Frozen Synapse

I have always been a huge fan of the turn based tactical isometric games such as Jagged Alliance, JA2, Xcom..etc..  For whatever reason that style of meticulous gameplay always appealed to me, but I had always assumed I was alone in my passion because those games never seemed to last very long in favor of first person shooters or real time strategy games..etc..

In fact, the industry as a whole has completely moved away from turn based game play, which I find to be a shame. Well thank god there are awesome independent developers around to fill the void!

Frozen Synapse is just the turn based top down tactical game that I have been craving for years.  It has a wonderfully fun and even somewhat dark sense of humor and most importantly, awesome gameplay.

There is nothing better than a game with deceptively simple gameplay that provides hours and hours of fun because it’s extremely challenging to master..

Plus it’s multiplayer!!  How awesome is that?!

I can’t tell you the number of times I said that XCom needed to be multiplayer so that I could play against my friends.. And sure as heck they did it here..

The interface is a little confusing at first, as it takes some time to understand what all the different commands do..  Plus as a whole the interface is kinda weak, but other than that I think this is an excellent game.

I wish I could give each character more than the one weapon, but I understand why they did things the way they did and so I wont ding them on that.. All in all I think it’s a very good game guys.. well done.

4.5 out of 5 losing that half for some interface suckery..   Still, if you know me.. 4.5 is an awesome score.

Red Faction: Armageddon

I played Red Faction back in 2001 when it first came out and enjoyed the heck out of it.   It was the very first game to come out with the Geo-Mod game engine which allowed for massive destruction of the game models and levels.   The game itself was otherwise unremarkable, but the fact that you could destroy everything made it awesome.

I find it funny that one little thing like that can make or break a game entirely, and the massively destructable nature of the Red Faction games entirely “makes” these titles.

Red Faction II was one of those games that came out only a year or so later but it managed to skip my notice and the series sorta fell off my radar.

The other day I picked up the latest in the franchise; Red Faction: Armageddon.   And I’m glad to say that it’s up to the original games standards in all ways .. to include the shortcomings..

Let me start by saying that by all standards it’s a good game all things considered, and I did enjoy it.  But there are some cons:

This game is of course plagued by one of my common complaints with all games these days;  The game is too short.. by a long shot..  That’s typical of all games though so I think the industry as a whole is trying to bring our game length expectations down fraction by fraction until we get a 3 hour tour for the same $60.  Oh well.. This game is longer than some, and I realize that for every minute of gameplay it likely takes them months.. but still..  This game clocks in at about 10 hours.

And it also suffers from another common issue with games these days;  Its too easy..   My theory as to why this happens lately is because most of the modern games are first made for consoles, and then ported to PC.. as such the controls on a PC are much easier to use, so the situations you’re in are suddenly that much easier?  This is a wild guess, but it will likely seem logical to anyone who has tried (and failed horribly) to play a game on a console using those crap controllers..  I can see how any game would be difficult if you handicap someone with one of those damn things..

Most games have at least 4 difficulty settings; Easy, Normal, Hard and Expert.. Or some myriad of names that equate to the same thing..  And in just about every game out there, I know that I should start playing it on “Hard” because anything easier would be pointless.   I can’t imagine how simplistic and juvenile “Easy” must be on these games because “Hard” is anything but..  This game suffers badly in this area because even on “Hard” I didn’t find it remotely challenging.  ”Hard” should be difficult.  Make it a challenge so that I will want to play through again..

I think its likely that game makers are afraid of making their games actually difficult because then people might get frustrated and stop playing.. However, I’m of the opinion that making a game like this too easy even when set on “hard” in order to keep the game “fun” is akin to handing the little league losers a trophy for participation..   Reward me for doing well, not for just showing up.  If I set the game to “hard” I believe it’s reasonable to expect the game to actually be difficult.

And finally my major complaint about the game is the weapons they give you.    Within the first minute or two of gameplay they give you the ONLY WEAPON YOU WILL EVER NEED; the gravity gun.   Now, I don’t want to complain about the gravity gun.. there is nothing more fun that hurling a whole building of destructive debris at an enemy.. and you generally have a reasonable expectation of doing fairly well when you use the same gun to hurl an enemy at a far wall only to watch him gib.     But, why do I need the other guns?

They give you a whole slew of other wizbang cool guns and more ammo than you can shake a stick at just lying around but I can honestly say I didn’t even start using ANY of them until near the very end of the game.  Up to that point I just used the gravity gun to do everything..   Either tossing the mobs around or throwing entire structures at them..  The other guns seemed pointless mostly.. and the ludicrous amounts of ammo lying around, doubly so.

This game is also extremely linear, so much so if you get out of the “area” you’re supposed to be in a countdown to your doom will appear.. better boogy back to where you’re supposed to be pronto..  I don’t really want to hold this up as a complaint though, this isn’t a sandbox game and like the original was never meant to be..   Still I can see how some might be put off by the count down thing..

All in all though I enjoyed the game.   There is still something very appealing about being about appease your darker side by waging wanton destruction on the carefully designed levels..  And if you’re not giddily giggling like a school girl over being about to toss mobs around like rag dolls to their ultimate doom, then you don’t know how to have a good time..  it was fun.  Though it’s replayability is pretty much zero.

I give this game 3.5 out of 5. (That’s a good score from me.)

FU Again er 2...

I never played the first Force Unleashed game and I sorta regretted it as I knew several folks who said it was a pretty good game..  So I was really excited when they announced a Force Unleashed 2 for the PC.    I figured that I’d finally get to try what everyone was talking about..

Well I’ve tried it..  What a piece of shit..  This is quite honestly the first game that has pissed me off in a long time..  And I mean absolutely barking at the computer, pissed off..

So lets give the pros;

It’s beautiful..  The graphics engine that they have used is a very nice one and it does a really good job of immersing you into the Star Wars universe..

Plus it’s a console to PC port so the expected controls are pretty bad, but I have seen worse console ports in this department so I want to give them a thumbs up here.. Not great.. Certainly not as good as a native PC game, but not terribad.

Now lets talk about the cons;

The camera system.  The gameplay.. The gameplay and uh.. the gameplay!!

First lets talk about the camera system..   Whoever the asshat was that thought it was a good idea to decouple the camera system from the players perspective and force you to control the character from whatever fucked up camera angle they wanted to throw at you for any given instance, needs to be kicked in the balls while being garroted by a hairy sweaty man using a live eel..  And then shot.

The camera system makes this game nearly unplayable as you don’t look in the direction you’re going!!  No no you look in whatever direction either your mouse was looking at previously OR (and this is by far worse) whatever fixed camera position they want you in for that particular scene..

It makes controlling your character impossible.  This is something that does NOT translate well from a console game to a PC game.  It only serves to piss people off,  so stop it!

But that’s not the worst part.  No no.

The worst part is the game play in which they decide every few minutes to throw a quicktime event at you..  For those of you that are unfamiliar with quick time events they go something like this.. PUSH E NOW!   Oh too late… You died.. Start over.

The next time it will be some other random control you have to do at exactly the right or you fail it!   Plus, the correct control request is displayed at various spots around the screen instead of in the same place..  So you never know whats coming, when.. or for how long..etc..

This shit made for crappy game play 20 years ago in Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace, and it makes for crappy game play today..  It’s cheap and easy for the programmers so that’s why they do it.. Not because it’s fun.. I can’t understand how console gamers like this crap but clearly they do or they wouldn’t do it..

Now.. Combine those two issues and you begin to understand why I had to stop playing every few minutes to wipe the projectile scream-spittle off my monitor..

You can’t see where you’re going or what you’re doing because you’re stuck in their camera angle and you have to perform some bullshit quick time event that borders on the impossible..

I got to the Gorgon scene (or whatever the big god of war style beasty is in the arena is called), tried it about 20 times and uninstalled the game.    It pissed me off bad enough trying to lock his arms in to the shackles but really pissed me off the next part where they throw an awkward camera angle at you followed by a fucked up quick time event and don’t explain at all what you’re supposed to do..

Done.

This game is shit.  Lucas Arts should hang their head as it does nothing to foster good memories about the franchise, it’s a painful game that isn’t fun what so ever..

I’ll give it 1 star for being pretty and half a star for actually not doing a bad job converting the controls to PC.. but the gameplay and camera system sink it completely.

Star Trek Online

Why I think they might actually have gotten it right.

Firstly, I was really worried when I found out the end game for STO would be PVP-centric.  That just doesn’t really work normally for any number of reasons which I wont go into just yet.. Traditionally if you look at all the major (even minor) MMO’s out there that have tried, you’ll see that they have generally failed or aren’t entirely PVP based.. Eve Online being one that hasn’t failed and does really well, but I believe that’s largely due to being the only game in it’s market. By and large however, PVP only games just don’t do that well with the masses..

I believe that there are 4 primary reasons for PVP being problematic in most games:

1. PVP allows Player X to have an immediate and often negative impact on Player Y’s game play experience. This means that Player Y could possibly have his game play impacted by another player in such a way as to prevent him from enjoying or even advancing in the game. Removing the “fun” from the game for Player Y entirely.

2. Good PVP and Smart PVP are two mutually exclusive concepts. “Good” PVP is playing against another person where things are evenly matched in terms of player skills, character skills, gear, etc.. The fight is even odds and could go either way and as such, is a “fair” fight.. “Smart” PVP is employing any tactic that would give the player any form of advantage over the intended target — fairness doesn’t enter into it. In fact the more unfair the fight is, the better.  Since most players always try to play smartly, the target of that doesn’t have fun.

3. Everyone loses eventually, and most players lose most of the time. This is simply math and has been proven time and again. In any PVP engagement, you will eventually lose. And most players, yes you too, lose most of the time. It’s a mathematical inevitability.  People don’t like to lose as it’s not fun.

4. Character skills and gear out weigh, player skills and gear every time. In most PVP games it just about always pans out that the higher level and better equipped character will simply dominate the lower level character, regardless of the players skill or equipment. So no matter how awesome you are on your level 45 warlock, that level 50 paladin will simply slaughter you while watching TV and eating some pizza.. not fun.

Why are these things bad?  Well first of all you might have noticed I used “fun” in each point.  Games are first and foremost about fun.  If you aren’t having fun then most likely you’re not going to play very long.

I think someone at cryptic looked at these facts and made the right decision to make PVP opt-in only.  Let’s look at each issue in turn;

The first one can actually punish a player, just for playing the game. They might be having fun mining asteroids for example, wanting nothing to do with other people only to have their experience tainted by someone else..  I think most hard core PVP players completely miss the fact that what is fun for them, isn’t the same thing as what’s fun for everyone else and games are first and foremost about fun for everyone.  STO has made PVP an opt-in system so that you must knowingly go to the various PVP zones in order to do any form of PVP.  If you don’t want to, you don’t have to.

This opt-in methodology also largely solves the second issue. You can’t be gate camped or ganked or griefed by a roaming pack of players in the regular world.. You must go into the PVP area where you acknowledge the possibility and most likely will bring your own posse..

If you know PVP is opt-in, then you wont mind losing on occasion.  STO makes the PVP very “Zerg” like in that if you do lose, you just respawn and off you go again.. So really dying a lot doesn’t matter all that much. So who cares if you lose more than you win.. It’s still fun!

And so far the ship buffs/abilities and stats don’t really seem to matter.   In my lowbie T1 Miranda class ship I was able to take out T2 ships in PVP.  I don’t know if this was due to my better understanding of shield and power management or if my equipment was better or if I was a better player..  Or if I was just lucky!  But right now it seems like player skill actually matters a great deal more than everything else..

I think it could work here..

A lot of folks are bitching about not having open realm PVP though and those people irritate me..

Their primary complaint is that they should be able to attack any other player at any time.. And they always gloss it over with reasons why it would be canonically correct in a Star Trek universe..blah blah blah..

Let’s be clear;  the only people that would disagree with the opt-in PVP system are the PVP players who are the ones most offended by the notion that they some how do something “unfair” by attacking people that aren’t as skilled, have no desire to participate, or who aren’t in anyway ready for the PVP conflict they are suddenly thrust into without any option.   Simply put,  they are griefers who enjoy ruining other peoples game by taking out the easy target.

I’m an old school PVP player from EVE online.  I have also PVP’d in EQ and WoW so I know where I’m coming from here.

In EVE when I went into a fight, I made damn sure it was going to be a fight I was going to win or at least had a good chance of winning.  If I didn’t think it would go my way, I would unass the AO ASAP.

If I was going to steal jet can’s (Yes I did that..) I made sure my target was someone I knew I could steal from without being instakilled.   When camping a gate in EVE I wouldn’t do it alone, but rather would bring a whole crew — why?  ’cause I wanted to win!

It’s just smart PVP — don’t engage in a fight you can’t win.  The same notion is employed by modern day generals when waging war..  Don’t play fair!!  Smart PVP will never be fair if the PVP’er knows what he is doing. A fair fight will get you killed every time.

There are a lot of players though who will never want to be apart of that world.. they want to play the game to have fun, and not PVP and they should be allowed to do so.   For them the fun is playing against the system and NPC’s.. It’s the same reason why raiding end game bosses in WoW and EQ is fun.. It’s the challenge of beating the system..   Whether you, the hard core PVP’er, agree is completely immaterial.

Thus when you attack them unprovoked in systems that allow for that, they rightly call you a griefer because you’re interrupting their fun.    I have griefed in my time, and been griefed.. so I understand..

The game designers in STO have rightly realized that it’s an absolute imperitive to make the game fun for as many people as possible, and to do that PVP must be opt-in.  It’s the only way to keep the largest portion of the population happy.

The simple fact of the matter is, if you attack someone who doesn’t want to be attacked then you’re negatively affecting their game play.  And the larger picture is;  Doing so will in many cases drive those players away from the game, which means now you’re negatively affecting the developing studio’s bottom line.  “Carebears”, a term I hate, are by far the largest segment of the market and keeping them happy keeps the game afloat.

Kudos Cryptic.

Aion Online

I have played a lot of MMO’s in my time.. I feel I have a pretty good handle on the genre and have a very good idea of what makes a game good, and what makes a game bad.  Both in terms of what I personally feel, and as well as taking a broader view as a whole.  I can readily recognize why one game or another may not appeal to me, but be appealing to others.

What’s interesting is that I find that as time has gone on I have had to lower my expectations because none of contemporary games are ever as good as the now lofty memories of the games of old..

I fully realize that it’s not fair of me to compare a modern game to the memory of a previous game.  A memory full of good times, good people and fun events.  Memories that I generally cherish in some way, oh and there was a game involved too..

Aion Online is the first game in a long time that actually holds up under this scrutiny..  I was shocked..

Generally I use three games as my virtual yard sticks;  Ultima Online, because it was basically the first and implemented many things correctly, and many more incorrectly.  Everquest, again because it was ground breaking and a first but also because many of the things that made it most memorable are absolutely horrible by todays standards.  Ah memories.  And finally World of Warcraft because it’s everything that Everquest wasn’t — including good in some cases.  I played all three of those games for at least more than 2 years.. Five in the case of EQ, and am still playing WoW as I type this though I can honestly say that I dread it at times..

Aion Online might find itself added to that yardstick for comparison to future games..

Initially I was a bit horrified by the notion of a JRPG style game.. The very thought of a game in which the women were high pitch voiced busty school girls with bobbed hair and the men where androgynous she-males wielding swords you would otherwise need a forklift to move didn’t exactly excite me.. Still doesn’t to be honest, but that’s not what Aion is..

While I have seen a few extremely improbable swords the rest of the game isn’t bad at all..   The JRPG aspect is fairly minor all things considered and the game itself is beautiful and full of depth.

The game itself isn’t super innovative in that they really have only one thing that other games don’t have and thats flight..  Their flight model is really great and does a lot for the game once you figure it out.  Flight has two modes;  Flying and Gliding.  When you glide, you have a chance of finding thermals and can soar just like a bird!   The only down side to flight is that no matter how you go about it you can only do it for so long bfeore you have to rest..

Everything else is what you would expect, but done very well.. The game engine works well, if maybe a tad laggy from time to time and of course looks fantastic as it’s based on the crysis engine..

My only true concern at this point is the end game.. It touts a brand new end game that they are calling PVPVE.. which is code for PVE while some one ganks you..  I’m not fooled..  But at the same time I havent’ experienced it yet.. Maybe its good..

I’ll have to wait and see..