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.

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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.

Another short post today, on a couple of gaming phenomenon that hold a special place in my heart.

Video gaming is an odd entertainment medium, because it can encompass almost all the others.  A game can be a game, movie or book (albeit with pictures) depending entirely upon how it is presented.  This is why I love Let’s Play and everything that comes from it.

If you are unfamiliar, the above is just two examples of a massive array of games that have been played (so you don’t have to) and recorded or screen-capped, usually with “witty” commentary by the player, by individuals and uploaded.  It is mainly based out of the Something Awful forums – although there are many youtubers who do it as well, really, really badly – which are sometimes open to the public, sometimes not.  Thankfully for the lazy or cheap, FromEarth created the lparchive, cateloguing all the best and reuploading their videos or screenshots for all to see.

Why do I enjoy LPs?  Well, other than because I’m cheap and lazy (thus meaning I don’t own any major console or want to play every game that interests me), I find that the commentary added enriches the experience.  I also find that LPs of games I have played can often be even more interesting than those I have not, due to a familiarity with the story coupled with attitudes and experiences I may not have had access to.

It is also a brilliant way to discover the narrative and full story behind a universe that may have suffered from a genre you are not partial to or controls that enraged you (or it may, as in the case of the Silent Hill series for me, scare your pants off).

Certainly one of the best parts of LPs is that the creator is free to add or manipulate the story of the game they are playing as they go.  A wonderful example is the UFO/X-Com series (all available on the LP Archive) where the multiple authors created an entire – utterly brilliant, utterly bonkers – plot stretching across four titles.

A word of warning, not all LPs are so brilliant.  Personally I actually prefer (mostly) screenshot LPs, simply because most people do not know how to be funny infront of a microphone.  An exception is Vice City, which was certainly humourous.

The other form gaming can take is racing.

Now this, this is the best gaming you will see outside of extremely brilliant e-sports.  This is the ultimate beat the system mentality up against walls that are meant to be solid, bunnies that are not meant to be hopped and barriers that were supposedly unbreakable.

The best example I have seen thus far is still Half-Life in 30 minutes.  No, really.  Take a look during a lunch break.  Everything is a dance of perfection, a half hour slide show of clutch shots, mind-bending bugs and superb jumps.  Picking out best parts is almost impossible – is it the combat, every shot bang on target; or perhaps the bunny hops, always perfect, never missing; or maybe the brilliant beginning, using a vortegaunt’s head as a launching platform?

There are others that may amaze you more, such as Morrowind and the work of attrition that is Final Fantasy VII in less than eight hours.  Do not expect your favourite games to be treated with respect however, some Speed Runs are awfully dull; relying on a single trick to beat 95% of the game (looking at you, Viewtiful Joe)

Speed runs is actually what led me to LPs.  I began watching then in an attempt to learn the plot of games – something I quickly discovered was almost impossible, most cutscenes being skippable.  The two compliment each other so well – watch the LP for 100% completion and total understanding and then the speed run for ridiculous displays of skill.

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Still don’t have this review ready.  It’ll happen.  In the mean time, read my other words over on StarCraft: Legacy.  Be happy for my Sunday Papers get.  And rejoice as I confirm a spot (on Thursdays) as part of GamingDaily.

Oh, and I added my real name to the site.  You know, cause I don’t think going by ChaosSmurf irl is a step I want to take.  Yet.

The proliferation of the internet went pretty well. The populations of the first world are now almost completely connected, whenever they wish to be. You can tweet from your phone, blog from your mp3 player and strafe-jump using nothing but the power of Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer. Hell, even OnLive, the “it’s never gonna happen” Crysis-on-an-Eee project, has entered beta. So, as our connectivity and speeds increased PC gaming began to exploit the new technology and create greater, more complex multiplayer experiences than had been available anywhere else before. The MMO, the co-op RTS and every possible way of chatting known to man – video, audio and text given their own dedicated, multinational services and networks – developed for the masses.

That has led to where we are today: almost every game is released with a multiplayer component; every big company is wanting a slice of the HolyGrailPie that is subscription based MMOs and it is becoming increasingly left to the indie and smaller developers to provide single-player focused genres such as the adventure – most of which are deployed via digital download only. Multiplayer has become an addiction. Let our first investigation be into MMOs and the simple question: why?

Answer: $70 a second, every second, every day. World of WarCraft’s ~12.5 million playerbase paying ~$14.95 per month. On to this you add the sales of the actual boxed game and expansions; the deals made with card game companies, model makers, internet streamers, peripheral makers; the money made from mergers all thanks to the popularity and quality of a singular game. Not only this but the attention it draws to other titles by the same company – how many WoW players are now proud owners of Diablo Battlechests and StarCraft II pre-orders?

This provides resources for what your designers, programmers and artists love doing – making games. Money gives you time, time gives you quality and, theoretically, quality gives you money. It allows you to build bigger studios; hire more experienced directors; create larger, more talented teams. That is why everyone wants an MMO. That is why we have seen so many lame copies and half-assed attempts at a bit of the cake. That is why so many brilliant ideas may have been wasted.

Think of one of the many MMOs released in recent years, successful, sufficing or failed. How many could have made superb single-player titles? Imagine if, instead of buying server clusters they had hired cinematic designers and voice actors; turned those vaguely entertaining set-pieces into works of pre-rendered beauty and those lines of text into enthusiastically acted dialogue. Unchanging, unliving universes becoming worlds where choices matter, characters die, endings happen.

I am not blind to the faults of my ideas – MMOs are good too. They allow for socialisation on an epic scale, teamwork on a level most could never experience. It allows for games to go on “forever”, your character never dying and his fate eternally in your hands. This appeals to me as much as any of you, I played WoW for years, I will play it again no doubt. But I worry for the future as well – for APB, Final Fantasy XIV, Star Trek, The Secret World and the various superhero games. All games with brilliant ideas and (from previews and media) talented development teams behind them; all games that could be ruined by the costs of servers and massive support teams, not to mention the natural limitations of MMOs relating to difficulty and logistics. I hope they do well, I look forward to playing them and I cannot wait to experience them with my friends; but in the current climate original, non-standard games do not need any additional penalties towards their chances of success.

Of course, not every game released or announced “recently” has been an MMO. Now we move onto what I think is the more worrying side of current trends – co-op. A feature so widely requested, one that can be so much fun in the right environment. There are games I have spent literally hours thinking “Man, this would be so brilliant with ventrilo and a couple of friends” (looking at you Mass Effect) and I enjoyed Left 4 Dead as much as the next sensible man. Sadly, we have the same over-application problem – situations where the addiction to multiplayer has hindered rather than helped. Take Red Alert 3: not the worst game you’ll ever play, but a certainly flawed single-player. Perhaps if, instead of developing a passable AI system (that still caused frustration and rage in the more complex missions) and designing every single map around two bases, there had been a focus on quality gameplay I would have actually bothered to finish all three campaigns and purchased the expansion.

This extends to the future too – Borderlands, the ridiculously highly anticipated RPG from Gearbox, is a very exciting looking game. A lovely art style, comedy feel and the first high-profile FPSRPG not to come out of Bethesda. With a squad of four members at its head and a strong focus on the co-op aspect of their play, it is only natural to be excited.  However, perhaps one of the reasons Mass Effect worked so well was because you couldn’t bring in friends to take control. While the AI of your team-mates did have the odd bug, it didn’t seem to matter, as all they were ever meant to do was follow you. Once that AI has to deal with the ability to do everything a player can, it is much more likely to bug out.

Another side to this is that a game experience crafted around cooperative play can be thoroughly mediocre when played alone. Left 4 Dead is – there just isn’t the same character in the pre-generated … characters. Again, I simply worry that those of us who prefer to play alone (or have odd gaming hours or dodgy internet connections) will be swept aside in the pursuit of an elusive, possibly non-existent, crowd.

You may ask: why play alone? Well, other than obvious answers of “because I don’t have too many gaming friends” and “other people suck”, I do not like dependence on others attendance to continue to enjoy a gaming experience I have paid for. This is uniquely a co-op problem, as MMOs are closer to a single-player game with other people in it (at least some of the time) and deathmatch or competitive games do not lend themselves so well to playing with the same crowd over and over. Indeed, currently I take part in a supposedly weekly Pen ‘n’ Paper RPG session that has been postponed for a month so far, simply because not everyone was available at the same time for a multitude of reasons. This problem is present in enough situations as it is, an expansion into gaming is not something I approve of.

It must be said that this addiction has provided some of the gaming related applications ever.  Look at services such as Steam which have become primary distribution platforms for games that otherwise may not have been successful – Audiosurf, arguably the best money I’ve ever spent, being a primary example. The continuing growth of e-sports is also something that should be nurtured as much as possible, Blizzard Entertainment’s Battle.net 2.0 seemingly leading the brunt of the charge in that direction after over a decade of community dedication. Both of these services (along with others such as XBOX Live and Playstation Network) also provide ways in which single-player can be improved through stat tracking and achievements as well as automated patching mechanisms to ensure bugs are fixed quickly.

But the positives I really want to focus on are the truly unique games that have come out of the multiplayer focused. Let the first example be Eve Online, a game that simply would not work without other players. The intricacies (including, as mentioned yesterday, espionage) of massive scale PvP, alliance vs. alliance combat, while remaining something I merely strive to take part in, are not something that can be simulated by the utterly inferior AI we currently have access to. Perhaps it never will. There are elements of this that are true of all MMOs, such as the variable economy or simple unpredictability of humanity. Deep.

Lastly, there are the rare, oft brilliant MMOFPSs. This is a genre I am so very excited about the future of. Rumours that Blizzard’s unannounced MMO is of this type keep me on tenterhooks – you know they’ll do it right. Planetside, despite still being stupidly expensive to play, is a constant temptation that I sadly have not yet had the time and money to take part in but the concept of WoW- or even Eve-scale play with differing mechanics interests me. As an extension of this, the possibilities of the MMORTS, a concept still very much in the Alpha phase of its life, are something I think we will see a massive interest in as we enter the next decade and internet connections become still more powerful in more locations.

If anything is to be gleaned from this article, it is that multiplayer is something that will, and should, continue to expand. But it should also be noted that it is not the be all and end all of gaming, that the individual’s experience is still important to some games and that if that experience is lost or replaced then that could be a grievous blow to one of the things that makes gaming unique: different every time due to your own actions, and your own actions alone.

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Or in short, wordwordswordswordswords. Man I liked writing that, and have been meaning to for a while.  Wish I’d been able to put some images in, but the writing took longer than I was expecting.

I was wanting to do a review today but technical difficulties prevented me doing so, hopefully that will happen tomorrow. I also have an idea for an interview that may materialise, as well as associated work with gaming websites. My weekly newsletter for StarCraft Legacy should also be available tomorrow.

I’d like you to take a look at a Dragon Age trailer. It’s “that” one, entitled “Sex and Violence” by some:

Now, this trailer is from E3, where Dragon Age was infamously shown to be entirely about pointless sex and outrageous violence (see the actual presentation here). There was a bit of a complaint about this, in that it seemed the game had “sold out” to the lowest common denominator. And what I have to say is: “So?” and “Shut up”.

Let’s get one thing clear, that first trailer is ridiculously cool. It manages to go past the standard Tolkinien setting into something altogether darker, more violent, more brutal. Is it loud, raucous and altogether silly? Yes. Is it brilliant, new and exactly what the fantasy RPG genre needs? Damn right it is. Its got mass battles, inspiring speeches, shouty men, blood, death, impressive one-liners – I’ll stop before you get tired, but all it needs is robots and laser beams to be a classic.

My point being: it doesn’t have robots and laser beams, its got dragons and fire breathing. No laser swords, just swords. Magical armour and fireballs instead of psychic powers and energy shields. It’s all the best bits of sci-fi firmly slammed into a fantasy universe.

Alright, moving on to the meaningless sex and hilariously easy librarians. So it’s tactless, unreal, stupid – we’re talking about a universe where people get away with what Morrigan is wearing there! Of course it’s silly, but have you played The Witcher? I’m thinking a more refined version of that, perhaps with slightly less collectible card games.

Gotta catch em' all

But honestly, I don’t see the problem – for an obviously too short-trailer trying to show off as much of the game as possible to garner positive reviews, I think the presenter did remarkably well. There was even a glimpse of some kind of moral repercussions (still, after all these years, a buzzfeature) to getting off with everything in si- LOOK, THE GUY JUMPS ON A DRAGON AND STABS IT IN THE HEAD!

An old woman turns into a dragon when you hunt her down under the power of some tempting seductress! Characters turn into giant infected spiders! Manly main characters survive being thrown around by demon beasts! Hordes of demons attack fleeing, helpless peasants! Are we so bitter and worn we don’t see awesome any more? I say, bring on the rock music and slaughtering Bioware, I’ve been waiting for proper action fantasy for years.

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A little shorter than I was thinking but it really was just an excuse for me to preview Dragon Age and say I’m excited. Also that as an 18 year old I approve whole-heartedly of fake sex and pretend violence. Yeah.

Remember when you had to cheat to be invulnerable? I do, iddqd, ~ -> god, all that. Things have changed a bit though eh? New-fangled pixel-kids these days (and all that) get to ignore their health levels – my, some don’t even have it on their UIs. The important questions are: “why?” and “is this a good thing?”. To answer both it’s only proper to explore the origins of regenerating health and the steps it has gone through; the forms it has taken; the advantages and disadvantages of the system for both the player and the developer and finally what it could be used for in the future.

So, where did it all start? Well, for me at least, with a little game you may have heard of:

It's about killing aliens and wanting to get it on with Artificial Intelligences

Yes, that marmite of the mainstream, Halo. The original game, purchased by a friend of mine who discovered to his horror he could not run it on his PC and hastened to my house all those years ago, featured the dual survivability mechanic of a regenerating shield and eight bars of health. Once your shield was gone you either found cover and waited for it to refresh or attempted to take out your enemies while being much more highly vulnerable to fire. At the time I enjoyed the system immensely – it instantly provided tense moments where I found myself on a solitary bar of health, endlessly searching for a health pack and constantly attempting to judge when to retreat and wait for the suddenly vital shield. The zzzzzeeeeeewap sound became a source of comfort in a hostile universe. The greatest difference being that there was all the stress and excitement of teetering on the edge of death without the inevitable single lucky shot from random enemy x ruining the moment.

This also made sense – you were a super-soldier, the last surviving member of a program to create Men+ to defeat a hostile alien race. Damn right you’d have some kind of health-regeneration. Okay, so you still needed the odd medpack (a feature which, let’s be honest, makes about as much sense as the standard RTS view point), but it made it all seem a bit more real.

Jump forward a few years to Call of Duty 2 and we have my next experience with differing health systems. My copy of PC Gamer UK provides me with a lovely little demo, which I hastily install and begin to play.

“Where’s my health bar?”

I was mightily confused. Far from CoD’s bottom right bar of green, or even Halo’s identifiable limitations, there is naught. I charge a machine gun post. The screen flashes red, an visual siren blaring: YOU ARE HURT, GET TO COVER. “Say wha-” I die.

“Er. Well okay then.”

I relearned how to treat health, relatively quickly. After all, it’s a simple concept – just imagine you have a health pack with you. But it was strange. On one level, it allowed me to enjoy each of the famously brilliant set-pieces that much more: I always went in with full health, always had the upper hand. But I loved the devastatingly hard Veteran difficulty in the original; spending an entire day clearing a house and then defending it against tanks and infantry. When two shots kill you and your health regenerates, it’s an awful lot less exhilarating than if two shots kill you and health packs are existant, but few and far between.

And so the trend began – regenerating health, sometimes utterly invisible, sometimes with a bar. All the Call of Duties since have had it, Wolfenstein uses it, Crysis had a version, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky had some, Far Cry 2 and Resistance having variations on the theme and so on (for a full, probably inaccurate, list, check here). To pick from that, Crysis was another game where it made a kind of sense – again, you were a super soldier in a futuristic mega-suit and surprisingly fragile to boot.

So – why? Why did this mechanic take off so? Well, one reason is it’s easier for developers. Not only do you now not have to worry about health pack distribution, you can always design set pieces around the player being on “full health”. More over, you can code the player getting hurt without ever possibly killing him or causing his death – they will feel under threat, constantly, if you keep their screen flashing with the YOU ARE HURT symbol, but it won’t screw them over for the next fight.

The player gains benefits too: better games for the reasons above but also a higher chance of a continual play experience, ideally without a drop in difficulty. One could say it’s more realistic, although it requires a stretch of the imagination almost as big as picking up medkits curing bullet wounds – that bullets that “hit” you in these systems simply represent your luck in dodging running out.

Sadly there are downsides – pure regen systems will never have that feeling of OH GOD I COULD DIE ANY SECOND that I described in my Halo section, neither will they ever be truly as hard as Call of Duty’s Veteren mode. It can make a game seem lazy and repetitive too; every fight becoming “hide behind box, pop out, shoot 5 guys, repeat” in the hands of less skilled development teams. It also (and this is very much only in my opinion) does not seem right for less realistic simulations – Doom for example, just wouldn’t work with regenerating health. If I’m gunning down thousands of zombie-alien-hellbeast-things, I’ve got magic health packs, okay? Equally, however, there are places anything else seems stupid; Portal being a primary example. The minimilisitic (read: lack of a) UI makes a health counter utterly foolish to include.

Something I would be very keen to see is an expansion into other genres. RPGs have already had their taste (though, as I mentioned yesterday, that’s hardly a genre of its own anymore), how about the RTS? No, hear me out here. Take the Dawn of War II style single player, cut the units down even more and take away their health bars (as well as everyone elses). Perhaps some sort of five man squad that must be intensely micro’d? It may already have been done and I simply missed the trick, but I’d like to see something designed around the concept. It would certainly work for one of the 12,000 World War 2 games released each year.

On the whole … I’m not sure if I approve of the mechanic. It’s an odd one, there are so many different factors as to whether it works or not. It may have acquired a “best of a bad bunch” status, with health packs being hardly better, as described above. I would like to see more games use Halo’s original combination system, just to see if it is as good as I remember.

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This was a bit more my brain on a page than yesterday’s entry. I hope you enjoyed it, I have another one lined up, but I might leave it a bit as I have some other stuff I want to talk about (warning: tomorrows entry may be a little meta).

EDIT: Thanks to those on Twitter who helped me come up with examples of games with regenning .

Mechanic: In Fighting
Notable Games: Doom, Doom II
Description: Why fight when there are those that will fight for you?

Why is this first? It was the inspiration for this article. It’s so simple, and so underused. Out of hell comes a flood of demons, devils and living dead guys, intent on the destruction of the human race. They’re bloodthirsty killing machines – so why would they only fight the player? We aren’t talking scriped sequences here, we’re talking an actual mechanic that means creatures will fight each other if they shoot each other. The most obvious example is the entire section of Level 8 – Tricks and Traps from Doom 2, seen below at roughly 3:33:

There are other places it is used – places it has to be used that are less obvious. On the harder settings it becomes a key part of the way you play. The possibilities it opens up are amazing – what’s cooler than facing off against a big badass boss? Making two of them fight eachother. What’s cool than wiping out a room of bad guys, single handed? Doing it without firing a shot.

There have been attempts of course – Bioshock’s Big Daddies and turrets come to mind (along with the 10,000 games with aliens vs. military), but it was all so more controlled. It wasn’t swarms of enemies fighting each other if you made them, it was set up events, designed to look cool but often with a predefined winner. Perhaps that’s part of the problem – the first person shooter has evolved from multiple, differing enemies to either a bunch of identikits with differing guns or a bunch of identikits holding different guns with alien backup.

An honourable mention should probably be made to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and its randomly generated fights. It’s not quite the same thing but it’s along the right lines, though even more to the non-scripted side. This highlights another point – perhaps the mechanic has simply evolved into something altogether different: utterly scripted fights or random encounters with scripted interactions.

Is it even possible to ressurect this mechanic? I’d like to think so. I’m looking at you id, I’m looking at you and Doom 4.

Why is there no Doom 4 imagery yet?

Mechanic: Bugs
Notable Games: StarCraft
Description: Beneficial screw ups.

Anyone whos read everything else I’ve ever written has probably seen this pop up a few times – StarCraft, the most balanced, most competitive, most played competitive RTS in the world is only this way because of bugs in the game code. They play a vital role in two main components of the reasoning behind it being so popular: constantly varying metagame and a collosal skill ceiling. Discovery of every little trick adds an extra action that can be applied for differences, whether miniscule or immense. Workers go all noclip when they’re moving towards resources, units can move and fire (some can move backwards and fire), air units can move and remain “stacked” – it all adds up to massive advantages and changes in the way you play.

The interesting thing is that it’s perfectly possible this mechanic is as common as ammo counters and experience points – it’s just other games haven’t had an addicted community, which considers an entire nation to be only “the biggest section” of itself, relentlessly testing for eleven and a half years. Even if they are found, most developers patch them out – Team Fortress 2’s “uber saving” trick comes to mind.

And it’s hardly developable is it? If it’s kept, it becomes a feature, if not, a bug that was fixed; relegated to some ancient set of patch notes. Even StarCraft has banned bugs, the ones so game breaking they are disallowed in professional and ladder play, overseen by diamond-eyed referees. This is one feature I can almost guarantee we won’t see again – the nature of larger beta tests, bigger development studios, more Q&A and simply the differences between isometric engines and full-3D ones make it a thing of the past.

Buggy.

Mechanic: Brilliant RPGs
Notable Games: Deus Ex, Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines (patched, naturally), Mass Effect
Description: The best of the best

Perhaps this doesn’t really fit here, perhaps I’m exploiting my topic to provide a rant on “games these days” or something. This section is devoted to when western RPGs get it spot on. Deus Ex’s plot, variable routes, two entire different sort of games. Vampire’s dialogue, voice acting and characters. Mass Effect’s brilliance in storytelling and cinematic moments.

Why RPGs you might say? Because it has become like some sort of super-genre. You have your “standard” Neverwinter Nights/Baldur’s Gate affair, your first person Oblivion/Fallout 3/Deus Ex, third-person, MMO, spaceships, Star Wars – even RTS, what with WarCraft III’s “commando” missions, StarCraft II’s campaigns and Dawn of War II’s MMORPG-like singleplayer. Games you would never expect to contain RPG elements (see: Wolfenstein) begin to have shop systems and open world hubs.

Notice my three main examples all had flaws. Deus Ex’s charm can wear off when you realise setting off most of the alarms means you just get to shoot everyone in the face, Vampire’s legendarily buggy release and Mass Effect’s repetitive mission structure (and the there-are-no-words-strong-enough inventory system). There were fixes for each of these – the player designed “challenges” (no guns), fan patches and … well just not doing them (and ignoring it), respectively.

Well, this is one “mechanic” we can hope we’ll see again. Dragon Age looks promising – though the way it was presented to the media is apparently worrying (a point I disagree with, but more on that at a later date). RPGs are always being made, so it’s inevitable that we’ll have another.

(NB: I know there are probably other games that could go into this, I just haven’t played them (Yes I haven’t played KOTOR (Yes I know, I know)))

We got the best (the best, the best, the best, the best) from you.

Mechanic: Eve Online
Notable Games: …
Description: A single server, player controlled, PvP focused

Its only been done once, there isn’t another like it and the game itself may have lost part of that charm. It should probably be noted early on that I am certainly an Eve noob – I’ve played the game for a few weeks and I do enjoy it, but I’ve never taken part in any of the kind of events I’m about to describe. The source for most of my knowledge is RockPaperShotgun’s Jim Rossignol and articles he’s written/linked to in the past, along with friends of mine which enjoy the game.

That aside – Eve creates a near-perfect simulation of an event which has not occured in human history. You see the innate oxymoron, but would you disagree? Thousands of players, conducting warfare in a very traditional manner. Individuals are meaningless here, even the best ships are easy to take down in fleets of smaller, cheaper vessels. Direct combat is not the only means of destroying your opponent – espionage is equally useful, huge empires crumbling after clever manipulation by just one man.

The control players have over the universe is astounding – you can make cities, destroy what others have worked long and hard to create, influence the economy. The training system helps in this: specialising can go so far that it is now impossible to master everything. This is part of what creates that infamous learning curve, famously shown as a wall of death that flips back upon itself, complete with hangmans noose and spiked pits. But when you get it (and spend enough time there and you will), it’s a thing of beauty.

No other MMO is as much fun to read about – so much is possible. And perhaps, that is why, again, I fear we will never see the like again. The community for a game such as this is very small, and Eve has them all. Competitors also suffer from WoW Syndrome: CCP have a massive lead on any game released now. It is also almost completely dependant on the community to create an atmosphere that accepts going to a player’s house and cutting their power a valid tactic of PvP. This is Eve, suck it up.

See? Realistic. Don't look at me like that.

I hope you enjoyed this opening of my mind. I hope to post something related but a little different tomorrow. If you enjoyed this, please spread the word and feel free to contact me via any of the options on the about page.