I downloaded the demo of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars last night. Melmoth had been talking about the beta, and then some random newsletter turned up with a link to the recently-released demo, so I thought I'd give it a shot.
There's... a lot going on! I've been out of the loop of online FPS games since Unreal Tournament 2004, never played much Counterstrike, and more pertinently for Quake Wars never got into any of the class-based team games like the Battlefield series. Starting off with a nice gentle offline warm-up against Easy bots (ha! Easy bots, they can barely walk and chew gum, let alone walk and shoot you through the head at 800 yards then send you an insulting message), obviously I'd dominate the battlefield, but it'd be a nice, simple introduction.
Parachuting down is a nice, relaxing way to start things off, our home base looks familiar enough, there's a few vehicles around, I'll just hop in one... as soon as I find the right key... there we go! Follow my bot team-mates, I'm not really sure what we should be doing, and then there's SHOOTING AND EXPLOSIONS AND I'M DEAD ARGH and parachuting again and MORE SHOOTING AND EXPLOSIONS and I can deploy stuff or is it hack stuff or ARGH I'M DEAD AND parachuting and I've got grenades and binoculars and airstrikes and a targeting device which doesn't seem to target and something's happening with a bridge and wahey! I shot a Strogg! And I've been promoted ARGH I'M DEAD and the bridge is repaired by someone (I don't think it was me, but it might have been while I was trying to tie my shoelaces up) and there's an MCP and artillery barrages and an airstrike and "press m for mission" is flashing somewhere and ARGH I'M DEAD.
Some tutorials can be a drag ("Now walk forwards! Can you walk forwards? Try pressing the 'W' key! That's it! Well done you! Now walk forwards some more... NO! THAT'S TURNING LEFT! BAD PLAYER, WE HAVEN'T GOT TO THE TURNING LEFT LESSON YET!"), but I think there's a bit of room in Quake Wars to not just chuck you straight into a fight... Still, it's only the demo, and after a couple of rounds and a fair amount of ARGH I'M DEAD, I got a bit more of a handle on it all, and even managed as a Support Engineer Type Class That I Can't Remember The Exact Name Of (But Not The Actual "Engineer") to deploy an artillery turrent, and call in a barrage from it (after standing within the white outline of an artillery turret going "eh, what use is this?", and dying when the *actual* artillery turret was para-dropped on my head).
The supplied map plays quite similarly to an Unreal Tournament "Assault" game-type, a sequence of objectives that one team tries to achieve, while the other team tries to stop them. It's certainly piqued my interest, and after a bit more practise I'll give it a try online so I can spend even more time looking at the "17 seconds to respawn" screen.
Friday, 14 September 2007
Wednesday, 12 September 2007
She said, "You been gone." I said, "That's only natural."
This MMOG business is unnatural, y'know. I mean, apart than all those demons and magic stuff. And aliens. And superpowered beings. And physics-defying weaponry. And grown men pretending to be lithe elf chyqs, or pretending to be lithe women pretending to be lithe elf chyqs pretending to like other lithe elf chyqs played by grown men pretending to be lithe women (who like girls who like boys who look like a girlfriend that I had in February of last year). No, that stuff is all fine, the unnatural bit is they expect you to keep playing them.
"Normal" games, you play 'em, you finish 'em, you move on, like books, or films. Now the Law of Imperfect Analogy starts kicking in somewhere around here, wherein you say "you can't *directly* compare games to books, and anyway, playing an MMO would just be like reading a series of books by the same author", and then I'll say, "only if that author totally recycled the same formulaic plot in every book", and you'll say "Dan Brown" (and we'd laugh uproariously) "besides which you're ignoring the investment in your own character in MMOs", and I'll say "OK, in that case, Choose Your Own Adventure books", and then you say "I haven't read one of those since they were given away with Weetabix", and then we're in a discussion about breakfast cereal.
But the basic point is: aren't Kellogs Variety Packs great? Especially mixing two different boxes together (which also gets around the problem of being left with cornflakes at the end). No, wait... the basic point is: the subscription model of MMOs is quite different from most other forms of entertainment. There's no incentive for the author of a book to keep you reading it as long as possible, or for a film to keep you in the cinema forever (though the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels seem to think there is, even without an intermission to boost ice cream sales). MMOGs, obviously, want to keep you playing, hence timesinks, "the grind" and related fun and games (though obviously the rest of the game needs to be enough fun to keep you going. Or sufficiently addictive, at least.) I'm not sure the $15/month all-or-nothing subscription is necessarily the One True Way for MMOGs. Course, a single payment alternative isn't automatically better; once you've paid for a "normal" game, as long as it isn't so disastrously rubbish that you storm around to the developers and demand a refund in person, they've got your money and don't really care how much you enjoy it. OK, they'll want good reviews so people buy the game in the first place and want expansion packs or a sequel, but why bother giving the user 500 hours of the most exquisite gameplay ever devised, when you could give 'em 30 hours of adequate fun, 10 more hours in a more-of-the-same expansion pack, then a bit of a shonky sequel with a few re-skinned elements.
From careful, in depth research (OK, vaguely scanning down rss feeds at high speed, if we're being entirely honest), there are other payment models brewing or already here; free basic play with deluxe paid-for bonuses (like Dungeon Runners), microtransactions, RMT (which might all be the same thing), and I think that's a Good Thing(tm), variety (packs) being the spice of life and all.
"Normal" games, you play 'em, you finish 'em, you move on, like books, or films. Now the Law of Imperfect Analogy starts kicking in somewhere around here, wherein you say "you can't *directly* compare games to books, and anyway, playing an MMO would just be like reading a series of books by the same author", and then I'll say, "only if that author totally recycled the same formulaic plot in every book", and you'll say "Dan Brown" (and we'd laugh uproariously) "besides which you're ignoring the investment in your own character in MMOs", and I'll say "OK, in that case, Choose Your Own Adventure books", and then you say "I haven't read one of those since they were given away with Weetabix", and then we're in a discussion about breakfast cereal.
But the basic point is: aren't Kellogs Variety Packs great? Especially mixing two different boxes together (which also gets around the problem of being left with cornflakes at the end). No, wait... the basic point is: the subscription model of MMOs is quite different from most other forms of entertainment. There's no incentive for the author of a book to keep you reading it as long as possible, or for a film to keep you in the cinema forever (though the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels seem to think there is, even without an intermission to boost ice cream sales). MMOGs, obviously, want to keep you playing, hence timesinks, "the grind" and related fun and games (though obviously the rest of the game needs to be enough fun to keep you going. Or sufficiently addictive, at least.) I'm not sure the $15/month all-or-nothing subscription is necessarily the One True Way for MMOGs. Course, a single payment alternative isn't automatically better; once you've paid for a "normal" game, as long as it isn't so disastrously rubbish that you storm around to the developers and demand a refund in person, they've got your money and don't really care how much you enjoy it. OK, they'll want good reviews so people buy the game in the first place and want expansion packs or a sequel, but why bother giving the user 500 hours of the most exquisite gameplay ever devised, when you could give 'em 30 hours of adequate fun, 10 more hours in a more-of-the-same expansion pack, then a bit of a shonky sequel with a few re-skinned elements.
From careful, in depth research (OK, vaguely scanning down rss feeds at high speed, if we're being entirely honest), there are other payment models brewing or already here; free basic play with deluxe paid-for bonuses (like Dungeon Runners), microtransactions, RMT (which might all be the same thing), and I think that's a Good Thing(tm), variety (packs) being the spice of life and all.
Monday, 10 September 2007
Rest for the wicked
I've been having a bit of a rest from MMOs for the last month or so. When not on holiday, I've been playing Bioshock, Medieval II: Total War and Wii Sports. I fired up the Tabula Rasa beta, and it looks lovely. All very polished, smooth, great graphics, fast paced rootin' tootin' gunslinging action, got up to level three or four or something, and... just couldn't muster any enthusiasm really. As the quote goes, "Sign me up for ennui. Or not. Whatever."
Hopefully by taking a break, I'll be able to return, renewed and refreshed, for something like Pirates of the Burning Sea or Warhammer: Age of Reckoning. In the meantime, the folly of over-specificness in blog naming has become somewhat apparent, but never mind eh?
Hopefully by taking a break, I'll be able to return, renewed and refreshed, for something like Pirates of the Burning Sea or Warhammer: Age of Reckoning. In the meantime, the folly of over-specificness in blog naming has become somewhat apparent, but never mind eh?
Friday, 7 September 2007
I've already ripped out the phones, honey
Back when Apple announced the iPhone, I made a post lamenting it's phone-ness, presuming this would lead to major contract requirements or a very high price. What I was hoping for was "a 'super iPod', with a large touchscreen interface, which maybe happens to make phone calls too..." Substitute "have WiFi" for "make phone calls" (which is more desirable, dunno why I didn't put that in at the time), and whaddayaknow... it's the recently announced iPod Touch, and £200 for the 8Gb model isn't a bad price. It remains to be seen if my assumption about iPhone pricing is borne out, as it hasn't even made it to the UK yet, but I wouldn't be surprised to see the 8Gb iPhone at the same price as a 16Gb iPod Touch if you get it *with* a 12 or 24 month contract, and a good £100+ more without.
8 or 16Gb isn't enough to replace my 60Gb iPod for playing music just yet (though to think, there was a time when a 20Gb Zen Jukebox seemed to offer boundless capacity), but with that touch screen and WiFi browsing, it could well replace my current PDA... I think... maybe... It's got the calendar and contacts; WiFi is a big plus, though the lack of Bluetooth for connecting up to a phone in areas with no WiFi is a shame. I don't use my PDA for an awful lot else; ebook reading (sounds like a people are finding a few ways to do that on the iPhone, if not really ideal at the moment), synching web content for offline reading, jotting a few notes etc.
The iPod Touch announcement came at a particularly opportune time, as I was on the verge of getting (or at least thinking quite hard about being on the verge of getting) a Nokia N800 "internet tablet". Strangely for Nokia it's not a phone, but offers WiFi and Bluetooth for connectivity on a Linux-based platform. In many ways, it's technically superior to the iPod Touch, with a higher resolution screen, 2 SD card slots, Bluetooth, and a decent range of open source software. But... with a 4Gb slickly-interfaced iPod Touch being £50 less (the N800 only has 256Mb built in, though high capacity SD cards are pretty cheap), it doesn't look nearly so attractive. Having a range of software available is all well and good, but I suspect much like the vast array of PalmOS software out there, I'd end up installing a few bits and pieces, going "hey, that's cool, I can use VNC", then never actually firing the application up again after that.
I've still not come to a firm decision one way or the other, but unless the iPod Touch has some major downsides, it could well be my next PDA (that isn't a PDA, obviously). It would probably be sensible to wait for a second or third generation, to see what sort of hardware enhancements and software support it gets, but heck, where's the fun in that?
Then again, after reading this interesting iPod Touch piece over on The Register, I noticed this review of the Archos 605 WiFi media player, with touchscreen... And then there's those Windows smartphones with slideout QWERTY keyboards... and touchscreen GPS devices that play MP3s... and...
8 or 16Gb isn't enough to replace my 60Gb iPod for playing music just yet (though to think, there was a time when a 20Gb Zen Jukebox seemed to offer boundless capacity), but with that touch screen and WiFi browsing, it could well replace my current PDA... I think... maybe... It's got the calendar and contacts; WiFi is a big plus, though the lack of Bluetooth for connecting up to a phone in areas with no WiFi is a shame. I don't use my PDA for an awful lot else; ebook reading (sounds like a people are finding a few ways to do that on the iPhone, if not really ideal at the moment), synching web content for offline reading, jotting a few notes etc.
The iPod Touch announcement came at a particularly opportune time, as I was on the verge of getting (or at least thinking quite hard about being on the verge of getting) a Nokia N800 "internet tablet". Strangely for Nokia it's not a phone, but offers WiFi and Bluetooth for connectivity on a Linux-based platform. In many ways, it's technically superior to the iPod Touch, with a higher resolution screen, 2 SD card slots, Bluetooth, and a decent range of open source software. But... with a 4Gb slickly-interfaced iPod Touch being £50 less (the N800 only has 256Mb built in, though high capacity SD cards are pretty cheap), it doesn't look nearly so attractive. Having a range of software available is all well and good, but I suspect much like the vast array of PalmOS software out there, I'd end up installing a few bits and pieces, going "hey, that's cool, I can use VNC", then never actually firing the application up again after that.
I've still not come to a firm decision one way or the other, but unless the iPod Touch has some major downsides, it could well be my next PDA (that isn't a PDA, obviously). It would probably be sensible to wait for a second or third generation, to see what sort of hardware enhancements and software support it gets, but heck, where's the fun in that?
Then again, after reading this interesting iPod Touch piece over on The Register, I noticed this review of the Archos 605 WiFi media player, with touchscreen... And then there's those Windows smartphones with slideout QWERTY keyboards... and touchscreen GPS devices that play MP3s... and...
Wednesday, 5 September 2007
If I Had A Photograph Of You
One feature of Bioshock is its research camera, which does exactly what it says on the tin. At least, it would if it came in a tin, I think I just found it on the floor somewhere; anyway, it's a camera, that you use to research the enemies you encounter. Hence the name. The natural, and sane, way of using it is to sneak around, hoping to catch some nice shots of Splicers in their natural habitat much like David Attenborough (were David Attenborough to be crawling around an undersea base toting various weapons and genetic modifications) (and were he to actually be a photographer, rather than wildlife presenter, but I couldn't think of a suitably well known wildlife photographer offhand) (so maybe more like David Attenborough's cameraman) (only with a still camera, rather than film) (which rather obviates the point of David Attenborough in the first place... I mean, just him standing in the foreground of photos pointing at stuff, not so much use really.) (Unless maybe you had some kind of audio recording to play along at the same time...) (An audio recording of David Attenborough talking about the photo, that is, an audio recording of Harry "The Hipster" Gibson singing "Who Put The Benzedrine In Mrs Murphy's Ovaltine" wouldn't be so appropriate).
What the hell was I talking about?
Oh yeah. The sane use of the camera, then, is to sneak around, snap your photos with a telephoto lens; you wouldn't want to alert those nasty old Splicers, after all. When doing so, I can't help but provide a voice-over, in suitably hushed whisper...
"And here we see the Leadhead Splicer, roaming the corridors..." *snap* "... notice the mad, staring eyes, and of course the pistol."
So. That's all well and good. However, the resulting photos are usually average at best, so you need lots of them to get the research bonuses. Much better for research purposes are nice, big close-ups. And better still, "action shots", offering a further bonus. Of course, the type of action they're talking about is combat (at least, I'm pretty sure that's the main type of action. I've never found a pair of Splicers getting down to some... errr... "Splicing" to see if that counts as an "action shot"). This leads to an interesting technique I like to call the Combat Paparazzi, involving sprinting towards your target yelling "That's it! Yeah, come on, swing that wrench at me, oh yeah, that's lovely, yeah, bit more pistol now? Come on, just a bit of pistol, that's beautiful, perfect, you're a natural."
Then you swap the camera for a shotgun, and shoot 'em in the head before they kill you.
Then take a photograph of the corpse (there's a penalty for dead targets, but hey, research is research...)
What the hell was I talking about?
Oh yeah. The sane use of the camera, then, is to sneak around, snap your photos with a telephoto lens; you wouldn't want to alert those nasty old Splicers, after all. When doing so, I can't help but provide a voice-over, in suitably hushed whisper...
"And here we see the Leadhead Splicer, roaming the corridors..." *snap* "... notice the mad, staring eyes, and of course the pistol."
So. That's all well and good. However, the resulting photos are usually average at best, so you need lots of them to get the research bonuses. Much better for research purposes are nice, big close-ups. And better still, "action shots", offering a further bonus. Of course, the type of action they're talking about is combat (at least, I'm pretty sure that's the main type of action. I've never found a pair of Splicers getting down to some... errr... "Splicing" to see if that counts as an "action shot"). This leads to an interesting technique I like to call the Combat Paparazzi, involving sprinting towards your target yelling "That's it! Yeah, come on, swing that wrench at me, oh yeah, that's lovely, yeah, bit more pistol now? Come on, just a bit of pistol, that's beautiful, perfect, you're a natural."
Then you swap the camera for a shotgun, and shoot 'em in the head before they kill you.
Then take a photograph of the corpse (there's a penalty for dead targets, but hey, research is research...)
Monday, 3 September 2007
Dada Online
Inspired by a recent News Brief from The Onion, "Hard To Tell If Wikipedia Entry On Dada Has Been Vandalized Or Not", I had a great idea for Dada Online, a bizarre world full of nonsensical, incoherent images, text and behaviours, where nothing has any meaning.
Then I remembered someone's done Second Life already. *badum-tish*
(Subsitute an MMO of choice if you prefer in there, it's a general observation on the genre, don't set the essay-commenting Second Lifers on me!)
Then I remembered someone's done Second Life already. *badum-tish*
(Subsitute an MMO of choice if you prefer in there, it's a general observation on the genre, don't set the essay-commenting Second Lifers on me!)
Sunday, 2 September 2007
Back once again
So! Holidays are over, PC's fixed, it's back to work, gaming and blogging. ALL AT THE SAME TIME!!1! Or possibly not.
Actually, it looks like work might be going a bit crazy for a while, which might well cut back on time for the other two, but we'll see how it goes. In the meantime, gaming-wise, I've been playing rather a lot of Bioshock the past couple of days. I'd actually got it before heading off on the most recent holiday, but rather irritatingly it totally failed to start with a good old "Windows has encountered a problem..." type message before anything had even loaded. A quick poke around the tech support forums, installation of the latest beta nVidia drivers, installation of some drivers for the new dual-core processor... still nothing. Then another thread suggested there might be a conflict with GOM Player, so I uninstalled that, and away it went, Bioshocktastic!
It's an amazing game, structurally very similar to the System Shock games (unsurprisingly), with you as the protagonist dropped into a utopia-turned-nightmare, guided by audio transmissions, fighting twisted medical experiments. The atmosphere is incredible, particularly the sound, haunting period music echoing around the corridors, splicer's deranged mutterings... just incredible.
Actually, it looks like work might be going a bit crazy for a while, which might well cut back on time for the other two, but we'll see how it goes. In the meantime, gaming-wise, I've been playing rather a lot of Bioshock the past couple of days. I'd actually got it before heading off on the most recent holiday, but rather irritatingly it totally failed to start with a good old "Windows has encountered a problem..." type message before anything had even loaded. A quick poke around the tech support forums, installation of the latest beta nVidia drivers, installation of some drivers for the new dual-core processor... still nothing. Then another thread suggested there might be a conflict with GOM Player, so I uninstalled that, and away it went, Bioshocktastic!
It's an amazing game, structurally very similar to the System Shock games (unsurprisingly), with you as the protagonist dropped into a utopia-turned-nightmare, guided by audio transmissions, fighting twisted medical experiments. The atmosphere is incredible, particularly the sound, haunting period music echoing around the corridors, splicer's deranged mutterings... just incredible.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)