Oldschool Hard

I usually got to see this about 50 times a match, 0.1 seconds before waiting to respawn.

My first post to Bitmob made the front page a few weeks ago. It’s about the coming changes to raiding in the next WoW expansion, Cataclysm. If you’re interested, you can check it out over here.

Also, for a fun little retro gaming mashup, check out Super Mario Crossover.

Work is nearly finished on my thesis, with a week left before I hand it in. No fabulous job offer has presented itself, tickets have been purchased, and in just under two weeks I move halfway across the world with a suitcase, a laptop, and a guitar. I ultimately made the decision to take my PS3, DS, PC and 360 games with me, and not sell my PS2 games. It’s keeping a foot in two camps, I guess, but whether or not I decide to stay or come back, I figure that my PS2 collection is essentially worth as little as it’s ever going to be worth, and I can sell it on a later visit back, should I need to, or it’s there for me if I come running back with my tail between my legs.

I’ve been reading, even if I haven’t been writing, and I found one particular article to strike a chord. Here is an admission of guilt within, rather than about, videogames.

My own admission: Well, I’ve thrown my controller a few times before in frustration, but I’ve already mentioned that. The general tone of this blog probably indicates that I’m prone to being a tad surly at times, so that should come as no real surprise.

A deeper admission, for someone who complains so much about what games should and shouldn’t be and thus likes to portray himself as a switched-on gamer: I’m terrible at multiplayer gaming.

WoW? Well, not WoW. I’m not the best but I’m in the upper half. PvE WoW is easy. Do some maths or read someone else’s maths so you gear correctly, don’t stand in the fire, watch the cast bar, hit the right buttons. PvP WoW is rock paper scissors, pick your battles and you’ll probably win. Other types of games, though, well…

Generally, it’s the speed of the game that gets me.

RTS? I build too slowly, try and get massively fortified, and end up getting rushed and stomped very quickly with my fortifications half-done.

FPS? I panic when someone starts shooting at me and when I fire back my shots tend to go everywhere but where they should. I can do reasonably well with an AoE class like the Pyro in Team Fortress 2, where I don’t have to be dead-on with my shots, and I’m adept at not dying when I play a support class, like someone repairing, doling out ammo, or chucking healthpacks around, but by genre definition, the games are shooters, and I fail at that part. I’m especially bad at the fastest-paced games, and vividly recall the thrashings I got when Quake 3 came out. In single player FPS, I can hide, take my time, rely on the predictability of the AI, and think about things. I don’t have that luxury in multiplayer FPS. The same problems also largely apply to me and third-person multiplayer games. Shit, even when I played on various MUDs, MUSHes, and MOOs, I’d panic during combat and not be able to type quickly enough half the time.

Sports games? I lack the aftertouch finesse, reflexes and, in most sports, tactical awareness needed.

I can’t think of any other common multiplayer genres at the moment, but it’s a good bet I suck at them, too. I generally need time to consider what I’m going to do, and other people don’t, it’s that simple. Me fail gaming? That’s unpossible!

Image from Unreality Magazine.

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I may be behind one of these tiny lights in the near future.

Once again I must make excuses for my absence – between the wedding that I was involved in – it went well – a cold that just seemed to come and go as it pleased before finally fucking off, trying to write 15,000 odd words of business plan and thesis so I can finish grad school, Operation Stop Being a Fat Bastard (down 22kg/48lb, nearly 6 inches around (not below) the waist, and fitting into a medium shirt for the first time in living memory – the ‘trick’ is to eat well and exercise, sorry) and being sucked back into raiding on WoW (I know), time’s slipped away from me, again.

There’s been a storm of gaming-related bullshit since I last posted, as there always seems to be: PS3s having clock errors, Activision causing havoc at Infinity Ward (so as to have as much control over the ‘brand’ and ‘annualisation’ as possible?) with subsequent claims and counter-claims, Ubisoft’s DRM servers getting hacked.

In good news, there was the Portal update, with its mysterious messages that showed what the power of nerds can do, and with Michael Atkinson showing himself out of parliament in South Australia we might be able to get a proper go at an 18+ games rating in Australia. I believe his true character was shown by the fact that he decided to retire after being voted back in with a massive swing against him.

In my own personal news, short of being offered a fabulous job here in the next 2 months, I’ll be moving to the US when I finish my grad studies (oh, the joy of hereditary dual citizenship). Either New York or San Francisco seem to be where the majority of jobs around my skill sets are, although I’m not ruling out other cities. Despite Australia supposedly having a much better job market, I can’t seem to get a job in one of my chosen fields (writing and/or editing) here, and through the strange nature of the internet and family networks, I know more people in New York than I know in Sydney, the other Australian publishing city.

This is a logistical challenge for me, as I did a count other day, and not counting my homebrew games, ’50 retro games on one disc!’ collections and so on, and estimating how many games are on some discs (eg. Space and Kings Quest collections), I currently own approximately 285 games, across 7 formats. I’ve probably sold about 70 games in my life, the vast majority when selling systems to get new systems, and I usually hang onto games rather than sell them, even if I don’t intend on ever playing them again.

So the question is raised: If I go, what games would I bring with me, and what would I leave behind? PC games are a no brainer – they work anywhere, and I just need to bring manuals (or even just a list of keys), a folder of discs, and downloads on an external HDD – boxes can be sent later when I’m settled in. PS3 games, not that I own many, are another no brainer – they’re region-free. DS/GBA games will also work anywhere. 360 games are tougher – some are region-free, some aren’t. My collection on 360 is a good pile without being huge, and I’m tempted to just play through the ones I haven’t finished before I leave and then sell them all, rather than try and sort out what works where.

The one collection that really drives me to confusion is my PS2 games. It’s approximately 70 games, including a bunch of rare ones (at least in PAL territories) like the .Hack collection, ICO, the Shadow Hearts games, (the subsequently banned from sale) Manhunt, Rez, Gitaroo Man, and the two Space Channel 5 games. There’s just too many issues: these won’t work on an overseas PS2 without modding and I have no idea if chipping PS2s is commonplace in the US, transporting many games is unwieldy and expensive, I don’t want to deal with the hassles of transformers and TV compatibility, and I don’t know if PS2 emulation is good enough yet to just play them through a PC. There’s a lot of games I’m yet to play through, I don’t have nearly enough time before my degree is finished, and while selling them would make me a decent chunk of change, I’d probably just put that out again buying US versions of the same games.

There’s always the prospect of me coming back, I can’t say any move would be forever. Should I let them sit because I can’t make up my mind definitively either way? Some things, it doesn’t matter – DVDs I can rip to computer, the same with CDs. But I need the physical media with these games, and I have a limited amount of luggage space. I also fret about my guitars and amplifiers, my books and certain magazines – much loved and important to me, but expensive to move in bulk, and barring a few Australian titles, first editions, and such, easy enough to buy again. Clothes, computer parts, most everything else, I’m not emotionally attached to, but some things mean a lot to me, and my games are part of that.

Image from art.com

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Mass Effect 2: Obliterate your free time, in spaaaaaace!

This post at Kotaku piqued my interest, covering some issues similar to what I usually look at in this blog.

Taking a point from said post, Mass Effect 2 has been released, and it seems like the topic du jour in gaming circles. Am I playing it? Of course not. I’m still stuck (for want of a better word; it’s not a chore) in Dragon Age, and it sets my tightarse sense tingling when it comes to paying full price for a game more than once every 3 or 4 months. What was Bioware thinking, releasing these games so close together? And the tight release schedule doesn’t stop – there’s more Dragon Age DLC coming in March. It’s insane. I like RPGs but fuck, there’s a million-ish decent games coming out in any given year and adults have jobs and kids and families and shit like that. Of course, I have none of those, and I barely consider myself an adult with my lack of responsibility and all-round juvenile sense of humour, but it’s the principle, dammit.

As I’ve written about before, as a kid you get what you’re given on Christmas and your birthday, so an RPG is brilliant, if you’re into them – more bang for the buck. It’s one thing to play a game over and over until you can do it with your eyes closed, but to have the same amount of game time with fresh content the whole way? Brilliant! The love story didn’t last – I fell out of love with JRPGs a while back, when I realised they were just treading the same ground again and again. I’m not so disillusioned that I won’t play any JRPGs at all, I just won’t waste my time and money searching for obscure spin-offs involving Thug no. 3 from Shadow Hearts‘ (no doubt) riveting backstory.

This also gives me the positive side-effect of having more time to spend playing other games that aren’t quite so demanding on my time, although those are getting less and less. Yes, I realise the irony of a WoW player saying this, but games are often just too damn long. Generally it used to be that it was either RPGs or ‘sandbox’ games that would suck up your time like a Hoover, but it seems to be creeping into all sorts of genres. I understand that the current revenue model involves bleeding you dry: full-priced games, or better yet, the ‘collector’s edition’ (hint: anything ever labelled as a ‘collectable’ when released is unlikely to ever be so) with some plastic chintz at maximum price, with the supposed ‘value’ in the 20+ hours of gameplay you get in exchange.

To me, value is in the intensity and enjoyment of the experience. I didn’t feel ripped off by the 6-7 hours of Shadow Complex I played, nor in roughly the same amount of time in the first Modern Warfare single-player game, although that one was at a discount. The experience was finely-tuned and there was rarely a lack of action. So I propose a new game model, to replace the game lengths and prices that are steadily creeping upwards.

Value is not in a 25 hour game with hours of cutscenes. Instead, provide a 5-15 hour experience, tuned for maximum action/enjoyment, at roughly half the price games are available at now. Make multiplayer a seperate entity at a price that means the single player experience + the multiplayer experience are available at a price on par, or better yet, slightly below, what full games cost now. Have some single-player modules, essentially just like current DLC, available at launch. That way, people who really like the single-player game world can have more of it without having to pay for a multiplayer experience they won’t use, those who don’t have time to play through a massive game can get a tight experience at a good price, and multiplayer-only gamers can avoid paying for superfluous single-player content they’re just not particularly interested in. Everyone gets the parts of the game they want, the incentive to buy secondhand is lessened (and thus developers and publishers lose less money to the secondhand market) because games are cheaper, and with more time and money on their hands, people may actually buy more games. A pipe dream, I know, but one I hope to see, especially with the rise and rise of digital distribution. Perhaps it’s a case of ‘check back in 5 years’?

Picture from Platform Nation.

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The ‘it was all a dream!’ ending – possibly the laziest narrative device ever.

A game is generally its own reward – the enjoyment is in the experience. Having an expectation that at the end of a game that I’ve enjoyed I’ll be treated to a song-and-dance show that neatly wraps up every loose end in the game, shows where all the characters end up, like in Animal House, and leaves me all giddy is really expecting too much. And yet I can’t help feel a little bit cheated when a game is wrapped up in a rote manner, or a manner that insults the efforts of the player, or one that just isn’t fitting.

I enjoyed Borderlands. As I’ve previously said, I like loot grind games. If nothing else, my love for WoW should make that obvious. But the ending brought back memories of some of the shittest game endings I’ve ever seen. The point of the game was in the mechanics, not the story, which was thin the whole way through, but wow, talk about an anti-climax. It was reminiscent of the generic mangled-engrish end screen of some early 8 and 16-bit games, usually with text something like ‘Congraturations! Now try harder difficulty level!’

At least that implies that if you complete the game on its hardest difficulty setting, you might be thrown a bone. Crappy endings that don’t fall into the ‘end screen with text’ category tend not to give any ‘outs’ – this is the ending, deal with it. Hope you enjoyed the game, if not, tough shit.

(WARNING: I am vaguely spoiling the endings of 5+ year old games. If you’re that behind, read no further. And go play some games, dammit.)

In examples of the insult ending, there’s the cliche of the ‘just a dream’ ending of Super Mario Bros. 2, or the ‘kill boss -> straight to credits + cringeworthy rapping’ of Gears of War and the anticlimactic boss battle of its sequel. Or how about, speaking of sequels (now that‘s a segue; where’s my pulitzer?), the Halo 2 ‘buy the sequel to find out more!’ blatant cash grab (which I didn’t play, but did watch happen), KOTOR 2, which left so many threads hanging it was ridiculous (but then, so did the whole game – the Blizzard ‘when it’s done’ would be very useful applied to all games). The Half-Life no-choice ‘choice’. Or perhaps the ultimate crappy ending, the ending of Metal Gear Solid 2, which has obviously had a lot of time put into it but made fuck-all sense. I felt like I was going to involuntarily re-enact a scene from Scanners by the time the bloody thing finished.

I’ve also had my favourites through the years, endings that finished games on a satisfying note and added a little cherry on top of a delicious game sundae. In direct contrast to the perplexing ending of its prequel, Metal Gear Solid 3‘s ending, while also convoluted, was much easier to fathom, tragic, and totally in keeping with the events of the game. The STALKER ‘ironic wish fulfillment’ endings were very appropriate to the dark tone of the game. SHODAN’s little sting in the tail at the end of System Shock 2 suited her goading and wheedling of you throughout. The Conker’s Bad Fur Day ‘negotiation’ was as irreverent as the rest of the game (‘NO WAI EDDIE, YOU CAN’T BREAK THE FOURTH WALLLLLLLLLL’). Deus Ex‘s three choices that fit well with the various paths you can take through the game. The ultimate sacrifice in Diablo, and the bittersweet endings of Shadow of the Colossus and Planescape: Torment, all downbeat, all so in keeping with the game’s theme.

Perhaps that’s the key to it all. The best endings don’t need to be elaborate, even though some are. They don’t need to be positive. They just need to fit what came before. I can’t believe that could be hard, but there are enough crappy endings around to show otherwise.

Picture from TerrisUS.

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