How to Fix GTA Online's Free Roam

A core portion of the 5 Huge Problems previously discussed center around one large problem: GTA Online's Free Roam is effectively broken.  Not broken in the sense that it's glitched beyond repair (any more) - but broken in the sense that the game punishes people for running around, shooting each other, and having fun.

Let's take a case in point:  I finished a mission with a fellow criminal.  That mission netted us $5K.  After the mission, we got dropped next to each other.  He shot me, stole my ride.  I spawned around the corner and shot him.  He then proceeded to chase me around Blaine County where I killed him two more times and he kill me one more time.

Thankfully, he had a $5K bounty on his head, so I still ended up ahead.  But he probably didn't.  In a matter of minutes, he probably wiped out all of the money he made during the mission.

Interestingly, the fact that free roam is nothing but a money sink doesn't keep people from playing like it is the new wild west.  This is probably the most telling fact that illustrates the players want GTA Online Free Roam, they want to run around and steal cars and shoot at other players ... even if it means it could be costing them thousands of dollars.

So instead of Free Roam being a huge pain in the ass and drain on the bank account, why not reward players for running around, shooting each other and having fun?

Way back when, I wrote a mod for Unreal Tournament called Bounty War.  The whole idea was to re-balance deathmatch scoring.  Better players got higher bounties associated with them and the goal of the game was to end with the most money in your account.  This meant that lower level players had a chance of catching up by fragging higher level players - which in many ways is more fair, since fragging someone who is better at the game is harder than fragging someone who is not good at the game.  

It effectively solved the noobie vs. veteran problem while keeping it fun for both.  And it could totally work for GTA Online.  Here's how:

Fix Passive Mode

Passive mode should be the real deal - not some odd Venn Diagram of how you might possibly get killed. Instead of making you semi-invulnerable but not really, passive mode should:

1. Remove the player from the map
2. Remove other players from the players' map
3. Remove the name float above players
4. Make the player bulletproof from other players (always, not just out of cars)

The entire "remove players" mechanic could be also be configurable, similar to how you can lock your car now - so you could remain visible to your friends and crew if you wanted.  This would let players roam around without other players stalking them and basically keep them safe from anything but getting run over and falling.

Change the Free Roam Death Penalty

Update: In the 1.04 patch, the death penalty is getting capped at $500.  Which is a good compromise, though some of the below is still plausible.



The worst part about the current penalty is that it is often not associated with skill, but circumstance.  For instance, if you quit out of a session before it starts, you could get dropped right next to a complete stranger who just did the same thing.  The last time I had this happen the guy instantly pistol whipped me.  Bam, I lose over a $1K.  For literally doing nothing.

And for some reason Free Roam really likes to spawn you next to your killer (not to mention the whole "1 on 1 Deatchmatch").  So now the whole thing might happen again.  This makes death so common in free roam, and potentially costly.

Instead, let's give players options.  On death, a player could:

1. Wait for ambulance.  If the ambulance is destroyed, or medics shot, player goes to hospital. Medium to Long spawn delay.  Risky.  Free.
2. Go to Hospital.  Short spawn delay.  Not risky.  $500.
3. Instant Revive.  No spawn delay.  Risky. $1,000.

This would penalize (more heavily) players who are distinctly trying to stay in the fight, while giving a middle ground to players who just want to either get back in the game or not spend any money.  It also reduces the previous cap from $2K down to 1.  Early players or players low on cash would have an incentive to go the low cash route.

OK, so now we've made Free Roam less of a hassle and less of a penalty in general.  Now let's make it fun.

Add Wanted Rewards

I'd just call this a bounty, but the current bounty system would actually work well as something additional to a more fully fledged mechanic.  So let's add that mechanic and call it a Wanted Reward. It could work like this:

1. An enemy is defined as someone not on your friends or crew list.
2. Killing an enemy raises your wanted reward by $500.
3. Killing an enemy gives you their wanted reward.
4. Getting killed by an enemy resets your reward back to $0.
5. Player icons go from white to red slowly (instead of just one or the other) to indicate how high their current reward is.
6. After $5K (this is 10 kills in a row without being killed by an enemy) - the player becomes Most Wanted and the reward goes up automatically $500 every game hour.
7. Wanted Rewards max out at $10K.
8. Players killed by law enforcement have their reward reset to $0.
9. Players can get their Reward removed by visiting a Police Station and paying a $2500 fine.

Now players who actively running around and causing chaos in Free Roam are slowly becoming more valuable targets.  Players can opt out of the system by dropping into Passive Mode.  More deadly players become more valuable, making it a higher reward to take them out.

Making Money in GTA Online

In my previous post, I noted how a lot of the big issues in GTA online amount to one thing: the economy works against.  The death penalty can add up quick, ammo isn't cheap, and some of the most common things to do in the game offer little payout for the amount of time you can spend completing them.

If you are trying to move on up to the next luxury condo - here are few tips to get you along:

#1: Play Solo

You can enter into a solo session by joining GTA Online via the Pause menu instead of the quick character select.  Solo is effectively the passive mode that Rockstar describes in the main mode, except it actually works - even if by brute force.  It might seem counter-productive to play by yourself in an online game - but the advantages are huge.  Firstly, you completely remove the possibility of getting involved in the vengeance-fueled killing frenzies which aren't uncommon when playing with others in free mode.  It also means that you have free reign over events in free mode like Simeon's high priority vehicle and convenience stores to knock over.

It also means that bounties can't be claimed against you, and the AI will occasionally set one on your head.  Since after a period of time you get the bounty against you, this translates into random free money for stealing random cars.

#2: Franklin's Early Years

Two of the fastest ways to score cash in GTA Online include what Franklin described as his early years: knocking over convenience shops and stealing cars.  

Each store will net you around $1100 on an average, with the occasional spike into $2K or so.  While this isn't a huge amount, if you only hit two in a row - you only have to fight a two star chase.  Once you get used to where the stores are and the easy escape route associated with them, this means you can punctuate your play with cash that takes about half the time of doing a mission or race, while giving you the same payback.

That said - there's some misinformation going around about knocking over stores.  One is that you'll bag more money for killing the store owner.  That hasn't been my experience and you'll get three stars instead of two right away - which will usually make the chase go far longer than you really want.

As for stealing cars: there are a few select brands that are found around the Vinewood Boulevard area which can net $6 - $9K.  You can sell a car every game day, which is roughly once an hour.  I recommend looking for Ubermacht cars - they're fairly common compared to other high end cars and always net more than $6K.

#3: Easy Missions

After your second store theft you'll need to cool the cops down a bit (or risk a three star chase off the bat), you can hop into a mission and try to do it by yourself.  Setting the mission to easy will make it simpler for the solo run and only seems to reduce the amount of respect you get from the mission, not the cash.  If you're handy with a gun, many of Gerald's missions can be done fairly quickly and will net a decent haul.

#4: Higher Level Missions = Higher Level Rewards

This one is a no brainer, but one of the factors that works for the player when it comes to the game economy is that as you level up, you'll get more access to missions which net higher cash rewards.  Keep an eye on which missions give you the most cash for the time you spend in it and make those a priority.

#5: Earn it, Spend it, then go online

My recommendation would be to spend a couple days in solo mode, and then buy one of the luxury condos with a 10 car garage.  After that, these tips become somewhat obsolete as you've purchased one of the more expensive items in the game - and once you spend your cash on something big, it can't be stolen away from you.  We netted about $180K over the weekend with the above, bought one of the better apartments and now have a lot less concerns when it comes to playing in the normal session.

Of course, now we just hope that Rockstar isn't going to randomly delete our character.

Game Review: 5 Huge Problems with GTA Online

Preface

First note that this is for just the online portion of GTA V.  I may have another post on the main game at a later date.

Second, some may say it is unfair to review GTA Online since it has been out for less than a week and Rockstar had warned ahead of the launch that unexpected demand for the game was going to cause issues.  And yes, some issues - like the fact that I can't currently sign into the game ... are probably due just to demand and will be resolved as Rockstar throws hardware at the problem.

Others, however, like the incredibly bugged tutorial missions that blocked the game for a majority of users - were clearly not because of high demand.  You couldn't even get into the game in offline or "solo" mode (and in fact, oddly - I had 5 people show up to my solo mission...).  We're now a couple patches in and if the servers are up, you can play - but the experience still has many issues.  Many of them aren't bugs, but simply design.

This is clearly another beta being rolled out as a product.  Now, GTA Online is a free component to a game which is already larger in scope than most titles in its price range.  Still, it is a product - and while one that shows a lot of promise (and I've already spent many hours on) ... is still deeply flawed.

However, in fairness to Rockstar I'm not even mentioning huge outstanding bugs like your character simply disappearing - under the assumption they'll fix that in short order.

Quick Overview

GTA Online is where players of GTA V can create their own criminal and run around Los Santos (and the greater Los Santos area) with other criminals created by players.  A bevy of activities await: Deathmatch, Last Team Standing, Vehicle Deathmatches, Races of nearly every variety, Missions (more on that later) and what seem like the entire set of activities from the main game (Tennis, Parachuting, etc).  Some of these open slowly as the player levels up.

At its core, it is a lot of fun.  It brings the RPG/Customization angle from San Andreas (but with a complete character and not just making CJ fat) and mashes it into an expanded online offering that goes well beyond the already surprisingly fun online mode in GTAIV.

Problem #1: Dying

Dying is pretty much expected in a game like GTA Online.  And when you have a bunch of people on the server which think the game is mostly about crashing cars into players to steal the $100 that drops out of their pocket ... it can happen a lot.  Especially because the game seems to egg on revenge tactics by always dropping you near the person who killed you.  We've had people hunt us down repeatedly for seemingly no other reason than us being on the radar.

This would be fine if it wasn't for the 5% death tax, which appears to max out at 2K.  I believe this is the same tax as in the story mode, but the online mode currently lacks any major heists to have large sacks of money laying around where even though you're paying more ... you have plenty.  No, here once you have managed to stockpile a decent amount of cash (you'll want $75-100K to buy a decent apartment, for instance) ... your cash becomes a huge liability.  We had about $80K saved up over the course of hard playing all afternoon and night ... but about 10 minutes of getting caught in the middle of some crazed bounty hunt, we were back down to ~$53K.  About five hours of play were wiped out in a matter of minutes.

If Rockstar expects the offset to this to be players buying cash with real dollars, then GTA Online will go down as one of the largest missed opportunities in online gaming.  And it will join such modes as Mass Effect 3's online component as being sacrificed to the idiot blind god of microtransactions.

Problem #2: There is no Passive Mode

Rockstar will tell you that if you want to run around and not get capped, you can just go into passive mode.  Passive mode costs $100 to get into (for some bizarre reason never explained).  Passive mode is also completely worthless as other players (and AI) can still run you over, shoot you from their cars and we think still pull you from vehicles and punch you.  It basically just means they can't shoot you while outside their vehicle.  Which is really not worth the $100.

Whether this is a deeply bugged or simply horribly designed feature is difficult to tell.  Rockstar has not as of yet mentioned any changes or fixes to the mode.

Problem #3: The Weird Bounty System

The other odd thing about having online players run around in free mode killing each other is ... there is very little point to doing it.  If you die, you lose ... some of your cash?  It is actually a little unclear - once you have $5K in walking money, Rockstar will warn you that players can steal your cash. Update: it sounds like it is $100 (always) + whatever you have over $5K. 

Course, there is no reason to run around with cash since you can deposit and withdraw money to your bank right from your phone.

However, none of that means anything since the death tax extends to your bank account.  So if I kill you, I'm unlikely to get any cash for it - but you'll lose 5% of everything you've got, or $2K, despite where it is.  After a certain level, you (and oddly, AI's) can put bounties on another player's head.  These seem to range from about $1K - $10K but are usually less than $5K.  

This is actually a horrible system, designed to do nothing but drain capital across the server.  Let's say you have a player with $80K in the bank.  They stand lose $2K just from dying once.  Someone puts a $3K bounty on their head.  Chances are players are going to die more than a couple times trying to kill them (especially since players often kill each other trying to get to the bounty).  So basically one player gets a slightly subsidized death and everyone else who participates loses out (potentially severely).

The only time I have ever profited from bounties is when I was lucky enough to get a $3K and $9K (which is very rare) bounty back to back.  Even then I died enough to eat up the $3K bonus.

So in short, one of the things players are most likely to do on the server - run around, cause mayhem and shoot at each other ... appears primarily designed to keep bank accounts low.

Problem #4: The Capital Throttle

This is all compounded by the fact that Rockstar has clearly made making cash a very slow process.  If you have a decent session going with lots of players, you can bounce from deathmatches to races relatively easily.  These will net you around $200 - $2000 depending on how well you do.  They can also take up a lot of time, especially some of the multiple lap races.

You can, as the title suggests you could, steal cars and sell them.  Without this being couched as a mission, you can only do this once an hour.  It is, however, one of the quickest ways to make money if you get the right car.  You can also holdup liquor stores, gas stations and the like - although time to completion there is highly dependent on how well you can evade the police.

There are a few choice missions which net a high profit, but you can't really select those voluntarily.  You have to hope one of your contacts hands them to you (more on that below).  The result is that activities that are the easiest to get to, but conversely can take up the most time ... actually offer the lowest profits (especially after you factor in buying ammo and armor).

Problem #5: Missions

All of the above compounds into the final huge issue: the mission structure.  Since deatchmatches and races are time consuming and not very profitable, it can be difficult to get players to actually play them. Worse, the goal based missions are easily the most entertaining and often offer higher rewards - but you can't select them.  After you do a goal based mission, you can vote on another session - but are limited to deathmatch and races (even though Last Team Standing sessions are labeled as Missions, which they really are not).  Most people just drop back into free mode.

This makes the best part of the game: performing goal based missions with a decent number of online players, something of a rarity.  You can call your contacts and hope for the best, but the result is something of a pot luck between who will respond to the Jobs text.

TLDR

GTA Online has a great core to it, but well beyond the issues of connectivity - it has some serious design issues.  Rockstar has currently turned off both the Stock Market and GTA$, so that players can't lose real money in the virtual game.  There are two unfortunate trend to all five problems: they all factor into keeping you bank account hard to grow and easy to deplete, and they're easily solved if you are willing to pony up some real cash to bankroll your virtual criminal.  

I really, sincerely, hope that this is not Rockstar's solution to the game.

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Beta Review

Yeah, so far ... I can't say that I'm a fan.

Here's why:

This game wasn't really on my radar, to be honest.  I've never been a big Final Fantasy guy.  But I had heard about some people talking about it and one day I get a message in my PSN box from Square Enix inviting me to the beta (I think I entered originally by like downloading a video off off PlayStation Plus or the like).

Great.  So I click on the attachment in the message.  This is what this message looked like:

It downloads a 28MB launcher, which in turn sits there and downloads some untold gigs of actual game software.

Slowly.  OK, so there went using the PS3 for a while.  I go about and do ... some other Friday night thing for a while.  I come back.  Still downloading.  Wash, rinse and repeat about five times.  Finally downloaded.  It's late now, but I can stay up for a bit to smoke test the first few moments of the game.

Except, there's no play button.  Instead I first have to enter in my Beta Code.

What Beta Code?  I don't have a Beta Code.  I have a huge amount of software that got downloaded from a small amount of software that I downloaded from that ....

Oh, right - that message.  So I go back to the message.  The Beta Code can be found if you artfully scroll down a bit.  It's 20 characters long.  There is no concept of cutting and pasting on the PS3.  Thankfully I've got an iPhone with a camera and a USB keyboard.

OK.  Beta Code in.  Time to kill some ... I don't know ... bird things.  Whatever they kill in Final Fantasy a lot.  Seriously, I haven't played Final Fantasy since like ... well at least before they needed more than a few Roman numerals.  But now I can play - right?

Nope.  Now I get to create a Square Enix account, and then I have to tie that to my PSN account. Usually typing in a promo code isn't really needed if you get it through PSN because it just gets passed through - but OK.  And sure, I've had to link accounts before - but usually that can be done pretty smoothly either through my browser or through the PS3 - this was pretty much neither.  I had to create account information, confirm account information, follow my confirmation instructions, confirm my other account information and so on.

Usually "closed beta" means "exclusive rights to download", not really "fill out enough forms to get a new rate on your loan".   After about three more screens and a couple user agreements, though, I've got it.  I'm all signed up, linked up, and I have every single code I could possibly have entered in.

Time to kill some Cocoa Birds, right?

Wrong.  I just get a message thanking me for joining the Square Enix community and come back when there's a beta not already in progress.  Don't call us, we'll call you.  We'll do lunch.  So days turns into weeks and I get bored with having this downloaded beta I can't play ... so I delete it.

Fast forward to yesterday.  I get this in the old inbox:

Now, there's just one teeeeny tiny little problem here.  I mean, really, so insignificant that I hesitate to mention.  Really, it might not be worth your time.  I should just go, really.  I mean - oh, well, OK - here's the thing.

I don't own a PC.

And I really would have thought you would have known that from the thirty minutes of paperwork you forced me to do just to have the privilege of not playing your game.

Sigh.  OK, probably a simple misunderstanding. Whatever, no big deal - like I said.  I mean, I spent all that time registering with Square Enix, surely I can just download the beta again and then login and then we'll be fine.  I go back to my PSN inbox, click on the attachment.

I get prompted for a 12 digit promo code.  I don't have a 12 digit promo code.  I have a 20 digit beta code.

 I got to the support center noted in the email.  I log into my account (which at this point I assume that Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn might just be the most subtle ARG ever made).  I fumble around until I find some forums in English.  I put a post there, and a fellow gamer tells me that I should have gotten a 12 digit code in my email.

You know, the email inviting me to download the beta client for my non-existent PC.

So I find Customer Support.  Square's concept of Customer Support seems to embrace the often used tactic of "fend them off with FAQ's and then ignore them completely".  I get past their measly FAQ's and submit a "ticket".

Of course, a "ticket" would imply that a) someone received it and that b) I could go back and check the status of the "ticket".  Only, there is no open tickets area in Square's Customer Support mindset.  So what they've really created is email.  And since I have no confirmation email, it might be email that goes nowhere.

So now I stumble onto the Technical Support forums, where I find the grandest of all the grand punchlines this little saga could have ... a thread entitled:

• Played Phase 3 PS3 beta but received Phase 4 PC beta email >.<

OK.  now we are getting somewhere.  Surely out of eight pages of Internet wisdom will be the answer, or at least some kind of response from Square Enix on the situation.  Right?

Right?

Oh, hell no.  There are, and I shit you not because I respect you as a person and would not do that you this late in a long post, eight pages of people posting their public email addresses to an international Internet forum in the hopes of someone sending them a beta key.

Because, I should mentioned, these forums do not have private messages.  So the thing is - I don't even really blame people for posting in the hopes of getting a code.  Several have.  Square is completely silent on the issue and have left them no other choice.

Eight pages ... and growing.  Of personal email addresses.

Nicely played, Square, you have managed to fuck up a process the gaming industry has been honing for like decades into a process where people are willing to forego their personal information for a 12 digit code.

So yeah.

First of all, if you are going to force me to jump through so many registration hoops - I should get some benefit of it.  That I had to create like three accounts, pinky swear four times and what not - but you have absolutely no way of giving me a beta code except email? Ludicrous.  Absolutely ludicrous.  This is like when the phone company asks you to put in your phone number so that they can put you through to a human whose first question will be what is your phone number.

Second - I am so tired of first rate game companies with third rate customer support systems.  I'm kinda glad I already played Tomb Raider - because now knowing that Square Enix basically has no customer support, I am far less likely to buy their games in the future.

And thirdly ... Square, if you are reading this - don't even respond to me until you have responded to that forum thread.  Like you should have done at least a day ago.


The Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Beta?

I am not a fan.

Not at all. 

Most of the Next Gen Console Rumors Are Probably Wrong

It's that time of the year again.  Or more specifically, that time of the gaming console cycle when it seems credible enough that the next generation of devices might be in some kind of hardware prototype form that it seems perfectly reasonable to float around rumors about how they'll play (pun intended) out.

Which also means it is time to go visit some old friends.  Take a quick glance back at the news reporting about the PlayStation 3 before it debuted.  We're going to see some similar themes: leaps to conclusion about disc storage and of course, the old ghost about playing used games.  Let's not even worry about these from a Microsoft or Sony or Nintendo stance, just as pure speculation.

No more used games!

We'll start with the real money-maker.  And when I say money-maker, I mean this is essentially the online equivalent of trolling for a news source.  There's no doubt that the concept of having a game console block used games will drive page views and comments - gamers love their used games.  The $40-60 price range of most new titles is painful enough to have many gamers think twice before purchasing and the so called "grey market" that keeps GameStop in business is a handy way to purchase for many gamers.

This was widely reported as pretty much factual for the PS3 before it arrived, with some news outlets even suggesting the PS3 would physically notch your disc to make your game its bitch.  But it just doesn't add up.

Problem is: The used games market hits publishers in the money belt, not console makers.

Probably the biggest problem with this meme is that it supposes that the big three have a huge financial stake in it.  However the real profit loss for the console makers is subsidizing the console hardware, not in licensing software.  While they would surely like to see the "white market" sales go up, even Microsoft managed to turn the 360 into a huge profit machine this generation.  Publishers and studios are the ones who potentially go into the red when they spend money on game development, not the hardware makers.

Worse, such a move could potentially hurt console makers where they are actually vulnerable - selling actual consoles.  Analyst Michael Pachter has guess that blocking the sale of used games would probably lead to a bricks and mortar lead, gamer followed revolt.  I think he's completely right (and I don't always think that about Pachter).

Finally, I still say that the technology isn't quite as solid to pull this off as some other people do.  If you accept that gamers will still have an offline, disc-based experience ... there's no real way to pull this off.

Course, that brings us to...

No more disc-based games!

This one has an awful lot of credence behind it, considering the number of people who are now used to buying games - be it for the PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, PS3, 360 or other abbreviation, via the Internet.  Steam, app stores, and console networks are big business these days and with some games only available via electronic means (think Minecraft), surely it makes sense that the next generation consoles would follow suit, right?

Problem is: many, if not most, living rooms are still not on the information highway

While wi-fi is largely domesticated and the concept of "high speed bandwidth" is becoming rapidly redundant - there's still a very healthy percentage of gamers who play 100% offline.  And we're not talking about the casual or senior citizen crowd here - we're talking normal if not hardcore gamers.  While  a decent percentages of gamers in 2011 use their console for online activities, it is by far not the majority.  I know it is anecdotal - but I'm constantly getting into conversations about gaming which quickly get confused because I assume they are playing the most recent patch (see Skyrim).

For more evidence check out the OnLive Console.  Did you even know there was such a thing?  While OnLive has exceeded my expectations for what can be done with streaming games - their hardware sales haven't exactly pegged them as "the fourth console maker" yet.  The truth is that the living room is still new frontier for certainly having high-speed access and many consumers don't yet associate their console as an online device.

But if we must have discs, then...

This XYZ console will use XYZ format!

Will Sony keep Blu-Ray?  Will Microsoft adopt Blu-Ray?  Will Nintendo use flash cards?

The problem with this speculation is that it is probably one of the last decisions the console makers need to make.  While architectural decisions about memory, bus speeds, processors, GPU, and other tightly integrated board components have direct impact on how games are actually coded - storage format fairly uniformly decides two things: capacity and load times.  It makes a big impact, for sure, but certainly not as much as how much system memory can be dedicated to textures or the like.

My guesses are: Sony will keep Blu-Ray, as keeping the Orbis a Blu-Ray player fits in their living room strategy and is cost-effective for them.  Plus, Blu-Ray is probably still the best option technically for games thanks to the large capacity on the discs.  Nintendo and Microsoft will probably use some kind of mutated version of HD-DVD because they can own the experience outright without licensing anything to Sony and still rival the size of Blu-Ray.  They might miss out on being a DVD player (but also might not) - but I'm not sure being a DVD player will be a serious game player in the next generation outright.

The problem with the flash card rumor is cost.  Flash cards offer a lot of versatility to developers (and probably the best option if anyone really did want to kill the grey market of used games) but are really only viable for mobile games where the footprint is small enough to keep costs down.  Look at this way - solid state drives have gotten to a point where they are essentially superior to traditional drives, but expect the makers to opt for the latter so that they can sell a "300GB" model instead of a "150GB" one for less price.

Bottom line: the speculation here is fun, but it is way too early to guess right now.

So for those scoring at home - for the top rumors about the next gen of consoles it is: no way in hell, almost certainly not, and way too early to even care.

[SPOILERS] Mass Effect 3's Bizarre (and bad) Ending

See - it's right there in the title. Spoilers.  Big time.

First (and to give those who are still parsing the whole "spoiler" bit a second) - I want to say that the Mass Effect series is still an amazing achievement and hands down my favorite BioWare franchise to date.  I don't know if a full review is really helpful from Cathode - easy to say I highly recommend it.  I have a few nitpicks with it - like the fact that in the far future I have a holographic glove which can unlock doors, repair items and kill people ... but I can't check my email.  Or that once again, BioWare managed to put in a boss fight which suddenly jumps the difficulty (and when both your squad mates die when walking in the room, don't cry "strategy" to me).

99% of this game is gorgeous, plays great and tells a wonderful story.

Until the end.  And I don't think anyone will ever really know what happened here.  Here's five reasons why Mass Effect 3's ending was just plain wrong.

And no, it's not because Shepard usually (and probably) dies. (spoilers!)

1. You don't save the galaxy.
I'm not sure what the definition of saving the galaxy would be ... but let's recap here:

Option 1: Destroy the Reapers and all the mass effect relays.  Destroying the Reapers also destroys all the important technology in the system, totally wiping out both the quarian and the geth and possibly doing untold damage to the other races who have already been decimated by the Reapers.

So in every cycle, the Reapers come and wipe out the dominate species and leave the remaining ones intact to evolve and be harvested later.  So while not the usual plan here - I'd still score this one pretty solidly in the Reaper column.  Most of the galaxy is destroyed, and what isn't has been tossed back to some kind of stone age.

Option 2: Die and control the Reapers.  Which is the first of the three options which starts to leave logical thinking aside.  I'm dead ... but I'm in control.  Worst.  Promotion.  Ever.  There's no indication of what this odd paradox of being both deceased but in control actually means - you're just left to assume.  It doesn't help that every end cutscene is 95% identical except with a few edits and color changes.

For the record, this is the only ending which seems even passable to me.  If I assume Shepard is now some kind of free-floating Reaper god child (seriously, wtf) - then I can assume enough technology and power remains that maybe everyone I just spent all that time fighting for might have a chance to live.

Option 3: Modify the entire galaxy into some kind of organic-synthetic hybrid.  Or as I like to call - what the frak are you talking about? How...   what.  Huh?  I mean, you stick a circuit into Joker, and put some dermal patches on EDI ... wait ... that's all the Reapers really wanted?  They just wanted organics and synthetics to get along?

But I did that.   It's possibly to have the geth and quarians living happily side by side, without any bullshit cutscene or mass genocide.  And since all the mass effect relays exploding still killed the vast majority of life in the galaxy ... I'm still not entirely calling this "saving the galaxy".  Not to mention, oh little glowing god-child of my dreams .... but a synthetic-organic hybrid could still make synthetics which could kill all the synthetic-organics.  And according to you, it's inevitable.  And now the Reapers are on vacation from "saving us".  So the synthesis doesn't really solve anything that controlling option did, except for altering all the DNA in the galaxy.  Everyone is still pretty much doomed, but they get new glowing bits.

So end result of any of this: nearly everyone on in the galaxy is dead, and those that aren't are likely marooned and about to die in the wake of the single most technological disaster in history.

But at least the Reapers were dealt with.


2. Your choices don't really matter.
BioWare did a great job of making me actually care about choices I made throughout both ME2 and ME3, and I felt that ME3 was building off some of my ME2 experience.

Until I got to the end.  Remember all that time you spent wondering if the geth should be given a chance for free will, even though you knew it might turn into another geth war when you really didn't need one?  Well, doesn't matter.  Your choice here is reduced to a bonus "military readiness" and the fact that in one ending, they're all dead - and in the other two they're either altered so that it wouldn't have mattered what you chose (because we all know that if geth just had a real heart to begin with, then ... no wait, that's Wizard of Oz) and then in the other there's actually a strong likelihood they'll probably take over what remains of the galaxy anyway.

More to the point: there's no real epilogue here.  If I sacrificed myself for the galaxy, can I at least know that my significant other got his or her dream of a white picket fence at some point?  Did the Krogan actually succeed in reproducing and hence becoming a threat to all the galaxy again, or did Wrex live up to his word?

You get to make a lot of interesting choices in the Mass Effect series - but at the end you just get a differently colored cutscene and absolutely no resolution or closure whatsoever.

And no, dude and dude's son on some future planet don't count.

3. Last minute premise which makes no sense
Wait, so the Reapers (who are synthetic) were just being controlled by some kind of AI or VI (also, synthetic) in a the longest running campaign of genocide ... in order to ... save organics from synthetics?  Why not just bring down the full bear of that power on ... rogue synthetics?  Couldn't they have just wiped out the geth in ME1 and saved us all that murder and mayhem?  This is like the worst project plan in the history of project management.

Goal: Save organics from synthetics.
Solution: Use synthetics to destroy organics.

And nobody raised their hand at that meeting?  If anything, the history of the Reapers and geth show that they were going to try to keep organics from destroying synthetics.  The whole spin here seems a last minute explanation to frame the "destroy, control or integrate" outcomes.  It wasn't needed either, I didn't need the sudden inclusion of a "Reaper master" to explain how they were tools all along (Sovereign didn't seem to agree with that, but whatever) or a concise description of their motives.  I was pretty good with "evolution going unchecked leads to chaos, we hate chaos" and going from there.

4.1 Worst plot device goes to: Synthesis Ending

I originally wrote the following section as "worst plot device".  I recant.  The more I think about the synthesis ending, the more I hate it.  It's the ultimate cop-out.  It explains nothing, allows for everything and anything.

Maybe Nano-Tali can eat Nano-Leaves because the green explosion made things work that way?  Maybe Nano-Joker can have man-babies with Nano-Jarvik, because now they are all the same species and sex and there is no more war!

Someone on the Bioware forums asked quite astutely about EDI's fate in a post-Normandy world (which is quite grim if you think about her nature). But the synthesis ending offers a clear possibility: THE NORMANDY IS NOW ALIVE.  The synthesis gave it organic parts and now it will just grow into the Nano-planet and it will never die and EDI will always be fine and can have lots of Nano-Babies with Nano-Joker.

Seriously?  Stupidest plot device since midichlorians.


4.2 Second worst plot device goes to: indoctrination
So Reapers can apparently send out a field which causes organics to fall under their control.  This is often done behind the scenes during the franchise and works kinda OK that way - because it just allows the explanation of key betrayals and whatnot.

But then you have the Illusive Man on the Citadel - himself indoctrinated, and with very little effort making two people be puppets to his will and you start to wonder ... how the hell are the Reapers even remotely losing this war?  It was one thing when there was like ... one of them, or that they were all in deep dark space or whatever ... but if Martin Sheen can play this trick after just learning how it works, why aren't the Reapers just brainwashing the whole galaxy into submission, then killing them off at their leisure while afterwards going back for some brews?

The whole Cerberus angle in ME3 feels a little weird, but the ending just killed it for me.  The Illusive Man is no longer interesting - he's just a tool with some new H.R. Giger makeup setting humanity up for a fall.  And instead of having Shepard and Anderson just shoot each other ... he does what every other garden variety villain does .... he talks them to death until his own demise.  Gee, I was so shocked.

Edit: More evidence - many people want to explain the ending by declaring that Shepard was indoctrinated.  Any plot device so free-form that your reader/player/user introduces it to explain away things which don't make sense - you've just created self-fulfilling plot holes.


5. They stole all this from Deus Ex.
It took reading some forum posts to make this click - but damn I thought this all felt familiar.  And here's why: this is the exact same kind of choices from the original Deus Ex.  You can either become a god-like AI in control of technology, you can send everyone back to the stone age, or you can integrate with technology to "better understand".  Control, destroy or integrate - and even the outcome is more or less the same.

At least in Deus Ex, you got three completely different cutscenes to describe what happens - not just a different colored filter.

OK, that's all for now sports fans.  Look, I still loved the franchise.  I don't know if I'm in the boat to go back and play ... well, any of it, again - and the ending is definitely a reason for that.  But it was a great ride, and I got a lot of great moments out of ME3 even if the ending felt like it was finished by the Korean Animation Studio:

Cheers, everyone.  You might also check out the next post, on how Bioware failed from a narrative point of view.

P.S.: Also consider GameFront's article on this, which is quite excellent.

[Game Play] Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (vs. Skyrim)

Reckoning is, if not anything else, an excellent freshmen attempt from a freshmen studio.  Sure, it famously hails Ken Rolston of Elder Scrolls fame - and that is probably cheating on the "freshmen" front, but this doesn't change the fact that it is a brand new franchise with a brand new engine.

Partially thanks to the Rolston connection, many comparisons were lined up between Reckoning and Skyrim.  I first heard about Kingdoms of Amalur in the midst of forum chatter about Skyrim, the theory being that Reckoning might be a Skyrim experience without the numerous bugs of Skyrim (did I mention this was a PS3 forum?  Yeah....).

I've clocked about 10 hours into Reckoning, so this is probably not an overly comprehensive review - but I'm now walking down the path of thinking that the games are far more different than similar.  Skyrim strives for a dense, realistic world and favors a first person narrative.  Reckoning is a fast paced third person affair with cartoon-like graphics.  Despite their similarities, Skyrim reminds me of old school games like Eye of the Beholder and Dungeon Master, where Reckoning reminds me strongly of Diablo and World of Warcraft.

Reckoning also sports a storyline by R.A. Salvatore - a rather famous author in the Dungeons and Dragons line of fantasy.  Salvatore's backstory seems to give Reckoning a certain edge, but the familiarity of the world with immortal fae, kobolds, trolls, and the like ... does it no favors in making Amalur stand out or seem particularly gripping.  Some of the dialogue and characters are interesting, but largely lacks any emotional impact.

If anything, I think this highlights a very strong suit of Skyrim.  The player manages to feel connected to the NPC's and hence, to the story itself.  In that game, I joined the assassin's guild out of an attempt to betray them (which failed, because you apparently only get one chance to do that...) - which is a pretty complex plot for a computer game that had nothing to do with any of the code.  I don't see anything like that happening in Reckoning.

The world and the story is a solid backdop for the game, and the designs by comic artist Todd McFarlane likewise gives everything you look at an extremely competent feel to it ... but there are rare instances when the design will really give you that "wow" feeling.

At this point, Reckoning would be set for a solid B if it weren't for two factors.

The first is the combat.  It's been noted in every review for the game, but it can't be mentioned enough.  These combat mechanics are through the roof good.  It's not just the way the auto-lock system flows easily without any real user interaction or input.   It's not just the highly stylized combat moves and the pure joy of unlocking new moves and figuring out how to best incorporate them into your fighting strategies.  It's not just the well factored physics and NPC reactions to your moves - enemies "feel" like they go down when they should, and keep charging when they should.  It is how all of that works together.  Rolston, Salvatore and McFarlane made sure that this game had a solid base when it comes to design, but I think the most noteworthy aspect is that the real star of the game had nothing to do with those big names ... it's the technical brilliance behind the most core aspect - beating up monsters and taking their loot.

Back when I modded Unreal, I realized the most important thing to keep right was the quality of deathmatch itself.  Because deathmatch is still the core of any other FPS game.  The Reckoning team clearly understood this rule and have delivered possibly the most awesome action of any action RPG in the history of the genre.

The second factor is simply a credit to the Big Huge Engine.  After a demo which left some players wondering if the game would crash or be full of graphical glitches - the final product is remarkably solid.  I've had occasional frame rate glitches, but nothing which has impacted gameplay.

It's only been 10 hours, so I'll wait to see if things degenerate - but so far I feel no need to have multiple save games.  No need to save intermittently.  No worries about things locking up after clearing a dungeon.  No soldiers drinking beer in mid air or creatures suddenly returning to a default 3D model pose after being beheaded.  Everything just works.  And it works well.

This actually impacts my gameplay.  Since I don't have five old savegames around, I don't reverse time when something goes wrong.  Probably the best "RPG" moment I had in the game was when an NPC in a quest got killed - which doesn't normally happen, and I was supposed to defend him.  It kinda sucked, because I got that "Quest Failed" message - but it had some emotional weight.  Especially when I then got a follow up quest for his dead wife.

I wish Reckoning had more of that kind of complexity, but I'm more happy to play an expansive RPG without all the technical issues that Bethesda ships with their games.  I hope Reckoning can now be a counter-argument to the nonsensical "all big games ship with big bugs" theory defending titles like Skyrim and New Vegas.  It's really just big games shipped and developed by Bethesda.

So short version: a very solid A-.  It's not a dense world, and you aren't going to find a gripping storyline here.  There is much about Amalur which is pretty but kind of vapid, but if you're a Diablo type of RPG person where the storyline essentially just connects you between points of having a lot of fun hacking things apart, Amalur promises hours and hours and hours of doing just that.

Game Play: Kingdoms of Amalur Demo

It's been about a month, faithful reader (or both of you - if the other guy is still around) ... the holiday drag is now nearly officially over and the gaming hangover which has been the survival of all of those November releases is behind us.

I could tell you about Uncharted 3 - which is simply one of the most technically impressive games on any platform to date.  It's just so ... so ... insanely solid.  The writing, the animation, the graphics, the inner mechanics - everything just clicks.

But you probably already knew that.  You might not have known about the Kingdoms of Amalur demo which just dropped on PSN and XBLA.  It's gotten some legs in the press because of Ken Rolston, of Morrowind and Oblivion fame, coming out of retirement to help retire it.

The main feeling on the net, even before playing it, is that the game is a mashup of Skyrim (or more generally, The Elder Scrolls in general) and Fable.  There's a little truth to that - but I think either comparison is dangerous.  Rolston's stamp is certainly all of this game - in the latter portion of the demo you can essentially go and do whatever you want.  So I tried to steal from a store, got caught, busted out of prison and went on a killing spree on the townsfolk as they tried to reign me in.  And that was all in like twenty minutes.

But the world design feels more like World of Warcraft, or I suppose Fable - if Fable was far less linear.  You don't quite get that "what is over that hill" feeling you get in Skyrim - but that doesn't mean the world isn't open to explore.  The combat mechanics are very difficult to describe - they easily transcend the usual button mash + power attack of most action RPG's by forcing players to dodge and defend themselves ... as well as pay close attention to the tactics of the enemy which change impressively from one type to the next, but I certainly wouldn't call it "strategic".

The thing is - Amalur is so clearly utilizing the playbooks of other games that describing it without making comparisons is difficult.  The problem is if you were honest - you would be making comparisons not just to Rolston's previous games, but WoW, Fable, God of War, most Bioware RPG's and probably wear yourself out by the time you remembered Nethack.

What Amalur has going for it is some excellent design and mechanics.  Unfortunately the demo appears to be plagued by more than a few bugs - I noticed a few "hall of mirrors" ... a graphics glitch when the rendering engine doesn't know what to render.  Other players have reported crash level gltiches.  As anyone who has read Cathode know, I've beaten on the rotting corpse of the horse which is Bethesda's miserable QA process in the past ... and hope Amalur won't have such issues.

One thing that I noted: I don't know if the lack of specific save is because it is a demo, or will be part of the game.  Not being able to have multiple save points would give the game a sort of permadeath like quality (not really, but actions would have consequences you can't take back ... like murdering a whole town).  I'll be curious to see what the full version has in the way of save game control.

Full version comes out Feb. 17th - very much looking forward to it, if it isn't too crash-laden.

Bethesda Owes Gamers Truth on "Creation" Engine (hint: It's still Gamebryo)

I'm not even going to go back and drag up all the posts I've made about Fallout: New Vegas and what a horrible bugfest it was.

The important thing here: it's still broken for some players, even today.

Now, like myself, many other gamers who experienced the nightmare which was Fallout: New Vegas were delighted to hear that it was going to use an all-new engine.  And when I say it was reported to use an all-new engine, I mean: Bethesda themselves stated that the engine for TES V: Skyrim would be all-new.


I'm not even paraphrasing here, not even a little bit.  Now, if you read through that recent FO:NV forum post, you'll see that the user is stating that the game becomes unplayable after the save file reaches a certain file size.

Gee, I dunno?  Sound familiar?  Yup, it's the exact same issue that everyone is talking about with Skyrim on the PlayStation 3.  And what is the most technical explanation for the problem that has been released to date?

It's the one offered by Obsidian, the developer of Fallout: New Vegas.  It explains how the Gamebryo based games use a file strategy to track the changes throughout the game world, and how consoles can have problems loading and managing those changes into memory.  No memory = no performance.

Now, I've been lucky.  I've had a few quest bugs and the occasional performance issues.  I've had two crashes.  I've had maybe a handful of lockups.  From my time with the game, I would say that I'd stick to my guns in that compared to Fallout: New Vegas - it is a godsend, and compared to normal games it is only slightly buggy.

But - that's me.  There's now plenty of video evidence that other players of Skyrim are experiencing what I experienced with Fallout: New Vegas (and to a slightly lesser degree, Fallout).  I don't know why I'm one of the lucky ones - but that isn't really the point.  The point here is that I bought Skyrim because I thought it was an all-new engine, as did many other people.

But how is it that an "all-new" engine has the same fundamental problem as the last engine, with apparently the same save file structure and loading concepts as well?

How is it that items in the world are rendered and handled in almost the exact same manner as the old engine?  Sure, the textures look nicer and Bethesda has cranked up the pretty in all sorts of ways, but someone who has played all the Gamebryo games can't load up Skyrim and deny the fact that the game looks and feels just like the old games did.

All-new engine, my ass.  All new graphics pipeline, perhaps.  Kicking Speedtree to the curb and implementing your own plant-life, sure.  New ways of loading textures, maybe.

But at the end of the day - the so called "Creation" engine is just lipstick on a pig.  Bethesda hasn't even been able to fix the problems with their last game, but they continue to march on with the same core technology ... only this time with more of PR spin to give gamers false confidence.

That's pretty shameful, and there are a lot of Skyrim players ... especially on the PS3 ... with plenty of righteous anger at the company right now.

I really don't know if I'll buy the next Bethesda game.  I can't trust the Gamebryo engine, and I can't trust Bethesda when they say they aren't using it.

Game Play: Skyrim

Update: Obviously I was a bit hasty, as several PS3 owners are reporting that after save files of a certain size, the game will start to increase in lag while playing until slowly becoming unplayable.

My own file size is about 9mb, and I have had a few issues like what is being reported - but can still make an afternoon out of it. Currently on a thumbs sideways kind of judgement. Bethesda has a patch coming out supposedly after Thanksgiving, but no confirmation that patch will fix it.

I'm still a big fan of the game in general, but feel for the PS3 players. And some of the player stories are of the kind I can't recommend it for the PS3 anymore. This is absurd, Bethesda, just absurd.

---

Faithful readers of Cathode Tan (and yes, I am referring to both of your) know that I have frequently felt that for the Fallout titles in particular frequently performed, shall we say, less than the standard amount of quality assurance.  I won't bore with a bunch of old links, but let us just say that the terms "buggiest" "game" and "ever" might have been used in regards with words like "New Vegas".

Seriously, a bug which can be fixed by wearing the right in-game hat?  Seriously?  A few months ago Bethesda released an update to New Vegas which reportedly fixed all the crashes, slowdowns, world holes, and other game breakers.  I tried it out for about five minutes before realizing that my experience with all the previous bugs had sucked every ounce of desire to ever play the game again out of my marrow.

So let us just say that I bought Skyrim with some trepidation.  Sure, I hadn't read any previews mentioning bugs - but it isn't like the gaming media has done a particularly good job calling Bethesda out on these issues, usually sidelining it to a paragraph in a review and then just giving the game a 9/10 anyway.

I've now spent many, many, many hours in Skyrim on the PS3.

Many hours.

And I haven't had a single serious technical problem.  I've run into the very rare temporary slowdown. There was one instance where the ground didn't load and I could fall into it.  Compared to the "grinding slowdown to a crash" of the previous games, Skyrim is quality assurance nirvana.  But more importantly, compared to most games out there - Skyrim is easily as stable if not slightly more so.

Why is this so important?  Why am I devoting several paragraphs starting out this review to it?  Simple.  I'm astonished with how utterly complete the experience is without all the glitches and crashes of the previous games.  That Skyrim is more graphically intense than the previous engine is nice, but being able to wander the Nord countryside without worrying about a crash was the real mission Bethesda needed to succeed.

Skyrim essentially takes some of the best concepts from the recent Fallout games, wraps them within the expansive RPG concepts of Elder Scrolls and delivers them in a very eye pleasing package.  Bethesda is declaring the Creation Engine a completely new engine, as opposed to the Gamebryo engine of the past titles.  How much is completely new I somewhat wonder - there is an awful lot about the game which has the identical feel from the Gamebryo titles ... but whatever is new, old or slightly updated - Bethesda has gotten this one right.

Elder Scrolls fans will be familiar with the core mechanics here.  Wander the countryside, stumble onto adventures, advance your skills by using them, and otherwise take in the open world RPG events of Skyrim.  The amount of content available to the player is insane.  I've currently got about twenty open quests, I think, and I don't know when I'll finish them because I'll stumble onto new ones while questing.

There's some streamlining at play here over the older games.  The crafting is simpler, and I feel as if magical items are more functional and useful than they were in Morrowind or Oblivion.  I find myself using the same strategy as I have before - a kind of mage/warrior/thief hybrid which works wonderfully with Skyrim's skill system.  I've seen YouTube videos of more "pure" builds and it seems that the game properly rewards you for either type of play.

My complaints are rather small.  Item management is still a burden, even once you get a faithful companion to offload some items.  Some missions feel a bit too linear, too hack and slash.  There have been a couple of the puzzles which honestly the solution was more annoying than entertaining.  But these are just tiny issues in an otherwise epic game.

Skyrim is simply one of the best RPG games to ever grace any console or PC.  It's the high watermark of the game design and philosophy of the Elder Scroll franchise.  I'm quite glad to now be in a camp where I can look forward to the future titles instead of dreading a soul crushing experience.

Highly recommend.

Unless you have a PS3. Sadly. Until Bethesda and PS3 gamers can confirm a proper fix.

Game Play: Battlefield 3

Let's put this review into two distinct parts.

Singleplayer
The offline campaign of Battlefield 3 is stunningly beautiful in parts and quite honestly one of the best written single player first person shooters in recent history.  The story actually manages to make sense for almost the entirety of the game, unlike the plot line of Modern Warfare 2 which I could only describe as a wtfest.


Sadly, the graphics and decent writing get absolutely kicked in the balls by some completely rookie mistakes in level and game design.  Invisible walls inhabit the otherwise immersive world in a surprising number of places.  My favorite was after having held down the fort (metaphorically) for some time, myself and my fellow soldier finally made our way to an Osprey for escape.  Hooray!

Except that my fellow soldier could run into the Osprey, whereas I was blocked by a force field of doom while getting shot at by enemy forces.  That was until he started yelling at me to get on the ramp...

Worse, however, is the number of times your squad will be positioned in a spot which seems utterly reasonable ... and yet is actually a complete death trap.  Try to position yourself in the same manner as your squad and you will get cut to ribbons.

These flaws aren't minor and they aren't rare.  They trip up the game nearly constantly.  If Battlefield 3 was a single player game - I would recommend giving it a pass.

Thankfully...

Multiplayer
I am absolutely enamored by BF3's multiplayer.  Despite several warnings that the Quick Find may be malfunctioning - I have never had a problem jumping into a game.  I think mute may be the default, because the battlefield is devoid of singing, guitar playing, racist, swearing and threatening sounds of other online shooters.  The squad mechanics are simple and unobtrusive.  The servers do not seem to be dominated by clans making teams one sided.

That last bit is, I think, very interesting.  From what I can tell, BF3 seems to try to balance teams in between maps.  I haven't gotten into many situations where a blowout appears to continually occur on a server.  This is a massive relief.  I haven't had a chance to dig into Uncharted 3 yet, but one of my huge complaints with the online play of Uncharted 2 was that their "buddy" system meant that veteran players could essentially mop up levels if they were friends and enough of them were online at the same time.

The vehicle mechanics seem well tuned.  There's the occasional moment of having to run across long distances - but seems far more rare than BF2.  The firepower of vehicles also seems well balanced versus available counter-measures.

I'll undoubtably get into Modern Warfare 3 over the holidays - but for the moment Battlefield 3 is definitely my goto game for online play.  Uncharted 3 may well occupy for some time next week, but if Battlefield 3 was multiplayer only - I'd still highly recommend it.

Game Play: Dark Souls

I was a rather huge Demons' Souls fan ... even if I did find the ending so mind numbingly difficult that I ended up using a rather nasty "cheat" to accomplish. This was after several attempts at finishing the final boss with online players, an attempt which only resulted in my online ratings getting butchered with every failure.

 When I kept reading that Dark Souls, the "spiritual successor" as it were, was going to be even harder ... I was a little apprehensive. Could From Software had decided to just amp everything up from the original - perhaps for the sake of publicity?

Thankfully, the answer seems to be no.  If anything, I'd say Dark Souls is an excellent refinement on the original.  It maintains that crisp sense of combat with an absolutely brilliant grinding design which slowly allows the user to increase their knowledge of the area and increase their skills and ability to deal damage.  I'm certainly not going to call Dark Souls easier ... but it feels like the mechanic have been shifted around more than simply amplified.

That's not to say that there aren't spikes of difficulty.  I tried to assault a two demon tag team event for most of an afternoon, only to get through in ten minutes when I managed to summon two players for aid.  This was true of the first one as well, however - Dark Souls is intended to be played within the confines of the inventive online functionality - and woe goes to the player who isn't taking advantage of the seamless co-op design From has used here.

My only complaint is that the grind can still get to be somewhat numbing.  Impressively - I can't call it annoying.  I don't want to throw the controller across the room because I just got killed by some dextrous skeleton.  But there are times when I just need to take a step back from Dark Souls and give it a rest.

Which is perhaps why the game is so unique.  In this day and age where if a company can churn out enough graphics to distract a player for twenty hours ... it's considered a success.  But Dark Souls insists that you engage it from the mechanics at the very root of the game - and finish it when and how you can.

Highly recommend.

Quick Overview of Sony's "Welcome Back" PS3 Games

I'm going to reserve judgement on Sony's 'Welcome Back' plan until all the details about identity theft protection are released and the PlayStation Store is actually back online. The most often quoted portion of the plan, the two free games, isn't really of interest to me since I already own all the titles they list. While I appreciate the cost in offering free games to the entire PS3 community, only two are full release titles and c'mon - LittleBigPlanet came out in 2008 and inFamous in 2009. Anyone who wanted these titles probably already has them.

But if you don't, here's some quickie reviews for you.

Dead Nation
Top down, zombie apocalypse action best played with another person sitting next to you. This was done by HouseMarque, who also did another title on the list: Super Stardust HD. The graphics are pretty excellent, and they manage to change up some game mechanics so that this doesn't feel like just another coop zombie shooter / Smash TV clone. If enjoy couch coop, this is a pretty great title.

inFAMOUS
I rather enjoyed inFAMOUS when it was released and look forward to the sequel. The gameplay gets a little repetitive, but still stands as one of the better free roaming superhero themed titles out there, even today (though not quite as good, imho, as say Crysis 2). The good/evil mechanic is a little overwrought, but hey - so are most good/evil mechanics.


LittleBigPlanet
If you don't have this one, get this one. Some of the platforming concepts might not appeal to people who don't like, well, platformers - but LBP is an excellent and unique title which also offers an absolute plethora of user made content.

Super Stardust HD
I actually find Stardust's difficulty curve a bit frustrating, but there's no doubting this is one pretty PSN title and very easy to jump into. It was the first game when I got my HDTV that a fellow gamer insisted I had to try out. Twin shooter/boat style mechanics against asteroids with lots of powerups - it is a lot of fun if you don't mind dying a lot.

Wipeout HD + Fury
I got Wipeout HD and played it a few afternoons, that was about it. It's not bad - but seemed overly derivative to me. A title only for racer fans for sure, and probably only if you've grown bored with Need for Speed.

Game Review: Brink

Brink is a bit of an odd title, and correspondingly it is getting reviews a bit all over the map. It's a bit curious to me that this was branded and sold as a "new breed of shooters" and that most of the previews seem to emphasize trying to figure out just exactly "what Brink is" - when what we really have at the core here is a fairly competent twist on Team Fortress, which is one of the oldest online game templates to go from.

The "evolution" most oft described for Brink is the supposed blending of single and multiplayer modes. Let's be specific and honest about this - there aren't really single player modes in Brink. Well, there are - but nothing in the same vein as what most FPS players are used to playing ... and not what's advertised. There are four challenge modes which seem to be mostly designed for one player, and actually serve as a decent tutorial for the game ... except that it isn't advertised as such and hence some players may be prone to playing after they've stumbled through parts of the game.

What Brink has done in lieu of a single player mode is to line up a series of objective based maps in a pretty convincing stand-in for a story-based campaign mode. Both teams have their own version of the maps, and playing completely through both sides actually has a decent narrative. It just lacks all the dialogue and in-game cinematics that most players associate with a single player mode. Which means that the maps are designed to be played by teams - not the shooting gallery setup of most offline campaigns.

It's not a bad design. Setup a narrative through team based maps, and then let players decide if they want to play against mostly bots, players on their side or players on both sides. As noted by many reviews, the flaw isn't the concept - the flaw is the AI. If you play offline, or mostly with bots, you must be prepared to push forward on all the main objectives and you simply can't always rely on your team to support you. I actually don't think the AI is as terrible as some of the reviews imply, it's simply that relying on AI for this kind of thing is the reason most games don't design single player campaigns like this. It's why I can't entirely buy into this "new breed of shooters" PR campaign. It's a different trick, but the same breed trying the trick out.

Then there is Smooth Movement Across Random Terrain, AKA SMART. SMART is designed to add parkor style movement to a shooter, and it does in general work pretty well. The truth is, though, that it mostly just solves the fact that ladders kinda suck in online shooters. It makes the maps feel more natural, my only real complaint is that many previews and reviews describe it as "point and press a button" to move to a point in the map, and while sprinting alone will accomplish some of that, don't expect all the platform jumping style frustrations to go away. In other words, it's neat - but it's not a game changer.

What's left is a competent, though occasionally flawed, objective based online team shooter with player class. There's more of a mix and match feel to building out your player's avatar, from the various options for appearance, to unlocking certain powerups, to selecting a specific body type (which gives "heavy" and "light" options to all the classes ... you can be slow and defensive or fast with lest health). There's not nearly the varied gameplay of say, Team Fortress 2, it actually feels more inline with the customizations that are available for Call of Duty.

That's not to say the classes themselves aren't important. In fact, they're key to success on a map because specific objectives can only be handled by specific classes. This will force you to change classes in the middle of gameplay to give your team with more options to succeed at the objective. This is particularly important for some of the time based objectives like hacking - your team is far more likely to succeed with multiple Operatives working together. Some reviews have knocked the game for forcing players to jump to classes they may not have leveled up as much, but temporarily jumping classes to help the team push through a section is pretty common for this style of shooter, even if it isn't the class you're best at - and since none of the powerups feel overpowered, I haven't really find this a big deal.

The classes are a mixed bag. The engineer feels a little overpowered, able to buff damage, build turrets and plant mines. In fact, the engineer is a bit more of a damage dealer than the soldier - which feels more like a support role to blow up objectives and hand off ammo. That the core gameplay on all the classes feels extremely similar, giving it that more Call of Duty feel, is both a curse and a blessing. There's less exploration in playing the classes, but it is also friendlier to new players and makes it easy to jump from class to class during the game.

If Brink has its flaws its that the technology doesn't completely fill in the gaps introduced with the concept. Mashing offline, coop and versus modes into the same map is a great concept, but the AI, having no squad command mechanic, and the lack of a lobby system - kicks the game in the knees a bit. There's some moments of real frustration - like trying to win an offline match with stupid AI support, or realizing that the challenges don't seem to offer their unlocks online.

And on an odd note - the graphics are a muddled result. Great design, and the customization screens offer awesome model detail, but in play - the actual detail and texturing has a tendency to dip in quality randomly (this was on a PS3, for reference - but I've heard tale it is true across platform).

That aside, the core gameplay is pretty strong. Some of the complaints I've read - that the maps host choke points, that most of the strategy comes down to getting a larger concentration of players in the right place, the repetition of play .... they're really somewhat true of this genre and subgenre in general. In some ways, I think Brink is a victim of a marketing push on features which aren't really the game's strength. Brink should be commended for some of the small things that it does really, really well. It's effectively solved grenade spamming with a simple cooldown mechanic. To be in disguise, Operatives need to scan a dead enemy - which keeps spies from constantly flooding objective points. They've resisted importing uberattacks, which nearly every shooter seems to feel the need to lift from Call of Duty. The interface design is pretty top notch, especially the customization and menu screens - but even the HUD is minimalist while informing the player. While there isn't a lobby system - there is something to be said for the "visibility" concept of starting a match exactly the same for offline, coop and versus that makes it easy to jump into the action.

At the end of the day, it's a good game - but probably only appealing to FPS gamers not completely addicted to the Call of Duty model. My biggest wish right now is that there were more players consistently online, as I think an all out human match is how Brink was really designed to shine, all marketing aside.

So recommend, though with reservations. Read up on this one first, or find a way to take it for a dry run. It's a great change from many of the console shooters out there - but not really a great game.

However, since it has sold well - I'm fairly optimistic for a sequel.

Dungeon Hunter Alliance; Gameloft Versus Bethesda

I do need to preface this incoming rant with the fact that The Girl and I are big fans of co-op action RPG's. We played every iteration we could get our hands on, and a few them we played through a couple of times.

Oddly, this genre has been sorely lacking on the PS3. There was the near launch title Untold Legends, but when this title was released we were still pretty content loading up Champions of Norrath instead, which sounded like a much more competent title.

IGN gave a Untold Legends a 6.5.

And of course, the was Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, which was a cut and paste of Marvel Ultimate Alliance with enhanced graphics.

IGN gave Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 a 7.7.

Finally, there was Sacred 2, which had some pretty odd issues when setting up the coop functionality but we played quite a bit, even starting over a couple of times - because it was probably the deepest game of this type we found.

IGN gave Sacred 2 a 6.5.

So we were pretty stoked when we saw that Dungeon Hunter Alliance was hitting PSN and offering offline coop. I would say my expectations on the game were somewhat reserved. I had played the original on my iPhone and enjoyed it to a point. If it didn't have coop, I probably would have gotten anyway as just a late night console crawler - but couch coop made this an easy buy at $13.

And honestly, the game doesn't take much to review: it's solid, albeit highly derivative (I mean, the game world is called Gothicus of all things) action RPG in the same vein as every other Diablo clone on the planet. It does support a competent menu system, a decent skill system, and solid (though occasionally blocky) graphics.

The most impressive thing about Dungeon Hunter Alliance, however, is that it has one the better coop setups of any game of its type on the console. MA:U2 probably being the only one with a more robust setup. The only real flaw I can find is that it's a pain to drop someone out locally, which isn't much of a problem. You can seamlessly play the same characters online, offline or a mixture of both. Trading items is easy, and they've implemented a simple color assignment system to make looting straight forward, and giving items back to the players uses the same system. The only thing missing is trading gold, I think. So far, I've found very easy to find online games to jump in and join, which isn't always the case for this genre.

There does some to be a couple of flaws with the hit detection, though it's more of an annoyance than anything that will cause you to toss a controller to the ground. We'd love to have more customization, or classes at least, offered as well.

If this genre is your thing, this is an easy buy - especially if you have someone to coop with. It's not going to impress you, but it will entertain you.

So why did IGN give it a 6.0? By that account this should be the worst of the bunch by far, despite the fact that it is about 1/3 the cost, the only offering in the genre on PSN, has many of the same flaws as MA:U2 in being completely unimaginative, and actually a better coop setup than some of the titles? The reader average is an 8, press average about a 7 or so. My score would be 7, maybe a 7.5 on bias. So why is this just "Okay" and not at least "Good"?

Simple. It came from Gameloft. And it's very trendy to hate Gameloft.

Don't believe me? Here's how the review starts out:

Gameloft is at it again. The company has succeeded on a strategy of similarity throughout the past several years, creating cloned versions of other studios' biggest hits and serving them up mostly on mobile platforms. Dungeon Hunter: Alliance is another of these projects, a game that feels like a riff on more original dungeon crawlers like Diablo -- and it, too, originally debuted in the mobile space.

-- Dungeon Hunter Alliance Review [IGN]

Let's examine this for a moment. There's no denying that Gameloft has made a business model out of lifting successful themes and mechanics and deploying them different platforms, especially the iPhone.

But the phrase that stands out for me? This one:

a game that feels like a riff on more original dungeon crawlers like Diablo

Are you kidding me? Of course it feels like a riff on Diablo. Diablo was released in 1996 and has spawned so many clones that "Diablo clone" is synonymous with "Action RPG" as a genre. You could level the same critique at so many titles, but because this is Gameloft, it must be some kind of evil. And that the game originally debuted on a mobile platform? Like that should be odd for a PSN title? Should I go look up any Angry Birds reviews to see if anyone wrote that like it was a bad thing?

So Dungeon Hunter Alliance has almost the exact same core as a game released in 1996. Let's also note that the most recent game of this type was dropped onto the PS3 in 2009, so "Diablo clone" fans have been waiting a couple years to play anything new. And what do we have to look forward to? There's Torchlight, already on XBLA and supposedly coming out for PSN - which doesn't even have couch coop. That leaves Dungeon Siege III for the console market that is similar to Dungeon Hunter in terms of features, and it's fully priced game.

Some of the other points in IGN review are just bizarre:

Then there are only three different character classes to choose from -- the Warrior, the Rogue and the Mage. That selection made sense when it was just a game with one main character, but expanding out to four means that at least two people in your party are going to be playing the same guy. That's like the Ninja Turtles having Raphael, Donatello and two Leonardos. It feels odd.

What's worse, technical issues are currently plaguing the game's online play, meaning you probably won't be able to reliably get a party of your friends connected together until Gameloft releases a patch.

I've played four player online. I had no problems connecting (and I got the game like a couple hours after it came out, so no more patched than anyone else). And I didn't find it odd at all. I seriously have no clue as to what the reviewer is talking about here.

The closing comments indeed sums it up:

Dungeon Hunter: Alliance has left me less than impressed. Gameloft's strategy of copying other studios' hits has worked before and the core game here was a worthwhile clone back on the iPhone two years ago -- but playing it on the PS3 now feels out of place. The extras that have been tacked on to sell this version as a new experience all fall flat, or, worse, just don't work. You'll never forget for a minute that you're playing a game not originally meant for PlayStation, so save your PSN cash for a different download and give this port a pass.

The point that the reviewer completely misses is that in the two years that, according to him, Dungeon Hunter went from a "worthwhile clone" to a junk PS3 port ... is that there haven't been any releases in this genre. Which in many ways, makes Dungeon Hunter just as worthwhile as when it debuted on the iPhone, especially for just $13.

And my question to IGN would be ... what download would you suggest instead? There are exactly zero other titles in this vein on PSN. Zero. Dungeon Hunter Alliance deserves some credit because even if it derivative, unimaginative and shallow - it's also the only game like it on PSN and it manages to do a solid job of delivering such a game. Gameloft isn't stupid, and they aren't unskilled. They see a viable market, and they offer competent games otherwise not seen on that market. And I'm rather glad they have. We've been playing the hell out of it.

Now, this post has gone on longer than I intended and I know most of you have probably zoned out by now. But I did put "Gameloft versus Bethesda" in the title. Yes, I am going to kick this rather dead horse again. Because I've read a few reviews of Dungeon Hunter which spend a rather inordinate amount of time dissing Gameloft for being Gameloft ... and yet when I peruse through the flood of Skyrim previews I notice on thing still hasn't happened.

Not one previewer has had the balls to ask Bethesda the completely obvious question on whether they are going to fix their stability issues.

It is absurd that Bethesda gets such a free pass from the press on delivering some of the buggiest games in the industry because they offer a game experience which is somewhat unique, and yet when Gameloft finally delivers a PSN title which no other company has bothered to produce ... they get shafted simply because they are Gameloft. I honestly don't give a "kill 10 rats" quest if Skyrim is beautiful, or has a new skill structure, or anything at all about the title unless I know that Bethesda is at least willing to acknowledge the failure of quality from their previous titles and is making it a priority not to repeat such mistakes.

And people, there's no other way to describe not being able to finish a game unless you are wearing the right hat on your character than a complete and miserable failure of quality. As I've said before, I won't be buying Skyrim until I see a review - and the first review that states something like:

Typical of Fallout games, there are performance issues and game-breaking bugs that seriously detract from the experience.

...which is from IGN review of the New Vegas: Blood Money ... I am writing Bethesda off as a competent developer forever.

And let's note that the Blood Money DLC, which shipped with game breaking bugs, got a 6.5 from IGN. So even shipping with game breaking bugs, according to IGN that's a better use of your $10 than a game which, you know, works.