Making Metro 2033 Immersive

I played Metro 2033 to completion for the first time about a year ago.  It had been on my radar (and my Steam list) for quite some time and I finally got around to actually playing it.  I’d heard so many great things about it and was very excited to play it.

It didn’t quite grab me in the way I wanted.  The voice acting was laughably bad in spots.  Character models have some of the deadest eyes I have ever seen.  The shooting was stiff and didn’t give me the control I wanted during intense moments.

By the time I reached the end, I wasn’t having much fun.  I even downloaded a FAQ to help me power through the last few levels in peace.  Quickly, I moved to the next game, not really thinking about the experience I just had.  There were more games in my backlog to “slog” through.

Recently, I had an itch to play the game again.  Part of me still wanted that experience I was expecting the first time through.  I decided to try a few things to hopefully strengthen the game.  One of these things was changing the spoken dialogue to Russian.  The game is based off a Russian book and takes place in a post-apocalyptic Russia.  What better way to make the game more immersive?

I also decided to play the game on a harder difficulty.  I don’t play many games on Hard, mostly because I have too many games to play through.  Also, I hate hard difficulties that simply make enemies crazy accurate or able to absorb entire clips without going down.  A few things about the Ranger Hardcore difficulty intrigued me enough to give it a shot.

First, bullets are actually powerful.  On Ranger Hardcore in Metro 2033, one bullet will often do the job, both for you and for baddies.  Enemies are a bit bullet-spongy on the Normal difficulty and this was a very welcome change.

Scavenging is a huge part of Metro 2033, as you need to find ammo and filters (for your gas mask) to survive.  These items are made much scarcer, giving the player an even greater need to scavenge or risk running out of supplies at a very inopportune time.

 

The final change to the game is a simple one – no HUD.  This means no crosshairs and no way to tell how much ammo you have, unless you are visiting a shop.  Luckily, your timer for how much air you have left on the surface still exists but only because it isn’t part of the HUD (it’s represented by a watch on your wrist). 

 

The results of my replay?  Suddenly, I understood the people who absolutely loved the game.  The world that seemed absolutely silly (mostly due to that terrible English voice acting) felt much more intense.  Something about Russian voices just fits the setting perfectly. 

I felt like I had to work to survive in this world.  I tensely snuck around enemy camps that I wouldn’t have a chance taking head-on.  When I did have to engage, every shot needed to count or I risked going down.  I even got into the habit of counting out how many shots I had fired, so I wouldn’t have to reload at an inopportune time.

I was torn between desperately trying to get off the hazardous surface and wanting to comb the ruins for any amount of ammo or filters I could find.  Several times I found myself dashing between alcoves in search of filters, gasping as the poisonous air tore at my lungs.  These are some of the most heart-pounding moments I’ve ever had in a game.

For anyone who skipped Metro 2033, I highly recommend you go back and check it out.  It still has its problems (stiff controls and some very odd audio-mixing) but those are easily overlooked for one of the best post-apocalyptic video game experiences to date.

Commercials in My Video Games? No Thanks.

I don't usually get up in arms about things.  My temperament is pretty calm and I can usually see both sides of any argument.  I find it hard to review books or games because I find myself being too understanding of the things that are wrong.  For example, the Mass Effect 3 ending didn't really bother me too much.  I do think it was a bit lazy at the very end but I still enjoyed the game as a whole.  The whole debacle with Diablo 3's online servers didn't really irk me either (although, I did get that game for "free").

I read something today that did get my blood hot, something I would absolutely fight against if it ever came to light.  Destructoid posted an interesting article today that talks about a new Sony patent.  This patent defines a system where a commercial can be inserted INTO a game

The advertising already present in video games, like billboards with real products on them, works because it doesn't interfere with the immersion (at least, it usually doesn't).  Ads that interrupt the gameplay most certainly would.

I understand that games are getting more costly to develop.  I understand that the economy is in dire straits and every company is looking for more ways to offset costs.  I don't care.  We already pay $60 for these games, several times more than other forms of media.  Find another way to do it.  And don't try and offer us a bullshit line of "Pay more and get a version with no ads!"  That won't work either.

Ads that interrupt content are probably the most hated form of advertising in the world (interstitials, I believe they are called) and no one wants them in their games.  Don't do it.

First Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend Impressions

This past weekend was the Guild Wars 2 beta and I managed to snag myself an invite by pre-purchasing the game.  I spent a good amount of time playing it and I just thought I'd give some of my impressions of the game.

First, and I think most importantly, was the extreme amounts of hitching and lag at the beginning of the weekend (around 2 pm my time on Friday).  When I got out to the areas with other people (after a brief instanced tutorial), it became unbearable.  Actions would take 3-5 seconds to happen after the button was pushed and it was impossible to get anything done.  Luckily, this lag didn't persist past the first day of the beta and hopefully NCSoft will be ready for this next time.  The servers were almost always at High capacity (at least the American ones were) so some more servers would probably be a good idea.

The feel of the game is very interesting.  It resembles a game like WoW, with smoothness (during the non-peak hours) during the combat - when you push the button for an ability, it comes out without delay.  This is something I feel a lot of MMO's don't nail and it bothers me constantly.  This seems to be in service of their combat system, which allows you to roll around by double tapping movement keys to dodge attacks.  Most attacks are dodgeable and it gave the game a more actiony feel.  Not quite sure if I like that yet.

I mostly played an Elementalist with my time, wanting to get a decent chunk into the content and not wanting to spread my time doing it.  She was 15 at the end of the weekend and had just left the first zone.  Her moveset was very involved and required a lot of thinking on my part. 

If you didn't already know, Guild Wars 2 doesn't have you learning skills the normal way.  Instead, equipping a new type of weapon (like a staff or sword) gives you a new set of skills.  You unlock a set of five of them by using the ones you have already and get the rest in a (relatively) quick amount of time.  Getting a new type of weapon meant grinding out new skills but they are usually quite different.

On top of this, the Elementalist has four "aspects" that correspond to the elements such as wind and fire.  Each aspect has its own set of skills and those sets also change with the weapon.  This easily gives the Elementalist the most to think about in terms of skill usage and it seems like it could be very interesting.  Of course, only playing for six or seven hours meant I didn't get a full grasp of them all but enjoyed trying to combo them together.  I could easily see this class being one of the more interesting ones to play, especially in PvP.

Before I talk about my rather brief time in PvP, I want to touch upon the quest structure in Guild Wars 2.  Unlike your traditional MMO where you travel to quest "hubs" and then go out and do them, GW2 seems entirely built on the public quest system that was most well-known from Warhammer Online.  On your map are several unfilled hearts; each of these corresponds to one of these quests.  By going to this point of the map and aiding the people there, you fill a bar that eventually tops out and fills the heart on your map and gives you a nice experience boost.  There is also an overarching story quest for your character that you do alone but it is much less experienced than the public quests.

This is a odd, but intriguing choice by NCSoft.  Forcing players to work together no matter what if they want to level means they can do crazier things with the quests.  Most memorable to me was the giant shadow demon I fought with about seven other people in a swamp area.  Before this event started, a few smaller events happened all over the zone where portals had to be closed to stop invasions (a la Rift).  When we closed the smaller portals, bigger ones opened in the swamp.  Closing those let out the boss demon.

It was a great deal of fun.  His pattern was fairly simple - let us wail on him a bit and then summon more portals we had to close to be able to attack him again - but things were crazy during it.  Attacks flying left and right, portals opening and people scrambling to close them, other players going down and having to run over and rez them.  It was simple but intense and was probably my favorite moment from the beta event.

Unfortunately, I can see a huge downside to this system.  Public quests are very dependent on other people.  What happens when everyone has leveled and no one is around to do these quests with you.  Like Warhammer Online, the middle tiers of the game would most likely be barren and extremely difficult to solo.  I'm not sure how NCSoft plans to balance this but I'm willing to give them a shot before I dismiss it out of hand.

Finally, let's talk a small bit about PvP.  Guild Wars the original was well-known for its "jump right in" PvP.  Anyone could make a max-level character with a good set of gear and go right into the fight.  Guild Wars 2 has a similar system but in a different way.  You create a normal character and jump into PvP whenever you want through a menu and are automatically scaled up to 80, the cap.  When you leave PvP, you go back to your original level.  It's a simple way to handle it but allows more people to try it out since they don't have to level a character to max level first.

The PvP combat itself felt good but wildly imbalanced at this point.  I flailed around a few games on my Elementalist and had a hard time with it because of all the skills.  However, some classes, particularly the melee ones, seemed to shred me much more quickly than the others.  I don't blame the game for being imbalanced now because it's in beta and should be fixed but it made it hard to get into the PvP.  It felt just as fluid as the PvE experience, with plenty of ledges to jump on and little hidden paths in each map.  The only available game type was a capture and hold points type game that worked well enough.  Next time, I might focus on PvP a little more to get more of an impression.

Well, I've rambled on long enough about my time with Guild Wars 2.  I had fun with the beta at times but also thought it dragged in many spots.  Maybe that was my class choice, maybe the XP values aren't final, I don't know.  I will certainly play more of it (since I've already paid for it!) but how much I play of it will depend on a few things.  Expect another update after the next beta!

Personal Attacks Instead of Product Reviews Are Not Alright

For those of you who haven't heard already, there is a man who claims that the idea for the Assassin's Creed games came from his book. He is suing Ubisoft for stealing his ideas and plans to seek both monetary reparations and the blocking of sales of Assassin's Creed 3.

I'm not here to talk about whether or not this man is telling the truth or how much imitation is too much when using a similar idea you heard elsewhere. I want to talk about what some gamers are doing in retaliation. The man's book, Link, is sold on Amazon and a bunch of gamers have taken it upon themselves to negatively review his book just on the grounds of not liking his lawsuit.

This is not the way to go. Reviews are in a very bad place right now, with controversies over too many similar ratings among websites or writers not being unbiased enough to review it. The rise of Metacritic as a tool for determining a game's success amongst publishers has made the power of our game reviews even more potentially damning. We shouldn't be giving this man's bad reviews just because we don't like something he is doing.

No matter the medium (movies, games, books, etc.), a review should be about the quality of the product itself. If potential customers keep seeing reviews treated as nothing but a place to trash the creators of the product and not about the thing they are supposed to be reviewing, who is going to take them seriously any more?

Dark Souls PC and Gamer Entitlement

Dark Souls was a surprising hit for From Software last year. The game that came before it, Demon's Souls, was well-liked but it just did okay in the sales department. Dark Souls was a much more well-received game and it almost seemed like everyone was playing it. I definitely enjoyed it as well - it ended up on my top 10 list for 2011. The one thing that people have been clamoring about for the game was a PC version, for those that didn't own a console but were intrigued.

Well, we are finally getting a PC version (whether they planned it all along or the petitions actually worked is hard to tell) and people are overjoyed. At least, they were until they learned that the game would include Games For Windows Live, the service that PC gamers love to hate. New petitions have shown up begging for the removal of GFWL and a lot of the positive comments about Dark Souls have again turned negative.

I can kind of understand this vitriol for GFWL. At times, I have had massive problems with the service, mostly with updating the client and getting stuck in impossible update loops, but for the most part, it is fairly unobtrusive. Some complaints state that Dark Souls' ever-online functions would be hindered by GFWL and I could certainly see that being the case at points.

However, I cannot get behind this petition. Its intents are in the right place but the anger around the whole thing is not. Gamers managed to convince From Software to put the time and effort into a PC port and they immediately complain when it isn't everything they wanted. GFWL is a horrible piece of crap sometimes but it isn't the end of the world; if the game did end up including it, it would only be a minor inconvenience.

It seems like this year is the year of gamer entitlement (an overused word but for good reason). If something isn't exactly to their liking, they yell and scream and pout until they get their way. Bioware caved with the Mass Effect 3 ending and I'm willing to bet From Software will cave too, unless the deal is already cemented.

On one hand, we are the consumers paying for these products and our say should matter. On the other, the consumer doesn't always understand what went into a decision or how game design actually works.

We are heading down a dark path towards a future where any little thing that fans of a game don't like will be patched or updated because that is what is expected of a developer. This future will be one where the only game developers are the ones that don't even bother to try something new because they don't want to risk being drawn and quartered by the online community.

Gamestop Forced to Notify Customers About Online Passes

Gamestop is the company we all love to hate. They are constantly at odds with one group or another and most gamers tend to ignore them if they can. The prices they give for trade-ins is abysmally low and they turn around and sell them for twice as much to willing consumers ready to spend $5 less. It's shady but completely legal.

One thing that won't be legal for Gamestop anymore is selling games with online passes without warning the consumer first in California. Most of your salespeople in a Gamestop won't tell you that that game you are saving $5 on will actually cost you $5 more when you have to buy an online pass.

I'm glad that someone is finally cracking down on this and I hope it spreads to more states soon. Many gamers are smart enough to not fall for such a trick but there are plenty of not-savvy consumers out there that do - and it needs to stop.

Persona 3: FES Only $10 on Playstation 3's Store

The Persona games have been around for awhile but they only really gained widespread popularity here with Persona 3 and Persona 4. These games have been popular enough to make Atlus a fairly loved company and allowed a game as strange as Catherine to actually sell really well. Remakes of each of them have come to the PSP, with P4 coming to the Vita later this year, and fan fervor over Persona 5 is rather intense.

I remember playing through Persona 4 first (thanks to the Endurance Run of the game found at Giant Bomb) and immediately wanting to track down 3. That was probably 2 years ago now and the only place I could manage to find a copy was on PlayAsia, paying way too much for shipping and having to wait almost three weeks to get it. It has been easier to find at various points in time but can still be pretty tricky to track down.

This is why I was so amazed at Atlus when they announced that Persona 3: FES would be releasing on the Playstation 3 store as a PS2 Classic download. I was even more amazed that the price would be only $10! For a game that amazing (and hard to track down), this is an amazing deal. While I stand by my assertion that Persona 3 Portable is a better game (even without all the running around town, the fact that you can control your whole party is way more crucial to enjoyment in that game), this is still a great way to get into the Persona series for a cheap price.