Thursday, September 16, 2004

Dying to be liked

This is really pissing me off. I already complained about how hard it is to be good in Fable, but this just steams my turkey. So after this long-ass bandit camp mission (great mission, but that's irrelevant), you have to fight this massive fella named Twinblade. The whole mission was to exact revenge on him; he's a bandit. So I promptly kick his ass, at which point a bunch of story twists and such happen. When the cutscenes are over, he's standing there telling you to finish him off, and all the other bandits surround you are yelling the same. The mission objective marker is even right on him. I run around for a bit, nothing seems to happen, so i walk up and punch him. Apparently this pisses him off, and I have to fight him and all his bandits off until they're dead. As I'm headed home and the mission ends, I notice I've just been given 120 EVIL points. What the fuck!? Now I'm more evil than good, just for killing an evil man and smashing a few barrels. Fuck that! I want to be good for chrissakes, good!

I made a thousand bucks selling perfume

So, since Tom the jerk factory posted about Fable even though I bought it (twice, no less), I have no choice but to bore you with more stuff about Fable. It is most certainly a great game, as Tom's posts will attest to. It's great-looking, it's fun, and you really do see the consequences of your actions and all that jazz. However, it's not perfect. In fact, I would go so far as to call it unpolished. Even though it's nowhere near as ambitious in scope as when it began pre-production, it's still a bit too ambitious for it's own good. Lionhead and Big Blue Box obviously spent a hell of a long time on the world of the game, the character interaction dynamics, and designing interesting quests. However, there are still some fairly general problems I have with the design, as well as a few minor ones. And anyhow, you know what's great about the game, so I'd rather get out some frustrations than regale you with the obvious overall coolness.

The first problem I have is that it's too hard to be good. Call me a flaccid wang, but I want to be known for my kindness rather than my cruelty. I mean, I don't take shit from people (like when they assume they can use my services and then not pay me - dead asshole), but I'm not going to go out of my way to be a jerk to someone. Sure, I smash the odd barrel, but I do it when the guard's not looking so I don't have to kill him when he tries to fine me. Trouble is, the game makes it really hard to play it completely straight. If you accidentally smash an upstairs window while admiring somebody's house, you'll have a dozen guards on your ass in no time. Either you have to pay a huge fine, or leave town until things have settled down. Both of those are a hassle and a waste of money and time, and it makes it very tempting to just rob everyone blind before I leave or take down a handful of guards and not have to leave at all. And I can understand the game tempting you on both sides, but when a farmer whose stones I'm protecting is going out of his way to tell me how valuable they are over and over, well, it seems like it would be to my benefit to slaughter him and his wife, take their damn stones, and possible fart a couple times in their house. Now that I've chosen the path of good, I'd just like it to be a bit easier to experiment with things without having to leave the area afterwards.

Another problem I noticed is that while Fable is surely epic in scope, and completely free-form in structure, it seems to try to keep things a lot more linear than you'd like them. It's always pushing you back on the path of the next mission, whether it's your guild master blabbing in the narration about where to go, wandering people you talk to constantly saying you're needed in such and such area, or the general feeling of unaccomplishment if you're not on a mission. The whole idea was to encourage people to go off the beaten path and find their own quests and callings and mistresses, but as much as I try I'm rewarded a hell of a lot more by defending an apple orchard against some trolls because the game asked me to. It's tough to earn money for fun, dating, and upgrades when you're just wandering around, and while playing the various traders like a stock market can net you good amounts, it's a bit too laborious to be worth it.

While those are my main problems, a slew of little ones exists. There's obviously a shitload of things to do in the game, but rarely does any single game mechanic work flawlessly. For one, the map and the menus both have their problems - the former being too general at times and constantly confusing to navigate (why the hell didn't they just make it player-centric?), while the latter is just redundant in places and generally not nicely organized. Fighting is certainly varied for what is basically a hack n' slash game, and usually pretty rewarding, but there are some spotty collision detection and balance issues once in a while. That, and blocking is just very badly incorporated into the mix. Messing with your inventory is damn near impossible while fighting if you need more than eight items at your disposal, so make sure you go into battle prepared to swap items and spells like a pro; why wouldn't they just have the game pause when you do these things?

So those are some issues I've had with Fable so far. It's a great game, and I'd still recommend it to every Xbox owner, but it has it's share of problems. Once again, read Tom's post if you want straight praise, I just figured I'd speak from the other side of the coin, even if said coin is still wonderful.

Wednesday, September 15, 2004

Slap Me, Pinch Me, Make Me Cry

It's kind of funny the way things work out. Since Fable became a reality, I said I would not buy this game. "Nick is buying it," I reasoned, "There is no need for me to buy it as well. I'll simply borrow it when he's done. How long can that take anyway?" Then, a week before release, my good friend and next door neighbor Scott was conned into pre ordering the thing. If I had any inkling to purchase this game before, certainly that was extinguished when someone not 5 minutes from my home purchased it. Now that the game is released, do I still feel like waiting for sloppy seconds?

As class was canceled yesterday, I had an entire day with nothing to do. My thought turned to Scott and hopefully many hours of Timesplitters and Pikmin 2. How silly of me, not realizing what yesterday was. Scott told me that, in just a few hours, Fable was going to be available and he was going to pick that up. For the first time ever, it actually seemed like Fable was really going to come out.

I have been reading about this game for years now. When I first heard about it, back in the Project Ego days, I burst out a most evil laugh. This crappy new console, headed by the most evil man in computing, was going to be the home of the most ambitious game in the history of video games? How could I not laugh? Only a year or two before Fable was announced, Nintendo had a similar idea for their system. When they revealed the 64DD, the disk drive for the N64, they showed a game called Mother 3. The third game in the beloved Earthbound series would feature a completely wide open world with the ability to affect change as time passed. The example Nintendo gave, of planting a seed and coming back years later to find a massive tree, was the same one Peter Molyneux gave about the world of Fable. Surely, if Nintendo wasn't able to finish this game, Lionhead wouldn't be able to.

Now, a dog year after it was first announced, I was actually going to walk to Gamestop to pick it up.

I have to admit, I don't know if any game is worth a 7 year wait, but my 2 hours with Fable were absolutely incredible. First of all, unlike Galleon, another game exclusive to the Xbox that was in development forever, Fable looks gorgeous. The world looks kind of like Hyrule, but everything is so much more detailed. It seemed like every 5 minutes, Scott would stop controlling the character and just admire the scenery for a second. It looks that good.

The story is, apparently, much cooler than I imagined. Considering how much I read about the game beforehand, it's kind of weird how I never came across why this quest existed in the first place. Towards the very beginning of the game, your home town is ransacked by bandits. Good times, right? Apparently, you don't know bandits. They kill everyone in the town and kidnap your sister and mother. They don't say what the bandit's intentions are with the women, but I assume they are most unpleasant.

A stranger appears and tells the boy he is not safe in town (duh!) and promptly whisks him away to some secret training facility. This is as far as we got before I had to leave, but any story revolving around vengeance has to be great. Furthermore, it now makes perfect sense why you can chose to be evil or good. With the weight of the world on your shoulders, it's understandable if you want to fart in ladies faces and kill everyone you see. Why not? You've had a hard life.

As far as problems with the game go... I couldn't find any. It's impossible to judge an epic quest in only two hours of playing, but I really saw nothing wrong with the game. It seems like talk of this being a mere 15 - 20 hours was a gross exaggeration. Considering how almost nothing happened, story wise, in 2 hours of playing, combined with how fun it is to talk to everyone and explore every inch of your surroundings, the game seems like it could last a very long time.

I guess if I have to complain about something, it would be the omission of a female main character. I know, I'm crazy. Every game where you have the option to play as a woman I take them up on it. But this game could really benefit from that. In such a realistic and wide open world, where you decide everything that happens to you from when you're a small child through adulthood, it would be a blast to play as a girl as well.

Speaking about the decision making ability, for some reason, decisions in this game seemed far more important than in Knight of the Old Republic, another game that let you be good or evil. I think it has to do with starting this game off as a child. In KotOR, though your decisions affected an entire galaxy, it never felt as important. You were on a quest and it was hard to take yourself out of your immediate task and realize this is your life. This is who you are.

Fable does an amazing job of making you realize that you can build what kind of person you are from the ground up. Even though it was fun to punch a child and destroy a man's possessions, I felt guilty watching Scott do it because I was scared about being punished. Any game that can force you to have a moral fiber is certainly doing something right.

I could probably talk about this game for 1,000 or more words, but I'll have to save that for another post. Suffice it to say, I am not going to run out and buy this game today, but only because I don't have the money right now. The game seems to be everything the hype promised, if not more. I always thought the Game of the Year would be decided between Halo 2 and Grand Theft Auto 3.3, but Fable looks like it can be right there. Maybe they had to cut a lot of things during the course of development, who cares? The game is a blast as is.


UPDATE - Better Out Than In

Remember when I said I would be back with another post about Fable? School got canceled again today and, instead of going home like I normally would, I found my way back to Scott's to play some more Fable. Man this game is good.

Scott played a few hours without me yesterday and I was quite upset to see what he had done with the character. Choosing the path of the dark side, his character was turning out to be a horrible, horrible man. By committing random crimes, Scott made everyone hate him. Some people may like this, but I was a little bummed out watching Scott walk around and hearing everyone insult him or fear him. It's fun being a jerk sometimes, but when no one likes you it's kind of sad...

We started a new game, though, so I was able to play the beginning this time. The control of this game is just perfect. The D pad is used for quickly accessing items. So, if you're in battle and need health, an apple will all of a sudden equip itself on Up D and let you heal yourself easily. Awesomeness.

The first mission you are given in the game is to kill a bunch of beetles with a stick. As you enter the forest, you hear the booming, Obi Wan-aqua voice of your master remind you to "Use your stick!" This promted many jokes about how great Star Wars would have been if the ultimate power was The Stick instead of The Force.

Another thing that made me laugh was one of the first little tasks you have in the very beginning of the game. A man runs hurriedly towards you, crying that his bladder is full and ask if you would please watch his store while he takes care of business. This is one of your first good/evil choices in the game. You can choose to break his barrels while he's gone. Scott and I did this the first time, though nothing was even in the barrels. Kind of lame when you break the law only to fight more mosquitoes.

Anyway, the second time I played through this I actually did stand watch. Then this little kid comes up, even smaller than me, and starts egging me on. "Come on! Smash the barrels!" he urged with his British whine. Then he called me a sissy. I tell you, if Scott wasn't there saying we had to play this guy as pure good, I would have ripped the kid's head off. The nerve, calling me a sissy! Maybe if there actually was anything worth stealing in the barrels.

There's a great boasting system in the game too. At one point, you go into battle with a friend. Before battle you can boast that, not only will you kill more enemies than her, but that you'll kill 10 more than whatever she will kill! Of course, it would be cooler if Scott could back up his talk, but it's pretty cool anyway.

I guess that's it for now... I'll write more later, though. You can count on that.

Tuesday, September 14, 2004

A million steps forward and one step back

So, a sweet rumor and a nasty confirmation about Halo 2 today. First, the good stuff. Apparently when EGM played their demo build there was a disabled "saved films" option, and a Bungie rep hinted that it might be a feature for saving videos of your games to the hard drive for later viewings. This would be great for obvious reasons, but it would also be a nice tool for the thousands of people out there who like to make Halo fan videos. If they included some basic editing options, there's no end to how cool this could be. Might as well use the hard drive for something, right?

Next, the bad, lame, ultra-weak news. No bots. I wasn't exactly expecting them, but I was really hoping that Bungie would bust them out at the last minute and give everyone a pleasant surprise. And really, there's no excuse for not having them. Once Tom finds out this news, he's sure to blurt out to no one in particular that Perfect Dark had eight very customizable bots, and that should have been the standard from then on (and he's right). Timesplitters took it to a ridiculously great 16, and most games with a solid multiplayer component since then have had at least a couple. So for what's become the biggest FPS franchise ever to not have them, frankly, it's a crime against humanity. I appreciate the great online play, I really do, but there are times when I just need to slay some mindless multiplayer drones. It remains to be seen if 4-player online play will work as smoothly as everyone is hoping it will, but even if it does run well I don't always want to be dealing with going online and changing my whole gameplay dynamic when I have a couple of friends over. I understand that bots wouldn't ever quite have the same unpredictability that makes Halo thrilling against humans, but hell, how hard is it to program some basic A.I. into an already perfect engine? I mean, fuck, it was by far the biggest omission in the first game's multiplayer, but now that they've had all the time in the world, I won't accept any excuses. I'd actually rather have bots than 4-player online play, dual wielding, destructible vehicles and all this other jazz. Oh well, I can't have it all I suppose, I hope Timesplitters 3 will sooth my botless pain.

P.S. Check out our rockin' new weekly releases section. Thanks.

Sunday, September 12, 2004

You go, Japan!



Final U.S. box art, bitches. Represent. Couldn't be better.

Progress

In reflecting on Bungie's online plans for Halo 2, you must understand their ultimate goal. Through the most up-to-date technology, some very clever ideas, and a heaping handful of faith on the consumers end, they're trying to make their online multiplayer emulate their offline multiplayer as closely as possible. The fact that they have a specific philosophy about it, and don't just do what's expected and what would rudimentally work, deserves accolades of it's own. Playing online has always had it's share of inherent problems, but rarely inherent solutions; some games have systems in place to fix a problem once it happens (such as banning a player who has been cheating), but it's always too late for some. People play games against a bunch of uncontrolled players to artificially raise their ranks, others go room to room killing their teammates for the hell of it, and still others lurk in games with inexperienced lower-level players, for obvious reasons. In general, there are a lot of douches online. Even when you step away from the problems that lie in the players hands, there are connection issues, the resulting lag, and chaotic lobby room organization. It should never be tough to find a game to play when thousands of people are trying to do the exact same thing as you. Anyone who has played a handful of online games will be able to attest to all of these problems, and that adds up to one huge issue - there are about as many reasons not to play online as there are to do so. If and when Nintendo decide to take their consoles online, I'm sure they will totally re-imagine how we play games together, and find a simple, elegantly revolutionary new way to accomplish it. In the meantime, Bungie seems to have the right idea. Here's how it works:

There are two ways to play - custom games, which you set up every detail of (just like offline multiplayer), and which are unranked, and 'matchmade' games, whose setup you don't control and which are ranked. First, a word about ranking - if you don't care about ranking, you haven't been playing online long enough. There is a certain point where you'll desire some sort of relatively tangible report of your improvement - it's inevitable. Maybe Halo 2 will shock me and be so amazing that the gameplay alone with satiate (take that, Dan!) infinitely, but I'm guessing that sooner or later everyone will care at least passingly about their rank. Anyhow, back to the topic at hand. Going into a matchmade game, you have very little control over any of the game settings. You can choose if you want a free-for-all, small team or large team game, and the system does the rest, randomly picking game type, weapons, rules, etc. So basically, you'll never know what you're getting into until you're blasting away. At first this sounds kind of shitty, but if you think it through, it's a much better way to run things. Something else important to this whole equation is that Bungie will monitor all of the action on a daily basis, so that as the weeks pass the settings in each random game will reflect what people like playing the most. From the sound of it, you'll rarely, if ever, end up playing something you don't like.

Some other important things to know - when you join a game, you'll always be matched with people near your skill level (slightly higher, for a nice consistent challenge, but never out of your league), and the host will always be the person who's best suited for it (they won't even know they're hosting, ever). That way games will always continue as long as at least one person is in a room, since it will always jump to the next best host when someone leaves. I think that this system will thrive because of two things - variety, and ease of use. You'll get to constantly play all different types of games, with the best types of people, and the best games won't be hard to find and play in, they'll be the ones that you join without thinking twice about. Eliminating lists of room which you have to scroll through (and then attempt to join and then get booted out of and then scroll again and end up in a clan room and get owned by them and have to find another decent game by scrolling through hundreds more lists blah blah blah etc.) will go a long way towards making online play a more natural extension of console gaming.

As far as features go, one big one that I almost forgot about is the party system. Like a temporary clan of sorts, you can add someone to your party (I'm assuming) before/after/while you're playing with them, and when the game ends, you'll travel room to room with them. So as you play throughout the night, you can stick with the non-douches and have a snowball of decent people to frag with. When you sign off, it all resets (unless you put them on your permanent friend list), and you'll start fresh next time.

Everything about Bungie's approach seems a bit odd at first, but the more I think about it the more I like it. It really is a very different way to play online, but I think it will lend itself well to the medium and will be copycatted by many soon after (if not become the standard until the next big idea rolls around). Being able to leap straight into a fun, fully populated game sounds like it will be easier than ever before, and that's awesome. I'm obviously looking forward to November 9th (as are plenty of friends who I'll be sure to put in their respective places), and this just solidifies what was sure to be already great online play. And I didn't even mention the four-player splitscreen online play. Jeez.

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