The FPS mobility and superpowers convergence and Open World distractathons

Call of Duty - Has no identity (enough with the futuristic nonsense)

I've not been a COD player for sometime (since MW2). Though honestly Black Ops 1 and 2 looked decent. Ghosts looked like hot garbage and Advance Warfare seemed solid, but that's where it also starting to show it doesn't really have an identity anymore. They'd essentially given us Call of Duty: Titanfall.

Not really surprising given the production line nature of COD now.  Not that Treyarch doesn't try, but Blops 3 is essentially COD: Titanfall now with Destiny superpowers in multi and more nonsensical future nonsense in the campaign. It all seems rather contrived.

I would rather play Titanfall and Destiny - which have ideas of the own, than another me too experience. And it seems like every shooter currently in development is built on the same character powers and mobility template. I know when COD hit , there were the copy cat games - but then we had games like Borderlands, Titanfall, Destiny bringing something unique to the table.

I'd love to see a reboot of COD that strips it back down to where it started, that turns down the campaign from 11 back to a more measured experience, with meaningful encounters.

Open World - Watering down a solid core experience with too many distractions

What happens when you climb a tower in Assassins Creed

The same could be said for the Open World game, which mostly now seem to follow the Ubisoft template of climbing a tower and unlocking a set of activities in that area. Assassins Creed has well and truly becomes stale for me, since every tower climbed populates the map with yet more distracting tasks that bog you down and have you putting the game back on the shelf mid game. Batman Arkham night somewhat suffered from the Open World, since the batmobile added very little to the game a number of the open world tasks whilst extending gameplay don't add anything to the experience. I enjoyed the detective missions and the ones that introduced a character from the universe, but the generic goon missions didn't do much for me. I wouldn't say Arkham night is a better game than Arkham Asylum, which hub style world focused more on the core experience. 

That said, I enjoyed Watch Dogs, since the hacking activities and hopping around security camera's creating chaos from a distance shook up the formula enough to see me though to completion. Likewise Shadow of Mordor, which features much of the Open World TM standards, but adds in the brilliant Nemesis system, giving the player a chance to build rivalries as they play. But on a whole the open world formula needs a rethink.

Rather than populate a map with repetitive tasks in each area, create more customised meaningful content. In this case less is more. I'd rather 50% less content, if it meant what was there was more substantive. I remember going into the wilderness in AC3, and doing all these tasks that didn't matter. All in service to the economy aspect of Assassins Creed that was a nice distraction in AC II, but rather tacked on in AC 3. The only reason to do it was to get parts for your ship. They could have abandoned the whole homestead/wilderness aspect and the game would have been better for it.

One thing I enjoyed about the original Assassins Creed was the Assassinations. Even though you performed the same three task to get the intel leading up to the assassination, it felt like it created a build up and the chance to plan your approach and escape. In the later games they abandoned that, to make assasinations feel less distinct from the rest of the game. Can you imagine an Assassins Creed game in which the assassinations were as detailed as the Hitman games? If you could actually use stealth effectively in AC again, rather than the alter guard then hide in hay bail loop you get stuck in before you just give up and just engage in open combat.

I fear for The Division, which could be great, but I suspect may lean heavily on Ubisofts open world formula and I don't see adding persistent online to that being that interesting.

Every day we move further from Gods light

Dusting off this blog to cover several topics that make me want to depart this planet for somewhere saner.

First up is the exposure of popular gamergater @Alison_Prime has been found out to be a persona of some guy named Steve. Steve adopted the persona (a boob obsessed lesbian gamer) originally as a WOW player, but actively engaged as Alison for over a year on twitter. The fraud came undone, when he posted calling for funds for a house fire and suspicious people went digging.

You can read about the details here:


You got Steved  (thanks to BroTeamPill for that expression).

I had a suspicion about Allison, I remember thinking photos she posted looked like different people. The commitment to the persona probably made me over look it though. Also the whole trophy obsessed gamer, didn't really fit with the rest of the persona. I'm mostly annoyed at the way they used #gamergate. Its one thing to be anon and another to be a complete fraud. 

Moving into the real world - Starbucks has revealed their cups for the festive season, moving away from even generic festive imagery to a plain red cup. 

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/11/05/war-on-christmas-starbucks-new-red-cups-are-emblematic-of-the-christian-culture-cleansing-of-the-west/

They explained their reasoning with dumb PC corporate speak: 

“to usher in the holidays with a purity of design that welcomes all of our stories.”

“We’re embracing the simplicity and the quietness of it. It’s [a] more open way to usher in the holiday,” said their CEO.

Previous Festive Design

This years red design - not exactly festive

Not that Starbucks coffee cups are a big deal, but its indicative of the wider shift away from Western Cultural expression under the guise of being 'more open'. Notice that other cultures are to be embraced and their expression celebrated and ours is to be hidden away.

Finally, I'll talk about the most face palm inducing story for last.

6 year old suspended for pretend poweranger battle 

Yup, thanks to progressive fun police we can now strike off 6 year old boys pretending to be powerangers as unacceptable.

“This can not be tolerated in the world we live in today”

Kids having imaginary battles somehow represents a threat now. Yeah ok.

Better get rid of the toy soldiers then.

Peak stupid – Have we reached it yet?

E3 and the Games Media's obsession with Gender politics

Gender politics in gamng is nothing new, so it's no surprise that in the wake of the press conferences the usual suspects took to twitter to air their grievances. These are the sorts of people who will never be please no matter how much developers pandered to them.

However it was it's prominence in the E3 coverage of the gaming press that was a little on the nose. Advocating "diversity" has become a default editorial position, a mandate. It's very much a symptom of our post feminist PC society that the inherent masculinity of gaming is somehow seen as problematic. The demographic majority in gaming (white male) are to be derided and minorities prioritized. Should a developer include minorities the focus shifts to finding critiquing the portrayal of said minority (to stereotypical, sexist etc). Never mind that half the male characters in gaming these days are fairly archetypal (and voiced by Nolan North, lol).  

I'm not sure why one should expect equal representation for a small proportion of the audience (and in the case of racial minorities, a relatively small proportion of the population) to be honest. Perhaps with the high proportion of women in games media, relative to the actual number of women who are core gamers has something to do with these expectations.

There were a few instances that this obsession was evident. The reaction to Assassins Creed and Far Cry 4 Co-op were such examples. Apparently now, there is a mandate that gender be selectable in any multiplayer mode of a game. This was not an option in AC Unity, where the players are simply Arno in different coloured robes. Of course the question was asked and Ubisoft provided an answer (the amount of work required to do a new rig and animations etc). Of course they were taken to task on this, there were editorials written and even old AC designers dug up to insist that it could easily be done. Ubisoft would be made accountable for their sin. Similarly with Far Cry 4, the co-op player is male and when asked the devs noted they had worked on a female character but the work was not able to be completed (didn't have a read for the character, etc). These answers were deemed unacceptable (even though the press are well aware of how pushed for time developers are to meet release dates).

The argument seems to be that women who game can't enjoy or feel excluded by having to use a male avatar. It seems odd to me since its so inconsequential in these games. In AC its really insignificant what gender is under the assassin robes and FC4 is an FPS, so you can't even see your character most of the time. It also seems odd that you would need to project yourself onto these characters. You aren't building up these characters or customizing them, simply playing out the action with them.

So many games shown at E3 include customizable characters (including gender). Dragon Age, Sunset Over Drive, The Division to name a few. To me, this is more about the politics than a legitimate issue. Not only that but there seems to be this pretense of wanting to "educate" their audience. It's here that people in the games media seem to be ignorant about the disconnect with the audience on this issue. The audience actually interested in that stuff is a small proportion of gamers and they alredy gravitate to sites like polygon that specialize in identity politics. The rest of us just aren't interested in being beaten around the head with this stuff. 

Don't get me started on this article by Gamespots Tom McShea on Rainbow 6 Siege: http://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-disturbing-representation-of-women-in-the-rainbow-six-siege-e3-demo/1100-6420266/

The most heavy handed nonsense you are likely to read for some time.

The enthusiast press has become the SJW press. No wonder gamers are looking elsewhere for their coverage.