The Gamer’s Quagmire #68: Lucky Number 4
Everything you wanted to know about gaming, and less
by Jamison DeLorenzo
Promises are promises, and, this amazing revelation aside, I figure if there is a week to talk about GTA this would be the week to do it. There are very few stories in gaming news this week that do not involve this game, and rightfully so. Considering the sales numbers this game is putting up (6 million copies sold in week one) it would be rather silly to ignore this landmark game.
That was far more than just a play on words relating to the number of NYC landmarks in the GTA IV version of Liberty City. This is one of the few games I have ever seen released where every major gaming publication and review site is giving this game near perfect marks. I am not saying this should drive you to your nearest store and pick the game up, but so few games are ever given a high score, let alone from everyone. After taking a week off from work to plow through this game, something which I had planned since the beginning of the year, I find it very difficult to disagree with the notion that this game isn’t as close to perfect as a game can get.
There are many things this game does that its predecessors have done. All the basic gameplay elements that you love (or hate) about the game are back, the satire is still present, the detail in the city environment is amazing, the story is engrossing, and the characters and dialogue are movie-level quality. These are all things I expect from GTA. Games that step up to this level are almost always highly praised, including last year’s icon in this department - BioShock.
Where GTA has stopped before, IV has kept going. Let us start with what is in the forefront – the graphics. The work Rockstar has put into Liberty City has definitely raised the bar in the realm of the free-roaming environment. Combine the graphical power of Crysis with the city detail that went into Assassin’s Creed and what you get is Liberty City. Downtown is littered with gigantic signs that make you feel like you’re on the strip in Vegas. Seeing the city skyline light up at night is just like looking out of a hotel window. Those are the big visuals. The details - like movie posters and other ads inside buildings, the geysers of water that shoot up when you knock out fire hydrants, the debris that gets caught in a cyclone when a helicopter is flying nearby, being able to hear your car radio while outside the car - all of these experiences make you feel like you are inside a real city.
Next to the basic gameplay elements that make GTA what it is, the satire embedded in this game is easily the most enjoyable aspect of this. This is not anything new, but being able to see this in the form of television and the web are brand new experiences. One day I spent hours just watching TV in one of my safehouses. Is there any point in doing this? You don’t get missions or any real information on backstory in the game, but it sure is entertaining.
The only complaint I have is that the character movement is still a ways away from smooth. Running around, moving through crowds of people, breaking into cars or just hopping in them all have very natural movements. Jumping, however, is still atrocious. Trying to get Niko to jump between ledges, onto or off of a boat, or in between rooftops is still an ordeal. Jumping in wide open spaces is not nearly as frustrating as cramped spaces (I got stuck once under a staircase which forced me to reload because crouching and walking wasn’t working right), but jumping in a straight line can be a major ordeal at times. One mission I failed because I tried getting onto a dirtbike from behind it, only to walk in circles for over 10 seconds before my target escaped.
If those problems were not present in the game I would easily be able to state with conviction that this game is perfect. When I say a game is perfect, that means that while the game can still be improved to do things in different ways, there is nothing that I feel the game is lacking. For example, the cover combat system could be a little easier to use for getting in and out of cover or sprinting between cover spots, but it didn’t really cause any problems. The combat system was still much better than anything that has been in GTA games to date, so I cannot state with a straight face that the combat was difficult or frustrating.
There is one thing I should make a special note on. There is a mission that involves a bank job in this game. I thought this was going to be as annoying as the Vice City mission was, but it turned out to be the best mission in any GTA game I have played to date. The tedious parts of the robbery - securing the bank, subduing employees and customers, busting open the vault, were all scripted. The entire mission revolved around the escape from the bank. The adrenaline rush in running through the streets taking out cop after cop, running through the subway, avoiding helicopters, and the final escape back to the house provided more adrenaline and energy than I could ask for. I would need 3 Red Bulls back-to-back to recreate that sensation. This mission was the defining moment for the game.
Coming up with something different to say about this game is tough. You know it all and you’ve probably seen it all. The highlights of this game were the graphics, fighting system, environment detail, voice acting, character animations, story, dialogue, satire, and length. The driving, movement, and missions were good but could all have been improved. The multiplayer was new and fun, but still could be so much more. Every one of the highlights were near perfect if not perfect, which means that GTA IV probably didn’t exceed many people’s expectations, but it matched what most people were expecting from Rockstar. If that doesn’t say something about what the value of the GTA franchise is, then nothing really does.
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February 22, 2008
The Gamer’s Quagmire #62: Rewards Systems as Mandated by Yoda
Everything you wanted to know about gaming, and less.
by Jamison DeLorenzo
Achieving something great in a game has been a fascination of mine for a long time. The first order of business, ironically, is having fun. It is difficult to pinpoint the transition period from enjoying games and excelling at games. I believe that this sentiment about excelling in gaming is the central ideal that makes a gamer a hardcore gamer, and stage 1 of a social disease that can escalate from Adventurer’s Perfectionist Disorder (commonly known as APD) all the way up to Elitist Gamer Syndrome.
Console video games were in their infancy when I started my gaming habit. Kids growing up today get to experience a much more polished medium which is just starting to become mainstream. No, the intent here is not to start the crotchety old man routine; not today at least. The goal here is to unite gamers by talking about what drives them to play games. If you understand why Final Fantasy VII isn’t complete before you have Knights of the Round or why Super Mario Galaxy isn’t done before you collect 120 stars you know motivation as I do.
For several generations of consoles the gamers that wanted to unlock everything in the game they could just go ahead and do it. Nobody needed to ask the Ocarina of Time fans to collect all of the hearts. Nobody taped Devil May Cry fans to chairs before getting an S rating on every stage. Nobody held a gun to my head to force me to complete Castlevania IV without dying. Gamers did these things because they wanted to.
Luckily we now have a world of gamers clamoring to prove that they can play all of these games better than anyone else. I realize that this drive isn’t new, but the ability to advertise these accomplishments across the world is. The advent of Achievements on Xbox Live is this semi-official place where gamers can prove who the better gamer is by completing more in-game feats than other people and posting high scores for the whole world to see.
In a matter of speaking the idea of achievements can be a good thing. Anybody who talks trash in message boards now can be more easily ignored (of course, if you ever listened to these people you are the central part of the problem) because without the proof that Achievement Points provides they have almost no way to back up their talk. Granted, there’s no law that tells you that you should listen to these people (and common sense tells you that you shouldn’t), but having extra ammo for someone who truly annoys you, such as an incompetent amphibious wingman, is never a bad thing.
I can’t say that the notion of Achievements is a bad thing, because sometimes gamers need extra motivation for doing certain things in games. Unfortunately, a lot of the 360 Achievements you see resemble the completion of an entirely fruitless endeavor. Crackdown, on top of one of the simplest and enjoyable games on the 360, has several achievements that make me question a few things. You get achievements for maxing out your stats, blowing up enough bad guys, taking down each crime syndicate, collecting all of the ability orbs, and even climbing to the top of your headquarters. Look closely at these items before continuing to the next paragraph.
My contention that there are three types of Achievements in existence: the wholly pointless, the painfully obvious, and the surprisingly noteworthy. If you do not believe me, let us walk through this together.
The first category, the wholly pointless, is obvious: climbing to the top of the HQ in Crackdown, while fun and entertaining, is pointless. I never would have thought to do it if it were not in the game, the developers wouldn’t have put it in had there been no Achievement system, and it serves no purpose whatsoever. There is a heightened sense of vertigo when climbing the tower that provides some entertainment, but the reality is that if it was never in the game I don’t think anybody would have cared considering the complete lack of any real reward other than finding another creative way to get gamers to jump to their untimely deaths.
The second category, the painfully obvious, is… what it is: taking down each crime syndicate, as a prime example, is already a requirement for completing the game. Why is this a noteworthy action? Is there a point in rewarding players for not being hopelessly moronic? It may make sense to promote idiots into management, but we are talking about video games here. At least in this scenario nothing gets taken off of the table.
Achievements that create a false sense of gameplay, thus taking something off the table, truly annoy me. In Mass Effect there is an Achievement for achieving Spectre status. In reality this is just like the previous Crackdown example, only it implies that it might be possible to somehow avoid achieving this goal (hint: it’s not). I had to change how my character reacted with others because I thought my dialog choices would screw up my chance to become an all-powerful Spectre. Maybe paranoia is to blame, but I steadfastly maintain that placing a sense of fear into gamers for the sole purpose of supporting the Achievement system is faulty. This situation becomes highly untenable when training to become a Jedi - Yoda would not be pleased.
(Subtle Star Wars joke - it’d been far too long since I used one)
The final category, the surprisingly noteworthy, comes along with items like collecting the ability orbs and maxing out all of your stats. Again, you are going to do these anyway for the same reasons you collect all 120 stars as Mario in Super Mario Galaxy. You hardly need to do this to complete the game, but you want to because it separates you from the pack. The attraction of others seeing that you did this does add a sense of accomplishment to the feat that is nice, albeit an inflated one. Rewarding this type of gaming behavior, unlike all other scenarios, is to be lauded.
The truth is that I am a fan of Achievements, but only when done properly. Game developers should not add Achievement points to a game just to support an artificial structure. If the points meant something then ranking players by those points would make sense. Instead we have reward points for people who fail a song 10 times in Guitar Hero and survive in open combat (you are an assassin!) for 10 minutes in Assassin’s Creed. These people should not be rewarded.
Mass Effect is, with small exception, a great example of how to use the system. It supports the Live Achievement system the way games should because most of the rewards unlock extra gameplay options for the player. Gamers like me who have APD know that if you give the player any reason at all to complete a task they would gladly do it. In an RPG the reward is almost always some form of loot or a new spell so that is easy, but if the reward is just a pat on the back for doing something insane I would just as soon grab that same arm and slam the would be back-patter to the ground.
One final point before today’s lecture is complete. I realize that the Mario example is not entirely pulling its weight here anymore because you do not need this to complete the game. What it does do is unlock playing the game as Luigi and offer a true sense of completion (imagine getting points for collecting 20% of the required stars). When your special rewards system recognizes achievements such as this then you have a system that has some meaning. Instead we have a system where you get into arguments revolving around your ability to complete tasks ranging from the deranged to idiotic, and I am tired of explaining that Live Achievement points have absolutely no value whatsoever. It is like winning a ton of tickets playing Skeeball in an amusement park without a ticket counter.
Then again, if you manage to satisfy your ego by completing utterly pointless tasks, then maybe the system already has an inherent sense of meaning to it.
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February 15, 2008
The Gamer’s Quagmire #61: Repeatedly Shedding Tears
Everything you wanted to know about gaming, and less.
by Jamison DeLorenzo
Every once in a while my friends over at The Guardian Games Blog manage to hit up on a topic that forces me to hunker down in my cave and take a lesson to heart about gaming. Not only does this get my creative juices flowing or allow me to have a good internal debate, which some people might think is a clear-cut sign of schizophrenia, but it also proves that there are sites out there that far more than just some reiterative drivel. Posting news about games is one thing, but getting people discussing a game or some gaming-related topic to me is a sign of a successful gaming publication.
Today’s topic in question comes from a non-archaeological dig about the most recent Devil May Cry game, a franchise that has been toiling in repetitiveness due to the overwhelming popularity of its original incarnation back in 2001. The core element of fun in this game stemmed from taking a standard hack and slash style of gameplay and throwing in the overdrive combos that propelled the 2-D fighter known as Killer Instinct back in the 90’s. Basically, if you like beating the ever living tar out of enemies and a dark story arc then the Devil May Cry games provide something you’ll enjoy. At iteration number four the core integrity of this franchise remains in tact.
Having gone through the first and third entries in the franchise, the question remains whether the fourth is going to be worth it. The game is getting fantastic reviews and people are scarfing it down, but I cannot help but wonder if this is game actually adds anything at all to the mystique of the franchise or if it is just the same old slop that gamers are expected to gobble up from the Troth of Formulaic Gaming (+1). It’s not that I don’t have an appreciation for hard work in the graphics department, but in games like this I wonder how much time can be spent admiring the architecture while a plethora of enemies rip me apart like a pack of lions. This, I would argue, is rather counter-productive when trying to complete the game.
I’d love to extol the virtues of the game to you here, but the main point I am driving at goes back to a question that was raised several days ago on the link given to you. The question in question (word games are fun) revolves around how much depth a game like this has. There are lots of combos that you can perform and a lot of enemies, but once you find a sequence of moves you like to unleash how much of the game is repetition versus new content? This hardly a new question for any game in the hack and slash genre, so in a sense it is a little asinine to bring up for this game. However, the question remains because there is this notion coming from critics that DMC4 is the best entry in the franchise because of its depth.
Assuming for a moment that people are not just fawning over the visuals, comments like these force me to ask why this game should be considered deep. For this style of game all you need are unique level design, interesting boss battles, intense battles, and good combo mechanics to make it succeed or just be a foray into mayhem and wholesome fun. I am unsure how a game of this type can be widely construed as deep. Is the battle system so flexible that you can go absolutely nuts delivering combos? Is the story RPG-level engrossing? Are there a ton of unlocks in the game that alter the gameplay drastically? Perhaps all of these are true to a point, but a counter question that is worth asking is at what point does a game cross the line from depth and become repetitive?
Puzzle Quest, as an example, is a unique game which molds a simple RPG with Bejeweled (together at last!) for a unique and compelling experience. The game is fun and interesting, but I hardly consider it to be deep. Leveling up is not quick by any stretch of the imagination, which is more than acceptable in an RPG, but the battles are beyond tedious because of their length. After 20 levels you gain abilities at such a slow rate that long-drawn out battles that tend to drag on much in the same way the movie Titanic does, only, somehow, much more painfully. I chose that image because both objects in question end in catastrophe and could have been great, but in reality lacked any meaningful depth.
At the end of the day I think gamers tend to see depth where they want to (which generally makes them lousy deep sea divers). Every genre tends to offer depth to some degree. Whether you gravitate towards RPG’s (story, abilities), MMO’s (PvP, abilities), FPS’s (PvP, weapons), fighters (combos, replay value), or any other genre you will find a certain level of depth to it. A game being particularly deep will not intrinsically interest any gamers if the genre does not line up with their interests. On top of that a game that lacks any form of depth will largely be very boring to many people because performing the same remedial task for hours on end for some unforeseen purpose suffers from what I like to call Office Space Syndrome (i.e. fun to watch, painful to endure). Games that suffer from this ailment in varying degrees include Assassin’s Creed, Halo, SimCity, Guitar Hero, and StarCraft.
Keep in mind that I told you that the repetitive nature of a game has nothing to do with how much fun you will have playing it. Most of those games I loved playing. I picked those games not just to inflame people like a loose dragon but also to show you that if you like those games, despite their repetitive nature, then it provides some perspective on what elements of gaming really make you happy.
I don’t know how much depth Devil May Cry 4 has. I may walk the Earth until the end of time like Kwai Chang Caine and never have the urge to give it a fair shake. It could be far deeper than any of the previous entries in the franchise thusly making it a game for the ages. It could be as deep as version 1 or 3 and still be very entertaining. In either case if you like this style of game I am betting it is time well spent. Whether you might appreciate the depth of the game I will leave up to you.
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January 9, 2008
The Gamer’s Quagmire #57: Learning to Enjoy a Playpen
Everything you wanted to know about gaming, and less.
by Jamison DeLorenzo
You need forgive the embedded juvenile humor for the lead-in question of the week: how do you know when it is okay to play in the sandbox? Several reviewers have felt the need to pound Assassin’s Creed for reasons that flew over my head. It is true that I am nowhere near an established or astute reviewer that many paid professionals are, but sometimes it takes the wit of a strung out English major (they’re always useful for needlessly comparing totally unassociated ideas) to critique design choices in a game that have no direct impact on the overall quality of a game.
It was not all that difficult to find several scathing reviews of Assassin’s Creed and to create a set of flaws that people had with the game. The universal opinion of the game seems to be that while it was drawn out and somewhat laborious the game was a lot of fun. Many reviews are more polarized than that, but I feel that this was a fairly common sentiment amongst most reviewers. There all always exceptions (and no, they never “prove” the rule… by definition), and in this case the most glaring are the ones that stipulate that it was a horrible design choice to make Assassin’s Creed a sandbox game.
What is that exactly? Sandbox games refer to games where the player is given overall objectives to complete but is given free reign on how to do it. GTA is a popular example when describing this style of game for obvious reasons. You’re almost never told what route to take to a specific place, which weapons to bring, which car to drive, what steps to take once you get there, or anything like that. The order in which you complete several objectives isn’t necessarily important either. Metal Gear is another game like that, only exercising stealth is encouraged.
Consider the popularity of these two franchises for a moment. There are contributing factors like story and graphics that makes these games what they are, but giving players free roaming capability is the highlight of the game. Combining that with the dark side of what you can do in GTA is what makes that franchise the powerhouse that it is right now. A free roaming environment is one of the many major draws of the larger RPG’s for many people. Giving gamers the ability to do what they want when they want in a game is, in my opinion, the best way to make games. The short version of this reads as follows: constraints are bad.
Upon reading multiple articles talking about the recent rash of games attempting to emulate a sandbox environment I began to wonder which games were being talked about besides Assassin’s Creed. Have there been any? I sure haven’t played any, and I don’t recall any popular ones that people have been talking about. Saint’s Row is the only other franchise that comes to mind, and that’s much more of a GTA clone than just another sandbox game.
I submit to you that Assassin’s Creed, if you look at it as a GTA clone, it, for the most part, succeeds. Grabbing all of the flags is basically just like grabbing all the hidden packages. Doing all of the extra missions (saving the citizens) is a lot like completing all of the now defunct rampages. Completing all basic mission objectives gives you free reign to recklessly roam the city, causing as much havoc as you deem appropriate, before completing them is a direct parallel. Whether I’m performing acrobatic face plants into alleyways or crashing a sports car into a pawn shop I’m having fun. That’s they key to a good game isn’t it? Fun?
The flaws that exist in Assassin’s Creed are the battle system (which is mindlessly repetitive) and the later missions not offering anything that new. Those are very gaping flaws that prevent the game from being as epic as Ubisoft wanted it to be. The only thing that prevents the game from being a total rinse and repeat is the moving story, but any good reviewer sees past that when discussing the game as a whole. Any competent critic, or common sense enthusiast, also figures out that a lack of mission variety and rewards has nothing to do with a gameplay mechanism.
Yes, a lot of the extras you get by exploring the world don’t provide you with a whole lot. However, I liked climbing insanely tall buildings and swan diving in conveniently placed haystacks. I loved finding perches and gazing on the horizons. Did exploring the ends of the Earth net me anything interesting in terms of rewards, story, or abilities? No, but that’s a problem that can be easily resolved without nuking the environment. I did expect a fuller story by finding all those extra flags and saving all of those citizens. My DNA sequence was more complete as a result- why didn’t that amount to anything? The lack of reward was frustrating, but it didn’t stop me from continuing to hunt for everything.
It’s basic logic- if you don’t enjoy exploring areas or already know it’s going to be tedious then don’t complain after you do it. It was painfully obvious going in that the size of the world Ubisoft created for the game was gigantic (even though all of the major cities were remarkably close to each other) and I knew I was going to hate saving all the citizens, hunting down all the flags, and killing and endless amount of guards. I did it anyway knowing that is largely unnecessary, and if it weren’t for a free-roaming environment I would have been in those annoying areas where the places the game developers didn’t want me to go were blocked with invisible walls. I would also have been forced down a path instead of running across rooftops while dodging arrows in whatever direction I felt like.
Call me insane, but I know what I prefer.
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November 29, 2007
The Gamer’s Quagmire #54: Thanksgiving Gaming Week I
Everything you wanted to know about gaming, and less.
by Jamison DeLorenzo
Part of the massive drama that surrounds these columns, including the built-in in drama of wondering when the next article might actually arrive, involves waiting several paragraphs before even seeing the beginnings of what the whole point of the article really is. Part of the joy for me is figuring out ways to delay it as long as possible. It pains me to say that, as I did devote any time to putting together a massive segway, this installment is going to be the first of two installments involving my Thanksgiving Week Gaming Marathon. It was never intended to be an incredibly interesting week, but the mere fact of being able to save all of my vacation this year for multiple gaming marathons is nothing short of scheduling genius. Peeking at gaming release schedules months in advance does have its payoffs, and with a plethora of high budget video games being released recently I had time to sit down for over 7 days of straight gaming with two games that I pegged a long time ago as the potentially most intriguing for the year.
This week I feel that it would be time well spent to discuss Assassin’s Creed, a project that was a huge undertaking for Ubisoft. I cannot speak to being a big fan of theirs, but with of their talk about research and ideas they were throwing into the game this game felt like a good idea to invest a decent piece of time into. They also still have major credits left over from Sands of Time despite the pathetic milking of the franchise soon after its impressive success. I’m not sure exactly how pathetic this was, but unwanted images of Tom Green popped into my head when analyzing the unfortunate progression of Prince of Persia.
It is import to confess up front that taking control of an assassin was a primal urge that I could not resist. This entirely could have been some resonant effect of impatiently waiting for GTA IV’s release. I never spent a lot of time with Metal Gear or Splinter Cell either (with no real good reason unless you are willing to consider laziness or a disturbing urge not to bow before all the major titles), so convincing myself that playing a stealthy assassin felt like a fresh idea.
Right away it was easy to see the eerily similar style of gameplay to Sands of Time (yes, there was a sinister reason behind mentioning this game earlier). It may sound that way, but this is far from being a bad thing. Those of us who were introduced to the sport of free-running with the latest James Bond movie quickly picked up on the vision that the developers had with the overly crowded streets and building layout which can only be described as “busy.” After spending only a few minutes exploring the city streets of Jerusalem the controls made a lot of sense. Once you see how the buildings are laid out running from one end of a city to another entirely on rooftops quickly turned into the most interesting challenge in the game.
It did pain me a lot to write the last sentence. The premise behind the game was fantastic. The adaptive controls (the 4 main buttons being mapped to head, left hand, right hand, and legs) proved to be quite intuitive and were close to perfect. The character animations were as close to flawless for every element of the game (casually moving through crowded streets, slinging your way through shops and corridors on the streets, running and jumping between rooftops, and climbing all of architecturally convenient buildings). Once you see the dynamic of how the assassination missions are carried out the gameplay, unfortunately, becomes incredibly monotonous. Eavesdropping on conversations, pickpocketing carriers, and beating up informants are all very entertaining. Even saving civilians from corrupt guards is a lot of fun. After a couple runs they merely become boring. Thankfully they’re wholly unnecessary.
What’s depressing is that once you see how to do one of these missions, seeing how to approach and eliminate a target becomes far too simple. The information the people give out is also mind-numbingly obvious. You’re told to wait for an event to happen to strike, but the only way to ever get the main target to appear is to trigger the event. You’re always told about the large number of guards, but you’re always on the lookout for them anyway. Luckily you only need to endure all of this advice if you want to unlock every last thing in the game.
The rest of the game becomes a laborious task just to move the story. You cease caring about the gameplay and your only drive is to see the overall story of the game to its end. As always, there’s some horrid corruption going on with a company and its guards and your job is to eliminate the top officials to bring about some form of justice. The only reason this story is made interesting is because the main character of the game is really someone in the present who is being interrogated to find some buried treasure that one of his ancestors, the assassin you play for most of the game, has hidden.
It probably sounds like I dislike this game intensely, but in reality this is a refreshing game. Exploring the landscape does provide you with breathtaking experience. Climbing up high to various perches really shows off the detail that went into designing the different villages and cities that were put together. Riding on horseback around the world is a lot of fun as you can decide to be a pleasant individual or go bowling for peasants and guards.
It is easy to see the attention to detail that went into designing a world that could be explored for hours on end. It is depressing that this is easily lost as the game unfolds. Still, at the end of the day if you enjoy games where the goal is to largely remain unnoticed and murder lots of people at your discretion then this game will deliver a pleasing experience. I spent two days exploring this game and do not regret it in the slightest. As the replay value for this game is not that high, I would say that this is a game that is definitely worth renting and plowing through.
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