Gameplay

I was having a conversation with a friend who I haven't talked to for a while. As usually happens when gaming buddies talk, we eventually got to what games we had been playing recently. My list went something like this: Eve, Kerbal Space Program, Minecraft, Game Dev Tycoon, and Farcry 3. I have played a little bit of Guild Wars 2 and other games, but those games are the ones I spent the most time on. He asked me why I was spending so much time on games with, and I quote, "Terrible graphics?" My answer came down to one thing: Gameplay.

With the exception of Eve, all of those games have good concepts for gameplay. Game Dev Tycoon is probably the weakest of the lot, but the concept is strong and with some work it could be an amazing game. You already know what I think about Kerbal Space Program (I LOVE IT!). Minecraft has been a favorite of mine since beta 1.2, and the Tekkit mod pack for it absolutely rekindled my love for it last year. And as the only AAA high graphical fidelity game on the list, Farcry 3 just has some of the best gun play of any shooter that I have played.

The truth is I have always preferred games with good gameplay over the latest and greatest in graphics. That's why the only games in the Call of Duty series I have ever owned are CoD4 and MW3, and I refuse to play Battlefield 3. They simply haven't made any huge in roads on the gameplay. Games like AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! A Reckless Disregard for Gravity, League of Legends and FTL just interest me way more. They make me want to keep playing them, regardless of what they look like.

Minecraft is the poster child for this. From a technical standpoint, the game looks terrible. However from an aesthetic standpoint, Minecraft nails it. The gameplay is interesting, but not overly complicated. It gives you options in how you want to play. With the addition of hardcore mode, Minecraft also got a way to make loss matter (and that's a draw to anyone who plays a game like Eve). If the gameplay in Minecraft was terrible, it wouldn't be half as successful as it is and Notch wouldn't be a millionaire.

At the end of the day, if a game has good gameplay it fast becomes a classic. It becomes something we will talk about as being one of the defining games of this time, much like Pacman, Mario, Sonic, Metroid, Doom, Wolfenstein, Command and Conquer, Age of Empires and countless others have been in the past. I just hope that more and more developers will realise this and continue to focus on the meat of a game: gameplay.

As always:

GAME ON!

Injustice: Gods Among Us

Last weekend I picked up a copy of Injustice: Gods Among Us, a fighting game set in the DC Comics universe. I had been excited about the game for a while, as I am a huge fan of the DC characters and the last DC vs Mortal Combat game was fantastic. Now this games single player has a short storyline and the following impressions of the game (not a review) will contain spoilers. If you are worried about the story in this game, this post won't be for you.

The story line for the game takes place in an alternate reality, with the majority of the game set here. Superman is driven mad with rage after the Joker tricks him into killing Lois Lane, along with their unborn child. He flat out murders the Joker in front of Batman. Fast forward and Superman has taken over the world, strong arming the other heroes and some villains into following him with a mixture of fear and bribes. Only Batman has remained, and he is leading the resistance against Superman, while being constantly hunted. There are parts of the story that I found truly interesting, and one scene where Superman flat out murders Captain Marvel in front of the rest of the 'heroes' gave me goosebumps. However as this is a fighting game, the story takes a backseat to the game play.

Injustice nails the game play for the most part. Combos are fun to pull off and knocking people around the levels can be very satisfying. The one biggest flaw I can see is the super move combos literally involve pulling the two triggers at the same time. There is no massive combo to actually pull it off which can leave them feeling a bit cheap at times. In multiplayer the use of moves that knock you around can spell the end of a game, and facing someone who knows how to chain properly can mean you are just watching your character get slapped all around the level.

If you like the DC comics universe then Injustice is a no brainer, as you will enjoy seeing and playing with all of the characters. If you aren't a fan of the comics then the game itself is a fun fighter, that has its flaws in places, but overall a solid experience.

Random Ramblings

Some pretty cool stuff has happened in gaming and technology this week and so I wanted to write a little about some of the things that interested me.

Greenheart Games Piracy Story

Unless you live under a rock or don't pay attention, you've heard about Game Dev Tycoon by now. The story itself has already been all over the place, but the general idea of it is that the developers of the game uploaded a "cracked" copy of the game to a well known torrent site at the same time that they released the game. They were tracking the downloads of it and at the time of the stories hitting over 93% of the copies out there were the pirated copies.

What those who pirated the game didn't know was this version was slightly different to the actual bought version. You could play the game until a point where a message popped up that looked like this:

Irony... Sweet sweet irony. Credit to Edge Online

That's right, the pirated game made the games you made get pirated (ouch my head). Soon after threads on many forums popped up filled with so much irony that it really hurts to read. Some selections below:

"Guys, I reached some point where if I make a decent game with a score 9-10, it gets pirated and I can't make any profit ... is there some way to avoid that? ... There's no point inventing a new engine because the revolutionary game made out of it will get pirated and I will not be able to cover my expenses,"

"Why are there so many people that pirate? It ruins me! ... not fair."

 Some other pirates asked if they were able to "research DRM" to protect their games. And all of this over an $8 game. There is no excuse for not paying less than a meal at McDonalds to play a good game. At the end of the day however, I can see this helping Greenheart Games with sales and publicity of their game. I will be buying it, and all because of some piracy within piracy.

Steam Hardware & Software Survey

Made by Tharanon

The latest Steam survey popped up for me today and I was very interested to see the results. It seems that nVidia still has the majority share in video cards with 52% of the market. ATI cards make up 33% of the market with the rest being Intel. Something that I sort of always knew but didn't realise was just how much of the processor market Intel holds (73%). The rest of it is pretty standard, but worth a look.

Anyway that ends the Random Ramblings, I'll probably be doing this style of post a little more.

GAME ON!

Pokemon (LOL!)

Sometimes I hate to admit it but I absolutely love Pokemon. In gamer circles this isn't uncommon as a lot of us grew up with the Pokemon games, however outside of those circles it's usually looked at like a kids game and that we should have left that behind in primary school. Try as I might however, I cannot give them up. I stop playing for long, long periods of time and then the bug bites again and I load up a game and start playing.

My most recent relapse has seen me playing the remake of Pokemon Red: Pokemon FireRed. It's been a fantastic nostalgia trip to go back and re-experience the wonders that the original games brought. From picking Charmander as my starter and then struggling with the first two gym leaders, to finally defeating the Elite Four and then pounding Blue's face into the dirt, it has gotten me thinking about what makes those games so good.

So far the only things besides nostalgia I can think of is the sense of adventure the original games gave you. You were going out on a journey that you were in total control over. You get to see and interact with amazing creatures, then deal with conflicts all along the way. The other major pull to the game (and this is something I only realised when I started getting interested in truly complex games) is the freedom to build your team of Pokemon how you choose. If you want to have all of one type, you can. If you want to focus on one single Pokemon and have him become the strongest you possibly can get him to, you can. Or if you want to build a team of well balanced and complementary Pokemon, you can.

Pokemon was a good beginning into the world of choice based games, where the choice you make about how you are going to face something can majorly hurt or benefit you down the line. Back when I was first playing Pokemon Blue I actually used to play the game much the same way that the current world record speed run holder for Pokemon Blue does. I would pick Squirtle and just level him completely. No other Pokemon were caught except for HM 'Slaves' who would only be used to teach the HM moves. I didn't do it anywhere near as fast as him (1 hour 57minutes - really? What the heck dude?) but the idea was the same: get to the end ASAP! To everyone else that was playing at the time it was a terrible idea to do that, and they all spent hours on end training their Pokemon up.

The thought that a game released back in 1998 gave so much freedom of choice, when a fair chunk of games  released today might as well be on rails shooters from the arcade boggles my mind. So to all the game devs out there, take a look at Pokemon and maybe learn a lesson from it. If a game that is fifteen years old can give me choices why can't yours?

As always, GAME ON!