I have a few words for you, World of Warcraft. They aren't pretty, and you won't like them. If there are any fanboys out there, you probably won't be too happy with these words I have for WoW either.
First of all, let's talk concept. Warcraft was taken from something, namely, Warhammer. Now feel free to criticize me on this, but Warcraft and Starcraft are both bastardizations of that universe. Good ones, but hardly original. I love universes, like Star Wars, Forgotten Realms, and Lord of the Rings. They have this continuity to them that makes the world so much easier to believe, and draws readers in. Warcraft has had that for a while now, but with the advent of WoW, it's slowly been dissolving. I could give examples, but I don't want to come off like a sniveling fanboy, so I'll leave it at "things are beginning to change from what you expected them to be like coming out of Warcraft 3."
That consistency falls apart every time Blizzard puts out a patch, as well. Shamans were, rightly so, the most powerful class in Vanilla. Some toning back in that regard was called for, but it seems the longer they go, the more they neuter the most fun spec, Enhancement. Only with enhancement do you get to watch as people soil themselves on seeing two giant bloodlusted wolves attacking from across the map. After screwing with their shocks, completely changing Wind Shock, neutering their damage, neutering the totems, screwing with some other spells, and making the spec basically inferior to elemental in every way, there is almost no worthy reason to play enhancement in, for example, arenas, or PvP, which is the growing focus of WoW now, since it seems to want to be WAR. The constant changing and rewriting of classes makes me feel that the game was incomplete. That it still is. While yes, that's technically true, I plan to do minimal patches to any MMO or game that I make. I want to spend enough time in QA to figure out most of the huge imbalance problems before the game ever goes to the floor. Patches shouldn't be major, because of what it suggests. The constant changing of the game also reflects how Blizzard treats its fanboys. They listen to the loudest whiners, and cater to them. A lot of the loud whiners being people who have jobs there that aren't so good at the game and things.
Paladins have been going through this a little, but they have been growing into the 'easy mode' class of the year. One spec for paladins, you have a three spell rotation. Healing as a paladin has been described to me as binding half your keys to Flash of Light, the other half of them to cleanse, and placing your face, fist, or dog on the keyboard, and pressing down repeatedly until the raid is over. Protection is the most complex spec, with a whopping 5 spell rotation, if you get creative. I understand that the game needs to be friendly, but in my opinion, there shouldn't be any one class that's easier to play than another class. They should all be somewhat technical, with spell/ability combos that progress, many cooldowns to manage, kind of like rogues. I don't open up a game to click on something once and wait for it to die, I do so to entertain my mind and actually play a...you know...game. Preferably not whack-a-key either.
I have played a variety of MMOs recently, and I have this to say: The only reason WoW is surviving is because it already has a healthy fanbase. If they were to try to come out now, between Champions, Aion, Star Trek Online,and the ones coming very soon, like Star Wars: The Old Republic, it wouldn't stand a frigging chance.
A game needs to be more than bringing pelts to dudes in towns. It needs to be more than fetch quests, hunt quests, and level grinding. There needs to be more than just doing the same dungeon over and over and over killing the same damned bosses to get better equipment to kill them easier at a later date. The combat system needs to be more than hitting a bunch of keys in sequence and waiting for things to die. I may play most games on easy, but a game should require at least some skill. WoW has effectively ruined Warcraft for me, by making it mainstream. They've gone the way of Nintendo, leaving their hardcore fanbase to go appease the casual.
I only ask this, Blizzard: Please, please, please don't let this happen to Starcraft.
Oh! News update: UNREAL ENGINE 3 IS NOW FREE!!!! I can develop using the everything engine for something less than $15,000!!!
Friday, January 1, 2010
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Double Header! Dawn of War 2 and my New Laptop!
So, first of all, my mother is amazing. I headed to Best Buy to help out a friend with some computer supplies, and I saw a Toshiba Laptop for about $450. I know what you're thinking, "What's wrong with it?" Well, not really anything. The graphics are kind of low level, and the processor is basically the lowest of the mid-range procs, but overall, I am very pleased. I can run Dragon Age, Neverwinter Nights 2, and Dawn of war 2 with what I call satisfactory framerates. Since I'm used to raiding on 10 fps, you can imagine how lenient I am with framerates.
It's got a small-ish 300gb hard drive, but combined with my 300gb external, that's more space than I'm going to need for a while. The only thing that I really hate is that there are only two usb ports. Oh well. I only need mouse most times anyway. (Toshiba Satellite L505, if anyone cares)
On to Dawn of War 2. For those of you who don't know, Dawn of War 2 is the love-child of an RPG, and an RTS. Strange combination you say? Well, the single player plays a lot like the inside missions in Warcraft 3, but with a heavier dose of RPG. You select your four squads like a normal RTS, but they are already mapped to the 1, 2, 3, and 4 buttons. You gain abilities through various accessories and equipment such as grenades, demolition charges, swords, jump-packs, and other things. You also gain abilities in typical RPG fashion a-la Mass Effect.
My greatest praise for this game is its feel. You really do feel like a small, tactical army fighting to gain control of small settlements, and sometimes larger cities. The small scale of the battles makes them fast paced, and tense, without being overbearing except at boss battles, which is normal. The story, while linear, is compelling, as you try to figure out what exactly it is that is coming to invade the sector and kill everything to death, and keeps you interested in small doses. The missions themselves are awesome. Simple, yet somewhat dynamic objectives, short and to the point, and lots of banter as you go, giving taking the dullness out of those times when you're moving across the map.
The multiplayer plays like a combination of DotA and Dawn of War 1. You can either play 3v3 or 1v1 battles, which is kind of disappointing, but honestly, more than that would be ridiculous, and probably make the engine sweat. It is insanely fun to play. Due to the small maps, the pace is fast. Since there's no base building, you're never waiting for anything to build, just for things to be captured. And yes, I said no base building. This is macro lite, micro heavy. I love it. They took the leveling system from the single player, and condensed it. You capture requisition points for 'money', power plants for tech upgrades, and strategic points for 'victory points'. For the system, the multiplayer is everything I dreamed it would be.
The first big problem that I have with this game is purely cosmetic. I am really mad that I can't turn off, or at least turn down the particle effects. This was a blunder on Relic's part, because that's the main thing that makes this game demanding. My computer runs it at a comfortable 20fps, except when there are lots of rockets, orbital strikes, and movement going on. Also, the story is probably the weakest aspect of this RPG. Essentially, you're fighting off Eldar and Orks, only to find that the real threat is spoiler warning. Well, not really. Watch the extended trailer for this game, and read two paragraphs about the mythos, you'll know who the threat truly is. The game surprisingly doesn't suffer much for it, making up for the story with the sense of progression, and the interesting characters.
The bottom line is that this game was awesome. I'd give it a 10, if it had a better story, and a little bit more depth to it. The single-player was a bit too shallow, but it more than made up for that in the multiplayer. I have high hopes for Chaos Rising, coming sometime next year. March, I think. Also, I must mention, this game would be great on the Xbox 360. It plays enough like Halo Wars that it wouldn't be particularly hard to pull off. I give it a 9 out of 10.
It's got a small-ish 300gb hard drive, but combined with my 300gb external, that's more space than I'm going to need for a while. The only thing that I really hate is that there are only two usb ports. Oh well. I only need mouse most times anyway. (Toshiba Satellite L505, if anyone cares)
On to Dawn of War 2. For those of you who don't know, Dawn of War 2 is the love-child of an RPG, and an RTS. Strange combination you say? Well, the single player plays a lot like the inside missions in Warcraft 3, but with a heavier dose of RPG. You select your four squads like a normal RTS, but they are already mapped to the 1, 2, 3, and 4 buttons. You gain abilities through various accessories and equipment such as grenades, demolition charges, swords, jump-packs, and other things. You also gain abilities in typical RPG fashion a-la Mass Effect.
My greatest praise for this game is its feel. You really do feel like a small, tactical army fighting to gain control of small settlements, and sometimes larger cities. The small scale of the battles makes them fast paced, and tense, without being overbearing except at boss battles, which is normal. The story, while linear, is compelling, as you try to figure out what exactly it is that is coming to invade the sector and kill everything to death, and keeps you interested in small doses. The missions themselves are awesome. Simple, yet somewhat dynamic objectives, short and to the point, and lots of banter as you go, giving taking the dullness out of those times when you're moving across the map.
The multiplayer plays like a combination of DotA and Dawn of War 1. You can either play 3v3 or 1v1 battles, which is kind of disappointing, but honestly, more than that would be ridiculous, and probably make the engine sweat. It is insanely fun to play. Due to the small maps, the pace is fast. Since there's no base building, you're never waiting for anything to build, just for things to be captured. And yes, I said no base building. This is macro lite, micro heavy. I love it. They took the leveling system from the single player, and condensed it. You capture requisition points for 'money', power plants for tech upgrades, and strategic points for 'victory points'. For the system, the multiplayer is everything I dreamed it would be.
The first big problem that I have with this game is purely cosmetic. I am really mad that I can't turn off, or at least turn down the particle effects. This was a blunder on Relic's part, because that's the main thing that makes this game demanding. My computer runs it at a comfortable 20fps, except when there are lots of rockets, orbital strikes, and movement going on. Also, the story is probably the weakest aspect of this RPG. Essentially, you're fighting off Eldar and Orks, only to find that the real threat is spoiler warning. Well, not really. Watch the extended trailer for this game, and read two paragraphs about the mythos, you'll know who the threat truly is. The game surprisingly doesn't suffer much for it, making up for the story with the sense of progression, and the interesting characters.
The bottom line is that this game was awesome. I'd give it a 10, if it had a better story, and a little bit more depth to it. The single-player was a bit too shallow, but it more than made up for that in the multiplayer. I have high hopes for Chaos Rising, coming sometime next year. March, I think. Also, I must mention, this game would be great on the Xbox 360. It plays enough like Halo Wars that it wouldn't be particularly hard to pull off. I give it a 9 out of 10.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Metal Gear Solid 4. Oh how you failed me in the end.
This is my first review. Don't expect all of my blogs to be reviews. This is just something I decided to do after conquering this creation of Hideo Kojima.
The only reason this game, which I can barely call a game, gets a 6.0 is because what little I got to play, I loved. Otherwise, this game gets a 1...or a 0, for not being a game. Let me explain. When I pick up an MGS game, I want one thing out of it. Tactical Stealth Espionage. What it says on the f****ing cover. What I got was about a 1 minute of gameplay for every fifteen minutes I was playing. In other words, I loaded a save, started the briefing, set the controller down after about five minutes of looking around for the battery or whatever the hell I was supposed to find, started the mission, had to pick up the controller to press start, got ready to play, as the game took over the majority of the shooting for me, so I set the controller down again, picked it up, played for a solid 20 minutes, then set the controller down, and waited for the cutscene to finish. By the time I was done, 3 hours had passed, and i had played for 20 minutes. This is not good game design. Especially in an action-oriented game like MGS. This isn't good storytelling either, where games as a storytelling medium are concerned.
Go and pick up a game. I'll pick one for you. Dragon Age Origins. Yes, it's an RPG. Yes, it's longer. However, part of the reason for that increase in length is the GAMEPLAY. In fact, if you don't believe me, I rushed through DA: O on my xbox in 30 hours. On the computer, my friend took 55 hours. Only the gameplay could produce a 25 hour difference in the same game across two platforms. Dragon Age had amazing storytelling. It barely had two hours of actual cutscenes. Not dialogue, it had tons of dialogue, because in a Bioware RPG, the dialogue is part of the gameplay! Metal Gear Solid's cutscenes are non-interactive cinematic messes. Sure, it had its bright points, Raiden was f***ing great. But all the establishing shots, long pans, useless and pointless dialogue, and backtracking through the other three games eventually made me stop caring. I only saw it to the end because I felt like I was letting Kojima win if I didn't finish it. I am also ashamed to say that I skipped cutscenes. Including some at the end.
Moving on this same tangent, there were so may times where the cinematics jacked the gameplay from me. For example, a good portion of the final act had gunfights going. Gunfights I could have played through. And when I wanted a cutscene, well he put gameplay in. Like when two of my favorite characters were fighting, and I was forced to fight a bunch of Gekkos instead of watching a fight I genuinely wanted to watch. The end of the game is another good example, which amounted to me pressing the triangle button to the point that I practically broke my roomate's controller. No joke.
Also, the plot, for the second time in Metal Gear history completely disappointed me. It got way too complicated, and unfortunately required half of the verbal diarrhea to explain it...Which is why games like Dragon Age have a damned codex. After a while, I just stopped caring. Call me lazy, fanboys, I dare you. Since the cinematics kept hijacking the gameplay, I found that I was beginning to become more and more apathetic to the whole thing. Possibly out of spite for Kojima that he kept on taking the game I paid money for away from me. I repeat that I finished the game specifically because I hate leaving games unfinished. It was like a bad movie that you really don't like, but you keep watching to see if it gets better. Well, it didn't. Also, the ending never ended. I saw the credits, and thought, oh! well, there i'm done! Little did I know what lurked around the corner, but another 30 minutes plus of dialogue....good dialogue...after the credits...you know those things that role at the...END of a movie? Well whatever, I listened for as long as it took for them to explain how the crap Liquid Snake possessed Ocelot's through his arm, other than that he was just that damned good......
The good parts: The controls were mostly intuitive and familiar, if a little modified in a stupid way, R1 should've stayed where it was so that circle could be used for melee, square could also have been used for frigging anything. The gunplay got a lot better when I found out I could up the look sensitivity, which unfortunately was at the end of the game. The gun modifications allow you to make the game yours (mmmmm.....M4 with underbarrel shotgun). The characters were mostly true to themselves, although Snake started pissing me off the further and further I got in, up until about the end. Drebin was awesome, as was his monkey...graphics were up to par with PS3 standards, since all the cinematics were rendered in-game, and according to a trusted source, no motion capture was used for the animation, which was impressive, if a little off at times.
Bottom line was that I despised this game by the end. Kojima didn't put together a good movie, nor a good game. He needed to cut the dialogue in half, and many cutscenes completely, and replace all of that with something other than one-shot levels that I can beat in 15 minutes or less(sans cutscenes of course). You know, like in the original...the one that got me hooked on this genre. In the end, the series failed me. Well, at least they explained Liquid Ocelot's goshdamned arm.
The only reason this game, which I can barely call a game, gets a 6.0 is because what little I got to play, I loved. Otherwise, this game gets a 1...or a 0, for not being a game. Let me explain. When I pick up an MGS game, I want one thing out of it. Tactical Stealth Espionage. What it says on the f****ing cover. What I got was about a 1 minute of gameplay for every fifteen minutes I was playing. In other words, I loaded a save, started the briefing, set the controller down after about five minutes of looking around for the battery or whatever the hell I was supposed to find, started the mission, had to pick up the controller to press start, got ready to play, as the game took over the majority of the shooting for me, so I set the controller down again, picked it up, played for a solid 20 minutes, then set the controller down, and waited for the cutscene to finish. By the time I was done, 3 hours had passed, and i had played for 20 minutes. This is not good game design. Especially in an action-oriented game like MGS. This isn't good storytelling either, where games as a storytelling medium are concerned.
Go and pick up a game. I'll pick one for you. Dragon Age Origins. Yes, it's an RPG. Yes, it's longer. However, part of the reason for that increase in length is the GAMEPLAY. In fact, if you don't believe me, I rushed through DA: O on my xbox in 30 hours. On the computer, my friend took 55 hours. Only the gameplay could produce a 25 hour difference in the same game across two platforms. Dragon Age had amazing storytelling. It barely had two hours of actual cutscenes. Not dialogue, it had tons of dialogue, because in a Bioware RPG, the dialogue is part of the gameplay! Metal Gear Solid's cutscenes are non-interactive cinematic messes. Sure, it had its bright points, Raiden was f***ing great. But all the establishing shots, long pans, useless and pointless dialogue, and backtracking through the other three games eventually made me stop caring. I only saw it to the end because I felt like I was letting Kojima win if I didn't finish it. I am also ashamed to say that I skipped cutscenes. Including some at the end.
Moving on this same tangent, there were so may times where the cinematics jacked the gameplay from me. For example, a good portion of the final act had gunfights going. Gunfights I could have played through. And when I wanted a cutscene, well he put gameplay in. Like when two of my favorite characters were fighting, and I was forced to fight a bunch of Gekkos instead of watching a fight I genuinely wanted to watch. The end of the game is another good example, which amounted to me pressing the triangle button to the point that I practically broke my roomate's controller. No joke.
Also, the plot, for the second time in Metal Gear history completely disappointed me. It got way too complicated, and unfortunately required half of the verbal diarrhea to explain it...Which is why games like Dragon Age have a damned codex. After a while, I just stopped caring. Call me lazy, fanboys, I dare you. Since the cinematics kept hijacking the gameplay, I found that I was beginning to become more and more apathetic to the whole thing. Possibly out of spite for Kojima that he kept on taking the game I paid money for away from me. I repeat that I finished the game specifically because I hate leaving games unfinished. It was like a bad movie that you really don't like, but you keep watching to see if it gets better. Well, it didn't. Also, the ending never ended. I saw the credits, and thought, oh! well, there i'm done! Little did I know what lurked around the corner, but another 30 minutes plus of dialogue....good dialogue...after the credits...you know those things that role at the...END of a movie? Well whatever, I listened for as long as it took for them to explain how the crap Liquid Snake possessed Ocelot's through his arm, other than that he was just that damned good......
The good parts: The controls were mostly intuitive and familiar, if a little modified in a stupid way, R1 should've stayed where it was so that circle could be used for melee, square could also have been used for frigging anything. The gunplay got a lot better when I found out I could up the look sensitivity, which unfortunately was at the end of the game. The gun modifications allow you to make the game yours (mmmmm.....M4 with underbarrel shotgun). The characters were mostly true to themselves, although Snake started pissing me off the further and further I got in, up until about the end. Drebin was awesome, as was his monkey...graphics were up to par with PS3 standards, since all the cinematics were rendered in-game, and according to a trusted source, no motion capture was used for the animation, which was impressive, if a little off at times.
Bottom line was that I despised this game by the end. Kojima didn't put together a good movie, nor a good game. He needed to cut the dialogue in half, and many cutscenes completely, and replace all of that with something other than one-shot levels that I can beat in 15 minutes or less(sans cutscenes of course). You know, like in the original...the one that got me hooked on this genre. In the end, the series failed me. Well, at least they explained Liquid Ocelot's goshdamned arm.
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