Archive for the ‘Random thoughts’ Category

I have 3 exams in all of my major Physics and Maths courses in 2 weeks which basically means no gaming and a lot of cramming.

I am actually quite good at that while staying in the library but I still remain a very lazy person by nature and you know what lazy people are really good at? Rationalizing their laziness and convincing themselves that not doing particular things will be for the greater good of humanity etc.

So, my bluetooth headphones’ battery died and I convinced myself in no time that having Foo Fighters blast my brains while studying for Calculus is important enough to go home. Of course I didn’t do any real studying the whole evening and decided to go to bed early in order to start fresh next morning. The problem is that I came to this wise decision just after I drinking a big mug of coffee…

The result is obvious – I am laying in bed, bestowing my wisdom on you, dear reader, only via the power of modern mobile technology, namely the iPhone 3GS.

Normally I tend to avoid popular things like the plague and, naturally, I hated the iPhone from its very first day. Just after 3GS was released and I tried to make some quick money by reselling one I got quickly converted and instead got rid of my WinMo SE Xperia X1.

This is one pretty amazing little piece of technology. I’m not going to start on that one because I could talk for hours about gadgets. The point is, I can write a complete post for Wordpress and then reformat it for GT while running Facebook and Skype with the Backgrounder and checking out some stuff in Safari…

So, what’s missing in the picture?

Gaming, of course! I admit, it’s fun to play some Minigore, Ragdoll Blast or the recently ported 80s arcade classic Dragon`s Lair on my iPhone for 10 minutes on the bus but I`m still disappointed in how far mobile gaming has gone since the original Nintendo Game Boy. Hell, the last major advancement for mobile gaming (guess which, abbreviated with 3 letters) came almost 5 years ago!  No offence, Sony, I have tried really hard since then to like your “portable console” but it simply offers an experience too inferior for me to call it “gaming”. I can`t see myself paying more than $5 for the top PSP titles. I`m not even going to start on the Nintendo DS, let`s just say that its sales figures are to me a great mystery not far behind the Events before the Big Bang happened.

But there is hope…

• The revolutionary one-chip-computer APX 2600 by nVidia has finally found its way into an actual device last year – the MS Zune HD!
• Nintendo has, too, made a contract with nVidia about using a simpler version in their next-gen DS which presumably will be announced this year.
• Palm is getting suddenly all enthusiastic about gaming on the webOS and will actually be attending this year`s Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco this March.

These are some of the most notable titles from the Palm App Catalog and more will be coming by EA, Gameloft, Glu Mobile and Laminar.

* “Need for Speed(TM) Undercover” (EA Mobile)
* “The Sims(TM) 3″ (EA Mobile)
* “MONOPOLY(TM)” (EA Mobile)
* “Asphalt 5: Elite Racing” (Gameloft)
* “Let’s Golf!” (Gameloft)
* “Glyder 2″ (Glu Mobile)
* “X-Plane” (Laminar Research)

Asphalt 5 is available on the iPhone, too, and is definitely one of the best looking titles on any mobile platform!

My take on the future of mobile gaming:

Even if Apple manage to squeeze a quad-core Intel i7 into their next-gen iPhone, and that little bugger would eat the battery of a 3GS in about 5 minutes according to my humble calculations, Gaming on a 3.5 inch screen is pretty pathetic in my opinion.

My personal hope for mobile gaming in the near future is in bigger but still portable machines like netbooks and Tablet PCs. This year`s CES (Consumer Electronics Show) showed a significant increase of interest for Tablet PCs like the HP Slate. Plus Apple`s rumored Tablet is supposed to be announced on 28. January. I guess  that whatever Apple release in a week, even if it cooks and does better blowjobs than your girlfriend, this new device simply doesn`t stand a chance to live up to the hype and tension. I still lay my best bet for mobile gaming on Tablets, Ultraportables and Netbooks! I would really like to get some opinions on that, very important for the whole Universe, matter.

I admit that half-way through I got a little more excited about the topic and I finished my post on my notebook but I really wrote more then a half on my phone. I think I can sleep now, good night.

Maybe “suck” is not the right word here but I still ask myself how come so many sequels don`t quite reach the quality of their predecessors?

I guess we`ve seen the scenario too many times – a company takes the time and effort to make an amazing game, the cash is more than good and in no time they suddenly want to dip their greedy little hands in the Leprechaun`s bag of gold again. The developer is being rushed to create a sequel as fast as possible and they usually take one of the following routes:

• change too little and serve us more of the same “dish” garnished with some uninspired story which the screenwriter made up in about 5 minutes while sitting on the pooper;
• change too much and create something that, if not outright bad, simply isn`t what the players expect from this particular game;

This is, of course, true for books and movies, too, but I would like to focus on the most interactive form of entertainment here.

Some examples from the Industry`s ever growing reserve of garbage:

My first ever encounter with a bad sequel was at the fragile age of 9. An innocent 3rd grader who goes to his friend`s house for some cookies and Nintendo-fun… After my classmate inserted the cartridge and assured me that I will be playing not just any sequel but Super Mario Bros, I still remember my reaction which was the closest thing to “WTF is that piece of crap” a kid is capable of. Well, I know kids are pretty extreme nowadays and I realize how absurdly it sounds when a young person speaks about “the good old times” but times really were different.

Now I know that Nintendo just re-skinned one of their other titles (Yume Kojo: Doki Doki Panic) and offered it as Mario 2 because they felt the real sequel (Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels) was beyond the skill level of their non-slanted-eyed brothers from the West. Now that seems like a good marketing move from Nintendo but back then you can imagine my disappointment.

Anyway, the most recent major disappointing sequel that I can think of right now is KOTOR II (“Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords”). Not that the game was bad or something like that, it simply did get anywhere near the greatness of its predecessor and that in itself was a disappointment for me. Some of my friends loved the game and coincidentally those guys haven`t played the first one.

I am sure that there are better examples of crappy sequels and new ones join the collection every year but I actually tend to avoid games that are obviously bad so I don`t get too much exposed to “low quality gaming”. Feel free to add as many as you can think of in the comments!

Now, is it so difficult to make a descent successor to your already good game?

I assume some steps in the right direction would be to:

1. research the opinion of the community about your previous game, I mean really take the time to read comments at least in the major gaming forums;
2. analyze the whole gathered data and figure out what elements the gamers LIKED and which were DISLIKED;
3. build your sequel with the focus layed on fixing the problematic areas and only MINOR tweaks of the good elements (“we know you’re creative and have plenty of new ideas but if something isn’t broken don’t fix it, please”);
4. think about what new gameplay mechanics can be added while taking into acount the gamers’ feedback on the old ones;
5. alpha-beta-and-gamma-test the s**t out of your new infant game WITH fans of your previous game as well and not only some middle-age-unemployed men who last time played Super Mario Bros. on the original NES;

What similar games were you disappointed from and what other steps do you think developers can undertake to make better sequels?

Next time I will write about the games that not only nail the sweet spot but surpass their predecessors and I have one particular title in mind. Can you guess which (hint: not yet released!)?

Over a week ago I started jotting down my thoughts and impressions of Call of Duty: MW 2 after completing the game in one frantic, sleepless night. It got a bit out of control though and so I have separated my initial post in 2 parts.

In the first part I explained what components make up a game`s “soul” and what makes some games stand out for me personally. Still I think it would come as a surprise for most people that I was rather disappointed by newest installment in the legendary Call of Duty franchise.

Maybe I should clarify here that I actually haven`t finished the first game, in fact I didn`t get past the 3rd mission. I thought the game was too simple and shallow in terms of features, you basically could run, jump, crouch, aim and shoot. This combined with the linearity of the levels was enough for me to abandon the game. I cannot explain why I felt Call of Duty 4 was supposed to be different, I`m perfectly OK with linear straight forward shooters normally.

Anyway, lets get back to the sequel

I started right away with the idea of playing through the whole campaign in one sitting. The game provided me with the minimal amount of background needed to start shooting at random people and I did it. The undercover mission with the civilian-massacre at the Zakhaev airport in Moscow didn`t make me hate me Makarov and I didn`t like the “good guys” more.

I even thought the story was too naive, in fact joking with the player in a way. So much for the believability of the game with such a moronic plot.

You take the role of Sergeant Gary “Roach” Sanderson from the elite counter-terrorism unit Task Force 141 and Private James Ramirez from the U.S. Army for most of the game. Around the end you get a chance to slip in the dirty pants of Captain “Soap” MacTavish (the main character from Modern Warfare 1).

In terms of action, I had a blast throughout the whole game. Especially the more open areas like in Rio de Janeiro offered amazingly action-packed combat. Although playing merely on “normal” difficulty, I was completely lost a couple of times among the sheds of the ghetto, running for my life with bullets flying all around. Those sections I enjoyed the most. I really liked the diversity of areas but I still think that the game doesn`t get the chance to bore you simply because of its short length.

So why am I disappointed since I had so much fun?

1. Well, I did not care for any of the characters. All I felt when “Roach” gets killed was positive surprise and respect for the development team for the well executed plot twist. The game didn`t get me at all to empathize with the character whose role I was taking. You cannot get a dramatic experience without complete immersion in the game and you can`t immerse yourself when you don`t feel anything for your character, be it love, disgust or at least some respect. Of couse as I`ve written last time, the whole emotional experience of a game depends on a lot of personal factors. For instance, an American might get more emotionally involved when he sees the burning suburbs of northeastern Virginia.

2. The other thing that kind of ruined my experience was that I didn`t feel in control. All too often I felt as if watching a movie or simply being dragged around by a bunch of people who spontaneously get new ideas to do random things without a major idea or a plan. This was the major deal-breaker for me.

Why do I compare CoD with Crysis?

Initially I wanted to bash Crysis, too, when I was thinking about what to write. The thing is, through the act of laying my thoughts down for the post, I have come to realize that what annoyed me the most about Modern Warfare 2 was the lack of sense of control (both of the character and of the events).

Exactly that element was very well executed in Crysis and its stand-alone expansion Crysis: Warhead. You got the ultimate feeling of being in control, you were the hunter in the woods and the dangerous thing hidden in the darkest shadow. The game was hyped with its state of the art visuals and realism but what made it fun for me was tactically combining the powers of the nano suit to defeat your enemies.

Of course, Crysis failed, too, in the other aspect where I criticized Call of Duty: you don`t get to emotionally live out the events with the characters. I didn`t give a rat`s ass about the characters in Crytek`s creation.

Eye candy or deeper meaning?

I think both titles tried to stake too much on “eye candy” and visually pleasing representation. That`s not a bad point at all!

Kudos to Infinity Ward for the HUMONGOUS amounts of detail in the levels of their game. That`s the thing that visually impressed me the most about CoD: MW2. You run through many tight areas and have barely seconds to gaze upon literally mountains of items and junk from the everyday life of people who really inhabit those places. Textures may not have the highest resolution but every single item is carefully “textured into actual existence”.

I don`t think there is anything to comment about Crysis graphics, 2,5 years after its release it still is the closest thing to “photo-realistic” game we have.

Three days ago I finally got my chance to play through the highly hyped sequel of Infinity Ward`s block-buster, sales-record-breaking Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. I completed the whole action-packed campaign in around 6 hours in a sleepless night before my flight back to Germany. I decided to go to bed at around 07:00 AM and while I layed there for some time, completely awake, I startet pondering upon a question that has previously come to bother me many times…

Do video games actually have souls?

Was there even at The Beginnig in the 8-bit Era of Atari 2600, something special about certain games, something beyond the circuit boards of their cartridges?

30 years later, what makes a disk bored with billions of nano-holes, spinning at a few thousand RPM in the drive of our console or PC move us emotionally and leave an imprint on our memories just like a darn good novel can?

I have realized that these questions are rather subjective and one cannot really get a straight answer as easily as it sounds. Just think about it!

The gaming industry has expanded in the last two decades to a multi-billion-dollar business ($44+ bn last year!). Players` experience has evolved from spending twenty minutes with friends at the arcades for some Donkey Kong to being completely engrossed by all senses in a living and breathing world with nearly photo-realistic visuals. Simply said, people are not as easily impressed today.

Can you sit down and really imagine how you would react if you were able to catch a glimpse of some Crysis or Killzone 2 footage exactly 10 years ago, when you were scoring frags in Unreal Tournament on your Playstation 2 or PC?

Can you find the differences? Please do click on the images, resolution does matter.

My point is that this is an ever changing medium where your experience depends not only upon time but on your environment, views on life, etc. In spite of all the globalization stuff people like to worry about, an American, for example, might have a totally different emotional experience playing CoD: MW2 than me, having grown up in post-communism Eastern Europe (no, people, for the last time: eastern Europe doesn`t mean war destroyed land inhabited by wild savages like in Fallout 3!)

So basically, a game has a soul for me when it does something more than simply entertain me for a couple of days and then collect dust on a shelf forever forgotten. It has to induce really strong feelings in me, be it happiness, anger, fear or even sadness. I think that highly atmospheric games achieve that without even having to bother with some deeper meaning and enlightening truths at the end.

The sadly buggy S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was exactly such a game for me, I really felt the sorrow of its desolate and dead world. Mafia was one of the first games to really impress me on the emotional front, it simply had it all: pretty amazing graphics for its time, engulfing and highly atmospheric world and a very dramatic story. It spanned some years of the main protagonist`s life. You got the chance to really get know him and the other characters, to see them evolve and when shit happened to them you could empathize.

I think that exactly empathy is the key to the dramatic experience! I personally won`t be moved by the death or misfortune of a main character if I don`t give a shit about him, would you?

We see that the “soul” that those really special and memorable titles poses is a complex thing with many ingredients:

• detailed and realistically created world;
• believable and interesting “3-dimensional” (meaning not flat!) characters;
• dramatic story;
• some kind of premise or meaning;

Of course there are other many important aspects like fluid and intuitive controls, interesting gameplay mechanics and so on, but I think these things contribute more to the fun side of the game and not to this thing that I call “soul”. So in my opinion, a game has to fulfill at least one or more of the above mentioned criteria in order to offer a really memorable experience to us players but of course not all are necessary.

I think that Fahrenheit (aka “Indigo Prophecy”) is the best of example of what I mean. When this game came out it already had annoyingly dated visuals at first glance. The thing is, this game engrossed me in such a way that I was completely lost, not paying attention to crappy models and low-res textures. I was part of its magical world, totally oblivious to the fact that I was already late for school the first time I started it. All this now I realize was mainly due to its unique and quite innovative at the time implementation of quick-time events, quite an interesting story and a character I really cared for.

What games affected you in similar ways? Which titles had such a big impact on you?

Now that I defined what I understand under a game`s “soul” I will explain what does this all have to do with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Crysis in the second part.

to be continued…