The Extra Credits Summer

[Sly Reflex]

So DC used to post Extra Credits. I liked them. I was sad when he stopped posting them. I've just stumbled across them again and it appears that they have a fair few episodes to watch. I will link to one episode per day as a daily discussion point. There should be enough vids to talk about until the new games start coming out and livening up the forum a bit.

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/bad-writing

The next video will go up late tomorrow night. I hope you take part.

[HandsomeDead]

I stopped posting them when they moved to Penny Arcade as you can't embed their videos. I know I don't tend to click on links often, personally, so stopped.

But I have still been watching them every week and they do have a YouTube channel now which is just a week or two behind so I could continue to do what I used to do.

[Sly Reflex]

Continue from the latest one on your thread and I will continue to do this one until summer is over and we have something else to talk about. Mainly games.

[Sly Reflex]

On topics, I've always thought that the way Valve games handle to story are the best way of doing story telling. It hardly ever takes control directly away from you. I really like the passive story telling or Left 4 Dead. The scrawls on the walls. The way things are left for you to discover on your own. Sometimes it's not always apparent and you need to link a few things up that characters say with the event around them, but I think it's probably the best way of going about flashing out a game story in game.

[HandsomeDead]

So bad writing. It is a problem in games since writers are brought on late in the games development. I remember reading an interview (which I can't seem to find) with Rhianna Pratchett regarding Mirror's Edge and how much of a mess it was since she was brought in so late and also unintentionally kept in the dark about some things like the comic book style cut scenes. It obviously helps having the writer included in the development of the game from as early as possible and it will help. Alex Garland, who did the story for Enslaved, benefited from this, and the story to that game is generally well received.

It doesn't mention it in the video but I have heard that game developers do tend to hire friends or acquaintances a lot when it comes to finding writers and some of them are just not up to the job at all.

[Sly Reflex]

I've had a chat with DC and I thought the best thing to do would to work back from where he has resumed. That way we don't end up covering the ones we already did back when DC was putting them up regularly.

I don't really get what they are aiming at with WoW if I'm being honest. Of course the stuff at level 60 is crap against the stuff that is level 70. The stuff at level 50 was crap comnpared to the level 60 stuff and so on. That is the nature of loot games. Level on level the stuff gradually gets better, that what keeps you playing. It doesn't matter about power creep because stuff gradually gets harder to kill. I understand where they are coming from if they are talking about getting greens that are better than purples at a higher level, but it still doesn't matter a jot. In PvP you are going to have the same level loot as someone at tyhe same level as you, and in PvE none of it fucking matters unless you are doing the hardest raids on the hardest settings. You need to be geared to do that, but then again if you are aiming to do that you are already geared and are more than likely just doing it for the thrill of the chase or for marginally better loot.

I can fully understand what they mean with character classes. Recently they added two characters to Awesomenauts. It was sort of unbalanced before with certain classes dominating, but I don't think introducing the others has made it any better. You are just tilting the scales of power instead of balancing them. I wouldn't say remove the offending classes, just balance them and make the perks for them work as they should do. I mean, when you look at the lizards perks on which you build there's stuff in there you'd have to be mad to use. For instance, in the health tree you can spend some money on making it so that you health regens. I think it costs 130. If you unlock the cloak perk for 100+ there is a perk inside that that allows you to regen health while cloaked. It cost 190. This only works when you are cloaked. The other regen works all the time. The cloak regen works a bit faster, but the other works all the time. It's probably one of the stupidly designed and balanced classes I've ever witnessed in a game, both on levelling up and on the field. No thought went into it at all. More thought went into making the other class in how to combat him and that not how it should be. The other character they released (I can write up on it if anyone wants me to, but I don't think the game has much of a following to warrant it) is basically the big robot but both work the best for certain maps.

What remains to be seen is that there are 4 empty character slots left in the game. It's quite possible that the power will just swap between these classes as they release them. I hope not though, It'd be nice if everything was nice and balanced and I saw more variation in teams online.

[Sly Reflex]

Next!

Lone Survivor looks pretty cool.

Artmis would probably drive me fucking insane.

[Sly Reflex]

[Sly Reflex]

I have a problem with hard boiling. From the games I've played the ones that take it to the brink they are very unrewarding from a character point of view. I spend every day witnessing people that are real. I don't want to do it in games. Game setting is a bit different. The setting of the game can be as serious as it wants to be, because the characters should make it up. When you look at games like Fallout 3 it's miserable as fuck when you are out in the wilderness. When you get back to civilisation you are picked up by the characters. Even if they are inherently bad and you shouldn't be rooting for them, they take you away from what the world is. They can be comedic, thought provoking or just plain nutjobs. Greenvale from Deadly Premonition could be any place in America really. That setting is as real as they come. It's more about the characters than anything. I played Battlefield single player a few nights ago and I cant even remember any persons name in that game apart from Black. Not good, especially when I can think back to other games with serious settings and recall loads of characters.

It's why I find games like God of War hard to play. The action is OTT, but everything else about it is just trying too hard to appeal to kids who think being moody and a fucking miserable cunt is mature. It isn't. It's fucking shit and it will always be shit. Even the characters in Mortal Kombat aren't as one dimensional as Kratos. In some character building I understand why they leave the player one dimensional, as you are meant to portray yourself as them and you cannot do that if the character has qualities you don't have. Master Chief is a good example of that. He's boring, but he's meant to be sterile. He's many things to many people. That something that characters like Kratos will never ascend to because he's a cantankerous ill tempered dour little bitch. When you compare him to someone like Nathan Drake where every little sound effect, animation and line that comes from him seems to make him a guy that's in too deep but has to deal with it. You have to wonder if the people responsible have taken notes from people like me to avoid creating a persona that would grate me up. The gulf between great characters and shit ones in gaming really is massive. It's something I think future games devs should look into and do the best they possibly can to avoid making a clinker.

[Sly Reflex]

I have no idea what the solution to this could be. Obviously the tv stations need kicking up the arse and off the network, or at least onto a spectrum that takes a narrower bandwidth. I understand digital and satellite have a narrower band than the usual transmission ways. In fact, we've already done that in the UK. The bandwidth was given to the telecoms for cellular phones.

I'm guessing we are going to see a shift in cellular phone technology in the more developed parts of the world to allow them to hook into any public wireless system. I'm not really sure how much space a either method takes up though. You could be just swapping one for another. I remember a movement (which might still be going on, I'm not sure) in that everyone in a developed area turned off the encryption on their internet it would become a cloud where the only time you'd go without is if you went into the sticks, and even then as long as you were near some sort of civilisation you'd still have some sort of connection, in it's most basic form. Enough to make basic VoIP I should imagine. The only problem is the ethical and legal. As I understand it the problem is you are not allowed by law to connect to something that doesn't belong to you unless you have permission. Some might see it as if people are un-securing their networks then that must mean they are fine with people jumping on and using their bandwidth, but I don't think it is as simple as that. Plus it brings in other matters. Why would you pay for internet yourself if you could just use the persons next door. Where do the lines cross from using an open connection and abusing it? I've often talked about it with friends and we come to the conclusion that if the internet was good enough, cheap enough and everyone chipped in instead of freeloading, that ideal could work at cutting out a lot of haze. Of course it isn't as simple as that. Some areas have higher traffic than others and would be hit harder. Is that fair to the people paying for a connection they can hardly use because it has hundreds or thousands of people using it daily? What about download caps? It's a very muddy situation that I can see no clear answer to.

Other ideas for throwing a cloud over the country could be to throw hotspots all over. Maybe utilise the national grid as internet network similar to how you can use your house wiring as a network. You'd have a maximum penetration with that because there isn't many places where the grid doesn't go. Bang some wireless tech into lamp posts and pylons and you'd have cloud coverage. Would it work in reality? I have no fucking idea. I'm just throwing ideas out into the open. There's every possibility that it could make the problem worse.

I know recently they started building a better internet because we'd essentially run out of internet addresses so started building over the top of what we have now providing us with a lot more gates. You can bet somewhere someone is working their balls off trying to work out how to minimise or eradicate this wireless problem too.

[HandsomeDead]

The boom in 'hard boiled' games is a frustrating one. It's not a bad thing in itself, but gaming is so bad for feverishly clinging to trends it makes anything that was once pretty cool very tiring, very quickly. Perhaps the day gaming stops pandering to what it thinks teenagers want will be a great thing.

there's a guy at Destructoid who said something pretty inspired once. It was more aimed at art games but I think it applies overall. Gaming needs to stop looking for it Citizen Kane and find its Simpsons. It applies here too. It's funny, sad, immature, mature, insightful and silly all at the same time.

[Sly Reflex]

Deadly Premonition did all those things. I think that's why it was so well received by those that invested time in it.

[DANGERMAN]

having just finished it I feel they've been a bit harsh on Max Payne 3. It's true that the first game had more 'knowing' moments, but "I hear a voice in my head screaming 'You're in a videogame Max'" was cheesy in 2000 let alone now. And the third game does have some humour, there's the dialogue about Max being good at pushing buttons (that's referenced in the back half of the game), the retired police officer that keeps popping up. And Max is self aware, he spends half the game talking about how what he's doing is suicide, how he's walking in to trouble as though he wants it (although why he doesn't walk away at some points isn't fully justified.

I agree with them about the death cam though. You need something to show the area is safe, and shot after shot of Max would be a bit dull, but I stopped planting extra bullets in people within a few minutes. However I've vivid memories of Max Payne 2's sparkly new ragdoll physics being shown off in an apartment room, when I shot a guy and he fell off the balcony, so it's not uncommon for the series. I feel like some people who complain about Max Payne 3 either never played the first 2 or haven't played them since release. They were as gritty and dark as any game I'd played at that point, funny and weird yes, but hammy and bleak too

I do agree with them on the greater point though, even when it's 'supposed' to be over the top, like say Bulletstorm, it can get incredibly tired very quickly. Games tend to struggle to do it properly because games run longer, and need to feature more encounters, than film and tv. The Raid is awesome, fairly brutal, and serious without being introspective, in terms of set pieces it's basically a videogame. The problem is the same thing in a game would take 15 minutes and become trite after it had been repeated (Uncharted, Gears of War, Modern Warfare, Rage, Kane & Lynch, Max Payne etc etc). Also both films and tv got in on the ground floor with this stuff, if a trend starts in film it can be replicated in tv within a year or so. In short we've already seen 'gritty' and 'mature' done, games will rarely make an impact doing that (a few exceptions including Heavy Rain, MW2 arguably [because they make you do things you dont want to])

Final point on the Citizen Kane thing. I was reading a thread on another forum about 80s films, and people were bemoaning how we don't have as many classic films now a days. Someone else called them on it, pointing out that the 80s had a fuck load of shit released, we just don't remember it because it never gets shown now and was no ones favourite film. The second that we're too close to things; The Lost Boys was a great film, but better than Batman, Inception, Drive, Old Boy, Super, Kick Ass?

We might have already had our Citizen Kane, which as a film was received poorly at its release, we wont know for another 20 years. Or perhaps that games date more than film tends to, maybe the last 20 years were all about laying the ground work

[Sly Reflex]

The first MW was a good story. It didn't feel ridiculous. MW3 on the other hand is probably the most stupid thing I've played over the last few years. I actually laughed out loud at lots of it, the highlight being the tank falling through the floors of the multi-story car park. That wouldn't be out of place in a comedy film.

[Sly Reflex]

Today's is a double ender.

I cannot be arsed to watch them right now. I'll give them a scan over tomorrow and maybe comment.

[HandsomeDead]

I'll get to the ARG thing (though I don't think I have much to say about them. I don't tend to get involved with them.) but back to hard boiled and what DANGERMAN said.

I remember seeing somewhere someone arguing that the original Super Mario Bros. was already our Citizen Kane in how much it influenced gaming as a whole like CK did for cinema. I also remember IGN arguing that Metroid Prime was our CK but did so much less convincingly. Even as someone who rates MP as one of their favourite games ever I struggled to agree with IGN's argument, with them focusing so much on the superficial and not what actually makes MP great; but that's IGN for you.

.. I had another point I wanted to make but I've forgotten... maybe it'll come to me in the morning... maybe.

[Sly Reflex]

Actual reality games are really cool, it's like being a detective. You're not bound by rules or tropes. You just figure it out with the other people you are playing with and it goes on from there. I don't know where this would fall,m but I remember Valve doing something very similar when they altered Portal that allowed you to pick up broadcasts by carrying a radio around the game with you and standing in certain places. The messages you got from that were proper garbled, but eventually people figured it all out. I'm going to go right out on a limb and say that the smartglass stuff MS is pushing will have some 'secrets' buried into it as well.

Augmented reality? I'm not really sure of it's applications in these games. He mentions that it could be abused by big companies, but then again it could be abused by parks and libraries, pissing off the people that would normally go to those places anyway. We all know how annoying that is when you've found a nice spot and it's suddenly invaded by 'casuals'. Messy. I do think that augmentation has potential for changing the world as we see it though. Imagine driving a car that has a heads up display projected onto the windscreen that shows you directions among other stuff instead of having the info stashed in the switchgear. They could replace stuff like traffic lights because they'd be happening right on your screen.

Those glasses could be used to make sure you are the only one seeing details on ATM's too, other people would just see a blank screen as all the details would be projected in front of your eyes. I think if stuff like warnings such as slippery floor or mind you head or any of the other hazard signs we say could be shown. Blank signs would replace the ones we normally see and could be directed directly at a user. Stuff like disabled access can be ignored by many of us. It's deadly important to others though.

[Sly Reflex]

It's worth watching just to see what the monkeys on the other side of the internet connection have written.

I always thought it was weird that you didn't have a report button on LIVE. If you get a abusive message you should just be able to send it to the man and have the consequences played out from there. I've got to say, the fools that do this sort of shit need to be fucked off the internet. Party chat's probably saved us all a lot of ear ache, but you can be that some cunt has cussed you up or generally been a prick. It's probably one if not the worst things about the anonymity of the internet.

[Sly Reflex]

Crowd funding.

I have something to say about this, but I'll do it before I put the next vid up, just in case anyone wants to jump in and discuss anything and break up me seemingly talking to myself.

[Sly Reflex]

Nobody?

OK, Kickstarter and its ilk then. I think it's great. Although I have a massive problem with it which can pretty much be outlined by a reoccurring joke on Joypod. Everything has a kickstarter. Seriously. Why is there so much shit? Everyone and their dog are at it. It's a fucking joke. There needs to be some sort of system that buries all the crap because all I see when looking at are pages and pages of wank. Have a look for yourselves.

http://www.kickstarter.com/discover

Now go look and think about some of the stuff that past its targets. I look at it and wonder why the hell it even got pitched. The thought behind it is awful. Instead of being used to make something that will be thought of positively in the future it's been thrown away mostly on shitty Facebook like iOS games and artwank films that about 20 people will watch. Same with the theatre stuff. I think the worst ones are the music ones. We've had a decade at least of people putting their music up on the internet. Why suddenly have these artists got their hands out. If you really want to get your music out there, rent a fucking music studio and get to it. It's a few hundred quid for a session. If you cannot record a cut in a few sessions then you are clearly doing it wrong. It bugs me that we've got all these hands out, like we don't have enough of that already without kickstarter.

As gamers I think we've yet to see the fruits of anything kickstarter based? There's always the possibility that we'll see something truly amazing. Saying that, there's always the chance we are going to see some clinkers. It's those that I think will ultimate demise of crowdfunding. When you put down money and you get delivered a broken promise, then you are less likely to fund other projects. Even if you only lose £10 it's still £10. If you are less likely to fund a project something truly great is going to slip through the net unnoticed because people are disillusioned with the system.

I think that while it has amazing possibilities, it'll only take a few bombs to burst its bubble.