Recently Played

Work and a lack of reliable internet have killed a lot of my gaming habits recently. But a quick rundown of stuff I've been at recently.

TF2 - Is as stupidly good as ever. EdgeGamers run a pretty nice selection of servers. Pretty strict on the behavior rules (no rudeness, no swearing, no religion, no politics, and a few others), but it seems to lead to a pretty nice climate to relax and frag people in. And going by their size (I believe the largest clan for FPS games, definitely the largest within TF2) they seem to be doing alright (I think they're currently running something silly like 7-8 TF2 servers, 4-5 DoD:S servers, 2 CS:S servers, and a CoD4 server). I've recently found the joy of playing scout and spy in addition to my general love of pyros and demos, so things are good.

CoD4 - I wasn't expecting a lot, but the single player really is very very good. One of the more cinematic and epic gaming experiences I've had recently. I'm also a sucker for unlock systems in FPS games, TF2s class updates, and BF2142 unlocks were both winners for me. It's a shame then that CoD4 is tied down to such utterly terribly multiplayer. If they'd given some sort of BF-like squad system, or really any gametype other than "Kill everyone" (and yes, every CoD4 gametype is "Kill Everyone" because no one understands the other types, i.e. the least intuitively implemented Capture and Hold and CTs/Terrorists modes ever).

Bioshock - Not a fan. Yes, the water looks pretty. And yes, I understand it's a more detailed story than most FPSs try to tell, but it still leaves me cold. Usually I'll dig through to the end of a game's story even if I have to jack the difficulty down to easy or turn on god mode so I can blow through annoying bits, but even then I couldn't be bothered to dig through Bioshock. And this really comes down to two things:

A) The combat sucks. It's a whole host of things from poor weapon accuracy, to spastic enemy movement, to high enemy health and low weapon/spell damage, all on top of ammo conservation concerns. I have the feeling that the developers want me to use combos of weapons and plasmids on every enemy to make things tolerable, which I might have been open-minded about if they hadn't thrown some many random cannon-fodder enemies in, and hadn't omitted a Last Weapon Quickswitch button that's now essentially mandatory for FPS games.

B) I hate everyone. Everyone I felt even mild sympathy for turns out either not to exist, or nailed to a wall. Yes the eventual meeting with Ryan is somewhat impressive, but at the end of the day it doesn't matter when I as a player don't care whether or not all of Rapture sinks into the sea and implodes, taking my character with it. Developers need to learn that simply looking out of a characters PoV for the entirity of a game doesn't buy them empathy, especially when we haven't seen anything from that PoV to induce it (including the, admittedly demanded by the storyline, paper thin protagonist backstory). Slaughtering hordes of faceless flapper beasties just isn't a significant bonding experience.

Mass Effect - Much much better than I expected. This is apparantly where all the talent that I'd expected in NWN2 went, and in the end I'm not unhappy, as I'd rather have one stupidly good space opera RPG than yet another fantasy rpg. Naked space booty is just an added bonus. The combat took me a little getting used to, but I did really enjoy it once I got into it. It's a fairly linear experience, the sidequests are very much sidequests. But frankly non-linear storylines are overrated, especially in RPGs, where I suspect a well written linear experience is much more preferable to a game that lets you explore it's mediocrity in whatever order you prefer (especially since I find most games whose storyline is the draw equally boring to replay regardless of linearity, so non-linear games simply make me feel like I've payed for content I haven't seen because one playthrough doesn't get through all of the story). I'd also like to point out the final assault on the Citadel as a good example of imaginitevely using the setting (lets have the them fight up the side of a building!) to seem like you're doing something different with out actually having to build anything new (other than some textures). Unfortunately now I'm left waiting for the sequel. /pout

Halo 2 - I've finally figured out what it is about the Halo series that does it for me: music, and voice acting. Because really, it's kind of a mediocre shooter, probably a bit better when it first came out, but the fight mechanics don't change drastically in the series. It's still the same old-school unrealistic (read: enemies can require many shots to kill) shooter at the end of the day. The combat is so-so, and most of the levels are very very repetitive. You could probably slice out 50-60% of every map (the copy/pasted bits) and end up with a much tighter experience (which is essentially what CoD4 did, same focus on story but with much shorter walks between epic setpieces).

But the sound gets you over that. The music really is amazingly well done, a good blend of epic stings and action guitar to help move the monotony of space hallway #1241. The wheel that keeps everything, including the player, moving in the end is the Chief/Cortana relationship. The story is nice and epic, but it's only interesting through the lense of those two and their scrambling to move from one precarious position to the next. It moves through the cutscenes, and her in-mission asides, and (I think) is one of the primary reasons the Arbiter missions feel so flat, as Tarturus generates no empathy as an obvious villain from the get go, and the elite with half a face is almost indistinguishable from the redshirts he drops in with, there's no emotional hook.

The problem with all this is that since the cutscenes for the entire series are now on Youtube, you can simply watch them in order there and enjoy 80-90% of the music and voice acting. While it's obviously less that what you'd get playing through the game, I'm not sure if the remaining 10-20% is worth $50 and 25 hours of playtime.

Games as Art

So around New Year's, Slate had one of their year end wrap up discussions on video games. They usually run these sorts of things, with 3-5 critics having a short posted conversation on their thoughts on the years offerings on music and movies, so I wasn't deeply surprised to see one of games this year.

I'm not a huge Slate fan, I read it fitfully these days mostly out of habit started by a friend from college who used to write the Sunday edition of their today's papers feature. And this set of articles is full of the out of touch attempts to explain 'hip' topics to the unwashed masses and getting most of it wrong that so often annoys me about the magazine/site/thing.

But it brought up something that I've wanted to articulate for a while. The three critics they gotten together has the same 'Games as Art', 'There should be better stories', 'Why should things be hard when this is entertainment' bumpf that seems to soak out of the officially magazine/newspaper critics so often.

And don't get me wrong, I love a good story, and more artistry in games is great. Lord knows I didn't play through that many Final Fantasy games for the gameplay. And I already know that I'll plunk down cash for any game Ragnar Tornquist wants to claim is a sequel because of the artistry I know he and his team are capable of. And lastly I'm haven't been above cheating in order to see the end of a game for a very very long time (i.e. since the internet came around to make it possible). If a game is aiming for that sort of thing, then by all means, the gameplay, and the puzzles, and everything else shouldn't be getting in the way of that goal.

But, invevitably, while making these sorts of points critics feel the need to take a swing as some of the more well known examples of games where the story takes a backseat to other concerns. And here's where there seems to be a disconnect between the officially sanctioned critics (who in fairness, are probably only spending a limited amount of time with many games), and those of us who play this stuff on a more...extensive level. Which is probably why a, say, Tycho or Yahtzee review, reads much much differently than anything written for a print mag.

My point, and I'm getting to it, is that there's different kinds of entertainment, and people expect and demand different things from them. Video games superficially look a lot like movies and tv, so I guess I understand the obvious instinct to examine them within the same framework we used on those mediums (which in turn are mostly carried over wholesale from frameworks used for literature and static visual art like painting/drawing/sculpting). However, the interactive nature of games, and now not just with the code, but as a mode of communication, with other people as well, makes them a different kind of beast. It makes them akin, in some ways, to the many other recreational persuits people pursue, watching sports, personal trials, clubs, etc.

In many ways that's how I see WoW. It's not a game as I've thought of them in the past. I don't play to see what dialogue Illidan has when you down him. It's not art for me, and in many ways, it's not even a game to win or lose, but it's still entertainment. For me, and I suspect for many others with guilds, WoW is a club. It's a social fixture, it's a communal challenge. It pushes a lot of the same buttons for me the rowing club I belonged to in college.

And with that frame of mind, hearing critics poo-poo WoW for not living up to artistic standards, or for being a time sink, feels kind of like an art critic berating you for joining a soccer team because the jerseys are ugly and games are too long.

Recap

As everyone needs to come from somewhere, here's the brief history of what I've been up to for the last year or so gaming-wise.

About a year ago I started to put down Guild Wars which I'd been playing for at least a year or so. While I enjoyed it, and I still think it's one of the better looking mmo's about, a less than active guild, limited pve content, end game that's pretty much limited to HoH (at least when I played), and a number of choices in the mechanics of Factions that really annoyed me made it hard to keep slogging away. (If they hadn't forced you to find a group before you joined a faction battle, that alone might have kept me)

Around the same time I also tried WoW during the bundled one month period as I was going to be on the road for a month or two away from home but with internet access and a low workload (it was a lame duck period at my old firm, still getting paid but not much getting done), which is kind of the gaming equivalent of trying crack cocaine because you're having a dull weekend.

Also around the same period I worked my way through Dreamfall, the sequel to The Longest Journey. While not quite as ridiculously good as the first, it's a good game for the most part, with the two caveats that a) the fights suck and feel shoehorned in, and b) it's very much part two of a three part story (much more than TLJ felt like part one of three). I'm willing to get over that if they get around to putting out part three pretty darn soon.

With a couple server hops (Malorne (lag/server issues) to Zuluhed (server pop death) to Altar of Storms) and toon changes (shaman shaman mage priest) I settled down with WoW and finally got past the 30s, put down GW pretty much for good, and completed Dreamfall. That took me through til late 05 and a new laptop. Then, full of myself and my new hardware I picked up BF2142 and NWN2.

I'm not really a huge fps type, I was an awful twitch gamer growing up, but they've grown on me, and I think BF2142 was the thing I'd been looking for for a while. Nice setting, unlocks to keep you occupied, squads, different roles, objectives, and non-instant respawns, I was sold. Finding a good server makes all the difference, but I found the Tactical Gamer server at just the right time.

NWN2 was a different story. I liked the original, a lot. Modules kept it alive for me long after it should have lost all interest. NWN2 however is a shockingly badly made piece of software, and runs appallingly. Combined with some issues on my hardware end of things meant I got maybe 30m into the game before I mothballed it. I'm hoping to go back to it at some point, but I'm not hopeful.

BF2142 and WoW took me through until the WoW x-pack release, at which point a reroll to shaman on alliance side meant a 70 level grind to catch up to guildmates which eat what time was going to BF. Also in the meantime I'd gone from nubby loner with occasional pvp urges, to regular raider, to class officer, to full officer, with occasional stops off in raid leader positions. Full MC and BWL clears, Twin Emps kills, 7 Naxx bosses, and some BC server firsts all followed, along with various server and guild dramas.

So now I'm here, working on Serpentshrine, and one of the holdouts in a increasingly embattled class (It's not QQ all the time, but let's be honest, playing a shaman these days is mostly about adjusting for the latest set of class nerfs) . I'm almost sure I'm one of two raiding shams on our server that don't run resto.

I'm looking into Vista upgrades both to try to sort out some chronic problems with the graphics on my machine, and to get myself ready for the Vista only Shadowrun (which gets double points for being an innovative shooter of the kind I like, and catering to the inner tabletop geek in me), I just hope the (reportedly) craptacular Live for Windows doesn't burn me. I'm also looking ahead at Bioshock, Fallout 3, and Tabula Rasa (which I'd like to see do well, but suspect might disappear quietly into the night), and personally suspecting to be underwhelmed by the performance of Warhammer and AoC.

So now that's out of the way, I should probably start talking about more recent stuff.