The Rocking Was Poor

We had a lot of fun playing Rock Band together. Brother on drums, Beth with the vocals and me on guitar. It wasn't so fun that my guitar died after about 3 hours of light playing. It doesn't consistently recognize downward strums, which is essentially a deal breaker for the game. It's like the A button not working on an NES controller.

Harmonix has publicly acknowledged" that they shipped broken guitars. If they knew about it, and EA knew about it -- why would they ship them? The game cost me $120. For those without the discount it was $160. It's just unacceptable and I'm really peeved.

I'll play the game once I get my replacement guitar and probably have a great time. But not until I play some other stuff first. I just find it really frustrating as a customer, developer and gamer.

(posted by grant at 11/29/2007)   (0) comments

Rock Rock Rock Rock

I picked up Rock Band at the company store today and I've barely gotten anything done. I'm so excited. I haven't been this excited all year, and I've never even owned a Guitar Hero game. A Queens of the Stone Age song pack (Sick Sick Sick, Little Sister, 3s & 7s) was released, as well as a Metallica pack (...And Justice for All!). I'll be buying those, most definitely.

I'm picking up my brother tonight from the airport (drummer). Beth will take vocals and I shall rock the guitar. I don't think I'll be sleeping tonight.

I downloaded the ...And Justice for All album to prepare myself. I'm headbanging at my desk while trying to do some creative writing. I haven't been very successful today, to say the least.

(posted by grant at 11/20/2007)   (0) comments

PS3 First Impressions and R&C Love

So, after a year of contemplation, price changes and shoddy content I finally obtained a Playstation 3. A deal crossed my plate that I just couldn't pass up -- Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction and Folklore for free, with Warhawk and Uncharted: Drake's Fortune still on the way. So, that's well over $200 worth of games that I also want to play. The Best Buy rebate also threw in 6 Blu Ray movies, a few of which are actually worth watching (Spiderman 3, Swordfish). I bought the 40 gig, $400 console.

There are a few things I really liked immediately. The wireless controller charges when I'm not playing and I found that I actually enjoyed how light it was. The WiFi inside the console is much appreciated, especially the fact that I didn't need to spend $100 like I did for the 360. The dashboard browser is slick. I don't prefer it or the 360 one for that matter -- both are good implementations.

I didn't care for the fact that I had to spend $20 Saturday morning on HD cables. The 360 ships with them, so should the "HD Era" Playstation 3. I also don't like that a lot of the flagship titles don't go to a full 1080p. Ratchet and Clank tops off at 720p. It looks incredible, but it should go all the way. All of my 360 games do (or at least claim to) and it's an expectation I have now.

I plowed through Ratchet and Clank this weekend. It's always been a favorite series of mine and the new one is more great stuff. It's funny, fully of personality and the graphics are just rich. They look fantastic. No popping, no rough edges -- the entire game looks smooth and pretty. They added a lot more slick FX and cool background noise, like buildings collapsing and huge space ships. The game runs at a silky smooth 60 fps. With the art direction and awesome tech, I have to say it's probably one of the best looking games I've seen. To sweeten the deal, Insomniac focuses the camera more, especially in segments like rail grinding. You look where they want you to look and some really epic segments emerge.

I don't think they changed the gameplay up at all, save a few pretty slick motion control segments. That's fine, because this was a really tight, refined R&C game. Halo jumps were cool and I loved flying around with the wings. I hated the Marble Madness style decrypting mini-game, but you don't win them all. The weapon upgrades are really well done and now that I'm finished with my first playthrough of the game, I can focus on using the weapons I've already finished upgrading. Gold Bolts are also calling to me.

I didn't care for the starship segments, mostly because I had to control flying and aiming independently. Like Starfox, they should have both been controlled with the left analog.

I'd love to see co-op built for the next Ratchet and Clank. It's about time Ratchet finds another Lombax. It's also time for Sony to take a jab at Microsoft's online throne with an online co-op game. I think the variety of weapons and gameplay situations in the franchise are great for co-op, so I'm looking forward to it. I'm also curious to see if they release any content over the Playstation Network.

Hopefully I'll get Warhawk and Uncharted tomorrow to play over the week.

(posted by grant at 11/19/2007)   (0) comments

Ok, I'll give you this one Cal

As much as I try to boycott all things Berkeley, I have to love this video. It's a pretty awesome half time show featuring a ton of NES game theme songs. Mario, Tetris, Zelda -- it's really cool. I must say though, the Cal trumpets suck.

(posted by grant at 11/15/2007)   (0) comments

I Love It

I think my favorite part of my job right now is working with the animators and making reference videos. Essentially, we act out how we think things should look in game. It's really fun and I always love when I get asked to help.

I wonder if there's a position where a non-animator can work with animators...but not have to be a project manager. I have no interest in scheduling people. Obviously that's not all they do, but it's a big chunk

(posted by grant at 11/13/2007)   (0) comments

That's One Fine Piece of Ace

I finally finished Ace Combat 6 this weekend, and not a moment too soon. I'm about to be overwhelmed by games I really want to play and love. I didn't even link to a few, because I'm still on the fence about them. But, Ace Combat...

I think the Project Aces team has done a really good job with the series. I've bought 3 of the last 4 games and played all of them to completion. I'm a bit surprised, though, that they've changed almost nothing. Same jets, same story every time, same missions -- they just update the graphics and tweak it. Instead of a time limit (Ace Combat 4), missions now give you more than enough time and mulitple objectives to complete. It's a bit annoying that it only lets you do half of the objectives before you're given new orders, but then again it encourages replaying the game. The game also introduced checkpoints, so it wasn't as frustrating. I remember getting to the end of a mission in the previous games, only to die in the very end. Maddening!

I thought the story in Ace Combat 6 was utter crap. They tried to tell it from about 3 too many vantage points. I didn't care about any of the characters -- too emotional and weepy. Japanese game developers make a lot of games about war, but all of these games are notorious (Metal Gear being the worst) for making sure you, the player, know all about the evils of war. It's a bit annoying. I really like the story of Ace Combat 4, where you learned about a boy in occupied territory during cutscenes. In mission, your character became more and more famous. It was really cool and they simply didn't capture that in Ace Combat 6. Most of the story seemed to revolve around the battle cry "Go Dance with the Angels" -- maybe it sounds great in Japanese. In English it's idiotic, especially when uttered 8 times in every mission and cutscene.

The presentation is fairly fantastic -- the jets and terrain look better than ever before. The voice acting is mostly good, even if what they are saying is obnoxious. I wish they would give the UI a fresh coat of paint -- it hasn't changed since the PS2 versions. Maybe longer.

I'd really love to see the series change a few things up. Maybe the setting -- why not space? Or, we could even dog fight in the atmosphere of a colonized Venus, for example. They could also vary the story plot. For once, I wouldn't mind being the aggressor against somebody evil. I'm always defending my homeland (which may be a side effect of Japanese history...). Also, why don't I get to fly attack choppers? I'm always destroying Apaches -- let me fly one! I think it'd be neat to create attack bomber missions as well. B2, Intruder, B1 -- these are really cool aircraft. I think it'd be really interesting (if done well) to give me no defensive weapons. Just a payload and an objective. If I can run the gauntlet, avoid radar detection and fly balls to the wall fast, I think it'd be pretty interesting.

They also need to vary the combat a bit. Most missions are a shooting gallery. You zoom around, get a lock, throw missiles at the bad guy. To make it "difficult", they throw in a ton of SAM sites that do more to annoy me than give me that adrenaline rush. I hate dogfighting against the uber jets in every game, because they are just too good. When I finally kill one, I feel like it's more luck than anything. They dodge every missile and fly way too fast. Crimson Skies had fantastic combat, but then again they had special weapons and prop airplanes. Slower jets allow for cooler dogfighting maneuvers.

Overall, it's good stuff. I haven't tried out multiplayer, because I don't imagine it'll be very good. I've love to try co-op, but none of my friends have picked up the title. Maybe after the Christmas rush.

(posted by grant at 11/12/2007)   (0) comments

Hellgate: London....Hmmmmm

Hellgate isn't a bad game. The reviews are a bit average and they're probably right. I spent a lot of the weekend playing, with a level 10 Marksmen and level 12 Blademaster to show for it, and ultimately the game just lacks a focus.

I've heard that Blizzard doesn't really have a well organized dev process. Supposedly they just start making stuff and eventually they have a game. If you have infinite time to make something, I guess you can do that. I wonder if the Hellgate guys, former Blizzard employees, took the same approach. Only now, they had a limited budget and a publisher that likes games on time.

It isn't that buggy, at least it wasn't for me. I noticed a few here and there, but no crashes or game killers. The joy and frustration of PC gaming is that if you have
just the right hardware specs, you're in the clear. I do have issues with the design though.

Analyzers are a stupid game mechanic. They are expendable items that reveal an items (ex: armor, sword) true stats. However, they cost practically nothing in a game where money is ridiculously plentiful...so what's the purpose of their existence? I would think they'd be very expensive and using one could potentially reveal something really great on a weapon. Classic risk vs. reward.

Weapon modification is also poorly implemented and not very intuitive. The nano-forge upgrades items using junk you collect...but I'm not sure how. The Augmentrex 3000 (terrible name!) adds a common, rare, or legendary property. Huh? What the hell does that mean? You can add little mods to slots on weapons which is pretty fun, but viewing the details on a weapon is painful and frustrating. Also, it drives me nuts that you must remove a weapon from your character and place it in your inventory before you can put it in the machines. Ultimately, there should be one single upgrade machine for everything. Upon activation, you specify what you want, then a UI dialog appears with all weapons you currently own listed. You pick what you want to upgrade and it's applied. Simple. Fast. Elegant.

Combat is fun and fast, however that's where you bump into issues. They copied WoW's skill selection bar, which is fine. However, combat in WoW is resolved after a few turns. You have time to pick your next skill, think about things and take advantage of all your skills. Combat is resolved in one or two swings in Hellgate (usually) -- it's hard to use the skills on a character. For my Marksmen, they are all but impossible. Instead of copying the grenade throwing mechanic from every FPS on the market, Flagship made it so that using a grenade means you'll throw it somewhere in front of your character. It also takes several seconds to detonate, so even if you do throw it correctly, the monsters are already rushing towards you. I would have kept the fast combat, but switched the skill focus to fewer active skills and more passive skills. Players could even pick which passive skills are active to give them different benefits. Also, by focusing on 2-3 skills at a time, they could have killed that entire bar UI and freed up more of the screen. Less HUD = better experience (in my opinion).

The game has no real story and doesn't really take advantage of the London setting. What story they do have is pretty awful -- dreadful text, lame characters and standard "get me 8 demon ears" type quests. The world does resemble a destroyed London-esque street/subway, so that's cool. But, so far I haven't fought in Buckingham Palace. I haven't been to London Bridge, the Tower of London (a hot spot for Satan's minions) or traveled outside the city to Stonehenge. The movie National Treasure was a lot of fun, because they took American history and twisted it a bit. Why am I not going to Buckingham Palace to find this one jewel in the queen's crown, to then take to Stonehenge before the Hellrift or whatever is too powerful? It's corny, but it's something that uses the scene and gets me interested. Where's the Prime Minister to rally the survivors? Queen and country? When people think of the Battle of Britain, they are reminded of Churchill's speech, of the King and Queen navigating the ruins after an attack -- if you're going to use London, USE it. They might as well called it Hellgate: Detroit.

I have no idea why these guys didn't license an engine. When they started, they could have grabbed Unreal 2.5 and it would have looked better than the game they shipped. Source and UE3 are both available now. Hellgate is a mostly interior focused, online game. They do nothing that available engines don't already do. If I had a brand new studio, I guarantee I'd license an engine so that I could focus on design and content instead of a lighting system, FX engine, sound engine, animation system...etc.

Lastly, I don't care for the rewards system. Leveling isn't that big of a deal. I allocate stat points and I get more powerful. They have the short term rewards down, but nothing significant that makes me say "gee, I really want to hit level 20 this weekend!" In World of Warcraft you get new or upgraded skills every two levels. Talent points eventually tick in and they give you new abilities over time. And early on you are told that at level X you get a mount, the ability to wear new armor or dual wield...big, character changing things. I don't know what I'm getting with each level in Hellgate other than more power.

I'm pretty harsh, but the game isn't awful. It's pretty fun, even more so with friends and it just seems to lack a point. I don't know how long I'll be playing it, especially with Call of Duty 4 shipping this week, plus Kane and Lynch and Mass Effect coming soon. Is it a $50 game? Probably not. Will the subscription bring me back? Depends on what they offer. I'll try to grab some screens and throw them in later.

(posted by grant at 11/05/2007)   (0) comments