Game Curmudgeons

BROKEN Steel. Get it? Because the installer for PC and live achievements on Xbox are broken! Damn I’m clever. Come on Bethesda, I love the stuff you’re making, but it never seems to work right.

Okay, that bad joke aside, I’ve talked a bit to Brad Wardell, AKA, the CEO of Stardock, and he’s been active on plenty of forums as of late trying to take care of Demigod’s MP issues. He’s been spectacularly honest about how it’s all going and it’s great to see how much effort is being put into fixing this immediately, because when it works, Demigod is a ton of fun (thankfully, there are third party services like GameRanger that work well for playing right now). But for too many people, the P2P networking just isn’t cutting it, which Stardock is actively working to fix. In fact, I just got this from Wardell:

“We’re actually here at the office right now (11pm) with a dev team of 11 people working on this issue.”

Since he’s gone into quite a bit of detail on things, I’m going to put up some quotes from recent forum posts of his. It offers a better insight than anything I could paraphrase anyway!

“The Demigod launch is definitely really bringing up to roost the sad state of networking affairs on the PC.

In Supreme Commander, GPGNet was used and what it did was NAT traversal between players. Players who couldn’t be connected would show up with yellow or red pings in the SupCom lobby and the host would have to decide to kick them out.

It wasn’t a huge deal in SupCom because most people didn’t play MP and those who did, were technical enough to open up their ports.

With Demigod, the difference is that the player has to connect to everyone already in the lobby, not just the host in order to get into the lobby. That means, if there is 1 user in the lobby who can’t connect to more than a couple of people (for a variety of reasons) they can keep everyone else out.

The false assumption in Demigod was that a person who could connect to 1 person could connect to 8 other people and that’s just not the case. That edge case wasn’t identified.

The next false assumption is that because there were few complaints about Company of Heroes or SupCom, that the NAT system in Demigod would work fine. But CoH and SupCom are mostly played single player by the more casual part of the base. By contrast, Demigod is mostly played multiplayer.

As a result, a lot of people who normally wouldn’t even be trying an RTS MP are now in that mix which aggravated the first false assumption.

It particularly aggravates it because for Demigod, a new type of “Super NAT traversal” was made. For those who have opened ports and such, it works like every other game. But for those who don’t have normal network configurations, it apparently does a lot more but the result is that it uses a LOT of server resources to do it. As a result, what worked fine for a random sample of say 500 people fell apart at 5000 people and you still end up with edge cases that can thwart everyone.

Here’s an example edge case: Some ISPs we believe are limiting the number of peer connections they allow a user to make somehow. That person connects to host of a game fine,  gets in. But then, nobody else can connect to them and he blocks everyone from getting into the game.

This was figured out quite quickly. But the solution isn’t something that can be engineered overnight.

Here’s basically how the solution works:

1. You have to let people get into the lobby even if they’re not connected to everyone else.

2. Once in the lobby you try to direct connect or NAT connect to each other. If that fails, we try to use proxy servers to connect them. if that fails, they will appear with a yellow ping and the host will have to decide whether to kick them.

This is non-trivial to implement because, as some people know, Stardock didn’t develop Demigod. GPG did, including the networking. The networking in Demigod works fine as a unit test just like the connection servers work fine as a unit test. But integrating the two without requiring a lot of changes to Demigod is a significant task.

It is my hope that it will be solved tomorrow.

Now, that said, and this is depressing, in the last 2 weeks I’ve talked to enough people in the industry off the record to realize that in terms of RTS’s, what Demigod is experiencing isn’t atypical. It’s just that Demigod’s *multiplayer* userbase is a different demographic than the multiplayer user base of say a Supreme Commander or a Company of Heroes.

But regardless, it has to be made bullet proof and THEN once it is made bullet proof, Stardock will have to put in extra effort to make sure the MP community stays large through contests with prizes, coupons, you name it.”

The first connectivity patch is scheduled for tomorrow at this point, though that may change.

There’s some real, brutal honesty too about the success or failure of the game, and the understanding that from a player side, it doesn’t matter why it’s happening, only that it is.

“Well my feeling is, if Stardock/GPG can’t solve the MP issue this week then Demigod deserves to go down in flames.

And before someone reading this thinks I’m trolling, I’m the CEO of Stardock (I have gotten flamed on our forums for “attacking” Stardock and Demigod).

I don’t CARE what the technical issues are. I know what they are — against my will I know them. But I don’t care and neither do gamers. The damn MP just needs to freaking work for the vast majority of users. Period. End of story.

If I wasn’t on the inside, I’d be screaming “how the hell did the MP in this game get released?!” Except in beta, it worked really well. We had 10 player MP games online routinely.

Long story short: ANY MP centric game must have a very large free PUBLIC beta test. Period. As in, 10s of thousands of players.”

I don’t think any of us who haven’t programmed a multiplayer game realized just how far back things are with network. Windows has integrated plenty of standards for video and audio, but for networking, nothing.

“With the information we know NOW, we know how things should have been done. Unlike with 3D where we have DirectX to make use of, MP on the PC is still basically like the DOS days where each game has to pretty much do this stuff from scratch.

Even with Demigod, we licensed a recommended third party network library (Raknet) which, as [the prior poster] pointed out, has problems with multiple IPs.”

Hopefully you’ve learned something interesting from this, I know I have. And it’s nice to know that Stardock is going to keep working until this is fixed, even if it takes some time. There’s not a lot of companies I’d believe when they say they’re putting customer satisfaction on top, but not many companies let people get a refund on the game when it had major launch problems like Stardock did.

“I also feel that I have a moral obligation to tell customers what is happening and what we are doing about it. These people paid $40 for the game and they don’t care whose problem it is. They just want to play their game.

It’s not that I’m emotionally involved with the game. But I feel personally responsible for any problems the game has and I think that’s a good thing.

Everyone who starts a business has a motivation to do so. My motivation is because I wanted to have a company that does things a certain way. And one of those things is responsibility to the customer.”

Butcher Bay is a tough game on normal difficulty. It’s fairly punishing, sets up a few nasty ambushes, and getting careless can be trouble.

Dark Athena is plain hard. Butcher Bay is training for it, no doubt. While the first has you dealing with prison scrubs and some guards, the latter has you taking on a ship full of mercs, drones, and way way more difficult to hide and navigate in areas. The perpetually dark areas of the prison are no more, instead one must plan ahead, get a better view of an area, and move fast.

I’m not terribly far in, but as a direct sequel, I’d call it a huge success for how it expands on what players had to do before in a way that feels appropriate to the new environment.

Okay, I haven’t actually played Dark Athena yet, but I’ve spent all day playing Butcher Bay.

I woke up at 6 am or so. My copy arrived at noon. It’s now 4 am, and minus 3 hours or so of break time, it’s all been Riddick.

While it has a few small technical issues (occasionally an enemy is hard to hear when speaking, sometimes a little bit of polygonal overlap shows on models), the gameplay is superb, the presentation excellent, the story intense, and the acting great. Butcher Bay itself is definitely a 5/5 game. More detail to come.

Okay, I have to say one thing before I start this.

I want House of the Dead 1 on a new freakin’ console already. My Saturn lightguns just don’t work anymore. Alright? Seriously Sega, I’d better see HotD 4/1 coming up soon.

Now, on with the show.

Holy shit, Overkill is amazing. It’s the first game in the series that’s clearly developed by a western team (it’s a darker, grittier, splattier, though no less comical tone), and clearly developed for a console, not just a port. This does mean the game can be too easy, even in the hard mode, but it’s also REALLY god damn fun and puts some more detail on the character. Oh, and a lot more cussing that wouldn’t fly in arcades. And nudity. Really! And it’s all in a Wii game somehow.

Now, I’m a long time fan of the House of the Dead series, I’ve probably spent a few hundred in arcades on the games. I’ve always enjoyed the campy style and the loose, rapid pace of the zombie blasting. It’s fun for everyone! But Overkill is a different beast. Perhaps the best way to put it is that it feels weightier, more serious (which it’s not at all, but it’s far less cartoony). Whereas previous games have been animated horror comedy, something out of an anime that shouldn’t take itself so seriously, Overkill is a very western affair, an NC-17 gorefest in a seedy theatre.

It’s obvious from the start, honestly. The game starts with scratched up logo reels and a credit roll over a pole dancer, with some funky audio matching the video. The start screen is initially an out of focus projection, and it just goes from there.

Levels begin (mostly, anyway) with a voiceover and what could easily be a movie trailer, often wonderfully profanity-laden and hilariously well voiced by a sinister sounding narrator. The trailer turns into cutscene and character interaction, advancing the surprisingly great plot (in the Snakes on a Plane way, at least). Blood, gore, comedy, sex, comedy, and solid stereotypical characters are presented right from the start, and they never stop. Dialog is ever present, constant smartass remarks whenever there aren’t gunshots, and often enough when there are. There’s rarely a moment that doesn’t have a sense of character, something said rarely for any genre, particularly rail shooters, but it’s true. You actually know who these people are, which can be wonderful and terrifying.

Overkill is all about the fun, and does some things I’m surprised took so long. Outside of the mediocre Carnevil, this is the first time I can think of a game with a zombie circus! Everyone loves shooting undead clowns, damn it! It’s just part of the spectacular presentation. Scratchy film grain, a camera that shakes with weapon recoil, and big chunks of enemies left on the floor. And blood splatters! Overkill makes a big leap forward in the blood department, it really is one of the messiest games I’ve ever played, going so far as to leave blood sprays on the wall behind enemies taken out close to one. Sure, Counter-Strike has done it forever, but when did a rail shooter? Not until now, that’s when, and it’s a great touch. Seeing the remains of an ex-zombie on the bricks behind what used to be a head is so satisfying.

Satisfaction is exactly the feeling the game at large leaves players with. It’s a reasonable length, clearly intended to be on a console and it takes its time as such to build longer levels with more to discover than a pure arcade game would allow for. Persistent rewards certainly aid the cause, as players unlock more music, art, and of course, guns, as they play. Every completed level is rewarded with some cash, used to buy weapons and improve already owned ones. Since players can replay anything already finished, there’s plenty of time and ability to stockpile cash, eventually resulting in some truly devastating arsenals, culminating in two-player dual wield modes with automatic shotguns and assault rifles decimating entire rooms of enemies in three shots or less.

It’s as great as it sounds. Overkill takes everything to an extreme and frankly to places you never expected to go on the Wii. Honestly, it took me to places I wouldn’t expect to go on film, and that’s just fine.

Overkill does, by the way, take a few chances and change up the formula a bit. Traditionally rail shooters have four or five lives on the high end, one being lost with each hit, occasionally restored by a medkit. In this case, players get actual health bars which are replenished often via medkits in game. Some attacks will take off a small amount, some a large amount, rather than the old 1:1 system. It helps to really make some enemies seem like the greater threat they should, and forces players to prioritize targets by more than simple proximity.

The continue system has also had an overhaul. The main mode, Story Mode, features unlimited continues at the cost of half the player’s points (which is more important than it sounds, as those points equal precious money). Director’s Cut, the hard mode, features only three continues as well as more zombies and areas (yep, it’s all sorts of deleted scene glory), but more powerful guns to buy as well, and faster earned money. Honestly, neither mode is particularly hard, but that’s in keeping with the overall feel of the game. Overkill isn’t made to gulp quarters like the rest of the series, it’s made to take players on a bloody ride through a zombie apocalypse, and it does that well.

House of the Dead:Overkill gets 5 out of 5. Completely, utterly brilliant, tons of fun. A little too easy, and an occasional framerate hitch, but damn it, it’s incredibly fun and the content is golden. Overkill aims high and scores a headshot.

Meridian4 is publishing a new puzzle title, and there’s something interesting about this one. It looks fairly simple, it’s a physics based puzzle game, a weakness of mine, and it’s all about orbs.

Sounds simple, should provide some fun challenges, the basic tenant of any puzzle game, really.

Video here!

While we like to bring the funny, we’re not as good as some friends of ours. But we don’t hold grudges.

Go, enjoy the Top 8 Rejected PS3 games. Although we still think the list should include “Unprotected: Drake’s Abortion.”

Valve rocks us pretty hard these days in all the right ways. Everyone knew they’d be adding some goodness to Left4Dead, but not that they’d be setting it out for free on PC and X360. Expanded Versus mode, a new mode entirely, and perhaps a few other things to come, knowing how the company loves to throw so much into their updates.

The recently announced Left 4 Dead Downloadable Content (L4D DLC) will be delivered to Xbox 360 and PC gamers free of charge.

Due for release this spring, the DLC for 2008′s best-selling new game property on the PC and Xbox 360, is dubbed the L4D Survival Pack and introduces a new multiplayer game mode entitled, Survival, plus two complete campaigns for Versus Mode (Death Toll, Dead Air). A Critic’s Choice Edition of the game will be heading to retail stores this spring, and will include access to all the content introduced in the L4D: Survival Pack.

Normally, I wouldn’t post this here, but it’s obvious Vince, aka the ShamWow guy, is being turned into a TF2 scout. He’s going to have a baseball cap and a bat really soon. Valve, you must hire him to promote the scout upgrades, and include the following lines.

“You followin’ this Heavy Weapons Guy?”

“Upgrade in the next 20 miuntes, because we can’t do this all day, and we’ll throw in the caltrops for free.”

If there happens to be a snack for the scout to regain health or pick up a speed boost, well, you know what it has to be. “You’re gonna love my nuts!”

And a testimonial from the engineer. “He’s very quick, it’s a time saver for point capturing.”

Do it Valve!

For those who haven’t seen this commercial, by the way…

Ooooh sit right back and I’ll tell a tale

A tale of a sinking ship

What started in a cartridge port

In the days of 16 bit

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Sonic the Hedgehog was a god damn revolution in gaming. It was a whole new kind of platformer designed to replace the prior mascot Alex Kidd. A game where instead of collecting powerups and jumping on heads and/or swinging swords, you charged ahead at full speed, plenty deadly from the start, rolling around and impaling anything in the way like a self-propelled pinball. Instead of mushrooms, you grabbed rings, which gave both gave and saved lives. Get hit? Grab your rings, and charge forward again. Once in a while smash a monitor which lets you go even faster, saving time on the limited clock(though rarely did one hit the dreaded 10 minutes), granted a shield to prevent ring loss on the next hit, or sometimes full on invincibility(unless you get crushed, too bad then). The formula was amazingly simple, and very effective, especially considering the platforming conventions of the time, and the first time a player ran a loop, that was an instant love for a new mascot.Sonic himself has evolved over the years, as have the games. Later 16-bit era games would find new mechanics like fire and electric shields, snowboarding segments, new characters, and for the top Sonic players, Super Sonic. The essence, though, aside from a few spin-offs of varying success, remained the same. Speed. Run fast, avoid crushing, spikes, lava, and other general bad things, then at the end of a zone, kick Robotnik’s ass.

So what happened? Where did it all go so wrong, leading us to the abortion of a game called Sonic the Hedgehog, played on Xbox 360 or PS3? The seeds were sewn in Sonic 3d Blast. The focus on speed and whoosh and rolling changed, it become homing attacks and jumping, and speed got you killed. The next big jump which brought the opportunity for ruin was Sonic Adventure.

This isn’t to say Sonic Adventure was bad. Hell, I bought it on Dreamcast and Gamecube. It was a lot of fun, the Sonic levels particularly were excellent, what with their high speed whooshing about, the boss fights which were creative but classic Sonic anyway, and some fun, easy enemies, along with lots of platformy bouncing around on springs. But it introduced new characters to be playable beyond those that played like Tails or Knuckles. Characters who really weren’t platform action types. Amy, E-102 Gamma, and Big the Cat, while fun in their own way, weren’t Sonic characters with gameplay. But, unless you’re the obsessive type, you didn’t have to play them. Ever. You could just go about as Sonic and finish the game’s main story, all is well, there was plenty of it. Beyond that, you had some exploration, tearing about the city/countryside at a high speed. It all looked great, and was fun. Even when you weren’t in a stage, you had room to explore and things to do. And you could even still die if you ran off the wrong edge.

The real problem began in Sonic Adventure 2. Suddenly, you MUST play as other characters. Sonic style levels had gotten worse, and while there was some decent ones in terms of speed, the magic wasn’t there. The Knuckles type levels, similar to the ones in Sonic Adventure, were more prominent. But they were smaller and certainly not as enjoyable by any means. And to cap it off, the new Tails levels, which were poor shooters in essence. The world itself still felt like a Sonic game’s setting, but the fun was diminished too often. It wasn’t a bad game yet, but it wasn’t the fun Sonic Adventure was. There was, in fact, no adventure. There was a very linear story, played a level at a time, without a break to explore the world.

And then came Sonic Heroes, an objectively bad game, even to a huge Sonic fan like myself, which I had to force myself to finish. In an attempt to get away from the problems of Sonic Adventure 2, every level was a Sonic level. But wait, suddenly they’re also Tails and Knuckles levels, everyone is involved at once! The idea was something akin to the old Chaotix game it seems. A team of Sonic characters runs through at high speed, working together. But it didn’t work at all. The game wanted you to change characters on the fly, but it didn’t work out that way. Uninspired levels, an unabashedly awful camera, and no real sense of why it’s a Sonic game instead of any other platformer. A few Sonic ideas showed up, but it never clicked. Too much bad control in a game that requires precise control resulted in a failure.

And finally, we come to the new Sonic the Hedgehog. I saw this one myself at E3 2006, and I was worried then, particularly when I couldn’t get a good answer to “How do I know this won’t suck like Sonic Heroes?” The best I heard was “Well, the camera system is much better now.” While a big chunk of the game went back to being Sonic, the inclusion of Shadow was a bad sign, as was the new character Silver.

Sonic the Hedgehog seemed to entirely scrap the previous ideas of character design. While Sonic himself has always been getting sleeker and spikier, the world around him hadn’t. Mobius itself had stayed reasonably cartoonish, but not anymore. Now, humans were too human. Even Robotnik was realistic now, and it didn’t work. Sonic himself looked wrong, he stood out like a hard penis in a lesbian bukkake video. He didn’t belong in the world he was in anymore.The control was a mess, unresponsive at best, and at times, when you’re supposed to let go of it and let springs and launchers take over, got you killed. As Sonic, there are a ton of surprise deaths that just can’t be predicted, and get very frustrating. And then, you’re suddenly not Sonic. You’re Tails, who throws fake rings in fake monitors now. Or Knuckles, who doesn’t even handle the same as he normally has.

Not only that, but the failure of control extends to the adventure sections. Sonic is left to wander aimlessly about a large-ish city with no landmarks whatsoever, bumping into any small object and stopping on it. Talk to someone with a side mission, say yes, load screen. This, of course, doesn’t actually load the mission in the city. It loads the dialog, after about 45 seconds. Press the button to advance a few times, and oh, loading again. Yes, you just loaded 45 seconds for a 10 second bit of dialog, then have to load again for the actual event. The city itself, even beyond that, is a miserable mess of design failures, with fun features like shadows that are only visible within 10 feet of an object, and not in their entirety then. Shadows reach out and retreat before your eyes, visibly disconnecting from the object they’re coming from.In this new game, death doesn’t come from screwing up. Death comes from not being overtly psychic. If you didn’t know already that not jumping at the end of a hill, for example, lands you in instant death spikes, well that’s too bad, and you’ll see a lot more of that soon. Of course, jump at the next hill, and you’ll overshoot and land in yet more death spikes. Good luck guessing what’s what. It honestly feels like the game was designed by matching levels to some random button inputs pressed by a designer, not around what would be fun.

If, somehow, players survive this, they get to play a section where Sonic just runs forward. Really, really fast. It’s almost like driving a bus. Sideways. Turning barely happens at all, and running into a wall means lost rings. Running into ANYTHING means lost rings, even if during any other part of the game you’d just stop. It all adds up to an absolute mess of a game with nothing to keep players interested.

Everything that made the original Sonic great seems to be gone. Responsive control, fast pace, and a focus on the rush made the games what they are. From the very first game, player inputs were met with immediate response, precisely, up until Sonic 3d Blast. Sonic Adventure, despite the 3d jump, kept the responsiveness for the most part, excepting for a few small moments where your best option was to let go. It was still about players being in control. Even Sonic Adventure 2, as rough a game as it was becoming, kept this. Sonic Heroes and Sonic The Hedgehog lost this entirely, and while dying was always likely in Sonic because you had to react so fast, you didn’t have to be a fucking psychic to play the game. It has, truly, become easier to stare into a crystal ball and look for directions like you’re playing DDR with your thumbs.

At this point, I’ve no hope for the next game on console. As a handheld game, Sonic has kept to his roots. Sonic Rush was great, and Sonic Rush Adventure, pretty damn good. But the consoles have pushed too far toward innovation, hit diminishing returns, and dropped right off the feature creep cliff.

If the series doesn’t return to its roots, it might be over. New fans aren’t being gathered by the way the game has gone, and old fans are dropping like flies. The next Sonic game needs to be all about running forward, fast. Collect some powerups, run faster. Forget about fighting enemies as a requirement as the new games have done, they were only there as hazards originally. Mobile hazards, just like moving spikes or fireballs, except you could kill them. Stop with the sections where players lose control, focus first and foremost on crisp response. And stop with the sharp turns or times the camera loses view. Sonic is all about top speed, and hard turns don’t do that. Big, sweeping turns are where that is, for the sharp ones, put players on a rail. It’s fine for visual effect, but not controlling as the camera never keeps up.

Take away all the new special things. Ring dash? Drop it. Homing attacks are okay, but shouldn’t be needed too often. And it’s very important to have a button to roll since pressing down doesn’t do it anymore in the 3d world.

If anything is to be added, put in some runs presented from a side view, pieces on long, narrow ledges. Disable up and down(except for rolling, of course). Put some old school Sonic design in the new games, use these pieces for the sections that are more about jumps and timing than speed.

Bring back the sense of excitement, and the cartoon feel. Realism and blue hedgehogs don’t miss.

I hope you’re paying attention here Sega. Because we really want a new Sonic game to blow our minds, and it shouldn’t be so hard. It’s a simple design, and the portable team has done a good job, perhaps due to inherent limitations of the platform. So why is the most exciting game with Sonic in it Nintendo’s next Smash Brothers game?

And now, the game of the year awards which I’m just going to type down without much if any explanation.

• Best Farm simulation/Dungeon Crawler- Rune Factory
• Best Objections-Phoenix Wright:Trials and Tribulations
• Best obscene value for a package-The Orange Box
• Best dialog ever-Portal
• Best cube-Weighted Companion Cube, presented by Portal
• Best ending theme-Portal
• Best villain, physical-GLaDOS
• Best villain, concept or metaphor-Objectivism, as portrayed by Andrew Ryan
• Best multiplayer, realistic-Call of Duty 4
• Best multiplayer, arcade-Team Fortress 2
• Best game that took way too long to come out-Team Fortress 2
• Best “Jesus fuck, that’s not right” moments-Bioshock
• Best port of a game that was way too good already-Puzzle Quest:Challenge of the Warlords
• Best re-release license crossover co-op game-Lego Star Wars:The Complete Saga
• Best TV based game-Naruto: Rise of a Ninja
• Best crazy long RPG with an actual morality system that goes beyond “I’m a knight in shining armor” and “I eat babies”, console-Mass Effect
• Best crazy long RPG with an actual morality system that goes beyond “I’m a knight in shining armor” and “I eat babies”, PC-The Witcher

And now, the absolute worst shit of the year.

• Worst abuse of tiered systems-Hellgate:London
• Worst abuse of paid downloadable content-Ace Combat 6
• Worst community playing a game that would be fun if it wasn’t for the 10 year olds at frat boys-Halo 3
• Worst case of hype-Crysis
• Worst game that could have been good if the rail shooting segments didn’t have lots of enemies who can kill you that never enter the range your gun can fire-Power of Destruction
• Worst voice acting and dialog-Two Worlds
• Worst spiritual successor that was nothing like the game that it was based on-Enemy Territory:Quake Wars
• Worst TV based game which isn’t really a game because the only way to lose the game is to change your resolution in the options menu-CSI:Hard Evidence
• Worst game I’ve played this entire year-Monster Jam(Really, I understand how it felt to be the guy who took the tubgirl pictures now)