22 Jan 2007
Played on Xbox360
Considering that Quake 3 opted out of a singleplayer campaign entirely, I wasn’t expecting much from the Quake 4 singleplayer campaign. But it wasn’t half bad. It’s a title you’d want to rent, not buy, but at least I was entertained the whole way through.
The aspect that keeps Quake interesting is its variety of fun weapons. I’ve been on a FPS singleplayer kick lately, and I’ve gotta say that the weapon selection in the games out there is boring me to tears. I don’t care if the rate of fire is different and the clip size is larger - it’s still just another freaking machine gun! Quake 4 has a machine gun, but it only has one. And it’s got a lot of other weapons that are, you know, fun.
Killing someone with lightning is fun. Creating a dark matter vortex is fun. Gleefully lobbing grenades everywhere is fun. Shooting hundreds of tiny exploding nails is fun.
Well, it’s not all fun. Getting stuck with a crappy save where you have 25 health is no fun. I’m not sure why in this day and age shooters are still struggling with health/armor systems. Halo solved this problem years ago: give the player regenerative shields. As long as you survive an encounter, you’re reset to a known-good state of health. It makes game balancing way easier, and less obvious for that matter (“Hey, here’s a big unattended cache of health packs and armor! I wonder if there’s a boss encounter coming up…”). The downside of course is that with no health system at all (as Halo 2 opted to do) you lose the sense of being “worn down” over some long epic encounter. I’m not saying ditch health entirely - I’m saying get with the times and start thinking about “out of combat” health resets/regeneration. And obviously “shields” don’t fit into every shooter’s lore, but the same idea can be applied anywhere. Hell, if you’re already in the business that saying that health packs can heal the protagonist’s bullet-riddled body, you should be flexible on spontaneous regeneration.
But ignore the antiquated health system and long load times (which you may get very familiar with due to said health system). I applaud Quake 4 for not trying to be too serious. Sure the whole space marine motif is almost as tired as WW2 shooters. But at least Quake 4 doesn’t waste effort trying to make too much sense. These are games people, not combat simulators.
The one inexcusable aspect of Quake 4? The frame rate. This is a console, not some random PC with a bargain bin video card. Get with the program.
20 Jan 2007
I finally got around to watching the Seattle auditions for American Idol. I generally don’t follow the show, although I have caught a couple other season’s audition portions. When the show starts becoming about actual talent, I lose interest. Which may seem odd, because it’s the same format as So You Think You Can Dance, which I enjoy. But it turns out that dancing is infinitely more entertaining to watch than singing.
Anyway, I was recently having a discussion with a friend about whether the fact that the show was just a thin cover for making fun of these people was okay or not. I say… yes?
These judges are not coming to you while you sing in the shower. Nor are they even criticizing your performance in Karaoke Revolution (although if you get the latest PS2 version, maybe they will). They’re not even heckling you at your favorite karaoke bar. No. You decided that you were such hot shit that you flew from Kansas to audition on television in front of them, full well knowing that they got famous for saying nasty things to people just like you. The real problem? A lack of self awareness.
The people auditioning for American Idol come from a generation that has grown up under the curtain of political correctness. In this fantasy world nobody ever says anything mean about anyone else. Ever. Somehow in the land of free speech unwelcome opinions have become the next WMDs. The result? Mobs of people whose self perception is so unnaturaly inflated up that they fly thousands of miles to audition for a singing competition where they’re expected to be good enough to inspire millions of voters in order to win.
For next time, here’s your pre-flight checklist:
- Have you ever sung in front of other people before?
- Did these people enjoy your performance?
- Are any of the people who enjoyed your performance not your mother?
- Do you have friends who think this is a good idea?
The show’s name is American Idol. As in something worth worshipping. If you’ve got the balls to claim that you’re worthy of America worshipping you, you’d better be ready for some criticism. Alas, it seems that 90% of our would-be demigods are freakishly disfigured trolls with no social awareness, no taste in music, think being on key is “subjective,” and can’t tell that everyone else is laughing at them until some English guy says something mean.
More laughing at ourselves, less taking everything too seriously.
18 Jan 2007
I wouldn’t call myself a fan of the whole reality television thing. But it has become such a large category that it’s really hard to ignore. So I find myself stopping to think about what differentiates a reality show that makes me want to throw up and one that sucks me in and won’t let go.
The obvious answer is that the ones that I like are the ones with real people. But how do you know which shows have real people and which don’t. The trick is looking at what the “goal” is of the show. Is it a cash prize? Bring on the gold diggers.
No one wants to be crowned America’s Next Top Model and get a modelling contract unless they, you know, want to be a model. It’s not like you can trade that contract in for cash. That’s not to say that there aren’t drama queens that dominate the show’s content, nor that the show itself is high brow. But for better or worse, those are in fact real people with real personal goals.
A less trashy example would be So You Think You Can Dance. That show has people with real talent. Yes, they need money. Yes, they need a job. But the point of the show is about how well they can leverage their talent. Not how much they love money.
Anyway, what brought about this particular round of thought is Beauty and the Geek. What makes this show really interesting is that it is half filled with honest people looking for self improvement, and half filled with those seeking profit. It’s a meta-reality show.
The geeks are sometimes extreme characters, but more often they’re scarily familiar (at least if you run in the circles I do). They couldn’t care less about the cash prize, because honestly they’re mostly all on a lucrative path anyway. The geeks are there to better themselves. And as a result they don’t game the show. Instead they make friends.
The beauties, on the other hand… well… they’re largely overrun with horrible reality show tropes. They form alliances, back stab each other, disrespect their geek partners, sunbathe through anything interesting, and generally focus on the money.
The point of the show is to see if even one can pull themselves out of a superficial shame spiral and become a better human being, or if all the others will cannibalize them first and leave the alpha as the victor. And it’s hard not to find that entertaining.
18 Jan 2007
Played on Xbox360
The second campaign in Far Cry Instincts Predator for the Xbox 360, called Evolution, managed to suck a lot less.
Evolution starts off with the return of the big open island environments that used to be Far Cry’s trademark. You’re given multiple objective blips on your radar, a boat, a gun, and you’re supposed to figure out the rest on your own. And given that you begin this campaign with all the feral powers from the previous campaign, romping through the jungle is a lot more fun. I found the super jump from Instincts to be a nice gimmick; in Evolution it was my bread and butter. I felt that there were more encounters where jumping was a viable stategy and there were definitely more routes through the jungle that took advantage of your increased mobility. There still wasn’t much motivation to sneak around, but at least leaping around through the jungle like a bloodthirsty monkey was much more satisfying. Which is why I enjoyed the second campaign so much more: the level design actually matched the gameplay features.
After actually having an opportunity to take advantage of the crazy feral powers, I started to think about some potential synergy with Science & Industry. There are four primary buckets of research items in S&I: weapons, armor, devices, and implants. The feral powers in Far Cry felt like a good fit in S&I’s implants branch. There’s the powerful melee attack (Muscle Fiber Replacements), super speed/jump (Leg Implants), and super smell/sight (Ocular Implants). So the powers themselves felt right at home, but there was some nice details to Far Cry’s implementation that made it just that much better. The melee attack had the same touch as Halo 2’s plasma sword where it also leaps you towards the target. The super jump had a nice mechanic for charging it up and letting it fly, but without being disorienting. And the super smell had these nice glowing trails to help you track enemies. Now if we could just get some traction on S&I2, it’d be great to see a little Far Cry in the implant system.
I’m certainly glad that I only rented this game. I hit multiple nasty crashing bugs and the first campaign bored me to tears. But it did have its moments. Cruising around the islands in a boat while enjoying the gorgeous water. Leaping through the jungle and pouncing right on top of a couple of unsuspecting guards. Having some guards inexplicably spawn right behind me, defying even the most dubious video game logic. Wait, maybe I don’t want to remember that last one…
17 Jan 2007
Played on Xbox360
I finished the two campaigns in Far Cry Instincts Predator (Xbox 360) (GameSpy, GameSpot) and sent the game back to GameFly with mixed feelings. In many ways, the game was thoroughly disappointing. But in other ways it was inspiring.
The first campaign (Instincts) really sucked. You’re this charter boat captain turned jungle ninja. You get to prowl the jungle, backstab unsuspecting guards, plant traps for them to stumble on, and eventually get animal traits of crazy speed, super jumps, and smell-o-vision. You’d think it’d be like being Richard in The Beach, but it’s not. I wasted lots of time trying to set up traps and lurk in the brush, but it’s vastly more efficient to just run and gun through the whole game. That’s okay by me - my inner Serious Sam loves unrealistically blowing the hell out of everything. But the gameplay features in Far Cry are screaming at you to sneak. For example, not only can you go prone, but you can then flip onto your back when prone so you can shoot guards through the floorboards of their stilted beach shack. Too bad you’ll never ever use it. I weep for the poor developer who built that feature for no reason.
Okay, so this is a “shoot first” and “to hell with who hears it” game. I can dig it. Then why do the guns all feel the same? They might as well have saved time by just calling it Machinegun #3 and used the same weapon model. It’s particularly bad because the enemies’ health seems to scale up at the same time your weapon’s damage does, making it feel like there’s no change at all. The only weapon that felt good was the shotgun (which is great for me because I love a good shotgun). But the open environments and lack of ammo makes it not very useful.
My largest complaint with Far Cry Instincts is with the unbelievably obvious spawning system. The critics all seem to love Far Cry’s open environments where you can “choose” the way you get from point A to point B. The reality is that the game is very linear and heavily scripted. Scripting isn’t inherently bad (case and point, Half-Life), but this is really bad scripting. Example: So you’re going along, creeping through this generic facility. You crawl through some ducts (the shooter’s superhighway) and pop out in an office. There are some guards hanging out there in the dark (don’t ask why) and you dispatch them (they’re evil, duh). There’s only one door out of this room, so you head out that way. As soon as you exit the door into the hallway… two new guards come out of the room you just left! There was no other entrance to the room! I guess you could explain it by saying that they came in the vent, just like you, but come on! Events like this happen constantly, completely breaking the realism of your environment.
I finished off the Instincts campaign thoroughly disatisfied. But I’m an achievement point whore, and that first campaign left me with a paltry 15 points, so I decided to keep going and do the second campaign. Thank god, because that one was much much better. More on that later.