Having recently finished Fallout: New Vegas it is now time to vent my frustrations. Typically I play this sort of game as a sneaky sniper-thief and try to talk my way out of rough situations (or apply my other wits: science, medicine, and lockpicking). New Vegas offers ample opportunities to talk, hack, repair, or lockpick your way through situations - but it seems to me the requirements are far higher than they ever were in Fallout 3.
I never passed a single speech check in the game. It seems they were all between 60-100 and speech has never been that useful as a skill so I did not invest in it. That turned out to be a mistake, as the game would have been much less fetch quest-heavy and grind-y with high speech given my character build (small guns, light armor).
I also never passed any science checks, which is abominable for me. Again, the requirements were always too high! I sometimes managed to use my mediocre repair skill, but really it's not that useful as a skill even to fix damaged gear. It's easier to just find a repair merchant and pay him. Caps are ridiculously easy to come by, even with low/no charisma and barter.
Worse, I was rarely able to attempt any of the lockpicking opportunities in the game. The locks worth picking to advance the story and make certain missions easier all seem to be Hard or Very Hard, meaning you need 75 or 100 in that skill.
This is a lot to invest in skills that don't make your character stronger or tougher. Sure, you can get the skills that high but your character will be really unbalanced. I've found that in Fallout it's really, really easy to let your character's level outpace her survivability. I beat the game at level 15 with a maxed out guns skill; normal human enemies were simple one-shot kills but armored enemies and deathclaws (even young ones) would simply murder me.
This is an issue I think Skyrim addresses really well: I never once found myself feeling outmatched as I progressed through the game, even though I went into it without a real game plan. I wasn't min/maxing or even planning my character; just upgrading what felt fun to play with allowed me to progress through the game without being overpowered by a basic insect enemy. Hopefully Fallout 4 will have learned from Skyrim's fantastic balance because otherwise I really do enjoy the post-apocalyptic scavenging and exploration.
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Friday, December 13, 2013
Weekly Report - 12/13/2013
I finally fired up my desktop PC this week to play Hard Reset, a shooter I’ve had in the shrink wrap for almost a year now. It offers crisp graphics and audio, plus insanely fast-paced gameplay.
The presentation is nice. It’s a great game to look at and listen to, but that doesn’t make or break a title. The gameplay is fun but shallow. It’s even less compelling than Doom, a title which Hard Reset boldly claims to emulate. You don’t run around a maze-like Mars base searching for keys. Instead you run around an awesome, dystopic, cyberpunk city shooting robots. It’s unfortunately linear and decidedly un-maze-like. There are no puzzles to solve, here. Just go from obvious switch to obvious switch opening doors and periodically fighting clumps of enemies.
That said, the shooting is fun and your character’s equipment is customizable. You can upgrade shields, health, and weapons in a variety of ways. There’s no way to upgrade everything in a single playthrough, so you are forced to make some choices that make a major impact on how you play the game. Are you a straight-up gunner or do you prefer to utilize the (admittedly dangerous) explosive-filled environment? Will you focus on lobbing explosive grenades, or tactically disrupting enemy movements to force them into your traps? This is how it’s done, folks - look here for a decent example of emergent gameplay! It’s not overly deep, but at least it’s something.
Unfortunately, the story is noise in the background of an insultingly short game. It ends abruptly after about three and a half hours of gameplay. Again, I sigh.
Speaking of Doom, this week marks the game's 20th birthday. Holy crap. And you can play it in a web browser, now.
The presentation is nice. It’s a great game to look at and listen to, but that doesn’t make or break a title. The gameplay is fun but shallow. It’s even less compelling than Doom, a title which Hard Reset boldly claims to emulate. You don’t run around a maze-like Mars base searching for keys. Instead you run around an awesome, dystopic, cyberpunk city shooting robots. It’s unfortunately linear and decidedly un-maze-like. There are no puzzles to solve, here. Just go from obvious switch to obvious switch opening doors and periodically fighting clumps of enemies.
That said, the shooting is fun and your character’s equipment is customizable. You can upgrade shields, health, and weapons in a variety of ways. There’s no way to upgrade everything in a single playthrough, so you are forced to make some choices that make a major impact on how you play the game. Are you a straight-up gunner or do you prefer to utilize the (admittedly dangerous) explosive-filled environment? Will you focus on lobbing explosive grenades, or tactically disrupting enemy movements to force them into your traps? This is how it’s done, folks - look here for a decent example of emergent gameplay! It’s not overly deep, but at least it’s something.
Unfortunately, the story is noise in the background of an insultingly short game. It ends abruptly after about three and a half hours of gameplay. Again, I sigh.
Speaking of Doom, this week marks the game's 20th birthday. Holy crap. And you can play it in a web browser, now.
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Weekly Report - 12/6/2013
So I finished The Last of Us (follow-up post forthcoming) and invested in a copy of Eternal Sonata to sate my JRPG hunger.
To start, the graphics demonstrate a beautiful, hand-crafted, cel-shading technique. Cel-shading has never been used this well in games.
The audio is solid, featuring acceptable voice actors and well-performed music originally composed by Chopin (who happens to be a main character in the game). My only complaint is the field music (as opposed to the cutscene music) is quiet, dull, and doesn’t remotely match the on-screen action. No, I have another complaint. The voices of many of the main characters, half of which are whiny children, are absolutely obnoxious. The adult characters are fine. I turned the audio volume down to where I could only hear battle sound effects and used subtitles through most of the game.
The gameplay, while much more active than most RPGs, is ultimately quite uncompelling. There is effectively no character customization. Weapons and equipment replacements are found all over the game world and in shops at various intervals. There really isn’t any give-and-take with the gear, though. It’s always just a straightforward “oh, this new suit is better than the last one” situation. Money, as usual, is obscenely easy to acquire. I sold a single photo I took during the first boss fight in the game which resulted in my wallet overflowing with cash throughout the entire game. Why do developers do this? It renders currency utterly pointless. Gear might as well be handed out free of charge. Even consumable items, which you could spend some dough on, are largely pointless to use.
The only time money matters in this game is during the massive, unimaginative, boring optional dungeon near the end. You have to gather 99,999,999 gold to buy one seventh of a soul, all of which you can combine to resurrect a character who died at the beginning of the game. She comes back at the same level she died (like 25 or so) when the rest of your party is upwards of level 80. This all happens after the final dungeon but immediately before the final boss. So you get a cool but uselessly weak character who is not worth leveling up, even though she’s awesome at high levels, because the remaining 3-minute final boss battle is both idiotic and laughably easy.
The story is the worst part. So one of your main characters is the real-world famous composer Chopin. He’s unconscious in the real world, but appears to be living in a dream world where he meets the rest of the cast of characters. He assures everyone that they are just in his dream, and they react in a totally outrageous way. They don’t care. They don’t call him crazy, nor do they believe him. They just ignore him.
In the absurd ending, Chopin dies - as is supposed to happen according to real history. But then another main character commits suicide for absolutely no reason, is immediately reborn as a four-year-old child at home with her mother, and suddenly teleports back to where she died and magically becomes a living, breathing, teenager again. Sigh.
To start, the graphics demonstrate a beautiful, hand-crafted, cel-shading technique. Cel-shading has never been used this well in games.
The audio is solid, featuring acceptable voice actors and well-performed music originally composed by Chopin (who happens to be a main character in the game). My only complaint is the field music (as opposed to the cutscene music) is quiet, dull, and doesn’t remotely match the on-screen action. No, I have another complaint. The voices of many of the main characters, half of which are whiny children, are absolutely obnoxious. The adult characters are fine. I turned the audio volume down to where I could only hear battle sound effects and used subtitles through most of the game.
The gameplay, while much more active than most RPGs, is ultimately quite uncompelling. There is effectively no character customization. Weapons and equipment replacements are found all over the game world and in shops at various intervals. There really isn’t any give-and-take with the gear, though. It’s always just a straightforward “oh, this new suit is better than the last one” situation. Money, as usual, is obscenely easy to acquire. I sold a single photo I took during the first boss fight in the game which resulted in my wallet overflowing with cash throughout the entire game. Why do developers do this? It renders currency utterly pointless. Gear might as well be handed out free of charge. Even consumable items, which you could spend some dough on, are largely pointless to use.
The only time money matters in this game is during the massive, unimaginative, boring optional dungeon near the end. You have to gather 99,999,999 gold to buy one seventh of a soul, all of which you can combine to resurrect a character who died at the beginning of the game. She comes back at the same level she died (like 25 or so) when the rest of your party is upwards of level 80. This all happens after the final dungeon but immediately before the final boss. So you get a cool but uselessly weak character who is not worth leveling up, even though she’s awesome at high levels, because the remaining 3-minute final boss battle is both idiotic and laughably easy.
The story is the worst part. So one of your main characters is the real-world famous composer Chopin. He’s unconscious in the real world, but appears to be living in a dream world where he meets the rest of the cast of characters. He assures everyone that they are just in his dream, and they react in a totally outrageous way. They don’t care. They don’t call him crazy, nor do they believe him. They just ignore him.
In the absurd ending, Chopin dies - as is supposed to happen according to real history. But then another main character commits suicide for absolutely no reason, is immediately reborn as a four-year-old child at home with her mother, and suddenly teleports back to where she died and magically becomes a living, breathing, teenager again. Sigh.
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Created by Gamers Like You
It's vital that we consider community when comparing this generation of consoles. Are players permitted to record, stream, and otherwise share their gameplay? The culture built around Let's Plays and video walkthroughs on YouTube is absolutely vital in moving software.
Consider Dark Souls. Thanks to its strong cult following on YouTube and other online communities, Dark Souls developer From Software caved in and ported a special PC version just because gamers asked for it. I suspect the lion's share of Dark Souls sales were in large part thanks to YouTube. I, for one, would never have heard of the title if it had not been for the overwhelming amount of compelling Dark Souls content online. I bought the game twice: first a used copy for my Xbox 360, then a new copy from Steam with the DLC included. It's one of my favorite games of the generation, largely due to how much player-created content you can find in the community.
Community-created content, be it video walkthroughs or independent game development, is an incredibly powerful. YouTube and Twitch are going to become a major force in this generation of consoles. Additionally, consider independent game developers. Minecraft is one such obvious, phenomenal success.
The console that best fosters community support and allows for community-driven content will emerge victorious.
Consider Dark Souls. Thanks to its strong cult following on YouTube and other online communities, Dark Souls developer From Software caved in and ported a special PC version just because gamers asked for it. I suspect the lion's share of Dark Souls sales were in large part thanks to YouTube. I, for one, would never have heard of the title if it had not been for the overwhelming amount of compelling Dark Souls content online. I bought the game twice: first a used copy for my Xbox 360, then a new copy from Steam with the DLC included. It's one of my favorite games of the generation, largely due to how much player-created content you can find in the community.
Community-created content, be it video walkthroughs or independent game development, is an incredibly powerful. YouTube and Twitch are going to become a major force in this generation of consoles. Additionally, consider independent game developers. Minecraft is one such obvious, phenomenal success.
The console that best fosters community support and allows for community-driven content will emerge victorious.
Monday, November 18, 2013
The Next Generation
There are plenty of articles out there with insider information comparing Wii U, PS4, and Xbox One, but ever since Microsoft pulled a total reversal on its DRM policies this summer, I've been wanting to make a brief comparison of my own. I'm going to try looking into the business side of the console wars, keeping in mind some tenants that make a console a success in both business and with its fans.
First let's take a look at the market for last-generation consoles. According to VGChartz in Q2 of 2013, 77,313,472 PS3s had been sold during the console's lifetime. In the same quarter, the figure for Xbox 360 consoles sold is 77,311,669. It took nearly six years but it appears the PS3 finally did overtake the Xbox 360 - just in time for the next generation to come along and bury this battle in the past.
It's worth noting the Wii is still over 22 million units ahead of even the PS3, but Nintendo is really in a rather shaky position.Wii sales dropped off a cliff (let's not even discuss the Wii U) a few years ago after a rabid selling spree during its youth. Does that strike you as a hardware prolem? I think it's an indicator of failing to deliver a steady stream of quality software, which is ultimately what continues to sell consoles (and more of said software).
This is important. Let's face it: the PS3 had a slow start. Killzone doesn't quite hold up to Gears of War. It wasn't until, probably, the Uncharted series that PS3 really began to catch up to the 360. It's not going to come down to who has flashier hardware this generation. It's going to be a software battle. Who has a better user interface? Who has better games? Who offers better independent development and fosters a stronger community?
First let's take a look at the market for last-generation consoles. According to VGChartz in Q2 of 2013, 77,313,472 PS3s had been sold during the console's lifetime. In the same quarter, the figure for Xbox 360 consoles sold is 77,311,669. It took nearly six years but it appears the PS3 finally did overtake the Xbox 360 - just in time for the next generation to come along and bury this battle in the past.
It's worth noting the Wii is still over 22 million units ahead of even the PS3, but Nintendo is really in a rather shaky position.Wii sales dropped off a cliff (let's not even discuss the Wii U) a few years ago after a rabid selling spree during its youth. Does that strike you as a hardware prolem? I think it's an indicator of failing to deliver a steady stream of quality software, which is ultimately what continues to sell consoles (and more of said software).
This is important. Let's face it: the PS3 had a slow start. Killzone doesn't quite hold up to Gears of War. It wasn't until, probably, the Uncharted series that PS3 really began to catch up to the 360. It's not going to come down to who has flashier hardware this generation. It's going to be a software battle. Who has a better user interface? Who has better games? Who offers better independent development and fosters a stronger community?
Friday, November 15, 2013
Weekly Report - 11/15/2013
Once I finally got The Last of Us working, I found it to be a truly enjoyable experience. The graphics are striking: animation is incredibly life-like and natural, textures are massively detailed and clear, and lighting effects are spot-on. The audio completes the presentation package. Every sound in the game is important to the player, from faint ambiance-building music to footsteps, this game is a superior example of how to employ audio with surround-sound technology.
The characters are not only realistic-looking and realistic-sounding, but they act like real people. These aren't your standard WWII shooter cardboard cutout soldiers. Joel's tragic backstory has real depth, and the mystery of Ellie's mission is compelling. It doesn't stop there. Side characters such as Bill of Bill's Town, offer a wider view of the emotional fallout present in this post-apocalyptic world.
It's a fun game, too. While the story and characters are compelling, the game is truly at its best when the player is forced to struggle. Scrounging for randomly-spawned weapons (Joel rarely has more than a dozen bullets in his inventory at any given time), supplies, and other gear is where the player spends the most time. On the harder difficulties the game really begins to shine: equipment is extremely scarce, and Joel has few options to defend himself. Every piece of gear must be used as efficiently as possible in order to survive. I'm reminded of how much fun I had on expert difficulty in Left 4 Dead 2 - some of my favorite video game memories.
The fact that deaths are nigh meaningless (Joel is merely returned to the last checkpoint) is a blemish on this system. In order to keep the player immersed and tense, death should have some serious consequence. This is partly why Dark Souls and EVE have been so successful at building rabidly dedicated fans: what you do has real meaning, and if you die, you pay for it.
The characters are not only realistic-looking and realistic-sounding, but they act like real people. These aren't your standard WWII shooter cardboard cutout soldiers. Joel's tragic backstory has real depth, and the mystery of Ellie's mission is compelling. It doesn't stop there. Side characters such as Bill of Bill's Town, offer a wider view of the emotional fallout present in this post-apocalyptic world.
It's a fun game, too. While the story and characters are compelling, the game is truly at its best when the player is forced to struggle. Scrounging for randomly-spawned weapons (Joel rarely has more than a dozen bullets in his inventory at any given time), supplies, and other gear is where the player spends the most time. On the harder difficulties the game really begins to shine: equipment is extremely scarce, and Joel has few options to defend himself. Every piece of gear must be used as efficiently as possible in order to survive. I'm reminded of how much fun I had on expert difficulty in Left 4 Dead 2 - some of my favorite video game memories.
The fact that deaths are nigh meaningless (Joel is merely returned to the last checkpoint) is a blemish on this system. In order to keep the player immersed and tense, death should have some serious consequence. This is partly why Dark Souls and EVE have been so successful at building rabidly dedicated fans: what you do has real meaning, and if you die, you pay for it.
Monday, November 11, 2013
Phoning Home
Upon acquiring a copy of Naughty Dog's The Last of Us this weekend, I promptly realized two things: it's impressively well-presented and almost totally unplayable.
Say what? First, the game takes about 10 minutes to load the main menu (no exaggeration). Aggravating, but not ruinous. Finally, I got three minutes into the prologue before encountering the first game-breaking bug. As soon as I guided Joel out of the wrecked car and through a chain link gate, the game's geometry stopped loading and Joel was stuck falling interminably into oblivion. Great! I rebooted my PS3 and tried again. Same result. I tried a third time. Same result. Okay, let's clean the disc. Scratchless and spotless. Try again. The floor actually loaded this time and I made it through a door with a horde of infected just behind me.
It is at this point I believe a cutscene tried to play, but it's hard to say for sure. Three or four infected humans were right behind Joel, but now they are cardboard-cutout caricatures with no volume and no animation. They are literally two-dimensional sprites shuffling around on the screen, frozen in some state of half-animation. Most of the sound engine cuts out and all I hear are soft footsteps chasing Joel. The screen goes black for nearly five whole minutes, then suddenly the game returns to life. The aforementioned door appears to have lead to the other side of an exterior wall rather than into any kind of building. The game crashes after taking a few steps on the other side of the door. The pause menu says "Autosave still in progress." It never seems to finish, so I don't get any checkpoints and have to start the prologue over every time.
Fortunately I'm not the first person to experience any of these issues:
Say what? First, the game takes about 10 minutes to load the main menu (no exaggeration). Aggravating, but not ruinous. Finally, I got three minutes into the prologue before encountering the first game-breaking bug. As soon as I guided Joel out of the wrecked car and through a chain link gate, the game's geometry stopped loading and Joel was stuck falling interminably into oblivion. Great! I rebooted my PS3 and tried again. Same result. I tried a third time. Same result. Okay, let's clean the disc. Scratchless and spotless. Try again. The floor actually loaded this time and I made it through a door with a horde of infected just behind me.
It is at this point I believe a cutscene tried to play, but it's hard to say for sure. Three or four infected humans were right behind Joel, but now they are cardboard-cutout caricatures with no volume and no animation. They are literally two-dimensional sprites shuffling around on the screen, frozen in some state of half-animation. Most of the sound engine cuts out and all I hear are soft footsteps chasing Joel. The screen goes black for nearly five whole minutes, then suddenly the game returns to life. The aforementioned door appears to have lead to the other side of an exterior wall rather than into any kind of building. The game crashes after taking a few steps on the other side of the door. The pause menu says "Autosave still in progress." It never seems to finish, so I don't get any checkpoints and have to start the prologue over every time.
Fortunately I'm not the first person to experience any of these issues:
- Audio drops out
- Geometry fails to load
- Textures fail to resolve (surfaces appear "muddy")
- Absurd load times
- Cannot save game
- Animations fail to load, leaving two-dimensional sprites floating on the screen
- Cannot quit game without crashing the PS3, forcing me to physically unplug the power cable
Unfortunately no one on the Internets offers any resolution to these issues. Naughty Dog claimed to have fixed the "Autosave" bug a few weeks after the game was released - sometime in June or so - which was caused by "an issue with their servers", but people seem to have outright stopped talking about the game altogether as of mid-July. Wait - why is my game saving to Naughty Dog's servers? Does that mean I cannot play offline? What happens when Naughty Dog decides to stop running said servers? Apparently they are somehow vital to the game. What happens if I try to play offline?
This is the path of logic I took in troubleshooting the game. After three hours of troubleshooting, it dawned on me to unplug the ethernet cable to my PS3, knocking it off the Internet. Outrageously, The Last of Us works flawlessly offline. Clearly, when an Internet connection is present, it attempts to phone home to Naughty Dog for reasons unknown (presumably saving to their cloud or some nonsense). For whatever reason, this wasn't working and it caused my PS3 to thrash horribly: it was so overwhelmed it couldn't even run the game's geometry, textures, animation, or sound.
It's difficult to express my frustration with this situation, so I'll just leave it at this. For shame, Naughty Dog. I won't be buying another of your titles. Ever.
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