The Gaming Grid

America celebrates Thanksgiving this weekend, and if you were lucky enough to avoid the frantic Black Friday festivities I hope you’ll join me in celebrating the greatest gift our hobby has to offer: fun. With all the frenzied excitement over platform capabilities, content ratings and buzzwords like “sandbox gameplay” I often feel the aptly-named enthusiast press runs roughshod over the simplest pleasures of the hobby in pursuit of populist legitimacy.

If you were lucky enough to pick up a high-profile title like Left4Dead or Gears of War 2 this month I encourage you to savor the experience and appreciate how much you look forward to the simple pleasure of unwinding with a few friends after an eventful week. Alternatively if you weren’t so lucky (or have simply decided to take a break from XBox Live) I’d like to employ the proverbial soapbox this feature provides to welcome you into the quixotic realm of gratuitous gaming.

Poor economic conditions in America have led to a rash of drastic lifestyle changes for many of us, and I encourage you to join me in welcoming our new socialist masters by taking part in some of the greatest communal gaming experiences the Internet has to offer. Every dollar counts these days, so save that $59.99 for the bread line and give a title like Jetpack Brontosaurus a try. Developed by Flashbang Studios, the game employs the same Unity web engine behind previous hits like Off-Road Velociraptor Safari and the currently beta-only project Minotaur in China Shop. This prehistoric flight of fancy is free to play and runs directly from your browser of choice, making it the perfect vehicle for sneaking a little fun into an otherwise dull lunch hour.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving, and while my family gatherings are never boring, they aren’t usually what I would call “exciting” either. This year was different though- my dad got a Nintendo Wii. I’ve played it, but don’t own one and was excited to see how the Wii, aimed at a different demographic than other consoles, would work out for my family.

Before I arrived at my parent’s house, my dad, mom, uncle, and grandmother had already made their Mii’s- your personal electronic avatar- and they beared an uncanny resemblance to each family member. They had warmed up on Wii tennis and bowling and my grandmother, having more fun than anyone, was already ready for other games.

Even more excited though was my three year old daughter. They made her a Mii and started to play bowling. It was fun to watch. She didn’t quite understand what to do, but my father would also hold the wiimote and show her. Since there were two wiimotes, I figured I would join in on the excitement. Little did I know that my video gaming genes had already passed to my daughter.

She had cleaned me in both games of bowling we played. I sat down to contemplate how a 3-year old could have beaten me so soundly and watched her and the rest of the family play golf and baseball. Once that was done, in an attempt to reclaim some honor, I challenged my old man to boxing, thinking “I should at least be able to beat up my dad.” Well it wasn’t as easy as I thought, but at least we tied. It was really cool to see that the whole family playing games and having a really good time.

Even though I did not win any games, I think the experience was an overall win. Growing up, the same father who had just held his own in a virtual boxing ring, had given me the “video games are bad for you” speech. Not only were they now having fun playing with four generations of family members, they perhaps understand a little better why I like games. It’s funny how things work out, but now I have another reason to go over to my parents and spend time with them which will surely bring us all closer together still. I also want to find some cool games for my daughter. But for now Wii Sports will do just fine.

I was never much into the elder scrolls series until Oblivion came out. When that came out, I had just put together a new computer that should be able to run it with no problems. The game was very detailed game. I liked how the leveling went up when used abilities.

That was nice since you could make a warrior and still use magic, or sneak around. With that in mind since you would only level up if you were leveling your main stats, sometimes it took forever to do so. Also if you wanted to have a twink character you would need to pick abilities that used the same stat to get a higher modifier when leveled.

If you played the actual main story line through that game, it would only take a few hours long. They seemed to design the game to think that you would care about the rest of the world. If you did care, the game could take a very long time. It was a very large map and so much to do. Before Fallout 3 came out, I had never played through the main story line, I was to busy playing the side quests.

After Fallout 3, I went back and played through just the story line and it went very fast. Now drawing the similarity from Oblivion to Fallout 3, it works great. It allows the player to do anything setup in this static world, but if he wants to do just the story the game. Now just because Bethesda used a lot of the same mechanics between the game doesn’t mean that its bad. If something works use it.

Lets go through some examples, When running through the world you will encounter random enemies. These are generated compared to your characters level. In this game you have a standard experience bar, and level very fast. Since it has a similar over world map with myriad places to explore you could level before you knew it. With this world Bethesda created, they maid it a little more immersive for you, so that you can take an interest in the rest of the world.

I also liked the first time when creating the character, playing through some of the small life stages. Also the art style that they had in the others was perfect. It added a since of humor, and uniqueness. The other critical thing that they needed to do, and thankfully did was hire more voice actors. Now I know that they could not possible get as many actors as there are NPCs in the game, but in oblivion it seemed like they had about five. It was some of the small things in Oblivion that detracted from the immersion of the game.

This is a trend I like to see from software companies, if something works, and it fits the need for another game, use it. Why come up with something that might suck, if you have something that already is known and works well. Work on the other things in the game that took away from the experience that you were trying to portray.

Overall I think this is almost the child to Oblivion, in the fact that they took something and evolved it. I am looking forward to some of the other games that Bethesda has planed to come out. Let’s see if they can keep the same trends going.

First off, let me say that this is going to be a rant of ludicrous proportions. Okay, it may not be that huge, but it could warrant such a size.

I remember when everybody and their brother was making an FPS with some kind of oddball story (some good, some bad, and some WTF?). No one really cared about how close to real the games got. Let’s face it, games were played for fun and not to see realistic enemies firing realistic weapons coming over the realistic hill with realistic grass all the while “breathing” realistic air. Honestly… I miss the imaginary… uh… everything. Why the crap do I care that a tree in a game is like the one outside? I can go outside and see that the thing is real. Does it add to the game? Only to the atmosphere if you’re close enough or are surrounded by them and probably in the map that you really aren’t going to be paying attention to anyway because your attention is needed elsewhere. And no… not looking at the randomly generated grass that pops up 30 feet away, which is also distracting.

One main and totally perplexing problem I see with most of these games is the fact that all you are… is a pair of arms floating around. You have no body. No head, no feet, no shoulders, no back (to carry some freaking huge amount of weapons), no chest. No nothing. How is this real? Apparently the developers were so worried about the damn trees, grass, water, leaves, etc. in the game that they thought arms for the main character was enough. “Ah, they won’t see that anyway.” Um, I can see a lot with my own eyes running around in real life and isn’t that what you’re trying to portray? Since all you are is arms, widescreen gaming is totally pointless. This limits your view of everything and in turn, your arms need to be shown almost in complete view along with your 1/4 sized screen weapon. By limiting your view, I mean up and down. What should stay down, like your arms, comes up because the screen shows more left to right. With widescreens, your arms and your weapon are basically mounted in your neck. Well, if you had one.

Another thing that I see, or shouldn’t see, actually, are lens flares. There’s a reason they call them lens flares. They are created through a camera lens. Last time I checked, my eyes aren’t camera lenses. If you’re a cyborg character or something like that, then I guess it’s passable, but still retarded. FPSs are shown through the character’s eyes. Speaking of things that mess your eyes up… What’s up with this insane amount of HDR and bloom effect? I don’t remember leaves or a dirt road “glowing” from the sun hitting it. All I see those effects being is a pain the butt for trying to focus on something, which the effect actually makes out of focus (read: glowing neon colors), and just plain useless being used EVERYWHERE. The sun, in real life, is a real pain to look at, not to mention blinding, doesn’t make things glow or become out of focus when it’s indirectly lighting something. Dirt doesn’t glow. Mud doesn’t either and when the sun hits it, it turns to dirt, not neon colored, fuzzy, pixie dust.

All characters are Hercules and Houdini. Hercules because they can carry 12 different weapons all made from some heavy metal and some of which are the size of half of your non-existent body. Houdini because they can magically hide the ones that aren’t being used somewhere. Not to mention all the ammo that gets picked up from running over weapons or the weapons themselves getting absorbed into their “body”. Yeah, it sounds like I’m nit picking, but it all goes into the grand scheme of the reality/realism moniker.

Another thing that bothers me? Your inability to climb over anything 4 feet tall. You cannot climb over anything you can’t jump over. Your abilities in the game include and are limited to: running into walls, boxes, etc. that are 3/4 your height and aimlessly jumping 1000 times to see how you can go over it regardless of the fact that you can only jump 2 inches off the ground. Okay, so it keeps you from straying the path the developers laid out for you to follow. You can’t climb over little things, but you sure as hell can “walk” up a damn ladder with no hands and while holding a gun. You can actually walk up the thing backward with no problem. Well, “walk” really shouldn’t be the term to use since you have no legs. “Float” is more appropriate.

Last thing (for now). Explosions in older games usually made things explode, including enemies. This doesn’t happen anymore. Most noticeably in Half-Life 2, nothing gets gibbed like in the first one. People blew up in chunks from grenades and satchels and being attacked by those friggin’ green tentacle parrot-beaked monsters in the “Blast Pit” map. Ever since the whole physics wave came along, nothing blows up like in the past. It’s like they traded one for the other. “Guys getting their guts blown all over the place when shot with a rocket? Ha! Not in this game. Nope, they are completely in tact. Why? Because we want you to marvel at how well their inanimate bodies flop around using the latest in ‘rape my CPU by doing physics calculations’ methods. Yes sir. We make sure that there is no possible way to totally destroy enemies or their bodies so that more memory can be consumed to remember where they stopped flopping. That annoying bit where their bodies fidget ridiculously when they happen to ‘clip’ through a door? What game with physics doesn’t have that?” If I attach a bomb to someone, I’m expecting them to blow the “F” up. What I’m not expecting is the damn thing to act like a jetpack and launch the dude 30 feet away from where he was.

The final thing (hopefully). Computer AI. I can’t stress what a pain it is in FarCry, but it knows everything you do and where you are and none of those damn plants that populate the whole game can save you. It’s like you see the game world with all of these things you can hide behind and the enemy sees what it really is: nothing but a ground layer and you in the middle of it. Nothing obstructs their view of you or their bullets. Does this still happen with plants? Yes it does. Those plants don’t hide crap, or you for that matter, from the enemy and are mainly there to obstruct your view of them. AI always has the upper hand no matter what. Its programmed to use things defined in the game world in code. This is where you get your ass handed to you because you have just encountered something completely new and they knew it before the game even went gold. Its the same with racing games. The track is programmed in the AI’s code and all the difficulty setting does is tell it how fast to kick your ass. NFS anyone? The Underground series was stupid because whenever you would do a nitrous boost, the AI would somehow match your speed without using it themselves. It’s like you could never gain on them. I’d rather play “Bump n Jump”.

So those are some glaring issues, in my opinion, that should be considered when making a first person shooter from now on. That doesn’t mean new things, or other things not mentioned, are still there and lurking in the shadows. I’m sure I’ll remember more and then write more about it later. For now enjoy FPSs for what they are… Part realistic, part imaginistic, part craptastic, and all of them having something wrong with them.

In the beginning there was Einstein, and he created a time machine, and it was good. He went back in time to take Hitler out of the time line, and Hell march was born, and it was good. Then Tim Curry went back in time to remove Einstein from time, and George Takie, became Emperor of the Rising Sun, and it is Glorious.

If you have ever played any of the command and conquer series, you will know the general idea of how to play the game, improvements on game play and the AI has evolved over time. Also the graphics have improved since it has gone from Westwood studios to EA.

After a long awesome teen years spending time installing and setting up dial-up connection to play with your friend, on snow days, I wondered would the EA giant only destroy this franchise of a game. I know that the first few, after EA were ok, but did not have the same kick that Westwood had.

EA’s big thing was to bring 3D to the game it seemed, and I wondered if it was really needed in a RTS. With Generals it was a really poor job and seemed that they might just kill this off after all. With C&C 3 however, it was great that they got back to the real fell of the game. Things were in 3D but the effects mostly came from the explosions and other unit abilities, so it was a great blend to the game.

With this game, there was a great reason to have the up to date graphics, they really change a lot of the unit mechanics and listened to what the players wanted form the other games. The first main thing is that all units have some secondary ability. With this present the idea was that you would go from an intense air battle to a furious fire fight on the ground or ride the waves of glory on the seas.

They really made the three levels of battle very distinct and wanting to do all of them. With some armies having a large group of amphibious units you could stroll with ease from one to the other. With units having multiple attack or defensive abilities there is a great balance to the game no matter what side you play.

In command and conquer 3 it felt very lopsided of a game due to some units being crazy powerful. With this game if your group needs more air protection, just switch up the units. The great thing is the mechanic is needed in battle, and not just some last minute idea they had. It really shows and makes for some great moments in the game.

With Co-Op being in most games now, they have also implemented that in this game as well. You can play through the standard campaign with a buddy; if you don’t it will have an AI co-commander play with you. These commanders are pretty reliable on all difficulties, but they are not perfect yet. Sometimes they will get stuck doing a mission objective, and you must assist them.

That is why they put in a command panel, where you can tell them to do something specific. This is a great feature because you can plan with ease a two prong attack, and have the computer handle the other units. There are other improvements that have been made that also help with the over all experience.

You can now build next to you allies base, without needing to have a construction yard there. Also you can build buildings on water, along with defensive structures. Now that I have either bored you with the guts of this game or you’re no longer reading this because your going to get it for yourself, let me tell you about the last little jewel.

They stayed with the standard Live Action cinematic in between missions and also for new orders on longer missions. They bring you that further into the game itself. Also the chatter between some of your units and co-commanders is priceless. Now with all that said, this game is not perfect it does have some flaws, but they are so few and far between that a simple patch will take care of them, they are nothing that would take enough away from the game play that you will stop playing.

This game delivers and EA got the look and feel of the Red Alert series down. Can they do it again? If you have the spare cash, and you are a fan of real time strategy games, do yourself a favor and get
this game.