It’s time for another round of “Tom pointlessly makes snide comments about reviews.” Because it’s a Tuesday, and it isn’t even 3:00 yet. Let’s get this party started.

1up has its Assassin’s Creed 2 review up [link]. I’ll let this bad boy speak for itself:

As for the limitations of the control interface? Ubisoft’s workaround was to create a game that’s almost preposterously easy. Constant in-game text prompts guide your actions from start to finish, generously placed checkpoints soften the blow of screwups, and Ezio can build up his health and healing items to the point where the prospect of losing in combat is unthinkable. It’s definitely the right approach, since failure in AC2 so often seems in no real correlation to player error, but it makes for a game you play to have a bit of carefree escapism rather than a challenge. The tricky Assassin’s Tomb platforming missions are a welcome change of pace, albeit few in number.

Those Ubisoft cats are making games that are too easy again! They have the temerity to include “generously placed checkpoints to soften the blow of screwups.” The author then does an about-face, saying that this is the “right” approach, “but it makes for a game you play to have a bit of carefree escapism rather than a challenge.”

Hmm. Let’s get this out of the way quickly: using checkpoints to punish players is the stupidest thing I can think of to use as a game mechanic. Maybe quicksaves “ruin the moment” or something. Maybe they make players feel too safe or confidant. Guess what developers? I would rather that, than lose minutes and minutes of careful play to an errant sword slash or badly timed jump. I would rather lose some of your vaunted “atmosphere” and “challenge” so that I can play a game free from the threat of sudden and vicious reprisal. If you make me replay a whole chunk of your damn game because I died/didn’t protect the hostage/you didn’t explain your game well enough, you are not “implementing good game design” or something to that effect. You have ill-prepared me for your game, and have decided to (as punishment, plain and simple, punishment designed to “challenge” me) reward my time and effort spent in your world with a slap in the face and the destruction of my progress.

When you take time I have invested and make it meaningless, it pisses me off. Games that are designed around intense, comprehensible difficulty and complicated, well-explained systems can make this kind of punishment part of their aesthetic, part of their feel. Weirdly, it feels right to die and start over weaker in Demon’s Souls, Left 4 Dead, or even in some of the more traditional Survival Horror games. These are games about death and fear. In a game like Uncharted, or Assassin’s Creed, or Red Faction Guerilla, it does no such thing. These games are not about instant, cruel death and a punishing world. They are about adventure, and fun, and outrageous feats of daring-do. They cease to be about these things when I am forced to replay 20 grueling minutes of tricky combat after A) I’m accidentally run over by my Rebel allies, or B) the camera gets stuck in a wall, or C) the game doesn’t inform me that I’m supposed to shoot the tiny silver supports holding the log piles together. Then, these excellent, fantastic (and fantastical) games become exercises in repetition and boredom. Dying and retrying do not equal “challenge,” or a “learning experience,” unless there are actually things being taught and learned. Death (and the deletion of progress) can be a worthwhile mechanic, but only in skilled hands, and only in worlds where such mechanics make sense.

So let me say this: when I’m playing a game that is essentially Grand Theft Italian Renaissance, and I am playing a guy stuck in a genetic time machine who is himself playing an Italian Noble Bad Boy Assassin Who Can Free Run Like Sebastien Foucan, I feel like the “carefree escapism” zone has already been fucking entered. Turn back, all ye who want “realistic” checkpoints.

I think this would be a good time to commend the games that take an admirable approach to death and the ways they deal with player “failure.” First off, I don’t think this is a bad time at all to link to Steve Gaynor’s “Play” article [link]. Game’s that take away from my pleasurable experience by punishing me are pretty bad at aiding me in my Play. Just a little thought.

Back to what I was saying. Far Cry 2, Prince of Persia, and Torchlight all take fun, interesting approaches to death. Torchlight, in a move that goes against years of Action RPG Loot Collecting tradition, gives you three options for respawn after death. You can respawn in camp for no penalty whatsoever, you can respawn at the beginning of the level for a small XP and money fee, or you can respawn instantly on the spot for a larger sum. While I don’t like dying in these kinds of games (I hate, hate, hate corps runs), I love that they let me pick from a variety of options. So that’s another point for the friendly, excellent Runic games. Good for them.

Prince of Persia (every time I mention that game on this blog, I resist the urge to cackle, as I inflict my love for it upon you, yet again!) features what is essentially a glorified, extremely forgiving checkpoint system. When you die during acrobatics, you return to the last solid platform your feet touched. Even at the game’s later, harder sections, this only results in a loss of a minute, maybe two, of play. I approve. While I feel like this approach is strengthened by its increasing integration with the game’s central plot and relationship, I won’t praise it too much. It is “just” a good quicksave feature that you can’t control.

Finally, we come Far Cry 2. In keeping with the game’s blend of gritty seriousness and peculiar, morally repugnant cast, your buddies will save you after you die, pulling you to safety and reviving you. I feel like this is a great mix of the Torchlight and Prince of Persia mechanics. It plops you right back in the action (which should always be what a game does, if possible), and it does it by reinforcing your connection to your buddies, and to the world around you. You start to respect those countless goons a lot more when they kill you and/or your buddy. And they don’t even make you replay the last battle… You can just keep on fighting! How terribly novel. It lets you forgive your buddies for talking like Mercenary versions of the Gilmore Girls.

Let’s finish this up with a snide, parting shot. It’s been that kind of day: if you want “preposterous,” 1up, try this one on for size: Assassin’s Creed 2 is the least preposterous open-world game I have yet to play, and it is precisely because, unlike GTA IV, Red Faction: Guerilla, Infamous, and the original Assassin’s Creed, it lets me play without much hindrance, and it doesn’t punish me for deciding to play that game in a less than Perfect Fashion. It is absolutely “preposterous” that this is the first game of this kind that has allowed me such unhindered, flowing, worry-free experiences. It’s just as preposterous that a company that encourages such fun, non-frustrating play is resoundingly censured for such design decisions.

[Forthcoming: a post on the press' discussion just how "brave" this second AC is]

No sooner had I made my way back to the arms dealer to mention his problem had been solved when he tells me another rival dealer had filled the fiery gap I left. Ukrainian, this time. Something about “inferior weapons.” The details were mostly irrelevant. My malaria was flaring up and I was tired. Promises of better selections of a few weapons and lack of sleep prompted me to agree.

As I made my way southwest from the dealer in search of my new target, I commandeered a small boat to travel by way of river to avoid the usual night-time patrols. After 4 kilometers, the river started moving away from my general path of travel. It was here that I found a quiet place to beach the boat and climb ashore amidst the dry grass and rocks. The plan was to leave the boat here, secluded, in hopes that I would be able to employ it again for my return trip.

That plan was cut very short, however, as I stumbled over the rocks as I was getting out and managed to fumble and drop a molotov cocktail. The bottle shattered on the jagged rocks, and the dry African grass provided quite the appropriate kindling for the fire. Primal survival instincts, rather than cooler logic, took over my sleep-deprived brain and had me running off into the plains away from the fire. In retrospect, the obvious solution would have been to get back into the boat and pull away from the shore, rather than allowing my escape means to burn along with half the damn Serengeti.

It was some small relief, though, the cover of darkness proved itself my ally in making my landward journey to the target. Patrol jeeps took no notice of me, even a scant 30 meters away from the dirt roads. In my walking to the pre-designated sniping spot on my map, I made a mental note to exercise more missions at night for the ease of which I was having in my travels.

Upon reaching my destination, a series of large boulders atop which I had a nice vantage point of the rival dealer’s delivery path, the sun started cresting the horizon to my left. Even better, I thought to myself. I have timed this perfectly to have darkness conceal my entry and the coming light will afford me a greater distance to engage the targets.

A much greater distance it was, as I could make out the convoy of delivery trucks approaching parallel to the train tracks near my position. This was shaping up to be a walk in the park, even with my self-sabotaged extraction plans. With high-explosive bolts in my crossbow, I hefted the weapon to my shoulder and prepared to take aim through the scope. It was then that I realized war has a nasty way of punishing the complacent.

My position was near perfect – a higher vantage point with the sun 45 degrees behind me to the left so as to illuminate my targets while making them blind by looking into the sun. It was also self-debilitating, as the rising sun cast a brutal glare into the glass of my scope. In raising the scope to within two inches of my eye, I was nearly blinded by the white refractions.

With the convoy quickly closing, as well as my window of opportunity, I knew I had no time to reposition myself. I laid prone on the rock and rested the crossbow on my canteen, holding and balancing it with my firing hand while trying to shade the sun from my scope with my left. The awkward position meant a quick reload (if there is such a thing with a crossbow) was out of the question. I brought the delivery truck into my sights and exhaled half a breath. I felt the subsequent recoil of my ingrained sniping method.

The initial blast of the high-explosive bolt confirmed my kill and mission success. The secondary, and much larger, explosion of the transported munitions took out the entirety of the remaining convoy, and sealed both my survival and escape.

I stood up and started making my way back to the arms dealer to retrieve my payments. But first, a long stay in a cheap hotel in town.

I walked out of Mike’s Bar in some little war-torn town in Africa and across the dirt “street” to the arms dealer. Walking around in the middle of a war with only two clips of ammo for my Avtomat-Kalashnikova 1947, or AK-47 as it’s commonly known, isn’t the brightest of ideas. Before I could even sit down at the terminal and order whatever instrument of destruction caught my fancy, the arms dealer in the shop asked me for assistance. Apparently a rival dealer was bringing in shipments of inferior AK-47s to the area. Equally apparent is the notion that competition may not be the healthiest of business practices in African nations besieged by conflict.

Before I could muster a half-hearted “no,” he sweetened the deal by promising to bring me better selections of pistols if I were to assist him in regaining his crown of the go-to dealer in the area.

Tracking the lumbering cargo truck wasn’t a problem. Even easier was finding a suitable ambush point hidden off the road, sheltered by a rock overhang. With bazooka in hand and dusk quickly concealing my position, I suitably dispatched both the truck and its escort jeep with mounted .50 cal machine gun. The smugness evaporated from my face as the other two escort jeeps, concealed from my view by that wonderous rock cropping, swarmed my position like wet hornets defending their recently destroyed nest.

In the heat of the moment, it was difficult to tell if they were more intent on extracting their retribution by gunning me down with the mounted 50-cals or simply running me down with the speeding jeeps. Back pedaling and tripping over the thick, dry grass and thorned bushes, I had no alternative but to unleash more hate with my bazooka. Granted, it was foolish to fire it off with targets in such close proximity (I felt the resulting heat and blast singe the hair off my face). But, trying to take the time to switch to my rifle or pistol would have taken more time and risk.

Surviving the jeeps, and the explosion from their demise, was only a hair easier than escaping the rampant brush fire I inadvertently created. The dry grass fueled the fire in a method that would make gasoline jealous. A quick retreat into someone’s barn a few hundred yards away, a five-minute breather to recover and a syringe of morphine bring a little stability back to my immediately chaotic world.

Rested and hidden for the moment, I consult my map and see a bus station that can take me back to the central town with a cease-fire. The station, about 1/2 mile away, should be an easy sprint under the cover of darkness. Nothing is easy in war, however.

Carving a careful path through the grass and underbrush, I come to a point 200 yards away from the station where I have to follow a dirt road next to a rock wall. As my war-torn luck would have it, I scared up a pair of zebras that startled me as much as I did them. I don’t know if it was the spur of movement or the fact that the zebras took my attention away from everything else. But, sure enough, a patrol jeep comes bearing down on me with guns blazing.

Thankfully I had my AK-47 in hand and took down the two occupants without demolishing the jeep, and a means to get to the bus station both quicker and safer.

I hadn’t settled into the seat of the bus for more than a mile before sleep overtook me.

There’s no shortage of wars in today’s world.

The horror of aggression, forced oppression, control and even genocide are an everyday occurence. It’s said there are enough guns in existence today to arm one out of every twelve people on the planet. What that means to me is the other eleven aren’t trying to steal my job. Yes, business is good for a digital mercenary.

The only problem is living long enough to enjoy retirement.

I have only been out of work for a week. Well, five “business days” — if you can call them that in my industry. Partly by choice, but mostly of necessity. I needed the break to transfer all my operations to my new laptop (see previous postings), and to take a small vacation from the constant barrage of gunfire aimed in my general vicinity. Yes, business is good.

News feeds of electronic conflicts are in no short supply, either. All week my cell phone has lit up with RSS feeds and emails. The Borderlands seems to be the newest hot spot for soldiers such as myself. No doubt the war is raging quite fiercely there, with veterans and greenies alike. I’m also confident there are enough “kids” there shooting their mouths more than their weaponry with access to the war there via 360 units. Not my cup of whiskey — I prefer to take aim at older, more sophisticated targets. Call me a snob, but I’d rather catch a bullet by someone that’s seen as many tours of duty as I than some young punk smacking bubble gum straight off his mum’s teet with a chip on his pre-pubescent shoulder and a lucky shot.

Other news feeds are pointing to a growing conflict in the Call of Duty armies — their second Modern Warfare war. I say “growing” lightly, as more soldiers have pre-enlisted there than any other conflict before. I will eventually enroll there, once my real-world cash flow stabilizes.

Until then, I’m eyeing an old turmoil in Africa to join. If you’re going to kill digital enemies, you may as well be somewhere gorgeous while you do it. And I hear Africa is nice this time of year, if you can avoid the malaria.

There is a new and much coveted title amongst the piles of games at UCHG HQ. A game so great that not only has it got Brad ending every phone call with “Solid copy on all. We are Oscar Mike!”; it has become his Game of the Year! Brad is away, but has managed to transmit a picture back from the front line -

Ladies and gentlemen, may we present Brad’s Game of the Year 2009

Operation Flashpoint 2 Dragon Rising

Now considering that Hitman Blood Money has been Brad’s game of the year for the past 3 years, Dragon Rising has got to be something pretty special to have swayed his narrow and violent mind!

Codemasters have gone all out with this game, taking all that was great about the original Flashpoint and inserting it neatly into everything that Far Cry 2 should have been. The end result is a gritty realistic tactical shooter that allows you to wage all kinds of war over a truly breathtaking open-world environment.

It really is a game of biblical proportions, and proudly proclaims to take the gamer as close to war as they’ll ever want to get! It will have you on the edge of your seat as you sneak past an enemy that greatly outnumbers you; it will place you on the verge of an adrenaline induced heart attack as you fight through villages as part of a large armoured force; and it will also make you shout at people from everyday life in the style of US Marine fire team leader!

One of the games major boner-inducing tools is the option to, when available, call in Fire Support! That’s right, you’re able to call in the big guns or order up an air strike, all at the click of a mouse, and it is nothing short of outstanding in every way. The only draw back is your enemy also has access to the heavy weapons and being mortared is an experience likely to make you wet yourself.

Operation Flashpoint 2 Dragon Rising has even retained the co-op mode that made its older brother so great. So when your done beating the hell out of the Chinese in the single player mode, and the blood has returned to your head, you can do it all again with your mates!

Pretty interesting, for a movie game.  The Kong parts, which I imagine were mandatory given the license, were outright not fun.  The fixed, “cinematic” camera angles looked good, from time to time, but hurt the gameplay, making it hard to judge the distance between characters, and leading to awkward, camera-relative directional movement control switches.

On the other hand, the on-foot segments were frequently a treat.  The decision to centre gameplay around environmental systems – fire, and the food chain – was not an obvious one, and I’m interested to know how it came about.  Also, going HUD-less (at least by default) seems quite forward thinking for a 2005 game, and complements the gameplay.  (Admittedly, I pretty quickly turned on the aiming reticule – pushing in the right stick to get iron-sights felt too awkward.)  The feeling of scrambling about, fighting for my life, and just barely making it, was at times as intense as in Dead Space and Resident Evil.  It’s heightened by playing, instead of a cypher like Isaac, a character who pants when he runs, and groans when he’s hurt, which helped me identify with the character far more than just being able to see him onscreen would have.  Having first-person controls, instead of the relative stiff, third-person ones in the more traditional survival-horror games was an extra perk, and shows that you can still have tense gameplay with a comparatively agile player-agent.  One last note about the game-play – having not everything being single-mindedly bent on killing you is a nice change, and I wish more games would incorporate it.

Not everything was rosy in the first-person segments, of course.  The level design tended to be very constricted and the colour palette was just too grey and oppressive, so the jungle never evoked any feelings of wonder and majesty that were called for.  And the music, while not inherently offensive, felt particularly repetitive.  That one music cue when you’re near death, in particular, I’ll be happy to never have to hear again.  (That being said, I like the choice of the extremely vision-impairing effect that happens in this state – it goes a long way to creating the tension in gameplay that I mentioned.)

While I’m not sure how much of a direct connection there is, it certainly feels like one of the antecedents of Far Cry 2, between the fire system, and the jungle environment, and the attempts at immersion in a first-person view.  In the end, while it’s not a great game, it is another good game from Ubisoft Montreal, and one that I’m glad I played.

With each consecutive hardware generation it takes time to achieve what was possible at the end of the previous generation. New hardware requires new software techniques and often a return to first principles. The initial move from sprite based to polygon based games saw a marked increase in the spatial complexity of environments but was accompanied by a dramatic decrease in the size and number of objects that could exist within those environments. This clearest example of this can be seen when comparing Doom and Quake, two games separated by three years and an entire dimension. It wouldn’t be until five years later that the release of Serious Sam saw a return to the sprawling environments and hundreds of enemies that Doom boasted.

Twenty years ago I was playing a game that allowed me to explore thousands of square miles of virtual terrain. I was driving snowmobiles down mountains in order to meet one of over thirty non-player characters each with their own personality and skills which I would hopefully convince them to use in the fight against the invading forces of General Masters. This was Midwinter, prequel to the game I still  consider my favourite game of all time, Midwinter II: Flames Of Freedom.

Since then, with each hardware generation, the scale of the environments in which I’ve been able to play has decreased. Only recently has the  trend started to reverse and I have been able to have a similar experience to that I had twenty years ago. Far Cry 2 is the nearest I’ve come to recapturing that experience of first playing Midwinter, yet even though Far Cry 2 shows a significant increase in graphical fidelity over Midwinter the range of options available to me, the possibility space of the game, feels reduced.

It would be extremely narrow minded of me to ignore the impact the increase in technology has had on my reaction to the game, or to underestimate how the subtle changes in available mechanics have altered the dynamics. Despite these advancements in both technology and design it’s still difficult to ignore the feeling that somehow I’m playing a version of the same game I played twenty years ago and that the core experience has changed little in that time.

Twenty years of technological advancement, several hardware generations all so I can have essentially the same experience available on my Atari ST. I can’t help but wonder if that time has really been put to the best use.

This is not the only example I can think of where a recent titles has felt like it could have been created years previously. Last year saw the release of Left 4 Dead, a major factor in its appeal is the ability to face off against hordes of zombies alongside three companions.  Four players together fighting off dozens of mindless enemies, it’s a fantasy that holds a lot of appeal. Yet that sense of four players against overwhelming odds, is an experience I can distinctly remember having eight years ago. Alongside three friends I faced down hundreds of enemies in the twisted ancient Egyptian setting of Serious Sam. The sheer number of enemies that game is able to thrown at the player is absurd, the final level is subtitled “Infinite Bodycount” and I honestly wonder how much of that is hyperbole.

The mechanics of Left 4 Dead could have been implemented seven years earlier in Serious Sam or even fifteen years earlier in Doom. The graphical fidelity of such an implementation would be much lower, but would the experience itself be that much different?

Of course it’s not only technology that has changed in that time. Those seven years have allowed artists, sound designers and level designers to hone their craft to the extent that even if Left 4 Dead or something similar had appeared earlier it would not possess the same level of craft. It takes time to learn and apply the techniques of filmic art direction and indirect training that make Left 4 Dead the holistic experience that it is.

This still doesn’t completely lessen the sensation that twenty years of technological advancement have done little for the actual design of games, and that is  a wasted opportunity. Commercial video games are approaching their fortieth anniversary and with the first few years of each hardware generation spent trying to recreate the experiences that were possible before it’s little wonder that it can feel like video games have had trouble growing up in that period.

Far Cry 2 – PC Far Cry 2 é a continuação de um dos jogos de tiro mais premiados de 2004, Far Cry. Desenvolvido originalmente pela Crytek, tanto a engine quanto as propriedades sobre o título foram adquiridos posteriormente pela distribuidora francesa Ubisoft. O fato é que esse título importante não foi esquecido. A plataforma de programação foi retrabalhada ao ponto de propiciar uma experiência satisfatória para atender às exigências daqueles que julgavam que uma engine de 2004 não conseguiria apresentar uma qualidade de última geração. As condições climáticas de Far Cry 2 variam constantemente durante a partida, fazendo com que o arranjo dos inimigos se dê de maneira diferente debaixo de chuva forte, céu nublado ou sob o sol forte. Existem 30 armas que podem apresentar defeitos caso um projétil as atinjam no meio do tiroteio, exigindo que o jogador se recolha e repare-as. A inteligência artifical aprende as táticas do jogador no decorrer da partida, de forma que em Far Cry 2 não existe fórmula pronta para a vitória ? cada ataque deve ser preparado de maneira única. 14 veículos permitem trafegar rapidamente por um cenário não-linear, que pode ser explorado da maneira que o jogador julgar mais adequada. Na versão para computadores, Far Cry 2 já usufrui da tecnologia DirectX 10 exclusiva para o Windows Vista. A versão 9 também é compatível com esse título, tudo a fim de aumentar a gama de jogadores que poderão reviver esse jogo que já é um clássico do gênero shooter.

Requerimentos Mínimo: Pentium 4 3.2 Ghz, Pentium D 2.66 Ghz, AMD Athlon 64 3500 ; 1 GB RAM; NVidia 6800 ou ATI X1650 com 256 MB; 12 GB de espaço em disco.

Recomendado: Intel Core 2 Duo Family, AMD 64 X2 5200 , AMD Phenom; 2 GB RAM; nVidia 8600 GTS, ATI X1900 com 512 MB.

Servidor: MEGAUPLOAD – Links: PARTE 1 - PARTE 2 - PARTE 3 - PARTE 4 - ON

Os links não funciona ? nos avise! baixehd@hotmail.com

Just a quick update to deal with some personal and site related things that I’ve not had a chance (been too lazy) to get around to until now.

Michael Abbott, of The Brainy Gamer, recently completed his Summer of Confabs, where he asked a number of developers, bloggers and academics to participate in a series of podcasts focusing on a specific topic that they felt has had the most impact this year. I highly recommend listening to them all, and as he was kind enough to invite me you can find my disjointed ramblings on the third podcast.

In a sort of quid pro quo arrangement Ben Abraham who I recently interviewed regarding his Perma-death Far Cry 2 experiment has also interviewed me. I can assure your that reading it will leave you will a desire to never listen to a word I say again, which in some ways might be for the best…

Finally I’ve started to update my Portfolio page with additional material, the most recent additions are a number of creative writing samples.

Love potentially a little emo, the clue’s in the title. I’ve included this as a short example of my ability to deal with a topic rarely dealt with in games.

The Argument a dialogue heavy short story focusing around a specific argument between a heterosexual couple, again focusing on a topic not usually handled in games.

A Date with Fortune, this is a short story set in the Honorverse low on dialogue the focus is on motivations and character development, building to an action sequences. I suppose some would call it fan fiction though the concept and all the characters are entirely of my own creation.

More material should be appearing there over the coming weeks, as I finally sort out what I’m actually going to use that part of this site for; blatant self promotion I believe is the order of the day.

How do you relieve stress? My personal stress level went through the roof last week, and so on Saturday night I turned to my go-to stress reliever of choice: video games. Specifically: shooters. Unfortunately, Saturday’s game session managed to increase my stress for a while.

I had the first part of the evening to myself; my kids were downstairs with a family friend, so I had a few hours to hide upstairs and play games on my PS3. My current stack of unplayed PS3 games is largely comprised of games from 2008’s holiday season that I never got around to finishing, or, in some cases, even trying. I settled down to play Ubisoft’s Far Cry 2.

Far Cry 2 is a game that I dearly want to like. While open world sandbox games are more and more common this generation, FC2 is one of the few such games in the first person shooter genre. Most FPS games are highly structured level based games; you complete the game one level at a time, and while there may be multiple routes through a level, it’s all generally a linear affair. By adopting the “go anywhere, do anything” mantra of the sandbox game, FC2 wins major points for originality.

It’s also set in Africa, in a country torn by civil war, and is one of a recent spate of games that plays around with lighting as a gameplay mechanic. Like Resident Evil 5, when you’re in sunlight, you can’t see anything in shadow, and transitions from light to dark result in momentary blindness as you wait for your eyes to adjust. In RE5, this effect is not very noticeable, but in FC2, it’s huge and nearly omnipresent – you can’t walk ten feet without going through a lighting transition. It turns out that this is not so much fun.

It’s not fun because it results in far too many moments when your character is essentially blinded. Great as an infrequent gimmick, annoying when it happens all the time, and infuriating when it results in your death, which happened all too many times. Far too many times I found myself in situations where I was being shot at by multiple assailants that I could not see. I would spin wildly, hopelessly looking for any sign of the attacker. Once, I was in sunlight, 50 feet away from any dark areas or hiding places, and someone was shooting me with a shotgun (not the general weapon of choice for 50+ foot engagements!).

After too many of these fights – too many deaths to unseen adversaries, too many deaths after other of the game’s nods to realism (jammed guns, malaria attacks) kicked in at the wrong time – I started to question whether I even liked playing first person shooters. Here was a game I wanted to explore, and yet I could not do so, as I failed at every combat situation. The mere idea of playing through twelve or more hours of this combat filled me with dread.

And so I quit the game.  This is the second Ubisoft holiday 08 title which I’ve decided to put aside and never play again. The first was Prince of Persia, which I really did quite like, but which has the ignoble distinction of being the only game to give me motion sickness. (I generally enjoy Ubisoft’s games – the next Assassin’s Creed and Splinter Cell games are very high on my must-buy list.)

After the kids went to bed, I went down to start up my Xbox 360, wondering, as I mentioned, whether I could even play FPS games, or even liked them. After all, a couple of interesting titles in October and November are FPS, and if I’d lost the touch or the taste for them, that was going to be deeply disappointing.

And so, with some trepidation, I dived back into Bungie’s Halo 3: ODST. Once wrapped securely into its loving embrace, all my concerns melted away. ODST does not really innovate at anything. But what it does, it does extremely, comfortingly well. It gives you a gun (a wide variety of them, actually), puts some nasty aliens in front of you, and then asks you to kill them. I finished the game’s campaign mode last night, and never once thought of rage-quitting in frustration. The combat, organized around some fairly magnificent set-pieces, was challenging but fair. All enemies could be located; the only question was whether or not you could kill them before they killed you. The emphasis, in other words, properly placed on the act of combat.

Did I die a lot? Yes. Loads of times. Were the elements of the conflict that caused my death firmly in my control? Yes. And so I played, and played, and my stress evaporated for a little while.

There are some very interesting shooters upcoming, as I mentioned: Borderlands and Modern Warfare 2, for a start. And more than a few of my favorite genre, third person action games. But for now, it’s Halloween-month, and I have two horror games to finish. Dead Space gave me the willies so badly last year that I never finished it, something I plan to remedy this week. Siren: Blood Curse offered up episodic horror delights last year, and is yet another game I bought but didn’t play. I will fix that as well. It takes place in a remote Japanese forest, and if you’ve seen the forest explored by the team on SyFy’s Destination Truth, then you’ll have an idea of just how scary a setting that can be.

(Teil 3)

Ich habe wieder ein paar Kleinigkeiten installiert. Nachdem ich am neuen Paint fast verzweifelt bin (Hübsche “Ribbons”  aber leider finde ich nichts mehr) habe ich das gute alte Paint.net installiert.  Kein Problem, geht einwandfrei. Und sieht aus und funktioniert wie immer .

Das Gleiche mit Winamp, kein Problem. Winamp brauche ich z.B. für die praktische Auto-Tag Funktion und Internet-Radio.

Dann wurde es schon schwieriger: Daemon-Tools. Die Installation der aktuellen Lite-Version 4.304 kommentierte Windows sofort mit einer Warnmeldung wegen bekannter Kompatibilitätsproblemen. Nach etwas googlen fand ich SPTD 1.60 den man angeblich installieren sollte, was ich auch tat. Win-7 meckerte die DT Installation immernoch an aber es liess sich installieren. Bisher noch kein Problem festgestellt bis auf die Warnmeldung von Windows beim Start. Trotzdem warte ich auf ein Update, das in ein paar Wochen wenn Windows 7 offiziell raus ist, hoffentlich kommt.

Danach habe ich ein paar Spiele installiert. Die Vorgehensweise ist dabei immer die Gleiche. :

1. Spiel installieren + Updates machen (wegen eventueller Registry-Einträge wegen der Version).
2. Installationsverzeichnis umbenennen (kann später gelöscht werden wenn alles geht) und den gesicherten Ordner aus Vista statt dessen einfügen. Der Schritt ist vermutlich nicht immer notwendig aber manche Spiele speichern auch noch irgendwas im eigenen Verzeichnis oder es sind diverse Mods vorhanden die man behalten möchte.
3. Savegames Verzeichnis auf der Vista Platte suchen und in Windows 7 einfügen, ggf Dateien ersetzen.

Die Einstellungs- und Savegame-Dateien liegen in folgenden Verzeichnissen:

Far Cry 2 c:\Users\xxxx\Documents\My Games\  ;  c:\Users\xxxx\AppData\Local\My Games\Far Cry 2\

Assassin’s Creed c:\Users\xxxx\AppData\Roaming\Ubisoft\Assassin’s Creed\ ;  c:\ProgramData\Ubisoft\Assassin’s Creed\

Sims 3 c:\Users\xxxx\Documents\Electronic Arts\Die Sims 3\

(Fortsetzung folgt)

Avevo iniziato a giocare a Far Cry 2 (su pc) all’inizio del 2009. Da subito mi era sembrato un gran gioco: ambientazione affascinante e realistica, missioni impegnative e varie, vastissima scelta di armi, storia interessante, grafica eccellente. Insomma tutti gli ingredienti per un gran bel gioco.

Dopo pochi giorni però lo avevo accantonato, avevo, infatti, dato priorità a Fallout 3 ed ho finito per dimenticarmi di aver installato sul pc questo gioco; fino a quando pochi giorni fa, in preda ad una terribile crisi di astinenza videoludica, dovuta alla terribile penuria estiva e post-estiva di videogiochi interessanti, ho deciso di tornare a cimentarmi con il gioco di Ubisoft.

All’inizio le sensazioni sono state le stesse che ricordavo: questo è un gran gioco! Poi però più sono andato avanti a giocare più mi sono ritrovato ad odiarlo parzialmente.

Perché, perché, perché non esiste un sistema più veloce per passare da una parte all’altra della mappa? Anche in GTA IV ci sono arrivati e hanno messo la funzione taxi per muoversi velocemente da una parte all’altra della città!

Perché, perché e ancora perché ogni volta che libero un posto di guardia, poco dopo questo si ripopola come se nulla fosse??

Sono piccole cose forse, ma credo che facciano la differenza tra un bel gioco e un gran gioco.

L’esperienza del videogiocatore deve essere gratificante e non frustrante, quando mai lo capiranno??

A large part of what fascinates me about games is the subjective nature of the play experience itself, the notion that no two people will have the same experience even within a heavily scripted game. Recently Australian blogger Ben Abraham has been gaining attention for his decision to partake in an “iron man” play through of Far Cry 2, no reloading when his character dies the game is over. The manner in which this player imposed boundary altered his play experience is something I’m particularly interested in. Fortunately Ben was kind enough to answer some questions I had:

1. In your own words, what prompted your decisions to play Far Cry 2 in this fashion?

I think the initial desire was to impose a new way of playing Far Cry 2 that would lead to more of those fun moments where it feels like something is really hanging in the balance – where the outcome is hinged upon my performance. I thought that perhaps by imposing a limit of a single life, it would add more drama and weight to my actions and performance in the game and ultimately provide me with a more satisfying experience.

In that sense it was for entirely selfish, experiential reasons – I wanted to enjoy and continue enjoying Far Cry 2 having played it a lot already.

2. Having completed Far Cry 2 previously, can you describe some of the ways in which permadeath changed the way you approach the game? Have you noticed yourself doing things differently when you played it under normal conditions?

I guess the approach I took reflected my desire to have a fun experience, and so I took it very seriously and played it quite safe at first. When the initial sense of tension and danger wore off I experimented a bit more, deliberately courted danger a little bit. When playing normally however I probably strode right up to danger and punched it in the face, trusting luck and skill to get me by, but by prioritizing my survival I became much more reserved and cautious. Kinda boring, really.

Practical things that changed how I played included picking safe options, and utilizing all the points on my “How To Kill People More Effectively” strategy. Basically any time there was a dangerous option and a boring safe option, I took the safe one.

3. Do you think this type of play through is something you could imagine doing for a game you had never played before?

I don’t think so. Far Cry 2 is quite forgiving of your mistakes in the sense that if you ‘die’ with a rescue buddy around, you get a second chance. That’s one of the reasons I thought it would be feasible for an ordinary non-uber player like myself to complete Far Cry 2 without ever dying.

4. Is there something specific to the design of Far Cry 2 that makes it more suitable to this type of play through than other games? Do you think Far Cry 2 was a good choice for what you were intending to do, and if so why?

I think the buddy rescue system is one of the best ways of dealing with the problem of lost and wasted game-time that you get by forcing players to reload and try parts of a game again – and I do think that it is a loss. Jesper Juul talks about ‘time lost’ as a punishment in a talk from GDC earlier this year.

5. You have been describing the events that took place from a first person perspective (With a notable exception), and as a connected narrative, is there an explicit reason for this approach to the presentation of your experience?

Part of the attraction to the “one life” approach was that it made everything in the game more meaningful to the story – that is, never ever was an action ‘wasted’ because I died and had to start over. I had also hoped that it would add weight to every action, even insignificant ones, but as it turns out, it’s not quite that straightforward.

I wanted to write from a first person perspective because of a couple of reasons – firstly I was (and still am) increasingly bored with straight essay style writing about games. That’s not to say that I don’t appreciate the good ones, and they’ll certainly always have their place, but more and more I’m finding myself attracted to the kind of games criticism that involves some application of creativity of expression. I’m a bit of a desperate fan of Kieron Gillen’s somewhat controversial New Games Journalism style of writing because it doesn’t just give permission to a writer to be creative, it demands it. I think a lot of people mis-read it back in the day and took it as meaning that was the only way you were meant to write about games, but it’s not meant to be so constrictive – it’s just another tool in the critic’s toolbox.

I also thought that the first person perspective would let me describe how I was feeling while playing it, and as the whole point of the exercise was to change the experience, keep it new and interesting, that seemed the logical choice.

6. The concept of adding additional rules to a game is not a new one: “Iron Man” runs, “Speed Runs”, various approaches have been adopted when playing Thief: The Dark Project: “Ghosting” etc. From your own perspective why do you feel your play through has garnered so much attention? How much of it do you feel is because of the way your have presented your experience? Do you feel people are more interested in the story of your play through, or the concept of what you are doing itself?

I think Kieron Gillen when he linked to the story in RPS’ Sunday Papers hit the nail on the head when he said he wished he’d thought of it. Like you say, self imposing additional rules and constraints isn’t new, but the idea of writing about them is still not done particularly often, and almost never with a view to how it changes the experience.

So in that respect I think it’s the concept that made people sit up and take notice. Whether they stuck around and enjoyed the story, I can’t be sure, but if it’s any indication comments have dropped off slightly in the later episodes while pageviews are still holding steady at somewhere around 100 a day.

When thinking about whether people are explicitly interested in the story, the question I’ve got to ask is “What really is the permanent death story?” Is it the experience that I, the player, have in the game? Or is it the story I construct with blog posts and pictures as it’s received by readers of the blog (and eventually, in the PDF novelization)? From my vantage point as both player and reader of the story, I know that there are a lot of things that happened in the game that get cut from the written story because they either make it too long and boring, compromising the quality of the narrative, or they’re nearly impossible to convey to a reader.

How does one write about the feeling of boating down a river under the cover of darkness as the moon slides behind trees? How do you convince a reader that you really were imagining the feel of the breeze in your face, and the feel of being immersed in this environment? Does the reader even care whether or not I was engaged at this particular point or not? How do I convince a reader that the idea of a soldier who I already shot, but who was still staggering around, was going to burn to death mildly horrified me? The fact that it horrified me in a videogame at all is still amazing to me because videogames suck at making me feel anything other than a desire to collect shit or blow stuff up.

I think it’s in trying to convey these sorts of experiences and personal reactions that I draw the most inspiration from NGJ. Not that Permanent Death is even an NGJ piece, it’s not quite personal enough and it often borders on the edge of being Fan Fiction, so I guess there’s that.

7. Permanence is an unusual term to use when discussing any video game, after all isn’t every decision you make permanent? You can return, change your actions and play out the consequences of that alerted decision but that doesn’t remove the fact that at some point you did make that initial decision?

When writing my thesis last year, I downloaded a single-life speed run of Halo 2 completed on Legendary difficulty. I watched it religiously – I watched all two and a half hours of it through more than once. I think what was so attractive and mesmerising about it was that it seemed to me like this is how Halo 2 was meant to be played.

In terms of making sense within the overarching narrative and fiction, this was how Master Chief would have done it. Any time you die, you mess up and you fail to live up to the chief’s standard, so you have to repeat a section until you get it right. Why do we not see the inherent weirdness in this? I think we have this ingrained, rote-learned blindness to the fundamental strangeness of videogame narratives. We do not experience the real world in anything remotely like the way we experience the events in a videogame.

Obviously, there are lots of good reasons for some of this – if it weren’t possible to fail then where would the challenge in the game come from? I think there are some great alternatives just waiting to be discovered, but so far all we do boils down to retconning the story on-the-fly. Ideally, every game would be perfectly set at that optimum level of difficulty that made it just hard enough to stay interesting, but not hard enough that you ever die and have to repeat any sections. I think most games err on the side of un-boring and go for just a little too hard. Which is fine, but it’s hardly a perfect system.

8. In reference to the previous question, would the decision to play Far Cry 2 again after this play through mitigate the decisions you made? Is that your intent, to never play Far Cry 2 again, and therefore make this your definitive play through?

I definitely intend to play Far Cry 2 again in the future, so no, the series of events in-game that became ‘Permanent Death’ are in no way meant to be the (or even just my) definitive Far Cry 2 story-experience. For starters, they are a fantastically more boring sequence of events than I have had in even other games of Far Cry 2, so it would be doing the game a disservice to leave it at that.

I don’t think playing again would diminish the permadeath story, either. There will always be the written record that roughly equates to that in-game series of events so I don’t think it would be impacted by playing again – or even by someone else attempting the same (or similar) thing.

9. How do you feel about the fact that there is no way to prove you have actually done anything you’ve described? Have you ever considered that there is no way in which the game can confirm that you in fact have not died? Is there such a means of recording this information that I have missed?

It’s interesting, I’ve been thinking recently about what I would do if I died right before the end of the game in a brain-meltingly stupid way, by shooting myself in the face with a grenade launcher, for example. If I was tantalisingly close to the end and messed up I know I would be tempted to lie about it and just keep playing as if nothing happened – after all how would anyone know? As far as the written Permadeath story goes, it’s whatever I say it is, right?

I guess there is no way of proving that I really did all the things I said I did, except to take me at my word. I don’t know if I’d want to there to be a way of proving what I said I did was what really happened, either. I wonder if it would limit the things I could do with the written story – as in, I couldn’t get away with as much ‘sexing up’ of the story as I have so far. I’ll freely admit that I’ve added in all sorts of stuff to make the written story more readable – like adding in some imaginary reasons for why I did the things I did in game.

It’s quite boring to just say “And then I shot some dude because it feels good to click my mouse and have the little man fall over” so I often invent a motivation for the character. I think it comes back to the question of ‘What is the Permanent Death story?’, because if you’re being truly honest, there aren’t any reasons for why we do a lot of what we do in games. Why do we shoot enemy soldiers? Because we’re told we should? Are we even explicitly told that most of the time? It’s certainly not because we are afraid of dying ourselves, as would be the case in a real combat situation. So is it fair game to pretend that’s why I was doing it in the game? I think for the sake of making an interesting written story, it is.

10. Do you think if there was an Achievement for completing the game without dying (Well until the very end), this is something you would have attempted for no other reason that obtaining that Achievement? What about if there was a scoreboard recording the total play time before death, would you be interested in trying to beat the “scores” of others?

I think if there were an achievement for it I wouldn’t need to do the Permanent Death ‘experiment’/story. I’m not very interested in achievements so I may have never bothered with it, but then I may have just to get some additional replay out of the game. Who’s to say?

Actually, I take that first bit back – I may still have done the permadeath play through because it’s important to note that anyone who finishes the game already does never die – because any “narrative branch” of the story that leads to the players death, gets pruned off when they die. Your loading the game eliminates the series of events between that save and your previous death from the Far Cry 2 history and your character goes on none-the-wiser. You may know and remember, but as far as the story is concerned, no one else does because it never happened. Now, the difference with permanent death is that there are no pruned branches.

I’m not really a competitive player, so scoreboards hold next to no interest for me. If you want to play Left 4 Dead with me though, I totally love cooperation and I daresay I work harder at a game when it’s for a cooperative goal than when it’s for a competitive reason.

11. Personally where do you fall on the ludology vs. narratology debate? How do you feel your personal opinions have influenced the decisions you have made during your play through?

I think the ludology/narratology debate is worn out and as Ian Bogost says in his DiGRA keynote, even the question of whether it’s one or the other presupposes a formalist approach to the ontology of games. Realistically, my opinions on whether games are play versus narrative only really matters when thinking about games as stories or games as playgrounds and any other time of the day I’m quite happy to let games be whatever they want to be.

Bogost characterises the Ludology/Naratology debate as “a formalist rather than functionalist approach to the study of games” and by arguing over what games are we end up ignoring what games mean already.

12. A number of other people joined you in your permadeath play through at the start, I believe none of them are still playing having already died. Do you think there is anything about the way you have approached your play through that has helped you to stay alive?

I think it’s more sheer bloody-mindedness that’s kept me going. Michel McBride got bored and quit, and if you’re an experienced player it’s not that hard to stay alive on normal. A reader who started up his own blog was playing along too, but on the hardest difficulty and he didn’t last very long. For me, it’s turned into an endurance test, rather than a skill test.

I recently began playing Diablo 2 again in preparation for the impending release of the much anticipated Diablo 3.  To me the Diablo games have always been about efficiency.  The goal is to kill everything on the screen at all times by clicking on enemies repeatedly.  I don’t feel as if I’m doing well in the game unless enemies take only one or two clicks to die.  I always play a straightforward melee class.  This works out pretty well early on while the enemies are fairly weak, but eventually their life bars get longer, their defenses become tougher, and I start missing because my attack rating isn’t high enough.  It is about this point in the game that the mana sucking, squishy spell casters who can nuke the whole screen come into their own, and it becomes impossible to simply wade into a giant mob of enemies with my melee powerhouse without drinking health potions like some kind of liquid popcorn.

This has always bothered me.  The endgame for the melee fighters is basically hit and run due to the number of enemies on the screen at one time.  Getting surrounded is inadvisable.  In short playing the melee fighter becomes inefficient compared to the nuke casters.

Early on in Diablo it is the other way around.  The casters don’t have enough mana to power their spells for extended period of time, and either have to gulp potions, or simply wait around for it to recharge.  They have to use mana draining fireballs to kill a skeleton while a melee fighter can simply whack it with a sword, and sometimes they miss, wasting mana.  If a fighter misses the player just keeps clicking.

I invariably become bored with Diablo games around the point my fighter can’t carve a path through enemies without constantly retreating, gulping potions, or teleporting back to town for a free heal.  If there was any ingenuity involved in alleviating these problems I would gladly continue playing, but I can only click like a madman, praying my health holds out for so long before I find something else to play.

I become dissatisfied with the efficiency of the tools at my disposal, and I stop playing.  I’m not questioning the game design of Diablo.  Blizzard is renowned for their tight design.  It simply stops being the game I want to play.

I frequently discover I am not playing games as the designers intended.  Oblivion is a good example.  Oblivion has so many skill sets and such an open world it offers myriad possibilities for play, but I always gravitate towards a stealth, ranged character in an attempt to emulate the game play of Thief: the Dark Project.  I played a Khajit (cat person) for their ability to see in the dark, which was an absolute boon to my stealthy dungeon crawling, but I discovered this ability was a timed spell rather than a natural ability.  This made no sense to me.  It also frequently occurred that though I put an arrow right into an enemy’s head they would turn around and run at me with an angry yell, which ruined my fun.  Clearly stealth wasn’t very efficient in Oblivion.  Fortunately other people felt the same way, and there were many mods I downloaded, and installed to create the game I wanted to play from Oblivion.

When it came time for Fallout 3 I was faced with same dilemma, or so it seemed.  Coming from the same company, and set in an open world with many options for how to play Fallout 3 is remarkably similar to Oblivion in all respects except setting, but the stealth is much more viable.  I had played Oblivion on the PC, and could mod it to my heart’s content, but I bought Fallout 3 for the Xbox 360 where no mods exist.  I had to play the game as it was intended.  Thankfully the combination of rifles rather than bows, and a seemingly more capable stealth system meant I could sneak through entire complexes making head shots, and not alerting everyone with a mile radius to my presence.

A game like Fallout 3 has so many options, however, I felt the need to play it through once more with a different skill set.  The problem is I had already discovered the most efficient way to play.  Shooting unaware enemies is much easier than brawling with them.  Using cumbersome weapons like rocket launchers that have scarce ammo is more bother than using a rifle. Being able to pick locks was much more useful than the ability to hack computers, or use high charisma to steer conversations in my favor.  There were many possibilities in Fallout 3, but most of them were more trouble than they were worth.

From a design standpoint the complication of including so many ways for the game to be played is making sure each path is equally viable.

I play Far Cry 2 as a stealth shooter.  I carefully stalk my enemies, taking them out with silenced weapons, or create distractions on the far side of camps with explosives.  It is highly enjoyable, but I adapted this style of play because rushing in guns blazing doesn’t work very well.  It is clear from the lack of a robust stealth system this is not meant to be the focus of the game.  There is no way to tell if someone can see you aside from whether or not they are shooting at you.  Once again I found this to be the most efficient way to play the game, but it made me wonder why all the inefficient ways are included.  To an extent open world games (like Fallout 3, Oblivion, and Far Cry 2) are about creating your own experience within the game world.  The player is given tools, and objectives, and left to figure out the best way to proceed, but my point is there should be more balance.  If there is a best way to do something why not make the game about that?  Otherwise it is like having the freedom to do things incorrectly.

I’m a big fan of open worlds, and multiple options to get from point A to point B, but I feel it can be done better, and some options are thrown in by default without the effects they have on other aspects of the game play being taken into account.

Na seção GAME ON desse mês temos o jogo Far Cry 2, First Person Shooter lançado em outubro de 2008. Na história, você é um mercenário enviado para assassinar o principal fornecedor de armas das duas facções rivais (UFLL e APR), mas tem seus planos alterados ao chegar ao país, sendo infectado com malária e tendo todas as suas armas e documentos perdidos logo na chegada ao hotel. E assim, sua “nova” aventura começa.

[PRÓS]

• Incrível quantidade de opções para se executar uma missão no estilo “sandbox”;
• Arsenal variado e possibilidade de upgrades para armas, equipamentos e skills;
• Jogo extenso, com mais de 30 horas de Gameplay;
• Inteligência artificial notável;
• Realismo retratado na natureza e suas respostas à efeitos naturais – fogo, chuva, vento – ou não naturais – tiros e explosões;
• 50km² – É muito chão representando a paisagem africana.

[CONTRAS]

• Repetição na variedade das missões;
• 50km² – Dirigir por 50 km² depois de um tempo cansa;
• A história que serve de pano de fundo é bem fraca e pouco desenvolvida.

[INTRO] – Logo na abertura do jogo você já tem uma noção da profundidade do jogo. Ambientado em algum país anônimo da África, toda a natureza apresenta interações com o jogador, e a sensação de imersão no game é altíssima.

Percebe-se algo logo de cara: mercenários tomam conta de tudo, não há polícia, poder público ou qualquer outro tipo de organização que tente manter a ordem na região. Eu até levei um tempo para me acostumar com a ordem “mexeu, atire” que o jogo impõe, mas você logo se habitua à essa regra. Até porque senão, você dança.

[GAMEPLAY] – No primeiro momento em que você toma o controle do seu mercenário, você já está sem seus documentos, suas armas, suas anotações e seu dinheiro, perdido em um hotel da região, com febre devido à malária, e no meio de um cerco de uma milícia contra a outra. E não, não existe outra saída a não ser capturado.

E então a sua jornada começa, e a única maneira de cumprir com os seus objetivos é infiltrando-se em uma das facções (ou nas duas), visto que ambas negociam com o seu “alvo”. No decorrer das missões você encontra lojas de armas, safehouses, maletas de diamantes, e vários checkpoints dos mercenários contendo munição, suprimentos médicos, explosivos e inflamáveis para repor o seu estoque. E ainda tem os “buddies”, que são outros mercenários em missões paralelas que você encontra pelo caminho, e podem te oferecer tanto ajuda nas horas de sufoco quanto alternativas na hora de completar as missões das facções. É uma pena que não haja um desenvolvimento na história dos seus parceiros mercenários, mas isso é fácil de saber o porquê… E eu não vou contar!

Outro ponto interessante do jogo é como quase todos os aspectos são baseados em troca de favores: quer comprar armas novas, diferentes? O dono da loja de armas terá uma missão para que o carregamento de uma loja rival seja destruído. A Malária está atacando? Leve os passaportes para os refugiados rebeldes e eles te entregarão novos comprimidos.

Aliás, a malária será uma constante preocupação no seu planejamento. Não sei se existe uma rotina para a doença atacar, mas você precisa ter noção de quantos comprimidos ainda tem antes de embarcar em mais uma missão. Como saber disso? Escute o barulho da caixa de comprimidos antes de tomar um deles. Sério, esse é o nível de realismo do jogo. No caso da malária atacar, a sua visão ficará amarelada, seus reflexos mais lentos, e caso não tome o seu remédio, você desmaia, sua missão falha, e você acorda no centro médico no distrito principal da cidade em que estiver.

E como se trata de uma paisagem extensa, existem vários tipos de veículos para a sua escolha: jipes, caminhões, swamp boats, quadriciclos, compactos e mini-buggys.. A maioria dos jipes vem com 1 dos 3 tipos de metralhadoras acoplados na caçamba, sendo uma Gattling Gun (a mais comum), ou uma .50, ou um lança-granadas de curto alcance. Durante as suas missões, você vai ter o seu veículo danificado, e você mesmo pode consertar. Na loja de armas você pode conseguir até alguns upgrades para consertar os carros mais rápidamente, e eles valem a pena obter.

Por volta de 50% das missões completadas, é hora de seguir para a segunda cidade, e as coisas ficam um pouco mais complexas: a mata fica mais cerrada, dificultando a sua visão contra os inimigos, aparentemente o nível das armas melhora, os tiros tiram mais sangue e aparecem mais milicianos por checkpoint.

[ANÁLISE] – Segue aí os aspectos do jogo separados um a um!

• Gráficos: 10/10 – Gráficos Estonteantes, respostas à vários estímulos;
• Jogabilidade: 7/10 – Pular pode ser uma súplica de vez em quando;
• Som: 10/10 – Você pode ouvir tiros, carros e inimigos sem qualquer esforço;
• Fator REPLAY: 8/10 – Só desanima por ser muito grande, mas ainda assim vale o replay.

[NOTA FINAL: 9] – Realmente é um jogo excepcional. Visualmente soberbo, desafiante, gradativo, leva ao pé da letra o nome “sandbox”, só não ganhou um 10 devido à repetição nos tipos de missão, e na canseira que dá ao jogador ao mandar ele percorrer dois pontos extremos no mapa só para matar um sujeito ou pegar uma caixa. Mas pela paisagem sobre o por do sol e a facilidade de andar por quase todos os locais, essas viagens podem até se tornar uma distração.

]]> http://gropingtheelephant.wordpress.com/2009/09/18/multi-level-decision-making/ Fri, 18 Sep 2009 20:40:10 +0000 Justin Keverne http://gropingtheelephant.wordpress.com/2009/09/18/multi-level-decision-making/

At any moment during a game players are liable to be thinking about events in multiple timeframes at once. Performing tasks that are over in seconds, in order to achieve goals that are over in minutes as a means of completing missions that may take hours.

The lowest level of actions occur on the Immediate layer, these are the second to second decisions made in the heat of combat, during a conversation, or while climbing a wall. When and where to shoot, which dialogue line to select, which handhold to reach for. These events are the Encounters, over in seconds and repeated dozens of times during the course of the game. The narrative strength of actions in this layer is best served through directly embedded content. Animation cycles, dialogue lines, and the options available to the player all serves as vectors for narrative meaning.

Above this there is the Tactical layer, the longer term minute to minute decisions made in the execution of plans. Which particular enemies to engage, which NPCs to talk to, which wall to scale. These are the Objectives, and can be defined either explicitly by the game, or implicitly by the players themselves. Variation in these Objectives and the levels in which they take place can be used to provide narrative.

Operating above both of these there is often, but not always,  a Strategic layer, actions on this layer occur over a much longer term, possibly hours. They include, which missions to accept, which character upgrades to select, which tools to equip. They can be either explicitly defined as Quests chains, or often they are not defined at all the goal of the Strategic layer simply being to reach the end of the game. This layer is best used to define the narrative context for actions that occur on the lower layers.

• The Immediate layer is Reactive.
• The Strategic layer is Proactive.
• The Tactical layer is both.

Though some traits can be associated with each layer,  the boundaries between them are fairly permeable. The goals of the Immediate and Tactical layer are often elements of those defined on the Strategic layer. Strategic goals lead to the creation of multiple Tactical goals, and multiple Immediate goals will be needed to fulfil a specific Tactical goal.

If the Strategic goal is to get to a specific location, it might require engaging in combat with several groups of enemies. This leads to the creation of Tactical goals concerned with how to deal with each enemy group and in what order. These Tactical goals in turn lead to the creation of Immediate goals, when to shoot, where to move. Successful completion of the Strategic goal requires successful completion of the Tactical and Immediate goals that stem from it.

In this way it can be seen that actions on the Strategic layer directly influence those on the lower layers.

Plans trickle down from higher layers to lower ones. Immediate actions are defined, their scope is limited by decisions made on the Tactical layer. Where you are and which tools you have at your disposal are based on decisions made at the Tactical layer, which in turn are influenced by decisions made on the Strategic layer. If a particular character upgrade has not been obtained on it will not be available.

This flow of influence does not only occur in one directions. Actions and their consequences trickle upwards. Events that occur in the Immediate layer change the Tactical status of the world, new routes are located, items are found. Events on the Tactical layer in turn affect the options available in the Strategic layer. Meaningful actions are ones that send ripples out beyond the layer in which they occur and affect decisions made on all layers: actions on the Immediate layer that leads to consequences on the Tactical and Strategic layers.

In ludic terms each layer has some degree of repetition, as there are only so many valid actions that can be performed at any given time. The repetition is mitigated most on the Strategic layer because the goals are long term, any repetition that does exist occurs over the course of several hours making it difficult to ascertain any patterns in the type of actions being performed.

On the Immediate layer the sense of repetition can be the strongest, as often the core mechanics of a game only allow for a few options. However at this layer the direct connection between action and outcome serves to lesson the impact of the repetition, as the consequences of actions on this layer are often the most directly stimulating, the blood spurts of a successful headshot, the ding of a loot pickup, the fluid animation of a character clambering over a ledge. Each one a little endorphin kick that keeps us engaged; if anybody is in doubt I point you to the immediate feedback presented in a game like Diablo.

The biggest problem with repetition comes on the Tactical layer. Action games suffer the most on this layer. Consider Far Cry 2, the actual combat mechanics and the options available to players in combat can be quite engaging (The Immediate layer is well designed). The ability to select which missions to attempt and in which order lessens the restrictive sense of repetition on the Strategic layer. However regardless of which mission the player selects and for whom, the short term goals required to complete each are usually very similar, if not identical: go here kill, these people\find this item, get back to here. The execution of these individual Tactical goals on the Immediate layer might be entertaining but that does little to cover up the fact that players are basically doing exactly the same thing during each mission. This is not helped by a lack of narrative feedback regarding the overarching consequences of actions. Assassinating a Police chief might be contextualised differently to the assassination of a Warlord but the narrative feedback from each event is not differentiated enough to mask the underlying repetition.

Because Tactical goals can take minutes to an hour to complete they occur over too short a timeframe for their patterns to be lost in the noise of all the other decisions, yet at too long a timeframe for that endorphin kick to keep players engaged. It’s here that a strong narrative context can keep players engaged in performing what are mechanic very similar actions.

Halo: Combat Evolved is another prime example of a game that suffers on the Immediate layer. Those “thirty seconds of fun”are, at least for me, some of the most pleasurable in gaming, but there can be no denying that on the Tactical layer the game is little more than a sequence of goals of the form: “Kill these hostiles.”

With their focus on Immediate and Tactical actions, action games are geared to a shorter play session, that serves to mitigate their repetitive nature. Plans are often completed within seconds or minutes, so players are given more points at which they are “free” to quit because they have no plans remaining to complete. Under these circumstances it’s little surprise that action game stories are fairly perfunctory, serving only to cover up the core mechanical repetition and provide a loose context for who, where and why.

Издатель: Ubisoft
Разработчик: Ubisoft Montreal
Жанр: First-Person > Action > Shooter > Modern
Выход: 21 октября 2008 (Америка), 24 октября 2008 (Европа), 25 декабря 2008 (Япония)
Официальный сайт

Обложки (европейской версии)

Арт

Герои

Marty Alencar, Waren Clyde, Josip Idromeno.

Paul Ferenc, Quarbani Singh, Andre Hyppolite.

Hakim Echebbi, Frank Bilders, Xianyong Bai.

Прошёл ещё летом эту видеоигру, вот подумал, почему бы не написать о ней в блоге. ) Игра вышла довольно неоднозначной, но, тем не менее, мне понравилась. Ну что могу сказать, FC2 конечно не шедевр, но чем-то он меня «зацепил», поэтому наверное и захотелось пройти его до конца. Графика в игре — просто потрясающая (густые джунгли, пустыня с живописными оазисами и.т.д. в FC2 мне чем-то напомнили серию action-RPG Gothic, а также местами фильм Predator John’а McTiernan’а), очень реалистичные спецэффекты (смотреть на реалистичную физику огня, ветра, дождя и.т.д и.т.п. — мне лично не надоело на протяжении прохождения всей видеоигры), сам экшен от первого лица хорошо поставлен, оружие отлично сделано и.т.д. Также лично меня порадовало, что время суток (в захваченном safehouse можно на часах установить подходящее время для выполнения той или иной миссии, например, если надо что-то выкрасть или убить одного человека, то достаточно установить время на ночь и втихаря прокрасться в вражеский лагерь, без лишнего шума и всякой там стрельбы выполнить задание, всё это отлично работает в игре), погодные условия (в сильный ветер, например, не стоит атаковать блокпост с гранатами и коктейлем молотова, ибо ветер разнесёт огонь по всему лагерю спалив все боеприпасы, транспортные средства и.т.д., ну а в дождь с точностью до наоборот) влияют на выполнение заданий. В общем к экшену и графике — претензий нет, но есть к самому игровому процессу — он невыносимо скучен и однообразен. До чего же обидно, что видеоигру с таким хорошим потенциалом просто угробили однотипными, друг на друга похожими миссиями. Я еле-еле осилил первые 40% игры, после чего забил на прохождение и наверное где-то около полугода или чуть больше к игре не подходил. Ближе к 50% станет чуть интересней, а где-то к 70% вы уже не успокоитесь, пока её прохождение не добьёте. Проходил за Xianyong Bai с снайперской винтовкой (primary Weapons — Dragunov SVD, потом поменял на более мощную AS50), пулемётом (special Weapons — PKM, чуть погодя заменил на более лучшую модель M-249 SAW) и гранатомётом (secondary Weapons — подходящего оружия в этой категории лично я для себя не нашёл, сначала я зачем-то бегал с Silent Makarov 6P9, но почти им никогда не пользовался, позже заменил его на M-79 Grenade Launcher, толку не намного больше, но им хоть можно было подрывать джипы, катера, машины и.т.д. противников).

Не понравились ещё условности в видеоигре. Ну, например, почему за всю игру я не встретил ни одного города с обычными африканскими жителями (их покажут только в начале в скриптовом ролике на движке и в аналогичном ролике за несколько минут до финальных титров в конце игры)? Всю игру приходиться смотреть лишь на похожие как две капли воды лагеря наёмников, как будто наёмники составляют основную популяцию жителей африканского континента. Почему вместо нормальной автобусной остановки (с людьми ждущими на скамейках своего транспорта) c автобусом, в который можно сесть и доехать до нужной точки назначения на карте (попутно наслаждаясь живописными африканскими пейзажами), там зачем-то расставили какие-то непонятные и нелепые доски с картами (подойдя к которым выбираешь свой пункт назначения, после чего около минуты или чуть меньше загружается местность, отмеченная точкой на карте) и.т.д. в том же духе? Какой-то вроде «живой» мир, но пустой и не очень реалистичный, хотя с мощью консолей этого поколения всё это можно было реализовать. Уже анонсировали Far Cry 3, разработка которого будет всё на том же движке, что и Far Cry 2, будем надеяться, что все ошибки в плане миссий и «мира видеоигры» в сиквеле исправят.

А теперь немного спойлеров по поводу сюжета и концовки. Сюжет не такой уж и простой, как его описывают в журналах и прочих рецензиях на различных сайтах, где говорится, что мол цель у гг убить «Шакала» и на этом всё. Нет конечно, это не так, слишком просто и примитивно, даже для шутера, такие вот его описания лишь выдают то, что человек, мягко говоря, не очень далеко продвинулся в прохождении FC2, я уж скромно промолчу про то, что он эту видеоигру точно не прошёл, но однако зачем-то свою никому не нужную рецензию накатал. Сам сюжет к счастью нелинейный, часто перед гг будет стоять выбор, как ему в той или иной ситуации поступить, что напрямую будет влиять на дальнейшее развитие событий сюжета игры. Я приоритетом для себя ставил выполнять миссии напарников (основные миссии на карте отмечают красным кружком, миссии напарников синим). Меня, мягко говоря, удивила концовка, где гг объединяется с Шакалом, после чего сталкивается со всеми своими выжившими напарниками и теми, кого вы считали погибшими (ага, «рояли в кустах» ближе к концу игры — будут), которые вдруг все вместе объединятся против вас и их всех придётся перебить в локации Heart of Darkness (или где-то рядом с ней) у разбитого самолёта. Только я не понял, там в конце, когда гг доходит до каких-то африканских военных, спустя мгновение происходит взрыв.. Бомбу сдетонировал тот репортёр? Из-за бриллиантов что ли?

Скриншоты

Скриншоты в большем объёме и более высоком разрешении — загружу где-то в первых числах следующего месяца ) , сейчас по техническим причинам — этого сделать не могу. (((

Видео

En ondsindet galning har udstyret de lokale med våben efter en overstået borgerkrig mellem diverse militær fraktioner, og dit job er at få likvideret ham, og helst så hurtigt som muligt. Derfor sendes du til et lille fattigt afrikansk land, hvor den glødende sol brænder sig igennem din hud hver eneste dag, og hvor der om natten er så mørkt at du intet kan ane i horisonten. Men nu når det er en generel konflikt imellem diverse individer, så er du nødt til at hvile fingeren på aftrækkeren hele tiden, og være forsigtig med alt. Spillet strækker sig over mere end 50 kvadrat kilometer åbent landskab, hvor der er rig mulighed for at tage på opdagelse. Du kan køre, gå, løbe, svømme, sejle eller flyve rundt i landet, og alt er så realistisk at du rent faktisk føler at du er der selv. Hvis du fx smider en molotov cocktail midt i det knas tørre græs, så vil der hurtigt opstå et gigantisk flammehav omkring dig, og skyder du på nogle mennesker,så vil de hurtigt snakke sammen for at finde dig, for derefter at gøre det af med dig. Spillet bygger på en række utroligt fantastiske og realistiske savanne og jungle områder, med vand, byer, udkigsposter, havne og meget mere. Personligt tror jeg at udviklerne af spillet har ladet sig inspirere af nogle af de uroligheder der har været i en del afrikanske lande med korruption, tortur, løgne, lejemord, borgerkrig og meget andet, for det virker sådan. I det lille land handler man ikke med penge, men derimod med diamanter, som man kan købe nye våben for i diverse våbenhandlere som ligger rundt omkring. Dette spil skal helt klart prøves hvis man kan lide FPS spil, og spil hvor man er overladt til sig selv på en eller anden facon. For at kunne spille det, kræver det en Core Duo 2 eller en Quad Core med mindst 2,7 GhZ i Clock Frekvens, mindst 2 GB ram, Og gerne et Zotaz Geforce GTX260 eller bedre grafikkort.

Dzisiaj bez zbędnego opisywania. Jedynie artyści, albumy i oceny.

Arctic Monkeys – Humbug. 9/10.

Thin Lizzy – Dedication. 10/10.

The Prodigy – Invaders Must Die. 9/10.

Coldplay – Viva La Vida.  8/10.

The Raconteurs – Consolers of The Lonely. 8/10.

PS. Przeniosłem się z ultra wolnego firefoxa na szybką Operę. Choć może wolność (odnośnie niskiej prędkości działania) była może spowodowana dodatkami zainstalowanymi w F. Chuj wie. Fakt faktem, że Opera bardzo mi przypadła do gustu. Nie chce mi się tłumaczyć, dlaczego konkretnie (powodem jest zajebisty ból głowy spowodowany albo lekkim odwodnieniem albo zmianą ciśnienia atmosferycznego). Próbowałem się bawić z Google Chrome, ale wydał mi się zbyt… Prosty. Zbyt… Po prostu mi nie pasuje i tyle. No i synchronizacja w Operze. Czegoś takiego mi brakowało w F. To chyba tyle.

PPS. Domyślny FOV w Far Cry 2  jest CDD*.

* – Całkiem Do Dupy.

While I was playing Far Cry 2 last week I had to turn aside for a moment to check some e-mail. My respite was brief, so I didn’t even pause the game. When I turned back I found that my character had raised his gun close to give it a good once over, allowing me to see a perspective of the weapon I hadn’t seen before, and haven’t seen since. It hit me that someone had to program that into the game, and had I not been looking for an e-mail I wouldn’t have seen it. I started wondering about other parts of games I might have overlooked.

I remember years ago, during my PC gaming phase, when “easter eggs” meant something you really had to earn. What I mean by this is that easter eggs were discussed only in the most hardcore forums, and seldom did “popular” media give away the secrets to discover these little things. As a result, I realize that there was a lot of interesting stuff in games I just never saw. Things are different now. Easter eggs are far more common and are often presented in plain sight. A good example is the cake in Wolverine. While slightly off the beaten path, you don’t have to go outside the rules of play to find it. I suppose that’s what I’m really getting at here: the idea that the player has to play beyond the norm to discover something special.

Easter eggs aren’t really what I was discussing at the outset though. What I was discussing was the depth that many games have these days without us ever noticing. Perhaps the energy which goes into that depth is why things like easter eggs are easier to find. I remember watching episodes of Reviews on the Run years ago and Tommy Tallarico would complain about the sounds for footsteps. If the game included the sound of a character’s steps, they would often have only one or two sounds which would be repeated almost indefinitely. Tommy would mention this every time it was obvious, so when I started playing games which had more than one sound I began to appreciate it. It seems like a very small part of a game, but when you think about it you listen to that sound for almost your entire play through. 12 hours of one sound would definitely get a little tired.

Jumping back to contemporary games, we now have games with catalogues of sounds we don’t even hear. I think about the bird songs in Far Cry 2 and I wonder how long some guy ran around with a boom mic to get enough noises to give the player an “authentic” experience. Think about third-person games and how frequently they have the avatar act board when left still for too long. How many hours have animators spent based on the idea that a gamer will sit perfectly still staring at the screen? What about hidden corners of maps? I’m not talking about the one mission set ridiculously on the periphery. I’m talking about the part of the map just beyond that, constructed just in case you decide to see what the boundary looks like. I have more sympathy for collectables which developers put in to encourage such exploration. Let’s not forget about some of that extra content too. What about character bios or comic covers? What’s the percentage of players who actually go through all of that? Yes, I am one of them, but that doesn’t mean I feel that the effort is always justified.

Looking at the games on my shelf I now find myself wondering if I really experienced they all had to offer. Is there maybe some easter egg I missed, or some cool collectable I never quite got. A part of me feels like I owe it to those developers to take that time and see all the awesome they packed on the disc. Then again, I do have a copy of Batman Arkham Asylum waiting to be played…