Random thought: if apostrophes ('s) are used to contract words (didn't = did not), what is "ain't" short for? Never really thought about it before.
What is Emergeant (possibly spelt wrong) gameplay? Well, I'm going to take the annoying route and write a shirtload before I even answer that question. Read on.
Long time readers (you poor, poor saps that you are) will know the crush I have upon the concept of customisability and openness in games. In many ways this is what attracts me to particular types of tabletop games, since if you get agreement from the other players, you're able to do anything you want. Computer games have it tougher, since you're stuck operating in the parameter's defined by the game, unless you've got an expert team of modders behind you and several months to kick back and waste while waiting for them to pump out the finished product.
One of the reasons I was originally so attracted to stuff in Warhammer 40,000 is the sheer fact you can do almost anything in it. If you have an entire galaxy to work with, it makes sense there are so many things that aren't covered in the rules. The Space Marines (the primary imagery used for the game) are recorded as having thousands of chapters (individually led armies), of which I think they have precise information for about a couple of dozen at most, and names for a hundred or so more. With that degree of option available, players can paint up and design armies in almost any way they like. There always seems to be a method available to make room for anything the players can come up with (within the rules and common sense knowledge of the backstory, of course). This openness is a requirement to make a game I will genuinely enjoy (though Games Workshop really buggered up plenty of stuff with Warhammer 40K).
Why am I repeating myself about my love for open stories? I recently began replaying Mount and Blade. I've gushed about it on this blog before, so I'll save you that pain, but I really NEED to tell how awesome today's gameplay with it was. My main character is the stock standard heavily armed and armoured Knight. He's a total dick who lances people in the face in standing fights, if you refuse to fight him he raids, loots, and burns down villages for his own wealth, and if you try to outnumber him he retreats to one of his three castles (and 1 city) and waits until you go away. The only time he can really be drawn into a fight he may not be ready for is if you besiege his castles/city without him present, at which point he'll raise an army from his standing forces, head to the castle and hold you off.
Now picture this scenario, two of his castles besieged at the same time. The character shows up with his army at the first castle and helps hold off the oncoming forces, but in the process loses half his forces. Here I made a miscalculation. Normally my castle forces are good enough they could probably hold off besiegers themselves, but the second castle I went to was at half strength (not sure why, it's a game I loaded from months ago). So my reinforcement army was at half strength, my standard defense army was at half strength, shouldn't be a problem, right?
Then I find out the attacking force is literally over 1,000 men. I was defending the castle with 100.
Holy crap. It was a white-knuckle battle. You... you PLEBS have no idea how elated I felt when I managed to scrape victory out of the battle. Twice the enemy managed to push through defenses and establish themselves on the walls, and twice I had to drop my crossbow and help directly in the battle to fight them back onto their ladders. When I realised the sounds the NPCs were making suddenly changed from grunts of battle to cheers of victory, I felt triumph.
Then I felt like an idiot because I'd gotten so involved in a computer game.
This is not a scenario pre-programmed into a game, not a scripted sequence, or part of a major battle. This is Emergent gameplay. This is not programmed at all, just through the way the game story unfolded naturally I ended up in a white knuckle tense situation. Knowing that I am one of the few to end up in a situation like this and triumphant despite no advantages on my side is what made it great. When you play a linear game, while some of the challenges can be amazingly designed it is always designed with the idea in mind that it is possible to beat. Through a gameplay situation emerging naturally in an open world, there is no way to know if it is even beatable, all you can do is try your friggin' hardest.
That is also the potential drawback of emergent gameplay. Imagine if through no fault of the player, they end up in an unwinnable situation. That can really ruin the enjoyment of a game, when all of a sudden the character they have worked so hard on suddenly can't go further, all because of things that happened in the background.
To continue with the use of Mount and Blade as an example, in one of my early games I made a character with the idea in mind that he would ally himself with a particular kingdom. Through behind the scenes calculations and battle results, that kingdom ended up on the back foot so strongly that no matter how good (or in some cases, ungood, to use a 1984 word) I was and how much I influenced battles, it still was completely pointless, and I would get my arse whooped no matter what. While, easily enough, I could have swapped the character over to another kingdom or just started from scratch, it left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth to know how easily background events could screw over my plans.
Still, I'd say the benefits are worth the cost.
Game Developers, all eleventy billion of you that read this blog, more open-world gameplay please.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Why FPS' just don't get me
Busy days = few posts
I'm not much of an FPS (First Person Shooter to the uninformed in the methodology of the geek, in which case what are you doing here?) player. If I play a game, it's either since I want to forge my own story in the game environment, or enjoy a wealth of customisation so in depth it makes god himself scratch his prematurely balding head and say "Why didn't I think of that shit?" In this respect FPS' not only fall on their arses, but they fall on their arses so hard that a little known law of physics results in their hips splatting out their forehead.
Both of these things do not come in an FPS, and few enough of them have a story worth writing home about, let alone worth writing down on a piece of paper to begin with. Except to try and work out where they're going to squeeze in a sewer level (then again, I play fantasy Roleplaying games, where sewers seem to be the one section of society that advances beyond the medieval period. Seriously, those guys have plumbing that makes my house look like I'm throwing it out my window in a bucket), and potentially trying to mention the big boss's name once or twice before the grand finale, just so the players aren't thinking "Why am I shooting this bastard" as they unload a truckload of hot steaming lead into his brain and/or arse (some particularly odd sci-fi FPS' can have both being the same thing).
First Person Shooters are, traditionally, so linear you can attach a monorail to the story. Walk down corridor's A through Z shooting anything moving that isn't in the same colours as you, occasionally stopping for a cutscene and/or high-score and/or loading screen. When the only real variations in the narrative consist of "Shall I shoot generic grunt 172 with the pistol or go all out and use the shotgun" there is no real variety in the story. Granted, some people do not WANT variety, but I do. If I play through a game twice and it's the exact same both times I won't find any enjoyment in playing it through a third time. It's like watching a movie. First time you enjoy the experience, second time you analyse the narrative, and third time you wonder why you're not watching something with full frontal nudity.
Customisability is my crack, which makes it odd how unenjoyable I found Spore. It's probably just because Spore felt like you were playing the exact same game with a different skin, no matter how you tried to make your animals different. In an FPS customisability is which collection of death dealing guns you'll tote around like an anti-social maniac in the zombie apocalypse. Sometimes a game will go all out and allow you to choose your armour. Then there are some wild and crazy FPS (all designed for online play) where you choose a Class! These continally fail to gain my attention since I'm far more interested in a roleplaying game where characters can be genuinely different.
Someday someone will make an open sandbox game with nearly limitless customisability of your character. On that day I will happily resign from life and build a basement so I can hang around in it all day playing this game.
This will be doubly beneficial for me, since about this time the seas will turn to blood and there will be a sudden market for snow shovels in hell.
Oh ho, end on that bloody overused "snowing in hell" joke. Well guess what, I KNOW it makes no sense (Dante's inferno describes the deepest circle of hell as being an ice and snow covered plain) and I'll use it anyway. It's cuz I'm a maverick, see.
I'm not much of an FPS (First Person Shooter to the uninformed in the methodology of the geek, in which case what are you doing here?) player. If I play a game, it's either since I want to forge my own story in the game environment, or enjoy a wealth of customisation so in depth it makes god himself scratch his prematurely balding head and say "Why didn't I think of that shit?" In this respect FPS' not only fall on their arses, but they fall on their arses so hard that a little known law of physics results in their hips splatting out their forehead.
Both of these things do not come in an FPS, and few enough of them have a story worth writing home about, let alone worth writing down on a piece of paper to begin with. Except to try and work out where they're going to squeeze in a sewer level (then again, I play fantasy Roleplaying games, where sewers seem to be the one section of society that advances beyond the medieval period. Seriously, those guys have plumbing that makes my house look like I'm throwing it out my window in a bucket), and potentially trying to mention the big boss's name once or twice before the grand finale, just so the players aren't thinking "Why am I shooting this bastard" as they unload a truckload of hot steaming lead into his brain and/or arse (some particularly odd sci-fi FPS' can have both being the same thing).
First Person Shooters are, traditionally, so linear you can attach a monorail to the story. Walk down corridor's A through Z shooting anything moving that isn't in the same colours as you, occasionally stopping for a cutscene and/or high-score and/or loading screen. When the only real variations in the narrative consist of "Shall I shoot generic grunt 172 with the pistol or go all out and use the shotgun" there is no real variety in the story. Granted, some people do not WANT variety, but I do. If I play through a game twice and it's the exact same both times I won't find any enjoyment in playing it through a third time. It's like watching a movie. First time you enjoy the experience, second time you analyse the narrative, and third time you wonder why you're not watching something with full frontal nudity.
Customisability is my crack, which makes it odd how unenjoyable I found Spore. It's probably just because Spore felt like you were playing the exact same game with a different skin, no matter how you tried to make your animals different. In an FPS customisability is which collection of death dealing guns you'll tote around like an anti-social maniac in the zombie apocalypse. Sometimes a game will go all out and allow you to choose your armour. Then there are some wild and crazy FPS (all designed for online play) where you choose a Class! These continally fail to gain my attention since I'm far more interested in a roleplaying game where characters can be genuinely different.
Someday someone will make an open sandbox game with nearly limitless customisability of your character. On that day I will happily resign from life and build a basement so I can hang around in it all day playing this game.
This will be doubly beneficial for me, since about this time the seas will turn to blood and there will be a sudden market for snow shovels in hell.
Oh ho, end on that bloody overused "snowing in hell" joke. Well guess what, I KNOW it makes no sense (Dante's inferno describes the deepest circle of hell as being an ice and snow covered plain) and I'll use it anyway. It's cuz I'm a maverick, see.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Don't see the new Punisher movie
I was all set up and prepared to do a post discussing how so many prime time TV shows seem to want to reference fight club, but so few of them get it, but then... Then I saw the second Punisher movie (the third, if you count the original one a decade or so ago). "Punisher: Warzone".
Oh sweet jesus. Surely there are better stories that can be told. That movie was incredibly painful. I believe the metaphor I used on facebook to describe it was "It's like getting your wisdom teeth removed via your scrotum" (to female readers lacking in male genitalia, you'll have to imagine something quite painful and awkward).
1. The child. Sure, her father's dead, but would she REALLY latch on, that quickly, to a tall male who wanders in? Especially since this tall male makes her mother cry first time they meet. What did he do to her before she latched on? He gave her a flashlight. Whoop-di-do.
A note for next time. If you want a more emotional story, have her be afraid of him. She reminds him of his own daughter, so if she was bloody terrified of him that'd really screw with his head.
2. Use some ACTUAL bad guys. It's a comic book story, the only genre where you can get away with larger then life bad guys. Closest they had was 'Jigsaw', who basically was a normal mob boss made ugly. And Jigsaw's "muscle"? His crazy brother. He was nuts, but neither he nor the mob boss felt like larger then life threatening villains.
Throughout the movie it felt like they were trying to make them both into something more threatening then they are, but... They were only human. The opening scene shows the Punisher killing dozens of "only humans". At no point did it feel like he was in danger, especially since his always-worn bullet proof vest took about a dozen bullets at various points in the movie, only about three of which did more then make him blink. In the first (technically second) Punisher movie, they showed how he could be genuinely threatened and get the shit beaten out of him. In this one he felt like the Terminator sans imposing jawline.
Put the Terminator (without jawline) against a nutcase moron and an ugly bastard who cries when he looks in a mirror, and you know who will win before the opening credits are even finished.
3. No emotional connection. The only person I felt even a vague emotional connection with throughout the entire movie was Neumann. Yes, THAT Neumanna. From Seinfeld. That says how poor the movie was. No matter how many 'good men' died, or the pain they left behind, only Neumann got my sympathy.
Oh sweet jesus. Surely there are better stories that can be told. That movie was incredibly painful. I believe the metaphor I used on facebook to describe it was "It's like getting your wisdom teeth removed via your scrotum" (to female readers lacking in male genitalia, you'll have to imagine something quite painful and awkward).
1. The child. Sure, her father's dead, but would she REALLY latch on, that quickly, to a tall male who wanders in? Especially since this tall male makes her mother cry first time they meet. What did he do to her before she latched on? He gave her a flashlight. Whoop-di-do.
A note for next time. If you want a more emotional story, have her be afraid of him. She reminds him of his own daughter, so if she was bloody terrified of him that'd really screw with his head.
2. Use some ACTUAL bad guys. It's a comic book story, the only genre where you can get away with larger then life bad guys. Closest they had was 'Jigsaw', who basically was a normal mob boss made ugly. And Jigsaw's "muscle"? His crazy brother. He was nuts, but neither he nor the mob boss felt like larger then life threatening villains.
Throughout the movie it felt like they were trying to make them both into something more threatening then they are, but... They were only human. The opening scene shows the Punisher killing dozens of "only humans". At no point did it feel like he was in danger, especially since his always-worn bullet proof vest took about a dozen bullets at various points in the movie, only about three of which did more then make him blink. In the first (technically second) Punisher movie, they showed how he could be genuinely threatened and get the shit beaten out of him. In this one he felt like the Terminator sans imposing jawline.
Put the Terminator (without jawline) against a nutcase moron and an ugly bastard who cries when he looks in a mirror, and you know who will win before the opening credits are even finished.
3. No emotional connection. The only person I felt even a vague emotional connection with throughout the entire movie was Neumann. Yes, THAT Neumanna. From Seinfeld. That says how poor the movie was. No matter how many 'good men' died, or the pain they left behind, only Neumann got my sympathy.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Dragon Age: Origins, and why it's awesome.
In an effort to stop the rampant pessimistic and overly critical stance this blog seems to have taken lately, I've decided to dedicate an entire post to something that is awesome. It should come as no surprise that the awesomeness in this post comes entirely from Bioware. No, I'm not talking about The Old Republic MMO (I'm reserving judgement on that), but from the upcoming RPG Dragon Age: Origins.
One of the always appealing aspects of the Western RPG is that you get to choose your own character and build him or her up from scratch. This is great and allows enormous amount of replayability in games, but has the problem in that it doesn't allow for much background. I sincerely doubt my heavily armoured Lawful Evil swordsman who's well on his way to becoming a divine embodiment of "evil arsehole" has much in common in his background with my chaotic good hippy-like Ranger who never wears anything heavier then a cotton shirt, and judging by the number of romantic options he seems to get, often much less.
So how to get around it? Some RPGS seem to just dictate to you who you were and bugger any choices you make on the matter. Case in point 1: Knights of the Old Republic 2, no matter what you choose with your character, your entire history is dictated to you and you need to find it out like an amnesiac cliche (despite the fact your character doesn't have amnesia, and is apparently just so thick he needs his life story narrated to him). Case in point 2: Neverwinter Nights 2, it seems this one village is so diverse it can give rise to anything from a Demon-summoning Warlock to an elite Warrior Paladin. Not bad for a place that only has three visitors a year.
What does Dragon Age do differently? Simple. From everything I've read, upon character creation and after choosing a class, gender, race, etc etc, you choose an origin story. An origin story is less of a dictated narrative and more of a basic social standing (high class noble, enslaved Elf, etc etc), which the game then places you in. Each origin has it's unique starting position, and you spend the opening part of the game exploring your life and informing the game of your normal sort of position in your backstory, how you got along with people, what your moral stance on XYZ is, things like that. Then at the end of your backstory, for some reason or another, you're recruited into the elite group who end up up shirt creek without a washer or dryer, beginning the epic narrative of the game.
I for one am so excited about this concept it gives me tingly feelings in my pants which cannot be contained in there alone, and so spread upwards into my nose affecting the erectile tissue contained there, as well. Are you sufficiently grossed out? Good, let's go onto the next paragraph.
This is taking RPG storytelling in a whole new direction. It was experimented with slightly in Mass Effect, with some background being chosen which had, at best, a tiny effect on the story (primarily just some dialogue changes and one or two minor quests), and I feel it was one of the appeals of the game. Now Dragon Age: Origins has taken this idea and run so far with it there's a gold medal in it for the game if it pulls it off and isn't caught using illegal drugs like "flat out lying in press releases and marketing".
The origins are supposed to have a genuine impact on the game. Dependant on who you are you'll be treated differently by NPCs. Inside the human settlements, Noble Humans will be readily accepted since they can order your castration otherwise, while low-born Dwarfs will be seen as little better then the yappy dog next door that comes over and wets the carpet. However the 'Wild-living' Elves will be completely unaccepted in human settlements, but the moment you go into the wild and meet their cousins you're up easy street, while the humans will be lucky to leave with both testicles still in the right container.
I could be over-emphasising the importance of the origin stories, and they could be little more then icing on top of the game-cake (in which case it needs to be a good cake anyway for the icing to be worth it), but considering it's part of the name of the bloody game (Dragon age: "ORIGINS") presumably they'll put some effort into getting it right. And anyway, it's BIOWARE. I haven't seen any bad decisions from them since "Hey, let's send all our sequels out to this Obsidian mob".
One of the always appealing aspects of the Western RPG is that you get to choose your own character and build him or her up from scratch. This is great and allows enormous amount of replayability in games, but has the problem in that it doesn't allow for much background. I sincerely doubt my heavily armoured Lawful Evil swordsman who's well on his way to becoming a divine embodiment of "evil arsehole" has much in common in his background with my chaotic good hippy-like Ranger who never wears anything heavier then a cotton shirt, and judging by the number of romantic options he seems to get, often much less.
So how to get around it? Some RPGS seem to just dictate to you who you were and bugger any choices you make on the matter. Case in point 1: Knights of the Old Republic 2, no matter what you choose with your character, your entire history is dictated to you and you need to find it out like an amnesiac cliche (despite the fact your character doesn't have amnesia, and is apparently just so thick he needs his life story narrated to him). Case in point 2: Neverwinter Nights 2, it seems this one village is so diverse it can give rise to anything from a Demon-summoning Warlock to an elite Warrior Paladin. Not bad for a place that only has three visitors a year.
What does Dragon Age do differently? Simple. From everything I've read, upon character creation and after choosing a class, gender, race, etc etc, you choose an origin story. An origin story is less of a dictated narrative and more of a basic social standing (high class noble, enslaved Elf, etc etc), which the game then places you in. Each origin has it's unique starting position, and you spend the opening part of the game exploring your life and informing the game of your normal sort of position in your backstory, how you got along with people, what your moral stance on XYZ is, things like that. Then at the end of your backstory, for some reason or another, you're recruited into the elite group who end up up shirt creek without a washer or dryer, beginning the epic narrative of the game.
I for one am so excited about this concept it gives me tingly feelings in my pants which cannot be contained in there alone, and so spread upwards into my nose affecting the erectile tissue contained there, as well. Are you sufficiently grossed out? Good, let's go onto the next paragraph.
This is taking RPG storytelling in a whole new direction. It was experimented with slightly in Mass Effect, with some background being chosen which had, at best, a tiny effect on the story (primarily just some dialogue changes and one or two minor quests), and I feel it was one of the appeals of the game. Now Dragon Age: Origins has taken this idea and run so far with it there's a gold medal in it for the game if it pulls it off and isn't caught using illegal drugs like "flat out lying in press releases and marketing".
The origins are supposed to have a genuine impact on the game. Dependant on who you are you'll be treated differently by NPCs. Inside the human settlements, Noble Humans will be readily accepted since they can order your castration otherwise, while low-born Dwarfs will be seen as little better then the yappy dog next door that comes over and wets the carpet. However the 'Wild-living' Elves will be completely unaccepted in human settlements, but the moment you go into the wild and meet their cousins you're up easy street, while the humans will be lucky to leave with both testicles still in the right container.
I could be over-emphasising the importance of the origin stories, and they could be little more then icing on top of the game-cake (in which case it needs to be a good cake anyway for the icing to be worth it), but considering it's part of the name of the bloody game (Dragon age: "ORIGINS") presumably they'll put some effort into getting it right. And anyway, it's BIOWARE. I haven't seen any bad decisions from them since "Hey, let's send all our sequels out to this Obsidian mob".
Friday, February 20, 2009
Why I dislike Games Workshop
Feel free to ignore this post. It's written in the grips of a hangover, and thus it probably makes no sense.
Wargaming is a well known side of tabletop gaming. The flipside of the coin to Roleplaying, if you will. Rather then a focus upon the individual and their efforts to save the world, Wargaming casts it's focus wider, aiming to recreate the feeling of massive battles, all the while depersonalising the tragedy of such events. However, I play the Total War games and love them, so I lose all right to criticise them for depersonalising mass slaughter.
Games Workshop is the Wargaming company I've had most of my experience with. When my brother was in his early teens he was bitten by the bug, and loved his Ork army in Warhammer 40,000. It was a brighter era, back in 2nd Edition Warhammer 40K. The Squigs were funny, crazy little muchroom monsters. The Gretchin were sneaky little gits who stole their weaponry so they could join in the biffs and couldn't threaten anything. Ork guns were as likely to blow up their owner as destroy a tank in one shot, and just as likely to patter out a weak spray of bullets that couldn't dent paper. But, most importantly, it realised it was a game, and as such didn't take itself immensely seriously. Each race fulfilled a niche, not just in the gaming aspect, but in what it provided to the players. If you wanted a deadly serious threat to the world, you'd play as Chaos. If you wanted super soldiers killing everyone despite being outnumbered three to one, you'd play as Space Marines. If you wanted weak-ace humans who's only real bonus is numbers and tanks, you'd go Imperial Guard. Orks provided the comic relief.
Then about the beginning of 3rd edition, everything changed. The focus shifted from providing entertaining stuff for the players, to milking the gamers. The rules now required you to have a large number of troops, even in your basic Space Marine force (the "only a few troopers but each of them highly powerful" army). If you wanted your force to be competitive, you had to buy more basic troopers. Oh, and all the rules. And the codex for your chosen race. And sometimes you were unlucky and they released a revised codex.
The charm and light-heartedness of some of it (namely the Orks) all vanished under a wave of grim, gritty and darkity McDarkdark. I'm not stupid, even at the young age I was reading about all this in 2nd edition I realised how dark the universe was. But it wasn't all dark. The aforementioned Orks were mostly lighthearted, with stories about the docs nailing pieces of metal to an Ork in the shape of an arm, and it working (when the Ork just wanted the wax cleaned out from his ear). Now the 'Docs' of the Orks are grim and threatening evil doers, despite the entire race still retaining their originally comical method of speach and terms. It's as much of a strange contradiction as the latter Harry Potter book's grim setting being populated with "muggles".
I have to admit, having browsed through the 3rd edition rulebook (I believe they're up to 5th, now), I don't mind some of the modifications they made to the rules (such as the changes to the way saving throws work). But it would be willful ignorance to believe Games Workshop altered the rules to focus more on large scale 'army' conflicts over small scale skirmishes (as it was originally designed to be) out of anything other then an interest in forcing you to spend more money.
"Of course they want more money!" you cry, annoyed at me, "they're a business!". I direct your attention to the wikipedia page for "Andy Chambers" (I'm not gonna get the link, you can do that yourself mates). It states that he was the individual who tilted the company away from being gamer orientated (in other words, looking out for the gamers first) to being business orientated. Read up on how he did that.
Flat out withdrawing support for games that didn't provide regular income (Blood Bowl, etc, despite the fact they're now making a computer game about that particular board game).
No longer focusing on their previous loyal customers and providing for them, instead turning their focus onto the younger kids with more disposable income (I.E. Their parents).
Any company that changes it's intended audience like that gets no sympathy from me. Yes, I understand company's are in it to make money, that doesn't mean I have to like their decisions.
Wargaming is a well known side of tabletop gaming. The flipside of the coin to Roleplaying, if you will. Rather then a focus upon the individual and their efforts to save the world, Wargaming casts it's focus wider, aiming to recreate the feeling of massive battles, all the while depersonalising the tragedy of such events. However, I play the Total War games and love them, so I lose all right to criticise them for depersonalising mass slaughter.
Games Workshop is the Wargaming company I've had most of my experience with. When my brother was in his early teens he was bitten by the bug, and loved his Ork army in Warhammer 40,000. It was a brighter era, back in 2nd Edition Warhammer 40K. The Squigs were funny, crazy little muchroom monsters. The Gretchin were sneaky little gits who stole their weaponry so they could join in the biffs and couldn't threaten anything. Ork guns were as likely to blow up their owner as destroy a tank in one shot, and just as likely to patter out a weak spray of bullets that couldn't dent paper. But, most importantly, it realised it was a game, and as such didn't take itself immensely seriously. Each race fulfilled a niche, not just in the gaming aspect, but in what it provided to the players. If you wanted a deadly serious threat to the world, you'd play as Chaos. If you wanted super soldiers killing everyone despite being outnumbered three to one, you'd play as Space Marines. If you wanted weak-ace humans who's only real bonus is numbers and tanks, you'd go Imperial Guard. Orks provided the comic relief.
Then about the beginning of 3rd edition, everything changed. The focus shifted from providing entertaining stuff for the players, to milking the gamers. The rules now required you to have a large number of troops, even in your basic Space Marine force (the "only a few troopers but each of them highly powerful" army). If you wanted your force to be competitive, you had to buy more basic troopers. Oh, and all the rules. And the codex for your chosen race. And sometimes you were unlucky and they released a revised codex.
The charm and light-heartedness of some of it (namely the Orks) all vanished under a wave of grim, gritty and darkity McDarkdark. I'm not stupid, even at the young age I was reading about all this in 2nd edition I realised how dark the universe was. But it wasn't all dark. The aforementioned Orks were mostly lighthearted, with stories about the docs nailing pieces of metal to an Ork in the shape of an arm, and it working (when the Ork just wanted the wax cleaned out from his ear). Now the 'Docs' of the Orks are grim and threatening evil doers, despite the entire race still retaining their originally comical method of speach and terms. It's as much of a strange contradiction as the latter Harry Potter book's grim setting being populated with "muggles".
I have to admit, having browsed through the 3rd edition rulebook (I believe they're up to 5th, now), I don't mind some of the modifications they made to the rules (such as the changes to the way saving throws work). But it would be willful ignorance to believe Games Workshop altered the rules to focus more on large scale 'army' conflicts over small scale skirmishes (as it was originally designed to be) out of anything other then an interest in forcing you to spend more money.
"Of course they want more money!" you cry, annoyed at me, "they're a business!". I direct your attention to the wikipedia page for "Andy Chambers" (I'm not gonna get the link, you can do that yourself mates). It states that he was the individual who tilted the company away from being gamer orientated (in other words, looking out for the gamers first) to being business orientated. Read up on how he did that.
Flat out withdrawing support for games that didn't provide regular income (Blood Bowl, etc, despite the fact they're now making a computer game about that particular board game).
No longer focusing on their previous loyal customers and providing for them, instead turning their focus onto the younger kids with more disposable income (I.E. Their parents).
Any company that changes it's intended audience like that gets no sympathy from me. Yes, I understand company's are in it to make money, that doesn't mean I have to like their decisions.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Another criticism of Halo
First thing's first, a new word invented with the aid of Ernie: Distriss. A Mistress who lives a long distance away.
Now, the meat of this short post. In my usual boredom-fueled Wikipedia reading, I found the following sentence in the entire wikipedia page devoted to the marketing of Halo 3 (does it need this? Not really, no):
'According to Microsoft, the unusual presentation of a model rather thant computer graphics was chosen to look at "the themes that lie at the heart of the Halo trilogy - war, duty, sacrifice, and most importantly the heroism of Master Chief".' (Halo 3 Marketing wikipedia page)
Having seen the diorama in question (here), my first thought is that it shows nothing but the futility of war rather then anything else, but that's not the point of the post. The point of the post is the phrase "the heroism of Master Chief." As other Wikipedia wankers like myself know, along with Halo fans, Master Chief is a cybernetically augmented, brainwashed super soldier taught from near birth to fight. Anyone who's played the games (althought I admit only playing up to the end of Halo 2) knows that he has a personality that can be approximated to a brick with some glue on a corner.
Can he really be 'Heroic'? He's a near-mindless war-drone created solely for battle. For him to charge into battle and combat, especially considering he never friggin' loses, isn't really bravery, it's his nature. It's not like warfare is his job, it's his life. A Fireman is being brave for trying to save lives, even though it's his job. A bird isn't being brave for flying around really high, it's what the bird DOES.
The Master Chief, as a character, even as a narrative device, is just uninteresting. The only thing he is useful as is a reason for the player of a computer game to be massively more effectively then the player's allies and enemies. The Arbiter, who earned near universal scorn in the game, is a hundred times more interesting then the Master Chief, but even his story is really really dully predictable.
One day I'm going to find something to fan-boy about for an extended period of time. Until then I'm just going to rip on everyone elses's favourite things.
Now, the meat of this short post. In my usual boredom-fueled Wikipedia reading, I found the following sentence in the entire wikipedia page devoted to the marketing of Halo 3 (does it need this? Not really, no):
'According to Microsoft, the unusual presentation of a model rather thant computer graphics was chosen to look at "the themes that lie at the heart of the Halo trilogy - war, duty, sacrifice, and most importantly the heroism of Master Chief".' (Halo 3 Marketing wikipedia page)
Having seen the diorama in question (here), my first thought is that it shows nothing but the futility of war rather then anything else, but that's not the point of the post. The point of the post is the phrase "the heroism of Master Chief." As other Wikipedia wankers like myself know, along with Halo fans, Master Chief is a cybernetically augmented, brainwashed super soldier taught from near birth to fight. Anyone who's played the games (althought I admit only playing up to the end of Halo 2) knows that he has a personality that can be approximated to a brick with some glue on a corner.
Can he really be 'Heroic'? He's a near-mindless war-drone created solely for battle. For him to charge into battle and combat, especially considering he never friggin' loses, isn't really bravery, it's his nature. It's not like warfare is his job, it's his life. A Fireman is being brave for trying to save lives, even though it's his job. A bird isn't being brave for flying around really high, it's what the bird DOES.
The Master Chief, as a character, even as a narrative device, is just uninteresting. The only thing he is useful as is a reason for the player of a computer game to be massively more effectively then the player's allies and enemies. The Arbiter, who earned near universal scorn in the game, is a hundred times more interesting then the Master Chief, but even his story is really really dully predictable.
One day I'm going to find something to fan-boy about for an extended period of time. Until then I'm just going to rip on everyone elses's favourite things.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Statements that never precede a good idea
You get two posts today, since over the next week I shall be posting infrequently. Despite this supposed 'bonus' it is really just a short post, with the meaty part of it stolen verbatum from a bunch of people I was drunkenly talking with friday night/saturday morning (it all blended together).
There are a number of phrases in the English Language that often are used to precede an idea or plan on how a number of individuals should spend their time. Among these phrases there are some that have, throughout the history of human endeavour, NEVER proceeded a 'good' idea. Here are a smattering of them.
1. "First, we'll have some shots, then..."
Any plan that requires a standard drink of alcohol down the throat in the space of two seconds before undertaking is bad. No arguement.
2. "OH MY GOD! I just had the best idea ever!"
'Oh my god' never proceeds 'good'. The best you can do with 'Oh my god' is shock and surprise. And the need to exagerate your plan so it is the 'best idea ever' just states that you're needing to overstate it's case.
3. "Dude! You know what we HAVE to do?"
"Stop you there before you start outlining an evening ahead that will get us arrested and/or lubed in an uncomfortable place that shouldn't NEED lube?"
4. "We'll have a quick nap now, then wake up in a few hours and..."
If you require a nap before proceeding to phase two, you're tired enough that you won't wake up in a few hours. This is one of the less 'bad' prefix phrases, since this is unlikely to end in catastrophe.
5. "You know what?"
No plan that ever relied upon in-depth knowledge of an indefinate conceptual item in language is worth doing.
Edit: Pix is a smartarse
There are a number of phrases in the English Language that often are used to precede an idea or plan on how a number of individuals should spend their time. Among these phrases there are some that have, throughout the history of human endeavour, NEVER proceeded a 'good' idea. Here are a smattering of them.
1. "First, we'll have some shots, then..."
Any plan that requires a standard drink of alcohol down the throat in the space of two seconds before undertaking is bad. No arguement.
2. "OH MY GOD! I just had the best idea ever!"
'Oh my god' never proceeds 'good'. The best you can do with 'Oh my god' is shock and surprise. And the need to exagerate your plan so it is the 'best idea ever' just states that you're needing to overstate it's case.
3. "Dude! You know what we HAVE to do?"
"Stop you there before you start outlining an evening ahead that will get us arrested and/or lubed in an uncomfortable place that shouldn't NEED lube?"
4. "We'll have a quick nap now, then wake up in a few hours and..."
If you require a nap before proceeding to phase two, you're tired enough that you won't wake up in a few hours. This is one of the less 'bad' prefix phrases, since this is unlikely to end in catastrophe.
5. "You know what?"
No plan that ever relied upon in-depth knowledge of an indefinate conceptual item in language is worth doing.
Edit: Pix is a smartarse
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