weemadando's Blog

Title	Score
Painkiller: Gold Edition	8.5
Burnout Paradise	8.5
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare	9.0
The Orange Box	9.5
Glory Days 2	7.0
Kane & Lynch: Dead Men	7.0
Viva Pinata	7.5
Fight Night Round 3	8.5
Catan	7.5
Assassin's Creed	8.0

16Mar 08

My temporary blog.

I'll set up a proper website at some point. But in the meantime you can check me out at:

http://hyperboledrive.blogspot.com/

Posted Mar 16, 2008 9:04 pm PT
Category: N/A
2 Comments

5Mar 08

Losing my stripes.

Just letting everyone know that "I'm out." I appreciate that the Gamespot community is still in existence, but damned if I'm going to pay for a site which I can no longer enjoy.

Jason Ocampo was my final straw. Up until then, I'd held out some hope that Gamespot might recover from its seemingly unstoppable plummet into mediocrity and the realm of Gamespy and IGN. Sadly, it seems that I was wrong.

You see, I liked, trusted and agreed with the reviews of Gallup, Gertsmann, Navarro, Davis and Ocampo. I enjoyed them as part of the overall crew. And I don't like saying this, but I just don't enjoy the site any more. The editorial process has become suspect, the show quality has dropped significantly across the board and really, it would take a miracle to bring it back for me. Don't get me wrong, I still know Shoemaker, Thomas and Eckberg, in that I've read enough of their work to form opinions on their opinions, but it's not enough to keep my attached to pay content here. I don't even use the video features that much any more and I've very rarely downloaded a gameguide from Gamespot rather than the much more detailed "free" content at GameFAQs.

Sadly Gamespot, it's a case of too much haemorrhaging of the important and valued staff members in way too short a time. I haven't been a subscriber that long, it's true - but I will be one more who is cutting my time short here.

Should I find a new place to publish my writings, I'll post the link. But that's it for me on the pay side of things. I hope you all enjoyed the show and thank you so much for your support and occassional hate for my opinions.

Posted Mar 5, 2008 9:07 pm PT
Category: Opinion
10 Comments

3Mar 08

Money spinning or: EA-synchronous play

Again, as I must always remind people, hyperbole in operating in this area.

I've been catching up on my GDC and DICE viewing of late and recently watched Peter Molyneaux's Fable 2 presentation. He opened with an interesting little mini-game which will be sold through XBLA and from which you can transfer winnings to your in game character.

Now, it could be that I'm firmly entrenched in the "embittered and cynical" camp but the first thing that came into my head was the following.

"EA is going to make a ****ing mint out of this."

Don't get me wrong, I think that asynchronous play has some seriously cool potential, but at the same time I can't help but think of all of the "this should have been in the goddamn game" moments that we will be having over the next few years as more and more studios start fracturing their games into yet more levels of micro-transaction hell.

For example, I can see EA pulling the roster editing, trading and other franchise aspects out of Madden, NHL et al and putting that up on XBLA as something for asynchronous play. After all - that's not part of the core game experience and why should everyone who buys the game be forced to pay for something that isn't going to be used by them?

Nevermind that the game would remain at the $60 price-point with this content stripped out and that you'd have to buy it later for some strange amount of points that may or may not be $5 or $50 because no one can tell what a points amount is in real money. And what comes after that? We've been waiting for the "current rosters as pay-DLC" shoe to drop. I can't wait until things like the mini-camp games turn up as asynchronous options too. What about player creation and editing? Surely people won't miss that and would be willing to pay 500 points to get that feature back in the game?

Some of these ideas aren't actually terrible. If EA could guarantee me that they could get a Franchise Mode working on a Zune with asynchronous play, so that I could spent time editing rosters, making trades and setting seating prices at times when I'm not at my 360, then that would be awesome and a reason for me to a) get a Zune and b) pay that little more. Why? Because it would mean that when I did get the time to sit down at a 360 I could actually just play the games and not have to worry about losing gaming time to the Franchise bits.

But that won't happen. What will happen with this asynchronous play is that suddenly we'll be faced with a barrage of new money-spinning rubbish which will almost always result in a scream of: "Why wasn't this in the game to start with?"

Peter Molyneaux's Fable 2 gambling thing is quite cool and if released at a reasonable price could be something that I'd seriously consider getting. But I just get the feeling that asynchronous play will just become another revenue-generating tool for publishers and developers. I can only hope that Microsoft is going to have stringent controls on what they allow to be released with an asynchronous component, or that developers ensure that the total cost of a gutted game + guts sold seperately never exceeds the price for the full game that they should have released in the first place.

But we know that both those things will never happen.

Posted Mar 3, 2008 9:06 pm PT
Category: Games
4 Comments

18Feb 08

PC gaming - the rose with a thousand thorns.

As hard as this statement will be for many readers to accept, the PC is the ultimate gaming platform. It allows for the widest variety of controllers customisations and configurations thereof to ensure that the input methods and UI are appropriate to the game and the person playing it. There is an expanse of games and genres which put every other platform to shame. In terms of multiplayer, I have yet to see any console title introduce the kind of comprehensive and functional server browsing features as those which PC has had since the late 1990s. And in terms of pure, unadultered power - nothing, absolutely nothing on the console side can come close.

But for all this, there is a huge disadvantage to the PC. It is probably the single most fractured market in the world. People worry about some XBox360s lacking a HDD, or certain PS3s not having backwards compatibility, this is nothing compared to the incomprehensibly large number of potential configurations that exist for PCs in the world. And developer's must try to ensure that their games work on a large a cross section of these as possible. Within reason of course.

There's no point in getting Bioware to ensure that Mass Effect for PC has Windows ME support. No point in having Introversion spend some of their precious time trying to sort out compatibility issues with an OEM, no name, no brand USB soundcard that perhaps 0.01% of the gaming community in Malawi have. There's no hope in Crytek even trying to get Crysis to run on an S3 Virge.

But for all the issues that developers face, there is one that is more important in that it is the bane of every single last PC gamer: "Can my box handle this?"

You go to the store and buy an console and you are guaranteed that any game which comes out for that console will run on it, even if the game is a total dog, at least you know that the dog will run. There are no such guarantees for a PC owner.

The game might have an issue with your drivers for any number of devices, with your OS or service pack level, with a particular piece of hardware or another piece of software. But the issue for many games (myself included), which rises above all of these quibbles are the lies (minimum spec), damned lies (recommended spec) and statistics (both) which constitute the system requirements. Such bald-faced falsehoods if uttered in any civilised setting would usually result in some form of criminal charge, or at the very least a civil suit. But somehow, having a set of meaningless numbers and words hidden on the bottom of the box has more credibility than the developers and publishers simply admitting: "We have no goddamn idea what this will run on, although having a card which supports SM3.0 is essential. Until we patch it that is."

People wonder why piracy is such an enormous issue for the PC. In my humble opinion (humble, heh - this is on the Soapbox). It's because people are unwilling to drop money on a game which they have *zero* guarantee of working on their system. And should it not work? Well, lets just say that most game retailers have a chronic aversion to accepting returns on PC games. You can't trade them in. Or if you've purchased through an online store or digital distribution channel, then even the already slim chance of a return is pretty much gone.

And don't for a minute think that demos are an acceptable substitute. The number of demos which come out and bear no resemblance at all to the final product in terms of quality are legion. The greatest offender in my mind was Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. This had one of the most brightly polished demos I have ever played. It ran like a dream on my PC of the time and the gameplay was so smooth that a gecko wouldn't have been able to clamber up its perfectly shaped learning curve. Yet, the final product ran like an arthritic amputee sloth. It appears that they'd spent all their time and money on making a good demo and then failed to include any of the graphics optimisations or performance tweaks in the final product. Then, when they finally started patching it, I was one of the lucky ones for whom the patches managed to completely destroy the game, leaving me unable to even load the menu screen. Even following an upgrade Dark Messiah of Might and Magic continues to be the bane of my system - at least I can play it now, for a few short minutes, before my system inexplicably shorts itself out, not just rebooting, but turning itself off, along with the power to whatever section of my home it happens to be plugged in to. I'd be worried, except it is the only game that has ever done that, and to be quite fair, I wouldn't really expect anything less from it. Maybe after my next upgrade, it will be able to turn my monitor into bridge to the hell dimensions. Again, welcome to the wonderful world of the PC.

So lets move on and look at that great bugbear of PC gaming at the moment: Crysis. A game which at every level appears to be a system hog beyond reproach. The developers continually state that it isn't (and to be fair, they have proved this point), but people are unwilling to risk their hard-earned on something which they aren't sure will run on their PC. As demonstrated by the rampant piracy of this game versus its (to be honest) crap sales. Have no doubt that I will buy Crysis. But by the time I have a system that can do it justice it will be in the "EA budget" range.

And that's the big problem with Crysis - most gamers have a PC that can run it. But they don't want to "make do" with the low-end graphics options that they'd have to deal with. I have been looking at movies and screenshots of it at insane resolutions, and even played it for a few minutes on a system which I may be able to afford if I spent the better part of six months pay on it. So, suddenly playing a game that looks like 2004 due to my system being rubbish just wouldn't be the same. When the time comes, Crysis will take the place of Far Cry in my line-up of Far Cry, Doom 3, Lock On: Modern Air Combat and Half Life 2: The Lost Coast in the list of games that I keep on hand just to see how well my upgrades are treating me.

On another front in the constant battle between PC gamers and their systems, I'm struggling with Call of Duty 4 at the moment. Following Activision's outrageous pricing adjustments on Steam, I decided to purchase the box copy of the game (prior to discovering that those of us in Australia can still get it for the actual price via the WarCry digital store). However, my DVD drive fails to read the full disc. I can install the game by copying the game folder to my HDD, but a full install eludes me. And even with the folder copying - some files remain inaccessible. It's all enough to make me download an ISO just so I can install the damn thing properly. And yes, I exchanged the disc, just in case that was the issue. So, because of this issue with my DVD drive, I cannot complete the campaign, at least not until I upgrade.

And here is where the PC really falls down, upgrading. In the relentless arms race between NVIDIA and ATI, Intel and AMD and so many other groups all with their own concepts and designs, the humble gamer is left sitting by the side of the road, watching advancements rocket past at breakneck speed.

How hard was it for you to justify the purchase of your 360 or PS3? Now, imagine for a moment that you take the cost of both of those, put them together and there you have a pricepoint for a reasonable gaming PC. If you want a fairly powerful one, add in a Wii and another 360. But the issue is that in commiting to that purchase, you are commiting yourself to something which is outdated the moment you buy it. In the graphics card and CPU stakes we're seeing generational upgrades every 12 months at most and multiple iterations and updates within that single generation.

Hence, every PC owner becomes a master procrastinator. They'll always upgrade when the next iteration hits the shelves. But the problem is, that by the time that new iteration arrives, the test benchmarks for the next one have already been released. And they're better.

For those of you without experience in this brutal climb up a greased ladder with missing rungs, imagine that you are looking forward to buying the PS3. But then, just days before the launch of the PS3, Sony announces the PS3.1 and says it will be here in three months and will be better in every goddamn way than what's just about to hit shelves now. And then of course, there's the leaks about the PS4 which will be out at the start of next year and will blow away even the PS3.8GTI-SS500 which will have been released by then.

That's the PC experience. So, you say to yourself: "why spend the money now, when I can save up a bit more and get the newest thing in a few months time, after all - I'm already well behind the curve, a few more months won't hurt." But as always, those few months pass and suddenly you delay again because a new CPU or MoBo or GFX card is due later.

It's like being on of those poor evil legionnaires from God of War trying to climb a ladder with Kratos ahead of you. Every time you start to catch up he grabs you by the scruff of your neck and slams you face first into the wall over and over and over until he tosses you, bleeding and broken down to the bottom, where you can start your climb all over again.

Now, this all sounds like a bit of a whinge. And it is, and it is not over yet. I have one major point left to get to.

Many (not all) PC developers are cash-strapped or lazy or both. They can't afford to spend time or effort, or worse can't be bothered optimising and tweaking, so they just release a product to market that will only run properly on the most monstrous of computers. Thankfully, most games worth playing on PC have had a lot of effort go into their optimisation. But the problem is that so many haven't. They get tested for 30 seconds on an Alienware-type beast provided by some company in order to get a 10 second splash screen at the start of the game. And the developers and publishers, based on the fact it works on an dual CPU octo-core, quad SLI system with more gigabytes of DDR3 RAM than most people have in HDD space then it's deemed to "be in releasable condition" and off to the printers it goes.

Then, of course, the game eventually gets about a 5000:1 ratio of pirated to legitimate copies, because no one who owns a PC that can run it actually has any money to buy games with following their constant upgrades and a power bill which rivals a partical accelerator's because their PC draws enough juice to brown out several city blocks. Anyone who you play with online is going to be cheating in some way, due to the innumerable hacking and "adjustment" options open to them. And then, just when you think that you are getting somewhere in the game a patch will be released, which once installed will remove all your savegames and if you are really lucky, format your HDD.

Now, with all of this in mind, most people would ask: "why bother with the PC?"

And I return to my original point. Because it is the best gaming platform that you can get. And despite all the downsides, the gaming experience always wins out.

P.S. And also because the majority of PC gamers realise that just because a game has voice chat, screeching homophobic, racist insults in their best pre-pubescent tones is not what they should do with it.

P.P.S. As for that bit about DMoMM shorting out my PC and breaking circuits in my house. It's 100% true. It has done it 3 times now. After testing several other Source Engine games and mods as well as many other games and programs, I can confirm that it is indeed that game which is causing the problem.

Posted Feb 18, 2008 7:11 pm PT
Category: Editorial
195 Comments

16Feb 08

Certain inherent dangers...

If you are yet to, you should really play Audiosurf which has recently been released via Steam.

The big problem is that this game taunts you. With XBox Live at least you have to logon and actively look up lists to see if your top score has been beaten. Audiosurf does this for you, by sending you a mocking e-mail. Just see the attached e-mail below.

-=-=-

Audiosurf scoreboard alert - Dethroned!

You used to have the worldwide best score for: mighty wings by cheap trick

Now the Audiosurf player 'alex1893' has beaten you. Get back in the game and reclaim the top spot!

View High Scores for mighty wings by cheap trick

-=-=-

Ignore for a moment that I held a record for "Mighty Wings" (what - you got a problem with that!), how else are you meant to react to such taunts other than to immediately hop back into the game and try and get your record back.

Posted Feb 16, 2008 3:24 pm PT
Category: Games
4 Comments

10Feb 08

An amendment.

In a previous blog post I'd complained that Valve forgot to make it [Halflife Episodes 1 and 2] awesome.

I hereby retract that statement.

They merely failed to make all but the previously mentioned setpiece in Ep1 and "Under The Radar" onwards in Ep2 awesome. Lets hope that by Ep3 they remember to make it ALL awesome.

That said, the final battles in Ep2 are really something else. I didn't see that coming. The entire premise of the final fight. The scope of it and the style. Well, I could ramble, but I won't.

I'll sum up this way. It took me ~a month to play through the first 2-3 hours of Episode 2 (the Antlion and Zombies + ooze BS). Meanwhile, once I got past that point I couldn't stop playing until it was over. MAKE THE WHOLE GAME THAT WAY IN THE FUTURE.

Posted Feb 10, 2008 12:49 am PT
Category: Games
7 Comments

7Feb 08

A great game is a many legged thing.

In my previous post I copped a lot of criticism for saying that just because something was simple, it wasn't necessarily dumb. So I decided to delve into gaming history and pull out some examples of games with amazingly simple controls which were anything but "easy" or "dumb".

But then I got distracted by a cockroach.

How many gamers here have actually played the game Bad Mojo, or the "Redux" version which I am now enjoying? Not many I bet. I remember overlooking it myself back in 1996 and indeed, until the Redux edition was released and I found it more to my tastes. It was a critics darling, but never sold well. Let's face it, the box art wasn't especially appealing and the actual concept sounds pretty damn odd.

For those not in the know, you can read the 1996 review of the game. You play as a cockroach trying to regain your humanity following an odd and magical event. The game opens with some really quite well produced and acted FMV, which continues to develop the really quite intricate and by turns sad, intriguing and heart-warming story throughout the game.

But in this game you had but 4 controls. No "interact" button, no jump button, no action button, no fire button or anything like that. You could simply crawl forward or back and turn left or right.

And I got to thinking - could a game like this get made today?

We see the effects of the commercialisation of the game industry everywhere - from the cookie-cutter approach to design, through to the issues with publishers throwing a whammy whenever someone tells them the truth (more on that later).

So how would a game with a really different concept, some genuinely creepy design and a mature story get published today? It may turn up on PSN or XBLA - but this is a bit more high concept and not nearly as family friendly as Flow or Undertow. Valve would almost certainly host it on Steam for the PC - but what about getting the money to develop in the first place?

The issues involved with obtaining financing for games have been well documented by people more informed than I, but I cannot help but imagine a modern version of Bad Mojo ending up being financed by JoWood who then demand that it be an MMO featuring a variety of insects armed with guns fighting Nazi Zombie Bugbears in Afghanistan. And then cancelling it a few weeks prior to release.

A game about a cockroach crawling around a dingy apartment block certainly is never going to knock Call of Duty 4 of the best seller list, no matter how good the reviews are. But if you have the chance to get a copy of Bad Mojo - do so, and play it. It is one of the oft-overlooked experiences of a time when games could afford to innovate.

And finally, in the wake of yet another departure from Gamespot (rats, sinking and ship are three words that come to mind) and Ubisoft's temper tantrum at Ziff Davis media I need to get something off my chest.

Attention: Activision, EA, Eidos, Ubisoft et al.

Re: Your BS

Turns out that occassionally you make shoddy games. Sometimes even bad games. And it doesn't matter how much money you throw at marketing, at least some people are going to be willing to call it like it is. So don't shoot the kid who has the balls to say: "The Emperor is naked!", instead take that marketing money and shove it back into development and make sure that your games don't suck.

In conclusion: Don't be petulant children.

Yours sincerely,

The world.

Posted Feb 7, 2008 3:13 pm PT
Category: Editorial
55 Comments

22Jan 08

Harder is not better.

It's a frequest criticism in the gaming press, blogs and forums that Assassin's Creed was "too easy". "You only ever have to use one button" is the most common issue raised with the game.

Is there a problem with distilling gameplay to a nice simple, level? It's not like you just have to press the button and you automatically win. It just means that you aren't struggling with hundreds of combinations that you need to remember to successfully play the game.

Are people seriously contending that the game would have been better had it required you to use all the buttons, bumpers, triggers, the d-pad and the sticks in combination for combat? I think that reducing it to the "one button" system made it elegant. It was refined, it was simple, but it was still difficult to master.

Another complaint about Assassin's Creed and its "simple design" is that it made the free-running too easy. Why not? Can you imagine how infuriatingly frustrating that game would be if it had made the free-running hard?

The entire point of the game was to allow the player to be a very, very dangerous man. And it was effortless to do. Which left you as the player then able to think about things like: "How do I make this look awesome?" rather than throwing your controller through your TV after you fell to your death after messing up a hand-contorting button combo to run across some roof-tops.

Being an avid PC gamer I certainly can't claim to be innocent of the occassional "They've dumbed it down!" remark. But in the case of Assassin's Creed it wasn't dumbed down. It was made better. No measure of complexity was lost - instead, the developers chose to not add a level of complexity where it wasn't needed.

As much as I will get flak for saying this (and I don't want to have to say it), I would rate Assassin's Creed well and truly above Ninja Gaiden. Why? Because Assassin's Creed was fun to play. Ninja Gaiden was an excercise is frustration. I'm sure that it would be rewarding if you could spend ten hours learning to play it.

In fact, most people who extoll it's virtues insist that you just neeed to give it time and you'll learn to play it well. In those ten hours I could have finished Assassin's Creed again and be having a great time doing it. I could have played through Call of Duty 4. I could have had a great time in any number of other games.

I just hope that more developers and more importantly, the gaming community realise that hard for the sake of hard is stupid. People play games for fun, not frustration.

Posted Jan 22, 2008 8:54 pm PT
Category: Editorial
130 Comments

17Jan 08

Why do Valve forget to make it awesome?

One of the final set pieces in Episode 1 is a shining bit of corn husk is an otherwise dull and smelly pile of poop. Because they finally remember the tone of HL2 - you're the goddamn Free Man. The legend. The one who everyone is willing to take up arms and follow. Not the person who spends all their time shifting crates with a gravity gun, or turning wheels to make doors slowly open. You're Gordon Freeman, the man who is here to save the world. So one of the final set pieces where you are having to shepherd groups of civilians to safety from the remaining Combine bent on exterminating them is remarkable. The Source engine shines - you see the look of recognition, adoration and maybe even a little hope on the people's faces as Barney brings them out to you in groups to escort. You feel bad when you lose one. The game which had previously been three hours of tedious zombie bashing suddenly becomes something else entirely.

So what do they do in Episode 2? Aside from a really impressive opening sequence (I will not spoil, I will not spoil - but DAMN that is cold). They decide - you know what? People complained about having to fight endless swarms of zombies in Episode 1, so we'll put them in a series of cut-and-paste tunnels fighting Ant Lions for more than an hour. And we'll even add some even more irritating Ant Lion opponents who just make the players insanely angry. Nevermind that you get a Vortigaunt companion who seems to be trying to imitate Bob Marley with his speech patterns, I'm bored! I know that my cause is noble and all, but damnit! Let me do something heroic that doesn't involve more mindless tunnel crawling.

I hear that once I hit the surface it all turns awesome again, but seriously - physics based puzzles with a "comedic edge" (ie NPCs commenting on how its "always with the couterweights" etc) aren't fun. They're boring. If you want to mix it up a bit look at CoD4. Give Gordon an AC-130 for a while or something. Not another goddamn "wait for a slowly descending lift in a dark room filled with constantly spawning zombies/antlions" segment.

Posted Jan 17, 2008 8:30 pm PT
Category: Games
13 Comments

14Jan 08

FInished it yet?

Holy crap.

Some time ago I seem to recall talking about how long it had been since I actually finished a game. Yet recently I have completed Splinter Cell: Double Agent, Rainbow 6: Vegas, Assassin's Creed, Portal, Episode 1 (yes, 1) and am well on my way to finishing Call of Duty 4.

I don't know what happened, except maybe I finally got motivated and decided to finish lots of games. Maybe the games were a lot better and I felt compelled to finish them.

Anyhow. Just thought I should mention that I'm actually getting somewhere. Sure, it doesn't make me a gaming god or anything, but it's pretty interesting to actually get around to doing all that stuff.

Posted Jan 14, 2008 11:14 pm PT
Category: N/A
9 Comments

26Dec 07

...I'll take the credit.

Looking on the Ubisoft website I can't help but notice that Rainbow 6: Vegas 2 is updating its "Persistant Elite Creation" (PEC) system. So now, what you do in the singleplayer (presumably terrorist hunts and the campaign) will also contribute to your score.

Thank god for that. As I'm still only on 3 out of 5 bars towards my first rank in R6: Vegas despite having played several hours online in the past weeks. Again, despite playing for several hours in ranked and unranked co-op games, my sole advancement came from a single round of adversarial in a ranked server. Hurrah. Maybe by 2012 I'll be able to reach Private C lass (html errors!) be able to wear something that doesn't make me look like a member of the Village People with some cheap styrofoam shoulderpads.

My rant of several months ago probably had nothing to do with this decision being made, but damned if I won't try and steal some of the glory.

And before I get too much hate. Yes, I've been playing Kane & Lynch. And rather liking it. But there'll be much more on that in a future blog.

Posted Dec 26, 2007 11:11 pm PT
Category: N/A
6 Comments

26Dec 07

The blame game.

After having to see yet another headline talking about "Game blamed for death", I could take solace in that at least they chose the correct terminology. The game wasn't the cause of, or linked to, or responsible for the death. No, it was merely blamed for the death.

Lets get a few things straight - do kids imitate things that they read about, see or hear? Yes. We've all done it. But in this particular case it was a pair aged 16 and 17. By the time I was 16 I was past the point of mindless apeing. I was fairly confident in my ability to distinguish between fantasy and reality. Granted, this is with the exception of two episodes - one involving a massive bacterial infection and associated crazy fever-dreams involving Deadlock (which I'd been playing in the days leading up to this hitting me) and the other involving close to eighty hours without sleep, whereupon I was lying on a couch watching Sesame Street and was convinced that I was, in fact, in Sesame Street (convinced for only so long as it took me to finally get to sleep - which was maybe another sixty seconds after this point). If this was a case of a 9 year old throwing a pair of scissors on some string at another 9 year old on a trampoline in an effort to imitate Scorpion (look at the Reader's Comments in that article) and accidentally causing some severe damage there, I'd say: "Well, it's understandable, because that is still fairly young. But why on earth were they playing this game to start with?"

But the usual "Blame the new media (theatre, books, movies, comics, rock'n'roll, TV, games) for the general decay of society" has been going on for at least as long as something new and different has been around. Just look at the Greeks and Romans (those paragons of morality and virtue) and their views on Theatre and the people who participated and attended it. Such new-fangled tomfoolery as people acting on stage was surely the reason for the general delinquency of the time and the decay in values.

More interesting are some of the studies which have been done into video games and the correlations with other behaviours. And of course the reporting on this front has been just as ridiculous. My favourite is the study which found that people who played racing games were more likely to drive dangerously in real life. Naturally this was reported by much of the media as "Games cause dangerous driving!" Notice the implication of a causal link here.

But this of course is a misinterpretation of the presented findings of the study. There is a correlation between playing racings games and driving fast. My personal take on this, is that most of the people I see buying Gran Turismo 3 for the PS2 are the same Holden Racing Team jacket-wearing bogans who are more likely to be driving their Commodore's above the speed limit just to feel the wind in their mullet. Similarly, kids who have just gotten their licence and feel the best way to drive is to try and drag race from stop light to stop light in their mother's Daihatsu Charade, will quite often be the one's who play Need For Speed.

Now, I may be completely missing the point here (after all, I haven't read the full study, just the summaries which have been posted by various news sites), so I'll elaborate down what may be a completely wrong pathway.

The study shows that people who play racing games are more likely to partake in dangerous driving in real life. Now, this is where some Venn diagrams could be handy. The demographics of gamers show a fairly clear drop off once you pass middle age. Lets face it - most grandma's haven't until recently comtemplated gaming, certainly no further than as something to get a kid on their birthday. Yet this the same demographic of people who happily drive at 40km/h in the passing lane on the highway. So, quite easily here we can see that someone who plays games (and within that demographic, someone who plays racing games) is already naturally much more likely to partake in what may be termed "dangerous driving", simply because they still have the musculature to depress an accelator.

Now this is a gross simplification of it all, but it was something that has been nagging at me a while. I could go into the whole "games taught this kid how to kill" BS that crops up regularly. Here's a hint News media - a game in all likelihood did not train that kid how to purchase, maintain and operate that firearm. There's a significant disconnect between aiming a crosshair with your mouse and coordinating your whole body to make an effective shot in real life. All that needs to be done to prove this is to look at my comparitive marksmanship in a game with fairly hefty ballistics modelling, like Operation Flashpoint vs my complete inability to consistently hit a target at >20m with a rifle in real life. Sure, given a firearms license, rifle, ammunition, a place to shoot and some training or a whole lot of solo practice I could probably get much, much better - but certainly the game isn't going to help me on that front.

In conclusion, did a game kill that child?
No.
Two morons did.
Two morons who decided to hit a child.
Two morons who decided to hit a child and didn't stop until that child had been beaten to death.

This simple fact is sadly overlooked by much of the populace who probably thought that Sub Zero and Johnny Cage used their psychic hypno-controllers to turn two normal kids into psychotic meat-puppets acting out the whims of the game. Because, that's what dem vidja games do.

Posted Dec 26, 2007 11:02 pm PT
Category: Editorial
117 Comments

3Dec 07

For any AU/NZ based Gamespotters.

Looking to organise a GRAW2 co-op campaign for this weekend (most likely Sunday) for those us who never got around to it when it came out and need a break from the current round of games.

If you are interested, send me a friend request and I'll invite you to the game on the day.

Posted Dec 3, 2007 9:16 pm PT
Category: Games
0 Comments

21Nov 07

A rip off of Antipodean proportions.

So, Activision has decided to raise the price of Call of Duty 4 on Steam to USD $88.50. But, before any Yanks cry foul, this change is only for Australia

Contemplate for a moment the concept of a game that price. Moreover - contemplate a downloadable game that price.

It is obscene. Disgraceful. A whole thesaurus could not contain enough words of distaste, bile and spite to describe my thoughts on this.

But I shall try to briefly make a point. At USD $88.50 and assuming an exchange rate of 0.87 (which is roughly the current rate), an Australian consumer on Steam will now be paying AUD $101.72 for the game. This compares to the previously charged amount of AUD $57.41 for the USD $49.95 price point.

Now, I will accept that adjustments in price based on changes in the international currency market will happen. But, the stated reason for this change was that they wished to avoid under-cutting the brick-and-mortar retailers. It strikes me, that if the Australian Dollar is on such a terrific streak that Steam pricing needs to be adjusted upwards to compensate, then surely our off-the-shelf prices need to be adjusted also?

I mean, the "double the USD price" structure which Australia has adhered to for so long doesn't really cut it anymore and I do find it hard to accept that any increase to shipping costs would have accounted for the ever-increasing profit margin for someone in the retail chain. I mean, if the previous pricing theories were applied to the new online pricepoint I'm sure that Call of Duty 4 would drop off every sales chart in the nation. Because, I can't see any consumer being willing to fork out AUD $177.00 for Call of Duty 4, even if they got a paper manual with it.

So, why haven't the prices for the brick-and-mortar stores gone down? One part of me says that it's acceptable for pricing to take longer to adjust in the physical medium, so as to not undercut previously purchased stock's value. But on the other hand, if a publisher is willing to step in and radically alter the pricing of their product in one form, then it should only be reasonable that the price adjustments take effect across all forms.

But one thing is for certain - they certainly can't make the argument that the Steam version of Call of Duty 4 is undercutting the brick-and-mortar anymore. Not when the price is more than what you'd pay for a physical copy.

As a final note, I think that this is the precise kind of thing that needs to be referred to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, as more blatant evidence of price-fixing and cartel behaviour would be hard to find.

Posted Nov 21, 2007 9:10 pm PT
Category: Editorial
56 Comments

13Nov 07

The Fat Lady sings... Poorly.

If you were to look at my Gamercard, you'd see that I'd recently finished 3 games. Rainbow 6: Vegas, Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2 and the 1989 Konami Arcade version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Two of these games had very disappointing endings after quite good gameplay. The other was pretty bad at both. Here's a hint - the bad one featured Krang.

In previous posts I've waxed lyrical (and cynical) about my issues with the premise Rainbow 6: Vegas, but the end of the game struck me as quite - and I seek a nice word or phrase here, but lets be fair and call it as it is - rubbish. I'll accept a "To Be Continued" at the end of an episode of free-to-air TV. I'll allow a "To Be Continued" in a comic. I'll even go so far as to allow a "To Be Continued" in a book.

I draw the line however, at having a $120 game not allow me to finish it.

Yes, I had my big finale, but you just had to keep on going that little further and then drop that "To Be Continued". It killed the experience. I have come to accept now that Rainbow 6 is now a balls-to-the-walls guts-and-glory shooter, rather than my very tactical, planning heavy love from the days of yore, and as such I want my experience to match that. Instead, I'm left at the end of the game feeling castrated by the outcome. My big enemy is yet to be revealed. The traitor has escaped in a completely unsatisfying way (escaping a helicopter crash into a body of water - did anyone even for a moment thing he'd actually died). And the relatively minor villain is the only one to actually get dispatched, and even then, I didn't get to do it.

So, I'm left looking at a "To Be Continued" screen and feeling like my work in this game has been for naught. Let me bask in my achievements. Play up the fact that I've saved America from the biggest terrorist attack in human history. Tell me all about how I just battled through one of the biggest police actions in history. Give me my goddamn Congressional Medal of Honor (yes, I know Rainbow is a UN force, but Logan "I have a larynx made of gravel and a chin that can split atoms" Keller is a US military officer and thus eligible). Give me a ticker tape parade and a bevy of bathing beauties. Don't give me that terrible anti-climax and the gaming equivalent of blue-balls.

Instead leave me on that great high note of just having rescued my team and stopped the missile. Sure, let me know that the traitor escaped in the closing credits, but don't end my experience on a neutral or even low point. Instead, let me have that high at end of the game - seeing that I've stopped the missile and basking in both the Nevada sunshine and my general awesomeness, then if you want a sequel, smack me back into the action hard, right off the bat, the way GRAW2 did.

And speaking of GRAW2 - that ending was total, goddamn, tripe. I'll briefly cover a list of my issues with it.

1) Apparently I need to laser designate the missile launchers to facilitate an airstrike. Yet, somehow, I've already got absolutely perfect 3d co-ordinates for them as demostrated by the floating yellow squares on my HUD. Surely this information can be relayed to the aircraft over head and preparing to drop the bombs. I can accept that they might have only had laser guided weapons on board (with that convenient EMP payload) and no designator package. But then, that leads us on to point 2.

2) The very instant I designate the target, the bomb hits. Which would indicate that the plane had already dropped the damn thing perfectly on target before I even have by designator online. Which again raises the question - why the hell am I even doing this?

3) So, after the bomb hits I'm left lying on my back with no one attempting to help me (where did my team-mates run off to anyhow?), just people already eulogising me over the Cross-Com. Fade to black as the Pavehawk comes into view. Its sort of touching, but at the same time, what was the outcome? Who were the mercenaries? What was the overall plan? Who was actually in charge? Did any of these things really get resolved?

Maybe the WGA strike will do the industry some good as we can get some cheap labour from the screenwriters needing to "get baby a new pair of boots" while still holding out on the big Hollywood studios and TV networks. I'm fairly sure that those guys know how to put a conclusion at the end of the story.

Posted Nov 13, 2007 10:05 pm PT
Category: Editorial
70 Comments

7Nov 07

Breaking down the brick and mortar.

[The Hyperbole Alert Level has been raised to Orange]

First, I can safely say that PC games are off my X-mas list, but if anyone wants to get me a high-end PC (SLI'd 8800s please) they're more than welcome. This is because my primary HDD died just a few days ago. A very, very sad day considering the amount of save games, downloaded mods, patches and tweaks, manuals, game guides, my full list of all my CD keys and everything else that was on there. Hopefully I'll be able to recover some of it, but the fact is, that the PC was on the way out anyway (needing to use a 30cm box fan as your case fan to keep things under 40 degrees celsius is not a good start).

My main topic today was once again raised by Metagnome in an e-mail complaining about purchasing the boxed edition of CoD4:MW for the PC, when just a few days later it appears on Steam at what would be roughly half price for us Australians and in a much easier to deal with format. And lets face it - I currently have more than 700 game discs of various formats, some are in big folders of 240CDs, some are in jewel cases, some are in their amaray cases. I'd really like it if there was a little less clutter to be had. Don't get me wrong, I love having a huge bookcase of nothing but games, but that can be more than a little inconvenient. Not to mention the issues like losing a CD Key, damage to your CD/DVD and all the rest.

So for me and many others, the appeal of the digital distribution option is great. Especially in Australia, where with the dollar at its strongest, we can get games from such US based services as Steam at prices WAY below "off-the-shelf" retail. But the bigger issue is that the brick and mortar stores drive me up the wall. You have EB Games and GameTraders in your dedicated games retailer spacem with JB Hi-Fi desperately trying to break in (even going so far as to have trade-ins now). Then you have big general retailers such as Target, Myer and Big W. And the specialty retailers like Harvey Norman, Dick Smith and Tandy.

The problem is, they all suck in their own special way. And I'm going to detail a few of these problems.

Many of the non-specialty retailers have wildly inconsistent pricing - the same game might be $120, $100, $75 and $50 all in the same store depending on what box you look at, never mind the differences between the stores. This problem exists within the specialty stores too, but generally to a lesser extent. And I'm not complaining about this either, especially when you can find an original, full box+manual version of a game for less than the jewel case budget edition.

Release dates are another huge issue. Especially it seems, in Australia, where we get the leftovers from either the UK, EU, South America or North America, depending on which publisher it is. Sometimes we get things a day ahead of the US (exceedingly rare), same date (very rare), several days behind (rare), several weeks behind (uncommon) and six months to one year behind (common). For the 360 and PS3 this has become less of an issue, but for the last generation and still for the handhelds this is very much the case. And that's if the store even knows when the release date will be, or if they are relying on the total lies pedalled by the Australian distributors.

And then there is the problem of the staff in these stores. They come in three primary varieties that I have noted.

1) The ignorant. These are the people who look at you blankly when you ask if they know a release date for Call of Duty 4 or try to sell you a PS3 controller to go with your Wii game.

2) The seedy. usually found at places like GameTraders or others that focus on the preowned side of things, or worse at places like Dick Smith and Tandy where you have the salesman who looks like he whips himself with gold-plated, house-brand, Component A/V cables while reading Hannah Montana slashfic over HAM radio all night. Finally there are the one's I hate most.

3) The corporate shill. This is the one who recites all the pretty phrases they've been taught. For example: "Do you have anything you want to trade in." Or the brilliant: "Dude, I just saw X last week at a vendor show and its AWESOME, and you can preorder it now." What about up-selling: "Do you want a game guarantee with that?" And the matter of cash-for-comment: "Oh, its 2 o'clock? Well, Sony have paid for us to whore their platform between 2 o'clock and four thirty, so, yeah - the PS3 is da bomb yo. I wipe my butt with my Wii now."

I could continue on and on about the problems with brick and mortar stores but the big one for me is that they just drive me up the wall everytime I go in. [Warning, the following consists mainly of satire and should be taken with several large doses of NaCl]

"Hi! Welcome to EB. Do you have any games you want to trade in?"

"No, I'm wondering about the release dates for Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect and Kane & Lynch for the 360."

"OK. Now is that cash or credit?"

"What? No! I don't want to preorder them now I just want to know when they're out."

"We have an excellent preorder program where we call you when they come out. And if you trade in three XBox360 titles, you can get any of them for just ten dollars!"

"But I just want to know when they're out!"

"Well, have you preordered them?"

"No, because -"

"Man - these are big games, if you don't preorder them, then there is NO chance of getting them on the release date."

"But when is the release date!"

"Do you want the regular or the collectors edition?"

"Regular."

"Are you sure? We're running a ten-down/ten-off on the collectors editions."

"Just. Tell. Me. The. Release. Dates."

"You know what's awesome? Heavenly Sword. And you can buy it with a PS3 right now for just -"

At this point, most of us (me included) are barely managing to restrain ourselves from throttling the sales clerk. But somehow, we choke down that rage and continue on with our false niceties.

"I just want to know the release dates for those games."

"OK. It looks like Assassin's Creed is due out 15 November, but the distributor said that it will probably slip about a fortnight. Kane & Lynch is due out - oh wait, we don't have a date for that. And what was the last one?"

"Mass Effect."

"OK, but you know that Blue Dragon is out right, a much better RPG, available now for only $10 if you trade in three XBox 360 games."

Usually at this point I walk out of the store and scream with such a primal rage that half the time I end up getting tasered by mall security.

But that conversation is remarkably civil compared to some of the really crazy ones that you can have. Such as:

"Hi! Welcome to EB. Do you have any games you want to trade in?"

"No, I'm wondering about the release dates for Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect and Kane & Lynch for the 360."

"WE CAN'T MAKE UP OUR MINDS! I MEAN IT COULD BE THIS WEEK OR THREE WEEKS FROM TUESDAY LAST! I DON'T KNOW WHAT GODDAMN DATE! Q5 2009! YEAH! DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING YOU WANT TO TRADE IN? WHILE YOU'RE HERE - CHECK THIS: WE'VE GOT SOME ROCKIN' N-GAGE SPECIALS! DO YOU WANT TO PREORDER? THE NORMAL EDITION IS $150 BUT DUE OUT APPROXIMATELY ONE EPOCH AFTER THE COLLECTORS WHICH HAS A SPECIAL 10 DOWN 10 OFF DEAL, MEANING YOU CAN GET IT ON THE RELEASE DAY FOR ONLY $50 AFTER TRADING IN A GODDAMN PS3 AND FOUR KITTENS! BUT YOU HAVE TO PREORDER IT NOW!"

Is it any wonder when faced with all this that many of us would far prefer to log on to Steam or a similar service, see the exact date of release (complete with a countdown if we're lucky) and can preorder and preload it, so that the moment its released we can play if that's what we wish to do? I find a the flow of dialogue boxes in Steam far more soothing than dealing with the raving maniacs (both staff and customers) that tend to frequent many game stores. And to top it all off, all Steam wants is my money - not my money, any preowned games I have and my precious, precious time which could be spent actually doing something other than rebuffing countless not-deals offered by an underpaid sales clerk.

Posted Nov 7, 2007 11:25 pm PT
Category: Editorial
53 Comments

4Nov 07

Henry Kissinger, I'm missing yer....

...And wishing you were here.

Why the Monty Python? Well just because, but mainly because the song is about Henry Kissinger, a man who despite other foibles was a damn good diplomat. And that's just what I'm looking for today. Because I'm smack bang in the middle of some very delicate negotiations around the home at the moment. As I'm sure are many other gamers with partners, jobs or other commitments. And I'd prefer if I didn't have to end up with a UN Observation Post manned by bored Tajikistani soldiers being placed in my living room to prevent an outbreak of hostilities.

It's really one hell of a holiday season this year. I'm looking at Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect, Ace Combat 6, Guitar Hero 3 and Kane & Lynch hitting for the 360 in very short order (no Rock Band or Army of Two due to delays to Q1). There's World in Conflict and Orange Box for PC that I'm both yet to play, along with the impending releases of Crysis, Hellgate London and Black Shark. Then I've got Mario Galaxy (again, probably not in Australia until Q1) for Wii, but I may look at Mario & Sonic: Olympics. The DS is probably the only system I have that isn't begging for money from me - except maybe for Glory Days 2 and Puzzle Quest which both finally came out in Australia.

But even with the delays, that is a very impressive list of games. And a very expensive list. Thankfully the Australian dollar is going very well at the moment so ordering online for some things has become very appealing, but even then I'm not going to be able to afford all of this. Not with an impending move to a new address, a car begging for some TLC and of course X-mas. But the big concern isn't money, because if I really wanted to, I could get all of these games. And then be a very, very poor person. A very, very poor person with a very, very angry spouse.

The big concern, as it is for most people I know, is time. Thankfully the new residence for myself and my wife has two big advantages. One - its larger, so there's more room to have things set up, meaning gaming becomes easier because you can have more than one TV (thus allowing both gaming AND Gilmore Girls) and my computer doesn't have to be temporarily set up on the dining table should I want to use it. Two - its WAY closer to work for me, meaning that my one hour drive each way is being cut to a ten minute (combined) walk and train journey. Which means gaming time at home is greatly expanded already.

In terms of damage minimisations, I've taken the approach thus far of education - explaining to my wife why, for the next few months, I may seem more distant, distracted, or should a game prove particularly brilliant - uninterested. My sleeping patterns will probably be disturbed, my share of households tasks may diminish and my already fairly vague mind might seem even further detached from reality. She is very accepting of my hobby, even if it is just one amongst many that diverts my limited attention.

And I thank her for that. Because I've heard the horror stories from other gamers in relationships and I'm glad that I've had nothing like that happen to me. In fact my wife is a fairly keen gamer in her own right, mainly on DS and Wii, but we played through TMNT (1989 Konami version) the other day on XBLA and on Sunday afternoon had a series of races in Forza 2 to introduce her to that game. True, Gears of War or GRAW2 might be a harder sell, but then again she can fairly comprehensively beat me in most puzzle games and regularly partakes in such wireless whuppings on the DS.

But for all my efforts to educate and foster compassion and understanding I still know that there will come a time, probably while playing Mass Effect, that the line is crossed. Most likely at about 3am on a worknight after I have failed to make, eat and clean up after dinner. I am really trying to figure out a way to get my games played, keep my marriage going strong and not get fired at work. Its not that hard. Something will just have to give. And though I'd prefer it to be work, it will probably be the games.

Posted Nov 4, 2007 10:43 pm PT
Category: Editorial
23 Comments

4Oct 07

Shop smart. Shop S-Mart.

I was listening to the Pritzker Military Library's podcast on a recent book by Tim Weiner, A Legacy Of Ashes which is a history of the CIA. And it got me thinking about what good "spy" games there have been. It cannot be debated in any way that espionage is a highly cerebral activity, at least when done properly.

But when was the last time a "spy" game actually really made me think? Sam Fisher might pause to consider whether he wants to risk detection by grabbing and interrogating a guard, rather than just sneaking past - but this isn't really a cerebral activity. And you don't have to do your own analysis either, you've got a whole team chirping in your ear, e-mailing you and on occassion providing face-to-face support. But then again, the sneak-em-up stylings of Splinter Cell are certainly more mentally involving than the SpyHunter games.

Even No One Lives Forever, which had some serious thought put into it, didn't require too much in the way of intense brain work from the player (with the exception of some fairly fiendish set-pieces and puzzles). No One Lives Forever 2 had an interesting RPG mechanic that added more to the game but still didn't really get the synapses popping along at a high level.

I had to think all the way back to Spycraft: The Great Game (and it was) before really finding a game in the "spy" genre that had seriously tested my mental faculties. This game was chock full of complex puzzles, intricate plots and more grey areas than a pre-election policy promise. It was a game that had you doing puzzles with a purpose. Figure out the puzzle and you may be rewarded with a vital piece of information. If you fail to crack the puzzle, then might get something out of it anyway (right or wrong).

You could even "pass" certain puzzles by entering plausible, but incorrect answers, leading you down a dead-end path from which you would have to backtrack to find your mistake. But it wasn't just puzzles - there were moral quandries too. Do you resort to torture, or even killing in order to get a result quickly? Or do you try to keep the moral highground? Both sides had their own advocates in game and whatever path you chose at these points would alter the interactions you had with others.

Spycraft was without doubt a game which had been designed from the ground up to be a serious challenge to the player on a great many levels, but with former spy-masters from both sides of the Iron Curtain helping its development, you had to expect that it would be a true test. Spycraft is also great for having a "hey - its that guy" factor, because the game is chock-full of FMV starring all manner of people who you will recognise from late-night TV and really bad straight-to-video thrillers.

Move sideways a bit and you can find a similarly cerebral title in Uplink: Hacker Elite. This was a game which delivered its story-line in a very unusual fashion and one which you would have to really work hard to uncover fully. I've got to get back into Uplink at some point because damnit - I want to find out just who was behind it all. In Uplink, nothing came easily either, beyond the most basic tutorial you had to seek out information on how to get better at the game, because there was no manual to help you out. It was a game which you could easily become immersed in - and that was the aim - at no point did the game break immersion to deliver any part of its plot or gameplay. A truly fantastic example of a really "smart" game.

Does Bioshock (or its predecessors like System Shock 1 & 2 and Deus Ex) count as a "smart" game in my mind? Its a real toss-up. On the one hand the game is without doubt a very intelligent title, with a lot of thought put into it. But does it really test my faculties? There are some choices to be made in these games, but I think that only the original System Shock of all these titles genuinely had my mind working hard to try and figure it all out.

But what really makes for a "smart" game? Its not just putting in some arbitrary puzzles to make it more difficult to get from point A to point B in order to get that key that you need to progress to point C. Or a game like Myst where it is merely puzzles for puzzles sake - with little in the way of character development or plot for you to be concerned with. Its about having a game that really tests you. Be it a mental test or a moral one - preferably both. After all, sometimes the correct choice can be wrong on other levels.

I think a "smart" game is something that can genuinely make you think about what it is you are doing and why. Splinter Cell: Double Agent claims to have this (but I'm not that far into it) and Bioshock too (again, not that far in), so maybe they will prove themselves to be a lot "smarter" than I'd thought.

And please note - by "smart" I mean what I've said - something that makes you really think about your actions, not something that completely befuddles you with nonsense in an attempt to be intellectual.

PS - a cookie for the first person who can explain the link between the title and the content of this post.

Posted Oct 4, 2007 12:30 pm PT
Category: Editorial
34 Comments

25Sep 07

Arriving at the party once the BBQ is cold.

As I have mentioned, I've recently picked up a 360 and several games. And am having big issues playing Rainbow 6: Vegas. I have been liking the single player (with the exception of the truly ridiculous scenario) and have been trying to dabble in multiplayer. But there's a problem, though I've been enjoying multiplayer co-op with friends because I'm just new, I'm stuck with crap gear. This is because of the "Persistant Elite Creation System" which allows you to customise your avatar to your hearts content, using items unlocked by advancing your rank. Problem is - I can't advance my damn rank.

To start with there's no ranked matches with anything resembling playable pings. Sure, I can play ranked matches with my friends, but that just becomes awkward and tedious. And I suppose I should mention that the whole "get experience win or lose" thing which was touted on the box is wrong. In fact not wrong, its a total goddamn lie. Because it would appear that you only get experience when you win in co-op.

It wouldn't be so bad if I had more than one or two people who I could rely on to play at any given time so we could do some adversarial and get INSANELY EASY ADVANCEMENT. It would in fact seem that joining an adversarial game with a second left on the clock, being assigned to the losing team and then having the game end before you even spawn results in you getting more experience than actually WINNING a co-op campaign story mission on hard (please note - hyperbole may be in effect in this area, conclusive studies are still being awaited).

As I mentioned, the real kicker is that you don't get experience for a failed co-op mission. Now, as with any good Red Storm game, maybe one mission in five you'll actually complete the task (and that's getting way out into glass half-full territory) . So one mission in five you're enjoying seeing the advancements rack up. That's tedious. Add to this the fact that after every mission you have to recreate the server in order to continue playing ranked matches and pretty soon, you're ready to tear your hair out.

But even after multiple hours of ranked co-op and (very little) adversarial (due to the horrible lag), I'm still a Private (2nd Cl) with only two bars of experience towards reaching my FIRST rank.

Then to relieve a bit of stress, I jump into the CoD4 beta. I haven't spent much time in this, but am advancing slowly and with a bit of dedicated play could easily catch up with the current experience curve. But what happens when six months after the game is released it has a drop in price, or turns up in the pre-owned and people who'd been on the fence or without hardware initially drop in? We still may want to give multiplayer a go, but will be at a natural disadvantage in skills (obviously) but also in items and equipment.

This. Totally. Sucks.

I play Call of Duty and Rainbow 6 because I DON'T want to play World of Warcraft. I don't want to have to worry about "just grinding those first few levels before the fun stuff starts becoming available". Its perfectly fine if you get in on day one, or even week one and can go through the advancement cycle with hundreds of others on many servers. But what about people like me, coming in late without the masses of servers and players in which to rapidly ascend in rank? Surely at some point the developers can just call it a day, admit that any newcomers are boned and issue a patch that auto-unlocks everything (or nearly everything) for all profiles.

Its fine to have that grind there on an MMO where at least you can play some PVE, but these games don't even give you that option. Its a lonely world for those of us who are struggling to make their way through the early levels. Especially those of us in Australia and other places who lack the population to reliably find gamers willing to play something at any time of any day.

So please, developers. Put a bit of thought into this. I know that its an appealing "hook" to those who are the day one purchasers (as I would be for CoD4 if I still had a PC worth a damn), but for those who came in late - spare a thought for the boring trash which we must live through in the meantime. Entering a server dressed in a nappy and holding a cap-gun when everyone else is having a grand old time with their pimped out armour and weapons is no fun. It is especially lacking in fun when your entire game lacks any real way for the new players to advance beyond that point if no one else in the world is willing to play matches with them.

With all this said - should any Australian GameSpotters wish to revisit the land of several months ago and boot into a little Vegas while everyone else goes Halo mad (for whatever reason) please, let me know and we can have ourselves some merry games and maybe help get our nations collective ranks up a bit.

Posted Sep 25, 2007 12:25 am PT
Category: Editorial
50 Comments

29Aug 07

It needs more pain.

I downloaded the skate. (yes, no capitalisation and needless fullstop, thanks EA) demo on the weekend and have played it a few times now. And its missing one thing.

Pain. Horrible. Brutal. Pain.

It looks like you're a store mannequin when you stack/bail/fall. I want to see some genuine skater pain!

Otherwise, this game looks like it has a hell of a lot of potential and I've been really enjoying.

Posted Aug 29, 2007 1:03 am PT
Category: Games
9 Comments

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