New Post Format II

After some thought, I'd like to make a few tweaks to the way I focus my reviews. In some ways these changes take a new angle on the same essential ideas, while in other instances it will lead me to talk about games in more specific ways that I might have in the past. So, let's talk specifics:

Gameplay: Still my first category but no longer one I would consider "most important", Gameplay is where I'd like to discuss the way a player plays the game. This means the control schemes, the duration of play sessions, and how these things effect the "feel" of the experience. I intend to make this category shorter and more specific.

Visual Effects/Art Style: An adaptation of the "Graphics" category, Visual Effects and Art Style will still be about the visual experience of the game, but will include more specific discussions on the aesthetic qualities of particular facets of a game. I will focus on moving away from relative comparisons and into my thoughts on what the visual component adds to the game.

Sound Effects/Music: In my previous posts, I have found a tendency to emphasize the necessity of effective in-game sounds. I hope that bringing greater specificity to this review category will bring new insights into good game design and a better guide to how a game creates atmosphere.

Story and Narrative: To my chagrin, many of the games I pick up lack well-developed stories. This is a serious problem among free-to-play games (which I review most frequently) that typically sets them apart from bigger, triple-A titles, but rather than using this category to grind that axe, I hope to focus more on constructive criticisms pertaining to how a game's narrative could be further developed.

Entertainment Value: An adaptation of the "Value" category which also borrows from what was cut from the  old "Gameplay" category, Entertainment Value is where I'll discuss a game's value-for-dollar as well as the impact of the experience. Games cost time, money, and attention in order to provide an entertaining experience.

Previously, in the "Value" category, I had intended to discuss the artistic contribution a game made to the whole industry, but the nature of much of what I am able to review makes this largely unnecessary. I don't mean to say that F2P games don't contribute to the art of video games, but I have seldom found it to be a highly relevant factor to recommending a game. If a game has artistic merit, then I would expect that merit to make a contribution to the way a game entertains the player and it will still be considered in the "Entertainment Value" category.

The next post I have planned is about a game called Shattered Horizons. I will be giving this scheme its first run there, and also plan to include a gameplay video. Look forward to it!

ESO Launch and First Impressions

The Elder Scrolls Online officially launched on April 4th, but I've been playing since March 31st with 5-day early access. My initial impressions were positive: I saw a great many players roaming Tamriel with their pre-order bonus vanity pets and Imperial Horse mounts. Last minute changes to the starting zones were frustrating to some story-centric players, but as someone who participated in several beta tests I found the opportunity to skip ahead of much of what I had already experienced to be a pleasant surprise. All in all the launch for both the 5-day and the 3-day early access went very smoothly.

With the true launch of the game on April 4th, some new problems came up. While the game itself is far from bug-free, the bigger troubles came from policies and systems external to the game. With the end of the early access periods and the beginning of subscription-based play-time, players were required to use their 30-day pass (included with the game) as a sort of registration key before they were prompted to select a subscription plan. The failure or inability to do either of these things meant being locked out of the game. This frustrated players who wanted to use their 30 days before deciding whether to subscribe for longer, but more egregiously those who had not received their codes were left helpless. In response to this, a grace period for submitting the code was extended through part of Sunday.The problem was that deliveries aren't made on Sundays, so some players were unable to play the game until their codes were delivered on Monday. This is what happened to me and, as someone who paid for the Physical Imperial Edition (the expensive one), it was disappointing to not be treated as a valued customer.

But when I think about judging a game's launch, what is happening in the game is far more important. If I'm delayed a few hours for some server downtime or a day for a delivery to be made, I would still be more frustrated by the game itself not working for me. In that respect, bugs are still popping up in spite of the lengthy beta testing phase and relogging to fix small glitches is disruptive to the experience. If the Elder Scrolls universe was not one which I loved, I would feel more inclined to recommend it to MMO players. As it is now, I would say the game better serves Elder Scrolls fans as the atmosphere is true to the game's predecessors and knowledge of the world-lore adds depth in the world which is otherwise easily skipped over. It might be more effective if ESO served as a bridge for MMO players into the Elder Scrolls universe enabling the Elder Scrolls fandom to grow, but the opposite is true and I see ESO bringing Elder Scrolls fans towards the bewildering landscape that is MMO gaming in this Free-to-Play, Pay-to-Win era.

Speaking as an Elder Scrolls fan, what I want most from ESO is for it to bring on an expansion of the franchise, not just internally through the game's lore, but externally as well as the fandom grows and more people take notice and take an interest in the game.

To that end, I'm already finding amazing things. For example, ShoddyCast, a YouTube channel, has been publishing an Elder Scrolls Lore Series:



And there are a lot more things coming from ESO, like these gamplay walkthroughs from YouTube channel IFreeMZ:



In my opinion, though, one of the best things coming from ESO are these trailers from Bethesda Softworks themselves:


Overall, ESO's launch certainly hasn't been perfect, but they have avoided some of the bigger pitfalls that other games have fallen victim to (like entirely halting digital sales of the game, FFXIV). The game itself is satisfying to Elder Scrolls fans like myself, and as long as we keep talking about it the game's popularity is sure to grow. The game needs to continue to grow as well, in patching up its bugs and glitches and in providing players more and more story to delve into. We are adventurers, after all, and we're going to need a steady supply of mysterious dungeons, caves, and keeps to hold our interest.

Smite's Official Release!

Today, Smite is officially out of its beta testing phase! This game is one which I have posted about multiple times in the past, and a game which I play almost every day. Most of the changes the game has seen over the last few months have brought it closer to a League of Legends clone, and yet, while that's not typically a compliment, I believe it has helped guide this game. Even their new cinematic teaser (below) is reminiscent of LoL's trailers in style and mood.

Recent changes to the item store in particular have made this game feel even more like League of Legends. LoL's popularity has been growing and the realm of e-sports has been growing around it, so hitching their wagon to LoL's train isn't a bad strategy. Still, it is becoming more difficult to describe Smite in its own terms. If the abilities become known by their LoL counterpart, and gods which should feel unique become amalgamations of LoL's champions (who are themselves amalgamations of DotA characters), then it becomes difficult to bring new players into the game--something I dearly hope for.

They're newest addition to their roster of gods, Ullr, doesn't add much to the game creatively. While I'm interested to explore his strengths and weaknesses, I would hope that future god releases include characters with a little more imagination in their abilities. It does compensate, somewhat, that his skin, "Strider", makes reference to  J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings", but I would prefer that the skin itself was more than just a change of color. The other skin they added recently, Dark Lord Sun Wukong, is clearly "inspired" by Star Wars, and if they're willing to run the risk of copyright infringement, why not an Assassin's Creed "inspired" skin for Ullr?

Now, before Hi-Rez has a chance to make major changes to their game again, I would like to share a quick gameplay video I recorded a few days ago. This match was over after only about 10 minutes, but most matches are between 15 and 25. The gametype is Assault (ARAM) and I play as Ra, a relatively basic god and one of the several available to new players for free. More than anything, though, my goal here was to give you some idea of what this game is like and, at the very least, this video can accomplish that.

If you haven't heard of Smite before or would like to give the game a try, check out it's page here

The Feel of the Game: War of the Roses vs. Chivalry: Medieval Warfare

Last night, I got to thinking about how "feeling" makes a game into what it is moreso than the mere facts of its description. To illustrate this, I present the examples of War of the Roses and Chivalry: Medieval Warfare. These are two games which look very similar on the outside, but feel quite different to the player playing them. While WotR feels rooted in history, Chivalry is really all about the action.

On it's Steam store page, Chivalry is described as "a fast-paced medieval first-person slasher with a focus on multiplayer battles" and it's most popular user-defined tags are "Medieval", "Multiplayer", "Action", "Melee" and "Gore".

User-defined tags for War of the Roses are very similar: "Action", "Free to Play", "Medieval", and "Multiplayer". But the game's description is less focused on describing the gameplay than it is on the historical aspects: "Battle online with up to 64 players through 7 historically inspired war zones as you experience the conflict between Lancaster & York first hand!"

But trying to describe their differences is inherently difficult. In both games you take on the role of a soldier. In both you choose between a variety of weapons, whether long-ranged or close, heavy or light. And in both games your ultimate goal is to slaughter the other team with superior skill and tactics. Getting more specific, both games ask the player to rely heavily on timing blocks and attacks, both try to inspire the player to see the match as a battle in a much larger war and world, and both use similar control and camera schemes. But the games become different as soon as you actually play them--once you actually feel them.

So, let me show you what I'm talking about.  Below are two videos of me playing each game. In Chivalry, there is a sense that buffoonery and ridiculous ideas have a place. It is more light-hearted than WotR, wherein a serious sense of historical accuracy is made dominant. Both games feature a wider variety of game types and weapons than I can demonstrate here, so my goal is to focus on what it is like to play an average match rather than explore the potential depth of the experiences.

What cannot be imparted through video or words is the way a game responds to the players inputs. This is an important part of the feel of a game, but short of putting the game in your hands it is not something I can show you. How well you are able to control a game makes a significant contribution to how you feel while playing it--are you in control or out of control?

What you are able to see in these videos is how pace and style develop the atmosphere, community, and sensations of these games. While WotR is slow and serious, Chivalry is fast and frenetic, and yet both games are trying to accomplish the same thing--an enjoyable, medieval experience.

In parting, I would be remiss not to mention "War of the Vikings", the next game from Fatshark and spiritual successor to WotR. I had a chance to play the game in its alpha-stage and, while avoiding saying anything specific, the game does a better job of accomplishing what it sets out to do. It has more in common with Chivalry in ways that don't make it unlike WotR and I feel that it will represent a step forward.

Twitch, eSports, and Orion: Dino Horde

Twitch.tv, an internet streaming service, isn't the only site on the net for streaming games, but it is quickly becoming the most popular. Through a Twitch account, users can stream live video onto the site for anyone to see. Streams can also be recorded and re-watched later. Similar to the "Let's Play..." style videos on YouTube, Twitch's service is providing a platform for players to connect, communicate, and learn from one another. But beyond this, the service enables gamers to watch their favorite e-sports in much the same way as they watch more traditional sports. In short, gaming livestreams are making e-sports more accessible and that enables them to grow.

Previously, Major League Gaming (www.majorleaguegaming.com) was the place for watching live streams of big-money gaming tournaments. But this limited fans to only popular franchises like Halo, Call of Duty, and Starcraft, while less popular gaming communities were left out. The rise of Twitch and similar services is an opportunity for the gaming industry in many ways, and I'm hopeful for the changes that are coming.

Currently, Twitch is streaming content from League of Legends, Dota 2, Starcraft 2, which are games you could have found elsewhere, but they are also streaming games like Diablo 3, Minecraft, DayZ, Hearthstone, World of Warcraft, and Super Smash Bros. which would have been much harder to find in the past.

In my own experience, streaming to Twitch has been difficult for online games. I wanted to stream some Smite, but the lag I experience while doing so makes the game unplayable. In concession, I went to find another game I could stream and share my thoughts on. So, here it is, in all of its anachronistic glory, Orion: Dino Horde!

Watch live video from zzSandman on TwitchTV

Loadout

Loadout is a new free-to-play, over-the-top, third-person action shooter. In addition to being a magnet for compound adjectives, Loadout is being touted on the virtues of its in-game customizablity. The game's developers, a company called Edge of Reality, have been in the game industry for over a decade, but this game isn't like most of the work they have done in the past.

Gameplay: Loadout doesn't innovate. You've played it's gametypes, you've fired it's weapons, and you've traversed it's maps. If I was going to forgive that, I'd say so about now, but I'm not. The biggest problem with Loadout is that it fails to stand out and try new ideas. When I think about the gameplay I'm reminded of another F2P game from last year called Renaissance Heroes that closed down last December. The games had a lot in common in terms of how they feel to play, and that was enough to keep me entertained for at least a few weeks. What sank Renaissance Heroes, in my opinion, was the exorbitant costs of the "micro" transactions. Loadout shouldn't have this same problem, but the fact remains that the gameplay has been tried and has failed.

If the customization options were truly deep, or if there was really much of an option at all, there would be more to say for this game. While the options are there for higher level or premium players, for most the game doesn't live up to its promise. Between a tech tree for new weapon options and experience points to spend upgrading and customizing your loadouts, the game has a capacity for depth that isn't realized until days and hours have already been sunk into playing it. The customization options should bemore readily accessible to new players if that's what this game is going to seel itself on. Without something special, without something to tell your friends about, Loadout doesn't stand a chance against the superior gameplay of its competitors. 7/10

Graphics: The graphical style of the game (reminiscent of Borderlands' "concept art style") is supposed contribute to that "over-the-top" sensation. Effectively, I've seen few players with the premium items and so much of the game looks repetitive. The maps are nice, but nothing special, and, while the projectiles are okay, the explosions don't make much of a visual impact. The animations are good and the way that damage shows on your character is downright admirable--easily one of the best parts of the game. 7/10

Sound: Loadout doesn't fail to utilize sound, but it does fall short of gaining anything form it. The clips of music and the beeping response you hear when you get a hit are effective at giving feedback, but they fail to add much to the experience. Sound hasn't been ignored in this game, but it has again failed to innovate in any way. 7/10

Value: As a free-to-play game, value is usually an easy win. Something for nothing is always worth it, and in Loadout you won't be overwhelmed by pay-to-win players (there just aren't very many of them). The premium currency reasonably priced, unlike it was in Renaissance Heroes, the F2P game I mentioned above, where a new weapon cost around $20. Moreover, daily rewards offer a chance at unlocking some of those premium items for free which is great. 8/10

Playing Time: Daily rewards area  great way to get players into a game day after day, but once you've gotten it there is little reason to stick around. For me, Loadout is a game I'll play for two or three matches (fifteen or twenty minutes) before I move on to something I enjoy more. I play a couple of matches, spend my experience, and move on. This is a game I'll play for a few weeks, and when I find something else I'll move on. While a game like SolForge has kept me playing with it's dailies, Loadout doesn't lend itself to quick sessions quite as well. All in all, I'll be done with this game before I really get a chance to enjoy it's customization options. 5/10

Overall: I'm not impressed with Loadout. The game is fun, but lacks anything to keep me hooked or to tell my friends about. There are no cool gimmicks or refined systems. It is too easily put down and too easily forgotten. I'm disappointed that I didn't have more customization options available to me at the start, and I feel that to be the first and foremost failure of the game. 68/100 F

Titanfall Beta Impressions

I was lucky enough to have the chance to play in Titanfall's multiplayer beta test this past weekend. The game's developers, Respawn Entertainment,are up against high expectations with their first game. The game studio formed in 2010 after Infinity Ward (makers of Call of Duty) fired Jason West and Vince Zampella (one of the Infinity's co-founders) for "breach of contract and insubordination".  Following the age-old playground tradition, Zampella and West started their own game--that's Titanfall, a game with a chip on its shoulder.

If you were doin' the Duty before it was just "cod", you know that the folks at Infinity Ward have had some pretty great ideas over the years. Besides being the "The Spiritual Successor to Call of Duty", Respawn Entertainment's Titanfall is an FPS made of equal parts speed and high-explosive. That's a recipe for disaster if the game isn't balanced, but, from what I've played, Titanfall is expertly balanced.

I had a great time playing the game. Multiplayer was exciting, challenging, and everything else a triple-A FPS title should be.  6v6 matches were just right for the maps and kept spawning players away from danger but never too far from action. AI-controlled "grunts" are absolutely a revelation to a genre which has stagnated as big names like Call of Duty and Battlefield begin to feel like are being manufactured on an assembly line. The constant presence of enemy targets keeps snipers sniping and CQB ninjas checking their corners.Their impact in the game has less to do with points and more to do with the experience of playing the game. Pointjockeys will still be better off hunting Titans than peppering the cannon fodder, but a players won't be able to ignore them, either.

Whether on foot or in a Titan, the matches maintained a sense of pace. Messages popping in from tacticians as well as chatter from the grunts filled the environments with a sense of purpose and kept up the pressure. Beyond filling the maps with action, AI grunts provide a thrilling contrast to real players, who in turn feel more like formidable opponents in a single-player mission. And, overall, the battles can feel like they are  on a large scale like in Battlefield 4 or Planetside 2 but with fewer players and on much smaller maps.

Besides the AI component, Titanfall's matches feel more like real battles because they have an ending. An epilogue sequence after the final points are scored brings closure to each match in addition to providing the opportunity to finish that last kill or rack some extra experience points. The effect that these additions have on making the multiplayer feel more like a narrative is astonishing. Titanfall is the best game I have played at making me feel like both  the single and multiplayer components belong in the story.

But there are still things keeping me from buying this game. For one thing, it's published by EA and will be played (on PC) through Origin. I really do not like the way EA behaves in the gaming industry, so giving them more of my money is something I try to avoid whenever I can. Still, the game looks and feels like a $60 game and I will have a hard time not buying it. 

Personal grudges aside, Titanfall is something of a fusion between Star Wars Battlefront and Call of Duty, but with much more from Call of Duty. Calling in Titans makes you tough and a tough-target for everyone on the battlefield, and I was reminded of spawning as a Jedi in Star Wars Battlefront, but the game looks like Call of Duty in so many ways. The menus, the challenges,  and the loadouts are all distinctly reminiscent of CoD, and I spent a good deal of time with them as there was more than a minute of waiting time between each match. I do feel that having a lengthy break after each match contributed to longer playing sessions, but it also gave me plenty of time to get distracted. 

There are still two things I want to hear about this game before I'm sold on it. One, that the single-player story is significant and worthwhile and, two, that the game has a powerful soundtrack. I realize that soundtracks aren't usually selling points on games in this generation, but, from what I've played so far, I feel it would be an unjustified shame if Titanfall didn't have some incredible music to accompany its stunning visuals--there's just something so evocative about a huge, flaming mech...

Finally, here's a great video from Rev3Games including Adam Sessler, Vince Zampella, and some gameplay video. It gets particularly good around 10 minutes in.