It's been a while since I've written one of these. In fact, I left a series on Battlefield vs Call of Duty half-finished. I am done with that now, though! There is a new whipping boy, and his name is Homefront.
For those wondering whether they should pick up this near-future, Korea-Invades-US, Red Dawn Redux FPS, let me save you the trouble: don't.
(The next sections may contain spoilers. But you shouldn't buy the game anyway, so it won't matter...)
It's not that it's bad. I have played worse FPSs in my time. But it is painfully average. And, in some very key respects, it's very broken. Not 'this game is full of bugs' broken, but 'this game is badly designed' broken.
Here are some examples:
Level Design
The levels seem to have been designed to give the impression of space and openness, but are inherently linear in nature. That's fine if the open space naturally leads toward the next section, but in Homefront there are sections of level that lead off in the opposite direction to where you want to be going. Not only is this wasted space (if a large percentage of your level is pointless, then you're better off without it), but it's also potentially confusing for the player. It also makes any firefight that happens in that area more annoying (more on that later).
Scripting/Mission Design
This is what really, really annoyed me. And in many ways prompted this rant. This one if mostly for the designers out there:
If you are going to split up the player from the small squad of 3 soldiers that he was previously with, and if you're going to make the player (as part of the mission design) go to the other side of the map to them, and if said group of soldiers then end up waiting at the mission end point, and there's a platoons of enemies in between the player and the squad, and if you're going to force the player to fight through all of those enemies in order to get to the squad, do not have the squad telling the player to 'Hurry up' because the squad is 'taking fire'.
You know what, squad? There's 3 of you. There's one of me. YOU SENT ME TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MAP IN THE FIRST PLACE. And, despite the fact you 'are being overrun', you're making me fight through the very enemies you are complaining about. And I even have to kill an extra few on the way.
That just doesn't make any sense on any level. You want me to hurry, because you're being attacked. But I have to kill my way through those same enemies to get to you. And you're expecting me, on my own, to kill my through despite the fact that, seemingly, the three of you can't deal with it? Last time I checked, 1< 3.
This is just some bad, bad script writing. And it really pisses me off.
And another thing: objective markers are there to let the player know where to go next. It is not big or clever to put an objective marker somewhere that is designed to draw their vision to a particular point in order for the enemy to get the drop on him.
At one point, I was guided to some doors. I ran right up to those doors, for they were my mission objective, expecting to be able to interact with them in order to get inside, to where I knew my next objective was. The next thing I knew, I was being shot in the side and I was dead. Enemies had spawned on both my flanks while I was staring at a wooden door. Because the game gave no indication that there was danger about, and every indication that where I was supposed to be was in the firing line for two enemies that spawned to the side of me.
It later transpired that killing one of these enemies seemed to trigger the door opening. Although perhaps it didn't open first time because I was standing in the way of them. It's hard to tell. Either way, the game directed me to a point, and then cheaply shot me in the back. This happened more than once (sometimes as a result of the poor level design).
It doesn't make your game 'too easy' or 'too dumbed down' if you lead the player toward each enemy, so the player is always facing their attackers. It just makes your game well designed. And if you absolutely have to attack the player from behind or the sides, give some audio/visual clue to it happening, so the player has time to react. If your game is completed by the player dying repeatedly and learning the spawn locations for each enemy for each part of a level, you have failed.
Combat/AI/Your Friends
I mentioned earlier the poor level design. This impacts the game on a number of ways. The most annoying of this is in the AI.
It seems in all games of this nature, there are unwritten rules, so that:
a) your allies are always dumb, and unable to shoot,
b) on the highest difficulty level your enemies are all crack shots and will always shoot you all the time, ignoring even seemingly immediate threats,
c) even your allies are often unaware of how to progress through a mission.
The poor ally AI and the open level design meant that often I would be flanked by enemies that, by rights, should have been shot by my allies. In some cases, they ran right past each other in order to get to me.
Or I'd be hunkered behind cover, taking pot shots at other enemies, safe in the knowledge that my AI allies had my back. Only they didn't. And often let enemies through to kill me from behind. They literally may as well not have been there. At least going in solo wouldn't give me the false hope that someone had my back.
Stupid allies/killer AI also manifested itself in a very amusing way on what I believe to be the final level of the game. As my laptop was booting up, and indeed as I started writing this, my game was happily running without me. I was, at the time, hunkered on a flatbed truck, behind some cover, while the tanks that I was rolling with were supposed to destroy some light armour.
For between 90 seconds and 2 minutes, I just sat staring off into nothing while the AI fought without me. I was waiting for the dialogue cue that told me the Humvees had been destroyed and it was safe for me to press on. I was forced in to doing this because the heavy machine guns on the Humvees always target me, and are crack shots (as mentioned above), and are heavy machine guns. Even a split second out of cover would see me lose most of my life, if not kill me outright. That split second out of cover is not enough to actually do anything useful (like kill enemies), so I found myself doing nothing.
I knew I could not destroy those vehicles myself; that's why the tanks were there. And I knew the tanks would kill them eventually. It was only a matter of when. Unfortunately, these tanks seemed to have a very odd idea about threat leves. I can only assume, from my hidey-hole, that they were aiming for anything but the lightly armoured vehicles, because it took them quite a while (up to two minutes!) to eventually destroy them. But I had nothing if not time. I could hide there all day.
But I shouldn't have to. If your enemies are going to aim exclusively for me, rather than attempting to put fire on the tank, or other allies, and if when they shoot they're going to injure me to the point where I feel the need to cower until all threats are taken care of, don't make your large, heavily armed tank take 90 seconds to kill one Humvee. That's. Just. Stupid.
And I'm sure there are other things, too. The story isn't fantastically interesting. The characters are almost all completely annoying (and the few that aren't either die early on, or actually change their character part way through).
There are good things, though! Health regeneration is nice and fast, so you aren't hiding for half the fight like in recent Call of Duty/Medal of Honor games.
Er...
It's short, so you don't have to put up with it for long.
...
Can't really think of many others.
So it's frustrating and annoying, and falls in to the same traps as every other modern console FPS, while managing to fall harder and more awkwardly. The things it doesn't do badly, it does averagely.
If you haven't played it yet, save yourself the bother.
Saturday 21 May 2011
Wednesday 10 March 2010
Modern Warfare 2 and Bad Company 2: Notes on expectations, AI and difficulty levels
Over the next few weeks, I will be discussing my views on AI, difficulty levels and what they mean to game play, and player expectations towards games (especially sequels). Under the microscope for this series are the two biggest hitters in the ‘modern war’ first-person shooter category: Modern Warfare 2 and the recently released Battlefield: Bad Company 2.
The first part of this article will deal with some background information about me, the way I play games, and how all that relates to my experiences with both games. The following parts will deal more in-depth with the subject of AI, difficulty and expectation.
(Note: Due to lack of home internet, this discussion will be based purely on the single-player campaigns. Spoilers will be kept to a minimum.)
I finished both Modern Warfare 2 and Bad Company 2 recently; Bad Company 2 from start to finish over the course of a weekend, Modern Warfare 2 after a long hiatus.
It was actually the break in playing Modern Warfare 2 that inspired this particular discussion topic. Both games feature very similar themes and game play mechanics, and are seemingly attempting to achieve very similar aims (as linear, story-driven single-player experiences backed by an approachable, but deep multiplayer system). They are two games that will be compared relentlessly. “Which game is this generation’s water mark for modern-era first-person shooters?”
Allow me to pick my favourite right off the bat: I think Bad Company 2 is the superior game.
That may seem obvious given the fact that it took me months to finally get around to finishing Modern Warfare 2, and only a weekend to complete Bad Company 2, but it’s actually a little more complicated than it first appears. For one, I often don’t get around to finishing games until months (or years) after I’ve started. Sometimes the games are just too massive to properly get my head around at the time (the Disgaea series), sometimes they’re too long and I’m distracted by other titles that have subsequently been released (most RPGs), and sometimes, even if the game is reasonably short and straightforward, I’ll just stop playing without any thought whatsoever. I’ll be playing it one day, try out something else another, and just never go back. I do buy a large number of games, so the latter two scenarios occur quite a lot.
Not so with Modern Warfare 2, however. That was one of the few games in recent memory that I made a conscious decision to stop playing. The reasons basically boil down to a couple of overriding themes that, for me, spoiled the experience.
But first, some background about me and the way I play games to give some perspective.
The Way I Play
I used to always play games on the default difficulty settings. Part of the reason for that is probably because that is what I’ve always done: purchase new game, boot it up, and get into it as quickly as possible, picking default options along the way. Another part of it is possibly some subconscious desire to ‘experience’ a game rather than be ‘challenged’: the journey is more important than any feeling of mastery over the game. Often, following successful completions of the normal difficulty setting, I will replay games on higher difficulties, in order to see whether the experience is improved or worsened by it being more challenging.
In recent years, however, I have started skipping to the most difficult setting straight away. A realisation that I am a very experienced gamer that ought to be challenged by the games I play, rather than simply playing through them? The knowledge that I don’t have the time I once did to play through games multiple times on various difficulties, so picking the hardest setting from the beginning saves time in the future?
As much as anything, it’s probably down to the release of Halo.
Halo was a game that redefined a lot of preconceptions about first-person shooters on consoles and the way games could be played. Aside from being an extremely well-polished game, with a fairly interesting story, and arguably the best console multiplayer experience since Goldeneye, Halo was at least two games in one. The first was a standard first-person shooter experience; running-and-gunning through levels killing simplistic enemies that were little more than target practice. The second was played on Halo’s highest difficulty level: Legendary.
It was a noticeably different game on the highest difficulty, with enemies acting far more intelligently and being generally more deadly. In many ways, it felt like the game the developers wanted you to play. Tactics played a very important part of the experience; you often felt as if you had to outthink your enemies as much as outgun them.
Few games since have followed this philosophy, sticking instead to the antiquated notion that a higher difficulty level simply means adjusting the values for the amount of damage the player and enemies do, and how accurate everyone is.
Some games get away with it by balancing their highest difficulty level sufficiently; the core game experience takes priority over some damage values in a spreadsheet. Some games do not.
Modern Warfare 2 does not come out of this discussion well...
Stay tuned for Part 2, where our hero discusses just how Modern Warfare 2 gets it so wrong. And why Bad Company 2 just about gets away with it.
The first part of this article will deal with some background information about me, the way I play games, and how all that relates to my experiences with both games. The following parts will deal more in-depth with the subject of AI, difficulty and expectation.
(Note: Due to lack of home internet, this discussion will be based purely on the single-player campaigns. Spoilers will be kept to a minimum.)
Part One: Background
I finished both Modern Warfare 2 and Bad Company 2 recently; Bad Company 2 from start to finish over the course of a weekend, Modern Warfare 2 after a long hiatus.
It was actually the break in playing Modern Warfare 2 that inspired this particular discussion topic. Both games feature very similar themes and game play mechanics, and are seemingly attempting to achieve very similar aims (as linear, story-driven single-player experiences backed by an approachable, but deep multiplayer system). They are two games that will be compared relentlessly. “Which game is this generation’s water mark for modern-era first-person shooters?”
Allow me to pick my favourite right off the bat: I think Bad Company 2 is the superior game.
That may seem obvious given the fact that it took me months to finally get around to finishing Modern Warfare 2, and only a weekend to complete Bad Company 2, but it’s actually a little more complicated than it first appears. For one, I often don’t get around to finishing games until months (or years) after I’ve started. Sometimes the games are just too massive to properly get my head around at the time (the Disgaea series), sometimes they’re too long and I’m distracted by other titles that have subsequently been released (most RPGs), and sometimes, even if the game is reasonably short and straightforward, I’ll just stop playing without any thought whatsoever. I’ll be playing it one day, try out something else another, and just never go back. I do buy a large number of games, so the latter two scenarios occur quite a lot.
Not so with Modern Warfare 2, however. That was one of the few games in recent memory that I made a conscious decision to stop playing. The reasons basically boil down to a couple of overriding themes that, for me, spoiled the experience.
But first, some background about me and the way I play games to give some perspective.
The Way I Play
I used to always play games on the default difficulty settings. Part of the reason for that is probably because that is what I’ve always done: purchase new game, boot it up, and get into it as quickly as possible, picking default options along the way. Another part of it is possibly some subconscious desire to ‘experience’ a game rather than be ‘challenged’: the journey is more important than any feeling of mastery over the game. Often, following successful completions of the normal difficulty setting, I will replay games on higher difficulties, in order to see whether the experience is improved or worsened by it being more challenging.
In recent years, however, I have started skipping to the most difficult setting straight away. A realisation that I am a very experienced gamer that ought to be challenged by the games I play, rather than simply playing through them? The knowledge that I don’t have the time I once did to play through games multiple times on various difficulties, so picking the hardest setting from the beginning saves time in the future?
As much as anything, it’s probably down to the release of Halo.
Halo was a game that redefined a lot of preconceptions about first-person shooters on consoles and the way games could be played. Aside from being an extremely well-polished game, with a fairly interesting story, and arguably the best console multiplayer experience since Goldeneye, Halo was at least two games in one. The first was a standard first-person shooter experience; running-and-gunning through levels killing simplistic enemies that were little more than target practice. The second was played on Halo’s highest difficulty level: Legendary.
It was a noticeably different game on the highest difficulty, with enemies acting far more intelligently and being generally more deadly. In many ways, it felt like the game the developers wanted you to play. Tactics played a very important part of the experience; you often felt as if you had to outthink your enemies as much as outgun them.
Few games since have followed this philosophy, sticking instead to the antiquated notion that a higher difficulty level simply means adjusting the values for the amount of damage the player and enemies do, and how accurate everyone is.
Some games get away with it by balancing their highest difficulty level sufficiently; the core game experience takes priority over some damage values in a spreadsheet. Some games do not.
Modern Warfare 2 does not come out of this discussion well...
Stay tuned for Part 2, where our hero discusses just how Modern Warfare 2 gets it so wrong. And why Bad Company 2 just about gets away with it.
Wednesday 27 January 2010
Impending Releases
In what commentators are calling "the greatest first quarter release line-up in the history of gaming"*, the next few months are rife with a whole slew of exciting prospects. Below are a list of some of my top picks (or 'some of the games I currently have on pre-order'):
Mass Effect 2 - This is probably the biggest release from here until... hmm.. let's say Final Fantasy XIII. Already picking up unseasonably high review scores across the board, it looks to set right all the complaints from the first, while refining and tightening everything that was already great. Continuing the story from the original title, and no doubt acting as the springboard for the inevitably climactic third game in the trilogy, ME2 is essentially playing the role of the Empire Strikes Back. Will it similarly be totally awesome in every way? My copy is in the post, and I shall certainly be commenting upon it in due course...
Bioshock 2 - The first Bioshock was a jolly fun romp through a dilapidated underwater city, featuring solid mechanics and 'Isn't that clever?' levels of self-aware, self-referential story-telling. The sequel puts the diving boot on the other foot by portraying the player as the behemoth Big Daddy; a constant source of worry (and cash) in the first game. With some updated mechanics, including change-of-pace underwater sections, and a differing story focus (from Adam-eating, Little Sister botherer in the original, to lumbering, single-minded protector) it appears there's enough to set it apart its forebear. But it still has a few questions to answer. The most pertinent seemingly being "Will Rapture hold the same wonder the second time around?"
Final Fantasy XIII - The most anticipated game since Mass Effect 2. Probably. Final Fantasy has always done pretty well, so the release of a new game is always a fairly big deal. But is XIII IV games too many? There has, in recent years, been more negative sentiment toward the FF titles than ever before, especially after XII which many believed lost the 'soul' of the series somewhat. But turn-based (ish) battles are back, and things seem to be more akin to 'traditional' Final Fantasy releases, rather than the 'single-player MMO' stylings of the previous title. Personally, I think that for many FFXIII is going to be the litmus test for whether Square-Enix has completely lost the plot and whether the Final Fantasy series has hit a wall. Whatever happens, though, it's hard to deny that game looks very, very pretty.
Just Cause 2 - The first game was an interesting experience. Not particularly polished or innovative, it still managed to be a whole bucket-full of fun. The premise was simple: you are a CIA agent trying to topple a corrupt Caribbean dictator. You have a bunch of story missions to complete, and a host of 'hearts and minds'-style side quests (to unlock and gain access to various missions and equipment). The hook was being able to explore all 250,000 acres of the island, in any which way you choose. That could be by hijacking a plane, parachuting onto the back of a moving car, driving said car off a cliff, bailing out and parachuting once more into an enemy base. Or onto a motorbike. Or a boat. The sequel brings all of this vehicle-hopping back, but ramps everything up to 11. The hook this time is actually a literal hook; shoot onto a plane and grapple up to it and take it over. Hook onto an enemy and pull him about. Hook an enemy and then hook the back of your car and drive about; dragging the poor soul behind you. It's never going to reach the dizzy heights of the other games so far mentioned, but it's the sort of underground-hit-to-be that's going to be a lot people's game of the year. Those people will be wrong, but you can't fault their enthusiasm.
Aliens Vs Predator - I don't actually know a great deal about this game other than it will more than likely follow the same overall design as its predecessors, it's being made by the original Aliens Vs Predator developer (Rebellion, a studio I like quite a bit), is very, very gory, has multiplayer (always a strong point for the series), and the special edition of the game comes with a model Facehugger. I'll be honest, only one of the above had any real influence over my decision to order it. And it wasn't the multiplayer.
Red Dead Redemption - GTA meets cowboys! I really, really liked the first one, and from what I've seen of Redemption it looks set to be even better. And just picture it: GTA in the Wild West. Stealin' horses, rustlin' cattle, shootin' bandits. Man, cowboys are awesome...
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 - This one is interesting. It seems to be billed (in certain sections of the press and gaming community) as 'the game that will topple Modern Warfare 2'. In the multiplayer department, if nothing else. I would like to agree, especially as I had a whole bunch of fun playing multiplayer in the original, but in sales numbers alone this game doesn't really have a chance. Even after the whole 'boycotting Modern Warfare 2 in favour of Bad Company 2 because MW2 doesn't let us have dedicated servers on the PC' thing. It will do well, of that I am sure. Early reports suggest it is shaping up extremely nicely. And I already have a group of people at work lined up to play multiplayer with, which is always a good sign. Solid, fun, destructible-scenery-based gaming action.
It's going to be a fairly busy few months. And the above list isn't even everything on the horizon. I am as certain of the sun rising in the morning as I am of me picking up another three or four games before April. The main thing to take away, I suspect, is that no gamer will be lost for choice for the rest of the Winter. Or the first half of Spring.
I was also going to take this opportunity to chat about some Valkyria Chronicles stuff, but this post has already reached mammoth proportions so I shall save that for another time. To briefly sum up: amazingly great game, but damn did some design decisions get to me...
*Someone somewhere must be...
Mass Effect 2 - This is probably the biggest release from here until... hmm.. let's say Final Fantasy XIII. Already picking up unseasonably high review scores across the board, it looks to set right all the complaints from the first, while refining and tightening everything that was already great. Continuing the story from the original title, and no doubt acting as the springboard for the inevitably climactic third game in the trilogy, ME2 is essentially playing the role of the Empire Strikes Back. Will it similarly be totally awesome in every way? My copy is in the post, and I shall certainly be commenting upon it in due course...
Bioshock 2 - The first Bioshock was a jolly fun romp through a dilapidated underwater city, featuring solid mechanics and 'Isn't that clever?' levels of self-aware, self-referential story-telling. The sequel puts the diving boot on the other foot by portraying the player as the behemoth Big Daddy; a constant source of worry (and cash) in the first game. With some updated mechanics, including change-of-pace underwater sections, and a differing story focus (from Adam-eating, Little Sister botherer in the original, to lumbering, single-minded protector) it appears there's enough to set it apart its forebear. But it still has a few questions to answer. The most pertinent seemingly being "Will Rapture hold the same wonder the second time around?"
Final Fantasy XIII - The most anticipated game since Mass Effect 2. Probably. Final Fantasy has always done pretty well, so the release of a new game is always a fairly big deal. But is XIII IV games too many? There has, in recent years, been more negative sentiment toward the FF titles than ever before, especially after XII which many believed lost the 'soul' of the series somewhat. But turn-based (ish) battles are back, and things seem to be more akin to 'traditional' Final Fantasy releases, rather than the 'single-player MMO' stylings of the previous title. Personally, I think that for many FFXIII is going to be the litmus test for whether Square-Enix has completely lost the plot and whether the Final Fantasy series has hit a wall. Whatever happens, though, it's hard to deny that game looks very, very pretty.
Just Cause 2 - The first game was an interesting experience. Not particularly polished or innovative, it still managed to be a whole bucket-full of fun. The premise was simple: you are a CIA agent trying to topple a corrupt Caribbean dictator. You have a bunch of story missions to complete, and a host of 'hearts and minds'-style side quests (to unlock and gain access to various missions and equipment). The hook was being able to explore all 250,000 acres of the island, in any which way you choose. That could be by hijacking a plane, parachuting onto the back of a moving car, driving said car off a cliff, bailing out and parachuting once more into an enemy base. Or onto a motorbike. Or a boat. The sequel brings all of this vehicle-hopping back, but ramps everything up to 11. The hook this time is actually a literal hook; shoot onto a plane and grapple up to it and take it over. Hook onto an enemy and pull him about. Hook an enemy and then hook the back of your car and drive about; dragging the poor soul behind you. It's never going to reach the dizzy heights of the other games so far mentioned, but it's the sort of underground-hit-to-be that's going to be a lot people's game of the year. Those people will be wrong, but you can't fault their enthusiasm.
Aliens Vs Predator - I don't actually know a great deal about this game other than it will more than likely follow the same overall design as its predecessors, it's being made by the original Aliens Vs Predator developer (Rebellion, a studio I like quite a bit), is very, very gory, has multiplayer (always a strong point for the series), and the special edition of the game comes with a model Facehugger. I'll be honest, only one of the above had any real influence over my decision to order it. And it wasn't the multiplayer.
Red Dead Redemption - GTA meets cowboys! I really, really liked the first one, and from what I've seen of Redemption it looks set to be even better. And just picture it: GTA in the Wild West. Stealin' horses, rustlin' cattle, shootin' bandits. Man, cowboys are awesome...
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 - This one is interesting. It seems to be billed (in certain sections of the press and gaming community) as 'the game that will topple Modern Warfare 2'. In the multiplayer department, if nothing else. I would like to agree, especially as I had a whole bunch of fun playing multiplayer in the original, but in sales numbers alone this game doesn't really have a chance. Even after the whole 'boycotting Modern Warfare 2 in favour of Bad Company 2 because MW2 doesn't let us have dedicated servers on the PC' thing. It will do well, of that I am sure. Early reports suggest it is shaping up extremely nicely. And I already have a group of people at work lined up to play multiplayer with, which is always a good sign. Solid, fun, destructible-scenery-based gaming action.
It's going to be a fairly busy few months. And the above list isn't even everything on the horizon. I am as certain of the sun rising in the morning as I am of me picking up another three or four games before April. The main thing to take away, I suspect, is that no gamer will be lost for choice for the rest of the Winter. Or the first half of Spring.
I was also going to take this opportunity to chat about some Valkyria Chronicles stuff, but this post has already reached mammoth proportions so I shall save that for another time. To briefly sum up: amazingly great game, but damn did some design decisions get to me...
*Someone somewhere must be...
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