Bluh.org

So, boredom and annoyance led to finally doing it:  I am Not Charles Randall

Too many people don’t check the addresses they send email to, and thus, I started this other site.  Don’t know how much updating it will see, but surely more than this sorry ass site!

So, I’ve been playing Mass Effect lately. Or more to the point, I’ve been hating Mass Effect lately. Don’t get me wrong, I want to like it. The dialogue is fantastic, and gives a level of maturity to Bioware games that’s been solely lacking.

Now, if only they could manage to make a good game. The more I play Mass Effect, the more angry I get at it. Why play if you are angry, you ask? Because hidden in there, beyond the horrible interface, poorly implemented action, and generic filler quests, is a good game. I think.

The soundtrack is amazing. The visuals (after ten seconds of loading, anyway) are top notch. Despite obvious frame rate issues. But the interface… Let’s just say, I can’t believe no one at Bioware sat down and said “You know, this inventory system sucks. A lot. Maybe we should fix it?” It’s painful to use. It’s slow to use. There’s no sorting options. Managing your equipment is a pain. And it doesn’t conform to any commonly used interface conventions. For instance, when I’m looking through upgrades for a weapon/armor, why can’t I hit the B button to cancel? Instead, I have to scroll all the way back to the top of the list (in an extremely slow fashion, as there is an arbitrary scrolling speed imposed by their mini-animation), and then reselect the upgrade I started with.

And that’s only one of the many oversights. For example, there’s a handy store on your ship. But you can’t compare any of the items in that store to any of your party members, because when you are on your ship, you are alone. So if you want to upgrade your sidekicks in between missions, you either write down all their stats on a sheet of paper (how retro!), or you spend all your time memorizing a set of stats, and checking it against the store.

Inventory management quickly becomes a chore that you have to stay on top of, or face the consequences. When you kill enemies, items magically end up in your inventory. So when you hit your equipment screen, you are helpfully confronted with a giant useless dialog showing you all the cool neat stuff you’ve recieved, with such helpful information as “Polonium” and “Phoenix” with an option to turn it in to omni-goo, which is a magical substance that hacks for you, and heals you, et cetera. Now, the catch is that if you don’t keep your inventory clean, you’ll hit a magical arbitrary limit where the game forces you to nuke everything you get at that screen, before you can figure out what any of it does.

And then there’s the action. It’s functional, but barely. The cover system is a weak and buggy copy of Gears of War, coupled with an attempt at strategy partially in line with Rainbow Six Vegas. The combat has little or no feedback with your normal weapons. Enemies can often one shot you (even on Easy mode, there’s still times where I’ll get owned by a shot from a powerful enemy, in one hit). Your party is effectively useless, spending most of their time standing out in the open and dying, or alternately, firing blindly in to a wall or crate. That’s when they are actually following you, and not bugged out, standing still, and only teleporting to you when you get out of range.

And then there’s the vehicle combat and controls, which are barely tolerable, and feel like the bare minimum. I’ve done Unreal Engine development before, and the vehicle combat in this game feels a hell of a lot like the default test vehicle that comes with the engine. It feels as if there was no extra work put in to the controls, or the camera, or the shooting.

Ultimately, the whole game just screams “Unfinished.” It’s like an Alpha that doesn’t crash. They didn’t bother taking any time to fix the little issues (Like getting stuck in walls, or your sidekicks not following you, or game balance), and instead just shipped it as it was.

I’m hard pressed to think of any RPG this buggy since the original Gothic. And that’s saying a lot, because at least Gothic tried to do new and interesting things.  Mass Effect is the same old Bioware formula, packaged in a visually appealing (once it loads) setting. The one claim to innovation was supposed to be its dialogue system, which ultimately turned out to be a glorified “Press any key to Continue” prompt, as multiple replays of conversation very distinctly shows you that often, no matter what option you pick, your character will deliver the exact same line in the exact same way. Innovation is convincing someone you are moving forward, when actually, you are moving backward. Apparently.

Those are just the major issues I have with the game. The minor issues are too numerous to count, starting from all planets/moons having the same gravity (including our moon), to sidekick quests being nothing more than looting a box on a specific planet. Especially disappointing given the story and detail of previous Bioware entries.

And yet, despite all of this, I power on. Because I want to like it. But it’s taking a lot of effort not to just take a pass on the game, and throw it on the pile with all the other “almost good” games that I’ll never finish.

That being said, I honestly can’t understand all the glowing reviews. It’s like I got a burn of an early alpha, while everyone else is playing the final game. Then again, maybe there’s some magical turning point in the game where it becomes amazing. Maybe that’s why I keep playing.

Be careful what you wish for, you just may get it, or so the saying goes!

Anyway, lampooned with style!

(Note, the following are my own personal opinions, and not those of Ubisoft)

So, I’d always figured Assassin’s Creed would end up being a love it or hate it kind of game. So I was surprised when no one actually hated it. In fact, the reception has been predominantly positive. But, there are a few low reviews. I’ve read a bunch of them, and ultimately, a lot of the negative points have to do with the game not being what the reviewers wanted it to be, or thought it would be. Now, I suppose, in some fashion, that’s a valid critique. But if you expect fruit, and you get an apple when you expected an orange, does that make the apple bad? I’m no good at analogies.

What I find truly hilarious though, are the conflicting things people want out of the game, and ultimately I take that as a huge positive. I’ve seen people say that the fast travel option shouldn’t have been available, in the same sentence that they say the kingdom area isn’t that interesting. Well… okay? Seems like one is a solution to the other… but that’s just me. What do I know.

Another thing I find interesting is how a lot of the negative things people say about the game… have to do with the fact that it is, at the end of the day, a game. People complain about how it’s repetitive because you do the same gameplay over and over. Seems to me that in most games, you do the same gameplay over and over, only the reasons change, and maybe the settings. I think it’s likely that people notice the “gamey” parts in AC more, simply because the game world as a whole is so detailed and realistic. It’s true, when contrasted against realism, the parts of the game that make it a game will stand out.

Granted, putting the game in a historical setting tied our hands somewhat. People have complained that the cities are too similar. Well… yeah. What do you want, an ice level? A fire level? Last I checked, this wasn’t Zelda, and no one slams WW2 games for being in yet another bombed out setting. Why can’t we play WW2 in a jungle for once?

Another laugh I had was at a guy complaining that the game doesn’t have weather. Right. In a desert area. Perhaps we could’ve made Altair comment about how it’s kind of hot today. Today it’s drier than usual!

I must admit, there’s definitely some valid criticisms of the game. It’s not as polished as I’d have liked. Cutscenes aren’t skippable, checkpoints aren’t clearly defined and reliable, instant kill water, and, of course, the odd crazy bug. But for all of that, it seems that most people agree: We made something special and innovative. And when you get down to it, that’s all we set out to do.

And really, if you are going to poke at the weak parts of the game, why not do it in style?  With that in mind, I sure hope Yahtzee does a Zero Punctuation on AC.  It would make my year.

Okay, so after finishing Assassin’s Creed, and taking some much needed R&R, I’m back!  Yes, that’s right, I actually have some time.  Mostly, I’m playing all the great games coming out lately, as well as diving back in to World of Warcraft.  But!  I’m going to try, once again, to get myself in to a habit of posting.  About what?  Who knows!

I do mean to make a post or two about AC’s reception.  I also have some comments burning to be released about Mass Effect, and some comments about the contrast between the receptions of the two games.  Soon!

Okay, so I’ve been slacking off again. However, I added a picture gallery to the site. You should be able to find the link on the links section of the site.

Sorry about the lack of updates, I’ve been making this:

So I’ve been thinking that maybe part of my problem with creating a project is simply that always wanting to do shit in 3d means a hell of a lot of overhead.  But I’ve never had a really good alternative to 3d… freeware 2d engines are about as hard to find as freeware 3d engines (ones that don’t suck anyway).

But I’ve been hearing people talk about Microsoft Silverlight.  I guess it’s like Flash, except I can use C#!  And since C# is a god among programming languages, this really got me interested.  Make 2D games, using C#, that people can play in their browser?  Sounds like maybe this might be the ticket.

So I’m downloading it.  And I’m going to develop… something in it.  Probably nothing big at first but some of the game ideas I’ve been having could probably work in 2D just as good as in 3D.  At least for a prototyping stage.  And if I can get started this way, maybe I can use it as a springboard to actually do some real large-scale side project development.

One can hope, anyway.

So, I like a lot of strange music. Also a wide variety of music. From classical to electronic to metal, the only thing I won’t listen to is country.

I also like digital distribution. If I buy a cd all I do is turn it in to MP3s and then shelve the cd, so why have the cd taking up space? I am, however, also a quality whore, and the trash they put on iTunes isn’t worth money. Also, DRM can eat my ass.

So I tend to frequent sites like Bleep more than I should. And that place is a damn gold mine. It’s also Warp Records‘ digital distribution system. So I get a lot of electro there. But let me tell you, there is no end to the wacky, and for an example, have a listen to one of my favorite tracks lately.

It never ceases to amaze me how an industry so built on overtime still can’t understand the politics of overtime.  They are very simple.  I’ll outline them.

1. The best overtime is the overtime which is volunteered.
2. Forced overtime burns goodwill at an extremely high rate.
3. The instant forced overtime goes in to effect, everyone will immediately give only the bare minimum to the project.

And now for an explanation.

1. An employee who volunteers overtime is an employee that believes in the project, or has personal investment.  These people want the project to succeed, and are willing to give of themselves to make it happen.  When employees volunteer overtime, it doesn’t burn any goodwill, and it actually builds goodwill, from the top down.  Which is great, because then everyone wins.  People are more productive, get more done, feel better about the project, and in general, are happier.
2. As soon as you tell someone they don’t get an evening or weekend (or any multiple thereof) they’re going to get angry. They are going to bitch and complain, and the employees doing the real work are going to amplify this anger amongst themselves.  Offering direct and immediate compensation can mitigate this somewhat, but only in small quantities.  And this can be really dangerous to management, because if they compensate once, but they don’t on a following bit of forced overtime, they will actually burn even more goodwill the second time around than if they’d not even offered compensation in the first case.  Because now they expect something for nothing, when previously they brought something to the table.
3. Someone who doesn’t want to work overtime won’t.  Sure, they may be in the office, but most will actively limit their productivity past a certain point as a coping mechanism.  If you tell someone on Wednesday that they have to work Saturday and Sunday, you can pretty much guarantee they won’t be working any extra hours before Saturday.  Whereas before with a simple push for completion, people might have given some extra time each weeknight, which ties back in to point 1.

Of course, none of these points ties in to basic limits of productive work time, or the reasons behind the need for crunch.  That’s a different topic for another time.

On a more personal note, I’ve realized that after my near seven years in the game industry, that all goodwill I have for a project pretty much evaporates as soon as there is forced overtime.  I just… I can’t do it.  It’s not in me to allow parts of my life to be taken for a simple job.

I’ve been down that road many times, and I know where it leads.