June 18, 2010

Red Dead Redemption (PS3)

My newest game has been Red Dead Redemption on the PS3.  This stunningly addictive game has so many varieties of play available that I am amazed one group of programmers could create such a vivid gaming world.

The story in Red Dead is rather linear with many branching side quests.  The story is rather banal, but does not detract from an otherwise dark and disturbing game.  Some scenes in the game should really not be seen or played by young kids.  I would recommend teen or better.  This is not like Grand Theft Auto with foul mouths and sexual themes, this game has genocide, rape, and other disturbing in game moments.  That said, the game is very addictive.

What I really like is the diversity of activities.  I can spend an hour playing in game poker, blackjack, liars dice, horseshoes, a game with knives and your fingers, and other fun tasks.  Some allow for gaining in game cash.  Other activities are searching for treasure troves, gathering style quests, doing a series of tasks for in game items such as new outfits with special abilities, and just the general mayhem of gun battles.

The gun battles are a lot of fun.  I like the variation in weapons, the change in skill of foes, and the variety of battle locations.  Miners are sloppy gun battlers while some bandits take full advantage of cover and flanking.  Alternitively to just shooting everyone, you can hogtie foes.  This makes for some interesting and funny moments.  For example, I caught a store thief by lassoing him and delivering him back to the store owner, a cranky lady, who took to kicking the bound felon in the head while taunting him.

The designers also put in some nice shortcuts for those who do not wish to be grognards.  But these are optional.  You can short cut travel, but then miss the random events along the way.  Some examples are that you might see robbers attacking a wagon.  Do you help?  Some sheriffs chasing a fugitive... do you help him escape?  A stranger on the side of the road; is he actually a horse thief?  So many interesting events occur that travel is often more fun than fast travel options.

So far I have put in 25 hours in this game and feel I am about 1/3rd to 1/2 through the game.  I look forward to more time in this adventure.  I have not tried multi player.

Red Dead Redemption is money well spent (for adults).

Rating: A

February 19, 2010

Star Trek Online

I have been playing Star Trek Online since the closed beta.  I have seen it really improve.  But the bottom line is this game is not done.  The worst thing is it has little growth potential.  At $15 a month, it is a far cry from other games in the MMO arena.  I just hope that Cryptic begins to offer a plan to play all of their games, like Sony, where the value of choice supplants the cost of one game.

The character creation is the best aspect.  I really like the designs that can be accomplished.  But why bother?  Most interaction is in space.  You have a small space ship avatar.  So who sees you?  The only times of social interaction are on space stations for trading and occasional in person quest gathering.  The rest of the time is in instanced landing party zones... awfully done, sad experiences, after thought landing party zones.

When you are doing a mission on a space station or planet, the interaction is sad.  The away team seem like they went to red shirt school and all want to die.  The problem is that they don't.   All the mobs are just as bad.  Away missions are a chore in the game.  This might be fixed later.  I recall how bad pet pathing was for EQ when it first came to market.  That game became quite fun after some updates.  I can still remember taking mobs and pets for strange runs in that game.  Star Trek Online has some of the weirdest moves too.

The space game is fun and stupid beyond Star Trek belief.  The fun is the small bits of strategy like facing, what weapons to fire, invoking special abilities, and team work in open mission zones.  The bad is that there are few weapon classes, the combat is tedious, and you have to keep tapping the space key or alt-space.  For the love of blue women, cannot a space faring Federation invent "fire at will"?  Do you have to command EVERY volley (hitting the space bar).  Even EQ had the auto attack.  WoW has the auto attack with invoking special attacks manually.  A phaser has to be commanded EVERY STINKING volley?  Combat is a royal pain after the third or fourth ship.

Exploration is on a map rather than space.  You move about, point to dots, move to dots, do a mission (either space combat or the horrid away missions) and repeat.  There are no real deep adventures.  The story lines of the missions are rather shallow and poorly tied together (if at all).  There is no Star Trek feel.

Frankly, I gave up on this game after about 20-40 hours ofgame play and have not delved deeper due to lack of interest.  I really wanted to like this game.  I still do.  I am subscribed through March.  At that time, I will tuck it away for a few months and see if any improvements are made.

I was much reminded of Sony's Pirates of the Burning Seas.  That game has some sad land missions, rather interesting ship combat.  And a great depth of ship design.  Star Trek has sad land missions, interesting, if tedious ship combat, and the basis of a good ship design system.  Star Trek would do well to learn from Pirates of the Burning Seas and improve a few areas.

I would like to see more avatar images on the screen.  Make some point to have an interesting avatar.  Make the classes more diverse and give a reason to play the science officer.  Make the away missions something not laughable.  Create Star Trek like story lines.

As it is, Star Trek is not a game that will do well with an experienced MMO player.

C-

January 29, 2010

Mass Effect 2 for the PC

My newest purchase is the sequel to a fine game from Bioware.  The new Mass Effect 2 (ME2) is rather gritty and dark.  While I have enjoyed Dragon Age for its refined RPG playstyle, I really like Mass Effect for its leap forward in gaming.  It is not so much a deep RPG as it is an evolution of Final Fantasy style games.  The game is very action orientated, but not overwhelming.  The RPG depth is very light on character building (in opposition to Dragon Age's deep character development).  But the RPG element is great in conversations and explorations.

One thing I did not enjoy about Dragon Age was its railroad feel.  While you could easily explore wherever you liked, the story was very linear and your actions did not really change any key plot elements.  With ME2, I feel very free to explore or not explore.  I don't feel that I have to search every location or follow every conversation path.  I get a sense of freedom in the game.  If I want to follow a dark path, I see the story and characters change.  If I want a balanced path, I also see a change in the way the story unfolds.

I am not normally an action gamer.  I do poorly at FPS games, much preferring strategy games that are turn based or slower paced.  ME2 is a twitcher, but not one that is too difficult to adapt.  The difficulty settings allow for everyone to play their own style.  This is what leads me to compare the game to Final Fantasy play styles.  Final Fantasy games, to me, are all about story.  The incidental combats and interwoven games are filler for the beautiful visuals.  ME2 is this way too.

ME2 has plentiful combat options, but thankfully not the over the top amount of Dragon Age (I did get tired of walking 10 steps and fighting something else all the time in Dragon Age).  ME2 has balanced the combat with interaction options, discovery of your crews' various motivations, puzzle games for locks and computers, and resource harvesting.  If anything, the game reminds me of the old style Sid Meier's games.  Sid's old games always had four disparate game elements tied with a story.  Covert Action, Pirates!, RailRoad Tycoon, etc all had this bonding of various game elements with a central theme that just made me play a little longer and a little longer and a little longer... until the sun rose and I fell asleep.  ME2 has that addictive quality too.

ME2 is wonderfully done as far as system resources.  I remember the pre-curser, Mass Effect, hogging my desktop that ran a couple of Radeon X1950 cards in Crossfire.  This game has much better graphics and works on lesser systems.  I have been playing on my laptop that hosts a NVidia 9800GS chip with all the settings on high.  It runs wonderfully with no issues.  That said, it appears to have a memory leak the longer you play.  After about 30 minutes on my laptop (which has 4 GB of RAM), the graphics will begin to stutter.  If I leave the game and come back, it is fixed.  Therefore, I attribute this to a memory leak.  I am sure it will be fixed soon.  Tonight I will try it on my desktop that has a couple of 8800 GTS 512 cards in SLI and 8GB or RAM.  If it still hiccups after 30 minutes, I will know it is something else (due to the extra RAM on the video cards and motherboard).

One other comment I have to make about the game is the online component.  Two elements are "free" if you buy a copy.  This practically kills being able to loan or re-sell the game to anyone as they will need their own account to get the extra content.  I find this good and bad.  The good is that pirating will be reduced and that will allow companies to profit from making PC games (thereby allowing for more PC games).  I hate that the PC is dying as a gaming platform outside of MMOs.  The bad is that you are tied to the company.  Game companies die all the time.  Remember Microprose, Sierra, Dynamix, SSI, or the other greats?  Well, if you had download enabled content and they fold, what then?  Is the game dead too?  With disks, you can re-load and play old games.  I still load Masters of Magic from time to time.  We shall see what this means for games going forward.  Seeing as I bought this game from Steam, I might have other issues if Steam goes belly up.

Bottom line, ME2 is a great game.  If you like RPGs in Final Fantasy style or great story lines, get this game.

January 6, 2010

On Dragon Age for the PC

I have been playing Dragon Age lately.  I really enjoy this type of RPG game.  Generally there are two types of people that like RPG games on the PC.  The first want an immersive world.  The second like a strong story line.  I am the latter.

With those that like the strong world, generally Fallout and Oblivion are the top honors holders.  These games have very large and immersive worlds.  However, the story is a shallow string that is interupted by side quests.  In my experience, the side quests are what make the game.  The varied missions and construction of your persona make the gaming experience.  While this is nice, it feels like an MMO with no other players.  Frankly, I will play World of Warcraft if I want that experience and just solo.

What draws me to games like Dragon Age (and Baldurs Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Mass Effect, et al) is the story line.  I really enjoy creating a character to my design from the many choices available, and then running through the story.  Games like Knights of the Old Republic (more so 1 and 2) have that morality scope to them.  The choices one makes greatly influences the story.

Dragon Age, for all its pre-release publicity, really does not have that morality quandary that Knights of the Old Republic games did.  While it certainly has its morality choices, the choices do not affect the game much.  The NPCs that you play the game with will certainly have opinions and may even leave or attack your character if you make too many choices against their persona settings.  But otherwise, the story is the same, the missions pretty much the same, and the experience is similar for each play style.  If anything, Dragon Age is a bit too dichotic for me.  I would have preferred more of a shades of gray game (as it was advertised prior to release), but it is fun still.  For the male characters, the love interests are really funny.  One is a bit too goody, the other really really evil, and the "alternative" is, well, male.  So, the game has something for every taste.  The same can be said if you play a female persona.  You have quite the choices.

What Dragon Age does well, and I really have to give BioWare or EA kudos for this, is they have an interesting copyright methodology.  I really wish more games would do this.  If piracy were limited, then game costs would go down and more games would be released.  As it is, PC games are dying due to the piracy epidemic and the lack of real piracy on platformers such as the PS3 or the XBOX 360.  But that is a debate for another time.  What is interesting is that you can get the basic game from the local shop and theoretically pirate the hell out of it.  However, if you want any advanced content, and that content really is fun for a low cost, you have to have an online validated account.  What this does is to ensure every time you play the game that you are the registered user.  You can still play on several computers as I do.  But only one can be logged in at any time.  I play on my desktop on weekends and my laptop week nights.  This allows me to continue my game from both of my gaming systems.  I really like this.  However, the same game files get rather large.  I was using my NAS to store the games, but due to size and time to save/restore between systems, I now use a 4GB memory stick.  It takes a few minutes and I am able to play on either system where I left the game.

Another nice aspect of Dragon Age is that the game is as easy or hard as you want to make the experience.  By taking advantage of minor crafting elements, you can enhance your weapons and add more depth.  By being able to switch weapon outfits at any time, you can create a dual aspect defined party for those tough encounters.  And, playing at the hard level is just the most masochistic experience I could ever imagine.  I am sure someone is playing at this level, but it is not me.

The pause and go combat is very similar to Mass Effect and the Neverwinter Nights games.  You just don't stack commands in this game.  That is fine, but I would have liked to have that ability.  Instead, the game offers defining if/then actions for your NPCs as well as threshold levels.  For example, you could set a healer to heal someone who reaches 40% health.  Until then, they might use offensive actions.  Or you could set to buff at first sight of an enemy, then heal, then attack.  There are lots of options.  These settings make the NPCs rather smart, but often boring since you can leave them alone and not have to take direct control often.  In my book, this is good, but I know those who love micro management.

I love the Dragon Age world and look forward to the next expansion being released in a month or two.  I wish all games had quick expansion delivery times.  But between Dragon Age, Mass Effect 2, and Star Trek Online, I don't know where I am going to find time to play these games and have a life.

Dragon Age gets an A- from me.