Versus Mode

Predictions: Half Life 3

Its gotta be in development.

Valve, we know are currently working on DOTA 2 (Defense of the Ancients). They have already shipped Portal 2 this year which means they are working on something else now. What could that something else be?

Left 4 Dead 3?

Unlikely, since L4D2 is still being updated and feels fresh. Valve had a reason to split the community between L4D and L4D2, but i doubt they have anything substantial to really change up the series. Its safe to say therefore that L4D3 is still a few years off.

Counter Strike 2

Unlikely. Yes Counter Strike Source is almost 7 years old now, but its still fantastically popular. The core game mechanic of CS:S isnt going to change anytime soon which makes me doubt a new one is on the way.

Portal 3

No way. The co-op mode of Portal 2 is going to have some legs. There is no reason why Portal 3 needs development. Chell’s story had a satisfactory ending, so the single player doesn’t need to progress at the moment. I guess a team in Valve is going to continue working ont dlc for a while.

So we have a team on DOTA 2, a team working on Team Fortress 2, and 2 smaller teams working on Portal 2 and Counter Strike.

Do we need any more indications that Episode 3 / Half Life 3 is in development?

My predictions for whats in Half Life 3

1. The ice level in the start with the Borealis is a known quantity. Apreture Science’s portal technology should allow Gordon Freeman to travel to the Combine Home-world.
2. It’s going to have co-op with Alyx Vance. Thats a given.
3. It’s going to use Left 4 Dead’s director to create encounter’s between the combine and Gordon. The final level in Episode 2 hinted a bit at the large open level’s that source engine could create. Now pair that with the L4D’s AI director and we will have the most re-playable single player game ever made.
4. It is likely going to be the last game in the series. I’m sure Valve want to end the story so that they can work on other things without people always asking when Episode 3 is coming.

So that’s my predictions!

Opinions: Crysis 2

Crysis 2… First watch a cinematic, and then swim, then watch an intro trailer for ‘Crysis 2’ (never mind i’ve already purchased the game, i still need to watch a trailer for it!), then walk three steps and watch ANOTHER cinematic showing you what happened between the first cinematic and you walking 3 steps. And then your nano suit bosses you around for the next 30 mins. for example, it tells you when to press B to zoom and you cant do anything else except press B at that point. Ite tells you when to cloak and when to engage armor mode treating me like im a two year old and cant work out what ‘cloak’ and ‘armor’ mean by myself.

I dont know if i should just blame the consoles and call of freaking duty school of game design or the inflated ego of ‘A Cevat Yerli Game’

Screw you crytek. The only decent developer left in the whole wide world is Valve.

Opinions: DiRT 3

The kindest thing I can say about Dirt 3 is that it’s a mild disappointment. It’s mostly a lack of content that bothers me. When you are 9 hrs into a racing game and you have just 6 locations (Finland, Norway, Kenya, Michigan, Monaco, Aspen) then you start to get bored. And while it’s neat that snow has finally made it to the Dirt series, the actual driving in snow bland and boring. Infact, the visuals seem to have been toned down compared to Dirt 2. (Maybe this was to enable the split screen mode.) The lack of track variety is however is my major gripe. Both previous titles packed in more tracks. Dirt 3 has little to show for itself apart from a reasonably good looking night driving mode.

Also, what has Monaco got to do with rally racing?

Another issue I have with D3 is the gymkhana mode. Its an interesting concept, but in the end it sucks. The location where you take part in Gymkhana modes are bland and boring, and when you are driving, you don’t really get the sense of what’s going on. Its only in the replays that you get to see what you were upto. But Gymkhana is a huge part of Dirt 3. If it was a small component, I would have ignored it, but in some championships, you need to do well in Gymkhana to win. This is plain silly.

And whats the ‘you should post this on youtube’ message at the end of every race?

Don’t get me wrong, the core driving mechanics behind D3 are still great. D3 is also the hardest of the 3 games. It has a wide selection of cars from 60’s, 70’s and 80’s as well. It’s a joy to drive a Beetle round aspen or Kenya, but… the lack of content, toned down presentation and excessive attention to Gymkhana makes it fall short of its awesome predecessors.

Eve Online’s, the greed, the backfire, the controversy

I’m looking at the controversy that CCP, the creators of the Space MMO ‘Eve Online’ is having with its players as an outsider. I have never had the patience to play the game. I tried the 15 day trial and found the game to be extremely difficult to get into. The game is meant for the elite and has a small subscriber base. (small compared to the likes of World of WarCraft and Lord of the Rings Online but still successful) It seems to me, that developers share the same gene that some Japanese designers do (Ninja Gaiden?). They create the games for a select few. They challenge you to be good enough or just persistent enough to not stop playing.

Now you would assume that CCP would go to any lengths to make sure that the subscriber base is happy. Yet, it looks like they are going out of their way to estrange the players. The first offense was the announcement of a game ‘Dust 514’ that is a shooter where the grand strategies are set by the players of Eve, but the actual combat takes place in Dust. That is, a real player from Eve Online will attack a planet. His forces will be a set of real players of ‘Dust 514’ attacking other players of Dust 514. A unique and exciting idea. Unfortunately, Dust 514 is only going to be on the Sony PS3. WTF? PC-Console cross platform play is cool… (Valve did it with Portal 2, although with PSN being down and all, im not sure how that is going on) Anyway, the question is, why would a PC focused company not create a client for the PC as well? Is it just the sales of shooters on consoles? But then again… why would the console players buy into it? They should have focused on their fans, instead they are focusing on a player base they don’t know anything about.

Having said that, the second bit of controversy leads me to believe they don’t know the player base of Eve Online as well. A recent micro-transaction heavy  expansion, ‘Eve Online Incarna’ was released in June. The content offered was basically vanity objects like clothing and monocles. This is all fine… but the prices of these objects are just plain obnoxious. For eg: the monocle in Eve is now for 70$

I wouldn’t pay that much in real life for a monocle.

Shirts and other clothing are also overpriced. The fans aren’t too happy about it. The controversy seems to have spiked further with leaked memos with more plans to squeeze the players of their cash. Is this a case where CCP just got too greedy? Or are they really so naïve to think that people would spend 25$ on a fake virtual shirt that doesn’t add any buff’s just makes you look a little cool. And what will happen when they release weapons for sale?

Being a small company trying to make some innovative and I would think expensive games might be the reason behind this, but I can’t believe just how dumb the whole idea is unless CCP is using the EvE playerbase as beta-tester tech to be used in other games that CCP are developing.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/06/22/eek-eves-clothing-and-cash-crisis/#more-63123

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/06/27/eek-online-ccp-apologises/

Why Far Cry 2’s design is so great.

The original Far Cry was a surprise to everyone. A relatively bug free open world shooter with advanced graphics and AI. Each level was meticulously designed and the large island levels gave you freedom to approach each firefight on your own terms.

But the story was throwaway and midway through the game the ‘trigens’ enemy was introduced and while the game was still fun, it lost some of the fun seen in the initial few levels.

The team behind this masterpiece went ahead and made Crysis which i wont discuss here. What i want to discuss.. is Far Cry 2.

(Right click on image and click View Image to see high resolution versions)

When Far Cry 2 was released on 2008, everyone commented on 1) the sequel was in name only and had no connection to the first game 2) the graphics and immersion were fantastic 3) Africa had a lot of bad guys, guns and fuel and 4) inevitably, you got bored of the game. The large amount of driving and shooting baddies wasnt fun.

I was in that camp. I agreed the game was boring.

I was wrong.

In my recent play through of far cry 2, i have tried to analyze the game’s design.

Far Cry 2 drops you in a large map of africa, 50x50 km with a few small towns, lots of guard checkpoints, and safe-houses. Each checkpoint has some baddies and you drive along the roads, stop at the checkpoints, shoot the baddies and continue driving.

Sounds repetitive and yes, it is. But wait, there is more. From the moment you load the game, you always see the game from the first person perspective. Exactly like Half Life’s Gordon Freeman. But FC2 goes a few steps ahead. Injuries in the game are followed up first aid you perform on yourself. Thats applying bandages, cauterizing wounds, removing bullets. It’s not for the faint of heart.

When you want to see the game map, you pull out a map in game. These establish a sense of realism. And the guns…

I could describe all this in more detail, but suffice it to say, the game nails the atmosphere. Ive never been to Africa, but after seeing FC2, i feel like i have. The sounds, the sunsets are exquisite. All these factors help you immerse yourself in the game world. And here the game design shines.

The designers of FC2 looked at what was the best aspects of the first game and have replicated that around the entire game. The best part of the first game was when you scanned a location through your binoculars, formed a plan on how to get in and get out and then slowly picked out the bad guys one by one.

Far Cry 2 lets you do this over and over again and each time you approach such an encounter, its in a different surrounding. As the game progresses, your arsenal of guns changes and this also effects how you approach these encounters. When i felt the game was repetitive, i was missing out on this feature. Get new weapons! So while in the start of the game I’d rely on just taking headshots with my AK and running and sliding away from baddies. With each progressing hour, my guns changed and so did my strategies. I played as a sniper for around 3 hours, then decided it was getting a little repetitive, so i swapped to a shotgun and a crossbow that fired explosives.

Once I had had my fill of blowing up jeeps and firing shotguns, i swapped to a MAC 10 for close quarters and a flame thrower.

Each combination changes the way i approach the encounters with the baddies.

There are things that still detract from the realism that FC2 aims for, the syringes that bring me back to full health, the way enemies respawn.. but you have to ask yourself. If the enemies didnt respawn you would have an empty map. A more realistic game, but maybe not as much fun. The same reason is for the health syringes.

In an age where shooters are getting linear and where each time you approach a door you need an adult to come and open it for you (im looking at you call of duty) or where shooters are just looking at gimmicks of scoring (bulletstorm) FC2 is a great place to be in.

So if you are the type that has recently had a go at Crysis 2 and been disappointing at the abysmal, scripted and generic FPS action or if you think you have finally grown up and can make your own decisions and dont need someone barking orders at you (still call of duty).. then give FC2 a try.

FC 2 Trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S—zR5BQAW0&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP3FOdJMcLM

Too much information released on BioShock Infinite?

As gamers, we are a spoled bunch. We want to know all about the games to be released. We want to see them now! We want to play them now! We are impatient and because of this… we dont get the joy of discovery.  Now I love Bioshock…  But since 2006, the studio behind the game (Irrational Games) haven’t released a follow up. (BioShock 2 was released by a different studio) And its been close to 5 years.

And so, perhaps because the designers can’t keep a secret, they have started talking about their game next game BioShock Infinite 2 years in advance. And me, being the impatient fool that i am.. have been reading everything i can about it.

But that made me question… am i finding out too much about the game to soo? Yes, BioShock Infinite looks fantastic, but if its only going to be released in 2012-2013, then why should I know about it right now! If it wasnt enough for the preview trailers to be show, after E3 3011, gaming sites are now reporting about the factions and the story of the game. And its getting harder to avoid reading about it!

Now I’m the kind of gamer who likes a pure experience of the game. I didnt know anything about Rapture the first time i set foot in it. This was partially because i didnt care about the first Bioshock till i played it. And i believe its because of this that i loved exploring it so much. But once you love any franchise, its hard to not read about the sequels. And this lessens the impact of of discovery. Sometimes it also hurts the experience. Case in point… Dragon Age 2.

I had seen the trailers, seen the developer interviews and knew about Hawke before i played the game. This meant i knew Hawke was to be the Champion of Kirkwall (whatever that means) So in part, i knew how the game was going to play out. Contrast this with the first dragon age, where all i knew was ‘spiritual sucessor to baldur’s gate’

My point is, the way developers try and build hype is ridiculous. Stop talking about the game 2 yrs in advance! While i LOVE the new world of infinite. I’d prefer the guys at Irrational just shut up about the game and finished it sooner rather than wasting time talking about it.

Let me learn about the game world AFTER i start playing the game. Let me explore. Don’t lamp shade it!

Random idea #16756

if double jumps are possible… whats to stop infinite jumps?
Yea… im gonna develop this… gonna call it Infitnie Jumps of Duty Or InfiniteJumpCraft. World of infinite jumps… craft.