For turning thirty-three I received Farcry, a new PC game that Gamespot hails as a new gold standard amongst first-person shooters:
Half-life was a fantastic game that turned into the measurement by which all PC first-person shooters are measured. So when Gamespot gave it a superb rating along with the above moniker, well hell, I figured Farcry was going to blow my socks off.
I should point out that I played the single-player demo two weeks ago. And what little I played (more of what was made available in the demo) was fantastic — stunning graphics, cool weapons, and intelligent artificial intelligence. After playing I thought for sure Gamespot had it right. But I assumed that my single player demo experience would transfer over into the realm of multiplayer — where the real fun is to be had.
Installing Farcry was another exercise in patience and nostalgia just as Unreal Tournament 2k4 had been. Twenty minutes later I was up and running, hoping to gun down a few online foes in the gorgeous tropical environment with lush vegetation and white sandy beaches.
Upon entering an online game, I found myself walking around a blocky world of green, blue, and sand — not quite Dig Dug, but close enough. My video card, while strong enough for the demo, doesn’t quite make the cut for the real game, despite that it exceeds the requirement listed on the box.
Needless to say, Farcry is far from Half-life, or becoming the next greatest FPS. Getting past my video card inadequacies, I found the game to be remarkably similar in game play as any other run of the mill product in that category. The only difference being that you’re killing people in Tahiti, not Normandy, or some off-world urban combat city. Perhaps I would have more appreciation for this game if I had a better video card, but I’ve already got 128 megs under the hood and I’ll be damned if I’m going to buy a new card just to play a game.
This is the single glitch in the PC game business — development in the wrong direction.
For a game company to compete it has to improve the performance of the product. There are two ways to do this: improve the game play and/or improve the graphics. Unfortunately I feel that most game companies focus their development time on the later and not enough time on the prior.
At last years E3 there was a lot of excitement about new physics models that allow for objects in a game to react to conditions similar as they would in real life. With new games, it’s all about striving to make the environment as close to the real world as possible. Valve, the makers of Half-life and the upcoming Half-life 2, patted themselves on the back for being able to shoot at a piece of wood and have it splinter just as it would in real life.
Even sports games are not immune. The newest versions of Madden Football let players design their own football stadiums right down to the price charged for hotdogs. Can anyone tell me where the fun is in that?
Games are supposed to be entertaining, a break from reality. But the industry is more focused on recreating reality as entertainment.
I’m all for innovation but I see little of it being done to improve the game play side. Nintendo is one of a handful of game creators who strive to create new forms of gameplay more so than improving the look and feel. Very few Nintendo games are created to be lifelike. Perhaps this is why Nintendo appeals to older gamers, like me, who remember what it was like to play with moving block graphics, with block laser beams and such.
This is what I’m thinking as I watch my online Farcry character take three high velocity rounds to the head — my body falling softly against the tall grass stretching from the virgin white sandy beach of Farcry Island. The sun sets slowly behind my adversary who is already reloading his weapon for the next prey. With a puff on his cigar and another clip unloaded into my already perfectly limp body, he moves on to seek cover behind the stand of bamboo hoping that ***rEaPeR420*** hasn’t pinpointed his exact location.
Forget this crap, I’m going to play Zelda: Windwalker again.
Join the fray by reading through and commenting at the end.
I know that this is probably an obvious thing to say, but the reason for this:
"For a game company to compete it has to improve the performance of the product. There are two ways to do this: improve the game play and/or improve the graphics."
Is because games companies are able to hire clever programmers to utilise new technology fairly easily. Creating an environment which looks good is a technological problem. Creating an environment which is believable, emotive, and enjoyable to play through is a creative problem, and that's the issue.
The games industry has a wealth of talent but a lack of creativity.
Colin, I agree. It is quite easy to put numbers on performance (i.e. "we can do X FPS with X resolution on X system") or for a coder looking for a job: "I can write an engine that will crunch X which will improve your FPS by Y"). It's true, they're looking at things as mathematical problems.
What's really hard to sell is, "I have new idea XYZ for a different kind of gaming genre and player-machine interaction."
I think harvesting the creative talent from people who possess both creativity and the skills to market that creativity would be a good direction to take things.
A lot of new FPS are great for single player .. but what looks stunning and beautiful as you point out slows you down and sucks for multiplayer.
Back in the day of Pentium 120's and Quake everybody was getting at least 25 FPS allowing for extremely fast game play.. Something that game companies don’t stress enough now and days.
DM3 till the fingers bleed!
Side note. Does anyone know where I can get the quake "Thresh" demo, been looking for a while
I agree and it's really just the "easy way out" to bump out the next version of basically the same game. How is that better? With the new, better graphics, they say. Not for me though.
The true innovators need face time with the game industry decision makers. Either that or the Indie sub-culture needs to produce. Heck, id used to be Indie.
I used to have those Q1 demos but lost them 2 computers ago, sorry man.
is 4/20 your birthday? it was my 30th yesterday, we had sushi from ABE down on the peninsula with a growler from newport brewing. not bad!
Nintendo. You've made me a happy man.
Now that, is gaming. I'm sorry to sound like an old twat (despite the fact that I'm quite young), but they just don't make games like they used to. Atleast not on the PC.
Been a diehard Nintendo fan for as long as I can remember, my dad bought me the Super Nintendo when it just came out, and along with it, the greatest game ever made: Super Mario World. Ended up buying tonnes of super nintendo games, and later the Nintendo 64 machine, with the such formidable titles as Super Mario 64, the Zelda games and Smash Bros (a riot among friends).
Ahhhh, those were the days - never got around to buying a Gamecube.
Getting more to the point here; I remember when someone downloaded that half-life 2 demo, and everyone around him went crazy. But after shooting wood and toppling crates and barrels for a few minutes, then what?
Obviously the problem is that you can't market games that have intricate stories, fabulous gameplay and spot-on controls (zelda anyone?), when it looks like a "cartoon" (I'll strike you dead) or has "outdated graphics".
Here is a really good read of a presentation the "developer producer," Eiji Aonuma, of the Zelda franchise gave this year http://cube.ign.com/articles/501/501970p1.html. Miyamoto is of course the ultimate producer of Zelda, but this guy is in charge of the day to day of Zelda. Anyways my favorite part was something I had noticed with the Wind Waker, but hadn't been able to put in words, and really about most of the Zeldas as compared to other games that is found on page 4. He says this:
"When he speaks, there is a phrase that Mr. Miyamoto always mentions that speaks directly to the very nature of the Zelda series. The phrase is, 'Zelda is a game that values reality over realism.' In the art world, realism is a movement to faithfully replicate the real world to whatever extent possible. Reality is not mimicking the real world, but rather making players feel like what they are experiencing is real. The big difference is that even exaggerated expression through toon-shading can be an effective means of making things feel more real."
That is why even though I have all of the systems, when it comes to the multi-platform games, the Gamecube version usually wins out even though the sound and/or graphics may not be as good. I just find the exclusives in general to be better on the cube then what everyone else is offering.
Brian wrote: "I remember when someone downloaded that half-life 2 demo, and everyone around him went crazy. But after shooting wood and toppling crates and barrels for a few minutes, then what?"
Let's just be entirely clear on this: What you refer to as the Half-Life 2 demo was in fact nothing of the sort. It was stolen from Valve's servers and released against their will on the Internet and should not be used for making any points about the finished game or the game in progress.
I say this for two reasons. First of all because I think we should get the facts straight, and secondly because I'm a game developer myself, and had this happened to me I would feel like my guts had been torn from my body; especially if someone then went and made judgments on the final game based on something that was nothing more than a work in progress.
Now. I've played a bit of Far Cry, nowhere near enough to properly judge it (though as you will see, that is no hinderance to me ;)). Now I have a history of sorts with CryTek, so I'm somewhat biased in the matter, but nonetheless. While it's a really pretty game - an impressive tech demo if ever there was one - it doesn't bring much of anything new to the table. Essentially there's nothing in there that Halo or Half-Life or their peers haven't already done a long time ago.
But while I might not care much for the game I do hold the amount of work that has gone into it in high regard. Making a game like that is certainly no small task!
And while they do try to make a few interesting choices here and there, like rolling barrels at people using the physics, I personally felt that what the game lacks more than anything is personality. Half-Life and Halo were both fantastic FPS's and they would probably have carved their place in FPS history even so. But what keep them in everyone's mind today, what makes people capable of still humming the theme from Halo, is the fact that they had personality. Umpf if you will.
Far Cry is pretty, but it doesn't have any umpf. The bad guys are bad guys, nothing more. No more memorable than a two-bit drugdealer on Miami Vice.
Anyway. I'm rambling a bit here, let me just draw the focus onto the criticism of the focus on bringing better physics and bigger polycounts.
There is no doubt that the progress is fueled in many ways by the fact that consumers are willing to upgrade time and again, and if they don't keep up, the competition will. Also looks are catchy and thus a fantastic way of selling products.
But you should also take into account that this industry is still extremely young. It's already being controlled heavily top-down by enormous corporations , though even so it still manages to find a way to fluctuate back and forth; enough so that interesting new hybrids of gameplay turn up a couple of times a year. But experimentation is by no means the order of the day for any industry that wants to maximize their income. For them, and that means for the people on the floor as well, it's about looking at what works, and how do we profit from that?
When you're lucky you have the time to work through a concept and properly mould it into something new, but most of the time you're in steep competition from the day the project gets started to the day it goes out the door. And if you're not on the top 10 list of games sold, you're not in business.
So to make sure that you're up there you're constantly seeking the edge that gives you the greatest advantage with the least risk. Making something look better is almost quantifiable. You can see the difference between a 256x256x16b texture and a 512x512x32b. The difference is obvious to anyone. So is per-pixel-lighting and hard- and soft-body physics. The only thing you have to calculate with is any overhead there might be in implementation and production.
Subtle gameplay issues however aren't quite so obvious however. It's not exactly a science. I mean who the hell would have guessed the Sims would become - I believe - the best selling game ever? I sure wouldn't.
You should however also take into account that while these improvements are often nothing more than fluff - and for the most part I do agree - there are great advantages to be found in new technologies. Far Cry might not use them particularly well, but nonetheless.
But when used right, and I trust in Half-Life 2 to bring us a game where this applies, such a thing as physics removes an abstraction layer from the game. The whole idea is to make you think less in game terms and more in real life terms, to use your real-life experience to solve in-game problems.
Heavy objects hurt meat-sack-human-opponents... Hmm... Guess that means that if I drop this... Yep, that killed him alright.
At the end of the day though, I agree entirely with the gameplay-above-all-else line of thought. You can compare it a bit to the way movies have evolved over the years. The technology gets better and better, but it all starts and ends with the script.
Shit in, shit out.
Personally I enjoy - and I thought I'd never say this - making games for the PlayStation 2. To be honest it's a hunk of shit. Compared to the Xbox it's antique. But because it has great limitations in its RAM and processor capacity, we're forced to consider carefully what goes in and what gets left on the cutting room floor. Now at times this means something we would have liked seeing in there getting cut, but overall I think that - for a proficient developer - it trims the game closer to the bare essentials.
Anyway, just some late night thoughts. It's all part of a larger, really complicated mess and in reality deserving of much more attention, but hey... :)
As for the Gamecube and Zelda, I loved the latest installment. I don't normally go for cute characters (which includes both Zelda and Mario), but I was thoroughly impressed. The Gamecube however probably won't last too long if it continues the way it has so far.
Too bad, they had some cool stuff going on.