Sundays are for bloodily bursting from the guts of an enormous Kieron-eating monster because not even death itself can stop me from compiling a weekly list of interesting (mostly) game related reading from across the week while trying to avoid linking to a pop-song. I am your Games Journalist Mesisah. [Do we edit this, or is it funnier just to leave it? - The Rest Of RPS]
- Quinns doesn’t just write for us, mores the pity. Here’s a piece he did on the joy of being confused for Eurogamer – as in, when you go Off The Map. Secondly, here’s his regular column for Game Set Watch. This time, it’s on Red Orchestra.
- Actually, while we’re over at Game Set Watch, Lewis wrote about how games should be easier. Leigh Alexander has threatened a counter-point already. I personally think games should be at the exact difficulty where it’s just too hard for John and not too hard for me, because that’ll amp up bragging rights enormously.
- You know Alice & Kev, the Sims homelessness tale by Roburky. If you haven’t read it for a while, it’s reaching something of an emotional climax right now.
- Have videogames reached the Jukebox age?
- Mark Stephen Meadows and Peter Ludlow write about a virtual life and an actual death.
- EA filing against EDGE games’ paper makes fascinating reading.
- BoingBoing off-shoot Offworld has only updated a single post since Teutonic Theory Titan Margaret Robertson’s column on why Halo makes her want to lay down and die - except, y’know – in a good way. Is this it for one of the best games blogs on the Internet?
- The Reticule on the incredi-ancient proto-Deus Ex Doom-period-game Strife.
- I admit, I’ve never watched any of the Guild, but the Wired profile of Felicia Day is fascinating reading, and speaks to a lot of problems of… well, the sort of world RPS is in, in its small way.
- Perseus 9 was the first to point at this New Scientist article which notes that gamers get a testosterone surge when they beat the shit out of a stranger – which they don’t actually get when beating a friend. It’s the sort of thing which makes a lot of sense, the more you think about it. Though doesn’t explain why sulkiness abounds when playing board games with friends. Well, because all my friends are bastards.
- Christian Donlan’s Eurogamer preview on The Secret World is some of the best coverage of the game I’ve seen so far.
- I’ve been in communication with a chap on this games criticism module this week. I’m linking to the week-by-week breakdown of what they cover, because I think the suggested reading is interesting. I mean, clearly, I disagree with a lot of it but that turned the question into what would I include if I was forced into running a similar course. Any ideas, people?
- Following on from QT3 posting a link to the Greg Costikyan piece on randomness, this essay by Mark Rosewater on randomness in Magic turned up. Interesting stuff again.
- Charlie Brooker on why Mac owners are tedious bullying wankers, basically (Though the new Microsoft adverts are sinister beyond belief).
- Simon Parkin writes about why the genius-yet-disappointing DS game Scribblenauts really is a game for kids. As in, in a good way. As in, it’ll improve the game enormously if you play it with one.
- Splendid futurist James Casico teases his presentation at the Singularity Summit – the splendidly titled Emma-Goldman-referencing “If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want to be Part of Your Singularity” – with the following essay on the concept of the Singularity. Strong stuff.
- It was my birthday this week. BUT HOW COME NO-ONE EVER TOLD ME I’M EXACTLY THE SAME AGE AS THE APACHE AH-64 ATTACK CHOPPER!?!?!?
- Have we violated our contract with Giant Squid?
- Been catching up with Felix Da Housecat this week, hence We All Want To Be Prince has got much play.
Failed.
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There’s just as many problems, if not more, from games that are ‘made for hard mode’. I still recall the bleating of Halo fans “play it on legendary, that’s where the AI really shines”. Well I’m sorry, but if it’s rubbish on normal, then you’ve failed your design, no matter how stellar it is at ramped up difficulties (and for the record, I found playing it there to be no real improvement).
Just to be clear, I’m not some wimp who can’t handle difficulty, I’ve finished Devil May Cry 3, I’ve beaten CoD4 and God of War on Hard mode, I can enjoy a hard game.
But that’s my choice, I’ve decided I want a hard time, and if I decide I want an easy one, I expect that to be catered to as well.
That’s an odd statement. I think making the AI smarter on higher difficulties is actually a really good way of doing it. Again, the Metal Gear Solid series. On the easiest setting you can screw around with the enemy all day long as they’re dumb as a sack of hammers. On the highest, they’re professional soldiers and will spot you, identify you and call for backup in three seconds flat.
Sure, it means that you’re not getting the full depth of the experience unless you play on higher settings, but shouldn’t there be some kind of reward for working your way up the difficulties anyway?
I’d agree with Dom – making the goons smarter on higher difficulties makes them much more of a challenge and much more interesting. Compare this to games which merely increase their health/damage and decrease yours, where going up a level does increase quickloads but doesn’t really increase the challenge; you can still kill them in the same way, but now it takes two headshots instead of one. I vastly prefer the system whereby a higher setting makes the enemies flank you, retreat, set up traps – which teaches you to play the game differently the second time around.
On the other hand, this can’t excuse shit AI at lower levels. The AI should get cleverer than normal as you go up, not stupider than normal as you go down.
About a 90% of AI is making the Bots fail. Normally a bot will neve fail a shot, and will have a vision of 360 degress. Will see you trough walls, trough the level, and know instantly if the superweapon has respawn, or how much time for it to respawn. The bot can see, even on the most dense of the particles explosion, and is not lost by different heights. Normally a game AI start godlike, so 90% of it is to make it worst, add errors, make it only see in front, make it forget things, etc.
Making AI good or bad at playing is trivial and a waste of our time. Is not important. You can have a slider to choose how much aim you want your bots to have, from 0% (fail always) to 100% (always hit). Thats trivial.
The thing is make bots interesting, human like, and probably things like fake chat comments.
And about halo… Is a corridor shooter, his code can be resumed in while(1) { aim(); show() }; I don’t need more than that, and probably don’t have much more. A shooter is a bad game to choose some good AI. What you want a soldier to do, other than take cover and shot of you?. Do you expect a enemy soldier to write poems, or design a perfect strategy plan?
Loved the mac article. I want to punch Apple fanboys in the mouth.
As Marcus Brigstocke says: “To the people who’ve got iPhones: you just bought one, you didn’t invent it”
Sums it up, I think!
Fantastic article on Red Orchestra there, it really is a gem.
Also leading me to realise there is going to be a Red Orchestra 2 oh joy!
If I recall, they even cheat in the display of your hitpoints. If you have 1% left, you actually have just a bit more than that, so you can take fire and be surprised that you are still alive.
Sorry, that should have been @Xercies. Hope the comment system gets fixed soon.
Man, that first paragraph was funny.
Microsoft has billions upon billions of dollars. Why the fuck is their marketing department still brain-dead?
That launch party stuff on YouTube is so incredibly cringe-inducing. I actually like Windows, but it seems like Microsoft doesn’t even know what its strengths are.
You’ve never watched any of The Guild?
Get off the internets.
Make games easier and never ending.
Isn’t that the ultimate profit sacrificing aim?
The Never Ending Gobstopper but for your fingers.
Ah, I see! Interesting that I made that mistake – it was just because I noticed that most of the items on their reading lists were from blogs or “hobbyist” websites (ie. targetted at the fan/consumer rather than at the academic or the industry-insider) rather than from peer-reviewed academic journals. Which isn’t to put them down, as many of them are really smart, incisive pieces of writing, but I think it says something interesting about gaming: that the most cutting-edge critical theoretical writing in the field is done by journalists rather than academics. I see this as indicative that the medium is still young and ways of writing about it are still being defined and I feel lucky to be around in this wild frontier phase in the development of the genre.
bah! that was meant to be a reply to the replies to my previous post, back on the first page… :/
Geez man, are you trying to get sued by Tim Langdell?!
Eugh, American legal pleadings are so terribly stilted to read. Plain English, idiots!
Eh, English legal stuff is usually pretty bad too, to be fair.
Not that funny to me, Kieron, but I guess that’s taste for you.
Anyway, bigots are bigots, but bashing mac users because some are overzealous is just as stupid as bashing you all for being Valve fanboys. ;) Anyway, more later once I’ve had time to read things through.
I think thats is a valid point. Every time someone says “I won’t buy it unless its on Steam” I want to punch him in the face but thats because I usually don’t pay a premium for convenience. Guess thats why I don’t use any Apple products.
I don’t think I’m a tedious bullying wanker. Not as far as I know, anyway. I’ve never been called that, at least not to my face. I don’t really care which operating system you use. I know which one I prefer, which is both, for different things. I get tired of die hard OS culture warriors, though. Charlie Brooker seems like kind of a dick. I guess that makes me wrong?
I think the article may miss an important fact, which is that there are assholes on both sides. And generally, the worst assholes are the ones that think there are only assholes on the other side.
Oh, wait, now I’ve been called a tedious bullying wanker. By my wife. She’s marginally more of a PC person than me. I guess it’s Platform War now.
That’s kind of the point of Brooker’s article though – you tedious bullying Mac wankers don’t even realise you’re being tedious bullying wankers!
The fact you’re right about the thing you’re being tedious bullying wankers about just makes it worse.
They are right now? Right about what? Maybe I’m enough of a techie that I regard the open box nature of pc as an advantage.
Well, my point was that I am a mac owner/mac user that also owns and uses a PC because they are both better for different things. I like using my mac, but I also like using my PC. I don’t like using my Mac for, say, playing Team Fortress 2, because it won’t. I do like using my Mac for playing WoW because the mac version interfaces nicely with iTunes.
A tedious bullying wanker that goes on about how awful PCs are is no better and no worse than a tedious bullying wanker that goes on about how awful Mac users are. It’s a pot-kettle situation with this Brooker fellow.
The os i spend most time with is symbian on my mobile, does that make me not a pc? The problem with the side taking with operating systems is that it doesn’t work for gamers.
If i want to be a mac owner and a gamer i’ll need a 360 a ps3 or *shudders* a wii as my games machine, and i can’t afford that, let alone multiple consoles.
Thats 2 closed systems with no cross over between the 2, i can’t drop a quick round of a game while sat waiting for an IM. Not just that but my console until jailbroken wouldn’t support free third party apps.
My position with windows is that “complaints are invalid when an alternative doesn’t exist, there is no other side to be greener”. I hope apples game success with the iphone slowly bleeds into their hardware and they move into real games one day, i also hope that linux gets access to directx, competition is healthy.
It’s worth mentioning that you can just boot into Windows on a Mac to play Windows games. That’s what I do. It’s less convenient than not having to dual boot, but it’s certainly possible.
I have a lot less problem with OSX (which is just a very user friendly version of FreeBSD, after all) than I do with Mac hardware, which is too restrictive speaking as someone that generally builds/upgrades his own systems.
I’m not really fond of their “proprietary everything” approach to computing, either.
That said, I’m sure they have their uses. Personally I work in Linux and play in Windows, until something comes along that serves one of those functions better, I see no reason to change that. Certainly the kind of frantic Mac evangelism I’m exposed to on a regular basis makes me entirely sympathetic to the Brooker piece, but I try not to judge a thing based on the quality of its fans. Admittedly I fail rather often, though.
The Red Orchestra article talking about games handling weapons realistically me think of Infiltration mod for Unreal Tournament. It’s somewhat sad that a dated UT mod makes every other modern first person shooter’s weapons and movement look terrible. Extra sad that all the Rainbow Ghost Call of Bojangles out there don’t even try.
Raven Shield and its expansions were the last Tom Clancy games to really try for realism. Ghost Recon 1 and its expansions are the only remotely realistic entries in the series. It is, indeed, kind of sad how little regard most developers/publishers/(gamers?) seem to have to realistic tactical FPS games. They’re almost always a lot more fun, IMO, than the run-n-gun variety.
I agree, I do have a lot more fun with realistic than run-and-gun shooters (well, depending on my mood). The level of mental engagement is more satisfying. FPSs with a goal of realistic portrayal are scarce, of late.
But the ways in which Infiltration is better could improve less realistic games, too. The physical first-person weapon moving with some freedom and colliding with the world instead of being a paper stapled to the player’s screen (or, as of late, a bobbing piece of paper stapled to the screen).
Further comments: I liked the piece of Felicia Day. In one way I hope the way she and those like her approach their audience becomes more valued by the more mainstream industry but on the other hand I have little trust in the mainstream industry to actually make use of that in a way which doesn’t merely treat that approach like a cheap cash-cow.
Speaking of the mainstream wanting to enter the internet market, I recently heard reports that Joss Whedon was shopping around an idea of setting up an Internet studio. Unsurprising, after his huge success with Dr. Horrible.
As it is looking increasingly like Dollhouse may not even be getting through the 13 episodes commissioned for season 2, this could be happening quite soon. I can’t imagine him wanting to work with FOX again.
And Felicia Day is just all kinds of awesome. She just seems like a genuinely nice person. Well done to her, and everyone at The Guild.
What a great steaming pile of goodness. You guys make me lazy, nice job :)
That “Windows 7 Launch Party” thing made me writhe in agony. Halfway through I wanted to throw my headphones at the screen and scream “THAT’S NOT HUMAN! LET THOSE PEOPLE GO! THEY DON’T DESERVE TO SUFFER LIKE THAT!” while imagining the kind of eerie Clockwork-Orange treatment those poor actors must’ve received. It was like watching someone slice their eyes with a razor, or shove a hypo under their fingernails.
i played through strife this year, excited about coming in playing a doom game i’d never come across before. it had some good ideas, but the execution was terribly broken, and the end product was nonsensical, hackneyed, and broken. the ending i got was jaw droppingly tasteless.
I don’t see it as odd at all, I’m not bitter that the AI gets smarter as the difficulty goes up (hypothetically I mean, as to be honest I didn’t see any difference) I’m annoyed that they supposedly designed the AI at this level for hard difficulty alone. The majority of users will play on normal, you should aim to have good AI in place from there.
If your AI gets better as you turn up the difficulty, one has to ask why you cut these features out of normal.
God damn it, why are my replies not working?
You have to click the reply button.
I like how the “Off the Map” article is officially about Thief:TDP, and hence, the Eurogamer standard question at the bottom is, “Are you excited about Thief: The Dark Project on PC?
(View Eurogamer readers most anticipated games)”. Time warp!
How come you linked to the Secret World preview so long after it went up, Kieron? Hoping to drum up interest in the game in the face of layoffs at FC and its possible delay?
A friend mentioned it to me this week as sterling work, and I agreed.
KG
I loved Strife. Very ordinary as a shooter, and the script was pretty bad, but it did storytelling things in the gameplay that I hadn’t seen before. It succeeded in feeling like a world (divided up into areas) rather than just a series of levels, and there was a real sense of change in the world – the resistance base is underground in some sewer tunnels to start with, then later in the game you defeat a boss in a castle and the base moves there. And you can go back to the tunnels and see the last few traces of the abandoned base. That sense of coming back to the same place and finding it changed was something I didn’t get again until Thief.