Tag Archive for ‘PC’

Tag Archive for 'PC'

Reflecting On ‘Star Wars Galaxies’

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on January 30, 2009

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As much as some would like to forget, BioWare’s Star Wars: The Old Republic is not the first massively multiplayer online game to tread the waters of the galaxy far far away. Sony Online Entertainment’s Star Wars Galaxies was the first MMO I ever played, and the oddball experience has colored my approach to every MMO after.

My love for the franchise compelled me to start playing SWG in the final stages of the beta, where everything was still broken as hell. Characters who sat in a certain chair in a campground would teleport to the exact middle of the world, where a set of women’s underwear hung in the air and graphic glitches played off the plains like thunder. It was charming as hell.

The game encompassed ten planets, all rendered as wide-open 15 km by 15 km squares of terrain. You could go anywhere, walk up any surface, swim across any body of water. Each planet featured a few movie landmarks — Jabba the Hutt’s palace and the droid’s escape pod on Tatooine, the lakes of Naboo, the Massassi temples on Yavin IV, and the Ewok village on Endor, to name a few.

They were fun to explore, but more like theme parks than anything else. The game had a few World of Warcraft style quests, but most players turned to the mission assignments for money and experience. Computer terminals randomly assigned a mob lair to destroy, which could be Womp Rats on Tatooine, smugglers on Corellia, or Rancors on Dathomir.

I loved the beta and all its flaws so much that I picked up SWG when it was released on June 26, 2003, and started playing the next day (the log-in servers were tellingly broken on the first day). I joined the Damorian Corporation, which constructed the first guild hall on the Chilastra server and later spawned Nova Enterprises.

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‘Grand Theft Auto IV’ Game of the Year

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on December 22, 2008

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Grand Theft Auto IV nabbed the 2008 Game of the Year slot in Time magazine, the New York Times, the Spike TV Video Game Awards, and in other critical lists, and for good reason.

Rockstar’s newest crime simulator definitely attempted something different than its predecessors. It cast off the minigames and bicycles of San Andreas in favor of realism and immersion. Instead of playing off the strengths of the series, it tried something new and risky.

A lot of what Rockstar attempted with GTA IV failed — the relationship building aspect was distracting and the open world did not fit with the linear storytelling, to name the largest flaws — but it failed in a fantastic way.

Even though your interactions with the world are fairly straightforward, they involve and engross the player. Driving and shooting through the beautiful, vibrant, living playground of Liberty City feels fun and strangely realistic.

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‘Left 4 Dead’ and the Cinematic Tutorial

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on December 16, 2008

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Last month’s zombie apocalypse game Left 4 Dead offers one of the best co-op experiences of the year in one complete and functional package that the team at Valve has gained a reputation for.

Unlike most Valve games, however, this one includes a very cinematic cutscene at the beginning of the game. An article by John Brownlee on the Offworld gaming blog explains how this cinematic is actually a tutorial which combines storytelling with the utilitarian function.

Left 4 Dead’s opening cinematic is a shockingly complete primer to the rest of the game. With only a few exceptions, almost any player going into Left 4 Dead for the first time will know exactly how to play the game: they already know the gameplay, the weapons, the enemies, the win scenario and the strategies they need to get through the game alive… the only thing not covered in the opening movie is the specifics of the interface.

It is one of the most useful tutorials ever put together: both broad in scope and minute in detail, with no strategy or major gameplay element overlooked. And as much as I love Left 4 Dead, I think the opening movie is probably the most brilliant thing about the game. While other developers put together opening cinematics that ignore the elements of the gameplay to tell a story, Valve made theirs a tutorial… one so subliminal that almost no one realizes they’ve sat through one.

In the article, Brownlee says point-by-point how Valve demonstrates game mechanics — like special infected behaviors and the use of pipe bombs — unintrusively through the opening cinematic, and how gamers naturally understand all these mechanics when they start the game.

One thing I liked about the cinematic is that it leaves the four characters on top of the building where they start the “No Mercy” campaign. It has a context within the story of the game, establishes the characters, and shows how the gameplay works. This is how game stories should be told, and it’s not surprising that the move came from Valve.

‘Fallout 3′ Procures Mods and DLC

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on December 13, 2008

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Bethesda’s Fallout 3 mod creator, nicknamed the Garden of Eden Creation Kit, went online this week.

The new Web site has the mod tools available and a library of how-to articles. Fallout 3 Nexus is a good community source for new content.

Bethesda has a history of good mod support for Morrowind and Oblivion as well as downloadable content, and Fallout 3 is getting the same treatment.

Three downloadable packages have been announced — “Operation: Anchorage,” which simulates a battle between the US and China, will come out next month, followed by “The Pitt” and the new city of Pittsburgh in February and “Broken Steel,” a continuation of the main quest, in March.

IGN has an in-depth interview with Producer Jeff Gardiner about January’s “Operation: Anchorage.”

“The Chinese red army is everywhere, and the player will first have to secure the surrounding mountain side and then fight their way into the Chinese base,” summarized Gardiner.

“The player will have to use a lot of their standard combat skills, along with several new tools that will only be available in the downloadable content. These include interactive Strike Teams under the player’s command and unique armor, weapons, and other exotic gadgets.”

The packs are exclusive to the Xbox 360 and PC, and they will cost $10 a piece.

Despite the price tag, I think Bethesda’s new DLC is exactly what it should be: four to five hours of content that supplements the main quest and expands on the story and gameplay of the core game. They are substantial, experimental mini-expansions rather than superfluous aesthetics like Oblivion’s infamous horse armor.

As Gardiner said in the interview, “It’s important to our team to use DLC as a way for us to flex our creativity, to try new things and answer the ‘wouldn’t have been cool if we did this?’ question that always comes up towards a games completion — when it’s too late to try them!”

BioWare Brings Companions, Epic Combat to ‘The Old Republic’

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on December 4, 2008

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An Edge magazine preview of the new Star Wars MMO The Old Republic has new details on how BioWare’s first attempt at a massively multiplayer game will differ from the competition in atmosphere and play style, including the use of companion characters.

“This is a faster-paced system that focuses on making the player feel like a hero,” said Creative Designer James Ohlen. “Four players all beating on one enemy; that’s not what you think of as heroic. It’s usually the heroes who are outnumbered, and that’s the kind of feeling we’re going for.”

BioWare is trying to integrate the epic, personal, and ascending narratives of their single player titles into the MMO genre, where individual players are normally cogs in a massive machine and one hero among thousands.

Lead Writer Daniel Erickson said that players would have to make big, character-defining choices and live with the consequences, but could not say if or how those choices would change the game world.

The Edge mentioned companion characters as one BioWare mainstay making its way into the game. A single ally can fight alongside a player character, and these allies have opinions and backstories.

Their role is to continually comment on, and presumably try to influence, your behaviour. Greg Zeschuk (BioWare’s president and co-founder) describes them as “the lens through which you see the world,” and they won’t hesitate to make their feelings known, good or bad, and will even abandon you if you’re constantly doing things they object to.

The article also gives early impressions of the new game’s art style.

The game takes a few visual cues from the new Clone Wars aesthetic introduced by the recent film and TV series: characters have simplified body structures, bright flat colors and the odd exaggerated feature. Each asset is hand-painted rather than using photo-sourced textures, giving everything a slightly unreal and highly distinctive sheen.

This is the same approach that Blizzard took with World of Warcraft. They compensated for aging graphics with unique art and design that kept everything fresh. Its the most economic plan for MMOs because it allows for stunning visuals and an expansive user base to play on low-end machines.

REVIEW: ‘Far Cry 2′ Falls in the Uncanny Valley

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on November 26, 2008

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Far Cry 2 features a number of inventions and improvements on first person shooters and attempts to bring more realism to the genre. By doing so, it slides down into the uncanny valley where any artificiality stands out as fantastic.

The game was developed by Ubisoft Montreal, the same studio behind Assassin’s Creed, Rainbow Six: Vegas, and Far Cry: Instincts, but shares nothing with its predecessors. No Jack Carver, mutagens or feral powers.

Gameplay in Far Cry 2 is more like Assassin’s Creed than anything. Chose from nine different mercenaries and make your way through an wide open African nation fired up in civil war, doing story missions for different factions or finding side quests and blood diamonds.

The world feels natural and realistic, especially from the player’s perspective. You never leave the first person view, even during cinematics or when driving a vehicle, and you always have a visual representations of your actions.

The mercenary’s hands pick up uncovered diamonds and knock on doors. Lose to much health and you have to pry bullets out of your leg or snap bones back into place. There’s no on-screen radar, just a map and GPS that function as part of the mercenary’s inventory.

This style of gameplay eschews a detailed HUD in favor of immersive elements. Its very detail oriented but it works and brings a high degree of realism to the African world of Far Cry 2.

But however realistic, Far Cry 2 is a flawed picture of reality and enters a sort of uncanny valley where every deviation from expected realism is a glaring error. When the normally inventive enemy AI stops and stands there looking dumb it breaks the illusion even more than in an average video game.

Even devices that make gameplay more convenient — like universal ammo for all assault rifles, fixing a shot up jeep with a few twists of a socket wrench, or the helpful moving icons on the your map — seem out of place.

The writing for Far Cry 2 isn’t bad, but the voice acting is horrible. Most characters sound like robots and their sentences are clipped together. It sounds unnatural and kills the otherwise realistic mood.

This expectation of perfect realism is a problem for games that strive for immersive verisimilitude, and something that future titles which attempt to put fit gameplay elements into the game world will have to overcome. Still Far Cry 2 is a big step in a good direction for FPS games and a worthwhile experience.

Stardock CEO Returns to PC Gaming’s Complicated Basics

Published

on November 17, 2008

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Stardock CEO Brad Wardell is devoted to reviving the classic era of PC gaming in all its excess. Stardock is currently developing Elemental: War of Magic for a 2010 release, a turn-based fantasy strategy game intended as a spiritual successor to the 1995 game Master of Magic.

Wardell talked about upcoming Stardock projects in a recent interview with Gamasutra and commented on the responsibilities of companies who take on old franchises.

“If you’re making a game that ends with ‘3,’ or Something: The Sequel, it should be similar to the original game,” Wardell told Gamasutra. “Don’t go off and say, ‘I have my own artistic vision.’ Okay, good — so call it something else. Don’t ride the coattails of the people who came before you to launch your own artistic vision.”

In the interview, Wardell also expressed interest in revisiting Toys For Bob’s Star Control II and Simtex’s classic series Master of Orion, last updated in 2003.

The CEO told Gamasutra that Stardock is building up a second full internal development team, and is tossing around various project ideas. “We’d like to do a roleplaying game too,” he said, pointing to BioWare classics like Baldur’s Gate II and Knights of the Old Republic as examples of the route he would like to take.

It would be “the same style of isometric gameplay — not first person — where I have a party that I’m interacting with,” he explained.

“I think there are a lot of people who want that. They want to have a party again. They want to have a Minsc-type character in there. You can’t have that interesting banter if it’s just one guy running around.”

Stardock earned a benevolent reputation among PC faithful after developing the excellent Galactic Civilizations II and publishing Ironclad Games’ Sins of a Solar Empire, both without any form of controversial copy protection or DRM. Their next published game, Gas Powered Games’ Demigod, comes out in early 2009.

It’s good to see a growing publishing house stay true to its roots and out to serve a small but ravenous audience of old school PC gamers.

The elaborate gameplay, structure and length of games like Baldur’s Gate II and Master of Orion got left behind by modern developers intent on mass appeal, and revivals like Gas Powered Games’ Supreme Commander fail to produce significant numbers.

Yet there’s something absolutely immersive about incredibly complicated gameplay, as anyone who tried out Steel Battalion’s unique mech controller will say. The spell system and character dynamics of Baldur’s Gate II brought that world to life, and the complicated micromanagement of Master of Orion gave the game’s universe political and economic verisimilitude.

If Stardock is truly pledged to bring back this wrongly abandoned aspect of PC gaming, then we should all be excited to see what they come up with.

Can the ‘Mirror’s Edge’ Experiment Go Mainstream?

Published

on November 8, 2008

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Mirror’s Edge is proof that publisher Electronic Arts can still innovate, but will the unique take on FPS gameplay pay off?

“Executing an unbroken flow from A to B is what Mirror’s Edge is all about,” says Edge Magazine in a staff preview of the new game. “Stringing together a few moves increases your speed, and there’s a purity and zing to bouncing between surfaces and popping over a low handrail in one smooth motion.”

The gameplay, especially the focus on weapon-less combat, that has drawn so much critical praise could turn away casual FPS gamers used to running and gunning tactics that won’t work in Mirror’s Edge. Instead the game asks players to sprint past enemies and over obstacles and to leap without looking.

This style immerses you in the world and the adrenaline-rush of its main character, but it runs contrary to a generation of FPS instinct. “Overcoming inclinations toward caution and inertia in first-person should perhaps have been one of the tutorial’s priorities,” the Edge article comments.

It’s a self-perpetuating cycle — gameplay conventions become instincts among gamers and hard to break. A steep learning curve accompanies any deviation from the old ways, and experimental games often seem unpolished by comparison to the tried-and-true.

This makes Mirror’s Edge confusing initially. “Your first steps are bewildering, but they soon become bewitching and even oddly familiar,” says the Edge preview. “It isn’t an FPS, not as we think of them. It’s a Full-on Platformer, Stupid.”

Mirror’s Edge comes out next Tuesday on Windows, Playstation 3, and Xbox 360.

REVIEW: Don’t Forget ‘Dark Messiah’

Published

on October 28, 2008

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Dark Messiah of Might and Magic was released last October to mediocre reviews and slow sales, not surprising for a game based on an outdated strategy series with a small cult following. I picked up the year-old FPS/RPG hybrid while waiting for this season’s storm of new games and had a lot of fun with it.

Dark Messiah is an enjoyable ride reminiscent of Thief and Half-Life with rousing visuals and exhilerating gameplay.

The protagonist is an orphan named Sareth, raised and trained by an ominous-voiced wizard who sends him out to find magical artifacts. Eventually he learns more about his past and makes that eternal choice between good and evil.

The story is told through dialog, cinematics and old books you find lying around. Like Half-Life, the cut scenes are viewed through the main character’s eyes, but unlike Gordon Freeman, Sareth speaks, both to other characters and the succubus that lives in his head.

The voice acting is kind of bad for all the main characters, and the writing is not much better. Where Dark Messiah really shines is the fast, intuitive gameplay, which combines spells and sword-swinging combos.

Combat is a blast, and plays more like a Deus Ex shooter than a Morrowind RPG. Weapon combat is quick and satisfying, with fun animations and brutal fatalities and criticals. Stats matter — you can put points into combat, magic or stealth abilities depending on how you want to play.

Sareth can use the environment to his advantage by kicking unwary soldiers, orcs and necromancers off cliffs or into fires or spikes. Shovels, chairs and jars of oil offer makeshift weapons that can be picked up and thrown, or just cut ropes and drop chandeliers or debris on enemies.

These scripted traps are the only way to defeat larger monsters. They’re fun to find but can seem contrived, especially when every goblin camp has a platform covered in barrels with one shaky support.

Nevertheless the environments in Dark Messiah are nice to look at thanks to brilliant art design and a lot of fun to mess with. Each cluster of enemies can be approached in many different ways, depending Sareth’s abilities and what items are around.

The areas between combat play like Half-Life and force you to work your way through the level using keys and shooting ropes tied to arrows Batman style. They can get a little repetitive and confusing but are generally very fun.

Dark Messiah showcases some entertaining gameplay ideas, albeit with a cliched plot and characters, and makes me wish that Bethesda had used such innovative combat with Oblivion. The game is well worth a quick playthrough, especially when it currently costs $10 on Steam.

Students Love ‘Fallout,’ Worry Over ‘Fallout 3′

Published

on October 22, 2008

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Michael Abbott at The Brainy Gamer has proven why we should be dissatisfied with Bethesda’s upcoming take on the Fallout franchise through the observations of newly initiated.

He handed over Fallout and Fallout 2 to his class of mostly casual gamers, who initially struggled with the decade old world.

“After exiting the vault, they had no idea where to go or what to do. Their movements were limited for no apparent reason; “action points” made no sense; and they died within minutes nearly everywhere they went,” said Abbot.

The students had trouble grasping the SPECIAL system, action points, and the severe dangers of Fallout’s nonlinear world. The game did not coddle its players or hold their hand; it shoved them into a brutal landscape where many areas offered instant and unremitting death to the unwary Vault Dweller.

But those who stuck with the games found the wonderfully engaging experience that lurks under the surface. Abbott posted some of their observations:

What is interesting about the random encounters in the game is that not all of them are hostile encounters. The kind of encounter that is very rare in games is the neutral encounter where you encounter people fighting. You can help either side but even then sometimes they will just turn around and attack you when they beat whoever they were fighting. My favorite way to deal with these encounters is to wait till a few of them die, and then it’s looting corpses time. It’s amazing what kind of nice loot you can find on them. It’s also where I got my first gun.

What effect would the isolation of the vaults have on the society? And what would changed based on the nuclear apocalypse? It would be like taking all the data in the world and deleting random parts. It would cause mass chaos, especially once the original humans (from pre-nuking) die out. Or, alternatively, there could be a safe-haven somewhere. From a developing standpoint, how could that effect the game? Could it?

I just found out that the greeter at the Den tells you to be vewy vewy quiet he is hunting rabbits, and i just stopped and laughed for about fifteen mins.

Abbott’s students got it. The dangers and aimlessness of Fallout absorbed them into that world and the character they played, a Vault Dweller newly emerged into the savage wild. He asked his students what they thought about Bethesda’s Fallout 3, long criticized by the Fallout faithful.

After a long and productive conversation I asked them how they were feeling about Fallout 3. ‘They’re totally gonna screw up that game,’ said one student. ‘They’re gonna say shoot this guy in the eyeball, like they’re giving you all these choices, but you know they’re gonna make it run and gun. You’re gonna be running around blowing stuff up, and all the shooter players are gonna love it. But it won’t be Fallout. I promise you. It won’t be Fallout.’

It remains to be seen whether or not Bethesda’s effort, which comes out next week, will take the same road as its ten-year-old predecessors. The challenging qualities that made Fallout and Fallout 2 so immersive have fallen out of favor, as Iroquois Pliskin commented on his Versus CluClu Land blog.

“While the frequent and arbitrary death, along with the cluelessness, was a pretty intimidating at first, by the end I really came to appreciate the way that these elements work together to make this really unique experience,” commented Pliskin on Abbott’s blog.

“I’m not manically paranoid about the prospect of Bethesda reimagining the game’s mechanics,” Pliskin added. “I hope they don’t lose the basic hostility the original’s setting and mechanics, though. Even though it runs counter to the tendencies of modern design… I think it’s one of the things that makes Fallout unique as a series.”

I don’t see Bethesda creating a game as testing as the original Fallout. Oblivion featured leveled creature lists that made it impossible for the protagonist to face enemies beyond his means to defeat, and dialog rarely influenced the course of the game. That’s how mainstream games are made today, and Bethesda is making Fallout 3 for a mainstream audience.

Yet I also know that the developers can’t help but be influenced by the quality of Fallout and Fallout 2, and I hope they find a way to make a new generation of Vault Dwellers feel like small fish in big ponds filled with piranahs, like they’re lost and alone in a self-destructive and self-depricating world.