From the beta, I have to say that the Witch Doctor was definitely my favorite class to play.
Monday, April 23, 2012
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Trials Evolution and the Death of the Triple AAA Game.
This has been a strange year for gaming to say the least and it’s only April. I guess I should have seen this coming when Mass Effect 3 was kind of a mixed bag of awesome and disappointment. Or when Street Fighter x Tekken was an awesome game with a horrible set of marketing projects that went along with it. Soul Calibur V had everything anyone in the fighting game community could want and got a lackluster reception. Then we had four games in a row that could hardly be better if God himself came down and touched them: Journey, Fez, Skullgirls, and Trials Evolution. These games delivered on a promise that in some cases(Fez in particular) were many years in the making. But did these folks use their long development cycles to make the same thing that everyone else was making? No, not even in the least.
Journey is a game about you. Yeah, it sounds like trippy, hippy crap. But Journey is basically whatever you bring to it. If you are a shallow jerk, then maybe you won’t get too much out of it. If you are a feeling, intelligent, sensitive person then I probably don’t want to know what you think because I’ve probably all ready offended you somehow. Seriously. though, never has a game brought out so much emotion and immersion with so little. The game at a short two-three hours does more to evoke emotion in the player than just about every other game out there. There is no well defined story with characters and dialogue. There are no, crazy five minute long cutscenes. No Journey is going to take you to figure it out and if you take the time and patience to do so; you’ll love it. So if you haven’t all ready played Journey, you need to.
FEZ, is not a game about you. It’s a game about problems. Yes, the game has a retro 8-bit style that has grown to be kind of uncool hipster lately. But what it does do, is it presents the player with problems. What these problems are and how you solve them is not all ways simple or straight forward. Sometimes you must go to sources outside of the game for an answer, with a QR Code Reader perhaps. But FEZ creates yet another kind of thing that hasn’t happened much in these times of consoles and internet. Questions no one can answer yet. Yes, the game is around a month old and there are still things in it, no one understands. This also, could be partially due to the fact that the game is currently a wee bit buggy. But I’m sure that will be fixed in no time. What’s crazier is that there are new things about FEZ being discovered all the time. Like there are hidden messages hidden in it’s soundtrack. Really? Now that’s some old school Mortal Kombat non-sense if I ever heard it.
Skullgirls is one of the most unique XBLA/PSN games ever made. Why? It has amazing hand drawn art and it’s a fighting game. The game is so visually absorbing that many people look at it and don’t even know what the game is about at first. It just looks THAT good. The game has no in-game move list and it’s a fighter. But that’s OK. The game has five modes: Story, Versus, Arcade, Training, and Online. Which some people have a problem with, but most people don’t really care. It is $15 and one of the fastest growing fighting games in the Fighting Game Community since last year’s Mortal Kombat release. None of my IRL friends are playing it and most think it too hard to even try it. Which is both good and bad. The game DOES have an incredible tutorial mode but it also has a very unforgiving Arcade mode and most of the people playing it right now on both XBOX 360 and PS3 are pro-fighting game players who have been trying this game at tournament venues for the past two years. When the typical person in the fighting game community was told things like: well there are five modes, eight characters, and no in-game move list. The typical person usually replied with, “That’s OK, I’m sure they will patch stuff in. “ The game is just THAT AWESOME.
Finally we have Trials Evolution. The sequel to the XBOX LIVE ARCADE hit Trials HD. This is a simple game about riding your motorcycle through obstacle courses. The game is incredibly addictive but also incredibly hard to explain why one likes it. It’s one of those, just download the demo and try it scenarios that is so hard to get across in a review. It had the best day one sales on XBOX LIVE in the history of the service. Trials HD had the best sales of any XBOX LIVE ARCADE game ever. So this game is a really good seller. And not one of my IRL friends are playing it either. Not one! It has no marketing campaign and while it is in the NEXT ARCADE promotion; I think most gamers have grown completely unmoved by Microsoft’s promotions as they come out what seems like every three months now and only one or two of them a year are any good. But I’m sure the developers aren’t complaining. After all, their servers crashed on Day One because too many people were playing the game at the same time. What is this World of Warcraft? So, I’m not saying cry for the developers of Trials; what I am saying is that Trials Evolution is a product of it’s own greatness and nothing else.
I brought all these games up, not because I’m not going to review them(I will, I promise), but because combined, if you bought them all; it would cost you $60. Yes, four of the arguably best games of the YEAR so far and ALL of them, would cost you $60 TOGETHER! Why is this important or significant? Games cost too much, they have for years. They cost too much to make, market, and shove in a box. When people start pointing fingers as to why, they have one pointed out and the other 4 pointed at themselves. Which is exactly where the blame usually should lie. No one, in the causal market or causal press wants to hear hardcore people, enthusiast press, or game publishers complain. They just go off and play their $3 iphone games and ignore us. If the game industry wants to reverse their decline they need to stop trying to make the next Call of Duty or Halo and start trying to just make fun games. The money will follow… That IS how it works… If you start imitating everyone just to try and get a piece of an overcrowded market that’s all your going to get(a piece and a small one at that). Developers and publishers need to get together and make unique cool games that they are passionate about. Because that’s how you have a success. Just ask the guys who made Trials HD and Evolution; if you can remember the name of their studio(RedLynx. Ltd.)
Blizzcast 17: Diablo 3 Quest, Item, and Sound Design video unlocked!
While your mouse hand is recovering from the Diablo 3 Open Beta(Like mine is) watch this new video that unlocked from Darkness Falls Heroes Rise website. You are participating there right? If not, click on the link back there and follow the instructions.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
More Wrath and less Heroism it Seems(Warhammer Wrath of Heroes Open Beta)
This is my second story on Warhammer Wrath of Heroes and if anyone thought the last story made it sound like I was working for EA. This story will sound like they fired me. If you want particulars about the game go over and read that other story. You can even see some gameplay footage there. But this article is written with the idea that you have all ready read the other article or all ready know what Warhammer Wrath of Heroes is.
Originally, way back in the closed beta(I will be estimating amounts here so don’t hold me to anything). The average amount of gold it would take to purchase a Hero was around 5,000. And you received probably around 500-1,000 gold a match. Which meant that if you played for a couple weeks every day eventually you could own every hero in the game. That seemed cool to me. You would then have to play each one of these heroes to level them up in their mastery trees and get advanced skills for them. Also, seemed cool. I was not even bothered by the 10-20,000 gold skins. I mean if you want a skin, your going to have to pay for it. Right? Anyway, all of this was great and while I wasn’t exactly in love with running the same three maps and same three modes from here to eternity, I figured that as it was a free to play game they would eventually update it.
Fast forward only a couple months later and the typical hero is now between 20,000-60,000 gold. You only receive a maximum of 1,000 gold per match; usually more like 100. And unless you are very good or very crazy there is absolutely no chance of you ever owning every hero in the game.
Before the great inflation I was able to get Ilanya; but before her and probably right before this mass price expansion I had Glowgob, Bax, and Felicia. Then EA reset everything and only gave me enough gold to buy one on-sale hero. Yes, at least they left me my winnings from my previous games. There have been many server resets and patches since and I guess they are happy to let me keep Ilanya who is 2/3 of the way to getting her full mastery tree and having all her skills. Only 7 more points and I get my final unique spell. But that’s it, if I didn’t like Ilanya I would be stuck with her.
Unless of course, you pay. And that my friends is my problem. I have rented guns in games, I have bought XP boosters, bought hats in TF2(haven’t we all, come on), and once I even bought some loot for a character. But NEVER have I actually HAD to buy a character. But you most likely will HAVE to buy a character in Wrath of Heroes. Because, you will not be able to get any mastery points on any of the free characters they give you. So you will basically get stomped, over and over. The game won’t be fun at all and you will just quit.
What I’m confused about is why EA didn’t just come out with this game as a downloadable on Origin for $20. The game would have done great. And that is basically what they want to you pay to have fun with the game anyway. So just take it up front. Why make us buy in-game currency(gems) so we can buy things from the store. Just charge $20 right off, run it as an Origin exclusive and there you go. Some people may say that it is better to try the game first and then pay. But if you can only try a limited number of heroes with a limited number of powers; that’s a demo not a F2P game. Oh, and demos are also usually free.
Considering how many feedback survey forms I’ve filled out EA is obviously not listening to me. So, if you want to play Warhammer Wrath of Heroes; just bare in mind you are probably going to have spend between $5-$10 to have any fun at all and if you want more than two characters, your probably going to have to spend more like $15-$20. Which is fine; the game IS probably worth that. But as a Free-2-Play game it stinks. Because yes, it’s free to play. But more accurately its free to get frustrated and die every single time. Everything else about the game is wonderful. That’s why it saddens me so much to say that this is one of the worst excuses for a free-2 play game; I’ve played. But bare in mind this game is still in beta. There is a chance(a very slight chance), that this economic problem will be fixed before they launch the game. Or perhaps they will come up with some kind of other system. Unfortunately due to the limited scale of content the game isn’t a good fit for a subscription model. So unless they lower their prices, I’m not exactly sure how they could make things better.
Monday, April 16, 2012
The PC, New Consoles, and Why Game Publishers Keep Getting it Wrong!
Here we are in 2012 and things seem to be going along pretty well for, “ye olde video games.” There are phones, pcs, consoles, ipads, and even a few televisions that can play games. Never in the history of video games have things been so amazingly rich and diverse. So why is everyone so worried and saying that the video game industry is failing. There can be NO DOUBT that things aren’t going very well. THQ just laid off a bunch of people, EA is set to lay off some soon, and even Blizzard dumped some customer service folks earlier this year. Which considering how well their current Diablo 3 downloader works might have not been a good idea. Anyway, without going into REAL numbers; which would probably either bore you or frighten you.
The games industry is not doing as well as it was back in 2008. But what industry is? In 2008, there was a Global Financial Crisis that effected every form of every industry and is still being felt today in everything from oil prices to real estate sales. So looking at things through that lens we should probably be happy new games are being made and people can afford to buy them. But instead, we have the people who run publishers saying crazy things like;
“We need to have online passes to recoup our used game sales or prevent people from trading games in.
We need to have a DLC flow, that while it doesn’t make any sense we are going to hold back finished content for day one dlc or maybe just dribble the content out over a series of months. Not create anything new, just make sure we have enough stuff after the game goes gold to hold people for the next six months to a year.
Keep console game prices up so that it is hard for people to afford new games and make sure these prices stick by creating digital marketplaces where games NEVER decrease in value even two or more years after they are released.
We need to implement buggy DRMs to make sure that players must be online at all times even in single player games. Who cares whether or not it really works, at least we can show stockholders that we are trying.
Finally, make sure not to spend one penny more than we need to on advertising because games don’t really need good television commercials when we can just slam every website with popup ads. “
Before some one out there accuses me of being overly negative; each one of these examples is based on something a publisher did this year or late last year. I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.
With the exception of the the DRM thing, however there has been one constant bastion throughout this time of troubles. The PC game market; here games drop in price like stones dropped off of a cart(unless they are published by EA). The graphics are amazing, the framerates are incredible, oh and there is more choice than there EVER has been before. No where do we see the stagnation of the console industry except in the ports that come from it. There are no online passes and DLC often comes in the form of free content patches(unless its an EA published title). Steam has managed to keep things interesting and with the emergence of other digital delivery services like Gamefly(used to be Direct2Drive), Good Old Games(you get the idea), and Amazon(not just for boxed products anymore). There has been a new revolution. There are even Free to Play games that aren’t horrible. While the consoles have languished in their as of this year 6 year cycle. We are seeing PCs and PC games explode with content and possibilities. Not everything is coming up roses, after all, games are often buggier on the PC and usually late in getting there. The industry is definitely focused mainly on the consoles. But as the consoles age even further(a Fall of 2013 for new consoles is rumored!) We are going to see the PC market get even stronger still as the mobile and social network markets grow right along with it.
With all this evolution most REALLY hardcore gamers who aren’t rich either buy all their games used or buy them on PC digitally at a discount or perhaps at a lower than regular price. So it comes as quite a shock when rumors start swirling that the new consoles(circa 2013, remember). Are not going to be able to play used games and are going to be only as powerful as a PC you could buy this year for around $700. To this I say, WTF?? If these rumors are true, which considering the frequency of them, they cannot be completely false. That would mean you want to sell me something that isn’t as good as a new PC and want me to subscribe to the same model as PCs; except I won’t get any of the benefits of them?
In another environment, I would discount this as purely speculation on someone’s part. But considering a recent study that said that more people use their XBOX 360 for doing things other than gaming than the other way around. It’s starting to sound pretty logical. Currently the 360, is a clunky piece of hardware that has gotten its upper limits so completely tested that the machine now stutters when it tries to load the starting screen. The XBOX of today and the XBOX of 2005 are like the difference between the iphone of today and the iphone of 2005. The folks at Microsoft are asking their machine to do far too much with far too little. So if they released an updated version of this machine(updated circa this year or last years medium priced PC); they probably wouldn’t have to worry again for say, another 4-5 years. You know the length of a console cycle or say how often most analysts suggest the average person buys a new PC. Strangely logical isn’t it? Oh and because of this lack of technological advancement they can probably charge much less for it. Launch consoles probably won’t exceed $450, they learned that lesson in 2005. Never again….
After all, if the typical end user is going to spend all their time watching Netflix, Youtube, or watching movies downloaded from the Zune store. They are going to be far more concerned about their internet connection than the power of the box they run it all through. Which of course, leaves hardcore gamers to buy new and better PCs and not ever again touch their consoles or buy new ones. In two or three years every game that has ever come out for the consoles will be cheaper and available on PC anyway. And if you can’t buy new releases used, you may as well get them on a platform with the most power and flexibility. And as exclusives begin to go the way of the dodo, this future seems even more probable.
This means for game publishers that most of their console sales will dry up and their PC sales will probably double or triple. Then the whole industry shifts again until someone realizes there is something that they can only do on some new console. So that company makes one and this starts all over again. Or maybe not… There has been a lot of talk over the past ten years of a one console future. That console is probably either Ipad or some kind of Android pad that has yet to come out. But what they were probably considering at the time; will probably appear in the next two or three years on the PC.
Unless of course, all the rumors and speculation are completely wrong. In that case, well, things will go on the way they are until technology makes another paradigm shift and we are all using computers in our brains or something.
Some More Day Early Diablo 3 Goodness from IGN: The Monk!
I do love getting these a day early, even if it does take some fun out of the reveal day.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Monday, April 9, 2012
Barbarian Video a Day Early from IGN?
This video is definitely in the style of the official Demon Hunter Reveal that came out last week. So I’m guessing IGN just jumped the gun and posted it early. But we will see tomorrow if that is true.
Friday, April 6, 2012
Journey the Bestselling PSN product for March.
Source IGN…
I think it should also be noted that Journey was the only game in the top 5 that was not on sale or free.
Monday, April 2, 2012
Maybe Alittle Too Unbound!(Ridge Racer Unbounded Review)
One of the biggest questions I had when booting up Ridge Racer Unbounded for the first time was, “Why is this a Ridge Racer game?” The Ridge Racer franchise is an arcade drifting series that started with the PSone. But Ridge Racer is marked with some particular mechanics. One is to hit turns and then use automatic drift to go around the corner, chaining these together to drive faster than the folks that don’t drift. This doesn’t exist here, in fact, drifting usually slows you down too much. Another are fun cars named with brands that Namco owns, these cars are also usually crazy futuristic and cool. Neither of these things exist in Unbounded. In fact, Unbounded is more like a tame version of Burnout where the designers sometimes try to emulate existing vehicles in the world. Ridge Racer also usually has a very arcady Japanese feel, with a cheesy announcer and unrealistically bright world. This game veers more toward the unnaturally dark than the previous. What did naming this Unbounded do for the game? Considering the lackluster reception that all Ridge Racer games have received since the launch of PS3; I’m not sure I would be hitching my horse to it any time soon.
There really is no story in this game and the main mode for the campaign is simply to play race after race trying to get three stars; another words, win. The player does receive experience points one way or another. They just don’t receive the bonus for placing first, second, or third. As these experience points accrue the player unlocks cars, tracks, and track elements for the track editor.
The main race type in the campaign are Dominaiton Races. These races consist of 4-12 competitors(usually 12), there are some destructible elements in track. But as you hit other cars, exceed a certain amount of speed, or drift. You gain points on a meter toward power. Once you cap the power meter; you can hit a button and get a boost that also allows the player to go through some particular destructibles and this is also the easiest way to wreck other cars. To me it seemed relatively obvious that the game engine couldn’t handle all the destruction and 12 cars. When not in slow motion due to hitting a car or breaking through an animation inducing barrier. There is some SERIOUS slow down on the installed XBOX 360 version. The game probably goes from 30-60 FPS to 10 FPS.
In other modes, like Time Attack(beat a set time), Frag Attack(hit as many enemy cars as possible), and Shindo Racing(just racing with only boost and no destructibles); there isn’t this slow down. Mostly because most of these modes don’t have the destructible environment elements like there are in Domination Mode. Even when they do, there are much fewer of them.
All of the limitations of the engine don’t exactly hurt the game too much. But what does hurt the game as a whole is the silly difficulty level of the A.I. Mostly this is due to the fact that the A.I. cars don’t adhere to the rules that the player car adheres to. They can earn full power meter without drifting or meeting any of the criteria for it. When one A.I. car is taken out by another A.I. car they respawn directly back into the position they were when they were taken out. This also happens when the player takes out an A.I. car. While if the player is taken out they lose however many seconds it takes to respawn. This is not a matter of rubber banding A.I. The A.I. cars are extremely difficult to catch up to and pass considering most races the player is put last or near to last. There really doesn’t seem to be any difference in A.I. difficulty from the first city to the fifth or sixth city you get by unlocking. The types of cars may be different but in most cases this doesn’t really matter.
The player gets cars, tracks, and new track elements for the editor as they earn experience. But most the cars in the main Domination mode are only made up of one class and this class has one or two descent cars in it. They are all pretty slow and half are pretty fragile. Considering the crazy level of unchangeable difficulty it might have been fun to not lock cars into classes. Or maybe just make better Street Class cars. Because these are all pretty lame. Gaining track elements by leveling is a pretty poor idea considering you might not have earned some track pieces that you want to put on your track. Why require the track designer to make a multi-hour commitment rather than letting them just build a bunch of cool tracks. Beating your own track is a requirement to complete your track. Which is fine except that the A.I. difficulty is SO high even on EASY(which is only selectable in the track editor and no where else in the entire game); that I think many designers have simply created an impassable areas for the A.I. to run into and for normal players to go around. I’ve seen it quite often and I’m guessing this is the reason. Also, I’ve seen some completely ridiculous broken tracks that have made it through this race proofing concept. Which simply proves that the idea of holding the designers to the standard of the top racers is counter productive.
Which leads me to the online functionality. Which for most players is where the meat of their experience will be. The game allows the player to create tracks with a quick and easy editor. It takes around 15 minutes to make a descent track and run through it. The online is very good, downloading each track as you select it. From selecting the track to playing will probably only take a minute or two depending on your internet strength. In this area the game is great. This part of the multiplayer is set up more like the campaign where your goal is to beat the creator’s score on the track. Then there is the multiplayer mode where you actually race head to head with other people. You can do this on user tracks or tracks from the campaign. And this would be great too, but I can’t comment on it. Because try as I may, I couldn’t get one single solitary game with other people. Not even one. Which this is probably Namco’s fault for not doing any advertising at all for this game and then there being some kind of shortage or distribution problem. But whatever the reason there was no one online during launch week or the week after launch.
I did have a great time playing through most of Ridge Racer Unbounded and I think anyone with a liking for Burnout or Split Second should definitely give it a look. But what I found was that the longer I played it, the less I liked it. Without any of the real trappings of Ridge Racer this game seems like it could have used an identity of it’s own to hang it’s hat on. With it’s wonky difficulty, bad framerate dips, lack of online community, it doesn’t seem like this game was built to last. The game was a great idea, but the implementation could probably use further testing. 8/10…
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