Comparing real time strategy games of the same genre.

I could start off by saying you how unabashedly Blizzard ripped of the Warhammer 40k franchise by making Starcraft. Indeed going on looks alone, both of these have Humans (Space Marines and Terrans), "the old advanced race" (Eldar and Protoss) and the insectoid aliens (Tyrannids and Zerg). The similarities are striking and not coincidental, yet they are only skin deep. But makes it tempting to compare them none the less. RTS players know it has happened before, and will happen again with the sequels. I could also say that Starcraft has been the dominant (video game) franchise. The offering of Warhammer titles had been quite meager up until Relic made Dawn of War. But with that, a more superior title was released in the RTS genre. With added mechanics and concepts, which led to radically different gameplay from what had been the standard in titles such as Command and Conquer, Age Of Empires and Starcraft.

All the latter have a arcade-like "spend and win" mechanic. Which boils down to massing an army together. Be it of one unit type or a mix of units. Eventually a battle is fought between huge armies and usually the biggest, or most expensive, comes out on top. Massing comes natural when you have to tech up one way or the other. Spending time and resources on buildings to build a specific unit type is risky. So a consequence of saving on the one building is the funding the one building you did build, and produce the specific unit type it produces.

I had to point this out because Starcraft has this gameplay down, almost to perfection. And with Starcraft 2, we'll see a further evolution of this kind of play. Expendable units, used to (hard) counter the others. With Buildings as technology investments. Starcraft 2 will even go as far as one unit per building. It's quite clear that reality has taken a back seat in this scenario. Which has led me to say that Starcraft is an Arcade RTS.
As a side note: It has become to such a degree that supply depots, which I take it were used to "store stuff in" (i.e. to expand your population cap), have taken the role of walls. This of course was because Starcraft players would wall off their base with supply depots. In Starcraft 2, Blizzard has added a "gate" functionality to the supply depot by making it possible to sink them into the ground. Or, how meta-gameplay feeds into the perceived reality of the Starcraft universe.
Disclamer: I am aware that the cream of the crop Korean Starcraft players don't actually mass all that much. They win matches with a handfull of units and godly micromanagement skills (which still strikes me as arcade play). And seldom make it into the endgame scenario. It is not how the majority (including you) plays the game however.

The opposite could be said for the Dawn of War series. Base building and resource management has been minimized and put in the battlefield to focus more on the actual tactics. DoW1 still had a case of teching with buidings. But the evolution in DoW2 has been an even bigger move into the battlefield. Bases consist out of one portal-like building that produces all units. Not all units are available at start but are unlocked by, essentially, buying the next tier. Resources are found on the battlefield as inexhaustable strategic points. These also form the goals of most battles. I should also mention that the influence of that other Relic juggernaut Company of Heroes was instrumental to the DoW evolution. In terms of gameplay CoH was based on DoW1. And in turn DoW2 was based on both of these. CoH cut back on base building and unit count, expanded on strategic points and added the retreat function. Coh is more complex in nature than DoW. This can both be a good or bad thing depending on what you want in an RTS. CoH has more complex strategy and longer games. DoW is more straight forward, has smaller maps and has shorter matches. But I digress. The biggest contrast between Starcraft and DoW is that in DoW units are a big investment, and letting one unit die can seal your fate. All these units are rather expensive and can be customized in various ways. Mainly modified weaponry lets you deal with different threats. Hero units can equip armor and weapons mid game to make them stronger. Much like you would in, say, Diablo. To help your units service there's a "retreat" command which orders your units to leg it back to base where they can be reinforced for a fraction of the unit cost. This also saves any special weapons they might be carrying and preserves their level, as these units gain experience.

The observation is this. Starcraft is heading along the way of fast paced arcade gameplay using expendable units. Dawn of War is going the way of an RPG with limited yet highly customisable "party members" and added realism with unit AI, physics and a cover mechanic.
And as such, they also become much harder to compare. Both being at their own end of the RTS spectrum.

Fallout 3: Good Karma

I forced myself to write a glowing post about Fallout 3 only a few weeks ago. Just to level out my cosmic balance. But since the game got praised into high heaven by just about every other body on the planet, I'll try and keep it short.

When you look past all the flaws in Fallout, there is still a good many reasons to play this game.
And in fact, I have loved my time in the wasteland.
Maybe we can chalk this up to escapism and a hunger for exploration.

Maybe most interesting of all is the greater story found in Fallout 3. And i'm not talking about the main story line, because that, in fact, is rather bland in comparison.
Once you set out to explore this blasted world you're free to explore deserted and destroyed ruins of buildings, each of which could be considered a chapter in the big book of fallout 3. Each of which is a bite-sized short story. Told in the form of audiotapes or through the environment. In some cases you'll even meet the short story protagonists in the flesh. Or, what's left of it anyway.
Not only are these stories stand-alone, they each and all have their own level design. A beginning and an end. Some of the better ones are actually quite linear. Some have a very nice reward at the end. Like the bobbleheads you can collect.
On a side note: the bobblehead that came with the collectors edition is awesome. And I must have been one of the happy few that actually got the Outcast statue with it aswel.
Of course, some stories are told through side quests. But with these my imagination wasn't as actively involved, and it generally has more impressively written dialog.
Yes, the dialogues in Fallout 3 are quite bad. Have I mentioned this before? I don't know, even I don't read my blog. But rest assured it's not all bad.
some of the dialog is quite good. And well acted. If you know anything about the voice talent in Fallout 3 you're probably thinking of Liam Neeson right away. He's a good actor and his voice sounds comfortably familiar but the actual performance is a bit monotone.
No, the best actor in the game is Malcolm McDowell as President Eden. He's the most likable, life-like and sympathetic person around. Wink wink, nudge nudge. If you've played the game you'll understand the irony.
The runner up is the guy who voiced Harold, one of the most memorable characters. To bad he's not even listed on imdb.com, which implies he's not even a registered actor. Wink wink, nudge nudge. sigh.
Maybe we should list the likes of Bob Crosby, Roy Brown and Cole Porter. Since they add so much atmosphere and character to the world of Fallout.
On a special note: this game has one of my personal favorites, Paul Eiding in it. Unfortunately Bethesda had him only do his old man voice. Which is such a waste.

What else is a major appeal in playing an RPG? For me, Building a character is a big part of the fun.
The type of character you play influences gameplay quite a bit. And as with all RPGs, you take out of it what you put in.
Pre-building a character in your mind does kind of kill the spontaneity, but it helps to define how you will play the game, and what the experience will be like.
On my first play-through I was a good character, a saint with a gun dealing judgement on the lawless. The character was build to be the infiltrator I played in Mass Effect, and so relied heavily on stealth and long range combat. Using sniper rifles and energy weapons.
My second character was made into a medium to close range combat powerhouse using heavy armour, explosives, heavy weapons and melee combat. He's also an evil slave trading computer hacking bastard with a short temper and. I enjoyed playing him the most. But I think a lot has to do with the fact I understood the RPG mechanics behind the game better, and so was more effective at making this character work. Short of abusing the game.
The second time through I played almost entirely without VATS, playing it as a shooter (I do like aiming manually). Which I recon was more fun. If not for fallout's clunky combat mechanics. Luckily, burning ghouls to a crisp at close range doesn't require a lot of aiming and is great fun regardless.
If you want to explore the entire game without getting bored of it all, you'll have to set your own goals a bit though. So what I did was set out to reach specific goals for each play session. Like, explore the Nuka Cola Factory, go get the Luck Bobblehead. Go get this piece of armor. Collect this unique weapon. In many cases couldn't have done it without the Wiki (looking up locations of some of the gear) though. So again, the spontaneity is kind of lost. But I recon it's okay since I don't have 200 hours to spend on one character. And there's other games I would like to play. Like Dawn Of War 2. Which is another game where you shoot up green hulking monstrosities under the rule of a fascist leader.

As a close I would say that once a character is built, all loot has been hoarded, all quests are completed and the map has been fully explored, the game is done.
And as it stands, I'm done with Fallout 3. Unless future downloadable content provides a big enough draw, I might be done for a while.
If not, there seems to be a healthy mod community out there, and so far I've been seeing some interesting mods. Maybe all my wishes will be granted in the end (or I should make my own). But thus far I haven't bothered. Maybe for a future play-through in a world where days run 48 hours long, transportation is eliminated due to new portal technology, and every week there's spaghetti-Friday.
I already know what I'd want to play. A neutral unarmed combat stealth lady-killer ninja cyborg.
Yeah, that sounds great...

Fallout 3: Bad Karma

_{Disclaimer: I do apologize for the length of my posts. The fact of the matter is that these will become standalone chapters in Bonesnack: Now a book.}

I wanted to talk to you about Fallout 3. A game that had me up to a point where I almost forgot I had a blog. After playing Mass Effect I jumped right into the Fallout universe. A shooter RPG after a shooter RPG. Yet, the difference was still quite dramatic. I'll start off with the bad. Fallout 3 has the looks of a shooter. Yet it is a Role Playing Game through and through. Maybe it is too much of an RPG for it's own good. Making it hard to give it a pass as the first person shooter it pretends to be.

I was quite shocked when I first got to feel the controls of this game, expecting it to control somewhat like COD4 or Crysis or even Bioshock. In Short, it doesn't at all. All of this might be a minor thing but it does take some getting used to. For instance, I was quite horrified to see the game "complete" my steps. Which feels like when you scale a flight of steps, stepping up only with your right foot, one flight at a time. It's hard to describe because it's so unusual. Like the game has a "right foot forward policy". When you crouch down and move about, the game will "add a step" in order put your right foot forward when you have manually put your left foot forward. I'm pretty sure there's a reason for this. And if so, I'm pretty sure it's an RPG thing. And if so, I'm pretty sure it's rooted in outmoded design. To clarify, this is a bad thing. It's obnoxious and clunky and it has no place in entertainment. Are we to count our steps to prevent the sky falling down? Do not condition us to have an obsessive-compulsive disorder!

At first I thought this quirk might be there to make the third person view work. But then as I entered said viewpoint, I was met with disbelief yet again. My stomach turned. Apparently I was air-skating across the environment. My body was making a running animation completely out of sync with the environment, and in 4 directions only. This game has horrible, horrible animation! Bethesda needs contact a motion capture studio and hire some animators. It needs to film some people talking to each other. Study the motions and take note. However, I need to nuance my statements a bit, I might come off as thinking too straight. For the most part, animations are fine. That is to say, when your running around in first person, having a firefight, using VATS (hey, ragdolls don't need any animation). It works, even though it's mediocre at best.
The third person view is there just to look at your character. It's unplayable otherwise. Further pushing the game into the FPS corner where bigger, better shooters lurk.

When you engage in a conversation, or you're being talked to, the game will zoom in on the speaker. Like in real life. You have quite a powerful zoom built into your eyes. That way you get a good view of all the bad. These characters are animatronics. There faces are as bland as cereal that's been left soaking in the bowl for too long. There are facial expressions but they are so subtle and stiff that you probably won't even notice. There are no gestures, no body language. And when there is, they wave their hand about a bit, and even that animation is looped. In cases they will stand there like complete idiots and in perfect silence with a hand that makes the same "I'm weighing a bull's nutsack"-motion every 10 seconds. It wasn't that easy coming to terms with all this. But since the game is not about talking to people it's possible to look the other way, or at the dialog text and continue with the game.

But my biggest gripe with the game is the blending of RPG and FPS elements. Animation is superficial. Gun play and combat gameplay are essential. I can hear the crowd gathering on my front door, protesting in one voice 'Fallout 3 is not a shooter!'. And they are wrong. Fallout 3 is made to play like a shooter, and so should it be judged. At first glance, the game plays rather clumsy. Your gun isn't particularly accurate nor powerful and your movement isn't very fluid. You're hoping it's a level 1 thing only, that things will get better over time. Well, they do. To a degree that you'll you gain auto-aim when you're really proficient with a type of weapons. It's another RPG rule I guess. Your weapons magically become more accurate when they are put in more capable hands. It feels so goddamn feeble to be shooting an assault rifle with bullets spraying in a 30 degree cone of fire. And for no good reason. This rifle has near mint condition and it shoots as if it has no barrel. The way to fix this "effectiveness with this weapon"-conundrum is, in my opinion, to have the hands sway a bit. Like when you're using a sniper rifle. It will sway in your untrained hands. Of course, when you squeeze the trigger at the right moment the bullet should still hit the mark, or at lease have a more believable trajectory. With this it becomes that much harder to compensate for the sway while aiming. But with the current game mechanic Fallout 3 has, even this isn't possible. Being an RPG, dice are governing hits and misses. Which means, when the dice roll indicates a miss, you miss. Even when you were seemingly dead on target. The opposite happens as well. When your aim is off but the dice are right, you'll hit. The effect is basically auto-aim and it's insulting to any self-respecting shooter fan. For wanting to be an RPG so badly it sacrifices consistency. Personally I'd ditch the entire system. It's boneheaded to try and shove dice rolls into a shooter. So don't. Make a shooter with RPG elements and be done with it.
But sure. Bethesda set out to make Oblivion with guns, mission accomplished.
By the way, why is the weight limit still around? It doesn't make the game more fun or challenging. It makes you shuttle from one container to another. Because of realism? In what reality does a coffee mug weigh half a kilogram? So many elements of this game shout, at the top of its lungs, "This is not a realistic game.", that a lot of these "set in stone" RPG conventions become superfluous.

The idea behind combat in an RPG is that it's strategic on a party based level. Or on a turn based level. Fallout 3 has no party management, no (visible) turns and no strategy.
The strategy in combat is that of a shooter. It deals with positioning your character, prioritizing targets, lining up shots, leading a target. Managing reloads. getting into cover at the right moments, picking the right weapons for every encounter. Such is the ways of shooters. If you want to borrow stuff, go look at the best of their class. Go look at COD4 and Gears Of War. Don't go looking at MOH: Pacific Assault. Elements that are missing are a scaling cross-hair to indicate the bullet spread or accuracy (although giving the system Fallout uses, the cross-hair would take up half the screen), weapon sets, lean mechanics, iron sights. I could even add weapon mods to that, but I guess no one ever had a second thought about the innovation Crysis brought to the table, which is a damn shame. Combat in Fallout 3 isn't very engaging. The AI simply isn't up to par with other shooters out there. What happens most of the time is that characters will charge up to close range and stab you with whatever weapon or limb they have.Or they will get out of cover and charge up to close range and empty their clip on you. They're also amazingly accurate compared to your own gun-spray. Sometimes though, they will flee when it's clear they're outmatched.
The only time I had a challenging fight was when a group of Tesla Soldiers pressed me with long range plasma fire while one of them charged at me.
So what else is there to harp on. There are no weapon sets. So you need to bring up the pipboy every time you want to switch weapons. Which hampers the action quite a bit. A few weapon slots would have been great. But alas, Fallout•3 was made with consoles (drag and drop what?) in mind and the PC platform suffers for it. But we're getting used to this.
I think I'll postpone my comments on the voice acting in the game until I write a dedicated post on that subject. Now, I know I might sound really down on the game. But truth be told, it has taken hours a day of my time for more than a month. And it's been occupying my gaming thoughts for just as long. So next time, I'll write a glowing post about it. I just wish Bethesda had made something that could stand next to the greatest of shooters, as well as the greatest of RPGs. But maybe 1 out of 2 still isn't so bad.

To be continued...

SPOILER WARNING

As bonus content and just as an example of how the RPG system of this game is holding it back. The end sequence with liberty prime could have been a lot more intense and interesting if the system could "calculate" more enemies at any given time. There's always little opposition, 5 troopers tops, and more spawn in when you dispatch the former. Imagine if the game didn't have to calculate dice rolls for any of those. A lot more calculations could be put to use on AI for more troopers.
And let's take it to the extreme, there could have been an Enclave Megatron to oppose Liberty Prime. Megatron kills off Prime, since enclave tech is always better, but does so at the cost of some of his health. You are left to mop up Megatron in a bossfight not unlike that of Crysis (Warhead).
That would have been an epic close to this epic game. Unlike the luke-warm ending it has now. Hear that, Bethesda? Stop being afraid.