The Good:

The Marksman: Playing the marksman class is great fun. Marksmen get to use many types of guns that are truly unique and can change the feel of gameplay a great deal. Using the Firefox (yes, Firefox) launcher is nothing like using a machine gun, and the option of using one small gun in each hand lets you have two different gun effects going off at the same time. I often chose to use two guns just because it was fun, even if it might have done less damage (which is hard to say... see later). The marksman doesn't suffer from the annoyances, bugs, and quirks of the other classes because you're just firing guns and shooting grenades. That's basically all there is to the class.

Weapon Sets: Hellgate lets you create three weapon sets that you can switch between using F1, F2, and F3. So, you can equip your machine gun on F1, equip two one-handed weapons on F2, and equip a sniper rifle on F3. This makes it feasible to switch between different weapons effortlessly so that you can use fire damage on monsters weak to fire, then switch to electrical damage for another monster, go into sniper mode with your sniper rifle, and so on. Setting up my arsenal of weapon slots was definitely fun, I'll give Hellgate that.


The Bad:

The Story: Wow, the story in this game is a stinker. I can hear some people protesting, claiming that Diablo's story wasn't very impressive either, and that no one plays an action-RPG for its story. But Hellgate's story is so bad it can't be ignored. I just can't bear the thought of playing through the last act again because it is so unbelievably stupid and painful to experience. The story is complete nonsense. I would say that the story was written while someone was on drugs, but I don't want to insult drugs like that. None of it made sense. None of it. The ending consists of fighting a demon who appears on the front of the game box, with very little explanation. Most disappointing villain ever. Diablo at least set up Diablo as this terrible demon who needed to be stopped. But the demon at the end of Hellgate has no history or story at all. Is it really so hard to foreshadow the end boss as a big bad guy?

The Writing: Ok, "writing" and "story" are basically the same thing, but I really hated this aspect of the game, so I'm including it in two sections. It's my blog and I can do what I want to! The writing is terrible. NPC dialog tries to be funny, but falls flat, and it gives very little information. Every NPC is a clown, cracking jokes or talking nonsense in a sad, sad effort to get a chuckle. Even worse is that some of the jokes are voice-acted so that you have to listen to them every time you want to sell your loot. It's ok for games to have humour, but it should be suitable in some way. Hellgate does a good job of creating a dark, post-apocalyptic atmosphere, but it is often ruined because all the NPCs are total buffoons. For the benefit of the Hellgate writers, here's the definition of "Toon" from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America website:

Toon. A comic relief character generally intended to be recognized as such -- Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are toons (most of Shakespeare's comic relief characters are toons). Toons have a limited place in fiction; an excess of them can render an otherwise serious work trivial. (CSFW: David Smith)

Cinematics: The cinematics in between each act are nonsense, much like the rest of the story. Without spoiling anything, they show a floating book. To accompany the floating book is a narrator who makes no sense at all. He just babbles some cliches and random words. Why even bother with cinematics if the writers have no content for them? Awful.

Skill Descriptions: Hellgate has skill trees like in Diablo 2 and World of Warcraft. Want to know what each skill does? You can try reading the skill descriptions, but they often won't help. To understand what most of the skills do, you need to spend precious skill points and try them. Since there's no way to get those skill points back, you'll end up wasting points on skills you don't like. The fix for this problem? Hire better technical writers. But you already know how I feel about the writing in this game... Unhelpful skill descriptions is just another symptom of a bigger problem with Hellgate. Alternatively, they could allow characters to "re-spec" (re-assign skill points any way you like), but I can understand why the game designers don't want to allow that.

Weapon Damage: Similar to the poor skill descriptions, it is very difficult to know whether one weapon is more powerful than another. All weapons have a number on them, but the meaning of that number is a mystery. It doesn't tell you how much damage you do, although that's what I assumed until finding a weapon with a much lower number that did a lot more damage than my current weapon. Most games now use the "damage per second" metric to tell you how much damage weapons will do, but Hellgate doesn't. Just like skills, the only way to tell the power of a weapon is to try it. Even then, it's hard to tell which weapons are more powerful most of the time.

Guide the Fist to Victory!: The quest "The Wall", where you must "Guide the Fist to Victory!" is a vomit-inducing stench of awful. It's unbelievable that someone at Flagship had played the quest, thought it was good, and decided to leave it in the game. This quest forces you to play a real-time strategy mission where you must control four useless soldiers from a top-down perspective and kill a boss somehow. The quest doesn't work well, and is completely broken in multi-player. If you do the quest in a party, every party member shares the same camera but controls different units. So, if you move north and your friend moves west, the camera can only show one person at a time, often oscillating between different viewpoints so that no one can see anything. Have no doubt, you and your friends will be yelling and screaming at each other in frustration. If you want your friendship to survive, you'd better start laughing about how bad the quest is. It's actually pretty funny. Flagship, what the hell? This quest is deplorable. And what's worse is that there is another quest like it closer to the end of the game. You will again need to control a unit in the same way (The Lightning), and it's just as bad.

Dismantle: The game has what I thought was a good feature at first. Instead of dropping items or carrying them back to town to sell, you have the option of dismantling loot to get small, stackable scraps that can later be used for crafting, upgrades, or selling. In theory, it's a great feature that improves on the Diablo formula. But soon you'll find that you're spending a good chunk of your time using the game's awkward interface to dismantle the hundreds of useless items that you picked up, one at a time. If you see your party members standing still instead of helping you in a fight, you can be sure that they are busy dismantling their items. In other games, you would suspect that they lost their internet connection or their computer crashed. But in Hellgate, they are dismantling items. This problem can be easily fixed with a "dismantle all" button or "dismantle all non-magic items". Titan Quest fixed this problem by giving you the option to ignore all non-magic and/or inferior items that drop. You won't even see them, so they'll never find their way into your inventory. Hellgate could easily add the same feature and it would go a long way to make the game more fun.

Levels: By themselves, I rather like most of the tile sets in the game. I especially like fighting in the London streets, the ruins of pubs, flats, and cars all around. The problem is that after you have been playing for a few hours, you have seen nearly all the level designs. After a few more hours, you will be dying to see some colours besides brown and grey. Set pieces like the British Museum and Piccadilly Circus are a welcome relief, and are very well done. Also, the game claims to be randomizing the levels, but I don't see it. Every street level looks the same to me. Every sewer, the same. Every basement, the same. Every hell citadel, the same. I'm sure there are slight variations, but the randomization is far too subtle to provide any variety. Also, since the game has the word "hell" in the title, you would think that hell would be an impressive place. Nope. Hellgate features the most boring, unimpressive rendition of hell I've ever seen. As for the hellgate itself, it provided the funniest moment in the game for me. When I first saw it, I thought I was looking at a rainbow. "Oh, isn't that pretty! Oh wait... that's the hellgate!? Mwahahaha!" If only the NPCs were that funny.



Conclusion

Ok, I think I've pummeled Hellgate: London for long enough now. It's bruised and bleeding, and I almost feel bad about it. The game can be pretty fun to play, although I didn't enjoy most of the classes. As a marksman, I had some good times. Hellgate is not beyond hope, given another year or two of development.

I tried to play it a couple of times lately, but couldn't get back into it. I don't want to dismantle any more items! I don't want to guide the Fist to victory ever again! The final level with the guy on the cover of the box is torture and I don't want to do it! There are too many things in the game that aren't fun.

If you're looking for a good action-RPG released in the past few years, I highly recommend Titan Quest. I can't recommend Hellgate: London to anyone for any reason.

Much of my joy in Oblivion comes from my characters. I like to take lots of screenshots of them. And now they look so much better. I can now use the “self shadows” option, which means that their clothing, armor, weapons, and other body parts (arms, nose, cheek bones, etc.) cast shadows onto the character. I’m playing a character who is often sneaking through the shadows, so seeing him wearing a hood that cast shadows over his eyes is video game geek heaven! Skulking in the shadows is way more fun now!

Another advantage to this simple, cheap upgrade is how well it handles the dense, lush forests in the game. Combat in the grassy forests always brought my computer to a crawl with my old nVidia 6800GT, giving me about 5 to 10 frames per second, which was a bit frustrating. Now forest battles are glorious and gorgeous.

Self-shadows is still my favorite feature though. Seeing the shadow of my sword on the goblin’s face right as it’s coming down will never get old.

If your computer is in need of a quick fix, check out the 8600GTS. It seems to be a prime time to upgrade right now, and this card delivers a lot of power at a low cost.

Oh, and for fun, check out a realistic and hilarious review of BioShock. Apparently, I’m not the only one who noticed how much of Fallout was stolen... I mean, how inspirational Fallout was to BioShock. I can’t embed the video here, so you’ll have to check it out at The Escapist.

I’m not alone here. Plenty of discussion on digg.com reveals similar stories and pissed off customers. This is a broken game on Windows. Similar stories aren’t heard from XBOX 360 customers. So we can see where the game developer’s priorities were.


Bioshock on Windows is Not Finished!

Quality assurance in the gaming industry is garbage. I’m sure that the QA folks know how to test and are finding bugs. However, the game companies don’t care. Once they get to a release date, most companies will ship the game and patch it later. Or not patch it. They must know that the bugs exist, but they’re more interested in making their quarterly results than making customers happy. Ship the game, expect complaints, publish happy financial numbers, and release a patch sometime later.

There’s no incentive to wait until a game is finished. You can’t return a game to the store after you find out it doesn’t work. As soon as you break that precious plastic wrap, you’re on your own.


Bioshock Gameplay Tips

Here are some tips for surviving in Bioshock:

1. If you don’t have a second monitor, buy one.
2. Keep Windows Task Manager open on your second monitor so you can Alt-Tab to it and kill Bioshock.exe.
3. Keep the reset button of your computer within easy reach.
4. Update your device drivers to pass the time. It probably won’t help, but at least you’ll accomplish something.
5. Have a game that works installed on your system, like Oblivion or anything by Blizzard. These games are made by companies who actually delay their game release dates when they are not finished their games. That’s right, instead of getting instant cash and pissing off their customers, some companies choose to finish their games enough so that they run for more than a few minutes at a time.

Rumors say that a patch for Windows customers is on the way. Isn’t that nice. What will they do to make me forget that I got screwed by buying this game? I should have downloaded an illegal copy.

In the meantime, the company says that you need some beta video card drivers. But the install for those drivers say they can’t find any updates... And besides, I’m not installing unfinished drivers for an unfinished game. That’s an unacceptable policy. Did I pay for the Bioshock Beta, or what?

Most games take some effort to get running on Windows. It’s rare that you can install a game, load it, and enjoy. You usually have to adjust the screen resolution, choose which type of shadows your computer can handle, adjust the draw distance, tweak the grass density, choose the water reflection mode, adjust the texture quality, adjust actor detail, enable or disable specular highlighting, choose the appropriate anti-aliasing mode, see how much high-dynamic range lighting affects performance, and so on and so on until you can find the right mix of visual quality and frame rate. And that assumes that the game doesn’t crash when you load the game, start a new game, enter a new zone, load a game, jump into a tree, stand on the blue brick, swing a dagger while wearing the gauntlets of ogre power, dance and cast magic missile without any pants, or whatever might turn the game against you.

I think it’s time I bought a console and give up gaming on Windows forever. That would mean that I wouldn’t need a Windows PC at all! Is it time to buy a Mac desktop now? Hmm... I can see that day coming.


Some Happy Thoughts

To Bioshock’s credit, I still want to play it. I will wait patiently for a patch and see how things turn out. It seems like it could be a beautiful game. It is clearly inspired by Fallout. Just look at the men and women washroom signs. There are countless other allusions to Fallout in the game, like the black and white film vignettes and rusty retro architecture. It’s great! The art deco architecture, underwater urban environment, and retro 1950’s music make for a cool steampunk-ish world.

It will be a great game when it’s finished, I’m sure.

I’ll try to piece his argument together since he’s not capable. What he seems to be saying is that Oblivion’s combat was bad because it wasn’t comparable to fighting games. By fighting games, I think he means games like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. I guess it’s hard to argue with him on this idiotic comparison. Oblivion sure was a terrible fighting game. And I’m glad it was! Imagine buying an RPG only to find that it’s a fighting game!

Ok, that’s probably a straw man argument. I don’t know what Molyneux was trying to say. The only clear message he sends is this: “most role-playing games are shit.”

I read the article further to find out more about his vision for the future of RPGs. He describes the target audience for Fable 2 like this:

"I am certainly suggesting that a good proportion of those people can't even control a character, and get stuck, and we're spending a lot of time getting that right. I could say draw your sword and they wouldn't even have a clue what we're talking about."

What the...?!

His target audience for this fantasy-themed RPG are people who don’t know what a sword is? They don’t know what a sword is? Or they don’t know what it means to “draw a sword”? Are there a lot of people who have never heard of a sword who are buying video games? Weren’t the Lord of the Rings movies extremely popular? Didn’t they involve a lot of swords, and drawing of swords? Even if you didn’t see the movie, you must have seen posters of the movies. And there were these shiny, metal, pointy things. If you had never seen them before, maybe you would ask someone, “Hey, what are those shiny, pointy, sharp-looking things in that picture?” “Oh, that’s a sword, you moron.”

Ok, maybe that’s another straw man argument. I don’t think so, but it’s inconceivable that Molyneux is targeting such a rare type of person for Fable 2. Let’s look at the first statement about the target audience. How many people who play video games don’t know what it means to control a character? Ever since Pong, Pac-Man, and Space Invaders, you have had to control a character on the screen. If the Pong paddles had to sit still, unmoving, completely locked in place, I don’t think it would have been quite as popular. If you couldn’t understand the concept of controlling the paddles, your interest in video games was probably nil.

Moving a character in games these days now includes more than one dimension. Now you must move your character forward, backward, left, and right. Molyneux must have an extremely low opinion of people if he doesn’t think we understand the concept of moving in two dimensions.

Molyneux is not God’s gift to games. In my opinion, he hasn’t produced a single decent game since the disappointing Dungeon Keeper games (1997). Black & White was an atrocious, infuriating game. Controlling the giant animals was a pointless exercise in frustration, adding nothing strategic to the gameplay. I remember showing Black & White to a friend, and he asked me why I played the game if it made me so angry. That was the last time I played it.

Here’s another quote that proves Molyneux has gone off the deep end:

”If I am using the attack button it means I want to do something aggressive to the nearest target!”

Innovation! The RPG Fighting Game Action Arcade Button Masher genre will never be the same!

Just one more quote because it’s fun:

”Remember, this is a role playing game: all the different weapons have different music sounds and give a very individual feel to the combat.”

That is a completely insane statement! Why do all weapons have different music sounds (whatever that means) and what does that have to do with role-playing games?? Does a dagger sound like a kazoo playing Yankee Doodle Dandy? Does a bow sound like bagpipes? What do I need to do to unlock the 1812 Overture music sound weapon?

This interview is almost as infuriating as Black & White!

My only hope is that other role-playing game designers have read Molyneux’s damning opinion of their work, that Molyneux alienates himself from his own industry, and that Fable 2 has no impact at all on my favorite game genre, because I don’t see RPGs evolving into fighting game musical weapon adventures. Go talk crazy about some other genre.

After watching the video, it seems to me like a conference call, except that you get to see some insane cartoon characters. Is a Second Life event more immersive than a conference call, or a recorded phone interview? For the very few players who attended the event, it probably was. Still, I’m not convinced there’s much value in such Second Life events, except to promote Second Life itself.

Other events held in Second Life: an interview with the cast and crew of Transformers, an interview with Bruce Willis (in which he looks horrifying), and a party with Fatboy Slim (attended by many drag queen avatars).

I think someone told businesses that the internet was on the way out and virtual worlds would take their place. Build your virtual stores now, or miss out on virtual reality! No one will want to shop on web sites in the future. They’ll want to use their virtual selves instead to shop in virtual malls!

Just imagine it: instead of shopping for books using a boring search engine on Amazon, you can walk your virtual avatar to the Amazon mall, then walk your character to different sections of the store using the mouse and WSAD keys, find the books you want, right-click to put them in your inventory, then walk your avatar into line at the cashiers, buy the books, and carry them back to your virtual estate. Yes, in the future we will want things to take a long time, be more difficult to use, and require good graphics cards. And companies will have to hire 3D modelers, texture artists, animators, and script-writers to build their virtual stores.

I’d like to say that it ain’t gonna happen, but I’m not so sure. It would be a great way for big companies to cut out a lot of competition. It’s far too easy to build a website today. Any company and individual can create a website and sell their products to millions of potential customers around the world. Creating a virtual, 3D, interactive store is a much bigger technical challenge that small companies would not all be able to afford. Like mainstream TV and film today, only the biggest players would be able to profit.

One thing Second Life proves: big businesses are interested. Second Life is being used as a testing ground for virtual world sales and marketing. It might be ugly and awkward today, but it’s just the ancestor to future non-game virtual worlds that will evolve and grow into something that everyone might want to join, like the internet, and where big businesses can use their muscle against the little guy. Or maybe this is just my cynical opinion as a modest blogger.

Long live the world wide web!

At long last, I now know how to beat that game! The video shows someone assembling the puzzle pieces, which takes about six minutes. Here it is:

Impossible Mission THIS!

I never would have figured that out. Without the internet, and without YouTube, we were really stuck. We could ask our friends, those pirates who gave us the game, but they were as stumped as us. If we knew someone with the game manual, they could have told us. But we don't know where those pirated games came from.

Some games today simply expect you to look stuff up on the internet. World of Warcraft is often lacking in information regarding quests, trade skill trainers, which zones are for which character levels, and other fairly important things. It's just assumed that you will use Thottbot or some other WoW database.

Diablo II had all those Horadric Cube recipes, and had no way of telling you what they were. I guess you were supposed to experiment and discover the recipes on your own. Being a multi-player game, with everyone else knowing the recipes, there isn't such a thing as "on your own". But seriously, the recipes appeared on the internet so fast that it was pointless to experiment with that cube. In fact, it was the game company who published the recipes on their own site. I guess the cube was a test of your web surfing skills.

Anyway, Impossible Mission. I had almost forgotten that gem. Here's a video that is much more like my experience with the game. Why did I play so much if I was so awful at it?

Good Thing We Had Unlimited Lives...

Now there is news that a company called System 3 is developing a Nintendo DS version of Impossible Mission, and the gameplay videos look amazing! Looks just like the original. I'm sold!

Check out another blogger who still loves this game over at Retro Junk.

Looks like a great way to blow off some steam! The environment looks very atmospheric: ruined London, hellish skies, dark subway. Subway systems and sewers are two of my favorite environments for video games! Not so much in real life.

The action looks fast and furious, with non-stop bullets mowing down zombies and demons. I need a good game where I can blast zombies in subway tunnels!

Here’s another video that is slightly less super-gogo, showing the inventory screen, HUD interface, automap, and item pickups:

Where Do I Equip A Feasibility Modulator?

Some item names I noticed in the videos: Feasibility Modulator, Firestarter, Plagueblaster, Spectral Hardened Templar Legs, Buffering Templar Helm, Firebrand, Spike Bolter, Shock Blade, Spark Rifle. That's a lot of nonsense... But I remember some of the Diablo item names, like Cursed Club of Healing? Who would make such an item?

Anyway, another thing I find is that all the misshapen demonic monsters start to look ridiculous after 30 seconds, but it hardly matters since they're just going to blow up within seconds anyway.

I'm not crazy about the "hell on earth" theme, though. It worked in Diablo because it took place in a fantasy world with magic and mythology having nothing to do with real world religions. I’ll find it impossible to get immersed into a game that is based on the premise of demons and other denizens of hell attacking real-world London. But I doubt that storytelling and role-playing are going to be strong features of this game. The context of Hellgate: London is something I'll just have to get over. Since the action seems to be fast and comical, it probably won't be an issue. I get the impression that the setting and story are intended to be light-hearted. Still, an alien invasion would have been a much better premise, and the same silly monsters could have been used just as well.

Looking at the comments at Blue’s News, interest in the game seems to be waning among some enthusiasts. Complaints are aimed at the monthly fees, third-person perspective, and MMORPG-style combat. I agree that the E3 video is boring and certainly hope they aren’t slowing the game down to be an MMORPG. Do we really need another MMORPG? Does anyone else hate the acronym MMORPG?

Hellgate: London could be the first Massively-Multiplayer First-Person Shooter Action Role-Playing Game. MMFPSARPG. Supergogo!

More info can be found at Hellgate Guru, and in a preview from E3 by Gamespy.

Chance I'll buy this game: 90%

Doubts: Subscription fees, MMORPG-style combat, low Explosions Per Minute.

Hooks: Zombies, post-apocalyptic London, fast action, assisted FPS targeting, lots of quests, ability to find an item called Feasibility Modulator.

Anyone else intrigued by this game? Thoughts on the new (disappointing) trailer?

Dune

No, this mod has nothing to do with the Frank Herbert novels. I really think it's time they choose a better name for this mod... Anyway, this mod aims to bring the desert to Elder Scrolls IV, and it looks amazing! The desert landscape looks gorgeous and totally convincing. This mod goes far beyond promising just a landscape. It also offers new reptile mounts, new weather, new armor and clothing, new weapons, and who knows what else. Amazing work so far. Update: As Prometheus tells me in the comments, more info can be found on the Dune forums.

Dune: Is That Wormsign?

Tamriel Rebuilt: Goldmoor

The Tamriel Rebuilt project is about as ambitious as it gets. It has been around since Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, proving that there is dedication to this project. The preview of the Goldmoor area of Hammerfell is looking fantastic. The boulder-strewn grassland looks unique, yet fits well into the existing game.

Tamriel Rebuilt: Goldmoor

I wish the modders the best of luck in finishing these amazing mods!

Another big difference is that Wasteland's skills had prerequisites. A character needed a minimum Intelligence score before he/she could use a skill. In Fallout, all skills were available for all characters, with no prerequisites. Sure looks like Fallout was simplified to me. Dumbed down? Well, maybe not. Let's look at the skills:

Wasteland skills:
IQ 3: Brawling, Climb, Clip Pistol, Knife Fighting, Pugilism, Rifle, Swim
IQ 6: Knife Throwing, Perception
IQ 9: Assault Rifle, AT Weapon, Submachine Guns
IQ 10: Acrobat, Gamble, Picklock, Silent Movement
IQ 11: Confidence
IQ 12: Sleight of Hand
IQ 13: Demolition, Forgery
IQ 14: Alarm Disarm, Bureaucracy
IQ 15: Bomb Disarm, Medic, Safecrack
IQ 16: Cryptology
IQ 17: Metallurgy

I like that a character needs to be smart in order to take the Medic skill. If you want to be able to fix your own wounds, you may have to sacrifice other attributes in order to have a high intelligence. On the other hand, some skills seem to be redundant. Why are Brawling and Pugilism separate skills? Are all those gun skills necessary? If I can use a Rifle, can't I also use an Assault Rifle?

Fallout skills:
Small Guns, Big Guns, Unarmed, Energy Weapons, Melee Weapons, Throwing, First Aid, Doctor, Sneak, Lockpick, Steal, Traps, Science, Repair, Speech, Barter, Gambling, Outdoorsman

Even with fewer skills, some were redundant or useless. There's no need for both First Aid and Doctor. In practice, Doctor could do everything that First Aid could and more, and cost the same number of points. Gambling was a waste of points, and Outdoorsman was a novelty at best.

The screenshot on the right shows a level 10 character of mine that already has two skills above 100. Talk about min-maxing!


Dumbed Down, or More Fun?

Fallout 3 will have 14 skills, which sounds about right once you get rid of the useless Fallout skills. But what about Wasteland's specialty skills like Cryptology and Confidence (whatever that's supposed to do)? In practice, I suspect those skills came up very rarely in the game compared to weapon skills and Medic. As Fallout did, it's probably best to roll them up into more general skills like Science and Speech. This isn't dumbing down, it's just an attempt to make skills more useful and fun. Spending (wasting?) points on something that you use once is not fun.

Another difference: in Wasteland, you could improve your skills by using them, not just by spending points on them. It's a hybrid of Fallout and Elder Scrolls, except that it preceded both of them. I'm a big fan of systems that reward you for using your character's abilities since it encourages you to role-play your stats, not just assign points to them. Fallout had no such incentives. You could only put points into your skills, even if you never used them. You could be an expert with lasers even if you had never owned or used a laser. But that's standard in most RPG systems.


Breaking Up The Party

One feature that was great in Wasteland was the ability to split up your party into any number of groups. If you have four characters, you can split them into four parties of one character each if you wanted. There were certainly times where having two parties was beneficial. Since you made each of your characters specialists in something, it became interesting when it was time to divide your party. Which party will get the doctor? Can the sneaky guy survive in a party by himself?

This brings me to another huge difference between Wasteland and Fallout (and all other modern RPGs): Wasteland let you create four characters, while Fallout gave you only one. Each game allowed you to have other characters join you, but they played a supporting role.

At some point, party-based RPGs went out of fashion. It used to be that all RPGs allowed you to create a group of characters. Bard's Tale, Wizardry, Might & Magic, Final Fantasy. Ultima is the only one I remember that let you create only one character.

The last time a party-based RPG was attempted was Temple of Elemental Evil by Troika. RIP Troika. RIP party-based RPGs.


Enough Comparison

Now I'm supposed to make a conclusion. I certainly can't say that Fallout is a dumbed down successor to Wasteland. In many ways it is more complex. The combat system itself is far more fun and complex than Wasteland's. Some fat was trimmed in some areas (no one misses the Confidence skill), and more important features were enhanced. It's how games evolve. Wasteland was clearly a computer adaptation of a pen-and-paper style system, but some things don't quite work in the translation.

Looking forward to Fallout 3, I would say that the original Fallout games need to evolve further. Min-maxing was far too easy and effective, making the latter half of the game very easy. All characters ended up wearing the same armor in the same order, no matter what skills you chose. Leather jacket, metal armor, power armor, power armor mark 2. And so on. But these are just details that didn't detract too much from the fun, but should not find their way into modern sequels.

As Fallout 3 is unveiled, I look forward to the evolution of this series. It's already clear that some big changes are in order, but the game sounds fun to me so far! If we could just figure out exactly what this VATS thing is...

As someone who has a lot of experience playing video games until 3 am on weeknights, I can’t see how anyone can say game playing is an addiction. At camp in the summer, I used to play cards with friends. We would also play late into the night, and be sure to be in our sleeping bags before dawn. Our parents didn’t complain. They could hear us outside playing cards and knew where we were. They would get mad when we woke them too often, but didn’t ask our family doctors to fix our card playing addictions! Games are fun and they don’t end like movies and TV shows. It’s hard to get your fill of a game, unless you become physically exhausted and just can’t play anymore. When you’re having fun, you just want to keep playing until some other issue overpowers the fun factor.

Imagine if Star Wars was a movie that went on for hundreds of hours without interruption. Dozens of lightsaber fights, lots of space battles, countless aliens, more cheesy lines than you can imagine! I would have a very hard time pulling myself away. I would watch it for so long, some might say that I was addicted to this awesome Star Wars movie of my dreams. But they would be confused.

Addiction is something far more specific. The word ‘addiction’ is used with ignorance, perhaps by people who want to vilify video games because they don’t like them or don’t understand them. Addiction can be a very harmful medical condition deserving of medical treatment. Accusing someone (out of ignorance) of having an addiction is deplorable. Would you accuse someone of having syphilis so lightly? I find it far more plausible that someone who plays video games instead of doing anything else could be suffering from something else. Depression, social anxiety, something like that. I don’t think it’s right to blame video games. Sweet, delicious video games.

Help Me Stop!

Still, something constructive could be done to help us to stop playing video games after a reasonable amount of time. Most gamers would like to stop playing after a few hours. If there were tools to help us turn off our games before midnight, I think many of us would use them. Some ideas:

• Add an in-game alarm, with snooze. Once the alarm goes off, an icon could appear in the corner of the screen. Snooze to give yourself more time to finish one more quest. Then the icon starts blinking. Then it appears closer to the center of the screen. As time continues after the alarm went off, the alarm can become more annoying. The only way to reset the alarm would be to exit the game and load it again. These extra actions you need to take to play into the wee morning hours might be enough to make some people stop playing.


• Similar to the alarm system, except gameplay could be affected. After the alarm goes off, enemies could get tougher. You might get fewer and fewer points as time passes. Less ammo. Your character moves more slowly. Enemies move more quickly. That kind of thing. This option would only work in a single-player game. No one would accept gameplay penalties in a multi-player game.


• After a set number of time, game features get turned off. Draw distance gets shorter. Graphics start to look worse. User interface elements become ugly, or disappear entirely. Music and sound effects get disabled or volume is lowered gradually over time after the alarm goes off. Your character becomes invisible. These would all act as reminders that you should have stopped playing and gone to bed.

Of course, these would all be optional tools for gamers. I predict that many people would choose to use them. I would be satisfied with a blinking icon in the game to tell me to go to bed. Adding features like this would give some brownie points to game developers, showing that they care about the issue without agreeing that games can be addictive.

So it was very disappointing to play the 2004 Bard’s Tale, which was missing all the classic elements from the original series. The writing was hilarious at times, but the gameplay just wasn’t fun or original. I couldn’t stand the combat and boring story, no matter how great the dialog was. The Bard’s Tale franchise would not be revived. This new game was something completely different. And that’s what I’m afraid will happen with a new Wasteland game.

Sure, a new Wasteland game being released 20 years after the original will have to be dramatically different. But it should still retain its CRPG roots, which the new Bard’s Tale abandoned. Point-and-click action-RPG games fail to act as mediums for telling compelling, immersive stories like those found in Wasteland and Fallout. Action-RPG’s are the new arcade games. Fast action, lots of points, high scores, and as many explosions as possible. That’s all fun, and I still have a great time playing Diablo II, but don’t waste the Wasteland brand name on arcade-style gameplay like this, especially when Fallout 3 will probably be so much more. If InXile wants to make a Wasteland successor, they have to compete with the RPG powerhouse Bethesda and their reputation in the RPG genre.

On the other hand, if InXile wants to make another action RPG like The Bard’s Tale, then they have to compete with Blizzard who... well, I guess we don’t know for sure... but more rumors say that Diablo III is waiting impatiently for its big reveal. A new Diablo would be the action-RPG to blow away all other action-RPG’s for years to follow. A Wasteland game in this genre would be adrift without an audience. RPG fans would not be interested, and action-RPG players would be crack babies for Diablo III.

InXile had better come up with a clear vision for its Wasteland, or another classic franchise will get dumped in the trash like Bard’s Tale. Bard’s Tale’s writing was excellent, so InXile’s heart seems to be in the right place. I wish I could have just watched all the dialog and enjoyed it instead of having to play the game. I’m hopeful that InXile has learned a lot from their first game and will make a satisfying post-apocalyptic RPG. I mean, Brian Fargo is at the helm, and he’s one of the greats, so I’m going to keep my eyes open to find confirmation on these rumors and watch this game closely.

There’s plenty of room for both Fallout 3 and Wasteland on my hard drive. More companies are welcome to make more post-apocalyptic games! This is an untapped genre, and I don’t know why! We have enough elves and gnomes in RPG’s, let’s get some more mutants and leather jackets, please?

Sadly, I notice that the InXile website shows an “Unannounced Project” that is an
“action adventure game”. I guess that could be the Wasteland successor. If so... meh. Nevertheless, I look forward to an announcement.

...most players will find themselves taking advantage of the innovative combat system that Bethesda has developed for the game. The Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System (V.A.T.S.) is what assures that this first-person game so chock full of guns doesn't become an FPS. "We don't want to be rewarding twitch play," Howard says. "It's not an action game. It's a role-playing game." While you'll certainly be able to tackle enemies in real time first-person shooting, V.A.T.S. lets players pause time and select a target at their leisure. Once targeted, a zoomed-in view of that enemy will show all the places you could aim to hit the creature, and the percentage chance you'll succeed... Just like in the original Fallout, you'll have a set number of action points, largely based on your agility score. Every combat move you make will deplete this supply, at which point those AP will begin to regenerate in real time at a rate that also corresponds with your agility. Once you complete all your actions in V.A.T.S. you can continue to attack in real time, but this will dramatically slow the recharge of your action points, thereby encouraging tactical targeting over constant twitch shooting.

I'm confused at the very start of this description. "Most players" will use VATS? Why most players? I interpret this paragraph to mean that there are two modes of combat: real-time, which is designed to be an inferior way to play, and turn-based, which is the ideal way to play. It also seems like you need to switch into real-time mode to let your Action Points recharge. Sounds strange. I'm sure Bethesda will clarify soon. Or rather, I hope they do. I don't quite get it.

I've played games that tried to have both real-time and turn-based combat, and it has never been great. Some examples:

Arcanum, by Troika (who expressed interest in the Fallout license before they went belly-up), had the worst implementation of real-time and turn-based combat in any RPG, in my opinion. The real-time combat was clearly unfinished, as it was much too fast to be playable. Rats could hit me about 3 times per second. I would sometimes be near death before I could even right-click on a monster! Even worse, it seems that the game’s turn-based mode had to make compromises to accommodate the real-time mode. So it ended up that Arcanum had a horrible real-time mode, and a disappointing turn-based mode. It was such a fantastic game otherwise. If only it stuck to one style of combat and did it well, we might have had another great RPG franchise like Fallout. It should have been the game that made Troika rich and famous.

Bioware RPGs like Baldur’s Gate and Knights of the Old Republic used a “real-time with pause” combat system. In real-time mode, it was just something you watched. Then you had to slam the space bar to stop the action, give some orders to your characters, and hit the space bar again to see it all happen. Often, the orders you gave didn’t happen the way you intended them to. As a result, Baldur’s Gate had the most frustrating implementation of the Dungeons & Dragons rules I can imagine. Casting a fireball in such a system was a nightmare, since by the time the fireball went off everyone had moved and one of my characters had wandered into the fireball blast radius thanks to the flawed pathfinding AI! It was neither real-time nor turn-based, and certainly wasn’t strategic or fun. You can’t take a turn-based system like D&D and force it into a real-time system. KOTOR did a better job of this, but only by simplifying combat and making the game too easy.

It always ends up that one mode of play is better than the other. Sure, you could try to play Baldur's Gate in real-time mode, allowing your party members to operate mostly on AI, but you would be far more successful if you used the "pause mode" to micro-manage each character. If real-time mode was so inferior, why have it at all? If you've got one combat system that is fun, why offer a second? Have some confidence in your game design skills, game developers!

So, based on the Game Informer article (which could be inaccurate), it sounds like Fallout 3 is designed to have a turn-based system (VATS) that is the optimal way to play. The real-time mode may exist only to get through simple combat situations quickly, like killing rats that die in one hit.

Overall, I'm optimistic about the idea of VATS. It means that we'll get some sort of turn-based combat system combined with the immersion of a first-person perspective. I look forward to finding out more. A gameplay video that demonstrates VATS would be nice...