me back on my feet. No dressing of the wounds, no temporary vulnerability as he heaved my hefty, bullet-ridden carcass back onto its feet. It seemed cheap, reminding me of the bro-slap system of Gears of War, which effectively involved insulting your partner and calling him a fa***t for going down to a mere 20 bullets to the face. It was an immersion-shattering experience. As someone who has real difficulty dealing with regenerating health as a mechanic, finding the concept of hiding behind a pillar for a few seconds to pick the bullets out of your face truly alien and more than a little stupid, this blatant arcade-y nonsense did absolutely nothing for me. The enemies eventually overwhelmed us and we attempted the mission a couple more times, to no avail. At least my concerns about difficulty were without merit, it was balls-to-the-wall hard. So why, pray-tell, could the entire game not be this challenging and therefore, by Infinity Ward’s flimsy justification, have co-op mode? Forgive me for my scepticism of IW’s reasoning after being presenting with their own demonstration material which appears to contradict their statement.
In terms of production values, it’s hard to judge how impressive the game is by a demo inside what is effectively a warehouse. Sound assets seem on par with the previous titles and I saw little upgrade in terms of visuals from the original Modern Warfare. It was a good looking game to begin with so that’s not a big issue. Gunplay was also almost identical so if you liked Modern Warfare’s gunplay I see no reason why you wouldn’t like this. It’s also rather hard to judge enemy AI in such an enclosed space. The snipers on the balconies did what snipers do, snipe. Picking them off wasn’t exactly difficult considering they had virtually no cover, so it was a shooting gallery for my rifle-toting partner. It was rather hard to tell if we’d been flanked at any point since we were dodging bullets from all sides to begin with, but I didn’t get the impression that the AI was stupid, beyond their insistence on piling into the room through a chokepoint which I riddled with buckshot at every possible opportunity.
The overall impression I was left with upon exiting The Dark Tower with my complimentary t-shirt is of a game and a publisher with delusions of grandeur. This is not the ultimate evolution of FPS, it is merely competent and overly reliant on it’s monstrous budget. It does not, judging by the limited playtime I had with the title, do anything to justify the price-hike beyond having spent too much money during the development cycle and on pre-release marketing. The recent Kotick-driven decisions have done nothing to warm me to the game and while console players might be limited in terms of their FPS back catalogue, PC gamers are not and do not desperately need this title to round off their 2009. I somehow doubt that those who enjoyed Modern Warfare will pass up this title on consoles, though the recent snub of PC players in the form of an unmoddable game and no dedicated servers may send some the way of the pirate and/or boycott. For me, as someone who found Modern Warfare inexplicably over-hyped and thoroughly lacklustre in many respects, my hands-on of Modern Warfare 2 has done nothing to change my opinion and it will not be getting shelf-space in my collection.
Monday, 7 September 2009
Why Dungeons and Dragons Online wipes the floor with other MMO’s levelling content.
I have a problem. See, I like MMOs as a concept. I enjoy the idea that I can work on a character for years, progress it to the highest echelons of power and in doing so, acquire a rich and varied history for the character. I get very easily attached to my character, it becomes a possession with sentimental value. It’s not as odd as it might sound, just like a normal, everyday object might acquire a history if you travel with it a lot, ‘I took this bag everywhere, it was with me at the Eiffel Tower, it was with me in Hong Kong’ etc etc, so does a character if you’ve had memorable times playing it. Unlike single-player titles, you could potentially be using the same character for years, so you’d better get used to it and like it.
So what’s my problem? Well so far, with only one exception, I have absolutely despised levelling a character in an MMO. The grindy, treadmill nonsense gets to me far too easily, as does the obvious lack of challenge. I’m not someone who thinks that the flimsy excuse for ‘storyline’ behind every quest in WoW somehow absolves it from being one of the same 8 tasks over and over again (destroy, discover, deliver, drop, defend, plus the 3 TBC/Wrath ones, bombing run, magic wand and vehicular). This applies to any game that tries this trick. Released post-WoW always try and do this to no avail and I must admit that the thin varnish covering what it otherwise a grind wore away before I even hit 60. I had to be coaxed back into the game and pushed to 60 with the promises of cool end-game stuff and big, epic battles. Levelling was a chore that just had to be done in order to get to the good stuff. It made me wonder why, why exactly hadn’t Blizzard, the innovators, polishers and borrowers of good ideas from other games done something about this MMO stigma? They had taken a step in the right direction, away from meaningless grind to stealth-grind with drip-fed rewards, but that was not enough for me.
Remember I said one game managed to break that mold for me? That was Planetside, because in Planetside, levelling is not one’s primary motivation. The acquisition of loot isn’t either, the point of the game Planetside is to play the game Planetside, because the game itself stands up on its own merits. I’ve said it before, no doubt I’ll say it again in future, as a general rule, MMORPGs put too much weight on the MMO and not enough on the RPG. They rely on the large worlds and the seamless interaction with tons of other people in order to get around the fact that they’re mostly just dry, dull treadmills. As I mentioned yesterday to a guy on vent defending WoW’s levelling, who brought up the point that WoW is fun when you level with friends, almost anything is fun when you do it with friends. Watching paint dry is more fun with friends than it is on your own, it’s almost a universal constant. That doesn’t make WoW levelling any good, quite the opposite. If you need friends to mitigate the fact that it’s boring as sin then something is wrong. WoW levelling does not need friends, you can do 1-80 solo. They are there to stop you from getting bored, not because it benefits you in any significant respect bar protection from ganking and the ability to do 5 man dungeons, which are also, not required to level. I think we have to face facts that, while some may enjoy WoW’s levelling, the actual system itself is mechanically over-simplistic and in terms of gameplay, horribly repetitive.
Enter DDO, a game that I initially had no interest in what-so-ever. Bogged down by a troubled launch and lack of initial content, DDO stumbled where other Turbine products such as Lord of the Rings Online have acquired a strong playerbase. An apparently lack of marketing behind the title as well as the fact that the WoW juggernaut was at full speed around the time of it’s launch ensured it’s quick demise. However, unlike many MMOs, it didn’t simply get shut down and written off as a loss. Turbine continued to quietly develop the game, fixing many of the issues and ensuring more and more content got added. A recent announcement that the game was going down a free2play route, with microtransactions and an optional subscription which would give you access to everything gave me reason to take a second look. It was a time when WoW was at it’s low point for me, indeed, it still is, my interest in playing the lacklustre 3.2 content is next to none and Cataclysm is a distant light at the end of a thoroughly dark tunnel. But could I face levelling up another character when I’d barely managed it in WoW?
Then I made a shocking discovery. DDO doesn’t do it like WoW, indeed, it doesn’t do it like anything else. The closest comparison would be Guild Wars, whose quests are instanced. In this case, Dungeons and Dragons Online benefits more so than anything from a design philosophy inspired by it’s very name.
Dungeons and dragons. That’s what it is, dungeons and dragons, DDO is a huge selection of hand-crafted dungeons along with the occasional large, outdoor area, which often serves as a hub for other dungeon adventures. What makes this such a big deal is the how similar in basic concept DDO’s quests are to WoW’s and most other MMOs and yet how many different elements the enclosed space of a dangerous dungeon can throw into the mix. It’s no secret that I think WoW’s great strength is it’s instance design, so imagine my delight when I discovered that every quest in DDO is it’s own instance. It sounds initially like a bit of a cop-out. After all, what’s the use of a Massively Multiplayer world when you’re shut off from the other players for 90% of the time? Here’s the rub, with a few notable exceptions such as EvE and Planetside, that’s what MMOs end up doing anyway. The best content, is these days, most often instanced, whether it be battlegrounds style PvP or raids and dungeons, WoW players in particular spend most of their time in an instance if they want to do anything meaningful. That’s where the best loot is, that’s where the best content is and that’s where the biggest challenges are. So where’s the harm in going one step further and instancing the quest content? That’s the question DDO asks and it’s answer was rather stunning. Imagine every quest was a multi-staged challenge, full of capable monsters to fight, traps to avoid, secrets to discover, bosses to defeat, chests to loot and puzzles to solve. Then consider that these quests by default have 4 levels of difficulty, from Solo all the way to Elite which provides a much greater group challenge and increased rewards. Factor in, if you will, rewards for exploration, for finding everything in the dungeon and for not dying. Now consider that the only reliable way to level up is not only to complete quests (you do not get direct XP for just killing everyday mobs) but to complete them WELL, for bonuses and get a big list of rewards which generally has something for everyone at the end.
That’s DDO’s levelling system in a nutshell and the reason it succeeds is because it takes what made the pen and paper DND great, translated it into videogame form and then applies the design philosophy used to make great singleplayer RPGs, into a massively multiplayer format. Quests feel like actual quests, rather than chores, because they are hand crafted to be an adventure in their own right. That’s what DnD is all about right? Having adventures. Even the most basic, short quest is a mini-adventure in and of itself. A trip into one of the basic starting quest in the first zone tasked me with retrieving a scroll. In WoW, such a quest would either involve killing a certain number of mobs until the scroll dropped and then taking it back, or camping various spawn points until the scroll spawned and then retrieving it. In DDO, I must enter a storehouse. Upon doing so, I find the door to the scroll’s storage chamber locked. I search for the key, smashing open crates and barrels looking for it, all the while battling some large brown spiders who seem none to pleased with my intrusion into their habitat. At last, the key (did I mention I was rewarded with various degrees of bonus XP for smashing everything up? A ransack bonus they call it, so even breaking stuff is not wasted time) but what’s this? A secret door opens to reveal a hidden passage, inside a lethal-looking reptilian man who demands the key from me. A trap! I rush into battle, dispatching my foe and exploring the previously secret passage wherein a find an altar to his foul god and a chest containing some tasty loot. Now, time to get that scroll! I battle my way back to the door and open it with the silver key, only to see the scroll secured inside a magical field. A curious tile-puzzle sits on the ground, requiring me to solve it in order to unlock the magical field and retrieve the scroll. After kicking my addled brain into gear I solve the puzzle, retrieve the scroll and exit the dungeon, the entire time being egged on by the atmospheric voice of a virtual Dungeonmaster. I wish, for the sake of WoW's pride, that I could say I was using a bit of creative license there, fudging the details and making it sound better than it actually is, but it speaks volumes that a quest in as mundane a place as a storehouse can rival some of WoW's more epic raid encounters in terms of enjoyment. There is a genuine understanding here of what makes RPGs and DnD fun and Turbine have gone out of their way to make this game appeal to people like me. It has it's flaws, without a doubt and due to the nature of the content, some repetition is involved (ie. you should really do the quests on multiple difficulty settings to get enough XP to advance), but the difficulty ramps up so much and the change from solo-friendly to party-essential is such a paradigm shift that the dungeon feels and plays different the second and even third and forth times.
As well as being essential for most Hard and Elite mode dungeons, grouping up in DDO really does reap rewards, both tangibly and in terms of player enjoyment. The combat system in which collision detection both exists and plays a major role, makes the role of the tank that much more important. Not only that, but the need to aim your spells and arrows as well as the genuine benefits to flanking and getting up behind the enemy make for a much more dynamic and enjoyable experience. As much as it often involves holding the button down to auto-attack, there is a genre of RPG that did very well on that basis, that of the hack-and-slash. DDO combines meaty 'bone-crunching' hack and slash, backed up by great feedback and strong sound assets with the hot-key activated abilities of more traditional MMOs and other PC-based RPGs. Add in the genuine danger that the harder modes offer and the drive to stay alive so as not to for-go your persistance XP bonus (which you get for not dying) and you have a game where players really must work as a team. It's not just the combat, DnD wouldn't be DnD without traps and secret doors, both of which are there in abundance. Even though they're always in the same place every run, traps can be deadly and secret doors often yield hidden mini-bosses and chests of loot. Caution and exploration are paramount and bringing a rogue along for the ride doesn't hurt either. Quests also have various 'checks' which favour particular classes, so don't expect a party of stringy wizards to be lifting huge boulders, nor barbarians deciphering mystic runes. It all comes together in a stellar realisation of cooperative roleplaying for the modern gaming scene, capturing the glory and essence of what makes RPGs enjoyable while dodging the arbitrary grind that other MMOs seem to feel the need to impose on you. The mark of a truly great MMO, in this writer's view, is the ability to play it solo and have it hold it's own against single-player games. That means when you add other players into the mix, you're genuinely multiplying the enjoyment of an already good experience, as opposed to mitigating the boredom by surrounding yourself with friendly voices. DDO achieves what so few other games have managed in this regard and breaks the mold in terms of what an MMO can achieve in terms of gameplay.
You really could do worse than giving this game a try. It's Free2Play incarnation launches in 2 days and those of us who subscribed are getting to enjoy it right now. There is an awful lot to like about this game. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some kobolds to slay.
Monday, 10 August 2009
POD:U – The difference between Old and New Media.
This is less of a tutorial and how-to post and more of a ‘this is what I think about the state of the medium right now’. Please by all means feel free not to read it if this is not what you’re looking for.
I have a bone to pick. When don’t I have a bone to pick? Today’s bone is with people who see New Media as an opportunity to throw away the rulebook and start over without one. It’s an understandable attraction, tech-savvy members of this generation have attached a very large and unpleasant stigma to Old Media. By Old Media I’m talking about newspapers, movie studios, television companies, commercial radio and in many ways the music industry. They have a point and I share those feelings to a certain degree, in that Old Media is not about taking risks anymore, it’s about appeasing an already dependent audience with the ‘stuff they like and have always liked’. It’s not about challenging convention or innovating, nor is it necessarily about telling the truth, it is an industry that puts out a product and that product has to make money otherwise it’ll be replaced with a different, more profitable product. Objecting to this kind of thing is fine but there are those who take it too far and reject everything Old Media stands for, no matter whether or not Old Media has good things going for it.
Here’s the thing guys, there is only one real difference between Old Media and New Media. Want to know what that difference is? Sure you do, you’ve got this far right? The difference….. wait for it….. is money. Shocking right? That’s all it comes down to, but to say that’s ‘all’ is to not give enough credit to just how complex the introduction of money into the equation can be. Money is what causes Old Media to be as corrupt as it is right now, but money is also what’s keeping guys like you and me out of Old Media, in one way or the other. We can’t afford a television studio or printing press, we can’t get a broadcast license, its out of our price range. New media becomes the great equaliser on one basis and one basis alone, money. New media allows a wider range of people to compete with Old Media because the financial barrier has been broken down. They are able to innovate because they don’t have millions of dollars riding on the success or failure of the product. That fear of losing money, which drives Old Media to creating what they think their captive audience is comfortable with, as opposed to trying something new, does not exist with New Media. You can make an interesting documentary, drama or sketch with a $500 camcorder if you know what you’re doing, you can produce an online radio show with a $100 microphone and some free multi-track audio software. You can write a blog that’s read by thousands without paying a penny in printing and distribution costs.
TotalBiscuit singing the praises of New Media? Surely not, a travesty, a heresy you might claim! Not exactly. New Media is indeed the great equaliser and put me in a position where I could produce popular shows for a large audience without having to get a broadcast license or job in an actual radio station, which would be more than a little resistant to the idea of a show about videogames. Remember what I said about innovation earlier? Well videogames are a risky prospect, still viewed by the Old Media as the new ‘Devils Music’, a passing fad and they won’t invest money into producing programming based around it. We know better however, so New Media steps in to fill that gap. So you could say that I like New Media as a concept. What I don’t like, is everything else that comes with it. Remember what I said, money is the ONLY difference between Old and New Media. So why then, the rejection of everything else that comes with Old Media? The extensive training, the quality assurance, the nurturing of the very best talent, the professionalism, the exceptional level of research, the conventions and standards that ensure everything, no matter how trashy the subject matter may be, comes out looking and smelling great? To be a New Media type, do we also need to abandon those things? Do we need to throw away a rulebook that’s been a century in the making, indeed in the case of newspapers, longer still? The answer is no, we really do not. The only difference is money. That means no, you cannot afford a $2000 broadcast microphone, a $10,000 mixing desk and a sound-proofed studio environment, but if you think that’s all broadcast radio has going for it you’re living in a dream-world. Professional radio hosts will sound a mile better than you and me on a $5 Walmart headset. Why? Because they have learned exactly what sounds good and what does not, they know how to speak to an audience, how to deliver their content in a manner that’s entertaining and easy to understand, they do not go off on wild tangents, they keep their thoughts ordered and structured, which carries over to their show. They deliver their message in confident tones and do not make frequent mistakes or pepper their broadcasts with umms and arrs as they stumble to find the words. They ensure that they have everything they need before they start the show and don’t get caught flatfooted as a result. I could go on and on, but the simple message is this. Just because you have removed the financial barrier of entry, does not mean you get to throw away the rulebook. These principles exist for a reason, each has a specific purpose. Some people are bothered more by lapses in these principles than others, but I doubt you’ll find many that actively dislike professionalism.
More than a few people have called me arrogant in the past for blasting certain podcasts, videos, blogs, you name it for their lack of professionalism. The irony is that it takes a real towering pillar of arrogance to reject the wisdom of a century’s worth of work by seasoned professionals. Who are you, the random blogger? Who are you, the gaming podcaster? Who are you, the budding machinimator? Who are you, the fan-fiction author? Who are you, the novice musician? Who are you to simply abandon all of these principles? Sure, question them, ask why each exists but simply ignoring them because you’re a ‘New Media type’? I cannot ever imagine being that arrogant and we all know how arrogant I can be. Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. These guys made the same mistakes you’re making now, the difference is they did it way, way before you did. Whereas they were breaking new ground in terms of technology and a new medium we are simply doing the same thing from our bedrooms and basements, thanks to cheaper technology and a greater understanding of it. It is not ‘innovation’ to reject the lessons of the past, it is ignorance, self-inflicted ignorance. Often it merely comes down to laziness on the part of the people in question. They don’t want to apply standards or quality assurance because it takes too long, or it’s too hard. They don’t want to spend time editing their productions and learning the tricks of the trade because they can’t be bothered. As vomit-worthy as that position is, it’s not quite as bad as those who actively reject the principles of good media because they’re ‘above’ them, they’re too good to be held by the chains of Old Media. Bollocks. For all it’s flaws in terms of the lack of innovation, risk-taking and worship of the almighty dollar, Old Media knows how to present it’s content and that didn’t come about by spending a lot of money, that came about through talent and rational thought, logically working out what works and what doesn’t, partially through trial and error, partially with common sense and then building a set of rules upon which every piece of professional media is produced.
Adhering to standards costs nothing. Nobody can reasonably expect a podcaster just starting out to spend a ton of money on equipment. Heck there’s no need to anymore, a Samson CO1U or Alesis Podcasting Kit will set you back a mere $100, not a lot of money to invest in a hobby. Even some of the cheaper headsets will give you serviceable, if not great quality. However, you can’t blame a bad mic on your umms and arrs, your frequent mistakes, your lack of research or structure, your dead air. All of these are problems easily fixed for the low low price of nothing at all. Don’t blame your mic for background hiss when a music bed or noise-reduction filter could eliminate that. The only good reason for not using either of those things is laziness. Don’t like how your podcasts sounds with a music bed? Ok, use noise-reduction then. Don’t like how your voice sounds with some of the frequencies cut out? Ok, use a music-bed. Don’t want to use either, but don’t want to invest in a better mic? Then you suck, pure and simple. You’re actively choosing not to improve your own work for whatever god-forsaken reason and that’s something I cannot stand.
Worse still are those who will defend this kind of behaviour simply because that’s what they’re come to expect. That right there is the reason podcasting will never gain the respect it deserves, because of a lack of adherence to standards. Podcasts in general, are viewed as the domain of rank amateurs, regardless of the fact that there are plenty that are really great. Problem is that they are islands among an ocean of laziness and failure, a vast ocean. Instead of encouraging their favourite podcasts to get better and offering constructive criticism and feedback, many podcast listeners are sycophants, defending their chosen shows to the hilt, regardless of how valid the criticism they are ‘bravely’ deflecting is. These white-knights are in fact the poison in the chalice of New Media, they enable a lax attitude, encourage bad behaviour. If anything these are the people I hate the most, because I am incapable of fathoming why anyone would actively go out of their way to stop a show they like from improving. It is so inconceivable because it is so irrational, it is a truly bizarre cognitive dissonance and indeed madness, that I personally cannot understand.
Is there a solution to this situation? Not an easy one, that’s for sure. I honestly think a lot of it comes down to the inability to deal with criticism in any of its forms. Podcasters in particular, are expecting almost by some hidden code, to walk on egg-shells around other podcasters, for fear of hurting their feelings. Well I must have missed that memo because I didn’t sign up to any code that told me to lie just so I don’t hurt some bleeding-heart’s feelings. Learning from your betters is the way any craft works. Very few people manage to forge their way ahead independently without any outside influence, indeed, do any? Doubtful. Accept that Old Media for all its flaws does a ton of things right and you are not enough of a master of your craft to simply abandon what they learned over the course of a century or more and you’ll be well on your way to turning out something that is truly great. Many podcasters could do with taking a good long look at themselves and figuring out why it is they get so out of sorts when their product is criticised. White-knight listeners doubly so, because you’re hurting the very people and product you like listening to. Simply put, you ain’t helpin’.
I have a bone to pick. When don’t I have a bone to pick? Today’s bone is with people who see New Media as an opportunity to throw away the rulebook and start over without one. It’s an understandable attraction, tech-savvy members of this generation have attached a very large and unpleasant stigma to Old Media. By Old Media I’m talking about newspapers, movie studios, television companies, commercial radio and in many ways the music industry. They have a point and I share those feelings to a certain degree, in that Old Media is not about taking risks anymore, it’s about appeasing an already dependent audience with the ‘stuff they like and have always liked’. It’s not about challenging convention or innovating, nor is it necessarily about telling the truth, it is an industry that puts out a product and that product has to make money otherwise it’ll be replaced with a different, more profitable product. Objecting to this kind of thing is fine but there are those who take it too far and reject everything Old Media stands for, no matter whether or not Old Media has good things going for it.
Here’s the thing guys, there is only one real difference between Old Media and New Media. Want to know what that difference is? Sure you do, you’ve got this far right? The difference….. wait for it….. is money. Shocking right? That’s all it comes down to, but to say that’s ‘all’ is to not give enough credit to just how complex the introduction of money into the equation can be. Money is what causes Old Media to be as corrupt as it is right now, but money is also what’s keeping guys like you and me out of Old Media, in one way or the other. We can’t afford a television studio or printing press, we can’t get a broadcast license, its out of our price range. New media becomes the great equaliser on one basis and one basis alone, money. New media allows a wider range of people to compete with Old Media because the financial barrier has been broken down. They are able to innovate because they don’t have millions of dollars riding on the success or failure of the product. That fear of losing money, which drives Old Media to creating what they think their captive audience is comfortable with, as opposed to trying something new, does not exist with New Media. You can make an interesting documentary, drama or sketch with a $500 camcorder if you know what you’re doing, you can produce an online radio show with a $100 microphone and some free multi-track audio software. You can write a blog that’s read by thousands without paying a penny in printing and distribution costs.
TotalBiscuit singing the praises of New Media? Surely not, a travesty, a heresy you might claim! Not exactly. New Media is indeed the great equaliser and put me in a position where I could produce popular shows for a large audience without having to get a broadcast license or job in an actual radio station, which would be more than a little resistant to the idea of a show about videogames. Remember what I said about innovation earlier? Well videogames are a risky prospect, still viewed by the Old Media as the new ‘Devils Music’, a passing fad and they won’t invest money into producing programming based around it. We know better however, so New Media steps in to fill that gap. So you could say that I like New Media as a concept. What I don’t like, is everything else that comes with it. Remember what I said, money is the ONLY difference between Old and New Media. So why then, the rejection of everything else that comes with Old Media? The extensive training, the quality assurance, the nurturing of the very best talent, the professionalism, the exceptional level of research, the conventions and standards that ensure everything, no matter how trashy the subject matter may be, comes out looking and smelling great? To be a New Media type, do we also need to abandon those things? Do we need to throw away a rulebook that’s been a century in the making, indeed in the case of newspapers, longer still? The answer is no, we really do not. The only difference is money. That means no, you cannot afford a $2000 broadcast microphone, a $10,000 mixing desk and a sound-proofed studio environment, but if you think that’s all broadcast radio has going for it you’re living in a dream-world. Professional radio hosts will sound a mile better than you and me on a $5 Walmart headset. Why? Because they have learned exactly what sounds good and what does not, they know how to speak to an audience, how to deliver their content in a manner that’s entertaining and easy to understand, they do not go off on wild tangents, they keep their thoughts ordered and structured, which carries over to their show. They deliver their message in confident tones and do not make frequent mistakes or pepper their broadcasts with umms and arrs as they stumble to find the words. They ensure that they have everything they need before they start the show and don’t get caught flatfooted as a result. I could go on and on, but the simple message is this. Just because you have removed the financial barrier of entry, does not mean you get to throw away the rulebook. These principles exist for a reason, each has a specific purpose. Some people are bothered more by lapses in these principles than others, but I doubt you’ll find many that actively dislike professionalism.
More than a few people have called me arrogant in the past for blasting certain podcasts, videos, blogs, you name it for their lack of professionalism. The irony is that it takes a real towering pillar of arrogance to reject the wisdom of a century’s worth of work by seasoned professionals. Who are you, the random blogger? Who are you, the gaming podcaster? Who are you, the budding machinimator? Who are you, the fan-fiction author? Who are you, the novice musician? Who are you to simply abandon all of these principles? Sure, question them, ask why each exists but simply ignoring them because you’re a ‘New Media type’? I cannot ever imagine being that arrogant and we all know how arrogant I can be. Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. These guys made the same mistakes you’re making now, the difference is they did it way, way before you did. Whereas they were breaking new ground in terms of technology and a new medium we are simply doing the same thing from our bedrooms and basements, thanks to cheaper technology and a greater understanding of it. It is not ‘innovation’ to reject the lessons of the past, it is ignorance, self-inflicted ignorance. Often it merely comes down to laziness on the part of the people in question. They don’t want to apply standards or quality assurance because it takes too long, or it’s too hard. They don’t want to spend time editing their productions and learning the tricks of the trade because they can’t be bothered. As vomit-worthy as that position is, it’s not quite as bad as those who actively reject the principles of good media because they’re ‘above’ them, they’re too good to be held by the chains of Old Media. Bollocks. For all it’s flaws in terms of the lack of innovation, risk-taking and worship of the almighty dollar, Old Media knows how to present it’s content and that didn’t come about by spending a lot of money, that came about through talent and rational thought, logically working out what works and what doesn’t, partially through trial and error, partially with common sense and then building a set of rules upon which every piece of professional media is produced.
Adhering to standards costs nothing. Nobody can reasonably expect a podcaster just starting out to spend a ton of money on equipment. Heck there’s no need to anymore, a Samson CO1U or Alesis Podcasting Kit will set you back a mere $100, not a lot of money to invest in a hobby. Even some of the cheaper headsets will give you serviceable, if not great quality. However, you can’t blame a bad mic on your umms and arrs, your frequent mistakes, your lack of research or structure, your dead air. All of these are problems easily fixed for the low low price of nothing at all. Don’t blame your mic for background hiss when a music bed or noise-reduction filter could eliminate that. The only good reason for not using either of those things is laziness. Don’t like how your podcasts sounds with a music bed? Ok, use noise-reduction then. Don’t like how your voice sounds with some of the frequencies cut out? Ok, use a music-bed. Don’t want to use either, but don’t want to invest in a better mic? Then you suck, pure and simple. You’re actively choosing not to improve your own work for whatever god-forsaken reason and that’s something I cannot stand.
Worse still are those who will defend this kind of behaviour simply because that’s what they’re come to expect. That right there is the reason podcasting will never gain the respect it deserves, because of a lack of adherence to standards. Podcasts in general, are viewed as the domain of rank amateurs, regardless of the fact that there are plenty that are really great. Problem is that they are islands among an ocean of laziness and failure, a vast ocean. Instead of encouraging their favourite podcasts to get better and offering constructive criticism and feedback, many podcast listeners are sycophants, defending their chosen shows to the hilt, regardless of how valid the criticism they are ‘bravely’ deflecting is. These white-knights are in fact the poison in the chalice of New Media, they enable a lax attitude, encourage bad behaviour. If anything these are the people I hate the most, because I am incapable of fathoming why anyone would actively go out of their way to stop a show they like from improving. It is so inconceivable because it is so irrational, it is a truly bizarre cognitive dissonance and indeed madness, that I personally cannot understand.
Is there a solution to this situation? Not an easy one, that’s for sure. I honestly think a lot of it comes down to the inability to deal with criticism in any of its forms. Podcasters in particular, are expecting almost by some hidden code, to walk on egg-shells around other podcasters, for fear of hurting their feelings. Well I must have missed that memo because I didn’t sign up to any code that told me to lie just so I don’t hurt some bleeding-heart’s feelings. Learning from your betters is the way any craft works. Very few people manage to forge their way ahead independently without any outside influence, indeed, do any? Doubtful. Accept that Old Media for all its flaws does a ton of things right and you are not enough of a master of your craft to simply abandon what they learned over the course of a century or more and you’ll be well on your way to turning out something that is truly great. Many podcasters could do with taking a good long look at themselves and figuring out why it is they get so out of sorts when their product is criticised. White-knight listeners doubly so, because you’re hurting the very people and product you like listening to. Simply put, you ain’t helpin’.
Monday, 3 August 2009
Thread-killers : 'Make levelling hard again'
My aim when posting on the forums is to kill a stupid thread with something so irrefutable that there is no possibly come-back. It's a pipedream, it rarely ever happens, for reasons that should be obvious, however every now and again, we get some success.
"Ok, so some people for some ridiculous reason believe that levelling was at one point hard. I can only assume that they never levelled back on launch, or are deliberately donning their rose-tinted goggles. From a day 1 player, let me just make this clear.
LEVELLING WAS NEVER HARD.
Why do you think the game got so popular in the first place? MMORPGs, before WoW, had a stigma attached to them. They were hardcore time-vampires that would drop you in a world with little to no idea of where to go, or what to do, and leave you to your own devices. That’s a big turn off to an awful lot of players, including myself. Before WoW, the only MMO I’d ever played with gusto was Planetside and hey, that game was so different to other MMOs, that the usual rules did not apply.
The press picked up on this, as demonstrated by these quotes.
“It's incredibly friendly to the solo gamer, allowing players not only to gain Levels 1 to 60 without ever grouping with someone else if they prefer, but also to earn the same or more experience playing that way. That means the solo gamer can level nearly as quickly as a group of power gamers playing together.” – Detroit Free Press
“They’ve just cleaned up your standard Dungeons and Dragons style online RPG and made it super fun, extremely refined, and exceedingly accessible to gamers of all levels.” – Just Adventure
“What's different about it is that Blizzard has made the game very accessible and really put together an amazing system of quests that aren't just part of the depth, but actually a tutorial.” – Firing Squad
“WoW has been described widely as a "newbie-friendly" game, but after playing since the closed beta phase that started back in Spring of this year, I can honestly say that WoW is friendly to everybody.” – IGN
I could go on and on, because basically every review says this. The point? These are all reviews from launch, all praising how easy it is to get into, how simple levelling is and how quests lead you by the nose and teach you the game. That has not changed, not one bit. Here’s why.
Questing all the way through to the end of TBC content, consists of the 5 Ds.
Deliver, Destroy, Defend, Drop, Discover.
To elaborate on that concept, you must either deliver an item to a destination, destroy a certain enemy, multiple enemies or objects, defend a particular objective (usually a person), acquire a certain number of drops or discover a specific area of the game world. These 5 Ds are repeated, ad infinitum, up to Level 70, when Wrath of the Lich King and the later TBC content added 3 new questing types, (I wish I had some Ds for them too, but I don’t), bombing run, vehicular and magic wand. Bombing run should be obvious, you saw them at the end of TBC and they exist in Wrath too, they involve riding a flying creature or vehicle on rails, while dropping bombs on targets, or flying your own flying mount and dropping bombs from there. Vehicular quests behave slightly differently, they put you either on a vehicle, or in control of a creature and you must use the abilities of that creature or vehicle to achieve the objective, which is almost always, destroy a target or targets. The final type, magic wand, consists of using an item to achieve an otherwise impossible task. It gets its name from the Howling Fjord quest where you must use a modified ice-wand to bring down a flying protodrake and destroy it.
So let’s think about this rationally, now that all those facts are on the table. Since level 1-68 or so consists of repeating the 5 D’s over and over again, one can assume that, if player is to learn his class doing those 5 Ds, he’s not going to have to do them a thousand times in order to do so. Indeed, he will learn how to achieve the 5 Ds very early on. And yet, there are claims that reducing the number of Ds that have to be completed by 20% or so, is going to make the difference between a good player and a bad player? Like doing 1600 quests is somehow going to make you a worse player than a guy who did 2000 quests? That is the logic the OP is attempting to espouse, correct? I would suggest that the OP is deluded. One can only learn one’s class to a basic level by doing quests. This has always been the case. Questing is solo friendly, always has been. You learn very little of the group dynamic while questing and end-game content consists almost exclusively of playing in groups. You learn more from running instances as you level up. Speeding up the levelling process does not preclude doing instances, far from it. Instance quests are good way to earn experience as well as long-lasting, high quality rewards. The questing system encourages you to visit instances by linking quest-chains into them as well as offering stand-alone quests with tempting rewards and large chunks of XP.
The reason players do not visit instances as much as they used to while levelling has nothing to do with speeding up the levelling process, it’s to do with the fact that the majority of players are level capped. This issue has existed since vanilla. Levelling was a long process then, but still, after a while, players ended up at cap and only new players and existing alts were levelling. Compound the issue with the fact that instances have a very specific level range at which they should be attempted and you have a recipe for disaster, with very few players being in the appropriate bracket. This has nothing to do with speeding up the levelling process, this happened in vanilla and has continued to happen ever since. It demonstrates a rather fundamental problem with the game that other games have resolved via the introduction of a mentoring system, where a higher level player may reduce himself to the level of a lowbie in order to help a friend or new player and is rewarded for doing so. There is no such system here so we are left with nothing more than boosting, which does not teach a lowbie how to play in a group environment.
In conclusion, the very idea that levelling used to be hard is ridiculous. Doing the same 5 things over and over again cannot be considered difficult in any respect. Levelling at launch only taught you how to play to a very basic level and levelling now continues to do that. Speeding up the levelling process has had no impact what-so-ever on the overall knowledge and competency of the playerbase and to claim otherwise is a logical fallacy. Please stop posting these silly threads. "
"Ok, so some people for some ridiculous reason believe that levelling was at one point hard. I can only assume that they never levelled back on launch, or are deliberately donning their rose-tinted goggles. From a day 1 player, let me just make this clear.
LEVELLING WAS NEVER HARD.
Why do you think the game got so popular in the first place? MMORPGs, before WoW, had a stigma attached to them. They were hardcore time-vampires that would drop you in a world with little to no idea of where to go, or what to do, and leave you to your own devices. That’s a big turn off to an awful lot of players, including myself. Before WoW, the only MMO I’d ever played with gusto was Planetside and hey, that game was so different to other MMOs, that the usual rules did not apply.
The press picked up on this, as demonstrated by these quotes.
“It's incredibly friendly to the solo gamer, allowing players not only to gain Levels 1 to 60 without ever grouping with someone else if they prefer, but also to earn the same or more experience playing that way. That means the solo gamer can level nearly as quickly as a group of power gamers playing together.” – Detroit Free Press
“They’ve just cleaned up your standard Dungeons and Dragons style online RPG and made it super fun, extremely refined, and exceedingly accessible to gamers of all levels.” – Just Adventure
“What's different about it is that Blizzard has made the game very accessible and really put together an amazing system of quests that aren't just part of the depth, but actually a tutorial.” – Firing Squad
“WoW has been described widely as a "newbie-friendly" game, but after playing since the closed beta phase that started back in Spring of this year, I can honestly say that WoW is friendly to everybody.” – IGN
I could go on and on, because basically every review says this. The point? These are all reviews from launch, all praising how easy it is to get into, how simple levelling is and how quests lead you by the nose and teach you the game. That has not changed, not one bit. Here’s why.
Questing all the way through to the end of TBC content, consists of the 5 Ds.
Deliver, Destroy, Defend, Drop, Discover.
To elaborate on that concept, you must either deliver an item to a destination, destroy a certain enemy, multiple enemies or objects, defend a particular objective (usually a person), acquire a certain number of drops or discover a specific area of the game world. These 5 Ds are repeated, ad infinitum, up to Level 70, when Wrath of the Lich King and the later TBC content added 3 new questing types, (I wish I had some Ds for them too, but I don’t), bombing run, vehicular and magic wand. Bombing run should be obvious, you saw them at the end of TBC and they exist in Wrath too, they involve riding a flying creature or vehicle on rails, while dropping bombs on targets, or flying your own flying mount and dropping bombs from there. Vehicular quests behave slightly differently, they put you either on a vehicle, or in control of a creature and you must use the abilities of that creature or vehicle to achieve the objective, which is almost always, destroy a target or targets. The final type, magic wand, consists of using an item to achieve an otherwise impossible task. It gets its name from the Howling Fjord quest where you must use a modified ice-wand to bring down a flying protodrake and destroy it.
So let’s think about this rationally, now that all those facts are on the table. Since level 1-68 or so consists of repeating the 5 D’s over and over again, one can assume that, if player is to learn his class doing those 5 Ds, he’s not going to have to do them a thousand times in order to do so. Indeed, he will learn how to achieve the 5 Ds very early on. And yet, there are claims that reducing the number of Ds that have to be completed by 20% or so, is going to make the difference between a good player and a bad player? Like doing 1600 quests is somehow going to make you a worse player than a guy who did 2000 quests? That is the logic the OP is attempting to espouse, correct? I would suggest that the OP is deluded. One can only learn one’s class to a basic level by doing quests. This has always been the case. Questing is solo friendly, always has been. You learn very little of the group dynamic while questing and end-game content consists almost exclusively of playing in groups. You learn more from running instances as you level up. Speeding up the levelling process does not preclude doing instances, far from it. Instance quests are good way to earn experience as well as long-lasting, high quality rewards. The questing system encourages you to visit instances by linking quest-chains into them as well as offering stand-alone quests with tempting rewards and large chunks of XP.
The reason players do not visit instances as much as they used to while levelling has nothing to do with speeding up the levelling process, it’s to do with the fact that the majority of players are level capped. This issue has existed since vanilla. Levelling was a long process then, but still, after a while, players ended up at cap and only new players and existing alts were levelling. Compound the issue with the fact that instances have a very specific level range at which they should be attempted and you have a recipe for disaster, with very few players being in the appropriate bracket. This has nothing to do with speeding up the levelling process, this happened in vanilla and has continued to happen ever since. It demonstrates a rather fundamental problem with the game that other games have resolved via the introduction of a mentoring system, where a higher level player may reduce himself to the level of a lowbie in order to help a friend or new player and is rewarded for doing so. There is no such system here so we are left with nothing more than boosting, which does not teach a lowbie how to play in a group environment.
In conclusion, the very idea that levelling used to be hard is ridiculous. Doing the same 5 things over and over again cannot be considered difficult in any respect. Levelling at launch only taught you how to play to a very basic level and levelling now continues to do that. Speeding up the levelling process has had no impact what-so-ever on the overall knowledge and competency of the playerbase and to claim otherwise is a logical fallacy. Please stop posting these silly threads. "
Wednesday, 29 July 2009
This is a bitchin' line-graph
The purpose of this graph? Just something I came up with which gives you a visual idea of the difficulty of Ulduar bosses, vs the percentage of active raiding guilds who have downed them. Bosses are rated from 1 to 10 in difficulty, 1 being the easiest, 10 being the hardest. There is no ratio, 4 is not twice as hard as 2 for instance, it's just a subjective idea of what's easy and what isn't. These numbers are from http://wow.guildprogress.com
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