Why can MMOs leave you with the worst experience of any gaming genre? The "MM" part. Massively multiplayer games leave plenty of room for you to play with total douchebags. The guys that find it fun to ruin experience of folks new to the game. A game could be the funnest game ever created, but if a level 60 is running around the level 3 area, killing all the monsters before the level 3s can, what's the fun? At your level, killing those level 3 rats is all there is in the game for you. If they're all dead, you get frustrated and quit playing.
It's a good season for console gaming! Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2, Godfather 2, inFamous, Prototype, Assasin's Creed 2, another Ratchet and Clank game... Granted some of those aren't coming out for a while still.
So I'm making a game. Finally.
My first plan was to build it for the iPhone. But iPhone apps are written in Objective-C (I theoretically know C and C++, but haven't used either since college), written on the Mac (I've had mine for 2 years but rarely use it), and deployed out through the iTunes Store's processes (third thing to learn). All those new bits to learn aren't bad, but it's overwhelming to start. $300 later I abandoned the iPhone app idea.
But I've been playing MafiaWars a LOT on Facebook. It's an AJAX heavy PHP game. So I thought, "what if I target Facebook?" More users than the iPhone and I could write the app in ColdFusion and/or Flex. So I'm going down that road now. The security's built in, so easy to add an app, and easier to turn into money. Give the game for free, pay to enhance it. Versus the iPhone where you build the game, then strip it down for a free demo, then have add ons for bonus in game points or something.
ColdSpring, ColdBox, Illudium generated code... squee!
And though I don't have as much free time to code as I might like (see all the WoW posts), I'm liking CF front end programming more than Flex again. It's fast, you don't have to recompile the whole thing and drill back to what you were testing, very easy to push out partial updates (opposed to having the whole app in a few swfs). Before getting back into CF like I have lately, if forced to make the decision, I'd give up CF before Flex, but now it's the other way around. I'd forgotten why I love the language!
After playing iMob (a rip off of MafiaWars from Facebook) on my iPhone, I figured it can't be that hard to make a game for the iPhone. I've posted before about game ideas and now am wondering if the iPhone would be a better platform than the web browser. It's a smaller audience, but there's no worries of browsers and version and JavaScript being turned off and to start making money, just add features and release a 99cent version. So another aspect of most games has been lingering in my mind... DEATH!
Any game with combat or platforming or a timed objective has a "game over" or "death". And many games (or rather, game genres) have different ways to handle it. Some have you restart the level or from the last checkpoint. Some have you reload the last save. MMORPGs all handle it differently. World of Warcraft damages your equipped items by 10% and makes you run as a spirit back to your body. Asheron's Call 2 would make you run back to your body naked AND give you XP debt. City of Heroes just has the XP debt. The Realm would have you randomly drop some items (for anyone else in the room to take) and lose a percentage of your total XP, up to a certain number of levels lost.
So what's the best? The City of Heroes XP debt was the reason I quit the game. Losing your gear made death a VERY bad thing in The Realm. I certainly like WoW's method the most, but running back to your body as a spirit wouldn't apply in a game without a big map. It has to be enough of an annoyance that you'll avoid dying, but not so much that you'll give up on the game. In iMob when you die at level 5, you lose 5 XP, the equivalent of 25 minutes of doing missions. I uninstalled the game as soon as I saw that.
It's also important that the death handling in a game fit into the feel of the rest of the game. If my game involves zombies and you're the zombie master and you die fighting a lich, your surviving minions could drag you back to the lair. And if all your minions are dead, what then? Once you're back at the lair, what will your zombie minions do to revive you, and at what cost?
Yea for getting carpal tunnel playing on your phone! With the iPhone 2.0 update last week, so came a wealth of apps. I naturally went right for the (free) game category.
The other day at work, I was messing with drag and drop in Flex for the first time and was surprised at how easy it is. As always, my mind starting thinking "how can I make a game out of this?" And the answer was obvious: Make a dungeon!! I played Dungeon Maker: Hunting Ground for PSP a LOT. Way too long, far past when the game is interesting and fun and deep into the terrain of "this game sucks, but how does it end?"
Goodbye WoW, hello PS3. Being able to download demos right to your next system is so sweet. So I've gone hogwild and here are some demo reviews! Just think, 15 years ago when the undisputed best game of all time, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, was released (damn I feel old saying that), "camera controls" were non-existent in games. Now it alone can break a game.
Heavenly Sword
Here was my complete experience with the demo: Long download, long install, long load time, /skipscene, 6 minutes of play time, long load time for friend, /skipscene, 6 minutes of play time, delete the demo. I thought the game would be far more God of War feeling, but alas.
Bladestorm
WAAAAAAANT!! The demo can take 15 minutes or 2 hours. I'd recommend dragging it out 2 hours. Still another month until this is released, can't wait. Fight in the 100 Year War as a mercenary. Lots of upgrades to get, lots of killing to do.
Clive Barker's Jericho
A FPS with plot? What? No. If you wanted to play this game, watch the intro movie, where all the characters are introduced. You won't want to play the game anymore.
Stranglehold
Cool in theory, though far from original, going into slow-mo mode for shooting guys, but the controls are no good. Using two sticks moving around and shooting, I always end up looking at the sky or ground. Need a mouse.
Stuntman: Ignition
I didn't play the original Stuntman, but I heard the load times killed the play experience. This has very quick level resets and has very fun levels. I'm hoping the full game lets you control the camera angles in the replay, the AI ends up making a terrible movie. I think this would be worth the investment, could be a really fun game (until Burnout is released for PS3).
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
I was trying to stack some furniture so I could talk to the painting that was calling me over and get a warning saying "demo will expire in 1 minute". WTF? A timed demo? They removed content from the demo AND limit how long you can play. Doesn't make me want the game at all. Bet this is fun on Wii, waving your wand around.
Full Auto 2: Battlelines
1080p Twisted Metal, hmm. Put guns and missiles and mines on your car and blow up other cars, what's not fun about that? Guessing this is good as a party game, assuming 4 people can play on one system.
Skate
Very interesting control system for a skateboarding game. Rather than skating up to a rail and hitting square to automatically start griding on it, you flick the right stick to make your character ollie up onto the rail. Seems more realistic, but I'm not about to master the game and assume that knowledge transfers to the real thing (I'm looking at you, Guitar Hero fans).
Armored Core 4
At the start of the demo, it says it features the game at an early stage of development. I'm hoping that's it. The controls are a mess.
Folklore
Pokemon, but it's with demon souls. Nice use of the motion sensing controller, you "yank" the souls out
Blast Factor
A puzzle game purchasable from the PSstore, $9.99. Hectic, but fun.
Years ago in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City for PS2, I noticed that whatever car you're currently driving, you see more of on the road. I dubbed this the GTA Effect. Shortly after, I got my Blazer, and proved the GTA Effect holds true in real life. I don't remember seeing a Blazer before I got mine, suddenly they were everywhere. This continued to hold true when I got rid of the Blazer and got my Impala. Now I never see Blazers (of course, it helps that they were discontinued), but Impalas were everywhere. Now I just got rid of the Impala for an Equinox. I'm not seeing other Equinoxes on the road, but all the sister cars and other crossover class cars from other companies (Pontiac Torrent, Ford Edge, etc) are everywhere. I wonder if it's that I'm more prone to notice a car when I'm driving the same thing, or if I'm a major trend setter and whatever car I buy, everyone else in the area decides to get too.
If you've ever played Kingdom Hearts 2, you know the most powerful command in the game is [Skip Scene]. The plot absolutely sucks. The same can be said for volume 1 of the new .hack series, G.U. Voice actors are awful, dialog is terrible and slow, and you have no option to speed through the conversation, just skip to it.
Not only am I spending my Sunday night at home alone playing video games, but I'm playing a game where I'm controlling a character that's playing a game. The .hack games take place inside a fake MMO, where the characters are far too into the game. In this one, there's a character (which looks like the main guy from the first .hack series, I never saw the ending of that so it might be him) that goes around killing other characters and by doing so, put their real life selves into a coma.
...
And the main character of this game stated that he thinks if he can find and kill the other character, that the people will come out of their real life coma.
... right ...
So you skip anytime people start talking. The game does a good job of keeping track of what you're supposed to do, almost like they're anticipating the plot to be unwatchable. Once you're past all that, the same is pretty fun. You gain levels quickly, the random world generation allows for near infinite places to fight monsters, and the computer controlled characters are actually useful in combat.
The last .hack series of games went by really quickly if you stuck just to the plot, but it's hard to not start exploring the random dungeons to collect l33ter lewts. But also like the other series, you're better off renting. Since the video game series will go on for probably 3 more games, you know each game will be short and with a predetermined level cap. Or get it from Game Stop and beat it in a week, to return it for full value.
Blizzard finally released a mini site about StarCraft II! I'm a bit shocked that Blizzard's even bothering to make more games, since they're raking in the loot with World of Warcraft. There's no date on it and the details are all very sketchy. I saw an article in a recent Game Informer, suggesting other games "now that you're board with WoW" Guess it's best to diversify your game base before your main source starts to decline. Based on how long Blizzard usually takes to polish a game, I wouldn't expect anything before Q1 2008. What they have so far looks nice. I'll keep my eye on this! StarCraft was one of the biggest games of all time, I would guess. I'm guessing the sequel will be labeled as one of the most anticipated releases of all time. StarCraft was released in 1998, but you can still find it on the shelf of any video game store. How many non-MMO games are on the shelf for 2 years, much less 9?
