Game Play: inFamous (...and boss fights in general)

I'm not going to spend a lot of time about the virtues of inFamous - the game has gotten a decent amount of coverage since its initial release and largely lives up to the hype. The open world is well constructed and imaginative, Sucker Punch really nails the postmodern urban comic book thing. At the core of the game: blowing stuff up is a great deal of fun - chaining attacks against enemies and environment alike is engaging (though I would love to see a truly destructible environment in a game of this style).

For the core mechanics, I only have two real complaints: repetition and intelligence. Most of the missions devolve into run, run, run or blast, blast, blast ... or sometimes run, blast, run ... or - well, you get the impression. This is why the fact that Sucker Punch made both the running (be it the parkour style climbing or skate style "grinding") and blasting so much fun is critical. Intelligence wise - well, the AI is not exactly Einstein ... rather the game seems to really on every enemy having really, really, really good eyesight. You'll constantly get sniped from enemies from afar - which can be fairly annoying early in the game when your powers are limited in scope and you're trying to snipe back.

Which, allow me to nominate the floating cloaking grenade-launching robots later in the game as some of the most annoying enemies devised - they aren't particularly tough, they just buzz (literally, the noise is irritating as hell). And so glad they decided to show for the final boss fight.

And that final boss fight. I'll keep this spoiler free, but the final boss fight is representative of everything I hate about boss fights. Most of the game and missions are well designed, but the final fight goes right to every cliche every put out there: the boss is largely invincible except for a random period of time you need to keep an eye out for - all the while you'll be running back and forth avoiding a relatively random array of attacks.

The reason why the final fight was such a downer for me is this: for a game that was all about revealing the escalation of a simple bike messenger to city superhero the final fight made me feel pointless and weak. Pointless because it was quite obvious that the final boss could tear me apart in an instant if it really tried and weak because all I could do was run around a lot and wait to throw off a few shock grenades ... and then repeat.

And then repeat.

And then repeat.

And then repeat.

At some point - can't we just skip to the end? I can't count how many games have built up layers of anticipation only to have the end scene be the result of some kind of old school slugfest followed by a cinematic. Gaming evolution has given us emergent gameplay, open worlds, freedom from counting down player lives or even keep track of the score - but in many ways we're still stuck with the bonus level notion that everything should be capped with a button mashing showdown.

So that's kinda more of rant about games in general, of course. The other good bit about inFamous? A pretty decent story handled well by the comic style cutscenes. OK, I still have questions and general huh's about the ending in general, but at least it kept things interesting.

One last note: I think it is curious that inFamous, Assassin's Creed II and Uncharted 2 all have very similar core mechanics: parkour style movement, third person action, emphasis on unlocks and exploration. Yet UC2 is not an open world setup and, no offense to other two - I think easily the best of the bunch. Homework question: what exactly does an open world give players?

Anyway, if you haven't played it - you probably should. And it just recently hit Greatest Hits for the PS3 - so you can get it cheap.

Game Play: Why Uncharted 2 Is Just So Damn Good

I feel a bit guilty that a lot of my online posts about Naughty Dog's Uncharted 2 have been complaining about matchmaking in an otherwise pretty solid online offering. So let me make a mea culpa and rave about the single player.

Because honestly, this is one of the best games ever made.

Let's start with the mechanics. Already solid in the original Uncharted, Uncharted 2 takes the whole thing up a notch. The platforming aspects are tight and you'll rarely feel out of control with Nathan's movements. Cover is well managed and manages not to feel forced on the player (comparisons to Gears of War could fit a whole other post). You sometimes wish Nathan could do a little more, like crouch, crawl or lean ... but there's a balance of complexity that works quite well.

The weapon design is impressive. As I mentioned in comments about the multiplayer, even the starting AK clone is quite a versatile bullet tosser once you get used to it. There's nothing that feels underpowered and the range of tools at Nathan's disposal keep the gunplay from getting bland. Grenade tossing is far simpler than most games offer (much to the chagrin of many an online player...)

I don't know how much I need to talk about graphics. You've probably seen them. The game is gorgeous. You'll stop and gape. Don't feel bad.

But all of that pieces together create a brilliant framework for what is essentially a working model of strong interactive storytelling. On the surface, this is an elongated action movie plot with some predictable twists and turns and plenty of explosions. If this was a movie, there would be a lot that would be pretty average. As a game, however, works just so damn well.

Remember cut-scenes? Remember when Valve fanatics were declaring them dead? Not worth the time, no real emotional value for the player, a skip button waiting to happen. Naughty Dog writes brilliant scenes with great dialogue and they do it all with the existing engine - making a near seamless experience for the player between watching and interacting. Many developers have forgotten that cut-scenes were once used as rewards, not fillers - but not these guys.

Remember when nearly every game announced had some kind of "open world" or "sandbox" concept? Or at least some kind of "morality choice"? Uncharted 2 is a strict linear path. There's no good path or bad path, there's only Nathan's path. But that is OK, because Nathan's path is fun and littered with bullets.

This is why the game is so damn good - it takes a solid game engine, adds characters with depth, lines them down a plot full of action and packs it with some of the best dialogue ever written for a game. It's completely awesome.

Get it, unless you don't have a PS3. Then get a PS3. Then get it.

Couple Notes on Uncharted 2 Multiplayer

I made a massive push on the Uncharted 2 single player experience, but don't really have my head around a full post for it yet. I did, however, want to expand my earlier review from the multiplayer demo.

The full version of the game has more maps and many more gametypes, including some fairly successful objective based ones. The mandatory Capture The Flag variant has players hauling around a large idol, which adds the not nearly used enough mechanic of hobbling the flag carrier, and also adds some of the fun of Epic's Bombing Run - namely tossing stuff around.

There are also a variety of domination/territory based games - which work remarkably well considering they are designed around the same maps as deathmatch (same, actually, goes for CTF).

The short summary is that Uncharted 2 adds an amazing online experience for the PlayStation 3. Highly recommend it.

Sadly, though, I still have to complain about the matchmaking. My assumption is that some players are teamed up at the beginning of the night, which makes breaking players up evenly difficult - but the problem remains the same. Numerous times the session will have all the high level players on one side, which often causes the highest level player on the losing side (and it always seems to be the highest level player) leaving early - which just cripples the losing team completely. Some of this gets pretty brutal.

The gameplay is good enough where it can be fun even if you're losing, which is an indication of a great game ... but when I can pretty accurately predict the outcome of a game just by the team makeup before the game starts, it sucks some of the fun out of an otherwise excellent experience.

Update: Last night I played a couple of hours and only had one match which was somewhat unbalanced, but not the wild sort I've seen repeatedly nights before. Don't know if this is just random behavior swinging to the other side or if there was a server-side fix. I'll keep an eye out.

Update to the update: Last night was bad - lots of very mismatched games. At one point, I just started leaving as the game started. Oddly, this is what finally caught Naughty Dog's eye, that I was jumping games. Which, don't get me wrong - not proud of ... but I can restart a game much faster than finishing it, and maybe the next one won't be such a one way battle.

Some digging seems to indicate that yeah, specific teams are the cause (that's in response to this, and I have lots of similar pics). This is age old problem of online play - boiling down to clan players getting repeatedly paired against casual players.

I'll probably roll this into a longer post, or the more complete Uncharted discussion. It's a huge detriment, though, and may just push me to coop way more- which I think is a shame (not that coop sucks, just that I'd be avoiding my preference. I just like fighting human intelligence...)

Update to the update to the update (guess I should just start numbering these). Naughty Dog is releasing a patch this weekend. It will "deter players from leaving voluntarily" and adjust goals for teams with fewer players. I'll try it out this weekend, but it seems like the wrong solution to the wrong problem to me. Address why people are leaving voluntarily first, simply deterring them seems pointless. I'll leave if I want to leave.

PSN Updates Live (Oct 1st)

The updates for PSN are up on the store and include the Brutal Legend Demo, Operation Anchorage AND The Pitt DLC for Fallout. Nearly as good as last week. Still no Trine, though, which seems odd to me. But I'm really not going to complain about a lack of game content right now.

Uncharted 2 Multiplayer Demo - Now For Everyone

Appearing now on PSN - a version of the Uncharted 2 multiplayer demo that everyone but you and me seemed to have access to, rave about, and gloat over. Downloading now, will post thoughts when I get a chance to give it some quality time.

Game Play: Fat Princess (PSN Review)

Fat Princess is an isometric class-based multiplayer game where two teams fight from opposing castles which hold the eponymous royalty as prisoners. There is an offline mode, though that is basically just a tutorial area for the real deal - though the game play still works pretty well as the bot AI is consistently good (which also helps sometimes fill out the online games).

Players choose their class by grabbing a specific hat (and can change classes in the same way on the fly). There's the sword-slinging warrior, bow-slinging ranger, spell-slinging mage, staff-slinging cleric and axe-wielding worker. Well, OK, the worker slings as well, I guess. Other relatively unique mechanics include tossing pieces of cake to your prisoner, making them fatter and harder to rescue, upgrading various items including the hat making machines (unlocking a secondary attack or stronger weapon for other players).

The core of the game is pretty strong and makes for a well-balanced match in general. No class is overwhelming powerful and each takes a bit of skill and practice to really become useful, while also being simple enough to play around without feeling like a complete tool.

For me, actually, the most problematic of all the classes is the worker ... which is something of a shame. It's by far the most difficult to achieve any decent score from as the worker spends half his time running around, getting killed (he's rather defenseless, even with the bomb upgrade) and the point rewards are meager compared to the ranger (for example) who can just stand and wound opponents to rack up a decent score.

There's also the fact that the gameplay can get a little repetitive and occasionally an experienced team will just race past an inexperienced one, especially in the normal "capture the princess" mode. The team deathmatch mode is somewhat preferable, because there's not catastrophic failures ... just a lot pointmongering. The soccer mode is fairly entertaining as well, even though moving the ball around is a bit frustrating.

Is Fat Princess worth it? It gets point for being at least somewhat unique, and has a strong online showing for the money. I wish it was deeper and more engrossing, but I'll also admit to having spent a few late nights with it. If you're looking for some cartoony online hack and slash, this might be the title for you.

September 24th PSN Update Looking Amazing

So far confirmed for this Thursday: Fallout 3 DLC, in fact the Broken Steel DLC - probably the best of the bunch. Trine (see the trailer at Average Gamer). Zombie Apocalypse.

Jinkies.

For Sunday: Chen Shows Off Flower

Flower game demo from Dean Takahashi on Vimeo.

From Dean Takahashi's preview, the game is apparently a work of art and really showcases the technical prowess of the Cell setup.

Fallout 3: Retrospective

This post will be pretty much nothing but spoilers.

Finished Fallout 3 last night, which disappointingly ends the game definitively for the character. It's actually a bit jarring because for a game which prides itself on open ended designs and providing the player with choices - you really don't get many choices. Basically you can sacrifice yourself or be a jerk and have another character do it. Specifically one character, which doesn't make much sense since there's a decent likelihood that you have access to a character which could survive the radiation blast - Fawkes or Charon. Since ghouls are healed by radiation, Charon could have possibly turned into some kind of superghoul from the blast...

It's an annoyance because I know there are locations in the game I haven't found and I'd like to wander some more - so I'm probably going to pick up an old save to do just that. It's just a nuisance, not to mention a bit of an unsatisfactory end to the story. First, Dad didn't have to die. Sorry, but I could torn every Enclave soldier to pieces with my Fisto! before breaking a sweat. So Dad dies in a kinda falsely martyr like way - and then I kinda get forced to do the same? Gip.

Especially taking into account that the MC in FO3 is what - 18? 19? I know the Wasteland is harsh, but wouldn't somebody have thought of stopping me from certain death?

I don't have any real interest in playing the game over as a new character, though part of that is having been forced to restart it three times. As some point it might be interesting to try the "stealth" or "barter" approach, just because I'd see it as a challenge. I ended the game more or less as a tank. I think I had something like 20 DR before armor, and with the Ranger Armor fully repaired I could walk into a room full of plasma fire and it would cost me about a stimpack. I began and ended the game with Fisto! as one of my most effective weapons - The Girl was pleased to see Col. Autumn's head pop off with a single punch.

I do wish Sony would get the DLC packs - but considering the hours I've spent so far in the game, and the hours I could spend just finishing up exploring, I'm more or less OK with it. FEAR 2 is coming up, Godfather II is coming up, I still need to play more LittleBigPlanet and I'd like to try Resistance 2 at some point as well - so truth be told the Fallout 3 DLC is in about the same camp as the GTA IV DLC. It would be nice, but its not like I don't have other stuff to play.

All in all though, such a fantastic game. I know some Fallout fans would disagree, but some Fallout fans complained about Fallout 2, so what can you do. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see a brand new turn-based more traditional RPG set in the universe as well, but Bethesda has added a very welcome addition to the franchise.

Qore Qan Qinda Qiss My Ass

OK, seriously.

I bought the August edition of Qore primarily for the Resistance Beta. Don't get me wrong, I think Veronica does a fine job and some of the interviews were interesting and all - but paying for the kind of information wasn't attractive without the beta tossed in.

The beta is out and all I've got is this damn Burger King ad for my troubles. Originally the beta was due "in late September", mind you. When I go to the link, I still get the unavailable error. I paid for Burger King ad. Yay.

So maybe in the second wave, or whatnot, I don't know. I don't really care. Don't sell me an issue based on a beta you can't deliver and don't give me a damn download link that I have no idea if it will never, ever work. I can get better experiences for free and, well, quite honestly from now on plan on doing just that.

Demo Play: Battlefield: Bad Company And Iron Man

Had a little free time this morning so I finally installed and tried out the two demos I had been sitting, Bad Company and Iron Man.

Battlefield: Bad Company
Bad Company has a pretty interesting dose of grim humor to add to the modern combat arena of shooters. Cast into the "Bad Company", the single player campaign tosses you headlong into a nearly hopeless scenario with little warning. You'll be stabbing yourself with medical hypos in no time flat.

The multiplayer takes a nice avenue from the normal CTF / spawn control style of play. The attackers are looking to take crates of gold from the defenders, which in turn increase the number of spawns the team gets. The defenders are trying to wear down the attackers to defeat. Server side stats are recorded with players gaining rank.

It's quick, gritty and looks amazing. The online play was crisp and easy over PSN. I would definitely at least recommend the demo when it goes fully public on June 5th.

Iron Man
Having just walked out of the movie itself not too long ago, I can say that they're certainly remaining faithful to the film. Downey's voice lends a great deal to the game and all the visuals fall in line with the feel of the movie.

My only complaint is the controls. It's an overcomplicated mess of movement and shooting with little concern for targeting in between. You feel a little less like man shaped tank when your repulsor shots shank to the right or when you accidentally jet yourself into a wall. My most effective attack seemed to be to just run up to a target and punch it a lot. Which worked awesome for the last Hulk game I played, but I was hoping for a little more sophistication from Stark's creation.

PlayStation 3 Launch In Hindsight

When Sony launched the PlayStation 3 - they got a lot of criticism. And by a lot, I mean every corner of the mainstream and most every online outlet on the planet had something to say about it, mostly negative - some of it reasonable ... some of it not.

Engadget HD looks back at the now finished format war and declares the PlayStation 3 was probably the deciding factor. It was a good quality Blu-Ray player at a reasonable cost (despite what one might think of the cost historically as a game console) and put the format into a lot of alpha tech buyers who then proceeded to buy enough titles to help push studios into Sony's corner.

So the launch which was described by some in the blogosphere as "suicidal" has now put Sony (actually, the Blu-ray Disc Association) into a front row seat for the high definition generation. Microsoft, on the other hand, has already had to reverse course on several design decisions for the 360 - including resolution and HDMI connections.

That optional hard drive and add-on high def player probably isn't far along. Unless, of course, Redmond changes tactics completely and goes the Nintendo route. If they make it "all about the games" and try and make the 360 simply the simplest, cheapest console they can ...

... oh c'mon ...this is Microsoft we're talking about and they could never be satisfied with limiting Xbox Live with such things. While they hem and haw over what to do next, market analyst predict the format decision will up PS3 about 10%. Honestly that seems pretty pessimistic to me. We are now less than a year away from the digital TV conversion and high def sets have found pretty acceptable price points for many consumers. This is going to be a big Christmas for HD and the PS3 will be sitting right there in the front row.

Here's CNet saying much the same thing.

A PlayStation 3 Forecast

There's been some industry talk about whether the PS3 will manage to outpace or continue to struggle behind the 360 (nobody seems to doubt it will continue to be a distant horse to the Wii).

Pending some massively stupid move on Sony's part (and that's always possible) - I'd say their future looks bright. Firstly, HDTV adoption is cresting ahead as set prices continue to plummet. I'm currently researching a 50" 720P plasma that will hit just around a grand by the time I'm probably going to pull the trigger. That's not that much more expensive than my 36" was back in the day.

Secondly, Blu-Ray is becoming the decisive winner in the "what-its-already-over" format wars for high def. When Netflix tells you to take your ball home the ballgame can't have many innings left (although follow up rumors suggest Netflix might have a download strategy for consoles which could help the 360 immensely).

So the "finally" here should be - and the PlayStation 3 is getting better games. Well, we've had Drake's Fortune and some people have managed to port some 360 code over without completely mucking things up. However, Sony has yet to make good on their "Gaming 3.0" promise or even the "year of software" one.

So the clock is ticking on Sony - but even more so for Microsoft. That optional hard drive and lack of a decent high def player will seem less and less attractive as people gear up for the slowly inevitable march to HD. I've been saying for like a year here that Microsoft will likely just suck it up and make a 360 with specs similar to a PS3, despite all their ranting about how that's not what gamers want or need. And maybe they were right - back then.

In 2008, I'd think a "360 Ultimate" would be already on the table. If Microsoft had a console with Blu-Ray and a HD for a reasonable price, it would get my consideration. Right now, I'm just looking for something that will hop along with the HDTV - and that console begins with a P.

PS3 UT3 Modding Inches Forward

Gaming Today (and probably others) are reporting that the UT3 "cooker" has been leaked and the first working mod is out using them.

Quick thoughts.

The Good
Epic is now out of the business of handpicking mods and maps. This was critical because for as long as the mother company is acting as a middle man, you really can't have a viable mod community. Now the community can be responsible for the creation, the discussion and distribution of content.

The Bad
No direct online distribution for content and I'm not hearing much buzz that it will ever change towards it. This will hobble growth over the long term as the novelty of mods wears off. It's been hard enough to convince people to download content and give it an honest try, putting the sneakernet shuffle in between certainly won't help.

The good news is that it sounds like there might be a backdoor in that "code only" mods like mutators and gametypes can be loaded up when a user hits a server using it. I'm not sure if this is cached, temporary, data or if it is stored, however. The flipside here is that traditionally it can lead to people avoiding servers because they don't want to bother with the forced download.

It also looks like there are some restrictions with code working across packages. This isn't terrible, but it does restrict anyone from developing a core package and mixing that code into other gametypes. An annoyance, but a small point overall.

The (Could Be) Ugly
It seems the only way to custom assets (models essentially) is to create a custom map and use that as a starting point. Without being able to try it out, this sounds like a bit of a cluster when it comes to development. If your gametype, for instance, requires a new kind of map - you have to treat it as a total conversion.

What I'm trying to hunt down is what this means for packaging the code. Will mod code have to be distributed with every map? What does that do to version control, etc? It feels a bit like the inverse of how mod development typically works and it would definately hit more than just TC's ... out of five gametypes I'm working on now for UT2004 - two require custom maps. The vast majority of mutators that won during the last MSUC had custom assets ... so those are actually just impossible in this schema.

And I can't imagine a lot of TC mod teams will be happy with not being able to import custom sounds. Heck, I used custom sounds with a holiday mutator I co-wrote a while ago.

For mods like Jailbreak or Deathball which are essentially more partial conversion than total conversions, the setup will probably work (looks like Jailbreak UT3 is already in the works). Also, I can speak to the fact that (at least in UT2004) you can hack the stock maps to a great deal without require new assets and if you're creative about reshuffling and remixing models and textures - you have a lot more flexibility than it probably looks. For instance, my Freehold mod for the original UT altered Domination maps to be coop style play without any map alterations, and it had new monsters, etc.


Overall I can't say I'm thrilled. If we see some gametype mods gain some traction, I would be happy but a little surprised. They haven't had much success on UT2004 without all these limitations.

In short - what's ironic here is that the setup is probably sufficient for the kind of modding I've traditionally done with the Unreal Engine. The problem here is that I've always been in the tiny minority there and rarely got any real motion when it came to getting online play.

Rein On the Open Modding For UT3

On Joystiq:

Filed under: Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, First Person Shooters,
Online
The always talkative Epic Games VP Mark Rein is exuberant about the open
system for downloading *Unreal Tournament 3* mods for the PlayStation 3.
"It's fantastic! I ...

Read Full Article, Mark Rein excited about UT3 mods on PS3

Saying "open modding" is generally redundant except that in this case - nobody has really tried it for consoles before. Epic taking the high road and letting users be users, letting modders be modders, is about the only way to keep "modding" in any semblence of its original form. Otherwise its just cheap outsourcing.

UT3 Demo For PC, Not PS3

On Gaming Today:

Mark Rein from Epic Games has said that they will be releasing a demo of Unreal Tournament 3 on the PC, but won't put out one for
the PS3. He cited the fact that it is much easier to produce a demo on the PC than on Sony's ...

Read Full Article, Demo for Unreal Tournament 3 Coming to PC, But Not PS3

Not terribly surprising and I'd much rather have a PC demo in order to see just how slow the CheapBox++ will be with it.

Update: Demo's available, happy fraggin.

More On Sony's Home

On Next Generation:

Sony's Home is running and it works well but it may not be progressing as quickly as the firm had hoped, according to an insider with access to the beta version of the upcoming PS3 online offering.

Read Full Article, PlayStation Home Details Leaked

Sounds like it's mostly there in it's E3 form - but the very , very important features like invites and buddylists aren't put together yet.

Time for less talk, more show, Sony.

PS3 Starting To Outpace 360?

Via Joystiq:

Pachter ain't the only analyst predicting the July NPD numbers will show the
PS3 has finally outsold the Xbox 360. Turns out Lazard's Colin Sebastian
predicts the same thing, saying the PS3 ...

Read Full Article, More analysts predict PS3 ahead of Xbox in July

Maybe Sony should have done that price drop earlier after all. Now they need to get their library squared up and I might actually consider one once we pull the trigger on a HDTV.

The Church Against Sony

Entertainment company Sony may be the target of a legal action by the Church of England, for featuring Manchester Cathedral in a computer war game.

The controversial game is Sony Playstation’s ‘Resistance: Fall of Man’, which features gun battles inside the cathedral without permission from the Church.

The game has been highly popular, with more than a million copies being sold, however, the featured shoot-out in the cathedral shockingly kills hundreds of soldiers in a virtual version of the holy building.

The Church of England has called for an apology from the game makers, and has called for the game to be removed from shops, saying that if this is not done it would consider legal action.

-- Church of England to Sue Sony for Illegal Gun Fight in Cathedral

OK, for one thing I am so tired of everyone's solution to a beef they have with games being to remove them completely. It's idiotic and honestly a huge sign of the fact that games are still considered the second class media of culture. I mean this isn't even calling for a boycott, as most organizations would do against say, a film - but rather the insistence that whatever problem said group has with said game is valid enough that nobody on the planet should be allowed access to it.

Which of course - is never true. Here we once again have a group capitalizing on a game for self-promotion. Does anyone actually, honestly believe that a shootout in a game depicting a futuristic alternate reality will lead or hinder gun control here in the real world? That's like saying Children of Men will lead to less birth control because hey - it's not like the world is having babies anyway.

This constant myth that gamers are unable to discern fiction from reality is insulting at best.

I'm not entirely sure what legal ground the Church has here - this is definately a dark little corner of copyright/trademark law. I would think that Manchester Cathedral being something of a public space would mean that in some sense the likeness is in the public domain - but I'm not sure. So the flip side here is that if they have any kind of legal traction when it somes to trademark protection, I suppose I can understand in some small sense the stance.

But it is still a lousy and irrational way to take the stance.

Best New Reason For A PlayStation 3

24th May 2007 sees the release of the latest firmware update from Sony for the Playstation 3. This latest update takes us to the heady hights of V1.80.

This update includes the following goodies:

Upscaling DVDs, PSone and PS2 games upto 1080p (note: HD telly required!).

-- Playstation 3 - Firmware V1.80 [The Average Gamer]

Old FluffyFist also links to a gameswank page showing of the upscaling on some PlayStation 2 (and PS1 Doom) titles. If it upscales DVDs even nearly this well, the PS3 just became an excellent choice for people wanting high definition content for their new HDTV.