Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Monday, November 10, 2008
Review: Command and Conquer Red Alert 3
Well, I have to say that my expectations going into this were not very high. Whether or not that had some kind of buoying effect on the final outcome, I'll leave to you to decide.
The reasons my expectations were low was because of my disappointment in the Wrath of Kain expansion for C&C3. Now, granted C&C3 itself was an ok game. Maybe not spectacular, but not terrible. RA3 doesn't make a whole lot of improvements over C&C3, but it slathers on the kitschy alternate-timeline jingo cut scenes and really amps up the amusement factor, transforming a mediocre RTS into an enjoyable show (if for not all the right reasons).
The single player campaigns, however, are unforgivably gimmicky. Only in the last mission of each campaign do you actually get unfettered access to the whole tech tree and every other mission also gives you dozens of little hoops to jump through (some admittedly fun, some aggravating in the extreme). Some missions, the gimmick is a simple tech handicap (only lowest tier vehicles, or no tanks, etc), and others it's the C&C signature "you have 1 unit and 1 unit only and if it dies before you pass all the scripted checkpoints you LOSE" horseapples. It makes the game not feel like quite up to being called an "RTS" in the same way you can't quite really in an unqualified manner call a Zelda or Final Fantasy game an RPG. Perhaps I'd better explain that before I upset triple the fanbois in one sentence.
See, in most of the Final Fantasy games, which are billed as "RPGs," you don't actually pick a role and play it. The role is already defined, you just step into control of a brooding spikey-haired protagonist with an oversized sword and set about advancing the plot in the exact same sequence of events every single time with absolutely no open-endedness whatsoever. Compare this to a true RPG such as Baldur's gate, which has so many sidequest diversions and such freedom of exploration that the multiple methods of advancement are absolutely staggering. Not to mention that you roll your protagonist completely from scratch, with an appearance and development path entirely customized by you. This is a similar feeling to RA3, which obviously falls into the RTS category but doesn't actually let you do any strategizing - there is usually one and only one solution to the obstacles set before you, and it becomes more of a point and click action game. The single player campaign experience is practically on rails, as opposed to RTSes such as Dawn of War or Supreme Commander where the entire array of tools is set before you and it is up to you to decide how and when to accomplish the mission (which is invariably destroy the other guys). Though, it is a nice touch to be given the option to play the single player campaign cooperatively with another player. Perhaps it should be classified as a Diet RTS, RTS lite, or to take the opposite metaphor, McRTS (as in the MacDonald's reference to indicate something is lacking substance and overloading on visual appeal, a la McMansion).
The campaign issues can be largely alleviated by simply playing in skirmish mode, but that deprives you of the cut scenes, which really ARE the Red Alert experience. If you're a fan of bad cinema, you'll love this stuff. Scads of second string actors hamming it up while half-dressed infobabes carry on the transition of cutscene to playfield, delivered with groanworthy dialog in hilarious accents. If you put a gun to my head right now, I couldn't describe Ivana Milicevic (the Russian infobabe)'s face to save my life. They also include more cheesecake shots of the RA3 girls on the quick-reference cards provided in the box, so I guess it's pretty obvious who their demographic is and what they think about them.
They seem to be using the same costume designers from C&C3 who never quite figured out how to get clothes to fit women properly, but having come to realize this, they incorporated push-up bras and plunging necklines into all female costumes to distract from otherwise mis-tailored uniforms. Gemma Atkinson, who plays the "Allies" infoblonde, has possibly the worst English accent I've ever heard on an English actress - it's like she can't decide if she's from London or Scotland. Andrew Divoff's accent also vacillates between Russian and English, which is a bit puzzling since he married a Russian girl and speaks fluent Russian, so one would think being inundated by it all the time he would have remembered to roll a few more Rs, slur a few more Ws and lift a few more As into Es. And I shouldn't have to say anything about Tim Curry's russian, if any of you has seen the movie Congo. Autumn Reeser is way too goddamned perky, but when is she not? Jenny McCarthy makes a thoroughly repulsive Agent Tanya, reminding us all that McCarthy is a sexy woman only until the instant she opens her mouth to say something. It also doesn't help that the wardrobe department has apparently bisected a golden tabby cat, cleaned out the blood and guts, and put it on her head for a wig. JK Simmons makes a chuckleworthy pastiche of J. Jonah Jameson and George Dubya Bush (and he's forced to spout off every predictable "ugly americanism" from "they hate us because of our freedom" down the list), and as everybody's heard by now, George Takei is cast as the Emperor of the Rising Sun, and does the best with what he's given. Actually the entire asian cast does a passable job as compared to the others. But don't even get me started on the atrocious acting of all the co-commanders of every faction.
It all makes for a circus of the hilariously bad, silly and (incoming saving grace) self-consciously tongue-in-cheek.
But, even in skirmish mode, there are things about the game itself that just rub me the wrong way. Whereas other RTS titles in the genre try to push the frontiers of RTS play with new paradigms, grandiose scale and versatility, the C&C franchise seems chained to just shuffling existing ideas around like cards and then dealing a new hand and calling it a new game. Everything "new" in RA3 is something we've seen in a slightly different combination or configuration in previous C&C or RA titles. In C&C3 I also felt a vague sense of "wrongness" or disconnectedness with everything I did in the game, and it persists in RA3 but I think I've nailed down what it is... nothing moves as I quite expect it to. Airborne units move a smidge too slow, tank units move a smidge too fast, and frankly the whole "strategy" dynamic takes a great big back seat to the "rock paper scissors" dynamic (which admittedly is present in every C&C RTS previous to this one, but) which is ratcheted up and feels like they're trying to squeeze the last bit of toothpaste out of this paradigm. Other games (especially the two aforementioned ones) have shown us that there's more to strategy than configuring the right mix of units in your battlegroup and going gallivanting around the map celebrating invulnerability through diversity. I also found, however, that you don't even necessarily have to do that either... Many a game I won simply by building 3 airfields, building as many Kirov bomber-blimps as I could and winning by explosive attrition.
I was also disappointed to see that the resource gathering dynamic has taken a huge step backwards. No longer are the days where you must worry about the safety of your harvester vehicles as they rumble out into no-man's land to scoop up resources... RA3 now simply allows you to build your "ore processor" immediately adjacent to the "ore mine," allowing your "ore truck" to simply drive back and forth between the two facilities loading and unloading cash-generating "ore" as swiftly as the driver can shift into and out of reverse gear. I don't see why they even really bothered with the separation instead of simply providing you with a building that you build directly ON the mine resource node, which then periodically provides cash every few seconds. And most of the levels thoughtfully provided not one, but TWO such resource nodes in each starting camp, and since your partner player/ai and you split resources (and he/she has their OWN two starting nodes), most levels I never even found the need to go out and claim more mines. You don't even have to build silos to increase your maximum funds cap... it just keeps rolling right in.
It's not all bad though (just mediocre as opposed to terrible). C&C3's brilliant interface scheme returns, allowing for quick and intuitive management of construction at multiple sites and types. The graphics are absolutely beautiful, the action is smooth, the unit models are novel and idiosyncratic, the sound and music are very appropriate and immersive (and a reminder of why some people still listen to C&C music soundtracks even without the games), and as long as you let your brain slip into neutral the live action exposition will make you cackle. The fidelity of the cutscene material is crystal clear and artifact-free.
Unfortunately, as the game emphasizes flash, twitch and (perhaps unintentional) comedy over cerebral strategy and innovation, the replayability suffers despite the skirmish play option provided. But overall I considered it a more positive experience than Kane's Wrath, and so I find myself hesitant to be too hard on the McRTS. I feel it's right on the cusp between C and B, in that I probably will come back and play it again from time to time, but only briefly and not often.
Grade: B-
And that's the word from Bandit Camp...
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Thursday, October 30, 2008
The Video Game Name Generator
http://www.norefuge.net/vgng/vgng.html
Barbie's Insect Syndrome
The Secret Weapon of the Dating - The Card Game
Ultimate Karaoke Football
Everybody hates the motorcycle epidemic
Funky Moped Jihad
Drunken Quiz Conspiracy (my kinda game!)
Papal Carnival Hell (Here's my money! Make the game already!)
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
The Whiners of Warhammer
I've been noticing a trend lately. I play both Order and Destruction characters, each day choosing one just purely on whim. Despite my experience and better judgement, I also occasionally peruse the IGN warhammer forum, mostly because from time to time Mark Jacobs, Mythic GM posts there.
As I knew from my time in Dark Age of Camelot, the place is a gathering spot for whiners and haters of the highest caliber. You thought the WoW official forums were bad? Welcome to Butthurt Central.
So anyway, I have a passing familiarity with some of the gripes the gripers make about this game, from my (as brief as possible) visits to the IGN vaginalogue fest and of course from hearing the occasional whine in /1 or /sc while I play. I've noticed that Order seems to whine about how Destruction outnumbers them in open world RvR (though that is becoming less and less the case with Mythic's recent incentives to roll new characters on numerically disadvantaged realms), and especially at low levels they whine about the nigh-invulnerability of the Orc. Destruction, however, whines about Bright Wizards and scenarios.
My order characters never seem to have a problem getting into a scenario as quickly as they like, and they can pick and choose. Don't want Stonetroll crossing or Tor Anroc? No problem! Just queue for the others and wait a couple minutes. I am absolutely loving Highpass Cemetery, btw. But they do seem to have some trouble hanging on to keeps in the non-scenario RvR arenas. The whining is actually pretty sparse there.
Ohhh but destruction. Never have I heard more mealy-mouthed tear-streaked mewling crybabies in one spot since... well, since closing the window that had IGN's forums open. God forbid more than 3 players on the other side in a scenario should happen to be bright wizards, that's just grounds for logging out right there. And one of the recurring whines is how the only tier 3 scenario that ever comes up is Tor Anroc. Never mind that if all these people who hate tor anroc simply didn't queue for it, they'd have a grand time in the other ones.
For instance, just last night I managed to get into Temple of Isha on destruction side (by simply queueing for everything and then removing myself from the Tor Anroc queue, go figure) three times in a row. The first time, Order claimed the flag first, and we didn't manage to fight them away from it until they were up by about 280-50 or so. General consensus in /sc was "just hold the flag and we can still win" even though there was less than 8 minutes left to go. But certain dumb players couldn't help running off where the healers (who stayed at the flag) couldn't get to them, and kept feeding the enemy points so that we finally lost... by three points. It was a gutwrenching defeat. So close.
Second time in, we started out rough again. Many on our side didn't join in a timely manner, only appearing 30 or so seconds after the clock started running, so naturally Order got the flag first. Then people started whining about how order had FIVE! FIVE! five bright wizards! This was intolerable to them. They started whining about wanting to log out. I remember this one dark elf called Ysr or Ysl or something like that in paricular, because she was one of the brainless twats handing the enemy extra frag points by hustling to her death in the first match. She vocalized her intent to log out and then did so. So did some others, mostly the brain dead simps of similar bearing as her. This meant that in mid-match, some poor bastards got brought in from the queue to fill those who logged out, only to get their butt handed to them in less than 5 minutes and get pushed back out (probably running back to Tor Anroc with their tail between their legs) because some big girls' blouses couldn't handle a challenge.
I wanted to haul the quitters back into the scenario and yell at them. "You know what Ysl? Go ahead and bail, because you're useless anyway. I saw you last match, running off to hand victory over to Order by trying to solo the entire Order team while out of healer range. If you really want to do the forces of evil a favor, just log out and stay out. Don't requeue for another scenario, ever. Better yet, delete your character. Better still! Roll order and subject THEM to your incompetence and whining! Or why don't we just cut to the best solution of all and have you go die in a fire??"
Fortunately the whiners didn't come back for the third round. Despite Order getting the flag first as always, we rallied, kicked them off, and held the flag. Without the Short Attention Span Special Forces going and getting themselves farmed one at a time, we managed to overcome the exact same situation we were in first match and win. How about that. Who'd have thunk that the loudest whiners were also our least effective fighters?
There's a big debate at good'ol IGN about whether or not people who log out of scenarios because they are losing are complete wankers. For me, there's no debate. Undeniably they are the biggest wankers since wanking was discovered. They'll tell you that "getting my ass kicked is not fun. Why should I play if I'm not having fun?" So let me get this straight... only winning is fun? You can never be allowed to lose or else you're not having fun? Why don't we just get you a game that consists of a single big red button marked "WIN" that you can push and it will play fanfare for you every time you do?
These are probably the same kids that when they realize they're going to lose at chess or checkers, their answer is to slap the board across the room and storm out. Listen you pasty retards, when you joined that queue, you signed up to play a team game with other people. While not exactly as binding as a commitment to the armed forces, it still labels you a dick if you then take your ball and go home the instant you start to lose. It's PvP! Someone has to lose if someone's going to win, and if you're routinely experiencing crushing defeats perhaps it's time to start looking for the problem in the mirror! In a soccer match, do players on the losing team start driving home at halftime? No! The entire attitude of these "I quit when I'm not having fun" people just absolutely reeks if immaturity and possibly developmental/personality disorders.
Well, it's just further proof that even in the best MMOs on the market, the worst aspect is always the other players.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Friday, October 17, 2008
Review: Warhammer Online - Age of Reckoning
No doubt both my regular readers will have noted that my content has dropped off for the last few weeks (thank goodness for Zero Punctuation, eh?). I'm in Warhammer Online and I'm hooked.
My highest level character is only mid 20s (out of a max 40), so really I don't feel comfortable doing a full review, but I also feel that already too much time has passed where I've been playing the game and not writing about it. So, here's my look at the non-endgame tiers of Warhammer Online.
First of all, let's get something out of the way - the experience of playing Warhammer Online is very distinct from the experience of playing World of Warcraft. The only thing they really have in common is the layout of the default interface and the ability to add in LUA-based interface addons. Yes, WoW draws on Warhammer for its inspiration and basic art, but the two diverged a long time ago. Warhammer's atmosphere is much more dark, bestial, brooding and dystopian. Warcraft "reformed" the Orcish Horde and now there's a "sort of" war going on between two sides where there's really no bad guy (except, of course, the NPCs), whereas the war between the forces of destruction and order is so bloody and desperate that lofty ideals and morality have pretty much gone out the window in a frantic scrabble just to survive. The forces of Destruction are unrepentantly evil, and the forces of Order are just as likely to impress a 15 year old into military duty and execute his Father for objecting.
Furthermore, Warhammer Online was designed from the ground up as a game where PvP, or rather, RvR, is the focus (as opposed to WoW which was entirely calibrated around PvE and continues to make that the primary focus of the game, all the way through the endgame). You can engage in RvR (Realm vs Realm, the Mythic/EA word for team-based objective-oriented PvP combat) from level 1, in your newbie gear and still stand a reasonable chance of contributing and advancing. As a matter of fact, PvE content takes a back seat and becomes just "something to do" to fill the relatively small gaps between RvR breaking out. This emphasis means that for the most part the character classes are extremely well balanced against each other (with a couple small exceptions to be noted later), and exponentially raises the replayability factor of the game at any given level.
Warhammer is extremely casual-gamer-friendly, in that the content does not require large consecutive blocks of time. The matchmaking tools are also very good, featuring a grouping model very novel for the genre: the "open" group. Unless you otherwise specify, your group can be joined at any time by anyone who wants to join it (though the group leader still retains the ability to kick out members, set loot rules, even change the group to the traditional "closed" group). Also, the UI has an excellent tool to find nearby "open" groups and get you into them. RvR scenarios typically run 15 minutes and "public quests" rarely take more than half an hour, with rewards being doled out generously. Also, there are separate rulesets available on special servers to suit the player's taste, whether you desire RvR to be limited only to designated areas or for there to be the potential for combat with the enemy no matter where you are. There are no "hardcore free-for-all" PvP servers as of yet where team restrictions would be ignored for PvP combat... and really, the nature of the game doesn't really lend itself to such a setup, and it isn't needed in any case.
The world is broken into 3 theaters of conflict, with 4 tiers of progression in each area. Each tier area has a slider of "control" which moves according to who is winning in RvR (both kills and objectives). Control of an area grants bonuses to the winning side (increased XP and cash drop rates, or better merchant prices for example) and control of some areas "opens" other areas to invasion at the 4th tier. The final objective of course is to invade the enemy's capital city, kill their leader and leave no stone standing upon another. This is a rather long and convoluted process of territorial acquisition.
The game itself however is pretty taxing on your hardware. If you haven't upgraded in the last year or two you will probably feel some of that strain on the kind of graphical settings you see in screenshots. You can turn them down, but texture quality tends to degrade very quickly when you do that, and even on low settings you really ought to have 2 gigs of ram, a multicore processor and a fairly recent video card.
The PvE has the usual "go here and kill this" type quests up for offer, but the real star of the show are the "Public Quests." Public Quests, or PQs for short, are multistage npc-driven events which usually require player cooperation to complete. You don't have to go see somebody to get a public quest, nor turn it in. Just wandering into the area automatically makes you part of the public quest. Most PQs are 3 stages, the first stage usually requiring the mass slaying or gathering of plentiful mobs or items that pop up on the ground. The second stage will usually be either a "miniboss" or another item-driven objective (burn down X houses, for example), and the final stage is almost always a boss encounter. The game keeps track of who contributes to the completion of these objectives, because when the PQ is successfully concluded there is loot to be rolled for (rolling happens automatically but transparently, like a scoreboard), and the more you contribute the higher a bonus will be added to your roll. This generally makes for a rather equitable distribution of loot, but it isn't perfect. I personally HAVE walked into a PQ that was nearly done killing the 3rd stage boss, took two whacks at the boss mob, and when it was over I won first place in the rolling (granting me the best item that dropped) and people who contributed exponentially more to the PQ got lesser items or nothing. Conversely, I have also many times been the "most contributing" member and walked away with nothing more than the XP and "influence" I gained for doing the PQ (each little area has an "influence" bar you can fill up, with rewards available once you do. Doing PQs is the only way to raise influence). However, the injustice is rather diminished because the PQ will reset itself quickly, and you can go through again, this time with yet another roll bonus for "persistence" because you did the PQ already and didn't win anything.
Really, though, as far as I'm concerned, PvE is only something to do in the sparse minutes between RvR scenarios and keep fights... not something I ever seem to need to do for any stretch of time. Really, I often don't WANT to level up, I want to stay at the top of the tier I'm in, trashin' bozos... but eventually the slaughter levels me despite my wishes and I'm back to being a small fry in the next tier. But fortunately, the game is balanced such that it is still entirely plausible for low level characters to contribute meaningfully in RvR, within their appropriate tier. If the influence rewards for doing PQs weren't so nice, I doubt I'd PvE at all, personally.
At this stage (a month after release), the patches have been small and frequent, mostly concerned with fixing bugs. There are still some pesky bugs flitting about but nothing near the caliber of Age of Conan's problems, and there are more things coming. Mythic maintains an excellent avenue of communication to their playerbase through their "herald" website and their GM, Mark Jacobs actually spends a great deal of time posting on the IGN warhammer forums (Mythic seems to be repeating their practice from DAOC of not having "official" forums but using IGN's forums extensively). I worry about the influence of the hordes of brain-dead whiny preteens (and mental preteens) that hang out at IGN searching for reasons to hate the games they play, but so far Mr. Jacobs has proven rather resilient and resistant to their influence. Mythic clearly has remembered the lessons they learned during DAOC's time in the sun and is building upon them carefully.
At this point, I can give my hearty endorsement of Warhammer Online, and recommend it unflinchingly with the one caveat that you need a pretty nice system to get max enjoyment out of it. Not as much so as Conan, but still pretty beefy. I think I've found my drug of choice for the forseeable future.
Verdict: A+.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Warhammer Online's War on Gold Spammers
Apparently Mark Jacobs isn't too fond of gold spammers.
I hated seeing their messages when I played WoW or any other MMO and I’ve been waiting for the day that WAR launched so I could have the absolute pleasure of instituting policies to make their lives more difficult so we could drive them out of WAR. Since WAR launched we have been banning these jerks like crazy. As of Saturday Night, we had banned about 400 of them.I can attest to having seen broadcast messages about "Spammername has been found guilty of heresy against Sigmar and has been sentenced to execution along with many cohorts" since launch. They really seem gung ho about going after gold spammers. Which is good, because the /ignore function doesn't seem to work at the moment. Read Full Article
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Buy RA3, get a bear hat in Warhammer Online
Pretty clever cross promotion here... if you buy Red Alert 3, you'll get a promo code that will give your Warhammer Characters a fuzzy soviet hat with a red star on the front that turns you into a bear when you use it.
Read Full Article
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
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