**Update**
There's a few rumblings that FEAR 2 has securom DRM - though whether it's just the disc-check (which i'm fine with) or the online authentication form of the software (which i'm not okay with) we'll have to wait and see because, let's face it, Warner Bros. and Monolith aren't going to tell us until it hits retail shelves.... Potentially one less reason for me to buy it.
Maybe this recession is affecting my optimism for gaming but i'm not feeling particularly excited about any releases already announced for this year.
Dawn of War 2 just isn't my cup of tea. I don't like squad management games with hero units and it's one of the reasons why i disliked Warcraft 3 why i don't like Company of Heros. It's too much of a departure from the original Dawn of War (though i didn't like the game after the second expansion) and what i liked about that game. I feel like they should have left the name and kept the franchise. Warhammer 40K: Squad Commander..... oh, wait.... they already did that.
Fear 2 - i need to try the demo for this game but i'm just tired of generic FPSes. I liked FEAR and i'm sure i'll get around to playing this one but not at release i've not seen anything that makes me excited for it.
DNF - it may come around sometime this year but who knows? I used to be excited for this game. Hell! I'm still excited for the game that was based around the 2001 trailer but the new screenshots haven't been that exciting - too dark and gritty. Duke was never about being dark and gritty he was about over-the-top fun and ridiculousness. We'll see but my interest is diminished.
Anything else?
Empire Total War? The only setting i liked was Rome the games are all pretty much of a muchness when you get down to it and IMO it's the setting that matters most in this genre that Creative Assembly have manged to corner for themselves.
Bah.... these are depressing times.
23 January 2009
18 January 2009
Finally, someone else sees some sense...
I've always liked Stardock's view on copy protection and customer support. I don't agree with everything that's coming through their new initiative that's trying to push towards copyright standards within the industry but at least they've always had a positive attitude towards piracy.
Now another company - again, one whose stance and methods i don't necessarily always agree with - has a spokesperson actually speaking with sense! Jason Holtman spoke recently at the Game Business Law Summit. He mentioned some interesting things about online versus retail sales but i was more interested in this little nugget at the end of the reporting article at gamedaily:
The final sacred cow that Holtman took a stab at was the issue of piracy. "There's a big business feeling that there's piracy," he says. But the truth is: "Pirates are underserved customers."
"When you think about it that way, you think, 'Oh my gosh, I can do some interesting things and make some interesting money off of it.'"
"We take all of our games day-and-date to Russia," Holtman says of Valve. "The reason people pirated things in Russia," he explains, "is because Russians are reading magazines and watching television -- they say 'Man, I want to play that game so bad,' but the publishers respond 'you can play that game in six months...maybe.' "
"We found that our piracy rates dropped off significantly," Holtman says, explaining that Valve makes sure their games are on the shelves in Moscow and St. Petersberg, in Russian, when they release it to North America and Western Europe.
There are, concludes Holtman, "tons of undiscovered customers," because publishers look very narrowly at the Western market.
This is basically something that i've said for a long time and something that people in the EU, Russia, Asia and Australia know to be true. In an age were you can get up to date information at the touch of a button it is truly frustrating to see that you won't get a product until 6 months to a year - or maybe never - after everyone else, or even just the primary market.
Publishers and developers are too focused on releasing as soon as possible to one audience and of course this will mean that piracy will increase. The PC has always been easiest to pirate on because it's an open platform but as consoles become more pervasive and more people are exposed to the discrepancies in releases and release dates in each territory console game piracy will become more of an issue - especially because each console is region-locked (i know PS3 isn't technically region locked but a few of its games are) so people can't or won't import a whole console which means that they then have to import every game purchase they want.
It's saddening to see that apparently so few people within the games industry realise that the industry hurts itself the most by being narrow-minded in these aspects and that they think piracy can be decreased and sales can be increased through hurting consumer rights and their relationship with the consumer.
Now another company - again, one whose stance and methods i don't necessarily always agree with - has a spokesperson actually speaking with sense! Jason Holtman spoke recently at the Game Business Law Summit. He mentioned some interesting things about online versus retail sales but i was more interested in this little nugget at the end of the reporting article at gamedaily:
The final sacred cow that Holtman took a stab at was the issue of piracy. "There's a big business feeling that there's piracy," he says. But the truth is: "Pirates are underserved customers."
"When you think about it that way, you think, 'Oh my gosh, I can do some interesting things and make some interesting money off of it.'"
"We take all of our games day-and-date to Russia," Holtman says of Valve. "The reason people pirated things in Russia," he explains, "is because Russians are reading magazines and watching television -- they say 'Man, I want to play that game so bad,' but the publishers respond 'you can play that game in six months...maybe.' "
"We found that our piracy rates dropped off significantly," Holtman says, explaining that Valve makes sure their games are on the shelves in Moscow and St. Petersberg, in Russian, when they release it to North America and Western Europe.
There are, concludes Holtman, "tons of undiscovered customers," because publishers look very narrowly at the Western market.
This is basically something that i've said for a long time and something that people in the EU, Russia, Asia and Australia know to be true. In an age were you can get up to date information at the touch of a button it is truly frustrating to see that you won't get a product until 6 months to a year - or maybe never - after everyone else, or even just the primary market.
Publishers and developers are too focused on releasing as soon as possible to one audience and of course this will mean that piracy will increase. The PC has always been easiest to pirate on because it's an open platform but as consoles become more pervasive and more people are exposed to the discrepancies in releases and release dates in each territory console game piracy will become more of an issue - especially because each console is region-locked (i know PS3 isn't technically region locked but a few of its games are) so people can't or won't import a whole console which means that they then have to import every game purchase they want.
It's saddening to see that apparently so few people within the games industry realise that the industry hurts itself the most by being narrow-minded in these aspects and that they think piracy can be decreased and sales can be increased through hurting consumer rights and their relationship with the consumer.
16 January 2009
Back soon...
Hey, all you zero readers!
I've been a bit out of things for a while now, partially due to trying to finish writing up and also because i've had other things on my mind such as having to pay a fairly large tax bill.... well, it turns out that i read the form incorrectly. I awoke to find a large amount of money in my bank account the other day which turned out to be from the tax office.... So i'm temporarily slightly better off than i was before and this means that i'll be able to buy and talk about new and not so new games in the coming months.
For the time being though i'll be pretty quiet until i get back home and have my usual set up surrounding me.
Chat soon.
I've been a bit out of things for a while now, partially due to trying to finish writing up and also because i've had other things on my mind such as having to pay a fairly large tax bill.... well, it turns out that i read the form incorrectly. I awoke to find a large amount of money in my bank account the other day which turned out to be from the tax office.... So i'm temporarily slightly better off than i was before and this means that i'll be able to buy and talk about new and not so new games in the coming months.
For the time being though i'll be pretty quiet until i get back home and have my usual set up surrounding me.
Chat soon.
17 December 2008
A favour...
I'm not sure how many people read this blog with any regularity but i have a favour to ask. I co-host a gaming podcast on a site called Eggmen.co.uk - however i get the feeling that no one listens to it. Normally i wouldn't be too bothered about lack of listenership because i'm doing it because i enjoy doing it and not because i'm looking for internet fame.
However, after doing three or four podcasts i think we need some constructive criticism and feedback on what we're doing right and wrong.... i'd like to be able to do the best we can do. If anyone could take the time to do something like this i'd really appreciate it.
However, after doing three or four podcasts i think we need some constructive criticism and feedback on what we're doing right and wrong.... i'd like to be able to do the best we can do. If anyone could take the time to do something like this i'd really appreciate it.
12 December 2008
Lara pollarva (or pallarva - can't find the exact spelling!)
I've just gotten around to playing Tomb Raider: Underworld and boy.... I'm a bit let down. Not by the graphics - they're fantastic and in comparison with what i thought was next-generation in Legend this game really is a completely next-gen graphical parade - no, i feel that I'm let down by the controls.
I remember not long ago i read an article where one of the developers was saying how much they had changed under the hood of their engine and i agree with all of their graphical changes.... they've also upped the animation and Lara's interaction with the environment - that is to say that the environment isn't interactive but that Lara interacts with it more realistically; she will push away branches that get in her face, trip when she falls a small distance or stumble over rocks etc. They've really tried to get a more realistic feel to Lara's adventures... unfortunately they've almost completely wrecked the one thing that is really important in a game - the controls.
At first, when i played the demo, i thought maybe it was me and i was mis-remembering. I asked in forums if other people noticed the same things as i did and they said, "no" but i held off the purchase anyway. Then i saw the game for 60% off and one impulse buy later i owned it. Now, however i realise that i wasn't wrong and that i may just be more observant than other people. To make things worse, I've just gotten through playing a game with one of the most well-made control systems I've ever encountered (Prince of Persia) though some people argue that it takes a lot of control away from the player.
Let me explain what's happening. Underworld has twitchy controls or more accurately, it has twitchy controls for the analogue sticks. When i first played the game i became dizzy and felt really sick.... it only occurred to me as i was getting to the point that i had to put the game down that i actually was suffering from motion sickness - something I've never been susceptible to in gaming or real life. I put the game down, went to bed and have played some more tonight. It wasn't as bad but i still ended up watching flash-frame close-ups of Lara's behind/back/legs and random walls/floors.... you name it, as i moved around the levels.
Lara now turns on the proverbial dime, her movement is so fast and quick that my mind has trouble comprehending her almost jerky super-movements. Even the simple action of running is exaggerated to some degree and in a really annoying nerdy moment i realised that her hyper-fast legs run in an inward V-shape as if she was a model posing rather than actually running properly.... (okay, it's mainly annoying to me because i did cross country running for 7 years of my school life along with many other sporting pursuits.... i know what people look like when they run).... all of this means that Lara ends up looking like her animations were modelled after a toddler (watch any movie of a toddler or young child running and their body parts seem to be moving faster than they should be for how fast they are actually moving).
Then there's the typical Tomb Raider environment vs. movement affair we've come to know and love. I can't count the number of obstacles that i've tried to climb onto but have instead gone for a jump off. Try again, this time standing next to the face of the object or ledge, without the direction button and the same thing happens. Run Lara in a circle and retry and this time she deigns to grip the top and allow you to indicate that you want her to pull herself up. I've "tripped" when trying to drop down or jump off ledges/objects and met invisible walls that were really obtrusive and countless little niggles that all add up. Most of these things wouldn't even be a problem if her movement and camera controls were okay.
But hey, it's a 3rd person adventure game - why am I so hard on it when there have been so many games that had these same issues? The answer is because they didn't exist in either Legend or Anniversary or at least they were less of an issue then.
In Crystal Dynamics' move to make the newest Lara truly next-gen they seem to have abandoned everything that worked in the much-loved games and improved on some of those areas but made others more finicky and harder to get to grips with. I actually went back to play Legend and see if i was suffering from some sort of short-term nostalgia (i only played it a couple of months ago) and was happy to learn that i was correct... it wasn't all just in my imagination - just amplified by the ease and frustration-free controls of Prince of Persia.
In Legend, the camera is further behind Lara so, while you may not be able to get as good a shot of her arse in the game, when she rolls underneath an overhanging obstacle you don't get a front and centre view of her left ass cheek. Nor do you end up viewing some sort of Blair Witch-esque cinematography when platforming in general. You also had a first person view by clicking one of the analogue sticks.... which is really useful because even in Legend there are plenty of ledges and overhangs that will not allow the camera to be positioned such that you can see what's across from your position - they removed this feature in Underworld and replaced it with an over-the-shoulder-with-a-slightly-more-zoomed-in-position camera..... which can't be utilised when on said ledges... thus making it that much more difficult (and frustrating) to see whether you're about to jump to safety or a plunging crevasse.
I mentioned before that Lara turns really quickly, as does the camera, and there is less of a 'dead' zone and gradient applied to both analogue sticks - though there may be some way to reduce the sensitivity on them that i haven't found. To top it all off.... in Legend and Anniversary Lara's running was almost perfect - straight legs and everything!
Overall, i've been a bit frustrated with the first 'level' of the game (i've played through two levels but they both took place in the Medditeranean Sea and am up to the end of the demo in Bohisvarta) though hopefully i'll grow acclimatised to the controls and camera..... but it really is a shame that they ditched the control mechanisms from the last two games. I made the comparison between The Angel of Darkness Lara and Underworld Lara in my last post.... I just hope that the similarities don't get much more deeper.
I played through more of the game this morning... turns out that first person view has been replaced by a camera thing that Lara lifts to her face. The problem is that in confined spaces it's still useless as it's slightly zoomed in and has a depth of field effect applied to it's view.
Still not liking the camera and movement controls though i think i've pinpointed the problem with what they did for the camera. It appears that the developers have used a universal 'turning rate' for the camera - what this means is that the further away from Lara you are, the better control you have over the camera while the closer you are the more quickly the camera will move making it harder to control. Let me show you schematically:
Say Lara is at the centre point of a circle and we take the above slice as an example of wanting to move the camera through its arc. Having the camera always move at the same speed is annoying because when moving from point 1 to 2 it takes longer while the closer you get to Lara it becomes much quicker, e.g. from A to B. This is an example of a universal movement/turning rate where the distance covered by an object in a given time is not related to its position in the system. It's mostly annoying in Underworld because, as i mentioned further up somewhere, the camera is much closer to Lara this time than in the previous two incarnations. What you really want is for the camera to be on some sort of inversely proportional movement rate from its distance to the character so that you have fine control when zoomed out and when zoomed in.
One other factor that makes the game more frustrating is the fact that when the camera moves so does the direction that you are moving Lara. Say you're holding forward, running down an L-shaped corridor.... you can quite smoothly run Lara around that corner by gently moving the camera - which is good! But if that camera gets stuck on a piece of the environment or if it suddenly decides to jump to a different position you are left smacking Lara's head into a wall or something because your movement reference just did a 130 degree spas-out for very little reason.
While i haven't quite figured out the problem with the analogue controls for movement of Lara herself i spent about 20 minutes doing a 5 minute segment due to the finicky controls this morning. I was trying to jump from a beam to a pillar which you stand on. Because as soon as i went to the position to jump the camera would get up close and personal with Lara, making it difficult to aim my jump. The first two times it was really the camera that made me miss the pillar.... the second three times i aligned myself perfectly but for some reason Lara decided to jump over or right next to the pillar but not on it. Finally i managed to do it but it's very frustrating.
I remember not long ago i read an article where one of the developers was saying how much they had changed under the hood of their engine and i agree with all of their graphical changes.... they've also upped the animation and Lara's interaction with the environment - that is to say that the environment isn't interactive but that Lara interacts with it more realistically; she will push away branches that get in her face, trip when she falls a small distance or stumble over rocks etc. They've really tried to get a more realistic feel to Lara's adventures... unfortunately they've almost completely wrecked the one thing that is really important in a game - the controls.
At first, when i played the demo, i thought maybe it was me and i was mis-remembering. I asked in forums if other people noticed the same things as i did and they said, "no" but i held off the purchase anyway. Then i saw the game for 60% off and one impulse buy later i owned it. Now, however i realise that i wasn't wrong and that i may just be more observant than other people. To make things worse, I've just gotten through playing a game with one of the most well-made control systems I've ever encountered (Prince of Persia) though some people argue that it takes a lot of control away from the player.
Let me explain what's happening. Underworld has twitchy controls or more accurately, it has twitchy controls for the analogue sticks. When i first played the game i became dizzy and felt really sick.... it only occurred to me as i was getting to the point that i had to put the game down that i actually was suffering from motion sickness - something I've never been susceptible to in gaming or real life. I put the game down, went to bed and have played some more tonight. It wasn't as bad but i still ended up watching flash-frame close-ups of Lara's behind/back/legs and random walls/floors.... you name it, as i moved around the levels.
Lara now turns on the proverbial dime, her movement is so fast and quick that my mind has trouble comprehending her almost jerky super-movements. Even the simple action of running is exaggerated to some degree and in a really annoying nerdy moment i realised that her hyper-fast legs run in an inward V-shape as if she was a model posing rather than actually running properly.... (okay, it's mainly annoying to me because i did cross country running for 7 years of my school life along with many other sporting pursuits.... i know what people look like when they run).... all of this means that Lara ends up looking like her animations were modelled after a toddler (watch any movie of a toddler or young child running and their body parts seem to be moving faster than they should be for how fast they are actually moving).
Then there's the typical Tomb Raider environment vs. movement affair we've come to know and love. I can't count the number of obstacles that i've tried to climb onto but have instead gone for a jump off. Try again, this time standing next to the face of the object or ledge, without the direction button and the same thing happens. Run Lara in a circle and retry and this time she deigns to grip the top and allow you to indicate that you want her to pull herself up. I've "tripped" when trying to drop down or jump off ledges/objects and met invisible walls that were really obtrusive and countless little niggles that all add up. Most of these things wouldn't even be a problem if her movement and camera controls were okay.
But hey, it's a 3rd person adventure game - why am I so hard on it when there have been so many games that had these same issues? The answer is because they didn't exist in either Legend or Anniversary or at least they were less of an issue then.
In Crystal Dynamics' move to make the newest Lara truly next-gen they seem to have abandoned everything that worked in the much-loved games and improved on some of those areas but made others more finicky and harder to get to grips with. I actually went back to play Legend and see if i was suffering from some sort of short-term nostalgia (i only played it a couple of months ago) and was happy to learn that i was correct... it wasn't all just in my imagination - just amplified by the ease and frustration-free controls of Prince of Persia.
In Legend, the camera is further behind Lara so, while you may not be able to get as good a shot of her arse in the game, when she rolls underneath an overhanging obstacle you don't get a front and centre view of her left ass cheek. Nor do you end up viewing some sort of Blair Witch-esque cinematography when platforming in general. You also had a first person view by clicking one of the analogue sticks.... which is really useful because even in Legend there are plenty of ledges and overhangs that will not allow the camera to be positioned such that you can see what's across from your position - they removed this feature in Underworld and replaced it with an over-the-shoulder-with-a-slightly-more-zoomed-in-position camera..... which can't be utilised when on said ledges... thus making it that much more difficult (and frustrating) to see whether you're about to jump to safety or a plunging crevasse.
I mentioned before that Lara turns really quickly, as does the camera, and there is less of a 'dead' zone and gradient applied to both analogue sticks - though there may be some way to reduce the sensitivity on them that i haven't found. To top it all off.... in Legend and Anniversary Lara's running was almost perfect - straight legs and everything!
Overall, i've been a bit frustrated with the first 'level' of the game (i've played through two levels but they both took place in the Medditeranean Sea and am up to the end of the demo in Bohisvarta) though hopefully i'll grow acclimatised to the controls and camera..... but it really is a shame that they ditched the control mechanisms from the last two games. I made the comparison between The Angel of Darkness Lara and Underworld Lara in my last post.... I just hope that the similarities don't get much more deeper.
[UPDATE]
I played through more of the game this morning... turns out that first person view has been replaced by a camera thing that Lara lifts to her face. The problem is that in confined spaces it's still useless as it's slightly zoomed in and has a depth of field effect applied to it's view.
Still not liking the camera and movement controls though i think i've pinpointed the problem with what they did for the camera. It appears that the developers have used a universal 'turning rate' for the camera - what this means is that the further away from Lara you are, the better control you have over the camera while the closer you are the more quickly the camera will move making it harder to control. Let me show you schematically:
Say Lara is at the centre point of a circle and we take the above slice as an example of wanting to move the camera through its arc. Having the camera always move at the same speed is annoying because when moving from point 1 to 2 it takes longer while the closer you get to Lara it becomes much quicker, e.g. from A to B. This is an example of a universal movement/turning rate where the distance covered by an object in a given time is not related to its position in the system. It's mostly annoying in Underworld because, as i mentioned further up somewhere, the camera is much closer to Lara this time than in the previous two incarnations. What you really want is for the camera to be on some sort of inversely proportional movement rate from its distance to the character so that you have fine control when zoomed out and when zoomed in.
One other factor that makes the game more frustrating is the fact that when the camera moves so does the direction that you are moving Lara. Say you're holding forward, running down an L-shaped corridor.... you can quite smoothly run Lara around that corner by gently moving the camera - which is good! But if that camera gets stuck on a piece of the environment or if it suddenly decides to jump to a different position you are left smacking Lara's head into a wall or something because your movement reference just did a 130 degree spas-out for very little reason.
While i haven't quite figured out the problem with the analogue controls for movement of Lara herself i spent about 20 minutes doing a 5 minute segment due to the finicky controls this morning. I was trying to jump from a beam to a pillar which you stand on. Because as soon as i went to the position to jump the camera would get up close and personal with Lara, making it difficult to aim my jump. The first two times it was really the camera that made me miss the pillar.... the second three times i aligned myself perfectly but for some reason Lara decided to jump over or right next to the pillar but not on it. Finally i managed to do it but it's very frustrating.
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