The Fields of Battle
Back in 2010, I became a founding member of the Talon Strike Force, a then FPS gaming clan built around the game MAG, which I’ve talked about several times (and continue to use as a base point for most online games in general). Just prior to this, I had been in a clan called Raven’s Eye, under the tag “EYE,” and had had some genuinely good times with them. What surprised me was when the leader, KrusaderX, decided that he’d had enough of it all and didn’t wish to lead the clan any longer, but instead of transferring leadership to another, decided to disband the clan completely in order to preserve the “name” of the clan.
At the time, I was quite annoyed, but at the same time I wasn’t all that worried. Though many of these people had been my friends and virtual brothers in arms, I’ve always had a knack for adaptability, and was sure that something would come along. As such, when RocketRob99 contacted me about forming another clan, I completely supported him, and so became the first “Talon,” though the name had not quite yet been decided on. Soon after, we were joined by another former EYE, DeathloksRevenge, and the three of us put together the Talon Strike Force, under the tag “TLN.”
A lot has happened over the years since then. For quite some time, I was very involved with the clan, and knew almost everyone in the game by name and voice. I could hand-pick a squad of players with whom I knew we could defeat anything in our path. And I think that that is what contributed most to my later problems. I started to get a little too cocky, a little too big-headed. My pride grew too much, and I began to see many in the clan as “beneath me,” which is just a terrible attitude to have.
Eventually this culminated in a split, as I foolishly followed my pride away from the clan, abandoning the team that I’d spent so much time building up. As the weeks passed, and the group that left the Talons eventually sputtered to a halt, I realized how stupid this all was. I realized how a clan is less about “skill,” and more about camaraderie. You play games with others because you enjoy their company, you can laugh and have a good time, and you know that, win or lose, you’ve got some pals to prop you up.
In those months between, as I got busy with “real-life” and other things, I realized that I had really screwed up. I’d betrayed the people who had looked up to me, and I’d left my friends behind in pursuit of some arbitrary “glory” that I’d come to realize was never there to be obtained in the first place.
I took the time to type out a letter of apology, mostly to Rob, describing my feelings as well as my personal regret. Though he was more than willing to let me back into the fold, I’ve come to realize that things have changed a little bit.
The saying “you can’t go home again” has a universal context. The fact is, once you leave a place behind, even returning to it never quite feels the same. Something is always just a little off. Friends have had experiences and relationships have changed while you were away. While they may still respect you for some things, in other ways you’ve become the visitor, and no longer one of the tenants. This happened to me when I left Talon, it happened to me when I moved up to Orem, and then when I moved back to St. George, and again now that I’ve moved to Salt Lake. Returning back to my old friends, my old haunts, and even my old high school… It never feels the same, and I don’t think it should.
Life is about progression. It’s about moving forward, no matter how slowly you have to go. You can look back fondly on the things behind you, (or look back with a tinge of regret), but the fact is that you’re here now. It’s now now, not then. You’ve got to take stock of who you are, what you’ve got, and what you can do with it. There’s no sense in constantly longing for those things that you can’t possibly get back, but instead you can spend your time forging new strides, and building new relationships.
As far as Talon is concerned, I’m slowly getting back into the mix. I picked up Battlefield 3 a couple of months back, and have slowly been building up my skills again, utilizing the thousands of hours that I’ve played over the years. I’ve been getting myself back involved with the clan again, and things have been going well.
Now, before you think that this is all a sad tale of loneliness and heartbreak, understand that it’s not. I’ve actually been legitimately busy over the past nine months, and the fact is, this summer is the first time that I’ve had some extra hours to actually play a few games for a legitimate amount of time. It’s an odd experience, almost from another era in my life, which is perhaps why these feelings of nostalgia seem so potent at the moment.
But the thing is, there’s life lessons to be learned in any endeavor. There’s things to take away from every situation that you find yourself in, and the fact is, no matter what social circles you navigate, you’re always going to run into the same dramas, the same highs and lows, dressed up with slightly different shades. If you can take the time to learn from each one, and use that knowledge to help better resolve problems in the future, well… That’s all anyone can really ask for, isn’t it?
Alright, that’s enough long-winded soapboxing for me. I’m off to Taco Bell, to have me a burrito.
The Lack of a Mass Affect (Mass Effect 3)
[Minor Mass Effect and Dragon Age spoilers to follow, as well as a few movies for the sake of discussion. Just a a brief forewarning.]
I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what I want to say about this, especially considering how much this whole debacle has occupied my thoughts over the past week and a half.
After I got back from GDC, our school had its Spring Break. So, being that ME3 came out while I was in San Francisco, I took a couple days and decided that I was going to play through this game, and get the final conclusion to this amazing series that I’ve been following over the past five years.
Throughout my time in the world of Mass Effect, I’ve been with Shepard through some truly unbelievable moments. I was there when he destroyed the Thorian. I was there when he saved the final Rachnii from extinction. And I urged him to convince the Human Fleet to save the Council, even though they’ve continued to be unbelievable pricks to him all throughout his career. I watched him take on an “impossible” suicide mission and then live, destroying not his first, but his second Reaper in the process.
I’ve been there with Shepard, helping him to not only beat, but utterly defy the odds over and over again. Over five years, I’ve come to know what he would do. I’ve come to understand who he is as a character. When he comes to a situation, I know that he’ll try, at first, to find a compromise. But if that fails, I know that he’s more than willing to do things “the easy way,” making convincing arguments through the use of more “forceful” persuasion.
Shepard doesn’t back down. He doesn’t give up. No matter who says that something can’t be done, he not only believes that he can get it done, but has shown repeatedly that he’s able to convince others to go along with him, and then get it done. He doesn’t just defy the odds. He obliterates them, and sends them crying home to mommy after he’s beaten them to a pulp.
As such, this is the reason why I just can’t wrap my head around the ending of ME3. It doesn’t fit the character, it doesn’t fit the story, and it feels so completely out-of-place that I wonder if perhaps a writer jokingly added it to the end of the script, and no one seemed to notice.
Mass Effect 3 is a wonderful and amazing game. It’s got such unbelievable depth and engagement in the storytelling, skills which are difficult to utilize well, but powerful when wielded by master craftmen. The gameplay is solid. The narrative is told well, revealing things smartly, with twists, turns, and numerous difficult decisions that Shepard has to make along the way. To create a genuine sense of urgency and imminent destruction so capably is no short order.
But then, in the end, all of that comes to naught. And it’s not simply a “bad ending.” It’s an inappropriate ending. It’s a non-Bioware ending.
When I played Dragon Age: Origins several years ago, I loved it. Being my first foray into a Bioware game, I was impressed by how deeply I became engaged in that world. Alistair, Zevran, Shale, and Morrigan became not only avatars on the screen, but they became my friends, my travelling companions, enough so that when I found a mirror to replace the one Morrigan had lost so long ago, the ensuing response felt almost real.
That kind of connection to fictional characters is what makes a Bioware game worth playing. And so, when I took my Warden into the final battle, with a great army of races at my back (that I’d had to negotiate my way towards), I still realized that I may very well be heading straight into my death. But even so, I was okay with that. I realized that that was a possibility, and that was alright. I had my companions at my side, my forces were marshaled and ready to fight, and I was as prepared as I absolutely could be.
And when that ending came, I didn’t feel like my actions were worthless. Sure, some of my decisions led to some less-than desirable outcomes, but that was alright. The ending was something that was led towards. It worked because my character was guiding the tale, instead of the great “hand of the writer” suddenly forcing my character into a situation.
As someone who studies storytelling extensively, I was extremely annoyed by the ending of Mass Effect 3. It was an amazing journey that ended with a drop off of a cliff, with no further resolution. The climax was alluded to, built up to, and the player was ready for it. The showdown was set-up, and you knew that it was going to be good. And then… It didn’t happen. No final climax. No final battle pitting Shepard against the machines. Instead, there’s just a little choice where Shepard is forced to choose one of three undesirable choices when there are numerous other possibilities that he could take, which would actually be within his personality.
The ending of a character’s story, when crafted properly, should be determined by the actions that that character takes, and the personality that he has displayed. Batman in The Dark Knight was going to have to make a final sacrifice for the sake of Gotham, because that is the kind of character he is. You just knew that Stamper was going to stay behind on the asteroid in Armaggedon, because you could sense it. He had to. William Thatcher in A Knight’s Tale needed a way to face off with Alumar. It had to be in the jousting arena, and despite whatever tricks Alumar pulled, Thatcher was going to win, because that was just who he was.
Every story sets its own expectations, and Mass Effect is no exception to that. When I started up Mass Effect 3, I went in with the expectation that Shepard was probably going to die at the end of it. That just felt like how it should end. This was his greatest danger, his most difficult mission ever. How could he expect to make it though unscathed yet again?
But I also expected him to win. I expected him to be able to yet again defy the odds, and defeat his enemies, because he’s Shepard. He always finds a way, and that should have happened. It was the ending that sat as an unspoken promise to the player, and it wasn’t even partially fulfilled.
Recently, Bioware co-founder Ray Muzyka announced that the team is looking into fan response, and will reveal how they’re looking to address it next month. Good. To me, narrative is just like anything else in a game. If there’s a bug, you fix it. If there’s a feature that just doesn’t work, then you make it work. You patch it, or you replace it with something else. Game narrative is no different. If it doesn’t work, then you fix it. I don’t understand the whole “reverence” that people seem to have with narrative, treating it as some kind of holy thing that should never be altered.
It’s got nuts and bolts just like anything else. Sure, it’s creative, but it’s not some mystical process, nor are its creators infallible. It goes through iterations, it’s changed, altered, retconned, and reshaped over and over, even in each individual telling. (But I’ve gone on long enough.)
I’ll just end with this. I’m happy that this is being reexamined. Some may decry the “precedent” that this creates, with fans suddenly deciding how things are going to end. The thing is, I see this as a stepping stone. I see this as a precedent that perhaps developers will take more care in how they craft their stories. Perhaps game narrative will be treated with more respect than simply cutscenes in-between the action parts.
We’ll see. Talk to you soon.
Reality Check: Thoughts
Originally, when we set out to create this prototype, I wondered if perhaps the game was a little too complicated, especially considering how little time we had, and especially after we lost one of our team members on the second day of production. I had worried that, because there seemed like a huge amount of work to do, if we simply were biting off way more than we could chew.
Now, though, I believe that I’m having the opposite problem. The game seems simplistic, though it’s message is still quite clear.
I honestly could see this final game as more of a Gameboy, or possibly a retro-themed game. Interestingly, however, that as a final art style may actually strengthen the game’s message even more, using Super Mario Bros. as a familiar entry point, leaving the game free to better explain its message. I could really see this all looking similar to a SNES game.
But, I guess, that kind of stuff would work better as a further prototype. Right now, instead, we’ve just got to keep our focus. Get this prototype done, make sure that it’s fun and interesting. When that’s all done, and everything works, if we find that it’s worthwhile to go back and clean it all up as a full and complete game, then we’ll do that.
Alright. Got to get these little scripts put together. Even though things are looking good, and we’re pretty much on track, don’t want to waste time. Always something else to do.
It’s Good to Have a Little Elbow Room
One of the most difficult things to deal with when trying to get into any field, it seems, is people trying to get you to specialize. I’m not sure why, but most people expect you to be able to describe yourself with a single title. “I’m a doctor,” or “I’m a police officer,” or maybe “I’m a writer.”
But the thing of it is, most of us just aren’t that way, especially in arts and entertainment. Throughout my schooling and career, I was always asked what I wanted to be, or what I was going to school for. Most often, I would have to resort to describing my major, “Digital Media,” or maybe whatever happened to be the focus of my studies that semester, like “Film.”
This can be especially problematic when you start looking for jobs, and people are surprised that you’ve worked a wide swath of jobs. For me, I’ve worked as a film grip, a key grip, and an electritian. I’ve worked as a producer, a production assistant, and an art director. I’ve been a writer, a UPM, a graphic producer, and a retail salesman. I’ve worked in landscaping, food service, and as a roadie. All of these things apply to who I am and what I know how to do, and how I can approach a situation or problem, and it does me a serious discredit for someone to ask me “what I do,” and expect a simple, no-frills answer.
Over the past year, however, I’ve come to better understand what I want to do in my life. Gaming, to me, has always been a great passion of mine. I’ve sunk more time into video games than I have into anything except perhaps my writing, and that drive to experiences these interactive stories and situations finally just clicked for me. Getting accepted to Grad School to start my gaming career finally just solidified my course for me. I knew what I wanted to do.
What’s been more freeing for me, however, is that I finally am able to portray myself the way that I want to. When you’re working in film, people tend to want a certain kind of person for a certain kind of work. They want you to be focused on the job at hand, and your experiences outside of the scope of that job seem to be mostly disregarded, because you’re expected to be compartmentalized.
But now, my hobby and my career are starting to blend. I can be a gamer, and that’s finally a good thing. I can start to portray myself as having this passion, and it’s not only understood, it’s encouraged. Of course, there’s a healthy dose of work to go along with it all, but it’s just good to have a little elbow room. It’s nice to not be stuck in a compartment that wasn’t exactly of my own choosing.
And when people ask me what I want to be, then I can explain that I want to be a producer. But when I go to explain myself, I’m not above telling people that I’m a Gamer, Producer, Writer, Artist, and a Jack-of-All-Trades. I’m finally starting to realize that it’s not a bad thing to just be who I am, and let the chips fall where they may. No need to worry anymore what “the masses” think, because I’m going to find a group that wants me for who I am.
I’m ready to rebrand myself so my brand is more true to me, and I’m ready to show what I can be. Here’s hoping that the hard work is going to pay off.
- K
ion drum rocker and the art of plywood
I know that everyone and their mom has now played Rock Band, and if they haven’t, they’ve been living in a cave for the past five years. This little karaoke substitute has created an amazing new way to enjoy your music, to become a virtual rock star, and to pile numerous plastic guitars and drum sets throughout living rooms everywhere. And it’s a total blast.
I picked up my Rock Band 2 set about a year ago, and quickly learned that while many people are familiar with the guitar controllers, the drums were a completely different animal. Considering that no one ever seemed to want to touch the drums, I took it upon myself to learn them, and so I became my friends’ default drummer in any and all Rock Band sessions. I usually can make it through any song on hard, and many on expert, but I wouldn’t consider myself extremely good.
But I do love to play. A lot.
So, it wasn’t really a surprise a few months into ownership that I broke the kick pedal’s plastic hinge. Or that I snapped the bolt on one of the symbols. Or that the pipes won’t properly stay all the way up anymore. That little plastic set had a good, long, life, but I realized that it was time to upgrade.
After some research, and realizing that I really only wanted to use this for Rock Band instead of a career as a drummer, I decided forgo the expensive, high-end electronic drum set ups and went with the Ion Drum Rocker. At first, this worked for me, but I quickly noticed that the thing liked to drop out of the game sporadically. A quick search later, and I discovered that there was some kind of static electricity buildup that caused a charge to run through the system and drop out, which was extremely frustrating during a particularly difficult section or while the entire band was on a good rhythm.
I went through a number of ideas, hoping that I wouldn’t have to send the set in to get it repaired or something, and annoyed that many people complained that the Ion/Alesis customer service was really bad. My ideas ranged from touching the pads to discharge them between songs, putting a vinyl mat underneath the set, to using some dryer sheets, to a number of different alternatives, but nothing seemed to stop it from disconnecting or just having the drums simply stop responding for apparently no reason.
After talking it over with a friend, we thought up that perhaps if we could deaden the charge, not only under the set, but under myself and the entire set-up, we could get it to work. After some rummaging through the garage, and a little hammer and sawing, I slipped some plywood under the drum set, my seat, the kick pedal, and the cords that run to the PS3.
So far, I haven’t had a single problem.
The Ion Rocker is a good set that I’ve had a lot of fun with. The main reason that I put this out there is that I’ve read about some really expensive ideas, including opening up the system and adjusting wiring, or scraping things off the pads, or a number of other ideas, and I thought that they all sounded rather… well, expensive, as well as time-consuming. As far as I can determine, the wood underneath my system at the moment, (on top of the carpet), is just regular old plywood. The cables don’t touch the carpet, which I also think is important.
Anyway, hope that helps someone who was as frustrated as I was. Or even those who aren’t.
- K
UPDATE: Since this posting, I’ve done some extra testing. The kit will sometimes still drop out, and the response that I got from ION was anything but helpful. In any case, I tried a number of other things in addition to the plywood on the carpet underneath the kit, and the most helpful has been a seven-dollar grounding wrist strap that I modified to fit around my ankle, plugged into the ground of a wall outlet. Over New Years, we held a four+ hour Rock Band marathon at my house, and after putting on the “ankle strap”, there were only two or three drop outs total for the whole night. It was cheap, and worked wonders. I would recommend putting the strap around the ankle of the foot that you’re going to use for the kick pedal, because that seemed important, and make sure that the metal piece of the strap is touching skin, not clothing.
In an effort to remove the problem completely, next I’m going to try adding an anti-static mat onto the plywood to see if that helps even more. But I thought that I should jot down this little tidbit for those who are still having problems. Good luck! – K
Techno-Tourette's
I play video games. A lot. Quite possibly too much. I think my favorite ones are those that really challenge some thought and make you look at things in a different perspective. A game with a really powerful and engaging story, or with unbelievable gameplay, or the ability to really lose yourself into another “world” for a while really tend to catch my attention. For me, gaming is all about the experience. When friends are over, we play Rock Band, or Buzz, or even (surprisingly awesome) Little Big Planet. Those are games that I don’t often play by myself, simply because it’s about the experience with the friends that are over that make the games enjoyable. I truly wish there were more games like that, instead of just leaving multiplayer to online-exclusives.
For my own solo experiences, though, it’s a different kind of experience. I gauge the quality of a game based on how hard it is for me to put it down. But also by how easily it is for me to go crazy over something that looks to be beyond my control, in which I can perceive a gaming flaw. In NCAA Football, it’s when I’ve got a defensve line of rock-solids and the halfback is able to run right through them because of the animations that force my guys just slightly to the wrong areas. In NBA Live, it’s when I get forced out-of-bounds by an animation, or get locked onto the offensive player against my will. Blitz: The League, when the computer has my guys slipping all over the field while the opposing team is playing like the Niners in the Joe Montana era. In Grand Theft Auto, when I have to wait an hour to kill the guy I’ve been chasing, even though I’ve been able to make the shot the entire time. In fighting games, its when the computer can do a million moves flawlessly while any normal person would make at least a couple mistakes, especially when some of those moves are physically impossible to duplicate (the Guile Sonic-Boom to Flash Kick comes to mind from my nostalgic days of SNES gaming.) It’s in Call of Duty when a grenade lands next to me, but the indicator fails to tell me until the nano-second before it blows up, killing me. (But that one could be that I’m no the greatest FPS player in the world. <grin>) In racing games, it’s when you manage to get ahead by a lap and the rubber-band AI always brings the competitor into supersonic speeds to keep the race “competitive.” These kinds of things seem to happen all the time.
Each time something like that happens, I tend to suffer from a strange malady that I’ve termed “Techno-Tourette’s Syndrome”, or TTS. Now, while this follows more the pop-culture definition of Tourette’s, namely, that it follows more closely to Coprolalia, all I know is that these particular situations make me want to spout such a string of profanities that even a muleskinner would hang his head in shame. I get angry, frustrated, and don’t want to play anymore. The reason? Because it feels like there’s nothing that I can do about it.
I used to train in boxing, once upon a time. When I went sparring, our intention wasn’t to hurt each other, but when something came up, we took care of it in the ring. We played by the rules, and then left it there. You spent yourself in that ring. The only one that you had to worry about failing was you, because as long as the other guy played by the rules, you knew that it was an even match.
I used to swim for my high school team. All that mattered was who got to the finish line first. Everything was on you to push yourself, because the guy next to you was going to do the same thing.
In any competitive sport that I’ve played, you play by the rules, and if you then lose, well you knew that you put everything in there that you could, so that was it. There was no wondering if the other team cheated, because there was a ref, or at least the players would notice. Cheating was not allowed.
But while playing video games, there is no ref. All there is is the gamer’s perception, and more often than not gamers notice a lot more than developers seem to want to give them credit for. We notice when there is an invisible “line” that we have to cross in order for all the bad guys to appear. We notice when the monsters just appear out of nowhere in an endless supply. We notice when you change the rules on us, or only apply rules to us, and no one else in the game. And things like that don’t make us happy. Instead, it gives us TTS.
I don’t know the answer, but I suspect that it relates to the fact that I don’t like it to feel like I’m being cheated, and there’s no one to take the slack when I feel that way in a video game. If I’m playing a board game, and I realize that the person next to me is cheating, then I call them out, and they get to live with those consequences. In sports, the ref metes them out. But in video games, I hand over 50+ dollars to play a game, only to have it cheat, and I have nothing I can do at it but swear at the screen for ten minutes straight, frustrated out of my mind.
Such is why I installed a pull-up bar just around the corner. When I get frustrated, I walk away a little, do some pull-ups to force the anger out of my system, and cool off.
But it makes me angry with just the fact that I have to do that at all when playing a @!$@*# #&%!*@& game.
- Kyle
My Distaste for Madden 08
A little while back, I wrote up a praising review for NCAA 08, which is still one of my favorite games. (A buddy and me have been playing it about every week, and are into our third season in the Dynasty mode. He got into the PAC-10 while I’m still in the WAC, but I did beat him severely in the BCS championship game, effectively shutting down his undefeated season. Badaboom.)
In any case, I said that when I got a hold of Madden 08, I’d give you guys my review, so here we are. I’ve played through for the past month or so, and I’ll tell you that it was a much different experience than the NCAA gridiron.
The first thing that I noticed was the theming. Whereas NCAA was all about the engrossing experience, pulling you into the game from the beginning with fight songs and chanting, Madden is all about the edgy, raw look of the NFL, with hard-hitting music and more “grafitti-inspired” art schemes. I used to play NFL Street a lot, and so I can see where some of the blending is coming from there.
The menus work well enough, with all the standard modes available, but I really wanted to dive right into the Franchise Mode, specifically because I figured it would compare nicely with the Dynasty Mode that I was familiar with in NCAA.
Right off the bat you can either jump into the draft, or just go into the teams. The draft is interesting enough, of course, the NFL equivalent of “picking teams.” The problem that I saw, however, is that instead of dealing with just stats and availability, you have a “salary cap”, which is true to life, but there’s all kinds of penalties when you want to get rid of one player in favor of another. Because the manual has a very limited explanation of the process, you’ve got to do it by trial and error, which was a huge pain in the rear. My first foray had me with a negative salary cap, and I couldn’t even tell if I had all the players that I needed. The interface just wasn’t really user friendly.
I thought that making your own team would be kind of fun, mostly because you would be able to customize all kinds of things. Well, it was possible to customize just about all aspects of the stadium, but the uniform designing was more difficult then it had to be. Compared to the streamlined and clean process in NCAA, the menu design just felt unnatural and annoying. However, there were a few more options as far as customization was concerned that were relatively absent in NCAA, so take your pick.
In older Madden games, you get a radio broadcast that talks a lot about the different teams and players. I thought that this was a good thing, yet another example of how to “pull the player in.” This is a fictional franchise, after all, and the goal should be to bring the player into this universe as if it really mattered. That’s what gets them coming back.
Instead, all you get is two little newspapers, which cover stupid little things that the teams do. The local paper covered trivial things like the naming of a new team Captain, and even when I accidentally pressed the button to alter the uniforms, and then cancelled out. How dumb is that?
Then you have the national news, especially in the pre-season, which doesn’t really matter. You hear about specific players and what-not, but it’s just blah text, and you don’t get the full-page screenshots that NCAA’s ESPN Magazine puts up.
And that’s probably a good thing, especially considering the way that the game looks.
The first thing that I noticed was that the players looked squatty and indistinguishable. You can adjust some of the pads and things that your players are wearing, but most of the time it’s just kind of a guessing game, and you have to just be able to tell by the numbers. The the players just plain look weird. Where the NCAA game really shows you the physical difference between a lithe wide reciever and a strong-shouldered halfback, Madden just makes them all look the same, and it’s kind of disappointing.
Right off you get the back and forth between John Madden and Al Michaels, which was a sorely disappointing second to the lively and interesting banter between Brad Nessler, Kirk Herbstreit, and Lee Corso. To be honest, I prefer just not listening to Madden himself at all. I think they ought to hire Frank Caliendo to immitate Madden and put some life into the play-by-play. At least Lee Corso is good for a laugh now and then, and has some character in his speech. Madden talks like he’s not even really watching the game.
You’d think that professional players would play better than the kids in college, but apparently not. Each game that I played felt sluggish, as if the players were on a molasses field. My running back, though he was supposed to be really good, couldn’t even break through the defensive line, like, ever. I never lost so many yards.
The computer’s defense got a killer boost, though. They shut things down repeatedly, pushing me farther and farther back, until I had to get some miracle throws to push ahead. I’ve never been one to sit there wondering if “maybe this time he’ll catch it.”
The stats don’t even matter – As a test, I made my guy a top stat on everything, and tried him out at DT – He broke through the offensive line three times in the whole season. Because of that, I made up different teams with different star players just to see what would happen.
The game becomes more of a battle against frustration instead of against the opponent. Yes, its the NFL, and its supposed to be difficult, but how many times does a star reciever with perfect stats drop the ball? How many times does a near-perfect offensive line let everybody through? How often should a quarterback get sacked? And why is it that every other team in the league has cornerbacks that can run faster and catch up to my perfect receivers, where my perfect corners can’t ever catch up?
Part of the problem, as I see it, is that the computer cheats its way into the win or, at least, into a really close game. This is something that I’ve noticed as a trend in a lot of games, but it just feels wrong to me. If you’re good at a game, the computer shouldn’t have to cheat to catch up. There shouldn’t be a sudden surge in stats just because you’re beating it. That’s just plain AI bull.
Ever game felt more like a chore than an enjoyable experience, and I found myself actually wondering why I was bothering to play the game at all. It just didn’t feel fun anymore.
So, for those of you out there with PS2s, who still want a good football experience, I’d recommend NCAA 08. I’d pass on Madden for the older console, because apparently Madden already passed on us.
-Kyle
EA's NCAA 08
Alright. I’ve always wanted to play football. I didn’t really “make the cut” in high school, and I’ve admitted to myself that I’m never going to play college or pro ball, but I love the game, and I’ve always liked to play. But I’m not the kind of guy who memorizes the stats of certain players, or can tell you who played in the 1998 All-Star game, or even who the big rivals are. I just love the game of football itself.
I’ve played Madden™ before, as well as NFL Blitz™ and NFL Street™, but I was never really impressed. I mean, sure, you can play the big teams against themselves, and you can even track your scores, but it just never felt as immersive to me as I hoped it would be, so I kind of put the genre to the side.
Imagine my surprise when I, on a whim, rented NCAA 08 from Blockbuster™. Thankfully, Blockbuster lets you keep the game for a week, and I happened to have a few free weeknights. I found my college team, and started into the Dynasty Mode.
The first thing that hits you about this game is the depth that you get into as you play it. Not only are you playing a mild game of football, but you’re tracking the progress of your coach, the stats of your players, and the status of high school senior college hopefuls. You’re literally tracking just about every aspect of your college, down to the trouble that some of your college players get themselves into. Bowl bids, Pac-10 championships, rivalries… It’s all in here.
A good friend and I both have started another Dynasty Mode together, and it always comes up between us. We ask how the other is doing, even though we both can just check it on the machine. We know each other’s players, and when we play against each other, it feels like it actually means something.
Now, this may sound strange to be talking about a video game like this, but I think it has really helped me to understand what “sports guys” really go through. I know that if one of my key players was injured on a play, I’d be pretty upset. When one of my guys cheats on a test and I have to pull him out of the game, I feel not only the stress of the NCAA breathing down my neck to do something, but the fear that we’re going to be underhanded for next week’s game against USC.
It feels that real.
I believe that any sports game, or even any game for that matter, should be using this as a model. Gamers truly want this much of an experience. We want what we do in the game to actually mean something. Ever wondered why EverQuest™ or World of Warcraft™ are so popular? It’s because the actions in the game actually affect things. In NCAA 08, there’s no extra lives. There’s no continues. If you lose, you lose, and that’s all there is to it. If you win, then you progress. If your player gets himself into trouble, you really have to discipline him, or you’ll get into trouble with the league. You want to win the Division championship? Then you better put the work in and win, but not against just anybody. You have to challenge the big schools.
I’ve always been disappointed with games that show a definite lack of depth. Gamers want to be able to customize their experience. They want to not only have a character that is interesting, but one that you can make your own. You need to be able to change the look, accessories, the weapons, the abilities, and the actions. You need to be able to make the game yours.
Everything about NCAA 08 is about pulling you into this fictional universe. And it’s about the details. From the game’s tracking of unnumerable stats and rankings, to the fictional ESPN Magazine stories, to even the little blurb spots about which teams have won or are winning during the same game that you’re playing. It’s immersive, it’s addicting, and it’s fun.
I guess I’ve gone on long enough. In essense, if you want to play a game that really rocks your world, and you like the game of football, I would pick up NCAA 08. When I finish with it, (at least for a while), and I want to track my alumni players in the pro leagues, I’ll pick up Madden 08 as well. More on that to come, I promise.
- Kyle
The Age of Street Fighter™
Back in those ages where the arcade was the video game hotspot, and where the fighting game debates were about Street Fighter™ and Mortal Kombat™, and when a 3D video game was the talk of imagination, those were the times that gaming thrived. It was when gaming wasn’t just about holing yourself up in the basement for the night, but it was a social experience.
I remember putting quarters up on the Tekken 4 machine, and beating down several people in a row. About it really being a competition of skill. It was about bragging rights, and about seeing the look on your opponent’s face when you really served him hard. When you could take a big-mouthed hot-shot down right in front of all of his friends, and immediately make him shut up.
These were the times before online chat-room bull. Before the guy could curse you out with no repercussions. If you stomped a guy in the arcade, there was literally nothing he could do but challenge you again. What, is he going to try and fight you over a video game? He might have all kinds of insults and excuses in his head, but there’s no way to hack an arcade game. You’re both playing on the same machine, and so it’s all about who’s still standing at the end of three rounds.
I really miss those days. I miss the social atmosphere where arcades were actually places that you could go. None of this online stuff. The people you played against were real people, and it was as much smack-talk face-to-face as a game of street basketball. You couldn’t just sit in your room and feel superior on your gaming throne. You actually had to get out. You had to shower, clean yourself up, and leave the house in order to show somebody up. (What a novel idea.)
It’s this kind of social atmosphere that I feel is missing not only from the gaming community, but also from most other kinds of communities as well. I’ve complained before about the absense of pick-up sports. Here’s just another example. I see us as a culture, in a few years, just sitting in our homes with virtual everything, not really living life, but instead just pretending to. When that time comes, I don’t know what’s going to stop me from picking up my virtual gun, and shooting my virtual self in the virtual head. But that’s not real, is it?
- Kyle
PS – For those of you interested in what Zengief, Dhalsim, Bison, and the rest of the gang are up to these days, check out Street Fighter: The Later Years for a good laugh.
Viewtiful Joe
Yesterday I was walking through the mall, and stopped by GameStop. Now, I’ve been a gamer for who knows how long, but I’d like to think that I’ve tempered my “obsession” over the past few years. I have yet to get on the whole “next-gen console” craze, and so I only own a Playstation 2. But don’t let that fool you into thinking that I’m not a gamer. It’s just that I’m not done with the good games of yesteryear yet.
In any case, as I was browsing through the old PS2 titles, especially the used games that were in the “$9.99 or less” rack, I came across a game that I had played when I was in high school over five years ago. It was called Viewtiful Joe. It looked liked it was in pretty good shape, and for $5.99, I figured it would be worth a play. I mean, a rental at Blockbuster is around seven bucks anyway, so I figured if I didn’t like it, at least I could trade it in for something else later.
That night, after my last class, I put the disc into the system, and was immediately blown away. Not exactly by the graphics, because though they were unique, they were about as far from “realistic” as possible. It was a very cel-shaded look, akin to the style of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. To me, it looked as if the characters had been pulled right from a comic book. All the proportions were cartoony, from the big heads and small bodies to the accompanying “SMACK” and “POW” feel of hitting your enemies.
And this isn’t a 3D game, though you’d really be hard-pressed to notice. This is a side-scrolling, fast-paced brawler akin to Double Dragon on thirteen double-latte cappuccinos. The action is fast, furious, and sucks you right in, even if it does get a little too wild for me to handle at times. (I mean, there are moments when there are over thirty little baddies all over the screen, and I’m just struggling to keep the hero alive.
But it’s the unique, tongue-in-cheek story that really sets this game apart from the crowd. We’re introduced right off to Joe, just an average movie-loving guy, and his girlfriend, Silvia, who clearly doesn’t want to spend her date night at the movie theater, again. But, just as Captain Blue, Joe’s favorite superhero, falls to the the movie’s antagonist, Joe is busy trying to get Silvia to take the film more seriously.
Then, as cheesy as it may sound, the antagonist reaches through the screen, kidnaps Silvia, and takes her back into movieland. Joe, the wisecracking little film nut that he is, gets pulled right in, and ends up entrusted with a superhero “V-Watch”, courtesy of Captain Blue’s “essence”. As soon as you can say “Henshin-a-go-go, baby”, Joe is off to defeat the Jadow, the group of villians who have kidnapped Silvia, and get his girlfriend back.
Now, I never played the game all the way through, and I’m only on the beginning stages, but man am I having a great time with it. More games need to be given the care and time and creativity that I’m sure this one was given. There are countless references to pop-culture, especially old movies and video games. The entire story is riddled with little jokes and references, along with the constant barrage of Joe’s personal dialogue.
So, if you’re up for some laughs, and want to get lost in one of the best Playstation 2 games every made, or even, one of the best games ever made, period, see if you can track down a copy of Viewtiful Joe.
- Kyle
