When we last left the mighty Zasz: Catman extraordianaire, we were progressing through the subterranean escape passages beneath the imperial jail/city with our new Emperor buddy and his guard types.

I think we’re really bonding, nice gents, the kind of guys you’d enjoy a drink with. They could be in Carling adverts, passing you terrible alcohol while you fight Daedra-cultist-assassins.

It’s gonna be a good ti-

Hay, where are you going guys? ... guys? ;_;

FINE! At least this place is safe, you can come back and get me later. I’ll just slash this sword around. Hay this is getting good.

In Oblivion you can make “power attacks”. These work basically the same with every weapon, though have unique effects based on your skill with that weapon. Holding a movement key and the attack button at the same time is the modus operandi and they are a good way to dispatch weak enemies quickly.

Unique effects include disarm, knockdown, paralysis and so on. “But what do you mean skill with that weapon, oh great Narrator?” QUIET WHIPPERSNAPPER, I’LL EXPLAIN LATER. For now, understand that with that sword we picked up we can either do a few fast attacks, or big strong ones with longer cooldowns. Fast and weak, slow and strong.

But, nothing to fight, so we shouldn’t really be worrying about all th-

OH GOD KILL IT KILL IT KILL IT KILL IT

After an EPIC DUEL SO INCREDIBLE CAPTURING IT IN SCREENSHOTS SIMPLY CORRUPTED MY HARDDRIVE (I’ve changed my screenshot key now so I can take better ones, probably from Chapter 5 on) the rats lay defeated, ourselves triumphant.

And you know what that means: loot time.

This is not as awesome as I was promised.

… this doesn’t even give me a benefit. It’s basically poison. I killed this monster and it dropped poison. I’m outrag- hay there’s a hole in the wall, let’s check it out. A turn to the right reveals a chest. Rat, you are forgiven your earlier failings, for now you bring plentiful bounty!

Moving on, and dispatching of another pesky rat, we come across the following.

You've got a little... there's something on your... er...

Now, there are only so many options in a situation like this:

a) Leave the poor man and his possessions where he is, respecting the dead and all that go with them to the next life.

b) Nab the bow and shield, open the chest – they might not be his, after all, and they are just lying there.

c) TAKE IT ALL.

OH BOY

Now, there are a lot of things to learn in this little period, but most of them are simple. The shield you saw before increases your armour, which makes you take less damage, and is also much more effective for blocking than a sword.

The bow is your standard range weapon – there are no guns or crossbows in Oblivion, much to my dismay. Magic is a weak alternative, but isn’t quite as manly. To fire a bow you need arrows and we’ll get onto them in more depth later.

The armour you see is of the light variety – light armour weighs less than heavy but provides less protection. This makes it easier to perform certain tasks (such as sneaking) but means you take more damage when you are hit.

Lockpicks are used to pick locks. There is a mini-game for this, helpfully demonstrated by the chest next to our ever helpful skeleton pal.

MASTER OF LOCKS, I'M STEALING YOUR STUFF

BENDING THE RULES AND SNATCHING YOUR SOCKS

Basically you tap the little tumblers up and when they’re in the right place you left click to lock them in. It is not as easy as it sounds, but easier than that sentence makes it seem. The harder the lock, the more tumblers there are to be put into place (on this lock, the righthand four were already done when we started), and the lower your Security skill, the harder those tumblers are to get into the right place.

It is my crowning glory that with only three reloads, I once picked a Very Hard lock with a Security skill of 5, with a single pick. Sound actually plays a larger part in this mini-game than many realise and it can be infinitely harder to play without sound than it is with.

Now that you are all well and truly bored with talk of locks and tumblers, lets shoot the crap out of something! This bucket has had it coming!

Arrow fight at the Bucket Coral.

The hero!

The villian!

To fire you must have both a bow and arrows equipped. While having a bow is counted as a two-handed weapon, arrows occupy their own equipment “slot” and thus can be kept on until the end of time.

Traitorous bucket dealt with throughly, we may procede to the exit. Defining the western RPG, we have a meaningless choice: do we try to pick the lock on the door or “try to find the key” – aka, look at the goblin right next to the door and loot his corpse.

You should realise by now what happens when I am given a corpse-looting choice.

Tune in next time for GOBLINS.

If someone could explain to me how in the name of all that is holy you manage to code your game such that if the computer it is running on does not have a perfect combination of audio codecs, all input from the keyboard and mouse fails after 3-5 minutes?

Or how, in the modern world (modern world), alt tabbing can still cause a game to crash?

I mad.

Anyway. It works now. Eventually. However I’ve forgone the use of graphics mods, mostly because I don’t want to redownload them after deleting them, believe them to be the cause of the problem (they weren’t). Also, some of them were such a giant cock to install. OUR ADVENTURE BEGINS, HERE:

We’re going to boldly go where no prisoner, emperor and three guards have gone before. But first we must create our mighty hero.

Are we to be man or woman? Warrior or sorcerer? Angel or devil-hearted demon-bastard/bitch? Pro-tip: none of the above.

We’re going to be a cat.

Rule 34 will not be tolerated.

OH GOD FURRIES. No not really. I’m picking it because of the ridiculous bonuses. For a start, we get a base increase to agility, which is sexy stuff considering our planned course of action. But mostly it’s the permanent, free see-in-the-dark spell, the racial bonus. You really can’t underestimate that, not least because it is so bright in my room I need to use it to actually play the game. The one downside is it does leave a blue tinge on everything, as you’ll see shortly.

So we begin. But. Hang on. This isn’t right. Why would yo- BETHESDA!

Doing it wrong.

Doing it right.

Okay we’re back. Well this is homely, a nice cell to call our own. Oblivion begins with your character, for unknown reasons, as a guest of the Emperor. Be it for murder, theft or picking your nose is left to your imagination, but judging by the hanging chains and nothing of a bed, it doesn’t look like a fun time. As an introduction to the world, we get to talk to the best character in the game. This guy:

Can't see you too well there son...

It's all getting a little Avatar in here.

He’s a dark elf and his dialogue is the first thing you’ll hear in-game. It is custom tailored to your race – to the point that if you’re a dark elf, he’ll talk about how he’s going to escape and sex up your wife. For cat people such as myself, he offers a nice juicy rat sandwich and goes on to explain how I’m going to die in here – the one common motif in all of his speeches. This leads nicely into him explaining that the guards are on their way.

Two guards, one emperor isn't nearly as famous.

They bust into the cell all “what the hell are you doing here?” and “STAY OUT OF OUR WAY” as you back into the corner. Just passing through, right guys? Not going to involve me in your obviously serious and incredibly dangerous work? You’ve already mentioned the horrible deaths of various persons, so I’m safe here right? I’ll just mind my own business. Hay a tan cu- OH GOD DAMMIT

Don't hurt me, old man ;_;

Captain Pic- Emperor Palpa- Uriel Septim informs us that he has seen us in his dreams. His dreaming about chained cat people aside, apparently this means we get the honour of escaping with him. You know, the guy apparently being chased by assassin’s. Unarmed. With wrist irons on. Sergeant TokenFemale opens the door for us with a push of a brick as we are informed we better not fuck around. Or they’ll kill us.

Things are looking up.

Movement and combat in Oblivion really isn’t very complex. You have your standard WASD, space for jump, e for use. You do have to “bring out” your weapon if you want to fight. This can be done by simply pressing the attack button (M1, like I said, normal) or press F – which also puts weapons away. Characters will react to you differently if you wander around and talk to them with your weapon drawn. This being the difference between going up to someone and asking if they have the time and pulling a gun on them, pointing it casually at their crotch and asking for the time.

We trek on, being casually insulted or shouted at by our various companions. At least Sergeant TokenFemale is a bit of a looker. Maybe if we all get out of this alive…

"Ever had a thing for a ma- cat in chains, darlin'?"

Man those caverns on the walls would be a really cool place to hide. You could spy on anyone walking through, maybe jump on them, scare them a bit. Good job there aren’t ASSASSIN’S CHASING US OR ANYTHING, HUH, GUARDS?

Oh crap.

AAAAAAA DIE

Yeah we sure showed them.

Alriiiiight, lootan time.

The guards pretty much one-shot the assassin’s and you can’t do crap to them due to the awesome daedric armour they’re wearing – which, of course, is just a spell they’re casting, so it dissapears when they die. No epic phat loots for us. Not yet, anyway, but SOON, PRECIOUS, OH SO SOON.

Anyway, time to steal from the dead. Those robes are fair fetching, and one of them even had a nice potion.

Giggity.

Hay, look who died D:

Giggity goo.

HAY SHE HAS A SWORD, yoink! Aww yeah, we’re one badass kitty now.

The adventure begins!

Tune in next time for OH GOD RATS.

It should be rather self explanatory from both the URL and the title of the page what this is to be, but why may be a slightly more mysterious question. Well, first off, I’ve never played Oblivion properly before. By properly, I mean modded up the wazoo and resembling the original about as closely as I resemble the 1986 winner of Miss. Universe.

I do not look like this.

And I don’t plan to. More on that in a bit. I’ve also never done a game diary before, and have big problems with sticking with things for large amounts of time, due to being an incredibly unfocused and slightly stupid teenager. This will be changed (in the spirit of the new British government) in a manner that involves killing lots of people and stealing their stuff.

I'm so fucking edgy and up on current affairs.

On the subject of the game itself: Oblivion was released in 2006 to the general praise reserved for AAA titles. A friend of mine purchased it, discovered it wouldn’t run worth shit on his computer and hastened to my abode. We dicked around, played it a little, had some fun.

I actually quite like it as a game – the main quest is pretty much a pile of bollocks, but the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild lines are brilliant. Many people think it is too easy and the complaints about the levelling system could stretch from now until the sun explodes.

Personally, I enjoyed the simple combat and consistent difficulty. I have never reached the maximum level and thus have not experienced the horror of Daedric homeless bandits, so that will be a novel experience should we get there. Thus, the mods I have installed do the following:

I think I'm ready now.

- Sounds/Textures – Oblivion was the Crysis of its time: the prettiest, graphics-card-murdering game available. Now, however, it’s actually got a little ugly. These mods change that, including one that is half as big as the game itself. Hopefully my mediocre PC can keep up, otherwise one or two will be disabled. The additional music and sounds just happened to be on a list of mods I was looking at. They will almost certainly not effect your experience of this diary, unless I decide I want to do video.

- Quest Award Leveler – The quest rewards in Oblivion are, on the whole, pretty fucking awesome. Unfortunetly, while they scale with your level when you acquire them, they do not continue to do so. This mod fixes that. Some might call it cheating, I call it having fun.

- Harvest – A couple of mods that make it more obvious when a herb or container has been looted. Very simple, very awesome.

- Non-psychic Guards – Fuck those guys, seriously. It’s like the Knights of the Round Table all suddenly standing up in the middle of a meeting and running off to the middle east because of some arcane link telling them there were crimes being committed in Jeruselum. And that’d just be stupid, so I’m using this.

- New UI – The old one was consolified crap! Damn casuals, etc! This is better, apparently. We’ll see.

- Oblivion Mod Manager – Makes all that stuff you just read actually work, and work well.

Our device has been modified.

Stuff I’m not using that you might think I should:

- Obscuro’s Oblivion Overhall (OOO)/Francesco’s – I enjoy playing the game the way I play the game, which pretty much involves doing whatever the dick I like, whenever I like. These mods make the game an incredible amount harder (and, probably, better) which while I’m sure is fun and brilliant, not for me!

- Any kind of levelling modification – I liked Oblivion’s levelling system and don’t really want to learn a new one. Plus the kind of character I intend to play (stealthy archer bullshit), I believe, has the lowest number of issues with it.

- Nude mods – Fap elsewhere. I can suggest a few places.

This is as hot as it's going to get.

If anyone has any suggestions, they can go right ahead and propose them through any of a million different channels of communication including the comments section and twitter.

Tune in for the next update, in which I make a character and begin MyAdventure(tm).

It can be quite a shock when one takes a moment to think how little time in film media is spent without background music. From the most poignant, heart-felt monologues to the flashy depths of the latest JJ Abrams or Michael Bay lightshow, something is playing in the background, often obscured by talking or effects, but always present.

This is less of a sudden realisation in video games – music has been a big part of out entertainment since the very beginning. Everyone remembers the music from games they played growing up because it was really all the sound we had – depending on your age there was little to no voice acting, very basic special effects and an awful lot of text that you needed something to hum while reading.

This continues as our gaming platforms become ever smaller – the Gameboy Advance, DS and Playstation Portable easily matching and often surpassing the weighty consoles of old. Their inheritance of the games of the past has naturally resulted in a transfer of values, but their technical limitations have resulted in the same for original titles.

And so, so much of it is absolutely brilliant. It’s no wonder that sites like ocremix exist, remixing and retuning the anthems of our favourite entertainment into fully fledged, standalone tracks; removing a simple inherent of VGM: it cannot have an identifiable ending, as usually it must repeat endlessly.

Example time! The boss battle theme from Final Fantasy VII (http://bit.ly/3CthKR). Now, I don’t care who you are or what your background is, if you never air-guitared madly to Those Who Fight Further, you never lived. More than anything else, it is a wonderful example of a catch-all statement for most of that kind of VGM: an identifiable, catchy and singable first ten seconds. Look anywhere and you will find it – whether it be covering a battle scene’s opening mini-cinematic; the turn counter on a strategy or the loading screen for a new level; the very first section of a piece of VGM is utterly vital – not only to create a listenable piece of music, but as a piece of game design.

More examples! The Advance Wars series. I challenge anyone to find a game with so many incredible and memorable full tracks. Obeying strictly to the ten second brilliance, two minute wonder formula, these are songs I’ll never forget – and they just kept getting better as the series progressed. Sturm’s theme (http://bit.ly/ckOI31) from the original was the perfect piece of boss music for one of the hardest fights I’ve ever had; through Sensei’s crazy up-beat slap-tastic anthem (http://bit.ly/9nlnx6) in the sequel; into the sublime rock piece for the nerd stereotype extraordinaire Jake (http://bit.ly/bwxzwc) in Dual Strike and finally the grim and dark stylings of every track in Days of Ruin… but most notably Tasha’s “Goddess of Revenge”: absolutely the best introduction you will hear (http://bit.ly/9BbdwP). If you don’t headbang, you aren’t human.

It is not just the console games – our own lovely PC’s shooters have some of the (mostly guitar/metal) best VGM there is. Unreal Tournament 2004’s DM_Rankin (http://bit.ly/cUphf0) is a hypnotic combination of electronica and metal to create an incredible wall-jumping, man-fragging beat-setter that seems custom designed to fuel the senses. As backup, who can forget Doom’s Hangarmaggedon? E1M1 just wouldn’t be the same without it (http://bit.ly/vYfoW), the death-rattle of zombies cataclysmically different when lacking this intricate piece.

But it goes further. Video Games Live is an experience everyone should have once. I myself have only been lucky enough to hear them at Blizzard events, and thus have not experienced their full range – but it is truly a glorious thing. Gamers are often accused of taking our hobby too far, of branding ourselves too heavily with this one thing, that we are addicted to our passtime. This is all well and good and probably at least a little correct – but 10,000+ people dancing, humming or singing their favourite pieces of music in a packed hall is as relevant and healthy for us as it is for the crowd at the latest Pendulum concert.

What I want to see next is for the remixes that are made (or even the originals themselves) – be they The Black Mages, OCRemix, VGL or whoever else – to be released properly and taken seriously as musical pieces. It won’t matter, or even need to be mentioned, that it’s remixed video game music; it’s just music. Those of us that know the origins, if we are even a rare specimen by this point, can laugh and enjoy it a little more perhaps, but that does not take away or add from the piece itself. Anyone can stand on a packed floor and air-guitar their heart out to Quake 2’s Kill Ratio (http://bit.ly/cwTDcr). Anyone could stamp their feet and throw their hands madly into the air to the Terran Medley (http://bit.ly/2DiQuP and http://bit.ly/1ayJDj).

What would you like to see, down the pub or in the club on a Saturday night?

A flick of the wrist, a speeding projectile, everything’s over. The crowd cheers or jeers; high fives or patted shoulders are exchanged accordingly. One individual, his pinpoint accuracy and lightning reactions the savior of the day, is the hero for his team.

Seven thousand miles away two people engage in a high-stakes strategic game. Each has his plan and knows a million or more ways to counter, predict and outplay his opponent. Each has a shot at the hundreds of thousands of pounds and worldwide fame that comes with being the best of the best. Each knows only one unsmiling, polite face will be the victor.

And, alone in his room, a British man sits. He is waiting. Waiting. With a minute movement, disappointment and rage spreads through another man; many kilometres of fibre-optic wire away. A further flurry and a grin expands on the first man’s face. “Damn I’m good”

This is e-sports.

Whether it’s a 5 on 5 Quake tournament in front of the developers themselves; the landslide of sound and light that is the Korean StarCraft scene or just some kid in his room, getting those perfect AK shots in Counter-Strike; it’s an amazing piece of gaming culture. It’s expanded beyond what anyone may have thought possible and resulted in some of the best gaming experiences of this decade. Let’s look at where we’ve come from and where we’re going.

Gaming has always been competitive. Since the earliest days of Pong, Pacman and electronic pinball there have been pairings trying to get the higher score, the next level, the longer time played. There are definitive titles – Street Fighter and its various sequels being the early fighter that grabbed the attention of players, producing “that moment” (http://bit.ly/IjMt) starring Daigo where one now-famous player managed to come back from almost-certain defeat to fully parry a flood of attacks and execute his own super maneuvre. A rare moment where the flashy effects of a game perfectly fit into the play used by professionals.

StarCraft must claim the RTS top-spot of course, but it is harder to choose a perfect moment from a game that sees less attention outside of the utterly non-english South Korean play. It takes an awful lot more game knowledge to understand the beauty of a perfectly executed game of StarCraft too, and obviously its nature as an RTS makes highlights a longer affair. However, I must recommend Epic Moments of StarCraft by MooN (http://bit.ly/UxMfm), showcasing some of the most amazing plays ever.

The FPS is a strange genre when it comes to competitive gaming. It is split into the team games such as Counter-Strike 1.6 and Source or Team Fortress 2 and the one-on-one arena games such as Quake Live and Unreal Tournament. However, finding examples of brilliance in any is easy – there are new frag videos created every day. Which leads us to the inspiration for this article: the amazing work that comes out of it.

There is a Counter Strike: Source video called “Incorporated 2″ (http://bit.ly/gCIgt). This video is full of impressive frags, at least half and probably more of which are by players who are using wall or aim-hacks. Once this was pointed out to me, I enjoyed the video as much as I did when I thought it was simply a display of some of the most skillful players around. Why? Because this is a video where weapons fire is [i]synced up with the drum beats in the song playing in the background[/i]. It is the kind of video where every single scene has been specifically selected or crafted to fit into the rest. Without e-sports, gaming would not experience that level of inspired design outside of cinematic teams.

The communities that form and allow this to happen are some of the best there are. Elitist and utterly horrible large portions may be, but their devotion to figuring out and mastering their favourite games is a site to behold. All of the games mentioned here have countless fansites, wikis and guides devoted to them; hyper-analysing every tiny mechanic until it can be categorised and exploited or ignored. The number of frames in a Street Fighter animation; the meanings of exact building placements in early-game StarCraft or the Counter-Strike map area naming conventions – to someone, they’re all relevant.

——-

Yay!  You reached the end.  Well done.  Hopefully I’m going to be writing more soon, please leave a comment.  Sorry for the captcha, but there were 20,000 spam comments on here before I deleted all of them (leaving some weird artifacts) and I don’t wanna do it again.

Also thanks to Quintin Smith (aka Quinns aka The Quinninator) for writing this piece over at RPS reminding me why I like writing about e-sports (and thus causing me to find this).

It’s like some kind of reverse evolution. In the long forgotten past of gaming, text based adventures would deliver exposition via characters that would be directly interacting with the character. 3D engines, advanced animation and billion dollar budgets later and my favourite way of receiving story is via audio/video logs that I non-sensically pick up off the ground and plug into my magical PDA.

I don’t know what it is, but something about the atmosphere of this method really takes me. Obviously, certain situations are idyllic for it – mostly survival horror or at least creepy games where there is a logical reason for little or no actual contact with other non-aggressive characters. But even during the introduction to these games, for example Doom 3, it can be brilliant for setting a story.

Who better to tell the history of a location and set the scene than the individuals who inhabit that place, before their untimely internal combustion/devouring/demon possession/decapitation? Hell, other than the magical-PDA problem earlier and the often odd location of the diaries (would anyone actually leave those in their workplace, ever?) it makes a little sense. Future-tech-people would keep audio logs right? If Scrubs has taught me anything, it’s that doctors do it already, without that!

Okay, so where have we seen it? The games that came to mind were Dead Space, Bioshock, the afore-mentioned Doom 3 and the recent acceptably allstar Batman: Arkham Asylum. Each used logs in slightly different ways; all of which I’d like to explore. I’ll start with the most recent: Arkham. The interview tapes that are collectible throughout the game serve no purpose whatsoever other than to provide background on the events at Arkham leading up to the game and information on the super-villains that oppose you. Our other examples often use these logs to provide key-pad codes, directions or other help that is useful in the gameworld – either to continue the plot or simply unlock ammo crates or further asides – Arkham does not.

And that is a good thing. Logs in general are easy to miss. In all games, they are usually small and hidden. This means that the “important” ones can sometimes be overlooked or are forced to be no challenge to find at all. Also, the more action-focused players – who may ignore logs in general, simply out of disinterest – take time out of their playstyle to bore themselves. Even those who do are often forced to relisten to the unskippable parts because they forgot the vital code in the 30 seconds it took them to get to the right place.

Arkham’s other major success is something I have never seen elsewhere and demand that EVERY. SINGLE. DEVELOPER. who is planning this strategy implements right away – if you have “sets” of recordings that tell a story, then no matter which order I pick them up in, they should be in the right order. To hell with realism, I don’t like missing out or spoiling something for myself. I realise this isn’t always plausible; particularly if you need certain logs to say certain things about the room or area they are in, but good lord was I happy when I figured this out.

Alright, let’s move on. Bioshock. Much like System Shock 2 (because I haven’t played it, that’s why it’s not the main focus of this paragraph), Bioshock uses logs as one of its main story-telling mechanics. While the main plot can be distinguished without them, there will be holes and pieces that seemingly don’t make sense. There are times when this is very effective – the puppy-killing phrase reveal is amazingly atmospheric; the log found in a room which tells the story of the player character’s brainwashing as a child and the horrific implications. It’s a work of art.

In other areas, these logs simply tell of the life of Rapture, before and after it’s apocalypse. The politics and the violence. It paints an amazing picture of a world that should have been perfect, but simply wasn’t. There are highlights – police officers talking of torture; the story of the main character’s birth leading to an iconic hallucination; the story of Adam. This was just the right way to tell it – signs would make no sense; video would seem too high tech; actual interaction with characters would ruin half the plot.

Dead Space and Doom’s usage are subtly different. There is more game advice here – Doom 3’s immortal sin of codes-for-doors while Dead Space has the slightly more acceptable “don’t shoot them in the head, morons” – but what they have most in common is horror. Both use their audio logs to enhance the scares, allowing the player to experience events which happened elsewhere or elsewhen.

For Doom 3 this is particularly effective, due to the “normality” of the base before the cataclysmic events that occur. It allows that player to be shown that there was always something not quite right about the goings on of certain individuals – most notably the eventual villain. The base is shown to have always been a little eerie, a little strange; as one might expect for an island of law and order in a sea of airless, red Mars dust. Even the video-logs, which are simply descriptions of the on-goings of the base, have a dark foreboding to them: they’re a little too mechanical, a little too clean.

Both games do one thing perfectly however: That “oh shit” moment. That bit where everything goes to fuck. Dead Space has two – when Isaac himself discovers the infestation, and the “original”, conveyed throughout the opening chapters in logs as Isaac discovers the remains of various crewmen. Both the audio and video that Isaac receives play wonderfully into the “no UI” feel of the game, as all is played out in front of the character via his mini-projection unit. This unsettles and heightens the realism of both game and story.

Doom 3’s is a little different: its one “ah hell” moment really is that, a superb bombardment of light and sound; screams of dying men; the ever popular “THEY’RE COMING THROUGHT HE GOD-DAMN WALLS”; flying skulls burrowing into flesh and demons of all sorts devouring an entire human colony. The logs, rather sadly, not live up to it – there is way, way, waaaaay too much “the new keycode is 9182″ and not nearly enough “OH GOD EVERYONE IS DEAD”. There are exceptions: the one marine lost in Hell, the panicked maintenance crew. The purely radio and log contact is a wonderful way to set the scene for those few characters you do meet. Those that look peaceful and are then suddenly floating head-n-spinal-cords all the more jarring after hours of naught but sound.

So, a salute then, the a happily increasingly popular piece of game design. May it long continue and may it learn from itself.

——

So I’ve also been working for GamingDaily.co.uk, hence my long silence. This is a really nice piece of work I think. Plays into my voice acting bit well, and is something nice and positive for once. I have no idea when or what I’m going to write next, so don’t hold you breath.

What is DLC?

This question is not nearly as easy to answer as it should be. Take for example, World of WarCraft expansion packs. These are available digitally through Blizzard’s online store. They add content to the game, though not as much as you may think – only level, monsters and areas are actually part of the expansion, everything else being a “free” patch; parts of which are not accesible until the expansion is paid for. Should these be considered DLC? What about the “free” patches? While they have all the hallmarks of DLC, they are not optional.

For the purposes of this article, we will define DLC as anything which describes itself as such. Fallout 3’s addons, FEAR – Reborn, Skin packs, etc. However, I will also draw comparisons to free upgrades; such as multiplayer maps released for RTS and FPS games.

What is the right “length”?

That piece of FEAR DLC that I reviewed was at maximum fifty minutes to an hour of gameplay, for £5.99. In comparison, a Steam sale of Braid recently went up, allowing six hours of some of the most critically acclaimed gameplay of the year for £3.39. Also compare with any RPG ever released that is now on budget, fourty hours or more for under a tenner.

So, from this we can deduce that DLC is often going to be a rip off. It is aimed squarely at the fans of the original, knowing that they will pay more for less. I have no quarrels with this, as it is a fact of capitalism and not something a blog post is going to change, but it also means I cannot recommend DLC that is as ridiculous as the FEAR example.

This is especially true when we allow comparisons with free (or cheap) map packs released for multiplayer FPS or RTS games. Because of the massively replayable nature of these type of releases, the effective hours/cost ratio is in turn massively more favourable.

It seems pretty obvious that any single-player DLC (or even game) is unlikely to have as good a ratio as multiplayer versions. However, there are ways around this. First off, I believe that Bethesda has had the right idea as far as DLC, if not the right price. For Oblivion they released very cheap, very small additional content. This is aimed at people who very much enjoy the game but want a sort of “premium mod” to enhance the experience. The low price means that it is more likely to sell and yet still make a decent amount of money compared to the development effort put in. This is comparable to skin and model packs for fighting games.

Bethesda’s other DLC selection, for Fallout 3, is also acceptable; if missing a step here and there. Some are too short, others not in-depth enough but in general, the $10 price-tag for 3-4 hours of gameplay is as good as we can expect. This is equal to, after all, the vast majority of episodic content released by Telltale.

What will people pay for?

This is the real question and one that has many different answers. For example, Team Fortress 2 players (by this point) are likely unwilling to pay for anything except for a complete engine upgrade, entirely new maps, new classes and a big 3 on the end. Even then, they are likely to complain it’s the same thing we’ve had for years for free.

Some Left 4 Dead players are unwilling to pay anything for a total doubling of the content they bought in the first place, comparing it to Team Fortress 2’s free upgrades. Nevermind that the comparisons don’t fit, they’re not going to pay any attention to silliness like that.

On the other hand, as mentioned above, players of Telltale Games’ myriad adventures are quite willing to shell out for three or four hours of gameplay that could often be described as exactly the same as any other Telltale game, only with a different skin. As another example, MMO players are perfectly fine to pay every month simply for access to a game (or, in the case of Dungeons & Dragons Online, have access to certain elements without as much in-game effort).

This is entirely about setting a precedent. People will pay for what they have paid for in the past and they will not like to change. This is why some have never paid for a piece of DLC in their life and it is why it can be so hard to convince people it is worth it.

So, to answer the original question: God knows. It is almost impossible to determine beforehand how a community is going to react to news regarding DLC. It is also rather easy to ignore them and simply hope that your original game is good enough that people will pay for more of the same.

How should it be distributed?

If the past two years has taught me anything, it’s “Digitally, don’t use Games for Windows Live”.

In addition to this, I believe that “Game of the Year” editions that contain all the DLC released thus far are a good way to bring in new players. This should also come with an option to purchase just the DLC at a reduced, bulk price; for those that never got into when it first came out, but do have the full game.

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Stupid computer crashed yesterday and lost a couple of paragraphs of this, meaning I really didn’t want to finish it at 2am. Anyway, very much an opinion piece, agree/disagree? Additional types of DLC I should have covered?

Books

This is certainly the most common form of tie-in that occurs. It is also arguably the one with the most variable quality. Some of these books are unbelievably, unreadably bad. Others are utterly superb.

Most of these books can be broken into two sorts – direct novelisations of game plots or stories set in the same universe. In my experience, the latter are usually superior. This is, I assume, to do with the natural constraits that are placed on converting a story as opposed to simply creating one.

Certainly the best factor is that often the authors are the lead writers for the games themselves. This means that the content of the book can be the way that the writers would tell the story in a perfect world where they did not have to worry about game mechanics. It can also allow them to fill in details about character’s pasts or develop mini-plots into much longer tales, without the usual six year development time of a major title. Examples of this are the Mass Effect prequel novel, Revalations (which is an absolutely wonderful read) and the Doom 3 series (which, er, isn’t so much).

There are certainly good examples of those written by “freelance authors”. Blizzard Entertainment have a large number of books published for their three main universes, the more recent of which are generally well received. This is also true of the Halo universe.

Complaints come when contradictions occur – which version to take as canon usually falling to definition from the developers, though some take the games to be the official version in all circumstances. Avoiding this can be a complex task, particularly for the larger and older universes, Bungie for example keeping a massive file containing every piece of information they have on their own creation.

Movies

There are more examples of this than perhaps they should be, and it’s all down to one man. One terrible, horrible man. I speak of course, of Uwe Boll. This … “director” is responsible for more video game movies than anyone else. He is certainly a talented individual, having the ability to make hot chicks killing nazis or hot chicks beating each other up boring enough to not even be worth watching on a drunken evening. He has ruined the storylines of more games than most people have even finished.

There is light at the end of the tunnel, hopefully, with a couple of big names in development. The WarCraft movie now has Spiderman director Sam Raimi on board and has had enough development time to ensure it won’t be terrible. Hopefully it won’t be bad anyway and get cancelled. There is also the eternally “is this actually in development” Halo movie that, I would assume, will eventually be made, and made well.

There is also a lot more quality in animated features, which are often used as mini-films by other mediums. The best I have seen is Dead Space Downfall, a prequel story to the video game. The violence and suspense of this particular feature is perfectly in tune with the game itself, and it wonderfully fits with the story and details of the game itself.

Others

The above are the “majors”, the most common type of tie-ins, but there are others. Boardgames seem semi-popular, though are mostly terrible from my experience. Another is comics and manga, which seem almost as common as books. I am woefully underexperienced in comics (both game related and otherwise), but the one I have read (StarCraft, Issue 1) was … well “utterly dire” would be unfair, but the art style was terrible and ugly, the dialogue bland and boring. There certainly are better however, Dead Space being another good example, for what I have heard. Manga (what the hell is the difference anyway?) seems slightly more blessed, though also rarer. Again, StarCraft is my only actual experience, but short stories in general fit better within already constructed universes, as well as the stereotypical art style being better for explosions and action.

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Anyone have any examples of particularly good (or bad) tie-ins they have seen? You can talk about how much Uwe Boll sucks too. Did I miss any major “sectors” of tie-ins?

I’m no developer. I don’t know how to code, design or draw. This means that the only thing I can base ideas for game design around are the experiences I have while enjoying finished products, and two things are always at the forefront, whether they are exceptional, terrible or bland. They can single handedly make or break a title’s success for me personally and entirely govern the atmosphere and success of a scene. I am talking of animation and script.

Both of these things are so utterly vital because they are so common. Every movement of a character or object is “animation”, every piece of text – whether voice acted or simply a character’s text-only journal – comes under the heading of script. If a common animation is off, in any way, it can be disastrous to the enjoyment of the player. Equally, voice actors phoning it in or terrible dialogue can utterly destroy any suspension of disbelief.

In the case of animation, it’s pretty shocking how poorly this can be done by even the most professional development studios. Bethesda’s Oblivion and Fallout 3 stand testament to just how much this vital piece of design can drag a game down if implemented poorly. The constantly clunky feeling to characters movements, as well as being generally ugly, really highlighted the bugs in game AI. This was not helped by voice acting which seemed no better than bored at times – not to mention the ridiculous changes in accent due to some lines only being recorded by some voice actors.

An amazing experience I had was, having played Fallout 3 for a day beforehand, I booted up Dead Space. The introduction sequence was like some sort of devine intervention:

Oh, so that’s how it’s meant to be done. The slickness of human movement, the real emotion in the voices. Dead Space is a game where atmosphere is vitally important and the movement of the monstrous beings you encounter perfectly transmit this. Clawing along the walls, popping from vents, some slither – it all combines to create a feeling of something utterly alien, unknowable and uncommunicable with. A direct helper to this is the brilliant voice acting of various characters: They sound realistic, actually scared, panicy in that introduction as they careen towards possible destruction. Dead Space being one of many games to exploit the “log” system (whereby unseen characters leave behind video/audio recordings for the player to find), voice acting was especially important while constructing the plot of the surroundings and past events. The fear in the voice of hunted men who’ve worked out a key fact was a component that added so much to the experience.

An extension of this is live action videos, as employed mostly by the Command and Conquer series. Let’s make one thing very clear – if we’re too busy laughing (or staring at breasts) to take in cutscenes, you’ve probably done something wrong. I’m looking at you, Red Alert 3. The interesting thing about this medium is it’s almost entirely down to the actor, at least for me. Whereas in audio, it can seem that if half a coversation is poor, everything is dragged down, in video I find that (for example) Joe Kucan portraying Kane is something I will never get tired of. Particularly in dance remixes.

On the subject of dialogue and VAs, I also want to mention Republic Commando which (nearly) gets a certain aspect spot on. This is the random speech triggered by events dialogues that occur frequently throughout the game. They are nailed by their VAs, but most importantly they are either short or are said extremely rarely. There are a couple of exceptions (usually relating to health pick ups), but overall their execution is preferable to other ways I have seen it done. Valve also comes close with Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress 2 – but these suffer from either being so rare as to never be heard by most players, or being so common as to become memes.

Why is it that so many companies don’t seem to see the value in decent animation and voice acting particularly?  What’s the point in a super-sexy Unreal 3 rendered Crysis-level awesomesauce graphics engine when there’s nothing good to look at?  Why include sound software that can accurately reproduce the sound of a gunshot, when your dialogue isn’t actually worth hearing?  These things are important, they can ruin games.

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Something I would be interested to know about is the exploits of indie gamers. How do they do in the region of animation and, particularly, voice acting? Many don’t even have something that would classify, I suppose. Most being 2Dish games without much talking (or, with text). Do comment if there are any that did anything particularly impressively (or hay, really, really badly).

Orbitally dropped into a battlezone encased in an invincible battlesuit is certainly one way to begin a game. It sets the pace of the first single-player DLC to appear for F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin – very quick and very violent.

Addressing that: it will almost certainly take you longer to download this than it will take you to play it, particularly if you have recently played the base game. This is easily completable in a lunch hour, which is all well and good until you realise the price to play ratio is roughly £12 per hour. Not exactly the deal of the moment.

The action itself is of a high quality. It’s nothing new from what was present in Project Origin already, but the sheer destructive power of the weapons available is a thing of beauty. On that note there is an odd valley of a power curve to the strength of your character throughout – eventually you must abandon your battlesuit and procede on foot. Later still you lose all your weapons and must build back up again. It was actually reasonably refreshing compared to the standard “here is a new gun, it is better than your old ones” repetition over an 8 hour period.

Despite the shortness, there are attempts to provide additional replayability in the form of some resonably challenging and interesting achievements, including a “Minature Replica Soldier” easter egg. I just didn’t have the passion to go back and complete them afterwards – the experience just wasn’t that exciting. The gameplay was standard run and gun, although very unforgiving to my control-forgetting brain. Some of the set pieces were nicely put together; particularly the finale (although it suffered from a rather ridiculous difficulty spike).

The plot was there but rather thin and requiring a reasonable knowledge of the FEAR universe to even decipher. Cinematic moments involving Alma were as awesome as ever, though woefully thin on the ground. A lot of the metagame pieces were very well put together; mission objectives being worded in such a way to heighten your sense of being in the world.

There really isn’t much more to say, other than: if you enjoyed Project Origin, you’ll enjoy this, but you won’t enjoy the price no matter your preferences. Oh, and I do wish we could control the same character two games in a row, just one time in F.E.A.R.

70%

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Wow, that was short. So’s the game. Inspired me to write a piece on DLC.