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E3 2012: final thoughts

Before I get into E3, I suppose I should explain last week’s unexpected (and unintentional) silence here.  During the first half of the week, my office’s internet was totally screwed up, and it was impossible to post.  During the second half of the week, however, I was beset by a particularly vicious head cold, and the last goddamned thing I wanted to do was think about putting words together that described bright lights and loud noises.

Indeed, about the only thing I did get up to during my weekend of death was to plow through Diablo 3 on Nightmare difficulty, which I managed to finish Sunday evening, just in time for Mad Men.  My monk, Lolily, is now at level 51, and I’ve sunk just over 39 hours into the game.   I must confess that right before I started Act 4, I did buy an incredibly powerful weapon in the auction house – not with real money, though, just in-game currency, which I’d been hoarding for no particular reason.  (To this point, the only times I’ve spent any gold in-game is when I’ve either had to fix my equipment or when I’ve trained my blacksmith and my jeweler, both of whom were as high as they could be until I unlocked Hell difficulty, where Tomes of Crafting began to drop.)  This was done partly because (a) I wasn’t looting anything particularly good up to that point, which was frustrating, and (b) I was getting a little tired of the game and wanted to plow through to the end.  The weapon I bought had a buyout price of 50,000G, which was fine enough with me; it boosted both my Vitality and Damage stats over 1000 points over my current weapon, which is something that’s hard to say no to.   I thought that it might break the game a little for me, but the truth is that my internet connection is still wonky, and so there were a number of times where the game just straight-up froze (thus resulting in death by an unsween swarm), and still other times where the game’s stuttering performance meant that the teleporting enemies who could also freeze me in place pretty much had their way with me at all times.   This is all to say that while I have an incredibly powerful weapon now – a weapon that I’m not sure I’ll need to replace – I still have my regular, non-spiffy armor, which just barely gets the job done; I still die from time to time.

Anyway.

It’s hard for me to comment on this year’s E3, being that my means of intake were generally limited to Giant Bomb’s absurdly long 4-hour podcasts and 20-minute video recaps of each day’s activities.   Every press outlet more or less covered the same ground, and being that my head was swimming in mucous, I could pretty much only handle one source at a time.  (This is why I am still a part-time blogger and not a professional journalist.)   I’d scan my Google Reader every hour or so, see that there were 70 articles about the same thing, and then I’d sneeze a dozen times and then close my eyes.

Still, even with my limited information and access, the general theme of the press at large  all seemed to agree on some variation of the theme that this E3 was dumb, unnecessary, uninspiring, fundamentally broken, etc.  There are several pretty obvious reasons for this, though, and I suspect that 2013’s events are going to be much, much different.

  1. It’s been said for a while now – we’re at the end of this console cycle, and developers/publishers are very reluctant to show off new IP this late in the game.  The fact that we saw as much new IP as we did (The Last of Us, Watch Dogs, Beyond) was pretty amazing, especially since all three of those games look really, really promising.
  2.  E3 doesn’t quite mean the same thing that it did a few years ago.  Back in the day, it was THE ONLY event that mattered; the internet didn’t leak quite so quickly as it does now; video streaming was ugly and impractical; the discerning gamer basically just read lots of stories and looked at tons of screenshots.  Now, though, it’s simply one event of seemingly dozens – PAX and PAX EAST seem to be just as important, and then there’s CES and Tokyo and Germany and all the rest.  Meanwhile, the internet’s caught up and so now we have high-quality video streams and commercial-free live TV feeds of keynote speeches and there’s all this HYPE and POMP; it’s just caught up at the wrong time, is all.  I guarantee that when Microsoft and Sony announce their new consoles at next spring’s 2013, we’ll forget all about this little bump in the road.

I still haven’t seen Sony’s keynote, so I can’t comment on it (other than that I keep hearing that they said pretty much nothing about the Vita, which is a big, big mistake).  I saw bits and pieces of Microsoft’s keynote – it wasn’t the horrible embarrassment that some people called it, though it certainly was a bit underwhelming.  SmartGlass seems like a way to keep a step ahead of the WiiU – as someone who is fiercely addicted to his iPad, I certainly plan on putting it through its paces – but it’s not a game-changer.  The games they announced were, more or less, more of the same; I think it’s fair to say that Microsoft’s first-party lineup leaves a lot to be desired, at least when compared to Sony.  I did end up watching Nintendo’s keynote (since I was home, sick), and I’m not sure I know what I saw.  There seemed to be genuine animosity between Reggie and the poor bastard who had 5 minutes to talk about the 3DS, and that guy’s 3DS spiel spent more time talking about how little time he had to talk instead of actually talking about things that mattered.  I don’t know that it’s fair for me to talk about Nintendo, anyway; they clearly don’t care about me, and I stopped giving a shit about their first-party IP a long time ago.  (I gave my Wii to my mother-in-law with zero regrets; indeed, when she expressed interest in getting one for herself, I suddenly saw a golden opportunity to get rid of the thing.)  Still, though, I was ready to be wowed by the WiiU, especially given my vulnerable state, and I was completely and utterly underwhelmed.  Nintendoland?  Really?  A shittier version of Playstation Home?  Fantastic, well done.

Highlights of the show include:

  • South Park RPG
  • The Last of Us (Uncharted post-apocalypse)
  • Beyond (Heavy Rain 2.0)
  • Criterion:  Need For Speed Most Wanted reboot
  • Tomb Raider
  • Star Wars 1313 (everyone seems to say that this is a next-gen game)
  • Watch Dogs
  • Lego City: Undercover (if this is a WiiU exclusive, I will be bummed)

Other notable games that I have knee-jerk, ill-informed opinions of:

  • Halo 4 (at least they’re trying something new – and the graphics look great)
  • new Gears of War (developed by People Can Fly)
  • Forza Horizon (what is this?  some sort of DiRT clone?)
  • new God of War (meh)
  • Elder Scrolls Online (this seems to be the consensus winner for Most Disappointing of E3)
  • Far Cry 3 (didn’t see the trailer since it’s NSFW, but I don’t care)
  • Crysis 3 (didn’t see the trailer since I don’t care)
  • Assassin’s Creed 3 (hoping for the best)
  • Splinter Cell reboot (looks a lot like Assassin’s Creed: Future Soldier)

Did anyone see Borderlands 2?  That’s a big title for me for later this year, and I’m not sure I read anything about it, although that’s certainly something I could fix with a quick Google search, although I’m not going to.  Maybe they’re focusing on the final push to the finish and didn’t show at all?  (Bioshock Infinite wasn’t there at the show, either, as far as I know.)

Here’s what I was hoping to learn at this year’s E3:

  • a release date for GTA5  (none given)
  • some sort of acknowledgement that The Last Guardian isn’t dead. (sort-of acknowledged)
  • a solid holiday release schedule for the Vita (if there was one, I missed it)
  • a solid holiday release schedule for the 3DS (see above)

We’re clearly in for a much stronger 2013 than I was anticipating, so that’s something to get excited about.

In the meantime, I will continue to click the shit out of monsters in Diablo 3.  I think I may need a new mouse, actually…

E3:2012 keynote impressions

[It appears that the office internet seems to be functioning somewhat normally today!]

Normally, E3 is an exciting time; a glorious week where I spend every free moment frantically refreshing Google Reader and doing the arcane mental calculus required to make sure I have enough money saved up to buy all the things that need to be bought.

(*apologies to Hyperbole and a Half)

But I’ve been saying for a while that I had pretty low expectations for this year’s E3; I never thought it was going to be all that exciting.  Most developers are seemingly reluctant to release new and exciting IP this close to the end of the current generation, and the console developers themselves can’t really reinvent the wheel at their keynotes at this stage of the cycle, either.  Nintendo has the WiiU to push; that’s really about it, as far as hardware.

Even so, it’s hard not to be totally underwhelmed by this year’s keynotes.  I was really hoping Sony would be able to sell me a Vita; did they even mention the Vita, beyond COD:BLOPS2 and AssCreed3?  Likewise, Nintendo went to great lengths to say that they could only spend about 5 minutes on the 3Ds during their presentation, and most of the 3DS section was spent apologizing for their lack of presentation time, rather than maximizing what they had.   Microsoft’s “SmartGlass” thing sounds intriguing, but it also seems mostly like a way to render the WiiU’s new tablet controller irrelevant; and in any event, the only big exclusive stuff they have coming out this year is the usual – Halo 4, Gears, and whatever that Forza Horizon thing turns out to be.

If anything, I do have to give Sony a lot of credit for not totally giving up on new IP – I’m really intrigued by Beyond and The Last of Us, both of which have been picking up a lot of positive buzz.  (Not as sold on the new God of War game, though.)

In the meantime, I’ve been thoroughly devoted to Diablo 3.  It does seem to be running smoother!  My monk is now at the beginning of Act 3,  either Level 46 or 47, and thoroughly decked out and dealing much damage.

I can’t be certain that my office’s internet hasn’t totally crashed, so I’m going to cut it short here.  Look for a CouchCast coming up later this week, though, wherein Gred and I will continue to whine and moan about what we’ve learned about this year’s E3 purely through hearsay and Twitter gossip.

of lag and right-clicking

[The internet at my day job has been pretty much broken all week; this is the first time since Tuesday that I’ve been able to load up the “Add New Post” page without everything crashing.  If this post feels a little rushed, just know that I was trying to cram in everything I wanted to say within the short window I’ve been given.]

In keeping with this post’s preface, here’s the short version:

1.  I beat Diablo 3 on Normal earlier this week; my level 32 Monk got through the end in a little over 18 hours.

2.  I went on a little bit of an iOS binge/bender last week, as lots of companies were offering Memorial Day sales that were too good to pass up.  I’m almost embarrassed to admit how much I picked up, considering how broke I’ve been.  (The TouchArcade app is a marvelous tool, by the way – it does a great job of letting you know if stuff you want is on sale.)

[Internet still seems to be working, so let me try and expand a little bit.]

re: Diablo 3:  Yeah, so, hmm.   Everyone seems to agree that the game doesn’t really start to get good until you start on Nightmare mode, which is (a) true, perhaps, and (b) a ridiculous supposition on Blizzard’s part that you’re going to invest 16-20 hours before you even get to the good stuff.  Especially since the single-player experience – well, my experience, at least – has been totally screwed up by lag and latency and random server disconnects.

Like I said above, I finished the single-player campaign on Normal in around 18 hours, and in that time I probably only died 3 or 4 times, but at least 2 of those deaths came at the expense of sudden server latency/lag issues, where the game would freeze for 10 seconds and then dozens of enemies would be standing over my dead body.  I never lost all that much progress, but since every dungeon is randomly generated, I’d have to re-play the entire map again once I regained a connection, and this started to get a bit annoying.

After beating the final boss – an experience  so underwhelming that I initially thought I’d done something wrong – I immediately started up again on Nightmare, and even though I only played for 20 minutes or so, there was a noticeable difference in both enemy toughness and the quality of dropped loot.   Again – everyone keeps saying that Nightmare is where Diablo 3 really becomes an experience instead of just mindless left- and right-clicking – you have to think about strategy and tactics a little more, and your build becomes something to seriously consider, rather than something to experiment with.  I suppose that’s true, although I still found myself clicking furiously; perhaps there was a slight uptick in clicks-per-second.

The lag is goddamned intolerable, that’s all there is to it.  Or maybe it’s my computer, although I refuse to believe it’s my computer.  I’ve tried the game on both my super-PC and my regular-strength MacBook Pro.  The PC can run at insanely high specs, and it has a wired connection with the router, but it’s laggy and stuttery (as it was in the beta).  The MacBook has to run things at lower resolutions and with bells & whistles turned down, and it’s wi-fi only, and yet while it’s true that it’s not as stuttery , the whole game feels like it’s running through water, or maybe it’s just capped at 20fps or something.   The point is, I have not yet had the silky-smooth experience that I really ought to be having – the experience that I had with, let’s say, Torchlight.

More than the lag, though – I really do wish the story and the characters were more interesting.  Not that they have to be, because honestly who cares, but it would’ve been nice to see the same level of care on the story that there clearly is in (mostly) everything else.   It’d enhance the experience just enough to actually keep you invested in why you’re right-clicking 1000x per minute, and not simply just because that pleasure loop of clicking/equipping is so addicting.

Anyway.  As we’re still in the release calender doldrums, I expect I’ll be playing Nightmare quite a bit, and I might experiment with other classes.  As it is, the Monk was a bit of a surprise for me; in every RPG I’ve ever played, I’ve pretty much always gravitated towards the Barbarian/Warrior/Tank class, but the Monk was quite enjoyable.  I might give the Witch Doctor a try;  a friend brought his Witch Doctor into a co-op game with me and it was pretty far out.  (Speaking of which, should you care to look me up, my battle tag is JervoNYC#1540.)

 

further thoughts on Max and Diablo

Gotta say – it’s really nice to be playing real games again.

I ended up finishing Max Payne 3 in one 12-hour sitting on Thursday, and then dabbled in enough of the multiplayer to unlock a few new modes, although I haven’t messed with those yet.

Patrick Klepek, on the most recent Giant Bombcast, said something that’s stuck with me for the last few days, the general idea of which is that he liked the game a lot but wasn’t sure if it was special, the way that GTA or Red Dead was.  I’ve been wondering the same thing myself.  I kinda wish I hadn’t finished it in only one sitting, that instead of powering through it in one day that I finished the campaign over the course of a dew days or a week.  The thing is, the game is exquisitely paced and it’s very hard to put down, and when you’re stuck at home feeling shitty, and there’s nothing else you’d rather do (especially since the Diablo 3 servers are still crap), why wouldn’t you keep playing?

You know what it reminded me of, even though the two franchises couldn’t have less in common?  Uncharted 2/3.  Bear with me here.   The thing that struck me the most in those two Uncharted games was the art direction’s astonishing attention to detail – every single nook and cranny of every single area looked different and unique and lived in, with very few obvious shortcuts.  Lots of games repeat themselves – walls will have repeating textures, buildings on opposite ends of the city/country/galaxy will have similar floorplans, and every enemy you kill might as well be a clone of the one before.   Not so in Uncharted, and not so in Max Payne 3.  Every chapter had its own unique look and feel and rhythm, and while Max might not look as jaw-droppingly beautiful as Uncharted, it’s still pretty damned close.*

Another thing that Max and Uncharted have in common is that there are thousands of enemies, and a lot of those enemies require a LOT of bullets in order to die.  At least in Max’s case, though, having him kill that many people doesn’t cause as much of a weird disconnect, the way it does with Nathan Drake.  Nathan is a charming, adventurous, personable guy who happens to kill hundreds of people during the course of his journey.  Max, on the other hand, is a man who has been through more terrible shit than pretty much any man alive, a man who can only function in this fucked-up world though the total and constant obliteration of his senses through whisky and pills.   According to my Social Club stats, I’ve killed over 1600 enemies during my campaign (and a few runs through one level of Arcade Mode), and Max is a character who feels the weight of every single kill, even if they all deserved what they got.

I only finished the game on Easy Mode.  Which is kind of bullshit – I still died a lot.  As far as I could tell, the only real difference between Easy and Normal is the aiming (i.e., Hard Lock or Soft Lock) – and there wasn’t much of a difference there.  I may end up playing through the campaign at least one more time, all the way on Normal, just to find all the hidden secrets and collectibles (of which there are many, and which scratches a favorite itch).  And I do plan on playing the multiplayer a bit more, too – it’s a lot of fun.  I’d really like to see some co-op modes eventually – if there are any announced, that might just be enough for me to buy the Season Pass.  (If I remember correctly, Red Dead got some co-op modes a few months into its DLC schedule; maybe there’ll be something similar here.)

*        *        *

I’ve continued to plow ahead in Diablo 3 – my lady monk is now level 15, I think – and the game is enjoyable when the lag isn’t killing the experience.  I’ve only been booted off the server once, but I’d say 80% of my playtime has been under some sort of lag duress, and it’s annoying as hell.  (I did end up installing it on my MacBook Pro, and the experience is roughly the same – my MacBook isn’t quite as powerful as my PC, so it runs a little bit slower anyway, but the lag was still an issue.)

It’s weird; I never played the original games, but I played a bunch of their descendants – Baldur’s Gate Dark Alliance, Titan Quest, and Torchlight, to name a few.  I’m a fan of the genre, if not of the genuine article.  There’s something weirdly intimidating about Diablo 3 for me; maybe it’s just that the dungeons have long paths and I never know if I’m going in the right direction.  (Which is sort of the point, right?)

I guess I’m still mostly annoyed at the lag.  As much as I suppose I understand Blizzard’s reasoning behind having an always-online structure, I still find it baffling that I’m experiencing so much lag in a single-player-only experience.  It’s ridiculous.  And while it does seem to be improving with each passing day, it’s still not as good as it should be.

I seem to be running out of steam; that’s it for today, then.

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* When I think about Rockstar games – which I do, quite a lot – I don’t necessarily think of them as a graphics powerhouse, the way I do with a studio like Naughty Dog or Epic, but I must admit that both Red Dead and Max Payne 3 are near the top of my list of this generation’s best-looking games.

3 is a magic number

It’s been very quiet here since the last podcast; honestly, there’s not been a hell of a lot to talk about.  If I were a professional games writer, I’d find stuff to post, but I’m pretty sure that those of you who find your way to this corner of the internet aren’t looking for hot scoops.

I’ve been in a rut, basically.  The initial wave of iPad euphoria has subsided, and I’m no longer buying every game that comes out.  (Well, I did buy Lost Winds 2 yesterday, but haven’t played more than the first 20 seconds of it.)   There are plenty of good-looking distractions to be found in the App Store, to be sure, but I am craving a meal, not a snack.  Or maybe I’m just waiting for the iOS ports of Walking Dead and Botanicula to show up.

In the meantime, I’d been kinda tooling around with my backlog.  Finally finished Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, which was a bit dumb.  I mean, it had been dumb for quite some time – I think I ultimately spent over 30 hours in there – but towards the end I just wanted to finish the final boss and be done with it.  I still have at least 20 side quests to finish but I do.  not.  give a shit.  The narrative – to the extent there is one – was boring and uninspired and in any event I couldn’t skip past it quickly enough.   I kinda feel bad for 38 Studios, who are going through some pretty serious money problems; wait a minute, what am I saying?  I hate Curt Schilling.  I feel bad for the non-Curt Schilling people of that company, let’s put it that way.

And I also decided to give up on Tiger Woods 13.  There used to be a time when the Tiger games could easily fill the slow months of the release calendar, but not so much these days.  I appreciate that they’re still making adjustments to the controls, but I can’t help getting annoyed when my perfectly lined-up putt curves away because of some arbitrary stat math.

And yeah, I guess I was also one of the million people who ended up buying Minecraft on XBLA, even though I’d never played the PC version – indeed, I never wanted to play the PC version.  That much freedom is intimidating to me; I have no idea what to do.  (This is is also why the Hitman games tended to scare the hell out of me, too.)  I spent an hour or two with it last weekend; I was pleasantly surprised at how accessible it was, but I’m still not sure I’m going to do very much with it.

This is all to say that yesterday’s releases of Max Payne 3 and Diablo 3 were big fucking deals for me, and I’d guess that if you’re reading this blog, you’re probably either at work, or just taking a break from playing those games.

_______________________

I fired up Max Payne 3 first.  I don’t recall how long I played for; I know I finished the first two chapters.

Gut reactions:

  • It’s probably the best-looking game Rockstar’s ever made, especially with regards to the lighting engine – everything is super-crisp and colorful.  This is also probably the best use of that Euphoria physics/rag doll system first seen in GTA4 and later used to marvelous effect in Red Dead Redemption – when you kill people, man, you fuck them up.
  • It’s really remarkable how well they’ve managed to both keep the game feeling fresh while, at the same time, staying true to the iconic features of the original games – the pills-as-powerups, the bullet-time, the noir.  A lot of this has to do with Rockstar’s incredible confidence in its cut-scenes.  Ever since GTA4, those mid-mission story beats started becoming real treats to watch – the dialogue’s always been great (if a little heavy-handed at times), but the scenes themselves became very cinematic – the camera was always in an interesting place, the motion-capture work was expressive and clear, and the characters themselves were engaging and entertaining.  I never found myself impatient and wanting to skip past a scene, the way I do with almost every other game out there.  Anyway, my point is that when the cutscene is over and Max is back in my hands, it still feels like the original games did – even though it’s got a lot of new technology behind the scenes.
  • If there’s one thing that’s a little off to me, it’s that I’m playing this game on the Xbox360.  I played the first two games on the PC, and the mouse and keyboard always felt intuitive and easy to use.  I also played the ports of those games on the Xbox, and the shift to the controller never felt quite right.  That not-quite-right feeling shows up here as well, which is somewhat of a bummer.  Bullet-time – the defining feature of this franchise – is activated by pushing in the right thumbstick, which is not at all intuitive and, if anything, makes it more of a pain in the ass to use.  On the PC, bullet-time was both super fun to watch and useful from a strategic perspective, but here I find myself using it just because I want to see it, not because I need it.
  • Haven’t yet touched the multiplayer, although it looks interesting.  Will try to give that a good look over the next few days, in between breaks from the campaign.

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As for Diablo 3… well, honestly?  I’m a little bummed.  I played for around 5 minutes last night – long enough to see that the weird latency/lag issues that I had in the beta a few weeks ago were still present in the retail release.  This is especially weird since my PC uses a wired connection to my router.  I haven’t yet tried tweaking the graphics settings – I wasn’t sure if this was a CPU issue or a lag issue – but I know that other people are experiencing similar problems.

I’m debating whether or not to install it on my MacBook Pro; the Mac is mainly for music and writing, and I’m a little afraid of
installing such a distraction onto that machine.  But, then again, if it runs better there…

No matter.  My plan is to focus on Max Payne 3 for the time being, and then, hopefully by this time next week, Blizzard will have solved some of these issues and the experience will be smoother.

CouchCast: 042712

Here it is: Episode 2!  Jervo and Gred engage in a free-wheeling conversation regarding Mass Effect 3 (still!), Fez, Trials Evolution, hitting the difficulty wall, the current state of the Vita, the future of iOS, games we’re looking forward to, and games we’re kinda not playing anymore!

 

CouchCast Episode 2

the first few hours – Tiger 13

Have I written here about my history with the Tiger Woods series?  I know I’ve written about each game I’ve played (see: the Tiger tag), but that’s not quite the same thing.

I’m not a golfer, and it wasn’t really something I watched on TV.  I suppose I only started paying attention to golf when Tiger Woods started kicking ass and becoming some sort of force of nature, and, well, it’s exciting to watch legends at their peak, doing things that no mortal man can do.  I wasn’t alive for Babe Ruth, and I didn’t pay attention to Wayne Gretzky’s career, but Tiger Woods was here and now and only a little older than me, and he was fundamentally changing the sport, and it was legitimately exciting to see.

But I never got into videogame golf until 2002 or so, and that was probably because there was a demo for a Tiger game on the OXM disc for that particular month, and I was bored and figured I’d give it a try.  And 2 things occurred to me almost instantly after I fired up the demo – (1) the game was really fun, and (2) I was really good at it.  And it was nice to be really good at a game, as opposed to just good enough to get to the end.  I bought Tiger Woods ’02 shortly thereafter, and found it a marvelous experience in a multitude of ways – it filled long, boring afternoons; the fantasy courses were a pleasant change from the real-world courses; the Tiger Challenge was a novel take on the career mode; I could listen to my own music instead of the game without missing anything important; and, most importantly, the career lasted long enough to get me through those endless summer months where nothing was coming out.  And, as I said before, I was really good at it.  And so the Tiger games became the annual franchise that I cared about and looked forward to.  Some people have Madden; some people have Call of Duty; I have Tiger.

Well, I had Tiger.  Ever since the console switch in ’06, the new Tiger games have struggled mightily to reach their potential.*  Each year has been one disappointment on top of another, and I’ve started to lose hope.

So when I say that I don’t think I hate Tiger Woods 13 yet, it’s probably a good sign.  Well, let me put it another way – I don’t want to strangle it to death, the way I did with 12.

My biggest grievance against Tiger 12 was how completely out of my hands the game felt at times, especially with regards to the putting game.  I was missing putts left and right, with no discernable reason why.  If the game at least explained what I’d done wrong, I suppose I could understand – but there was no such feedback.  It felt arbitrary and unfair, and while golf (the sport) is frequently unfair, at least that’s just physics and your own skill letting you down.  In 12, the putting game boiled down to getting lucky on an invisible coin toss, which is unfair in the sort of way that makes my eyes bleed.  (The game’s big innovation last year was the inclusion of the Masters, which didn’t really matter to me one way or the other.  It’s nice that it was there, I suppose, but the game went out of its way to kiss the Masters’ ass, which was also probably a good way for EA to distract its customers from the sad trajectory of Tiger Woods’ actual professional career.

The big innovation in Tiger 13 (as there must always be one new thing) is the new True Swing mechanism, or whatever it’s called.  (I ought to know, at this point – you have to press the A button no less than 4 or 5 times before you’re actually playing golf, and I suppose they advertise the name of the swing on one of those splash screens, but my ADD is such that I’d rather look at my iPad in the interim.)  The success of your swing depends on the accuracy and the tempo of your left thumb ‘s movement.  This isn’t totally new –  the last few games showed you how close your thumb moved in a straight line, too – but this tempo mechanic is very interesting and feels a lot more responsive.    It applies to the putting game as well, and while it does take a little bit of getting used to, it does make some intuitive sense at the very least, and so when I whiff a putt I know understand why – it’s usually because I get impatient and push too hard on the upswing, thereby sending the ball off the green entirely.

My big grievance of the moment, then, is the chipping game.  This never used to be a problem.  And I don’t really often end up in the sand off the greens all that much, so it’s not really that big a problem in the grand scheme of things.  Still, though, there’s a major discrepancy between where the game tells you the ball’s going to land, and where the ball actually ends up (which is usually well past the hole, and then ultimately off the other side of the green, so you have to do the whole damned thing again).

As for the rest of the package; well, there’s the Tiger Woods Legacy mode, where you play as Tiger as a 2 year old in his backyard, launching chip shots into a swimming pool, and other assorted important touchstones of the Tiger Woods mythos.  It’s not particularly engaging, and it’s also a little weird, and the more I think about it the more it comes off as some sort of PR strategy towards repairing the Tiger brand – making him human again, making him a little kid again, before the utter collapse and everything that ensued afterwards.

You may be surprised – if you’ve made it this far – that I haven’t talked about the insane in-game purchase stuff.  A lot of reviews went out of their way to really nail EA to the wall over this – how over half of the courses are hidden behind a pay wall, and how you can pay real money to power-level your character and all the rest of it.  Yeah, it does disgust me, sure.  But to be honest, I haven’t really hit any of those obstacles just yet.  (To be even more honest, I’ve really only played the first 2 full 18-hole rounds in the career mode, which (I felt) was enough to let me know how the game felt in my hands.  I might also add that I went -8 in my first round, and -6 in my 2nd, which included some horrendous 3-putts but also a fantastic eagle from 150 yards out.)  I haven’t yet entered my Online Pass code yet, and I don’t yet know if that will make a difference as I get farther into the career.  As it happens, you can still buy courses (or, rather, playtime on courses which are still locked for general use) with in-game currency that you earn through play, so I’m hopeful that as long as I pay attention to my stash, I won’t run into any problems.  (Rest assured, though, that I’ll scream VERY LOUDLY if I do.)

———

* Ranking the Tiger games would be its own column, one which I’m not prepared to get into at this very moment.  But I’d break the rankings in half, anyway, between the Xbox 1 and the Xbox 360.  As I said above, the games on the original Xbox were incredibly fun, approachable, and intuitive, and they featured tons of fantasy courses (some of which were fucking insane), and it was not uncommon to bomb 400 yard drives and get holes in one on Par 4s, and while they weren’t super-gorgeous, they certainly got the job done.  The move to the current console generation was, shall we say, a bit rough; ’06 was a fucking joke.  Off the top of my head, I’d put ’03 at the top of my overall list, and I’d probably put ’09 at the top of this generation’s run; ’09 looked great (not just in terms of graphics – the fonts looked really good, too), and they hadn’t fucked with the controls too much.

MGS4: conclusion

***MINOR MGS4 SPOILERS BELOW***

It’s funny. I spent most of last week getting all bent out of shape about MGS4, mostly because Act III was so ridiculous; but then I plowed through the rest of the game on Saturday, and now I find I don’t really have anything to say about it. Or, at least, there’s nothing for me to rant about.

Which is not a bad thing; I mean, I didn’t spend $60 so that I could actively hate something. And the more I think about it, the thing that would get me angry isn’t even the game’s fault – it’s the gaming press at large for not having the balls to call it out on certain glaringly obvious problems. I listened to Joystiq’s MGS4 podcast, and there was one dude in particular who did not have anything negative to say about the game at all. Now, I’m not saying that you have to say something negative about MGS4 in order to be validated in my book – I’m saying this dude played the game, and found everything about it to be perfect. This means he found nothing wrong with Act III, whose problems I covered in detail below. This even means he found nothing at all wrong with Meryl and Akiba/Johnny’s scene in Act V, which may very well be the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen, in any medium, ever. It was so ridiculous, in fact, that my wife – who was in the other room – would periodically walk in and yell, “Jesus Christ, will you two shut the fuck up? Why have you not died?” This means he had no problems with Otacon’s voice acting – and, lemme tell you, that guy should win the “Worst. Crier. Ever.” award. Nor did he have any problem with the fact that at least 5 or 6 characters in this game ought to be dead, considering how much damage they take, and none of them do. Hell, Raiden himself should have died 2 or 3 times in this game alone; I consider this a bit of a cop-out on Kojima’s part, but what do I know. I’m saying that if you are in any way a decent and honest journalist – not a fanboy, but a journalist whose primary responsibility should be the ability to remain objective – you can’t ignore this shit and pretend it’s not there. It may not have any impact on your enjoyment of the game, but considering how much of it there is here, it is a gross error in judgment to be willfully immune to it.

Anyway. I did eventually remember that the press wasn’t the one playing the game this weekend – it was me. And, ultimately, here’s what I can say about MGS4, and I think this could be said for both fans and haters: I’ve never had an experience like that before.

From a gameplay perspective, MGS4 is one of the best games I’ve ever played, and the more I think about it, the more I want to go back and try to play it better than I did before. I unlocked 3 trophies when I finished my first playthrough, and they all seemed to reflect that I killed everybody and stole all their weapons; I’d love to try it playing the way it’s supposed to be played – silent and stealthily. The fact that the game is fun either way is absolutely a testament to its rock-solid design and mechanics. The game rewards exploration – I loved that there were so many nooks and crannies to check out, especially since so many of them yielded loot. The game can be difficult but it’s almost never frustrating; any time I ran into trouble, I knew it was my fault – and in any event, I was able to play my way out of the problem most of the time. I maintain that the octocamo system is one of the coolest gameplay mechanics I’ve ever seen, just in terms of how it works in and of itself; the fact that it’s actually effective is even cooler.

From a story perspective… well, I don’t know how much more I can say about it without repeating myself. The truth of the matter is, it’s a sci-fi soap opera, and even if the storytelling is absurdly over-the-top and self-indulgent and just flat-out poor, there’s something strangely compelling about it – even if it frequently warrants mocking, which it most assuredly does. I think this game – hell, the whole franchise – could have been 100 times better if a real scriptwriter had been brought on board; at the very least, the game needs an editor who has the balls to tell Kojima enough is enough. The story is convoluted enough as it is – it would have been appreciated if coherence and clarity were considered as well.

Now, the big question is – what do I play next?

A discussion of MGS4, Act 3

I am ready to write about MGS4 today, being that I finished Act III last night, but first I want to quote something I just read.

This comes from PS3Fanboy, which links to Zero Punctuation’s pretty good MGS4 video:

Sometimes you have to wonder whether Yahtzee enjoys playing any games. This week he predictably lays into Metal Gear Solid 4 for exactly the reasons we expected. He dislikes the amount and length of the cutscenes , which are fair points. We know a lot of people can’t get passed (sic) the heavy story. He goes on to label the gameplay cluttered and says that the entire series is badly written. Strong words.

Obviously we don’t agree with what Yahtzee says, but the video is still hilarious — and in the end, that’s what Zero Punctuation is all about. Ignore the complaints for what they are, vehicles for his unique brand of humor. Our favorite part of this week’s episode has to be the insinuation that Snake and Otacon are more than just good friends. We must say, it crossed our mind at times while we were playing through the game, too.

What I love about this quote are the qualifiers. “Obviously we don’t agree… Ignore the complaints for what they are.” As if they have to quell the fanboy rage before it starts, as if by linking to anything somewhat derogatory about the sacred franchise, they themselves are now implicated and responsible. The “Obviously” part is the thing that kills me the most. Why is it obvious? Is it obvious because the site is called “PS3Fanboy”? Does that mean that anybody who says that MGS4 is nothing less than a gift from the heavens is somehow blaspheming? More to the point, is there any middle ground that MGS4 can fall into? Or can it only be a “love it / hate it unconditionally” sort of discussion?

I digress. (How apropos!) I’m not here to talk about the press; I’m here to talk about MGS4. Specifically, Act III.*

[Here there be spoilers, insofar as I mention a key character who first appears at this point in the game. I couldn’t possibly spoil the story, because that would imply that I know what the fuck is going on with any degree of specificity.]

As I said before, Act III is, so far, the perfect example of all there is to love and hate about the franchise. The actual gameplay in Act III is pretty exciting stuff – for starters, you’re no longer on a battlefield but rather in a very noir-ish urban environment, with lush sepia tones, and you’re tailing a member of a resistance organization to his hideout. Then, later, you’re on the back of a motorcycle, speeding through rain-slicked streets, shooting out soldiers and flying monster-things, and I should come right out and say that this was one of the coolest sections of any game I’ve ever played. And then, finally, you’re engaged in a pretty satisfying boss fight, who gradually destroys the building you’re using for cover.

That all sounds great, right? Except here’s the thing – those gameplay moments maybe add up to about 30 minutes, tops. The entire whole of Act III – not including the mission briefing – took up almost 2 and a half hours. Before you even start playing, there’s a cutscene which is (stop me if you’ve heard this one before) at least twice as long as it needs to be, especially considering that the information it’s imparting isn’t necessarily all that complicated. And then, sandwiched between the tailing section and the motorcycle section is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever seen in my entire life. The person you’re trying to meet is a 50-60ish Caucasian woman who goes by the name “Big Mama.” The only things big about her are her breasts, which I suppose is apt because she, as with every other female in this game, doesn’t believe in buttoning up the front of her shirt, so her boobs are just hanging out.

I’m surprised there hasn’t been more said about just how ridiculous and gratuitous the boobs are in this game. It’s been remarked upon in lots of other games – the Prince of Persia sequels come to mind, and the Ninja Gaiden and DOA games are known for their physically impossible boob physics – but as far as I know, nobody’s made any mention of the non-stop cleavage that abounds in MGS4.

Anyway. Big Mama shows up and suddenly the game just grinds to a halt as she spends at least 30 minutes droning about the backstory, speaking in an unending monotone – as if the voice actress simply gave up trying to figure out how to put any emotional weight behind what she was saying, partly because her dialog is so stilted and forced and no human being would ever talk like that, especially when Big Mama is revealing herself as Solid Snake’s mother. IIRC, there’s almost no physical interaction between the two of them in this scene – she simply walks through this church, zombie-like, intoning about Zero and Big Boss and The Boss (two different people?) and cloning and AI and the nature of warfare and the tragedy of what they’ve been through. I seem to recall one particular sequence where she explains how she came to be Snake’s mother, and Snake says something like “So you were a surrogate,” and she says “That’s an awfully cold way to put it”, and then 10 minutes later she says “I asked to serve as a surrogate”, as if the previous conversation specifically referencing that exact word hadn’t even happened.

I would go on, but that would imply that I could retain any of it. Luckily, we have the internet, so let’s just cut and paste some dialog from the script. But before I do, let me be clear: I don’t necessarily have a problem with the story, and I don’t have a problem with long cut scenes. My problem is that the story is told so poorly. Snake in particular seems to suffer from a particularly bad case of what my wife and I call “Legolas-itis”, except it’s somehow worse; Legolas (in the LOTR films, in case you weren’t following) often simply blurts out the obvious, with such pithy observations as “The horses are getting restless.” Snake can’t even blurt out the obvious – he is mostly reduced to repeating nouns of sentences he’s just heard.

I digress. Again. (How apropos!) Here’s some snippets from Act III.

Snake : I need to talk to you. Raiden sent me.

Big Mama : My, how you’ve grown… David. It was you, not I, who was
created from the rib of man.

[Big Mama places her hand on her stomach.]

Big Mama : But I gave you life. I am your mother.

[Snake stares at Big Mama in utter shocked.] (sic)

Snake : What?

Big Mama : Les Enfants Terribles. You can’t grow a human being in a
test tube… Not even a clone. You need a woman’s body to
give it life.

Snake : You mean… A surrogate mother?

Big Mama : That’s an awfully cold way to put it. I am your mother. I
gave birth… For the Patriots.

Snake : Gave… Birth?

…………………………………………………………..

Big Mama : The man who wants me dead… Is Liquid. Your twin. You think you know him, but I know him better. He was once Ocelot… But Liquid has taken control of his soul. And now he’s locked in a bitter struggle with Zero.

[Snake walks over to the front of Big Mama.]

Snake : “Zero?”

Big Mama : The founder of the Patriots.

Snake : Founder? When did this happen?

………………………………………………..

Big Mama : They’ve found us. We’re moving out.

[As Big Mama and the resistance members begin heading out the door, Snake receives another Codec transmission from Otacon.]

Otacon : Snake, the PMCs are converging on your location. Damn it! They’re sending in Gekko! They’ll be on you in less than five minutes!

[Snake hurries out the door after Big Mama.]

Big Mama : Are they ready?

Resistance : Yes, ma’am.

Big Mama : We’ll escape through the canal route using the real van. Get it ready. Hurry!

Resistance : Yes, ma’am.

Big Mama : Snake, over here. We’ve got decoy vans set to draw some of our pursuers away.

[Big Mama walks over to a sheet-covered object near the side of the church. She removes the sheet to reveal a Triumph motorcycle. Snake and Big Mama look on in the courtyard, watching the resistance members preparing for their escape.]

Big Mama : All of these children were orphans. They work in arms factories, and when they grow up, they want to join a PMC. They seek revenge on other companies… PMCs that killed their parents and use their earnings to support their younger siblings. There are countless child soldiers like these in the PMCs. Nowadays, anyone with a computer can get combat training. The FPS games these children love are distributed for free by these companies. Of course, it’s all just virtual training. It’s so easy for them to get absorbed by these war games. And before they know it, they’re in the PMCs holding real guns. These kids end up fighting in proxy wars that have nothing to do with their own lives. They think it’s cool to fight like this. They think that combat is life. They don’t need a reason to fight. After all, for them it’s only a game.

[Big Mama hands Snake a Vz. 83 submachine gun.]

Big Mama : Zero is the cause of all this. Defeating Liquid won’t change things. Unless we stop the Patriots’ System, the cycle will go unbroken.

[Big Mama gets on her motorcycle and starts the engine.]

Big Mama : Hop on. Hold on to me.

[Snake gets on the back of the motorcycle and hangs on to Big Mama’s waist. Allowing the engine to run for a few seconds, Big Mama calmly enhales the air around her.]

Big Mama : With so many wars being waged, oil and biofuel have become as precious as diamonds. It’s been a while since I went out for a ride.

Snake : You sure about this?

Big Mama : I only get off my bike when I fall in love… Or fall dead.

Snake : Big Mama….

Big Mama : Call me EVA.

I don’t get it. I don’t know how to get that. Again – I don’t care that Kojima has such lofty cinematic ambitions, but bad dialog is bad dialog and this, my friends, is among the worst. It lacks any semblance of humanity – it utterly lacks the rhythm of natural speech. I’m not saying that this game needs to be like a Mamet script, with people stepping all over each other – I’m just saying that people don’t talk like this, ever, not even when they’re high. People only talk like this in shitty sci-fi stories written by hyperactive 12-year-0lds, and I haven’t even talked about the character’s names. And when the gaming press refuses to acknowledge shit like this, it becomes very easy to understand why gaming still has a hard time getting taken seriously. If there was ANY indication from Kojima that this game’s story was meant to be looked at with an eye towards camp, then that would at least be something, but even then the scene could be twice as short and still be effective.

I’ve got 2 acts to ago, and it’s only because the gameplay itself is so refined that I’m staying with it until the end. But my bullshit quota is pretty much full up at this point.

* It should be noted right up front that I’m playing MGS4 on the “Naked Normal” difficulty, which is one step up from Super Easy. This is because I am trying to not hate the game, and so I’d rather be able to see everything there is to see first. I’m not sure if higher difficulties make the enemy AI smarter, or simply less easy to take down with a headshot; in any event, the enemy AI is pretty fucking stupid. At one point in Act III, there’s a helicopter hovering over a city square, with a search light that points all over the ground. I had inadvertently set off an alarm (I’m still not sure how), and ended up taking out the helicopter with an RPG. Literally within 20 seconds of the helicopter exploding, I intercepted a message from an enemy patrolman saying that the sector was now “all clear.” This is preposterous.

MGS4; second impressions

I didn’t get a chance to play MGS4 until this past Sunday, and only for 20-30 minutes at most. That was enough time, however, for me to get pretty bent out of shape about it.

I wrote this at the time, in a forum thread that somehow is still alive and kicking 3 days later:

I’ve only played about 20 minutes of MGS4, but I defy anybody to explain to me how a game franchise that is so deliberately obtuse, pretentious and self-indulgent can get such consistently high scores – especially when the actual game part of the game isn’t necessarily that ground-breaking. It’s true that the game is a bit easier to get into – the controls are still somewhat non-intuitive (especially compared to every other 3rd person action game) but at least they do all the things you need to do… But it’s also true that after 8 minutes of installation, and then another 5 minutes of completely bizarre and unexplained television footage, and then another 5 minutes of in-engine cutscenes that explain what you’re doing (as much as such a thing is possible), you spend exactly 20 seconds moving Snake around before you figure out you need to crawl under a truck and then there’s another 3 minutes of cutscene.

…So, then. Why am I still playing it? This game has its head shoved so far up its own ass that it’s almost painful to watch, and yet there’s something oddly compelling about it. I don’t get it. How does a game that’s so incredibly divisive get such good scores? Every positive review out there – and there are tons – all make some sort of mention about how if you don’t like the MGS series, you won’t like MGS4, and that there are perfectly valid reasons for people to NOT like these games (the incredibly convoluted story, the uneven pacing between gameplay and cutscenes, the unintuitive controls, the just-plain-WEIRDNESS), and then they give out a 10 in spite of all of it.
…

I’ve got nothing wrong with cutscenes. If that’s how your story has to be told, then I hope you make good use of it. My problem with the MGS4 cutscenes is that they’re used self-indulgently and without any thought given to pacing or rhythm. The beginning of MGS4 – there’s no reason to have that many breaks in the action, especially when you’re still trying to get used to the controls, and ESPECIALLY when most of the stuff that Snake is doing in those first few cutscenes are things that you could very easily be doing yourself.

…

I wouldn’t have bought the game in the first place if I was determined to hate it. What I was hoping for was someone to tell me why MGS4 is so awesome, and to explain what it is that I’m not getting, instead of someone telling me my opinion is for shit. It’s true that I think that the MGS franchise is the most overrated franchise in the entire history of gaming, and that could maybe even extend to cover movies, art, books, and any other works of art with multiple sequels out there. But I was still ready to give MGS4 a chance – hell, I still am. I own a PS3, this is arguably the biggest exclusive title the PS3 is going to get this year, I want to enjoy it. I’m not giving up on it. I just want to know what it is that I’m not getting. I consider myself a reasonably intelligent and informed person, and yet I remain totally in the dark as to why people love this series so much, especially since the first 20 minutes of the game do as much to alienate a newcomer to the series as they do to give fanboys multiple orgasms.

I think that’s my biggest question. I understand why GTA4 got 10s. I can respect why a great RTS game will get great reviews, even if I don’t know how to play RTSs and haven’t ever really cared about them. What I don’t understand is that pretty much every review that’s come out for MGS4 has had at least one clause where they say that if you hate the series already, you’ll continue to hate MGS4. Shouldn’t a great work of art be something that doesn’t alienate a large percentage of the people who experience it? How does something so divisive get such universal praise? I know I’m stepping into dangerous waters here, which is why I specifically used the word “alienate”. Lots of great works of art have been controversial; lots of great works of art have been hated. MGS4, on the other hand… is it really something that is only accessible to fans of the franchise? And if so, how does that make it great?

…

The fact that this game has very clearly defined areas where one could find fault (and [Caro‘s term] “Kojima–ness” is as close as any other term there is to describe what I’m referring to) is something that raises a red flag, as far as I’m concerned, in terms of any sort of discussion about how awesome this game is. If any other game, made by any other developer, had this much Kojima–ness, I’m not sure it would get the same sort of fawning treatment in the gaming press. The fact that this game has SO MUCH Kojima–ness is being labeled a benefit. This is also what I mean when I said earlier that this franchise has its head stuck as far up its own ass as it possibly can go.

If people like it, that’s awesome, and good for them. I remain not only unconvinced, but dumbfounded.

Again, this was written on Monday, when I was still a neophyte, when I had barely dipped my toes in the vast pool of insanity that is MGS4.

I put in about 90 minutes tonight. Well, it’s hard to say for sure – my PS3 was on for 90 minutes or so, and MGS4 was spinning in the drive, but I was really only in control of Snake for about half of that. But I think I’m starting to get it.

I won’t be spoiling anything by revealing where I am – I’m barely in Act 1. I just got to the first new area after you get the barrel, which occurs right after you meet the soda-swilling arms dealer and his soda-swilling monkey, who happen to be in a room directly next to a room that, moments before, had been swarming with bad guys, who I happened to kill.

The cutscene with the arms dealer very much epitomizes this “Kojima–ness” that is so problematic. The scene itself serves several specific and necessary functions:

  • it occurs right after a somewhat lengthy sequence where you are sneaking around in some underground bunkers, and so it offers the player a break and a reward;
  • it introduces you to a key character (the unfortunately named “Drebin“, because every time I hear that name I can only think of Leslie Nielsen in The Naked Gun movies, but every time I actually see him I can’t help but think of Zach, the flamboyant black man from the Dead or Alive games);
  • it introduces a crucial gameplay mechanic (i.e., how you acquire new guns and modifications); and
  • it fleshes out some of the backstory (something about the “war economy”, nanotechnology and the arms trade).

Relatively straightforward, right? Except this scene is at least twice as long as it needs to be, with a script so hokey it would make a 10th grade English teacher blush, and, as said above, it prominently features a monkey who drinks soda. This is also leaving aside the quality of the voice-acting, which is obviously a subjective point of discussion but I have to say that for the most part, the voice-acting in this game is beyond stupid. The guy doing Snake is trying so hard to be an old, grizzled badass but instead he sounds like a very constipated man who is constantly being annoyed. The entire scene is a series of non-sequiturs. The scene is so ridiculous in its conception that it ends up distracting the player from what its actual purpose is.

Any other game would have gotten killed for this kind of storytelling, but somehow this game gets away with it. And the truth of it is, once I stopped being a critical observer and instead let the silliness wash over me like a wave, I kinda got sucked into it. I don’t quite understand how that happened. It’s like Kojima is a goddamned magician.

I was trying to explain this “Kojima-ness” to my wife, who didn’t quite understand. But then I asked her to imagine if Star Wars: A New Hope was released for the very first time right now, in its exact same form, with the same silly dialog and hammy acting and melodramatic story, and how stupid it would seem. She said, “But hold on, Star Wars is a great movie.” And I said, “Now you understand what I’ve been going through, explaining why I think the Metal Gear series is so overrated to a bunch of Metal Gear fans.”

I have to admit – I’m ready to keep playing. I still don’t understand how I got sucked in, but it’s starting to happen, and it’s weird.