Jefftown

What with all the reloadin'...

Loveless is a great comic that avoids most of the clumsiness that can be associated with the old west genre in 21st century.

I love the idea of teeth blowing out of characters heads in video games. Not sure how to differentiate it from the facemasks of Pariah or shields of the Suffering, but might be cool.

Road Warrior

Pursuit Force is another game I would have made give ridiculous levels of fortune. They made it harder than I would have, and cops doesn't resonate with me as much as wasteland cannibals, but still my favorite PSP game by miles. Written December 2005:

Turns out what GameSpot's promoting as the PSP killer app is already out in the UK: http://www.gamespot.com/psp/driving/pursuitforce/news.html?sid=6140961. Its region free and my next day'd box worked like a charm.

The game in a nutshell is a driving/shooting action game in a "day after tomorrow" dark future setting. As a cop, you're assigned these various crime syndicates to shut down, each with a handful of missions available. The combat mechanic is you're limited to hand weapons, but they can be fired while driving your own vehicle, or while hanging on for dear life from the hood of the enemies.

Being able to leap from vehicle to vehicle is the main gimmick for killing enemies, since blasting from a distance rarely does damage fast enough. Armed with an assault rifle and hiding behind their front grill, you can unload so fast that the defenders don't have a chance. Equipped with a slower rate of fire weapon, you'll need to actually duck when the enemies try and shoot you off. This usually results in you dragging your legs between the car's wheel, then pulling yourself up to return fire. On cars like SUVs, it's not uncommon to have the driver driving, the front and rear left passenger blasting at some mission objective (like the mayor's limo) and the rear right hunting you as you attempt to commandeer the vehicle while hanging onto the rear bumper. It can get complicated.

It's pretty wild stuff and definitely passes the Mom test, where people who don't know anything about video games know they've never seen anything like it before.

There’s many awesome racing games for the PSP (Burnout, Wipeout, NFS, GTA), and as clunky as all the FPS control schemes are for the platform, the driving ones are pretty much nailed. Target selection is auto-locking, but this didn't really bother me. It's the norm for shooting games on the PSP (Infection, SOCOM), and there's so much going on anyways I didn't miss manual targeting.

The game also does a great job of mixing up the vehicles you drive. In the first 8 missions I played on foot, in a bunch of cars, on a motor cycle and in a boat. According to the packaging I get to fly a helicopter at some point. There’s some great physics where dead passengers slump in their seats realistically once you’ve taken over their vehicles. Enemy drivers often try to shake you off the car, and the staggering/falling animations are used to great effect. In a nice attention to detail, if you’re “hijacking” a friendly vehicle the original owner stays for the ride.

As cool as the inner loop is, this game has one fatal flaw that just might kill it for people. Quite simply, it's the most difficult game I've ever played. Back in the amiga days US gamers would bitch about how hard euro games were, like shadow of the beast and those psychotic psygnosis shooters. This game is like those but twice as hard. The levels are so much a puzzle about correctly using your ammo, health, vehicle health and the enemies facing you that even one mistake will cause mission failure. Even on the first mission.

You need to read the manual and KNOW about the justice ability or you will replay the first three available missions for hours without beating them. Couple this with a complete lack of checkpoints, and you frequently have 3 separate zero margin-of-error missions back to back that if you fail at any time, you replay all. The US previews mention addressing this, but just be forewarned. This game may make you throw your PSP in frustration.

I'm the embodiment of hating "consoly" save systems and better games than this have sat unplayed because of their autosaves. But there's really something compelling about crawling on speeding vehicles in post-apocalyptic shootouts. Since I've been talking about this game, people have pointed out these types of interactions in other games, notably halo 2 and ratbag's ex-mad max game. Soon someone is going to get these basic mechanics honed and fun, on a UE3 powered multiplayer game and the vehicular combat genre is going to have a new market leader.

More Battlefront II ranting

I REALLY enjoyed Star Wars: Battlefront II on the PC. There were lots of high performance servers and had loads of star wars "out of game" accessories that enriched the experience. The movies and vehicle/character/planet art books mapped almost perfectly to the game's environment and amped my psychological closure like a motherfucker. Written November 2005 I believe:

I can see why this game drives some people nuts, but man oh man have I been playing the shit out of this game. The game has that awesome habit of just when I'm about to shelve it, I try another class that generally doesn't interest me and BLAMMO I have a new favorite class. Some of these moments:

* Discovering the depth of the jet pack systems. Namely the Boba/Jango/Jump Trooper style of hovering versus the Dark Trooper rocket jump. Punching through the forest canopy on dagobah, flying along the tree tops, then dropping straight down on to a hostile control point just rocks. Hovering over command points as a Jet Trooper on the republic side is a blast. Bounding past overwhelming offensive forces that have you pinned in your last node, and capturing some undefended ones behind any lines is very addicting. Love the jump pack combat.

* Heroes versus Villains: Every Star Wars fan needs to play this one gametype at least once. It's only on Mos Eisley and is all the good guys versus all the bad guys. It's a game type of only one map and 20 different classes. Jedi force powers like choke, push, jump, run versus guided missiles, jump packs and sniping weapons. Teams include literally every speaking character from the 6 movies except Lando. Can get old, but again, being able to switch between these wild classes extends the experience.

* Hunts: One normal unit type versus a "wildlife" class on various planets. Sand People versus Jawas is a favorite. Empire snipers versus ewoks is fun when you accomplish the monumentally difficult task of killing a storm trooper. Hunt or BE Jar-Jars or geonosisians. It's a great diversion and I swear averted a shelf moment for me.

* Remote Controlled Drones: Many commander classes have these remote controlled drones you can drive around, shoot ineffectively with, or detonate to devastating effect (albeit with a 5 second immobilizing delay). The challenging "deflection" shooting of these things, detonating them at the end of hallways, that in 5 seconds are going to be filled with enemies, is very satisfying.

* Space Combat: The space combat missions, when everything is in sync on a fast server, are incredibly unique. With fighters intercepting enemy transports and bombers, while escorting our own it's a solid air-combat style action game. Add to this teams of players actively trying to board enemy ships, and counter teams attempting to stop them, the action gets even crazier. Now add turrets on the capital ships that can be manned, and people on repair duty, fixing ships components damaged from space. There's a lot to marvel at here. As soon as they let us drive the capital ships as well, this should spin off into its own product.

* Bothan Spies: Invisible guys with microwave flamethrowers. Great for ambushing and capturing enemy nodes, the gun does so much damage at such a wide arc you'll quickly become the subject of “quit cheesing it with the bothan” and “play a real class newbie!” taunts.

Like any multiplayer game, where you play colors your experience. I recommend "drunken masters" which usually runs around 48 players at good speeds for me (Raleigh, NC). It intermixes space, hunt, heroes/villains, and the standard conquest maps to good effect.

Battlefield: Ancient Mediterranean

I obsess over the battlefield franchise. It's one of the rare games I would have made given the opportunity (again, with more robots and spaceships) that didn't eventually bomb. No idea when I wrote this about Battlefield: Vietnam, so most likely near the release date of March 2004:

I've probably spent more time with Battlefield 1942 than virtually any other game in the last five years. Its combination of depth, tactics, team work, kitchen sink design ethos all held my attention well past faves like Half-Life (+ TFC/CS/etc). My thoughts on BF:Vietnam.

* Neat weapon modeling: Sure virtually every gun in bf1942 was fully automatic, but these machine guns just feel different. Their rate of fire seems through the roof, their sound effects are shredding and kinetic, and their lethality at range is devastating. Besides the stable assault rifles, you've got a kick ass grenade launcher, WWII-o-phile fave the M14, and a bunch of unconventional weapons like punji sticks, booby traps, claymore mines, and SA-7 surface to air missiles. They’re almost all a pleasure to use and have used against you.

* Map audio features: Something BF: V does well is introduce audio into FPS tactics and maps. The Hue maps have this lady constantly berating the US, somewhat convincingly, about the error of their ways. Some US Airfields have a broadcast from a 'good morning vietnam'-esque DJ. The ability to blast Surfing Bird from your scooter after claiming a conquest point is pretty exhilarating. We'll see how old they get, but combined with the licensed pop music from the 1960's, audio seems in many ways to be this products defining feature. Never mind the enemy can hear you coming from miles away. Sometimes just blasting the Kinks after owning some teenager can’t be helped.

* New Multi-Station vehicles: My favorite vehicle in bf1942, hands down, was the inflatable raft their introduced in the Secret Weapons of WWII expansion pack. Think jeep on water. There are a few variations on this in bfv, the most notable being the PT boats. These 3 station fast attack craft are an absolute blast to use and the maps provide a constant sense of discovery as you find some heretofore unknown water way. In an interesting twist, virtually every flying vehicle is multi-station. The 6 person chopper is pretty wild when used for invasions and even the phantom's need two team members operating them to use all their firepower. Fun! Most jeeps are now 3 people, which while kind of cool, is stupid dangerous to use. The old fan favorite from Codename Eagle of the sidecar passenger being able to use their own weapon is back, so you can really tailor a jeep to any purpose (if you're crazy enough). I had a lot of success with a driver, a guy on the mounted MG and the passenger with a SA-7.

* Classes: There are only 4 classes to each side as opposed to the 6 in bf1942. Each of those classes have two 'kits' though, so in a sense there's a total of 16 classes. In general it seems like each class has a number of different options, so if one tactic isn't working, you're equipped to tackle another. In most of my games, people gravitated towards the m60/law soldier class which is a clear "killer for all seasons" uber class. The NVA anti-air class by comparison is virtually useless at anything other than unloading SAMs at planes. Engy's can now dismantle enemy vehicles while occupied, which is pretty devastating.

* Mobile Spawns: DICE fooled around with these a little in SWoWWII with the plane/mobile spawn. Here you've got a boat that fulfills the same type of role, but you have fancier methods available. One is to have a chopper airlift this crate to wherever it likes. The NVA can 'dig up' a spawn and then replant it else where. They all seem like pale imitations of Planetsides mobile spawn. And in general, the choppers CAN airlift other vehicles, but it’s pretty dangerous. I saw more than my share of Patton tanks dropped from 800 feet by over reacting newbs (myself included!). Choppers aren’t easy to fly, don’t get me wrong, as the collective modeling is a little twitchy.

* Destroyable Structures: Adding a little C&C Renegade to the mix, you can now destroy control towers at certain locations to shut down vehicle spawning. On a few maps the NVA can spawn at these un-capturable airfields. Get any anti-armor weapon over to it and start slugging away at the tower. Not really a destroyable structure, but there are ambush spots on various maps. One I got caught in was a bunch of tree trunks with spikes rolling down a hill (it automatically resets after a period of time).

* Maps: Neat overall though there are only 14. Flaming Dart and Game Warden were probably my two favorites. The first is a partially successful attempt at doing modern air combat in a first person shooter. The other is a rambling, delta of waterways.

* Stability/Bugs: Well, not too many problems but not great. Performance was uniformly below what I experienced in bf1942 or UT2004 but that may have more to do with slim pickings on servers than the code. I locked up twice and dumped to desktop once in my play sessions yesterday.

Final Comments: B-. Neat, incremental additions crammed into an aging engine on a compressed time table. I predict I'll be playing it for a few weeks, but nothing akin to my addiction to the original product.

3rd World Genosis Shithole

Not certain when I wrote this, so probably around the release date of March 2005. Novalogic games like Black Hawk Down and Joint Operations really specialized in "gaming" these 3rd world shitholes. Republic Commando is yet to be surpassed in squad AI and control, and their sci-fi take space squalor focused on all the coolness the movies skipped. And yes, again, clearly, I am a nerd:

Right up front I should say I wasn't a fan of either the Xbox or PC Republic Commando demos. In hindsight I know why, but it made me all the more surprised when I ended up really enjoying the full game (on PC). Turns out the game lives up to it's tagline that the squad is the weapon. I'm having the most fun when I'm sort of trailing the squad as they're on seek and destroy orders, patching holes in the squads firing arcs, blasting monsters off a guy hacking a door, etc. The AI does a great job of maintaining the right distance in front of you when in that mode, and you can pretty much play the game by following their lead.

The order system (which I feel really could have been better explained in the demo) boils down to seek and destroy, do something specific, and stop everything you're doing/get ready for a new order. There's defend location which hasn't been needed in the geonosis(sp?) missions. Also ‘group on me’, which too never came up.

That's mainly because Republic Commando does this neat 'sticky' order system when telling guys to take cover at a certain location, or hack a door. When the squad is given an order like that, one guy (randomly as far as I can tell) is assigned and the rest of the squad keeps doing what they're doing. The next squad wide order doesn't effect those guys even if a general order like seek and destroy. To get those guys off that order you need to issue the cancel everything order, then reissue the new order. It's a minor feature, but it really let's you have 100% predictable control over your dudes. A niggle is the 4 icons in the lower left tell you what they're up to (very useful!), but they're so abstract that I'm still not 100% sure up arrow is 'on me' and down arrow is 'defend location'.

The game tries to bring personalities to your clone teammates, but they're all named 49, and 30, which doesn't help. While they're meant to have specific skills, they can all do each others job and the squad level granularity of the order system doesn't let you really pick who does what. To be honest I'm not sure why "man this turret" specific-type orders need to be an order at all. Why don't they just go jump in and do it. It's not like most of the missions have 8 to choose from, where I have to tactically pick a gameplan. Maybe it's to make sure the player see something cool being done by the squad.

The combat is the standard blaster fare, which can be pretty uninspired traditionally, but they spice it up with primarily tight, close combat. Republic Commando uses the increasingly standard halo shield model of health, though you appreciate it, because as far as I can tell friendly fire is on by default.

The squad AI is pretty good in these encounters, but the enemies are straight forward. The old sci-fi exploit of being able to do the most horrible things to robots (cuz they're not human, right?) is in full effect and there's lots of dismemberments and decapitations.

The game does the interesting thing of having every ammo drop give you your weapon's full capacity, instead of trickling "random" amounts to you that add up to whatever they add up to. Promotes being generous with the trigger. Off hand grenades (instead of selecting them). Melee attacks are so powerful the game ‘cripples’ them by having whatever you’re stabbing spray its innards all over your visor. This ‘flashbang’ effects you until the wiper scoops off to goop.

Something that really shines in the game are the team animations. In the above mentioned seek and destroy, they'll wave you along in the right direction. When they fight hand to hand with aliens, it's like a fighting game's combo as they just kick the living shit out of their foes. They interact with the dead bodies of enemies, kicking them halo style or if left alone for a few moments, collect together over it looking almost hypnotized by it. The death animations of the enemy exhibit a real gallows humor. Decapitated droids stumbling around firing aimlessly, amputated badass droids drag themselves along the ground before croaking. Can't wait until someone tries this level of violence with human figures and a nod to realism (maybe not...).

Consol-isms include extremely short levels (though loadtimes are blistering on modern PCs), a checkpoint system made irrelevant on the PC by the inclusion of quicksaves (thanks!), and ginormous fonts everywhere. I'm worry that less and less developers are designing for the PCs strengths these days.

Last thing I'll mention is they do great living battlefields. I'm as jaded as the next 35 year old star wars fan about the new trilogy, and the geonosis battle in ep2 was no hoth as far as I was concerned. But they convincingly carry it off here, with an almost a call of duty level of burning, spiraling fighters, vietnam-esque hot drops, and close air support pyrotechnics. I think there was even the old war horse of a medic reviving a fallen soldier.

Playing a lot of tactical shooters didn't prepare me very well for playing Republic Commando. Once I got into the groove of squad control (which, again, boy did I not grok in the demo…twice), it barely plays like a first person shooter. You're shooting sure, but most of the time you're directing the squad and pitching in when more that 3 tasks need to be done simultaneously. That combined with fairly righteous science fiction war scenes and intense character animations, you've got a very good tactical shooter.

Hope Lucasarts didn't fire this internal team..

Aayla Secura sweatin' in Felucia

Battlefront II PC review written November 2005. Yes, I am a nerd:

I should admit I’m a bit of a Clone Wars geek. And sadly, that’s totally compatible with not especially enjoying the new trilogy. For some bizarre reason Lucas decided to essentially skip the actual Clone Wars in his movies. The battle of Geonosis was featured prominently at the end of Episode 2 (the Clone Wars Pearl Harbor), but that was basically it for the films.

The 4 sentence paragraph description of the Clone Wars is this: Decimated Jedi peacekeepers become defacto field generals for the unification side in an interstellar civil war. A staggering number of their order were obliterated on Geonisis and there is wide spread desertion from the Jedi Council’s call for leadership. Those that do fight are tasked with the moral and physical challenges of leading their clone soldiers against the CIS rebel droid army. Tragically overlaying this cosmos wide consumption of life and resources is the truth it’s all an artifact of a pedestrian power struggle on the unification side.

That essential setup has led to some of the most insanely kickass military science fiction ever rendered in any media. Sadly the premier media of film almost completely ignores the actual Clone Wars, and the associated rich, kinetic pulp. A brilliant peek into the actual Clone Wars is Genndy Tartakovsky’s Cartoon Network series. There are also a number of wonderful trade paperbacks on the Clone Wars available from the Dark Horse Comics, many of the stories written by Lucasarts Producer Haden Blackman. Both whip out a real Indiana Jones-style, seat of your pants, action adventure and bring into focus the matinee serial roots of the prequel naming convention (that so often has people under 30 wondering WTF).

In the game medium, by far the best clone wars game was republic commando. It was an addicting, memorable and fun as hell sci-fi brothers in arms right in the heart of the Clone Wars (Geonsis, Outer Space, and Kashyyyk) . Battlefront II continues that fine tradition, though there are some bizarre elements that I fear will make it not everyone’s cup of tea…Well, as “not every one’s cup of tea” that the best selling star wars franchise of all time can be.

Up front innovations are remorselessly unbalanced hero “classes” that are unlocked based on mission completion and, I’m sure, other wacky triggers though only for a limited time. From Clone Wars darlings like Aayla Secura, General Grievous and Mace Windu to old school archetypes like Han Solo, Darth Vader and Princess Leia, this is the first time behind the controls for many of these characters, in any game. Leading newly rechristened stormtroopers against rebels on rain-drenched Kamino as Boba Fett is a gaming memory, pure and simple. It’s done so well it’s even respectful of Star Wars canon logic, as Boba Fett was raised on Kamino where the clone army was prototyped.

They do space combat better than most, fully embracing FPS mechanics and melding them with the optional depth of Holland-era sims like X-Wing. Being able to selectively disable ships from space, or aggressively board the enemy ships and shut them down from within, adds a nice layer of strategy if so inclined. Can’t wait until they let you actually drive the cruisers...

There’s a clever single player game presented by slapping a decent objective system over the normal mechanics of the multiplayer game. It’s used to great effect in easing the newb into the diversity of the games classes and weapons. Must be nice to have miles of insanely uber-designed film footage laying around to bookend your missions ;-). I really respect what they did here as MP games on the consoles need a SP and this looks like a pretty efficient way to pull it off.

Back to the fanboy POV, this game is as far as I’ve seen the only exploration of the time of the upcoming TV show, the era between Sith and New Hope. In the game it’s the Empire going around, kicking the shit out of various upstarts and pennyante rebellions. According to the game this is when clone troopers get rechristened storm troopers, are no longer all clones of Jango Fett (fears of vulnerabilities and defects though those “pure” clones still serving tend to be in senior positions), and includes the theft of the death star plans.

A negative is blaster combat just isn’t that much fun. The firearms all seem under powered and mushy, while the explosives by comparison seem overpowered and the smart way to play the game. I didn’t find the vehicles especially fun to drive, and in multiplayer they're easily exploitable by hanging back and sniping in 1600x1200 glory (I’m playing on the PC, natch). There’s no autosave in the campaign, which almost fucked me except for a lucky replay save. Kinda clunky the title screens are always 640x480, regardless of the res you run the game at. The AI is great background fodder, but can’t be considered comparable to human opponents in any known metric.

Battlefront II is a Clone Wars “and beyond” battle generator that looks great, innovates conservatively but potently the DICE’s Battlefield genre, and respects the source material to the point of molestation.

Go PanWare!

More Outfit Gushing

I've noticed a phenomenon where I get this great idea for a game, lament my employeers short sightedness in not letting me make it on their dime, then watch a competitor do basically the same game and bomb. The Outfit would have been my game, except with more robots and spaceships.

Written March 2006:

I had very high expectations for this game and it pretty much exceeded them. I really dig elaborate, strategic, multiplayer action games and this delivers in spades. Having control of my own NPC squad, against another player’s NPC squad, in MP has been a dream of mine for a while and it's a cool as I had hoped. I loved the various objectives you could capture that unlocked new deployables, even "intelligence" ones like listening in on the other teams voice com. The destroyable environments add oomph to the weapons, and it can get very hectic out there very quickly. Getting my ass beat by some spandex wearing Nazi babe who crept up on my boys is a gaming memory, pure and simple. Same with calling in an airstrike, then advancing under fire, dropping a self-manning 50cals all along the way. Piling all my guys into a cannon jeep and tear assing around, running dudes over, dodging anti-tank shells, addicting! Describing it to a co-worker, he said it sounded like multiplayer Mercenaries with NPC squad mates, I said yeah, and he said SOLD!

I will confess though that not everyone may necessarily be tolerant of the pretty substantial "WTF is going on" moments of your first 15 minutes of play. This game is RADICALLY different from almost anything on consoles that I’ve heard of, and having NPCs in multiplayer is maybe a bigger innovation than you guys suspect. Coupled with a quickly ignored tutorial-lite, the game's initial impression can be overwhelming, which for lil Johnny Live may bury the needle in "It SUCKS!" territory. Nevertheless, it's that depth and diversity of tactics and play styles that is going to keep this game's player count steady, where other shooters will dip and plunge as new MP titles cannibalize each other.

GDC 2006

I love GDC. I got my first job in the game industry, at Origin no less, at GDC. Many dismiss GDC as not exclusive enough, but I prefer its nuts and bolts focus to bullshit theory. Skipping the parties has been instrumental in my recent enjoyment of the conference, and SF cuisine doesn't hurt.

Written March 2006:

Neil Young's talk: EALA is looking at specific features as being meaningful IP, not just brands. An example being the "one button interface" that Battle for Middle Earth 2 is using on the 360 that supposedly solves RTS interfaces on consoles (missed Louis Castle's talk on the topic). Didn't know EA had adopted the Valve "cell" structure, but apparently they have. A re-occurring theme in most talks about prototyping is fail as fast as you can with as little work as you can, so you can learn the lesson and move on. EA's idea of a hit is a game with mass audience appeal, strong execution, and 1-3 potent innovations over previous titles/competition. A funny bit was the EA guys behind me bitching about how they worked for the company and had never seen the Airborne footage he showed.

Factor 5’s growing your company talk: I liked their idea of burying expensive engine dev across multiple projects. They said that their leads have something like 25 meetings a week which sounds insane. They have "point people" who take specific issues to completion, including answering spammed emails on the topic, fixing the build, specific features, which they said was necessary in 100+ person teams. Mentioned that the average time in the industry for developers is declining, which sounds right though I don't know where they're getting that from. They touched on how source control going down for an hour can lead to man months worth of work lost on huge teams. Brian Krueger looks so much like Commander Riker from Star Trek: TNG it became distracting.

Don Daglow's next-gen production lecture: He clearly had a lot of experience, but I didn't an immense amount of out it. The "crazy" voices got old, and he was repeatedly and perplexingly name dropping ("Back when GDC was in Chris' house..."). His analogy about tides and moon cycles and comparing them to console cycles rang false to me and his goal of touching people with games sounded pretty corny. It was interesting to know they're a heavy MS Project company, and the stories about getting Hollywood types approval on assets makes me grateful for Epic's process. And he let us all know about 8 times Stormfront is hiring like mad.

Full Moon Studios scaring people talk: Talked a lot about cognitive dissonance, where things look right for the most part, but then something really isn't right. Their example was of the little girl from the Ring and FEAR, who for the most part looked "right", but didn't move right. They also touched on disempowering the player through removing weapons, screwing with their movement, etc, though prefaced it by saying it's easy to frustrate players this way. I loved their analogy between humor and fear, which is that it's difficult to track a road to it, you know it when you've got it, and one small misstep can destroy the entire illusion. One thing I agreed with is they said violence is the easiest emotion to cause a player to feel, which explains the last 25 years of game development. I never knew Eternal Darkness evoked "fear" in the player by faking a corrupted save game (SCARY!).

Spore Pre-Pro talk: The main thing I walked away from this with is that words are just about the worse mechanism for discussing interactive experiences you can use. I also liked the idea of prototyping features in their own exe to reduce both build and load times, which can accumulate into real time sinks. They also touched on the idea that you need a certain amount of polish in prototypes for people to enjoy using them, even though this is fundamentally at odds with the goal of a prototype.

Wild Tangent's Vista talk: A sponsored session, I still learned a bit about Vista. I didn't know that most software is bought by a customer during the first 6 months of a machine's ownership. It looks like most people will be using limited user accounts in vista since they fixed the "I can't install anything" problem it had. Now when admin level things come up for normal accounts, they can be "elevated" to the admin level just for that feature using a download-style popup. He also talked about predicting your game's performance with vista by running in a limited user account in xp, which sounds like it's more restrictive than vista will be. The game explorer seems cool, except that it can shutdown apps based on time of day, so he suggested always saving on exit. The explorer also allows you to set approved ESRB ratings, like a game v-chip.

Valve's production talk: They said iterative designers need to be able to cope with failure, since that's what they'll be doing most of the time. Since Epic is a company that playtests every day, and it was interesting to hear how they decided to playtest only every 1-2 weeks (enough time to meaningfully address problems mainly). I couldn't imagine any effective predictive scheduling based on assembling tasks lists in 1-2 week chunks, but whatever works for them. It rang very true that "theoretical" problems that prevent something from being playtested is dumb. I never thought of it this way but it's true that players under threat don't notice subtle things. This was useful to know for their in-game cinematics. It was also interesting to hear them discuss "whole game" iteration at alpha when it's playable from beginning to end and how time consuming it can be.

Digital Distribution panel: I was intrigued to hear how closely you could monitor demo customer to real customer trends with e-distribution. It was also interesting to hear how Xbox Live Arcade managed portfolio system ("we need ONE chess game, not 10") differed from Steams ("All aboard!"). I didn't know that retail still plays a huge part in games that use e-distro. Glad to hear that the Make Something Unreal contest winner Red Orchestra is selling very well on Steam. Overall it was a pretty uncomfortable session with Gabe's body language being very defensive, the moderator seeming somewhat ill-informed, and going to Q&A 30 minutes in. Something that I was amazed nobody noticed was the MS guy said "Tighten up the graphics" like those wonderful Westwood College commercials.

Wideload Model: Didn't know humor was a core aspect of the "wideload" brand, though Stubbs was a funny as hell game in retrospect. At first blush having contractors directly checking in assets into source safe sounds like a good idea. Since the Halo engine was so "exclusive" no contractors had any experience with it and there was significant training to be done with them. Other things that sounded true were having certain contractors work on certain game regions to help unify look, have a full time contractor manager since feedback delays are expensive and wasteful, use IM for fast communication, and don't have the first drop from a contractor be the final asset incase major reworking is done. 

Another winner

Relic's 360 game, the Outfit. Deployables galore. Written April 2006:

Finished the single player over the weekend and really enjoyed the later missions. As it goes on, missions become difficult enough to require smart use of resources and deployables, which made all the difference in SP engaging me like MP does. It reminded me of Republic Commando where in your first missions, there was always just enough locations for you to send your guys to, so you felt like, why don't they just go their automatically. In later RC missions, there are MORE places you can send guys to than you have guys, so you feel like you're actually influencing the battle, rather than just doing what the designer clearly wants you to do.

I'm so addicted to MP it's ridiculous. I had a great moment last night where this guy was hunting my squad with a Panther (an incredibly scary, cool looking and historically accurate vehicle BTW). I was hiding along the curve of this wall, but didn't have anything to hurt the tank with so I was just backing up. I eventually came to a point where I had to run across the open, or die. As I mulled my limited options, the tank comes around the bend, fires, misses and ends up blasting a hole in the wall. I dove through it and escaped! Very cool moment.

Something that's growing on me is how important terrain elevation and line of sights are in this game. Since it's pretty much a game of deployables, knowing that this innocuous looking control point is actually on a high hill is important. There's not really any other game that delivers the feel of power that setting up the crown of artillery and machine guns on a high vantage point gives you. You're prime target number one in such an exposed position, but if you're smart about it, the cacophony of all that firepower blasting in all directions is intoxicating.

I've started playing two on two matches now, and other than the standard RTS crap-shoot of random team member quality, find it fun as hell. Outstanding game! 

E3 2006

It'll be active for a while while I clear out old writing from the ol' clie. E3 2006 dump. Written at the time of May, 2006:

• Marvel: Ultimate Alliance - Looked a lot of like a marvel franchise, single player, final fight. Some cool environmental hazards like Galactus. For anyone who knows him, Scott Walker landed at activision after EALA. Marvel is his baby.
• Quake Wars - Very pretty, which only a handful of "next-gen" games really earn. Terrain lagged a little behind the quality of the vehicles and deployables, but overall looked great. Feels very far along, MP worked wonderfully, and the team specific video training before hand was hella well produced and useful. They did 1st person vehicle cockpits, which is cool but I wonder if anyone will ever see them, preferring to play in 3rd person. Deployable system is easy to understand and use, and I really love being able to watch the skies to time its arrival. It's a great example of de-hudding a hud element (time to finish "construction" in this case). The orbital strike is extremely cool.

Capcom:
• Dead Rising - The "use anything" ethos of this game, combined with the photo taking mechanism, differentiate this from other zombie games. I saw this guy grab a frying pan in a kitchen, and use it on the stove (it starts glowing). He then grabs a loaf of bread, and I thought he was going to make a sandwich! A lot of the items don't seem useful against zombies. Animations are stylized and kinetic, which works well where bashing things heads in are related. A weird thing is that on the outline of what constitutes a good photo, one category is "erotic". I didn't play long enough to find out what's erotic about the zombie apocalypse.

EA:
• Battlefield 2142: The airborne aircraft carrier gametype is pretty cool. It was fun to take on walker vehicles from the turrets mounted on the “titan” which are all aiming down and mighty powerful. Being able to assault these “titans” from an apc with aerial insertion pods sounds cool, but even the ea dudes seemed to be camping where these things land. It’s clearly using the BF2 engine, so it doesn’t look as good as Quake Wars.
• Crysis: Performance was really noticeable, but I overhead an EA suit say to the driver “wow, the frame rate is really improved”. Weapon customization is well done, where you just look at the weapon you’re holding in first person, and the UI overlays the model. Some vehicles, but only a handful.

Eidos:
• Rogue Trooper: I’m a sucker for anything 2000ad and had some fun playing it. All the previews say “unless you are familiar with the comic…”, and I am, so there you go. I loved the “low rider” walker enemies and since the world’s air is poisoned, everyone is wearing these martial bunny suits. When you spray them, the burst leaks wherever you hit them, which turns out to be very satisfying. It handles weapon switching gracefully with the “AI” equipment backpack’s metal arms unfolding out and revealing/hiding weapons.
• Hitman: Blood something – Didn’t play it, but the Mardi Gra scene with 50 people in the narrow alley impressed. I adored being able to kill some random partier wearing a chicken suit, put it on, and then get into gunfights with gangsters.
• Just Cause – As far as I can tell, this is essentially the Jagged Alliance 2 FPS. You’re a rock jawed Special Forces type in this huge go anywhere banana republic with warring, manipulatable factions. The guy claimed 100 vehicles, and they’re a major element of the game. One cool bit was each vehicle had a “stunt position”, like standing on the hood, or hanging on to the wing, which you could safely enter just as you could enter the vehicle. From here you can dive onto other vehicles, or make HALO drops, frequently the best tactic for hitting objectives.

Lucasarts:
• Indiana Jones: Essentially, two tech demos, both of Indy beating people up. It can suck to be pressured into showing at E3 when your high profile product just gets started ;-).
• Empires at War expansion: Big addition seems to be the 3rd army, the Underworld/Fringe of Jabba the Hutt and Boba Fett. They’ll have their own units, heroes and a differing economy. This is one of the few games that allow you the play both the strategy and tactical game against an AI, and not have them fall apart after the first battle.

Microsoft:
• Age 3: The Warchiefs – The new tribal races have buildings that remind me of whatever the “mana” in Age of Myth was called. You have these totems you can send your peasants to, enabling your hero badass to use all his abilities. I really liked the tame animal one which converted this lethal bear into a unit. Tribal council instead of home city seems like a stretch (just saying… ;-))
• Crackdown – Very over the top. The main hero has the ability to throw vehicles around, which adds a much needed dose of surrealism into the modern cop genre.
• Lost Planet – Really kickass visually functioning mech.
• Shadowrun – Really expected this to be a huge single player RPG, when in fact it’s a multiplayer and class focused game. The lack of direct damage spells really reminded me of Wheel of Time, and the leveling system promotes experimentation instead of cautiousness (like, say BF2 or any MMORPG). The ability to resurrect in a perma-death game is interesting in that the revived guy contributes part of his cash until he dies again. Has a decent support class role as well. The guy demoing regularly compared it to counterstrike.
• Too Human: My impression after playing was a robotron. It takes serious adjusting to as you have no control over the camera. The right analog stick is all melee attacks, and I had to unlearn Halo to grok it.

Namco
• Warhammer: Mark of Chaos: My hope was a fantasy battle version of Dawn of War and that’s not a bad description. Very good looking, with fine animations, a polished regiment UI and canon Games Workshop forces. The chaos forces I used the demo would be legal in the tabletop game (I know, I’m a dork). A favorite was challenges made it over from the analog game, and it was KICKASS to watch the battle around me come to a stop as everyone gawked at the demon fight the warboss. Many units have abilities that are only applicable for challenges. A concern is they took the more literal route of fleeing and it seems like you lose control of your units if their morale breaks. I think DoW nailed how to manage this, so why fuck with it?

Nintendo:
• Wii: Didn't wait in line, but the video billboards along it were wild. They were movie poster sized video windows with a person on the other end looking through a camera at the line. You walk up and a "poster" says Hi and starts chatting you up. It was weird but cool, hopefully like the Wii.

Sony
• Resistance: Fall of Man – I didn’t lay hands on controller, but it looked like a world war II game set in the future. Very desaturated mid-range FPS combat.
• Warhawk – Pretty, but putting my 36 year old gamer wrists together and twisting really isn’t my idea of a good time ;-).
• Heavenly Sword – Very pretty. Wish I took this one for a spin.

THQ
• Dawn of War: Dark Crusade – They added a new C&C-like strategic campaign where you choose the battle you fight next. Additionally captured territories provide specific units and bonuses in upcoming fights. Characters now gain XP as well and have access to wargear. The guy was coy about new units for existing armies, but even if there weren’t any, the two new armies justify the purchase alone!
• Frontline – One of those weird theaters that only ran a trailer in it. It was a kickass theater, with these cool 3D weapon schematics, but why would anyone wait in line for that?
• Supreme Commander – Another theater with a trailer. It looked good and seemed very representative of gameplay, but still.

Ubisoft
• BIA: Hell’s Highway – The two things I’ll remember about this demo was the window glass getting blasted into my arm and the 88 team’s awesome reloading animation. The first one was a great example of thinking outside the box about first person actor gags which really got my creative juices flowing. The second will make any artillery piece crew in a WWII game that ISN’T perfectly looking like they should stick out like speaking characters who don’t at least flap their gums. The chimney collapse was also very cool.
• Dark Messiah of M&M – Pretty-ish and going around and kicking goblins through fragile planks into bottomless ravines was surprisingly fun. Evidently I had a weapon that whole time as a slight annoyed Ubi dude let me know, but shit I enjoyed it. The physics puzzles were logical and it rocked to stun the cave Cyclops with one before bum-rushing him and trying to kick his head in. The Ubi dude sighed at this point and walked away. Who would have thought that the challengers to western RPG throne would be Might & Magic and Elder Scrolls.

VU Games
• FEAR: Extraction Point – I fooled around with a new minigun with this dope split barrel muzzle breaks, and it was ridiculously overpowered against infantry (which I LOVE in miniguns). The battle armor was kind of cool. Didn’t know that Timegate of Kohan fame was doing it.
• Joint Task Force – A contemporary military RTS, it seems fairly by the numbers, but I didn’t spend any serious time with it. I did like how you could get infantry into civilian cars and pass undetected by enemy troops.
• World in Combat – A contemporary military RTS, it seems fairly by the numbers, but I didn’t spend any serious time with it. It’s got a slightly wonky interface with unmodified mouse movement only controlling camera orientation. You had to use the keyboard in conjunction with the mouse to scroll, which is a step back IMO. The saved replay function was a great way to demo the game, and they have perhaps the most impressive real-time mushroom cloud visual effect I’ve ever seen. It’s really pretty scary.

Webzen
• Huxley – Great character models was what I came away from with this. They put the environment polys to good use, but really leave the skybox horizon pretty boring. I felt like I was in this giant aquarium. I’m not sure who the H18 and H5 players were, but they were actively griefing the E3 players, blocking them into spawn locations and team killing. I suspect public beta testers.. 

bioshock - Impressive. Looks very high poly, and boasts the wares of a dedicated water artist since it's all in a submerged base. The whole "eco-system" of npcs is wild and designed with a real Verne flair. Mix with some Fallout-esque humor, and most SS2 systems (cameras, security stations, ammo types, taunting speaker presence), etc. Very neat.

Fun real life demo moments include some irrational guy schooling what I assumed was a take 2 stooge about how to handle crashes with a full house and all the australian accented profanities (most of any demo I've seen yet!). A good time was had by all.

Thanks Dan!