Archive for the 'Games' Category

I’ve been playing less and less of EQ2 during the past year or so. Other than logging in for our regular Saturday session with my Sister Judy and her husband Bryan, my Nephew Shane and his wife Monique, and of course my wife Irene, I really haven’t been playing at all.

I’ve been playing massively multiplayer RPGs for over a decade now: I have a collectors edition version of Ultima Online So I could easily chalk it up to just being “bored” or tired of such games in general, and that’s what I did. I even tried a couple of other games. Vanguard was one, but it didn’t appeal, and ultimately the game itself sort of “died out”. More recently I re-activated my World of Warcraft account- that was fun, but more importantly I started to figure out myself and my disinterest a bit more.

Then my Nephew called up and suggested I get out of that WoW crap and create a new character in EQ2- that might be just the thing. Once I started playing that “new” character (actually one I created a year or so ago- a Kerran Paladin), the final piece explaining my ennui fell into place. I’m back to playing a couple of hours several days each week in addition to our Saturday session. And I’ll likely cancel my WoW account again shortly.

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I played World of Warcraft a couple of years ago when my Nephew and family decided to check it out. I didn’t mind it, but was just starting to get into EQ2 when we moved and so it was a bit frustrating in that regard. Within a month or two we moved back to EQ2 and have stayed there since.

I’m still playing EQ2 each weekend with my family, and having a lot of fun. But every once in a while I think back to World of Warcraft fondly and imagine that it might be fun to try it out again. Interestingly, WoW is pretty much the only MMOG available for the Macintosh, and so it seemed like a logical progression that one day I would install it on my MacBook.

Of course, I don’t want to go to the store and buy it, and I decided to try out the demo download. It often makes me chuckle when I realize that I’m using an Internet connection dozens of times faster than my modem of yesteryear… and yet the size of the things I download has more than kept pace with the increased bandwidth available:

Ah, a mere 11 hours… well, almost time to read a good book

I believe it is appropriate to note that I am not a historian before I say anything about Assassin’s Creed. Furthermore, I am not a religious person- I’m an agnostic. These two things together mean that my opinions regarding the religious or historical content of the game Assassin’s Creed should be taken with a grain of salt.

Assassin’s Creed is an open-ended third person sneaker with a strong role playing element. It is single player only, with no multiplayer or online elements other than XBox Live achievements. The main character- the guy you play- is oddly sort of a secondary character within the game itself. You are Desmond Miles, a young guy who finds himself kidnapped and held within a lab at a shadowy pharmaceutical company’s offices. The majority of the game is played through Desmond’s “genetic memories” using a machine called the Animus. You spend your time playing through your recovered memories of an ancestor named Altair: an assassin, Hashshashin, or Fedayeen during the period of the Third Crusade.

The plot involves completing a series of assassinations, partly to restore Altair’s status within his guild, and more importantly to disrupt the plans of the invading Templars. A secondary plot involves discovering why Desmond has been kidnapped and forced to live through his ancestral memories. Something is going on in modern times, something sinister and based on ancient rivalries and power struggles. The story is presented through a series of slightly interactive cut scenes (you can change your point of view and move slightly) with first rate voice acting.

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I bought Halo 3 on my XBox 360 shortly after it came out. I didn’t expect much from it- and that’s what I got. The Halo franchise is good, but has never really “wow”ed me.

At its root, I’d say the problem is partly a matter of the story as presented in the game coming across as “weak”, and partly the visual perspective the game plays from. I understand the back story behind the games is very detailed and rich…but the game doesn’t convey that well to me. As for the perspective: they seem to consistently do something with Halo that combines to irritate me (”an endless stream of passages, all alike…”) and give me motion sickness. First person plus acres of similar looking views equals nausea for me. Add these considerations to the fact that I made a mistake and played 9/10ths of the game on “easy” before discovering that you have to play on “normal” to get any achievements…the thought of playing the game through again made me put the DVD away.

Along comes Crysis. This game is as “different” as Far Cry was a few years ago, and that’s not too surprising I guess as both games were developed by Crytek. Note that Far Cry 2 was *not* developed by Crytek, so who knows what that will be like.

Moving back to the topic…Crysis has the bog-standard first person shooter plot. A super-soldier is part of a squad tasked with investigating some strange happenings on an island near China. The cause turns out to be some sort of alien invasion- much gunfire ensues. What makes Crysis “better” than the standard fare has more to do with how the story is presented, how the player is allowed to interact with the world, and how natural the whole process feels.

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I don’t play World of Warcraft any more- it was fun, but lacked depth. But apparently William Shatner plays WoW, or at least he claims to in a new World of Warcraft television commercial.

And Will Shatner isn’t the only celebrity doing TV ads for WoW- Mr. T does one too, and claims to play a “Night elf Mohawk” (the off camera director reminds him that it is a Night elf Warrior, and there is no such thing as a “mohawk” class.

The commercials are kinda funny- I like them. But the more interesting thing to me is that this is the first MMOG commercial I’ve seen with “mainstream” celebrities participating. I guess Blizzard has mountains of money to spend, what with something like 10 million people subscribing to World of Warcraft at $15 a month each.

I wonder how Mr. T reacts when he gets ganked in PvP? “I pity da fool…”

I stumbled across this series of comic video game reviews earlier this week, but didn’t actually watch any of them.  You see, I had heard that this particular reviewer had given a negative review to BioShock, and my unsubstantiated reaction was that the reviewer must be a total moron.

Well, Yahtzee may be a total moron (who’s to say?), but his reviews make me laugh…even though I disagree with much of what he says.  Check this out (WARNING: somewhat crude humour, not really safe for work):

Or how about this?

And Lara Croft needs some love too…

If you don’t find these funny…well, to each their own.  Maybe check out some more of Yahtzee’s work.  But even though I disagree with his BioShock review, I still laughed.  The humour is perhaps a bit rude, but it does a good job expressing a point without trying to tell me I’m stupid for disagreeing- and that makes me listen and maybe see a different perspective.  Good stuff!

I bought Halo 3 the other day: count me as number 5,000,001.  I’ve been enjoying it: the story is intriguing.  I’d say the third installment of Halo is, thus far at least, better than its predecessors.

I selected “Easy” mode when I started.  I like easy, as I’ve explained in previous posts.  Unfortunately, the vast majority of XBox Live achievements for Halo 3 require you to at least be playing on “Normal”.  That’s okay…or it would have been if I’d known it before I got halfway (2/3rds of the way?) through the game.

Strangely, I find that I sort of want those darn achievements.  But I really don’t like playing the same content over and over again: that is at least part of the reason I play on the easy setting to begin with.  That leaves me with a frustrating choice to make: start all over again, potentially finding the more difficult “normal” mode to be as irritating as I expect it to be.  Or forego any achievements. 

I’ll make my choice.  But perhaps by posting this, someone else who might otherwise choose the easy setting will avoid the same trap I’m in

I like the Halo series: it’s a decent first person shooter game with a better than average story.  I played the original Halo on the PC and Halo 2 on the XBox.  I haven’t bought Halo 3 for the XBox 360, but I probably will someday soon.  I’d probably rate both of the first two Halos at somewhere between 7 and 8 out of 10.  Good solid games, nothing earth-shattering, but fun.

But I just have to shake my head in stunned disbelief at the sales stats for Halo 3.  It was released on September 25th.  Over $170 million dollars in Halo 3 sales were racked up in the first 24 hours…over $300 million in the first week.  Over three million Halo 3 players are logging in to play the game on line each day. 

Those numbers are pretty staggering to me.  I remember when computer games were considered a niche industry: now we have single games that generate more revenue in a single day than triple A movies.   I’m guessing that Halo 3 might top a billion in sales over the next year…for a single game, on a single platform (Halo 3 is currently an XBox 360 exclusive). 

I was doubtful when I first heard that Halo 3 was expected by some to push huge volumes of XBox 360 sales.  Now I’m not so sure- if 5 million people bought Halo 3 in the first week, some of those have to be buying the game console to go with it.  Heck, there were only 11 million or so XBox 360s out there before Halo 3 shipped. 

An interesting side note: the company that developed Halo 3, Bungee, has parted ways with Microsoft.  They were a wholly-owned subsidiary of MS since 2000.  Apparently, the separation was on good terms, Microsoft retains an equity stake in Bungee as well as rights both to future Halo releases and right of first refusal for any new titles Bungee may develop.  Some folks even believe this split is good news for both Microsoft and Bungee.   Bungee apparently wanted more creative freedom, and the rumour is that Halo 3 is the last Halo they want to make.

I finished BioShock last night.  I won’t spoil the game by revealing its secrets, but the ending was…a let down.

Don’t get me wrong: BioShock still has my strongest recommendation- I really enjoyed the game, and my rating is unchanged.  But endings are always hard, and it seems that the better an entertainment is, the harder it is to end well. 

This is true with computer games, books, movies…but I’d say that the art of “completion” is the most poorly developed with computer/video games.  In BioShock, I think what left me feeling deflated was the fact that, ultimately, the choices I made in the game really boiled down to just one thing having an impact on the ending.  Make that singular choice differently, and you get one of (basically) two endings.  Either your character becomes an evil SOB, or not, based on that choice.

So, BioShock’s graphics and sound were great, the gameplay fantastically well realized, the narrative stunningly well done for a computer game- this was true right through until the ending credits.  What undid the ending for me was being given the sense that the choices I made would make a difference to the story, then discovering that those differences were, in fact, very constrained. 

Could a game this tightly written have given more variability in the ending?  Made my choices as a character have more meaning?  Would that have really made the ending more satisfying?  I’m not sure.  But it is an interesting challenge for game developers.

It was a great relief on a lot of levels to play BioShock after my rant about checkpoint saves the other day. In addition to being an XBox 360 game (also available on the PC) with unlimited saves, it is probably one of the best computer games I’ve played in a long while.

BioShock has it all: a fantastic and original story, brilliantly realized game mechanics, and stunning use of visuals and audio. The story is set during the post WWII era: your passenger plane plane crashes and you, the only apparent survivor, discover the entrance to a secret oasis…or what might have once been one. Rapture, an entire underwater city founded by a wealthy man with a passing resemblance to Howard Hughes, was founded on principles of moral and scientific freedom. Unfortunately, it seems as if something has gone terribly wrong…

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