Gaming Weekend: Zombie Apocalypse Edition
Zombies invaded my 360 this weekend, plus I reach a WoW milestone, engage in some courtroom activities that soldify my position on virtual lawyering, pick up a game I can’t seem to latch onto, find out Lock’s Quest isn’t the game I thought it was and fall asleep playing a demo. Plus, my thoughts on what would make for a better MMO experience and more Pandemic than you can shake a stick at.
Come on. You know you want to read it.
- Left 4 Dead
One of my Goozex trades that came in this week was this Valve-produced zombie game which I was really excited about when I initially heard talk of it, then cooled on considerably when I heard the initial reviews and impressions, but gradually found I could not resist, possibly due to my well-documented love of all things zombie.
I guess I don’t know what I thought the game was; I’m not sure how many ways there are to interpret multiplayer zombie apocalypse game. But for someone who doesn’t always run lock-step with my gamer friends’ gaming habits multiplayer games tend to be either something I have to play with strangers (not something I tend to enjoy) or something that I have to maintain on hand for far longer than I tend to keep games in an effort to happen on a chance to enjoy. As a result, I can’t be sure how long I’ll have L4D, but at least they included the option to play solo.
What is a little disappointing is that this is a game I think I’d really love if I had the social structure to play it the way it was intended, with three friends. The non-co-op mode displays the game in a sort of demo mode, but Left 4 Dead’s principal appeal is that it eschews a lot of the unnecessary exposition in favor of thrusting you into the middle of a zombie film with only your companions and a goal of making it to the next safe point. As a single-player game, this is good for people like me who enjoy zombie stories but largely temporary. Once I’ve escaped the zombies in each zone one time, there’s no need to retry unless I really want to improve my performance or something. Since the companion AI is designed to get you through only so much as the difficulty level suggests, there is no real sense of accomplishment other than “Okay, I can do that on this difficulty mode.”
It’s pretty clear the highlight of the game is, instead, “Wow. We did it. That was close.” - World of Warcraft
I hit level 50. Now that I’m ten levels away from the max without paying for the expansions, I’m again confronted with the prospect of considering how long I intend to play the game. I doubt I’ll reach 60 before the next billing cycle so I’ll probably at least have my account active into the first week of April, but what then? Opting for Burning Crusade could keep the game going longer, but at $30 extra the benefit would seem to be a couple of new races to choose from (in other words, new characters) and some new content. As much as I enjoy the game though, I feel like—as with Left 4 Dead—my lack of regular multiplayer access is restricting some of the long-term enjoyment the game represents as a mere potential. Sure I could try to befriend a regular group via guilds and try to find people in roughly the same stage of the game as I am, but at some point it starts to feel like my best bet there would be to just race toward the current end game which means not just Burning Crusade and its $30 price tag, but also Wrath of the Lich King and its $40 entry point. $70 and a lot of trial and error to find a way to keep justifying a $15 monthly charge? No, I think not. - Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
As part of my ongoing effort to clean out my stash of handheld games, I picked up Phoenix Wright again to try and push through the last couple of cases. But as I played, I realized that while I like the game in a sort of abstract way (I admire their adherence to older point-n-click adventure tropes) I really don’t have a lot of actual fun playing it. It seems tedious, trial-and-error based and altogether too slow to be a really great handheld game. I want to like it more than I really do and since the game represents something I could be enjoying a lot more, I dropped it onto my Goozex list unplayed. Hey, I figure I can always re-acquire it if I start to miss it. - Folklore
Another title I’m fond of believing I enjoy more than I actually enjoy playing, I put Folklore back in the PS3. Maybe it’s the fact that thus far I’ve enjoyed a number of PS3 exclusives in a very disposable sense and I’m still looking for that game I want to hang onto, maybe it’s that Folklore bothers to try to be original in areas that normally get overlooked like theme, tone and structure as opposed to say, style or mechanics. Whatever the case, I’m sort of smitten by Folklore and yet I find it consistently gets dumped aside for something else.
I think overall the problem is that as someone who has played hundreds of video games, I respect Folklore for marching to the beat of its own drum, but that respect is earned in spite of it being a fundamentally dull game. I like that it exudes melancholy where a similar game might be whimsical, I love that its story unfolds with separate interwoven lot threads focusing on two characters but you can choose how to see it unfold. I think its unabashed embrace of a grim tale with a heavy dose of fantasy to keep it just light enough as to not fall into depressing territory is wonderful but (and it’s a significant but) at the end of the day those things don’t make it fun to actually play. It’s still a collection-game brawler with questionable hit detection and an overly complex system of advancement.
I haven’t yet decided that the game needs to hit the trade-in pile, but I’m on the cusp and I think if a couple of my other pending trades were to go through and deplete my stockpile of Goozex points, it would be out the door in a flash. - Lock’s Quest
A friend of mine at work showed me the online demo of the game. It’s a fun little tower-defense variant and we had some good times seeing who could get the furthest. Since we liked that so much we both decided to pick up the DS version and we were likewise simultaneously surprised to learn that the game you play in your browser is not the game you play in your DS at all.
Which is not to say the DS game is worse in any way, in fact it is significantly richer and more multifaceted than the simple flash game that is really only slightly different from dozens of excellent Kongregate entries. In the DS version you actually control Lock, who is responsible for repairing your fortifications in real time and can also contribute by engaging the enemies (Clockworks) in combat. I’m very early in the game still but I’m impressed by the way the game stitches together elements of action RPGs, RTS games and Turn-Based Strategy by giving you the opportunity to prepare your defenses, manage resources and then get in and mix it up while the battle is raging. I do think some of the touch-screen controls are a bit hokey like the ratching slide move for certain rapid repairs and the special attack system which has you hitting randomly assigned progressive number sequences in order but they give the game a distinctive DS flavor that is starting to feel very familiar, not unlike hitting A to jump on an old NES game. In fact, while I realize the original Game Boy and even the Advance have dedicated fans, I’m prepared to submit that the DS is the system that will attain legendary status in terms of era-defining hardware not unlike the original NES or the original Sony Playstation. I, too, mocked the device when it was first unveiled and like millions of my fellow gamers and more than a few non-gamers, we have rapidly progressed from skeptical to intrigued to enchanted to irreversably converted.
This funky little two-screened console is the real deal y’all. - Blood Bowl
I’m not sure what game we were supposed to play on our game night, but what we settled on was Blood Bowl. I carry my two top teams around in my car at all times so it was trivial to start the game once my friend learned of the access to materials I possessed. I played the Undead because I had the most up-to-date roster for them prepared, and I faced a team of Dwarves. I had previously worked these exact same dwarves to a 1-1 tie, but this time I managed to roll a double one on my accurate pass attempt right along the sidelines and ended up having no other opportunity to score. We ground it out to a two-and-a-half hour 1-0 game and while I think strategically I started off a bit rusty I was overall not to disappointed in my coaching.
Obviously things could have gone better, but there was only one or two turnovers from coaching errors (failed blocks, fumbles, etc) and I used all my re-rolls including my free Brilliant Coaching roll which means I managed both the dice/re-rolls well and avoided unnecessary risks.
What ultimately undid me wasn’t the risky pass to the end zone play but was just the resilience of the dwarves and my inability to get any fortuitous rank thinning with KOs or casulaties. I also may have disadvantaged myself by not playing all my Ghouls whenever I had the chance, but their lack of regeneration and pivotal role as principal offensive threat makes them difficult to field when the other team is receiving with good conscience. Typically I’m able to at least force one turnover and whenever I do I always regret not having more offensive options, but I struggle to decide whether the turnovers are made possible with the extra defender or if my inconsistent performance once I do gain possession is worth the price of admission.
Oh, and this is sort of off-topic for the discussion immediately at hand, but relevant anyway. In case you hadn’t heard, they’re making a Blood Bowl video game.
Demo Watch
I picked up a couple of PS3 demos this week, although I admit that what I was looking for was something interesting for the PSP. I find the PSP hardware incredibly attractive and a joy to play for the most part (I’m conveniently leaving out FPS’) but as of yet I haven’t found anything on the system that really stands out as indespensible. I did have the R-Type Tactics demo still hanging around so I gave that a whirl. At this juncture I think PSP is sort of defined by its Tactical RPG library: Jeanne D’Arc, Dungeons and Dragons Tactics, Disgaea, Final Fantasy Tactics, Warhammer 40K Squad Commander, etc. So it takes something really special to rise above the crowd and R-Type Tactics doesn’t. It’s not bad in the sense that it doesn’t work, it’s just sort of dull.
Speaking of dull demos, one of the PS3 titles I downloaded was F.E.A.R. 2 and, well, it put me to sleep. I enjoyed the first game for the most part and said at the time that I would play a sequel. Except I assumed the sequel would be at least as interesting as the original. It still tries too hard to be scary but now they have to contend with a degree of familiarity that meant I kept waking up, running endlessly into a corner while some scary voodoo was happening behind me like a Tim Burton bedtime story. I turned it off because I was afraid it was going to try to scare me into a coma.
But all was not sour in the demo game this week; I also picked up the Valkyria Chronicles demo and… well. This is an absolutely gorgeous game. Now I’m a sucker for cel-shading and while the trailers make it looks cel-shaded and that’s a good thing in my book, the truth is that it’s so much better looking than that. They do a sort of oil-on-canvas effect that makes the visuals look like some sort of painting. It’s really stunning. What surprised me was that a game with this much visual flair also has room to be an interesting take on an unexpected genre: It’s a turn-based tactical RPG but it has elements of FPS built in becuase you control each unit individually within the parameters of your “turn.” Imagine if each character’s turn in Final Fantasy Tactics were executed in first-person and you sort of get the idea.
Parting Shot
I was reading up a little on phasing, a MMO trick they’re beginning to use to show some sort of change in the game world. One of my complaints about MMOs like World of Warcraft is that while they possess a particular magic in terms of drawing you into the kinds of worlds you enjoy from other computer role-playing games in ways you can’t with a solo adventure. But, unlike those single-player games, the world has to be sort of static so everyone can experience the same thing regardless of when they join. So my understanding of phasing is that certain areas have two separate sets of characteristics: One for the “default” and another depending on what circumstances are true for the player. So say there is an empty town and as you advance through a certain questline you obtain an orb that allows you to see ghosts, when you return to the town it is suddenly populated by ethereal figures going about their regualr business. Both versions of the town always exist, what you see is only dependent on what the game thinks you should be seeing there, so you get the illusion of a dynamic world.
I like this approach but I was thinking that even then it’s pretty limiting because you only ever get minor, mostly cosmetic changes which is a big drawback compared to games like Final Fantasy VI almost 15 years ago which was able to drastically alter the landscape of the entire game world at one point or something like Fallout 3 where a whole town can be destroyed and its inhabitants displaced. So it occurred to me that one solution to this would be to take advantage of another limitation in the MMO game design: The separate servers or realms.
Consider this: Instead of selecting a realm to play on you simply join a game. It’s an MMO, populated by other characters, with the minor difference that there is sort of a level cap to the other PCs. Because rather than having all low-level players and higher level players inhabiting the same realm, the realms are level specific, focused on level blocks. For example, you could have the opening realm consist of characters level 1-15. At level 10 you have the option to explore, say, a particular dungeon instance to defeat a boss-type character. You can continue to grind to 15 but once you reach that point you can no longer gain experience from any of the game’s creatures. So you defeat this boss character and perhaps during the encounter the boss (maybe some sort of giant) smashes your starting town to bits. You finally defeat him, gain the rewards and are then transported to the next realm, populated by characters between levels 10 and 25 only in this realm, that starting town is just a smoking pile of rubble. Also, of note, the giant-boss is completely extinct in the second realm: Obviously, he has been defeated.
Since generally speaking you only care to play with people who are doing roughly the same types of things you are, it allows both a changing game environment and a more normalized play experience since you can’t do things like have ultra-high level characters “run you” through dungeons. When I gained the achievement for Shadowfang Keep in WoW, for instance, I followed a level 80 priest through and didn’t engage in combat once. Which is kind of a shame since it looked like a cool instance. Such things would be impossible if the highest level you could be for any instance or encounter was the realm max, and it would probably help with game balance as well. If designers knew they only had to keep adding new realms to keep players interested, they wouldn’t have to “find” areas on the world map for them to play in.
It’s possible this sort of thing already exists in another game, but my limited experience prevents me from being sure if this is a great idea or something someone already tried. If they haven’t tried it yet, though, someone better get on it.