Monkey vs Mortimer

I’m not really a fan of summer.  In fact, I hate summer.  I hate being hot.  I hate sweating.   I hate getting burned.   I hate watching guys walk around with no shirts on.   There is nothing good on TV.   The only thing summer really has going for it is baseball and NCAA Football.

I grabbed NCAA on Tuesday and I must say that thus far I am really enjoying this year’s offering.   The gameplay is crisp and plays pretty wide open, even online.   In fact, online is really where this game excels.  Last year there was a very noticible button lag (and going into pause menus was a nightmare) but thankfully EA has cleaned that up and playing online this year is a much improved experience.   There is still a slight hint of button lag, but it’s completely playable, and you will adapt to it fairly quickly.  Well, I did at least, and I’m a pretty crappy gamer.

The big draw for this year’s release is online dynasty mode.   I am actually running one of these with some of my friends over at The Fanboys. I can’t comment much about this mode yet, as I’ve only messed around with it a little bit so far (our dynasty isn’t starting proper until next Tuesday).  But from what I’ve seen it’s basically the same as playing a multiplayer dynasty on your own console…  so I think it’s gonna be pretty cool.  It’s especially gonna make stuff like recruiting and all the off the field stuff have some weight and meaning to them, as we plan on running this thing multiple years.   In my single player dynasties I never really gave a crap about any of that stuff, but the prospect of competing for recruits with my friends as we all try to better our teams is gonna be a whole lot of fun.

I guess the single player create a player mode (sorry, I can’t even think of the name for it) is pretty weak.  But as you can tell, I really don’t give a crap as that mode means nothing to me.   NCAA football is good for one thing and one thing only… playing with your friends.  I mean, I do have a single player dynasty going currently, but it’s really what I care the least about.   The game being great online is what is really important, and thus far I am very happy with it.

Once I get to sink my teeth into the online dynasty mode I will write up some more detailed impressions.

I have been an avid MMO gamer since the beginning.  I got Ultima Online at launch, and dealt with the insane lag and server instability.   I got Everquest at launch, but to be honest never made it very deep in that game.   I know it is the grandaddy of them all, but grinding rats for 50 hours to get a level just didn’t do it for me.   I played other numerous MMOs along the way (like FFXI, City of Heroes, even Everquest Online Adventures on the ps2).   Anyway, I’ve played most of them, missed some (never played Anarachy Online or Dark Ages of Camelot) but none has ever grabbed me and sucked my life dry like World of Warcraft did.

When WoW was announced I was excited, I have always been a huge warcraft fan, and an mmo fan, it was a match made in heaven.  A buddy of mine was even more excited, we would sit at a local pub and get sloshed and just talk about how awesome it was gonna be.   We had already formed our guild and decided on our tabard months before the game came out.   We both got into the beta together and tried out every race and class and just wet ourselves over how awesome it was.  Then the game came out proper and after a few hiccups (our original server went down for 5 days so we migrated to Llane, where we still are) we created the guild and tabard that was formed in that pub.  Good times were had by all.

I had a strange experience with WoW overall, I was never really content.  I left the guild I helped create to go play on the horde side.   I left that guild and the server as a whole to try out a new server.   I came back to the guild I originally made and did a fair amount of raiding (this is pre-tbc) and then the expansion came out and I basically repeated that whole process again.  Eventually after going down every avenue I could with the game, from casual pvp to hardcore pvp, from casual raiding to hardcore raiding…  I grew tired of it.  I also emerged from my cave and got a girlfriend, something that helps noones MMO career.  So, early this spring I decided it was time to quit WoW.   I had to purge myself of it completely, I decided.   So I took my account, which had 6 lvl 70s, and 2 more guys just shy of 70, and I sold it.   Viola, done, finished.  Take that WoW, I wash my hands of you.   I loved you, but I used you up, and you used me up…  and I just haven’t been a fan of many of the changes that came with the expansion pack.

So, there I was, free of the MMO that I literally had 400+ days played in.   What was I to do?   Well, play other MMOs, of course.   I played Lord of the Rings Online for a while, and it really is a good game, and more importantly it has one of the best player bases you will find in an MMO.  Everyone was really, really cool.  But it just didn’t hook me.    So I waited patiently for Age of Conan to come out (after getting turned down for the beta like 19 times) and in early May it finally dropped.

I loved AoC a lot early on.  Just scroll down and you will find numerous posts on the game, all of them glowingly.   But I knew there was trouble brewing, I just didn’t want to admit it to myself.   The forums for Age of Conan is simply the most hideous place on the internet.   And this means two things:

1.  The people playing the game are assholes.

2.  The game isn’t very good so everyone is complaining about it, nonstop.

I would say the core of the game is pretty good.  The “no auto attack” really does work, and makes playing melee classes a bit more intricate and fun.   Also, the questing itself is pretty great, in the places where they are finished.  The quests are written at a very high level, always have clear goals, and are well worth your time both in terms of story and helping you level.

The problem with the game is that it just isn’t finished.  Now, I understand that MMOs are never truly “finished” when they are released (or ever, really), but AoC is so far from finished that it is kinda shocking that the game was released.   The rumor swirling around is that the development team basically ran out of money so they put it out to get some cash flowing, and right now its subscribers are basically paying to beta test the game.

This is something I could live with if the developers were a bit more open and honest about what is going on with their game, but I think the reason they aren’t is because they know that the things that everyone wants are a long, long ways off.   There are bugs that have been around for months that have yet to be squashed, memory leaks making even the strongest PCs crash or run the game at really low frame rates and basically once you hit the late 40s there is no more content.  From 50-80 all you pretty much do is grind, kinda like years and years ago in Everquest.   I loved it up until that point, and then the game became a repetitive chore.

I still have high hopes that in maybe 6-12 months the game will end up being a very strong MMO.  The groundwork is laid for it.   But there is just soooooo much they need to add and balance and fix before this can happen, I just can’t see playing it right now.  I mean if you still like it, more power to you, but with other much more complete MMOs out there, the only option I saw for myself was to cancel my account.

So I did.  And then, against my better judgement, I started a new WoW account, I am back with the guild that was born In Rudy’ Bar and Grill over 3 years ago, and I have just one character… a level 40 (and growing) warlock.  The thing is, though, I am having a ton of fun again.  And fun is the name of the game, and it’s something that Age of Conan is currently lacking.

Well, a comment I got a few days back saying “more Wii please” got me thinking.  I really have been neglecting the system in my Squidoo roundups, so I figure it’s time to make amends.

Lets dive right in with Wii Fit.   Despite the fact that Nintendo continues it’s somewhat shady practice of not supplying enough of a product to create a larger demand, it can be found be some of the more intrepid shoppers. The game is receiving rave reviews from the gaming public at large, with it’s groundbreaking (literally?) “Wii-Board” or whatever they are calling it.   Most of my friends that have it love it though.  Word on the street is that it isn’t the best workout you will ever get, but it certainly is more of a workout than sitting on your couch and playing Paper Mario, which has been my favorite game for the system so far.   But, I must say, the fact that Nintendo can convince people to put a controller in their pocket and run in place and call that a mini game and people enjoy it….  well, the world exploding in 2012 doesn’t seem all that unrealistic.

Another huge title right now for the Wii is Super Smash Bros Brawl.  The game is a continuation of a series born on the Nintendo 64.  Basically it takes your favorite Nintendo characters, mixes them in with crappier Nintendo characters and lets you duke it out.   The action is fast and frantic, almost so much so that it loses a bit of strategy in the face of wild button mashing.   The game delivers a ton of fan service to long time Nintendo fans though, and people are eating this game up like hot cakes.   Which an episode of Ed recently taught me are both hot and cakes.

Mario Kart for the Wii is also another great use of your gaming dollar.   Coming with a rather cheap but effective wheel for you to put your Wii Remote into to simulate a steering wheel, it adds a new wrinkle to this tried and true franchise.  Other than that, not much has changed, it’s still the same Mario Kart we have been playing since the early 90s, good or bad.   For most it’s a good thing though, so I don’t blame Nintendo all that much for not reinventing the wheel.  Wait, they actually did do that, kinda.

And of course there is thefluffanutta’s insanely popular Top Games for the Wii lens, which is always sitting either at #1 or #2 in the top 100 lenses in the games category.

The final WoW vs AoC post is coming, I promise.

Kotaku is reporting that Microsoft is readying a price drop on the Xbox 360.  Evidently some intrepid Gamestop employee snapped photos of some sort of invoice with his cell phone camera.  A price drop makes sense, it’s been a while since there has been one, and it will force Sony to do the same with the Playstation 3, which I assume will be tougher on Sony financially with the more expensive to make console.   It’s good news for gamers though, as cheaper = better.   Now if only they would cut back the prices on games from $60 back to $50…

Personally, I am still balls deep into Battlefield: Bad Company.  I just flat out love this game.  After beating it on normal I started over on hard and I’m on the final level now.  I know this isn’t much of a feat to most gamers, but I tend to have videogame ADD and single player games especially just don’t grab me for more than one playthrough just about ever.   The last game I can think of that I beat twice was Mario 64, way back in 1853.  BF:BC is just that good, and the online is even better, even if it fails many of my commandments posted late last week.

I’ve also caught a bit of the World of Warcraft bug again, I guess for many reasons, but the two big ones is my inability to find a good guild and the fact that I have many good friends that still play WoW.  I do plan in the coming days writing a final WoW vs AoC piece that highlights what both games do right and wrong.

Also, a lens making contest over at Squidoo is still in the works, but with the holiday and all it’s been tough ironing out all the details, and I want to get them exact before setting this thing in motion.    But if you are a lensmaster, or someone who could whip up something cool for some sort of prize (probably a game of the winner’s choice…) Keep looking here.

1.  Assume the worst about your player base. Anyone who has played online games of any form know that the majority of the people you play with are idiots.   Not only are they idiots, but they will do anything and everything to cheat, glitch or otherwise mess with scoring system or ranking system of any given game.   You need to proof your game from these idiots long before the game ever releases.  You need to think up every possible scenario these guys will be looking for to cheat.  Take Battlefield: Bad Company, for example.  In that game you get points for fixing vehicles you blew up yourself.  So guess what happens….?  Most matches have a handful of asshats running around blowing up their own vehicles and fixing them just to get points to move up the leaderboards (and level their characters).   How does a design flaw like this make it out the door?

Other than cheap points like I mentioned up above, these glitchers will also look for soft spots in the map where they can become invulnerable (like in Socom when guys would get outside of the map and be able to shoot up through the ground).   Developers, YOU NEED to assume that people will be doing this stuff and you need to make sure it isn’t possible when the game ships.

2.  Online Achievements / Trophies that aren’t win based are a BAD, BAD, BAD idea.   I can understand how a developer can think that other types of online achievements are a good idea, but when that thought process happens they forget the first commandment.  All of your players are cheating idiots!  If you put an achievement in to get “20 melee kills” you will find matches with idiots running around just trying to knife everyone and not doing a damn thing to help the team.   These are always a bad idea.  Always!  If you must have online achievements you must make them based on how you want the game played.   Simple stuff like “Win 20 matches” will mean that achievement whores will *gasp* try to win the match.

Team Fortress 2 is suffering from this badly right now.  Each time they update a class they add these insane achievements that are about impossible to pull off if you are playing the game correctly, so all it does it make people play the game in the most wrong way possible to get them done.   I really respect Valve as a developer, but how can they see what is happening on TF2 servers across the globe and be happy with how people are playing their game?

Online achievements should only be based on how you want the game to be played.   I know already said that, but it is worth repeating.   If you, as a developer, want 20 guys running around with knives trying to stab each other and blowing up 1000 crates just to get some worthless achievements… then, well, you have succeeded.   If you want people to play the game correctly don’t put that crap in the game.

3.  Just because Halo 2/3 and CoD4 are popular and use a party based matchmaking system doesn’t mean that it’s the right thing to do. I am not against party based matchmaking in general.  I think it is a pretty good system that in theory puts together two equal teams to play each other.  The problem with it is that it takes all of control out of our hands.   In Call of Duty 4 if you are in the mood to play Search and Destroy on the Chinatown map you are just shit out of luck.   You need to keep joining and leaving games the auto-party making system throws you into until you get to that map.

One thing that party based matchmaking does do is eliminate stuff like “rank up rooms,” which is a positive, but it’s the wrong way to do it.  What gamers want is options.  The perfect shooter, to me, would have matchmaking games, a server list where you can search games that you want and the ability to create ranked games with settings that are reasonable with the creator being able to chose the map selection.  I know you love all your maps, but we don’t.  We have favorites and we want to play them more often.

The answer to “rank up rooms” is to make it so winning a legit game is the fastest and best way to advance up the ranks in your game.   This takes much more complicated design, I understand this, but no one ever said making the perfect online shooter would be easy.

4.  The community is the number two reason people will keep coming back to your game.  Support them. Create a website where users can track their stats.  Create forums where gamers can talk to each other about strategy and clans can setup matches against one another.   Be active in these forums, talk to your customers, see what they like and don’t like.   Now, I still stand by the everyone is an idiot rule, so most of the stuff they suggest to you will probably be gamebreaking…  but there is still stuff to learn.  And, in general, gamers feel more attachment to a game where:

A.  They feel like they are part of a community, they see the same guys over and over (another thing random party matchmaking KILLS), they know who the top clans are, they have some interaction with the developers and can see when things (like glitches, new maps, etc) are going to be addressed.

B.  They feel like they are respected.   Even if the majority of gamers opinions on things don’t make any sense, they still bought your game and they deserve to feel like you are doing things to make them happy.  If you ship a game and then basically close down shop they will stop caring just like you did.

5.  Gameplay is the number one reason someone will stick with your game. I know this goes without saying, but you need to hammer out all the kinks before your game ships.  If this means pushing it back a few months than so be it.  Yeah, I know that’s easy for me to say, I’m not the one dealing with publishers who force dates on you.  But at the end of the day if your game is good people will play it and they will have their friends play it.

When shooters come out with glitches, weapon imbalances, laggy servers, etc, etc, etc…  you are going to get an initial group of buyers who will play it, hate it, bitch about it in every forum across the internet and your game will die an early death, even if you patch it down the line.

6.  Beta tests are your friend and you should listen to the people playing them. In the controlled environment of your development house your game may be playing fine only for you to come to find out that in a live environment it’s a complete mess.  Players aren’t playing it like you envisioned, the servers can’t handle the load trying to sync people from 1000s of miles away, etc.   Get a build up of your game on XBL or the PSN and let actual gamers put it through the paces.

Even with beta tests you may find that gamers just refuse to play the game how you designed it, if this is the case you either need to adapt the design to them or rework what you have done so far.   Beta tests are for more than just testing your servers out.  It gives you a peek into how the game is actually played, how things are balanced and will also flush out some of the easier to find glitches.   Use them!  In fact, you can probably charge a small fee to play the beta if you wanted.   I know if the Socom beta came out tomorrow and cost $5 to play I’d plunk it down in a heartbeat, and I would be all over their forums with what I am seeing.

7.  The rich shouldn’t always get richer. Most games are designed to reward the best players and while it may be impossible to argue against this, I’m gonna give it a shot.

Lets take Call of Duty 4 for example…  in COD4 when you get 3 kills in a row you get a radar that will show where your enemies are on the map, giving you a huge tactical advantage.  Once you get to five kills you can call in an air strike on whatever part of the map you would like.   Once you get to seven kills you can call in a chopper that is basically just a kill bot that will fly around and take out anyone standing out in the open.

Now, all of these moves have a counter, which is good, but it is still just making the better player more powerful.   So if I am a crappy player the match will start and I will get killed because the guy shooting at me is better than me.  That’s fine and dandy.   But then he will get the radar and know where I while I am clueless to where he is.  I mean he already killed me without it, why does he need that?   And then he gets more kills and starts dropping bombs on my head.   And then he sends up a chopper that takes zero skill on his part for him to kill me even more.   All of these things are only punishing bad players and giving extra power to players who don’t need the advantage, they are already better players.

I don’t mind games having a learning curve, I fully expect in any game that I play that there will be better players than me, and worse players than me, and if I keep playing I will get better and better.   And like I said before, all of those advantages in COD4 have counters, or at least ways of avoiding them, but that design is just piling on frustration for newer or less skilled players.   The same thing can be said for games that open up more powerful guns as you progress your character.   This is a good idea on paper, but when Joe Newbie comes into a game not only does he not know the maps, or how to play, he also has a weaker gun.  I am a firm believer in fair play and the movement in shooters to reward players like this is very disheartening.

Don’t get me wrong, I love throwing a chopper up in COD4 and getting a huge killing streak going, it makes it really fun for me…  but as for the balance of the game, I think it gets skewed.

8.  Auto-aim is bad.  Bad, bad, bad. I am a PC gamer at heart, I always have been, and I understand that getting precise controls with a controller is much harder than with a keyboard and mouse, but auto-aim is just lame.  I don’t know how else to say it…  it is just a weak way of making up for your sloppy controls.

Even with the reality that it is harder to aim with a controller, the fact of the matter is that everyone playing your game will be using the same controller (or a reasonable facsimile of it), so you don’t need to assist them.  If was controller vs kb/m I could see attempting to level the playing field a bit, but not controller vs controller.   The fun in killing someone in an online shooter is knowing you got him, not that the computer helped you do it.  I know I was just bitching up above about having fairer games for newer or less skilled players, but auto-aim is the wrong way to do it.  It stops being a game at that point.

9.  Stats are fun. The more the merrier when it comes to stat tracking.   I know I can sit there for absurdly large chunks of time just going over my stats, trying  to assess from them what my strengths and weaknesses are and then hopping back into the game with a slightly modified strategy.   This seems to be becoming the norm more and more, which I welcome wholeheartedly.  The stat tracking on the BFBC website, for instance, is very well done.   It adds a whole layer of fun to the game when I’m not even playing the game.   How cool is that?

Also, and this is a biggie, if your game has multiple modes track the stats just within that mode, don’t give an overall leaderboard.  The problem is that if one mode will get you up the leaderboard quicker the leaderboard jockeys will play that mode exclusively which is to the detriment of your game as a whole.  Also, it gives people something easier to focus on.  Like, say, I really like your capture the flag mode it will motivate me to keep playing as I see myself move up that specific leaderboard.

10.  Ease of use. This is a pretty broad topic which ranges from everything to menus to how the game actually plays.   The simpler it is to perform something, the better.   One thing that is an absolute must these days on Xbox Live is being able to mute people with the quickness.   There are so many idiots on there that will start screaming, rapping, yelling at their moms, talking on the phone with the mic open, etc etc etc… you need to allow players to squelch that crap immediately.   If I have to go through 4 menus and probably get killed while I am doing it, I am going to be pissed.

Also, things like weapon swapping and context sensitive buttons are a must (like to arm a bomb or something like that… flash that crap on my screen so I know what to hit!).   Also, allow the user to *FULLY* customize the controls to how they want.   I hate having to learn a completely new control scheme with each new shooter I play because they refuse to give me the option to change it.   If I want the Select button to fire my freaking gun… let me!   Why games rarely let users do this is completely beyond me.   I want the throw grenade button to be the same in CoD4 as it is in Halo 3 as it is in Socom.   I don’t want to be fumbling with my controller because you think throwing a grenade should be the Y button when I think it should be the left bumper.  That’s just lazy design.

———————————————————————————————————————————————

So, there you have it straight from a gamer with no development experience.  I understand that games are on deadlines and things get cut and things get rushed and no matter how much you test new glitches are sure to be found after release (and when they do, for the love of god… PATCH!).  I understand all of that, but these are the things that drive me crazy as a gamer, and these are 10 fairly easy steps to creating a game that would be the total package.

I mean, just imagine a game with achievements based solely on winning, where the playing field is evenly balanced, the glitches minimized, all of the stats tracked, a huge community that interacts with each other and the developers on their website and the ability to configure the games how you want and to squelch out the little kids that haven’t learned how to swear properly yet.  Man, that would such an awesome game.

If you agree and would like to help get the word out there…  DIGG IT!

Well, late last night (or early this morning) I beat Battlefield: Bad Company.   Just about everything I wrote in my early impressions holds true throughout the game, so I won’t ramble on and on about it.  But I must say, for a game I had to convince myself to buy I am really surprised by how much fun I’ve had with it.   I can’t sit here and tell you all that it is perfect, because I had tons of issues with it, but none of the issues mattered because I sat there for hours and hours with a giant smile on my face having a freaking blast.   The game, offline, is just flat out fun.

Online is a whole other can of worms.  On the one hand it is also insanely fun, but it’s left me wondering how they could have made some design decisions.  Basically, the problems arise from the fact that it is very, very easy to “cheat” to get tons of points, which means in any given game either side will have a few folks that just go off and blow up their own trucks and then repair them and do that over and over for a whole match.   Obviously, if you have more guys doing that on your team than the other team does you will be outgunned and have no chance of winning.   The other problem is online achievements.   Online achievements are a very tricky thing to do right, and almost every game does them wrong.  In fact, my whole experience with BFBC added on to other console shooters of the past has me laying out the groundwork of the Do’s and Don’ts of online shooter design.   Hopefully I will have it posted in the next day or two.

Overall though, with people playing the game correctly, BFBC online is about as fun an online shooter as I have played.  Now, of course, I’ve only been playing it for a few days, so I can’t speak on it’s lasting power…  but there are so many options on what to do while you play that I think it will be staying in my tray for a long time to come.  Until Socom: Confrontation, at least.

And for those that don’t know…  Socom has been pushed back a month and is now expected in late October.  As bummed as I am (Socom is my favorite console shooter of all time), I am happy they are taking the time to get it right.  Though they have made some questionable design decisions themselves.   They just revealed on their blog that matches will be 10 rounds with no tie breaker.   How can they think that is a good idea?   They are also planning to ape the Halo/COD party match making system, another error in my opinion.   But, yeah, I’ll cover all of this in the bigger post I am working on.

Long time Mormon, smartass and podcaster Mik from The fanboys has written (with pictures) a very honest and smart post about the shortcomings of the current Xbox 360 dashboard and what he hopes Microsoft will do with it in the future.

The blog post is a piece of gamer geek genius (to the point that I am jealous, but it gives me something to strive towards).  He clearly outlines the design flaws with the current system (with graphs no less!!) and then dreams up how it could and should look in the future.   It is probably the smartest thing you will read about UI design on video game systems, which makes it a crying shame that it is coming from someone who has no control over any of it.   It’s almost sad that he (and with him sharing his knowledge with us…. we) know more about how it should function than the team at Microsoft working on it does.

Check it out, and if you are signed up at Digg.com digg it.  If you aren’t, sign up there, and then digg it.

Well, I went ahead and pulled the trigger on trading in some old crap and picking up Battlefield: Bad Company.  After dumping about 3-4 hours into the single player (and a measly 20 minutes into the multiplayer) I have to say that I am really happy with my purchase.

The single player in the Battlefield series has never really had much purpose other than as a basic warmup for the multiplayer, but I’m happy to report that is not the case with BFBC. The single player story is certainly cliche ridden, from it’s stereotypical character archetypes (the dumb guy, the guy that just wants to go home, the smart guy, etc) and the story itself is basically ripped from the movie Three Kings, which if you haven’t seen it, is about a group of guys in the Iraq war who go off on their own to find some of Saddam’s gold.  It’s a really good movie, I highly recommend it if you haven’t seen it.

The small group of mercanaries going off looking for gold is the basic idea that was stolen, but it works well enough as a plot device.  The setting itself is kinda weird.   I don’t mean specific things like it being fields and rivers…  but the war itself,  as far as I can tell it’s never explained why it’s happening.  Oh, and the enemy is the russians.  Why?  Who knows.   But I guess it’s cool to fight russians again.

The squad you are in, the B-company, short for Bad Company (bet you didn’t see that coming!) is explained to be where the army sends guys that should probably be court marshaled but instead puts them into this squad and sends them basically on suicide missions.  All of the other characters tell you what they have done to get there, but you never seem to.  I guess it’s setup for you to roleplay your backstory?   Who knows.

So yeah, it seems like I am being pretty negative, but I wanted to get all of that stuff out of the way to explain that none of it really matters.   The story while goofy is actually fairly engaging, it has it’s hooks in me now about chasing this guy who has lots of gold.  I know I shouldn’t fall for it, but I have.   And the stereotypical characters are filled with banter, which usually makes you want to shove hot knives into your ears, but these guys are actually entertaining, and you may even chuckle.   The game overcomes it’s lack of creativity with creativity, if that makes any sense.

But the real star of the show is the gameplay (well, and the sound, but i’ll get to that).   Each new shooter that comes out needs a hook, or so it seems, while also aping off of recent games that had their own hook.  So the MP has a level up system similar to Rainbow 6 and COD4.  The single player has a bunch of collectible and unlockable guns (ala every shooter since 1995).  But the thing that BFBC adds is completely destructible environments.  And I can’t even begin to explain how fun they are and how it changes how you play the game.

Like, for instance, lets say you are entering a town and there is a dude in a window sniping down at you.  What’s a gold lovin’ soldier to do?  Well, you can get a riffle with a nice scope and take him out (like all other games) or you can sneak around and try to get in the building behind him and take him out (like all other games) or you can take your grenade launcher and demolish half the building, which if that doesn’t kill him, it will at least leave him with no cover.

At first as I strolled around I didn’t use this enough, probably because I’m just not used to the ability (there was a game back on the PS2 called Red Faction that did something similar, but that was a long while ago).  But after about two hours I was sitting there thinking “you know, this area coming up… it would be a lot easier to pick these guys off if there were no trees.”  So I started blowing those bitches up, and now the AI had lost all its cover, which made my mission object much, much more simple.   It’s the type of thing that may lose its appeal over time, but so far I am completely in love with it.   Blowing stuff up is fun.  Also, it should be noted that the sound in the game is pretty awesome.  Well, actually I’m torn on it.  The sound is very loud and jarring, which fits the feeling of being in a war (I would guess, I’m a pacifist treehuggger), but at the same time it sometimes just feels like they took a normal gun sound and added a shitton of reverb and echo to it.  But it does make for a more dynamic sounding game, so kudos for that.

The game does have its issues.  The AI seemingly can see through trees, foliage, smoke, etc… while you cannot.   There are countless times where I am getting shot and I have no freaking idea where it is coming from.   It can be frustrating, for sure, but the game is also very forgiving.  When you die you respawn back at the last checkpoint, but everything you killed (or blew up) is still dead (or blown up).  Also, you have this shot you can inject yourself with to regain your health.   This setup works well, but I can’t help but feel like it’s just a cheap way to deal with the AI having an unfair advantage.

Like I said earlier, I only got to play one match online, and it was great fun, for sure.  Snipers seem to be the flavor of the month, which is kinda annoying, but I do have a good time taking long, out of the line of fire paths and coming up behind them and shooting them in the ass.   Friends of mine are complaining that the party system isn’t working correctly and right now there is only one game mode… but those are both things EA has said they are working on (in fact they said another game mode will be made available for free “shortly after launch).

If you like shooters you really can’t go wrong with this one.  The graphics are great, the story while cliched and tired is still entertaining, and the multiplayer will of course have legs because it’s a Battlefield game.    Come discuss the game on the forums.

So I am in a conundrum right now as to how to spend my money, while at the same time, not wanting to spend my money at all.   I have 3 video game related issues that need taking care of.

1.  My Pentium 4 computer just doesn’t cut it anymore.  I would really, really, really like to upgrade this.  But that costs a fairly large amount of cash USA dollars.

2.  My PS3’s bluray/disc drive crapped the bed, and it’s not under warranty anymore.  Sony wants $150 to fix it.

3.  There are two games out right now that I want pretty badly, Battlefield: Bad Company and Grid.   I’ve never been a superfan of the battlefield games, but I have gotten pretty into a few of them and the demo for this one was pretty fun (which was surprising because I found the beta to be pretty lackluster… good job tightening it up, EA).  Grid also has an amazing demo, and I love arcade racers, or at least I used to.  I guess it’s been a while since I’ve gotten one.   But both games could potentially be tons of fun for me, or a waste of money.

So my problem is simple.   Right now I can afford to go to the store and buy Battlefield or Grid.  That could be made even easier if I trade in games that I’m not playing anymore.  But, even if I do trade in games, and only spend like $10 of my own money… that’s $10 not going towards a new computer or fixing my PS3.

I have Rock Band on the PS3 and that’s something my girlfriend and I have really enjoyed playing together, but other than that I don’t have any overwhelming need to have the system fixed right now (actually scratch that, we watch a decent number of blu rays also).   I seem to be primarily a PC gamer these days, between Age of Conan and World of Warcraft and Warcraft 3 and Team Fortress 2 and Call of Duty 4…  most of my gaming is done on my PC.   But to upgrade the PC it will take a long time of saving money, and not buying things like Battlefield or fixing my PS3.  Also, I will need to buy less snacks!  And I love snacks.    Difficult decisions are difficult.

Man, I just don’t know what to do!  I really want Battlefield: Bad Company.  But if I get it and don’t play it, I’ll be really pissed at myself.   I mean I’m knee deep in my Age of Conan addiction right now, so that tends to dominate my game playing time…  so will I even play it?  And AoC runs like complete ass on my computer so I would be so very, very happy to get a new computer to get it (and the rest of my games) to run much smoother.  But that’s so in the future!  I mean, I just got promoted and a raise at work, but I have other non-video game needs I need to take care of (like my muffler that mysteriously fell off).  And of course there is rent and bills and all of that.   But if I saved I could probably get a decent computer in a month or two.  But during that time I will have nothing on the xbox 360 to play and a broken PS3, and I’ll continue to run around in Age of Conan at 10-15 frames per second.  And that just isn’t cool!

Right now I am leaning towards trading in the 360 and ps3 games I don’t (or can’t) play and getting Battlefield, I mean I will do it for the good of the blog!  It would be nice to get a review, right?   So yeah, I’m totally gonna do that for *YOU*.   Then I’m gonna save for a PC.  No more console games!  NONE!   Grid can suck it!   Then, by late summer, I should have the PC and I’ll have the $150 to fix my ps3, which will be right in time for the big fall releases.   I think this is a sound plan.  Or me lying to myself.  Either/or.

Also, and completely off topic from this thread, I stumbled upon a lens for the seminal shooter Counter Strike: Source for the PC.  The lens is hysterical, and I feel bad saying this, but only because the lensmaster’s grasp on the English language is a comedy genre all its own.  Hell, it may even be on purpose.  But check it out and have a chuckle.

What is a cash strapped gamer to do?  Come tell me on the forums. Maybe even my girlfriend will make a post yelling at me to save my money.

Over the past few weeks I have picked up two different games for one simple reason:  they were cheap.   The video game industry moves so fast and is so fickle that it’s pretty amazing how quickly the titles lose their value, or have their price dropped to reach a wider audience.  But, i’m not really gonna complain about it, because so many great games came out last fall and I didn’t get a chance to play them all, so I’m psyched to find them on the sunny side of $30.

First up was Bully: Scholarship Edition on the Xbox 360. Made by Rockstar games, it is definitely in the spirit of the GTA series with an open world but the setting is much more confined and exact.  The game takes place at a fictional private school in the New England area where your heartless parents sent you because you are a jerk.   Once you get there you realize everyone else are jerks on par with you, including the staff, and the whole point of the game seems to be about being the biggest jerk.

So far the game just isn’t moving me, I’m finding the gameplay to be shallow and pedantic.  Yes, shallow and pedantic.  Seriously though, from what I have seen so far it’s just a series of fetch quests, run here, do a thing, run back over here, do some other thing.   I think the biggest issue I have with the game is that I don’t like any of the characters.   In fact the main character is such a little shit that I kinda like letting him get beat up.

I have heard from multiple people that the game picks up once you get further into it, and I’m gonna try my damndest to get there.  But right now I am having a hard time forcing myself to play.  Without characters I give a damn about it makes the story a non factor, so the only thing left is the gameplay…  and games existing in an open world just aren’t enough to wow me anymore.  Yeah, it’s cool I can run all over the school grounds, but I wish I had a compelling reason to do so.   Basically, i’m glad i bought this game on the cheap.

On the flip side, however, I also picked up Mass Effect for the Xbox 360 this week, for a measly $20, which is highway robbery if you ask me.   I don’t even remember my reasoning for not getting it when it came out, being that I love most if not all Bioware games (probably had to do with my insane World of Warcraft addiction).  But when I saw it for $20 I just couldn’t pass it up.

I’m only about 3 hours in, and the game certainly isn’t perfect, but it is definitely far cooler than 90% of the other crap out there.   The basic story is several hundred years in the future us fledgling humans having dug up some alien technology on Mars are now out colonizing our section of the universe, while maintaining relationships with other aliens who have been doing the same for a much longer period of time.  Evidently these aliens speak english, so that helps with diplomacy.

You play the role of some sort of space marine (yeah, I’m sick of them too) who has been nominated to join some sort of alien council, you would be the first human ever to take the position, or something like that.  I don’t know, the plot is kinda convoluted, as most SCI-FI RPGs tend to be.  But, the game itself is pretty cool.   All of the character interactions and dialogue have branching paths which you decide what tone to take while talking, which supposedly has an effect on the game as a whole, but so far I’m not seeing it.   I played through the opening mission twice now, answering questions completely different each time, and nothing at all changed about the mission.  Maybe later in the game your decisions have more of an effect, but right now they seem to have purely role playing uses… so if you get into games where you get to pretend to be a jerk, or really nice, you’ll enjoy it.   If you are like me and just want to get to the action and skip this dialogue that doesn’t have any effect on what you are about to do… well, it’s kinda bothersome.   It’s a missed opportunity and something I thought was gonna be much cooler than it has been so far.

The gameplay itself is pretty stellar though.  The controls are tight, the weapons seem very similar but they feel and sound good… and the graphics are flat out gorgeous.  The story so far is OK, I can’t say it’s sunk its teeth into me, but I don’t hate it, which i guess is praise for a video game.   The game may be a step backwards from Knights of the old Republic on the Xbox (the last great Bioware game) but it’s still a pretty awesome game and for the $20-$30 range you really can’t afford to pass it up.

It also released this month on the PC, which I haven’t played, but supposedly is the superior version of it (especially if you have enough of a rig to push all the eye candy).

And speaking of free games, I ran accross this Squidoo lens last night that is an A to Z listing of all (well, probably *most*) freeware games out on the net. It’s a pretty extensive list, I plan on checking some of the stuff out.  I’m sure most of it is crap, but hey - it’s free.  And free is even better than not free.

Hop on the forums and discuss this post and other games you have found on the cheap HERE.