Oldschool Hard

This is the sort of achievement that actually counts for something.

I think Microsoft hit upon the purest form of sweet, sweet digital crack when they came up with XBox Live achievements. How many hours have been spent by poor gamers trying to get the most obsession-required, difficult or obscure achievements? All for a maximum of 1000 nerd points a game, that are worth exactly zero. You can’t trade them for anything. Having more doesn’t get an in-game advantage beyond whatever you unlocked in the process of actually getting them. It doesn’t get you free games, or discounts on your Live subscription, or anything other than bragging rights. And yet I find myself drawn to certain achievements, chasing little orbs or riddle symbols well after I’ve completed a game’s main storyline, for what, I don’t even know. All they are are a modern, complicated version of the high-score table on the arcade machines down at the local fish and chip shop, only with your gamertag attached, instead of cool three letter word like G O D or S E X. Heh, sex. That’s a good one.

The effort required to get the same amount of achievement points can vary widely. My one (and only) playthrough of the original Gears of War netted me a mere 100 points, as most of the game’s points are tied up in multiplayer achievements that I’m not at all interested in. Balancing that out are the easy ones. I’ve received achievement points, just for not skipping a cutscene, in The Darkness. In a game like Avatar (not the movie game), you can get all 1000 points the game has to offer merely by button-mashing, within the first 5 minutes of playing. Perhaps it’s a canny sales strategy – appeal to all the gamer score whores, although I’d say it’s more likely to be the most rented game than a big blockbuster.

I don’t really mind achievements that flow naturally from gameplay (complete this level, kill a realistically-achieveable number of smellies, do x jumps), and even better if they require some skill, but still flow naturally (complete this level quickly, kill a realistic number of smellies barehanded). I’ll even give kudos to the most out-there achievements, like the Six Degrees of Schafer achievement in Brutal Legend, where you have to play with or against someone who already has the achievement to get it (and the first people to get it had to play against the developer, Tim Schafer). It’s the ‘rack up 700 hours online with a 10:1 kill:death ratio’-type of achievement that really annoys me, and while I expect the idea is to try and keep you playing their game, that sort of ridiculous way of doing it makes me want to drop a game like a bad habit as soon as another game comes along.

Now, Microsoft was only the first. In the way of all gaming innovations, others would later come along to latch on. Later to come were PlayStation trophies, steam achievements, WoW achievements…that last one is like sprinkling the finest columbian powder over concentrated crack. It’s so addictive it should be illegal. I’m not even going to begin to tell you the stupid shit I’ve done to get achievements in WoW (nor how annoying it is to not have achievements for things you’ve actually done, because you did them before achievements were introduced). All I will say is that there was a lot of time wasted, a lot of boredom, and yet I did them anyway, like an idiot.

Please, eliminate these wretched things. Not because they inevitably influence game design, not because they serve no real purpose, but because I CAN’T HELP MYSELF AND I NEED YOU TO TAKE THEM AWAY. I won’t do the stupid ones, but if I think something is do-able, I will keep trying to run back and forth across a lake in Shadow Complex for a measly 5 achievement points. Unless, for the love of god, you stop me.

Image from Polygamer.

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Just because this looked good once doesn’t mean we had to believe that was as good as it would ever get.

Oh, but of course I spoke too soon. I had less than a week of a functional WoW before a random error occurred, leading to a texture error and crash upon logging in. Also of course, a repair didn’t work and I had to do a full reinstall, running into the same install -> patch problems as before. I have no idea what I did right the one time it installed without a problem, and like an idiot, I didn’t make a copy of the folder when it was working. So I eventually had to install the game on my parents’ computer, a very slow process on their old machine, and then copy that folder to an external HDD. It seems to be working, at least for now.

I’m beginning to get some sort of battered-wife thing happening, where I feel like I must have brought it upon myself, somehow. Sigh.

Alright, I know you don’t care about that. What’s today’s post actually about? Graphics. It’s one thing to talk about graphics not ageing well – like my oft-mentioned belief in how poorly PS1 games graphics have aged – but this often comes down to a question about art design versus trying to push the technology at hand based on the knowledge you have of it. I have no problem with the cutting edge aging rapidly if I’m not being sold bullshit about how current graphics are never going to get better. I read items about how we don’t need to progress in graphics any time soon, and thus don’t need new consoles any time soon. While I agree that current-gen consoles are probably adequate for now with the current levels of HDTV and online gaming adoption, I think making a call that graphics don’t have anywhere much to go is bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.

Every generation we’re treated to the same thing: a tech demo of ‘REAL GAME FOOTAGE!!1onebbq’ that always ends up being a frigging cutscene, and console-launch titles that don’t look anything like the initial tech demo. As developers learn to get more out a machine over time, we wonder what the hell we were thinking when we thought those first few games looked so amazing. Yes, current games mostly look pretty good, but resting on our laurels gets us nowhere, and some of the problems of (particularly) console games are fucking glaring.

As I’ve stated before, I play console games on a 50″ 1080p TV. The inability of current-gen consoles to combine high resolutions and anti-aliasing for anything moderately demanding, graphically, is markedly fucking obvious on a screen this big. “Jaggies” are everywhere, and all you generally have to do to confirm how bad they are is to compare a PC version to a console version of a multi-format game on any moderately powerful PC. Then there is the reasonable assumption that the game you’re playing on a 1080p TV should actually be output at a native 1080p. HA. Games like COD4 or Halo3 run upscaled at a native resolution closer to 600-700p most of the time, just to get an acceptable frame rate.

Even if a developer does get a game running relatively smoothly at a high native resolution, we run into more insidious problems like the “uncanny valley.” The closer you get to being ‘human’ without actually nailing it, the worse the problem usually is – this is why stylised and/or cartoonish graphics often age well, but “cutting-edge” graphics don’t. Plastic skin, incorrect lip-synching, movement that just doesn’t quite look human. I think this is partially a problem of hardware (in terms of skin and hair tone, hair movement, etc. being mathematically complex and thus heavily resource intensive, especially for something that doesn’t directly affect gameplay) and partially a problem of a lack of ingenuity or talent by artists and animators in being able to accurately represent human movement. And it amazes me how many games still can’t get the “camera” right – having it follow too close or far away, at the wrong angle, obscuring hazards, swinging wildly at corners…need I go on?

To expect the perfection of a Pixar film where each frame can spend hours being rendered on supercomputers is, of course, ridiculous. But to accept that near enough is good enough, ignore the problems, and not even try to push for any progression does a disservive to gaming and gamers, and harks towards an age of graphical mediocrity that would well suit an age of annualisation. I’ll be in the corner, playing Deus Ex again, thanks. It may look ugly now, but at least the developers tried to push forwards based on what they had available.

Picture originally from Kinox.

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Deja Vu? This could be what all gaming will feel like, soon.

As well as the big pile o’ unplayed games, I keep a list of games that I hear/see/read about, both already released games that I’m yet to get (some examples: Bayonetta and The Saboteur), and games yet to come out (like Heavy Rain, Alan Wake, and Rage). As the examples show, there’s definitely still new stories, new gameplay ideas, and new stories grafted onto old ideas coming out of game publishers. However, these new ideas have to fight very hard to get any traction. On my list of 31 upcoming games to watch, 22 are either direct sequels or part of an already established series. Mass Effect 2, Crackdown 2, Max Payne 3, Diablo 3, Thief 4…

I suppose I’m the sucker; it’s my own list, after all. And it’s probably what a large section of the gaming public wants – why wouldn’t you want more of a good thing? But it makes me wonder, are these games being released in addition to games with original ideas and settings, with as many new properties being released as there has ever been, or are they the replacement for new ideas? I worry when I see things like Activision (oh, you have come a long way since Pitfall, haven’t you) talking about not releasing new games unless they can be “annualised.” That statement does perhaps imply new ideas in gaming, but it implies ‘safe’ new ideas. Does it prevent any resources being put into the next Psychonauts, Ico, or Okami?

Call of Duty, Guitar Hero - these sort of series will be cranked out on a yearly basis, quality or need be damned. As game budgets and therefore the number of units needed to sell to make a profit rise, the will to take on risk evaporates, and thus these sort of sequels or annual installments will be prevalent. GTAIV, as an example, had a lot of ambition, and in some ways its reach exceeded its grasp, but at the core it was largely the same game as every GTA game since GTA3 – and stuck largely to what people look for in a GTA game. I can see the Madden Syndrome threaten to take over before too long, where the game title just becomes ‘Call of Duty 2011‘, and any gameplay changes are minor and incremental. It seems like the only games that will join these existing series’, at least from major publishers, will be games that are derivative of them.

Repitition and sequels are old as games themselves: Look at Pac Man and Ms. Pac Man, Galaxian and Galaga. There’s been a million Zelda sequels, give or take, and that’s down to a fine art by now, which is pretty much exactly why I struggle to take much interest in the Zelda series anymore. You can contrast this with the (western versions of the) Super Mario Bros. series, which up to Super Mario 64 (at the very least) did something different in every game. But the development cycles were long, and games were relatively less expensive to make – the pressure was undoubtably there to make a hit, but would be unlikely to sink the company if one game in a series wasn’t quite the blockbuster they were hoping for. There was time to experiment when a game didn’t have to come out every year, and even if games were released annually, they didn’t need the scores of graphic and sound resources that games do now.

I’m not saying I wouldn’t want a good sequel to a game I enjoy, but getting one every year is a bit ridiculous and can make you tired of even the best ideas. I mean, I like pizza, but I don’t want to eat it every night, you know?

Image from Sports Rubbish, done over with my 1337 chopping skillz.

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Just pass 700 more of these challenges, and then we’ll let you drive a Camry.

I like the idea of a decent learning curve and gathering more things as a game goes on to face greater challenges. Pretty much everyone’s aware of the ‘gather boomerang, gather hookshot, get more life-hearts’ Zelda-type of progression, and I don’t have a problem with that. Being able to get uber-gear straight off (like you can in, for instance, Oblivion, if you know what you’re doing) doesn’t make the game present much of a challenge, and while it’s fun to absolutely destroy everything in your path, the novelty grows old pretty quickly.

Note, however, the concept of a ‘decent learning curve.’ If a game ramps up the difficulty level exponentially, and then won’t let you get any further unless you do what it wants, that’s not fun. Ridiculously hard side-challenges like Ruby and Emerald weapon in Final Fantasy VII, I have no problem with – they don’t affect the main game at all. But something like the Guitar Hero games – “Yeah, play through these songs you don’t like to get to songs you do. Jump through some hoops to get what you paid for”? Fuck that.

It’s especially awful in games like the Gran Turismo series: I can’t speak for everyone’s motivations, but what I buy those games for is to drive fast cars that I’ll never be able to afford to actually buy. Having to pass ridiculous licence challenges in boring cars to get to the good bits strikes me as being against the spirit of being a game. Boring, arbitrary challenges that you have to do to get to do other things are usually known as a job, and you at least get paid for those.

Don’t get me wrong, some people like these ‘challenges’ and see them as fun. A good friend of mine refused to buy Gran Turismo 4 until he had completed 100% of Gran Turismo 3. He talks proudly about how it took him 2 years before he could complete a lap in Grand Prix Legends, at a decent speed, without crashing. However, for the rest of us without an acquired brain injury or autism spectrum disorder, this sort of stuff is generally regarded as bullshit.

At least unlockable content doesn’t cost you any money beyond what you’ve already paid for a game. I’m not really against downloadable content if it adds to a game, but paying for stuff that’s almost essential strikes me as a special kind of stupid. For instance, I’m enjoying the few hours of Dragon Age: Origins I’ve played so far, and as the Bioware sucker that I am, I bought the ‘deluxe’ (aside: notice how almost everything is or has a version that’s ‘deluxe’ or ‘premium’, these days? To paraphrase The Incredibles: “When everything’s special, nothing is”) edition, which came with all the DLC included. I bet the people who bought the regular edition of the game weren’t especially pleased to find that the fix to a widely acknowledged inventory problem could only be downloaded as part of the Warden’s Keep DLC pack. Sure, you got extra content, but anything that’s a systems-fix needs to be available free.

That wasn’t DA:O‘s only DLC sin, either. The idea of leaving hooks in the game (“Will you help me free my dronkey? To help me, thou needst to [PAY EA SOME MONEY]“) that slap you in the face with your ‘missing’ paid DLC is against the whole idea of stepping into a game world, and especially of playing a role in an RPG. Then there’s content like the extra multiplayer maps in games like Halo 3 and Gears of War 2, not technically ‘essential’, but without them it can be very difficult to find a multiplayer game. I haven’t even touched the concept of ‘day-1′ DLC, like the ‘classic’ map pack in GoW 2, the pack-in extras in (again) DA:O, and the Saboteur ‘titty code’.

What I find perhaps most ridiculous, keeping in mind that at this stage it’s just a rumour, is the rumour of Modern Warfare 2 having ‘DLC’ locked on the retail disc. It’s one thing to jump through in-game hoops to access what you’ve paid for, another thing entirely to pay more money for things that were on the disc YOU ALREADY PAID FOR.

But, you negative nancy who never has anything nice to say, my dear voices inside my head ask, what games do DLC right?

Burnout: Paradise is a great example – not only does it have a good unlockable learning curve and basically no ‘essential’ unlockables, Criterion keeps releasing new DLC for the game, with a mixture of free content, reasonably priced content, and vanity items that you can buy if you love the game, but have no effect on the gameplay if you don’t. Team Fortress 2 is another, always getting updated and added-to, for free. It can be done, the developers and publishers just have to have the will to do it.

Image from IGN.com

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