Game of the Year

Notes: Champions Online

A good friend hooked me into this against my better judgement, and so far I'm really enjoying it. I know that MMOs are inherently bad for both one's wallet and mental health, so I'm going to try to very carefully manage my investment of resources - short subscription periods with no auto-renew, doing my homework before playing, etc. That micro-payment store they're setting up looks awfully dangerous, but we'll leap that building when we come to it.

All that aside, Champions is proving to be quite a lot of fun. Made by Cryptic, it is essentially City of Heroes Only Better. While the previous franchise has fallen into subscription retention mode, eschewing further content development for easing player limits and offering free goodies, Champions revisits the whole superhero game genre and adds a lot of new functionality we haven't seen before. There are some embarrassing similarities, to be sure. Cryptic seems to have retained the rights to a lot of CoH's design assets - suspiciously familiar textures, meshes, sounds, and animations that pop up all throught the game. Luckily, the impressive sweep of original content and customization more than makes up for the legacy content.

Despite the similar paint job, under the hood, Champions runs very different from its predecessor. Gone are the cookie-cutter map tile door missions with the repetetive "defeat all" requirement. While there are a handful of missions like this, they are usually quick filler, generated dynamically when a citizen runs up to you asking for help. Most of the content is delivered in more traditional MMO style (think World of Warcraft), with parameters, locations, and rewards varying greatly. There is an admirable focus on scripting, which allows for a lot of interactivity and variable NPC behavior. There is also a lot of great writing, and plots tend to be engaging and spread out over discernible arcs. I particularly enjoyed coming to the rescue of the Action News Team (with Ron Mahoghany). Classy.

Game mechanics are fairly predictable - approach hostiles, unleash various attacks, manage aggro, win, recover, move on. Champions focuses primarily on energy management. Rather than forcing you to wait for regen or rely on a specific power to replenish your energy, as in CoH, Champions starts every hero out with a simple energy building attack power that you can fall back on between big blasts. Your energy also aturally recharges to an equilibrium state determined by your stats. The result is a very frenetic, flashy fight dynamic (as advertised) with very little downtime between action scenes.

This doesn't work out well for all builds. Melée heroes have trouble building energy until they can get in close, and have to really focus on defense if they intend to take on groups. Champions seems geared toward small squad battles instead of big street-sweeping mobs, which is kinda disappointing but it keeps things balanced. Holds and crowd control seem to become more and more important as you advance, as you face more and more singularly dangerous villains that need to be neutralized quickly. I haven't yet been able to make anything other than a well-rounded blaster work yet. Experimentation is key.

PvP is fun and fits seamlessly with the rest of the game - a first for superhero games, I think. There are lots of rewards just for playing, many inside jokes, and a lot of little features to keep players happy. You can throw trucks at bad guys. There are also some now almost standard MMO launch problems: driver issues, server crashes, balance changes, lag, forum drama, etc. Hopefully all of that will be ironed out soon.

But I do have some big complaints:

1. No documentation. They sell the game as something you can pick up and play without a lot of study. That's true, but there is also a very dense complexity under that "casual" veneer that becomes really engaging once you dig down into it. The problem is you have no clue how anything works. Every power framework has a gimmick. If you don't know the gimmick, you are likely to make some poor decisions that may go unnoticed until much later. Compounding this is the respec/"retcon" system, which forces you to backtrack character levels one at a time to make changes, and becomes prohibitively expensive more than 2 or 3 levels back.

2. Broken economy. The devs are starting very conservatively in managing the nascent economy, which means very little money going in. They have acknowledged that this is a problem, and will be adding more soon, but the rest of the infrastructure is also lacking. The market interface is poor, comparative values of items are hard to assess (see item 1), and most excess items get recycled into skill grinding. And crafting is basically its own reward - there's not much you need to buy unless you are ignoring the skill system entirely.

3. No need to team. The Ogre and I met up on Saturday to bust some suckahs up in game. In 5 hours or so, Foxy Chocolate and the Iron Ho each advanced 8 levels, stuck it to the man and kept it very Kung Fu funky. Very fun, but not very different from soloing. Missions to not appreciably change with more team members, and most of the very few team-oriented missions can be solo'd with a little work. Maybe team content gets fleshed out at higher levels.

So overall, a solid game with a lot of potential, some lessons learned from previous outings, and assets quietly stolen from the Marvel Online development cycle. Plus you can launch rockets at a robot cowboy and then bash it over the head with a snowmobile. Sold.

Pimp New Ships

New Galactic Civilizations II ship designs (well, from May anyway) posted at the official forums. Reply #346, towards the end of the page.

Warning: very large downloads.

Ready to Rock

If you like sim games, and you are not familiar with Galactic Civilizations II, head on over to the site and check them out. It's from Stardock, which produces a lot of great third-party software - inventive and useful stuff you've probably never heard of but need right this minute.

Anyway, GalCiv2 is a middling-to-good sim, not quite on par with Civ4, but stable and challenging enough to hold your interest for the 20-30 hours or so it takes to play a complete game of galactic conquest. Where it really shines, though, is the shipyard. GalCiv2 allows you to design your own starships from a host of components. Here are a few asteroid-themed ships I put together using a mod that allows you to do that sort of thing.


That's just the colony ship. Here are some others:
Deep Sounder Recon Craft
Iron Determination Mining Tower
Terminus Station
Steel Workshop Construction Platform
Meteos Cataclysm-class Troop Transport


And here a few older ships from a previous version:
Starseed Colony
Stardust Merchant
Quasar Defense Drone
Ion II Escort Fighter
Echo Drone
Sunflare Destroyer
Nova Mk1 Battleship

New Games 2007

Well, new to me, anyway. I long ago fell off whatever wagon drives you past the game store on release days. Here's a quick rundown of what I picked up over the holiday season. "Holiday season" being defined as the last 4 months, for convenience's sake.

Company of Heroes

PC: Picked up over the summer, a highly detailed WWII real-time strategy game. Gloriously rendered to the point of murdering my computer. I really don't know when I'll have time to play it. Never even done multiplayer yet, because I like to live.

Dynasty Warriors Vol. 2

PSP: A near perennial favorite from Koei's rich garden of franchise delights, adapted for portability. Graphically, it stands up to the standards of past installments, although lacking the resources to render huge armies on massive battlefields, this new format breaks the terrain down into bite-sized chunks on a larger grid. You clear and claim areas of the map a bite at a time, jumping back to the grid to navigate between strategic goals. Interesting, and an excellent waste of time.

Guitar Hero II

PS2: You've seen it, and if you haven't, get your ass to a Best Buy right fracking now. This one hurts. If your rock-fu is strong, and you think you have mastered Guitar Crane style, play Medium. You will enjoy the marginal challenge of getting 5 stars on every song. However, should you climb the mountain of Hard Mode, the zen master that resides there shall break your will before agreeing to train you in the higher arts. Only ascended beings should attempt Expert. Still... Trogdor.

Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria

PS2: This one slipped under the radar of a lot of die hard RPG fans. Not sure why. Gorgeously rendered, well voiced, detailed in the extreme, excellent story. Unfortunately, it's also a massive time sink. And I still haven't finished VP:Lenneth for the PSP, because... well, because it's HARD.

Dynasty Tactics 2

PS2: Thank God for gift cards and discount bins, or I would have forgotten about this. Basically an update of the last one, with more tactics, more storylines, more hidden content, and you can play as Lu Bu. Also a massive time sink.

MGS3: Snake Eater

PS2: You know, I just don't know. Seemed like a good idea at the time. You eat frogs in this one. No really.

Carcassonne

Big-ass table: In my heart of hearts I really didn't want to do it. Courtney and I, I fear, have taken that first faltering step into the abyss of couples entertainment with the acquisition of this classic tile-building game. I don't want a games closet, I really don't. I'm much happier mooching off the entertainment of my couple-friends, since that's who I play with most of the time anyway. Sure, we dabble in Scrabble, but now where do I find myself? Placing a meeple on a potentially valuable farm and angling to link it up with a vast tract of already claimed territory. And currently in the pipeline from Amazon? The River 2 and Inns and Cathedrals expansions. I fear that the grace of God has failed me, and there, as they say, go I.

I'm also still playing EVE Online (4 significant characters now), and City of Heroes (ungodly number of insignificant characters). What the hell is wrong with me?

More Love for Tycho

Today's Penny Arcade:

Entitled "Moral Kombat," the trailer for it is mostly a sensationalist sort of hook whose urgent piano strains to convey the unrelenting danger of the coming Cyber Game War.
--
I haven't seen it, though I would love to. We did, however, approach their trailer with our characteristic scorn as is required of us by the Penny Arcade Charter. There's a lot of strange quotes and received wisdom I don't especially have any use for, and to dredge up that fruity "9/11 Terrorists Trained On MS Flight Simulator" stuff to score rhetorical points in a completely unrelated discussion is (I have chosen to be polite) weak sauce. You'd better have a Goddamn good reason for invoking that day, and "so I can sound like a smart motherfucker on the teevee" ain't gonna cut it.

A sentiment that I have been harboring, like a falsely-accused fugitive from the law, for some time now.

BF2 Jesus

From a Tactical Gamer discussion that got.... wierd.

We ♥ OCD

The summer heat gives way to the newness and the oldness of fall. Such wonderful pandas! It makes me want to dance!

Oh, hello. We did not see you there. We have been busy rolling! Rolling rolling rolling, rollling everything up together in beautiful style. We quite enjoy it.

We enjoy it so much, in fact, that we have been staying up late. Far, far too late. Too late to make any appearances without looking very stiff and tired. That is the curse of the Katamari. The curse and the joy.

What's that? Your talking dog is also cursed? That is highly unlikely... Perhaps he would enjoy some rolling. Being cursed is not a very agreeable pasttime. Wouldn't you agree? Of course you would.

Zero Hour

The air over middle America was crystal clear on Saturday, making for a very smooth and timely flight. If only ground travel were so relible. Regardless, made it to the BBQ relatively on time and in one piece. It was a blast getting to meet TCON and friends face to face. It was also disorienting. Imagine seeing an alternate reality draped over your perceptions like a color slide show. That may LOOK like a hotel manager from the midwest, but its actually a deadly Outer Rim rifleman and hunter. That military contractor? Hairy-faced Bothan merchant. And the lady over there seems to have misplaced her Lekku. Pics:

General Hijinks

Spawn of Jaden and Aaura

We ate, laughed, argued politics. Some people pit bunnies against each other in bloody combat. Wren and Jen gave the non-believers a lesson in EQII. And a good time was had by all. Although the last few hours are a little hazy, since my brain is still firmly rooted in another, more bagel-intensive temporal dimension.

Local Time:

Notes: Battlefield 2

Travel the world, meet interesting people and shoot them.

Within my circle of friends, I seem to be the only person with a lasting interest in the "shoot real people with virtual guns" form of video games. Many have dabbled here and there, tossing a grenade or shotgun blast in my general direction before moving on. Ah, harken back to the glory days of my cracked copy of Quake! (This one time, I totally owned this guy in CTF by hooking him with the grappling hook and zooming up to him, switching to grenade launcher and... hey, come back!)

I myself have skipped over a generation of FPS here and there, unwilling or unable to meet the preposterous computing or network demands of today's modern twitch monsters. But like a brainwashed illuminati operative unaware of his compulsive tendency to hoard shiny objects, I scurry back every so often to the genre and indulge in it's dark dissociative mechanics.

Enter Battlefield 2. I will spare you the detailed content rundown, as you can get that in myriad places. There are squad tools, multi-person land sea and air vehicles, a command communication system, huge maps, up to 64 player slots, a friendly rank and award system, built-in VOIP, well-balanced weapon kits, all that good stuff. And you can play it comfortably on a variety of systems without blowing out your processor. All that is great, but what really impresses me is the overall effect this detail has on the play experience.

Stopping to take pictures is ill-advised (I died here)

BF2 has really hit home as an immersion game. Playing counter-strike, there were always moments of forced tension - times when the counter-terror squad would slowly creep down the hall, sweeping for enemies, guns clutched loosely in sweating palms - but those were usually contrived elements. When it got right down to it, CS was a Doom deathmatch with more crouching. You don't actually have to stop, put your back against the wall, and peer around the door frame when you're advancing. It may look cool in the movies but the game is far more condusive to running around the corner hopping up and down and shooting wildly.

When an army is really functioning as a team, BF2 is not like that. As much as you hear about it in war stories, I've never actually been "pinned down" in a combat game. Pinned down means you're on your belly in the dirt behind a wall of low rubble watching tracer bullets fly overhead and hoping to God a ricochet doesn't make it through and take off a piece of your ass. It means not being able to move or stand without being shot. That happens here.

When you see an enemy down the road, and he sees you, you both have a split second to react. Do you run? Dive for cover? Unload your clip in his direction? Or do you drop to the deck, switch to single-fire and try to nail him somewhere soft before he can get a good shot? I suck at shoot-offs, but in guerilla combat I understand that they are fairly common.

In Dragon Valley, I often take the Spec Ops route, parachute onto a ridge at the edge of enemy territory, sneak through dense forest and plant C4 on their artillery stations.

The other day I was riding in a blackhawk when we were hit by anti-aircraft fire. The guy next to me was shot right out of the cab - the rest of us bailed to safety as the pilot brought the craft down in a smoking heap.

On Monday our squad got caught in a bloody line battle across a sun-parched beachhead. I peeked my head over an embankment to see a stretch of sand strewn with fallen soldiers. Bullets and anti-tank rockets flew everywhere.

Although the immersion factor is as much a function of smart teamwork as anything else, and there are lots of video game caveats (shock paddles can be used to instantly treat any kind of life-threatening injury), BF2 really does come remarkably close to war movie battle tactics without losing the central element of casual play.

Oh, they also have the F-35. Which is awesome.

Postscript:
In the interest of fairness, here are the cons:

• There are bugs and glitches that are still being tested and fixed, par for the course with modern gaming.


• The flying vehicles handle like crap and can't go very far outside the very small mission maps before they are shot down.


• The rank system is friendly at first, but becomes brutal once you get to Lance Corporal. They expect you to play about 250 hours before you get any further rewards beyond the initial cookies.


• Most people on public ranked servers are unreliable cheeseheads.


• I die a lot. Clearly this is a major flaw in the game design.

Geeks with Free Time

If you are a rampant video game freak and are over 22, you will probably enjoy this. Grab a drink, it's about half an hour long.

Also Gespieltes Zarathustra

My God, it's full of franchises

So E3 is upon us. The armies of marketers rally to the corporate banners and scream their fearsome warcries. Wi-fi! Teraflops! Sequels! Market shares! By now you've probably seen images of the big three, including Sony's weird PS-a-rang. There is truly some impressive hardware in the making here, including a PS3 that can output to dual screen HDTVs. Who the hell has two HDTVs? I don't know, but I'm sure they can afford all three next gen consoles without having to look at the charge account.

But what's really amazing about all the new information coming down the pike is how much I don't give two shits. One shit, yes, I obviously give that, since I'm bothering to write on the topic. But two? No. I haven't had enough fiber.

Seriously, I can't get excited about gaming hardware anymore. Everyone has a technological fanboy apex, I think. My friend Nick's crested with the Super Nintendo. Mine lasted heartily into the PS2 era. Some people crapped out on the C64 or the 2600. And then there are Mac people, who are clearly iSane.

The point is, it's very hard for me to get worked up about specs, performance, or even actual graphics. We have evolved gaming entertainment to the point where graphics just don't really matter. If you want to express an artistic element, you don't have to parse thousands of concepts down into a few lines of code anymore. Ninjas can appear fully-formed from the mists of nightmares and interact directly with a man's jugular vein in sparkling crimson 3D. At some point an increased level of texture detail on the blood stain just doesn't add anything to the experience. Hell, Tenchu has some of the worst polygon clipping around, and it's still just a fun game to play.

So what do they have ready for the intial releases? More plumbers, more Madden's, and God help us, more Tekken. Tekken 6? At least Capcom had the decency to add words to each sequel (Super Final Street Fighter 2 EX Alpha Smurf Ultra Turbo, anyone?). Not everyone can make a Katamari Damacy, but why is anyone excited about all the same warmed-over crap? How many times can you make the same damn game? Oh, this time I can shoot the aliens with RED lasers? Awesome.

They are also making more Final Fantasies and Metal Gear games. Because kids don't read enough today, and we if we keep feeding them poorly-translated and awkwardly-written stuff like this, they may stop altogether.

Perhaps I am just becoming grouchy and old, with my red checkered bath robe and baseball bat, sitting on my front lawn yelling at the neighborhood kids as they run by with their PSPs. But I still play far more games than is healthy for my daily schedule. I bust up criminals in CoH. I tear around San Andreas in my stolen Infernus. You've seen me wax weird about the Sims. I keep an eye out for peripherals and accessories to improve my laptop, which is a monster gaming station. But I just don't think I'm going to plunk down anything this year on a console. Feh.

Notes: The Sims 2

Welcome to the Swamp

You want to play God. Go ahead, admit it. There's nothing to be ashamed about - everybody wants to command the very forces of creation itself. It's built into us from very early on that we must enact our will upon our surroundings. Handy then, that Will Wright and co. have given us so many options for living out our deepest and shallowest fantasies in the forms of video games.

I realize I'm about a year behind the curve on this one, but a few weeks ago I picked up a discount copy of The Sims 2. Of course the first thing I did to familiarize myself with the game was to build my college apartment and put digital copies of my roommates in it. I've been told that for most people, dropping your friends into the Sims is your personal end game. For me, it's just a good place to get started. I mean, come on, look at how happy Eric looks playing Jedi Knight! I'm not sure he actually owns pajamas like that but I like to think he does.

The sequel to the The Sims (original title - Sims: Devourer of Time) has most of the familiar elements of the first game. You build a home, put people in it, monitor their various needs and play out complex social dramas involving leveling up your cooking skill, throwing parties and buying expansion packs. Unfortunately it also has many of the same design faults, i.e., I'm really not interested in spending a lot of time organizing the collective bowel movements of a four-person family. I don't care what they say about the smart new AI, you still have to micromanage the use of the toilet if you want a happy Sim.

Flaws aside, the new game engine is remarkable. It pushes the limits of my top end machine, looks great, and is amazingly customizable. The home-building controls are extremely detailed and now include basements, patios, decks, bi-level floors and hundreds of new design elements. I could spend hours working on architecture alone.

Not exactly right, but eerily familiar

The character animations have also been brought up to match the complexity of the new meshes. They're simply gorgeous, and fun to watch, ranging from the flamboyant (one of the hugs is a leap into the arms, a la Shaggy and Scooby) to the subtle (simple body language will tell you how a conversation is going before the relationship numbers change). Still, a lot of the actual activity seems pretty banal. Here's us eating the toasted ham sandwiches Eric made with his new George Foreman Grill:

Ben and I look skeptical, and I think Jason is suggesting Cocoa Beef as an alternative, but we shall not speak of this.

I could go on and on about the other denizens I've been working on - the multi-child Frazzle family, the college kids hunting aliens, the country farmer couple with the comely daughter, or the mysterious goings on behind the steel walls of The Institute, but you get the idea. You can be a lot more creative right out of the box with this monster than with the original. It's tasty brain candy. The only real problems I've had so far is that sometimes a piece of furniture will get bugged, forcing you to tear down the whole damn house to fix it, and some of the behaviours are hard to predict based solely on the personality profiles. For example, I think I made Jason too lazy, because he routinely forgets to wear pants.

Now, if playing with virtual dolls isn't your thing (they're action figures, I swear!), you can look forward to Will Wright's next project, which apparently will render his entire life's work to date obsolete. That's ballsy.

BGBA3

Because it was in my head and now it's not. I was supposed to be doing my taxes today.

This is a large file by the way, so those of you on dial-up might want to suck it up, get with the times and find yourself some broadband.

Nanaca Crash Withdrawl

Notes: World of Warcraft

What is it good for? Absolutely NUTHIN'... say it again!

Huh. I'm dropping World of Warcraft. After only two months. I hate to do it to such an obviously superior piece of software, but after five days of not logging in I realize that I don't miss it. The account expires sometime mid-April so maybe I'll jump back in for a few laughs before time runs out.

That I would drop an expensive MMO that provides pretty much everything I look for in an online game should tell me something about my own tastes. WoW has an engaging overall plot, enjoyable mechanics, a robust crafting system, rewarding solo play, and excellent team dynamics. The new patch even added a better user interface and a chat system more in line with SWG, which was top notch. But still, it's just another grind. I discovered in the past weeks I had three choices - I could level up by smashing gorillas in a jungle, bashing yetis in the mountains, or bonking lizards in the desert. For about 6 levels or so. Then I'd be able to move on to other forests, other mountians and other plains in which to hit things. Not really appealing anymore.

I suppose if I had a decent group to play with regularly I'd stick with it, but that never materialized. Hell, I stayed with Star Wars, a game I came to loathe, for almost two years just so I could stay in the guild there. Socialization makes the whole thing work. It's difficult to find that magical union of game environment and community where the impetus to play enhances the social aspect and the friendships reinforce the desire to play. Two base hit with WoW, but no run scored.

So farewell, Azeroth, I hardly knew ye. Hmmm... I wonder if Paragon City needs an extra hero next month?

Nanaca Crash Update

Oh God someone please stop me.

Flash Games Anonymous

Hello, my name is Erik, and I can't stop hitting this guy with a bicycle.


Update: Saturday, 1:11AM


Update: Saturday, 11:02PM

Arc Impulse!

I am trying to save money these days. But corporations such as Namco - giant uncaring soulless wonderful awesome godlike video game producing Namco - make it very difficult to do so. They make video games and I buy them. This is a simple relationship as unbreakable and unignorable as a diamond monofilament tether wrapped around my larynx.

Xenosaga II is coming out now.

Now, I never actually finished Xenosaga I: Der Wille zur Macht. In the grand tradition of Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, and Xenogears (all part of the same genetic line) I stopped playing at a certain point where it became ridiculously hard and figured I'd get back to it later. But now I have to finish Xenosaga - I have to dive back into that hanger bay and take down that giant quantum cannon-toting robot - because some salient facts have just come to my attention.

Xenosaga II has team up attacks. Jesus in heaven above, Xenosaga II has team up attacks.

For those of you coming late to class, Chrono Trigger is perhaps the greatest platform RPG of all time. It is distilled addictive adventure in the 16-bit tradition, encompassing all the greatest elements of the genre. Chrono Cross is it's direct story descendent, delving into issues of causality and time travel directly related to the original story. Xenogears is the half-completed conceptual descendant, encompassing much of the style and charm of the Chrono series while being very much its own animal. I say half-completed because they literally stopped making the final 10 chapters of the game after Final Fantasy VII came out and Square realized that the game was going to look out of date by the time it launched. So the second disc is a major let down and consists mainly of long cut scenes and linear boss battles to move you quickly to the finale. Still, it remains a favorite.

Xenosaga is a pseudo-cousin of Xenogears published by many of the same developers after they made the move from Square to Namco. It is ambitious, potentially involving 6 seperate chapters each with a 2-3 year development schedule. It's storyline is barely comprehensible but generates a level of intrigue unique to the Japanese style of pop storytelling. See also Metal Gear Solid, Escaflowne, Evangelion, and any Final Fantasy incarnation with 32 bits or more.

So what's the big deal with team-up attacks? Chrono Trigger had them, and they made the game. As you advance you gain special abilities with each character. Eventually they learn to combine these abilities in various ways. As you progress then, you may wish to swap out the characters from time to time to produce significantly different effects and strategies. Typically with these sorts of games it becomes a chore to level up your less favorite characters, but Chrono made it ceaselessly fun to explore each and every combo. And there were a lot.

So Xenosaga II has just touched off a geek nerve in me that is difficult, nay, impossible to ignore. Damn you, Namco, you beautiful bastards!

Snow Day

:(

:)