Some Words on Co-op Gaming

Online co-op is not a relatively new feature in modern games, but it's one that's only recently risen to prominence over the last couple of years.  Franchises that began as solely individual experiences are now getting sequels that allow you to play with a friend, or even many friends.  You can see this everywhere, from Portal 2, to Far Cry 3, to The Elder Scrolls Online.

The advent of co-op and multi-player gaming has not been without its growing pains, and developers have struggled a bit to evolve it.  For the longest time during the late 1990's and the first decade of the 2000's, most multi-player gaming was a tacked on feature, sometimes so much so that it had a different application launcher.  That slowly began to change as the decade wore on, and now multi-player has become a standard feature in a lot of franchises, sometimes becoming the -main- feature.  And, of course, multitudes of multi-player -only- titles have been and are still being released to varying success.

But let's focus on co-op for a moment if we may.  This is something that's taken a bit longer to evolve, but it's been coming into its own quite recently.  A lot of big-name franchises have been receiving co-op modes.  Sometimes they are done well.  Sometimes they are not.  Portal 2 is an example of co-op done extremely well.  It's entertaining, engaging, and it makes both players feel like they are contributing to the gameplay.  It was also a separate mode entirely from the main solo campaign.  Usually I don't prefer this, but with Portal 2 it was brilliant.  I loved the co-op characters, and the story was great.  I didn't feel slighted that it wasn't possible to co-op the main campaign.

Other games do not apply their co-op so well.  Take Hunted for example.  That co-op would have been quite good if it was actually balanced correctly.  Unfortunately, in some parts of the game, even on the easiest difficulty, it was nigh impossible to get through it on co-op.  When playing solo, you had an invincible AI character at your side to help you.  Replace that with a player, and you both end up dead very quickly.  Bad design.

When it comes to co-op, it just seems to me that it's very rarely done well.  Either the co-op is good, but separate from the main game.  Or, it's not done well but it's melded into the main campaign.  (I would prefer the main game be playable co-op.  And, unfortunately, I prefer the main game to be co-op, which results in my choices of co-op games being very, very few.

Far Cry 3's co-op is separate from the main game.  I absolutely love Far Cry 3, but I've never tried the co-op.  I don't see the point of buying the game again at full price just so I can play that one small portion of the game, especially when I got so much out of the solo campaign.  Now, if it ever goes on sale for like 50-75% off, I will consider it.  But not until then.

Borderlands 2 co-op is melded into main campaign.  Great!  Unfortunately, I also hate it.  Loot sharing should never be implemented in a game without a means of equal distribution.  That oversight alone made me hate it, and I refuse to play the game with anyone else.

And let's not forget about the elephant in the room:  The fact that developers seem utterly incapable of making connecting to a co-op game easy.  I'm utterly amazed that in today's world the need to forward ports and disable firewalls and turn off anti-virus software and install patches and tweak settings and align the stars are all still necessary in order to simply connect to a damned game.  We put men on the moon nearly 45 years ago, but we're incapable of making a simple online connection between two computers?  Half-Life 2 deathmatch.  Minecraft.  Unreal Tournament.  Magicka.  You're all guilty of this.  That's just a few.  There are multitudes more.  It's horrendous.

I have my hopes, though, that things will only get better.  Some early proof of that is now here.  Dead Space 3 is out, and the main campaign is entirely playable co-op.  I've played some of it.  You can look forward to hearing my thoughts relatively soon.  

There's a problem brewing in the game's industry.  A good old fashioned "Us vs. Them" war could possibly erupt in the next few years if we're not careful.  Allow me first to describe to you a mentality that I have touched upon before.  The average gamer is rather predicable in a number of ways.  Especially the PC Gamer.  In short, this is how it goes:

They will hate any large game publisher, and will call them greedy.  Conversely, they will love any indie game developer, and worship the ground they walk upon.

The reason for this is rather complex in a number of ways, but there are a few standard, simplistic ones that apply to my point here.  The first and major one is that with large publishers, the customer is more inclined to feel cheated in some way.  Let's face it:  When you're as large as EA or Blizzard, you have a very, very large group of people that you need to aim your product at.  This leads to people thinking your product is either dumbed down, too hard, too casual, or too hardcore.  In today's world, it's cool and standard procedure to hate the "big guys" and to root for the "underdogs".  In this example, big-name game publishers are the big guys, and the indie companies are the underdogs.

Additionally, big budget games these days have a lot of things in common that make the customer feel cheated and/or nickel-dimed.  DLC packs, pre-order bonuses, always-online DRM, and micro-transactions to name a few.  These things are becoming more and more common because they work.  You don't have to like it.  Hell, I certainly don't.  But this is the world we live in today.  As long as people support the games that do these things, and buy these extra items...in other words, as long as they make the companies money, they will continue to exist.  And people do it...of course they do.  I do it.  I snatched up each DLC for Skyrim and Borderlands 2 that exist because I fucking love those games.  People hate me for doing that, but I don't care because I wanted MORE.  Just remember that when you are about to chastise these people -- eventually, there WILL be a game that you love enough to do the same, if it hasn't happened already.

Before I move on, I just want to point out that not all DLC is bad.  It's become sort of a dirty word now in the industry these days, and I much prefer the old types of DLC that used to be called Expansion Packs.  Those I love, and those are typically the only types of DLC that I will buy.  The DLC for Skyrim (aside from Hearthfire) and the DLC contained in the Borderlands 2 Season Pass are examples of DLC that I would actually call Expansion Packs.  There were some other DLC for BL2 that wasn't -- more skins, and an arena map -- and those I did not purchase.  I don't care about skins, extra weapons, special armor, or anything like that.  Those types of DLC can die, for all I care.

Back on topic, though.  So like I said, in today's world it's cool to love those indie devs and hate those big game publishers.  I've given you the main reasons for this already.  But there's more.  Not only do indie games come without all that nickel-diming DLC, pre-order bonuses/rewards, and all that crap, but they also have this inclination to give out free stuff.  And let me tell you, nothing draws the worship of the PC Gaming masses more than free stuff.  Allow me to provide you with some examples.

The developers of The Witcher 2, CDProjektRed, released an Enhanced Edition of The Witcher 2 for free, with additional content, added cut-scenes, and a more polished game.  They didn't charge a dime for it, and this earned them HUGE brownie points with their fanbase.  I say good on them for this, and I don't have a problem with it at all.  It's great of them to give that extra bit of effort.  I do, however, have a problem with the idol worship from the masses that this sparked.  Now, it's come to the point where CDProjektRed can basically do no wrong, and that's a very bad mentality to have.

The developer of Hotline Miami actively assisted people trying to pirate his game, rationalizing that he couldn't stop it and just wants people to enjoy his creation.  This sparked a huge amount of support for him, and PC Gamers everywhere stood up on their soap boxes and demanded that everyone that could hear them go out and immediately buy that game to show that PC Gaming loves people like him. The problem with this, obviously, is that you're supporting a guy who's saying he thinks stealing is okay.  This is horribly misguided.

Most recently, the devs of Chivalry released free DLC for their game.  You remember what I said about free stuff, so I really don't need to explain the response to this.  What's scary is that people are getting up on their soap box again, and demanded not only that everyone should immediately go buy this game, but that people should purposefully wait for it to NOT BE ON SALE so they buy it at full price, because the devs deserve "heaps of success for doing this despite the game having a multitude of bugs."  Are you FUCKING kidding me?  I shouldn't have to explain the problems with this, but fuck that, I'm going to do it anyway.

Let me give you a taste of the hypocrisy of the average PC Gamer.  Dead Space 3 was released to good reviews, with the universal opinion basically being that it's a very solid game with great combat.  It's not blazing any trails in innovation, but it's slick, smooth, runs without any problems, looks great, has great co-op as well as single-player, and is all-around just a very good game.  Yet the masses pound their chests and say "NOT PAYING FULL PRICE!  WON'T BUY UNTIL IT'S UNDER $10!"  And then you have a game that, to me, doesn't look that great, and apparently has a multitude of bugs, yet those same people are standing up on their soap boxes yelling "BUY IT BUT DON'T GET IT ALL SALE!  FULL PRICE TO SUPPORT THE DEVS!"

I'VE OBVIOUSLY FALLEN INTO THE BIZZARO LAND OF STUPIDNESS.

So here's the potential problem that I see looming on the horizon:  Eventually, someone is going to catch on to this mob mentality, and they're going to take advantage of it.  They're going to use the average PC Gamer's penchant for rooting for the underdog, and use it to make some quick money off of their gullibility.  Because you know what?  All that free stuff doesn't mean shit if the product is irrevocably pisspoor and unplayable.  

My Precious Pixels

Yesterday, I had a discussion with John regarding video game graphics.  I made the argument that I wasn't particularly thrilled with the success of such games as Minecraft, Faster Than Light, and Hotline Miami because they look like shit.  The age-old argument to that is simply "Graphics aren't everything; it's the gameplay that matters."  To this I have two things to say to you:  You are entitled to your opinion.  Also, go fuck yourself.

The truth is, though, that I certainly agree that gameplay is very important, but to me graphics are just as integral to the whole concept of enjoying a game.  This is why I have a very, very difficult time understanding the endless amounts of Minecraft maps that are recreations of other games.  Why in the name of Zeus' butthole would I want to play a Fallout-based Minecraft map?  Fallout 3 is a few years old now and quite honestly looks a bit dated to be sure, but it still looks light-years better than Minecraft.

But let's be clear here:  I totally understand why someone would want to CREATE such a thing.  It'd be a nice accomplishment.  The person who created it should be proud of their work.  But to actually play it?  I don't get it, and I never will.  To me, that's like going to a restaurant, having the choice between the same dish prepared either by an award-winning chef or a three year old, and choosing the three year old's.  And getting salmonella because it wasn't cooked properly.

But PD!  People are entitled to play what they want!

Sure.  But that doesn't mean that I have to understand it.  I would like to think that there are only two types of people who would do such a thing:  Either people like the Yogscast who play it probably because their fans requested they do so, and Internet trolls who simply says "Item X is better than Item Y" simply because they want people to disagree with them.  I can do the same thing.  Here, I'll show you:

I liked Dragon Age 2 better than The Witcher 2.

Though, admittedly this isn't trolling.  It's truth.  It's just that everyone THINKS I'm trolling because obviously if I don't worship the ground the CDProjekt walks upon, I'm clearly an idiot.  Yeah?  Fuck you.  I found the Witcher 2's story boring and disconnected, the combat to be stupid, and the game crashed repeatedly on me even almost 2 years after it was released.  I actually gave the game another chance last week.  I played about 4 hours of it.  And stopped.  I just wasn't having any fun.

I'm trying to decide what my point is, here, because I think I've sadly lost it.  I came here to talk about graphics, and this was prompted this very morning after reading an article on RPS regarding an interview with Bethesda, in which one of them said they are focusing on graphics.  I was pretty happy to hear that.  SAID NO ONE EXCEPT ME, APPARENTLY.

I was actually shocked at how much hate that article prompted.  But, while a lot of what I read seemed utterly nonsensical to me, I suppose that same could be said for the rant that I just had in the ensuing paragraphs above.  A lot of people loved The Witcher 2, and they would think that liking Dragon Age 2 more than it is nonsensical.  That's human nature, and opinions are like assholes:  Everyone is one.

Oh.  I mean everyone HAS one.  I mis-typed.

OR DID I.

The truth is I just need something to be angry about, because being angry about what's really bothering me is pointless.  This is why I haven't posted here in a few weeks.  It would have just been counter-productive, just like this whole article has been.  But hey, writing angrily is a lot better than throwing things.  

It is incredibly difficult to write blog posts when quite a lot of what is on my mind is inherently negative.  I don't like making negative posts or writing about negative topics.  I leave that to the media.  They've made a multi-billion dollar business out of it.  I don't want to talk about America's problems with guns and mental health, bigotry towards gays, debt, hatred by other countries, or broken immigration rules.  I don't want to talk about how my health benefits increased by 16% this year, yet my salary stayed the same, so therefore I actually got a pay decrease in addition to getting nothing for the increase of cost of living.  I don't want to talk about how John will be leaving in less than a month now, and I'm going to have to deal with being thousands of miles away from the one I love simply because the people of this country believe that a book written by men are the divine words of some Sky Bully.

The problem is, after I'm done not talking about all of those things, I really don't have much left to say.

It's quite easy to fall into a state of depression this time of year.  It's been coined the "Winter Blahs" by some people.  I think I read that in a Peanut's strip once.  As such, I find it important to focus on the small things that make me happy.  Otherwise, I'd be a basket case.  

Over the weekend, I delved into the third DLC offering of Borderlands 2 entitled Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt.  I purchased the season pass for Borderlands 2 because I really like it, and I'm never going to say no to additional content for it.  Even so, I still worried that I would end up with content similar to The Secret Armory of General Knoxx.  That is...utter crap.  The only DLC that I enjoyed from the original Borderlands was the Zombie Island of Dr. Ned.  

Fortunately, I've been enjoying all the BL2 DLC released thus far, though if I had to pick my least favorite it would most certainly be this one.  I love Sir Hammerlock as a character, but him as the star of this package doesn't quite save it from being a bit mediocre.  And slightly annoying.

So let's get these things out of the way first.  There are two things I didn't like about SHBGH.  First, I didn't like how isolated it was from the rest of the game.  I missed my slot machines, and the feeling of walking through a populated city like Sanctuary.  Or even just a ship full of pirates, or a town that is inhabited by a mad man pretending to be a dozen people.  Instead, it's just a lodge and only Sir Hammerlock, with another quest giver that you never actually meet.  It was a bit droll, really.

The other problem I have with this add-on is definitely the Witch Doctors.  I would like to meet the person who thought they would be a new addition to the game, and punch them in the head.  For a moment, let's ignore the fact that 75% of the new enemies in this DLC do not have a "head shot" spot.  What I mean is, a spot where you can shoot them so that you're guaranteed to crit.  For most enemies, this is the head.  Sometimes it's a special spot, though, like the new strider-like creatures in this add-on, where you have white bulbs on their body to shoot.  For me, this is how I like to play BL2. I aim for those weak spots, usually with a sniper rifle, and to me that's the fun in the game.  Having them either remove that (or move the spots so obtuse or hidden that you can't find them), well that just sort of kills the fun for me.  It makes me have to resort to high damage, explosive weaponry.  Now, I enjoy explosions just as much as the next guy, but when it comes to shooters I prefer the method that relies on accuracy.

Of course, with that being said, this is only one small slice of the game and I really can't expect it to cater to my needs 100% of the time.  However, with the Witch Doctors, I do feel they are just badly designed.  Hard to crit, tons of health, and a heal that is more HPS than most guns' DPS.  I'm sorry, but that's broken.  Every time I killed one, instead of being left with a feeling of satisfaction, I was left feeling that I had cheesed the system, because the only way to kill them was to throw every grenade in my inventory followed by several clips of ammo from a high damage explosive weapon, and hope it was enough to kill it before it healed every point of damage away.  It's so bad, that there are forum posts stating they are actually impossible to kill.  On a higher difficulty setting, I actually can believe that.  (I am playing on Normal.)

So with the bad out of the way, how about the good stuff?  The new weapons are cool and interesting.  I've expanded my arsenal a bit so that I now carry around a few extra versions of the same type of weapon.  In addition to carrying a normal pistol, I also have one that fires explosive rounds now, for when I really need to nuke something.  Same goes for the assault rifle and the shotgun.  I actually have a gun I really like for every slot, now, so that's cool.

The design of the place is also excellent.  It's the same Borderlands style, with different themes.  Have a look for yourself.












All in all, the add-on is quite worth it, and the ending made me laugh quite hard.  I was not disappointed at the end of it, not by a long shot.  Though, if you were picking your DLC and not getting them all, I would recommend either of the other DLC packs first before picking up this one.

A Supermarket Story

So it's been quite a while since I've last made a Supermarket Story post.  I'm sure you've missed them.

The other night, I stopped for groceries on my way home from work.  Among the things I needed was cat litter.  When I need to get that, I usually avoid the self-checkout lane.  With the weight of the litter, I always have problems and end up needing a cashier anyway.  So I just go through a normal check-out lane when I have a big, heavy box of litter.

This particular night, my cashier was this early-20-something dork with thick glasses.  Now, I'm not one to judge -- I was a dork with thick glasses up until I was 18.  But, sadly, this guy totally realized the stereotype that I had etched out in my mind.  As he's scanning my items, he gets to my bottle of fabric softener.  It's then that he says, "Oh, fabric softener.  I have never used that.  I don't even know what it does."  I'm pretty sure that I was able to hide my look.  You know the look.  It's the one that basically says, "Wow, you're a fucking idiot."  I'm very good at speaking without words.  But, I hid that look, and simply replied, "It softens your fabric."  I said this without any sarcasm.  I swear!

To this, he replied, "Oh, my jeans get pretty soft after I wear them for a month."

I said nothing to this, because I'm an intelligent human being who knows when to keep his mouth shut in order to avoid receiving any more useless and unwanted information.  Unfortunately, the woman behind me in line was not this type of person, and replied, "Ew, what does that smell like?"

And, naturally, the Cashier-el-Dorko replied, "It smells manly!"

I'm pretty sure this was the fastest I have ever said the words, "Noneedtobagthemilkorfabricsoftenerthankyougoodbye."  

I'm Still Undecided on whether Cotton Malone is a Cool Name

I finished reading The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King two nights ago, and immediately delved into The Templar Legacy.  It's a rather recent novel that was published in 2006 by author Steve Berry, who I hadn't heard of before I found the book.  It is the first in an on-going series of books centered around the character Cotton Malone.  As the title of my post suggests, I'm still trying to decide whether or not that is a good name for an adventure hero.  I'm leaning towards yes, because Malone is a badass last name.  I can ignore the first name.

Anyway, the book has drawn me in rather quickly, so I suspect that I'm going to enjoy it.  It's sort of a mixture of genres, mixing spy novel, adventure, and mystery.  Malone is an early-retired spook (he worked for the U.S. Justice Department) who is now a bookseller, and he gets caught up in an intriguing mystery.  Judging from the short synopsis of the book, there's also some historical fiction thrown in as well, which really caught my attention.

This was just the kind of story I was looking for.  I was pretty full up on fantasy after reading LOTR, and definitely wanted to read something set in a contemporary period of time.  I considered reading the Jason Bourne series of books by Robert Ludlum, but balked at that because I've seen the movies and therefore knew almost all of the plot of the books already.  I also considered reading some Ian Fleming, but again, movies.  Before I found Steve Berry, I considered delving back into Tom Clancy novels.  His newest books have actually delved away from Jack Ryan and are focusing more on his son, Jack Jr., and I thought that would be a good place to restart reading him.  But sadly, I read that the very first Jack Jr. book wasn't very good at all.  I didn't particularly want to have to read a bad book just so I could get to ones that were better.

And then I found Steve Berry, who, like I said, I hadn't heard of until now.  The first book appealed to me, especially with the historical fiction bit.  (I love that Indiana Jones-type stuff.)  And, the books have been written recently, as well, which is also what I wanted.  So I made my choice and purchased the first Cotton Malone story.  It's the first of seven, with an eight due to be published this year.  So, if I really like it, I'll have quite a bit of reading to do!