Summer Gaming Drought
The current lack of new releases is painfully obvious. Not only have I been deeply sucked in by relatively minor new stuff such as Half-Life 2: Episode 1 and Street Fighter Alpha Anthology, but I've recently caught myself getting swept up in random old stuff--such as firing up Guild Wars (which I haven't played in well over a year) just for the heck of it, or playing Quake III on Dreamcast, of all things. One evening I spent several hours playing Oolite, an open-source remake of the classic space sim Elite. This is the sort of idle game noodling that I do when there's nothing truly compelling around.
It's kind of funny (and perhaps disturbing) how even though I have this massive library of great games at my finger-tips, many of which I've only just scratched the surface of, I continue to pine for new releases. A large part of it is the excitement and potential of the "unknown" games forth-coming. I can go back and revisit old games or play games from years ago that I've never seen before, but either way I can't shake the feeling that I've been there and done that. It really would be good for me to pick up something that I never properly mastered and take the time to really enjoy it, but it seems to take a lot for an old game to really surprise me anymore. With a new release, there is always that exciting possibility that I'll get a novel experience out of it.
That having been said, it looks like I'm going to have to find some way to cope for the next couple of months, because it's not until late August that I see anything on the horizon to get very worked up about. Of course there will be some nice-to-have releases between now and then, and I'll have some good gaming experiences like I've had with Half-Life 2: Ep 1 and Street Fighter Alpha Anthology in the last few weeks, but I'm also going to have to largely occupy myself with finally polishing off Disgaea, perhaps starting on Digital Devil Saga II, getting better at Tourist Trophy, and other staple delights such as Counter-Strike: Source and Day of Defeat: Source.
As for when the drought may let up, I'll list five titles in chronological order that I'm currently looking forward to. All of the really big stuff (World of WarCraft expansion, Final Fantasy XII, Zelda: Twilight Princess) is holding off until October or later, so these are five titles coming out no later than the end of September that have caught my eye. The release dates are off of EBGames.com. You'll also notice that almost all of these are PS2 games.
King of Fighter 2006 (Aug 22nd, PlayStation 2)
I completely skipped out on KoF: Maximum Impact, which is supposed to have sucked really badly, but I do like tournament fighters a great deal. It sounds like this one is going to be a big improvement over Max Impact, even though it is still going to be 3D. The 3D thing is a pity (even Street Fighter wasn't able to properly make the transition to 3D with the EX series), but who knows--maybe it'll end up being worthwhile. If nothing else, I'd like to demonstrate that there is still a market for KoF games by buying into this one.
Disgaea 2 (Aug 29th, PlayStation 2)
This is a no-brainer, really--I'm a big fan of Nippon Ichi RPGs, and I've already sunk over 60 hours into the original Disgaea. I'll probably be playing Disgaea 2 long after I've gotten my Wii, even.
Yakuza (Sept 1st, PlayStation 2)
On the down side, this is yet another Grand Theft Auto rip-off. On the plus side, it's supposedly a very good Grand Theft Auto rip-off, and with a badass Yakuza theme to boot. I never bothered with San Andreas, so the last GTA game I payed any attention to was Vice City. It's probably been long enough now that I can stomach another one.
Okami (Sept 5th, PlayStation 2)
I want this game largely for the same reason that I want to go see "
A Scanner Darly": it sounds moderately entertaining and has lots of eye candy. This looks like exactly the kind of game that I'll be willing to forgive for being mediocre in every other respect as long as the visuals are entertaining. And if it turns out to be a solid game on top of that, well, that'll be a nice bonus.
Neverwinter Nights 2 (Sept 19th, PC)
Neverwinter Nights is a very worthwhile RPG, mostly due to the fantastic toolset that allows you to create your own NWN modules. I haven't been keeping a close eye on what BioWare is planning for the sequel, but if they can improve on the experience provided by the original, I'll definitely be in for that
The Wastefully Temporal Nature of the Gaming Industry Today
I've ranted about this before, but one thing that really ticks me off about the gaming industry is how short-lived its products are. As gamers, we are generally expected to shell out hundreds of dollars for console hardware with an expected shelf life of four to six years along with hundreds--if not thousands--more on games that become outdated along with the hardware that they're tied to, unless one turns to emulator software. In this respect, gamers stand alone in the multi-media industry; audiophiles, bookworms, and movie buffs can all expect that whatever format they buy their media in will continue to be useable for at least ten year, if not longer. I'm confident that audio CDs and video DVDs sold today will still be playable on home media center equipment in another decade--perhaps even two. As a gamer, I long to have the same sense of reassurance about my extensive PlayStation 2 game library.
And to some extent, console makers have improved their act. That the PlayStation 2 is backward compatible with PS1 games is a huge step, and I hope that the PlayStation 3 does a better job of continuing the trend than the XBox 360 has done with its respective line of games. Nintendo is promising that the Wii will play not only GameCube games, but that classic Nintendo games of all eras will be available on it, which is exciting news. There is one problem that I have with Nintendo's plan, though: I still own a fair number of NES, SNES, and N64 games. Why should I have to repurchase the right to play them on newer hardware? And even if I do bother to pay additional fees to play games that I already legally own on the Wii, will Nintendo offer any reassurance that I won't have to repurchase these games yet again in some other form in the future? I've already shelled out money to have games on PS2 (stuff included in compilation titles like the Mega Man Anniversary Collection) that I already had in NES cart form.
For that matter, I have a bunch of Sega CD, Sega Saturn, and Sega Dreamcast games as well. They're all on CD-ROM, and it's a pain in the ass to dig out the requisite hardware to play them--and that's assuming that my old consoles (most of which are sitting in the closet gathering dust) are still in working order. Someday I hope that there will be good enough emulation software available that I'll be able to put these discs into my PC and play these great games conveniently. But then, there's still the worry that I'll lose my precious copy of Lunar: The Silver Star story for Sega CD and have no way to replace it. I'm lucky enough to have a copy in the first place, at least--there are gamers out there who would appreciate the chance to play this classic game if it were even possible to legally buy a copy at a fair price.
Can you imagine how cool it would be to walk into a game store and for it to be as well stocked as a book store or a music shop? I would love to walk into such a store and browse the Sega Saturn section for $10 import RPGs. I would love for Dreamcast games to still be relavent. I would love to be able to buy a copy of Parappa the Rapper, which was a massive hit in its day.
And you have to consider that I'm an old hat at this video game business, relatively speaking. I already have a massive library of most of my all-time favourite games. There are younger and/or newer gamers out there who have heard about games like Parappa the Rapper and Lunar: The Silver Star and have never had a chance to play them--or, if they have had a chance, it was probably because they pirated a copy using the internet. How many people still go out to the music store and buy old CDs? Nirvana and The Beatles still sell records, I'm sure. Couldn't the same hold true for video games? Is the video game industry losing a ton of money simply because they're not supplying any of what there's demand for?
Some people would say that because old games have inferior graphics, sound, and overall production values that they would not hold up in today's market. Hogwash, I say. Classic games like Space Invaders and Pac-Man are still enjoyed today, even by gamers who grew up with PlayStation 2 and XBox. People still play old fighting games like Street Fighter 2 and the original Tekken for the old school novelty factor. Retro gaming in general has a strong appeal, and there is a place for it.
That leaves us with the challenge of how gamers are going to be able to play these old console games even if they were still being published. In Parappa the Rapper, one sees a partial solution: because the PlayStation 2 is backward compatible (and the PS3 should be as well), players could already still play that game if only it were on store shelves. Things get a bit stickier with Lunar: The Silver Star, though. If one owns a Sega CD console, one can legally use emulator software on their PC to play it (even if the Sega CD is busted, which mine isn't.) But for new-comers, what is there to do?
I know just enough about computers and electronics to know that it wouldn't be hard, from a technical standpoint, to create a standard all-in-one console for playing old games. If the major players in the gaming industry could come together and develop some kind of system with roughly the same power as an original XBox that would sell for about $150 and could play all games for Sega CD, Saturn, Dreamcast, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, and XBox, that would be a huge deal. While they're at it, they could publish old Nintendo games on CD-ROM, and also emulate more exotic consoles like Neo-Geo, Panasonic 3DO, etc. If I could buy a brand new copy of a 3DO game for $10 at the local game store, I would do it just for the sheer novelty value--and I would buy several if I could actually play them too.
The Coup de Grace would be for this all-in-one console to have some kind of I/O port that one could buy adapters for to be able to plug in old carts for NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, N64, GameBoy, and other cartridge-based systems. For the memory cards, use a standard format like Compact Flash. For the gamepads, sell adapters for vintage console controllers, and also manufacture some new ones for good measure. The gamepads don't have to be cheap; I'm willing to bet that a lot of gamers would shell out $50 for a Sega Saturn controller redux to play Street Fighter on, or for a brand new, bona fide NES controller. My point here is that the hardware could easily be sold at a break-even (or near break-even) price point and people would still buy it.
As for the software, this is perhaps the best part of the whole idea: the games have already been developed. All the publishers have to do is dig out the old images for CD-ROM games for PlayStation, Sega CD, Saturn, and Dreamcast, and take those suckers to press. Those games are pure profit; people like me would pay $10 per title to buy dozens of them at a time, and the publishers would incur no additional development costs. The profit margin would be so huge that it makes my head spin. That only leaves me with one burning, almost haunting question:
When is somebody going to get their shit together and actually make this dream a reality?
Day of Defeat: Source
Day of Defeat may very well be the perfect FPS, and its sequel, Day of Defeat: Source, brings the series from the old Half-Life engine into the much more advanced Half-Life 2 "Source" engine. Given how much I enjoy this game, and how I've recently been meaning to write a rant about how great it is, I was taken aback when I noticed its lack-lustre score over on Metacritic. Day of Defeat: Source has a meta score of only 80, while the user score is a much more respectable 9.3 out of 10 from 426 user votes. What's with the huge disparity?
One thing I noticed is that a lot of critics panned DoD: Source because upon release it only had four maps available. 1up.com gave the game a score of 60 and had the following to say about it:
Taken with the limitations of only four maps, on which to play one game type, all too soon you can find yourself in a mechanical rut playing them over and over. And that's something that the original didn't suffer from.
PC Gamer gave it 79, saying "[g]reat fun, but tough to recommend until more maps are available."
Some other sources complained about the strictly multi-player nature of DoD: Source. IGN gave it a score of 84 with the following comment:
I expect to be playing DoD a lot more than "Couterstrike: Source" [...] I recommend DoD:S to the multiplayer action crowd, but don't come crying to me when things start getting stale.
And PC Format, with its score of 81, said "It's firmly a team game, rocketing from tense action to a tedious slog, based entirely on how the rest of your team plays. [Dec 2005 p.91]"
A third trend centered around the game's WW II theme, which many critics seem to assume gives DoD a more or less fringe appeal. Gamespot scored the game at 81 and said the following:
While a lack of maps cuts into the game's value somewhat, Day of Defeat: Source still offers a satisfying and exciting experience for those who just can't get enough of World War II.
And Electric Playground scored the game 80 saying "[a] great game if you are a fan of the WW2 genre and a previous fan of the DOD series, but if not, you might find greater value in another WW2 title."
Now the first of these criticisms--the lack of maps--only applies to Day of Defeat: Source, and applies less and less as time goes by since new maps are being released continually (there are a couple of new ones scheduled for release on June 28th, in fact.) For comparitive purposes, I decided to check the meta score of the original Day of Defeat, and I was surprised to find the disparity between critical reviews and fan scores to be even greater. Day of Defeat has a meta score of 79 while 180 fans gave it an average score of 9.7 out of 10.
This brings me to my first point about why Day of Defeat is so excellent--particularly the original, although DoD: Source is catching up--and that is the absolutely brilliant level design. DoD features some of the best maps that I've ever played in any FPS game, period. Not all of the maps are good, of course, but when it comes to multiplayer FPS games, I find that the quality of the game's top three to five best maps matters more than the quality of all of the other maps. That is to say that for an FPS game to be utterly amazing, it really only needs to have a handful of hits in its map lineup; if a bunch of the maps are just filler, that's forgiveable, but only if those few top maps are so great that players have dreams about them.
I do agree with some of the criticism that DoD is narrow in scope as a strictly multiplayer game. To me, this is by design; whining that DoD (by which I mean to refer to both the original game and DoD: Source) is repetitive and lacks variety is like complaining that Space Invaders is repetitive and lacks variety. There are lots of FPS games out there strive to offer many different play modes (Unreal Tournament 2004) or an open-ended experience with regards to how the player chooses to play the game (Battlefield 2.) Day of Defeat is not trying to compete with these games on that level--rather, it strives to be a singular but pure gaming experience, and I strongly believe that it deserves praise for this outlook rather than admonishment. As classic games like Pac-Man or Joust demonstrate, the best games are not necessarily the games that provide the user with the most impressively broad experience, and I think Day of Defeat is a game that understands that very well.
Finally, while it may be true that DoD appeals to WW II genre fans because of its theme, I object to the labelling of the game as a fringe title for that reason. DoD has the same kind of general appeal as Counter-Strike, and in fact the two games are different takes on a very similar gameplay style. Some would say that DoD is less strategic than C-S, but I contend that it is merely a different kind of strategy. Certainly the biggest gameplay difference between the two is that in C-S one doesn't respawn until the start of a new round, whereas the respawn in DoD is continuous. DoD is also about capturing strategic points, whereas C-S concerns itself with more "capture the flag" style objectives (rescue/guard hostages, detonate/diffuse a bomb, or eliminate the other team.) There are definitely times when DoD has a very meat-grinder like progression--one respawns, runs into the thick of the action, and gets cut down in a flurry of chaotic gunfire--but this sort of thing happens in other multiplayer FPSes like Counter-Strike and Battlefield 2 as well. The real difference with DoD is that it happens more frequently because one always respawns quickly and the maps are relatively small.
In my view, the Day of Defeat formula comprises three crucial factors:
- high lethality
- small, potent maps
- fast respawn
The result is truly epic.
Ever since I got my first taste of high lethality FPSes, I've never really respected FPSes where the lethality is very low. When I used to play Goldeneye on Nintendo 64 (remember that crappy ray-tracer engine?) with Fritzkrieg, we quickly fell into the habit of always maxing out or nearly maxing out the lethality of the weapons, because the game just "felt right" that way. Low lethality works better in a single player FPS where the goal is epic shoot-outs against armies of low-intelligence bots; otherwise the low lethality makes the game feel like some kind of tournament fighter--seriously, like Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat--rather than a genuine FPS experience. Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament got it right when they took the low lethality and turned it into some kind of fighting tournament style experience. Rainbow Six got it right when they decided that a one-shot kill wasn't an unreasonable thing to have in an FPS game. With Day of Defeat, the fact that it only takes one or two hits to kill or be killed makes the game that much more intense, and intensity is a big part of the DoD experience.
That is also why the maps are so small. Fans of Tribes and the Battlefield series are big on the sweeping maps of epic scope, and I readily admit that there is a place for that kind of thing. But there is also a place for an FPS that simulates a concentrated core of fighting. In Battlefield 2, the action generally centers around one or two contested "hot spots" that dynamically shift around as the situation changes, and that is a big part of the appeal of the game. With Day of Defeat, you never have to figure out where the center of action is, or worry about finding a vehicle to take you there, because you always spawn right near it. The maps in Day of Defeat aren't so small that the same dynamic of shifting "hot spots" doesn't still apply, but it is designed so that these hot spots are always within reasonable walking distance of where the players spawn. And although the maps are small in area, they are rich and detail and usually interesting to navigate through; by comparison, Battlefield 2 maps seem rather sparse.
The fast respawn creates an obvious design problem in that with most DoD maps when one team gets down to their last objective point, they all spawn near it and its difficult for the other team to capture it. DoD does a good job of keeping this problem in hand, however--I've only found that a few maps are frustrating in this regard (dod_flash is one, I think, and dod_avalance, as awesome as it is, can be bad for this as well.) The real problem, perhaps, is that overcoming this obstacle requires a bit of teamwork, and teamwork can be difficult to achieve with strangers online. Still, the disadvantages of having such a fast respawn cycle are outweighed by the advantages; after all, the theme of Day of Defeat is epic WW II battles, and the fast respawn creates the illusion that there are hundreds of soldiers involved in the battle. If you don't like it, you can always play Counter-Strike.
Speaking of the theme, another one of Day of Defeat's strengths is how colourfully themed it is. I've always been amazed by the characteristic feel of the weapons in DoD; nothing kills an FPS faster than generic-feeling weapons, and few things are as satisfying about a great FPS as when the weapons feel genuine. Through good artistic resources and excellent map design, DoD also crafts a very gritty sort of WW II setting. This isn't the sort of FPS where the WW II setting was chosen simply as a place-holder; one can feel that the game designers really invested themselves in it personally.
Overall, Day of Defeat is a powerful package, and one of the single most exciting games that I've ever played. Certainly it is limited in scope and provides an experience that might not appeal to you at all, but it is not one of those games merely for WW II afficionadoes, and it is not simply a cheap novelty FPS created as one of those campy "FPS mods gone pro." Day of Defeat fully contributes to the development of the artistic medium of video games, and I believe that it is the sort of classic game that will never go out of fashion.
---
As a brief aside, I've still been playing lots of Dawn of War, and while I continue to greatly enjoy the game (it's certainly one of the best RTS games that I've ever played), it has really started to show its colours as being a very mainstream, StarCraft-like game. In spite of my earlier rant about it, I'm no longer convinced that my buddy Matt would necessarily get much out of the game, although he might be won over by the colourful Warhammer 40k theme.
I'm also now up to 56 hours in Disgaea and not quite finished, although the game's appeal is holding out very well and in many ways I'm enjoying it more now than ever before. I still hope to finish it soon.
Wii > PS3?
Until recently, my take on the dynamics of the upcoming "next generation" of game consoles had been fairly well defined. The XBox 360 is playing its "doomed to fail" role quite well (I'll admit that there's still hope for it), which leaves me buying both a PlayStation 3 and a Nintendo Wii, where the PS3 is the main attraction and the Wii is the sideshow--sort of like how currently my PS2 is my primary console and the GameCube is there for backup. I don't even own an XBox, which isn't to say that I don't like the XBox, because I do, but I don't see the same appeal in the XBox 360 that I found in the original. Anyway, my original plan was to buy a PlayStation 3 immediately at launch and wait to see how appealing the Wii really is before getting one. But lately the Wii is sounding better and better, and the PlayStation 3 is sounding, well, worse.
Initially I was excited by the PS3's promises to be the true "next gen" console with powers far out-classing the XBox 360. I was assuming that Microsoft had merely jumped the gun and that the PS3 would be better because it was coming out a full year later, but it's now aparent that part of the reason that the PS3 is going to be more powerful is because it's going to be much more expensive. We're seeing Moore's Law failing for the first time in the console arena, and since the power of the hardware hasn't doubled in the last 18 months, Sony's approach would seem to be to just use hardware that's twice as expensive and pass the cost along to the consumer.
Meanwhile, while Nintendo certainly isn't shy about throwing gimmicks out there (motion-sensitive controllers? the name "Wii"?), they also seem to know what they're doing. The Wii is not going to be a powerful console hardware-wise in comparison to the XBox 360 and the PlayStation 3, but Nintendo's far lower price-point gives them a unique advantage here, and the Nintendo brand may be as strong as it's been in the last 10 years right now. The Wii generated tons of buzz at E3 and it seems that everyone ranging from gamers, to critics, to Nintendo's own competitors want to see the Wii succeed. Meanwhile, gamers are feeling more than a little sting of betrayal at the news that the PS3's price is going to be significantly higher than console fans have ever been charged before for a gaming system. And, of course, the XBox 360 is blowing their early advantage by not having yet put out any "must have" games.
This week has been the final straw for me. First I hear that the Wii is going to feature Nintendo DS connectivity, which I guess is pretty obvious, but the news did remind me of the fun times I've had playing games like Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles and Zelda: Four Swords. And today I read on IGN that the Wii may come out earlier than expected and may even beat the PS3 to market. Somehow that made the last puzzle piece click into place, and I realised that as much as I'm confident in the success of the PlayStation 3, I might be better off using my money to buy a Nintendo Wii on launch day and wait six months to see how well the PlayStation 3 does before buying one. Hell, I might even wait longer to see if the price drops, since I'll have the Wii to tide me over.
It's quite shocking to me that this kind of role-reversal is taking place in my mind--that the Wii is going to be the console to jump on and the PS3 is going to be the "wait until it's really good" purchase. It sure would be crazy if a lot of like-minded gamers did the same thing, and Nintendo over-took Sony in marketshare. Personally, I have no loyalty to the PlayStation brand; the only reason that I'm so big on the PlayStation 2 is because of RPG titles from producers like Nippon Ichi, Square-Enix, and Atlus, as well as a handful of other solid game series like Metal Gear Solid, Gran Turismo (and Tourist Trophy), and Ico/Shadow of the Colossus, to name a few. Overall, the library of worthwhile games available for the PS2 dwarfs the selection offered by either the GameCube or the XBox, and as long as the PS3 delivers the same thing, it will be a "must have" purchase for me. If Nintendo could somehow leverage their momentum going into this next round of console wars into being able to re-take the top spot in terms of game selection, then I could imagine the Wii actually being a better console than the PS3 overall.
But as long as the majority of Nintendo's most worthwhile games continue to be Nintendo-produced titles like Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Kirby, Star Fox, and the like, I can't see that happening. Nintendo's games are truly great, and they alone are enough to ensure that I will want a Wii, but they are not enough to ensure that I won't want anything else. Until Nintendo can get serious 3rd party producer support behind them, they are doomed to always play second-fiddly in my books. So my prediction now is that, yes, I will probably buy a Wii as soon as they're available and wait on the PlayStation 3 for a bit, but when the PlayStation 3 hits that critical mass of "must have" games, it will become my new primary gaming console. That is, unless Sony screws up horribly and the PS3 never reaches that level of critical mass, or somehow Nintendo manages to hold on to that role.
Half-Life 2: Episode 1
Spoiler FreeInitially I wasn't all that hyped about the release of Half-Life 2: Episode 1 because I had never really finished the original Half-Life 2, and release of Episode 1 was stirring up all kinds of well-deserved guilt over that. (Normally "Episode I" refers to "Star Wars: Episode I," but for the scope of this aricle I will "Episode 1" to refer to "Half-Life 2: Episode 1." I hope that makes some kind of sense to you.) Now if you're any kind of gamer at all, right now you're asking yourself what kind of idiot I am that I never finished Half-Life 2--until last night. I can actually explain this in a way that should satisfy you, and in the process I will explain how the fact that I had never really finished Half-Life 2 before was a blessing in disguise.
Flash back to around March 2003 when the first Half-Life 2 footage from E3 hit the net. I saw footage of the gravity gun, car wreckage being thrown around by rocket explosions from helicopters hovering overhead, and those freaky walker things (yes, "Striders," although I didn't know they had such a name at the time), and I kid you not, I was so moved that my eyes welled up. Half-Life 2 was, to me, the single most exciting new game to come out since Super Mario World, or some such thing. I waited on pins and needles for this game for a long while.
Now Half-Life 2 is the kind of game that people such as myself often use as an excuse to buy a new computer. The only problem was that I wasn't really flush for cash and couldn't afford a proper new computer, but I had a pretty decent computer at work, and what I could afford was a Radeon 9600 graphics card for $160. Sure, I would rather have had a Radeon 9800, but the point is that I didn't have much money. So what I ended up doing was sneaking the new video card into my computer at work (I had sort of a Junior Sys Admin type position there in addition to being a programmer, so I could open up a box to work on it without drawing too much attention to myself) and not-so-discreetly installing Half-Life 2 since at the time, at that job, we were allowed to have games on our computers for playing during lunch and after work.
It took a whole lunch hour just to install Half-Life 2 and on the first day that I had it (the Collector's Edition, even), I was at the office playing literally from 6 pm until 9 pm. My girlfriend (soon to be wife), whom I was living with at the time, was surprisingly understanding. So over a series of lunch hours, I continued to work my way through Half-Life 2, eventually making it as far as maybe 80% through the final level, Dark Matter. That's how far I made it on my first play-through.
Now for reasons that I don't clearly recall, I never quite played through the last 15 minutes of the game. Part of it was simply that I didn't realise how close I was to actually finishing Half-Life 2; I didn't consult any walk-throughs, and as far as I knew I still needed another couple of hours to polish it off. Another part of it was that I was playing other games like Unreal Tournament 2004 and Battlefield Vietnam at work with other people on the LAN, so I didn't always make time for Half-Life 2. Shameful I know. The major event that prevented me from properly finishing it, though, was that I finally did scrape together enough money for a cheap gaming PC (oxymoron?) that was better than what I had at work, and I yanked the graphics card out of my work computer to use at home. This was also in preparation for my imminent depature from my job--I was preparing to quit.
If I had been a bit more on the ball, I could have copied my save games over from work, of course. But I had this shiny new PC and that part of me that said "let's just play it again from the start" won out. A big part of this decision, now that I think about it, was that I had been playing through the game on "Easy" difficulty at work which wasn't challenging enough, and I wanted to tackle it on "Normal." I made it to Ravenholm and part-way through that level and got tired of Half-Life 2, since I really don't like the Ravenholm level. And if you follow this blog at all, you know that I go through new games at an alarming rate, so it was bound to happen that I was going to get pulled away from Half-Life 2 sooner than later. It held out really well, all things considered (although that's not surprising when you consider that Half-Life 2
fucking rocks.)
Somewhere between then and this week, I found the time to finish Ravenholm, Highway 17, and a couple of other chapters. So when I realised that Episode 1 was already out and I should finish Half-Life 2 before getting it, I was already on Anti-Citizen One. Several hours of gametime was enough to get me right through to the ending of the game. Fun times.
The reason that I say that this was a blessing in disguise is that the story of Half-Life 2--particularly its epic conclusion--is completely fresh in my mind as I plod through Episode 1, which I'm nearly half-way done already and which I think has been excellently fun so far. I won't say anything about the ending of HL2 or the story of Episode 1 as per my "spoiler free" promise, but it should be safe to say that Episode 1 picks up right where HL2 leaves off, and having just replayed Dark Matter has helped me to make the transition.
I can see how some people wouldn't like Episode 1 because it features some relatively frustrating challenges, and it seems to me to be less action-oriented than the original Half-Life 2. Of course, Half-Life in general features a lot of puzzle solving and certain action-shy or frustrating levels, so I think that any serious Half-Life fan will not find that to be a problem here at all. Personally, I'm loving the new Half-Life 2 stuff, although it hasn't been quite as exciting as the original game.
Now I just need to find the time to replay through the original Half-Life (which I've owned for years), or perhaps (preferably?) Half-Life: Source. Shamefully enough, I've never finished the original Half-Life, but that is a curse that I hope to break. :)
Dawn of War - Early Impressions
This rant is particularly for my friend Matt. I've been saying some good things about Dawn of War in the last few days since picking it up (along with New Super Mario Bros., which also rocks), and I wanted to explore some of the reasons that I've been enjoying it--and perhaps even convince Matt himself to partake. In case anyone else is interested in reading this, I'd better toss off a couple of qualifications. First up, I am familiar with Warhammer 40k and think fondly of it, but I am not a devout fan, nor am I well versed in Warhammer 40k as either a game or a fantasy world. This is primarily due to lack of exposure to it. Secondly, I am not a hardcore RTS fan by any stretch of the imagination. I'm well versed in the development of the genre to an extent, particularly in that I've spent hours playing a wide variety of RTS games (WarCraft II and III, StarCraft, Rise of Nations, Age of Empires III, Z, and Highway to the Reich are some of the highlights), but I'm the kind of guy who only has a shot at winning a round of StarCraft at a LAN party if nobody of any real skill shows up.
As for Matt, he's not the kind of guy who wins the StarCraft LAN party either, but there's a very good reason for that. Matt is specifically the kind of RTS fan who loathes heavy micro-management and resents that most RTS games boil down to the winner being the player with the best mouse skills. Matt wants an RTS game that lets him play the role of the military strategist--where smart planning, knowing how to best employ the equipment in the field, and tactics are the factors that win the day. He especially enjoys turn-based games like Master of Orion II, The Operational Art of War, and Galactic Civilizations II. I admire his taste in strategy wargames, and I myself experience a lot of the same rush that he gets out of them.
On the other hand, there is that part of me that kind of enjoys the busy-body appeal of micro-management heavy RTS games, otherwise I could never have had as much fun with Age of Empires III as I've had. AoE III is extremely micro-management heavy: all at once you have to manage large numbers of civilian units gathering several different types of resources (fishing for food, hunting for food, gathering berries for food, chopping trees for wood, mining for gold), constructing buildings (houses to manage your population cap, barracks for infantry, stables for calvary, a machine shop for seige weapons, a livestock pen for even more food, various structures for technological advancements, military constructions including watchtowers and forts), a technology tree with various dimensions (cycling through your buildings looking for various upgrades), scores of military units (easily dozens at a time), and all kinds of odds and ends (an explorer unit capable of gathering treasure, a system of organizing supply shipments sent to the new world from your home land, diplomacy with other players, and even moving individual livestock units to be fattened and slaughtered for food.) AoE III is a fun, addictive game with great production value that offers a very entertaining experience when you're up for it, but it is also a textbook example of a micro-management heavy RTS. Personally, I find AoE III to be the single most micro-management heavy RTS game that I've ever played, and I think that it's actually intened to be part of the appeal. For reasons that are obvious to Matt, I would not recommend AoE III to him.
A much more interesting question is whether or not Matt would enjoy Dawn of War. I'm convinced that he would, and in particular I'm going to outline some reasons why I think that the micro-management in Dawn of War isn't out of control. In most ways, Dawn of War conforms to the standard RTS format popularized largely by StarCraft. The period key cycles through your contruction units (civilians in most RTS games), although not just your idle ones (as is the case in AoE III and others) which, amazingly, turns out not to be a big problem (more on that in a minute.) CTRL-# makes a group out of the units you have selected, and you use the corresponding number key to select that group again. You get the idea. What's really different about Dawn of War are the measures that it takes to alleviate the sheer amount of clicking around that such an RTS game typically demands, which lets you focus on tactics and strategies.
There are only two types of explicit resources that need to be gathered in Dawn of War: Requisition and Power (meaning electricity, not "power.") Requisition is constantly being accumulated, but the rate depends on how many strategic points you control--a system that reminds me of Z. You can also construct buildings on captured strategic points to increase the rate at which you gain requisition. As for Power, like Requisition it is constantly being accumulated, but you must construct power generator buildings to create any. You are not required to assign any units to the task of gathering requisition or power--the most that you ever have to do is order the construction of some buildings, and not in large numbers. One very nice effect that this immediately has is that you usually don't need very many civilian units to construct buildings. I've played small maps with as few as three constructor units managing all of my needs for the entire game. This stands in stark contrast to games like Rise of Nations, Age of Empires III, and even the classic StarCraft where my first move is usually to select the Town Hall equivalent and hit SHIFT-V to queue up the building of 5 civilian units (usually followed soon after by another 10 builders and harvesters, no matter what the map size is.) In an RTS like AoE III, civilian resource gatherers frequently make up a large portion of the population of my empire right up through the late stages of the game. Not having to deal with that in DoW frees up a lot of time and attention for fighting.
I imagine that the game designers for Dawn of War noticed that having lots of military units is part of what makes RTS games fun, because people love seeing those massive armies charge at each other like the warriors in Braveheart. The problem is that micro-managing between 20 and 60 individual units is a pain in the ass, even when you can group them and easily sub-select the units by type within that group (which, admittedly, helps a whole lot.) DoW's solution is that you do not construct individual Space Marines or other infantry types; rather, you construct entire squads, and manage each squad as a unit. Space Marine squads start with three Space Marines, and to add more you select the squad and hit a button to queue up the addition of reinforcements. These reinforcements spawn with the squad in the field, thereby helping a great deal to alleviate the annoying problem of having an army group in the field and having to move more units from your home base out to bolster that force (perhaps even in merely wanting to replace units that were killed in battle.) This squad-based system works well, although it is not applied to vehicles--but then, vehicles are not constructed in numbers counting in the dozens, so this is not really an issue.
Another thing that the creators of Dawn of War noticed is that quite often you want to construct a special unit--a commander, healer, or whatever--and have that unit tag along with a larger group to fill a special role. Dawn of War formalizes this process by having an "attach to group" command for special units that has them join a squad (these units can also detach so you can reassign them or use them individually.) One limitation imposed by Dawn of War, to prevent you from creating unreasonably strong squads, is that you can only attach one special unit to each squad. This system is fairly convenient, although it does add some complexity.
There is one aspect of Dawn of War which I've so far found to be fairly micro-management heavy, and that is in technology and upgrade management. Staying on top of your squads is not a huge task given that you're generally keeping close tabs on what they're doing at all times anyway, so it's easy to track which ones are not at full strength and which ones need new equipment--you can even check up on that in the heat of battle. The main factor here is that squad management does not generally require zooming back to your home base, unless it's to replace a special unit or a squad that was eliminated. Zooming back to your home base in order to construct new buildings and research new tech, on the other hand, is a definite distraction from the action occuring on your frontlines. DoW does not have a massive tech tree or a particularly large set of buildings to manage, but relative to the amount of micro-management that is present in the rest of the game, this is one area that conforms more to the stereotypical RTS.
Of course, the advantage to having some meaty tech management in a game like Dawn of War is that it creates interesting strategic decisions. In much the same manner that the order in which one chooses to research tech in a game like Civilizations or GalCiv II influences one's military strategies, how one manages one's tech tree in DoW is an important aspect of the game. One has to balance whether it is more important to spend resources on building more military units versus researching better military tech, and one has to make decisions on which military techs deserve priority over others. With the Space Marines, for example, one generally starts with a few scout squads to grab territory early on. Once the regular marines hit the battlefield, though, the scout squads generally only survive by staying out of sight (they can be equipped with sniper rifles, which is awesome.) Similarly, while those regular Space Marines will serve you well through the middle stretch of the game, you can't survive on them alone once your opponents start deploying vehicles and, especially, Space Marine Terminators. Essentially, Dawn of War has a tech race element, and I've known Matt to enjoy a good tech race.
There is a big question mark here in that Dawn of War does require a fair amount of micro-management, by what I imagine Matt's standards to be. After all, DoW is a relatively stereotypical RTS experience (except, perhaps, in-so-much as that it's one of the most exceptionally enjoyable RTS games I've personally ever played), by which I mean to say that it isn't as strictly strategy-oriented as an RTS like Z or Highway to the Reich. It's just that relative to Rise of Nations and Age of Empires III, both of which I've really enjoyed over the past three years, Dawn of War has relatively little micro-management, which is a big part of its explosive appeal for me personally. Underscoring this question mark is the fact that I've only played a few hours of DoW so far; only time will tell how I end up feeling about this game down the road.
In any case, it was a damned good deal at the value-pack price of $30.
