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23 Apr 04
Happy Friday to everyone. It's highlight time again. In case anyone was worried, I'm still looking forward to Full Spectrum Warrior on the Xbox. I forgot to mention it on Wednesday. I changed my desktop to a FSW background as penance. I won't be forgetting it again any time soon. Some people are even saying it will be the main challenger to Halo 2 for the Xbox game of the year. I'm too jaded to compare potential features of unreleased games.
I'm not too jaded to get excited about unannounced games. There's a rumor running around (ok, actually there was a report from cube.ign.com), that Nintendo will be releasing a Gamecube version of Advance Wars. In honor of this we'll be looking at the highlights of the Advance War series (official site). For those unaware of the games, Advance Wars was basically the first strategy title on the Gameboy Advance. It's a turn based war game using fairly modern units based in an anime world.
On to highlights, the first thing advance wars does well is that it's very user friendly. It gives you an on screen guide and takes you through a comprehensive tutorial session. Information is readily available when you need it. Unit information cycles at the touch of a button. Projected outcomes of a fight are given before you make your move and lock it in. It's not that these things haven't been done before. It's just that Advance Wars makes it quick and easy to get in and play. You're not thinking about the interface or how to get information. You can concentrate on the challenge in front of you.
Next, Advance Wars lets you play the way you want. There's a main campaign with a story. There are multiple levels of difficulty for you to try. Then there's a whole skirmish mode. You can buy maps with tokens you've earned. You can even build your own maps. When you're ready to battle, you can choose the general that best fits the way you want to fight the map. Each general has certain strengths and weaknesses. You can choose a general that emphasizes air power or tanks or infantry. Then each general has a special power they can use during the battle. Knowing how to set your units up to take advantage of your general's power is another layer of strategy.
Finally, the greatest strength of advance wars is its simplicity. The economy is streamlined. Unit production is simple and strait forward. Unit movement and abilities are what you'd expect them to be. There is no uber unit or power that will always dominate. Units have expected counters. Enemy using a lot of bombers or choppers? Counter with antiaircraft guns and interceptors. Need more money? Capture more cities. All this lets you focus on building an effective army and using it to the greatest impact. In short, it's a pure strategy game. You can even play a link game against a friend and write it up to submit here. What more could you want from a game.
Jason
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22 Apr 04
Does adding cooperative play make any FPS a tactical shooter? There are some coop rumblings about Doom 3. Clearly Doom 3 is not going to be designed as a tactical game. You're a lone marine fighting the entire hordes of hell. Sure there are a lot of weapons, but switching between the shotgun and the rocket launcher is not a profound tactical decision.
The problem is that as soon as you have a living breathing person to work with you become a team. That opens up a wealth of tactical possibilities. How you move, where you go, coordinating weapon types all take on tactical implications. Countries don't respect the American military just because of technology. It's the implementation of training, strategy and tactics that make the difference. It's long been argued that the AK-47 is a better combat weapon than the M-16, but would you rather be protected by some Iraqi thugs with AK's or Army Rangers with M-16's?
I used to play a lot of paintball in college. We were pretty good, but most of the people we played with had no idea how to work together. Yet game after game the team that worked together the best tended to win. We once played against a "professional" team. Pro paintball, at least at the time, didn't bring in the big bucks so it was still a hobby to most of them. That team demolished us. I don't think they lost more than one player in two games. Each time they encountered someone, it was suppress, flank and destroy. They went through a lot more paint than we did, but they were always using it effectively.
So where am I going with this? Basically I think you need three things to make a shooter into a tactical game. First the game must allow cooperation. It's amazing how many games still don't do this. Second, you need to be able to easily communicate with teammates. Voice is probably best whether voice over IP or just being in the same room on a lan. Finally, you need people willing to work together. This tends to be the biggest problem online. Too many people just go lone wolf not realizing that they're hurting their team. Since developers only have to provide the first one (maybe help with VOIP), yeah, I guess adding cooperative play can make a FPS a tactical shooter. But it's still on the player to work out the other two. Maybe our community can help with that.
Today's game is another online game. I'm not sure why these fascinate me, but I think it's because anyone willing to add strategic elements to a massively online game is a risk taker. This game is Steel Law Online (official site) from Red Redemption. It's slated to launch on May day (an omen?). It seems to be another web client game. You get to build an empire in a future cyberpunk world, but when you want to blow off some steam you can choose to log in as a monster and go around terrorizing other players. Get ready to quantum leap soon.
Jason
Comments?
21 Apr 04
I just wanted to talk about the site tonight. We've had a pretty good first half of the month, but the numbers have been dropping off lately. I could really use some feedback. What do we need to improve on? How can we get more people to take the two minutes to register and join the site? I think the lack of comments and forum posts are related to the fact that most people who visit don't sign up. Anonymous posting has problems of its own and the handful of people who voted in the poll voted against it anyway?
We've got a few stories going in the forums. I'm getting a couple more game pages ready (sorry for the delay CSL). The news site seems to be doing alright. Do you like the Press releases? I could drop those if they're not of use. I realize that most of our news is just links to other content providers, but that was the original idea. We do the work so you have convenient one stop shopping. That lets you get back to your gaming.
So what's everyone playing? I'm working on Gladius for the Xbox, Silent Storm and Homeworld 2 on the PC. I've also been playing around with the Athena Sword expansion to RS3: Raven Shield. I'm still waiting for the "patch" to come out for Steel Battalion: Line of Contact. That game is so wonderful when it works; it's a shame so many people have so many problems with it. I still haven't gotten it to work in all its five on five glory. Did I mention I'm trying to learn Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow multiplayer on Xbox as well?
My looking forward to games haven't changed much. I'm still pretty psyched about Ground Control 2 and Rome: Total War with Evil Genius creeping up the list. On the console side, not much springs to mind beyond La Pucelle for the PS2. Send me an email and tell me what you're looking forward to. I'm begging you.
Today's game is from the makers of Mafia. It's Hidden and Dangerous 2 (official site) from Illusion Softworks. In this WWII tactical game you lead your special operations team in a series of missions in real time and 1st or 3rd person perspective. They just released an updated demo for the game that you can check out at the usual suspects.
Jason
Comments?
20 Apr 04
A quick heads up, don't forget to check out the forums. The play by email battle is getting quite interesting. CSL has come along and started a story on the Temple of Elemental Evil. I know what some of you are thinking. That's an RPG, not a tactical or strategy game. Bzzzt. We count tactical RPGs here. In fact, if someone thinks a game makes a good story, we welcome it here. It's just that games with firm story arcs don't lend themselves to story creation easily.
Following up a little from yesterday, the question of game direction bears discussion. I'm not talking about changing genres or radical redesigns. Once a game goes public (or perhaps even public beta), who should dictate the direction of changes? Should it be the developers to conform the game to their vision, or should it be the gamers who are interested in having more fun over a longer time?
Of course, I'm talking about games that can be tweaked, usually PC games, but it could be a game such as an MMO console game where things can still be changed after release. As consoles add hard drives and network capability, this might come up more.
Let's use a short hypothetical example. TS is about to release their first game, Azolog's World. It's a RTS game, but is designed to be slow moving focusing on solid economic and supply principles. Wars are supposed to be a last resort and potentially devastating even if you win. TS holds a public beta. The mostly positive feedback indicates that the battles are great fun and feel like a reward for playing well until the penalties hit. Then people hate it. The short of it is that people are having more fun playing against the design. Changing the penalties is relatively easy, but there would be some rebalancing necessary.
So, assuming any pressure from the publisher is just to get it done, should TS change the game? One side would clearly argue yes. Games are entertainment. People spend money on games. They should get good entertainment value for their money. If it's more fun, it's more likely to do well. That means the team can make more games in the future. Since the changes are small and the developer is serving the customer base, they should be responsive.
The other side would argue that you should remain true to the design. Every decision in making the game was based on the design. Besides betraying that vision, the focus of the game shifts. Elegant details that enhanced the original design could become superfluous in a more combat oriented game. Even the fundamental message of the game, you need a strong economy to even survive a large war, would be tossed aside. If other changes need to be made to discourage battles, so be it.
Me, I'm enough of a gamer at heart to say you better have darn good reasons for ignoring your fans. And you had better be right. Otherwise, I'd give people the fun they want.
Today's game is a little different. It's from a small Czech company, and apparently they're still looking for a publisher for North American distribution. It's Necromania: Trap of Darkness (Official Site) from Cinemax. You play one of seven antiheroes. You can directly fight one another, but the best path to success is to lay traps for your enemies. You can play against other people or AI opponents. You're all looking for the three parts to the key that will let you escape from the dungeon. First one out wins. The demo is available now.
Jason
Comments?
19 Apr04
How strict do you like your server? When playing multiplayer online games, do you like hosts, players and game companies that crack down on cheaters instantly? I ask because there seems to be two schools of thought on this. One is that games are just for fun, and if you want a "clean" game by your house rules, play with your friends, your clan, etc. The other is that games have an expectation of fairness and that cheating ruins the experience for everyone.
I can understand both. Many times the difference between cheating and using an exploit is so small that it's hard to tell the difference. Is it wrong to turn down the graphics option for max frame rate because it also has the bonus of removing foliage that your opponents thought they were hidden in? Of course, as soon as exploits are changed or removed, the dreaded "nerf" cry resounds. Then many people have different definitions of cheating. To some that if you can't do it in "real life," you shouldn't do it in a sim like game. To others stretching the limits of the game engine is completely fair as long as you don't hack the code. Then there are the people who feel that they paid their hard earned money to buy the game so they should be able to play it any way they want. They ask why should hacks and aimbots be off limits if they're out there available to everyone?
On the other side, a balanced game means that everyone has the same options, and play is only differentiated by skill and strategy (or tactics as the case may be). Developers have a vision of the way their game is meant to be played. They usually only mean to allow flexibility in tactics not loopholes you can drive a tank through. Keeping things fair also improves the life of the game. Games can grow more when even new players can come in and contribute.
Should players be punished for using exploits or should the exploit just be removed? Is an act cheating only if everyone agrees it is? Sometimes a player is just much better than everyone else. The cries of cheating usually follow them. Just because you're not used to seeing anyone that good is not conclusive proof they're cheating. But should players only be kicked if there's conclusive evidence they were cheating? Do developers stifle emergent gameplay if they crack down on exploits and cheating? I guess we'll have to live with punkbuster as the best we can do now. Keep databases of exploits and check for them when someone tries to join a game.
Still that doesn't answer the question, why are people cheating? Is it a flaw in the design or a flaw in the player? I'm sure some would answer either way. There aren't really easy answers when it comes to interfacing human behavior with rigid design. One could certainly argue for more flexible design, but that almost inevitably leads to more exploits. Me? I try to be slow to cry foul, but I know I enjoy a level playing field.
Today's game is another online tactical game, but this one doesn't have to have the client loaded on your machine. It's all done in Flash. It's Tactics Arena Online (official site) from Flash Players Studios, Inc. It's online only and only player versus player. It has turn based tactical gameplay and a fantasy setting. They offer a gold account for a small price to support the game. The gold account gives you access to some special units, a dedicated gold server and priority on the other servers (you don't have to reconnect after each session). Jump into a game where ever you can find a net connection.
Jason
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