Prototype reaction

So – you’re the T-1000 with psychic powers.

What’s supposed to be the challenge, then? Do you just have to avoid getting lured into an industrial smelter?

They’re going to go the Force Unleashed‘s miserable and lame “some enemies are immune from your attacks” route, aren’t they.

Invert THIS

Memo Ubisoft: You know the “Y axis inverted” FPS controls many gamers use? They’re popular particularly amongst those who played flight simulators before FPSes, and who had got used to pushing forward meaning pointing down and pulling backwards meaning pointing up. I don’t know how it came to be that the weird “push forward look up” control came to be described as the “standard”, but it certainly isn’t amongst people familiar with flight simulators.

SO, when you release an actual flight simulator – say, H.A.W.X. – don’t invert the flight stick controls just because someone uses inverted FPS controls. I don’t know if any gamer expects pulling back on a joystick to cause an aircraft to dive, but if they do, it’s not those of us who use the aircraft-style y axis settings for FPSes.

That was just weird.

GTA IV’s crap conclusion

Played GTA IV to its crap conclusion tonight. It ends, as you’d expect, with Nico chasing down one of the big villains, by slaughtering his way through an army of henchmen before he gets a chance to put a bullet in his nemesis’ head.

At least, that’s what happens – until the villain gets in an indestructible boat (that cannot be blown up by a rocket, for example) and zips off along the coast. Nico has to chase him on a barely-controllable trail bike along the beach, doing what are clearly supposed to be cinematic jumps but which are, in reality, just opportunities for a quick fail after which you need to go through every one of those henchmen all over again. Then he’s forced to do a jump off a ramp onto a helicopter (freedom to choose what you’re doing? Uh, not in this “sandbox” game), whereupon you’re forced to HIT “A” REPEATEDLY TO NOT DIE.

Then you’re in the helicopter, chasing the villain as he zips along in his boat and fires heat seeking missiles at you. (Seriously.) “Press “X” to fire the helicopter’s guns”, explains the game, pretending that you can actually do some damage to the boat. It is, of course, lying – you can’t affect the boat until the next cut scene, silly.

Eventually you escape from your flaming helicopter and run clumsily (Nico always runs clumsily; seriously, I’m not interested in the GTA series from now on until they fix the controls) towards the villain so you can shoot him. End game.

That was it. A last mission which highlighted many of the game’s most irritating flaws – from Nico’s shitty controls, to the serious stupidity of having neither proper checkpoints nor quicksaves, to the utter annoyance of its sequences where it takes control and won’t let you do anything – before suddenly giving control back to you and killing you if you don’t jump through the hoops quick enough.

Will I download the DLC to play any more of it? You have got to be kidding.

PS Didn’t get that “achievement” for ploughing through the game in 30 hours – ie, the achievement you get if you ignore that it’s supposed to be a “sandbox” game – either.

“Rock” Torture

You know what? People might joke about it, but “Green Grass and High Tides” does need a bloody checkpoint in the middle of it.

Ten minutes of thrashing about just to get defeated at the end by some RSI-inducing triplets? Get stuffed, Harmonix.

Also, I don’t even like the song. How many times must I endure listening to it before I get through it?

THIS IS NOT FUN!

PS The Outlaws ARE NOT “ROCK”. They’re COUNTRY. And you might be surprised by this, but appreciation for and enjoyment of the former style does not necessarily equate to appreciation for and enjoyment of the latter…

Why does SA A-G Michael Atkinson want to treat fifteen year olds as adults?

South Australian Attorney General Michael Atkinson – a man who insists all Australian adults be treated as 15 year olds despite the vast majority of us (who don’t live in his electorate) not having any right to vote against him (whither democracy?) – has been having a particularly edifying spat with online gamer websites over the last week. (Presumably hoping to provoke a few unhinged people into sending some abusive emails with which he can smear anyone who plays videogames.) His basic argument is fatuous in the extreme:

It confuses my (sic) why so many gamers are arguing that they should have the right to play games that enable them on-screen to bash, torture, slay, slaughter, rape and take drugs.

No, that’s what 15 year olds can do NOW, because you are blocking an R18 rating. If Australia had an R18 rating, Grand Theft Auto IV would’ve been restricted to adults, and not just given minor edits (that don’t prevent the things you describe) and released as MA15+. Atkinson’s insistence on treating adults as if they were fifteen year olds has an unavoidable corollary you’d think would disturb even him – it results in fifteen year olds being treated as adults.

The issue boils down to this: should fifteen year olds have access to all the media consumed by adults? Is there no difference between the maturity of an adult and a fifteen year old? If the answer to either of these questions is no, if you think there IS a major difference between yourself and a fifteen year old, then Australia needs an R18 category for videogames and promptly. Please, Mr Atkinson, stop stalling.

For the sake of the impressionable children.

UPDATE: I’ve sent an email along these lines, for all the good it’ll do us, to Atkinson on both his electorate and ministerial email addresses.

UPDATE 2: And emailed the other A-Gs. Sent them each an email entitled “R18 category needed to keep adult videogames away from impressionable teenagers” and begging them to “protect children by locking adult content away from them under an R18 category for computer games”.

Not if it’s got any QTEs in it

The Guardian asks:

Ghostbusters the gaming surprise of the year?

Not if early reports are right and it’s got any quick time events in it, it won’t be.

When they come with unnecessary baggage

It’s been a while since I’ve bought a new PC game. Most of my recent purchases have been for the 360, mainly because I’ve finally been sold on the convenience and comfort of sitting on the couch and playing games on the big TV. And not having to upgrade my graphics card every time a new game comes out.

I do like PC strategy though – Civilization 4 in particular, but RTSes as well. I am hanging out for Starcraft 2 (although less than before they split it into three games) and Diablo 3 (although obviously that’s an RPG). I’m not sold on strategy on the console yet.

Anyway, so I’m intrigued by the new Empire: Total War strategy game that’s just come out. Looks like just the sort of thing I enjoy on the PC. Also looks very pretty, which is a worry – will it work on my current laptop?

I know – I’ll download the demo and find out.

What’s this? I have to install Steam? That computer-occupying copy-protection scheme brought in with Half Life 2? Okay, I understand the need to protect the PC business with online registration of games, and I guess if I were to buy ETW I’d accept Steam as a necessary evil, but… you’re making me download and install it for a demo?

Why does a demo need copy protection? You want to spread it far and wide, surely – that’s the whole point!. And your demo players have not yet committed to your game enough to buy it. They certainly haven’t committed enough to your game to let you install something that loads every time their PC is turned on and that insinuates itself throughout the operating system. Like iTunes (the main reason I refuse to buy an iPod).

At the point at which I’m only curious about your game, why would you put me off like that?

In short – your demo is advertising. Make experiencing that advertising as painless as possible FOR THE CONSUMER. Or we won’t try it.

Compulsory steam installation for demos? FAIL.

UPDATE 20/3: Sony doesn’t get it either. You’ve got to pre-order a game to get a demo for that game? What? As Kotaku puts it:

As in, the people so keen for the game they’ll put money down to reserve a copy. As in, the last people on earth who need a demo. Curious about the game but unsure whether you want to actually reserve one or not? Tough!

Someone needs to sit down with these management morons and remind them what demos are for.

“Powers” should be more than mere keys

Here’s another time when games suck: when the developers do not understand how to reward progression.

The story arc for most games is simple: you start out pissweak and get better. At the beginning you have some basic abilities, and even simple battles/tasks are difficult. A carrot is dangled over your head – a new weapon, a new power will be yours for the taking if you manage to do X; you do X, and now you can feel a sense of achievement as not only have you solved a problem, but your avatar in the game is now demonstrably better and can do more fun things. It’s not that the game has removed the old challenges and given you new ones; it’s given you new ones but still lets you have the ego boost of stomping all over the old ones to give you the satisfaction of seeing how far you’ve come.

Because it is fun to get better, and it’s fun to have your abilities increase. It’s fun to have your tactical options expand as you can do more things.

Unfortunately, some developers look at new “abilities” as nothing more than things to slow you down, as nothing more than keys to open the next door.

I’m looking at you, whoever developed the new Prince of Persia. The game talks about these four “powers” you collect as the game progresses, and implies that after you’ve got each one you’ll have a new ability you can apply throughout the game. Something new and awesome you’ll be able to do to defeat enemies or move around the environment.

But they’re really nothing more than keys. The “red” power just lets you open, effectively, the red doors. The “green” power the green doors. Oh, they pretty it up a little – the way they pretty up the Quick Time Events under the acrobatics to disguise what they are – as if the amazing ability to jump from one particular coloured plate to the next BUT ONLY THOSE PLATES IN THOSE PARTICULAR POSITIONS is somehow an exhilarating new “power”. But of course it isn’t – the Prince remains exactly the same, and the fights at the end of the game are pretty much exactly the same as at the beginning. He can jump no higher, wall run no longer, hit no harder than before. The Prince does the same thing over and over because he has not changed.* He can’t do anything more. All his new “powers” have enabled him to do is get from point A to previously locked point B.

Where’s the satisfaction in that?

Look at games that do this right, like the good RPGs. Zelda, Oblivion, Diablo – or even most FPSes. You are constantly improving, but so are the enemies. You think “man I’d love to be able to defeat these guys more easily”, and you actually do get to a point where you can. Only now there’s a new challenge.

That is satisfying. That is fun. Simply giving me the key to open the next door isn’t.

*Note: I’m about 3/4 of the way through. I gather the game pulls a Sands of Time and takes away his safety net – the prettied up checkpoint save that is Elika – towards the end.