I'll Take Old Hotness for 100 Alex

I'm not sure how much Team Fortress 2 I plan to play at this point. It's just not grabbing me. Upon release it burned hot and I was playing it daily at lunch. Now I'm kinda "eh" with the game.

I loaded up Day of Defeat: Source at lunch and even after a few months of neglect I still knew everything, still kicked ass and still loved it just as much as ever. The game is just so straightforward and honestly perfect. I love how the maps change every encounter and classes can really back each other up. With TF2 I don't feel like the maps change anything really. Some are better for scouts or snipers, but the game doesn't really change. My favorite multiplayer games (Battlefield, DoD, Halo 3) offer a completely different experience with every map. With TF2, the classes are the star of the show. They're really well balanced and really fun to play...but they aren't getting me to come back.

I don't know, perhaps I'm just overloaded with choice right now and TF2 is just going to have to sit on the sidelines for a bit. I'm probably being too harsh. I just wish the 6 maps they shipped were really different for gameplay.

(posted by grant at 10/26/2007)   (0) comments

Last time, on Grant Rambling...

Back to Halo 3.

I find that I can't really put the game down, and when I have the choice of Team Fortress 2 with friends or Halo 3 with friends, I take Halo 3 every time. Sitting on the couch in front of an HDTV is part of the appeal, but I'm not ashamed to say that I really love ranking up in FPS games. On that note, I expect Call of Duty 4, with its deep ranking and unlockables, to be like crack cocaine.

I love the Halo 3 weapon's balance. The return to rifles is done so well, everything is tuned perfectly and equipment is a great edition. I did give the campaign a little bit of time (trying to find skulls) and it isn't nearly as fun in single player. Also, I find normal difficulty to be stupid easy, but Heroic is frustrating. I'm not sure why the designers start players off on a map with so many snipers and they don't give you a long range rifle. Whatever.

I started Portal and it's really slick so far. Really cool puzzles and hilarious characters. Ultimately, I want the next Portal to be in the real world. Cities, office buildings, homes, woods -- I think the puzzle opportunities are insane. I want two Portals actually -- one that is just puzzles, and one that is like Half Life 2...but designed around using the grav gun and portal gun. It'd be delicious.

I don't like playing as a girl character in Portal, but I sympathize with all the female gamers that always get cast as a dude. I really think developers should give players the choice in the beginning -- not full character customization, but Guy or Girl.

(posted by grant at 10/22/2007)   (0) comments

Weekend Gaming: Post Mortem

I accomplished everything I set out to accomplish this weekend. I think I deserve a metal. Episode 2 -- finished. Lieutenant rank obtained in Halo 3 -- I one upped it to a Lieutenant Grade 2. Portal begun -- yep. Friday night, while waiting for the engineers to check in some fixes I was able to play around with Tabula Rasa (beta) and Unreal Tournament 3 (demo).

Tabula Rasa is pretty bad. The concept is nice -- science fiction, a laser rifle in every hand and the promise of more action. The execution is pretty weak. The environments are pretty bland, instead of the awesome potential alien environments present artists. The action was incredibly boring after about 10 minutes. You move the targeting reticle over an enemy, hit Tab, then hold your mouse button. Then, the dice rolls take over. The cool abilities and strategy of games like World of Warcraft weren't present at all.

I found the UI pretty confusing and the quests iffy. One of the first ones I grabbed told me to kill 200 enemies. Sweet Jesus that's a grind. I spent about an hour or so with the game and uninstalled it. I don't think NCsoft has a hit coming with Tabula Rasa. It doesn't offer anything new, novel or special. It's just blah.

The Unreal Tournament 3 demo was a huge disappointment. It ran incredibly poorly on my work desktop, which has 3 gigs of RAM, a dual core processor and an nVidia 6800. The lag was so bad that sniping or fragging at all was pretty much impossible. Visually it didn't look that great (on my computer at least), though the guns looked fantastic. I don't agree with the design decision to link a huge tracer stream to every sniper shot, making it impossible for a sniper to hide. I also don't agree with them not letting us try out Warfare mode, but I agree that doing so could be risky -- I could have played the UT 2004 demo forever. Onslaught + Torlan is awesome. Also uninstalled.

Good news time. Half Life 2 Episode 2 ended incredibly well. The story that was presented was great and it really sets the stage for the sequel. I'm really excited to play EP3, even though I'm saddened by, uh, certain events at the end. It only took me 4.5 hours to complete, which was a bit disappointing. I thought they were going to make it 6-8 hours -- oops. I still love them. I actually bought an EP2 print, DoD: Source print and level design book from them this weekend. I'm hopeful.

I'll finish this in the morning over coffee. Bed time.

(posted by grant at 10/21/2007)   (0) comments

Weekend Game Plan

I think I'm at the climax of Half Life 2: Episode 2 and I'm really excited to finish it. The game has had some really cool sequences so far that really take the focus away from some of the ones we've seen in all of the Half Life 2 games now. If you don't know what I'm talking about, check out this hilarious Zero Punctuation Review of The Orange Box.

Alyx is still an awesome companion, Hunters are incredibly cool and I love the new muscle car. The open environments are also great -- Valve's really bumped their combat up a notch.

Then I'll head straight into Portal. It's pretty short, but I may not finish it. After all, I also want to earn another 10 XP in Halo 3 multiplayer so that I can move from Gunnery Sergeant (Second Grade) to Lieutenant.

To round it all off I have access to the Tabula Rasa Beta. Expectations are lowish, but I'm sure it'll be tons of fun for the first weekend or so.

Naturally, we cannot forget Ogame.

(posted by grant at 10/19/2007)   (0) comments

If It's Not Nazis, It's Demons

If there's anything developers love more than Nazis, it's demons. As a player, I love killing both. There aren't too many black and white conflicts throughout history. I can safely say the Allies vs. the Nazis is one, and the future war of Humans vs. Satan'sDemonic Hordes will be another.

I downloaded the newly released Hellgate: London single player demo yesterday and I was really happy with the game. I'm not a huge fan of Diablo or the thousands of Diablo clones. I didn't play Diablo when it came out and I have always found click fests like Titan Quest incredibly boring. I'd have to say the biggest reason I never stick to MMOs is that I hate repetition.

When you play a game like Diablo or World of Warcraft, the game, if you really want to break it down, is repetition wrapped around a gooey shell of loot and skills. You can say the same for any shooter, because you more or less shoot people with the same handfull of guns in Half Life 2. I guess it's the scripting and situations that change things. In WoW I always feel like I'm killing a bigger jackrabbit.

/rant over

Hellgate was really cool. I really liked the setting and the fact that it's semi-futuristic (I'm so sick of fantasy!). I played the Marksmen class to avoid the blademaster hack 'n slash and really digged him. Futuristic armor + big rifles is always a win in my book. Demons exploded pretty quickly and it reminded me a lot of the simplicity of Serioius Sam. I reached level 4, so I was able to toy a little bit with skills and stats, plus some gear. It seems deep, but not too deep.

I imagine single player will be fun for 5-10 hours only. I can tell it'll get repetitive and the story sucks (mostly text, fairly blah). BUT, co-op should be excellent. Co-op makes almost any game excellent. That's why I may play this game for a long time.

I worry about performance -- it seemed to chug a little on my monster work desktop. It can also get a bit ugly in parts. We'll see. The game is only $10 with my EA discount, so I'm not that concerned.

(posted by grant at 10/19/2007)   (0) comments

I Shall Always Cherish Them

A fellow producer surprised me this morning with some classic Command and Conquer stuff. She worked with Westwood back in the day. I now have NOD and GDI metal infantry soldiers (Tiberium Sun), a C&C Renegade pocket knife and NOD and GDI pins. Naturally, I'm wearing the GDI pin on my jacket.

Kane can die, as he always has.

(posted by grant at 10/12/2007)   (0) comments

This Week on Dateline...

Playgrounds -- Public convenience...or death center? Beth and I bumped into her uncle and his two cute little kids (2 and 4 years old) on our way to the tennis courts Sunday. He was taking them to grandma's, so we thought we'd spare her a bit and take them to the playground for a while.

Terrifying! But still a lot of fun.

The entire thing is metal -- why isn't their foam on the ladders, soft plastic in front of the bobby horses (I experienced my first accident here when 2 year old Noah got a bloody lip) -- something! They have these big metal cranes in the sandboxes, with little kids behind each one swinging them around like a demonic knight in battle.

Other parents don't care. They are sitting around and watching as their kids dump sand on others, jump off the top of the playground with other kids below. Just scary.

It was a ton of fun though. The kids are really cute and full of energy, plus it's fun to try out "parenting" strategies on them. One of them listened to us, the other one didn't. So, how do you trick them into doing what you want? I also noticed the women were checking me out. I don't think girls want to see you with your own kid -- they just want to see you with a kid. Little Noah was better than a Labrador and I find that hilarious.

Beth and I had a lot of fun with them, though they were exhausting. Not near the kid point yet (not quite at the marriage point), but it's fun to see where we will be eventually.

(posted by grant at 10/08/2007)   (0) comments

Short Story

I wrote a short story for a Shacknews Contest. I can potentially win a copy of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, so I took a shot. You can find the story in the Articles section. Or, if you're lazy, right here.

I only spent an hour or so on it, so I'm not too concerned. I based it on the classes in the game, specifically an ability of the Strogg Technician class. Enjoy...or don't.

(posted by grant at 10/05/2007)   (0) comments

Bioshockage for the Morning

I really liked Bioshock. Hands down, it's one of the finest, most well-crafted experiences currently available in gaming. There's just a thick layer of polish surrounding the controls and feel of the weapons, the environments and how engrossing they are, the quests and storyline and the depth of the game. It's just rich, finely tuned and scrubbed to a white hot sheen of awesomeness.

It's perhaps a sad state of affairs when one of things that first jumped out at me about the game and stuck with me for the duration is the inventory management...or perhaps it's more accurate to say the lack thereof. Games like STALKER have completely turned me off with their ridiculous system of bullet, health pack and random trinket management. Bioshock could have easily fallen into that category, especially when their feature list includes inventing, a handful of different guns, health packs, eve packs (essentially mana), hacking tools, cash and more. But they didn't! Hit A to search a corpse or object. Once it's empty, the option is removed (quite annoying in Oblivion to accidentally search and research rooms full of crates). There's no weight to the items and the only restriction is that you can carry only so many. Very slick, very fast and it really kept the gameplay moving along.

I also enjoyed the RPG upgrades. Instead of allocating experience points or something like that, you simply choose to make something better. The only real decision is what to improve. So refreshing. I think the best comparison is Gran Turismo to Need for Speed. I don't care about tire pressure, how much my muffler will reduce statistic X, etc. I just want something that makes me go faster. Need for Speed does this and in the realm of RPGs or RPG like games, Bioshock nailed it.

Level design and pacing were fantastic. I love games where I can enter a room, blow everything away, then toot around at my own pace exploring and digging through stuff. I love seeing all the details that the developers poured into each and every room and how you could see just how nuts the current antagonist was by their surroundings (what was up with Cohen?).

Enemy design was top notch -- fighting splicers and big daddies were just a blast. The player is given such a huge assortment of weapons and plasmid abilities to fight them with, not to mention turrets and some environment interactivity. Every battle, according to the devs, had the potential to end differently, but unfortunately I found that this wasn't really the case. I know I may be asking too much, but I wanted more splicer types. I also wanted to see an additional big daddy type or two and definitely more big daddy battles.

The game isn't a short one (thank you devs for respecting our money and sense of value!) and by the end I found myself hacking cameras, turrets and vending machines (again), wasting a ton of splicers (again) and hosing the big daddies with the best weapon combos I'd discovered. It got a bit redundant, though not so much do to the awesome environments and great story. Such fantastic characters!

I think 2K Games said something about turning it into a franchise. I'm not really sure where they can take the story, but I know what I'd love to see in a sequel. More unit types (like I mentioned above) would be cool. Vehicles, like submersibles or even diving suits would also be really fun if done well. More environmental interactivity (like ice putting out fire!) would be slick and if at all possible, multiplayer. I think the devs could take their awesome take on weapons, plasmids and upgrades to turn it into a fantastic multiplayer experience. Objective based, persistent unlocks -- gives me tingles.

(posted by grant at 10/03/2007)   (0) comments

The First Jump is Frustrating

I started playing Medal of Honor: Airborne when I finished Halo 3 to get it out of the way. Then I can go back to Halo 3 multiplayer and prepare for the rest of the holiday release onslaught. I delight with the thought.

But man, Airborne is frustrating. I really don't know why the franchise hasn't become the dominating force it used to be. Take controls for example (I'm playing on the 360 by the way) -- instead of using the standard set by Halo, they completely rewrote the conrol scheme.

Instead of pushing the right stick, you must hold the left trigger to zoom in. In a game where you are using iron sites constantly, having to hold an additional button is lame. Another thing that really chafes me is that you have to switch to grenades before throwing them. Again, Halo let you heave them with a simple pull of the left trigger. Grenades are a ton of fun and every game should emphasize them more. They are also really effective in tight spots -- essentially a knee jerk reaction to bad guys. When you have to switch to use them, and essentially take painful use of planning and forethought, the fun of grenades is greatly lessened.

Most glaring of all is the archaic health system. Halo 2, Rainbow Six: Vegas, Call of Duty 2 -- all of these games have proven that you can make a challenging game that is more fun without health packs. Ultimately, what do the designers want you to achieve? They want you to live through the current firefight, take a breath and move on to the next. With R6 and Halo you just recharge and go back in. With Airborne you must constantly monitor your health, fight cautiously (not fun) and then search for health packs. The game has nothing to do with health packs -- it has everything to do with fighting Nazis and liberating Europe.

I'm on the second mission and the game is already fairly frustrating and difficult. I once read a Valve designer who said something like "AI should be hard or challenging for the player. They are there to die gloriously." They are there to provide and awesome experience and the perception of a challenge. Half Life does this really well -- you get close to dying constantly but rarely actually die. The player gets the tension and adrenaline, but not the frustration of a restart and playing the level over.

One thing that I really like about EA, or something I liked about EA in the past, is that they seem to really focus on hitting the casual gamers -- people who don't stay up until 4 AM playing multiplayer, but merely an hour here and there in their spare time. These folks don't want to get pummeled by Nazis, but instead do the pummeling. EA should make Medal of Honor a really great, run and gun romp through Europe with tons of explosions, climbing cliffs under fire and jumping out of airplanes. Halo 3, Rainbow Six, Crysis, Team Fortress 2, Bioshock -- these games all have the hardcore gamers covered. We should make a fun, casual experience for the other guys. Co-op, reduced difficulty, better controls, more explosions -- this is what it needs.

I'll keep playing and offer more thoughts later. Perhaps.

(posted by grant at 10/02/2007)   (0) comments

Bungie, You Rock

I can safely say with zero doubt that Halo 3, when played with 3 other friends, is one of the best gaming experiences money can buy...assuming you didn't buy the Legendary "My Gato's a Spartan" Edition. I have no clue how it stacks up in single player, but the co-op is fantastic.

Much like the Halo 3 adversarial multiplayer, the Halo 3 campaign is the version of the three that is just right. Almost every aspect feels tweaked and refined and the number of awesome moments can be contained in nothing short of a large excel spreadsheet. The monotony and repetition of Halo:CE's Library, or a good percentage of Halo 2 is long gone. The game contains nine missions that feel just right in length. The pacing is finally spot on and we never found ourselves saying "ugh, another group of brutes?"

Speaking of which, the Brutes are the coolest enemy in any of the Halos and probably my favorite overall addition to Halo 3. I'll fight Brutes any day over Elites. Now that they are armored and armed with projectile weapons, I found them far more enjoyable. Instead of the brute force rush tactics of Halo 2, they'll fight like elites, only more pack like. I really enjoyed taking them down. If anything, I'll replay this game multiple times just to master killing the Brutes.

The vehicle segments were incredible and they honestly seemed to be designed with four players in mind. I have no idea how you'd play them solo, or perhaps they just can't be enjoyed as much. Cruising along a destroyed highway in a convoy of Warthogs is great, especially when you get the controls down and have a good gunner. When Keyes lands the frigate and hands over four scorpion tanks I was simply delighted. A tank for everyone! Taking down the scarab walkers was continually fun, especially the time I jumped off the wing of my friend's VTOL fighter, landed on the scarab and took it out from within. That's just good game design. I don't think I can spend a paragraph on it, but I loved the visuals. I think it's the best looking game on the 360, or at least tied with Bioshock. Plasma rifles and alien armies get me every time -- I just love the sci fi.

I also think Bungie finally nailed the Flood. They varied their units by adding these wall crawling, morphing units that can turn into ranged turrets. They also added a few more lumbering brutes and varied the weaponry of the typical units. The Flood came into the story exactly when the game needed a change of pace, then stepped aside for the Covenant again. I hated playing the Flood levels in the first two Halos, but I really enjoyed them here.

Halo 3 does have a few things that could have been ironed out or changed for the better. The storytelling mechanic with Cortana or the Gravemind constantly interrupting the game has got to go. It's disruptive and nothing they said was interesting or worth noting. I don't know who thought the mechanic would be cool, but man they were wrong. The online connection with other people can be frustrating. I know Bungie isn't responsible for everyone's online connection, but if one player gets disconnected from a co-op mission it shouldn't kick EVERYONE out of the game. If you cannot change that, at least let us start at the save point again. We had to play the first level 4 times -- unacceptable.

I also find it interesting that Bungie has created several of the same levels for every version of Halo. Defending the ship, I mean base, driving the warthog off an exploding Halo, exploring a long winding level full of snipers, crusing along a road network in Warthogs -- I love these levels, but we've seen them before. Then again, how do you improve a fantastic formula? Does the mouse trap need to be replaced?

I guess that last line sums it up. How do you improve something that's been pretty good all along and has now finally reached the epic level? Halo 3 is great. Everyone at Bungie deserves a long vacation and a new franchise to totally rock. Just don't make a mini-game compilation. I'll kill you all.

Note: The storyline for the series is actually really cool, but it's sometimes hard to understand from the cutscenes. Check out this thread. It presents a summary of all the books, plus a compilation of all of the Halo:CE and Halo 2 cutscenes.

(posted by grant at 10/01/2007)   (0) comments