Posts Tagged ‘gaming’
The Nintendo gaming world awaits another Mario - Times Online
The Joy of Halo 3
I avoided Matchmaking in Halo 2 like the plague. I played a lot of Rumble Pit early on when I first got Xbox Live, and I’m sure that certainly helped me develop a lot of the necessary skills to be a somewhat competitive player. My favorite type of match to play, however, were custom games with friends. There were two reasons for this.
The first was that Matchmaking was rife with Timmies. For the uninitiated, a Timmy is a play – usually a child or adolescent – who, regardless of skill at the game, mouth of with words that would make a sailor blush, verbally abuse anyone and everyone around them, declare themselves video game gods when they are playing well and accusing everyone else of cheating when they don’t, and spend a large portion of their time teabagging the virtual corpses of their opponents – whether they were actually the one who defeated them in battle or not. The Timmies still exist in Halo 3 Matchmaking, of course. It’s just a lot easier to put the mute on them and to stick bullets into them.
The second was that I was never quite able to match up competitively with most of my opponents. In all my games of Rumble Pit, I can count on one hand the number of games I actually won. When playing with my fellow Gunslingers, I always felt like the dead-weight who was more of an impediment than a help. In Halo 3, I’m very competitive, having achieved skill levels so far in the 18-19 range, where I never consistently made more than a 12 or 13 in Halo 2. I’m enjoying Halo 3 much more than Halo 2 – and for those who know me, they know how much I raved about Halo 2. The games seem much more balanced now, and I feel like I still have room to go up in skill points.
The game itself is visually and audibly stunning, taking advantage of the full processing power of the Xbox 360 to provide a cornucopia of delights. Forge is a beast, allowing you to customize maps to your heart’s content, and Saved Films, Screenshots, and File Share are revolutionary pleasures. I’ve joked in the past that Halo 3 is probably the most expensive video game to date, since many of us acquired an Xbox 360 for the sole purpose of playing this game. It’s no joke now, though. Halo 3 is worth every penny, and I look forward to many more hours of enjoying this game with my friends and the Halo community.
Difference in Opinion
I’m proud to announce the launch of a gaming/entertainment blog run by two of my clanmates – Dweezle and bs angel. Dweezle and I have been working hard over the last few weeks getting everything set up and in place. He’s made most of the general design decisions, and I’ve done most of the heavy code-jockeying. The site has a good start with some legacy entries imported in from their original location and looks to be an interesting source for gaming and movie reviews and the promise of an excellent podcast. The site is called Difference in Opinion. Go check it out, and leave some comments for them while you’re there.
I’m Envious
As of right now, 22 out of 81 friends on my list are playing Halo 3 – and it’s not even 6AM. Lucky dogs.
Bad Behaviors
My friend Paul (aka, Dweezle of TTL Gunslinger fame) has written up some thoughts on MLG player behavior – and I agree with him completely. It’s interesting to me how much slack we give those people that we pay to essentially keep us entertained. In professional sports, we’re willing to cover our eyes to most of the bad behaviors we see our athletes exhibiting. We figure that so long as they continue to perform and don’t bring the team down or reflect too badly on the city that it’s not such a bad thing to have them on the team. We want our team to do well and if that means contracting players whose social lives or behaviors during leave something to be desired, then we can live with that. Sure, we’d probably like to have players we can all look up to and respect, but on the other hand, these players do provide some added entertainment and juicy gossip, right? Of course, we might get fed up with them after a while and want them to leave, but they have to pull our strings pretty far to reach that point.
In Major League Gaming (MLG), though, we start out with a lot of players who exhibit bad attitudes. These are players whose way of gaming life involves a lot of swagger and trash talk. These are players whose natural habits include the use of words that we would never allow our kids to use and that we ourselves are, at the very least, uncomfortable with and, at worst, are deeply offended by. But these are also the players that our kids look up to because they possess the gaming skills that our kids aspire to. These players that our kids idolize and that whose behaviors we disdain now have a larger platform for their childish behaviors on several major networks that cover MLG events.
Trashtalking is pretty much considered par for the course in the gaming world. As Paul pointed out in his writeup, the usage of words like ‘rape’ and ‘own’ are commonplace – and should be cause for concern. In my opinion, this is a gangster mentality infiltrated into what should be a relaxing, fun world of games and laughs. It is also this kind of thing that takes a lot of the fun and enjoyment right out of the game.1 One might think that gamers who are fortunate enough to sit in the public spotlight like this might conduct themselves like professionals, but unfortunately, this has proven to not be the case. All the bad behaviors and rude language that these players used during their pursuit of the professional gaming circuits have stuck with them, and they continue to be rude and loud and obnoxious.
Personally, I think all professionals of every stripe ought to be held accountable for their behaviors. Professional athletes ought to be called onto the carpet by the sports organizations under which they play, by the team owners, the coaches, their fellow players, and even by the fans. The same goes for professional gamers – when they act out and behave in ways that are unethical and, yes, even immoral, they need to be confronted by the MLG authorities, by their sponsors, by their fellow gamers, and by the fans that watch their matches. There is no reason why a gamer should be allowed to get away with saying, “I just raped that guy” after every kill or shouting, “You just go owned, bitch!” That’s the sort of thing that would have gotten me a bar of soap in my mouth as a kid.
Maybe Dial or Dove could win a long-term contract for MLG events. I can guarantee they’d make a killing.
The irony of the situation is that, turn the tables on these and use their own language back, and they themselves get upset. Bit of a double-standard, don’t you think?
- Whatever game it might be that you choose to play.[back]
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
My wife bought me this game for Christmas since it had been on my list for quite a while. Prince of Persia is basically a game of puzzles, with a healthy dose of sword fighting thrown in for a change of pace. It’s a short game – I completed the whole thing in just under 10 hours of gameplay. It requires both brains and coordination to make it through, as booby traps and pitfalls abound. There isn’t a whole lot to the story – as plots go, it’s fairly basic and could probably be told in under five minutes. But this game doesn’t actually need much of a storyline to be fun (which is probably one of the only times you’ll ever hear me say that). The enjoyment here is in solving every riddle and finding solutions to every secret.
One of my favorite features of the game is the cinematic effects. The camera angles shift as you move along, providing you with unique and interesting viewpoints. Of course, these camera angles can also sometimes be annoying, but such instances are few and far between. The fighting sequences are both fun and frustrating, but once you get the rhythm, they’re generally pretty easy1 to move through.
I really enjoyed this game, so much so that I’ve already started a second run-through, and despite having beaten it once, it’s actually no easier the second time around. Of course, a healthy dose of over-confidence may be partially to blame for this.
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time comes highly recommended from me.
- ‘Easy’ here is a relative term.[back]
“Seriously, Though, For Real”
Penny Arcade! – Seriously, Though, For Real
I love it. Penny Arcade makes an interesting point. It is rather ridiculous that video game companies produce only a limited supply of units every time they bring their new consoles to market. I’m honestly not sure why it is they do this. After all, they have to know that there are thousands of gamers out there just waiting to plunk down the greenbacks for the latest and greatest in gaming entertainment. What units make it to the shelves the first day are gone within minutes, whether through pre-orders or through those hardcore (and insane) fanatics who wait in line for three days ahead of time – no matter what the weather.
So why do the video game companies like play things so coy? Wouldn’t they make more money by producing two or three times the number of units and selling even more on the first day? Or is there some sort of marketing strategy to draw in more sales later by making consoles hard to get those first few weeks? Maybe they’re counting on the drama and tension to elevate desire, turning consumers into a pack of slavering beasts with no mind other than to acquire one of these most coveted gaming systems.1 Maybe they’re using the first consumers as a sort of pseudo-beta test group; after all, we all know that all these consoles are rife with glitches and problems straight out of the factory. Maybe they need a test group to buy them, play them, then gripe about all the problems with them so that they can fix them in the second or third factory runs for happier customers later. 2
Either the corporate marketing gurus are a collective of geniuses hard at work or a gaggle of fools who have no clue about their target populations.
- Except that this very fact of hard-to-get turns a lot of people off to these new consoles, a fact that may or may not be overlooked by a marketing team that may be using this sort of strategy, unless of course, they count those as acceptable losses, given how many gamers do buy their consoles in the long-run.[back]
- Yeah, yeah, pipe dreams. I know.[back]
Sometimes Gamers Get a Bad Rap
One of my favorite card games is a collectible card game (CCG) called Warlord: Saga of the Storm. 1 I haven’t actually played the game in about 12-18 months due to a number of reasons – there doesn’t really seem to be anyone in my area who plays anymore; like all CCGs, it costs quite a bit of money to continue playing due to a new expansion coming out every three months or so; and it requires a fair amount of your free time for travel, deckbuilding, and actual play time. Unfortunately, my budget is tight and my free time almost nonexistent, so I haven’t gotten to enjoy this game I love so much for quite a while now – and it’s possible I will never again pick the game up seriously. I simply have too many other interests that also demand my time.
Now, when most people think of gamers, particularly the CCG or the RPG types, they think of guys (and some gals) who dress up in Lord of the Rings or Star Wars garb and parade their latest geek-fest wares at the local convention downtown – and that stereotype is, on a fairly significant scale, justified. Not all of us are that immersed in the game culture, however. A lot of us who consider ourselves gamers are just your average, run-of-the-mill Joes who enjoy games that are both imaginative and strategic. We enjoy our sci-fi and fantasy genres, but we don’t try to live in them, per se.
Probably the two biggest reasons why I love Warlord is 1) it is a strategic game; it makes me think outside of the box, and 2) there is a solid fantasy backstory that serves as the foundation upon which the game is built that brings the characters on each card to life. In short it sparks both my intellect and my imagination. It lets me be a kid for a little while who can just have fun playing cards with some friends. I wish I had the time and the money to keep up the hobby, but alas, real life has this annoying way of encroaching and sacrifices have to be made in the interests of keeping food on the table.
Am I a geek? Sure, but that doesn’t mean I’m not just a normal guy, too.
- I also enjoy a good game of Yu-Gi-Oh from time to time.[back]