Archive for the ‘Gaming’ Category
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23
Mar
2010
If Patience is a Virtue…
Then what is being inpatient? I’ve been eagerly awaiting today, March 23, as the expanded Beta for TaleWorld’s Mount & Blade: Warband is being released for those who have pre-ordered the game. A few pre-order sites are offering this expanded beta, the expanded part including the single player aspect of the game (whereas the open beta had only the 0nline aspect), and as with all releases of everything in the history of gaming, people must complain.
In case you don’t know what Mount & Blade: Warband (simply Warband from hereon out) is, it’s the stand-alone expansion to the cult favourite game Mount & Blade, a completely open RPG/Medieval Combat game that, for history buffs and combat fans, doesn’t include any sort of magic, potions, or anything of that nature. It’s just melee and archery combat on a beautiful scale. What the game lacks graphically (as it’s an independently developed title from Turkey) it more than makes up for in awesomeness. Warband expands on the single player aspect with new weapons, armour, and features while adding the much anticipated multiplayer modes with enhanced (but still “dated” in most eyes) graphics. Recurring visitors may remember my Mount & Blade review that gives pretty strong accolades for the game.
When I do online pre-orders, I do so with IGN’s Direct2Drive now since Steam gives so much hassle when it comes to games not specifically designed for the platform. The alternative to D2D is Gamers Gate, the official mirror for Paradox Interactive (the publisher of the game), a small distribution company specializing in Paradox and independent titles. It’s a decent service, but my own experience is that when a popular title is released the servers either slow down incredibly or go down completely where IGN has the backing to ensure stable speeds and reliability.
19
Aug
2009
Hearts of Iron III Fallout
I’ve always been a huge fan of strategy games and actually prefer them to action games and shooters. So when my old buddy Plexis from my modding days got me playing Hearts of Iron the better part of a decade ago, I fell in love. When Paradox Interactive says that HoI is a grand strategy title, they do mean grand. In all three iterations of the games (not including expansions) you can play as virtually any country that existed between 1936 and 1948 and either follow the annals of history or rewrite it. Research technologies, manage your industries and production, ensure your population has what they need to survive, and wage war or, if you’d rather, stay completely neutral and watch the world destroy itself. Sounds fun, huh? Well, that’s because it is.
When Hearts of Iron III was announced and more and more media came flowing on to the Internet, I was tickled pink and I simply couldn’t wait to get my greedy little paws on it. Hell, I even pre-ordered it so I could get the bonus Sprite Packs (German and American specific unit icons). But when it was released, as with virtually all Paradox Interactive titles, it was riddled with bugs. Every game upon launch essentially since 1998 will have bugs due to the complex nature of modern games (especially so with Hearts of Iron), but in this case it was a little extreme.
I’m not one to call out developers on releasing bugs with their games as a huge majority of release day bugs are either hardware specific or wouldn’t have been immediately noticable during the beta testing phase. In the case of HoI3 though, there were performance issues beyond belief, numerous and common crashes, glitches, memory leaks, poorly programmed A.I., and other issues. I’m always the first to defend developers and bugs as it comes with the territory when you work in the gaming industry, but I find it hard to defend these bugs and the release of this game. Paradox Interactive has a very bad reputation for releasing games far too early, so this is very much their fault and it’s very clear why there are so many people who are very upset with the company and the game.
But there’s another side to this. Paradox isn’t a money hungry company that ignores their community and conducts business as they see fit, it’s actually quite the opposite in their case. The company head is very active on the community forums and interacts almost daily, and he and the company itself are known for giving support where support is needed. Even before the game was in the hands of the mass public there was a patch released followed by a hot fix followed by a slightly larger patch. Even as we speak (and for the next two weeks) Paradox is programming a comprehensive patch based on the feedback from their community. There’s nothing bad you can say about that, this is really a company that cares about the people that keep them in business.
23
Jun
2009
Mount & Blade Review
Every once in a while, I come across a game that just stops me in my tracks and makes me really wonder how all previous games were even fun. Mount and Blade, an independent game by TaleWorlds Interactive and published by Paradox Interactive (a favourite of mine) is a stunningly realistic medieval combat and trade RPG that is completely open.
I love melee combat and archery, but the problem with this is I don’t love (in fact, I hate) magic, and thus is incredibly hard to find a medieval first or third person game that doesn’t include spells and potions. A good example of this, and a good comparison for Mount & Blade, is The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Oblivion is a big-budget massive open world where you can explore and do what you please (there’s a main plot, but you can put that on the back burner if you’d like). I love it, but the magic crap bugs the hell out of me, so I get bored of it easily and I get bored of fighting little gremlins that shoot fireballs and weird ogres and fantasy creatures. They never existed, and to me that should be left to the childhood imagination.
Mount & Blade takes that open world feel with lots of melee and archery weapons (which can be used on horseback, unlike Oblivion) and puts it into a free-play game. There’s no big main plot where you become a hero of the lands, but instead you just do whatever you want. Ride from village to village and do quests for them (training their peasants, herding cattle, protection, etc.) or roam the lands looking for adventure and fun. It’s not as easy as Oblivion where you come across pairs of bandits that can be hacked ‘n slashed to death in 60 seconds or less, but instead is done far more realistically with roving bands of mercenaries that go into the dozens and would be exceedingly difficult to take on alone.
14
Jun
2009
Left 4 Dead 2 Impressions
I haven’t done much posting here at The Soft Parade lately since I’ve been so damn busy with Planet Half-Life. Why the sudden increase in work, you might ask? Left 4 Dead 2, that’s why. At this year’s E3 Conference in California, Valve announced the development and release date (November 17, 2009) of Left 4 Dead 2, a full-blown sequel to last year’s co-op hit Left 4 Dead.
For those of you who may not know what the game is all about, Left 4 Dead puts you and three other survivors in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. The goal of each campaign (a 45-75 minute series of five maps) is simply to survive and make it out of the area. You must fight your way through thousands of zombies who want nothing more than to eat you, and they certainly will try to do just that. Left 4 Dead 2 builds off of the successes that Left 4 Dead had and improves on them. That’s a good thing, right?
Well, not according to 30,000 pissed off Left 4 Dead fans. No less than a day after the game was released, a group was created to boycott the sequel for a myriad of reasons. The Left 4 Dead 2 Boycott Group feels as though Valve didn’t deliver what they promised with Left 4 Dead and are simply abandoning the game for a sequel. I can understand somewhat why some may feel this way initially as Valve has stated numerous times that they will be releasing free downloadable content for the game as they have with Team Fortress 2, something Valve has come to be known for. Valve kept their word and released “The Survival Pack,” a gameplay mode with a new map and changes a few months back and stated that additional content is still in production. That isn’t good enough for the Group. Below is a part of the groups manifesto which was created by one of the groups member (which is good, as the original was nothing but ranting immature jibberish).
7
May
2009
Why Gamers Destroy Lives
When I was thirteen years old I bought Half-Life, a game that effectively changed my life. I began playing Half-Life and its modifications, namely (at the time) Counter-Strike and began into the world of modding myself. I did that for several years and I loved it, I loved the people and the interactions on forums and IRC, it was great. As I got older I became professionally involved when I first began volunteering at IGN’s Planet Half-Life and eventually came on as the full-time Site Director, the proverbial dream come true for a Half-Life fan, right?
That was 2005, it’s now 2009, and while I do love games still and I love writing and reporting, I generally dislike my job. Why? Because I have to interact with the very people that I came from when I was thirteen; immature self-entitled gamers. Most of these gamers are either young and immature, as I was at the time, or are older and never grew up. You know the types, the ones that lie to get attention and who must always compare their e-penis with yours, and it’s these types of people, and I use this term loosely, that make me want to hit my face against a brick wall until I vomit from the pain.
A few days ago I published a story about a Counter-Strike player in Russia who was beaten to death by his younger rival. Essentially two Russian boys, one seventeen and one fourteen, were playing the game in a gamer’s café while drinking alcohol. The older boy was a superior player and had kept beating the younger, and as such angered him beyond belief. When the older boy left for the night, the younger (with a friend) ambushed him outside and beat him to death with a brick. It’s a sad story and even more sad when a fourteen year old is allowed to drink, stay out until 3am, and then get four years for killing someone with a brick over a video game. As a journalist it’s my job to find these related stories and publish them to their target demographic, but posting anything serious with gamers is a huge mistake.
Many of the comments for the news story are absolutely horrible. Here are a few of the gems:
RabidBrains: Do you think that he made the melon head shot noise?
Bishopzs: HEADSHOT
[SA]Hauptmann: Wow, what a petty bugger that dude was…oh well…ULTRAKILL!
GlennyBoi2008: WICKED SICK!
Bishopzs (again): HEADSHOT!
killertowfoo: Terrorists win!
I don’t even think I need to keep writing for you to get the point I’m putting out here. It’s sick and disrespectful. Oh, just because it was in Russia it doesn’t really matter, so we can all just mock the death of someone who’s probably exactly like all of these people? It would seem so.
28
Apr
2009
Planet Overlord Launches
I’ve been busy working on a new gaming site these last few weeks for IGN Entertainment, and yesterday marks its official launch to the web. Planet Overlord covers the Triumph Studios/Codemasters game series Overlord, placing you in the shoes of a powerful being set to do evil to the world and obtain total control. My co-worker Alex and I spent weeks adding in content to the site’s wiki (all new Planet sites are wiki-driven) and making the site look the way it does. It was a lot of work, but Overlord fans need a place to go to learn more about the ever-expanding series.
Planet Overlord offers wiki pages for virtually every Overlord-related topic, a discussion board (not ForumPlanet, but a single forum on the IGN Boards, sorry about that), up-to-date news, videos and screen shots, polls, articles, and upcoming guides. So add it to your book marks and check daily for the latest news on Overlord, Overlord 2, Overlord: Dark Legend, and Overlord: Minions. No matter what system you play, whether it’s the PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 3, or even the Nintendo DS, there’s an Overlord game for you!
Enjoy!
14
Mar
2009
Gamers Expect Too Much
I’ve been a PC gamer since I got my first real computer in 1999, and with it Half-Life. With Half-Life I got into modding and eventually into gaming journalism where I still am today, and I love it, nothing could make me happier. But as a part of gaming journalism comes interaction with gamers, and five years ago that was good, I couldn’t ask for anything more, but today it’s starting to wear me down, and I’ll tell you why.
Gamers today, whether they’re 10, 20, 40, or whatever, expect way too much from games and developers. This is even more true with Valve Software, the developers behind the Half-Life series, Team Fortress, and most recently Left 4 Dead. Valve is probably one of the most caring developers out there, they’ll continue to support their games until they’re nothing left to do on them (Half-Life itself received updates for nearly ten years, for example). The spark that hit my powder keg, and thus lead me to write this, is in response to forum postings at Planet Half-Life, the site that I run for IGN Entertainment. Valve is planning a new system of server rankings for Team Fortress 2 where servers are ranked by time spent on individual servers per player. This is meant to weed out servers that use fake bots and tags to draw users into their servers, a novel and proud idea I thought. Well it seems that I’m alone in that as the trolls are at it already.
Certain individuals are complaining that this idea will fail and cite reasons that make no sense, they simply deem its failure on the fact that it’s new and hasn’t been done before. This happens with every major change to a system these people are used to. In 2004 when Steam, Valve’s digital distribution platform, was introduced, people immediately said it would fail simply because it had bugs. Well yes, it has bugs, every piece of software has bugs when it’s released because it’s impossible to beta test these things on a wide scale. Steam now has over sixteen million registered users and has 600 blockbuster and indie titles to choose from. If that’s failure, I’d love to see success.
19
Jul
2008
Parents, Please Take Some Responsibility
It’s as much of a hot-button issue as Iraq and poverty today, and that’s the morality of children declining. It seems that every other day that some politician is blaming Family Guy or Jack Thompson is crying over Grand Theft Auto IV, but do they really have the right to do that?
Everything has a rating these days, whether it’s a blockbuster movie, a TV show, or a video game, and there are many more fail-safes in place too. Movie theatres and video game retailers are obligated to verify the age of their patrons and virtually every modern TV has the V-Chip, yet we still constantly hear about movies, games, and shows destroying our youth. Not only are people complaining, but there are lobbyists and politicians trying to outright ban such forms of entertainment for everyone.
If I was twelve years old and I wanted to go see The Happening in theatres (which is rated 18+ if I’m not mistaken) and I tried to go alone, the theatre would deny me that. Hell, even if I went to see a 13+ movie I couldn’t, and sure, as a kid that’s going to tick me off. What’s a little sex and violence on screen, right? How could that hurt my little twelve year old mind? Kids are impressionable and will want to emulate whatever they see to some degree or another, and that’s no different for teenagers and sadly a lot of adults as well, but the adults aren’t in question here. If I wanted to see The Happening at age twelve, I’d need a parent or an older sibling to take me to the theatre and sit through the movie with me; it’s simply the way it is here. If I wanted to go buy GTA4, again, I couldn’t do it on my own, I’d need someone who’s over the age on the ESRB rating (that little black and white box on the cover) to buy it for me.
This is extremely common these days, and this is why the lobbyists and Jack Thompsons of the world are screaming bloody murder. But it’s not the software developers or the movie producers’ fault that kids are being exposed to this no more than the local liquor store can be held responsible for kids getting their older brother to buy them booze. It’s the parents fault that their kids are hitting each other with folding chairs and coming home drunk at 15, and nobody elses. ‘Ole mom ‘n pop are perhaps the most hipocritical and niave people on the face of the planet when they demand that Family Guy gets cancelled and Grand Theft Auto is pulled off the shelves.
5
Jul
2008
The Progression of Gamers & The Gaming Community
While talking with some of my staff members at Planet Half-Life today, I was reminded on just how gamers have progressed throughout the years. I personally got into modern gaming (3D accelerated graphics) in 1999 when the first games I bought were Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear and, of course, Half-Life. Rogue Spear (and the entire R6 series) pretty much dies off as soon as they’re released, there’s no longevity to them, but Half-Life is a game that you can see trends happening with the entire gaming industry.
With each new benchmark in PC gaming comes a new crowd, and from what I can see, there have been four different generations of gamers. A gamer is a gamer whether you started playing Doom and Rise of the Triad or you just bought Team Fortress 2 last night, but each gamer can be labeled to a certain generation, even if only a few years separates them. I’m 21 years old, and yeah, I was playing Doom and RoTT on my 486DX2 back in the mid 90s in single-player mode, but that’s not my generation.
Doom (Left) & Rise of the Triad (Right)
That generation I’m speaking off is what I call Generation Old-School. Sure a lot of us were playing the games back in those days, but a true gamer is someone who goes above playing a few single-player levels, a gamer is someone who engulfs themselves in the game (or games), plays in heated online battles with their friends, enters tournaments, and so forth. This generation of gamers belongs largely to the people who are making the games today that newer generations are playing. Once people got a taste of how addictive shooters and strategy games are, they began building on that and making their own versions and maps of these games (called modders, modifying [modding] the game.
A prime example of an Old-Schooler is Mihn Le, a.k.a. The Gooseman. Le is a Vietnamese-Canadian who in 1996 began playing with the SDK (Software Development Kit) of the immensely popular game Quake. With game developers now releasing the tools needed for development, amateur programmers and artists can make their own games for people to enjoy, and the people that enjoy these amateur-produced games are just the kind of people I was talking about earlier when I mentioned those to who above and beyond and engulf themselves. Le is perhaps the epitome of the Old-Schoolers as he is the single most important reason that Half-Life continued to be played years after it was released (Source: GameSpy, an article by my old friend Kevin Bowen). Why is that, you ask? Because he, along with his friend Jess Cliffe, were the creating force behind the #1 most played online shooter known as Counter-Strike.
24
Apr
2008
Steam & the Rest of the World
Starting off for the few of you who don’t know what Steam is, it’s a digital distribution and game management platform (software) that Valve Software developed to initially distribute and manage their own software library but has since exploded as the leader in digital distribution (more here). Digital distribution allows publishers of all sizes to sell their games online without packaging or CDs/DVDs thus cutting out the middle man of shipping and the like. Great, right?
For me as a Canadian, yeah, it saves me a trip to EB Games, keeps all of my CD keys safe and registered to only my account, and I need only open the program to have access to the dozens of games I have through Steam. But lately more light has been placed on customers outside of North America and the unfair treatment they’re getting from the publishers using the platform to distribute their titles.
That unfair treatment I mentioned is inflamed prices or complete unavailability outside of North America of certain titles. For example, you can purchase the popular and multi-award winning title “Call of Duty 4″ for around $49.95 (on average) throughout North America on Steam. But in Australia, that price is $88.50 for the exact same title with the exact same content. This is still cheaper than buying from a local EB Games in Australia which retails the game for $99.95, but why so expensive when there are no costs to physically manufacture the product (disks, manuals, boxes, etc.) and no shipping costs?
Sure, the Australian dollar is weaker, there are sales taxes, and probably some other stuff that the average consumer can’t see, but are the big-name publishers taking advantage of foreign Steam users with them already used to grossly inflamed prices in-store?
