2301: Overwatch

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I decided to give the game everyone seems to be talking about — Blizzard’s new first-person shooter Overwatch — a bit of a go this weekend. They were running an open beta, after all, so there was no risk whatsoever involved in downloading it and giving it a shot.

And what do you know — it’s actually pretty good. I’m not sure if I’m sold enough on it to want to pick up a copy when it comes out later in the month, but I certainly enjoyed the time I spent with it over the last couple of days.

For those who have perhaps heard of Overwatch but not found out any more information about it, it is, in many ways, similar to Valve’s classic Team Fortress 2 in that two teams made up of various different characters with different capabilities face off against one another in order to complete an objective of some description. In the game as it stands at the moment, the objectives on offer include a “king of the hill” type affair, where over the best of three rounds, each team has to control a particular area on the map for a certain amount of time; an “attack and defend” situation, where one team has to defend a point against assault from the other team; an “assault” variant, where the attacking team has to escort a slow-moving “payload” vehicle from one end of the map to the other while the other team stops them; and a mode that mixes the “attack and defend” and “assault” objectives together.

Like Team Fortress 2, the different characters have different roles on the team. Offensive characters are nimble but fragile, with their weapons and abilities concentrating on inflicting damage efficiently. Defensive characters have the ability to do things like lay down turrets or, in the case of one particular character, turn themselves into a turret. Tank characters have a huge pool of health points so are designed to act as a distraction for the other team. And support characters generally have some sort of useful ability to help the team out — usually some form of healing, buffing or both.

Where Team Fortress 2 only had one character of each archetype, though, Overwatch has several, each of whom has a unique weapon and loadout of special abilities. Weapons have clips of ammo and have to be reloaded when empty, but you have infinite clips, so there’s no hunting around for ammo or any punishment for spray-and-pray gunplay. You can restore your health by returning to your home base, similar to how Blizzard’s MOBA Heroes of the Storm works. And if you find a hero isn’t working out for you, you can switch either when you die or when you’re in your base.

Overwatch strikes an excellent balance between simplicity and tactical depth. The characters are all easy to learn in terms of mechanics, but applying their weapons and skills to situations throughout a match is the real challenge. That and not blowing yourself up in some instances; my favourite character so far, D.Va, has the ability to self-destruct her mech suit, killing anyone nearby, which is an absolutely devastating skill, but also very likely to take you with it if you don’t immediately run away.

There’s also a fun metagame that doesn’t fall into the Call of Duty trap of excessive challenges and skill levels: you simply have an experience level, which gives you a “loot box” every time you level up, and the items in the loot box are randomly selected skins, animations, spray paint logos and voice clips for the various characters in the game. None of these have any effect on the characters’ abilities — they’re just there as cool collectibles as an incentive for players to keep playing. The choice to make Overwatch a full-price game rather than a free-to-play affair also seems quite sensible, too; while some may balk at paying full whack for a multiplayer-only game, there’s a substantial amount of content in here, both heroes and maps, and Blizzard claim that they’re going to support the game post-launch with new, free add-on content rather than paid DLC. A round of applause for them, then; doubly so since their parent company is Activision, who loves milking the annual Call of Duty installments dry.

The other nice side-effect of it being a full-price game is that everyone has access to everything from day one. Everyone can pick a favourite character and get to grips with them without having to wait for them to come around in a free-to-play rotation; everyone is, in other words, on a level playing field to begin with, with no advantage given to someone who has paid up for characters, boosters or whatever.

As I say, I’m not yet sure if I’m convinced enough by the beta to hand over 50 quid for the full game when it releases later in the month, but I will say it’s the most fun I’ve had in a first-person shooter for a very long time indeed, and I generally don’t go in for competitive first-person shooters. The beta seems to have had some positive attention, too, so hopefully it will enjoy a solid community for some time — long enough for it to be worthwhile for Blizzard to keep adding new content.

If you want to give it a go for yourself, I believe you have until Monday morning to try it out. Better hurry!

2190: Rubble Without a Cause

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I played through the second episode of the new King’s Quest game today. It’s a lot shorter than the first one, so I was able to get through it in a single sitting. Despite being fairly short, though, it’s an interesting contrast from the previous episode; rather than being a relatively large (for an adventure game) open world with a non-linear series of puzzles for you to tackle at your leisure, Rubble Without a Cause, as the second episode is known, takes place in a much more confined environment, and largely focuses around one big puzzle: how to free everyone from captivity at the hands of the goblins.

Yes, instead of throwing us back into Daventry, Rubble Without a Cause puts us underground in a goblin prison complex. Graham is dismayed to discover that most of the major characters from the town of Daventry appear to have also been abducted, along with the eccentric merchant’s “unicorn” Mr. Fancycakes. Thus begins a quest to find a way out of this predicament.

There’s a twist, though: unlike most adventure games, you don’t have all the time in the world with which to achieve your goals. Unfolding over the course of several days, the adventure sees the health of all of the prison’s occupants — with the exception of Graham — decline as the days pass. Thus you’re presented with some difficult, mutually exclusive choices throughout as you determine who it is best to give medicine and food to as they require it. And once you start getting closer to escaping, you need to determine which potential companion is going to provide you with the best chance of succeeding, and ensure that they are in good health for when you make your attempt.

The small scale of the episode initially felt a little disappointing, but on reflection after finishing it, I very much liked the concept of it being based around one central problem for you to solve, and felt this was a good use of the episodic format to provide a short-form but complete-feeling experience. You can solve it in a number of different ways, too — it is, I believe, even possible to complete the episode without anyone running out of health and being carried away by the goblins, but I most certainly did not succeed in that particular endeavour today.

In many ways, the King’s Quest episodes we’ve seen so far are a great example of “gaming short stories” — quite literally, since they are presented as stories narrated by the ageing King Graham (whom I’ll be very surprised to see survive the fifth episode) to his grandchildren. This presentation of the narrative as a participant narrator looking back on his past actions is an interesting twist on how old Sierra games such as the original King’s Quests used to work, with a strong contrast between the omniscient, non-participant narrator and the in-character dialogue between characters. King’s Quest, as a series, maintained this style of presentation until its seventh installment, and it’s good to see new developers The Odd Gentlemen returning very much to the “feel” of the classic Sierra adventures.

So was Rubble Without a Cause worth playing, given its short length? Well, if it was a standalone game by itself, I’d perhaps feel a little short-changed at its small scale and short length. In the context of the whole series, though, it makes a good, nicely contrasting follow-up to the excellent first episode, and has me once again hungering to know what happens next!

2019: Hero of Daventry: Some King’s Quest First Impressions

Following on from my post the other day, I downloaded the first episode of King’s Quest on PlayStation 4 today, and gave it a bit of a go earlier. Andie seemed to be enjoying it, so I paused for a bit while she went and had a nap, then we went and had dinner. Will probably play some more tomorrow.

First impressions are very good indeed, though. The game has a gorgeous art style, wonderful animation and a spectacular voice cast, including Christopher Lloyd, Josh Keaton and Maggie Elizabeth Jones.

Most notably, though, the game is very much aware of its heritage. I was concerned that a new developer taking on such a legendary series would lose some of the magic of the original — or worse, try and retrofit their interpretation over the top of the existing format, or “reboot” it — but my mind has been very much set at rest so far, with a story and characterisation that feels very true to King’s Quest’s lightly comedic (but, at times, surprisingly dark) fairy-tale nature.

Of particular note in the animation regard is how much care and attention has been lavished on protagonist Graham. Although he’s now a beautifully animated 3D model with a dramatically billowing cape as opposed to a tiny pixel dude with yellow skin, there’s a bunch of wonderful little touches in the new game as callbacks to the original King’s Quest games. Make Graham walk instead of run, for example, and his slightly cocky strut looks just like the crude walking animation of the original game’s sprite. And in one sequence, you jump into a river; the animation as Graham flails about in the water is pretty much exactly the same as his old sprite did any time you wandered into a body of water and forgot to type “swim”.

And, pleasingly, the new game incorporates the original series’ fondness for killing you off in a variety of horrible ways — though, given the game’s narrative framework of an elderly Graham narrating his past adventures to his granddaughter, any unfortunate demises are represented as Graham either making a mistake in his memories or cracking a joke.

The use of old Graham as narrator allows the game to do something that a lot of modern adventure games these days don’t do: use a narrator. This is one thing that made Sierra adventures unique and distinct from their biggest rivals LucasArts — in every one of their games, the narrator was as much of a character as the characters who had actual dialogue. In most cases, the narrator wasn’t a participant in the narrative, instead taking an omniscient viewpoint of what was going on, but there was a very clear sense of authorial voice that was often distinct between Sierra’s different series. The narrators of King’s Quest used flowery language and occasional cringeworthy puns — a habit Graham has picked up in the new game — while Space Quest and Leisure Suit Larry used lowbrow humour to good effect. Gabriel Knight, meanwhile, took the bold step of having a narrator with a very strong Creole accent explain what was going on — stylistically appropriate, though initially jarring if you were used to the somewhat cleaner, more easily understandable tones of the American narrators of Sierra’s other games. (Once you became accustomed to her drawl, however, she delivered some delightfully sarcastic zingers at Gabriel’s expense throughout the game.)

Pleasingly, old Graham’s narration pays attention to what you are doing and has a variety of responses for when you try to do the same thing over and over again. There’s no Discworld-style “That doesn’t work!” here; instead, keep trying to do something that’s clearly wrong and old Graham will come up with more and more fanciful reasons about his futile attempts, until eventually his granddaughter stops him in most cases. There’s also a delightful running joke about That One Adventure Game Item You Use For Everything when you discover a hatchet which comes in useful for a while. After its final task, however, Graham leaves it behind, with old Graham putting special emphasis on the fact that he would “not need it ever again”. (Prior to this, of course, you were free to attempt to use it on anything and everything, with suitable comments from both Graham and Gwendolyn along the way.)

So far, then, I’m delighted by how King’s Quest has turned out. It’s smart, funny, beautiful and captures the essence of the old games while bringing them right up to date. I’m looking forward to see how the remainder of this first episode continues — and how the series as a whole develops over time.

#oneaday Day 548: Capcommotion

I’m a bit surprised by the way Capcom have been acting recently. I always used to figure them for a company that had their collective heads screwed on pretty well, and with their Capcom Unity (geddit?) site showing a much greater effort than many publishers to engage with fans, it looked like they were getting 21st century marketing right.

Then came the Mega Man Legends 3 project, where the community would be able to play an active role in the making of the game. The Capcom Dev Room page allowed users to submit ideas — many of which would end up in the final game — as well as see how the development of a game progressed from start to finish, complete with all the trials and tribulations it faced along the way.

The other day, the project got cancelled on the grounds that its transparency was proving to be “quite concerning” for the rest of the company. This, to me, is somewhat worrying, and suggests that Capcom has something to hide. It could be something as simple as the fact that they actually haven’t done any real work on Mega Man Legends 3 since Keiji Inafune left last year, or it could be something altogether more sinister along the lines of the Team Bondi fiasco.

This isn’t the only mis-step Capcom have made recently, either. The Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D save game issue stank from start to finish. To say that it’s “not possible” to erase a save file on a 3DS game card is absolute nonsense — erasing a file involves writing to the card, and in order for the save to be on there in the first place the card must be written to. So there is absolutely no way that it would not be possible to reset the save data, yet Capcom persisted in perpetuating a lie to the community.

And today we learn that there’s an “Ultimate” edition of Marvel vs. Capcom 3 on the way, featuring 12 new characters, 8 new stages and a spectator mode. But existing DLC characters aren’t included in the package, naturally. And the “Ultimate” edition is a standalone retail product for $40, not a DLC expansion, which it really should be. I should be excited by the fact that Capcom have finally added Phoenix Wright to the game after a considerable amount of fan requesting, but instead I’m left with a bitter taste in my mouth due to them re-releasing a slightly-enhanced version of a game which only came out in February.

Sadly, this practice is becoming more and more common with this generation of consoles. And while I perhaps wouldn’t go quite as far as my friend Mr Peter Skerritt in saying that this generation “sucks” — there’s a lot to like, after all — I do believe that the obnoxious business practices that more and more publishers are starting to adopt are going to come back and bite both game companies and consumers in the ass at some point in the very near future.

I mentioned something along these lines on Twitter the other day in reference to Rockstar’s comments that L.A. Noire still isn’t finished despite having released its “final” piece of DLC. The response I got was surprising; the practice was defended on the grounds of it making good business sense. If we’re at this stage already where blatant money-grabbing and the cutting of content from games in order to hold it back for subsequent DLC or new retail editions is defended by the community because it makes good business sense, it’s a sad situation indeed. We gamers are supposed to be giving money to the software companies we want to support because we like their products, not bending over and asking in what ways they can violate us next. I’m quite happy to buy a game and never resort to piracy, but with more and more early adopters being punished by having to pay full whack for a product and then being stung for DLC down the line, it’s understandable if people feel disillusioned by the whole thing.

That said, not all hope is lost — since picking up a gaming PC I’ve been using the consoles far less. And while there is DLC for PC titles, many PC gamers are a lot less patient with this sort of bullshit — largely because there’s an enormous and active modding community out there more than willing to provide content of a higher quality than Activision’s $15 map packs for free. And there aren’t many PC games I’ve played recently where there’s a big hole for some DLC — I intend on going back through Mass Effect 2 at some point, so I may feel differently after that, though.

The most frustrating thing I find is that people don’t seem to realise or care that they are being taken advantage of. We can complain all we like about Capcom releasing the same game twice in the space of nine months, but we all know that there are enough people out there who will happily part with their cash and give Capcom the sales figures they need to justify rolling out this obnoxious business practice again and again. We can bitch all we like about paying $15 for Call of Duty map packs, but people pay it, again showing Activision that it’s Okay to Do This. And we can point our fingers and say L.A. Noire’s add-on cases should have been in the game in the first place, but I bet most players picked them all up just out of curiosity if anything, giving Rockstar the green light to do more in the future.

It’s refreshing to see that not all of the industry is operating in this way, though. Indie developers are flourishing — and the community is taking to them. Indie RPGs Breath of Death VII and Cthulhu Saves the World along with awesome roguelike Dungeons of Dredmor topped the Steam sales charts on their day of release, and in less than a week on sale BoD/CStW has equalled its sales from a year and a half on Xbox Live Indie Games. Minecraft continues to go from strength to strength. And Frozen Synapse proves more popular than its developers could have ever dreamed.

Right now, I’m thankful that the indies exist, because with every day that passes, each new “teaser reveal”, each new embargo, I’m losing more and more respect for the big publishers.

#oneaday, Day 228: Call of Cthuty: Black Arts

London, UK – 2nd September, 2010 – DECLASSIFIED: Prepare for the follow-up to the biggest entertainment launch in history: on 9th November, Call of Cthuty®: Black Arts™ will introduce fans to the occult world of HP Lovecraft. Activision Publishing, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATVI) and award-winning developer Starfuckers, Inc. will take players behind the lines of madness in an entirely new and ill-advised chapter in the groundbreaking and record-setting, No. 1 first-person action series of all time.

“My favourite part is the one where Dagon kidnaps the president,” said Starfuckers, Inc. Vice-President of Scenarios and Scripting Ashton Raze. “OF MEXICO.”

Players will face off against their darkest fears in an epic struggle for survival against gradually-dwindling sanity. And when the time comes, the Dark One shall arise, and the world shall be devoured!

“The way I see it,” said Bobby Kotick, Activision CEO, “is that we already sold our souls some time ago. So why not celebrate the Dark One in the only way we know how: by offering players the opportunity to participate in a futile and expensive struggle against an inevitable decline into insanity from a first person perspective with lots of big guns and no women whatsoever?” Kotick later explained that girls have “cooties” and he wanted nothing to do with them.

Activision also announced a multi-year agreement that will bring Call of Cthuty® add ons and map packs first to the Xbox LIVE online entertainment network.

“The Dark One needs His tribute, which is why we’re thrilled to announce this Xbox LIVE agreement,” said Philip Earl, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Activision’s Dark Arts and Call of Cthuty® Business Unit. “This agreement reflects our shared and continued focus on funding the Dark One’s attempts to break into this world via microtransaction, and our willingness to drive our playerbase insane by releasing content at a price significantly higher than any other publisher out there.”

Call of Cthuty®‘s revolutionary multiplayer mode features a robust progression system based on the player’s insanity level. Reaching new heights of madness unlocks “Jerks”, involuntary bodily spasms which allows the player to personalise their individual avatar in a unique manner until they are a shambling, stumbling mess only fit to turn their own gun on themselves.

“With 25 million members, Xbox LIVE is a prime feeding ground for the Dark One,” said Marc Whitten, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Xbox LIVE. “With the release of Call of Cthuty®: Black Arts™, it presents a whole new opportunity for Him to feast upon the player base. And come on, who’s going to miss those racist fucktards anyway?”

About Activision Publishing, Inc.

Headquartered in Santa Monica, California, Activision Publishing, Inc. is a leading worldwide developer, publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment products, and also a glad receiver of lots of money from people who are happy to pay over the odds. Activision maintains operations in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Ninth Circle of Hell, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Purgatory, Australia, South Korea, China and the region of Taiwan.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements: Information in this press release that involves Activision Publishing’s expectations, plans, intentions or strategies regarding the future are forward-looking statements that are not facts and involve a number of risks and uncertainties, such as the Dark One’s devouring of the world, which may put the kibosh on the whole Xbox LIVE exclusivity deal as without a world, there will be no Xbox LIVE on which Activision can sell map packs for $15 a pop. Activision Publishing generally uses words such as “outlook”, “will”, “could”, “would”, “might”, “remains”, “to be”, “plans”, “believes”, “may”, “expects”, “intends”, “anticipates”, “estimate”, “future”, “plan”, “positions”, “potential”, “project”, “remain”, “scheduled”, “set to”, “subject to”, “upcoming”, “blood sacrifice” and similar expressions to identify forward-looking OH GOD HE’S COMING SET LOOSE THE PUPPIES OF WAR BLOOD BLOOD SO MUCH BLOOD FORGIVE ME FORGIVE ME FORGIVE ME FORG—

#oneaday, Day 181: Vampire: Bloodlines

Body clock buggered up today. After getting to bed late last night, I slept solidly until about lunchtime. Nice, but ultimately unproductive, as it means here I am at 3AM in the morning.

Actually, there’s another reason I stayed up so late, and that is Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines.

This is a game I’ve been meaning to play for absolutely ages. I’m a big fan of the White Wolf interpretation of vampirism and, to be honest, vampires in general. Just not the Twilight variety. Granted, I have never read or seen Twilight beyond reading a two-chapter preview on iBooks on my phone, but already both Bella and Edward seemed to be some of the most unsympathetic arseholes I’ve ever had the misfortune to come across in a book.

But that’s beside the point.

White Wolf’s interpretation of vampirism focuses much more on clan-based political intrigue, with each clan having its own unique outlook on life, special abilities and, in some cases, quirks. Part of the reason for this is for gameplay balancing in the pen-and-paper RPG. Instead of picking a character class, you pick a clan, and that determines your specialisms. But the pen-and-paper Vampire RPG is heavily focused on the RP bit as opposed to the G bit, meaning that these character backgrounds are hugely important from the perspective of actually playing your character in a realistic manner.

Bloodlines was the second Vampire game to hit the PC. The first, Redemption, was a mixed bag. It was notable for having a pretty good script, solid voice acting and (at the time) quite nice graphics. But the Diablo-style clicky-clicky combat really didn’t work from the close-up over-the-shoulder camera view adopted. The AI of party members was beyond “dumbass”. And there were lots of monumentally irritating bits where you had to sneak a four-person party through areas of sunlight. I never finished it as it got a bit frustrating, though I would like to return to it one day.

Bloodlines took a different approach. Based on an early version of the Source engine, it plays more like Deus Ex than anything else. You walk around LA from a first- or third-person perspective, meet people, talk to them, possibly suck their blood, fight them, complete quests in a variety of different ways and get involved in all the point-toothed intrigue you could shake a stake at.

The game was renowned for being hugely buggy on its original release. I haven’t noticed any showstopping bugs since I’ve been playing this evening—one or two minor graphical glitches, sure, but that’s more the old Source engine than the game itself I think. What I have noticed, though, is that it’s an utterly fantastic game. While it appears that the overarching narrative takes a while to get going—I played several hours tonight and couldn’t tell you what the “main” plot thread was—one of the best things the game does, much like Deus Ex, is immerse you in the game world. There are people in this world going about their business, and they are genuine characters whom you get to know and recognise.

One of the most compelling, immersive things about playing as a White Wolf vampire is the idea of the “Masquerade”, where vampires must hide their true nature from humans. In game terms, this means that you mustn’t let people see you feeding, using any obviously supernatural abilities or doing anything “vampirey”. There are get-out clauses to this, though; seduce a human using your vampiric seduction skills and they won’t mind you biting them, for example. But if anyone sees you doing that, you’re in trouble.

So far I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve played. The balance between the RPG stat-building and the action-based combat is good, and some of the dialogue is genuinely well-written. The World of Darkness is introduced gradually in such a way that isn’t daunting to new players but isn’t patronising to those who know the lore.

In short, then, I can highly recommend the game from what I’ve seen so far. It’s currently available on Steam and via Direct2Drive. Good luck finding a physical copy if that’s your thing.