Tag: asynchronous multiplayer

#oneaday, Day 306: Need for Speed

My brother was good enough to send me a copy of the new Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. It arrived this morning and I’ve spent a fair amount of time putting it through its paces today. I shall now share my thoughts for the benefit of those of you considering it.

In very simple terms, it can be described as “Burnout with real cars”. This is not in the slightest bit surprising, given developer Criterion’s history. But this is through-and-through a Burnout game, right down to the ways you earn boost and the cinematic “crash camera”. And not a Burnout Paradise interpretation of Burnout, either. Because although I loved that game, as did some of my friends, there are plenty of people out there who didn’t like it much, either, for various reasons.

Hot Pursuit returns to the roots of both the Need for Speed and the Burnout series, in that it is about driving impossibly-expensive and shiny cars through a variety of circuits in an effort to Be The Fastest Mo-Fo In The World. There’s no tacked-on story (besides the fact that the cops have outfitted themselves with some seriously heavy-duty automotive hardware) and no unnecessary fluff—it’s just a map screen, a series of events and a bunch of cars to unlock gradually according to your progress. Those who did enjoy the free-roaming nature of past Need for Speed games as well as Burnout Paradise are free to drive around the sprawling game world as they please to find events, but those who prefer kicking it old-school can just select events from a map. Best of both worlds. You have to wonder why this hasn’t been thought of previously.

The shining light in Hot Pursuit‘s arsenal of, err, light-emitting weapons (abandon metaphor!) is the Autolog system. Essentially an in-game social network, it sets out to do what Blur did, but better, and succeeds admirably. While racing any event, you have not only the single-player targets to beat, but also an “Autolog Recommends” target to beat, too. This way, when you do beat all the single-player events (and you will, eventually, because they’re not that difficult, at least to begin with) you have plenty of incentive to go back and beat your friends. This incentive is made even better by the fact that you have a Facebook-style “wall” on which you can brag about your Achievements and even write your own custom messages and comments. There’s a fairly heavy-duty naughty word filter in place, though, which inexplicably censored the post “This game is awesome. Time to take a break, now, though.” in its entirety. I haven’t seen bizarre censorship of this nature since Phantasy Star Online censored the words “shoes” and “Saturday” for having rude words in the middle of them.

Overzealous censorship aside, though, the Autolog feature is an excellent one. Every time you log in, assuming you have friends playing the game, you’ll have a new set of challenges to beat. Autolog even recommends friends of friends that are playing the game whom you may want to add to your Xbox friends lists. This is a smart idea—again, why hasn’t anyone thought to do this before?

Possibly my favourite thing, though, is the return of one of the best things about Need for Speed: Most Wanted. The cinematic “chase music” when you’re being chased by cops. While the licensed soundtrack that plays in cop-free events is solid enough, though fairly forgettable, the orchestral, cinematic music that plays in Hot Pursuit events gets the pulse pounding and adds a sense of urgency to these races. I’m glad to see the return of it.

I haven’t tried playing as a cop yet, though I’m anticipating an experience akin to a modern-day remake of Chase HQ. This is very much a Good Thing. Further reports as events warrant.

In summary, then: You like arcade racing? You gonna love this.

#oneaday, Day 103: Synchronise… Watches!

Anyone who’s got friends in other countries, something which has become more and more likely with the rise of online social networking, will know how difficult it is to do things together sometimes. Different time zones, the fact that you’re not “just around the corner” from one another – all manner of factors conspire to ensure that arranging a friendly game of Modern Warfare or Fat Princess, let alone anything more adventurous, is tricky business.

So what’s the solution? Well, how about if you don’t actually have to be online at the same time as each other to play together? It’s obviously not quite the same as actually being able to talk smack live to each other, but it’s a start. And it’s a gaming trend which is growing.

Many iPhone and iPad owners have been enjoying Words with Friends, a Scrabble clone with a different board layout to avoid difficult copyright negotiations. Words with Friends gets this idea of asynchronous multiplayer just right. Play a move and a pop-up push notification is sent to your opponent that it’s their turn. They can play their turn whenever is convenient to them. Then the notification is sent back to you. There’s also a chat window in game, where messages can be left for the other player. If you want to both stay logged in and play in real-time, there’s nothing stopping you doing that. But if, like most people, time is of the essence and you don’t have a spare hour for a friendly game, you can spread your game over the course of several days, weeks, months as necessary.

Obviously this works great for turn-based games, but what about genres which are traditionally real-time? Take racing games, for example.

Well, here’s a clever solution. The rather literally-titled Async Racing allows players to compete against each other without being logged in at the same time. The way it does this is by recording players’ laps around the game’s tracks and then using these recorded laps as opponents when someone decides to enter a race. Mario Kart Wii did something similar some time back with its Mario Kart Channel functionality, and it proved rather successful for a while, at least among my friends and I.

Then there’s Geometry Wars 2, perhaps the best – and simplest – example of asynchronous multiplayer fun. By posting one of your friends’ scores in the upper-right corner of your screen at all times during gameplay, you’re always competing against someone else. Assuming you actually have some friends, of course.

While asynchronous multiplayer is never going to completely take the place of simultaneous play complete with all the trash-talking that entails, it’s certainly an attractive alternative for those who are either short on time or friends in the same time zone. It’ll be interesting to see how – or indeed if – it will translate to other genres.

One possibility is for it to use the behavioural analysis that Halo: Reach is supposedly going to pioneer for its matchmaking. Imagine being able to party up with an AI team in something like World of Warcraft made up of your friends’ personalities, or have a game of Call of Duty against bots based on behavioural analysis of your buddies. Sure, it’s not a patch on actually being there with your friends, but we’ve established that isn’t always an option for some people.

Games are more fun with friends, whether they can be there with you or not. New opportunities to “play” with people you wouldn’t normally get to should be embraced. Asynchronous play is going to be a big part of the future of gaming, and it’ll be interesting to see who gets it right first.