Some time ago, I posted an article on the generic locations used by many games, and put forth the proposal of developers going to a war far removed from any they've portrayed (however accurately or poorly) so far. Perhaps I was setting the bar too high. Perhaps it's too much to expect from the modern PC gaming industry, where large developers are so single-mindedly fixated on churning out the next reiteration of the same game in time to seize the Christmas market (yes, Activision, I am talking about you right now) that any suggestion of originality warrants the deposing of a studio's chiefs.
Maybe we should take this a little slower, then. So here's my new proposal: why not stick with the same locations, but go to a different war. Surely this isn't too much to ask? There have been plenty of wars in every developer's favourite areas, so it's not as if there's a lack of choice. In Europe alone, war has been raging since the dawn of time and it's only since WWII that things have settled down. The Middle East has probably never been at peace in human history. Likewise, central and south-east Asia have been hotbeds for conflicts through the ages.
As the favourite of late seems to be the Middle-Eastern Area of Operations, let's go to Afghanistan. But how about we do it differently this time? No more ACU-clad Americans. No more high-tech rifles which will never actually end up replacing anything, let alone the M4. No, let's take a trip back in time to the 1979-1989 conflict with the Soviet Union, in what has come to be known as their own Vietnam.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I watched Charlie Wilson's War recently. By recently, I actually mean yesterday. I see no reason this game does not exist, aside from the industry's apparent reluctance to make anyone who isn't American (or sometimes British) appear good at all, let alone a heroic character. The war was long, was bloody, and had a distinct turning point; it had a spectacular victory by the underdog, only to plunge back into chaos due to cessation of support from the US government; it had plenty of intrigue, thanks to the incredible scheme that saw the utterly outgunned and outmatched mujahideen armed with Stinger missiles. The Soviet helicopters, in particular the Mi-24 gunships, had been the absolute scourge of the Afghan resistance fighters. However, as the imposing machines began to fall from the sky, the entire course of the war changed and the eventual withdrawal by the unsuccessful Soviet invasion force was considered a contributing factor in the crumbling of the USSR.
So once again, I'm putting out a challenge. Quit working on the tenth samey re-release of a tired series, and put the love back into games that has been missing from the mainstream for years now. Eventually even the drooling diehards, who are currently oblivious to the sharp decline in quality of their favourite franchises, will come about. Try actually doing something different, something which sets you apart from the rest of the industry. Who knows, you may even make a killing.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Just when I thought I’d heard it all
Yet again, I find myself amazed at the sheer idiocy of a certain individual within this country. As I sat reading an article on the Black Mesa mod in the latest issue of PC PowerPlay, I hear something on the radio which absolutely stuns me. Immediately, I cease reading and pay closer attention. I hear that in South Australia, a law was proposed which would force any person within that state to provide their full name and postcode when commenting on politics online. Think you can work out who proposed this? Take a guess. It was every gamer’s favourite misguided bigot, SA Attorney-General Michael Atkinson. Clearly not satisfied with demonising violent games and making insulting generalisations against Australian gamers, the man seems determined to stamp out any criticism whatsoever. Instead of being able to voice an opinion anonymously, without fear of retribution beyond the usual name-calling, Atkinson seriously expects South Australians to provide all the information needed for any given nutter to rock up to their house and do whatever they please. This comes in the wake of Atkinson calling one online poster who criticised him a Liberal creation, despite the man living only a few doors down from his office. He even came into it to collect some paperwork. Of course, this means nothing to Atkinson.
I’m usually the first person to complain about the immense freedom of speech the Internet allows, because I hate having know-it-all armchair experts vomit their misinformation in my face, but to strip this altogether is absolutely mind-boggling and, for any sensible person, an appalling violation of basic rights. I don’t doubt that if I had to provide my full name and my postcode every time I expressed an opinion online, various people would’ve tried to intimidate or even harm me. I have a habit of going to town on the ignorant, and most of the time they don’t like this. Atkinson likely realises full well that this is a possibility, but since when did anything like that ever stop him? Apparently, his own precious image is more important than the safety of his critics. In my eyes this shows just how perverse an interpretation of democracy this country’s politics are becoming.
Of course, I heard this on 2GB, and any Australian will probably tell you how often 2GB gets into trouble and how prone their talkback hosts are to shooting their mouths off with reckless abandon. I haven’t heard the other side of the story, but at the same time this strikes me as precisely the kind of thing such a grossly incompetent person as Atkinson would do. How the man remains in office is utterly beyond me, and I can only hope he finally gets the axe (and I don’t mean that literally, as he would likely construe) before he manages to make an even bigger mess of things.
Internet filters, inconsistent bans on violent games rather than appropriate ratings, and now the removal of anonymity which allows people to voice opinions which may cause them great amounts of misery otherwise – I’m beginning to wonder what this absolute joke of a government comes up with next.
I’m usually the first person to complain about the immense freedom of speech the Internet allows, because I hate having know-it-all armchair experts vomit their misinformation in my face, but to strip this altogether is absolutely mind-boggling and, for any sensible person, an appalling violation of basic rights. I don’t doubt that if I had to provide my full name and my postcode every time I expressed an opinion online, various people would’ve tried to intimidate or even harm me. I have a habit of going to town on the ignorant, and most of the time they don’t like this. Atkinson likely realises full well that this is a possibility, but since when did anything like that ever stop him? Apparently, his own precious image is more important than the safety of his critics. In my eyes this shows just how perverse an interpretation of democracy this country’s politics are becoming.
Of course, I heard this on 2GB, and any Australian will probably tell you how often 2GB gets into trouble and how prone their talkback hosts are to shooting their mouths off with reckless abandon. I haven’t heard the other side of the story, but at the same time this strikes me as precisely the kind of thing such a grossly incompetent person as Atkinson would do. How the man remains in office is utterly beyond me, and I can only hope he finally gets the axe (and I don’t mean that literally, as he would likely construe) before he manages to make an even bigger mess of things.
Internet filters, inconsistent bans on violent games rather than appropriate ratings, and now the removal of anonymity which allows people to voice opinions which may cause them great amounts of misery otherwise – I’m beginning to wonder what this absolute joke of a government comes up with next.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Ghillie suits in the Modern Warfare games: a perfect example of concealment done right
Too many games use unrealistic, easy-way-out devices to render concealed players invisible. In many cases, they fade into nothing, or become literally no more than a shadow. In some - ArmA 2, looking at you - they would barely stand up to a cursory glance. But of all the games I've seen so far, only one series has really done concealment right. You might be surprised to know that it's the Modern Warfare series - then again, if you play the game, probably not.
Without a doubt, this is as good as it gets. Unlike ArmA 2, your suit matches the grass sprites perfectly. Colour, density, shape - it's all there. You don't fade as you lie there on the ground, as seen in Empires or many RTS titles. Instead, your suit is what renders you invisible. To discover exactly how effective the suit was in a controlled (i.e. not mid-game in a crowded TDM server) environment, and partially to kill some time, Kolby and I took to an empty server on Overgrown, by far one of my favourite maps and easily the best map for concealment. I had long suspected the suit as modelled by Infinity Ward's artists would be effective, but it wasn't until we put it to the test that I realised just how incredibly so it was.
The guidelines were simple: one of us would stare into a corner of the barn, the other would find a position and conceal themselves. To make things fairer and a little faster, the concealed man would give a rough location so the seeker would know which area to concentrate on; if this didn't result in a find, the location would be narrowed down until the former was standing up and talking the seeker onto his position.
The results were astounding. Even when I knew exactly where Kolby was, I could only just make out his outline - if it hadn't been for the outline of his rifle, I would never have seen him. Numerous times I stepped on him, and when my turn came, he walked past me some six times before I rose up into a crouch; he passed me again twice before I stood and talked him to a point only a few feet in front of me, by which time he only noticed me because the muzzle of my rifle was right in his face.
While browsing Youtube out of boredom I happened upon the following video, which demonstrates this rather well - notice how the sniper remains nigh invisible even when he takes a knee, and how hard he is to see while prone, even while moving slowly:
If only as many developers followed the example set by IW, the gaming world would be a much better place - particularly for people like myself.
Without a doubt, this is as good as it gets. Unlike ArmA 2, your suit matches the grass sprites perfectly. Colour, density, shape - it's all there. You don't fade as you lie there on the ground, as seen in Empires or many RTS titles. Instead, your suit is what renders you invisible. To discover exactly how effective the suit was in a controlled (i.e. not mid-game in a crowded TDM server) environment, and partially to kill some time, Kolby and I took to an empty server on Overgrown, by far one of my favourite maps and easily the best map for concealment. I had long suspected the suit as modelled by Infinity Ward's artists would be effective, but it wasn't until we put it to the test that I realised just how incredibly so it was.
The guidelines were simple: one of us would stare into a corner of the barn, the other would find a position and conceal themselves. To make things fairer and a little faster, the concealed man would give a rough location so the seeker would know which area to concentrate on; if this didn't result in a find, the location would be narrowed down until the former was standing up and talking the seeker onto his position.
The results were astounding. Even when I knew exactly where Kolby was, I could only just make out his outline - if it hadn't been for the outline of his rifle, I would never have seen him. Numerous times I stepped on him, and when my turn came, he walked past me some six times before I rose up into a crouch; he passed me again twice before I stood and talked him to a point only a few feet in front of me, by which time he only noticed me because the muzzle of my rifle was right in his face.
While browsing Youtube out of boredom I happened upon the following video, which demonstrates this rather well - notice how the sniper remains nigh invisible even when he takes a knee, and how hard he is to see while prone, even while moving slowly:
If only as many developers followed the example set by IW, the gaming world would be a much better place - particularly for people like myself.
The dust settles: MW2 and matchmaking
Wow.
What a drama that was, and how unwarranted it was, too. As I'm painfully aware, there are still plenty of people who will waste no time in extolling the horrors of matchmaking and just what a low and depraved group of individuals comprise Infinity Ward; no doubt they do this despite begrudgingly playing (and probably enjoying) the game. MW2 created such an uproar that despite being literally half the world away from my own PC, I figured it pertinent to look back on the entire fiasco and share my thoughts here. I've also got little else to do for the next few hours, so naturally, typing this will amuse me enough to kill some of that time.
Right from the outset, my predicament varies drastically from that of many MW2 owners; I had the game pre-loaded, all ready to go, but I couldn't play it. It wasn't until four weeks after its release - nearly five, in fact - that I finally got to fire up the game which has caused one of the biggest online shitfights I can recall. Communities fractured, friends became arch enemies... it was absolutely ridiculous, and in the end, it was also absolutely pointless. While I have no doubt at all that various people will disagree with me, I thought MW2's multiplayer a drastic improvement over the ever-frustrating experience of the original Modern Warfare. The touted lag was nowehere to be seen; in fact, I ran into no more trouble with it than I have in any of the locally-based dedicated servers I frequent. Yes, occasionally the game has to pause for a minute or two while it migrates hosts, and yes, that has resulted in my painful and very avoidable death on multiple occasions. So what? It's a minor annoyance. It happens maybe once every five games for me, and that's at most - some days it won't happen at all. One unfair death or missed kill a day is hardly justification for the mess that followed the big announcement.
One of the other major concerns was the tactical nuke; again, this was something I found to be a non-issue. If one person can seriously get that many kills in a row without dying, it's a pretty sure sign to me that there's a severe skill stack going on, and most of the time that results in the game being little to no fun at all for those of us who still whoop with glee when we get killstreaks of more than five. An early ending to a game is hardly a life-ruining experience, and if it keeps happening, there's nothing stopping you from dropping out to find another match. I guess we're all just so used to being spoon-fed by developers that today's gamers will suffer a severe mental breakdown at the thought of actually needing to act on their own behalf.
Another concern - the customisable killstreaks. Again, non-issue. Don't like getting hammered by that C-130? Then find some cover and stay there, like any sensible being equipped with a survival instinct would do. I don't see how the new killstreaks are any worse than MW's helicopters or airstrikes were - in fact, a number of them are significantly less destructive and in the case of the care package, even useful to the other team if captured. Truth be told, the two killstreaks which proved most disruptive were - and brace for a shock here - the air strike and the helicopter. Amazing.
After several days solid of enjoyable play in various gametypes using matchmaking, I can honestly say that I'm glad Infinity Ward dared to rattle the cage of the PC gaming community. I'd even go so far as to say I'm glad that they went on to thrust a gigantic middle finger at those who couldn't accept this change.
What a drama that was, and how unwarranted it was, too. As I'm painfully aware, there are still plenty of people who will waste no time in extolling the horrors of matchmaking and just what a low and depraved group of individuals comprise Infinity Ward; no doubt they do this despite begrudgingly playing (and probably enjoying) the game. MW2 created such an uproar that despite being literally half the world away from my own PC, I figured it pertinent to look back on the entire fiasco and share my thoughts here. I've also got little else to do for the next few hours, so naturally, typing this will amuse me enough to kill some of that time.
Right from the outset, my predicament varies drastically from that of many MW2 owners; I had the game pre-loaded, all ready to go, but I couldn't play it. It wasn't until four weeks after its release - nearly five, in fact - that I finally got to fire up the game which has caused one of the biggest online shitfights I can recall. Communities fractured, friends became arch enemies... it was absolutely ridiculous, and in the end, it was also absolutely pointless. While I have no doubt at all that various people will disagree with me, I thought MW2's multiplayer a drastic improvement over the ever-frustrating experience of the original Modern Warfare. The touted lag was nowehere to be seen; in fact, I ran into no more trouble with it than I have in any of the locally-based dedicated servers I frequent. Yes, occasionally the game has to pause for a minute or two while it migrates hosts, and yes, that has resulted in my painful and very avoidable death on multiple occasions. So what? It's a minor annoyance. It happens maybe once every five games for me, and that's at most - some days it won't happen at all. One unfair death or missed kill a day is hardly justification for the mess that followed the big announcement.
One of the other major concerns was the tactical nuke; again, this was something I found to be a non-issue. If one person can seriously get that many kills in a row without dying, it's a pretty sure sign to me that there's a severe skill stack going on, and most of the time that results in the game being little to no fun at all for those of us who still whoop with glee when we get killstreaks of more than five. An early ending to a game is hardly a life-ruining experience, and if it keeps happening, there's nothing stopping you from dropping out to find another match. I guess we're all just so used to being spoon-fed by developers that today's gamers will suffer a severe mental breakdown at the thought of actually needing to act on their own behalf.
Another concern - the customisable killstreaks. Again, non-issue. Don't like getting hammered by that C-130? Then find some cover and stay there, like any sensible being equipped with a survival instinct would do. I don't see how the new killstreaks are any worse than MW's helicopters or airstrikes were - in fact, a number of them are significantly less destructive and in the case of the care package, even useful to the other team if captured. Truth be told, the two killstreaks which proved most disruptive were - and brace for a shock here - the air strike and the helicopter. Amazing.
After several days solid of enjoyable play in various gametypes using matchmaking, I can honestly say that I'm glad Infinity Ward dared to rattle the cage of the PC gaming community. I'd even go so far as to say I'm glad that they went on to thrust a gigantic middle finger at those who couldn't accept this change.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Epiphany
I can't believe it took me this long to work it out, but I've finally cracked the mystery of why ArmA 2's terrain, while being nearly photorealistic, feels unnatural.
There's no dead ground.
I'm not talking about huge valleys or sprawling basins, because as we all know, there's no shortage of those. No, what I'm talking about is the smaller-scale stuff - the stuff yours truly would seek refuge in with his mates in a contact. Drainage canals, creekbeds, culverts along the sides of the road, berms, craters, fissures, erosion channels... the list goes on. Nowhere in the entire game world - and now I think about it, nowhere in that of the first game, either - do I recall seeing any of these. Considering that ArmA 2 is regarded a sim rather than a shooter, and also considering the heavy emphasis on infantry combat, wouldn't you think that the infanteer's favourite forms of cover would be included from the outset?
I'd gladly sacrifice a few forests, truck-sized boulders, and locked buildings to see these included in ArmA 2. Don't even start me on the gates and doors, though.
There's no dead ground.
I'm not talking about huge valleys or sprawling basins, because as we all know, there's no shortage of those. No, what I'm talking about is the smaller-scale stuff - the stuff yours truly would seek refuge in with his mates in a contact. Drainage canals, creekbeds, culverts along the sides of the road, berms, craters, fissures, erosion channels... the list goes on. Nowhere in the entire game world - and now I think about it, nowhere in that of the first game, either - do I recall seeing any of these. Considering that ArmA 2 is regarded a sim rather than a shooter, and also considering the heavy emphasis on infantry combat, wouldn't you think that the infanteer's favourite forms of cover would be included from the outset?
I'd gladly sacrifice a few forests, truck-sized boulders, and locked buildings to see these included in ArmA 2. Don't even start me on the gates and doors, though.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Borderlands
Over the past few days, I've been gaming hard. I'm leaving very shortly to go to basic training, where I will remain for four weeks (or so I hope); few things bother me more than to leave a story unfinished, so I was intent on completing Borderlands before my departure.
At first, I wasn't sure what to think. The effort put into the game's intro sequence alone was pretty impressive; however once I embarked upon my journey, it began to feel a lot like I imagine Fallout 3 would have if Bethesda had left out a lot of the extraneous bullshit. Don't get me wrong, I like the sheer amount of features in that game; VATS makes up for the awful manual aiming (although I would rather they fixed that instead), and I wasted no time in setting about rescuing every teddy I could find from the horrors of the Capital Wasteland. The ability to just mess about doing things like this was kind of entertaining, but at the same time it diverted me away from the main story time and time again; I'd take on one side mission and end up trying to complete ten all at once. While Borderlands presented me with a lot of the same issues - particularly the one where I would have a small nervous breakdown trying to work out which areas to explore, for fear of forgetting to look somewhere else - it did it a lot less often and the side quests were generally fairly short, which was nice.
The game started out at a rather leisurely pace; in fact, it remained that way for most of its duration, again echoing the things about Fallout 3 which irritated me. Forgive me for comparing the two almost exclusively, but it's for reasons of simplicity, not a belief that Borderlands is any attempt at a copy of that game. Fallout 3 is the most recent game I've played which I can really compare Borderlands to at all. To get back on track, the reasons for this were twofold: slow-paced missions, or plenty of missions. As the game progressed, the number of quests available skyrocketed and it took me about two days to get through the New Haven phase of the game alone. That said, I was enjoying myself. While a lot of the side objectives tended to repeat themselves - searching for objects scattered either locally or over an entire map segment being the worst offenders, followed by elimination challenges - they usually coincided fairly nicely with my more important tasks or even each other, allowing me to wrap up anything from two to six all at once. I'm not entirely sure how, but Gearbox have somehow managed to stop this from boring me to death, like it would in most games. Gearbox have also managed to reference a variety of absolutely brilliant movies without making things seem cheesy, and I got a good laugh out of spotting these. At times things became a little tedious, but never enough for me to quit the game for days, weeks or months on end like I generally do; I took breaks every few hours, but then I was right back into the game.
I think that the sheer uniqueness of the game's art style played a large part in appealing to me. It's something I haven't seen for a long time, and it's always nice when a dev decides to fly completely in the face of the current trends, even when there's no real guarantee that the gamble will pay off. Originally, Borderlands subscribed to the same gritty over-realistic, Hollywood-esque style that many recent titles have used; although it still featured far more colour than most of those games, there wasn't much else to distinguish it visually. In changing to a completely unrealistic, almost cartoony art style, Gearbox not only managed to make it stand out from the crowd, but they also proved that you don't have to follow everyone else's lead to produce a popular game. Even in the absence of the usual long cinematic sequences or rooted-to-the-spot exposition dialogues, I found it relatively easy to lose myself in the world of Pandora; I developed an almost parental over-protectiveness of Claptraps, and took great glee in mowing down any who I found near a hurt one. I developed something of a 'feel' for the characters' personalities, usually spotting a betrayal or a helping gesture before it came. Most importantly, I felt the kind of drive to reach the Vault while keeping Lilith as safe as possible that I needed to finish the game (despite there being no real penalty for dying). Even though no real backstory was provided for the characters ingame and scant details were all I had seen elsewhere, it was fairly easy to work out what made Lilith (who is an absolute force to be reckoned with in good hands) tick. That said, I would've liked the chance to actually learn more about each character at some point in the game; like L4D, vague details and subjective guesswork are all that are available.
Returning to the gameplay itself, once again, the Fallout 3 comparison rears its ugly, desolate head. Both games featured a slow lead-up to a tipping point after which no amount of willing the game to slow down would help. That's it, really; the story just hit its climax and ran away wildly, like a kid tyre-rolling down a hill. In the case of Fallout 3, I actually went back and loaded an earlier save before buggering off and setting out to explore the remaining two-thirds of the game world, abandoning the final quest as it neared its close. I genuinely hadn't expected things to take off so fast, and as I'd finished the game, I knew how I would end it. To this day, Fallout 3 appears confused as to whether I've finished the main quest or not, evidenced by the mixed news updates on GNR. This is essentially the same problem I had with Borderlands; I had a few side quests I was partway through, and whole areas of the game world I had only given a cursory glance to. In particular, the latter areas of the game were all but unexplored to me, as I'd been so single-mindedly intent on reaching the Vault. I'm trying to keep this relatively spoiler-free, so I won't go into specifics; however, Thor was the tipping point, and from there on I didn't stop for hell nor high water. I did stop for hurt Claptraps, but I digress.
Once the inevitable had happened, and I had finished the game - the ending of which, by the way, felt like a bit of a slap in the face - I sat and watched the credits roll, and began the inevitable comedown that follows a long binge on a game which has managed to really draw me in. You can imagine my surprise, then, when the credits stopped rolling and I found myself standing alone in the snow, a single objective marked on my HUD.
Borderlands isn't quite done with me yet, and in a way, I'm kind of glad. While the actual main story was incredibly short and wonkily paced, much like Fallout 3's, I wasn't ready to just leave Pandora, or Lilith, to gather proverbial dust. In conclusion - because I have to end this barely-coherent mess of thoughts somewhere - Borderlands is something like a donut to me: thoroughly enjoyable, but leaving you wanting more. Gearbox is already working on DLC which will add new areas, enemies, and quests, but in this gamer's mind, a more filled-out main story would be worth more than all the DLC in the world. Borderlands will probably suffer somewhat upon my return as I'll no doubt binge on MW2 and L4D2, but it can certainly rest assured that I won't be able to leave it alone for any longer than necessary.
Like a hurt Claptrap, really.
Edit - and this does contain something of a spoiler - I should probably make one final note, which is that my disappointment with regards to the ending was due to the speed at which it arrived, not what it entailed. A lot of people seem upset that they couldn't do what they expected to do; well, you can't always get what you want. If anything, it's nice to see a game which leaves the player feeling well and truly stitched up and wondering if anything they'd experienced was what it seemed to be. Nearly every game I've ever played ended well for the player; this is a welcome change.
At first, I wasn't sure what to think. The effort put into the game's intro sequence alone was pretty impressive; however once I embarked upon my journey, it began to feel a lot like I imagine Fallout 3 would have if Bethesda had left out a lot of the extraneous bullshit. Don't get me wrong, I like the sheer amount of features in that game; VATS makes up for the awful manual aiming (although I would rather they fixed that instead), and I wasted no time in setting about rescuing every teddy I could find from the horrors of the Capital Wasteland. The ability to just mess about doing things like this was kind of entertaining, but at the same time it diverted me away from the main story time and time again; I'd take on one side mission and end up trying to complete ten all at once. While Borderlands presented me with a lot of the same issues - particularly the one where I would have a small nervous breakdown trying to work out which areas to explore, for fear of forgetting to look somewhere else - it did it a lot less often and the side quests were generally fairly short, which was nice.
The game started out at a rather leisurely pace; in fact, it remained that way for most of its duration, again echoing the things about Fallout 3 which irritated me. Forgive me for comparing the two almost exclusively, but it's for reasons of simplicity, not a belief that Borderlands is any attempt at a copy of that game. Fallout 3 is the most recent game I've played which I can really compare Borderlands to at all. To get back on track, the reasons for this were twofold: slow-paced missions, or plenty of missions. As the game progressed, the number of quests available skyrocketed and it took me about two days to get through the New Haven phase of the game alone. That said, I was enjoying myself. While a lot of the side objectives tended to repeat themselves - searching for objects scattered either locally or over an entire map segment being the worst offenders, followed by elimination challenges - they usually coincided fairly nicely with my more important tasks or even each other, allowing me to wrap up anything from two to six all at once. I'm not entirely sure how, but Gearbox have somehow managed to stop this from boring me to death, like it would in most games. Gearbox have also managed to reference a variety of absolutely brilliant movies without making things seem cheesy, and I got a good laugh out of spotting these. At times things became a little tedious, but never enough for me to quit the game for days, weeks or months on end like I generally do; I took breaks every few hours, but then I was right back into the game.
I think that the sheer uniqueness of the game's art style played a large part in appealing to me. It's something I haven't seen for a long time, and it's always nice when a dev decides to fly completely in the face of the current trends, even when there's no real guarantee that the gamble will pay off. Originally, Borderlands subscribed to the same gritty over-realistic, Hollywood-esque style that many recent titles have used; although it still featured far more colour than most of those games, there wasn't much else to distinguish it visually. In changing to a completely unrealistic, almost cartoony art style, Gearbox not only managed to make it stand out from the crowd, but they also proved that you don't have to follow everyone else's lead to produce a popular game. Even in the absence of the usual long cinematic sequences or rooted-to-the-spot exposition dialogues, I found it relatively easy to lose myself in the world of Pandora; I developed an almost parental over-protectiveness of Claptraps, and took great glee in mowing down any who I found near a hurt one. I developed something of a 'feel' for the characters' personalities, usually spotting a betrayal or a helping gesture before it came. Most importantly, I felt the kind of drive to reach the Vault while keeping Lilith as safe as possible that I needed to finish the game (despite there being no real penalty for dying). Even though no real backstory was provided for the characters ingame and scant details were all I had seen elsewhere, it was fairly easy to work out what made Lilith (who is an absolute force to be reckoned with in good hands) tick. That said, I would've liked the chance to actually learn more about each character at some point in the game; like L4D, vague details and subjective guesswork are all that are available.
Returning to the gameplay itself, once again, the Fallout 3 comparison rears its ugly, desolate head. Both games featured a slow lead-up to a tipping point after which no amount of willing the game to slow down would help. That's it, really; the story just hit its climax and ran away wildly, like a kid tyre-rolling down a hill. In the case of Fallout 3, I actually went back and loaded an earlier save before buggering off and setting out to explore the remaining two-thirds of the game world, abandoning the final quest as it neared its close. I genuinely hadn't expected things to take off so fast, and as I'd finished the game, I knew how I would end it. To this day, Fallout 3 appears confused as to whether I've finished the main quest or not, evidenced by the mixed news updates on GNR. This is essentially the same problem I had with Borderlands; I had a few side quests I was partway through, and whole areas of the game world I had only given a cursory glance to. In particular, the latter areas of the game were all but unexplored to me, as I'd been so single-mindedly intent on reaching the Vault. I'm trying to keep this relatively spoiler-free, so I won't go into specifics; however, Thor was the tipping point, and from there on I didn't stop for hell nor high water. I did stop for hurt Claptraps, but I digress.
Once the inevitable had happened, and I had finished the game - the ending of which, by the way, felt like a bit of a slap in the face - I sat and watched the credits roll, and began the inevitable comedown that follows a long binge on a game which has managed to really draw me in. You can imagine my surprise, then, when the credits stopped rolling and I found myself standing alone in the snow, a single objective marked on my HUD.
Borderlands isn't quite done with me yet, and in a way, I'm kind of glad. While the actual main story was incredibly short and wonkily paced, much like Fallout 3's, I wasn't ready to just leave Pandora, or Lilith, to gather proverbial dust. In conclusion - because I have to end this barely-coherent mess of thoughts somewhere - Borderlands is something like a donut to me: thoroughly enjoyable, but leaving you wanting more. Gearbox is already working on DLC which will add new areas, enemies, and quests, but in this gamer's mind, a more filled-out main story would be worth more than all the DLC in the world. Borderlands will probably suffer somewhat upon my return as I'll no doubt binge on MW2 and L4D2, but it can certainly rest assured that I won't be able to leave it alone for any longer than necessary.
Like a hurt Claptrap, really.
Edit - and this does contain something of a spoiler - I should probably make one final note, which is that my disappointment with regards to the ending was due to the speed at which it arrived, not what it entailed. A lot of people seem upset that they couldn't do what they expected to do; well, you can't always get what you want. If anything, it's nice to see a game which leaves the player feeling well and truly stitched up and wondering if anything they'd experienced was what it seemed to be. Nearly every game I've ever played ended well for the player; this is a welcome change.
Friday, November 6, 2009
Brown Brown Brown (Red Blue Green)
Over the past few days, I've been playing two games in particular: Mirror's Edge and Borderlands. Here, though, we have two very different ways of avoiding the 'brown problem'.
Let's start with the former. Mirror's Edge makes use of white like most games make use of brown. The buildings, streets, drainage canals, walkways, AC units... virtually everything in the city is pure, eye-burningly stark white, right down to the cardboard boxes and benches and other detritus that you encounter during the course of the game. Obviously, this is as much a device to tell the player they're in a sterile, utopian society as it is a design choice; accents of orange, green, blue, pink, and various other vivid colours are used to draw the player's attention to where they're meant to go, or to detail an area. In places, even the lighting and shade are coloured. This is the all-out, dead-opposite approach to what we're becoming used to, as brown usually represents something dirty or old.
Perhaps the credit for the more interesting of the two approaches, though, goes to Borderlands. While the game itself is largely brown by necessity (Pandora, of course, being one giant wasteland), the player's weapons - the things they will see every second they are playing the game, in the bottom right corner of their screen - are so vividly coloured they put even the Halo series to shame. Kill a lot of enemies in one area, and you will find a veritable rainbow of weapons lying on the dusty ground. The fact that Gearbox found a way to add some colour to a game which takes place on a dustbowl planet is impressive; the fact that they did so without hurting the atmosphere is even more so. If only more developers would try to inject some variety into the sea of brown... as even deserts have colour.
Let's start with the former. Mirror's Edge makes use of white like most games make use of brown. The buildings, streets, drainage canals, walkways, AC units... virtually everything in the city is pure, eye-burningly stark white, right down to the cardboard boxes and benches and other detritus that you encounter during the course of the game. Obviously, this is as much a device to tell the player they're in a sterile, utopian society as it is a design choice; accents of orange, green, blue, pink, and various other vivid colours are used to draw the player's attention to where they're meant to go, or to detail an area. In places, even the lighting and shade are coloured. This is the all-out, dead-opposite approach to what we're becoming used to, as brown usually represents something dirty or old.
Perhaps the credit for the more interesting of the two approaches, though, goes to Borderlands. While the game itself is largely brown by necessity (Pandora, of course, being one giant wasteland), the player's weapons - the things they will see every second they are playing the game, in the bottom right corner of their screen - are so vividly coloured they put even the Halo series to shame. Kill a lot of enemies in one area, and you will find a veritable rainbow of weapons lying on the dusty ground. The fact that Gearbox found a way to add some colour to a game which takes place on a dustbowl planet is impressive; the fact that they did so without hurting the atmosphere is even more so. If only more developers would try to inject some variety into the sea of brown... as even deserts have colour.
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