Destiny or FUCK THIS GAME!

December 10, 2014 by Ray R.

From the title alone, you should get the gist of how I feel about Destiny, but it isn’t the whole story. Honestly, when I’m not getting pissed off by the random number generator (RNG) driven reward system and the fact that I’ve done everything in the game (except the Vault of Glass) multiple times because there’s only a limited amount of things to do at this time and nothing new has popped up in the weeks since its release, I actually enjoy the game.

If you read up on Destiny on Reddit and a thousand other sites, you will find one common thread: the game uses a random number generator to decide what “drops” during the game, whether in combat or at the conclusion of a strike or mission. Sometimes it’s useful, frequently it’s not, usually because you have something better already. Sometimes you’ll be the biggest badass in the game during a strike and get nothing; other times you’ll really suck and get something exotic as a reward. It doesn’t make any sense, but that’s the nature of randomness. Worse, you can go to a vendor, Xur for instance, spend your hard earned Strange Coins and Motes of Light to get a piece of exotic equipment and come away with something completely unusable by your class.

As someone that first learned to program more than thirty years ago and an avid gamer, I understand the attraction to using a random number generator and a look up table (LUT) to determine a player’s loot. It keeps things from getting stale. Is a special reward really special when everyone knows you’re going to get it for completing a particular mission? Not to knock World of Warcraft (which I also play), but that gets boring and predictable. (In fairness, World of Warcraft has had random drops in game for a very long time though most mission rewards are fixed. In the recent Warlords of Draenor expansion, some missions (and/or follower missions) award you a generic item that becomes something specialized for your class’ specialization. So Blizzard has obviously thought about that.) The problem with RNG+LUT is just that unpredictability, especially when you have no ability to trade or sell items that aren’t important to you. In Destiny, that means if you get an item on your Warlock that is only usable by the Titan class, you have two choices: put it in your vault and use it on a Titan character you also created or disassemble it for parts. And hopefully those parts will be useful to you; unfortunately, some items will break down into parts that are only usable by the class the item was intended for, leaving you with parts you can’t use unless you move them to another class. You can’t even sell the parts, at this time, just to try to turn a buck.

Speaking of money… For a game that has no economy whatsoever, there’s a shit load of currencies in it. The primary form of money is called glimmer, which is described as a form of programmable matter. While the concept is interesting, the fact is that the concept is totally wasted because you don’t actually do anything with it other than pay for things, such as weapons, ammo, and upgrades. If you could use it to customize your appearance, make unique equipment or even just put it in your character’s hair to change the style and color, then it would be something neat to play with, and something more than just a currency. Given that it does nothing of the sort, they may as well call it dollars or pesos or gold coins. Want to know something extraordinarily silly? You can only carry a maximum of 25,000 glimmer at a time. Considering a 32 bit integer takes 4 bytes and offers a range of 4 billion numbers (unsigned in this case would be most useful), I really don’t know why Bungie chose to use less than a 16 bit/2 byte number as the maximum amount of cash you can carry. Maybe it’s a practical limit… After all, while you can’t always count on getting precisely what you wanted to buy thanks to the RNG+LUT, you can still buy almost everything that costs strictly glimmer with little effort because you accumulate a lot and many of the enemies, especially the “majors”, drop items that help you earn more glimmer just by killing members of their species. Still, I think the 25k limit is awfully arbitrary, pointless, and oddly specific. I’m pretty sure Bungie isn’t saving a lot of memory by limiting it to a 16 bit integer.

If that was the extent of my money gripes, I’d be fine with it. But, as I hinted at before, there are other forms of currency: Motes of Light, Strange Coins, Vanguard Marks, Ascendant Shards, Ascendant Energy, Crucible Marks, and the recently added Exotic Shards. Aside from the Vanguard and Crucible Marks and Exotic Shards, all of those are obtained RANDOMLY throughout the game, either as drops in combat, mission rewards, upgrades mailed to you for public events or reaching new reputation levels, bounty rewards, decrypting engrams, or disassembling things. And like all other drops, they’re random enough that you can’t count on getting them on any regular basis. Well with a caveat: certain daily and weekly strikes and story missions award Notes and Strange Coins the first time you complete them for their respective periods. The Vanguard and Crucible Marks are earned, however, by either completing strikes and missions or fighting it out in the PvP Crucible. Strange Coins and Motes of Light are used to buy equipment from the NPC Xur; the various shards and energy are used to upgrade equipment when combined with the various resources you harvest on each of the worlds, glimmer, and parts you scavenge from equipment like I mentioned earlier. The Marks are used to buy equipment from the Vanguard and Crucible quartermasters. For a game that is based around combat, there’s a whole lot of economics going on even if you can’t sell your unwanted equipment.

Now, I started this review some weeks ago, and I’m only just now working towards finishing it the day after the first DLC pack was released. While I’ve been playing Destiny regularly since it’s release and still have only stuck my proverbial toe into the Vault of Glass, I have mostly enjoyed the game. My frustrations are illustrated above, and led by the striking lack of content to keep the game fresh for a long time after the initial play through. And that continues in The Dark Below; three new missions, more bounties making you play through things you’ve already mastered, a new strike and raid, and new equipment for $20… (Or $35 or $17.50 depending on your perspective if you purchased the “season” pass.) I can’t say the DLC is worth that much, honestly. Wait for it to go on sale if you can; sooner or later it will be offered for about $10 in some special deal. The missions are tough and interesting story wise, but I find the lack of Peter Dinklage’s narration a bit disturbing even though it was replaced by the new NPC’s. I never thought that I’d miss “Dinkelbot.” (Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of Dinklage!)

The bottom line of both Destiny’s main storyline and the DLC is that there are a lot of brilliant scraps of story that are laid out on the table, but there’s so much missing from the bigger picture that you’re not really sure what’s going on. Just like with Watch Dogs, I keep saying that we’re still early in the game’s lifespan, but that is sounding more and more hollow to me. It’s becoming more obvious that Activision, Electronic Arts and other major publishers, distributors and, yes, developers have decided to push DLC as the next big thing in their efforts to make themselves rich. Rather than focusing on making the best damned game they can, they strip out whatever they can get away with to sell as an add-on later, thereby securing their own destiny. While I like Destiny, I think it could have been so much more had this money grubbing scheme hadn’t been a factor.

Watch Dogs: The Good, the Bad, and the Annoying

November 1, 2014 by Ray R.

(Note that I started writing this review on July 22, 2014, but was distracted by editing video, The Last of US (PS4), and Destiny and didn’t get around to finishing it until November 1, 2014 when I decided to finish it.)

By the time I finish writing this post and make it public, Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs will have been out months, so you aren’t going to be hurting for a review. There are tons out there, and I really don’t expect this one to stand out or garner any more attention than any of the countless others, still, I want to add my two cents to the mix for the hell of it.

Let me start off by saying that despite all the hype around this game, I actually had no desire to buy it until the week before it was released. Frankly, I just wasn’t interested. But between some streaming IGN was doing before the release and the fact that I wanted another PS4 game to play, I decided to invest in it because it seemed to have some pretty cool features and game play. While I’ve purchased open world games before, I frequently gotten bored with them before I ever even got halfway through the single player campaign; in truth, they were purchased for the pleasure of screwing around in multiplayer with my friends. That includes everything that I’ve played from Rockstar Games… Even GTA V mainly sits in my Xbox 360 unplayed most days. So Watch Dogs had several advantages: I got the PS4 version because I was always more comfortable with the Sony controllers than the Microsoft ones, better graphical quality than 360 and PS3 at the very least, and it was more relate-able to me given I work and have worked for many years in the computer industry.

Contrary to how I usually do things, I’m not going to comment on the single player campaign; while I think it’s enticing and interesting to an extent, really it’s completely expendable from the game. It’s a token story intended to make your occasional murderous rampages and other misdeeds seem justified. Considering the game was marketed along the lines of Infamous with regards to you having the freedom to choose whether you’re a hero or villain, the fact that the single player game suggests you follow a hero-ish (really more antihero) path seems a bit heavy handed.

But to cut to the chase, here are the things I really liked about the game:

A large play setting; it’s not Los Santos of GTA V, but the City of Chicago in Watch Dogs is a pretty large place.

Great attention to details on many things; where Ubisoft thought to pay attention, they did a kick ass job. Sadly, they didn’t pay enough attention… More on that later.

Things I really, really like about the game include the graphical quality, the handling and feel of most the in-game vehicles, and the idea that a nerd can be a bad-ass.

The bad…

Where Ubisoft didn’t pay attention or simply give a fuck, there are significant flaws in the game, the game play, and fun factor. My biggest complaint, particularly once a lot of people really started playing Watch Dogs was and is the fact that you can’t just start playing and not worry about getting hacked by other random players. Initially, I thought there was some triggering event, such as you pissed off the cops or did something major that triggered the notoriety kharma factor that meant the game was going to try to get you hacked. But now, as demonstrated a moment ago when I logged in for the first time in months, I got into a hacking situation as soon as my virtual boots hit the ground in the game. Fortunately, I’ve found a pretty good and effective place from which to deal with hacks but it’s irritating that I have to worry about it as soon as I start it up. There’s only one way to avoid it: go into the Online game settings and turn off “Online Invasions”. Simple right? Well, the problem with that is that it will reset any and all progress you’ve made in the online modes… So, if you participate in the online aspects on a regular basis but just want a quiet evening trying to complete the various missions, you’re just screwed unless you don’t mind losing your progress.

For the bad stuff, I kept saying this is Ubisoft’s first open world game and that this was damned good for a first attempt. But it isn’t really their first attempt, and frankly the problems really start to show after you get comfortable with the game. Until August or so, there was no cooperative mode in the game at all, and, while you could challenge your friends through the mobile app on your phone or tablet, there was no way to hack your friends. The best you could do is get in a free roam match with them and screw around either doing things together or, with adversarial mode enabled, killing one another. I have yet to do any of the cooperative missions introduced in August/September, but it’s something that was a long time coming.

Another major issue that has now been addressed was that once you get done with the missions — story missions, privacy invasions, gang hideouts, and criminal convoys — you were completely out of things to do other than hack random people going down the street and initiate (and respond to) online races and hacking. And frankly, those things get boring after a while. It’s now possible to do the gang hideouts and criminal convoys again, though the methodology behind doing them is counter-intuitive. In fact, it’s ass backwards. Rather than just selecting the mission to play again, you have to go into the Gameplay options menu and reset the side missions. While this may get the job done, why not just make them directly playable again? Is it really that difficult to fix?

While I stated the play area is pretty large, it isn’t infinite. More interestingly, it’s rather limited on the Lake Michigan side of Chicago, as you’ll notice in the “issues” video I’m attaching to this review: there’s apparently an invisible wall preventing you from going past a certain point out onto the lake. Although I didn’t highlight it the video, all roads, rivers and train tracks that would otherwise leave the Chicago area seem to curve into other parts of the city. The latter makes a certain amount of sense, I admit, but it’s still so… artificial.

Another particularly aggravating thing is the enforcement of law and order. If you kill a person on the street, you can expect to be hunted down by the police and killed. I’d like to say arrested, because sometimes you don’t commit major crimes, and so you should be arrested, right? But, as in the GTA series, if you cross the line in too negative a way, you are hunted down and killed by the police. Hello Ferguson! But sometimes, Watch Dogs’ police decide that you are guilty by proximity and execute you. Throughout the game, you will be given the opportunity to spoil petty (and sometimes not so petty) crimes that occur randomly nearby which have nothing to do with the story campaign or side missions (gang hideout, criminal convoy, etc). If you kill the criminal, say by shooting them and, I’m quite positive, running them down with a car, you may end up in a police chase even if you saved the intended target of the crime. You’re a fucking vigilante, who just took out a bad guy; why are you getting gunned down? Even if you take them down in a nonlethal way (there’s a melee attack that is only available on enemy targets), if there were gunshots fired, you will end up getting chased by the police. Not the actual criminal. You. Even though your character starts off as this anonymous anti-hero, you eventually end up well enough known that police are immediately after you for crimes you had nothing to do with. What. The. Fuck?

So the bottom line…?

The bottom line is that the game can be a lot of fun and very interesting, but it’s flawed. In July when I started this review, I was going to say that it’s early in the game’s lifespan, and it still is. There’s lots of time for Ubisoft to iron out the problems. But don’t be mistaken, there are lots of problems, and there are rumors that the primary development team has already moved on to Watch Dogs 2, so these problems may not get resolved. Time will tell… My original rating for the game was about an 8. At the time that I started writing the review I’d have put it at about 6.5. Now… maybe a solid 7.5 for resolving some of the problems that it had. But that doesn’t matter; what matters is whether you enjoy the game or not. So, make that assessment for yourself.

Contrast…

January 4, 2014 by Ray R.

It’s been a little while since I last made a blog post, anywhere, let alone here… It’s now 2014, and much has once again changed in the world. Detroit has entered bankruptcy, Iran is playing nice (for the moment at least), the economy has picked up… Of course, there are so many things that haven’t changed that I’m not even going to name a few… But what’s surprised me the most is a little game I never heard of before seeing a demo video of it running on a PlayStation 4 kiosk at a Game Stop in Port Huron back at the start of December… A game called Contrast.

The basic premise of the game is that the main character, Dawn, must use her ability to slip in and out of the shadows literally to solve puzzles and circumvent obstacles.Though that’s interesting enough in its own right, the reason behind her actions is a little, sometimes painfully annoying, girl named Didi.

Didi’s sole purpose in life seems to make you do stuff that makes her life better, and Dawn is always willing to comply. So, no, this isn’t a free will open world game but there are frequently multiple ways to accomplish most tasks. There’s also a series of sub-missions that involve memories played out as shadows on building walls, these shadows, when you become one, allow you to reach not so hidden but otherwise inaccessible collectibles called luminaries. The main reason to collect the luminaries is the sake of collecting them, however they are also used to power some devices in the game as well. All of those devices are necessary to manipulate shadows that will enable you to accomplish tasks and solve puzzles, but never fear: if you can’t do some of the memory wall puzzles, there’s usually enough luminaries that are easily obtained for you to continue moving forward.

Aside from some of the shadow puppet theater, there’s no actual violence in the game which makes a nice change of pace from many other games that use a 3d environment. Didi’s story is very much the focal point of the game, and it’s a very engrossing one at that. There’s a lot going on with just her family, but as interesting as it is, it doesn’t mask the question you’ll start asking from the very beginning… “Why…?”

I’m not going to state the full question, despite my normal spoiler heavy posts, because I admire and respect the game enough to keep my trap shut. But trust me, it’s an obvious and simple question, for which you only get close to having an answer for towards the end of the game. Still, the pieces of that proverbial puzzle are there for you to solve to your own mental satisfaction. But the highlights of the game for me are all of the little touches in the game honoring cultural icons, the dialog which occasionally have pauses that completely change the contextual meaning of what’s being said, and the overall film noir look and feel of the game.

Forgive the pun but I don’t know what compulsion the team felt to develop this game, but personally, I’d put it down as the second best game of 2013, which is really amazing for a core team of seven people. Not that I am any authority of anything in any field, but the only game to surpass it last year was Naughty Dog’s “The Last of Us”. Whole I’m a huge fan of their games and stories, the only reason I’m giving them the victory over Contrast is the length of the game. Not that Contrast is a particularly short game, it can indeed be completely experienced (I’d hate to say “beaten”) in just a couple hours, but “The Last of Us” has a lengthy, very involving story. Both games are great in my opinion, and I enjoyed both in different ways; TLoU got my heart pumping, but Contrast, to put it mildly, was fun. As much as I love the former, it was rarely a game that could be considered fun, it was a tense, drama filled experience and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Well that about concludes my spiel on Contrast, but I do want to say that if you have a PS4, get this game! You should be able to get it for free at this point in time, I don’t think you even have to be a PlayStation+ member. But even if you do have to pay for it, I feel you could do a lot worse for your money. There are some bugs in the game but those will get worked out with time.

There’s a bit more information at the PlayStation Blog about Contrast that you might find interesting, and if you don’t have our want a PS4, you can also buy it on PC through Steam.

STO Expansion: What the hell?

March 22, 2013 by Ray R.

I’ve complained about Star Trek Online before, so this won’t surprise you too much. I’ve gotten hours of enjoyment from STO so I’m not devastated about the limits that have been imposed on my characters for the last the years. There has been a steady flow of new content for the last two years so I haven’t had much to complain about because there was frequently something new to do.
Then a few weeks ago, they started hinting at something big coming in May. The rumor sites were predicting that this would be a large new featured episode, but instead Cryptic/Perfect World announced the first expansion for the game. The biggest thing that is being added to the game in the expansion is something that has been rumored to be in the works for years, since the beginning in fact: the addition of a third faction lead by the Romulans.
That’s great and all, but something significant is missing: there’s no level call increase.
I know that I’m probably overstating this issue, but my main character has been level 50 since June 2010. There’s been no way to really increase my character’s abilities since then, though I’ve been able to get new ships, weapons, equipment and personnel. My character is effectively stagnant, and that has had a major impact on my desire to play the game. Sure there’s plenty to do but it’s all busy work or repetition if I do it on one of my other characters. The only hope for advancement and intrigue is on the Klingon faction which I have barely used. So I’ll have another option with the Romulans. But once I hit level 50, I’m stuck again.
There’s been no level cap increase that I’m aware of since the game left beta shortly before it was released. Why not? I don’t have a clue. Blizzard has increased the level call in World of Warcraft multiple times, sometimes by 10 levels, others by 5, but they realize the importance of character advancement to retaining player interest. EA/Bioware even sees the importance of character advancement to Star Wars: The Old Republic with their first expansion pack, advancing a modest 5 levels, but at least it’s there.
The failure to increase the level cap leaves me speechless. Perhaps the game was never designed to go past level 50. I’ve heard of games where critical problems would occur if the character exceeded a certain level, because math was foolishly based on the level or an algorithm depended on a lookup table that was only extended to a certain point. One of my favorite games of all time had such a flaw: SSI’s classic gold box D&D game Curse of the Azure Bonds. Of course that game is nearly 30 years old now, but maybe increasing the cap would break the already seriously strained and tenuous connection that the two game engines in STO already struggle to view with. Maybe not.
I just can’t believe that they would think that adding new content alone would be something to keep longtime and lifetime members interested in the game. After all, they’ve been giving us new content on a regular basis for years. Why would we get excited over something we’ve expected for years in light of the regular content updates. Let us advance, keep the Romulans for all I care.

PlayStation 4 Announced!

February 21, 2013 by Ray R.

So the currently least well kept secret in the gaming industry has been unleashed, the Sony announced the PlayStation 4 this evening. You know what? I’m not completely blown away. I’m satisfied, mind you, and I’m looking forward to owning a PS4, but I’m not blown away by anything that was demoed tonight. Well… Maybe Killzone: Shadow Fall… but then, I’m a Killzone addict.

Frankly, I liked what I saw for the most part, and I think this is going to be a fun and interesting system to own. I have little to complain about the PS4 itself. It’s using an x86 processor, in all likelihood, one of AMD’s Trinity APUs since the term APU was thrown around repeatedly and they, frankly, are about the only game in town when it comes to an APU. Connected with that, by extension, will be an AMD Radeon based GPU in all likelihood, which will allow graphics performance to be improved via Radeon’s hybrid Crossfire X technology. Undoubtedly these will be customized processors, designed specifically for the PS4 and not commercially available, but ultimately, as Sony stated, this will be basically a PC machine. I’m both pleased and disappointed by that… The Cell architecture was really advanced and I think another generation of it in a game system probably have blown us all away with its processing capability, but then as was pointed out several times this evening, the complexity of developing for it has been getting in the way of PS3 development. Similarly, it’s an acknowledgment that at some point, I could put together a machine with similar or better specs, and perhaps find a way to get PS4 titles to run on my desktop… Not what they want, obviously, but possible… However, by using mostly off the shelf components, it’ll drive the cost of the machine down tremendously; I paid $500 for my PS3, and I don’t regret it, but if I can pay $300 or less for my PS4, I’ll be hysterically happy…

Of course, the long standing rumor is that the next Xbox will also be based around an x86 processor, and has even been rumored to use Radeon GPUs as well… I suppose you could say that the day of the consoles is over, despite the constant proclamations that PC gaming is dead [thanks to the consoles]. Even with Valve’s upcoming Steam box, it’s little more than a PC running Linux… Ultimately, it’s very interesting to see that the PS4 and Xbox could literally be kissing cousins, and I wonder how long it’ll take the hacker community to figure out how to get a PS4 up and running on a next generation Xbox’s OS and vice versa, possibly to multi-boot the operating systems and have one console to rule them all… The advantage of exotic hardware is difficulty in bootstrapping it and then getting a compatible OS to run on it, or developing such an OS… PC hardware… well, let’s just say that the hardware is extraordinarily well known, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see someone running Linux on the PS4 or next-gen Xbox on release day.

As for the rest of the announced specs for the PS4, they’re interesting… Though it’s also interesting what wasn’t announced in those specs. So we know we’re getting 8 GB GDDR5 RAM, which should give developers lots of memory to play with. A constant criticism of Sony’s consoles over the last 13 years has been the limited amount of memory they have. 8 GB goes well past the rumors I heard just today; this morning I read that it would have 4 GB RAM. Still, 8 GB seems like a lot, and it might be enough to last a long time, but one of the complaints I’ve seen about x86 hardware is that it typically requires more RAM for some things, not to mention that there’s still that legacy memory hole between 640k and 1 MB. Not that that’s very big or important these days, but it may have been more advantageous to include 16 GB RAM rather than just 8. Back in the days of the PowerPC Macintoshes, many applications running on the Mac required and used less RAM than the PC version of the same application. Maybe it was MacOS versus Windows, or big-endian versus little-endian. I don’t know. But this may be an issue.

As I mentioned, it’s curious what wasn’t mentioned in the specs of the PS4, though there may be good reason for that. We can assume it will have a Blu-Ray player, but it wasn’t discussed. There was no mention of network connectivity besides the fact that we know it will connect to the internet. Will it still have an traditional ethernet port? Or will it be wifi only? What wifi standards will it support with 802.11AC coming up soon? We know the current PS Move controller will work with it, but will Dual Shock 3 controllers? Does it even have Bluetooth, or did it go with a proprietary wireless technology like Microsoft did with the Xbox 360? It has a hard drive, but what size? Will the hard drive be removable and user upgradable? Will it have USB ports, and if so how many? Will games be encouraged to allow keyboard and mouse where applicable, such as in a MMORPG or certain FPS games that have a history on the PC? It’s not going to be directly backwards compatible with the PS3, but they stated that you would some how be able to play PS3 (and earlier) games eventually, possibly through Gaikai technology… Will that be free? Will I have to mail in my PS3 games to play them on the PS4?

There are lots of unanswered questions, though I think a lot of them were deliberately left nebulous for two reasons. The first and most important reason is so that Sony has some flexibility in adjusting the final specs before the console goes into mass production, in order to maximize profit (or at least minimize initial loss), without being accused of scaling back the features and power prior to release. That’s why we didn’t hear an official gigahertz speed being bandied about, and I, personally, didn’t hear anything about an 8 core processor being used even though that’s the top raging rumor at this point. As hard drive prices fluctuate, APU and GPU processor production yields vary, and whether or not 802.11AC gets made into an official standard or not, Sony can take its time and evaluate which combination of technologies will go into the final production version of the PS4, and they can determine a suggested retail price for when the release actually occurs, all without taking fire. Well, any more fire than they probably already will for moving away from Cell. (I should note, however, that IBM, the primary producer of the Cell processor in collaboration with Sony pretty much stopped active development of the technology some time ago, so the best we’d have gotten would have been perhaps a multi Cell processor game system or one with a souped up clock speed; not necessarily a better processor or better technology.) I suspect the second major reason that we haven’t gotten an official announcement about all those things left unsaid about the PS4 is that Sony didn’t want to reveal any more information than necessary considering that we all know Microsoft’s Xbox division was sitting there watching this announcement (despite their proclamations that no one cared what was happening tonight).

I’d say there’s about an 80% chance that there was a product development meeting going on at Microsoft at the same time as and extending for several hours after the PS4 announcement this evening. Microsoft wants to make people think that it doesn’t care. Microsoft needs to believe that they know their new console will be so much better than Sony’s that they don’t need to lose any sleep over it. The fact of the matter is that they are losing sleep over it, just like Sony’s been losing sleep over theirs. It’s been a game of one-upmanship; always has been, always will be. Except that Sony didn’t quite do as good a job in the last generation as they should have. In my opinion, the PS3 was and still is superior to the Xbox 360, however it’s not as superior as it should’ve been for a console that came out a year later. They lost the initiative and as a result trailed the 360 for pretty much the entirety of the life-cycle of the generation. I still think that PS3 exclusive games look and play better than Xbox 360 exclusive games, but with the added development complexity and the fact the cross/multi platform games consistently look and play worse on the PS3 than the 360, I have to concede that Sony lost out. I also think that Sony failed to deliver in that generation with some of the features they promised would come along… Take cross-game chat, for instance… It was mentioned as coming soon as far back as 2008. When PlayStation+ came along, it was stated that you’d be able to initiate a cross game chat as a subscriber, but it still hasn’t come to pass. Hell, the option to take screenshots was added to the PS3 firmware years ago, but most games don’t support that at all… And it’s things like that gave and gives the 360 the momentum and Microsoft the bragging rights in terms of popularity. As owner of both a 360 and a PS3, I’ll tell you that my 360 is extremely dusty and rarely used. I’ve never experienced a red ring of death because I haven’t used it sufficiently for it to happen. I hated the crappy headset that came with it, and the cable broke, forcing me to buy the crappy wireless headset that will only work with my 360. I HATE having to pay a subscription fee to play games with my friends online… But at least it came with a headset, my PS3 didn’t. I initially used a USB one I already had, then got the official PS3 Bluetooth headset which I’m currently also using with my cellphone. On the other hand, I had to buy a battery for the 360’s controller in order to use it wirelessly; at least the PS3 controllers have built-in rechargeable batteries which don’t get a memory nearly as fast as the expensive 360 batteries do. (The one and only battery I bought for the 360 became useless within months of buying the system. My PS3 controllers’ batteries are still going strong, and I’ve had them longer.) Yes, my PS3 is a little more dusty than it used to be, but that’s because I’ve been doing a hefty amount of writing, PC gaming, and reading as of late, but whenever I get the Netflix urge, or the desire to blow something away, it gets powered up immediately.

I love my PS3, and in the Sony-Microsoft war, I favor Sony. But in the last generation, they came second. PS3 was considered second for development of titles, and inferior products were often produced. I have to admit that. I think that Sony announcing the PS3 so far ahead of even E3 is an attempt to gain the upper-hand this time around, and despite Microsoft’s outward indifference, they’re probably very concerned about what they saw tonight. Of course, Microsoft as a long history of assimilation that Sony probably didn’t take into consideration… Microsoft many times in the past has either bought out rival technologies and incorporated them into their own product, or just incorporated the features claiming to have had them all along. I think the only time they didn’t follow that pattern was with the Xbox 360 with the HD-DVD technology versus Blu-Ray. Now, I’m not going to reopen old wounds, but Microsoft had a huge stake in that fight and lost, and though they phased out the HD-DVD external drive for the 360, they never admitted defeat by producing a Blu-Ray drive for it. They would claim that the Xbox didn’t need it, or it didn’t fit within their platform design, personally, I think they were just holding a grudge and refused to swallow their pride. At the very least, I think they have to include it with the next Xbox just to stay relevant… After all, Nintendo didn’t and their Wii-U is looked upon as even more of a toy than the original Wii was now; they put themselves out of contention for the dominant next generation platforms.

Any how, getting back to tonight’s announcements, I think the biggest disappointment for me was the Square Enix “announcement.” They basically got on stage, got screen time, and showed a demo that I swear they were showing a couple years ago. The Luminous game engine demo they showed was showcased at a prior time… It may have been last year’s E3, it might have been earlier, as I believe it was. I know it’s old, because I recognized it as soon as it started playing, and as an industry outsider, it’s impossible for me to have seen it running on the PS4 before tonight. But it was not something that was cooked up to demonstrate the PS4’s power, and I don’t know why they were allowed to claim as much. Unless, of course, when it debuted previously it was running on a PS4, but some how I doubt that. As a result I thought their announcement was pathetic and sad, especially when they then teased a Final Fantasy announcement at E3. As a friend of mine said during the presentation, “If it’s not a FF VII remake, I doubt if I will care.” Square Enix can spend all the money they want on new engines and developing new technologies, but the fact of the matter is they’ve lost their way with the Final Fantasy franchise. They are, like so many newer game developers, are showcasing pretty graphics and perhaps some interesting game play rather than telling a good story through their games. That’s why Final Fantasy 12-14 aren’t doing all that well… They forgot how to tell a story in their games. That’s why everyone wants Final Fantasy 7 to be remade. It was probably their last game that seemed to have heart and soul; the only think it needs is to be updated graphically. Square Enix claims it would be impossible, that it would cost too much to do, and take too much time, yet they want to waste their time on inventing new game engines and claim performance break-throughs that they aren’t actually demonstrating. Frankly, considering they’re sitting on the code to FF VII, I don’t see what the big deal is. Sure, a lot of it would probably need to be reimplemented to take into account the higher memory requirements of the high definition graphics, and yes they could use all sorts of more modern graphical techniques to accomplish some of the things they did in the original, but we’re ultimately not talking about developing a whole new game mechanic. We players were fine and happy with the old school game mechanics, and Square Enix’s own purported technology demonstration shows us that they have the time and techniques to update this classic game. So why not do it? I wish I had an answer. All I can say is that of all the things I saw at this announcement, I was most disappointed by their segment.

So… That’s where I stand on things. The PS4’s hardware, at least as announced, isn’t exactly mind blowing, but I concede and acknowledge why they’ve taken the direction that they did. I’m more curious than ever about Quantic Dream’s Beyond, and although I knew that Killzone would eventually be represented on the PS4, I was fully expecting it to be a version of Killzone: Mercenary, not a completely new title. I nearly peed my pants when I saw Shadow Fall. I’m not kidding. But the one thing that was missing that I really, really, really wish had been present was an announcement from Insomniac Games stating that the Resistance franchise would be present on the new console.

The Resistance series really didn’t get the recognition it deserved. As one of the PS3 launch titles, it (Resistance: Fall of Man) was frequently compared to Gears of War, which it really shouldn’t have been. Yes, it was the launch shooter game just like Gears was, but it was a first person shooter versus a third person shooter, set in the past rather than the future on some unknown planet, and had a really deep storyline. And the multiplayer on all three games, though different in each case, was amazing in each case. I still love playing the first one and dropping air-gas grenades on my friends. I absolutely love the teamwork based co-op on Resistance 2 that involved several basic missions spruced up randomly by changing starting locations, events, and objectives. And the competitive multiplayer in R2 was exceeded only by M.A.G. (by the now defunct Zipper) in terms of simultaneous players! Resistance 3‘s story and multiplayer modes were even more fun, frankly, though the game definitely seemed to be Insomniac’s way of saying goodbye to the franchise… The end of the game seemed to say it all, and sadly I don’t foresee a new entry to the franchise on the PS4, but I strongly urge Sony and Insomniac to reconsider!

Similarly, since I mentioned M.A.G., I fear that it will not see a follow-up, nor will we see a new SOCOM on this generation now that Sony has closed the studio formerly known as Zipper. M.A.G. was flawed, big time, but it was and is a fun game. I think the concept is great, but I think it never got the polish it really needed, though Zipper was working towards accomplishing it. I think it’s sad, however, that the M.A.G. website and apparently development went quiet once SOCOM 4 got announced. Those the game is still playable, and I fully intend to pick-up my 2+:1 KDR as a sniper at some point, the game is practically abandoned. It’s parent is no more, and Sony doesn’t seem the least bit interested in continuing it. And once Unit 13 was shipped out the door for the Vita, the future of the SOCOM franchise became uncertain as Zipper was promptly dissolved. Will we see these games revived on the PS4 at some point? Seven years is a long time, so maybe we will see it happen, but I wouldn’t hold my breath…

Finally, as far as wishful thinking goes, I want a sequel to Heavenly Sword on PS4. As nice as God of War is, I don’t want another God of War game. I want to breathe new life into Heavenly Sword, another PS3 launch title that has long since been dormant. There’s no reason that Noriko should continue to be ignored; the game was beautiful, the game play was beautiful, and the story was amazing. I would sell my car today to pre-order the PS4 if I knew that a new Heavenly Sword game was coming, But alas…

So, there you have it. Everything that’s on my mind regarding the PS4, the next Xbox, a few kick ass games, the laments and concerns I have for a few franchises, and one brain dead presentation. Take it as you will, and discuss freely.

Another MMO Commentary…

January 11, 2013 by Ray R.

One of the very first posts I did on this blog was a review of Star Trek Online. It was scathing at times and a bit harsh. I still mostly stand by it despite the progress the game has made since then. More on that later. Since that time, I touched on DC Universe Online, which, I should note, I haven’t touched since that post. When World of Warcraft’s Mists of Pandaria came out, I said… nothing… I was too busy playing the hell out of it. But somewhere in there, I missed Star Wars The Old Republic. This was deliberate, but I’m correcting that now.

There are two major reasons that I didn’t touch the game, The Old Republic, before now: I had personal, if petty, issues against BioWare (the developer) and I couldn’t afford another game subscription. So I never bought the game. There are additional reasons, mind you; I didn’t like the art style, still don’t like some of the play mechanics, and I didn’t particularly want to play in the Old Republic era of the Star Wars universe. Now that the game is free to play, I thought I’d give it a shot this week, and long story short, I’m coming down mostly positive on the game. I’m not going to say it’s flawless or even that I’ll play it long term, but I’ll say this much: BioWare knows how to make games and it can be an enjoyable experience.

I suppose I should explain my beef with BioWare. Back in 98 and 99, I started tinkering around as a programmer on an operating system called BeOS; I won’t go into that here and now, but it was a great little operating system and BioWare was pledging to support it with the new Dungeons and Dragons game Neverwinter Nights. Well, the client was never released and I was and am fine with that. I played the hell out of NWN under Windows and Linux, and I was happy with it. But suddenly around 2004, they were done with it, and handed the franchise off to someone else, which left me and the other players hanging. Fine. Then they got the rights to develop Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, and because they were nice and cozy with Microsoft and only interested in Windows development, really, they made it Xbox exclusive.

There’s one thing that you should know about me. I am very much anti-Microsoft. I am an Xbox 360 owner. I do use Windows (among other operating systems) on my computers. But I have no love for Microsoft particularly for their actions that led to the downfall of Be, the maker of BeOS, my employer from 2000 through August 2001. That deserves an unverifiable fact filled rant of its own, but I needed you to know why I began to despise BioWare.

Suffice it to say that they made themselves appear as a Microsoft exclusive developer and I wanted no part of that. Knights of the Old Republic 2 and Mass Effect came out as Xbox exclusives and pissed me off. When I finally caved and got a 360 (after I got my PS3, mind you) I got Mass Effect and was very dissatisfied with the play mechanics. This brings us to The Old Republic. (Off subject but for the record, my 360 is pretty much a paperweight; I got it to play a few select 360 only games with friends, but I mostly use my PS3 or PC for gaming, Netflix, etc.)

When The Old Republic trailer was released I thought it looked great, but something obvious was nagging me. They’d used a lot of near photo-realistic action in the trailer, but I didn’t think any of it was using in-game footage. And I was right. Later when they revealed the in-game footage, everything had a much more cartoony look and feel to it. In fact, it’s still a bit cartoony now. Frankly, I hated that for the game, and I still don’t like it much. For Star Wars. Cartoony is OK if it works; I wouldn’t want it in all my games, especially not Star Wars or Star Trek Online. There’s a certain connection you build with franchises that have used live actors in live action films, you expect to see live actors or near photo-realism in games based off of them. That’s what I wanted and expected out of The Old Republic, and I didn’t quite get it. The game that I’ve played for the last few days isn’t as bad graphically as I thought it would be, but it’s not as good as I had hoped. But graphics aren’t everything.

The game play in The Old Republic is very reminiscent of WoW, but then again, it would be hard not to be. The control scheme is fairly simple and straight-forward, uses a number of the keys and mouse in a common sense sort of way. I have no gripes about that per se. There was something in the original announcement that made me cringe with regards to the controls, but either they since changed that or it’s not as bad as I thought it would be… Whatever it was, I can’t remember it and I haven’t yet run into it. So I’ll leave that alone. But there is one thing that I keep running into that fucking drives me nuts… Every now and then, when I’m running along with my finger on the W key to move forward, and I adjust my view slightly with the mouse, the entire view kind of flips in a weird way and I end up running my character in the opposite direction I was just headed, and the camera is staring up at my character from below. It could be me doing something, but I don’t think so. I think it’s a weird bug that hasn’t been significant enough for anyone to complain about. Well, here I am, complaining about it.

Beyond that, my biggest problem with The Old Republic is the fact that it’s set thousands of years before the Star Wars events I know so well. I can’t tell you how many Star Wars novels I’ve read; it’s certainly a number measured in the dozens. I read the entirety of the New Jedi Order series and all of the ones that followed it to date. I read the X-Wing saga, and all the Timothy Zahn books, and quite a few of the Republic Commando books by Karen Traviss. I know that Star Wars. I have even read some of the books from the Old Republic days, including Darth Bane Path of Destruction. I’m familiar with a great deal of legend and lore in the Star Wars universe, even if I don’t know the details. It would have been entirely possible to make a game called The Old Republic that was set much closer to the more modern events, but BioWare chose to go old school. There are hints of things familiar all through out the game, and I guess that’s what keeps me playing and interested so far, but by the same token, there’s nothing keeping me excited about the game. Every time I think about it, I think “Meh, it’s alright.” And that’s just it, it’s alright. I can think of worse ways to spend your time, but I wouldn’t give it a raving review. Would I subscribe to it? Perhaps if I had a paying job, but as that’s not the case, I’m going to enjoy the free-to-play aspects as much as I can. I have a rant coming up on free-to-play, so stick around.

In the nearly three years since I wrote the review on Star Trek Online, it has changed a lot. You can now, for instance, visit your ship’s bridge and move around the ship. Quests are often a little more complex and interesting. There are more moments that make you feel like you have an awesome ship, especially when you get to the top rank, level 51 Vice Admiral. (Which, by the way, I have been since July 2010, a little more than a month after my review, and in that time there has been absolutely no level cap increase!) In the last year or so, they added the ability for fleets (the game’s term for guilds) to have a starbase that gets improved through the contributions of the fleet’s members. They added duty officers which perform tasks that earn various rewards and abilities as you go through the “ranks” of assignments. Most importantly, they fixed a shitload of bugs! But the biggest fundamental problem still remains… The game is still mostly boring, and I still don’t bother to read most of the missions. For the most part, it’s still “go here, kill that, scan this, report your findings.” I suppose I should cut STO a break… That’s pretty much the standard procedure in almost every MMO, so why should I be so hard on it? I’ll put some thought into it and get back to you on it. Nonetheless, there’s little that draws me to the game. Late last year, I did spend a considerable amount of time in it, trying to get new ships and, now, try to help out the fleet I joined recently.

What probably angers me more than anything else is the fact that I spent in excess of $200 to become a lifetime member, and the game is now free-to-play. Sure, there are perks to being a lifetime member, but I hate receiving these fucking “lockboxes” as rewards, then having to spend the Cryptic/Zen points that I receive as a monthly stipend (or bribe to keep playing) to get it. And you know what? Even though various special ships are supposed to be in some of those lockboxes, I haven’t gotten one yet! That’s the only reason I open the damned things! Any way, free-to-play may have saved STO, but I would also contend that it’s ruined it… Again, more on that in a bit.

Another problem I have with STO is the fact that it’s hiding two separate and distinct game engines tied together, and that isn’t working terribly well. I had a fairly long conversation with one of my best friends, Maxx, today about STO and the many places they went wrong. He believes that they went wrong in not following the J.J. Abrams reboot of the franchise, and that game play should have included things like doing a space jump onto the drilling rig, as seen in the film, and fighting on it. I found myself in the odd position of defending STO because the game engines just couldn’t handle it. And that’s the part of the problem with STO. Cryptic sold the copyright/license holders on a great concept that was way too long in coming, and then they did a half assed job in putting it together by developing a new game engine for the space combat and travel, and married it to a game engine they already had that wasn’t really up to the task. Instead of building a game engine specifically for STO, with games offering all sorts of capabilities like Assassin’s Creed out on the market, they chose to limit themselves to what they thought Star Trek should be and/or has been. They saddled us with space game-play that has no option for legitimate 3D maneuvering; true that most people would probably prefer 2D or even the 2.5 -ish that we have, but there are those of us that would love to have 3D maneuverability! They then combined it with a lame ground game-play engine which, after three years after release, still isn’t as smooth as it should be. There’s a lengthy (20-60 seconds depending on the day) while the game switches between these two distinct engines! Not to mention there are terrible issues like not being able to actually enter most buildings on away missions. How do they usually handle it? You click on the doors and wait while the game loads the new area! There’s no running back and forth between areas for the most part, except in a few lucky zones in the game. You can run back and forth into and out of almost all buildings in The Old Republic!

I personally love the fact that they continued on with the original timeline in the Star Trek universe (which is mainly what our argument was about), but Cryptic really fucking dropped the ball with the implementation of the game. Another direction they could have gone, which Maxx and I agreed upon, was that you could have played as a crewman on-board a ship, doing your job and getting called upon for away missions or repelling boarding parties. You would advance through the ranks until eventually you get assigned to be a part of the bridge crew, and your career would culminate in becoming captain of your ship! But what did we get? Once you’re done with the tutorial missions, you are the captain of your vessel with a rank of Ensign. Yeah, I pointed out that ultimately, everyone wants to captain their own ship, but in a five minute span of sitting in the Sol System (the main Federation base around Earth), you can probably count a hundred or two hundred ships warping into or out of that system. Does everyone really need to have their own ship?

Honestly, I think what happened, looking back at it, is that Cryptic had hoped to make some quick money with STO and then shut it down when it wasn’t successful. That explains the lifetime memberships like mine: a quick and easy $200, plus a lot of other people paying $30-$60 for the game, and then monthly fees to boot. Even before they went free-to-play, they were selling ships and some other stuff. They were probably hoping for a quick buck then were going to get out of the Star Trek franchise and licensing. But there was enough interest and support to keep them in it, until they got bought, and now they are stuck with it as a part of Perfect World Entertainment. I really do think that they dropped the ball so fantastically on this game that it had to have been deliberate. I’ve got no evidence, but the way it functions seems to indicate it. I think that’s why it’s improved over the last year or so; the developers that were expecting to drop it at some point are now realizing that they’re stuck with it, and are getting around to fixing the problems. But ultimately, it’s still two lame game engines married to each other. If they’re going to make this turkey a swan, they’re going to have to scrap the current two-engine design and build one custom one from scratch. Otherwise STO is doomed to remain a black sheep of the Star Trek legacy.

Any way, this brings me to DC Universe Online… I took a look at the game on November 3, 2011, and wrote the commentary on my trouble getting into the game at that time. I would have sworn I wrote an actual review, but I don’t see it… Maybe I put it up elsewhere, or simply deleted… No matter… I didn’t like the game much. I had problems with it all over the place, and didn’t load it again. Until a few minutes ago, when I decided to try to take another look at it for this commentary. That’s when I downloaded a 140 MB patch which, like last time, was followed by a much bigger content patch. This time it was about 7 GB of data it wanted to download. As I wasn’t going to be able to finish that tonight and play it before I finished this lengthy commentary, I’m skipping it, and probably won’t attempt to load the game for another year or more…

All of this brings me to the first and best MMO I personally have and currently play, World of Warcraft. WoW has its critics. There are tons of people griping about it all the time. Hell, I saw people complaining about it while running around this last week in both STO and The Old Republic! It is the 800 pound gorilla in the room that murdered the previous 600 pound alpha male, Everquest, and left it to rot in the woods… (Yes, I know Everquest is still around and got some reasonably impressive upgrades recently, but it was never one of my games.) The fact of the matter is that you can’t talk about MMO games without at least mentioning or comparing it to World of Warcraft. Why not? Because it’s that good. Blizzard (I refuse to call them by their new Activision enabled name) developed a crown jewel of a game years ago, and have polished it repeatedly over the years. Yes, the characters and environments are cartoony, but that’s acceptable for the game: it’s never had a live action movie or television show. Not to mention it fits in with the rest of the game franchise. A while back, WoW went free to play for its first 20 levels or so, but it doesn’t matter, because Blizzard isn’t using free to play as its primary way of making money off the game, but as a demo or trial period for the game…! They want to get you hooked on playing it and the subscribe! And you know what? The latest expansion, Mists of Pandaria, makes a compelling argument for subscribing!

Although Pandaria is obviously inspired by and influenced by Chinese culture and environment, perhaps some of the other Asian countries as well, the thing that makes it such a success is that the storylines used in the quests are fascinating! They tell stories through out the quests and the actions you undertake in-game. You feel like you’re advancing the storyline yourself, not just watching it happen around you. You participate in the events, and even though you may be an utter bad-ass, there’s always a challenge to the game. The game makes you want to explore, and find all the details they put into it. Yeah, there are silly things in it, and sometimes I got pissed off playing it, but I wanted to play it every day for a long while after MoP got released! In fact, I did from September through November, when I decided that I needed to play STO for a while. WoW isn’t and probably never will be perfect; I can’t stand the fact that they keep rewriting the damned skill system and that certain abilities my rogue has had since 2005 are now gone, but, fuck, I love this game! I love the fact that, during development, it was determined that loading screens should be minimized! I’ve run characters from top to bottom of continents without ever seeing a loading screen, or in the case of the Ghost Lands, only having seen one loading screen. That lends credence to the world aspect of the game. One of the things I hated about watching my friends play Everquest was watching them reach an obvious wall between zones that triggered a loading screen… You almost never get that in WoW; the key exceptions are when going into instances/dungeons or from continent to continent. I can live with that. It shows that someone thought that loading screens were irritating, and wanted to eliminate them. More games need to do eliminate them! You can’t go an hour in STO, unless you ‘re in a fleet action, without hitting a loading screen. And I’m being way too generous in that statement. Blizzard, thank you for MoP, I hope the next expansion is just as well thought out and detailed!

About Free to Play…

Now here’s the thing about free to play: it’s both a boon and a curse to MMOs. Naturally, almost all games are made with the premise and hope of making money. Most MMOs are developed with the subscription monetization game plan: sell subscriptions to repay the investment costs and to bankroll the continued development and support of the game. That works out great in the case of games like World of Warcraft: they earn tons of money that way, and most MMO games start off as subscription only. Maybe they have a trial period maybe they don’t. Maybe they offer lifetime subscriptions because they’re secretly hoping to leave their players high and dry in a couple years, but fail to act on that plan successfully because they get bought out first…

Along comes the concept of microtransactions and the sale and purchase of in-game content and abilities, and suddenly companies get the idea that they can make more money that way than they can through subscriptions. Sometimes that’s true, as is the case with a number of games out of South Korea. (I’ll be damned if I can name one; nine times out of ten they’re advertised on the side of your popular web comics and gaming sites though.) Most of the time, they keep games that would have otherwise have died a cruel or premature death, games like three of the four MMOs I’ve touched on in this commentary, up and running. In some cases, they make the game significantly more popular, as those that would never have purchased the software and then subscribed to it now have the opportunity to do so. That’s the good and beautiful aspect of it. WoW capitalizes on it, and gets new subscribers out of it. If I had a job, I’d consider the same thing for The Old Republic. I’m on the verge of vowing that STO will never get another dime out of me, but as I’m already a lifetime subscriber and never have to pay them another dime, I don’t see the point in making the vow. I’m fully in support of games being self-sufficient in these terms; they should be able to make income and survive, even if it is a niche game.

But the dark and evil side of it is that some games nag the living hell out of their free to play users! I haven’t seen what WoW does, but STO annoys the shit out of me, a lifetime subscriber, with options to buy stuff. I couldn’t tell you how many different currencies are in STO, but I know you can buy with dilithium with real money which can be used to buy ships and equipment in-game, or be sold for the energy credits which can be used to buy other stuff. I also know you can buy Cryptic/Perfect World’s cryptic/zen points which allows you to buy still other stuff, including “master keys” to unlock the goddamned lockboxes I mentioned earlier. Lifetime members receive a stipend of 500 cryptic/zen points every month to do with as we please, but when you’ve stockpiled 30-50 lockboxes in a short period (and I did!), and the keys cost 150 points each, you can’t exactly run around unlocking all the fucking things to get the real reward they promise… And I’d like to reiterate that I’ve opened quite a few of the damned things, and still have never gotten a ship out of one. Why aren’t the fucking keys given as quest rewards on occasion?

And you know what? In some ways, The Old Republic is even worse! No matter what class you play, no matter what race you choose, there is a big fucking orange coin sitting at the top of your screen. You can see it in the gallery below. That lets you buy an in-game coin which in turn will let you buy better weapons and equipment, and unlock other things, such as different playable races, and CARGO SPACE IN YOUR FUCKING SHIP! That’s right, my level 15 bounty hunter has her own ship, but she can’t just leave anything in her inventory on-board her ship, because she has no cargo space! She has to carry it all around with her unless I spend the money to buy the cargo space! Even STO gives you a certain number of free bank slots! I tried to get a screenshot of the screen on-board the ship demanding 80 coins for the cargo slots, but, oddly, you can’t take screenshots on-board the ship! Could it be because they don’t want you sharing the fact that you’re nagged repeatedly about either subscribing or buying upgrades? I can’t tell you the number of times I was presented with a quest reward that never appeared in my inventory, but whose icon gave a message to the effect of “if you were a subscriber, you’d have some options for this reward.” What it effectively does is say “fuck you, you don’t actually get to have this reward until you pay us.” I suppose that’s fair, to some extent, but why not just give me nothing? Why not as part of the mission/quest completion just say “A reward for this quest is provided to subscribers” instead of giving me an item that disappears before reaching my inventory? If there’s one great flaw with The Old Republic as I see it currently, it’s the free to play system is fucking annoying.

Make money on the game, I don’t care. Make money through the use of free to play, again, I don’t care. But stop being so fucking annoying about it!

Sheesh! Ok, I’ve just pissed myself off about that again, so I can’t think of a better reason not to end this commentary. They talk about the in-game advertising that’s been on its way for a long time. Maybe that’s a good way to make money on games. I don’t know. But in terms of what I’ve seen of free to play, it almost defeats the purpose of playing the game in the first place. No one wants to be nagged constantly about upgrading or buying this or that thing that by all rights they just earned in-game. So we’re getting to play for free… Who cares? We’re playing a game that you are making money on, that’s all that should matter to you. You should at least be a little more respectful of our desire to not be bombarded with reminders that we’re being blessed with your work at no charge. Give us something worth seeking out to buy in-game, rather than presenting us with non-stop nag features. If that doesn’t satisfy you, give us the damned in-game commercials like television has. Instead of a bland loading screen, subject us to the occasional 30 second commercial from Coke or Pepsi, Apple or Google, and leave the game play and game experience the hell alone.

: Star Wars The Old Republic

: Star Wars The Old Republic

: Star Wars The Old Republic

: Star Wars The Old Republic

: Star Wars The Old Republic

: World Of Warcraft – Mists of Pandaria

: World Of Warcraft – Mists of Pandaria

: World Of Warcraft – Mists of Pandaria

: World Of Warcraft – Mists of Pandaria

: World Of Warcraft – Mists of Pandaria

: Star Trek Online – Sol System Transwarping to Fleet Starbase

: Star Trek Online – Fleet Starbase System

: Star Trek Online – Fleet Starbase Transporter Pad

: Star Trek Online – Fleet Starbase

: Star Trek Online – Fleet Starbase

Early E3 2012 Impressions

June 5, 2012 by Ray R.

I should actually make this post about my impressions about Sony’s pre-E3 conference this year, but I want to talk about at least one game that had nothing to do with Sony’s conference so I decided to just make this about E3 showings in general… Although I own an Xbox 360, it rarely gets turned on, I just use my PS3 a lot more than the 360 and enjoy it more as well. I’m a PlayStation man, what can I say? Needless to say, I didn’t watch the Microsoft pre-expo conference.

Nonetheless, the game I want to mention that wasn’t covered in Sony’s conference is Dead or Alive 5… I had absolutely no idea until today that it was in the works and I have to confess I’m really excited that it’ll be one the PlayStation after the franchise’s long absence from the platform. I’m even more excited that Team Ninja is responsible for bringing it; although I haven’t had the opportunity to play too many of their games in recent years, I always remember the fun I had with my buddies playing the original Dead or Alive on the original PlayStation! Now, I’ll confess there was the legendary breast physics that drew me to the game at that time and has left a huge impact on me since, but the characters were fun to use, and I’m amazed by the interactive fighting stages in this latest installment! While I’ve mainly been a Street Fighter kind of guy for the last few years, I think DoA 5 will fill that gaping hole that Soul Blade/Edge/Calibur left in me with it’s previous installment: when Soul Calibur V was announced, I found I just had no interest in the series any more. IV let me down that much despite not doing a thing wrong… But, I digress… DoA 5 appears to be the pseudo-3D fighter I’ve been waiting for on PS3, and I’m eagerly awaiting the chance to play it!

Being a Sony guy, I have to confess I was let down by Sony’s conference. The Wonderbook for PS Move is interesting and all, but I wouldn’t have made a fuss about it in today’s conference. Even the audience at the auditorium was less than thrilled by it. Now, I know they were excited because they get to have a tie in with J.K. Rowling’s Pottermore and Harry Potter universe, possibly as an exclusive, via Wonderbook, but frankly, that’s not the sort of announcement that I, as a 40 year old gamer, was looking for. I have the Move, and I’d consider getting the Wonderbook and Book of Spells as something to do with my five year old, but that did not get my heart pumping… Especially when the captions, purposefully or accidentally, indicated that the gameplay was not live and the speaker specifically stated moments later that it was. For me, the demo players looked like they were having difficulty getting the game to do what they wanted, when they wanted, which could very well mean that it was pre-recorded footage that was out of sync with the players demonstrating it on stage. If it was indeed live, then the application (because I wouldn’t really call it a game) was laggy, and it’s still not something that should have been demoed prior to the official start of E3.

There were some games demoed that did get me excited and interested, however. The first is Quantic Dream’s Beyond: Two Souls, which, simply put, looks amazing. That alone is nothing out of the ordinary for that studio… I never played Heavy Rain, but every little bit I saw of the game looked amazing, and I regret never having had the money to spare for it. The Kara technology demo was also amazing and I suspect heavily laid the groundwork for Beyond. It’s still way too early to see what Beyond is going to be, but I’ll tell you now that I’m excited about it! I love a game with a great story line, and this is going to be one that has so much to reveal! 15 years in a character’s life?!?! Holy shit! Even more remarkable is that the lovely Ellen Page will be voicing the game’s main character, Jodi Holmes.

I love role playing games as much as I love air, but when I want to truly unwind, I like to kill things in first person shooters. I won’t even begin to cover the FPS games I’ve played, loved, and mastered over the last 20 years, but today’s press conference had me eager to play Ubisoft’s Far Cry 3. This is a franchise I never played beyond a beta or demo, so I don’t know anything about the story line, characters, or quirks that make it any different from any of the others. But the 4 player co-op caught my eye… In some ways, this game’s co-op mode reminds me of Valve’s Left 4 Dead series (the primary reason I bought my 360), and in others it reminds me of Insomniac’s Resistance 2‘s co-op mode. Considering I love both of those games, I got pretty interested in the game play on Far Cry 3 and I could see myself buying the game simply for that if three of my PS3 owning friends also get it… I did a bit of reading on IGN’s web site about what they thought of FC3‘s co-op mode, and it was hardly favorable, but I think it’s something that I’ll keep my eye on. According to IGN, the game is 3 months away from release and they were pessimistic about the chances of it improving before then, but I’ve seen a lot change in a final release in shorter time. Not to mention that the game as it exists at E3 today may very well be weeks or months old code.

There will be those that are extremely excited over God of War: Ascension but I saw it, more or less, as desperation. The God of War series has been an amazing seller for Sony, and it has done some pretty amazing things over all, especially with #3 which included combat on the back of a titan climbing mount Olympus, but this new one really didn’t seem to do anything particularly groundbreaking. Maybe I’m just not that into Kratos and his adventures — as a matter of fact, I’m not, I’d much rather see a follow-up to Heavenly Sword than another God of War entry — but it really looked like Sony decided to make another GoW game to keep money flowing into the coffers while they prep for the next generation. By this point, I was fairly disappointed in Sony for only having one strong, original title in the line up prior to the official start of E3, but then they reminded me of exactly what I needed to be reminded of…

Naughty Dog has been impressing me since the day I bought my PS3. Before then, actually, because I saw video and screenshots of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune long before I had the money to buy my PS3. One of the first games I bought was Uncharted, and I still play it and its sequels on a regular basis! I still haven’t found all of the treasures in any of the three games, and I’m not about to stop looking! (I refuse to use a guide for most games, and especially these.) Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, sadly, felt like a goodbye to me, that Naughty Dog was ready to move on to bigger and better things. If that’s the case, then I can think of nothing more suitable as a follow-up than The Last of Us. There’s no need for me to describe The Last of Us because I’m sure there are a thousand blogs out there doing just that, and a couple hundred game magazines doing the same in print and electronically, but it looks to be just the kind of game I’ve been waiting for. As I watched the demo for the game tonight, I was reminded of playing the original Resident Evil game on my PlayStation back in 96 when I would get creeped out to the point that I couldn’t play the game at night. While Last of Us may or may not involve zombies, genetic engineering gone bad, and betrayal like RE did, it frankly looks like another amazing work of art weaving extreme attention to detail, an engaging and thoughtful storyline, and brutal realism from one of the premiere PlayStation developers. In my humble opinion, this is a game worth buying a PlayStation 3 to play!

Between Beyond and Last of Us, I think Sony could have let a team of monkeys throw poop at the audience and still pulled off a positive conference this evening. The other games didn’t hurt [much at least], but those were the two stars. The PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale looked interesting, and got even better when it was revealed that Nathan Drake (from the aforementioned Uncharted series) and the Big Daddy (from BioShock) were going to be gracing the game as playable characters, but I was unusually uninterested for most of the conference.

Farewell 38 Studios

May 25, 2012 by Ray R.

I’ve mentioned a time or two here that I’m a big R.A. Salvatore fan, and I recently wrote about a game, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, that a company he helped form released earlier this year. Frankly, I enjoy the game very much and I had thought it very successful, even if it was being overshadowed by Skyrim. A few days ago, 38 Studios released some footage from what I believed to be the MMO follow up in Amalur, Project Copernicus, and it, too, looks amazing! Possibly the World of Warcraft killer that people have been trying to make for the last 5-6 years…!

But alas, it is not to be apparently… Today, all the staff of 38 Studios and Big Huge Games were laid off, and Rhode Island’s governor has been quoted as having said that the game, Reckoning, failed. It’s possible that Copernicus will eventually see the light of day still, but without the talent to deliver strong and compelling storylines and inspire us with amazing artwork, the game will never be what was once envisioned.

The worst thing is that people will forever claim that Reckoning failed. That’s the part I can’t live with. The game only failed in one area: generating enough revenue to keep the companies afloat. What it did do, however, is manage to be a completed project of a pair or amazing dreamers, Todd MacFarlane and R.A. Salvatore, and a future hall of farmer, Curt Schilling. What it did do was sell hundreds of thousands of copies at a time when Elder Scrolls: Skyrim was still on the tip of many people’s tongue! What it did do was provide steady employment for over 300 people for a period of years during a major recession. What it did do was draw me into the game at a point when I was so stressed out over my final college semester that I didn’t care about gaming at all, barely tried to do any creative writing, did no reading for pleasure, and honestly thought that death would be a sweet release!

No, I don’t see Reckoning as a failure considering that there are so many games that are developed every year that never see the light of day, let alone reach the hands of a consumer… I’m something of an “almost insider” with the game industry. One of my two best friends has worked in the industry for 15+ years at some of the big companies. I’ve talked and eaten with a lot of his coworkers over the years, and I’ve seen first hand projects that never even got close to being finished, let alone released with a major publisher. Developing games is hard work, but the real work is in the post development phase: finding a publisher and working out a deal, finding a marketing company and working out a deal, getting a deal with a distributor, and ultimately getting the attention of gamers to actually convince them to buy the game. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that despite the vast number of games that do reach consumers, the vast majority never do. If for no other reason than that, Reckoning did not fail.

So to all employees and family members of 38 Studios, I want to say thank you for your work, dedication, and sacrifices that you’ve made to bring me this game, and for working to bring me Copernicus! I wish there was more that I could do to show you my appreciation!

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

January 30, 2012 by Ray R.

Whether you’ve heard of this game or not, it comes out Tuesday and the demo has been available for a week or more. If you’re a gamer or a geek, chances are you’ve heard of it and have been anxious to get your grubby little hands on it for quite some time. I am such a geek, though I’ll confess I’ve only had a wait and see attitude regarding Kingdoms of Amalur for quite some time.

The reason is kind of simple. Despite the creative genius behind 38 Studios, I’ve usually found that people that are good at one thing are seldom good at anything else. I’ve been a fan of R. A. Salvatore for the last 20 years, and I’ve respected
Todd MacFarlane as a comic and toy genius for almost as long. Add in a baseball player (sorry! I can’t recall his name and I’m too focused to look it up right now) and I figure that they might make great figureheads for a company seeking investors. But what do they know about video games?

Before I give you my answer, I’ll tell you that in principle, Kingdoms sounded intriguing from the very beginning. It’s a completely new property, unburdened with intellectual property rights of any of the past works of the company’s top name talent. Launching a new world is risky business even for the top talent and established developers. That’s why Activision keeps going back to the Modern Warfare cash cow, and even Blizzard takes a long time to launch new products within their proven franchises and is slowly, almost reluctantly prepping this new one, project Titan. So three guys famous for doing other stuff getting together to first form a new video game company and launch it with a completely original title is pretty fucking ballsy if you ask me.

That said, Kingdoms isn’t perfect. I played the demo all the way through twice last night on my PC, and most of the way through on both Xbox 360 and PS3 today, and I found a few rough edges that need to be polished, especially on the PS3 version. (Most notably the load times are longer and the particle glow effects seem to be toned down on the Sony system.) The PC version ran well on my nearly uber modern PC (AMD FX-8150, 16 GB RAM, and, wait for it, Radeon HD 4870!) but the control scheme felt like it was adapted from the console version and only recently someone said “Wait a minute guys! We have a fucking keyboard!” I never did get comfortable with the Xbox controller so I have to say that the PS3 seems to have the most precise and comfortable control scheme. Of course, it might also have to do with the fact that I played that version last… But there was something missing with that version… As I played the other two versions, there was a sense of smoothness to the animation that I just didn’t get on the PS3, though the animations and artwork were virtually identical to my untrained eyes. It took me trying to describe it to one of my best friends to figure out a possible suspect as to what it was; my video card, the Radon HD 4870 is about 4 years old, and the 360 is at least 6 years old… I think the gpu in those beasts were straining at some points giving the game a feel of smoothness that wasn’t really there. The PS3, though no youngster itself, seemed to just power through the graphically intense game as if it were walking through air instead of a river. At least I think that is it…

In any event, I have to say that I like the game very much. I love that it’s an original fantasy story that’s displacing, at least for now, some of the old familiar faces in the fantasy genre. Though there’s a race called the Fae that is probably akin to the various interpretations of the elf, in the demo, at least, elves are no where to be found. Neither are dwarves. Humans are present as are gnomes, but I’m not entirely sure what the species the player characters are. In some ways they appear to be elves t with their pointed ears, but that’s about where the resemblance ends. I personally kept getting drawn to select a female character of the bottom most subspecies because I found them gorgeous. And I love how the actual customized character model, utilizing the correct equipped equipment, is used in the cut scenes instead of being either left out or made generic.

The magic system is different from the traditional implementations in fantasy, and I love the idea that the character can alter the path of the world’s destiny [in theory]. The game’s mythology is also unique and engaging to the point that, despite intending to stop playing as the night grew long, I kept finding myself wanting to play for just another few minutes. Even now, without touching the game in 12 hours, I want to play it. The more I think about Kingdoms the more convinced I am that it’s what I’ve been seeking in an RPG for a long time.

I never got into Fallout 3. I’ve played Oblivion and I got lost rather quickly, and fear the same from Skyrim. I do play World of Warcraft but sometimes I feel like I’m just grinding away with little or no fulfillment; I sometimes play merely for some social interaction with people that I’ve known in-game for years. Star Trek Online has improved considerably in the last two years, but I still hate anything that has to do with an away mission, and I wouldn’t call any of it a role playing game. I haven’t played a Final Fantasy in 10 years and Fable, while amazing, is more of a technology demonstrator than a game to me. Kingdoms of Amalur brings me back to the old school computer role playing games that are long gone and yet manages to satisfy my hardcore gamer itch.

It’s not perfect, but it’s a pretty great game in my opinion.

DC Universe Online, Now Free to Play

November 3, 2011 by Ray R.

I haven’t talked about DC Universe Online before because I wasn’t willing to pay a monthly fee for it. I pay a monthly fee play World of Warcraft as is, and I’m a lifetime member of Star Trek Online, as I’ve mentioned before, so I just couldn’t see myself paying another monthly fee just to play a game in a comic universe I don’t know a whole lot about. Still the game looked interesting…

On Tuesday, DC Universe Online became free to play, which means that basically they’re giving it away in the hopes that people will buy DLC and that they’ll retain a few monthly subscribers. I don’t know how well the model works, but personally I’d bet that this game will be killed off in under a year. Nonetheless, I decided that I would download the software and give it a shot.

If I remember correctly the basic client download is almost 2 GB, not too bad considering the typical PS3 game download or demo is in that neighborhood. I got the download going last night and was going to check it out today. A few minutes ago in fact…

The problem is, that there’s apparently a 14 GB content download that occurs when you launch the game…! 14 GB!! I don’t know about you but when I go to play a game, I want to play then, not several hours later…! Even Blizzard learned that a few years ago and made the WoW client capable of downloading data as it needed it! Sheesh… this is not going to be positive influence on my opinion of the game…

Update: 6:53 pm: [Unofficial] Strike 2! So, sometime over the last 4 hours, DC Universe Online finished downloading its data, so that in theory I could play. I just spent the last 15 minutes or so trying to log in to actually take a look at the game, but I couldn’t. Maybe it’s system maintenance. Maybe it’s the PSN maintenance that should have wrapped up by now. Maybe there’s an unexpected outage. Maybe my router’s firewall is interfering though all other games seem to work. I don’t know. But I do know that I can’t connect at all to the game, and it says that I need to be logged into PSN (which I am) in order to play. I’m going to give DCUO the benefit of the doubt on this one, but this is not a good way to impress a potential customer…

An Evil Genius

A Little Evil Goes a Long Way…

Category Archives: Games

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DC Universe Online, Now Free to Play

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