We got an XBOX 360 for Christmas, and I've been playing it a fair bit over the past couple of days. And something has attracted my ranting hat.
Achievements.
On one side, they're absolutely fucking genius on Microsoft's part. They keep people playing longer than they otherwise would do, trying to get those last few achievements. This can only be a good thing as far as Microsoft is concerned.
But then there's the other side, the seedy underbelly of it. The gamerscore whores. The main reason these people play the games is to gain the score that the achievements give. No longer do they play simply for enjoyment's sake, but instead to prove that they are better than others.
And achievements turn everybody into gamerscore whores to some degree. Gone are the days where you'd just play to play, to get a couple of unlockables maybe, to maybe get another couple of percent on that all-important game completion percentage. Now, you have specific goals. And you'll look at the achievements and think, 'That's what I'm going to aim for next'.
You no longer play for the sake of it. You play with a goal in mind, to get one of those elusive achievements and get the pop-up on your screen that tells you you've unlocked it, to get that sense of achievement you used to only be able to get when you achieved your own goals for the game.
On one side, I love them. I have always been a goal-orientated person. But part of me wants to play until I have completed every single achievement for every game I own. 'They look untidy if I don't do them all,' my brain rationalizes. And I don't like that one bit.
Thursday 27 December 2007
Thursday 20 December 2007
Grinding
One of the main aspects of RPGs is grinding. This is defined as staying in an area and doing lots of battles (whether they be random or otherwise), to level up beyond what you would be at naturally if you only battled what the game gave you.
I am in two minds about grinding. One, when you need to do it so you can beat a boss, then the game is badly designed. If I have to go out of my way to get more powerful so I can beat it, then I just won't bother. I play games to enjoy myself, to immerse myself in it's atmosphere, as an escape from real life. Grinding is like a shunt back out of that reality.
I am Felt, wielder of the Azure Azoth, advanced alchemist, savior of both Eden and Belkhyde. I am beating up small creatures so I can gain enough experience to beat Chaos, evil bad guy.
It doesn't wash, does it?
On the other hand, sometimes, you just get into a state of mind where all you want is to mindlessly grind for a while, because you've had a taxing day or whatever. And games that let you do it if you want to cater to this perfectly. It's nice and calming and you can almost just watch which your character does what it does.
Now, if RPGs instead had the second kind of grinding instead of the first (which is placed in a game simply so you don't complete it so fast), then I'd play a lot more through to the end. I would buy more as impulse buys, instead of laboriously searching on the Internet to find ones which don't have grinding as a gameplay feature (a number which is few and far between).
Game developers, take note. I will not finish your game if I have to grind to get through it. What you place in the game so I don't finish it as quickly makes me play it less. If you give me the option to, instead, I will savor it, I will take my time, I will play it longer. I will then go buy more of your games.
I am in two minds about grinding. One, when you need to do it so you can beat a boss, then the game is badly designed. If I have to go out of my way to get more powerful so I can beat it, then I just won't bother. I play games to enjoy myself, to immerse myself in it's atmosphere, as an escape from real life. Grinding is like a shunt back out of that reality.
I am Felt, wielder of the Azure Azoth, advanced alchemist, savior of both Eden and Belkhyde. I am beating up small creatures so I can gain enough experience to beat Chaos, evil bad guy.
It doesn't wash, does it?
On the other hand, sometimes, you just get into a state of mind where all you want is to mindlessly grind for a while, because you've had a taxing day or whatever. And games that let you do it if you want to cater to this perfectly. It's nice and calming and you can almost just watch which your character does what it does.
Now, if RPGs instead had the second kind of grinding instead of the first (which is placed in a game simply so you don't complete it so fast), then I'd play a lot more through to the end. I would buy more as impulse buys, instead of laboriously searching on the Internet to find ones which don't have grinding as a gameplay feature (a number which is few and far between).
Game developers, take note. I will not finish your game if I have to grind to get through it. What you place in the game so I don't finish it as quickly makes me play it less. If you give me the option to, instead, I will savor it, I will take my time, I will play it longer. I will then go buy more of your games.
Tuesday 18 December 2007
Why does my Slim PS2 not run Gran Turismo 4?
Racing games are one of my favourite types of games. Of them, the Gran Turismo series is one of my favourites. Now, our Playstation 2 is a slimline one. This is all fine and dandy. It takes up less space, uses less electricity, looks nicer and the laser is easier to clean. Great.
Until I want to play Gran Turismo 4.
At first, I thought I was unlucky in buying 3 different copies of Gran Turismo 4 which did not work. But I was kind of suspicious as it was 3 different copies, after all. So I called Sony's helpline in the manual, and they said they'd replace the PS2, but they wanted me to check them on another Playstation 2 and another copy of Gran Turismo 4 just in case.
So, I dragged my friend The Git round with his fat PS2. I set it up, and hey presto! Gran Turismo 4 worked on his PS2. Another copy of GT4 which didn't work on my slim, worked on his fat.
Needless to say, I am not impressed. From what I can garner from my roams around the Internet since, slimline PS2s have major difficulties in reading data from dual-layered DVDs (i.e. ones with lots of data). This means that games like Gran Turismo 4 are completely out of reach for us people who bought the slimline thinking they were getting a better console than the fat one and who can't afford to go out and randomly buy a fat PS2.
Sony have been no help since my console is out of warranty.
How do I get my slimline PS2 to run Gran Turismo 4?
Answers on a postcard please.
Until I want to play Gran Turismo 4.
At first, I thought I was unlucky in buying 3 different copies of Gran Turismo 4 which did not work. But I was kind of suspicious as it was 3 different copies, after all. So I called Sony's helpline in the manual, and they said they'd replace the PS2, but they wanted me to check them on another Playstation 2 and another copy of Gran Turismo 4 just in case.
So, I dragged my friend The Git round with his fat PS2. I set it up, and hey presto! Gran Turismo 4 worked on his PS2. Another copy of GT4 which didn't work on my slim, worked on his fat.
Needless to say, I am not impressed. From what I can garner from my roams around the Internet since, slimline PS2s have major difficulties in reading data from dual-layered DVDs (i.e. ones with lots of data). This means that games like Gran Turismo 4 are completely out of reach for us people who bought the slimline thinking they were getting a better console than the fat one and who can't afford to go out and randomly buy a fat PS2.
Sony have been no help since my console is out of warranty.
How do I get my slimline PS2 to run Gran Turismo 4?
Answers on a postcard please.
Monday 17 December 2007
EA should stop being publishers
I am boycotting EA. Their business practices got a bit out of hand, so I told myself, right, I'm not going to buy any more EA games until they sort it out. Except Spore, but Spore is special.
This leads me to a problem. A lot of games released now have EA involved somewhere in the process, whether it was that they owned the company, were involved in the coding or they published it. More often than not, it is the last one. That means that my money is going straight to EA, as the developers were paid their money by EA so they could publish it.
I don't want that. Not one bit.
If EA gets my money then that means they can buy more companies. That means that more games will be rushed by their developers so that they don't slip from set deadlines, something that makes EA very mad. This means that there will be more bugs, sloppy coding, long loading times, and entire features cut out because the developers couldn't spend as much time as they wanted working on it.
This is not good for games. This is not good for gamers. But EA just does not care.
Sure, some games they publish would never see the light of day if it weren't for EA. It's something I suppose I should be grateful for. But they really don't need to acquire so many of them.
In the past year alone the list of games they've published is massive. From the list on GameFAQs:
Battlefield 2142:Northern Strike; Bionicle Heroes; Boom Boom Rocket; Burnout Dominator; Hellgate: London; Just Cause; Orcs & Elves; Rail Simulator; SimCity Societies; The Sims Life Stories; The Sims 2: Bon Voyage, Castaway, Celebration Stuff, Deluxe, H&M Stuff, Pets and Seasons; and Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom.
The entire list of games they've been involved in was so big that it crashed Firefox the first time I loaded it.
Please note that I purposely excluded ones that EA developed themselves. That would make the list far too big.
Out of those, I would buy all but 4 if it weren't for the fact that EA is involved.
I am deprived of a lot of games.
This leads me to a problem. A lot of games released now have EA involved somewhere in the process, whether it was that they owned the company, were involved in the coding or they published it. More often than not, it is the last one. That means that my money is going straight to EA, as the developers were paid their money by EA so they could publish it.
I don't want that. Not one bit.
If EA gets my money then that means they can buy more companies. That means that more games will be rushed by their developers so that they don't slip from set deadlines, something that makes EA very mad. This means that there will be more bugs, sloppy coding, long loading times, and entire features cut out because the developers couldn't spend as much time as they wanted working on it.
This is not good for games. This is not good for gamers. But EA just does not care.
Sure, some games they publish would never see the light of day if it weren't for EA. It's something I suppose I should be grateful for. But they really don't need to acquire so many of them.
In the past year alone the list of games they've published is massive. From the list on GameFAQs:
Battlefield 2142:Northern Strike; Bionicle Heroes; Boom Boom Rocket; Burnout Dominator; Hellgate: London; Just Cause; Orcs & Elves; Rail Simulator; SimCity Societies; The Sims Life Stories; The Sims 2: Bon Voyage, Castaway, Celebration Stuff, Deluxe, H&M Stuff, Pets and Seasons; and Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom.
The entire list of games they've been involved in was so big that it crashed Firefox the first time I loaded it.
Please note that I purposely excluded ones that EA developed themselves. That would make the list far too big.
Out of those, I would buy all but 4 if it weren't for the fact that EA is involved.
I am deprived of a lot of games.
Jumping on the bandwagon - A.K.A The Golden Compass
This week, I've been taken to see The Golden Compass twice. Once by the boyfriend, and once by the sister who was too afraid to go to the movies by herself.
Overall, I'm fairly pleased. They got the bits that I was most scared about right (or at least, did them well enough that I didn't care) and the special effects were most awesome.
The bears were amazing and every bit as intimidating and cool as I wanted them to be. I didn't even care that they changed the name of the fake bear king. Ian McKellen was perfect as the voice of Iorek, though he did have his voice 'gruffed up' a fair bit.
The Daemons were spot on. The ease of which they changed was great, the animations were perfect (they acted like real animals just with more emotional faces), and the voices of the Daemons that spoke were cast well. Pan was very, well, Pan-ish.
What I did not like was the casting of Lyra. Dakota Blue Richards may be a newcomer, but that does not give her allowances for her acting being wooden and her lines sounding like she was bored. She made a crap Lyra. And seeing as she is the main character of this movie, and of the first book, it is inexcusable. I will honestly walk out of the cinema if her Lyra is as bad in The Subtle Knife as it was in this one.
I could probably say a lot more about it, like how Lee Scoresby was a wonderful texan flirt, that Eva Green made a great Serafina Pekkela, like how you will get sick of people going 'the alethiometer; the golden compass', and like how pretty Daemons are when they go poof, but I won't.
I'll just tell you to go and see it for yourself so they do make a second one.
Overall, I'm fairly pleased. They got the bits that I was most scared about right (or at least, did them well enough that I didn't care) and the special effects were most awesome.
The bears were amazing and every bit as intimidating and cool as I wanted them to be. I didn't even care that they changed the name of the fake bear king. Ian McKellen was perfect as the voice of Iorek, though he did have his voice 'gruffed up' a fair bit.
The Daemons were spot on. The ease of which they changed was great, the animations were perfect (they acted like real animals just with more emotional faces), and the voices of the Daemons that spoke were cast well. Pan was very, well, Pan-ish.
What I did not like was the casting of Lyra. Dakota Blue Richards may be a newcomer, but that does not give her allowances for her acting being wooden and her lines sounding like she was bored. She made a crap Lyra. And seeing as she is the main character of this movie, and of the first book, it is inexcusable. I will honestly walk out of the cinema if her Lyra is as bad in The Subtle Knife as it was in this one.
I could probably say a lot more about it, like how Lee Scoresby was a wonderful texan flirt, that Eva Green made a great Serafina Pekkela, like how you will get sick of people going 'the alethiometer; the golden compass', and like how pretty Daemons are when they go poof, but I won't.
I'll just tell you to go and see it for yourself so they do make a second one.
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