acolite.eu

20 Games I Should Probably Finish

Janusz Urbanski — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 13:37:57 +0000

I know that posting lists is passé these days, but if I wrote this in long form, It wouldn't be fun to read, so please bear with me.

Truth is, I have a bit of a problem when it comes to finishing games. Over the last year or two I've bought 50 or 60 games, but have finished less then half of them. This is due to three main things: 1) If a game doesn't grab during the initial play session, I probably won't come back to it. 2) There is always something newer and more shiny that will inevitably distract me, and 3) I only ever play Eve Online and TF2 anyway, so all other games I own are pretty much redundant!

So now, with all this new-found 'spare time', I've decided to go back and finish all those games I started (providing that they're worth finishing, of course.
Obviously multiplayer games pose a bit of a problem, as you can't really 'finish' them per se, but I intend to at least play them enough to get the hang of them.

Now, onto the list (which is roughly in highest to lowest priority):

At the time of writing I am currently halfway through a second play-through, partly to see the bits of the game I missed the first time round, but also because, well, it's really fun! The combat system is pretty robust and fun to use, and through this second play-through I really feel like I'm beginning to master it.

Everyone seems to say this game is good, but for whatever reason, I've never got round to playing it. I actually own it now, but haven't even booted it up once! I think the big thing will be making the time investment needed for a storyline game... I tend to prefer a more relaxed 'obligation-less' gaming schedule, but hopefully once I've started playing it will engage me enough to finish it without taking to much of a break.

I doubt I will ever 'complete' it (i.e. get a five-star rating on each map), but I only played a couple of maps the first time round, and didn't even see half of the game mechanics. AaAaAA is the kind of game where you could spend years constantly trying to beat your previous score, so I'll probably play until I get bored.

When the new update comes out (with its 144 new achievements), I'm sure I'll hope back in again. I haven't properly played CSS in almost 2 years, so going back will definitely be an interesting experience... it was one of the games that got me into 'hard core' gaming in the first place, after all.

I actually finished the story mode the first time round, but didn't get very far with the challenge rooms. I'm mainly going back to this because I felt that the combat system was very well done, and so I'd like to master it through the challenge rooms (I admit it, I pretty much button mashed my way through the campaign!).

I was more hyped for this mod then most AAA games, and was even on their IRC channel for the midnight launch, but the game only just delivered. As a mod, it is bloody good and incredibly polished, but the core gameplay just isn't quite engaging enough to tear me away from Battlefield 2 or Team Fortress 2. It is definitely fun though, and pretty unique, so I've always intended to go back to it. Like most multiplayer mods its desperately in need of more players, with few servers to choose from, but I'm sure I can find a few good EU servers.

I'm fairly eager to go back to Far Cry 2, as I mainly stopped playing due to lack of time. Some of the mechanics were a little frustrating, but overall it seemed like a good game, so I just need to invest the time needed, really.

I only stopped playing this game because I reached a level I couldn't beat, and couldn't work out how to cheat round it (unlike Chains, which I blatantly cheated round and am very glad I did so; that game was brilliant!), which means I'll need to conjure up a lot of resolve and self motivation if I want to start playing it again, let alone finish it.

When I bought it, I played it almost constantly for a good two or three days and really enjoyed it. I think the reason I went back to it was because Eve Online quenched my thirst for loot gathering and character progression, which seems to a major problem with all RPGs I play; because of the persistent progression of MMO's is so engaging, any non persistent progression seems less meaningful, or even pointless. This means the fun of a single player RPG has to be derived from the gameplay, not just the enjoyment of progression, and while games like Fallout 3 manage to provide this, I feel Torchlight only just treads the line...

I bought this game well over two years ago, and have only booted it up once, making it a major victim of the "ooh, something more shiny then what I'm playing now" impulse. I think I'm also a bit intimidated by it, to be honest, as it seems like such a time and skill investment... when I did try it that first time, the gunplay seemed almost impossible, for example. But so many people seem to enjoy it, that I probably shoot give another go.

Having loved Fallout 3, I'm pretty sure I'll a least like Oblivion, but the time investment needed has always put me off. Considering my playthrough of Fallout 3 took 75 hours (and that was without the DLC), I'm not sure I'm ready to go though it all again. Also the HUD looked like chunky piece of shit, but hopfully the fun of exporation and an immersive game-world will distract me enough to not care.

I started a play through so long ago I can't even remember, and every now and then I come back it. At this stage I'm mostly playing because of my love for the HL series, so I'm considering making one last push and finishing it in one go, so I can say "there, I've done it!". The man thing holding me back is the fact that I'm about to start the Zen section, which everyone says is shit.

Again, mainly on the list due to my goal to have played everything to do with Half Life ever. I'm told Opposing Force is actually quite good though, so I'm sort of looking forward to finding out if this is true.

Like Psychonauts, I've been told over and over again that this is a brilliant, but to be honest it didn't grab me. I feel I should probably give it a second chance though, as I didn't really 'get the hang' of the game mechanics the first time round, so maybe if I take the time to learn the game, it will become more fun.

Or more correctly, the 'Lord of the Rings: The Third Age' and 'Warhammer: Total War' mods. To be honest I only really bought Medieval 2 in order to play these mods, as I also own the more recent Empire: Total War, but I may discover that I like it more then Empire. I tend to only play grand strategy games when I'm in a grand strategy kind of mood though, so I don't really know when I'll start playing it... could be tomorrow, could be never.

I love the idea of Mass Effect, and being big Sci-Fi fan I imagine I would love the world too, but when I created a character and tried the game for the first time, it really didn't grab me. Something about the gameplay just didn't sit well, I think. I do intend to give another go though, as it looks like the world could redeem the gameplay, and it would also give me anther reason to get Mass Effect 2, which is supposed to be awesome.

By this point we're getting to the "I vaguely want to play this, but probably wont" section. I got about 20 minutes into Doom 3 when I bought it last year, so never really got to see the meat of the game, hence why I never continued with it. I do want to finish it though, if only to have experienced the series that made the FPS genre what it is today.

I've had X3 on my games shelf for a good few years now, and fluctuate between really wanting to play and not wanting to play it all. When I did try it, I just didn't seem to get it at all... the ship seemed utterly uncontrollable and I had no idea what to do; it seemed like it was both a story based game and a sim, two types of game I'd always assumed could never work together. I'm assuming I was doing it wrong though, as I've had one or two people say they swear by this game even though know one else seems to care about it, which immediately causes the Eve Online loving part of my brain to say "give it a chance, it could be awesome".

A little while ago I vowed to complete a no-death Delta difficulty play-through of Crysis. I started. I died. I decided to do it some other time. For this reason alone, I'm putting Crysis on the list; one day I WILL finish Crysis on the hardest difficulty without dying, and that day will be a great day, but I have no idea when it will happen.
In fairness, I did do couple more attempts and had a lot of fun (and new experiences), so I may well write ab article about it at some point.

See Mass Effect. I stopped playing from almost the exact same reasons, which causes me to wonder why I enjoyed Jade Empire (known for the being "the only shit Bioware game") so much. At this stage, I think I'll only ever play it because I want to play a Star Wars game, or because I feel guilty about not giving it a real chance.

Site Revamp

Janusz Urbanski — Mon, 10 May 2010 22:16:20 +0000

Having finished college for the year, I've had some time to really sit down and decide what to do with this site. I definitely wanted to continue with it, but I wasn't completely happy with it as much of it had been made during the mad rush that was my application when I couldn't give it the time it needed.

So, thinking was done, conclusions were reached, and changed made. Read on to discover the full extent of the revamp (though you can probably see most of it right now anyway!)

BRAND NEW LOOK!: Though the CMS software the site runs on (Drupal) does have a lot of user contributed themes, the large majority of them are crap. In fact, I couldn't even find one I was half happy with, so I ended up going with one of the boring but functional default themes.

This was easily first on my list of thing to change, so when I finally had the time, I sat down and hacked a user made theme into the kind of shape that I liked. I'm no pro with php or css, but as someone else (Antsin.com) had already done all the legwork, it was fairly easy to go in and mess about with it until it looked the way I wanted it to.

Less (functionality) Is More (usability): Again, due to using the Drupal CMS, I had a whole load of user made functionality at my finger tips, some of which is really useful. However, after trying out a whole range of tweaks and features, I decided to strip things down and make the site more minimal. At the end of the day, people will come hear to read the articles, so it makes sense for all the functionality to be based around directing you to content you might be interested in.

Content: Since the site's launch in January, I've managed a whopping 3 original articles, and one recap of 'other stuff I'm doing'. Obviously this isn't very much, but college had to come first, so it was to be expected.
In short; now I have more free time, so expect more content. Also expect a wider range of content; having the time to play games as extensively as I want to has given me the opportunity to write more in-depth game-specific articles. So expect those too.

Eve-Online Sub-site: Eve Online is probably the game I will write most about, and so much so that for some time I planned for this to be an Eve-only blog. Having made the decision to spread my focus, though, writing about Eve in such a specialist way while also trying to keep my articles accessible to everybody is quite a big challenge, to the point where it put me off even attempting it.
So I decided to make a dedicated Eve Online sub site, still connected to this one, but using its own main page and RSS feed. This Eve site wont be updated half as often as the main site, so may seem a little empty, but it will allow me to write articles in such a way that Eve players will actually find it informative, and not have to read through my explanations of game mechanics they already know.

The Eve site is still being tweaked, but I hope to release it some time this month.

Ads: The simple reality is this; I really didn't want to have to put ads on this site, but I need to justify the time I'm spending on it, not least because so far I've failed to get a job over the summer. (I've been trying, but sadly everyone else has been too :S ). Sorry about shoving Evony ads in your face the whole time, but its kind of necessary at this stage.

I think I'm going to finish it there. There are a couple of other tweaks I have planned, but the main revamp is pretty much finished. The content is obviously the most important thing though, so really hope to deliver on that. I welcome all feedback, so don't hesitate to get in touch. You can email me through the Contact form, or find my social networking profiles on the About page.

Introducing.... Galleries Of My Current Work

Janusz Urbanski — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 23:06:26 +0000

I'm just posting a quick article to draw attention to the collection of new galleries I've recently uploaded. All in all, you can find examples of my level design work, Life Drawing, experiments in land art, and the work I am currently doing for the final project of my foundation arts course (some of it so recent it was actually drawn today!)

Life and Observation Drawing

Maya 3D Modelling

Colour Theory Level Design work

House Recreation Level Design work

Stop Frame Animations

Organic Card Structures

Land Art Arrangements

Foundation Course Work In Progress

Original XBox Live About To Be Not-So-Live

Janusz Urbanski — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 23:00:02 +0000

In short, Microsoft is dropping support for XBox Live on the original XBox, which among other things means you wont be able to play original XBox games (including Halo 2 most notably) online.

My thoughts on this are that it sucks, but is unavoidable. I'm also kind of glad I'm a PC gamer, as this doesn't really affect me anyway!

1) If you ever needed proof that dedicated servers are superior to to matchmaking, then this is probably it.

The fact of the matter is that server/multiplayer networking costs money to run, so it makes sense that Microsoft (a notoriously aggressive major corporation) will shut it down when it stops making money. As Microsoft controls the networking, then even if other people want to pay the money instead, they can't.
With server files and dedicated severs though, as long as there are people wanting to play the game, it will remain available.

How I feel about this is pretty simple; I want the option to go back and play any game I have paid money for, as long as its reasonable to do so (i.e. there are other people playing the game). In some cases (Quake, original Unreal Tournament), the only way you can experience certain kinds of games is to go back and play the 'oldies', as their design sensibilities are out of vogue at the moment.

2) Are these games even 'Old', anyway?

Halo 2 was released in 2004, a mere 6 years ago, so to call it 'old' does seem pretty odd. As a point of reference, Unreal Tournament 2K4 was released that year, and Battlefield 2 the year after, and both these games still have fairly sizable payer bases, BF2 especially. For this reason, I am a little disappointing that with devoted player bases of games like Halo 2 will simply cease to be, as I'm sure they have many years of enjoyment still in them.

3) You shut down MY game!??

Although the games studios of the original Xbox games signed a deal with Microsoft, you can't help but feel for them, as their hard work is essentially being trashed right in front of them, and there is nothing they can do about it. Whereas PC game studios have the option to support their games if they value them that much (Battlefield 2 received a major patch just a few months ago, in fact), Xbox studios have to stand and watch as years worth of balancing, bug fixing, and community building is flushed down the toilet. Some companies really pride themselves on post release support, so it must suck to be them right now.

At the end of the day, though, I feel this is just one of the many aspects of console gaming you just have to accept. If you want convenience, you have to let other people do the work for you, which which means ultimately they decide what you can and can't do. Though I do feel sorry for the gamers and studios that will lose something because of this, they did have a great 9 year run, so it's not all bad.

EVE ONLINE: Blog Banter - Meaningful Targets

Janusz Urbanski — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 17:33:10 +0000

[IMPORTANT!] Before reading this, please note that it is largely written for Eve players players, and so there is a certain amount of assumed understanding of what Eve 'feels' like to play. If you've never played it don't worry though, I've tried to be both general and concise to avoid confusion as much possible. Please also be aware that this piece is VERY GUSHY! I usually tend to avoid being disgustingly positive, but as this piece is about why I love Eve Online, being positive is kind of inevitable.

So, on with the show:

Welcome to this special installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux.

We know the EVE Online Community is unique in so many ways, and that EVE Online is like no other MMORPG out there. But what makes the game special for you?

What is it that makes this particular virtual world so enticing, so mysterious and so alluring that we keep coming back for more. Why is EVE one of the very few MMOs to see a continuous growth in its subscriber.

To put it simply: Why do you love EVE Online so much?

One of the things Eve Online does brilliantly, perhaps better then any other game I have ever played, is to allow and encourage you to generate and realise meaningful goals and targets within the game.

Largely speaking all games, by their very nature, are about setting yourself objectives or understanding the objectives that have been set for you, and achieving these objectives. This is doubly true for MMOs, and many completely evolve around the advancement of your character by achieving a multitude of goals. World of Warcraft's levelling system, for example, is refined to near perfection, but it is Eve's all encompassing and infinitely scaleable target setting which causes me to love this game and keep coming back to it time after time.

What I mean by "all encompassing" is that the target setting and achievement of goals is so involved and heavily integrated into the gameplay that you are constantly reassessing your situation on both a micro and macro level, which gives your goals and the decisions that arise from them a real sense of meaning. I care more about what I do in Eve then in any other game, because the system is so complex it seems to be more then 'just a game', and the goals I set myself aren't just arbitrary level caps or generic pre-defined game objectives. When I played WoW and Warhammer Online my goals were always 'get the top tier armour' or 'complete the sequence of story missions/public quests', which wasnt really a goal I set myself at all, but a goal that the designers said I should probably work towards. In Eve, though, the goals are my own, and so are special to me.

When I say "infinitely scalable" I'm referring to Eve's endgame content, or rather the fact that the entire game is the endgame content! In Eve, there is no level cap or conventional player ranking system, so the minute you begin the game you are both working toward something bigger and also participating in something bigger at the same time. Whether it be 0.0 alliance warfare or high-sec PvE, there is no real end of the road, just a continuous engagement that can become more complex or not, depending on your tastes and playstyle. This means that when you set yourself targets, you have no real overarching end point to anchor your targets around, and so are encouraged to treat the game as more of a hub of possibilities than a linear progression.

One of the most important factors in Eve's target setting, though, is down to the game's persistent, single shard nature. Due to the whole of Eve being on one server, you really feel that what you are doing is contributing to something bigger, and that your achievements are appreciable in a way no other game can manage. I can basically become a demigod in Warhammer Online, and control an entire galaxy in Sins of a Solar Empire, but these achievements mean very little to me as they have been achieved in small, irrelevant contexts which are in no way affect the overall game, and have absolutely no bearing or relevance to anyone other than myself. In Eve, though, even the most insignificant achievements can affect the world and the way I perceive it, and in some cases be very meaningful, even if most of the meaning is only apparent me.

All in all, Eve gives me a unique sense of achievement. It may well be a response to a lack of control over my place in life, I don't know, but for what ever reason, I keep coming back to Eve because setting myself goals and realising them is immensely gratifying in this game, and makes me so glad I started playing.

Oh, and my character in Eve is 'ac0lite', if you want to know.

How Added Value Is Ruining Single Player Games

Janusz Urbanski — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 17:07:07 +0000

If you follows games news and release cycles, you'll probably be aware that single player games having a multiplayer component is the vogue right now. Most people aren't very happy with this - the announcement of Bioshock 2's multiplayer seemed to annoy people in particular - but its purpose is to "extend play time" and "add value", so say the back of the boxes. People also seem to mention "replayability" a lot when talking about single player games, promoting it as "adding value" as well.

The problem is that games studios, and in fact players, assume these are ways of adding value inherently. That is to say they follow the 'more is better' approach to consuming content. In my eyes, this a wrong assumption.

Competitive Multiplayer Components: Diverting resources away from the main mode of a game is rarely a good thing. It means there are fewer developers are working on the single player, and have less to work with, so it only makes sense that the single player will be of lower quality then it could be. That's not to say that a conventional multiplayer component can never enhance a single player experience; being able to engage in combat/contest with an enemy far more dynamic then game AI can allow you explore the game world in new ways and have different emotional experiences. However few studios have as good resources as Bungie or Infinity Ward, so multiplayer modes rarely end up being worth playing at all. Not that they're bad per se, but why would you want to play Uncharted 2's multiplayer when you could be playing a game that's been built from the ground up to be multiplayer, such as Team Fortress 2? The result is that additional multiplayer game modes are often a waste of resources.

So far I've been referring to conventional implementation of multiplayer, i.e. deathmatch, capture the flag, and all the other usual game modes. It's worth thinking about unconventional multiplayer as well though. Take Brink for example; allowing real players to take the place of bots to try to thwart a player or group of players as they progress through a storyline is a really good way to enhance the single player experience. Demon's Souls' message leaving system is another way multiplayer interaction can enhance a single player experience. So we can conclude that it is possible for multiplayer to enhance single player, it just requires that the right kind of multiplayer is implemented, a kind of multiplayer that works with the single player.

Co-Operative Multiplayer Components: Co-Op can enhance the single player experience greatly; exploring and area or working together with a companion to take down a boss can convey narrative and generate experiences that really increase your enjoyment of the story. However this doesn't mean that by adding co-op to a game you are automatically adding to the value of its single player. I feel Half-Life 2, for example, is a kind of game where co-op would and confuse and detract from the messages and experience that the game is trying to convey, because it would completely mess up the relationships you have to the NPC characters, and destroy the pivotal illusion that you are Gordon Freeman. As it happens, co-op has actually been developed for the game in the form of the Synergy mod, which I've played and haven't really enjoyed at all. So as with competitive multiplayer, whether co-op really adds any value to single player really depends on what kind of game the single player is.

Replayability and Bonus Content: Yes, I know its not really a word, but everyone else uses it so I will too! Replayability is quite complicated when it comes to adding value. To use two earlier examples; I've played HL2 the game through many times and have easily got more 'value' out of it then I payed for, and Demons Souls is a game specifically designed to be fun when replayed. However I think that to say that replayability inherently adds to a game's value, or that being able to spend time in a game without advancing the story (i.e. Assassin's Creed's flag collection) adds anything to the game at all, is a wrong assumption. I say this because some games honestly seem to lose value by having multiple playthroughs encouraged. This can be seen with Lucas Art's Lucidity, which I really enjoyed and played through in a single sitting. The artwork was beautiful and atmospheric, the gameplay engaging, and the story/message/context interesting and emotionally effecting. I didn't need collect-a-thons, bonus levels, achievements, or leaderboards in order to have the reaction I did, and yet the developers chose to include them anyway.

This bugged me as I felt that the achievements and leaderboards distracted me and took my attention away from from what the game was trying to tell me. It was the same with the firefly collecting; the fact there was an option to collect as much as I could and a reward for doing so meant that I felt compelled to so, which again distracted me away from the actual game itself. So, as with competitive and co-operative multiplayer, it really comes down to integrating replayability and bonus content into games that would benefit from it, and not into games that wouldn't.

As you can see, the prevailing conclusion I have come to is that when games developers and publishers look into adding value to their games, they should think more about what type they are making, and how it could be enhanced, rather then looking at which ways of adding value are successful. After all, whatever is right for everyone else might not be right for you!

Addendum: Oh and yes, you could argue that added value is only added to make games more appealing to customers and so make more money, meaning it doesn't matter whether it enhances the game or not, as long as it sells. To this I would use the age old capitalist logic response; "money is made by games that sell, and games that sell are games that are bought by us the consumer, so in fact we the consumer have the power to decide what makes money and what doesn't". Now if only we could use this power responsibly, rather then just buying X million copies of Uncharted 2 and scoring it on its multiplayer mode and replay value.

acolite.eu goes live!

Janusz Urbanski — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 15:31:12 +0000

A little bit about myself:

I (Janusz Urbanski) go by the username 'acolite' online, and am an avid gamer, level designer, and UK based art student. At the time of writing I'm currently doing a Diploma in Foundation Studies at Hereford College of Art, and hopefully next year will have started a BA in Games Art, depending how my university applications work out.

Though I still find it odd to call myself an artist, you can find my most recent work on DeviantART and Vimeo. When it comes to video games I'm both a player and developer, playing mostly on the PC and making maps for the Source engine, Left 4 Dead and Half-Life 2 specifically.

Now about this website:

I've created a couple of sites before, some more successful than other, but with acolite.eu I want to create a place where I can post articles and information that interests me, without any obligations to get pageviews or keep activity levels high. I enjoy thinking and writing about games, so you can expect to see some quite in-depth content here in the future, but I plan to also post the odd bit of news that's worth mentioning, and ramble on whatever mod or game I'm enjoying at the time.

I intend the site to also act as a kind of showcase for my work, so expect to see some drawing and level design images posted posted at some point.

Well, now thats done I guess I should start on getting some content up!