Obscured View

So, like I said I would,  I’ve started a list of things I’ve found in games over the years that have annoyed me enough to remember them long enough to make this list.

I’ll expand the list as I find more or remember more of them from the years I’ve spent playing games, or any good ones from comments made on the page.

You can find a link to the list up top, or just click here.

First, let me say that I absolutely hate and love my 360.  I hate it because it’s cheaply made, I’m on my second one already, and this one has the same problem of just out of no where having “disc can not be read” messages pop up, typically when I’m in the middle of enjoying myself.

Or, sometimes, it’s after not enjoying myself that it hurts the most.  Twice now, the little gremlins inside the machine decided that they’re going to make my 360 explode right after I finish a boss battle in DMC4 and a cutscene is playing.  Great reward.

Also, since Capcom decided that saving mid-mission wasn’t cool or something, since it crashed before I could save, I have to do the entire level over again.  Yay.  No, really — let me put more feeling into that…

“yay.”

So the annoying shoddy console aside, the real issue that DMC4 has as a game is that the camera angles make no sense from transition to transition.  There’s a very reasonable rule in film that you learn very early on in any film class, and that’s never, ever cross the line of action from camera angle to the next unless you move onto the line first.

It’s like Capcom wanted to break that rule on every occasion they could.  So you are pushing down on the controller, and when the scene changes, you’re now running “up” on the screen.  This happens in games from time to time, but what most do is that until you let up on any movement, your controls stay relative to how you were moving before the scene change.  Not so in DMC4 — you switch angles, and if you make the slightest adjustment in movement vector, the controls immediately flip to what’s relative to the new screen.  This ends up making you immediately turn around and run back onto the other screen that you just left.  This can chain several times if you’re not completely steady on the controller.

I think I’m going to start a list of things that you just don’t do in 3D games, and that’ll be the first one on it.

There’s a lot of crappy games on XBLA.  There’s some good ones, too.

The one tool that allows the consumer to make an educated choice on which games are crap and which aren’t are the demo versions.  Sure, you have to deal with annoying “BUY NOW!!!!1!” screens and such — especially in any Sierra game — but you can check the quality of a title quickly without paying for it.

Apple seems to have completely missed this whole “try before you buy” part.  Sure, they’ll claim within the next few days that they’ve made $$$ from apps already (and that developers have made $$), but the point is that most of that is money people are going to regret spending.  Apple seems to be treating the app store not like they’re making product for a game service — or even a PC / Mac service — but for a phone company that just wants you to buy off of a name rather than sample what’s available.

I can’t help but wonder if this was intentional.  Hell, I can preview songs on iTunes… but I can’t preview apps?  Free apps, sure, but apps you want me to pay $10 for?!

Epic fail, Apple, epic fail.

I don’t really know why I played all the way through Assassin’s Creed.  It’s great to look at, and very fluid to control, but after visiting each of the towns once, you’ve done everything the game has to offer to the very end.  I realized this when I first bought it and played it only to about that point.  I guess because I’m doing some research for something else (more on that soon!) that I went back to it.

I’m a big fan of games that have a simple premise and carry it out well.  AC does a good job with that for the most part.  The controls are easy to get, most of the dexterity is handled for you, and the weapon selection is limited enough (but not diversified enough, IMO) that it’s graspable.  I think perhaps the issue with AC is the number of missions you had to go on that didn’t offer you any real differences in how to complete them whatsoever.  Sure, there’s an achievement for silently killing all your marks, but what I mean is that I was never forced to do one mission completely brute-force, another relying completely on avoiding jar carriers, another that had to be done only from range, one where I had to make the enemy kill themself, etc.  And although the informant missions were of two variations, I groaned whenever a timer popped up.  I understand the PC version has even more mission types, but boy, none of them sound like they’re more fun… likely because they’re side objectives and you don’t need to even bother with them in your investigations.

This I think is the danger of creating games that are built around a very open-ended sandbox experience, and that is that the game creators begin to rely on the open-ended world to create interesting scenarios for them, rather than creating ones that are hand-crafted from beginning to end.  Perhaps the creative people on the project were new to the idea of directed storytelling, or perhaps the schedule called for it to be shipped sooner rather than later.  I don’t really know, but it’s a bit disappointing in the end that the best they could come up with was really just different placements of walls / obstacles and enemy NPCs from job to job.  I was never trapped in a market by guards and forced to leap through stalls.  I never found myself looking for a jar of poison amongst a sea of jar carriers, nor chasing a thief that lifted something from me across the city in order to recover it.

I was delighted when there was a mission on the harbor (although why Altair can’t swim is beyond me) with an archer boss, as that sounded like a fun dodge / retaliate kind of fight while you chased him across the piers.  Alas, no.  It was just a setup for a ground chase, which ended in a leaping kill or a massive sword fight (depending on your dexterity)… as did just about every other kill in the game.

You could say there’s a purity of focus to the game, but perhaps that focus was just a bit too pure.  They stuck with making scenarios that used only the mechanics that they created, but they never forced one mechanic to be dominant in any mission over the others, so in the end, they’re all the same.

The story, by the end, is all right; that the apple that got Adam and Eve kicked out of Eden is some kind of alien data / mind-control device is interesting, but the game ended before it actually got anywhere good.

I’ve heard they’re not in any rush to revist the franchise, and I’m glad for that.  If they’d just cranked out another sequel, chances are it would have played just the same as this one, and that’s not a good thing.  They’ve got plenty of tech on their side, but really need some more scripting and setup to the kills, with more involvement and planning on the part of the player in order to create a more rewarding experience.

On a side note, not until I had finished the entire game did I realize that the notes and diagrams you pickpocket from people can actually be read and analyzed.  Had that information directly overlaid into my HUD / Radar so that I can see these weaknesses, guard positions, and such, it would have made the recovery of them a lot more rewarding, and the leveraging of them that much more interesting.  As it was, you had to stop the action to read stuff that you don’t in the slightest have to bother with.  See that X on the radar?  Just get to that and kill the target.  It’s not any deeper than that.

So the moral of the story — just because you have a sandbox to run around in doesn’t mean designers should rely on it to generate exciting content for the user.  GTA’s team knows this, which is why missions are still hand-crafted experiences within the sandbox world.  Ubisoft’s Creed team could use a lesson in it.

Can’t wait.

So I’ve been trying to get a Wii Fit for a while now, and have always found them unattainable.  So today, I get up early, pour over the Sunday ads, and find that Target says they have them.  Ok, on my way…

I get to Target around 7:45 and there’s two people already waiting there.  By the time 8 rolls around, there’s about 10 people behind me, waiting.  I have a feeling they’re all here for the same thing.  I figure, OK if at least they got one box in, all of these people will go away happy.

So the doors open, we get in, and… they have two Wii Fits.  Two.

Two?!

Two is more of an insult than having none.  Two, for an entire store?  On a day you’re advertising them in the sunday paper?!  What sense does that make?  I would love to have had a (limited quantites) disclaimer, at least then two would be acceptable in some way.

Walking out, I hear the lady that was in the front of the line say “thank god I got here at 6:45″.

Ok, that’s a bit extreme.  I guess in hindsight I’m really not hardcore enough for a Wii Fit.  She earned it.  I don’t want to work that hard for my casual excercise device.

So my wife and I went to see WALL-E Friday night (great film), and were waiting in line for our 7:15 showing to start.  There were about 20 people ahead of us, and about 20 behind us that got there a bit early.  Most of them were couples with or without kids, and some families with friends and kids in tow.

Right next to us was the line for Wanted’s 7:10 showing.  There were about 100 people in line at least, and most of them were large groups of kids that weren’t anywhere near 17, and families with their kids, which ranged in age from 11 and up.

I was confused and had to go ask an employee if I was in the right line.  Yes, I was in the right line.  So there were more under-age kids in the line for Wanted (an R rated film) than in the WALL-E (rated G) line.

I have no problem with Wanted being more popular on a Friday night… but the number of 11-14 year old kids seeing the movie really threw me.  Did anyone even bother to check their IDs?  I’m figuring there was one kid that was 17 in the group, which allows the entire group in under the “parent or guardian” clause.  As for families with younger kids… OK, that’s cool if you want to parent that way… but WTF?

So what does the R rating mean any more?  Does it even have a place?  Most of what you see in an R rated film is on TV (cable at least) these days.  It seems like perhaps PG-13 is enough, and R should be what NC-17 is now, and NC-17 removed.

How the hell does the ratings board even make sense any longer?  I went and saw Orgazmo in the theater and it was NC-17… after which seeing it (and laughing until it hurt), I have no idea why it was rated as it was.  Oh wait that’s right, it made fun of religion (although it didn’t really).  Instant NC-17 for that, because kids could get the wrong idea!  Slow-motion bullet through the brainpan in full graphical detail?  Oh, that’s a bit graphic… but kids can handle that as long as they’re with a guardian.  We’ll say R.

I’ve made some violent games in the past, but I certainly wouldn’t expose kids to them at an early age.  The world is violent enough as-is that I don’t think kids need to see that kind of stuff until they’re older.  Be a child for a while, eh?

Amusing tidbit: “The Blues Brothers” was R rated when it came out in theaters.  Man, how times have changed.

Is it entertaining? Yes.

Is it fun to play? Yes, most of the time.  Some of the aiming mechanics are a bit off for my tastes, but for the most part your character does what you want them to do when you want them to do it.  The controls become second nature after a bit, although CQC combat isn’t explained at all through game play.  You have to read up on it via a menu.

Does it wrap things up? Yes, for the most part it does.  I’ll not give anything away, but you certainly get a lot of payoff.

Should you play it? Yes, absolutely.

Should you buy it? Depends.  If you’re going to play it more than once or play online, yes.  It has tons of collection items, rewards, and achievement-like things to gather in both multi and solo play.

Adam, you finished it already? Already?  There’s an achievement for finishing the game in under 5 hours with no kills… even bosses.  So yes, at my more lethargic pace, I finished it in about a week of on and off play, with at least one “holy crap it’s 3AM?!” session mixed in there.  That’s one nice thing about this game — you can actually finish it — and it keeps your interest throughout, unlike some other major releases this summer.  I’m looking at you, Niko Bellic!

If Michael Bay, the director, was a character in a book by King or Koontz, Bay would go off into some secret chamber somewhere in his compound, play MGS4 in some kind of all-encompassing aural and visual experience, and pleasure himself (in either simple or twisted ways, author dependent) while dreaming of making action scenes in his films that work on the level that some of the stuff does in MGS4.  When MGS4 is good, it’s really, really good.  It kicks Bay’s ass all over the place.  It laughs at him, then headlocks him and knocks him unconsious, steals his rations, and dumps him in a locker.  It may even put a claymore outside the locker for when he finally wakes back up, just for laughs.

Of course, you have to give Bay credit for creating the kind of patriotic bad-ass film that inspired Kojima’s team, but man if the Japanese didn’t just take it and run off with it, improving it at every turn.

If Kojima took any influence from Bay, it’s unfortunately in the lack of having a good editor, or listening to an editor if indeed they had one.  Anything you do in MGS4 is a time-commitment.  Watching a briefing can take 30 minutes… or more.  Try 90 minutes.  That’s almost half as long as Bad Boys 2 (yes, I’m joking).  Although you really don’t notice the time going by (unless your spouse is waiting for you for something) while playing the game, you still notice that you just burned hours of your day in a “quick” session once you’re done.

Gear selection choice is through the roof in this game, and frankly I don’t know why half of them are featured.  I realize that most are real weapons (neat to see the FN in the mix) and we’re traveling around the world, so different ones would be represented, but do we need 15 different rifles?  Really?  How about three diverse ones and one really customizable one?  No, 15?  Really?  Oh, ok.

I can’t tell you the chills I got playing this late at night with the lights down while Laughing Mantis was screaming “SNAAAAAAKE!!!” at me (complete with great reverb effect) and taunting me to find her.  Creepy!

So far this year, Metal Gear Solid 4 is the first must-play game of 2008.  Highly entertaining from beginning to end, and even more so if you’ve played the previous series entries… all the way back to the NES.

And just think!  You can now skip the next 4 or 5 (movie ticket price dependent) Michael Bay movies and still come out ahead, because MGS4 likely just did it all better.

P.S. I really have nothing against Bay or his films, it was just fitting to use him in this post… although he does need to get a better editor, or listen to one.

Holy shi–

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