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.

Diablo 3 Expansion

Last August, Activision/Blizzard announced an expansion for Diablo 3, as expected, at Gamescom in Germany. Closed beta tests for "Reaper of Souls" started this past December, and the release date is currently set for March 25th.

 I found Diablo 3 to be an underwhelming experience. Without an abiding love for Diablo 1 or 2, there was not much to enjoy in 3. One playthrough of the campaign was not enough to lift a character very high in level, and the prospect of replaying levels over and over again seemed pointless to me. Maybe it was my predilection for fully exploring each map on my first time through, but I just did not feel compelled to try any of those levels again. And, really, what would have been my reward? The same enemies taking longer to kill? No thanks. I was promised a loot-fest, and I got a gear grind.

 It was seeing the Cinematic trailer which got me thinking about this post. I find everything about this trailer enticing: the characters, the narrative, the swords, the angels and the demons. It's everything I love in the fantastic and, yet, I will not be buying what it is trying to sell me.



 Because when I watch the Blizzcon trailer, I see that the new expansion will be nothing more than I have come to expect. Let me be clear, I don't prefer isometric views or click-to-run control schemes and that, more than anything else, saps the fun from Diablo 3. With this in mind, I could hardly expect to see something inviting in a gameplay trailer. Now, with that being said, the expansion looks like it would disappoint me in much the same way that the vanilla game has. I do not see the story, which I find compelling and interesting, taking on a more prominent role or playing any important part in the gameplay narrative. I was underwhelmed to play a game of trash-trash-boss before, and I won't pay for the privilege of doing it again.



Games like Mass Effect have spoiled me. When I play a game that's about a story, I want to see my actions having consequences. I want to talk to other gamers about what they found, how they made their decisions, and where their story took them. From a game design perspective, that makes a game excruciatingly complex and difficult to build on--which ought to be the hallmark of a triple-A title. It is in this respect that Diablo 3 fails most profoundly in my eyes. There is an illusion of false choice (class, skillset, etc.) coupled with an expectation to feel challenged to complete higher difficulty settings. Difficulty settings are for bragging rights, which I don't care to have, and a game selling itself on its narrative ought to better engage the player with it.

My Favorite Game Soundtracks

Lately, I've been listening to a lot of music from Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. In addition to it being genuinely fun music, it also draws me back to the joy of exploring the wasteland.

I wrote in an earlier post that sound is both a vital part of the gaming experience and something too often overlooked. Some of the biggest offenders in this area, in my opinion, have been free-to-play MMOs whereas indie games by one or two developers can be among the best. In order for a game to become an experience, quality sounds are vital.

Moreover, great music in a game can also inspire great music made by fans. When a theme is evocative in the right way, it can be reinterpreted again and again. Some of the most enjoyable game music comes from fans of the originals who reinspire the songs with their own energy.

But, I digress. After hours of big bands and crooners I decided that I would like to put together a few playlists of my own favorites and so, without further ado, here it is:

Fallout Franchise: A Sense of the Past

In addition to being just about the only country music I can enjoy, the music from Fallout takes the player back in time and into a world where art has stagnated in the wake of an apocalyptic war and a lasting strife. It both develops the world and draws the player into it. Some of the music is only vaguely familiar the first time you hear it, but as it becomes your soundtrack to the wasteland the two become undeniably linked.

While the game's original soundtrack is good, it's the radio playlists that really make Post-Apocalyptia special.




Legend of Zelda Franchise: The Power of Themes

It's hard to know for sure what it is about The Legend of Zelda that makes it's impact last for so long. I loved The Ocarina of Time, but since then none of the games have grabbed me in the same way. Even Wind Waker. And yet, the music is something which I have always deeply enjoyed.

This playlist includes a variety of ways to listen to this music. Symphonies, ensembles and dubstep remixes all founded on the same several themes and, like a jarred fairy, all possessing some of the magic of Hyrule4.




The Elder Scrolls Franchise: A Sense of Setting

I am a huge fan of The Elder Scrolls, so it is no surprise to find it here. I remember hearing the Skyrim theme before the game was released and listening to it endlessly. Too, the themes from Morrowind and Oblivion call me back to vicarious hours spent in another world. More so than in other games, the soundtracks of the Elder Scrolls put you back in a mood and in a place. Close your eyes, and the grassy valleys stretch out before you. The distant, cloudy mountains rise up and cradle you. The wildlife dances its natural dance through the shaded woods and across the sun-soaked plains.




Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag: A Sense of Character

I admit that I'd enjoyed a few shanties before I ever played Assassin's Creed 4, but ever since I sailed out on the Jackdaw they've held a new place in my heart. AC4 is another fine example of sound being used to draw the player into a world. While repetitive cut-scenes are a shortcoming of the game in many ways, the consoling presence of the crew's shanties makes up for a great deal. The songs allow your crew to feel like people rather than resources and I, for one, love to sing along.

Here is a playlist of all the shanties your crew knows so that you can learn them, too.




Tony Hawk's Pro Skater: The Power of Community

When I was growing up, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater was a franchise to rival Madden NFL for popularity. I had it, my friends had it, and we all thought we knew the best trick. Beyond simply being a fun game, I still find today that the songs from the first three game's soundtracks hold a special nostalgia for me. Moreover, at the time and as a gamer, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater was introducing and inviting me into a community. In those days, "skaters" were a clique unto themselves and this was especially true in their music. Punky, indie rock was a staple of their genre, usually sounding off on an anti-establishment theme of one kind or another. While I never would have identified myself as a "skater kid", the franchise and the playlists introduced me to the community and helped me to understand it.

Today, many of these songs still hold a special place in my memory and altogether they make for a pretty great playlist.





Assorted Others: The Sense and Power of Nostalgia

Throughout this post I have discussed how certain games and franchises can make effective and consistent use of music to strengthen the experience of their game. In LoZ, we see that musical themes can tie worlds together and, in the same way, THPS demonstrates how ideological themes can bring a greater depth of experience. In Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, and Assassin's Creed 4, sound is used to give the player a greater breadth of feeling all throughout their vicarious explorations. While these examples are favorites of mine, there are a plethora of games and franchises which have done and continue to do this same thing. Because I can, here is another list of some assorted video game songs that I really love, but which are not included in the above playlists.

Papers, Please!

I first heard about Papers, Please! over the holidays. It's a puzzle game developed by Lucas Pope wherein the player is an immigration officer for the fictional country of Arstotzka. Since it went on sale, I decided to pick up a copy and try it out. I was expecting something a little prettier, but I'm not dissatisfied with what I got.

Gameplay: As an immigration officer for the nation of Arstotzka, the player's task is to check that the documents provided by NPC's are correct and match one another. Rules change day-to-day based on various conditions relating to the game's story, like whether certain documents are required for certain reasons and how problems should be processed. Overall, this makes the gameplay feel much like working. What alleviates this to some degree is the story. Throughout the course of a day, certain NPC's may offer you choices or there may be a terrorist attack of some kind. These tend to have repercussions on the coming days but also on how well you are able to feed and care for your four family members. 8/10

Graphics: Papers, Please looks like a game from the 80's. That said, if this game had been made in the 80's we would still be talking about it today, though not because of the graphics. Playing the game reminded me of playing Oregon Trail in grade school as much because of the graphical style as for the game's layout. Much of the action happens in the top-left part of the screen, with the rest being reserved for the player to manage their decisions and review documents. Moreover, the graphical style being reminiscent of the 1980's, as well as the fact that Arstotzka is a communist state,  introduces it as a sort of discourse on Cold War politics. 7/10

Sound: Sound is an area where Papers, Please really succeeds. From the menu screen through to every click you make in-game, Papers, Please responds with sound effects that are more than auditory cues. Sure, they get repetitive, but repetition is a part of the nature of the gameplay and so it deepens the aesthetic feel of the game.The words are unintelligible, but the false language of them lends the game a sense of exoticism important to the overall aesthetic. 8/10

Playing Time: The amount of time you will spend playing this game is less than you would hope. Because of the tendency of the gameplay itself to feel like work, it's very easy to quit after fifteen minutes or twenty minutes. When this is the case, a game ought to be easy to come back to and Papers, Please does succeed in this. Your progress it autosaved at the beginning of each day, so you are free to quit out whenever you please or when your day is not going so well. This is not a marathon game, but it is a game to keep around to play little by little. 5/10

Value: Papers, Please is one of those games where the aesthetics employed make it a work of art as much as a computer game. There are a number of paths  might choose to follow in the game, helping a resistance movement, helping immigrants in need, or just helping oneself to make ends meet. In every case, there are moral issues to wrestle with and subtle discrepancies to inspect that engage the player in his role. For it's regular price, $9.99, one should already have an interest in Cold War politics in order to find that value, but on sale for half that price the game is entertaining enough for anyone. 6/10

Overall: I like this game, and would recommend it if you can get it for five dollars or less. There's no hurry to play it, but the next time Steam puts it up on sale it will be worth picking up. It is interesting conceptually, but the gameplay itself lacks entertainment value. Grade: 74 D 

Robocraft

A friend of mine recently suggested I try Robocraft. It is a free-to-play game that's been in development for about a year by FreeJam, a small developer from the UK. Robocraft's tagline, "Build. Drive. Fight.", encapsulates the basics of a game which appeals to both our creative and destructive appetites.

Gameplay: Robocraft is somewhere between Minecraft, Kerbal Space Program, and World of Tanks. More than this, however, playing the game is reminiscent of playing with Legos--except I get to blow up the other kids with lasers. While blocks are the primary building tool, like in Minecraft, the game has more in common with Kerbal Space Program. You build, you test, experiment, test some more, and eventually you find that an hour has past. The game is weakest when you are actually joining matches and fighting, though even that is not unpleasant. Steering is frustrating at times, but the fighting is good fun. It requires a bit of technique to line up shots and to keep your cannons on your target. In short, Robocraft is good fun whether building or fighting, while driving still needs some work.

Graphics: Robocraft isn't going to wow you with it's textures. The crafts are made from square or angular bricks that don't allow for smooth, rounded creations. The environment doesn't sport an amazing pixel count either, but manages an enjoyable, retro feel nonetheless. Laser beams and explosions are no better or worse than you'd expect given the quality of everything else--satisfying but not impressive.

Sound: In spite of the many ways that Robocraft succeeds, the sound design leaves something to be desired. The background music adds little and the sound effects fall short of satisfying. In a game which features both lasers and explosions, sounds are an area which deserve to see some improvement. Too often, sound gets ignored when it ha the potential to make up half of the experience  and that is the case in Robocraft so far. There is nothing to inspire feeling from the game's sound effects beyond simple confirmation of a kill. I would rather be hearing too many ratchets and gears than not enough.

Playing Time: Downloading Robocraft was pleasantly fast. It was less than 10 minutes between visiting the game's website and creating an account (which was also very easy to do through the game's launcher). My time in game has been split between crafting ships and taking them into matches. I've spent more time fiddling with my crafts than fighting with them, but that's been a lot of the fun. Games tend to go by quickly as you are returned to the "garage" as soon as your craft is defeated. Presently, there is no party mechanic or friends list available which is a limitation to the time I spend playing the game both in a given session and overall. So far I've enjoyed the game for a few days, but without friends list support I expect it will be uninstalled after another week or two.

Value: The game is free to play right now and is in an early alpha stage of development. Given that, the value I see in this game at present is tremendous. It's satisfying on a juvenile, intellectual, and competitive level all at the same time between it's gameplay, physics, and nostalgic feeling. Furthermore, the in-game currency available for purchase isn't expensive. I've played many games where eight or more dollars gets you one, maybe two, upgrades of one kind or another but the currency here is more reasonable. Not so reasonable that I've bought any, but cheap enough that I've considered it. In any beta (much less an alpha) that's impressive and a good sign that the developers have got their heads on straight.

Overall: As this game is still only in an alpha stage of development, I will refrain from assigning an overall verdict. I am hopeful that this promising game will continue to grow and improve itself. Without a doubt it's worth a quick download and a bit of your time.

New Post Format

When I was in school writing papers and such, I always found it was much easier to do things quickly if I drew up a formula to follow. Too, it makes things easier to peruse when you know just where to find the information you're looking for.  There will still be, of course, the occasional short essay like the posts I have made in the past, but I'd like to try and do something that makes this blog both easier to read and faster to write. To that end I'm going to try and make my posts about new games more formulaic.

I plan to post a few times in the near future using this formula and then I can decide how I want to change it. For now, I'm going to be writing about a paragraph or so discussing how a game satisfies the following categories and assigning to each an entirely subjective score out of 100 points:

Gameplay: Gameplay is the most important category. This is where I will talk about whether the game is fun to play, if the controls are intuitive, what games are similar to this one, how steep the learning curve is for new players and so on. This is the most general category, and will typically include the brunt of my thoughts on the game among its competitors.

Graphics: The aesthetic feel, the quality of the games effects, the colors, and so on will be critiqued here. Game graphics, in my opinion, tend to get more attention than they deserve, yet they still make up an essential element of what separates a video game from other mediums like movies and books. There are a lot of ways that graphics can add to the experience of a game beyond mere realism, and this section is where I intend to make that point should I feel the need to do so.

Sound: While graphics tend to receive too much emphasis, sound tends to receive too little. A game's sound effects, music, and voice-over work are important parts of making a good game. More than just the quality of the sounds themselves, sounds can provide useful cues to the player and using sound for more than just background noise is important to a really great game.

Playing Time: Some games are worth hours of your time, some others are worth days. Some games you play for a few minutes at a time, others can consume entire afternoons in the blink of an eye. Understanding how you are going to play a game can be a helpful tool in deciding whether to play it at all.

Value: There are a lot of games around vying for a slice of your disposable income, and here is where I'd like to talk about  how that money is going to be converted into entertainment value. I look at a lot of F2P games, where the expense is time rather than money, but value-for-time is just as important as value-for-money. This is also where I can discuss the value of the game in other ways, as an artistic work or as an innovator in the industry.

So, with all of that, I'll be getting to work on putting this formula into practice.