Go Big or Go Home

Some games have such an enormous learning curve you need to either dig in and focus to play successfully, or just don't play at all. These games have no middle ground for casual or even semi-hardcore gamers. You have to be invested. EVE Online is one obvious example. It takes months or even years to learn enough about the game to become successful. On top of that, the character development system in the game requires further commitment: it actually takes months to train a passable frigate PVP character. Want to fight using larger, more expensive, more powerful ships and equipment? You'll have to wait more months. Probably years. I have a four-year-old character who still cannot pilot the simplest capital ship. Granted, I never really focused said character at capital ships. He's decent in battlecruisers and battleships. But still - he's four years old. One would think he had reached the endgame content, no?

So when Jester mentions DUST 514 has an EVE-like skill system that takes months or even years to develop the more fun, useful abilities, I know exactly what he means. And I agree with him; I don't particularly want to go through it all again, either. At least, not in a free-to-play action game where I'm more interested in player skill rather than character skill. That's not to say EVE isn't based on player skill - it most certainly has a player skill component. But the fact remains it's very frustrating, especially to new or casual players, to be saddled with things like slow-responding sniper scopes simply because you haven't logged a requisite number of hours in the game.

As a solution, I would recommend taking a look at Enemy Territory, the free, standalone multiplayer release based on Return to Castle Wolfenstein. It's an FPS of course, but your character earns experience and levels up based on your actions in the game. Due to the action-oriented nature of the game, your character can reach maximum level by the time a server's round rotation is over (usually between 30-90 minutes of gameplay). Once the server rotates to a new round, all characters are reset. This is great because endgame is attainable but not frustratingly long and drawn-out. Advanced characters have definite advantages, but a low-level skilled player can still best a max-level player at any time.

I want Dust 514 to play less like EVE and more like Enemy Territory.

MUDs Are Still Fun

A few years ago, having grown jaded and disenchanted with most modern video games, I resolved to mix a handful of retro games in my play time. At this point in time, I consider anything pre-PS2 to be retro. Sometimes I'll fudge a little and count some early PS2 or Xbox titles. It's not a hard line.

One retro game I remember spending hours in is a multi-user dungeon, or MUD, called Merentha. In high school I spent untold hours using the public library computer and Internet connection playing this game after school and sports practice, waiting for a parent to pick me up. MUDs are text-based role playing adventure games. You've probably seen one before.

Merentha, a text-based role playing adventure game

There are no graphics. It's all text-based. It's like reading a book you can interact with (remember those build-your-own adventure books). Though the text bears some responsibility for drawing you in and creating the world, you have to use your imagination. I find the world of Merentha so much more engaging than most modern games, say, Army of Two. The ability to relay narrative, engage the player, and build suspense is far greater in a MUD because the developers are not restricting the player to a predefined image of what the world should look like.

Beyond the interesting possibilities to build an engaging game world, I think MUDs make players smarter. Players need to develop certain skills in order to survive. For example, consider navigation. In Merentha the world is navigable in many directions: North, East, South, West, sometimes In, Out, Over, Under, and occasionally Up and Through. As a player, you are required to map this out in your head or else you'll quickly become horribly, irreversibly lost. The ability to successfully navigate the world and build a map in your head is utterly invaluable, particularly if you find yourself stuck for a week in the enormous, indoor, labyrinthine hotel-casino compounds in Las Vegas with a group of people who have no sense of direction.

Best of all, Merentha is still online, still free to play (long before F2P became a business model), and still easily accessible from any telnet client.

Weekly Report - 01/11/2013

As I mentioned last week, I started Black Ops 2. I'm already about halfway through the campaign - so far it's just too easy (even more so than the last one). The plot is a sticky, convoluted mess so far. Hopefully it clears up but I'm not holding my breath. It's especially confusing to hop between characters in different eras (1980s - 2025) with the same names every mission (the 2025 character is, apparently, the son of the protagonist from Black Ops.

The presentation of this title is far superior to anything Treyarch has done before. Graphics and animation are excellent and voice acting is improved. However, the audio in general is iffy. The soundtrack is acceptable but sound effects, particularly gunfire, is pathetic. Gunfire is so quiet you can barely hear it compared to footsteps, explosions, and voice chatter. Game designers, take note: guns are loud. Remember the first episode of The Walking Dead when Rick unthinkingly fires his handgun inside the tank on the streets of Atlanta? It concusses him and he is temporarily deafened. Seriously, guns are loud.

In terms of gameplay, I don't care for the futuristic "see-through-walls" scopes, the flying drones, or the track-mounted robot machine guns. It feels gimmicky. I can't speak to how drones play out in multiplayer (I haven't tried it out yet) but I imagine they are quite obnoxious.

And one more thing: Strike Missions. I'm not quite sure how to rate these, yet. I've discussed them before but I'm still not entirely committed to an opinion on the quality of this new game mode.

Video Game Books

Video gaming is of my hobbies, though I'm pretty choosy when it comes to how I spend my gaming time. I tend to research titles thoroughly before making a purchase. Even though I've been gaming for most of my life, my collection isn't very large by most standards.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I'm also an avid reader. This post is about what happens when these two seemingly disparate hobbies meet.

A few books worth reading.

Books based on video games are (so far) generally much better than movies based on games. Allow me to point out a few I have enjoyed. Be forewarned, the books on this list are extremely geeky. I hate being caught reading these so I generally keep them to myself at home. I guess that makes video game books a guilty pleasure?

• The Doom series by Dafydd ab Hugh and Brad Linaweaver. The first two books in this series are really fantastic (disclaimer: I love the Doom games. Hard.) The latter two books are lower quality, to the point where book 4 finishes the series with a completely outrageous and irreconcilable twist. But you just have to read them all so you can talk about it with your gamer friends at parties.
• The Mass Effect series by Drew Karpyshyn. These are great stories faithful to the ME universe. Except the fourth one by William C. Dietz. Skip it, as it butchers ME lore even worse than adding ammo to Mass Effect 2 & 3.
• EVE: Empyrian Age by Tony Gonzales. I was skeptical at first. A book based on EVE? Where could that possibly go? It turns out to be a great novel. It builds upon EVE lore and really paints a picture of the EVE universe. But watch out - it'll make you want to play EVE. A lot.

Blending RTS and FPS

About three missions into Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 players are introduced to the concept of Strike Missions. Strike Missions are sort of side missions (largely unrelated to the real campaign).

What stands out about Strike Missions is that they represent a very different mode of gameplay. The player takes the role of a commander in control of a handful of squads and equipment. As commander, the player must direct and position these assets in a strategic manner to achieve some set of objectives (e.g. defend three designated points on the map for ten minutes). The command view is very RTS-like, but it doesn't end there. This is still Call of Duty, after all, so the commander can choose to take direct control of a single asset (soldier, drone, whatever) at any time.

A typical Strike Mission starts like so: commit your troops and equipment to some plan, change to direct control of a key unit (the player is generally a much more capable shooter than the AI), achieve some objective, return to command mode and re-evaluate troop orders, then return to directly first-person control.

Is it fun? I was taken aback at first, but it grew on me. This isn't a brand-new idea in the gaming industry. Take a look at Savage and Savage 2 from developer S2 Games. Both are fairly successful "indie" RTS-FPS titles. Both are multiplayer games to boot. I'm sure you can imagine the interesting player interactions involved there.

The Strike Mission game mode is fun but only mildly engaging. It feels a lot like the multiplayer portion of Mass Effect 3 - it's a game apart from the  game players bought and could easily (and perhaps more appropriately) stand on its own as a F2P title.

What surprises me most about Strike Missions in Black Ops 2 is that it doesn't exist as a multiplayer mode. I see this as a huge missed opportunity, but who knows - if Strike Missions turn out to be popular with players, maybe they will return with some enhancements in Black Ops 3.

Weekly Report - 01/03/2013

Yikes, it's been a while since my last weekly report. Well, that's because I haven't been able to dedicate any time to gaming for nearly the past six weeks or so. That should change starting this week!

This week I popped Call of Duty: Black Ops in my Xbox 360. In two days I ripped through the campaign on normal and then on veteran and collected all of the non-multiplayer achievements I deemed significant. I'm going to skip multiplayer on this game since I also have Black Ops 2. When I move on to BO2 I intend to spend some time in multiplayer mode. Anyway, we're talking about the first BO title here. I found the campaign to be rather easy - easier than MW3 even. It was nowhere near as challenging as the first Modern Warfare or World at War on veteran (remember the grenade spam in WaW). The storyline was a bit muddy and it's starting to become a challenge for me to tell these various modern shooters apart. It felt really, really similar to Battlefield 3 overall. I'll be moving on to Black Ops 2 next week, so more to come on that later.

I have also acquired a long-desired cult hit for the PC called Hard Reset. I enjoyed the demo when it came out in 2011, but never dedicated any funds to making a purchase. That situation has been resolved now and I'm the proud owner of Hard Reset: Extended Edition. I'm looking forward to some good, old-fashioned FPSing on my PC.

Call of Duty: Jaded Ops

Sometime during the campaign of Modern Warfare 2 I started wondering if Call of Duty was growing stale. Each title is still an exceptionally high quality release, particularly when compared against the average product release these days (e.g. games based on movies). But how many times can we run from objective to objective, popping in and out of cover to oust enemy soldiers that, for the most part, always act the same?

At a minimum, the Call of Duty franchise needs some refreshment. In my mind, Modern Warfare 3 was a bit of a let down. I'm uncomfortable saying that, because I really believe MW3 is a superb game with excellent gameplay and production quality. But it is, for the most part, just more of MW2.

I skipped Black Ops a few years ago in an attempt to avoid Call of Duty burnout. However, I'm interested in Black Ops 2 so I picked up both titles a few weeks ago (one simply cannot jump into the middle of a series, right?) and started in on Black Ops.

Black Ops tells its story almost exactly like Battlefield 3 (note: Black Ops came out first). The main character is held captive by the authorities until he tells his entire story - each level in the game is a flashback-style event - and eventually breaks out and saves the world from a deadly plot.

Even so, Black Ops is a good game. The fit and finish is not quite as nice as the Modern Warfare series, but the gameplay is sharp and satisfying. But it still feels rather stale to me, an avid player of the Call of Duty franchise. It's so similar to the other games that they are sometimes difficult to tell apart. One wonders what can be done to change up the franchise enough that the next game feels new and fresh. Is it possible at all? Or is this style of first-person shooter just tapped out?