Let me preface this by stressing that I am not a game developer. But I am a gamer, and I know that there is a right way to make a game and a wrong way to make a game, as I have played many well-designed games and many poorly-designed games.
I recently purchased the game Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts. I had purchased the original Company of Heroes quite a while ago, but I had never finished it. So, I decided to re-install the original before dealing with Opposing Fronts. After a rather arduous process of patching, I was ready to play. Upon loading it up, it seemed that the patches had installed data for Opposing Fronts as well as the original, since the menu included the campaigns from the new game. I couldn’t play them without an Opposing Fronts CD key, but I didn’t want to deal with that right then. I played the game (picking up where I had left off) and finished the campaign. Now for Opposing Fronts.
Continue reading ‘The way to make games’
Sphere: Related Content
I recently became aware of a website called GOG.com. It’s brand new and still in an early-access beta (it’s due to be opened up to everyone soon, I believe), but it looks freakin’ awesome. The idea is this: you can buy and download popular, classic PC games (think Descent, Fallout, Freespace 2), all guaranteed to work on Windows Vista or XP, and all DRM free. That’s right: no DRM. I suppose that’s not insanely attractive to most people, but to the people who hate to deal with installation limits (à la Spore), CD keys, or online verification servers, it’s a real kicker. I was able to wrangle an early-access key, so I’ve been checking the place out. I haven’t bought or downloaded anything, so I can’t report on how well that works, but I can say that the interface is snazzy, the selection is great (better than what you can find in the local gaming store’s bargain bin, that’s for sure), and the prices are very nice ($10 and under for pretty much everything).
It really looks like a good deal. I’m interested to see how much the game catalog there expands and how well things work out. Also, if anyone is really interested in scoping it out, I’ve got a beta key available to the first commenter who asks. Alternately, you can put your email in at the main site and hope they send you a key.
Sphere: Related Content
I’m unintentionally continuing on my gaming post trend. I was watching G4 earlier and saw some stuff about a new action/role-playing game called Mass Effect developed by BioWare. It looks pretty interesting, and I’ve played games by BioWare before. They tend to have a big emphasis on story-telling, and I love games with an engaging story.
Unfortunately, the game was released only for the Xbox 360. What’s worse is that BioWare has no plans to develop the game for the PC. Another good game ruined by what I see as a lazy developer. I mean, the PC is still a good gaming platform. Why, then, do so many developers come out with games exclusive to certain consoles? I don’t want to buy a freakin’ Xbox. If that means I’m not going to buy a game like Mass Effect, then that’s the loss of the game developer. Ignoring an entire (and rather large) portion of the video game market is about the best thing you can do to get people to dislike you.
BioWare used to develop games for the PC, too. Even the most recent game they developed before Mass Effect, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic was made for both the Xbox and the PC. Before that, they were PC-only, since no one thought an RPG could really work that well on a console.
I really don’t have anything against consoles. They have their uses. I don’t want to be forced to buy one, though. I already own a decent computer. Buying something else that only plays games is a bit…redundant. And to have to pay for multiplayer? Seriously, no thanks. But it seems like PC gamers are being left behind, especially now that gaming consoles can look better than high-end PCs without costing nearly as much. Of course, if you add in the gigantic HD television set needed to fully appreciate the look of console games, the cost can go up quite a bit. Realistically, though, the PC gaming market isn’t dead yet. It’s not even close. But when good games are made for consoles and not for PC, it can be just a little bit irritating.
Dammit, that G4 review is really making me want Mass Effect. It looks like a sweet game. Curse you, BioWare! You might make me buy an Xbox 360, but I won’t like it… I know, I’m weak-willed. Sometimes.
Sphere: Related Content
I don’t know why video games today are popular. I mean, look at where they started. The original video games were all arcade games like Pac-Man and Asteroids. Boring and hard. When they got stories, the dropped the boring part, but some of them were still freakin’ impossible. A very good example of that is the game Dragon’s Lair. It’s an old game, but you can still find CD-ROM copies for the computer. I recently discovered my dad still had a copy, so I’ve been playing it. Well, trying to play it is more accurate.
Dragon’s Lair is seriously the hardest game I’ve ever played. When it comes to gameplay, it’s rather simple. You don’t always control the main character. You don’t need to know where to go. The trick is the timing. It’s a rather fast-paced game and if you screw up, you have to start over. You start off walking over a bridge. Your character falls through and these tentacle things start moving toward him. You have to mash down on the spacebar to make him swing his sword and then frantically push the up arrow to get him to climb up through the hole in the bridge while the tentacles are distracted. Easy, right? Wrong. If the timing is off by even a second, you’re dead. This sort of action does not stop any time soon.
It’s even worse that you only get 5 lives throughout the entire game. You don’t always start over at the beginning if you die within that limit, but once those 5 lives are up, you have to do the entire thing over again. This would make anyone go crazy.
I just don’t understand how games got past this point. In all honesty, I would have stopped playing after half an hour of a game like Dragon’s Lair if that’s all there was. Even Pac-Man can really piss me off. Games today can actually save your progress and have adjustable difficulty levels, but these old arcade games have nothing of the sort. They all had one difficulty level: impossibly hard. And yet video games survived. Boggles the mind.
Sphere: Related Content
I swear, I have the most incompatible laptop ever. For some strange and inexplicable reason, my (not-so) unique combination of hardware makes it a very big pain to install anything other than Windows on my computer. Linux? Doesn’t like my video card or my wireless. Mac OS X (not that I’d ever try to install a hacked version of OS X on my computer)? Doesn’t like my video card, my sound, and my ethernet connection. Heck, even in Windows, nothing likes my video card. Damn Radeon Mobility. ATI refuses to provide support for my model, so I have to rely on Dell to provide timely driver updates…which they don’t.
I honestly don’t know why this laptop in particular is such a pain. I mean, it was only one of the most popular Inspiron laptop models Dell put out before the newest wave. I still think you can get it through their business store under the guise of 6400 (the home version was labeled E1505). The graphics card is all right, but it’s been the biggest thorn in my side when trying to install a) Windows games, or b) non-Windows operating systems. Ubuntu Linux was my arch-nemesis for a while, until I found out some guy actually modified an Ubuntu installation CD to work specifically on Dell E1505 systems with no tweaking or special knowledge of terminal commands required (the custom CD/DVD for the latest release of Ubuntu, 7.10, is still in beta, but the old disks for 7.04 are still perfectly workable). He’s got the right idea. Other developers don’t.
The thing is that people don’t make concessions for hardware like mine. The majority of hardware configurations work so they don’t take the time to fix things up for the small amount of incompatible configurations. It just bugs me that an entire laptop line gets thrown out the window for this. Okay, that’s not completely true. The big problems only show up if you have an ATI Radeon Mobility x1400 video card. I don’t know what it is about this particular card, but it can cause you major grief if you like Linux, hacked Mac OS X, or newer games. The most recent problem I encountered came when I tried playing Gears of War. I figured I’d be able to enjoy it at fairly low graphics settings, but the game crashed my computer when it started because I didn’t have the latest version of the Catalyst drivers for my card. This would be no problem…if Dell had released those drivers. ATI won’t give them to me (my hardware configuration, again, is incompatible, and they’re unwilling to develop alternate drivers for Dell systems). I had to fall back on third-party drivers, and I haven’t had the chance to test them out yet.
Some people tell me I shouldn’t be gaming on a laptop unless I shell out thousands of dollars for an Alienware or Dell XPS notebook. Others tell me I should just buy a desktop rig and trick it out. That would be nice, yes, and I intend on putting together a desktop gaming PC in the future, but for the time being, I have to make do with what I have. And I’m entitled to whine about it because I’m a poor, starving college student who knows better than to whip out the credit card and act like I don’t have to pay it off. So there.
Sphere: Related Content
