Eckyman.com

This isn’t my review as I’ve not finished it yet. Not far off mind you but I’m digesting this like a large meal, reclined on my couch and at my own pace.

However… what I did want to talk about is the idiotic moaning about the difficulty of the boss fights if you go for a stealth build. You’ll have seen it by now, the tears flowing on this subject are fast and salty.

Let us clear a few things up.

1. I’m using stealth. All my points went in non-combat, stealth/hacking related areas.
2. The bosses go down faster than a hooker with a blank cheque as long as you THINK about it.

First boss fight. Pants, that dudes arm is a cannon, I don’t have many weapons and all my points are in non-combat augs.

Wait, I do have a brain and the ability to think my way around a problem so.. what I’ll do is first toss this EMP grenade at the walking cannon guy. OK, that fried him. Now how about stacking a couple of these explosive looking barrels at his feet and blowing them up while he is dazed. Yeah, he didn’t like that and the EMP grenade has worn off. OK, so I’ll hide behind this pillar and place two frag mines either side so the boss can’t get close. OK, looks like the boss just walked over one. Wait? What? It’s over? I thought these boss fights were supposed to be tough according to reviewers?

Took no time at all, nothing stressful about it, and I didn’t need a single point in any augmentations to use my smegging brain!

Second boss fight. Let’s see, EMP grenade worked well last time, lets try that. Hmm, not so good this time. OK, you like charging at me? So I’ll put my back to the wall and place frag mines in front and to the sides of me. Charge that! Oh you did.. OK, have 3 rockets in the face from the rocket launcher I saved all the way through this level. Ahh, you died did you? Didn’t take long.

Well, I guess I had a rocket launcher, what did I expect. Reload, throw away rocket launcher and pick up heavy rifle from the room right before the boss, available to all players no matter of build.

Same tactic, back to wall, frag mines down… dumbass ran into one again and is standing around inviting me to drill her with bullets. Naturally I aim to please and just as fast, the second boss is down.

If you are one of those people moaning about the difficulty of the bosses on Deus Ex, I suggest growing a pair… or spending 30 seconds thinking of a way around the situation that does not involve moaning all over the internet about the hike in difficulty when in reality, the boss fights are the easiest part of the game.

I just read they are basically getting rid of threat mechanics by buffing tanks threat output through the roof!!

Learning optimal rotations just became pointless, as did learning any tanking tricks outside of your classes skill bar, as did several threat reduction abilities, as did any need to play DPS tactically – just keep on spamming those buttons and posting recount stats!

In Kara, one of the things I enjoyed the MOST about tanking was the constant fight against the rising DPS and aggro of the damage players. Half the game to me was more about fighting players DPS gains than tanking mobs. Once you know an instance and patrols/boss fights, the challenge is purely in holding threat from other players.

…and now that’s gone.

All that is left is to soak up boss hits and position the boss when something on the floor is on fire. Big fecking whoop! If I hadn’t already quit, I’d be clicking my way to the cancel subscription page and copy/pasting this rant into the reasons box!

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I recently picked up Fable 2 used for pretty cheap and I am now probably at least 3 or 4 hours into the game so far.

One thing bugs me… a LOT

So you start the game poor, destitute, and living from the gutter. When a mysterious lady implies we should buy the music box, the sister remarks;

5 Gold? We could eat for a week on that!

Fair enough.

Next, the sister and brother decide, what the hey, its a magical music box, lets buy it anyway. OK, so with no money the game asks me to complete a few ‘odd-jobs’ for NPC’s around town. Fine I think. About 10 minutes later I’m rolling 5 gold coins around my pocket ready to buy the music box.

Go back a little, remember when the sister mentioned something about eating for a week for 5 gold? And I just earned 5 gold in about 10 minutes. To be generous I’ll use in-game time, so not even close to the time it took for night to cycle to day. I can work a minimal amount, for less than a full day, and eat for a week on the proceeds? You have to wonder, perhaps if you got off your arse and did two or three days work maybe, just maybe you wouldn’t be living in the effing gutter you idiots!

If the main character is sleeping in a no walled shed with only a blanket to his name, has no food, no money, no prospects in life.. how about making it a little harder to earn a weeks food money than putting in 5 minutes work?

Kinda ruins the effect of trying to build up sympathy for your main protagonist if it turns out the only reason he is destitute is simply because he can’t be arsed doing a days work!

I kinda like the game, but man it has some serious issues. Job’s are ridiculous. Gaming distilled into it’s most basic form. Hit that button when this bar reaches here. Again. Again. AGAIN! Going back to the main point of this post, my character came from a life in the gutter yet within 30 minutes of spamming the blacksmith job I had over 10 thousand gold. I went to the smith as the shops shut, by sunrise I had 10 thousand gold.

When in-game systems contradict the storyline, something is very wrong.

Following up on my previous post about the problems with saving, I’d like to continue this with a look at the way a few games handle the various issues that can occur.

Read more…

Most modern games allow the player to save progress at any time they wish. Gamers do not expect to be thrown back to the start of a level when they fail to complete it, and often this kind of gameplay can lead to players losing interest rapidly.

Giving the player the ability to save whenever they want can also influence the difficulty of a game in ways the developer may not have intended. For example, Splinter Cell Double Agent allows the player to save at any time and this results in the ability to trial and error your way through sections of the game that may have been intended to be much more difficult. The other issue with this mechanic is when developers recognise it as causing a problem, rather than solve the issue by limiting the amount of saves they begin designing level difficulty around this ‘infinite save’ mechanic.

Back in the 80′s games did not have saves. It was pretty rare to even get an option to continue your game in fact. Most games operated under a ‘three lives then your out’ system, with some (Treasure Island Dizzy) opting for just the one life. I have personally witnessed a good friend of mine reach the end of Treasure Island Dizzy only to die as he picked the very last Gold Coin required for completion. At 9 years old swearing is not as fast and thick as it would have been had he done it now, but the disappointment on his face stays with me forever. Of course, a few years later he would have his revenge when I would reach the end of Fantasy World Dizzy, and fearing a death at the hands of a badly timed jump towards a screen containing a dragon (which I might add, I had already subdued but feared perhaps it had awakened in the meantime), I instead chose to blindly leap in the opposite direction only to land in the gears of a lift and lose my one remaining life! I had literally completed the game, all I had to do was make my way to Daisy and I’d have been home free. Needless to say, my friend gleefully reminds me of such gaming disasters whenever the opportunity arises.

Of course, in today’s gaming world the above incident would not be a problem, you would simply load up an earlier save and jump in the other direction. Is this a good thing? Allowing players to prevent the loss of several hours of hard work? Or is it diluting the challenge to a degree that completing it is just not as satisfying as it once was?

I’m a firm believer in risk vs reward gaming experiences. There can be no great reward if the risk is minimal. It is a simple fact of life. If a game holds your hand all the way throughout, allows you to save whenever you want, grants any number of continues, what achievement remains upon completion of the game?

The recent Super Mario Brothers Wii has a feature that allows the console to play the game for you. Today’s Mario experience says “don’t worry, if this bit is too hard for you, we’ll do the work for you”.

Not too long ago there was a huge fuss made over the fact gamers had to complete Guitar Hero in order to unlock all the songs. If I want to listen to a particular song, I have the CD for that.

The worst offender to date (that’s right Alone In The Dark I’m looking at you) allows the player to skip levels entirely. I’m not even kidding, it is advertised as a feature on the back of the box. Don’t want to complete the game? Fine, skip all the way to the end, watch the pretty cut-scenes then put the game away never to be played again. If that is the experience you want, watch a movie. The only barrier to content is sticking around till the end, knock yourself out.

Take a look at the majority of children’s games today on the DS for example. When I was a kid just about everything in a game could and would kill you. A blade of grass, a gust of wind, a pixel to the left of the correct spot and OOPS you’re in the spike pit. Start over.. and over… and over again, till the point that when you did manage to complete the game the achievement was something worthwhile. A challenge met head on and bested. Something to be proud of. My father still fondly recalls clearing every puzzle/difficulty settings of the original Lemmings. A feat that was only achieved over long frustrating nights punctuated with rapid fire swearing. Words I had not heard used in such obscene combinations till years later. But the day he completed it a calm fell over our house, he smiled for weeks and even now, years later, if I should ever remind him of this achievement I can visibly see his eyes glaze over in happiness.

That is fulfilment, that is what we play games for. I know its not a popular thing to say in regards to current attitudes to gaming difficulty, but you didn’t get a medal for just showing up and doing your best in my day.

Assassins Creed 2 is a good example of how tutorials can be worked into a story rather than an optional training session. The game has you play a portion of Ezio’s adolescent life, completing training missions that introduce basic systems such as fighting, looting, and climbing. Some have criticised this as a slow moving section of the game that could have been accomplished in a shorter time, but a writer for AC2 (Corey May) has defended this portion of the game saying it was “necessary to spend time with Ezio as a carefree adolescent”, and that “it needed to be more than a token five minutes”.

In my opinion the starting sequence in AC2 was done very well. While it’s essentially just a tutorial session, it also builds a little back story giving some insight into Ezio’s family life and sets the stage for the main event.

Call of Duty 4 did something similar with the F.N.G opening level, introducing the player to the control system and giving a glimpse into the personalities of the NPC’s you will be fighting alongside. This section ends with a timed run through a mock-up cargo ship that explains some additional controls (rope slide) and kicks off the main story via a cut scene when the course is complete.

Optional tutorials can lead to the player skipping training in order to get to the meat of the game. This is especially true for sequels and returning players as they already know how to play the game from experience and just want to get started. Unfortunately, skipping tutorials can result in missing vital information on new features added to the game. For example, a friend of mine recently completed AC2 without using a single smoke bomb or visiting the fight trainer outside of the required mission to do so. His reasoning was that he knew how to fight from playing the first game. While it’s not really necessary to use smoke bombs or the special moves available from the trainer, it opens up an entirely new way to play. There is always a chance this could negatively affect impressions of the game through no fault of the game designer, not to mention all the work on new features going to waste if players neglect to use them.

I think the most effective game tutorials are integrated into the story in such a way you barely notice they are there. AC2 gradually introduces elements throughout the game in a way that seems a very natural progression of learning skills as the character does. It could have perhaps used a little fine tuning but still a great example of how to work a forced tutorial into story elements.

Terry Cavanagh has a post up on his site Distractionware, talking about how his game VVVVVV, has been leaked on 4chan by someone who donated for beta access.

Firstly, I just want to say this is not some deep pocketed company like EA you are ripping off (not that ripping off EA is any better morally), it’s an independent developer.

Secondly, for the low donation he was asking for (to help fund the projects entry to IGF) you could have played the Beta to your hearts content and helped a small developer at the same time.

Anyone in the comments section claiming they wouldn’t have donated in ‘good faith’ for a game they have never played, you could have tried out any of his previous games to get a feel for the quality. You could have read the impressions posted about the game, or checked out a gameplay video, or looked through the screenshots available.

Your excuses are your own.

distractionware » Final Push.

I keep getting searches for information on how to change rooms in Adventure Game Studio.

It’s quite easy actually, all you need is the following code;

cEgo.ChangeRoom(room number, x, y)

Replace “cEgo” with your character name, change “room number” for the number of the room you want the player to be taken to, and lastly set the x/y co-ordinates you wish the player to appear in the room.

Easy

Whilst looking for some info and images of the old C64 game, Monty on the Run for a Game Maker project, I came across this great video…

Driving back from the Stewart Lee gig last night, the conversation turned to gaming, retro games we enjoyed, an attempt to list our top 5 games of all time.. the usual stuff. Then someone brought up a very valid point I’d not given much thought to at the time.

Why is it, in Fallout 3, you can do everything right, be the saviour of the wasteland, help out many, many people along your way, basically become a living god in the eyes of Fallouts inhabitants.. but if you so much as swipe a carton of smokes from someones table by pressing the wrong button, then the whole population nearby will mobilise against you and cut you down where you stand. You might have just saved that guys daughter from rape and slavery but if you DARE to take a spanner from his pile on the shelf, you are going to regret it sunshine!

Why is this? A game like Fallout, which does so much right, cant include some variable in the code that deals with this. Surely something as simple as checking the players karma level and adjusting NPC’s reaction accordingly cant be that hard? They obviously have a way of tracking your karma based on the missions you accept and complete.. +10 karma for a ‘good’ quest, -10 karma for an ‘evil’ quest or something? How hard could it be to check that counter and adjust NPC behaviour accordingly?

I don’t know, maybe it’s harder than I imagine, I’ve only barely scratched the surface of coding so I’m not one to call people on this stuff but it’s things like this that can ruin the immersion you have spent so long on and worked so hard to achieve.

If I act like a bastard enough, I expect people to run from me screaming. If I save your family from slavers I expect some understanding if I mistakenly pick a spanner up from your shelf because I hit the wrong damn button.