Dark Souls 2

It should be no surprise that I really waited for this game. Following the weeks it got out, I played it for quite a respectable amount of hours. In fact I'm still not done with it, but I'm taking a break from it for now. It's summer in Finland and it's bright throughout most of the day, even inside my living room. Shockingly, this game is quite dark (who would've thought) so I can't actually play it because of screen reflections. Even if it is significantly less dark than its predecessor. It's just not really a game where you'd want to miss seeing something. I mean that something might just get you very, very dead. Even though it's probably one of the best - if not the best - games this year, there's not much to say. It's mostly more of the same with slight tweaks. That's enough though right, because it's more of the same best gameplay out there.

1. The tweaks

Because sequels are effectively massive iterations of the original concept, they tend to tweak things in a better direction. The basics have been largely left untouched as there really isn't much of a reason to change them. Some things have clearly been changed as an attempt to improve them; others have been changed more for flavor. Take dual-wielding for instance. It used to be pretty useless, so they've given it a buff. Wielding two weapons of the same type and having high enough stats grants access to power stance. This stance offers new moves featuring both weapons at the same time, which increases damage output quite nicely. The tradeoff, not being able to use a shield, is still significant - although I have to say less so than I'd expected. Don't know whether it's just a matter of enemy design or me having enough confidence in my own abilities, but I have mostly been playing without a shield. I do like that lighter weapons are now more useful in PVE.

One of my biggest gripes with Dark Souls has received some much-needed attention. I'm naturally talking about poise - the stagger resistance mechanic - that used to be just bonkers. This in the sense that with high enough poise there were next to no attacks in the game that could stagger your character. That's particularly stupid in PVP - which is another subject I've touched in quite some detail previously. Well, that's in the past because poise has been heavily nerfed. I think it's fairly balanced now actually. If you choose to go that route, you can still shrug of staggers from most mobs and some attacks from bosses, but not nearly everything. It is pretty useless in PVP. As a bit of a step backwards though, there now seems to exist a rather definite sweet spot for equipment encumbrance. In the past, there was a notable difference for having less than 25% load, and another huge step at 50%. Now it scales more linearly, but load only affects roll distance (almost useless) and stamina recovery speed (somewhat meaningful). The only hard limit is at 70% where normal roll turns into the fat roll.

This means that most builds can wear almost any armor without getting punished because there's very little point in carrying around anything below 69.9%. Sure, the roll distance was useful for my bow only run but that's not really an optimal way to play in any regard. On the other hand, if you're really good at not getting hit, might as well go naked for maximum stamina recovery speed I guess. Still, I feel there's less factors involved in picking armor in this game. There is however some choice involved in rolling, because rolling speed and invulnerability window length are now determined by a derivative stat. This actually caught me be surprise at first a lot because rolling away after making an attack has a longer delay than it used to (even with high stats, but especially at the beginning). I died a lot because of this. Admittedly I still die a lot because of greedy attacking, but at least now it's no longer a surprise when it happens - just the usual facepalm. Then again that's probably the biggest reason I die in a lot of games of this genre in general.

Speaking of stats, there's now more of them. Endurance has been split into two stats: one for stamina and another for equipment load. Then there's adaptability which is a new stat that affects the derivative agility stat I just mentioned, and resistances. Stat-based damage bonuses are now derivative stats, and as a bigger change, there's not just the original four but also three new ones: fire, lightning and dark damage. Well, really just two new ones, because lightning replaces faith-based damage. Yes, elemental weapons do scale now, based on different stats. Dark damage is the most demanding type, because it's defined by whichever of magic or faith is lower. Another curious scaling type is the new mundane scaling, which scales based on how high is the character's lowest stat. Interestingly enough, almost all weapons in the game can be imbued with any scaling even if they already have that damage type built in (in which case that damage type gets more emphasized). Even more importantly, elemental weapons can now be enchanted with spells.

All this means that different scaling types actually make a lot more sense now. Previously even casters often wanted to use a physical damage weapon because it would get a much bigger damage buff from a spell. Now you can cast the buff on any weapon. I think there's simply more viable builds this time. Scaling can also be imbued into shields now to change their damage blocks. Status effects, most notably poison, can also be imbued into melee weapons for some interesting options - especially since most bosses aren't actually immune to poison. Other tweaks include changes to backstab and parrying, both of which are now less dominant (bugs aside). Backstab has less invulnerability; parrying now knocks the attacker on their butt, and to get a riposte you actually have to wait a bit (and can be interrupted by other enemies in the meantime). There's also a new magic category, hexes, based on dark scaling which makes it the most demanding magic type stats wise. Pyromancy is less broken and the flame now requires materials to upgrade so you can't rush it.

Limited respecs are also now available. Matchmaking has changed too. Previously it was based on soul level, which caused an anomaly where players would focus all their souls into upgrading gear, then invade low level games with godlike equipment. It's now based on soul memory, which is a measure of all souls obtained instead, making this method of griefing impossible. The matchmaking has other issues, and pure invasions are actually very rare because the player now needs to belong to a specific covenant in order to do so. Even then it's not really worth it, and as a side effect another covenant is useless. I guess they wanted to protect players a bit more because now the only way to fully avoid invasions is to play offline. There are however certain PVP focus areas in the game where invasions happen a lot so if you really want to fight, it's easily possible. Most importantly, network code is much better now, and I've experienced a lot less lag issues - and no lagstabbing at all.

The biggest issue with this system as far as I've heard is the fact that soul memory caps at 15 million, after which you can face anyone above the threshold. This means you can end up fighting fully maxed out characters once you hit that 15M souls. I don't remember where are my characters' soul memories at so I cannot say how high is the threshold exactly. All in all I feel the tweaks are welcome, and as soon as they fix a few bugs that are getting abused, the game should be more balanced than Dark Souls.

2. Extinction

There's one tweak that's worth its own section. Partly because this is something I forgot to include in my Lightning Returns post. The biggest and perhaps most vocalized change in reviews is the limitation on enemy spawns. Whereas before there would occasionally be enemies that were there only once, in Dark Souls 2 all enemies can be killed only a set amount of times after which they will no longer respawn. This change affects the game in two ways. In one way it makes the game easier because areas can be cleared so that around the fifteenth attempt against the boss the player just runs through empty corridors to get there. In another way it makes the game harder  because everything now comes with limited availability. By everything I mean items and souls dropped by enemies. This only really applies if the player relies on farm. This was also the most discussed and criticized change.

At first it felt a bit like cheating because by now I'm used to repeating sections in Souls games. In the end though by the fifteenth attempt the section is mostly routine anyway, so going through it is neither challenging or interesting. Sometimes you might not even make it to fifteen kills on all enemies if you figure out a way to bypass them. Which is what we used to do in previous games when killing the same enemies for the umphteenth time got a bit too tedious. Now there's a choice to purposefully clear an area before a difficult boss instead of bypassing the enemies and sometimes I did opt for that. Most of the time it's still more convenient to just run past mobs, especially if you don't particularly need their drops. For new players this change can make things tricky if they are not careful with their souls. Let's say you make it to the boss fourteen times and always succeed in reclaiming your souls - except on the fifteenth run you lose them. Now you're facing empty corridors with no souls in sight, and the boss hasn't gotten any easier.

It is true that in offline play you can get screwed by this, theoretically at least. However, infinite souls are still available in the game. There's no limitation to how much you can go out as a white phantom to help out other players, and get your share of their soul rewards. If I remember this right, the reward is half of the normal amount of souls you would get. At the same time, it's a good way to scout out bosses and to avoid nasty surprises. The game also has one other tool to help players with this limited availability of souls. There's a ring that prevents losses at death. It does break when triggered, but can be repaired for about 2,000 souls. Since you always spawn at a bonfire and warping is always available, you can go back to repair it infinitely. Sure it's a bit of work, but it's a great safety net when you have massed a lot of souls. Similar rings existed in Dark Souls, but they could not be repaired.

I guess it's still possible to get screwed, but I don't really see how the mechanic in itself could be that bad. Its biggest impact is on drops if anything. It is now impossible to farm equipment upgrade materials indefinitely. it does put some weight on upgrade decisions early on in the game. Eventually, most materials will still have pretty high availability. It is also worth remembering that highest tier materials and things like demon titanite were also very limited in Dark Souls, so this is not exactly new either. In fact, the limited availability of drops is probably more consequential in Lightning Returns because of the way the ability upgrades work (i.e. you need to fuse together many copies of the same ability). In Dark Souls 2 you can still easily fully upgrade several weapons and a set of armor on one playthrough, which to me is hardly limited availability. All in all I don't know if it was a necessary change, but I am not really feeling the claimed negative impacts. I guess you could say it's against the Souls principle in a way because you are being denied learning possibilities after fifteen attempts. Color me indifferent.

In Dark Souls 2 the extinction of enemies is clearly just a game mechanic with no thematic implications. In Lightning Returns it's thematically more appropriate - at the end of days, even monsters feel it. This is further signified by last ones - special bosses encountered when every other member of a monster species is defeated. In a way it makes killing monsters feel less pointless as you can go on a crusade to truly defeat every last one of them. Of course, being able to slay an entire monster species would also have rather interesting moral implications in a different context. Even in LR you can ask yourself are all of these monsters truly malicious. In the end though, you will still go ahead and kill them for your precious loot and achievements. As a concept extinction has a lot to explore - not just as a meta-commentary, but also as a farm-limiting game mechanic.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, Dark Souls 2 is almost the same game as Dark Souls, just in a different environment. For me this is more than enough. Even if the design does seem a bit weaker at times, it's still more awesome than any of its competitors. Changes have been mostly rather cautious and for good reason. I guess I'm just not hardcore enough to see how DkS2 is so obviously inferior to DkS. Even if it was slightly weaker (and I'm not even sure about that), it's still an entirely new game with new challenges and environments. I mean, we used to play sequels made with exactly the same engine in the past (and I guess we still are). Sometimes I feel people are a bit too eager to declare "more of the same" in a negative tone. At times, "more of the same" is exactly what's called for. For me, Dark Souls 2 was a reason to get back to the gameplay system I have learned to love.

DmC - Devil May Cry

This article is about the 2013 reboot of the franchise. I have played all games in the original series - most of them a lot in fact. I wasn't very enthusiastic about the reboot but after reading some reviews it sounded like it might not be that bad after all. Then it wound up in PS+ instant game collection which was my cue to grab it and give it a spin. I'm sensing a pattern here... Honestly this article is almost not worth it to write. I've said almost everything before (here and here, and probably elsewhere too).

The game has gone through a lot of westernization - especially Dante. He now looks like an emo rock star, and his vocabulary has been expanded to cover clever words like "fuck". Now he's also the archetypal reluctant hero type who grows to the occasion. Wow. Such original. Amazingly enough they've managed to retain at least a small sliver of the original Dante's charm. On the plus side, the game's plot is more sensible and in all its cheesiness pretty fine. Demons are controlling the human world through media and with pacifying energy drinks. Throw in a sexy girl sidekick who gets to play damsel in distress and we have pretty much everything that's needed for a good old 'murican hero flick. It's a rather obvious social commentary, especially aimed at news propaganda. The outrageousness of all the lies in the in-game news broadcasts made me chuckle a few times. I guess that's something, right?

A lot of negative things could be said about the game's fiction but let's just skip that and move on to actually playing the game. The core gameplay of the original series is surprisingly intact and - I dare say - even better at times. Most importantly, the core dynamic is there: Dante has tools for everything the game throws at you; the question is, can you utilize them? The developers are stating this rather boldly too: the game has a difficulty where even a single point of damage kills Dante. I didn't get that far, but I haven't entirely abandoned this game yet - I might go for another playthrough at some point on a harder difficulty. Like its predecessors, it's entirely possible to play the game through in one sitting, especially after the initial playthrough. This is another thing that is advantageous to games such as DmC. If the first playthrough is effing long, it's hard to bother with a second one.

The series has always been one where mastery of the battle mechanics is the driving motivator. By the end of the game, the player has become proficient with their weapons and fairly knowledgeable about different enemies in the game. Then they get to do it again with harder enemies. The series has also always rewarded diversity: the player is awarded style points for alternating between attacks and combos. Good controls are a cornerstone for both of these drivers - and DmC hits that nail right on its head. For once I don't even feel a need to bash camera controls. The game features a free camera without target locking which should be a recipe for disaster but turns out it's not. Fast-moving enemies cause problems with this kind of setup, but DmC doesn't actually have any. All enemies also have appropriate sound cues when they are about to attack, which makes even off-camera attacks avoidable.

There's another really important game usability point on DmC. Dante is effectively wielding three weapon sets at once: in normal mode, he uses a sword and one gun or another; in angel mode he uses an angel weapon; and in demon mode he uses a demon weapon. The important point is the way you switch between these. Holding the left trigger puts Dante into angel mode while the right trigger puts him into devil mode. As soon as they're released he is back in normal mode. This is simple yet brilliant, because the alternative - one that was experienced with Vergil in DMC3 special edition - is using the same buttons to cycle through the three. There is a huge cognitive problem with cycling: the context changes. Pressing the left trigger can give you any of the three weapons depending on which one you are holding right now. It doesn't sound too complicated on paper, but it's really easy to get confused when switching weapons in a hurry. The DmC way of dealing with three modes has no such issues because the left trigger always puts Dante into angel mode.

That's pretty much all I really have to say about DmC. It's an enjoyable game and does a lot of things right. Probably Dante is a bit too powerful in this game because the devs have gone overboard with a lot of things. I think it's actually entirely possible to finish battles in the game without ever touching ground. Dante can pull himself to enemies and he can pull enemies to himself, and use combos that keep both him and the target in the air. Then again, it feels cool to do so, especially when you are able to pull five plus enemies into the air with you and keep them all there. Boss fights are surprisingly rare in this game, and I'm not sure what to think about that. I feel like there could have been more. At least the ones in the game all feel different from each other.

Remember Me

When previews about this game started to appear, I put it on my "looking forward to" list. The Last of Us took priority though and I forgot about this game - mostly because everyone else seemed to do so. I also had my month long summer vacation which I spent chasing geocaches all around. The game popped up again as a PS+ freebie later last year - around the time I was getting a bit tired of FFXIV - and this time I chose not to ignore it. After pressing buttons at a slow pace for three months, I was thirsty for some hand-to-hand action.

1. Tying it all together with a theme

As far as merits go, Remember Me has most of  them in visual design and theme. The setting makes for pretty delicious sci-fi - a corporation has found a way to manipulate memories, allowing people to get rid of bad ones and replace them with custom-made good memories. Naturally this has led to a dystopian society, as things developed by corporations are wont to do. The game being about memory and all, it's no big surprise the protagonist Nilin has lost hers. Fortunately this game here is one of the few cases where this actually doesn't feel cheap. The fact that there's a female protagonist in a dystopian future immediately draws comparisons to Mirror's Edge. The game is also reminiscent of Mirror's Edge because of its distinctive visual style. The aesthetic is very different from ME's exceedingly white visual style but the overall atmosphere is very similar.

Remember Me uses a lot of visual effects and filters to achieve its visual style. Generally overuse of filters and glitchy effects might be frowned upon, but it works in RM. Why? It's thematically appropriate. Overall, the game makes full use of the Sensen technology (that would be the memory manipulation tech). Through Sensen, information can be conveniently projected into the game world - and because everything is perceived through it, all sorts of distortions and visual glitches fit in just perfectly. It also extends its reach into gameplay in few segments of the game. By copying the memories of another, the protagonist is able to follow in their footsteps through memory projection. One example use for this mechanic is navigating through a minefield. Finally some of the protagonist's superpowers work by manipulating enemies' Sensen nodes - enemies without one are therefore immune.

Story also works well with the theme. It's not a nobel worth masterpiece by a long shot but better than most any way. It works better as an overall documentary of consequences of technology than it does as a story about people - much like the Joss Whedon's Dollhouse actually. So the plot in itself is not all that great, but the way it portrays how Sensen technology has affected everyone's lives is pretty solid. The moments when the game explores the darkest sides of Sensen are definitely the strongest. I recommend playing it through just for the atmosphere. It's not a long game either.

2. Finishing off with gameplay

While I'd mostly recommend this game for its atmosphere, gameplay in Remember Me ain't half bad either. It's not very original though. The game can roughly be divided into three types of segments: the aforementioned memory projection segments, climbing segments and of course combat. Climbing is heavily railroaded: usually there's exactly one option for moving forward - pretty much what is typical in heavily scripted games already. There's nothing difficult about it either because controls are accurate enough so mostly it's just mindless execution of a predetermined obstacle course. The saving grace is scenery. Although immersion is way weaker than in Mirror's Edge, at least the views are great. There's not really much else to say about climbing in this game.

Nilin cannot use weapons so she has to rely on her fists and feet to do the dirty work for her. The game uses a combo system that sounds interesting on paper: The player is granted two chains to start off with, and can assign Pressens to each attack in a combo. These affect what the attack does. Unfortunately the options are rather limited. The choice is basically between damage, healing and cooldown reduction. The fourth Pressen type is a more powerful version of whatever Pressen preceded it. Regardless of Pressens, attack animations for combos don't change. With more varied Pressens this system might have been much cooler, but as it stands it's very simplistic. As soon as I opened a third combo, I simply had one combo for each purpose: dishing out the hurt, healing and reducing cooldowns. Normal attacks aside, Nilin gains access to a total of five superpowers.

Although the mechanic is simple, it does grant some tactical depth. Much of this is due to clever encounter and enemy design. Nilin's superpowers are not just to make fights go faster - each and every one of  them is truly required. Especially towards the endgame battles become dances around tougher enemies while the player tries to build up meter for Nilin's superpowers and at the same time use cooldown reduction combos to make them available in decent time (default cooldowns are *long*). Finally, because healing is also only possible through attacking, the player really needs to stay on the offensive. Delightfully the game heavily punishes mashing - each attack in a combo needs to be timed correctly. It is also worth learning which combos include area of effect damage. Controls are not perfect, but overall encounters are fun to play precisely because they feel different from each other.

The game also has a few memory remixing scenes, which are kind of interesting. They involve manipulating a memory like a recording, skimming back and forward and changing small things like the position of a table in hopes of altering the outcome. It's mostly a more elaborate version of "try everything" puzzles in some adventure games, but thematically they're cool.  There's not that many things to try in each memory either. Fine additions to the game, but not much else really.

Conclusion

Remember Me is a solid action adventure game that is strong in atmosphere but otherwise not all that special. Although combat and climbing mechanics are not very original or interesting on their own, both are enhanced by auxiliary means: battle encounters are designed surprisingly well, and scenery in the game is amazing. Nilin's story is not that great either, but the way the game handles its sci-fi makes it worth playing. If you choose to pick it up, do yourself a favor and play on the highest difficulty.

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn

This game swallowed up must of my autumn. As of now, I haven't touched it for a month, my subscription has expired and I have no real desire to go back anyway. Therefore it's a good time to make a writeup about the first and (probably) last MMORPG (just MMO from now on) I have played. First one I have played properly anyway; I did play one and half starting areas of World of Warcraft, mostly for the same reason I started this game - it was easier for me to justify starting an MMO when I did with a friend or two. On the one hand, playing an MMO alone is not that much fun at all. On the other hand, limiting playing time to playing with friends helps against sinking too much time to the game (that's wishful thinking, just so you know). This post is likely to be a long one because I want to go through some game mechanics (and dynamics) and talk about my own experiences, including the reason I quit playing.

1. FFXIV - the game

As an MMO, this game's pretty traditional. Game mechanics wise it follows in the footsteps of World of Warcraft and as such I'm not going to delve too deeply into the basics. It's a Final Fantasy game, clearly made for fans of the series - it has everything people expect to see in FF. For me personally the biggest deciding factor in choosing to play this over other MMOs was entirely technical: it was released for the PS3. On top of my office work and my daily Dota 2 dose, I really cannot sit in front of a computer much more. Not that sitting on a couch with a pad is super healthy, but the ergonomy is just way better. Anyway, the combat mechanics are cooldown-based with some abilities on shared cooldown (called global cooldown) while others on their individual cooldowns (these abilities are referred to as cooldowns... because that's not confusing at all). 

All in all, the mechanics are pretty slow-paced and not challenging in the least to execute. Gameplay decisions revolve more around positioning, rotations (the order in which different abilities are used) and timing of cooldowns. It's honestly not that interesting, which is why I always find it weird when single player RPGs choose to adopt similar mechanics (e.g. Xenoblade). Based on what I heard from people who have played other games, positioning matters slightly more in FFXIV - at least with some classes - because certain abilities have different effects when they hit the enemy from the side or behind. It makes melee damage dealers (DD) more interesting to play - or at least there's a bit more to do than just walk next to the enemy and start pushing buttons in a predetermined order. When playing solo, combat is still pretty damn static. Basically solo playing goes back to easy fun, a topic I brought up in my post about Amalur. 

The overall game concept is very familiar. The game progresses through a long series of plot-related quests, and of course includes an insane amount of sidequests. I'm not a big fan because the vast majority of these quests are not interesting in the least - another point I brought up when writing about Amalur (which just goes to show how accurate it is to describe Amalur as a single player MMO). Could we have an MMO with less sidequests? I'll write a separate section about the plot, so let's move on. Equipment is also very standard and for me the biggest disappointment - or would be if I had expected anything more. All you ever get is more numbers and typically the next piece of equipment is only very marginally better than the last. So although new stuff is gotten fairly often, it doesn't really seem to do anything. In a way the biggest win is when you get rid of an ugly piece of gear. 

As a game, the one thing FFXIV has going for it is its class system. Unlike most MMOs, there's no need for alts (alternative characters) because characters can freely change their class by changing their primary weapon (or tool) anytime outside of combat. Each class is leveled independently and any class lower than your highest gets an experience bonus (so they level up a bit faster). Not that remarkable in itself, but in true FF style classes can borrow skills from other classes. Honestly though it sounds cooler on paper because each class only has a few skills that others can borrow. Furthermore, advanced classes (jobs) are even more limited because they can only borrow from two predefined classes. The usefulness of this system depends on which job you're playing - playing paladin I found absolutely no reason to level up other classes for skills. 

Crafting is a bit different from what I've heard about other games. Crafts are full classes with their own skills and mechanics. They're divided into disciplines of the hand (DOH) and disciplines of the land (DOL). DOH mechanics are the most interesting and for them, it actually makes a lot of sense to level up other crafts to get more skills. Crafting rotations are a bit different from combat rotations, because they depend on several factors: primarily what is being crafted and how many crafting points (CP) the character has. Each skill costs either CP or durability (or both). Durability is basically an indicator for how many operations can be done to the item being crafted. Generally speaking operations raise either progress or quality. Progress defines whether the crafting succeeds (inability to fill the progress bar leads to failure) while quality defines the odds of getting a high quality item. DOL mechanics are mostly about playing around with odds of getting items and hq items from nodes. 

2. Fail

There are a couple of pretty big faults. One is more specific to FFXIV while the other feels like it applies more broadly. Let's talk about the main plot. As such the plot is pretty standard Final Fantasy (or any RPG), - nothing really special to it really. If plots are salvaged at all, it usually happens through interesting characters. Herein comes a bit of a problem because in MMOs, the player's character has no personality - and in FFXIV at least they don't even have any lines. This feels a bit off, because the player is supposed to control the central character in the story, it doesn't really feel like it at any point because the only slivers of personality have been granted to NPCs. I guess the intention is for the player to fill in the blanks inside their head but it just doesn't work at all (it works in Persona 3/4 though). The fact that story quests are almost indistinguishable from sidequests doesn't help. 

All in all, it feels like the player's role is to be a task-completing robot. A lot of these tasks also feel like they're there only to make the experience longer - which is understandable from the business point of view what with FFXIV being a subscription game and all. Every time you go to see someone to get a piece of equipment or information, you can bet they send you on an errand or ten before allowing you to proceed with the actual story. The story just drowns in a sea of errands. It also bothers me that MMOs basically just ask you to look away from the fact that there are thousands of characters doing the exactly same plot... which kind of retracts from the idea of being the "only hope" or whatever. There's a very half-assed attempt to explain all the other player characters but it doesn't really work. Could we get an MMO that actually takes this into account? 

It's painstakingly clear that the story is there just to give you something to do on your way to level 50 and the endgame. Leveling up is the other sore point in FFXIV, and here's why: quests aside, the hands down best way to get experience is to do Fates (well, FATEs really but I don't even remember what the acronym was for). These are events (read: fights) that pop on the map periodically, and they can involve any number of players. They give much higher experience rewards than killing enemies or doing dungeons. What this means is that the best way to level up other classes (and at some points your main too) is to go to an area that has a lot of fates for roughly your level, then just wait for one to appear, go do it and... rinse and repeat. The waiting part is already annoying, as is doing the same fates all over again but that's not the biggest problem. 

The biggest problem with fates is lazy-ass programming and lag. Because popular fate areas contain a lot of players, each fate has a ridiculous amount of players trying to get enough contribution for the highest rank. That causes a ton of lag, and at times makes the game entirely unplayable because for some reason the programmers decided to prioritize loading of other players above loading monsters. Because you cannot target unloaded objects and almost every attack in the game is unit target... good luck trying to do some damage. The contribution mechanics are also bonkers because whoever hits a monster first gets full credit for killing it even if that's the only attack they contribute while others have to do significant percentage of the total damage to get credit. Which means people are just spamming aoe attacks to "claim" enemies as fast as possible, then leave them for someone else to kill. 

I was actually quite happy I didn't need any high level skills from other classes because leveling up in this game sucks balls so hard. Even in the main quest there are moments where you are asked to grind a couple of levels before proceeding. Wow. Such design. Very grind. Leveling up crafts is actually a lot faster (or at least it was, they nerfed it a bit after I stopped playing). I actually found it quite fun to level up my crafts alongside my main class because it allowed me to create my own equipment, primarily because leveling up crafts wasn't nowhere near the insane grind that adventuring classes needed. The game also has a bunch of minor issues here and there like non-sortable inventory (dafuq?), but these two things are the major issues.  

3. Dungeons and... more dungeons

FFXIV uses the standard paradigm for its dungeons. A basic party consists of one tank, one healer and two damage dealers with each of these having its own distinctive role. It ain't broken so there's no real need to fix it. Guild Wars 2 tried to break the paradigm but it only resulted in dungeons being more boring than ever (they basically gave every class a heal etc. so anyone could do any role). I started the game with a DD, but when my friends stopped playing I switched to tank. The reason for the swap was simple enough: most players want to play DD which puts tanks and healers in higher demand. Each role has its own challenges so I think in general all should be interesting to play. In addition to keeping enemies agroed to themselves, tanks are also expected to lead - which includes choosing and prioritizing targets. I enjoyed that part, because it allowed me to be an active player in dungeons. 

Dungeons can be roughly divided into mob and boss phases. For tanks, mobs are often the more challenging part - keeping multiple enemies targeting you is harder than keeping just one. For damage dealers bosses are often more interesting because they usually need to take care of adds (reinforcements) and other smaller details, while the tank just sits there toe-to-toe with the boss. This varies from boss to boss, and some designs are clearly better than others. Worst designs are pretty much slugfests while best ones require active participation from everyone (e.g. tanks need to kite the boss around instead of tanking in one spot). Mostly these bosses are not that hard. Before the endgame there are only very few show-stoppers. There's nothing particularly hard about mobs in dungeons as long as the tank doesn't pull (engage) too many at once. Of course, later on, speedrun tactics involve pulling quite a bit more than standard runners are used to.  

Dungeons and other party instances feel like the essence of MMOs. Even with random people they are way more fun than solo gameplay - with friends they are of course even better. FFXIV is rare in one respect considering dungeons: the main story includes most of the game's dungeons as mandatory stops. I actually like this decision because it gets all players involved with dungeoneering way before the endgame - after all, playing in a party is the only thing in the entire game that is actually challenging. To make things easier for players, the game contains the dreaded Duty Finder (DF), which is the equivalent of matchmaking for multiplayer games. Instead of trying to get parties by shouting in area chat, players just register to DF alone or with friends, and DF forms complete parties and sends them off to the dungeon. Because DDs are rather abundant, it takes a while for them to find a party. I was usually DFing with one friend who played healer, so we basically got parties instantly. 

DF is honestly just fine until harder dungeons and instances start to appear. After that, well, you get to deal with the usual matchmaking problems: some people are undergeared while others don't seem to have any idea about how to play. Considering how easy and intuitive I found most of the things in this game, I can only wonder how people cannot grasp the basic concepts... oh well. I didn't experience many problems at all, probably because I was always queueing as a tank and usually had my own healer too. Most of the time poor DDs only make things slower, not impossible. Some bosses in the game do require a healthy pace from DDs at which point those with poor gear or rotations become a hindrance. One of the biggest show-stoppers in the game is especially obnoxious for DF because it always creates parties with the same 1:1:2 formula. For this particular boss, there is absolutely no use for a second tank, and there's a phase that is highly dependent on damage output where a fifth DD would really help. 

For the record I didn't make it through that one particular boss because - DF issues aside - it's fricking hard. Therefore I also haven't experienced any of the endgame raids but it's pretty safe to assume they are still mostly like any other dungeon. The endgame in general is mostly about speedrunning dungeons - the faster the better - and although it's pretty damn repetitive in the long run, I found it quite fun to try and shave off minutes from completion times. For the record, the difference between DF parties and premade parties is pretty staggering here. 

4. Reasons to play

I guess I covered the game itself to as much detail as I had planned. As a game, it really is not that great. Most single player RPGs - even ones that suffer from the MMO syndrome - are better as games. But playing an MMO is not like playing other games really. It's more like a project. A project where success is pretty much guaranteed if you put enough time into it. Likewise, it's much easier to pick up than any real project. It's easy to see how this makes these games highly attractive - and addictive. Like I said, I started off with a couple of friends but they didn't last very long. I had however already put significant amount of time into the game and felt like at least playing through the main story. At that time I had plenty of things to do besides progressing in the story: I enjoyed gathering, crafting and playing the market (i.e. capitalism). In short, the project was already well underway, and every day I reached a milestone or few. 

There's also the social aspect. It got me into the game in the first place. Although my friends quit, I discovered a linkshell (kind of a chat channel) for Finnish players which helped me actually stay in the game. Being able to chat (or follow one) while doing whatever seemingly boring task turns the game into a fine passtime. Occasionally, especially in the endgame, we would also form full parties to speedrun and tackle some of the hardest bosses, usually as a favor to newer players in the linkshell. I always enjoy helping people out in games, so although there wasn't anything for me to gain (other than good karma I guess) these were fun times. It's once again a bit like any actual project - being involved with people makes it so much easier to make it through one. Although dungeons were mostly fun from a pure gameplay perspective, I feel it's the project angle that really keeps players like myself in these games.

Come to think of it, I seem to like my games (even) more when they become projects. For RPGs this happens after beating the game, when I start to tackle all the post-game content (optional dungeons, bosses, achievements and such). After beating the game, I'm armed with much more knowledge about it not just because I have been playing it for 30+ hours, but also because I allow myself to look at guides at this point to see what I've missed. I never use any additional information while playing the game because I want to surprise me and I don't want to know about any possible overpowered skills, weapons and such beforehand. It is half the fun to tackle the game with what you manage to find. However after it is done, that's when the other kind of fun - the project fun - begins. 

5. Reasons to quit

I did stop playing FFXIV before completing the project largely because it no longer felt worth doing - at least considering the time investment it would have required. For the last four weeks I was more or less just doing one thing: speedrunning the same two dungeons over and over again to farm tomes (needed for endgame gear). What had happened was that I had leveled up all the crafts I wanted and I didn't feel like leveling up another adventuring class (for reasons mentioned earlier). There was literally nothing left except two things: the speedrun, and waiting for an opportunity to tackle hard mode Titan in order to proceed to the final endgame stage. The latter never happened because although I was interacting with a lot of people, getting a Titan party together was pretty rare.

I didn't really feel like getting into an FC that would focus the endgame content. I don't really feel like having social obligations in my games - especially not weekly. Still it seemed like the only real way of getting anywhere with the endgame. I was pretty much playing on my own, unable to schedule anything so I was just reliant on being in the game when someone started to put together a party for a speedrun or Titan. I only logged in to do my weekly speedruns anyway so I didn't spend too much time in the game for the last couple of weeks. Christmas holidays came around and it was then when I decided to take a break from the game and see if I would feel like getting back to it come new year. I started to play other games (Remember Me and Valkyrie Profile 2 at the time) and didn't feel like getting back into the time sink.

There was another thing that really bothered me about the endgame. Unless you have a full party of friends who want to tackle unknown challenges, it is pretty much mandatory to look up boss strategies etc. beforehand. For me figuring out strategies is the reason to play games in general so it felt really lame. I wasn't really looking forward to the final endgame phase for this reason. Even if I got there, I would still be just repeating someone else's strats more or less. MMOs like this one don't really have that much challenge in executing a strategy, at least not on individual level. It's really more like a communication effort. That's fine and all, but really only works with a group of people you know.

Conclusion

The big question considering the entire experience is: was it worth the three months I spent on it? From a pure gameplay perspective... probably not. Although I clearly enjoyed playing the game, something about it definitely rubbed me the wrong way in the long run. I don't think it was FFXIV specifically was the problem either - while the game had its flaws, I honestly don't think any other MMO would have made much of a difference. However as a game dev and as a researcher I think it was valuable to really get into an MMO to see what's it all about. It was also nice to notice that this genre works just fine with a pad. The only real difficulty is with typing - it's ridiculously slow. I did bear with it for like two months but I eventually got a bluetooth keyboard for my PS3 just to type.

The game was already remade once, and I think Square-Enix still has some work to do with it - mainly fix the braindead loading priority and lag issues. There's not much wrong in the game compared to the competition (based on hearsay). From a thematic perspective it definitely feels like a Final Fantasy game, but the gameplay is very standard MMO stuff - sure, the class system brings some FF spice into the mix, but it doesn't do quite as much as it could. The crafting system is probably the biggest distinguishing factor, but its impact is ultimately a bit too small. Whether the game is worth trying really depends on what you're looking for. There is one thing it does superbly though: it's the best MMO you can play on a PS3 (FYI: the PC version also supports pad, and some people seemed to prefer it to ye olde keyboard+mouse combo).

I'm glad I played it, I'm glad I quit it, and - unless a really game-changing MMO comes around - now I can safely say "never again". 

Ninja Gaiden Sigma

Talk about unfinished business... I started Ninja Gaiden Sigma over two years ago. I stopped playing it around halfway through because it was kind of frustrating. Furthermore, Mirror's Edge happened. I never got back to NGS, and actually lost my save when my PS3 hard drive died. Yet for some reason I decided to pick it up again quite recently and managed to complete it. There's not actually that much to write about NGS, especially since not-so-long ago I did a piece on Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. That piece pretty much contains the most important things to say about the genre in general and Ninja Gaiden Sigma is no exception.

The game is notorious for its difficulty and to a large extent this is true. Unfortunately, as usual, some of the difficulty comes from bad usability. We already covered bad camera. Although the problem is not as agravating in NGS as it is in Revengeance, it still gets pretty bad. Unlike Revengeance, NGS has a 360 degree block which means even stuff that comes from outside the camera angle can be guarded against. At least mostly - there's a bunch of unblockable attacks. The fair amount of unblockable attacks is also what makes a simple guard more interesting in NGS than it is in most other games. Any extended period of guarding gets punished with damaging unblockable attacks like throws. This prevents the game from getting too static. Overall, static is definitely not a word one would use to describe NGS. Staying on the move is the best defense.

It is therefore a bit disappointing that controlling movement is effing frustrating at times. For some reason it often feels like Ryu just plain refuses to register directional inputs correctly, leading to disastrous evasive moves. The feeling of being in control of the action sometimes just is not there. Unlike Devil May Cry or Revengeance, NGS also feels more like designed in such a way that taking damage is not entirely avoidable. Because of these reasons, the game just was not as sharp as those two. It is however much sharper than God of War or Dante's Inferno. Towards the end of the game it also seemed like the enemy designs mostly competed for unfairness rather than trying to provide more interesting challenges. Nevertheless, the game's difficulty peaked around midway, precisely where I quit the last time. This is where most enemies had ranged direct-hit attacks (i.e. not avoidable projectiles).

Although sometimes I felt the player's ability to control Ryu was not what I expected, Ryu's ability to control the pace of combat was pretty much top tier. This is where the game's strength lies: there's tools for everything. Ryu's ability to stay on the offensive is superior, and is achieved through a couple of means. First of all, enemies are staggered properly which makes it possible to actually control even crowds of enemies. Second, certain moves have built-in invincibility frames which allows Ryu to do stuff even when cornered. There's a downside of course: some enemies are best defeated by spamming invincible attacks. Against most enemies, even defense can be quickly turned around into offense with well-timed counter attacks. I'm not the most skilled player so I can only imagine how effective a really good player will be with these tools. My streaks mostly ended when I got tangled up with the controls.

Another thing that is noteworthy in NGS is the usefulness of different weapons. Variations aside, there's basically four different weapons in the game, and each has a distinct use. The basic sword (or the dual katana variant) is your default weapon and it excels in mobility, allowing Ryu to quickly move from enemy to enemy no matter how scattered they are. Staff is a solid choice against groups of enemies because of its wide hit areas and excellent counter attacks. Another good crowd control tool is the heavy sword, but it really shines with its ability to stagger even some of the biggest enemies in the game. Finally there's a nunchaku type flail which is superior against massive swarms of weak enemies and generally good when being static doesn't hurt Ryu too much. All in all, different weapons don't exist just for flavor - a feat a lot of games can't boast about.

Although I felt at times that the game was difficult for the wrong reasons, most of the time it is difficult for the right reasons: everything in the game - Ryu included - hits hard and goes down fast. Even bosses have pretty short life bars, all the way to the final boss. This is something we have gone through time and again, so I won't go into any more ranting about it. In conclusion it can be said that Ninja Gaiden Sigma is mostly deserving of its reputation as a difficult game and is mostly definitely a true game of skill. It might not be my favorite because ultimately it doesn't feel as thought-through as some other titles and also because it's a bit too fast-paced for me. Regardless, although I'm not looking forward to playing it again, I might at some point play the sequel.

The Last of Us

Every once in a while even I play hyped titles. It comes down to quite random things, and in this case I largely picked The Last of Us up because of two things: it felt like a game that will be discussed so I had to get it early to dodge spoilers; I just happened to have an empty spot in my gaming schedule since I had drastically decreased my Dota 2 playing. Despite being a horrorish game, it actually felt like a decent summer game due to lots of well-lit environments. I would have probably jumped on this game even harder had it not been for the zombies. Goddamn zombies. I'm not a big fan of post-apo either, but at least The Last of Us is the better kind of post-apo - i.e. not that frigging boring-as-a-brick-wall desert shit. Yeah, there's some things in gaming I *really* don't like.

1. Realism is overrated... again

In a way, The Last of Us is a spot-on example of how Ian Bogost described the persuasive power of games in his book Persuasive Games. In the book he defines the concept of procedural rhetoric: whereas verbal rhetoric appeals to us through logic and compelling writing, games persuade through modeling processes. Through the model, the player can experience the circumstances and interact with them. For instance, Bronkie the Bronchiasaurus teaches asthma management through simulating it - the player controls a dinosaur with asthma. The model can be based on reality, but typically is not realistic as such. So it is with The Last of Us - its gameplay is a compelling model of scarcity. The model is not compelling because of realism - rather, it is compelling despite its lack of realism. Allow me to explain.

The Last of Us uses several different mechanics to simulate scarcity. Since it has a post-apocalyptic setting, guns are expected as is scarce ammunition. Survival games in general use this mechanic to create suspense and force the player to seek alternative ways to defeat enemies. Generally the next best thing would be melee weapons, and they too have been made scarce. A typical melee weapon is only good for a few hits and the most effective melee weapon is the shiv - a single use stabbing weapon. The shiv is especially important because it is the only way to silently kill clickers, a type of enemy that detects the player based on sound. Normal enemies can also be taken down silently by surprise with unarmed attacks, but it takes time. Generally going stealth is the only option when the player has no ammunition left and usually shooting is plan b in any case.

Of course none of this makes sense from the perspective of realism. After a firefight with even a handful of enemies, the protagonist would have weapons and ammunition to last a small lifetime (at least considering how carelessly the enemies fire their weapons - which means they must have no worries about running out). A good melee weapon lasts almost forever with proper maintenance and shivs are just poor replacements for knives, which are clearly ubiquitous in the game world. Thing is, had the developers considered the realism of each game situation, encounters would be rather dull - in order to avoid giving the player too much equipment, they would be facing unarmed opponents for the entire game or only zombies. Simply put, there would be so much less variety. Instead the developers have chosen to model the economy of scarcity through artificial resource limitations - and it works phenomenally well.

The same goes for the game's crafting system. It is very simple with only six or seven items that can be crafted, but it serves an important purpose. First of all, it adds to the survival theme: useful items are very hard to come by, but materials to make them are slightly more available. Second, it does force the player to make some choices about what to do with their resources. The system is simple enough to not get in the way - at the same time it is not too simple to the point it would be redundant. Is it even remotely realistic? Not likely. Instead it's a functional subsystem in the game's repertoire of mechanics. Resources are also scarce enough to make scavenging always worthwhile, which adds value to exploring corners of the world. It also does not feel out of place, because it is consistent with the game's story - unlike excessive looting in certain other genres!

Games often don't follow the WYSIWYG paradigm when it comes to loot. Although it is from time to time called out as unrealistic, it is important to understand that realism would actually make things very though. Anyone who has tried to run a tabletop campaign where scarcity of resources is an important element has likely run into this problem. In tabletop RPGs players are much more likely to play the realism card if they cannot loot stuff enemies were using. Some settings allow for workarounds with varying credibility but others do not. It can become a major challenge for the game master to prevent their players from gaining too much power while still creating challenging combat situations. It helps that mechanics in tabletop RPGs are less rigid - in videogames the designers cannot adapt on the fly.

Finally, let's talk about stealth. Often when sneaking around, at least one other party member is following you. It seems a bit out of character at first, because they are actually entirely invisible to enemies as long as the protagonist has not been detected. Sure, the AI does its best to make it look like they're also sneaking, but very often they end up running around - even bumping into enemies - while the player is trying to sneak as quietly as possible. It sounds pretty awful, but ultimately didn't retract much from the experiene at all. Imagine if, instead, they had made it so that allies can also trigger enemy awareness. The sheer amount of frustration would have caused a massive outcry as yet another stealth attempt fails because the AI-controlled characters accidentally revealed themselves. Considering that stealth in the game is quite demanding, I don't think it would have been possible to implement an AI that could navigate the situations well enough.

In general it is far more important to consider what is the aesthetic experienced by the player than it is to consider its realism. Likewise the actions taken by the player are more important than how they look. Thus Dark Souls can incorporate a lot of the mentality of actual fencing even though it looks completely different. Likewise, The Last of Us incorporates the dynamics of surviving in a world of scarce resources without taking into account the realism of scarcity. The most compelling games do not impart their message through narrative or graphics - they do so through gameplay. This is essentially Bogost's message in his book. Instead of considering realism, designers should consider whether the game's dynamics are able to model the process they want the player to explore. Making sense is voluntary.

2. About segment lengths

I basically have only one complaint about The Last of Us, and it is one that applies to a bunch of other titles too. I guess I just truly pinpointed the problem while playing this game. In a nutshell, a single segment in the game is way too long. Several times it feels like it is ending and the game is about to move forward, only to start yet another thread that prolongs the experience. Although it is only a single segment, it can have far-reaching consequences to the gameplay experience. The player only needs to get bored once. After one segment that drags, I started to be far more critical towards the game and the length of its segments. Fortunately the problem was not repeated but its shadow still retracted from my enjoyment. I recall this happening in other games too; a single long segment severely affects my playing mentality. The entire games feels more boring only because one segment lasted too long.

I would like to say I know a psychological basis for why this happens, but I actually cannot recall having read anything directly similar. However, since I like to do some guesswork, it might have something to do with how expectations affect our actual experience of something. The same phenomenon that makes wine taste better from a finer glass is just as likely to affect a gameplay experiene. For instance, if I consider a game worth preordering, chances are I will like it more just because I had high enough expectations to opt not to wait. Expectations during gameplay are a living thing. Players usually arrive with some expectations, and will build upon them after experiencing the game itself. A single instance of bad experience can then set the (possibly false) expectation that similar instanced might occur in the future. The player will become suspicious of the game in a way - e.g. Is this turn in the plot another ruse to get me into a long gameplay segment?

The sad reality is that players are more likely to base their expectations on a single bad experience than to a positive experience. That's why you can read fans complaining about the smallest things. Although the things themselves feel small, it might have happened that they have changed the player's expectations and in doing so in fact ruined the entire experience for them. Although this is just my (educated) guesswork, it definitely is something to think about. I have no doubt that The Last of Us's lack of realism has been a turn-off for some players.

3. About stealth, again

I keep going on about this topic - and that's a good thing since I keep re-evaluating my feelings about stealth games. This is the essence of this blog: coming to understand why certain solutions work for me while others do not. I am doing so because I believe it will help as a player (to pick games better) and as a developer (obviously). The Last of Us is a game where I both loved and hated stealth mechanics, and thus it is a good ground for me to explore my relationship with this subgenre. The biggest differentiating factor between stealth scenes I liked and the ones I did not was their setting: I consistently liked outdoor encounters and disliked indoor encounters. Being indoors or outdoors is not the actual explanation though. Rather, it is indeed the degree of freedom which simply happens to be larger in outdoor environments - especially in The Last of Us.

This preference also explains why I consider Dishonored my absolute favorite game in this genre - not only does it take place in quite open environments, it also gives the player superpowers that open up even more possibilities. The more closed the environment, the more stealth starts to feel like a puzzle. This happens because the solution space for a given problem shrinks. Turns out I don't like this one bit. While I have nothing against puzzles, if I want to solve puzzles, I'd rather play puzzle games. There's often a sort of uncertainty in stealth puzzles, and I really don't like that largely because there are too many variables that are hidden from the player. The control of the situation slips from the player's hands because instead of being able to make their way through the encounter, they are playing a guessing game to figure out the one solution that actually works.

Free saving is another feature that highly affects my stealth experience. I don't mind redoing boss-fights in arcade games, because the challenge remains interesting even after defeating the boss for the first time. Likewise, I love strict time attacks in racing games - driving the same track, perfecting one corner at a time, great times. However, I really really hate redoing stealth segments. It is fun to stalk an enemy for the first time, especially if it ends in their death - it's not fun to do the same thing all over again. The difference here is that the "mechanic" involved in stalking is often *waiting*. So while I don't mind playing through a challenging segment again because it will improve my skills, waiting is not really a skill - it's just a colossal waste of time. The more the stealth segment is like a puzzle, the worse it gets because I will just be doing the exact same things every time. I always succeed because I already figured out how to do it.

Coincidentally, Dishonored has free saving while The Last of Us did not. A lot of games are better off without free saving, but seriously, that feature is absolutely necessary in stealth games. Moving very slowly and waiting simply are not fun game "mechanics" - the real challenge was in scouting the situation and figuring out a way through it - and since that knowledge is not lost when the player dies, all they have left to do is to repeat the same steps. I guess we can coin a term for this: retry value (related to replay value, obviously). If repeating a segment poses no challenge to the player, its retry value is very low whereas if it remains challenging every time, its retry value is high. Games with high retry value can actually benefit from not having free saving whereas games with low retry value absolutely must have free saving or very frequent checkpoints.

Conclusion

The Last of Us is worth the hype, and calling it PlayStation 3's last big game might very well be appropriate. It is impressive in so many ways - it's beautiful to look at, runs smooth and has a solid story to boot. Most importantly though, it has so much elegant design. It is one of those games that really make the player feel like the world has ended. It accomplishes this not through realism, but game mechanics that give rise to compelling model of scarcity. Yet another strength that went unmentioned is that the game achieves a lot in segments where nothing at all happens. As opposed to what might be expected of a videogame, The Last of Us actually has rather lenghty parts where no fighting is going on and the player is simply wandering through scenery - and somehow these feel like the strongest moments in the game. Part of their allure is built by conversation. There's a lot of that, and most of the game's dialogue takes place in-game rather than cutscenes.

Although the game is beautifully designed, its mechanics are not ultimately *that* interesting on their own. The beauty is in the atmosphere - the final aesthetic - of the game. In this sense it is the paragon of modern games where everything from technology to writing to game mechanics come together to support an enchanting player experience. It is also a game that uses the strengths of the medium to create something powerful that simply could not work in any other media. I do think it's required playing before putting your PS3 to rest - whether you like zombies or not.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

A lot of mixed reviews have been floating around the internet about this game and I have considered trying it on a few occasions. Although I expected it to quite mediocre, swords are always a plus. When it came available for free through PS+ in June, I decided to give it a spin. As expected, there was nothing revolutionary about it but nevertheless it was quite enjoyable to play. I'll explain how in just a bit. Let it just be said that this game lacks original ideas and its plot is the usual nonsensical teenage fantasy crap (well, R. A. Salvatore was involved in writing it so no surprises there). I am not above enjoying such plots every now and then but the one in Amalur made less sense than most. Anyway, story, not the point.

1. Busywork gaming

Amalur is the perfect excuse to write about busywork gaming. Unfortunately I have forgotten the source for the term but the concept is interesting. It explains the popularity of a lot of genres including a bunch of Facebook games and of course MMOs. Being an offline MMO, Amalur definitely employs a lot of busywork gaming. The appeal of busywork gaming is in stark contrast to what is usually understood as good game design. It is, roughly, progress without challenge. It is totally stress-free, and more or less comparable to watching television. Although Amalur has some degree of challenge on the highest difficulty, much of the game is about constantly doing some small tasks to improve your character.

As such it is a power trip much like Borderlands, but Amalur offers even less variety and space for creativity. Instead, it offers several different systems of busywork. Sidequests are just the start. As usual, there are a) too many of them and b) they are too boring. They don't really provide much of anything either - most of the rewards are just money and experience. The crafting systems are what actually hold more appeal to them because of their more immediate rewards. Amalur is a game ruled by equipment so it is quite easy to see how crafting your own has high appeal - especially when the crafted equipment is actually better than stuff you can find most of the time.

There are actually three different crafting systems, two of which kind of overlap a bit, and one that is entirely separate (alchemy, for potions obviously). This means a lot of collecting, and that is more or less what the player does all game long. Most found equipment goes into the grinder to see what components drop out. Surprisingly there is no grinding involved because stuff is abundant and naturally encountered while going through quests. As some readers might have noticed, I have mixed opinions about crafting systems. Amalur falls mostly into the light side, because crafting doesn't work with recipes. The outcome is the sum of components used, no mystery involved (well, except alchemy, that works with recipes).

It is indeed the fluidity of systems that make busywork in Amalur strangely relaxing. Basically everything is guaranteed to grant progress, be it experience (levels come with new crafting skills) or components. This is what makes it somewhat different from recipe-based crafting systems where new components are only useful if they are part of a recipe the player wants to make. In Amalur each component creates new crafting options - although they are not always actually useful. Customization also grants a greater sense of ownership over the created piece of equipment - and hey, you can name it too. In contrast, recipe-based systems always feel more like obtaining a piece of equipment in unnecessarily small pieces.

So although I do often bash various games about their busywork aspects, I do indeed enjoy it when it is done correctly. I can even somewhat enjoy large grinding efforts if they are done for a greater purpose. Busywork gaming is, all in all, still guaranteed progress. It is suitable for times when even gaming stress is not particularly welcome. We all do all sorts of meaningless things for the sake of progress in meaningless efforts to take our mind off other things. It is my belief that to work, busywork systems indeed have to guarantee progress. Grinding for items with super low drop rates (F U, Demon's Souls) doesn't fit the bill.

I'll try to find the book section or article I used as the source for this, it is more interesting than my rambling about the subject.

2. Sidequest, man, what happened to you?

Another sidequest rant, yay. They are a freaking plague though, someone has to stop the madness. As a concept the sidequest has existed for god knows how long, but somewhere along the line something happened to it. It has become a bureaucracy of faceless tasks. While some games like Borderlands 2 grant a great deal of personality to their sidequests, the whole thing is now a system. You have your quest log with its completion ratios, milestones and cute little check markers for done quests. Every corner of the world has some helpless or ten in need of your help (while you should be busy saving the world).

I don't have a problem with sidequests as a concept. The problem is their modern "quantity over quality" design philosophy. I would not be surprised to find out that some games have generated sidequests and sadly, those would not be that much worse than what we have now. Every RPG seems to want to provide 100 hours of gameplay, regardless of the length of its main content. The most disturbing thing about this pandemic is the flood of new quest logs entries upon entering every single new area. It's just overwhelming. At first you might try to do all just to be sure, then be on the lookout for ones with nice fat rewards and in the end it's just fuck-all, I want to finish this game.

Some sidequests in Amalur are however reminiscent of better days - which is why I included this section in the first place. Remember Baldur's Gate 2 where most sidequests would actually take you to an entirely new place or in the very least have an actual plot of their own? In comparison, modern sidequests are mere tasks at best. Every now and then though, there are ones that make an effort. Amalur has faction quests, a set for each of the game's six or so factions. Unlike your bread and butter tasks, these quests actually form a side plot of multiple quests. Although the quests themselves are equally bland as the rest, the continuity does go a long way toward creating better experience.

I call for a sidequest reform. If a quest doesn't involve any sort of joy of discovery, be it a side plot or, a new area or an exciting enemy, it should not be in the game. Want to add gameplay hours? Make the quests longer, without increasing their number. I take one long quest any day over ten small ones. Of course we all know that creating new content is expensive, which is why they don't do this. So here's a radical idea: don't have sidequests at all if there's no real budget for them. I know the reply will be "but you don't have to do them!" but there never is any indication how optional they really are. Games set different expectations, but it is usually not implied in any way.

This puts the player in a weird position. In one hand, they want to of course get any advantage they can in form of rewards - but, on the other hand, doing too many sidequests is going to make the main quest a cakewalk. BG2 actually had a good indicator for what is enough: once the player had enough gold to proceed in the main story, they were likely to also have enough levels to have an enjoyable challenge in the main quest. Of course a lot of people probably did most of the quests anyway because, you know, they were actually interesting.What purpose do sidequests serve in your game? Perhaps it is something the player would also like to know.

Another thing to consider is sidequest density. The further in the game the player is, the more likely they are bored to death with repetitive sidequests so maybe new ones shouldn't be popping as frequently. It's easy to say "don't do them", but the fact that they are there, in your quest log, is always nagging you. We don't like unfinished business after all. So consider this: after doing sidequests by the bucket, do players really feel like being showered in even more? The busywork appeal only lasts for so long, and after that there's just the nagging. At first there's the excitement of exploring a new world, and sidequests can be good guides - but this does not last forever. 

It feels like this sidequest business is for RPGs what multiplayer is to other genres. You just have to have it, says the publisher. I don't see anyone bashing a game for not having enough sidequests.

3. Ability trees and combat balance

Although an offline MMO by design, Amalur does have a surprisingly decent combat system. As far as action RPGs go though, it is fairly standard. You have your strikes, blocks, dodges and spells - the latter not too many in number, even when playing a mage. It's not a revolution, but it works. At leats on hard difficulty there's even some challenge. This is created by following the basic principles of stagger and recovery mechanics. Everything has a longish recovery time, which opens a careless player to enemy attacks. Enemy attacks stagger, so the player has to go on defensive mode. All in all, a functional system. Now let's talk about abilities.

I have talked about over-conservative skill design before. In general, it means that the designers have been too afraid of imbalances. The end result is that all abilities in the game are rather unremarkable. I did not fully explore the other two trees of course, but at least the Might tree (for warriors, obviously) had mostly abilities that were truly bland. You have your passive number bonuses and a handful of actives. You won't see the effects of most abilities. One active that is supposed to be crowd control has such a long casting time that it becomes almost useless. Another ability doesn't even work as described (which would have made it useful).

What usually happens though is that there is one ability that outshines everything else. It may sound unremarkable on paper, or it might even be disguised. In this case it was disguised by making it look weak on level 1. You can't actually see the upper levels beforehand, so there is no way of knowing. Actually my alarm bells should have rung though, even with the -50% armor penalty on the first level. You see, the ability makes the player immune to stagger. On highest level, the armor penalty is gone too. Now, stagger immunity is huge. The meaning of stagger (aka hit stun) has been discussed before, but let me remind you.

The biggest threat in games like this is often not the damage from a single attack, but the stagger. Groups of enemies are the most dangerous because they can engage the player in a stagger chain. Since being staggered typically prevents and intercepts attacks, it is a big deal. A huge deal really. Stagger is what gives fighting its dynamic and prevents it from becoming a DPS mashfest. Being immune to stagger is a massive advantage to the point that I still consider poise to be broken in Dark Souls. See, if your attacks cannot stagger the enemy, they lose all of their threat. The opponent has no reason to respect your attacks, and attacking becomes a loser's game.

Poise in Dark Souls had drawbacks and it could have been balanced with more consideration. Too few things in the game punished having high poise, and too many rewarded it. Poise made you slow, because only heavy armor granted it. Being slow was not big enough of a deal in the game but it could have been. Fighting in melee against someone with high poise in online was a game you could only win by not playing. Whenever you attacked, they could also attack and possibly follow up with more while laughing your stagger off. The best way to fight them would have been to wait for their attack and parry it, but they had no reason to attack really. So, basically no one had incentive to attack.

Back to Amalur though. So if poise, which wasn't always full stagger immunity mind you, is broken, how would you think of full stagger immunity with no drawbacks? Okay it had a 20 second duration, but that also is quite a long time. However with two linked abilities, this one became absolutely game-breaking. Here is what you can get on top of full stagger immunity, from the same skill: a chance to reflect damage back to the enemy and a chance to steal health. Not only is the threat of stagger gone, you don't actually need to care about most damage either because your uninterruptable attacks will constantly heal you.  This is honestly so ridiculous that I do not see how it got through playtesting. After obtaining this package the game does become a trivial mashfest.

This ability is so dominating that everything else in the tree becomes redundant. It solves every possible situation in the game, for free (practically at leat - there's a mana cost but you can regen it between fights). Furthermore, there is nothing interesting in the ability tree so it's not like there are even any cool alternative ways to play a fighter. There are no drawbacks, so it is impossible to design around it - anyone with full stagger immunity will be at least as good in every situation as  those without, and often better (in Amalur, always better). As I said I didn't try the other two trees but I somehow doubt their ability to compete with this insanely broken ability. It is simply impossible to die with this ability.

In closing, I want to stress this: never ever give stagger immunity to the player for free. Even if it has a cost, make sure the cost is steep enough, because stagger immunity is very likely to break your game. It's good to throw on some enemies if you want to make them really nasty though. Stagger immunity in a nutshell: Enemies yes, players no.

Conclusion

I did enjoy my trip to Amalur for most of its duration. Although the game is really nothing special, it does have enough appeal and can be rushed quite quickly once it starts to get boring. As far as offline MMO experiences go, it is not bad at all. It's got nice scenery. Very lazy dungeon design though, as I was able to recognize certain "building blocks" that were present in many dungeons, looking exactly the same. Should you play it though? If you don't mind the potential time sink factor, you are probably better off playing a solid MMO for much of the same appeal. Likewise, if you are looking for some good sword and sorcery action, there are the Souls and Witchers. However if you are like me and have actually played most of the important titles already and yearn for some heroic, light adventure then go ahead.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

Primarily Revenvengeance is just another swordplay action game. Granted, it combines the familiar gameplay mechanic to a series mostly known for stealth and crazy plots. The latter is of course intact in Revengeance as the plot makes very little sense at any point. As a game it follows most of the tropes in its genre, including the bad ones.

1. The camera problem

Indeed the biggest issue I had with this game was its camera and honestly I cannot recall a fast-paced action game where camera would not have been an issue. In slower games like the Souls series camera works just fine most of the time (some bosses in at least Dark Souls made the camera go batshit though). I do find it curious that developers insist on making games with very fast-moving enemies while keeping the camera very close to the protagonist's back. If the enemies move slow enough, there is no issue because they cannot suddenly strike from far beyond vision range. Fast-moving enemies also make all kinds of locking systems a pain, because once you lock onto one, it's going to get rather nauseating.

The camera issue is quite simple: in real life, when fighting with melee weapons, people are perfectly able to glance quickly at their sides/behind to see what is going on there. So far there has been no viable way to do this in games. The thumbstick, your friendly neighborhood camera controller, cannot do both accurate and fast. If the sensitivity is fast enough to allow quick glances, you can bet it won't be accurate enough for anything else. It is also far more disorienting to do quick perspective changes in games because the player lacks body sense in the situation. The situation is worst in first person action games, which I think I discussed in my analysis of Dishonored. Moving the camera behind the player's avatar does, in a way, simulate peripheral vision and also the ability for quick glances by showing what is going on the sides.

The situation is somewhat remedied by game mechanics in some games. Devil May Cry has fixed camera angles but experts find it quite playable because of two features: one, all enemies make a sound before attacking; two, jumps and dodges have invincibility frames at the beginning. This means that even attacks from out-of-view enemies can be dodged at all times if the player is careful enough. The system in Revengeance is a bit problematic in this regard because its primary defensive system is parrying and the player is required to press the left thumbstick in the direction of the attack and time the parry correctly. The game assists in this by highlighting when enemies are about to strike, but this is of little help if they are out of view. For this reason Revengeance is somewhat more infuriating with its camera problems than most games in the genre.

One way to deal with camera issues I believe Revengeance should have taken would be to move the camera further. The downside of this of course is that as enemies become smaller, they attacks are harder to discern. However, the game already uses rather blatant highligths and discerning those should not be a problem. Unless it is a technical limitation, I don't think there is any acceptable reason for the camera being so close - especially if they are unwilling to make enemies jump around a lot less. In summary: close camera + fast enemies is a bad combination, but especially so when the primary defense mechanism relies on the player being able to discern each attack's direction. It gets even worse near walls, because the camera does sudden resets (instead of, say, making the walls invisible when they would obstruct the view).

Although the camera problem is rather ubiquitous in this genre, that doesn't mean it should be accepted. Here's why: bad usability is a shitty way to make a game challenging. I highly doubt that Platinum Games wanted to make camera control into a central mechanic in Revengeance - and since it's not part of the core gameplay, it should not get in the way. Some people have excused things like bad controls in Silent Hill because they somehow add to the game's feeling of helplessness. I say we should stop excusing things like this - there are other ways that don't rely on frustrating the player.  

2. Feedback matters

If you have not read it yet, this article does a lot to explain Revengeance's appeal. In short, the violence itself is not the source of the appeal. The violence is just a graphical metaphor for the truly appealing force: feedback. The messy headshot is a very clear indicator that you did well. Revengeance pretty much takes this to the extreme. It is indeed hyper-violent, but not for the sake of violence. The most violent stuff happens in cutting mode, where the player is allowed to literally cut stuff to pieces with rapid slashes. This mode can be used to instantly kill any normal enemies. Furthermore, if you make a cut in the right angle and hit the enemy's power core, Raiden will grab it from the splitting body and instantly refill his health and the energy meter you need to do these cuts. That right there is a very powerful indicator of success - a positive feedback loop even.

So the game reinforces your behavior of scoring instant kills not just with a cool visual effect which in itself is rather satisfactory - it also gives you the power to do more instant kills quicker. Perfect parries are similarly rewarded: you get a cool effect, your meter refills and you get an instant kill option right there. Overall, anything that the player does "right" gives satisfying visual effects in the least, and often gameplay rewards that enable the player to do even more cool stuff. Other important things like stagger have been well implemented. All this makes the game a very satisfying experience. The over-the-top attitude shows not just in cheesy cutscenes, but all over the gameplay. Lesser action games could learn a lot from Revengeance. Platinum Games definitely have a knack for making the player feel empowered when they succeed.

Dante's Inferno is one example of a game that could learn a lot. I'd also throw God of War to the lot, although I'm risking a lot of flak doing so. The games share a lot of genes. Most importantly, battles in both of these games feel very stagnant compared to Revengeance. It just feels a lot more like attrition where the player slowly chips life away from enemies. The weird thing is, these games share most of the mechanics with Revengeance. They just do so in a manner that is several magnitudes less satisfying. They have instakills, and they reward instakills too, but the oomph factor is severely lacking. One key difference is pace. Revengeance is wicked fast. The player hits hard, as do the enemies. Enemies fall left and right, often in mere seconds. It feels like the game is constantly moving forward whereas Dante's Inferno in particular feels like you are forever stuck in every single fight.

Conclusion

Revengeance - even with its flaws - is definitely one of the better games in its genre. It's up there in the company of Devil May Cry (original series) and Ninja Gaiden. It doesn't have any revolutionary mechanics. Rather it just does the basic gameplay in a manner that totally reinforces good play. Although I did compare it to God of War, the games are actually in slightly different categories in my opinion. God of War is more oriented towards casual audiences who might not be as interested in mastering every technique in a game. The difference is quite subtle because on the surface these games feel very similar. Revengeance is purely devoted to one thing: fighting enemies with style, whereas games like God of War throw in a fair bit of exploration and trivial puzzles for a more varied experience. Revengeance is much more suitable for the DMC/NG crowd.

Sleeping Dogs

Sleeping Dogs was initially one of those games that I just picked up because I had finished one game and the next titles were still on their way in the mail. Ultimately it turned out to be quite a bit more than just a snack. For those not in the know, Sleeping Dogs is a GTA-like that was initially supposed to be a part of the True Crime series. For some unknown reason the original publisher rejected the game, thus the name change and another publisher. Because I have not written about any GTA yet, I am going to include some wider points from the genre's conventions.

1. Backstory matters in gameplay - to an extent!

Sleeping Dogs features one important backstory difference to GTA games: the protagonist is not a criminal. He is an undercover cop who has been tasked with infiltrating a triad in Hong Kong. This sets a different tone to the entire game. Although the mechanical punishments for driving over civilians are quite small, they bear much larger emotional impact on the player if they identify with the protagonist's dual identity. Although I am not particularly happy about killing bystanders in any of these games, Sleeping Dogs puts a lot more emphasis on the ethics of the player's actions. In GTA I hijack cars for leisure with no second thoughts but in Sleeping Dogs I found myself wanting a really pressing need before I could even think about hijacking a car.

There is no in-game punishment for breaking the law, unless the player is on a mission (and then it just lowers their cop score a bit). The mechanic, and also the reaction of the car's original owner are exactly the same in both GTA and Sleeping Dogs. The only difference is the protagonist's identity. Protagonist identity has its limits though, as is also evidenced by Sleeping Dogs: when asked (by a criminal contact) to hijack a specific car, hijacking the car actually feels less bad. This may be because the player can push the responsibility for their actions onto the game. After all, the game gave them the goal to hijack a car - even though they were responsible for taking the mission in the first place (hijack missions are optional)!

This is actually a fairly common ethical conflict in games: the conflict between in-game rewards and the ethical concerns of an action. Game characters do indeed do all sorts of nasty things under the player's control. This picture highlights this particular issue (in a rather parodical way - but it does get a point across). Typically gameplay incentives override any ethical concerns the player might have about the action - especially if the game does not confront the player about their actions. Therefore, although they are supposed to be the ideal hero, players controlling Link in various Zelda games will happily hack away at civilian property. This happens in part because no one cares in the game world. Thus the game is not actively confronting the player.

In Sleeping Dogs repercussions for actions are situational (score is only counted during missions). Even then they still somewhat reinforce the protagonist's identity's ability to control player actions. Furthermore, the rewards for hijacking cars at random are also quite low: garages where the protagonist can summon their own car are quite common. Later in the game they even get the ability to have a valet deliver a to them. Therefore it is not that necessary to hijack cars in order to get some wheels. This design decision is sound; if the game had actually forced the player to hijack cars just to get around, it would have a much harder time to get anything out of the protagonist's dual identity. Of course we can argue that the ridiculous bodycount also conflicts with this identity. However, this is once again a case where the game is forcing the player's hand. It also has its limits; just like I did in L.A. Noire, regardless of crashing into traffic and other property I usually did not choose to control my speeding.

The dual role of the protagonist is also present in the game's structure. The storyline consists of both triad and police missions, all of which need to be completed to advance in the story. All in all this play on identities does distinguish the game's story from a bunch of competitors to its advantage. It also makes it "easier" for the writers to create a more complex and conflicted protagonist. Easier in the sense that certain amount of complexity is already present in the character concept and game structure.

2. The Hong Kong experience

I love GTA titles - Vice City in particular - but there is one major and commonly accepted defect in the entire series: action is typically effing lame, and further destroyed by bad controls. This is commonly forgiven because Rockstar has a tendency to do a marvelous job on every other front. GTA V might not get away so easily though, because Sleeping Dogs has shown how things can be with proper effort. The game takes its inspiration from Hong Kong action movies - a genre of action movies famous for their insane stunts. The illusion would really break with GTA style static combat. Fortunately action sequences in the game are far more diverse. The game puts less emphasis on gunfights for starters. It includes close quarters combat all the way until the end of the game.

Adding more variety is just icing on the cake though. Both types of combat have been made simply a lot better than in any competitors I have played. Hand-to-hand takes its influences from games like Arkham Asylum and Yakuza, and the system is actually very functional. Winning fights against multiple opponents doesn't come down to just one strategy and most combos and other moves have their uses. Some have  been thrown in just for flair of course, but they succeed in creating more diversity. Shortly put, combat stays interesting throughout the game. Gunfights are also more dynamic than usual. The addition of bullet time while vaulting over obstacles gives the player a lot of incentive to stay on the move. It is also easy to switch to close combat at any time - the player can even disarm opponents through grappling.

Hong Kong action wouldn't be Hong Kong action without more dynamic movement. Parkouring is quite easy in Sleeping Dogs but it gives the player better movement range. In particular it makes chase scenes on foor a lot more interesting. If there is one weaker category in terms of game controls it is cars. They behave somewhat weirdly in Sleeping Dogs, and car controls are a bit shaky. However, the driving experience is also enhanced with some Hong Kong flair. The player can ram cars on either side more effectively. The coolest trick in car driving is action hijack, where the protagonist jumps from one car on another to hijack it while it's moving. While this feature is not very commonly used, it adds an important bit of flavor to the game.

In addition to enriching the game's action quite a bit, Hong Kong also acts as a superb setting to the game. Although the game is technically (very) poor on PS3, the city looks impressive and - more importantly - very different from American cities often seen in games. It made me actually wish that there would have been even longer distances to drive just looking at the scenery and listening to the radio. The radio has some weird asian stuff on some channels which is a plus.

3. Travel experience and dialogue

In my last post about Journey, I talked about how simply traveling can be a powerful gaming experience. Journey had a very silent and elegant way of creating that experience. Sleeping Dogs also achieves good traveling experiences but through different means. This is something that I noticed quite a while ago when playing GTA IV (or maybe Vice City even) but haven't written about it yet. The experience of driving changes drastically as soon as the player gets a passenger in their car - not because a companion is present but because they are actually talking. I swear I could play a game of this genre where the only thing the player ever did was drive interesting companions around the place while dialogue is going on. Then again, this is coming from a guy who drove around in circles in Vice City when a good song was playing instead of going straight for the objective.

In a way using dialog in this way during transition draws the player's attention from the fact that they are just doing a transition from point A to point B. In GTA-like games the transition is typically more fun than some other games (such as RPGs where you just walk) but the player still speeds through as fast as possible - unless their avatar is having a conversation with another person. The feeling of there being another person in the car changes the way I drive in these games. Although there's no punishment (other than the occasional shriek of terror) for reckless driving, the presence of a virtual person somehow makes me drive way more carefully. In games where transition is boring by nature, having virtual company makes the experience feel more like a journey. I liked this in Nier for instance where NPCs commented on side quests while I was making my way towards quest objectives.

The reason I think this is important is that it goes to show how story content can change the gameplay experience. Thus it reinforces my stance that prewritten story content should not be treated simply as content that can be separated from gameplay. Disruptive ways of including story content such as cutscenes are kind of so-so, but injection story elements into gameplay parts - like conversations while driving - does affect the perceived gameplay experience. It does nothing to the mechanics but it changes the environment in which gameplay takes place. I think this is something that is not easily achievable without voice acting because text tends to be too disruptive.

Conclusion

At its core, Sleeping Dogs is yet another GTA clone. However, through clever decisions in both story concept and gameplay design, it in many ways surpasses the original. The biggest issues in the game are quite minor. The biggest problem the game had was its framerate on the PS3. It was simply abyssal during cutscenes. Fortunately it stayed quite good during actual gameplay. The game also had some hilarious bugs. My favorite has to be the bus trap: I got into a bus by accident and, opting to cancel instead of choosing my destination, was trapped inside with no way out! I actually left the game running for quite some time and when I came back, I was still in the bus. There were also some (quite common) oversights. It is cool and all that the protagonist's clothes get soaked and bloody. It is however quite less credible when no one reacts to it. Case in point: putting on good clothes to get onto a casino boat - I just couldn't get into a boat to get there without taking a little dip. Of course no one questioned my entirely soaked expensive suit. This oversight is very common in games but somehow I found it much more hilarious in Sleeping Dogs than usual.

Anyway. If you like the genre, play this game.