Since Cent wouldn't write one it falls onto me, again. What is Mass Effect? Well it started back in 5 years ago about a man(or woman), Commander Shepard, out on a quest to save the galaxy. A sci-fi game taking place in the near future where humanity found artifacts on mars that led to a 10000 year jump of technology or something of that sort. Upon arriving at the Citadel they discovered that every specie uses it as their central hub of communication. When I first played the game and stepped onto the Citadel I was struck speechless by it. I admit I enjoyed the first game. Combat was a little lacking that is true. The storyline was ridiculous beyond belief. The characters although somewhat whiny are fairly likable and memorable. But what I remember most was the world. Traveling around the galaxy meeting the species, talking and listening to the history, and seeing the epic tale of Shepard take place. It wasn't perfect, but it wasn't bad either. I would consider it a pretty good game.
During this time, Dragon Age came out and Bioware learned how stupid their playerbase really are. They learned that people loved romances and shitty stories. They also learned that every loser out there would buy every single DLC available. So when Mass Effect 2 came out what we got was an Action FPS RPG that focused more on the combat. They added the cover system where you duck behind cover and leap over when you press the button again while holding forward. This causes a lot of problems because you have to use the spacebar to duck, exit cover, interact with object, leap over object and picking up other guns. That shit is horrible. Can't we separate them? No of course not. Consoles like the same button for everything. In ME3 this is even more stupid because pressing space will let you jump in the direction as well as jump from cover to cover. You can also press space to climb ladders. So half the time you are flying in every direction trying to climb the ladder or duck behind cover while getting blasted by guns. I just wanna get behind the cover but apparently I didn't click spacebar at the right area and I am doing somersaults in front of the wall.
ME2 was made so that anyone who didn't play ME1 would understand what ME2 was about. While that worked there were still a little bit of info missing. If you didn't play the first one it automatically picks the important choices for you and you cannot get the best endings or choices in ME3 because of that. Same goes for ME2 choices for ME3. This sucks because you'll miss out on most of the game. But that is fine because if you don't buy DLCs you will miss out on even more of the game. Unless you read up on Mass Effect Wikia, none of the shit you find out in the next game would make sense.
http://www.gamespot.com/features/who-the-hell-is-james-vega-6366008/
Important parts of the story are explained in DLCs. Why? Because they want to milk more money from the fucking idiots who buy their games. And of course they also add day one DLCs. As I have said before in a previous post, day one DLCs are the biggest bullshit to gaming. Anything they wanted to add could be added before its shipped or patched in. Of course they wouldn't do that because they'd miss out on the 10 bucks. Their excuse was that after the game is ready they had time to make DLCs before it ships to you. But everyone knew that wasn't the case when the leaked script that was out 5 months before it was out had the DLC. The DLC is also included on the game disc and the 10 bucks was just to unlock the content on the DVD. Really? Bioware and EA are fucking giant greedy dicks. So what happens if you never downloaded them? Well you don't get the story! Because it continues the game expecting you to know that. ME3 pretty much requires you to play ME1 and ME2 to understand. That also includes all DLCs. Not to mention choices aren't available to you if you don't.
In ME2 you join up with Cerberus one of the villain groups in ME1. Why? Well its part of the story. I never trusted them but Cent apparently did. If you did any of the side quests in ME1 you would see a ton of shit they done and would never agree to anything they could possibly do in ME2. The storyline revolves around getting a group of people and doing a suicide mission. There is really not much story to the game you just keep collecting people then head off. Because of that I wasn't so sure if the game would be terrible or not. I was waiting for ME3 to finally end the game once and for all. In ME2 they introduced a wide cast of characters which most of them are stupid. Every single person has problems and its up to Shepard to save them with his magical penis. You can romance almost everyone on your team. The people are different for a male or female Shepard. The characters are whiny, the storyline is weak and inconsistent to ME1, and the world is a billion times smaller. One thing I really hated was that we cannot really explore anywhere. In ME1 you can walk around listening to conversation and find out little snippets of information about whats going on in the galaxy. In ME2 all of this is replaced with people from the first game coming back in some way. It felt cool at that time because it was the first game I heard of that had persistent progression between games, but nowadays its so common. Outside of those five lines of dialogue, they do nothing to add to the world but say exactly what they did in ME1 for the people who didn't play. Also they butchered the returning characters pretty badly for example, Wrex in ME1 was a wise Krogan battlemaster with his the best interest of his species at heart, in ME3 he is a hotheaded fucker thats wants to breed with all the women. Why? Because his counterpart if you left him to die on Virmire (the default choice for people who started in ME2 or ME3) is a hotheaded fucker that wants to breed with all the women.
What is the point of romances in Bioware games anyways? They can never get them right but everyone hails them as the best romance writers ever. In ME1 you get the space racist or naive Asari child. In ME2 you get the whiny pathetic "perfect engineered" human, the psycho whiny emotional wreck, or the whiny Quarian waif. In ME3 you get all of those plus a gay dude who probably happens to be the best written and some dumb chick with an assdress from IGN that was added into the game for nerd pandering. These romances just randomly and magically appear with no buildup or anything. They are awkward and poorly written.
When we finally get into ME3 that was when shit hit the fan. First starting the game you'll notice that you have no fucking clue what is happening because it continues the story from a DLC in ME2 and a comic book in between the two games. It is NEVER explained. The only way to find out what the fuck happened is to read it up online. That is bullshit. It completely invalidated all my choices in the previous two games and decided to shit all over it. They basically went "I know you did this and that but since we decided to go this way with the game we're gonna change everything for you and pretend nothing happened." As you're going around going why the fuck is this happening? How the fuck is this happening you realize the biggest fucking flaw in the game. The story has been completely retconned. In the first game you stop the Reapers, a race of sentient synthetic warships, from attacking the Citadel and rendering all species lost without communication. In the third game the Reapers decided they're not going to do that like the past several milennia, instead they'll directly attack Earth and let Shepard and the rest of the galaxy gather strength. That is fine if you really want to retcon the story BUT DON'T CHANGE IT BACK AT THE END. At the end they decided they liked the original story and the Reapers magically moved the Citadel to earth (yes it can move why didn't they do it at the start of the game who fucking knows) but at that time its too late. The galaxy has been united because the Reapers are stupid. That brings me to another point, the Reaper's had a reason for culling the galaxy of organic life but it was considered "too complex" for you to comprehend. Obviously that wasn't true in ME3.
In ME3, Cerberus returns to being evil again and starts working for the reapers. It is a complete 180 from ME2 when Cerberus was helping you defeat the reapers. Why? I don't know it was never truly explained other than the reason that the person behind it, the Illusive Man was indoctrinated before he even formed the Cerberus organization. SO IT MAKES EVEN LESS SENSE? How do you fuck that one up so bad. Although there were some great missions and having returning characters from the previous two games most of them are terrible. Again they retconned most of the choices in ME1 and ME2 so that people who played neither of those games can get ME3. If you killed off a character in ME1 going yeah this is going to bite me in the ass! Someone appears in his/her place and the story is unchanged. So basically what you're telling me is what I did or didn't do in the previous games meant nothing? It was just an illusion tricking me into thinking I had a choice in what I was doing but in reality everything is set in stone already.
I didn't think they can make ME2's exploration even worse but they managed to do it. It is the most tedious and horribly constructed thing ever and I am not going into detail. To summarize you go around clicking scan on a random pocket in the galaxy and if you scan too much reapers come and blow you up. Yes its as dumb as it sounds. Side quests also involve scanning the galaxy. There are no longer mission side quests. Unlike ME1 where you ride the Mako around and explore you get quests that says "find and rescue the Elcor forces" when you talk to the Elcor ambassador. All you have to do is fly over to a planet hit scan and it says "anomaly detected" you fly over click on it click scan planet/moon drag your mouse around launch a probe then at the bottom right a pop up appears "Elcor fleet acquired." I finished the quest right? Then you look at your journal and you see the side quest magically grayed out. And you walk over to the war room and look at what you acquired. You gotten 40 extra military strength from the Elcor fleet! They managed to make everything worse and worse as the series continued. Combat got worse, storyline got worse, side quests got worse and the worst part of all, the sexism seemed to get worse.
I've mention Bioware being sexist as fuck and I will say it again. Bioware is sexist as fuck. A whole specie of all female prostitutes? Seriously? Clothing that are impractical as fuck? Its basically the space version of a chain mail bikini. No one should be walking around with a slutsuit with a huge camel toe. The worst part of it is the male gaze. The camera automatically pans around so it zooms in on their ass while you are having a conversation. When they walk away the camera pans and focuses on the ass as they walk off. Shit like that. Why? Why do we need that? For people like Cent who likes to zoom in on their crotch with a high powered sniper rifle? So they wouldn't have to do it the game would do it for them so they don't look like some kind of pathetic sick fuck?
All of these are nothing compared to the massive failure of a ending that the Mass Effect trilogy has. Not only is it disconnected from the main game, all three ending are exactly the same. To even unlock the ending you would need to get over 5000 Effective Military Strength. to get 5000 EMS you would have to play multi player and grind points. There is no way around that unless you modify your EMS which I did. Why do you force us to play a shitty multi player for our shitty single player? Fucking separate that shit. Is it to stop pirates? No they can mod that in. Is it because they are so fucking proud of their multi player that they want everyone to give it a try. Yes thats probably it. I can imagine it they sitting in their office jerking off to the multi player mode that they made while high fiving each other going "How do we get more people to try this fucking awesome shit we made?" Then one guy jumps up and goes "LETS MAKE IT REQUIRED TO GET THE ENDING!" And everyone blows their load from the perfection that is that idea. MULTI PLAYER AND SINGLE PLAYER SHOULD NEVER AFFECT EACH OTHER. Never.
So you modded your game got 5000 EMS and went well what does it really do? There are three endings one is paragon which is the choice that the Illusive Man wanted. The renegade ending where its the choice Anderson wanted and then the neutral choice that only appears if you have high enough EMS. All three choices involve dooming the galaxy and killing Shepard. There is no way around it. You basically use the Conduit from ME1 that magically got retconned and moved to Earth from Ilos. Then you meet the God AI of the Reapers that control them in the Citadel and he's all like "you're the first organic that reached here so I'm giving you three choices and all of them are terrible. Enjoy your ending." But before that he tells you why the Reapers appear every time organics reach a peak of their civilization and harvest them to create more Reapers. Organics and synthetics cannot get along with each other so they appear and kill the organics before they can make synthetics that kill them like the species that created the Reapers. What the fuck? Apparently the ending is so bad that there are petitions to get it changed. A vote on the Bioware forums has 98% of the votes saying the ending is bad. And there is even a charity donation to raise awareness of how terrible the ending of ME3 was. It raised up to $7000 in a day and as I am writing this it is at $32035.
The best part of the ending is after the credit screen, a pop up appears saying that there will be more DLCs. Bioware developers on their twitter accounts say that there is more to the ending don't go apeshit. So basically they either gave us a shitty ending and expect us to pay 10 bucks to get the best ending or they're trying to save their ass and lying to us, again, and pretending that shit is terrible on purpose. They could fix it and admit their mistakes which I think they shouldn't. If you're going to make an ending then stick to it. Don't change it because people whine about it. It is your story, you have the power. But keep in mind that people won't like it. So they're basically stuck here. They're fucked either way. One thing that seems to be happening is that a portion of the playerbase are in denial and think that the ending was all a dream after being blasted in the face by Harbinger's laser. If people rather accept that it was a dream than the ending that was given to them what does that say about the ending? Which brings me to another point. The main villain of the series is the Reaper leader called Harbinger. He never speaks and doesn't appear in ME3 until the very last minute of the game to blast your entire army to death including you. You don't even get to fight him. The real ME3 boss is Kai Leng a Cerberus assassin spaceninja using a spacekatana. All he does is do spaceflips with his spaceponytail and spacesword taunting you. When he beats you he lets you go then sends you emails taunting you. He's like those stereotypical retarded villains that wait until the good guys collect everything swoop in to take it then leave you alive so you can come back and beat his ass. Why? I don't know. Whats the point of his existence? He's evil for the sake of being evil.
There is also the fact that to fully understand ME3 you have to have played ME1 and ME2. An interview with Casey Hudson, the lead developer of Mass Effect, he stated that since ME3 is the finale there will be bigger choices and everything Shepard picks or does will have MAJOR AND DIRE CONSEQUENCES to the end of the game. Really? This is the straightest line I have ever seen. And the ending happens regardless of any of your choices so there is really no reason to pick anything. From what I have heard all but 2 of the 6 writers remained after the original Mass Effect so they had to hire some new writers. They hired a couple fanfic writers on the ME universe and thats how you got a shitty downhill slope. I like how in ME1 you get to interact with the other races and learn so much about the galaxy. In ME2 they expected you to know everything and you were being shepherded into the right path forcing you to ignore everything. In ME3 everyone expected it to offer something more like ME1 since we are visiting the homeworld of every specie and also helping them. But no, its more like ME2, infact its even worse. There are absolutely nothing to do. You don't even get to talk to Hanars or Elcors or anything. If you didn't play ME1 you wouldn't know anything about those two species. Although I do like how people move around the citadel and your ship the Normandy after every mission as if they have a life of their own instead of sitting in their respective rooms.
The worst part is anyone that enjoyed the game is so soured by the ending that it completely ruined the series for them. They do not feel like replaying the game again or even stand looking at the game. It is that bad.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Players vs Spectators
What makes a game successful and popular? It is the players? Or the spectators? When the same question is applied to televised sports, the spectators generate the most revenue and the most interest. But video games have almost always had a larger player base than a spectator base. This hasn't been a problem for decades, but with the rapidly growing strive to reach televised esport status, the need for more spectators is clear.
Games like Quake 3, Starcraft, Counterstrike, Street Fighter, DOTA have all been televised before, and largely commentated and spectated, yet a controversial topic was brought forward by a Korean community member recently: Starcraft was the only sport to draw a significant number of spectators who have barely played the game, while all others have spectators who have at least played it at an amateur level. He believed that this characteristic distinguished Starcraft as a genuine 'sport'.
While his stance is still heavily contested, games striving to achieve tournament and esport recognition should place heavy consideration into making the game fun for spectators, and not just the players. Even in real sports, the respective associations consider and apply rule changes to make the game more exciting for fans to watch, even if it is as the expense of the players. Baseball had different bats approved to increase the rate of homeruns to entice more watchers. Hockey changed passing rules to quicken puck turnarounds and increase frequency of scoring. After all, for these games built primarily around competitive play, it is the fans that will bring in revenue, and the more people who are interested, the more pros will want to pick it up.
That isn't to say any casual drivel can be accepted as a tournament game as long as it is easy to watch. It must be largely recognized to be a deep game requiring mastery and training. But the gameplay should be easy to comprehend for new watchers, smooth to follow for cameramen, quick to tell who's winning and why, fast paced enough to stay interested, long enough to be satisfying, and short enough to not get bored.
If you make a game for tournaments, think about the spectators. I'm looking at you MOBA.
Games like Quake 3, Starcraft, Counterstrike, Street Fighter, DOTA have all been televised before, and largely commentated and spectated, yet a controversial topic was brought forward by a Korean community member recently: Starcraft was the only sport to draw a significant number of spectators who have barely played the game, while all others have spectators who have at least played it at an amateur level. He believed that this characteristic distinguished Starcraft as a genuine 'sport'.
While his stance is still heavily contested, games striving to achieve tournament and esport recognition should place heavy consideration into making the game fun for spectators, and not just the players. Even in real sports, the respective associations consider and apply rule changes to make the game more exciting for fans to watch, even if it is as the expense of the players. Baseball had different bats approved to increase the rate of homeruns to entice more watchers. Hockey changed passing rules to quicken puck turnarounds and increase frequency of scoring. After all, for these games built primarily around competitive play, it is the fans that will bring in revenue, and the more people who are interested, the more pros will want to pick it up.
That isn't to say any casual drivel can be accepted as a tournament game as long as it is easy to watch. It must be largely recognized to be a deep game requiring mastery and training. But the gameplay should be easy to comprehend for new watchers, smooth to follow for cameramen, quick to tell who's winning and why, fast paced enough to stay interested, long enough to be satisfying, and short enough to not get bored.
If you make a game for tournaments, think about the spectators. I'm looking at you MOBA.
The small details should be missed.
Whenever I think back to previous immersive gaming experiences, the main factor that I find neglected are the small details. Perhaps it's something comedic that's happening in the background. Or a faint, passing sound in the distance. Or the tiny gouges in the wall that are omens for a greater nemesis. Or the hint dropping for a masterminded scheme in shadows. These elements, while small, synergize with primary gameplay and setting to accentuate a brilliant game.
Games in the 90's started to have the technology and capacity to harness and manifest these masterful details, and while not every game that did this were financially successful, they all became memorable experiences and left unforgettable legacies. The progression and modernization of gaming has not discarded these fine touches, and the resurgence of success of heavy-immersion games with significant atmosphere has only strengthened this philosophy.
Yet, something is lacking. Notably so. Almost to the extent of crippling the entire effort of the responsible developers. Only recently did I come to pinpoint what the problem was: the developers didn't want us to miss the details. They tried too hard to make sure players would notice and experience every fine detail. They would move to camera and zoom in on exactly what they wanted us to see. They would stop the gameplay so that players could hear that faint squeaking. They would make characters audibly or visually respond to the details. Protagonists would commentate on the fine detail he noticed, just in case the player missed it.
The producers find this reasonable, and I understand. If they paid a developer to add in content, this content better directly attribute to raising the game's score and quality. Leaving it to the chance of whether or not the player was perceptive enough to receive it is a bad gamble with an investment.
But when the extras are forced into the game, shoved into the players face, you don't feel in control. You don't feel the need to be perceptive. You don't feel frightened or intimidated. You don't feel like there's anything you may have missed, and you don't want to play again. Every time I reread a book or rewatch a movie, there are fine details that I glanced over at first, but then come to appreciate on subsequent views. If immersion is crucial, then part of that immersion is to be believable. And in a believable situation, you will miss some details, and you'll only be able to see everything you should if you let your imagination run away with it. The mind and imagination are the strongest weapons a developer can harness against us. With them, they can make us see what isn't there. Or believe things that were never true. Or shock us when we are the ones revealing the untold truth to ourselves. The only way to do that, is to let our minds be free, and stop guiding us with painfully exposed and over-elaborated details. We'll become more perceptive, allowing our minds to wander into the depths of the game.
Games in the 90's started to have the technology and capacity to harness and manifest these masterful details, and while not every game that did this were financially successful, they all became memorable experiences and left unforgettable legacies. The progression and modernization of gaming has not discarded these fine touches, and the resurgence of success of heavy-immersion games with significant atmosphere has only strengthened this philosophy.
Yet, something is lacking. Notably so. Almost to the extent of crippling the entire effort of the responsible developers. Only recently did I come to pinpoint what the problem was: the developers didn't want us to miss the details. They tried too hard to make sure players would notice and experience every fine detail. They would move to camera and zoom in on exactly what they wanted us to see. They would stop the gameplay so that players could hear that faint squeaking. They would make characters audibly or visually respond to the details. Protagonists would commentate on the fine detail he noticed, just in case the player missed it.
The producers find this reasonable, and I understand. If they paid a developer to add in content, this content better directly attribute to raising the game's score and quality. Leaving it to the chance of whether or not the player was perceptive enough to receive it is a bad gamble with an investment.
But when the extras are forced into the game, shoved into the players face, you don't feel in control. You don't feel the need to be perceptive. You don't feel frightened or intimidated. You don't feel like there's anything you may have missed, and you don't want to play again. Every time I reread a book or rewatch a movie, there are fine details that I glanced over at first, but then come to appreciate on subsequent views. If immersion is crucial, then part of that immersion is to be believable. And in a believable situation, you will miss some details, and you'll only be able to see everything you should if you let your imagination run away with it. The mind and imagination are the strongest weapons a developer can harness against us. With them, they can make us see what isn't there. Or believe things that were never true. Or shock us when we are the ones revealing the untold truth to ourselves. The only way to do that, is to let our minds be free, and stop guiding us with painfully exposed and over-elaborated details. We'll become more perceptive, allowing our minds to wander into the depths of the game.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Saving - Turning the simplest things into something complex
Saving is something that I noticed recently that we've taken for granted. Sure it sucks when you can't find a save point or you have to go to an inn or something but it could be so much worse. Depending on the game saving could be like a JRPG where its only available in set locations or inside inns. Or it could be like a PC game where saves are available at anytime. Then theres the retarded fucking bullshit of console ports where saves are fucking autosave only and won't let you save. Everything is saved automatically to the account you logged in as. So the only way to save is to keep going until you reach a checkpoint and look for the spinny autosave shit at the bottom corner before quitting the game. Of course it warns you that quitting might lose all unsaved progress like an asshole. Like it'll make a difference? You never gave us a save button or option we have to guess if it really works or not.
Lets look at some games with bad saving system. Alice: Madness Returns have you create a profile and then log into that profile. After logging into the profile you can edit options, check unlocks and other shit. Even quitting the game requires you to select a profile too. Say you clicked your game and then realize oh shit I gotta go time to quit. NOPE THERES NO QUIT. You have to select a profile log in select quit then it asks if you wanna quit then you can quit. Sure its minor but its a simple fucking thing like quit to desktop. They shouldn't have you log in first to quit the game. How does this have to do with saving? Well you don't get to save ever. You have to keep an eye out for the autosave clock at the bottom right corner. I suppose its because it didn't want you to save after completing something minor like a jump or puzzle so if you die you have to start over. But what about safe areas? Why do we have to wait 10-20 minutes of content to get to an autosave?
The sad part is there are more console ports that do the same shit. Alan Wake does the same shit but at least the save points are more common. Now L.A Noire is the biggest pile of shit ever. Not only are the saves far from common it never tells you when it saves or not. So all you can do is hope that it saved and quit or wait until you finish your case and start a new one. Which could take anywhere from a hour to two. Fucking bullshit. Who decided to not include saving? What about the worst console port ever in the history of games, Fable 3? Not only is there no menu you have to go into your private room when you click the option button and then navigate the room to the wall where you enter another room to find a save mannequin. After talking to the mannequin you are able to save then you navigate out of the room. To another to quit the game. Fuck you.
Some games make it hard to save while others don't give you the option. What about games that save too much? Look at games like Kings Bounty or the Witcher. The games are good but they autosave way too much. By the time you actually save they already made ten separate copies of autosaves. By the time you're halfway through the game you already have 5 gigs of saves in your save folder. Eventually a patch was released to fix those problems but its still dumb as shit. You wouldn't need 100 copies of autosaves, why can't they be limited? At least they fixed it.
I never noticed how bad saving has become until now. It may be a simple and insignificant part of the game, but it shouldn't be overlooked. Its simple, its hard to mess up, yet a bunch of games do this. Even games that are good do this.
Lets look at some games with bad saving system. Alice: Madness Returns have you create a profile and then log into that profile. After logging into the profile you can edit options, check unlocks and other shit. Even quitting the game requires you to select a profile too. Say you clicked your game and then realize oh shit I gotta go time to quit. NOPE THERES NO QUIT. You have to select a profile log in select quit then it asks if you wanna quit then you can quit. Sure its minor but its a simple fucking thing like quit to desktop. They shouldn't have you log in first to quit the game. How does this have to do with saving? Well you don't get to save ever. You have to keep an eye out for the autosave clock at the bottom right corner. I suppose its because it didn't want you to save after completing something minor like a jump or puzzle so if you die you have to start over. But what about safe areas? Why do we have to wait 10-20 minutes of content to get to an autosave?
The sad part is there are more console ports that do the same shit. Alan Wake does the same shit but at least the save points are more common. Now L.A Noire is the biggest pile of shit ever. Not only are the saves far from common it never tells you when it saves or not. So all you can do is hope that it saved and quit or wait until you finish your case and start a new one. Which could take anywhere from a hour to two. Fucking bullshit. Who decided to not include saving? What about the worst console port ever in the history of games, Fable 3? Not only is there no menu you have to go into your private room when you click the option button and then navigate the room to the wall where you enter another room to find a save mannequin. After talking to the mannequin you are able to save then you navigate out of the room. To another to quit the game. Fuck you.
Some games make it hard to save while others don't give you the option. What about games that save too much? Look at games like Kings Bounty or the Witcher. The games are good but they autosave way too much. By the time you actually save they already made ten separate copies of autosaves. By the time you're halfway through the game you already have 5 gigs of saves in your save folder. Eventually a patch was released to fix those problems but its still dumb as shit. You wouldn't need 100 copies of autosaves, why can't they be limited? At least they fixed it.
I never noticed how bad saving has become until now. It may be a simple and insignificant part of the game, but it shouldn't be overlooked. Its simple, its hard to mess up, yet a bunch of games do this. Even games that are good do this.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Kingdoms of Amalur - A single player MMORPG
Kingdoms of Amalur managed to seamlessly merge MMORPG and single player RPG together. Is that a good thing? No. What it ends up is a game where the quests are stupid fetch quests, boring quest hubs, quests having nothing to do with the main storyline. Hell I had more fun doing MMO quests than the quests in KoA. MMO are about playing with others while single player RPGs are about the story and following the story of the hero as he/she does shit. When KoA was announced everyone was excited to see big names such as Ken Rolston, the lead developer of Morrowind and Oblivion, R. A. Salvatore an actual real fantasy writer, and Todd McFarlane a comic book artist. Such big names for such a small game. Too many chefs in the kitchen maybe. But the worst part of this is, to start this company the city of Rhode Island gave them a 75 million loan to make this game and another MMORPG based on KoA. Not only does this suck they are simultaneously making KoA and KoA:MMO at the same time not even sure if KoA would be a hit or not. If they do suck and go under, it would be Rhode Island that loses money. Too bad.
KoA plays like an action RPG. It sounds really nice because action RPGs are fun as shit but there is a flaw. All the ideas for KoA are alright, but every one of them is flawed in a way. There are many types of weapons and magic and you can reset your hero at any time by talking to an NPC. The monsters you fight in this game are the same from the beginning of the game to the end of the game. There is no variance other than boosting their health or damage. They do the same predictable moves and attacks. Difficulty does not rise. The game itself is the easiest action game I have ever seen. Blacksmithing breaks that game even more by making your character invincible. Even without blacksmithing it is easy. You keep learning new moves, the monsters never do. Big bosses you would think would be hard, but they made it so easy you can beat it with your eyes closed. Mainly because they don't want people who suck at games to not be able to finish! Even on the hardest difficulty a giant boss the size of a city would bite you for maybe 10 damage. While a regular Niskaru Bloodhunter would do 100-150 damage a hit and hit 10 times by the time the big boss takes to bite again. Why so easy? Its not like you have to fight the boss anyways. You automatically win when you go into fate mode because you automatically do an execution and kill it.
After playing around for an hour you notice that combat is boring and repetitive, what about the quests? Think of this game like an MMO. You have quest hubs where you can collect boring side quests. These include, killing 10 creatures, collecting boxes, deliver shit, and other boring fucking shitty quests you see in MMOs. You go into dungeon that are nothing but a long hallway as you stab your way though everything, reach the end and then turn around and go out back the way you came in. You must think not every quest is like that. No every quest is like that. There are like 500 side quests in the game and they are all exactly like that. I managed to get halfway into the game before I gave up on all side quests. They don't do anything but give you exp/rewards. They add nothing to the story, to the lore, to the world. They are just pointless exp/reward farms. Another thing about the game is loot is randomized. Like a MMO where you have random statistics on your gear. These drop randomly from monsters, looted from chests, or bought from NPCs. These can be broken down by blacksmiths and salvaged for parts to craft something. In the first quarter of the game I crafted a weapon that was stronger than anything I could find in the game already. And it was just a tier 2 dagger. When I reached the final tier I was so powerful that nothing could stand in my way. You don't really need to pick up those garbage to salvage anyways. The best crafting loot are from killing harmless crabs and cows. Apparently dried guts added to anything grants critical %. As a rogue I have bonus critical damage from talents, skills, passives, gears, everything. I crafted all my gear with bonus critical % and bonus critical damage. My backstabs were doing 98k a hit when monsters at the end of the game had around 2k-3k health. My regular swings had 100% critical rate and I was doing 1.5-2k a hit, 3k if I use my bow. I had a 15% chance to fully heal myself everytime I swing my daggers, which are fast as shit. Do I ever die? No.
The main quest has you traveling all over the world and you may find something called faction quests on your way. There are 5 factions in the world of Amalur. The House of Ballads of the summer fae, the Warsworn warrior guild, the Travelers thief guild, some dumbshit mage guild I can't remember, and the House of Sorrows of the winter fae. You would think these quests would be better than the average but it really isn't. The only decent one is the House of Ballads, the rest are just standard quests you find in any MMO. The mage guild ends suddenly for no reason and you become the archmage for no fucking reason. The real Archmage gets imprisoned in a prison and suffers for all eternity and no one gives a flying fuck to rescue him. They just replace him with you and you go on your merry way while he's imprisoned in the mage guild. Great story eh? Warsworn you follow some dumb random chick around all day and then suddenly a bad guy appears and is like "kill your friends and you get power!" I was like fuck off I don't wanna do more quests and I turned around and left and then suddenly I was the hero of the Warsworn, a Truesworn even though I didn't do anything to the fucking Niskaru Lord. Travelers you go around following orders from some dipshit until a fucking plot twist sends you to frame the Heirophant. GUESS WHAT!? She knows of your plan to frame her and what does she do? Tell you to frame your friend instead of her. What do you do? Frame her. She gets framed and the quests magically end. House of Sorrows you follow a bunch of dipshit winter fae around who wants you to find the guy who stole a milennia of sorrows and is going to use it to cause people to kill themselves from sorrow. Turns out the guy has been tricking you and you managed to kill the entire House of Sorrows from your dumb naiveté. You go around find out that dumb chick that has been following you the whole time was the reincarnation of the weeping king and she uses her magical powers to seal the sorrow in the magical fae world and you become the last remaining member in the House of Sorrows. Way to fuck up everything asshole. Better to not bother getting involved in the first place.
These quests have you traveling all over the fucking world. The worst part is the zones are like MMO zones. Pretty to look at but really nothing there. You walk around with nothing to interact with and barely any monsters around. You find random quest hubs or quest areas and dungeons. Other than that traveling around is like going around in WoW without a mount or flight point. You get to fast travel by clicking the map on a location you've been to before, thank god, but that doesn't help when you only need to visit a place once because its far as shit away and take like 20 minutes to walk there. The main quest basically have you walk around and follow some dumb slut elf and some drunken loser around all game then fight and kill a God. The End.
There are also quite a few bugs I found. Using the reckoning mode before a cutscene will cause the monsters to freeze there forever unable to loot or kill them with just the F button highlighted when you walk close. Hitting F does nothing they are just stuck there in limbo for all eternity. Using different reckoning moves can get monsters stuck in walls or the sky where it is impossible to loot them, while other times reckoning mode makes you end up on top of a dead monsters making you unable to walk around like in ME2 where touching walls make you walk upwards and get stuck in the walls. Its like that for monsters instead. Backstabbing sometimes cause you to backstab a different enemy than the one you have selected. For example, there were two kobolds one at the other end of the room and one infront of me. I sneak over backstab and a mini cutscene appears where I grab the guy throw him on the ground and stab him on the neck. Next thing you know the guy at the end of the room explodes in blood and flies away and dies while the guy infront of me start stuttering fading in and out of existence like some kind of existence seizure. I go what the fuck? And I backstabbed again killing him this time.
The only positive thing I can think of in this game is that gear looks the same on men and women. You don't have chainmail bikinis. I made sure to play a female so I could see for myself. People said it was a positive portrayal of women. I thought that was a right step. Then you have the loser Alyn Shir the slut elf who walks around wearing nothing but leather bandages with half her ass exposed. The developers made sure to add ass jiggle physics like breast physics and its the first and only game to have ass physics in a game. What the fuck?
Overall the lore had potential, the combat was fun for the first hour then got boring, the quests were a mess, the storyline was interesting enough to finish but not memorable or good at all. Worst part is they claimed the game would take 200 hours to finish without doing any side quests at all. WHAT THE FUCK!? Its not even 200 hours if you do all the side quests in the world. Are the testers so bad that they fucking take 200 hours to do something or they shitting out their mouth. I think its the latter. This game felt more like a MMO that halfway went "you know people might not wanna pay 15 bucks a month for this" and changed to a single player. The worst part? They ARE making a KoA:MMO. It is currently in development and has been since KoA started. They are working on it simultaneously. Am I the only one that is going what the fuck? Why would you make an MMO version of a game where you have no idea if anyone wants to play. After this shitfest of a game what makes you think people would want to play KoA:MMO? Its like if Bioware decided to make a DA:MMO while making DA2. Looks like Rhode Island is going to lose 75 million.
Never ever trust reviews on EA games either. They are known for bribing the reviewers.
KoA plays like an action RPG. It sounds really nice because action RPGs are fun as shit but there is a flaw. All the ideas for KoA are alright, but every one of them is flawed in a way. There are many types of weapons and magic and you can reset your hero at any time by talking to an NPC. The monsters you fight in this game are the same from the beginning of the game to the end of the game. There is no variance other than boosting their health or damage. They do the same predictable moves and attacks. Difficulty does not rise. The game itself is the easiest action game I have ever seen. Blacksmithing breaks that game even more by making your character invincible. Even without blacksmithing it is easy. You keep learning new moves, the monsters never do. Big bosses you would think would be hard, but they made it so easy you can beat it with your eyes closed. Mainly because they don't want people who suck at games to not be able to finish! Even on the hardest difficulty a giant boss the size of a city would bite you for maybe 10 damage. While a regular Niskaru Bloodhunter would do 100-150 damage a hit and hit 10 times by the time the big boss takes to bite again. Why so easy? Its not like you have to fight the boss anyways. You automatically win when you go into fate mode because you automatically do an execution and kill it.
After playing around for an hour you notice that combat is boring and repetitive, what about the quests? Think of this game like an MMO. You have quest hubs where you can collect boring side quests. These include, killing 10 creatures, collecting boxes, deliver shit, and other boring fucking shitty quests you see in MMOs. You go into dungeon that are nothing but a long hallway as you stab your way though everything, reach the end and then turn around and go out back the way you came in. You must think not every quest is like that. No every quest is like that. There are like 500 side quests in the game and they are all exactly like that. I managed to get halfway into the game before I gave up on all side quests. They don't do anything but give you exp/rewards. They add nothing to the story, to the lore, to the world. They are just pointless exp/reward farms. Another thing about the game is loot is randomized. Like a MMO where you have random statistics on your gear. These drop randomly from monsters, looted from chests, or bought from NPCs. These can be broken down by blacksmiths and salvaged for parts to craft something. In the first quarter of the game I crafted a weapon that was stronger than anything I could find in the game already. And it was just a tier 2 dagger. When I reached the final tier I was so powerful that nothing could stand in my way. You don't really need to pick up those garbage to salvage anyways. The best crafting loot are from killing harmless crabs and cows. Apparently dried guts added to anything grants critical %. As a rogue I have bonus critical damage from talents, skills, passives, gears, everything. I crafted all my gear with bonus critical % and bonus critical damage. My backstabs were doing 98k a hit when monsters at the end of the game had around 2k-3k health. My regular swings had 100% critical rate and I was doing 1.5-2k a hit, 3k if I use my bow. I had a 15% chance to fully heal myself everytime I swing my daggers, which are fast as shit. Do I ever die? No.
The main quest has you traveling all over the world and you may find something called faction quests on your way. There are 5 factions in the world of Amalur. The House of Ballads of the summer fae, the Warsworn warrior guild, the Travelers thief guild, some dumbshit mage guild I can't remember, and the House of Sorrows of the winter fae. You would think these quests would be better than the average but it really isn't. The only decent one is the House of Ballads, the rest are just standard quests you find in any MMO. The mage guild ends suddenly for no reason and you become the archmage for no fucking reason. The real Archmage gets imprisoned in a prison and suffers for all eternity and no one gives a flying fuck to rescue him. They just replace him with you and you go on your merry way while he's imprisoned in the mage guild. Great story eh? Warsworn you follow some dumb random chick around all day and then suddenly a bad guy appears and is like "kill your friends and you get power!" I was like fuck off I don't wanna do more quests and I turned around and left and then suddenly I was the hero of the Warsworn, a Truesworn even though I didn't do anything to the fucking Niskaru Lord. Travelers you go around following orders from some dipshit until a fucking plot twist sends you to frame the Heirophant. GUESS WHAT!? She knows of your plan to frame her and what does she do? Tell you to frame your friend instead of her. What do you do? Frame her. She gets framed and the quests magically end. House of Sorrows you follow a bunch of dipshit winter fae around who wants you to find the guy who stole a milennia of sorrows and is going to use it to cause people to kill themselves from sorrow. Turns out the guy has been tricking you and you managed to kill the entire House of Sorrows from your dumb naiveté. You go around find out that dumb chick that has been following you the whole time was the reincarnation of the weeping king and she uses her magical powers to seal the sorrow in the magical fae world and you become the last remaining member in the House of Sorrows. Way to fuck up everything asshole. Better to not bother getting involved in the first place.
These quests have you traveling all over the fucking world. The worst part is the zones are like MMO zones. Pretty to look at but really nothing there. You walk around with nothing to interact with and barely any monsters around. You find random quest hubs or quest areas and dungeons. Other than that traveling around is like going around in WoW without a mount or flight point. You get to fast travel by clicking the map on a location you've been to before, thank god, but that doesn't help when you only need to visit a place once because its far as shit away and take like 20 minutes to walk there. The main quest basically have you walk around and follow some dumb slut elf and some drunken loser around all game then fight and kill a God. The End.
There are also quite a few bugs I found. Using the reckoning mode before a cutscene will cause the monsters to freeze there forever unable to loot or kill them with just the F button highlighted when you walk close. Hitting F does nothing they are just stuck there in limbo for all eternity. Using different reckoning moves can get monsters stuck in walls or the sky where it is impossible to loot them, while other times reckoning mode makes you end up on top of a dead monsters making you unable to walk around like in ME2 where touching walls make you walk upwards and get stuck in the walls. Its like that for monsters instead. Backstabbing sometimes cause you to backstab a different enemy than the one you have selected. For example, there were two kobolds one at the other end of the room and one infront of me. I sneak over backstab and a mini cutscene appears where I grab the guy throw him on the ground and stab him on the neck. Next thing you know the guy at the end of the room explodes in blood and flies away and dies while the guy infront of me start stuttering fading in and out of existence like some kind of existence seizure. I go what the fuck? And I backstabbed again killing him this time.
The only positive thing I can think of in this game is that gear looks the same on men and women. You don't have chainmail bikinis. I made sure to play a female so I could see for myself. People said it was a positive portrayal of women. I thought that was a right step. Then you have the loser Alyn Shir the slut elf who walks around wearing nothing but leather bandages with half her ass exposed. The developers made sure to add ass jiggle physics like breast physics and its the first and only game to have ass physics in a game. What the fuck?
Overall the lore had potential, the combat was fun for the first hour then got boring, the quests were a mess, the storyline was interesting enough to finish but not memorable or good at all. Worst part is they claimed the game would take 200 hours to finish without doing any side quests at all. WHAT THE FUCK!? Its not even 200 hours if you do all the side quests in the world. Are the testers so bad that they fucking take 200 hours to do something or they shitting out their mouth. I think its the latter. This game felt more like a MMO that halfway went "you know people might not wanna pay 15 bucks a month for this" and changed to a single player. The worst part? They ARE making a KoA:MMO. It is currently in development and has been since KoA started. They are working on it simultaneously. Am I the only one that is going what the fuck? Why would you make an MMO version of a game where you have no idea if anyone wants to play. After this shitfest of a game what makes you think people would want to play KoA:MMO? Its like if Bioware decided to make a DA:MMO while making DA2. Looks like Rhode Island is going to lose 75 million.
Never ever trust reviews on EA games either. They are known for bribing the reviewers.
Monday, February 20, 2012
Dear Esther - A game without gameplay
I heard about this game I think about an year ago. Someone had a LP of the game and I scanned through the description and then didn't bother watching it. After seeing the remake come out I decided to give it a try. What is this game to be exact? Well, its not really a game. Its an experiment. They were trying to use video games as a form of art. While the game is beautiful to look at, the narration amazing, and the music hauntingly melancholic, it was lacking. Perhaps what it was lacking was length. The story is so short that you can barely feel an attachment to it.
The game itself would last about an hour if you go where you are supposed to. You might be able to drag it out by exploring a lot and at most you'd spend maybe two hours. Such a short game for 10 bucks? Is it worth it? No. Would I recommend it to anyone? No. If it was cheaper perhaps. However if you want to see new "art games" come out then the 10 bucks would go to a good cause. Good graphics and good narration alone cannot possibly make up for the 10 dollar price. Most of the complaints about this game is the pricing. Even though they earned back whatever they spent on it in a little over 6 hours by selling 16000 copies, many had buyer's remorse and felt cheated. Its why I never buy games without playing a demo or "trying it out" first.
I cannot possibly go into the game without spoiling things. You are basically a nameless narrator on a uninhabited island. You may wander anywhere but there is always visual clues on where to go. Such as paint on the walls, a blinking aerial in the distance, or the moon lighting a path. Its impossible to get lost really, but if you do go off the main path you can hear more about the story. Every time you reach a certain point, the narrator will start talking giving a little about the story. Its never in chronological order and its purposely vague and ambiguous. Some points will have random prose that differs every play through. As you get closer to the end you see the paint on the wall become more erratic and common, the narrator's voice becomes more agitated and the prose become more confusing. Until you reach the climax and the ending where everything makes sense, or it doesn't.
The story is well written and I really enjoyed it. It fits perfectly with the background and the music. Will more of these games come out? I don't know. Do I want to see more? Why not. If no one experiments then we'll never get anything new. Its a nice idea, but its a little flawed. I wouldn't call it a good game because that would imply that there is some form of game play. However I cannot say that its completely bad because that would imply the game pissed me off or was annoying as fuck. Its sorta stuck there not really wowing anyone nor is it disappointing anyone. Its like stuck in perpetual limbo. Perhaps one day this will be the game that creates a revolution but don't count on it. Its probably just going to be forgotten under the weight of Call of Duty, Final Fantasies, and other copy paste games.
The game itself would last about an hour if you go where you are supposed to. You might be able to drag it out by exploring a lot and at most you'd spend maybe two hours. Such a short game for 10 bucks? Is it worth it? No. Would I recommend it to anyone? No. If it was cheaper perhaps. However if you want to see new "art games" come out then the 10 bucks would go to a good cause. Good graphics and good narration alone cannot possibly make up for the 10 dollar price. Most of the complaints about this game is the pricing. Even though they earned back whatever they spent on it in a little over 6 hours by selling 16000 copies, many had buyer's remorse and felt cheated. Its why I never buy games without playing a demo or "trying it out" first.
I cannot possibly go into the game without spoiling things. You are basically a nameless narrator on a uninhabited island. You may wander anywhere but there is always visual clues on where to go. Such as paint on the walls, a blinking aerial in the distance, or the moon lighting a path. Its impossible to get lost really, but if you do go off the main path you can hear more about the story. Every time you reach a certain point, the narrator will start talking giving a little about the story. Its never in chronological order and its purposely vague and ambiguous. Some points will have random prose that differs every play through. As you get closer to the end you see the paint on the wall become more erratic and common, the narrator's voice becomes more agitated and the prose become more confusing. Until you reach the climax and the ending where everything makes sense, or it doesn't.
The story is well written and I really enjoyed it. It fits perfectly with the background and the music. Will more of these games come out? I don't know. Do I want to see more? Why not. If no one experiments then we'll never get anything new. Its a nice idea, but its a little flawed. I wouldn't call it a good game because that would imply that there is some form of game play. However I cannot say that its completely bad because that would imply the game pissed me off or was annoying as fuck. Its sorta stuck there not really wowing anyone nor is it disappointing anyone. Its like stuck in perpetual limbo. Perhaps one day this will be the game that creates a revolution but don't count on it. Its probably just going to be forgotten under the weight of Call of Duty, Final Fantasies, and other copy paste games.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Persistent Progression - So noobs can feel better about themselves
A lot of updates recently, mainly because so many stupid shit is happening at once. What is persistent progression? Persistent progression is when the more you play the more achievements or unlocks or progress you get. For example, TF2 and its million of hats. This is different than experience points for MMOs. This is literally, the more hours you log into a game, the bigger your penis gets. A lot of people swear by it while others hate it. If they don't have any kind of progress whats the point of playing right? Whether its for unlocking that spiffy avatar or getting runes for LoL, its something that people can look forward to. A carrot in front of their head basically.
These can be done right, or they can be done wrong, most of the time though its done wrong. When you play a game, what is the most important thing when playing multiplayer? Fairness. Sure you can argue that skill is superior to progression but sometimes the advantage gets so big theres no point in trying. Its like fighting a max level guy as a brand new guy in a MMO. No matter how skilled you are, if you have to hit him 2000 times to kill him and he can kill you in 1 hit from across the map, you're fucked. An extreme example but unfortunately its not that far off. Look at something like League of Legends. A free to play dota-like made by the creators of the original dota. They wanted to innovate the game and added in persistent progression. The more you play, the more summoner (player) levels you can gain. Each time you gain a level you unlock a rune slot to add in permanent stats for all your champions and talent points to boost your champions. The more you play you can buy runes from the shop from points earned from playing the game. With these both you have a huge advantage over someone new, someone who didn't play as much as you. So high that they can literally kill you in 2 hits 20 seconds into the game while he can shrug off all your hits from the massive runes and talents he has. This makes it impossible to win.
What is the point of that? Why not have a skill based game rather than a MMO. If I want a game where I get more powerful the longer I play then I'll play a fucking MMO. Even FPS nowadays add shit like 10% more damage to guns or other retarded upgrades. Even if you think it looks tiny and insignificant, it can easily skew the game in your favor. Hell I talked about how Bloodline Champions completely fucked themselves over by adding persistent progression. It was a game where it advertised skill based arena style gameplay with no RNG. But they caved to the people begging on the forums. After adding that patch and milking money, most of the people quit. When the advantage is that big what can you possibly do to fight people that have already played for so long? All it does is alienate new players. What if tomorrow SC2 added a new talent tree that gives you permanent +2 damage +2 armor with 10% move speed for all your units for people who played over a year. Then double that bonus for people who played for two. How in the fuck do new people compete? By playing more? Eventually catching up them?
Another thing people insist on having is achievements. These are also part of persistent progression. The more you play the more you unlock these achievements to feel good about yourself. It may be something to do when you're bored, other times it unlocks items, but the biggest reason is to show off to all your friends. A bigger achievement completion means you have a bigger penis. This is what it all comes down to, E-Peen. People like persistent progression because it makes them look pro. It lures them into a false sense of superiority. And to reward them with a false sense of superiority are achievements that congratulate you every time you do something correctly like an aide for a retard. Each time the achievement pops up your friends and everyone around you go "congratulations!" and clap for you. Why? They're mocking you. You're a big fucking retard and you don't even know it yourself. And every time you do this they'll give you a little toy. A better toy than the other kids because you're special.
These can be done right, or they can be done wrong, most of the time though its done wrong. When you play a game, what is the most important thing when playing multiplayer? Fairness. Sure you can argue that skill is superior to progression but sometimes the advantage gets so big theres no point in trying. Its like fighting a max level guy as a brand new guy in a MMO. No matter how skilled you are, if you have to hit him 2000 times to kill him and he can kill you in 1 hit from across the map, you're fucked. An extreme example but unfortunately its not that far off. Look at something like League of Legends. A free to play dota-like made by the creators of the original dota. They wanted to innovate the game and added in persistent progression. The more you play, the more summoner (player) levels you can gain. Each time you gain a level you unlock a rune slot to add in permanent stats for all your champions and talent points to boost your champions. The more you play you can buy runes from the shop from points earned from playing the game. With these both you have a huge advantage over someone new, someone who didn't play as much as you. So high that they can literally kill you in 2 hits 20 seconds into the game while he can shrug off all your hits from the massive runes and talents he has. This makes it impossible to win.
What is the point of that? Why not have a skill based game rather than a MMO. If I want a game where I get more powerful the longer I play then I'll play a fucking MMO. Even FPS nowadays add shit like 10% more damage to guns or other retarded upgrades. Even if you think it looks tiny and insignificant, it can easily skew the game in your favor. Hell I talked about how Bloodline Champions completely fucked themselves over by adding persistent progression. It was a game where it advertised skill based arena style gameplay with no RNG. But they caved to the people begging on the forums. After adding that patch and milking money, most of the people quit. When the advantage is that big what can you possibly do to fight people that have already played for so long? All it does is alienate new players. What if tomorrow SC2 added a new talent tree that gives you permanent +2 damage +2 armor with 10% move speed for all your units for people who played over a year. Then double that bonus for people who played for two. How in the fuck do new people compete? By playing more? Eventually catching up them?
Another thing people insist on having is achievements. These are also part of persistent progression. The more you play the more you unlock these achievements to feel good about yourself. It may be something to do when you're bored, other times it unlocks items, but the biggest reason is to show off to all your friends. A bigger achievement completion means you have a bigger penis. This is what it all comes down to, E-Peen. People like persistent progression because it makes them look pro. It lures them into a false sense of superiority. And to reward them with a false sense of superiority are achievements that congratulate you every time you do something correctly like an aide for a retard. Each time the achievement pops up your friends and everyone around you go "congratulations!" and clap for you. Why? They're mocking you. You're a big fucking retard and you don't even know it yourself. And every time you do this they'll give you a little toy. A better toy than the other kids because you're special.
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Ubisoft - Biggest supporters of piracy
Remember Ubisoft's awesome idea of always online gaming?
http://theorycrafting.blogspot.com/2011/11/ubisoft-pc-pirating-no-more-releasing.html
Remember how they hate PC gamers because they're all pirates? Remember how proud they are when they showed the world their always online policy? Guess what? They decided to move around some servers so their games will NOT be available for the next week or more. This includes both multiplayer and singleplayer games. Why don't they make a backup server or something so people can keep playing? Why? Because fuck them thats why. Why the fuck should they care about their customers. They should be lucky they get to rent Ubisoft games for 60 bucks. Those thieving fuckers even invite friends over to play with them. Thats fucking stealing. Assholes steal their games and they don't even have to pay 60 bucks to rent it! Such assholery needs to be punished the only way possible. By shitting on the servers for as long as possible. This should teach those shit ass customers not to steal Ubisoft games. They should feel happy Ubisoft is even letting them play whenever they want.
When a series start becoming unpopular, Ubisoft can just shut it down. Oh people still wanna play? Fuck you why you playing old shit! Go buy the next Ubisoft game, wait no my mistake, go rent the next Ubisoft game for 60 bucks! Customers are so stupid they'll just keep shoving money in Ubisoft's face right? Ubisoft is so smart they should go around publishing all the good games and drive them to the ground. Milk as much money as they can and then leave them to die. If people complain then they'll just blame the pirates. Thats whats causing problems anyways. Its the pirates fault. So all the customers should be mad at the pirates for this inconvenience. Never mind the fact that only pirates are able to play the game now. See how much as an asshole they are? Playing the game while you can't. Now you're forced to download cracks and pirate the games so you can play too. Ubisoft is the only company in the world where its easier to pirate a game from them than to buy it.
But why! Because by fucking over the customers will they earn the most money. A kid finished his game and he wants to resell it? NOPE. Don't think about doing that you little fucking piece of shit. Trying to sell the 60 dollar game you rented. RENTED. This shit doesn't belong to you asshole. You fucking leave Ubisoft's fucking property alone. Ubisoft doesn't take shit from assholes trying to resell. What else also stops resell? CD-Keys? WELL FUCK THAT SHIT! Why the fuck do they wanna waste their time making CD-Keys when they can fucking milk as much money out of the next person all while pissing them off and blaming the pirates. Because they need to make the customers mad at the pirates while milking their money for maximum effect. Pirates are the assholes here. Fuck them.
http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/07/28/ubisoft-our-drm-is-a-success/
Look at how fucking successful they are! Those fucker pirates can't touch the game with their grubby pirate hands now that they have the best DRM ever made.
http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/10/07/opinion-ubisoft-piracy-and-the-death-of-reason/
Sales down 90%? Well those fucker pirates must have done something about it then! Ubisoft's DRM is foolproof. There is no way those fucker pirates got past! It must be a conspiracy the other companies must have roused up the pirates to fuck over the paying customers. Those assholes pirates are the cause of everything. Better not release games for PC anymore! Too many fucker pirates there. What about the PC gamers? Fuck them. There are no PC gamers there are only pirates. If their DRM causes people to pirate more then that just proves their point. Pirates are ruining games! Look at Ubisoft. Such a sad pitiful way to die. Get ripped to shred by the pirates they are so desperately trying to protect their customers from. Now these pirates will rape their customers with their illegal copies. Then infect the world with cracks and hacks. Oh the humanity. We're all lucky a company is trying this hard to fight the pirates.
http://kotaku.com/5881867/some-of-ubisofts-pc-games-wont-work-next-week-not-even-singleplayer
A small price to pay to beat the pirates!
http://theorycrafting.blogspot.com/2011/11/ubisoft-pc-pirating-no-more-releasing.html
Remember how they hate PC gamers because they're all pirates? Remember how proud they are when they showed the world their always online policy? Guess what? They decided to move around some servers so their games will NOT be available for the next week or more. This includes both multiplayer and singleplayer games. Why don't they make a backup server or something so people can keep playing? Why? Because fuck them thats why. Why the fuck should they care about their customers. They should be lucky they get to rent Ubisoft games for 60 bucks. Those thieving fuckers even invite friends over to play with them. Thats fucking stealing. Assholes steal their games and they don't even have to pay 60 bucks to rent it! Such assholery needs to be punished the only way possible. By shitting on the servers for as long as possible. This should teach those shit ass customers not to steal Ubisoft games. They should feel happy Ubisoft is even letting them play whenever they want.
When a series start becoming unpopular, Ubisoft can just shut it down. Oh people still wanna play? Fuck you why you playing old shit! Go buy the next Ubisoft game, wait no my mistake, go rent the next Ubisoft game for 60 bucks! Customers are so stupid they'll just keep shoving money in Ubisoft's face right? Ubisoft is so smart they should go around publishing all the good games and drive them to the ground. Milk as much money as they can and then leave them to die. If people complain then they'll just blame the pirates. Thats whats causing problems anyways. Its the pirates fault. So all the customers should be mad at the pirates for this inconvenience. Never mind the fact that only pirates are able to play the game now. See how much as an asshole they are? Playing the game while you can't. Now you're forced to download cracks and pirate the games so you can play too. Ubisoft is the only company in the world where its easier to pirate a game from them than to buy it.
But why! Because by fucking over the customers will they earn the most money. A kid finished his game and he wants to resell it? NOPE. Don't think about doing that you little fucking piece of shit. Trying to sell the 60 dollar game you rented. RENTED. This shit doesn't belong to you asshole. You fucking leave Ubisoft's fucking property alone. Ubisoft doesn't take shit from assholes trying to resell. What else also stops resell? CD-Keys? WELL FUCK THAT SHIT! Why the fuck do they wanna waste their time making CD-Keys when they can fucking milk as much money out of the next person all while pissing them off and blaming the pirates. Because they need to make the customers mad at the pirates while milking their money for maximum effect. Pirates are the assholes here. Fuck them.
http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/07/28/ubisoft-our-drm-is-a-success/
Look at how fucking successful they are! Those fucker pirates can't touch the game with their grubby pirate hands now that they have the best DRM ever made.
http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/10/07/opinion-ubisoft-piracy-and-the-death-of-reason/
Sales down 90%? Well those fucker pirates must have done something about it then! Ubisoft's DRM is foolproof. There is no way those fucker pirates got past! It must be a conspiracy the other companies must have roused up the pirates to fuck over the paying customers. Those assholes pirates are the cause of everything. Better not release games for PC anymore! Too many fucker pirates there. What about the PC gamers? Fuck them. There are no PC gamers there are only pirates. If their DRM causes people to pirate more then that just proves their point. Pirates are ruining games! Look at Ubisoft. Such a sad pitiful way to die. Get ripped to shred by the pirates they are so desperately trying to protect their customers from. Now these pirates will rape their customers with their illegal copies. Then infect the world with cracks and hacks. Oh the humanity. We're all lucky a company is trying this hard to fight the pirates.
http://kotaku.com/5881867/some-of-ubisofts-pc-games-wont-work-next-week-not-even-singleplayer
A small price to pay to beat the pirates!
Thursday, February 2, 2012
CDs, Boxes, Manuals & More - Digital distribution's impact on physical copies
I like boxed copies. If I am doing a day one purchase then I exclusively buy physical copies. Theres something about holding a box in your hand and digging your fingernail into the tape and cutting it open. Then you stick your finger into the cardboard skeleton and pull out the inside but not before placing the opening to your nose and giving yourself a sniff of the new game smell. After you flip over the contents inside on the carpet and see a paper sleeve and a piece of paper, you remember why no one buy physical copies anymore.
What happened? I remember in the past you would get a huge box and inside you get a CD case with a mini manual and the game CD. Then you get a thick book of a manual, some of the even older ones are in leather and had a nice smooth touch and smell to it. There would also be non important things included like art, catalogs, and other useless stuff. I'm not old enough to know about the floppy disk games but aren't those in big huge thick plastic cases with a bunch of stuff? Even those are better than today's boxes. Nowadays you're lucky to even get a flippy cover on your box. Inside is a paper slip with your DVD shivering inside from exposure. A piece of paper called a manual and a catalog thats at least 10x bigger than the manual. Thats fucking it? You can totally see the effort they took.
Nowadays everyone is using digital distribution. Its fast, its easy, and you will never have the risk of losing your shit. Why drive down to your local store wait in line and buy a physical copy. Then you'd have to pull the DVD out and install. Digital distribution you can predownload it before the day it is released and you just wait until the clock hits midnight and start playing. I can see why its so popular. But for people like me who likes the feel and the looks of the boxes, we're willing to put up with having to drive down to the store. But with the game companies desperately trying to get as much money as they can, the boxes end up suffering.
I have never been a fan of collector editions. I don't know why but they just never really appealed to me. I can see why people would want them. Theres a lot of stuff in them that are pretty cool. Walking out the store while everyone is holding a tiny box and you are carrying a huge beast of a box makes you feel like either a huge dork or the king of nerds. But unfortunately, what is found inside the box are usually not worth the big price increase. Some exceptions like Witcher 2 and a few others give a ton of shit and their collector edition boxes are twice as big as the next. The rest like all the other lazy companies give a slightly bigger box with exclusive ingame items! Why the fuck do I want these retarded ingame items when they can either be modded in if its single player or in an online game be completely useless because they are nothing but vanity items.
Another thing about ingame items are preorder bonuses. Seems like every company is adapting that model. Preorder and you can get in our exclusive beta! You'll get garbage that no one gives a shit about! Honestly, the reason 90% of the people preorder is because of early beta access. Why? Because betas are nothing more than a marketing tool now. I mentioned it in my beta post before, betas are now used as demos and way to get preorders. They don't fix shit, they don't test shit, and theres no stress testing. Half the time betas keep what progress you did giving people who preorder a huge advantage. One game seems to take this to the next level. Tera a new action MMO coming out has preorders giving beta access. A beta that is 15 days long over a series of 6 weekends. Each weekend is 60 hour long of beta and after every weekend all progress is wiped and a new set of 1000 people are allowed in. What could they possibly test in that limited amount of time? Nothing. Its used for nothing but hype and to suck in preorders.
To make things worse. they even add a 10 dollar "mini preorder" which gives you beta access but not the game itself. Its deducted once you purchase the full game. Those who preorder get to get in all betas and allow you to keep all progress during the beta. And at the very end there is a 5 day head start where people who preorder can play. Is this what gaming has been reduced to? What happened to the boxes? What happened to the cool shit. Now its just ingame items and beta access. Even Blizzard is doing it. Buy 12 months of WoW subscription and get into Diablo 3 beta!
Then theres the digital collector editions. Those are laughable. You get more exclusive ingame items and digital artbooks and digital novels. Yes, those are very nice indeed. So nice I'm going to sit here and laugh at everyone who bought them.
Consoles on the other hand, haven't changed too much. In fact I think they gotten better. Before you get a box with a cartridge inside with a manual, then it changed to a tiny plastic CD case after the introduction of CD games, but now its a big plastic case with a bigger manual and cover art. Size isn't everything though, but at least they feel superior to the lame PS2 plastic cases. I like to admire cover art. Its getting rarer these days for nice cover art. Most games are just a big lameass title front and center with a bland single color background. Then there are those that are beautifully and artistically created. And of course there are the retarded ones that gives you second hand embarrassment just being in the vicinity of. Scariest part of that is where is says partial nudity. It could be anything from prepubescent girls naked or a hairy ogre ass.
I don't hate digital distribution, in fact I find it very convenient. It fits perfectly with today's fast paced world. I'm afraid after a few more years, these video game boxes might disappear completely. Never again will we be able to breathe in that new game smell, run your fingers through the pages of the manuals, or admire the visual art on the cover. Consoles might live on but digital distribution might be winning the fight for PCs.
What happened? I remember in the past you would get a huge box and inside you get a CD case with a mini manual and the game CD. Then you get a thick book of a manual, some of the even older ones are in leather and had a nice smooth touch and smell to it. There would also be non important things included like art, catalogs, and other useless stuff. I'm not old enough to know about the floppy disk games but aren't those in big huge thick plastic cases with a bunch of stuff? Even those are better than today's boxes. Nowadays you're lucky to even get a flippy cover on your box. Inside is a paper slip with your DVD shivering inside from exposure. A piece of paper called a manual and a catalog thats at least 10x bigger than the manual. Thats fucking it? You can totally see the effort they took.
Nowadays everyone is using digital distribution. Its fast, its easy, and you will never have the risk of losing your shit. Why drive down to your local store wait in line and buy a physical copy. Then you'd have to pull the DVD out and install. Digital distribution you can predownload it before the day it is released and you just wait until the clock hits midnight and start playing. I can see why its so popular. But for people like me who likes the feel and the looks of the boxes, we're willing to put up with having to drive down to the store. But with the game companies desperately trying to get as much money as they can, the boxes end up suffering.
I have never been a fan of collector editions. I don't know why but they just never really appealed to me. I can see why people would want them. Theres a lot of stuff in them that are pretty cool. Walking out the store while everyone is holding a tiny box and you are carrying a huge beast of a box makes you feel like either a huge dork or the king of nerds. But unfortunately, what is found inside the box are usually not worth the big price increase. Some exceptions like Witcher 2 and a few others give a ton of shit and their collector edition boxes are twice as big as the next. The rest like all the other lazy companies give a slightly bigger box with exclusive ingame items! Why the fuck do I want these retarded ingame items when they can either be modded in if its single player or in an online game be completely useless because they are nothing but vanity items.
Another thing about ingame items are preorder bonuses. Seems like every company is adapting that model. Preorder and you can get in our exclusive beta! You'll get garbage that no one gives a shit about! Honestly, the reason 90% of the people preorder is because of early beta access. Why? Because betas are nothing more than a marketing tool now. I mentioned it in my beta post before, betas are now used as demos and way to get preorders. They don't fix shit, they don't test shit, and theres no stress testing. Half the time betas keep what progress you did giving people who preorder a huge advantage. One game seems to take this to the next level. Tera a new action MMO coming out has preorders giving beta access. A beta that is 15 days long over a series of 6 weekends. Each weekend is 60 hour long of beta and after every weekend all progress is wiped and a new set of 1000 people are allowed in. What could they possibly test in that limited amount of time? Nothing. Its used for nothing but hype and to suck in preorders.
To make things worse. they even add a 10 dollar "mini preorder" which gives you beta access but not the game itself. Its deducted once you purchase the full game. Those who preorder get to get in all betas and allow you to keep all progress during the beta. And at the very end there is a 5 day head start where people who preorder can play. Is this what gaming has been reduced to? What happened to the boxes? What happened to the cool shit. Now its just ingame items and beta access. Even Blizzard is doing it. Buy 12 months of WoW subscription and get into Diablo 3 beta!
Then theres the digital collector editions. Those are laughable. You get more exclusive ingame items and digital artbooks and digital novels. Yes, those are very nice indeed. So nice I'm going to sit here and laugh at everyone who bought them.
Consoles on the other hand, haven't changed too much. In fact I think they gotten better. Before you get a box with a cartridge inside with a manual, then it changed to a tiny plastic CD case after the introduction of CD games, but now its a big plastic case with a bigger manual and cover art. Size isn't everything though, but at least they feel superior to the lame PS2 plastic cases. I like to admire cover art. Its getting rarer these days for nice cover art. Most games are just a big lameass title front and center with a bland single color background. Then there are those that are beautifully and artistically created. And of course there are the retarded ones that gives you second hand embarrassment just being in the vicinity of. Scariest part of that is where is says partial nudity. It could be anything from prepubescent girls naked or a hairy ogre ass.
I don't hate digital distribution, in fact I find it very convenient. It fits perfectly with today's fast paced world. I'm afraid after a few more years, these video game boxes might disappear completely. Never again will we be able to breathe in that new game smell, run your fingers through the pages of the manuals, or admire the visual art on the cover. Consoles might live on but digital distribution might be winning the fight for PCs.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Indie Games - Doing gaming right
I really like Indie games. I don't know whats about them that draws me to them. I spent more time playing games like Aquaria, Dungeons of Dredmore, Recettear, Dungeon Defenders or World of Goo than any of the recent AAA titles minus a few. I had more fun playing a 5 to 15 dollar game than a 60 dollar AAA title. What is it about these games that make them so freaking fun? Maybe because they have a niche audience and can cater specifically to them? Maybe they're a little old school but manage to make it new? Maybe because they listen to their fans? Who knows really. All I know is more developers need to start paying more attention to their fans, because it pays off in the end.
With the recent increase of digital distribution, more and more indie games are popping up. Some of you may be asking what are these mysterious "indie games" that are getting more and more popular.
"There is no exact widely-accepted definition of what constitutes an "indie game". However, generally indie games share certain commonalities. Indie games are developed by individuals, small teams, or small independent companies. And, typically, indie games are smaller than mainstream titles. Indie game developers are not financially backed by publishers and usually have little to no budget available."
What this means is, they are in control of everything. They can change everything on a whim, granted that the whole team agrees, if they wish to. Instead of having to appeal to a broad audience and dumbing down games or mechanics they can make their games as unforgiving as they want. There is an audience for that. They're called roguelikes where the gameplay is so frustrating and unforgiving but just the right amount that make masochists crawl back to play over and over again.
The only problem is that there is almost no marketing for these games. Most travel from person to person on forums and gaming sites. I read around on a gaming forum quite a bit always on the lookout for new games and information. What I noticed is how many indie developers hang around there. They post about their games show a little and then constantly change or update things based on feedback. That is where I find most of my games. I've already talked about Carpe Fulgur and their successes and they are just one of many. A recent one caught my attention as I was reading about an upcoming old school dungeon crawler game called Legend of Grimrock.
What exactly happened was a fan asked why there weren't any clickable arrow icons for movement like many of the old school games. When asked why, he replied that he was disabled. The developers upon hearing that spent a couple hours and added optional clickable arrow icons into the game. Just for one person. When this happened, a random guy on the forums decided to send this story to reddit and various gaming sites and soon it exploded out of proportion. Their website went down from massive traffic overload and their email were flooded.
To quote one of the developers
"It's a bit sad to find out that even such a small gesture toward fans gets so much attention, because it says that there's a huge gap between the game creators and the audience in general, and people just aren't used to this kind of interaction,"
What he says is true. Its sad how many companies don't give a shit about their customers. Hell even some indie developers start drifting away from the community. Trendy Entertainment of Dungeon Defenders for one started going on a downhill slope. For one they decided that alienating their console players is a good idea. They stopped updating for consoles entirely. Next they started drifting away from their playerbase. They used to talk to their players often and update often. Now everyone is left in the dark then a patch comes out of nowhere with nerfs and bugs. People's characters get deleted, items are lost, and other things happen. When people sent emails for help it came back with a reply more than 3 weeks later saying they'll give them 10 million mana (not even worth 1 item) so they can start over. Really? Wait 3 weeks just for that?
I think what really attracts me to indie games is how approachable and human they are. I think thats what it comes down to. Love for their work, their fans, and their own game and it shows in the end product.
http://www.joystiq.com/2012/01/27/indie-studio-almost-human-is-more-human-than-most/
With the recent increase of digital distribution, more and more indie games are popping up. Some of you may be asking what are these mysterious "indie games" that are getting more and more popular.
"There is no exact widely-accepted definition of what constitutes an "indie game". However, generally indie games share certain commonalities. Indie games are developed by individuals, small teams, or small independent companies. And, typically, indie games are smaller than mainstream titles. Indie game developers are not financially backed by publishers and usually have little to no budget available."
What this means is, they are in control of everything. They can change everything on a whim, granted that the whole team agrees, if they wish to. Instead of having to appeal to a broad audience and dumbing down games or mechanics they can make their games as unforgiving as they want. There is an audience for that. They're called roguelikes where the gameplay is so frustrating and unforgiving but just the right amount that make masochists crawl back to play over and over again.
The only problem is that there is almost no marketing for these games. Most travel from person to person on forums and gaming sites. I read around on a gaming forum quite a bit always on the lookout for new games and information. What I noticed is how many indie developers hang around there. They post about their games show a little and then constantly change or update things based on feedback. That is where I find most of my games. I've already talked about Carpe Fulgur and their successes and they are just one of many. A recent one caught my attention as I was reading about an upcoming old school dungeon crawler game called Legend of Grimrock.
What exactly happened was a fan asked why there weren't any clickable arrow icons for movement like many of the old school games. When asked why, he replied that he was disabled. The developers upon hearing that spent a couple hours and added optional clickable arrow icons into the game. Just for one person. When this happened, a random guy on the forums decided to send this story to reddit and various gaming sites and soon it exploded out of proportion. Their website went down from massive traffic overload and their email were flooded.
To quote one of the developers
"It's a bit sad to find out that even such a small gesture toward fans gets so much attention, because it says that there's a huge gap between the game creators and the audience in general, and people just aren't used to this kind of interaction,"
What he says is true. Its sad how many companies don't give a shit about their customers. Hell even some indie developers start drifting away from the community. Trendy Entertainment of Dungeon Defenders for one started going on a downhill slope. For one they decided that alienating their console players is a good idea. They stopped updating for consoles entirely. Next they started drifting away from their playerbase. They used to talk to their players often and update often. Now everyone is left in the dark then a patch comes out of nowhere with nerfs and bugs. People's characters get deleted, items are lost, and other things happen. When people sent emails for help it came back with a reply more than 3 weeks later saying they'll give them 10 million mana (not even worth 1 item) so they can start over. Really? Wait 3 weeks just for that?
I think what really attracts me to indie games is how approachable and human they are. I think thats what it comes down to. Love for their work, their fans, and their own game and it shows in the end product.
http://www.joystiq.com/2012/01/27/indie-studio-almost-human-is-more-human-than-most/
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