How hard can it be ? Part deux

In the forums of one of my most favourite game devolper, Tripwire Interactive, the forum regular Murphy initiated an interesting discussion on the subject of difficulty scaling, using Burnout and Unreal Tournament 2004 as good examples.

I can't really agree, but I'm too lazy to summarize the discussion, especially since it might grow. So follow the link to the thread to read up and participate.

And while you're there, you might aswell check out TWIs titles, which are both quite recommendable.

What's huge, hard and full of jocks?

As you might have noticed already, I am not intimidated by complex games. In fact, I rather prefer games that need me to get into before knowing all the nuances, instead of being pick up and play.

Last week, I discovered such a gem of "hard to get into"-games, and I have to admit, I still fail miserably at it. But it's just too awesome to rage-quit it. Also, it has some mechanics that prevent that, but that point will be covered later. Now, drumroll please, the game I discovered: Titans of Steel - Warring Suns by Vicious Bytes, published by Matrixgames back in 03, but nowadays freely available.

And why is it awesome? Battlemechs, or rather Titan Attack Techs, or Titan-ATs in short. If that doesn't suffice to convince you, you will probably not like it. Still, I'll elaborate a tad more: much like the original Battletech board game, it's a very complex hex-strategy game where you control squads up to 8 jocks who pilot said Titan-ATs. Just as the source of inspiration, it features multiple hit zones with internal damage, independent torso movements and heat and ammo management. If that wouldn't be complex enough, all your pilots have a multitide of skills that can be improved upon, much like in an rpg. Also, it isn't as strictly turn based as Battletech, but uses a system similar to the Brigade series, where each action takes time and once it's done, you can give new orders.

Additionally, you have to worry about the financial wellbeing of your squad, which is rather difficult in itself.

Another perk of it, and that's where the "no rage-quitting" comes back, is that your squad is persistent. If you quit during a mission, your squad will not be able to do anything except of continuing that mission, or retrieve you squad for the quadruple of you upkeep costs you pay per mission. Which, with a cheap beginner squad, amounts to the price pf a whole new recon mech. That retrival doesn't only cost dear money, it also nullifies any XP gained during the mission, so it's quite a hefty price to pay. Also, it's the only way to "revive" fallen jocks or completely obliterated Titans, so woe to you if you just lost your best man but can't afford to retrieve the team. Thus you think twice before accepting a mission.

The 1.2.2 Beta Patch somewhat takes away from that by allowing loans (at horrendous rates) or cloning of dead soldiers (at the price of decreased constitution of the jock, additionally to a hefty sum), but it's still a tough blow to lose.

This persistent squad system is also what scares me away from multiplayer battles, as I don't want my four cautiously leveled "greens" (the second of 10 ranks) to be obliterated by "heroes" (the tenth rank) who play since 03. Also, I do think that it's quite hard to get a partner to play unless you get a friend of yours to play it with you. If anyone of you wants to scrim sometime against either my Greens or against an all new squad, just drop me a message and I'll see what I can do.

But for now, I'm stuck with single player, which sadly is somewhat of an afterthought. At first it looks like it's only up to 4 squads 2on2ing on random generated maps, but after some searchng, you can find several campaigns with rudimentary stories, and difficulty ratings. But don't get fooled by them, because my green team struggles even on "rookie" (the first rank) missions. So you better spend some time in random matches with the rules set to outmach your enemy greatly until you'rt jocks and mechs are improved enough to go on. You can also switch campaigns between missions, so for example you play the first two missions of campaign 1, then head over to the first mission of campaign 2, which might let you capture a mech that makes mission 3 on campaign 1 easier.

The start is also quite hard because it's nigh impossible to judge which of those more than 150 Titans to chose from are any good at the start, so you might end up with Titans not suited for the tasks at hand.

Still, if you like Battlemech, that game is the one for you if you need a quick fix for your needs, and once you start winning, it's certainly very rewarding. Just make sure you install the 1.2.2 Beta Patch.

How hard can it be?

Spending last night on a friend's Playstation 3 for some mindless fun, I discovered one of the plagues pestering modern gaming: difficulty scaling.

The principle of it seems pretty neat in theory. After a short calibration phase, everyone get's to play a game that is tailered to his specific skills. That way, everyone should be playing a game that is challenging, but neither frustatingly hard, nor overly easy.

The problem is though, that in reality, it doesn't work.

Now let's get back to the game I was playing: Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. Specifically the two story modes. Nobody cares that the story is shallow, badly written, seriously badly dubbed in german and about four times the length it should have, as it has this one flaming flaw that overshadows everything else: the difficulty scaling, which overrides the difficulty setting you chose in the options menue.

The premise is that it starts of easy, but get's harder with every opponent you knock out, and gets easier everytime you have to press 'O' to continue after a lost fight. Now what really is borked with that is that the rise in skill is too steep, leading to following situation: You win three fights easily only uppercutting the oblivious enemies, but the fourth fight is suddenly extremely hard and the AI just kicks your sorry butt around the screen in one long combo until you're out.

Now beat'em-ups getting harder with each victory is pretty much the concept of the genre's single player mode from it's very beginnings, so I have no problem with that. In every other beat'em-up, a tough enemy is a means for me to hone the skills I have with that particular character I chose, learning new moves and tactics to overcome the opponent.

And this personal skill gain is completely defeated by the level scaling, as once I lose, I don't have to look for combos that give me the edge, but simply button mash the now miraculously retarded AI.

What's wrong with me chosing my level of challenge on my own via the options? Thank god only the story mode is plagued with that. So stay clear of it.

Another example of difficulty scaling done badly is the Need for Speed series, especially since it went "underground": The AI rubber banding. That's what I call the phenonemon of the AI cars always being faster than you when they are behind you, but being slower when they are in front of you, causing the AI to oscillate around you like they were strapped to you with an invisible rubberband.

Again, in theory that system provides a challenge for every player, as you can't lose without hope of winning, but yet can't get away too easily. The problem is though, that again, it actually hinders the player in getting more skillful with the game. If you crash three fourths of the race in every object on and off the track, but drive the last fourth well, you win easily. If you blitz through a race but happen to get caught somewhere in the last corners, you lose. In some parts of the series, it went even so far that races were easier if you refused to upgrade your car.

Not only does this system, like most scaling systems, reward you for playing badly, but it also provides only a fake challenge, as once you're overtaken it's usually pretty easy to retake the lead from the AI which left their brains right at your rear bumper, unless they catch you late in the race.

Another bad example of scaling is TES 4: Oblivion. I don't think I have to say more on that one.

Now, as I like to think myself as being fair, I'd like to share a list of games that did scaling well, and explain why. Only I couldn't think of  one single game.

What's new?

Seeing the financial crisis kick in, I am sadly working less than I'd like to, and seeing that I spend most of my now quite vast spare time with my girlfriend, I also game less than I'd like too.

Still, there are some news gaming wise that are worth writing about.

Firstly, as I am a longtime fan of turn based tactical games with RPG elements. In fact, I am hooked to that genre since Jagged Alliance. Now I got my hands on a new one of it's clones: 7.62 High Caliber. It's not really new, especially since it's been out in Russia for ages, but I like it notheless. It's a great sequel to Brigade E5, improving on every aspect of it. As a short description, it's not really turn based, but pause driven. Everything happens in real time, each action takes time, but after each action, the game pauses itself you you can plan, thus making it basically feel like a turn based game. The concept is hard to explain, but it makes traditional turn based games feel very restricted and unrealistic.

It still has some severe bugs though, some of which require a complete reinstall of the game to play on. So sadly, I can only recommend it to fans of the genre.

Secondly, PC Gamer UK spoiled Tripwires announcement of their Game 3 (game 1 being Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45, Game 2 being Killing Floor) by prematurely publishing a preview on it. Not really a surprise, but its a follow up to their first game, now named Red Orchestra: Heroes Of Stalingrad. It will again be realistic, allthough TW plan to make it more easily accessible for people who are less willing to sufferthrough an enormous learning curve to get enjoyment out of a game. It will feature SP campaigns for both Russians and Germans (a genre novelty, being german was limited to strategy games until now), a coop mode and some more refinements. It seems that especially the damage to players will be a novelty, with more detail than other FPS-Games, plus there will be bandaging. I do hope though that they don't mess it up like the bandaging system in Americas Army.

The Ring

Long Time no see, my one single imaginary reader!

This time I want to talk about "The Ring". Now depending on your preferences, that might be a mediocre horror flick series (slightly better in it's japanese original), or the place where a great Xbox-FPS, yet mostly mediocre PC shooter is set.

But for those of you who have at least virtual gas guzzling through your veins, it's the infamous Nürburgring Nordschleife, aka the Green Hell. This interesting and unique curcuit kindled my intrest while I played Gran Turismo 4, and pretty soon became the only track that I could get enjoyment out of. Soon after, I discovered Ben Lovejoy's site on  the Ring and I was completely drawn into that 20 odd kilometers of asphalt in the presumably lovely Eifel.

Now as I can't afford a trip to the Ring, let alone a car that is worthy driving on it (and most likely to be repaired after that), I try to get my Nordschleife-Fix virtually. Now, already hinting that my funds are quite limited, I have two choices, using my PC and my old, trustworthy, fat Playstation 2. I heard that there's the Ring in the Forza and Project Gotham Racing series, but as I don't own an XBox or Xbox 360 and an adequate TV set, that will have to be postponed until I either come to money miraculously, or someone will more miraculously donate one of them to me.

So, with what I got, I have surprisingly much to chose from. The PS2 offers the Ring on GT4 and Enthusia, while on the PC, I can go for a spin with either GTR Evolution or rFactor (which offers 4 different versions to download.)

A while ago, I made a quick video comparison using the same car in both Enthusia and GT4, to be found on youtube. Please excuse the crappy voice over. It was tediously enough to get it audible that I won't do something similar soon. But I digress. A summary of the video: while I prefer driving Enthusia for it's better physics (a shame that it was such a flop), I like the Nordschleife better in GT4. Which is annoying, because no matter what I play, I crave the other for it's merits.

So let's go to the PC. As already mentioned, I used GTR Evolution and rFactor. For the latter, I solely used The Ring 2007 v 2.2a, as that one seems to be the best version of the Ring.

Concerning details, no matter what game, they are ahead of the PS2 Rings, allthough both GTR and rFactor, sharing basically the same engine, lack in the track lightning department, making the Nordschleife look quite sterile. They have some advantages though. GTR has full dynamic weather, allowing any track condition from bone dry to monsoon rain and also features changing weather during a long race. The rFactor track comes in four flavours (summer, fall, winter and wet) and allows night racing with realistic change of daytime and light. To be honest though, I did not ever finish a lap in both rain and night, making a combination of those two both awesome and aweful.

Now, as I didn't use comparable cars this time, it saved me from doing another split screen comparison. In rFactor I used Niels Corvette C6 with Real Feel, with is pretty much the only way I can get to grips with rFactors physics.

To sum things up: I like GTRs driving better, and the Ring feels more polished. The Ring in rFactor feels more raw and brutal and is a lot less forgiving, even with Niels changes to the grip-level and bumpyness, so I imagine it to be the more realistic simulation of the sensation. Again, I can't really give a definite answer on which Ring is the best, until I actually go there and take a car around it myself.

So conclusively I can just say that whatever you chose to get your Ring-fix, it will do, as there is no version that's outstanding in all aspects, at least from the four I tried. If you want to take a look for yourself without having to buy, install and play four games, you can see a lap of each game both from the cockpit and a TV-cam replay on my Youtube channel.

Take Cover!

Ever since Gears of War, there's one thing plaguing Shooter-games, especially if they claim to have a certain tactical approach: a 3rd person view cover system. It works usually like this: your character approaches a conveniently placed object that serves as cover and either automatically or by a button, takes cover behind it which lets you take a look on the nice playermodel and the action behind it.

I have to admit it is pretty to look at, especially in multiplayer, where it just looks much more realistic than simply crouching behond cover in other games. At least when other players do it.

Which brings us to my main gripe with this system: it totally breaks immersion in first person shooters. A prime example of this is Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway. To play it right, you have to be "dug in" as the game calls it most of the time, because you will die if you don't. Because of that, you very rarely use the beautiful ironsights, but a rather stupid, zoomed in third person perspective to aim.

Of course, such a system doesn't irritate if the game is confined to the third person perspective, but in my opinion it shouldn't be used in FPS games, especially if they claim to be realistic, like Hell's Highway or the R6: Vegas series (which has numerous other things which make it a bad R6 game, but we'll come to that on a later time perhaps). Not only that it's quite unrealistic to suddenly see yourself from the outside, it also defeats the main drawback of being in cover: you shouldn't be able to see what's going on on the other side of it, unless you risk a peek.

Now this brings me to a feature I'd like to see in a FPS. The very same cover system, but still with a first person view. You can look around with your mouse, use the movement keys to slide along it and peek over the cover, and with a press of a button you aim over it. That would create immersion.

On a last sidenote: I hate how we austrians are punished for stupid german laws regarding the protection of the youth becasue publishers and retailers regard us as a "sub-state" of germany: no blood in most games (even though with some effort you can get internation al versions). It was quite unintentionally hilarious in Hell's Highway *Spoiler Alert* after the mortar attack. The cut to Baker's face after the question "What happened to your face?" reveals his normal, unhurt face...