I'd apologise for the late post, but I won't for three reasons.
1. I'm a Odin-damn Viking.
2. I'm busy, Christmas is prime raiding season.
3. I've got big news.
I've decided to expand my blog of Viking Greatness into a website:
NNIB.com.au.
NNIB promises to be a community website with quality articles on gaming, table-top and miniatures, music, dvds and Viking theory.
Don't spread the word just yet, as I will be making further updates as the site progresses.
Til next time, the gamer with horns on his hat.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Call of Duty: Black Ops
Due to a malfunction involving myself, Ianardo and a T-rex sodomizing a duck wielding a chainsaw, I will not be able to show you the videos I have saved of me:
I whole-heartedly love the Call of Duty series. It provides me with competition, encourages me to figure out the human mind, tests my reflexes, tests my ability to contain my rage, and most importantly, lets me blow off the heads of other people.
Some of you may now be screwing your faces, brains trying to click all the gears and cogs into place to figure out why a Viking that could single-handedly decimate every Spartan there ever was armed only with a sewing needle and a sock, would feel a need for competition.
Despite reading in a recent article that summarily dismissed Black Ops as a game that could only be enjoyed by pimply youths who didn't get out much (would have loved to have posted a link, but it seems the pure bullshit this guy was spewing would have been taken off the site due to the thousands of complaints he would have received for being an arrogant tool), I have to argue this premise:
Competition is what makes online fun, and because no-one can compete with me in real life I have to settle with a simulated scenario.
Is it any less of an achievement because its a game? Golf and cricket are inventions of Odin as a punishment for some sin some Viking committed aeon's ago, and for some reason people love that shit. It doesn't matter it's as boring as watching a sloth race, people still poor hundreds and thousands, if not millions of dollars, into these sports.
I threw a grenade in a guys face and killed him. That is not boring, in any way, shape or form.
If I wasn't a Viking and I had a regular 8:30-4:30 job as an editor in a legal publishing firm, I would still love the sense of competition. After a long day trying to find semi-colons and invisible text, the very last thing I might want to do (if this scenario was real, and it's not) is go somewhere to do strenuous physical activity. Maybe I want to feel the same sense of competition and achievement, of domination over another human being from the comfort of my own home.
And with no respect and absolutely no refrain, anyone that thinks that gamers are still these fat, sad, lonely stereotypes deserve a friendly Viking word of advice:
FUCK YOU.
Black Ops is just like the rest of the Call of Duty series, but it's so much more. If you remember my previous blog on shooters, every reference I made to what made Call of Duty great applies to Black Ops, except they've managed to improve and expand on everything.
The first thing you'll notice different, and the most fun and awesome thing, is that you can now dive. Diving is awesome. It serves very little practical purpose, but its incredibly funny watching five or six players simultaneously diving on a flag or objective to capture it.
The second thing you'll notice is something I originally wasn't a fan of but am growing to love immensely, and that is the amount of customisation that goes into your character. For instance, your playercard picture is insanely customisable, and after seeing a picture of a man fistng a llama with a love heart above his head, I knew that this was something I could sink my teeth into. Not that I'm into llama porn.
The reciticles (pointed sights on guns) are now interchangeable, which is great because some people (like a certain Viking) fucking hated the plain red dot site as it was almost impossible to see where the enemy went if they moved even slightly to the side. I much prefer the inverted triangles or the nuclear symbol, as I just find it easier to play that way.
Weapons are still unlocked at certain levels, but attachments are now no longer earned by achievements, and instead are earned by a monetary system within the game. I find this to be a much, MUCH better system than before as I can only guess at the amount of hours I put into getting some of the attachments on guns only to find shortly after my ability to use said weapon had flown out of the window and I had to start again with a new and less infuriating weapon.
My two absolute favourite changes to the game are the shotguns and wager matches. Shotguns are now primary weapons, and due to a change in map design, shotguns are now useful in all maps.
Wager matches are games in which players bet their in-game money on their winning the match. My favourite wager match thus far is 'One in the Hole', which sounds like a porno but is actually a game in which players are restricted to a one shot kill pistol with only one bullet and their cq weapon (knives). When a player kills another they gain another bullet. The maps are small but not restrictive, and the tension in the games is HUGE. Ianardo, a man I've seen stop a speeding Buffalo with a stare, froze up at one point out of tension.
He then went on to get the most amazing killstreak I've seen in a different game type, but there you have it.
The thing I hate about Black Ops is the either the Playstation Network or whatever system Treyarch is running for their multiplayer. I'm so sick of getting d/c, or having trouble joining a friends game, or having the connection interrupted when I WAS FUCKING WINNING ODIN DAMMIT!
I'm giving CoD Black Ops 4.5/5 crossbow bolts in an enemies face, because it's just that awesome to do.
Til next time, the gamer with horns on his hat.
- Getting several 7 long killstreaks
- Ballistic knifing people in the face
- Shooting an explosive tipped crossbow bolt and then watching as they run and around and blow up
- Kill someone by throwing a grenade into their face (no explosion mind, just straight crushing of the skull with 3kg of pure metal)
I whole-heartedly love the Call of Duty series. It provides me with competition, encourages me to figure out the human mind, tests my reflexes, tests my ability to contain my rage, and most importantly, lets me blow off the heads of other people.
Some of you may now be screwing your faces, brains trying to click all the gears and cogs into place to figure out why a Viking that could single-handedly decimate every Spartan there ever was armed only with a sewing needle and a sock, would feel a need for competition.
Despite reading in a recent article that summarily dismissed Black Ops as a game that could only be enjoyed by pimply youths who didn't get out much (would have loved to have posted a link, but it seems the pure bullshit this guy was spewing would have been taken off the site due to the thousands of complaints he would have received for being an arrogant tool), I have to argue this premise:
Competition is what makes online fun, and because no-one can compete with me in real life I have to settle with a simulated scenario.
Is it any less of an achievement because its a game? Golf and cricket are inventions of Odin as a punishment for some sin some Viking committed aeon's ago, and for some reason people love that shit. It doesn't matter it's as boring as watching a sloth race, people still poor hundreds and thousands, if not millions of dollars, into these sports.
I threw a grenade in a guys face and killed him. That is not boring, in any way, shape or form.
If I wasn't a Viking and I had a regular 8:30-4:30 job as an editor in a legal publishing firm, I would still love the sense of competition. After a long day trying to find semi-colons and invisible text, the very last thing I might want to do (if this scenario was real, and it's not) is go somewhere to do strenuous physical activity. Maybe I want to feel the same sense of competition and achievement, of domination over another human being from the comfort of my own home.
And with no respect and absolutely no refrain, anyone that thinks that gamers are still these fat, sad, lonely stereotypes deserve a friendly Viking word of advice:
FUCK YOU.
Black Ops is just like the rest of the Call of Duty series, but it's so much more. If you remember my previous blog on shooters, every reference I made to what made Call of Duty great applies to Black Ops, except they've managed to improve and expand on everything.
The first thing you'll notice different, and the most fun and awesome thing, is that you can now dive. Diving is awesome. It serves very little practical purpose, but its incredibly funny watching five or six players simultaneously diving on a flag or objective to capture it.
The second thing you'll notice is something I originally wasn't a fan of but am growing to love immensely, and that is the amount of customisation that goes into your character. For instance, your playercard picture is insanely customisable, and after seeing a picture of a man fistng a llama with a love heart above his head, I knew that this was something I could sink my teeth into. Not that I'm into llama porn.
The reciticles (pointed sights on guns) are now interchangeable, which is great because some people (like a certain Viking) fucking hated the plain red dot site as it was almost impossible to see where the enemy went if they moved even slightly to the side. I much prefer the inverted triangles or the nuclear symbol, as I just find it easier to play that way.
Weapons are still unlocked at certain levels, but attachments are now no longer earned by achievements, and instead are earned by a monetary system within the game. I find this to be a much, MUCH better system than before as I can only guess at the amount of hours I put into getting some of the attachments on guns only to find shortly after my ability to use said weapon had flown out of the window and I had to start again with a new and less infuriating weapon.
My two absolute favourite changes to the game are the shotguns and wager matches. Shotguns are now primary weapons, and due to a change in map design, shotguns are now useful in all maps.
Wager matches are games in which players bet their in-game money on their winning the match. My favourite wager match thus far is 'One in the Hole', which sounds like a porno but is actually a game in which players are restricted to a one shot kill pistol with only one bullet and their cq weapon (knives). When a player kills another they gain another bullet. The maps are small but not restrictive, and the tension in the games is HUGE. Ianardo, a man I've seen stop a speeding Buffalo with a stare, froze up at one point out of tension.
He then went on to get the most amazing killstreak I've seen in a different game type, but there you have it.
The thing I hate about Black Ops is the either the Playstation Network or whatever system Treyarch is running for their multiplayer. I'm so sick of getting d/c, or having trouble joining a friends game, or having the connection interrupted when I WAS FUCKING WINNING ODIN DAMMIT!
I'm giving CoD Black Ops 4.5/5 crossbow bolts in an enemies face, because it's just that awesome to do.
Til next time, the gamer with horns on his hat.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Fable 3, or Fable meh
Unfortunately due to high demand of my skills as a Viking and a writer, this blog will be a little short. Also, I don't know how to connect my Xbox to record my awesome playing ability. and most devastatingly the fact that Fable 3 has come down with a chronic case of the 'meh'.
Fable 3 is set one hundred years after Fable 2, the start of the industrial age, and you are the evil kings brother or sister (one of the first choices you have to make, and the only one that seems to have effect on how something looks in the game). After having your lover/friend shot or some stupid peasants shot, you run away like a little bitch with your butler and some guard or soldier guy that will INCESSANTLY talk whenever you two are walking towards your objective. Well, when I say walk I mean I run and he dawdles his lard arse behind me. This somehow fails to kill the conversation that follows you despite being about three kilometers away.
Combat is split up into three sections, melee, magic and shooting.
Magic: is finally useful, unlike in Fable 2 where if magic was what you focused on you would inevitably lose like the chump you were. The area damage it provides now can actually stop attackers, making it useful during gameplay! When I discovered this I almost wept with joy, and I probably would have if Vikings knew how to weep.
Melee: is still retarded and not quite as good as shooting, especially when you might be doing roughly the same damage, the advantage being that you wont get hit. Having to hold down a button to block is something else that mystifies me. The whole point of a game is to minimise reaction time between pressing and action to make the game more immersive. So instead of last minute blocks you are more likely to get slashed the fuck out of before you finally hold your weapon up in front of your face by which time the enemy is quite content to stand back and laugh at your bleeding face.
Shooting: is shittier than it was in two but still quite good, and this is where the 'industrial age' climate of the game truly shits its pants and then tries to blame the smell on you.
Imagine this: nearing the end of Fable 2 you can buy the best possible 'normal' gun from a travelling salesperson. Clockwork pistols and rifles, which shoot, as I recall, about 6-7 times before reloading and the reloading is as smooth and quick as the Gentle Beauty through a peasants abdomen. In the industrial age, however, they've decided to forsake clockwork machines and give you a shitty pistol that fires slowly, only fires 4 or so shots, and takes about as long to reload as it does to swim to France (my best time including one count of raiding is about 5 hours).
Your abilities are no longer bought after killing enemies in certain fashions like in 2. Now you get points from doing missions and talking to people and crushing skulls and then to use these points you go to a secret road and open chests that magically unlock new power. In reality the main difference is that the points are universal now. That would have been great, but unless you somehow don't do every main mission you will always end up with enough points to open up the more important chests. No longer do you focus on one area, you just suck it up like a chump and become 'multi-skilled' or more accurately, 'bland'.
Despite Fable 2 taking as long to play as it takes me to walk down to the corner shop and pillage it, I really enjoyed it. Once you got over the fact that melee and magic were useless compared to the shooting, and the fact that the shooting skill tree had all the useful abilities (such as the ability to dodge. Seriously, figure that shit out) it was quite a ride.
Fable 3, on the other hand, seems like so much more of an effort. No longer can you pose and dance and belch for scores of people to come over and eventually love you, you have to talk to all of these suckers individually. I don't like people, it's what makes being a Viking much easier. Not only do I not like people, I fail to see how I should give a damn about cgi people that have the same charming conversation techniques as characters from the Sims do (with their irritating gibbering).
Getting people to like you is the next step in the drunken stumbling of this game. Once you unlock the ability to flirt, your character becomes a raging bisexual and cant talk or interact with anyone of any sex without dancing with them or tickling them or just generally being a massive pervert.
Because you can only talk to ONE PERSON AT A TIME, you have to go through this same song and dance (quite literally) before the dumb schmuck will inevitably send you on a quest which requires you to either run around the corner and dig something up or deliver a letter or parcel to some other schmuck somewhere else. And then they like you.
I would not go through that effort to save my Viking mothers life (if Odin had not already taken her soul in that Longship collision...it was late and it had been raining, the hull slick with oil...they swerved, but too late, they were never seen again...). I'm serious. If I got asked to make ONE MORE peasant like me from people threatening death on someone I love, I would give them this message:
Dear kidnappers,
Fuck no.
Yours sincerely,
The Viking Gamer
Fable 3 also failed to keep a lot of promises, or intends to and just fails miserably. If Fable 3 had promised you a sandwich it would have given you two mouldy slices of bread with a nicely coiled turd in between.
Guns and weapons evolve depending how you use them. Well, that's a complete pile of shit sandwich. The will evolve if you reach a certain criteria, like kill 500 enemies during the day time, or eat a shit sandwich. This is the equivalent of an rpg saying; 'you can go anywhere you want, but if you want to go anywhere it has to be down that road' to which you would reply; 'but you promised the gameplay would change on how I played!' to which it would reply yet again, 'and it will, as long as you follow that road only'.
This isn't where it ends though, and if you've just bitten into afore mentioned sandwich and your teeth are brown and you wonder why you ever bit into it in the first place, prepare yourself for another, big bite and try to swallow this:
Guns and weapons damage differs so greatly that there is no point, I'll say it again with more emphasis, NO POINT in wasting your time trying to kill hundreds of enemies or walking however far for the upgrade. If one weapon is 50 damage and another is 100, unless the former weapons upgrade makes it more powerful than the 100 ( and assuming the 100 stays the same or gets a different power which isn't upgraded damage) then WHY WOULD YOU EVER CHOOSE THE FUCKING 50 DAMAGE GUN!?
Fable 3 promised innovation in making your character unique, but it lies. It's a phony, a big fat phony.
Fable 2 had weapons with slots in them, in which a player could fill with an emerald that caused fire damage or something that stole life or something that made it more powerful. Mathematically anyone could have had up to 1000 different weapon combinations. Choice=individuality.
Fable 3, on the other hand, makes you a giant bland sack that needs to be beaten.
Lastly, the choices. Oh the choices. I've done two missions with choices, one where I either killed this guy so I could marry his wife who he got me to seduce so he could get divorced, or another when I gave two dead brothers a book of death that they used to summon a party for ghosts.
In the former I let the guy go because quite frankly his wife was a bitch. To do so, I simply walked out of the house. In the second occurrence, I was supposed to either tell the brothers to go back to their graves where their dead mother had asked me to tell them to go, or give them the book.
What I got instead was the option to give them the book, and that was the ONLY OPTION.
I have no idea if it was a glitch or a bug, either way it would surprise me as this game is only too full of glitches and bugs, such as that glowing trail never, EVER being there when you actually need it, or prompts just simply not appearing on screen or buttons simply not working.
I'm giving Fable 3 four 'mehs' out of five, and a score of 2/5.
Til next time, the gamer with horns on his hat.
Fable 3 is set one hundred years after Fable 2, the start of the industrial age, and you are the evil kings brother or sister (one of the first choices you have to make, and the only one that seems to have effect on how something looks in the game). After having your lover/friend shot or some stupid peasants shot, you run away like a little bitch with your butler and some guard or soldier guy that will INCESSANTLY talk whenever you two are walking towards your objective. Well, when I say walk I mean I run and he dawdles his lard arse behind me. This somehow fails to kill the conversation that follows you despite being about three kilometers away.
Combat is split up into three sections, melee, magic and shooting.
Magic: is finally useful, unlike in Fable 2 where if magic was what you focused on you would inevitably lose like the chump you were. The area damage it provides now can actually stop attackers, making it useful during gameplay! When I discovered this I almost wept with joy, and I probably would have if Vikings knew how to weep.
Melee: is still retarded and not quite as good as shooting, especially when you might be doing roughly the same damage, the advantage being that you wont get hit. Having to hold down a button to block is something else that mystifies me. The whole point of a game is to minimise reaction time between pressing and action to make the game more immersive. So instead of last minute blocks you are more likely to get slashed the fuck out of before you finally hold your weapon up in front of your face by which time the enemy is quite content to stand back and laugh at your bleeding face.
Shooting: is shittier than it was in two but still quite good, and this is where the 'industrial age' climate of the game truly shits its pants and then tries to blame the smell on you.
Imagine this: nearing the end of Fable 2 you can buy the best possible 'normal' gun from a travelling salesperson. Clockwork pistols and rifles, which shoot, as I recall, about 6-7 times before reloading and the reloading is as smooth and quick as the Gentle Beauty through a peasants abdomen. In the industrial age, however, they've decided to forsake clockwork machines and give you a shitty pistol that fires slowly, only fires 4 or so shots, and takes about as long to reload as it does to swim to France (my best time including one count of raiding is about 5 hours).
Your abilities are no longer bought after killing enemies in certain fashions like in 2. Now you get points from doing missions and talking to people and crushing skulls and then to use these points you go to a secret road and open chests that magically unlock new power. In reality the main difference is that the points are universal now. That would have been great, but unless you somehow don't do every main mission you will always end up with enough points to open up the more important chests. No longer do you focus on one area, you just suck it up like a chump and become 'multi-skilled' or more accurately, 'bland'.
Despite Fable 2 taking as long to play as it takes me to walk down to the corner shop and pillage it, I really enjoyed it. Once you got over the fact that melee and magic were useless compared to the shooting, and the fact that the shooting skill tree had all the useful abilities (such as the ability to dodge. Seriously, figure that shit out) it was quite a ride.
Fable 3, on the other hand, seems like so much more of an effort. No longer can you pose and dance and belch for scores of people to come over and eventually love you, you have to talk to all of these suckers individually. I don't like people, it's what makes being a Viking much easier. Not only do I not like people, I fail to see how I should give a damn about cgi people that have the same charming conversation techniques as characters from the Sims do (with their irritating gibbering).
Getting people to like you is the next step in the drunken stumbling of this game. Once you unlock the ability to flirt, your character becomes a raging bisexual and cant talk or interact with anyone of any sex without dancing with them or tickling them or just generally being a massive pervert.
Because you can only talk to ONE PERSON AT A TIME, you have to go through this same song and dance (quite literally) before the dumb schmuck will inevitably send you on a quest which requires you to either run around the corner and dig something up or deliver a letter or parcel to some other schmuck somewhere else. And then they like you.
I would not go through that effort to save my Viking mothers life (if Odin had not already taken her soul in that Longship collision...it was late and it had been raining, the hull slick with oil...they swerved, but too late, they were never seen again...). I'm serious. If I got asked to make ONE MORE peasant like me from people threatening death on someone I love, I would give them this message:
Dear kidnappers,
Fuck no.
Yours sincerely,
The Viking Gamer
Fable 3 also failed to keep a lot of promises, or intends to and just fails miserably. If Fable 3 had promised you a sandwich it would have given you two mouldy slices of bread with a nicely coiled turd in between.
Guns and weapons evolve depending how you use them. Well, that's a complete pile of shit sandwich. The will evolve if you reach a certain criteria, like kill 500 enemies during the day time, or eat a shit sandwich. This is the equivalent of an rpg saying; 'you can go anywhere you want, but if you want to go anywhere it has to be down that road' to which you would reply; 'but you promised the gameplay would change on how I played!' to which it would reply yet again, 'and it will, as long as you follow that road only'.
This isn't where it ends though, and if you've just bitten into afore mentioned sandwich and your teeth are brown and you wonder why you ever bit into it in the first place, prepare yourself for another, big bite and try to swallow this:
Guns and weapons damage differs so greatly that there is no point, I'll say it again with more emphasis, NO POINT in wasting your time trying to kill hundreds of enemies or walking however far for the upgrade. If one weapon is 50 damage and another is 100, unless the former weapons upgrade makes it more powerful than the 100 ( and assuming the 100 stays the same or gets a different power which isn't upgraded damage) then WHY WOULD YOU EVER CHOOSE THE FUCKING 50 DAMAGE GUN!?
Fable 3 promised innovation in making your character unique, but it lies. It's a phony, a big fat phony.
Fable 2 had weapons with slots in them, in which a player could fill with an emerald that caused fire damage or something that stole life or something that made it more powerful. Mathematically anyone could have had up to 1000 different weapon combinations. Choice=individuality.
Fable 3, on the other hand, makes you a giant bland sack that needs to be beaten.
Lastly, the choices. Oh the choices. I've done two missions with choices, one where I either killed this guy so I could marry his wife who he got me to seduce so he could get divorced, or another when I gave two dead brothers a book of death that they used to summon a party for ghosts.
In the former I let the guy go because quite frankly his wife was a bitch. To do so, I simply walked out of the house. In the second occurrence, I was supposed to either tell the brothers to go back to their graves where their dead mother had asked me to tell them to go, or give them the book.
What I got instead was the option to give them the book, and that was the ONLY OPTION.
I have no idea if it was a glitch or a bug, either way it would surprise me as this game is only too full of glitches and bugs, such as that glowing trail never, EVER being there when you actually need it, or prompts just simply not appearing on screen or buttons simply not working.
I'm giving Fable 3 four 'mehs' out of five, and a score of 2/5.
Til next time, the gamer with horns on his hat.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
The multiplayer conundrum
It's hard to make friends when you're a Viking, mostly due to the fact that the larger portion of the people you meet are peasants of the village you are currently raiding.
It's also hard to make online friends, because when you live in a place that has a small population density (eg. my hut in the barren snow and ice of Greenland or in the suburbs of Sydney), it becomes the norm that my connection will either drop out during a game or cause a lag that will inevitably leave me frustrated and with a wall decorated with angrily thrown axes.
Add to that every gaming systems inability to make an easy to use 'add friend' mechanic, coupled with every games ability to induce brain haemorrhaging irritation whenever you try to start a game with a friend, the whole multiplayer scenario starts to feel like its dying.
'But hey!' I thought, strapping myself in for a round of online CoD, 'surely playing with and against complete strangers will make the game feel like a multiplayer experience!'
Well, it does and it doesn't. It's kind of like rowing a longboat next to someone you don't particularly like. While you do enjoy the activity, it's hard to keep a positive outlook when the hairy, sweaty guy next to you keeps calling you a noob, threatens to rape your family and then swears he'll 'tea-bag' you, because nothing says ‘I'm a dominant alpha male’ than homo-erotic acts.
But luckily, this rowboat is equipped with a mute button, and after some time you begin to think, maybe this isn't so bad, and then the day drags on and you realise that despite being surrounded by people you are still well and truly alone and may as well be rowing with some particularly clever (or stupid) AI.
So...what the hell is multiplayer now? Before anyone starts, no, online capabilities are not bringing people closer together. I've heard the arguments, and yes, I know you can talk to people from around the world, but when the world throws some kid from New Zealand trying to single handedly ruin his countries tourism industry by annoying his team mates with his consistent and persistent offering of a free Big Mac to anyone that would ‘add’ him (this actually happened) at you, I can’t help but think that this is not the multiplayer we used to have.
I remember days after Viking school (learning how to set things on fire, threaten peasants etc) when we all used to come back to my place to crowd around my Playstation and its multi-tap to play four player Crash Team Racing.
I remember only two years ago, playing four solid hours of Killzone with my friend (who had to travel over 10 km of snow and kill a polar bear with his controller to get to my hut) on my sealskin couch while we talked about current events.
But now my most distinct memory of multiplayer is a New Zealander with a fetish for giving out burgers.
With the release of the newest generation of portable gaming systems, I thought we had arrived at a new system of multiplayer. Surely now we had the power of last gens systems in our hands, players could easily game within the same room!
But I was to be more disappointed than little Ulric who was told he was too young to go on the raid with us this year.
There are no decent multiplayer games on the new hand-helds. Many of you are probably waving your hands and screaming and pointing at copies of Monster Hunter, but any game that rewards you for searching through faecal matter with your bare hands isn't something anyone should be interested in.
Surely someone out there had a better idea for a Diablo rip-off than whoever thought to create a Dungeons and Dragons game.
Think back to Champions of Norrath. Great game both single and multiplayer, offered hours of gameplay and, most importantly, team based gameplay. You're going archer? Well I'll be the Barbarian and the smelly kid can be the Elf. All set? Let's play.
Is the problem the brilliance of the idea or is it simply that it’s harder to put them onto smaller discs and cartridges?
What I don't understand is why a poor (but humble and quite handsome) Viking is telling the gaming industry what is incredibly clear to its market.
The concept of multiplayer is always changing, but a lot of us still remember and treasure the days you could play with your friends and be in the same room. If you can't do it for the consoles, then do it for your hand-helds. If you can't do it for the hand-helds, then you're practically forcing innocent gamers like myself to buy one of the many thousands of multiplayer Mario games that Nintendo will NEVER stop releasing, just so I can be a gamer and social.
I'm giving my nostalgic memories of mutliplayer 5/5 and this new dang form of multiplayer 2/5 due to the fact I sing when I forget I have my headphones on.
Til next time, the gamer with horns on his hat.
It's also hard to make online friends, because when you live in a place that has a small population density (eg. my hut in the barren snow and ice of Greenland or in the suburbs of Sydney), it becomes the norm that my connection will either drop out during a game or cause a lag that will inevitably leave me frustrated and with a wall decorated with angrily thrown axes.
Add to that every gaming systems inability to make an easy to use 'add friend' mechanic, coupled with every games ability to induce brain haemorrhaging irritation whenever you try to start a game with a friend, the whole multiplayer scenario starts to feel like its dying.
'But hey!' I thought, strapping myself in for a round of online CoD, 'surely playing with and against complete strangers will make the game feel like a multiplayer experience!'
Well, it does and it doesn't. It's kind of like rowing a longboat next to someone you don't particularly like. While you do enjoy the activity, it's hard to keep a positive outlook when the hairy, sweaty guy next to you keeps calling you a noob, threatens to rape your family and then swears he'll 'tea-bag' you, because nothing says ‘I'm a dominant alpha male’ than homo-erotic acts.
But luckily, this rowboat is equipped with a mute button, and after some time you begin to think, maybe this isn't so bad, and then the day drags on and you realise that despite being surrounded by people you are still well and truly alone and may as well be rowing with some particularly clever (or stupid) AI.
So...what the hell is multiplayer now? Before anyone starts, no, online capabilities are not bringing people closer together. I've heard the arguments, and yes, I know you can talk to people from around the world, but when the world throws some kid from New Zealand trying to single handedly ruin his countries tourism industry by annoying his team mates with his consistent and persistent offering of a free Big Mac to anyone that would ‘add’ him (this actually happened) at you, I can’t help but think that this is not the multiplayer we used to have.
I remember days after Viking school (learning how to set things on fire, threaten peasants etc) when we all used to come back to my place to crowd around my Playstation and its multi-tap to play four player Crash Team Racing.
I remember only two years ago, playing four solid hours of Killzone with my friend (who had to travel over 10 km of snow and kill a polar bear with his controller to get to my hut) on my sealskin couch while we talked about current events.
But now my most distinct memory of multiplayer is a New Zealander with a fetish for giving out burgers.
With the release of the newest generation of portable gaming systems, I thought we had arrived at a new system of multiplayer. Surely now we had the power of last gens systems in our hands, players could easily game within the same room!
But I was to be more disappointed than little Ulric who was told he was too young to go on the raid with us this year.
There are no decent multiplayer games on the new hand-helds. Many of you are probably waving your hands and screaming and pointing at copies of Monster Hunter, but any game that rewards you for searching through faecal matter with your bare hands isn't something anyone should be interested in.
Surely someone out there had a better idea for a Diablo rip-off than whoever thought to create a Dungeons and Dragons game.
Think back to Champions of Norrath. Great game both single and multiplayer, offered hours of gameplay and, most importantly, team based gameplay. You're going archer? Well I'll be the Barbarian and the smelly kid can be the Elf. All set? Let's play.
Is the problem the brilliance of the idea or is it simply that it’s harder to put them onto smaller discs and cartridges?
What I don't understand is why a poor (but humble and quite handsome) Viking is telling the gaming industry what is incredibly clear to its market.
The concept of multiplayer is always changing, but a lot of us still remember and treasure the days you could play with your friends and be in the same room. If you can't do it for the consoles, then do it for your hand-helds. If you can't do it for the hand-helds, then you're practically forcing innocent gamers like myself to buy one of the many thousands of multiplayer Mario games that Nintendo will NEVER stop releasing, just so I can be a gamer and social.
I'm giving my nostalgic memories of mutliplayer 5/5 and this new dang form of multiplayer 2/5 due to the fact I sing when I forget I have my headphones on.
Til next time, the gamer with horns on his hat.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)