05 October 2009

Nostalgia

Recently I was hit with the nostalgia bug, suddenly wanting to play all my old games, watch old shows etc. Pokemon was a big contender, along with MDK and Future Cop LAPD for PC.

Thing is, while these games were good, I always wonder... Just where did the companies who made them go?

MDK 2 was an okay sequel, but it had nothing on the original. While the humour, the weapons and the level design was there, there's just something so charming about the original that makes me come back to it. The graphics really were amazing for a game of the time, utilising full 3D for the levels and enemies while using a pre-rendered image for the player character, Kurt.

This full 3D allowed for the implementation of this game's incredibly unique sniper rifle. It can be loaded with eight different kinds of ammunition, along with the ability to send off an airship to bomb drop an area you aim at, it has three cameras which show you where your ammo has hit or landed, and it has an incredible zoom mode, the first boss in particular utilising its 100x zoom.

Outside of the sniper malarkey, Kurt's main weapon is a hand-mounted chain gun which is described in the manual as having infinite ammunition "by sheer fluke". This can receive limited ammo upgrades to do more damage, and Kurt has all sorts of other items at his disposal such as grenades, blow up dolls with a crudely drawn image of himself on it to distract the enemy, and my favourite weapon of all, The World's Smallest Nuke, a weapon so non-lethal that its only purpose is to be a way of unlocking doors.

Before each level you receive a mission briefing which generally consists of about three very short lines of text. At the end, you are likely to receive a funny comment. First level again, if you complete it, but take too much time, you are told that "Millions died in Laguna Beach!... Oh well." and then on with the next mission.

Then there's Future Cop LAPD, a game I played way to much when I was young. I collected every hidden weapon without cheats or passwords, completed every level, owned the shit out of Sky Captain... Despite this game's simplistic approach to Mechs (A friend has said he prefers Mechwarrior 3 simply because it's got so many controls... And is an entirely different game in a very different genre... And he has nostalgia goggles for that slightly) it does a good job of using its controls for complex platforming parts, especially if players want to take shortcuts into the enemy bases.

There is so much about this game I hate, like the confusing level design, overly difficult enemies and unbalanced weapons, but for some reason this is one of the few games I don't call out for such things. I can play this game all the way through without getting angry, which is a major first for me, with how shouty I can get when I start failing miserably.

The game itself again utilises full 3D, although this was a middle life PS1 release so that's expected, and provides the player with a large bipedal robot, somewhat combining the sleek workings of eastern mechs with the large, bulky design of western imagination, armed with a number of guns to mow through the enemy. The player must choose their selection of weapons before the level, choosing from a selection of Standard, Heavy and Special weapons. Standard weapons are your basic guns. You know, a minigun, electric gun, gatling gun or a flamethrower. Heavy weapons contain various forms of missiles, and Special weapons consist of a mortar launcher, a shockwave generator and a mine layer.

Now the major problem with this weapon selection is in multiplayer. All you need to choose is the electric gun, the Concussion Beam (The only non-missile based heavy weapon which can stop the opponent's missile-based heavy weapon in its tracks) and the shockwave generator, since it attacks from all sides at a quite lengthy close range, and I believe also stops enemy turrets from being a major problem. Along with being the fastest firing and most powerful weapons, they completely slaughter all others because of their missile stopping capabilities and range. It was especially funny getting friends to pick other ones, convincing them my weapons were the worst so I could get a couple of rounds in where I was completely overpowered.

Okay, so I've explained and ranted about two of my favourite old games now, so I'm assuming you want to know why. Too many times I hear people complaining that games aren't like they used to be, a select few wanting their precious old games to be the benchmark in terms of gameplay to make games of today be similar.

Genres develop. At the time, there weren't many over the shoulder third person shooters when MDK came out, and the top down shooter format of Future Cop was pretty much dying at the time. The thing is, it's very unlikely that such games will ever get any form of sequel or spiritual sequel, simply because their genres have developed. From MDK and other TPSs of the time I would eventually get Gears of War and Mass Effect, while Future Cop... I don't know really, like I said, top down shooters were already done with, being a genre from some of the oldest of home consoles.

Nostalgia is the only thing that's keeping old franchises in production. The Mario and Sonic series continue to be stretched further and further out with meaningless updates to the original format (Sonic more than Mario with just how ridiculously hard Sonic Team are trying to make Sonic good again with soundtracks and story, not realising that it's the crap gameplay that's causing Sonic's slow demise.)

The other big problem is the fans of these old games who want their old games remade. If a developer takes on the challenge and makes it basically the same game, many will hate it for it because it's too similar. There's no line between the other side either, being that if ANYTHING is changed, fans of the old get narky over the slightest of differences between their beloved old game.

Fans of Modern Warfare who are waiting for Modern Warfare 2 will be pleased to know one of the levels in MDK has Kurt snowmobiling down a long winding path while shooting other snowmobiling aliens. It's good to ruin people's knowledge of 'uniqueness'.

And at least I know playing that bit in MW2 will be a rather nostalgic experience for me.

10 September 2009

The Hardcore/Casual Divide - Such Bull

I play games a lot.

Not many days go by when I haven't spent at least an hour playing them.

I consider myself to be pretty good at most games, and rather adept at getting good at new ones.

Yet I would never call myself a hardcore gamer.

I've never understood the term properly. To me it seems to be a way for the 'elite' to describe themselves as something that sounds better than, "I play games way too much." Why is there this need in some gamers to label themselves in such a way that, from what I can tell from a lot of forums at least, gives the impression that they are hot headed, egotistical, whiny pricks who can't take their precious favoured games being ranted on?

Then there's the casual gamer, a term coined by the 'hardcore' to describe those they feel beneath them. Any game considered casual is normally immediately bashed by said hardcores, with claims such as lack of story, simplistic gameplay etc.

It's as if these hardcore gamers, a demographic which takes up only a small percentage of those who play games I might add, don't want people who only play games for fun to play them. Y'know, the ones who actually realise what games are for.

I know a few people who seem to play games purely for the sake of beating them, whether they enjoy the games or not. One of my friends played Fable 2 and, despite claiming it was pretty bad, continued to play it anyway. True, if I'd spent thirty quid on a game I'd play it through, but my point here is why play a game you dislike, with the only reward is the boast factor of 'I completed the game'? Even then, when the truth is revealed at 'I completed the game I didn't like' it makes the whole aspect of beating the game a little less flavoursome.

Games are primarily for a fun. A game which isn't fun to someone shouldn't be considered a bad thing. I don't dis those who like Cooking Mama and games such as that on Wii and DS because if that's what they find fun, then good for them. Just because I enjoy games like Call of Duty, Half Life, Halo, Eternal Darkness, No More Heroes, House of the Dead etc. doesn't mean I'm not partial to a bit of Rock Band, Peggle, Wonderful End of the World, Osmos, Eets, and whatever other games I play that many would deem 'casual', as if it's a truly bad thing.

One arguement I've heard is that it's ruining the gaming industry as a whole.

Big problem with this is that it's targetted mainly at the Wii, a Nintendo console. Nintendo have never been big on the hardcore side of things, aside from Contra, Mega Man and the real SMB2. Even then, those were on their oldest of old consoles. N64 and up, it became a lot harder anyway to find these so called hardcore games, with Perfect Dark and Goldeneye being the only ones to come to mind. Even then, these eventually spawned Timesplitters which seems to me like the most casual FPS out there.

True, there's so much shit on Ninty's latest consoles, but within the sludge there are a few shining diamonds of great games available for those who prefer a game with killing, with excellent artistic style. True, this is done mainly due to the limitations of the Wii's graphics capabilities, but that's a suitable price to pay to deviate from the realistic graphics of the modern age a little bit. No More Heroes with its cel-shading, Madworld with its comic book, almost light-hearted Sin City-esque style and Super Mario Galaxy with its incredibly bright and colourful scheme spring instantly to mind when I think of this.

And while Nintendo has these problems, the other two players of the console race are not at all devoid of shit. The amount of generic FPS, racing and sports games that come out on those consoles (that are also widely hated by hardcore fans which I don't understand too much... It's like they want every single game to be like Counter Strike or something) is staggering, with immense use of licence branding over them to appeal to a wider audience.

This ties in well with my last article really. People like the games that appeal to them. For a group of people to say, "this game is bad, get *Insert completely different genre game here* instead," won't change a damn thing if that person doesn't like those kind of games. Someone who plays games they enjoy to get the best times, the best rewards, the best scores etc. will be the ones who are hardcore, not those that play Valve and Infinity Ward games constantly whether they are good at them or not.

08 September 2009

Opinions, criticism, and feeling yours is above everyone else's...

I very lightly touched upon this subject in my earlier post about fanbases. Opinions are a very awkward thing to talk about, and I'm not going to pretend I know much about how the brain forms such opinions. One thing I do know, however, is that opinions are different.

Whether you prefer Halo or Half Life is perfectly valid as an opinion. It simply reflects what you prefer to have in the games you play. What I'm struggling to understand is the way certain people feel their opinion allows them to state that the game they prefer gives that person a higher status in life in comparison to the person who enjoys a different game more.

I mean, seriously, it's a game, you like it, someone else does. Get over it.

There's also the use of opinion within a debate or arguement. While opinion heavily influences whether you will like a game or not, it is NOT a suitable tool to use in debate or even just a review of a game. Both Halo and Half Life are good games, although I repeatedly bash Halo for its highly simplistic gameplay in comparison, and I gladly admit to that being my opinion. Surely I can't be right among the six or seven million people who have bought and love the three games of the Halo series (even though most of those sales can be attributed to the advertising the game received on release of the XBox, or gamers who dislike Halo in an attempt to see if the series has gotten better yet).

The most common use of opinion from what I have seen is "Well that's just your opinion," as if this is a suitable way of ending an arguement. If anything, this should be something used at the beginning of said arguement, and even then, there are aspects of games that are pretty much objectively bad, if only because they are not suitable in an interactive medium.

Poor controls would be a big one, and no amount of 'you can get used to it' arguements beat good old fashioned good controls. This would be the difference between having a bajillion buttons that do everything the player could need to use, while good controls would be the more and more popular 'context sensitive' controls, with a 'use' button allowing the player to do everything the character needs to do, but only when they seriously need to do it to continue with the game. True, this limits freedom of the player somewhat, but most games are linear anyway, where context sensitive controls make sense. Even sandbox games like Saints Row utilise them, such as the 'climb on cars' button performing an action which I have currently forgotten when not near a car. Probably reloads or something.

Unskippable cutscenes are another one, although then again this may be a statement influenced by opinion. But here's my example: Metal Gear Solid, filled with so much bullshit I could grow several crops of food with it, allows you to skip the cutscenes. This is especially useful on multiple playthroughs. I don't want to sit through the same bullshit again because I'm playing through again. Even if it's something as simple as having lost the save file. This sways my opinion of Half Life a little, because it has a total lack of cutscenes, with every bit of story within gameplay and therefore unskippable. The amount of times I've had to sit and listen to, "Wake up, mister Freeman... Wake up and smell the ashes..." is gradually wearing on my mental capacity, but I digress...

Leave opinion out of review and out of debate when talking about games. In fact, remove it from every entertainment medium. There's many Youtube videos calling out rap as being unskillful and boring in comparison to other genres such as rock, and using this as an example as to why rap lovers should stop loving rap. But a person's opinion is based on a totally different set of attributes, a reflection of that person's personality, a reflection of their history, and the same can be applied to games. If people want a game to challenge their intellect in quick paced strategy, they would play a real time strategy. If someone wants to blow off some steam, or simply relax after a long, hard day, games like Halo or Timesplitters will seem more compelling with their much simpler approach to gaming.

Until gamers can realise their own opinions are not useful in swaying other peoples' opinions, we'll always have fanboy wars. It's just annoying that most of the gaming population are either elitist dickweeds who can't stand their precious 'hardcore' games being blashphemed (Most PC gamers), or 12 year old kids with shrieky voices who demand people don't kill them so they can kill other people (Most console gamers).

17 August 2009

Graphics...

Much like the 'bit-wars' that occured during the ninties, where consoles competed and marketted heavily on the basis their console had so many bits in comparison to others (Early Sega Mega Drive/Genesis adverts claiming their console was better simply because it was 16 bit compared to the NES's pitiful 8), games these days have a major emphasis on graphics.

I don't mean just how the game looks model and texture wise, but the lighting, the physics, destructable terrain etc. being touted proudly on the back of the box. Even Valve fall into the trap with their Source physics/graphics engine being one of the game's most well known features to even the most casual of gamers.

My problem is this: A game should be all about the gameplay. Why does it matter in this day and age, to the point where it can decide if a game sells well or not, if the graphics are top of the line?

Graphics are purely a way for the player to see the game fold out in front of them, to allow them to interact better. True, bad graphics make for confusing games, a problem with the NES and the way some games handled backgrounds. But in modern day standards, graphics from the PS1/N64 era onwards are generally easy to distinguish between the player, the enemies, the items and the levels, all aspects more important than the graphics themselves.

And then there are games which proudly spout out that they're great, when they aren't all that good. Halo 3, for example, had vastly inferior graphics when compared with other 360 games even a year or two before hand, and suffered some massive slowdown in some parts when more than a handful of explosions were shown at once. It had a constant, overactive use of the bloom effect which hurt my eyes for a lot of the time I played it, yet it manages to sell itself as having 'outstanding graphics'

A more recent game, The Conduit for the Wii, talks about having new technology to make the graphics look as good as the 360 and PS3, when they barely stand up to last generation's consoles. This however brings me to the point of how older games, especially ones in the consoles' later years, had graphics comparable to modern day. While Timesplitters 3 had rather poor player/enemy models, the environments were wonderfully well designed, looking as good as at least the early 360 games.

This emphasis on the graphics capabilities of both a system and a game are tiring me and many other gamers who enjoy the game based on the gameplay. Some reliance on graphics is certainly required, if only to improve gameplay or immersion by making the environments look brilliant or to help players distinguish between player characters and enemies.

I can't wait until we develop virtual reality systems capable of being more detailed, i.e. further than atoms, than real life... I will be waiting for the people complaining that "RL's graphics need updating."

Topics!

Just a list of things I'm hoping to detail. Well, the titles of them at least. I'll leave you to guess the detail within.
  • Games I Like And Why
  • Innovation
  • Graphics
  • Story
  • Casual Gamers
  • Hardcore Gamers
  • The Wii - Gaming Platform?
  • Game Advertising
  • The Development Process
  • Movies and Games - Can they combine?
  • Game Idea: Ghost game
  • Game Idea: Zombie RTS
Of course, this list is pretty basic. This is just an outline of what I hope to eventually talk about. Titles subject to change if I feel like it, I guess.

Fanbases, Halo vs Half Life and pointless topics of discussion...

I'm sick to death of fanbases.

I have never understood these obsessive, die hard defense of games people like, and on the subject the anti-fanbases that also arise, i.e. the anti Halo/Half Life crowds that many gaming forums are plagued with.

I don't deny I was part of such things. I'm a part of the pro-Valve, anti-Bungie crowd. However, unlike many in these cliques, I very soon realised just how futile such things are. People who are passionate about their favourite games are horribly unlikely to change their opinion because some teenager whines about it on a forum somewhere.

True, without fans, companies would find it difficult to gain a constant foothold in their respective markets, I just don't see the point in people making thread after thread after god damn thread along the lines of "i h8 halo, i r hardcor gamer"

Why? Why would anyone upon reading this, especially fans of the Halo series, suddenly think "Wow! This guy's put a great case forward. I too will dislike Halo!" Surely the point of games is to enjoy them, and in Halo's defense it is a very accessible game to the newbies to gaming yet still retains the fun and challenge for the more veteran gamers of past genenerations.

One thing I have noticed is an all out war between the fans of Halo and the fans of Half Life, both going to desperate struggles to prove in every way their favoured game is better than the other, detailing innovation, gameplay, story complexity, graphics, soundtracks... All things that really only merge to form a game's most important aspect: how fun it is to play.

While I agree that on pretty much every point Half Life wins, I had as much fun playing the Halo games (Besides Halo 2, that one was dreadful) both in single player and multiplayer. As well made as Half Life is, Halo stands up highly against it purely because it's such an easy game to pick up and play whenever, no matter how interested in games you are, while Half Life is definately more of a game for the long-time gamer.

It all depends on why you play a game. If you prefer all the nerdy aspects of looking with detailed precision into a game's mechanics, the story and the way it presents it, and how technical the graphics and physics engine is, Half Life is definately for you. It just doesn't strike me as the kind of game you could play multiple times with similar enjoyment, where as Halo can be played many times through, especially in Co-op even if it has the same horrid problems as Timesplitters 3's co-op mode where major plot changes occur (thinking of the Harry Tipper levels mainly here, took me fucking ages to figure out the second player didn't have to retrieve the disguises on the first level of it).

Half Life is more an interactive story, taking the player through various locales and situations where he/she must complete objectives, where as Halo is something for any kind of gamer who just wants to shoot shit up.

Of course, my personal opinion is that Call of Duty 4 encapsulated both game's impressive gameplay and story telling into one wonderful package, but that's a topic for another time...

Intro

Seems pretty standard for a blog, so here goes...

My name's Ryan Whitehead, I'm a frequent gamer of many platforms who has a lot to say about the realm of video games, old and new. I'm an aspiring game developer, learning C++ and hopefully going to Keele University to study Creative Computing, which basically entails general programming and basic computer science, graphics editing and game design all in one, and it also involves a dual honours thing in Music Technology, so essentially I'll have all the skills I need to enter any part of the games industry.

With this blog I hope to detail both ideas I have had for games themselves, along with issues I've noticed arising within various gaming communities, game developers, the games themselves and their connection with other forms of the entertainment industry. As this is a blog, I hope to receive comments you may have, and I'm glad to discuss various things although I must point out now I am rather closed minded in my opinions, rarely giving in to many arguements against my views, so please don't be upset if you're unable to sway me from disliking Halo (specifically its fanbase), loving the PC as both a gaming and general use system etc.

If you wish to contact me, whether it be to discuss games or really anything, or just to invite me to a game of something, I'm available on three pretty major IM systems, and you can always email me:
AIM: Teundusia
WLM: r.w2@hotmail.co.uk
YIM: RYjet911
Email (Preffered): ryan.whitehead2@gmail.com
Email (Secondary): spacemarinealex@gmail.com