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18 Jun 04

I suppose if I had a really delicate ego, I wouldn't be doing this website. Putting up thoughts and theories for the world to ridicule would probably be too much for some people. I really don't mind the criticism. If you listen, it can make you a better thinker and writer. On the other hand, I'm not sure what to make of it when the comments on what I write are better than what I wrote. Check out Wednesday's comments here. Still, I guess I can take pride in sparking an interesting discussion.

It's Friday so it's back to highlight time. Today I wanted do Hostile Waters: Antaeus Rising. I've previously talked about the game as a good bargain bin find. It disappeared all too quickly from store shelves. It's not a lost classic or anything, but it did bring some good features to the table.

Clearly it's first and greatest strength was the voice acting. Every thing was pretty much top notch. You can quibble about some of the 'alien' voices, but the voice actors did a great job. From narration by Tom Baker (of Doctor Who fame) to the Headquarters staff to your crew, everything fit well. The voices were instantly recognizable and the emotion was clear and appropriate.

Tying into that was the next strength. You crew was made up of chips you could put into vehicles. Each chip was a personality captured at the soldier's death. They each had skills and preferences. More importantly the personalities had personality. Patton was a tank commander. He was only happy with the largest tank with the biggest gun. He also had the most skill with such a combination. He would charge bravely into battle. Each comment he made was revealing of his personality. Even the word choices used fit the personality profile. In short, the game created a real personality. Then each real personality would interact with each of the other personalities. Some bickered, some hated each other, some flirted and some were aloof from the others. With all that they still provided good feedback. Even if you were off somewhere else personally piloting an attack craft, you could tell how the battle was going from their perspective from the chatter. It created the most real sense of a battlefield I've heard in a game that I wasn't actually talking to real people.

I'd say the final great strength was the resourcing system. Energy was the only resource you could acquire. You gained it by attaching a recycler unit to a scarab utility vehicle. If you used an AI personality, the scarab would tool around the battle site looking for metal and debris to break down into energy. The great thing about it was that you could also recycle your vehicles. So if a unit got too damaged, you could send it to the scarab or back to the ship to be turned back to energy. You'd lose a little from damage, but not as much as if you lost the unit before it got back. This encouraged you not to meaninglessly sacrifice units. If at all possible, you wanted all your team to survive if just to get them back to the ship to create a fresh vehicle for them.

I'm going to go ahead and give a bonus strength. The game gave you freedom of how you wanted to play. Any time you wanted, you could go into your war room. Whenever you did, the game paused, but you could give orders. So if you wanted to play as almost a turn based game you could. Or you could give order from there and just see how they played out. Or if you wanted you could give all orders directly from the field ala Battlezone. It meant that different players could have a radically different play experience based on the way they wanted to play.

Today's game is also a RTS game. But it doesn't have a name. It's the No Name War (official site) from AMC Creation. It's a Romanian effort that is trying to create a true quality RTS. It also has randomly generated 3D maps, something you don' t see often. They're promising that each of the four races will feel completely different down to the unit level. They're still looking for a publisher so no word on when we might expect the game.

Jason
Comments?

17 Jun 04

Well, the Ground Control 2 reviews are starting to come out. Largely they're look quite positive. I've talked about a couple of the intriguing aspects of the game, but I'd like to go into one more. It seems that both Perimeter and Ground Control 2 feature unit morphing. This is where you can take some basic units and combine them into larger units.

This is a interesting gameplay twist. I find it interesting that two games would be coming out with this idea at the same time. On the other hand, it does seem like an obvious solution to the one of the constant problems in RTS games, how to keep an army ready for any type of threat. If you're marching columns of heavy infantry through a forest and they suddenly come under attack by light archery units, most of the time you're in trouble. If you could morph some of those heavy infantry into a flame cannon, you could set the woods on fire and the archers would be hurting.

I suppose, in a sense it's just taking resourcing to the the next level. If all units are made from the same base resources, why can't you just recombine those resources to get the unit you need. I suppose it would only make sense in a fantasy or sci fi setting. Unfortunately, nobody ever makes RTS games in those genres.

Of course, there are precedents. Starcraft being the most notable where you could morph zerg units into more advance forms. You didn't have the option reverse the process. Sacrifice's use of souls was similar as well. You couldn't directly change units, but you could gib them and quickly gather and recast to adjust your army to your needs. In fact, that often happened in the middle of battles. Notably some people hated this "hectic" type of battle that ensued.

I'm of the school that says give gamers more options and see what they make of them. So I'm pretty happy with this development. The idea that without returning to a base, that you can reconfigure your army to face a new threat seems like a good one to me. I might worry that it will take the emphasis away from good planning and tactics, but really the only way to effectively use morphing is if you know your enemy. You have to detect a threat to your army then move to effectively counter it. Either way it sounds like good tactical thinking to me.

Today's game is another in our small company series. It's Starship Tycoon (official site) from Positech Computing Ltd. You run a spaceship trading company. You choose your ships, your crew and your cargo in an effort to survive in the cutthroat environment of deep space. A demo is available now.

Jason
Comments?

16 Jun 04

Today's topic is once again the user interface. Next to artificial intelligence, I think the UI is the most interesting (and overlooked) part of game design. While most developers tend to admit that there's room for improvement in AI, very few seem to think about how to improve the UI. After all, if it worked in the last game in the genre, it'll work here.

I think there's one compelling reason to keep looking at the UI. That's speed of interaction. The less the UI gets in the way of the player, the faster they can interact with the game world. Since I've already stressed the importance of freedom in game design, I'll just point out the ability to make your avatar do what you want when you want is the ultimate freedom in game play.

The flip side is just as important, when a UI slows down your interaction with the game world, it forces you out of that world. You're just reminded that you're playing a game. That step back from immersion is important, but it's compounded when you can't do something you expect to be able to do or you can't do it simply.

While you could argue that speed is only important in real time games or even action game, that's not true. How many times have you read about a strategy game where the review describes fighting to find the right window. Even when you're doing something in a game that's not time critical, you don't want to waste your time on the interface; you want to develop and implement your strategy.

So what makes an interface fast? First there's streamlined information flow. Whatever information you need, should be quickly available as soon as you need it. For instance, a health display should be clearly visible when a unit is taking damage. Second there's context sensitivity. This was practically a miracle when it first came about in the RTS realm. Based on what the unit is and what the cursor is on, the standard click performs the most appropriate action for the unit. Finally, the controls for the most used commands are the easiest to access. So in a shooter, the shoot button should be quick and easy to access. Part of the reason that Halo's controls on the Xbox were so praised was because of the smart button layout.

How fast is your interface?

Today's game is another in the build it yourself school. It's Peoples Tactics (official site) from Victor Reijkersz. It's an old school hex war game with hotseat and PBEM modes. It's in beta right now so you can check it out.

Jason
Comments?

15 Jun 04

I wanted to talk about pricing pressures again. I realize I've gone around this topic several times, but I think it's important. It will have a significant impact on our wallets one way or another. I'm going to look at the console side because of the interesting stratification, but almost all of it applies to the PC side as well.

In the console world starting next year, you could have the next generation of consoles coming out, huge numbers of the current generation, the Sony PSP (playstation portable), then Nintendo DS and the Gameboy Advance. While publishers have liked the $50 price point for new games, it's going to get complicated. Let's assume there's going to be some logic in pricing. When the current generation of consoles came out, Playstation software started coming out $10 cheaper. Also handheld game prices are generally less than their console counterparts. So we might end up with something like this:

$50 -- Playstation 3, Xbox 2 games
$40 -- PS2, Xbox, GCN games
$30-40 -- PSP, Nintendo DS games
$20-30 -- GBA games

But, I've previously talked about bargain pricing games. With greatest hits lines and some new games being released around the $20 price point that puts pressure on the prices of other games. Don't forget, that we can expect additional price drops on the current consoles by then. When you've waited for the consoles to go below $100 before getting one, you expect your gaming dollar to go further.

My feeling is that we should only be seeing large budget AAA titles for the top end consoles going for the $50 price range with trickle down effects across the other consoles. Essentially you make the software end more consumer friendly which helps justify the initial expenditure.

Of course, the counter argument says that I don't pay more for the huge summer blockbusters at the movies so why should I pay more for the games. Even if you take the next step to the DVD, the argument still stands. Well, even a few years ago, the games market was small enough that you could argue that the numbers wouldn't hold. That's not true anymore. In fact, you can make the argument now, that the size of the market dictates that games are now overpriced. You see many titles doing rapid price dives into the bargain bin. These are games that don't hit their initial sales numbers, but publishers want to move units while the reviews and advertising are still fresh in gamer's heads. If those games had been released at that price point, they would have moved more units initially without the taint of a rapid price drop. That in turn can create more buzz for a game. It'll be interesting to see if any of the big players are willing to take that risk.

Today's game is an online web game. It's The Clash of Civilizations (official site) from Mark Everson and the CoC Team. It's a java game that aims to encompass the entire sweep of civilization. It lets you make the broad decisions or dive into the details to control everything. They have a demo available now.

Jason
Comments?

14 Jun 04

Happy Flag Day if you're in the United States today. Yes, more flag waving from the Yanks, but let's face with all the places in the world that still aren't free societies, we should appreciate those that are.

I want to talk about the site today. I'm sure some people have wondered about things ever since I started the news section of the site. While some people might be interested in the little rants I put up each day, they're not the purpose of the site. Some would argue that neither is game news, screenshots or reviews (mini or otherwise). Originally I might have agreed, but as I've mentioned before, this place is a community and I'm going to try my darnedest to do everything to build one.

That means a few things. One is that there must be a reason to stop in on a regular basis. I try to cover a broad range of topics on the front page. I also try to keep coming back to gaming and in particular strategy and tactical gaming. I just realize that these little columns aren't enough to keep people coming in all the time.

Keeping up on the strategy and tactical game news is another reason for people to stop by. Sometimes the news is controversial so we have a method for commenting on the stories directly or you can take it to the forum. Also, it allows us to be sort of one stop shopping (portalling?) to get your strategy and tactical fix.

Another thing the news section does is give us contacts in the industry. If you want to know something about a game, sometimes it's hard to get an answer from a website or just a personal email. With access to the PR personnel in the industry, I can pass on questions, comments and concerns. Since they want us to keep passing on information about their upcoming products, they have an incentive to try to get an answer.

Finally, things like the news and reviews can make companies more interested in sending us review copies of games and/or free copies for contests. So when you see the screenshots or the press briefs even when they're not of interest to you they are still helping the site. As always, I'm open to feedback. Let me know what we can improve here.

Today's game is a little short on information, but it's still highly anticipated. It's Close Combat: First to Fight (official site) from Destineer and Atomic Games. It's being developed with the US Marine Corps to make a highly realistic tactical shooter. It will be available on the PC, Mac and Xbox by the end of the year.

Jason
Comments?

12 Jun 04

Sorry, I didn't get a chance to do a highlight yesterday. Strangely, I did spend a great deal of the national day of mourning wactching the ceremonies for President Reagan. Whether you agreed with all his policies or not, it was a fitting and touching tribute to a great leader. Rest in Peace, Dutch.

I spent most of my web time yesterday fighting to get the image viewing software to work. It's still not perfect, but it is running now. I've put up some screenshots for Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders, Kohan II, Evil Genius, the new Hidden and Dangerous 2 Expansion, and Empire Earth 2. So enjoy them. Check them out Here.

Drop me a line if you experience any problems.

Jason
Comments?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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