Down About Downtime?

So, I guess there's only really one thing to talk about these days. PSN, our gaming lifeblood, is down. Worse... Looks like it's going to stay that way for a whole month. Shock and Horror!

From left to right: Shock, Horror, and Listening-to-Beiber-on-Friday.

Alright, calm down now. Before we all rush off and commit Sepuku, just hold your chocobos and take a moment and consider other, less permanent options. Will complaining online get the network back up faster? No. It'll be back when it's ready, and not before.
Sacrifice a goat to a pagan god? No. Where are you even going to find a goat at this hour?
Hmm, what to do then? Oh, I have an idea!
Now, I'm going to need you all to think back... Back to a time several years ago... A time before PS3... What's there?
Why, it's a massive library of games that have no online capability! What's more, they're good!
That's right, much to the surprise of the modern gamer, there do exist games that can be played entirely offline!

PS2, PS1, GameCube, N64, SNES, and all the way back to the humble Arcade cabinet. Games have certainly come a long way, but that's not to say that only what's new is good. Sometimes the old is even superior.

Case in point.

Bust out those classics, my friends and fellow gamers! Step into the role of the heroes of the early Final Fantasy titles. Take up the blade once more in Onimusha (the world's only four part trilogy). Go head to head against the mighty Metal Gears with your trusty cardboard box. Run and Gun to your heart's content with Jak, Daxter, Ratchet, and Clank. Let the Prince of Persia scale the walls of Castlevania (Actually, I would pay quite well to see this game).

But wait, there's more!
Has anyone found any silver linings on this otherwise terrible event? In my case, I realized that I'd been spending way too much time on CoD simply because it was easier than working at other games. I found myself thinking things like, "I could put in the time to level up in Oblivion, maybe tackle the next mindscape in Psychonauts, OR I could just turn on the PS3 and do several rounds of Black Ops." I'd get a similar rush and feeling of accomplishment from doing well there that I would from completing a difficult puzzle or filling out some well planned leveling scheme. Why go the hard route when the easy one is so much simpler?
I'm not trying to ego trip about my 'leet CoD skillz" here or anything. At my best, I'm only slightly above average, if at all. What I'm saying is that the dozens of little victories I got each day were apparently greater to me than games that took more thought and effort. And that's not something I particularly enjoyed finding out. It's a habit I intend to break. Does that mean I'll be giving up on Black Ops? No. But I think that when the month is done, I might not be spending so much time on it. And not just because I expect the servers to go right back down from the massive influx of people scratching a month long itch.
Don't mistake me, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with Black Ops (well, at least nothing inherently wrong with competitive multiplayer gaming anyway). I've just never thought of myself as a 'take the easy road' kind of person, and that's what this title turned out to be for me.

Of course, what I'd really like is some sweet Portal 2 goodness. Seems like just the thing to get the old brain working again. And when funds allow, I'll most definitely get it and drop a review here. But for now I'll be entering the Uncharted territory of New Vegas, looking for the inFamous Arkham Asylum, and deciding whether or not the Devil May Cry.

Skill Drops: An Alternative to Random Drops

Hello again, folks. Cobalt Monkey here to share today's view from the treetops. Well, actually let's descend for a bit and get the view from under the canopy. When I venture down to the Underlands for a nice walk on occasion, I'll come upon a banana that has fallen from the trees above. And that's a nice surprise. But you know what wouldn't be nice? If that was the only way to get bananas. Imagine, if you can, a horrible, terrible world in which monkeys like myself could only get bananas once in a blue moon!



I'll give you a moment to collect yourself after witnessing such a sad sight.
...
Let us move on.

The good news is that bananas can easily be obtained either by a monkey skillful enough to climb up and get them, or by going to the store and buying them.
The bad news is that this abominable concept has long ago infiltrated even the best of our games in the form of Random Loot Drops. Most common in RPG games, and the very backbone of MMOs like World of Warcraft, but not unknown outside of other game types as well.
For the unfamiliar, the Random Loot Drop mechanic means that no matter how many times or how quickly and easily you defeat an enemy, there will only be a certain (and usually very small) percentage chance that it will drop a given item. Why is this so? Many people have been over the idea of the Skinner Box in numerous articles, so I won't be going in depth on it here. Random Drops are a way to condition people to keep playing long after it stops being fun.

Let's look at an example you non-jungle dwellers can probably relate to a bit more.
Let's say you go to work all week. You work hard and do your job diligently. Friday rolls around and your paycheck is nearly there.
Only it turns out that the boss rolled some dice to see which days you'd get paid for and how much. Instead of getting paid for five long days of hard work, you'll be getting paid for two days. Now, its not always like that. Sometimes you get nothing at all. Sometimes you get all you earned. And if you're really lucky, then once every couple of years, you'll get a little bonus too. But by and large you'll see little to no pay for your efforts.
Would you stay in this kind of job? No. So why are we killing the same enemies over and over for hours on end, hoping that the next one hits the 1% and the item you've been searching for drops, and calling it "Fun"? Skinner Box.

That's not to say that the idea of Random Drops has no place in gaming. It just needs to be an "Icing on the cake" type of thing, not a goal in itself. Here's a game that implements Random Drops well.

For those of you too busy staring at Karin to actually read, the title of the game is Shadow Hearts: Covenant. This may not have been the first game to do something like this, but it is the first one I've seen.
In this game, the randomly dropped items were never things you couldn't get elsewhere. They were always simple healing items, or extra accessories on rare occasion. But what sets it apart more is that you can earn items by playing skillfully. There were numerous conditions you could satisfy during a battle to get additional items.
Take no damage.
Perfectly execute your attacks.
Perform an impressive combo.
Not letting the enemy get a turn.
Etc.
Each of those done during a fight added to the money, items, and such that you would get after a fight. None of them were required, nor were the items you could obtain usually unique. In fact, doing well most often just got you to the next tier of equipment a bit sooner. Icing on the cake.

What got me thinking about this was a bit of conversation about Dark Souls, the upcoming spiritual successor to Demon's Souls, that I read on a message board. A simple statement that I agree with wholeheartedly. "It doesn't take skill to farm for hours." Demon's Souls was an excellent game by itself, but if I had to pick one flaw in it, it would be that a several of its trophies were earned for forging weapons with randomly dropped items to create better weapons. Do you really deserve a trophy for being lucky? This especially stands out in a title like this, one that's built almost entirely around player skill. If you have enough skill, then even the most difficult boss in the game can be taken out with the weakest weapons and armor. Despite having completed the game a couple times, it took me forever to get the platinum simply because the items I needed to forge would not drop. I eventually had to resort to trading online to get them. Not something I should have to do in a single player game, and if even one had been placed in a hard to access area of the map somewhere instead of relying on a random drop, then I wouldn't have had to.

That's when my thoughts drifted back to Shadow Hearts. What if such a system as that could be used in other types of games? Random Drops would be replaced with Skill Drops. That is, killing certain enemies in certain ways gets you particular rewards. This way a game would actually reward you for being good at a particularly skillful challenge.
Examples:
Kill an enemy with a backstab
Kill an enemy after parrying
Kill an enemy with a certain weapon or spell combination

Or maybe not just kills.
Maybe something like Kill an enemy after landing a three hit combo that finishes with a fireball, etc.
Each enemy could have several different possible drops, and you get the ones for which you've satisfied the conditions. So, using the above examples, let's say after you land your three hit fireball combo, you backstab them as they're getting up. You'd get both rewards.
This would still extend game time (which is the one and only goal of Random Drops), but through encouragement of expanding both the player's and character's skills.

Like this idea? Hate it? Got a better one? Let us know in the comments.

The Truth About Peach

So, a thought occurred to me today. (It had to happen eventually, I know. Ha ha, very funny. Don't quit your day job.) I've seen several articles in the past about Princess Peach Toadstool. Some claim she is just a figurehead. Others say she's an enchantress using her feminine wiles, which are apparently incredibly rare in the Mushroom Kingdom, to control all the little toad men of the country into doing her bidding.


Some even claim she is a usurper of the throne and that Bowser truly is the rightful king. They cite that the scaly sovereign is far more similar to anything else in the mushroom kingdom than the normal human Peach, whose right to the throne isn't ever explained. And it's true, we never do see her parents or even get mention of them. Any of the little toad people who claim to be relatives are clearly lying.

But let's think for a moment. What happens when Peach is kidnapped by Bowser? Does the kingdom suddenly stop running? No. Unless a given area of the kingdom is directly under attack, things proceed in a perfectly normal manner. Same old, same old with no interruptions. Even in Mario 64, it was only the castle that was affected by the invasion, while the rest of the country went on about its business.

Look too at Super Mario RPG. Aside from a few boss monsters here and there, the kingdom is relatively fine. And once those few are defeated, it's back to business as usual. Peach is even rescued halfway through the game and immediately leaves again to go with you, ignoring whatever important royal works needed to be done. But as we journey with her, we see she's actually quite a capable fighter, and valued party member. In fact, it quickly becomes apparent that she could escape Bowser's clutches at any time, and even avoid getting kidnapped in the first place.

This is when I started understanding Peach. She's not a princess. She's not an enchantress. She's not just a figurehead. She's all that and more. She is, in fact, the first line of defense for the Mushroom Kingdom.

Preemptive
Emergency
Avoidance of
Catastrophe's
Harbingers

She's the lightning rod that draws danger to her before it can ever reach her subjects. Under her reign, not one single casualty has ever befallen her people, while Mario has laid waste to thousands upon thousands of enemy troops. The worst the average citizen has had to endure is a temporary inconvenience. Peach and Mario work together to be the focus of all enemy efforts. But even they can't handle everything. Bowser can replace his fallen minions at a moment's notice. His ranks are truly staggering. So, how does Mario manage to survive? It's because while all enemy eyes are on him, the Mushroom Army is out there covertly taking out enemies by the score and leaving our hero helpful items to ensure he lives to remain the focus. Meanwhile, Bowser is so focused on keeping Peach captive that he never notices.

And what happens when an enemy that can't be dealt with this way attacks? The lacy white gloves come off, that's what. As the fiends of Mario RPG found out, she's more than capable of being out there on the front line along side Mario and delivering a heaping helping of princess pwnage.



So, when you inevitably see the next headline in the Mushroom Kingdom Times proclaiming that Peach has been kidnapped yet again, don't just roll your eyes. That means she's doing her job, descending into darkness alone so that her citizens can rest easy. Show a little respect. She's earned it.

Morality: A Red and Blue Issue?

Would you like to read this blog, or look for another?
Please select a response:
Read.
Don't Read.

Okay, those aren't actual links to choices, but they are your options when choosing to read this. If you've played any games with a Morality Meter in the past decade, then I'll bet you can guess which one is the "good" option. Morality is a very complex issue, but most games reduce it to a black and white (or red and blue) decision. As Yahtzee said once in his Zero Punctuation Bioshock review, "You're either Mother Theresa, or a baby-eater. There's no middle ground." And he's quite right most of the time. You can't just be a nun with the nibbles. The games sometimes even only reward you for achieving maximum good and evil values, while leaving those with neutral views with nothing.

Some games do things a bit differently, which is to be applauded. Let's look at Jade Empire. Instead of having a Light Side and a Dark Side, Bioware used two opposing philosophies that have basically the same goal in mind, but with vastly different reasoning and execution. The "blue" path is the Way of the Open Palm. It believes that those with power have a responsibility to those without and should help them in any way they can. The "red" path is the Way of the Closed Fist. It states that by helping others you only inspire them to stay weak. After all, if their needs are met by others, then how could they improve themselves?
Here are two opposing views with the same goal, and both have merit to their ways of thinking. Neither one is strictly good or evil.

There's also the newer Mass Effect method in which your blue and orange meters are independent of one another. It's not a sliding scale like we've seen before where doing a bit of evil takes the meter closer to red and further from blue. In this system you can be a jerk sometimes, but still be an overall nice guy without having to sacrifice any of your blue meter. However there's also a quirk in the system. You can't pick certain options associated with your meters unless they're full enough. Meaning, basically, that you can't steal candy from a baby when the chance arises unless you'd also kicked a dog earlier. So, this system is a little more versatile than the sliding scale, but doesn't really allow you to play a middle ground character either.

The problem in these games is that we're still given a meter to see how much in one direction or the other we've gone. Our actions are judged by an outside third party. In the real world, no one can give you your morality. You make it yourself through the way you handle the choices presented to you. You can take inspiration from others, certainly, but that too is your decision. Now, those around you may well judge you for your decisions, but no matter which you pick it's as likely a given person will agree with you as disagree. But with the meter thrown in it's as if every time you make a choice, God pops down to say Yay or Nay. Last I checked, that didn't happen in real life.

Hmm... Perhaps I should check that one more time.
*steals puppies from a baby*

Okay, but that's not a typical occurrence.
*Returns puppies*

When the idea of making a moral decision is put into games, it becomes more about asking which stats you want your character to have as opposed to actually answering the question before you.
I can't help but think that this is another effect of streamlining for the sake of more casual gamers. It's certainly easier to make a decision when you can see all the consequences lined out before you. But doesn't that take away from the gravity of your decisions? You choose to be good or evil for what it gets you, not for how you feel about the consequences.

Let's look back at a game called Deus Ex now.
Here is a game full of moral choices, but with no meter to classify them. You're just as capable of giving a homeless person some change as you are of killing him and taking his stuff. You're also presented with the option of using lethal or non-lethal force in all your encounters. If you've been playing the game like a pure shooter, then you're in for a bit of a surprise when you find out that for a third of the game, you may have been mercilessly slaughtering your new allies.
Even so there is no drawback to using fully lethal force, and you're still allowed to join up with them because they need someone like you desperately. The only punishment is a few 'disappointed in you' comments from some characters. However, this personally bothered me enough that I restricted myself to non-lethal for a large portion of the game on future playthroughs. Fittingly enough, this got me a few 'disappointed in you' comments from other characters.

Later in that same game, I was exploring a new area that contained a closed office building. I promptly broke into it and started looking around for things I could use. As I passed by a phone sitting on a desk, it rang. Expecting to have a bit of a giggle, I answered it. It was an enemy of mine on the other end that was capable of tracking my actions and location. It pointed out that despite the fact that I claimed to be fighting injustice, here I was ignoring whatever laws I found inconvenient.
This made me stop and think a moment. I am an elite cyborg/ninja thing with all sorts of nanomodification. If I were caught doing this, then I could easily overpower or evade the local police and continue on my quest to defeat Evil. As I am on said quest, I have to be as prepared as possible. So, does that mean I get a free pass on doing all sorts of underhanded deeds ranging from theft to murder so long as the people who are supposedly worse than me are stopped?
Now, that is a moral question. We've moved out of a black and white scenario and are operating well within the shades of gray (or purple).
Contrast that with the cut and dry choices in the game inFamous, where your only real concern over who or who not to kill was what kind of powers it worked toward and trophies it unlocked.
The game that made no claim to morality did a better job of expressing it than did the game that touted it as a feature. That's not to say that inFamous isn't a fun and entertaining experience. It's just mindless fun that's trying to stick on a morality bar for extra replay value. I'm looking forward to the sequel anyway and will surely pick it up when I can. I do hope they've done a bit more with it though.

Well, those are my thoughts on the Morality issue. What are yours? Let us know in the comments.

Gamers Getting Ripped Off

Today I logged into Reddit.com and was greeted by this post here. A single post from a forum that got me instantly ticked off. For those of you terrified of the Link Monster, (it's more afraid of you than you are of it, I swear) I'll spell it out here. It shows a link to a hacked save file from the PC version of Dead Space 2 that "not only has all that stuff (some previously bugged 'elite suits'), but all the console-only DLC items as well. About to test this myself, and will confirm once I reach the store. EDIT: Confirmed. Enjoy."

This means that everything they're asking you to pay to unlock on consoles is already on the disc you bought. If you gave them a single penny for a new suit or weapon, then you've been ripped off. You shelled out money to downloaded an unlock code for something you'd already paid for. This is completely unacceptable. It's related a bit to my post a couple weeks ago about the recent emergence of a dependency on patches to fix known problems post release instead of fixing them before shipping. Only here you're not getting a broken product (that I'm aware of; any DS2 owners feel free to chime in in the comments), you're getting charged multiple times for a finished one.

I understand the need to make money. The lousy state of the economy has raised the sale of used games, which means that fewer new copies are being sold, and that translates to less money for the game's devs and producers. That's a problem for them and I get that. But this isn't the way to fix it. I loved the first Dead Space, and am still interested in playing the sequel because from all I've heard it's a quality title. Before hearing this I would gladly have dropped the money on a new copy of this game. Not now though. They've assured I get my copy used. I have no problem paying full price for everything that's on the disc, so I'll make certain to get it for a low enough price to compensate for all those additional charges.

Now, I think DLC is a great idea. The premise is that the developers spent extra time and money creating something in addition to the normal game. For a truly excellent example of DLC done right, look no further that the game Borderlands put out by the company Gearbox. They listened to feedback from fans and decided that there was something more to be done with the game. They put in time and effort to make a quality piece of work that made me want to pay them more just to get more time with their game. And look how much more money they made because of this. Initial game cost $50 USD. DLCs were $9.99 each for the four of them. All told, Gearbox and its publishers made nearly $90 from me alone off that one game and its DLC, not to mention that coinciding with the release of the last DLC they also put out a Game of the Year edition that contained all $90 worth of game and DLC for $50. Compare that with the amounts that the Dead Space 2 guys (I can't say for certain if it was the devs or EA who was responsible for this debacle) will be getting trying to nickel and dime their customers. Borderlands kept putting out quality work and asking their customers to pay them for it. Dead Space 2 put out quality work, then asked their customers to keep paying for it. Tell me, which do you think is going to make more in the long run?

These locked away suits and guns in Dead Space 2 are also an example of so-called Day One DLC, which may or may not be a ripoff depending on how its done. Day One DLC is downloadable content that's available from the time the game hits shelves. Whether or not it's a ripoff depends on two things.
1. Is the content included on the disc the consumer bought, (as is the case here)?
2. Is the content actually additional content and not content that was held back intentionally so that consumers could be charged more for it?
If it meets either of those requirements, then the consumers are most definitely being taken advantage of by someone.

It's especially sad when good games do this. It's hard to be angry at them and yell "No one buy this!" because the game itself is good and you want others to enjoy it too. All I can say again is to vote with your wallet. Support the game, but don't support this type of business model! Give the game rave reviews (if it deserves them) and great praise. But don't spend a cent on their DLC, and maybe this this type of thinking will eventually disappear. Might be a slim hope, but it's the only one we've got.

Mass Effect 2 PS3 Review

I finished this game recently, and I think it's safe to say that I'm ready for more. And I mean that both ways. What was here was great, but despite sinking just over 40 hours into it, I can't help but feel like there should be more. Let's get to the breakdown.

Presentation: 8
Bioware tells us that this PS3 version of the game is running with the same engine created for its upcoming successor. The effect is somewhat lost on me because I don't have an HD TV. So for me everything looks fine. Not great, but fine. Only real complaint is that the subtitles blend in with the backgrounds far too often and I can end up missing conversation, or not being able to read my dialog choices.
The sound is really very nice. Everything is crisp and clear, and the voices are mostly very well done. Only a few lines are delivered in a cheesy fashion. The rest all come out quite nicely, the female version of our main character (often referred to as "FemShep") in particular. The music in the game is adequate, but nothing really stands out for me.

Story: 8
As a PS3 player, you're coming into the game missing a very large part of the story, and you can definitely tell. There are many points where certain events happened that I could see were significant, but I couldn't tell how. However, by the end of the game you're mostly up to speed, though I was personally left a little confused with too many unanswered questions. I get the feeling that some of these same questions were also unanswered in the last game. Building tension is fine, but don't drag it out too long or you risk loss of interest. Hopefully there will be some answers forthcoming in the next game.

The central story of the game is actually pretty short. Most of the game's story comes from the side missions which have you recruiting new party members, and subsequently doing another mission of about the same length to secure their loyalty, thus unlocking their best abilities and upping their chances for survival. Each of these smaller stories is a welcome bit of character development. But after the first few the formula becomes a bit stale. This is something I hope they can improve on in ME3. Just a matter of preference, I guess, but I'd rather be picking up party members as I pursue the main mission rather than have my mission be to get party members.

Gameplay: 7
I went into this game expecting something like the Star Wars: KotOR games, but ended up with something closer to the Uncharted series. This left me with mixed feelings. You see, in Uncharted you do a lot of cover based combat (that is, most of the time your objective is to get behind a wall or small obstruction, only peeking out for a moment to shoot when the enemy pauses), but it doesn't feel like it. There is tons of cover around, but it just seems like part of the scenery that happens to serve as cover. In this game you can always tell when you're about to enter combat because of the sudden appearance of waist high walls, whether or not there is any reason for them to be there. It really stands out and makes the game predictable. The only thing that really changes up the gunplay at all is the different types of bars you'll be depleting. Enemies can have Barriers, Shields, and Armor in addition to their health that must be depleted before you can begin damaging them. You and your party can have special powers to help with that, but most of the time it's faster just to burn through them. Ammo usually abounds, and when you need it enemies drop it.

Outside of combat things are a little better. You never know when you'll stumble on a sidequest. Conversations are handled nicely too. It's great that your character is not a silent protagonist with few lines of written text. Instead you select a short general idea from a wheel of options and then Shepard has the actual conversation aloud while elaborating on the selected idea. This way Shepard actually has character instead of being a boring blank slate.

ME2 also has an interesting new take on the morality meter mechanic. Instead of being either Good or Evil, you can be as much of both as you want. Selecting certain dialog options or doing mini-QTEs (pressing L2 or R2 when prompted during cutscenes) allows you to fill your Paragon and Renegade gauges separately. This lets you make choices later that tend more to extremes of those views. These choices can effect things later in the game, as well as in the sequel. How? Well, we don't know yet. But it should be interesting to see.

The low point of the entire game is the tedious mining mini-game. It's just boring, and, as I found out after completing the story, largely pointless. I ended up using perhaps a fifth of what all I mined. Sadly, by that time I had already mined every planet in the game dry. When ME3 rolls around, I should have enough raw materials to have built my own space armada. Let's see how the enemy handles 5,000 Normandys!
Seriously though, if I don't get something out of that I'll never play again (until later).

The PS3 version comes with a few extras. If you buy the game new, you'll get a code to download a DLC pack priced at $15 USD for free. So, if you're interested in this title, then get it new while you can. You'll want the Operation Firewalker, Operation Overlord, Zaneed, Kasumi, and Shadow Broker DLCs. They add a much needed bit of diversity to the gameplay.
Perhaps more importantly, you'll get an interactive comic that allows you to read along with the story of the first game and make the same major choices.

Characters: 9
I could go on about these guys and girls (and indeterminates) for a long while, but I'm going to keep it brief to avoid spoilers. I will say that these characters are very well developed and interesting. Fun to talk to and learn about. By the end of the game you'll be wanting to do your best to save them all.
That's right, any and all of the main characters in this game can permanently die...including Shepard. How will they handle this in the sequel? No idea.

Replay value: Fairly high.
This one's tricky. See, what you do here will have a big effect on things in the next title. (Massive, one might even say.) No matter what you do here, you don't know how it will carry over. That means you'll likely want to replay the game. Just not until you see how it all plays out in the sequel.

Overall Score: 8 out of 10
There's more to like here than not, but the parts that do need work really need it. Fortunately those are few. If they spice up the gunplay and make the environments more sensible, then I'm sure ME3 with have no trouble claiming a perfect 10 score.

Quality: Not a Patch on the Old Days?

How many of you out there have played a game with a glitch? Show of hands.
...
Okay. Those of you who raised your hands, please leave the internet. Why would you even do that? You have to know I can't see them. I think it's just better that we cull you from the herd while we still can.
To everyone else, I'm going to guess that-- Hey, what are you doing? No, not the sad face!

Tch. Fine. You can stay.

Where was I? Ah, yes.
I'm going to guess that it hasn't been all that long since you encountered your last glitch. Were you wandering the desert of New Vegas when you suddenly fell through the world? Perhaps you had been cruising the galaxy in Mass Effect 2 for about 30 hours when your save file got corrupted. Maybe an NPC refused to acknowledge that you were dangling the Bloodgrass she wanted in front of her, and so had to roam Cyrodil (minus 1 NPC) as a vampire, permanently unable to interact with most "normal" people. Or you may just be a member of the CoD Glitch of the Month Club. This month it's free kills from attacking corpses. Yay!

Glitches know no boundary. They can hit any game in countless ways. Some can be dealt with by clever means on the part of the player. Others will put an end to your adventures, leaving you with nothing but the dull glow of the cursor sitting on the New Game option.
But what's this? Riding in on the wave of the future, Online Gaming, it's *dramatic pause*

Patch Man!

With this new hero in town all the old frustrating glitches are a thing of the past! In the event a nefarious bug infiltrates your machine, wrecking your saves and putting your digital damsels in distress, you can rest easy knowing that Patch Man will soon be there! Just raise up a cry to the afflicted game's developers and they will chant a mystical code that rolls out their champion to rewrite all wrongs. Yes, life sure is great now that no one's seen a glitch in years...

Oh, wait a second. All those examples up there near the top are from pretty recent titles. What terrible fate has befallen our hero? Is Ash from the Evil Dead movies the one they have chanting the code?

Okay, so maybe I didn't pronounce every single syllable...

No, I'm afraid the reality is much worse. Turns out that instead of using the option to patch a game after release as a way to correct oversights, many companies are using it as an excuse to release unfinished or untested work. Not all of them, of course, but too many.

Let's look back to the old days for a moment. Many games back then had glitches, but how many were the kind that could really take the fun out of a game? You could be pretty certain that if a glitch made it's way into the final product it would be either very minor like the odd clipping issue, or even entertaining like the ungodly amount of things you can do in Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

The point is that if a game came out back then you could be certain it's company's Quality Assurance team had put it through the wringer with beta testing, feedback groups, and hours upon hours of play testing. That's not how it is anymore.

So, who's to blame? Well, everyone really. The developers for making the game wrong to begin with. The publishers for not giving devs the time they needed to make things right, and instead rushing title after title out the door. And lastly, all of us for supporting this type of business model by constantly buying these titles one after another. After all, why would Activision waste time beta testing Black Ops when they can just move on to Modern Warfare 3 in a year's time and collect another $650 million a week after launch?

Corporate greed and our own willingness to jump on the next big thing are the heart of our problems, my friends. If we can conquer our own tendency to head toward the cliff like lemmings whenever a launch day is set, then we can send a message to the publishers that just want the games out as fast as possible. They won't listen to angry rants or sensible criticism. Only the siren's song of Ben Franklin gets their attention.

You know you want me.

Do keep in mind that not every company is like this though. For example, Media Molecule delayed the release of LittleBigPlanet 2 to make sure it was done, even though they said they could have just patched it. Way to go, guys. Quality and customer satisfaction before quick profit. The ball is in our court now. Let's do our best to give support to the companies who care.

Black Ops: Thoughts on the Prestige System

Well, it's the future now. 2011. Still no flying car. Sure, swinging from vine to vine is okay for local travel. But what about when you want to visit places outside the jungle? What's a monkey to do? Oh, well. At least there are some new things. You're looking at one of them.
Hello and welcome to the first ever blog post from the Sixth Nation of Gamers. What's the purpose of this blog, you ask? Well, it's mainly to give you some opinions on various aspects of games and gaming. Because if we all know one thing, it's that the internet is sorely lacking in opinions. Other than that, I'll be posting various reviews for games I play, as well as anything informative or amusing I happen across in my online wanderings. I've already got a bit of a backlog on reviews for games which you can find here.
I decided to open with a few thoughts about a popular game these days, Call of Duty: Black Ops. Now, I know what you're thinking. "This is just going to be either another list of complaints and whining, or someone telling everyone to stop complaining. If I wanted that, I'd visit the official forums." Well, you're wrong. Mostly.

Let me start by saying, I've played a good bit so far and enjoyed it for the most part. I could babble on complaining about the host migrations, the hit detection issues, trouble with the party system, and other technical problems that can get in the way of the fun, but ultimately I'd just have to admit there's a reason I've put more than 80 hours into it so far.
It's fun.
Yes, I hope these issues get resolved, but that's not what I'm talking about today. No, today's discussion is about the Prestige feature.

God no, not that terrible electro-clone movie. *shudders*

I mean the option to reset to level 1 once you complete level 50. I've done it myself and intend to do it several more times. I probably would have shelved the game by now without this feature. It's a great way to keep the game fresh. It makes me use guns I would otherwise ignore. Grant you, I still usually make my way back to my trusty AK47 because it fits so well with my play style. Still, I wouldn't have even touched LMGs or sniper rifles if I hadn't had my assault rifle security blanket taken away. I would have missed out on trying to learn new ways to play.
So, is there something I take issue with? Well, here's a chart straight from the CoD Wiki:

Prestige Level Unlock
Prestige 1 Prestige Leaderboard, Prestige Team Deathmatch, Custom Class 6, New Emblem, New Background
Prestige 2 New Emblem, New Background
Prestige 3 Custom Class 7, New Emblem, New Background
Prestige 4 New Emblem, New Background
Prestige 5 Custom Class 8, New Emblem, New Background
Prestige 6 New Emblem, New Background
Prestige 7 Custom Class 9, New Emblem, New Background
Prestige 8 New Emblem, New Background
Prestige 9 Custom Class 10, New Emblem, New Background
Prestige 10 New Emblem, New Background, Prestige Hardcore
Prestige 11 Face Paints, New Emblem, New Background
Prestige 12 New Emblem, New Background
Prestige 13 Clan Tag Colors, New Emblem, New Background
Prestige 14 Golden Camouflage, New Emblem, New Background
Prestige 15 Prestige Pure, New Emblem, New Background

You get new emblems and backgrounds each time, other than that you have to prestige 10 times to get anything other than an additional custom class out of it. Now, I'm not exactly the most competitive player, so maybe there's some reason to keep 9 additional classes on hand that I'm unaware of. I only keep two set up myself. One for Run & Gun and one for full on Anti-Air. Now, I can fully understand wanting to keep an extra class for large and small maps specifically, or to just be able to change up what your enemy has to deal with. Even then, how many do you really need? Five or six? So, why do we get ten? They may not be much, but I'd really rather have some of the other stuff earlier, like clan tag colors, or face paint. And really, how many people are going to get to 15 and play Prestige Pure? How hard would it be to actually find a game on there? I'd expect anyone who reaches that level to spend quite a long time searching. And when they did get a game, what are the odds that they'll get it with an acceptable amount of lag?

It occurred to me that the devs already have a solution to this problem. It just isn't applied to this aspect. Like with weapons and perks, why not let the player choose what they unlock? Leave the Emblems and backgrounds be, but let us decide whether or not we want another class or an additional camo option? In my humble opinion, I think giving each person a choice in this matter would make the most players happy. You see, the hardcore players will still fight their way up to prestige 15 no matter what's there, and they still get their emblem to show off. The casuals might only prestige once or twice, but can snag the stuff that makes them happy. You leave an overall positive impression on everyone.

Well, that's it for this fist look at the View from the Treetops. Thanks for reading, and let us know what you think in the comments.