They completely removed the health bar and the ammo/weapon management. There are no maze elements to navigating the levels and the game purposefully doesn’t let you back-track so that players don’t get lost and frustrated. They loaded the game with tons of auto-checkpoints that neatly separate the action into distinct battles so there is almost never any forced replay. They also loaded the game with variety (the visuals, enemies, weapons, and combat change quite a bit throughout the game) to eliminate complaints of repetition.

All of these changes were made very purposefully and probably came from extensive user feedback studies and focus group testing. The problem is that all of these changes really dumbed down the experience. I felt more like I was passively moving through a scripted semi-interactive tech demo than actually playing a game.

Resistance 2 was still a lot of fun, the giant fire fights didn’t have this overly scripted feel to them (they’re still linear, but they felt very interactive), and this game isn’t the only one with this problem. Call of Duty 4 (single player), for example, was worse. It felt every bit as blatantly scripted and forced and linear, but lacked many of the cool highlights of Resistance 2. (BTW, I feel more comfortable criticizing Insomniac’s games, because I’ve been such a big fan, where CoD4, I didn’t want to rain on everyone else’s parade.)

Also, Uncharted, Bioshock, Ratchet & Clank, Dead Space, God of War, Manhunt (only mentioning PS2/PS3 titles): these are some of my favorite games from the past few years, but they all fall into this category: heavily scripted, produced, and completely linear experiences. Even as the developers are getting better and better of making this style of game, and as much as I love the mentioned games, and admire the work that went into them, I feel like the general structure and formula is really wearing thin.

So what else should games do? From the little I’ve played of Far Cry 2, that’s a good example of what I don’t want: the same linear game play with a repetitive quest/hub/navigation system thrown on top of it. Games need to develop new hooks: something that makes them fun and addicting beyond merely shooting/dodging and clearing gorgeous levels.

So what do you think? Are you fine with bigger and better versions of games like Uncharted and God Of War or are you getting a little tired of that formula (or a little of both)? Do you think this type of game has passed it’s peak?

It’s interesting that everyone who mailed us about this (many thanks, by the way) immediately went for the Oh God No What Are They Thinking angle. Bullfrog fans are purists, perhaps understandably. Me, I’m not going to presume the worst yet, despite being a huge old geeky Dungeon Keeper fan myself.

Absolutely nothing is known about this shock DK sequel/rethink, bar its being an MMO and being handled by a Chinese developer you’ve never heard of. Yeah, ‘Asian MMO’ does set off a few alarm traps, as the Lineage model tends to impress us Westerners about as much as shadow puppetry impresses bears. Clearly, this won’t be Dungeon Keeper 3 - there’s not even a whiff of a single ex-Bullfrog guy around it for starters, and no talk of it being a direct follow-up, but rather of it just using names, themes and characters. Put that Pointy Stick Of Angry Pre-Judgement +3 vs EA down, though. There are hints that this be more Dungeon Keeperish than you presume….
(...)
Read the rest of Dungeon Keeper 3! The MMO! Eh? (1,110 words)

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This article is from Rock, Paper, Shotgun. If you're reading it on any other website, they're stealing it from us without permission.

Everyone needs a break now and again -- I know I do, after having written about what seems like 20,000 magazines over the years here -- so for this holiday, I thought I'd cover a couple electronics-themed mags I picked up earlier in the week, one of whom I love with all my heart and two I at least enjoy a fling with now and then:

Make Issue 16

If there is hope for print media about video games, or for that matter any kind of very nerdy topic, then this is it.

Make is a lot more than a technology/do-it-yourself mag. It's a snappy and visually interesting introduction to modern nerd-dom, with the '70s definition of nerd ("I wired my S-100 bus machine with an extra 4K of RAM over the weekend instead of going to the company picnic with my wife") used instead of the modern one ("I used an iPhone to split up the bar tab"). The "visually interesting" phrase is important here; unlike other electronics periodicals, the emphasis is on ideas, concepts, and neat pictures over tech details.

And even when tech details are required, the light, airy, Edge-like visual design keeps attention spans engaged. Photos and diagrams are everywhere. You can flip to any random page and find something interesting to read. Try flipping through a modern US game mag. You're guaranteed to stop on an advertisement of some sort, whether a pull-out poster or subscription card. The sense of curiosity is lost.

But Make still has it, and a lot of that is because of its smaller dimensions, I think -- the tinier size allows for 200 pages an issue, and you feel like you're getting a ton, even for the premium price.

That's the watchword there -- "premium." Yeah, Make is a luxury item. But it's not that expensive, and the unique size, look, voice and design of it makes the buyer feel like he's getting something special. Compare that to game mags, where subs cost pocket change and only crazy coots like me keep any issue longer than a few months.

Nuts and Volts December 2008

I confessed in this column a while back that I bought an issue of Nuts and Volts sheerly because of how silly the cover looked. I must sheepishly admit that I did it again. Sorry. I was standing there at the bookstore wondering what was up with Santa's right arm, and I... I... I just couldn't help myself. Forgive me.

Nuts and Volts, along with its main competitor Circuit Cellar, is among the only hardcore electronics-hobbyist mags left in the US marketplace. They survive chiefly thanks to their diehard readership and an even more dedicated base of advertisers, some of whom have been doggedly supporting both mags since their launches in the '80s.

In terms of content, both mags are kind of amateur in style, a term I don't mean to sound offensive. Articles are mostly submitted by enthusiasts who snap their own pictures of parts, and schematics and step-by-step circuit instructions are de rigeur. It's a hobbyist rag, in other words, while Make is meant more to read for its own sake. Both approaches have their charms, but N&V wins out in cover design, no contest. Ahem.

Popular Communications December 2008

Another hobbyist mag I bought mainly for its cover. Damn, this looks exactly like any computer mag from the early 1980s! And as this index shows, neither the logo nor the visual design has changed appreciably since the title's launch in 1982.

PopComm is a mag about shortwave radios and police scanners and that sort of thing, a companion volume to its big brother, the amateur-radio mag CQ. Like N&V, it's mostly supported by diehard (and old) radio buffs and suppliers, and in many ways it looks like something from a bygone era inside and out. And yet...it's oddly readable.

I have no interest in amateur communications, but I still dig reading this, especially the article on the soon-to-be-dead art of TV DX, enabling people in Massachusetts to receive stations from South Carolina and Venezuela. I have a thing for "subversive" tech like that, the sort of thing Make or 2600 might cover. If only there were a little more of that...

[Kevin Gifford breeds ferrets and runs Magweasel, a site for collectors and fans of old video-game and computer magazines. In his spare time he does writing and translation for lots and lots of publishers and game companies.]

More importantly, I’ve gathered more intelligence about how Nintendo’s “expanded audience” — i.e. my parents — play Wii games.

Observation: The Wii Motion-Plus controller add-on/enhancement can’t be released soon enough. People like my parents don’t play games every day and certainly shouldn’t have to rearrange their living room couches so that they are sitting at angles that allow the Wii sensor bar to read the movements of their Wii remotes. Too much of our time playing a game of Sorry in EA’s “Hasbro Family Game Night” was spent trying to get our cursors back on the screen because someone wasn’t pointing squarely at the TV. Motion-Plus, make our Wii remotes better. Save us!

Observation: The expanded audience has some tricks up their sleeve. Either the game of Battleship — also included in the aforementioned “Hasbro Family Game Night” — is a game of luck. Or… she who was taught to play Battleship by her father, who learned it while serving on an actual battleship, simply had some hidden skills she never taught to her son. Mom sunk my fleet with glee. For revenge, I beat her in a Wii-powered bout of Connect Four.

Observation: Two years ago at Thanksgiving, I played my first video game against my dad ever: “Wii Sports.” A year later, he and I and my wife played “Rock Band,” creating an instantly cherished memory. This Thanksgiving, after years of occasionally getting mutually fixated on “Tetris” for my NES or, more recently, swapping stories about playing our DS systems, my mom and I finally played a game against one another. Who cares if she sunk my battleship? We played a video game together! Three years ago, I never would have bet on that happening.

Thanks, EA. Thanks, Nintendo. Thanks, mom.

Next: I’m down to my final four of must-play 2008 games. It’s “Banjo” time.

Not content with the current offerings in the popular genre of video games that utilize various-shaped plastic peripherals, Ripten has presented a new Guitar Hero-esque concept appropriately titled “Vagina Hero” that caters to those that are more than a little sexually inept. Much like the entertaining music game that requires you to hit brightly colored buttons in tune with a streaming series of notes, this game is played to the pulsating bass heavy beat of classic 70’s style pr0n music. Their controller, which can be seen after the jump, appears to be meant for finger use only. As provocative as this game idea is, I simply can’t support something of this nature that doesn’t allow the use of a tongue. Would that really have been too complicated of a feature to include? I’m thinking a slight modification of the red button into a less sensitive strum bar mechanism would have been optimal with the function being activated by a maxed out star power meter. Not that I’ve put any thought into that or anything. Because that would just be weird.

Source [Geekologie]

Diverting information from shields to weapons in newest STO Ask Cryptic originally appeared on Massively on Fri, 28 Nov 2008 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Boogie!

If you are super-sensitive to such things, there’s a possibility this includes a couple of really minor location spoilers. I honestly don’t think there’s anything in this that’ll truly impact your F3 experience (bar wishing its NPCs really were this funktastic), but Angry Spoiler Men should consider themselves warned.

Thanks to Homunculus for pointing this out.
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Posted by ento. | 10 comments | Donate or subscribe to RPS | Post tags: fallout-3, loose funk
This article is from Rock, Paper, Shotgun. If you're reading it on any other website, they're stealing it from us without permission.