An open letter to the developers of "multiplayer-only" games:
Dear developers,
I can understand why, over the past year or two, you collectively seem to have become entranced by the idea of making games "multiplayer-only"; It requires significantly less work than creating a balanced single-player and multi-player experience, it means that you can focus on a more polished and full experience in one court as opposed to having two thinner experiences in two, and you can apparently sell it at full-price with people calling you out on it left, right and center and still make a frankly ludicrous amount of money.
I'll grant you, multi-player is often very satisfying to be good at; there's something viscerally fun about knowing that you've bested your fellow man that you just don't get by playing against a computer. In addition, I'll grant you that multiplayer tends to take longer to get tired of than single-player, although this is largely dependent on who you're matched with or against. However, it does have one major problem which I've brought up previously in my RWBY: Grimm Eclipse review, and that is Ghost Town Servers. What happens six months down the line when most of the player base have moved on to the Next Big Thing?
Showing posts with label Rant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rant. Show all posts
Wednesday, 17 August 2016
Tuesday, 28 June 2016
Press 'X' to Rant: Diversity in Gaming
A.N: Who's got two thumbs and is really horrible at updating regularly now he's gotten out of the swing? *points to self* This guy. I now return you to your not-so-regularly scheduled programming.
So, I guess we had to end up here eventually. Where does one even start when trying to cover this? The difficulty with a rant like this (for me, at least) is that I'm not entirely sure what is or isn't stepping over a line when talking about it. At time of writing, this rant's sat in my drafts for a full week with only four paragraphs, simply because any time I tried to write any more it felt like it was either breaking what little flow there was or like I was stepping over some sort of line. What I'm trying to get at here is that as I said in my Overwatch review, the most I can really hope to do in this area is simply point out what kind of things cross the line into insensitivity, and do my best to help people understand what pushed it over the line.
I suppose there would be worse places to start than current affairs in the field. So: as some of you may have heard, The Sims 4 recently (to a given definition of 'recently') released an update that, among other things, allowed even more extensive customisation of the gender of Sims, things like being able to decide whether a Sim can get pregnant/get other Sims pregnant, if they stand up at the loo, stuff like that. On top of that, a Sim's gender no longer limits what clothes or walk style can be used. This essentially means that you can now have transgender or non-binary sims, whereas previously you had to kind of make-do with significantly more restricting tools.
***
So, I guess we had to end up here eventually. Where does one even start when trying to cover this? The difficulty with a rant like this (for me, at least) is that I'm not entirely sure what is or isn't stepping over a line when talking about it. At time of writing, this rant's sat in my drafts for a full week with only four paragraphs, simply because any time I tried to write any more it felt like it was either breaking what little flow there was or like I was stepping over some sort of line. What I'm trying to get at here is that as I said in my Overwatch review, the most I can really hope to do in this area is simply point out what kind of things cross the line into insensitivity, and do my best to help people understand what pushed it over the line.
I suppose there would be worse places to start than current affairs in the field. So: as some of you may have heard, The Sims 4 recently (to a given definition of 'recently') released an update that, among other things, allowed even more extensive customisation of the gender of Sims, things like being able to decide whether a Sim can get pregnant/get other Sims pregnant, if they stand up at the loo, stuff like that. On top of that, a Sim's gender no longer limits what clothes or walk style can be used. This essentially means that you can now have transgender or non-binary sims, whereas previously you had to kind of make-do with significantly more restricting tools.
Sunday, 15 May 2016
Press 'X' to Rant: The Nerf Hammer
A.N. I've been asked to put in a short glossary for (and I quote) "Those reading from the outside looking in." So, for those wondering:
A "Nerf" is a patch in a game that makes a weapon or ability less powerful, usually because of player data indicating that it's being over-used or becomes incredibly obnoxious to deal with.
A "Buff" in this context is pretty much the opposite of a nerf: a patch that makes something more powerful because it's under-used or useless in all but a handful of rare situations. I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
So, I'd like to start off by apologising for the lack of a review this week; I had a math test on Friday, and revision for that seems to have made up a decent portion of my time recently. I did manage to play the Overwatch Beta last weekend, but I decided against reviewing that for two reasons. The first is that I intend to do a review on the full game once I can actually get my hands on a copy, and the second is that it was in beta and as a result, not entirely finished. At least, I hope it isn't entirely finished yet, because there are still a few characters that definitely need a whole bunch of balancing.
This is actually a topic I've been meaning to talk about for a while, but let's start by focusing on Overwatch (or more specifically, the character Bastion). Bastion's main "thing" is that he can walk around normally and do reasonable damage, but he can then turn into a freaking minigun-turret. It's absolute BS. Everyone playing knows it's BS. Even the people playing as Bastion know it's BS, as they do to the enemy team what power tools have been known to do to swans (and in around the same time frame, too). I once played against a team of five of the buggers, and I nearly left on the spot.
A "Nerf" is a patch in a game that makes a weapon or ability less powerful, usually because of player data indicating that it's being over-used or becomes incredibly obnoxious to deal with.
A "Buff" in this context is pretty much the opposite of a nerf: a patch that makes something more powerful because it's under-used or useless in all but a handful of rare situations. I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
So, I'd like to start off by apologising for the lack of a review this week; I had a math test on Friday, and revision for that seems to have made up a decent portion of my time recently. I did manage to play the Overwatch Beta last weekend, but I decided against reviewing that for two reasons. The first is that I intend to do a review on the full game once I can actually get my hands on a copy, and the second is that it was in beta and as a result, not entirely finished. At least, I hope it isn't entirely finished yet, because there are still a few characters that definitely need a whole bunch of balancing.
This is actually a topic I've been meaning to talk about for a while, but let's start by focusing on Overwatch (or more specifically, the character Bastion). Bastion's main "thing" is that he can walk around normally and do reasonable damage, but he can then turn into a freaking minigun-turret. It's absolute BS. Everyone playing knows it's BS. Even the people playing as Bastion know it's BS, as they do to the enemy team what power tools have been known to do to swans (and in around the same time frame, too). I once played against a team of five of the buggers, and I nearly left on the spot.
Thursday, 21 April 2016
Press 'X' to Rant: Addendum to my previous rant
So recently, my dad picked up a copy of K-Zone on the basis of "It's the only place I can get the Lego polybag of Poe's X-Wing", and in that K-Zone was an article on the new Lego Star Wars game (the one that they're bringing out for The Force Awakens and the other two movies in the new trilogy). So I thought to myself "Oh, this looks interesting given my recent views on the subject. I wonder if they're going to try and break from formula or if they're just going to slap on a new coat of paint." And let me tell you, no phrase in any article that I have ever read before has leapt out at me as fast as "Did someone say third-person cover-based shooting?"
I know I've been harsh on Lego Star Wars. I take it all back. I take back everything I said about it being repetitive, or the fact that I keep stubbing my toe on the Dimensions portal. I no longer want the Lego games to break new ground if the supposed "New Ground" they're trying to break is littered with bits of damaged masonry. I thought that the games industry was mostly done with collectively beating this rotting pile of organs that at one point may have been a dead horse.
On top of that, I can't quite fathom what target audience they're trying to get in on with this move. The usual audience of 6-9 year old children probably won't be allowed to play if their parents hear it's become a third person shooter, the older kids that might pick it up have mostly had enough with moving soldiers through desert and jungle environments while occasionally sucking their thumbs as their legs grow back behind bits of wall, and the people who genuinely like third-person cover shooters will be terribly confused as to why they have to keep stopping to hold down a button next to some jumping bricks to move the plot along.
That being said, I'd like to backtrack a bit because the next phrase that leapt out at me was about how they're adding in aerial combat/dog-fighting sections with the Millenium Falcon, so I might actually try and convince Dad to go halfsies on it with me so I can review it.
I know I've been harsh on Lego Star Wars. I take it all back. I take back everything I said about it being repetitive, or the fact that I keep stubbing my toe on the Dimensions portal. I no longer want the Lego games to break new ground if the supposed "New Ground" they're trying to break is littered with bits of damaged masonry. I thought that the games industry was mostly done with collectively beating this rotting pile of organs that at one point may have been a dead horse.
On top of that, I can't quite fathom what target audience they're trying to get in on with this move. The usual audience of 6-9 year old children probably won't be allowed to play if their parents hear it's become a third person shooter, the older kids that might pick it up have mostly had enough with moving soldiers through desert and jungle environments while occasionally sucking their thumbs as their legs grow back behind bits of wall, and the people who genuinely like third-person cover shooters will be terribly confused as to why they have to keep stopping to hold down a button next to some jumping bricks to move the plot along.
That being said, I'd like to backtrack a bit because the next phrase that leapt out at me was about how they're adding in aerial combat/dog-fighting sections with the Millenium Falcon, so I might actually try and convince Dad to go halfsies on it with me so I can review it.
Saturday, 2 April 2016
Press 'X' to Rant: Formulaic or Repetitive?
When I was a kid (to clarify, we're talking 6-year-old me as opposed to nearly 16-year-old me), my favorite game was Lego Star Wars. I played it with my Dad whenever I could, and I still have very fond memories of a day where Dad's day off and my having to stay home sick coincided and we played one of the free-roam levels for around an hour together.
Fast-forward around 8 years and Lego Batman 3 gets released, and Dad gets it for either his birthday or Father's Day (I honestly couldn't tell you which). For nostalgia's sake, we sat down to play the opening mission together and realised that literally nothing had changed from the first Lego Batman except for a new coat of paint and the fact that we didn't have to use the Wii controllers. I still remember the night I went to try and play Destiny to discover he had tried to pick it up again and had been stuck in the Bat-Cave for the last hour with no idea how to progress.
Fast-forward another 3 and a half years to Christmas 2015. What should Dad find under the tree but Lego Dimensions, and what should I find but the Portal 2 level pack for it. I decided to try it again to give it the benefit of the doubt. I boot it up to discover an unskippable 5 minute cut-scene followed by the same game, but now with the Dimension Portal mechanic that I keep stubbing my toe on added in about as seamlessly as a back-alley limb re-attachment surgery. At what point, I found myself wondering, did playing the Lego Game* cease to be fun?
This is a question that has haunted me since Christmas, so I feel that it's only right to finally give it something resembling an answer. Looking back, the first time I had my doubts about it would have been a few missions into Lego Pirates of the Caribbean. This does raise a few questions, however. Was it simply a matter of having grown out of it? Was it because they'd introduced voices and half of the fun of the Lego games was watching them try to convey the plot of a pre-existing franchise with exaggerated gestures and the occasional suggestive shopping center photo-booth pic? Or was it really that it had gotten to be a few games too many?
Counting the DS games, it was about 5 or 6 games for me before it got to a point where it felt repetitive. This in turn raises a slew of other questions. For example, how many games has something like Call of Duty gone on for with more or less the same game each year but with better lighting, a new sky-box and a few more guns? As it turns out, around 18 (give or take). At what point does that start getting repetitive? Same thing for Halo, or the ironically named Final Fantasy, or pretty much any game with enough installments that you can't comfortably count them on one hand?
That's not an easy question to answer, mostly for the same reason that any non-objective question is hard to answer: because there is no definitive answer. What I find repetitive may be within what other people consider a perfectly reasonable amount of sequels, and in fairness some games do stay the same for a few before shaking up the formula enough to stop it being repetitive. Then, there are some games that get repetitive in only one installment (Looking at you, Destiny. I love you, but I also love to hate you.)
That just about does it for today. As always, if you have a slightly more definitive answer to today's question, a suggestion for a future rant or review or just want to say hi, you can email me at pressxtoreview@gmail.com
-Harry
*A.N. I use the singular because, let's face it, there is only one Lego Game, in the same way that there is only one From Software game.
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